Rifles - Mark Urban [89]
At 7 p.m. the storming columns moved down through one of the city’s suburbs to a point about three hundred yards from the lesser breach. They would wait there until a rocket was fired, giving them and Picton’s boys the signal. Their advance had almost certainly been spotted by the French officer who served high up in the cathedral tower as a lookout. Riflemen in the covering party were leading the way. Craufurd came up with them, annoyed that they were not moving faster, and accused them of lacking courage – ‘Move on, will you, 95th? or we will get some who will!’
The sense of anticipation had reached a high pitch among the stormers, some trying to dissipate it with a last-minute bout of activity and chatter. Harry Smith sent Lieutenant George Simmons to bring up some ladders. Making his way through the darkness to bring them, Simmons was intercepted by Craufurd. The general asked the young lieutenant why he had brought short ladders rather than long ones, Simmons replying that he had only done what the engineers had told him to do. Craufurd told him, ‘Go back, sir, and get others; I am astonished at such stupidity.’
Captain Uniacke and Lieutenant John FitzMaurice looked up at the defences, looming ahead of them in the darkness. They were meant to be part of the covering party, but like many of the Light Division officers, both could barely wait to rush in and get the business over with. The two Irishmen shared the loss of a father young in life. Uniacke turned to his lieutenant, ‘Look there, Fitz, what would our mothers say, if they saw what was preparing for us?’ FitzMaurice replied, ‘Far better they should not,’ before pointing out that Uniacke had put on an expensive new jacket – ‘But what extravagance to put on a new pelisse for a night such as this!’ The captain replied, ‘I shall be all the better worth taking.’ He had a point, for every man – defender or stormer – imagined what he might gain on a night like this: plunder; a handsome new pelisse; a glorious reputation; or just the chance to avoid an ignominious death.
Craufurd pushed his way through to the head of the column, and on finding a little higher ground he called out to his division: ‘Soldiers! the eyes of your country are upon you. Be steady, be cool, be firm in the assault. The town must be yours this night.’ The rocket was up, the leading parties began trotting forward.
Whatever the garrison may or may not have seen, most of the approach was made before the eruption of fire that they all dreaded. At last, with the column moving up the first obstacle, less than fifty feet from the walls themselves, a French sentry called out and then the cacophony began. Hundreds of muskets opened up from the walls, and cannon too. Riflemen from the covering party were firing back from the embankment surrounding the walls as the stormers moved up to the lip of this great rampart. The first men began dropping down into the ditch.
Craufurd, who was standing atop the feature, was hit by a bullet which went through his arm and one of his lungs, then lodged in his spine. The general was hurled over by the force of the impact and rolled down into the darkness. Believing the wound to be mortal, Craufurd asked the captain to tell his beloved wife he was ‘quite sure they would meet in heaven’.
Down in the ditch in front of the breaches there was a mayhem of wounded men, screaming out in pain, officers calling on others to follow them and soldiers taking potshots at the French above them. Lieutenant Kincaid got himself to the foot of a ladder: ‘I mounted with a ferocious intent, carrying a sword in one hand and a pistol in the other; but, when I got up, I found nobody to fight except two of our own men, who were already laid dead across the top of the ladder.’ In the confusion he had stormed not the main wall, but an outlying ravelin unconnected to it.
At the breach itself Gurwood was making his way up one of the ladders when he was either thrown or knocked off by one of the defenders, falling back to the ground