The inhabitants of Salamanca, who had a clear view of what was passing, hastened to the spot, to afford all the relief in their power. Several cars, most of them loaded with provisions, reached the field of battle before morning; and it is but due to those people to state, that their attentions were unremitting, and of the most disinterested kind, for they sought no emolument.
They brought fruit, and even quantities of water, well knowing how distant the river was from us, and how scantily the countryside around was provided with so necessary a relief to men who had not tasted a drop for so many hours, under a burning sun, and oppressed with the fatigue they had endured during the fight.
During the battle there were many circumstances which, if related in their places, at the period they occurred, would have broken in upon the narrative, but may be told with more propriety now.
When the 3rd Division under Pakenham had crossed the flat, and were moving against the crest of the hill occupied by Thomières' tirailleurs, a number of Caçadores commanded by Major Haddock were in advance of us. The moment the French fire opened, these troops, which had been placed to cover our advance, lay down on their faces, not for the purpose of taking aim with more accuracy, but in order to save their own sconces from the French fire. Haddock dismounted from his horse and began belabouring with the flat side of his sabre the dastardly troops he had the misfortune to command, but in vain; all sense of shame had fled after the first discharge of grape and musketry, and poor Haddock might as well have attempted to move the great cathedral of Salamanca as the soldiers of his Majesty the King of Portugal.
At the time the Colonel of the 22nd French Regiment stepped out of the ranks and shot Major Murphy dead at the head of his regiment, the 88th, a number of officers were beside Murphy. It is not easy at such a moment to be certain who is the person singled out. The two officers who carried the colours of the regiment, and who were immediately in the rear of the mounted officers, thought that the shot was intended for either of them. Lieutenant Moriarty, carrying the regimental flag, called out, “That fellow is aiming at me!”—“I hope so,” replied Lieutenant D‘Arcy, who carried the other colour, with great coolness—“I hope so, for I thought he had me covered.” He was not much mistaken: the ball that killed Murphy, after passing through him, struck the staff of the flag carried by D‘Arcy, and also carried away the button and part of the strap of his epaulette! This fact is not told as an extraordinary occurrence, that the ball which killed one man should strike the coat of him who happened to stand in his rear, for such casualties were by no means uncommon with us; but I mention it as a strong proof of the great coolness of the British line in their advance against the enemy’s column.
When the cavalry of Le Marchant passed through Wallace’s brigade, in their advance against Thomières' column, Captain William Mackie of the 88th, the discountenanced leader of the forlorn hope at Rodrigo, who acted as aide-de-camp to Colonel Alexander Wallace, was missing. In the confusion that prevailed it was thought he had fallen. No one could give any account of him; but in a short lapse of time, after the cavalry had charged, he returned covered with dust and blood, his horse tottering from fatigue, and nothing left of his sabre—but the hilt! He joined the cavalry so soon as the fighting amongst the infantry had ceased, and those who knew the temperament of the man were not surprised at it: wherever glory and danger were to be met, there was Mackie to be found, and nothing—not even the chilling slights he had experienced—could damp his daring spirit.
At the first dawn of the morning of the 23rd of July Lord Wellington continued the pursuit of the defeated army of Marmont. He placed himself at the head of the Light Division, which opened the march, followed by the heavy German cavalry under General Bock, and Anson’s brigade of light horse. Those two superb brigades of dragoons had only joined the army the night before. The 1st Division of infantry, composed of the Guards and German Legion, followed the cavalry, and Lord Wellington, at the head of thirteen thousand men that had not pulled a trigger, or unsheathed a sabre in the battle, followed the enemy’s track; but the retreat was so quick that Marmont’s headquarters were thirty miles from Salamanca the day after the battle. Nevertheless, the corps that covered the retreat, consisting of three battalions of infantry and five regiments of cavalry, were overtaken near the village of La Serna. The infantry formed themselves into three squares, the cavalry were posted on the flanks for its support, but the panic with which all were infected by the defeat of the preceding day had taken such a fast hold of them, that the French horse in advance could not be prevailed upon to show a front. This threw those that were at hand to support them into disorder; confusion was communicated to the remainder, and the field of battle was precipitately abandoned by the cavalry, who, in the most unaccountable manner, left their companions, the infantry, to their fate.
The cavalry having thus fled, Bock, with his German horse, galloped at the squares, and breaking through, slew or took prisoners the entire; and the contest ended in one dreadful massacre of the French infantry. Nevertheless, many of the troopers fell; for one regiment in particular, the 105th French, bravely stood their ground, but the ponderous weight of the heavy cavalry broke down all resistance; and arms lopped off, heads cloven to the spine, or gashes across the breast and shoulders, showed to those who afterwards passed the spot the fearful encounter that had taken place; and from this moment nothing more of the army of Portugal was to be seen.
The overthrow of the rear-guard which covered the flight of the army of the Duke of Ragusa, and the rapid manner in which Clausel made good his retreat from the heights of La Serna, where that army for the last time made any show of a stand against the British troops that had defeated it on the plains of Salamanca, finished the campaign, so far, at least, as regarded the army of Portugal.
The leading regiments followed the enemy’s track as far as Flores de Avila, which town, distant ten leagues from Salamanca, had been evacuated by them two days after the battle. The cavalry and artillery of the northern army met them on their retreat near Arevalo; but nothing—not even this reinforcement—could inspire them with confidence; and the mass of fugitives hastily followed the road leading to Valladolid. The good generalship displayed by Clausel, and the steady front he showed when in the presence of a victorious army, raised him considerably, and justly so, in the estimation of his own troops; but all his skill would have been of no avail had the battle not been unavoidably prolonged until dark.