Salamanca 1812- Wellington’s Year of Victories

by Peter Edwards

  When 6 April dawned, fourteen 24-pounder howitzers had been put into No. 12 Battery during the night, ready to fire upon the new battery on the Castle, overlooking Trinidad. Another fourteen guns in the breaching batteries opened on the old curtain wall, the base of which was visible to them, and by 4pm proved easily effective against the poor masonry. Lord Wellington went forward to satisfy himself on the state of all three breaches and returned to confirm the assault for 7.30pm that evening. His orders having been written up the previous day, before the attack on the curtain wall was settled, a separate order was sent to the 4th Division for that purpose; and similarly for the 5th, to attempt to climb the San Vincent bastion. Lord Wellington’s orders are attached at Appendix 2.

  For the garrison had run out of time. They had done all they could. The three breach sites had replacement parapets of fascines, woolpacks and sandbags, with shells, barrels of combustibles, casks filled with tar and straw, powder and loaded grenades, and multiple muskets for each man with cannon double-charged with canister, all lay ready. There was even a large boat anchored in the flooded ditch in front of Trinidad, full of soldiers to enfilade the breach with musketry. General Philippon issued his orders which Lamare paraphrased as ‘to prolong the defence by every obstacle which courage and art could oppose: everywhere to make the most determined resistance and to make the enemy pay with the blood of his best soldiers’.

  He also made one small but ultimately fatal re-allocation of troops to tasks: to hold the new third breach he took a grenadier company of Hessians away from the Castle. All in all, however, General Philippon had created a robust, ingenious defence, and had fought the progress of the British tooth and nail. Yet he had only three days’ powder and Soult lay more marches than that away, and with a battle to fight en route. The garrison appeared lost, unless a successful repulse of the British, imposing heavy casualties, could gain a day or even two while Soult’s approach itself put increasing pressure on the besieging divisions. And the British acknowledged their position, in preparing to attack breaches without first blowing the counter-scarps into the ditch, thus easing the descent into the ditch; the failure to do so gave the garrison added scope for deepening the drop and laying explosive trains. The drop from the counterscarp was now up to eighteen feet, partly flooded, and anyway blind to the approaching attackers, who would naturally seek to form up there. What a place for sixty 14-inch shells, four paces apart, and barrels of powder connected by covered train to the ramparts! What a place for rope entanglements, old carts, fascines, broken boats, deep holes: all in advance of the breaches, covered in crowsfeet, beams studded with nails, doors with long spikes, and at the summit of each breach chevaux de frises formed by Spanish sabres stuck in foot-square timbers and chained down. And behind all that, a second line of trenches, loopholed houses with cannon with canister and massed men with multiple muskets at each stage. As Lamare wrote of their endeavours ‘Heroic resolution! And such as merited better success!’

  Part III – Badajoz Wellington’s Plan of Attack

  We will preface his Lordship’s plans by reminding ourselves of the mood that night of his men. Charles Oman’s Introduction in 1902 to Ensign Grattan’s Adventures praises his treatment of the ‘psychology of the stormers at Badajoz’, saying that nowhere else has he seen it described so convincingly:

  There was a certain something in their bearing that told plainly that they had suffered fatigues, which they did not complain of, and had seen their comrades and officers slain while fighting beside them without repining, but that they smarted under the one, and felt acutely for the other; they smothered both, so long as their minds and bodies were employed; now, however, that they had a momentary licence to think, every fine feeling vanished, and plunder and revenge took place. Their labours, up to this period, although unremitting, had carried on with a cheerfulness that was astonishing, hardly promised the success which they looked for; and the change which the last twenty-four hours had brought in their favour, caused a material alteration in their demeanour; they held the present prospect as the mariner does the disappearance of a heavy cloud after a storm, which discovers to his view the clear horizon. In a word, the capture of Badajoz had long been their idol. Many causes led to this wish on their part; the two previous unsuccessful sieges, and the failure of the attack against St Cristobel in the latter; but above all the well known hostility of its inhabitants to the British army, and perhaps might be added a desire for plunder, which the sacking of Rodrigo had given them a taste for. Badajoz was, therefore, denounced as a place to be made an example of; and most unquestionably no city, Jerusalem excepted, was ever more strictly visited to the letter than was this ill fated.

  These considerations were not, of course, limited to Grattan’s 88th Connaughts; as a further example, hear Sergeant William Lawrence, 40th, who with two friends volunteered for their Forlorn Hope:

  All three of us had been quartered at Badajoz after the battle of Talavera so we knew where the shops were located. Having heard a report that, if we succeeded in taking the place, three hours plunder would be allowed, we arranged to meet at a silversmith’s shop ... [later] I saw some of our men launch a naked priest into the street and flog him down it – they had a grudge against him for the way they had been treated at a convent, when they were in the town previously.

  In the orders setting out his plans, Wellington’s final paragraph urges his commanders ‘to impress upon their men the necessity of their keeping together and formed as a military body after the storm, and during the night’ ostensibly to repel counterattacks, but also with a passing reference to ‘the honour of the Army’. There is no doubt – especially after Rodrigo – that every one of his officers knew their collective honour was all set to be tarnished.

  The Earl’s plan to capture the town was in two parts. One was obvious to all, having been on the menu for the French to read for some days; the other was a matter of pot-luck surprise, designed to cause Philippon to redeploy his companies in the bastions, and disperse or commit his reserve, thus lightening the resistance to the three main attempts. These were, of course, the left and right flanks respectively of the Maria and Trinidad bastions, together with the linking curtain wall. All three rubble slopes were in an area perhaps some 200 yards wide by 100 yards deep (see Napier’s sketch). Perhaps not much more than a football pitch, and into which some 6,500 men were to be decanted in the coming darkness. Clearly the centre breach would not be easy, protected as it was by flanking fire from the others, and set behind a deeper killing zone. It and the two bastion breaches were to be defended by the ten grenadier and light companies from the garrison’s five battalions, with four fusilier companies from the 3rd/103rd Ligne as an immediate reserve, manning the entrenchments in rear. Oman estimates the flank companies totalled some 700 men, the fusiliers another 400 or 500. We do not know if he meant this to be just the number of bayonets, or whether he also included associated gun teams and sapper parties. If the former, it puts an impossibly high average manning figure on the infantry, bearing in mind earlier losses. These (some 600) probably had reduced the companies to around fifty men. A small confirmation is Lamare’s comment that four companies of the 88th Ligne ‘amounted to about two hundred men’.

  These fourteen companies were under the command of Colonel Barbot, whose own 3rd/88th Ligne formed Philippon’s reserve back in the Cathedral Square; the two Hessian battalions under Colonel Maistre held the Castle, the San Roque Lunette, the San Pedro and San Antonio bastions. The 3rd/9th Léger, the 3rd/28th Léger and the 1st/58th Ligne, less their flank companies, manned the other bastions. Allowing fifty bayonets per company, this meant the 9th Léger would be defending San Vincente and San Jose bastions with fewer than 200 men on each – bearing in mind they also had the long run of the connecting curtain wall. Lamare subsequently indicated that San Vincente was allocated just two and a half companies. The 28th Léger would be even more thinly spread, with not only the San Jago and No. 4 Bastions but also two lengths of curta
in; and the 58th Ligne would also have its hands full with No. 5 Bastion, two lengths of wall, and the communications out to Fort Pardaleras. Altogether the French bayonet strength was quite inadequate, and the greater the demands upon it, the weaker would be the response. This consideration would especially apply where defences were less pre-arranged than they were at the breaches. Surprise was all, and Lord Wellington fully intended to stretch his enemy. General Philippon, aware of that, ‘frequently reconnoitred our works ... from the tower of the Cathedral, (it) being very high’.

  But at Trinidad and Maria, there could be no surprise. Only weight of numbers could steamroller a passage, the overwhelming surge of two whole divisions flooding across the glacis, jumping down into the very deep ditch, climbing over and through the obstacles and forcing the breach. Nor could they even reach the glacis with much chance of surprise, since Philippon’s Inundation channelled any approach from the south across the Calamon stream which paralleled the Valverde road, passing the Stone Quarries on the left, with the head of the waters on the right, just hundreds of yards down the slopes from Fort Pandeleras. The approach therefore ended with a right-angle left turn to face up to the glacis. The turn would be made under the garrison’s guns, and to maintain control in the dark Wellington’s plan required the two divisions – Light on the left and the 4th on the right – to move either side of the convenient axis of the Calamon stream. The line of Quarries running parallel to the Valverde road had its northern end perhaps 170 yards from the Maria covered way, and the Light Division was to throw forward a hundred men in advance, to close up on the covered way, in readiness to engage the French on the bastion and the covered way once the main storming parties were discovered, coming from their right. Separate firing and storming parties, to a strength of 500 men for each division (300 stormers, 200 firers), were to form the two advance guards each equipped with a dozen ladders, twelve carpenters with axes, a gunner party of an officer and twenty artillery men, and the Forlorn Hopes to carry hay sacks to drop into the deep ditch (the counterscarp not having been touched). The Light Division’s advanced guard would precede the 4th’s, and all formed bodies in their approach march were to keep as close to the Inundation as they could, i.e. away from the Valverde road. The firing parties on arrival at the glacis would take up firing positions, the hay sacks would be jettisoned to the left and right of the unfinished ravelin for each division, and the Forlorn Hopes and the stormers would descend, the 4th making for Trinidad and the Light turning left for Santa Maria. The firing parties, curiously, were ‘to follow immediately in the rear of their respective storming parties’. Curious since the stormers would then have no overhead suppressive fire onto the breaches and the neighbouring gun embrasures. In this context, Kincaid had an interesting idea, after it was all over:

  The defences on the tops of the breaches ought to have been cleared away by our batteries before the assault commenced. But failing that, I cannot see why a couple of six-pounders (or half a dozen) might not have been run up along with the storming party, to the crest of the glacis. Our battalion took post there, and lay about ten minutes unknown to the enemy, and had a few guns been sent along with us, I am confident that we could have taken them up with equal silence.

  Both Divisions’ main bodies would follow in column of brigades, two British brigades sandwiching the Portuguese, and were initially ordered to concentrate and remain in the Quarries until the breaches had been ascended. Each was to leave 1,000 men behind as reserves. (Lord Wellington on second thoughts allowed that ‘the heads of the columns should be brought as near as they can without being exposed to fire,’ fearing that the Quarries might not be close enough for the main bodies quickly to join the fray.) On achieving the ramparts, both divisions were to send parties outwards, to link up with others and open up the various town gates. Fire support from the fourteen heavy howitzers in No. 12 Battery was to be put onto the enfilading cannon located on the Castle and the San Antonio demi-bastion.

  As to the third breach, in the town wall, Wellington wrote a separate memorandum the next day (6 April) to enlarge on the bald note to his orders of the 5th ‘That General Colville will observe that a part of the advance of the 4th Division must be allotted to storm the new breach in the curtain.’

  That then is the outline for the assault on the San Maria and La Trinidad bastions. Neither division was at full strength: the 4th was that night providing the trench guard, and some of the Light’s riflemen were detached, giving strengths respectively of 3,500 and 3,000 men, or thereabouts.

  Half a mile east of Trinidad, beyond the San Pedro bastion and the San Antonio demi-bastion, the Castle sat hunched above the Rivillas, where it joins the Guadiana river. Its walls varied from eighteen to twenty-four feet in height, but the ditch had been deepened along the rocky foot of the walls, which raised their effective height very considerably. In places the parapets were narrow and defenders could with ease reach out, to ward off ladders. The walls were to be climbed by Picton’s 3rd Division, setting out from the First Parallel near No. 6 Battery, and crossing the Rivillas stream below the broken bridge, taking long ladders, slightly right of the San Antonio demi-bastion. His orders quite specifically directed his escalade to that part of the Castle ‘in rear of the great battery constructed by the enemy to fire on the bastion of La Trinidad ... The attack should be kept clear of the bastion of San Antonio’; that is, the battery being constructed upon San Antonio, the division should keep to its right, as seen from the trenches.

  Picton’s British brigades (commanded by Kempt and Campbell), together with Champalimaud’s Portuguese brigade, were to move off before 10pm, but not to attack before that time, since Lord Wellington wished all his attacks to be simultaneous. The exception to this was the proviso that if the engagement of the 3rd Division by the French was earlier, that was to be the signal for the fourth attack, upon the Lunette San Roque. This outwork would threaten the flanks and rear of Picton’s approach. Four hundred men of the 4th’s covering party under Major James Wilson, 48th, who was commanding in the trenches that night, were to capture the Lunette and blow in the dam in rear which was containing the Inundation. Half his force was to leave the Second Parallel and make for the rear of the Lunette; half from the sap head then to cover the short distance to the covered way’s salient angle, to put musket fire onto the defenders, keeping them occupied and undecided as to where exactly they should concentrate.

  Four further attacks were added to this complex plan: false escalades by Power’s Portuguese brigade on the Tête de Pont and on Fort San Cristobal, across the Guadiana; another false demonstration by the 5th Division’s Portuguese against Fort Pardeleras; and a real escalade by one of Leith’s British brigades of the 5th Division, against the riverside San Vincente bastion or, if easier, the curtain wall round the corner towards the bridge. This was the bastion which was held by just two and a half companies of the 3rd/9th Léger.

  We have now explained Lord Wellington’s plans and, this not being the place to comment upon them, we will press on to the narration of their execution.

  Part IV – Badajoz The Attack 10pm to Midnight, 6 April 1812

  A Lt-Colonel or cold meat in a few hours.

  At half past seven o’clock, the light now failing, the British guns ceased their fire. Philippon’s working parties rushed out again at each breach, to make good the debris and re-arrange the obstacles. By 8pm the attacking regiments had assembled, piled arms and sunk again to rest, preparatory to the various fatigue parties setting off (if not having done so earlier) for the engineer park, to collect ladders, hay sacks, axes etc. It was also the time for confirmatory orders by the divisional generals to their brigade and battalion commanders, and the synchronisation of watches.

  The men, having been earlier disappointed by the previous day’s postponement of the attack, and with the sodden hardships of long days digging mud whilst randomly having their heads blown off, were spoiling for a fight. The prospects of plunder and revenge even fuelled the compe
tition to join the Hopes. Bugler William Green, 95th:

  Our Bugle Major made us cast lots which two of us should go on this momentous errand; the lot fell on me and another lad. One of our buglers who had been on the Forlorn Hope at Ciudad Rodrigo offered the Bugle Major two dollars to let him go in my stead. On my being apprised of it, he came to me, and said ‘West will go on the Forlorn Hope instead of you’. I said ‘I shall go where my duty calls me.’ He threatened to confine me to the guard tent. I went to the adjutant and reported him; the adjutant sent for him, and said ‘So you are in the habit of taking bribes;’ and told him he would take the stripes off his arm if he did the like again! He then asked me if I wished to go? I said ‘Yes, sir.’ He said ‘Very good,’ and dismissed me. Those who composed this Forlorn Hope were free from duty that day, so I went to the river, and had a good bathe; I thought I would have a clean skin whether killed or wounded, for all who go on this errand expect one or the other ... At nine o‘clock at night, we were paraded – it was then dark – and half a pound of bread and a gill [a quarter pint] of rum was served out to each man on parade.’