[190] Several narrators accuse them of shirking, but Geo. Napier writes (Life, p. 215), ‘Neither Elder nor his excellent regiment were likely to neglect any duty, and I am sure the blame rested elsewhere, for George Elder was always ready for any service.’ Compare George Simmons’s autobiography—possibly he put things out by ordering the Portuguese company to carry the ladders, which he clearly was not authorized to do. [A British Rifleman, p. 221.]
[191] Some narrators say a low ravelin, but the best authority is in favour of its having been a traverse.
[192] The point has often been raised as to whether it was not the success of the Light Division at the lesser breach which enabled the 3rd Division to break through at the greater. Some Light Division diarists (e.g. Harry Smith) actually state that it was their attack on the rear of the defenders which made them flinch from a position which they had hitherto maintained. I think that the case is decided in favour of the 3rd Division by Belmas’s statement that the French fired the mine at the great breach only when the 3rd Division had got through, combined with the fact that the leading men of the Light Division reached the back of the great breach just in time to suffer from the explosion, which killed Captain Uniacke of the 95th and a few others. Apparently, therefore, the breach was forced before the head of the Light Division stormers had come up, but only just before.
[193] There is considerable controversy as to what officer received Barrié’s surrender. For the Gurwood-Mackie dispute see note in [Appendix].
[194] See his Life and Letters, p. 396.
[195] Kincaid, Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, p. 117.
[196] Leach’s Sketches in the Life of an Old Soldier, p. 250. For an amusing story about a plundering Connaught Ranger who came down a chimney, see Grattan, p. 162. He tried to propitiate the officer who found him by presenting him with a case of surgical instruments. Kincaid speaks of worse than plunder—armed violence and some cases of rape.
[197] So Napier and most other authorities. John Jones, however, says that the explosion was not accidental, but deliberate—some English deserters had hidden themselves in a small magazine under the rampart. ‘These desperate men, on seeing an officer approach, deeming discovery and capture inevitable, and assured that an ignominious death would follow, blew themselves up in the magazine. The explosion first found vent through the door, and shot the refugees up into the street, some alive, but so mutilated, blackened, and distorted, as to be painful to behold.’
[198] Costello (a Light Division narrator), pp. 151-2.
[199] See vol. iii. pp. 233-7.