History of the war in the Peninsula and in the south of France from the year 1807 to the year 1814, vol. 4

by William Francis Patrick Napier

He had also greatly improved the defences of the place. An interior retrenchment was made in the castle, and many more guns were there mounted; the rear of fort Cristoval was also better secured, and a covered communication from the fort itself, to the work at the bridge-head, was nearly completed. Two ravelins had been constructed on the south side of the town, and a third was commenced, together with counterguards for the bastions; but the eastern front next the castle, which was in other respects the weakest point, was without any outward protection save the stream of the Rivillas. A “cunette” or second ditch had been dug at the bottom of the great ditch, which was also in some parts filled with water; the gorge of the Pardaleras was enclosed, and that outwork was connected with the body of the place, from whence powerful batteries looked into it. The three western fronts were mined, and on the east, the arch of the bridge behind the San Roque, was built up to form an inundation, two hundred yards wide, which greatly contracted the space by which the place could be approached with troops. All the inhabitants had been obliged, on pain of being expelled, to lay up food for three months, and two convoys with provisions and ammunition had entered the place on the 10th and 16th of February, but Phillipon’s stores of powder were still inadequate to his wants, and he was very scantily supplied with shells.

As the former system of attack against Cristoval and the castle, was now impracticable, lord Wellington desired to assail one of the western fronts which would have been a scientific operation; but the engineer represented that he had neither mortars nor miners, nor enough of guns, nor the means of bringing up sufficient stores for such an attack. Indeed the want of transport had again obliged the allies to draw the stores from Elvas, to the manifest hazard of that fortress, and hence, here, as at Ciudad Rodrigo, time was necessarily paid for, by the loss of life; or rather the crimes of politicians were atoned for by the blood of the soldiers.

The plan finally fixed upon, was to attack the bastion of Trinidad, because, the counter-guard there being unfinished, that bastion could be battered from the hill on which the Picurina stood. The first parallel was therefore to embrace the Picurina, the San Roque, and the eastern front, in such a manner that the counter-batteries there erected, might rake and destroy all the defences of the southern fronts which bore against the Picurina hill. The Picurina itself was to be battered and stormed, and from thence the Trinidad and Santa Maria bastions, were to be breached; after this all the guns were to be turned against the connecting curtain, which was known to be of weak masonry, that a third breach might be made, and a storming party employed to turn any retrenchments behind the breaches in the bastions. In this way the inundation could be avoided, and although a French deserter declared, and truly, that the ditch was there eighteen feet deep, such was the general’s confidence in his troops, and in his own resources for aiding their efforts, that he resolved to storm the place without blowing in the counterscarp.

The battering train, directed by major Dickson, consisted of fifty-two pieces. This included sixteen twenty-four-pound howitzers, for throwing Shrapnel shells, but this species of missile, much talked of in the army at the time, was little prized by lord Wellington, who had early detected its insufficiency, save 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 besides the neglect of the Portuguese government, the peasantry and even the ordenança employed to move the battering train from Alcacer do Sal, although well paid, deserted.

Of nine hundred gunners present, three hundred were British, the rest Portuguese, and there were one hundred and fifty sappers volunteers from the third division, who were indeed rather unskilful, but of signal bravery. The engineer’s parc was established behind the heights of St. Michael, and the direction of the siege was given to general Picton. General Kempt, general Colville, and general Bowes alternately commanded in the trenches.

In the night of the 17th, eighteen hundred men, protected by a guard of two thousand, broke ground one hundred and sixty yards from the Picurina. A tempest stifled the sound of their pickaxes, and though the work was commenced late, a communication, four thousand feet in length, was formed, and a parallel of six hundred yards three feet deep, and three feet six inches wide, was opened. However, when the day broke the Picurina was reinforced, and a sharp musketry interspersed with discharges from some field-pieces, 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 out, the parallel was prolonged both on the right and left, and the previous works were improved. On the other hand the garrison raised the parapets of the Picurina, and having lined the top of the covered way with sand-bags, planted musketeers there, to gall the men in the trenches, who replied in a like manner.

The 19th lord Wellington having secret intelligence that a sally was intended, ordered the guards to be reinforced. Nevertheless, at one o’clock some cavalry came out by the Talavera gate, and thirteen hundred infantry under general Vielland, the second in command, filed unobserved into the communication between the Picurina and the San Roque; a hundred men were prepared to sally from the Picurina itself, and all these troops jumping out at once, drove the workmen before them, and began to demolish the parallel. Previous to this outbreak, the French cavalry forming two parties had commenced a sham fight on the right of the parallel, and the smaller party pretending to fly, and answering Portuguese, to the challenge of the picquets, were allowed to pass. Elated by the success of their stratagem, they then galloped to the engineer’s parc, which was a thousand yards in rear of the trenches, and there cut down some men, not many, for succour soon came, and meanwhile the troops at the parallel having rallied upon the relief which had just arrived, beat the enemy’s infantry back even to the castle.

In this hot fight the besieged lost above three hundred men and officers, the besiegers only one hundred and fifty; but colonel Fletcher, the chief engineer, was badly wounded, and several hundred entrenching tools were carried off, for Phillipon had promised a high price for each; yet this 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 as a reserve-guard behind St. Michael, and a signal post was established on the Sierra de Venta to give notice of the enemy’s motions.