But this ruse was not always successful; more than once they found that instead of making Riflemen prisoners, they had themselves ‘caught a Tartar.’ On one such occasion an officer and some men of the Battalion made a body of the Yankees prisoners, and when they were desired to lay down their arms, the cowardly officer who commanded them made a stab at the 95th officer with a knife. He was summarily disposed of; for a Rifleman instantly shot him through the body.
Meanwhile the fight continued at Hallen’s post. Two battalions came up and fired volleys by word of command as at a drill. Not much to their advantage, for the Riflemen, warned by the words, ‘Ready! Present!’ took care to lie pretty close before the word ‘Fire!’ which, having been pronounced and obeyed, they sprang up, and gave them a severe return before they could reload. This continued for some time; but at last, the picquet was obliged to give way before superior numbers. Yet they only retired a little way to get under cover and re-form. Eventually the Riflemen advanced again, attacked their assailants, repulsed them, and regained the post. Hallen, as I have said, was wounded, so was Lieutenant Forbes, who held a separate post, and about forty men were killed or wounded. This defence by Hallen has truly been characterised as ‘an affair of posts but rarely equalled, and never surpassed in devoted bravery.’[148]
‘Had the expedition terminated more favourably,’ he who makes the foregoing remark goes on to observe, ‘it is to be presumed that the brave commander of the company would not have gone unrewarded.’ It may be so: this is the presumption; the fact is, that Hallen retired from the Service in 1824 with the rank of Captain, which he had obtained fifteen years before. Thus England rewarded acts of valour performed by all but her superior officers.
When the fire was first heard at Hallen’s picquet, Major Mitchell, taking with him twenty or thirty Riflemen, had hurried to the front to reinforce it. On the way, however, he fell in with a body of the enemy, whom, in consequence of the darkness of the night, he could not distinguish, and he and the men with him were made prisoners. Altogether the loss of the Battalion on that night was 6 Sergeants and 17 Riflemen killed; Captain Hallen, Lieutenants Daniel Forbes, (severely), and W. S. C. Farmer (slightly), 5 Sergeants and 54 Riflemen wounded; and Major Samuel Mitchell, 2 Sergeants, and 39 Riflemen missing. A total (exclusive of officers) of 123, or one-fifth of their whole number.
The loss of the Americans, who were finally driven off about midnight, must have been very great, for the field was strewn with their dead.
Yet still the schooner, and a ship which had joined her, inflicted amazing annoyance on our people. With a brutality happily unknown among European nations, they fired into the houses to which the wounded had been carried. One shot struck a house in which a wounded Rifleman was lying, and knocked away his knapsack, which he was using as a pillow, without doing him any actual injury.
However, this savage warfare was to end. On the night of the 25th a battery was constructed close to the river’s edge, and furnaces erected for heating red-hot shot. At daybreak on the 26th the battery commenced its fire on the schooner. Its crew, whose courage did not equal their cruelty, at once took to their boats and fled; the fourth shot set her on fire, and she soon afterwards blew up. While the ship, warned by her fate, and esteeming discretion as the better part of valour, had herself towed, as rapidly as possible, out of the range of the little English battery.
In this bivouack the Riflemen continued till the 28th. But it was toilsome work. The picquets were continually fired at; the reliefs waylaid; the officers going round their sentries exposed to chance shots from a concealed marksman. How different this from the courtesies and chivalry of their European enemies, which I have so often had occasion to narrate!
