On the day after the capture of the San Francisco Convent, MacKay arrived from Almaraz, bearing several despatches sent out the day before by Marmont and captured by the cordon that the Hornets had established on all roads north of the town.
MacKay was both mortified and mystified. He went, with Welbeloved, to see Wellington and presented him with captured orders from Marmont to the commanders of his main garrisons. They were instructions to mobilise as many men as they could and get Montbrun back from Valencia.
“I cannae understand how Marmont found out that the siege had started, My Lord. We hae taken a’ the French couriers riding frae Salamanca and hae found nae word tae show that they know anything about it.
The despatches frae Marmont tell us that he is leaving Almaraz today wi’ a division o’ men. I am certain that Salamanca shall nae know until he gets there. We hae taken a’ his couriers. He shall need at least ten days before he can muster twenty thousand men.”
If anything, Wellington looked smug. He gave an amused nod to Welbeloved. “This is the first time I have ever seen your normally imperturbable Scotchman in a lather, Sir Joshua.” He turned to MacKay. “Every one makes mistakes, Colonel and sensible people learn from them. I am prepared to believe that your mistake was being too certain, when nothing is certain with regard to war, horseracing and women.
I shall be surprised if you stopped travellers such as Spanish merchants from transacting their business. Some of them are less than wholehearted in their support for the Spanish cause and they do not necessarily travel in a straight line. Any of them could have carried a rumour to Almaraz by a roundabout way.
Rumours are not orders however and I believe you when you say that Marmont cannot muster his men until he arrives at Salamanca tomorrow. I confide that he shall not be capable of troubling us for at least another week.
I believe that it was Nelson who was credited with the dictum – lose not an hour. I honour his wisdom. This is the eighth day of the siege and already we have two breaches almost wide enough for our assault. The guns of our second parallel shall commence their bombardment tomorrow evening or the following morning. I am determined that the assault shall take place in the evening, two full days after that.
It shall be as well to note and learn this lesson, MacKay. I do believe that Marmont cannot be here in the next two weeks, but I shall take no risk and my assault shall be in the next three days. It is fervently to be hoped that both breaches may be wide enough to be stormed by then.”
Welbeloved nodded his agreement. “It needs to be done as soon as can be, but it shall be a bloody business whenever yew do it, My Lord, even if yew were to accept that the Hornets may participate.”
There was a sudden silence. Wellington stared at him, or rather right through him, while he considered what appeared to be two conflicting points of view.
“It shall indeed be a bloody business, Welbeloved. A great number of brave men shall be lost in those two breaches, with no guarantee that they shall succeed in breaking through.
Most of my soldiers are brave, but I can replace those that are killed or wounded. Your Hornets can be replaced as well, but not easily or quickly and I know you shall never consider sending them to almost certain death if there is some other way to be attempted.”
He seemed genuinely concerned, but continued. “Before you say more, let me tell you what I have planned. Picton’s Third Division shall attack the main breach in the north wall. Craufurd’s Light Division is to assault the smaller breach in the north-east wall. This shall commence at seven o’clock, when it is fully dark and shall be the signal for Pack and O’Toole to lead two small columns to attempt an escalade of the south wall, anticipating that most of the defences shall be deployed round the two breaches.”
Welbeloved nodded. “Aye, My Lord, I am sure that yew need neither my approval or otherwise. I had hoped that yew should send scaling parties to take advantage of the scarcity of defenders.
What I can offer to these parties is the service of Lieutenant Thuner and a dozen of our expert mountain climbers. They could precede Pack and O’Toole and make it easier for them to get their men over the wall.
Thuner has already examined the south wall and tells me that the mortar is old and crumbly and that he can drive his metal spikes in with little or no noise. Give him an hour while yor main assault starts and provide Pack’s and O’Toole’s assault columns with ladders of forty feet in length. There is a deep ditch before the walls and every foot shall be needed.”
Wellington thought long and hard. “The two southern columns understand that they are intended as a distraction. I entertain no great expectation that they may succeed in getting over the wall. It shall be sufficient if they draw many of the defenders away from the breaches.
I am content, though, if you shall talk to Pack. O’Toole and he have their orders, but may accept the help of your men in carrying them out.”
* * *
The third battalion of the naval division, the Avispónes, had only been working together as a full battalion for about four weeks. It was only six weeks since their fourth company had come into existence under the command of Captain Dai Evans and most of that time had been spent bringing their marksmanship up to the standard demanded by the finest shot in the division.
Even Welbeloved now grudgingly admitted that Evans, and possibly Cholmondeley of the first battalion were his equals. Grudgingly, because they were both ten years younger than he and; it had to be faced; a senior general did not get as many opportunities as he would have liked to keep his marksmanship as sharp as before.
Evans was not finding it easy with his new company. They were all excellent shots. The minimum requirement for the Hornets was four killing shots in one minute into a standing target at one hundred yards. They could all achieve that with no difficulty, but it had to be done with Roberto’s modified smooth-bore carbines, the fusils des dragons, originally captured from the French after the battle of Talavera.
Only his four lieutenants and his sergeant major had so far received the modified, breech-loading Baker rifle and they were not necessarily the best marksmen in his company. He was doing his best to get his hands on some of the latest deliveries, but D Company was the youngest of the four companies of Avispónes and less than a hundred Bakers had as yet been delivered for the whole battalion.
Not that marksmanship was a prime requirement for this latest venture that he was leading his men into. Darkness was a great leveller for marksmen. The only target was the brief flare of the powder igniting in the enemy’s pan. Then it was a matter of aiming at where the flash had been, with only guesswork and sniper’s intuition about the true position of one’s own sights.
They had certainly chosen the right man to prepare the ways for O’Toole’s column and Pack’s Portuguese. Lieutenant Johan Thuner; Johnnie to his friends; was Swiss and had been taught since childhood to walk up vertical surfaces as if they were only gentle slopes. It was something that he had been teaching the men of his own platoon. His company commander, Captain Burfoot, had been helping by posting anyone with talent from other platoons in A Company.
As Thuner was also the Condesa’s chosen deputy when it came to explosives, he had become one of the more formidable experts among the varied talents of the Hornets.
He had already taken his platoon, silently, along the ditch between the south wall and the river; invisible, with blackened faces and hands, inching their way to the two places chosen for the climb.
With him were two of Evans’ platoons with coils of rope and spare iron spikes for the climbers. They would also line the way for the assault columns, to insure that no one missed his way in the dark.
Evans’ other two platoons were vetting both the assault columns. Welbeloved had persuaded Pack that it was desirable and effective in the dark. Vast quantities of charred cork had been prepared and already faces and hands had disappeared into the darkness. Now, they were concentrating on any metal that might glitter and crossbelts that n
eeded to be smeared with mud.
Fortunately, Pack’s Portuguese had brown tunics that were perhaps less visible in the dark that those of the Hornets.
Finally, anything that squeaked or jingled was tracked down and silenced and the columns set off slowly, carrying their long ladders and guided by the Hornets. Broken up into small squads, they moved as silently as they could, drifting along almost as inconspicuously as the Hornets themselves.
Thuner, meanwhile, had brought his men to the two selected points and both parties scrambled out of the ditch to the base of the wall. Both he and Sergeant Pujol had been here the night before and each had driven a spike between the stones, to mark where the overhang at the top of the wall seemed both less obtrusive and less than perfect. They would have to reach the top before they could be sure.
Both men had lived in the mountains. Spanish mountains were not as high as the Swiss ones, but there were probably more of them and the skills were the same. Pujol had indeed introduced Thuner to a compact slab of leather with a wooden handle that was ideal for tapping the spikes into cracks between the stones, without making more than a faint thud.
They took their time. In the dark, a delicate sense of touch was more useful than a pair of eyes and shortly after they started, the soft thuds of their leather hammers would have been lost in the eruption of explosions from the other side of the town, as the assault began.
* * *
At the main breach there was utter chaos. Barrié had too few troops to defend adequately the two breaches and the rest of the walls. He elected to risk all on the defence of the two breaches. Of these, he reasoned that the biggest was the easiest to carry and would attract the greatest attention.
He was right. The whole of Picton’s Third Division stormed forward, to be met by almost everything that the French could devise, from hundreds of muskets stacked, already loaded and ready to fire, to obstacles of all sorts, chevaux de frise of beams studded with captured sword blades, fused shells rolled down among the attackers, ditches that had been mined at the entry to the breach and large calibre cannon, blasting hundreds of musket balls into the head of the assaulting columns.
Every attempt was hurled back with hundreds of casualties. The attackers kept on coming with unimaginable courage, but were smashed back, time after time.
Absorbing enormous losses, the attackers finally gained a foothold in the breach and found themselves faced with a twenty-five foot drop into the street. At this point the defenders moved back and fired an enormous mine that killed everyone in and around the breach.
* * *
At the lesser breach, a hail of fire, probably equal in intensity to that at the main breach, though concentrated in a smaller space, met Craufurd’s Light Division.
Time and again they were repulsed with massive casualties. Even Craufurd himself was wounded and carried out of the fight.
Once the assault had started at the two breaches, the need for absolute silence on the south wall was no longer necessary. Thuner and Pujol moved more quickly and a small team followed them up, making use of the spikes that had been placed and adding further spikes and a web of ropes to the originals.
The two men eased themselves over the battlements and crouched on the walkway, looking for sentries. Flashes from the explosions on the other side of the town briefly illuminated a deserted wall. The French must be using all their strength to contest the breaches and praying that it would be enough.
The columns, with their ladders, arrived below, guided by Evans’ men. Fine, sturdy ladders were placed in position and found to be six feet short.
The Hornets immediately took over and swarmed onto the spike and rope web, hoisting half the ladders up to be lashed to the crenellations at the top, the rest were quickly lashed to the bottoms of the first ones and swarms of men went up and over the wall.
Pack and O’Toole came with them and set off to take the defenders of the breaches in the flank and rear.
At the smaller breach, the defenders now found themselves assailed from the front and the rear. They faltered just as the Light Division made a final thrust and broke through. The victors joined up and poured into the town, making initially towards the larger breach to take the enemy in the flank.
Resistance there slackened immediately and the attackers gained the foothold they needed to pour through the wide opening. Ciudad Rodrigo had fallen and it had taken less than two weeks.
It had been such a bloody slaughter at the two breaches with such enormous losses that the men pouring into the town wanted nothing so much as revenge. They turned at once into a rampaging, pillaging mob. French soldiers, trying to surrender were fortunate if they were allowed to live.
Those that were spared were stripped naked and robbed of everything that they possessed, particularly if they were officers, the reasoning being that officers were more likely to have valuables worth stealing.
There was widespread abuse of the civil population as well, with looting and vandalism rampant and the local poor, the rogues and vagabonds, taking their chances and joining in.
It was well into the morning before a semblance of order was restored and the assault parties marched out, dressed in every imaginable fashion in stolen clothes and carrying whatever had captured their fancy; the more bizarre the better.
Wellington and his staff watched with stupefied amazement, but the millennia-old convention held that any town that resisted to the end was put to the sword and sacked ruthlessly. That the pillage did not continue longer was due solely to the fact that it was nominally a friendly town, being recaptured from the enemy.
That was little consolation to the ‘friendly’ townspeople who suffered the depredations.
CHAPTER 11
Three weeks after the capture of Ciudad Rodrigo, Colonel Hamish MacKay was beginning to wish that he had gone south with the Portuguese Second Battalion, to help Wellington with his investment of Badajoz.
He may well have done so, had he not assumed that Welbeloved would wish to stay close to Wellington during the coming siege, in order to direct the Portuguese and German battalions.
Instead, Wellington had waited only as long as it took to arrange an appropriate and solemn burial for Craufurd and Mackinnon, the two major generals killed in the storming, before he was on his way to the south with practically the whole of his army.
He left three thousand Spaniards as garrison and asked Welbeloved if he would remain, together with the British and Spanish battalions of the Hornets. He wanted him to lend moral support to the garrison, keep a close eye on what Marmont was doing at Salamanca and chivvy the Spaniards into rebuilding the breaches in the walls before the French could return in force.
If Marmont was logical, he had to be aware that after Ciudad Rodrigo, the next target must be Badajoz. The last time Wellington had tried to besiege Badajoz, Marmont had rushed down to help Soult. Wellington had been outnumbered and forced to withdraw.
With the bridge at Almaraz, on the Tagus, under Marmont’s control, he had the means to do this again. This is what Wellington expected and it was about this that he wanted the Hornets to keep him informed, day by day.
MacKay and the First (British) Battalion were deployed to the west, but more to the south of Salamanca, interfering with any activities of the French in those two directions. They were doing their best to capture dispatches that would indicate what were the enemy intentions.
None of this was easy. The French were only too aware that they were operating in a hostile country and that guerrilla bands would pounce on small and badly-led escorts. Not that they were too bothered about that. They were confident that fifty cavalrymen were more than a match for any number of irregulars.
Then they found that their fifty horsemen were meeting a company of Hornets and dispatches were not getting through. Now there were fewer journeys, but more escorts and multiple dispatches with each delivery.
MacKay was still quite prepared to argue the question of rights of way with up to two squadrons o
f French cavalry at a time, until they started to ride at night. Then the capture of dispatches became more difficult and French intentions harder to fathom.
It was not the increased difficulty in capturing dispatches that was irritating MacKay. They couldn’t all go by night and he took enough of them to discover what orders Marmont was giving to his commanders.
Therein lay the confusion. The marshal was giving his orders and changing his mind a few days later. He had been at Salamanca when Rodrigo fell. In the following two weeks, his divisions from Almaraz and other garrisons had converged on Salamanca.
MacKay estimated that up to twenty thousand men were available to march on Rodrigo in an attempt to recapture the town, now that Wellington was marching south, leaving only three thousand Spanish garrison troops and two battalions of Hornets to hold it.
That it was not Marmont’s intention to do so became evident with captured dispatches to General Montbrun, newly returned to the Tagus valley around Almaraz. They ordered the general to wait there until the marshal joined him with his divisions. The drive to the south, to help Soult contest the attack on Badajoz, was imminent.
It never happened! Instead, a complete division left Salamanca and marched north. Marmont did nothing for the remainder of February, except instruct Montbrun to remain at Almaraz with his divisions.
MacKay was finding it more and more confusing. He knew that Marmont was a good commander. That was without question, once he had achieved his marshal’s baton. Napoleon had created the Marshalate as soon as he had become emperor. Only generals with outstanding records of success were rewarded with batons.
Yet here was an established marshal who was dithering. There was no other word for it and it was uncharacteristic. French marshals did not dither. They got their batons by decisive action. The only possible explanation was that he was being told to do what he did not want to do. That meant that Napoleon himself was interfering from Paris. It could only be Napoleon as none of the marshals was prepared to accept orders from King Joseph.
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