Rifles - Mark Urban [90]
Looking up in the murk, they could see the mouth of a cannon facing down and across the breach. Doubtless it was double-charged with canister and the French were just waiting their moment to cut down the storming party. But some soldiers scrambled up the jagged rocks at the edge of the breach and emerged in the top of the wall just beside the cannon’s mouth. One of the 95th brought the butt of his rifle down like an axe across the head of the French gunner and the danger to the men on the ladders was removed. Men now quickly fanned out along the walls and the defence began to crumble.
In this chaos of shouting and shooting, one of the French engineers touched a match to the fuse on a mine. As Harry Smith and John Uniacke ran along the ramparts with soldiers not far behind, it blew up with massive force. ‘I shall never forget the concussion when it struck me, throwing me back many feet into a lot of charged fuses of shells,’ wrote Smith. ‘My cocked hat was blown away, my clothes all singed.’ Uniacke was not so fortunate: he staggered back, charred black, with one of his arms hanging only by threads of skin. As he was led away by comrades, Uniacke murmured, ‘Remember, I was the first.’
Soldiers poured into the town, often refusing quarter. Some of the ‘French’, throwing down their muskets, called out that they were only poor Italians. But according to Kincaid, ‘Our men had, somehow, imbibed a horrible antipathy to the Italians, and every appeal they made in that name was instantly answered with “You’re Italians are you? then, damn you, here’s a shot for you”; and the action instantly followed the word.’
Those who had survived the breaches were flushed with the joy of being alive: ‘When the battle is over, and crowned with victory, he finds himself elevated for a while into the regions of absolute bliss.’ The Forlorn Hope and storming party volunteers ‘broke into different squads, which went in different directions and entered different streets according to the fancy of their leaders.’
Costello stripped some French soldiers of their money and an officer of his watch. He and his party then found their way into the house of a Spanish doctor, who was hiding with his pretty young niece, fully expecting the sack of Rodrigo to conform to all the horrors of medieval warfare, whereby those inside a stormed town forfeited their lives and property. ‘Like himself, she was shivering with fear,’ according to Costello. ‘This we soon dispelled, and were rewarded with a good supper crowned by a bowl of excellent punch which, at the time, seemed to compensate us for all the sufferings we had endured in the trenches during the siege.’ Elsewhere, the sources of liquor were soon discovered and gallons of the stuff rapidly thrown down the stormers’ necks.
In Rodrigo’s ancient plaza, the jubilant soldiery gathered in mobs, cheering and firing into windows. The alcohol was taking its effect now, and a general riot seemed imminent. ‘If I had not seen it, I never could have supposed that British soldiers would become so wild and furious,’ wrote a young officer of the 43rd. As the firing at nothing in particular built up, one private of the 43rd dropped dead, a bullet through his head.
Major Alexander Cameron, who’d been commanding the covering party of riflemen, arrived with Lieutenant Colonel Barnard and tried to check the collapse in order. ‘What, sir, are you firing at?’ Cameron bellowed at one rifleman, who shouted back at him, ‘I don’t know sir! I am firing because everybody else is.’ Cameron and Barnard looked about them at the debris on the streets, each seizing a broken musket which they used to beat their soldiers into some kind of order.
The search for plunder was not confined to the soldiery. Lieutenant FitzMaurice helped