The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes (29 page)

As they approached the walls illuminated by the moon, some could see the French defenders looking down on them. The British batteries had maintained a fire of blank rounds, trying to lull Phillipon's men into a false sense of security. But they were not deceived in any way. They were just waiting for the stormers to enter their killing ground.

When the first men mounted the
fausse braie,
barrels of burning tar came bouncing down from the ramparts. Their targets thus illuminated, the defenders unleashed a storm of bullets onto them. Rifleman Costello of the 95th was one of a team burdened with scaling steps:

With each flash and bang a ghastly new sight of decapitation or evisceration came briefly into view. As the stormers fell into the ditch between the
fausse braie
and the walls, many were hurt and lay helpless as others came piling down on top of them. Rifleman Costello lay under a bank of bodies while “the fire continued to blaze over me in all its horrors, accompanied by screams, groans, and shouts, the crashing of stones and the falling of timbers. For the first time in many years I uttered something like a prayer.”

With two bits of shrapnel in his knee and a musket ball lodged in his side, Sergeant Lawrence was also down in the trench. “On the cry of ‘come on my lads!' from our commanders, we hastened to the breach.” Lawrence scambled up the smashed section of wall only to find the immovable array of blades and spikes on top and spy the further ditch the defenders had dug behind this broken wall. “The
cheval de frise
was a fearful obstacle and although attempts were made to remove it—my left hand was dreadfully cut by one of the blades—we had no success.”

The attack was faltering and hundreds of men were dying in the ditch in front of the breaches. While Wellington watched the scene from atop the San Miguel ridge a few hundred yards away, his boyish ADC Lord March was beside him, as was Sir James McGrigor, the army's surgeon. Scovell and other staff officers were scurrying about in the darkness trying to collect reports on the progress of the different columns. Wellington stared grim-faced into the night, wracked with worry as he tried to catch sight of what was happening in the brief glare produced by one explosion after another.

Faint from loss of blood, Sergeant Lawrence staggered out of the trench and back toward the surgeons. His mates were both dead: Pig Harding had been riddled with seven musket balls and George Bowden had both his legs blown off. Lawrence had forsaken any idea of plundering the silversmiths; he was just trying to find some help before he bled to death. Stumbling up the San Miguel ridge, he walked straight into Wellington and his two staff. “He enquired whether any of our troops had got into the town,” Lawrence recalled later. “I told him no
and that I did not think they ever would because of the
cheval de frise,
the deep entrenchment and the constant and murderous fire of the enemy behind them.”

As further news arrived from the breaches, it became clear that the men were losing any hope of breaking in to Badajoz. This moment, one of the greatest crises of Wellington's life as a general, was memorably recorded by Sir James McGrigor:

At midnight, two hours after the dreadful business had begun, Wellington sent orders for the 4th and Light Divisions to be recalled. Only Picton could now save the affair. Wellington did not know it yet, but Picton had already started on his own initiative to try to escalade the old medieval wall on the eastern side of Badajoz. Wellington sent McGrigor forward to tell the fiery Welsh general that his attack might be their last hope. But before the surgeon had traveled far, news came that Picton's men were already successfully climbing their long ladders and getting into the fortress. Phillipon could not defend every possible point against attack, and indeed at the other end of the fortress, its western point close to the Guadiana, a column of the 5th Division, intending only to deliver a diversionary attack, was also pressing home its unexpected success.

After hours of mayhem Rifleman Costello, still lying in the ditch in front of the great breach, heard “a cry of ‘Blood and ‘ounds! Where's the
Light Division? The town's ours, hurrah!' It was, no doubt, from some of the 3rd Division.” Costello struggled out of the killing ground and found his way into Badajoz, where gangs of soldiers had already begun breaking into houses, smashing them up in search of hidden money or drink and beating any Spaniards who stood in their way. “It has to be considered that men who besiege a town in the face of such dangers generally become desperate from their own privations and sufferings,” Costello wrote later of the events during the early hours of 7 April. “Once they get a footing within its walls, they are flushed by victory. Hurried on by the desire for liquor and eventually maddened by drink, they will stop at nothing.”

This rioting soon turned to murder and rape and the British officers who tried to restrain their men were among the dead. Major FitzRoy Somerset, Wellington's young military secretary, fought his way through the rampaging mob to save General Phillipon and his daughters. One eyewitness saw:

It would take many hours before the situation could be brought under control, requiring the hanging of several soldiers in the town's main square to serve as an example. William Warre wrote wearily in a letter home: “It was almost impossible to restrain the avarice and licentiousness of the soldiery, which so greatly sullies the brilliancy of their conduct and victory … it is also prudent to hold our tongues and shut our eyes on miseries it is out of our power to prevent, but must deeply feel.”

As Wellington surveyed the wreck of the town on the seventh, he
began to understand the scale of the butcher's bill he had paid for this victory. There had been forty-six hundred Allied casualties between the investment of the fortress on 17 March and that bleary April morning. More than eighteen hundred of these dead and wounded had belonged to the storming parties of the Light and 4th Divisions.

The official dispatch, as always with a public document, was full of praise for the conduct of the troops: “It is impossible that any expressions of mine can convey to your Lordship the sense which I entertain of the gallantry of the officers and troops on this occasion.” There was fulsome thanks to Picton, who was wounded in the fighting, and many other officers. Scovell's friends Somerset and Hardinge were both promoted lieutenant colonel for their parts in events, achieving this lofty step at twenty-three and twenty-seven years old respectively.

In his private correspondence, however, Wellington expressed great anguish and pain at what had happened at Badajoz. Attaching a confidential note to his victory dispatch, he told the secretary of war, “I anxiously hope that I will never again be the instrument of putting [my men] to such a test as that to which they were put last night.” He expressed dismay that the British army had no proper corps of engineers for carrying out such operations and that this had forced him to adopt many second-rate improvisations. The inability to demolish the
fausse braie
ramparts in front of the breach and pressure of time had placed him in an impossible position on 5 April: “I was obliged then to storm or give the business up, and when I ordered the assault I was certain that I should lose our best officers and men. It is a cruel situation for any person to be placed in.”

Many surviving soldiers and officers profited from the siege in the way they had hoped to, by pocketing cash and jewels or making off with church plate that they cashed in at a later date. Others got the promotions they so earnestly desired. For Scovell, there had been only one thought after the successful conclusion of this sanguinary affair. Bright and early on 8 April, he set off to see his beloved Mary in Lisbon.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
F
ROM
L
ISBON TO
F
UENTE
G
UINALDO,
A
PRIL TO
J
UNE
1812

W
alking through Lisbon with Mary on that bright spring morning, the hell of Badajoz slowly receded and the promised land of a two-week leave opened up before Scovell. For three years now he had ridden about Iberia, answering the whims of Wellington or the quarter master general, and doing it in double time, sir! For months at a time he had kept his portmanteau packed and his horses ready, and laid his head in a different place every night—usually without removing his clothes. He had endured mortal danger on at least half a dozen occasions and finally achieved his majority.

In Lisbon, he was enfolded in Mary's arms, lay with her between crisp sheets and ate the finest food. He had time to guide her through the narrow streets of the Bairro Alta, sharing his discoveries—the Sao Rocque church or the riot of color in the Chiado fruit market. When Mary tired, there were so many places to find refreshment. The Grotto was a favorite eating house for British travelers, down in the Largo de
Sao Paolo: there they could watch fashionable society drift by while tasting strawberries and delicately flavored sorbets and imbibing coffee or hot chocolate. Having accumulated a good deal of money during his campaigning, George could treat her to the finest.

What must Mary have made of him when she saw him after three years? Like most Iberian campaigners, wind and sun had weathered Scovell's face to a leathery tan. He was probably much thinner than when they had parted, too. His hair had also receded a little farther from his brow and his clothes must have shown every sign of wear and tear. Perhaps Scovell was tempted to blow some cash on a smart new uniform. Certainly the merchants of the city competed to sell their wares to men like him, one officer recalling a similar experience: “The streets of Lisbon glittered with uniforms; the shop windows of all the embroiderers furnished a grand display of military ornaments. The magazines of the gunsmiths and sword cutlers were constantly filled with customers.”

Scovell had the option of wearing the Mounted Guides' uniform, with an embroidered brown light cavalry jacket and handsome crested Tarleton helmet, or the new staff outfit. The latter consisted of a red coat with dark blue facings, rank being shown by embroidered white waves on the lapels and cuffs. It was topped off with a cocked hat, trimmed with a broad stripe of gold tape. This outfit was quite splendid, so much so that from a distance, it could easily be mistaken for a general's suit. That was all very well promenading down Horse Guards, but for officers on service it was a distinct liability: “I suppose our good chiefs do not think our Generals or Staff get killed off fast enough that they order them cocked hats with gold binding,” William Warre explained in a letter home. “It must only be meant for Wimbledon. There are no
Voltigeurs
[sharpshooters] there, and a gold laced cocked hat, though very ugly is a very harmless thing—not here.”

As the Scovells enjoyed the sights of Lisbon, headquarters was in motion again, moving back from Badajoz toward northern Portugal. Major Scovell's leave had only been possible because the main army would take a week or ten days to make its way back to its usual domain on the northern Portuguese frontier. But the commander of forces may well have rued giving even this short furlough to his assistant QMG, because in his absence the British suffered a significant intelligence setback.