by Peter Snow
Any uncertainty about what the French would do next vanished over Christmas. Wellington was delighted to hear that Napoleon had ordered Marmont to send part of his army to bolster French forces fighting Spanish rebels around Valencia. Typical, he thought, of Napoleon’s long-distance mismanagement of the Peninsular War and just the opportunity he had been waiting for. He could now upgrade the faltering blockade of Ciudad Rodrigo into a full-scale siege. With Marmont looking east to superintend Napoleon’s redeployment plan, Wellington had a chance to seize Ciudad Rodrigo before the French could rescue it, and Ciudad Rodrigo was the gateway to Spain. He ordered the army to move.
William Grattan’s Connaught Rangers were alerted at 3 a.m. on 4 January 1812 and were on the march by 5 a.m. The weather was appalling. ‘I scarcely remember a more disagreeable day; the rain which had fallen in the morning was succeeded by snow and sleet and some soldiers, who, sunk from cold and fatigue, fell down exhausted, soon became insensible and perished; yet, strange to say, an Irishwoman of my regiment was delivered of a child upon the road and continued the march with her infant in her arms.’ By 6 January Ciudad Rodrigo was encircled by a substantial British force and the siege began. The city, whose strategic position had long marked it out as one of Spain’s most prized strongholds, stood high above the east bank of the Águeda river. Its ‘monasteries, convents and churches’, observed light infantryman John Cooke, gave the city ‘at a distance the appearance of an immense Gothic castle’.
Ciudad Rodrigo’s walls looked much more formidable than they really were. Built largely of rubble they did not have the solidity of the walls of Badajoz 150 miles to the south. And 500 yards to the north of the city was a long hill, higher than the city itself, which offered Wellington’s siege guns the perfect firing position. Dug in on this hill, the Grand Teson, his guns would be able to batter a breach in the city walls which his infantry could storm. But someone had to do the digging. It was an exhausting and dangerous job. British forces had not conducted a major siege for a century and a half, and Wellington was seriously under-equipped with trench-digging gear and the specially trained engineers to operate it. He had asked for them already, but his earnest demands had fallen on deaf ears in London. George Simmons and other riflemen had to cross the Águeda – wading through up to their shoulders – to do a day’s digging, soaking wet and cold. They also had to do some sharpshooting with their rifles to keep ‘Johnny François’ at bay. Ned Costello found the river ‘a great annoyance’. The men were so bruised by pieces of ice floating down the river that ‘to obviate it, the cavalry at length were ordered to form four deep across the ford, under the lee of whom we crossed comparatively unharmed’.
The Siege of Ciudad Rodrigo
Everyone was expected to do his duty digging the trenches. All resented it, believing it was a job for specialists. Wellington agreed but he had only some twenty engineers under the resourceful Richard Fletcher, who had constructed the Lines of Torres Vedras. So most of the digging would have to be done by the infantry. Even the hardy Scots found it an ordeal. Joseph Donaldson almost froze. ‘The frost was so excessive that we were almost completely benumbed, and nothing but hard working, I believe, kept us from perishing with the cold.’ First they had to dig a trench, known as the ‘first parallel’, in line with the walls but just out of the lethal range of French guns. From the cover of this trench they would then scoop out emplacements for their first gun batteries just within range of the walls. While these batteries pounded the walls as best they could from around 500 yards, a further trench – known as a sap – would be dug at an acute angle – to avoid the enemy firing straight into it. This would allow men, guns and ammunition to be moved up under cover to another parallel within about 150 yards of the walls. This forward battery would – Fletcher and Wellington hoped – be so close that the guns would quickly shatter the walls in two places. This bombardment would create two breaches, gaps in the wall of collapsed rubble that would allow the storming parties to scramble through and gain access to the city.
First, though, a French redoubt on the Grand Teson had to be stormed. The job was done the very first night by Colonel John Colborne and men of the Light Division. ‘When about fifty yards from the redoubt, I gave the word “double-quick”. This movement and the rattling of canteens alarmed the garrison …’ But the ladders were soon in place and the assault was an immediate success. According to Colborne, once they were over the wall, there was no resistance. Wellington had been watching the attack, and Colborne sent him a messenger, who ran up in great excitement and told the Commander in Chief that they had taken the fort. ‘“Oh, you’ve taken the fort have you?” he replied coolly. “Well I’m glad to hear it,” and got up and rode away.’ Most of the small garrison were taken prisoner, and Craufurd was not pleased when one prisoner was paraded before him who had been stripped naked by the vengeful Portuguese. Harry Smith, Craufurd’s ADC, was quick to provide a large handkerchief to help the poor man cover himself. The digging could now begin in earnest. The conditions the men worked in were unimaginable. The weather was cold, the ground often frozen. The digging equipment they had was primitive, the hours they had to work almost limitless. On occasion they were on shift for twenty-four hours at a time. Speed was of the essence if Wellington was to storm the fortress before Marmont could collect an army large enough to challenge him. The trenches were under constant fire from French guns in the fort, and as they dug their way closer and closer to the walls, musket fire became a hazard too. It took a week to get all the trenches dug – to within 150 yards of the wall. Robert Knowles had the hazardous job of opening the embrasures for the guns once the trenches were dug. ‘A very fine young man, a lieutenant in the Engineers, was mortally wounded standing by my side.’
With the trenches dug, the guns – massive, unwieldy monsters – were dragged into their firing positions, readied and fired, as often and as accurately as possible. By 14 January twenty-two guns in the first parallel were firing at a range of some 500 yards. It was a welcome sound to people like Simmons who had spent days digging out the trenches and the gun emplacements. ‘Twenty two pieces of British cannon opened most musically against the town.’ By the 19th the guns in the second parallel were firing at point-blank range only 150 yards from the walls.
The best of the gun crews had the meticulous procedure drilled to perfection. There were eight or nine men to each gun detachment. Up front was the spongeman. The moment the gun fired, he thrust his staff down the barrel, with a water-soaked sheepskin wrapped round a cylinder on the end of it to kill any remaining embers from the last shot. The loader then stuffed down the barrel a new cartridge and a sealed bag of gunpowder, followed by the cannon ball itself. While the loader was ramming in the cartridge and ball, the ventsman held his thumb down over the vent at the near end of the barrel to stop any air getting in: if it did, the cartridge could be ignited by any embers still left in the barrel. A lazy ventsman could cost a loader both his hands if the gun exploded prematurely. Once he saw cartridge and shot rammed home, the ventsman pushed a pricker into the vent to puncture the cartridge inside the barrel and draw up a small amount of powder through the hole. He then poked a little firing tube into the vent filled with very fine-grain powder, instantly combustible. The detachment commander adjusted the gun using the elevating screw behind the barrel, then shouted, ‘Give fire!’ A fifth man, the firer, touched the powder at the top of the vent with his slow-burning match and the cartridge exploded, propelling the ball to its target around 500 yards away. Each blast threw the gun back six feet from its firing position. So before they could fire again, the team, with the help of two or three loading assistants, had to heave the gun back to its firing position. Two rounds a minute was very fast. Twenty rounds an hour was good going.
At the height of the exchange of fire between the two sides Tom Garrety found the spectacle ‘sublime’. ‘The bellowing of eighty large guns shook the ground far and wide; the smoke rested in heavy columns on the battlements of the p
lace: the walls crashed to the blow of the bullet … the quick clatter of musketry was heard like the pattering of hail after a peal of thunder.’ By the time it was over, the five-day barrage had devoured 9,515 rounds of shot and 834 barrels of powder – each ninety pounds in weight.
By the evening of 18 January Wellington, who had been eyeing the progress of the bombardment through his telescope almost hourly, was told that two breaches in Ciudad Rodrigo’s north wall were now ‘practicable’. That meant they were now sufficiently battered to offer an opening to a storming party. Wellington issued detailed orders for the assault on the evening of 19 January. Men from ‘Black Bob’ Craufurd’s Light Division would attack the Lesser Breach at the centre of the north wall, and men from Picton’s division would go for the Greater Breach in the north-west corner. Each assault would be led, as usual, by a forlorn hope. This macabre expression dated from before the English Civil War and was actually derived from the Dutch verloren hoop – a lost troop. But in either language it aptly described the few score men at the spearhead of each storming party whose task was recognised as almost suicidal: they faced a high chance of death or dismemberment. Survival could lead to fast promotion, but the risks were high.
William Grattan’s Connaught Rangers were earmarked for the Greater Breach under one of Picton’s brigade commanders, General Mackinnon. While they waited for the signal Grattan watched his comrades oiling up their bayonets and adjusting their straps so that the cartridge boxes were conveniently available in front of them. The married men said goodbye to their wives: ‘the women, from long habit, were accustomed to scenes of danger’. If the husband returned with plunder, recalled Grattan, that would be a cause for joy, but ‘if he happened to fall, his place was sure to be supplied by some one of the company to which he belonged, so that the women … had little cause for alarm on this head. The worst that could happen to them was the chance of being in a state of widowhood for a week.’ Grattan was more sympathetic to the plight of his male comrades almost sure to be killed in the forlorn hope. Its leader was a young lieutenant, William Mackie. Grattan noted that, when Mackie volunteered, his commanding officer had tears in his eyes. The two men came from the same town. Picton addressed his forlorn hopers and the rest of his storming force with his characteristic bluntness: ‘Rangers of Connaught, it is not my intention to expend any powder this evening. We’ll do this with the cold iron.’
As the light faded on 19 January, both assault parties set off. They faced the most daunting challenge any footsoldier has ever had to tackle – breaking through a heavily defended fortification in which every weapon, every booby trap, every enemy soldier is primed to repel the attackers. Craufurd gave a stirring speech, which sank deep into Ned Costello’s memory: ‘Soldiers! The eyes of our country are upon you. Be steady, be cool, be firm in the assault. The town must be yours this night. Once masters of the wall, let your first duty be to clear the ramparts, and in doing this keep together.’ Costello ‘couldn’t help remarking … when all most probably were on the brink of being dashed into eternity, a certain solemnity and silence among the men deeper than I had ever witnessed before’. Then he and his comrades followed Craufurd across the open ground towards the outer rampart that ran around the fortress walls. ‘Now lads, for the breach!’ shouted Craufurd. They were quickly up and over the rampart, jumping down into the wide ditch that ran up to the walls. Some threw down bags full of grass to break their fall. Others climbed down scaling ladders. This was the most dangerous moment: a huge confused mass of men scrambled across the ditch trying to locate the Lesser Breach. Simmons was up at the front just behind the forlorn hope. ‘A tremendous fire was opened upon us, and as our column was entering the ditch a … magazine on the ramparts near the large breach blew up and ignited a number of live shells, which also exploded and paid no sort of difference to friend or foe.’ The French defenders fired everything at their disposal. Guns, grenades and muskets played havoc with the attackers in the ditch below.
Craufurd, commanding as energetically and forcefully as ever, made an obvious target. He was waving his men over the very top of the rampart, which was on the other side of the ditch below the walls. His men remember him being lit up by the glow of explosions all round him. He continued shrieking instructions in that high-pitched voice of his. This brought a great deal of enemy fire on him and a musket ball hit him, passed through his lungs and stuck near his spine. Craufurd fell and rolled down the slope. His ADC, James Shaw Kennedy, managed to drag him, desperately wounded, back to safety. Just before the siege began, on New Year’s day, Robert Craufurd had written to his wife that he was longing to see her again and hoped to be reunited with her by the end of the year. He was never to see her again, but he asked his ADC to tell his wife that he was ‘quite sure that they would meet in heaven’.
Most of the rest of his men were soon breaking through into the city. When it was Garrety’s turn to charge in, he didn’t wait for the grass bags but ‘jumped down the scarp a depth of eleven feet, and rushed up the fausse braye [rampart], under smashing discharge of grape and musketry. The bottom of the ditch was dark and intricate, and the forlorn hope too much to their left … But the storming party went straight to the breach … when two thirds of the ascent were gained, the leading men, crushed together by the narrowness of the place, staggered under the weight of the enemy’s fire.’ Costello, at the top of the breach, ran slap into a French gun and fell on a wounded French officer. Another French gunner instantly seized him and ‘bent double by the height and heavy person of the Frenchman I began to think that after all my escapes my game was over’. But then in the nick of time some friends came to his assistance including an ‘old chum’, Wilkie. They disabled the French gunner, but Wilkie suddenly staggered against the gun mortally wounded. ‘Seizing me hastily by the hand, and giving it a deadly squeeze, “Ned,” he articulated, “It’s all up with me,” and relaxing his grasp he fell back and expired.’ Costello found Wilkie’s body the next morning, stripped naked.
At the Greater Breach, the other assault party led by General Mackinnon swept in and had successfully scaled the walls at the top of the breach when a huge French powder magazine exploded. Mackinnon and a few others were thrown hundreds of feet into the air, and limbs and broken bodies showered down on their comrades. ‘Every man on the breach at the moment of the explosion perished,’ according to Grattan. ‘For an instant all was confusion; the blaze of light caused by the explosion resembled a huge meteor, and presented to our sight the havoc which the enemy’s fire had caused in our ranks.’ The forlorn hope’s leader, Lieutenant Mackie, miraculously survived. He and the other Rangers pressed on but fell prey to two French guns placed at the top of the breach. It took a charge of three men, armed with only the bayonets they had stripped off their muskets, to seize the two guns and to secure the breach. Sergeant Pat Brazil and his two companions Swan and Kelly attacked one gun. They ‘engaged the French cannoniers hand to hand: a terrific but short combat was the consequence. Swan … was met by the two gunners on the right of the gun, but no way daunted, he engaged them and plunged his bayonet into the breast of one … but before he could disengage his weapon from his bleeding adversary, the second Frenchman closed upon him, and by a coup de sabre severed his left arm from his body a little above the elbow.’ Kelly then rushed forward to help, and bayoneted two Frenchmen on the spot. That left just two of the five gunners. Swan was bleeding to death; Brazil made a lunge at one of the Frenchmen, slipped on the bloody ground and ended up bayoneting his opponent as they rolled on the ground. Kelly went for the last one, who ran away only to be killed by some other British soldiers near by.
With the gun now silenced, the attackers were soon in the streets of the town. That didn’t stop some Frenchmen fighting on. Lieutenant George Faris was shot in the thigh by a Frenchman, who then tried to bayonet him. Faris sprang forward and seized the Frenchman by the collar, and they struggled desperately until Faris was able to disengage himself enough to use his sabre. ‘He p
ushed the Frenchman from him and ere he could recover himself, he laid his head open nearly to the chin. His sword blade, a heavy, soft, ill-made Portuguese one, was doubled up with the force of the blow and retained some pieces of the skull and clotted hair.’ Grattan ran up to see the dead man on the ground and his British assailant, faint from loss of blood, being applauded by his mates: ‘the feeling uppermost with them was, that our man had the best of it! It was a shocking sight, but it would be a rather hazardous experiment to begin moralizing at such a moment and in such a place.’
Harry Smith wasn’t far away from the explosion. He had raced along the wall after assaulting the Lesser Breach to help the stormers in the Greater Breach. The huge blast wounded Captain Uniacke at his side – they had had supper together a little earlier – and scorched Smith. ‘I shall never forget the concussion when it struck me, throwing me back many feet … My cocked hat was blown away, my clothes all singed.’ But he recovered and reached the other breach, where a great big Connaught Ranger, mistaking him for an enemy, ‘seized me by the throat as if I were a kitten, crying out “You French ——.” Luckily he left me room in the windpipe to d— his eyes, or the bayonet would have been through me in a moment.’ Uniacke, appallingly burned, died three days later. His last words were ‘Remember, I was the first man that entered the breach.’
Minutes later Lieutenant John Gurwood, a rare survivor of the forlorn hope, and the man who would later edit Wellington’s despatches, sought out the French Governor and arrested him. Smith wrote later – rather snidely – that Gurwood, ‘a sharp fellow’, had escaped only because he was momentarily stunned and had to let the rest of the forlorn hope overtake him. Just over 1,100 allied soldiers were killed or wounded. The French suffered more than 500 dead and wounded, and another 1,360 were taken prisoner.