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Three centuries of battles reconstructed with the buttons lost by the soldiers

2023-01-25T11:15:03.454Z


The recovery of 220 pieces allows us to recompose the secular warfare between Spain, Portugal, England and France in the province of Salamanca


Gallegos de Argañán is a small municipality in Salamanca located 15 kilometers from Ciudad Rodrigo and 10 from the Portuguese border.

Its strategic location next to a royal road meant that, between the 17th and 19th centuries, its term was crossed by numerous military units of the most varied origins: Spanish tercios, battalions and regiments, Portuguese

caçadores

, English divisions and Napoleonic army corps.

All of them made up of men who crouched, crawled, rested, fought, died... As a consequence, they lost accessories from their uniforms and their equipment, which the archaeologist Clemente González García, specialized in battlefield research, has documented and summarized in his report

Metal buttons in the 18th and 19th centuries on a border military itinerary.

Historical and Typological Studies,

published by the

Hecate Numismatic Magazine

.

A trail of

bread crumbs

―in three years it has documented 3,200 pieces of different types along more than seven kilometers of road―, which allows us to reconstruct the exact places where the exhausted soldiers stopped to rest or where they faced death in combat.

More information

pigs eat history

González García recalls that “the enormous traffic of individuals and military units traveling along the road gave rise to numerous losses of metallic objects.

Among them, a great variety of buttons whose identification and chronological attribution is, still today, the subject of debate in many cases”;

because sometimes it is difficult to distinguish if the element corresponds to a civilian or a soldier.

Only since the end of the 17th century did the troops use metal buttons and it was not until 1784 when it was ordered that they should bear the name of the unit.

Button science is a branch of numismatics that studies these small objects and helps to date and reconstruct historical episodes from the pieces found.

Of the 3,200 objects recovered, 1,100 correspond to spherical projectiles used by muzzle-loading weapons (those that are loaded through the barrel), about 700 coins, almost a hundred buckles, as well as religious medals, thimbles, various ornaments, remains of weapons and nails of all types and sizes;

some elements that demonstrate "the intense human activity carried out in this small municipality of the Salamanca Raya".

Among all the pieces detected, 220 buttons documented, inventoried and deposited in the Museum of Salamanca stand out.

Distribution of the 220 documented buttons on the prospected areasClemente González García

The royal road probably has a Veton origin ―various granite boars have been found associated with its route―, but it was also used by the Romans, perhaps under the name of Colimbriana road.

During the Portuguese Restoration War (1640-1668), the Gallegos de Argañán military fort ―built as an advanced defense of Ciudad Rodrigo― was bombarded in 1647 by the Portuguese.

In the War of Succession between the Austrias and the Bourbons (1704-1714) it suffered new artillery attacks by the Austrians, who dominated the area for almost a year and a half.

In 1736, in Aldea del Obispo, just 15 kilometers from Gallegos, another great fortress was built, which required for several decades the passage through the royal road of huge amounts of raw materials, such as lime, bricks, stone, iron, firewood , tools, food,

In 1762, the Spanish monarchy invaded Portugal ―with little success and heavy losses― in the so-called Fantastic War.

Along the way, the cavalry regiments from Flanders, Milan, Granada and Borbón traveled along, along with the Dragoons of Mérida and Sagunto, as well as the French division of the Prince of Beauveau, of 8,000 men.

In May 1801, during the so-called War of the Oranges, another large French contingent crossed the area.

In 1810, Napoleonic troops besieged Ciudad Rodrigo, while the English Light Division, deployed in Gallegos de Argañán, covered the withdrawal of Wellington's army.

In 1811 the battle of Fuentes de Oñoro, a neighboring municipality, took place.

In 1812, a new siege of Ciudad Rodrigo, this time by the English, made General Wellington use Gallegos as a logistics base and camp for thousands of men.

Iron buttons, from the late 18th century, found near a spout where the cavalry drank water, in Gallegos de Argañán.Clemente González García

Unlike coins, the buttons are sewn or locked, which greatly reduces the chance of loss.

For this to happen, the piece must undergo intense traction.

Something that frequently occurs in episodes of combat and fighting, but also in camps, when soldiers lie down to sleep or eat.

91% of the buttons found were made of copper alloys, but pewter (lead and tin), tombac (brass and zinc) and aluminum (3%) have also been documented.

Flat types predominate, a quarter have a convex shape while spherical and hemispherical are the least abundant.

The vast majority have a circular shape, except for a few that are octagonal.

Not a single copy of the typical charro button has been found, probably because it is used in festive costumes and not in work clothes.

Several have been found from the 19th century Spanish infantry.

Some, regulatory between 1875 and 1931, present the Alfonsine crown, but others have also been discovered with the mural crown characteristic of the First Republic.

Within this group, pieces of the Carabineros corps stand out, in charge of pursuing border smuggling;

of the Navy, of the Barbastro Hunters, of the Savoy Regiment [sic], or of the Provincial Militias of Ciudad Rodrigo.

Specimens of the so-called

Vendée

and patriotic have also been documented.

The first, related to the civil war that took place in the French province of La Vendée between monarchists and republicans in 1793, could have been introduced by Napoleonic troops and were located next to the spherical projectiles, which indicates war activity.

The patriotic ones, however, show the busts of Fernando VII and Isabel II, imitating those that were made in France with the face of Napoleon.

At the end of October 1808, 12,000 English soldiers disembarked in A Coruña and crossed Salamanca towards the Portuguese border, many of them accompanied by women.

They remained in the area until 1813, and during that period they set up camps, established surveillance points, fought heavily with the French, and even turned the local hermitage into a theater where British officers dressed as women performed.

The legislation of his country was very strict with the quality of the gold plating of the buttons, which gave rise to many soldiers using the shiny buttons of their uniforms as payment in Spanish taverns.

Among the English specimens documented in Gallegos, one stands out that shows a star with eight rays with a cross in the center and surrounded by the legend "

Honi soit qui mal y pense

", the motto of the English Order of the Garter, the highest British distinction. .

It belonged to an officer of the Coldstream Guards who participated in the battle of Fuentes de Oñoro in May 1811. Others from the 1st Royal Dragoons, part of the 1st Light Division Brigade, as well as from the 43rd Infantry Regiment have been found. light.

One of the pieces, in which the three feathers of the Prince of Wales can be distinguished, bears the German motto "

Ich dien"

(I serve).

As for the French troops, 17 infantry and cavalry pieces have been found, from line regiments 15, 24, 26, 39, 76, 82 and 86. One of them is very unique, since it corresponds to the 3rd Régiment de Flotille, created in 1807, and whose members assumed support tasks for the pontooners and engineers.

Abundant buttons have also been found decorated with floral motifs and with an X or cross, which until now had been considered for civil use.

However, the large number of findings and its connection with other military elements undoubtedly point to its relationship with the Spanish troops of the first half of the 18th century, the tercios.

The researcher draws attention in his report to the misuse of detectors by looters.

“The following reflection is enough.

During the 600 hours that we have used in our field work, some 3,200 objects have been recovered.

That same number of hours is equivalent to a single amateur going out for a year on Saturday and Sunday afternoons to prospect with his detector.

If we multiply this by the hundreds or thousands of fans that exist in Spain, we will see that the damage caused, especially on the Spanish battlefields, is immense”.

The looting of these archaeological pieces ―projectiles, buckles, coins, buttons...― "prevents an objective complement to the traditional historical account that, up to now, has been based exclusively on documentary sources."

Thus, looting makes it impossible to study with precision and scientific rigor many historical episodes and, especially, great battles, whose testimony is almost always based on the authority of their authors and protagonists.

Perhaps history was written by the victors, but, without a doubt, its vestiges are being erased by the plunderers.

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Source: elparis

All life articles on 2023-01-25

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