On the following day the Duke of Dalmatia held the town hemmed in almost on every side; but, as there was not any firing, an officer and myself rode towards the road where the Spaniards had been repulsed. Its steep banks were at least twenty-five feet in depth, with two or three narrow pathways by which the Spaniards had descended in hopes of obtaining a little shelter. This spot was strewed with heaps of the slain, piled on the top of each other in strange confusion, many having tumbled over the precipitous banks, and remaining stuck on the twisted bayonets on whose points they had fallen. Death here appeared in every possible shape; some were jammed in the crowd, and propped up in an erect posture against the bank; others were standing on their heads, or sprawling with legs and arms spread out to their fullest extent. Almost the whole of the cadaverous dead were without caps, which in the mêlée had been knocked off, and were intermixed with knapsacks, breast-plates, broken arms, bayonets, and swords. A mournful silence reigned around. No voice broke on the stillness that reigned over the lacerated remains of the swarthy Spaniards!
While looking down on these inanimate objects swept off by the scythe of war, I noticed a naked man lying on his back at my feet: as there was no appearance of any wound about his person, we were lost in conjectures as to the probable cause of his death. A Spaniard who stood by was so overcome with curiosity, that he laid hold of the dead man's hair; but, to his inexpressible wonder the head was as light as a feather, for it now appeared, that a cannon ball had struck him sideways, leaving nothing of the head remaining but the scalp and face. The sight was too horrible to look upon, and we hastily remounted our horses, and returned from this melancholy spectacle. While riding over the field of battle, the motion of a horse is the most gentle and easy to be fancied: the animals cock their ears, snort, look down, and plant their feet with a light and springing motion, as if fearful of trampling on the dead soldiers.
The heights of the Terre Cabade and Calvanet are free from trees or hedges, and have two hollow roads cutting through the middle of them, which protected the French from our cavalry. The banks of these roads are so steep, and at the same time so imperceptible, that a whole brigade of dragoons at a canter might be swallowed up without any previous warning. Many dead horses lay in this hollow way, with their lifeless riders thrown to a distance, maimed, bruised, or with broken limbs.
The ascent in front of this position is very steep, but southerly; where the fourth division attacked, it is of a gentle acclivity.
The bodies of the soldiers of the sixth division lay very thick, in front of the heights of Calvanet, and also round a fort of the maison des Augustins. Here the Highlanders and English soldiers were intermixed with the French. The town of Toulouse lay nearly within point blank range on the west of these heights, from whence we could see the enemy's columns under arms at the têtes-du-pont which protected the various bridges across the canal. They were in a manner besieged in the town, as the only road left open to them was by a narrow strip of land south of Toulouse, between the canal and the river Garonne.
On the night of the 11th the enemy retreated towards Carcassone, taking the road by St. Aigne, Montgiscard, Baziege, and Ville-franche, to Castelnaudary.
[24] It will always be a matter of surprise to me, how the sixth division managed to carry the front of so formidable a position almost single-handed. The following day, while passing over the range of heights, the firelocks of one of its brigades were piled, and I counted only five hundred, out of eighteen hundred stand effective on the morning of the battle. Both brigades suffered enormously in killed and wounded.
END OF THE
MEMOIRS OF CAPTAIN COOKE.