Random Shots from a Rifleman

by J. Kincaid

"Yet are Spain's maids no race of Amazons,
But formed for all the witching arts of love!"

Their house, under the circumstances in which we were placed, became an agreeable lounge for many of us for a month or two, for though the sports of the field, with the limited means at our disposal, formed our daily amusement, we always contrived that it should terminate somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Quinta, where we were sure of three things—a hearty welcome, a dish of conversation, and another of chestnuts fried in hog's-lard, with a glass of aguadente to wind up with, which, after the fatigues of the day, carried us comfortably home to our more substantial repast, with a few little pleasing recollections to dream about.

The French marshal, as if envious of our enjoyments, meagre as they were, put a sudden stop to them. His advance, however, was not so rapid but that we were enabled to give our first care towards providing for the safety of our friends of the Quinta, by assisting them with the means of transporting themselves to a more remote glen in the mountains, before it was necessary to look to our own, and

Although the links of love that morn
Which War's rude hands had asunder torn

had not been patent ones, yet did it savour somewhat of chivalric times when we had been one evening in the field in the front of the Quinta sporting with the young and the lovely of the land, as if wars and rumours of wars were to be heard of no more.

I say I felt it rather queerish or so, to be spreading down my boat-cloak for a bed in the same field the next night, with an enemy in my front, for so it was, and to find myself again before day-light next morning, from my cold clay couch, gazing at the wonderful comet of 1811, that made such capital claret, and wishing that he would wag his fiery tale a little nearer to my face, for it was so stiff with hoar frost that I dared neither to laugh nor cry for fear of breaking it.

We passed yet another night in the same field hallowed by such opposite recollections; but next day, independently of the gathered strength of the enemy in our front, we found a fight of some magnitude going on behind us, the combat of Elbodon; and our major-general, getting alarmed at last at his own temerity, found a sleeping place for us, some distance in the rear, in a hollow, where none but the comet and its companions might be indulged with a look.

Our situation was more than ticklish—with an enemy on three sides and an almost impassable mountain on the fourth—but starting with the lark next morning and passing through Robledillo, we happily succeeded in joining the army in front of Guinaldo in the afternoon, to the no small delight of his Grace of Wellington, whose judicious and daring front with half the enemy's numbers, had been our salvation. And it must no doubt have been a mortifying reflection to our divisional chief, to find that his obstinacy and disobedience of orders had not only placed his own division, but that of the whole army in such imminent peril.

Marmont had no doubt a laurel-wreath in embryo for the following day, but he had allowed his day to go by; the night was ours and we used it, so that when day-light broke, he had nothing but empty field-works to wreak his vengeance on. He followed us along the road, with some sharp partial fighting at one or two places, and there seemed a probability of his coming on to the position in which Lord Wellington felt disposed to give him battle; but a scarcity of provisions forced him to retrace his steps, and break up to a certain extent for the subsistence of his army, while our retreat terminated at Soita, which it appeared was about the spot on which Lord Wellington had determined to make a stand.

I shall ever remember our night at Soita for one thing. The commissariat had been about to destroy a cask of rum in the course of that day's retreat, when at the merciful intercession of one of my brother officers, it was happily spared and turned over to his safe keeping, and he shewed himself deserving of the trust, for by wonderful dexterity and management, he contrived to get it wheeled along to our resting-place, when establishing himself under the awning of a splendid chestnut-tree, he hung out the usual emblem of its being the head-quarters of a highland chief—not for the purpose of scaring way-fairers as erst did his forefathers of yore, to exclude the worthy Baillie Nicol Jarvie from the clachan of Aberfoyle—but for the more hospitable one of inviting them to be partakers thereof; and need I add that among the many wearers of empty calabashes which the chances of war had there assembled around him, the call was cheerfully responded to, and a glorious group very quickly assembled.