Alphonse d’Hautpoul was born at Versailles on 4 January 1789. He was a cousin of the cavalry general of the same name, who lost his life at the battle at Eylau. Alphonse’s brother, Amand, served in the horse artillery of the Imperial Guard. Attending the Military School at Fontainebleau, Alphonse departed there as a second lieutenant in October of 1806. He saw action in the engagements in Prussia and Poland of early 1807 up to Friedland. His regiment, the 59th, would make its way to Spain and Portugal as part of Ney’s VI Corps.
He was a witness of one of the most decisive battles of the Peninsular War and recounts his fate after the clash…
I stayed another month in Aspecia, continuing to fight in the field. During this time I was only involved in insignificant engagements. Finally, I was relieved; I joined the march regiment and, towards the month of March, we set off to join the Army of Portugal. I rejoined the 59th Regiment at Salamanca; I was very pleased to see my comrades again, they were like a new family to me.
Wellington crossed the Tormes at Salamanca and formed his battle line opposite us at a place called the Arapiles. On 21 July, the two armies confronted each other. Our positions were as follows. Our right wing consisted of Bonnet and Foy’s Divisions; in the centre, Ferey and Clauzel’s Divisions; on the left wing, Taupin, Thomières and Maucune’s Divisions. General Curto with his cavalry covered the extreme left, which was closest to the line. My regiment was part of Clauzel’s Division.
At dawn on the 22nd, the skirmishers began to engage. Marshal Marmont realised that he had to seize the initiative. He had 20,000 soldiers less than the enemy and almost no cavalry. It was only by a vigorous forward movement that he could hope to break through the English. Generals Foy and Bonnet occupied the two hills at Arapiles, and their position was formidable: it was to serve as a pivot for the army’s movements. Marshal Marmont was accused of having extended his line too far and of not having kept any reserves. What is certain is that, after a sharp cannonade, he ordered the left wing and the centre forward, in a sort of conversion to the right.
We stood in a line of battle; General Clauzel charged General Hill’s troops in front of us. The English were waiting for us on firm footing. When we were half a musket range away, they opened battalion fire on us with the same precision as during manoeuvres. Their flags stood in the line and we could hear the commands of their officers. Ferey and Clauzel’s Divisions were not arrested by this initial fire, even though more than 800 men had been incapacitated. We approached the enemy with the bayonet; their line was broken, the regiments of the Scottish Guards that were in front of us could not reform; we pursued them vigorously, littering the ground with their dead.
In the centre, we believed the battle had been won; however, Wellington, realising that Marshal Marmont had made a mistake by extending his line too far, had brought all his cavalry and reserves to his right wing and had our left wing vigorously charged by 8,000 horse. General Curto’s cavalry could not withstand the shock and was driven in. General Thomières’ Division, which stood on the extreme left, was charged in the flank before it had time to form squares; it could not resist either; the regiments were sabred and General Thomières was killed. Taupin and Maucune’s Divisions were in turn charged and driven in. General Clauzel, who pursued General Hill, realised that he was being outflanked on his left by a large cavalry force, halted his line and ordered his troops to form squares. He ran out of time, and his regiments, [all] cut off, were sabred. General Hill, reinforced by a corps of Portuguese, took the offensive again, and the melee became frightful.
At that moment, a Scottish sergeant, whom I had just sabred, shot me at point-blank range through the hip, and at the same time pierced my right arm with a bayonet. I fell, bathed in blood. Moments after I had been wounded, the English cavalry, catching us in the rear, ran through our line. Mr. de Loverdo, my colonel, who had succeeded Colonel Coste, took the regimental eagle and galloped off into the squares of Ferey’s Division, behind which the remnants of Clauzel’s Division rallied. Lying on the ground, I remained in enemy hands. During the charge, two squadrons passed over me, but by instinct, which is natural to them, the horses passed over me without harming me; I could see the horseshoes on their feet poised to crush me; my situation was critical, but there was nothing I could do about it, I had to resign myself to it.
I spent the night on the battlefield without any assistance. The next day, some Spanish guerrillas, who had not been present during the action, swooped down on us like vultures on their prey. I was stripped naked. One of these wretches, in order to take off my boots, placed a foot on my stomach and then tore them off. It was terribly hot, and the sun’s rays were burning my entire body. I found myself in a field where the wheat had recently been cut. With my left hand I tore off some straw and placed it on my head to stop the sun scorching my skull. I was suffering from a severe fever… Not far from me lay one of my comrades, Captain Gauchard; we had been together at Fontainebleau. He had a broken thigh and, in a fit of rage, uttered a thousand imprecations against his fate. I urged him to restrain himself and to save all his strength to withstand his injury. He did not listen to me and succumbed to terrible torments at around three o’clock.
I can still remember a young Spaniard about fifteen or sixteen years old, armed with a poor musket, coming up to me and, furious that there was nothing left for him to take from me, placing his weapon on my chest and heaping abuse on me. Then, raising it, he added: ‘What did you come here to do, you French brigand? You are not going to stay with the priests any more, but with the devil’. As he said this, he looked cheerful. I told him to hurry up and finish me off. I believe there was nothing left in his gun, for he left me and went off to seek his fortune elsewhere. At about seven o’clock in the evening, one of the English wagons that were roaming the battlefield collecting the wounded halted beside me. The ambulance soldiers had no idea which army I belonged to; they grabbed me by the feet and shoulders and placed me in the wagon with several other wounded. I was transported to Salamanca and taken to a paddock that we used as an ox park when we occupied the area.
There I encountered officers of my acquaintance, some wounded, others merely prisoners. They wore rather grotesque attires, in my opinion, but it was all I was able to obtain. They cut off the boots of a dragoon who had just passed away and made slippers for me, picked up a pair of discarded canvas trousers and put them on me, cut a hole in the middle of a horse blanket and put my head through it; I wore it like a chasuble, hanging down the front and the back. Then they tightened the whole thing around my waist with a musket strap. I was very grateful to be sheltered in this way from the drizzle, which is both abundant and very cold in Spain.
The number of wounded was very considerable, we had 12,000 men hors de combat; the English and Portuguese had lost almost as many. It was logical that the English surgeons should treat their countrymen first and have them taken to the hospitals and other establishments at Salamanca. I was not bandaged for the first time until the 23rd, at ten or eleven in the evening, twenty-nine hours after I had been injured. I was in a pitiful state; luckily my blood had clotted and hardened due to exposure to the sun, forming a sort of scab that prevented haemorrhaging.
On the 24th, I was taken to a church that had been converted into a hospital, where I was placed on cut straw. We were piled in a jumble, men of all nations. An English surgeon bandaged me every day. I was dressed in such a way that I could not be recognised as an officer; no matter who I said I was, they would not listen to me. It was not long before gangrene set in on my hip wound, and it was wreaking terrible havoc. The surgeon used a scalpel to open the flesh on the outside so as to connect the two bullet holes. This allowed him to insert powdered cinchona and lemon juice into the wound. I was in terrible pain, but this treatment saved my life. In the morning, he removed the rotting flesh with tweezers and cut it with scissors, then put back the same substances as the day before, with a bundle of oakum on top for lack of lint, secured with a bandage, and I was fine for twenty-four hours. The wound in my arm also caused me a lot of pain, although gangrene did not set in: it took its normal course. I was given Oporto wine to drink, which I poured into a broken jug with powdered cinchona. I stirred it with a stick and then I drank. I stuck to this regime for twenty-two days; the fever subsided and the gangrene was brought to a halt. I was very fortunate to be pure-blooded, for I needed a healthy, vigorous disposition to withstand my suffering and misery. It was not long before vermin got hold of me; [for the] straw was not replaced. As neighbours, I had a Hanoverian soldier on one side and an Italian from the Légion du Midi on the other.
I stayed in that church, without a shirt and in the attire I mentioned earlier, for two and a half months. Our food consisted of broth made with salted meat brought from England. When the suffering finally left me the strength to reflect, I saw myself as a prisoner for an indefinite time, for I knew that the war between France and England was not about to end. The Emperor did not want partial exchanges; he demanded that the Portuguese and the Spanish, allies of the English, prisoners in France like them, be exchanged at the same time. This proposal was rejected; each government retained its prisoners. Thus, at the age of twenty-three, I found myself with no hope of regaining my freedom and my career to be lost. That sorrowful thought was worse for me than the physical pain resulting from my injuries. I had a resilient soul; I felt strong enough to bear my pain and my destitution, but I was close to despair when I contemplated my future…
Source : Estienne Hennet de Goutel, Memoires du général marquis Alphonse d’Hautpoul – Pair de France (1789-1865), Perrin et Cie Libraires-Éditeurs, Paris, 1906, pp. 67-73.
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