Joseph Donaldson

“ A general huzza greeted its appearance. ‘Now, hang it! we’ll beat the French dogs,’ said the seamen; but the cheering attracted the notice of the commandant, and he ordered it to be hauled down again. Never was an order so reluctantly obeyed. In a few minutes, a shot cut through the flag staff. ‘There it goes down again—Oh, botheration;’ was the surly reply. ‘Let it lie there;’ and there it lay, for no one would meddle with it. ‘Better to fight without a flag at all, than under such a bloody treacherous flag as that,’ said an old sailor. ”

“ We were to march the next morning early. The most of the single men were away drinking. I slept in the berth above Sandy and his wife. They never went to bed, but sat the whole night in their berth, with their only child between them, alternately embracing it and each other, and lamenting their cruel fortune. I never witnessed in my life such a heart-rending scene. The poor fellow tried to assume some firmness; but in vain; some feeling expression from her would throw him off his guard, and at last his grief became quite uncontrollable. ”

“ I have no prejudice against the aristocracy of the army—far from it—there are many of them whom I esteem and respect—many of them intelligent and liberal-minded men, who would do honour to any profession; but there are also others of a different stamp, supercilious, overbearing tyrants, who think their fellow-men created to be their slaves, and ignorant, swaggering coxcombs, whose puppyism must disgust all under their command. I have spoken of them as they merited,—let each claim his meed of praise or censure as he may think himself deserving it. ”

“ During that day, and the succeeding night, the baggage of the troops in front, along with the inhabitants of the surrounding country, filled the road leading through our village. It was a melancholy sight to see the poor natives, carrying their children, and any little thing which they were able to bring with them, moving along the road, after having left their homes and property—travelling they knew not whither, desolate and friendless. In a few days they might be reduced to beg, or perhaps (what was not uncommon in Portugal) die of hunger. Alas! thought I, what misery war causes! ”

“ But General Picton was not the character which we, by prejudice, were led to think him. Convinced of the baneful effects of allowing his men to plunder, he set his face sternly against it, but in other respects he was indulgent; and although no man could blame with more severity when occasion required, he was no niggard of his praise when it was deserved. Nothing could surpass his calm intrepidity and bravery in danger; and his presence in battle had the effect of a talisman, so much had his skill and valour gained the confidence of the men under his command. ”

“ I cannot understand how it is so much encouraged in Spain, unless it be to serve the same purpose that we pay boxers to murder each other, namely, to keep up the national courage.
I have known some of those ‘bruising’ fellows in the army,—indeed every regiment has its ‘bully;’ but although they were always forward enough to abuse and tyrannize over their fellow-soldiers, who were not of the ‘fancy,’ I never knew one of them that displayed even ordinary courage in the field; and it was invariably by fellows of this description that outrages, such as those perpetrated at Badajos, were committed. ”

“ You, that have been ranging the world over, amid scenes of every kind, must surely have much more interesting subjects in store, than those who have been always at home.’
‘The life of a soldier is not so varied,’ said I, ‘as you may imagine; there is a sameness in his duty, and so little liberty of his own in all that he does, that he cannot see or feel objects through the same medium as those who travel on pleasure or business. In general, he is secluded in a barrack or a camp from the rest of the world, and therefore there can be little variation in his life at home or abroad. ”

“ The commandant was now moving from place to place, giving orders and exposing himself to every danger. No one could doubt that he was brave: had it been bravery, softened and blended with the finer feelings of humanity, he would have been a true hero; but——. Our artillery officer behaved like a gentleman, as he had always done; and our subaltern in a tolerable medium: the midshipman in the style of a brave, rough and ready seaman. ”

“ When we consider that, in the face of long-established usages, and coadjutors of unbending and contracted views of human nature, the commander-in-chief by his persevering exertions has almost entirely abolished those numerous vexations—when we see gentlemanly feeling and attention to the soldier’s best interests encouraged among the officers of the army, and the change wrought in the moral and military character of the soldier by these means,—is it to be wondered at that every individual in the service is attached to the Duke of York, and looks up to him in the light of a father and a friend. ”

“ To inspire and cherish the manly, honourable spirit I have described, it is only necessary to treat men as if they possessed it. Soldiers have their failings, and their prominent vices, it is true; but they generally lie on the surface, and their neighbours in civil life have this advantage of them, that they ‘have the better art of hiding;’ but in point of disinterested feeling, and generosity of character, I question much whether the soldier would lose by the comparison. ”

“ On our part it was not a little enhanced by the envious egotism and gasconading of the corps whom we relieved,—a corps that has been flattered by the country into a belief that they are the flower of the British army. To hear themselves speak, they were the saviours of the nation,—their exertions, wherever they had been engaged, had turned the tide of battle in our favour,—and, without the gallant forty-second, the army would be like a watch without a mainspring.
How the country could have been so long the dupe of high-sounding pretensions, I do not understand. ”

“ I have no animosity to Highlanders, as a body; there are many brave and intelligent men amongst them, who would disdain to seek any adventitious aid from the mania of the day, and I willingly allow them credit for what they deserve in common with the rest of the army; but the behaviour of a regiment is so much influenced by the officers, or officer, commanding, and the men who compose it are so often changed during war or foreign service, that a judgment formed of them at one time would be erroneous at another. ”

“ This debasement of feeling and character, I imagine, arises from the system of discipline pursued by many commanding officers, which teaches the soldier to believe that he is a mere piece of machinery in the hands of his superiors, to be moved only as they please without any accordance of his own reason or judgment, and that he has no merit in his own actions, independent of this moving power. Such a belief has naturally the effect of making a man so little in his own eyes, that he feels he cannot sink lower, let him keep what company he may. ”

“ I had gone into the army a mere boy, my service had been principally abroad. The life of a soldier is not one where people learn worldly wisdom, and I now felt myself as much a child in that respect, as when I first left my native home to seek for reputation in the wars. ”

“ Seated in an angle of the battery, sheltered from the shot, no penitent on the cutty stool ever exhibited so rueful a countenance.
The carnage now became dreadful; the ramparts were strewed with the dead and wounded; and blood, brains, and mangled limbs, lay scattered in every direction: but our men’s spirits and enthusiasm seemed to rise with the danger. ”

“ I certainly thought that Tom had been an apt scholar; he seemed to be as finished a sailor as if he had been twenty years at sea. From being a boy of few words, he had acquired a surprising volubility of tongue, along with an affected English accent. He could curse and swear, chew tobacco and drink grog; and although we perceived much affectation in what Tom said and did, still we were disposed to think him a very clever fellow. When seated over our grog, we disclosed our minds to him, and inquired if he could assist us in getting a vessel. ”

“ The first man I saw flogged, received eight hundred lashes, for desertion—it would have been more merciful to have shot him. But men have been known to receive a thousand lashes before they were taken down from the halberts; and on occasions where nature could not bear the punishment awarded at once, they have been brought out again, and again, to have their half-healed backs torn open afresh! They have been known to faint under their punishment, and again be flogged into life! ”

“ The poor fellows flew with alacrity to procure wine to treat us; amongst the rest, my comrade Dennis was not backward. He and I had been separated when I went to the fort, and he was now overjoyed to see me. He seized my hand in the warmth of his heart, and shook it so long, and squeezed it so heartily, that I was ready to cry out with the pain.
‘Man alive, Joseph!’ exclaimed he, ‘is it yourself that’s in it? troth, I thought I’d never see you more, for, when I saw the shot and shell flying about ye like hailstones, I said to myself, “Poor comrade! it’s all over with you;” ”

“ Dennis, round whom there used to be gathered a host of his comrades, listening to his witticisms or quaint remarks, and whose spirits I had never known to fail, was now crest-fallen, and moved along with the greatest difficulty. Nothing but death, however, could altogether keep down his buoyant spirits; for if we got a minute’s halt during the march, he made such ludicrous remarks on the wo-begone countenances of himself or his companions, that, although the effort was distressing, they were obliged to smile in spite of their misery. ”

“ Why should not a soldier (if he has cultivated his natural abilities) express himself in a tolerable manner as well as an individual of a different class? It would be more strange if a particular grade of men were to engross all the talent existing; and it is only the presuming arrogance of rank, or the overweening conceit of literary pedantry, which would seek to shut the door against the exercise of talent, merely because the individual does not enjoy any of the arbitrary distinctions which they themselves have created. ”

“ Yes, there were a few who vindicated the cause of insulted humanity, and they live in the grateful remembrance of the soldier; but their efforts were rendered ineffectual through the opposition of men whom I dare not trust myself to speak about.
How individuals can be found to stand up in the senate of a free and enlightened country, and vindicate this brutal and inhuman mode of punishment, is an anomaly not easy to be accounted for. ”

“ My father’s friends and acquaintances, remembering all my childish follies, and the greater number of them being dull, thorough-paced men of business, whose blood had glided through its icy channel in the same even current from the time they came into the world, could not believe that a warm imagination might lead a boy astray from the path of prudence, without his heart being depraved. ”

“ I felt my heart softened more than it had been in all my misery; surely adversity is no tamer of the human heart—at least, I never felt it so. I am of opinion that it is calculated rather to draw forth the darker passions of our nature, and shut up all the holy avenues of the soul. ”