"He is a wild and untamed spirit," he said; "and as he is just now under orders for foreign service, he had better go; let him have a year of that fun; it will do his complaint good; and, if he lives, we shall see him, I hope, return an improved man."
The new-comer, therefore, was fain to put up with this answer, and next morning returned home to his parents, apparently much cut up and disappointed at his ill success. Accordingly the gentleman-farmer embarked for Portugal, and was soon after witness of a wilder scene of discord and horror than, I dare say, even his hair-brained ideas quite contemplated when he enlisted for a soldier; in short, he took his first lesson of actual warfare at the siege of Badajoz, and, entering with heart and soul into the breach, his head was dashed into a hundred pieces by a cannon ball.
Thomas Mayberry was a man well known at that time in the Rifles. He was a sergeant in my day, and was much thought of by our officers as a very active and useful non-commissioned officer, being considered, up to the time of his committing the slight mistake I shall have to tell of, one of the most honest men in the army. With the men he was not altogether so well liked, as he was considered rather too blusterous and tyrannical. Whilst in the town of Hythe, he got the fingering of about two hundred pounds, for the purpose of paying for necessaries purchased for the men of his company, and which two hundred pounds he had, in a very short space of time, managed to make away with, and lose in the society of a party of gamblers, who at that time infested the town of Hythe. Captain Hart, who then commanded the company Mayberry belonged to, was not a little thunderstruck, some little time after, at finding that the several tradesmen who furnished the articles for the men had never been settled with, and, sending for Mayberry, discovered the delinquency. Mayberry was a prisoner in a moment; and Captain Hart was as much astonished as if his own father had committed a fraud, so well and so much was Mayberry thought of. He was brought to court-martial, together with two other men, whom he had seduced to become partners in his gambling transactions; and, on the inquiry, it was further discovered that he had been in the habit of cheating the men of his company out of a farthing a-week each for the last ten months. That was, perhaps, the worst thing against him. He was sentenced to receive seven hundred lashes. Corporal Morrisson and Patrick Divine, his two participators in this roguery, got, I remember, the former three, and the latter one hundred, awarded to them.
When the square was formed for punishment, and the three were brought out, it was necessary to check the men of the regiment, or they would have hooted and hissed them on the parade. I recollect, also, that there was a civilian, of the name of Gilbert, whom Mayberry had defrauded, and he had inquired the time of his punishment, and was present in the rear during the infliction, having expressed to some of Mayberry's companions that he was content to lose the money, so that he saw the fellow well flogged:—a pretty good proof that, when their own interests are nearly concerned, your civilian has no objection to even be an eye-witness of the infliction of the lash, about which there has lately been such an outcry. It is, indeed, no uncommon thing, now-a-days, to see a man who has committed crimes, which have caused him to receive the execrations of his sometime companions in arms, as he is being drummed out of the corps, received by a host of folks without the barrack-gates, and taken to their bosoms as an object of commiseration.
When Mayberry was tied up, he was offered, as was then customary, the option of banishment; but he refused it, notwithstanding considerable entreaty was made to him by his two comrades to accept it, as, by so doing, they thought they all would escape the lash. However, Mayberry decided to take the seven hundred, and bore the sentence without a murmur. Not so the two others: Morrisson screamed and struggled so much, that he capsized the triangle, and all came sprawling together, so that he was obliged to be held by a man at each side. Divine came last. He was rather an effeminate-looking man; and the colonel rode round, and told him he lamented being obliged to break so fair a skin; but he must do his duty. However, as he had borne a good character, and was not so much to blame as the other two, he let him down after five-and-twenty.
Mayberry after this was much scouted by his fellow-soldiers, and also ill-thought of by the officers; and, on a detachment being sent to Portugal, he volunteered for the expedition. Captain Hart, however, would fain have declined taking him, as he had so bad an opinion of him after this affair; but Mayberry shewed himself so desirous of going, that at last he consented, and took him. At the siege of Badajoz, Mayberry wiped off, in a measure, all his former ill conduct. He was seen by Captain Hart to behave so bravely in the breach, that he commended him on the spot.
"Well done, Mayberry!" said he; "you have this day done enough to obliterate your disgrace; and, if we live, I will endeavour to restore you to your former rank. Go now to the rear; you have done enough for one day." Mayberry, however, refused to retire, although covered with wounds; for he was known to have killed seven with his own hand, with his rifle-sword-bayonet.
"No going to the rear for me," he said. "I'll restore myself to my comrades' opinion, or make a finish of myself altogether."
He accordingly continued in the front of all, till at last he was seen to be cut down, in the clear light of the fire-balls, by a tremendous sword-cut, which cleft his skull almost in twain. Morrisson, I heard, also died at that siege. Divine returned safe home, and died of fatigue at Fermoy.
It has been said, I have heard, by officers of high rank in the army of the Peninsula, that there never were such a set of devil-may-care fellows, and so completely up to their business, as the 95th. It would be invidious to make a distinction, or talk of any one regiment being better, or more serviceable, than another; but the Rifles were generally in the mess before the others began, and also the last to leave off. It was their business to be so; and if they did their work well, so did every other British corps engaged in that country, at least I never either heard or saw to the contrary. There was, perhaps, as intelligent and talented a set of men amongst us, as ever carried a weapon in any country. They seemed at times, to need but a glance at what was going on to know all about its "why and wherefore." I remember seeing the Duke of Wellington during the battle of Vimiero; and in these days, when so much anxiety is displayed to catch even a glance of that great man's figure as he gallops along the streets of London, it seems gratifying to me to recollect seeing him in his proper element, "the raging and bloody field," and I have frequently taxed my mind to remember each action and look I caught of him at that time.