Salamanca 1812- Wellington’s Year of Victories Page 10
To the south, the Pardaleras fort had been properly closed off, with a loopholed wall, the ditches deepened and joined to the garrison, with powerful covering batteries. In front of the two western ravelins the approaches were prepared for mines, although fortunately a French sergeant major of sappers had deserted with a map. The explosives had not yet been put in place. The shafts had indeed been sunk and the galleries formed, so mines could be put under any breaching batteries approaching the glacis, all ‘in case of necessity’. But Colonel Lamare, as the garrison’s commanding engineer, tells us ‘This resolution was not persevered in, on account of the absolute want of powder towards the end of the siege.’
Oman gives the garrison’s infantry strength as 3,861, but up to 300 men were sick in the hospital and Lamare with hindsight said ‘The garrison was not strong enough’ and should have been around 7,000. But at least Governor Philippon had engineers – 260 all ranks. The British had half that (twenty-three engineer officers and 150 sappers), a remarkable improvement on the pathetic first outing at Badajoz the previous year (forty-seven all ranks), but of course a pitiful specialist strength with which to set about a modern European fortress. It was one that Lord Wellington was to lobby hard if belatedly to change. His efforts to urge Horse Guards to create a trained pool of sappers and miners were to bear fruit eventually (in time for San Sebastian), but for now his ad-hoc solution – as at Rodrigo – was fairly limited: to train half a battalion’s worth of infantry in the practices of sapping and lend them, together with any soldiers with carpentry etc. skills, to Colonel Fletcher. However, because of the casualties suffered at Rodrigo, the half-battalion was down now to 120 men, and the carpenters to eighty.
The garrison had provisions for forty days, which was adequate in one sense: their estimate was that the walls and powder could not hold beyond twenty or twenty-five days of open trenches. The poor 4,000 or so civilian inhabitants – a quarter of the usual population – who had not fled the scene, were worse supplied.
The Governor of the garrison was Armand Philippon, thirty-four years a soldier and now a baron and an energetic major general. He and his staff, including the gunner and engineer commanders, had been in the town for just over a year, and therefore knew it well. The defence of Bastions 1 (San Vincent) and 2 (San José) next to the town’s river frontage, on the north-west, were allocated to the 3rd/9th Léger; Bastions 3 (Santiago) and 4 (San Juan) to the similarly-sized 1st/28th Léger; No. 5 (San Roque) Bastion alone to the 1st/ 58th Ligne; Bastion 6 and 7 (Santa Maria and Trinidad) the 3rd/103rd Ligne and Bastions 8 (San Pedro) and 9 (San Antonio) and the Castle to the two battalions of the Hesse-Darmstadt Regiment.
It is futile to attempt to tell how these individual battalions would have set about deploying on their respective bastions, since that would wait until the breaches were advanced enough to require it. But the simplest sums quickly confirm Lamare’s view that the garrison was far from excessive. Taking the bastions that will most interest us, 6 and 7 (Santa Maria and Trinidad), and their connecting town wall together with a fair extension either side of it, some 700 or 800 yards of rampart were the responsibility of the 3rd/103rd, at that time with a strength of about 540 men in six companies. Allow one company as reserve at each bastion, and allow ninety men for each of the other four companies, and those 360 men on 800 yards of ramparts would only be a meaningful defence against an escalade or a breach when concentrated. If there were to be two or three simultaneous attempted break-ins, Governor Philippon would need to shuffle his pack of cards with some urgency. And it must be noted that the strength figure for the 3rd/103rd was according to the parade state of 15 March, and so before the losses incurred in the Sortie and the capture of Fort Picurina (see below), as well as the many sick in the hospital.
The 3rd/88th Ligne were designated the reserve, together with the forty-two cavalrymen; the last sub-units of infantry, two companies of the 64th Ligne, who had entered the town as convoy escort shortly before the envelopment snapped shut, were doled out to the gunners, so too fifty surplus sappers. For Colonel Picoteu, commander of the artillery, had only his 260 men for 140 rampart guns, and more hands were needed.
Another early decision by Philippon was to form a company of what today we would call snipers – if such a description can be applied to muskets – by taking the best marksmen from the seven battalions, to harass the British once the trenchwork approached close enough to the walls.
On 16 March, as the 3rd, 4th and Light Divisions under Beresford invested the town, the Chief Engineer, Colonel Fletcher, sent out ostentatious reconnaissance parties to view the south and north fronts, while he concentrated on viewing the eastern Bastions (6, 7 and 8) and Fort Picurina, from a vedette on the Sierra de San Michael, some 600 yards east of the latter. It had already been settled that previous endeavours against Fort San Cristobal and the Castle were no longer practicable, due as much to the additional works by Philippon as to the experience of the previous year’s failures. Bastions 8 and 9 would be under the guns of the Castle and Fort San Cristobal, and would need the prior capture of the Lunette San Roque, and that would need the prior capture of Fort Picurina. At the other end of the defences, the western abutments onto the Guadiana at Bastions 1 – 4 were held to be equally unattractive, partly because of the defensive mining, which Fletcher’s stretched manpower could not contend with, partly because four breaches might be required, beyond the scope of the battering train in the time available.
There was a stretch of the wall’s defences which met the prime rule of all battering: place your early shots onto the base of the wall, not higher up. Hit high and you aid the defender, for the loosened debris will fall down to deepen and shelter the front of the wall, before it has received any damage, and the resultant breach slope will be steep and to a height. To hit low at any distance, however, requires the gunner to have a sight line, and it is to conceal the line that garrisons construct high glacis or fausse braies, or counterguards. Now the counterguard in front of the right face of the Trinidad Bastion was, unaccountably, unfinished. Consequently a gun on the heights of San Miguel, the slight hill occupied by Fort Picurina, could hit low down on the base of the bastion’s walls. Ironically, the garrison itself regarded one of their weak points to be 500 yards farther north, the town wall between Bastions 8 (San Pedro) and 9 (San Antonio). According to Lamare, the foot of the wall could be seen ‘From the country at a distance of eight hundred yards, and having but a simple curtain, without a parapet, ditch or counter scarp, behind which it was impossible to construct an entrenchment ... [hence] we constructed in front of this weak curtain a small retrenchment’ on some piles of earth which the Spaniards had formerly dumped to turn into a ravelin. If Fletcher had spotted this possibility, it was not mentioned as one of the ‘courses open’ by John Jones, presumably because it was immediately overlooked by the Castle complex.
Thus guns there must be on San Michael, but first the Fort must be captured. This prerequisite formed the starting point for his Lordship’s planning, notwithstanding that the capture would add to the length of the business. At least the similar early capture of the Renaud Redoubt at Rodrigo was an encouraging precedent.
The plan therefore envisaged the excavation of a zig-zagging approach trench, from the engineer park nearly a mile from Fort Picurina and which, some 300 yards short of the Fort would branch right and left (north and south) to curve around the Fort, on the right straightening to end nearly opposite the Castle, on the left running down to the Rivillas stream – over two miles of digging. Batteries adjacent to this First Parallel would then put fire onto and into the Fort, as well as keeping down the interference from the town itself, until the Fort might be assaulted. New batteries would then be added in a Second Parallel, and seek to breach both the right face of the Trinidad Bastion and the opposite or left flanking face of the Santa Maria Bastion. Since the garrison would almost certainly react by retrenching behind the two breaches as they developed, a third breach in the old connecting town walls
– and which it was hoped might be knocked down within the last day’s firing – would allow the assault troops to turn such inner defences. So they would use two breaches, with a third last-minute addition if it turned out to be required.
Part II – Badajoz The Trenches and Fort Picurina 16 March – 5 April
Following in the mud of the investing troops, on 16 March, were the first convoys of engineer stores – six score bullock carts – and 1,000 Portuguese militiamen from Elvas, with 500 gabions. The dumps were commenced a mile from the town walls, hidden behind the heights of San Michael. Over coming days there were built up 1,200 gabions, 700 fascines, and the same number of tracing fascines (all such labour!), 3,000 picks and shovels, 80,000 sandbags and the large quantities of timber required for gun platforms, magazines and bunkers. The first gun convoy set out from Elvas, consisting of eight 24-pounders, eight 24-pounder howitzers and ten 18-pounders. Shot for these old Russian 18-pounders was of such random circumferences, that it was necessary to divide them into three sizes, and paint them, each cannon allocated a particular colour.
During 17 March, some seven battalions (the whole 3rd Division) were warned for duty for that night, as the working (digging) party of 1,800 men and their covering (protection) party of 2,000 men. Colonel Fletcher with a thirty-man guard at last light walked forward to the top of the San Michael feature, and staked his line of curving trench, to be dug around Fort Picurina. The trench lay in places only 160 yards from the Fort’s covered way and it was thus fortunate that the heavy rain and wind helped conceal the noise of the subsequent digging. Harder work of course for the diggers, and just plain miserable for the covering party, lying huddled in their hundreds, cold and soaked, in position just behind the line of the workmen – to be in front would have put them almost in the French lap. Not many would have trusted their powder to be dry, nor for many days thereafter. As Kincaid wrote, ‘We had scarcely taken up our ground when heavy rain commenced, and continued without intermission, for about a fortnight (or so it seemed).’
By dawn the four zig-zag approaches were 1,400 yards long and the parallel some three feet deep and much the same wide; work continued with fresh troops the next day, harassed by frequent heavy showers of both rain and musketry from the Fort, together with occasional howitzer and cannon fire, from the town. ‘In working,’ wrote Major Charles Cocks, 16th Light Dragoons,
it is usual to allow at night one man to each four feet and to calculate that in twelve hours they will have got themselves under cover, that in twenty-four hours there will be cover for infantry and in forty-eight the trenches will be completed to the breadth of nine feet and depth of three. Parallels require another day as they must be twelve or fourteen feet wide, provided with a better parapet and should have two banquettes. Batteries may be finished in forty-eight hours ready for the guns and the guns may be got in in a night. Our zigzags are to be ten feet by three and our parallels twelve by three.
The excavated spoil of course allowed a parapet giving an effective depth of at least six feet.
That night, 18/19 March, the parallel was further extended, and two battery positions traced out: No. 1 for three of the 18-pounders and three 5½-inch howitzers; and No. 2 for four 24-pounders, all for use against the Fort and its approaches, from a range of about 250 yards. It would be four days before the guns could move in, but they and their ammunition were this day drawn up in readiness to the engineer park.
Also in the park, shortly after 1pm, to the clear horror of the many unarmed men going about their lawful businesses, suddenly there erupted the rare and dreaded sound of cantering cavalry, forty blue-clad sabre-wielding French hussars splashing through the mud, most unwelcome guests, arriving unbidden from the back of the covering heights.
For ‘in a dense vapour, issuing from the Guadiana and Rivillas, caused by the heavy rain’ Philippon had sent out a sortie, to raid and disrupt the trench work – three battalions of infantry, who had lined up unobserved along the trench connecting the Fort with the San Roque Lunette. Actually, Ensign William Grattan of the 88th did observe:
Having a little more experience than the officer who commanded the party, I observed with distrust the bustle which was apparent, not only in the Fort of Picurina, but also along the ramparts of the town. Without waiting the formality of telling the commanding officer what I thought, I on the instant ordered the men to throw by their spades and shovels, put on their appointments, and load their firelocks. This did not occupy more than three minutes, and in a few seconds afterwards the entire trenches to our right were filled with Frenchmen, the workmen massacred, and the works materially damaged; while at the same moment several hundred men attempted to throw themselves into the Battery we occupied.
They were into the parallel before the workmen could reach their arms or the covering party form up in good order. Sergeant William Lawrence, 40th, wrote,
I myself killed a French Sergeant. I was in the trenches and he came on the top. Like me, he had exhausted his fire, and so made a thrust at me with his bayonet. He overbalanced and fell, and I pinioned him to the ground with mine. The poor fellow expired. I was sorry afterwards and wished I had tried to take him prisoner, but with the fighting going on all around, there had been no time to think, and he had been a powerful looking man, tall and stout, with a moustache and beard which almost covered his face, he had been as fine a soldier as I have ever seen in the French army. If I had allowed him to gain his feet I might have suffered for it, so perhaps what I did was for the best? At such times it is a matter of kill or be killed.
Both the working and covering parties were forced out of the works, but were quickly rallied some fifty yards in rear, then turning to eject the French, including the small party of sappers brought out to fill in the digging. Lieutenant John Cooke, 43rd, wrote:
Two or three French dragoons having approached within a few yards without being perceived, fired their pistols into the trenches. We had just entered the mouth of the first parallel and all joined in a simultaneous attack on the enemy’s Infantry, without regard to trenches or anything else. The French were beaten out of the advanced lines and retired. They formed a line under the Castle, having two field pieces on their left flank. I cannot say how they entered the town because there was so much smoke near the walls. General Philippon knew his business well. The day was fine, and the time well-selected. The sortie took place while we were filing into the trenches. He concluded that the front parallel would be vacant while the relief were coming in, but there was an order against that.
It is thought the sortie was to cover the hussars’ reconnaissance into the dead ground of the engineer park. Cocks says ‘they took some officers but could not get them off; I do not think they learnt much. Our guns were parked in a hollow and I do not believe they saw them ... they nearly took General Picton.’ Apart from that near-coup, little else was achieved with respect to filling in the trenches, but 200 picks and shovels were taken, a demeaning little loss. Philippon had offered a reward of a dollar per tool. The French lost thirty men killed and 287 wounded, quite a high price – some eight per cent of the garrison’s infantry. The besiegers suffered 150 men killed and wounded, including Lieutenant Colonel Fletcher, hit in the groin by a ball which drove a silver dollar piece to a depth of an inch, and which would see this important man spend the rest of his siege on a litter. Wellington visited to consult him each morning at 8am.
Wellington – we hate to imagine his irritation – immediately placed a signal post on the far hillside, from which observation would in future be kept on the reverse of the Fort, and a dragoon squadron was ordered to take position behind the San Michael heights.
And then, at 3pm, ‘A heavy and uninterrupted rain began to pour down’ and continued through the night of 19/20 March. John Jones notes that ‘there was little fire kept up on either side’, but the parallel was somehow extended another 600 yards, stopping just 300 yards up the slope adjacent to the narrow ending of the Inundation on the Rivillas. Little further
progress could be made, the trenches being now full of water, dug soil changing to sliding mud; but over the dark hours of 20/21 March three more battery positions were commenced: No. 4 for six 24-pounders and a 5½-pinch howitzer, No. 5 for five 18-pounders and No. 6 for three 24-pounder howitzers, for enfilading fire respectively against the right face of the Trinidad and San Pedro bastions and the same for the San Roque Lunette. Some concern was felt for the security of these new works, which were but 300 yards from the Lunette, and this entire parallel now a mile in length: so No. 4 and No. 5 Batteries were sited actually a little in rear of the parallel itself.
The rains continued during 21 March, and that night a further battery position, No. 3, was marked out for four of the 18-pounders, to add to the fire onto the Lunette. Once more, however, continuing heavy rains washed out any prospects and next morning the lower trenches were so full that bailing-out parties were at work; fascines were placed to stand on. Then, at four o‘clock, occurred what Jones describes as ‘One of the heaviest showers imaginable, which again filled the trenches’, carrying away the pontoon bridge over the Guadiana, with eleven other pontoons sunk at their anchors, and leaving the flying bridge working, with difficulty, in the rapid currents.
Perhaps encouraged by the sight of his drowned opponents floundering in the mud, General Philippon added to the pressures. A further but smaller sortie had been made on the night of the 20th/21st, and attempts to establish a two-gun position on the San Cristoval feature, and adjacent to Fort Pardaleras, had to be seen off by rifle picquets. On the night of the 21st/22nd three field guns were deployed on the far bank of the river and these, throughout the 22nd, put a destructive long-range fire into the Parallel, such that Wellington was forced to order General Leith’s 5th Division to march in from Campo Major, and cover that side. Philippon also commenced a communication trench from the Trinidad gate to the back of the Lunette San Roque. At 300 yards range this strongpoint could put fire into the flanks and rear of the attack anticipated on what they saw as the weak point, between the San Pedro and San Antonio Bastions. In a labour-saving plan to be copied in other trenches a century later, theirs was lined above ground with a canvas curtain, frustrating the British riflemen. On 22 March further strengthening work was continued on the dam behind San Roque to secure the Inundation; and additional 24-pounder platforms and embrasures were readied on the Castle, to bring added fire to bear on the batteries of the parallel opposite. Altogether some 800 men of the garrison were employed in the above works.