5 - On Wellington’s Watch

Summary

This chapter explores the British sack of stormed towns from the perspective of Wellington’s command. Throughout his career, Wellington was not always consistent in how he dealt with sacks. He learnt lessons in India, but seemingly those lessons had to be learnt again in Spain. From Wellington’s perspective, the challenge was to manage and contain sack rather than prevent it entirely, something that he considered nigh on impossible. Given the centuries long tradition of plundering stormed towns, the chaotic circumstances of storming operations, and the prevailing articles of war, Wellington had only a very limited capacity to control the behaviour of his troops once beyond the breaches. Still, during the Peninsular War, as had been the case in India, a clear trend emerges: Wellington made progressively greater efforts to prevent or minimise sack plunder, with the growing encroachment of the military justice system into the space of sack itself. Moreover, Wellington cared about the welfare of civilians within besieged and stormed towns: it was not the breakdown of troop discipline alone that concerned him about sack – there was a humanity at play, too, as guarded and infrequently expressed as it was, in this most demonstrably unsentimental of soldiers.