Wellington’s plan of assault on the hornwork was put together that very day of arrival, 19 September, and successfully executed that night. It bore various fraternal similarities to the previous assaults on both the Renault Redoubt and Fort Picurina, including being made after last light and without preliminary artillery programmes. It was, however, a costly success, and one has to note again the Portuguese element, from Pack’s brigade – not for the last time – were a little shy. What happened was that soon after 8pm, two ladder parties supplied by the 1st/42nd (Black Watch) and led by Lieutenant Pitts crept to the two demi-bastions which formed the ends of the hornwork’s north face. The Black Watch also provided two forlorn hopes. They were followed by two Portuguese storming parties, whilst a Black Watch firing party of 150 men should have advanced to the edge of the ditch, to keep French heads down while the storm proceeded. John Mills, Coldstream, wrote ‘The Portuguese who thought to raise their spirits by it, began to shout at 200 yards distance and thereby drew the enemy’s fire upon them.’ In the moonlight, the Highlanders were then spotted also, and engaged with a heavy fire – it is said at 150 yards – from where the Highlanders then pointlessly began firing their own muskets. They advanced firing, to the ditch, where they stayed under fire for a quarter of an hour. The ladders up against both demi-bastions were found to be rather short, but the forlorn hopes managed the climb, albeit without support, for neither Portuguese storming party could be availed upon to enter the ditch, let alone to mount. They again remained under fire for some minutes before pulling back, along with the 42nd. What saved the day was a force led by Major Somers Cocks, now 79th, comprising the three light companies of the 1st/42nd (Black Watch), 1st/24th (Warwicks) and 1st/79th (Camerons). His role was to prevent reinforcements coming from the castle and to make a false attack on the gorge – and convert it for real if he could. He took them round the horn-work, and clambered over the seven-foot palisades at the rear, overcoming the surprisingly light opposition. Opening the gateway, he got inside with about 140 men, and his appearance caused a mass exodus by the garrison, assisted by a bayonet charge which, Tomkinson says, accounted for fifty Frenchmen ‘and making as many more as prisoners.’ John Jones says the French ‘literally ran over the party left to oppose them (at the gorge gate) and mostly escaped into the Castle.’ The French garrison was a battalion of the 34th, some 500 strong. Their losses were about a third: six officers and 137 men killed and wounded, of whom sixty were captured – about two companies worth. British losses were however six officers and sixty-five men killed and fifteen officers and 334 men wounded, with the Black Watch accounting for 204 of the losses, the Portuguese the remainder. In return for this heavy bill Wellington obtained seven field guns, and the necessary first key to unlock Burgos Castle; he also obtained widespread grumbling as to the part not played by the Portuguese, and which was to resurface and get worse almost immediately.
Over the next three days a battery position for five guns was constructed next to the hornwork, two 18-pounders and three howitzers being put in on the night of the 22nd. At midnight an attempted escalade was made on the outer wall, on the north-western slopes beneath the white house. Here the wall ran straight for 200 yards, was about twenty-four feet high and had a shallow ditch. A covered approach from the suburb of San Pedro, next to the river, was provided by a sunken lane. It lay in dead ground to the garrison’s guns and view, and led to within sixty paces of the wall. The result of the escalade was a disaster, another 158 all ranks killed and wounded, for a dozen or so French. Wellington blamed the officer he appointed and personally briefed, but as we shall see, that was only fair to a degree: some of his own decisions were obviously questionable. Four months later, in a letter to Liverpool, he wrote:
They did not take the line because Major Laurie, the field officer who commanded, did that which is too common in our army. He paid no attention to his orders, notwithstanding the pains I took in writing them; and in reading and explaining them to him twice over. He made none of the dispositions ordered; and instead of regulating the attack as he ought, he rushed on as if he had been the leader of a forlorn hope, and fell, together with many of those who went with him. He had my instructions in his pocket; and as the French got possession of his body, and were made acquainted with the plan, the attack could never be repeated. When he fell, nobody having received orders what to do, nobody could give any to the troops. I was in the trenches, however, and ordered them to withdraw. Our time and ammunition were then expended, and our guns destroyed in taking this line; than which at former sieges we had taken many stronger by assault.
The plan was for a 200-strong storming party taken from volunteers out of the entire 1st Division, with five ladders, should attempt the wall by coup-de-main after a short run from the concealed lane, covered by a firing party, also 200 strong, who were to line up along the bank above the lane. The wall to be assaulted had a thick earthen parapet, and their fire thus sweeping the parapet, should allow the storm to proceed unhindered. The range was said by Jones to be fifty yards.
The storming party was divided into ten groups of an officer and twenty men. Five ladders were to be placed, for the sole use of the first group to go forward, that is four men to shin up each ladder. On their reaching the parapet, another group would advance to the ladders, and so on. When all twenty groups had climbed, the firing party was then to become a working party, tasked with demolishing the wall sufficiently to make a ramp. As a diversion, the 9th Caçadores from the 6th Division were to attempt the wall 200 yards farther along, on the south-western corner, where Dubreton had positioned a small guard. Unfortunately, the Portuguese failed to reach even the ditch, let alone the wall, being deterred by the guards’ musketry; the firing party failed to line the bank, remaining with the stormers on the sunken lane. Gallant attempts were made by the forlorn hope to mount the five ladders successfully placed (the French counted forty dead bodies in the ditch the next day) but it is clear chaos reigned supreme. A flavour of this is contained in John Mills’ letter home the next day:
A party of 130 of the Brigade of Guards led the way with the ladders. The enemy opened a tremendous fire, on which the Germans filed off to the right and the Scotch followed them. Our men got the ladders up with some difficulty under a heavy fire from the top of the wall, but were unable to get to the top. Hall of the 3rd Regiment [3rd Foot Guards] who mounted first was knocked down. Frazer tried and was shot in the knee. During the whole of this time they kept up a constant fire from the top of the wall and threw down bags of gunpowder and large stones. At last, having been twenty-five minutes in the ditch and not seeing anything of the other parties they retired having lost half their numbers in killed and wounded. Three officers were wounded. The Portuguese failed in their attempts. Thus ended the attack which was almost madness to attempt.
Apparently the 400 volunteers had been moved along the lane from San Pedro in a column of fours, and in the process become strung out. Major Laurie of the 79th having issued few if any clear orders then being fatally hit, the matter was at a stand. The entire column seems to have left the cover of the lane while standing around waiting for someone to tell them what to do. Jones says ‘the whole remained for above a quarter of an hour under the destructive efforts of the garrison.’ The Peer said it was he who then called them back, leaving nearly half their number dead or lying wounded under the wall.
Laurie aside, the mixing of volunteers from various regiments was not a good idea for a night operation, nor the successive waves of just twenty men and five ladders rather than a mass assault with multiple ladders, thereby stretching the defences. The accounts mention the parapet being stood upon to hurl 41b shot and ‘Much burning composition which caused many of the men’s pouches to explode’ and that was precisely why the firing party had been ordered to line the bank. In short, the sunken lane was an asset utterly wasted through appalling organisation and execution on the part of Laurie, with an overall plan by his General which was overly optimistic: the equiva
lent of two strong infantry companies, with five ladders, was hardly a serious approach.
His Lordship now changed tactics, having wasted three days. Unfortunately his remaining means were also by nature slow. A further week passed in preparation: the digging of a tunnel to lay an explosive mine under the walls. A gallery three feet wide and four feet high was commenced at the end of a sap pushed out from the hollow lane, the wall being a cricket pitch away. The workmen had to make do with the large English pickaxes available – and of course as infantrymen they largely learned as they went along. The mine would be placed near to the earlier escalade, which had failed. A second gallery was commenced for another mine, nearer to the San Pedro suburb. At midday on 29 September the miners reported that they had reached large blocks of masonry. A chamber was hollowed out and stocked with 1,090 pounds of powder. It was decided to attack at midnight.
During the previous week, whilst the tunnels had been slowly driven forwards, a serious of saps and approaches zigzagged between the hornwork and San Pedro, allowing musketry firing trenches, and a second battery (in the gorge) to be positioned. The garrison’s guns proved lethal at such short range, so too their musketry, and in places the tossing of shells and hand grenades, which as Jones described ‘being thrown over the parapet at a high angle from small distance of 20 or 25 yards, had much the appearance in descending of cricket balls.’ The trenches necessarily were deep and lined above by gabions: nonetheless the plunging fire from the walls made movement vulnerable, with several marksmen making a name for themselves. There was also great danger from fused shells being rolled down the slopes or, a variant for the trenches beneath the hornwork, shells which overshot and pitched above the trench would roll back down into it.
When the mine went up at midnight, under cover of a firing party, the stormers closed on the wall and the forlorn hope sent ahead a sergeant and three men. They found the facing stones brought down, but with the earth rampart behind largely still standing. They managed to reach the top and ‘were some minutes on the top of the parapet before the garrison recovered from their surprise’ (Jones). Whereupon they were forced down at the point of the bayonet. The main body of the hope, with no engineer officer to guide them, then went too far right, found no damaged wall and decided the mine had failed. The report that the wall was intact saw the whole party withdraw back to the trenches. By the time the sergeant had had his say, showing bruises and bayonet wounds to prove his point, it was too late to go back: the garrison had formed a parapet behind the breach, which now bristled with obstacles.
Wellington’s loss this time was only twenty-nine killed and wounded. The loss to morale generally, however, was more serious. To the generals, ten days effort went unrewarded, and frustrating wider, more important matters. For the junior officers and the men, ten days of hard physical work and daily danger had now three times seen plans not work, either totally or in part. The lack of proper artillery and trained engineers was obvious to the thickest skull, and would point to inadequate planning somewhere. Yet blaming the staff could not hide the undoubted sense that in several instances – not all involving the poor Portuguese – attacks had not been pressed home robustly, nor opportunities seized. It was all becoming rather disheartening.
The next plan was more of the same, plus an artillery aspect. The second gallery was progressing slowly, but should be ready to blow in a few days. Wellington decided to re-position his three 18-pounders very close to the wall of the first mine, and batter it and the new parapet into a practicable breach, thus providing two entry points. Battery No. 3 was prepared just in front of the hollow lane, at sixty-five yards range; but the French artillery reacted with great and immediate violence. Before a single ball was fired at the wall, the battery position was in ruins, with two guns knocked over, one with a trunnion blasted off, and the third hit eleven times and with a split muzzle. (The three guns were subsequently christened ‘Thunder’, ‘Lightning’ and ‘Nelson’ — the one with only one trunnion.) Nothing daunted, a better protected site nearby was prepared, but was again to become untenable to very accurate plunging fire and the guns, now with a third change of position, were sent back to their original battery, next to the hornwork. That night, the working parties, with the exception of the Guards, shirked their tasks, choosing with their officers’ connivance to shelter from the appalling weather. This shirking was not the first, and was a measure of the general loss of morale. However, two of the guns were reported ready on 4 October, as was the mine. About 9am the pitiful battery of two repaired 18-pounders and three howitzers opened fire, and by 4pm the breach was much improved, being held practicable for a width of about twenty yards. The mine had 1,080 pounds of powder, and was fired at 5pm. It was to be a daylight attack by the 2nd/24th on both breaches, five companies or half of the battalion on each and, the mine working splendidly, both were instantly carried. John Mills, Coldstream, watched near the horn-work with a crowd of spectators:
The troops rushed forward from the place where they were concealed. A Grenadier officer of the 24th led that regiment in the most gallant style. He was first on to the breach but when near the top appeared to find great difficulty in getting up, the ground slipping from under his feet. Just at this moment about ten Frenchmen appeared; they seemed quite confounded and not to know what was going on. Two or three ran to the old breach, one fired close to the officer but missed him, the men then peered over and the French ran off as fast as they could into the fort. The 24th advanced and hid themselves behind a pile of shot from whence they commenced firing. Thus far the French seemed taken quite unawares. The explosion of the mine and the storming were so instantaneous that they had not time to do anything before the men were in and then it was too late.
The 24th’s attack was well planned and controlled, and executed robustly and at speed – a proper justification for giving the job not to a mixture of units but to one battalion. The 24th lost just sixty-eight men killed and wounded, the supporting work parties about 120. The garrison lost sixty-nine. So Wellington was at last within the outer or third wall. The 24th then faced a palisaded ditch, and the day was spent sapping forwards – sufficiently to provoke General Dubreton to launch a 300-strong sortie at midnight. It overran the working parties (the two sides were but another cricket pitch apart), and reached the breach (the one the artillery had improved); there the protective gabions were overthrown, the trenches back-filled and the tools taken. They inflicted 150 casualties and withdrew when counter-attacked, no doubt very pleased with themselves. Several more days passed in desperate close work, which both sides’ great-great-grandsons would have recognised in later trench warfare, including the atrocious rains, the mud and the floods. Duckboards were almost certainly invented in Burgos in 1812.
Four days later, a second and bigger sortie of 400 men erupted at 3am on 8 October. The working parties that day were Pack’s Portuguese, with the 1st Division’s Germans as their covering parties. Both were entirely surprised and ejected; the works again were levelled and tools taken, at the laughable cost of thirty-three casualties to the French. Wellington suffered 184 losses, mostly KGL and the counter-attack saw its leader, Major Somers Cocks, that most valuable soldier, shot and killed. He was clearly a man thought to be cut out for great things, whose many friends rated his personal qualities rather as was Nelson by his frigate captains, while it is certain his sad death touched Wellington himself profoundly. The death of Somers Cocks was certainly not the last at Burgos Castle, but in a melancholy way it marked the effective end of the siege. All ammunition had to be rationed, French cannonballs had to be picked up and re-used, heavy naval guns were belatedly sent for from Santander, and more powder barrels – even red hot shot was tried – but all to no avail. Ten days later the guns were still firing, and another escalade was attempted on the second line, there was another mine, another bloody repulse with the dead this time Germans and guardsmen. John Mills of the Coldstream described the attack:
At three o‘clock it was communicated
to us that the place was to be stormed at 4 o’clock. The signal was the explosion of the mine, on which a flag was to be held up on the hill. The mine exploded – the explosion was attended with so little noise that though we were anxiously expecting it, we could hear no noise. The earth shook a little, we looked to the hill and saw the flag. The 300 Germans stormed the breach and got well up it. They then attempted the third line, by a place in the wall which was broken down. It ended with their being beat out of the whole with the loss of 7 officers and a great many men. Our party was to escalade the wall in front. Burgess ran forward with 30 men, Walpole and myself followed with fifty each and ladders. Burgess got up without much difficulty, Walpole and myself followed. The place we stood on was a ledge in the wall about three feet from the top. A most tremendous fire opened upon us from every part which took us in front and rear. They poured down fresh men and ours kept falling down into the ditch, dragging and knocking down others. We were so close that they fairly put their muskets into our face, and we pulled one of their men through an embrasure. Burgess was killed and Walpole severely wounded. We had hardly any men left on the top and at last we gave way. How we got over the palisades I know not. They increased their fire as we retreated, and we came off with the loss of more than half our party and all the badly wounded were left in the ditch. Burgess behaved nobly – he was the first up the ladder and waved his hat on the top. I found him lying there wounded. He begged me to get my men up and in the act of speaking a stone hit him, he fell on the ledge and was shot dead. The time we were on the wall was not more than six minutes. The fire was tremendous, shot, shells, grape, musketry, large stones, hand grenades and every missile weapon was used against us.
Salamanca 1812- Wellington’s Year of Victories Page 44
