Defence of Tarifa. (Dec. 1811.)
Soult had long resolved to reduce the maritime town of Tarifa, but General Campbell, governor of Gibraltar, equally resolute to prevent him, threw in an English garrison, under Colonel Skerrett. The defences were ancient, the place being encircled with towers connected by an archery wall, irregular, without a ditch, and too thin to resist even field artillery. It was commanded also by heights within cannon-shot, but the English engineer Smith[21] adapted the defence to the peculiarities of ground so skilfully as to fix the enemy’s attention entirely to one point, which offered facilities for an internal resistance, to begin when the weak ramparts should be broken.
Tarifa was cloven by a periodical torrent, entering at the east and passing out at the west. It was barred at the entrance by a tower with a portcullis, in front of which palisades were planted across its bed. The houses within the walls were strongly built on inclined planes, rising from each side of the torrent; and at the exit of the water were two massive structures, called the tower and castle of the Gusmans, both looking up the hollow formed by the inclined planes. From these structures, a sandy neck, prolonged by a causeway for eight hundred yards, joined the town to an island, whose perpendicular sides forbade entrance save by the causeway which ended on an unfinished entrenchment and battery.
On the neck of land were sand hills, the highest, called the Catalina, being scarped and crowned with a field-work holding a twelve-pounder. This hill masked the causeway towards the enemy, and with the tower of the Gusmans, which was armed with a ship eighteen-pounder, flanked the western front of the tower. This tower gun also shot clear over Tarifa to the slope where the French batteries were expected, and there were a ship of the line, a frigate, and some gun-boats, anchored to flank the approaches.
Smith deterred the enemy from attacking the western front by the flanking fire of a fortified convent beyond the walls, by the Catalina hill, and by the appearance of the shipping; but he deceitfully tempted an attack on the eastern front and the line of the torrent, whose bed rendered the inner depth of wall greater than the outer. There he loopholed the houses behind, opened communications to the rear, and barricaded the streets; so that the enemy, after forcing the breach, would have been confined between the houses on the inclined planes, exposed on each side to musketry from loopholes and windows, and in front to a fire from the Gusmans, which looked up the bed of the torrent; finally the garrison could have taken refuge in that castle and tower, which, high and massive, were fitted to cover the evacuation, and were provided with ladders for the troops to descend and retreat to the island under protection of the Catalina.
There was no want of guns. Besides those of the Catalina, there were in the island twelve pieces, comprising four twenty-four pounders and two ten-inch mortars; in the town were six field-pieces, with four cohorns on the east front; an eighteen-pounder was on the Gusmans, a howitzer on the portcullis tower, and two field-pieces were in reserve for sallies: yet most of the island ordnance was mounted after the investment, and the walls and towers of the town were too weak and narrow to sustain heavy guns; hence only three field-pieces and the cohorns did in fact reply to the enemy’s fire.
The garrison, including six hundred Spanish infantry and one hundred horse of that nation, amounted to two thousand five hundred men, of whom seven hundred were in the island, one hundred in the Catalina, two hundred in the convent, and fifteen hundred in the town.
On the 19th of December, General Laval, having eight thousand men, drove in the advanced posts, but was with a sharp skirmish designedly led towards the eastern front.
The 20th the place was invested, and the 21st some French troops having incautiously approached the western front, Captain Wren of the 11th, suddenly descended from the Catalina and carried them off. In the night the enemy approached close to the walls of that front, but in the morning Wren again fell on them; and at the same time a sally of discovery was made from the convent so vigorously that Lieutenant Welstead of the 82nd, entering one of the enemy’s camps captured a field-piece; he was unable to bring it off in face of the French reserves, yet the latter were drawn by the skirmish under the fire of the ships, of the island, and of the town, whereby they suffered severely and with difficulty recovered the captured piece.
In the night of the 22nd the anticipations of the British engineer were realized. The enemy broke ground five hundred yards from the eastern front, and worked assiduously until the 26th, under a destructive fire, replying principally with wall-pieces, which would have done much mischief if the garrison had not been copiously supplied with sand-bags.