The battles of the British Army

by Robert Melvin Blackwood

Ciudad Rodrigo stands on high ground, in the centre of an extensive plain it domineers. The city is erected on the right bank of the Agueda, which there branches into numerous channels, and forms a number of small islands. The citadel commands the town, and standing on an elevated mound is difficult of access on every side. Since their late occupation, the French had added considerably to the strength of the place. The suburbs were secured against a coup de main, by fortifying two convents on their flanks, and another nearly in the centre. On the north side the ground rises in two places; that furthest from the works is thirteen feet above the level of the ramparts, from which it is distant six hundred yards. The other, of lesser altitude, is scarcely two hundred paces. On the former the enemy had erected a redoubt; it was protected by a fortified convent called San Francisco, as well as the artillery of the place, which commanded the approaches from the hill.

The Agueda is fordable in several places, the best passage being within pistol-shot of the walls. In winter, from the sudden floodings of the river, these fords cannot be relied upon, and a bridge of eighteen trestles, with a platform four hundred feet long, was secretly constructed in the citadel of Almeida and conveyed to Salices.

Four divisions were entrusted with the duties of the siege. They took their turns in course, each for twenty-four hours furnishing the requisite guards and working parties.

On the night of the 8th of January, the investment was regularly commenced, and the redoubt on the upper Teson stormed by three companies of the 52nd with trifling loss. Ground was broken on its flank, and by the morning the trench was four feet wide and three in depth. On the following night the first parallel was opened; and the outlines of three batteries for eleven guns each were traced.

The weather continued dreadfully inclement, and as it was believed that Marmont would endeavour to raise the siege, Wellington decided on rapid operations, and resolved to attempt a storm even with the counterscarps entire. Both the besiegers and the besieged were active in their operations. On the night of the 13th, the convent of Santa Cruz was taken; and on the 14th, while the division was coming to relieve the working parties, the garrison made a sortie, overturned the gabions in advance of the parallel, and would have succeeded in spiking the guns, but for the spirited opposition of a few workmen and engineers, who checked the attempt, until the head of the division closing up obliged the French to retire.

On the morning of the 14th, the batteries were nearly ready for breaching, mounted with twenty-three 24-pounders and two eighteens. At four o’clock in the afternoon their fire commenced, and a spectacle more strikingly magnificent, it has rarely been the good fortune even of a British soldier to witness.

The evening chanced to be remarkably beautiful and still; there was not a cloud in the sky, nor a breath of wind astir, when suddenly the roar of artillery broke in upon its calmness, and volumes of smoke rose slowly from the batteries. These floating gently towards the town, soon enveloped the lower part of the hill, and even the ramparts and bastions in a dense veil, while the towers and summits lifting their heads over the haze, showed like fairy buildings, or those substantial castles which are sometimes seen in the clouds on a summer’s day. The flashes from the British guns, answered as they were from the artillery in the front, and the roar of their thunder reverberating among the remote mountains of the Sierra de Francisca; these, with the rattle of the balls against the walls, proved altogether a scene which, to be rightly understood, must be experienced.

That night the convent of San Francisco was escaladed by a wing of the 40th, and the French having abandoned the suburbs, they were occupied by the besiegers.

At daybreak on the 15th the batteries resumed their fire, and at sunset the walls of the main scarp and fausse braye were visibly shaken. Under cover of a fog on the 16th, the second parallel was prolonged; but the front of the works was so limited, and the fire of the enemy so concentrated and correct, that it required immense time to throw up a battery. The difficulty may be readily imagined, from the fact of the French having discharged at the approaches, upwards of twenty thousand shot and shells. Another battery of seven guns was opened on the 18th. On the 19th, two breaches were distinctly visible from the trenches, and on being carefully reconnoitred, they were declared practicable. Lord Wellington examined them in person, decided on storming them that evening, and from behind the reverse of one of the approaches, issued written orders for the assault.

The French were not inactive. The larger breach, exposing a shattered front of more than one hundred feet, had been carefully mined—the base of the wall strewn with shells and grenades, and the top, where troops might escalade, similarly defended. Behind, a deep retrenchment was cut, to insulate the broken rampart, in the event of its being carried by storm. The lesser breach was narrow at the top, exceedingly steep, with a four-and-twenty pounder turned sideways, that blocked the passage up, except an opening between the muzzle and the wall, by which two files might enter.