by Dean King
“Nevertheless,” we remarked, “you would, no doubt, make a good figure in action still, if you were put to your mettle?”
“I don’t know that,” said one of them; “look at the men, they are all worn out, and disheartened; if they are not sleeping, or eating whatever they can get hold of, they are gazing at the vessels and thinking only of home. Like us, indeed, they are wishing for anything but an attack from those confounded fellows over the way.”
Upon this we parted; they to their welcome dinner, while we retraced our steps amongst the weary soldiers, who certainly did look in such a miserable plight that it seemed as if the enemy would have little more to do than gallop across the valley and catch them all napping.
General Napier, however, remarks, cleverly enough, in his account of this campaign, that, “although a British army may be gleaned in a retreat, it cannot be reaped:” and of this truth abundant proofs were furnished within a few minutes after the wretched appearance of the troops had drawn from us such disparaging reflections. I had but just asked the commanding officer of one of the regiments, I forget which, near the top of the position, “Whether he thought anything could possibly rouse the men up?” In reply, he said, with a very expressive smile and a slight nod of his head, implying that even then he suspected what was about to take place, “You’ll see by-and-bye, sir, if the French there choose to come over.”
These words had hardly been uttered, when a movement along the whole enemy’s line became apparent even to our inexperienced eyes. Almost at the instant when this stir was observed, a furious cannonading opened from a battery mounting eleven guns (eight and twelve pounders), of the existence of which, I believe, no person on our side had previously the smallest suspicion, so completely, up to this moment, had it been masked. This formidable battery, which overhung the right of the English position, was so skilfully placed that it raked nearly the half of the British line, and, of course, galled the troops excessively Had we remained to share the pic-nic with our friends of the 95th, we must have partaken, close at hand, of the first salvo of round and grape from these French guns, and, in all probability, the story of this great battle might never have fallen into naval hands.
The effect of these characteristic preparatory notes of war, thundering over the line, was extremely curious. At the first discharge from the French battery, the whole body of the British troops, from one end of the position to the other, started on their feet, snatched up their arms, and formed in line with as much regularity and apparent coolness as if they had been exercising on the parade in Hyde Park. I really could scarcely believe my eyes when I beheld these men spring from the ground, as if touched by a magic wand, full of life and vigour, though but one minute before they had all been stretched out listlessly in the sun. I have already noticed the silence which reigned over the field; now, however, there could be heard a loud hum, and occasionally a jolly shout and many a peal of laughter, along a distance of nearly a mile. In the midst of these sounds, the peculiar sharp “click-click-click” of fixing bayonets fell distinctly on the ear very ominously.
Many thousand stand of new arms had been issued to the troops from the stores at Corunna; and I could observe the men rapping the flints, tightening the screws, and tossing about their firelocks, with the air of veteran sportsmen eager to try their new pieces. The officers, who up to this moment had seemed so languid, might be seen everywhere brushing along the line, speaking to the sergeants, and making arrangements, which we did not pretend to understand. Aides-de-camp galloped past us, dropping their orders into the ears of the commanding officers of the different corps, as they moved swiftly along the position.
Not a single face could now be seen turning towards the ships, and we found it difficult to obtain an answer to any of our questions. All had become animation and cheerfulness, over minds from which, but a short time before, it seemed as if every particle of spirit had fled. There appeared to be much conversation going on, and not a little jesting amongst the men, while they braced themselves up, buckled on their knapsacks, and made various other arrangements, preparatory to the hard work they foresaw they would have to perform before the night fell. Their kits, or stock of clothes (none of them very large), being soon placed on their shoulders, the army, in a few minutes, stood perfectly ready to meet that of the enemy, whose troops, in three immense close columns, by this time were pelting rapidly down the side of the opposite heights.
I have no precise notion how many men might be in each of these square, solid masses—I think I have heard it stated at six or seven thousand. They kept themselves steadily together, looked as dark as the blackest thundercloud, and, I must say, their appearance, on the whole, was the most imposing and formidable thing I recollect to have seen, either before or since.
As there could be mustered on the English side only a dozen small guns, our artillery made but a feeble return to the fierce attack of the enemy’s great raking battery, which continued to tear open the English ranks in dreadful style. Presently, however, the two armies became so completely intermixed in personal conflict that the enemy’s cannon-shot could no longer be directed with certainty against their antagonists, without an equal chance of hitting their friends, and they ceased to fire at the troops.
When it was found, at the commencement of the action, that the English guns could make no serious impression on the heavy artillery of the battery, they had been turned upon the huge French columns, which, by this time, had reached the level space, less than a mile in width, lying between the bases of the two ranges of hills. The round and grape with which the enemy’s columns were thus saluted, as they came across the valley, in some degree avenged the havoc wrought on the right, and part of the centre of our line, by the raking broadsides of the battery so often alluded to.
Mr. Oughton and I stood near the centre of the position when the battle commenced; but as the ground thereabouts was rather flat, we found it difficult to see well into the valley; we therefore climbed an abrupt rising ground on the left, on which two or three regiments were posted, as we thought, in reserve. I see no mention, however, of these corps in the accounts of the battle; and I presume they must have belonged to the main line. About half-way up this rising ground, but rather lower than the spot where these troops had been stationed, stood three English field-pieces. These guns worked away briskly at the French columns, as soon as the enemy came within range of shot, and they still fired at the rear of the three great masses, the heads of which by this time had actually mingled in the plain with the British troops in and round the village of Elvina.
The intermixture of the combatants on this day was probably rendered greater than usual in consequence of the peculiar nature of the ground. It could hardly be called a plain, for it was crossed in all directions by roads cut into the earth like deep trenches, eight or ten feet below the surface; while on the ground above lay a complete net-work of walls, hedges, and rows of olive-trees and aloes, of such intricacy, that I should imagine it nearly impossible to have formed fifty men abreast anywhere. Thus, each corn-field, or little patch of garden-ground, became the scene of a separate fight.
We were quite near enough to see the soldiers scrambling over the walls and meeting one another in these open spaces or amongst the trees; while the smoke and the flashes of musketry from the hollow roads showed that a subterranean sort of warfare was going on at the same time. To us the field of battle certainly looked as complete a scene of confusion as anything could possibly be; and I suppose it must have presented nearly a similar aspect even to the more practised observation of the commander of the destructive French battery on our right; for about the period I speak of, as I have already stated, he ceased firing at the troops and turned all his attention towards the few English field-pieces.
Heretofore we had been viewing the fray from a gentle slope, several hundred yards in front of these English guns; but so considerably below them in level, that their shot passed far over our heads. When this great flanking battery, however, s
et seriously about silencing the fire of our artillery, which, as I have mentioned before, kept playing away upon those parts of the French columns not yet mingled with their antagonists, our position, as mere spectators, became rather an unpleasant one. The small six-pound shot of the English field-pieces had whistled over us merrily enough; but when the heavy metal of the enemy came spinning and screaming about our ears, the story told quite differently. Some of these balls went completely over the English guns, grazed the crest of the ridge, and, falling on the high road, rolled down the other side of the hill half-way to Corunna. Several of them hit our guns and made a fine scatter amongst the artillery-men; while every shot that fell short came plump into the little hollow space where we nautical men had established ourselves, and from which we had proposed to view the battle at our ease, as if it had merely been a panoramic representation of war, instead of one of the severest struggles in which two angry nations had ever been engaged.
The purser and I now held a counsel of war, and the proverbial result of such deliberations followed. We agreed unanimously, that, under existing circumstances, a retreat was the proper measure. The French gunners, as if to quicken our prudent resolution, just at that moment pitched a shot so critically that it fell between the two amateurs and threw the dirt and stones quite over us. The feeling produced on both our minds by this broad hint was that the shot must have been aimed expressly at us; but although this was probably not the case, we took the warning in good part, and moved off towards a rising ground still farther to the left, and two or three hundred yards out of the direct line of fire.
Here we enjoyed the additional advantage of making acquaintance with the colonel and the other officers of one of the regiments of the reserve. The colonel, whose name I do not recollect, held a pocket spy-glass in his hand and very kindly described to us the nature of the different movements as they took place. By this time the centre, and a portion of the left of the English line, gradually became engaged in the valley; but the severest fighting of all appeared at the village of Elvina, which we could easily distinguish was sometimes in possession of one party, sometimes of the other. The uncertainty, indeed, of what was going on became greatly augmented by the broken nature of the ground, which, I suppose, prevented any manoeuvre on the grand scale; but this circumstance may probably have taken nothing from the fierceness of those mortal struggles, which we could discover, from time to time, in the open spaces when a puff of wind blew the smoke on one side.
The road leading into Corunna, and lying between us and the severest part of the action, passed at no great distance, and was soon covered along its whole length with wounded men; some of whom were walking alone, some supported by their comrades less severely hurt, and a good many had been placed in carts. We observed Sir David Baird led or carried off the field; but from the smoke and dust we could not exactly make out which, though I think he was walking.7 Shortly afterwards another and a larger group passed near us, bearing along a wounded officer. It was evident from the appearance which this second party presented that some person of consequence was under their charge; and while we were trying to discover who it could possibly be that engaged so much attention, an officer rode up the hill. After he had delivered his message, he pointed to the party which had just gone by, and told us, that in the centre was carried along their brave commander-in-chief, Sir John Moore, who, a few minutes before, had been struck off his horse by a cannon-shot.
The command now devolved upon Sir John Hope, whom we could readily distinguish, from his being surrounded not only by his staff, but by the aides-de-camp of his two wounded senior officers.
I shall not seek to describe how greatly the interest of this scene, so new to us in all its parts, and so remarkable in itself, was heightened by these proofs of the serious nature of the conflict. The colonel of the regiment along with which we had taken up our station, had just said to us, “Well, gentlemen, I don’t know how you get on at sea, but I certainly never saw on land a hotter fire than this;” when a breathless messenger came galloping up, with orders to carry his brigade as smartly as he possibly could down to the right, to support some regiments which he described as being severely pressed in that quarter. In a few minutes we found ourselves quite alone on the summit of the ridge, watching, with a painful degree of interest, the movements of our newly-made acquaintances, who trotted off, at double-quick time, right down the hill, and ere long were lost sight of in the thick of the action. So completely, indeed, were they enveloped in smoke and dust that we could only distinguish their presence by the movement in advance of the British line, which took place on the right almost immediately after their arrival.
The battle, which had commenced nearly at the foot of the English hill, had gradually, though not without several fluctuations, moved itself forward towards the French side of the valley; and the much-contested village of Elvina remained finally in our possession.
I believe I am not strictly correct in saying that this village was opposite to the right of the British army, though it was not far from that portion of the position which rested on the elevated ground. We could observe some smart fighting still farther to the right, beyond the termination of the ridge, between the English reserve and the French cavalry. But of this I can record nothing with confidence, because the scene of action lay too far off for us to see distinctly, or even to guess what they were about. I remember, however, hearing one of the officers of the regiment with whom we were conversing say that the British troops would be in an awkward scrape if the enemy should succeed in turning our right, and afterwards push themselves down the valley, so as to take up a position between Corunna and the English army. Instead of this happening, the left of the French was fortunately repulsed, and even driven considerably back, though I believe it was never fairly turned.
As the battle did not commence till between two and three o’clock in the afternoon, and was very obstinately contested on both sides, no great time was allowed, before the night set in, for those important manoeuvres which form so much of the interest of battles. All was sheer hard fighting. The eventual advantage, however, remained manifestly on the side of the English; for it became easy to distinguish, towards the end of the day, that the struggle was carried on at a position removed considerably in advance of that on which the English had stood when first attacked. What might have been the result if the ground had been clear of hedges, ditches, walls, and deep roads, I cannot pretend to say; but it struck me at the time, when looking down with a sort of bird’s-eye view on the battle, that, cut up as the ground was, there could be little communication to the right and left between the different bodies of fighting men, and consequently that each regiment or mass must have acted very much for itself; somewhat in the way ships of war manage in a general action. Cavalry, I imagine, could not have been brought into play on such ground; and, indeed, there were no horses in the battle, on our side at least, except those of the field-officers and their aides-de-camp.
What I regretted most was not seeing the French battery taken; and, from General Napier’s account, it appears that if General Fraser’s division had been brought into action along with the reserve at the close of the day, this purpose might have been accomplished; after which the enemy could hardly have escaped a signal overthrow.8
It must have cost Sir John Hope a great effort of military self-denial to have resisted such a temptation; “but, on the other hand,” observes the judicious historian, “to continue the action in the dark was to tempt fortune; for the enemy were still the most numerous, and their ground was strong. The disorder the French were in offered such a favourable opportunity to get on board the ships that Sir John Hope, upon whom the command of the army had devolved, satisfied with having repulsed the attack, judged it more prudent to pursue the original plan of embarking during the night; and this operation was effected without delay, the arrangements being so complete that neither confusion nor difficulty occurred.”9
UNFORTUNATELY, WE could not remain till the v
ery last upon our elevated look-out station, from whence we had commanded so complete a view of this hard-fought field, being obliged to come down shortly after sunset, that we might get on board, if possible, before dark. We took the shortest way from the top of the hill by a little footpath, leading along a steep bank, till we gained the great Corunna high road. By this time the whole space between the field of battle and the town had become pretty well crowded with wounded men, mingled with stragglers of all kinds, wending their way, as well as they might, towards the point of embarkation.
The first person we met, on coming to the road, was an elderly officer, I think of the 50th regiment, partly supported by a private soldier, and partly leaning on his sword. We helped him to gain a seat near the door of a little cottage, which we could see had been used as a temporary hospital, from the numerous wounded, dead, and dying men stretched all round it. This situation being on the face of the hill next the town, had not been exposed to the direct fire of the enemy, while the chance of any stray shots plunging into it, over the top of the ridge, seemed not great.
The old officer’s face soon turned so pale that a streak of blood flowing along his brow and cheek, though not broader than a thread, appeared as conspicuous as if it had been a line drawn on a sheet of paper. That he had received a serious wound was evident; but we had not the least idea he was dying.
“I should like the doctor to look at my head,” he said; and in a minute or two the surgeon came from the cottage. He took off the officer’s cap, cut away some of the hair, looked closely at the wound, and then paused.