"Nor of his name or race
Hath left a token or a trace,"
save what I have here related.
The baron, presuming that he had all the merit due to a leader on that occasion, (for I knew him only by sight,) shewed, in his own person, what we frequently see, that to be a bold man it is not necessary to be a big one. In stature he was under the middle size, slenderly made, and with a hump on one shoulder. He lived through many a bloody peninsular field to perish by shipwreck in returning to his native country.
Throughout our many hard-fought and invariably successful Peninsular fields, it used to be a subject of deep mortification for us to see the breasts of our numerous captives adorned with the different badges of the Legion of Honour, and to think that our country should never have thought their captors deserving of some little mark of distinction, not only to commemorate the action, but to distinguish the man who fought, from him who did not—thereby leaving that strongest of all corps, the Belem Rangers, who had never seen a shot fired, to look as fierce and talk as big as the best. Many officers, I see, by the periodicals, continue still to fight for such a distinction, but the day has gone by. No correct line could now be drawn, and the seeing of such a medal on the breast of a man who had no claim, would deprive it of its chief value in the eyes of him who had.
To shew the importance attached to such distinctions in our service, I may remark that, though the Waterloo medal is intrinsically worth two or three shillings, and a soldier will sometimes be tempted to part with almost any thing for drink, yet, during the fifteen years in which I remained with the rifles after Waterloo, I never knew a single instance of a medal being sold, and only one of its being pawned.
On that solitary occasion it was the property of a handsome, wild, rattling young fellow, named Roger Black. He, one night, at Cambray, when his last copper had gone, found the last glass of wine so good, that he could not resist the temptation of one bottle more, for which he left his medal in pledge with the aubergiste, for the value of ten sous. Roger's credit was low—a review day arrived, and he could not raise the wind to redeem the thing he gloried in, but, putting a bold face on it, he went to the holder, and telling him that he had come for the purpose of redemption, he got it in his hands, and politely wished the landlord good morning, telling him, as he was marching off, that he would call and pay the franc out of the first money he received; but the arrangement did not suit mine host, who opposed his exit with all the strength of his establishment, consisting of his wife, two daughters, a well-frizzled waiter, and a club-footed hostler. Roger, however, painted the whole family group, ladies and all, with a set of beautiful black eyes, and then marched off triumphantly.
Poor Roger, for that feat, was obliged to be paid in kind, very much against the grain of his judges, for his defence was an honest one—namely, that he had no intention of cheating the man, but he had no money, "and, by Jove, you know gentlemen, I could never think of going to a review without my medal!"
THE END.
MARCHANT, PRINTER, INGRAM-COURT, FENCHURCH-STREET.