Salamanca 1812- Wellington’s Year of Victories

by Peter Edwards

  That night, with the men sinking knee-deep into the mud in places, the ten pieces earmarked for Batteries No. 1 and No. 2 were put in place, the platforms being laid with much difficulty; next day (23 March) the rain holding off until 3pm and the ground improving, the other battery platforms were also laid. Lord Wellington was cheered to be brought a letter, from Philippon to Soult, no less, by a Spaniard paid 512 dollars by the former, saying ‘Within these few days the English works have assumed a formidable appearance; that he will do his best to prevent being taken by a coup vivre, but if not relieved must alternatively surrender.’

  The afternoon rain continued through to the morning of 24 March, and was accompanied by a much heavier fire by the garrison onto the trenches. The fire being mainly cannon not howitzer, the parapets kept the men reasonably well covered. Captain John Dobbs, 52nd, was an expert witness:

  The enemy’s shells at Rodrigo were more destructive than at Badajoz, the surface being hard the shells did not sink into the ground, consequently fell in all directions, while at Badajoz they sank into the clay, and you could lie quite close to them without danger, the splinters flying upwards. To persons who had not read on the subject it may be well to state that, in every Battery there is a person on the lookout who crawls out at every discharge from the enemy, ball or shell as it may be; when the former each person covers himself behind the parapet, if the latter it was watched as it took its course through the air ’til it fell; if close, you fell flat on the ground, ’til it exploded; if at a distance you had to take your chance.

  Much the same scene was noted by Captain James MacCarthy, 50th:

  I sat down with two men of the Corps of Artificers watching the fall of numerous shells thrown at the work, when one of the men said ‘A shell is coming here, Sir’. I looked up and beheld it approaching me like a cricket ball to be caught; it travelled so rapidly that we only had time to run a few paces and crouch, when it entered the spot on which I had been sitting and, exploding, destroyed all our night’s work.

  That day, 24 March, by 3pm, Leith’s 5th Division completed the investment of Fort San Cristobal and the French field pieces were withdrawn. By now it is no surprise to read these damp and resigned sentences by the engineer John Jones:

  The rain which fell had so saturated the ground, that the water stood everywhere in pools; the earth lost its consistency and would not retain any form, but fell into the ditch as fast as thrown out; the revetments of the Batteries also fell, and no solid foundation could be obtained upon which to lay the remaining platforms. [In any case] the guns could not travel along the parallel or across the fields into the Batteries, and no progress was made with the attack.

  The deluge had lasted four days and nights, and perhaps the equivalent of just one day’s work had proved possible. All were excessively tired, cold and soaked, and this was the seemingly endless period when a good many of the mud-coated infantry had private thoughts, and short words, regarding the inside of Badajoz. For it is to be recalled that many old soldiers knew the inside rather well, and not a few of the women and wine bars – they had been there in 1809, after Talavera. Their treatment by the Spanish inhabitants, many felt, deserved retaliation.

  While the rains prevented digging, the men were employed completing the batteries, draining the trenches and carrying shot to the batteries. A hundred shot per piece was the complement.

  But the rains stopped again in the middle of the 24th, and during the later dark hours, with great exertions, which thankfully were spared undue interference by the garrison, fourteen guns and four howitzers with ammunition were got into Batteries 3 to 6. At eleven next morning a brisk fire was opened generally by a total of twenty-one guns and seven howitzers. Batteries 1 and 2 quickly succeeded in silencing the French artillery in Fort Picurina but, according to Cocks,

  they did not produce all the effect that was expected, the ditch at Picurina is very deep and the scarp mostly cut out of solid rock; it is likewise so well covered by its glacis that it cannot be seen. The parapet is of earth, well rammed to a stiff, adhesive nature and left at the natural slope. The only injury the fort suffered was in the embrasures and a few palisades near the salient angle.

  Lord Wellington promptly decided to attack that night, being very much in touch with progress as a frequent visitor in the forward positions. Captain James MacCarthy, 50th but for now a volunteer engineer, had been in a trench when his Lordship appeared with others:

  Gently walking in the trench, where shot and shell were flying, as tranquilly as if strolling on his own lawn in England, and on approaching the medical officers, they made their obeisance and offered their glasses, one of which his Lordship politely received, and also placed in the same scallop: at that instant the besieged (perhaps seeing cocked hats) fired the gun, the shot hummed as it passed over Lord Wellington’s head, he smiled, but made his inspection and returned the glass.

  Rifleman Ned Costello, 95th, also had an encounter:

  Occasionally, Lord Wellington would pay us a visit during the work, to make observations and examine the trenches. One day when Crawley and myself were working near each other, a shell fell inconveniently close to us. Tom was instantly half buried in mud awaiting the explosion. The shell had sunk itself deep into the earth because the fuse was too long, so I decided to play a trick upon Crawley – when the shell exploded I was going to throw a large lump of clay on his head, to make him believe himself wounded. To obtain the clod I sprang at the other side of the trench, and in doing so exposed myself to a grape shot. It splashed me from head to foot with mud, and I had to throw myself back into the trench upon Crawley who, believing that a shell had fixed itself upon his rear, roared like a bull. In an instant however the sunken missile burst, and when the smoke dispersed I beheld the Duke, crouched down, his head half averted, drily smiling at us.

  General Philippon’s guns answered the British cannonade, the engagement on both sides only ceasing at dusk. Efforts were then made to repair the parapets at Fort Picurina using woolpacks and fascines, the parapets only twelve feet wide at the front angle and now much damaged. The garrison of 200 men could not venture into the open until darkness, such was the marksmanship of the men in the batteries 150 yards away. At the salient or front angle, four small galleries had been cut facing backwards into the ditch, to give a reverse or flanking fire. The top of the ramparts stood thirty feet above the bottom of the ditch, the front edge of which was about nine feet beneath the glacis, but only the first fourteen or sixteen feet of the wall was perpendicular. A continuous row of fraises or sharpened stakes, was driven into the wall at that level leaning outwards, and the upper half of the wall then sloped back, being therefore then climbable. At intervals, suspended from the fraises, were ‘Very large earthen vessels – oil jars – filled with combustibles, and furnished above them with bundles of hemp, pitch etc.... to give light when ignited, and to drip fire into those pots below and cause explosions’ (Captain James MacCarthy, 50th).

  The rows of palisades at the rear had a large gate set in them and a bridge of planks connecting over the Inundation to the town. Around the ramparts grenades, powder barrels and loaded shells were stock-piled, to be hurled down at the attackers. Each defender had extra muskets ready loaded. Most of the twin rows of palisades, three rows at the rear, still stood in spite of the battering, the two main walls some seventy paces long, twenty at the sides, all these preparations had been reported to Wellington by a Spanish deserter. With seven guns and a colonel in command, it was altogether a formidable position.

  So, taken all in all, the Fort was rather more than a minor impediment and the busy French commanding engineer regretted in hindsight only that ‘Two hours more would have put this work in a sufficient state of defence’, with the troops fully deployed; and a second regret that the 200-strong composite garrison was drawn from across the various battalions in the town, rather than from two or three regular companies under their own officers. Otherwise, it was as strong an outwork as Philippon and L
amare, experienced and energetic as they were, could devise.

  Major General Sir James Kempt, commanding No. 1 Brigade in the 3rd Division, since MacKinnon’s death at Rodrigo, and the day’s duty commander in the trenches, formed three attack columns: 200 men of the 74th under Major Shaw; 200 of the 77th under Major Rudd; and 100, mostly from the 2nd/83rd under Captain Powis. Each column would be preceded by the engineer officers Lieutenant Gipps, Stanway and Captain Holloway respectively, who each were to take twelve sappers carrying ladders and axes, six miners with crowbars, and six carpenters with saws. Both Rudd and Shaw’s columns were to move out from the parallel on the same signal from No. 4 Battery, Rudd skirting the right flank of the Fort to come at its rear, and Shaw by the left flank, to drop off half his force as a block between the force and the San Roque Lunette, the other half joining Rudd in the rear; and Powis to remain formed in No. 2 Battery but ready to climb the damaged salient angle of the walls should Rudd and Shaw fail to break in from the rear. Three additional battalions stood ready in the trenches to come forward on success, to guard against a counter-attack. The attack was timed for 9pm, but Jones tells us it was another hour before all the preparations were completed, no doubt to the Peer’s irritation: the extra hour of dark gave the French more scope to clear the rubbish, and jam woolpacks and fascines into the damaged structure.

  Ensign William Grattan did not take part himself (he was deputed to command a party of thirty-two sappers, tasked to dismantle the Fort after its capture) but fellow 88th officers were part of the assault, and he would have heard the story from their lips:

  At about three o’clock in the afternoon of the 25th March, almost all the batteries on the front of La Picurina were disorganised, its palisades beaten down, and the fort itself, having more semblance of a wreck than a fortification of any pretensions, presented to the eye nothing but a heap of ruins. But never was there a more fallacious appearance: the work, although dismantled of its cannon, its parapets crumbling to pieces at each successive discharge from our guns, and its garrison diminished, without a chance of being succoured, was still much more formidable than appeared to the eye of a superficial observer. It had yet many means of resistance at its disposal. The gorge, protected by three rows of palisades, was still unhurt; and although several feet of the scarp had been thrown down by the fire from our battering, it was, notwithstanding, of a height sufficient to inspire its garrison with a well-grounded confidence as to the result of any effort of ours against it; it was defended by three hundred of the elite of Philippon’s force, under the command of a colonel of Soult’s staff, named Gaspard Thiery, who volunteered his services on the occasion. On this day a deserter came over to us from the fort, and gave an exact account of how it was circumstanced. Colonel Fletcher, the chief engineer, having carefully examined the damage created by our fire, disregarding the perfect state of many of the defences, and being well aware that expedition was of paramount import to our final success, advised that the fort should be attacked after nightfall.

  At half-past seven o‘clock the storming party, consisting of fifteen officers and five hundred privates, stood to their arms. General Kempt, who commanded in the trenches, explained to them the duty they had to perform; he did so in his usual clear manner, and everyone knew the part he was to fulfil. All now waited with anxiety for the expected signal, which was to be the fire of one gun from No. 4 Battery. The evening was settled and calm; no rain had fallen since the 23rd; the rustling of a leaf might be heard; and the silence of the moment was uninterrupted, except by the French sentinels, as they challenged while pacing the battlements of the outwork; the answers of their comrades, although in a lower tone of voice, were distinguishable – ‘Tout va bien dans le fort de la Picurina’ was heard by the very men who only awaited the signal from a gun to prove that the response, although true to the letter, might soon be falsified.

  The great Cathedral bell of the city at length tolled the hour of eight, and its last sounds had scarcely died away when the signal from the battery summoned the men to their perilous task; the three detachments sprang out of the works at the same moment, and ran forwards to the glacis, but the great noise which the evolution unavoidably created gave warning to the enemy, already on the alert, and a violent fire of musketry opened upon the assailing columns. One hundred men fell before they reached the outwork; but the rest, undismayed by the loss, and unshaken in their purpose, threw themselves into the ditch, or against the palisades at the gorge. The sappers, armed with axes and crowbars, attempted to cut away or force down the defence; but the palisades were of such thickness, and so firmly placed in the ground, that before any impression could be made against even the front row, nearly all the men who had crowded to this point were struck dead. Meanwhile, those in charge of the ladders flung them into the ditch, and those below soon placed them upright against the wall; but in some instances they were not of a sufficient length to reach the top of the parapet. The time was passing rapidly, and had been awfully occupied by the enemy; while as yet our troops had not made any progress that could warrant a hope of success. More than two-thirds of the officers and privates were killed or wounded; two out of the three that commanded detachments had fallen; and Major Shawe, of the 74th, was the only one unhurt. All his ladders were too short; his men, either in the ditch or on the glacis, unable to advance, unwilling to retire, and not knowing what to do, became bewildered. The French cheered vehemently, and each discharge swept away many officers and privates.

  Shawe’s situation, which had always been one of peril, now became desperate; he called out to his next senior officer (Captain Oates of the 88th) and said, ‘Oates, what are we to do?’ but at that instant he was struck in the neck by a bullet and fell bathed in blood. It immediately occurred to Oates, who now took the command, that, although the ladders were too short to mount the wall, they were long enough to go across the ditch! He at once formed the desperate resolution of throwing three of them over the fosse, by which a sort of bridge was constructed; he led the way, followed by the few of his brave soldiers who were unhurt, and forcing their passage through an embrasure that had been but bolstered up in the hurry of the moment, carried – after a brief, desperate, but decisive conflict – the point allotted to him. Sixty grenadiers of the Italian guard were the first encountered by Oates and his party; they supplicated for mercy, but, either by accident or design, one of them discharged his firelock, and the ball struck Oates in the thigh; he fell, and his men, who had before been greatly excited, now became furious when they beheld their commanding officer weltering in his blood. Every man of the Italian guard was put to death on the spot.

  Meanwhile Captain Powis’s detachment had made great progress, and finally entered the fort by the salient angle. It has been said, and, for aught I know to the contrary, with truth, that it was the first which established itself in the outwork; but this is of little import in the detail, or to the reader. All the troops engaged acted with the same spirit and devotion, and each vied with his comrade to keep up the character of the ‘fighting division’. Almost the entire of the privates and non-commissioned officers were killed or wounded; and of fifteen officers, which constituted the number of those engaged, not one escaped unhurt! Of the garrison, but few escaped; the Commandant, and about eighty, were made prisoners; the rest, in endeavouring to escape under the guns of the fortress, or to shelter themselves in San Roque, were either bayoneted or drowned in the Rivillas; but this was not owing to any mismanagement on the part of Count Philippon. He, with that thorough knowledge of his duty which marked his conduct throughout the siege, had early in the business ordered a body of chosen troops to débouche from San Roque, and to hold themselves in readiness to sustain the fort; but the movement was foreseen. A strong column, which had been placed in reserve, under the command of Captain Lindsey of the 88th, met this reinforcement at the moment they were about to sustain their defeated companions at La Picurina. Not expecting to be thus attacked, these troops became panic-struck, soon fled
in disorder, and, running without heed in every direction, choked up the only passage of escape that was open for the fugitives from the outwork, and, by a well-meant but ill-executed evolution, did more harm than good.

  Grattan’s timings seem adrift, and his reference to ‘the Italian guard’ is a puzzle, but otherwise it all rings true. Napier, writing thirteen years earlier, noted that ‘Powis, Holloway, Gipps and Oates of the 88th, 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 had fallen outside.’ Oman reckons Wellington lost twenty officers and 300 men, killed or wounded, of the 500-strong force; while on the French side the Fort commander, Colonel Gaspard Thierry and 145 men were taken, eighty killed and wounded, and just one officer and forty men of the Hessian regiment escaped into the town. By any standard, the British loss, of two-thirds, was very severe and so no wonder the Governor loudly signified displeasure at the weak resistance of this work. For with only the equivalent of two full British companies left on their feet, and with very few officers, the outcome was quite finely balanced. Philippon blamed the under-usage of the grenades,