Salamanca 1812- Wellington’s Year of Victories

by Peter Edwards

  loaded shells and combustibles lying ready on the parapets and on the glacis, of which the effect had been so fortunate at the two assaults of the breach of San Cristoval in 1811, thanks to the wounding of the commanding gunner, Captain Mareillac, and his replacement by an unnamed captain who did not show the same courage (Lamare).

  The attack had lasted just under the hour. The horizontal fraises high on the ramparts had proved a blessing, lodging points for the ladders, but also allowing the stormers to gather thereon before making the final climb, up the sixteen feet of the massive sloping earth parapet, untouchable by the defending bayonets until the last. The ferocity of that final close struggle was shown afterwards, by the discovery of ‘Several officers and many men, shot dead or severely wounded, found lying on the fraises ... The defenders certainly disputed the parapet.’ (Jones)

  Just as at the two breaches at Rodrigo, the Light and 3rd Divisions again exercised their inter-tribal vanities. A hundred men from the former, under Lieutenant James Stokes, 95th, had been required by General Kempt to collect and carry the ladders for use by the 3rd Division stormers. Harry Smith tells us:

  The working party were sent to the engineer park for the ladders. When they arrived [at the Fort], General Kempt ordered them to be planted ... The boys of the 3rd Division said to our fellows, ‘Come, stand out of the way’, to which our fellows replied, ‘Damn your eyes, do you think we Light Division fetch ladders for such chaps as you to climb up? Follow us’. And springing on the ladders, many of them were knocked over.

  It was said (probably by a Rifleman) that Stokes (who was to die twelve days later) was the first man into the Fort. So the Rifles here showed again that they saw no reason to limit themselves to their orders – whether merely to clear the ditch at Rodrigo, or merely to carry a ladder at Picurina, they pop up early at the very sharp end, on the walls, desperate for glory.

  Grattan’s reference to the failed French counter-attack reflects well on Kempt’s decision to post, as a block, a strong company from Shaw’s column, precisely to counter such a threat. The flight of the French force, the 3rd/ 103rd after the loss of only seventy men (according to Lamare), implies a great disaster, and it was unfortunate that the 520 or so remainder sought the same escape route over the Inundation (a partly destroyed plank bridge) as the fleeing remnants from the Fort. In the dark confusion, weighed down by boots and equipment, many would drown.

  By this stage, around 11pm, the Garrison were unsure whether a further attempt on the main walls was imminent. The move forward of the three reserve battalions may have been misinterpreted. For an hour or so alarms continued to be heard within the walls, and intermittent if random fire from both cannon and muskets took some time to die down. By morning the sappers had smoothed a ramp on the breach, up the front or salient angle of the Fort, and this was connected by trench back to the First Parallel. A start was made on the Second Parallel, running left-handed down to the Inundation, but throughout 26 March the garrison’s cannon and howitzers put heavy fire over and through the rear palisades, making the inside of the Fort thoroughly unhealthy.

  Yet even so, the Fort’s capture marked an important step forward in Lord Wellington’s plans. After eight days of open trenches he was now between 350 and 500 yards from the Trinidad and Maria bastions (albeit across 100 yards of water), and he had now to construct the necessary batteries. These were to be in the Fort’s gorge, a very hot place to be. We have Lamare to thank for the description of those who would make it so: ‘more than eighty pieces of cannon against that point [the Fort] from the guns of bastions Nos 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, from the Castle, from the Lunette San Roque, and Fort Pardaleras.’ And that fire, in their view, would have made the British fail in their attack on the Maria and Trinidad bastions given only that ‘we had a sufficient quantity of ammunition’. But they didn’t. They thought Wellington was making a mistake, to choose the strongest bastions, subsequent to the capture of Picurina across the way, rather than what they believed to be the weakest link in their defensive chain – Bastions 8 and 9, and which they thought had been his Lordship’s original plan. That was never the case, of course, 6 and 7 always having been the intention.

  The daylight hours after the Fort’s capture – like the previous dark hours – were notable for the ferocity and volume of the French fire at and around the Fort, even at an oblique angle from the Castle, and from Fort San Cristobal a mile away. But when Colonel Picoteau, Philippon’s artillery commander, was given the figures for the day’s ammunition expenditure, they made unhappy reading. Another 12,000lbs of powder had been fired off, making 82,000lbs used since the siege began. This was half their total stock. It was reluctantly decided that fire rates must be reined back.

  The British batteries Nos 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6 replied vigorously. A feature of the British shooting was for Nos 4 and 5 Batteries to fire on reduced charges against the enfiladed gun line on the Trinidad and San Pedro right-flank walls. This ricochet technique of lobbing a shot just over the parapet from the side, to roll along a line of guns, could be very rewarding, given a slice of luck. (The French had used the same reduced charge idea at Talavera, to roll shot through the British battalions lying down behind the Medellin.)

  That night, 26/27 March, one of the new battery positions (No. 9) was started in the Fort’s gorge, for eight 18-pounders, to fire on the breach site on the left flank of Santa Maria; also No. 7 Battery was started down next to the Inundation, for twelve 24-pounders, to breach the right face of Trinidad; and No. 10 up on the First Parallel, next to No. 4, for three 24-pounder howitzers, to enfilade any workmen in the ditch before the principal breach at Trinidad. Nos 1 and 2 Batteries, used against Picurina, were dismantled.

  Over the next three days the Second Parallel was with difficulty extended above the San Roque Lunette, eventually closing to forty paces. Casualties were heavy. The aim of this extension was to take possession and then unblock the Inundation at the dam in rear. To this end Wellington ordered up another six guns from Elvas, to form a further battery, No. 11, just 200 yards from the Lunette, in the Second Parallel. In addition, the platforms were laid for No. 9 Battery in the gorge, and No. 8 was commenced next door for another of the six 18-pounders, also to fire on the left flank of Maria. In front of both batteries a trench was dug for riflemen to provide covering fire. Captain John Dobbs, 52nd, tells us:

  I happened to be in the covering party, and occupied a trench in its front, running parallel to the battery; the enemy opened a tremendous fire upon it, and in a short time dismounted several guns and disabled others. On this a message came to us requesting that we would endeavour to stop the enemy’s fire. Accordingly we opened fire on their embrasures, and the effect of the fire was such that in about twenty minutes they had to stop them with gabions. Some of the shots struck the sides and glanced right and left – others went right through the centre, so that the gunners could not stand to their guns. I do not remember our distance from the walls, but the trench ran along the front of the batteries, about fifty yards nearer to the walls.

  This was the sap the marking out of which caused a brave French sapper, Corporal Stoll, to creep out, re-aligning the tapes to the guns on the Castle, so that the trench so dug would lay exposed. Fortunately a sapper officer, Captain Ellicombe, spotted and corrected what was initially thought to be a mischance, not a deliberate act. We get a flavour of the dangers when working in close sapping from Ensign Grattan:

  We were frequently obliged to run the flying-sap so close to the battlements of the town that the noise of the pick-axes was heard on the ramparts, and, upon such occasions, the party was invariably cut off to a man ... When a fire so destructive as to sweep away all our gabions took place, men would run forward with a fresh supply, and under a fire in which it was almost impossible to live, place them in order for the rest of the party to shelter themselves, while they threw up a sufficiency of earth to render them proof against musketry.

  On the other side of the Inundation, the French continued to r
aise the counterguard in front of Trinidad, since by now they were in no doubt of the besiegers’ intentions. That evening Philippon ordered a sortie by 400 men of the 3rd/9th Léger, to destroy the line of trenchwork in hand by the 5th Division, some 600 yards beyond the Tête de Pont and San Cristobal and linking with a new small square fort (Lunette Werle) on the Knoll of Atalaya. But according to Colonel Lamare ‘the enemy brought up the whole force which he had on that bank, and obliged them (the sortie) to return without having achieved any object.’ Strangely, no mention of this sortie on the 29th is made in any British account.

  On the night of 29/30 March, eight 18-pounders were got into Battery No. 9, and three 24-pounder howitzers into No. 10, the former opening fire on the left-flank wall of Santa Maria next morning. Time began to press. News came of Soult’s marches, and in consequence the 5th Division left Badajoz for the south.

  Philippon and Lamare now began constructing retrenchments behind and between Santa Maria and Trinidad, as was anticipated. In addition and independent of the retrenchments ‘we caused a second enclosure to be formed in rear, by making use of the garden walls and houses adjacent, and loopholed them in such a way as to compel the enemy to repeat his assaults. The streets we cut across with ditches and traverses.’

  By the end of April Fool’s Day, three days hard pounding at the bastions was just beginning to bear fruit, there now being twelve 24-pounders operating against Trinidad, eleven 18-pounders and three 24-pounders against Maria, and enfilading fire from Batteries 3, 5 and 10. The French meanwhile added another four feet in height to the counterguard in front of the Trinidad breach. The bottom third of the wall was now obscured from the breaching gunners, who were understandably not best pleased with their enfilading brethren, who had not been sufficiently active during the night. The commanding officer (Picton) ‘Is determined to report every officer to Lord Wellington who shall neglect this duty.’ The next night the enfilading batteries fired continuously.

  The garrison also worked hard at night in clearing the rubbish now beginning to form at the breaches, so as to aggravate the climb, the men being ‘exposed for four or five hours to grape shot and the projectiles of every description.’ Cocks says the French working party was 200 strong, and a deserter reported forty killed and wounded. Lamare quotes overall casualties to this point from 16 March at some 700. And British losses were also mounting up, with the French firing some 5,000 cannon balls on 31 March alone.

  But the walls still stood at Trinidad and Maria. The facing stones had come away but the solid clay interior remained, jammed obstinately tight between the buttresses inside the structure. Not so the parapets now shattered alongside the supporting revetments. The garrison endeavoured to replicate new parapets at the breach sites, a little in rear, using sandbags and wool and cotton bales; but these proved short-lived. Case shot and shell were running low and – more importantly – powder began to fail. This was accordingly rationed to 6,500 pounds a day and on that basis was due to be expended on or by 9 April. Presumably this calculation became general knowledge amongst Philippon’s men – certainly it is implied in Lamare’s account. While he lavished praise on the troops for their ‘noble devotion ... zeal and ardour’ etc. in the declining circumstances, and how indignant the lowest soldier would be ‘had anyone uttered a thought of capitulating’, he did interestingly add ‘Before they had repulsed several assaults’. Implicit therein lies the expectation of eventual failure.

  On the night of 2 April, because progress sapping up to the Lunette was too slow, Wellington put in hand an alternative attempt to drain the Inundation – and thus open up his possible routes for the assault – by blowing down the masonry dam and sluice across the Rivillas to its rear. For the Inundation was a serious hindrance, made worse by the endless rains of 20 – 22 March. It allowed but a narrow approach across the Valverde road from the south, not from the trenches to the east as would be wished, and where last preparations could safely be made under cover, and, possibly, without detection. Lieutenants Stanway and Barney – the former had guided Major Rudd’s 77th’s stormers at Fort Picurina – took twenty sappers and a covering party of thirty men forward to the Lunette as soon as it was dark. They dropped down into the bed of the Rivillas, turned left, and quietly approached the dam. Sentries on the bridge twice challenged and once fired upon the men carrying the two heavy cases of powder. It would seem the darkness had by then fully fallen and, the sentries not investigating further, the powder cases containing a massive 450lbs of explosive were placed, by touch, against the dam wall (but not quite against it, for a clay buttress had been built against the wall, and water was pouring over it). Stanway had also brought sandbags, to be jammed over the cases to direct the force of the blast inwards; however, he judged a further carrying party would be discovered. A train was laid, the match lit, Stanway withdrew – and the match failed. The Lunette guard discovered the party in the ditch, and opened fire. Stanway returned under fire to relight the match, but the resultant explosion unfortunately failed to disturb the dam. Moorsom, in his excellent Historical Record of the 52nd, maintains that an hour later Lieutenant Robert Blackwood and three sappers were ordered to make another (equally unsuccessful) attempt on the dam.

  Attempts to sap to the dam continued next day but were finally abandoned due to the very high casualties involved. His Lordship now reluctantly accepted the limitations imposed by Philippon’s Inundation, which the Peer doubtless described, no pun intended, as a damned inconvenience.

  On 3 April No. 11 Battery, having been armed during the night with six 18-pounders, opened initially (and possibly as a feint), since no breach had been considered there, on the curtain wall between Trinidad and San Pedro. Jones tells us that this soon switched to the Lunette, ‘the wall proving very hard’. Lamare, however, says this new battery fired ricochets at the workmen on Trinidad. In either event, such was their shortage of ammunition, the French batteries ‘could reply only feebly’ to the British artillery this day, consisting of ‘forty pieces of cannon, eighteen or twenty-four pounders, which fired incessantly’. By evening both the breaches were very promising and, there now being no parapet from the main Trinidad breach, the terre-plein behind was quite open to view. As at Rodrigo, on either side of the breach lay a ditch and parapet, across the breadth of the terre-plein, and the retaining wall behind the rampart was fourteen feet deep. The French themselves considered the breaches were becoming practicable and the efforts of the workmen clearing rubbish at night to be proving inadequate. After dark the breaches had each been test-climbed by French NCOs in full kit, and thus proved; and earlier a convoy of wagons loaded with scaling ladders had been spotted moving forward. So General Philippon assembled his Counsel of Defence to issue his final orders. Colonel Lurat and his 3rd/103rd Ligne was to hold the retrenchments behind Trinidad; Colonels Barbot and Maistre of the 3rd/88th and the Hessian Regiment were to hold the breaches with some 350 men each, coming from the grenadier and light companies in the garrison, together with gunners and sappers. Another 1,000 men, changing in shifts, worked on the retrenchments clearing rubbish, destroying the ramps, and working in the Castle both as a last safe haven and also to create another large battery, to overlook the approaches to the Trinidad breach. The threat from this latter battery next day caused Lord Wellington to order a counter-battery of fourteen iron howitzers to fire shrapnel, but only in the assault, to be positioned right at the end of the Second Parallel in enfilade as No. 12 Battery.

  In the trenches, destruction continued in both directions. Lieutenant George Simmons, 95th, tells us:

  I was with a party of men behind the advanced sap, and had an opportunity of doing some mischief. Three or four heavy cannon that the enemy were working were doing frightful execution amongst our artillery men in their advance Batteries. So I selected several good shots and fired into the embrasures. In half an hour I found the guns did not go off so frequently ... and soon after gabions were stuffed into each embrasure to prevent our rifleballs from entering.
They withdrew them to fire, which was my signal for firing steadily at the embrasures. The gabions were replaced without firing a shot. I was so delighted with the good practice I was making against Johnny, that I kept it up from daylight until dark, with forty as fine fellows as ever pulled trigger. These guns were literally silenced.

  Also on 4 April came news that Marshal Soult and 24,000 men, having joined with Drouet, and Dericau, was now at Llerena seventy miles or four or five marches away. His progress from Seville had been delayed by concerns of the Spanish threat from the Ronda hills; but he was also convinced Philippon, on the previous year’s outcomes, was in no immediate danger. Sensing that Marmont wanted no part in a joint force, Soult’s modest strength was thus a sufficient cause of tardiness. He wrote a week later:

  The best accounts give Wellington 30,000 men, and some make him as high as 40,000; ... If the Army of Portugal had joined me with 25,000 men Badajoz would have been saved or retaken; and a great victory would throw the English back into their lines ... (but) I was not strong enough alone.

  Graham fell back towards the old battlefield at Albuera, one day’s march south of Badajoz, and Hill, having destroyed the two centre arches of the bridge at Merida, to Talavera Real, one march east. Fortunately, in compliance with his Emperor’s orders, Marshal Marmont was away in the other direction; yet time now again became a pressing factor, perhaps with a second battle of Albuera looming for the covering forces.

  With this in mind, and after another day’s busy breaching, at noon on 5 April Wellington himself went forward to the farthest sap, to make his personal reconnaissance. He returned to give a warning order for the assault that evening, but subject to further reconnaissance by Colonel Fletcher, now fortunately again on his feet. The Chief Engineer took particular trouble to make what he could of the defensive works behind the breaches and, as a result, formed the view that the principal breach would form ‘an obstinate and protracted resistance’; that is, the breach itself and what lay behind it in the form of a second line. On hearing this at 4pm, Lord Wellington cancelled his warning order, and directed that, next morning, fire be opened on the curtain wall between the bastions, and grape during the night to interrupt the garrison’s working parties.