SECOND ASSAULT OF CHRISTOVAL.
The storming party was commanded by major M‘Geechy; the forlorn hope, again led by the gallant Dyas, was accompanied by Mr. Hunt, an engineer officer, and a little after nine o’clock the leading troops bounding forward, were immediately followed by the support, amidst a shattering fire of musketry which killed major M‘Geechy, Mr. Hunt, and many men upon the glacis. The troops with loud shouts jumped into the ditch, but the French scoffingly called to them to come on, and at the same time rolled the barrels of powder and shells down, while the musketry made fearful and rapid havoc. In a little time the two leading columns united at the main breach, the supports also came up, confusion arose about the ladders, of which only a few could be reared, and the enemy standing on the ramparts, bayonetted the foremost of the assailants, overturned the ladders, and again poured their destructive fire upon the crowd below. When a hundred and forty men had fallen the order to retire was given.
An assault on the castle breach might still have been tried, but the troops could not have formed between the top, and the retrenchments behind the breach, until Christoval was taken, and the guns from thence used to clear the interior of the castle; hence the siege was of necessity raised, because to take Christoval, required several days more, and Soult was now ready to advance. The stores were removed on the 10th, and the attack was turned into a blockade.
OBSERVATIONS.
1º. The allies lost, during this unfortunate siege, nearly four hundred men and officers, and the whole of their proceedings were against rules. The working parties were too weak, the guns and stores too few, and the points of attack, chosen, not the best; the defences were untouched by counter-batteries, and the breaching batteries were at too great a distance for the bad guns employed; howitzers mounted on trucks were but a poor substitute for mortars, and the sap was not practised; lastly, the assaults were made before the glacis had been crowned, and a musketry fire established against the breach.
2º. That a siege so conducted should fail against such a brave and intelligent garrison is not strange; but it is most strange and culpable that a government, which had been so long engaged in war as the British, should have left the engineer department, with respect to organization and equipment, in such a state as to make it, in despite of the officers’ experience, bravery, and zeal, a very inefficient arm of war. The skill displayed belonged to particular persons, rather than to the corps at large; and the very tools with which they worked, especially those sent from the storekeeper’s department, were so shamefully bad that the work required could scarcely be performed; the captured French cutting-tools were eagerly sought for by the engineers as being infinitely better than the British; when the soldiers’ lives and the honour of England’s arms, were at stake, the English cutlery was found worse than the French.
3º. The neglect of rules, above noticed, was for the most part a matter of absolute necessity; yet censure might attach to the general, inasmuch as he could have previously sent to England for a battering train. But then the conduct of the Portuguese and British governments when lord Wellington was in the lines, left him so little hope of besieging any place on the frontier, that he was hourly in fear of being obliged to embark: moreover, the badness of the Portuguese guns was not known, and the space of time that elapsed between the fall of Badajos and this siege, was insufficient to procure artillery from England; neither would the Portuguese have furnished the means of carriage. It may however at all times be taken as a maxim, that the difficulties of war are so innumerable that no head was ever yet strong enough to fore-calculate them all.
CHAPTER VI.
It will be remembered, that Soult instead of1811. June. retiring into Andalusia, took a flank position at Llerena, and awaited the arrival of Drouet’s division, which had been detached from Massena’s army. At Llerena, although closely watched by general Hill, the French marshal, with an army, oppressed by its losses and rendered unruly by want, maintained an attitude of offence until assured of Drouet’s approach, when he again advanced to Los Santos, near which place a slight cavalry skirmish took place to the disadvantage of the French.