Disorders usually prevail in a retreating army, and many circumstances served to augment them on this occasion. Our soldiers were enraged by the apparent apathy or treachery of the Spanish officials, who withheld all supplies; these latter, at the same time did not conceal that they believed themselves to be abandoned by the British to the enemy, in whose overwhelming numbers, with true Spanish obstinacy, they refused to believe.
Perceiving, however, that unless by some vigorous resistance he crippled his pursuers, a flight by sea would be impossible, Sir John Moore recalled General Fraser's division from the Vigo road, and on the 6th of January, after a sharp cavalry encounter at Cacabelos, where Colbert, a distinguished French general, was killed, he took up a position near the city of Lugo, on the Minho, in Gallicia, a place situated on high ground.
So pressed were the cavalry, and so dreadfully had the horses suffered during the retreat, that on entering Lugo many fell dead beneath their riders, and others were mercifully shot. Four hundred of their carcasses, with bridles, saddles, and holsters on—the steeds that whilome had been in the ranks of our splendid 7th, 10th, 15th, and 18th Hussars—lay in the market-place and thoroughfares. There were none of our soldiers who had strength to dig trenches deep enough to bury them; the Spaniards were too lazy or apathetic for the work, or cared not to attempt it while the enemy's voltigeurs or sharpshooters were within sight of their old ruined walls. Swelling in the rain, bursting, and putrefying, the bodies lay there, a prey to herds of devouring dogs, and flocks of carrion birds.
At Lugo the army might have rested for some days, had the bridges of the now swollen rivers been blown up; but the mines had failed, and on the 5th of January the pursuing French came in sight in force, and at last a battle was looked for.
The evening of the 5th proved a very eventful one for the humble fortunes of our hero, and the last of his service in the ranks of the King's Own Borderers.
About four in the afternoon, during a partial cessation of the sleet and rain which had been incessant for so many days, melting the snow on the mountains and swelling the rivers, Quentin found himself posted as an advanced sentinel in front of the line of out-picquets, near the road leading from Lugo to Nogales. Dark clouds enveloped the mighty range of mountains in the distance, but from their summits it was known, by the intelligence of scouts, that the enemy was descending in force.
A blue patch was visible here and there overhead, through the flying vapour, and there, already bright and twinkling, a few "sentinel stars set their watch in the sky."
After the slaughter of the worn or half-dead cavalry horses, all was still, and now not a sound stirred the air save the tolling of the cathedral bell in Lugo, or the roar of the Minho, swollen by a hundred tributaries, and rushing in wild career through an uncultivated waste of stunted laurel bushes to mingle with the Atlantic.
That day Quentin had tasted no food save a handful of corn which he received from Major Middleton, whom he had found fraternally sharing a feed of it with his now lean and gaunt Rosinante-looking charger, which he had stabled under a cork-tree and covered with his blanket, complimenting himself by the old adage that "a merciful man is merciful to his beast."
Oppressed by the sombre scenery, the drenched and uncultivated waste, and the gloom of the December evening, Quentin leaned on his musket, a prey to a fit of intense despondency, and tears almost came to his eyes as he thought of all the horrors he had witnessed since the day on which he landed at the bay of Maciera, the campaign he had served so fruitlessly, and of what was before him on landing, friendlessly, in England.