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garrison of about two thousand men, any initial confidence about the outcome of the siege began to falter. Their engineers knew that Rodrigo was not nearly as strong as Almeida, just across the border, or many of the other fortresses in Spain. Its walls were not thick enough and their layout was poorly thought out. At the corner nearest the Teson ridges, the walls curved virtually through a right angle, leaving it vulnerable to assault: this arrangement made it harder for them to concentrate their fire in its defence, but easier for the enemy. A purpose-built place of war laid out during the eighteenth century would be hexagonal or even octagonal, with bastions on each of the points, allowing each stretch of wall to be swept by flanking fire from two such strongpoints. Often a further element of defence was added in front of the enciente or main wall, particularly if the bastions were far enough apart for any firing by the defenders to become less effective at the mid-point between them. In such instances, a triangular strongpoint called a ravelin was added in front of the main wall. It stood like a little island in the ditch around the fortress, giving more opportunities to fire at any attacker, creating yet more lethal intersections with the bastions’ fields of fire. The walls and strongpoints were all surrounded by a great embankment. Anyone approaching such a place would walk up a grassy slope which fell away vertically in front of them, about fifty or sixty feet before the main wall. This outer defensive skin both protected the base of the fortress’s wall from besiegers’ artillery batteries, and created a deep ditch or obstacle for any storming parties trying to rush in.

The men defending Ciudad Rodrigo were a mixed bunch – one battalion each of the 34ème Léger and 113ème Régiment. Their officers were generally professional, as throughout the French service, but the men were a combination of conscripts from France, Italy and Holland. Their world had shrunk in the preceding months because the approach of the Allied armies, and patrols of an Allied hireling, local guerrilla leader Don Julian Sanchez, meant they could hardly wander beyond the walls without fear of capture. Falling into the hands of the Spanish irregulars could mean a slow, ghastly end. A couple of months before, the French governor of Rodrigo had been carried off by one of Don Julian’s parties and presented as a prisoner at Wellington’s dinner table. This close blockade meant it was difficult to get supplies in and people out. So it was that Joseph Almond and the other British deserters had ended up inside the fortress.

Almond, Mills and Hodgson had all been inducted into the French Army. It would evidently have made sense to move them on to some place further away from their former comrades, for everyone could imagine what might happen to them if they were captured – but it had not been possible. In all likelihood their commander was reluctant to let any man go once he had clapped hands on him, such were the vagaries of getting new drafts from France. Almond had traded his old life in the 95th for one in the French Army: reveille became the diane; grog gave way to brandy; and the Baker rifle once in his hands was replaced by the fusil de dragon.

Outside, the Light Division took its turn with the working parties again on 12 and 13 January, returning to camp to lie up after their dangerous task. Wellington and his chief engineer resolved to advance a communication trench down the forward slope of the Greater Teson and establish a second parallel, or attack trench, on the Little Teson, much closer to the walls.

In his race to take the town before the enemy could concentrate against him, Wellington needed to batter breaches in the walls closest to the Teson ridges as quickly as possible. This had started from the higher feature, although it was obvious that the British guns would do much greater damage if they battered from just 200 or 250 yards. There were some difficulties too: as the breaching progressed, with great slabs of wall being undermined by