"Hand to hand, and foot to foot;
Nothing there, save death, was mute:
Stroke, and thrust, and flash, and cry
For quarter or for victory,
Mingle there with the volleying thunder,
Which makes the distant cities wonder
How the sounding battle goes,
If with them, or for their foes;
If they must mourn, or must rejoice
In that annihilating voice,
Which pierces the deep hills through and through
With an echo dread and new.
* * * * * * *
From the point of encountering blades to the hilt,
Sabres and swords with blood were gilt;
But the rampart is won, and the spoil begun,
And all but the after carnage done."
--BYRON.
It would be difficult to find in the whole history of war a more
thrilling and heroic chapter than that which tells the story of the six
great campaigns of the Peninsular war. This was, perhaps, the least
selfish war of which history tells. It was not a war of aggrandisement
or of conquest: it was waged to deliver not merely Spain, but the whole
of Europe, from that military despotism with which the genius and
ambition of Napoleon threatened to overwhelm the civilised world. And
on what a scale Great Britain, when aroused, can fight, let the
Peninsular war tell. At its close the fleets of Great Britain rode
triumphant on every sea; and in the Peninsula between 1808-14 her land
forces fought and won nineteen pitched battles, made or sustained ten
fierce and bloody sieges, took four great fortresses, twice expelled
the French from Portugal and once from Spain. Great Britain expended
in these campaigns more than 100,000,000 pounds sterling on her own
troops, besides subsidising the forces of Spain and Portugal. This
"nation of shopkeepers" proved that when kindled to action it could
wage war on a scale and in a fashion that might have moved the wonder
of Alexander or of Caesar, and from motives, it may be added, too lofty
for either Caesar or Alexander so much as to comprehend. It is worth
while to tell afresh the story of some of the more picturesque
incidents in that great strife.
[Illustration: Siege of Badajos, 1812. From Napier's "Peninsular War."]
On April 6, 1812, Badajos was stormed by Wellington; and the story
forms one of the most tragical and splendid incidents in the military
history of the world. Of "the night of horrors at Badajos," Napier
says, "posterity can scarcely be expected to credit the tale." No
tale, however, is better authenticated, or, as an example of what
disciplined human valour is capable of achieving, better deserves to be
told. Wellington was preparing for his great forward movement into
Spain, the campaign which led to Salamanca, the battle in which "40,000
Frenchmen were beaten in forty minutes." As a preliminary he had to
capture, under the vigilant eyes of Soult and Marmont, the two great
border fortresses, Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos. He had, to use Napier's
phrase, "jumped with both feet" on the first-named fortress, and
captured it in twelve days with a loss of 1200 men and 90 officers.
But Badajos was a still harder task. The city stands on a rocky ridge
which forms the last spur of the Toledo range, and is of extraordinary
strength. The river Rivillas falls almost at right angles into the
Guadiana, and in the angle formed by their junction stands Badajos,
oval in shape, girdled with elaborate defences, with the Guadiana 500
yards wide as its defence to the north, the Rivillas serving as a wet
ditch to the east, and no less than five great fortified
outposts--Saint Roque, Christoval, Picurina, Pardaleras, and a
fortified bridge-head across the Guadiana--as the outer zone of its
defences. Twice the English had already assailed Badajos, but assailed
it in vain. It was now held by a garrison 5000 strong, under a
soldier, General Phillipson, with a real genius for defence, and the
utmost art had been employed in adding to its defences. On the other
hand Wellington had no means of transport and no battery train, and had
to make all his preparations under the keen-eyed vigilance of the
French. Perhaps the strangest collection of artillery ever employed in
a great siege was that which Wellington collected from every available
quarter and used at Badajos. Of the fifty-two pieces, some dated from
the days of Philip II. and the Spanish Armada, some were cast in the
reign of Philip III., others in that of John IV. of Portugal, who
reigned in 1640; there were 24-pounders of George II.'s day, and
Russian naval guns; the bulk of the extraordinary medley being obsolete
brass engines which required from seven to ten minutes to cool between
each discharge.
Wellington, however, was strong in his own warlike genius and in the
quality of the troops he commanded. He employed 18,000 men in the
siege, and it may well be doubted whether--if we put the question of
equipment aside--a more perfect fighting instrument than the force
under his orders ever existed. The men were veterans, but the officers
on the whole were young, so there was steadiness in the ranks and fire
in the leading. Hill and Graham covered the siege, Picton and Barnard,
Kempt and Colville led the assaults. The trenches were held by the
third, fourth, and fifth divisions, and by the famous light division.
Of the latter it has been said that the Macedonian phalanx of Alexander
the Great, the Tenth Legion of Caesar, the famous Spanish infantry of
Alva, or the iron soldiers who followed Cortes to Mexico, did not
exceed it in warlike quality. Wellington's troops, too, had a personal
grudge against Badajos, and had two defeats to avenge. Perhaps no
siege in history, as a matter of fact, ever witnessed either more
furious valour in the assault, or more of cool and skilled courage in
the defence. The siege lasted exactly twenty days, and cost the
besiegers 5000 men, or an average loss of 250 per day. It was waged
throughout in stormy weather, with the rivers steadily rising, and the
tempests perpetually blowing; yet the thunder of the attack never
paused for an instant.
Wellington's engineers attacked the city at the eastern end of the
oval, where the Rivillas served it as a gigantic wet ditch; and the
Picurina, a fortified hill, ringed by a ditch fourteen feet deep, a
rampart sixteen feet high, and a zone of mines, acted as an outwork.
Wellington, curiously enough, believed in night attacks, a sure proof
of his faith in the quality of the men he commanded; and on the eighth
night of the siege, at nine o'clock, 500 men of the third division were
suddenly flung on the Picurina. The fort broke into a ring of flame,
by the light of which the dark figures of the stormers were seen
leaping with fierce hardihood into the ditch and struggling madly up
the ramparts, or tearing furiously at the palisades. But the defences
were strong, and the assailants fell literally in scores. Napier tells
how "the axemen of the light division, compassing the fort like
prowling wolves," discovered the gate at the rear, and so broke into
the fort. The engineer officer who led the attack declares that "the
place would never have been taken had it not been for the coolness of
these men" in absolutely walking round the fort to its rear,
discovering the gate, and hewing it down under a tempest of bullets.
The assault lasted an hour, and in that period, out of the 500 men who
attacked, no less than 300, with 19 officers, were killed or wounded!
Three men out of every five in the attacking force, that is, were
disabled, and yet they won!
There followed twelve days of furious industry, of trenches pushed
tirelessly forward through mud and wet, and of cannonading that only
ceased when the guns grew too hot to be used. Captain MacCarthy, of
the 50th Regiment, has left a curious little monograph on the siege,
full of incidents, half tragic and half amusing, but which show the
temper of Wellington's troops. Thus he tells how an engineer officer,
when marking out the ground for a breaching-battery very near the wall,
which was always lined with French soldiers in eager search of human
targets, "used to challenge them to prove the perfection of their
shooting by lifting up the skirts of his coat in defiance several times
in the course of his survey; driving in his stakes and measuring his
distances with great deliberation, and concluding by an extra shake of
his coat-tails and an ironical bow before he stepped under shelter!"
On the night of April 6, Wellington determined to assault. No less
than seven attacks were to be delivered. Two of them--on the
bridge-head across the Guadiana and on the Pardaleras--were mere
feints. But on the extreme right Picton with the third division was to
cross the Rivillas and escalade the castle, whose walls rose
time-stained and grim, from eighteen to twenty-four feet high. Leith
with the fifth division was to attack the opposite or western extremity
of the town, the bastion of St. Vincente, where the glacis was mined,
the ditch deep, and the scarp thirty feet high. Against the actual
breaches Colville and Andrew Barnard were to lead the light division
and the fourth division, the former attacking the bastion of Santa
Maria and the latter the Trinidad. The hour was fixed for ten o'clock,
and the story of that night attack, as told in Napier's immortal prose,
is one of the great battle-pictures of literature; and any one who
tries to tell the tale will find himself slipping insensibly into
Napier's cadences.
The night was black; a strange silence lay on rampart and trench,
broken from time to time by the deep voices of the sentinels that
proclaimed all was well in Badajos. "_Sentinelle garde à vous_," the
cry of the sentinels, was translated by the British private as "All's
well in Badahoo!" A lighted carcass thrown from the castle discovered
Picton's men standing in ordered array, and compelled them to attack at
once. MacCarthy, who acted as guide across the tangle of wet trenches
and the narrow bridge that spanned the Rivillas, has left an amusing
account of the scene. At one time Picton declared MacCarthy was
leading them wrong, and, drawing his sword, swore he would cut him
down. The column reached the trench, however, at the foot of the
castle walls, and was instantly overwhelmed with the fire of the
besieged. MacCarthy says we can only picture the scene by "supposing
that all the stars, planets, and meteors of the firmament, with
innumerable moons emitting smaller ones in their course, were
descending on the heads of the besiegers." MacCarthy himself, a
typical and gallant Irishman, addressed his general with the exultant
remark, "Tis a glorious night, sir--a glorious night!" and, rushing
forward to the head of the stormers, shouted, "Up with the ladders!"
The five ladders were raised, the troops swarmed up, an officer
leading, but the first files were at once crushed by cannon fire, and
the ladders slipped into the angle of the abutments. "Dreadful their
fall," records MacCarthy of the slaughtered stormers, "and appalling
their appearance at daylight." One ladder remained, and, a private
soldier leading, the eager red-coated crowd swarmed up it. The brave
fellow leading was shot as soon as his head appeared above the parapet;
but the next man to him--again a private--leaped over the parapet, and
was followed quickly by others, and this thin stream of desperate men
climbed singly, and in the teeth of the flashing musketry, up that
solitary ladder, and carried the castle.
In the meanwhile the fourth and light divisions had flung themselves
with cool and silent speed on the breaches. The storming party of each
division leaped into the ditch. It was mined, the fuse was kindled,
and the ditch, crowded with eager soldiery, became in a moment a sort
of flaming crater, and the storming parties, 500 strong, were in one
fierce explosion dashed to pieces. In the light of that dreadful flame
the whole scene became visible--the black ramparts, crowded with dark
figures and glittering arms, on the one side; on the other the red
columns of the British, broad and deep, moving steadily forward like a
stream of human lava. The light division stood at the brink of the
smoking ditch for an instant, amazed at the sight. "Then," says
Napier, "with a shout that matched even the sound of the explosion,"
they leaped into it and swarmed up to the breach. The fourth division
came running up and descended with equal fury, but the ditch opposite
the Trinidad was filled with water; the head of the division leaped
into it, and, as Napier puts it, "about 100 of the fusiliers, the men
of Albuera, perished there." The breaches were impassable. Across the
top of the great slope of broken wall glittered a fringe of
sword-blades, sharp-pointed, keen-edged on both sides, fixed in
ponderous beams chained together and set deep in the ruins. For ten
feet in front the ascent was covered with loose planks, studded with
sharp iron points. Behind the glittering edge of sword-blades stood
the solid ranks of the French, each man supplied with three muskets,
and their fire scourged the British ranks like a tempest.
Hundreds had fallen, hundreds were still falling; but the British clung
doggedly to the lower slopes, and every few minutes an officer would
leap forward with a shout, a swarm of men would instantly follow him,
and, like leaves blown by a whirlwind, they swept up the ascent. But
under the incessant fire of the French the assailants melted away. One
private reached the sword-blades, and actually thrust his head beneath
them till his brains were beaten out, so desperate was his resolve to
get into Badajos. The breach, as Napier describes it, "yawning and
glittering with steel, resembled the mouth of a huge dragon belching
forth smoke and flame." But for two hours, and until 2000 men had
fallen, the stubborn British persisted in their attacks. Currie, of
the 52nd, a cool and most daring soldier, found a narrow ramp beyond
the Santa Maria breach only half-ruined; he forced his way back through
the tumult and carnage to where Wellington stood watching the scene,
obtained an unbroken battalion from the reserve, and led it towards the
broken ramp. But his men were caught in the whirling madness of the
ditch and swallowed up in the tumult. Nicholas, of the engineers, and
Shaw, of the 43rd, with some fifty soldiers, actually climbed into the
Santa Maria bastion, and from thence tried to force their way into the
breach. Every man was shot down except Shaw, who stood alone on the
bastion. "With inexpressible coolness he looked at his watch, said it
was too late to carry the breaches," and then leaped down! The British
could not penetrate the breach; but they would not retreat. They could
only die where they stood. The buglers of the reserve were sent to the
crest of the glacis to sound the retreat; the troops in the ditch would
not believe the signal to be genuine, and struck their own buglers who
attempted to repeat it. "Gathering in dark groups, and leaning on
their muskets," says Napier, "they looked up in sullen desperation at
Trinidad, while the enemy, stepping out on the ramparts, and aiming
their shots by the light of fireballs, which they threw over, asked as
their victims fell, 'Why they did not come into Badajos.'"
All this while, curiously enough, Picton was actually in Badajos, and
held the castle securely, but made no attempt to clear the breach. On
the extreme west of the town, however, at the bastion of San Vincente,
the fifth division made an attack as desperate as that which was
failing at the breaches. When the stormers actually reached the
bastion, the Portuguese battalions, who formed part of the attack,
dismayed by the tremendous fire which broke out on them, flung down
their ladders and fled. The British, however, snatched the ladders up,
forced the barrier, jumped into the ditch, and tried to climb the
walls. These were thirty feet high, and the ladders were too short. A
mine was sprung in the ditch under the soldiers' feet; beams of wood,
stones, broken waggons, and live shells were poured upon their heads
from above. Showers of grape from the flank swept the ditch.
The stubborn soldiers, however, discovered a low spot in the rampart,
placed three ladders against it, and climbed with reckless valour. The
first man was pushed up by his comrades; he, in turn, dragged others
up, and the unconquerable British at length broke through and swept the
bastion. The tumult still stormed and raged at the eastern breaches,
where the men of the light and fourth division were dying sullenly, and
the men of the fifth division marched at speed across the town to take
the great eastern breach in the rear. The streets were empty, but the
silent houses were bright with lamps. The men of the fifth pressed on;
they captured mules carrying ammunition to the breaches, and the
French, startled by the tramp of the fast-approaching column, and
finding themselves taken in the rear, fled. The light and fourth
divisions broke through the gap hitherto barred by flame and steel, and
Badajos was won!
In that dreadful night assault the English lost 3500 men. "Let it be
considered," says Napier, "that this frightful carnage took place in
the space of less than a hundred yards square--that the slain died not
all suddenly, nor by one manner of death--that some perished by steel,
some by shot, some by water; that some were crushed and mangled by
heavy weights, some trampled upon, some dashed to atoms by the fiery
explosions--that for hours this destruction was endured without
shrinking, and the town was won at last. Let these things be
considered, and it must be admitted a British army bears with it an
awful power. And false would it be to say the French were feeble men.
The garrison stood and fought manfully and with good discipline,
behaving worthily. Shame there was none on any side. Yet who shall do
justice to the bravery of the British soldiers or the noble emulation
of the officers? . . . No age, no nation, ever sent forth braver
troops to battle than those who stormed Badajos."