On 5 March 1770 soldiers of the British 29th Regiment of Foot under Captain Thomas Preston fired into a crowd outside the Custom House on King Street in Boston, and five men died, in what became known as the Boston Massacre. On 5 March 1811 Thomas Graham's Anglo-Portuguese division beat two French divisions at Barrosa, near Cadiz.
Shots on King Street, 1770
On the evening of 5 March 1770 a crowd gathered outside the Custom House on King Street in Boston and confronted the British soldiers standing guard there. Captain Thomas Preston of the 29th Regiment of Foot came up with a party of soldiers, and they fired into the crowd. Three men lay dead in the street and two of the wounded died later; the five dead were Samuel Gray, Samuel Maverick, James Caldwell, Crispus Attucks and Patrick Carr. The National Park Service and Revere's print both count six wounded.1
Preston and the eight soldiers were jailed. Preston was tried first, defended among others by John Adams and Josiah Quincy, and acquitted on 30 October 1770. The soldiers' trial opened on 27 November, with Adams again for the defense. The jury acquitted six of them and found Matthew Kilroy and Hugh Montgomery guilty of manslaughter; by pleading benefit of clergy the two escaped the death penalty and were branded on the hand.2
Within weeks Paul Revere issued his engraving “The Bloody Massacre perpetrated in King Street”, copied from a design by the Boston engraver Henry Pelham, who protested to him in a letter of 29 March. The Library of Congress calls it a sensationalized portrayal, and the Massachusetts Historical Society notes that the line of redcoats firing a volley into a defenseless crowd is historically inaccurate. It became the best-known picture of the event.3
Battle of Barrosa
5 March 1811 · 215 years ago
Barrosa, 1811: a sortie from besieged Cadiz
Early in 1811 Marshal Soult took part of Marshal Victor's 1st Corps, which was besieging Cadiz, for his campaign in Estremadura, and the allies in Cadiz agreed to land a force behind the French lines and strike them from the rear. The British commander, Lieutenant-General Thomas Graham, agreed to serve under the Spanish general Manuel La Peña.4
The British sailed from Cadiz on 21 February and, kept out of Tarifa by the weather, landed at Algeciras on the 23rd. With reinforcements from Gibraltar and Tarifa, Graham had 5,196 men by Oman's count and “rather over five thousand” by Fortescue's. Victor posted General Villatte's division across the coast road to Cadiz and held the divisions of Generals Ruffin and Leval at Chiclana, ready to fall on the flank of the allied column.5
Graham turns about
After a night march the allies reached the Cerro del Puerco, the hill the British called Barrosa, on the morning of 5 March. The Spanish vanguard under Lardizabal attacked Villatte, and when General Zayas came out of the Isla de León over his bridge of boats, Villatte fell back across the Almanza creek. La Peña then ordered Graham down to the Bermeja ridge, although Graham argued that the hill was the key to the position.6
Graham's division was marching through the pine wood toward Bermeja about midday when Victor attacked. Ruffin's division climbed the hill, the Spanish rearguard left it, and Lieutenant-Colonel Browne's flank battalion followed. Warned in the wood, Graham rode back, saw Ruffin on the slope and Leval on his own flank, and attacked at once.7
Browne's battalion, 536 strong, went up the slope alone, and the first French volley struck down about two hundred of its men. Brigadier-General Dilkes then led the Guards up the hill to the right of Browne's line. Ruffin's columns, and then two battalions of grenadiers under General Chaudron-Rousseau, could not break the British line, and they gave way and ran down the hill.8
The eagle of the 8th Line
On the left, Colonel Wheatley's brigade came out of the wood against Leval. Lieutenant-Colonel Barnard's riflemen and Portuguese light companies went in first, while Major Duncan's guns opened fire.9
The first clash came between the 2nd battalion of the 87th Foot, led by Major Hugh Gough, and the French 8th of the Line; its two battalions were driven together into one mass, and the 87th charged into it. Sergeant Masterson of the 87th took the regiment's eagle. Further left, the 28th Foot under Colonel Belson met the French 54th, which beat off two charges and gave way at the third.10
Counting the cost
The fight was short: Graham reported the enemy in full retreat in less than an hour and a half, and Oman writes that it lasted nearly two hours. Oman and Fortescue both give Graham's loss as 1,238 killed and wounded out of some 5,200 men. Browne's battalion lost 236 of its 536.11
For the French troops engaged against the British, Oman and Fortescue both give 2,062 killed, wounded and missing; Oman counts 134 unwounded prisoners, Fortescue fewer than 150. Ruffin and Chaudron-Rousseau were wounded and taken, and both died of their wounds.12
A victory thrown away
La Peña, about two miles from Wheatley's fight, would not move to Graham's support. In a letter of 24 March to Henry Wellesley, Graham wrote that “Within a quarter-of-an-hour's ride of the scene of action, the General remained ignorant of what was passing, and nothing was done”; Oman, too, writes that La Peña could have ridden over in a quarter of an hour. Graham's division crossed the Santi Petri into the Isla de León the next morning, and he refused to serve under La Peña again.13
At a French council of war it was decided that, if the allies came on in force, the forts would be blown up and the corps would fall back on Seville; no attack came, and Victor reoccupied his lines. The siege of Cadiz went on. Fortescue writes that a court-martial pronounced La Peña blameless, Toreno that a junta of generals found no grounds to proceed against him. Graham was offered a Spanish dukedom. See also our article on the Duke of Wellington.14
In April 1811 the 87th was allowed to call itself the Prince of Wales's Own Irish Regiment and to bear an eagle with a wreath of laurel above the harp on its colors. Sergeant Masterson was commissioned as an officer.15
Also on this day
Battle of Rakvere
5 March 1603 · 423 years ago
At Rakvere in Estonia, Lithuanian cavalry under Jan Karol Chodkiewicz clashed with a Swedish force during the Polish-Swedish War of 1600-1611. The Lithuanians won with very light losses, and the victory hastened the surrender of the Swedish garrison of Dorpat.
