With Moore at Corunna Part 8

"I am, nevertheless, glad to have been of service to you, gentlemen," he said, courteously; "at least you are Irishmen, and I have many good friends countrymen of yours. And you have still another claim upon us all, for are you not here to aid us to shake off this French domination? I hope that you are comfortable, but judging from what I see and hear when pa.s.sing I fear that your lodging is a somewhat noisy one."

"You may well say that, Father; and we do our full share towards making it so; but having the room makes all the difference to us. They have no time to cook downstairs, and it is done by our own servants; but it is handy to have the wine and other things within call, and if we always do as well, we shall have good cause to feel mighty contented; for barring that we are rather crowded, we are just as well off here as we were at home, saving only in the quality of the spirits. Now, Father, we cannot ask you up there, seeing that it is your own village, but if you would like to take a walk through the camps we should be glad to show you what there is to be seen, and can give you a little of the real cratur. It is not much of it that we have been able to bring ash.o.r.e, for the general is mighty stiff in the matter of baggage, but I doubt whether there is one of us who did not manage to smuggle a bottle or two of the real stuff hidden in his kit."

The priest accepted the invitation, and was taken through the brigade camp, staying some time in that of the Mayos, and astonishing some of the soldiers by chatting to them in English, and with a brogue almost as strong as their own. He then spent half an hour in O'Grady's tent, and sampled the whisky, which he p.r.o.nounced excellent, and of which his entertainer insisted upon his taking a bottle away with him.

Three days later it was known in camp that two French divisions had been set in motion against them, the one from Abrantes to the east under Loison, the other from the south under Laborde. Junot himself remained at Lisbon. The rising in the south, and the news of the British landing caused an intense feeling among the population, and the French general feared that at any moment an insurrection might break out. The natural point of junction of these two columns would be at Leirya. That night orders were issued for the tents of the division to which the Mayo regiment belonged to be struck before daylight, and the troops were to be under arms and ready to march at six o'clock.

"Good news!" O'Grady said, as he entered the mess-room at four o'clock in the afternoon, after having learned from the colonel the orders for the next morning; "our brigade is to form the advanced guard, and we are to march at six tomorrow."

A general exclamation of pleasure broke from the five or six officers present. "We shall have the first of the fun, boys; hand me that horn, Terence. Here is to Sir Arthur; good-luck to him, and bad cess to the French!"

The toast was drunk with some laughter. "Now we are going to campaign in earnest," he went on; "no more wine swilling, no more devilled ham---- "

"No more spirits, O'Grady," one of the group cut in; "and as for the wine, you have drunk your share, besides twice your share of the spirits."

"Whin there is nothing to do, Debenham, I can take me liquor in moderation."

"I have never remarked that, O'Grady," one of the others put in.

"In great moderation," O'Grady said, gravely, but he was again interrupted by a shout of laughter.

"Ye had to be helped home last night, O'Grady, and it took Hoolan a quarter of an hour to wake you this morning. I heard him say, 'Now, master dear, the bugle will sound in a minute or two; it's wake you must, or there will be a divil of botheration over it.' I looked in, and there you were. Hoolan was standing by the side of you shaking his head gravely, as if it was a hopeless job that he had in hand, and if I had not emptied a water-bottle over you, you would never have been on parade in time."

"Oh! it was you, was it?" O'Grady said, wrathfully. "Hoolan swore by all the saints that he had not seen who it was. Never mind, me boy, I will be even wid ye yet; the O'Grady is not to be waked in that fashion; mind I owe you one, though I am not saying that I should have been on parade in time if you had not done it; I only just saved my bacon."

"And hardly that," Terence laughed, "for the adjutant was down upon you pretty sharply; your coatee was all b.u.t.toned up wrong; your hair had not been brushed, and stuck up all ways below your shako; your sword-belt was all awry, and you looked worse than you did when I brought you home."

"Well, it is a poor heart that never rejoices, Terence. We must make a night of it, boys; if the tents are to be struck before daylight it will be mighty little use your turning in."

"You won't catch me sitting up all night," Terence said, "with perhaps a twenty-mile march in the morning, and maybe a fight at the end of it. If it is to Leirya we are going it will be nearer thirty miles than twenty, and even you, seasoned vessel as you are, will find it a long walk after being up all night, and having had pretty hard work to-day."

"I cannot hold wid the general there," O'Grady said, gravely; "he has been kapeing us all at it from daybreak till night, ivery day since we landed, and marching the men's feet off. It is all very well to march when we have got to march, but to keep us tramping fifteen or twenty miles a day when there is no occasion for it is out of all reason."

"We shall march all the better for it to-morrow, O'Grady. It has been hard work, certainly, but not harder than it was marching down to Cork; and we should have a good many stragglers to-morrow if it had not been for the last week's work. We have got half a dozen footsore men in my company alone, and you would have fifty to-morrow night if the men had not had all this marching to get them fit."

"It is all very well for you, Terence, who have been tramping all over the hills round Athlone since you were a gossoon; but I am sure that if I had not had that day off duty when I showed the priest round the camp I should have been kilt."

"Here is the general order of the day," the adjutant said, as he came in with Captain O'Connor. "The general says that now the army is about to take the field he shall expect the strictest discipline to be maintained, and that all stragglers from the ranks will at once be handed over to the provost-marshal, and all offences against the peasantry or their property will be severely punished. Then there are two or three orders that do not concern us particularly, and then there is one that concerns you, Terence. The general has received a report from Colonel Corcoran of the Mayo Fusiliers stating that 'the transport carrying the left wing of that regiment was attacked by two French privateers, and would have been compelled to surrender, she being practically unarmed, had it not been for the coolness and quick wit of Ensign Terence O'Connor. Having read the report the general commanding fully concurs, and expresses his high satisfaction at the conduct of Ensign O'Connor, which undoubtedly saved from capture the wing of the regiment.'

"There, Terence, that is a feather in your cap. Sir Arthur is not given to praise unduly, and it is seldom that an ensign gets into general orders. It will do you good some day, perhaps when you least expect it."

"I am heartily pleased, my lad," Captain O'Connor said, as he laid his hand upon Terence's shoulder. "I am proud of you. I have never seen my own name in general orders, but I am heartily glad to see yours. Bedad, when I think that a couple of months ago you were running wild and getting into all sorts of mischief, it seems hard to believe that you should not only be one of us, but have got your name into general orders."

"And all for nothing, father," Terence said. "I call it a beastly shame that just because I thought of using that lugger I should be cracked up more than the others."

"It was not only that, though, Terence; those guns that crippled the lugger could not have been fired if you had not thought of putting rope round them, and that French frigate would never have left you alone had not you suggested to the major how to throw dust into their eyes. No, my lad, you thoroughly deserve the credit that you have got, and I am sure that there is not a man in the regiment who would not say the same."

"Gintlemen," Captain O'Grady said, solemnly, "we will drink to the health of Ensign Terence O'Connor; more power to his elbow!" And the toast was duly honoured.

"It is mighty good of me to propose it," O'Grady went on, after Terence had said a few words of thanks, "because I have a strong idea that in another two or three minutes I should have made just the same suggestion that you did, me lad. I knew at the time that there was a plan I wanted to propose, but sorra a word came to me lips. I was just brimful with it when you came up and took the words out of me mouth. If I had spoken first it is a brevet majority I had got, sure enough."

"You must be quicker next time, O'Grady," the adjutant said, when the laughter had subsided; "as you say, you have missed a good thing by your slowness. I am afraid your brain was still a little muddled by your indulgence the night before."

"Just the contrary, me boy; I feel that if I had taken just one gla.s.s more of the cratur me brain would have been clearer and I should have been to the fore. But I bear you no malice, Terence. Maybe the ideas would not have managed to straighten themselves out until after we had had to haul down the flag, and then it would have been too late to have been any good. It has happened to me more than once before that I have just thought of a good thing when it was too late."

"It has occurred to most of us, O'Grady," Captain O'Connor said, laughing. "Terence, you see, doesn't care for whisky, and perhaps that has something to do with his ideas coming faster than ours. Well, so we are off to-morrow; though, of course, no one knows which way we are going to march, it must be either to Leirya or along the coast road. It is a good thing Spencer has come up in time, for there is no saying how strong the French may be; though I fancy they are all so scattered about that, after leaving a garrison to keep Lisbon in order, and holding other points, Junot will hardly be able at such short notice to gather a force much superior to ours. But from what I hear there are some mighty strong positions between this and Lisbon, and if he sticks himself up on the top of a hill we shall have all our work to turn him off again."

"I fancy it will be to Leirya," the adjutant said; "the Portuguese report that one French division is at Candieros and another coming from Abrantes, and Sir Arthur is likely to endeavour to prevent them from uniting."

That evening there was a grand feast at the mess-room. The colonel had been specially invited, and every effort was made to do honour to the occasion. Tim Hoolan had been very successful in a foraging expedition, and had brought in a goose and four ducks, and had persuaded the landlord's nieces to let him and the cook have sole possession of the kitchen. The banquet was a great success, but the majority of those present did not sit very long afterwards. The colonel set the example of rising early.

"I should advise you, gentlemen, to turn in soon," he said. "I do not say where we are to march to-morrow, but I can tell you at least that the march is a very long one, and that it were best to get as much sleep as possible, for I can a.s.sure you that it will be no child's play; and I think that it is quite probable we shall smell powder before the day is over."

Accordingly, all the young officers and several of the seniors left with him, but O'Grady and several of the hard drinkers kept it up until midnight, observing, however, more moderation than usual in their potations.

There was none of the grumbling common when men are turned out of their beds before dawn; all were in high spirits that the time for action had arrived; the men were as eager to meet the enemy as were their officers; and the tents were all down and placed in the waggons before daylight. The regimental cooks had already been at work, and the officers went round and saw that all had had breakfast before they fell in. At six o'clock the whole were under arms and in their place as the central regiment in the brigade. They tramped on without a halt until eleven; then the bugle sounded, and they fell out for half an hour.

The men made a meal from bread and the meat that had been cooked the night before, each man carrying three days' rations in his haversack. There was another halt, and a longer one, at two o'clock, when the brigade rested for an hour in the shade of a grove.

"It is mighty pleasant to rest," O'Grady said, as the officers threw themselves down on the gra.s.s, "but it is the starting that bates one. I feel that my feet have swollen so that every step I take I expect my boots to burst with an explosion. Faith, if it comes to fighting I shall take them off altogether, and swing them at my belt. How can I run after the French when I am a cripple?"

"You had better take your boots off now, O'Grady," one of the others suggested.

"It is not aisy to get them off, and how should I get them on again? No; they have got there, and there they have got to stop, bad cess to them! I told Hoolan to rub grease into them for an hour last night, but the rascal was as drunk as an owl."

There was no more talking, for every man felt that an hour's sleep would do wonders for him; soon absolute quiet reigned in the grove, and continued until the bugle again called them to their feet. All knew now that it was Leirya they were making for, and that another ten miles still remained to be accomplished. A small body of cavalry which accompanied them now pushed on ahead, and when half the distance had been traversed a trooper brought back the news that the enemy had not yet reached the town. It was just six o'clock when the brigade marched in amid the cheers and wild excitement of the inhabitants. The waggons were not yet up, and the troops were quartered in the town, tired, and many of them foot-sore, but proud of the march they had accomplished, and that it had enabled them to forestall the French.

Laborde, indeed, arrived the same night at Batalha, eight miles distant, but on receiving the news in the morning that the British had already occupied Leirya, he advanced no farther. His position was an exceedingly difficult one; his orders were to cover the march of Loison from Abrantes, and to form a junction with that general; but to do so now would be to leave open the road through Alcobaca and Obidos to the commanding position at Torres Vedras. Batalha offered no position that he could hope to defend until the arrival of Loison; therefore, sending word to that general to move from Torras Novas, as soon as he reached that town, to Santarem, and then to march to join him at Rolica, he fell back to Alcobaca and then to Obidos, a town with a Moorish castle, built on a gentle eminence in the middle of a valley.

Leaving a detachment here, he retired to Rolica, six miles to the south of it. At this point several roads met, and he at once covered all the approaches to Torres Vedras, and the important port of Peniche, and could be joined by Loison marching down from Santarem.

The advanced brigade of the British force remained in quiet possession of Leirya during the next day, and on the following, the 11th of August, the main body of the army arrived, having taken two days on the march. The Portuguese force also came in under Friere. That general at once took possession of the magazines there, and although he had promised the English general that their contents should be entirely devoted to the maintenance of the English army, he divided them among his own force. Disgusted as the British commander was at this barefaced dishonesty, he was not in a position to quarrel with the Portuguese. It was essential to him that they should accompany him, not for the sake of the a.s.sistance that they would give, for he knew that none was to be expected from them, but from a political point of view. It was most important that the people at large should feel that their own troops were acting with the British, and that no feelings of jealousy or suspicion of the latter should arise. Friere was acting under the orders of the Bishop and Junta of Oporto, whose great object was to keep the Portuguese army together and not to risk a defeat, as they desired to keep this body intact in order that, if the British were defeated, they should be able to make favourable terms for themselves. Consequently, even after appropriating the whole of the stores and provisions found at Leirya, Friere continued to make exorbitant demands, and to offer a vigorous opposition to any further advance.

So far did he carry this that the British general, finding that in no other way could he get the Portuguese to advance with him, proposed that they should follow behind him and wait the result of the battle, to which Friere at last consented. The Portuguese, in fact, had no belief whatever that the British troops would be able to withstand the onslaught of the French, whom they regarded as invincible. Colonel Trant, however, one of our military agents, succeeded in inducing Friere to place 1,400 infantry and 250 cavalry under the command of Sir Arthur.

The addition of the cavalry was a very useful one, for the English had with them only 180 mounted men; the country was entirely new to them, scarcely an officer could speak the language, and there was no means, therefore, of obtaining information as to the movements of the enemy. Moving forward through Batalha, and regaining the coast road at Alcobaca, the British forces arrived at Caldas on the 15th; and on the same day Junot quitted Lisbon with a force of 2,000 infantry, 2,000 cavalry, and ten pieces of artillery, leaving 7,000 to garrison the forts and keep down the population of the city. His force was conveyed to Villa Franca by water, and the general then pushed forward to Santarem, where he found Loison, and took command of his division.

The British advanced guard, after arriving at Caldas, pushed forward, drove the French pickets out of Brilos, and then from Obidos. Here, however, a slight reverse took place. Some companies of the 95th and 60th Rifles pressed forward three miles farther in pursuit, when they were suddenly attacked in flank by a greatly superior force, and had it not been that General Spencer, whose division was but a short distance behind, pressed forward to their a.s.sistance, they would have suffered heavily; as it was they escaped with the loss of two officers and twenty-seven men killed and wounded. Their rashness, however, led to the discovery that Laborde's force had taken up a strong position in front of the village of Rolica, and that he apparently intended to give battle there.

The next day was spent in reconnoitring the French position. It was a very strong one. Rolica stood on a table-land rising in a valley, affording a view of the road as far as Obidos. The various points of defence there, and on the flank, were held by strong parties of the enemy. A mile in the rear was a steep and lofty ridge that afforded a strong second line of defence. By the side of this ridge the road pa.s.sed through a deep defile, and then mounted over a pa.s.s through the range of hills extending from the sea to the Tagus, and occupying the intermediate ground until close to Lisbon. Laborde's position was an embarra.s.sing one. If he retired upon Torres Vedras his line of communication with Loison would be lost, if he moved to meet Loison he would leave open the direct road to Lisbon, while if he remained at Rolica he had to encounter a force almost three times his own strength.

Trusting in the advantages of his position, and confident in the valour of his troops, he chose the last alternative. Very anxiously, during the day, the British officers watched the French line of defence, fearful lest the enemy would again retreat. By sunset they came to the conclusion that Laborde intended to stay where he was, and to meet them. The French, indeed, had been so accustomed to beat the Spanish and Portuguese, that they had not woke up to the fact that they had troops of a very different material facing them.

"We ought to have easy work," Major Harrison said, as the officers gathered round the fire that had been built in front of the colonel's tent; "the people here all declare that Laborde has not above 5,000 troops with him, while, counting Trant's Portuguese, we have nearly 14,000."

"There will be no credit in thrashing them with such odds as that," d.i.c.k Ryan grumbled.

"I suppose, Ryan," Major Harrison said, "if you had been in Sir Arthur's place you would have preferred remaining at Leirya until Junot could have gathered all his forces, and obtained a reinforcement of some fifty thousand or so from Spain, then you would have issued a general order saying, that as the enemy had now a hundred thousand troops ready, the army would advance and smite them."