All was now in readiness. It was twenty-five minutes past nine; the soldiers, unencumbered with their knapsacks—their stocks off—their shirt-collars unbuttoned—their trousers tucked up to the knee—their tattered jackets, so worn out as to render the regiment they belonged to barely recognisable—their huge whiskers and bronzed faces, which several hard-fought campaigns had changed from their natural hue—but, above all, their self-confidence, devoid of boast or bravado, gave them the appearance of what they in reality were—an invincible host.
The division now moved forward in one solid mass—the 45th leading, followed closely by the 88th and 74th; the brigade of Portuguese, consisting of the 9th and 21st Regiments of the line, under Colonel de Champlemond, were next; while the 5th, 77th, 83rd, and 94th, under Colonel Campbell, brought up the rear. Their advance was undisturbed until they reached the Rivillas; but at this spot some fire-balls, which the enemy threw out, caused a great light, and the 3rd Division, four thousand strong, was to be seen from the ramparts of the castle. The soldiers, finding they were discovered, raised a shout of defiance, which was responded to by the garrison, and in a moment afterwards every gun that could be brought to bear against them was in action; but, no way daunted by the havoc made in his ranks, Picton, who just then joined his soldiers, forded the Rivillas, knee-deep, and soon gained the foot of the castle wall, and here he saw the work that was cut out for him, for he no longer fought in darkness. The vast quantity of combustible matter which out-topped this stupendous defence was in a blaze, and the flames which issued forth on every side lighted not only the ramparts and the ditch, but the plain that intervened between them and the Rivillas. A host of veterans crowned the wall, all armed in a manner as imposing as novel; each man had beside him eight loaded firelocks; while at intervals, and proportionably distributed, were pikes of an enormous length, with crooks attached to them, for the purpose of grappling with the ladders. The top of the wall was covered with rocks of ponderous size, only requiring a slight push to hurl them upon the heads of our soldiers, and there was a sufficiency of hand-grenades and small shells at the disposal of the men that defended this point to have destroyed the entire of the besieging army; while on the flanks of each curtain, batteries, charged to the muzzle with grape and case shot, either swept away entire sections or disorganised the ladders as they were about to be placed, and an incessant storm of musketry, at the distance of fifteen yards, completed the resources the enemy brought into play, which, as may be seen, were of vast formidableness.
To oppose this mass of warriors and heterogeneous congregation of missiles Picton had nothing to depend upon for success but his tried and invincible old soldiers—he relied firmly upon their devoted courage, and he was not disappointed. The terrible aspect of the rugged wall, thirty feet in height, in no way intimidated them; and, under a frightful fire of small arms and artillery, the ponderous ladders were dragged into the ditch and, with a degree of hardihood that augured well for the issue, were planted against the lofty battlements that domineered above his soldiers' heads: but this was only the commencement of one of the most terrific struggles recorded during this hard-fought night. Each ladder, so soon as placed upright, was speedily mounted and crowded from the top round to the bottom one; but those who escaped the pike-thrusts were shattered to atoms by the heavy cross-fire from the bastions, and the soldiers who occupied them, impaled upon the bayonets of their comrades in the ditch, died at the foot of those ladders which they had carried such a distance and with so much labour.
An hour had now passed over. No impression had been made upon the castle, and the affair began to have a very doubtful appearance, for already well nigh half of the 3rd Division had been cut off. General Kempt, commanding the right brigade, fell wounded, early in the night; and the 88th Regiment alone, the strongest in the division, lost more than half their officers and men, while the other regiments were scarcely in a better condition. Picton, seeing the frightful situation in which he was placed, became uneasy; but the goodwill with which his brave companions exposed and laid down their lives reassured him; he called out to his men—told them they had never been defeated, and that now was the moment to conquer or die. Picton, although not loved by his soldiers, was respected by them; and his appeal, as well as his unshaken front, did wonders in changing the desperate state of the division. Major Ridge of the 5th, by his personal exertions, caused two ladders to be placed upright, and he himself led the way to the top of one, while Canch, a Grenadier officer of the 5th, mounted the other. A few men at last got footing on the top of the wall; at the same time Lieutenant William Mackie of the 88th—he who led the forlorn hope at Rodrigo (unnoticed!—still a lieutenant!!)—and Mr. Richard Martin (son of the member for Galway, who acted as a volunteer with the 88th during the siege) succeeding in mounting another. Mackie—ever foremost in the fight—soon established his men on the battlements, himself unhurt; but Martin fell desperately wounded. A general rush to the ladders now took place, and the dead and wounded that lay in the ditch were indiscriminately trampled upon, for humanity was nowhere to be found. A frightful butchery followed this success; and the shouts of our soldiery, mingled with the cries of the Frenchmen, supplicating for mercy or in the agonies of death, were heard at a great distance. But few prisoners were made; and the division occupied, with much regularity, the different points allotted to each regiment. Meanwhile the ravelin of San Roque was carried by the gorge, by a detachment drawn from the trenches, under the command of Major Wilson of the 48th; and the engineers were directed to blow up the dam and sluice that caused the inundation of the Rivillas, by which means the passage of that river between La Picurina and the breaches could be more easily effected. One entire regiment of Germans, called the regiment of Hesse Darmstadt, that defended the ravelin were put to death.
While all this was taking place at the castle and San Roque, a fearful scene was acting at the breaches. The Light and 4th Divisions, ten thousand strong, advanced to the glacis undiscovered—a general silence pervading the whole, as the spirits of the men settled into that deep sobriety which denotes much determination of purpose; but at this spot their footsteps were heard, and, “perhaps since the invention of gunpowder,”[[24]] its effects were never more powerfully brought into action. In a moment the different materials which the enemy had arranged in the neighbourhood of the breaches were lighted up—darkness was converted into light—torches blazed along the battlements—and a spectator, at a short distance from the walls, could distinguish the features of the contending parties. A battery of mortars, doubly loaded with grenades, and a blaze of musketry, unlike anything hitherto witnessed by the oldest soldier, opened a murderous fire against the two divisions; but, unshaken by its effects, they pressed onward and jumped into the ditch. The 4th Division, destined to carry the breach to the right, met with a frightful catastrophe at the onset. The leading platoons, consisting of the fusilier brigade,[[25]] sprang into that part of the ditch that had been filled by the inundation of the Rivillas, and were seen no more; but the bubbles that rose on the surface of the water were a terrible assurance of the struggles which those devoted soldiers—the men of Albuera—ineffectually made to extricate themselves from the deadly grasp of each other, and from so unworthy an end.
[24]. Colonel Jones’s Sieges, i. p. 236.
[25]. 7th, 23rd, and 1st 48th.
Warned by the fate of their companions, the remainder turned to the left, and following the footsteps of the Light Division, pressed onwards in one mingled mass to the breaches of the curtain and La Trinidad. Arrived here, they encountered a series of obstacles that it was impossible to surmount, and which I find great difficulty in describing. Planks, of a sufficient length and breadth to embrace the entire face of the breaches, studded with spikes a foot long, were to be surmounted ere they reached the top of the breach; yet some there were—the brave Colonel Macleod, of the 43rd, amongst the number—who succeeded so far, but on gaining the top, chevaux de frise, formed of long sword-blades firmly fixed in the trunks of trees of a great size, and chained, boom-like, across the breach, were still to be passed; while at each side, and behind the chevaux de frise, trenches were cut, sufficiently extensive for the accommodation of three thousand men, who stood in an amphitheatrical manner—each tier above the other—and armed with eight muskets each, like their companions at the castle, awaited the attack so soon as the planks on the face, and the chevaux de frise on the top of the breach were surmounted; but they might have waited until doomsday for that event, because it was morally impossible.