At dusk the columns of attack were formed, and they moved forward at the rising of the moon: 150 sappers, under the direction of Captains M’Leod and Thomson, royal engineers, and Captain Thompson of the 74th, advanced from the second parallel to the edge of the ditch, each man carrying two bags filled with hay, which they threw into the ditch, reducing its depth thus from nearly fourteen feet to eight. Major-General Mackinnon followed close with his brigade, consisting of the 45th, 74th, and 88th, ... the men jumped into the ditch upon the bags; the enemy, though not yet wanting in heart, wanted the coolness of deliberate courage: they had accumulated shells and combustibles upon the breach, and at the foot of it, but they fired them too soon, so that the tremendous discharge was mostly spent before the troops reached their point of action. Ladders were instantly fixed upon the bags; they were not sufficient in number, the breach being wide enough for a hundred men abreast; but the short delay that this occasioned produced no evil, for the 5th arrived from the right to take part in the assault, and their eventual success was facilitated by the speedier progress of the light division on the left. That division moved simultaneously with Mackinnon’s column from behind the convent of St. Francisco against the little ♦Craufurd mortally wounded.♦ breach, under a heavy fire of musketry from the ramparts, by which Major-General Craufurd, who commanded, and was considerably in front, animating his men and leading them on, was mortally wounded. The counterscarp here was not so deep, the breach was not obstinately defended, and no interior defence had been prepared, so that the assailants carried it without much difficulty, and began to form on the ramparts. Meantime Major-General Mackinnon’s brigade, aided by the 5th, after a short but severe struggle gained the summit of the great breach. Giving up the breach, where first one mine was sprung and then a smaller, though neither with much effect, the enemy retired behind a retrenchment, where they stood their ground resolutely, and a severe contest ensued. But Brigadier-General Pack, who had been ordered with his brigade to make a false attack upon the southern face of the fort, converted it into a real one; and his advanced guard under Major Lynch, following the enemy’s troops from the advanced works into the fausse braye, made prisoners of all opposed to them: and while the garrison was thus disheartened on one side, the success of the light division on the other took from them all hope as soon as it was known; they gave way at once, and the retrenchment was carried. The brigade then dividing to the right and left, General Mackinnon said to Ensign Beresford, “Come, Beresford, you are a fine lad, we will go together!” ... these were the last words which he was heard to utter, for presently some powder exploded; Beresford was blown up, but fell without much injury into the arms of Mackinnon’s aide-de-camp ♦Mackinnon killed.♦ Captain Call. Mackinnon himself was among the many brave men killed by the explosion, and in him the nation lost an officer of the highest promise in the British army.
The enemy were now driven at the point of the bayonet into the great square, and were pursued from house to house, till they threw down their arms and called for quarter; and this was granted them, in the first heat of the onslaught, when, as they afterwards confessed, judging from what they themselves would have done, they expected nothing else than to be massacred. The place was won about nine at night: the troops, British and Portugueze, spread themselves all over the town, and got at the stores; but fortunately a guard was placed in time over the spirit-magazine, in which fifty pipes of good cogniac were found: had the men got at these, the amount of deaths would have been increased. It was a scene of wild disorder till daylight. The night was miserably cold, and the men crowded into the ruined houses to make fires: these rotten edifices soon caught the flames, and the conflagration became dreadful. Very little booty was to be gained in a town which the French had sacked, and which, indeed, had been deserted before they occupied it upon their conquest; what the men found was wholesome as well as welcome after their late hard fare, and they were seen each carrying three or four loaves stuck upon his bayonet. The enemy had pulled down many of the houses for firewood, and those which were nearest the ramparts had been demolished by our guns, though especial care had been taken to spare the town by battering it only in breach.
The governor, General Banier, was made prisoner, with seventy-eight officers and 1700 soldiers. Great quantities of ammunition and stores were found, a well-filled armoury, and an arsenal abundantly supplied; 109 pieces of ordnance mounted on the ramparts; and moreover, the battering-train of Marmont’s army, consisting of forty-four guns with their carriages. The loss of the allies consisted of three officers and seventy-seven men killed, twenty-four wounded and 500 during the siege; six officers and 140 men killed, sixty and 500 ♦General Craufurd.♦ wounded, in storming the breaches. Craufurd’s wound, though severe, was not thought dangerous, but it proved fatal on the fifth day. He had entered the army at the age of fifteen, and in the course of two-and-thirty years few officers had seen so much or such varied service. Early in life his abilities and professional zeal were noticed by his then colonel, Sir Charles Stuart, than whom no man was better qualified to appreciate them. During peace he pursued the study of his profession in all its branches upon the continent for three years, then went to India, and there distinguished himself in two campaigns under Lord Cornwallis. He was employed on a military mission with the Austrian armies during the years 1795, 1796, and 1797, and again in 1799; was made prisoner in the ill-planned and not more happily executed expedition against Buenos Ayres; and afterwards commanded the light division of Sir John Moore’s army in Spain. With that miserable retreat his course of ill fortune terminated. He joined Sir Arthur Wellesley the day after the battle of Talavera; sustained a severe attack from very superior numbers and in a perilous position upon the Coa; signalized himself at Busaco; rejoined his division after a short absence, when the troops were drawn up for action at Fuentes d’Onoro, and was saluted by them with three cheers in presence of the enemy. “I cannot report his death,” said Lord Wellington in his dispatch, “without expressing my sorrow and regret that his Majesty has been deprived of the services, and I of the assistance of an officer of tried talents and experience, who was an ornament to his profession, and was calculated to render the most important services to his country.” He was buried with all military honours in the breach before which he received his mortal wound.
♦General Mackinnon.♦
Mackinnon also had been interred in the breach which he had won; but this was done hastily, by some pioneers under General Picton’s orders, and the officers of the Coldstream guards, in which regiment he had long served, removed his body to Espeja, and there deposited it with due honours. In Craufurd the army lost one of its most experienced officers; in Mackinnon one of the greatest promise, in whom were united all the personal accomplishments, intellectual endowments, and moral virtues which in their union constitute the character of a perfect soldier. He was one of those men whom the dreadful discipline of war renders only more considerate for others, more regardless of themselves, more alive to the sentiments and duties of humanity. He was born near Winchester in 1773, but his father was chief of a numerous clan in the Hebrides. His military education was commenced in France, his family having removed to Dauphiny because of his elder brother’s state of health; and Buonaparte, then a military student, was a frequent visitor at their house. It is one of the redeeming parts of Buonaparte’s character, that he never forgot his attachment to that family; that during the peace of Amiens he invited them to France, where they might receive proofs of it; and that when he heard of General Mackinnon’s death, he manifested some emotion. He entered the army in his 15th year, served three years as a subaltern in the 43rd, was employed at the commencement of the war in raising an independent company, and then exchanged into the Coldstream guards. During the Irish rebellion, he was attached to the staff as major of brigade to Sir George Nugent; and distinguishing himself greatly in that horrible service, was distinguished also for his humanity. He was in the expedition to the Helder, volunteered to Egypt, and was at the siege of Copenhagen. In 1809 he joined the army in Portugal, was at the passage of the Douro, and had two horses killed under him at Talavera; how ably he conducted himself when left in the charge of the wounded after that action has been related in its proper place. At Busaco he displayed so much skill and promptitude, that Sir Arthur, immediately after the battle, returned him thanks in person. He distinguished himself also on many occasions during Massena’s retreat, and led that last charge against the French at Fuentes d’Onoro which drove them finally from the ground. The unwholesome heat in the vicinity of Badajoz induced some recurrence of a disease with which he had been attacked in Egypt, and he returned for a few weeks to England there to recruit his health. In 1804 he had married a daughter of Sir John Call: she planted in his garden a laurel for every action in which her husband was engaged; and when in his last visit she took him into the walk where they were flourishing, he said to her, that she would one day have to plant a cypress at the end. Perhaps this country has never sustained so great a loss since the death of Sir Philip Sidney.
♦Marmont’s movements during the siege.♦
Without delay the approaches were destroyed and the works repaired. On the 27th the place had been again rendered defensible. Marmont was at Toledo when he received the first tidings of its investment. Hastening to Valladolid, he stated in his dispatches to France on the 16th, that he had collected five divisions for the purpose of throwing supplies into Ciudad Rodrigo, but finding that force inadequate, he had been fain to recall two divisions from the army of the north: with these he should have 60,000 men, and events might then be looked for as momentous in their results as they would be glorious for the French arms. Massena had been a month in reducing that fortress; the calculation was, that it might hold out against a regular siege, to which there should be no interruption from without, four or five-and-twenty days; Marmont expected to be in good time if he came to its relief on the 29th; ... but his army was not collected at Salamanca till the 24th; and when he announced to his own government the loss of the place, in which he said there was something so incomprehensible that he would not allow himself to make any observation upon it, it was too late to make any movement for its recovery. The weather, which had so often been unfavourable to the allies, favoured them on this occasion; heavy rains, which cut off their communications, and which would have rendered it impossible to fill in the trenches and close the breaches, did not commence till four days after the place had been rendered secure against a sudden attack; and Marmont, whose battering-train had been captured with it, could attempt nothing more.
Castaños was present at the siege, and to him as Captain-General of that province the place was given up. Before its capture, the Alcaldes of 230 pueblos had repaired to his head-quarters, to testify their own fidelity and that of their respective communities. Lord Wellington bore testimony in his dispatches as well to the loyalty and general good-will of the Spaniards in those parts, as to the assistance he had derived from Brigadier Alava; and from Julian Sanchez and D. Carlos de España, who with their two bands had watched the enemy on the other side the Tormes. A thanksgiving-service for the reconquest was performed with all solemnity at Cadiz; and the Cortes, in conformity with the proposal of the Regency, conferred upon Lord Wellington ♦Lord Wellington made Duque de Ciudad Rodrigo.♦ the rank of a Grandee of the first class, and the title of Duque de Ciudad Rodrigo. The tidings could not have been more unexpected by Buonaparte himself, than it was by the opponents of administration in England. At the commencement of the session, they, in their old tone of dismay, had repeated their denunciations of discomfiture and utter failure: ministers were again arraigned by them for their obstinate blindness, ... for their wanton waste of money and of the public strength, and for persisting in flattering and fallacious language when they had brought the nation to the very brink of ruin! Sir ♦Speeches of Sir F. Burdett and Mr. Whitbread.♦ Francis Burdett said, that whatever had been done by England for the rights of the King of Spain (who had resigned his whole pretensions to Buonaparte), nothing had been done for the Spanish people; that even if the cause of Spain had been honourably undertaken by the British government, it had now become perfectly hopeless; our victories were altogether barren, and the French were making regular and rapid strides towards the subjugation of the Peninsula: but these evils, he said, arose from the system of corruption which an oligarchy of boroughmongers had established; and as things now were, the progress of France was more favourable to liberty than the success of England would be! With more curious infelicity in his croakings, Mr. Whitbread observed, that Lord Wellington after pursuing Massena to the frontiers had been obliged to fall back; that his attempt upon Ciudad Rodrigo had proved abortive; that every thing which we could do for Spain had already been done; and though the first general of the age and the bravest troops in the world had been sent to her assistance, nothing had been accomplished, and, in short, the French were in military possession of Spain. A month had not elapsed after the delivery of these opinions, ♦Vote of thanks to Lord Wellington. He is created an Earl.♦ before the thanks of Parliament were voted to Lord Wellington for the recovery of Ciudad Rodrigo, he was created an Earl of the United Kingdom, and an additional annuity of 2000l. granted to him in consideration of his signal services. In the course of the debate, Mr. Canning took occasion to state that a revenue of 5000l. a year had been granted to Lord Wellington by the Portugueze government when they conferred upon him the title of Conde de Vimeiro; that as Captain-General of Spain, 5000l. a year had been offered him, and 7000l. as Marshal in the Portugueze service; all which he had declined, saying, he would receive nothing from Spain and Portugal in their present state; he had only done his duty to his country, and to his country alone he would look for reward.
♦Preparations for the siege of Badajoz.♦
The Earl of Wellington was already preparing for a more arduous siege. Eighteen 24-pounders had been reserved at Lisbon for this service, when the battering-train intended for Ciudad Rodrigo was sent from the Tagus to the Douro. These, with some iron guns which the Russian fleet had left there, and with the engineers’ stores, were embarked at Lisbon in large vessels, as if for some remote destination, then transhipped at sea into smaller craft, and conveyed up the Sadam to Alcacere do Sal. Fascines and gabions were prepared at Elvas. The line of supply was changed from the Douro to the Tagus; and as the Beira frontier must for awhile be left open to the enemy’s incursions, directions were given for forming a temporary depôt at Celorico, the nearest point where it could be deemed safe, and a grand magazine beyond the Douro. Ciudad Rodrigo was in some degree provisioned, as well as rendered thoroughly defensible against any attack that the French had means of making; and the troops were then put in motion, glad to remove from an exhausted country, where the labour of procuring forage amounted to constant occupation for the cavalry, none being to be found except the straw which the peasants had reserved and endeavoured to conceal, as the only subsistence left for their remaining cattle. Corn was so scarce that the very few officers who could afford such an expenditure paid the enormous price of fourteen dollars the fanega for it, in prudence, as well as in mercy to their beasts; and the owner, loading his horse with his own precious provender, performed the march himself on foot. One division of infantry remained on the Agueda, covered by a few cavalry posts. The main body proceeding by rapid marches to the Tagus crossed it, some at Abrantes, some at Villa Velha. Lord Wellington having completed his arrangements at Ciudad Rodrigo, and given it finally over to the Spaniards, set out for Alemtejo on the 5th of March, and on the 11th his head-quarters were fixed at Elvas. On the 16th, the preparations being completed, a pontoon bridge was thrown across the Guadiana about a league below Badajoz; and the light, 3rd, and 4th divisions, under Lieutenant-Colonel Barnard, Generals Picton and Colville, crossed and invested the place without opposition. General Graham, with the 1st, 6th, and 7th divisions of infantry, and Generals Slade and Le Marchant’s brigades of cavalry, advanced to Los Santos, Zafra, and Llerena, to oppose any movements on the part of Marshal Soult; while Sir Rowland Hill with the 2nd division, General Hamilton’s Portugueze division, and a brigade of cavalry, moved from their cantonments near Alburquerque to Merida and Almendralejo, thus interposing between Soult and Marmont, if the latter should march from Salamanca with the intention of forming a junction as in the preceding year.