On the morning of the fourth day (April 10th) the 9th Regiment were marched regularly into town. A gallows was erected in the principal square and others in different parts of the town. A general order was proclaimed that the first man detected in plundering should be executed; but no execution took place. The soldiers well knew how far they might proceed, and no farther did they go. The butcheries and horrible scenes of plunder and debauchery ceased in Badajoz; and it became an orderly British garrison. During the sack the Portuguese troops plundered but little, for as they had not been employed in the storming the British soldiers would have killed them had they interfered with the spoil. But during the three days’ transfer of property they lay hid close outside the town, where they awaited the British soldiers, who always came with a sheet or counterpane filled with every species of plunder, carried on their heads and shoulders like so many Atlases; and as these always left the town drunk and lay down to sleep between it and the camp, the artful Portuguese crept up and carried away everything, and thus they finally possessed all the plunder. I witnessed this mean jackal theft a hundred times; and, without feeling the slightest affection for those second-hand dastard robbers, I enjoyed seeing the British soldiers deprived of their booty, acquired under circumstances too disgusting to be dwelt on.
The storming of Badajoz caused a severe loss to the British army. The 3rd and 5th Divisions, who successfully escaladed the walls, lost either in killed or wounded six hundred men each; and the casualties suffered by the 4th and light Divisions amounted to upwards of five hundred more than the loss of the successful escalading divisions.
The great loss caused in the ranks of those who attacked the breaches was due to their having been erroneously led on to an unfinished ravelin, constructed in front of the centre breach, that of Trinidad. This work had been a good deal raised during the siege, and being mistaken for a breach, which in its unfinished state it much resembled, the 4th Division gallantly mounted and soon reached the top. Here they were severely galled by a destructive fire from the whole front; a deep precipice and wet ditch intervened between the ravelin and the breaches. Astonished and dismayed the men began to return the enemy’s fire. At this critical moment the light division, who had been led as much too far to their right as the 4th Division had been to their left, came up; and unfortunately they also mounted the fatal deceptive ravelin. All was now confusion and dreadful carnage was passively suffered by those devoted troops. The officers, having at length discovered the mistake, hurried down the ravelin and gallantly showed the example of mounting the Trinidad and Santa Maria breaches, followed by the bravest of the men; but the formation as an organised body being broken, only the excessively brave followed the officers. On arriving at the top of the breaches, which were stoutly defended, so weak a force were consequently hurled down to destruction. The utmost disorder followed. Thus the attacks on the three breaches, where alone Badajoz was considered vulnerable, all failed of success; while those defences which both by the besiegers and besieged were deemed almost impregnable, were gallantly forced. Such are the vicissitudes of war, especially in night attacks. At dawn on the 7th there was no dead body near the last made and most vulnerable breach—a proof that by error it was never attacked.
Immediately after the fall of Badajoz the chief part of the army moved towards the north of Portugal, where Marmont had collected his corps. However, all his exploits consisted in a distant blockade of Ciudad Rodrigo and some romantic attempts against the fortress of Almeida. Failing in his attempts against those two places, he marched upon Castello Branco, threatening to destroy the Bridge of Boats at Villavelha; but on the advance of Lord Wellington to attack him he retired out of Portugal and thus terminated his inglorious incursion.
MARMONT’S JEALOUSY OF SOULT.
Fortunately for the operations carried on against Badajoz, Marmont’s jealousy of Soult was such that he ignored all his remonstrances and did not unite with him; he continued obstinate and Badajoz fell.
Marshal Soult arrived with his army at Llerena on April 3rd, and on the 4th Lord Wellington made arrangements to receive him. His plan was to leave ten thousand men in the trenches and fight the marshal with the remainder of his army; but Soult, either feeling diffident of his strength or still in the hope that Marmont would bend his course southerly, arrived at Villa Franca, but thirty miles from Llerena and the same distance from Badajoz, only on the 7th, thus taking four days to march thirty miles in haste to relieve a beleaguered fortress. On his arrival at Villa Franca on the 7th, he was informed that Badajoz had fallen that morning, or rather the night before, and that Phillipon had surrendered at discretion. He then, like Marmont, retired and moved into Andalusia.
CHAPTER XXV.
AFTER SOME ADVENTURES BY SEA AND LAND I JOIN MY NEW REGIMENT IN THE PYRENEES.
All the troops, except those left to repair and garrison Badajoz, having moved off, I proceeded immediately to Lisbon. Here I remained as short a time as possible, not from over anxiety to see England, but because, although I had the horrors of the sacking of Badajoz in painful recollection, I felt greater horror at the idea that I might be taken for a Belemite. During the splendid campaigns which took place in the Peninsula from 1808 to 1813 many British officers were collected at Belem, and with peculiar tact so contrived as always to remain in the rear of the army. Some were unwillingly kept back from debility of constitution or through wounds, but a large majority were inflicted with a disease which, baffling the skill of learned doctors, loudly called for a remedy far different from that of medical treatment. This patrician band, amounting to the incredible number of upwards of a thousand, were formed into an inefficient depôt at Belem, a suburb of Lisbon, distant thence about five miles. That this over prudent body was not exclusively composed of wounded will appear when it is known that the greater number of its members had never seen nor heard a shot fired during the whole of the eventful period mentioned, far more cautions indeed than the smooth-faced Roman patricians who fled from the slingers at Pharsalia. This careful band did not venture so far even as the skirts of the fight; and it might truthfully be said that the movement of the whole army was attended with less difficulty than the movement of a single Belemite to the front. The complaint or disease of which they complained they invariably attributed to the liver; but medical men after careful analysis attributed it to an affection of the heart, founding their conclusions on the fact that whenever any of those backward patients came forward, the violent palpitations of that organ clearly proved that it was much more affected by the artificial fire in the field than was the liver by the physical heat of the sun.