Early in February the 51st moved to its old quarters at Pena Macor, and thence, a little later, commenced the march towards Badajoz, the reduction of which fortress Wellington had determined to attempt at once. The 7th Division was again detailed for covering duty, and, with the 6th Division, was placed under the command of General Graham. Crossing the Tagus at Villa Velha, the two divisions reached Elvaz, and bivouacked close to Fort La Lippe until the arrival of the army destined for the investment and siege of Badajoz.[66] Then Graham crossed the Guadiana by the bridge of boats above that place, and moved into position to the south-east. A short letter from Major Rice, dated Puebla, two miles from Zafra, 19th March 1812, describes what was taking place:—
"Our lord continues to dash, having undertaken once more the siege of Badajoz. The better to insure success and prevent molestation two corps d'armée have been formed and advanced into Spain—Hill on the side of Merida, and Graham of Balgowan in this direction, for which you must turn to maps. Our corps is respectable, comprising three divisions of infantry, two brigades of cavalry, two troops of horse artillery, with lots of heavy field-pieces. We crossed the Guadiana on pontoons on the morning of the 16th, and passed Valverde and Santa Martha. At the latter place we had near surprised a body of French, but had the mortification of seeing them in the distance retiring in squares, flanked by cavalry. We took one solitary dragoon. The French evacuated Zafra last night. We continue to pursue, but how far I am not in the secret—various reports, but only the wigs of course know. We are greeted in all the towns by acclamations of Viva los Inglezes—how charming and flattering! We suffer a few privations; long marches; and in the evening we generally turn in under the trees without any other covering than the 'grand canopy.' I hope we shall do something brilliant. Prepare yourself to hear of gallant exploits. I trust the siege of Badajoz will go on well. We, the 7th Division, luckily for us, were thought too good for the spade and shovel duty.
P.S.—I have just heard that we shall march again to-night. I suppose to put a little salt on Mr Frenchman's tail!"
Nothing very brilliant, however, was done by Graham's corps, although it certainly carried out its rôle, and prevented any attempt of the enemy to raise the siege. Nor was this an easy task, for Graham displayed considerable activity, and endeavoured to do something more than merely to hold the French in check. Discovering that a small body of the enemy was occupying Llerena, eight leagues distant from his headquarters, the general ordered the 51st and 100 German riflemen to make a forced march and surprise the place. The garrison, however, had received information of the threatened attack, and evacuated Llerena, which was immediately occupied by the 51st. Yet, within a few hours, the regiment learned that Soult was making a night march on the town with 5000 men, and the small British force, in its turn, was obliged to beat a hasty retreat. Graham waited a day or two, and then determined to turn the tables on Soult. He issued sudden orders for his whole corps to march on Llerena and surprise Soult's force, and the 51st again took part in the enterprise. Everything went well throughout the long march, and just before dawn the troops approached the town. The surprise was thought to be complete, and success seemed certain, when, of a sudden, there arose a panic, which had the most dire consequences. General Graham and his staff had ridden, unknown to the troops, on ahead of the columns to reconnoitre, and were fired upon by a single vedette. They immediately galloped back to the columns, with the unfortunate result that they were mistaken for the enemy's cavalry. Major Rice, writing a week afterwards, thus describes the affair:—
"In one of our night rambles, when the whole force of our corps, 12,000 in number, was advancing upon Llerena, the heads of columns were thrown into confusion by alarm of cavalry. A firing unfortunately began. Friends, and not foes, were shot. We[67] expended two officers and a private. It had like to have proved a business of the most serious nature. The Hero of Barrosa rowed us all most terribly for unsteadiness. The real fact is he himself was in fault, having been in front with a parcel of A.D.C.'s and staff, and other tom-fools; not being in their places, and gaping about, they came suddenly in contact with a French cavalry picket, upon which D.I.O.[68] was the word full speed. Our advance gave them a fire and frightened their animals, who ran furiously between our columns. We mistook the business for a charge of cavalry, and unfortunately a fire ensued. Several generals were spilt and run down. The affair was ludicrous enough. I was at the head of the column, but escaped by my horse tumbling head and heels into a ditch—a species of good luck, for I was running the gauntlet."
All this firing, of course, put an end to surprise, and by the time that order was restored and the advance resumed, Soult and his five thousand had slipped away. After a short stay at Llerena, Graham moved on to the ground upon which had been fought the battle of Albuhera; and while there the troops heard in the distance the desperate firing which resulted in the capture of Badajoz.
It will be remembered that, twice during the previous year, the fortress had been besieged and unsuccessfully assailed. On each of those occasions Wellington had directed his attack from the north, intending first to capture the detached work of St Christoval, in order to establish batteries there preparatory to an assault on the castle. For his third attempt he adopted a new plan, and decided to attack from the south, capturing the Picurina outwork, breaching the bastions opposite to it, and then delivering the assault. The trenches were pushed rapidly forward; Picurina was carried by assault on the night of the 25th March, and the breaching batteries were immediately established. For ten days they battered the walls of the fortress, until the necessary breaches were effected, when Wellington gave immediate orders for the assault to take place; and on the night of the 6th-7th April 1812 occurred one of the most bloody struggles in the annals of war—a struggle the horrors of which lived in the memories of the surviving assailants for ever afterwards. The breaches defied all attempts; time after time assaults were delivered and beaten back; and the ditch became filled with dead and wounded. Elsewhere, however, fortune favoured the assailants, the 3rd Division entering the place by the San Vincente bastion. Thus Wellington captured his second fortress in 1812, but at the cost of 5000 men out of the 21,000 engaged.
The scenes which followed the fall of the place are indescribable; the victorious troops gave themselves up to plunder and licentiousness of every description. Drink drove them mad, and no one could control them. There is no denying the fact that fearful crimes were committed by the British soldiers in Badajoz that night, for each man carried his loaded musket and his bayonet, and brooked no interference with his revels. Yet these men were not hardened criminals, for in their sober moments they would have shuddered at the very mention of such crimes as, under the influence of drink, they themselves committed. They started to enjoy themselves—to hold high carnival—but they were drunk with success at the outset, and, even before the wine-vaults had been sacked, the carnival became the wildest and most lawless ever held. But with this great tragedy scraps of comedy occasionally mingled, and some of the scenes would, at any other time, have been considered highly entertaining. Dressed as monks and nuns, or wearing the gay clothes of Spanish ladies, grizzled and begrimed veterans danced and sang through the streets; and when eventually they were driven out of the town, they wended their way to their bivouacs, wearing these same garments, and staggering under the weight of such plunder as they had collected.
Quartermaster Surtees, who had an opportunity of seeing for himself many of the horrors of this night and of the next day, tells the hideous tale, in his 'Twenty-five Years in the Rifle Brigade,' sufficiently fully to enable one to realise how utterly demoralised a well-disciplined army can become almost at a moment's notice. His remarks on the reason for this are of particular value, because he had risen from the ranks and was intimately acquainted with human nature as represented by the private soldier, and because he was a man who thought deeply. He concludes his account of the sacking of Badajoz in the following words:—
"An English army is, perhaps, generally speaking, under stricter discipline than any other in the world; but in proportion as they are held tight while they are in hand, if circumstances occur to give them liberty I know of no army more difficult to restrain when once broke loose. A reason may perhaps be assigned for it in part. On such occasions as this siege, where they were long and much exposed to fatigue almost insupportable, to the most trying scenes of difficulty and danger, which were generally borne with cheerfulness and alacrity, they perhaps reasoned with themselves and one another in this manner,—that, as they had borne so much and so patiently to get possession of the place, it was but fair that they should have some indulgence when their work and trials were crowned with success, especially as the armies of other powers make it a rule generally to give an assaulted fortress up to plunder. They had also become quite reckless of life from so long exposure to death; but an English army cannot plunder like the French. The latter keep themselves more sober and look more to the solid and substantial benefit to be derived from it, while the former sacrifice everything to drink, and when once in a state of intoxication, with all the bad passions set loose at the same time, I know not what they will hesitate to perpetrate. The reader will judge of the state of our soldiers who had been engaged in the siege when Lord Wellington found it absolutely necessary to order in a Portuguese brigade to force the stragglers out of the town at the point of the bayonet."