The fashion in which the gate was blown open was very curious. A French sergeant was in the act of throwing a live shell upon the storming party in the ditch, when he was struck by an English bullet. The lighted shell fell from his hands within the parapet, was kicked away by the nearest French in mere self-preservation; it rolled toward the gate, exploded, burst it open, and instantly the British broke in.
For ten days a desperate artillery duel raged between the besiegers and the besieged. The parallels were resolutely pushed on in spite of rocky soil, broken tools, bitter weather, and the incessant pelting of the French guns. The temper of the British troops is illustrated by an incident which George Napier—the youngest of the three Napiers—relates. The three brothers were gallant and remarkable soldiers. Charles Napier in India and elsewhere made history; William, in his wonderful tale of the Peninsular War, wrote history; and George, if he had not the literary genius of the one nor the strategic skill of the other, was a most gallant soldier. “I was a field-officer of the trenches,” he says, “when a 13-inch shell from the town fell in the midst of us. I called to the men to lie down flat, and they instantly obeyed orders, except one of them, an Irishman and an old marine, but a most worthless drunken dog, who trotted up to the shell, the fuse of which was still burning, and striking it with his spade, knocked the fuse out; then taking the immense shell in his hands, brought it to me, saying, ‘There she is for you, now, yer ’anner. I’ve knocked the life out of the crater.’”
The besieged brought fifty heavy guns to reply to the thirty light pieces by which they were assailed, and day and night the bellow of eighty pieces boomed sullenly over the doomed city and echoed faintly back from the nearer hills, while the walls crashed to the stroke of the bullet. The English fire made up by fierceness and accuracy for what it lacked in weight; but the sap made no progress, the guns showed signs of being worn out, and, although two apparent breaches had been made, the counterscarp was not destroyed. Yet Wellington determined to attack, and, in his characteristic fashion, to attack by night. The siege had lasted ten days, and Marmont, with an army stronger than his own, was lying within four marches. That he had not appeared already on the scene was wonderful.
In a general order issued on the evening of the 19th Wellington wrote, “Ciudad Rodrigo must be stormed this evening.” The great breach was a sloping gap in the wall at its northern angle, about a hundred feet wide. The French had crowned it with two guns loaded with grape, the slope was strewn with bombs, hand-grenades and bags of powder; a great mine pierced it beneath; a deep ditch had been cut between the breach and the adjoining ramparts, and these were crowded with riflemen. The third division, under General Mackinnon, was to attack the breach, its forlorn hope being led by Ensign Mackie, its storming party by General Mackinnon himself. The lesser breach was a tiny gap, scarcely twenty feet wide, to the left of the great breach; this was to be attacked by the light division, under Craufurd, its forlorn hope of twenty-five men being led by Gurwood, and its storming party by George Napier. General Pack, with a Portuguese brigade, was to make a sham attack on the eastern face, while a fourth attack was to be made on the southern front by a company of the 83d and some Portuguese troops. In the storming party of the 83d were the Earl of March, afterward Duke of Richmond; Lord Fitzroy Somerset, afterward Lord Raglan; and the Prince of Orange—all volunteers without Wellington’s knowledge!
At seven o’clock a curious silence fell suddenly on the battered city and the engirdling trenches. Not a light gleamed from the frowning parapets, not a murmur arose from the blackened trenches. Suddenly a shout broke out on the right of the English attack; it ran, a wave of stormy sound, along the line of the trenches. The men who were to attack the great breach leaped into the open. In a moment the space between the hostile lines was covered with the stormers, and the gloomy, half-seen face of the great fortress broke into a tempest of fire.
Nothing could be finer than the vehement courage of the assault, unless it were the cool and steady fortitude of the defense. Swift as was the upward rush of the stormers, the race of the 5th, 77th, and 94th regiments was almost swifter. Scorning to wait for the ladders, they leaped into the great ditch, outpaced even the forlorn hope, and pushed vehemently up the great breach, while their red ranks were torn by shell and shot. The fire, too, ran through the tangle of broken stones over which they climbed; the hand-grenades and powder-bags by which it was strewn exploded. The men were walking on fire! Yet the attack could not be denied. The Frenchmen—shooting, stabbing, yelling—were driven behind their intrenchments. There the fire of the houses commanding the breach came to their help, and they made a gallant stand. “None would go back on either side, and yet the British could not get forward, and men and officers falling in heaps choked up the passage, which from minute to minute was raked with grape from two guns flanking the top of the breach at the distance of a few yards. Thus striving, and trampling alike upon the dead and the wounded, these brave men maintained the combat.”
It was the attack on the smaller breach which really carried Ciudad Rodrigo; and George Napier, who led it, has left a graphic narrative of the exciting experiences of that dreadful night. The light division was to attack, and Craufurd, with whom Napier was a favorite, gave him command of the storming party. He was to ask for one hundred volunteers from each of the three British regiments—the 43d, 52d, and the rifle corps—in the division. Napier halted these regiments just as they had forded the bitterly cold river on their way to the trenches. “Soldiers,” he said, “I want one hundred men from each regiment to form the storming party which is to lead the light division to-night. Those who will go with me come forward!”
Instantly there was a rush forward of the whole division, and Napier had to take his three hundred men out of a tumult of nearly one thousand five hundred candidates. He formed them into three companies, under Captains Ferguson, Jones, and Mitchell. Gurwood, of the 52d, led the forlorn hope, consisting of twenty-five men and two sergeants. Wellington himself came to the trench and showed Napier and Colborne, through the gloom of the early night, the exact position of the breach. A staff-officer, looking on, said, “Your men are not loaded. Why don’t you make them load?” Napier replied, “If we don’t do the business with the bayonet we shall not do it at all. I shall not load.”—“Let him alone,” said Wellington; “let him go his own way.” Picton had adopted the same grim policy with the third division. As each regiment passed him, filing into the trenches, his injunction was, “No powder! We’ll do the thing with the could iron.”
A party of Portuguese carrying bags filled with grass were to run with the storming party and throw the bags into the ditch, as the leap was too deep for the men. But the Portuguese hesitated, the tumult of the attack on the great breach suddenly broke on the night, and the forlorn hope went running up, leaped into the ditch, a depth of eleven feet, and clambered up the steep slope beyond, while Napier with his stormers came with a run behind them. In the dark for a moment the breach was lost, but found again, and up the steep quarry of broken stone the attack swept.
About two-thirds of the way up, Napier’s arm was smashed by a grape-shot, and he fell. His men, checked for a moment, lifted their muskets to the gap above them, whence the French were firing vehemently, and forgetting their pieces were unloaded, snapped them. “Push on with the bayonet, men!” shouted Napier, as he lay bleeding. The officers leaped to the front, the men with a stern shout followed; they were crushed to a front of not more than three or four. They had to climb without firing a shot in reply up to the muzzles of the French muskets.