Generals Picton, Colville, Kempt, Bowes, Hervey, Walker, Champlemond, and almost every officer commanding regiments, besides more than three hundred officers, and between four and five thousand gallant veteran soldiers, fell around these walls.
The left breach[25] had not been attempted at all until a quarter before twelve o'clock, when Captain Shaw of our regiment[26], collecting about seventy men of different regiments, and with great difficulty, after such slaughter for two hours, made a desperate effort to gain the top; but when half-way up, as if by enchantment, he stood alone. Two rounds of grape and the musketry prevented any more trouble, for almost the whole of the party lay stretched in various attitudes!
Captain Nichols[27], of the Engineers, was of the number; he now showed great courage; and when asked by Shaw, if he would try the left breach, answered he would do any thing to succeed. A grape-shot went through his lungs, and he died three days after.
This attack was very daring. It was a forlorn hope, under accumulated dangers; almost all the troops had retired[28], and, a few moments before, a great alarm was excited by a cry from the heaps of wounded, that the French were descending into the ditch. To exaggerate the picture of this sanguinary strife is impossible:—the small groups of soldiers seeking shelter from the cart-wheels, pieces of timber, fire-balls, and other missiles hurled down upon them; the wounded crawling past the fire-balls, many of them scorched and perfectly black, and covered with mud, from having fallen into the lunette, where three hundred soldiers were suffocated or drowned; and all this time the French on the top of the parapets, jeering and cracking their jokes, and deliberately picking off whom they chose. The troops lining the glacis could not fire sufficiently, as they were terribly exposed, and could scarcely live from the cross fire of grape-shot.
Colonel Barnard[29] did all in his power to concentrate the different attacks. It was in vain; the difficulties were too great. But Badajoz was not the grave of the light division's valour, nor of the fourth division's either.
Philippon, the governor, a Frenchman, and our enemy, gave the full particulars of this affair to a friend of mine, while travelling in England; he said that he thought the great explosion would have finished the business, but he was astonished at the resolution of the British troops, who, he said, were fine fellows, and deserved a better fate.
The single musket-shot, fired just as the "forlorn hope" descended the ditch, was a signal of their approach, which shows how determined the French were to have a good blow-up, for not a ball was fired before the explosion. The efforts of the garrison to preserve the place did them much honour. Philippon was determined not to do as the governor of Ciudad Rodrigo had done. Had not the Earl of Wellington planned the two extreme attacks by escalade, on the castle, by the third division, and on the south side of the town by part of the fifth division, and on the Fort Pardalaras by the Portuguese, the result might have been very serious. The Duke of Dalmatia was within a few leagues, and opposite Generals Hill[30] and Graham[31]. The Duke of Ragusa had pushed his advanced dragoons as far as the Bridge of Boats at Villa Velha, and at length got entangled in the labyrinths of Portugal. I have heard and read of sitting down before a town, opening trenches, blowing up the counterscarp, and all according to rule; but this was a crisis, time was precious, added to which the Guadiana ran in our rear, and the pontoon bridge had been carried away once during the siege, by the swelling of the river.
When the French soldiers found that the town was falling by escalade on the south side, and that the castle was lost to them, they made an attempt to retake the latter by an old gate, leading towards the town; that gate was pierced by their musketry in numberless places. I never saw a target better covered with holes. The third division had in return twice discharged a gun through it, which made two large holes. An old handspike was placed under its breech to depress it, and remained precisely in the same way three days afterwards. The scaling-ladders were well placed, five quite close together, against an old round tower. Many slain soldiers had evidently been pushed from off the parapet, and rolled nearly fifty yards down the hill; some lay with heads battered to pieces, whilst others were doubled up, looking scarcely human, and their broken limbs twisted in all directions.
The third division had been obliged to cross the broken bridge over the small river Revellas, rank entire, (amidst a shower of grape-shot, bullets, and bursting of shells,) and during the work of death to drag the unwieldy ladders up a rugged hill, to plant them against the walls: their first effort failed; many of the enemy then, contrary to General Philippon's orders, evacuated the Castle, and went to assist at the breaches. At this moment, Lieutenant-Colonel Ridge of the fifth regiment called on an officer of his corps, "There, you mount one ladder, and I will lead up the other. Come on Fifth, I am sure that you will follow your commanding officer." He was killed; but the place was carried!