The novel does not do justice to the Fifth Division whose attack on the San Vincente bastion, made late, was most responsible for the city’s fall. There was no Forlorn Hope on the third, the central breach, and accounts of the night differ as to whether any man even reached that breach. The Light Division claimed that some of their dead were found on its slopes, but most survivors disagree, and so, with a novelist’s freedom, I took the breach for Sharpe. There was one final attack on the breaches, which succeeded, but Wellington did not order it until he was certain that the Fifth Division were in the defenders’ rear. Purists will also be offended that Sharpe attacked Ciudad Rodrigo with the Third Division, and Badajoz with the Fourth, but it is the fate of fictional soldiers to be always where the fight is thickest even when that means a cavalier disregard for the make-up of divisions. Some battalions were involved in both assaults, notably those of the Third and Light Divisions, so my sin is not too great.
I have tried to be exact, with the above exceptions, to the real events. The letters and diaries of the campaign are, as ever, a trove of information. Thus, for instance, the details in the book of the daily weather conditions are taken from the diaries and I feel a constant debt to those long-dead soldiers whose memories I plunder. One myth should be put to rest. Badajoz was not assaulted on Easter Sunday. 6 April was the second Monday after Easter in 1812, and no amount of imagination can change that fact.
The castle walls at Badajoz are unchanged, the only addition to the scenery is a road that passes at the foot of the casde hill. The breaches in the two bastions have been repaired and the giant ditch is now a municipal garden. The glacis is entirely gone. The approaches to the breaches, like the San Miguel Hill, have been built over. The approach to the Trinidad is hidden by nondescript buildings, and that to the Santa Maria by a modern and remarkably ugly bull-ring. The area of the central breach is still a passage through the walls, the defences between the two bastions being largely destroyed, but it is possible to climb to the bastions’ parapets and into the embrasures, and marvel at the courage of men who would attack such a place. Ciudad Rodrigo’s defences are better preserved; the breach repairs are visible above the glacis, and the marks of British cannon balls are still chipped into the church tower. The Fort of San Cristobal, across the river from Badajoz, is in almost perfect repair. The South Essex could march in tomorrow and have it set up for defence within hour. Best preserved of all are the defences of Elvas, just across the border, and all are worth visiting.
The memorial plaques in the Trinidad bastion (where the Madrid road enters Badajoz) recall the assault and sack of the city, but not that of 6 April 1812. They remember August 1936, and some inhabitants still remember the massacre which followed the assault by Franco’s troops. History has a sad way of repeating itself in Badajoz. It is not a pretty city; some people have described it as gloomy, as if the ghosts of too many battles stalk the streets, but I did not find it so. As in other places in Portugal and Spain, I met with much kindness and courtesy, and was given every help with my researches. The last words in this book can be left with a man who became accustomed to having the last word: Wellington. Writing to the War Minister, and talking of his 5000 casualties, he said: ‘The capture of Badajoz affords as strong an instance of the gallantry of our troops as has ever been displayed. But I greatly hope that I shall never again be the instrument of putting them to such a test.’