The pugnacity of Irishmen has grown into a proverb, until, in the belief
of many, a genuine Milesian is never at peace but when fighting. With
certain nations, certain habits are inseparably associated as peculiarly
characterising them. Thus, in vulgar apprehension, the Frenchman dances,
the German smokes, the Spaniard serenades; and on all hands it is agreed
that the Irishman fights. Naturally bellicose, his practice is
pugnacious: antagonism is his salient and distinctive quality. Born in a
squabble, he dies in a shindy: in his cradle he squeals a challenge; his
latest groan is a sound of defiance. Pike and pistol are manifest in his
well-developed bump of combativeness; his name is FIGHT, there can be no
mistake about it. From highest to lowest--in the peer and the
bog-trotter, the inherent propensity breaks forth, more or less modified
by station and education.
Be its expression parliamentary or popular, in Donnybrook or St
Stephen's, out it will. "Show me the man who'll tread on my coat!"
shouts ragged Pat, flourishing his shillelagh as he hurls his
dilapidated garment on the shebeen-house floor. From his seat in the
senate, a joint of the "Tail" intimates, in more polished but equally
intelligible phrase, his inclination for a turn upon the turf. Wherever
blows are rife, Hibernia's sons appear; in big fights or little wars the
shamrock gleams in the van. No matter the cloth, so long as the quarrel
be there. In Austrian white, or Spanish yellow, or Prussian blue,--even
in the blood-coloured breeks of Gallia's legions, but especially, and
preferred above all, in the "old red rag" of the British grenadier, have
Irishmen displayed their valour. And on the list of heroes whom the
Green Isle has produced, a proud and prominent place is justly held by
that gallant corps, the Rangers of Connaught.
Those of our civilian readers to whom the word "Ranger" is more
suggestive of bushes and kangaroos, or of London parks and princes of
the blood, than of parades and battle-fields, are referred to page 49 of
the Army List. They will there find something to the following effect:--
88th, CONNAUGHT RANGERS.
The Harp and Crown.
_"Quis Separabit?"_
The Sphinx, "Egypt."
"Talavera." "Busaco."
"Fuentes d'Onore."
"Cindad Rodrigo."
"Badajoz." "Salamanca."
"Vittoria."
"Nivelle." "Orthes."
"Toulouse."
"Peninsula."
There is a forest of well-won laurels in this dozen of names. They form
a proud blazon for any corps, and one that might satisfy the most
covetous of honour. But of all men in the world, old soldiers are the
hardest to content. They are patented grumblers. Napoleon knew it, and
christened his _vieille garde_ his _grognards_: tough and true as steel,
they yet would have their growl. Now the lads of the Eighty-Eighth,
having proved themselves better men even than the veteran guards of the
Corsican corporal, also claim the grumbler's privilege, setting forth
sundry griefs and grave causes of complaint. They are not allowed the
word "Pyrenees" upon their colours, although, at the fight of that name,
they not only were present, but rendered good service:--whilst for
Waterloo many a man got a medal who, during the whole battle, was scarce
within boom of cannon. During more than four years of long marches,
short commons, severe hardships, and frequent fighting, the general
commanding the third division--the fighting division, as it was
called--viewed the Connaughters with dislike, even stigmatised them as
confirmed marauders, and recommended none of their officers for
promotion, although many greatly distinguished themselves, and
some,--the brave Mackie, at Ciudad Rodrigo, for instance--successfully
led forlorn-hopes. Finally, passing over the old sore of non-decoration
for Peninsular services, since that, common to many regiments, is at
last about to be healed,--Mr Robinson, the biographer of Sir Thomas
Picton, has dared, in order to vindicate the harsh and partial conduct
of his hero, to cast dust upon the facings of the brave boys of
Connaught. It need hardly be said that they have found defenders. Of
these, the most recent is Lieutenant Grattan, formerly an officer of the
Eighty-eighth, and who, after making a vigorous stand, in the pages of a
military periodical, against the calumniators of his old corps, has
brought up his reserves and come to its support in a book of his own.
His volumes, however, are not devoted to mere controversy. He has
understood that he should best state the case, establish the merits, and
confound the enemies of his regiment, by a faithful narrative of his and
its adventures, triumphs, and sufferings. Thus, whilst he has seized the
opportunity to deal out some hard knocks to those who have blamed the
conduct (none have ever impugned the courage) of the Connaught Rangers,
he has produced an entertaining book, thoroughly Irish in character,
where the ludicrous and the horrible, the rollicking and the
slaughtering, mingle and alternate. Even when most indignant, good
humour and a love of fun peep through his pages. His prologue or
preamble, entitled "An Answer to some attacks in Robinson's Life of
Picton," although redolent of "slugs in a sawpit," is full of the
national humour. "Frequently," Mr Robinson has asserted, "just before
going into battle, it would be found, upon inspection, that one-half of
the Eighty-eighth regiment were without ammunition, having acquired a
pernicious habit of exchanging the cartridge for _aguardiente_, and
substituting in their places pieces of wood, cut and coloured to
resemble them." Such things have been heard of, even in very
well-regulated regiments, as the exchange of powder and ball for brandy
and other creature comforts; but it is very unlikely that the practice
should have prevailed to any thing like the extent here set down, in a
British army in active service and under Wellington's command, and the
artfully prepared quaker-cartridges increase the improbability of the
statement. Lieutenant Grattan scouts the tale as a base fabrication,
lashes out in fine style at its propagator, and claims great merit for
the officers who taught their men to beat the best troops in the world
with timber ammunition. He puts forward a more serious refutation by a
string of certificates from men and officers of all ranks who served
with him in the Peninsula, and who strenuously repel the charge as a
malignant calumny.
It was at the close of the campaign of 1809, that the historian of the
Connaught Rangers, then a newly commissioned youngster, joined, within a
march of Badajoz, the first battalion of his regiment. The palmy and
triumphant days of the British army in the Peninsula could then hardly
be said to have begun. True, they had had victories; the hard-earned one
of Talavera had been gained only three months previously, but the
general aspect of things was gloomy and disheartening. The campaign had
been one of much privation and fatigue; rations were insufficient,
quarters unhealthy, and Wellington's little army, borne on the
muster-rolls as thirty thousand men, was diminished one-third by
disease. The Portuguese, who numbered nearly as many, were raw and
untried troops, scarce a man of whom had seen fire, and little reliance
could be placed upon them. In spite of Lord Wellington's judicious and
reiterated warnings, the incompetent and conceited Spanish generals
risked repeated engagements, in which their armies--numerous enough, but
ill disciplined, ill armed, and half-starved--were crushed and
exterminated. The French side of the medal presented a very different
picture. Elated by their German victories, their swords yet red with
Austrian blood, Napoleon's best troops and ablest marshals hurried
southwards, sanguinely anticipating, upon the fields of the Peninsula,
an easy continuation of their recent triumphs. Three hundred and sixty
thousand men-at-arms--French, Germans, Italians, Poles, even
Mamelukes--spread themselves over Spain, occupied her towns, and
invested her fortresses. Ninety thousand soldiers, under Massena,
"_l'enfant cheri de la Victoire_," composed the so-called "army of
Portugal," intended to expel from that country, if not to annihilate,
the English leader and his small but resolute band, who, undismayed,
awaited the coming storm. In the ever-memorable lines of Torres Vedras,
the legions of Buonaparte met a stern and effectual dike to their
torrent of headlong aggression. Upon the happy selection and able
defence of those celebrated positions, were based the salvation of the
Peninsula and the subsequent glorious progress of the British arms.
Whilst referring to them, Mr Grattan seizes the opportunity to enumerate
the services rendered by the army in Spain. "The invincible men," he
says, "who defended those lines, aided no doubt by Portuguese and
Spanish soldiers, afterwards fought for a period of four years, during
which time they never suffered one defeat; and from the first
commencement of this gigantic war to its final and victorious
termination, the Peninsular army fought and won nineteen pitched
battles, and innumerable combats; they made or sustained ten sieges,
took four great fortresses, twice expelled the French from Portugal,
preserved Alicant, Carthagena, Cadiz, and Lisbon; they killed, wounded,
and took about _two hundred thousand enemies_, and the bones of forty
thousand British soldiers lie scattered on the plains and mountains of
the Peninsula." And thereupon our friend, the Connaughter, bursts out
into indignation that warriors who did such deeds, and, on _fifteen_
different occasions received the thanks of parliament, should have been
denied a medal for their services. Certainly, when men who went through
the whole, or the greater part, of those terrible campaigns, which they
began as commissioned officers, are now seen holding no higher than a
lieutenant's rank, one cannot but recognise their title to some
additional recompense, and marvel that the modest and well-merited badge
they claim should so long have been refused them. Mr Grattan puts much
of the blame of such refusal at the door of the Duke of Wellington. Not
that he is usually a depreciator of his former leader, of whose military
genius and great achievements he ever speaks with respect amounting to
veneration. But he does not hesitate to accuse him of having sacrificed
his old followers and friends to his own vanity, which petty feeling, he
maintains, made the Duke desire that the only medal granted for the war
against Napoleon, should be given for the only victory in which he beat
the Emperor in person. We believe that many Peninsular officers, puzzled
to account for the constant and seemingly causeless refusal of the
coveted decoration, hold the same opinion with Mr Grattan. We esteem it
rather plausible than sound. The names Of WELLINGTON and WATERLOO would
not the less be immortally associated because a cross bearing those of
PENINSULA and PYRENEES, or any other appropriate legend, shone upon the
breasts of that "old Spanish infantry," of whom the Duke always spoke
with affection and esteem, and to whom he unquestionably is mainly
indebted for the wealth, honours, and fame which, for more than thirty
years, he has tranquilly enjoyed. Moreover, we cannot credit such
selfishness on the part of such a man, or believe that he, to whom a
grateful sovereign and country decerned every recompense in their power
to bestow, would be so thankless to the men to whose sweat and blood he
mainly owed his success--to men who bore him, it may truly be said, upon
their shoulders, to the highest pinnacle of greatness a British subject
can possibly attain. Waterloo concluded the war: its results were
immense, the conduct of the troops engaged heroic; but when we compare
the amount of glory there gained with the renown accumulated during six
years' warfare--a renown undimmed by a single reverse;--still more, when
we contrast the dangers and hardships of one short campaign, however
brilliant, with those of half-a-dozen long ones crowded with battles and
sieges, we must admit that if the victors of La Belle Alliance nobly
earned their medal, the veterans of Salamanca and Badajoz, Vittoria and
Toulouse, have a threefold claim to a similar reward. They have long
been unjustly deprived of it, and now comparatively few remain to
receive the tardily-accorded distinction.
The first action to which Mr Grattan refers, as having himself taken
share in, is that of Busaco. The name is familiar to every body, but
yet, of all the Peninsular battles, it is perhaps the one of which least
is generally known. It was not a very bloody fight--the loss in killed
and wounded having been barely seven per cent of the numbers engaged;
still it was a highly important one, as testing the quality of the
Portuguese levies, upon which much depended. Upon the whole, they
behaved pretty well, although they committed one or two awkward
blunders, and one of their militia regiments took to flight at the first
volley fired by their own friends. Mr Grattan does not usually set
himself up as a historical authority with respect to battles, except in
matters pertaining to his own regiment or brigade, and which came under
his own observation. Nevertheless, concerning Busaco, he speaks boldly
out, and asserts his belief that no correct report of the action exists
in print. Napier derives his account of it from Colonel Waller, whose
statement is totally incorrect, and has been expressly contradicted by
various officers (amongst others, by General King) who fought that day
with Picton's division. Colonel Napier's strong partiality to the light
division sometimes prevents his doing full justice to other portions of
the army. In this instance, however, any error he has fallen into,
arises from his being misinformed. He himself was far away to the left,
fighting with his own corps, and could know nothing, from personal
observation, of the proceedings of Picton's men. Opposed to a very
superior force, including some of the best regiments of the whole French
army, they had their hands full; and the Eighty-eighth, especially,
covered themselves with glory. At one time, the Rangers had not only the
French fire to endure, but also that of the Eighth Portuguese, whose
ill-directed volleys crossed their line of march. An officer sent to
warn the Senhores of the mischief they did, received, before he could
fulfil his mission, a French and a Portuguese bullet, and the Eighth
continued their reckless discharge. But no cross-fire could daunt the
men of Connaught. "Push home to the muzzle!" was the word of their
gallant lieutenant-colonel, Wallace; and push home they did, totally
routing their opponents, and nearly destroying the French Thirty-sixth,
a pet battalion of the Emperor's. Stimulus was not wanting; Wellington
stood by, and, with his staff and several generals, watched the charge.
The Eighty-eighth were greatly outnumbered, and Marshal Beresford, their
colonel, "expressed some uneasiness when he saw his regiment about to
plunge into this unequal contest. But when they were mixed with
Regnier's division, and putting them to flight down the hill, Lord
Wellington, tapping Beresford on the shoulder, said to him, 'Well
Beresford, look at them now!'" And when the work was done, and the fight
over, Wellington rode up to Colonel Wallace, and seizing him warmly by
the hand, said, "Wallace, I never witnessed a more gallant charge than
that made by your regiment!" Beresford spoke to several of the men by
name, and shook the officers' hands; and even Picton forgot his
prejudice against the regiment, whom he had once designated as the
"Connaught foot-pads," and expressed himself satisfied with their
conduct. Many of the men shed tears of joy. So susceptible are soldiers
to praise and kindness, and so easy is it by a few well-timed words to
repay their toils and perils, and renew their store of confidence and
hope. And numerous were the occasions during the Peninsular contest when
they needed all the encouragement that could be given them. After
Busaco, when blockaded in the lines of Torres Vedras, their situation
was far from agreeable. The wet season set in, and their huts, roofed
with heather--a pleasant shelter when the sun shone, but very
ineffectual to resist autumnal rains--became untenable. Every device was
resorted to for the exclusion of the deluge, but in vain. Fortunately,
the French were in a still worse plight. In miserable cantonments, short
of provisions and attacked by disease, the horses died, and the men
deserted; until, on the 14th November, Massena broke up his camp, and
retired upon Santarem. The Anglo-Portuguese army made a corresponding
movement into more comfortable quarters, and rumours were abroad of an
approaching engagement; but it did not take place, and a period of
comparative relaxation succeeded one of severe hardship and arduous
duty. Men and officers made the most of the holiday. There was never any
thing of the martinet about the Duke. He was not the man to harass with
unnecessary and vexations drills, or rigidly to enforce unimportant
rules. Those persons, whether military or otherwise, who consider a
strictly regulation uniform as essential to the composition of a British
soldier, as a stout heart and a strong arm, and who stickle for a
closely buttoned jacket, a stiff stock, and the due allowance of
pipe-clay, would have been somewhat scandalised, could they have beheld
the equipment of Wellington's army in the Peninsula. Mr Grattan gives a
comical account of the various fantastical fashions and conceits
prevalent amongst the officers. "Provided," he says, "we brought our men
into the field well-appointed, and with sixty rounds of good ammunition
each, he (the Duke) never looked to see whether their trousers were
black, blue, or grey; and as to ourselves, we might be rigged out in all
the colours of the rainbow, if we fancied it." The officers, especially
the young subs, availed themselves largely of this judicious laxity, and
the result was a medley of costume, rather picturesque than military.
Braided coats, long hair, plumed hats, and large mustaches, were amongst
the least of the eccentricities displayed. In a curious spirit of
contradiction, the infantry adopted brass spurs, anticipatory, perhaps,
of their promotion to field-officers' rank; and, bearing in mind, that
"there is nothing like leather," exhibited themselves in ponderous
over-alls, _a la Hongroise_, topped and strapped, and loaded down the
side with buttons and chains. One man, in his rage for singularity, took
the tonsure, shaving the hair off the crown of his head; and another,
having covered his frock-coat with gold tags and lace, was furiously
assaulted by a party of Portuguese sharpshooters, who, seeing him, in
the midst of the enemy's riflemen, whither his headlong courage had led
him, mistook him for a French general, and insisted upon making him
prisoner. And three years later, when Mr Grattan and a party of his
comrades landed in England, in all the glories of velvet waistcoats,
dangling Spanish buttons of gold and silver, and forage caps of fabulous
magnificence, they could hardly fancy that they belonged to the same
service as the red-coated, white-breeched, black-gaitered gentlemen of
Portsmouth garrison.
The embarkation of the British army, which in the summer of 1810 was
deemed imminent both in England and the Peninsula and considered
probable by Lord Liverpool himself, was no longer thought of after
Busaco, save by a few of those croaking gentlemen, who, in camps as in
council-houses, view every thing through smoked spectacles.
Reinforcements, both English and Spanish, reached the lines of Torres
Vedras, which Wellington continued to strengthen, and Massena dared not
attack. The accession of General Drouet's corps increased the army of
the Prince of Essling to upwards of 70,000 men. His cavalry, too, was
twice as strong as that of the British; but, notwithstanding this
superiority, and the desire which he must have felt to retrieve his
fame, tarnished by the repulse at Busaco, and by his fruitless movement
on the lines of Lisbon, Massena remained inert, in front of the man whom
Napoleon's _Moniteur_ contemptuously designated as the "Sepoy General."
Spring approached without either army assuming the offensive, until, on
the 5th of March 1811, the French began their retreat from Portugal,
closely followed up by Wellington. There was little difficulty in
tracing them: they left a broad trail of blood, and desolation. With
bare blade, and blazing brand, they swept across the land; church and
convent, town and village, the farm and the cottage, were given to the
flames; on the most frivolous pretexts, often without one, women,
children, and unarmed men were barbarously murdered; and many a
Portuguese lost his life for refusing to point out treasures which
existed only in the imagination of the fierce and greedy Frenchman.
Enraged at the dearth of provisions, of which they stood in great need,
and which had been every-where removed or destroyed, the retreating army
abandoned themselves to frightful cruelties and excesses. All along the
line of march, the pursuers found piles of bodies, groups of murdered
peasantry, and, mingled with them, the corpses of Frenchmen, often
hideously mutilated, according to the barbarous usage which has been
continued in more recent wars by the vindictive population of the
Peninsula. The retaliation was terrible, but the provocation had been
extreme. Mr Grattan's details of some of the scenes he himself
witnessed, are painfully minute and vivid; and whilst reading them, we
cease to wonder that, after the lapse of a third of a century, hatred of
the French exists almost undiminished in the countries they so cruelly
and wantonly ravaged.
However orderly and well-conducted, there is always something
discouraging in a retreat, as there is a cheerful and exhilarating
feeling attendant on an advance. Nevertheless, during their progress
across Portugal, the French maintained their high reputation. Their
rear-guard, commanded by Marshal Ney, made good fight when pressed by
the British, but their losses were heavy before they reached the Spanish
frontier. This they crossed early in April, and a month later they had
to recross it, to convey supplies to the fortress of Almeida, the only
place in Portugal over which the tricolor still floated. The result of
this movement was the bloody combat of Fuentes d'Onore, a complete but
dearly-bought triumph for our arms. Here the Eighty-eighth nobly
distinguished themselves. At first they were in reserve, whilst for
eight hours two Highland regiments, the Eighty-third and some light
companies, fought desperately in the town, opposed to the fresh troops
which Massena continually sent up. Their loss was very heavy, the
streets were heaped with dead, the heat was excessive, and ammunition
grew scarce. The Highlanders and the French grenadiers fought in the
cemetery, across the graves and tombstones. "Wallace, with his regiment,
the Eighty-eighth, was in reserve on the high ground which overlooked
the churchyard, and was attentively viewing the combat which raged
below, when Sir Edward Pakenham galloped up to him, and said, 'Do you
see that, Wallace?'--'I do,' replied the colonel; 'and I would rather
drive the French out of the town than cover a retreat across the
Coa.'--'Perhaps,' said Sir Edward, 'his lordship don't think it
tenable.' Wallace answering, said, 'I shall take it with my regiment,
and keep it too.'--'Will you?' was the reply; 'I'll go and tell Lord
Wellington so.' In a moment or two, Pakenham returned at a gallop, and
waving his hat, called out, 'He says you may go.--Come along, Wallace!'"
Poor Pakenham! ever foremost to lead a charge or brave a peril. He
deserved a better fate, after his glorious exploits in the Peninsula,
than to be picked off by a sneaking Yankee rifle, in the swampy plains
of New Orleans. But the same "boiling spirit and hasty temper" that won
him laurels in Europe, led him to his death in another hemisphere.
Over-confidence may be pardoned in a man who had so often driven before
him the redoubtable cohorts of the modern Alexander. And one mistake
cannot obliterate the memory of fifty gallant feats.--Full of fight, and
led on by Pakenham, Mackinnon, and Wallace, the Eighty-eighth advanced
at a smart trot into the town, where the French Ninth regiment and a few
hundreds of the Imperial Guard awaited them. Their charge was
irresistible; they cleared the place and drove the enemy into the river.
They even pursued them through it, and several Rangers fell on the
French side of the stream. About a hundred and fifty of the Old Guard
ran into a street, of which the further end was barricaded. Mr Grattan,
whose account of the affair is a graphic and interesting piece of
military narrative, is amusingly cool and _naif_ in referring to this
incident. "Mistakes of this kind," he says, "will sometimes occur, and
when they do, the result is easily imagined.... In the present instance,
every man was put to death; but our soldiers, _as soon as they had
leisure_, paid the enemy that respect which is due to brave men." We
apprehend that, with the Connaughters, _leisure_, in this sense, was
scanty, at least at Fuentes d'Onore; but, in so close and desperate a
fight, hot blood is apt to drown mercy. The dashing charge of the
Eighty-eighth nearly closed the day's performances, although the French
batteries, admirably served, still peppered the town. Men and officers
sheltered themselves as well as they could, but many were killed; whilst
Pakenham, with reckless bravery, rode about the streets, a mark for the
enemy's shot, which tore up the ground around him whenever he stood
still. "He was in a violent perspiration and covered with dust, his left
hand bound round with a handkerchief, as if he had been wounded; he was
ever in the hottest of the fire: and, if the whole fate of the battle
had depended on his exertions, he could not have fought with more
devotion."
Amongst the many daring acts witnessed on the bloody day of Fuentes
d'Onore, that of the Spanish guerilla chief, Julian Sanchez, deserves
notice. At the head of his ragged and ill-disciplined band, he had the
temerity to charge a crack French regiment, and, as might be expected,
was sent back with a sore head. Whilst on the subject of guerillas, Mr
Grattan combats an opinion which he believes many persons in this
country entertain, "that the Spaniards and Portuguese did as much, if
not more, during the Peninsular contest, than the British." Here he is
certainly mistaken. Very few persons, out of the Peninsula, have any
such notion. The French know well enough by whom they were beaten. Loth
as they are to acknowledge a thrashing at the hands of their old
antagonists, they do not dream of attributing their defeats to the
"_brigands_," of whom they declare they would have had a very cheap
bargain, but for the intervention of the troublesome English. And
certainly, if the Spaniards and Portuguese had been left to themselves,
although, favoured by the mountainous configuration of the country, they
might long have kept up a desultory contest, they would never have
succeeded in expelling the invaders; for the simple reason that they
were wholly unable to meet them in the plain. Most true it is that,
during the war of independence, the people of the Peninsula gave
numerous examples of bravery and devotion, and still more of long
suffering and patient endurance for their country's sake. The irregular
mode of warfare adopted by the peasantry, the great activity and
constant skirmishings, stratagems, and ambuscades of Mina, the
Empecinado, Sanchez, and many other patriotic and valiant men, greatly
harassed and annoyed the French; and, by compelling them to employ large
bodies of troops in garrison and escort duty, prevented their opposing
an overwhelming force to the comparatively small army under Wellington.
But all that sort of thing, however useful and efficacious as a general
system, and as weakening the enemy, was very petty work when examined in
detail. The great victories, the mighty feats of war that figure in
history's page, were due to British discipline, pluck, and generalship.
And whatever merit remains with the Spaniards, is to be attributed to
their guerillas and irregular partisans. As to their regular troops,
after they had overthrown Dupont at Baylen, they seemed to think they
might doze upon their laurels, which were very soon wrenched from them.
Baylen was their grand triumph, and subsequently to it they did little
in the field. Behind stone walls they still fought well: Spaniards are
brave and tenacious in a fortress, and Saragossa is a proud name in
their annals. Nothing could be better than old General Herrasti's
valiant defence of Cuidad Rodrigo against Ney and his thirty thousand
Frenchmen. The garrison, six thousand strong, lost seven hundred men by
the first day's fire. Only when their guns were silenced, when the town
was on fire in various places, and when several yards of wall were
thrown down by a mine, did the brave governor hoist the white flag.
Other instances of the kind might be cited, when Spanish soldiers fought
as well as mortal men could do. But with respect to pitched battles,
another tale must be told. At Ocana, Almonacid, and on a dozen other
disastrous fields, Baylen was amply revenged. The loss at Ocana alone is
rated by Spanish accounts at thirty thousand men, chiefly prisoners. Mr
Grattan estimates it at twenty-five thousand men, and _thirteen thousand
eight hundred and seventy-seven guitars_. Of these latter, he tells us
twelve thousand seven hundred and fifty-two were in cases, and the
remainder without; Indeed he is so exceedingly circumstantial that we
presume he counted them himself. Otherwise, although well aware of the
Spaniard's predilection for the fascinating tinkle of his national
instrument, we could hardly credit the accuracy of the figures. Even a
_Spanish_ general, we should think, would hardly allow his men thus to
encumber themselves with harmony. The march of such an army of
Orpheuses, in which every third soldier shouldered a fiddle-case as a
pendant to his musket, must have been curious to behold; suggesting the
idea that the melodious warriors designed subduing their foes by the
soothing strains of _jotas_ and _cachuchas_, rather than by the more
cogent arguments of sharp steel and ball-cartridge. Great must have been
the tinkling at eventide, exceeding that of the most extensive flock of
merinos that ever cropped Castilian herbage. Was it because they were
certain of a dance that these barrack-yard minstrels came provided with
music, sure, in any case, to have the piper to pay? If the instruments
were provided to celebrate a triumph, they might as well have been left
at home. In Spain, however, time has effaced, or greatly weakened, the
remembrance of many reverses, whilst slight and dubious successes,
carefully treasured up, have swollen by the keeping into mighty
victories; and at the present day, foreigners who should be so
uncourteous and impolitic as to express, in the hearing of Spaniards, a
doubt that Spanish valour was the main agent in driving the French from
the Peninsula, might reckon, not on a stab--knifeing being less in vogue
beyond the Bay of Biscay than is often imagined--but certainly on a
scowl, and probably on an angry contradiction. And in every province,
almost in every town, in Spain the traveller may, if he so pleaseth, be
regaled with marvellous narratives of signal victories, gained over the
_gavachos_, in that immediate neighbourhood, by valiant generals whose
names, so partial is fame, have never transpired beyond the scenes of
their problematical exploits. Under the constitutional system, and owing
to the long civil war, Spanish troops have improved in discipline and in
various other respects; and with good generals, there is no manifest
reason why they should not successfully cope with Frenchmen, although we
doubt whether they could. But in Napoleon's day matters were very
different, and in the open field their chance was desperate. The
Portuguese were doubtless of a better quality; and in the pages of
Napier and other historians, we find them spoken of in terms of praise.
They had British officers to head them, and there is much in good
leading; they had British troops to emulate, and national pride spurred
them on. At the same period, Italians--certainly very poor soldiers when
left to themselves--fought gallantly under French generals, and with
French example before them. Of the general bearing of the Portuguese,
however, we have heard few Peninsular men speak very highly. They appear
to have been extremely inconsistent; brave one day, dastards the next.
At, Ciudad Rodrigo, Mr Grattan greatly lauds their gallantry, which
struck him the more as being unexpected. At Salamanca, on the other
hand, he records their weakness, and the easy repulse of Pack's brigade,
two thousand strong, by four hundred Frenchmen. "Notwithstanding all
that has been said and written of the Portuguese troops, I still hold
the opinion that they are utterly incompetent to stand unsupported and
_countenanced_ by British troops, with any chance of success, against
even half their own numbers of Frenchmen." Again, after Salamanca, when
Wellington and his victorious army advanced on Madrid, the Portuguese
dragoons fled, without striking a blow, before the French lancers,
exposing the reserve of German cavalry to severe loss, abandoning the
artillery to its fate, and tarnishing the triumphal entry of the British
into the capital--within a march of which this disgraceful affair
occurred. Still, to encourage these wavering heroes, it was necessary to
speak civilly of them in despatches; to pat them on the back, and tell
them they were fine fellows. And this has sometimes been misunderstood
by simple persons, who believe all they see in print, and look upon
despatches and bulletins as essentially veracious documents. "I remember
once," says Mr Grattan, "upon my return home in 1813, getting myself
closely cross-examined by an old lawyer, because I said I thought the
Portuguese troops inferior to the French, still more to the British.
'Inferior to the British, sir! I have read Lord Wellington's last
despatch, and he says the Portuguese fought as well as the British; and
I suppose you won't contradict him?' I saw it was vain to convince this
pugnacious old man of the necessity of saying these civil things, and we
parted mutually dissatisfied with each other; he taking me, no doubt,
for a forward young puppy, and I looking upon him as a monstrous old
bore."
The Eighty-eighth, we gather from Mr Grattan's narrative, whilst
respected by all as a first-rate battle regiment, was, when the stirring
and serious events of that busy time left a moment for trifling, a
fertile source of amusement to the whole third division. This is not
wonderful. Many of the officers, and all the men, with the exception of
three or four, were Irish, not Anglicised Irishmen, tamed by long
residence amongst the Saxon, but raw, roaring Patlanders, who had grown
and thriven on praties and potheen, and had carried with them to Spain
their rich brogue, their bulls, and an exhaustless stock of gaiety. The
amount of fun and blunders furnished by such a corps was naturally
immense. But if in quarters they were made the subject of much
good-humoured quizzing, in the field their steady valour was justly
appreciated. No regiment in the service contained a larger proportion of
"lads that weren't aisy," which metaphorical phrase, current among the
Rangers, is translated by Mr Grattan as signifying fellows who would
walk into a cannon's month, and think the operation rather a pleasant
one. Whenever a desperate service was to be done, "the boys," as they,
_more Hibernico_, familiarly termed themselves, were foremost in the
ranks of volunteers. The contempt of danger, or non-comprehension of it,
manifested by some of these gentlemen, was perfect. "My fine fellow,"
said an engineer officer, during the unsuccessful siege of Badajoz in
May 1811, to a man under Lieutenant Grattan's orders, who sat outside a
battery, hammering at a fascine; "my fine fellow, you are too much
exposed; get inside the embrasure, and you will do your work nearly as
well." "I'm almost finished, colonel," was the reply, "and it isn't
worth while to move now. Those fellows can't hit me, for they've been
trying it these fifteen minutes." Just then, a round-shot gave the lie
to his prediction by cutting him in two; and, according to their custom,
the French gunners set up a shout of triumph at their successful
practice. Some of the Connaughters, who had never lost sight of their
native bogs till exported to the Peninsula, understood little or no
English beyond the words of command. On an inspection parade, one of
this class was asked by General Mackinnon, to whose squad he belonged.
Bewildered and puzzled, Darby Rooney applied to his sergeant for a
translation of the general's question--thus conveying to the latter an
idea that this was the first time he had heard such a thing as a squad
spoken of. The story got abroad--was, of course, much embellished--and
an hour afterwards the third division was enjoying a prodigious chuckle
at the notion that not one of the Connaughters knew what a squad meant.
The young men laughed, the old officers shook their heads and deplored
the benighted state of the Irishmen; whilst all the time, Mr Grattan
assures us, "the Eighty-eighth was a more really _efficient_ regiment
than almost any _two_ corps in the third division." As efficient as any
they undoubtedly were, when fighting was to be done; but in some other
respects their conduct was less irreproachable. According to their
historian and advocate's own showing, their knapsacks were often too
light and their havresacks too heavy. "A watchcoat, a piece of
pipe-clay, and a button-brush," compose rather a scanty kit: yet those
three articles formed--with the exception of the clothes he stood
in--the entire wardrobe and means of personal adornment of the Rooney
above-named; and many of his comrades were scarce better provided. But
if the back was neglected and left bare, the belly, on the contrary,
was cared for with vigilant affection. On occasion, the Eighty-eighth
could do their work on meagre diet as well, or better than any other
corps. They would march two days on a pipe of tobacco; or for a week,
with the addition of a biscuit and a dram. But when they did such
things, it was no sign of any abstract love of temperance, or wish to
mortify the flesh; it was simply a token of the extreme poverty of the
district in which they found themselves. For the article provend they
always kept a bright look-out. A greasy havresack, especially on the
line of march, is the soldier's first desideratum; and it was rare that
a very respectable workhouse soup could not have been produced by
infusing that of a Connaughter in a proper quantity of water. When
rations were scanty, or commissaries lagged in the rear, none understood
better than the Eighty-eighth how to forage for themselves. "Every man
his own quartermaster" was then their motto. Nothing came amiss to them;
sweet or savoury, from a pig to a bee-hive, they sacked every thing; and
their "taking ways" were often cast in their teeth. The natives were
compelled to mount guard over their sheepfolds; but the utmost force
they could muster was of small avail against the resolute onslaught of
the half-famished Irishmen. Even the exertions of the Provost-marshal,
and the liberal application of the cat, proved ineffectual to check
these depredations; whilst the whimsical arguments used by the fellows
in their defence sometimes disarmed the severity of Picton himself.
It would have been quite out of character for an Irish regiment to march
without ladies in their train, and accordingly the female following of
the Rangers was organised on the most liberal scale. Motley as it was
numerous, it included, besides English and Irish women, a fair
sprinkling of tender-hearted Spaniards and Portuguese, who had been
unable to resist the fascinations of the insinuating Connaughters. The
sufferings of these poor creatures, on long marches, over bad roads and
in wet and cold seasons, were of course terrible, and only to be
equalled by their fidelity to those to whom they had attached
themselves. Their endurance of fatigue was wonderful; their services
were often great; and many a soldier, stretched disabled on the field of
some bloody battle, and suffering from the terrible thirst attendant on
wounds, owed his life to their gentle ministry. In circumstances of
danger, they showed remarkable courage. At the assault of Ciudad
Rodrigo, the baggage-guard, eager to share in the fight, deserted
their post and rushed to the trenches. Immediately a host of
miscreants--fellows who hung on the skirts of the army, watching
opportunities to plunder--made a dash at the camp, but the women
defended it valiantly, and fairly beat them off. Of course feminine
sensibility got a little blunted by a life of this kind, and it was
rarely with very violent emotion that the ladies saw their husbands go
into action. Persuaded of their invincibility, they looked upon success
as certain, and if, unfortunately, the victory left them widows, they
deemed a very short mourning necessary before contracting a new
alliance. Now and then a damsel of birth and breeding would desert the
paternal mansion to follow the drum; and Mr Grattan tells a romantic
history of a certain Jacinta Cherito, the beautiful daughter of a
wealthy judge, who blacked her face and tramped off as a cymbal boy
under the protection of the drum-major of the Eighty-eighth--a
magnificent fellow, whose gorgeous uniform and imposing cocked hat
caused him to be taken by the Portuguese for nothing less than a general
of division. The young lady had not forgotten to take her jewels with
her, and the old judge made a great fuss, and appealed to the colonel,
who requested him to inspect the regiment as it left the town. But the
sooty visage and uniform jacket baffled his penetration, and at the
first halt, the drummer and the lady were made one flesh. Thorp, the
lucky bridegroom, was a fine dashing fellow, bent upon distinguishing
himself. He was often wounded, but never missed an engagement, even when
his hurts were unhealed. He fell gloriously at Toulouse, and the next
day came the gazette with his promotion to an ensigncy, which, if it was
then of little value to him, was at any rate "a great consolation to his
poor afflicted widow, and the means of reconciling her father to the
choice she had made; and her return once more to her home was a scene of
great rejoicing." When the British troops embarked at Bordeaux, for
America and England, a crowd of poor Spanish and Portuguese women, who
had long followed their fortunes and were now forbidden to accompany
their husbands and lovers, watched their departure with tearful eyes.
"They were fond and attached creatures, and had been useful in many
ways, and under many circumstances, not only to their husbands, but to
the corps they belonged to generally. Many of them, the Portuguese in
particular, had lived with our men for years, and had borne them
children." But the stern rules of the service prevailed. The battalions
bound for America were allowed but a limited number of soldiers' wives,
and the surplus were of necessity left to their fate. Some had money;
more were penniless, and nearly naked. Men and officers were then
greatly in arrear, but nevertheless a subscription was got up, and its
amount divided amongst the unfortunates, thus abandoned upon a foreign
shore, and at many hundreds of miles from their homes.
General Picton was a man of action, not of words. There was no palaver
about him, nothing superfluous in the way of orations, but he spoke
strongly and to the point. Long harangues, as Mr Grattan justly
observes, are not necessary to British soldiers. Metaphor and flowers of
rhetoric are thrown away upon them. Something plain, pithy, and
appropriate is what they like; the shorter the better. "Rangers of
Connaught!" said Picton, as he passed the Eighty-eighth, drawn up for
the assault of Ciudad Rodrigo, "it is not my intention to expend any
powder this evening. We'll do this business with the cold iron." This
was a very unpretending speech; nothing of the clap-trap or melodramatic
about it; a mere declaration in the fewest possible words, of the
speaker's intentions, implying what he expected from those he addressed.
That it was just what was wanted, was proved by the hearty respondent
cheer of the brave Irishmen. The result of the attack is well known; the
Rangers took a gallant share in it. The next morning the troops were
ordered out of the captured town, which they had ransacked to some
purpose, and the Eighty-eighth, drawn up on their bivouac ground, were
about to march away to the village of Atalaya, when Picton again rode
past. "Some of the soldiers, who were more than usually elevated in
spirits," (they had passed the night in bursting open doors and drinking
brandy,) "called out, 'Well, General, we gave you a cheer last night:
it's your turn now!' The general smiled, took off his hat, and said,
'Here, then, you drunken set of brave rascals--hurrah! we'll soon be at
Badajoz.'" A prophecy which was not long unaccomplished. With all
deference to Mr Grattan, we cannot but think that the Eighty-eighth were
very appropriately placed under Picton's orders. Excellent fighting men
though they were, they certainly, according to their champion's own
showing, needed a strict hand over them. We should like to know how they
would have got on under such an officer as Mr Grattan tells us of, who,
when in command of a regiment, came to mess one day in very low spirits,
because, having sent his adjutant to inquire of an ensign why he did not
attend parade, the ensign returned no answer, and, on subsequently
meeting his commanding officer, cut him dead. The colonel told the story
at the mess-table, and concluded by saying, "I thought nothing of his
not answering my message, but I cannot express how much I am hurt at the
idea of his cutting me as he did when I wished to speak to him!"
Field-officers of such susceptible feelings, and such very loose ideas
on the subject of discipline, were not plentiful in the Peninsula, and
this one, we are given to understand, did not long retain his regiment.
He would hardly have done at the head of the high-spirited Connaughters.
But if Picton's severity to the men of the Eighty-eighth may be
justified, his neglect of the officers is far more difficult to excuse.
"_Not one of them was ever promoted through his recommendation._" The
conduct of Lieutenant Mackie at Ciudad Rodrigo was chivalrous in the
extreme. General Mackinnon--who commanded the brigade and was blown to
pieces at its head by the explosion of a mine--wished to confer a mark
of distinction on the gallant Eighty-eighth, and ordered that one of its
subalterns should lead the forlorn-hope. The moment this was announced
to the assembled officers, "Mackie stepped forward, and lowering his
sword, said, 'Major Thompson, I am ready for that service.'" Mackinnon
had promised a company to the forlorn-hope leader, if he survived. But
it must be observed that Mackie was senior lieutenant, and consequently
sure of early promotion. The Eighty-eighth was to be in the van at the
assault, and the probabilities were that at least one captain would be
knocked off. Or, if not that day, it would happen the next. So that
Mackie, in volunteering on the most desperate of all services, could
have little to actuate him beyond an honourable desire for glory. How
was he repaid? Gurwood, who led the forlorn-hope at the lesser breach,
got his company; Mackie remained a lieutenant--no captain of the
Eighty-eighth having been killed, and General Mackinnon not being alive
to fulfil his promise. And whilst all the other officers who had been
forward in the attack, had their names recorded in Picton's
division-order, poor Mackie was denied even the word of barren praise so
gratifying to a soldier's heart.
The loss of Ciudad Rodrigo was a stunning blow to the French. They could
not understand it at all. Herrasti and his Spaniards had held out the
place a month against Ney and Massena, with thirty or forty thousand
veterans, and that in fine weather, a great advantage to the
besiegers--in eleven days, and in the depth of winter, Wellington
reduced it, with twenty thousand men and opposed by a French garrison.
The contrast was great, and quite inexplicable to the French. "On the
16th," wrote Marmont to Berthier, "the English batteries opened their
fire at a great distance. On the 19th the place was taken by storm, and
fell into the power of the enemy. There is something so incomprehensible
in this event, that I allow myself no observation. I am not provided
with the requisite information." No testimony could be more
complimentary to the brave captors of Rodrigo. That great success,
however, was only a forerunner of greater ones. Badajoz was the next
place to be taken, preparatory to marching into the interior of Spain.
To conceal his intentions from the enemy, Wellington had recourse to an
elaborate stratagem. A powerful battering train, supplied by the men of
war in the Tagus, was shipped at Lisbon, on board vessels of large size,
which put out to sea, and, when out of sight of land, transhipped their
cargo into smaller craft. These carried them up the Tagus into the heart
of the country. At the same time the necessary magazines were formed;
and at Elvas, only three leagues from Badajoz, a large quantity of
fascines and gabions were prepared. All this, however, was done so
quietly, Wellington appeared so supine, and Badajoz was so well
provided, that Soult was lulled into security; and when at last he took
the alarm, and marched from Seville at the head of twenty-five thousand
men, it was too late. Philippon, and his brave garrison, did all that
skill and courage could; but in vain. When Soult reached Villafranca,
two days' march from Badajoz, the fortress had already been two days in
the power of the English. This, to the French, was another unaccountable
business; they, even yet, had not learned fully to appreciate the
sovereign virtues of British bayonets. "I think the capture of Badajoz a
very extraordinary event," Lery, Soult's chief engineer, wrote to
General Kellerman, "and I am much at a loss to account for it in a clear
and distinct manner." This comes at the end of a mysterious sort of
epistle, in which the engineer general talks of fatality, and seems to
think that the British had no right to take Badajoz, defended as it was.
But Wellington and his army were great despisers of that sort of
_right_, and, in spite of the really glorious defence, in spite of the
strategy of the governor and the valour of the garrison, of _chevaux de
frise_ of sword-blades, and of the deadly accuracy of the French
artillery and musketeers, Badajoz was taken. The triumph was fearfully
costly. Nearly four thousand five hundred men fell on the side of the
besiegers;--Picton's division was reduced to a skeleton, and the
Connaught Rangers lost more than half their numbers.
Shot through the body at Badajoz, Mr Grattan was left there when his
division marched away. He gives a terrible account of the sacking of the
town; but on such details, even had they not been many times
recapitulated, it is not pleasant to dwell. The frightful crimes
perpetrated during those two days of unbridled excess and violence, rest
at the door of the man whose boundless ambition occasioned that most
desolating war. From an ignorant and sensual soldiery, excited to
madness by a prolonged resistance, and by one of the most sanguinary
conflicts recorded in the history of sieges, forbearance could hardly be
expected. The horrible saturnalia, in which murder and rape, pillage and
intoxication, are pushed to their utmost limits, are the necessary
condition of a successful assault on a desperately defended fortress;
and supposing them prohibited, and that such prohibition could be
enforced, we agree with Mr Grattan in believing that many a town that
has been victoriously carried, might have been found impregnable. But
one must ever deplore the disgraceful scenes enacted in the streets and
houses of Badajoz, Ciudad Rodrigo, and St Sebastian. Unsurpassed in
atrocity, they remain everlasting blots upon the bright laurels gathered
by the British in the Peninsula. And it is small palliation, that under
similar circumstances, the armies of all nations have acted in like
manner. Here the sufferers were not enemies. To the garrison, when their
resistance ceased, quarter was given; they were marched away scatheless,
and treated with that humanity which England, notwithstanding the lying
assertions of foreign historians, has ever used towards her prisoners.
No, the victims were friends and allies. The very nation in whose behalf
our soldiers had fought, saw their houses ransacked, their property
wasted, their wives and daughters brutally outraged, by those whose
mission was to protect and defend. Let us hope they have forgotten, or
at least forgiven, such gloomy episodes in the struggle for their
liberation.
The advocates of universal peace might adduce many potent and practical
arguments in favour of their doctrine from the pages of Mr Grattan's
book. He is unsparing in his details of the inevitable horrors of war;
and some of his descriptions, persons of tender hearts and sensitive
nerves will do well to pass over. They may be read with profit by those
who, accustomed to behold but the sunny side of military life, think too
lightly of the miseries war entails. Let such accompany Mr Grattan
though the streets of Badajoz, on the morning of the 7th April, 1812,
and into the temporary hospital of Villa Formosa, after the fierce
conflict of Fuentes d'Onore, where two hundred soldiers still awaited,
twenty-four hours after the action, the surgeons' leisure, for the
amputation of their limbs. Let them view with him the piles of
unsuccoured wounded on the breach of Badajoz, and hear the shrieks and
groans of men dying in helpless agony, without a friendly hand to prop
their head, or a drop of water to cool their fevered lips. From such
harrowing scenes it is pleasant to turn to the more humane and redeeming
features of civilised warfare, and to note the courteous and amicable
relations that existed between the contending armies when, as sometimes
happened, they lay near together without coming to blows. This occurred
previously to the battle of Salamanca. From the 3d to the 12th of July,
the French and British were in presence of each other, encamped on
either side the Douro, at that season little more than a rivulet. Of
course all were on the alert; there was no laxity or negligence that
could tempt to surprise; but neither was there any useless skirmishing
or picket firing; every thing was conducted in the most gentlemanly and
correct manner. The soldiers bathed together and exchanged their
rations, and the officers were on equally good terms. "The part of the
river of which I speak was occupied, on our side, by the Third division;
on the French side by the Seventh division. The French officers said to
us at parting, 'We have met, and have been for some time friends. We are
about to separate, and may meet as enemies. As friends we received each
other warmly; as enemies we shall do the same.' Ten days afterwards the
British Third and the French Seventh division were opposed to each other
at Salamanca, and the Seventh French was destroyed by the British
Third." Mr Grattan's wound was healed in ample time for him to assist at
the battle of Salamanca; a glorious victory, which would have been even
more complete had the British been properly seconded by their Portuguese
allies. The behaviour of these was any thing but creditable to their
nation. One detachment of cacadores actually threw themselves on their
faces to avoid the enemy's fire, and not all the blows showered on them
by their commander, Major Haddock, could induce them to exchange their
recumbent attitude for one more dignified. Notwithstanding this, and the
more fatal feebleness of Pack's brigade, the French were totally beaten,
and their loss was nearly four times that of the British. Lord
Wellington's opinion of the battle--a particularly honourable one to our
troops, inasmuch as they not only _fought_ better, but (which was not
always the case) moved and manoeuvred better, than the picked veterans
of the French army--is sufficiently shown by the fact that "he selected
it in preference to all his other victories, as the most fitting to be
fought over in sham-fight on the plains of St Denis, in the presence of
the three crowned heads who occupied Paris after the second abdication
of the Emperor Napoleon, in 1815."
At Salamanca, the right brigade of the Third division, including the
Connaught Rangers, charged the entire division of the French General
Thomiere. So awful was the volley that welcomed them, that more than
half the officers, and nearly the whole front rank, were swept away.
Doubtless the French thought this would prove a sickener, for great was
their consternation when, before the smoke had well cleared away, they
saw the shattered but dauntless brigade advancing fiercely and steadily
upon them. Panic-stricken, they wavered; "the three regiments ran
onward, and the mighty phalanx, which a moment before was so formidable,
loosened and fell in pieces before fifteen hundred invincible British
soldiers fighting in a line of only two deep." In this memorable charge,
the standard-pole of the Eighty-eighth was struck by a bullet, the same
that killed Major Murphy, who commanded the battalion. New colours have
since been presented to the regiment, but the wounded pole is still
preserved, and on it is engraved, on a plate of silver, the day and the
manner of its mutilation.
An advance on Madrid was consequent on the triumph at Salamanca, and on
the 12th of August, Wellington and his army reached the Spanish capital.
Their entrance has often been described, but in default of novelty, Mr
Grattan's account of it possesses spirit and interest. It was one of
those scenes that repay soldiers for months of fatigue and danger. The
troops were almost carried into the city in the arms of the delighted
populace. The steady, soldier-like bearing of the men, the appearance of
the officers, nearly all mounted, inspired respect and increased the
general enthusiasm. For miles from Madrid, the road was thronged; when
the army got into the streets, it was no longer possible to preserve the
order of march. The ranks were broken by the pressure of the crowd, and
the officers (lucky dogs!) were half-smothered in the embraces of the
charming Madrilenas. Young and old, ugly and handsome, all came in for
their share of hugs and kisses. Still, although patriotism impelled the
Spanish fair to look with favour upon the scarlet-coated Britons, the
painful confession must be made that as individuals they gave the
preference to the lively, light-hearted Frenchmen. Napoleon was the
fiend himself, incarnate in the form of an under-sized Corsican, and the
_gavachos_ were his imps, whom it was praise-worthy to shoot at from
behind every hedge, and to poniard whenever the opportunity offered.
Such was the creed inculcated by the priests, and devoutly entertained
by their petticoated penitents--that is to say, by every Christian woman
in the Peninsula. But somehow or other, when French regiments were
quartered in Spanish towns, the female part of the population forgot the
anathemas of their spiritual consolers, and looked complacently upon
those they were enjoined to abhor. It was a case of "_nos amis les
ennemis_," and the French, beaten every where in the field, obtained
facile and frequent triumphs in the boudoir. "It is a singular fact, and
I look upon it as a degrading one," says Mr Grattan with diverting
seriousness, "that the French officers, whilst at Madrid, made in the
ratio of five to one more conquests than we did." The dignity of the
admission might be questioned; the degree of degradation is matter of
opinion; the singularity is explained away by Mr Grattan himself. He
blames his comrades for their stiff, unbending manners, and for their
non-conformance to the customs of the country. They were nearly three
months at Madrid, and yet he declares that, at the end of that time,
they knew little more of the inhabitants than of the citizens of Pekin.
And he opines that the impression left in Spain by the Peninsular army
was rather one of respect for their courage, than of admiration of their
social graces and general affability. If Mr Grattan, whilst reposing at
ease upon his well-earned bays, would devise and promulgate an antidote
to the mixture of shyness, reserve, and hauteur, which renders
Englishmen, wherever they travel, the least popular of the European
family, he would have a claim on his country's gratitude stronger even
than the one he established whilst defending her with his sword in the
well-contested fields of the Peninsula. Notwithstanding, however, the
unamiability with which he reproaches his companions in arms, there was
much fun and feasting, and sauntering in the Prado, and bull-fighting
and theatre-going, whilst the British were at Madrid. But it was too
pleasant to last long. The best a soldier can expect in war-time, is an
alternation of good quarters and severe hardship. The "_quart-d'heure de
Rabelais_" was at hand, when all the dancing, drinking, masking, and
other pleasant things should be paid for, and the brief enjoyment
forgotten, amidst the sufferings of the most painful retreat--excepting,
of course, that of Corunna--effected by a British army during the whole
war. We refer to the retrograde movement that followed the unsuccessful
siege of Burgos.
The high reputation of the British soldier rests far more upon his arms
than upon his legs; in other words, he is a fighting rather than a
marching man. Slowness of movement, in the field as on the route, is the
fault that has most frequently been imputed to him. One thing is pretty
generally admitted; that, to work well, he must be well fed. And even
then he will hardly get over the ground as rapidly, or endure fatigue as
long, as the lean lathy Frenchman, who has never known the liberal
rations and fat diet the other is accustomed to. When a certain period
of active service and long marches has given the English soldier his
campaigning legs, he must still have his regular grog, or he soon flags,
if he does not grumble and become insubordinate. Rations were bad, and
hard to be got, on the retreat from Burgos. Then, Mr Grattan tells us,
the superior marching qualities of the Irish were manifest. There had
been very little beef-steak and bacon expended in _their_ bringing up;
scanty fare was nothing new to them, and by no means affected their
gaiety and good-humour. And when shoes were scarce, what cared they? The
stones in Connaught are not a bit softer than those in Spain; and
nine-tenths of the boys had trotted about, from infancy upwards, with
"divel a brogue, save the one on their tongues." Some of the English
regiments--the Forty-fifth for instance, chiefly composed of Nottingham
weavers--would, under ordinary circumstances, march as well as any
Irishman of them all: "But if it came to a hard tug, and that we had
neither rations nor shoes, then, indeed, the Connaught Rangers would be
in their element, and out-march almost any battalion in the service." On
the retreat from Burgos to Portugal, they gave proof of their toughness
and endurance; for whilst other regiments were decimated by fatigue and
sickness, the Eighty-eighth scarcely lost a man, except by the enemy's
fire. It was a time when the good qualities of all were severely tested.
The movement began in a most unfavourable season. The roads were nearly
impassable from heavy rains, and for days together there was not a dry
jacket in the army. At night they lay in the open country, often in a
swamp, without a tent to shelter them; the baggage was detached, and
they never saw it till they reached Ciudad Rodrigo. It was share and
share alike amongst men and officers, and many of the latter were mere
striplings, who had but lately left the comforts of their English homes.
When they halted from their weary day's march, the ill-conditioned
beasts collected for rations had to be slaughtered; sometimes they came
too late to be of any use, or the camp-kettles did not arrive in time to
cook them; and the famished soldiers had to set out again, with a few
pieces of dry biscuit rattling in their neglected stomachs, and driven
to satisfy the cravings of hunger with the acorns that strewed the
forests. There was little money afloat, for pay was four months in
arrear, but millions would have been useless where there was nothing to
buy. The country was deserted; every where the inhabitants fled on the
approach of the two armies. Disease was the natural consequence of so
many privations; ague and dysentery undermined the men's strength, and
many poor fellows, unable to proceed, were left upon the road. Horses
died by hundreds, and those which held out were for the most part
sore-backed, one of the greatest calamities that can happen to cavalry
and artillery on the march. Fortunately Soult, who, with ninety thousand
men, followed the harassed army, had some experience of British troops.
And what he had seen of them, especially at Albuera and on the Corunna
retreat, had inspired him with a salutary respect for their prowess.
They might retreat, but he knew what they could and would do when driven
to stand at bay. And therefore, although Wellington was by no means
averse to fight, and actually offered his antagonist battle on the very
ground where, four months previously, that of Salamanca had occurred,
the wary Duke of Dalmatia declined the contest. He played a safe game:
without risking a defeat by a general action, or attempting to drive the
British before him with the bayonet, he hovered about their rear,
disquieted them by a flank movement of part of his force, and had the
satisfaction of knowing that their loss by the casualties and fatigues
of the march and inclemency of the weather, was as great as it would
probably have been had he engaged them. For, besides those who perished
on the road, when the army got into winter quarters, a vast number of
men and officers went into hospital, and months elapsed before the
troops were fully reorganised and fit for the field. At a day's march
from Ciudad Rodrigo, Wellington's rear-guard had a smart skirmish, and
then Soult desisted from his pursuit, and the Anglo-Portuguese were
allowed to proceed without further molestation. Although disastrous, and
in some respects ill managed, the retreat was in no way disgraceful. The
French, very superior in numbers, had, whenever they pressed forward,
been bravely met, and invariably repulsed.
With this retreat, Mr Grattan's Peninsular campaigns closed. He returned
to Ireland, and in the summer of 1814, embarked for Canada. He rather
refers to, than records the service he saw there; taking occasion,
however, for a strong censure on Sir George Prevost, who, after forcing
our ill-appointed fleet on Lake Champlain into action, refused to allow
Brisbane and his brigade of "Peninsulars" to take the fort of
Platsburgh, an enterprise easy of achievement, and which would have
placed the captured ships, and the victorious but disabled American
flotilla, at the mercy of the British. But we have not space to follow
the Ranger across the Atlantic, nor is it essential so to do; for,
although he gives some amusing sketches of Canada and the Canadians, the
earlier portion of his book is by far the most interesting, and
certainly the most carefully written. We could almost quarrel with him
for defacing his second volume with perpetual and not very successful
attempts at wit. We have rarely met with more outrageous specimens of
punning run mad, than are to be found in its pages. Barring that fault,
we have nothing but what is favourable to say of the book. Its tone is
manly, and soldier-like, and it is creditable both to the writer and to
the service, by which, during the last thirty years, our stores of
military and historical literature have been so largely and agreeably
increased.