Chapter XV The Great Retreat
Reprieve—A Fight in prospect—Trapped—Napoleon leaves Spain—Salvage—The Tragedy of War—In Motley—A Breathing Space—The Slough of Despond—Motherless—Thalatta!—A Batman’s Battle
The growing spirit of indiscipline and lawlessness among the Reserve determined General Paget to make a signal example of the culprits. Early on the following morning he marched all the five regiments under his command towards the crown of a low hill overhanging Cacabellos, in the direction of Bembibre. After sending pickets to the summit, to keep the enemy under observation, he ordered the whole division to form a hollow square, the men facing inwards. Some distance to the rear of each regiment, the officers sat in drumhead court-martial. The men caught in the act of plundering were brought before them, tried, and sentenced, and then taken into the square, where, lashed to the triangles, they received the punishment awarded.
During this scene the general sat stern and impassive on his horse. At one moment a cavalry vedette galloped up with news that the French were in sight. “Very well,” replied the general, and the punishment went on. Soon another trooper appeared, to report that the enemy were rapidly advancing. “Very well,” said the general, without movement or further word.
So many were the offenders that the work of flogging continued for several hours. At length came the turn of the two soldiers taken in the act of assaulting and robbing the Spaniard. They were summarily tried, and condemned to be hanged. At one corner of the square stood a tree with accessible branches. The unhappy men were conveyed thither, with halters round their necks. They were hoisted on the shoulders of two strong Riflemen, and the ropes were fastened to the lower boughs.
It was just twelve o’clock. One movement of the supporting men would leave the criminals dangling in the air. The whole division awaited in breathless stillness the dread signal for execution. General Paget looked grimly down from his horse upon the wretched men, and in his set face they saw no hope of mercy. At this tense moment a captain of dragoons galloped through a gap opened for him in one side of the square. Halting before the general, he excitedly reported that the pickets on the hill were being driven in.
“I am sorry for it, sir,” said the general coldly; “and I should rather have expected the information from a trooper than from you. Go back to your fighting pickets, sir,” he added sternly, “and animate your men to a full discharge of their duties.”
The officer retired. General Paget was again silent. His lips twitched, his eyes flamed. Then suddenly he burst out: “My God! is it not lamentable to think, that when I might be preparing my troops to receive the enemies of their country, I am preparing to hang two robbers! But if at this moment the French horse should penetrate that angle of the square, I will still execute these villains at this angle.”
Again he was silent, and now shots were heard from the direction of the hill. The awed soldiers looked with consternation at their general’s face. How long was this suspense to continue? A brief pause; then, swinging round in the saddle, Paget cried:
“If I spare the lives of these two men, will you promise to reform?”
A quiver passed along the ranks; the men held their breath; there came not a murmur from their parted lips.
“If I spare the lives of these men,” again said the general, “will you give me your word of honour as soldiers that you will reform?”
Still the same awful silence reigned—and the ominous sound of firing came nearer and nearer.
“Say ‘yes’ for God’s sake!” whispered an officer to the man next him.
“Yes,” murmured the man. His neighbours repeated the word in firmer tones, and then, as though a match had been laid to a train of powder, shouts of “Yes! yes!” rang along the faces of the square.
“Cut the ropes!” cried the general. The prisoners were instantly released, the triangles removed. The men cheered, and as the square was reduced, and formed into columns, the British pickets came slowly over the brow of the hill, steadily retreating before the advance-guard of the enemy. Paget’s orders were rapidly given. The men started at the double towards the River Cua behind them. Three battalions crossed the bridge and took up their position behind a line of vineyards and stone walls parallel to the stream. A battery of horse-artillery, escorted by the 28th, was placed so as to command the road in its ascent towards Cacabellos from the bridge, and a squadron of the 15th Hussars, together with half the 95th Rifles, was left on the Bembibre side of the river to keep observation on the French.
“At last, my boys!” said Captain O’Hare. The men of his company were flushed with excitement. At last! The weary waiting of two months was at an end; the enemy were upon them; and now every man tingled with the joy of the fight to come, and greedily watched for the foe. The officers, looking along their ranks, could not but be struck with the wonderful change. Gone the blank despair, gone the sullen discontent, gone the hang-dog look; every man’s face was lit up, every man’s eyes flashed, every man stood erect with an air of high-hearted staunchness that had not been seen for many a day.
“There they are!” cried Pomeroy, whose keen eyes had descried Colbert’s hussars advancing cautiously over the hill-top.
At this moment the bugle sounded for the last companies of the 95th to retire across the bridge and occupy the defensive positions allotted to them. The men marched with alacrity; it was certain there must be a fight now. Jack’s was the rearmost company but one. It had only reached the middle of the bridge when the 15th Hussars came riding behind in hot haste, and the infantry were in imminent danger of being trampled down. The French were pressing on in such force that the hussars, wholly outnumbered, had been hurriedly withdrawn. Unsupported, the 95th were too weak to withstand a charge of cavalry; they must retire, and there was no time to lose.
“Hurry your stumps!” shouted a trooper as he passed Wilkes.
“No hurry!” said the corporal coolly, looking over his shoulder.
But behind them Colbert’s hussars and chasseurs had swept down on to the bridge and ridden into the rear-most company. Some of the latter were cut down, half were captured, the rest succeeded in gaining the farther bank, and joined their comrades behind the vineyard walls.
“A close shave, mates!” said Wilkes. “But let ’em come on; we’re ready.”
General Colbert, a young and gallant officer, and reputed the handsomest man in the French army, had reached the bridge, and saw that the slopes on the other side were held by artillery and what appeared to be a small infantry escort. All the regiments but the 28th were by this time concealed from view. Burning to distinguish himself, and anxious to emulate the successful charge of Franceschi’s dragoons at Mansilla a few days before, Colbert did not wait to reconnoitre the position and discover the actual strength of his enemy, but ranged his leading regiment four abreast, and led them straight for the bridge. Paget’s guns played briskly on the French horse until, with the dip in the road, they sank below the line of fire; then the hidden infantry followed up with steady volleys from the walls and hedges. But the French were barely within range. The majority of the troopers escaped injury, cleared the bridge, and dashed up the hill, to carry, as they thought, all before them. Then the men of Paget’s Reserve showed their mettle. The 28th were drawn across the road; the 52nd and the 95th were out of sight behind the vineyard walls; and the French horsemen fell into the fatal trap. They suddenly found themselves in the midst of a hail of bullets from left, and right, and front. For a brief moment they struggled on; then Tom Plunket, leaping the wall and flinging himself flat on the slope, fired two marvellous shots which killed Colbert and his aide-de-camp in succession, whereupon the whole brigade wheeled about and fled madly back to the bridge, leaving the road strewed with their killed and wounded.
Cheer after cheer broke from the ranks of the exultant British infantry. Many of the men wished to leap the walls and pursue the baffled enemy, and had to be pulled back like hounds straining at the leash. Not a man had been lost since they left the bridge, and Paget’s “Well done, Riflemen!” was like wine to their hearts.
But the fray was not yet over. Lahoussaye’s dragoons swept down to the river, avoided the fatal bridge, forded the stream at several points, and tried to make their way over the rocky ground and through the vineyards. Finding this impossible, they dismounted and advanced on foot in skirmishing order, meeting with a spirited response from the 52nd and 95th, whom they first encountered. Then, as the afternoon wore on, Merle’s light regiments of the line came into sight, and in column formation marched forward with loud cries to cross the bridge. For a few moments the 52nd were in danger of being swept upon and overwhelmed, but the six guns from the battery above opened a raking fire on the massed columns of French, and drove them back pell-mell to the other side. For an hour longer the French sharpshooters kept up a skirmish with the 95th and 52nd; then, as darkness fell, they recognized the hopelessness of their attack, gave up the contest, and hastened down the slopes to the eastern bank of the Cua.
“By George, this is a change of scene!” said Smith, standing with his fellow-subalterns around a hastily lit fire. “Won’t the Grampus be green when he hears what he has missed? I wonder what the fellow is doing?”
“Offering Napoleon long odds on something or other,” said Jack with a laugh.
He had hardly spoken when the command came to form up in marching order. Sir John Moore had ridden back from Villafranca on hearing Paget’s cannon, and was delighted to hear of his old friend’s success. The French having suffered so decisive a check, he saw that the Reserve could be safely withdrawn under cover of night. The troops set out in better spirits than they had known for many a day, tramping cheerily over the snow-covered road with the comfortable assurance that at last they had won the general’s approbation and proved themselves men. Their gaiety was doubled when they learnt from a wounded prisoner on the way that Napoleon was no longer behind them. He had withdrawn part of his army, leaving Soult and Ney to continue the pursuit. The thought that they had baffled the great emperor was delightful to the British troops: they never doubted that Napoleon had seen he was beaten by Johnny Moore, and had run away in sheer petulance and chagrin.
Four miles after leaving the scene of their brilliant rear-guard action, the Reserve arrived at the outskirts of Villafranca. Long before, they had noticed a red glow in the sky, which as they approached threw a rosy light upon the banks of dazzling driven snow. As they drew still nearer, the whole town seemed to be on fire. In every street great heaps of stores and provisions were burning, and so thoroughly was the work of destruction being carried out that guards had been placed even round the doomed boxes of biscuit and salt meat. But the temptation was irresistible to hungry soldiers; many men, as they passed, stuck their bayonets or pikes into junks of salt pork that were actually on fire, and bore them off in great glee. The men had been marching so steadily that the officers for the most part winked at this rescue from the flames, Jack remarking to Pomeroy that they’d all be precious glad to get a slice or two of the meat by the time the march was ended.
After leaving Villafranca they passed through the defile of Piedrafita into still wilder country. Climbing Monte Cebrero and emerging on to the barren plain of Lugo, the troops reached Herrerias shortly before daybreak. They were suffering intensely from fatigue and cold, but their halt for food and rest was of the shortest; as soon as day dawned they had to set off again. Now that daylight illumined the scene, they saw terrible signs of the misery and disorder into which the constant forced marching had thrown the main body. The road was strewn with wreckage of all kinds—horses were lying dead, wagons lay shattered and abandoned; here was a rusty musket, there a broken sword; worn-out boots, horse-shoes, pots, articles of apparel, dotted the white and rugged causeway for miles. Worse than that, human bodies were mingled with these evidences of woe. At one spot Jack saw a group of redcoats stretched on the snow. Thinking they were stragglers asleep, he went to rouse them. They made no response to voice or touch; in their sleep they had been frozen to death.
As the day wore on, other incidents added to the general misery. The horses of Lord Paget’s cavalry were constantly foundering through losing their shoes on the stony road. When this happened, the dragoons dismounted, and led their chargers till the poor beasts could go no farther. Then, by Lord Paget’s orders, they were shot, so that they might not fall into the hands of the French. Many a rough trooper shed tears as he raised his pistol to the head of the faithful animal whose friend he was, and as the cracking of the pistols reverberated from the rocks, the sounds sent a painful shudder through the ranks of the trudging infantry.
Hundreds of stragglers from the leading divisions loitered along the road, causing an exasperating delay to the march of the disciplined Reserve. Among the laggards were not merely the marauders and ne’er-do-wells who had cast off all obedience, but veterans who were overcome by the rigours of the winter cold and the heavy marching on diminished rations. Every mile brought new horrors. Many sick and wounded were being conveyed in baggage-wagons, which, as the beasts failed, were abandoned, leaving their human occupants to perish in the snow. Women and children panted along beside their husbands and fathers, or rode in the few wagons that were left; but many dropped on the road and died of cold and fatigue. Looking back from a spur of the mountain chain, Jack saw the white road behind covered with dead and dying, a black spot here, a red spot there, showing where a woman or a soldier lay sleeping the last sleep. The groans of women, the wails of little children, were torture to the ears of the more sympathetic. Sometimes a soldier whose wife had given up the struggle, would fling himself down beside her, and, cursing the general whose object he so grievously misunderstood, remain to die.
Long after dark the Reserve reached Nogales, where they remained for the rest of the night. Before dawn, however, news came that the enemy were pursuing close upon them, and as they marched out, the rear companies became hotly engaged with French cavalry. The force hurried on, across a many-spanned bridge, up a zigzag road, skirmishing all the way, and halting at favourable points to tempt the enemy to attack. At one spot the mountain rose up a sheer wall on the right of the road, and on the left a deep precipice fell steeply to a valley. Here General Paget ordered the men to face round. The position could not be gained by a frontal assault, and the enemy, waiting for their heavy columns to come up, sent voltigeurs and some squadrons of cavalry into the valley to attempt a flank attack. But deep drifts of snow having hidden the inequalities in the ground, men and horses tumbled head over heels as they advanced, and, amid grim cheers from the British troops above, the French withdrew discomfited.
Fighting almost every yard of ground, the Reserve continued their rigorous march towards Lugo. Near Constantino they were amazed to meet a train of fifty bullock-carts crammed with stores and clothing for La Romana’s army. Someone had blundered. The Spaniards were dispersed far and wide, and, but for its being intercepted by the British, the convoy must inevitably have fallen into the hands of the French. Astounded at this piece of Spanish folly, but rejoiced at the luck which had brought clothes at such an opportune moment, the soldiers soon stripped the wagons, many a man carrying off several pairs of trousers, and enough shoes to last a lifetime. Thus, when they were halted for action at the bridge of Constantino, they presented a remarkable appearance. Some wore gray trousers, some blue, some white; they were new shod, but with no regard for pairs. Corporal Wilkes, in his haste to replace his own worn-out boots, had put a black shoe on his right foot and a white one on his left. But there was no time to attend to niceties of costume, for the enemy kept up an incessant fire all the afternoon, and it was only at nightfall that the tired regiments could withdraw from the eastern end of the bridge and resume their march.
At dawn on January 6th they reached the main body, drawn up in battle order three miles in front of Lugo. The brigade of Guards were in their shirts and trousers, cooking their breakfast, having hung their tunics and belts to the branches of trees. As Captain O’Hare’s company passed through them, one of the officers asked him if he had seen anything of the French.
“Bedad, now,” exclaimed O’Hare, “you’d better take down your pipe-clayed belts from those trees, my dear, and put them on, and eat your murphies, if you’ve got any, as quick as you can, or by the powers those same French will finish ’em before they’re cold.”
The Guards laughed mockingly; they themselves had not fired a shot during the whole retreat. But as the 95th marched on they heard Paget’s guns open on the advancing enemy behind, and, turning, they gave the incredulous Guards a derisive cheer.
No sooner had the Reserve reached Lugo than General Paget ordered the men to clean their weapons and polish their accoutrements as thoroughly as if they were going on parade in the barrack-ground at Colchester. Corporal Wilkes had scarcely uttered a murmur for three days, but this command was too much for him.
“Discipline be hanged!” he growled. “We ain’t out for a picnic, nor goin’ for a walk in the park, and what’s polishin’ paste to do with lickin’ the French?—that’s what I want to know.”
But when he had recovered from the first feeling of hardship he recognized that the general’s motive was to maintain the excellent discipline which had hitherto prevailed in his division; and Wilkes was too good a soldier not to do his best, even with the polishing leather.
For three days the army lay at Lugo—three days of incessant rain, which turned to slush the snow on the hills, and proved more trying to the spirits and tempers of the men than the frost had been. There were large stores at Lugo, and Sir John Moore judged it wise, after the exhausting forced marches of the past weeks, to allow the men a good spell of rest and plentiful supplies of fresh food. His position was very strong, and he hoped to tempt Soult to a fight, being assured that the troops would pull themselves together and give a good account of the enemy. But Soult was too wary to attack until he had overwhelming numbers at his disposal. His own force had suffered almost as severely as Moore’s, and some of his divisions were still toiling on far in his rear. After a few attempts to feel the British position he made no further movement, and Moore waited and fretted in vain. He would not risk an offensive movement himself. He had no hospitals, few wagons, no reserve of food or ammunition; delay would weaken him and strengthen Soult. There was no alternative but to continue the retreat. The route to Vigo was definitively abandoned; orders were issued for the whole army to slip out of its lines on the night of the 8th, leaving the camp-fires burning so as to deceive the enemy, and to make for the direct road to Corunna, to which harbour the transports had already been commanded to sail round the coast. As soon as darkness fell all the foundered horses were shot, and such provisions, stores, and ammunition as were not required were destroyed. At half-past nine the first companies moved off, and by midnight the whole position was evacuated.
This was the beginning of the last stage of the army’s demoralization. The frost of the previous week had quite broken up; a pelting storm of sleet and rain assailed the troops as they marched. In the inky darkness many of the guides missed their way amid the labyrinth of vineyards, orchards, and intersecting paths. Regiment after regiment went hopelessly astray, and when General Paget’s reserve division reached the appointed spot on the Corunna road, it proved to be not in the rear but actually in advance of the main body. In these circumstances Paget moved his troops slowly, knowing that if the enemy overtook the less trustworthy regiments behind him the whole force would run the risk of being annihilated.
Through the black and rainy night, then, the men marched, halting at intervals. No man was allowed to leave the ranks; all were filled with apprehension of what might befall. On the morning of next day the belated divisions of the main body began to appear, and the Reserve thankfully resumed its proper position of rear-guard.
A terrible lack of discipline prevailed in all but a few of the regiments of the main body. Drenched by the incessant rain, the men sought shelter in cottages and outlying hovels whenever they were halted, with the result that when the order for marching was given vast numbers could not be found and had to be left behind. All day and all night the Reserve was harassed by the necessity of beating up these loiterers, until officers and men alike were almost overwhelmed with despair.
The experiences of that fearful 9th of January haunted the memories of Jack and his friends for years afterwards. From cheerless dawn to cheerless eve their eyes were shocked, their hearts were riven, by misery almost passing belief. For mile after mile of that bleak desolate country, a land of bluff and spur, torrent and ravine, men fell down upon the road, groaning, weeping, dying of weariness and disease aggravated by the bitterness of shame and despair. Mules and oxen lay as they fell, and in the wagons they had drawn, husbandless women and fatherless children wailed and moaned, a prey to hunger and exhaustion. Many a time Jack stuffed his fingers into his ears to keep out the intolerable sounds, until the very frequency of them made him almost callous, and he tramped along with haggard face and the same sense of dreary hopelessness. Smith was bent almost double with illness, Pomeroy and Shirley were so utterly weary and dispirited that they dragged their feet like old peasants racked with the ague of the fields. Even Pepito’s vivacity had vanished; for the greater part of every day he rode on a gun-carriage, a silent image of depression.
As the 95th halted for a brief spell at a hamlet, Corporal Wilkes, his tanned, weather-beaten cheeks drawn and pinched, came up to his captain and said:
“Sir, Sergeant Jones’s wife is dead.”
“God help the poor fellow!” said Captain O’Hare; “what’ll he do now with those two little children? How are they?”
“Well, sir, and cosy; that good woman gave her life for them. The sergeant’s crazy, sir, and the wagon’s come to grief that they were riding in. I thought, sir—”
“Well?”
“I wouldn’t like to leave ’em behind, sir, and the sergeant’s as weak as a rat and can hardly trail his pike. Couldn’t I carry one, sir?”
“Sure an’ you can. Take turns with another man. And the other one—the poor little colleen—”
“Pomeroy and I will look after her,” said Jack. “It’ll give us something to think about. We’ll either carry her by turns or get some of our best men to do it.”
And so it happened that for the rest of the retreat two little children, a boy and a girl, rode along in the rain on the shoulders of tender-hearted Riflemen, who talked to them and cheered them, so that the small things, all unconscious of their irreparable loss, prattled and laughed and felt exceedingly proud of their unusual altitude.
It is the morning of January 10th; the regiments are climbing the face of a range of hills, the last, they have been told, that intervene between them and the harbour of Corunna. The rain has ceased, the sky clears, and as the drenched and footsore warriors top the crest the sun bursts through a lingering cloud and throws its low beams from behind them.
“The sea! the sea!”
A great shout reverberates over the rugged hills. Below lies the little town of Betanzos, and beyond it the blue white-crested waters of the Atlantic. Corunna is only a few miles distant; the end of the long agony is in sight; and the sudden coming of weather springlike in its mildness after the severity of winter, fills all hearts with unutterable gladness. Colonel Beckwith roars at his men with a gruffness which nobody mistakes, and the fierce tension of General Paget’s face is relaxed for the first time for many days.
“The finest retreat that was ever retreated,” cries Captain O’Hare, who, though he looks only the shadow of his former self, has suddenly recovered his usual cheerfulness. “But what’s afoot down yonder, begorra?”
All eyes follow his gaze downhill. They light on a curious spectacle. In the distance the road is dark with French cavalry, their helmets and accoutrements flashing in the unwonted sunlight. Between them and the heights there marches a nondescript horde of stragglers, in all uniforms, from all regiments. But they are no longer straggling. Formed in a solid mass across the road, they are retiring by alternate companies, one company remaining to face the French, another marching along the road until they reach a position whence they can cover the first’s subsequent retreat. Time after time Franceschi’s horsemen charge; but every charge is beaten back by the rolling fire of the British, who fight and retire, retire and fight, with equal steadiness.
“Bedad, now, that’s fine!” cries Captain O’Hare enthusiastically. “That’s the greatness of the British Arrmy! Three cheers for the fighting stragglers, my boys!”
Cheer upon cheer roll down towards the baulked and angry French. Stage by stage the army of stragglers retire up the slope until they are safe within the protecting lines of the Reserve. There the curious incident is explained. Dr. Dacres of the 28th had entrusted his instruments and baggage to the care of a batman, who had loaded his mule’s panniers so heavily that the animal had fallen far behind the regiment. During the night the man slept in a cottage by the roadside, and, rising before dawn, was astounded to find that the French were almost within arm’s-length. Shouting to the numerous stragglers in the vicinity, the batman, relishing a little brief authority, got them into some sort of order and began to fight a rear-guard action on his own account. A sergeant of the 43rd, seeing what was in the wind, hurried up and assumed command of the growing companies. It was by the skilful handling of this man, William Newman by name, that the impromptu rear-guard had held their own against the enemy’s cavalry and been brought safely out of danger.
The army remained for a whole day at Betanzos. On the 11th they marched out towards Corunna, the Reserve being hotly engaged with the enemy’s cavalry, and disputing the last ten miles yard by yard, under the approving eye of Sir John Moore himself. Two bridges were blown up. On the 13th Franceschi’s dragoons discovered a ford, and Sir John, seeing that his main body was now secure, ordered the Reserve to fall back on Corunna. The regiments had hardly left their bivouac when shots from the French artillery came with a crash on to the roofs of the houses they had occupied near the bridge.
It was with this thundering adieu reverberating in their ears that the gallant 95th, along with their equally gallant comrades in arms, marched into their new quarters at Eiris, above Corunna, and attained, after much travail, their long-desired haven.