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

The weather continued wet and boisterous, and the labour of the works was very harassing, but in the night of the 19th the parallel was opened in its whole length, and the 20th it was enlarged; yet a local obstacle and the flooding of the trenches, rendered the progress slow.

In the night of the 20th the parallel was extended to the left, across the Seville road, and three counter-batteries were commenced; but they were traced, in rear of the parallel, partly because the ground was too soft in front to admit of the guns moving; partly for safety, because the batteries were within three hundred yards of the San Roque, and as the parallel, eighteen hundred yards long, was only guarded by fourteen hundred men, a few bold soldiers might by a sudden rush have succeeded in spiking the guns if they had been placed in front of the trench. A slight sally was this day repulsed, and a shoulder was given to the right of the parallel to cover that flank.

The 21st the enemy placed two field-pieces on the right bank of the Guadiana, designing to rake the trenches, but the shoulder, made the night before, baffled the design, and the riflemen’s fire soon sent the guns away. Indications of a similar design against the left flank, from the Pardaleras hill, were also observed, and a guard of three hundred men with two guns, was posted on that side in some broken ground.

In the night another battery against the San Roque was commenced, and the battery against the Picurina was finished; but heavy rain again retarded the works, and the besiegers having failed in an attempt to drain the lower parts of the parallel, by cuts, made an artificial bottom of sand-bags. On the other hand the besieged thinking the curtain adjoining the castle was the true object of attack, threw up an earthen entrenchment in front, and commenced clearing away the houses behind it. A covered communication from the Trinidad gate to the San Roque, intended to take this supposed attack in reverse, was also commenced;La Marre’s Siege of Badajos. but the labour of digging being too great, it was completed by hanging up brown cloth, which appeared to be earth, and by this ingenious expedient, the garrison passed unseen between those points.

Vauban’s maxim, that a perfect investment is the first requisite in a siege, had been neglected at Badajos to spare labour, but the great master’s art was soon vindicated by his countrymen. Phillipon finding the right bank of the Guadiana free, made a battery in the night for three field-pieces, which at daylight raked the trenches, and the shots pitching into the parallel, swept it in the most destructive manner for the whole day; there was no remedy, and the loss would have been still greater but for the soft nature of the ground, which prevented the touch and bound of the bullets. Orders were immediately sent to the fifth division, then at Campo Mayor, to invest the place on that side, but these troops were distant and misfortunes accumulated. In the evening heavy rain filled the trenches, the flood of the Guadiana ran the fixed bridge under water sank twelve of the pontoons, and broke the tackle of the flying bridges; the provisions of the army could not then be brought over, and the guns and ammunition being still on the right bank, the siege was upon the point of being raised. In a few days, however, the river subsided, some Portuguese craft were brought up to form another flying-bridge, the pontoons saved were employed as row-boats, and in this manner the communication was secured, for the rest of the siege, without any accident.

The 23d the besieged continued to work at the entrenchments covering the front next the castle, and the besiegers were fixing their platforms, when at three o’clock the rain again filled the trenches, the earth, being completely saturated with water, fell away, the works everywhere crumbled, and the attack was entirely suspended.

The 24th the fifth division invested the place on the right bank of the Guadiana, the weather was fine, and the batteries were armed with ten twenty-fours, eleven eighteens, and seven five-and-a-half-inch howitzers. The next day, at eleven o’clock, these pieces opened, but they were so vigorously answered, that one howitzer was dismounted and several artillery and engineer-officers were killed. Nevertheless the San Roque was silenced, and the garrison of the Picurina was so galled by the marksmen in the trenches, that no man dared look over the parapet; hence, as the external appearance of that fort did not indicate much strength, general Kempt was charged to assault it in the night.

The outward seeming of the Picurina was however fallacious, the fort was very strong; the fronts were well covered by the glacis, the flanks were deep, and the rampart, fourteen feet perpendicular from the bottom of the ditch, was guarded with thick slanting pales above; and from thence to the top there were sixteen feet of an earthen slope. A few palings had, indeed, been knocked off at the covered way, and the parapet was slightly damaged on that side, but this injury was repaired with sand-bags, and the ditch was profound, narrow at the bottom, and flanked by four splinter-proof casemates. Seven guns were mounted on the works, the entrance to which by the rear was protected with three rows of thick paling, the garrison was above two hundred strong, and every man had two muskets. The top of the rampart was garnished with loaded shells to push over, a retrenched guard-house formed a second internal defence, and finally, some small mines and a loop-holed gallery, under the counterscarp, intended to take the assailants in rear, were begun but not finished.

Five hundred men of the third division being assembled for the attack, general Kempt ordered two hundred, under major Rudd of the seventy-seventh, to turn the fort on the left; an equal force, under major Shaw of the seventy-fourth, to turn the fort by the right; and one hundred from each of these bodies were directed to enter the communication with San Roque and intercept any succours coming from the town. The flanking columns were to make a joint attack on the fort, and the hundred men remaining, were placed under captain Powis of the eighty-third, to form a reserve. The engineers, Holloway, Stanway, and Gips, with twenty-four sappers bearing hatchets and ladders, guided these columns, and fifty men of the light division, likewise provided with axes, were to move out of the trenches at the moment of attack.