Recollections of the eventful life of a soldier

by Joseph Donaldson

As yet, none of the troops had been brought into action, with the exception of the light companies, who had some slight skirmishing at the outposts. The French had attempted nothing of any consequence. They were very busy, however, prosecuting the siege—building batteries in every direction. There was one battery, called Fort M ——. It lay on the French side, at the extremity of a point of land, stretching down from Porto Real into the bay, opposite to Puntallis. From this, had they manned it, they might have annoyed our shipping very much; and it was resolved that we should take possession of it.

Accordingly, one evening the three first men from each company of the regiment to which I belonged were turned out, in marching order, for that purpose. At the quay, we were joined by a detachment of artillery, and were conveyed across the bay in man-of-war boats. On our passage we were joined by a party of seamen and marines; who, with a captain-commandant, surgeon, two subalterns, one of whom acted as adjutant, a lieutenant of artillery, and a midshipman, made in all about one hundred and fifty men.

When we reached the fort, we used every precaution to avoid alarming the French if there had been any there; but it was quite unnecessary, for their picquet had retired, without firing a shot. After placing a picquet in front, we set to work, and got up three guns, which we had brought with us. This kept us busy enough until morning; when we got a better view of the isolated place we had taken possession of. The fort itself was about a hundred yards square; but it had been completely demolished on its sea face, by the seamen of our fleet when the French advanced to the siege, and the others were all more or less in ruins. The bomb-proofs were nearly all destroyed. In what remained there was not shelter for the half of our men; and by a rule of division, often practised in the army, that little was made less by the officers appropriating the half of it to themselves.

Day had not long dawned when the French gave us a salute from a small battery, in the village at Fort Lewis; but when we got our guns mounted, it was soon silenced. From that time we commenced with redoubled exertion to work at the battery—building up the parapets, and laying platforms for more guns. We were supplied with materials, viz., fascions, gabions, and sand-bags, from Cadiz.

Here we were wrought like slaves, I may say, without intermission; for our worthy adjutant, who aimed at being a rigid disciplinarian, and was a great amateur in drill, was determined that no hard labour, or want of convenience for cleaning our things, should tempt him to deviate from a clean parade and formal guard-mounting every morning, even although we had been out all night under the rain on picquet, or carrying sand-bags and digging trenches up to the knees in mud. All the varied forms of duty known in a militia regiment, with which he was best acquainted, were by him indispensable; and in a place where we had no convenience for keeping our things in order, not even shelter for them, this exactness was certainly, to say the least of it, unnecessarily teasing. We were also obliged to stand sentry on different parts of the battery, full dressed, where there was no earthly use for us, unless for show; and I could perceive no reason the commandant and he had for their conduct, unless that, feeling the novelty of their situation—in command of a fort—they wished to ape, with their handful of men, all the importance of leaders of an army.

We were driven from guard to working—working to picquet—picquet to working again, in a gin-horse round of the most intolerable fatigue; which we never could have borne for any length of time, exposed as we often were to sun and rain, in a climate like that of Cadiz. But, even with all this we had the mortification to find our best endeavours repaid with the most supercilious haughtiness, and the worst of usage. We were allowed little time to sleep; and that little often interrupted.

But let it not be imagined that our officers participated in all this fatigue; they know how to take care of themselves; and they could sit and drink wine in their bomb-proof at night, as comfortably as in a mess room at home. And it was a common amusement of the commandant, when he got warmed with it, to order the drum to beat to arms in the middle of the night—when the poor wretches who had perhaps just lost sense of their fatigue in sweet oblivion, would be roused up, and obliged to go to their several posts on the ramparts; and when permitted to go below to our berths, we would scarcely be lain down, when we were again roused to commence working. This was the usual routine the most of the time we were here.

It may be well to remark, however, (for the benefit of those officers who may wish to follow the example,) that the commandant had a most ingenious method of assembling his men quickly; he used to stand with his fist clenched, at the top of the ladder leading from the bomb-proof, ready to knock down the last man that came up; and as some one must necessarily be last, he of course was sure of the blow; and as he was a strong muscular man, it used to tell (as we military men term it) on the poor fellow’s head.

One man, I remember, who had suffered in this way, remonstrated, and threatened to complain to his colonel; but the answer was a second ‘knock down,’ and an order to confine him between two guns in an angle of the battery, where he was exposed to the inclemency of the weather for many days and nights without covering; and when his health was impaired by this usage, he was still kept in the fort, although it was the usual practice to send the sick to the general hospital in Cadiz. He was not allowed to leave the place until we all left it; and then it is probable if he had ventured to complain, he might have been flogged in addition to all he had suffered, for presuming to say anything against the Hero of M——.

We had now got up six guns and two mortars on the fort, which was all we could mount to have any effect. We were supported by a Spanish man-of-war and six or eight gun-boats; and with them we used to bombard the small village at Fort Lewis, and annoy the working parties coming down from Porto Real to build batteries. We often made great havoc amongst them, with spherical case-shot. One day in particular, I remember, we brought down an officer who was riding on a white horse at the head of his party, and we saw them carry him off in a litter from the place where he fell.