History of the war in the Peninsula and in the south of France from the year 1807 to the year 1814, vol. 6

by William Francis Patrick Napier

Villatte’s demonstration against Longa on the 28th of July had caused the ships laden with the battering train to put to sea, but on the 5th of August the guns were re-landed and the works against the fortress resumed. On the 8th, a notion having spread that the enemy was mining under the cask redoubt, the engineers seized the occasion to exercise their inexperienced miners by sinking a shaft and driving a gallery. The men soon acquired expertness, and as the water rose in the shaft at twelve feet, the work was discontinued when the gallery had attained eighty feet. Meanwhile the old trenches were repaired, the heights of San Bartolomeo were strengthened, and the convent of Antigua, built on a rock to the left of those heights, was fortified and armed with two guns to scour the open beach and sweep the bay. The siege however languished for want of ammunition; and during this forced inactivity the garrison received supplies and reinforcements by sea, their damaged works were repaired, new defences constructed, the magazines filled, and sixty-seven pieces of artillery put in a condition to play. Eight hundred and fifty men had been killed and wounded since the commencement of the attack in July, but as fresh men came by sea, more than two thousand six hundred good soldiers were still present under arms. And to show that their confidence was unabated they celebrated the Emperor’s birthday by crowning the castle with a splendid illumination; encircling it with a fiery legend to his honour in characters so large as to be distinctly read by the besiegers.

On the 19th of August, that is to say after a delay of sixteen days, the battering train arrived from England, and in the night of the 22d fifteen heavy pieces were placed in battery, eight at the right attack and seven at the left. A second battering train came on the 23d, augmenting the number of pieces of various kinds to a hundred and seventeen, including a large Spanish mortar; but with characteristic negligence this enormous armament had been sent out from England with no more shot and shells than would suffice for one day’s consumption!

In the night of the 23d the batteries on the Chofre sand-hills were reinforced with four long pieces and four sixty-eight pound carronades, and the left attack with six additional guns. Ninety sappers and miners had come with the train from England, the seamen under Mr. O’Reilly were again attached to the batteries, and part of the field artillerymen were brought to the siege.

On the 24th the attack was recommenced with activity. The Chofre batteries were enlarged to contain forty-eight pieces, and two batteries for thirteen pieces were begun on the heights of Bartolomeo, designed to breach at seven hundred yards distance the faces of the left demi-bastion of the horn-work, that of St. John on the main front, and the end of the high curtain, for these works rising in gradation one above another were in the same line of shot. The approaches on the isthmus were now also pushed forward by the sap, but the old trenches were still imperfect, and before daylight on the 25th the French coming from the horn-work swept the left of the parallel, injured the sap, and made some prisoners before they were repulsed.

On the night of the 25th the batteries were all armed on both sides of the Urumea, and on the 26th fifty-seven pieces opened with a general salvo, and continued to play with astounding noise and rapidity until evening. The firing from the Chofre hills destroyed the revêtement of the demi-bastion of St. John, and nearly ruined the towers near the old breach together with the wall connecting them; but at the isthmus, the batteries although they injured the horn-work made little impression on the main front from which they were too distant.

Lord Wellington, present at this attack and discontented with the operation, now ordered a battery for six guns to be constructed amongst some ruined houses on the right of the parallel, only three hundred yards from the main front, and two shafts were sunk with a view to drive galleries for the protection of this new battery against the enemy’s mines, but the work was slow because of the sandy nature of the soil.

At 3 o’clock in the morning of the 27th the boats of the squadron, commanded by lieut. Arbuthnot of the Surveillante and carrying a hundred soldiers of the ninth regiment under captain Cameron, pulled to attack the island of Santa Clara. A heavy fire was opened on them, and the troops landed with some difficulty, but the island was then easily taken and a lodgement made with the loss of only twenty-eight men and officers, of which eighteen were seamen.

In the night of the 27th, about 3 o’clock, the French sallied against the new battery on the isthmus, but as colonel Cameron of the ninth regiment met them on the very edge of the trenches with the bayonet the attempt failed, yet it delayed the arming of the battery. At day-break the renewed fire of the besiegers, especially that from the Chofres sand-hills, was extremely heavy, and the shrapnel shells were supposed to be very destructive; nevertheless the practice with that missile was very uncertain, the bullets frequently flew amongst the guards in the parallel and one struck the field-officer. In the course of the day another sally was commenced, but the enemy being discovered and fired upon did not persist. The trenches were now furnished with banquettes and parapets as fast as the quantity of gabions and fascines would permit, yet the work was slow, because the Spanish authorities of Guipuscoa, like those in every other part of Spain, neglected to provide carts to convey the materials from the woods, and this hard labour was performed by the Portuguese soldiers. It would seem however an error not to have prepared all the materials of this nature during the blockade.

Lord Wellington again visited the works this day, and in the night the advanced battery, which, at the desire of sir Richard Fletcher had been constructed for only four guns, was armed. The 29th it opened, but an accident had prevented the arrival of one gun, and the fire of the enemy soon dismounted another, so that only two instead of six guns as lord Wellington had designed, smote at short range the face of the demi-bastion of St. John and the end of the high curtain; however the general firing was severe both upon the castle and the town-works and great damage was done to the defences. By this time the French guns were nearly silenced and as additional mortars were mounted on the Chofre batteries, making in all sixty-three pieces of which twenty-nine threw shells or spherical case-shot, the superiority of the besiegers was established.

The Urumea was now discovered to be fordable. Captain Alexander Macdonald of the artillery, without orders, waded across in the night passed close under the works to the breach and returned safely. Wherefore as a few minutes would suffice to bring the enemy into the Chofre batteries, to save the guns from being spiked their vents were covered with iron plates fastened by chains; and this was also done at the advanced battery on the isthmus.