Salamanca 1812- Wellington’s Year of Victories

by Peter Edwards

  The Light Division which had been blockading the town, moved to besiege it on 8 January, crossing the Agueda at a ford four miles above. Previous days had seen falls of sleet and snow, but this day was milder, albeit with ice on the river edges. The Division made a point of examining the entire perimeter during the afternoon, without overt or regular investment, and withdrew behind the Upper Teson. Johnny Kincaid, 95th:

  There was a smartish frost, with some snow on the ground and when we arrived opposite the Fortress, about midday, the garrison did not appear to think we were in earnest, for a number of their officers came out, under the shelter of a stone wall within half a musket-shot and amused themselves in saluting and bowing to us in ridicule ... We lay on our arms until dark.

  A cold time it would have been in the wind, on open slopes, even wrapped in greatcoats.

  The assault on the Renaud Redoubt was most unusual in Peninsular terms. Silent night attacks on entrenched positions necessarily dispense with preliminary artillery fire, in turn demanding for success a huge element both of surprise and of superiority of numbers, swiftly to overcome the natural advantages of the defender. There can be no room for doubt or hesitation, since control and changes of plan in darkness are at their most vulnerable to errors. The thirty-three-year-old Lieutenant Colonel John Colborne, 52nd, as commander of this venture therefore – and thankfully – issued orders that were simple, clear and to be carried out with compelling force.

  The Redoubt’s rear face was a plain low loop-holed wall without a ditch but with a gate set in it; the other faces comprised a wall with a ditch eight feet deep and about the same wide, with a timber palisade much the same height. In places this was quite close to the counter-scarp, or the near side of the ditch. A guardhouse was set in the rear. Four companies (two each from the 52nd and the 95th), around 300 men, half having Baker rifles, were to provide point-blank covering fire from the edge of the ditch against the one company’s worth of French heads above the parapet; a further two companies (each from the 43rd and the 52nd) were to break in, while a further company was to circle the Redoubt to break in from the rear. The remaining three companies were in reserve – although some doubt still exists as to whether the two Portuguese companies were present in effective numbers. Additionally, a party of sappers under Captain Thomson RE were to carry the necessary scaling ladders and fascines. Awaiting success and standing by with picks and shovels was a 700-strong working party. They were immediately to commence digging trenches both in rear and forward of the Redoubt.

  As the town clock struck 8pm half a mile away, the sound echoing up over the dark crest before them, John Colborne sat his horse at the front of the four fire support companies in the dead ground behind the Upper Teson. In the lead was No. 8 Company, 1st/95th, Captain Crampton’s. The ladder parties came next, and then the assault or escalading companies.

  Many years later Colborne described what happened:

  In this order we started and advanced, after a caution had been given by me in respect of silence, and each captain had been instructed precisely where he was to post his company and how he was to proceed on arriving near the redoubt. An officer of the 95th and two sergeants had been stationed before dark on the brow of the hill to mark the angle of the redoubt covering the steeple of the church in Ciudad Rodrigo. When we reached the point marked by the officer of the 95th, I dismounted and again called for the four captains of the advance guard and ordered the front company to occupy the front face and the 2nd the right, &c. Captain Mulcaster, of the Engineers, suggested that it would be better to wait for the light ladders which were coming up. I, however, thought that no time should be lost, and proceeded with the very heavy ladders which had been made during the day. When about fifty yards from the redoubt I gave the word ‘double-quick’. This movement and the rattling of canteens alarmed the garrison; but the defenders had only time to fire one round from their guns before each company had taken its post on the crest of the glacis and opened fire. All this was effected without the least confusion, and not a man was seen in the redoubt after the fire was commenced. The party with the ladders soon arrived and placed them in the ditch against the palisades, so that they were ready when Captain Mein, of the 52nd, came up with the escalading companies. They got into the ditch by descending on the ladders and then placing them against the fraises. The only fire from which the assailants suffered was from shells and grenades thrown over from the rampart. During these proceedings Gurwood of the 52nd came from the gorge and mentioned that a company could get in by the gorge with ladders. I desired him to take any he could find. Thompson, of the Engineers, had no opportunity of being of use; the whole arrangements were executed by the exertions of captains of companies, and the order preserved by them. We entered the redoubt by the ladders safely; no resistance or opposition was made. The company at the gorge had tossed open the gate, or it had been opened by some of the defenders endeavouring to escape. Captain Mein, I believe, was wounded by a shot from one of our own companies as he was mounting on the rampart. Most of the defenders had fled to the guard-house Not one man was killed or wounded after we entered the redoubt ... Had the redoubt not been taken, five days would have been required to attack it regularly ... The Governor (of Rodrigo) had been in the redoubt half an hour before we attacked it.

  Colborne suffered only six men killed and nineteen wounded, capturing some fifty all ranks (unwounded), (according to Captain John Ewart, 52nd, three officers and forty-seven men) with just a dozen Frenchmen wounded, three killed. That seventy-five per cent of the garrison suffered no ill would seem to indicate a remarkable lack of resolve on their part. Indeed, Colborne made comment later about the French taking refuge under the guns, with some muskets found to be piled, and not in the garrison’s hands. Sergeant Garretty, 43rd, tells how ‘when we entered the place I observed several packs of cards, with which the men had been amusing themselves.’

  This stout little battalion-sized effort therefore achieved the surprise upon which it entirely depended, and the superiority of numbers brought to bear shows Lord Wellington had learnt lessons from the previous year at Badajoz. (It also shows he had overcome his Indian antipathy towards night operations.) It was a necessary but, nonetheless, neat coup-de-main, which saved much time overall. It showed how a concentrated close-range rifle fire will subdue rampart defenders, and thus give escaladers space to climb and swiftly conquer: a demonstration sadly not to be properly followed at Badajoz, with bloody results. And in passing, it is pleasing to speculate how John Colborne would have applauded another John in his regiment – Major John Howard – who 132 years later, in another silent night attack with two companies of the 52nd (now the 2nd Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry), captured by glider-borne coup-de-main the two bridges at Ranville in Normandy, to secure the left flank of that great Invasion. The two Johns shared more than the cap badge.

  Part II – Ciudad Rodrigo The Plan

  Now that the siege proper could begin, just what was facing the British force on the other side of the Lesser Teson? The main town wall was about thirty feet high – nearly six men’s height – and in places almost as wide, with a parapet rather too thick for defending with muskets, not easily able to command the ditch below, that is, with aimed fire, without leaning out to expose the body. The same problem attended the gun embrasures cut in the parapet, which were designed to cover the glacis and beyond, firing over the fausse braie, but not able to fire with depressed barrels into the ditch. This would not matter if the main wall had bastions or angles to afford ancillary flanking fire, but there were none, except at the point some 300 paces to the east of Lord Wellington’s intended breaching site, in the form of a medieval tower.

  The main wall ditch was some seven paces wide, up to the ‘outside’ wall, or fausse braie, which was twenty feet high, i.e. well below the main wall. The outer ditch below the fausse braie was another seven or eight paces wide, edged by the glacis but only to a height of some ten feet. So not only was the main wall’
s designed protector – the fausse braie – too short to prevent shot and shell striking the main wall, the fausse braie’s designed protector – the glacis – was too short in turn to protect it either.

  Thus given the close 200 yards range of the Lesser Teson ridge and the superior height advantage (thirteen feet) provided by the Upper Teson ridge, once the Redoubt had been secured, the reduction of Rodrigo became a matter of establishing battering batteries forward on both ridges. A start was made within minutes of Colborne’s coup-de-main: ‘the force under my command was collected outside (having secured the Redoubt) and marched down to the rivulet at the bottom of the glacis of the place, and covered the working parties opening the first parallel, til moonlight.’ As Rifleman Ned Costello, 95th, said:

  We expected to be marched back to our quarters at El Bodon, but instead were ordered to break ground, and we commenced the task of throwing up entrenchments in the face of the city. Being unsheltered from the enemy’s shot, their grape and cannister occasionally played among us, so although the night was remarkably cold – it was freezing at the time – we had no reason to complain of not having a good fire! Now was the time to cure a skulker, or teach a man to work for his life. There we were, in twos, each provided with a pick axe and shovel, digging with a vengeance into the frozen mould, and watching for the glances of the shot and shell. We stuck to our work like doubles, sometimes pitching ourselves to our bellies to avoid their being purged with grape or cannister.

  A view echoed by John Cooke, 43rd:

  A furious fire of shot and shell opened on us while digging a parallel close to the captured fort; the earth was thrown up on the town side. The land was arable and strewn with loose stones, which flew on all sides from the impulse given by the cannon balls and bursting shells. They exploded on every side, killing and maiming many soldiers.

  But by first light on 9 January 150 yards of the old 1810 French parallel had been re-opened to a depth of three feet or so, adjacent to the Redoubt, continuing back over the crest onto the reverse slope, ‘a trench sufficiently large to cover a Brigade’ according to Lieutenant Madden, 43rd.

  Costello reminds us of the conditions:

  The following day (the 9th) we were relieved and marched back to our quarters, cold, hungry and fatigued. It was very annoying to have to cross the Agueda getting to the trenches and returning to them. Pieces of ice were constantly carried down this rapid stream, and they bruised our men so much that the cavalry were ordered to form four deep across the ford, under the lee of whom we crossed comparatively unharmed. Nevertheless, by the time we reached our quarters, our clothes were frozen and icy.

  Lieutenant George Simmons, 95th, noted further how ‘Our poor fellows had to cross the river nearly up to their shoulders, and remain in this wet state until they returned to their quarters.’

  The garrison of course had the range to the digging work, and its fire concentrated on the battery sites and magazines, ‘Their round shot causing many casualties’ according to the engineer John Jones. Some thirty guns were positioned on the northern ramparts and ‘The garrison adopted the expedient of firing shells filled with powder and having long fuses in salvos. Some of these falling together into the parapets, blew away in an instant the work of hours.’

  On 11 January thirty-eight heavy guns from the battering train arrived, together with two days’ expenditure of ammunition.

  Next day the Light Division stood duty once more. In an effort to suppress the French fire, Simmons writes, ‘Thirty riflemen were ordered to get as close as possible, dig holes sufficiently deep to cover themselves, and take deliberate aim at the enemy’s embrasures which a good marksman could easily do by observing the flashes of their cannon, although it was dark.’ That night, the cold was so intense, says Jones, that ‘The same men were incapable of working the whole night through so that reliefs were regulated, a thousand men at dusk (soon after 5pm) and five hundred men at one a.m.’

  On 13 January three of the four battery positions prepared in rear of the Redoubt on the Upper Teson received a total of twenty-seven guns. That night the garrison at the Convent of Santa Cruz situated just 200 yards from the intended line of the second parallel across the Lesser Teson, were ejected by 300 German troops from the 60th and the King’s German Legion.

  Next morning work on the second parallel commenced, prompting a sortie by 500 of the garrison, which recaptured Santa Cruz and destroyed much of the work on the new trenches. The garrison’s Governor, General Barrié, had stationed an officer lookout on the steeple of the Cathedral, to observe and report the commencement of the relief by Wellington’s duty division; a lazy drill had been fallen in to, which Jones describes as ‘A bad custom ... The works were left unguarded for some time during each relief.’ However, the incoming Division restored order and at 4.30pm fire commenced from the batteries on the Upper Teson. Two 18-pounders opened onto the walls of the Convent of San Francisco, and the other twenty-five pieces commenced battering the fausse braie and main wall at Lord Wellington’s chosen breaching site – the same as Ney’s in 1810 – the north-western corner of the town. Darkness fell soon afterwards, and the guns fell silent, but a start had been made and doubtless General Barrié went to bed with a good deal on his mind. It was not made any more tranquil a few hours later when news came that his small garrison in the Convent of San Francisco had been driven out, by three companies from the 40th – another silent night attack – leaving behind the guns which would have enfiladed the second parallel, and which had been making the diggers’ lives uncomfortable in the first parallel. William Lawrence, 40th, was there:

  We were annoyed all the time by three guns which were situated on a fortified Convent a little distant from the town. As the Convent was near to where our Brigade’s operations were in progress, our Colonel volunteered to storm it. The offer was accepted and several companies, my own included, advanced under cover of darkness. Unobserved by the enemy we took the Garrison by surprise and succeeded in effecting an entrance, but the Garrison managed to decamp. I and a few others volunteered to march up to the tower where the guns were situated. There were no French there, only three shattered cannon whose condition was hardly improved when we were ordered to throw them down. The only French left in the Convent – or at least all I saw there – were two of their wounded. However they were good enough to leave us a room full of cabbages, which came in very handy indeed.

  The removal of the threat from San Francisco, and the successful progress next day battering the old breached site, decided Lord Wellington to locate a fourth battery in the first parallel (just to one side of the Redoubt) with the role of opening a second breach, at the medieval tower some 300 yards to the left (as he saw it) of the main breach. It was his intention, however, to hold back the fire onto this new breach, until the old one was imminently practicable. That day, it was the turn of the 3rd Division. Private Donaldson, 94th, aged nineteen:

  The French kept up a very destructive fire on us during the whole of our operations, and while forming the second parallel they threw out some fire balls to enable them to see where we were working, that they might send their shot in that direction; one of them fell very near where a party was working, and by its light completely exposed them to the view of the enemy; a Sergeant belonging to our regiment, of the name of Fraser, seeing the danger to which they were exposed, seized a spade and, jumping out of the trench regardless of the enemy’s fire, ran forward to where it was burning, and having dug a hole tumbled it in and covered it with a sod.

  On 16 January a thick fog descended in the morning, enabling the embrasures and gun platforms to be repaired as required, free from interference, by the working party now numbering some 700 men. It was the Light Division’s turn once again and George Simmons, 95th, tells us:

  I had charge of a party to carry earth in gabions [wicker baskets] and plant them upon the advanced saps in places where the ground was an entire rock and could not be penetrated. The enemy fired grape and consequently numbers fel
l to rise no more from the effects of it. I ran the gauntlet here several times and brought gabions of earth, always leaving some of my poor fellows behind when I returned for more. Glad enough I was when the engineer said ‘We have now sufficient’.

  Once more riflemen that night sniped at the French gun teams from pits sunk well forward. Next day (the 17th) the fog lifted around noon, and the battering continued until darkness fell. A good part of both the main wall and the fausse braie had been tumbled into the ditches, but the garrison’s accurate fire, shot, shell and grape, saw mounting casualties including amongst the riflemen in the pits, and the working parties, and a 24-pounder which suffered a direct hit in No. 2 Battery. That night the fourth battery on the first parallel was completed, including its magazine, and seven 24-pounders with their ammunition were heaved into position. Their target was the second breach or tower, and was calculated at 550 yards range.

  At daylight on 18 January fire commenced from thirty-two guns, and by evening the main breach was considered practicable. For this reason the tower was also engaged, and promptly came down ‘like an avalanche’. By nightfall it was deemed prudent to play on the main breach throughout the dark hours, with three howitzers, ‘to prevent the garrison from clearing the rubbish out of the ditch, as they had done on previous nights, and these did some execution, as the French said they had lost thirty men’ (Captain John Ewart, 52nd, quoting a French journal later found in Rodrigo). The total expenditure of ammunition up to midday on 18 January was 5,544 rounds of 24-pounder and 490 rounds of 18-pounder, with a second 24-pounder out of action through a burst barrel.