The troops in Medellin rejoined their friends in Don Benito on the 29th, and on the 31st, the whole retreated to Quarena. On the 1st of April, we retraced our steps to La Zarza, and next morning to Merida. Sir Thomas Graham being under the necessity of withdrawing his troops from Llerena, retired slowly towards Albuera, where it was generally understood the covering army was to assemble. On the afternoon of the 5th, we again crossed the Guadiana, marched to St Servan, and on the 6th, to a small eminence near the village of Lobon.
Aware that the capture of Badajoz was to be attempted that night, the most intense anxiety pervaded our encampment, for the issue of the terrific conflict. Throughout every corner of our gloomy bivouac, the opinion of almost every individual seemed to be, that our friends would not be able to surmount the numerous obstacles which the besieged had provided to obstruct the passage of the besiegers into the place by the practicable breaches. It was therefore with feelings which I shall not attempt to describe, that we waited the commencement of the struggle in which our companions were about to engage, in order to rescue a suffering people from the iron grasp of a hateful and grinding tyranny.
On the signal being given, the various columns moved forward to the points of attack with extraordinary spirit, but the whole were ultimately beat back with considerable loss. Again they attempted to force a passage into the body of the place, but with no better success. Again and again the intrepid assailants mounted the breaches—renewed the sanguinary conflict with renovated courage, and at these points, maintained the murderous conflict, till the ditches were literally filled with dead, dying and wounded, piled above each other in one undistinguished mass. The scene at length became one of horror; numbers every moment breathed their last, while the heart-rending cries of the wounded in the ditches, intimated to their more fortunate companions, that if they were not soon removed from their dreadful situation, death by suffocation would be their inevitable fate. Appalling as this state of affairs was, yet none seemed inclined to yield till victory should entitle them to decorate their brows with the wreath of the conqueror. All therefore being alike determined to perish rather than yield, it was with no small reluctance that they ultimately obeyed an order of recal to prepare for another and final effort to wrest the place from the enemy. This effort, however, was not required, for General Picton having rather unexpectedly obtained a footing within the castle, General Philippon, the governor, on perceiving the fruits of his own folly, in leaving this part of the fortress without a sufficient body of troops to defend it, retired into Fort St Christoval, and at day-break on the 7th, surrendered himself and garrison prisoners of war.
The loss of the enemy during the siege, was 1200 killed and wounded, and 4000 prisoners; ours amounted to 3860 British, and 1010 Portuguese killed and wounded.
Early on the 7th, Sir Rowland Hill moved from Lobon, to a field on the left bank of the Albuera, a short distance from Talavera-la-Real. Marshal Marmont having dispatched a small body of infantry to the assistance of his friend Soult, Lord Wellington gave orders for two arches of the beautiful bridge of Merida to be destroyed, that their junction with the army of Soult might be retarded to the latest possible period.
Marshal Soult who had arrived in the vicinity of Zafra, Los-Santos, &c. on his way to the relief of Badajoz, became perfectly frantic when he received the first intelligence of the fall of that important fortress. Being seated at breakfast when the unlooked for and unwelcome intelligence reached him, the gallant Marshal raised his foot, and after wishing all the "Leopards at the bottom of the sea," dispatched the breakfast table to the opposite side of the apartment, and made the china, under which it groaned, fly into a thousand pieces.
As soon as this unseemly fit of passion had subsided, Soult gave orders for his followers to wheel to the right-about, and retrace their steps into Andalusia. On being informed of the Marshal's intentions, Sir Stapleton Cotton was ordered to harass the enemy's rear with the allied cavalry. Coming up with a strong body of their dragoons near Villa-Garcia, a sharp conflict ensued, which terminated in the defeat of the French, with a loss of 300 killed, wounded, and prisoners.
On the 10th, the Northern army set out on its return to the banks of the Agueda, to keep Marshal Marmont in order; and we advanced to Almendralejo, to look after Druet,—the Count D'Erlon.
Strolling at a short distance from our bivouac, in company with two friends, on the 6th of April, we perceived a Spanish peasant reposing under the cooling shade of a large tree. After a few preliminary questions, we inquired whence he came, and his business in the vicinity of our camp. To these interrogatories he unhesitatingly replied, that he was an inhabitant of a mountain village, twenty miles distant, and that his only object was to kill as many Frenchmen as he could, after, not in, the great battle which he imagined had become inevitable, from the proximity of the army of Soult to ours. And to prove that such was his intention, he pulled a tremendous knife from his side-pocket, with which he assured us, he sent eleven Frenchmen to sleep with their fathers on the morning subsequent to the battle of Albuera. On upbraiding him for his cruelty, and inquiring how he could perpetrate such cold-blooded atrocities, he very coolly replied, that it was the duty of every loyal Spaniard like himself, to send as many Frenchmen into another world as they could, wherever they might find them, whether in the field of battle, or in a private retreat—whether armed or unarmed—or whether they might be in the enjoyment of health, or writhing under the effects of severe wounds. From this doctrine, we not only most decidedly dissented, but endeavoured to convince him that conduct such as his was highly derogatory to his character as a man; for either revenge or inhumanity towards an enemy, when he can no longer offer resistance, was no less an insult to human nature, than it was contrary to the laws and usages of war. Finding, however, that we could not bring him to coincide with us in opinion, we bade the Albuerian assassin adieu, in the fervent hope that we might never again find ourselves near his polluted person.
Having formerly alluded to the battle of Medellin, I now proceed to make a few remarks on the conduct of the Spanish General Cuesta, on that occasion, conceiving that a great proportion of those reverses which subsequently befel the Spanish arms, are to be traced to the unfortunate issue of that engagement.