But nothing could stop the men of the light division. A 24-pounder was placed across the narrow gap in the ramparts; the stormers leaped over it, and the 43d and 52d, coming up in sections abreast, followed. The 43d wheeled to the right toward the great breach, the 52d to the left, sweeping the ramparts as they went.
Meanwhile the other two attacks had broken into the town; but at the great breach the dreadful fight still raged, until the 43d, coming swiftly along the ramparts, and brushing all opposition aside, took the defense in the rear. The British there had, as a matter of fact, at that exact moment pierced the French defense. The two guns that scourged the breach had wrought deadly havoc among the stormers, and a sergeant and two privates of the 88th—Irishmen all, and whose names deserve to be preserved—Brazel, Kelly, and Swan—laid down their firelocks that they might climb more lightly, and, armed only with their bayonets, forced themselves through the embrasure among the French gunners. They were furiously attacked, and Swan’s arm was hewed off by a saber stroke; but they stopped the service of the gun, slew five or six of the French gunners, and held the post until the men of the 5th, climbing behind them, broke into the battery.
So Ciudad Rodrigo was won, and its governor surrendered his sword to the youthful lieutenant leading the forlorn hope of the light division, who, with smoke-blackened face, torn uniform, and staggering from a dreadful wound, still kept at the head of his men.
In the eleven days of the siege Wellington lost one thousand three hundred men and officers, out of whom six hundred and fifty men and sixty officers were struck down on the slopes of the breaches. Two notable soldiers died in the attack—Craufurd, the famous leader of the light division, as he brought his men up to the lesser breach; and Mackinnon, who commanded a brigade of the third division, at the great breach. Mackinnon was a gallant Highlander, a soldier of great promise, beloved by his men. His “children,” as he called them, followed him up the great breach till the bursting of a French mine destroyed all the leading files, including their general. Craufurd was buried in the lesser breach itself, and Mackinnon in the great breach—fitting graves for soldiers so gallant.
Alison says that with the rush of the English stormers up the breaches of Ciudad Rodrigo “began the fall of the French empire.” That siege, so fierce and brilliant, was, as a matter of fact, the first of that swift-following succession of strokes which drove the French in ruin out of Spain, and it coincided in point of time with the turn of the tide against Napoleon in Russia.
But, as already noted, the climax of the war occurred at Vittoria. Wellington, overtaking the French at that place, inflicted on them a defeat which drove in utter rout one hundred and twenty thousand veteran troops from Spain. There is no more brilliant chapter in military history; and, at its close, to quote Napier’s clarion-like sentences, “the English general, emerging from the chaos of the Peninsular struggle, stood on the summit of the Pyrenees a recognized conqueror. From those lofty pinnacles the clangor of his trumpets pealed clear and loud, and the splendor of his genius appeared as a flaming beacon to warring nations.”
The victory not only freed Spain from its invaders; it restored the spirit of the allies. The close of the armistice was followed by a union of Austria with the forces of Prussia and the Czar; and in October a final overthrow of Napoleon at Leipzig forced the French army to fall back in rout across the Rhine. The war now hurried to its close. Though held at bay for a while by the sieges of San Sebastian and Pampeluna, as well as by an obstinate defense of the Pyrenees, Wellington succeeded in the very month of the triumph at Leipzig in winning a victory on the Bidassoa which enabled him to enter France. He was soon followed by the allies. On the last day of 1813 their forces crossed the Rhine; and a third of France passed, without opposition, into their hands. For two months more Napoleon maintained a wonderful struggle with a handful of raw conscripts against their overwhelming numbers; while in the south, Soult, forced from his intrenched camp near Bayonne and defeated at Orthes, fell back before Wellington on Toulouse. Here their two armies met in April in a stubborn and indecisive engagement. But though neither leader knew it, the war was even then at an end. The struggle of Napoleon himself had ended at the close of March with the surrender of Paris; and the submission of the capital was at once followed by the abdication of the emperor and the return of Ferdinand.
After the convulsions it had endured, Spain required a period of firm but conciliatory government; but the ill-fate of the country gave the throne at this crisis to the worst of her Bourbon kings. Ferdinand VII. had never possessed the good qualities which popular credulity had assigned to him, and he had learned nothing in his four years’ captivity except an aptitude for lying and intrigue. He had no conception of the duties of a ruler; his public conduct was regulated by pride and superstition, and his private life was stained by the grossest sensual indulgence.
But Spain was not allowed to work out its own salvation. Europe was dominated at this time by the Holy Alliance, which disguised a resolution to repress popular liberties and to maintain despotism under a pretended zeal for piety, justice and brotherly love. At the Congress of Verona (October, 1822), France, Austria, Russia and Prussia agreed upon armed intervention in Spain, in spite of the protest of Canning on the part of England. Spain was to be called upon to alter her constitution and to grant greater liberty to the king, and if an unsatisfactory answer were received France was authorized to take active measures. The demand was unhesitatingly refused, and a French army, 100,000 strong, at once entered Spain under the Duke of Angouleme (April, 1823). No effective resistance was made, and Madrid was entered by the invaders (May 23). The Cortes, however, had carried off the king to Seville, whence they again retreated to Cadiz. The bombardment of that city terminated the revolution and Ferdinand was released (October 1). His first act was to revoke everything that had been done since 1819. The Inquisition was not restored, but the secular tribunals took a terrible revenge upon the leaders of the rebellion. The protest of the Duke of Angouleme against these cruelties was unheeded. Even the fear of revolt, the last check upon despotism, was removed by the presence of the French army, which remained in Spain till 1827. But Spain had to pay for the restoration of the royal absolutism, as Canning backed up his protest against the intervention of France by acknowledging the independence of the Spanish colonies.
Ferdinand VII. was enabled to finish his worthless and disastrous reign in comparative peace. In 1829 he married a fourth wife, Maria Christina of Naples, and at the same time he issued a “Pragmatic Sanction” abolishing the Salic law in Spain. No one expected any practical results from this edict, but a formal protest was made against it by the king’s brothers, Carlos and Francisco, and also by the French and Neapolitan Bourbons. In the next year, however, the queen gave birth to a daughter, Isabella, who was proclaimed as queen on her father’s death in 1833, while her mother undertook the office of regent.