Abstract
In July 1808 Lt General Sir Arthur Wellesley sailed for Portugal with an expeditionary force of 9000 men and orders to defeat Napoleon's army. Wellesley triumphed at the Battle of Vimeiro but his incompetent senior officers, Sir Harry Burrard and Sir Hew Dalrymple, arranged for an armistice. All three were recalled to London to face a tribunal and the fury of the British public baying for Napoleon's blood. Meanwhile, Sir John Moore was put in command of British forces in the Peninsula, retreating to Corunna with the loss of some 5000 men.
Wellesley's confidence in the war – and in himself – was not dented. He presented a plan of campaign to the Secretary of State and returned to Portugal in the spring of 1809, leaving his wife at home in Harley Street. Wellesley drove the French out of Oporto and as he prepared to advance on Madrid and to fortify Torres Vedras he received news of his peerage.
Wellington led an army that was consistently outnumbered by the enemy. His soldiers faced difficult conditions: a harsh climate, difficult terrain, exhausting marches. In some skirmishes his soldiers advanced very rapidly and were cut to pieces; at Albuera they were shattered by close-range musket fire. Forty-thousand British troops were deployed to Walcheren in 1809 and those who reached Portugal after that disastrous expedition were unfit. Sgt D Robertson, who joined Wellington's army in October 1809, complained of the torrential rain and cold which ‘brought back the Walcheren ague upon us’. The surgeon Charles Boutflower found that sickness prevailed throughout Wellington's army and he was himself incapacitated by ‘the bilious remittent fever of the country’.
Army medical administration in the Peninsula was poor and lacked coordination. Surgical equipment was scarce and medical practice in the Portuguese hospitals was antiquated. George Guthrie, who landed with Wellesley's troops in 1808, was called upon immediately to treat heavy casualties from two battles. Advancing north towards France, his assistant surgeon was killed and Guthrie had 3000 wounded to deal with – the base hospital was 35 miles away and transport primitive – so he operated for 18 hours a day until the situation eased. Guthrie wrote a standard textbook on the surgery of war and pushed for reforms, as did Sir James McGrigor, Wellington's senior medical officer in the Peninsula from 1812. While Wellington penned missives home-demanding supplies for the troops, McGrigor organized hospital wards and the more efficient removal of casualties from the battlefield.
At the start of the Peninsular Campaign the inefficiency of the Army Medical Board, particularly the ignorance and arrogance shown by Sir Lucas Pepys, head of the Board and President of the Royal College of Physicians (1804–10) caused problems. Fortunately, heroes including Guthrie and McGrigor were able to introduce improvements and initiate reforms to medical services for the British army before the climax at Waterloo in 1815.