Storming of San Sebastian. (Aug. 1813.)
The morning of the 31st broke heavily, and as a thick fog hid every object the batteries could not open until eight o’clock, but from that hour a constant shower of heavy missiles poured upon the besieged until eleven: then Robinson’s brigade got out of the trenches, passed through the openings in the sea-wall and was launched against the breaches. While this column was gathering on the strand, near the salient angle of the horn-work, twelve men under a sergeant, whose heroic death has not sufficed to preserve his name, running violently forward, leaped on the covered way to cut the sausage of the enemy’s mines, and the French fired the train prematurely; the sergeant and his brave followers were destroyed, and the high sea-wall was thrown with a dreadful crash upon the head of the advancing column, but not more than forty men were crushed and the rush was scarcely checked. The forlorn hope had previously passed beyond the play of the mine, speeding along the strand amidst a shower of grape and shells, the leader, Lieutenant Macguire of the 4th Regiment, conspicuous from his long white plume, his fine figure, and his swiftness, bounding far ahead of his men in all the pride of youthful strength and courage, but at the foot of the great breach he fell dead, and the stormers swept like a dark surge over his body: many died with him and the trickling of wounded men to the rear was incessant.
A broad strand had been left by the retreating tide, and the sun had dried the rocks, yet they still broke the ranks and the main breach was two hundred yards off; the French also, seeing the first mass of assailants pass the horn-work without attacking, crowded to the river face and poured their musketry into the flank of the second column as it rushed along a few yards below them: yet still running forward the British returned this fire without slackening their speed. Then the batteries of the Monte Orgullo and the St. Elmo sent showers of shot and shells down on them, the two pieces on the cavalier swept the breach in St. John, and the four-pounder in the horn-work, being suddenly mounted on the broken bastion, poured grape-shot into their rear.
Although scourged thus with fire, and their array broken by shot and by the rocks, the stormers reached the great breach and the head of the first column mounted; but the unexpected gulf beyond could only be passed at a few places where meagre parcels of the burned houses were still attached to the rampart, and the deadly clatter of the French muskets from the loop-holed wall beyond soon strewed the narrow crest of the ruins with dead. In vain the following multitude, covering the ascent, sought an entrance at every part; to advance was impossible and the mass slowly sunk downwards, yet remained stubborn and immoveable on the lower part. There they were covered from the musketry in front, yet from several isolated points, especially the tower of Los Hornos under which the great mine was placed, the French still struck them with small arms, and the artillery from Monte Orgullo poured shells and grape without intermission.
Meanwhile at the St. John affairs were worse. To reach the top of the high curtain was quite practicable, and the effort to force a way there being strenuous and constant, the slaughter was in proportion; for the traverse on the flank was defended by French grenadiers who would not yield, the two guns on the cavalier swept the front face, and the four-pounder and the musketry from the horn-work swept the river face. In the midst of this destruction some sappers and a working party attached to the assaulting columns endeavoured to form a lodgement; but no artificial materials had been provided, and most of the labourers were killed before they could raise cover.
During this time the British batteries kept up a constant counter-fire, which killed many French, and the reserve brigades of the 5th division gradually fed the attack until the left wing of the 9th Regiment only remained in the trenches. The volunteers who had been with difficulty restrained in the parallel, calling out to know, “why they had been brought there if they were not to lead the assault,”—these fierce and terrible men, whose presence had given such offence to Leith that he would have kept them altogether from the assault, being now perforce let loose, went like a whirlwind to the breaches and swarmed up the face of the ruins; but on the crest the stream of fire struck and they came down like a falling wall; crowd after crowd were seen to mount, to totter, to sink, and when the smoke floated away the summit bore no living man.
Graham, standing on the nearest of the Chofre batteries, beheld this frightful destruction with a stern resolution to win at any cost, and he was a man to have put himself at the head of the last company and died sword in hand rather than sustain a second defeat: but neither his confidence nor his resources were yet exhausted. He directed a new attack on the horn-work, and concentrating the fire of fifty heavy pieces upon the high curtain sent his shot over the heads of the troops gathered at the foot of the breach; a fearful stream of missiles, which pouring along the upper surface of the high curtain broke down the traverses, shattering all things, and strewing the rampart with the mangled limbs of the defenders. When this flight of bullets first swept over the heads of the soldiers a cry arose from some inexperienced people, “to retire because the batteries were firing on the stormers;” but the veterans of the light division, being at that point, were not to be so disturbed, and in the very heat and fury of the cannonade effected a solid lodgement in some house ruins actually within the rampart, on the right of the great breach.
For half an hour the horrid tempest smote upon the works and the houses behind, and then suddenly ceased, when the clatter of French muskets was again heard, showing that the assailants were still in activity. At the same time the 13th Portuguese Regiment under Major Snodgrass, followed by a detachment of the 24th under Colonel Macbean, entered the river from the Chofres. The ford was deep, the water rose above the waist, and when the soldiers reached the middle of the stream, two hundred yards wide, a shower of grape struck the column with terrible havoc, yet the survivors closed and moved on; a second discharge tore the ranks from front to rear; still the regiment moved on, and amidst a confused fire of musketry from the ramparts, and artillery from St. Elmo, the castle, and the Mirador, landed and rushed against the third breach, while Macbean’s men reinforced the great breach. The fighting then again became fierce and obstinate at all the breaches; yet the French musketry rolled with deadly effect, the heaps of slain increased, and once more the great mass of stormers sunk to the foot of the ruins unable to win: the living sheltered themselves as they could, and the dead and wounded lay so thickly that hardly could it be judged whether the hurt or unhurt were most numerous.
It was now evident the assault must fail unless some accident intervened; for the tide was rising, the reserves all engaged, and no greater effort could be expected from men whose passionate courage had been already pushed to the verge of madness. Fortune intervened. A number of powder barrels, live shells, and combustible materials accumulated behind the traverses caught fire, a bright consuming flame wrapped the high curtain, a succession of explosions followed, hundreds of the French grenadiers were destroyed; the rest were thrown into confusion, and while the ramparts were still involved with suffocating eddies of smoke the British soldiers broke in at the first traverse. The French, bewildered by this terrible disaster, yielded for a moment, yet soon rallied, and a close desperate struggle took place along the summit of the high curtain, but the fury of the stormers, whose numbers increased every moment, could not be stemmed; the colours on the cavalier were torn away by Lieutenant Gethin of the 11th Regiment; the horn-work, the land front below the curtain, and the loop-holed wall behind the great breach, all were abandoned, and then the light division soldiers, already established in the ruins on the French left, penetrated into the streets; and at the same moment the Portuguese at the small breach, mixed with British who had wandered to that point seeking for an entrance, burst in on their side.
Five hours this dreadful battle had lasted at the walls, and now the stream of war went pouring into the town; yet the undaunted governor still disputed the victory at his barricades, although several hundreds of men had been cut off in the horn-work, and his garrison was so reduced that even to retreat behind the line of defence separating the town from Monte Orgullo was difficult: however the troops, flying from the horn-work on the harbour flank, broke through a body of the British near the fortified convent of Santa Téresa, and that post was still retained by the French within the town. It was thought Monte Orgullo might have been then carried if a commander of rank to direct the troops had been at hand; but, as in the first assault, whether from wounds or accident no general entered the place until long after the breach had been won, the battalion officers were embarrassed for want of orders, and a thunder-storm, coming down the mountains with unbounded fury just as the place was carried, added to the confusion of the fight—the opportunity was lost.
This storm seemed to be a signal from hell for the perpetration of villany which would have shamed the most ferocious barbarians of antiquity. At Ciudad Rodrigo intoxication and plunder had been the principal objects; at Badajos lust and murder were joined to rapine and drunkenness; at San Sebastian, the direst, the most revolting cruelty was added to the catalogue of crimes: one atrocity, of which a girl of seventeen was the victim, staggers the mind by its enormous, incredible, indescribable barbarity. Some order was at first maintained, but the resolution to throw off discipline was quickly made manifest. A British staff-officer was pursued with a volley of small arms and escaped with difficulty from men who mistook him for a provost-marshal; a Portuguese adjutant, striving to prevent some ruffianism, was put to death in the market-place, not with sudden violence but deliberately. Many officers exerted themselves to preserve order, many men were well-conducted, yet the rapine and violence commenced by villains soon spread, the camp-followers crowded into the place, and the disorder continued until fire, following the steps of the plunderer, put an end to his ferocity by destroying the whole town.
Three generals, Leith, Oswald, and Robinson, had been hurt in the trenches; Sir Richard Fletcher, a brave man, was killed; Colonel Burgoyne, next in command of the engineers, was wounded. The carnage at the breaches was appalling. Nearly half the volunteers were struck down, the fifth division suffered in the same proportion, and the whole loss since the renewal of the siege exceeded two thousand five hundred men and officers. Amongst the last may be mentioned Lieutenant John O’Connel of the 43rd, in blood nearly related to the celebrated turbulent agitator. He was gentle, amiable, and modest, and brave as man could be, and having previously been in several storming parties here again sought in such dangerous service the promotion he had earned before without receiving—he found death.
Monte Orgullo was now to be attacked. Steep and difficult to assail it was, and just below the castle four batteries connected with masonry were stretched across its face; from their extremities, also, ramps protected by redans led to the convent of Santa Téresa, the most salient part of the defence. Towards the harbour and behind the mountain were sea batteries, and if all these works had been of good construction and defended by fresh troops the siege would have been difficult; but the garrison was shattered by the recent assault, most of the engineers were killed, the governor wounded, five hundred men sick or hurt, and the soldiers fit for duty, only thirteen hundred, had four hundred prisoners to guard. The castle was small, the bomb-proofs filled with ammunition and provisions, and but ten guns were left for service, three being on the sea line. There was little water, and the soldiers had to lie on the naked rock, exposed to fire, or only covered by asperities of ground; they were however still resolute to fight, and received nightly, by sea, supplies of ammunition in small quantities.
Lord Wellington arrived the day after the assault, and judging regular approaches up the naked rock impracticable, doubting also the power of vertical fire, he resolved to breach the remaining line of defence and then storm the Orgullo. Meanwhile from the Santa Téresa convent, which was actually in the town, the French killed many men; and when, after several days, it was assaulted, they set the lower parts on fire and retired by a communication from the roof to a ramp on the hill behind. All this time the flames were licking up the houses, and the Orgullo was overwhelmed with vertical fire.
On the 3rd of September the governor was summoned, he was unshaken, and the vertical fire was continued day and night, the British prisoners suffering as well as the enemy; for the officer in the castle, irritated by the misery of the garrison, cruelly refused to let the unfortunate captives make trenches to cover themselves. The French however complain, that their wounded and sick men, placed in an empty magazine with a black flag flying, were fired upon, although the English prisoners, in their uniforms, were posted around to strengthen the claim of humanity.
New breaching batteries were now commenced and armed with guns, brought from the Chofres at low water across the Urumea, at first in the night, but the difficulty of labouring in the water during darkness finally induced the artillery officers to transport them in daylight under the enemy’s batteries, which did not however fire. In the town labour was impeded by the flaming houses, but near the foot of the Orgullo the ruins furnished shelter for musketeers to gall the garrison, and the Santa Clara Island battery was actively worked by the seamen. With the besieged ammunition was scarce, and the horrible vertical fire, contrary to Lord Wellington’s expectation, subdued their energy; yet the action was prolonged until the 8th of September, when fifty-nine heavy battering pieces opened at once from the island, the isthmus, the horn-work and the Chofres. In two hours the Mirador and Queen’s battery were broken, the French fire extinguished, and the hill furrowed in a frightful manner; the bread-ovens were destroyed, a magazine exploded, and the castle, small and crowded with men, was overlaid with the descending shells. Then proudly bending to fate the governor surrendered. On the 9th this brave man and his heroic garrison, reduced to one-third of their original number, and leaving five hundred wounded behind, marched out with the honours of war. The siege thus terminated, after sixty-three days’ open trenches, and just as the tempestuous season, then beginning to vex the coast, would have rendered a continuance of the sea blockade impossible.
The excesses committed in the storming of San Sebastian caused great indignation in Spain, and justly; but they were used by the Spanish government to create a hatred of the British army, and, horrible as were the facts, it is certain the atrocities were the work of a few. Writers have not been wanting however to excuse them on the insulting ground, that no soldiers can be restrained after storming a town and British soldiers least of all, because they are brutish and insensible to honour! Shame on such calumnies! What makes the British soldier fight as no other soldier ever fights? His pay! Soldiers of all nations receive pay. At the period of this assault, a sergeant of the 28th, named Ball, being sent with a party to the coast from Roncesvalles to make purchases for his officers, placed two thousand dollars entrusted to him with a commissary, secured his receipt and persuaded his party to join in the storm. He survived, reclaimed the money, made his purchases, and returned to his regiment. And these are the men, these the spirits who are called too brutish to work upon except by fear! It is to fear they are most insensible!