Wellington’s Engineers: Military Engineering on the Peninsular War 1808-1814 (23 page)

1. Lieutenant Piper to be desired to supply six pontoons as row boats near the flying bridge, to carry over principally powder and shot.

2. Care must be taken that they are not overloaded; not more than forty 24-Pound shot to be put in each, or an equal quantity or weight of powder.

3. Plank must be placed in the bottom, and the lower part of the sides should have a plank in order to prevent the shot from rolling against them and making holes.

4. The pontoons must not be used as passage boats.

5. Lieutenant Piper to be requested to mention in his report whether he has bullocks in sufficient numbers, and in good order, to move the bridge.
⁶⁰

For the remainder of the siege the pontoons were used exclusively as rowing boats for the transport of powder and shot across the river.
⁶¹
The poor weather had probably delayed completion of the batteries by two or three days but they finally opened on the fortress on the morning of 25 March and started to batter the fortress and also the Picurina and San Roque outworks. No significant damage had been inflicted on the Picurina fort when Wellington ordered it to be stormed that night, Oman suggesting that this was to make up lost time.
⁶²
Due to the delay between the siege guns ceasing fire and the attack, the French had time to make repairs and although the attack was successful, fifty-four were killed and 265 wounded out of 500 attackers. Once the fort had been taken, the second parallel and associated batteries could be started.

From 27 March, the trenches were extended towards the San Roque lunette with the intention of taking it and destroying the dam that kept the ground in front of the fortress flooded. Wellington’s intention was to launch the assault across this ground but until the water was drained this was not possible. Progress by the partially-trained sappers was not fast enough and casualties were high. An attempt was made on 2 April to mine the dam near the San Roque lunette. Lieutenant Stanway RE led a party forward and placed 450 pounds of gunpowder on the dam, but the explosion did not have the desired effect. The attack on San Roque was now abandoned and Wellington accepted that the attack would have to work round the flooded area. The danger involved in trenching is well described in a letter from Lieutenant Vetch RE:

I was employed … in advancing the approaches; we were three or four officers, at least half an hour laying out the work not 80yds from the French parapet. The sap was marked out with a white cord, and the men put down as near as they could work along the line. They squat down and worked away as hard as they were able, in order to cover themselves … the moment we were perceived they opened a very sharp fire of musketry, and killed seven men in the first half hour, after which our men got too much cover to be hit.
⁶³

As the days moved on into early April, Wellington once again found himself balancing the time needed to batter the fortress against the advance of the French to relieve it. He was aware that Soult was collecting troops and was moving north towards Badajoz, so he needed to decide between rapidly concluding the siege, or putting it on hold and advancing to meet Soult, leaving a force to guard the trenches, or raising the siege. Marmont was also demonstrating in the north against Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo, but Wellington cannot have been seriously concerned about their safety at this time.

By 5 April, the breaches looked ready and Wellington issued orders for an assault that night. Later in the day the assault was postponed for twenty-four hours to allow a third breach to be battered in the curtain wall. It would appear that Wellington asked Fletcher to look at the breaches and give his opinion.
⁶⁴
Following his inspection, Fletcher advised that the defences the French had constructed behind the breaches were strong and that a third breach should be made where they would have little time to prepare new defences. The original plan was to make a third breach at the last moment. The concentrated effort of the siege guns on 6 April quickly battered the wall and the third breach was ready in the afternoon. The three breaches would be attacked by the 4th and Light Divisions. Separate attacks would also be made on the castle by the 3rd Division and on the San Vincente bastion by the 5th Division. Sunset was just after 7 p.m.
⁶⁵
The siege guns stopped firing at about 7.30 p.m. but the assault did not get underway until around 10 p.m., leaving the defenders with plenty of time to prepare for the assault that they knew was coming. The main attacks through the breaches all failed, with huge casualties, due to the obstacles put across them and the heavy fire from the garrison. When it became clear to Wellington that they had failed, he ordered the troops to be withdrawn and planned to make another assault just before daybreak, but about this time, he was informed that Picton’s 3rd Division had managed to scale the walls of the castle and that the 5th Division had also entered the town. He ordered the 4th and Light Divisions forward again, using these footholds to break out and finally take the fortress. As at Ciudad Rodrigo, there followed an uncontrollable sack by the troops and it took two days before order could be restored.

Lieutenant James Vetch RE who had just arrived from Cadiz with a detachment of thirty miners from the Royal Military Artificers described the events:

When we got intelligence of the siege of Badajoz, and as I knew we were wanted there I pushed on the party as fast as possible … I got to Badajoz on the morning of the fifth. I did duty in the trenches and lost, of my small working party, seven men the first half hour … The enemy had been very active in throwing every obstacle they could think of in the way … I was posted between the castle and breaches, at the ravelin of San Roque, which was to be escaladed by 200 men. About 10 p.m. a brisk firing began from the castle and they threw some light balls which gave them great advantage. When the castle had been attacked for half an hour, the parties in the breaches commenced. That moment produced such a scene as no man can conceive. The night was dark; the castle on high and all the lower points of attack involved in one sheet of fire, a well pitched light ball now and then bringing out the scenes more fully to view; at the breaches the springing of mines, bursting of large shells, which they rolled into the ditch, with the fire from the whole of the batteries made a sight which I believe never was seen in so small a space. My party of 200 men, which attacked the ravelin, carried it immediately and marched their prisoners through the breaches. General Picton carried the castle about 10 p.m. The parties at the breaches were completely repulsed; those escalading on the left succeeded about 2 a.m. with great slaughter. At 3 a.m. we had pretty good light and we discovered the enemy had left a gate open near the ravelin, which three of our companies took possession of. I was in the town at 3 a.m. and it was completely in our possession by 4 a.m. I had been sent out to give notice of the gate being in our possession, and got in again about 5 a.m. in good daylight to behold the most shocking scenes of dead and wounded, and the soldiers pillaging the houses. Not many of the inhabitants were killed, but all were left without a rag to cover them or a morsel to eat. Broken chairs and tables only were left. The pillage [had] lasted two days when two gallows were erected to show the pillage was over. When looking about for quarters, I was implored by a lady to take my abode under her roof for her protection, and I remained there two days. I found my hostess was a Marchioness; Lord Wellington called twice at my billet, and the poor lady had scarce a gown to cover her back.
⁶⁶

Casualties from the assault were shocking, with 800 killed and 2,900 wounded out of an overall total for the siege of around 1,000 killed and 3,800 wounded. As always with the sieges it was the officers and better soldiers who took more than their fair share of the injuries. Engineer casualties were similarly heavy. Of the twenty-four officers present, four were killed and eight were wounded, three of whom went home.
⁶⁷

Wellington had taken Badajoz in twenty-one days. His estimate before the start was twenty-four days, not taking into account the bad weather that surely delayed progress. Mulcaster, one of the engineers, had estimated twenty-seven days for the siege.
⁶⁸
In 1811 the French took forty-five days to get the fortress to surrender and in reality it should have held out for much longer. The cost of this rapid success was once again measured in casualties. In this case they were all from the very experienced British divisions, troops Wellington could not afford to lose. Although there were criticisms at the time of the decision to postpone the assault for another day to make the third breach, it is probable that this decision tipped the balance by spreading the defenders thinner which meant they were not able to resist the secondary assaults. Once order had been re-established in the town, work started immediately to repair the defences. As a sign of the importance that Wellington placed on its speedy and effective repair, Fletcher was left to oversee the work and did not rejoin Wellington at headquarters until September 1812.

Analysis of the siege

As in the previous year, time was of the essence and taking the fortress on 6 April 1812 required brute force, inflicting enormous casualties on Wellington’s best divisions. The huge casualties at the siege of Badajoz finally pushed Wellington into writing a strongly-worded private letter to Liverpool demanding that something be done about the lack of trained men available to undertake siege work. His criticism overflowed into a more general complaint about the skills of the engineers. An analysis of his complaints will be detailed below, but first the other components of the siege that were not within the control of the engineers will be evaluated.

Wellington’s strategy of keeping the French guessing about his plans by staying north worked well. Soult made arrangements for Marmont to come to his aid if Wellington attacked Badajoz, but he then appears to have become distracted and, even though warnings had started filtering through, he was at Cadiz until 20 March. Soult then rushed back to Seville and spent the next ten days putting together a relief force which did not exceed 25,000 men, believing that Marmont would be doing the same. Marmont, in the meantime, had received direct orders from Napoleon not to support Badajoz, this being Soult’s responsibility. He was ordered to threaten Ciudad Rodrigo instead, which Napoleon believed would force Wellington to break off the siege of Badajoz and race north to protect it.
⁶⁹
Soult did not discover until around 6 April that Marmont was sending no supporting force. By that time it was too late for the French to relieve the fortress.

The habitual problem of transport once again caused the siege train to be much less powerful than Wellington would have liked. At Ciudad Rodrigo the siege train was made up of thirty-eight new English iron guns, thirty-four of which were 24-pounders. Since these could not be transported to Badajoz, reliance had to be placed on a combination of sixteen new English 24-pounders and twenty old Russian 18-pounders in poor condition. There were an additional sixteen 24-pounder carronades but these were of no use for breaching work and appear to have been used for enfilade fire. Jones commented that the 24-pounder iron howitzer (carronade) ‘should never be admitted into a battering train … [as] it only served to waste ammunition’.
⁷⁰
General Colville commented ‘we have for the third time undertaken the siege … deficient of means … half the guns are 18-pounders. We have not a single mortar’.
⁷¹
This siege train was a little better than the one used at the second siege of Badajoz, primarily due to the guns being made of iron, but it was much less powerful than that used at Ciudad Rodrigo, which was a much weaker fortress, so the time taken to make a significant impact on the breaches was extended. The lack of heavy howitzers limited the besiegers’ ability to undertake counter-battery fire and this led to heavier casualties in the trenches and during the assault.

The weather also had a material effect on the early stages of the siege. It rained continuously until about 25 March, and this slowed down work in the trenches and certainly stopped any attempt to put guns into the batteries until the ground had dried out. Of more concern to Wellington was the loss of the pontoon bridge and the difficulties with the flying bridge as the river rose. At this time, around 22 March, Wellington did not have a clear picture of the movements of Soult and Marmont. The loss of his only bridge was a serious matter. If the French had forced him to lift the siege and retire, his army would have been able to do this, but the siege train would probably have been lost. The wet weather also ensured that the inundation around the walls of Badajoz caused by the damming of the Rivellas stream was higher than normal and was impossible to cross. This was what made the attack on the San Roque outwork important. If heavy howitzers had been available to suppress the French guns, it might have been possible to take the San Roque lunette, which would have enabled the destruction of the dam and the draining of the area in front of the breaches. Wellington could not reasonably blame the bad weather for unexpectedly hampering his plans. He understood what the weather would be like at this time of year and used the poor weather as an argument to explain his timing of the siege, as it would hamper the movements of the French. Of course there was also a chance that it would hamper his own plans and in the event it did.

The French governor, Phillipon, showed the same energy and determination that he had in 1811. The garrison was made up of seasoned troops and the experienced chief engineer, Lamarre, had been at the fortress for some time and knew it well. The defenders’ energy, particularly in clearing the debris from in front of the breaches and in blocking them up, made the assaults much more difficult. As described above, the assaults on the breaches all failed with heavy casualties and it was only due to the secondary attacks that the fortress was taken. With another thousand men, Phillipon would have probably repulsed the assault. It is doubtful that the British troops would have had the energy to make a further serious assault as Wellington planned on the morning of 6 April.