Chapter XIII

Lawrence's division marched south to invest Badajoz -- Small
choice allowed by the fortunes of war -- In the trenches -- A
fort taken -- The town walls breached -- Refusal of the garrison
to surrender -- An assault ordered -- Lawrence in the forlorn
hope -- A somewhat premature assignation -- Fighting in the
breach -- Lawrence wounded -- Fearful scenes on his way to the
rear -- He reports on the state of affairs to Lord Wellington --
The story of Filer -- The castle carried after severe fighting,
and the English enter the town -- Dreadful excesses on the part
of the victorious troops -- Great losses on both sides in the
assault -- The end of Lawrence's assignation.

Our stay at Rodrigo was of short duration, for we were soon ordered south to invest Badajoz, which gave us another long and tedious march of a hundred and fifty miles or more. We arrived there at the beginning of March, and the third, ours, that is the fourth, and the light divisions, under the command of Marshal Beresford and General Picton, invested the town.

We soon broke ground before the town by commencing to throw up breastworks and batteries. Very heavy rains had just lately set in, but our troops still pursued their undertaking and persevered in the trenches. A cannonade was kept up from the town, which fortunately, however, did not do much damage; but on the 19th of March the garrison attacked us, and were only driven back with a loss on our side of a hundred men killed and wounded, and a still greater loss on their part.

I killed a French sergeant myself with my bayonet in this action. I was at the time in the trenches when he came on the top and made a dart at me with his bayonet, having, like myself, exhausted his fire; and while in the act of thrusting he overbalanced himself and fell. I very soon pinioned him to the ground with my bayonet, and the poor fellow soon expired. I was sorry afterwards that I had not tried to take him prisoner instead of killing him, but at the time we were all busily engaged in the thickest of the fight, and there was not much time to think about things. And besides that, he was a powerful-looking man, being tall and stout, with a beard and moustache completely covering his face, as fine a soldier as I have seen in the French army, and if I had allowed him to gain his feet, I might have suffered for it; so perhaps in such times my plan was the best--kill or be killed.

About eight hundred of us were every night busily engaged in the trenches, whilst a large number, who were called the covering party, were on the look out in case of an attack from the enemy. The rain poured down so fast that balers were obliged to be employed in places, and at times the trenches were in such a state of mud that it was over our shoes. We were chiefly employed during the day in finishing off what we had done in the night, as very little else could be done then owing to the enemy's fire. We had not been to work many days before we got within musket shot of a fine fort situated a little distance from the town, and garrisoned with four or five hundred of the enemy, who annoyed us rather during our operations. One night as I was working in the trenches near this place, and just as the guard was about to be relieved, a shell from the town fell amongst them and exploded, killing and wounding about thirty. I never saw a worse sight of its kind, for some had their arms and legs, and some even their heads, which was worse, completely severed from their bodies. I remember my comrade, Pig Harding, who was working near me at the time, and had, like myself, become hardened to the worst of sights during our sojourn in the Peninsula, saying as a joke, "Lawrence, if any one is in want of an arm or a leg he can have a good choice there;" little thinking, poor fellow, that soon he would himself be carried out, numbered with the slain. On the morning after this explosion a terrific scene of our mangled comrades presented itself, for their remains strewed the ground in all directions.

Of course our next thought was how to clear ourselves of this troublesome fort. Some suspicions were entertained that it was undermined, so in the dead of night some engineers were sent between it and the town to search for a train, and finding that the earth had been moved, they dug down and found the train and cut it off. Then, on the next night, the Eighty-seventh and Eighty-eighth regiments were ordered up to storm the fort, and succeeded after a brisk action in gaining the place, the most of the garrison escaping into the town. Next morning I entered the fort with the rest, where we found the wounded Frenchmen lying. We relieved their pain a little by giving them some of our rum and water, and then conveyed them to the rear; most of their wounds being bad, evidently from the bayonet, but not mortal.

Owing to the success of taking this fort we were enabled to carry on our works much nearer to the town, and by the beginning of April two batteries were formed within three or four hundred yards of the place: and in about five days, through the effects of our twenty-four pounders, three practicable breaches were made in the walls.

Lord Wellington then ordered the town to be attacked on the night of the 6th, having previously sent to know if it would surrender: and the answer being "No," he asked for the inhabitants to be allowed to quit, as he intended to take the town by assault. In consequence of this some thousands of the inhabitants quitted the city.

A storming-party was selected from each regiment, and each of the third, fourth, and light divisions was told off to a breach. I joined the forlorn hope myself.

Before, however, that I proceed further in my account of this sanguinary affair, I will relate an engagement that myself, Pig Harding, and another of my comrades, George Bowden by name, entered into before we even started on our way, of which the result showed what a blind one it was. Through being quartered at Badajoz after the battle of Talavera, all three of us knew the town perfectly well, and so understood the position of most of the valuable shops: and hearing a report likewise that if we succeeded in taking the place, there was to be three hours' plunder, we had planned to meet at a silversmith's shop that we knew about, poor Pig even providing himself with a piece of wax candle to light us if needed.

But all this was doomed to disappointment. We were supplied with ladders and grass bags, and having received and eaten our rations, and each man carrying his canteen of water, we fell in at half-past eight or thereabouts to wait for the requisite signal for all to advance. During the interval our men were particularly silent: but at length the deadly signal was given, and we rushed on towards the breach.

I was one of the ladder party, for we did not feel inclined to trust to the Portuguese, as we did at Ciudad Rodrigo. On our arriving at the breach, the French sentry on the wall cried out, "Who comes there?" three times, or words to that effect in his own language, but on no answer being given, a shower of shot, canister and grape, together with fire-balls, was hurled at random amongst us. Poor Pig received his death wound immediately, and my other accomplice, Bowden, became missing, while I myself received two small slug shots in my left knee, and a musket shot in my side, which must have been mortal had it not been for my canteen: for the ball penetrated that and passed out, making two holes in it, and then entered my side slightly. Still I stuck to my ladder, and got into the entrenchment. Numbers had by this time fallen: but the cry from our commanders being, "Come on, my lads!" we hastened to the breach; but there, to our great surprise and discouragement, we found a _chevaux de frise_ had been fixed and a deep entrenchment made, 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.

We remained, however, in the breach until we were quite weary with our efforts to pass it. My wounds were still bleeding, and I began to feel very weak; my comrades persuaded me to go to the rear; but this proved a task of great difficulty, for on arriving at the ladders, I found them filled with the dead and wounded, hanging some by their feet just as they had fallen and got fixed in the rounds. I hove down three lots of them, hearing the implorings of the wounded all the time; but on coming to the fourth, I found it completely smothered with dead bodies, so I had to draw myself up over them as best I could. When I arrived at the top I almost wished myself back again, for there of the two I think was the worse sight, nothing but the dead and wounded lying around, and the cries of the latter, mingled with the incessant firing from the enemy, being quite deafening.

I was so weak myself that I could scarcely walk, so I crawled on my hands and knees till I got out of reach of the enemy's musketry. After proceeding for some way I fell in with Lord Wellington and his staff, who seeing me wounded, asked me what regiment I 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, as there was a _chevaux de frise_, a deep entrenchment, and in the rear of them a constant and murderous fire being kept up by the enemy. One of his staff then bound up my leg with a silk handkerchief, and told me to go behind a hill which he pointed out, where I would find a doctor to dress my wounds; so I proceeded on, and found that it was the doctor of my own regiment.

Next after me Lieutenant Elland was brought in by a man of the name of Charles Filer, who had seen him lying wounded at the breach with a ball in the thigh, and on his asking him to convey him from the breach, had raised him on his shoulders for that object. But during his march a cannon-ball had taken the officer's head clean off without Filer finding it out on account of the darkness of the night, and the clamour of cannon and musketry mingled with the cries of the wounded. Much it was to Filer's astonishment, then, when the surgeon asked him what he had brought in a headless trunk for; he declared that the lieutenant had a head on when he took him up, for he had himself asked him to take him from the breach, and that he did not know when the head was severed, which must have been done by one of the bullets of which there were so many whizzing about in all directions. Some may doubt the correctness of this story, but I, being myself both a hearer and an eyewitness to the scene at the surgeon's, can vouch for the accuracy of it. Certainly Filer's appearance was not altogether that of composure, for he was not only rather frightened at the fearful exposure of his own body at the breach and across the plain, but he was evidently knocked up, or rather bowed down, by the weight of his lifeless burden, which he must, if he came from the breach, have carried for upwards of half a mile, so that, under these disadvantages, the mistake might easily have been made even by any one of harder temperament than his. But the tale did not fail to spread through the camp, and caused great laughter over Filer, sentences being thrown at him such as "Who carried the man without a head to the doctor?" &c.

After Lord Wellington had found it useless to attempt to face the breach with the _chevaux de frise_, he altered his plans of attack. More success had fortunately been achieved in the other breaches, so he withdrew the men from our fatal breach to reinforce the others, but not till at least two thousand had been killed or wounded in this single assault. He had ordered the castle to be attacked, and a quantity of troops had been supplied for the purpose with long ladders, which had been raised against the walls and filled with men: but the enemy showered down a mass of heavy substances, such as trees and large stones, and amongst all a number of deadly bursting shells, and thus broke the ladders and tumbled the men down from top to bottom, crushing still more underneath.

Yet more men were found ready to push on to the sanguinary scene. More ladders had indeed to be procured, which caused another great delay, but as soon as they arrived they were quickly hoisted, and the precaution was taken this time to fix them farther apart, so that if more beams were waiting to be rolled over, they might not take such a deadly sweep.

The second attempt was more successful, for the ramparts were gained and the French driven back: and a single piece of ground being thus gained, a footing was soon established for many more, who succeeded in turning round some guns and firing them along the ramparts, soon sweeping the enemy off them.

Fresh reinforcements on both sides shortly arrived at this for us successful spot, but the garrison was soon forced back into the town. The ramparts were then scoured, the breaches cleared, and the _chevaux de frise_ pulled down, and the main body of the English entered the town. Some opposition had to be overcome in the streets, but that was soon cleared away, and the French escaped to Fort San Cristoval.

Our troops found the city illuminated to welcome them, but nevertheless then began all the horrors that generally attended a capture by assault--plunder, waste, destruction of property, drunkenness, and debauchery. I was myself exempt from all this, owing to my wounds, which kept me in camp at the time the town was taken; but though I was at least a mile off, I could distinctly hear the clamour of the rabble, as the guns and musketry had ceased; and next morning I hobbled as well as I could into the town with the help of the handle of a sergeant's pike chopped up so as to form a stick, and there sure enough I found a pretty state of affairs. Pipes of wine had been rolled into the streets and tapped by driving the heads in, for any one to drink of them who liked, and when the officers tried to keep order by throwing all of these over that they could, the men that were in a state of drunkenness lay down to drink out of the gutters, which were thus running with all sorts of liquors; doors were blown open all through the city, both upstairs and down, by placing muskets at the keyhole and so removing the locks. I myself saw that morning a naked priest launched into the street and flogged down it by some of our men who had a grudge against him for the treatment they had met at a convent, when staying in the town before. I happened to meet one of my company, and asked him how he was getting on, to which he replied that he was wounded in the arm, but that he had got hold of something that compensated for that a little, showing me a bag of about a hundred dollars that he had succeeded in obtaining, and saying that I should not want whilst he had got it.

But whilst all this debauchery was going on amongst some of our soldiers, I will give a word of credit to a great many of the more respectable, who were trying as much as lay in their power to stop the ferociousness of the same. That morning I met many about, who said they were sorry to think that the soldiers could not carry it on without going to such excesses as they did, respectable houses being ransacked from top to bottom, with no regard to the entreaties of the few inhabitants who remained within the walls. Things that could not be taken were often destroyed, and men were threatened if they did not produce their money, and the women sometimes the same. Comparatively few murders were, I believe, committed, but some no doubt occurred.

It was not till the drunken rabble had dropped into a sound slumber or had died in consequence of their excesses, that the unhappy city became at all composed; but in the morning some fresh troops were placed on guard, and a few gallows were erected, but not much used. Two or three officers had been killed in the act of keeping order, and I have been given to understand that some of the fifth division, having arrived after most places had been ransacked, plundered their drunken fellow-comrades, and it was likewise reported that a few were even murdered. Lord Wellington punished all offenders by stopping their grog for some time; but in these times such scenes as these were generally found to occur after a place had had to be so hardly fought for. No doubt in the present day, at least half a century later, more discipline is observed in similar circumstances, which must be owned as a great improvement.

This same morning the garrison surrendered. Before the assault it had numbered about five thousand, but we found that some twelve hundred of these had been slain, and now the rest were prisoners; while upwards of one hundred and fifty guns, eighty thousand shots, and a great quantity of muskets and ammunition were taken in the place. Ours was a much severer loss, for nearly five thousand of our men, including three or four hundred officers, were either killed or wounded. But it must be observed that with the circumstances under which our troops had to fight it was a wonder that they entered the town at all that night, every obstacle that a cunning enemy could devise being there to be overcome. Every kind of combustible deadly in its action was thrown amongst the men; placed in readiness along the ramparts were trees, stones, and beams; and the worst of all was the fearful _chevaux de frise_; in fact nothing had been wanting to discourage the men, who, however, pushed on, being as anxious as Lord Wellington himself to get into the town.

All being now over, thoughts of Pig Harding, George Bowden, and our engagement, ran in my head, and how it had all failed, poor Pig having received seven shots in his body, and George Bowden having had both thighs blown off. Both must have met with instant death, and I myself had four wounds and was disabled for some time from getting about. I resolved then that I would never make any more engagements under the same fearful circumstances. We missed poor Pig more than any man of the regiment, for he passed many an hour away pleasantly with his jokes, being a thoroughbred Irishman, and not only that, but he supplied us with many an extra piece of tommy by his roguish tricks.