A history of the Peninsular War, Vol. 5, Oct. 1811-Aug. 31, 1812

by Charles Oman

At eleven o’clock on the morning of the 29th the two French batteries opened[116], with twelve heavy guns. The weakness of the old town wall at once became evident: the first shot fired went completely through it, and lodged in a house to its rear. Before evening there was a definite breach produced, just south of the Retiro ravine, and it was clear that the enemy would be able to increase it to any extent that he pleased—the masonry fell to pieces the moment that it was well pounded. The two small field-guns on the tower of Jesus were silenced by 3 o’clock, and the heavy gun on Guzman’s tower also ceased firing—of which more anon. By night only the distant guns on the island, and the ships in the south-western bay, were making an effective reply to the French.

This, from the psychological point of view, was the critical day of the siege, for on the clear demonstration of the weakness of the walls, Colonel Skerrett, who had never much confidence in his defences, proposed to evacuate the city of Tarifa. At a council of officers he argued in favour of withdrawing the garrison into the island, and making no attempt to hold the weak mediaeval walls which the French were so effectively battering. This would have been equivalent, in the end, to abandoning the entire foothold of the British on this point of the coast. For there was on the island no cover for troops, save two or three recently erected buildings, and the recesses of the ‘Cueva de los Moros.’ Some of the inhabitants had already taken refuge there, and were suffering great privations, from being exposed to the weather in tents and hastily contrived huts. It is clear that if 3,000 men, British and Spanish, had been lodged on the wind-swept rocks of the island, it would soon have been necessary to withdraw them; however inaccessible the water-girt rock, with its low cliffs, might be, no large body of troops could have lived long upon it, exposed as they would have been not only to wind and wet, but to constant molestation by heavy guns placed in and about the city and the hills that dominate it. Meanwhile the French would have possessed the excellent cover of the houses of Tarifa, and would have effectively blocked the island by leaving a garrison to watch the causeway, the only possible exit from it. It is certain that the abandonment of the island would have followed that of the town within a few days: indeed Skerrett had already obtained leave from General Cooke, then commanding at Cadiz, to bring his brigade round to that port as soon as he should feel it necessary. He regarded the evacuation of the place as so certain, that he ordered the 18-pounder gun on Guzman’s tower to be spiked this day, though it was the only piece of heavy calibre in the city[117]—the reason given was that one of its missiles (spherical case-shot) had fallen short within the streets, and killed or wounded an inhabitant. But the real cause was that he had fully decided on abandoning Tarifa that night or the following day, and thought the moving of such a big gun in a hurry impossible—it had been hoisted with great difficulty to its place by the sailors, with cranes and tackle[118].

Skerrett stated his decision in favour of the evacuation at the council of war, produced General Cooke’s letter supporting his plan, and stated that Lord Proby, his second in command, concurred in the view of its necessity. Fortunately for the credit of the British arms, his opinion was boldly traversed by Captain C. F. Smith, the senior engineer officer, Major King commanding the Gibraltar battalion of flank-companies, and Colonel Gough of the 87th. The former urged that the town should be defended, as an outwork of the island, to the last possible moment: though the breach was practicable, he had already made arrangements for cutting it off by retrenchments from the body of the town. The streets had been blocked and barricaded, and all the houses looking upon the back of the walls loopholed. Tarifa could be defended for some time in the style of Saragossa, lane by lane. He pointed out that such was the configuration of the ground that if the enemy entered the breach, he would find a fourteen-foot drop between its rear and the ground below, on to which he would have to descend under a concentric fire of musketry from all the neighbouring buildings. Even supposing that the worst came, the garrison had the castle to retire into, and this was tenable until breached by artillery, while a retreat from it to the island would always be possible, under cover of the guns of the flotilla. There was no profit or credit in giving up outworks before they were forced. Major King concurred, and said that his battalion, being Gibraltar troops, was under the direct orders of General Campbell, from whom he had received directions to hold Tarifa till the last extremity. If Skerrett’s brigade should embark, he and the flank-companies would remain behind, to defend it, along with Copons’s Spaniards. Gough concurred in the decision, and urged that the evacuation would be wholly premature and ‘contrary to the spirit of General Campbell’s instructions’ until it was seen whether the French were able to effect a lodgement inside the walls[119].

Skerrett’s resolve was shaken—he still held to his opinion, but dismissed the council of war without coming to a decision: he tried to avoid responsibility by requesting the officers who voted for further resistance to deliver him their opinions in writing. This King, Smith, and Gough did, in the strongest wording. The first named of these three resolute men sent that same night a messenger by boat to Gibraltar, to inform General Campbell of Skerrett’s faint-hearted decision, and to observe that, with a few companies more to aid his own flank-battalion and the Spaniards, he would try to hold first Tarifa and then the island, even if Skerrett withdrew his brigade. Campbell, angry in no small degree, sent a very prompt answer to the effect that the town should not be abandoned without the concurrence of the commanding officers of artillery and engineers, while the Gibraltar battalion should be concentrated in the island, in order to ensure its defence even if Tarifa itself fell. Still more drastic was an order to the officers commanding the transports to bring their ships back at once to Gibraltar: this decisive move made it impossible for Skerrett to carry out his plan[120]. A few days later Campbell sent two more flank-companies to join the garrison—but they only arrived after the assault.

The idea of evacuating the town without attempting any defence was all the more ignominious because Copons had declared his intention of holding it to the last, had protested against the spiking of the heavy gun in Guzman’s tower, and next morning, when Leval summoned the place to surrender, sent in a most unhesitating, if somewhat bombastic[121], note of refusal. If Skerrett had withdrawn into the island, or taken to his ships, and Copons had been overwhelmed, fighting in the streets, the disgrace to the British flag would have been very great. As a sidelight on the whole matter, we may remember that this was the same officer who had refused to land his troops to defend the breach of Tarragona six months before. He was no coward, as he showed in many fights, and he died gallantly at Bergen-op-Zoom in 1814, but he was undoubtedly a shirker of responsibilities.

On the morning of the 30th the besiegers’ batteries opened again, and enlarged the breach to a broad gap of thirty feet or more; they also dismounted a field-piece which the besieged had hoisted on the Jesus tower, to replace those injured on the previous day. At midday Leval sent in the summons already recorded, and receiving Copons’s uncompromising reply, directed the fire to continue. It was very effective, and by evening the breach was nearly sixty feet long, occupying almost the whole space between the tower at the portcullis over the ravine, and that next south of it. At dusk the garrison crept out to clear the foot of the breach, and began also to redouble the inner defences in the lanes and houses behind it. All work on both sides, however, was stopped, shortly after nightfall, by a most torrential downpour of rain, which drove the French from their batteries and the English and Spaniards from their repairing. The sky seemed to be falling—the hillsides became cataracts, and the Retiro ravine was soon filled with a broad river which came swirling against the walls, bearing with it fascines, planks, gabions, and even dead bodies washed out of the French lines. Presently the mass of débris, accumulating against the palisades erected in front of the portcullis, and urged on by the water, swept away these outer defences, and then, pressing against the portcullis itself, bent it inwards and twisted it, despite of its massive iron clamps, so as to make an opening into the town, down which everything went swimming through the ravine. The flood also swept away some of the defensive works on each side of the depression. When the hurricane was over, the rain still continued to fall heavily, but the garrison, emerging from shelter, commenced to repair their works, and had undone much of the damage by daylight[122].

If the besieged had been sorely incommoded by the tempest, the besiegers on the bare hillsides had been still worse tried. They had been forced to abandon their trenches and batteries, of which those high up the slope were water-logged, while those below had been largely swept away by the flood. The breach had been pronounced practicable by the engineers, and an assault had been fixed for dawn. But it was necessary to put it off for some hours, in order to allow the artillery to reoccupy their batteries, and recommence their fire, and the infantry to come up from the camps where they had vainly tried to shelter themselves during the downpour. Nevertheless the French commanders resolved to storm as soon as the men could be assembled, without waiting for further preparations. ‘The troops,’ says the French historian of the siege, ‘unable to dry themselves, or to light fires to cook their rations, loudly cried out for an assault, as the only thing that could put an end to their misery.’ A large force had been set apart for the storm, the grenadier and voltigeur companies of each of the battalions engaged in the sieges, making a total of over 2,200 men. They were divided into two columns—the grenadiers were to storm the breach; the voltigeurs to try whether the gap at the Portcullis tower was practicable or not: they were to break in if possible, if not, to engage the defenders in a fusilade which should distract their attention from the main attack.

As soon as day dawned, the besieged could detect that the trenches were filling, and that the storm was about to break. They had time to complete their dispositions before the French moved: the actual breach was held by Copons with a battalion of his own troops[123]: the 87th, under Gough, occupied the walls both to right and left of the breach, including the Portcullis tower, with two companies in reserve. Captain Levesey with 100 of the 47th was posted in the south-eastern (Jesus) tower, which completely enfiladed the route which the enemy would have to take to the foot of the breach. The rest of the 47th was in charge of the south front of the town.

At nine o’clock the column of French grenadiers issued from the trenches near the advanced breaching battery, and dashed down the side of the Retiro ravine towards the breach, while the voltigeur companies, at the same time, running out from the approaches on the eastern hill, advanced by the opposite side of the ravine towards the Portcullis tower. Demonstrations to right and left were made by Cassagne’s brigade on one flank and Pécheux’s on the other. The progress of the storming column was not rapid—the slopes of the ravine were rain-sodden and slippery; its bottom (where the flood had passed) was two feet deep in mud. The troops were forced to move slowly, and the moment that they were visible from the walls they became exposed to a very heavy fire of musketry, both from the curtain and the enfilading towers on each of their flanks. Of guns the besieged had only one available—a field-piece in the northernmost (or Corchuela) tower, which fired case-shot diagonally along the foot of the walls.

Nevertheless the French grenadiers pushed forward across the open space towards the breach, under a rain of bullets from the 87th which smote them on both flanks. The Fusiliers were firing fast and accurately, to the tune of Garry Owen, which the regimental band was playing by order of Gough just behind the breach, accompanied by bursts of shouts and cheering. On arriving at the foot of the walls, in great disorder, the French column hesitated for a moment; many men began to fire instead of pressing on, but some bold spirits scaled the rough slope of the breach and reached its lip—only to get a momentary glimpse of the fourteen-foot drop behind it, and to fall dead. The bulk of the column then swerved away to its right, and fell upon the palisades and other defences in front of the Portcullis tower, where the hasty repairs made after the flood of the preceding night did not look effective. Apparently many of the voltigeurs who had been already engaged in this quarter joined in their assault, which surged over the outer barricades and penetrated as far as the portcullis itself. It was found too well repaired to be broken down, and the stormers, crowded in front of it, and caught in an angle between the front wall defended by the 87th, and the flanking Jesus tower from which the 47th were firing, found the corner too hot for them, and suddenly recoiled and fled. The officer at the head of the forlorn hope gave up his sword to Gough through the bars of the portcullis, which alone separated them, and many other men at the front of the column also surrendered, rather than face the point-blank fire at close range which would have accompanied the first stage of their retreat.