Read Online The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes by Mark Urban - Free Book Online Page B

seminary, puffs of smoke drifting from the firing points. The French, too, wanted to bring artillery to bear and were wheeling guns down by the riverbank on the northern quay. If they could cannonade the British as their barges came ashore, they could do great slaughter, for the redcoats would be caught packed together as they disembarked. Wellesley, though, had no intention of allowing them to give the first blow.
    One of the British pieces, a howitzer, fired at the French guns on the quayside, hurling one of the new exploding shells designed by Major Shrapnel. It was not solid, like the six-pound shot fired by most of this battery, but packed with explosive powder that would send shards of its metal casing in all directions. Its target was a team of French gunners who were trying to unhitch their cannon from the horse-drawn limber used to tow it into position. As the British shell went off, it cut down every single one of them, perhaps a dozen men. This was not the first time that the Shrapnel shells had been used in battle, but it was the most dramatic effect many of the Royal Artillery officers had ever seen. The other guns began hitting the French attack columns on the ridge above.
    At Marshal Soult’s headquarters, the cacophony indicated that a serious battle had been joined in the heart of the city. Reinforcements were ordered up to join Foy’s brigade. The evacuation of French stores and guns assumed a desperate speed. Orderlies were stuffing papers into trunks, wagons loaded with spoils, waiting to leave.
    As the guns were thundering overhead, many more boatloads of redcoats had crossed the Douro. Men of the 48th and 66th had joined the Buffs up in the seminary. The French withdrew their last men from the quayside to reinforce those fighting on the heights above. As this happened, dozens of Portuguese emerged from their houses to launch fishing boats and more port barges into the river. The trickle of British troops crossing was soon a flood.
    After three failed attempts to break into the seminary, the morale of the French troops was beginning to falter. Reports that another Anglo-Portuguese force was about to assault them in the flank were making theFrench officers jittery; Foy broke off the attack. By midafternoon a general evacuation of Oporto was under way, with French troops pressing quickly along the roads.
    A cavalry attack on the rear of a broken force could yield devastating results, but the ground to the north and east of the city was just as unfavorable as that in Grijó had been the day before. Major General Stewart once again took personal command of a squadron of light dragoons and ordered a charge. Once again, it was carried out with some losses and little positive effect.
    Stewart’s charge, though, did not spoil the positive results of the day’s action. For trifling casualties (125 killed, wounded and missing), Wellesley’s force had killed about 300 French, captured about 1,700 prisoners, many of whom had been abandoned in hospitals during the French retreat, and six cannon. The British army had seen its new commander in action and could not fail to be impressed. Wellesley took over Soult’s fine headquarters to discover that the Portuguese servants had prepared a dinner, expecting their French guests to return that evening. Instead, the victor savored his culinary spoils.
    Breathless at this success, Scovell penned a letter to Colonel John Le Marchant, his old teacher at the Royal Military College: “I must give you a line if it only shows how delighted I am at having been able to pay off my old friend Soult a few of the old scores we were in his debt at Corunna. He certainly never bargained to have them returned so soon and with such good interest.” The staff officer had clearly been impressed with May twelfth’s operation, telling Le Marchant “the passage of the Douro was certainly as gallant a thing as ever man did.” As for the French, “they