The whole of the next day (September 20) the garrison kept up such a searching fire upon the work that little could be done there, but on the following night the first battery of the besiegers [battery 1 on the map] was begun on a spot on the south-western side of the hill, a little way from the rear face of the hornwork, which was sheltered by an inequality of the ground from the guns of the Napoleon battery. It was armed on the night of the 23rd with two of the 18-pounders and three of the howitzers of the siege-train, with which it was intended to batter the Castle in due time. They were not used however at present, as Wellington, encouraged by his success at San Miguel, had determined to try as a preliminary move a second escalade, without help of artillery, on the outer enceinte of the Castle. This was to prove the first, and not the least disheartening, of the checks that he was to meet before Burgos.
The point of attack selected was on the north-western side of the lower wall, at a place where it was some 23 feet high. The choice was determined by the existence of a hollow road coming out of the suburb of San Pedro, from which access in perfectly dead ground, unsearched by any of the French guns, could be got, to a point within 60 yards of the ditch. The assault was to be made by 400 volunteers from the three brigades of the 1st Division, and was to be supported and flanked by a separate attack on another point on the south side of the outer enceinte, to be delivered by a detachment of the caçadores of the 6th Division. The force used was certainly too small for the purpose required, and it did not even get a chance of success. The Portuguese, when issuing from the ruined houses of the town, were detected at once, and being heavily fired on, retired without even approaching their goal. At the main attack the ladder party and forlorn hope reached the ditch in their first rush, sprang in and planted four ladders against the wall. The enemy had been taken somewhat by surprise, but recovered himself before the supports got to the front, which they did in a straggling fashion. A heavy musketry fire was opened on the men in the ditch, and live shells were rolled by hand upon them. Several attempts were made to mount the ladders, but all who neared their top rungs were shot or bayoneted, and after the officer in charge of the assault (Major Laurie, 1/79th) had been killed, the stormers ran back to their cover in the hollow road. They had lost 158 officers and men in all—76 from the Guards’ brigade, 44 from the German brigade, 9 from the Line brigade of the 1st Division, while the ineffective Portuguese diversion had cost only 29 casualties. The French had 9 killed and 13 wounded.
This was a deplorable business from every point of view. An escalade directed against an intact line of defence, held by a strong garrison, whose morale had not been shaken by any previous artillery preparation, was unjustifiable. There was not, as at Almaraz, any element of surprise involved; nor, as at the taking of the Castle of Badajoz, were a great number of stormers employed. Four hundred men with five ladders could not hope to force a well-built wall and ditch, defended by an enemy as numerous as themselves. The men murmured that they had been sent on an impossible task; and the heavy loss, added to that on San Miguel three days before, was discouraging. Many angry comments were made on the behaviour of the Portuguese on both occasions[37].
Irregular methods having failed, it remained to see what could be done by more formal procedure, by battering and sapping up towards the enemy’s defences on the west side of the Castle, the only one accessible for approach by parallels and trenches. The plan adopted was to work up from the hollow road (from which the stormers had started on the last escalade) in front of the suburb of San Pedro. The hollow road was utilized as a first parallel; from it a flying sap (b on the map) was pushed out uphill towards the outer enceinte in a diagonal line. The object was to arrive at it and to mine it (at the place marked I on the map). When the working party had got well forward, a point was chosen in the sap at a distance of 60 feet from the wall, and the mine was started from thence. All this was done under very heavy fire from the Castle, but it was partly kept down by placing marksmen all along the parallel, who picked off many of the French gunners, and of the infantry who lined the parapet of the outer enceinte. Sometimes the return fire of the place was nearly silenced, but many of the British marksmen fell. The work in the flying sap was made very costly by the fact that the trench, being on very steep ground, had to be made abnormally deep [September 23-6].
Meanwhile, on the hill of San Miguel, a second battery (No. 2 on the map) was dug out behind the gorge of the dismantled hornwork, and trenches for musketry (a.a on the map) were constructed on the slope of the hill, so as to bring fire to bear on the flank and rear of the lower defences of the Castle. The French heavy guns of the Napoleon battery devoted themselves to incommoding this work; their fire was accurate, many casualties took place, and occasionally all advance had to cease. A deep trench of communication between the batteries on San Miguel and the attack in front of San Pedro was also started, in order to link up the two approaches by a short line: the ground was all commanded by the Castle, and the digging went slowly because of the intense fire directed on it.
Meanwhile battery No. 1 on San Miguel at last came into operation, firing with five howitzers (the 18-pounders originally placed there had been withdrawn) against the palisades and flank of the north-western angle of the outer enceinte of the Castle. These inefficient guns had no good effect; it was found that they shot so inaccurately and so weakly that little harm was done. After firing 141 rounds they stopped, it being evident that the damage done was wholly incommensurate with the powder and shot expended [September 25]. This first interference of the British artillery in the contest was not very cheering either to the troops, or to the engineers engaged in planning the attack on the Castle. The guns in battery 1 kept silence for the next five days, while battery 2, where the 18-pounders had now been placed, had never yet fired a single shot. Wellington was now staking his luck on the mine, which was being run forward from the head of the flying sap.
This work, having to be cut very deep, as it was to go right under the ditch, and being in the hands of untrained volunteers from the infantry, who had no proper cutting tools, advanced very slowly. The soil, fortunately, was favourable, being a stiff argillaceous clay which showed no disposition to crumble up: the gallery was cut as if in stone, with even and perpendicular sides and floor, and no props or timbering were found necessary. The main hindrance to rapid work, over and above the unskilfulness of the miners, was the foul air which accumulated at the farther end of the excavation: many times it was necessary to withdraw the men for some hours to allow it to clear away. At noon on September 29 the miners declared that they had reached the foundations of the wall, and this seemed correct enough, for they had come to a course of large rough blocks of stone, extending laterally for as far as could be probed. It is probable, however, that the masonry was really the remains of some old advanced turret or outwork, projecting in front of the modern enceinte. For when the end of the mine was packed with twelve barrels, containing 90 lb. of powder each, well tamped, and fired at midnight, the explosion brought down many stones from the front of the wall, but did not affect the earth of the rampart, which remained standing perpendicular behind it. There seemed, however, to be places, at the points where the broken facing joined the intact part of the wall, where men might scramble up. Accordingly the storming-column of 300 volunteers who had been waiting for the explosion, was let loose, under cover of a strong musketry fire from the trenches. A sergeant and four men went straight for one of the accessible points, mounted, and were cast down again, three of them wounded. But the main body of the forlorn hope and its officer went a little farther along the wall, reached a section that was wholly impracticable for climbing, and ran back to the trenches to report that the defences were uninjured. The supports followed their example. The loss, therefore, was small—only 29 killed and wounded—but the moral effect of the repulse was very bad. The men, for the most part, made up their minds that they had been sent to a hopeless and impossible task by the errors of an incompetent staff. The engineers declared that the stormers had not done their best, or made any serious attempt to approach the wall.
Wellington must by now have been growing much disquieted about the event of the siege. He had spent ten days before Burgos, but since the capture of the hornwork on the first night had accomplished absolutely nothing. There were rumours that the Army of Portugal was being heavily reinforced, and these were perfectly true. By the coming up from the rear of drafts, convalescents, and stragglers, it had received some 7,000 men of reinforcements, and by October 1 had 38,000 men with the colours—more than Wellington counted, even including the Galicians. Souham was now in command: he had been on leave in France at the time of the battle of Salamanca, but returned in the last days of September and superseded Clausel. There had been in August some intention of sending Masséna back to the Peninsula, to replace the disabled Marmont. Clarke, the Minister of War, dispatched him to Bayonne on his own responsibility, there being no time to consult Napoleon, who was now nearing Moscow[38]. When the Emperor had the question put to him he nominated Reille[39], but by the time that his order got to Spain Souham was in full charge of the army, and was not displaced till the campaign was over. Masséna never crossed the frontier to relieve him, reporting himself indisposed, and unable to face the toils of a campaign: his nomination by Clarke was never confirmed, and he presently returned to Paris. Hearing of the gathering strength of the Army of Portugal, Wellington remarked that he was lucky—the French were giving him more time than he had any right to expect[40] to deal with Burgos. Meanwhile he showed no intention, as yet, either of abandoning the siege or of taking back to Madrid the main part of his army, as he had repeatedly promised to do in his letters of early September. Soult and the King were not yet showing in any dangerous combination on the Valencian side, and till they moved Wellington made up his mind to persevere in his unlucky siege. It is clear that he hated to admit a failure, so long as any chance remained, and that he was set on showing that he could ‘make bricks without straw.’
The mine explosion of the 29th-30th had been a disheartening affair; but Wellington had now resolved to repeat this form of attack, aiding it however this time by the fire of his insignificant siege-train. A second mine had already been begun, against a point of the outer enceinte (II in the map) somewhat to the south of that originally attacked by the first. This was pushed with energy between September 30 and October 4; but at the same time an endeavour was made to utilize, for what it was worth, the direct fire of artillery, at the shortest possible distance from the walls. On the night of September 30-October 1 a battery for three guns (No. 3 in the map) was commenced, slightly in advance of the 1st Parallel in the Hollow Road, no more than some sixty-five yards from the French defences. The garrison, not having been troubled with any battery-building on this front before, suspected nothing, and at dawn on October 1 the earthwork was completed, and the carpenters were beginning to lay the wooden platforms on which the 18-pounders were to stand. With the coming of the light the enemy discovered the new and threatening work, and began to concentrate upon it every gun that he could bring to bear. The platforms however were completed, and at 9 o’clock the artillery hauled the three heavy guns, which were Wellington’s sole effective battering-tools, into their places. The sight of them provoked the French to redoubled activity: shot shell and musketry fire were directed upon the front of the battery from many quarters, its parapet began to fly to pieces, and the loss among the artillerymen was heavy. Before the embrasures had been opened, or a single shot had been fired from the three guns, the enemy’s fire had become so rapid and accurate that the work had become ruined and untenable. Two of the 18-pounders had been cast down from their carriages and put out of action—one had a trunnion knocked off, the other (which had been hit eleven times) was split in the muzzle. Only one of the three remained in working order. Without having fired even once, two of the three big guns were disabled! It was a bad look out for the future [October 1].
Wellington, however, ordered a second battery to be constructed, somewhat to the left rear of the first (No. 4 in the map), and behind instead of before the parallel. The position chosen was one on to which many of the French guns could not be trained, while it was equally good with battery No. 3 for playing on the outer enceinte. After midnight [October 1-2] the two disabled and one intact 18-pounders were dragged out of the abandoned battery and taken to the rear. Next morning, however, a new disappointment was in store for Wellington: the French detected battery No. 4, and opened upon it, with all guns that could reach it, such an accurate and effective fire that the parapet, though revetted with wool-packs, soon began to crumble, and the workmen had to withdraw. ‘It became evident that under such a plunging fire no guns could ever be served there[41].’ All hopes of breaching the lower enceinte from any point on its immediate front had to be abandoned—and meanwhile the heavy artillery had been ruined.