He turned about with his fellows and retreated. They picked up their arms and joined their comrades, when a loud discussion followed. Then once more the forward move was continued, Tom and his men watching as a mob five hundred strong bore down upon the building.
"I see ladders amongst them," said Andrews of a sudden, peering over our hero's shoulder. "That looks as if they would attempt to climb the wall of the yard. Then they guess where we've got to."
The next few minutes showed that the enemy were fully alive to the situation. They steered away from the door of the church, a few on the flank alone advancing toward it. The remainder surrounded the yard and the house, and, a shot having been fired by one as a signal, all rushed in to the attack, the ladder bearers winning their way to the wall without difficulty, while a chosen band made an onslaught upon the doors which gave entrance.
[CHAPTER IX]
Hard Pressed
"Stand back so that they cannot see you," commanded Tom, as the peasants rushed madly at the entrance of the church that the troopers had defended so gallantly on the previous evening, and above which they were now stationed. "There is no need for us to risk their bullets yet. Let them climb, and then we will use our spears again and teach them that, if anything, we are in a stronger position."
The advice came in time to save many a wound without shadow of doubt; for while two or three hundred of the maddened Portuguese had swarmed along the walls of the house, and turning the corner abruptly had then made a fierce onslaught on the gate leading into the yard, or were endeavouring to clamber to the top of the wall, an almost equal number had selected the church door for their own particular effort. They came on at the double, brandishing an assortment of strange weapons, weapons which, though they were not similar to those carried by the troops, and had seen many and many a summer, and, in fact, were wont to be used more often in the peaceful employment of agriculture, were still capable of giving terrible wounds, wielded as they were by men who seemed actually to be maddened by the sight of the defenders. The affair in which Tom and his friends found themselves so strangely and unexpectedly mixed was, indeed, one of those sad exhibitions of savagery to be met with, alas! in time of war, when such war is accompanied by atrocities. Knowing something of the history of this Peninsula campaign, and guessing at the rest, Tom could realize that the Portuguese peasant had suffered severely at the hands of vindictive troops who had been given a more or less free hand. The French bore an unenviable reputation for rapine, and history tells clearly that while the Spaniards had no very great cause of complaint, the Portuguese were often enough horribly treated. And at this time, when the French were slowly being forced in front of our armies towards the Portuguese frontier, driven in spite of their numbers out of a country they had sworn to hold, the atrocities committed were many. They did not stop at burning villages and ruining crops. Defenceless people were killed and horribly illtreated. Even the women and children were subjected to violence. And here was a direct result. One could hardly blame the peasants. Reprisals, terrible reprisals when the opportunity came, were but a natural sequence to violence.
"I have known these brutes waylay the rearguard of two battalions marching north, and capture everyone," said a trooper who was close to Tom, craning his head so as to see the mob from over the edge of the parapet. "Yes, monsieur, I have known them to capture a hundred men, and when the news reached us, and we, a full regiment of cavalry, galloped to the spot, we found every one of our brothers murdered, done to death by torture. Vraiment! It made our blood boil. It makes us fight now till there is not a breath left in us."
Tom sighed. It was not often that he indulged in such a melancholy act; but the thing saddened him. In the midst of an attack it is true that he could forget the reasons for it, could almost forget the nationality of the enemy, but in his more serene moments he could not help but see the fact that these were but peasants, and that their rage and hatred were natural. Nevertheless, to allow them to chop himself and his little command to pieces because the French had earned reprisals was a very different matter. Self-preservation is one of the first laws ingrafted in us, and in Tom it was acutely displayed.