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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF
SERGEANT WILLIAM LAWRENCE,
_A HERO OF THE PENINSULAR AND WATERLOO CAMPAIGNS_;
EDITED BY
GEORGE NUGENT BANKES,
AUTHOR OF "A DAY OF MY LIFE AT ETON," ETC., ETC.
London
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON
CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET
1886
[_All rights reserved_]
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
_Square 16mo, cloth extra, 2s. 6d. each._
A DAY OF MY LIFE AT ETON.
ABOUT SOME FELLOWS; or, Odds and Ends from My Note-book.
CAMBRIDGE TRIFLES; or, Splutterings from an Undergraduate's Pen.
A CAMBRIDGE STAIRCASE.
_Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s._
WRITTEN TO ORDER: being some Account of the Journeyings of an
Irresponsible Egotist, and of How he enjoyed himself thereon.
LONDON: SAMPSON LOW & CO., 188, FLEET STREET, E.C.
PREFACE.
Sergeant William Lawrence died at Studland in Dorsetshire in the year
1867, bequeathing the manuscript of the accompanying autobiography to
the family one of whose members now submits it to the notice of the
public. Circumstances, which perhaps may be too often interpreted as
really meaning an unfortunate tendency to procrastination, have
hitherto prevented it being put into shape with a view to publication:
one thing after another has intervened, and the work has been passed
on from hand to hand, until after these long years a final effort has
been made, and the self-imposed task completed.
The book is simply sent forth on its own merits in the hope that there
are yet some, if not indeed many whose hearts are never weary of the
tales of England's glory in the past, and seek to find in them reason
why that glory should be perpetuated. Many an account have we already
had of the victories of the Peninsula and Waterloo, and this but adds
one more to the list: though perhaps it may be regarded in somewhat of
a supplementary light, as treating of the campaigns neither from an
entirely outside and _soi-disant_ unprejudiced standpoint, nor with
the advantages possessed by one who may have had access to the
councils of the authorities, but as they were seen by one who came and
went and did as he was told, and was as it were nothing more than a
single factor in the great military machine that won our country those
battles of which she has so much right to be proud. What criticisms of
the conduct of the war our veteran occasionally does indulge in are of
course chiefly founded on the camp gossip current at the time, and in
reading them it must always be borne in mind that events at the moment
of their happening often do not present the same appearance as when
viewed from the calmer security of after years, and they must be
judged accordingly.
As to the style. Lawrence, though he never betrayed the fact to the
authorities during his whole military career, being possessed of a
wonderful aptitude for mental calculation, and always contriving to
get some assistance in concealing his deficiency when his official
duties necessitated his doing so, and though he has carefully avoided
all direct allusion to it in this work itself, never learnt to write,
and the first form in which his history was committed to paper was
from dictation. The person who took down the words as he spoke them,
one of his fellow-servants, was but imperfectly educated himself, so
that it may be imagined that the result of the narrative of one
illiterate person being written down by another was that the style
was not likely to aspire to any very high degree of literary merit.
Still, to preserve the peculiar character of the book, it has been
thought better to leave it as far as possible in its original shape:
some emendations have perforce had to be made to render it actually
intelligible--for instance, in the original manuscript there is
scarcely any punctuation from beginning to end, with the exception of
at those places where the amanuensis evidently left off his day's
work; but the language, with its occasional half-flights into a poetry
of about the standard of an Eton boy's verses, its crude moralizings,
and imperfect applications of old proverbs and fables, has not been
altered, nor, so far as there can be said to be one, has the method.
It is trusted, therefore, that, remembering that the main object in
the editor's mind has been to let the venerable hero tell his story in
exactly his own words so far as his meaning can be thereby made out,
no one will take any unnecessary pains to count up how often the words
"likewise" and "proceed" are repeated in these pages, or to point out
that the general style of the book combines those of Tacitus, Caesar's
Commentaries, and the Journeyings of the Israelites. Nor, it is to be
hoped, will any one be too severe in his comments on the fact that to
the mind of a man in Lawrence's position the obtaining of a pair of
boots was apparently quite as important an event as the storming of
Badajoz, or the finding of a sack with a ham and a couple of fowls in
it as the winning of the battle of Waterloo.
Interesting perhaps the book will prove as giving some of the details
of what our soldiers had to undergo in those old times of war.
Hardships they now have to endure, and endure them they do well, but
all must be thankful to know that they are far better off than their
forefathers; who, unsuitably clad, half starved, and with their
commissariat such even as it was disgracefully mismanaged, and yet
forbidden very often under pain of death to pick up what they could
for themselves, submitted on the shortest notice to punishments which
would nowadays call forth the indignant protests of hosts of newspaper
correspondents; and still in spite of all fought stubbornly through
every obstacle till they had gained the objects for which they had
been sent out. What wonder can there be that under all these
circumstances we should find our hero somewhat hardened in his
estimate of human sympathies, and not altogether disinclined to view
everything, whether it concerned life or death, or marriage, or
parting or meeting, all in one phlegmatic way, as occurring as a
matter of course? What ought to strike us as more curious is that he
was only reduced to that level of intellect where he thought even
that much of anything at all besides his actual eating, drinking, and
sleeping.
But to go on further would be to depart from the original intention of
letting the book speak for itself. To conclude therefore: there is
much to wade through, though it is all more or less relevant to the
progress of the story: some readers may like one part and some may
prefer another; and if the pruning-hook had once been introduced it
would have been difficult to decide what to leave and what to take,
or whether it would not be better to publish another volume of the
things pruned, since it had been determined to publish at all. But if
the reader will accomplish the wading to the end, there will he find
summed up in one simple paragraph the autobiographer's own ideas about
the merits of his work. May it be received in the same spirit as it is
sent forth!
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. Page
Starting in Life 1
CHAPTER II.
Enlisted and ordered Abroad 9
CHAPTER III.
The River Plate Expedition--Monte Video 16
CHAPTER IV.
The River Plate Expedition, continued--Colonia 26
CHAPTER V.
The River Plate Expedition, concluded--Buenos Ayres 35
CHAPTER VI.
The Peninsula, 1809--Vimeira--Lisbon 42
CHAPTER VII.
Talavera 51
CHAPTER VIII.
1810--Busaco 59
CHAPTER IX.
Torres Vedras 67
CHAPTER X.
1811--Pombal, Redinha, &c. 77
CHAPTER XI.
Siege of Badajoz--Albuera 87
CHAPTER XII.
1812--Ciudad Rodrigo 95
CHAPTER XIII.
Badajoz 107
CHAPTER XIV.
Invalided--Promotion 120
CHAPTER XV.
1813--Vittoria 131
CHAPTER XVI.
The Pyrenees--Villebar 143
CHAPTER XVII.
The Nive--Further Promotion 154
CHAPTER XVIII.
San Sebastian--Nivelle 167
CHAPTER XIX.
1814--Orthes--The Adour--Toulouse 175
CHAPTER XX.
End of the War 185
CHAPTER XXI.
To America and back--Napoleon's escape from Elba 194
CHAPTER XXII.
Waterloo 204
CHAPTER XXIII.
Paris--Matrimony 217
CHAPTER XXIV.
Return to Great Britain 227
CHAPTER XXV.
Family matters 233
CHAPTER XXVI.
Pensioned and Discharged 245
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SERGEANT WILLIAM LAWRENCE.
CHAPTER I.
Lawrence's Parentage -- Birth and early training -- Apprenticed
-- He falls out with his master -- Is beaten and resolves to
leave -- A few words to masters in general -- Finds a companion
-- Precautions against being forgotten too soon -- To Poole _via_
Wareham -- Engages for a voyage to Newfoundland -- Recaptured and
sent back, but escapes again on the way -- Receives some good
advice, and starts to Dorchester, picking up some fresh company
on the way.
As I have been asked to furnish as complete an account as I am able of
my own life, and it is usual when people undertake to do so to start
at as early a period as possible, I will begin with my parentage. My
father and mother were of humble means, living in the village of
Bryant's Piddle, in the county of Dorset. My father had been formerly
a small farmer on his own account in the same village, but having a
large and hungry family to provide for, he became reduced in
circumstances, and was obliged to give up his farm, and work as a
labourer.
I was born in 1791, and, being one of seven children, found myself
compelled at a very early age to seek my own livelihood as best I
could, so that I had not much opportunity for education, though I
cannot say that I thought that much hardship at the time, being fonder
of an open-air life. I was employed for some time in frightening the
birds off the corn, for which I received the sum of twopence a day;
after which I was advanced to sixpence a day as ploughboy, in which
situation I remained until I was fourteen years of age. My father then
obtained twenty pounds from a friend, with which he apprenticed me to
Henry Bush, a builder living at Studland, a village in the same
county, for seven years, the agreement being that my master was to
find me in food, lodging, and clothes, and I was to receive no wages.
I had not been with him very long before I found that he did not suit
me as a master at all well. Things went on pretty smoothly for the
first month or so, that is, while the money for my apprenticeship
lasted; but after that he became rather difficult to please, and
besides took to allowancing me in food, which was a much more serious
matter both to my mind and palate.
However, I rubbed on for about nine months, until one Sunday, when I
had gone out to church in the morning and had happened to stay in the
village all day, on my return home at last after dark I found the
house locked up. I accordingly proceeded to Swanage, the nearest town,
and called on my master's sister, who lived there, who took me in and
was giving me some supper, when my master chanced to come in himself,
and was very angry with me and told me to come along with him,
declaring that he would pay me out in the morning. When we got home he
ordered me to see if the garden gate was closed, which I thought
rather strange, as it was a thing I had never had to do before; but
meanwhile he slipped upstairs with a horsewhip, which he produced
suddenly in the morning, and gave me a good thrashing before I had
well got my clothes on. I bundled downstairs pretty much as I was, and
out of the house as quick as I could, saying to myself, "This is the
last thrashing I will ever receive at your hands;" and sure enough it
was, for that same week I planned with another apprentice near the
same place, who was under very similar circumstances to myself, to
take our departure on the following Sunday; so that was the end of my
apprenticeship.
And I should like here to warn any master whose eye may fall on this
story not to treat any lad who is put under his care too harshly, as
it is very often the means of discouraging him in the occupation he is
intended to follow, and of driving him from his home, and even from
his country, and to his ruin. Thus even in my case it will be seen
that it was all my master's want of kindness that forced me into a
very different sort of life to that which my parents intended for me;
into one which, though it was not altogether so ruinous, was perhaps
more perilous than many others, and on which I can only now look back
in wonder that I have been spared to tell my story at all.
But I must go back to the day on which myself and my companion had
resolved to leave our homes, which as I have before stated was a
Sunday, no better opportunity appearing by which we might get a few
hours' start unbeknown to our employers. We met early in the morning,
but finding that neither of us had either money or food, and I
likewise wanting to get hold of my indentures, we waited until the
family had left the house as usual to go to Swanage to chapel, when I
made my entry into the house by the back door, which was only
fastened by a piece of rope-yarn. I could not find my indentures, but
in the search for them I came upon a seven-shilling piece, which I put
into my pocket, as I thought it might be useful. I also cut about
three or four pounds off a flitch of bacon that hung in the chimney
corner, nicely marked to prevent any being lost on account of my late
allowanced state. I did not study that much at the time, however, but
took what I thought we should require, and when I had put it into a
bag with the necessary amount of bread, we marched off together up to
a place near called King's Wood, where we put a little of our bread
and raw bacon out of sight, for we were both hungry. Then we went on
to Wareham, a distance of about ten miles, where we changed our
seven-shilling piece, and had a pint of small beer to help us in again
lightening our bundle; and, after about an hour's rest, proceeded on
for Poole, about nine miles from Wareham. We felt very tired, but
still walked on, and gained our destination at a very late hour, owing
to which we had some trouble in obtaining a lodging for the remaining
part of the night; but at last we found one in a public house, where
we finished our bread and bacon, together with some more beer, the
best day's allowance we had had for some time past.
We slept very soundly, and in the morning went round to inquire for
service on board the Newfoundland packets. We soon found a merchant of
the name of Slade, who engaged us for two summers and a winter,
myself for 20_l._ and my companion for 18_l._ for the whole time, and
our food and lodging till the ship left the harbour. But we were not
long in finding that our destination was not to be Newfoundland, for
on the very next day my companion's master came to Poole in search of
us, and meeting his own boy wandering about the market, soon wished to
know what business he had there, and took him into custody. He
likewise asked him if he had seen anything of me, and the boy told him
I was in Poole, but he did not know where. I at the time was at work
on board the ship, but in the evening, having fallen in with the mate,
he asked me where I was going. When I said to my lodgings, beginning
rather to shake, for I thought by his manner that there was something
up, he told me that I had better come with him. I did so, and
presently found myself with my companion's master, who finished up for
the night by having me put into gaol.
Next day we were both taken on board the Swanage market-boat to go
back, but when we had got as far as South Deep, near Brownsea Castle,
we had to anchor, as the wind was contrary. A number of stone-boats
were lying there at the time, and one of the boatmen, named Reuben
Masters, took charge of me to convey me back to my master's house, as
he was going by it; so we landed, and proceeded towards home. When we
were about half a mile off it, however, we met my mistress, who, after
inquiring where I had been, told me that her husband would have
nothing more to do with me, but would send me to prison. I could have
told her I did not want to trouble him any more, but I thought I would
leave that for them to find out; so I went on with the man to the next
gate, when, seeing an opportunity to bolt; I took it and popped over
to the other side; and all I heard the man say was, "Well, you may go,
and your master may run after you for himself if he likes;" so I knew
there was not much to fear from him.
I ran down into the common, to a place called Agglestone, which I knew
had once been a great place for foxes, and there I crawled into a hole
and remained till dusk. Then I came out of my den, and again made my
way to Wareham. I called this time at the "Horse and Groom," where,
having related my story to the landlady, she kindly gave me food and
lodging for the night, advising me to go back to my parents and state
my master's behaviour. So next morning, after she had provided me with
breakfast, and some bread and cheese to eat on the way, I set off for
Dorchester.
On the road I met with two boys who were going to Poole to try and get
a ship bound for Newfoundland. I wanted some companions on my journey,
so I told them not to go to Poole, as the press-gang was about, and,
when I had been there myself a few days before, had fired a
blunderbuss at me, but I happened to pop round the corner and so had
escaped. The boys did not seem fit for soldiers, or sailors either,
for they looked as if they had lain in the sun for some time, and one
of them was warped. When they heard my story, they turned back and
kept with me. They soon began to complain of hunger, but when I asked
them if they had got any money, they said they had only one shilling
and a farthing, with a hundred miles to travel before they reached
their home again; so I took out my bread and cheese and divided it
amongst us. We were very tired and hungry when we arrived at
Dorchester, and I tried to persuade them to change the shilling, but
they would not. However, they gave me the farthing; it was not much
certainly for a hungry boy, but it served to purchase a cake for me to
devour; and then I and my companions parted, and what became of them
afterwards I do not know.