The Age of Elegance (4 page)

which snatched victory out of defeat at Albuera; the Guards with their grace and nonchalance and unbreakable discipline; the fiery Highlanders; the great, undemonstrative regiments of the Line—the 5th, the 28th, the 29th, the 45th, the 48th, the 57th. On their capacity to rise, when called upon, to the highest capacity of human endurance and valour, their commander, though he seldom misused it, knew he could rely. "Ah," he said during a near-run fight to an officer who informed him that he had placed the Royal Welch in a dangerous gap, "that is the very thing!"

Pride in the continuing regiment—the personal individual loyalty which each private felt towards his corps—gave to the British soldier a moral strength which the student and administrator ought never to under-estimate. It enabled him to stand firm and fight forward when men without it, however brave, would have failed. To let down the regiment, to be unworthy of the men of old who had marched under the same colours, to be untrue to the comrades who had shared the same loyalties, hardships and perils were things that the least-tutored, humblest soldier would not do. Through the dusty, tattered ranks the spirit of companionship ran like a golden thread. "Years of hard fighting, fatigues and privations that we now wonder at," wrote Grattan, "had a charm that in one way or another bound us all together; and, all things considered, I am of opinion that our days in the Peninsula were amongst the happiest of our lives." "You may laugh at me," wrote George Napier after leading a storming party, "but it made me cry with pleasure and joy to find myself among the men and to see their rough weather-beaten countenances look at me with every expression of kindly feeling."

There was little outward pageantry now about Wellington's army —little except the bronzed faces, the level eyes, the indefinable air of resolution and alertness. The dandified uniforms of peace-time England, the powder, pipeclay, brilliant colours, shining brass-work, had become things of the past. Wellington cared little for these; provided his men brought their weapons into the field in good order and sixty sound rounds of ammunition, he never asked whether their trousers were blue, black or grey.
¹
Their jackets were faded and ragged, their breeches patched with old blankets, their shakos

¹
Grattan, 50. "There is no subject of which I understand so little.... I think it indifferent how a soldier is clothed provided it is in a uniform manner, and that he is forced to keep himself clean and smart as a soldier ought to be." Wellington,
Supplementary Dispatches,
VII, 245. See Oman,
Wellington's Army,
296; Kincaid, 203-4.

bleached by sun and twisted into fantastic shapes. When an officer, returning wounded from Portugal, saw the Portsmouth garrison in their smart white small clothes and black gaiters, they seemed to him like the troops of another nation. And the Life Guards, arriving in Spain from England, mistook the Rifles from their dark clothing and sunburnt visages for Portuguese. The slouching gait, the motley wear, the alert, roving gaze of the Peninsular men were as far removed from the Prussian gait of the barrack square as was the fustian of Cromwell's Ironsides. Only their firelocks were always bright and clean.

Yet as they assembled in the March of 1812 before Badajoz, there was no mistaking their power. On the 17th—the day after the city was invested—they paraded before Wellington, their bullet-ridden colours, bare and faded, floating in the wind and the band of each regiment breaking into the march, "St. Patrick's Day." That night the work of entrenching began under heavy fire from the fortress and in icy rain. The men had to dig up to their knees in slime under continuous bombardment; for the next week, while the rest of the army covered the siege, they spent sixteen out of every twenty-four hours in the trenches. At one moment floods swept away the pontoon bridge that linked them with headquarters at Elvas. Every morning of that anxious week as Wellington waited for news of Soult's army beyond the Sierra Morena, the Portuguese Governor of Elvas and his Staff in full uniform solemnly waited on him to ask, with a wealth of old-world compliment, how he had passed the night.
¹

On the afternoon of March 24th the weather cleared. Next night five hundred volunteers of the Light and 3 rd Divisions stormed Fort Picurina, an outlying bastion on the south-east of the town. As the last stroke of the cathedral bell tolled eight, the storming detachments rose from the trenches and raced towards the glacis. Two hundred fell, but, before the enemy could recover, they were swarming up the ladders, the men of the 3 rd Division crying out to their old rivals: "Stand out of the way!" to which the latter, shoving fiercely by, shouted back, "Damn your eyes, do you think we Light Division fetch ladders for such chaps as you to climb up!"
²

¹
Stanhope, 327.

2
Smith, I, 62. See also Grattan, 188; Bell, I, 28; Tomkinson, 143; Blakeney, 261: Fortescue, VIII, 286; Oman, V, 239-40.

The capture of Picurina enabled the breaching batteries to begin the bombardment of the south-eastern corner of the city wall which the engineers had selected as its weakest point. It was now a race between the British guns and
Souk's troops. Fortunately, Mar
mont, who in the previous summer had successfully marched to the relief of Badajoz, had been expressly commanded by Napoleon to invade Portugal in Wellington's absence—a futile demonstration as he knew, since, not only did Ciudad Rodrigo bar the road to Lisbon, but he had no means of supporting his army in the Portuguese hinterland.

By April 4th, the day Soult emerged from the Sierra Morena, two breaches had been made. Next day, every gun was directed to making a third in the curtain wall between. By the rules of siegecraft, no assault should have been made until the batteries had blown in the counterscarp. But as this was beyond Wellington's power, an un-military Parliament and parsimonious Treasury having failed to provide him with trained sappers, he had to use his infantry to do the work of mine and shell.

Badajoz was held by nearly 5000 veteran troops under General Philhpon, a past-master of fortification. Faced by Napoleon's threat to shoot the Governor of any fortress who surrendered before it had been stormed—a defiance of the eighteenth-century convention that allowed the Governor of a besieged town to yield as soon as a practicable breach had been effected so as to avoid casualties and the horrors of a sack—he had sealed off the breaches with tiers of trenches and strewn the unbridged ditch before them with thousands of mines, iron harrows, crows' feet and
chevaux de frise.
Believing the rest of the city's defences to be impregnable, he had then concentrated half the garrison at the point and armed every man with eight loaded muskets.

It was Wellington's plan that of the four divisions besieging the town, the 7500 men of the 4th and Light should storm the breaches. At Picton's eleventh-hour entreaty, the 3 rd Division on their right had been given the supplementary task of trying to take the main castle by
escalade
—a feat apparently impossible, for part of its walls rose a hundred feet sheer above the ditch and the Guadiana. Meanwhile, on the other side of the town, which was known to be heavily mined, General Leith's 5th Division and some Portuguese were to pin down as many of the garrison as possible by a demonstration. At the last moment a few ladders had been allotted to them to attempt the ramparts of the San Vincente bastion at the extreme north-west corner of the town.

By the afternoon of April 6th, the third breach had been made. The order for the assault was immediately given. Though it was certain that there would be terrible losses, the troops received it with grim satisfaction. Even officers' servants insisted on taking their places in the ranks. The gaiety of the southward march had now been succeeded by something in the men's bearing that told that, though during the siege they had made no complaint of their fatigues and had seen their comrades fall without repining, they smarted under the one and felt the other. Their expression of anxiety to seize their prey was almost tiger-like.
¹

As evening approached a hush fell on the camp. The men sauntered about, many for the last time, while bands played airs which recalled distant homes and bygone days. The time for the assault had been fixed for seven-thirty, but owing to various mishaps it was postponed till ten, giving the enemy several further hours of darkness in which to sow the ditch and breaches with explosives. Ghostlike sheets of mist rose from the Guadiana, hiding the lanterns of the working-parties; only the rippling waters, the croaking of frogs along the bank and the sentinel's cry on the ramparts broke the silence. Grattan has left a picture of the waiting columns: the men without knapsacks, their shirts unbuttoned, trousers tucked to the knees, tattered jackets so worn as to make the insignia of regiment and rank indistinguishable, the stubby, keen-set faces, the self-assurance, devoid of boast or bravado, that proclaimed them for what they were—an invincible host.

Soon after nine the order was given to move to the storming positions, and without a word and in pitch blackness the men went forward. Those approaching the castle were discovered shortly before zero hour by the light of a flaming carcass thrown from the ramparts. Immediately every gun opened up. In front of the breaches the storming parties, creeping up to the glacis, had already begun to descend into the ditch. As the first fireball rose, the scene was lit up like a picture; the ramparts crowded with dark figures and glittering arms, and, below, the long red columns coming on "like streams of burning lava." Then there was a tremendous crash, and the leading

¹
Grattan, 193-7; Kincaid, 130; Bell, I, 27
.

files were blown to pieces as hundreds of shells and powder barrels exploded.

For an instant, wrote an officer, the men stood on the brink of the ditch amazed at the sight; then, with a shout, flew down the ladders or, disdaining their aid, leaped, reckless of the depth, into the gulf below. Hundreds fell, but their comrades, trampling over them, pressed forward through a storm of grape-shot and
canister
. The ditch became a writhing mass of dead and wounded, across whose bodies fresh assailants struggled through flame and darkness towards the breaches. Many were shot or burnt; some, losing their bearings in the darkness, stumbled into the flooded part of the ditch and, weighed down by their packs, sank beneath the waters. Others were blown to pieces by the exploding grenades, mines and powder-barrels. Yet still little groups of men forced their way through that surf of fire and "went at the breach like a whirlwind. . . . Hundreds fell, dropping at every discharge which maddened the living; the cheer was for ever on, on, with screams of vengeance and a fury determined to win the town; the rear pushed the foremost into the sword-blades to make a bridge of their bodies rather than be frustrated. Slaughter, tumult and disorder continued; no command could be heard, the wounded struggling to free themselves from under the bleeding bodies of their dead comrades; the enemy's guns within a few yards at every fire opening a bloody lane amongst our people, who closed up and, with shouts of terror as the lava burned them up, pressed on to destruction—officers, starting forward with an heroic impulse, carried on their men to the yawning breach and glittering steel, which still belched out flames of scorching death."
¹
All the while the bugles continued to sound the advance.

But, though the breaches were three times cleared by the bayonet, none penetrated them. There were soldiers who in the frenzy of attack thrust their heads through the hedge of swords at the summit and allowed the foe to smash them with the butts of their muskets, or, enveloped in streams of fire, died trying to tear with lacerated hands the blades out of the
chevaux de frise.
All was in vain. No troops could have passed through that curtain of death.

Yet, "though valour's self might stand appalled," the British refused to withdraw. They stood sullenly facing that terrible fire until some officer, rallying fifty or a hundred tired men, led them forward

¹
Bell, I, 30-1.

once more, only to meet the same inevitable fate. For two hours the slaughter continued until a third of the Light Division had fallen. The 95th alone lost twenty-two officers.

About midnight Wellington, who was waiting in a neighbouring quarry, called off the attack. His face, lit by the flame of a candle, was grey and drawn, and his jaw fell as he gave the order. In that bitter hour he ordered one of his aides to hasten to Picton and tell him that he must try at all costs to succeed in the castle. He was unaware that the castle had already fallen. While the buglers on the glacis before the breaches still sounded the retreat and the stubborn survivors of the 4th and Light Divisions began to fall back to the quarries, an officer galloped up with the news that Picton's men were inside the walls. For by their refusal to admit defeat the men of the breaches had given their comrades the chance to achieve the impossible. Those struggling to breast the castle's towering cliffs had, too, suffered terrible casualties, and, baffled by a murderous cross-fire from the bastions and shells, stones and logs thrown from the ramparts, had fallen back in defeat. But Picton, who never did things by halves, wounded though he was in the groin, returned to the ditch and formed up his entire division, 4000 strong, at the base of the wall. Though ladder after ladder was flung down by the defenders and the rungs were slippery with blood, those below took the places of those who fell so swiftly that in the end a lodgment was made, the ramparts cleared, and, after nearly a fifth of its numbers had fallen, the 3 rd Division swarmed into the fortress. Among the casualties was Colonel Ridge of the 5th Fusiliers—the third to reach the summit. "No man," wrote Napier, "died that night with more glory—yet many died, and there was much glory."

By capturing the castle, and with it the enemy's reserves of food and ammunition, Picton had made the fall of Badajoz certain. He could not alter the immediate situation in front of the breaches because the castle gates leading to the ramparts had been bricked up, and only a single postern, hastily closed by the enemy, gave access to the town. But while his men were dragging up a gun from the embrasure to blow it in, Wellington, still waiting in the quarries near the breaches, thought he heard the sound of an English bugle in the tower of San Vincente at the far side of the town. Here, though the walls were more than thirty feet high and the ladders too low, a detachment of General Walker's brigade
of Leith's 5 th Division, con
sisting of men of the 4th and 44th Regiments, managed in the darkness to secure a foothold on the under-manned ramparts. They had at once gone to the assistance of their comrades below, and by midnight, had lifted the whole brigade into the town. Though there was fierce fighting on the walls and Walker himself was wounded, Leith brought up the rest of his division with such speed that the enemy was given no chance to recover. It was the appearance in the rear of the breaches of a detachment of this force, marching in haste through the deserted streets, that caused the French to collapse. Unable to imagine how their foes had entered, they threw down their arms or fled. The exhausted survivors of the Light and 4th Divisions, returning to the attack, found the breaches deserted. Badajoz had fallen.

What followed tarnished the night's glory. The men, separated in the darkness from their officers, parched with thirst and half-mad from the fury of the attack, broke into the cellars and wine-shops. By dawn they had become a mob of fiends. They had been promised, in accordance with the rules of war, that, if the garrison resisted after the breaches had been made, the city would be given up to sack; they did not now mean to lose a prey so hardly won. The worst horrors were the work of the scoundrel minority of an army recruited in part from the gaols, and of the Spanish and Portuguese camp-followers. For two days and nights packs of drunkards rushed from house to house, blowing in doors, firing through windows, and looting everything. Women were dragged screaming from hiding holes and raped, wine casks were broached in the streets, and satyrs with blackened faces drank till the liquor ran from their mouths and ears. No officer could control them. It was not till the third day that Wellington, marching in fresh troops and erecting a gallows in the square, restored order.
¹

Yet even during these scenes soldiers risked their lives to stay the tumult. Groups of officers fought their way through the streets escorting women to the church of St. John's where a guard was mounted; others kept watch over Spanish families and drove back the mobs who assailed them. Down at the camp below the town, where the British wounded lay in thousands, two young officers, standing at their tent door on the day after the attack, saw two Spanish ladies approaching, the elder of whom, her ears torn and

¹
Blakeney, 270-8; Grattan, 158, 2o8
?
210-16; Gomm, 202; Costello. 120-1; Bell, I, 33-4; Tomkinson, 146; Simmons, 233; Kincaid, 139;
Random Shots,
285; Stanhope, 49; Napier, IV, 430-1.

bleeding from the grasp of drunken savages, confided to their protection her sister, a girl of fifteen. Such was her faith in the British character, she declared, that she knew the appeal would not be in vain. "Nor was it," wrote one of the officers, "nor could it be abused, for she stood by the side of an angel—a being more trans-cendently lovely than any I had ever before beheld. To look at her was to love her—and I did love her, but I never told my love, and in the meantime another and a more impudent fellow stepped in and won her!" Two days later Juanita Maria de los Dolores de Leon was married to Captain Harry Smith of the Rifles. The Commander-in-Chief gave her away, and she became the darling of the Army, henceforward sharing all its adventures and hardships. Many years later, when her husband, the victor of Aliwal, had become the hero of Victorian England and Governor of the Cape, she gave her name to a South African town destined to become the scene of another famous siege.