“In quitting the marshal on the field, under the circumstances, and with impressions I have just described, I followed the course most consonant to my feelings, my sense of duty, and even my views of my own interest at the time. Whether I judged rightly upon the latter point or not, certain it is, that when I appeared in the next great battle-scene at Vittoria, the following year, I had already, for some months, filled the station of staff-surgeon in the Portuguese army.”
CHAPTER XXIV.
Sailors must strike their colours, and soldiers surrender when they have death for an enemy.—A court-martial.—Shooting a soldier.—Naval execution.—Soldier’s burial.—Funeral at sea.—Battle of Waterloo.—First attack.—Second attack.—Third attack.—Defeat of Buonaparte.—Consequences of the battle of Waterloo.—Chelsea College.—Greenwich Hospital.—Old England for ever!—Conclusion.
“A word or two now, boys, on the battle of Waterloo, for that must not be forgotten. Many a comrade who fought with me in that battle, without a wound, has since been brought down by sickness to the grave.”
“Neither soldiers nor sailors can hold out long when death attacks them.”
“When it comes to that the boldest tar must strike his colours, and the bravest soldier that ever mounted a breach surrender at discretion. Lancers themselves are not sharp enough to resist their last enemy, nor can life-guardsmen parry the stroke of death.”
“Sometimes soldiers are shot. Please to tell us how they shoot them; it must be a sad sight!”
“Sad indeed! so sad, that I hope and trust you will never witness it. In a soldier, whose eye should be bright with honour, and whose heart should despise a deed of meanness, for him to be paraded before his companions as an object of disgrace, and then, perhaps, shot by those who have fought and bled with him, and messed at the same table! It will hardly bear to be thought of; and the faster I hurry over the account of it the better. The culprit is tried, and fairly tried too, by a general court-martial, sworn to ‘do justice.’ No sentence of death can be given against him unless nine officers present agree therein. If condemned to die, he is taken to the ground, where the men are drawn up in a square, and marched round it. He then kneels on his coffin—his eyes are bandaged, and the few men whose melancholy duty it is to fire at him, aim at his heart. Every thought of a soldier should be, honour bright by day and night. How sad to become a spectacle of shame and disgrace among his old companions.”
“Are sailors ever sentenced to be shot?”