Salamanca 1812- Wellington’s Year of Victories

by Peter Edwards

  The column halted a few yards from a breast-work surmounted with a stockade and a ‘chevaux de frise’ concealing a guard-house on the covered way, and at this moment a most awful explosion took place, followed by the most tremendous peals of musketry. ‘That is at the breaches,’ was the whisper amongst our soldiers, and their anxiety to be led forward was intense, but their firmness and obedience were equally conspicuous. The moon now appeared. We could hear the French soldiers talking in the guard-house, and their officers were visiting the sentries. The engineer officer who preceded the column, said, ‘now is the time’; the column instantly moved to the face of the gateway. It was only at this moment that the sentry observed us, and fired his alarm-shot, which was followed by musketry. The two companies of Portuguese carrying the scaling-ladders threw them down, and deaf to the voices of their officers, made off. This occurrence did not in the least shake the zeal and steadiness of our men, who occupied immediately the space left, and shouldering the ladders moved on. We could not force the gate open, but the breast-work was instantly crowded, and the impediments cut away sufficiently to allow of two men entering abreast ... The engineer officer was by this time killed. We had no other assistance from that corps, and the loss was most severely felt at this early period of the attack.

  The troops were now fast filling the ditch; they had several ladders, and I shall never forget the momentary disappointment amongst the men when they found that the ladders were too short ... The enemy took advantage of this to annoy us in every way, rolling down beams of wood, fireballs, &c. together with an enfilading fire.

  We observed near us an embrasure unfurnished of artillery, its place being occupied by a gabion filled with earth. A ladder was instantly placed under its mouth, and also one at each side. This allowed three persons to ascend at once, but only one at a time could enter in at the embrasure. The first several attempts were met with instant death. The ladders were even now too short, and it was necessary for one person to assist the other by hoisting him up on the embrasure.

  The walls were after all twenty feet high, with a twelve-foot slope above that; a great many men were swept off the ladders, and a cunette in the ditch six feet deep by the same wide had compressed the light company men prior to the mine’s detonation. Colonel Brooke found a spot further to their left, eventually, where the ladders were just long enough for a practicable escalade.

  We must remember that Philippon had about this time withdrawn two companies of the 9th Léger to reinforce the Castle, leaving San Vincente with a single company plus gunners – well under 100 men. So Walker had an overwhelming advantage, even greater than Picton about this time enjoyed at the Castle – thirty companies against the one? It was therefore indeed a feat of arms for this skeleton defence to wreak such losses on Walker. By the end of the night’s work he had lost over 500 men, although of course many of these would have been laid low subsequently on the ramparts or in the town.

  So the Vincente ramparts were necessarily thinly manned, and the light companies pushed on along them, progressing into and through the first three bastions. The fourth, San Julian, opposite Pardeleras, was, however, a bastion too far, and General Walker near here being wounded, and a perceived bright flash exciting a cry of ‘Mines!’, the panicking invaders reversed their progress. They were helped by a counter attack of 400 men of the 28th Léger under Brigadier Veiland, Philippon’s second in command. Fortunately, Walker had placed Colonel Nugent with the understrength 38th as a reserve on San Vincente, and upon whom Brooke now reformed, and the 38th’s solid volley reversed the situation. Colonel Lamare’s account implies Veiland should not have had to intervene with this counter attack: for the 28th Léger themselves on bastions three and four had ‘Made no [early] movement to succour bastion number one’.

  Brooke’s 4th, under Major John Piper, got down into the town’s streets with a view to reaching the breaches on the far side. With him went Captain Hopkins:

  Some shots were fired from a building in the town, and Colonel Piper was sent with a party to dislodge the enemy, while General Walker, at the head of his brigade, attempted to clear the rampart to the right. The enemy retired from the building on our approach, and Colonel Piper did not return to the ramparts but moved into the body of the town. Could we have divested our minds of the real situation of the town it might have been imagined that the inhabitants were preparing for some grand fete, as all the houses in the streets and squares were brilliantly illuminated, from the top to the first floor, with numerous lamps. This illumination scene was truly remarkable, not a living creature to be seen, but a continual low buzz and whisper about us, and we now and then perceived a small lattice gently open and re-shut, as if more closely to observe a singular scene of a small English party perambulating the town in good order, the bugleman at the head blowing his instrument. Some of our men and officers now fell wounded; at first we did not know where the shots came from, but soon observed they were from the sills of the doors.

  The 4th progressed to the main square – the Place de St John – which had been Philippon’s tactical headquarters. Hopkins again:

  We soon arrived at a large church facing some grand houses, in a sort of square. The party here drew up, and it was at first proposed to take possession of this church, but that idea was abandoned. We made several prisoners leading some mules ladened with loose ball cartridges in large wicker baskets, which they stated they were conveying from the magazines to the breaches. After securing the prisoners, ammunition etc., we moved from the square with the intention of forcing our way upon the ramparts. We went up a small street towards them, but met with such opposition as obliged us to retire with loss. We again found ourselves in the square.

  The Governor now made a last desperate charge with forty or so dragoons against more of the 5th Division in the Place de las Palmas near St Vincente, but failed with heavy losses. Finding himself and General Veiland and about four dozen men cut off from the breaches, he crossed the nearby bridge to the Tête de Pont and Fort San Cristobal. It was one o’clock in the morning. He had sent Captain De Grasse to bring back the troops from the breaches, but the streets were blocked by the incoming British tide. It was the end. Lamare:

  The Governor could no longer communicate with his troops. Doubt and dismay took possession of their minds; they fled about the streets and fired in disorder. Cries of Victory! and frightful groans were heard; confusion was at its height ... The brave men who defended the breaches, receiving no orders, ceased to make further resistance, broke their arms and surrendered.

  Hearing of the 5th’s success, Lord Wellington now sent the Light and 4th Divisions forward once more into the breaches. George Simmons:

  I was lying upon the grass, having the most gloomy thoughts of the termination of this sad affair, when a staff officer rode up and said ‘Lord Wellington orders the Light Division to return immediately and attack the breaches.’ We move back to this bloody work as if nothing had happened. Never were braver men congregated together for such a purpose. We entered the ditches, and past over the bodies of our brave fellows who had fallen, and dashed forward to the breaches. Only a few random shots were fired, and we entered without opposition. Firing was now going on in several parts of the town and we were not long in chiming in with the rest of them.

  Ned Costello (hardly conscious, in the ditch):

  I heard a cheering ... I now attempted to rise but, from a wound which I had received, but at what time I know not, found myself unable to stand. A musket ball had passed through the lower part of my right leg – two others had perforated my cap. At the moment this discovery I saw two or three men moving towards me, who I was glad to find belonged to the Rifles. One of them, named O’Brien, of the same company as myself, immediately exclaimed ‘What! Is that you, Ned? – We thought all you ladder men were done for.’ He then assisted me to rise.

  Kincaid:

  The enemy were abandoning the breaches, and we were immediately all ordered forward to take possession of them.
On our arrival we found them entirely evacuated, and had not occasion to fire another shot, but we found the utmost difficulty and even danger, in getting in in the dark, even without opposition. As soon as we succeeded in establishing our battalion inside, we sent pickets into the different streets and lanes leading from the breach and kept the remainder in hand until day should throw some light on our situation.

  Which gives a cosy view, with no hint that plunder, rioting and worse were breaking out elsewhere, as Rifleman Costello, now inside the town with a rifle as a crutch, indicates more robustly:

  We now looked round for a house where we could obtain refreshment, and if truth must be told, a little money, for wounded though I was, I had made up my mind to gain by our victory. At the first house we knocked at, no notice was taken of the summons, so we fired a rifle ball at the keyhole, our usual method of forcing locks. It sent the door flying open. As soon as we entered the house, we found a young Spanish woman crying bitterly and praying for mercy. She said she was the wife of a French officer. When O’Brien demanded refreshment, she said there was nothing in the house but her poor self. However, she produced some spirits and chocolate, and being very hungry and faint I partook of them with much relish. But the house looked poor, so we soon quitted it in quest of a better and went in to the direction of the market place, O’Brien and the Frenchman supporting me.

  It was a dark night, and confusion and uproar prevailed in the town. The shouts and oaths of drunken soldiers in quest of liquor, reports of firearms, the crashing in of doors, and the appalling shrieks of hapless women, made you think you were in the regions of the damned.

  Robert Blakeney, 28th, also remembered the noise:

  the howling of the dogs, the crowing of cocks, the penetrating cackle of geese, the mournful bleating of sheep, the furious bellowing of wounded oxen maddened by being continuously goaded and shot at and ferociously charging through the streets, were mixed with accompaniments loudly trumpeted forth by donkeys and mules, and always by the deep and hollow baying of the large Spanish half-wolves, half-bloodhounds which guarded the whole. Add to this the shrill screaming of affrighted children, the piercing shrieks of frantic women, the groans of the wounded, the savage and discordant yells of drunkards firing at anything and in all directions, and the continuous roll of musketry kept up in error on the shattered gateway; and you may imagine an uproar such as one would think could issue only from the regions of Pluto; and this din was maintained throughout the night.

  For the town had at last been captured, and would now pay the price for earlier perceived unfriendliness, and the rain and mud, shot, shell, ball and fire, mines, Inundation, too-short ladders, broken ladders, chevaux de frises and all similar torments; all of which were clearly the fault of those inside the walls, whether in uniform or not. A general opinion was that an implicit licence had been granted; one indeed applicable to all, including camp followers:

  A couple of hundred women (wives) from the camp poured into the place, when it was barely taken, to have their share of the plunder. They were, if possible, worse than the men. Gracious God! Such tigresses in the shape of women! I sickened when I saw them coolly step over the dying, indifferent to their cries for water, and deliberately search the pockets of the dead for money, or even divest them of their bloody coats. (Lieutenant von Hodenberg, KGL).

  Part VI – Badajoz The Sacking, 7-9 April

  Now commenced that Wild and Desperate Wickedness,

  Which tarnished the Lustre of the Soldier’s Heroism.

  It was the drink they wanted, all 10,000 men. Many had arranged to meet up at wine shops they knew from earlier days – or at silversmiths, the early birds catching the worms. The men knew they would be allowed their heads – the 45th were specifically given two hours leave to go ‘wherever we pleased’, the 40th ‘three hours’ plunder would be allowed’. They knew also that the narrow medieval alleyways would be no place for formed companies, moved in ranks, officers and sergeants in their due places; so the customary hierarchies and aids to discipline were to be absent and, once the alcohol got to work, heaven help those who would seek to re-impose them.

  Contrary to this generality, however, were some who were kept to their duties, at least initially and despite their human inclinations. Johnny Kincaid’s battalion, the 1st/95th Rifles, having returned to the breach after the midnight pause:

  Once established within the walls we felt satisfied that the town was ours. Profiting by his experience at Ciudad, our commandant (Colonel Cameron) took the necessary measure to keep his battalion together so long as the safety of the place could in any way be compromised. Knowing the barbarous licence which soldiers employed in that desperate service claim, and which they will not be denied, he addressed them, and promised that they should have the same indulgence as others, and that he should not insist upon keeping them together longer than was absolutely necessary; but he assured them that if any man quitted the ranks until he gave permission, he would cause him to be put to death on the spot. That had the desired effect until between 9 and 10 o‘clock in the morning, when, seeing that the whole of the late garrison had been secured and marched off to Elvas, he again addressed the battalion ... ‘Now my men, you may fall out and enjoy yourselves for the remainder of the day, but I shall expect to see you all in camp at the usual roll-call in the evening.’

  Colonel Cameron was to be disappointed at roll-call, but he had demonstrated a remarkable grip on his battalion.

  Inside, Grattan’s Irishmen would not be so patient:

  In the first burst, all the wine and spirit stores were ransacked from top to bottom: and it required just a short time for the men to get into that fearful state that was alike dangerous to all officers and soldiers, or the inhabitants of the city. Casks of the choicest wines and brandy were dragged into the streets, and when the men had drunk as much as they fancied, the heads of the vessels were stove in, or the casks otherwise so broken that the liquor ran about in streams.

  Sergeant Joe Donaldson agreed the wine and spirit stores were top priority:

  The greatest number first sought the spirit stores, where having drunk an inordinate quantity, they were prepared for every sort of mischief. At one large vault in the centre of town, to which a flight of steps led, they had staved in the head of the casks and were running with their hat-caps full of it, and so much was spilt here, that some, it was said, were actually drowned in it.

  The drownings did indeed take place, in the vault of the Cathedral, as told by the anonymous senior officer quoted in Maxwell’s Sketches:

  On entering the cathedral, I saw three British soldiers literally drowned in brandy. A spacious vault had been converted into a spirit depot for the use of the garrison. The casks had been pierced with musket-balls, and their contents escaping, had formed a pool of some depth. These men becoming intoxicated had fallen head foremost into the liquor, the position in which I found them, and were suffocated.

  According to A Short History of Badajoz published the following year, ‘One of the chapels (of the Cathedral) was filled up to the roof with biscuit, and a vault contained so great a quantity of brandy, in casks, which were staved in, that three or four of our soldiers were actually drowned in spirit.’ The corpses were observed three days after the assault, 9 April, and are thus a reminder that widespread inebriation much delayed collection of bodies generally, and the succour of the wounded in particular. William Surtees, 3rd/95th, came upon his friend Lieutenant Arthur Cary, apparently dead in the ditch:

  He was shot through the head, and I doubt not received his death-wound on the ladder, from which in all probability he fell. He was stripped completely naked, save a flannel waistcoat which he wore next to his skin. I had him taken up and placed upon a shutter (he still breathed a little, though quite insensible) and carried him to the camp. A sergeant and some men, whom we had pressed to carry him, were so drunk that they let him fall from off their shoulders, and his body fell with great force to the ground. I shuddered, but poor Car
y, I believe, was past all feeling, or the fall would have greatly injured him. We laid him in his tent, but it was not long ere my kind, esteemed, and lamented friend breathed his last.

  The overwhelming volume of casualties combined with the drunken manpower available, created an immense medical problem, inevitably slow to resolve. Lieutenant MacCarthy, 50th, shot before midnight on the 6th, was still in the ditch late on the 8th when

  I prevailed on an officer to allow his men to convey me to my tent; but they were unwilling, and though obliged to carry me, jostled and nearly rolled me out of the bier [blanket] in going over the milldam; they however laid me down on my left side at the end of the Second Parallel, leaving the bier under me, and joined the sports in the Town.

  It is not as if MacCarthy was in some quiet spot, hidden away for those two long days, for ‘the dead and wounded were as close as a regiment laying down in repose’.

  Some early efforts were, of course, made to get the wounded out, and William Surtees tells us how he and Captain William Percival did their best:

  and now he and I, hearing the heart-piercing and affecting groans which arose from the numbers of wounded still lying in the ditch, set to work to get as many of these poor fellows removed as was in our power. This we found a most arduous and difficult undertaking, as we could not do it without the aid of a considerable number of men; and it was a work of danger to attempt to force the now lawless soldiers to obey, and stop with us till this work of necessity and humanity was accomplished.

  All thought of what they owed their wounded comrades, and of the probability that ere long a similar fate might be their own, was swallowed up in their abominable rage for drink and plunder; however, by perseverance, and occasionally using his stick, my commandant at length compelled a few fellows to lend their assistance in removing what we could into the town. But this was a most heart-rending duty, for, from the innumerable cries of – ‘Oh! for God’s sake, come and remove me!’ it was difficult to select the most proper objects for such care. Those who appeared likely to die, of course, it would have been but cruelty to put them to the pain of a removal and many who, from the nature of their wounds, required great care and attention in carrying them, the half-drunken brutes whom we were forced to employ exceedingly tortured and injured; nay, in carrying one man out of the ditch they very frequently kicked or trod upon several others, whom to touch was like death to them, and which produced the most agonising cries imaginable.