The besieging army consisted of the fifth division under General Oswald, and the Portuguese brigades of J. Wilson and Bradford, reinforced by detachments from the first division. Including the artillery-men, some seamen commanded by Lieutenant O’Reilly of the Surveillante, and one hundred regular sappers and miners, now for the first time used in the sieges of the Peninsula, nearly ten thousand men were employed, with forty pieces of artillery. The siege depôt was at Passages, from whence to the Chofre sand-hills was only one mile and a half of good road, and a pontoon bridge was laid over the Urumea river above the Chofres; but from thence to the height of Bartolomeo was more than five miles of very bad road.
Early in July, Major Smith, the engineer of Tarifa, proposed a plan of siege, founded upon the facility furnished by the Chofre hills to destroy the flanks, rake the principal front, and form a breach with the same batteries; the works would, he observed, be secured, except at low water, by the Urumea, and counter-batteries could be constructed on the left of that river, to rake the line in which the breach was to be formed. Against the castle and its out-works he relied principally upon vertical fire, instancing the reduction of Fort Bourbon in the West Indies as proof of its efficacy. This plan would probably have reduced Sebastian in a reasonable time without any remarkable loss of men, and Lord Wellington approved of it, though he erroneously doubted the efficacy of the vertical fire. He renewed his approval after examining the works in person, and all his orders were in that spirit; but neither the plan nor his orders were followed, and the siege which should have been an ordinary event of war obtained a mournful celebrity. Wellington has been unjustly charged with a contempt for the maxims of the great masters of the art in his desire to save time: he did not urge the engineer here beyond the rules. Take the place in the quickest manner, but do not from over speed fail to take it, was the sense of his instructions. The haste was with Graham, one of England’s best soldiers, but of a genius intuitive rather than reflective, which, joined to great natural modesty and a certain easiness of temper, caused him at times to abandon his own correct conceptions for less judicious counsels of men who advised deviations from the original plan.
In the night of the 10th two batteries were raised against the convent and redoubt of San Bartolomeo; and in that of the 13th, four batteries, to contain twenty of the heaviest guns and four eight-inch howitzers, were marked out on the Chofre sand-hills, at distances varying from six hundred to thirteen hundred yards from the eastern rampart of the town. No parallel of support was made, because the river was supposed unfordable, but good trenches of communications and subsequently regular approaches were formed. Two attacks were thus established—one on the right bank of the Urumea by the Portuguese brigades; one on the left bank by the fifth division: yet most of the troops were encamped on the right bank to facilitate a junction with the covering army in the event of a general battle.
On the 14th a French sloop entered the harbour with supplies, and the batteries of the left attack opened against San Bartolomeo, throwing hot shot into the convent. The besieged responded with musketry from the redoubt, with heavy guns from the town, and with a field-piece which they had mounted on the belfry of the convent itself.
The 15th Colonel Fletcher took command of the engineers, but Major Smith retained the direction of the attack from the Chofre hills, and Wellington’s orders continued to pass through his hands. This day, the convent being set on fire, the musketry of the besieged silenced, and the defences damaged, the Portuguese troops of the fifth division felt the enemy, but were repulsed with loss: the French then sallied, and the firing only ceased at nightfall.
A battery for seven additional guns was now commenced against Bartolomeo on the right of the Urumea, and the original batteries again set fire to the convent, yet the flames were extinguished by the garrison.
In the night of the 16th Rey sounded the Urumea, designing to cross and storm the batteries on the Chofres; but the fords discovered were shifting, and the difficulty of execution deterred him.
The 17th, the convent being nearly in ruins, an assault was ordered. Detachments from Wilson’s Portuguese, supported by the light company of the 9th British Regiment and three companies of the Royals, composed one column, which under General Hay was to storm the redoubt; another column under General Bradford, composed of Portuguese, but supported by three companies of the 9th British Regiment under Colonel Cameron, assailed the convent.
Storming of San Bartolomeo. (July, 1813.)
At ten o’clock in the morning two six-pounders opened against the redoubt, and the French, reinforced and occupying the suburb of San Martin in support, announced with a sharp return of fire their resolution to fight. The Portuguese advanced slowly at both attacks, and the companies of the 9th, passing through them, first fell upon the enemy. Cameron’s grenadiers going down the face of the hill were exposed to a heavy cannonade from the horn-work, yet soon gained the cover of a wall, fifty yards from the convent, and there awaited the second signal. This rapid advance, which threatened to cut off the garrison from the suburb, joined to the fire of the two six-pounders, and some other field-pieces on the farther side of the Urumea, caused the French to abandon the redoubt, whereupon Cameron jumped over the wall and assaulted both the convent and the houses of the suburb. At the latter a fierce struggle ensued, and Captain Woodman was killed in the upper room of a house, after fighting his way from below; yet the grenadiers carried the convent with such rapidity that the French could not explode some small mines, and hastily joined the troops in the suburb: there the combat continued, Cameron’s force was much reduced and the affair was becoming doubtful, when the remainder of his regiment arrived and the suburb was with much fighting entirely won.