[721] His dispatch to Castlereagh, of Jan. 18, proves that he was wounded before Moore fell.
[722] Every student of the Peninsular War should read Charles Napier’s vivid and thrilling account of the storm of Elvina. William Napier reprinted it in vol. i of his brother’s biography. Charles was within an ace of being murdered after surrender, and was saved by a gallant French drummer.
[723] Letter of his aide-de-camp Hardinge in James Moore’s Life, p. 220.
[724] Erroneously called in most British and French accounts Palavea Abaxo. The latter village is at the foot of the French line, a little to the north.
[725] For an account of this combat from the French side see Foy’s report to Delaborde, printed in Girod de l’Ain’s Vie militaire du Général Foy (appendix), where the losses of the brigade are given. On the English side the 92nd lost three killed and five wounded (see Gardyne’s History of the 92nd Regiment). The 14th do not separate their battle-losses from those of the retreat in their casualty-returns. They had sixty-six dead and missing in the whole campaign, and put on board at Corunna seventy-two sick and wounded. Probably not more than ten of the former and thirty of the latter were hit in the battle; if the casualties were any larger on January 16 the losses in the retreat must have been abnormally small in the 14th Regiment.
[726] Of course the untrustworthy Le Noble does so, and falsifies his map accordingly.
[727] Foy’s brigade engaged two battalions of the 70th Regiment, besides three companies of voltigeurs of the 86th; this was all that Delaborde sent forward. There were two chefs de bataillon among the wounded.
[728] ‘Chaque armée resta sur son terrain,’ says St. Chamans, Soult’s senior aide-de-camp (the man who so kindly entreated Charles Napier, as the latter’s memoirs show). ‘A la nuit, qui seule a pu terminer cette lutte opiniâtre, nous nous sommes retrouvés au point d’où nous étions partis à 3 heures,’ says Fantin des Odoards, of Mermet’s division (p. 200). ‘Nos troupes furent obligées, par des forces supérieures, de rentrer dans leurs premiers postes,’ says Naylies, of Lahoussaye’s dragoons (p. 46).
[729] Blakeney urges this very strongly (pp. 117, 118); Graham also.
[730] It would seem that only the 2nd Léger and 36th of the Line of Merle, and the 70th of Delaborde, had been seriously engaged.