The Siege of Badajoz
Unless you originate in the vicinity of Nottingham in the UK it is unlikely that the word Badajoz will do more than ring the odd bell in your memory, something you may have heard at school perhaps. If just one incident had not occurred in 1812 that put the name on everybody’s lips, in Europe at least, it is likely that Badajoz would have continued in obscurity, as it largely had since it was founded by the Moors in the 9th century.
With interest peaked it is time to visit this city that is situated on the Rio Guadiana, on the border with Portugal, just two hours drive north of Seville in the neighbouring community of Extremadura.
The most powerful first impression of the city is gained if you approach the city from the Portuguese side, which is strongly recommended due to the vagaries of the city’s ring road. You find yourself heading towards a fortress. On the east side of the river is the city proper, surrounded by an immensely strong wall, reminiscent of the fortifications at Gibraltar, with salients jutting out at intervals. It is between two of those salients that the road to the centre of the city takes vehicles via a modern bridge. If you look to your left as you cross this bridge you will see a magnificent granite bridge, built in 1460, repaired in 1597 and rebuilt in 1833, that crosses the river to the original town gates, equally impressive, that penetrate the walls on the east bank. Behind the gates is the hill on which Badajoz was originally built, crowned by the Moorish fortress, incredibly still largely intact. Beyond the granite bridge, on the west side of the river is a hill on top of which is another fortress, that of the Fuerte de San Cristobal. The adventurous can climb the hill and wander around this fort. It is from here that you first start to appreciate the impregnability of this city that owes its position to the strategic point it occupies on the river from which it can guard one of the major trade routes to Portugal.
Proof of the effectiveness of the fortifications is the city’s history. The Portuguese laid siege to it in 1660 and the Brits tried to take it in 1705 during the War of the Spanish Succession. During the Peninsula War, in 1808 and 1809, the French unsuccessfully attacked Badajoz. The French only occupied the city in 1811 when Marshal Soult bribed the Spanish commander, José Imaz into surrendering. Soult’s forces managed to hold out against a determined British attack in the same year. It was left to Arthur Wellesley (later Duke of Wellington) to ensure the name Badajoz entered the history books for eternity in a battle that became known as ‘The Siege of Badajoz’.
Wellesley laid siege to the city in March 1812, bombarding the walls with iron shot. Three weeks later there were three breaches in the wall. They were known as practicable breaches if two infantrymen could pass through side by side. On the inside of the walls 5,000 French soldiers prepared to repel the Allied forces.
The attack, by two British and Portuguese divisions, about 25,000 men, began on the 6th April 1812 with a rush forward by a group of volunteers known as ‘The Forlorn Hope’. Their task was to put ladders against the walls and establish a bridgehead. Not surprisingly their chances of survival were slim. For five hours wave after wave of infantry tried to take the breaches supported by a diversionary attack on the other side of the city. In the first two hours the British and Portuguese troops suffered 2,000 casualties in the breaches and countless wounded and dead at the site of the diversionary attack. They faced a barrage of, in the words of one survivor, ‘murderous musket fire, grenades, stones, barrels of gunpowder with crude fuses and bales of burning hay ’. The redcoats had to struggle over the bodies of their fallen comrades. Wellesley was on the point of recalling his decimated divisions when a foothold on the walls was eventually gained. Sheer weight of numbers began to tell and the French fell back to San Cristobal from where they eventually surrendered. Over 5,000 Allied troops were killed or badly wounded in those five hours.
The first troops to enter the fortress were from the 45th Regiment of Foot, later amalgamated with the 95th to form the Sherwood Foresters. In the absence of a Union Flag, Lt. James MacPherson had his red jacket hoisted up the flagpole to show the castle had been taken. The event is commemorated at Nottingham where, every 6th April, red jackets are flown on regimental flag staffs and over Nottingham castle.
As often happened after a particularly vicious battle, the survivors who had lost so many friends and colleagues took revenge on the town. For 72 hours they looted, raped and pillaged resulting in the deaths of about 4,000 Spanish inhabitants and not a few officers who had tried to regain order. Order was only restored after a few hangings and floggings. At dawn on the 7th April bodies were piled high outside the city walls and blood flowed like rivers in the ditches and streams. The Rio Guadiaro turned red. Wellesley is reported to have wept and cursed the British Parliament for allowing him so few resources.
He wrote to Lord Liverpool, “The capture of Badajoz affords as strong an instance of the gallantry of our troops as has ever been displayed, but I anxiously 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”
His hopes were not fulfilled, the siege of San Sebastian the following year was almost a carbon copy of that at Badajoz.
It is not hard today to envisage the scenes of 1812. The walls and bastions are largely still there. The killing fields between the curtain walls and glacis are now public gardens. A few modern buildings have arisen on the substantial walls but not enough to detract from the awesome grandeur of the fortifications. It is difficult to imagine the bravery of men on foot with muzzle loading rifles and muskets throwing themselves against the vertical, grey, granite slabs.
Within the oldest part of town, around the cathedral that is itself built like a fortress and within the walls of the alcazabar the city is as it was 200 years ago. The few British that reach Badajoz today are now made very welcome despite their behaviour then.