by Peter Snow
The key thing was to get the siege train, the big guns and their ammunition to San Sebastián, and Wellington ordered his artillery commander, Colonel Dickson, to have them shipped direct to a port only a mile or two east of the city. And he ordered his talented engineer, Colonel Sir Richard Fletcher, to prepare the equipment for the storming once the guns had blown a breach in the walls. It would not be easy. The city stood on a promontory with a powerfully built castle at the seaward end and massive walls and bastions protecting it from attack across the narrow isthmus that connected it to the mainland. It reminded some of Gibraltar. If well defended, it would be as formidable as Badajoz or Ciudad Rodrigo. Wellington wrote to Earl Bathurst, the Secretary of State for War, in London on 10 July 1813, ‘I am in hopes that we shall obtain possession in a short time after we shall have broken ground.’ He was being optimistic. The siege of San Sebastián would take him two months.
There were only two places where a realistic attack on San Sebastián could be mounted. There was the complex of bastions on the south side that faced the only approach by land and there was the eastern wall of the city which faced across the River Urumea. Wellington and Graham took the risky decision to attack the eastern wall. It was less heavily protected but it meant the storming could be mounted only at low tide when the main body of attackers would be able to wade across the river. Others who approached along the west bank would have to run under the heavily defended bastions.
The man Wellington chose to blast breaches in the wall of San Sebastián was Augustus Frazer, a Royal Horse Artilleryman whom Wellington greatly admired. He was now on Wellington’s staff as senior horse artillery officer. He was put in charge of the main breaching batteries in the sand dunes east of the fortress. Firing from a distance of around 600 yards the roundshot still had the accuracy to cut – as near as they could – two straight vertical lines of holes down the wall and one horizontal line across the bottom. This was the most effective way of getting a great square slab of the wall to collapse. ‘We began breaching the wall of San Sebastian at daybreak on the 20th. By midday yesterday the breach of one hundred feet long was perfectly practicable, the wall being entirely levelled. The guns have fired upwards of 300 rounds and several of them 350 daily: this is very violent.’
While his guns were blazing away, Frazer found time to have dinner with Fred Ponsonby, whose cavalry could do little but sit and wait while the siege went on. Everything now depended on Frazer and his gunners, who were themselves exposed to counter-fire from the city walls: ‘I have had a scratch or two in the face and head but nothing either to spoil my good looks or spirits.’ Wellington, unwisely as it turned out, had left Graham in charge of the siege and gone off to his mountain headquarters on the front line twenty-five miles away. Graham dithered. He was told by Frazer that the main breach would be practicable – open enough to assault – by 22 July. But Graham waited through the 23rd, set the date for the attack on the 24th, then postponed it when he learned that the French had started a fire in some of the nearby buildings. ‘Should it not be possible to attack tomorrow, I shall be much at a loss how to proceed,’ he wrote to Wellington at 5 a.m. on the 24th.
The delay allowed the gunners to open a second breach in the walls, but the penalty for waiting was that the French who were well motivated and robustly commanded by a sturdy veteran, General Emmanuel Rey, had time to improvise some nasty surprises for the men who would storm the breaches. Besides, Frazer’s ammunition was running down fast, and so Graham decided that an attempt should be made to storm the city the following day, the 25th. One of Frazer’s artillery officers, Richard Henegan, described how in the darkness before dawn the storming party emerged from the trenches and dashed across atrociously rough ground. They had to brave ‘sharp pointed rocks and deep holes of sea water left by the receding tide’ in the river. They scrambled as fast as they could along the path at the bottom of the wall towards the breach into a ‘terrific fire of musketry and shells from the ramparts, while, in front, a heavy discharge of grape showered from the battery … which flanked the approach to the breach’. Those who made it to the breach were mown down by concentrated musket fire, and the dead and wounded soon piled up in the rubble. Others were thrown backwards into the river and swept out to sea.
The one man who made it to the top of the breach, an engineer lieutenant who had offered himself as a guide, ‘misled by the darkness into the belief that his footsteps would be closely followed by the stormers, bravely leapt from the breach into the town below – a distance of upwards of twelve feet.’ But he was on his own, and ended ‘a wounded prisoner’. Henegan blamed ‘injudicious’ planning for the attack, which took place in darkness rather than daylight. Augustus Frazer was close to despair: ‘The assault was made but stupidly an hour before and not after daybreak … the enemy [commenced] a roll of musketry, the men, panic struck, turned, could never be rallied and sustained loss in running back. No man ever reached the foot of the second breach.’ Both Frazer and Henegan believed that a daylight assault, in which the stormers might have drawn strength from seeing each other charging forward, would have been more successful. John Aitchison, writing home from San Sebastián, blamed Graham’s ‘imbecility and indecision’ and the ‘ignorance and indolence’ of his staff for the mismanagement of the siege.
1813–14 Campaign
As soon as Wellington heard of the failed attack on the breach, he leaped on his horse and sped the twenty-five miles from his headquarters on the Pyrenean border down to San Sebastián, where he found both sides removing their casualties under a truce. Soon after daybreak Frazer had ordered his battery of twenty-four-pounders to reopen their bombardment, but as he peered across at the breach he noticed a Frenchman standing – at great risk to himself – on top of the breach gesturing with his sword towards the British gunners. The officer had seen the devastating effect of the renewed gunfire on the dead and wounded British soldiers – as well as French – lying in the breach. Frazer guessed that he was calling attention to the human suffering in the breach, stopped his guns firing, and a one-hour ceasefire was agreed. When the casualties were counted, there were more than 500 British dead or wounded.
Wellington rode off deeply disappointed and determined to keep a much closer eye on the conduct of the siege from then on. But by the time he was back at his headquarters he had far more than San Sebastián to worry about. A message had reached him halfway back that a major French offensive was under way against his forces through two narrow Pyrenean passes – the pass of Maya and the pass of Roncesvalles. Marshal Soult, despatched by Napoleon from Germany two weeks earlier, had done a masterly job in rallying Joseph’s demoralised army and assembling a substantial force in the mountains on the French border. Moreover he had attacked where Wellington least expected him to, not against British forces on the major coast road that led directly into France, but further south-east where he hoped he could surprise and overwhelm the troops Wellington had deployed there. In a proclamation to all his units Soult said he couldn’t deny praise for what France’s enemy had done in Spain. ‘The dispositions and arrangements of their General have been prompt, skilful and consecutive.’ But then he addressed himself to his own men: ‘I have borne testimony to the Emperor of your bravery and zeal. His instructions are to drive the enemy from those lofty heights which enable him proudly to survey our fertile valleys, and chase them across the Ebro.’
The first news that reached Wellington’s headquarters from the front was not good. The defenders were under immense pressure and heavily outnumbered. That evening at dinner Wellington was in one of his darker moods, scarcely speaking to anyone at table. By 10 p.m. he was writing to Graham: ‘When on my road home I heard that there had been firing in the Puerto de Maya, and since my arrival I have heard that the enemy had moved in force in the morning upon Roncesvalles … it is impossible to know of Soult’s plan yet.’ Wellington went on to say that they should leave just half a dozen guns to keep up the pressure on San Sebastián and load the res
t on board naval ships to be ready for action elsewhere. Wellington was now involved in a full-blown crisis and he got little sleep that night. At 4 a.m. he wrote again to Graham saying that British forces had to retire from the pass of Maya.
Soult, the Duke of Dalmatia, known mockingly in British ranks as the ‘Duke of Damnation’, had managed to launch 60,000 men at dawn on 25 July. Forty thousand attacked General Lowry Cole’s 13,000 British, Portuguese and Spanish troops in the pass of Roncesvalles and another 20,000 men assailed the 6,000 General Hill commanded, defending the Maya Pass. Cole fought for ten hours but when a blanket of fog dropped after 4 p.m. he lost his nerve and pulled his massively outnumbered troops back down the road to Pamplona. He knew that Wellington had ordered him to hold his position at all costs, but he felt he had no choice. Fusilier John Cooper, now a sergeant, described the night withdrawal as ‘horrible … for our path lay among rocks and bushes, and was so narrow that only one man could pass at a time … This was made much worse by the pitchy darkness. Many were swearing, grumbling, stumbling, tumbling. No wonder, we were worn out with fatigue and ravenous with hunger …’ One young man killed that day was Robert Knowles, who had been one of the first to scale the walls of the castle at Badajoz in April 1812.
Hill’s men fought back hard. Thomas Todd’s Scottish regiment, the 71st, held on for some time, but then they were ‘forced to give way … we had the mortification to see the French making merry in our camp, eating the dinner we had cooked for ourselves. What could we do? They were so much superior in numbers.’ George Bell, with his companions in the 34th Regiment, the so-called Cumberland Gentlemen, were under less pressure than other units. He looked across to where the Gordon Highlanders, the 92nd, were facing an entire French division. ‘The 92nd were in line pitching into the French like blazes, and tossing them over. They stood there like a stone wall overmatched by twenty to one, until half their blue bonnets lay beside those brave warriors.’ Suddenly Bell’s regiment too was swamped by an enemy attack. ‘There was but one escape for us now – to run away, or be riddled to death with French lead … I never ran so fast in my life.’ By the next morning Hill had managed to rally his men to secure a new front line at Elizondo, ten miles down the road inside Spain.
Wellington moved swiftly. He had been up all night sending despatches and receiving news. He told Graham to move enough men east to guard the main coastal road in case Soult attacked there. The following morning, 26 July, he rode twenty miles up the Bidasoa valley to see what had happened to Hill. He was pleased to find that Hill’s force was effectively blocking the central route to Spain down the Baztán Valley. He spent the night in a local mountain village awaiting news from Picton and Cole, who had been hard pressed trying to defend the pass of Roncesvalles. At dawn the following morning he rode south and began to hear rumours of further withdrawals by the two generals. Wellington was incredulous: Picton of all people! He may have disapproved of the coarse Welshman’s personality but he couldn’t fault his fighting qualities – until this moment. Now that he had an independent command, Picton appeared to have lost that brash self-confidence. Wellington’s comment on this crisis was that his generals were ‘really heroes when I am on the spot to direct them, but when I am obliged to quit them they are children’.
Wellington rode furiously on. It was essential to stop the French before they could link up with their beleaguered troops in Pamplona. They were just two lone horsemen, superbly mounted, Wellington and his faithful ADC, Fitzroy Somerset, who had been by his side ever since they had landed together at Mondego Bay five years earlier. Suddenly the two men, covered in dust, their horses sweating, were in the little village of Sorauren. It took them seconds to see that they were in serious danger. The French were advancing towards them in force along the ridge to their left. British forces were taking up position on the hillside some way ahead. With the villagers shouting, ‘The French are coming, the French are coming,’ Wellington leaped off his horse, slinging his reins to Fitzroy. He sat on the bridge scribbling out directions to his other units to make a detour to the west to avoid the French. Fitzroy seized the note and raced off one way while Wellington galloped through the village, just escaping the French who were now sweeping into it. ‘It was rather alarming,’ Wellington told Seymour Larpent, his judge advocate, ‘and it was a close run thing.’ ‘I escaped as usual unhurt,’ he wrote to his brother William. ‘I begin to believe that the finger of God is upon me.’ Moments later Portuguese troops spotted a solitary rider approaching them dressed in a simple grey coat and breeches with a familiar cocked hat. ‘Douro! Douro!’ they shouted: it was the title he had won soon after the capture of Oporto. The cheers were taken up by the British troops as well and the French didn’t take long to realise that they would be facing Wellington himself in battle the following day.
The Battle of Sorauren on 28 July was a fierce one. The two armies faced each other across a valley. It was the French who moved forward – bringing the combat to close quarters. ‘The ground was uneven, rugged and hilly,’ George Bell remembered. ‘Strong posts were taken and retaken with the bayonet.’ Wellington said he ‘never saw such fighting’. It was ‘fair bludgeon work … the losses were very severe but not of a nature to cripple us’. He was severely outnumbered, but by bringing as many muskets as he could to bear on the French, who were attacking in columns, he was able to hold off most of the attacks. John Cooper’s fusiliers were among the hardest pressed. Cooper found himself fighting with only one officer left standing in his wing of the regiment. He was sent off to ask the colonel for more officers. Ignoring Cooper’s request, the colonel said, ‘Sergeant Cooper, go up the hill and tell the brigade major to send down ammunition immediately or we must retire.’ Cooper struggled up the hill: ‘I then dragged a Spaniard with his mule laden with ball cartridges down to my company … I smashed the casks and served out the cartridges as fast as possible while my comrades blazed away.’ The next thing he knew, ‘a swarm of the enemy suddenly rushed over the brow of the hill and swept our much reduced company down the craggy steep behind … however whatever number of balls followed me, they all missed, and I had the pleasure of seeing a fresh body of red jackets coming in haste to our relief’.
When the French looked like breaking through later in the day, Wellington threw in two battalions he had carefully kept in reserve. It was decisive. Soult’s attempt to smash through and relieve Pamplona had failed. Two days later, on 30 July, Soult ordered his men to withdraw before dawn. He hoped he would be able to slip away, reform and move against Wellington at another place of his own choosing. But when Wellington’s pickets reported the French army on the move in two separate directions, the Commander in Chief ordered his troops to attack the retreating columns. The result was a disaster for Soult. The so-called Second Battle of Sorauren ended with Soult’s men escaping to France as best they could through a number of mountain passes.
Now that he had thrown Soult’s great counter-offensive back, Wellington could have seized the chance to press on into France. But again his strategic caution prevailed. The outcome of the confrontation between Napoleon and the allies in Germany was still not decided. The campaign there was to continue without resolution until mid-October. In any case Pamplona and San Sebastián remained in French hands. At least one of these had to be taken. It would be unwise to move into France leaving two great border strongholds in French hands. Wellington would first resume the siege of San Sebastián. Alexander Gordon wrote to his brother, ‘there is nothing in the world to hinder our invading France as soon as one or other of these places fall’.
This time Wellington wasn’t going to risk allowing Graham to make any mistakes. He ordered the guns back into the sand dunes by San Sebastián and increased their numbers. By the end of August Larpent, whose curiosity frequently took him away from his job reviewing court-martial cases, counted fifty-one guns battering away at the city. Henegan, who supervised the constant flow of ammunition wagons to the gunners, says there were no fewer than ninety-
five guns altogether. These included some forty massive twenty-four-pounders, now made exclusively of iron which maximised their range and rate of fire. The old brass guns had often overheated dangerously and new technology – a product of Britain’s fast-developing industrial revolution – had come to the rescue. It took eight pairs of oxen to drag just one twenty-four-pounder. Each one weighed three tons. And Henegan’s ammunition wagons had to be hauled up too, running the gauntlet of enemy fire. They had to carry the powder and shot for the guns, which would devour no fewer than 43,350 cannon balls weighing nearly 500 tons during the entire siege. And that was for the twenty-four-pounders alone: over 1,160 tons of ammunition were fired altogether. In a letter to his wife, Frazer described how it sounded: ‘You never heard such a row as is going on. Walls and houses falling, guns and mortars firing. The row in general almost exceeds that of the children in your drawing room.’ One battery was placed in a graveyard and its gunners had the distasteful job of having to shift the bodies, which they had to dig up. These fell to pieces when they tried to lift them.
As the siege went on, Wellington was a frequent visitor. He became increasingly impatient, writing to Marshal Beresford on 27 August: ‘I was yesterday in San Sebastian where I did not think matters were going exactly right.’ In order not to risk another failure he asked for volunteers from other divisions to join the storming party ‘and show the 5th division how to mount a breach’ – a call bitterly resented by the 5th, who had tried and failed in July. All this meant that August was a quiet month for the rest of the army, particularly for the cavalry who could do little in the Pyrenean passes. Fred Ponsonby wrote home that his light dragoons were in such good spirits in their excellent quarters that he wished he could get them launched into France before the harshness of winter could change their mood.