Chapter XIV An Incident at Cacabellos
Stragglers—Oblique Oration—The Massacre at Bembibre—Moore’s Appeal—A Shot in the Dark—A Souvenir
There was no rest for Jack or his friends that night. On returning to his quarters he found that Colonel Beckwith had called the officers of the regiment together, and was already addressing them with more than usual seriousness. He told them that their hope of making a stand at Astorga was fated to be disappointed. Sir John Moore had decided to continue the retreat with all speed, either towards Vigo or towards Corunna.
“It is useless to pretend I am pleased,” said the colonel. “None of us are that. Some of the youngsters among us may think that things would be ordered differently if they were in command. That’s not our business. The general is satisfied that his reasons are good, and all we have to do is to obey orders. And that brings me to the point. A retreating army is always apt to get out of hand, and a British army perhaps more than any other. Take any man in the regiment and he’ll ask you why he should retreat, and what the dickens is the good of running away from a Frenchman. We’ve seen already what disorder and ruffianliness have disgraced some of the regiments. And I tell you, gentlemen, I won’t have that in the 95th. We shall from this time form a part of the actual rear-guard. The second battalion leaves, with other regiments, direct for Vigo to cover our left flank. The safety of the whole army will therefore depend much on us. The French won’t let us off lightly. We shall often be in touch with them, and if there’s any want of steadiness they’ll get through us, and then it’s all up. I ask you then, gentlemen, every one of you, to keep a tight hand on the men. There must be no slackness, no relaxation of discipline. The honour of the regiment is in your keeping, and, by heaven! I’ll never lift my head again if the 95th fails me.”
The colonel’s vehement words sent a thrill through the group, and Jack Lumsden was not the only officer among them who vowed inwardly not to disappoint “old Sidney”. Beckwith went on to prescribe their immediate duties. He alluded to the confusion and disorder in which they had found the town, in great part due to the unexpected presence of La Romana’s ragged regiments. The place had been crammed with stores, consisting of shoes, blankets, tools, muskets, ammunition, from which many of the preceding regiments had been partially re-equipped. But in the haste and muddle the distribution had been mismanaged. Many of the stores had been left behind, and the town was full of British and Spanish stragglers eager to plunder where they could. The colonel instructed his officers to see that pillaging was checked as much as possible. What stores could not be removed were to be destroyed.
During the night, therefore, Jack and his chums were busy in carrying out the colonel’s orders. It was found next day that there were not sufficient draught animals to serve for the transport of all the remaining stores, and the 95th were employed for many hours in burning and blowing up valuable stuff to prevent it from falling into the hands of the French.
The regiments of the Reserve were to march in the evening for Cambarros, a village some nine miles in the direction of Villafranca. Before they started, Captain O’Hare paraded his company and repeated to them the substance of what Colonel Beckwith had said to the officers.
“I’ve heard a deal of grumbling at times,” he said. “You don’t want to retreat. No more do I, but our chance’ll come, please the pigs; and then I know who’ll be at the front—not the grumblers and skulkers, but the men who know how to obey. Now, my boys, I trust ye. I don’t want the general to send for me by and by and say: ‘O’Hare, ye’ve the most blackguardly company in the whole army.’ We’ll do better than the best, and sure I’ll be proud of ye. And if there should be a man among ye with a deal o’ power over the company—a good soldier let us say, but with a long tongue and a way of speaking that—well, a way of speaking”—the captain studiously kept his eyes from Corporal Wilkes: “if there’s such a man, to him I’d say, with all my solemn seriousness: Ye’ve a deal of persuasion; then use it for the glory o’ the regiment; and bedad, I believe he’d know what I meant.”
Corporal Wilkes, looking straight in front of him, had turned a brick-red, and was unusually silent as the company marched off. To Sergeant Jones, the little Welshman, toddling along by his side, he remarked presently:
“I hope you’ll mind what Peter said, Sergeant. As for me, ’tis a good thing for the glory o’ the regiment that the second battalion’s off another way, for all my good resolutions would be turned into sour milk by the long fiddle-face of Corp’ril MacWhirter.”
After their sleepless night, and hard work during the day, both officers and men were glad to fling themselves down on rough beds of hay and straw when they reached Cambarros at dusk. But they had hardly settled to rest when some dragoons came riding in with news that the enemy were advancing in force. The order was immediately given to get under arms, and the march was continued through the night.
The Reserve reached Bembibre, a dirty village of mud and slate, at daybreak on January 1st, expecting now at least to enjoy the rest so much desired. But again they were disappointed. On entering the village they were at once ordered to pile arms and clear the place. It presented the appearance of a town that had recently been stormed and put to the sack. It happened to be a depôt for the wine produced in the neighbouring vineyards, and large quantities were stored in the vaults and cellars of the houses. The inhabitants had shown themselves unfriendly to the regiments of the main body of Moore’s army, and had provided food and drink for them only with the greatest reluctance. The result was that the men of the least-disciplined regiments broke all bounds, and set furiously to work to get for themselves what the Spaniards had denied them. Doors were wrenched off, windows smashed, property of all kinds destroyed; and the unfortunate discovery of so large a stock of wine had the worst consequences. Those were the days when hard drinking was the rule in all classes of society. It was little to be expected, then, that rough soldiers, suffering the hardships of exhausting marches on short rations, and feeling bitter shame and humiliation at having to retreat continually before a despised enemy, should prove able to withstand the temptation to excess. Ready to fight like bull-dogs if the call came, they lost all sense of responsibility at the sight of means to enjoyment, and set their officers at defiance.
The Reserve spent that day and part of the next in chasing the stragglers from the houses and driving them along the streets towards the mountains; but the task had been only partly accomplished when cavalry pickets came in and reported that French dragoons were pushing rapidly down the Manzanal pass in their rear.
“We must leave the ruffians to their fate,” cried General Paget furiously, ordering the Reserve to march out towards Cacabellos. Not until late in the day did the 95th learn from the last of the hussar pickets what had happened when they left Bembibre. Lahoussaye’s dragoons had come galloping into the village, riding through the groups of stragglers who flocked staggeringly along the road when they heard the noise of the pursuing horse, and slashing at them as a schoolboy does at thistles. The French made no distinction of age or sex. They hewed their way indiscriminately through drunken redcoats, women, and children. Even mothers who held up their babies, pleading for mercy on them, were struck down as ruthlessly as soldiers with arms in their hands. Few escaped. Those who did bore terrible signs, in sabre-cuts on head and shoulders, of the revenge the French horse had wreaked for their defeat at Benavente.
The road from Bembibre led over the crests of the Galician hills, with ravines and gorges and precipitous crags on both sides. Then it made a rapid and crooked descent, ending in a valley through which dashed a thundering river, white with foam, bearing huge stones and logs along with it in its tempestuous rush from the Asturian mountains to the ocean. Here the hill-slopes were covered with gaunt trees, which, though now bare of foliage, threw a mysterious gloom over the narrow road. Marching rapidly down this road against a beating storm of sleet, and whipping up innumerable stragglers on the way, the 95th at length arrived at Cacabellos.
Here, just as they halted, Sir John Moore met them, having ridden back with his staff the five or six miles from Villafranca, where the main body had bivouacked. The regiments of the Reserve were at once formed up in columns in the fields by the roadside. Sir John, his fine face lined with care and sorrow, took up a position in their midst, and then, in his clear penetrating voice, amid a silence broken only by the distant thunder of the torrent, he spoke in stern biting phrases of the disorder and want of discipline he had lately witnessed. With a pungent irony that made many ears tingle, the commander-in-chief concluded his address thus:
“And if the enemy are now in possession of Bembibre, as I believe they are, they have got a rare prize! They have taken or cut to pieces many hundreds of drunken British cowards—for none but unprincipled cowards would get drunk in presence, nay in the very sight, of the enemies of their country; and sooner than survive the disgrace of such infamous misconduct, I hope that the first cannon-ball fired by the enemy may take me in the head.”
After a few words, addressed specially to the 28th, which had done glorious service with him in Egypt, Sir John turned rein and rode back to Villafranca. His words made a deep impression on both officers and men. Previous appeals had not been in vain. The reserve regiments had kept much better discipline and committed fewer excesses than the main body, and the general’s stern speech deepened the resolve of all good soldiers to abstain from disorder, and merit Sir John’s approbation.
Alas! all were not animated by the same spirit. General Paget bade the men encamp some distance away from the town, and gave orders that no one was to enter the streets unless accompanied by a non-commissioned officer, who was to be held responsible for the orderly return of those committed to his charge. But no sooner had darkness fallen over the camp than many of the soldiers, forgetting the reproof of Sir John Moore, forgetting the subsequent appeals of the company officers, escaped from their lines, and, entering the town, resumed the old work of plundering. During the night many were arrested by the patrols, and two men were seized in the act of committing a serious crime, of which few had yet been guilty. They were maltreating and robbing a poor old Spaniard, who, paralysed with fright, was piteously beseeching them to take all that he had, but to do him no harm.
“This means a drumhead court-martial!” said Captain O’Hare when the matter was reported. “Keep the men in irons; Lumsden, take a note to the general from me.”
Jack had delivered his note, and was returning to his quarters, when, as he passed along a broad road shadowed by trees on one side and a high wall on the other, he felt that someone was dogging him. He had heard no pursuing footsteps; he was at a loss to account for his strange uneasiness; but, obeying an impulse of which he was only half-conscious, he turned suddenly round, moving as he did so a little towards the wall on his right. At the same moment there was a report and a flash. A bullet whizzed past him; he could feel the rush of air on his cheek, there was a dull thud as the missile flattened itself on the stone wall. Springing forward in the direction of the report, he could just discern in the murk a tall figure scuttling for cover among the trees.
The man had a dozen yards’ start, but Jack, always a good sprinter, had reduced the gap by half when his quarry disappeared into the trees. It was a narrow belt of chestnuts about three or four deep, and, following the sound of the footsteps in front, Jack dashed through, heedless of obstacles. A moment’s scramble among roots and brambles brought him to the far side; his assailant had turned sharp to the right and was scampering towards a high wall running parallel with the belt on the opposite side of the road. With a fine spurt Jack reduced the gap to an arm’s-length; his outstretched hand was within a few inches of the man’s collar, when, to his utter amazement, the pursued disappeared into the wall. Jack shot past an open door, and before he could check his progress there was a violent bang and the sound of falling bolts. Jack pushed against the door, then threw himself upon it with all his force; it did not even creak. The wall was too high to clamber over; it was too long to go round; he had perforce to relinquish the thought of further pursuit.
“Some poor demented Spaniard who has lost his all, perhaps,” he thought, and was about to resume his walk when he noticed a small triangle of cloth projecting between the door and the jamb. The would-be assassin’s cloak had caught, and, but that the door was rather clumsily fitted, would have prevented its being closed. Without any definite motive, Jack drew his sword and cut off the strip, which he put into his pocket, where it lay for many days forgotten. He said nothing about the adventure to his fellow-officers, and it did not keep him awake for an instant when, at a late hour that night, he threw himself, worn out, upon his uncomfortable bed.