"Attend, all ye who list to hear our noble England's praise,
I tell of the thrice famous deeds she wrought in ancient days."
--MACAULAY.
The three great and memorable sieges of the Peninsular war are those of
Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajos, and San Sebastian. The annals of battle
record nowhere a more furious daring in assault or a more gallant
courage in defence than that which raged in turn round each of these
three great fortresses. Of the three sieges that of Badajos was the
most picturesque and bloody; that of San Sebastian the most sullen and
exasperated; that of Ciudad Rodrigo the swiftest and most brilliant. A
great siege tests the fighting quality of any army as nothing else can
test it. In the night watches in the trenches, in the dogged toil of
the batteries, and the crowded perils of the breach, all the frippery
and much of the real discipline of an army dissolves. The soldiers
fall back upon what may be called the primitive fighting qualities--the
hardihood of the individual soldier, the daring with which the officers
will lead, the dogged loyalty with which the men will follow. As an
illustration of the warlike qualities in our race by which empire has
been achieved, nothing better can be desired than the story of how the
breaches were won at Ciudad Rodrigo.
At the end of 1811 the English and the French were watching each other
jealously across the Spanish border. The armies of Marmont and of
Soult, 67,000 strong, lay within touch of each other, barring
Wellington's entrance into Spain. Wellington, with 35,000 men, of whom
not more than 10,000 men were British, lay within sight of the Spanish
frontier. It was the winter time. Wellington's army was wasted by
sickness, his horses were dying of mere starvation, his men had
received no pay for three months, and his muleteers none for eight
months. He had no siege-train, his regiments were ragged and hungry,
and the French generals confidently reckoned the British army as, for
the moment at least, _une quantité négligeable_.
And yet at that precise moment, Wellington, subtle and daring, was
meditating a leap upon the great frontier fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo,
in the Spanish province of Salamanca. Its capture would give him a
safe base of operations against Spain; it was the great frontier _place
d'armes_ for the French; the whole siege-equipage, and stores of the
army of Portugal were contained in it. The problem of how, in the
depth of winter, without materials for a siege, to snatch a place so
strong from under the very eyes of two armies, each stronger than his
own, was a problem which might have taxed the warlike genius of a
Caesar. But Wellington accomplished it with a combination of subtlety
and audacity simply marvellous.
He kept the secret of his design so perfectly that his own engineers
never suspected it, and his adjutant-general, Murray, went home on
leave without dreaming anything was going to happen. Wellington
collected artillery ostensibly for the purpose of arming Almeida, but
the guns were trans-shipped at sea and brought secretly to the mouth of
the Douro. No less than 800 mule-carts were constructed without
anybody guessing their purpose. Wellington, while these preparations
were on foot, was keenly watching Marmont and Soult, till he saw that
they were lulled into a state of mere yawning security, and then, in
Napier's expressive phrase, he "instantly jumped with both feet upon
Ciudad Rodrigo."
This famous fortress, in shape, roughly resembles a triangle with the
angles truncated. The base, looking to the south, is covered by the
Agueda, a river given to sudden inundations; the fortifications were
strong and formidably armed; as outworks it had to the east the great
fortified Convent of San Francisco, to the west a similar building
called Santa Cruz; whilst almost parallel with the northern face rose
two rocky ridges called the Great and Small Teson, the nearest within
600 yards of the city ramparts, and crowned by a formidable redoubt
called Francisco. The siege began on January 8. The soil was rocky
and covered with snow, the nights were black, the weather bitter. The
men lacked entrenching tools. They had to encamp on the side of the
Agueda farthest from the city, and ford that river every time the
trenches were relieved. The 1st, 3rd, and light divisions formed the
attacking force; each division held the trenches in turn for
twenty-four hours. Let the reader imagine what degree of hardihood it
took to wade in the grey and bitter winter dawn through a half-frozen
river, and without fire or warm food, and under a ceaseless rain of
shells from the enemy's guns, to toil in the frozen trenches, or to
keep watch, while the icicles hung from eyebrow and beard, over the
edge of the battery for twenty-four hours in succession.
Nothing in this great siege is more wonderful than the fierce speed
with which Wellington urged his operations. Massena, who had besieged
and captured the city the year before in the height of summer, spent a
month in bombarding it before he ventured to assault. Wellington broke
ground on January 8, under a tempest of mingled hail and rain; he
stormed it on the night of the 19th.
He began operations by leaping on the strong work that crowned the
Great Teson the very night the siege began. Two companies from each
regiment of the light division were detailed by the officer of the day,
Colonel Colborne, for the assault. Colborne (afterwards Lord Seaton),
a cool and gallant soldier, called his officers together in a group and
explained with great minuteness how they were to attack. He then
launched his men against the redoubt with a vehemence so swift that, to
those who watched the scene under the light of a wintry moon, the
column of redcoats, like the thrust of a crimson sword-blade, spanned
the ditch, shot up the glacis, and broke through the parapet with a
single movement. The accidental explosion of a French shell burst the
gate open, and the remainder of the attacking party instantly swept
through it. There was fierce musketry fire and a tumult of shouting
for a moment or two, but in twenty minutes from Colborne's launching
his attack every Frenchman in the redoubt was killed, wounded, or a
prisoner.
The fashion in which the gate was blown open was very curious. A
French sergeant was in the act of throwing a live shell upon the
storming party in the ditch, when he was struck by an English bullet.
The lighted shell fell from his hands within the parapet, was kicked
away by the nearest French in mere self-preservation; it rolled towards
the gate, exploded, burst it open, and instantly the British broke in.
For ten days a desperate artillery duel raged between the besiegers and
the besieged. The parallels were resolutely pushed on in spite of
rocky soil, broken tools, bitter weather, and the incessant pelting of
the French guns. The temper of the British troops is illustrated by an
incident which George Napier--the youngest of the three
Napiers--relates. The three others were gallant and remarkable
soldiers. Charles Napier in India and elsewhere made history; William,
in his wonderful tale of the Peninsular war, wrote history; and George,
if he had not the literary genius of the one nor the strategic skill of
the other, was a most gallant soldier. "I was a field-officer of the
trenches," he says, "when a 13-inch shell from the town fell in the
midst of us. I called to the men to lie down flat, and they instantly
obeyed orders, except one of them, an Irishman and an old marine, but a
most worthless drunken dog, who trotted up to the shell, the fuse of
which was still burning, and striking it with his spade, knocked the
fuse out; then taking the immense shell in his hands, brought it to me,
saying, 'There she is for you now, yer 'anner. I've knocked the life
out of the crater.'"
The besieged brought fifty heavy guns to reply to the thirty light
pieces by which they were assailed, and day and night the bellow of
eighty pieces boomed sullenly over the doomed city and echoed faintly
back from the nearer hills, while the walls crashed to the stroke of
the bullet. The English fire made up by fierceness and accuracy for
what it lacked in weight; but the sap made no progress, the guns showed
signs of being worn out, and although two apparent breaches had been
made, the counterscarp was not destroyed. Yet Wellington determined
to attack, and, in his characteristic fashion, to attack by night. The
siege had lasted ten days, and Marmont, with an army stronger than his
own, was lying within four marches. That he had not appeared already
on the scene was wonderful.
In a general order issued on the evening of the 19th Wellington wrote,
"Ciudad Rodrigo must be stormed this evening." The great breach was a
sloping gap in the wall at its northern angle, about a hundred feet
wide. The French had crowned it with two guns loaded with grape; the
slope was strewn with bombs, hand-grenades, and bags of powder; a great
mine pierced it beneath; a deep ditch had been cut betwixt the breach
and the adjoining ramparts, and these were crowded with riflemen. The
third division, under General Mackinnon, was to attack the breach, its
forlorn hope being led by Ensign Mackie, its storming party by General
Mackinnon himself. The lesser breach was a tiny gap, scarcely twenty
feet wide, to the left of the great breach; this was to be attacked by
the light division, under Craufurd, its forlorn hope of twenty-five men
being led by Gurwood, and its storming party by George Napier. General
Pack, with a Portuguese brigade, was to make a sham attack on the
eastern face, while a fourth attack was to be made on the southern
front by a company of the 83rd and some Portuguese troops. In the
storming party of the 83rd were the Earl of March, afterwards Duke of
Richmond; Lord Fitzroy Somerset, afterwards Lord Raglan; and the Prince
of Orange--all volunteers without Wellington's knowledge!
At 7 o'clock a curious silence fell suddenly on the battered city and
the engirdling trenches. Not a light gleamed from the frowning
parapets, not a murmur arose from the blackened trenches. Suddenly a
shout broke out on the right of the English attack; it ran, a wave of
stormy sound, along the line of the trenches. The men who were to
attack the great breach leaped into the open. In a moment the space
betwixt the hostile lines was covered with the stormers, and the gloomy
half-seen face of the great fortress broke into a tempest of fire.
Nothing could be finer than the vehement courage of the assault, unless
it were the cool and steady fortitude of the defence. Swift as was the
upward rush of the stormers, the race of the 5th, 77th, and 94th
regiments was almost swifter. Scorning to wait for the ladders, they
leaped into the great ditch, outpaced even the forlorn hope, and pushed
vehemently up the great breach, whilst their red ranks were torn by
shell and shot. The fire, too, ran through the tangle of broken stones
over which they climbed; the hand-grenades and powder-bags by which it
was strewn exploded. The men were walking on fire! Yet the attack
could not be denied. The Frenchmen--shooting, stabbing, yelling--were
driven behind their entrenchments. There the fire of the houses
commanding the breach came to their help, and they made a gallant
stand. "None would go back on either side, and yet the British could
not get forward, and men and officers falling in heaps choked up the
passage, which from minute to minute was raked with grape from two guns
flanking the top of the breach at the distance of a few yards. Thus
striving, and trampling alike upon the dead and the wounded, these
brave men maintained the combat."
It was the attack on the smaller breach which really carried Ciudad
Rodrigo; and George Napier, who led it, has left a graphic narrative of
the exciting experiences of that dreadful night. The light division
was to attack, and Craufurd, with whom Napier was a favourite, gave him
command of the storming party. He was to ask for 100 volunteers from
each of the three British regiments--the 43rd, 52nd, and the Rifle
Corps--in the division. Napier halted these regiments just as they had
forded the bitterly cold river on their way to the trenches.
"Soldiers," he said, "I want 100 men from each regiment to form the
storming party which is to lead the light division to-night. Those who
will go with me come forward!" Instantly there was a rush forward of
the whole division, and Napier had to take his 300 men out of a tumult
of nearly 1500 candidates. He formed them into three companies, under
Captains Ferguson, Jones, and Mitchell. Gurwood, of the 52nd, led the
forlorn hope, consisting of twenty-five men and two sergeants.
Wellington himself came to the trench and showed Napier and Colborne,
through the gloom of the early night, the exact position of the breach.
A staff-officer looking on, said, "Your men are not loaded. Why don't
you make them load?" Napier replied, "If we don't do the business with
the bayonet we shall not do it all. I shall not load." "Let him
alone," said Wellington; "let him go his own way." Picton had adopted
the same grim policy with the third division. As each regiment passed
him, filing into the trenches, his injunction was, "No powder! We'll
do the thing with the _could_ iron."
A party of Portuguese carrying bags filled with grass were to run with
the storming party and throw the bags into the ditch, as the leap was
too deep for the men. But the Portuguese hesitated, the tumult of the
attack on the great breach suddenly broke on the night, and the forlorn
hope went running up, leaped into the ditch a depth of eleven feet, and
clambered up the steep slope beyond, while Napier with his stormers
came with a run behind them. In the dark for a moment the breach was
lost, but found again, and up the steep quarry of broken stone the
attack swept. About two-thirds of the way up Napier's arm was smashed
by a grape-shot, and he fell. His men, checked for a moment, lifted
their muskets to the gap above them, whence the French were firing
vehemently, and forgetting their pieces were unloaded, snapped them.
"Push on with the bayonet, men!" shouted Napier, as he lay bleeding.
The officers leaped to the front, the men with a stern shout followed;
they were crushed to a front of not more than three or four. They had
to climb without firing a shot in reply up to the muzzles of the French
muskets.
But nothing could stop the men of the light division. A 24-pounder was
placed across the narrow gap in the ramparts; the stormers leaped over
it, and the 43rd and 52nd, coming up in sections abreast, followed.
The 43rd wheeled to the right towards the great breach, the 52nd to the
left, sweeping the ramparts as they went.
Meanwhile the other two attacks had broken into the town; but at the
great breach the dreadful fight still raged, until the 43rd, coming
swiftly along the ramparts, and brushing all opposition aside, took the
defence in the rear. The British there had, as a matter of fact, at
that exact moment pierced the French defence. The two guns that
scourged the breach had wrought deadly havoc amongst the stormers, and
a sergeant and two privates of the 88th--Irishmen all, and whose names
deserve to be preserved--Brazel, Kelly, and Swan--laid down their
firelocks that they might climb more lightly, and, armed only with
their bayonets, forced themselves through the embrasure amongst the
French gunners. They were furiously attacked, and Swan's arm was hewed
off by a sabre stroke; but they stopped the service of the gun, slew
five or six of the French gunners, and held the post until the men of
the 5th, climbing behind them, broke into the battery.
So Ciudad Rodrigo was won, and its governor surrendered his sword to
the youthful lieutenant leading the forlorn hope of the light division,
who, with smoke-blackened face, torn uniform, and staggering from a
dreadful wound, still kept at the head of his men.
[Illustration: Siege of Ciudad Rodrigo, 1812. From Napier's
"Peninsular War."]
In the eleven days of the siege Wellington lost 1300 men and officers,
out of whom 650 men and 60 officers were struck down on the slopes of
the breaches. Two notable soldiers died in the attack--Craufurd, the
famous leader of the light division, as he brought his men up to the
lesser breach; and Mackinnon, who commanded a brigade of the third
division, at the great breach. Mackinnon was a gallant Highlander, a
soldier of great promise, beloved by his men. His "Children," as he
called them, followed him up the great breach till the bursting of a
French mine destroyed all the leading files, including their general.
Craufurd was buried in the lesser breach itself, and Mackinnon in the
great breach--fitting graves for soldiers so gallant.
Alison says that with the rush of the English stormers up the breaches
of Ciudad Rodrigo "began the fall of the French Empire." That siege,
so fierce and brilliant, was, as a matter of fact, the first of that
swift-following succession of strokes which drove the French in ruin
out of Spain, and it coincided in point of time with the turn of the
tide against Napoleon in Russia. Apart from all political results,
however, it was a splendid feat of arms. The French found themselves
almost unable to believe the evidence of their senses. "On the 16th,"
Marmont wrote to the Emperor, "the English batteries opened their fire
at a great distance. On the 19th the place was taken by storm. There
is something so _incomprehensible_ in this that I allow myself no
observations." Napoleon, however, relieved his feelings with some very
emphatic observations. "The fall of Ciudad Rodrigo," he wrote to
Marmont, "is an affront to you. Why had you not advices from it twice
a week? What were you doing with the five divisions of Souham? It is
a strange mode of carrying on war," &c. Unhappy Marmont!