Adventures with the Connaught Rangers, 1809-1814

by William Grattan

Thus terminated the siege and storming of La Picurina, after a lapse of eight nights and nine days of unprecedented labour and peril. It might be said that its capture opened to us the gates of Badajoz, or at all events put the key of that fortress into our hands; it nevertheless cost us some trouble before we could make use of the key so gained. Never, from the commencement of the war until its termination, was there a more gallant exploit than the storming of this outwork.

On the 30th of March two breaching-batteries, armed with twenty-six guns of heavy calibre, and of the very best description, opened their fire to batter down the face of the two bastions of Santa Maria and the Trinidad; and, notwithstanding every effort which the powerful resources of the enemy enabled him to command, it was abundantly manifest that a few days would suffice to finish the labours of the army before Badajoz.

The breaching-batteries, which opened their fire on the 30th, were effective beyond our expectations against the works, and the sappers had made considerable progress towards completing a good covered way for the troops to débouche from in their attack of the breaches. On the 25th thirty-two sappers were placed under my command, but on the night of the 4th of April their numbers were reduced to seven. I lost some of the bravest men I ever commanded; but, considering the perils they encountered, it is only surprising how any escaped. We were frequently obliged to run the flying-sap so close to the battlements of the town that the noise of the pick-axes was heard on the ramparts, and, upon such occasions, the party were almost invariably cut off to a man. But it was then that the courage of the brave fellows under my orders showed itself superior to any reverse, and what was wanted in force was made up by the most heroic bravery of individuals. There were three men of my own regiment, Williamson, Bray, and Macgowan, and I feel happy in being able to mention the names of those heroes. When a fire, so destructive as to sweep away all our gabions, took place, those men would run forward with a fresh supply, and, under a fire in which it was almost impossible to live, place them in order for the rest of the party to shelter themselves, while they threw up a sufficiency of earth to render them proof against musketry. This dangerous duty was carried on for eleven successive nights, that is to say, from the 25th of March to the 5th of April.

On this day the batteries of the enemy were nearly crippled, and their replies to our fire scarcely audible; the spirits of the soldiers, which no fatigue could damp, rose to a frightful height—I say frightful, because it was not of that sort which alone denoted exultation at the prospect of their achieving an exploit which was about to hold them up to the admiration of the world; there was a certain something in their bearing that told plainly that they had suffered fatigues, which they did not complain of, and had seen their comrades and officers slain while fighting beside them without repining, but that they smarted under the one, and felt acutely for the other; they smothered both, so long as their minds and bodies were employed; now, however, that they had a momentary license to think, every fine feeling vanished, and plunder and revenge took their place. Their labours, up to this period, although unremitting, and carried on with a cheerfulness that was astonishing, hardly promised the success which they looked for; and the change which the last twenty-four hours had wrought in their favour, caused a material alteration in their demeanour; they hailed the present prospect as the mariner does the disappearance of a heavy cloud after a storm, which discovers to his view the clear horizon. In a word, the capture of Badajoz had long been their idol. Many causes led to this wish on their part; the two previous unsuccessful sieges, and the failure of the attack against San Christoval in the latter; but, above all, the well-known hostility of its inhabitants to the British army, and perhaps might be added a desire for plunder, which the sacking of Rodrigo had given them a taste for. Badajoz was, therefore, denounced as a place to be made an example of; and, most unquestionably, no city, Jerusalem excepted, was ever more strictly visited to the letter than was this ill-fated town.

The demeanour of the soldiers on this evening faithfully exemplified what I have just written: a quiet but desperate calm had taken the place of that gayness and buoyancy of spirits which they possessed so short a time before, and nothing now was observable in their manner but a tiger-like expression of anxiety to seize upon their prey, which they considered as already within their grasp.

Towards five o’clock in the afternoon all doubts were at an end, in consequence of some officers arriving in the camp from the trenches: they reported that Lord Wellington had decided upon breaching the curtain that connected the bastions of La Trinidad and Santa Maria, and as this operation would necessarily occupy several hours' fire, it was impossible that the assault could take place before the following day, the 6th, and the inactivity that reigned in the engineer camp, which contained the scaling-ladders, was corroborative of the intelligence. For once I saw the men dejected; yet it was not the dejection of fear, but of disappointment. Some of the most impetuous broke out into violent and unbecoming language; others abused the engineers; and many threw the blame of the delay upon the generals who commanded in the trenches; but all, even the most turbulent, admitted that the delay must be necessary to our success, or Lord Wellington would not allow it.

The night at length passed over, and the dawn of morning ushered in a day pregnant with events that will be recorded in our history as amongst the most brilliant that grace its annals. The batteries against the curtain soon reduced it to a heap of ruins; and the certainty that the trial would be made the same evening re-established good-humour amongst the soldiers. It was known, early in the day, that the breaches were allotted to the Light and 4th Divisions; to the 5th, the task of escalading the town on the side of the St. Vincent bastion; and to Picton, with his invincible 3rd, to carry the castle by escalading its stupendous walls, upwards of thirty feet high. The Portuguese brigade, under General Power, were to divert the enemy’s attention on the side of San Christoval; while three hundred men, taken from the guard in the trenches, were to carry the outwork of San Roque.

To ensure the success of an enterprise upon which so much was at stake, twenty thousand men were to be brought into action as I have described; by five o’clock all the ladders were portioned out to those destined to mount them. The time fixed for the assemblage of the troops was eight; that for the attack ten. The day passed over heavily, and hour after hour was counted, each succeeding one seeming to double the length of the one that preceded it; but, true as the needle to the pole, the long-expected moment arrived, and the clear but deep note of the town clock was now heard throughout our lines, as it tolled the hour of eight, and ere its last vibration had ceased the vast mass of assailants were in battle array. A thick and dusky vapour, issuing from the Guadiana and Rivillas, hung above the heads of the hostile forces, and hid alike, by its heavy veil, each from the view of its opponent; the batteries on both sides were silent, as if they reserved their efforts for the approaching struggle; and, except the gentle noise which the rippling of the Guadiana created, or the croaking of the countless frogs that filled the marshes on each side of its banks, everything was as still as if the night was to be one of quiet repose; and a passing stranger, unacquainted with the previous events, might easily have supposed that our army were no otherwise occupied than in the ordinary routine of an evening parade; but Phillipon, profiting by this cessation, retrenched and barricaded the breaches in a manner hereafter to be described.

So soon as each division had formed on its ground in open column of companies, the arms were piled, and the officers and soldiers either walked about in groups of five or six together, or sat down under an olive-tree to observe, at their ease, the arrangements of the different brigades which were to take a part in the contest. Then, again, might be seen some writing to their friends—a hasty scroll, no doubt, and, in my opinion, an ill-timed one. It is a bad time, at the moment of entering a breach, to write to a man’s father or mother, much less his wife, to tell them so; and, besides, it has an unseasonable appearance in the eyes of the soldiers, who are decidedly the most competent judges of what their officers should be, or, at least, what they would wish them to be, which is tantamount, at such a crisis.

There is a solemnity of feeling which accompanies the expectation of every great event in our lives, and the man who can be altogether dead to such feeling is little, if anything, better than a brute. The present moment was one that was well calculated to fill every bosom throughout the army; for, mixed with expectation, hope, and suspense, it was rendered still more touching to the heart by the music of some of the regiments, which played at the head of each battalion as the soldiers sauntered about to beguile the last hour many of them were destined to live. The band of my corps, the 88th, all Irish, played several airs which exclusively belong to their country, and it is impossible to describe the effect it had upon us all; such an air as “Savourneen Deelish” is sufficient, at any time, to inspire a feeling of melancholy, but on an occasion like the present it acted powerfully on the feelings of the men: they thought of their distant homes, of their friends, and of bygone days. It was Easter Sunday, and the contrast which their present position presented to what it would have been were they in their native land afforded ample food for the occupation of their minds; but they were not allowed time for much longer reflection. The approach of General Kempt, accompanied by his staff, was the signal for the formation of the column of attack; and almost immediately the men were ordered to stand to their arms. Little, if any, directions were given; indeed, they were unnecessary, because the men, from long service, were so conversant with the duty they had to perform, that it would have been but a waste of words and time to say what was required of them.