[Illustration: Siege of Ciudad Rodrigo, 1812. From Napier’s “Peninsular War.”]
In the eleven days of the siege Wellington lost 1300 men and officers, out of whom 650 men and 60 officers were struck down on the slopes of the breaches. Two notable soldiers died in the attack—Craufurd, the famous leader of the light division, as he brought his men up to the lesser breach; and Mackinnon, who commanded a brigade of the third division, at the great breach. Mackinnon was a gallant Highlander, a soldier of great promise, beloved by his men. His “Children,” as he called them, followed him up the great breach till the bursting of a French mine destroyed all the leading files, including their general. Craufurd was buried in the lesser breach itself, and Mackinnon in the great breach—fitting graves for soldiers so gallant.
Alison says that with the rush of the English stormers up the breaches of Ciudad Rodrigo “began the fall of the French Empire.” That siege, so fierce and brilliant, was, as a matter of fact, the first of that swift-following succession of strokes which drove the French in ruin out of Spain, and it coincided in point of time with the turn of the tide against Napoleon in Russia. Apart from all political results, however, it was a splendid feat of arms. The French found themselves almost unable to believe the evidence of their senses. “On the 16th,” Marmont wrote to the Emperor, “the English batteries opened their fire at a great distance. On the 19th the place was taken by storm. There is something so incomprehensible in this that I allow myself no observations.” Napoleon, however, relieved his feelings with some very emphatic observations. “The fall of Ciudad Rodrigo,” he wrote to Marmont, “is an affront to you. Why had you not advices from it twice a week? What were you doing with the five divisions of Souham? It is a strange mode of carrying on war,” &c. Unhappy Marmont!