Wellington’s Engineers: Military Engineering on the Peninsular War 1808-1814 (30 page)

Casualties during the siege and assault were high, with nearly 2,400 killed and wounded. Engineer casualties were three killed, including Fletcher, and three wounded, including Burgoyne,
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but his wound was not serious and he temporarily took command of the engineers.
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Across both sieges, of the eighteen engineer officers present, four were killed and seven were wounded. Captain Stanway was left to repair the fortress with a company of Royal Sappers and Miners, work continuing until six months after the end of the war.

Analysis of the Second Siege of San Sebastian

During both sieges, Wellington was again pushed for time due to the very real threat from Soult, who made two determined attempts to disrupt the siege and the blockade of Pamplona. There is no doubt that there would have been fewer casualties had San Sebastian been besieged according to the established rules, but, as Fletcher pointed out, this would have taken much longer. In both sieges, the time from opening fire to the assault on the town was five days, which only allowed the walls to be breached and did not allow sufficient time to destroy the defenders’ artillery and reduce the garrison both physically and morally. Ironically, Wellington had given orders to limit the amount of shellfire so as to reduce the damage to the town, with a consequent reduction in damage to the defenders. Unfortunately the town was pretty much destroyed by fire anyway and Wellington was accused by the Spanish of deliberately burning the town to the ground as a punishment for the Francophile tendencies of its population. Like the previous three sieges at Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz and Burgos, Wellington cut corners to reduce the time required due to external pressures. The impact of the time reduction was measured in the increase in casualties that occurred.

The biggest single criticism of the siege concerned the strategy selected for the attack. It is inconceivable that Wellington was not aware of the risk and costs associated with the plan selected. He wanted the fortress taken quickly to avoid the very real chance that Soult would relieve it. Blaming the engineers for the plan is unreasonable since they were producing plans that met the requirements given to them by Wellington. With hindsight, it may have been better to go for the formal attack, as the twin sieges took nearly two months in total, but that was not known or expected when the first one began. However, the plan agreed by Wellington was to continue the same basic plan of attack for the second siege.
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The criticism of the engineers, and to a lesser extent the artillery, suggesting that they were indifferent to the casualties in the army, is unfair and ignores the fact that it was usually an engineer officer who was leading these desperate attacks and their casualties reflect this. The high casualties in the besieging army were caused by rushing the sieges and the responsibility for that rests with the commander. This was compounded on the first assault by it taking place before daylight, an action that Wellington had strongly discouraged.

In terms of the operations of the engineers, both sieges were managed reasonably well. There were some problems with the use of short naval 24-pounders (accuracy), the supply of working parties and the distant positioning of some batteries, but nonetheless the breaches were still made very quickly. Neither assault would have been quicker if these events had not occurred, as there were other tasks that had to be completed before the assault could happen. The siege was under the control of Sir Thomas Graham, who corresponded with Wellington daily. In some of these letters, Wellington was personally critical of Fletcher and Dickson, particularly of their demands for working parties.
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Such criticism must have undermined the credibility of these officers with Graham. Wellington knew Dickson and Fletcher well, trusted them and had worked with them for a number of years, but Graham did not know them and such criticism must have affected his view of their competence. Graham had no experience of commanding at a major siege and his lack of experience cannot have helped the situation.

The availability for the first time of significant numbers of troops from the Royal Sappers and Miners does not appear to have had any material effect. There is a surprising lack of comment on their presence by both engineer and army officers. Harry Jones makes one comment about the lack of training – ‘sappers and miners who have never seen a gabion made!’
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– but this is in a letter complaining about the number of engineer and sappers present at the siege, which is full of errors. Neither John Jones nor Burgoyne made any comment at the time, but it is telling that when Burgoyne was asked to carry out some mining activities between the sieges, he requested volunteers from the line regiments.
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Though most of the sappers present were troops who had been in the Peninsula for some time, the company that arrived on 15 August was the first to have been through Pasley’s School of Military Engineering. Unfortunately, the company did not initially live up to expectations. Writing several weeks later Burgoyne reported:

On the subject of the Sappers, my complaint lies not to their want of ability but, I am sorry to say, to their irregularities and insubordination … Many of them, as individuals, showed ability, spirit and regularity as was highly useful and creditable. They commenced [the second siege of San Sebastian] however by such insubordination, almost amounting to mutiny, and proved in many instances so little trustworthy, disappointing us in the execution of important services, that although many, and perhaps most of them, were very good men, we lost all confidence in them and did not therefore reap much benefit from their employment…. I have, since the siege, given the command of this company to Captain Pitts, an active officer who, having them with him, attached to repress their irregularities, and I fully expect that at the next siege they will render us good service and enable the Commanding Engineer to give a more favourable account of them than I feel myself justified doing on this occasion.
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A few weeks later, Burgoyne was able to give a more positive report

I send a further note from Pitts on the latest company from you. I learn from him that they are ‘excellent, able, useful and steady’, in short, he now has a good military view of them which was all they wanted and he is delighted with them.
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The first assault on San Sebastian was a very poor attempt that was never going to succeed, mainly thanks to the bad planning on the day of the assault. The second assault on the town barely succeeded and could very easily have failed also. The pinpoint artillery fire during the second assault just tipped the edge in the attackers’ favour. It could easily have gone either way. Again, Wellington was lucky.

The Death of Fletcher

Wrottesley, the biographer of John Burgoyne, recounted a story that Wellington wanted to retain Burgoyne and that was why he did not recall Elphinstone from Lisbon after Fletcher’s death.
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I also think it is likely that Wellington was perfectly happy with Burgoyne commanding the Engineers and was in no hurry for Elphinstone to come up. On 10 September, Burgoyne sent his account of the siege direct to London saying ‘which I transmit to you direct to avoid any circuitous route by Lisbon through Lieutenant Colonel Elphinstone, which I trust will meet with your approbation’.
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Elphinstone would have been extremely unhappy about this. Fletcher had led the Royal Engineers for most of the war but he never managed to create any real sense of loyalty in his subordinates. John Jones wrote:

Sir Richard Fletcher possessed in an unusual degree, the knowledge and accomplishments of a finished soldier … but these valuable qualities were … almost paralysed, by what in military language is called a deficiency of moral courage, or in other words, being too sensitive to the awful responsibility of risking human life, and being … distrustful of his own judgement to plan or direct any unusually bold or hazardous enterprise. He also had the military weakness of being far too honest and conscientious to support or advise any … undertaking of his chief, which his military judgement did not approve.
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He went on to say he believed Wellington blamed Fletcher for the heavy casualties at the third siege of Badajoz due to him recommending a day’s delay in the assault. He also said that Fletcher was strongly opposed to the plan for the siege of San Sebastian and arguing against it further set Wellington against him. Elphinstone, not the most reliable of sources, writing in 1813 stated that three of the senior engineers ‘Goldfinch, Burgoyne and Boteler do not speak to Fletcher’,
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and Burgoyne, writing after Fletcher’s death, said: ‘Poor Sir Richard had no arrangement whatever, any system or improvement recommended to him, he would highly approve of, but never acted upon it.’
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Burgoyne had not been mentioned in Wellington’s dispatch after the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo, an error which led to him not receiving brevet promotion, while two junior engineer officers did. In the nineteenth century there was nowhere to get news other than the official dispatches. If you were not mentioned then you had done nothing remarkable. Even worse in this case, two of Burgoyne’s juniors were mentioned, so people might have thought that Burgoyne was being deliberately snubbed due to some failure. It was corrected a few months later but Burgoyne was very angry about it.

Whilst there was some criticism of Fletcher, I believe that Wellington was not unhappy with him. When compared with the way he treated the senior artillery officers during this period it is safe to assume that Wellington could have made life very difficult for Fletcher if he did not want him. Whilst not a dynamic leader, Fletcher showed great competence in coordinating the various wide-spread activities of his officers and managing the difficult boundary between the Army and the Ordnance. Wellington’s anger and frustration at the sieges clearly boiled over into highly critical letters home, but that is different from believing the engineer officers with him were at fault. As Wellington was to find out, Fletcher’s successor was not an improvement.

Elphinstone arrived unannounced at headquarters at Vera on 13 October, ‘so that they were rather surprised at seeing me’ he said.
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The following day he dined with Wellington and wrote:

The dinner went off exceedingly well and I now consider myself completely fixed. I therefore send you a list of articles for the canteen. I must keep a table, therefore it is nonsense buying trumpery articles. Indeed considering my pay and station it would be mean and paltry not to do so.

Two days later, he wrote to his wife:

The conduct of the officers of the Corps has been most gratifying to me, indeed Burgoyne wrote to me to say that if Wellington attempted to give him the command, upon his present commission, he would refuse it … My coming up will I fancy make some little bustle at Woolwich, as Ld W. has sent away two Lt. Col’s and put Dickens [
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– Dickson] in command upon his brevet rank over the heads of four senior officers in the country, all of whom are mean enough to remain and serve under him.
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Elphinstone was of course referring to the ongoing controversy over the appointment of Dickson to command the artillery. Wellington had made life so difficult for Dickson’s superiors that one after another they had resigned. There were still artillery officers senior to Dickson in the Peninsula, but Wellington made sure they did not come anywhere near his army. Elphinstone half expected that he was going to receive the same treatment to allow Burgoyne to continue in command with Wellington’s forces.

Howard Elphinstone, like Fletcher, had operational experience that equipped him for this role. The son of Admiral John Elphinstone, he had been commissioned in October 1793. His first active service was at the capture of the Cape of Good Hope in 1795 after which he served in India for the next five years. In 1801 he accompanied the division sent from India to Egypt under Sir David Baird, arriving in Egypt in August 1801 after which he returned to the UK serving at Plymouth. In 1806 Captain Elphinstone was attached to Lord Rosslyn and General Simcoe’s special mission to Portugal, to advise the Portuguese government on the defence of Lisbon. In early 1807 he accompanied Major-General Whitelocke to South America as Commanding Royal Engineer, but he never landed in South America, arriving after the expedition had failed. By the time he landed back in the UK he had spent a year on board the fleet. He was then assigned to command the proposed South American expedition under Sir Arthur Wellesley, and when this was diverted to the Peninsula, he travelled with it.

Clearly Elphinstone knew that his coming to HQ was not going to be universally welcomed. It is also clear where his priorities were. Most of his letters home during this period focus on getting the appropriate uniform, stable and canteen for an officer of his station. What is interesting is that there is almost no correspondence between Elphinstone and his subordinates, the Army and the Ordnance. Apart from his letters to his wife, it is as if he never existed. The few letters home are complaints about allowances, refusal to appoint a bridge master and engineer officers not getting medals when he thought they should (including himself). He even records being officially ‘encouraged’ to write home more but making it clear he had no intention of.

The impact of the change of command quickly became apparent. Captain Stanway, who had been left to repair San Sebastian, wrote to Burgoyne two weeks after Elphinstone’s arrival saying: ‘I can get nothing from Colonel Elphinstone neither men nor authorities for the Alcades, so that I shall give it up as a hopeless job … If you have any interest with Col. E. pray get him to represent my want of men.’
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Other engineer officers were making similar comments: ‘Now that Sir Richard is dead we have found out his value and I fear we shall not soon see his place as ably filled.’
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