As I have already remarked, two of our companies alternately did duty in front of our position, at Fort Conception. The orders issued to the officer commanding the picquet were to blow up the fort immediately on the approach of the enemy, for which purpose it was undermined in several places by the artillerymen, who were left to fire the mines when the order should be given.
On the morning of the 19th of July, our company and another were on duty at this point, and it was generally expected we should be attacked on the morrow. I think the intelligence was brought by a deserter. The fort contained a great quantity of good English rum and biscuit, which Captain O’Hare allowed the men of both companies to help themselves to and fill their canteens, upon their promise, which they kept, not to get drunk. The following morning, before it was scarcely light, the enemy proved the correctness of our anticipations by advancing upon us in heavy columns, preceded by their light troops. The command was instantly given to fire the mines, and we retired upon our division. A few minutes after our quitting the fort, its beautiful proportions, which had excited the admiration of so many beholders, was broken, as by the shock of an earthquake, into a blackened heap of ruin.
We retreated under the walls of Almeida, where we halted until the 23rd, when at night we experienced a storm that for violence, while it lasted, exceeded anything I had ever before beheld. The lightning, thunder, wind, and rain were absolutely awful. With a few other men, I had sought shelter in the hollow of a rock, where we were not a little amazed at the numbers of snakes and lizards which the occasional gleams of lightning exhibited to us running about in all directions, as though the tempest had the effect of bringing them all from their holes.
At break of day, the music that we were now getting quite accustomed to—i. e. the cracking of the rifles of our outline picquet, gave intelligence of the enemy’s advance. Our company was immediately ordered to support them. Captain O’Hare accordingly placed us behind some dilapidated walls, we awaited the approach of the picquet then under the Hon. Captain Steward engaged about half a mile in our front, and slowly retreating upon us. They had already, as it afterwards appeared, several men killed, while Lieutenant M’Culloch had been wounded and taken prisoner with a number of others. We could distinctly see the enemy’s columns in great force, but had little time for observation, as our advance ran in upon us followed by the French tirailleurs, with whom we were speedily and hotly engaged. The right wing of the 52nd regiment, at this period, was drawn up about one hundred yards in our rear behind a low wall, when a shell, which with several others was thrown amongst us from the town, burst so near, that it killed several of our men, and buried a sergeant so completely in mud, but without hurting him, that we were obliged to drag him out of the heap, to prevent his being taken by the enemy[[4]]—at this moment also Lieutenant Cohen who stood close to me received a shot through the body. My old Captain, O’Hare, perceiving him roll his eyes and stagger, caught him by the arm, saying in a rather soft tone to the men about him:
“Take that poor boy to the rear, he does not know what is the matter with him,” and with the same characteristic coolness, he continued his duties. While hotly engaged, however, with the French infantry in our front, one or two troops of their hussars which, from the similarity of uniform, we had taken for our German hussars, whipped on our left flank between our company and the wing of the 52nd, when a cry of “the French cavalry are upon us,” came too late as they charged in amongst us. Taken thus unprepared, we could oppose but little or no resistance, and our men were trampled down and sabred, on every side. A French dragoon had seized me by the collar, while several others, as they passed, cut at me with their swords. The man who had collared me had his sabre’s point at my breast, when a volley was fired from our rear by the 52nd, who, by this time had discovered their mistake, which tumbled the horse of my captor. He fell heavily with the animal on his leg, dragging me down with him.
It was but for a moment nevertheless: determined to have one brief struggle for liberty, I freed myself from the dragoon’s grasp, and dealing him a severe blow on the head with the butt of my rifle, I rushed up to the wall of our 52nd, which I was in the act of clearing at a jump, when I received a shot under the cap of my right knee and instantly fell. In this emergency, there seemed a speedy prospect of my again falling into the hands of the French, as the division was in rapid retreat, but a comrade of the name of Little instantly dragged me over the wall, and was proceeding as quick as possible with me, on his back, towards the bridge of the Coa, over which our men were fast pouring, when he, poor fellow! also received a shot, which passing through his arm smashed the bone, and finally lodged itself in my thigh, where it has ever since remained.[[5]] In this extremity, Little was obliged to abandon me, but urged by a strong desire to escape imprisonment, I made another desperate effort, and managed to get over the bridge, from the other side of which Captain Ross’s guns were in full roar, covering our retreat; in this crippled state and faint through loss of blood, I made a second appeal to a comrade, who assisted me to ascend a hill on the other side of the river.
On the summit, we found a chapel which had been converted into a temporary hospital, where a number of wounded men were being taken to have their wounds dressed by the surgeons. Fortunately, I had not long to wait for my turn, for as we momentarily expected the coming of the French, everything was done with the greatest dispatch.
In this affair our company sustained a very severe loss; our return was, “one officer, Lieutenant Cohen, quite a youth, dangerously wounded, eleven file killed and wounded, and forty-five taken prisoners.”
My old Captain O’Hare had only eleven men on parade next day. The preceding facts will serve to show the unmilitary reader, that skirmishes are frequently more partially destructive to riflemen than general actions, although attended with but little of their celebrity. For my own part, I was never nearer death, excepting on the night we took Badajoz.
I must not forget a singular escape that occurred: a man of the name of Charity, of my own company, when the cavalry first rushed upon us, had fallen, wounded in the head by a sabre, while on the ground, he received another severe sword slash on the seat of honour, and a shot through the arm, the latter, no doubt, from the 52nd. Yet after all this, he managed to escape, and