Victoria’s Scottish Lion

by Greenwood, Adrian; Haythornthwaite, Philip;

  The Royal Scots started to withdraw, joined by the 38th Foot, who had turned back from the second breach further along the wall. Getting men out of the narrow trenches had proved so difficult that three companies of the 9th were only now emerging, in time to run straight into the retreating Royals and plunge both battalions into confusion. Colonel Cameron was irate. ‘Colonel Greville joined me there, and united his best efforts to mine to induce the Royals to return to their duty’, he wrote, ‘but we might as well have addressed ourselves to the horses … The forward officer and Staff all this while did not stir a leg out of the parallel!!’ ‘Seeing they would not return to their duty’, Cameron explained, ‘I endeavoured to pass with the 9th by the right, but the pressure from the front was so great, that I was immediately obliged to give it up.’84 The French fire intensified as the tide rose steadily. The general order to fall back rang out.

  With the breach under heavy French fire, the injured were left behind. Lieutenant Jones,* wounded and unable to walk, could see enemy grenadiers emerging. ‘Oh, they are murdering us all!’ exclaimed one soldier, as they started finishing off the injured. Jones watched as a grenadier approached him, cutlass raised for the coup de grâce, but, at the last moment, a French sergeant stopped him in the act. ‘Oh, mon Colonel, êtes vous blessé’, he exclaimed. Jones’s elaborate blue engineer’s uniform had saved his life. He had been mistaken for a field officer and spared.85

  Campbell was even luckier. Lying helpless at the foot of the breach, he had been rescued by Archimbeau’s men as they pulled back, and carried to his tent in the rear. Here he had to undergo an ordeal quite as daunting as battle: nineteenth-century surgery. In 1813 the prospects for a soldier with severe injuries were poor, especially when, as in Campbell’s case, those injuries were to body parts that could not be amputated. However, at least in the 9th Foot the prognosis was better than most. Throughout the Peninsular War the regiment lost remarkably few officers to wounds. Maybe it was because they employed more surgeons than average, maybe those surgeons were unusually skilled or perhaps they were just plain lucky, but for whatever reason, Campbell had a statistically higher chance of recovery in the 9th, especially at San Sebastian. ‘This climate is wonderfully healthy’, explained Gomm. ‘All our wounded recover faster here than they have been known to do elsewhere.’86

  San Sebastian was Campbell’s sole combat defeat. Over his fifty-five year career he suffered a few draws, but never again withdrew from the field beaten. Campbell believed the reason for the failure of the assault lay in the decision to attack in darkness, coupled with the inability to mass the men ‘in one big honest lump’, as he put it. The mechanistic drilling of the troops, so effective in pitched battles in the open, had fallen to pieces in broken terrain. Whatever the reason behind it, the drubbing the British received on 25 July only enhanced Campbell’s reputation. He gained his second mention in despatches in just over a week, and had ninepence a day docked from his pay while hors de combat. Not for the last time, the sheer number of Colin Campbells* confused matters. ‘There is one thing I am sorry to see in the English Newspapers about a Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell, who is said to have behaved gallantly’, wrote Surgeon Dent to his cousin, ‘whereas there is no such Man here, and the praise bestowed on him is intended for a Lieutenant Colin Campbell of our regiment, who led the forlorn hope and was wounded in the breach.’87

  Of the 2,000 troops who assaulted San Sebastian that day, 425 were killed, wounded or taken prisoner.88 Dishonour was heaped on dishonour when, two days later, the French launched a sortie and took a further 200 allied soldiers prisoner. ‘Instead of gaining laurels we sink deeper and deeper into disgrace every day’, complained Le Mesurier.89 Wellington’s response was to order a new attack.He called for 750 volunteers to ‘show the 5th Division how to mount a breach’. It was to be, in essence, a reworking of 25 July, though in daylight this time, with more men, and an even heavier bombardment beforehand to improve the odds. Graham’s guns had been fired until they were worn out but new ordnance arrived from England with plentiful ammunition and a company of sappers. It took time to deploy, but on 22 August the barrage began anew with seventy-three guns trained on San Sebastian.

  Nine days later, the second infantry assault was launched. With extra guns, men and trenches, and troops able to see where they were going this time, more soldiers made it to the top, only to find an even greater drop down to the path behind. During the five-week intermission the French had filled the space with stakes, bits of furniture, railings, anything they could find that might make a soldier think twice before jumping. Ahead lay the old enemy in high dudgeon, behind the wrath of Wellington and national disgrace. Hunkering down in front of the breach seemed much the safest course, and soon the ground was thick with redcoats.

  The allies threw everything they had into the fight, some 6,200 men,* but still the French did not weaken. As before, British troops massed in front of the breach, seemingly unable to manage the final few yards. Graham had no reserve troops left and the tide was on the rise, threatening to cut off his men. But then came a fierce, hot blast and a mighty thunderclap. ‘French soldiers near the spot were blown in the air, and fell singed and blackened in all directions.’90 A huge enemy magazine, packed with bombs and musket cartridges, had exploded. For a few seconds there was silence while the men lay insensible, dazed by the force of the discharge.91 It was the British who recovered first and, veiled by the smoke, stormed the breach. The battle had already lasted five hours but the allies conquered their weariness, and started brawling and bayoneting their way through the streets. With the town overrun, the garrison retreated into the castle (see Plate 6).

  ‘The whole town is ours’, wrote Colonel Frazer of the Royal Artillery, ‘and will very soon be nobody’s.’ Convention dictated that while the British did not pillage the countryside like the barbarian French, a town taken by storm was fair game. That said, it was supposed to be plundered systematically by prize agents, but since two-thirds of the officers had been killed or wounded there was little hope of maintaining order in the chaos. Within hours everything of value had been pocketed, smashed or set on fire. The looting only stopped when there was nothing left to steal, defile or desecrate. Soon the town was an inferno, thereby neatly destroying the evidence. Graham was unfazed: ‘I am quite sure that if Dover were in the hands of the French, and were taken by storm by a British army, the cellars and shops of the inhabitants would suffer as those of San Sebastian did.’92

  Mount Orgullo remained with the enemy. ‘The French still hold the castle,’ wrote Gomm, ‘but they hold it like people that are anxious for an opportunity of surrendering with a good grace … there is little acharnement left among them.’93 After repeated cannonades, on 8 September they raised the white flag.

  It had taken over 70,000 rounds of shot and shell to take San Sebastian.94 The British captured ninety-three guns, most so dilapidated that they were useless. It was victory, but victory tempered by the knowledge that, but for one lucky explosion, the result might have been very different. It was hard to take pride in a town won, in William Napier’s words, ‘by accident’.

  Campbell having sat out the second assault on 31 August, word reached him in early October that Wellington had a new offensive in the offing. Across Europe the emperor’s armies were in retreat. Bonaparte’s genius for battle seemed to have deserted him. It was time to start fighting Napoleon on his home turf. The Duc de Berri had already promised the allies 20,000 Royalist troops once they were on French soil. News that Austria too had joined forces with the allies convinced Wellington that the tide of events was with him. His target was the foothills of the Pyrenees, beyond the estuary of the River Bidassoa. ‘The heights on the right bank of the Bidassoa command such a view over us that we must have them,’ Wellington told Graham, ‘and the sooner the better.’95

  Two months had passed and Campbell was still waiting for his captaincy. Wellington had publicly laid the blame for the failure on 25 July on the men at the brea
ch. It was hard to condemn an assault and at the same time promote the man who’d been at the centre of it. Campbell needed a way of reminding him of his talents. So, with another wounded officer, he put on his uniform, strapped his sword to his side and headed for Wellington’s army massing 10 miles up the coast.

  The Bidassoa wound its lazy way down from the Pyrenees through a fertile valley of fruit trees and apple orchards, before widening as it reached the sea a few miles up the coast from San Sebastian. Soult realised its strategic importance and had fortified the French lines on the east bank along a 23-mile front. In his mind the strip nearest the coast, beside the estuary, would be the hardest to cross, so he ordered Reille to leave just one division there. Reille’s other division was stationed 5 miles behind the French lines at Boyer, as a reserve. Soult had an additional 8,000 men about 12 miles from the estuary, ready to deploy in support.

  The 5th Division, including the 1/9th, were camped west of the Bidassoa, near Oyarzum. To get there Campbell cadged lifts on commissariat carts. He reached his colleagues on 6 October. The 1/9th were about to move off. Wellington’s big push was scheduled for the following morning. Discharging himself from his sickbed without permission invited a court martial, but Colonel Cameron limited the punishment to the lightest of sanctions, a severe reprimand, before putting Campbell back in command of the light company which, once again, would lead the battalion’s assault.

  Wellington planned to launch into his enemy along a 4-mile front, leading inland from the sea, precisely where Soult least expected it. Wellington had gleaned from the locals that at Irun and Fuenterabia the river was fordable at low tide. It was here the British would cross. That night Campbell led his company the short distance from their camp towards Fuenterabia, the noise of the marching column helpfully muffled by a thunderstorm. By the time they reached their destination, the rain had eased and the night became sultry and close. Except for a few casinos kept open for the troops, Fuenterabia had been abandoned.96 Campbell’s company bivouacked in the deserted buildings to keep their arrival a secret from the French on the bank opposite. They had left their tents standing at Oyarzum for the same reason.97

  Campbell was to cross the estuary and then swing right to threaten the flank of the enemy opposing the British soldiers crossing at Irun. In the small hours he led his men down to a ditch next to the river, obscured by a tall turf bank. At 7 a.m. a bugle from the steeple at Fuenterabia sounded the advance and the 1/9th started forward at the head of the right-hand column under Colonel Greville. Major-General Robinson’s brigade took the left, with the Portuguese in the centre. In front of his light company, at the front of the 9th, Campbell reached the sands first and waded into the water. The tide was powerful, and the muddy bottom made it slow going. It was now that his men were at their most vulnerable. Reloading a musket in 3ft of water was nigh on impossible and if a soldier got his musket or cartouche of cartridges wet he would be unable to fire it at all. Further upstream Campbell could hear distant gunfire as the engagement at Irun began, but opposite Fuenterabia the French remained silent.

  Campbell reached the far shore without incident but, as his men were forming up, the enemy let fly with musket and gun.98 Though short on troops, the French had the advantage of higher ground. Campbell’s first obstacle was Hendaye, ‘a miserable and nearly ruined village’, according to one Guards officer, ‘deserted before by all but a few fishermen’.99 Its handful of enemy soldiers was put to flight by a charge from the 9th. As the battalion made its way up the Café Republicain ridge, the 9th met more determined resistance from the French 3rd and 17th regiments but the enemy here too was forced back, leaving the way clear to the heights of Croix des Bouquets. On this ridge the French were more firmly entrenched and fortified with artillery. Reille knew that if he could dig his heels in and wait for his reserve troops from Boyer, he might just prevail.

  Instead of the traditional advance in line, Greville told Cameron to go forward in echelon, staggering his force. He swiftly gained the northern slope of the ridge, before turning to attack the French flank. In the way stood a substantial redoubt discharging a murderous fire, but, shrugging off heavy casualties, the 9th stormed it.100 Cameron re-formed his by now disordered battalion and advanced along the ridge towards a battalion of the French 105th Regiment. Shouting furiously, the 9th charged, but the French ‘stood their ground till we came within nine or ten yards of them, when they made off with great speed. In this advance we suffered very severely from the enemy’s fire, as they were posted in column and in great numbers, the ground on which they were formed sloping inwards, this giving them a great advantage in firing upwards’, recalled Cameron. ‘It was one of the hottest fires I was ever in. Ten or eleven officers were severely wounded and about seventy men placed hors de combat.’101 Still suffering from the two bullet wounds he had received in July, Campbell had been shot again.102 Bleeding and exhausted, but content that the French were falling back on Urrogne, he watched as a figure in a grey frock coat, wearing a cocked hat with oilskin cover, approached. All around the men started to cheer. Wellington stopped and thanked them for their efforts and then rode off.103

  Notes

  * A captain normally commanded a company, but with Captain Alexander Campbell dead and Captain Gomm doing staff work, the 9th was a bit short.

  ** Currently in the National Museum of Scotland, it can be seen at his side in the portrait by Sir Francis Grant completed shortly before his death (Institute of Directors, Pall Mall, London) and on his statue in Glasgow.

  * Hanoverian troops who formed a foreign corps within the British army.

  * Though Blakeney describes the retreat as being in column, Beamish, Henegan and Fortescue all describe forming square and the defence by the King’s German Legion.

  * Gough would see battle with Campbell in China and India, eventually gaining a field marshal’s baton and a viscountcy. He gave the eulogy at Campbell’s funeral. The Napoleonic eagle was Bonaparte’s attempt to ape the aquila of ancient Rome. The eagle formed a grand finial to the pole supporting the French colours. The captured eagle was paraded at Horse Guards with full pomp in May 1811 and then displayed in the Royal Hospital Chelsea, where it was joined by twelve more. It was stolen in April 1852. Inevitably suspicion fell on the French, but its fate remains a mystery.

  * This is according to his service record of 1829. It states that in late 1812 he was present at ‘the affairs of Coin and Alhaurin’ and acted as ADC. However, the same document records his service in Tarragona as being in 1812 rather than 1811. The French had evacuated Andalucia by early August 1812, while Ballesteros had taken Malaga that July before being removed from command in November 1812, making Campbell’s service as ADC in the autumn of 1811 far more likely. ‘Livesay’ may have been Brigadier-General Luis de Lacy (1772–1817).

  ** This did not stop Campbell alluding proudly to his service at the Siege of Tarifa in various documents.

  *** ‘What the devil is the use of making me a Marquess?’ Wellington said upon hearing of his new title (Holmes, 169).

  * French armies were named after their intended theatre of operations, e.g. the Armée d’Angleterre prepared for the invasion of England.

  ** Campbell recorded it as 5 p.m. and Wellington’s ADCs as 3 p.m., but Wellington’s actual instructions are marked 2 p.m. (Wellington, VI, 538; Stanhope, 115).

  *** Dent blames this on the decision to advance in column instead of in line, allowing the enemy artillery to wreak havoc (35).

  * This was literally true after the fall of Mooltan in the Second Sikh War, where soldiers could scarcely walk after they crammed their boots with gold to smuggle it past the prize agents (see Chapter 5).

  * The same tactic used to take the town in 1719.

  ** Squat, short-range iron cannons.

  *** An outwork of half-moon shape. Cameron refers to both the lunette and the Cask Redoubt as ‘the redoubt’, but one can determine which he means from the succession of events.

  * Campbell may hav
e been encouraged by Colonel Cameron, who won his captaincy after storming the Fort Fleur d’Épée in Guadeloupe in 1793.

  * Campbell met up again with Jones when he took over as senior engineer in the Crimea.

  * The Army List of 1813 includes thirteen officers called Colin Campbell.

  ** This compares with only three battalions sent in on 25 July, around one-third the number (Oman, VII, 35–6).

  1 Oman, IV, 96; Brett-James, General Graham, 34.

  2 PRO/WO/1/225/121.

  3 Blakeney, 180.

  4 Brett-James, General Graham, 201.

  5 Stanhope, 47.

  6 Blakeney, 183; Fortescue, VIII, 50; Henegan, I, 208–9.

  7 Blakeney, 184.

  8 Brett-James, General Graham, 208; Fortescue, VIII, 50.

  9 Fortescue, VIII, 49.

  10 Blakeney, 185.

  11 Bunbury, I, 74.

  12 Henegan, I, 210

  13 Blakeney, 187; Glover, The Peninsular War, 124.

  14 Brett-James, General Graham, 210.

  15 Loraine Petre, I, 216; Cadell, 102; Oman VIII, 114.

  16 Blakeney, 189.

  17 Fortescue, VIII, 55.

  18 Stanhope, 49.

  19 Blakeney, 196; Fortescue, VIII, 61.

  20 Kinglake, III, 132.

  21 Shadwell, I,10.

  22 Henegan, I, 220.

  23 Hall, C., 175, Dent, 26; Codrington, I, 228.

  24 Fortescue, VIII, 247.

  25 Fortescue VIII/244 & PRO/WO/1/225/181.

  26 PRO/WO/1/225/213-15.

  27 Fortescue, VIII, 335.

  28 Shadwell, I, 11; Loraine Petre, I, 217; Hale, 101.

  29 Fortescue, IX, 524.