and so, each dawn, the gunners fired at the mattresses until, in an explosion of greasy fleeces, the padding fell away and the iron balls could start again on the wall proper; gouging at it, crumbling it, carving the double path into the city.
The dam still stood and the floodwaters still stretched south of the city, forcing any assault on the bastions to march obliquely against the walls instead of straight on. The northern batteries pounded at the dam's fort while the infantry dug their trenches forward, trying to take their spades and muskets to the very edge of the small fort, but the trenching was thrown back. Every gun on Badajoz's east wall, from the high kestrel-ridden castle, to the Trinidad bastion, opened up on the creeping trench till the workers were smashed and no one could live in the iron hail, and so the attempt was given up. The dam would stay, the approach would 'be oblique, and the engineers did not like it. 'Time, I want time! Colonel Fletcher, wounded in the French foray, was out of bed. He pounded the map in front of him. 'He wants a bloody miracle!
'I do. The General had entered the room unheard and Fletcher twisted round, grimacing because the wound still hurt.
'My Lord! My apologies. The Scottish growl sounded far from apologetic.
Wellington gestured the apology away, nodded at the men waiting for him, and sat down. Major Hogan knew the General was just forty-three, yet he looked older. Perhaps they all looked older. The siege was wearing them down as it was wearing away the two bastions, and Hogan sighed because he knew that this meeting, on Saturday 4th April as he carefully noted at the top of his notebook page, would once more be a wrangle between the General and the Engineers. Wellington took out his own map, unrolled it, and weighted the corners with ink bottles. 'Good morning, gentlemen. Expenditure?'
The gunner Colonel pulled paper towards him. 'Yesterday, my Lord, one thousand one hundred and fourteen twenty-four-pounders, six hundred and three eighteen-pounders.
He gave the figures in a flat monotone. 'One gun burst, sir.
'Burst?
The Colonel turned the paper over. 'Twenty-four-pounder in Number Three, my Lord, high-shot half-way down the bore. We lost three men, six wounded.
Wellington grunted. It was astonishing, Hogan always thought, how the General dominated a room by his presence. Perhaps it was the blue eyes that seemed so knowing, or the stillness of the face round the strong, hooked nose. Most of the officers in this room were older than the Viscount Wellington, yet all of them, with the possible exception of Fletcher, seemed in awe of him. The General wrote the figures on his small piece of paper, the pencil squeaking. He looked back to the gunner. 'Powder?
'Plenty, sir. Eighty barrels arrived yesterday. We can keep firing for another month.
'We'll bloody need to. Sorry, my Lord. Fletcher was hatching marks on his map.
A trace of a smile flicked the corners of Wellington's mouth. 'Colonel?
'My Lord? Fletcher affected surprise. He looked up from the map, but kept his pen poised as though he was being interrupted.
'I can see you're not prepared for the meeting. Wellington gave a small nod to the Scotsman and turned to Hogan. 'Major? Any reports?
Hogan turned his notebook back two pages. 'Two deserters, my Lord, both Germans, both from the Hesse-Darmstadt Regiment. They confirm that the Germans are garrisoning the castle. Hogan raised his eyebrows. 'They say morale is high, my Lord.
'Then why desert?
'A brother of one, my Lord, is with the KGL.
'Ah. You're sending them there?
'Yes, sir. The King's German Legion would welcome the recruits.
'Anything else? Wellington liked to keep the morning conferences brisk.
Hogan nodded. 'They confirm, sir, that the French are devoid of round shot, but claim plenty of canister and grape. We already knew that. He hurried on, forestalling a complaint of repetition from the General. 'They also say the city is terrified of a massacre.’
'Then they should plead for a surrender. 'The city, my Lord, is partly pro-French. It was true. Spanish civilians had been seen on the walls, firing muskets at the trenches sapping forward towards the fort at the dam. 'They are hoping for our defeat.
'But. Wellington's voice was scornful.’ They hope to avoid reprisals if we win. Is that right?'
Hogan shrugged. 'Yes, sir. It was, the Irishman thought, a vain hope. If Wellington had his way, and he would, the assault would be soon and the way into the city hard. If they did win through the breach, and Hogan acknowledged the possibility that they might not, then the troops would lose all vestiges of discipline. It had always been so. Soldiers who were forced to fight through the terror of a narrow breach claimed the right to possess the fortress and all within it. The Irish remembered Drogheda and Wexford, the towns sacked by Cromwell and his English troops, and the stories were still told of the victors' atrocities. Stories of women and children herded into a church that was fired, the English celebrating while the Irish burned, and Hogan thought of Teresa and her child, Sharpe's child. His thoughts snapped back to the meeting as Wellington dictated a fast order to an aide-decamp. The order forbade any looting inside the city, but it was given, Hogan thought, without much conviction. Fletcher listened to the order and then, once again, pounded the map with his fist.
'Bomb them.
'Ah! Colonel Fletcher is with us. Wellington turned to him.
Fletcher smiled. 'I say bomb them, my Lord. Smoke them out! They'll give up.
'And how long, pray, before they give up?
Fletcher shrugged. He knew it could take weeks for the squat howitzers to reduce enough of Badajoz to smoking rubble, to burn the food supplies and thus force a surrender. 'A month, my Lord?
'Two, more like, perhaps three. And let me advert you, Colonel, to the notion, imperfectly understood though it may be within the walls, that the Spanish are our allies. If we indiscriminately bomb them with shells it is possible, you will grant me, that our allies will be displeased.
Fletcher nodded. 'They'll not be too happy, my Lord, if your men rape everything that moves and steal everything that doesn't.
'We will trust to our soldiers' good sense. The words were cynically said. 'And now, Colonel, perhaps you can tell us about the breaches. Are they practical?
'No, sir, they are not. Fletcher's Scottish accent was stronger again. 'I can tell you a good deal, sir, most of it new. He turned the map round so that the General was looking at the two bastions from the point of view of an attacker. The Santa Maria was to the left, Trinidad to the right. Fletcher had marked the breaches. The Trinidad had lost half of its face, a gap nearly a hundred feet wide and the Engineer had penciled in his estimate of the height reduction. Twenty-five feet. The flank of the Santa Maria facing the Trinidad was equally badly hit. 'The breaches, as you can see, my Lord, are now about twenty-five feet high. That's a hell of a climb! That's higher, if you'll forgive me for pointing it out, than the unbreached wall at Ciudad Rodrigo! He leaned back as if he had made a scoring hit.
Wellington nodded. 'We are all aware, Colonel, that Badajoz is appreciably bigger than Ciudad Rodrigo. Pray continue.
'My Lord. Fletcher leaned forward again. 'Let me advert you to this. He grinned as he used one of Wellington's favorite expressions. His broad finger settled on the ditch to the front of the Santa Maria. 'They've blocked the ditch here, and here. The finger moved to the right of the Trinidad breach. 'They're boxing us in. His voice was serious now. He could twist the General's tail from time to time, but only dared do it because he was a good Engineer, trusted by Wellington, and he saw it as his job to give his true point of view and not be a lickspittle. The finger tapped the ditch. 'It seems they've put carts in the ditch, upturned carts, and lengths of umber. You don't have to be a genius to work out that they plan to fire those obstacles. You can see what will happen, gentlemen. Our troops will be in the ditch, trying to climb a bloody great ramp, and there'll be no escape from the grapeshot. They can't go left and right into the darkness to regroup. They'll be trapped, lit up, like rats in a bloody barrel.
Wellington listened to the impassioned outburst. 'You're sure?
'Aye, my Lord, and there's more.
'Go on.
