The garrison, supplied by the Army of the North, was not so numerous as it should have been, particularly when it was intended to hold not only the enceinte of the small circular town but the straggling suburb outside. It consisted of a battalion each of the 34th Léger and the 113th Line, from the division of Thiébault (that long commanded in 1810-11 by Serras), making about 1,600 men, with two companies of Artillery and a small detachment of sappers—the whole at the commencement of the siege did not amount to quite 2,000 of all ranks, even including the sick in the hospital. The governor was General Barrié, an officer who had been thrust into the post much contrary to his will, because he was the only general of brigade available at Salamanca when his predecessor Renaud was taken by Julian Sanchez[174]. The strength of the garrison had been deliberately kept low by Dorsenne, because of the immense difficulty of supplying it with provisions. The first convoy for its support had only been introduced by bringing up 60,000 men, at the time of the fighting about El Bodon in September: the second only by Thiébault’s risky expedient on November 2nd.
The one thing that was abundant in the garrison of Ciudad Rodrigo on January 8th, 1812, was artillery. Inside the place was lying the whole siege-train of the Army of Portugal, which Masséna had stored there when he started on his march into Portugal in September 1811. No less than 153 heavy guns, with the corresponding stores and ammunition, were parked there. A small fortress was never so stocked with munitions of war, and the besieged made a lavish and unsparing use of them during the defence: but though the shot and shell were available in unlimited quantities, the gunners were not—a fortunate thing for the besiegers.
The details of the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo are interesting. This was the only one of Wellington’s sieges in which everything went without a serious hitch from first to last—so much so that he took the place in twelve days, when he had not dared to make his calculation for less than twenty-four[175]. Even the thing which seemed at first his greatest hindrance—the extreme inclemency of the weather—turned out in the end profitable. The sleet had stopped on the 6th, and a time of light frosts set in, without any rain or snow. This kept the ground hard, but was not bitter enough to freeze it for even half an inch below the surface; the earth was not difficult to excavate, and it piled together well. A persistent north-east wind kept the trenches fairly dry, though it chilled the men who were not engaged in actual spade work to the very bones. The worst memory recorded in the diaries of many of the officers present in the siege is the constant necessity for fording the Agueda in this cold time, when its banks were fringed each morning with thin ice. For the camps of all the divisions, except the 3rd, which lay at Serradilla del Arroyo, some miles south-east of the city, were on the left bank of the river, and the only bridge was so far off to the north that it was little used, the short cut across the ford to the south of the town saving hours of time: ‘and as we were obliged to cross the river with water up to our middles, every man carried a pair of iced breeches into the trenches with him[176].’ There being very few villages in the immediate neighbourhood of Rodrigo, many of the brigades had to bivouac on the open ground—life being only made tolerable by the keeping up of immense fires, round which the men spent their time when off duty, and slept at night. But for the troops in the trenches there could be no such comfort: they shivered in their great coats and blankets, and envied those of their comrades who did the digging, which at any rate kept the blood circulating. It is said that several Portuguese sentries were found dead at their posts from cold and exhaustion each morning.
Wellington’s general plan was to follow the same line which Ney had adopted in 1810, i. e. to seize the Greater Teson hill, establish a first parallel there, and then sap down to the lower Little Teson, on which the front parallel and the breaching batteries were to be established, at a distance of no more than 200 yards from the northern enceinte of the city. But he had to commence with an operation which Ney was spared—there was now on the crest of the Greater Teson the new Redout Renaud, which had to be got rid of before the preliminary preparation could be made.
This little work was dealt with in the most drastic and summary way. On the same evening on which the army crossed the Agueda and invested the fortress, the Light Division was ordered to take the redoubt by escalade, without any preliminary battering. In the dark it was calculated that the converging fires from the convent of San Francisco and the northern walls would be of little importance, since the French could hardly shell the work at random during an assault, for fear of hitting their own men; and the attacking column would be covered by the night till the very moment when it reached its goal.
Colonel Colborne led the storming-party, which consisted of 450 men, two companies from each British battalion, and one each from the 1st and 3rd Caçadores[177]. His arrangements have received well-deserved praise from every narrator of the enterprise. The column was conducted to within fifty yards of the redoubt without being discovered; then the two rifle companies and two of the 52nd doubled out to the crest of the glacis, encircled the work on all sides, and, throwing themselves on the ground, began a deliberate and accurate fire upon the heads of the garrison, as they ran to the rampart, roused at last by the near approach of the stormers. So close and deadly was the fire of this ring of trained marksmen, that after a few minutes the French shrank from the embrasures, and crouched behind their parapets, contenting themselves with throwing a quantity of grenades and live shells at haphazard into the ditch. Their three cannon were only fired once! Such casual and ineffective opposition could not stop the veterans of the Light Division. For three companies of the 43rd and 52nd, forming the escalading detachment, came rushing up to the work, got into the ditch by descending the ladders which were provided for them, and then reared them a second time against the fraises of the rampart, up which they scrambled without much difficulty, finding the scarp not too steep and without a revêtement. The garrison flinched at once—most of them ran into their guard-house or crouched under the guns, and surrendered tamely. At the same time entrance was forced at another point, the gorge, where a company, guided by Gurwood of the 52nd, got in at the gate, which was either unlocked by some of the French trying to escape, or accidentally blown open by a live shell dropped against it[178]. Of the garrison two captains and forty-eight rank and file were unwounded prisoners, three were killed, and about a dozen more wounded. No more than four, it is said, succeeded in getting back into the town[179]. This sudden exploit only cost the stormers six men killed, and three officers[180] and sixteen men wounded. Colborne remarks in his report that all the losses were during the advance or in the ditch, not a man was hurt in the actual escalade, for the enemy took cover and gave way, instead of trying to meet the stormers with the bayonet.
The moment that the redoubt was stormed, the French gunners in the city and the convent of San Francisco opened a furious fire upon it, hoping to make it untenable. But this did little harm, for Colborne withdrew the stormers at once—and the important spot that night was no longer the work but the ground behind it, which was left unsearched. For here, by Wellington’s orders, a first parallel 600 yards long was opened, and approaches to it along the top of the Teson were planned out. So little was the digging hindered, that by dawn the trenches were everywhere three feet deep and four broad, sites for three batteries had been marked out, and a communication had been run from the parallel up to the redoubt, whose rear wall was broken down into the ditch, so as to make it easily accessible.
It had been calculated that if the assault had failed, the redoubt could only have been reduced by regular battering for five days—that amount of time, therefore, was saved by the escalade. The operation contrasts singularly with the fruitless assaults on Fort San Cristobal at Badajoz during the summer months of the preceding year, to which it bore a considerable similarity. The difference of results may be attributed mainly to the superiority of the arrangements made by Colborne, more especially to the great care that he took to keep down the fire of the besieged by a very large body of marksmen pushed close up to the walls, and to the way in which he had instructed each officer in charge of a unit as to the exact task that was imposed on him. At San Cristobal there had been much courage displayed, but little management or intelligence in the command.
On the morning of January 9th, the first parallel, along the front of the Great Teson, was not so far advanced as to afford good cover, and the working parties were kept back till dark, and employed in perfecting the approaches from the rear: only fifty men were slipped forward into the dismantled Redout Renaud, to improve the lodgement there. The garrison fired fiercely all day on the parallel, but as there was little to shoot at, very small damage was done. At noon the 1st Division relieved the Light Division at the front: for the rest of the siege the arrangement was that each division took twenty-four hours at the front in turn, and then returned to its camp. The order of work was:
Light Division 8th-9th January, 12th-13th, 16th-17th, and for the storm on the 19th.