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

This day the materials and ordnance for a battery of six pieces, to take the defences of the Monte Orgullo in reverse, were sent to the island of Santa Clara; and several guns in the Chofre batteries were turned upon the retaining wall of the horn-work, in the hope of shaking down any mines the enemy might have prepared there, without destroying the wall itself which offered cover for the troops advancing to the assault.

The trenches leading from the parallel on the isthmus were now very wide and good, the sap was pushed on the right close to the demi-bastion of the horn-work, and the sea-wall supporting the high road into the town, which had increased the march and cramped the formation of the columns in the first assault, was broken through to give access to the strand and shorten the approach to the breaches. The crisis was at hand and in the night of the 29th a false attack was ordered to make the enemy spring his mines; a desperate service and bravely executed by lieutenant Macadam of the ninth regiment. The order was sudden, no volunteers were demanded, no rewards offered, no means of excitement resorted to; yet such is the inherent bravery of British soldiers, that seventeen men of the royals, the nearest at hand, immediately leaped forth ready and willing to encounter what seemed certain death. With a rapid pace, all the breaching batteries playing hotly at the time, they reached the foot of the breach unperceived, and then mounted in extended order shouting and firing; but the French were too steady to be imposed upon and their musquetry laid the whole party low with the exception of their commander, who returned alone to the trenches.

On the 30th the sea-flank of the place being opened from the half-bastion of St. John on the right to the most distant of the old breaches, that is to say, for five hundred feet, the batteries on the Chofres were turned against the castle and other defences of the Monte Orgullo, while the advanced battery on the isthmus, now containing three guns, demolished, in conjunction with the fire from the Chofres, the face of the half-bastion of St. John’s and the end of the high curtain above it. The whole of that quarter was in ruins, and at the same time the batteries on San Bartolomeo broke the face of the demi-bastion of the horn-work and cut away the palisades.

The 30th the batteries continued their fire, and about three o’clock lord Wellington after examining the enemy’s defence resolved to make a lodgement on the breach, and in that view ordered the assault to be made the next day at eleven o’clock when the ebb of tide would leave full space between the horn-work and the water.

The galleries in front of the advanced battery on the isthmus were now pushed close up to the sea wall, under which three mines were formed with the double view of opening a short and easy way for the troops to reach the strand, and rendering useless any subterranean works the enemy might have made in that part. At two o’clock in the morning of the 31st they were sprung, and opened three wide passages which were immediately connected, and a traverse of gabions, six feet high, was run across the mouth of the main trench on the left, to screen the opening from the grape-shot of the castle. Everything was now ready for the assault, but before describing that terrible event it will be fitting to shew the exact state of the besieged in defence.

Sir Thomas Graham had been before the place for fifty-two days, during thirty of which the attack was suspended. All this time the garrison had laboured incessantly, and though the heavy fire of the besiegers since the 26th appeared to have ruined the defences of the enormous breach in the sea flank, it was not so. A perpendicular fall behind of more than twenty feet barred progress, and beyond that, amongst the ruins of the burned houses, was a strong counter-wall fifteen feet high, loopholed for musquetry, and extending in a parallel direction with the breaches, which were also cut off from the sound part of the rampart by traverses at the extremities. The only really practicable road into the town was by the narrow end of the high curtain above the half bastion of St. John.

In front of the counter-wall, about the middle of the great breach, stood the tower of Los Hornos still capable of some defence, and beneath it a mine charged with twelve hundred weight of powder. The streets were all trenched, and furnished with traverses to dispute the passage and to cover a retreat to the Monte Orgullo; but before the assailants could reach the main breach it was necessary either to form a lodgment in the horn-work, or to pass as in the former assault under a flanking fire of musquetry for a distance of nearly two hundred yards. And the first step was close under the sea-wall covering the salient angle of the covered way, where two mines charged with eight hundred pounds of powder were prepared to overwhelm the advancing columns.

To support this system of retrenchments and mines the French had still some artillery in reserve. One sixteen-pounder mounted at St. Elmo flanked the left of the breaches on the river face; a twelve and an eight-pounder preserved in the casemates of the Cavalier were ready to flank the land face of the half-bastion of St. John; many guns from the Monte Orgullo especially those of the MiradorBelmas. could play upon the columns, and there was a four-pounder hidden on the horn-work to be brought into action when the assault commenced. Neither the resolution of the governor nor the courage of the garrison were abated, but the overwhelming fire of the last few days had reduced the number of fighting men; General Rey had only two hundred and fifty men in reserve, and he demanded of Soult whether his brave garrison should be exposed to another assault. “The army would endeavour to succour him” was the reply, and he abided his fate.

Napoleon’s ordinance, which forbade the surrender of a fortress without having stood at least one assault, has been strongly censured by English writers upon slender grounds. The obstinate defences made by French governors in the Peninsula were the results, and to condemn an enemy’s system from which we have ourselves suffered will scarcely bring it into disrepute. But the argument runs, that the besiegers working by the rules of art must make a way into the place, and to risk an assault for the sake of military glory or to augment the loss of the enemy is to sacrifice brave men uselessly; that capitulation always followed a certain advance of the besiegers in Louis the Fourteenth’s time, and to suppose Napoleon’s upstart generals possessed of superior courage or sense of military honour to the high-minded nobility of that age was quite inadmissible; and it has been rather whimsically added that obedience to the emperor’s orders might suit a predestinarian Turk but could not be tolerated by a reflecting Christian. From this it would seem, that certain nice distinctions as to the extent and manner reconcile human slaughter with Christianity, and that the true standard of military honour was fixed by the intriguing, depraved and insolent court of Louis the Fourteenth. It may however be reasonably supposed, that as the achievements of Napoleon’s soldiers far exceeded the exploits of Louis’s cringing courtiers they possessed greater military virtues.

But the whole argument seems to rest upon false grounds. To inflict loss upon an enemy is the very essence of war, and as the bravest men and officers will always be foremost in an assault, the loss thus occasioned may be of the utmost importance. To resist when nothing can be gained or saved is an act of barbarous courage which reason spurns at; but how seldom does that crisis happen in war? Napoleon wisely insisted upon a resistance which should make it dangerous for the besiegers to hasten a siege beyond the rules of art, he would not have a weak governor yield to a simulation of force not really existing; he desired that military honour should rest upon the courage and resources of men rather than upon the strength of walls: in fine he made a practical application of the proverb that necessity is the mother of invention.