When there is no object in view beyond the simple breaking of the heads of those opposed to us, there requires no speechification; but, on all occasions, like the one related, it ought never to be lost sight of—it is easily done—it never, by any possibility, can prove disadvantageous, and I have seen many instances in which the advantages would have been incalculable. I shall mention as one—that three days after the battle of Vittoria, in following up the retreating foe, we found ourselves in a wood, engaged in a warm skirmish, which we concluded was occasioned by our pushing the enemy's rear guard faster than they found it convenient to travel; but, by and bye, when they had disappeared, we found that we were near the junction of two roads, and that we had all the while been close in, and engaged with the flank of another French division, which was retiring by a road running parallel with our own. The road (and that there was a retiring force upon it) must, or ought to have been known to some of our staff officers, and had they only communicated their information, there was nothing to have prevented our dashing through their line of march, and there is little doubt, too, but the thousands which passed us, while we stood there exchanging shots with them, would have fallen into our hands.
The day after the action at Foz d'Aronce was devoted to repose, of which we stood much in want, for we had been marching and fighting incessantly from day-light until dark for several consecutive days, without being superabundantly provisioned; and our jackets, which had been tolerably tight fits at starting, were now beginning to sit as gracefully as sacks upon us. When wounds were abundant, however, we did not consider it a disadvantage to be low in flesh, for the poorer the subject the better the patient!
A smooth ball or a well polished sword will slip through one of your transparent gentlemen so gently that be scarcely feels it, and the holes close again of their own accord. But see the smash it makes in one of your turtle or turkey fed ones! the hospital is ruined in finding materials to reduce his inflammations, and it is ten to one if ever he comes to the scratch again.
On descending to the river side next morning to trace the effects of the preceding night's combat, we were horrified and disgusted by the sight of a group of at least five hundred donkeys standing there ham-strung. The poor creatures looked us piteously in the face, as much as to say, "Are you not ashamed to call yourselves human beings?" And truly we were ashamed to think that even our enemy could be capable of such refinement in cruelty. I fancy the truth was, they were unable to get them over the river, they had not time to put them to death, and, at the same time, they were resolved that we should not have the benefit of their services. Be that as it may, so disgusted and savage were our soldiers at the sight, that the poor donkeys would have been amply revenged, had fate, at that moment, placed five hundred Frenchmen in our hands, for I am confident that every one of them would have undergone the same operation.
The French having withdrawn from our front on the 16th, we crossed the Ciera, at dawn of day, on the 17th; the fords were still so deep, that, as an officer with an empty haversack on my back, it was as much as I could do to flounder across it without swimming. The soldiers ballasted with their knapsacks, and the sixty rounds of ball cartridge were of course in better fording trim. We halted that night in a grove of cork trees, about half a league short of the Alva.
Next morning we were again in motion, and found the enemy's rear-guard strongly posted on the opposite bank of that river.
The Alva was wide, deep, and rapid, and the French had destroyed the bridge of Murcella, and also the one near Pombeira. Nevertheless, we opened a thundering cannonade on those in our front, while Lord Wellington, having, with extraordinary perseverance, succeeded in throwing three of his divisions over it higher up, threatening their line of retreat—it obliged those opposed to us to retire precipitately, when our staff corps, with wonderful celerity, having contrived to throw a temporary bridge over the river, we passed in pursuit and followed until dark; we did not get another look at them that day, and bivouacked for the night in a grove of pines, on some swampy high lands, by the road side, without baggage, cloaks, or eatables of any kind.
Who has not passed down Blackfriars-road of an evening? and who has not seen, in the vicinity of Rowland Hill's chapel, at least half a dozen gentlemen presiding each over his highly polished tin case, surmounted by variegated lamps, and singing out that most enchanting of all earthly melodies to an empty stomach, that has got a sixpence in its clothly casement, "hot, all hot!" The whole concern is not above the size of a drum, and, in place of dealing in its empty sounds, rejoices in mutton-pies, beef-steaks, and kidney-puddings, "hot, all hot!" If the gentlemen had but followed us to the wars, how they would have been worshipped in such a night, even without their lamps.
In these days of invention, when every suggestion for ameliorating the condition of the soldier is thankfully received, I, as one, who have suffered severely by outward thawings and inward gnawings, beg to found my claim to the gratitude of posterity, by proposing that, when a regiment is ordered on active service, the drummers shall deposit their sheep-skins and their cat-o'-nine tails in the regimental store-room, leaving one cat only in the keeping of the drum major. And in lieu thereof that each drummer be armed with a tin drum full of "hot, all hot!" and that whenever the quarter-master fails to find the cold, the odd cat in the keeping of the drum-major shall be called upon to remind him of his duty.
If the simple utterance of the three magical monosyllables already mentioned did not rally a regiment more rapidly round the given point than a tempest of drums and trumpets, I should be astonished, and as we fought tolerably well on empty stomachs, I should like to see what we would not do on kidney puddings, "hot, all hot!"