"Who would not fight for England?
Who would not fling a life
I' the ring, to meet a tyrant's gage,
And glory in the strife?
* * * * *
Now, fair befall our England,
On her proud and perilous road;
And woe and wail to those who make
Her footprints red with blood!
Up with our red-cross banner--roll
A thunder-peal of drums!
Fight on there, every valiant soul,
And, courage! England comes!
Now, fair befall our England,
On her proud and perilous road;
And woe and wail to those who make
Her footprints red with blood!
Now, victory to our England!
And where'er she lifts her hand
In Freedom's fight, to rescue Right,
God bless the dear old land!
And when the storm has passed away,
In glory and in calm
May she sit down i' the green o' the day,
And sing her peaceful psalm!
Now, victory to our England!
And where'er she lifts her hand
In Freedom's fight, to rescue Right,
God bless the dear old land!"
--GERALD MASSEY.
Busaco is, perhaps, the most picturesque of Peninsular battles. In the
wild nature of the ground over which it raged, the dramatic incidents
which marked its progress, the furious daring of the assault, and the
stern valour of the defence, it is almost without a rival. The French
had every advantage in the fight, save one. They were 65,000 strong,
an army of veterans, many of them the men of Austerlitz and Marengo.
Massena led; Ney was second in command; both facts being pledges of
daring generalship. The English were falling sullenly back in the long
retreat which ended at Torres Vedras, and the French were in exultant
pursuit. Massena had announced that he was going to "drive the leopard
into the sea"; and French soldiers, it may be added, are never so
dangerous as when on fire with the _élan_ of success.
Wellington's army was inferior to its foe in numbers, and of mixed
nationality, and it is probable that retreat had loosened the fibre of
even British discipline, if not of British courage. Two days before
Busaco, for example, the light division, the very flower of the English
army, was encamped in a pine-wood about which a peasant had warned them
that it was "haunted." During the night, without signal or visible
cause, officers and men, as though suddenly smitten with frenzy,
started from their sleep and dispersed in all directions. Nor could
the mysterious panic be stayed until some officer, shrewder than the
rest, shouted the order, "Prepare to receive cavalry," when the
instinct of discipline asserted itself, the men rushed into rallying
squares, and, with huge shouts of laughter, recovered themselves from
their panic.
But battle is to the British soldier a tonic, and when Wellington drew
up his lines in challenge of battle to his pursuer, on the great hill
of Busaco, his red-coated soldiery were at least full of a grim
satisfaction. One of the combatants has described the diverse aspects
of the two hosts on the night before the fight. "The French were all
bustle and gaiety; but along the whole English line the soldiers, in
stern silence, examined their flints, cleaned their locks and barrels,
and then stretched themselves on the ground to rest, each with his
firelock within his grasp." The single advantage of the British lay in
their position. Busaco is a great hill, one of the loftiest and most
rugged in Portugal, eight miles in breadth, and barring the road by
which Massena was moving on Lisbon. "There are certainly," said
Wellington, "many bad roads in Portugal, but the enemy has taken
decidedly the worst in the whole kingdom."
The great ridge, with its gloomy tree-clad heights and cloven crest,
round which the mists hung in sullen vapour, was an ideal position for
defence. In its front was a valley forming a natural ditch so deep
that the eye could scarcely pierce its depths. The ravine at one point
was so narrow that the English and French guns waged duel across it,
but on the British side the chasm was almost perpendicular.
From their eyrie perch on September 27, 1810, the English watched
Massena's great host coming on. Every eminence sparkled with their
bayonets, every road was crowded with their waggons; it seemed not so
much the march of an army as the movement of a nation. The vision of
"grim Busaco's iron ridge," glittering with bayonets, arrested the
march of the French. But Ney, whose military glance was keen and sure,
saw that the English arrangements were not yet complete; an unfilled
gap, three miles wide, parted the right wing from the left, and he was
eager for an immediate attack. Massena, however, was ten miles in the
rear. According to Marbot, who has left a spirited account of Busaco,
Massena put off the attack till the next day, and thus threw away a
great opportunity. In the gloomy depths of the ravines, however, a war
of skirmishers broke out, and the muskets rang loudly through the
echoing valleys, while the puffs of eddying white smoke rose through
the black pines. But night fell, and the mountain heights above were
crowned with the bivouac fires of 100,000 warriors, over whom the
serene sky glittered. Presently a bitter wind broke on the mountain
summits, and all through the night the soldiers shivered under its keen
blast.
Massena's plan of attack was simple and daring. Ney was to climb the
steep front on the English left, and assail the light division under
Craufurd; Regnier, with a _corps d'élite_, was to attack the English
left, held by Picton's division. Regnier formed his attack into five
columns while the stars were yet glittering coldly in the morning sky.
They had first to plunge into the savage depths of the ravine, and then
climb the steep slope leading to the English position. The vigour of
the attack was magnificent. General Merle, who had won fame at
Austerlitz, personally led the charge. At a run the columns went down
the ravine; at a run, scarcely less swift, they swept up the hostile
slope. The guns smote the columns from end to end, and the attack left
behind it a broad crimson trail of the dead and dying. But it never
paused. A wave of steel and fire and martial tumult, it swept up the
hill, broke over the crest in a spray of flame, brushed aside a
Portuguese regiment in its path like a wisp of straw, and broke on the
lines of the third division.
The pressure was too great for even the solid English line to sustain;
it, too, yielded to the impetuous French, part of whom seized the rocks
at the highest point of the hill, while another part wheeled to the
right, intending to sweep the summit of the sierra. It was an
astonishing feat. Only French soldiers, magnificently led and in a
mood of victory, could have done it; and only British soldiers, it may
be added, whom defeat hardens, could have restored such a reverse.
Picton was in command, and he sent at the French a wing of the 88th,
the famous Connaught Rangers, led by Colonel Wallace, an officer in
whom Wellington reposed great confidence. Wallace's address was brief
and pertinent. "Press them to the muzzle, Connaught Rangers; press on
to the rascals." There is no better fighting material in the world
than an Irish regiment well led and in a high state of discipline, and
this matchless regiment, with levelled bayonets, ran in on the French
with a grim and silent fury there was no denying. Vain was resistance.
Marbot says of the Rangers that "their first volley, delivered at
fifteen paces, stretched more than 500 men on the ground"; and the
threatening gleam of the bayonet followed fiercely on the flame of the
musket.
The French were borne, shouting, struggling, and fighting desperately,
over the crest and down the deep slope to the ravine below. In a
whirlwind of dust and fire and clamour went the whole body of furious
soldiery into the valley, leaving a broad track of broken arms and
dying men. According to the regimental records of the 88th, "Twenty
minutes sufficed to teach the heroes of Marengo and Austerlitz that
they must yield to the Rangers of Connaught!" As the breathless
Rangers re-formed triumphantly on the ridge, Wellington galloped up and
declared he had never witnessed a more gallant charge.
But a wing of Regnier's attack had formed at right angles across the
ridge. It was pressing forward with stern resolution; it swept before
it the light companies of the 74th and 88th regiments, and unless this
attack could be arrested the position and the battle were lost. Picton
rallied his broken lines within _sixty yards_ of the French muskets, a
feat not the least marvellous in a marvellous fight, and then sent them
furiously at the exulting French, who held a strong position amongst
the rocks. It is always difficult to disentangle the confusion which
marks a great fight. Napier says that it was Cameron who formed line
with the 38th under a violent fire, and, without returning a shot, ran
in upon the French grenadiers with the bayonet and hurled them
triumphantly over the crest. Picton, on the other hand, declares that
it was the light companies of the 74th and the 88th, under Major Smith,
an officer of great daring--who fell in the moment of victory--that
flung the last French down over the cliff. Who can decide when such
experts, and actors in the actual scene, differ?
The result, however, as seen from the French side, is clear. The
French, Marbot records, "found themselves driven in a heap down the
deep descent up which they had climbed, and the English lines followed
them half-way down firing murderous volleys. At this point we lost a
general, 2 colonels, 80 officers, and 700 or 800 men." "The English,"
he adds in explanation of this dreadful loss of life, "were the best
marksmen in Europe, the only troops who were perfectly practised in the
use of small arms, whence their firing was far more accurate than that
of any other infantry."
A gleam of humour at this point crosses the grim visage of battle.
Picton, on lying down in his bivouac the night before the battle, had
adorned his head with a picturesque and highly coloured nightcap. The
sudden attack of the French woke him; he clapped on cloak and cocked
hat, and rode to the fighting line, when he personally led the attack
which flung the last of Regnier's troops down the slope. At the moment
of the charge he took off his cocked hat to wave the troops onward;
this revealed the domestic head-dress he unconsciously wore, and the
astonished soldiers beheld their general on flame with warlike fury
gesticulating martially in a nightcap! A great shout of laughter went
up from the men as they stopped for a moment to realise the spectacle;
then with a tempest of mingled laughter and cheers they flung
themselves on the enemy.
Meanwhile Ney had formed his attack on the English left, held by
Craufurd and the famous light division. Marbot praises the
characteristic tactics of the British in such fights. "After having,
as we do," he says, "garnished their front with skirmishers, they post
their principal forces out of sight, holding them all the time
sufficiently near to the key of the position to be able to attack the
enemy the instant they reach it; and this attack, made unexpectedly on
assailants who have lost heavily, and think the victory already theirs,
succeeds almost invariably." "We had," he adds, "a melancholy
experience of this art at Busaco." Craufurd, a soldier of fine skill,
made exactly such a disposition of his men. Some rocks at the edge of
the ravine formed natural embrasures for the English guns under Ross;
below them the Rifles were flung out as skirmishers; behind them the
German infantry were the only visible troops; but in a fold of the
hill, unseen, Craufurd held the 43rd and 52nd regiments drawn up in
line.
Ney's attack, as might be expected, was sudden and furious. The
English, in the grey dawn, looking down the ravine, saw three huge
masses start from the French lines and swarm up the slope. To climb an
ascent so steep, vexed by skirmishers on either flank, and scourged by
the guns which flashed from the summit, was a great and most daring
feat--yet the French did it. Busaco, indeed, is memorable as showing
the French fighting quality at its highest point. General Simon led
Loison's attack right up to the lips of the English guns, and in the
dreadful charge its order was never disturbed nor its speed arrested.
"Ross's guns," says Napier, "were worked with incredible quickness, yet
their range was palpably contracted every round; the enemy's shot came
singing up in a sharper key; the English skirmishers, breathless and
begrimed with powder, rushed over the edge of the ascent; the artillery
drew back"--and over the edge of the hill came the bearskins and the
gleaming bayonets of the French! General Simon led the attack so
fiercely home that he was the first to leap across the English
entrenchments, when an infantry soldier, lingering stubbornly after his
comrades had fallen back, shot him point-blank through the face. The
unfortunate general, when the fight was over, was found lying in the
redoubt amongst the dying and the dead, with scarcely a human feature
left. He recovered, was sent as a prisoner to England, and was
afterwards exchanged, but his horrible wound made it impossible for him
to serve again.
Craufurd had been watching meanwhile with grim coolness the onward rush
of the French. They came storming and exultant, a wave of martial
figures, edged with a spray of fire and a tossing fringe of bayonets,
over the summit of the hill; when suddenly Craufurd, in a shrill tone,
called on his reserves to attack. In an instant there rose, as if out
of the ground, before the eyes of the astonished French, the serried
lines of the 43rd and 52nd, and what a moment before was empty space
was now filled with the frowning visage of battle. The British lines
broke into one stern and deep-toned shout, and 1800 bayonets, in one
long line of gleaming points, came swiftly down upon the French. To
stand against that moving hedge of deadly and level steel was
impossible; yet each man in the leading section of the French raised
his musket and fired, and two officers and ten soldiers fell before
them. Not a Frenchman had missed his mark! They could do no more.
"The head of their column," to quote Napier, "was violently thrown back
upon the rear, both flanks were overlapped at the same moment by the
English wings, and three terrible discharges at five yards' distance
shattered the wavering mass." Before those darting points of flame the
pride of the French shrivelled. Shining victory was converted, in
almost the passage of an instant, into bloody defeat; and a shattered
mass, with ranks broken, and colours abandoned, and discipline
forgotten, the French were swept into the depths of the ravine out of
which they had climbed.
One of the dramatic episodes of the fight at this juncture is that of
Captain Jones--known in his regiment as "Jack Jones" of the 52nd.
Jones was a fiery Welshman, and led his company in the rush on General
Simon's column. The French were desperately trying to deploy, a
_chef-de-bataillon_ giving the necessary orders with great vehemence.
Jones ran ahead of his charging men, outstripping them by speed of
foot, challenged the French officer with a warlike gesture to single
combat, and slew him with one fierce thrust before his own troops, and
the 52nd, as they came on at the run, saw the duel and its result, were
lifted by it to a mood of victory, and raised a sudden shout of
exultation, which broke the French as by a blast of musketry fire.
For hours the battle spluttered and smouldered amongst the skirmishers
in the ravines, and some gallant episodes followed. Towards evening,
for example, a French company, with signal audacity, and apparently on
its own private impulse, seized a cluster of houses only half a musket
shot from the light division, and held it while Craufurd scourged them
with the fire of twelve guns. They were only turned out at the point
of the bayonet by the 43rd. But the battle was practically over, and
the English had beaten, by sheer hard fighting, the best troops and the
best marshals of France.
In the fierceness of actual fighting, Busaco has never been surpassed,
and seldom did the wounded and dying lie thicker on a battlefield than
where the hostile lines struggled together on that fatal September 27.
The _melée_ at some points was too close for even the bayonet to be
used, and the men fought with fists or with the butt-end of their
muskets. From the rush which swept Regnier's men down the slope the
Connaught Rangers came back with faces and hands and weapons literally
splashed red with blood. The firing was so fierce that Wellington,
with his whole staff, dismounted. Napier, however--one of the famous
fighting trio of that name, who afterwards conquered Scinde--fiercely
refused to dismount, or even cover his red uniform with a cloak. "This
is the uniform of my regiment," he said, "and in it I will show, or
fall this day." He had scarcely uttered the words when a bullet
smashed through his face and shattered his jaw to pieces. As he was
carried past Lord Wellington he waved his hand and whispered through
his torn mouth, "I could not die at a better moment!" Of such stuff
were the men who fought under Wellington in the Peninsula.