ANECDOTE THE FOURTH.
When the straggling and the disorders of the army on the retreat to Corunna became so serious as to demand an example, Sir Edward Paget, who commanded the reserve, caused two of the plunderers to be tried by a court-martial, and they were sentenced to suffer death. The troops were ordered to parade in front of the town, to witness the execution, but, while in the act of assembling, a dragoon came galloping in from the front to inform Sir Edward by desire of his brother (Lord Paget), that the enemy were on the move, and that it was time for the infantry to retire. Sir Edward, however, took no notice of the message. The troops assembled, and the square was formed, when a second dragoon arrived, to say that the enemy were advancing so rapidly that if Sir Edward did not immediately retire, his lordship could not be answerable for the consequences. Sir Edward, with his usual coolness and determination, said he cared not, for he had a duty to perform, and were the enemy firing into the square, that he would persevere with it. Dragoon after dragoon, in rapid succession, galloped in with a repetition of the message; still the preparations went on, and by the time they were completed, (and it wanted but the word of command to launch the culprits into eternity,) the clang of the carabines of the retreating dragoons was heard all around.
In the breast of Sir Edward, it is probable, that the door of mercy never had been closed, and that he had only waited until the last possible moment to make it the more impressive; and impressive truly it must have been; nor is it easy to imagine such a moment; for, independently of the solemn and desolate feeling with which one at all times witnesses the execution of a comrade, let his offence be what it may, they had an additional intensity on this occasion, on the score of their own safety; for, brief as the span seemed to be that was allotted to the culprits, the clang of the carabine, and the whistling ball, told that it was possible to be even still more brief on the parts of many of the spectators.
Sir Edward, however, now addressed the troops, with a degree of coolness which would argue that danger and he had been long familiar. He pointed out the enormity of the offence of which the culprits had been guilty, that they deserved not to be saved, and that though the enemy were now upon them, and might lay half their number dead while witnessing the execution, that only one thing would save them, and that was, "would the troops now present pledge themselves that this should be the last instance of insubordination that would occur in the course of the retreat?" A simultaneous "Yes," burst from the lips of the assembled thousands, and the next instant saw the necessary measures taken to check the advancing foe, while the remainder resumed their retreat, lightened of a load of care, which a few minutes before had been almost intolerable.
The conduct of these regiments, as compared with others, was very exemplary during the retreat, although their duty, in protecting the stragglers of the army till the last possible moment, was of the most harassing kind. They had no means of punishing those to whom they were indebted for their extra trouble, but by depriving them of their ill-gotten gains, so that whenever a fellow came in with a bag of flour under his arm, (which was no uncommon occurrence,) they made it a rule to empty the bag over his head, to make him a marked man. Napier says of them, that "for twelve days these hardy soldiers covered the retreat, during which time they had traversed eighty miles of road in two marches, passed several nights under arms in the snow of the mountains, were seven times engaged with the enemy, and now assembled at the outposts (before Corunna), having fewer men missing from the ranks, including those who had fallen in battle, than any other division in the army."[A]
[A] The foregoing story, I find, has just made its appearance in a volume published by Lieutenant-Colonel Cadell; but as this narrative was publicly noticed, as being in preparation, prior to the publication of his, I have not thought it necessary to expunge it.
I shall now, with the reader's permission, resume the thread of my narrative.
[CHAP. III.]
An old one takes to his heels, leaving a young one in arms.—The dessert does not always follow the last course of—a goose.—Goes to the war, and ends in love.
In those days, the life of a soldier was a stirring and an active one. I had not joined the regiment above a fortnight when the 1st battalion received orders for immediate active service, and General Graham was to make his appearance on the morrow, to inspect them prior to their embarkation. Every man destined for service was to appear in the ranks, and as my turn had not yet come, I was ordered, the previous evening, to commence my career as a rifleman, in charge of the guard; and a most unhappy debut I made of it, and one that argued but little in behalf of my chances of future fame in the profession.
My guard was composed of the Lord knows who, for, excepting on the back of the sergeant, I remember that there was not a rag of uniform amongst them. I was too anxious to forget all about them to think of informing myself afterwards; but, from what I have since seen, I am satisfied that they must either have been a recent importation from "the first gem of the sea," or they had been furnished for the occasion by the governor of Newgate;—however, be that as it may, I had some ten or a dozen prisoners handed over to me; and as my eye was not sufficiently practised to distinguish, in such a group, which was the soldier and which the prisoner, I very discreetly left the whole affair to the sergeant, who seemed to be a man of nous. But while I was dozing on the guard-bed, about midnight, I was startled by a scramble in the soldier's room, and the cry of "guard, turn out;" and, on running out to ascertain the cause, the sergeant told me that the light in the guard-house had been purposely upset by some one, and, suspecting that a trick was intended, he had turned out the guard; and truly his suspicions were well-grounded, although he took an erroneous method of counteracting it; for, the sentry over the door, not being a much shrewder fellow than myself in distinguishing characters in the dark, in suffering the guard to turn out, had allowed some of the prisoners to turn out too, and, amongst the rest, one who had been reserved for an especial example of some sort or other, and whose absence was likely to make a noise in the neighbourhood.
This was certainly information enough to furnish me with food for reflection for the remainder of the night, and, as if to enhance its agreeable nature, the sergeant-major paid me a visit at daylight in the morning, and informed me that such things did sometimes happen;—he enumerated several cases of the kind in different regiments, and left me with the consolatory piece of information that the officer of the guard had on each occasion been allowed to retire without a court-martial!!! My readers, I am sure, will rejoice with me that in this, as in other cases, there is no rule without an exception, for otherwise they would never have had the pleasure of reading a book of mine.
How I had the good fortune to be excepted on that occasion I never found out; probably, in the hurry and bustle of preparation it was overlooked,—or, probably, because they hoped better things of me thereafter,—but my commanding officer never noticed it, and his kindness in so doing put me more on the alert for the future than if he had written a volume of censure.
Among the other novelties of the aforesaid guard-house on that memorable night, I got acquainted with a very worthy goose, whose services in the Rifle Brigade well merit a chapter in its history. If any one imagines that a goose is a goose he is very much mistaken: and I am happy in having the power of undeceiving him, for I am about to show that my (or rather our regimental) goose was shrewd, active, and intelligent, it was a faithful public servant, a social companion, and an attached friend, (I wish that every biped could say but half so much). Its death, or its manner of departure from this world, is still clouded in mystery; but while my book lives, the goose's memory shall not die.
It had attached itself to the guard-house several years prior to my appearance there, and all its doings had been as steady as a sentry-box: its post was with the sentry over the guard; in fine weather it accompanied him in his walk, and in bad, it stood alongside of him in his box. It marched with the officer of the guard in all his visiting rounds, and it was the first on all occasions to give notice of the approach of any one in authority, keeping a particularly sharp look-out for the captain and field-officer of the day, whether by day or night. The guard might sleep, the sentry might sleep, but the goose was ever wide awake. It never considered itself relieved from duty, except during the breakfast and dinner-hours, when it invariably stepped into the guard-house, and partook of the soldiers' cheer, for they were so devotedly attached to it that it was at all times bountifully supplied, and it was not a little amusing, on those occasions, to see how the fellow cackled whenever the soldiers laughed, as if it understood and enjoyed the joke as much as they did.
I did not see Moore's Almanack for 1812, and, therefore, know not whether he predicted that Michaelmas would be fatal to many of the tribe that year; but I never saw a comrade more universally lamented than the poor goose was when the news of its mysterious disappearance reached us in Spain.
Our comrades at home, as a last proof of their affection, very magnanimously offered a reward of ten pounds for the recovery of the body, dead or alive; but whether it filled a respectable position in a banquet of that year, or still lives to bother the decayed tooth of some elderly maiden, at Michaelmas next, remains to be solved.
On the 24th of March, 1809, our first battalion received orders to march at midnight for Dover, there to be united with the 43d and 52d regiments, as a light brigade, under Major-General Robert Crawfurd, and to embark next morning to join the army which was then assembling in the Peninsula.
In marching for embarkation in those stirring times, the feeling of the troops partook more of the nature of a ship's crew about to sail on a roving commission, than a land-crab expedition which was likely to prove eternal; for although one did occasionally see some blubber-headed fellow mourning over his severed affections for a day or two, yet a thorough-going one just gave a kiss to his wife, if he had one, and two to his sweetheart, if he had not, and away he went with a song in his mouth.
I now joined the 2d battalion, where we were not permitted to rest long on our oars, for, within a month, we were called upon to join the expedition with which
"The Great Earl of Chatham, and a hundred thousand men,
Sailed over to Holland, and then sailed back again."
As the military operations of that expedition do not entitle them to a place in such an important history as mine is, I shall pass them over, simply remarking that some of our companies fired a few professional shots, and some of our people got professionally shot, while a great many more visited Death by the doctor's road, and almost all who visited him not, got uncommonly well shaken.
South Beeveland ultimately became our head-quarters. It is a fine island, and very fertile, yielding about forty bushels of frogs an acre, and tadpoles enough to fence it with. We were there under the command of General W. Stewart, whose active mind, continually in search of improvement, led him to try (in imitation of some foreign customs) to saddle the backs of the officers with knapsacks, by way of adding to their comfort; for he proved to demonstration that if an officer had a clean shirt in his knapsack on his back, that he might have it to put on at the end of his day's march; whereas, if he had it not on his own back, it might be left too far back to be of use to him when wanted.
This was a fact not to be disputed, but so wedded were we to ancient prejudices that we remained convinced that the shirt actually in wear, with all its additions at the end of an extra day or two, must still weigh less than the knapsack with a shirt in it; and upon those grounds we made a successful kick, and threw them off, not, however, until an experimental field-day had been ordered to establish them. The order required that each officer should parade in a knapsack, or something answering the same purpose, and it was amusing enough to see the expedients resorted to, to evade, without committing a direct breach of it. I remember that my apology for one on that occasion was slinging an empty black oil-skin haversack knapsack-ways, which looked so much like a newly-lanced blister on my back that it made both the vraws and the frogs stare. The attempt was never repeated.
What a singular change did a short residence in that pestiferous place work in the appearance of our army! It was with our regiment as with others; one month saw us embark a thousand men at Deal, in the highest health and spirits, and the next month saw us land, at the same place, with about seven hundred men, carrying to hospital, or staggering under disease.
I cannot shake off that celebrated Walcheren fever without mentioning what may or may not be a peculiarity in it;—that a brother-officer and I experienced a return of it within a day of each other, after a lapse of five years, and again, within a week, after the lapse of the following three years.
As my heart had embarked for the Peninsula with the 1st battalion, although my body (for the reasons given) remained behind for a year, I shall, with the reader's permission, follow the first, as being in the more interesting position of the two; and although, under these circumstances, I am not permitted to speak in the first person singular until the two shall be again united, yet whatever I do speak of I have heard so often and so well authenticated, that I am enabled to give it with the same confidence as if I had been an eye-witness.