Wounded: Captains Hughes and Cator,—Lieutenants Mitchell, Brereton, Manners, Maitland, and Pester.
Three rank and file killed, and 32 wounded: besides of the Royal Artillery Drivers, 1 sergeant, 2 rank and file, and 18 horses killed: 1 sergeant, 7 rank and file, and 22 horses wounded.
The ordnance captured from the French was as follows:—
Major Duncan to General Graham.
Two 7-inch howitzers, 3 heavy 8-pounders, 1 4-pounder,—with their ammunition waggons, and a proportion of horses.
The fruits of the battle of Barossa might have been very considerable, had the Spanish General been capable of understanding even the rudiments of his profession. As he was at once ignorant and proud, General Graham found it necessary to return with his force to Cadiz; the object of the expedition had failed, for the siege was not raised,—but Marshal Victor had received a check which alarmed him considerably, and which led to eager demands for reinforcements. In his conduct, both in the action of the 5th March, and in his withdrawal to Isla de Leon on the following day, when he separated from the Spaniards, General Graham received the warmest support from Lord Wellington, to whose movements the reader is now invited to return.
After an inactivity of five months before the lines of Torres Vedras, Massena commenced to evacuate Portugal. He had no siege artillery with which to attack the fortifications behind which his enemy was securely sheltered; and his supplies were becoming every day more difficult to obtain; he therefore had no other alternative. As he retired, he was closely followed by the English army, and many smart affairs took place between the advanced guards of the latter and the rear-guard of the French army, in which the Royal Horse Artillery did good service. The limits of the largest work and the patience of the most enduring reader would be exhausted were these minor actions given in detail. Suffice it to say, that the Artillery engaged on these occasions included the troops commanded by Captain Ross and Captain Bull,—that the names of the various actions are given in the first volume of this history at pages 396 and 401, and that the way in which they performed their duty may be gathered, in the first place, from Lord Wellington’s despatches, and, in the second, from the exhaustive narrative of Napier. In writing of the actions of the 11th, 12th, and 13th March, 1811, at Pombal, Redinha, and Cazal Nova, To Lord Liverpool, dated 14 March, 1811. Lord Wellington said that the troops of Horse Artillery under Captains Ross and Bull particularly distinguished themselves. At the affair of Foz d’Arouce, on the 15th March, he also wrote that the Horse Artillery, under Captains Ibid. dated 16 March, 1811. Ross and Bull, distinguished themselves. Later, in the affair which took place on the 7th April, during a reconnaissance, in which the English, under Sir W. Erskine, drove a division of the French army before them across the Ibid. dated 9 April, 1811. Turones and Dos Casas, Lord Wellington wrote that “Captain’s Bull’s troop of Horse Artillery did great execution on this occasion.”
Vol. ii. chap. ii.
At the celebrated engagement of Fuentes d’Onor,[24] the dashing affair mentioned in an early part of this work took place, in which Captain Norman Ramsay, of Bull’s troop, so greatly distinguished himself. On this occasion the losses of the Artillery were as follows:—
Royal Horse Artillery—1 rank and file and 3 horses killed: 1 rank and file, and 3 horses wounded.