A plunging shot struck the ground near the spot where Sir James was standing, rebounded, struck him on the chest, and laid him prostrate and senseless. The officers near thought certainly that he was killed; but he recovered breath, and then recollection, and resisting all entreaties to quit the field, continued to issue his orders. Sir Thomas Graham meantime accepted the offer of a part of Major-General Bradford’s Portugueze brigade to ford the river and assist in the assault. The advance of a battalion under Major Snodgrass, and of a detachment under Lieutenant-Colonel M’Bean, was made rapidly and firmly, under a very heavy fire of grape, along the beach and over a creek knee-deep. They got over, but not without great loss, and bore their part in what Sir Thomas Graham began now to think was an all but desperate attempt: and desperate it must have proved, if, upon consulting with Colonel Dickson, who commanded the artillery, he had not ventured to direct that the guns should be turned against the curtain. A heavy fire was immediately directed there, passing only a few feet above the heads of our own troops, and it was kept up with a precision of practice beyond all example. The troops who were employed in the assault were astonished at hearing the roar of cannon from behind them; they saw the enemy swept from the curtain; a few of their own men were brought down also by the first discharge: the second made the intent fully intelligible; its effect upon the enemy was visible, and a great effort was then ordered to gain the high ridge at all hazards.
At this time a shell burst near Sir James Leith, tore off the flesh of his left hand, and broke the arm in two places; still he continued to give directions, till, fainting from loss of blood, he was carried from the field. Major-General Hay succeeded to the command. Almost ♦Sir Richard Fletcher slain.♦ immediately afterwards, and nearly on the same spot, Sir Richard Fletcher talking to General Oswald, was killed by a musket-ball, which struck him in the spine of the neck. This was a great loss to his friends and his country: he was of such amiable qualities, as well as of such sterling worth, that no man was ever more respected and loved; and that his professional talents were of the highest order had been shown by the lines of Torres Vedras.
♦The city taken.♦
As Sir James Leith was carried through the trenches to the rear, he met the remaining part of his division pressing forward to execute his orders; and the men of the 9th regiment, recognizing their general, promised him not to desist from their exertions until the place should be taken. Just as they arrived at the breach, a quantity of cartridges exploded behind one of the traverses of the curtain; the fire of the artillery had occasioned this; and it caused some confusion among the enemy, who already apprehended that the tide of fortune was turning against them. The narrow pass was now gained and maintained; hats were waved from the terre-plein of the curtain; the troops rushed forward and drove the enemy down the steep flight of steps near the great gate leading from the works into the town. The troops on the right of the breach about the same time forced the barricadoes on the top of the narrow line wall, and found their way into the houses that joined it. In many places it was necessary to apply scaling-ladders before the men could get down. At the centre of the main breach there was an excavation below the descent, and a barricado at some feet farther back; here, therefore, any who should have descended would have been inclosed as a mark for the enemy, till the way was cleared for them by a flanking fire from a round tower on the right, which took the French in reverse. The French themselves were inclosed in a barricado between that tower and the right breach, and their dead lay there heaped upon each other. The contest was still maintained from barricadoes in the streets, and by firing from the houses; till between four and five in the afternoon, the enemy were driven from their last defence in the town, except the Convent of S. Teresa, and retired into the castle. By that time the town was on fire in many places; and, to add to the horrors of a place taken by assault, the vindictive enemy fired upon it from their upper defences, and rolled their shells into it.
About three in the afternoon, the day, which had been sultry, became unusually cold; the sky was overcast, and between the blackness of the sky, the rain, and the smoke, it was as dark as a dusky evening; but when darkness would in its natural course have closed the town was in flames. A dreadful night of thunder and rain, and wind succeeded; and it was made far more dreadful by man than by the elements. It is no easy task for officers, after the heat of an assault, to restrain successful troops who are under no moral restraint; and on this day so many officers had perished that the men fancied themselves exempt from all control. They sacked the place, and gave way to such excesses that if the French could have suspected the state of drunkenness to which men so excellently brave in action had reduced themselves, they might very probably have retaken part of the town, if not the whole. The loss of the assailants amounted to nearly 1600 British and 800 Portugueze killed and wounded; 700 of the garrison were made prisoners.
♦The French defeated in their attempt to relieve it.♦
On the morning of the assault the French made a second effort for the relief of S. Sebastian’s. Three divisions of Spaniards, under General Freyre, occupied the heights of S. Marcial on the left of the Bidassoa, and the town of Irun, thus covering the road to the besieged fortress. The position was exceedingly strong, the front and the left being covered by the river, and their right resting on the Sierra de Haya. They were supported by the first division of British infantry, under Major-General Howard, and by Lord Aylmer’s brigade on the left, and in the rear of Irun; and by Longa’s division near the Sierra in rear of their right. Still farther to secure them, Lord Wellington, knowing that during the 29th and 30th the enemy were assembling a large force at Vera, moved two brigades of the 4th division to the left of the Sierra, and occupied the heights on the right of that mountain, between the convent of S. Antonio and Vera; and Lezaca with a Portugueze brigade, to prevent it from being turned in that direction. On the 30th also he moved Major-General Inglis’s brigade to the bridge of Lezaca, and gave orders for the troops in the Puertos of Etchalar, Zugarramundi, and Maya, to attack the enemy’s weakened post in front of their positions.
Before daylight on the 31st the enemy crossed the Bidassoa with a very large force, two divisions by a ford in front of the left of the Spaniards, while a third, under protection of batteries which they had thrown up during the night, were constructing a bridge over the river, about three quarters of a mile above the high road. The two divisions immediately attacked the Spaniards along the whole front of their position on the heights of S. Marcial. The attack was made with that confidence which the French had always felt when the Spaniards were opposed to them in regular action; but the boldness with which they commenced it was ill maintained; for the Spaniards waited firmly till the assailants had nearly reached the summit of the steep ascent, then charged them with the bayonet whilst in column, and instantly broke them. As often as the French repeated the attack so often were they driven back, some of them even across the river, where many in their haste lost the direction of the ford and perished. The division which had been pushed across the Bidassoa to protect the construction of the bridge, made a subsequent attempt on the right of the Spaniards, with no better success. But as the course of the river was immediately under the heights on the French side, and a considerable bend in that part of the stream was flanked by their batteries, the Spaniards could not prevent the pontooners from completing their work; and in the afternoon the enemy marched over a considerable body, which, with the divisions who had crossed at the fords, made another desperate attack upon the Spanish position. Lord Wellington, who pronounced the conduct of the Spaniards on this day to have been equal to that of any troops whom he had ever seen engaged, appeared in front of their line at the moment when the French advanced to this last attack. He was received with loud and repeated shouts, and the men, proud of supporting in his sight the character which they felt that they had this day deserved, again beat back the assailants. They showed themselves indeed so capable of defending their post without assistance, that the two British divisions were not brought into action, the nature of the ground being such that they could not be employed on the flanks of the enemy’s corps. When the French were at length convinced that all their efforts were in vain, they took advantage of a violent storm and the darkness which came on with it, to retire hastily from this front. Many took to the river in their fear, to sink or swim if they should miss the fords; and in this attempt so many were seen to perish, the river being swoln by the storm, that latterly the fugitives crowded to the bridge, and at last pressed upon it in such numbers, that it sunk beneath their weight, and most of those who were passing at the moment were lost.
About the same time that the enemy commenced their operations on this side, a very strong body of their infantry crossed the Bidassoa, in two columns, by the fords below Salon, in front of the position occupied by the 9th Portugueze brigade. Major-General Inglis moved with his brigade to their support, and finding he could not maintain the heights between Lezaca and the river, withdrew to those in front of the convent, protecting there the right of the Spanish army, and at the same time the approach by Oyarzun to S. Sebastian’s. Major-General Kempt meantime moved a brigade of the light division to Lezaca, by which he kept the enemy in check; and the Earl of Dalhousie was directed likewise to support Major-General Inglis; but being engaged at the Puerto de Zugarramundi, he could not begin his march till late in the afternoon, nor arrive before the ensuing morning, when the operations were at an end. For the enemy, when they found that Major-General Inglis was in a position from which they could not dislodge him, and knew that they had completely failed at the heights of San Marcial, felt that their situation on the Spanish side of the Bidassoa was becoming every moment more critical, and retired during the night. But the river had then so risen, and was still rising so fast, that the rear of their column was obliged to cross by the bridge at Vera: and to effect this, they attacked the posts of the light division about three in the morning. If a sufficient force could have been spared for guarding this point, a very considerable part of Soult’s army might have been taken. The bridge was not wide enough for more than three or four to pass abreast, and a continual fire was poured upon it from the walls of a neighbouring convent, so that they were believed to have lost not less than a thousand men in passing. The loss of the allies on this day amounted to 400 killed, about 2060 wounded, and 150 missing, nearly 1600 of these being Spaniards. The brunt of the action had fallen upon them; and in this respect it was a day of great importance, because it made the French feel their own growing inferiority, and apprehend that San Marcial would teach the Spaniards the same confidence in themselves which the Portugueze had learned at Busaco. Among the British officers who fell was Captain Douglas of the 51st: he is thus mentioned in a work wherein so many crimes have been recorded, because his brother officers bore this testimony to him, that he was the only man they knew of whom they could truly say there was nothing in him in the slightest degree approaching to a vice. The men of his company carried him off the field, made his grave carefully, and gave him a soldier’s burial with all the marks of respect which they could bestow.
The effort on Soult’s part had been great, and was deemed so by Lord Wellington, for a Portugueze brigade was withdrawn from the besieging corps during the assault. As soon as the town had been carried, ♦Siege of the castle of S. Sebastian’s.♦ preparations were made for reducing the castle. The enemy still held the convent of S. Teresa, the garden of which, inclosed as usual in such establishments with a high wall, reached a good way up the hill, toward their upper defences; and from thence they marked any who approached within reach of fire, so that when a man fell, there was no other means of bringing him off than by sending the French prisoners upon this service of humanity. The town presented a dreadful spectacle both of the work of war and of the wickedness which in war is let loose. It had caught fire during the assault, owing to the quantity of combustibles of all kinds which were scattered about; the French rolled their shells into it from the castle; and while it was in flames, the troops were plundering, and the people of the surrounding country flocking to profit by the spoils of their countrymen. The few inhabitants who were to be seen seemed stupified with horror; they had suffered so much, that they looked with apathy at all around them, and when the crash of a falling house made the captors run, they scarcely moved. Heaps of dead were lying every where, English, Portugueze, and French, one upon another, with such determination had the one side attacked and the other maintained its ground. Very many of the assailants lay dead on the roofs of the houses which adjoined the breach. The bodies were thrown into the mines and other excavations, and there covered over so as to be out of sight, but so hastily and slightly that the air far and near was tainted; and fires were kindled in the breaches to consume those which could not be otherwise disposed of. The hospital presented a more dreadful scene, ... for it was a scene of human suffering; friend and enemy had been indiscriminately carried thither, and were there alike neglected; ... on the third day after the assault many of them had received neither surgical assistance, nor food of any kind; and it became necessary to remove them on the fifth, when the flames approached the building: much of this neglect would have been unavoidable, even if that humane and conscientious diligence, which can be hoped for from so few, had been found in every individual belonging to the medical department, the number of the wounded being so great; and little help could be received from the other part of the army, because it had been engaged in action on the same day. ♦Excesses committed in the city.♦ The hideous circumstances of war were indeed at this time to be seen in S. Sebastian’s, divested of its pomp: and to a thoughtful mind its actual horrors were less painful than the brutal insensibility with which they were regarded by men whose nature, originally bad, had been worsened by their way of life. Great exertions were made to stop the excesses which at such times are to be expected; but the utmost exertions can do little among troops who believe themselves privileged by the occasion to break loose from the restraints of military discipline, and who are not more fearless of death than they are, while in health and strength, of judgment. The town was sacked: had it been an enemy’s town, it could not have suffered more from its captors. Sentries were placed at all the outlets to make the plunderers lay down their booty, but all that could be secreted about the person was carried off; and the Spaniards of Passages and other places were ready, as at a fair, to purchase the spoils of their countrymen. A reproach was brought upon the British name. The French seized the opportunity of endeavouring to fix upon their enemies the same odious imputation which they themselves were conscious of having deserved; they accused the British of setting fire to the town, indiscriminately murdering friend and foe, and pillaging the place under the eyes of their officers, who made no attempt to restrain them. These charges were brought forward by that party in Spain who, without inclining in ♦September.♦ the slightest degree toward the French, manifested on all occasions their jealousy and their envious dislike of England; and they added the farther calumny, that the captors had plundered the churches, and, by giving way to excess of every kind, lost the favourable time for following up their success and taking the castle. All was false, except that great excesses had been committed: the difference between the conduct of the British at S. Sebastian’s, and that of the French at Porto, Tarragona, and other places, being this, that the crimes which the former perpetrated were checked as soon as they could be by the officers, acknowledged by the generals as evils which they had not been able to prevent, severely condemned by them, and punished: those of the French had been systematic and predetermined; the men were neither checked nor reproved by their generals; and so far were the generals from receiving any mark of disapprobation from their government, that the acts themselves were ostentatiously proclaimed in bulletins and official reports, in the hope of intimidating the Portugueze and Spaniards, and without any sense of shame.