Wellington’s Engineers: Military Engineering on the Peninsular War 1808-1814 by Mark S. Thomson Page B

Wellington’s staffs, would forty years later advise Lord Raglan in the Crimean War. Another, General Sir Charles Pasley, had been at the Battle of Corunna and would pioneer much-needed improvements in the training of engineer officers before going on to establish at Chatham what is now known as the Royal School of Military Engineering. Others were called upon to oversee a variety of famous civil endeavours. For example, Lieutenant Colonel John By played a major role in the early development of Canada, including the building of the Rideau Canal between Montreal and Kingston in the 1820s – now a World Heritage Site. Indeed, Ottawa, the capital of Canada, was originally called Bytown. Sir Joshua Jebb played a leading role in prison reform and would later become the first Surveyor General of Prisons in 1844. Sir William Reid, who was a Lieutenant at the time of the Peninsular War, became chairman of the committee for the planning of the Great Exhibition in 1851. Others continued the work of their forebears in the Ordnance Survey by conducting survey operations across the British Empire, and many made names for themselves as directors of railway companies and as colonial governors in the West Indies and Australia.
    The bi-centenary of the Peninsular War has created renewed interest in the period and I am delighted that we have a new evaluation of the role of Royal Engineer officers, who did much to lay the foundations for the many military and civil engineering feats that were accomplished in the Victorian era. Their legacy to our nation’s history deserves greater recognition.
    Lieutenant General Sir Mark Mans KCB CBE DL
    Chief Royal Engineer

Introduction
    On 27 July 1808, a very wet Royal Engineer officer, Captain Peter Patton, was washed up on the beach at Mondego Bay in Portugal, after his boat capsized whilst trying to ride over the rough Atlantic waves. Fortunately for him and his fellow Engineer passenger, Lieutenant John Neave Wells, there was no lasting injury. 1 This was the first step of an officer from the Corps of Royal Engineers in the Peninsula and the reason he was there will come as a surprise to many people. He was not there to conduct a siege, but to undertake a range of tasks for which he had been fully trained but is understood by few today.
    The stereotypical view of the engineers as just being employed for sieges is outdated and this book will provide a more balanced description of their role and their contribution to the war. Today, we have a greater emphasis on all the components that make up war. Gone are the descriptions of battles with no consideration of what came before the first shot or after the last. Recently, there have been a number of studies on logistics, the role of the Royal Navy, the effects of political considerations and the impact of other campaigns on the Peninsular War, e.g. the central European campaigns or the War of 1812. One area that has not been looked at for over 100 years is the role of the engineers who supported Wellington in his campaigns in the Iberian Peninsula. This support was provided by a number of different corps. These were the Royal Engineers, the Royal Military Artificers (later to become the Royal Sappers and Miners), the engineers of the Portuguese army, the Spanish army and the King’s German Legion, the Royal Staff Corps and the officers serving with the Quarter Master-General’s department (QMG staff, exploring officers and the Corps of Guides).
    This myriad of different units is partly the cause of the confusion about who did what during the war. Whilst on paper the roles of these units were clear, there was a level of pragmatism in the field, where whoever was available was used. This showed clearly in two particular areas, bridging and mapping. This pragmatism was not always shared or understood at home where inter-service rivalry remained intense. An early example was the engineer Captain Peter Patton being asked to explain why he had jointly signed