Now Scindhia, had the Frenchmen been loyal, could have checked the Mahratta princes, but these got out of hand, and one of them, Holkar, drove the Mahratta emperor, the peshwa of Poona, from his throne. The peshwa fled to Bombay, and returned with a British army under Sir Arthur Wellesley. So came the battle of Assaye, wherein the British force of four thousand five hundred men overthrew the Mahratta army of fifty thousand men, captured a hundred guns, and won Poona, the capital of the South. Meanwhile for fear of Napoleon’s coming, Perron, his servant, had to be overthrown. A British army under General Lake swept Perron’s army out of existence and captured Delhi, the capital of the North. Both the capital cities of India fell to English arms, both emperors came under British protection, and that vast empire was founded wherein King George now reigns. As to Perron, his fall was pitiful, a freak of cowardice. He betrayed everybody, and sneaked away to France with a large fortune.
And Arthur Wellesley, victor in that stupendous triumph of Assaye, became the Iron Duke of Wellington, destined to liberate Europe at Waterloo.
L
A. D. 1805 THE MAN WHO SHOT LORD NELSON
This story is from the memoirs of Robert Guillemard, a conscript in the Grand Army of France, and to his horror drafted for a marine on board the battle-ship Redoubtable. The Franco-Spanish fleet of thirty-three battle-ships lay in Cadiz, and Villeneuve, the nice old gentleman in command, was still breathless after being chased by Lord Nelson across the Atlantic and back again. Now, having given Nelson the slip, he had fierce orders from the Emperor Napoleon to join the French channel fleet, for the invasion of England. The nice old gentleman knew that his fleet was manned largely with helpless recruits, ill-paid, ill-found, most scandalously fed, sick with a righteous terror lest Nelson come and burn them in their harbor.
Then Nelson came, with twenty-seven battle-ships, raging for a fight, and Villeneuve had to oblige for fear of Napoleon’s anger.
The fleets met off the sand-dunes of Cape Trafalgar, drawn up in opposing lines for battle, and when they closed, young Guillemard’s ship, the Redoubtable, engaged Lord Nelson’s Victory, losing thirty men to her first discharge.
Guillemard had never been in action, and as the thunders broke from the gun tiers below, he watched with mingled fear and rage the rush of seamen at their work on deck, and his brothers of the marines at their musketry, until everything was hidden in trailing wreaths of smoke, from which came the screams of the wounded, the groans of the dying.
Some seventy feet overhead, at the caps of the lower masts, were widespread platforms, the fighting tops on which the best marksmen were always posted. “All our topmen,” says Guillemard, “had been killed, when two sailors and four soldiers, of whom I was one, were ordered to occupy their post in the tops. While we were going aloft, the balls and grapeshot showered around us, struck the masts and yards, knocked large splinters from them, and cut the rigging to pieces. One of my companions was wounded beside me, and fell from a height of thirty feet to the deck, where he broke his neck. When I reached the top my first movement was to take a view of the prospect presented by the hostile fleets. For more than a league extended a thick cloud of smoke, above which were discernible a forest of masts and rigging, and the flags, the pendants and the fire of the three nations. Thousands of flashes, more or less near, continually penetrated this cloud, and a rolling noise pretty similar to the sound of thunder, but much stronger, arose from its bosom.”
Guillemard goes on to describe a duel between the topmen of the Redoubtable and those of the Victory only a few yards distant, and when it was finished he lay alone among the dead who crowded the swaying platform.
“On the poop of the English vessel was an officer covered with orders and with only one arm. From what I had heard of Nelson I had no doubt that it was he. He was surrounded by several officers, to whom he seemed to be giving orders. At the moment I first perceived him several of his sailors were wounded beside him by the fire of the Redoubtable. As I had received no orders to go down, and saw myself forgotten in the tops, I thought it my duty to fire on the poop of the English vessel, which I saw quite clearly exposed, and close to me. I could even have taken aim at the men I saw, but I fired at hazard among the groups of sailors and officers. All at once I saw great confusion on board the Victory; the men crowded round the officer whom I had taken for Nelson. He had just fallen, and was taken below covered with a cloak. The agitation shown at this moment left me no doubt that I had judged rightly, and that it really was the English admiral. An instant afterward the Victory ceased from firing, the deck was abandoned.... I hurried below to inform the captain.... He believed me the more readily as the slackening of the fire indicated that an event of the highest importance occupied the attention of the English ship’s crew.... He gave immediate orders for boarding, and everything was prepared for it in a moment. It is even said that young Fontaine, a midshipman ... passed by the ports into the lower deck of the English vessel, found it abandoned, and returned to notify that the ship had surrendered.... However, as a part of our crew, commanded by two officers, were ready to spring upon the enemy’s deck, the fire recommenced with a fury it had never had from the beginning of the action.... In less than half an hour our vessel, without having hauled down her colors, had in fact, surrendered. Her fire had gradually slackened and then had ceased altogether.... Not more than one hundred fifty men survived out of a crew of about eight hundred, and almost all those were more or less severely wounded.”