The new battery on the Little Teson was costly to build and maintain—on one night the French lost sixty-one men killed and wounded in it[286]. But it was very effective; the original breach was much enlarged, and the old wall behind it was reduced to ruins. Meanwhile a mortar battery, placed in the conquered suburb, played upon the parts of the town which had hitherto escaped bombardment, and reduced many streets to ashes. The position of the garrison was unsatisfactory, and Herrasti sent out several emissaries to beg Wellington to help him, ere it was too late. Most of these adventurers were captured by the French, but at least two reached the British commander[287], who had recently come up to the front to observe for himself the state of the enemy’s forces. He found them too strong to be meddled with, and sent back a letter stating that he was ready to move if he saw any chance of success, but that at present none such was visible. He then retired, after leaving Craufurd two squadrons of the 16th Light Dragoons to strengthen his thin outpost line. Herrasti, though much dispirited by Wellington’s reply, continued to make a vigorous defence, but the town was now mostly in ruins, and the breach gaped wide.
On July 4th Masséna, who had again come up to visit the siege, obtained intelligence that Wellington had been with the Light Division at Gallegos, and determined to push back the British outposts, in order to discover whether the front line of his enemy had been strengthened by any troops from Portugal. It seemed to him likely enough that the British general might have massed his army for a bold stroke at the besiegers, now that the strength of Ciudad Rodrigo was running low. Accordingly St. Croix’s division of dragoons, supported by a brigade of Junot’s infantry, crossed the Azava brook and drove in Craufurd’s cavalry pickets. They retired, skirmishing vigorously all the way, to Gallegos, where the five infantry battalions of the Light Division had concentrated. Craufurd, having strict orders from his chief that he was not to fight, fell back on Fort Concepcion, the work on the Spanish frontier half way to Almeida. Thereupon the French retired, having obtained the information that they wanted, viz. that Craufurd had not been reinforced by any considerable body of troops from the rear. The Light Division had manœuvred with its customary intelligence and alertness all day; its flanks were being continually turned by horsemen in overpowering numbers, but it beat them off with ease, and lost only five men wounded while falling back across ten miles of absolutely open country. The French lost five officers and over twenty men[288], mostly in combats with the German Hussars, who surpassed themselves on this day, and repeatedly charged the heads of the hostile columns on favourable occasions. For the future Craufurd kept behind the Dos Casas, while the French took up his old line on the Azava. This move made any attempt to help Ciudad Rodrigo a harder business than before, since the British outposts were now fifteen instead of only six miles from the town. An attempt to storm by surprise the French camps on the near side of the place was for the future impossible.
Warned by this activity on the part of the enemy, Wellington again reinforced Craufurd’s cavalry, giving him three squadrons of the 14th Light Dragoons, so that the Light Division had now some 1,200 horse to watch its long and much exposed front. But the French advance now halted again for a full fortnight, the demonstration of July 4th having had no other purpose than that of ascertaining the strength of the British observing force behind the Azava.
On the four days that followed Craufurd’s retreat the French batteries were thundering against the northern angle of Ciudad Rodrigo, and had reduced it to one vast breach more than 120 feet broad. But Ney, more sparing of life than was his wont, refused to order an assault till the whole of the Spanish artillery on the neighbouring front should have been silenced, and till the engineers should have worked up to and blown in the counterscarp. This last preliminary was accomplished on the night of the eighth, when a mine containing 800 lb. of powder was exploded with success just outside the counterscarp, and cast down a vast amount of earth into the ditch, so that there was now an almost level road from the advanced trenches to the foot of the inner wall. The garrison repeatedly built up the lip of the breach with palisades and sandbags, under a heavy fire and at great expense of life. But their flimsy repairs were swept away again and again by the batteries on the Little Teson, and all their guns on this front of the walls were gradually disabled or destroyed. Early on the afternoon of July 9th the engineers informed the Marshal that Ciudad Rodrigo was untenable, and that a storm could not fail of success. Three battalions, composed of picked voltigeur and grenadier companies, were brought up to the advanced trenches, under the Marshal’s personal superintendence. Before letting them loose on the broad acclivity of rubble before them, Ney asked for three volunteers who would take the desperate risk of climbing up to the crest of the breach to see if it were retrenched behind. A corporal and two privates made this daring venture, ran lightly up to the summit, fired their muskets into the town, and descended unhurt, under a scattering fire from the few Spaniards who were still holding on to the ruins. On receiving their assurance that nothing was to be feared, Ney ordered the storming battalions to move out of the trenches, but ere they had started an officer with a white flag appeared on the breach, and descended to inform the Marshal that the Governor was prepared to capitulate. Finding that Ney was immediately below, Herrasti came out in person with his staff a few minutes later, and settled the whole matter in a short conversation. Ney congratulated the white-haired veteran on his handsome defence, returned him his sword, and told him that he should have all the honours of war.
Accordingly the garrison marched out next morning about 4,000 strong, laid down its arms below the glacis, and was marched off to Bayonne. The Spaniards had lost 461 killed and 994 wounded, just a quarter of their force, in their highly honourable resistance. They had only a few days’ provisions left, and, though their munitions were by no means exhausted, they would have been forced to yield for want of food, even if the storm had failed, which was absolutely impossible. The French captured 118 guns, most of them in bad order or disabled, and 7,000 muskets. Not a house or church in the place was intact, and a large majority were roofless or levelled to the ground. There was no use whatever in protracting the resistance, and it is clear that Herrasti had done all that a good officer could. In his dispatch to the Junta he spoke somewhat bitterly of the fact that Wellington had made no effort to relieve the place, showing feeling natural enough under the circumstances. Martin La Carrera, who had been commanding the Spanish division that lay in the mountains south of the town, expressed his wrath still more bitterly, and marched off to Estremadura in high dudgeon, the moment that the news of the surrender reached him.
The French had been forced to much greater exertions in the siege of Rodrigo than they had expected when they first sat down before its walls. Their artillery had thrown 11,000 shells and 18,000 round shot into the place, which almost exhausted their store of munitions—only 700 rounds for each of their fifty guns having been provided. They had lost 180 killed and over 1,000 wounded, mainly in the costly work of pushing forward the approaches towards the wall, before the Spanish artillery fire had been silenced. Professional critics attributed the delays and losses of the siege entirely to the fact that the engineers believed, when they first planned their works, that the enemy would surrender the moment that a breach had been made, an idea which had never entered into Herrasti’s head[289]. Masséna showed his ill-temper, when all was over, by sending the civilian members of the Junta as prisoners to France, and imposing a fine of 500,000 francs on the miserable ruined town. It is surprising to learn that he actually succeeded in extracting half that sum from the homeless and starving population.
On the day that the garrison of Rodrigo marched out (July 10) Craufurd had suffered a misadventure. Seeing that the French foragers were busy in the villages between the Azava and the Dos Casas, he had resolved to make an attempt to surprise some of their bands, and went out from Fort Concepcion with six squadrons of cavalry[290], six companies of the Rifles and the 43rd, a battalion of Caçadores and two guns. Coming suddenly upon the French covering party near the village of Barquilla, he ordered his cavalry to pursue them. The enemy, consisting of two troops of dragoons and 200 men of the 22nd regiment from Junot’s corps, began a hasty retreat towards their lines. Thereupon Craufurd bade his leading squadrons, one of the German Hussars and one of the 16th, to charge[291]. They did so, falling upon the infantry, who halted and formed square in a corn-field to receive them. The charge, made by men who had been galloping for a mile, and had been much disordered by passing some enclosures, failed. The troopers, opening out to right and left under the fire of the square, swept on and chased the French cavalry, who were making off to the flank. They followed them for some distance, finally overtaking them and making two officers and twenty-nine men prisoners. Meanwhile Craufurd called up the next squadron from the road, the leading one of the 14th Light Dragoons, and sent it in against the little square. Headed by their colonel Talbot the men of the 14th charged home, but were unable to break the French, who stood firm and waited till the horses’ heads were within ten paces of their bayonets before firing. Talbot and seven of his men fell dead, and some dozen more were disabled. Before another squadron could come up, the French slipped off into the enclosures of the village of Cismeiro and got away. It was said that no effort was made to stop them because two outlying squadrons of British cavalry[292], which had ridden in towards the sound of the firing, were mistaken for a large body of French horse coming up to the rescue of the infantry. Both Craufurd and the British cavalry were much criticized over this affair[293]; but it was, in truth, nothing more than an example of the general rule that horsemen could not break steady infantry, properly formed in square, during the Peninsular War. The instances to the contrary are few. It was said at the time that Craufurd might have used his leading squadrons to detain and harass the French till his guns or his infantry, which were a mile to the rear, could be brought up. This may have been so, but criticism after the event is easy, and if the guns or the riflemen had come up ten minutes late, and the French infantry had been allowed to go off uncharged, the General would have been blamed still more. He lost in all an officer and eight men killed, and twenty-three wounded, while he took thirty-one prisoners, but the defeat rankled, and caused so much unpleasant feeling that Wellington went out of his way to send for and rebuke officers who had been circulating malevolent criticism[294]. The French captain Gouache, who had commanded the square, was very properly promoted and decorated by Masséna: nothing could have been more firm and adroit than his conduct[295].
SECTION XIX: CHAPTER VI
COMBAT OF THE COA: SIEGE OF ALMEIDA (JULY–AUGUST 1810)