in warfare. In our regiment there were many fine young men who joined
us, and fell in their first encounter with the enemy; but, amongst the
old standing dishes, there were some who never, by any chance got hit,
while others, again, never went into action without.
At the close of the war, when we returned to England, if our battalion
did not shew symptoms of its being a well-shot corps, it is very odd:
nor was it to be wondered at if the camp-colours were not covered with
that precision, nor the salute given with the grace usually expected
from a reviewed body, when I furnish the following account of the
officers commanding companies on the day of inspection, viz.
Beckwith with a cork-leg--Pemberton and Manners with a shot each in the
knee, making them as stiff as the other's tree one--Loftus Gray with a
gash in the lip, and minus a portion of one heel, which made him march
to the tune of dot and go one--Smith with a shot in the ankle--Eeles
minus a thumb--Johnston, in addition to other shot holes, a stiff
elbow, which deprived him of the power of disturbing his friends as a
scratcher of Scotch reels upon the violin--Percival with a shot through
his lungs. Hope with a grape-shot lacerated leg--and George Simmons
with his riddled body held together by a pair of stays, for his was no
holyday waist, which naturally required such an appendage lest the
burst of a sigh should snap it asunder; but one that appertained to a
figure framed in nature's fittest mould to "brave the battle and the
breeze!"
I know not to what particular circumstances British tailors were in
the first instance indebted, for ranking them so low in the scale
of humanity, but, as far as my knowledge extends, there never was
a more traduced race. Those of our regiment I know were among the
best soldiers in it, and more frequently hit than any, very much to
our mortification; for the very limited allowance of an officer's
campaigning baggage left him almost constantly at their mercy for the
decoration of his outward man; but as the musket-balls shewed no mercy
to them, we could not of course expect them to extend it to us.
Our master-man having at this time got his third shot, we deemed it
high time to place him on the shelf, by confining his operations in the
field, to the baggage guard. So long as we could preserve him in a
condition to wield the scissors, we luckily discovered that there were
minor thimble-plyers ready to rally round him, for we should otherwise
have been driven sometimes to the extraordinary necessity of invading
the nether garments of the ladies!
The last night at Badajos had been to the belligerents such as few had
ever seen--the next, to its devoted inhabitants, was such as none would
ever wish to see again, for there was no sanctuary within its walls.
I was conversing with a friend the day after, at the door of his tent,
when we observed two ladies coming from the city, who made directly
towards us; they seemed both young, and when they came near, the
elder of the two threw back her _mantilla_ to address us, shewing
a remarkably handsome figure, with fine features, but her sallow,
sunburnt, and careworn, though still youthful countenance, shewed that
in her, "The time for tender thoughts and soft endearments had fled
away and gone."
She at once addressed us in that confident heroic manner so
characteristic of the high bred Spanish maiden, told us who they were,
the last of an ancient and honourable house, and referred to an officer
high in rank in our army, who had been quartered there in the days of
her prosperity, for the truth of her tale.
Her husband she said was a Spanish officer in a distant part of the
kingdom; he might or he might not still be living. But yesterday, she
and this her young sister were able to live in affluence and in a
handsome house--to day, they knew not where to lay their heads--where
to get a change of raiment or a morsel of bread. Her house, she
said, was a wreck, and to shew the indignities to which they had
been subjected, she pointed to where the blood was still trickling
down their necks, caused by the wrenching of their earrings through
the flesh, by the hands of worse than savages who would not take the
trouble to unclasp them!
For herself, she said, she cared not; but for the agitated, and almost
unconscious maiden by her side, whom she had but lately received over
from the hands of her conventual instructresses, she was in despair,
and knew not what to do; and that in the rapine and ruin which was at
that moment desolating the city, she saw no security for her but the
seemingly indelicate one she had adopted, of coming to the camp and
throwing themselves upon the protection of any British officer who
would afford it; and so great, she said, was her faith in our national
character, that she knew the appeal would not be made in vain, nor the
confidence abused. Nor was it made in vain! nor could it be abused, for
she stood by the side of an angel!--A being more transcendantly lovely
I had never before seen--one more amiable, I have never yet known!
Fourteen summers had not yet passed over her youthful countenance,
which was of a delicate freshness, more English than Spanish--her face
though not perhaps rigidly beautiful, was nevertheless so remarkably
handsome, and so irresistibly attractive, surmounting a figure cast in
nature's fairest mould, that to look at her was to love her--and I did
love her; but I never told my love, and in the meantime another, and a
more impudent fellow stepped in and won her! but yet I was happy--for
in him she found such a one as her loveliness and her misfortunes
claimed--a man of honour, and a husband in every way worthy of her!
That a being so young, so lovely, so interesting, just emancipated
from the gloom of a convent, unknowing of the world and to the world
unknown, should thus have been wrecked on a sea of troubles, and
thrown on the mercy of strangers under circumstances so dreadful, so
uncontrollable, and not to have sunk to rise no more, must be the
wonder of every one. Yet from the moment she was thrown on her own
resources, her star was in the ascendant.
Guided by a just sense of rectitude, an innate purity of mind, a
singleness of purpose which defied malice, and a soul that soared
above circumstances, she became alike the adored of the camp and of
the drawing-room, and eventually the admired associate of princes. She
yet lives, in the affections of her gallant husband in an elevated
situation in life, a pattern to her sex, and the every body's _beau
ideal_ of what a wife should be.
My reader will perhaps bear with me on this subject yet a little longer.
Thrown upon each other's acquaintance in a manner so interesting, it
is not to be wondered at that she and I conceived a friendship for
each other, which has proved as lasting as our lives--a friendship
which was cemented by after circumstances so singularly romantic, that
imagination may scarcely picture them! The friendship of man is one
thing--the friendship of woman another; and those only who have been on
the theatre of fierce warfare, and knowing that such a being was on the
spot, watching with earnest and unceasing solicitude over his safety,
alike with those most dear to her, can fully appreciate the additional
value which it gives to one's existence.
About a year after we became acquainted, I remember that our battalion
was one day moving down to battle, and had occasion to pass by the
lone country-house in which she had been lodged.
The situation was so near to the outposts, and a battle certain, I
concluded that she must ere then have been removed to a place of
greater security, and, big with the thought of coming events, I
scarcely even looked at it as we rolled along, but just as I had passed
the door, I found my hand suddenly grasped in her's--she gave it a
gentle pressure, and without uttering a word had rushed back into the
house again, almost before I could see to whom I was indebted for a
kindness so unexpected and so gratifying.
My mind had the moment before been sternly occupied in calculating the
difference which it makes in a man's future prospects--his killing
or being killed, when "a change at once came o'er the spirit of the
dream," and throughout the remainder of that long and trying day, I
felt a lightness of heart and buoyancy of spirit which, in such a
situation, was no less new than delightful.
I never, until then, felt so forcibly the beautiful description of Fitz
James's expression of feeling, after his leave-taking of Helen under
somewhat similar circumstances:--
"And after oft the knight would say,
That not when prize of festal day,
Was dealt him by the brightest fair
That e'er wore jewel in her hair,
So highly did his bosom swell,
As at that simple, mute, farewell."
CHAP. XIII.
Specimens of target-practice, in which markers may become
marked men.--A grave anecdote, shewing how "some men have
honours thrust upon them."--A line drawn between man and
beast.--Lines drawn between regiments, and shewing how
credit may not be gained by losing what they are made
of.--Aristocratic.--Dedicatic.--Dissertation on advanced
guards, and desertion of knapsacks, shewing that "the greater
haste the worse speed."
With discipline restored, Badajos secured, and the French relieving
army gone to the right about, we found ourselves once more transferred
to the North.
Marmont had, during our absence, thrown away much valuable time in
cutting some unmeaning vagaries before the Portuguese militia, which,
happily for us, he might have spent more profitably; and now that we
approached him, he fell back upon Salamanca, leaving us to take quiet
possession of our former cantonments.
Lord Wellington had thus, by a foresight almost superhuman, and by a
rapidity of execution equal to the conception, succeeded in snatching
the two frontier fortresses out of the enemy's hands in the face
of their superior armies, it gave him a double set of keys for the
security of rescued Portugal, and left his victorious army free and
unfettered for the field.
We had been on the watch long enough, with the enemy before, beside,
and around us; but it had now become their turn to look out for
squalls, and by and bye they caught it--but in the meanwhile we were
allowed to have some respite after the extraordinary fatigues of the
past.
Spring had by that time furnished the face of nature with her annual
suit of regimentals, (I wish it had done as much for us,) our pretty
little village stood basking in the sunshine of the plain, while the
surrounding forest courted the lovers of solitude to repose within its
shady bosom. There the nightingale and the bee-bird made love to their
mates--and there too the wolf made love to his meat, for which he
preferred the hind-quarter of a living horse, but failing that, he did
not despise a slice from a mule or a donkey.
Nature seemed to have intended that region as the abode of rural
tranquillity, but man had doomed it otherwise. The white tent rearing
its fiery top among the green leaves of the forest--the war-steed
careering on the plains--the voice of the trumpet for the bleat of
the lamb--and the sharp clang of the rifle with its thousand echoes
reverberating from the rocks at target-practice, were none of them in
keeping with the scene; so that the nightingale was fain to hush its
melody, and the wolf his howl, until a change of circumstances should
restore him to his former sinecure of head ranger.
The actors on that busy scene too continued to be wild and reckless as
their occupation, their lives had been so long in perpetual jeopardy
that they now held them of very little value. A rifleman one day in
marking the target, went behind to fix it more steadily; another, who
did not observe him go there, sent a ball through, which must have
passed within a hair's breadth of the marker, but the only notice he
took was to poke his head from behind, and thundering out, "Hilloah
there, d---- your eyes, do you mean to shoot us?" went on with his work
as if it had been nothing.
Whilst on the subject of rifle-shooting, and thinking of the late
Indian exhibition of its nicety on the London stage, it reminds me that
the late Colonel Wade, and one of the privates of our second battalion,
were in the habit of holding the target for each other at the distance
of 200 yards.
I cannot think of those days without reflecting on the mutability of
human life, and the chances and changes which man is heir to. For,
to think that I, who had so many years been the sleeping and waking
companion of dead men's bones, and not only accustomed to hold them
valueless, but often to curse the chance "which brought them between
the wind and my nobility;" I say that, under such circumstances, to
think I should e'er have stood the chance of dying the death of a
body snatcher, is to me astonishing, and would shew, even without any
scriptural authority, "that in the midst of life we are in death," for
so it was.
Some years after, I was on my way from Ireland to Scotland, when I was
taken seriously ill at Belfast. After being confined to bed several
days in a hotel there, and not getting better, I became anxious to
reach home, and had myself conveyed on board a steam-boat which was on
the point of sailing.
I had been but a few minutes in bed when I heard a confused noise about
the boat; but I was in a low, listless mood, dead to every thing but
a feeling of supreme misery, until my cabin-door was opened, and the
ugly faces of several legal understrappers protruded themselves, and
began to reconnoitre me with a strong sinister expression; I was dead
even to that, but when they at length explained, that in searching
the luggage of the passengers, they had found a defunct gentleman in
one of the boxes, and as he belonged to nobody out of bed, he must
naturally be the property of the only one in it, viz. myself! a very
reasonable inference, at which I found it high time to stir myself, the
more particularly as the intimation was accompanied by an invitation to
visit the police-office.
My unshaved countenance worn down to a most cadaverous hue with several
days intense suffering, was but ill calculated to bear me out in
assertions to the contrary, but having some documentary evidence to
shew who I was, and seeing too that I was really the invalid which they
thought I had only affected, they went away quite satisfied. Not so,
however, the mob without, who insisted on being allowed to judge for
themselves, so that the officers were obliged to return and beg of me
to shew myself at the cabin widow to pacify them.
There is no doubt but I must at that time, have borne a much stronger
resemblance to the gentleman in the box, than to the gentleman
proprietor; but to shew the justice and discrimination of mobites,
I had no sooner exhibited my countenance such as it was, than half
of them shouted that they knew me to be the man, and demanded that
I should be handed over to them; and had there not been some of the
family of the hotel fortunately on board seeing their friends off, who
vouched for my authenticity, and for my having been in bed in their
house ever since I came to town, there is little doubt but they would
have made a _subject_ of me.
Returning from this grave anecdote to the seat of war, I pass on to the
assembling of the army in front of Ciudad Rodrigo preparatory to the
advance upon Salamanca.
Our last assemblage on the same spot was to visit the walls of that
fortress with the thunder of our artillery, and having, by the force of
such persuasive arguments, succeeded in converting them into friends,
in whom, with confidence, we might rely in the hour of need, we were
now about to bid them and our peasant associates an adieu, with a
fervent wish on our part that it might be a final one, while with joy
we looked forward to the brightening prospect which seemed to promise
us an opportunity of diving a little deeper into their land of romance
than we had yet done.
Division after division of our iron framed warriors successively
arrived, and took possession of the rugged banks of the Agueda, in
gallant array and in gayer shape than formerly, for in our first
campaigns the canopy of heaven had been our only covering, and our
walking on two legs, clothed in rags, the only distinction between us
and the wild beast of the forest--whereas we were now indulged in the
before unheard of luxury of a tent--three being allowed to the soldiers
of each company, and one to the officers.
There is nothing on earth so splendid--nothing so amusing to a military
soul as this assembling of an army for active service--to see fifty
thousand men all actuated by one common spirit of enterprize, and
the cause their country's! And to see the manner, too, in which it
acts on the national characters enlisted in it--the grave-looking,
but merry-hearted Englishman--the canny, cautious, and calculating
Scotchman, and the devil-may-care _nonchalance_ of the Irish.
I should always prefer to serve in a mixed corps, but I love to see a
national one--for while the natives of the three amalgamate well, and
make, generally speaking, the most steady, there is nevertheless an
_esprit_ about a national one which cannot fail to please.
Nothing occasions so much controversy in civil life as the comparative
merits of those same corps--the Scotchman claiming every victory in
behalf of his countrymen, and the Irishman being no less voracious--so
that the unfortunate English regiments, who furnish more food for
powder than both put together, are thus left to fight and die
unhonoured.
Those who know no better naturally enough award the greatest glory
to the greatest sufferers; but that is no time criterion--for great
loss in battle, in place of being a proof of superior valour and
discipline, is not unfrequently occasioned by a want of the latter
essential.
The proudest trophy which the commanding officer of a regiment can
ever acquire is the credit of having done a brilliant deed with little
loss--and although there are many instances in which they may justly
boast of such misfortunes--witness the fifty-seventh at Albuera, the
twenty-seventh at Waterloo, and a hundred similar cases, in which
they nearly all perished on the spot they were ordered to defend, yet
I am of opinion that if the sentiments of old service officers could
be gathered, it would be found among a majority, that their proudest
regimental days were not those on which they had suffered most.
National regiments have perhaps a greater _esprit de corps_ generally
than the majority of mixed ones, but in action they are more apt to be
carried away by some sudden burst of undisciplined valour, as Napier
would have it, to the great danger of themselves and others.
An Irishman, after the battle of Vimiera, in writing home to his
friends, said, "We charged them over fifteen leagues of country, we
never waited for the word of command, for we were all Irish!" And I
think I could furnish a Highland anecdote or two of a similar tendency.
In the present day, the crack national regiments, officered as they are
with their share of the _elite_ of their country's youth, are not to
be surpassed--but in war time I have never considered a crack national
regiment equal to a crack mixed one.
The Irishman seems sworn never to drink water when he can get whiskey,
unless he likes it better--the Scotchman, for a soldier, sometimes
shews too much of the lawyer--the Englishman, too, has his besetting
sin--but by mixing the three in due proportions, the evils are found
to counteract each other. As regards personal bravery there is not a
choice among them--and for the making of a perfect regiment I should
therefore prescribe one-half English, and of Irish and Scotch a quarter
each. Yet, as I said before, I love to see a national corps, and hope
never to see a British army without them.
With regard to officers, I think I mentioned before that in war we
had but a slender sprinkling of the aristocracy among us. The reason
I consider a very sensible one, for whatever may be the sins with
which they have, at different times, been charged, the want of pluck
has never been reckoned among the number. But as there never was any
scarcity of officers for the field, and consequently their country did
not demand the sacrifice--they may very conscientiously stand acquitted
for not going abroad, to fight and be starved, when they could live at
home in peace and plenty.
I have often lamented however that a greater number had not been
induced to try their fortunes on the tented field, for I have ever
found that their presence and example tended to correct many existing
evils. How it should have happened I leave to others, but I have rarely
known one who was not beloved by those under him. They were not better
officers, nor were they better or braver men than the soldiers of
fortune,[G] with which they were mingled; but there was a degree of
refinement in all their actions, even in mischief, which commanded the
respect of the soldiers, while those who had been framed in rougher
moulds, and left unpolished, were sometimes obliged to have recourse
to harsh measures to enforce it. The example was therefore invaluable
for its tendency to shew that habitual severity was not a necessary
ingredient in the art of governing--and however individuals may affect
to despise and condemn the higher orders, it is often because they feel
that they sink in the comparison, and thus it is that they will ever
have their cringers and imitators even among their abusers.
[G] Meaning soldiers of no fortune.
I have, without permission, taken the liberty of dedicating this volume
to one of their number--not because he is one of them, but that he
is what I have found him--a nobleman! I dedicate it to him, because,
though personally unacquainted, I knew and admired him in war, as
one of the most able and splendid assistants of the illustrious chief
with whom he served--and, "though poor the offering be," I dedicate it
to him in gratitude, that with no other recommendation than my public
services, I have ever since the war experienced at his hands a degree
of consideration and kindness which none but a great and a good man
could have known how to offer.
It may appear to my reader that I have no small share of personal
vanity to gratify in making this announcement, and I own it. I am proud
that I should have been thought deserving of his lordship's notice, but
I am still prouder that it is in my power to give myself as an example
that men of rank in office are not all of them the heartless beings
which many try to make them appear.
With the army assembled, and the baggage laden on a fine May morning, I
shall place every infantry man on his legs, the dragoon in his saddle,
and the followers on their donkeys, starting the whole cavalcade off
on the high road to Salamanca, which, being a very uninteresting one,
and without a shot to enliven the several days' march, I shall take
advantage of the opportunity it affords to treat my young military
readers to a dissertation on advanced guards--for we have been so long
at peace that the customs of war in the like cases are liable to be
forgotten, unless rubbed into existence from time to time by some such
old foggy as I am, and for which posterity can never feel sufficiently
thankful, as to see our army taking the field with the advanced guard
on a plain, prescribed by the book of regulations, would bring every
old soldier to what I for one am not prepared for--a premature end; as
however well the said advanced guard may be calculated to find birds'
nests in a barrack square or on a common parade, in the field it would
worry an army to death.
In the first place, if a plain is an honest plain, it requires no
advanced guard, for a man's eyes are not worth preserving if they
cannot help him to see three or four miles all round about--but there
is no such thing as a plain any where. Look at the plains of Salamanca,
where you may fancy that you see fifty miles straight on end without so
much as a wart on the face of nature, as big as a mole hill; yet within
every league or two you find yourself descending into a ravine a couple
of miles deep, taking half a day to regain the plain on the opposite
side, within a couple of stones' throw of where you were.