"Remember me—Stanhope—to—your sister."
He referred to the famous and brilliant Lady Hester Stanhope, whom he was said to have loved, and who died in Syria in 1839. Here his voice again completely failed him, and while pressing to his breast the hand of Colonel Anderson, who had saved his life at St. Lucia, he expired without a struggle in his forty-eighth year......
All stood in silence around the pallet whereon that brave gentleman and Christian soldier lay dead, and some time elapsed before they could realize the full extent of the calamity which had befallen them, and with moistened eyes they watched the pale still face, the fallen jaw, the shattered and blood-soaked form.
Just as Colonel Anderson knelt down to close the eyes of his dead friend and commander, Quentin Kennedy, with a heavy sigh in his throat, a sob in his breast, issued from the house, and grasping the sabre of Colbert, Moore's doubly-prized gift, he leaped on his horse, and, as if to relieve himself from thoughts of grief and sorrow, galloped towards the battle-field.
The night was now quite dark, and Sir John Hope had succeeded in following out Moore's dispositions so well, that he had driven the whole French line so far back that the British had now advanced far beyond their original position.
All Soult's ammunition was expended, though his troops were still the most numerous. He could not advance, and neither could he retreat, as the rain-swollen Mero was foaming along in full flood in his rear, and the rudely re-constructed bridge of El Burgo was his only avenue for escape.
It was now that Hope ordered a great line of watch-fires to be lighted by the picquets, and to have them kept burning to deceive the enemy, while the wounded, so far as possible, were carried off, and the whole army embarked, covered by Rowland Hill's brigade, which was posted in and near the ramparts of the citadel.
The field presented a scene of unexampled horror as Quentin rode back towards Corunna. Worn out by the long day passed under arms, the troops fell back, in somewhat shattered order, by companies and regiments towards the beach, the shadow of night concealing innumerable episodes of suffering, of solitary and unpitied dissolution.
The British loss was estimated at eight hundred, the French at three thousand men, so superior were our arms and firing.
In a place where the dead lay thick there sat a piper of the 92nd; he was wounded and bleeding to death, yet he played to his retreating comrades so long as strength remained, and then lay back dead, with the mouth-piece of the chanter between his relaxed jaws.