A history of the Peninsular War, Vol. 6, September 1, 1812-August 5, 1813

The Castle of Burgos lies on an isolated hill which rises straight out of the streets of the north-western corner of that ancient city, and overtops them by 200 feet or rather more. Ere ever there were kings in Castile, it had been the residence of Fernan Gonzalez, and the early counts who recovered the land from the Moors. Rebuilt a dozen times in the Middle Ages, and long a favourite palace of the Castilian kings, it had been ruined by a great fire in 1736, and since then had not been inhabited. There only remained an empty shell, of which the most important part was the great Donjon which had defied the flames. The summit of the hill is only 250 yards long: the eastern section of it was occupied by the Donjon, the western by a large church, Santa Maria la Blanca: between them were more or less ruined buildings, which had suffered from the conflagration. Passing by Burgos in 1808, after the battle of Gamonal, Napoleon had noted the commanding situation of the hill, and had determined to make it one of the fortified bases upon which the French domination in northern Spain was to be founded. He had caused a plan to be drawn up for the conversion of the ruined mediaeval stronghold into a modern citadel, which should overawe the city below, and serve as a half-way house, an arsenal, and a dépôt for French troops moving between Bayonne and Madrid. Considered as a fortress it had one prominent defect: while its eastern, southern, and western sides look down into the low ground around the Arlanzon river, there lies on its northern side, only 300 yards away, a flat-topped plateau, called the hill of San Miguel, which rises to within a few feet of the same height as the Donjon, and overlooks all the lower slopes of the Castle mount. As this rising ground—now occupied by the city reservoir of Burgos—commanded so much of the defences, Napoleon held that it must be occupied, and a fort upon it formed part of his original plan. But the Emperor passed on; the tide of war swept far south of Madrid; and the full scheme for the fortification of Burgos was never carried out; money—the essential thing when building is in hand—was never forthcoming in sufficient quantities, and the actual state of the place in 1812 was very different from what it would have been if Napoleon’s orders had been carried out in detail. Enough was done to make the Castle impregnable against guerrillero bands—the only enemies who ever came near it between 1809 and 1812—but it could not be described as a complete or satisfactory piece of military engineering. Against a besieger unprovided with sufficient artillery it was formidable enough: round two-thirds of its circuit it had a complete double enceinte, enclosing the Donjon and the church on the summit which formed its nucleus. On the western side, for about one-third of its circumference, it had an outer or third line of defence, to take in the lowest slopes of the hill on which it lies. For here the ground descended gradually, while to the east it shelved very steeply down to the town, and an external defence was unnecessary and indeed impossible.

The outer line all round (i.e. the third line on the west, the second line on the rest of the circumference) had as its base the old walls of the external enclosure of the mediaeval Castle, modernized by shot-proof parapets and with tambours and palisades added at the angles to give flank fire. It had a ditch 30 feet wide, and a counterscarp in masonry, while the inner enceintes were only strong earthworks, like good field entrenchments; they were, however, both furnished with palisades in front and were also ‘fraised’ above. The Donjon, which had been strengthened and built up, contained the powder magazine in its lower story. On its platform, which was most solid, was established a battery for eight heavy guns (Batterie Napoléon), which from its lofty position commanded all the surrounding ground, including the top of the hill of San Miguel. The magazine of provisions, which was copiously supplied, was in the church of Santa Maria la Blanca. Food never failed—but water was a more serious problem; there was only one well, and the garrison had to be put on an allowance for drinking from the commencement of the siege. The hornwork of San Miguel, which covered the important plateau to the north, had never been properly finished. It was very large; its front was composed of earthwork 25 feet high, covered by a counterscarp of 10 feet deep. Here the work was formidable, the scarp being steep and slippery; but the flanks were not so strong, and the rear or gorge was only closed by a row of palisades, erected within the last two days. The only outer defences consisted of three light flèches, or redans, lying some 60 yards out in front of the hornwork, at projecting points of the plateau, which commanded the lower slopes. The artillery in San Miguel consisted of seven field-pieces, 4- and 6-pounders: there were no heavy guns in it.

The garrison of Burgos belonged to the Army of the North, not to that of Portugal. Caffarelli himself paid a hasty visit to the place just before the siege began, and threw in some picked troops—two battalions of the 34th[28], one of the 130th; making 1,600 infantry. There were also a company of artillery, another of pioneers, and detachments which brought up the whole to exactly 2,000 men—a very sufficient number for a place of such small size. There were nine heavy guns (16- and 12-pounders), of which eight were placed in the Napoleon battery, eleven field-pieces (seven of them in San Miguel), and six mortars or howitzers. This was none too great a provision, and would have been inadequate against a besieger provided with a proper battering-train: Wellington—as we shall see—was not so provided. The governor was a General of Brigade named Dubreton, one of the most resourceful and enterprising officers whom the British army ever encountered. He earned at Burgos a reputation even more brilliant than that which Phillipon acquired at Badajoz.

The weak points of the fortress were firstly the unfinished condition of the San Miguel hornwork, which Dubreton had to maintain as long as he could, in order that the British might not use the hill on which it stood as vantage ground for battering the Castle; secondly, the lack of cover within the works. The Donjon and the church of Santa Maria could not house a tithe of the garrison; the rest had to bivouac in the open, a trying experience in the rain, which fell copiously on many days of the siege. If the besiegers had possessed a provision of mortars, to keep up a regular bombardment of the interior of the Castle, it would not long have been tenable, owing to the losses that must have been suffered. Thirdly must be mentioned the bad construction of many of the works—part of them were mediaeval structures, not originally intended to resist cannon, and hastily adapted to modern necessities: some of them were not furnished with parapets or embrasures—which had to be extemporized with sandbags. Lastly, it must be remembered that the conical shape of the hill exposed the inner no less than the outer works to battering: the lower enceintes only partly covered the inner ones, whose higher sections stood up visible above them. The Donjon and Santa Maria were exposed from the first to such fire as the enemy could turn against them, no less than the walls of the outer circumference. If Wellington had owned the siege-train that he brought against Badajoz, the place must have succumbed in ten days. But the commander was able and determined, the troops willing, the supply of food and of artillery munitions ample—Burgos had always been an important dépôt. Dubreton’s orders were to keep his enemy detained as long as possible—and he succeeded, even beyond all reasonable expectations.

Wellington had always been aware that Burgos was fortified, but during his advance he had spoken freely of his intention to capture it. On September 3rd he had written, ‘I have some heavy guns with me, and have an idea of forcing the siege of Burgos—but that still depends on circumstances[29].’ Four days later he wrote at Valladolid, ‘I am preparing to drive away the detachments of the Army of Portugal from the Douro, and I propose, if I have time, to take Burgos[30].’ Yet at the same moment he kept impressing on his correspondents that his march to the North was a temporary expedient, a mere parergon; his real business would be with Soult, and he must soon be back at Madrid with his main body. It is this that makes so inexplicable his lingering for a month before Dubreton’s castle, when he had once discovered that it would not fall, as he had hoped, in a few days. After his first failure before the place, he acknowledged it might possibly foil him altogether. Almost at the start he ventured the opinion that ‘As far as I can judge, I am apprehensive that the means I have are not sufficient to enable me to take the Castle.’ Yet he thought it worth while to try irregular methods: ‘the enemy are ill-provided with water; their magazines of provisions are in a place exposed to be set on fire. I think it possible, therefore, that I have it in my power to force them to surrender, although I may not be able to lay the place open to assault[31].’

The cardinal weakness of Wellington’s position was exactly the same as at the Salamanca forts, three months back. He had no sufficient battering-train for a regular siege: after the Salamanca experience it is surprising that he allowed himself to be found for a second time in this deficiency. There were dozens of heavy guns in the arsenal at Madrid, dozens more (Marmont’s old siege-train) at Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida. But Madrid was 130 miles away, Rodrigo 180. With the army there was only Alexander Dickson’s composite Anglo-Portuguese artillery reserve, commanded by Major Ariaga, and consisting of three iron 18-pounders, and five 24-pounder howitzers, served by 150 gunners—90 British, 60 Portuguese. The former were good battering-guns; the howitzers, however, were not—they were merely short guns of position, very useless for a siege, and very inaccurate in their fire. They threw a heavy ball, but with weak power—the charge was only two pounds of powder: the shot when fired at a stout wall, from any distance, had such weak impact that it regularly bounded off without making any impression on the masonry. The only real use of these guns was for throwing case at short distances. ‘In estimating the efficient ordnance used at the Spanish sieges,’ says the official historian of the Burgos failure, ‘these howitzers ought in fairness to be excluded from calculation, as they did little more than waste invaluable ammunition[32].’ This was as well known to Wellington as to his subordinates, and it is inexplicable that he did not in place of them bring up from Madrid real battering-guns: with ten more 18-pounders he would undoubtedly have taken the Castle of Burgos. But heavy guns require many draught cattle, and are hard to drag over bad roads: the absolute minimum had been taken with the army, as in June. And it was impossible to bring up more siege-guns in a hurry, as was done at the siege of the Salamanca forts, for the nearest available pieces were not a mere sixty miles away, as on the former occasion, but double and triple that distance. Yet if, on the first day of doubt before Burgos, Wellington had sent urgent orders for the dispatch of more 18-pounders from Madrid, they would have been up in time; though no doubt there would have been terrible difficulties in providing for their transport. It was only when it had grown too late that more artillery was at last requisitioned—and had to be turned back not long after it had started.

Other defects there were in the besieging army, especially the same want of trained sappers and miners that had been seen at Badajoz, and of engineer officers[33]. Of this more hereafter:—the first and foremost difficulty, without which the rest would have been comparatively unimportant, was the lack of heavy artillery.

But to proceed to the chronicle of the siege. On the evening on which the army arrived before Burgos the 6th Division took post on the south bank of the Arlanzon: the 1st Division and Pack’s Portuguese brigade swept round the city and formed an investing line about the Castle. It was drawn as close as possible, especially on the side of the hornwork of San Miguel, where the light companies of the first Division pushed up the hill, taking shelter in dead ground where they could, and dislodged the French outposts from the three flèches which lay upon its sky-line. Wellington, after consulting his chief engineer and artillery officers, determined that his first move must be to capture the hornwork, in order to use its vantage-ground for battering the Castle. The same night (September 19-20) an assault, without any preparation of artillery fire, was made upon it. The main body of the assailing force was composed of Pack’s Portuguese, who were assisted by the whole of the 1/42nd and by the flank-companies[34] of Stirling’s brigade of the 1st Division, to which the Black Watch belonged. The arrangement was that while a strong firing party (300 men) of the 1/42nd were to advance to the neighbourhood of the horn work, ‘as near to the salient angle as possible,’ and to endeavour to keep down the fire of the garrison, two columns each composed of Portuguese, but with ladder parties and forlorn hopes from the Highland battalion, should charge at the two demi-bastions to right and left of the salient, and escalade them. Meanwhile the flank-companies of Stirling’s brigade (1/42nd, 1/24th, 1/79th) were to make a false attack upon the rear, or gorge, of the hornwork, which might be turned into a real one if it should be found weakly held.

The storm succeeded, but with vast and unnecessary loss of life, and not in the way which Wellington had intended. It was bright moonlight, and the firing party, when coming up over the crest, were at once detected by the French, who opened a very heavy fire upon them. The Highlanders commenced to reply while still 150 yards away, and then advanced firing till they came close up to the work, where they remained for a quarter of an hour, entirely exposed and suffering terribly. Having lost half their numbers they finally dispersed, but not till after the main attack had failed. On both their flanks the assaulting columns were repulsed, though the advanced parties duly laid their ladders: they were found somewhat short, and after wavering for some minutes Pack’s men retired, suffering heavily. The whole affair would have been a failure, but for the assault on the gorge. Here the three light companies—140 men—were led by Somers Cocks, formerly one of Wellington’s most distinguished intelligence officers, the hero of many a risky ride, but recently promoted to a majority in the 1/79th. He made no demonstration, but a fierce attack from the first. He ran up the back slope of the hill of St. Miguel, under a destructive fire from the Castle, which detected his little column at once, and shelled it from the rear all the time that it was at work. The frontal assault, however, was engrossing the attention of the garrison of the hornwork, and only a weak guard had been left at the gorge. The light companies broke through the 7-foot palisades, partly by using axes, partly by main force and climbing. Somers Cocks then divided his men into two bodies, leaving the smaller to block the postern in the gorge, while with the larger he got upon the parapet and advanced firing towards the right demi-bastion. Suddenly attacked in the rear, just as they found themselves victorious in front, the French garrison—a battalion of the 34th, 500 strong—made no attempt to drive out the light companies, but ran in a mass towards the postern, trampled down the guard left there, and escaped to the Castle across the intervening ravine. They lost 198 men, including 60 prisoners, and left behind their seven field-pieces[35]. The assailants suffered far more—they had 421 killed and wounded, of whom no less than 204 were in the 1/42nd, which had suffered terribly in the main assault. The Portuguese lost 113 only, never having pushed their attack home. This murderous business was the first serious fighting in which the Black Watch were involved since their return to Spain in April 1812; at Salamanca they had been little engaged, and were the strongest British battalion in the field—over 1,000 bayonets. Wellington attributed their heavy casualties to their inexperience—they exposed themselves over-much. ‘If I had had some of the troops who have stormed so often before [3rd and Light Divisions], I should not have lost a fourth of the number[36].’

The moment that the hornwork had fallen into the power of the British, the heavy guns of the Napoleon battery opened such an appalling fire upon it, that the troops had to be withdrawn, save 300 men, who with some difficulty formed a lodgement in its interior, and a communication from its left front to the ‘dead ground’ on the north-west side of the hill, by which reliefs could enter under cover.

The whole of the next day (September 20) the garrison kept up such a searching fire upon the work that little could be done there, but on the following night the first battery of the besiegers [battery 1 on the map] was begun on a spot on the south-western side of the hill, a little way from the rear face of the hornwork, which was sheltered by an inequality of the ground from the guns of the Napoleon battery. It was armed on the night of the 23rd with two of the 18-pounders and three of the howitzers of the siege-train, with which it was intended to batter the Castle in due time. They were not used however at present, as Wellington, encouraged by his success at San Miguel, had determined to try as a preliminary move a second escalade, without help of artillery, on the outer enceinte of the Castle. This was to prove the first, and not the least disheartening, of the checks that he was to meet before Burgos.

The point of attack selected was on the north-western side of the lower wall, at a place where it was some 23 feet high. The choice was determined by the existence of a hollow road coming out of the suburb of San Pedro, from which access in perfectly dead ground, unsearched by any of the French guns, could be got, to a point within 60 yards of the ditch. The assault was to be made by 400 volunteers from the three brigades of the 1st Division, and was to be supported and flanked by a separate attack on another point on the south side of the outer enceinte, to be delivered by a detachment of the caçadores of the 6th Division. The force used was certainly too small for the purpose required, and it did not even get a chance of success. The Portuguese, when issuing from the ruined houses of the town, were detected at once, and being heavily fired on, retired without even approaching their goal. At the main attack the ladder party and forlorn hope reached the ditch in their first rush, sprang in and planted four ladders against the wall. The enemy had been taken somewhat by surprise, but recovered himself before the supports got to the front, which they did in a straggling fashion. A heavy musketry fire was opened on the men in the ditch, and live shells were rolled by hand upon them. Several attempts were made to mount the ladders, but all who neared their top rungs were shot or bayoneted, and after the officer in charge of the assault (Major Laurie, 1/79th) had been killed, the stormers ran back to their cover in the hollow road. They had lost 158 officers and men in all—76 from the Guards’ brigade, 44 from the German brigade, 9 from the Line brigade of the 1st Division, while the ineffective Portuguese diversion had cost only 29 casualties. The French had 9 killed and 13 wounded.

This was a deplorable business from every point of view. An escalade directed against an intact line of defence, held by a strong garrison, whose morale had not been shaken by any previous artillery preparation, was unjustifiable. There was not, as at Almaraz, any element of surprise involved; nor, as at the taking of the Castle of Badajoz, were a great number of stormers employed. Four hundred men with five ladders could not hope to force a well-built wall and ditch, defended by an enemy as numerous as themselves. The men murmured that they had been sent on an impossible task; and the heavy loss, added to that on San Miguel three days before, was discouraging. Many angry comments were made on the behaviour of the Portuguese on both occasions[37].

Irregular methods having failed, it remained to see what could be done by more formal procedure, by battering and sapping up towards the enemy’s defences on the west side of the Castle, the only one accessible for approach by parallels and trenches. The plan adopted was to work up from the hollow road (from which the stormers had started on the last escalade) in front of the suburb of San Pedro. The hollow road was utilized as a first parallel; from it a flying sap (b on the map) was pushed out uphill towards the outer enceinte in a diagonal line. The object was to arrive at it and to mine it (at the place marked I on the map). When the working party had got well forward, a point was chosen in the sap at a distance of 60 feet from the wall, and the mine was started from thence. All this was done under very heavy fire from the Castle, but it was partly kept down by placing marksmen all along the parallel, who picked off many of the French gunners, and of the infantry who lined the parapet of the outer enceinte. Sometimes the return fire of the place was nearly silenced, but many of the British marksmen fell. The work in the flying sap was made very costly by the fact that the trench, being on very steep ground, had to be made abnormally deep [September 23-6].

Meanwhile, on the hill of San Miguel, a second battery (No. 2 on the map) was dug out behind the gorge of the dismantled hornwork, and trenches for musketry (a.a on the map) were constructed on the slope of the hill, so as to bring fire to bear on the flank and rear of the lower defences of the Castle. The French heavy guns of the Napoleon battery devoted themselves to incommoding this work; their fire was accurate, many casualties took place, and occasionally all advance had to cease. A deep trench of communication between the batteries on San Miguel and the attack in front of San Pedro was also started, in order to link up the two approaches by a short line: the ground was all commanded by the Castle, and the digging went slowly because of the intense fire directed on it.

Meanwhile battery No. 1 on San Miguel at last came into operation, firing with five howitzers (the 18-pounders originally placed there had been withdrawn) against the palisades and flank of the north-western angle of the outer enceinte of the Castle. These inefficient guns had no good effect; it was found that they shot so inaccurately and so weakly that little harm was done. After firing 141 rounds they stopped, it being evident that the damage done was wholly incommensurate with the powder and shot expended [September 25]. This first interference of the British artillery in the contest was not very cheering either to the troops, or to the engineers engaged in planning the attack on the Castle. The guns in battery 1 kept silence for the next five days, while battery 2, where the 18-pounders had now been placed, had never yet fired a single shot. Wellington was now staking his luck on the mine, which was being run forward from the head of the flying sap.

This work, having to be cut very deep, as it was to go right under the ditch, and being in the hands of untrained volunteers from the infantry, who had no proper cutting tools, advanced very slowly. The soil, fortunately, was favourable, being a stiff argillaceous clay which showed no disposition to crumble up: the gallery was cut as if in stone, with even and perpendicular sides and floor, and no props or timbering were found necessary. The main hindrance to rapid work, over and above the unskilfulness of the miners, was the foul air which accumulated at the farther end of the excavation: many times it was necessary to withdraw the men for some hours to allow it to clear away. At noon on September 29 the miners declared that they had reached the foundations of the wall, and this seemed correct enough, for they had come to a course of large rough blocks of stone, extending laterally for as far as could be probed. It is probable, however, that the masonry was really the remains of some old advanced turret or outwork, projecting in front of the modern enceinte. For when the end of the mine was packed with twelve barrels, containing 90 lb. of powder each, well tamped, and fired at midnight, the explosion brought down many stones from the front of the wall, but did not affect the earth of the rampart, which remained standing perpendicular behind it. There seemed, however, to be places, at the points where the broken facing joined the intact part of the wall, where men might scramble up. Accordingly the storming-column of 300 volunteers who had been waiting for the explosion, was let loose, under cover of a strong musketry fire from the trenches. A sergeant and four men went straight for one of the accessible points, mounted, and were cast down again, three of them wounded. But the main body of the forlorn hope and its officer went a little farther along the wall, reached a section that was wholly impracticable for climbing, and ran back to the trenches to report that the defences were uninjured. The supports followed their example. The loss, therefore, was small—only 29 killed and wounded—but the moral effect of the repulse was very bad. The men, for the most part, made up their minds that they had been sent to a hopeless and impossible task by the errors of an incompetent staff. The engineers declared that the stormers had not done their best, or made any serious attempt to approach the wall.

Wellington must by now have been growing much disquieted about the event of the siege. He had spent ten days before Burgos, but since the capture of the hornwork on the first night had accomplished absolutely nothing. There were rumours that the Army of Portugal was being heavily reinforced, and these were perfectly true. By the coming up from the rear of drafts, convalescents, and stragglers, it had received some 7,000 men of reinforcements, and by October 1 had 38,000 men with the colours—more than Wellington counted, even including the Galicians. Souham was now in command: he had been on leave in France at the time of the battle of Salamanca, but returned in the last days of September and superseded Clausel. There had been in August some intention of sending Masséna back to the Peninsula, to replace the disabled Marmont. Clarke, the Minister of War, dispatched him to Bayonne on his own responsibility, there being no time to consult Napoleon, who was now nearing Moscow[38]. When the Emperor had the question put to him he nominated Reille[39], but by the time that his order got to Spain Souham was in full charge of the army, and was not displaced till the campaign was over. Masséna never crossed the frontier to relieve him, reporting himself indisposed, and unable to face the toils of a campaign: his nomination by Clarke was never confirmed, and he presently returned to Paris. Hearing of the gathering strength of the Army of Portugal, Wellington remarked that he was lucky—the French were giving him more time than he had any right to expect[40] to deal with Burgos. Meanwhile he showed no intention, as yet, either of abandoning the siege or of taking back to Madrid the main part of his army, as he had repeatedly promised to do in his letters of early September. Soult and the King were not yet showing in any dangerous combination on the Valencian side, and till they moved Wellington made up his mind to persevere in his unlucky siege. It is clear that he hated to admit a failure, so long as any chance remained, and that he was set on showing that he could ‘make bricks without straw.’

The mine explosion of the 29th-30th had been a disheartening affair; but Wellington had now resolved to repeat this form of attack, aiding it however this time by the fire of his insignificant siege-train. A second mine had already been begun, against a point of the outer enceinte (II in the map) somewhat to the south of that originally attacked by the first. This was pushed with energy between September 30 and October 4; but at the same time an endeavour was made to utilize, for what it was worth, the direct fire of artillery, at the shortest possible distance from the walls. On the night of September 30-October 1 a battery for three guns (No. 3 in the map) was commenced, slightly in advance of the 1st Parallel in the Hollow Road, no more than some sixty-five yards from the French defences. The garrison, not having been troubled with any battery-building on this front before, suspected nothing, and at dawn on October 1 the earthwork was completed, and the carpenters were beginning to lay the wooden platforms on which the 18-pounders were to stand. With the coming of the light the enemy discovered the new and threatening work, and began to concentrate upon it every gun that he could bring to bear. The platforms however were completed, and at 9 o’clock the artillery hauled the three heavy guns, which were Wellington’s sole effective battering-tools, into their places. The sight of them provoked the French to redoubled activity: shot shell and musketry fire were directed upon the front of the battery from many quarters, its parapet began to fly to pieces, and the loss among the artillerymen was heavy. Before the embrasures had been opened, or a single shot had been fired from the three guns, the enemy’s fire had become so rapid and accurate that the work had become ruined and untenable. Two of the 18-pounders had been cast down from their carriages and put out of action—one had a trunnion knocked off, the other (which had been hit eleven times) was split in the muzzle. Only one of the three remained in working order. Without having fired even once, two of the three big guns were disabled! It was a bad look out for the future [October 1].

Wellington, however, ordered a second battery to be constructed, somewhat to the left rear of the first (No. 4 in the map), and behind instead of before the parallel. The position chosen was one on to which many of the French guns could not be trained, while it was equally good with battery No. 3 for playing on the outer enceinte. After midnight [October 1-2] the two disabled and one intact 18-pounders were dragged out of the abandoned battery and taken to the rear. Next morning, however, a new disappointment was in store for Wellington: the French detected battery No. 4, and opened upon it, with all guns that could reach it, such an accurate and effective fire that the parapet, though revetted with wool-packs, soon began to crumble, and the workmen had to withdraw. ‘It became evident that under such a plunging fire no guns could ever be served there[41].’ All hopes of breaching the lower enceinte from any point on its immediate front had to be abandoned—and meanwhile the heavy artillery had been ruined.

The next order issued was that the solitary intact 18-pounder and the other gun with the split lip—which had been mounted on a new carriage—should be hauled back to the hill of San Miguel and put into their original place, battery No. 1. The night during which they were to be removed was one of torrential rain, and the working parties charged with the duty gradually dropped aside and sought shelter, with the exception of those detailed from the Guards’ brigade and the artillery. At dawn on October 3 the guns had not reached their destination, and had to be shunted beside the salient of the hornwork, to hide them from the enemy during the day. Wellington, justly vexed with the shirking, ordered the defaulters to be put on for extra duty, and the names of their officers to be formally noted. This day was lost for all work except that of the mine, which advanced steadily but slowly, long intervals of rest having to be given in order to allow for the evaporation of foul air in its inner depths (October 3). On the following night, however, the 18-pounders were got into battery No. 1, and about the same time the engineer officers reported that the mine (now eighty-three feet long) had got well under the wall of the outer enceinte. The 4th of October was therefore destined to be an eventful day.

At dawn, battery No. 1 opened on the wall, where it had been damaged by the first mine on September 29th, using the two 18-pounders and three howitzers. The effect was much better than could have been expected: the 18 lb. round-shot (of which about 350 were used) had good penetrating power, and the already shaken wall crumbled rapidly, so that by four in the afternoon there was a practicable breach sixty feet long.

Wellington at once arranged for a third assault on the outer enceinte, telling off for it not details from many regiments, as on the previous occasion, but—what was much better—a single compact battalion, the 2/24th. Only the supports were mixed parties. At 5 p.m. the mine was fired, with excellent effect, throwing down nearly 100 feet of the rampart, and killing many of the French. Before the dust had cleared away, the men of the 2/24th dashed forward toward both breaches, with great spirit, and carried them with ease, and with no excessive loss, driving the French within the second or middle enceinte. The total loss that day was 224, of which the assault cost about 190, the other casualties being in the batteries on San Miguel and in the trenches. But the curious point of the figures is that the 2/24th, forming the actual storming-column, lost only 68 killed and wounded; the supports, and the workmen who were employed to form a lodgement within the conquered space, suffered far more heavily. Dubreton reports the casualties of the garrison at 27 killed and 42 wounded [October 4].

In the night after the storm the British, after entrenching the two breaches, began to make preparations to sap forward to the second enceinte, which being ditchless and not faced with masonry, looked less formidable than that which had already been carried, though it was protected by a solid row of palisades. Meanwhile the artillery officers proposed that battery No. 2 on San Miguel should be turned against a new objective, the point where the walls of the second and the inner lines met, immediately in front of the hornwork, in the re-entering angle marked III in the map. Battery No. 1 was meanwhile to play on the palisades of the second enceinte. This it did with some success. At 5 o’clock in the evening, however, there was an unexpected tumult in the newly-gained ground. Dubreton, misliking the look of the approaches which the assailants were beginning to run out from the breaches, ordered a sortie of 300 men, who dashed out most unexpectedly against the lodgements in front of the northern breach (No. I), and drove away the workmen with heavy loss, seizing most of their tools, overthrowing the gabions, and shovelling earth into the trench. They gave way when the covering party came up, and retired, having done immense mischief and disabled 142 of the besiegers, while their own loss was only 17 killed and 21 wounded. This was an unpleasant surprise, as showing the high spirit and resolution of the garrison; but the damage was not so great but that one good night’s work sufficed to repair it: the loss of tools was the most serious matter—the French had carried off 200 picks and shovels which could not be replaced, the stock (as usual in Peninsular sieges) being very low[42].

On the 6th and 7th the besiegers again began to sap forward towards the second enceinte, with the object of establishing a second parallel on its glacis, but with no great success. There was little or no effective fire from the batteries on San Miguel to keep down the artillery of the besieged, and the work at the sap-head was so deadly that the engineers could hardly expect the men to do much: however, the trench was driven forward to within thirty yards of the palisades. So useless were the howitzers in No. 2 battery that two of them were removed, and replaced by two French field-pieces from those captured in the hornwork on September 20; these, despite of their small calibre, worked decidedly better. The heavy guns in the Napoleon Battery devoted themselves to keeping down the fire of the two surviving 18-pounders in battery No. 2, and on the 7th knocked one from its carriage and broke off one of its trunnions. This left only one heavy piece in working order! But the artisans of the artillery park, doing their best, rigged up both the gun injured on this day and that disabled on October 1 upon block carriages, with a sort of cradle arrangement to hold them up on the side where a trunnion was gone; and it was found that they could be fired, if a very reduced charge was used. When anything like the full amount of powder was employed, they jumped off their carriages, as was natural, considering that they were only properly attached to them on one side. Of course, their battering power was hopelessly reduced by the small charge. The artillery diarists of the siege call them ‘the two lame guns’ during the last fortnight of their employment.

On October 8 Dubreton, growing once more anxious at the sight of the advance of the trenches toward the second enceinte, ordered another sally, which was executed by 400 men three hours after midnight. It was almost as successful as that of October 5. The working party of Pack’s Portuguese and the covering party from the K.G.L. brigade of the 1st Division were taken quite unawares, and driven out of the advanced works with very heavy loss. The trench was completely levelled, and many tools carried away, before the supports in reserve, under Somers Cocks of the 1/79th—the hero of the assault on the Hornwork—came up and drove the French back to their palisades. Cocks himself was killed—he was an officer of the highest promise who would have gone far if fate had spared him, and was the centre of a large circle of friends who have left enthusiastic appreciations of his greatness of spirit and ready wit[43]. The besiegers lost 184 men in this unhappy business, of whom 133 belonged to the German Legion: 18 of them were prisoners carried off into the Castle[44]. The French casualties were no more than 11 killed and 22 wounded—only a sixth part of those of the Allies.

We have now (October 8) arrived at the most depressing part of the chronicle of a siege which had been from the first a series of disappointments. After the storm of the lower enceinte on October 4, the British made no further progress. The main cause of failure was undoubtedly the weakness of their artillery, which repeatedly opened again from one or other of the two San Miguel batteries, only to be silenced after an hour or two of conflict with the heavy guns on the Donjon. But it was not only the small number of the 18-pounders which was fatal to success—they had run out of powder and shot; a great deal of the firing was done with second-hand missiles—French 16 lb. shot picked out of the works into which they had fallen. The infantry were offered a bonus for each one brought to the artillery park, and 426 were paid for. More than 2,000 French 8 lb. and 4 lb. shot were also bought from the men, though these were less useful, being only available for field-guns, which were of little use for battering. But in order not to discourage the hunting propensities of the soldiers, everything brought in was duly purchased. Shot of sorts never wholly failed, but lack of powder was a far more serious problem—it cannot be picked up second-hand. There would have been an absolute deficiency but for a stock got from a most unexpected quarter. Sir Home Popham and his ships were still on the Cantabrian coast, assisting the operations of Longa and Mendizabal against the Army of the North. The squadron had made its head-quarters at Santander, the chief port recovered from the French, and communications with it had been opened up through the mountains by the way of Reynosa. On September 26 Wellington had written to Popham[45] to inquire whether powder could not be brought from Santander to Burgos, by means of mule trains to be hired at the port. The Commodore, always helpful, fell in with the idea at once, and succeeded in procuring the mules. On October 5th 40 barrels of 90 lb. weight each were brought into camp: considering the distance, the badness of the roads, and the disturbed state of the country, it cannot be denied that Popham did very well in delivering it only ten days after Wellington had written his request, and eight days after he had received it. Other convoys from Santander came later. It is a pity that Wellington did not think of asking for heavy ship guns at the same time. But he had written to the Commodore on October 2 that ‘the means of transport required to move a train either from the coast or from Madrid (where we have plenty) are so extensive that the attempt would be impracticable[46].’

The idea of requisitioning ship guns had been started on the very first day of the siege (September 20) by Sir Howard Douglas, who had lately come from Popham’s side, and maintained that by the use of draught oxen, supplemented by man-handling in difficult places, the thing could be done. But Wellington would hear nothing of it, maintaining that matters would be settled one way or another before the guns could possibly arrive. After the disaster to batteries 3 and 4 on October 2nd he—too late—altered his opinion, and consented that an appeal should be made to Popham. The Commodore rose to the occasion, and started off two 24-pounders on October 9th, which by immense exertions were dragged as far as Reynosa, only 50 miles from Burgos, by October 18th, and had passed the worst part of the road. But at Reynosa they were turned back, for Wellington was just raising the siege and preparing to retire on Valladolid. It is clear that if they had been asked for on September 20 instead of October 3rd—as Howard Douglas had suggested—they and no doubt another heavy gun or so, could have been brought forward in time for the last bombardment, and might have turned it into a success. But guns might also have come from Madrid: Wellington did not think it wholly impossible to move artillery from the Retiro arsenal. For, ere he left it on August 31, he had instructed Carlos de España that the best guns there should be evacuated on to Ciudad Rodrigo, if ever Soult and King Joseph should draw too close in[47]. It is true that he observed that the transport would be a difficult matter, and that much would have to be destroyed, and not carried off. But it is clear that he thought that some cannon could be moved. The strangest part of the story is that his own brother-in-law, Pakenham, wrote to him from Madrid offering to send him twelve heavy guns over the Somosierra, pledging himself to manage the transport by means of oxen got in the Madrid district. His offer was rejected[48]. It seems that the conviction that the Castle of Burgos would be a hard nut to crack came too late to Wellington. And when he did realize its strength, he did not reconsider the matter of siege artillery at once, but proceeded to try the methods of Badajoz and Almaraz, mere force majeure applied by escalade, instead of thinking of bringing up more guns. He judged—wrongly as it chanced—that he would either take the place by sheer assault, or else that the French field army would interfere before October was far advanced. Neither hypothesis turned out correct, and so he had the opportunity of a full month’s siege, and failed in it for want of means that might have been procured, if only he had made another resolve on August 31st, or even on September 20. But even the greatest generals cannot be infallible prophets concerning what they will require a month ahead. The mistake is explicable, and the critic who censures it over-much would be presumptuous and unreasonable[49].

But to return to the chronicle of the unlucky days between October 8th and October 21st. The working forward by sap from the third enceinte towards the second practically stood still, after the second destructive sally of the French against the new approaches. This is largely accounted for by the steepness of the ground, which made it necessary to dig trenches of extraordinary depth, and by the setting in after October 7 of very rainy weather, which made the trenches muddy rivers, and the steep banks of earth and breaches so slippery that it was with great difficulty that parties could find their way about and move to their posts[50]. But the unchecked power of the French artillery fire counted for even more, and not least of the hindrances was the growing sulkiness of the troops. ‘Siege business was new to them, and they wanted confidence; sometimes they would tell you that you were taking them to be butchered. The loss, to be sure, was sometimes heavy, but it was chiefly occasioned by the confused and spiritless way in which the men set about their work, added to the great depth we were obliged to excavate in the trenches, to obtain cover from the commanding fire of the enemy[51].’

Meanwhile the batteries on San Miguel, when they had ammunition, and when they could put in a few hours’ work before being silenced by the fire from the Donjon, continued to pound away at the re-entering angle in the second enceinte (III in the map), and with more effect than might have been expected, for this section of the defences turned out to have been built with bad material, and crumbled even under such feeble shooting as that of Wellington’s ‘lame’ 18-pounders. The French on several days had first to silence the English battery, and then to rebuild the wall with sandbags and earth under a musketry fire from the trenches (a-a in the map) upon San Miguel, from which they could not drive the sharp-shooters of the besiegers. It was thought later—an ex post facto judgement—that the best chance of the Allies would have been to attempt a storm on this breach when first it became more or less practicable. The delay enabled the besieged to execute repairs, to scarp down the broken front, and to cut off the damaged corner by interior retrenchments.

Meanwhile, since doubts were felt as to the main operation of storming the new breach, No. III, subsidiary efforts were made to incommode the enemy in other ways. At intervals on the 9th, 10th, and 11th red-hot shot were fired at the church of Santa Maria la Blanca, where it was known that the French magazine of food lay. The experience of the Salamanca forts had led the artillery officers to think that a general conflagration might be caused. But the plan had no success; the building proved to be very incombustible, and one or two small fires which burst out were easily extinguished. Another device was to mine out from the end houses of the city towards the church of San Roman, an isolated structure lying close under the south-east side of the Castle, which the French held as an outwork. Nothing very decisive could be hoped from its capture, as if taken it could only serve as a base for operations against the two enceintes above it[52]. But, as an eye-witness remarked, at this period of the siege any sort of irregular scheme was tried, on the off chance of success. By October 17 the mine had got well under the little church. A more feasible plan, which might have done some good if it had succeeded, was to run out a small mine or fougasse from the sap-head of the trench in front of breach I to the palisades of the second enceinte. It was a petty business, no more than two barrels of powder being used, and only slightly damaged an angle of the work in front when fired on October 17. An attempt to push on the sap after the explosion was frustrated by the musketry fire of the besieged.

On the 18th the engineers reported that the church of San Roman was completely undermined, and could be blown up at any moment. On the same morning the one good and two lame 18-pounders in battery 2 on San Miguel swept away, not for the first time, the sandbag parapets and chevaux de frise with which the French had strengthened the breach III. They were then turned against the third enceinte, immediately behind that breach, partly demolished its ‘fraises,’ and even did some damage to its rampart. This was as much as could have been expected, as the whole of the enemy’s guns were, as usual, turned upon the battering-guns, and presently obtained the mastery over them, blowing up an expense-magazine in No. 2, and injuring a gun in No. 1. But in the afternoon the defences were in a more battered condition than usual, and Wellington resolved to make his last attempt. Already the French army outside was showing signs of activity; and, as a precaution, some of the investing troops—two brigades of the 6th Division—had been sent forward to join the covering army. If this assault failed, the siege would have to be given up, or at the best turned into a blockade.

The plan of the assault was drawn up by Wellington himself, who dictated the details to his military secretary, Fitzroy Somerset, in three successive sections, after inspecting from the nearest possible point each of the three fronts which he intended to attack[53].

Stated shortly the plan was as follows:

(1) At 4.30 the mine at San Roman was to be fired, and the ruins of the church seized by Brown’s caçadores (9th battalion), supported by a Spanish regiment (1st of Asturias) lent by Castaños. A brigade of the 6th Division was to be ready in the streets behind, to support the assault, if its effect looked promising, i.e. if the results of the explosion should injure the enceinte behind, or should so drive the enemy from it that an escalade became possible.

(2) The detachments of the Guards’ brigade of the 1st Division, who were that day in charge of the trenches within the captured outer enceinte, and facing the west front of the second enceinte, were to make an attempt to escalade that line of defence, at the point where most of its palisades had been destroyed, opposite and above the original breach No. I in the lower enceinte.

(3) The detachments of the German brigade of the 1st Division, who were to take charge of the trenches for the evening in succession to the Guards, were to attempt to storm the breach III in the re-entering angle, the only point where there was an actual opening prepared into the inner defences.

From all the works, both those on St. Miguel and those to the west of the Castle, marksmen left in the trenches were to keep up as hot a musketry fire as possible on any of the enemy who should show themselves, so as to distract their attention from the stormers.

The most notable point in these instructions was the small number of men devoted to the two serious attacks. Provision was made for the use of 300 men only in the attack to be made by the Guards: they were to move forward in successive rushes—the first or forlorn hope consisting of an officer and twenty men, the supports or main assaulting force, of small parties of 40 or 50 men, each of which was to come forward only when the one in front of it had reached a given point in its advance. Similarly the German Legion’s assault was to be led by a forlorn hope of 20, supported by 50 more, who were only to move when their predecessors had reached the lip of the breach, and by a reserve of 200 who were to charge out of the trench only when the support was well established on the rampart.

Burgoyne, the senior engineer present, tells us that he protested all through the siege, at each successive assault, against the paucity of the numbers employed, saying that the forlorn hope had, in fact, to take the work by itself, since they had no close and strong column in immediate support; and if the forlorn hope failed, ‘the next party, who from behind their cover have seen them bayoneted, are expected to valiantly jump up and proceed to be served in the same way.’ He reminded Wellington, as he says, that the garrison at Burgos was as large as that at Ciudad Rodrigo, where two whole divisions instead of 500 or 600 men had been thrown into the assault. The Commander-in-Chief, condescending to argument for once, replied, ‘why expose more men than can ascend the ladders [as at the Guards’ attack] or enter the work [as at the breach in the K.G.L. attack] at one time, when by this mode the support is ordered to be up in time to follow the tail of the preceding party[54]?’ And his objection to the engineer’s plea was clinched by the dictum, ‘if we fail we can’t lose many men.’ This controversy originally arose on the details of the abortive storm of September 22, but Burgoyne’s criticism was even more convincing for the details of the final assault on October 18. The number of men risked was far too small for the task that was set them.

The melancholy story of the storm runs as follows. On the explosion of the mine at San Roman, punctually at 4.30, all three of the sections of the assault were duly delivered. At the breach the forlorn hope of the King’s German Legion charged at the rough slope with great speed, reached the crest, and were immediately joined by the support, led most gallantly by Major Wurmb of the 5th Line Battalion. The first rush cleared a considerable length of the rampart of its defenders, till it was checked against a stockade, part of the works which the French had built to cut off the breach from the main body of the place. Foiled here, on the flank, some of the Germans turned, and made a dash at the injured rampart of the third line, in their immediate front: three or four actually reached the parapet of this inmost defence of the enemy. But they fell, and the main body, penned in the narrow space between the two enceintes, became exposed to such an overpowering fire of musketry that, after losing nearly one man in three, they finally had to give way, and retired most reluctantly down the breach to the trenches they had left. The casualties out of 300 men engaged were no less than 82 killed and wounded[55], among the former, Wurmb, who had led the assault, and among the latter, Hesse, who commanded the forlorn hope, and was one of the few who scaled the inner wall as well as the outer.

The Guards in their attack, 100 yards to the right of the breach, had an even harder task than the Germans, for their storm was a mere escalade. It was executed with great decision: issuing from the front trench they ran up to the line of broken palisades, passed through gaps in it, and applied their ladders to the face of the rampart of the second enceinte. Many of them succeeded in mounting, and they established themselves successfully on the parapet, and seized a long stretch of it, so long that some of their left-hand men got into touch with the Germans who had entered at the breach. But they could not clear the enemy out of the terre-pleine of the second enceinte, where a solid body of the French kept up a rolling fire upon them, while the garrison of the upper line maintained a still fiercer fusillade from their high-lying point of vantage. The Guards were for about ten minutes within the wall, and made several attempts to get forward without success. At the end of that time a French reserve advanced from their left, and charging in flank the disordered mass within the enceinte drove them out again. The Guards retired as best they could to the advanced trenches, having lost 85 officers and men out of the 300 engaged. The French returned their casualties at 11 killed and 30 wounded.

Wellington’s dispatch, narrating the disaster, gives the most handsome testimonial to the resolution of both the bodies of stormers. ‘It is impossible to represent in adequate terms the conduct of the Guards and the German Legion upon this occasion. And I am quite satisfied that if it had been possible to maintain the posts which they gained with so much gallantry, these troops would have maintained them[56].’ But why were 600 men only sent forward, and no support given them during the precious ten minutes when their first rush had carried them within the walls? Where were the brigades to which the stormers belonged? It is impossible not to subscribe to Burgoyne’s angry comment that ‘the miserable, doubting, unmilitary policy of small storming-parties’ caused the mischief[57]. He adds, ‘large bodies encourage one another, and carry with them confidence of success: if the Castle of Badajoz was stormed with ten or twelve ladders, and not more than 40 or 50 men could mount at once, I am convinced that it was only carried because the whole 3rd Division was there, and the emulation between the officers of the different regiments got their men to mount; although we lost 600 or 700 men, it caused success—which eventually saves men.’

The third section of the assault of October 18, the unimportant attack on the church of San Roman, had a certain measure of success. The mine, though it did not level the whole building, as had been hoped, blew up the terrace in front of, and part of its west end. Thereupon the French evacuated it, after exploding a mine of their own which brought down the bell-tower and much more, and crushed a few of the caçadores and Spaniards[58] who were ahead of their comrades. The besiegers were able to lodge themselves in the ruins, but could make no attempt to approach the actual walls of the second enceinte. So the 6th Division remained behind, within the streets of Burgos, and never came forward or showed themselves.

Such was the unhappy end of this most unlucky siege. All through the day of the assault there had been heavy skirmishing going on at the outposts of the covering army; Souham was at last on the move. On the 19th the Guards’ brigade and the K.G.L. brigade of the 1st Division marched to join the 5th and 7th Divisions at the front, leaving only the line brigade (Stirling’s) to hold the trenches on the north and west sides of the Castle. Two-thirds of the 6th Division had already gone off in the same direction before the storm: now the rest followed, handing over the charge of Burgos city and the chain of picquets on the east side of the Castle to Pack’s Portuguese. There was little doing in the lines this day—the French built up the oft-destroyed parapet of breach III with sandbags, and made an incursion into the church of San Roman, driving out the Portuguese guard for a short time, and injuring the lodgement which had been made in the ruins. But they withdrew when the supports came up.

On the 20th, news being serious at the front—for Souham showed signs of intending to attack in force, and it was ascertained that he had been reinforced by great part of the Army of the North, under Caffarelli in person—Wellington gave orders to withdraw the guns from the batteries, leaving only two of the captured French pieces to fire an occasional shot. All transportable stores and ammunition were ordered to be loaded up. There was some bickering in San Roman this day, but at night the Portuguese were again in possession of the much-battered church.

On the 21st came the final orders for retreat. The artillery were directed to burn all that could not be carried off—platforms, fascines, &c.—to blow up the works on San Miguel, and to retire down the high-road to Valladolid. The three 18-pounders were taken a few miles only. The roads being bad from heavy rain, and the bullocks weak, it was held that there was no profit in dragging about the two guns which had lost trunnions and were practically useless. The surviving intact gun shared the fate of its two ‘lame’ fellows: all three were wrecked[59], their carriages were destroyed, and they were thrown out on the side of the road. The artillery reserve, now reduced to the five ineffective 24-lb. howitzers, then continued its retreat.