The siege of Badajoz took place from March 16 to April 6, 1812, as part of the Spanish War of Independence. It opposes the Anglo-Portuguese army under the orders of the Duke of Wellington to the French garrison of Badajoz commanded by General Armand Philippon. The siege — one of the bloodiest of the Napoleonic Wars — is considered a costly victory by the British, with some 3,000 Allied soldiers killed in a few hours of heavy fighting in the final phase of the attack.
Context
After having taken the border towns of Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo during previous sieges, the Anglo-Portuguese army moved on Badajoz, a fortress-city erected on the left bank of the Guadiana river, in order to invest it in order to secure the lines of communication with Lisbon, the main base of operations for the Allied army.
State of play
Badajoz has a garrison of around 5,000 men under the command of French General Armand Philippon, military governor of the city, and has much more formidable fortifications than Almeida or Ciudad Rodrigo. With a strong wall covered by numerous fortified points and bastions, Badajoz had already withstood two successful siege attempts. It is well prepared to face a third attempt thanks to its reinforced walls, the creation of a lake to retain the waters of the Rivillas river, to the south-east, and the explosive mining of the glacis on its south-eastern flank. west.
The fortress has only one weak point:the San Miguel hill which rises to the southeast, on the other side of the artificial lake, where the Allies will first install their batteries. The French, who were aware of this, therefore built two outlying forts, Fort Picurina to the east on the side of the San Miguel hill, and the great Fort Pardaleras to the south.
The siege
Preparations
The allied army, 25,000 strong, outnumbered the French garrison by the ratio of five to one and, after the encirclement of the city, the siege began with the digging of trenches, "parallels" and earthworks. intended to protect the siege artillery. The earthworks are made difficult by torrential and prolonged rains. While the Allies are carrying out the earthworks, the French carry out several raids to destroy the approach trenches towards the wall, but are each time repelled by British snipers and line infantry. After the 18- and 24-pound heavy mortars had been emplaced, the Allies began an intense bombardment of the city's defences.
The outlying bastion Picurina is taken by the Redcoats of General Thomas Picton's 3rd Division, allowing the continuation of the siege earthworks and the extension of the trenches towards the high stone walls, while new British batteries quickly brought into the ruins of Picurina pound and nibble the masonry of the wall, from Easter Monday, March 30, to Saturday, April 4, 1812. On April 5, two breaches were made to the southeast in the wall — one in the Trinidad bastion and one in the Santa Maria and the Allied soldiers prepare to storm Badajoz. To curb it, the French garrison occupying the fortress mined the two breaches already opened in the walls before confronting the besiegers.
The order to attack was however deferred for 24 hours to allow the opening of a third breach, which the besieged would not have time to seal or undermine, by successfully pounding the curtain wall throughout the day of April 6. weakened joining the two bastions already started, which collapses at the beginning of the afternoon. The howitzers continue to bombard the three large breaches all afternoon to prevent the French from plugging them. Rumors circulated among the Allies that Marshal Soult's French troops were coming to help the besieged city:in an emergency, Wellington issued the order for an assault on Monday April 6, 1812 at 10 p.m.
The Assault
The light division, led by the soldiers of Forlorn Hope advanced into the breach of the Santa Maria bastion and the 4th division into the breach of the Trinidad bastion. The soldiers carry assault ladders and carry various siege utensils, large axes with long handles and sacks of hay to cushion the falls. The first men to storm will be those of Forlorn Hope, the next wave of assault being made up of the 4th Division and Craufurd's Light Infantry Division.
As a diversion from the massive attack in the breaches to the south-east, the climbing of the rocky outcrop of the castle (to the north) was entrusted to the 3rd division of General Thomas Picton and the climbing of the San Vincente bastion (to the northwest) to General James Leith's 5th Division. Just as the soldiers of Forlorn Hope are about to launch the attack, a French sentry spots the Allied soldiers and raises the alarm. In a short time, the ramparts fill up with French soldiers who come to pour a deadly hail of musketry on the troops at the base of the breach. The British and Portuguese rushed in massively and scaled the breaches, facing a deadly barrage of musket fire, throwing grenades, rocks, barrels of gunpowder primed with crude fuses and even flaming bales of hay that showed them to the besieged.
This furious barrage devastates the British ranks and the breach soon begins to fill with dead and wounded, through which the assault troops find it difficult to force their way. Despite the carnage, the Redcoats bravely continued to advance in large numbers, only to be cut down by musket balls and grapeshot. In just two hours, some 2,000 men were killed or seriously wounded in the main breach, while many men of the 3rd Division were shot down in the diversionary attack from the castle on the northern flank of the fortress. General Picton himself was injured as he climbed a ladder to reach the top of the wall. Soldiers attacking the breaches at the Santa Maria and Trinidad bastions were systematically repulsed, and the carnage was so great that Wellington considered recalling his troops.
Against all odds, the soldiers of the 3rd Division ended up being the first to reach the top of the castle wall and the men of the 5th Division managed to invest the San Vincente bastion a little later in the night. The soldiers of these two divisions progressed towards the interior of the city, joined forces and, overflowing from the rear the French defenders of the breaches, finally allowed the Allied attackers to reach the top of the scree slopes. From the moment they succeeded in gaining a foothold there, the Allies quickly benefited from their numerical superiority and completely invested the city. Seeing that they could no longer hold out, French General Armand Philippon and the survivors of the garrison abandoned Badajoz and fell back to the nearby fortress of San Cristobal, north of the city on the right bank (opposite bank) of the Guadiana River. They signed their surrender there on the morning of April 7, 1812.
Consequences
Once the investment of the fortress is completed, the looting of the city begins in total anarchy, when the Redcoats start drinking; it takes three days to get the troops back in hand. The sack of Badajoz, an act of wanton savagery, has been held up by many historians as an example of particularly atrocious conduct on the part of the British army. Many soldiers broke into homes, property was vandalized or stolen, Spanish citizens of all ages and walks of life were killed or raped, and a number of British officers were also shot by their own men trying to bring to reason.
At that time, it was customary to allow 24 hours of looting for victorious troops after storming a fortified town. However, this was contrary to the strict instructions of Wellington who, in allied countries, Portugal or Spain, required that his soldiers pay for everything they consumed and prohibited requisitions without payment made by the army quartermaster. However, there was a climate of distrust between the British and the Spaniards, following the questionable behavior of the Spanish officials vis-à-vis the British - see for example the results of the birth of Talavera and the battle of Barrosa - which which was not the case between the Portuguese and the British, who fought in perfect harmony. The assault had been so deadly that the officers did not dare in the first hours to curb the base instincts of their soldiers. Moreover, in the assault itself, most of the officers commanding the assault troops had been killed or wounded, leaving the soldiers to enter the city unsupervised. From the start of the war, in 1808, the French had carried out numerous sacks of towns, often attacking populations who had remained neutral in the conflict until then, thus creating a climate conducive to the emergence of the guerrilla.
At dawn on April 7, the horror of the massacre all around the wall could be measured. The bodies were piled high and the blood had flowed in whole streams in the trenches. When he saw the destruction and the scale of the massacre, Wellington wept bitterly and cursed the British Parliament for granting him so few resources and soldiers. The assault and preliminary engagements cost the Allies the knockout of some 4,800 men. The light division – an elite division – suffered badly, losing 40% of its workforce. But, with the siege over, Wellington can secure the border between Spain and Portugal and now march on Salamanca to meet Marshal Marmont.