The following account is from Gleig’s Subaltern:—
“Things had continued in this state for nearly a quarter of an hour, when Major Snodgrass, at the head of the thirteenth Portuguese regiment, dashed across the river by his own ford, and assaulted the lesser breach. This attack was made in the most cool and determined manner, but here, too, the obstacles were almost insurmountable; nor is it probable that the place would have been carried at all but for a measure adopted by General Graham, such as has never perhaps been adopted before. Perceiving that matters were almost desperate, he had recourse to a desperate remedy, and ordered our own artillery to fire upon the breach. Nothing could be more exact or beautiful than this practice. Though our men stood only about two feet below the breach, scarcely a single ball from the guns of our batteries struck amongst them, whilst all told with fearful exactness among the enemy. The fire had been kept up only a few minutes, when all at once an explosion took place such as drowned every other noise, and apparently confounded, for an instant, the combatants on both sides. A shell from one of our mortars had exploded near the train which communicated with a quantity of gunpowder placed under the breach. This mine the French had intended to spring as soon as our troops should have made good their footing or established themselves on the summit, but the fortunate accident just mentioned anticipated them. It exploded whilst 300 grenadiers, the élite of the garrison, stood over it; and instead of sweeping the storming party into eternity, it only cleared a way for their advance. It was a spectacle as appalling and grand as the imagination can conceive, the sight of that explosion. The noise was more awful than any which I have ever heard before or since, whilst a bright flash, instantly succeeded by a smoke so dense as to obscure all vision, produced an effect upon those who witnessed it such as no powers of language are adequate to describe. Such, indeed, was the effect of the whole occurrence, that for perhaps half a minute after not a shot was fired on either side. Both parties stood still to gaze upon the havoc which had been produced! insomuch, that a whisper might have caught your ear for a distance of several yards. The state of stupefaction into which they were at first thrown did not, however, last long with the British troops. As the smoke and dust of the ruins cleared away, they beheld before them a space empty of defenders, and they instantly rushed forward to occupy it. Uttering an appalling shout, the troops sprang over the dilapidated parapet, and the rampart was their own. Now then began all those maddening scenes which are witnessed only in a storm, of flight and slaughter, and parties rallying only to be broken and dispersed, till finally, having cleared the works to the right and left, the soldiers poured down into the town.”
It is nearly incredible, and certainly not very creditable, that General Jones in his detailed account of the siege and storming of San Sebastian, says not one word of the horrible excesses which our soldiers there committed. Some men’s notions of history do not differ very widely from the concoction of a political pamphlet. Napier’s history abounds with frank admission and reprobation of these horrors. I find a distinct allusion to them almost at its very commencement: “No wild horde of Tartars ever fell with more license upon their rich effeminate neighbours, than did the English troops upon the Spanish towns taken by storm.”—Hist. War Penins. i. 5.
The part which the Portuguese took in this assault was sufficiently creditable to make quite unnecessary the boasting spirit which disfigures their national literature. It abounds in the great work of their greatest poet. Thus, for instance:—
Que os muitos por ser poucos não temamos;
O que despois mil vezes amostramos.
Camóens, Lus. viii. 36.
“We don’t fear many because we are few, which we have shown a thousand times!” And in the previous stanza he relates that “seventeen Lusitanians, being attacked by 400 Castilians (desasete Lusitanos subidos de quatro centos Castelhanos), not only defended themselves, but offended their adversaries!!”
Que não só se defendem, mas offendem!