Читать книгу Adventures with the Connaught Rangers, 1809-1814 - William Grattan - Страница 9

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State of the town of Fuentes d'Oñoro after the battle—The wounded—Visit to an amputating hospital—General Brennier’s escape from Almeida—Booty in the camp.

As soon as the town of Fuentes d'Oñoro was completely cleared of the enemy, we sheltered ourselves in the best manner we could behind the walls, and at the angles of the different streets; but this was a task not easy to be accomplished, the French batteries continuing to fire with much effect. Nevertheless, Sir Edward Pakenham remained on horseback, riding through the streets with that daring bravery for which he was remarkable; if he stood still for a moment, the ground about him was ploughed up with round shot.

About this time Colonel Cameron, of the 79th Highlanders, fell, as did also Captain Irwin of the 88th Regiment. The death of the latter officer was singular. He had been many years in the army, but this was his first appearance in action. He was short-sighted, and the firing having in some degree slackened, he was anxious to take a view of the scene that was passing; he put his head above the wall behind which his men were stationed, but had scarcely placed his glass to his eye, when a bullet struck him in the forehead—he sprang from the earth and fell dead.

General Mackinnon and a group of mounted officers were behind the chapel wall, which was the highest point in the village, and consequently much exposed to the enemy’s view. This ill-built wall was but a feeble defence against round shot, and it was knocked down in several places, and some wide gaps were made in it. The general stood at one of these breaches giving his directions; he attracted the enemy’s notice, and they redoubled their fire on this point. Salvos of artillery astounded our ears, at each of which some part of the old wall was knocked about us; at one of these discharges, five or six feet of it was beaten down, and several men were crushed. Colonel Wallace, of the 88th, was covered with the rubbish, his hat was knocked off, and we thought he was killed, but fortunately he escaped unhurt.

By two o’clock the town was comparatively tranquil. The cannonading on the right of the line had ceased, but the enemy continued to fire on the town; this proceeding was attended with little loss to us, and was fatal to many of their wounded, who lay in a helpless state in the different streets, and could not be moved from their situation without great peril to our men—and they were torn to pieces by the shot of their own army. Several of these poor wretches were saved by the humane exertions of our soldiers, but still it was not possible to attend to all, and, consequently, the havoc made was great. Towards evening the firing ceased altogether, and it was a gratifying sight to behold the soldiers of both armies, who but a few hours before were massacring each other, mutually assisting to remove the wounded to their respective sides of the river. The town too, as was usual in such cases, was not passed unnoticed; it contained little, it is true, yet even that little was better than nothing; and it was laughable to see the scrupulous observation of etiquette practised by our men, when any windfall, such as a chest of bread or bacon, happened to fall to the lot of a group of individuals in their foraging excursions. The following was the method taken to divide the spoil, and as no national distinction was thought of, the French as well as the British shared in whatever was acquired. An old experienced stager or two took upon themselves the responsibility of making a division of the plunder according to the number that were present at the capture. This done, one of the party was placed with his back to the booty, when one of those who had partitioned it called out with an audible voice, “Who is to have this?” at the same time pointing to the parcel about to be transferred, while he that was appealed to without hesitation particularised some one of the number, who immediately seized on his portion, put it into his haversack, and proceeded in search of fresh adventures.

We had now leisure to walk through the town and observe the effects of the morning’s affray. The two armies lost about five thousand men, and as the chief of this loss was sustained by the troops engaged in the town, the streets were much crowded with the dead and wounded. French and British lay in heaps together, and it would be difficult to say which were most numerous. Some of the houses were also crowded with dead Frenchmen, who either crawled there after being wounded, in order to escape the incessant fire which cleared the streets, or who, in a vain effort to save their lives, were overpowered by our men in their last place of refuge; and several were thrust half-way up the large Spanish chimneys.

General Mackinnon, who directed the attack of the 88th Regiment, and accompanied it in its advance, ordered it to retire to the position it had previously occupied, and as he was unwilling to attract the notice of the enemy too much, he desired that this operation should be performed by companies. My company, or at least the one I commanded, was the first to quit the town. As I approached the spot where Sir Edward Pakenham was on horseback, he said, “Where are you going, sir?” not at the moment recognising the regiment. I told him that General Mackinnon had desired me to retire, but of course if he wished me to stay I would. “Oh no,” said he, “the 88th have done enough for this day; but the regiment that replaces you would do well to bring a keg of ammunition, each man, in addition to his sixty rounds, for, while I have life, the town shall not be taken.” He was in a violent perspiration and covered with dust, his left hand bound round with his pocket-handkerchief as if he had been wounded; he was ever in the hottest of the fire, and if the whole fate of the battle depended upon his own personal exertions he could not have fought with more devotion.

Lord Wellington caused the village of Fuentes d'Oñoro to be occupied by five thousand fresh troops. The Light Division was selected for this service, and it passed us about five o’clock on the evening of the 5th. General Craufurd took the command of this post, and every precaution was resorted to to strengthen the town; temporary walls were thrown up at the bottom of the streets, carts and doors were put into requisition to barricade every pass, but, as it turned out, those observances were unnecessary, for Marshal Masséna, giving up all idea of success, declined any further contest. Thus was the object of his movement frustrated—a battle lost, and Almeida left to its fate.

Our wounded were removed to Villa Formosa, and Lord Wellington decided upon diminishing his front. By this movement we lost our communication with Sabugal, but we effectually covered Almeida, and still possessed the pass of Castello Bom. At half-past nine o’clock at night, the regiments which had so bravely defended Fuentes d'Oñoro passed us, as we were about to lie down to rest; they were much fatigued, and we were struck with their diminished appearance. The 79th Highlanders, in particular, attracted our notice. We asked them what their loss had been; they said, thirteen officers, including their colonel, Cameron, and more than three hundred rank and file; and the soldiers were nearly correct in their estimate.^[13]

13. The 79th, by the official return, lost 32 killed, 152 wounded, and 94 missing—a total of 278.

The next day, the 6th, we had no fighting; each army kept its position, and Villa Formosa continued to be the receptacle for the wounded. This village is beautifully situated on a craggy hill, at the foot of which runs the little stream of Oñoro. Its healthful and tranquil situation, added to its proximity to the scene of action, rendered it a most desirable place for our wounded; the perfume of several groves of fruit-trees was a delightful contrast to the smell that was accumulating on the plain below; and the change of scene, added to a strong desire to see a brother officer, who had been wounded in the action of the 5th, led me thither.

On reaching the village, I had little difficulty in finding out the hospitals, as every house might be considered one, but it was some time before I discovered that which I wished for. At last I found it. It consisted of four rooms; in it were pent up twelve officers, all badly wounded. The largest room was twelve feet by eight, and this apartment had for its occupants four officers. Next the door, on a bundle of straw, lay two of the 79th Highlanders, one of them shot through the spine. He told me he had been wounded in the streets of Fuentes on the 5th, and that although he had felt a good deal of pain before, he was now perfectly easy and free from suffering. I was but ill skilled in surgery, but, nevertheless, I disliked the account he gave of himself. I passed on to my friend; he was sitting on a table, his back resting against a wall. A musket-ball had penetrated his right breast, and passing through his lungs came out at his back, and he owed his life to the great skill and attention of Doctors Stewart and Bell, of the 3rd Division. The quantity of blood taken from him was astonishing; three, and sometimes four, times a day they would bleed him, and his recovery was one of those extraordinary instances seldom witnessed. In an inner room was a young officer shot through the head. His was a hopeless case. He was quite delirious and obliged to be held down by two men; his strength was astonishing, and more than once, while I remained, he succeeded in escaping from the grasp of his attendants. The Scotch officer’s servant soon after came in, and, stooping down, inquired of his master how he felt, but received no reply; he had half turned on his face; the man took hold of his master’s hand, it was still warm, but the pulse had ceased—he was dead. The suddenness of this young man’s death sensibly affected his companions; and I took leave of my friend and companion, Owgan, fully impressed with the idea that I should never see him again.

I was on my return to the army when my attention was arrested by an extraordinary degree of bustle, and a kind of half-stifled moaning, in the yard of a quinta, or nobleman’s house. I looked through the grating, and saw about two hundred wounded soldiers waiting to have their limbs amputated, while others were arriving every moment. It would be difficult to convey an idea of the frightful appearance of these men: they had been wounded on the 5th, and this was the 7th; their limbs were swollen to an enormous size. Some were sitting upright against a wall, under the shade of a number of chestnut-trees, and many of these were wounded in the head as well as limbs. The ghastly countenances of these poor fellows presented a dismal sight. The streams of gore, which had trickled down their cheeks, were quite hardened with the sun, and gave their faces a glazed and copper-coloured hue; their eyes were sunk and fixed, and what between the effects of the sun, of exhaustion, and despair, they resembled more a group of bronze figures than anything human—there they sat, silent and statue-like, waiting for their turn to be carried to the amputating tables. At the other side of the yard lay several whose state was too helpless for them to sit up; a feeble cry from them occasionally, to those who were passing, for a drink of water, was all that we heard.

A little farther on, in an inner court, were the surgeons. They were stripped to their shirts and bloody. Curiosity led me forward; a number of doors, placed on barrels, served as temporary tables, and on these lay the different subjects upon whom the surgeons were operating; to the right and left were arms and legs, flung here and there, without distinction, and the ground was dyed with blood.

Dr. Bell was going to take off the thigh of a soldier of the 50th, and he requested I would hold down the man for him. He was one of the best-hearted men I ever met with, but, such is the force of habit, he seemed insensible to the scene that was passing around him, and with much composure was eating almonds out of his waistcoat-pockets, which he offered to share with me, but, if I got the universe for it, I could not have swallowed a morsel of anything. The operation upon the man of the 50th was the most shocking sight I ever witnessed; it lasted nearly half an hour, but his life was saved.

Turning out of this place towards the street, I passed hastily on. Near the gate an assistant-surgeon was taking off the leg of an old German sergeant of the 60th. The doctor was evidently a young practitioner, and Bell, our staff-surgeon, took much trouble in instructing him. It is a tolerably general received opinion, that when the saw passes through the marrow the patient suffers most pain; but such is not the case. The first cut and taking up the arteries is the worst. While the old German was undergoing the operation, he seemed insensible of pain when the saw was at work; now and then he would exclaim in broken English, as if wearied, “Oh! mine Got, is she off still?” but he, as well as all those I noticed, felt much when the knife was first introduced, and all thought that red-hot iron was applied to them when the arteries were taken up. The young doctor seemed much pleased when he had the sergeant fairly out of his hands, and it would be difficult to decide whether he or his patient was most happy; but, from everything I could observe, I was of opinion that the doctor made his début on the old German’s stump. I offered up a few words—prayers they could not be called—that, if ever it fell to my lot to lose any of my members, the young fellow who essayed on the sergeant should not be the person to operate on me.

Outside of this place was an immense pit to receive the dead from the general hospital, which was close by. Twelve or fifteen bodies were flung in at a time, and covered with a layer of earth, and so on, in succession, until the pit was filled. Flocks of vultures already began to hover over this spot, and Villa Formosa was now beginning to be as disagreeable as it was the contrary a few days before. This was my first and last visit to an amputating hospital, and I advise young gentlemen, such as I was then, to avoid going near a place of the kind, unless obliged to do so—mine was an accidental visit.

Masséna, renouncing all hope of gaining any advantage by a fresh attack upon our position, recrossed the river Agueda with his army, and left the governor of Almeida to shift for himself. On the 8th and 9th we heard several explosions in that direction, but although we guessed that the governor was destroying some of the magazines previous to his surrender, it never for a moment occurred to us that he meditated what he afterwards executed with too much success. On the morning of the 11th we heard, with the greatest astonishment, that the garrison, after having successfully passed through our lines that encompassed the place, had escaped, with trifling loss, by the pass of San-Felices, and succeeded in reaching the French lines on the Agueda. This was certainly the most extraordinary event that took place during the campaign, and the regiments that formed the blockade afforded amusement for several days to our men; the soldiers used to say that the regiment nearest the town was asleep, and that the others were watching them.

The command of the army of Portugal was now transferred to Marshal Marmont, Duke of Ragusa. Masséna returned to France in ill-health and ill-humour, in consequence of the bad success of his combinations since his elevation to the command of this army, which, it was confidently stated, was to drive the English from the Peninsula. With the qualifications of our new antagonist we were unacquainted, except that having been for a considerable time aide-de-camp to the Emperor Napoleon, we looked upon him as something out of the common way—a kind of rara avis. However, we found him out before we parted with him.

For six days we had not seen our baggage, and were in consequence without a change of linen. We lay among dirty straw for those six days.

I had no nightcap, and my socks scarcely deserved the name. But this was not all; those who had beards—at this epoch I had not—suffered them to grow to a hideous length, and their faces were so altered as to be scarcely recognisable even by themselves. They might be compared to old Madame Rendau, who, not having consulted her glass since her husband’s death, on seeing her own face in the mirror of another lady, exclaimed, “Who is this?” We all agreed that it would be delightful to bathe ourselves in the river, and half a dozen of us walked out to the banks of the Dos Casas. Having washed ourselves, we had a hankering for clean linen, and as none of us could be brought to the opinion of the Irishman, who said it was a charming thing when he turned his shirt, we proceeded to wash ours, and as this was the first appearance of any of us in the character of a blanchisseur, we all acquitted ourselves badly, but I worst of all. In an unguarded moment I flung my unfortunate shirt a little farther than the others did, and, not being quite as light as the day it came out of the fold, it sank to the bottom, and I never saw it afterwards. I soon discovered the cause of my mishap; a small whirlpool (which at the moment appeared in my eyes little inferior to Charybdis) carried it into its vortex, and left me shivering and shaking like a solitary heron watching for a fish by the bank of a river. This accident, however, happened at rather a lucky time; our men had ransacked the French knapsacks with tolerable effect, and as soon as my mishap was known to the men of the company, I was not long wanting the means to supply my loss. At another time this might not have been a matter of easy accomplishment, because it is well known in the army that the men in my regiment were never remarkable for carrying too great a kit.

The soldiers, as was their custom, made a display of the different articles they had picked up: some had watches, others rings, and almost all money. There cannot be a stronger contrast between the soldiers of any two nations than between those of France and England: the former, cautious, temperate, and frugal, ever with something valuable about him; the latter the most unthinking, least cautious, and intemperate animal in existence, with seldom a farthing in his pocket, although his pay is three times greater than the others. A French soldier was quite a prize to one of our fellows, and the produce of the plunder gained served him for drink for a week, and sometimes for a fortnight!

I knew a soldier once make a capture of thirteen hundred dollars, which having squandered, this same man, in less than a year afterwards, was tried for his life for a highway robbery, and he would have been hanged had not a Portuguese woman proved an alibi in his favour. The booty taken by him (for I am convinced the woman swore falsely to save his life) amounted to six vintems, or about eightpence sterling! Under similar circumstances a French soldier would have hoarded up his treasure, and, on his return home, dressed like a gentleman, and gone to all the dancing-houses in his neighbourhood.