Random Shots from a Rifleman

by J. Kincaid

On the 19th we were again in motion at day-light, and both on that day and the next, although we did not come into actual contact with the enemy, we picked up a good many stragglers. We were obliged, however, to come to a halt for several days from downright want, for the country was a desert, and we had out-marched our supplies. Until they came up, therefore, we remained two days in one village, and kept creeping slowly along the foot of the Sierra, until our commissariat was sufficiently re-inforced to enable us to make another dash.

I was amused at that time, in marching through those towns and villages which had been the head-quarters of the French army, to observe the falling off in their respect to the Marquess d'Alorna, a Portuguese nobleman, who had espoused their cause, and who, during Massena's advance, had been treated like a prince among them. On their retreat, however, it was easily seen that he was considered an incumbrance. Their names were always chalked on the doors of the houses they occupied, and we remarked that the one allotted to the unfortunate marquis grew gradually worse as we approached the frontier, and I remember that in the last village before we came to Celerico, containing about fifty houses, only a cow's share of the buildings had fallen to his lot.

We halted one day at Mello, and seeing a handsome-looking new church on the other side of the Mondego, I strolled over in the afternoon to look at it. It had all the appearance of having been magnificently adorned in the interior, but the French had left the usual traces of their barbarous and bloody visit. The doors were standing wide open, the valuable paintings destroyed, the statues thrown down, and mixed with them on the floor, lay the bodies of six or seven murdered Portuguese peasants. It was a cruel and a horrible sight, and yet in the midst thereof was I tempted to commit a most sacrilegious act, for round the neck of a prostrate marble female image, I saw a bone necklace of rare and curious workmanship, the only thing that seemed to have been saved from the general wreck, which I very coolly transferred to my pocket and in due time to my portmanteau. But a day of retribution was at hand, for both the portmanteau and the necklace went from me like a tale that is told, and I saw them no more.

It was the 28th before we again came in contact with the enemy at the village of Frexadas. Two companies of ours and some dragoons were detached to dislodge them, which they effected in gallant style, sending them off in confusion and taking a number of prisoners; but the advantage was dearly purchased by the death of our adjutant, Lieutenant Stewart. He imprudently rode into the main street of the village, followed by a few riflemen, before the French had had time to withdraw from it, and was shot from a window.

One would imagine that there is not much sense wrapped up in an ounce of lead, and yet it invariably selects our best and our bravest, (no great compliment to myself by the way, considering the quantity of those particles that must have passed within a yard of my body at different times, leaving all standing.) Its present victim was a public loss, for he was a shrewd, active, and intelligent officer; a gallant soldier, and a safe, jovial, and honourable companion.

I was not one of the party engaged on that occasion, but with many of my brother officers, watched their proceedings with my spy-glass from the church-yard of Alverca. Our rejoicings on the flight of the enemy were quickly turned into mourning by observing in the procession of our returning victorious party, the gallant adjutant's well-known bay horse with a dead body laid across the saddle. We at first indulged in the hope that he had given it to the use of some more humble comrade; but long ere they reached the village we became satisfied that the horse was the bearer of the inanimate remains of his unfortunate master, who but an hour before had left us in all the vigour of health, hope, and manhood. At dawn of day on the following morning the officers composing the advanced guard, dragoons, artillery, and riflemen, were seen voluntarily assembled in front of Sir Sidney Beckwith's quarters, and the body, placed in a wooden chest, was brought out and buried there amid the deep but silent grief of the spectators.

Brief, however, is the space which can be allotted to military lamentations in such times, for within a quarter of an hour we were again on the move in battle array, to seek laurels or death in another field.

Our movement that morning was upon Guarda, the highest standing town in Portugal, which is no joke, as they are rather exalted in their architectural notions—particularly in convent-building—and were even a thunder-charged cloud imprudent enough to hover for a week within a league of their highest land, I verily believe that it would get so saddled with monks, nuns, and their accompanying iron bars, that it would be ultimately unable to make its escape.

Our movement, as already said, was upon Guarda, and how it happened, the Lord and Wellington only knows, but even in that wild mountainous region the whole British army arriving from all points of the compass were seen to assemble there at the same instant, and the whole French army were to be seen at the same time in rapid retreat within gun-shot through the valley below us.

There must have been some screws loose among our minor departments, otherwise such a brilliant movement on the part of our chief would not have gone for nothing. But notwithstanding that the enemy's masses were struggling through a narrow defile for a considerable time, and our cavalry and horse artillery were launched against them, three hundred prisoners were the sole fruits of the day's work.