Wellington’s Engineers: Military Engineering on the Peninsular War 1808-1814 (24 page)

One question that needs further consideration is why did Wellington decide to make the assault on 6 April? Wellington was clearly concerned that the French would try to relieve the fortress, but there does not appear to be the urgency that he felt. He was aware of the movements of Soult and he had a reasonable idea of the size of his force. Wellington also must have been reasonably certain that Marmont was not marching to the aid of Soult, having had a report on 4 April that Marmont had been in front of Almeida the previous day, which suggested he was not making any immediate plans to move south.
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He was also clearly concerned that the breaches were only just practicable. His decisions to order and then postpone the attack on the night of 5 April show a level of indecision that was very unusual for him. He had made preliminary plans to suspend the siege and move to face Soult who he believed had up to 35,000 men. When he realised that he had around 25,000 men, he would have known that Soult could not possibly interfere with the siege without the support of Marmont. Marmont did not receive permission from Napoleon to directly support Soult until 27 March, and would have needed ten to fourteen days to concentrate sufficient troops. A week later he had not moved south and Wellington knew that, so the earliest he could have arrived would have been the end of the second week in April.

There are two areas where the lack of trained artificers appeared to have made a difference to the planning. The first was in selection of the point of attack. As mentioned above, Wellington’s preference was to attack the south front, as it appeared to be the weakest. This was the point that the French attacked, but the French, realising the same, had significantly strengthened it by reinforcing the Pardaleras outwork and also by placing mines in the approaches to the walls. The approaches to the southern wall that Wellington last saw in June 1811 were significantly stronger in March 1812. The second was in the attempt to take the San Roque lunette and allow the destruction of the dam behind it. This was abandoned due to the heavy casualties and poor progress made by the partially-trained sappers from the army. If trained sappers had been available, better progress would have been made and casualties should have been lower. But the major difficulties were caused by the heavy fire from the defenders and without some attempt to reduce this, the results might not have been any different. The siege train at Badajoz did not contain weapons that were ideal for counter-battery and breach clearing activities. The 24-pounder carronades were the only ‘high-angle’ weapon available and as they were equivalent to the smallest 5½in howitzer, they did not have the punch that was required.

It could be argued that Wellington moved too quickly to the assault, when he could have waited a few more days and continued battering the defences. This would have reduced his casualties although it is unlikely that Phillipon would have considered surrender. Wellington’s complaint about the lack of trained sappers and miners causing the additional casualties was justified, but even with the trained artificers he would still have needed to give them time to work and it is unlikely that the siege would have progressed any faster. As in all the previous sieges in 1811 and 1812, Wellington was pushed into attacking early because of the need to take the fortress before the relieving force could intervene. Badajoz was no different and trained artificers would not have made a significant difference.

On 7 April Wellington wrote his dispatch informing the government of the success at Badajoz. With it was sent a private letter to Liverpool in which he complained about the lack of trained engineers and artificers and blamed the heavy losses at Badajoz on the lack of such troops:

It is quite impossible to expect to carry fortified places … unless the army should be provided with a regular trained corps of sappers and miners … The consequences … are – first, that our engineers although well educated and brave, have never turned their minds to the mode of conducting a regular siege, as it is useless to think of that which it is impossible in our service to perform. They think that they have done their duty when they construct a battery, with a secure communication to it, which can make a breach in the wall of a place; and, secondly, these breaches are to be carried by vive force by an infinite sacrifice of officers and soldiers … I earnestly recommend to your lordship to have a corps of sappers and miners formed without loss of time.
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His frustration at his losses extended his complaints from the reasonable towards what many engineers saw as an unreasonable attack on the whole engineering profession. His complaints about the lack of sappers and miners were fully supported by the engineer officers themselves. One example was Squire, who used almost the same words as Wellington in his letter after the assault: ‘This siege has served to confirm … that constituted as our Corps is, we are decidedly not equal to the attack of a place; whose scarp is covered by a good counterscarp and glacis … Sappers and Miners are as necessary to engineers during a siege, as soldiers to the General’.
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Wellington’s critical comments in his letter of 7 April 1812 were lost until 1889, but a subsequent letter on the same subject to Major-General Murray was published in the dispatches.

I trust … that future armies will be equipped for sieges, with the people necessary to carry them on as they ought to be; and that our engineers will learn how to put their batteries on the crest of the glacis and to blow in the counterscarp, instead of placing wherever the wall can be seen, leaving the poor officers and men to get into and across the ditch as best they can.
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This was responded to in Jones’ Journal: ‘the officers … were fully equal to the difficult duty of crowning the crest of the glacis had they been assisted by a proper trained body of men’.
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Wellington’s complaint about the casualties during the assault on the Picurina fort is particularly unreasonable, since the fort was stormed on his orders the same day the batteries opened when it was clear that no material damage had yet been inflicted. Wellington rushed the assault to make up time lost due to the bad weather. There is no doubt, based on the available evidence, that Wellington’s criticism of the engineer officers was unfair. The four sieges of 1811 and 1812 had all been arranged with limited resources and limited time. This led to compromises that affected the chance of success and the level of casualties. There was not sufficient time at any of these sieges for formal approaches to be prepared. Complaining about the lack of troops to deliver formal approaches is not reasonable when such troops would not have had the time to make the approaches anyway.

In the archives at the British Library, there is a scrap of paper written by John Squire on 8 April 1812. You can feel the shock and exhaustion he was feeling as he wrote his brief note on the successful assault and the loss of more friends. He finishes it with ‘I am a little fatigued, so you will excuse me breaking off so abruptly’. A month later, he was dead, collapsing and dying whilst travelling with General Hill.
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Fletcher was left at Badajoz to carry out repairs and Burgoyne accompanied Wellington with the army as it set out on the Salamanca campaign. This was an unusual arrangement, as typically the senior engineer would travel with Wellington. Whilst there has been some question about whether this was evidence of a lack of trust in Fletcher, there is no evidence to support this view. Wellington’s decision was probably based on two points that would have been foremost in his mind. Firstly, that losing Badajoz again was unthinkable, so every effort had to be made to protect it. Secondly, Wellington had handed over responsibility for Ciudad Rodrigo to the Spanish only four weeks before and he had already received communications to show that little progress had been made to complete the repairs; the Spanish were asking for further help and they had already used most of the supplies left for the use of the garrison. Because of this Wellington was forced to remain in a position where he could support Ciudad Rodrigo when one of his options would have been to pursue Soult south.
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Although it was not approved, Wellington had also asked for promotion for Fletcher after Ciudad Rodrigo.
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In summary, Badajoz was attacked with a second-rate siege train; the lack of sappers and miners meant that the preferred choice of attack could not be chosen; the fortress was assaulted too early; and together these factors caused the high casualties. Badajoz was taken due to the secondary attacks succeeding when all the main attacks had failed. Wellington was lucky.

However, Wellington’s complaints reinforced the desire of the Board of Ordnance to progress the development of the School of Military Engineering that had just been formed on 23 April 1812 (see
Appendix 5
). Liverpool wrote to Wellington on 28 April, informing him that the Board of Ordnance had been working on this issue for some time and that the first troops would be with him before the end of the month.
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Although this was unrealistic, it is true that Charles William Pasley had previously started work on training artificers. The incorrect understanding of the causes of the formation of the Royal Sappers and Miners still appears in most works. Oman
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assumes that Wellington’s letter of 7 April caused an immediate change and the formation of the corps. Fortescue seems even wider from the mark, suggesting that Wellington was ‘beginning himself to train one on the spot’. Myatt does not recognise that the Board of Ordnance had been working throughout 1811 to rectify the situation.
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Similarly, in the most recent books on sieges in the Peninsula, there appears to be a misunderstanding of the role of sappers and miners. They would undertake the specialist tasks, like sapping up to the glacis or mining, but the line infantry would still do the bulk of the ‘spade work’ with the trained artificers providing supervision.
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Whilst this siege is often seen as a breakdown in trust between Wellington and Fletcher, I am not so sure. Fletcher was wounded on 19 March but Wellington insisted on him retaining command even though he was bed-bound, visiting him each morning. Wellington could easily have sent Fletcher away, but chose to retain him even though other engineer officers, seen as his ‘favourites’, were present, i.e. John Burgoyne and John Jones. Whilst Jones suggested that Wellington left Fletcher to repair Badajoz as a punishment, I believe he was left there because he was not fit to travel. Fletcher only left his tent for the first time on 4 April, two days before the assault and riding was probably impossible.
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There is plenty of correspondence to confirm Fletcher remained in charge of the engineer department for Wellington’s army whilst he was at Badajoz.

As soon as order was restored, work started of repairing the fortress, Burgoyne noting on 9 April that 300 men from Power’s brigade commenced filling in the trenches.

The following day, Burgoyne was dispatched to Villa Velha to be ready to take up the pontoon bridge as Marmont had started an advance into Portugal to try and distract Wellington from the siege that had just been completed. Wellington was not sure that he could get troops there before Marmont and did not want to lose the bridge or his ability to cross the Tagus. Burgoyne rode post horses to the river and there:

found the Portuguese Captain of Engineers in charge of the bridge in great distress, having been ordered to remove the bridge [only] when the enemy arrived … knowing how impossible this would be … he determined on preparing to burn it as the French had entered Castello Branco yesterday … and were expected down at Villa Velha hourly. Neither General Lecor … nor General Baron Alten … would take upon themselves to give an order for removing the bridge … On my arrival, I had it immediately withdrawn.
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Burgoyne’s implied criticism of the unwillingness of senior commanders to make decisions without direct instructions from Wellington is then extended by reporting that the commandant of the sick at Villa Velha, who had made arrangements to remove the sick and stores based on intelligence he received from General Lecor, was criticised for not waiting for instructions from headquarters. The French retired from Castello Branco on 14 April, presumably having heard that Badajoz had fallen. Burgoyne rode to the point where the twelve boats had been stored and noted with satisfaction that the Portuguese engineer was already working with 200– 300 peasants to move the bridge back into place and it would be ready the next day. When he arrived back at Headquarters on 17 April 1812 he noted that he was now attached to headquarters, ‘Colonel Fletcher and other officers of engineers to remain at Badajoz’.

Other Engineering Work in Early 1812

Away from these two major sieges, other engineer officers continued to provide support to a variety of operations. John Squire remained in the south with General Hill’s detached corps and noted their advance into Spain in January 1812, a movement clearly intended to distract the French from the siege at Ciudad Rodrigo. Work continued on repairing and strengthening the various strongpoints in Portugal, Captain Wedekind reporting plans to move some of the fresh water springs around Abrantes to within the perimeter defences and also to improve the water storage capacity.
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Lieutenant Pringle RE was working on improving the embarkation jetties at fort St Julian near Lisbon and Captain Boteler and Lieutenant Tapp continued work on the defences to the south of the Tagus.

Lieutenant Marshall RE had been sent to carry out further work on the river Douro to allow boats to carry supplies up to the border at Barca d’Alva. This had been started in 1811 under the charge of George Ross but the first boats to try and navigate the whole length reported there were still areas where the river was too shallow to pass. The supplies still reached their destination, but had to be unloaded to pass the shallows.

In late April, Squire was sent to repair the bridge at Merida that the Allies had previously destroyed. He knew this repair was for a secret operation that was being planned and reported: