3. The Battle of Maida (3)
An Unopposed Landing at Santa Eufemia
The expeditionary force landed, quite unopposed, on a shingly beach, a mile below the high-lying village which gives its name to the Gulf of Santa Eufemia, on the dawn of July 1st. Calabrese peasants rowed out to the ships to warn Stuart that there were a few French troops in the neighbourhood, but no force that he need fear. The place of honour in the disembarkation should have fallen to the light battalion, but a large transport which carried Kempt and the British portion of that corps had not arrived at the rendezvous, so General Oswald started the landing with the 250 Corsican Rangers and seven companies from the 78th, 58th, and 81st. Oswald spread out his men, and advanced cautiously towards Santa Eufemia, through a scrubby wooded rising ground. When he had nearly reached it a brisk fire broke out in his front, and the Corsican Rangers were driven in by a rush of some three hundred of the enemy.
This force consisted of three companies of Poles, who had just come up from Monteleone, and did their best to disconcert the landing party by a sudden attack. But, as Bunbury remarks, “they showed want of judgement in risking a contest in the wood; their true opportunity of doing us mischief was while our boats were struggling through the surf”. They were driven back by the supports after a brief scuffle, in which they lost two officers and fifty men prisoners. It may seem incredible, but is stated, alike in the official report and in Bunbury’s narrative and Boothby’s diary, that Oswald’s force lost only one sergeant wounded.
The victorious advanced guard then passed on, and took possession of Santa Eufemia, while the disembarkation was continuing. It was completed during the day, every man, gun, and artillery mule being ashore by the evening of July 1st. That evening the advanced guard took possession of the little town of Nicastro, five miles inland, which is the chief place of the district. The Calabrese showed great pleasure at the arrival of the expedition, and in the course of the next two days some 200 armed men joined the British; they are described by Bunbury as ‘ruffians of the lowest type”. The better class of inhabitants, though perfectly friendly, had not yet made up their minds to risk themselves, by taking up the cause of an ally whose force was small, and might (as they guessed) take to the sea again the moment that Reynier came up in full strength.
It is clear from the general strategic position of affairs that Stuart ought to have marched at once, to catch the enemy while he was still supposed to be in a state of complete dispersion. Every day that he remained stationary gave Reynier more opportunity to concentrate. Nevertheless, he lingered three days on the shore; the explanation given is that a heavy surf had sprung up on the night of July 1st, and that it was hard to get ashore the reserve ammunition, stores, and baggage animals. Meanwhile Stuart employed his time in throwing up an entrenchment on the beach. A ruined tower called the Bastione de Malta was taken as the centre of the work, and it was surrounded with a ditch and a semicircle of sandbags touching the shore at both ends.
Reynier meanwhile showed a very different sort of energy. His army was much less scattered than the British had supposed. At the moment that the expedition sailed he had seven of his ten battalions in the very toe of the Calabrian peninsula—two of the 1st Léger at Reggio, two of the 42nd Ligne at Pontemolle near Reggio, two of the 23rd Léger at Scilla, one of the 1st Swiss at Palmi, only eight miles north of Scilla. All his artillery were with him. To keep up his line of communications with the north and Naples he had only left his three Polish battalions and part of his cavalry, dotted at intervals along the road to Cassano. One battalion of the Poles was at Tropea, on the high road, thirty miles north of Palmi; another at Monteleone, ten miles farther up the road than Tropea, on the headland looking out into the Tyrrhenian Sea. It was three companies from this unit which had attacked Stuart’s vanguard on the morning of the disembarkation—Monteleone is only about fifteen miles from Màida beach. Lastly, the 3rd battalion was far to the north, at Cosenza with General Verdier. It had three companies detached at Cotrone (Crotón), where the division had its central hospital. Of the 9th Chasseurs, one squadron was at Catanzaro on the east coast of Calabria, the other two were near the main body of the division at a place called Maddalone, which I cannot find on the map, but which must be somewhere in the Reggio direction.
Thus when the British landed at Maida there lay north of them only one Polish battalion at Cosenza and Cotrone, and one Chasseur squadron at Catanzaro. Instead of cutting into the middle of Reynier’s army, Stuart had 8,000 of its 9,000 men south of him and only 1,000 north. It may be remarked, by the way, that Reynier in his dispatch says that he had but 7,000 men at the moment, of whom there were 1,000 out of reach at Cotrone and Cosenza. But his own morning state gives him the lie, as it shows 9,166 officers and men present on July 1st, three days before the battle. The news that a British fleet of transports had sailed north from Messina on the morning of June 30th started him off at once for the direction which the enemy had taken. He would not be cut off from Verdier, but would draw near his base and fight the British at once, unless they were in overwhelming force. “Five thousand men”, as he pleasantly remarked, “were enough to thrust 6,000 or 7,000 English into the water.”
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