Twenty-Five Years in the Rifle Brigade

by William Surtees

The loss of our five companies in this attack amounted to seven officers and about —— men killed and wounded. Some of the other regiments, the 93d in particular, had suffered dreadfully, having lost more than half their numbers. The sad ceremony of burying such of the officers whose bodies had been recovered, together with attention to the wounded, occupied several days from this period, and sending the wounded, who were able to bear removal, to the shipping, kept great numbers of the remaining men continually employed; and the attention of all was now turned towards drawing off from this scene of our late disastrous attempt.

The General entered into a negotiation with Jackson about being permitted to send a portion of our wounded down the river in boats; for which permission some equivalent, which I forget, was to be granted on our part, and which, after considerable discussion, was eventually agreed to. The sick, the wounded, the stores of every description, were now despatched as fast as circumstances would allow; but the effecting of this occupied not less than nine days, during the whole of which time the enemy was incessant in his attempts to harass and annoy us. All their heavy ordnance was brought to bear on our bivouack; the sugar-house our people occupied, and even the head-quarters, did not escape; night and day they kept up a fire of shot and shells upon these points; but the distance being considerable, no very great mischief resulted from it, further than the continual state of uneasiness and alarm in which it kept the troops. On one occasion, however, a shell was thrown into the lines of the 43d, who had since the attack occupied a part of the general bivouack, and which, falling into a hut occupied by Lieutenant Darcy of that regiment, while he lay asleep, carried off both his legs as it fell. Poor fellow! he would thus be awakened in a rough manner indeed. I have since seen him in Dublin, the government having kindly compensated him by giving him a company, and I believe two pensions.

Several shells were thrown into the head-quarters premises, but providentially without injuring any one. One fell in the yard while a party of troops was halted there for a short while, and which falling on one of the men's knapsacks, which he had put off, it carried it, with itself, not less than six feet deep into the earth. It did not explode. Some fell on the roof, which penetrated through all the stories to the very ground. Every night also the picquets were kept in a state of agitation and alarm by the continual attacks of small parties of our skulking enemy, and my battalion, as did the others also, lost considerable numbers by this petty warfare. In short, the men's lives began almost to be a burden to them.

There was another source of annoyance adopted on the part of the Americans on this occasion, but which, affecting only the mental, and not the bodily powers of our soldiers, was not so much heeded. Every day almost they assembled in large bodies on the parapet of their line, with flags of various descriptions, some with "sailors' rights" and numerous other devices, &c. painted on them, using the most insulting gesticulations towards those who were near enough to see them, a band playing Yankee Doodle, and other national airs, all the while, and sometimes ironically favouring us with Rule Britannia. Considerable numbers of our men deserted about this time. Every encumbrance being removed, however, by the 17th, orders were issued for the march of the army on the following evening soon after dark, leaving the picquets as a rearguard, which were not to march till a short while before daylight. In retiring, some of the wounded, who were unable to bear removal, were necessarily left in the houses where they had been collected; but there were not many so left, and no doubt the enemy acted humanely by them. There were seven men of my battalion left, out of which three rejoined us after the conclusion of peace; the other four, I believe, were very badly wounded, and died in consequence. It was also necessary to abandon such of the guns as remained in the advanced batteries, because, both from their weight and their being so near the enemy, they could not be brought off without exposing our intentions of retreating. Neither were these numerous, and most of them only iron ship-guns, which are of no great value.

The movement commenced according to the preconcerted plan, and being conducted with secrecy and regularity, every soldier was brought off, over a country almost impassable, and where, if followed and harassed by an enterprising enemy, great numbers must have either fallen into their hands or perished in the swamp. But I believe, had the Americans even been aware of our intention, they would have hesitated before they came into collision with our highly exasperated army, and would scarcely have dared to attack us in the open field: they had had enough of that work on the 23d, to give them a specimen of what British soldiers could do when met fairly, front to front.

The marsh, it may be necessary to mention, extended from the lower skirt of the wood to the fishermen's huts at the mouth of the creek. This creek we had sailed up on our advance, but this could not possibly be the case at present, both on account of our numbers being much too great for the number of boats, and of the danger to which it would have exposed the troops had they been attacked from the shore, but principally on the former account; a sort of road had therefore been constructed by our artificers, by cutting down boughs from the wood, and laying them across such places as required something on the surface on which to tread. This road extended, as nigh as I can judge, about eight or ten miles, and in passing which numerous slips were made into the sloughs on each side; but there being plenty of assistance generally at hand, they helped each other out: some men, I understand, were lost, however, in this night-march through the swamp.

Having arrived at the huts before-mentioned, the whole army set about forming such places of shelter as the desert swamp afforded. There were certainly reeds in abundance, but we wanted some sort of timbers for the support of the outward covering. We, however, did the best we could; and now every exertion was made by the navy to bring the army off from this most uncomfortable place of abode, and regiment after regiment were despatched as fast as the boats and other small craft could go and return, the distance from hence to the shipping being about seventy miles. While we remained here, we who were fond of shooting found plenty of wild-ducks on which to exercise our sporting abilities; but, alas! we wanted shot, and were therefore seldom able to bring home a couple for dinner.

A considerable number of slaves, belonging to the estates where we had lately been stationed, followed us down thus far, some of whom would not return, but were afterwards sent on board of ship. These, male and female, often amused us with their native dances, the men generally having a number of rings or bells about them, which sounded as they kept time to the tune. Some of their dances were, however, far from decent, particularly on the part of the females, which, it may be supposed, highly delighted some of our young and thoughtless countrymen. Some were induced to return to their masters: for those who came on board of ship, I believe it was not till very lately that the two governments came to terms as to the remuneration which their owners claimed for them.

At length the turn came for my battalion to go on board, which we did on the 25th of January, when our whole five companies were put on board the Dover, the ship that had brought out two companies of the battalion, and which were then not much fewer in number than the five at present were; in fact, we had lost more than half. The whole army did not get embarked till ——, when the 7th Fusileers came on board. This regiment had been necessarily left alone at the fishermen's huts till the boats could return, as before stated, to bring them off, and yet even this single battalion the enemy, with upwards of 10,000 men, dared not come down and attack, although there were no works to protect it in this exposed situation. Nothing could possibly demonstrate more fully and clearly, that, notwithstanding the repulse they had unfortunately given our troops, they dreaded them in the open country; or else it must be attributed to the prudent sagacity of their leader, who, having gained a victory which he had previously scarce dared to hope for, now wisely resolved not to risk the tarnishing of his dear-bought laurels. It is not an easy matter to reconcile this cautious and timid conduct with their furious onset on the night of the 23d, and with their boasting speeches after our failure on the 8th instant.

Now, while we remain at rest for a short while on board of ship, let us take a retrospective glance at the late events. It is certain we were singularly unfortunate. Providence, which had smiled upon us in our late operations against the most formidable army in the world, the French, here taught us most painfully, that the victory is not always to be gained by strength or courage. Indeed it was but a just punishment for the contempt we entertained for our opponents, and which unfortunate feeling, I believe, was almost universal. I own I entertained it in a high degree; for I judged it next to a moral impossibility that an army of undisciplined and unmanageable peasants, however numerous, could for a moment withstand the attack of those troops who had overthrown the victorious legions of Bonaparte. But every soldier was a patriot, and they fought for their country, and for a country of all others most suitable for the operations of such troops; full of fastnesses, composed of creeks, and necks, and woods, &c. of all which they did not fail to take the utmost advantage. For this work of theirs, constructed on a spot of ground said to have been pointed out by General Moreau, completely shut us out from all approach towards the town, and compensated for every disadvantage under which they, as irregulars, laboured; for it was not only a formidable barrier to our army, but it gave them, by the protection it afforded their persons, all the steadiness of troops inured to combat, and permitted them the full exercise of that superior skill as marksmen for which they are famed, and which exposure in the open field would have deprived them of; for here they were covered up to the chin, and suffered comparatively nothing from all our fire.