Such as got away from the sabres of the horsemen sought safety amongst the ranks of our infantry, and scrambling under the horses, ran to us for protection—like men who, having escaped the first shock of a wreck, will cling to any broken spar, no matter how little to be depended upon. Hundreds of beings, frightfully disfigured, in whom the human face and form were almost obliterated—black with dust, worn down with fatigue, and covered with sabre-cuts and blood—threw themselves amongst us for safety. Not a man was bayoneted—not one even molested or plundered; and the invincible old 3rd Division on this day surpassed themselves, for they not only defeated their terrible enemies in a fair stand-up fight, but actually covered their retreat, and protected them at a moment when, without such aid, their total annihilation was certain. Under similar circumstances would the French have acted so? I fear not. The men who murdered Ponsonby at Waterloo, when he was alone and unprotected, would have shown but little courtesy to the 3rd Division, placed in a similar way.
Nine pieces of artillery, two eagles, and five thousand prisoners were captured at this point; still the battle raged with unabated fury on our left, immediately in front of the 5th Division. Leith fell wounded as he led on his men, but his division carried the point in dispute, and drove the enemy before them up the hill.
While those events were taking place on the right, the 4th Division, which formed the centre of the army, met with a serious opposition. The more distant Arapilles, occupied by the French 122nd, whose numbers did not count more than four hundred,[[34]] supported by a few pieces of cannon, was left to the Portuguese brigade of General Pack, amounting to two thousand bayonets. With fatal, though well-founded reliance—their former, conduct taken into the scale—Cole’s division advanced into the plain, confident that all was right with Pack’s troops, and a terrible struggle between them and Bonnet’s corps took place. It was, however, but of short duration. Bonnet’s soldiers were driven back in confusion, and up to this moment all had gone on well. The three British divisions engaged overthrew every obstacle, and the battle might be said to be won, had Pack’s formidable brigade—formidable in numbers at least—fulfilled their part; but these men totally failed in their effort to take the height occupied only by a few hundred Frenchmen, and thus gave the park of artillery that was posted with them full liberty to turn its efforts against the rear and flank of Cole’s soldiers. Nothing could be worse than the state in which the 4th Division was now placed; and the battle, which ought to have been, and had been in a manner, won, was still in doubt.
[34]. This is unfair to the Portuguese; the 122nd had 1000 bayonets.
Bonnet, seeing the turn which Pack’s failure had wrought in his favour, re-formed his men, and advanced against Cole, while the fire from the battery and small arms on the Arapilles height completed the confusion. Cole fell wounded; half of his division were cut off, the remainder in full retreat; and Bonnet’s troops, pressing on in a compact body, made it manifest that a material change had taken place in the battle, and that ere it was gained some ugly uphill work was yet to be done.
Marshal Beresford, who arrived at the moment, galloped up at the head of a brigade of the 5th Division, which he took out of the second line, and for a moment covered the retreat of Cole’s troops; but this force—composed of Portuguese—was insufficient to arrest the progress of the enemy, who advanced in the full confidence of an assured victory; and at this critical moment Beresford was carried off the field wounded. Bonnet’s troops advanced, loudly cheering, while the entire of Cole’s division and Spry’s brigade of Portuguese were routed. Our centre was thus endangered. Boyer’s dragoons, after the overthrow of the French left, countermarched and moved rapidly to the support of Bonnet; they were close in the track of his infantry; and the fate of the battle was still uncertain. The fugitives of the 7th and 4th French Divisions ran to the succour of Bonnet, and by the time they had joined him his force had indeed assumed a formidable aspect; and thus reinforced, it stood in an attitude far different from what it would have done had Pack’s brigade succeeded in its attack.
Lord Wellington, who saw what had taken place by the failure of Pack’s troops, ordered up the 6th Division to the support of the 4th; and the battle, although it was half-past eight o’clock at night, recommenced with the same fury as at the onset.
Clinton’s division, consisting of six thousand bayonets, rapidly advanced to assert its place in the combat, and to relieve the 4th from the awkward predicament in which it was placed; they essayed to gain what was lost by the failure of Pack’s troops in their feeble effort to wrest the Arapilles height from a few brave Frenchmen; but they were received by Bonnet’s troops at the point of the bayonet, and the fire opened against them seemed to be threefold more heavy than that sustained by the 3rd and 5th Divisions. It was nearly dark; and the great glare of light caused by the thunder of the artillery, the continued blaze of the musketry, and the burning grass, gave to the face of the hill a novel and terrific appearance: it was one vast sheet of flame, and Clinton’s men looked as if they were attacking a burning mountain, the crater of which was defended by a barrier of shining steel. But nothing could stop the intrepid valour of the 6th Division, as they advanced with a desperate resolution to carry the hill. The troops posted on the face of it to arrest their advance were trampled down and destroyed at the first charge, and each reserve sent forward to extricate them met with the same fate. Still Bonnet’s reserves, having attained their place in the fight, and the fugitives from Thomières' division joining them at the moment, prolonged the battle until dark. Those men, besmeared with blood, dust, and clay, half naked, and some carrying only broken weapons, fought with a fury not to be surpassed; but their impetuosity was at length calmed by the bayonets of Clinton’s troops, and they no longer fought for victory but for safety. After a frightful struggle, they were driven from their last hold in confusion; and a general and overwhelming charge, which the nature of the ground enabled Clinton to make, carried this ill-formed mass of desperate soldiers before him, as a shattered wreck borne along by the force of some mighty current.