Rifles - Mark Urban [102]
Half a mile away, near the city’s castle, men of the 3rd Division had moved up to the walls. They faced a forty-foot climb, as these were far higher than those of the more modern defences on the Light Division’s side. Here too men of different regiments became mingled and confused as the defenders poured fire on them. One gentleman volunteer noted in a letter home:
The men were not so eager to go up the ladders as I expected them to be … I went up the ladder and half way up I called out ‘Here is the 94th!’ and was glad to see the men begin to mount. In a short time they were all up and formed on a road just over the wall.
Picton’s attack was succeeding.
The small group of officers that marked the Light Division’s makeshift HQ stood disconsolately near the outer defensive rampart. The slaughter had gone on a good four hours before they had broken off their attack. Just then, Major FitzRoy Somerset, Wellington’s military secretary, popped out of the darkness and accosted Captain Harry Smith. Where was Colonel Barnard? Lord Wellington wanted the Light and 4th Divisions to resume their attack. ‘The devil!’ said Smith in reply. ‘Why, we have had enough; we are all knocked to pieces.’ Somerset was adamant: ‘I dare say, but you must try again.’ Smith smiled and replied, ‘If we could not succeed with two whole fresh and unscathed Divisions, we are likely to make a poor show of it now. But we will try again with all our might.’
Before the order could be passed, a ripple of shouts began spreading through the British ranks – ‘Blood and Wounds! the 3rd Division are in!’ – and as the rumour strengthened, the French fire slackened, for the defenders knew their enemies were now behind them and it was time to sauve qui peut. Badajoz had fallen.
SEVENTEEN
The Disgrace
April 1812
Major Cameron walked slowly and deliberately up and down the ranks of riflemen. The four companies under his command had been formed up on top of Badajoz’s defensive rampart once the French firing stopped. It was about 4 a.m., and the men could hear gunshots and women’s screams occasionally rising above the constant moaning of the hundreds of wounded still lying just below them in the ditch. Cameron fixed them with his grey eyes; the flashes of gunfire and flames licking around buildings behind them occasionally lit up the Celtic pallor of his countenance. He knew they were itching to join the plunder. ‘If any man leaves the ranks,’ he shouted, ‘I shall have him put to death on the spot.’
Down inside the town’s streets, the cement that held discipline together in Wellington’s Army was crumbling. Ned Costello, wounded, had dragged himself in once he heard the town had fallen. In the streets mobs of stormers mixed together, shooting locks open with their rifles and breaking into houses to see what they might find.
Some soldiers came running down the street, manhandling a French prisoner. Costello stopped them. The rifleman, caked with blood, powder and filth, stared into the Frenchman’s eyes, snapped back the hammer on his weapon and levelled it at the prisoner’s head. None of the other lads was going to stop him. The prisoner dropped to the ground, sobbing and pleading for mercy: ‘The rifle dropped from my hand. I felt ashamed.’
The Frenchman joined his new-found saviour as he prowled about. ‘We now looked around for a house where we could obtain refreshment and, if truth must be told, a little money, for wounded though I was, I had made up my mind to gain by our victory,’ Costello later wrote.
A small gang, ‘who by this time were tolerably drunk’, broke into a prosperous-looking home to find the patrone quivering with fear. After threatening him, he revealed something up to 150 dollars which the men divided, and answered their demands for more drink. Costello and the others had found their spot for the night, but were soon obliged to defend it at the point of the bayonet against some Portuguese troops who tried to evict them. Eventually the prowling soldiers discovered their terrified