Wellington: A Personal History. Christopher Hibbert

self-congratulation, reported to the Cabinet – was performed ‘in half the time’ he had told them it would take, and ‘in less than half that which the French spent in taking the same place from the Spaniards’.³¹ He did not, however, mention the scenes which had marred the success once the British soldiers entered the town. Many were soon incapably drunk and, firing at doors and windows in the square beneath the twelfth-century cathedral, they killed and wounded some of their comrades. Neither the oaths of Picton, in Wellington’s opinion ‘the most foul-mouthed fellow that ever lived’, nor the calls of trumpets nor yet the efforts of officers who hit the men over the head with the butt ends of broken muskets could restore order or prevent the pillaging of the joints of meat, loaves of bread, clothes and shoes which the men, marching out of the town the next morning, hung round their necks or carried on the points of their bayonets. Passing Picton they demanded a cheer. ‘Here then, you drunken set of brave rascals,’ he replied indulgently. ‘Hurrah! We’ll soon be at Badajoz!’³²

      There were many who were never to get to Badajoz. Over a thousand men had been killed or wounded; an uncertain number of deserters found hiding in the town were shot as they knelt beside their shared grave; General Craufurd, his spine shattered, anxious in his last moments to be reconciled to Wellington with whom he had had his differences, begged forgiveness for having sometimes been a croaker in the past, talking, so Wellington said, in puzzled sorrow, ‘as they do in a novel’, before dying after five days’ agony and being buried in the breaches through which his men had stormed.³³

18 Badajoz, Salamanca and Madrid

       1812

       ‘I assure you I actually could not help crying.’

      IN ENGLAND, Craufurd was mourned as a national hero. His brave death was recognized by votes of both Houses of Parliament; and monuments were erected to him and to Colonel Mackinnon in St Paul’s Cathedral.

      Wellington was highly honoured also. Over the past few months he and his army had been severely criticized. General Sir Banastre Tarleton, who had achieved fame as a ruthless cavalry commander in the American War, had been tireless in his sniping; the Whigs had been eager to seize upon any setback; Henry Brougham had been unable to hide his pleasure upon learning of the failure of the assault on Badajoz; Creevey had reported that Lord Wellington and the campaign in Portugal were now ‘out of fashion’ at court; and the Prince of Wales, who had become Prince Regent now that his father was considered incurably insane, had declined to discuss the matter. When someone had spoken of Wellington’s campaigns in the north of the Peninsula, the Regent, his mind preoccupied with the behaviour of his detested wife, had exclaimed, ‘Damn the north! and damn the south! and damn Wellington! The question is, how am I to be rid of this damned Princess of Wales?’¹

      Now all past failures and disappointments were forgiven and forgotten. The British Government, the Prince Regent and the Spanish Cortes all agreed that the capture of Ciudad Rodrigo was an achievement in which Wellington could justifiably take pride. The Cortes created him Duque de Ciudad Rodrigo; the Government asked a willing Parliament to grant him another annuity of £2,000. Even General Tarleton joined in the universal praise; only the radical Sir Francis Burdett voiced doubts as to the hero’s ability;² and on 28 February 1812 the Prince Regent created him Earl of Wellington.

      Yet there were further setbacks and sorrows soon to be borne. With Ciudad Rodrigo now safely in his possession, Wellington turned south for Badajoz. Anxious to take the place before Soult or Marmont reached it, he hurried forward the necessary preparations for siege warfare – the digging of trenches and parallels, saps and mines, the building of batteries and bulwarks.

      The assault was launched on the dark night of 6 April and, as some had thought at Ciudad Rodrigo, Wellington launched it too soon.³ The first storming column struggled to clamber up the slopes and across the imperfect breaches, treading on to the sharp spikes of caltrops and planks studded with the points of nails, being blown apart by mines, mutilated by shells and grenades, burned by fire-balls and knocked over by powder barrels, coming up against chevaux-de-frise made from Spanish sword blades, carrying scaling ladders, many of which proved too short, taunted by the shouts of the French troops on the walls and with the piercing sound of their own bugles ringing in their ears.