At eleven o’clock at night, on the 9th of June 1811, the siege of Badajoz virtually ceased. From the moment the second attack against San Christoval was repulsed, Lord Wellington resolved to make the best of a bad business, and he converted the siege into a blockade. On the 10th, the battering train and stores were removed from the trenches, and by the 13th our works were clear. The town was closely blockaded until the 17th, on which day we broke up from before the place, and crossing the Guadiana by the ford above San Christoval, reached the banks of the Caya, in the neighbourhood of Aronches, a little after noon.
It appeared from the different reports of our spies that the whole disposable force, not only of Soult’s army of the South, but also of that of Portugal, were in march against us; and Lord Wellington accordingly took up a defensive position near Elvas, with his vanguard at Campo Mayor, consisting of the 3rd and 7th Divisions of infantry. The Dukes of Dalmatia and Ragusa formed their junction at Badajoz on the 28th, and the two Marshals dined there together on that day. Great praise was bestowed upon General Phillipon for his fine defence of the place, and, as a matter of course, much bombastic stuff was trumpeted forth in the papers about the valour displayed by the Imperial soldiers on the occasion. Our losses were rated at more than four times their real amount; and though no blame was attached by the enemy to our troops, the Engineers were attacked with a severity that I have reason to think was unjust. One writer speaking on the subject says:—
“Had the Engineers followed the rules of fortification with as much ability as his lordship displayed in the application of the principles of the higher branches of tactics, Badajoz would, no doubt, have surrendered about the 14th or 15th of June. It scarcely would be believed, were it not expressly mentioned in the official reports, that in the beginning of the nineteenth century, troops should have been sent to the assault with ladders after the breach had been judged practicable.”
I shall leave it to the gentlemen of the Engineers to answer these remarks; but as far as I have been able to collect the facts, and I have received my information from good, I might say the best, authority, our defeat before San Christoval arose from three causes: first, the want of knowledge displayed by the officer commanding the first attack of the real situation of the breach, owing to the unfortunate circumstance of the engineer being killed at the onset; secondly, the shortness of the ladders, and the smallness of the storming party each night; and thirdly, the conduct of the men who were entrusted with the charge of the ladders—a foreign corps, it is true;[[17]] but why employ troops of this description upon a service so desperate?
[17]. The battalion of Brunswick Oels, largely composed of German deserters from the French army.
There is no duty which a British soldier performs before an enemy that he does with so much reluctance—a retreat always excepted—as working in trenches. Although essentially necessary to the accomplishment of the most gallant achievement a soldier can aspire to—the storming a breach—it is an inglorious calling; one full of danger, attended with great labour, and, what is even worse, with a deal of annoyance; and for this reason, that the soldiers are not only taken quite out of their natural line of action, but they are, if not entirely, at least partially, commanded by officers, those of the Engineers, whose habits are totally different from what they have been accustomed to.
No two animals ever differed more completely in their propensities than the British engineer and the British infantry soldier. The latter delights in an open field, and a fair “stand-up fight,” where he meets his man or men (for numbers, when it comes to a hand-to-hand business, are of little weight with the British soldier); if he falls there, he does so, in the opinion of his comrades, with credit to himself; but a life lost in the trenches is looked upon as one thrown away and lost ingloriously. The engineer, on the contrary, braves all the dangers of a siege with a cheerful countenance; he even courts them, and no mole ever took greater delight in burrowing through a sandhill than an engineer does in mining a covered way, or blowing up a counterscarp. Not so with the infantry soldier, who is obliged to stand to be shot at, with a pick-axe or shovel in his hand instead of his firelock and bayonet. If, then, this is a trying situation, as it unquestionably is for a soldier, where death by round-shot and shell in the works is comparatively less than it is at the moment of the assault of a breach, how much more care should there be taken in the selection of the ladder men than appears to have been the case at San Christoval?
On the 22nd of June, the two French Marshals moved a large body of troops towards Elvas and Campo Mayor, in order to cover their reconnoissance of our position. Our army at this time counted about sixty-six thousand men, of which number only six thousand were cavalry. The combined French army exceeded us by about ten thousand, and in the arm of horse they were upwards of three thousand our superiors. Notwithstanding this disproportion of force, Lord Wellington had made able dispositions to beat the French Marshals in detail, and there is little or no doubt but that he would have succeeded, had Marmont been acting in concert with a man as presumptuous as himself; but Soult was too good a judge not to see the sort of adversary he was opposed to, and it was not possible to entrap him. Albuera taught him a lesson.
After the reconnoissance of the 22nd, and after supplies had been thrown into Badajoz, the enemy took up the quarters he had occupied previous to the junction of the armies of Portugal and the South—the army of Soult in the neighbourhood of Seville, that of Marmont at Placentia. The 7th and 3rd Divisions of our army occupied Campo Mayor: and having got ourselves and our appointments into good order, we began to have all the annoyances of garrison duty, which was not lessened by the presence of three or four general officers. The mounting of guard, the salute, and all the minutiæ of our profession, were attended to with a painful particularity; and poor old General Sontag was near falling a sacrifice to his zeal on this particular point of duty. This officer was by birth either a German or Prussian, I don’t know which, but, from his costume, I should myself say that he was a disciple of the Grand Frederick; he was a great Martinet, and had all the appearance of one brought up in the school of that celebrated warrior, and might have passed, and deservedly so, for aught I know to the contrary, for one who had served in the “Seven Years' War.” His dress was singular, though plain; he usually wore a cocked hat and jacket, tight blue pantaloons, and brown top hunting-boots.