Years of Victory 1802 - 1812 (92 page)
the one, went headlong into the other." Coursing, fox-hunting, the chase of wolf and wild boar with the Commander-in-Chief himself in the field and a score of ragged, cheering riflemen acting as beaters, greyhound matches and boxing contests, football and donkey races with "every Jack sitting with his face to the tail and a smart fellow running in front with a bunch of carrots," were the characteristically English prelude to the adventure which was to knock Napoleon out of Spain. Straight across country and no flinching was the rule in all their contests; a favourit
e sport was for two officers to
wager that each would reach a distant church-tower by a given time, whereupon off they would go with the entire Mess at their heels, stopping for nothing on the way—swamp, wall or ravine. At night there were theatricals in barns or gay, unconven
tional balls with the local sen
oritas and village girls joining uproariously in bolero, fandango and waltz to an improvised band of flute and guitar, and a supper of roast chestnuts, cakes and lemonade to follow. If some-* times the more squeamish of the ladies left early, no one minded so long as the rest remained. The avidity and delight of it all, wrote an officer in after years, was beyond the power of words to convey. "We lived united as men always are who are daily staring death in the face on the same side and who, caring little about it, look upon each new day added to their lives as one more to rejoice in."
1
Foremost in that gallant company—in sport as in war—were the men of the Light Division. They were the very embodiment of the offensive spirit which now permeated the army. In one corner of Europe at least the cycle of the twenty years' war had come full circle; it was the French who had fallen back, like the allies in 1794, on defensive fortifications, their adversaries who had learnt to rely on audacity. "A soldier who trusts to his firelock," wrote Charles Napier, the living repository of Moore's teaching, " never despairs while he can use it, but he who puts much faith in works, on seeing them forced, thinks all is lost."
2
"The first in the field and the last out of it," was the toast of the Rifles, "the bloody, fighting Ninety-fifth!" It was a long road that the gay, good-humoured riflemen and their comrades of the
43rd
and 52nd had travelled since they marched behind their band of thirty bugle-horns to take boat at Dover in 1809. Their jackets were now patched and faded, their trousers indiscriminately black, blue and grey and even particoloured, their shakos dented, for Wellington did not mind what his men looked like so long as they were well appointed for battle
1
Kincaid,
95-6;
Random Shots,
250-1;
Bel!, I,
12, 22;
Smith, I,
50, 55;
Schaumann,
326;
Coste
llo,
88-9;
Simmons,
134, 137.
2
Charles Napier, I,
158.
Sec Scott, II,
67.
and carried their sixty rounds of ammunition. But the silver-mounted bugle-horns still sounded their merry invocation of "Over the Hills and Far Away," and, for all their rags and tanned, weather-beaten faces, "the grace and intrepidity and lightness of step and flippancy of a young colonel with a rill of grasshoppers at his heels" had lost none of its power to bring "the dear little dark creatures with their sweeping eyebrows," running with fluttering handkerchiefs and clapping hands to the windows and roadside.
1
In the first days of 1812 Wellington drew his sword from the scabbard. If Napoleon was bound that summer for Moscow,"* he would go with his merry men to Madrid. His adversary had sent 16,000 troops to Valencia, and to encourage him in his folly the British Commander-in-Chief sent a thousand of his—from the Cadiz garrison—by sea to Cartagena. The remainder of the French Army of Portugal, deceived by his carefully studied attitude of winter inactivity, was strung out on account of supply difficulties from Salamanca to Toledo. Ciudad Rodrigo was Wellington's for the taking.
Early on January 4th the orders to march reached the waiting regiments in their cantonments. Before it was light they were on their way. It was a terrible day of sleet and rain. The snow from the hills drifted over the roads and made every village a sea of mire; the troops went through the Agueda with water up to their shoulders and with arms linked to save themselves from being swept away by the current. Next day five men of the
3rd
Division died from the cold, though one stout Irishwoman of the 88th was delivered of a child by the wayside and continued the march with her new-born infant in her arms.
By January 7th the fortress was closely invested. The garrison was not expecting an attack, and when the British on the morning of the 8th appeared under its towering rocks and medieval walls, the French officers, treating the affair as an elaborate jest, stood on the ramparts and saluted. The day, they had been given to understand, had been specially appointed by their incomprehensible adversaries for a greyhound match; no serious attack at such a time of year could conceivably be intended.
2
This was merely Wellington's cunning. That night three hundred- picked men of the Light Division, commanded by the thirty-three-year-old Colonel Colborne, stormed the outlying
1
Barnard Letters,
196.
See also Simmons,
5.
"It is curious," recorded Kincaid, "that I never yet asked a nun or an attendant of a nunnery if she would elope with me that she did not immediately consent—and that, too, unconditionally."—
Random Shots,
224.
In his humbler sphere Rifleman Harris noted the same phenomenon.—Harris,
14.
2
Smith, I,
55
; Kincaid,
101
-3;
Tomkinson,
122.
redoubt of San Francisco without a preliminary bombardment. Within twenty minutes they captured or slew the entire garrison for a loss of six killed and twenty wounded. So carefully had Colborne rehearsed his men and so swift and sustained was the covering fire from the edge of the glacis, that they were through the ditch and half-way up their scaling ladders before the French had time to fire a shot. In Napier's phrase the assailants appeared to be at one and the same time in the ditch, mounting the parapets, fighting on the top of the rampart and forcing the gorge of the redoubt.
Wellington did not waste an hour. That same night his engineers broke ground and commenced the first parallel. For the next five days the work was pressed on under a tempest of grape-shot and mortar shells, each division taking its turn with the spade in the trenches for twenty-four hours at a time. It was bitterly cold at night, but the fine, clear, frosty days aided rather than retarded operations, for, while it made the rocky, snow-covered ground harder, it forced the men to work to keep warm. The enemy, who had plenty of ammunition, soon had their range, and no one could move without provoking the deadly blast of the howitzers. But though casualties were high—nearly 500 fell in just over a week— the attackers closed steadily in. By the 14th January all the outlying suburbs and convents were in their hands.
On the same day Wellington, hearing that Marmont was hastily assembling his army fifty miles away, decided to carry the fortress by assault and not to wait till his heavy guns—many of them still moving up from Almeida—had completed the reduction of the walls. That night the first batteries opened fire, and for the next few days the earth shook and the far mountain valleys echoed with the roar of artillery. By the morning of the 19th, the eleventh day of the siege, two passable breaches had been made on the opposite side of the town to the Agueda river. Picton's 3rd Division was thereupon appointed to storm the greater breach on the right, and the smaller Light Division the lesser one on the left. Pack's Portuguese were to make a feint against the walls at another point, while the rest of the army was to stand by in support.
By all the accepted rules of war the decision to carry the fortress by storm before the counterscarp had been blown in was wrong. But Wellington had weighed the odds more carefully than he had done at Badajoz in the summer. Not only, were his engineers and gunners more efficient, but the garrison—less than 3000—was too small to hold such extensive fortifications. The price of a frontal attack on narrow breaches might be
high, but it was not likely to
be greater than that of a sustained siege and was almost certain to be less costly than a prolongation of the stalemate on the frontier. It was a time for boldness, and, like Napoleon sixteen years before, Wellington had made up his mind to be bold. The fate of Europe depended on it.
His orders were laconic: "Ciudad Rodrigo
must
be stormed this evening." The troops received them with enthusiasm: it was death or glory this time, wrote Lieutenant Simmons; a golden chain or a wooden leg. They had boundless confidence in their chief and complete assurance in themselves. "Give me sixty scaling ladders and two hundred volunteers with a supporting column," Charles Napier had pleaded nine months earlier, "and the British standard should fly in Almeida in two hours."
1
Now his brother George to his unspeakable joy was given three hundred volunteers from the Light Division and told to crack a far harder nut.
Grattan of the
88th
saw them a few hours later marching at the head of the Light Division to their action stations while the band of the
43rd
played the march that was sweeping England, "The Downfall of Paris." "They were in the highest spirits, but without the slightest appearance of levity in their demeanour—on the contrary, there was a cast of determined severity thrown over their countenances that expressed in legible characters that they knew the sort of service they were about to perform, and had made up their minds to the issue. They had no knapsacks—their firelocks were slung over their shoulders—their shirt-collars were open, and there was an indescribable
something
about them. In passing us each officer and soldier stepped out of the ranks for an instant as he recognised a friend to press his hand—many for the last time. Yet, notwithstanding this animating scene, there was no shouting or huzzaing, no boisterous bravadoing, no unbecoming language; in short, every one seemed to be impressed with the seriousness of the affair entrusted to his charge, and any interchange of words was to this effect: ' Well, lads, mind what you're about to-night'; or, 'We'll meet in the town by and by'; and other little familiar phrases, all expressive of confidence. The regiment at length passed us
?
and we stood gazing after it as long as the rear platoon continued in sight; the music grew fainter every moment, until at last it died away altogether. They had no drums, and there was a melting sweetness in the sounds that touched the heart."
1
The men of the
3rd
Division, asking the bitter question—were they to be left behind?—had not long to wait. A few minutes later the word, "Stand to your arms" passed along the ranks. After the
1
Charles Napier, I;
170.
Forlorn Hope had been detailed under Lieutenant Mackie of the
88th
and a storming party of five hundred volunteers under Major Russell Manners of the
74th,
the whole division moved off towards the trenches in front of the grand breach. Before each regiment marched, General Picton spoke a few words, which were listened to with silent earnestness. "Rangers of Connaught," he told the
88th,
"it is not my intention to expend any powder this evening. We'll do this business with the could iron."
2
The announcement was greeted with a storm of cheering.
As soon as it was dark the storming parties and the troops who were to cover them with their fire from the glacis while they crossed the ditch, moved into position. It was bitterly cold and the frost lay crisp on the grass. The guns of both sides were now still. Presently the moon emerged from the clouds, revealing the glitter of bayonets on the battlements. The joyous animation of the afternoon had passed, and on the faces of the Rangers Grattan noted an expression of severity and even savagery which he had never seen before. Some distance to the left under a Convent wall General Craufurd was addressing the storming party of the Light Division, and in the silence his voice was more than ordinarily clear and distinct. "Soldiers! the eyes of your 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."
3
Just before seven o'clock the signal-rocket sounded from the ramparts, and the whole place became bright as day with French fireballs. On the right the 3rd Division rushed the 300 yards which separated it from the glacis through an iron hail from guns charged to the muzzles with case-shot. Despite, heavy losses, the storming party covered the ground with astonishing swiftness, leapt from the glacis into the eleven-foot ditch and, under a smashing discharge of musketry and grape, began to swarm up the breached walls. Others, including the
5th
or Northumberland Fusiliers and the
94th
—the heroes of El Bodon—after silencing the French on the ramparts with their fire, attempted to scale the
fausse-braye
with twenty-five