State of the enemy’s fort La Picurina from our fire—Attempt to storm
it—Desperate defence of the garrison—It is carried by
assault—Preparations for the grand attack—Frightful difficulties of
the enterprise—The attack and defence—Slaughter of the
besiegers—Badajoz taken.
At about three o’clock in the afternoon of the 25th of March, almost all
the batteries on the front of La Picurina were disorganised, its
palisades beaten down, and the fort itself, having more the semblance of
a wreck than a fortification of any pretensions, presented to the eye
nothing but a heap of ruins. But never was there a more fallacious
appearance: the work, although dismantled of its cannon, its parapets
crumbling to pieces at each successive discharge from our guns, and its
garrison diminished, without a chance of being succoured, was still much
more formidable than appeared to the eye of a superficial observer. It
had yet many means of resistance at its disposal. The gorge, protected
by three rows of palisades, was still unhurt; and although several feet
of the scarp had been thrown down by the fire from our battering-park,
it was, notwithstanding, of a height sufficient to inspire its garrison
with a well-grounded confidence as to the result of any effort of ours
against it; it was defended by three hundred of the _élite_ of
Phillipon’s force, under the command of a colonel of Soult’s staff,
named Gaspard Thiery, who volunteered his services on the occasion. On
this day a deserter came over to us from the fort, and gave an exact
account of how it was circumstanced.
Colonel Fletcher, the chief engineer, having carefully examined the
damage created by our fire, disregarding the perfect state of many of
the defences, and being well aware that expedition was of paramount
import to our final success, advised that the fort should be attacked
after nightfall.
At half-past seven o’clock the storming party, consisting of fifteen
officers and five hundred privates, stood to their arms. General Kempt,
who commanded in the trenches, explained to them the duty they had to
perform; he did so in his usual clear manner, and every one knew the
part he was to fulfil. All now waited with anxiety for the expected
signal, which was to be the fire of one gun from No. 4 battery. The
evening was settled and calm; no rain had fallen since the 23rd; the
rustling of a leaf might be heard; and the silence of the moment was
uninterrupted, except by the French sentinels, as they challenged while
pacing the battlements of the outwork; the answers of their comrades,
although in a lower tone of voice, were distinguishable—“_Tout va bien
dans le fort de la Pleuvina_” was heard by the very men who only awaited
the signal from a gun to prove that the _réponse_, although true to the
letter, might soon be falsified.
The great cathedral bell of the city at length tolled the hour of eight,
and its last sounds had scarcely died away when the signal from the
battery summoned the men to their perilous task; the three detachments
sprang out of the works at the same moment, and ran forwards to the
glacis, but the great noise which the evolution unavoidably created gave
warning to the enemy, already on the alert, and a violent fire of
musketry opened upon the assailing columns. One hundred men fell before
they reached the outwork; but the rest, undismayed by the loss, and
unshaken in their purpose, threw themselves into the ditch, or against
the palisades at the gorge. The sappers, armed with axes and crow-bars,
attempted to cut away or force down this defence; but the palisades were
of such thickness, and so firmly placed in the ground, that before any
impression could be made against even the front row, nearly all the men
who had crowded to this point were struck dead. Meanwhile, those in
charge of the ladders flung them into the ditch, and those below soon
placed them upright against the wall; but in some instances they were
not of a sufficient length to reach the top of the parapet. The time was
passing rapidly, and had been awfully occupied by the enemy; while as
yet our troops had not made any progress that could warrant a hope of
success. More than two-thirds of the officers and privates were killed
or wounded; two out of the three that commanded detachments had fallen;
and Major Shawe, of the 74th, was the only one unhurt. All his ladders
were too short; his men, either in the ditch or on the glacis, unable to
advance, unwilling to retire, and not knowing what to do, became
bewildered. The French cheered vehemently, and each discharge swept away
many officers and privates.
Shawe’s situation, which had always been one of peril, now became
desperate; he called out to his next senior officer (Captain Oates of
the 88th) and said, “Oates, what are we to do?” but at the instant he
was struck in the neck by a bullet, and fell bathed in blood. It
immediately occurred to Oates, who now took the command, that although
the ladders were too short to mount the wall, they were long enough to
go across the ditch! He at once formed the desperate resolution of
throwing three of them over the fosse, by which a sort of bridge was
constructed; he led the way, followed by the few of his brave soldiers
who were unhurt, and, forcing their passage through an embrasure that
had been but bolstered up in the hurry of the moment, carried—after a
brief, desperate, but decisive conflict—the point allotted to him. Sixty
grenadiers of the Italian guard[23] were the first encountered by Oates
and his party; they supplicated for mercy, but, either by accident or
design, one of them discharged his firelock, and the ball struck Oates
in the thigh; he fell, and his men, who had before been greatly excited,
now became furious when they beheld their commanding officer weltering
in his blood. Every man of the Italian guard was put to death on the
spot.
-----
Footnote 23:
There were no troops of the Italian guard in this part of Spain,
though there were some of the “_Velites_” in Catalonia. Italians there
were, but only men incorporated in ordinary French line regiments.
-----
Meanwhile Captain Powis’s detachment had made great progress, and
finally entered the fort by the salient angle. It has been said, and,
for aught I know to the contrary, with truth, that it was the first
which established itself in the outwork; but this is of little import in
the detail, or to the reader. All the troops engaged acted with the same
spirit and devotion, and each vied with his comrade to keep up the
character of the “fighting division.” Almost the entire of the privates
and non-commissioned officers were killed or wounded; and of fifteen
officers, which constituted the number of those engaged, not one escaped
unhurt! Of the garrison, but few escaped; the Commandant, and about
eighty, were made prisoners; the rest, in endeavouring to escape under
the guns of the fortress, or to shelter themselves in San Roque, were
either bayoneted or drowned in the Rivillas; but this was not owing to
any mismanagement on the part of Count Phillipon. He, with that thorough
knowledge of his duty which marked his conduct throughout the siege,
had, early in the business, ordered a body of chosen troops to
_débouche_ from San Roque, and to hold themselves in readiness to
sustain the fort; but the movement was foreseen. A strong column, which
had been placed in reserve, under the command of Captain Lindsey of the
88th, met this reinforcement at the moment they were about to sustain
their defeated companions at La Picurina. Not expecting to be thus
attacked, these troops became panic-struck, soon fled in disorder, and,
running without heed in every direction, choked up the only passage of
escape that was open for the fugitives from the outwork, and, by a
well-meant but ill-executed evolution, did more harm than good.
So soon as the result of this last effort to succour the fort was
apparent to Phillipon, he caused a violent cannonade to be opened
against it, but it was not of long duration; and our engineers,
profiting by the quiet which reigned throughout the enemy’s batteries,
pushed forward the second parallel with great success. A corps of
sappers, under my command, were charged with the work of dismantling the
fort, and before day we had nearly completed its destruction.
Thus terminated the siege and storming of La Picurina, after a lapse of
eight nights and nine days of unprecedented labour and peril. It might
be said that its capture opened to us the gates of Badajoz, or at all
events put the key of that fortress into our hands; it nevertheless cost
us some trouble before we could make use of the key so gained. Never,
from the commencement of the war until its termination, was there a more
gallant exploit than the storming of this outwork.
On the 30th of March two breaching-batteries, armed with twenty-six guns
of heavy calibre, and of the very best description, opened their fire to
batter down the face of the two bastions of Santa Maria and the
Trinidad; and, notwithstanding every effort which the powerful resources
of the enemy enabled him to command, it was abundantly manifest that a
few days would suffice to finish the labours of the army before Badajoz.
The breaching-batteries, which opened their fire on the 30th, were
effective beyond our expectations against the works, and the sappers had
made considerable progress towards completing a good covered way for the
troops to _débouche_ from in their attack of the breaches. On the 25th
thirty-two sappers were placed under my command, but on the night of the
4th of April their numbers were reduced to seven. I lost some of the
bravest men I ever commanded; but, considering the perils they
encountered, it is only surprising how any escaped. We were frequently
obliged to run the flying-sap so close to the battlements of the town
that the noise of the pick-axes was heard on the ramparts, and, upon
such occasions, the party were almost invariably cut off to a man. But
it was then that the courage of the brave fellows under my orders showed
itself superior to any reverse, and what was wanted in force was made up
by the most heroic bravery of individuals. There were three men of my
own regiment, Williamson, Bray, and Macgowan, and I feel happy in being
able to mention the names of those heroes. When a fire, so destructive
as to sweep away all our gabions, took place, those men would run
forward with a fresh supply, and, under a fire in which it was almost
impossible to live, place them in order for the rest of the party to
shelter themselves, while they threw up a sufficiency of earth to render
them proof against musketry. This dangerous duty was carried on for
eleven successive nights, that is to say, from the 25th of March to the
5th of April.
On this day the batteries of the enemy were nearly crippled, and their
replies to our fire scarcely audible; the spirits of the soldiers, which
no fatigue could damp, rose to a frightful height—I say frightful,
because it was not of that sort which alone denoted exultation at the
prospect of their achieving an exploit which was about to hold them up
to the admiration of the world; there was a certain _something_ in their
bearing that told plainly that they had suffered fatigues, which they
did not complain of, and had seen their comrades and officers slain
while fighting beside them without repining, but that they smarted under
the one, and felt acutely for the other; they smothered both, so long as
their minds and bodies were employed; now, however, that they had a
momentary license to _think_, every fine feeling vanished, and plunder
and revenge took their place. Their labours, up to this period, although
unremitting, and carried on with a cheerfulness that was astonishing,
hardly promised the success which they looked for; and the change which
the last twenty-four hours had wrought in their favour, caused a
material alteration in their demeanour; they hailed the present prospect
as the mariner does the disappearance of a heavy cloud after a storm,
which discovers to his view the clear horizon. In a word, the capture of
Badajoz had long been their idol. Many causes led to this wish on their
part; the two previous unsuccessful sieges, and the failure of the
attack against San Christoval in the latter; but, above all, the
well-known hostility of its inhabitants to the British army, and perhaps
might be added a desire for plunder, which the sacking of Rodrigo had
given them a taste for. Badajoz was, therefore, denounced as a place to
be made an example of; and, most unquestionably, no city, Jerusalem
excepted, was ever more strictly visited to the letter than was this
ill-fated town.
The demeanour of the soldiers on this evening faithfully exemplified
what I have just written: a quiet but desperate calm had taken the place
of that gayness and buoyancy of spirits which they possessed so short a
time before, and nothing now was observable in their manner but a
tiger-like expression of anxiety to seize upon their prey, which they
considered as already within their grasp.
Towards five o’clock in the afternoon all doubts were at an end, in
consequence of some officers arriving in the camp from the trenches:
they reported that Lord Wellington had decided upon breaching the
curtain that connected the bastions of La Trinidad and Santa Maria, and
as this operation would necessarily occupy several hours' fire, it was
impossible that the assault could take place before the following day,
the 6th, and the inactivity that reigned in the engineer camp, which
contained the scaling-ladders, was corroborative of the intelligence.
For once I saw the men dejected; yet it was not the dejection of fear,
but of disappointment. Some of the most impetuous broke out into violent
and unbecoming language; others abused the engineers; and many threw the
blame of the delay upon the generals who commanded in the trenches; but
all, even the most turbulent, admitted that the delay must be necessary
to our success, or Lord Wellington would not allow it.
The night at length passed over, and the dawn of morning ushered in a
day pregnant with events that will be recorded in our history as amongst
the most brilliant that grace its annals. The batteries against the
curtain soon reduced it to a heap of ruins; and the certainty that the
trial would be made the same evening re-established good-humour amongst
the soldiers. It was known, early in the day, that the breaches were
allotted to the Light and 4th Divisions; to the 5th, the task of
escalading the town on the side of the St. Vincent bastion; and to
Picton, with his invincible 3rd, to carry the castle by escalading its
stupendous walls, upwards of thirty feet high. The Portuguese brigade,
under General Power, were to divert the enemy’s attention on the side of
San Christoval; while three hundred men, taken from the guard in the
trenches, were to carry the outwork of San Roque.
To ensure the success of an enterprise upon which so much was at stake,
twenty thousand men were to be brought into action as I have described;
by five o’clock all the ladders were portioned out to those destined to
mount them. The time fixed for the assemblage of the troops was eight;
that for the attack ten. The day passed over heavily, and hour after
hour was counted, each succeeding one seeming to double the length of
the one that preceded it; but, true as the needle to the pole, the
long-expected moment arrived, and the clear but deep note of the town
clock was now heard throughout our lines, as it tolled the hour of
eight, and ere its last vibration had ceased the vast mass of assailants
were in battle array. A thick and dusky vapour, issuing from the
Guadiana and Rivillas, hung above the heads of the hostile forces, and
hid alike, by its heavy veil, each from the view of its opponent; the
batteries on both sides were silent, as if they reserved their efforts
for the approaching struggle; and, except the gentle noise which the
rippling of the Guadiana created, or the croaking of the countless frogs
that filled the marshes on each side of its banks, everything was as
still as if the night was to be one of quiet repose; and a passing
stranger, unacquainted with the previous events, might easily have
supposed that our army were no otherwise occupied than in the ordinary
routine of an evening parade; but Phillipon, profiting by this
cessation, retrenched and barricaded the breaches in a manner hereafter
to be described.
So soon as each division had formed on its ground in open column of
companies, the arms were piled, and the officers and soldiers either
walked about in groups of five or six together, or sat down under an
olive-tree to observe, at their ease, the arrangements of the different
brigades which were to take a part in the contest. Then, again, might be
seen some writing to their friends—a hasty scroll, no doubt, and, in my
opinion, an ill-timed one. It is a bad time, at the moment of entering a
breach, to write to a man’s father or mother, much less his wife, to
tell them so; and, besides, it has an unseasonable appearance in the
eyes of the soldiers, who are decidedly the most competent judges of
what their officers should be, or, at least, what _they_ would _wish_
them to be, which is tantamount, at such a crisis.
There is a solemnity of feeling which accompanies the expectation of
every great event in our lives, and the man who can be altogether dead
to such feeling is little, if anything, better than a brute. The present
moment was one that was well calculated to fill every bosom throughout
the army; for, mixed with expectation, hope, and suspense, it was
rendered still more touching to the heart by the music of some of the
regiments, which played at the head of each battalion as the soldiers
sauntered about to beguile the last hour many of them were destined to
live. The band of my corps, the 88th, all Irish, played several airs
which exclusively belong to their country, and it is impossible to
describe the effect it had upon us all; such an air as “Savourneen
Deelish” is sufficient, at any time, to inspire a feeling of melancholy,
but on an occasion like the present it acted powerfully on the feelings
of the men: they thought of their distant homes, of their friends, and
of bygone days. It was Easter Sunday, and the contrast which their
present position presented to what it would have been were they in their
native land afforded ample food for the occupation of their minds; but
they were not allowed time for much longer reflection. The approach of
General Kempt, accompanied by his staff, was the signal for the
formation of the column of attack; and almost immediately the men were
ordered to stand to their arms. Little, if any, directions were given;
indeed, they were unnecessary, because the men, from long service, were
so conversant with the duty they had to perform, that it would have been
but a waste of words and time to say what was required of them.
All was now in readiness. It was twenty-five minutes past nine; the
soldiers, unencumbered with their knapsacks—their stocks off—their
shirt-collars unbuttoned—their trousers tucked up to the knee—their
tattered jackets, so worn out as to render the regiment they belonged to
barely recognisable—their huge whiskers and bronzed faces, which several
hard-fought campaigns had changed from their natural hue—but, above all,
their self-confidence, devoid of boast or bravado, gave them the
appearance of what they in reality were—an invincible host.
The division now moved forward in one solid mass—the 45th leading,
followed closely by the 88th and 74th; the brigade of Portuguese,
consisting of the 9th and 21st Regiments of the line, under Colonel de
Champlemond, were next; while the 5th, 77th, 83rd, and 94th, under
Colonel Campbell, brought up the rear. Their advance was undisturbed
until they reached the Rivillas; but at this spot some fire-balls, which
the enemy threw out, caused a great light, and the 3rd Division, four
thousand strong, was to be seen from the ramparts of the castle. The
soldiers, finding they were discovered, raised a shout of defiance,
which was responded to by the garrison, and in a moment afterwards every
gun that could be brought to bear against them was in action; but, no
way daunted by the havoc made in his ranks, Picton, who just then joined
his soldiers, forded the Rivillas, knee-deep, and soon gained the foot
of the castle wall, and here he saw the work that was cut out for him,
for he no longer fought in darkness. The vast quantity of combustible
matter which out-topped this stupendous defence was in a blaze, and the
flames which issued forth on every side lighted not only the ramparts
and the ditch, but the plain that intervened between them and the
Rivillas. A host of veterans crowned the wall, all armed in a manner as
imposing as novel; each man had beside him eight loaded firelocks; while
at intervals, and proportionably distributed, were pikes of an enormous
length, with crooks attached to them, for the purpose of grappling with
the ladders. The top of the wall was covered with rocks of ponderous
size, only requiring a slight push to hurl them upon the heads of our
soldiers, and there was a sufficiency of hand-grenades and small shells
at the disposal of the men that defended this point to have destroyed
the entire of the besieging army; while on the flanks of each curtain,
batteries, charged to the muzzle with grape and case shot, either swept
away entire sections or disorganised the ladders as they were about to
be placed, and an incessant storm of musketry, at the distance of
fifteen yards, completed the resources the enemy brought into play,
which, as may be seen, were of vast formidableness.
To oppose this mass of warriors and heterogeneous congregation of
missiles Picton had nothing to depend upon for success but his tried and
invincible old soldiers—he relied firmly upon their devoted courage, and
he was not disappointed. The terrible aspect of the rugged wall, thirty
feet in height, in no way intimidated them; and, under a frightful fire
of small arms and artillery, the ponderous ladders were dragged into the
ditch and, with a degree of hardihood that augured well for the issue,
were planted against the lofty battlements that domineered above his
soldiers' heads: but this was only the commencement of one of the most
terrific struggles recorded during this hard-fought night. Each ladder,
so soon as placed upright, was speedily mounted and crowded from the top
round to the bottom one; but those who escaped the pike-thrusts were
shattered to atoms by the heavy cross-fire from the bastions, and the
soldiers who occupied them, impaled upon the bayonets of their comrades
in the ditch, died at the foot of those ladders which they had carried
such a distance and with so much labour.
An hour had now passed over. No impression had been made upon the
castle, and the affair began to have a very doubtful appearance, for
already well nigh half of the 3rd Division had been cut off. General
Kempt, commanding the right brigade, fell wounded, early in the night;
and the 88th Regiment alone, the strongest in the division, lost more
than half their officers and men, while the other regiments were
scarcely in a better condition. Picton, seeing the frightful situation
in which he was placed, became uneasy; but the goodwill with which his
brave companions exposed and laid down their lives reassured him; he
called out to his men—told them they had never been defeated, and that
now was the moment to conquer or die. Picton, although not loved by his
soldiers, was respected by them; and his appeal, as well as his unshaken
front, did wonders in changing the desperate state of the division.
Major Ridge of the 5th, by his personal exertions, caused two ladders to
be placed upright, and he himself led the way to the top of one, while
Canch, a Grenadier officer of the 5th, mounted the other. A few men at
last got footing on the top of the wall; at the same time Lieutenant
William Mackie of the 88th—he who led the forlorn hope at Rodrigo
(unnoticed!—still a lieutenant!!)—and Mr. Richard Martin (son of the
member for Galway, who acted as a volunteer with the 88th during the
siege) succeeding in mounting another. Mackie—ever foremost in the
fight—soon established his men on the battlements, himself unhurt; but
Martin fell desperately wounded. A general rush to the ladders now took
place, and the dead and wounded that lay in the ditch were
indiscriminately trampled upon, for humanity was nowhere to be found. A
frightful butchery followed this success; and the shouts of our
soldiery, mingled with the cries of the Frenchmen, supplicating for
mercy or in the agonies of death, were heard at a great distance. But
few prisoners were made; and the division occupied, with much
regularity, the different points allotted to each regiment. Meanwhile
the ravelin of San Roque was carried by the gorge, by a detachment drawn
from the trenches, under the command of Major Wilson of the 48th; and
the engineers were directed to blow up the dam and sluice that caused
the inundation of the Rivillas, by which means the passage of that river
between La Picurina and the breaches could be more easily effected. One
entire regiment of Germans, called the regiment of Hesse Darmstadt, that
defended the ravelin were put to death.
While all this was taking place at the castle and San Roque, a fearful
scene was acting at the breaches. The Light and 4th Divisions, ten
thousand strong, advanced to the glacis undiscovered—a general silence
pervading the whole, as the spirits of the men settled into that deep
sobriety which denotes much determination of purpose; but at this spot
their footsteps were heard, and, “perhaps since the invention of
gunpowder,”[24] its effects were never more powerfully brought into
action. In a moment the different materials which the enemy had arranged
in the neighbourhood of the breaches were lighted up—darkness was
converted into light—torches blazed along the battlements—and a
spectator, at a short distance from the walls, could distinguish the
features of the contending parties. A battery of mortars, doubly loaded
with grenades, and a blaze of musketry, unlike anything hitherto
witnessed by the oldest soldier, opened a murderous fire against the two
divisions; but, unshaken by its effects, they pressed onward and jumped
into the ditch. The 4th Division, destined to carry the breach to the
right, met with a frightful catastrophe at the onset. The leading
platoons, consisting of the fusilier brigade,[25] sprang into that part
of the ditch that had been filled by the inundation of the Rivillas, and
were seen no more; but the bubbles that rose on the surface of the water
were a terrible assurance of the struggles which those devoted
soldiers—the men of Albuera—ineffectually made to extricate themselves
from the deadly grasp of each other, and from so unworthy an end.
-----
Footnote 24:
Colonel Jones’s Sieges, i. p. 236.
Footnote 25:
7th, 23rd, and 1st 48th.
-----
Warned by the fate of their companions, the remainder turned to the
left, and following the footsteps of the Light Division, pressed onwards
in one mingled mass to the breaches of the curtain and La Trinidad.
Arrived here, they encountered a series of obstacles that it was
impossible to surmount, and which I find great difficulty in describing.
Planks, of a sufficient length and breadth to embrace the entire face of
the breaches, studded with spikes a foot long, were to be surmounted ere
they reached the top of the breach; yet some there were—the brave
Colonel Macleod, of the 43rd, amongst the number—who succeeded so far,
but on gaining the top, _chevaux de frise_, formed of long sword-blades
firmly fixed in the trunks of trees of a great size, and chained,
boom-like, across the breach, were still to be passed; while at each
side, and behind the _chevaux de frise_, trenches were cut, sufficiently
extensive for the accommodation of three thousand men, who stood in an
amphitheatrical manner—each tier above the other—and armed with eight
muskets each, like their companions at the castle, awaited the attack so
soon as the planks on the face, and the _chevaux de frise_ on the top of
the breach were surmounted; but they might have waited until doomsday
for that event, because it was morally impossible.
The vast glare of light caused by the different explosions, and the fire
of cannon and musketry, gave to the breaches the appearance of a volcano
vomiting forth fire in the midst of the army: the ground shook—meteors
shone forth in every direction—and when for a moment the roar of battle
ceased, it was succeeded by cries of agony, or the furious exultation of
the imperial soldiers. To stand before such a storm of fire, much less
endeavour to overcome a barrier so impregnable, required men whose
minds, as well as frames, were cast in a mould not human; but,
nevertheless, so it was. The gallant Light and 4th Divisions boldly
braved every danger, and with a good will, rarely to be found, prolonged
a struggle, the very failure of which, taking into account the nature of
the obstacles opposed to them, and their immense losses, was sufficient
to immortalise them. At length, after a dreadful sacrifice of lives—all
the generals, and most of the colonels, being either killed or
wounded—they were driven from the breaches, while the Frenchmen,
securely entrenched behind them, might be seen waving their caps in
token of defiance. This was too galling for men who had never known
defeat—and they ran back headlong to the attack, and destruction. But
for what end? To judge from the past, when their numbers were more
numerous, they had failed; they were now reduced to less than half,
while the resources of the enemy were unimpaired, and the prospect
before them was hideous. Again did they attempt to pass this terrible
gulf of steel and flame—and again were they driven back—cut
down—annihilated. Hundreds of brave soldiers lay in piles upon each
other, weltering in blood, and trodden down by their own companions. The
43rd left twenty-two officers and three hundred men on the breach; four
companies of the 52nd were blown to atoms by an explosion; and the 95th,
as indeed every other regiment engaged, suffered in proportion. Our
batteries, from whence a clear view of all that was passing could be
distinguished, maddened by the havoc at the breaches, poured in a
torrent of shot; and, in the excitement of the moment, killed friends as
well as foes. Finally, the remnant of the two divisions retired; and,
with a valour bordering upon desperation, prepared for a third trial;
but the success of Picton’s attack was by this time whispered amongst
them, and the evacuation of the breaches soon after confirmed the
rumour.
While the attack of the castle and breaches was in progress, the 5th
Division, under General Leith, maintained a fierce and dangerous
struggle on the other side of the city beyond the Pardeleras fort; but
the resistance at those points was feeble, as compared with the other
two. In some instances the French troops deserted the walls before they
were carried; and it is worthy of remark, that while the 38th Regiment
were mounting the ladders, the imperial soldiers were scrambling down
them at the reverse side—in many instances treading upon the fingers of
our own men! The few men of Leith’s division, thus established on the
ramparts, boldly pressed on in the hope of causing a change in favour of
the men at the breaches; but the multitude that had fled before this
handful of troops became reassured when they beheld the scantiness of
their numbers, and, returning to the fight, forced them up a street
leading to the ramparts. Leith’s men became panic-struck by this
unexpected burst, and retraced their steps in confusion; many were
killed ere they reached the wall; and some, infected by the contagion of
the moment, jumped over the battlements, and were dashed to pieces in
their fall. One, an officer, bearing the flag of his regiment, fearing
it might be captured, flung himself from the wall, and falling into a
part of the ditch that was filled with the slime of the river, escaped
unhurt. At this critical moment General Walker reached the spot with a
fresh body of troops, and driving back the French with ruinous disorder,
established his men at this point; and from that moment the fate of
Badajoz was sealed. The enemy fled in every direction towards the bridge
leading to San Christoval; and the remnant of the ill-fated Light and
4th Divisions with difficulty entered the town by the breaches, although
unopposed.
It was now half-past two o’clock in the morning, and the fighting had
continued, without cessation, from ten the preceding night. More than
three hundred and fifty officers and four thousand men had fallen on our
side; yet the enemy’s loss was but small in proportion; because, with
the exception of the castle, where the 3rd Division got fairly amongst
them, the French, with that tact for which they are so remarkable, got
away the moment they found themselves out-matched.
Shortly after the last attack at the breaches had failed, and long after
the castle had been carried (although it was not generally known at the
time), I was occupied, with Major Thomson of the 74th (acting engineer),
in placing some casks of gunpowder under the dam of the Rivillas, in
front of San Roque; when, while leaning on his shoulder, I was struck by
a musket-bullet in the left breast; I staggered back, but did not fall,
and Thomson, bandaging my breast and shoulder with his handkerchief,
caused me to be removed inside the ravelin; but the firing continued
with such violence upon this point, that it was long before I could
venture out of it. At length, nearly exhausted from loss of blood, and
fearing that I might be unable to reach the camp if I delayed much
longer, I quitted it, accompanied by two sappers of my own corps (Bray
and Macgowan), who supported me as I walked towards the trenches. Bray
was wounded in the leg while he tried to cover me from the enemy’s fire;
but this brave fellow soon recovered, and afterwards greatly
distinguished himself in the battle of the Pyrenees, by killing a French
colonel at the head of his battalion.
By this time the attack of Badajoz was, in effect, finished. Some
irregular firing was still to be heard as the fugitives hurried from
street to street towards the Roman bridge leading to San Christoval, but
all resistance might be said to have ceased. An attempt to retake the
castle was made in vain; but the brave Colonel Ridge of the 5th, who had
so distinguished himself, lost his life by almost one of the last shots
that was fired in this fruitless effort to recover a place which had
cost the army the hearts' blood of the 3rd Division; and the dawn of the
morning of the 7th of April showed to the rest of the army, like a speck
in the horizon, the shattered remnant of Picton’s invincible soldiers,
as they stood in a lone group upon the ramparts of a spot that, by its
isolated situation, towering height, and vast strength, seemed not to
appertain to the rest of the fortifications, and which the enemy, with
their entire disposable force, were unable to take from the few brave
men who now stood triumphant upon its lofty battlements. Nevertheless,
triumphant and stern as was their attitude, it was not without its
alloy, for more than five-sixths[26] of their officers and comrades
either lay dead at their feet, or badly wounded in the ditch below them.
All their generals, Picton amongst the number, and almost all their
colonels, were either killed or wounded; and as they stood to receive
the praises of their commander, and the cheers of their equally brave
but unfortunate companions in arms, their diminished front and haggard
appearance told, with terrible truth, the nature of the conflict in
which they had been engaged.
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Footnote 26:
An exaggeration: the 3rd Division lost about 1100 men out of 4300.
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Early on the morning of the 7th of April, Phillipon and his garrison,
which had taken refuge in San Christoval, hoisted the white flag in
token of submission, and from that moment the beautiful and rich town of
Badajoz became a scene of plunder and devastation.