In the eleven days of the siege Wellington lost 1300 men and officers, out of whom 650 men and 60 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. Apart from all political results, however, it was a splendid feat of arms. The French found themselves almost unable to believe the evidence of their senses. "On the 16th," Marmont wrote to the Emperor, "the English batteries opened their fire at a great distance. On the 19th the place was taken by storm. There is something so incomprehensible in this that I allow myself no observations." Napoleon, however, relieved his feelings with some very emphatic observations. "The fall of Ciudad Rodrigo," he wrote to Marmont, "is an affront to you. Why had you not advices from it twice a week? What were you doing with the five divisions of Souham? It is a strange mode of carrying on war," &c. Unhappy Marmont!
HOW THE "HERMIONE" WAS RECAPTURED
"They cleared the cruiser from end to end,
From conning-tower to hold;
They fought as they fought in Nelson's fleet—
They were stripped to the waist, they were bare to the feet,
As it was in the days of old."
—KIPLING.
The story of how the Hermione was lost is one of the scandals and the tragedies of British naval history; the tale of how it was re-won is one of its glories. The Hermione was a 32-gun frigate, cruising off Porto Rico, in the West Indies. On the evening of September 21, 1797, the men were on drill, reefing topsails. The captain, Pigot, was a rough and daring sailor, a type of the brutal school of naval officer long extinct. The traditions of the navy were harsh; the despotic power over the lives and fortunes of his crew which the captain of a man-of-war carried in the palm of his hand, when made the servant of a ferocious temper, easily turned a ship into a floating hell. The terrible mutinies which broke out in British fleets a hundred years ago had some justification, at least, in the cruelties, as well as the hardships, to which the sailors of that period were exposed.
Pigot was rough in speech, vehement in temper, cursed with a semi-lunatic delight in cruelty, and he tormented his men to the verge of desperation. On this fatal night, Pigot, standing at the break of his quarter-deck, stormed at the men aloft, and swore with many oaths he would flog the last man off the mizzentop yard; and the men knew how well he would keep his word. The most active sailor, as the men lay out on the yard, naturally takes the earing, and is, of course, the last man off, as well as on, the yard. Pigot's method, that is, would punish not the worst sailors, but the best! The two outermost men on the mizzen-top yard of the Hermione that night, determined to escape the threatened flogging. They made a desperate spring to get over their comrades crowding into the ratlines, missed their foothold, fell on the quarter-deck beside their furious captain, and were instantly killed. The captain's epitaph on the unfortunate sailors was, "Throw the lubbers overboard!"
All the next day a sullen gloom lay on the ship. Mutiny was breeding. It began, as night fell, in a childish fashion, by the men throwing double-headed shot about the deck. The noise brought down the first lieutenant to restore order. He was knocked down. In the jostle of fierce tempers, murder awoke; knives gleamed. A sailor, as he bent over the fallen officer, saw the naked undefended throat, and thrust his knife into it. The sight kindled the men's passions to flame. The unfortunate lieutenant was killed with a dozen stabs, and his body thrown overboard. The men had now tasted blood. In the flame of murderous temper suddenly let loose, all the bonds of discipline were in a moment consumed. A wild rush was made for the officers' cabins. The captain tried to break his way out, was wounded, and driven back; the men swept in, and, to quote the realistic official account, "seated in his cabin the captain was stabbed by his own coxswain and three other mutineers, and, forced out of the cabin windows, was heard to speak as he went astern." With mutiny comes anarchy. The men made no distinction between their officers, cruel or gentle; not only the captain, but the three lieutenants, the purser, the surgeon, the lieutenant of marines, the boatswain, the captain's clerk were murdered, and even one of the two midshipmen on board was hunted like a rat through the ship, killed, and thrown overboard. The only officers spared were the master, the gunner, and one midshipman.
Having captured the ship, the mutineers were puzzled how to proceed. Every man-of-war on the station, they knew, would be swiftly on their track. Every British port was sealed to them. They would be pursued by a retribution which would neither loiter nor slumber. On the open sea there was no safety for mutineers. They turned the head of the Hermione towards the nearest Spanish port, La Guayra, and, reaching it, surrendered the ship to the Spanish authorities, saying they had turned their officers adrift in the jolly-boat. The Spaniards were not disposed to scrutinise too closely the story. A transaction which put into their hands a fine British frigate was welcomed with rapture. The British admiral in command of the station sent in a flag of truce with the true account of the mutiny, and called upon the Spanish authorities, as a matter of honour, to surrender the Hermione, and hand over for punishment the murderers who had carried it off. The appeal, however, was wasted.
The Hermione, a handsome ship of 715 tons, when under the British flag, was armed with thirty-two 12-pounders, and had a complement of 220 men. The Spaniards cut new ports in her, increased her broadsides to forty-four guns, and gave her a complement, including a detachment of soldiers and artillerymen, of nearly 400 men. She thus became the most formidable ship carrying the Spanish flag in West Indian waters.