Blockade of Ciudad Rodrigo--Combat of Elbodon--Combat of Aldea de
Ponte--Surprise of Aroyo de Molinos--Defence of Tarifa--English
Siege of Ciudad Rodrigo--Third English Siege of Badajos--Assault
of Picurina--Assault of Badajos.
BLOCKADE OF CIUDAD RODRIGO. (Sept. 1811.)
After the second siege of Badajos the contest in the Peninsula
presented a new phase. French reinforcements were poured into Spain,
forty thousand old soldiers entered by the northern line alone, and
General Dorsenne took command of the _Army of the North_, which now
contained seventeen thousand of Napoleon’s young guard. The king had a
particular force about Madrid called the _Army of the Centre_; Soult
commanded the _Army of the South_; Marmont the _Army of Portugal_,
with which, by the emperor’s orders, he took post in the valley of the
Tagus, leaving a division at Truxillo south of that river, establishing
a bridge of communication at Almaraz, which he fortified on both sides
strongly.
This disposition of the French armies was at once offensive and
defensive. Portugal was menaced from the north by Dorsenne, who had
Ciudad Rodrigo as an advanced place of arms; from the south by Soult,
who had Badajos for an advanced place of arms; in the centre by
Marmont, who could march on Abrantes, join Dorsenne, or unite with
Soult. In defence the French were still more powerful. If Wellington
assailed Dorsenne, the latter by retiring could concentrate a great
force, while Marmont acted on the English right flank; and together
they could present seventy thousand men in line. If he assailed Soult,
as he had indeed designed before the failure of Badajos, Marmont could
act on his left flank, and, united with Soult, could present sixty-five
thousand fighting men. If he marched against Marmont by either bank of
the Tagus, that marshal, reinforced with detachments from Dorsenne,
Soult, and the king, could deliver battle with more than seventy
thousand men.
The English general could not contend with such powerful armies beyond
the mountains of Portugal, yet from political pressure he could not
stand still, and there were defects in his adversaries’ breast-plate
through which he hoped to pierce. He saw that Badajos and Rodrigo were
isolated and difficult to provision; that each depended for succour on
the junction of armies under generals of equal authority, ill disposed
to act together, and whose communications were long and uneasy,
furnishing pretences for non-coöperation. Marmont had indeed a direct
line of intercourse with Dorsenne across the Gredos mountains, by the
fortified pass of Baños; but to reach Soult the Tagus was to be crossed
at Almaraz, the defiles of Estremadura and the passes of the Morena to
be threaded before a junction could be made in the plains of Badajos:
wherefore, General Girard, having the remains of Mortier’s army, called
_the fifth corps_, was employed as a moving column in Estremadura, to
support Badajos and connect the army of Portugal with that of Soult.
In this state of affairs Wellington, who had received large
reinforcements after the siege of Badajos, left General Hill, in
August, with twelve thousand men of all arms to keep Girard in check,
and in person marched to the north, under pretence of seeking healthy
quarters for his sickly troops, really to blockade Ciudad Rodrigo,
which an intercepted letter described as wanting provisions; it had
however been previously supplied by Bessières before he quitted his
command, and this effort was frustrated. The army was then placed near
the sources of the Agueda and Coa, close to the line of communication
between Marmont and Dorsenne, and preparations were made for a siege,
in the notion that the last general’s force was weak: but that also was
an error, and when discovered, a blockade was established. Almeida,
whose renewed walls had been destroyed by Spencer when he marched to
the south, was now repaired for a place of arms, the bridge over the
Coa was restored, and with the utmost subtilty of combination and the
most extensive arrangements the English general, while appearing only
to blockade, secretly prepared for a siege. All his art was indeed
required, for though the Anglo-Portuguese were at this time eighty
thousand on paper, with ninety guns, twenty-two thousand men were in
hospital; wherefore, Hill’s corps being deducted, less than forty-five
thousand were on the watch to snatch a fortress which was in the
keeping of eighty thousand.
In September Rodrigo called for succour, whereupon Marmont and Dorsenne
advanced to its relief with sixty thousand men, six thousand being
cavalry, and they had a hundred pieces of artillery. Wellington could
not fight this great army beyond the Agueda, but would not retreat
until he had seen all their force, lest a detachment should relieve the
place to his dishonour. In this view he took the following positions.
Picton’s division, reinforced with three squadrons of German and
British cavalry, was placed at the heights of Elbodon and Pastores,
on the left of the Agueda, within three miles of Rodrigo. The light
division with some squadrons of cavalry and six guns, were posted on
the right of the Agueda, at the Vadillo, a river with a rugged channel
falling into the Agueda three miles above Rodrigo: from this line an
enemy coming from the eastern passes of the hills could be discerned.
The sixth division and Anson’s brigade of cavalry, forming the left of
the army, was under General Graham at Espeja, on the Lower Azava, with
advanced posts at Carpio and Marialva, from whence to Rodrigo was eight
miles over a plain. Julian Sanchez’s Partida watched the Lower Agueda,
and the heads of columns were thus presented to the fortress on three
points, namely, Vadillo, Pastores and Espeja. Two brigades of heavy
cavalry on the Upper Azava, supported by Pack’s Portuguese, connected
Graham with Elbodon; but he was very distant from Guinaldo, the pivot
of operations, and to obviate the danger of a flank march in retreat
the first and seventh divisions were posted in succession towards
Guinaldo. The army was thus spread out on different roads, like the
sticks of a fan, having their point of union on the Coa.
This disposition was faulty. Broad heights lining the left bank of the
Agueda ended abruptly above the villages of Elbodon and Pastores, and
were flanked in their whole length by woods and great plains, extending
from Rodrigo to the Coa; they could not therefore be held against an
enemy commanding those plains, and if the French pushed along them
suddenly, beyond Guinaldo, the distant wings could be cut off. At
Guinaldo however, three field redoubts had been constructed on high
open ground, to impose upon the enemy and so gain time to assemble and
feel his disposition for a battle, because a retreat beyond the Coa was
to be avoided if possible.
On the 23rd the French encamped behind the hills northeast of Rodrigo,
and a strong detachment, entering the plain, looked at the light
division on the Vadillo and returned.
The 24th, six thousand cavalry and four divisions of infantry crossed
the hills in two columns to introduce the convoy, while on the English
side the fourth division occupied the position of Guinaldo, and the
redoubts were completed. No other change was made, for it was thought
the French would not advance further; but the 25th, soon after
daybreak, fourteen squadrons of the imperial guards drove Graham’s
outpost from Carpio across the Azava; the Lancers of Berg then crossed
that river in pursuit, but were flanked by some infantry in a wood
and beaten back by two squadrons of the 14th and 16th Dragoons,
who re-occupied the post of Carpio. During this skirmish, fourteen
battalions of infantry and thirty squadrons of cavalry, with twelve
guns, under Montbrun, passing the Agueda at Rodrigo marched towards
Guinaldo; the road divided there, one branch turning the Elbodon
heights on the French right the other leading through Pastores and
Elbodon, and as the point of divarication was covered by a gentle
ridge, it was doubtful which branch would be taken. Soon that doubt
vanished. The cavalry pouring along the right-hand road leading to
Guinaldo, drove in the advanced posts, and without waiting for their
infantry fell on.
COMBAT OF ELBODON. (Sept. 1811.)
The action began disadvantageously for the allies. The left of the
third division was turned, the 74th and 60th Regiments, being at
Pastores, far on the right, were too distant to be called in, and
Picton, having three other regiments at Elbodon, could take no
immediate part in the fight. Wellington sent to Guinaldo for a brigade
of the fourth division, and meanwhile directed General Colville to
draw up the 77th and 5th British Regiments, the 21st Portuguese and
two brigades of artillery of the same nation, on a hill over which
the road to Guinaldo passed, supporting their flanks with Alten’s
three squadrons. This position, convex towards the enemy, was covered,
front and flanks, by deep ravines; but it was too extensive, and
before Picton could come from Elbodon the crisis was over. Vainly the
Portuguese guns sent their shot through Montbrun’s horsemen, they
crossed the ravine in half squadrons, and with amazing vigour rode up
the rough height on three sides; neither the loose fire of the infantry
nor the artillery stopped them, but they were checked by the fine
fighting of the cavalry, who charged the heads of the ascending masses,
not once but twenty times, and always with a good will, maintaining the
upper ground for an hour.
It was astonishing to see so few troopers resist that surging multitude
even on such steep ground; but when Montbrun, obstinate to win, brought
up his artillery, his horsemen, gaining ground in the centre, cut down
some gunners and captured the Portuguese guns, and at the same time
one German squadron, charging too far, got entangled in the ravines.
The danger was then imminent, but suddenly the 5th Regiment, led by
Major Ridge, a daring man, dashed bodily into the midst of the French
cavalry and retook the artillery, which again opened, while the 77th,
supported by the 21st Portuguese, vigorously repulsed the enemy on the
left. These charges of infantry against a powerful cavalry, which had
room to expand, could however only check the foe at particular points,
and Montbrun pressed with fresh masses against the left of the allies,
while other squadrons penetrated between their right and the village of
Elbodon, from the inclosures and vineyards of which Picton was, with
difficulty and some confusion, extricating his regiments. He could
give no succour, the brigade of the fourth division was not in sight,
the French infantry was rapidly approaching, and Wellington therefore
directed both Picton and Colville to fall back and unite in the plain
behind.
Colville, forming his battalions in two squares, descended at once
from the hill, but Picton had a considerable distance to move, there
was a great interval, and at that moment, the cavalry, fearing to be
surrounded, galloped for refuge to the Portuguese regiment, which
was farthest in retreat. Then the 5th and 77th, two weak battalions
formed in one square, were quite exposed, and in an instant the whole
of the French horsemen came thundering down upon them. But how vain,
how fruitless to match the sword with the musket, to send the charging
horseman against the steadfast veteran! The multitudinous squadrons,
rending the skies with their shouts, closed upon the glowing squares
like the falling edges of a burning crater, and were as instantly
rejected, scorched and scattered abroad; then a rolling peal of
musketry echoed through the hills, bayonets glittered at the edge of
the smoke, and with firm and even step the British regiments came forth
like the holy men from the Assyrian’s furnace.
Picton now effected his junction and the whole retired to Guinaldo,
about six miles. The French would not renew the close attack, yet plied
shot and shell until the entrenched camp was gained; there the fourth
division presented a fresh front, Pack then came in from Campillo, the
heavy cavalry from the Upper Azava, and as it was near dusk the action
ceased. The 74th and 60th Regiments, posted at Pastores, were abandoned
by this retreat, but they crossed the Agueda at a ford, and moving up
the right bank reached Guinaldo in the night after a march of fifteen
hours.
Graham had early received orders to fall back on the first division,
yet to keep posts of observation on the Azava, while Sanchez’s infantry
went behind the Coa; the guerilla chief himself passed with his cavalry
to the French rear, and the seventh division was withdrawn behind the
left wing, which was now in line with the centre, though still distant.
The light division should have come by Robledo to Fuente Guinaldo;
Craufurd received the order at three o’clock, heard the cannonade, and
might have reached it before midnight; but fearing a march in darkness
he merely retired a league from the Vadillo, which was immediately
passed by fifteen hundred French; Guinaldo was thus maintained by
only fourteen thousand men, two thousand six hundred being cavalry.
Graham was ten miles distant; the light division, debarred of a direct
route by the enemy, was sixteen miles distant; the fifth division,
posted at Payo in the mountains, was twelve miles distant; and during
the night and the following day, Marmont united sixty thousand men in
front of Guinaldo. The English general was thus in great danger, yet
he would not abandon the light division, which, intercepted by the
French cavalry at Robledo, did not arrive until after three o’clock in
the evening. Marmont’s fortune was fixed in that hour! He knew not how
matters really stood. He detached a strong column by the valley of the
Azava to menace the allies’ left, and made an ostentatious display of
the Imperial Guards in the plain, instead of attacking an adversary who
laughed to see him so employed, and soon changed the state of affairs.
In the night, by an able concentric movement, Wellington united his
whole army on new ground between the Coa and the sources of the Agueda,
twelve miles behind Guinaldo. Marmont, unconscious of his advantages,
instead of troubling this difficult movement had also retired in
the night, and was marching back when the scouts of his column in
the valley of Azava reported that the allies were in retreat, and
their divisions widely separated. Then discovering all the deceit
of Guinaldo, and the escape of the light division, he prophetically
exclaimed, alluding to Napoleon’s fortune, _And Wellington, he also
has a star._ In this mood he would have continued his retreat, but it
is said Dorsenne forced him to wheel round and pursue: Wellington was
then however in a strong position behind the stream of the Villa Maior,
where he could not be turned, and where it covered all the practicable
roads leading to the bridges and fords of the Coa.
COMBAT OF ALDEAPONTE. (Sept. 1811.)
The French moved by two roads against the right and centre. Checked
on the first by the light division, on the second their horsemen
drove the cavalry posts across the Villa Maior and took possession of
Aldeaponte, where at twelve o’clock the head of their infantry attacked
a brigade of the fourth division, posted on opposing heights, under
General Pakenham. Wellington arriving at that moment directed a charge,
and the French were driven back; they attempted to turn the brigade
by a wood on their own left while their cavalry advanced to the foot
of the hills, but the artillery sufficed to baffle the effort, and
then the English general, taking the offensive, turned their left and
seized the opposite hills: this finished the action and Aldeaponte was
re-occupied. Wellington, who had been much exposed to fire, rode to
another part, yet scarcely had he departed when the French from the
other road joined those near Aldeaponte, and at five o’clock retook the
village; Pakenham recovered it, but the enemy was very numerous, the
country rugged, and so wooded he could not tell what was passing on the
flanks: wherefore, knowing the chosen ground of battle was behind the
Coa, he abandoned Aldeaponte for his original post.
In the night the allies retreated, and on the morning of the 28th
occupied a new and strong position in a deep loop of the Coa, where
it could only be attacked on a narrow front; but the French, who had
brought only a few days’ provisions and could gather none in that
country, retired the same day. Dorsenne marched to Salamanca, a strong
division was posted at Alba de Tormes to communicate with Marmont, and
the latter resumed his old position in the valley of the Tagus. The
light division, reinforced by some cavalry, now resumed the nominal
blockade of Ciudad Rodrigo, in concert with Julian Sanchez; the rest of
the army was cantoned on both sides of the Coa and head-quarters were
fixed at Freneda.
Only three hundred men and officers fell in these combats on the
British side. The French lost more, because of the unreturned fire at
Elbodon, and here a fine chivalric action on their side merits notice.
In one of the cavalry fights, an officer in the act of striking at
Felton Harvey of the 14th Dragoons, perceived that he had but one arm
and with a rapid change brought down his sword to a salute and passed
on!
SURPRISE OF ARROYO DE MOLINOS. (Oct. 1811.)
While Rodrigo was being blockaded, General Hill co-operated with the
Spaniards in Estremadura against General Drouet, who first joined
Girard, but after various movements returned to the Morena, leaving
his colleague at Caceres between the Tagus and the Guadiana. From
that place Hill drove him the 26th of October, and hoping to cut him
off from the bridge of Merida, moved by a cross road next day. On
the march he heard Girard had halted in Arroyo de Molinos, leaving
a rear-guard on the Caceres road--thus showing he knew not of the
cross-road movement and looked for pursuit only from Caceres. With a
rapid decision and a forced march the English general moved in the
night upon Alcuesca, just one league from Arroyo, which was in a plain,
and close behind it rose a rocky sierra, crescent-shaped, and about two
miles wide on the chord. From Alcuesca one road led direct to Arroyo,
another entered it on the left, and three led from it, the most distant
of the last being the Truxillo road, which rounded the extremity of
the sierra; the nearest was the Merida road, and between them was that
of Medellin. The weather was very stormy and wet, but no fires were
permitted in the allies’ camp, and at two o’clock in the morning of the
28th the troops moved to a low ridge half a mile from Arroyo, under
cover of which they formed three bodies--the infantry on the wings,
the cavalry in the centre. The left column marched straight upon the
village, the right towards the extreme point of the sierra, where the
Truxillo road turned the horn of the crescent, the cavalry kept the
centre.
One brigade of Girard’s division had marched at four o’clock by the
road of Medellin, but Dombrouski’s brigade and the cavalry of Briche
were still in the place, and the horses of the rear-guard, unbridled,
were tied to trees. The infantry were gathering on the Medellin road
outside the village, and Girard was in a house waiting for his horse,
when two British officers galloped into the street and in an instant
all was confusion; hastily the cavalry bridled their horses and the
infantry ran to their alarm-posts, but a tempest raged, a thick mist
rolled down the craggy mountain, a terrific shout was heard amidst
the clatter of the elements, and with the driving storm the 71st and
92nd Regiments came charging down. The French rear-guard of horsemen,
fighting and struggling hard, were driven to the end of the village,
where the infantry, forming their squares, endeavoured to cover the
main body of the cavalry; but then the 71st, lining the garden walls,
opened a galling fire on the nearest square, the 92nd, filing out of
the streets, formed upon the French right, and the 50th Regiment,
following closely, secured the prisoners.
The rest of the column, headed by the Spanish cavalry, skirted outside
the houses to intercept the line of retreat, and soon the guns opened
on the squares, and the 13th Dragoons captured the French artillery,
while the 9th Dragoons and German Hussars dispersed their cavalry.
Girard, an intrepid officer, although wounded, still kept his infantry
together, retreating by the Truxillo road; but the right column of
the allies was in possession of that line, the cavalry and artillery
were close upon his flank, and the left column followed fast; his
men fell by fifties and his situation was desperate, yet he would
not surrender, and giving the word to disperse endeavoured to scale
the almost inaccessible rocks of the sierra. His pursuers, not less
obstinate, immediately divided. The Spaniards ascended the hills at
an easier point beyond his left; the 39th Regiment and Ashworth’s
Portuguese turned the mountain by the Truxillo road; the 28th and
34th, led by General Howard, followed him step by step up the rocks,
taking prisoners, but finally the pursuers, heavily loaded, were beaten
in speed by men who had thrown away their arms and packs. Girard,
Dombrouski, and Briche, escaped into the Guadalupe mountains, and then
crossing the Guadiana at Orellana, on the 9th of November rejoined
Drouet with six hundred men, the remains of three thousand: they were
said to be the finest troops then in Spain, and their resolution in
such an appalling situation was no mean proof of their excellence.
Thirteen hundred prisoners, including General Bron and the Prince of
Aremberg, all the artillery, baggage, commissariat, and a contribution
just raised, were taken. The allies had seventy killed and wounded,
and one officer, Lieutenant Strenowitz, was taken. He was an Austrian,
and distinguished for courage and successful enterprises, but he had
abandoned the French to join Julian Sanchez, and was liable to death by
the laws of war. Originally forced into the French service he was, in
reality, no deserter, and General Hill applied frankly in his favour
to Drouet, who was so good-tempered that, while smarting under this
disaster, he released his prisoner.
This exploit set all the French corps in motion to revenge it; yet on
the 28th of November Hill, by a forced march, again surprised three
hundred infantry and some hussars under Captain Neveux, who however
lost only forty men, escaping the British cavalry, said his generous
antagonist, by “_the intrepid and admirable manner in which he
retreated_.”
DEFENCE OF TARIFA. (Dec. 1811.)
Soult had long resolved to reduce the maritime town of Tarifa, but
General Campbell, governor of Gibraltar, equally resolute to prevent
him, threw in an English garrison, under Colonel Skerrett. The defences
were ancient, the place being encircled with towers connected by an
archery wall, irregular, without a ditch, and too thin to resist even
field artillery. It was commanded also by heights within cannon-shot,
but the English engineer Smith[21] adapted the defence to the
peculiarities of ground so skilfully as to fix the enemy’s attention
entirely to one point, which offered facilities for an internal
resistance, to begin when the weak ramparts should be broken.
Tarifa was cloven by a periodical torrent, entering at the east and
passing out at the west. It was barred at the entrance by a tower with
a portcullis, in front of which palisades were planted across its bed.
The houses within the walls were strongly built on inclined planes,
rising from each side of the torrent; and at the exit of the water were
two massive structures, called the tower and castle of the Gusmans,
both looking up the hollow formed by the inclined planes. From these
structures, a sandy neck, prolonged by a causeway for eight hundred
yards, joined the town to an island, whose perpendicular sides forbade
entrance save by the causeway which ended on an unfinished entrenchment
and battery.
On the neck of land were sand hills, the highest, called the Catalina,
being scarped and crowned with a field-work holding a twelve-pounder.
This hill masked the causeway towards the enemy, and with the tower of
the Gusmans, which was armed with a ship eighteen-pounder, flanked the
western front of the tower. This tower gun also shot clear over Tarifa
to the slope where the French batteries were expected, and there were a
ship of the line, a frigate, and some gun-boats, anchored to flank the
approaches.
Smith deterred the enemy from attacking the western front by the
flanking fire of a fortified convent beyond the walls, by the Catalina
hill, and by the appearance of the shipping; but he deceitfully
tempted an attack on the eastern front and the line of the torrent,
whose bed rendered the inner depth of wall greater than the outer.
There he loopholed the houses behind, opened communications to the
rear, and barricaded the streets; so that the enemy, after forcing the
breach, would have been confined between the houses on the inclined
planes, exposed on each side to musketry from loopholes and windows,
and in front to a fire from the Gusmans, which looked up the bed of
the torrent; finally the garrison could have taken refuge in that
castle and tower, which, high and massive, were fitted to cover the
evacuation, and were provided with ladders for the troops to descend
and retreat to the island under protection of the Catalina.
There was no want of guns. Besides those of the Catalina, there were
in the island twelve pieces, comprising four twenty-four pounders and
two ten-inch mortars; in the town were six field-pieces, with four
cohorns on the east front; an eighteen-pounder was on the Gusmans, a
howitzer on the portcullis tower, and two field-pieces were in reserve
for sallies: yet most of the island ordnance was mounted after the
investment, and the walls and towers of the town were too weak and
narrow to sustain heavy guns; hence only three field-pieces and the
cohorns did in fact reply to the enemy’s fire.
The garrison, including six hundred Spanish infantry and one hundred
horse of that nation, amounted to two thousand five hundred men, of
whom seven hundred were in the island, one hundred in the Catalina, two
hundred in the convent, and fifteen hundred in the town.
On the 19th of December, General Laval, having eight thousand men,
drove in the advanced posts, but was with a sharp skirmish designedly
led towards the eastern front.
The 20th the place was invested, and the 21st some French troops
having incautiously approached the western front, Captain Wren of the
11th, suddenly descended from the Catalina and carried them off. In
the night the enemy approached close to the walls of that front, but
in the morning Wren again fell on them; and at the same time a sally
of discovery was made from the convent so vigorously that Lieutenant
Welstead of the 82nd, entering one of the enemy’s camps captured a
field-piece; he was unable to bring it off in face of the French
reserves, yet the latter were drawn by the skirmish under the fire
of the ships, of the island, and of the town, whereby they suffered
severely and with difficulty recovered the captured piece.
In the night of the 22nd the anticipations of the British engineer were
realized. The enemy broke ground five hundred yards from the eastern
front, and worked assiduously until the 26th, under a destructive fire,
replying principally with wall-pieces, which would have done much
mischief if the garrison had not been copiously supplied with sand-bags.
On the 23rd the ships were driven off in a gale; on the 29th the French
guns opened against the town and their howitzers against the island;
the piece at the Gusmans was dismounted, yet quickly re-established;
but the ramparts came down by flakes, and in a few hours opened a
wide breach a little to the English right of the portcullis tower.
Skerrett then proposed to abandon the place, and though strenuously
opposed by Major King and the engineer Smith, he would have done so, if
General Campbell, hearing of this intention, had not called away the
transports. Tarifa was indeed open to assault and escalade. But behind
the breach the depth to the street was fourteen feet, and Smith had
covered the ground below with iron gratings, having every second bar
turned up; the houses were also prepared and garrisoned, and the troops
well disposed on the ramparts, each regiment having its own quarter.
The breach was held by the 87th under Colonel Gough.[22] On his left
were some riflemen: on his right some Spaniards should have been, yet
were not, and two companies of the 47th took their place.
In the night of the 29th the enemy fired salvos of grape, but the
besieged cleared the foot of the breach between the discharges.
The 30th the breaching fire was renewed, and the wall, broken for
sixty feet, offered an easy ascent; yet the besieged again removed the
rubbish, and in the night were augmenting the defences, when, flooded
by rain, the torrent brought down from the French camp a mass of
planks, fascines, gabions, and dead bodies, which broke the palisades,
bent the portcullis back, and with the surge of waters injured the
defences behind: a new passage was thus opened in the wall, yet the
damage was repaired before morning, and the troops confidently awaited
the assault.
In the night the torrent subsided as quickly as it had risen, and at
daylight a living stream of French grenadiers gliding swiftly down its
bed, as if assured of victory, arrived without shout or tumult within
a few yards of the walls; but then, instead of quitting the hollow to
reach the breach, they dashed like the torrent of the night against
the portcullis. The 87th, previously silent and observant, as if at a
spectacle, now arose and with a shout and a crashing volley smote the
head of the French column; the leading officer, covered with wounds,
fell against the portcullis grate and gave up his sword through the
bars to Colonel Gough: the French drummer, a gallant boy, while beating
the charge dropped lifeless by his officer’s side, and the dead and
wounded filled the hollow. The survivors breaking out right and left,
and spreading along the slopes of ground under the ramparts, opened an
irregular musketry, and at the same time men from the trenches leaped
into pits digged in front and shot fast; but no diversion at other
points was made and the storming column was dreadfully shattered. The
ramparts streamed fire, and a field-piece sent a tempest of grape
whistling through the French ranks in such a dreadful manner that,
unable to endure the torment, they plunged once more into the hollow
and regained their camp, while a shout of victory mingled with the
sound of musical instruments passed round the wall of the town.
The allies had five officers wounded, and thirty-one men killed or
hurt; the French dead covered the slopes in front of the rampart,
and choked the bed of the river: ten wounded officers, of whom
only one survived, were brought in by the breach, and Skerrett,
compassionating the sufferings of the others, and admiring their
bravery, permitted Laval to fetch them off. The siege was then
suspended, for the rain had partially ruined the French batteries,
interrupted their communications, and stopped their supplies; and the
torrent, again swelling, broke the stockades of the allies and injured
their retrenchments: some vessels also, coming from Gibraltar with
ammunition, were wrecked on the coast. Nevertheless a fresh assault
was expected until the night of the 4th, when frequent firing in the
French camp without any bullets reaching the town, indicated that the
enemy were destroying guns previous to retreating. Hence, at daylight
the besieged, issuing from the convent, commenced a skirmish with the
rear-guard, but were impeded by a heavy storm and returned, after
making a few prisoners. Laval’s misfortunes did not end there. His
troops had contracted sickness, many deserted, and it was computed the
expedition cost him a thousand men, while the allies lost only one
hundred and fifty, and but one officer, Longley of the engineers, was
killed.
Such is the simple tale of Tarifa, yet the true history of its defence
cannot there be found. Colonel Skerrett obtained the credit, but he
and Lord Proby, second in command, always wished to abandon both town
and island. It was the engineer Smith’s vigour and capacity which
overmatched the enemy’s strength without, and the weakness of those
commanders within, repressing despondency where he failed to excite
confidence. Next in merit was the artillery captain, Mitchel, a noble
soldier who has since perished in the Syrian campaign against Ibrahim
Pasha: his talent and energy at Tarifa were conspicuous.
ENGLISH SIEGE OF CIUDAD RODRIGO. (Jan. 1812.)
Lord Wellington, unable to maintain the blockade of Rodrigo, had
withdrawn behind the Coa in November and widely spread his army
for provisions; but the year 1812 opened favourably for his views.
Napoleon, then preparing for his gigantic invasion of Russia, had
recalled from Spain many old officers and sixty thousand of the best
soldiers, including all the Imperial Guards. The _Army of the North_,
thus reduced, was ordered to quarter about Burgos, while the _Army of
Portugal_, leaving troops to guard Almaraz, moved across the Gredos
mountains into the Salamanca country. It had been reinforced with
eighteen thousand men, but was spread for subsistence from Salamanca
to the Asturias on one side, and to the valley of the Tagus and Toledo
on the other; Montbrun also had been detached from it to Valencia. The
_Army of the Centre_ was in a state of great disorder, and the king and
Marmont were at open discord. In this state of affairs, seeing that
Ciudad Rodrigo was weakly guarded, that Marmont, deceived by previous
combination, had no suspicion of a siege, that Soult’s attention
was fixed on Tarifa; seeing in fine that opportunity was ripe, Lord
Wellington leaped with both feet on Ciudad Rodrigo.
Thirty-five thousand men, cavalry included, were disposable for this
siege, the materials for which were placed in villages on the left
of the Azava river, and the ammunition in Almeida, where seventy
pieces of ordnance had been secretly collected. Hired carts and mules
were employed to bring up the stores, but for the guns the means of
transport were so scanty that only thirty-eight could be brought to the
trenches. A bridge was laid down on the Agueda, six miles below the
fortress, on the 1st of January, and the investment was designed for
the 6th, but the native carters took two days to travel ten miles of
good road with empty carts, and it could not be made before the 8th: to
find fault with them was dangerous, as they deserted on the slightest
offence.
Rodrigo was on high ground overhanging the right bank of the Agueda; an
old rampart thirty feet high, nearly circular and flanked with a few
projections, formed the body of the fortress; a second bulwark, called
a _Fausse-braye_, with a ditch and covered way, enclosed this rampart,
yet was placed so low on the descent, as to give little cover to the
main wall.
Beyond the walls, on the side farthest from the river, the suburb
of Francisco was intrenched, and within it two large convents were
fortified; the convent of Santa Cruz on the opposite side, near the
river, was fortified as another outwork; and nearly between those
points was an isolated ridge called the Little Teson, of less elevation
than the place but only one hundred and fifty yards distant.
Behind the Little Teson and parallel to it, was another ridge called
the Great Teson, which at six hundred yards overlooked the lesser one,
and saw over it to the bottom of the ditch.
In the centre of the large Teson, on the edge towards the town, was an
enclosed and palisadoed redoubt called Francisco, which was supported
by the fire of two guns and a howitzer, placed on the flat roof of a
convent in the fortified suburb. An old castle, forming part of the
walls, gave access to the bridge at pistol-shot distance, but was of
little value in defence.
On the side of the Tesons the ground was rocky, the front of the place
better covered with outworks, and more fire could be directed on the
trenches; yet that line of attack was adopted with reason, because
elsewhere the batteries must have been constructed on the edge of the
counterscarp to see low enough for breaching; whereas the lesser Teson
would enable them to strike over the glacis, and a deep gully near the
latter offered cover for the miner. It was therefore resolved to storm
Fort Francisco, form a lodgement there, open the first parallel along
the greater Teson, place thirty-three pieces in counter-batteries, ruin
the defences and drive the besieged from the convent of Francisco;
then, working forward by the sap, breaching batteries were to be raised
on the lesser Teson and the counterscarp blowed in, while seven guns
demolished a weak turret on the left, and opened a second breach to
turn retrenchments behind the principal one. Previous to breaking
ground, Carlos España and Julian Sanchez were pushed to the Tormes,
and then four British divisions and Pack’s Portuguese commenced the
siege; but as neither fuel nor cover were to be had on that side of
the Agueda, the troops kept their quarters on the hither bank, cooking
their provisions there and fording the river each day in severe frost
and snow. Eight hundred carts drawn by horses had been constructed
by the artificers, and were now the surest means for bringing up
ammunition; but so many delays were anticipated from the irregularity
of the native carters and muleteers, and the chances of weather, that
Wellington calculated upon an operation of twenty-four days. He hoped
to steal that time from his adversaries, yet knew, if he failed, the
clash of arms would draw their scattered troops to this quarter as
tinkling bells draw swarming bees: and to make them thus gather and
consume their magazines was an essential part of his warfare.
On the 8th of January the light division and Pack’s Portuguese forded
the Agueda, three miles above the fortress, and took post beyond the
great Teson, where they remained quiet, and as there was no regular
investment the enemy did not think the siege was commenced. But in
the evening the troops stood to their arms, and Colonel Colborne, now
commanding the 52nd, taking two companies from each regiment of the
light division stormed the redoubt of Francisco. This he did with
so much fury that the assailants appeared to be at one and the same
time in the ditch, mounting the parapets, fighting on the top of the
rampart, and forcing the gorge of the redoubt, where the explosion of
a French shell had burst the gate open. Of the defenders, a few were
killed and forty made prisoners. The post being thus taken with a loss
of only twenty-four men and officers, a lodgement was begun on the
right, because the fort was instantly covered with shot and shells from
the town. This tempest continued through the night, yet at daybreak the
parallel, six hundred yards in length, was sunk three feet deep, four
wide, and a communication over the Teson was completed: thus the siege
gained several days by this well-managed assault.
On the 9th the first division took the trenches, and the place was
encircled by posts to prevent any external communication. In the night
twelve hundred workmen commenced three counter-batteries for eleven
guns each, under a heavy fire of shells and grape; before daylight the
labourers obtained cover, and a ditch was sunk in front to provide
earth for the batteries, which were made eighteen feet thick at top to
resist the powerful artillery of the place.
On the 10th the fourth division relieved the trenches, and a
thousand men laboured, yet in great peril, for the besieged had a
superabundance of ammunition and did not spare it. In the night a
communication from the parallel to the batteries was opened, and on the
11th the third division undertook the siege.
This day the magazines in the batteries were excavated and the
approaches widened; but the enemy’s fire was destructive, and shells
fell so on the ditch in front of the batteries that the troops were
withdrawn, and earth raised from the inside. Great damage was also
sustained from salvos of shells with long fuzes, whose simultaneous
explosion cut away the parapets in a strange manner, and in the night a
howitzer from the garden of the Francisco convent killed many men.
On the 12th the light division resumed work, and the riflemen during
a thick fog digged pits for themselves in front of the trenches, from
whence they picked off the enemy’s gunners; yet the weather was so
cold and the besieged shot so briskly little progress was made. The
13th, the same causes impeded the labourers of the first division.
The scarcity of transport also baulked the operations, for one third
only of the native carts arrived, the drivers were very indolent,
most of the twenty-four pound ammunition was still at Villa de Ponte,
and intelligence arrived that Marmont was preparing to succour the
place. Wellington, thus pressed, decided to open a breach with his
counter-batteries, which were only six hundred yards from the curtain,
and then storm without blowing in the counterscarp: in other words,
to overstep the rules of science and sacrifice life rather than time,
for the capricious Agueda might in one night flood and enable a small
French force to relieve the place.
The whole army was now brought up and posted in villages on the Coa,
ready to cross the Agueda and give battle. Hill also sent a division
across the Tagus, lest Marmont, despairing to save Rodrigo, should fall
on the communications by Castello Branco and Villa Velha.
In the night of the 13th the batteries were armed with twenty-eight
guns, the approaches were continued by the flying sap, and the Santa
Cruz convent was surprised by the Germans of the first division, which
secured the right flank of the trenches.
On the 14th the enemy, who had observed that the men in the trenches,
when relieved, went off in a disorderly manner, made a sally and
overturned the gabions of the sap; they even penetrated to the
parallel, and were upon the point of entering the batteries, when a
few workmen getting together checked them until a support arrived.
The guns were thus saved, but this sally, the death of the engineer
on duty, and the heavy fire from the town, delayed the opening of
the breaching-batteries. However, at half-past four in the evening
twenty-five heavy guns battered the fausse-braye and ramparts, while
two pieces smote the convent of Francisco. Then was beheld a spectacle
fearful and sublime. For the French replied with more than fifty
pieces, and the bellowing of eighty large guns shook the ground far
and wide; the smoke rested in heavy volumes upon the battlements of
the place, or curled in light wreaths about the numerous spires, and
the shells hissing through the air seemed fiery serpents leaping from
the darkness; the walls crashed to the stroke of the bullet, and the
distant mountains, faintly returning the sound, appeared to moan over
the falling city. When night put an end to this turmoil, the quick
clatter of musketry was heard like the pattering of hail after a peal
of thunder, for the 40th Regiment assaulted and carried the convent
of Francisco, and established itself in the suburb on the left of the
attack.
Next day the ramparts were again battered, and fell so fast it was
judged expedient to commence the small breach, wherefore in the night
five more guns were mounted. The 16th, at daylight, the batteries
recommenced, but at eight o’clock a thick fog compelled them to desist;
nevertheless the small breach was open and the place was summoned, yet
without effect. At night the parallel on the Lower Teson was extended,
a sharp musketry was directed against the great breach, and the
riflemen of the light division, from their pits, picked off the enemy’s
gunners.
The 17th the fire on both sides was heavy and the wall was beaten down
in large cantles; but several of the besiegers’ guns were dismounted,
their batteries injured, many men killed, the general of artillery
wounded, and the sap entirely ruined. The riflemen in the pits were
overpowered with grape, yet towards evening recovered the upper hand;
the French could then only fire from distant embrasures, and in the
night a new battery against the lesser breach was armed, and that on
the Lower Teson was raised to afford more cover.
On the 18th, the besiegers’ fire being resumed with great violence,
a turret was shaken at the small breach, and the large breach became
practicable in the middle; the enemy commenced retrenching it and the
sap made no progress, the engineer was badly wounded, and a twenty-four
pounder, bursting, killed several men. In the night the battery on the
Lower Teson was improved, and a field-piece and howitzer from thence
played on the great breach to destroy the retrenchments.
On the 19th both breaches became practicable, the assault was ordered,
the battering-guns were turned against the artillery of the ramparts,
and the order of attack terminated with these remarkable words,
“_Ciudad Rodrigo must be stormed this evening_.”--“_We will do it_,”
was the soldiers’ comment.
For the storm the third and light divisions and Pack’s Portuguese were
organized in four parts.
1°. _Right attack._ On the extreme right, troops posted in some houses
beyond the bridge were to cross the river and escalade an outwork
in front of the castle, where there was no ditch, but where two
guns commanded the junction of the counterscarp. On their left, two
regiments, assembled behind the convent of Santa Cruz with a third in
reserve, were to enter the ditch at the extremity of the counterscarp,
escalade the fausse-braye, and scour it on their left as far as the
great breach.
2°. _Great breach._ One hundred and eighty men carrying hay-bags were
to move out of the second parallel, followed by a storming party, and
supported by Mackinnon’s brigade of the third division.
3°. _Left attack._ The light division, assembled behind the convent of
Francisco, was to send three rifle companies to scour the fausse-braye
on the right. At the same time a storming party, preceded by men
carrying hay-sacks and followed by the division, was to assault the
small breach, detaching men, when the fausse-braye should be passed,
to their right to assist the main assault, to the left to force a
passage at the Salamanca gate.
4°. _False attack._ An escalade, to be attempted by Pack’s Portuguese
at the opposite side of the town.
The right attack was conducted by Colonel O’Toole. Five hundred
volunteers under Major Manners, with a forlorn hope under Lieut.
Mackie, composed the storming party of the third division. Three
hundred volunteers led by Major George Napier,[23] with a forlorn hope
under Lieutenant Gurwood, composed the storming party of the light
division.
The deserters, of which there were many, had told the governor the
light division was come out of its turn, and it must be to storm, yet
he took no heed, and all the troops reached their posts without seeming
to attract attention; but before the signal was given, and while
Wellington, who in person had pointed out the lesser breach to Major
Napier, was still on the ground, the attack at the right commenced,
and was instantly taken up along the whole line. The space between
the trenches and the ditch was then suddenly covered with soldiers
and ravaged by a tempest of grape from the ramparts; for though the
storming parties in the centre jumped out of the parallel when the
first shout arose, so rapid were the troops on their right, that before
they could reach the ditch, Ridge, Dunkin, and Campbell, with the 5th,
77th, and 94th Regiments, had already scoured the fausse-braye, and
pushed up the great breach amidst bursting shells, the whistling of
grape and musketry, and the shrill cries of the French, who were driven
fighting behind the inner retrenchments. There they rallied, and, aided
by musketry from the houses, made hard battle for their post; none
would go back on either side; yet the British could not get forward,
and the bodies of men and officers, falling in heaps, choked up the
passage, which from minute to minute was raked with grape, from two
guns flanking the breach, at the distance of a few yards; yet striving
and trampling alike upon dead and wounded these brave men maintained
the combat.
Meanwhile the stormers of the light division, who had three hundred
yards of ground to clear, would not wait for the hay-bags, and with
extraordinary swiftness running to the crest of the glacis jumped down
the scarp, a depth of eleven feet, and rushed up the fausse-braye
under a smashing discharge of grape and musketry. The ditch was dark
and intricate, and the forlorn hope inclined to the left while the
stormers went straight to the breach, which was so narrow at top that
a gun placed across nearly barred the opening; then the forlorn hope
rejoined, and the whole rushed up, yet the head, forcibly contracted
as the ascent narrowed, staggered under the fire. With the instinct of
self-preservation the men snapped their muskets though they had not
been allowed to load, and Napier, his arm shattered by a grape-shot,
went down, but in falling called aloud to use the bayonet, while the
unwounded officers instantly and simultaneously sprung to the front:
the impulse of victory was thus given and with a furious shout the
breach was carried. The supporting regiments, coming up abreast,
then gained the rampart, the 52nd wheeled to the left, the 43rd to
the right, and the place was won. During this contest, which lasted
about ten minutes, the fighting at the great breach was unabated:
but when the stormers and the 43rd poured along the rampart towards
that quarter, the French wavered, three of their expense magazines
exploded, and the third division with a mighty effort broke through the
retrenchments: the garrison still fought awhile in the streets indeed,
but finally fled to the castle, where the governor surrendered.
Now plunging into the town from all quarters, and throwing off all
discipline, the troops committed frightful excesses; houses were soon
in flames, the soldiers menaced their officers and shot each other,
intoxication increased the tumult to absolute madness, and a fire
being wilfully lighted in the middle of the great magazine, the town
would have been blown to atoms but for the energetic coolness of
some officers and a few soldiers who still preserved their senses.
To excuse these excesses it was said, “the soldiers were not to be
controlled.” Colonel M^cLeod of the 43rd, a young man of a noble and
energetic spirit, proved the contrary. He placed guards at the breach
and constrained his men to keep their ranks for a long time, but as no
organized efforts were made by higher authorities, and the example was
not followed, the regiment dissolved by degrees in the general disorder.
Three hundred French fell, fifteen hundred were made prisoners, and
immense stores of ammunition with a hundred and fifty pieces of
artillery, including the battering-train of Marmont’s army, were
captured. The loss of the allies was twelve hundred soldiers and
ninety officers, of which six hundred and fifty men and sixty officers
had been slain or hurt at the breaches. General Craufurd and General
Mackinnon, the former a person of great ability, were killed, and with
them died many gallant men; amongst others a captain of the 45th, of
whom it has been felicitously said, that “three generals and seventy
other officers had fallen, yet the soldiers fresh from the strife only
talked of Hardyman.” General Vandeleur, commanding the light division
after Craufurd fell, was badly wounded; so was Colonel Colborne, with
a crowd of inferior rank; and unhappily the slaughter did not end with
the storm; for as the prisoners and their escort were marching out by
the breach, an accidental explosion killed numbers of both.
This siege lasted only twelve days, half the time originally
calculated, yet from the inexperience of engineers and soldiers, and
the extraordinarily heavy fire of the place, the works were rather
slowly executed. The cold also impeded the labourers, yet with less
severe frost the trenches would have been overflowed, because in open
weather the water rises everywhere to within six inches of the surface.
The greatest impediment was the badness of the cutting tools furnished
from the storekeeper-general’s office in England; the profits of the
contractor seemed to be the only thing respected: the engineers eagerly
sought for French cutlery, because the English was useless!
Marmont heard of the siege the 15th and made great efforts to collect
his forces at Salamanca. The 26th he heard of its fall and retired to
Valladolid, thus harassing his men by winter marches. Had he remained
between Salamanca and Rodrigo with strong advanced guards he would have
recovered the place; for on the 28th the Agueda flooded two feet over
the stone bridge, and carried away the allies’ trestle-bridge. The army
was then on the left bank, the breaches not closed, and no resistance
could be offered. The greatest captains are the very slaves of fortune.
* * * * *
When Ciudad Rodrigo fell, Wellington’s eyes were turned towards
Badajos. He desired to invest it again early in March, because the
flooding of the rivers in Beira, from the periodical rains, would then
render a French incursion into Portugal difficult, enable him to carry
nearly all his forces to the siege, and impede the junction of Soult
and Marmont in Estremadura. Many obstacles arose, some military, some
political, some from the perverseness of coadjutors and the errors of
subordinates; yet on the 5th of March the troops were well on their
way towards the Tagus, and then the English general, who had remained
on the Coa to the last moment that he might not awaken the enemy’s
suspicions, gave up Rodrigo to Castaños and departed for Elvas.
Victor Alten’s cavalry was left on the Yeltes in advance of the
Agueda to mask the movements, but Marmont was unable to measure his
adversary’s talent or fathom his designs. He had again spread his army
far and wide, appeared to expect no further winter operations, and
having lost all his secret friends and emissaries at Ciudad Rodrigo,
where they had been discovered and put to death by Carlos España, with
an overstrained severity that gave general disgust, knew nothing of the
allies’ march to the Tagus. On the other hand the projected siege was,
by the incredibly vexatious conduct of the Portuguese Regency, delayed
ten days, and thrown into the violent equinoctial rains, which greatly
augmented the difficulties. It was in vain Wellington threatened,
remonstrated and wasted his mental powers to devise remedies for those
evils, and to impart energy and good faith to that extraordinary
government. Insolent anger, falsehood or stolid indifference in all
functionaries, from the highest to the lowest, met him at every turn,
and the responsibility even in small matters became too onerous for
subordinate officers; he was compelled to arrange every detail of
service himself with the native authorities. His iron strength of body
and mind were thus strained until all men wondered how they resisted,
and indeed he did fall sick, but recovered after a few days.
On the 15th of March pontoons were laid over the Guadiana four miles
from Elvas, where the current was dull, and two large Spanish boats
being arranged as flying-bridges, Beresford crossed that river on the
16th to invest Badajos with fifteen thousand men.
Soult was then before Cadiz, but Drouet and Daricau were with ten
thousand men in Estremadura; wherefore General Graham marched with
three divisions of infantry and two brigades of cavalry upon Llerena,
while Hill moved by Merida upon Almendralejos. These covering corps
were together thirty thousand strong, five thousand being cavalry, and
the whole army presented fifty-one thousand sabres and bayonets, of
which twenty thousand were Portuguese. Castaños had gone to Gallicia,
and the fifth Spanish army, under Morillo and Penne Villemur, four
thousand strong, passed down the Portuguese frontier to the Lower
Guadiana, intending to fall on Seville when Soult should march to
succour Badajos.
As the allies advanced, Drouet moved by his right towards Medellin, to
maintain the communication with Marmont by Truxillo. Hill and Graham
then halted, the latter at Zafra, having Slade’s cavalry in front.
Marmont meanwhile recalled his sixth division from Talavera to Castile,
and four other divisions and his cavalry, quartered at Toledo, marched
over the Guadarama towards Valladolid.
It was therefore manifest that he would not act this time in
conjunction with Soult.
THIRD ENGLISH SIEGE OF BADAJOS. (March, 1812.)
Badajos stands between the Rivillas, a small stream, and the Guadiana,
a noble river five hundred yards broad. From the angle formed by
their confluence the town spread out like a fan, having eight regular
bastions and curtains, with good counterscarps, covered way, and glacis.
At the meeting of the rivers, the Rivillas being there for a short
distance deep and wide, was a rock one hundred feet high, crowned
with an old castle, the ascent to which was not steep. This was the
extreme point of defence on the enemy’s left, and from thence to the
Trinidad bastion, terminating this the eastern front of resistance, an
inundation protected the ramparts, one short interval excepted, which
was defended by an outwork, beyond the stream, called the cunette of
San Roque.
On the enemy’s right of San Roque, also beyond the Rivillas and four
hundred yards from the walls, another outwork called the Picurina was
constructed on an isolated hill, about the same distance from San Roque
as the latter was from the castle. These two outworks had a covered
communication with each other, and the San Roque had one with the town,
but the inundation cut the Picurina off from the latter, and it was an
inclosed and palisadoed work.
The southern front, the longest, was protected in the centre by a
crown-work, constructed on the lofty Sierra de Viento, the end of
which, at only two hundred yards, overlooked the walls. The remainder
of that front and the western front had no outworks.
On the right bank of the Guadiana there were no houses, but the
twice-besieged fort of San Christoval, three hundred feet square, stood
there on a rocky height, and from its superior elevation looked into
the castle, which was exactly opposite to it and consequently but five
hundred yards distant. This fort also commanded the works heading the
stone bridge, a quarter of a mile below stream.
Phillipon’s garrison, nearly five thousand strong, was composed of
French and Hessian, and some Spanish troops in Joseph’s service. He had
since the last siege made himself felt in every direction, scouring
the country, defeating small guerilla bands, carrying off cattle
almost from under the guns of Elvas and Campo Mayor, and pushing his
spies to Ciudad Rodrigo, Lisbon, and even to Ayamonte, by which he
gained a knowledge of the forces, material and personal, combined
against his fortress, and prepared accordingly. He had formed an
interior retrenchment at the castle, and mounted more guns there; he
had strengthened San Christoval on the side before attacked, and made
a covered communication to the bridge-head; he had constructed two
ravelins on the south front, and commenced a third with counterguards
for the bastions. At the eastern front he had dug a _cunette_ at the
bottom of the great ditch, which was in some parts filled with water.
The gorge of the Pardaleras was enclosed and connected with the body of
the place, from whence it was overlooked by powerful batteries; the
glacis of the western front was mined, and the arch of a bridge behind
the San Roque was built up to cause the inundation. The inhabitants
had been compelled to store food for three months, and provisions and
ammunition had come in on the 10th and 16th of February, yet the supply
of powder was inadequate, and there were not many shells.
Lord Wellington desired to assail the western front, but the engineer
had not mortars, miners, or guns enough, or the means of bringing
up stores for that attack: indeed the want of transport had again
compelled the drawing of stores from Elvas, to the manifest hazard of
that fortress. Hence, here, as at Ciudad Rodrigo, time was paid for
with the loss of life, and the crimes of politicians were atoned by the
blood of soldiers.
It was finally agreed to attack the bastion of Trinidad, because the
counterguard there was unfinished, and the bastion could be battered
from the Picurina. The first parallel was therefore to embrace that
fort, the San Roque and the eastern front, so as to enable the
counter-batteries to destroy the armaments of the southern fronts,
which bore against the Picurina hill. The Picurina was to be stormed,
and from thence the Trinidad and the next bastion, called the Santa
Maria, were to be breached. The guns were then to be turned against the
connecting curtain, known to be of weak masonry, and to open a third
breach, whereby a storming party might turn any retrenchments behind
the other breaches. In this way the inundation could be avoided. A
French deserter declared, and truly, that the ditch was eighteen feet
deep at the Trinidad, yet Wellington was so confident that he resolved
to storm the place there without blowing in the counterscarp.
The battering train was of fifty-two pieces, including sixteen
twenty-four-pound howitzers for throwing Shrapnel-shells; but this
species of missile, much talked of at the time, was little prized by
Lord Wellington, who had detected its insufficiency, save with large
guns and as a common shell; and partly to avoid expense, partly from a
dislike to injure the inhabitants, neither in this, nor in any former
siege did he use mortars. Here indeed he could not have brought them
up, for the peasantry, and even the ordenança, employed to move the
battering train, although well paid, deserted. Of nine hundred gunners
present three hundred were British, the rest Portuguese; there were
one hundred and fifty sappers, volunteers from the third division,
unskilled, yet of signal bravery.
The engineer’s park was established behind the heights of St. Michael
which faced the Picurina, and in the night of the 17th, eighteen
hundred men broke ground one hundred and sixty yards from that fort.
A tempest stifled the sound of the pickaxes, and a communication four
thousand feet long, with a parallel of six hundred yards, three feet
deep and three feet six inches wide, was opened without hindrance;
but when day broke the fort was reinforced, and a sharp musketry,
interspersed with discharges from some field-pieces and aided by heavy
guns from the body of the place, was directed on the trenches.
In the night of the 18th two batteries were traced, the parallel
prolonged, and the previous works improved; but the garrison raised
the parapets of the Picurina, lined the top of the covered way with
sand-bags, and planted musketeers to gall the men in the trenches.
The 19th, secret notice of a sally being received, the guards were
reinforced; nevertheless, at one o’clock some cavalry came out by the
Talavera gate, and thirteen hundred infantry under General Vielland,
second in command, filed unobserved into the communication between the
Picurina and San Roque; one hundred men were also ready in the former,
and all these troops, jumping out at once, drove the workmen off and
began to demolish the parallel. Previous to this outbreak the French
cavalry had commenced a sham fight on the right of the trenches, and
the smaller party, pretending to fly toward the besiegers, answered
Portuguese to the challenge of the picquets and were allowed to pass.
Elated by their stratagem, they galloped to the engineer’s park, a
thousand yards in rear, where they killed some men before succour came;
meanwhile the troops at the parallel rallied on the relief and beat the
infantry back along the front of the ramparts even to the castle.
In this fight the besieged lost three hundred men and officers, the
besiegers one hundred and fifty; but the chief engineer, Fletcher, was
badly wounded, and several hundred intrenching tools were carried off;
Phillipon had promised a high price for each, which turned out ill,
because the soldiers, instead of pursuing briskly, dispersed to gather
the tools. After the action a squadron of dragoons and six field-pieces
were placed behind the St. Michael ridge, and a signal-post was
established on the lofty Sierra de Viento, to give notice of the
enemy’s motions.
The weather continued wet and boisterous, making the labour very
severe, yet in the night of the 19th the parallel was opened on its
whole length; the 20th it was enlarged, and though the rain, flooding
the trenches, greatly impeded progress, the work was extended to the
left. Three counter-batteries were then commenced in its rear, because
the ground was too soft in front to sustain the guns, and the San Roque
was within three hundred yards; hence, the parallel, eighteen hundred
yards long, being only guarded by fourteen hundred men, a few bold
soldiers might by a sudden rush have spiked the guns in front of the
trench.
A slight sally was this day repulsed, and a shoulder was given to the
right of the parallel to cover that flank; in good time, for next day
two field-pieces placed on the right bank of the Guadiana, tried to
rake the trenches and were baffled by this shoulder. Indications of a
similar design against the left flank, from the Pardaleras hill, were
then observed, and three hundred men with two guns were posted on that
side in some broken ground.
In the night, though the works went on, rain again impeded progress,
and the besiegers, failing to drain the lower parts of the parallel by
cuts, made an artificial bottom of sand-bags. On the other hand the
besieged, thinking the curtain adjoining the castle was the object of
attack, threw up earth in front and removed the houses behind; they
also made a covered communication from the Trinidad gate to the San
Roque, to take this supposed attack in reverse; and as the labour of
digging was great, hung up brown cloth which appeared like earth, by
which ingenious expedient they passed unseen between those points.
Vauban’s maxim, that a perfect investment is the first requisite in
a siege, had been neglected to spare labour, yet the great master’s
art was soon vindicated by his countryman. Phillipon, finding the
right bank of the Guadiana free, made a battery in the night for three
field-pieces, which at daylight raked the trenches, the shots sweeping
the parallel destructively; the loss was great and would have been
greater but for the soft ground, which prevented the touch and bound
of the bullets. Orders were therefore sent to the fifth division,
then at Campo Mayor, to invest the place on the other bank, but those
troops were distant and misfortunes accumulated. Heavy rain filled the
trenches, the Guadiana run the fixed bridge under water, sunk twelve
pontoons, and broke the tackle of the flying bridges; the provisions of
the army could not be brought over, the battering-guns and ammunition
were still on the right bank, and the siege was on the point of being
raised. In a few days however the river subsided, some Portuguese craft
were brought up to form another flying bridge, the pontoons saved were
employed as row-boats, and the communication thus secured for the rest
of the siege.
On the 23rd rain again filled the trenches, the works crumbled and the
attack was entirely suspended. Next day the fifth division invested
the place on the right bank, the weather cleared, and the batteries,
armed with twenty-one guns and seven five-and-a-half-inch howitzers,
opened on the 25th, but were so vigorously answered, that one howitzer
was dismounted, and several artillery and engineer officers killed.
Nevertheless the San Roque was silenced, the garrison of the Picurina
so galled by marksmen that none dared look over the parapet, and as the
external appearance of that fort did not indicate much strength General
Kempt was charged to assault it in the night.
This outward seeming of the Picurina was fallacious; it was very
strong. The fronts were well covered by the glacis, the flanks deep,
the rampart, fourteen feet perpendicular from the bottom of the ditch,
was guarded with slanting pales above, and from thence to the top was
an earthen slope of sixteen feet. A few palings had been knocked off at
the covered way, and the parapet, slightly damaged, was repaired with
sand-bags, but the ditch was deep, narrow at the bottom, and flanked by
four splinter-proof casemates. Seven guns were mounted. The entrance in
the rear was protected with three rows of thick paling, the garrison
was above two hundred strong, and every man had two muskets; the top of
the rampart was garnished with loaded shells, a retrenched guard-house
formed a second internal defence, and small mines, with a loopholed
gallery under the counterscarp to take the assailants in rear, were
begun but not finished.
Five hundred men of the third division assembled for the attack.
Two hundred under Major Rudd were to turn the fort on the left, an
equal force under Major Shaw to turn it by the right, each being to
detach half their force to seize the communication with San Roque and
intercept succour coming from the town. The remainder were to attack
Picurina by the gorge, leaving one hundred under Captain Powis as a
reserve. The engineers, Holloway, Stanway, and Gipps, with twenty-four
sappers bearing hatchets and ladders, guided these columns, and fifty
men of the light division, likewise provided with axes, were to move
out of the trenches at the moment of attack.
ASSAULT OF PICURINA. (March, 1812.)
The night was fine and the stormers quickly reached the fort, which,
black and silent before, then seemed a mass of fire, under which the
stormers run up to the palisades in rear and endeavoured to break
through; the destructive musketry and thickness of the pales rendered
their efforts nugatory, wherefore, turning against the sides of the
work they strove to get in there, but the depth of the ditch and the
slanting stakes at the top of the brickwork again baffled them. At this
time, the French shooting fast and dangerously, the crisis appeared so
imminent that Kempt sent the reserve headlong against the front. The
fight was thus supported and the carnage terrible. A battalion which
came from the town to succour the fort was beaten back by the men in
the communication, the guns from the town and castle then opened, the
guard of the trenches replied with musketry, rockets were thrown up
by the besieged, and the shrill sound of alarm-bells mixing with the
shouts of the combatants increased the tumult.
Still the Picurina sent out streams of fire, by the light of which
dark figures were seen furiously struggling on the ramparts; for Powis
had escaladed in front where the artillery had broken the pales; and
the other assailants, throwing their ladders in the manner of bridges
from the brink of the ditch to the slanting stakes thus passed, and all
were fighting hand to hand with the enemy. Meanwhile the axemen of the
light division, compassing the fort like prowling wolves, discovered
the gate, and hewing it down broke in by the rear. Nevertheless the
struggle continued. Powis, Holloway, Gipps, and Oates fell wounded on
or beyond the rampart, Nixon of the 52nd was shot two yards within the
gate, Shaw, Rudd, and nearly all the other officers of the 79th had
fallen outside, and it was not until half the garrison were killed,
that Gaspar Thiery, the commandant, surrendered with eighty-six men,
while others, not many, rushing out of the gate endeavoured to cross
the inundation and were drowned.
Phillipon had thought to delay the siege five or six days by the
resistance of Picurina, and one day later this would have happened;
for the mines and loop-holed gallery in the counterscarp would have
been completed, and the work was too well covered by the glacis to be
quickly ruined by fire. His calculations were baffled by this heroic
assault, which, lasting only an hour, cost four officers and fifty
men killed, fifteen officers and two hundred and fifty men wounded;
and so vehement was the fight throughout, that the garrison forgot or
had no time to roll over the shells and combustibles on the ramparts.
Phillipon did not conceal the danger accruing to Badajos from the loss
of the Picurina, but he stimulated his soldiers’ courage, by calling to
their recollection, how infinitely worse than death it was to be the
inmate of an English prison-hulk--an appeal which must have been deeply
felt, for the annals of civilized nations furnish nothing more inhuman
towards captives of war than the prison-ships of England.
When Picurina was taken three battalions advanced to secure it, and
though a great turmoil and firing from the town continued until
midnight, a lodgement in the works and communication with the first
parallel were established; the second parallel was also begun, but at
daylight the redoubt was overwhelmed with fire, no troops could remain
and the lodgement was destroyed. In the evening the sappers effected
another lodgement on the flanks, the second parallel was then opened in
its whole length, and next day the counter-batteries on the right of
Picurina exchanged a vigorous fire with the town.
In the night of the 27th three breaching-batteries were traced out. The
first, between the Picurina and the inundation, to breach the right
face of the Trinidad. The second, on the Picurina, to breach the Santa
Maria. The third, on a prolonged line of the front attacked, contained
three Shrapnel howitzers to scour the ditch and prevent the garrison
working in it; for Phillipon, having now discovered the true line of
attack, was raising the counterguard of the Trinidad and the imperfect
ravelin. At daybreak these works being well furnished with gabions and
sandbags were lined with musketeers, who severely galled the workmen
employed on the breaching-batteries, and the artillery practice was
brisk on both sides. Two of the besiegers’ guns were dismounted, the
gabions placed in front of the batteries to protect the workmen were
knocked over, and the musketry became so destructive the men were
withdrawn to throw up earth from the inside.
In the night of the 27th the second parallel was extended on the right,
to raise batteries against San Roque and the dam which held up the
inundation, and to breach the curtain behind: but the ground was hard,
the moon shone brightly, the labourers were quite exposed and the work
was relinquished.
On the 28th the screen of gabions before the batteries was restored,
the workmen resumed their labours outside and the parallel was
improved. The besieged then withdrew their guns from San Roque, yet
their marksmen still shot from thence with great exactness, and
the plunging fire from the castle dismounted two howitzers in one
of the counter-batteries. During the night the French observed the
tracing-string, marking the direction of the sap in front of San Roque,
and a daring fellow, creeping out before the workmen arrived, brought
it on the line of the castle fire, whereby some loss was sustained.
In the night the howitzer battery was re-armed with twenty-four
pounders to play on the San Roque, and a new breaching-battery was
traced on the site of the Picurina; the second parallel was extended by
sap, and a trench was digged for riflemen in front of the batteries.
The 29th a slight sally made on the right bank of the river was
repulsed by the Portuguese; but the sap at San Roque was ruined by the
enemy’s fire, and the besieged continued to raise the counterguard and
ravelin of the Trinidad, and to strengthen the front attacked. The
besiegers armed two batteries with eighteen-pounders, which opened next
day against Santa Maria, yet with little effect, and the explosion of
an expense magazine killed many men.
While the siege was thus proceeding, Soult, having little fear for
the town but designing a great battle, was carefully organizing a
powerful force to unite with Drouet and Daricau. Those generals had
endeavoured to hold the district of La Serena and keep open the
communication with Marmont by Medellin and Truxillo, but Graham and
Hill forced them into the Morena; and on the other side of the country
Morillo and Penne-Villemur descended to the Lower Guadiana, to fall
on Seville when Soult should advance. Nor were there wanting other
combinations to embarrass and delay that marshal. In February, a
Spanish army had assembled in the Ronda to fall on Seville from that
side also, which compelled Soult to send troops there, and fatally
delayed his march to Estremadura. Marmont was however concentrating his
army in the Salamanca country, and it was rumoured he meant to attack
Ciudad Rodrigo. This disquieted Wellington: for though Marmont had
no battering-train, the Spanish generals and engineers had neglected
the repairs of the place, and had not even brought up from St. Jão da
Pesqueira the provisions given to them from the British stores: the
fortress therefore had only thirty days’ supply, and Almeida was in as
bad a state.
On the 30th, it being known that Soult was advancing from Cordova,
the fifth division was brought over the Guadiana as a reserve to the
covering army, leaving a Portuguese brigade with some cavalry of the
same nation to maintain the investment on the right bank. The siege was
then urged on, forty-eight pieces of artillery being in constant play,
and the sap against San Roque advancing: the French fire was however
destructive, and their progress in strengthening the front attacked was
visible.
On the 1st of April the sap was pushed close to San Roque, the Trinidad
bastion crumbled under the stroke of the bullet, and the flank of
the Santa Maria, which was casemated, also began to yield. Next day
the face of the Trinidad was broken, but the Santa Maria casemates
being laid open the bullets were lost in their cavities, and Phillipon
commenced a retrenchment to cut off the whole of the attacked front
from the town.
In the night a new battery against San Roque being armed, two officers
with some sappers glided behind that outwork, gagged the sentinel,
placed powder-barrels and a match against the dam of the inundation
and retired undiscovered. The explosion did not destroy the dam, the
inundation remained and the sap made no progress, because of the
French musketeers; for though the besiegers’ marksmen slew many,
reinforcements were sent across the inundation by means of a raft with
parapets, and men also passed unseen behind the cloth communication,
from the Trinidad. But the crisis of the siege was now approaching
rapidly. The breaches were nearly practicable, Soult had effected
his junction with Drouet and Daricau; and Wellington, who had not
sufficient force to assault the place and give battle at the same time,
resolved to leave two divisions in the trenches and fight at Albuera.
In this view Graham fell back towards that place, and Hill, destroying
the bridge at Merida, marched to Talavera Real.
Time was now, as in war it always is, a great object, and the anxiety
on both sides redoubled. Soult was however still at Llerena when, the
breaches being declared practicable, the assault was ordered for that
evening, and Leith’s division recalled to the siege; yet a careful
personal examination caused Wellington to doubt, and he delayed the
storm, until a third breach, as originally projected, should be
formed in the curtain between Trinidad and Maria. This could not be
commenced before morning, and during the night the French workmen
laboured assiduously at their retrenchments, despite of the showers
of grape with which the batteries scoured the ditch and the breach.
On the 6th all the batteries were turned against the curtain, the bad
masonry crumbled rapidly away, in two hours a yawning breach appeared
and Wellington renewed his order for the assault. Eagerly then the
soldiers got ready for a combat, so fiercely fought, so terribly won,
so dreadful in all its circumstances, that posterity can scarcely be
expected to credit the tale: but many are still alive who know that it
is true.
Wellington spared Phillipon the affront of a summons, and seeing the
breach strongly intrenched, the flank fire still powerful, he would not
in that dread crisis trust his fortune to a single effort. Eighteen
thousand daring soldiers burned for the signal of attack, he was
unwilling to lose the service of any, and therefore to each division
gave a task such as few generals would have the hardihood even to
contemplate.
On the right, Picton’s division was to file out of the trenches, cross
the Rivillas, and scale the castle walls, from eighteen to twenty-four
feet high, furnished with all means of destruction, and so narrow at
top that the defenders could easily reach and as easily overturn the
ladders.
On the left, Leith’s division was to make a false attack on the
Pardaleras, but a real assault on the distant bastion of San Vincente,
where the glacis was mined, the ditch deep, the scarp thirty feet high,
the parapet garnished with bold troops: Phillipon also, following his
old plan, had three loaded muskets placed beside each man that the
first fire might be quick and deadly.
In the centre, the fourth and light divisions, under Colville and
Andrew Barnard, were to march against the breaches. Furnished like the
third and fifth divisions with ladders and axes, they were preceded
by storming parties of five hundred men, having each their separate
forlorn hopes. The light division was to assault the Santa Maria,
the fourth division the Trinidad and the curtain, both columns being
divided into storming and firing parties, the former to enter the
ditch, the latter to keep the crest of the glacis.
Between these attacks, Major Wilson of the 48th was to storm the San
Roque with the guards of the trenches; and on the other side of the
Guadiana General Power was to make a feint at the bridge-head.
At first only one brigade of the third division was to have attacked
the castle, but just before the hour fixed, a sergeant of sappers
deserted from the enemy and told Wellington there was but one
communication from the castle to the town, whereupon he ordered the
whole division to advance.
Many nice arrangements filled up this outline, and some were followed,
some disregarded, for it is seldom all things are attended to in a
desperate fight. The enemy was not idle. While it was yet twilight
some French cavalry rode from the Pardaleras, under an officer who
endeavoured to look into the trenches with the view to ascertain if an
assault was intended, but the picquet there drove him and his escort
back into the works, darkness then fell and the troops awaited the
signal.
ASSAULT OF BADAJOS. (April, 1812.)
Dry but clouded was the night, the air was thick with watery
exhalations from the rivers, the ramparts and trenches unusually still;
yet a low murmur pervaded the latter, and in the former lights flitted
here and there, while the deep voices of the sentinels proclaimed
from time to time that all was well in Badajos. The French, confiding
in Phillipon’s direful skill, watched from their lofty station the
approach of enemies they had twice before baffled, and now hoped to
drive a third time blasted and ruined from the walls. The British,
standing in deep columns, were as eager to meet that fiery destruction
as the others were to pour it down, and either were alike terrible for
their strength, their discipline, and the passions awakened in their
resolute hearts.
Former failures there were to avenge on one side, and on both leaders
who furnished no excuse for weakness in the hour of trial; the
possession of Badajos was become a point of personal honour with the
soldiers of each nation; but the desire for glory on the British part
was dashed with a hatred of the citizens from an old grudge, and
recent toil and hardship, with much spilling of blood, had made many
incredibly savage: for these things, which render the noble-minded
averse to cruelty, harden the vulgar spirit. Numbers also, like Cæsar’s
centurion, who could not forget the plunder of Avaricum, were heated
with the recollection of Rodrigo and thirsted for spoil. Thus every
passion found a cause of excitement, while the wondrous power of
discipline bound the whole together as with a band of iron, and in the
pride of arms none doubted their might to bear down every obstacle that
man could oppose to their fury.
At ten o’clock, the castle, the San Roque, the breaches, the
Pardaleras, the distant bastion of San Vincente, and the bridge-head on
the other side of the Guadiana, were to be simultaneously assailed. It
was hoped the strength of the enemy would quickly shrivel within that
fiery girdle, but many are the disappointments of war. An unforeseen
accident delayed the attack of the fifth division, and a lighted
carcass, thrown from the castle, falling close to the third division,
exposed its columns and forced it to anticipate the signal by half an
hour. Thus everything was suddenly disturbed, yet the double columns of
the fourth and light divisions moved silently and swiftly against the
breaches, and the guard of the trenches, rushing forward with a shout,
encompassed the San Roque with fire and broke in so violently that
scarcely any resistance was made.
Soon however a sudden blaze of light and the rattling of musketry
indicated the commencement of a more vehement combat at the castle.
There Kempt, for Picton, hurt by a fall in the camp and expecting
no change in the hour, was not present; there Kempt, I say, led the
third division. Passing the Rivillas in single files by a narrow
bridge under a terrible musketry, he re-formed his men, and run up
the rugged hill with great fury, but only to fall at the foot of the
castle severely wounded. Being carried back to the trenches, he met
Picton at the bridge hastening to take the command, and meanwhile the
troops, spreading along the front, had reared their heavy ladders, some
against the lofty castle some against the adjoining front on the left,
and with incredible courage ascended amidst showers of heavy stones,
logs of wood, and bursting shells rolled off the parapet, while from
the flanks musketry was plied with fearful rapidity, and in front the
leading assailants were with pike and bayonet stabbed and the ladders
pushed from the walls: and all this was attended with deafening shouts,
the crash of breaking ladders, and the shrieks of crushed soldiers
answering to the sullen stroke of the falling weights.
Still swarming round the remaining ladders those undaunted veterans
strove who should first climb, until all were overturned, when the
French shouted victory, and the British, baffled, yet untamed, fell
back a few paces to take shelter under the rugged edge of the hill.
There the broken ranks were re-formed, and the heroic Colonel Ridge,
again springing forward, called with stentorian voice on his men to
follow, and seizing a ladder raised it against the castle to the right
of the former attack, where the wall was lower and where an embrasure
offered some facility: a second ladder was placed alongside by the
grenadier officer Canch, and the next instant he and Ridge were on the
rampart, the shouting troops pressed after them, and the garrison,
amazed and in a manner surprised, were driven fighting through the
double gate into the town: the castle was won. Soon a reinforcement
from the French reserve came to the gate, through which both sides
fired and the enemy retired; but Ridge fell, and no man died that night
with more glory--yet many died, and there was much glory.
All this time the tumult at the breaches was such as if the earth had
been rent asunder and its central fires bursting upwards uncontrolled.
The two divisions reached the glacis, just as the firing at the castle
had commenced, and the flash of a single musket, discharged from the
covered way as a signal, showed them the French were ready: yet no
stir followed, and darkness covered the breaches. Some hay-packs were
then thrown, some ladders placed, and the forlorn hopes and storming
parties of the light division, five hundred in all, descended into the
ditch without opposition: but then a bright flame, shooting upwards,
displayed all the terrors of the scene. The ramparts crowded with
dark figures and glittering arms were on one side, on the other the
red columns of the British, deep and broad, coming on like streams
of burning lava: it was the touch of the magician’s wand, a crash of
thunder followed, and the storming parties were dashed to pieces by the
explosion of hundreds of shells and powder-barrels.
For an instant the light division soldiers stood on the brink of the
ditch, amazed at the terrific sight, but then, with a shout that
matched even the sound of the explosion they flew down the ladders,
or, disdaining their aid, leaped, reckless of the depth, into the gulf
below; and nearly at the same moment, amidst a blaze of musketry that
dazzled the eyes, the fourth division came running in to descend with
a like fury. There were only five ladders for both columns, which were
close together, and the deep cut made in the bottom of the ditch, as
far as the counterguard of the Trinidad was filled with water from the
inundation: into this miry snare the head of the fourth division fell,
and it is said above a hundred of the fusileers, the men of Albuera,
were there smothered. Those who followed, checked not, but, as if the
disaster had been expected, turned to the left and thus came upon the
face of the unfinished ravelin, which, rough and broken, was mistaken
for the breach and instantly covered with men; a wide and deep chasm
was however still between them and the ramparts, from whence came a
deadly fire wasting their ranks. Thus baffled, they also commenced a
rapid discharge of musketry, and disorder ensued; for the men of the
light division, whose conducting engineer had been disabled early,
having their flank confined by an unfinished ditch, intended to cut off
the Santa Maria, rushed towards the breaches of the curtain and the
Trinidad, which were indeed before them, but which the fourth division
had been destined to storm.
Great was the confusion, the ravelin was crowded with men of both
divisions, and while some continued to fire, others jumped down and
run towards the breach; many also passed between the ravelin and the
counterguard of the Trinidad; the two divisions got mixed, and the
reserves, which should have remained at the quarries, also came pouring
in until the ditch was quite filled, the rear still crowding forward
and all cheering vehemently. The enemy’s shouts also were loud and
terrible, and the bursting of shells and of grenades, the roaring of
guns from the flanks, answered by the iron howitzers from the parallel,
the heavy roll and horrid explosion of the powder-barrels, the whizzing
flight of the blazing splinters, the loud exhortations of the officers,
and the continual clatter of the muskets made a maddening din.
Now a multitude bounded up the great breach as if driven by a
whirlwind: but across the top glittered a range of sword-blades,
sharp-pointed, keen-edged, immovably fixed in ponderous beams chained
together and set deep in the ruins; and for ten feet in front the
ascent was covered with loose planks studded with iron points, on which
the feet of the foremost being set the planks slipped, and the unhappy
soldiers falling forward on the spikes rolled down upon the ranks
behind. Then the Frenchmen, shouting at the success of their stratagem
and leaping forward, plied their shot with terrible rapidity, for every
man had several muskets, and each musket in addition to its ordinary
charge contained a small cylinder of wood stuck full of wooden slugs,
which scattered like hail when they were discharged.
Once and again the assailants rushed up the breaches, but the
sword-blades, immovable and impassable, always stopped the charge, and
the hissing shells and thundering powder-barrels exploded unceasingly.
Hundreds of men had fallen, hundreds more were dropping, yet the heroic
officers still called aloud for new trials, and sometimes followed by
many, sometimes by few, ascended the ruins; and so furious were the men
themselves, that in one of these charges the rear strove to push the
foremost on to the sword-blades, willing even to make a bridge of their
writhing bodies; the others frustrated the attempt by dropping down,
yet men fell so fast from the shot it was hard to say who went down
voluntarily, who were stricken, and many stooped unhurt that never rose
again. Vain also would it have been to break through the sword-blades;
for a finished trench and parapet were behind the breach, where the
assailants, crowded into even a narrower space than the ditch was,
would still have been separated from their enemies, and the slaughter
have continued.
At the beginning of this dreadful conflict, Andrew Barnard had with
prodigious efforts separated his division from the other, and preserved
some degree of military array; but now the tumult was such, no command
could be heard distinctly except by those close at hand, while the
mutilated carcases heaped on each other, and the wounded, struggling to
avoid being trampled upon, broke the formations; order was impossible!
Nevertheless officers of all stations, followed more or less numerously
by the men, were seen to start out as if struck by a sudden madness and
rush into the breach, which yawning and glittering with steel seemed
like the mouth of some huge dragon belching forth smoke and flame. In
one of these attempts Colonel Macleod of the 43rd, whose feeble body
would have been quite unfit for war if it had not been sustained by an
unconquerable spirit, was killed. Wherever his voice was heard there
his soldiers gathered, and with such strong resolution did he lead them
up the ruins, that when one, falling behind him, plunged a bayonet into
his back, he complained not, but continuing his course was shot dead
within a yard of the sword-blades. There was however no want of gallant
leaders or desperate followers, until two hours passed in these vain
efforts convinced the soldiers the Trinidad was impregnable; and as
the opening in the curtain, although less strong, was retired, and the
approach impeded by deep holes and cuts made in the ditch, the troops
did not much notice it after the partial failure of one attack, which
had been made early. Gathering in dark groups and leaning on their
muskets they looked up with sullen desperation at the Trinidad, while
the enemy stepping out on the ramparts and aiming their shots by the
light of the fireballs which they threw over, asked, as their victims
fell, _Why they did not come into Badajos_?
In this dreadful situation, while the dead were lying in heaps, and
others continually falling, the wounded crawling about to get some
shelter from the merciless shower above, and withal a sickening stench
from the burnt flesh of the slain, Captain Nicholas of the engineers,
was observed by Lieut. Shaw of the 43rd, making incredible efforts to
force his way with a few men into the Santa Maria. Collecting fifty
soldiers of all regiments he joined him, and passing a deep cut along
the foot of this breach, these two young officers, at the head of their
band, rushed up the slope of the ruins, but ere they gained two-thirds
of the ascent, a concentrated fire of musketry and grape dashed nearly
the whole dead to the earth: Nicholas was mortally wounded, and the
intrepid Shaw stood alone![24] After this no further effort was made at
any point, and the troops remained passive, but unflinching, beneath
the enemy’s shot, which streamed without intermission: for many of
the riflemen on the glacis, leaping early into the ditch, had joined
in the assault, and the rest, raked by a cross-fire of grape from the
distant bastions, baffled in their aim by the smoke and flames from
the explosions, and too few in number, had entirely failed to quell the
French musketry.
About midnight, when two thousand brave men had fallen, Wellington, who
was on a height close to the quarries, sent orders for the remainder
to retire and re-form for a second assault; he had just then heard
that the castle was taken, and thinking the enemy would still hold out
in the town was resolved to assail the breaches again. This retreat
from the ditch was not effected without further carnage and confusion;
for the French fire never slackened, and a cry arose that the enemy
were making a sally from the flanks, which caused a rush towards the
ladders. Then the groans and lamentations of the wounded, who could not
move and expected to be slain, increased; and many officers who did not
hear of the order endeavoured to stop the soldiers from going back,
some would even have removed the ladders but were unable to break the
crowd.
All this time the third division lay close in the castle, and either
from fear of risking the loss of a point which insured the capture of
the place, or that the egress was too difficult, made no attempt to
drive away the enemy from the breaches. On the other side however,
the fifth division had commenced the false attack on the Pardaleras,
and on the right of the Guadiana the Portuguese were sharply engaged
at the bridge: thus the town was girdled with fire. For Walker’s
brigade had, during the feint on the Pardaleras, escaladed the distant
bastion of San Vincente. Moving up the bank of the river, he reached a
French guard-house at the barrier-gate undiscovered, the ripple of the
waters smothering the sound of the footsteps; but then the explosion
at the breaches took place, the moon shone out, the French sentinels
discovering the column fired, and the British soldiers, springing
forward under a sharp musketry, began to hew down the wooden barrier
at the covered way; the Portuguese, panic-stricken, threw down the
scaling-ladders, but the others snatched them up, forced the barrier
and jumped into the ditch; there the guiding engineer was killed, a
_cunette_ embarrassed the column, and when the foremost men succeeded
in rearing the ladders they were found too short, for the walls were
generally above thirty feet high. The fire of the French was deadly,
a small mine was sprung beneath the soldiers’ feet, beams of wood and
live shells were rolled over on their heads, showers of grape from the
flank swept the ditch, and man after man dropped dead from the ladders.
At this critical moment some of the defenders being called away to
aid in recovering the castle, the ramparts were not entirely manned,
and the assailants, having discovered a corner of the bastion where
the scarp was only twenty feet high, placed three ladders under an
embrasure which had no gun, and was only stopped with a gabion. Some
men got up with difficulty, for the ladders were still too short, but
the first man being pushed up by his comrades drew others after him,
and thus many had gained the summit; and though the French shot heavily
against them from both flanks and from a house in front they thickened
and could not be driven back. Half the 4th Regiment then entered the
town itself, while the others pushed along the rampart towards the
breach, and by dint of hard fighting successively won three bastions.
In the last, General Walker, leaping forwards sword in hand just as a
French cannonier discharged a gun, fell with so many wounds that it
was wonderful how he survived, and his soldiers seeing a lighted match
on the ground cried out a mine! At that word, such is the power of
imagination, those troops whom neither the strong barrier nor the deep
ditch, nor the high walls, nor the deadly fire of the enemy could stop,
staggered back, appalled by a chimera of their own raising. While in
that disorder a French reserve under General Veillande drove on them
with a firm and rapid charge, pitching some over the walls, killing
others outright, and cleansing the ramparts even to the San Vincente:
but there Leith had placed a battalion of the 38th, and when the French
came up, shouting and slaying all before them, it arose and with one
close volley destroyed them. This stopped the panic, and in compact
order the soldiers once more charged along the walls towards the
breaches; yet the French, although turned on both flanks and abandoned
by fortune, would not yield.
Meanwhile the detachment of the 4th Regiment which had entered the
town when the San Vincente was first carried, was strangely situated;
for the streets though empty were brilliantly illuminated, no person
was seen, yet a low buzz and whisper were heard around, lattices were
now and then gently opened, and from time to time shots were fired
from underneath the doors of the houses by the Spaniards, while the
regiment, with bugles sounding, advanced towards the great square of
the town. In its progress several mules going with ammunition to the
breaches were taken, but the square was as empty and silent as the
streets, and the houses as bright with lamps. A terrible enchantment
seemed to prevail, nothing to be seen but light, and only low whispers
heard, while the tumult at the breaches was like the crashing thunder:
there the fight raged, and quitting the square the regiment attempted
to take the enemy in reverse, but they were received with a rolling
musketry, driven back with loss, and resumed their movement through the
streets.
At last the breaches were abandoned by the French, other parties
entered the place, desultory combats took place in various parts, and
finally Veillande and Phillipon, both wounded, seeing all ruined,
passed the bridge with a few hundred soldiers and entered San
Christoval. Early next morning they surrendered upon summons to Lord
Fitzroy Somerset, who with great readiness had pushed through the
town to the drawbridge ere the French had time to organize further
resistance; yet even at the moment of ruin, this noble governor with
an imperturbed judgment had sent horsemen out from the fort in the
night to carry the news to Soult’s army, which they reached in time to
prevent a greater misfortune.
Now commenced that wild and desperate wickedness, which tarnished the
lustre of the soldier’s heroism. All indeed were not alike, hundreds
risked, and many lost their lives in striving to stop violence; but
madness generally prevailed, and the worst men being leaders all the
dreadful passions of human nature were displayed. Shameless rapacity,
brutal intemperance, savage lust, cruelty and murder, shrieks and
piteous lamentations, groans, shouts, imprecations, the hissing of
fires bursting from the houses, the crashing of doors and windows,
and the reports of muskets used in violence resounded for two days
and nights in the streets of Badajos! On the third, when the city was
sacked, when the soldiers were exhausted by their own excesses, the
tumult rather subsided than was quelled: the wounded men were then
looked to, the dead disposed of!
Five thousand men and officers fell during the siege, including seven
hundred Portuguese; three thousand five hundred were stricken in the
assault, sixty officers and more than seven hundred men slain on the
spot. Five generals, Kempt, Harvey, Bowes, Colville, and Picton were
wounded, the first three severely; six hundred men and officers fell in
the escalade of San Vincente, as many at the castle, and more than two
thousand at the breaches: each division there lost twelve hundred! But
how deadly the strife was at that point may be gathered from this; the
43rd and 52nd regiments of the light division, alone lost more men than
the seven regiments of the third division engaged at the castle!
Let it be remembered that this frightful carnage took place in a
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 that the town was won at last: these things considered,
it must be admitted that 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? the noble emulation of the officers?
Who shall measure out the glory of Ridge, of Macleod, of Nicholas, of
O’Hare of the rifles, who perished on the breach at the head of the
stormers, and with him nearly all the volunteers for that desperate
service? Who shall describe the springing valour of that Portuguese
grenadier who was killed, the foremost man, at the Santa Maria? or the
martial fury of that desperate rifleman, who, in his resolution to win,
thrust himself beneath the chained sword-blades, and there suffered the
enemy to dash his head to pieces with the ends of their muskets? Who
can sufficiently honour the intrepidity of Walker, of Shaw, of Canch,
or the resolution of Ferguson of the 43rd, who having at Rodrigo
received two deep wounds was here, with his hurts still open, leading
the stormers of his regiment, the third time a volunteer and the third
time wounded! Nor are these selected as pre-eminent; many and signal
were the other examples of unbounded devotion, some known some that
will never be known; for in such a tumult much passed unobserved, and
often the observers fell themselves ere they could bear testimony to
what they saw: but no age, no nation ever sent forth braver troops to
battle than those who stormed Badajos.
When the havoc of the night was told to Wellington, the pride of
conquest sunk into a passionate burst of grief for the loss of his
gallant soldiers.