that the diminished divisions withdrew to the bottom of the slope
and stood furious and exhausted, but powerless to effect their aim,
and still under a fire that was thinning their broken ranks, while
the enemy cried mockingly down to them, “Why don’t you come into
Badajoz?” Captain Nicholas, of the Engineers, gathered a few men and
made frantic efforts to force the Santa Maria breach, and he was
joined by Lieutenant Shaw, of the 43rd, who collected fifty men from
various regiments and struggled over the broken masonry with them,
but, two-thirds of the way up a hail of balls and hissing grape-shot
mowed them nearly all down, and the divisions remained stolidly
confronting inevitable death, unable to advance, unwilling to retire,
for the bugles sounded twice unheeded, while, strange irony it seemed,
a bright moon shining peacefully overhead, the Santa Maria, or “Holy
Mary,” looking down upon them on the one hand, La Trinidad, “The
Trinity,” on the other, and all around an Inferno such as Dante never
dreamed of! About midnight Wellington ordered them back to re-form for
another attack, and in the meantime Picton’s Division, whom we left
also re-forming, had rushed forward again, led by Colonel Ridge, who
placed a ladder against the castle wall, where an embrasure offered a
chance of foothold. A grenadier officer named Canch reared a second
one alongside it, and the two mounted together, followed by their men,
securing the ramparts after a desperate hand-to-hand conflict, and
driving the enemy out of the castle into the town.
The garrison sent a reinforcement, and there was a sharp passage of
arms at the gate, our redcoats firing from one side almost muzzle to
muzzle with the blue-clad, square-shakoed French on the other; but we
kept the castle, though, unhappily, the gallant Ridge was slain.
Our reserves found the two ladders still standing, the top rungs of
one being broken; and when the 28th Regiment practised storming a dry
bridge with these, a couple of months afterwards, they were even then
covered with blood and brains!
It was about half-past eleven when the 3rd Division succeeded in
their escalade, and, retarded by unforeseen obstacles, it was not
until the same hour or thereabouts that the 5th Division, under
Lieutenant-General Leith, came under the breastwork before San Vincente
at the west end of the town. As the 1st, 4th, 9th, 30th, 38th, and 44th
Regiments, with a Portuguese brigade, halted, undiscovered, a few yards
from a guard-house where the French could be heard talking, the roar of
a distant explosion sounded, and the men whispered among themselves,
“It is at the breaches!”
All was intensely silent around them; the murmur of the river rose on
their left, the fortifications showed clearly before them as the moon
came out; they knew that their comrades far off on the other side of
the citadel were engaged, and an eager thrill went through the ranks. A
sentinel discovered the mass of men and the glint of the moonbeams on
the bayonets at the moment when our engineer guide exclaimed “Now’s the
time!” and as he fired we ran forward against the gateway.
Seized by a sudden panic the Portuguese ladder-party bolted, but we
snatched up the heavy ladders and our axemen chopped fearlessly at
the gate and wooden palings that fringed the covered-way, while from
the walls which towered thirty-one feet overhead, the same tempest of
beams, and shot, and bags of powder showered down on the heads of the
5th Division.
We cleared the paling and jumped into the ditch, crossing the cunette
with difficulty and finding the ladders too short for our purpose;
the engineer was killed, and a small mine exploded under our feet,
but, as luck would have it, the ramparts at San Vincente had been
thinned of some of their defenders, who had gone off at the double to
attack Picton’s men in the castle, and we placed three ladders under
an embrasure where there was a gabion instead of a gun, and where the
scarp was only twenty feet high.
Hand over hand, the troops clambered up under a concentrated fire
that dropped them off by dozens, and the topmost stormers had to be
pushed up by those behind before they could reach the embrasure, as
the ladders were all too short; but at last the bold fellows got a
foothold, and pulled the others up alongside them, until the redcoated
mass grew larger and larger, and half the King’s Own charged the houses
while the rest of the division went roaring along the ramparts, Brown
Bess in hand, hurling the stubborn garrison out of three bastions in
succession. There was a great shouting, mingled with the scream of
the grape-shot and the whistling hum of shells; yells, howls, prayers
and curses were drowned or half-heard amid the boom of cannon and the
incessant bang-bang of the deadly muskets fired at close-quarters.
[Illustration: BADAJOZ
1812.]
The awestruck watchers on the hill above our camp stood in an agony
of suspense, spectators of the terrific struggle; the entire citadel
seemed full of flame and noise, as mine after mine exploded, and
fire-ball after fire-ball was flung over the walls to light the
besieged in their heroic resistance: never had Napoleon’s soldiers
fought with more determined gallantry, officer and man vying with each
other in their efforts to keep us out, and as we drove them from one
defence they retired into another and stood once more at bay.
Philippon, and Vielland, the second in command, though both wounded,
flew from rampart to rampart, sword in hand, encouraging their brave
fellows by word and deed, while the solemn chime of the cathedral rang
out unnoticed hour after hour of that night of horrors.
A strange incident occurred at San Vincente when General Walker fell
riddled with balls on the parapet: either by accident or design, he
made a masonic sign as he staggered backwards, and a brother-mason
in the French ranks dashed aside the threatening bayonets of his
countrymen and saved him: afterwards, it is said, the general found his
preserver a prisoner-of-war in Scotland, and procured his exchange in
remembrance of his chivalry on the ramparts of Badajoz.
The 5th Division had obtained firm hold, knowing nothing of what was
happening at the castle or the breaches, and as a portion of them were
pursuing the enemy along the walls they rounded an angle and came upon
a solitary gun with one artilleryman, who flung a portfire down as they
approached.
Instantly there arose a cry of “A mine! a mine!” and our fellows
retired helter-skelter, followed by a fresh body under Vielland, who
drove them back to the parapet again and pitched several over into
the ditch, but a reserve of the 38th, under Colonel Nugent, about two
hundred strong, poured a volley into them, and we rallied and charged
along the wall towards the breaches.
The King’s Own had entered the town at the first onslaught of Leith’s
Division, and a strange contrast they found it to the uproar of the
bastions, as, with bayonets fixed and bugles blowing, they filed
through the streets, silent and deserted as the tomb; every door shut,
lamps alight in many of the windows, but not a soul abroad, except some
soldiers leading ammunition mules, who were promptly taken prisoners.
Sometimes a window opened and was immediately closed again; voices were
heard, but the speakers were invisible; a few shots came from beneath
the doors, but they were unheeded, and the adventurous 4th continued
its march into the great square, where the same silence reigned,
although the houses round it were brilliantly lighted.
The renewed fury at the breaches turned their steps in that direction,
and they hurried off to take the garrison in rear: the attempt was
well meant, but they were met by a fire that repulsed them, and they
continued their wandering down streets and lanes, but the French began
to be disheartened, as well they might.
The castle in our possession they could possibly have besieged from
the town side, as there was only one gate by which the 3rd Division
could have issued; the Trinidad and Santa Maria were also well-nigh
impregnable in spite of their shattered condition, had the garrison
been able to concentrate there, but the forcing of San Vincente had
let us in _behind_ them, and the struggle was only a matter of
time; so, brave Philippon and Vielland, with their remnants, forced the
bridge and shut themselves up in San Christoval across the Guadiana,
sending a few horsemen on the spur to carry news to Soult, and, the
bleeding 4th and Light Divisions scrambling up again and rushing the
breaches, BADAJOZ WAS OURS!
As the heavy firing died away towards morning, a mighty shout arose
inside the walls, caught up and echoed far and near by our victorious
soldiery, “Hurrah! hurrah! the town’s our own, hurrah!” and the
carnage-maddened men, breaking from all control, began a wild orgy,
which lasted for two days and two nights, indelibly sullying the glory
of our triumph.
[Illustration: “‘WILL YOU DRINK, OLD BOY?’”
(_p._ 266).]
Churches and mansions were entered and pillaged; costly sacramental
plate and silver money from the military chest strewed the rugged
pavement of the town; wine flowed down the gutters as freely as
blood had done on the ramparts, and men staggered along with their
shakoes full of liquor. One bestrode a cask with a loaded musket and
compelled officer and private alike to drink as they passed him; here
a group fired aimlessly down a street, caring little whom they hit,
others blazed away at the convent bells, while some masqueraded in
court-dresses, in French uniforms, and monks’ cowls, howling, singing,
dancing, like men possessed.
Many of the wretched inhabitants placed lighted candles and flasks of
aquadienta on their tables and sought to hide themselves, hoping the
marauders would drink and go away; they drank, but every cranny of the
house was ransacked before they took their leave, and things were done
of which we cannot speak, for the sake of humanity and the honour of
the army.
“The town is ours, hurrah!”
Women and children ran shrieking to the officers for protection, which,
alas, it was not always in their power to afford. Many an indignant
subaltern risked his life among his own men in frantic attempts to
recall them to order; an officer of the Brunswickers was shot while
struggling for the possession of a canary bird; one party was seen
tormenting a wounded baboon that had belonged to the colonel of the
4th French Regiment. And breaking open the jail, they liberated the
prisoners, some of the 5th and 88th holding candles aloft as the scum
of a Spanish prison poured out to add to the disorder. Wellington
himself was surrounded by a mob of drunkards, who fired their muskets
to his infinite peril, shouting as they brandished bottles of wine and
brandy--“Will you drink, old boy? The town’s our own, hurrah!”
At length a gallows with three nooses reared its ominous form in
the square, and a man named Johnny Castles, of the 95th, was placed
beneath it; but no one was hanged, and by degrees the troops were
drawn out of the town, credited with having murdered eighty-five of
the inhabitants--in actual fact, the number being thirty-two. In
fearful contrast to the licence within the walls was the scene outside.
Philippon had surrendered to the future Lord Raglan, and retired from
the service, in 1816, a General of Division, Baron of the Empire, and
wearer of the Legion of Honour and the Order of St. Louis. The ditch,
the slope, from the edge of the glacis to the top of the bastions,
resembled a huge slaughter-house, nearly 2,500 of our men having
fallen between the Santa Maria and La Trinidad alone, within a space
of a hundred square yards; the 43rd and 52nd, respectively the gayest
and the most sedate regiments in Spain, losing 670 men between them,
and the place presenting an unusually shocking appearance from the
explosions which had taken place there.
In one place the wife of a grenadier of the 83rd moaned over the corpse
of her husband; in another a little drummer-boy of the 88th lay with
his leg broken beside his dead father; the most heartrending sights
were witnessed as the women and children sought frantically for their
dear ones amid thousands of bodies, and the mangled fragments of what
had once been living men.
Amid the horror of it all, two Spanish ladies came out of the town and
implored two officers of the Rifles to assist them: one of them, Donna
Juana Maria de los Dolores de Leon, afterwards married her protector,
who became Sir Harry Smith, of Aliwal fame, and was long a prominent
figure in English society--a curious instance of the “romance of war.”
We took the colours of the garrison and the Hesse-Darmstadt, but there
were no eagles in the town. The first man to die at the Santa Maria was
a Portuguese grenadier, and there was a story current in the army that
José de Castro, bugle-boy of the 7th Caçadores, had sounded the French
“recall” at a critical moment, for which he received a hundred guineas
from the Earl of Wellington: certain it is that when a very old man,
gaining a bare living by teaching the cornet in the town of Golega, he
was still petitioning the Portuguese Government for a pension.
Five generals wounded, five thousand officers and men fallen during the
siege--that is the story of Badajoz. And when Wellington stood in the
breach and looked around him, stern Spartan though he was, he burst
into tears.
[Illustration: THE BLOCKADE OF CALLAO
BY W. B. ROBERTSON]
At the invitation of the newly-created Republic of Chili, Admiral
Thomas Cochrane, tenth Earl of Dundonald, sailed from England in the
month of August, 1818, in the _Rose_, merchantman, to organise and
take supreme command of the Chilian navy. With him he took, besides his
wife and two children, English naval officers upon whom he could rely
in the arduous fighting he was soon to engage in against the superior
armaments of Spain. He landed on November 28th at Valparaiso, whither
General O’Higgins, Supreme Director of the Chilian Government, had
come to receive him. His reception was so warm both at Valparaiso and
at Santiago, the capital, and the continuation of proposed festivities
in his honour threatened to be so prolonged, that he had to remind his
Excellency O’Higgins that he had come to Chili to fight, and not to
feast.
Preparations were accordingly pushed forward to get such ships of war
as the Chilians possessed into some kind of fighting order. These
ships were the _O’Higgins_, formerly the _Maria Isabel_,
a Spanish frigate of 50 guns, which the Chilians had captured and
re-named after their adored chief; the _San Martin_, formerly the
_Cumberland_, Indiaman, with 56 guns; the _Lautaro_, also a
purchased Indiaman, with 44 guns; the _Galvarino_, recently the
British sloop-of-war _Hecate_, with 18 guns; the _Chacabuco_,
with 20 guns; and the _Araucano_, with 16 guns. This modest
squadron of seven vessels was to contend with and conquer the Spanish
fleet, made up of four frigates--the _Esmeralda_, 44 guns,
the _Venganza_, 42 guns, the _Sebastiana_, 28 guns; four
brigs--the _Maipo_, 18 guns, the _Pezuela_, 22 guns, the
_Potrillo_, 18 guns, and another, whose name is not known; one
schooner, name not known; six armed merchantmen--the _Resolution_,
36 guns, the _Cleopatra_, 28 guns, _La Focha_, 20 guns, the
_Guarmey_, 18 guns, the _Fernando_, 26 guns, and the _San
Antonio_, 18 guns; and twenty-seven gunboats.
Such were the opposing forces, whose operations for the next two
years now were to command the attention of the civilised world. Under
any other but Cochrane’s leadership the result could never have been
doubtful. Cochrane, however, had already shown under the British flag
that odds made no difference to him--a reputation that he was still
further to maintain.
It is necessary here to say that though Chili had vanquished the
Spanish forces in the interior and had overthrown the Spanish
Government, her long line of coast was still exposed to attacks from
the Spanish fleet. Besides, the enemy still held the impregnable forts
that commanded the port of Valdivia. These advantages, added to the
fact that her power in Peru was still intact, made Spain even yet a
formidable foe to the newly-acquired liberties of the Chilians. Thus,
before Chili could rest assured that Spanish dominion would not again
be re-asserted over her, she must break the power of the Spanish navy,
clear the Spanish garrisons out of Valdivia, and see her neighbour,
Peru, liberated. It was to contribute to the accomplishment of these
ends that Admiral Cochrane had now conferred upon him by commission the
titles of “Vice-admiral of Chili” and “Admiral and Commander-in-Chief
of the Naval Forces of the Republic.”
On December 22nd, nearly a month after his arrival at Valparaiso,
Cochrane hoisted his flag on the _O’Higgins_, named, as already
mentioned, in honour of the Supreme Director, who was the son of an
Irish gentleman of great distinction, who had risen so high in the
Spanish service as to occupy the position of Viceroy of Peru--the
highest post at that time in South America. The son, however, on the
outbreak of revolution, joined the patriots, and, as a reward for his
signal services in the field, was chosen head of the young Republic.
Resuming our narrative, we find Cochrane sailing from Valparaiso on
January 16th, 1819, with only four ships--the other three being not
yet ready. On that day Lady Cochrane with the children had come on
board to bid him adieu. She had gone ashore, and the last gun to summon
all hands on board had been fired, when suddenly a loud hurrah near
the house in which she was residing made her go to the window to see
what the matter might be. She was petrified at the sight that met her
gaze. Her little boy of five years, who had slipped away from her
unperceived, was perched on the shoulders of Cochrane’s flag-lieutenant
who was hurrying with him down to the beach. The excited populace were
shouting and hurrahing, while the little fellow, who had begged of the
by no means unwilling lieutenant to be taken aboard, was waving his
cap over their heads and crying “_Viva la patria_.” Before Lady
Cochrane could interfere, the two were being rapidly rowed off in a
small boat to the flagship which was already under weigh. It was thus
impossible, to the delight of the sailors as well as the youngster, for
him to be sent back; and though he had only the clothes that were on
him, which were altogether insufficient, the sailors said that didn’t
matter--they would make him others!
[Illustration: LORD COCHRANE.
(_From the Painting by Stroehling._)]
During this cruise Cochrane inflicted so many disasters upon the
Royalist cause, as to become known amongst the Spaniards by the title
“_El diablo_.” These disasters cannot be given in detail: so we
pass to the end of February, when he entered the port of Callao with
the _O’Higgins_ and _Lautaro_ under American colours. In
this port was practically concentrated the naval force of Spain in
the Pacific; yet such was the terror with which Cochrane had already
inspired them, that the Spaniards dared not go out to meet him. Instead
of this they dismantled their ships of war, and with the topmasts
and spars made a double boom across their anchorage to prevent his
approach. An unimportant action, however, took place, and at the
commencement of the firing Cochrane locked his little boy in the
after-cabin. In the middle of the engagement a round shot took off a
marine’s head. This attracted Cochrane’s attention to the spot, where
he was horror-stricken to see his son, close by the decapitated marine,
and covered with blood. The boy had escaped from his confinement
through the quarter-gallery window, and throughout the fight, in the
little midshipman’s uniform that the seamen had made for him, had been
busily engaged in handing powder to the gunners. His father now thought
him killed. But it was only the blood and brains of the unfortunate
marine that he was bespattered with, and up he ran to his agonised
father. “I am not hurt, papa; the shot did not touch me: Jack says the
ball is not made that can kill mama’s boy.” “Mama’s boy,” however, was
forthwith ordered to be carried below.
It may here be pardonable to cite a few words as showing what kind of
“mama” that boy had. By a writer in the _North British Review_,
we are told that one night whilst Lord Cochrane was in command of the
Chilian fleet, “his ship got becalmed under a battery from which he
was assailed with red-hot shot. His men were seized with a panic and
deserted their guns. If the fire from the shore were not returned, it
would speedily become steady, sustained, and fatal. He went down to the
cabin, where her ladyship lay: ‘If a woman sets them the example, they
may be shamed out of their fears: it is our only chance.’ She rose and
followed him upon the deck. We have heard her relate that the first
object that met her eye was the battery with its flaming furnaces,
round which dark figures were moving, looking more like incarnate
demons than men. A glance at her husband’s impressive features and his
‘terrible’ calmness reassured her. She took the match, and fired the
gun when he had pointed it. The effect on the crew was electrical: they
returned to their posts with a shout, and the battery was speedily
silenced.”
[Illustration: VALPARAISO.]
One more glimpse at Lady Cochrane. General Miller--subsequently the
hero of Ayacucho, and as brave an officer as ever unsheathed sword--was
on one occasion sent on a secret service under the orders of Lord
Cochrane. With his force, comprising 600 infantry and sixty cavalry, he
proceeded to Huacho, a little to the north of Lima. “On the day after
his arrival there,” the account proceeds, “and whilst he was inspecting
the detachments in the Plaza, Lady Cochrane galloped on to the parade
to speak to him. The sudden appearance of youth and beauty on a fiery
horse, managed with skill and elegance, absolutely electrified the
men, who had never before seen an English lady. ‘_Que hermosa!_ _Que
graciosa!_ _Que linda!_ _Que airosa!_ _Es un angel de cielo!_’ were
exclamations which escaped from one end of the line to the other.
Colonel Miller, not displeased at this involuntary homage to the beauty
of his countrywoman, said to the men, ‘This is our _generala_;’ on
which Lady Cochrane, turning to the line, bowed to the troops, who
no longer confining their expressions of admiration to suppressed
interjections, broke out into loud ‘_vivas_.’”
* * * * *
After the action in Callao Harbour, already referred to, Lord Cochrane,
on March 2nd, sent Captain Foster with a Spanish gunboat and crew
they had captured, and the launches of the _O’Higgins_ and
_Lautaro_, to take possession of San Lorenzo, a small island
about three miles distant. Here they found thirty-seven Chilians, who
had been taken prisoners eight years before, and who, all that time,
had worked in chains under the supervision of a military guard. The
military guard were now taken prisoners, and the Chilians released.
These showed their liberators the filthy shed in which, chained by
one leg to an iron bar, they had been compelled to sleep. From them,
too, it was learnt that the patriot prisoners in Lima were in a more
deplorable plight still, and that the fetters on their legs had worn
their ankles to the bone. The pitiful tale told by these men moved
Cochrane to send a flag of truce to the Viceroy in Lima, with a request
for an exchange of prisoners, and complaining of the harsh treatment
accorded the Chilian prisoners, while the Spanish prisoners in Chili
were well treated. To this message the Viceroy replied that he had a
right to treat the prisoners as pirates, and that he was surprised
that a British nobleman should be found in command of the maritime
forces of a Government “unacknowledged by all the Powers of the globe.”
So he refused to treat for an exchange of prisoners. To the Viceroy,
Cochrane replied that a British nobleman was a free man, and therefore
had a right to adopt any country which was endeavouring to re-establish
the rights of aggrieved humanity, and that he had, hence, adopted the
cause of Chili with the same freedom of judgment that he had previously
exercised when refusing the offer of an admiral’s rank in Spain,
made to him not long before by the Duke de San Carlos in the name of
Ferdinand the Seventh.
So ended Cochrane’s humane endeavour on behalf of the prisoners of both
parties. Meanwhile, with the rather contemptible force and appliances
at his command being unable to successfully attack the Spanish fleet,
which lay under the shelter of the guns of the forts of Callao, he put
to sea and made some important captures. Among these was a vessel laden
with treasure lying in the river Barrança; another on the way from Lima
to Guambucho with 70,000 dollars, the pay of the Imperial troops; and
on April 10th the _Gazelle_, with 60,000 dollars. He also landed
parties at various points on the Peruvian coast, routed the different
Spanish garrisons with his marines, and captured their military stores.
In this way he was able to make the enemy provide for the wants of his
squadron, and his extraordinary success was due to his treatment of
the natives. These he always paid for everything required from them.
He also paid them highly for any information they might bring him
regarding the movements of the enemy. Thus the natives became a kind
of detective force working on his behalf. On June 16th he returned to
Valparaiso, where, laden with the spoils of many victories, he was
received with loud and warm acclamations.