Results of the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo—The town revisited—Capture of
deserters—Sale of the plunder—Army rests in cantonments—An execution
of deserters—A pardon that came too late.
The fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo fell on the eleventh day after its
investment; and taking into account the season of the year, the
difficulty of the means to carry on the operations, and the masterly
manner in which Lord Wellington baffled the vigilance of the Duke of
Ragusa, the capture of Rodrigo must ever rank as one of the most
finished military exploits upon record, and a _chef d'œuvre_ of the
art of war. Our loss was equal to that of the enemy; it amounted to
about one thousand _hors de combat_, together with three generals; of
the garrison but seventeen hundred were made prisoners, the rest being
put to the sword.
So soon as my regiment reached the village, I obtained leave to return
to Rodrigo, for I was anxious to see in what situation the family were
with whom I, in common with my companions, had passed the preceding
night. Upon entering the town, I found all in confusion. The troops
ordered to occupy it were not any of those which had composed the
storming divisions; and although the task of digging graves, and
clearing away the rubbish about the breaches, was not an agreeable one,
they nevertheless performed it with much cheerfulness; yet, in some
instances, the soldiers levied contributions upon the unfortunate
inhabitants,—light ones it is true, and for the reason that little
remained with them to give, or, more properly speaking, withhold. But
the Provost-Marshal was so active in his vocation that this calamity was
soon put a stop to, and the miserable people, who were in many instances
in a state of nudity, could without risk venture to send to their more
fortunate neighbours for a supply of those articles of dress which
decency required. Upon reaching the house I had rested in the evening
before, I was rejoiced to find it uninjured, and the poor people, upon
once more seeing me, almost suffocated me with their caresses, and their
expressions of gratitude knew no bounds for our having preserved their
house from pillage.
Having satisfied myself that my _padrona_ and her daughters had escaped
molestation, I took my leave of them, and once more visited the large
breach. On my way thither I saw the French garrison preparing to march,
under an escort of Portuguese troops, to the fortress of Almeida; they
were a fine-looking body of men, and seemed right well pleased to get
off so quietly; they counted about eighteen hundred, and were all that
escaped unhurt of the garrison. At the breach there were still several
wounded men, who had not been removed to the hospitals; amongst them was
a fellow of my own corps, of the name of Doogan; he was badly wounded in
the thigh, the bone of which was so shattered as to protrude through the
skin. Near him lay a French soldier, shot through the body, quite
frantic from pain, and in the agonies of death. The moment Doogan
observed me, he called out most lustily, “Och! for the love of Jasus,
Mr. Grattan, don’t lave me here near this villain that’s afther cursing
me to no end.” I observed to Doogan that the poor fellow was in a much
worse state than even himself, and that I doubted whether he would be
alive in five minutes. At this moment the eyes of the Frenchman met
mine, “_Oh! monsieur_,” exclaimed he, “_je meurs pour une goutte d’eau!
Oh, mon Dieu! mon Dieu!_”—“Now,” ejaculated Doogan, addressing me, “will
you believe me (that never tould a lie in my life!) another time? Did
you hear him, then, how he got on with his _mon dew_?” I caused Doogan
to be carried to an hospital, but the French soldier died as we
endeavoured to place him in a blanket.
I quitted the breach, and took a parting glance at the town; the smell
from the still burning houses, the groups of dead and wounded, and the
broken fragments of different weapons, marked strongly the character of
the preceding night’s dispute; and even at this late hour, there were
many drunken marauders endeavouring to regain, by some fresh act of
atrocity, an equivalent for the plunder their brutal state of
intoxication had caused them to lose by the hands of their own
companions, who robbed indiscriminately man, woman, or child, friend or
foe, the dead or the dying! Then, again, were to be seen groups of
deserters from our army, who, having taken shelter in Rodrigo during the
winter, were now either dragged from their hiding-places by their
merciless comrades, or given up by the Spaniards, in whose houses they
had sought shelter, to the first officer or soldier who would be
troubled, at the moment, with the responsibility of taking charge of
them.
In the midst of a group of a dozen men, deserters from different
regiments, stood two of the Connaught Rangers. No matter what their
other faults might be, desertion was not a species of delinquency they
were addicted to; and as the fate of one of these men—indeed both of
them, for that matter—was a little tragical, I purpose giving it a nook
in my adventures. The two culprits to whom I have made allusion were as
different in their characters as persons; one of them (Mangin) was a
quiet well-disposed man, short in stature, a native of England, and, as
a matter of course, a heavy feeder, one that could but ill put up with
“short allowance,” and in consequence left the army when food became as
scarce as it did in the winter of 1811. The other, a fellow of the name
of Curtis, an Irishman, tall and lank, was, like the rest of the “boys”
from that part of the world, mighty aisy about what he ate, provided he
got a reasonable supply of drink; but as neither the one nor the other
were “convenient” during the period in question, they both left an
advanced post one fine night, and resolved to try the difference between
the French commissariat and ours. This was their justification of
themselves to me, and I believe, for I was not present at it, the
_summum bonum_ upon which the basis of their defence at their trial
rested. There were also six Germans of the 60th Rifles in the group, but
they seemed so unnerved by their unexpected capture that they were
unable to say anything for themselves.
Towards evening I reached the village which my regiment occupied. An
altered scene presented itself. The soldiers busied in arranging their
different articles of plunder; many of them clad in the robes of some
priest, while others wore gowns of the most costly silk or velvet;
others, again, nearly naked; some without pantaloons, having been
plundered, while drunk, of so essential a part of their dress; but all,
or almost all, were occupied in laying out for sale their different
articles of plunder, in that order which was essential to their being
disposed of to the crowds of Spaniards which had already assembled to be
the purchasers; and if one could judge by their looks, they most
unquestionably committed a breach in their creed by “coveting their
neighbours' goods.” And had the scene which now presented itself to our
sight been one caused by an event the most joyous, much less by the
calamity that had befallen the unfortunate inhabitants of Rodrigo, to
say nothing of the human blood that had been spilt ere that event had
taken place, the scene could not have been more gay. Brawny-shouldered
Castilians, carrying pig-skins of wine on their backs, which they sold
to our soldiers for a trifling sum; bolero-dancers, rattling their
castanets like the clappers of so many mills; our fellows drinking like
fishes, while their less fortunate companions at Rodrigo—either hastily
flung into an ill-formed grave, writhing under the knife of the surgeon,
or in the agonies of death—were unthought of, or unfelt for. _Sic
transit gloria mundi!_ The soldiers were allowed three days _congé_ for
the disposal of their booty; but long before the time had expired, they
had scarcely a rag to dispose of, or a _real_ of the produce in their
pockets.
A few days sufficed for the reorganisation of the soldiers after they
had disposed of their hard-earned plunder, and we were once more ready
and willing for any fresh enterprise, no matter how difficult or
dangerous. Badajoz was talked of, but nothing certain was known, and the
quiet which reigned throughout all our cantonments was such as not to
warrant the least suspicion that any immediate attack against that
fortress was contemplated by the Commander-in-Chief.
On the sixth day after our arrival at Atalaya, we were again in motion;
the village of Albergaria was allotted for our quarters, and a
court-martial was ordered to assemble for the trial of the deserters
from our army found in Rodrigo. The men of the 60th, and the two men of
the 88th (Mangin and Curtis) were amongst the number. The court held its
sitting—the prisoners were arraigned, found guilty, and sentenced to be
shot! All were bad characters, save one, and that one was Mangin. He
received testimonials from the Captain of his company (Captain
Seton—ever the soldier’s friend) highly creditable to him, and Lord
Wellington, with his accustomed love of justice, resolved that his
pardon should be promulgated at the time of the reading the proceedings
and sentence of the court-martial. Three days after the trial it was
made known to the prisoners, and the army generally, that they were to
die the following morning.
At eight o’clock the division was under arms, and formed in a hollow
square of small dimensions; in the centre of it was the Provost-Marshal,
accompanied by his followers, with pick-axes, spades, shovels, and all
the necessary etceteras for marking out and forming the graves into
which the unfortunate delinquents were to be deposited as soon as they
received the last and most imposing of military honours—that of being
shot to death! In a few moments afterwards the rolling of muffled
drums—the usual accompaniment of the death-march—was heard, and the
soldiers who guarded the prisoners were soon in sight. The division
observed a death-like silence as the prisoners defiled round the inside
of the square; every eye was turned towards them; but Mangin, from his
well-known good character, was an object of general solicitude. The
solitary sound of the muffled drums at last died away into silence; the
guard drew up in the centre of the square, and the prisoners had, for
the last time, a view of their companions from whom they had deserted,
and of their colours which they had forsaken; but if their countenances
were a just index of their minds, they seemed to repent greatly the act
they had committed! The three men of the 60th were in their shirts, as
was also Mangin of the 88th, but Curtis wore the “old red rag,” most
likely from necessity, having, in all human probability, _no shirt to
die in_—a circumstance by no means rare with the soldiers of the
Peninsular army.
The necessary preliminaries, such as reading the crime and finding the
sentence, had finished, when the Adjutant-General announced the pardon
granted to Mangin, who was immediately conducted away, and placed at a
short distance in rear of the division; the rest staggered onward to the
spot where their graves had been dug, and having been placed on their
knees, their legs hanging over the edge of the grave, a bandage was tied
over their eyes. The Provost-Marshal then, with a party of twenty
musketeers, their firelocks cocked, and at the recover, silently moved
in front of the prisoners until he reached to within five paces of them,
and then giving two motions of his hand—the one to present, the other to
fire—the four men fell into the pit prepared to receive them. The three
Germans were dead—indeed they were nearly so before they were fired at!
and if the state of their nerves was a criterion to go by, a
moderate-sized popgun would have been sufficiently destructive to have
finished their earthly career; but Curtis sprang up, and, with one of
his jaws shattered and hanging down upon his breast, presented a horrid
spectacle. Every one seemed to be electrified, the Provost-Marshal
excepted; he, I suppose, was well accustomed to such sights, for,
without any ceremony, he walked up to Curtis, and with the most perfect
composure levelled a huge instrument (in size between a horse-pistol and
blunderbuss) at his head, which blew it nearly off his shoulders, and he
fell upon the bodies of the Germans without moving a muscle.
This ceremony over, the division defiled round the grave, and as each
company passed it the word “eyes right” was given by the officer in
command, by which means every man had a clear view of the corpses as
they lay in a heap. This is a good and wholesome practice, for nothing
so much awakes in the mind of the soldier, endowed with proper feeling,
the dishonour of committing an action which is almost certain to bring
him to a disgraceful end, while it deters the bad man from doing that
which will cost him all that he has to lose—for such persons have no
character—his life. It was ten o’clock before the parade broke up, and
we returned to our quarters, leaving to the Provost-Marshal and his
guard the task of filling up the grave. Several Portuguese peasants
crowded near the fatal spot, and so soon as all danger was passed, they
flocked to witness the interment, making, all the time, divers appeals
to the Virgin Mary; but whether these were intended for the preservation
of the souls departed, or their own bodies corporate, I neither knew nor
inquired.
Mangin, the man who had received his pardon, was still in a state of
stupor. After the lapse of an hour or so his Captain went to see him;
but the shock he had received was too severe; he had not nerve to bear
up against it; he replied in an incoherent manner, soon fell asleep, and
awoke an idiot! Every effort that could be made by the medical men, and
every assurance of favour from his Captain, proved vain—he became a
palpable, irreclaimable idiot, and shortly afterwards died of
convulsions.