Deeds that Won the Empire: Historic Battle ScenesFitchett, W. H. (William Henry)
History
Deeds that Won the Empire: Historic Battle Scenes
Fitchett, W. H. (William Henry)
Battles -- Great Britain; Great Britain -- History, Military; Great Britain. Army -- History
In a general order issued on the evening of the 19th Wellington wrote,
"Ciudad Rodrigo must be stormed this evening." The great breach was a
sloping gap in the wall at its northern angle, about a hundred feet
wide. The French had crowned it with two guns loaded with grape; the
slope was strewn with bombs, hand-grenades, and bags of powder; a great
mine pierced it beneath; a deep ditch had been cut betwixt the breach
and the adjoining ramparts, and these were crowded with riflemen. The
third division, under General Mackinnon, was to attack the breach, its
forlorn hope being led by Ensign Mackie, its storming party by General
Mackinnon himself. The lesser breach was a tiny gap, scarcely twenty
feet wide, to the left of the great breach; this was to be attacked by
the light division, under Craufurd, its forlorn hope of twenty-five men
being led by Gurwood, and its storming party by George Napier. General
Pack, with a Portuguese brigade, was to make a sham attack on the
eastern face, while a fourth attack was to be made on the southern
front by a company of the 83rd and some Portuguese troops. In the
storming party of the 83rd were the Earl of March, afterwards Duke of
Richmond; Lord Fitzroy Somerset, afterwards Lord Raglan; and the Prince
of Orange--all volunteers without Wellington's knowledge!
At 7 o'clock a curious silence fell suddenly on the battered city and
the engirdling trenches. Not a light gleamed from the frowning
parapets, not a murmur arose from the blackened trenches. Suddenly a
shout broke out on the right of the English attack; it ran, a wave of
stormy sound, along the line of the trenches. The men who were to
attack the great breach leaped into the open. In a moment the space
betwixt the hostile lines was covered with the stormers, and the gloomy
half-seen face of the great fortress broke into a tempest of fire.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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