Siege and Capture of Badajoz

From 16 March to 6 April 1812 Wellington besieged and took Badajoz, French stronghold in Extremadura commanded by General Philippon. After two repelled assaults, British breached the walls on 6 April. Capture was followed by looting and violence against civilians; Wellington wept seeing the damage.

Badajoz commanded the southern road from Lisbon to Madrid and locked the frontier between Spain and Portugal. Having taken Ciudad Rodrigo, Wellington appeared before it with 25,000 Anglo-Portuguese troops, five times the garrison. General Armand Philippon had about 5,000 men and a formidable defensive system: the Trinidad and Santa Maria bastions, covered by the outlying forts of Picurina and Pardaleras.

Wellington opened the trenches and battered the walls until two breaches were made. The assault of 6 April went in along three simultaneous axes. The main attack fell on the Trinidad and Santa Maria breaches, where Philippon's prepared defences caused carnage: nearly 2,000 men were killed or seriously wounded there in two hours. Meanwhile Picton's 3rd Division escaladed the castle's rocky spur and Leith's 5th Division carried the San Vicente bastion — and it was these two escalades, conceived as secondary, that decided the day. The French survivors fell back on Fort San Cristóbal and capitulated on 7 April.

Allied losses came to about 4,800 men, the Light Division alone losing 40 per cent of its strength. Once the breach was taken, the sack of the city began in total anarchy as soon as the troops started drinking; Wellington is said to have wept at the sight, though historians disagree on how genuine the emotion was. The loss of Badajoz deprived the French of an essential foothold in the south-west of the peninsula and opened the campaign that would lead to Salamanca. Philippon was taken prisoner.