CHAPTER IV

THE STORM OF BADAJOZ. APRIL 6, 1812

The arrangements which Wellington made for the assault--a business which he knew would be costly, and not absolutely certain of success--were as follows.

The Light and 4th Divisions were told off for the main attack at the three breaches. They were forced to make it on the narrow front west of the Rivillas, because the inundation cramped their approach on the right. The 4th Division, under Colville, was to keep nearest to that water, and to assail the breach in the Trinidad bastion and also the new breach in the curtain to its left. The Light Division was to devote itself to the breach in the flank of Santa Maria. Each division was to provide an advance of 500 men, with which went twelve ladders and a party carrying hay-bags to cast into the ditch. For the counterscarp not being ruined, it was clear that there would be a very deep jump into the depths. The two divisions followed in columns of brigades, each with a British brigade leading, the Portuguese in the centre, and the other British brigade in the rear. Neither division was quite complete--the 4th having to provide the guard of the trenches that night, while the Light Division detached some of its rifles, to distract the attention of the enemy in the bastions to the left, by lying down on the glacis and firing into the embrasures when their cannon should open. Hence the Light Division put only 3,000, the 4th 3,500 men into the assault. When the breaches were carried, the Light Division was to wheel to the left, the 4th to the right, and to sweep along the neighbouring bastions on each side. A reserve was to be left at the quarries below the Pardaleras height, and called up when it was needed.

In addition to the main assault two subsidiary attacks were to be made--a third (as we shall see) was added at the last moment. The guards of the trenches, furnished by the 4th Division, were to try to rush the lunette of San Roque, which was in a dilapidated condition, and were to cut away the dam if successful. A much more serious matter was that, on the express petition of General Picton, he was allowed to make an attempt to take the Castle by _escalade_. This daring officer argued that all the attention of the enemy would be concentrated on the breaches, and that the Castle was in itself so strong that it was probable the governor would only leave a minimum garrison in it. He had marked spots in its front where the walls were comparatively low, owing to the way in which the rocky and grassy slope at its foot ran up and down. The escalade was to be a surprise--the division was to cross the Rivillas at a point far below the inundation, where the ruins of a mill spanned the stream, and was to drag ladders up the steep mound to the foot of the wall.

Two demonstrations, or false attacks, were to be made with the intention of distracting the enemy--one by Power’s Portuguese brigade beyond the Guadiana, who were to threaten an escalade on the fort at the bridge-head: the other by the Portuguese of the 5th Division against the Pardaleras. At the last moment--the order does not appear in the full draft of the directions for the storm--Leith, commanding the 5th Division, was told that he might try an escalade, similar to that allotted to Picton, against the river-bastion of San Vincente, the extreme north-west point of the defences, and one that had hitherto been left entirely untouched by the besiegers. For this he was to employ one of his two British brigades, leaving the other in reserve.

Every student of the Peninsular War knows the unexpected result of the storm: the regular assault on the breaches failed with awful loss, but all the three subsidiary attacks, on San Roque, the Castle, and San Vincente, succeeded in the most brilliant style, so that Badajoz was duly taken, but not in the way that Wellington intended.

The reason why the main assault failed was purely and simply that Phillipon and his garrison put into the defence of the breaches not only the most devoted courage, but such an accumulation of ingenious devices as had never before been seen in a siege of that generation--apparently Phillipon must share the credit with his commanding engineer, Lamare, the historian of the siege. The normal precaution of cutting off the breaches by retrenchments on both sides, and of throwing up parapets of earth, sandbags, and wool-packs behind them, was the least part of the work done. What turned out more effective was a series of mines and explosive barrels planted at the foot of the counterscarp, and connected with the ramparts by covered trains. This was on the near side of the ditch, where there was dead ground unsearched by the besiegers’ artillery. In the bottom of it, and at the foot of the breaches, had been placed or thrown all manner of large cumbrous obstacles, carts and barrows turned upside down, several large damaged boats, some rope entanglements, and piles of broken gabions and fascines. The slopes of the breaches had been strewn with crowsfeet, and were covered with beams studded with nails, not fixed, but hung by ropes from the lip of the breach; in some places harrows, and doors studded with long spikes, were set upon the slope. At the top of each breach was a device never forgotten by any observer, the _chevaux de frise_, formed of cavalry sword-blades[268] set in foot-square beams, and chained down at their ends. For the defence of the three breaches Phillipon had told off 700 men, composed of the light and grenadier companies of each of his battalions, plus the four fusilier companies of the 103rd Line--about 1,200 men in all. A battalion of the 88th was in the cathedral square behind, as general reserve. The two Hessian battalions were on the left, holding the Castle, the lunette of San Roque, and the San Pedro bastion. The three other French battalions occupied the long range of bastions from San Juan to San Vincente. As there had been many casualties, the total of the available men had sunk to about 4,000, and since nearly half of them were concentrated at or behind the breaches, the guard was rather thin at other points--especially (as Picton had calculated) at the Castle, which, though its front was long, was held by only 250 men, mostly Hessians.

[268] These swords were those of the large body of Spanish dismounted cavalry which had surrendered at the capitulation in March 1811.

It was a most unfortunate thing that the time of the assault, originally fixed for 7.30, was put off till 10--and that the siege-batteries slacked down after dark. For the two hours thus granted to the besieged were well spent in repairing and strengthening all their devices for defence. An earlier assault would have found the preparations incomplete, especially in the matter of the combustibles placed in the ditch.

It would be useless, in the narrative of the doings of this bloody night, to make any attempt to vie with those paragraphs of lurid description which make Napier’s account of the storm of Badajoz perhaps the most striking section of one of the most eloquent books in the English language. All that will be here attempted is to give a clear and concise note of what happened between ten and one o’clock on the night of April 6, 1812, so far as it is possible to secure a coherent tale from the diaries and memoirs of a number of eye-witnesses. Burgoyne and Jones of the Royal Engineers, Dickson the commander of the Artillery, Grattan and McCarthy from the 3rd Division, Leith Hay of the 5th, and Kincaid, Simmons, and Harry Smith of the Light Division, along with many more less well-known authorities, must serve as our instructors, each for the part of the storm in which he was himself concerned.

It had been intended, as was said above, that all the columns should converge simultaneously on their points of attack, and for that reason the distances between the starting-point of each division and its objective had been calculated with care. But, as a matter of fact, the hour of 10 p.m. was not quite accurately kept. On the right Picton’s division was descried by the French in the Castle as it was lining the first parallel, and was heavily fired upon at 9.45, whereupon the general, seeing that his men were discovered, ordered the advance to begin at once--the 3rd Division was fording the Rivillas under a blaze of fire from the Castle and the San Pedro bastion before 10 struck on the cathedral clock. On the other hand, at the western flank, the officer in charge of the ladder and hay-bag party which was to lead the 5th Division, lost his way along the bank of the Guadiana, while coming up from the Park to take his place at the head of Leith’s men. The column had to wait for the ladders, and was more than an hour late in starting. Only the central attack, on the three breaches, was delivered with exact punctuality.

It is perhaps best to deal with this unhappy assault first--it was a horrible affair, and fully two-thirds of the losses that night were incurred in it. The two divisions, as ordered, came down the ravine to the left of the Pardaleras hill without being discovered: the line of vision from the town was in their favour till they were actually on the glacis, and heavy firing against Picton’s column was heard as they came forward. The 4th Division was turning to the right, the Light Division to the left, just as they drew near the ditch, when suddenly they were descried, and the French, who were well prepared and had long been waiting for the expected assault, opened on them with musketry from all the breaches, and with artillery from the unruined flanking bastions. The storm began as unhappily as it was to end. The advance of the 4th Division bearing to the right, came on a part of the ditch into which the inundation had been admitted--not knowing its depth, nor that the French had made a six-foot cutting at the foot of the counterscarp. Many men, not waiting for the ladders, sprang down into the water, thinking it to be a mere puddle. The leading files nearly all perished--the regimental record of the Welsh Fusiliers shows twenty men drowned--that of the Portuguese regiment which was behind the Fusiliers as many as thirty. Finding the ditch impassable here, the rest of the 4th Division storming-party swerved to the left, and, getting beyond the inundation, planted their ladders there: some came down in this way, more by simply taking a fourteen-foot leap on to the hay-bags, which they duly cast down. At the same moment the advance of the Light Division descended in a similar fashion into the ditch farther to the left, towards Santa Maria. Many men were already at the bottom, the rest crowded on the edge, where the French engineers fired the series of fougasses, mines, and powder-barrels which had been laid in the ditch. They worked perfectly, and the result was appalling--the 500 volunteers who formed the advance of each division were almost all slain, scorched, or disabled. Every one of the engineer officers set to guide the column was killed or wounded, and the want of direction, caused by the absence of any one who knew the topography of the breaches, had the most serious effect during the rest of the storm. Of the Light Division officers with the advance only two escaped unhurt.

There was a horrible check for a minute or two, and then the heads of the main column of each division reached the edge of the ditch, and began to leap down, or to make use of those of the ladders which had not been broken. The gulf below was all ablaze, for the explosions had set fire to the carts, boats, broken gabions, &c., which the French had set in the ditch, and they were burning furiously--every man as he descended was clearly visible to the enemy entrenched on the top of the breaches. The troops suffered severely as they dribbled over the edge of the counterscarp, and began to accumulate in the ditch. From the first there was great confusion--the two divisions got mixed, because the 4th had been forced to swerve to its left to avoid the inundation, and so was on ground originally intended for the Light. Many men mistook an unfinished ravelin in the bottom of the ditch for the foot of the central breach, and climbed it, only to find themselves on a mass of earth divided by a wide sunken space from the point they were aiming at. To get to the foot of the largest breach, that in the Trinidad bastion, it was necessary to push some way along the blazing bottom of the ditch, so as to turn and get round the end of the inundation. The main thrust of the attack, however, went this way, only part of the Light Division making for the Santa Maria breach, on which it had been intended that all should concentrate. As to the central breach in the curtain, it seems that few or none made their way[269] thither: the disappointment on reaching the top of the ravelin in front of it, made all who got alive to that point turn right or left, instead of descending and pushing straight on. Jones records that next morning there was hardly a single body of an English soldier on the central breach, while the slopes and foot of each of the two flank breaches were heaped with hundreds of corpses. This was a misfortune, as the curtain breach was the easiest of the three, and having been made only that afternoon was not retrenched like the others.

[269] This fact, much insisted on by Jones, is disputed by certain Light Division witnesses, but does not seem to be disproved by them.

From ten to twelve the surviving men in the ditch, fed by the coming up of the rear battalions of each division, and finally by the reserve, delivered a series of desperate but disorderly attacks on the Trinidad and Santa Maria breaches. It is said that on no occasion did more than the equivalent of a company storm at once--each officer as he struggled to the front with those of his men who stuck to him, tried the breach opposite him, and was shot down nearer or farther from its foot. Very few ever arrived at the top, with its _chevaux de frise_ of sword-blades. The footing among the beams and spikes was uncertain, and the French fire absolutely deadly--every man was armed with three muskets. Next morning observers say that they noted only one corpse impaled on the _chevaux de frise_ of the Trinidad breach, and a few more under it, as if men had tried to crawl below, and had had their heads beaten in or blown to pieces. But the lower parts of the ascent were absolutely carpeted with the dead, lying one on another.

More than two hours were spent in these desperate but vain attempts to carry the breaches: it is said that as many as forty separate assaults were made, but all to no effect--the fire concentrated on the attacked front was too heavy for any man to face. At last the assaults ceased: the survivors stood--unable to get forward, unwilling to retreat--vainly answering the volleys of the French on the walls above them by an ineffective fire of musketry. Just after twelve, Wellington, who had been waiting on the hill above, receiving from time to time reports of the progress of the assault, sent down orders for the recall of the two divisions. They retired, most unwillingly, and formed up again, in sadly diminished numbers, not far from the glacis. The only benefit obtained from their dreadful exertions was that the attention of the French had been concentrated on the breaches for two hours--and meanwhile (without their knowledge) the game had been settled elsewhere.

The losses had been frightful--over one man in four of those engaged: the Light Division had 68 officers and 861 men killed and wounded out of about 3,000 present: the 4th Division 84 officers and 841 men out of 3,500. The Portuguese battalions which served with them had lost 400 men more--altogether 2,200 of the best troops in Wellington’s army had fallen--and all to no result.

But while the main stroke failed, each of the subsidiary attacks, under Picton and Leith, had met with complete success, and despite of the disaster on the breaches, Badajoz was at Wellington’s mercy by midnight. The success of either escalade by itself would have been enough to settle the game.

Picton’s division, as already mentioned, had been detected by the French as it was filing into the parallel below the Castle: and since a heavy fire was at once opened on it, there was no use in halting, and the general gave the order to advance without delay. The men went forward on a narrow front, having to cross the Rivillas at the ruined mill where alone it was fordable. This was done under fire, but with no great loss. The palisade on the other bank of the stream was broken down by a general rush, and the storming-party found itself at the foot of the lofty Castle hill. To get the ladders up it was a most difficult business--the slope was very steep, almost precipitous in parts, and the ladders were thirty feet long and terribly heavy. Though no assault had been expected here, and the preparations were not so elaborate as at the breaches, yet the besieged were not caught unprepared, and the column, as it climbed the hill, was torn by cannon shot and thinned by musketry. The French threw fire-balls over the wall, and other incandescent stuff (_carcasses_), so there was fair light by which to see the stormers. Picton was hit in the groin down by the Rivillas, and the charge of the assault fell to his senior brigadier, Kempt, and Major Burgoyne of the Engineers. The narrow space at the foot of the walls being reached, the ladders were reared, one after the other, toward the south end of the Castle wall. Six being at last ready in spots close to each other, an attempt was made to mount, with an officer at the head of each. But the fire was so heavy, that no man reached the last rungs alive, and the enemy overthrew all the ladders and broke several of them. One is said to have been pulled up by main force into the Castle! Meanwhile the besieged cast heavy stones and broken beams into the mass of men clustering along the foot of the wall, and slew many. But the 3rd Division was not spent--Kempt’s brigade had delivered the first rush--Champlemond’s Portuguese headed the second, when they had climbed the slope--but also to no effect. Lastly the rear brigade--Campbell’s--came up, and gave a new impetus to the attack. There was now a very large force, 4,000 men, striving all along the base of the wall, on a front of some 200 yards. Wherever footing could be found ladders were reared, now at considerable distances from each other. The garrison of the Castle was not large--two Hessian and one French company and the gunners, under 300 men, and when simultaneous attacks were delivered at many points, some of them were scantily opposed. Hence it came that in more places than one men at last scrambled to the crest of the wall. A private of the 45th is said to have been the first man whose body fell inside, not outside, the battlements--the second, we are told, was an ensign (McAlpin) of the 88th, who defended himself for a moment on the crest before he was shot. The third man to gain the summit was Colonel Ridge of the 5th Fusiliers, who found a point where an empty embrasure made the wall a little lower, entered it with two or three of his men, and held out long enough to allow more ladders to be planted behind him, and a nucleus to gather in his rear. He pushed on the moment that fifteen or twenty men had mounted, and the thin line of defenders being once pierced the resistance suddenly broke down--all the remaining ladders were planted, and the 3rd Division began to stream into the Castle. Picton was by this time again in command; he had recovered his strength, and had hobbled up the slope, relieving Kempt, who was by now also wounded. The time was about eleven o’clock, and the din at the breaches down below showed that they were still being defended.

It took some time to dislodge the remainder of the garrison from the Castle precinct; many took refuge in the keep, and defended it from stair to stair, till they were exterminated. But by 12 midnight all was over, and Picton would have debouched from the Castle, to sweep the ramparts, but for the fact that all its gates, save one postern, were found to have been bricked up--the French having intended to make it their last point of resistance if the town should fall. The one free postern being at last found, the division was preparing to break out, when the head of its column was attacked by the French general reserve, a battalion of the 88th, which Phillipon had sent up from the cathedral square, when he heard that the Castle had been forced. There was a sharp fight before the French were driven off, in which (most unhappily) Ridge, the hero of the escalade, was shot dead. By the time that this was over, Badajoz had been entered at another point, and Picton’s success was only part of the decisive stroke. But as he had captured in the Castle all the French ammunition reserve, and nearly all their food, the town must anyhow have fallen, because of his daring exploit. The loss of the division was not excessive considering the difficulties they had overcome, about 500 British and 200 Portuguese out of 4,000 men engaged.

Meanwhile, in the valley below the Castle, the guards of the trenches had stormed the lunette of San Roque, and were hard at work cutting the dam, so that in an hour or two the inundation was beginning to drain off rapidly. This also would have been a decisive success, if nothing else had been accomplished elsewhere.

The blow, however, which actually finished the business, and caused the French to fail at the breaches, was delivered by quite another force. It will be remembered that a brigade--Walker’s--of the 5th Division, had been directed to escalade the remote river-bastion of San Vincente. It was nearly an hour late, because of the tiresome mistake made by the officer charged with the bringing up of the ladders from the Park. And only at a few minutes past eleven did Leith, heading the column, arrive before the palisades of the covered way, near the Guadiana. Walker’s men were detected on the glacis, and a heavy artillery fire was opened on them from San Vincente and San José, but they threw down many of the palisades and began to descend into the ditch--a drop of 12 feet. There was a cut in the bottom, to which water from the Guadiana had been let in, and the wall in front was 30 feet high. Hence the first attempts to plant the ladders were unavailing, and many men fell. But coasting around the extreme north end of the bastion, close to the river, some officers found that the flank sloped down to a height of only 20 feet, where the bastion joined the waterside wall. Three or four ladders were successfully planted here, while the main attention of the garrison was distracted to the frontal attack, and a stream of men of the 4th, 30th, and 44th began to pour up them. The French broke before the flank attack: they were not numerous, for several companies had been drawn off to help at the breaches, and the bastion was won. As soon as a few hundred men were formed, General Walker led them along the ramparts, and carried the second bastion, that of San José. But the two French battalions holding the succeeding western bastions now massed together, and made a firm resistance in that of Santiago. The stormers were stopped, and an unhappy incident broke their impetus--some lighted port-fires thrown down by the French artillerymen were lying about--some one called out that they were the matches of mines. Thereupon the advancing column instinctively fell back some paces--the French charged and drove them in, and the whole retired fighting confusedly as far as San Vincente. Here General Leith had fortunately left a reserve battalion, the 2/38th, which, though only 230 strong, stopped the panic and broke the French advance. Walker’s brigade rallied and advanced again--though its commander was desperately wounded--and once more the enemy were swept all along the western bastions, which they lost one by one.

Some of the 5th Division descended into the streets of the town, and pushing for the rear of the great breaches, by a long détour through the silent streets, at last came in upon them, and opened a lively fire upon the backs of the enemy who were manning the retrenchments. The main body, however, driving before them the garrison of the southern bastions, hurtled in upon the flank of the Santa Maria. At this moment the 4th and Light Divisions, by Wellington’s orders, advanced again towards the ditch, where their dead or disabled comrades were lying so thick. They thought that they were going to certain death, not being aware of what had happened inside the city. But as they descended into the ditch only a few scattering shots greeted them. The French main body--for 2,000 men had been driven in together behind the breaches--had just thrown down their arms and surrendered to the 5th Division. Even when there was no resistance, the breaches proved hard to mount, and the obstructions at the top were by no means easy to remove.

The governor, Phillipon, had escaped into San Cristobal with a few hundred men, and surrendered there at dawn, having no food and little ammunition. But he first sent out the few horsemen of the garrison to run the gauntlet of the Portuguese pickets, and bear the evil news to Soult.

Thus fell Badajoz: the best summary of its fall is perhaps that of Leith Hay, who followed his relative, the commander of the 5th Division, in the assault on San Vincente:--

‘Had Lord Wellington relied on the storming of the breaches alone, the town would not have been taken. Had General Leith received his ladders punctually and escaladed at 10, as intended, he would have been equally successful, and the unfortunate divisions at the breaches would have been saved an hour of dreadful loss. If Leith had failed, Badajoz would still have fallen, in consequence of the 3rd Division carrying the Castle--but not till the following morning; and the enemy might have given further trouble. Had Picton failed, still the success of the 5th Division ensured the fall of the place.’ The moral would seem to be that precautions cannot be too numerous--it was the afterthoughts in this case, and not the main design, that were successful and saved the game.

Wellington himself, in a document--a letter to Lord Liverpool--that long escaped notice, and did not get printed in its right place in the ninth volume of his _Dispatches_[270], made a commentary on the perilous nature of the struggle and the greatness of the losses which must not be suppressed. He ascribed them to deficiencies in the engineering department. ‘The capture of Badajoz affords as strong an instance of the gallantry of our troops as has ever been displayed. But I greatly hope that I shall never again be the instrument of putting them to such a test as they were put to last night. I assure your lordship that it is quite impossible to carry fortified places by _vive force_ without incurring grave loss and being exposed to the chance of failure, unless the army should be provided with a sufficient trained corps of sappers and miners.... The consequences of being so unprovided with the people necessary to approach a regularly fortified place are, first, that our engineers, though well-educated and brave, have never turned their minds to the mode of conducting a regular siege, as it is useless to think of that which, in our service, it is impossible to perform. They think that they have done their duty when they have constructed a battery, with a secure communication to it, which can breach the place. Secondly, these breaches have to be carried by _vive force_ at an infinite sacrifice of officers and soldiers.... These great losses could be avoided, and, in my opinion, time gained in every siege, if we had properly trained people to carry it on. I declare that I have never seen breaches more practicable in themselves than the three in the walls of Badajoz, and the fortress must have surrendered with these breaches open, if I had been able to “approach” the place. But when I had made the third breach, on the evening of the 6th, I could do no more. I was then obliged either to storm or to give the business up; and when I ordered the assault I was certain that I should lose our best officers and men. It is a cruel situation for any person to be placed in, and I earnestly request your lordship to have a corps of sappers and miners formed without loss of time.’

[270] My attention was called to this letter, found among Lord Liverpool’s papers in 1869, by Mr. F. Turner, of Frome.

The extraordinary fact that no trained corps of sappers and miners existed at this time was the fault neither of Wellington nor of the Liverpool ministry, but of the professional advisers of the cabinets that had borne office ever since the great French War broke out. The need had been as obvious during the sieges of 1793-4 in Flanders as in 1812. That the Liverpool ministry could see the point, and wished to do their duty, was shown by the fact that they at once proceeded to turn six companies of the existing corps of ‘Royal Military Artificers’ into sappers. On April 23, less than three weeks after Badajoz fell, a warrant was issued for instructing the whole corps in military field-works. On August 4 their name was changed from ‘Royal Military Artificers’ to ‘Royal Sappers and Miners.’ The transformation was much too late for the siege of Burgos, but by 1813 the companies were beginning to join the Peninsular Army, and at San Sebastian they were well to the front. An end was at last made to the system hitherto prevailing, by which the troops which should have formed the rank and file of the Royal Engineers were treated as skilled mechanics, mainly valuable for building and carpentering work at home stations.

[Illustration: BADAJOZ]

One more section, a most shameful one, must be added to the narrative of the fall of Badajoz. We have already had to tell of the grave disorders which two months before had followed the storm of Ciudad Rodrigo. These were but trifling and venial compared with the offences which were committed by the men who had just gone through the terrible experiences of the night of April 6th. At Rodrigo there was much drunkenness, a good deal of plunder, and some wanton fire-raising: many houses had been sacked, a few inhabitants were maltreated, but none, it is believed, were mortally hurt. At Badajoz the outrages of all kinds passed belief; the looting was general and systematic, and rape and bloodshed were deplorably common. Explanatory excuses have been made, to the effect that the army had an old grudge against the inhabitants of the city, dating back to the time when several divisions were quartered in and about it, after Talavera. It was also said that all the patriotic inhabitants had fled long ago, and that those who had remained behind were mainly _Afrancesados_, traitors to the general cause. There was some measure of truth in both allegations: it was no doubt true that there had been quarrels in 1809, and that many loyalist families had evacuated the city after the French occupation, and had transferred themselves to other parts of Estremadura. The population at the time of the British storm was not two-thirds of the normal figure. But these excuses will not serve. There can be no doubt that the outrages were in no sense reasoned acts of retribution, but were a simple outburst of ruffianism.

Old military tradition in all the armies of Europe held that a garrison which refused to surrender when the breaches had become practicable was at the mercy of the conqueror for life and limb, and that a town resisting to extremity was the natural booty of the stormers. In the eighteenth century there were countless instances of a fortress, defended with courage up to the moment when an assault was possible, surrendering on the express plea that the lives of the garrison were forfeit if it held out, when resistance could no longer be successful. The attacking party held that all the lives which it lost after the place had become untenable were lost unnecessarily, because of the unreasonable obstinacy of the besieged: the latter therefore could expect no quarter. This was not an unnatural view when the circumstances are considered. The defender of a wall or a breach has an immense advantage over the stormer, till the moment when the latter has succeeded in closing, and in bringing his superior numbers to bear. In a curious hortatory address which Phillipon published to his garrison[271], the passage occurs, ‘realize thoroughly that a man mounting up a ladder cannot use his weapon unless he is left unmolested: the head comes up above the parapet unprotected, and a wary soldier can destroy in succession as many enemies as appear at the ladder-top.’ This is perfectly true: but Phillipon naturally avoided stating the logical conclusion, viz. that when the stormers finally succeed in crowning the ramparts, they will be particularly ill-disposed towards the garrison who have, till the last moment, been braining their comrades or shooting them through the head at small risk to themselves. When the assailant, after seeing several of his predecessors on the ladder deliberately butchered by a man under cover, gets by some special piece of luck on a level with his adversary, it will be useless for the latter to demand quarter. If it is a question of showing mercy, why did not the other side begin? _Que messieurs les assassins commencent_, as the French humorist remarked to the humanitarian, who protested against capital punishment for murderers. There is a grim story of a party of Tuscan soldiers of the 113th Line, who were pinned into a ravelin on the flank of the lesser breach at Rodrigo, and after firing to the last minute upon the flank of the Light Division, threw down their arms, when they saw themselves cut off, calling out that they were ‘_poveros Italianos_’--’So you’re not French but _Italians_ are you--then here’s a shot for you,’ was the natural answer[272]:--reflections as to the absence of any national enmity towards the victors should have occurred to the vanquished before, and not after, the breach was carried. The same thing happened at the Castle of Badajoz to the companies, mainly Hessians, who so long held down the stormers of the 3rd Division. If the defenders of the breaches escaped summary massacre, it was because the breaches were not carried by force, and the main body of the French surrendered some time after the assault had ceased, and to troops of the 5th Division, who had not been personally engaged with them.

[271] Printed in Belmas, iv, Appendix, p. 369, and dated March 26.

[272] The story may be found in Kincaid, p. 114, and in several other sources.

It was universally held in all armies during the wars of the early nineteenth century that the garrison which resisted to the last moment, after success had become impossible, had no rights. Ney wrote to the governor of Ciudad Rodrigo in 1810, ‘further resistance will force the Prince of Essling to treat you with all the rigour of the laws of war. You have to choose between honourable capitulation and the terrible vengeance of a victorious army[273].’ Suchet, in more brutal words, told the governor of Tortosa that he should put to the sword a garrison which resisted instead of capitulating ‘when the laws of war make it his duty to do so, large breaches being opened and the walls ruined[274].’ A very clear statement of this sanguinary theory is found in a passage in the Memoirs of Contreras, the unlucky governor of Tarragona in 1811[275]. ‘The day after the storm General Suchet had me brought before him on a stretcher [he was severely wounded] and in presence of his chief officers and of my own, told me in a loud voice that I was the cause of all the horrors which his troops had committed in Tarragona, because I had held out beyond the limit prescribed in the laws of war, and that those laws directed him to have me executed, for not capitulating when the breach was opened; that having taken the place by assault he had the right to slay and burn _ad infinitum_.’ I replied that ‘if it is true that the laws of war state that, if the besieger gets in, he may deliver to the sword and the flames town and garrison, and if they therefore suggest as a proper moment for capitulation that when an assault has become practicable, it is nevertheless true that they do not prohibit the besieged from resisting the assault, if he considers that he can beat it off: I had sufficient forces to hold my own, and should have done so if my orders had been properly carried out. Therefore I should have been called a coward if I had not tried to resist, and no law prohibited me from repulsing an assault if I could.’

[273] Document in Belmas, iii. p. 287.

[274] Ibid., p. 442.

[275] Published in the collection of _Mémoires sur la guerre d’Espagne_ in 1821.

But, as has been pointed out recently[276], Wellington himself may be quoted in favour of this theory. In a letter written to Canning in 1820 concerning quite another matter, he remarked, ‘I believe that it has always been understood that the defenders of a fortress stormed have no claim to quarter, and the practice which prevailed during the last century of surrendering fortresses when a breach was opened, and the counterscarp blown in, was founded on this understanding. Of late years the French availed themselves of the humanity of modern warfare, and made a new regulation that a breach should stand one assault at least. The consequence of this regulation of Bonaparte’s was the loss to me of the flower of my army, in the assaults on Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz. I should have thought myself justified in putting both garrisons to the sword, and if I had done so at the first, it is probable that I should have saved 5,000 men at the second. I mention this to show you that the practice which refuses quarter to a garrison that stands an assault is not a _useless_ effusion of blood.’

[276] By Colonel Callwell, in an article in _Blackwood’s Magazine_ for September 1913.

Comparatively few of the garrisons of Rodrigo and Badajoz were shot down, and those all in hot blood in the moment after the walls were carried. Suchet’s army was much more pitiless at Tarragona, where a great part of the Spanish garrison was deliberately hunted down and slaughtered. But there was, of course, a much more bitter feeling between French and Spaniards than between English and French.

The only reason for enlarging on this deplorable theme is that there was a close connexion in the minds of all soldiers of the early nineteenth century, from the highest to the lowest ranks, between the idea that an over-obstinate garrison had forfeited quarter, and the idea that the town they had defended was liable to sack. This may be found plainly stated in Lannes’s summons to Palafox at Saragossa in January 1809[277], in the capitulation-debate before the surrender of Badajoz in 1811, in Augereau’s address to the inhabitants of Gerona[278], in Leval’s summons to the governor of Tarifa[279], and with special emphasis in Suchet’s threatening epistle to Blake on the day before the fall of Valencia: ‘in a few hours a general assault will precipitate into your city the French columns: if you delay till this terrible moment, it will not be in my power to restrain the fury of the soldiery, and you alone will be responsible before God and man for the evils which will overwhelm Valencia. It is the desire to avert the complete destruction of a great town that determines me to offer you honourable terms of capitulation[280].’ It was hardly necessary in the Napoleonic era to enlarge on the connexion between storm and sack--it was presupposed. Every governor who capitulated used to put in his report to his own government a mention of his ‘desire to spare the unfortunate inhabitants the horrors of a storm.’

[277] See Belmas, ii. p. 381.

[278] Ibid., ii. pp. 844-5.

[279] Text in the _Defence of Tarifa_, p. 64, and in Arteche.

[280] Belmas, iv. p. 202.

This idea, sad to say, was as deeply rooted in the minds of British as of French soldiers. It is frankly confessed in many a Peninsular diary. ‘The men were permitted to enjoy themselves (!) for the remainder of the day,’ says Kincaid in his narrative of the fall of Badajoz, ‘and the usual frightful scene of plunder commenced, which officers thought it prudent to avoid for the moment by retiring to the camp[281].’ ‘The troops were, of course, admitted to the immemorial privilege of tearing the town to pieces,’ says another writer on another occasion[282]. The man in the ranks regarded the connexion of storm and sack as so close that he could write, ‘the prisoners being secured and the gates opened, we were allowed to enter the town _for the purpose of plundering it_[283].’ But perhaps the most eye-opening sentence on the subject is Wellington’s official order of April 7, 1812, issued late in the day, and when the sack had already been going on for fifteen or eighteen hours, ‘It is now full time that the plunder of Badajoz should cease; an officer and six steady non-commissioned officers will be sent from each regiment, British and Portuguese, of the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and Light Divisions into the town, at 5 a.m. to-morrow morning, to bring away any men still straggling there[284].’

[281] Kincaid, p. 39.

[282] Leith Hay, ii. pp. 256-7.

[283] Memoirs of Donaldson of the 94th, p. 158.

[284] Wellington, _Supplementary Dispatches_, vii. p. 311.

It was unfortunately the fact that Badajoz was a Spanish and not a French town, and this adds a special shame to the lamentable outrages which were perpetrated in its streets for many hours after the storm. It is comparatively seldom in war that an army takes by assault a town which does not belong to the hostile power. The only parallel of recent years to the sack of Badajoz had been that of Lübeck in November 1806. Blücher’s Prussian corps, retiring before the pursuing French, trespassed on neutral territory by seizing on the old Hanseatic city, which lay in its way, and endeavouring to defend it. The magistrates protested, but were powerless, as they had no armed force at their disposition. Then the French came upon the scene, and, after a fierce fight, won their way over wall and ditch and took the place. They sacked it from end to end with every circumstance of atrocity[285]: Marshal Bernadotte, when importuned by the Burgomaster to stay the horrors, said that he was sorry, but that his troops only recognized the fact that they were in a stormed town--he and his officers could only succeed in calling them off after the city had been half destroyed. This was sufficiently horrible; but to sack a town belonging to a friendly nation is a shade worse than to sack a neutral place--and this the British troops did.

[285] It is said on good first-hand authority that all the inmates of an asylum for female lunatics were raped. See Lettow-Vorbeck, _Geschichte des Krieges von 1806-7_, ii. p. 384.

Two short quotations from eye-witnesses may serve to show the kind of scenes that prevailed in Badajoz from the early hours of the morning on April 7th down to the following night.

‘Unfortunate Badajoz,’ writes one narrator[286], ‘met with the usual fate of places taken at the point of the bayonet. In less than an hour after it fell into our possession it looked as if centuries had gradually completed its destruction. The surviving soldier, after storming a town, considers it as his indisputable property, and thinks himself at liberty to commit any enormity by way of indemnifying himself for the risking of his life. The bloody strife has made him insensible to every better feeling: his lips are parched by the extraordinary exertions that he has made, and from necessity, as well as inclination, his first search is for liquor. This once obtained, every trace of human nature vanishes, and no brutal outrage can be named which he does not commit. The town was not only plundered of every article that could be carried off, but whatever was useless or too heavy to move was wantonly destroyed. Whenever an officer appeared in the streets the wretched inhabitants flocked round him with terror and despair, embraced his knees and supplicated his protection. But it was vain to oppose the soldiers: there were 10,000 of them crowding the streets, the greater part drunk and discharging their pieces in all directions--it was difficult to escape them unhurt. A couple of hundred of their women from the camp poured also into the place, when it was barely taken, to have their share of the plunder. They were, if possible, worse than the men. Gracious God! such tigresses in the shape of women! I sickened when I saw them coolly step over the dying, indifferent to their cries for a drop of water, and deliberately search the pockets of the dead for money, or even divest them of their bloody coats. But no more of these scenes of horror. I went deliberately into the town to harden myself to the sight of human misery--and I have had enough of it: my blood has been frozen with the outrages I witnessed.’

[286] Hodenberg of the K.G.L. See his letters published in _Blackwood’s Magazine_ for March 1913, by myself.

Another eye-witness gives a passing glimpse of horrors. ‘Duty being over, I chanced to meet my servant, who seemed to have his haversack already well filled with plunder. I asked him where the regiment was: he answered that he did not know, but that he had better conduct me to the camp, as I appeared to be wounded. I certainly was hit in the head, but in the excitement of the escalade had not minded it, nor had I felt a slight wound in my leg: but, as I began to be rather weak, I took his advice, and he assisted me on. In passing what appeared to be a religious house I saw two soldiers dragging out an unfortunate nun, her clothes all torn: in her agony she knelt and held up a cross. Remorse seized one of the men, who appeared more sober than the other, and he swore she should not be outraged. The other soldier drew back a step and shot his comrade dead. At this moment we found ourselves surrounded by several Portuguese: they ordered us to halt, and presented their muskets at us. I said to my servant, “throw them some of your plunder:” he instantly took off his haversack and threw it among them: some dollars and other silver coin rolled out. They then let us pass--had he not done so they would have shot us--as they did several others. We got safe to the bastion, and my servant carried me on his back to the camp, where I got a draught of water, fell asleep instantly, and did not waken till after midday[287].’

[287] _Recollections of Col. P. P. Nevill, late Major 63rd_ [but with the 30th at Badajoz], pp. 15-16.

‘In justice to the army’--we quote from another authority[288]--’I must say that the outrages were not general: in many cases they were perpetrated by cold-blooded villains who had been backward enough in the attack. Many risked their lives in defending helpless women, and, though it was rather a dangerous moment for an officer to interfere, I saw many of them running as much risk to prevent inhumanity as they did in the preceding night while storming the town.’ The best-known incident of the kind is the story of Harry Smith of the 95th, who saved a young Spanish lady in the tumult, and married her two days later, in the presence of the Commander-in-Chief himself, who gave away the bride. This hastily-wedded spouse, Juana de Leon, was the Lady Smith who was the faithful companion of her husband through so many campaigns in Spain, Belgium, and South Africa, and gave her name to the town in Natal which, nearly ninety years after the siege of Badajoz, was to be the scene of the sternest leaguer that British troops have endured in our own generation. Harry Smith’s narrative of the Odyssey of himself and his young wife in 1812-14, as told in his autobiography, is one of the most romantic tales of love and war that have ever been set down on paper.

[288] Donaldson of the 94th, p. 159.

It was not till late in the afternoon of the 7th that Wellington, as has been already mentioned, came to the rather tardy conclusion that ‘it was now full time that the plunder of Badajoz should cease.’ He sent in Power’s Portuguese brigade to clear out those of the plunderers who had not already gone back exhausted to their camps, and erected a gallows in the cathedral square, for the hanging of any criminals who might be detected lingering on for further outrages. Authorities differ as to whether the Provost Marshal did, or did not, put his power in action: the balance of evidence seems to show that the mere threat sufficed to bring the sack to an end. The men were completely exhausted: Napier remarks that ‘the tumult rather subsided than was quelled.’

SECTION XXXII: