On the right bank of the Guadiana there were no houses, but the twice-besieged fort of San Christoval, three hundred feet square, stood there on a rocky height, and from its superior elevation looked into the castle, which was exactly opposite to it and consequently but five hundred yards distant. This fort also commanded the works heading the stone bridge, a quarter of a mile below stream.
Phillipon’s garrison, nearly five thousand strong, was composed of French and Hessian, and some Spanish troops in Joseph’s service. He had since the last siege made himself felt in every direction, scouring the country, defeating small guerilla bands, carrying off cattle almost from under the guns of Elvas and Campo Mayor, and pushing his spies to Ciudad Rodrigo, Lisbon, and even to Ayamonte, by which he gained a knowledge of the forces, material and personal, combined against his fortress, and prepared accordingly. He had formed an interior retrenchment at the castle, and mounted more guns there; he had strengthened San Christoval on the side before attacked, and made a covered communication to the bridge-head; he had constructed two ravelins on the south front, and commenced a third with counterguards for the bastions. At the eastern front he had dug a cunette at the bottom of the great ditch, which was in some parts filled with water. The gorge of the Pardaleras was enclosed and connected with the body of the place, from whence it was overlooked by powerful batteries; the glacis of the western front was mined, and the arch of a bridge behind the San Roque was built up to cause the inundation. The inhabitants had been compelled to store food for three months, and provisions and ammunition had come in on the 10th and 16th of February, yet the supply of powder was inadequate, and there were not many shells.
Lord Wellington desired to assail the western front, but the engineer had not mortars, miners, or guns enough, or the means of bringing up stores for that attack: indeed the want of transport had again compelled the drawing of stores from Elvas, to the manifest hazard of that fortress. Hence, here, as at Ciudad Rodrigo, time was paid for with the loss of life, and the crimes of politicians were atoned by the blood of soldiers.
It was finally agreed to attack the bastion of Trinidad, because the counterguard there was unfinished, and the bastion could be battered from the Picurina. The first parallel was therefore to embrace that fort, the San Roque and the eastern front, so as to enable the counter-batteries to destroy the armaments of the southern fronts, which bore against the Picurina hill. The Picurina was to be stormed, and from thence the Trinidad and the next bastion, called the Santa Maria, were to be breached. The guns were then to be turned against the connecting curtain, known to be of weak masonry, and to open a third breach, whereby a storming party might turn any retrenchments behind the other breaches. In this way the inundation could be avoided. A French deserter declared, and truly, that the ditch was eighteen feet deep at the Trinidad, yet Wellington was so confident that he resolved to storm the place there without blowing in the counterscarp.
The battering train was of fifty-two pieces, including sixteen twenty-four-pound howitzers for throwing Shrapnel-shells; but this species of missile, much talked of at the time, was little prized by Lord Wellington, who had detected its insufficiency, save with large guns and as a common shell; and partly to avoid expense, partly from a dislike to injure the inhabitants, neither in this, nor in any former siege did he use mortars. Here indeed he could not have brought them up, for the peasantry, and even the ordenança, employed to move the battering train, although well paid, deserted. Of nine hundred gunners present three hundred were British, the rest Portuguese; there were one hundred and fifty sappers, volunteers from the third division, unskilled, yet of signal bravery.
The engineer’s park was established behind the heights of St. Michael which faced the Picurina, and in the night of the 17th, eighteen hundred men broke ground one hundred and sixty yards from that fort. A tempest stifled the sound of the pickaxes, and a communication four thousand feet long, with a parallel of six hundred yards, three feet deep and three feet six inches wide, was opened without hindrance; but when day broke the fort was reinforced, and a sharp musketry, interspersed with discharges from some field-pieces and aided by heavy guns from the body of the place, was directed on the trenches.
In the night of the 18th two batteries were traced, the parallel prolonged, and the previous works improved; but the garrison raised the parapets of the Picurina, lined the top of the covered way with sand-bags, and planted musketeers to gall the men in the trenches.
The 19th, secret notice of a sally being received, the guards were reinforced; nevertheless, at one o’clock some cavalry came out by the Talavera gate, and thirteen hundred infantry under General Vielland, second in command, filed unobserved into the communication between the Picurina and San Roque; one hundred men were also ready in the former, and all these troops, jumping out at once, drove the workmen off and began to demolish the parallel. Previous to this outbreak the French cavalry had commenced a sham fight on the right of the trenches, and the smaller party, pretending to fly toward the besiegers, answered Portuguese to the challenge of the picquets and were allowed to pass. Elated by their stratagem, they galloped to the engineer’s park, a thousand yards in rear, where they killed some men before succour came; meanwhile the troops at the parallel rallied on the relief and beat the infantry back along the front of the ramparts even to the castle.
In this fight the besieged lost three hundred men and officers, the besiegers one hundred and fifty; but the chief engineer, Fletcher, was badly wounded, and several hundred intrenching tools were carried off; Phillipon had promised a high price for each, which turned out ill, because the soldiers, instead of pursuing briskly, dispersed to gather the tools. After the action a squadron of dragoons and six field-pieces were placed behind the St. Michael ridge, and a signal-post was established on the lofty Sierra de Viento, to give notice of the enemy’s motions.
The weather continued wet and boisterous, making the labour very severe, yet in the night of the 19th the parallel was opened on its whole length; the 20th it was enlarged, and though the rain, flooding the trenches, greatly impeded progress, the work was extended to the left. Three counter-batteries were then commenced in its rear, because the ground was too soft in front to sustain the guns, and the San Roque was within three hundred yards; hence, the parallel, eighteen hundred yards long, being only guarded by fourteen hundred men, a few bold soldiers might by a sudden rush have spiked the guns in front of the trench.