One day, when it came to my tour of duty, General Sontag was the senior officer on the parade. Mounted on a spirited horse, he took his station in front to receive the “salute,” when the band of my regiment, much more celebrated for its harshness and noise than its sweetness, struck up as discordant a jumble of sounds as ever proceeded from the same number of wind instruments. The animal, a German horse, and no doubt with a good ear for music, took fright, and standing upright on his hinder legs, commenced pawing and snorting in a manner that astounded every one present, the old General alone excepted; he continued immovably steady in his saddle, from which a less skilful or an inexperienced rider must inevitably have been flung, and sawed his horse’s mouth with such effect as to compel him to resume his former and more natural position. But, unfortunately, at this moment the drum-major, who justly estimated the cause of the refractory movements of the brute, made a flourish with his mace as a token for the band—music I can’t call it—to desist, and so terrified the animal that he made a sudden plunge to get away, but was so firmly held by the grip of his rider, that his feet came from under him, and both the General and his charger were prostrate on the ground in a second.
It was an alarming, as well as a ludicrous exhibition. For a moment the General was unable to disentangle his foot from one of the stirrups, and when he got rid, after much exertion, of this encumbrance, he lost not only his hat but his wig also; providentially he sustained no injury, and every one was glad of it. He was a man much esteemed in his brigade, and had, perhaps, the largest nose in the world! He was humorously styled by some Marshal (Nez) Ney! His nose hung in two huge flaps under his cheek-bone, and their colour and size were like two red mogul plums. Joe Kelly said that he would be a capital gardener, “because he always had his fruit under his eye”!
A few weeks terminated our sojourn here, and the day of our leaving it was a delightful one to us all. We marched to the northern frontier, which we considered as our own natural element; for in Estremadura we witnessed nothing but reverses, and our division had no opportunity of keeping up its established name. The country between the river Coa and the Agueda was filled with troops. The 3rd Division occupied Aldea de Ponte, Albergaria, and the neighbouring villages. Gallegos, Espeja, Carpio, El Bodon, and Pastores, were likewise occupied; and Ciudad Rodrigo might be said to be invested; the garrison were, at all events, much circumscribed in the extent of country for their foragers, but, nevertheless, they made some successful excursions to the nearest villages, such as Pastores and El Bodon. The 11th Light Dragoons, stationed at the latter, were considerably annoyed by the nocturnal visits of the garrison. A regiment of infantry was, therefore, thought necessary to co-operate with the cavalry, and mine (the 88th) was the one selected. General Picton, no matter what his other faults might be (and who is there amongst us without one?), knew well what he was about when he sent “the Rangers of Connaught” to support the 11th; he was aware that before many hours after their arrival in their quarters they would be tolerably well acquainted with the resources of the country about them; and that though now and then, perhaps, in a case of emergency, they might enlist an odd sheep or goat into their own corps, they would not allow the French to do it. The General was right, and thought it better that a few sheep should be lost than an entire pen of them carried off in triumph, and our dragoons (the worst of it!) bearded to the edge (almost) of their sabres.
We were not long unemployed. On the tenth night after our arrival the enemy made a formidable attack on our outposts at the village of Pastores. The advanced sentry, Jack Walsh, passed the word to the next, who communicated with the picket, and in an instant every man was on his legs. Walsh waited quietly until the French officer who headed the advance approached to within a few paces of where he was standing, when he deliberately took aim at him, and shot him dead. The remainder retired for a moment, panic-struck, no doubt, at the fate of their leader; they, however, rallied—for they were not only brave, but, what is almost as great a stimulus, hungry—and they forced our advance to give way; but Colonel Alexander Wallace, placing himself at the head of his men, drove back this band of cormorants, and they never molested us afterwards.
Notwithstanding that we were thus placed with respect to Rodrigo, the army of Portugal maintained its position; the army of the North, commanded by Count Dorsenne, remained in its cantonments on the Douro, and Rodrigo was thus abandoned to its own resources.
Lord Wellington was not an idle spectator of this supineness on the part of the two French generals. As early as the month of August he directed that a large number of the tradesmen[[18]] of our army, with a proportion of officers, should be attached to the Engineers, in which branch we were deficient in point of numbers; and these men in less than six weeks gained much useful information, and besides, made a quantity of fascines and gabions sufficient for the intended operations. By the 5th of September the town of Ciudad Rodrigo was completely blockaded, and we were employed in making arrangements for its siege when the two generals, Dorsenne and Marmont, made theirs to drive us back on Portugal.
[18]. I.e. the men who in civil life had been smiths, carpenters, joiners, etc.
On the 22nd of September they formed their junction at Tamames, which is about three leagues distant from Rodrigo. Their united force amounted to sixty thousand men, including six thousand horse; ours to not quite fifty thousand, including the force necessary to observe the garrison. We could not, therefore—taking it for granted, as a matter of course, that we wished to maintain the blockade—have brought forty thousand bayonets and sabres into the field, with an inferiority, too, in cavalry of two thousand! This, in a country so well calculated for the operations of that arm, at once decided Lord Wellington, and he raised the blockade on the 24th.