To War with Wellington

by Peter Snow

  The attackers crept across the ground that sloped towards the ditches without attracting attention. But the ditches were deep, and the French had made sure there was a long drop from the rim of the ditch to its bottom. The assaulting British threw down their large bags of grass to break the fall. But the French on the ramparts heard the clinking of arms as the attackers leaped down into the ditch or slid down ladders. The cry went up, ‘Les voilà! There they are!’ Instantly the defenders triggered their mines. They propelled fire bombs into the ditch and transformed the dark night into a blaze of light. The attackers were illuminated as they raced forward. They were now totally exposed to a fusillade from French muskets, mortars and guns firing grapeshot.

  Costello was carrying a ladder with three others. They were all shot dead beside him and the full weight of the ladder fell on him. ‘I fell backward with the grass bag on my breast. The remainder of the stormers rushed up, regardless of my cries or of those of the wounded around me, for by this time our men were falling fast. Many in passing were shot and fell upon me so that I was actually drenched in blood.’ The ditch in front of the Trinidad bastion was flooded with water and scores of men drowned. Costello found himself up to his neck in water. But he was a good swimmer and managed to clamber out of the far side of the ditch and make for the breach. One young officer described the horrific carnage in the ditch: he heard ‘shrieks uttered in wild despair as [men] vainly struggled against a watery grave with limbs convulsed’. All this time the noise was deafening: on top of the gunfire and the screams and groans of the dying and wounded the war-cries and yells of the soldiers spurred each other on. And from the ramparts the French taunted the exhausted attackers with shouts of ‘Come on into Badajoz!’ and ‘Try again!’

  William Lawrence was another forlorn hoper. He got as far as the breach and was hit three times – two shots in the leg, and one in his side, which would have killed him if it hadn’t been stopped by his metal canteen. In front of him he saw chevaux de frise, ‘from behind which the garrison opened a deadly fire on us. Vain attempts were made to remove this fearful obstacle during which my left hand was dreadfully cut by one of the blades of the chevaux de frise, but finding no success in that quarter, we were forced to retire for a time.’ Lawrence, bleeding profusely, managed to crawl to the rear and fell in with Wellington, who asked him which regiment he belonged to. ‘I told him the Fortieth, and that I had been one of the Forlorn Hope. He inquired as to the extent of my wounds, and if any of our troops had got into the town, and I said “No” and I did not think they ever would.’ One of Wellington’s staff then bound up his leg with a silk handkerchief and directed him towards the doctor.

  Wellington was watching with mounting concern. He knew that Badajoz was a far tougher nut to crack than Ciudad Rodrigo, but it was quickly apparent that the depth of the ditches, the height of the walls and the skill and fury of Philippon’s defenders were costing him far more than the earlier siege. But he was single-mindedly determined to press forward, no matter what the cost. Hundreds were already dead and dying, and yet the breaches were holding and the castle’s walls were unscaled. The French defenders were now venturing forward from the ramparts on to the piles of rubble in the breaches. They fired their muskets at the attackers, who made easy targets caught in the cramped cauldron of fire below.

  William Green, the bugler, was wounded by a ball that went through his thigh as well as through the hand that was holding the bugle. He collapsed before he had even reached the ditch, heard his bugle major sounding the advance and managed to get his bugle to his lips to repeat the sound. But an officer with a drawn sword came up beside him, shouting, ‘Desist blowing that bugle: you are drawing all the fire on my men.’ Green protested that he was only doing his job and managed to stagger away into the hands of a surgeon in the rear. He was in such pain that he pleaded with a surgeon to cut off his hand, but amputation was refused and Green was invalided out of the army. The wound healed but the hand remained disabled, and he was eventually awarded £15 compensation for having effectively lost the use of a limb.

  Picton’s 3rd Division, which had the much more challenging job of scaling the castle walls, was faring no better. The old warrior was bent on beating the other divisions into the city. So when he heard the commotion from the assaults on the breaches way over to his left, he accused his guide of losing his way and came close to striking him in anger. But the guide had brought them to the right place – just below the castle. They were soon swarming around in the ditch beneath its high walls. Their only way up was by ladder and the French defenders had the relatively simple job of dropping all manner of explosive and musket fire on the wretched attackers directly below them and bayoneting British soldiers who managed to climb to the top. Joseph Donaldson of the 94th Scots was eager to climb, but the ladders got so crowded that many of them broke and ‘the poor fellows who had nearly reached the top were precipitated a height of thirty or forty feet, and were impaled on the bayonets of their comrades below’. George Hennell, the son of a ribbon-maker in Coventry, had managed to make it to the Peninsula with a letter of introduction to Picton. He was just approaching the foot of a ladder when a twenty-four-pounder shot landed very near him. ‘Twelve men sank together with a groan that would have shook to the soul the nerves of the oldest soldier who ever carried a musket. I believe ten of them never rose again, the nearest was within a foot of me …’

  Picton was quickly among his men. He reminded them that they had never been defeated and that now was the moment to ‘conquer or die’. But then he was struck by a ball in the groin. One officer who was with him believed the ball had first struck the earth. But the blow was severe. He didn’t fall or bleed, but in a short time became very faint and almost insensible. Picton remained in this state for nearly twenty minutes. And then, when the pain subsided a little, he refused medical aid and took command again. ‘If we cannot win the castle, let’s die upon the walls,’ he cried. This encouraged his men to lay fresh ladders against the wall. William Grattan, whose Connaught Rangers were in Picton’s assault party, wrote that although the general was not loved by his men, they respected him, ‘and his appeal as well as his unshaken front, did wonders in changing the desperate state of the division’.

  Back at the breaches some of the most stalwart in the assault force, including Costello and Major O’Hare, managed to battle their way beyond the ditch and place their ladders against the walls around the Light Division’s breach. But that was as far as they got. O’Hare was floored by a musket shot in the chest, and Costello got a blow that sent him crashing down the ladder on to the ground below. ‘Among the dead and wounded bodies around me I endeavoured to screen myself from the enemy’s shot … The fire continued to blaze over me in all its horrors, accompanied by screams, groans and shouts, the crashing of stones and the falling of timbers. For the first time in many years I uttered something like a prayer.’

  The desperate struggle went on in the dark. It was a scene of unimaginable slaughter. No night of the entire Peninsular War would be as bloody as this. Again and again waves of British soldiers threw themselves into the breaches only to be gunned down or skewered on the hideous obstructions studded with spikes and sword blades. Harry Smith, never one to miss a fight where he saw one, described the struggle as ‘most murderous. We flew down the ladders and rushed at the breach. But we were broken and carried no weight with us although every soldier was a hero. The breach was covered by a breastwork from behind and ably defended at the top by chevaux de frise of sword blades, sharp as razors, chained to the ground, while the ascent to the top of the breach was covered with planks with sharp nails in them.’

  The British made desperate efforts to break through. Kincaid watched officers form ‘groups of fifty to a hundred men at the foot of the breach’ and then try to ‘carry it by desperate bravery. And fatal as it proved to each gallant band in succession, yet as fast as one dissolved another was formed.’ The air was heavy with the whiff of gunpowder, and the odour of
death was everywhere – overpowering even the stench of an army that had spent three weeks on the same piece of land. Uniforms, usually a striking contrast in proud bright colours, now all merged indistinguishably, spattered with blood and grime. Even Jonathan Leach’s powers of description were sorely taxed by the horror of what he saw at the Light Division’s breach. ‘The discharge of grape shot and musketry with buck shot in addition to bullets, the hand grenades, rafters of wood and various weapons of destruction hurled from the ramparts on the heads of the assailants in the ditch … was of so dreadful and destructive a nature as to beggar all description and to render it a hopeless undertaking for the most gifted person to depict in true colours.’

  Wellington’s own account of the slaughter was lavish in its praise for his men’s courage. He said the 4th and Light Divisions advanced to assault the breaches ‘led by their gallant officers with the utmost intrepidity. But such was the nature of the obstacles prepared by the enemy at the top and behind the breaches and so determined their resistance that our troops could not establish themselves within the place. These efforts were repeated till after twelve at night …’

  George Simmons, another Rifles officer, one of the most seasoned veterans of Wellington’s Peninsular campaign, estimated, with understandable exaggeration, that the breaches were assaulted ‘fifty times’ without effect. But then, in a picture that rings frighteningly true, he remembered that from the place he entered the ditch to near the top of the breach the ground was covered with dead and dying soldiers. ‘If a man fell wounded, ten to one he never rose again, for the volleys of musketry and grape shot that were poured amongst us made our situation too horrid for description. I had seen some fighting but nothing like this … we could do the besieged little injury … we were ordered to move away …’

  The state of Wellington’s attacking force was now worse than tragic. It was pathetic. Two thousand of his best men were already lost – and still Badajoz held out. Wellington himself was standing on a small hill near the breaches. Those who were with him remember hearing the voices of the British becoming fainter and those of the French becoming stronger, mocking their attackers, shouting at them to ‘come on into Badajoz’. Officers were coming up and reporting no progress. Surgeon James McGrigor looked at Wellington’s face lit up by the glare of a torch. ‘I shall never forget it … The jaw had fallen, and the face was of unusual length, while the torchlight gave his countenance a lurid aspect: but still the expression of the face was firm.’ Robert Blakeney found himself near Wellington and his staff on one occasion. They were ‘screened from the enemy’s direct fire, but within range of shells. One of his staff sat down by his side with a candle to enable the General to read and write all his communications and orders …’ Blakeney wasn’t near enough to know what reports Wellington was receiving, ‘yet it was very evident that the information which they conveyed was far from flattering; and the recall on the bugle was again and again repeated’.

  Suddenly, with hope almost extinguished, the prospects for the British attackers were transformed. Just before midnight Colonel Henry Ridge, of the 5th (Northumberland) Foot in Picton’s division assaulting the castle, managed to find a spot where the walls were a little lower and succeeded in placing his ladder against the sill of an embrasure on the ramparts. The weight of the men clambering up behind him pinned the ladder against the wall in spite of all the efforts of the French to push it away. Ridge climbed to the top protected by his men’s bayonets and swords. Suddenly he was on the battlements and a rush of comrades followed him. Another who was first to the top of a neighbouring ladder was William Mackie, who had led the forlorn hope at Ciudad Rodrigo, but, perhaps because he was a Connaught Ranger, was still unrewarded by Picton. Once over the wall, in a fury of revenge for all the night’s bloodshed, the British scythed through the defenders and were soon pressing them back towards the castle gate that led into the town centre. Another early stormer of the castle, Lieutenant Macpherson, was struck by a musket ball as he scaled the walls but luckily it hit a Spanish dollar in his pocket and only broke two of his ribs. He managed to summon up enough strength to shin up the castle’s flagstaff and tear down the French flag, substituting his own red jacket.

  Lieutenant Robert Knowles was the third man up one ladder. A corporal was first but was instantly killed. ‘On leaping into the place I was knocked down by a shower of grape which broke my sword into a hundred pieces.’ He seized the corporal’s musket and ‘with the assistance of eight or ten men, who had now got into the fort, I charged along the ramparts destroying or disarming all who opposed us.’

  Minutes later an officer tore up on his horse to where Wellington’s group was standing and cried, ‘Where is Lord Wellington?’ Wellington asked who it was, and the man replied that he was Picton’s aide de camp, Lieutenant Tyler. ‘Well?’ said Wellington. ‘General Picton has taken the castle.’ ‘Then the place is ours,’ said the Commander in Chief, in immense relief.

  Philippon, the French commander, attempted to reinforce the castle, but he was too late. Meanwhile Wellington’s 5th Division way over to the north-west had managed to scale the walls of the San Vincente bastion and now advanced into the town. Philippon, in danger of being caught between them and the victorious Picton to the east, escaped across the bridge to the north bank of the River Guadiana, where he surrendered.

  The moment Wellington heard of Picton’s success – at midnight – he ordered the 4th and Light Divisions to retire to their start lines. But the memory of the men on the ground is that, although they were told about Picton’s feat, they were soon ordered to return to the breaches and redouble their efforts to storm them. Kincaid suggests that for a time – until Picton’s men actually broke into the town through the castle gate – the French defenders of the breaches fought on. Simmons, utterly spent, was lying on the grass when a staff officer rode up and told him Wellington wanted the Light Division to return immediately and attack the breaches. Harry Smith remembers Wellington’s ADC, Fitzroy Somerset, riding up to him and telling him that Wellington had ordered the 4th and Light Divisions to storm again.

  ‘The Devil,’ says I, ‘Why we have had enough. We are all kicked to pieces.’

  Lord Fitzroy says ‘I dare say, but you must try again.’

  I smiled and said ‘If we could not succeed with whole fresh and unscathed divisions we are likely to make a poor show of it now. But we will try with all our might.’

  So again they advanced, though by the time Simmons got to the breaches ‘only a few random shots were fired and we entered without opposition … the place was given up to be plundered and pillaged’.

  The sack of Badajoz that followed was one of the worst orgies of military indiscipline in British military history. Wellington’s men had lost countless comrades, and the ‘Frenchies’, their women and the thousands of Spanish inhabitants, who seemed to the maddened British to be indistinguishable from the French, were going to pay for it. Costello managed to drag himself through the blades of the chevaux de frise and into the town with the blood from his wound still dripping down his face. And there he witnessed total uproar and confusion. ‘The shouts and oaths of drunken soldiers in quest of more liquor, the reports of firearms and crashing in of doors, together with the appalling shrieks of the hapless women, might have induced anyone to believe himself in the region of the damned.’ At one stage Costello was on the point of shooting a French soldier who had threatened him but who was quickly disarmed. His first instinct was to avenge his own wounds and the deaths of his comrades, but as his finger was about to press the trigger the Frenchman ‘fell upon his knees and implored mercy. The next moment the rifle dropped from my hand, and I felt a degree of shame that a feeling of irritation should have nearly betrayed me into the commission of a crime for which I could never have forgiven myself.’ In their frantic orgy of drunkenness and plunder the British soldiers even fired on each other in order to grab booty. One nunnery was subjected to wholesale rape. George Hennell reported that ‘one
of our officers saw a man go among a number of women and force off all their ear-rings. Those that would not give way he broke off a bit of their ear.’

  But there were flickers of humanity as well. Two young ladies approached John Kincaid and Harry Smith and appealed to them to protect them from British troops, who had just assaulted them. They had blood trickling down their necks where their ear rings had been torn off them. Kincaid remarked that the younger woman was one of ‘delicate freshness … irresistibly attractive … to look at her was to love her’. But before he could do anything about it, young Smith beat him to it, proposed to the young woman, who was fourteen years old, and married her three days later in the presence of Wellington. ‘Impudent fellow,’ observed Kincaid. But Harry and Juana Smith were to remain happily married for a lifetime. In his own autobiography Smith confesses to being that ‘“impudent fellow” … and if any reward is due to a soldier, never was one so honoured and distinguished as I have been by this dear child … From that day to this she has been my guardian angel.’

  The looting of Badajoz went on for three whole days. Wellington rode into the midst of it all on the evening of the day following the storming of the town, when his men were still rampaging through it. A small group of drunken soldiers gave him a cheer and fired a volley over his head. Costello saw them gathered round the general holding bottles with their tops knocked off and shouting, ‘Old Boy – will you drink? The town’s our own. Hurrah!’ Wellington issued an order that evening for the looting to stop and had a gallows erected, presumably intended as a deterrent. But his attitude to the horrors his soldiers committed has long been the subject of debate. He did instruct the Provost Marshal ‘to execute any man he may find in the act of plunder’. He expressed his revulsion at the pillage, but there was little sign that his order was promptly carried out. His men’s rampage eventually petered out of its own accord. If Wellington was, in principle, opposed to and appalled by the excesses of his troops, he did occasionally betray signs of ambivalence. He was to write later that there was no denying that the sacking of a town after a siege could have the effect of encouraging less resistance when an army set out to storm another town. Costello has his own gloss on it: ‘The men who besiege a town, when once they get a footing within its walls, flushed by victory, hurried on by the desire of liquor and maddened by drink, they stop at nothing. They are literally mad and hardly conscious of what they do in such a state of excitement. I do not state this in justification: I only remark on what I have observed human nature to be on these occasions.’ Kincaid and Donaldson were both clearly under the impression that there was an accepted, if unspoken, right of plunder. Kincaid observed, ‘the men were permitted to enjoy themselves for the remainder of the day’. And Donaldson remarked, ‘we were allowed to enter the town for the purpose of plundering it’.