Salamanca 1812- Wellington’s Year of Victories

by Peter Edwards

  Sergeant Brazill’s own account puts a different slant on the gun’s location. Writing in a letter to the United Services Journal in 1843 he says ‘There was a great panic following the explosion through fear of a second.’ And he then

  Distinctly heard a voice from the centre of the breach ‘Are there any brave fellows who will come forward to push up the breach?’ I am certain it was Captain Thompson, 74th regiment, who called from the breach into advance. I pushed forward with two of my own company, and immediately topped the breach by moving up by the left side, where there was a good passage about eighteen inches wide which reached to the top of the breach. That side of the breach was secured with gabions, well packed with clay, and covered the breach for their musketry, which they used in gallant style.

  On reaching the top of the breach I pushed forward to the left, about forty yards, and attacked a large brass gun and took it, with the loss of one of my brave comrades, who fell while we were bayoneting the gunners that served the gun, which had done great damage, being only forty yards from the breach and pointed to rake the small passage left for us to gain either side of the breach. I then moved close to the parapet wall to see if I could obtain any assistance from the forlorn hope of the Light Division, when about a hundred yards from the taken gun I saw approach a man – immediately challenged him – the answer, an officer of the 52nd regiment. There was no individual with him, he was a brave soldier; I am sorry I did not know his name, as he raised my heart thinking I would be relieved from my perilous situation. Immediately I returned to the gun, and from the gun to the breach, where I found Lieutenant Mackie collecting as many as he could muster of all regiments of the 3rd Division.

  Sergeant Brazill’s estimate, that his cannon was as much as forty yards from the breach, seems curious: it certainly could not sweep the rubble slope beneath the breach, if so located. Others (in the 94th) used the description ‘[guns] pointing downwards from the flanks’.

  Whether Picton’s men eventually succeeded unaided by the Light, is arguable – and many of the Light Division did so argue, especially the 43rd. However, an officer of the 94th comes close to conceding it was a joint affair:

  Those officers and men of the 94th and 5th regiments who attacked the retrenchment on the left flank of the main breach, clung to it to the last, and suffered severely in their constant efforts to overcome the obstacles to their entrance; but it was an utter impossibility, so long as those behind stood firm. The instant however that they wavered, these brave men sprung over – and both they and the Light Division each thought themselves first into the town.

  It is clear, and very understandably so, that the 3rd Division were sensitive to accusations of a slow assault and that their eventual success was due only to the appearance of the Light. So sensitive that there were counter-claims, that the Light, arriving later at their breach than the 3rd, owed their ‘easy conquest’ to the latter’s prior efforts! A likely conjecture is that the French officer in charge of setting off the mine – one clearly and deliberately of mighty power – would have been watching the small party led by Campbell and Ridge successfully make it onto the walkway, with no quick reinforcements. He had in his hand the match to put to the powder trail; but as a last-ditch blow he would be loath to fire it, so long as he still had men at and behind the breach, putting up an effective defence. Then he would see the gun crew on his right bayoneted by the 88th, with an increase in the fire over the lip of the breach at the loop-holed defenders in rear; and as the final straw, he would see the men of the 43rd and the 95th running along the rampart from his right. As Cooke says ‘The moment the magazine blew up, all the firing had nearly ceased, for the enemy had literally jumped over the right entrenchment to save themselves from the bayonets of the Light Division.’ That is when he blew the mine, for all was then clearly lost. From this interpretation, if correct, we may say the 3rd Division had to all intents and purposes forced their breach, without help from the Light Division; but only just.

  We next descend down into the town, inside the walls of Rodrigo, and consider the unappealing drunken aftermath. It is therefore appropriate here first to comment on this major assault, particularly since it was the Peer’s third formal siege in the Peninsula, and preceding that at Badajoz, a far greater challenge to his engineers, gunners and, above all, to his dauntless infantry.

  That lessons from the previous efforts against Badajoz had been learned is obvious: the greater application of manpower, employment of proper and ample artillery used at closer ranges, the element of surprise in overcoming the Renaud Redoubt rather than the well-signalled attempt at Fort San Cristobal, the application of close-range suppressive rifle fire to prevent rubbish clearance, the prior provision of adequate supplies of all kinds, the pre-training of infantry in sapper work. It is hard to fault this swift and vigorous siege, bar the unnecessarily long and exhausting marches required to get the Divisions from their different cantonments, six or eight miles distant from their work in the trenches. (Crossing the half-frozen Agueda river, as the 52nd’s historian comments, made sure ‘A pair of iced breeches were usually the accompaniments of each man, on twenty-four hours sharp duty.’)

  On the French side, Governor Barrié appears negligent in not adding trenches etc. to the Lesser Breach – it was high and narrow, and a little effort would have gone a long way. He had warning on the morning of the 19th, from deserters, that the Light Division had moved up out of turn for digging, so he should have known the assault was nigh; even that evening, as the 5th began to clear the ditches, and an officer was captured and taken to him, he was not believed to be involved in an attack. And there is a report that a demi-bastion with parapet, which flanked the Lesser Breach, was abandoned early on, even though damaged by the battering. As the 77th’s officer noted, the French officers captured ‘subsequently acknowledged that they never contemplated the assault being made that night’.

  Marmont himself was at fault in garrisoning with only 1,700 or so men – in 1810 Massena was held for twenty-four days by Herrasti’s 6,000. As Napier says ‘When there are enough of men the engineers’ art cannot be overcome by mere courage.’

  The price of his Lordship’s success in human terms has been set by Oman at nine officers killed and seventy wounded, and other ranks 186 and 846 respectively, with ten missing. That is, a total of 1,121 men. Of these, 562 or fifty-nine officers and 503 rank and file, fell in the actual storm. Unfortunately, the strengths of each battalion, before operations commenced, are not known, so percentage losses are not calculable. The figures, however, are in line with events: Ridge’s 5th lost ninety-four all ranks killed or wounded (including nine officers): Campbell’s 94th lost sixty-nine all ranks (eight officers); Donkin’s 77th lost fifty all ranks (five officers) and the 45th lost forty-eight all ranks (seven officers). The Connaught Rangers got off fairly lightly with thirty-four all ranks (four officers).

  At the Lesser Breach the Light Division lost altogether just 113 all ranks, over a third being from the 43rd of whom presumably many were struck down by the explosion; while the Portuguese troops had surprisingly high casualties totalling 114. It is a puzzle how that arose, unless they suffered particularly during the earlier siege operations. The Light Division’s commander, General Craufurd, was mortally hit by a ball while on the glacis, shot through his arm and two ribs to shatter the spine; his second-in-command Vandeleur was simultaneously wounded, as was John Colborne at the head of the 52nd, and the commander of the stormers, Major George Napier. Perhaps modern eyes will question that officers of ‘high rank and estimation’ – even more so in Craufurd’s case ‘an ornament to his profession’ – should be expected to place themselves at the head of their columns climbing a breach, given the statistical probability of being hit. The deaths of Craufurd and MacKinnon, and the serious wounding of Vandeleur and Colborne, were grave blows to Lord Wellington’s command structure. At Badajoz, as we shall see, it was even worse: Generals Picton, Colville, Kempt, Walker and Bowes wounded; and at the Sal
amanca Forts the latter was killed. Officers of their value and skills – at brigade and higher levels, say – might with advantage be kept a little in rear, one would think: their personal reputations would scarcely suffer, if it had been the Peer’s requirement?

  Part IV – Ciudad Rodrigo Entry into the Town and Aftermath

  Compared to the disgraceful events a few weeks later, inside the captured fortress of Badajoz, the next part of our story is tame. Still, a small taste of things to come. It is useful therefore to remind our modern minds of the practice prevailing two centuries ago, with respect to behaviour by victorious besieging troops towards their conquered enemy, and indeed the civil inhabitants, of a garrisoned town. That behaviour was condoned as part of the universal belief that a defender should surrender once his wall had been breached, and was open – ‘practicable’ – to a successful assault. Resisting rather than capitulating, from that point on, caused the attacker what he regarded as unnecessary further casualties; commanders knew that in the loose combat conditions of a siege, they had not that iron control of their men enjoyed in disciplined fire fights in the open. The condonement was simply an acknowledgement that, once inside disputed walls, any garrison was likely to be hunted down. And righteous retribution was a happy cover for both a thirst to be assuaged, and a knapsack to be filled with loot.

  The men well knew they had licence to free-range once inside the walls, at least for some hours. There was a presumed connection between storm and sack, with many eyewitness accounts using phrases such as ‘the immemorial privilege of tearing the town to pieces’ or ‘the men were permitted to enjoy themselves’. Indeed, officers largely recognised the impossibility of stemming alcohol-fuelled excesses, which (as Dobbs of the 52nd observed) it were best ‘found necessary to let take its course’. Wellington would share this acquiescence at Badajoz, it would seem, when after a good eighteen hours of the town’s possession he eventually issued the order ‘it is now full time that the plunder of Badajoz should cease’.

  Yet at Rodrigo the garrison were not in fact slaughtered – except as we shall see for some Italians – a surprising fact which presumably became rapidly known to the garrison down in Badajoz, and the more rapidly just because it was deemed surprising. The knowledge no doubt contributed to their sturdy defence, which was thus conducted without – they hoped – the traditional fear of retribution. In so doing they acted with a sense of a calculated risk, of course, but very likely also upon their reading of the British character, witnessed now during four years of campaigning, and with many expressions of mutual humanity. Lord Wellington himself in later years ruefully pondered that:

  I shall have thought of myself justified in putting the garrisons to the sword, and if I had done so at the first [Rodrigo] it is probable I should have saved five thousand men at the second [Badajoz]. I mention this to show you that the practice which refuses quarter to a garrison that stands an assault is not a useless effusion of blood.

  Whether his soldiers would have agreed to obey such an order remains unknown, for on the night of 19 January 1812 no man knew what the next few hours would see. None present had previous experience in the business of successfully storming a proper European fortress. It was a novel operation for the Peninsular field army.

  The only genuine report of part of the garrison being put to the sword – literally correct in that the 95th’s Baker rifles were fitted with what they called swords, not bayonets – occurred to a party of Tuscan soldiers of the 113th Ligne. They had fired from a flanking ravelin onto the Light Division’s breach and, the breach taken and their position untenable, they threw down their muskets and then cried out ‘Poveros Italianos’ to Kincaid’s riflemen ‘to excite our pity; but our men have somehow imbibed a horrible antipathy to Italians, and every appeal they made in that name was invariably answered with ‘so you’re not French but Italians, are you? Then, damn you, here’s a shot for you’, and the action instantly followed the word’. Yet at the time Kincaid’s party were intent on moving rapidly around the ramparts, and his words tend to imply no more than that, as they hurried past, they fired down at the unarmed and cringing Italians whose cries, they would sense, were in the circumstances unduly cheeky. That is quite far from a massacre, and very much what one would expect: the custom, after all, if you wished to surrender yourself, was to discard your arms. Both sides generally honoured this mutually advantageous custom. Henry Ridge, writing a few days later, described ‘throwing away their arms’ as French soldiers’ ‘most effective means to obtain mercy’, for even though they had not capitulated with two practicable breaches lying open, and therefore ‘their lives became forfeit,’ it was ‘glorious to see Britons incapable of slaying unarmed men’.

  Fresh from potting Italians, Kincaid’s 95th Riflemen

  continued our course round the rampart until we met the head of the column which had gone by the right, and then descended into the town ... Finding the current of soldiers setting towards the centre of the town, I followed the stream, which conducted me into the great square, on one side of which the late garrison were drawn up as prisoners, and the rest of it was filled with British and Portuguese intermixed without any order or regularity. I had been there but a very short time when they all commenced firing without any ostensible cause; some fired in at the doors and windows, some at the roofs of houses and others at the clouds; and at last some heads began to be blown from the shoulders in the general hurricane, when the voice of Sir Thomas Picton, with the power of twenty trumpets, began to proclaim damnation to everybody, whilst Colonel Barnard, Colonel Cameron and other active officers were carrying it into effect with a strong hand; for, seizing the broken barrels of muskets which were lying about in great abundance, they belaboured every fellow most unmercifully about the head who attempted either to load or fire, and finally succeeded in reducing them to order. In the midst of the scuffle, however, three of the houses in the square were set on fire; and the confusion was such that nothing could be done to save them.

  The 77th also progressed to the town square, from the main breach:

  we dropped from the wall into the town. At first we were among ruins; but having extricated ourselves from them, we made our way into a large street leading nearly in a straight line from the principal breach to the plaza or square; up this street we fought our way, the enemy slowly retiring before us. At about half a length of the street was a large open space on our left hand, where was deposited an immense battering train of the Army of Portugal, and its material. Amongst this crowd of carriages, a number of men ensconced themselves, firing on us as we passed, and it required no small exertion on our part to dislodge them. Such of them as were caught suffered for their temerity. In the meantime, those of the enemy ahead of us were lost to sight, having entered the square; from which place we pushed on with as many men as we could lay hands, formed, without distinction of regiments, into two or three platoons; for the great proportion of those who had stayed with us had gradually sneaked off into the by-streets for the purpose of plundering, which business was already going on merrily. As we reached the head of the street (which entered the square at one angle), and wheeled to the left into the open space, we received a shattering volley from the enemy, which quickly spoiled our array. They were drawn up in force in the square, and under the colonnade of the cathedral, and we were for the moment checked by their fire, which we returned from the head of the street, waiting for a reinforcement. At length, when we were meditating a dash at the fellows, we heard a fire opened from another quarter, which seemed to strike them with a panic, for on our giving a cheer and moving forward, they to a man threw away their arms as if by word of command, and disappeared in the gloom like magic. It was the Light Division which entered the square by a street leading from the little breach, and their opportune arrival had frightened the game which we had brought to bay, leaving the pavement of the square covered with arms and accoutrements.

  But it was at this point, when successful feelings were general and reli
ef the greater, that the mind naturally turned to rewards in general and to alcohol in particular. Costello, with many others, had by now reached the town’s square:

  In a short time, a regiment of the 3rd Division entered the square and, commanded by their officer, something like order prevailed. When the British colours were planted in the centre, proclaiming the town to be taken, three cheers were given by the whole. When this was over, they commenced firing in the air, as well as at windows where any light appeared. Seeing the confusion, a number broke into squads, which went in different directions and entered different streets according to the fancy of their leaders. Myself and about a score of others took a large street to the right. The night was dark and as the city was not lit, we had to grope our way along. We had not gone far when we got mixed up with a quantity of French muskets, which had been thrown on the ground with their bayonets fixed. These pricked the legs of one or two of the men, who swore they had come to a chevaux-de-frise.