The Storming of Badajoz - 1812

As will become clear during the course of this blog, I'm a pretty big fan of Sharpe. Since watching Sean Bean play the title role in Sharpe's Company, the siege of Badajoz has always been a key moment of the Peninsular Campaign that I've wanted to represent in LEGO. If you're interested in buying similar minifigures, take a look at the information at the end of this post.

The third siege of Badajoz took place between 16 March – 6 April 1812, where an Anglo-Portugese Army, under the then Earl of Wellington besieged the Spanish city of Badajoz, and forced the surrender of the French garrison. This particular siege was one of the bloodiest in the Napoleonic Wars and was a costly victory for the British, with approximately 4,800 Allied soldiers killed or wounded during the storming of the breaches as the siege reached its conclusion. 

On their march into Spain, Wellington had already captured Armeida and Ciudad Rodrigo, and now it was the turn of Badajoz. As frontier towns, these were all important to capture as it allowed lines of communication to run back to Lisbon. 

Badajoz was well prepared however, having faced two unsuccessful sieges previously, with strengthened walls, a garrison of 5000 French soldiers and areas around the walls that had been mined with explosives or flooded. It also had bastions and strongpoints on it's curtain wall that the previous two towns had not. The Allies had a huge advantage in numbers however, with approximately 27,000 men, giving them a 5 to 1 advantage.

On 19th March, two days after the siege began, 1,500 French sallied out and caused losses of approximately 150 men of the working parties. Amongst those injured was Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Fletcher who was the chief engineer. This brief encounter is seen in Sharpe's Company, albeit with about 20 French attackers rather than 1,500, due to the show's low production budget! Corporal William Lawrence gives a first-hand account of this bitter fighting in his autobiography "I myself killed a French sergeant. I was in the trenches, and he came on the top. Like me, he had exhausted his fire so made a thrust at me with his bayonet. He overbalanced and fell, and I pinioned him to the ground with mine. The poor fellow expired. I was sorry afterwards, and wished I had tried to take him prisoner, but with the fighting going on all around there had been no time to think, and he had been a powerful looking man. Tall and stout, with a mustache and beard which almost covered his face, he had been as fine a soldier as I had seen in the French army. If I had allowed him to gain his feet, I might have suffered for it, so perhaps what I did was for the best? At such times it is a matter of kill or be killed. 

Firing on the city by Siege artillery began on 25th May, and on the same night a party of 500 men under Lieutenant-General Thomas Picton (famed for fighting, and dying, at the Battle of Waterloo in his top hat and civilian clothes) took Fort Picurina just outside the city - at great cost with over 300 men killed or wounded. Capturing this fort was vital however, as this allowed for the expansion of the siege earthworks and the greater caliber guns to be brought up to fire upon the city.  

Ten days later, by 5th April, two practicable breaches had been made in the walls of the city. Wellington waited an extra day to attempt another breach in the wall, but with Marshal Soult marching to relieve the city, the order was given that the attack would begin at 10pm on 6th April. 

Two of the breaches were attacked by forlorn hopes made up of volunteers of the 4th Division. The third breach was assaulted by Alfren's Light Division, while extra attacks with ladders were made by Portugese troops, and Pictons Third Division would addempt to escalade the walls of the castle. 

William Lawrence was amongst the forlorn hope with two comrades, Pig Harding and George Bowden. They had stayed in Badajoz previously when it had been under the Allies control, and Lawrence states "We knew where the shops were located. Having heard a report that, if we succeeded in taking the place, three hours plunder would be allowed, we arranged to meet at a silversiths shop". Lawrence and his friends obviously had a sense of what was to come after the battle and had an opportunity to make the most of it. 

A French sentry spotted the forlorn hope, and quickly the ramparts were filled with Frenchmen who brought a hail of canister, musket fire, grenades, fireballs (made of bales of burning hay) and barrels of gunpowder with lit fuses down on the attackers. Lawrence recieved two small slug shots in his his left knee and a musket ball in his side. Pig recieved seven shots to his body and died, while both of George Bowden's thighs were blown off and he presumably died instantly.  Very quickly the breach was filled the bodies of the dead and the moaning wounded, adding an extra layer of difficulty for those infantrymen climbing the breach to navigate. 

Lawrence battled bravely on, despite his wounds, but when the storming was halted at that breach by the blockage of a cheval de frise, he was encouraged by his comrades to go and seek medical attention. His descent from the breach back to the lines under a hail of gunfire sounds as terrifying as the storming itself. Along the way he met Wellington who wanted to know the extent of his wounds and whether any men had made it into the town. "I told him no, and I did not think they ever would, because of the cherval de frise, the deep entrenchment and the constant and murderous fire from the enemy behind them". He was then conveyed to a surgeon, where he tells the tale of Chales Filer, who brought Lieutenant Elland to see the surgeon. After finding the Lieutenant wounded at the breach, Filer had carried him for half a mile through a hail of gunfire and cannon shot. Filer was quite surprised when the surgeon turned to him and asked him why he had brought him a headless trunk? In the chaos of battle, Filer had failed to notice a cannonball take off the head of the man he was carrying! News of this got around the camp, and poor Filer was followed about by calls of "Who took a headless man to see the doctor then?"

Back at the breaches, in amongst the smoke, din of battle, carnage, and loss of their guides, men of the Light Division became confised and became mixed up with those of the 4th division. The British however continued to surge forward in huge numbers, with each wave being cut down like the one before. In the first two hours, over 2,000 British casualties had been sustained.

All hope seemed lost at the breaches, and Wellington was about to call a halt to the assualt, when he heard that Picton's third division, attacking the heavily fortified castle managed to reach the top of the wall. These brave men secured the castle and a vital foothold that kept the battle alive. Wellington ordered that the third division should blow the castle gates and support the assaults on the breaches by attacking the flank. 

Another bastion, San Vicente was assaulted at around this point. There had been a bit of a delay in this attack by the 5th Division as their ladder party had become lost en-route! They made up for this delay by attacking bravely and with the loss of 600 men made it to the top of the wall. It was Wellington's own military secretary, Major Lord FitzRoy Somerset who was the first to mount the breach and secured one of the gates to allow British reinfocements into the bastion before the French could bring their own reinforcements in. Somerset would go on to become Field Marshal Lord Raglan. 

Soon afterwards, the 3rd and 5th Divisions were able to link up and proceed into the town, and once this significant foothold was established, the French withdrew. 

The next day, Wellington wrote to Priminster Lord Liverpool: "The storming of Badajoz affords as strong an instance of the gallantry of our troops as has ever been displayed. But I greatly hope that I shall never again be the instrument of putting them to such a test as that to which they were put last night"

It is impossible to write about the Battle of Badajoz without discussing what followed and it is also quite correct that the full picture is told. The victorious British troops rampaged through the city, drunk on captured alchohol and also presumably from the relief of surviving such an experience. Homes were broken into and property looted, and civilians were assaulted, raped and murdered. It is thought that about 300 civilians were killed or wounded, which was about 30% of those still living in their homes near the walls of the city during the sacking. Officers who attempted to bring their soldiers back to order were also killed

After 18 hours or so, Wellington ordered that the sacking should cease, but it took some 72 hours to restore order completely. A gallows was erected, but whilst many soldiers were flogged for their part in the rampage, no one was hanged.

The military and civilian cost of the storming had been high, but from Wellington's point of view, it was necessary that the storming happened speedily before Marshal Soult was able to re-enforce the city. It did mean however, that he was able to then march into Spain and begin the next phase of the Peninsular War.

The LEGO Siege of Badajoz:

I made my version of the breach for a video that I'm making based on photographs of LEGO Sharpe. I wanted to show the carnage of one of the breaches, and so I made sure the living:dead/wounded ratio was high. The minifigures are LEGO Compatible models from Aliexpress - you can buy them in singles , packs of 4 and packs of 10. If you would prefer to use Amazon, you can buy a pack of 4, or the full collection of 20 figures. Buying through any of those affiliate links supports this blog through a small amount of commission.

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