Rifles - Mark Urban [83]
Wellington rode back to Frenada, evidently having satisfied himself that Craufurd was guilty of his usual stuff and nonsense. As he went, though, a germ of uncertainty arose in his mind. If the system of supply had not failed the Light Division, then why were men deserting? It was, he readily conceded, a most unusual state of affairs. He felt sure that those who had gone must be habitual recidivists.
The following day, the Adjutant General addressed a further letter to Craufurd on Wellington’s behalf. ‘The commanding officers of these battalions’, he wrote, were to report, ‘whether any of these men who deserted had committed any crime, or were in confinement previous to their desertion, and whether they were men of good or bad character.’
The reports on Almond and McInnes would certainly have revealed previous misdemeanours – the usual soldier’s stuff of boozing and lost stripes in the first case and a prior desertion in the second. Evidently this was enough to convince Wellington that the matter was closed, and that Craufurd was guilty yet again of a ‘mad freak’.
This simply sent Black Bob him into a deeper despondency, for he felt he had forfeited the regard of his great Army patron. Craufurd wrote home, ‘I cannot say that Lord Wellington and I are quite so cordial as we used to be. He was nettled at a report which I made of the wants of the Division.’
When Wellington told Craufurd that he would soon need the Light Division, it had been because he was meditating a siege of Ciudad Rodrigo. His base in Portugal would not feel truly secure until all of the key border fortresses were in Allied hands. Those on his side of the frontier – Almeida and Elvas – were in the possession of their Portuguese masters, but on the Spanish side Rodrigo and Badajoz, further south, were still in the grasp of the French. The British general knew that the coming campaign would require him to take both of these places: this was a necessary preliminary to pushing a British Army deep into Spain so that, eventually, the French invaders might be evicted.
Early in January 1812, Wellington’s orders for the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo were sent out to the different parts of his Army. The Light and other divisions abandoned their cantonments and marched through thick snow to cross the oak forests of the borderland and head for the fortress. The British plan was very well calculated, for it involved battering the fortress into submission, or storming it, before the French could unite their forces in western Spain and come to the garrison’s rescue. Siege operations could be the most difficult in war, for to storm some great wall bristling with cannon and muskets required troops of the most ardent spirit. The British had already tried and failed to take Badajoz in 1811. This time, it was vital that everything went to plan.
Setting off on this new campaign in the middle of frigid winter, Craufurd wrote home to his wife. He was glad for the activity, for he wanted to give up the command of the Light Division, and felt the best time to do it would be after a successful operation. He told her, ‘I expect in a few months, very few, to be with you and to have done with this sort of life.’ In an attempt to reassure his wife, he told her, ‘You need not be alarmed, for [a siege] is the least dangerous of all operations, particularly for those of higher rank.’
FOURTEEN
The Storm of Ciudad Rodrigo
January 1812
Not long after dark, Lieutenant Colonel Colborne led his column forward. They had spent the afternoon of that 8 January hidden from view behind a hill called the Greater Teson. It was a miserable business having to hang around in this piercing wind, shuffling feet in the snow, trying to keep warm, but this band of killers could not go to work until after sunset. The Teson mount shielded them from Ciudad Rodrigo, which it also overlooked, making it the most obvious place from which to batter the walls. There was an obstacle, though, to digging trenches on this ground, and Colborne had been sent to deal