Third Assault. (Sept. 1812.)
At midnight, the hollow road being lined with men to fire on the defences, the storming party, three hundred strong, was assembled there, attended by others who carried tools and materials to secure a lodgement when the breach should be carried. The mine was then exploded, the wall fell, and an officer with twenty men rushed forward to the assault. The effect of the explosion was disappointing, yet it cast the wall down, the enemy was stupefied, and the forlorn hope, a sergeant and four daring soldiers, gained the summit of the breach; soon however the French recovered, and threw them over pierced with bayonet wounds. Meanwhile the officer, with his twenty men, missed the breach in the dark, and finding the wall unbroken returned, saying there was no breach; then the main body regained the trenches, and before the sergeant and his comrades came in with streaming wounds to tell their tale the enemy was reinforced: the scarcity of ammunition would not permit a fire to be directed upon the work during the night, and the French, raising a parapet behind it, placed obstacles on the ascent which deterred the besiegers from renewing the assault at daylight.
Twelve days had now elapsed since the siege commenced, one assault had succeeded, two had failed, twelve hundred men had been killed or wounded, little progress was made, and the troops were dispirited, notably the Portuguese, who seemed to be losing their ancient spirit. Discipline was relaxed, ammunition was wasted, work in the trenches avoided and neglected by officers and men, insubordination was gaining ground, and reproachful orders were issued, the Guards only being noticed as presenting an honourable exception.
The French marksmen in the flanking palisaded work were so expert that everything which could be seen from thence was hit, until the howitzer battery on San Michael was reinforced with a captured French eighteen-pounder, and this mischievous post was at last demolished. At the same time the gallery of the second mine was pushed forward, and a new breaching battery for three guns constructed behind it, so close to the enemy’s defences that they screened it from the artillery fire of their upper fortress. To arm this work the three eighteen-pounders were dragged in the night from San Michael, and next day were, under a musketry fire which thinned the workmen, placed in battery; but the watchful Dubreton brought a howitzer down, with which he threw shells into the battery, and making a hole through a flank wall, thrust out a light gun also, which sent its bullets whizzing through the thin parapet of the work at every round. The allies were thus driven from their post, more French cannon were brought from the upper works, and the battery was demolished; two of the gun-carriages were disabled, a trunnion was knocked off one of the guns, and the muzzle of another split: and vainly the marksmen endeavoured to quell this fire, the French eventually remained masters.
In the night a more solid battery was made on the left of the ruined one, but at daylight the French fire, plunging from above, made the parapet fly off so rapidly, that the besiegers relinquished it also, returning to their mines and breaching battery on San Michael. The two guns still serviceable were now remanded to the upper battery, to beat down a retrenchment formed by the French behind the old breach; but the weather was so wet and stormy that the workmen, those of the Guards excepted, abandoned the trenches, and at daylight the guns were still short of their destination. However, on the 2nd of October they were placed, and at four o’clock in the evening, their fire having cleansed the old breach, and the second mine being tamped for explosion, a double assault was ordered. For this operation a battalion of the 24th British Regiment, under Captain Hedderwick, was formed in the hollow way, having one advanced party under Lieut. Holmes near the new mine, and a second under Lieut. Frazer towards the old breach.