The battles of the British Army

by Robert Melvin Blackwood

In consequence, the fifth division was ordered to advance, leaving the observation of San Christoval to the Portuguese cavalry; the British general having decided on leaving a corps of ten thousand men to protect the trenches, and with the remainder of his force bring Soult to action.

At noon, on the 5th April, the breaches were reconnoitred and declared practicable; but the assault was deferred for another day to allow the artillery time to batter down the curtain, connecting the bastion with an unfinished ravelin. The concentrated fire of the British batteries fell upon the old wall with irresistible force; it was breached in a single day, and thus three points for assault were thrown open. The report of the engineers was encouraging; the main breach was sufficiently wide, and the ascent to all three easy enough for troops to mount.

Ten o’clock on the night of the 6th was appointed for the assault to be attempted, and the necessary orders were issued accordingly. The castle was to be attacked by the third division, the bastion of La Trinidad by the fourth, that of Santa Maria by the light division, the lunette of San Rocque by a party from the trenches; while the fifth should distract the garrison by a false attack on the Pardelaras, and the works contiguous to San Vicente.

Philippon, well aware that an assault might be expected, had employed every resource that skill and ingenuity could devise to render the attempt a failure. As Lord Wellington had neither time nor means to destroy the counterscarps, the French were enabled to raise the most formidable obstructions at their foot, and insulate the breaches effectually. At night, the rubbish was removed, retrenchments formed, and the battered parapets repaired by sand-bags, casks, and woolpacks. Powder-barrels and grenades were laid along the trenches, and at the foot of the breach sixty fourteen-inch shells, communicating with hoses and bedded in earth, were placed ready for explosion. A chevaux-de-frieze[11] was stretched across the rampart, and planks studded with spikes covered the slopes of the breaches. Every species of combustible was employed, and a cartridge specially prepared for the musketry, formed of buck-shot and slugs; and when the distance was so close, nothing would prove more mischievous.

[11] Chevaux-de-frieze are wooden spars, spiked at one end, and set into a piece of timber. They were originally used as a defence against cavalry, but are now commonly employed in strengthening outworks and stopping breaches.

The day was remarkably fine, and the troops, in high spirits, heard the orders for the assault, and proceeded to clean their appointments, as if a dress parade only was intended. Evening came, darkness shut distant objects out, the regiments formed, the roll was called in an under voice, the forlorn hope stepped out, the storming party was told off, all were in readiness and eager for the fray.

Shortly before ten, a beautiful firework rose from the town, and showed the outline of Badajoz and every object that lay within several hundred yards of the works. The flame of the carcase died gradually away, and darkness, apparently more dense, succeeded this short and brilliant illumination.

The word was given, the forlorn hope moved forward, the storming parties succeeded, and the divisions, in columns, closed the whole. Of these splendid troops, now all life and daring, how many were living in an hour?

At that moment the deep bell of the cathedral of St. John struck ten; the most perfect silence reigned around, and except the softened footsteps of the storming parties, as they fell upon the turf with military precision, not a movement was audible. A terrible suspense, a horrible stillness, darkness, a compression of the breathing, the dull and ill-defined outline of the town, the knowledge that similar and simultaneous movements were making on other points, the certainty that two or three minutes would probably involve the forlorn hope in ruin, or make it the beacon-light to conquest—all these made the heart throb quicker and long for the bursting of the storm, when victory should crown daring with success, or hope and life should end together.

On went the storming parties; one solitary musket was discharged beside the breach, but none answered it. The light division moved forward, rapidly closing up in columns at quarter distance. The ditch was gained, the ladders were lowered, on rushed the forlorn hope, with the storming party close behind them. The divisions were now on the brink of the sheer descent, when a gun boomed from the parapet. The earth trembled, a mine was fired, an explosion, and an infernal hissing from lighted fusees succeeded, and, like the rising of a curtain on the stage, in the hellish glare that suddenly burst out around the breaches, the French lining the ramparts in crowds, and the British descending the ditch, were placed as distinctly visible to each other as if the hour were noontide!