In this dreadful situation, while the dead were lying in heaps, and others continually falling, the wounded crawling about to get some shelter from the merciless shower above, and withal a sickening stench from the burnt flesh of the slain, Captain Nicholas of the engineers, was observed by Lieut. Shaw of the 43rd, making incredible efforts to force his way with a few men into the Santa Maria. Collecting fifty soldiers of all regiments he joined him, and passing a deep cut along the foot of this breach, these two young officers, at the head of their band, rushed up the slope of the ruins, but ere they gained two-thirds of the ascent, a concentrated fire of musketry and grape dashed nearly the whole dead to the earth: Nicholas was mortally wounded, and the intrepid Shaw stood alone![24] After this no further effort was made at any point, and the troops remained passive, but unflinching, beneath the enemy’s shot, which streamed without intermission: for many of the riflemen on the glacis, leaping early into the ditch, had joined in the assault, and the rest, raked by a cross-fire of grape from the distant bastions, baffled in their aim by the smoke and flames from the explosions, and too few in number, had entirely failed to quell the French musketry.
About midnight, when two thousand brave men had fallen, Wellington, who was on a height close to the quarries, sent orders for the remainder to retire and re-form for a second assault; he had just then heard that the castle was taken, and thinking the enemy would still hold out in the town was resolved to assail the breaches again. This retreat from the ditch was not effected without further carnage and confusion; for the French fire never slackened, and a cry arose that the enemy were making a sally from the flanks, which caused a rush towards the ladders. Then the groans and lamentations of the wounded, who could not move and expected to be slain, increased; and many officers who did not hear of the order endeavoured to stop the soldiers from going back, some would even have removed the ladders but were unable to break the crowd.
All this time the third division lay close in the castle, and either from fear of risking the loss of a point which insured the capture of the place, or that the egress was too difficult, made no attempt to drive away the enemy from the breaches. On the other side however, the fifth division had commenced the false attack on the Pardaleras, and on the right of the Guadiana the Portuguese were sharply engaged at the bridge: thus the town was girdled with fire. For Walker’s brigade had, during the feint on the Pardaleras, escaladed the distant bastion of San Vincente. Moving up the bank of the river, he reached a French guard-house at the barrier-gate undiscovered, the ripple of the waters smothering the sound of the footsteps; but then the explosion at the breaches took place, the moon shone out, the French sentinels discovering the column fired, and the British soldiers, springing forward under a sharp musketry, began to hew down the wooden barrier at the covered way; the Portuguese, panic-stricken, threw down the scaling-ladders, but the others snatched them up, forced the barrier and jumped into the ditch; there the guiding engineer was killed, a cunette embarrassed the column, and when the foremost men succeeded in rearing the ladders they were found too short, for the walls were generally above thirty feet high. The fire of the French was deadly, a small mine was sprung beneath the soldiers’ feet, beams of wood and live shells were rolled over on their heads, showers of grape from the flank swept the ditch, and man after man dropped dead from the ladders.
At this critical moment some of the defenders being called away to aid in recovering the castle, the ramparts were not entirely manned, and the assailants, having discovered a corner of the bastion where the scarp was only twenty feet high, placed three ladders under an embrasure which had no gun, and was only stopped with a gabion. Some men got up with difficulty, for the ladders were still too short, but the first man being pushed up by his comrades drew others after him, and thus many had gained the summit; and though the French shot heavily against them from both flanks and from a house in front they thickened and could not be driven back. Half the 4th Regiment then entered the town itself, while the others pushed along the rampart towards the breach, and by dint of hard fighting successively won three bastions. In the last, General Walker, leaping forwards sword in hand just as a French cannonier discharged a gun, fell with so many wounds that it was wonderful how he survived, and his soldiers seeing a lighted match on the ground cried out a mine! At that word, such is the power of imagination, those troops whom neither the strong barrier nor the deep ditch, nor the high walls, nor the deadly fire of the enemy could stop, staggered back, appalled by a chimera of their own raising. While in that disorder a French reserve under General Veillande drove on them with a firm and rapid charge, pitching some over the walls, killing others outright, and cleansing the ramparts even to the San Vincente: but there Leith had placed a battalion of the 38th, and when the French came up, shouting and slaying all before them, it arose and with one close volley destroyed them. This stopped the panic, and in compact order the soldiers once more charged along the walls towards the breaches; yet the French, although turned on both flanks and abandoned by fortune, would not yield.
Meanwhile the detachment of the 4th Regiment which had entered the town when the San Vincente was first carried, was strangely situated; for the streets though empty were brilliantly illuminated, no person was seen, yet a low buzz and whisper were heard around, lattices were now and then gently opened, and from time to time shots were fired from underneath the doors of the houses by the Spaniards, while the regiment, with bugles sounding, advanced towards the great square of the town. In its progress several mules going with ammunition to the breaches were taken, but the square was as empty and silent as the streets, and the houses as bright with lamps. A terrible enchantment seemed to prevail, nothing to be seen but light, and only low whispers heard, while the tumult at the breaches was like the crashing thunder: there the fight raged, and quitting the square the regiment attempted to take the enemy in reverse, but they were received with a rolling musketry, driven back with loss, and resumed their movement through the streets.
At last the breaches were abandoned by the French, other parties entered the place, desultory combats took place in various parts, and finally Veillande and Phillipon, both wounded, seeing all ruined, passed the bridge with a few hundred soldiers and entered San Christoval. Early next morning they surrendered upon summons to Lord Fitzroy Somerset, who with great readiness had pushed through the town to the drawbridge ere the French had time to organize further resistance; yet even at the moment of ruin, this noble governor with an imperturbed judgment had sent horsemen out from the fort in the night to carry the news to Soult’s army, which they reached in time to prevent a greater misfortune.
Now commenced that wild and desperate wickedness, which tarnished the lustre of the soldier’s heroism. All indeed were not alike, hundreds risked, and many lost their lives in striving to stop violence; but madness generally prevailed, and the worst men being leaders all the dreadful passions of human nature were displayed. Shameless rapacity, brutal intemperance, savage lust, cruelty and murder, shrieks and piteous lamentations, groans, shouts, imprecations, the hissing of fires bursting from the houses, the crashing of doors and windows, and the reports of muskets used in violence resounded for two days and nights in the streets of Badajos! On the third, when the city was sacked, when the soldiers were exhausted by their own excesses, the tumult rather subsided than was quelled: the wounded men were then looked to, the dead disposed of!
Five thousand men and officers fell during the siege, including seven hundred Portuguese; three thousand five hundred were stricken in the assault, sixty officers and more than seven hundred men slain on the spot. Five generals, Kempt, Harvey, Bowes, Colville, and Picton were wounded, the first three severely; six hundred men and officers fell in the escalade of San Vincente, as many at the castle, and more than two thousand at the breaches: each division there lost twelve hundred! But how deadly the strife was at that point may be gathered from this; the 43rd and 52nd regiments of the light division, alone lost more men than the seven regiments of the third division engaged at the castle!
Let it be remembered that this frightful carnage took place in a space of less than a hundred yards square. That the slain died not all suddenly nor by one manner of death. That some perished by steel, some by shot, some by water; that some were crushed and mangled by heavy weights, some trampled upon, some dashed to atoms by the fiery explosions; that for hours this destruction was endured without shrinking and that the town was won at last: these things considered, it must be admitted that a British army bears with it an awful power. And false would it be to say the French were feeble men, the garrison stood and fought manfully and with good discipline, behaving worthily. Shame there was none on any side. Yet who shall do justice to the bravery of the British soldiers? the noble emulation of the officers? Who shall measure out the glory of Ridge, of Macleod, of Nicholas, of O’Hare of the rifles, who perished on the breach at the head of the stormers, and with him nearly all the volunteers for that desperate service? Who shall describe the springing valour of that Portuguese grenadier who was killed, the foremost man, at the Santa Maria? or the martial fury of that desperate rifleman, who, in his resolution to win, thrust himself beneath the chained sword-blades, and there suffered the enemy to dash his head to pieces with the ends of their muskets? Who can sufficiently honour the intrepidity of Walker, of Shaw, of Canch, or the resolution of Ferguson of the 43rd, who having at Rodrigo received two deep wounds was here, with his hurts still open, leading the stormers of his regiment, the third time a volunteer and the third time wounded! Nor are these selected as pre-eminent; many and signal were the other examples of unbounded devotion, some known some that will never be known; for in such a tumult much passed unobserved, and often the observers fell themselves ere they could bear testimony to what they saw: but no age, no nation ever sent forth braver troops to battle than those who stormed Badajos.
When the havoc of the night was told to Wellington, the pride of conquest sunk into a passionate burst of grief for the loss of his gallant soldiers.