Years of Victory 1802 - 1812 (93 page)

¹
Grattan,
144-5.

²
Grattan,
147-8.
The storming party of the Light Division also moved off to the attack unloaded. Asked why by one of the Staff, their commanding officer replied, "Because if we do not do the business with the bayonet, we shall not
be able to do it
at all." At which Wellington murmured, "Let him alone; let him go his own way."—George Napier,
215.

³
Costello,
95-6.
The chief English authorities for the assault other than Oman, Fortescue and Napier, are Grattan,
133-55;
George Napier,
209-18;
Kinc
aid,
101-14;
Random Shots,
252-5, 261-4;
Burgoyne, I,
137, 153-64;
Gomm,
244-8;
Simmons,
217-22;
Donaldson,
230-5;
Knowles,
44-50;
Bell, I,
22-3;
Moorsom,
150-3;
Smith,!,
58-9;
Se
aton,
166-72;
Charles Napier, I,
184;
Tom
kinson,
121-5;
Lynedoch
,622;
Wellington's Dispatches of the
9th', 15th
and
20th
Jan.,
1812;
Gurwood.

foot ladders. Those leading the attack were blown to tatters, their bodies and brains plashing amongst their comrades, but others following continued to advance till the whole breach was piled high with corpses. Just as the head of the column,- pressing furiously upwards, reached the top, a magazine on the ramparts exploded, killing about three hundred defenders and assailants, including Major-General Mackinnon, who was directing the attack. At that moment only one officer—Major Thomson of the
74th
—remained alive on the breach, while a single gun, served by five heroic Frenchmen, kept firing into the mass of struggling redcoats across a crevice of fallen stone.

Meanwhile the Light Division had gone forward with its usual dash and efficiency on the left. Craufurd was one of the first to fall under the hail of canister, grape, round-shot and shell—a tragic loss for England. George Napier at the head of the storming party lost an arm; Major-General Vandeleur and Colonel Colborne were both wounded. But nothing could stay the rising tide of British courage in the breach. Two-thirds of the way up there was a check as the leader fell and a tendency on the part of some of the men to snap their muskets; then Napier, with his shattered elbow, cried out, "Recollect you are not loaded, push on with the bayonet!" and the whole mass with a loud shout swept over the head of the breach. Promptly fanning out as they had been ordered, they dispersed along the ramparts to left and right. A party under Captain Ferguson took the defenders of the main breach in the flank and helped to open a way for the
3rd
Division. There, as resistance began to weaken and new supports arrived, every officer simultaneously sprang to his feet, while three devoted Irishmen of the 88th flung themselves with their unscrewed bayonets on the French gun crew beyond the ditch. There was a thrilling cheer and the breach was carried, the victors trampling the dead and dying under foot as they rushed forward.

Within half an hour of the assault and while storming-parties were still advancing through the narrow streets with shouts o
f "Victory!" "England for ever!
" the Governor, who had just sat down to his dinner, surrendered his sword to Lieutenant Gurwood,
¹
the leader of the Light Division's Forlorn Hope. Soon afterwards all resistance ceased. The attackers, however, separated from their officers, continued firing in the darkness. As they converged on the central cathedral square a number of Italian soldiers ran out crying that they were
Poveri Italiani.
But some of the British, who had conceived a strong dislike for their race, merely answered, "You're

¹
Afterwards editor of Wellington's Dispatches.

Italians, are you? then damn
you, here's a shot for you!"
¹
For the redcoats, enraged by some foolish Spaniards who had been shooting indiscriminately into the streets, were completely out of hand, shouting and firing madly at one another and into every door and window.

The storm of a fortress by night was something new in British military experience. The officers, many of whom had been killed or wounded in the assault, had not visualised the immediate consequences of their victory. Their rough men, used as living weapons in place of the heavy guns and sapping implements their country had failed to provide, had seen their comrades blown to pieces before their eyes; they were parched with thirst and almost frantic with excitement; their faces were scorched and blackened with powder and gore. As in the retreat to Corunna, the mystic bonds of discipline suddenly snapped; those who a few minutes before had been heroes became momentarily demons or lunatics. Lost in the blazing streets of an unfamiliar town, they broke into the houses and liquor-shops in search of drink and plunder. Guided by the baser inhabitants and the light of blazing houses, they quickly found what they sought. For the rest of the night, until the light of dawn enabled the harassed provost-marshals to restore order, Ciudad Rodrigo became a hell on earth, where officers, hoarse from shouting, drew their swords on their own men in an attempt to save the persons of terrified citizens and where packs of drunken soldiers ran from house to house in diabolical rage. Few lives were lost but the town was completely sacked. "John Bull, though heartily fond of fighting, is not a man of blood," wrote a spectator, "but he is a greedy fellow and he plundered with all the rapacity of one to whom such liberty was new."
²
It was the first time a British army had so disgraced itself since Cromwell stormed Wexford. When the Light Division marched out next morning it was scarcely recognisable; the men were decked out in Frenchmen's coats and cocked-hats with hunks of beef, tongues and hams stuck on their bayonets, while others, remembering their waiting wives in the camp, staggered under swathes of clothes, strings of shoes, birdcages and even tame monkeys. They

1
Kincaid,
114.
Elsewhere, however, those who surrendered were scrupulously spared. "It is a remarkable feature in the history of this siege," wrote Captain Gomm, "that the loss of the besiegers doubles that of the besieged. . . The milk of human kindness was flowing richly through the veins of these Englishmen who stopped to draw breath in the breach and gave terms there to Frenchmen and such Frenchmen."—Gomm,
247.
See also Grattan,
154.

²
Gomm,
247.
See also
idem,
245;
Burgoyne, I,
159.
"What the devil, sir, are you firing at?" Kincaid shouted at one soldier. "I don't know, sir," he answered, "I am firing because everybody else is."—
Random Shots, 262.
See also Grattan,
155-63;
Donaldson,
236;
Bell, I,
23;
Fortescue
, VIII,
363;
Tomkinson,
125;
Simmons,
222-3;
Costello,
102;
Kincaid,
119-20.

looked for all the world, as they moved singing over the bridge, like rag-fair on the march.

But Ciudad Rodrigo had fallen. With Marmont's relieving army still twenty miles away, the door of northern Spain had been forced. General Brennier, 78 officers and 1700 men—all that remained alive after the storm—had been made prisoners for a British loss of
553
casualties in the trenches and
449
in the breaches. At the same lime the entire siege-train of the Army of Portugal, including a hundred and fifty heavy guns, had been captured. A great feat of arms—one of the greatest in the whole war—had been achieved. The British now felt ready for anything. Kincaid, who led the storming detachment of the Rifles, declared as he stood on the ramparts that night that, had the ghost of Jack the Giant-Killer passed that way, he would have given it a kick in the breech without the slightest ceremony. As the Rangers fell in under the ramparts of the captured fortress on the morning of the 20th, General Picton rode by. Some of the men, still a little above themselves, cried out, "Well, General, we gave you a cheer last night; it's your turn now!" Smiling, he took off his hat and called to them, "Here, then, you drunken set of brave rascals, hurrah! we'll soon be at Badajoz!"
¹

Five weeks later the army with all its guns was on the move again towards the south; Wellington was wasting no time. At the moment that Napoleon had turned his face eastwards, thinking his rear safe, the British General had kicked open one of the two gates into Spain; now before the spring came, he was going to smash through the other. Before his tramping, singing columns lay the towers of Badajoz, the plains of Salamanca and the defiles of Vittoria and the Pyrenees. The men knew nothing of these; it was enough for them that they were marching to victory. The morrow promised to be bloody, but they cared little for the morrow, and the song and the jest went round as usual.
²

Far away in Engl nd the mail-coaches drawn up on the parade outside the General Post Office in Lombard Street were decked— men, horses, carriages—with laurels and flowers, oak-leaves and ribbons. Presently the lids thundered down on the mail-bags and the waiting horses pawed the ground, the guards sounded their horns, and the news of the fall of Ciudad Rodrigo went radiating outwards down a dozen great trunk roads, through cheering towns and villages where every heart leapt for an instant in the glow of a single common pride. .

¹
Grattan, 1
65. See also Bessborough,
220;
Donaldson,
198.
²
Kincaid,
Random Shots,
250.

LIST OF

ABBREVIATIONS FOOTNOTES

USED IN

Aberdeen
.—Lady Frances Balfour,
The Life
of
George, Fourth Earl
of
Aberdeen,
1923.
Add. MSS.—
Additional MSS., British Museum.

Adventures in the Peninsula.—Personal Narrative
of
Adventures in the Peninsular War,
1827.

Albemarle
.—George Thomas, Earl of Albemarle,
Fifty 2'ears
of
My
Life,
1870.

Alsop.—
Memorials
of
Christine Majolin
(ed. M. Braithwaite),
1881.

Anderson
.—Lt.-Col. J. A. Anderson,
Recollections of A Peninsular Veteran,
1913.

Ann. Reg.—
Annual Register.

Apperley
.—C. I. Apperley,
My
Life and Times
(cd. E. D. Cuming),
1927.

Argyll
.—George Douglas, Eighth Duke of Argyll,
Autobiography and Memoirs,
1906.

Arteche
.—General Jose Arteche y Moro,
Guerra de la Indcpencia,
Madrid,
186S-1902.

Asiiton
.—John Ashton,
The Dawn of the Nineteenth Century in England,
1886.

auckland.—
Journal and Correspondence
of
William Lord Auckland,
1862.

Austen
.—J. H. and F. C. Hubback,
Jane Am
en's Sailor Brothers,
1906.

Bamford
.—Francis Bamford,
Dear Miss Heber,
1936.

Bannister
.—John Adolphus,
Memoirs
of
John Bannister,
1838.

Barbauld
.—A. L. le Breton,
Memoir
of
Mrs. Barbauld,
1874.

Barham.—
Letters and Papers
of
Lord Barham
(Navy Records Society), Vol. Ill,
1910.

Barnard Letters.—
The Barnard Letters
(ed. A. Powell),
1928.

Barrow
.—Sir John Barrow,
An Autobiographical Memoir,
1847.