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

Thus scourged with fire from all sides, the stormers, their array broken alike by the shot and by the rocks they passed over, reached their destinations, and the head of the first column gained the top of the great breach; but the unexpected gulf below could only be passed at a few places where meagre parcels of the burned houses were still attached to the rampart, and the deadly clatter of the French musquets from the loop-holed wall beyond soon strewed the narrow crest of the ruins with dead. In vain the following multitude covered the ascent seeking an entrance at every part; to advance was impossible and the mass of assailants, slowly sinking downwards remained stubborn and immoveable on the lower part of the breach. Here they were covered from the musquetry in front, but from several isolated points, especially the tower of Las Hornos under which the great mine was placed, the French still smote them with small arms, and the artillery from the Monte Orgullo poured shells and grape without intermission.

Such was the state of affairs at the great breach, and at the half bastion of St. John it was even worse. The access to the top of the high curtain being quite practicable, the efforts to force a way were more persevering and constant, and the slaughter was in proportion; for the traverse on the flank, cutting it off from the cavalier, was defended by French grenadiers who would not yield; the two pieces on the cavalier itself swept along the front face of the opening, and the four-pounder and the musquetry from the horn-work, swept in like manner along the river face. In the midst of this destruction some sappers and a working party attached to the assaulting columns endeavoured to form a lodgement, but no artificial materials had been provided, and most of the labourers were killed before they could raise the loose rocky fragments into a cover.

During this time the besiegers’ artillery kept up a constant counter-fire which killed many of the French, and the reserve brigades of the fifth division were pushed on by degrees to feed the attack until the left wing of the ninth regiment only remained in the trenches. The volunteers also who had been with difficulty restrained in the trenches, “calling out to know, why they had been brought there if they were not to lead the assault,” these men, whose presence had given such offence to general Leith that he would have kept them altogether from the assault, being now let loose went like a whirlwind to the breaches, and again the crowded masses swarmed up the face of the ruins, but reaching the crest line they came down like a falling wall; crowd after crowd were seen to mount, to totter, and to sink, the deadly French fire was unabated, the smoke floated away, and the crest of the breach bore no living man.

Sir Thomas Graham, standing on the nearest of the Chofre batteries, beheld this frightful destruction with a stern resolution to win at any cost; and he was a man to have put himself at the head of the last company and died sword in hand upon the breach rather than sustain a second defeat, but neither his confidence nor his resources were yet exhausted. He directed an attempt to be made on the horn-work, and turned all the Chofre batteries and one on the Isthmus, that is to say the concentrated fire of fifty heavy pieces upon the high curtain. The shot ranged over the heads of the troops who now were gathered at the foot of the breach, and the stream of missiles thus poured along the upper surface of the high curtain broke down the traverses, and in its fearful course shattering all things strewed the rampart with the mangled limbs of the defenders. When this flight of bullets firstManuscript Memoir by colonel Hunt. swept over the heads of the soldiers a cry arose, from some inexperienced people, “to retire because the batteries were firing on the stormers;” but the veterans of the light division under Hunt being at that point were not to be so disturbed, and in the very heat and fury of the cannonade effected a solid lodgement in some ruins of houses actually within the rampart on the right of the great breach.

For half an hour this horrid tempest smote upon the works and the houses behind, and then suddenly ceasing the small clatter of the French musquets shewed that the assailants were again in activity; and at the same time the thirteenth Portuguese regiment led by Major Snodgrass and followed by a detachment of the twenty-fourth under colonel Macbean entered the river from the Chofres. The ford was deep the water rose above the waist, and when the soldiers reached the middle of the stream which was two hundred yards wide, a heavy gun struck on the head of the column with a shower of grape; the havoc was fearful but the survivors closed and moved on. A second discharge from the same piece tore the ranks from front to rear, still the regiment moved on, and amidst a confused fire of musquetry from the ramparts, and of artillery from St. Elmo, from the castle, and from the Mirador, landed on the left bank and rushed against the third breach. Macbean’s men who had followed with equal bravery then reinforced the great breach, about eighty yards to the left of the other although the line of ruins seemed to extend the whole way. The fighting now became fierce and obstinate again at all the breaches, but the French musquetry still rolled with deadly effect, the heaps of slain increased, and once more the great mass of stormers sunk to the foot of the ruins unable to win; the living sheltered themselves as they could, but the dead and wounded lay so thickly that hardly could it be judged whether the hurt or unhurt were most numerous.

It was now evident that the assault must fail unless some accident intervened, for the tide was rising, the reserves all engaged, and no greater effort could be expected from men whose courage had been already pushed to the verge of madness. In this crisis fortune interfered. A number of powder barrels, live shells, and combustible materials which the French had accumulated behind the traverses for their defence caught fire, a bright consuming flame wrapped the whole of the high curtain, a succession of loud explosions were heard, hundreds of the French grenadiers were destroyed, the rest were thrown into confusion, and while the ramparts were still involved with suffocating eddies of smoke the British soldiers broke in at the first traverse. The defenders bewildered by this terrible disaster yielded for a moment, yet soon rallied, and a close desperate struggle took place along the summit of the high curtain, but the fury of the stormers whose numbers increased every moment could not be stemmed. The French colours on the cavalier were torn away by lieutenant Gethin of the eleventh regiment. The horn-work and the land front below the curtain, and the loop-holed wall behind the great breach were all abandoned; the light division soldiers who had already established themselves in the ruins on the French left, immediately penetrated to the streets, and at the same moment the Portuguese at the small breach, mixed with British who had wandered to that point seeking for an entrance, burst in on their side.

Five hours the dreadful battle had lasted at the walls and now the stream of war went pouring into the town. The undaunted governor still disputed the victory for a short time with the aid of his barricades, but several hundreds of his men being cut off and taken in the horn-work, his garrison was so reduced that even to effect a retreat behind the line of defences which separated the town from the Monte Orgullo was difficult. Many of his troops flying from the horn-work along the harbour flank of the town broke through a body of the British who had reached the vicinity of the fortified convent of Santa Téresa before them, and this post was the only one retained by the French in the town. It was thought by some distinguished officers engaged in the action that Monte Orgullo might have been carried on this day, if a commander of sufficient rank to direct the troops had been at hand; but whether from wounds or accident no general entered the place until long after the breach had been won, the commanders of battalions were embarrassed for want of orders, and a thunder-storm, which came down from the mountains with unbounded fury immediately after the place was carried, added to the confusion of the fight.

This storm seemed to be the signal of hell for the perpetration of villainy which would have shamed the most ferocious barbarians of antiquity. At Ciudad Rodrigo intoxication and plunder had been the principal object; at Badajos lust and murder were joined to rapine and drunkenness; but at San Sebastian, the direst, the most revolting cruelty was added to the catalogue of crimes. One atrocity of which a girl of seventeen was the victim, staggers the mind by its enormous, incredible, indescribable barbarity. Some order was at first maintained, but the resolution of the troops to throw off discipline was quickly made manifest. A British staff-officer was pursued with a volley of small arms and escaped with difficulty from men who mistook him for the provost-martial of the fifth division; a Portuguese adjutant, who endeavoured to prevent some atrocity, was put to death in the market-place, not with sudden violence from a single ruffian, but deliberately by a number of English soldiers. Many officers exerted themselves to preserve order, many men were well conducted, but the rapine and violence commenced by villains soon spread, the camp-followers crowded into the place, and the disorder continued until the flames following the steps of the plunderer put an end to his ferocity by destroying the whole town.

Three generals, Leith, Oswald, and Robinson, had been hurt in the trenches, sir Richard Fletcher the chief engineer, a brave man who had served his country honorably was killed, and colonel Burgoyne the next in command of that arm was wounded.

The carnage at the breaches was appalling. The volunteers, although brought late into the action, had nearly half their number struck down, most of the regiments of the fifth division suffered in the same proportion, and the whole loss since the renewal of the siege exceeded two thousand five hundred men and officers.