‘Your Highness informs me that if my army is united at Salamanca the

English would be “mad” to move into Estremadura, leaving me behind

them, and free to advance on Lisbon. But they tried this precise

combination in May 1811, though all my army was then quite close to

Salamanca, and though the Army of the North was then twice as strong as

it is to-day, and though the season was then later and allowed us to

find provender for our horses, and though we were then in possession

of Ciudad Rodrigo. They considered at that time that we could not

undertake such an operation [as a march on Lisbon], and were perfectly

right. Will they think that it is practicable to-day, when all the

conditions which I have just cited are changed to our disadvantage, and

when they know that a great body of troops has returned to France?...

Consequently no movement on this side can help Badajoz. The only

possible course is to take measures directly bearing on that place, if

we are to bring pressure upon the enemy and hope to attain our end.

The Emperor seems to ignore the food question. This is the important

problem; and if it could be ended by the formation of base-magazines,

his orders could be executed with punctuality and precision. But we are

far from such a position--by no fault of mine.... When transferred to

the North in January, I found not a grain of wheat in the magazines,

not a sou in the treasury, unpaid debts everywhere. As the necessary

result of the absurd system of administration adopted here, there

was in existence a famine--real or artificial--whose severity was

difficult to realize. We could only get food for daily consumption in

our cantonments by using armed force: there is a long distance between

this state of affairs and the formation of magazines which would allow

us to move the army freely.... The English army is always concentrated

and can always be moved, because it has an adequate supply of money

and transport. Seven or eight thousand pack-mules bring up its daily

food--hay for its cavalry on the banks of the Coa and Agueda has

actually been sent out from England[235]. His Majesty may judge from

this fact the comparison between their means and ours--we have not

four days’ food in any of our magazines, we have no transport, we

cannot draw requisitions from the most wretched village without sending

thither a foraging party 200 strong: to live from day to day we have to

scatter detachments to vast distances, and always to be on the move....

It is possible that His Majesty may be dissatisfied with my arguments,

but I am bound to say that I cannot carry out the orders sent me

without bringing about a disaster ere long. If His Majesty thinks

otherwise, I must request to be superseded--a request not made for the

first time: if I am given a successor the command will of course be

placed in better hands[236].’

[235] An exaggeration, but hay was actually brought to Lisbon and

Coimbra, and used for the English cavalry brigades, which had

been sent to the rear and cantoned on the Lower Mondego.

[236] Marmont to Berthier, Valladolid, Feb. 26. Marmont’s

_Mémoires_, iv. pp. 344-5.

[Illustration: _Marshal Marmont, Duke of Ragusa_]

This was an admirable summary of the whole situation in Spain, and

might have caused the Emperor to change his policy, if he had not by

this time so hardened himself in his false conceptions as to be past

conviction. As Marmont complains, his master had now built up for

himself an imaginary picture of the state of affairs in the Peninsula,

and argued as if the situation was what he wished it to be, not what

it actually was. ‘Il suppose vrai tout ce qu’il voudrait trouver

existant[237].’

[237] Marmont’s ‘Observations on the Imperial Correspondence of

Feb. 1812,’ _Mémoires_, iv. p. 512.

A subsequent letter from Paris, dated February 21st and received about

March 2nd, contained one small amelioration of Marmont’s lot--he

was told that he might take back Bonnet’s division, and not cede

it to Dorsenne, on condition that he sent it at once to occupy the

Asturias. But it then proceeded to lay down in the harshest terms the

condemnation of the Marshal’s strategy:

‘The Emperor charges me to repeat to you that you worry too much about

matters with which you have no concern. Your mission was to protect

Almeida and Rodrigo--and you have let them fall. You are told to

maintain and administer the North, and you abandon the Asturias--the

only point from which it can be dominated and contained. You are

getting into a state of alarm because Lord Wellington sends a division

or two towards Badajoz. Now Badajoz is a very strong fortress, and the

Duke of Dalmatia has 80,000 men, and can draw help from Marshal Suchet.

If Wellington were to march on Badajoz [he had done so the day before

this letter was written] you have a sure, prompt, and triumphant means

of bringing him back--that of marching on Rodrigo and Almeida.’

Marmont replied, with a suppressed rage that can be read between the

lines even more clearly than in his earlier letters, ‘Since the Emperor

attributes to me the fall of Almeida, which was given up before I had

actually taken over the command of this army[238], I cannot see what I

can do to shelter myself from censures at large: ... I am accused of

being the cause of the capture of Ciudad Rodrigo: it fell because it

had an insufficient garrison of inferior quality and a bad commandant.

Dorsenne was neither watchful nor prescient. Was it for me to take

care of a place not in my command, and separated from me by a chain

of mountains, and by the desert that had been made by the six months’

sojourn of the Army of Portugal in the valley of the Tagus?... I am

blamed for having cantoned myself in the valley of the Tagus after

repulsing Lord Wellington beyond the Coa [at the time of El Bodon],

but this was the result of the imperative orders of the Emperor, who

assigned me no other territory than the Tagus valley. Rodrigo was

occupied by troops of the Army of the North.... I have ordered General

Bonnet to reoccupy the Asturias at once, and quite see the importance

of the occupying of that province.... I am told that the Emperor thinks

that I busy myself too much about the interests of others, and not

enough about my own. I had considered that one of my duties (and one of

the most difficult of them) was to assist the Army of the South, and

that duty was formally imposed on me in some twenty dispatches, and

specially indicated by the order which bade me leave three divisions

in the valley of the Tagus. To-day I am informed that I am relieved

of that duty, and my position becomes simpler and better! But if the

Emperor relies with confidence on the effect which demonstrations

in the North will produce on the mind of Wellington, I must dare to

express my contrary opinion. Lord Wellington is quite aware that I have

no magazines, and is acquainted with the immensely difficult physical

character of the country, and its complete lack of food resources at

this season. He knows that my army is not in a position to cross the

Coa, even if no one opposes me, and that if we did so we should have to

turn back at the end of four days, unable to carry on the campaign, and

with our horses all starved to death[239].’

[238] To be exact, it was on May 10 that Marmont took over the

command from Masséna, and Almeida was evacuated by Brennier that

same night.

[239] I extract these various paragraphs from Marmont’s vast

dispatch of March 2, omitting much more that is interesting and

apposite.

This and much more to the same effect had apparently some effect on the

mind of the Emperor. But the result was confusing when formulated on

paper. Berthier replied on March 12:

‘Your letters of February 27 and 28 and March 2 have been laid before

the Emperor. His Majesty thinks that not only must you concentrate

at Salamanca, but that you must throw a bridge across the Agueda, so

that, if the enemy leaves less than five divisions north of the Tagus,

you may be able to advance to the Coa, against Almeida, and ravage all

northern Portugal. If Badajoz is captured by two divisions of the enemy

its loss will not be imputed to you, the entire responsibility will

fall on the Army of the South. If the enemy leaves only two, three, or

even four divisions north of the Tagus, the Army of Portugal will be

to blame if it does not at once march against the hostile force before

it, invest Almeida, ravage all northern Portugal, and push detachments

as far as the Mondego. Its rôle is simply to “contain” six British

divisions, or at least five: it must take the offensive in the North,

or, if the enemy has taken the initiative, or other circumstances

necessitate it, must dispatch to the Tagus, by Almaraz, the same number

of divisions that Lord Wellington shall have dispatched to conduct the

siege of Badajoz.’

This double-edged document reached Salamanca on March 27, _eleven days

after Wellington had invested Badajoz_. The whole allied field army had

marched for Estremadura in the last days of February, and not a single

British division remained north of the Tagus. In accordance with the

Emperor’s dispatches of February 11th and of February 18th, Marmont had

already concentrated the bulk of his resources at Salamanca, drawing

in everything except Bonnet (destined for the Asturias), Souham, who

was left on the Esla to face the Army of Galicia, and the equivalent of

another division distributed as garrisons in Astorga, Leon, Palencia,

Zamora, and Valladolid. With five divisions in hand, or just coming up,

he was on the move, as the Emperor had directed, to threaten Rodrigo

and Almeida and invade northern Portugal.

The Paris letter of March 12, quoted above, suddenly imposed on Marmont

the choice between continuing the attack on Portugal, to which he was

committed, or of leading his whole army by Almaraz to Badajoz--it must

be the whole army, since he was told to send just as many divisions

southward as Wellington should have moved in that direction, and every

one of the seven units of the allied army had gone off.

Since Badajoz was stormed on April 6th, only ten days after Marmont

received on March 27 the Emperor’s dispatch of March 12, it is clear

that he never could have arrived in time to help the fortress. In June

1811 he had accomplished a similar movement at a better season of the

year, and when some time had been allowed for preparation, in fifteen

days, but only by making forced marches of the most exhausting sort. It

could not have been done in so short a time in March or April, when the

crops were not ripe, the rivers were full, and the roads were far worse

than at midsummer. Moreover (as we shall presently see) Wellington had

placed a large containing force at Merida, half-way between Almaraz and

Badajoz, which Marmont would have had to drive in--at much expense of

time.

The Marshal’s perplexity on receiving the dispatch that came in upon

March 27 was extreme. ‘The instructions just received,’ he wrote

to Berthier, ‘are wholly contradictory to those of February 18 and

February 21, imperative orders which forced me, against my personal

conviction, to abandon my own plan, and to make it impossible to do

what I regarded as suitable to the interests of the Emperor. The

letters of February 18 and February 21 told me that his Majesty

thought me a meddler in matters which did not concern me: he told me

that it was unnecessary for me to worry about Badajoz, “a very strong

fortress supported by an army of 80,000 men.” ... He gave me formal

orders to abandon any idea of marching to succour it, and added that

if Lord Wellington went thither, he was to be left alone, because by

advancing to the Agueda I could bring him back at once. The letters of

the 18th and 21st made it quite clear that His Majesty freed me from

all responsibility for Badajoz, provided I made a demonstration on the

Agueda. ... To-day your Highness writes that I _am_ responsible for

Badajoz, if Lord Wellington undertakes its siege with more than two

divisions. The concluding paragraph of your letter seems to give me

permission to succour the place, by bringing up troops to the Tagus.

So, after imperative orders have wrecked my original arrangement, which

had prepared and assured an effective help for Badajoz, and after all

choice of methods has been forbidden to me, I am suddenly given an

option when it is no longer possible to use it.... To-day, when my

troops from the Tagus valley have repassed the mountains, and used up

the magazines collected there at their departure, when it is impossible

to get from Madrid the means to establish a new magazine at Almaraz, my

army, if it started from this point [Salamanca], would consume every

scrap of food that could be procured before it could possibly reach

Badajoz.... The movement was practicable when I was in my original

position: it is almost impracticable now, considering the season of the

year, and the probable time-limit of the enemy’s operations.... After

ripe reflection on the complicated situation, considering that my main

task is to hold down the North, and that this task is much greater

than that of holding the South, taking into consideration the news

that an English force is said to be landing at Corunna (an improbable

story, but one that is being repeatedly brought me), considering that

the Portuguese and Galician troops threaten to take the offensive from

Braganza, remembering that your letters of February 18 and 21 state

that Suchet’s Army of Aragon is reckoned able to reinforce the Army

of the South, and considering that my dispositions have been made (in

spite of immense preliminary difficulties) for a fifteen days’ march on

the Agueda, which is already begun, I decide in favour of continuing

that operation, though I have (as I said before) no great confidence in

its producing any effective result.

‘Accordingly I am putting the division that came up from the Tagus in

motion for Plasencia, with orders to spread the rumour that it is to

rejoin the army by the pass of Perales and enter Portugal; I start

from here with three more divisions for the Agueda; ... if I fought

on the Tormes I could put one more division in line, five in all: the

number of seven divisions of which the Emperor speaks could only be

concentrated if the Army of the North[240] could send two divisions to

replace my own two now on the lines of communications and the Esla.’

[240] Marmont writes the Army of the Centre, evidently in

confusion for the Army of the North. The nearest posts of the

Army of the Centre were 150 miles away from the Esla, while

the Army of the North at Burgos was much closer. Moreover, the

Army of the Centre had not two infantry divisions, but only

one--d’Armagnac’s--and some _Juramentado_ regiments.

The recapitulation of all this correspondence may seem tedious, but it

is necessary. When it is followed with care I think that one definite

fact emerges. Napoleon was directly and personally responsible for the

fall of Badajoz. Down to March 27th Marmont was strictly forbidden to

take any precautions for the safety of that fortress, and was censured

as a meddler and an alarmist, for wishing to keep a strong force in

the valley of the Tagus, ready to march thither. On March 27 he was

suddenly given an option of marching to Estremadura with his whole

army. It appears to be an option, not a definite order, for Berthier’s

sentence introducing the new scheme is alternative--the Army of

Portugal is ‘to take the offensive in the North _or_, under certain

circumstances, to march for Almaraz.’ But this point need not be

pressed, for if taken as a definite order it was impracticable: Marmont

received it so late that, if he had marched for Badajoz with the

greatest possible speed, he would have reached it some days after the

place was stormed. The fact that he believed that he would never have

got there at all, because lack of food would have stopped him on the

way, is indifferent. The essential point of Napoleon’s responsibility

is that he authorized the march too late, after having most stringently

forbidden it, in successive letters extending over several weeks.

That a march on Badajoz by the whole Army of Portugal (or so much of it

as was not required to contain the Galicians and to occupy Asturias),

if it had begun--as Marmont wished--in February or early March, would

have prevented Wellington from taking the fortress, is not certain.

A similar march in June 1811 had that effect, at the time of the

operations on the Caya. But Wellington’s position was much better

in February 1812 than it had been eight months earlier. This much,

however, is clear, that such an operation had a possible chance of

success, while Napoleon’s counter-scheme for a demonstration on the

Agueda and an invasion of the northern Beira had no such prospect.

The Emperor, for lack of comprehension of the local conditions,

misconceived its efficacy, as Marmont very cogently demonstrated in his

letters. Northern Portugal was a waste, where the Marshal’s army might

wander for a few days, but was certain to be starved before it was many

marches from the frontier. Napier, in an elaborate vindication of the

Emperor, tries to argue that the Marshal might have taken Rodrigo by

escalade without a battering-train, have assailed Almeida in similar

fashion, have menaced Oporto and occupied Coimbra[241]. He deliberately

ignores one essential condition of the war, viz. that because of the

French system of ‘living on the country,’ Marmont had no magazines, and

no transport sufficient to enable his army to conduct a long offensive

campaign in a devastated and hostile land. His paragraphs are mere

rhetoric of the most unfair kind. For example, he says, ‘Wellington

with 18,000 men[242] escaladed Badajoz, a powerful fortress defended by

an excellent governor and 5,000 French veterans: Marmont with 28,000

men would not attempt to escalade Rodrigo, although its breaches were

scarcely healed and its garrison disaffected.’ This statement omits the

essential details that Wellington had a large siege-train, had opened

three broad breaches in the walls of Badajoz, and, while the enemy

was fully occupied in defending them, escaladed distant points of the

_enceinte_ with success. Marmont had no siege-train, and therefore

could have made no breaches; he would have had to cope with an

undistracted garrison, holding ramparts everywhere intact. Moreover,

Ciudad Rodrigo and its outworks form a compact fortress, of not half

the circumference of Badajoz and its dependencies. If Ney and Masséna,

with an adequate siege apparatus, treated Rodrigo with respect in 1810,

and proceeded against it by regular operations, Marmont would have been

entirely unjustified in trying the desperate method of escalade in

1812. The fortifications, as Napier grudgingly admits, were ‘healed’:

an escalade against Carlos de España’s garrison would certainly have

met the same fate as Suchet’s assault on Saguntum, a much weaker and

unfinished stronghold. But it is unnecessary to follow into detail

Napier’s controversial statements, which are all part of a wrong-headed

scheme to prove Napoleon infallible on all occasions and at all costs.

[241] See chapter vii of book iv, _Peninsular War_, iv. pp.

138-40.

[242] Why omit the 30,000 men of Graham and Hill?

The governing facts cannot be disputed: Marmont in February placed

three divisions on the Tagus, which were to form the advanced guard

of an army that was to march to the relief of Badajoz, whose siege he

foresaw. Napoleon told him not to concern himself about Badajoz, and

compelled him to concentrate his army about Salamanca. He instructed

him that the proper reply to an attack on Badajoz by Wellington was

an invasion of northern Portugal, and gave him elaborate instructions

concerning it. Marmont reluctantly obeyed, and was starting on such an

expedition when he was suddenly told that he might move on Badajoz.

But he only received this permission ten days before that fortress

was stormed: it was therefore useless. The Emperor must take the

responsibility.

SECTION XXXII: CHAPTER III

THE SIEGE OF BADAJOZ. MARCH-APRIL 1812

In narrating the troubles of the unlucky Duke of Ragusa, engaged

in fruitless strategical controversy with his master, we have been

carried far into the month of March 1812. It is necessary to return to

February 20th in order to take up the story of Wellington’s march to

Estremadura. We have seen that he commenced his artillery preparations

in January, by sending Alexander Dickson to Setubal, and dispatching a

large part of his siege-train southward, partly by sea, partly across

the difficult mountain roads of the Beira.

The Anglo-Portuguese infantry and cavalry, however, were not moved till

the guns were far on their way. It was Wellington’s intention to show

a large army on the frontier of Leon till the last possible moment. He

himself kept his old headquarters at Freneda, near Fuentes de Oñoro,

till March 5th, in order that Marmont might be led to persist in the

belief that his attention was still concentrated on the North. But,

starting from February 19th, his divisions, one by one, had made their

unostentatious departure for the South: on the day when he himself

followed them only one division (the 5th) and one cavalry brigade (V.

Alten’s) still remained behind the Agueda. The rest were at various

stages on their way to Elvas. Most of the divisions marched by the

route Sabugal, Castello Branco, Villa Velha, Niza. But the 1st Division

went by Abrantes, in order to pick up there its clothing for the new

year, which had been brought up the Tagus in boats from Lisbon to that

point. Some of the cavalry and the two independent Portuguese brigades

of Pack and Bradford, whose winter cantonments had been rather to the

rear, had separate routes of their own, through places so far west as

Thomar[243] and Coimbra. The three brigades of the 2nd Division, under

Hill, which had been brought up to Castello Branco at the beginning of

January, were at the head of the marching army, and reached Portalegre,

via Villa Velha, long before the rest of the troops were across the

Tagus. Indeed, the first of them (Ashworth’s Portuguese) started

as early as February 2nd, and was at Castello de Vide, near Elvas,

by February 8th, before the troops behind the Agueda had begun to

move[244].

[243] This was the case with G. Anson’s brigade and Bradford’s

Portuguese infantry. Pack went by Coimbra, Slade’s cavalry

brigade by Covilhão, and the horse artillery of Bull and McDonald

with it.

[244] Nothing is rarer, as all students of the Peninsular War

know to their cost, than a table of the exact movements of

Wellington’s army on any march. For this particular movement the

whole of the detailed orders happen to have been preserved in the

D’Urban Papers. The starting-places of the units were:--

1st Division--Gallegos, Carpio, Fuentes de Oñoro.

3rd Division--Zamorra (by the Upper Agueda).

4th Division--San Felices and Sesmiro.

5th Division--Ciudad Rodrigo.

6th Division--Albergaria (near Fuente Guinaldo).

7th Division--Payo (in the Sierra de Gata).

Light Division--Fuente Guinaldo.

Bradford’s Portuguese--Barba del Puerco.

Pack’s Portuguese--Campillo and Ituero.

The marches were so arranged that the 7th Division passed through

Castello Branco on Feb. 26, the 6th Division on Feb. 29, the

Light Division on March 3, the 4th Division on March 5. All these

were up to Portalegre, Villa Viçosa, or Castello de Vide, in

touch with Elvas, by March 8. The 1st Division, coming by way of

Abrantes, joined on March 10. Pack and Bradford, who had very

circuitous routes, the one by Coimbra, the other by Thomar, were

not up till several days later (16th). The 5th Division did not

leave Rodrigo till March 9.

The lengthy column of infantry which had marched by Castello Branco and

the bridge of Villa Velha was cantoned in various places behind Elvas,

from Villa Viçosa to Portalegre, by March 8th: the 1st Division, coming

in from the Abrantes direction, joined them on March 10th, and halted

at Monforte and Azumar. Only the 5th Division and the two Portuguese

independent brigades were lacking, and of these the two former were

expected by the 16th, the latter by the 20th. With the exception of

the 5th Division the whole of Wellington’s field army was concentrated

near Elvas by the 16th. Only the 1st Hussars of the King’s German

Legion, under Victor Alten, had been left to keep the outpost line in

front of Ciudad Rodrigo, in order that the French vedettes in Leon

should not detect that all the army of Wellington had disappeared, as

they were bound to do if only Portuguese or Spanish cavalry showed at

the front[245]. Counting Hill’s corps, now long returned to its old

post in front of Badajoz, there were now nearly 60,000 troops nearing

Elvas, viz. of infantry, all the eight old Anglo-Portuguese divisions,

plus Hamilton’s Portuguese division[246], and Pack’s and Bradford’s

independent Portuguese brigades. Of cavalry not only were all the old

brigades assembled (save Alten’s single regiment), but two powerful

units now showed at the front for the first time. These were the

newly-landed brigade of German heavy dragoons under Bock[247], which

had arrived at Lisbon on January 1st, and Le Marchant’s brigade of

English heavy dragoons[248], which had disembarked in the autumn, but

had not hitherto been brought up to join the field army. Of Portuguese

horse J. Campbell’s brigade was also at the front: the other Portuguese

cavalry brigade, which had served on the Leon frontier during the

preceding autumn, had been made over to General Silveira, and sent

north of the Douro. But even after deducting this small brigade of 900

sabres, Wellington’s mounted arm was immensely stronger than it had

ever been before. He had concentrated it on the Alemtejo front, in

order that he might cope on equal terms with the very powerful cavalry

of Soult’s Army of Andalusia.

[245] The other regiment of V. Alten’s brigade (11th Light

Dragoons) was on March 12 at Ponte de Sor, on its way to the

South.

[246] Which lay at Arronches and Santa Olaya.

[247] 1st and 2nd Heavy Dragoons K.G.L.

[248] 3rd Dragoons, 4th and 5th Dragoon Guards. They had been

lying during the winter in the direction of Castello Branco.

The Commander-in-Chief himself, travelling with his wonted speed, left

his old head-quarters at Freneda on March 5th, was at Castello Branco

on the 8th, at Portalegre on the 10th, and had reached Elvas, his

new head-quarters, on the 12th. Before leaving the North he had made

elaborate arrangements for the conduct of affairs in that quarter.

They are contained in two memoranda, given the one to Castaños, who

was still in command both of the Galician and the Estremaduran armies

of Spain, and the other to Generals Baccelar and Silveira, of whom the

former was in charge of the Portuguese department of the North, with

head-quarters at Oporto, and the other of the Tras-os-Montes, with

head-quarters at Villa Real[249].

[249] Dated Feb. 24 and 27, _Dispatches_, viii. pp. 629 and 638.

It was a delicate matter to leave Marmont with nothing save the

Spaniards and Portuguese in his front. Of the former the available

troops were (1) the Army of Galicia, four weak field divisions, making

about 15,000 men, of whom only 550 were cavalry, while the artillery

counted only five batteries. There were 8,000 garrison and reserve

troops in Corunna, Vigo, Ferrol, and other fortified posts to the rear,

but these were unavailable for service[250]. Abadia still commanded

the whole army, under the nominal supervision of Castaños. He had one

division (3,000 men under Cabrera) at Puebla Senabria on the Portuguese

frontier, two (9,000 men under Losada and the Conde de Belveder) at

Villafranca, observing the French garrison of Astorga and Souham’s

division on the Esla, which supported that advanced post, and one

(2,500 men under Castañon) on the Asturian frontier watching Bonnet.

(2) The second Spanish force available consisted of that section of

the Army of Estremadura, which lay north of the Sierra de Gata, viz.

Carlos de España’s division of 5,000 men, of whom 3,000 had been thrown

into Ciudad Rodrigo, so that the surplus for the field was small, and

of Julian Sanchez’s very efficient guerrillero cavalry, who were about

1,200 strong and were now counted as part of the regular army and

formally styled ‘1st and 2nd Lancers of Castille.’

[250] These figures are those of January, taken from the ‘morning

state’ in _Los Ejércitos españoles_, the invaluable book of 1822

published by the Spanish Staff.

The Portuguese troops left to defend the northern frontier were all

militia, with the exception of a couple of batteries of artillery and

the cavalry brigade of regulars which had been with Wellington in Leon

during the autumn, under Madden, but was now transferred to Silveira’s

charge, and set to watch the frontier of the Tras-os-Montes, with the

front regiment at Braganza. Silveira in that province had the four

local regiments of militia, of which each had only one of its two

battalions actually embodied. Baccelar had a much more important force,

but of the same quality, the twelve regiments forming the divisions

of Trant and J. Wilson, and comprising all the militia of the Entre

Douro e Minho province and of northern Beira. Three of these regiments

were immobilized by having been told off to serve as the garrison of

Almeida. Farther south Lecor had under arms the two militia regiments

of the Castello Branco country, watching their own district. The total

force of militia available on the whole frontier must have been about

20,000 men of very second-rate quality: each battalion had only been

under arms intermittently, for periods of six months, and the officers

were for the most part the inefficient leavings of the regular army. Of

the generals Silveira was enterprising, but over bold, as the record of

his earlier campaigns sufficiently demonstrated--Trant and Wilson had

hitherto displayed equal energy and more prudence: but in the oncoming

campaign they were convicted of Silveira’s fault, over-confidence.

Baccelar passed as a slow but fairly safe commander, rather lacking in

self-confidence.

Wellington’s very interesting memoranda divide the possibilities

of March-April into three heads, of which the last contains three

sub-sections:--

(1) Marmont may, on learning that Badajoz is in danger, march with

practically the whole of his army to succour it, as he did in May-June

1811. If this should occur, Abadia and Carlos de España will advance

and boldly take the offensive, laying siege to Astorga, Toro, Zamora,

Salamanca, and other fortified posts. Silveira will co-operate with

his cavalry and infantry, within the bounds of prudence, taking care

that his cavalry, which may support Abadia, does not lose communication

with, and a secure retreat upon, his infantry, which will not risk

itself.

(2) Marmont may leave a considerable force, perhaps the two divisions

of Souham and Bonnet, in Leon, while departing southward with the

greater part of his army: ‘this is the operation which it is probable

that the enemy will follow.’ What the Army of Galicia can then

accomplish will depend on the exact relative force of itself and of

the French left in front of it, and on the state of the fortified

places on the Douro and Tormes [Toro, Zamora, Salamanca] and the

degree of equipment with which General Abadia can provide himself for

siege-work. But España and Julian Sanchez must make all the play that

they can, and even Porlier and Longa, from distant Cantabria, must be

asked to co-operate in making mischief. Silveira and Baccelar will

support, but risk nothing.

(3) Marmont may send to Estremadura only the smaller half of his army,

and keep four or five divisions in the north, a force strong enough to

enable him to take the offensive. He may attack either (_a_) Galicia,

(_b_) Tras-os-Montes, or (_c_) the Beira, including Almeida and Ciudad

Rodrigo.

(_a_) If Marmont should invade Galicia, Abadia had better retreat, but

in the direction that will bring him near the frontiers of Portugal

(i. e. by Puebla Senabria) rather than on Lugo and Corunna. In that

case Silveira and Baccelar will be on the enemy’s flank and rear, and

will do as much mischief as they can on his communications, always

taking care that they do not, by pushing too far into Leon, lose their

communication with the Galicians or with Portugal. In proportion as the

French may advance farther into Galicia, Baccelar will take measures

to collect the whole of the militia of the Douro provinces northward.

Carlos de España and Julian Sanchez ought to have good opportunities of

making trouble for the enemy in the Salamanca district, if he pushes

far from his base.

(_b_) If Marmont should invade Tras-os-Montes [not a likely operation,

owing to the roughness of the country], Baccelar and Silveira should

oppose him in front, while Abadia would come down on his flank and

rear, and annoy him as much as possible. ‘Don Carlos and the guerrillas

might do a great deal of mischief in Castille.’

(_c_) If Marmont should attack Beira, advancing by Ciudad Rodrigo and

Almeida, both these fortresses are in such a state of defence as to

ensure them against capture by a _coup-de-main_, and are supplied with

provisions to suffice during any time that the enemy could possibly

remain in the country. Baccelar and Silveira will assemble all the

militia of the northern provinces in Upper Beira, and place themselves

in communication with Carlos de España. They will endeavour to protect

the magazines on the Douro and Mondego [at Celorico, Guarda, Lamego,

St. João de Pesqueira], and may live on the last in case of urgent

necessity, but not otherwise, as these stores could not easily be

replaced. An attempt should be made, if possible, to draw the enemy

into the Beira Baixa (i. e. the Castello Branco country) rather than

towards the Douro. Abadia will invade northern Leon; what he can do

depends on the force that Marmont leaves on the Esla, and the strength

of his garrisons at Astorga, Zamora, Toro, &c. Supposing Marmont takes

this direction, Carlos de España will destroy before him all the

bridges on the Yeltes and Huebra, and that of Barba del Puerco, and the

three bridges at Castillejo, all on the Lower Agueda.

It will be seen that the alternative (2) was Marmont’s own choice, and

that he would have carried it out but for Napoleon’s orders, which

definitively imposed upon him (3_c_) the raid into northern Beira.

With the inconclusive operations resulting from that movement we shall

deal in their proper place. It began on March 27th, and the Marshal

was over the Agueda on March 30th. The last British division had left

Ciudad Rodrigo three weeks before Marmont advanced, so difficult was

it for him to get full and correct information, and to collect a

sufficiently large army for invasion. On the 26th February he was under

the impression that two British divisions only had yet marched for

Badajoz, though five had really started. On March 6th, when only the

5th Division remained in the North, he still believed that Wellington

and a large fraction of his army were in their old positions. This

was the result of his adversary’s wisdom in stopping at Freneda till

March 5th; as long as he was there in person, it was still thought

probable by the French that only a detachment had marched southward.

Hence came the lateness of Marmont’s final advance: for a long time he

might consider that he was, as his master ordered, ‘containing’ several

British divisions and the Commander-in-Chief himself.

Meanwhile, on taking stock of his situation at Elvas on March 12th,

Wellington was reasonably satisfied. Not only was the greater part

of his army in hand, and the rest rapidly coming up, but the siege

material had escaped all the perils of storms by sea and rocky

defiles by land, and was much where he had expected it to be. The

material which moved by road, the sixteen 24-lb. howitzers which had

marched on January 30th, and a convoy of 24-pounder and 18-pounder

travelling-carriages and stores, which went off on February 2, had

both come to hand at Elvas, the first on February 25th, the second on

March 3, and were ready parked on the glacis. This was a wonderful

journey over mountain roads in the most rainy season of the year. The

sea-borne guns had also enjoyed a surprising immunity from winter

storms; Dickson, when he arrived at Setubal on February 10th, found

that the 24-pounders from Oporto had arrived thirty-six hours before

him, and on the 14th was beginning to forward them by river-boat to

Alcacer do Sal, from where they were drawn by oxen to Elvas, along

with their ammunition[251]. The only difficulty which arose was that

Wellington had asked Admiral Berkeley, commanding the squadron at

Lisbon, to lend him, as a supplementary train, twenty 18-pound ship

guns. The admiral sent twenty Russian guns (leavings of Siniavins’s

squadron captured in the Tagus at the time of the Convention of

Cintra). Dickson protested, as these pieces were of a different calibre

from the British 18-pounder, and would not take its shot. The admiral

refused to disgarnish his own flagship, which happened to be the only

vessel at Lisbon with home-made 18-pounders on board. Dickson had

to take the Russian guns perforce, and to cull for their ammunition

all the Portuguese stores at Lisbon, where a certain supply of round

shot that fitted was discovered, though many thousands had to be

rejected as ‘far too low.’ On March 8th the whole fifty-two guns of

the siege-train were reported ready, and the officer commanding the

Portuguese artillery at Elvas announced that he could even find a small

supplement, six old heavy English iron guns of the time of George II,

which had been in store there since General Burgoyne’s expedition of

1761, besides some Portuguese guns of similar calibre. The old brass

guns which had made such bad practice in 1811 were not this time

requisitioned--fortunately they were not needed. The garrison of Elvas

had for some weeks been at work making gabions and fascines, which

were all ready, as was also a large consignment of cutting-tools from

the Lisbon arsenal, and a train of twenty-two pontoons. Altogether the

material was in a wonderful state of completeness.

[251] For details see Jones, _Sieges of the Peninsula_, Appendix

in vol. i. pp. 421-5, and the _Dickson Papers_, ed. Leslie, for

Feb. 1812.

For the service of the siege Wellington could dispose of about 300

British and 560 Portuguese artillerymen, a much larger force than had

been available at the two unlucky leaguers of 1811. Colonel Framingham

was the senior officer in this arm present, but Wellington had directed

that Alexander Dickson should take charge of the whole service of the

siege, just as he had been entrusted with all the preparations for

it. There were fifteen British, five German Legion, and seventeen

Portuguese artillery officers under his command. The Portuguese gunners

mostly came from the 3rd or Elvas regiment, the British were drawn from

the companies of Holcombe, Gardiner, Glubb, and Rettberg.[252] Under

Colonel Fletcher, senior engineer officer, there were 115 men of the

Royal Military Artificers present at the commencement of the siege, and

an additional party came up from Cadiz during its last days. But though

this was an improvement over the state of things in 1811, the numbers

were still far too small; there were no trained miners whatever, and

the volunteers from the line acting as sappers, who were instructed by

the Artificers, were for the most part unskilful--only 120 men of the

3rd Division who had been at work during the leaguer of Ciudad Rodrigo

were comparatively efficient. The engineer arm was the weak point in

the siege, as Wellington complained in a letter which will have to be

dealt with in its proper place. He had already been urging on Lord

Liverpool the absolute necessity for the creation of permanent units

of men trained in the technicalities of siege-work. Soon after Rodrigo

fell he wrote, ‘I would beg to suggest to your lordship the expediency

of adding to the Engineer establishment a corps of sappers and miners.

It is inconceivable with what disadvantage we undertake a siege, for

want of assistance of this description. There is no French _corps

d’armée_ which has not a battalion of sappers and a company of miners.

We are obliged to depend for assistance of this sort upon the regiments

of the line; and, although the men are brave and willing, they want

the knowledge and training which are necessary. Many casualties occur,

and much valuable time is lost at the most critical period of the

siege[253],’

[252] For details see Duncan’s _History of the Royal Artillery_,

ii. pp. 318-19.

[253] Wellington, _Dispatches_, viii. p. 601.

The situation on March 12th, save in this single respect, seemed

favourable. It was only fourteen miles from Elvas, where the

siege-train lay parked and the material was ready, to Badajoz.

Sufficient troops were already arrived not only to invest the place,

but to form a large covering army against any attempt of Soult to

raise the siege. There was every reason to believe that the advance

would take the French unawares. Only Drouet’s two divisions were in

Estremadura, and before they could be reinforced up to a strength

which would enable them to act with effect some weeks must elapse.

Soult, as in 1811, would have to borrow troops from Granada and the

Cadiz Lines before he could venture to take the offensive. Unless he

should raise the siege of Cadiz or evacuate Granada, he could not

gather more than 25,000 or 30,000 men at the very most: and it would

take him three weeks to collect so many. If he approached with some

such force, he could be fought, with very little risk: for it was not

now as at the time of Albuera: not three Anglo-Portuguese infantry

divisions, but eight were concentrated at Elvas: there would be nine

when the 5th Division arrived. Not three British cavalry regiments

(the weak point at Albuera), but fourteen were with the army. If Soult

should push forward for a battle, 40,000 men could be opposed to him,

all Anglo-Portuguese units of old formation, while 15,000 men were

left to invest Badajoz. Or if Wellington should choose to abandon the

investment for three days (as Beresford had done in May 1811) he could

bring 55,000 men to the contest, a force which must crush Soult by the

force of double numbers, unless he should raise the siege of Cadiz and

abandon Granada, so as to bring his whole army to the Guadiana. Even if

he took that desperate, but perhaps necessary, measure, and came with

45,000 men, leaving only Seville garrisoned behind him, there was no

reason to suppose that he could not be dealt with.

The only dangerous possibility was the intervention of Marmont with

five or six divisions of the Army of Portugal, as had happened at the

time of the operations on the Caya in June 1811. Wellington, as we

have seen in his directions to Baccelar and Castaños, thought this

intervention probable. But from the disposition of Marmont’s troops

at the moment of his own departure from Freneda, he thought that he

could count on three weeks, or a little more, of freedom from any

interference from this side. Two at least of Marmont’s divisions

(Souham and Bonnet) would almost certainly be left in the North, to

contain the Galicians and Asturians. Of the other six only one (Foy)

was in the valley of the Tagus: the rest were scattered about, at

Salamanca, Avila, Valladolid, &c., and would take time to collect[254].

Wellington was quite aware of Marmont’s difficulties with regard to

magazines; he also counted on the roughness of the roads, the fact that

the rivers were high in March, and (most of all) on the slowness with

which information would reach the French marshal[255]. Still, here lay

the risk, so far as Wellington could know. What he could not guess

was that the movement which he feared had been expressly forbidden

to Marmont by his master, and that only on March 27th was permission

granted to the Marshal to execute the march to Almaraz. By that time,

as we have already seen, it was too late for him to profit by the

tardily-granted leave.

[254] For Wellington’s speculations (fairly correct) as to

Marmont’s distribution of his troops, see _Dispatches_, viii. p.

618, Feb. 19, to Graham.

[255] Wellington to Victor Alten, March 5, _Dispatches_, viii. p.

649, makes a special point of ‘the difficulties which the enemy

experiences in getting intelligence’ as a means of gaining time

for himself.

But it was the possibility of Marmont’s appearance on the scene, rather

than anything which might be feared from Soult, which made the siege

of Badajoz a time-problem, just as that of Ciudad Rodrigo had been.

The place must, if possible, be taken somewhere about the first week

in April, the earliest date at which a serious attempt at relief was

likely to be made[256].

[256] Napier (iv. p. 98) tries to make out that Wellington’s

siege began ten days later than he wished and hoped, by the fault

of the Portuguese Regency. I cannot see how Badajoz could have

been invested on the 6th of March, when (as the route-directions

show) the head of the marching column from the Agueda only

reached Portalegre on the 8th. The movement of the army was not

delayed, so far as I can see, by the slackness of Portuguese

management at Lisbon or Elvas. But Wellington certainly grumbled.

Did he intend that Hill alone should invest Badajoz, before the

rest of the army arrived?

On March 14th, every preparation being complete, the pontoon train,

with a good escort, moved out of Elvas, and was brought up to a point

on the Guadiana four miles west of Badajoz, where it was laid without

molestation. On the next day Le Marchant’s heavy dragoons crossed, but

(owing to an accident to one of the boats) no more troops. On the 16th,

however, the 3rd, 4th, and Light Divisions passed, and invested Badajoz

without meeting any opposition: the garrison kept within the walls,

and did not even prevent Colonel Fletcher, the commanding engineer,

from approaching for purposes of reconnaissance to the crest of the

Cerro de San Miguel, only 200 yards from the _enceinte_. The investing

corps of 12,000 bayonets was under Beresford, who had just returned

from a short and stormy visit to Lisbon, where he had been harrying

the regency, at Wellington’s request, upon financial matters, and

had been dealing sternly with the Junta de Viveres, or Commissariat

Department[257]. The situation had not been found a happy one. ‘After

a perfect investigation it appears that the expenditure must be nearly

£6,000,000--the means at present are £3,500,000! A radical reform

grounded upon a bold and fearless inquiry into every branch of the

revenue, expenditure, and subsidy, and an addition to the latter

from England, can alone put a period to these evils. To this Lord

Wellington, though late, is now turning his eyes. And when the Marshal,

in conjunction with our ambassador, shall have made his report, it must

be _immediately_ acted upon--for there is no time to lose[258].’

[257] D’Urban’s diary, Feb. 7-16: he accompanied Beresford, being

his Chief-of-the-Staff.

[258] I spare the reader the question of Portuguese paper money

and English exchequer bills, which will be found treated at great

length in Napier, iv. pp. 97-9. Napier always appears to think

that cash could be had by asking for it at London, in despite of

the dreadful disappearance of the metallic currency and spread of

irredeemable bank-notes which prevailed in 1812.

The investment was only part of the general movements of the army on

the 16th. The covering-force was proceeding to take up its position in

two sections. Graham with the 1st, 6th, and 7th Divisions, and Slade’s

and Le Marchant’s horse, crossed the Guadiana, and began to advance

down the high road to Seville, making for Santa Marta and Villafranca.

Hill with the other section, consisting of his own old troops of the

Estremaduran army, the 2nd Division and Hamilton’s Portuguese, Long’s

British and Campbell’s Portuguese cavalry, marched by the north bank

of the Guadiana, via Montijo, towards Merida, which had not been

occupied by either party since January 17th. These two columns, the

one 19,000, the other 14,000 strong, were to drive in the two French

divisions which were at this moment cantoned in Estremadura--Drouet

was known to be lying about Zafra and Llerena, covering the Seville

_chaussée_, Daricau to have his troops at Zalamea and Los Hornachos,

watching the great passage of the Guadiana at Merida. As each division

with its attendant cavalry was not much over 6,000 strong, there was

no danger of their combining so as to endanger either of the British

columns. Each was strong enough to give a good account of itself. Hill

and Graham were to push forward boldly, and drive their respective

enemies before them as far as the Sierra Morena, so that Soult, when he

should come up from Seville (as he undoubtedly would in the course of a

few weeks), should have no foothold in the Estremaduran plain to start

from, and would have to manœuvre back the containing force in his front

all the way from the summit of the passes to Albuera.

In addition to these two columns and the investing corps at Badajoz,

Wellington had a reserve of which some units had not yet come up,

though all were due in a few days, viz. the 5th Division, Pack’s and

Bradford’s independent Portuguese brigades, and the cavalry of Bock and

Anson--about 12,000 men--: the last of them would be up by the 21st at

latest.

There was still one more corps from which Wellington intended to get

useful assistance. This was the main body of the Spanish Army of

Estremadura, the troops of Penne Villemur and Morillo, about 1,000

horse and 4,000 foot[259], which he destined to play the same part in

this campaign that Blake had played during the last siege of Badajoz.

By Castaños’s leave this little force had been moved from its usual

haunts by Caçeres and Valencia de Alcantara, behind the Portuguese

frontier, to the Lower Guadiana, from whence it was to enter the

Condado de Niebla. It passed Redondo on March 17th on its way towards

San Lucar de Guadiana, feeding on magazines provided by its allies;

Penne Villemur’s orders were that he should establish himself in the

Condado (where there was still a small Spanish garrison at Ayamonte),

and strike at Seville, the moment that he heard that Soult had gone

north towards Estremadura. The city would be found ill-garrisoned by

convalescents, and _Juramentados_ of doubtful loyalty: if it were not

captured, its danger would at any rate cause Soult to turn back, just

as he had in June 1811, for he dared not lose his base and arsenal. It

was hoped that Ballasteros with his roving corps from the mountain of

Ronda would co-operate, when he found that the troops usually employed

to ‘contain’ him had marched off. But Ballasteros was always a ‘law

unto himself,’ and it was impossible to count upon him: he particularly

disliked suggestions from a British quarter, while Castaños was always

sensible and obliging[260].

[259] The Conde had 1,114 horse and 3,638 foot on Jan. 1, not

including two of Morillo’s battalions then absent. The total

force used for the raid was probably as above.

[260] Details in a dispatch to Colonel Austin of March 15,

_Dispatches_, viii, p. 666. General scheme in a letter to

Castaños of Feb. 16. Ibid., p. 614.

Before dealing with the operations of the actual siege of Badajoz,

which require to be studied in continuous sequence, it may be well to

deal with those of the covering corps.

Graham marched in two columns, one division by Albuera, two by

Almendral. He ran against the outposts of Drouet at Santa Marta, from

which a battalion and a few cavalry hastily retired to Villafranca,

where it was reported that Drouet himself was lying. Graham judged

that the French general would probably retire towards Llerena by the

main road, and hoped to harass, if not to surprise him, by a forced

night march on that place. This was executed in the night of the

18th-19th, but proved a disappointment: the vanguard of the British

column entered Llerena only to find it empty--Drouet had retired

not southward but eastward, so as to get into touch with Daricau’s

division at Zalamea--he had gone off by Ribera to Los Hornachos. Graham

thereupon halted his main body at Zafra, with the cavalry out as far

as Usagre and Fuente Cantos. A dispatch from Drouet to his brigadier

Reymond was intercepted on the 21st, and showed that the latter, with

four battalions at Fregenal, had been cut off from his chief by the

irruption of the British down the high-road, and was ordered to rejoin

him by way of Llerena. Graham thought that he might catch this little

force, so withdrew his cavalry from Llerena, in order that Reymond

might make his way thither unmolested, and be caught in a trap by

several British brigades converging upon him by a night march. This

operation, executed on the night of the 25th, unfortunately miscarried.

The French actually entered Llerena, but as the columns were closing in

upon them an unlucky accident occurred. Graham and his staff, riding

ahead of the 7th Division, ran into a cavalry picket, which charged

them. They came back helter-skelter on to the leading battalion of

the infantry, which fired promiscuously into the mass, killed two

staff officers, and nearly shot their general[261]. The noise of

this outburst of fire, and the return of their own dragoons, warned

the 1,800 French in Llerena, who escaped by a mountain path towards

Guadalcanal, and did not lose a man.

[261] ‘Something too like a panic was occasioned at the head of

the 7th by the appearance of the few French dragoons and the

galloping back of the staff and orderlies. A confused firing

broke out down the column without object! Mem.--Even British

troops should not be allowed to load before a night attack.’

D’Urban’s diary, March 26.

Improbable as it would have been judged, Drouet had abandoned the

Seville road altogether, and gone off eastward. His only communication

with Soult would have to be by Cordova: clearly he had refused to

be cut off from Daricau: possibly he may have hoped to await in the

direction of Zalamea and Castuera the arrival of troops from the Army

of Portugal, coming down by Truxillo and Medellin from Almaraz. For

Soult and his generals appear to have had no notice of the Emperor’s

prohibition to Marmont to send troops to Estremadura. On the other

hand the Duke of Ragusa had written, in perfect good faith, before

he received the imperial rescript, that he should come to the aid of

Badajoz with four or five divisions, as in June 1811, if the place were

threatened.

On the 27th Graham resolved to pursue Drouet eastward, even hoping

that he might slip in to the south of him, and drive him northward

in the direction of Merida and Medellin, where he would have fallen

into the arms of Hill’s column. He had reached Llera and La Higuera

when he intercepted another letter--this time from General Reymond

to Drouet; that officer, after escaping from Llerena on the night of

the 25th-26th, had marched to Azuaga, where he had picked up another

detachment under General Quiot. He announced that he was making the

best of his way towards Fuente Ovejuna, behind the main crest of the

Sierra Morena, by which circuitous route he hoped to join his chief.

Graham thought that he had now another opportunity of surprising

Reymond, while he was marching across his front, and swerving southward

again made a second forced night march on Azuaga. It failed, like that

on Llerena three days before--the French, warned by _Afrancesados_,

left in haste, and Graham’s exhausted troops only arrived in time to

see them disappear.

Reymond’s column was joined next day at Fuente Ovejuna by Drouet and

Daricau, so that the whole of the French force in Estremadura was

now concentrated--but in an unfavourable position, since they were

completely cut off from Seville, and could only retire on Cordova if

further pressed. Should Soult wish to join them with his reserves, he

would have to march up the Guadalquivir, losing four or five days.

Graham and his staff were flattering themselves that they had won a

considerable strategical advantage in this matter, when they were

disappointed, by receiving, on March 30, a dispatch from Wellington

prohibiting any further pursuit of Drouet, or any longer stay on the

slopes of the Sierra Morena. The column was ordered to come back and

canton itself about Fuente del Maestre, Almendralejo, and Villafranca.

By April 2nd the three divisions were established in these places.

Their recall would seem to have been caused by Wellington’s knowledge

that Soult had by now concentrated a heavy force at Seville, and that

if he advanced suddenly by the great _chaussée_, past Monasterio and

Fuente Cantos, Graham might be caught in a very advanced position

between him and Drouet, and find a difficulty in retreating to join

the main body of the army for a defensive battle on the Albuera

position[262].

[262] For details of this forgotten campaign I rely mainly on

D’Urban’s unpublished diary. As he knew Estremadura well, from

having served there with Beresford in 1811, he was lent to

Graham, and rode with his staff to advise about roads and the

resources of the country.

Meanwhile Hill, with the other half of the covering army, had been

spending a less eventful fortnight. He reached Merida on March 17

and found it unoccupied. Drouet was reported to be at Villafranca,

Daricau to be lying with his troops spread wide between Medellin, Los

Hornachos, and Zalamea. Hill crossed the Guadiana and marched to look

for them: his first march was on Villafranca, but Drouet had already

slipped away from that point, avoiding Graham’s column. Hill then

turned in search of Daricau, and drove one of his brigades out of Don

Benito near Medellin. The bulk of the French division then went off to

the south-east, and ultimately joined Drouet at Fuente Ovejuna, though

it kept a rearguard at Castuera. Hill did not pursue, but remained in

the neighbourhood of Merida and Medellin, to guard these two great

passages of the Guadiana against any possible appearance of Marmont’s

troops from the direction of Almaraz and Truxillo. Wellington (it will

be remembered) had believed that Marmont would certainly come down with

a considerable force by this route, and (being ignorant of Napoleon’s

order to the Marshal) was expecting him to be heard of from day to day.

As a matter of fact only Foy’s single division was in the Tagus valley

at Talavera: that officer kept receiving dispatches for his chief from

Drouet and Soult, imploring that Marmont should move south without

delay. This was impossible, as Foy knew; but he became so troubled

by the repeated requests that he thought of marching, on his own

responsibility, to try to join Drouet. This became almost impracticable

when Drouet and Daricau withdrew southward to the borders of Andalusia:

but Foy then thought of executing a demonstration on Truxillo, on his

own account, hoping that it might at least distract Wellington. On

April 4 he wrote to Drouet that he was about to give out that he was

Marmont’s advanced guard, and to march, with 3,000 men only, on that

point, leaving the rest of his division in garrison at Talavera and

Almaraz; he would be at Truxillo on the 9th[263]. If he had started

a week earlier, he would have fallen into the hands of Hill, who was

waiting for him at Merida with four times his force. But the news of

the fall of Badajoz on the 6th reached him in time to prevent him from

running into the lion’s mouth. Otherwise, considering Hill’s enterprise

and Foy’s complete lack of cavalry, there might probably have been

something like a repetition of the surprise of Arroyo dos Molinos.

[263] The letter may be found in King Joseph’s _Correspondance_,

viii. pp. 345-6. See also Girod de l’Ain’s _Vie militaire du

Général Foy_, pp. 368-9.

So much for the covering armies--it now remains to be seen how

Wellington dealt with Badajoz, in the three weeks during which Graham

and Hill were keeping the peace for him in southern and eastern

Estremadura.

On surveying the fortress upon March 16th the British engineers found

that it had been considerably strengthened since the last siege in

June 1811. Fort San Cristobal had been vastly improved--its glacis

and counterscarp had been raised, and a strong redoubt (called by the

French the Lunette Werlé, after the general killed at Albuera) had been

thrown up on the rising slope where Beresford’s breaching batteries

had stood, so that this ground would have to be won before it could be

again utilized. On the southern side of the Guadiana the Castle had

been provided with many more guns, and some parts of the precipitous

mound on which it stood had been scarped. The breach of 1811 had been

most solidly built up. No danger was feared in this quarter--it was

regarded as the strongest part of the defences. The approach toward

the much more accessible bastions just below the Castle had been made

difficult, by damming the Rivillas stream: its bridge near the San

Roque gate had been built up, and the accumulated water made a broad

pool which lay under the bastions of San Pedro and La Trinidad; its

overflow had been turned into the ditch in front of San Pedro, and, by

cutting a _cunette_ or channel, a deep but narrow water obstruction had

been formed in front of the Trinidad also--the broad dry ditch having a

narrow wet ditch sunk in its bottom just below the counterscarp. This

inundation was destined to give great trouble to the besiegers. The

Pardaleras fort had been connected with the city by a well-protected

trench between high earthen banks. Finally the three bastions on the

south side next the river, San Vincente, San José, and Santiago, had

been strengthened by demi-lunes, which they had hitherto lacked, and

also by driving a system of mines from their counterscarps under the

glacis: these were to be exploded if the besiegers should push up their

trenches and breaching batteries close to the walls on this side,

which was one of the weakest in the city, since it was not covered,

as were the other fronts, by outlying works like the Pardaleras and

Picurina forts or the San Roque lunette. The existence of this series

of mines was revealed to the besiegers by a French sergeant-major of

sappers, a skilful draughtsman, who had been employed in mapping out

the works. Having been insulted, as he conceived, by his captain,

and refused redress by the governor, he fled to the British camp in

a rage, and placed his map (where the mines are very clearly shown)

and his services at the disposition of Wellington[264]. The identical

map, a very neat piece of work, lies before me as I write these lines,

having passed into the possession of General D’Urban, the chief of

the Portuguese staff. It was in consequence of their knowledge of

these defences that the British engineers left the San Vincente front

alone[265].

[264] This man is mentioned in Wellington’s Dispatches, viii.

p. 609: ‘The _Sergent-major des Sapeurs_ and _Adjudant des

travaux_ and the French miner may be sent in charge of a steady

non-commissioned officer to Estremoz, there to wait till I send

for them.’

[265] This renegade’s name must have been Bonin, or Bossin: I

cannot read with certainty his extraordinary signature, with a

_paraphe_, at the bottom of his map. The English engineers used

it, and have roughly sketched in their own works of the third

siege on top of the original coloured drawing.

The garrison on March 15th consisted of five battalions of French

regulars, one each from certain regiments belonging to Conroux,

Leval, Drouet, and Daricau (2,767 men), of two battalions of the

Hesse-Darmstadt regiment of the Rheinbund division of the Army of the

Centre (910 men), three companies of artillery (261 men), two and a

half companies of sappers (260 men), a handful of cavalry (42 men), a

company of Spanish Juramentados, and (by casual chance) the escort of

a convoy which had entered the city two days before the siege began.

The whole (excluding non-combatants, medical and commissariat staff,

&c.) made up 4,700 men, not more than an adequate provision for such

a large place. The governor, Phillipon, the commandants of artillery

and engineers (the last-named, Lamare, was the historian of the three

sieges of Badajoz), and nearly all the staff had been in the fortress

for more than a year. The battalions of the garrison (though not the

same as those who had sustained the assaults of 1811) had been many

months settled in the place, and knew it almost as well as did the

staff. They were all picked troops, including the German regiment,

which had an excellent record. But undoubtedly the greatest factor

in the defence was the ingenuity and resource of the governor, which

surpassed all praise: oddly enough Phillipon did not show himself a

very skilful mover of troops in the field, when commanding a division

in the Army of Germany in 1813, after his capture and exchange: but

behind the walls of Badajoz he was unsurpassable[266].

[266] When he commanded the 1st Division of the 1st Corps

under Vandamme, and was present when that corps was nearly all

destroyed on Aug. 30, 1813, at Culm.

The scheme of attack which Wellington, under the advice of his

engineers, employed against Badajoz in March 1812 differed entirely

from that of May-June 1811. The fact that the whole was a time-problem

remained the same: the danger that several of the French armies might,

if leisure were granted them, unite for its relief, was as clear as

ever. But the idea that the best method of procedure was to assail

the most commanding points of the fortress, whose capture would make

the rest untenable, was completely abandoned. Fort San Cristobal and

the lofty Castle were on this occasion to be left alone altogether.

The former was only observed by a single Portuguese brigade (first

Da Costa’s and later Power’s). The second was not breached, or even

battered with any serious intent. This time the front of attack was to

be the bastions of Santa Maria and La Trinidad, on the south-eastern

side of the town. The reason for leaving those of San Vincente and

San José, on the south-western side, unassailed--though they were

more accessible, and defended by no outer forts--was apparently the

report of the renegade French sergeant-major spoken of above; ‘they

were countermined, and therefore three or four successive lodgements

would have to be formed against them[267].’ To attack Santa Maria

and the Trinidad a preliminary operation was necessary--they were

covered by the Picurina fort, and only from the knoll on which that

work stands could they be battered with effect. The Picurina was far

weaker than the Pardaleras fort, from whose site a similar advantage

could be got against the bastions of San Roque and San Juan. It must

therefore be stormed, and on its emplacement would be fixed the

batteries of the second parallel, which were to do the main work of

breaching. The exceptional advantage to be secured in this way was that

the counterguard (inner protective bank) within the _glacis_ of the

Trinidad bastion was reputed to be so low, that from the Picurina knoll

the scarp of the bastion could be seen almost to its foot, and could

be much more effectively battered than any part of the defences whose

upper section alone was visible to the besieger.

[267] Jones, _Sieges of the Peninsula_, i. p. 163.

Despite, therefore, of the need for wasting no time, and of the fact

that the preliminary operations against the Picurina must cost a day or

two, this was the general plan of attack adopted. The investment had

been completed on the evening of the 16th: on the same day 120 carts

with stores of all kinds marched from Elvas, and on the 17th these were

already being deposited in the Engineers’ Park, behind the Cerro de San

Miguel, whose rounded top completely screened the preparations from the

sight of the garrison.

The besieged had no notion whatever as to the front which would, on

this third attempt, be selected for the attack of the British. The

elaborate fortifications and improvements made in the Castle and San

Cristobal tend to show that these old points of attack were expected

to be once more assailed. Hence the besiegers got the inestimable

advantage of an unmolested start on the night of March 17th. Colonel

Fletcher had risked the dangers of drawing the first parallel at a very

short distance from the Picurina fort. On a night of tempestuous rain

and high wind, a parallel 600 yards long was picketed out, on a line

ranging only from 160 to 200 yards from the covered-way of the work,

and 1,800 workmen in the course of the night threw up the parallel, and

4,000 feet of a communication-trench, leading backward to the head of

a ravine in the hill of San Miguel, which gave good cover for bringing

men and material up from the rear. Not a shot was fired by the French

all through the night, and at dawn the parallel and approach were

already 3 feet deep and 3 feet 6 inches wide--a good start.

With daylight the enemy discovered what had been done, and opened a

furious fire both of cannon and musketry upon the trenches. The three

nearest bastions of the fortress joined in with their heavy guns,

but the 18th was a day of such constant rain that even at a distance

of only 500 or 600 yards it was impossible to see much, or take

accurate aim at the trenches. The working parties went on deepening

and improving the parallel and the communication behind it, without

suffering any great loss.

During the night of the 18th-19th they were able to trace out and begin

two batteries, destined to breach the Picurina, in the line of the

parallel, and to extend it at both ends, from the Rivillas on one side

to the foot of the hill of San Miguel on the other.

This was visible on the following morning, and Phillipon thought the

prospects of the fort so bad that he resolved to risk a sortie, to

destroy at all costs the trenches which were so dangerously near to

their objective. At midday two battalions--1,000 men--starting from the

lunette of San Roque, dashed up the hill, got into the north end of the

parallel, and drove out the working parties for a distance of some 500

yards: they carried off many entrenching tools, for which the governor

had offered the _bonus_ of one dollar a piece. But they had no time to

do any serious damage to the parallel, for the guard of the trenches

and the working parties, rallying fifty yards up the hill, came down

on them in force, within a quarter of an hour, and evicted them again

after a sharp tussle. The loss on the two sides was very different--the

British lost 150 men, the besieged 304, of whom many were drowned in

the inundation, while trying to take short cuts through it to the

gates. The effect of the sortie had been practically _nil_, as far as

destroying the works went. During this skirmish Colonel Fletcher was

wounded in the groin by a ball, which hit his purse, and while failing

to penetrate further, forced a dollar-piece an inch into his thigh. He

was confined to his tent for some fourteen days, and his subordinates,

Majors Squire and Burgoyne, had to take up his duty, though Wellington

ordered that he should still retain nominal charge of the work, and

consulted him daily upon it.

On the next night (March 20th) the parallel and approach against the

Picurina being practically complete, and only the battery emplacements

in it requiring to be finished, the engineers of the besieging army

resolved to continue the line of trenches into the flat ground in

front of the Bastion of San Pedro and the Castle, it being intended

that batteries should be constructed here to play on the Trinidad and

the neighbouring parts of the fortress, when the Picurina should have

fallen. It would save time to have everything ready on this side, when

the fort should have been mastered. Trouble at once began--not only

from the enemy’s fire, which swept all this low ground, but still more

from the continuous bad weather. The rain which had easily run away

from the sloping trenches on the Cerro de San Miguel, lodged in the

new works, could not be drained off, and melted away the earth as fast

as it was thrown up. Mud cast into the gabions ran off in the form of

slimy water, and the parapets could only be kept upright by building

them of sandbags. The men were actually flooded out of the trenches

by the accumulated water, which was almost knee deep. In the rear the

Guadiana rose, and washed away the two bridges which connected the army

with its base at Elvas. The deluge lasted four days and was a terrible

hindrance, it being impossible to finish the parallel in the low

ground, or to begin moving the battering-guns, even those destined for

the long-completed batteries on the Cerro de San Miguel.

It was not till the afternoon of the 24th that fine weather at last

set in; this permitted the guns to be brought at once into the two

batteries facing the Picurina, and, after herculean efforts, into other

batteries (nos. 4 and 5) in the low ground also. Three days at least

had been lost from the vile weather.

On the morning of the 25th all the batteries opened simultaneously,

ten guns against the Picurina, eighteen against the parts of the

fortress behind it. The fort was completely silenced, as was the little

lunette of San Roque. Not much damage appeared to have been inflicted

on the Picurina beyond the breaking of many of its palisades, and the

degradation of its salient angle. But Wellington ordered that it should

be stormed that night, in order that he might make up for the lost time

of the 20th-24th.

The storm was duly carried out by General Kempt and 500 men of the

Light and the 3rd Divisions, at ten o’clock that night. It was a

desperate affair, for the ditch was deep, and not in the least filled

with rubbish, and the scarp was intact save at the extreme salient

angle. Though the garrison’s guns had been silenced, they kept up a

furious fire of musketry, which disabled 100 men before the stormers

reached the ditch. The main hope of the assault had been that two

turning columns might break in at the gorge: but it was found so

strongly closed, with a double row of palisades and a cutting, that all

efforts to force an entrance were repelled with loss. Baffled here,

one party tried the desperate expedient of casting three long ladders,

not into, but _across_ the ditch on the right flank of the fort, which

though deep was not so broad but that a 30-foot ladder would reach from

its lip to the row of fraises, or projecting beams, ranged horizontally

at the top of the scarp some feet below the brim of the parapet. The

ladders sagged down but did not break, and some fifty men headed by

Captain Oates of the 88th ran across on the rungs and got a lodgement

inside the fort. At the same moment General Kempt launched the reserve

of the storming party--100 men, mostly from the 2/83rd and headed by

Captain Powys of that regiment--at the exact salient of the fort, the

only place where it was seriously damaged, and succeeded in breaking

in. The garrison, who made a stubborn resistance, were overpowered--83

were killed or wounded, the governor, Colonel Gaspard-Thierry, and 145

taken prisoners, only 1 officer and 40 men escaped into the town. The

losses of the stormers had been over 50 per cent. of the men engaged!

Four officers and 50 rank and file were killed, 15 officers and 250 men

wounded, out of a little over 500 who joined in the assault. Phillipon

tried a sortie from the lunette of San Roque, just as the fort fell, in

hopes to recover it: but the battalion which came out was easily beaten

off by the fire of the men in the trenches to the right, and lost 50

killed and wounded.

The last stage of the siege had now been reached. By capturing

the Picurina on its commanding knoll, the British had established

themselves within 400 yards of the Trinidad and 450 yards of the Santa

Maria bastions, which they could batter with every advantage of slope

and ground. But it was a very costly business to make the necessary

lodgement in the ruined fort, to demolish it, and throw its earth in

the reverse direction, and to build in its gorge the two batteries

(nos. 8, 9), which were to breach the body of the place. The fire of

three bastions bore directly on the spot where the batteries were to

be placed, and there was also a most deadly enfilading fire from the

high-lying Castle, and even from the distant San Cristobal. Though the

three batteries in the flat ground (to which a fourth was presently

added) endeavoured to silence this fire, they only succeeded in doing

so very imperfectly, for the French kept replacing one gun by another,

from their ample store, when any were disabled. From the 26th to the

30th four days were employed in building the Picurina batteries, with

great loss of life all the time, which fell mainly on the engineer

officers who were directing the work and on the sappers under their

orders. The French covered the whole of the Picurina knoll with such

a hail of projectiles that no amount of cover seemed to guarantee

those labouring in it from sudden death. When the batteries had been

completed, the bringing forward of the guns and the ammunition cost

many lives more. Twice there were considerable explosions of powder,

while the magazines in the batteries were being filled.

At last, however, on March 30, one of the two new batteries in the

gorge of the Picurina was able to open, and on the 31st the other

followed suit, supported by a third supplementary battery (no. 7),

planned under the left flank of the fort. The practice was excellent,

but at first the effect was not all that had been hoped: the Trinidad

and the Santa Maria bastions were solidly built and resisted well. On

April 2, however, both began to show considerable and obvious injury,

and it was clear that a few days more would ruin them. But there was

one serious _contretemps_: the inundation between the Picurina and the

fortress showed no signs of going down--it had been swollen by the

rains of the 20th-24th, and could not flow away so long as the dam at

the lunette of San Roque kept it back. While the water was held up,

the breaches, soon about to develop, could only be got at by a narrow

and curved route, between the inundation and the steep slope on which

stands the Pardaleras. It had been intended that the assault should be

delivered from the trenches, but this was impossible till the Rivillas

should have fallen to its usual insignificant breadth and depth. Hence

efforts were made to burst the dam at all costs, but neither did

artillery fire suffice, nor a venturesome expedition on the night of

the 2nd of April by the engineer Lieutenant Stanway and 20 sappers, who

slipped down the ravine and laid powder-bags against the dam, despite

of the French fire. The powder exploded, but did not do its work. For

several days an attempt was made to sap down to the dam from the second

parallel. But it cost so many lives at the head of the sap, and the

zig-zags advanced so slowly, that on the 3rd of April the attempt was

given up, and it was determined that the breaches must be assaulted

from the west bank of the Rivillas only.

Meanwhile the two breaches, the larger one in the front of the Trinidad

bastion, the smaller in the flank of the Santa Maria, began to be very

apparent, and gave good hope to the besiegers. The French, however,

delayed their progress by the most gallant efforts: 200 men worked in

the ditch after dark, to clear away the débris that was falling into

it. This they did under constant artillery fire from the batteries,

which played on the ditch with grape at intervals in the night, and

killed scores of the workmen. They also deepened the ditch at the foot

of the counterscarp, till it was 18 feet from the covered-way to the

bottom of its level. The ruined parapets were built up every night

with earth and wool-packs, only to be destroyed again every morning.

The garrison began to feel uncomfortable, for not only was the loss of

life great, but the furious fire, by which they strove to keep down the

efficiency of the siege-batteries, had begun to tell so much on their

reserves of ammunition that, by April 3, there was no common shell

left, and very little grape--of the round-shot much more than half had

been expended. Phillipon was obliged to order the artillerymen to be

sparing, or a few days more would leave him helpless. As the French

fire slackened, that of the besiegers grew more intense, and Wellington

put forward the last twelve guns of his siege-park, hitherto reserved,

to form some new supplementary batteries on the right of his line [nos.

10, 11, 12].

On April 4th the breaches were both growing practicable, and news from

the South warned Wellington that he must hurry; Soult was at last over

the Sierra Morena with all the troops that he could scrape together

from Andalusia. It was lucky indeed that Marmont was not marching to

join Soult, but was executing a raid into central Portugal, not by

his own wish but by the special orders of the Emperor, as has already

been explained elsewhere. His irruption into the Beira was absolutely

disregarded by Wellington: for as long as the two French armies were

not united, the British commander did not much fear either of them.

Still, if Soult came close up to Badajoz, it would be necessary to send

part of the siege-troops to join the covering force--and this would be

inconvenient. Wherefore Wellington resolved to strike at once, while

Soult was still four or five marches away.

On the 4th the breaches, both in the Trinidad and in Santa Maria,

looked practicable--on the morning of the 5th they were certainly so.

But the question was raised as to whether the mere practicability of

the breaches was enough to ensure success--it was clearly made out that

the garrisons were building a semicircular inner retrenchment among the

houses of the town, which would cut off the breaches, and give a second

line of resistance. Moreover Colonel Fletcher, who was just out of bed,

his wound of the 19th March being on the mend, reported from personal

observation that it was clear that all manner of obstacles were being

accumulated behind both breaches, and every preparation made for a

desperate defence of them. Wherefore Wellington ordered the storm to

be put off for a day, and turned two batteries on to a new spot, where

Spanish informants reported that the wall of the curtain was badly

built, between Santa Maria and the Trinidad. So true was this report,

that a very few hours battering on the morning of the 6th made a third

breach at this point, as practicable as either of the others.

To prevent the enemy from getting time to retrench this third opening

into the town, the storm was ordered for 7.30 o’clock on the same

evening--it would have been well if the hour had been kept as first

settled.

SECTION XXXII: CHAPTER IV

THE STORM OF BADAJOZ. APRIL 6, 1812

The arrangements which Wellington made for the assault--a business

which he knew would be costly, and not absolutely certain of

success--were as follows.

The Light and 4th Divisions were told off for the main attack at

the three breaches. They were forced to make it on the narrow front

west of the Rivillas, because the inundation cramped their approach

on the right. The 4th Division, under Colville, was to keep nearest

to that water, and to assail the breach in the Trinidad bastion and

also the new breach in the curtain to its left. The Light Division

was to devote itself to the breach in the flank of Santa Maria. Each

division was to provide an advance of 500 men, with which went twelve

ladders and a party carrying hay-bags to cast into the ditch. For the

counterscarp not being ruined, it was clear that there would be a very

deep jump into the depths. The two divisions followed in columns of

brigades, each with a British brigade leading, the Portuguese in the

centre, and the other British brigade in the rear. Neither division was

quite complete--the 4th having to provide the guard of the trenches

that night, while the Light Division detached some of its rifles, to

distract the attention of the enemy in the bastions to the left, by

lying down on the glacis and firing into the embrasures when their

cannon should open. Hence the Light Division put only 3,000, the 4th

3,500 men into the assault. When the breaches were carried, the Light

Division was to wheel to the left, the 4th to the right, and to sweep

along the neighbouring bastions on each side. A reserve was to be left

at the quarries below the Pardaleras height, and called up when it was

needed.

In addition to the main assault two subsidiary attacks were to be

made--a third (as we shall see) was added at the last moment. The

guards of the trenches, furnished by the 4th Division, were to try to

rush the lunette of San Roque, which was in a dilapidated condition,

and were to cut away the dam if successful. A much more serious matter

was that, on the express petition of General Picton, he was allowed to

make an attempt to take the Castle by _escalade_. This daring officer

argued that all the attention of the enemy would be concentrated on

the breaches, and that the Castle was in itself so strong that it was

probable the governor would only leave a minimum garrison in it. He had

marked spots in its front where the walls were comparatively low, owing

to the way in which the rocky and grassy slope at its foot ran up and

down. The escalade was to be a surprise--the division was to cross the

Rivillas at a point far below the inundation, where the ruins of a mill

spanned the stream, and was to drag ladders up the steep mound to the

foot of the wall.

Two demonstrations, or false attacks, were to be made with the

intention of distracting the enemy--one by Power’s Portuguese brigade

beyond the Guadiana, who were to threaten an escalade on the fort

at the bridge-head: the other by the Portuguese of the 5th Division

against the Pardaleras. At the last moment--the order does not appear

in the full draft of the directions for the storm--Leith, commanding

the 5th Division, was told that he might try an escalade, similar to

that allotted to Picton, against the river-bastion of San Vincente, the

extreme north-west point of the defences, and one that had hitherto

been left entirely untouched by the besiegers. For this he was to

employ one of his two British brigades, leaving the other in reserve.

Every student of the Peninsular War knows the unexpected result of the

storm: the regular assault on the breaches failed with awful loss, but

all the three subsidiary attacks, on San Roque, the Castle, and San

Vincente, succeeded in the most brilliant style, so that Badajoz was

duly taken, but not in the way that Wellington intended.

The reason why the main assault failed was purely and simply that

Phillipon and his garrison put into the defence of the breaches

not only the most devoted courage, but such an accumulation of

ingenious devices as had never before been seen in a siege of that

generation--apparently Phillipon must share the credit with his

commanding engineer, Lamare, the historian of the siege. The normal

precaution of cutting off the breaches by retrenchments on both sides,

and of throwing up parapets of earth, sandbags, and wool-packs behind

them, was the least part of the work done. What turned out more

effective was a series of mines and explosive barrels planted at the

foot of the counterscarp, and connected with the ramparts by covered

trains. This was on the near side of the ditch, where there was dead

ground unsearched by the besiegers’ artillery. In the bottom of it,

and at the foot of the breaches, had been placed or thrown all manner

of large cumbrous obstacles, carts and barrows turned upside down,

several large damaged boats, some rope entanglements, and piles of

broken gabions and fascines. The slopes of the breaches had been strewn

with crowsfeet, and were covered with beams studded with nails, not

fixed, but hung by ropes from the lip of the breach; in some places

harrows, and doors studded with long spikes, were set upon the slope.

At the top of each breach was a device never forgotten by any observer,

the _chevaux de frise_, formed of cavalry sword-blades[268] set in

foot-square beams, and chained down at their ends. For the defence of

the three breaches Phillipon had told off 700 men, composed of the

light and grenadier companies of each of his battalions, plus the

four fusilier companies of the 103rd Line--about 1,200 men in all. A

battalion of the 88th was in the cathedral square behind, as general

reserve. The two Hessian battalions were on the left, holding the

Castle, the lunette of San Roque, and the San Pedro bastion. The three

other French battalions occupied the long range of bastions from San

Juan to San Vincente. As there had been many casualties, the total of

the available men had sunk to about 4,000, and since nearly half of

them were concentrated at or behind the breaches, the guard was rather

thin at other points--especially (as Picton had calculated) at the

Castle, which, though its front was long, was held by only 250 men,

mostly Hessians.

[268] These swords were those of the large body of Spanish

dismounted cavalry which had surrendered at the capitulation in

March 1811.

It was a most unfortunate thing that the time of the assault,

originally fixed for 7.30, was put off till 10--and that the

siege-batteries slacked down after dark. For the two hours thus

granted to the besieged were well spent in repairing and strengthening

all their devices for defence. An earlier assault would have found the

preparations incomplete, especially in the matter of the combustibles

placed in the ditch.

It would be useless, in the narrative of the doings of this bloody

night, to make any attempt to vie with those paragraphs of lurid

description which make Napier’s account of the storm of Badajoz perhaps

the most striking section of one of the most eloquent books in the

English language. All that will be here attempted is to give a clear

and concise note of what happened between ten and one o’clock on the

night of April 6, 1812, so far as it is possible to secure a coherent

tale from the diaries and memoirs of a number of eye-witnesses.

Burgoyne and Jones of the Royal Engineers, Dickson the commander of the

Artillery, Grattan and McCarthy from the 3rd Division, Leith Hay of

the 5th, and Kincaid, Simmons, and Harry Smith of the Light Division,

along with many more less well-known authorities, must serve as our

instructors, each for the part of the storm in which he was himself

concerned.

It had been intended, as was said above, that all the columns should

converge simultaneously on their points of attack, and for that reason

the distances between the starting-point of each division and its

objective had been calculated with care. But, as a matter of fact, the

hour of 10 p.m. was not quite accurately kept. On the right Picton’s

division was descried by the French in the Castle as it was lining

the first parallel, and was heavily fired upon at 9.45, whereupon the

general, seeing that his men were discovered, ordered the advance to

begin at once--the 3rd Division was fording the Rivillas under a blaze

of fire from the Castle and the San Pedro bastion before 10 struck

on the cathedral clock. On the other hand, at the western flank, the

officer in charge of the ladder and hay-bag party which was to lead the

5th Division, lost his way along the bank of the Guadiana, while coming

up from the Park to take his place at the head of Leith’s men. The

column had to wait for the ladders, and was more than an hour late in

starting. Only the central attack, on the three breaches, was delivered

with exact punctuality.

It is perhaps best to deal with this unhappy assault first--it was a

horrible affair, and fully two-thirds of the losses that night were

incurred in it. The two divisions, as ordered, came down the ravine

to the left of the Pardaleras hill without being discovered: the line

of vision from the town was in their favour till they were actually

on the glacis, and heavy firing against Picton’s column was heard as

they came forward. The 4th Division was turning to the right, the Light

Division to the left, just as they drew near the ditch, when suddenly

they were descried, and the French, who were well prepared and had long

been waiting for the expected assault, opened on them with musketry

from all the breaches, and with artillery from the unruined flanking

bastions. The storm began as unhappily as it was to end. The advance

of the 4th Division bearing to the right, came on a part of the ditch

into which the inundation had been admitted--not knowing its depth,

nor that the French had made a six-foot cutting at the foot of the

counterscarp. Many men, not waiting for the ladders, sprang down into

the water, thinking it to be a mere puddle. The leading files nearly

all perished--the regimental record of the Welsh Fusiliers shows

twenty men drowned--that of the Portuguese regiment which was behind

the Fusiliers as many as thirty. Finding the ditch impassable here,

the rest of the 4th Division storming-party swerved to the left, and,

getting beyond the inundation, planted their ladders there: some came

down in this way, more by simply taking a fourteen-foot leap on to the

hay-bags, which they duly cast down. At the same moment the advance

of the Light Division descended in a similar fashion into the ditch

farther to the left, towards Santa Maria. Many men were already at the

bottom, the rest crowded on the edge, where the French engineers fired

the series of fougasses, mines, and powder-barrels which had been laid

in the ditch. They worked perfectly, and the result was appalling--the

500 volunteers who formed the advance of each division were almost all

slain, scorched, or disabled. Every one of the engineer officers set

to guide the column was killed or wounded, and the want of direction,

caused by the absence of any one who knew the topography of the

breaches, had the most serious effect during the rest of the storm. Of

the Light Division officers with the advance only two escaped unhurt.

There was a horrible check for a minute or two, and then the heads of

the main column of each division reached the edge of the ditch, and

began to leap down, or to make use of those of the ladders which had

not been broken. The gulf below was all ablaze, for the explosions had

set fire to the carts, boats, broken gabions, &c., which the French

had set in the ditch, and they were burning furiously--every man as

he descended was clearly visible to the enemy entrenched on the top

of the breaches. The troops suffered severely as they dribbled over

the edge of the counterscarp, and began to accumulate in the ditch.

From the first there was great confusion--the two divisions got mixed,

because the 4th had been forced to swerve to its left to avoid the

inundation, and so was on ground originally intended for the Light.

Many men mistook an unfinished ravelin in the bottom of the ditch for

the foot of the central breach, and climbed it, only to find themselves

on a mass of earth divided by a wide sunken space from the point

they were aiming at. To get to the foot of the largest breach, that

in the Trinidad bastion, it was necessary to push some way along the

blazing bottom of the ditch, so as to turn and get round the end of the

inundation. The main thrust of the attack, however, went this way, only

part of the Light Division making for the Santa Maria breach, on which

it had been intended that all should concentrate. As to the central

breach in the curtain, it seems that few or none made their way[269]

thither: the disappointment on reaching the top of the ravelin in front

of it, made all who got alive to that point turn right or left, instead

of descending and pushing straight on. Jones records that next morning

there was hardly a single body of an English soldier on the central

breach, while the slopes and foot of each of the two flank breaches

were heaped with hundreds of corpses. This was a misfortune, as the

curtain breach was the easiest of the three, and having been made only

that afternoon was not retrenched like the others.

[269] This fact, much insisted on by Jones, is disputed by

certain Light Division witnesses, but does not seem to be

disproved by them.

From ten to twelve the surviving men in the ditch, fed by the coming up

of the rear battalions of each division, and finally by the reserve,

delivered a series of desperate but disorderly attacks on the Trinidad

and Santa Maria breaches. It is said that on no occasion did more

than the equivalent of a company storm at once--each officer as he

struggled to the front with those of his men who stuck to him, tried

the breach opposite him, and was shot down nearer or farther from its

foot. Very few ever arrived at the top, with its _chevaux de frise_ of

sword-blades. The footing among the beams and spikes was uncertain,

and the French fire absolutely deadly--every man was armed with three

muskets. Next morning observers say that they noted only one corpse

impaled on the _chevaux de frise_ of the Trinidad breach, and a few

more under it, as if men had tried to crawl below, and had had their

heads beaten in or blown to pieces. But the lower parts of the ascent

were absolutely carpeted with the dead, lying one on another.

More than two hours were spent in these desperate but vain attempts

to carry the breaches: it is said that as many as forty separate

assaults were made, but all to no effect--the fire concentrated on the

attacked front was too heavy for any man to face. At last the assaults

ceased: the survivors stood--unable to get forward, unwilling to

retreat--vainly answering the volleys of the French on the walls above

them by an ineffective fire of musketry. Just after twelve, Wellington,

who had been waiting on the hill above, receiving from time to time

reports of the progress of the assault, sent down orders for the recall

of the two divisions. They retired, most unwillingly, and formed up

again, in sadly diminished numbers, not far from the glacis. The only

benefit obtained from their dreadful exertions was that the attention

of the French had been concentrated on the breaches for two hours--and

meanwhile (without their knowledge) the game had been settled elsewhere.

The losses had been frightful--over one man in four of those engaged:

the Light Division had 68 officers and 861 men killed and wounded out

of about 3,000 present: the 4th Division 84 officers and 841 men out of

3,500. The Portuguese battalions which served with them had lost 400

men more--altogether 2,200 of the best troops in Wellington’s army had

fallen--and all to no result.

But while the main stroke failed, each of the subsidiary attacks,

under Picton and Leith, had met with complete success, and despite

of the disaster on the breaches, Badajoz was at Wellington’s mercy by

midnight. The success of either escalade by itself would have been

enough to settle the game.

Picton’s division, as already mentioned, had been detected by the

French as it was filing into the parallel below the Castle: and since

a heavy fire was at once opened on it, there was no use in halting,

and the general gave the order to advance without delay. The men

went forward on a narrow front, having to cross the Rivillas at the

ruined mill where alone it was fordable. This was done under fire, but

with no great loss. The palisade on the other bank of the stream was

broken down by a general rush, and the storming-party found itself

at the foot of the lofty Castle hill. To get the ladders up it was a

most difficult business--the slope was very steep, almost precipitous

in parts, and the ladders were thirty feet long and terribly heavy.

Though no assault had been expected here, and the preparations were

not so elaborate as at the breaches, yet the besieged were not caught

unprepared, and the column, as it climbed the hill, was torn by cannon

shot and thinned by musketry. The French threw fire-balls over the

wall, and other incandescent stuff (_carcasses_), so there was fair

light by which to see the stormers. Picton was hit in the groin down

by the Rivillas, and the charge of the assault fell to his senior

brigadier, Kempt, and Major Burgoyne of the Engineers. The narrow space

at the foot of the walls being reached, the ladders were reared, one

after the other, toward the south end of the Castle wall. Six being

at last ready in spots close to each other, an attempt was made to

mount, with an officer at the head of each. But the fire was so heavy,

that no man reached the last rungs alive, and the enemy overthrew

all the ladders and broke several of them. One is said to have been

pulled up by main force into the Castle! Meanwhile the besieged cast

heavy stones and broken beams into the mass of men clustering along

the foot of the wall, and slew many. But the 3rd Division was not

spent--Kempt’s brigade had delivered the first rush--Champlemond’s

Portuguese headed the second, when they had climbed the slope--but also

to no effect. Lastly the rear brigade--Campbell’s--came up, and gave

a new impetus to the attack. There was now a very large force, 4,000

men, striving all along the base of the wall, on a front of some 200

yards. Wherever footing could be found ladders were reared, now at

considerable distances from each other. The garrison of the Castle was

not large--two Hessian and one French company and the gunners, under

300 men, and when simultaneous attacks were delivered at many points,

some of them were scantily opposed. Hence it came that in more places

than one men at last scrambled to the crest of the wall. A private of

the 45th is said to have been the first man whose body fell inside,

not outside, the battlements--the second, we are told, was an ensign

(McAlpin) of the 88th, who defended himself for a moment on the crest

before he was shot. The third man to gain the summit was Colonel Ridge

of the 5th Fusiliers, who found a point where an empty embrasure made

the wall a little lower, entered it with two or three of his men, and

held out long enough to allow more ladders to be planted behind him,

and a nucleus to gather in his rear. He pushed on the moment that

fifteen or twenty men had mounted, and the thin line of defenders being

once pierced the resistance suddenly broke down--all the remaining

ladders were planted, and the 3rd Division began to stream into the

Castle. Picton was by this time again in command; he had recovered his

strength, and had hobbled up the slope, relieving Kempt, who was by now

also wounded. The time was about eleven o’clock, and the din at the

breaches down below showed that they were still being defended.

It took some time to dislodge the remainder of the garrison from the

Castle precinct; many took refuge in the keep, and defended it from

stair to stair, till they were exterminated. But by 12 midnight all

was over, and Picton would have debouched from the Castle, to sweep

the ramparts, but for the fact that all its gates, save one postern,

were found to have been bricked up--the French having intended to make

it their last point of resistance if the town should fall. The one

free postern being at last found, the division was preparing to break

out, when the head of its column was attacked by the French general

reserve, a battalion of the 88th, which Phillipon had sent up from the

cathedral square, when he heard that the Castle had been forced. There

was a sharp fight before the French were driven off, in which (most

unhappily) Ridge, the hero of the escalade, was shot dead. By the time

that this was over, Badajoz had been entered at another point, and

Picton’s success was only part of the decisive stroke. But as he had

captured in the Castle all the French ammunition reserve, and nearly

all their food, the town must anyhow have fallen, because of his daring

exploit. The loss of the division was not excessive considering the

difficulties they had overcome, about 500 British and 200 Portuguese

out of 4,000 men engaged.

Meanwhile, in the valley below the Castle, the guards of the trenches

had stormed the lunette of San Roque, and were hard at work cutting the

dam, so that in an hour or two the inundation was beginning to drain

off rapidly. This also would have been a decisive success, if nothing

else had been accomplished elsewhere.

The blow, however, which actually finished the business, and caused the

French to fail at the breaches, was delivered by quite another force.

It will be remembered that a brigade--Walker’s--of the 5th Division,

had been directed to escalade the remote river-bastion of San Vincente.

It was nearly an hour late, because of the tiresome mistake made by

the officer charged with the bringing up of the ladders from the Park.

And only at a few minutes past eleven did Leith, heading the column,

arrive before the palisades of the covered way, near the Guadiana.

Walker’s men were detected on the glacis, and a heavy artillery fire

was opened on them from San Vincente and San José, but they threw

down many of the palisades and began to descend into the ditch--a

drop of 12 feet. There was a cut in the bottom, to which water from

the Guadiana had been let in, and the wall in front was 30 feet high.

Hence the first attempts to plant the ladders were unavailing, and many

men fell. But coasting around the extreme north end of the bastion,

close to the river, some officers found that the flank sloped down

to a height of only 20 feet, where the bastion joined the waterside

wall. Three or four ladders were successfully planted here, while the

main attention of the garrison was distracted to the frontal attack,

and a stream of men of the 4th, 30th, and 44th began to pour up them.

The French broke before the flank attack: they were not numerous, for

several companies had been drawn off to help at the breaches, and the

bastion was won. As soon as a few hundred men were formed, General

Walker led them along the ramparts, and carried the second bastion,

that of San José. But the two French battalions holding the succeeding

western bastions now massed together, and made a firm resistance in

that of Santiago. The stormers were stopped, and an unhappy incident

broke their impetus--some lighted port-fires thrown down by the French

artillerymen were lying about--some one called out that they were the

matches of mines. Thereupon the advancing column instinctively fell

back some paces--the French charged and drove them in, and the whole

retired fighting confusedly as far as San Vincente. Here General Leith

had fortunately left a reserve battalion, the 2/38th, which, though

only 230 strong, stopped the panic and broke the French advance.

Walker’s brigade rallied and advanced again--though its commander was

desperately wounded--and once more the enemy were swept all along the

western bastions, which they lost one by one.

Some of the 5th Division descended into the streets of the town, and

pushing for the rear of the great breaches, by a long détour through

the silent streets, at last came in upon them, and opened a lively fire

upon the backs of the enemy who were manning the retrenchments. The

main body, however, driving before them the garrison of the southern

bastions, hurtled in upon the flank of the Santa Maria. At this moment

the 4th and Light Divisions, by Wellington’s orders, advanced again

towards the ditch, where their dead or disabled comrades were lying so

thick. They thought that they were going to certain death, not being

aware of what had happened inside the city. But as they descended

into the ditch only a few scattering shots greeted them. The French

main body--for 2,000 men had been driven in together behind the

breaches--had just thrown down their arms and surrendered to the 5th

Division. Even when there was no resistance, the breaches proved hard

to mount, and the obstructions at the top were by no means easy to

remove.

The governor, Phillipon, had escaped into San Cristobal with a few

hundred men, and surrendered there at dawn, having no food and little

ammunition. But he first sent out the few horsemen of the garrison to

run the gauntlet of the Portuguese pickets, and bear the evil news to

Soult.

Thus fell Badajoz: the best summary of its fall is perhaps that

of Leith Hay, who followed his relative, the commander of the 5th

Division, in the assault on San Vincente:--

‘Had Lord Wellington relied on the storming of the breaches alone, the

town would not have been taken. Had General Leith received his ladders

punctually and escaladed at 10, as intended, he would have been equally

successful, and the unfortunate divisions at the breaches would have

been saved an hour of dreadful loss. If Leith had failed, Badajoz would

still have fallen, in consequence of the 3rd Division carrying the

Castle--but not till the following morning; and the enemy might have

given further trouble. Had Picton failed, still the success of the 5th

Division ensured the fall of the place.’ The moral would seem to be

that precautions cannot be too numerous--it was the afterthoughts in

this case, and not the main design, that were successful and saved the

game.

Wellington himself, in a document--a letter to Lord Liverpool--that

long escaped notice, and did not get printed in its right place in

the ninth volume of his _Dispatches_[270], made a commentary on the

perilous nature of the struggle and the greatness of the losses which

must not be suppressed. He ascribed them to deficiencies in the

engineering department. ‘The capture of Badajoz affords as strong an

instance of the gallantry of our troops as has ever been displayed. But

I greatly hope that I shall never again be the instrument of putting

them to such a test as they were put to last night. I assure your

lordship that it is quite impossible to carry fortified places by _vive

force_ without incurring grave loss and being exposed to the chance of

failure, unless the army should be provided with a sufficient trained

corps of sappers and miners.... The consequences of being so unprovided

with the people necessary to approach a regularly fortified place are,

first, that our engineers, though well-educated and brave, have never

turned their minds to the mode of conducting a regular siege, as it

is useless to think of that which, in our service, it is impossible

to perform. They think that they have done their duty when they have

constructed a battery, with a secure communication to it, which can

breach the place. Secondly, these breaches have to be carried by _vive

force_ at an infinite sacrifice of officers and soldiers.... These

great losses could be avoided, and, in my opinion, time gained in every

siege, if we had properly trained people to carry it on. I declare that

I have never seen breaches more practicable in themselves than the

three in the walls of Badajoz, and the fortress must have surrendered

with these breaches open, if I had been able to “approach” the place.

But when I had made the third breach, on the evening of the 6th, I

could do no more. I was then obliged either to storm or to give the

business up; and when I ordered the assault I was certain that I should

lose our best officers and men. It is a cruel situation for any person

to be placed in, and I earnestly request your lordship to have a corps

of sappers and miners formed without loss of time.’

[270] My attention was called to this letter, found among Lord

Liverpool’s papers in 1869, by Mr. F. Turner, of Frome.

The extraordinary fact that no trained corps of sappers and miners

existed at this time was the fault neither of Wellington nor of the

Liverpool ministry, but of the professional advisers of the cabinets

that had borne office ever since the great French War broke out. The

need had been as obvious during the sieges of 1793-4 in Flanders as in

1812. That the Liverpool ministry could see the point, and wished to

do their duty, was shown by the fact that they at once proceeded to

turn six companies of the existing corps of ‘Royal Military Artificers’

into sappers. On April 23, less than three weeks after Badajoz fell,

a warrant was issued for instructing the whole corps in military

field-works. On August 4 their name was changed from ‘Royal Military

Artificers’ to ‘Royal Sappers and Miners.’ The transformation was

much too late for the siege of Burgos, but by 1813 the companies were

beginning to join the Peninsular Army, and at San Sebastian they were

well to the front. An end was at last made to the system hitherto

prevailing, by which the troops which should have formed the rank and

file of the Royal Engineers were treated as skilled mechanics, mainly

valuable for building and carpentering work at home stations.

[Illustration: BADAJOZ]

One more section, a most shameful one, must be added to the narrative

of the fall of Badajoz. We have already had to tell of the grave

disorders which two months before had followed the storm of Ciudad

Rodrigo. These were but trifling and venial compared with the

offences which were committed by the men who had just gone through the

terrible experiences of the night of April 6th. At Rodrigo there was

much drunkenness, a good deal of plunder, and some wanton fire-raising:

many houses had been sacked, a few inhabitants were maltreated, but

none, it is believed, were mortally hurt. At Badajoz the outrages of

all kinds passed belief; the looting was general and systematic, and

rape and bloodshed were deplorably common. Explanatory excuses have

been made, to the effect that the army had an old grudge against the

inhabitants of the city, dating back to the time when several divisions

were quartered in and about it, after Talavera. It was also said that

all the patriotic inhabitants had fled long ago, and that those who had

remained behind were mainly _Afrancesados_, traitors to the general

cause. There was some measure of truth in both allegations: it was no

doubt true that there had been quarrels in 1809, and that many loyalist

families had evacuated the city after the French occupation, and had

transferred themselves to other parts of Estremadura. The population

at the time of the British storm was not two-thirds of the normal

figure. But these excuses will not serve. There can be no doubt that

the outrages were in no sense reasoned acts of retribution, but were a

simple outburst of ruffianism.

Old military tradition in all the armies of Europe held that a

garrison which refused to surrender when the breaches had become

practicable was at the mercy of the conqueror for life and limb,

and that a town resisting to extremity was the natural booty of the

stormers. In the eighteenth century there were countless instances of

a fortress, defended with courage up to the moment when an assault

was possible, surrendering on the express plea that the lives of the

garrison were forfeit if it held out, when resistance could no longer

be successful. The attacking party held that all the lives which it

lost after the place had become untenable were lost unnecessarily,

because of the unreasonable obstinacy of the besieged: the latter

therefore could expect no quarter. This was not an unnatural view when

the circumstances are considered. The defender of a wall or a breach

has an immense advantage over the stormer, till the moment when the

latter has succeeded in closing, and in bringing his superior numbers

to bear. In a curious hortatory address which Phillipon published

to his garrison[271], the passage occurs, ‘realize thoroughly that

a man mounting up a ladder cannot use his weapon unless he is left

unmolested: the head comes up above the parapet unprotected, and a

wary soldier can destroy in succession as many enemies as appear at

the ladder-top.’ This is perfectly true: but Phillipon naturally

avoided stating the logical conclusion, viz. that when the stormers

finally succeed in crowning the ramparts, they will be particularly

ill-disposed towards the garrison who have, till the last moment, been

braining their comrades or shooting them through the head at small

risk to themselves. When the assailant, after seeing several of his

predecessors on the ladder deliberately butchered by a man under cover,

gets by some special piece of luck on a level with his adversary, it

will be useless for the latter to demand quarter. If it is a question

of showing mercy, why did not the other side begin? _Que messieurs

les assassins commencent_, as the French humorist remarked to the

humanitarian, who protested against capital punishment for murderers.

There is a grim story of a party of Tuscan soldiers of the 113th Line,

who were pinned into a ravelin on the flank of the lesser breach at

Rodrigo, and after firing to the last minute upon the flank of the

Light Division, threw down their arms, when they saw themselves cut

off, calling out that they were ‘_poveros Italianos_’--’So you’re not

French but _Italians_ are you--then here’s a shot for you,’ was the

natural answer[272]:--reflections as to the absence of any national

enmity towards the victors should have occurred to the vanquished

before, and not after, the breach was carried. The same thing happened

at the Castle of Badajoz to the companies, mainly Hessians, who so long

held down the stormers of the 3rd Division. If the defenders of the

breaches escaped summary massacre, it was because the breaches were not

carried by force, and the main body of the French surrendered some time

after the assault had ceased, and to troops of the 5th Division, who

had not been personally engaged with them.

[271] Printed in Belmas, iv, Appendix, p. 369, and dated March 26.

[272] The story may be found in Kincaid, p. 114, and in several

other sources.

It was universally held in all armies during the wars of the early

nineteenth century that the garrison which resisted to the last moment,

after success had become impossible, had no rights. Ney wrote to the

governor of Ciudad Rodrigo in 1810, ‘further resistance will force

the Prince of Essling to treat you with all the rigour of the laws

of war. You have to choose between honourable capitulation and the

terrible vengeance of a victorious army[273].’ Suchet, in more brutal

words, told the governor of Tortosa that he should put to the sword a

garrison which resisted instead of capitulating ‘when the laws of war

make it his duty to do so, large breaches being opened and the walls

ruined[274].’ A very clear statement of this sanguinary theory is

found in a passage in the Memoirs of Contreras, the unlucky governor

of Tarragona in 1811[275]. ‘The day after the storm General Suchet had

me brought before him on a stretcher [he was severely wounded] and in

presence of his chief officers and of my own, told me in a loud voice

that I was the cause of all the horrors which his troops had committed

in Tarragona, because I had held out beyond the limit prescribed in

the laws of war, and that those laws directed him to have me executed,

for not capitulating when the breach was opened; that having taken the

place by assault he had the right to slay and burn _ad infinitum_.’

I replied that ‘if it is true that the laws of war state that, if

the besieger gets in, he may deliver to the sword and the flames

town and garrison, and if they therefore suggest as a proper moment

for capitulation that when an assault has become practicable, it is

nevertheless true that they do not prohibit the besieged from resisting

the assault, if he considers that he can beat it off: I had sufficient

forces to hold my own, and should have done so if my orders had been

properly carried out. Therefore I should have been called a coward if

I had not tried to resist, and no law prohibited me from repulsing an

assault if I could.’

[273] Document in Belmas, iii. p. 287.

[274] Ibid., p. 442.

[275] Published in the collection of _Mémoires sur la guerre

d’Espagne_ in 1821.

But, as has been pointed out recently[276], Wellington himself may be

quoted in favour of this theory. In a letter written to Canning in

1820 concerning quite another matter, he remarked, ‘I believe that it

has always been understood that the defenders of a fortress stormed

have no claim to quarter, and the practice which prevailed during the

last century of surrendering fortresses when a breach was opened,

and the counterscarp blown in, was founded on this understanding. Of

late years the French availed themselves of the humanity of modern

warfare, and made a new regulation that a breach should stand one

assault at least. The consequence of this regulation of Bonaparte’s

was the loss to me of the flower of my army, in the assaults on Ciudad

Rodrigo and Badajoz. I should have thought myself justified in putting

both garrisons to the sword, and if I had done so at the first, it is

probable that I should have saved 5,000 men at the second. I mention

this to show you that the practice which refuses quarter to a garrison

that stands an assault is not a _useless_ effusion of blood.’

[276] By Colonel Callwell, in an article in _Blackwood’s

Magazine_ for September 1913.

Comparatively few of the garrisons of Rodrigo and Badajoz were shot

down, and those all in hot blood in the moment after the walls were

carried. Suchet’s army was much more pitiless at Tarragona, where a

great part of the Spanish garrison was deliberately hunted down and

slaughtered. But there was, of course, a much more bitter feeling

between French and Spaniards than between English and French.