CHAPTER XIV
The Siege of Ciudad Rodrigo (1811–12)
“The great object in all sieges is to gain time.”
Wellington.
The exacting nature of the campaign was beginning to tell on Wellington. “I certainly feel, every day,” he had written to the Earl of Liverpool on the 15th May 1811, “more and more the difficulty of the situation in which I am placed. I am obliged to go everywhere, and if absent from any operation, something goes wrong.” “Another such battle” as Albuera, he informs his brother Henry on the 22nd, “would ruin us,” and he proceeds to compare the Spanish and Portuguese troops, to the disadvantage of the former. They often held their ground too well, there was no moving them in a battle. On the other hand, “We do what we please now with the Portuguese troops; we manœuvre them under fire equally with our own, and have some dependence on them; but these Spaniards can do nothing, but stand still, and we consider ourselves fortunate if they do not run away.” In his report of the battle Beresford mentions the Spanish cavalry as having behaved “extremely well.”
Some idea of the enormous amount of labour involved may be gained from the fact that on the day mentioned Wellington either wrote or dictated at least eighteen dispatches, including two dealing with the loss of an officer for whose widow and child he was endeavouring to obtain “favour and protection” at the hands of the home authorities. At the same time he was actively preparing for the renewed siege of Badajoz: “The late action has made a terrible hole in our ranks; but I am working hard to set all to rights again.” He appeared “destined to pass his life in the harness,” to use his own phrase, and had “a monstrous quantity of business to settle of different descriptions.”
Referring to the difference of opinion held by his officers regarding his policy, he says, “I believe nothing but something worse than firmness could have carried me through.... To this add that people in England were changing their opinions almost with the wind, and you will see that I had not much to look to excepting myself.” The words are almost those of a broken-hearted man.
Badajoz was again invested on the 25th May, and the batteries opened fire on the 3rd of the following month in an attempt to breach the fort of San Christoval and the castle. Wellington had then made his headquarters at Quinta de Granicha, from whence he writes, on the 6th to the Earl of Liverpool, to the effect that if he cannot prevent the enemy from receiving provisions he will not risk an action because he has not the means, and out of fairness to his soldiers he cannot “make them endure the labours of another siege at this advanced season. Notwithstanding that we have carried on our operations with such celerity,” he concludes “we have had great difficulties to contend with, and have been much delayed by the use of the old ordnance and equipments of Elvas, and of the Portuguese artillery, in this siege; some of the guns from which we fire are above 150 years old.” The majority of them were supposed to be 24-pounders, but they proved to be larger, with the result that their fire was very uncertain. Two attempts were made to storm the outwork of San Christoval without success, many brave fellows perishing in the vain effort to escalade the walls.
Three weeks had not elapsed before it became eminently necessary to retire from this scene of activity. During this short time nearly 500 officers and men had been reported as killed, wounded, or missing, and fifty-two of the Chasseurs Britanniques had deserted. “I have a great objection to foreigners in this army,” he informs a colleague a little later, “as they desert terribly; and they not only give the enemy intelligence which he would find it difficult to get in any other manner, but by their accounts and stories of the mode in which deserters from the French army are treated by us, some of them well founded, they have almost put an end to desertion.” The reason for the latter belief was the legend “that the deserters from the enemy are sent to the West India Islands, and have no chance of ever returning to Europe.”
Marmont, having united his scattered units, was about to join forces with Soult, which meant that when they marched on Badajoz, as undoubtedly they would do, the French army might number between 50,000 and 60,000 troops. Wellington had been of opinion that it was possible to reduce the place before the end of the second week of June. An intercepted dispatch from Soult to Marmont made it abundantly evident that the enemy were to concentrate in Estremadura, and other intelligence clearly proved that the destination of the French army was “to the southward.” Elvas, where supplies were running low, had first to be replenished, so that it might be in a condition of defence should the enemy cross the frontiers. Leaving a comparatively small number of men to blockade Badajoz, and having made arrangements for the strengthening of Elvas, he marched from that place to Quinta de St João, where he remained for a considerable period. For nearly a fortnight the French threatened to attack, and had they done so it is scarcely possible that Wellington could have held his own in the field. Soult was the first to withdraw, the immediate cause being the threatening of Seville by Blake, who retired when Soult approached. Marmont, feeling unequal to fight alone, marched to the valley of the Tagus and cantoned his army between Talavera and Plasencia. During the crisis the two marshals mustered 62,000 troops, Wellington about 48,000.
The heat and other considerations prevented Wellington from besieging Badajoz; to relieve Cadiz was out of the question because the forces of Soult and Marmont would be almost certain to come to the assistance of the force before the great southern port. He therefore decided to besiege Ciudad Rodrigo, for four reasons stated in a letter to the Earl of Liverpool dated the 18th July, namely: “We can derive some assistance from our militia in the north in carrying it into execution, and the climate in which the operation is to be carried on is not unfavorable at this season. If it should not succeed, the attempt will remove the war to the strongest frontier of Portugal; and, if obliged to resume the defensive, the strength of our army will be centrically situated, while the enemy’s armies of the north and of the south will be disunited.” Shortly after the above dispatch was written he heard that Suchet had captured Tarragona, which made the proposed operation “less favorable.” “However,” he tells Beresford on the 20th of the same month, “we shall have a very fine army of little less than 60,000 men,[67] including artillery, in the course of about a fortnight; and I do not see what I can do with it, to improve the situation of the allies, during the period in which it is probable that, the enemy’s attention being taken up with the affairs of the north of Europe,[68] we shall be more nearly on a par of strength with him, excepting we undertake this operation.”