It will presently be seen why I took no notice of the share the eighth Portuguese are said to have had in this brilliant achievement. Meanwhile the reader will observe that Picton’s letter indicates the centre of his division as being forced by the French, and he affirms that he drove them down again with his left wing without aid from the fifth division. But my statement makes both the right and centre of his division to be forced, and gives the fifth division, and especially colonel Cameron and the ninth British regiment, a very large share in the glory, moreover I say that the eighth Portuguese was broken to pieces. Mr. Robinson argues that this must be wrong, for, says he, the eighth Portuguese were not broken, and if the right of the third division had been forced, the French would have encountered the fifth division. To this he adds, with a confidence singularly rash, his scanty knowledge of facts considered, that colonel Cameron and the ninth regiment would doubtless have made as good a charge as I have described, “only they were not there.”
In reply, it is now affirmed distinctly and positively, that the French did break the eighth Portuguese regiment, did gain the rocks on the summit of the position, and on the right of the third division; did ensconce themselves in those rocks, and were going to sweep the summit of the Sierra when the fifth division under general Leith attacked them; and the ninth regiment led by colonel Cameron did form under fire, as described, did charge, and did beat the enemy out of those rocks; and if they had not done so, the third division, then engaged with other troops, would have been in a very critical situation. Not only is all this re-affirmed, but it shall be proved by the most irrefragable testimony. It will then follow that the History is accurate, that general Picton’s letter is inaccurate, and the writer of his life incompetent to censure others.
Mr. Robinson may notwithstanding choose to abide by the authority of general Picton’s letter, which he “fortunately found amongst that general’s manuscripts,” but which others less fortunate had found in print many years before; and he is the more likely to do so, because he has asserted that if general Picton’s letters are false, they are wilfully so, an assertion which it is impossible to assent to. It would be hard indeed if a man’s veracity was to be called in question because his letters, written in the hurry of service gave inaccurate details of a battle. General Picton wrote what he believed to be the fact, but to give any historical weight to his letter on this occasion, in opposition to the testimony which shall now be adduced against its accuracy, would be weakness. And with the more reason it is rejected, because Mr. Robinson himself admits that another letter, written by general Picton on this occasion to the duke of Queensbury, was so inaccurate as to give general offence to the army; and because his letters on two other occasions are as incorrect as on this of Busaco.
Thus writing of the assault of Ciudad Rodrigo, Picton says, “about this time, namely, when the third division carried the main breach, the light division which was rather late in their attack, also succeeded in getting possession of the breach they were ordered to attack.” Now it has been proved to demonstration, that the light division carried the small breach, and were actually attacking the flank of the French troops defending the great breach, when the third division carried that point. This indeed is so certain, that Mr. Uniack of the ninety-fifth, and others of the light division, were destroyed on the ramparts close to the great breach by that very explosion which was said to have killed general M’Kinnon; and some have gone so far as to assert that it is doubtful if the great breach would have been carried at all but for the flank attack of the light division.
Again, general Picton writing of the battle of Fuentes Onoro, says “the light division under general Craufurd was rather roughly handled by the enemy’s cavalry, and had that arm of the French army been as daring and active upon this occasion, as they were when following us to the lines of Torres Vedras, they would doubtless have cut off the light division to a man.”
Nevertheless as an eye-witness, and, being then a field-officer on the staff, by Mr. Robinson’s rule entitled to see, I declare most solemnly that the French cavalry, though they often menaced to charge, never came within sure shot distance of the light division. The latter, with the exception of the ninety-fifth rifles, who were skirmishing in the wood of Pozo Velho, was formed by regiments in three squares, flanking and protecting each other, they retired over the plain leisurely without the loss of a man, without a sabre-wound being received, without giving or receiving fire; they moved in the most majestic manner secure in their discipline and strength, which was such as would have defied all the cavalry that ever charged under Tamerlane or Genghis.
But it is time to give the proofs relative to Busaco, the reader being requested to compare them with the description of that battle in my History.
Extracts from major-general sir John Cameron’s letters
to colonel Napier.
“Government House, Devonport, Aug. 9th, 1834.
“—I am sorry to perceive in the recent publication of lord Beresford, his ‘Refutation of your justification of your third volume,’ some remarks on the battle of Busaco which disfigure, not intentionally I should hope, the operations of the British brigade in major-general Leith’s corps on that occasion, of which I, as commanding officer of one of the regiments composing it, may perhaps be permitted to know something. I shall however content myself at present with giving you a detail of the operations of the British brigade in major-general Leith’s own words, extracted from a document in my possession, every syllable of which can be verified by many distinguished officers now living, some of them actors in, all of them eye-witnesses to the affair.