J. Kincaid

“ General Bock, with his brigade of heavy German dragoons, immediately went at them; and, putting their cavalry to flight, he broke through their infantry, and took or destroyed the whole of them. This was one of the most gallant charges recorded in history. I saw many of these fine fellows lying dead along with their horses, on which they were still astride, with the sword firmly grasped in the hand, as they had fought the instant before; and several of them still wearing a look of fierce defiance, which death itself had been unable to quench. ”

“ Habit gives endurance, and fatigue is the best nightcap; no matter that the veteran's countenance is alternately stormed with torrents of rain, heavy dews, and hoar-frosts; no matter that his ears are assailed by a million mouths of chattering locusts, and by some villanous donkey, who every half hour pitches a bray note, which, as a congregation of presbyterians follow their clerk, is instantly taken up by every mule and donkey in the army, and sent echoing from regiment to regiment, over hill and valley, until it dies away in the distance ”

“ We heard a heavy cannonade all day to our left, occasioned, as we understood, by the fifth division falling in with another detachment of the enemy, which the unexpected and rapid movements of Lord Wellington was hastening to their general point of assembly.
On the early part of the 19th, we were fagging up the face of a mountain, under a sultry hot sun, until we came to a place where a beautiful clear stream was dashing down the face of it, when the division was halted, to enable the men to refresh themselves. ”

“ The civil authorities, in making their own hurried escape, had totally forgotten that they had left a gaol full of rogues unprovided for, and who, as we were passing near them, made the most hideous screaming for relief. Our quarter-master-general very humanely took some men, who broke open the doors, and the whole of them were soon seen howling along the bridge into the wide world, in the most delightful delirium, with the French dragoons at their heels. ”

“ We were, take us all in all, a very bad army. Our foreign auxiliaries, who constituted more than half of our numerical strength, with some exceptions, were little better than a raw militia—a body without a soul, or like an inflated pillow, that gives to the touch, and resumes its shape again when the pressure ceases—not to mention the many who went clear out of the field, and were only seen while plundering our baggage in their retreat. ”

“ For so many fellows holding such precarious tenures of their lives could not meet together in commemoration of such an event, without indulging in an occasional cheer—not a whispering cheer, but one that echoed far and wide into the French lines, and as it was a sound that had often pierced them before, and never yet boded them any good, we heard afterwards that they were kept standing at their arms the greater part of the night in consequence. ”

“ Petite La Rhune was more of an outpost than a part of their position, the latter being a chain of stupendous mountains in its rear; so that while our battalion followed their skirmishers into the valley between, the remainder of our division were forming for the attack on the main position, and waiting for the co-operation of the other divisions, the thunder of whose artillery, echoing along the valleys, proclaimed that they were engaged, far and wide, on both sides of us. ”

“ My turn of duty did not arrive until eight in the evening, when I was ordered to take thirty men with shovels to dig holes for ourselves, as near as possible to the walls, for the delectable amusement of firing at the embrasures for the remainder of the night. The enemy threw frequent fire-balls among us, to see where we were; but, as we always lay snug until their blaze was extinguished, they were not much the wiser, except by finding, from having some one popt off from their guns every instant, that they had got some neighbours whom they would have been glad to get rid of. ”

“ Palais, we were very much annoyed to find the seventy-ninth regiment stationed there, who handed us a general order, desiring that the last-arrived regiment should relieve the preceding one in charge of the place. This was the more vexatious, knowing that there was no other regiment behind to relieve us. It was a nice little town, and we were treated, by the inhabitants, like friends and allies, experiencing much kindness and hospitality from them; but a rifleman, in the rear, is like a fish out of the water; he feels that he is not in his place. ”

“ Our division brought up the rear of the infantry, marching with the order and precision of a field-day, in open column of companies, and in perfect readiness to receive the enemy in any shape; who, on their part, had a huge cavalry force close at hand, and equally ready to pounce upon us. Our movement was supported by a formidable body of our own dragoons ”

“ April 11th.—Marched again for the neighbourhood of Ciudad Rodrigo, with the long-accustomed sounds of cannon and musketry ringing in my fanciful ears as merrily as if the instruments themselves were still playing.
Sir Sidney Beckwith, one of the fathers of the rifles, was, at this time, obliged to proceed to England for the recovery of health, and did not again return to the Peninsula. In his departure, (p. 142) that army lost one of the ablest of its outpost generals. Few officers knew so well how to make the most of a small force. ”

“ There are several degrees of comfort to be reckoned in a bivouac, two of which will suffice.
The first, and worst, is to arrive at the end of a cold wet day, too dark to see your ground, and too near the enemy to be permitted to unpack the knapsacks or to take off accoutrements; (p. 044) where, unincumbered with baggage or eatables of any kind, you have the consolation of knowing that things are now at their worst, and that any change must be for the better. You keep yourself alive for a while, in collecting material to feed your fire with. ”

“ The consequence was, that, although we were kept on our legs during the whole of the night, we found, when daylight broke, that the tail of the column had not got a quarter of a mile from their starting-post.
On a good broad road it is all very well; but, on a narrow bad road, a night march is like a night-mare, harassing a man to no purpose. ”

“ We did not cease the pursuit until dark, and then halted in a field of wheat, about two miles beyond Vittoria. The victory was complete. They carried off only one howitzer out of their numerous artillery, which, with baggage, stores, provisions, money, and every thing that constitutes the matériel of an army, fell into our hands.
It is much to be lamented, on those occasions, that the people who contribute most to the victory should profit the least by it; not that I am an advocate for plunder—on the contrary, I would much rather that all our fighting was for pure love ”

“ Our division formed on the heights above Samunoz to cover the passage of the rivulet, which was so swollen with the heavy rains, as only to be passable at particular fords. While we waited there for the passage of the rest of the army, the enemy, under cover of the forest, was, at the same time, assembling in force close around us; and the moment that we began to descend the hill, towards the rivulet, we were assailed by a heavy fire of cannon and musketry, while their powerful cavalry were in readiness to take advantage of any confusion which might have occurred. ”

“ Passing from the Portuguese to the Spanish frontier is about equal to taking one step from the coal-hole into the parlour, for the cottages on the former are reared with filth, furnished with ditto, and peopled accordingly; whereas, those of Spain, even within the same mile, are neatly whitewashed, both without and within, and the poorest of them can furnish a good bed, with clean linen, and the pillow-cases neatly adorned with pink and sky-blue ribbons, while their dear little girls look smiling and neat as their pillow-cases. ”

“ When we arrived on the ground I was sent to take command of the highland company, which we had at that time in the regiment, and which was with the left wing, under Colonel Cameron. I found them on piquet, between the right of the trenches and the river, half of them posted at a mud-cottage, and the other half in a ruined convent, close under the walls. It was a very tolerable post when at it; but it is no joke travelling by daylight up to within a stone's throw of a wall, on which there is a parcel of fellows who have no other amusement but to fire at every body they see. ”

“ In the midst of the scuffle, however, three of the houses in the square were set on fire; and the confusion was such that nothing could be done to save them; but, by the extraordinary exertions of Colonel Barnard, during the whole of the night, the flames were prevented from communicating to the adjoining buildings.
We succeeded in getting a great portion of our battalion together by one o'clock in the morning, and withdrew with them to the ramparts, where we lay by our arms until daylight.
There is nothing in this life half so enviable as the feelings of a soldier after a victory. ”

“ The town of Bayonne, too, was visible in the distance; and the view to the right embraced a beautiful well-wooded country, thickly studded with towns and villages, as far as the eye could reach.
Sir Thomas Graham, with the left wing of the army, had, the same morning, passed the Bidassoa, and established them, also, within the French boundary. A brigade of Spaniards, (p. 255) on our right, had made a simultaneous attack on La Rhune, the highest mountain on this part of the Pyrenees, and which, since our last advance, was properly now a part of our position. ”

“ Whether in love or war, I have always considered that the pursuer has a decided advantage over the pursued. In the first, he may gain and cannot lose; but, in the latter, when one sees his enemy at full speed before him, one has such a peculiar conscious sort of feeling that he is on the right side, that I would not exchange places for any consideration. ”

“ The cottages in Alameida, and, indeed, in all the Spanish villages, generally contain two mud-floored apartments: the outer one, though more cleanly than the Irish, is, nevertheless, fashioned after the same manner, and is common alike to the pigs and the people; while the inner looks more like the gun-room of a ship-of-war, having a sitting-apartment in the centre, with small sleeping-cabins branching from it, each illuminated by a port-hole, about a foot square. ”

“ It is wonderful how such scenes as these will deaden men's finer feelings, and with what apathy it enables them to look upon the sufferings of their fellow creatures! The third day after the fall of the town, I rode, with Colonel Cameron, to take a bathe in the Guadiana, and, in passing the verge of the camp of the 5th division, we saw two soldiers standing at the door of a small shed, or outhouse, shouting, waving their caps, and making signs that they wanted to speak to us. We rode up to see what they wanted, and found that the poor fellows had each lost a leg. ”

“ A woman was a woman in those days; and every officer made it a point of duty to marshal as many as he could to the general assembly, no matter whether they were countesses or sextonesses; and although we, in consequence, frequently incurred the most indelible disgrace among the better orders of our indiscriminate collection, some of whom would retire in disgust; yet, as a sufficient number generally remained for our evening's amusement, and we were only birds of passage, it was a matter of the most perfect indifference to us what they thought ”

“ Certainly I never saw such skirmishers as the ninety-fifth, now the rifle brigade. They could do the work much better and with infinitely less loss than any other of our best light troops. They possessed an individual boldness, a mutual understanding, and a quickness of eye, in taking advantage of the ground, which, taken altogether, I never saw equalled. They were, in fact, as much superior to the (p. 289) French voltigeurs, as the latter were to our skirmishers in general. As our regiment was often employed in supporting them, I think I am fairly qualified to speak of their merits. ”

“ While our battalion-reserve occupied the front of the wood, our skirmishers lined the side of the road, which was the Prussian line of communication. The road itself, however, was crossed by such a shower of balls, that none but a desperate traveller would have undertaken a journey on it. We were presently reinforced by a small battalion of foreign light troops, with whose assistance we were in hopes to have driven the enemy a little further from it; but they were a raw body of men, who had never before been under fire ”

“ About midday our division advanced to the grand attack on the most formidable looking part of the whole of the enemy's position, and, much to our surprise, we carried it with more ease and less loss than the outpost in the morning, a circumstance which we could only account for by supposing that it had been defended by the same troops, and that they did not choose to sustain two hard beatings on the same day. The attack succeeded at every point; and, in the (p. 266) evening, we had the satisfaction of seeing the left wing of the army marching into St. Jean de Luz. ”

“ An hour before daybreak, next morning, a rattling fire of musketry along the whole line of piquets made every one spring to his arms; and we remained looking as fierce as possible until daylight, when each side was seen expecting an attack, while the piquets were blazing at one another without any ostensible cause: it gradually ceased, as the day advanced, and appeared to have been occasioned by a patrole of dragoons getting between the piquets by accident: when firing commences in the dark it is not easily stopped. ”

“ The officers of each company form a mess of themselves. One remains in camp to attend to the duties of the regiment; a second attends to the mess: he goes to the regimental butcher, and bespeaks a portion of the only purchaseable commodities, hearts, livers, and kidneys; and also to see whether he cannot do the commissary out of a few extra biscuit, or a canteen of brandy; and the remainder are gentlemen at large for the day. ”