On April 6, 1812, the French-garrisoned Spanish fortress town of Badajoz fell to the British after a three-week siege. The fall of the city was accompanied by British soldiers raping, plundering and killing the Spanish residents of the town.
As Napoleon's armies raged across Europe, one of the principal theaters of the conflict was the Iberian peninsula. The French had invaded Spain in late 1807/early 1808, and many Spaniards welcomed the invasion. They advocated enlightenment ideals like liberalism, equality and an end to aristocratic privilege. The majority of Spaniards, however, resented French rule and Napoleon's placement of his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne.
The British landed troops in Spain in late 1808 and before long engaged the French alongside Spanish partisans. After the disastrous January 1809 Battle of Corunna, the British were forced to retreat into Portugal, which had enjoyed a military alliance with Britain. The British commander, Sir John Moore, had been mortally wounded in the battle, and his replacement was Arthur Wellesley, a battlefield commander who had proven his ability in India and who would later be known as the Duke of Wellington.
The next few years saw French attacks into Portugal, and a vicious game of cat and mouse with the British forces. When French Marshal André Masséna invaded Portugal in 1810, Wellington's fortifications at Terras Vedras kept the French armies from taking Lisbon. Soon, Wellington was ready to go on the offensive.
A series of border fortresses separated Portugal and Spain, and by necessity they were Wellington's first targets. In May 1811, the fortress of Almeida fell to the British, and in January 1812, Cuidad Rodrigo fell after a 10-day siege. Wellington then took his force of roughly 27,000 British, Portuguese and Spanish troops up against the Badajoz's approximately 5,000 French defenders. Despite the vast allied numerical advantage, the formidable fortress would be very difficult to take. Additionally, the city's population was known to hold French sympathies.
The siege of Badajoz began on March 16, with British engineers building trenches and siege works around the fortress. Heavy cannons were used to try to bring down the walls. This was a long process that required the gunners to continue to hit the wall at the same spots repeatedly, in the hopes of creating breaches. The problem then, of course, was that the enemy would have a choke point at the only place where the British troops could enter the town.
As it was virtually guaranteed that the first men through the breach would be killed, those soldiers who volunteered were known as the “Forlorn Hope.” Any who survived were usually guaranteed an immediate advancement in rank, as well as covering themselves in glory. As time wore on and the wall sections started to crumble, Wellington decided continuing the siege was too dangerous, as a French relief army could arrive at any moment.
In Christopher Hibbert's book, “Wellington: A Personal History,” the biographer wrote: “The assault was launched on the dark night of 6 April and, as some thought at Cuidad Rodrigo, Wellington launched it too soon. The first storming column struggled to clamber up the slopes and across the imperfect breaches, treading on to the sharp spikes of caltrops and planks studded with the points of nails, being blown apart by mines, mutilated by shells and grenades, burned by fire-balls and knocked over by powder barrels, coming up against the chevaux-de-frise made from Spanish sword blades, carrying scaling ladders, many of which proved too short, taunted by the shouts of French troops on the walls and with the piercing sound of their own bugles ringing in their ears.”
Hibbert notes that an army surgeon, James McGrigor, recalled Wellington's loss of color at the assault and appeared to be repulsed. Nearly 5,000 British and Allied soldiers fell taking the town. The French would lose roughly the same number in killed, wounded and captured.
But the real horror had just begun. British soldiers butchered residents of the town who had refused Wellington's earlier calls to surrender. Hibbert offers the writings of a young British officer:
“Every house presented a scene of plunder, debauchery and bloodshed, committed with wanton cruelty on the persons of the defenseless inhabitants by our soldiery. … Men, women and children were shot in the streets for no other apparent reason than pastime; every species of outrage was publicly committed in the houses, churches and streets, and in a manner so brutal that a faithful recital would be too indecent and too shocking to humanity.”
One of the reasons why the British soldiers took such an evil revenge upon the Spanish residents of Badajoz had to do with the British sense of cultural superiority. As historian Charles Esdaile noted in his book, “Napoleon's Wars: An International History,” the British looked down on the Spanish, whom they though of as “incompetent, cowardly and unreliable.” Additionally, years of hard feelings between Protestants and Catholics in England fueled another level of antagonism, mostly directed toward the French, but also toward the Catholic Spaniards. Badajoz was not the first time British feelings of superiority led to savagery against the Spanish, but it was perhaps the worst example.
The day after the successful assault, the bodies of British soldiers lay in great piles before the walls, and when Wellington learned of the extent of the casualties he briefly suffered a breakdown, weeping uncontrollably. Indeed, a few years later, after achieving victory in his most famous battle, Waterloo, Wellington would famously say, “Believe me, nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.”
Wellington blamed the British government for his lack of supplies and siege equipment, with which he believed he could have taken the fortress much sooner and without such high casualties. Horrific as the riots his soldiers unleashed upon the city had become, Wellington also understood their military value. Other Spanish cities would think twice about refusing to surrender after Badajoz, lest they suffer the same fate.
Though Wellington called for an end to the riots on April 7, they continued on for another two days. Finally, he ordered the creation of a gallows in the town, though it never saw use. Several of the worst offenders in the army were flogged, however, a common punishment in the British army of the day.
The writer Bernard Cornwell wrote a historical note in his novel “Sharpe's Company” that offered at least one positive outcome of the horrific events at Badajoz:
“The sack of Badajoz was not without one famous love story. A Lieutenant of the 95th Rifles, Harry Smith, met and married a fourteen-year-old Spanish girl, Juana Maria de los Dolores de Leon, who was fleeing from the horror. She was not completely unscathed, her ear-rings had been torn bloodily from her lobes, but Lieutenant Smith found and protected her. Years later, after her husband had been knighted, a town was named after her in South Africa that was itself to see a famous siege; Ladysmith.”
The fall of Badajoz meant that Wellington was now free to invade Spain. In July, Wellington won another great victory over the French at Salamanca, and soon took Madrid.
Cody K. Carlson holds a master's in history from the University of Utah and teaches at Salt Lake Community College. An avid player of board games, he blogs at thediscriminatinggamer.com. Email: ckcarlson76@gmail.com