Random Shots from a Rifleman

by J. Kincaid

The night turned out a regular Tam o'Shanter's night, or, if the reader pleases, a Wellington night, for it is a singular fact that almost every one of his battles was preceded by such a night;—the thunder rolled, the lightning flashed, and all the fire-engines in the world seemed playing upon the lightning, and the devoted heads of those exposed to it. It was a sort of night that was well calculated to be a damper to a bolder spirit than the one whose story I am relating; but he, nevertheless, sheltered himself as he best could, under the veteran's cloak, and put as good a face upon it as circumstances would permit.

As usual, an hour before day-break, Mac Culloch, resigning the boat-cloak to his dosing companion, stood to his arms, to be ready for whatever changes daylight might have in store for him: nor had he to wait long, for day had just begun to dawn when the sharp crack from the rifle of one of the advanced sentries announced the approach of the enemy, and he had just time to counsel his terrified bedfellow to make the best of his way back to the division, while he himself awaited to do battle. Nor had he much time for preparation, for, as Napier says, "Ney, seeing Crawfurd's false dispositions, came down upon them with the stoop of an eagle. Four thousand horsemen, and a powerful artillery, swept the plain, and Loison's division coming up at a charging pace, made towards the centre and left of the position." Mac Culloch, almost instantly, received several bad sabre wounds, and, with five-and-twenty of his men, was taken prisoner.

Rogers, it may be believed, lost no time in following the salutary counsel he had received with as clever a pair of heels as he could muster. The enemy's artillery had by this time opened, and, as the devil would have it, the cannon-balls were travelling the same road, and tearing up the ground on each side of him almost as regularly as if it had been a ploughing match. Poor Rogers was thus placed in a situation which fully justified him in thinking, as most young soldiers do, that every ball was aimed at himself. He was half distracted; it was certain death to stop where he was, neither flank offered him the smallest shelter, and he had not wind enough left in his bellows to clear the tenth part of the space between him and comparative safety; but, where life is at stake, the imagination is fertile, and it immediately occurred to him that by dowsing the cocked hat he would make himself a less conspicuous object; clapping it, accordingly under his arm, he continued his frightful career, with the feelings of a maniac and the politeness of a courtier, for to every missile that passed he bowed as low as his racing attitude would permit, in ignorance that the danger had passed along with it, performing, to all appearance, a continued rotatory sort of evolution, as if the sails of a windmill had parted from the building, and continued their course across the plain, to the utter astonishment of all who saw him. At length, when exhausted nature could not have carried him twenty yards further, he found himself among some skirmishers of the 3d Caçadores, and within a few yards of a rocky ridge, rising out of the ground, the rear of which seemed to offer him the long-hoped-for opportunity of recovering his wind, and he sheltered himself accordingly.

This happened to be the first occasion in which the Caçadores had been under fire; they had the highest respect for the bravery of their British officers, and had willingly followed where their colonel had led; but having followed him into the field, they did not see why they should not follow another out of it, and when they saw a red coat take post behind a rock, they all immediately rushed to take advantage of the same cover. Poor Rogers had not, therefore, drawn his first breath when he found himself surrounded by these Portuguese warriors, nor had he drawn a second before their colonel (Sir George Elder) rode furiously at him with his drawn sword, exclaiming "who are you, you scoundrel, in the uniform of a British officer, setting an example of cowardice to my men? get out of that instantly, or I'll cut you down!"

Rogers's case was desperate—he had no breath left to explain that he had no pretensions to the honour of being an officer, for he would have been cut down in the act of attempting it: he was, therefore, once more forced to start for another heat with the round shot, and, like a hunted devil, got across the bridge, he knew not how; but he was helm up for England the same day, and the army never saw him more.

General Crawfurd's conduct in the affair alluded to, would argue that his usual soldier-like wits had gone a wool-gathering for the time being—he had, in fact, like a moth, been fluttering so long with impunity around a consuming power that he had at length lost all sense of the danger. But even then it is impossible to conceive upon what principle he took up the position he did—for, in the first place, it was in direct defiance of Lord Wellington's orders; and had the river behind him been flowing with milk and honey, or had the rugged bank on which he was posted been built of loaves and fishes, it would scarcely have justified him in running the risk he did to preserve the sweets; but as the one was flooded with muddy water, and the other only bearing a crop of common stones, and when we consider, too, that the simple passing of the river would have made a hundred of his troops equal to a thousand of the invaders, we must continue lost in wonder.

It is difficult to imagine, however, that he ever contemplated the possibility of stopping the French army but for the moment. Confiding, probably, in the superiority of his troops, he had calculated on successfully repelling their first attack, and that having thus taught them the respect that was due to him, he might then have made a triumphant retreat to the opposite bank, where, for a time, he could safely have offered them further defiance.

If such was his object, (and it is the only plausible one I can find,) he had altogether overlooked that for a man with one pair of arms to grapple with another who had ten, it must rest with the ten-pair man to say when the play is over, for although the one-pair man may disable an equal number in his front, there are still nine pair left to poke him in the sides and all round about; and thus the general found it; for having once exposed himself to such overwhelming numbers, there was no getting out of it but at a large sacrifice—and but for the experience, the confidence, and the devotion of the different individual battalion officers, seconded by the gallantry of the soldiers, the division had been utterly annihilated. Napier, as an eye-witness, states, (what I have often heard repeated by other officers who were there,) that "there was no room to array the line, no time for any thing but battle, every captain carried off his company as an independent body, and joining as he could with the ninety-fifth or fifty-second, the whole presented a mass of skirmishers acting in small parties, and under no regular command, yet each confident in the courage and discipline of those on his right and left, and all regulating their movements by a common discretion, and keeping together with surprising vigour."

The result of the action was a loss on the British portion of the division of two hundred and seventy-two, including twenty-eight officers, killed, wounded, and taken.