Twenty-Five Years in the Rifle Brigade

by William Surtees

From Canterbury we marched to Brabourn Lees Barracks, in the same county, where we remained till some time in October, when we were called upon to embark for Lower Germany. During our stay at Brabourn Lees, a circumstance occurred which called forth an exhibition of as great magnanimity, on the part of Colonel Beckwith, as I almost ever remember to have witnessed: We had received about 200 Irish volunteers, who were wild and ungovernable in the extreme; a party of these, in strolling about one day, had fallen in with Mrs Beckwith, with her maid and child, taking a walk along the Ashford road. Not knowing, I imagine, who the lady and her maid were, they set on and assaulted them in the most violent and outrageous manner, proceeding to such lengths as perhaps delicacy forbids to mention. It was, I believe, discovered who they were. Accordingly, the next day, the Colonel formed the battalion into a square, and proceeded to relate the circumstance to the regiment; "But," says he, "although I know who the ruffians are, I will not proceed any farther in the business, because it was my own wife that they attacked; but, had it been the wife of the meanest soldier in the regiment, I solemnly declare I would have given you every lash which a court-martial might have sentenced you." Such a trait of generous forbearance is not often met with; but by this, and similar instances of liberal feeling, he completely gained the heart of every soldier in the battalion, a thing not always attainable by very excellent commanding-officers.

About the latter end of October, 1805, we marched to Ramsgate, and there embarked, as before noticed, for Germany. It was my lot, on this occasion, to be put on board a small and ill-shaped collier brig, called the Jane of Shields, but the master I have forgot. She was a most miserable sailer, making on a wind almost as much lee as head-way, and in every respect ill adapted for the transport service. We had not been many days at sea before we lost the fleet, and in our endeavours to find it again were at one time on the coast of Jutland. All this time we had been beating against a contrary wind; but while here, the wind became favourable, and we appeared to have nothing to do but to bear away for the mouth of the Elbe, which river it was our destination to enter; but unfortunately, by some mismanagement, we fell quite away to leeward of it, and got entangled between the mainland and the Island of Wangeroog, not far from the mouth of Jade River, instead of the Elbe.

While in this uncomfortable situation, it came on to blow a tremendous gale, which rendered our position not only most unpleasant, but extremely perilous, for we were embayed, and the wind blowing on a lee shore, and the vessel became almost unmanageable, her bad sailing becoming distressingly more apparent the more she was put on her mettle. In the midst of the confusion attendant on such circumstances, the master (with what intention I know not, whether to drown dull care, or to fortify him against his exposure to the watery element) went down below, and swallowed the best part of a bottle of brandy. In doing which, his corner cupboard, with all its contents, came rattling down about his ears. He would fain have had me to pledge him, but I begged to be excused. The consequence was, he became quite drunk at the time when all his abilities as a seaman were likely to be called into operation; but he probably saw things clearest after having his eye wet.

My commanding-officer now became quite alarmed for the safety of the troops, seeing the master had incapacitated himself, as he conceived, for the management of the vessel; and, after a consultation among our officers, an attempt was made to deprive him of the command, and intrust it to the mate, who had in this case, in order to save as many of the troops as possible, determined on running the vessel high and dry, as he termed it, on the sandy beach, near the Jade River.

At this proposal, however, the master stormed and blasphemed like a madman, swearing there was neither soldier nor sailor on board the ship but himself. He went so far, and became so outrageous, that our commanding-officer talked of hanging him up at the yard-arm; but it being a ticklish thing to take the command of a ship from the person legally authorized to exercise it, the major did not enforce the wishes of the officers. The poor mate sat down on the companion and cried like a child, partly owing to the abuse the captain gave him, and partly, I imagine, from the hopelessness of our situation. The captain, in his refusal to yield up the command, told the major he had been several times wrecked, and had been, I know not how many times, exposed for a considerable length of time in the water; and that he was not afraid to encounter it again. This, however, was but poor consolation to landsmen, who had not been accustomed to such duckings.

A desperate case requires a desperate remedy—so our captain thought—for he instantly clapped on the vessel the square mainsail, which every moment threatened to carry away the mast, and in which case, nothing could have prevented our destruction; however, Providence so ordered it, that she bore it through the gale, and he, after putting her on the outward tack, continued to stand from the land till he imagined he had completely weathered Wangeroog; but at midnight, when he ordered to put about the ship, had it not been for the cabin-boy providentially seeing close to leeward of us the light of Wangeroog, we should instantly have been upon the rocks. This will show either what a bad sailer the vessel was, or how far the master had miscalculated the distance; for he imagined himself by this time to be quite clear of all the land, and considerably out to sea. He continued, after this providential escape, to stand on the same tack, and just cleared the island; and in the morning, the wind having somewhat abated, and shifted a little in our favour, we were enabled, soon after, to lay our course.

We arrived in the Elbe, and landed at Cuxhaven on the 18th of November, 1805, the day on which our fleet there was celebrating the victory of Trafalgar—clouded indeed it was by the death of the hero who fell while achieving it—yet glorious to the nation to which that fleet belonged. We, immediately after landing, marched for Dorum, a village twelve or fourteen miles distant, and from thence by Osterholtz and Bremer Lehe to the city of Bremen. On our arrival there, (my battalion forming the advanced guard,) we found the gates were shut against us; a Prussian garrison was in the town, the commandant of which seemingly did not know how to act, whether to admit us as allies, or not, the policy of his government at that time being so extremely ambiguous. Colonel Beckwith, who commanded the advance, was not however easily to be deterred from executing his orders, and he hesitated not to tell them, that if they did not choose to admit us peaceably, force should be resorted to to gain an entrance. This had the desired effect, for the gate was soon after thrown open, and we were received by the authorities of the town, and by the inhabitants in general, with the warmest expressions of friendship and cordial attachment; the Prussian officers, all the while looking on, apparently not over-well pleased with the conduct of their hosts; they were soon afterwards, however, withdrawn from the territory, and we then remained sole occupiers of this part of the country.

Our army assembled in this city in considerable force, when it becoming necessary to establish outposts in advance, my battalion was sent out first to the town of Delmenhorst, and subsequently a part of it to the city of Oldenburg, and the remainder to the town of Wildishausen; to this latter place two companies were detached, under the command of Major Travers, and to which he appointed me to act as sergeant-major. We did not remain long in this situation, but were again recalled from Wildishausen to Delmenhorst, and afterwards sent to join the other companies at Oldenburg.

Here we staid some time, during which we experienced the most unbounded hospitality and kindness from the whole of the inhabitants, but more particularly from the Duke. He actually did not know how sufficiently to express his friendly disposition towards our officers in general,—his kindness also extended to the soldiers,—for when we afterwards received an order to retrograde again to Delmenhorst, he sent forward to the half-way house refreshments of every description, for both officers and men; and the night before we left this hospitable city, he gave a splendid ball in honour of the officers of our corps, to which, of course, every inhabitant of a suitable rank was invited. Nay, I heard, and have no reason to doubt the correctness of the report, that he wrote to the burgomaster of Bremen, to which city we again retired, to endeavour, if possible, to have us quartered in his immediate neighbourhood, in the best part of the town, for that not only the officers, but the soldiers of the corps, were perfect gentlemen; indeed, the conduct of the battalion at this time, under its kind and excellent commanding-officer, was such as to entitle it to the highest praise. Our retreat on this occasion, I understood, was rendered necessary, in consequence of the defeat of the allied forces at Austerlitz, and of the fatal termination by that sanguinary action of the campaign in that part of Germany.

Although I am no prophet, I predicted at this period what the result would be to the King of Prussia, whose hesitating and equivocal conduct kept him aloof from taking an active part, when his co-operation might have been of the utmost advantage to the general cause. It required no second sight to perceive, that when Bonaparte could clear his hands of his present antagonists, he would not hesitate for a moment to turn his arms against a monarch on whom he could not cordially rely, and whose dominions offered such a strong temptation to an ambitious and aspiring mind like his.