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

by Charles Oman

1st Division 9th-10th, 13th-14th, 17th-18th.

4th Division 10th-11th, 14th-15th, 18th-19th.

3rd Division 11th-12th, 15th-16th, and for the storm on the 19th.

The 1st Division had very responsible work on the second night of the siege, for when darkness had set in the first parallel had to be made tenable, and the three batteries in front of it developed. Owing to the very powerful artillery of the besieged, it was settled that the batteries were to be made of exceptional strength and thickness—with a parapet of no less than 18 feet breadth at the top. To procure the necessary earth it was determined that an exterior ditch should be dug in front of them, and that their floor (terre-plain) should be sunk 3 feet below the level of the hillside within. A row of large gabions was placed in front of the exterior ditch to give cover to the men digging it.

Great progress was made with the work under cover of the night, but when morning came the besieged, whose fire had been at haphazard during the night, could see the works and commenced to shoot more accurately. A curious contretemps was discovered at dawn. By some miscalculation the locality of the left-hand battery had been laid out a little too far to the east, so that half its front was blocked by the ruins of the Redout Renaud. This, of course, was the effect of working in pitch darkness, when the outline of that work was invisible even from a score or so of yards away. Possibly the error may have originated from the fact that, early in the night, the directing engineer officer, Captain Ross, was killed by a flanking shot from the convent of San Francisco. Thus the men constructing the battery had been deprived of all superior direction. In the morning Colonel Fletcher directed that the east end of the battery should have no guns; the five which should have been placed there were to be transferred to the right-hand battery, which thus became designed for sixteen guns instead of eleven[181].

On the 10th-11th January, when the 4th Division had charge of the trenches the first parallel was nearly completed, the batteries continued to be built up, magazine emplacements were constructed in them, and a trench of communication between them was laid out. When daylight revealed to the French the exact situation of the three batteries, which were now showing quite clearly, a very fierce fire was opened on them, the rest of the works being neglected. The losses, which had hitherto been insignificant, began to grow heavy, and so many men were hit in the exterior trenches, which were being dug in front of each battery, that Wellington and Colonel Fletcher gave orders that they should be discontinued. Heavy damage was done to the batteries themselves—the French adopted a system of firing simultaneous flights of shells with long fuses at given points, ‘of which several falling together upon the parapets blew away in an instant the work of whole hours.’

On the 11th-12th, with the 3rd Division in charge, the work was continued; the platforms were placed in the batteries, and the splinter-proof timbers laid over the magazine emplacements. But half the exertion of the men had to be expended in repairs: as each section of the batteries was completed, part of it was ruined by the besiegers’ shells. ‘The nights were long and bitter cold, and the men could not decently be kept working for twelve hours on end[182],’ especially when it was considered that they had to march four or five miles from their camps to the trenches before commencing their task of digging, so that they did not arrive fresh on the ground. Reliefs were therefore arranged to exchange duty at one hour after midnight, so that no man was at work for more than half of the cold hours of darkness.

On the 12th-13th, with the Light Division doing its second turn at the front, the batteries were nearly completed, despite of much heart-breaking toil at repairs. Wellington, before starting the task of battering, put the problem to Colonel Fletcher as to whether it would be possible to breach the walls with the batteries in the first parallel, or whether these would only be useful for subduing the fire of the besieged, and the actual breaching would have to be accomplished by another set of batteries, to be placed in a second parallel which was, as yet, contemplated but not begun. Fletcher, after some cogitation, replied that he thought it could be done, though Ney, in the siege of 1810, had failed in such a project, and had breached the walls with batteries in situations much farther forward. Wellington’s inquiry was dictated by his doubt as to whether Marmont and Dorsenne might not be in a position to appear with a heavy relieving force, before a second parallel could be thrown up. There were, as yet, no signs of such a danger; the enemy having apparently been taken completely unawares by the opening of the siege. But if the second parallel advanced no faster in proportion than the first, and had to be built on much more dangerous ground, it was clear that there was a risk of its taking an inordinate time to complete. On Fletcher’s conclusion being made, Wellington decided that he would try to breach the walls with his original batteries, but would push forward a second parallel also: if Marmont and Dorsenne showed signs of rapid concentration, he would try to storm the place before the trenches were pressed forward to the neighbourhood of the walls. If they did not, he would proceed in more regular style, build a second and perhaps a third parallel, with batteries close to the enceinte, and end by blowing in the counterscarp, and assaulting from close quarters.

This resolution having been formed, Wellington ordered the second parallel to be commenced on the night of the 13th-14th, with the 1st Division in charge. Despite of a heavy fire from the French, who discovered (by throwing fire-balls) that men were at work in front of the first parallel, an approach by flying sap was pushed out, from the extreme right end of the original trenches, down the slope which separates the Great from the Lesser Teson, and a short length of excavation was made on the western end of the latter height, enough to allow of a small guard finding cover. This move brought the besiegers very close to the fortified convent of Santa Cruz, outside the north-western walls of the city, and lest it should give trouble during the succeeding operations Wellington ordered it to be stormed. The troops employed were 300 volunteers from the Line brigade of the German Legion and one company of the 5/60th. They broke down the palisades of the convent with axes, under a heavy fire, and as they entered the small garrison fled with some loss. That of the stormers was 6 killed and 1 officer and 33 men wounded[183]. Only by clearing the French out of this post could the zig-zags leading down from the first to the second parallel be completed without paying a heavy price in lives, for the musketry of the convent would have enfiladed them in several places. The same night the siege-guns, which had reached the camp on the 11th, were moved into the three batteries.

Next day (January 14-15) was a very lively one. General Barrié was convinced that the establishment of a second parallel on the Lesser Teson, only 200 yards from his walls, must not be allowed at any cost, and executed a sortie with 500 men, all that he could spare from the garrison. He (very cleverly) chose for his time the hour (11 a.m.) when the 4th Division was relieving the workmen of the First, for, as Jones remarks, ‘a bad custom prevailed that as soon as the division to be relieved saw the relieving division advancing, the guards and workmen were withdrawn from the trenches, and the works were left untenanted for some time during the relief, which the French could observe from the steeple of the cathedral, where there was always an officer on the look-out.’