Deeds that Won the Empire Part 5

For hours the battle spluttered and smouldered amongst the skirmishers in the ravines, and some gallant episodes followed. Towards evening, for example, a French company, with signal audacity, and apparently on its own private impulse, seized a cl.u.s.ter of houses only half a musket shot from the light division, and held it while Craufurd scourged them with the fire of twelve guns. They were only turned out at the point of the bayonet by the 43rd. But the battle was practically over, and the English had beaten, by sheer hard fighting, the best troops and the best marshals of France.

In the fierceness of actual fighting, Busaco has never been surpa.s.sed, and seldom did the wounded and dying lie thicker on a battlefield than where the hostile lines struggled together on that fatal September 27.

The _melee_ at some points was too close for even the bayonet to be used, and the men fought with fists or with the b.u.t.t-end of their muskets. From the rush which swept Regnier's men down the slope the Connaught Rangers came back with faces and hands and weapons literally splashed red with blood. The firing was so fierce that Wellington, with his whole staff, dismounted. Napier, however--one of the famous fighting trio of that name, who afterwards conquered Scinde--fiercely refused to dismount, or even cover his red uniform with a cloak. "This is the uniform of my regiment," he said, "and in it I will show, or fall this day." He had scarcely uttered the words when a bullet smashed through his face and shattered his jaw to pieces. As he was carried past Lord Wellington he waved his hand and whispered through his torn mouth, "I could not die at a better moment!" Of such stuff were the men who fought under Wellington in the Peninsula.

OF NELSON AND THE NILE

"Britannia needs no bulwarks, No towers along the steep; Her march is o'er the mountain waves, Her home is on the deep.

With thunders from her native oak, She quells the floods below, As they roar on the sh.o.r.e When the stormy winds do blow; When the battle rages loud and long, And the stormy winds do blow.

The meteor flag of England Shall yet terrific burn, Till danger's troubled night depart, And the star of peace return.

Then, then, ye ocean warriors, Our song and feast shall flow To the fame of your name, When the storm has ceased to blow; When the fiery fight is heard no more, And the storm has ceased to blow."

--CAMPBELL.

Aboukir Bay resembles nothing so much as a piece bitten out of the Egyptian pancake. A crescent-shaped bay, patchy with shoals, stretching from the Rosetta mouth of the Nile to Aboukir, or, as it is now called, Nelson Island, that island being simply the outer point of a sandbank that projects from the western horn of the bay. Flat sh.o.r.es, grey-blue Mediterranean waters, two horns of land six miles apart, that to the north projecting farthest and forming a low island--this, ninety-eight years ago, was the scene of what might almost be described as the greatest sea-fight in history.

On the evening of August 1, 1798, thirteen great battleships lay drawn up in a single line parallel with the sh.o.r.e, and as close to it as the sandbanks permitted. The head ship was almost stern on to the shoal which, running out at right angles to the sh.o.r.e, forms Aboukir Island.

The nose of each succeeding ship was exactly 160 yards from the stern of the ship before it, and, allowing for one or two gaps, each ship was bound by a great cable to its neighbour. It was a thread of beads, only each "bead" was a battleship, whose decks swarmed with brave men, and from whose sides gaped the iron lips of more than a thousand heavy guns. The line was not exactly straight; it formed a very obtuse angle, the projecting point at the centre being formed by the _Orient_, the biggest warship at that moment afloat, a giant of 120 guns.

Next to her came the _Franklin_, of 80 guns, a vessel which, if not the biggest, was perhaps the finest sample of naval architecture in existence. The line of ships was more than one mile and a half long, and consisted of the gigantic flagship, three ships of the line of 80 guns, and nine of 74 guns. In addition, it had a fringe of gunboats and frigates, while a battery of mortars on the island guarded, as with a sword of fire, the gap betwixt the headmost ship and the island.

This great fleet had convoyed Napoleon, with 36,000 troops crowded into 400 transports, from France, had captured Malta on the voyage, and three weeks before had safely landed Napoleon and his soldiers in Egypt. The French admiral, Brueys, knew that Nelson was coming furiously in his track, and after a consultation with all his captains he had drawn up his ships in the order which we have described, a position he believed to be una.s.sailable. And at three o'clock on the afternoon of August 1, 1798, his look-outs were eagerly watching the white topsails showing above the lee line, the van of Nelson's fleet.

Napoleon had kept the secret of his Egyptian expedition well, and the great Toulon fleet, with its swarm of transports, had vanished round the coast of Corsica and gone off into mere s.p.a.ce, as far as a bewildered British Admiralty knew. A fleet of thirteen 74-gun ships and one of 50 guns was placed under Nelson's flag. He was ordered to pursue and destroy the vanished French fleet, and with characteristic energy he set out on one of the most dramatic sea-chases known to history. With the instinct of genius he guessed that Napoleon's destination was Egypt; but while the French fleet coasted Sardinia and went to the west of Sicily, Nelson ran down the Italian coast to Naples, called there for information, found none, and, carrying all sail, swept through the straits of Messina.

On the night of June 22 the two fleets actually crossed each other's tracks. The French fleet, including the transports, numbered 572 vessels, and their lights, it might be imagined, would have lit up many leagues of sea. Yet, through this forest of hostile masts the English fleet, with keen eyes watching at every masthead, swept and saw nothing. Nelson, for one thing, had no frigates to serve as eyes and ears for him; his fleet in sailor-like fashion formed a compact body, three parallel lines of phantom-like pyramids of canvas sweeping in the darkness across the floor of the sea. Above all a haze filled the night; and it is not too much to say that the drifting grey vapour which hid the French ships from Nelson's lookout men changed the face of history.

Nelson used to explain that his ideal of perfect enjoyment would be to have the chance of "trying Bonaparte on a wind"; and if he had caught sound of bell or gleam of lantern from the great French fleet, and brought it to action in the darkness of that foggy night, can any one doubt what the result would have been? Nelson would have done off the coast of Sicily on June 22, 1798, what Wellington did on June 18, 1815; and in that case there would have been no Marengo or Austerlitz, no retreat from Moscow, no Peninsular war, and no Waterloo. For so much, in distracted human affairs, may a patch of drifting vapour count!

Nelson, in a word, overran his prey. He reached Alexandria to find the coast empty; doubled back to Sicily, zigzagging on his way by Cyprus and Candia; and twelve hours after he had left Alexandria the topsails of the French fleet hove in sight from that port. Napoleon's troops were safely landed, and the French admiral had some four weeks in which to prepare for Nelson's return, and at 3 P.M. on August 1 the gliding topsails of the _Swiftsure_ above Aboukir Island showed that the tireless Englishman had, after nearly three months of pursuit, overtaken his enemy.

The French, if frigates be included, counted seventeen ships to fourteen, and ship for ship they had the advantage over the British alike in crew, tonnage, and weight of fire. In size the English ships scarcely averaged 1500 tons; the French ships exceeded 2000 tons.

Nelson had only seventy-fours, his heaviest gun being a 32-pounder.

The average French 80-gun ship in every detail of fighting strength exceeded an English ninety-eight, and Brueys had three such ships in his fleet; while his own flagship, the _Orient_, was fully equal to two English seventy-fours. Its weight of ball on the lower deck alone exceeded that from the whole broadside of the _Bellerophon_, the ship that engaged it. The French, in brief, had an advantage in guns of about twenty per cent., and in men of over thirty per cent. Brueys, moreover, was lying in a carefully chosen position in a dangerous bay, of which his enemies possessed no chart, and the head of his line was protected by a powerful sh.o.r.e battery.

Nothing in this great fight is more dramatic than the swiftness and vehemence of Nelson's attack. He simply leaped upon his enemy at sight. Four of his ships were miles off in the offing, but Nelson did not wait for them. In the long pursuit he had a.s.sembled his captains repeatedly in his cabin, and discussed every possible manner of attacking the French fleet. If he found the fleet as he guessed, drawn up in battle-line close in-sh.o.r.e and anch.o.r.ed, his plan was to place one of his ships on the bows, another on the quarter, of each French ship in succession.

It has been debated who actually evolved the idea of rounding the head of the French line and attacking on both faces. One version is that Foley, in the _Goliath_, who led the British line, owed the suggestion to a keen-eyed middy who pointed out that the anchor buoy of the headmost French ship was at such a distance from the ship itself as to prove there was room to pa.s.s. But the weight of evidence seems to prove that Nelson himself, as he rounded Aboukir Island, and scanned with fierce and questioning vision Brueys' formation, with that swiftness of glance in which he almost rivalled Napoleon, saw his chance in the gap between the leading French ship and the sh.o.r.e.

"Where a French ship can swing," he held, "an English ship can either sail or anchor." And he determined to double on the French line and attack on both faces at once. He explained his plan to Berry, his captain, who in his delight exclaimed, "If we succeed, what will the world say?" "There is no 'if' in the case," said Nelson; "that we shall succeed is certain; who will live to tell the story is a very different question."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BATTLE OF THE NILE. Doubling on the French Line.

From Allen's "Battles of the British Navy."]

Brueys had calculated that the English fleet must come down perpendicularly to his centre, and each ship in the process be raked by a line of fire a mile and a half long; but the moment the English ships rounded the island they tacked, hugged the sh.o.r.e, and swept through the gap between the leading vessel and the land. The British ships were so close to each other that Nelson, speaking from his own quarter-deck, was able to ask Hood in the _Zealous_, if he thought they had water enough to round the French line. Hood replied that he had no chart, but would lead and take soundings as he went.

So the British line came on, the men on the yards taking in canvas, the leadsmen in the chains coolly calling the soundings. The battery roared from the island, the leading French ships broke into smoke and flame, but the steady British line glided on. The _Goliath_ by this time led; and at half-past five the shadow of its tall masts cast by the westering sun fell over the decks of the _Guerrier_, and as Foley, its captain, swept past the Frenchman's bows, he poured in a furious broadside, bore swiftly up, and dropped--as Nelson, with that minute attention to detail which marks a great commander, had ordered all his captains--an anchor from the stern, so that, without having to "swing,"

he was instantly in a fighting position on his enemy's quarter. Foley, however, dropped his anchor a moment too late, and drifted on to the second ship in the line; but Hood, in the _Zealous_, coming swiftly after, also raked the _Guerrier_, and, anchoring from the stern at the exact moment, took the place on its quarter Foley should have taken.

The _Orion_ came into battle next, blasted the unfortunate _Guerrier_, whose foremast had already gone, with a third broadside, and swept outside the _Zealous_ and _Goliath_ down to the third ship on the French line. A French frigate, the _Serieuse_, of thirty-six guns, anch.o.r.ed inside the French line, ventured to fire on the _Orion_ as it swept past, whereupon Saumarez, its commander, discharged his starboard broadside into that frigate. The _Serieuse_ reeled under the shock of the British guns, its masts disappeared like chips, and the unfortunate Frenchman went down like a stone; while Saumarez, laying himself on the larboard bow of the _Franklin_ and the quarter of the _Peuple Sovrain_, broke upon them in thunder. The _Theseus_ followed hard in the track of the _Orion_, raked the unhappy _Guerrier_ in the familiar fashion while crossing its bows, then swept through the narrow water-lane betwixt the _Goliath_ and _Zealous_ and their French antagonists, poured a smashing broadside into each French ship as it pa.s.sed, then shot outside the _Orion_, and anch.o.r.ed with mathematical nicety off the quarter of the _Spartiate_. The water-lane was not a pistol-shot wide, and this feat of seamanship was marvellous.

Miller, who commanded the _Theseus_, in a letter to his wife described the fight. "In running along the enemy's line in the wake of the _Zealous_ and _Goliath_, I observed," he says, "their shot sweep just over us, and knowing well that at such a moment Frenchmen would not have coolness enough to change their elevation, I closed them suddenly, and, running under the arch of their shot, reserved my fire, every gun being loaded with two, and some with three round shot, until I had the _Guerrier's_ masts in a line, and her jib-boom about six feet clear of our rigging. We then opened with such effect that a second breath could not be drawn before her main and mizzen-mast were also gone.

This was precisely at sunset, or forty-four minutes past six."

The _Audacious_, meanwhile, was too impatient to tack round the head of the French line; it broke through the gap betwixt the first and second ships of the enemy, delivered itself, in a comfortable manner, of a raking broadside into both as it pa.s.sed, took its position on the larboard bow of the _Conquerant_, and gave itself up to the joy of battle. Within thirty minutes from the beginning of the fight, that is, five British line-of-battle ships were inside the French line, comfortably established on the bows or quarters of the leading ships.

Nelson himself, in the _Vanguard_, anch.o.r.ed on the outside of the French line, within eighty yards of the _Spartiate's_ starboard beam; the _Minotaur_, the _Bellerophon_, and the _Majestic_, coming up in swift succession, and at less than five minutes' interval from each other, flung themselves on the next ships.

How the thunder of the battle deepened, and how the quick flashes of the guns grew brighter as the night gathered rapidly over sea, must be imagined. But Nelson's swift and brilliant strategy was triumphant.

Each ship in the French van resembled nothing so much as a walnut in the jaws of a nut-cracker. They were being "cracked" in succession, and the rear of the line could only look on with agitated feelings and watch the operation.

The fire of the British ships for fury and precision was overwhelming.

The head of the _Guerrier_ was simply shot away; the anchors hanging from her bows were cut in two; her main-deck ports, from the bowsprit to the gangway, were driven into one; her masts, fallen inboard, lay with their tangle of rigging on the unhappy crew; while some of her main-deck beams--all supports being torn away--fell on the guns. Hood, in the _Zealous_, who was pounding the unfortunate _Guerrier_, says, "At last, being tired of killing men in that way, I sent a lieutenant on board, who was allowed, as I had instructed him, to hoist a light, and haul it down as a sign of submission." But all the damage was not on the side of the French. The great French flagship, the _Orient_, by this time had added her mighty voice to the tumult, and the _Bellerophon_, who was engaged with her, had a bad time of it. It was the story of Tom Sayers and Heenan over again--a dwarf fighting a giant. Her mizzen-mast and mainmast were shot away, and after maintaining the dreadful duel for more than an hour, and having 200 of her crew struck down, at 8.20 P.M. the _Bellerophon_ cut her cable and drifted, a disabled wreck, out of the fire.

Meanwhile the four ships Nelson had left in the offing were beating furiously up to add themselves to the fight. Night had fallen, by the time Troubridge, in the _Culloden_, came round the island; and then, in full sight of the great battle, the _Culloden_ ran hopelessly ash.o.r.e!

She was, perhaps, the finest ship of the British fleet, and the emotions of its crew and commander as they listened to the tumult, and watched through the darkness the darting fires of the t.i.tanic combat they could not share, may be imagined. "Our army," according to well-known authorities, "swore terribly in Flanders." The expletives discharged that night along the decks and in the forecastle of the Culloden would probably have made even a Flanders veteran open his eyes in astonishment.

The _Swiftsure_ and the _Alexander_, taking warning by the _Culloden's_ fate, swept round her and bore safely up to the fight. The _Swiftsure_, bearing down through the darkness to the combat, came across a vessel drifting, dismasted and lightless, a mere wreck.

Holliwell, the captain of the _Swiftsure_, was about to fire, thinking it was an enemy, but on second thoughts hailed instead, and got for an answer the words, "_Bellerophon_; going out of action, disabled." The _Swiftsure_ pa.s.sed on, and five minutes after the _Bellerophon_ had drifted from the bows of the _Orient_ the _Swiftsure_, coming mysteriously up out of the darkness, took her place, and broke into a tempest of fire.

At nine o'clock the great French flagship burst into flame. The painters had been at work upon her on the morning of that day, and had left oil and combustibles about. The nearest English ships concentrated their fire, both of musketry and of cannon, on the burning patch, and made the task of extinguishing it hopeless. Brueys, the French admiral, had already been cut in two by a cannon shot, and Casablanca, his commodore, was wounded. The fire spread, the flames leaped up the masts and crept athwart the decks of the great ship. The moon had just risen, and the whole scene was perhaps the strangest ever witnessed--the great burning ship, the white light of the moon above, the darting points of red flame from the iron lips of hundreds of guns below, the drifting battle-smoke, the cries of ten thousand combatants--all crowded into an area of a few hundred square yards!

The British ships, hanging like hounds on the flanks of the Orient, knew that the explosion might come at any moment, and they made every preparation for it, closing their hatchways, and gathering their firemen at quarters. But they would not withdraw their ships a single yard! At ten o'clock the great French ship blew up with a flame that for a moment lit sh.o.r.e and sea, and a sound that hushed into stillness the whole tumult of the battle. Out of a crew of over a thousand men only seventy were saved! For ten minutes after that dreadful sight the warring fleets seemed stupefied. Not a shout was heard, not a shot fired. Then the French ship next the missing flagship broke into wrathful fire, and the battle awoke in full pa.s.sion once more.

The fighting raged with partial intermissions all through the night, and when morning broke Brueys' curved line of mighty battleships, a mile and a half long, had vanished. Of the French ships, one had been blown up, one was sunk, one was ash.o.r.e, four had fled, the rest were prizes. It was the most complete and dramatic victory in naval history. The French fought on the whole with magnificent courage; but, though stronger in the ma.s.s, Nelson's strategy and the seamanship of his captains made the British stronger at every point of actual battle.

The rear of the French line did not fire a shot or lose a man. The wonder is that when Nelson's strategy was developed, and its fatal character understood, Villeneuve, who commanded the French rear, and was a man of undoubted courage, did not cut his cables, make sail, and come to the help of his comrades. A few hundred yards would have carried him to the heart of the fight. Can any one doubt whether, if the positions had been reversed, Nelson would have watched the destruction of half his fleet as a mere spectator? If nothing better had offered, he would have pulled in a wash-tub into the fight!

Villeneuve afterwards offered three explanations of his own inertness--(1) he "could not spare any of his anchors"; (2) "he had no instructions"! (3) "on board the ships in the rear the idea of weighing and going to the help of the ships engaged occurred to no one"! In justice to the French, however, it may be admitted that nothing could surpa.s.s the fierceness and valour with which, say, the _Tonnant_ was fought. Its captain, Du Pet.i.t-Thouars, fought his ship magnificently, had first both his arms and then one of his legs shot away, and died entreating his officers not to strike. Of the ten French ships engaged, the captains of eight were killed or wounded. Nelson took the seven wounded captains on board the _Vanguard_, and, as they recovered, they dined regularly with him. One of the captains had lost his nose, another an eye, another most of his teeth, with musket-shots, &c.

Nelson, who himself had been wounded, and was still half-blind as a result, at one of his dinners offered by mischance a case of toothpicks to the captain on his left, who had lost all his teeth. He discovered his error, and in his confusion handed his snuff-box to the captain on his right, who had lost his nose!

What was the secret of the British victory? Nelson's brilliant strategy was only possible by virtue of the magnificent seamanship of his captains, and the new fashion of close and desperate fighting, which Hood and Jarvis and Nelson himself had created. It is a French writer, Captain Graviere, who says that the French naval habit of evading battle where they could, and of accepting action from an enemy rather than forcing it upon him, had ruined the _morale_ of the French navy. The long blockades had made Nelson's captains perfect seamen, and he taught them that close fighting at pistol-shot distance was the secret of victory. "No English captain," he said, "can do wrong who, in fight, lays a ship alongside an enemy." It was a captain of Nelson's school--a Scotchman--who at Camperdown, unable, just as the action began, to read some complicated signal from his chief, flung his signal-book on the deck, and in broad Scotch exclaimed, "D---- me! up with the h.e.l.lem an' gang in the middle o't." That trick of "ganging into the middle o't" was irresistible.

The battle of the Nile destroyed the naval prestige of France, made England supreme in the Mediterranean, saved India, left Napoleon and his army practically prisoners in Egypt, and united Austria, Russia, and Turkey in league against France. The night battle in Aboukir Bay, in a word, changed the face of history.

THE FUSILEERS AT ALBUERA

"And nearer, fast and nearer, Doth the red whirlwind come; And louder still, and still more loud, From underneath that rolling cloud, Is heard the trumpet's war-note proud, The trampling and the hum.

And plainly, and more plainly, Now through the gloom appears, Far to left and far to right, In broken gleams of dark-blue light, The long array of helmets bright, The long array of spears."

--MACAULAY.

Albuera is the fiercest, bloodiest, and most amazing fight in the mighty drama of the Peninsular war. On May 11, 1811, the English guns were thundering sullenly over Badajos. Wellington was beyond the Guadiana, pressing Marmont; and Beresford, with much pluck but little skill, was besieging the great frontier fortress. Soult, however, a master of war, was swooping down from Seville to raise the siege. On the 14th he reached Villafranca, only thirty miles distant, and fired salvos from his heaviest guns all through the night to warn the garrison of approaching succour. Beresford could not both maintain the siege and fight Soult; and on the night of the 13th he abandoned his trenches, burnt his gabions and fascines, and marched to meet Soult at Albuera, a low ridge, with a shallow river in front, which barred the road to Badajos. As the morning of May 16, 1811, broke, heavy with clouds, and wild with gusty rain-storms, the two armies grimly gazed at each other in stern pause, ere they joined in the wrestle of actual battle.

All the advantages, save one, were on the side of the French. Soult was the ablest of the French marshals. If he had not Ney's _elan_ in attack, or Ma.s.sena's stubborn resource in retreat, yet he had a military genius, since Lannes was dead, second only to that of Napoleon himself. He had under his command 20,000 war-hardened infantry, 40 guns, and 4000 magnificent cavalry, commanded by Latour Maubourg, one of the most brilliant of French cavalry generals. Beresford, the British commander, had the dogged fighting courage, half Dutch and half English, of his name and blood; but as a commander he was scarcely third-rate. Of his army of 30,000, 15,000 were Spanish, half drilled, and more than half starved--they had lived for days on horse-flesh--under Blake, a general who had lost all the good qualities of Irish character, and acquired all the bad ones peculiar to Spanish temper. Of Beresford's remaining troop 8000 were Portuguese; he had only 7000 British soldiers.