With Moore at Corunna

by G. A. Henty

In the afternoon he generally rode forward with Major Errington, the quartermaster-general of the brigade, to examine the place fixed upon for the halt, to apportion the ground between the regiments, and ascertain the accommodation to be obtained in the village. Two orderlies accompanied them, each carrying a bundle of light rods. With these the ground was marked off, a card with the name of the regiment being inserted in a slit at the end of the rod; the village was then divided in four quarters for the accommodation of the officers. But beyond fixing the name of each regiment to the part assigned to it, no attempt was made to allot any special quarters to individual officers, this being left for the regimental quartermaster to do on the arrival of the troops.

When the column came up Terence led each regiment to the spot marked off, and directed the baggage-waggons to their respective places. While he was doing this, Trevor, with the orderlies, saw the head-quarters baggage carried to the house chosen for the general's use, and that the place was made as comfortable as might be, and then endeavoured to add to the rations by purchases in the village. Fane himself always remained with the troops until the tents were erected, and they were under cover, the rations distributed, and the fires lighted. The latter operation was often delayed by the necessity of fetching wood from a distance, the wood in the immediate neighbourhood having been cut down and burned either by the French on their advance, or by the British regiments ahead.

He then went to his quarters, where he received the reports of the medical, commissariat, and transport officers, wrote a report of the state of the road and the obstacles that he had encountered, and sent it back by an orderly to the officer commanding the six guns which were following a day's march behind him. These had been brought along with great labour, it being often necessary to take them off their carriages and carry them up or down difficult places, while the men were frequently compelled to harness themselves to ropes and aid the horses to drag the guns and waggons through the deep mud. Between the arrival of the troops and dinner Terence had his time to himself, and generally spent it with his regiment.

"Never did I see such a country, Terence," O'Grady complained to him one day. "Go where you will in ould Oirland, you can always get a jugful of poteen, a potful of 'taties, and a rasher of bacon; and if it is a village, a fowl and eggs. Here there are not even spirits or wine; as for a chicken, I have not seen the feather of one since we started, and I don't believe the peasants would know an egg if they saw it."

"Nonsense, O'Grady! If we were to go off the main road we should be able to buy all these things, barring the poteen, and maybe the potatoes, but you could get plenty of onions instead. You must remember that the French army came along here, and I expect they must have eaten nearly everything up on their way, and you may be sure that Anstruther's brigade gleaned all they left. As we marched from the Mondego we found the villagers well supplied--better a good deal than places of the same size would be in Ireland--except at our first halting-place."

"I own that, although Hoolan sometimes fails to add to our rations, we have not been so badly off, Terence. He goes out with two or three more of the boys directly we halt, laving the other servants to get the tents ready, and he generally brings us half a dozen fish, sometimes a dozen, that he has got out of the stream.

"He is an old hand, is Tim, and if he can't get them for dinner he gets them for breakfast. He catches them with night-lines and snares, and all sorts of poaching tricks. I know he bought a bag with four or five pounds of lime at Torres Vedras, and managed to smuggle it away in the regimental baggage. I asked him what it was for, and the rascal tipped me a wink, as much as to say, Don't ask no questions, master; and I believe that he drops a handful into a likely pool when he comes across one. I have never dared to ask him, for my conscience would not let me countenance such an unsportsmanlike way of getting round the fish."

"I don't think that there is much harm in it under the present circumstances," Terence laughed. "It is not sport, but it is food. I am afraid, Tim, that you must have been poaching a good deal at home or you would never have thought of buying lime before starting on this march."

"I would scorn to take in an Oirish fish, yer honour!" Hoolan said, indignantly. "But it seems to me that as the people here are trating us in just as blackguardly a manner as they can, shure it is the least we can do to catch their fish any way we can, just to pay them off."

"Well, looking at it in that light, Tim, I will say no more against the practice. I don't think I could bring myself to lime even Portuguese water, but my conscience would not trouble me at eating fish that had been caught by somebody else."