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Updated: May 10, 2025
Then came the town, while at the end of the peninsula rose a steep rock, called Mount Orgullo, on which stood the citadel. Upon its left side this neck of land was separated from the mainland by the River Urumea; and upon the heights of Mount Olia and the Chofres, across the Urumea, were placed the British batteries, which breached the fortifications facing the river.
The troops for the great breach were filed out ahead of the 38th, which had farther to go. Worst of all, they were set in motion an hour before dawn, although Wellington had left orders that fair daylight should be waited for, and the artillery-men across the Urumea were still plying their guns on the sea-wall, to dissuade the besieged from repairing it in the darkness.
No papers had been asked for, on leaving, at the bridge over the Urumea, where a post of volunteers kept guard by an antique and stumpy bronze howitzer, mounted on a siege-carriage, and furnished with the dolphin-handles to be seen on some of the last-century guns in the Tower Arsenal.
The general, watching the fight from the batteries across the Urumea, now directed the gunners to fire over the stormers' heads; and again a cry went up that our men were being slaughtered by their own artillery.
The convent had, in fact, surrendered, and its defenders were even now withdrawing up the hill to the citadel. He found the lesser breach and climbed down it to the shore of the Urumea, beside the deserted ford across which the Portuguese had waded on the morning of the second assault. Beyond it shone the sandhills, hiding our batteries.
Sergeant Wilkes and his men, halting on the lower slope of the mountain where it fell away in sand-dunes to the estuary of the Urumea, had the whole flank of the fortress in view. Just now, at half-tide, it rose straight out of the water on the farther bank a low, narrow-necked isthmus that at its seaward end climbed to a cone-shaped rock four hundred feet high, crowned by a small castle.
That flank of the place which it presented to the sandhills across the Urumea was clearly more vulnerable, and yet not easily vulnerable. Deep water and natural rock protected Mount Orgullo, the citadel hill. The sea-wall, for almost half its length, formed but a fausse braye for the hornwork towering formidably behind it.
On the 24th the batteries on Mount Olia, having effected what was believed to be a practicable breach, 2000 men of the fifth division, consisting of the 3d battalion of the Royals, the 38th, and the 9th, made an assault at night. To arrive at the breach they had to make their way along the slippery rocks on the bed of the Urumea, exposed to a flank-fire from the river-wall of the town.
Then it ceased, and the troops leapt to their feet, and again rushed up the breach, while the 13th Portuguese Regiment, followed by a detachment of the 24th, waded across the Urumea under a heavy fire from the castle, and attacked the third breach. But still no entry could be effected. The French fire was as heavy as ever, and the stormers again sank baffled to the foot of the great breach.
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