Few men have gone through life without passing through certain periods
which, although not marked by positive misfortune, were yet so impressed
by gloom and despondence that their very retrospect is saddening. Happy
it is for us that in after days our memory is but little retentive of
these. We remember the shadows that darkened over the landscape, but we
forget in great part their cause and their duration, and perhaps even
sometimes are disposed to smile at the sources of grief to which long
habit of the world and its ways would have made us callous.
I was almost alone in the world--bereft of fortune, separated
irrevocably from the woman I loved, and by whom I had reason to think my
affection was returned. In that home to which I should have looked for
fondness I found only gloom and misfortune--my mother grown insensible
to everything save some frivolous narrative of her own health; my
father, once high-spirited and freehearted, care-worn, depressed, and
broken; my cousin, my early playfellow, half sweetheart and half sister,
bestowing her heart and affections on one so unworthy of her. All lost
to me--and at a time, too, when the heart is too weak and tender to
stand alone, but must cling to something, or it sinks upon the earth,
crushed and trodden upon.
I looked back upon my past life, and thought over the happy hours I had
spent in the wild west, roaming through its deep valleys and over its
heath-clad mountains. I thought of her my companion through many a long
summer day by the rocky shore, against which the white waves were ever
beating, watching the sea-birds careering full many a fathom deep below
us, their shrill cries mixing with the wilder plash of the ever-restless
sea--and how we dreamed away those hours, now half in sadness, now in
bright hope of long years to come, and found ourselves thus wandering
hand in hand, loved and loving; and then I looked out upon the bleak
world before me, without an object to win, without a goal to strive at.
'Come, Jack,' said my father, laying his hand on my shoulder, and
startling me out of my reverie, 'one piece of good fortune we have had.
The duke has given me the command at Chatham; some hint of my altered
circumstances, it seems, had reached him, and without my applying, he
most kindly sent for me and told me of my appointment. You must join
the service companies of the Twenty-seventh by to-morrow; they are under
sailing-orders, and no time is to be lost. I told his grace that for
all your soft looks and smooth chin there was no lack of spirit in
your heart; and you must take an eagle, Jack, if you would keep up my
credit.'
Laughingly spoken as these few words were, they somehow struck upon a
chord that had long lain silent in my heart, and as suddenly awoke in me
the burning desire for distinction, and the ambitious thirst of military
glory.
The next evening at sunset the transport weighed anchor and stood out
to sea. A slight breeze off shore and an ebb-tide carried us gently
away from land; and as night was falling I stood alone, leaning on
the bulwarks, and looking fixedly on the faint shadows of the tall
chalk-cliffs, my father's last words, 'You must take an eagle, Jack!'
still ringing in my ears, and sinking deeply into my heart.
Had my accidents by flood and field been more numerous and remarkable
than they were, the recently-told adventures of my friend Charles
O'Malley would prevent my giving them to the public. The subaltern of a
marching regiment--a crack corps, it is true--I saw merely the ordinary
detail of a campaigning life; and although my desire to distinguish
myself rose each day higher, the greatest extent of my renown went
no further than the admiration of my comrades that one so delicately
nurtured and brought up should bear so cheerfully and well the roughings
of a soldier's life; and my sobriquet of 'Jack Hinton, the Guardsman,'
was earned among the stormy scenes and blood-stained fields of the
Peninsula.
My first experiences of military life were indeed but little
encouraging. I joined the army in the disastrous retreat from Burgos.
What a shock to all my cherished notions of a campaign! How sadly
different to my ideas of the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious
war! I remember well we first came up with the retiring forces on the
morning of the 4th of November. The day broke heavily; masses of dark
and weighty clouds drifted across the sky. The ground was soaked with
rain, and a cold, chilling wind swept across the bleak plain, and moaned
dismally in the dark pine-woods. Our party, which consisted of drafts
from the Fiftieth, Twenty-seventh, and Seventy-first regiments, were
stationed in a few miserable hovels on the side of the highroad from
Madrid to Labeyos. By a mistake of the way we had missed a body of
troops on the preceding day, and were now halted here in expectation
of joining some of the corps retiring on the Portuguese frontier. Soon
after daybreak a low rumbling sound, at first supposed to be the noise
of distant cannonading, attracted our attention; but some stragglers
coming up soon after, informed us that it proceeded from tumbrels and
ammunition-waggons of Sir Lowry Cole's brigade, then on the march.
The news was scarcely communicated, when the head of a column appeared
topping the hill.
As they came nearer, we remarked that the men did not keep their ranks,
but strayed across the road from side to side; some carried their
muskets by the sling, others on the shoulder; some leaned on their
companions, as though faint and sick; and many there were whose savage
looks and bloated features denoted drunkenness. The uniforms were torn
and ragged; several of the men had no shoes, and some even had lost
their caps and shakos, and wore handkerchiefs bound round their heads.
Among these the officers were almost undistinguishable; fatigue,
hardship, and privation had levelled them with the men, and discipline
scarcely remained in that disorganised mass. On they came, their eyes
bent only on the long vista of road that lay before them. Some, silent
and sad, trudged on side by side; others, maddened by drink or wild with
the excitement of fever, uttered frightful and horrible ravings. Some
flourished their bayonets, and threatened all within their reach; and
denunciations of their officers and open avowals of desertion were
heard on every side as they went. The bugle sounded a halt as the column
reached the little hamlet where we were stationed; and in a few seconds
the road and the fields at either side were covered with the figures
of the men, who threw themselves down on the spot where they stood, in
every posture that weariness and exhaustion could suggest.
All the information we could collect was that this force formed part
of the rear-guard of the army; that the French under Marshal Soult were
hotly in pursuit, having already driven in the cavalry outposts, and
more than once throwing their skirmishers amongst our fellows. In a few
minutes the bugle again sounded to resume the march; and however little
disposed to yield to the dictates of discipline, yet old habit, stronger
than even lawless insubordination, prevailed; the men rose, and falling
in with some semblance of order, continued their way. Nothing struck me
more in that motley mass of ragged uniform and patched clothing than
the ferocious, almost savage, expression of the soldiers as they marched
past our better equipped and better disciplined party. Their dark scowl
betokened deadly hate; and I could see the young men of our detachment
quail beneath the insulting ruffianism of their gaze. Every now and then
some one or other would throw down his pack or knapsack to the ground,
and with an oath asseverate his resolve to carry it no longer. Some even
declared they would abandon their muskets; and more than one sat down
by the wayside, preferring death or imprisonment from the enemy to the
horrors and severities of that dreadful march.
The Highland regiments and the Guards alone preserved their former
discipline; the latter, indeed, had only lately joined the army, having
landed at Corunna a few weeks previously, and were perfect in every
species of equipment. Joining myself to a group of their officers,
I followed in the march, and was enabled to learn some tidings of my
friend O'Grady, who, I was glad to hear, was only a few miles in advance
of us, with his regiment.
Towards three o'clock we entered a dark pine-wood, through which the
route continued for several miles. Here the march became extremely
difficult, from the deep clayey soil, the worn and cut-up road, and more
than all the torrents of rain that swept along the narrow gorge, and
threw a darkness almost like night over everything. We plodded on
gloomily and scarcely speaking, when suddenly the galloping of horses
was heard in the rear, and we were joined by Sir Edward Paget, who,
with a single aide-de-camp, rode up to our division. After a few hurried
questions to the officer in command, he wheeled his horse round, and
rode back towards the next column, which, from some accidental delay,
was yet two miles in the rear. The sound of the horse's hoofs was still
ringing along the causeway, when a loud shout, followed by the sharp
reports of pistol-firing, mingled with the voice. In an instant all was
as still as before, and save the crashing of the pine-branches and the
beating rain, no other sound was heard.
Our conjectures as to the cause of the firing were just making, when
an orderly dragoon, bareheaded and wounded, came up at the top of his
horse's speed. The few hurried words he spoke in a half-whisper to our
commanding officer were soon reported through the lines. Sir Edward
Paget, our second in command, had been taken prisoner, carried away by
a party of French cavalry, who were daring enough to dash in between the
columns, which in no other retreat had they ventured to approach. The
temerity of our enemy, added to our own dispirited and defenceless
condition, was the only thing wanting to complete our gloom and
depression, and the march was now resumed in the dogged sullenness of
despair.
Day followed day, and all the miseries of our state but increased with
time, till on the morning of the 17th the town of Ciudad Rodrigo came in
view, and the rumour spread that stores of all kinds would be served out
to the famished troops.
By insubordination and intemperance we had lost seven thousand men since
the day the retreat from Burgos began, and although neither harassed by
night marches nor excessive journeys, losing neither guns, ammunition,
nor standards, yet was the memorable document addressed by Wellington to
the officers commanding divisions but too justly merited, concluding in
these words:--
'The discipline of every army, after a long and active campaign, becomes
in some degree relaxed; but I am concerned to observe that the army
under my command has fallen off in this respect to a greater degree than
any army with which I have ever been, or of which I have ever read.'