Napoleonic Literature
Kincaid: Adventures in the Rifle Brigade
Chapter III

Other People, Myself, and my Regiment. Retreat to the Lines of Torres Vedras. Leave Coimbra, followed by a select group of Natives. Ford the Streets of Condacia in good spirits. A Provost-Marshal and his favourites. A fall. Convent of Batalha. Turned out of Allenquer. Passed through Sobral. Turned into Arruda. Quartering of the Light Division, and their Quarters at Arruda. Burial of an only Child. Lines of Torres Vedras. Difference of opinion between Masséna and Myself. Military Customs.

Having now brought myself regularly into the field under the renowned Wellington, should this narrative by any accident fall into the hands of others who served there and who may be unreasonable enough to expect their names to be mentioned in it, let me tell them that they are most confoundedly mistaken! Every man may write a book for himself, if he likes, but this is mine; and, as I borrow no man's story, neither will I give any man a particle of credit for his deeds, as I have got so little for my own that I have none to spare. Neither will I mention any regiment but my own, if I can possibly avoid it, for there is none other that I like so much, and none else so much deserves it; for we were the light regiment of the Light Division, and fired the first and last shot in almost every battle, siege and skirmish in which the army was engaged during the war.
    In stating the foregoing resolution, however, with regard to regiments, I beg to be understood as identifying our old and gallant associates, the forty-third and fifty-second, as a part of ourselves, for they bore their share in everything, and I love them as I hope to do my better half, (when I come to be divided) wherever we were, they were; and although the nature of our arm generally gave us more employment in the way of skirmishing, yet, whenever it came to a pinch, independent of a suitable mixture of them among us, we had only to look behind to see a line in which we might place a degree of confidence almost equal to our hopes in heaven; nor were we ever disappointed. There never was a corps of riflemen in the hands of such supporters!
    October 1st, 1810. — We stood to our arms at daylight this morning on a hill in front of Coimbra; and, as the enemy soon after came on in force, we retired before them through the city. The civil authorities, in making their own hurried escape, had totally forgotten that they had left a gaol full of rogues unprovided for, and who, as we were passing near them, made the most hideous screaming for relief. Our quartermaster-general very humanely took some men, who broke open the doors, and the whole of them were soon seen howling along the bridge into the wide world in the most delightful delirium, with the French dragoons at their heels.
    We retired the same night through Condacia, where the commissariat were destroying quantities of stores that they were unable to carry off. They handed out shoes and shirts to anyone that would take them, and the streets were literally running ankle deep with rum, in which the soldiers were dipping their cups and helping themselves as they marched along. The commissariat, some years afterwards, called for a return of the men who had received shirts and shoes on this occasion, with a view of making us pay for them, but we very briefly replied that the one half were dead and the other half would be d - d before they would pay any thing.
    We retired this day to Leiria, and at the entrance of the city saw an English and a Portuguese soldier dangling by the bough of a tree — the first summary example I had ever seen of martial law.
    A provost-marshal on actual service is a character of considerable pretensions, as he can flog at pleasure, always moves about with a guard of honour, and though he cannot altogether stop a man's breath without an order, yet, when he is ordered to hang a given number out of a crowd of plunderers, his friends are not particularly designated, so that he can invite anyone that he takes a fancy to to follow him to the nearest tree, where he, without further ceremony, relieves him from the cares and troubles of this wicked world.
    There was only one furnished shop remaining in the town at this time, and I went in to see what they had got to sell; but I had scarcely passed the threshold when I heard a tremendous clatter at my heels, as if the opposite house had been pitched in at the door after me; and, on wheeling round to ascertain the cause, I found, when the dust cleared away, that a huge stone balcony, with iron railings, which had been over the door, overcharged with a collection of old wives looking at the troops, had tumbled down; and in spite of their vociferations for the aid of their patron saints, some of them were considerably damaged.
    We halted one night near the convent of Batalha, one of the finest building in Portugal.
    It has, I believe, been clearly established that a living man in ever so bad health is better than two dead ones; but it appears that the latter will vary in value according to circumstances, for we found here, in very high preservation, the body of King John of Portugal, who founded the edifice, in commemoration of some victory, God knows how long ago; and though he would have been reckoned a highly valuable antique within a glass case in an apothecary's hall in England, yet he was held so cheap in his own house that the very finger which most probably pointed the way to the victory alluded to is now in the baggage of the Rifle Brigade! Reader, point not thy finger at me, for I am not the man.
    Retired on the morning of a very wet, stormy day to Allenquer, a small town on the top of a mountain, surrounded by still higher ones; and, as the enemy had not shewn themselves the evening before, we took possession of the houses, with a tolerable prospect of being permitted the unusual treat of eating a dinner under cover.
    But by the time that the pound of beef was parboiled, and while an officer of dragoons was in the act of reporting that he had just patrolled six leagues to the front without seeing any signs of an enemy, we saw the indefatigable rascals on the mountain opposite our windows just beginning to wind round us with a mixture of cavalry and infantry, the wind blowing so strong that the long tail of each particular horse stuck as stiffly out in the face of the one behind, as if the whole had been strung upon a cable and dragged by the leaders. We turned out a few companies and kept them in check while the division was getting under arms, spilt the soup as usual, and transferring the smoking solids to the haversack for future mastication, we continued our retreat.
    We past through the town of Sobral soon after dark the same night; and, by the aid of some rushlights in a window, saw two apothecaries, the very counterparts of Romeo's, who were the only remnants of the place and had braved the horrors of war for the sake of the gallipots, and in the hopes that their profession would be held sacred. They were both on the same side of the counter, looking each other point blank in the face, their sharp noses not three inches apart, and neither daring to utter a syllable, but both listening intensely to the noise outside. Whatever their courage might have been screwed up to before, it was evident that we were indebted for their presence now to their fears; and their appearance altogether was so ludicrous that they excited universal shouts of laughter as they came within view of the successive divisions.
    Our long retreat ended at midnight on our arrival at the handsome little town of Arruda, which was destined to be the piquet post of our division, in front of the fortified lines. The quartering of our division, whether by night or by day, was an affair of about five minutes. The quartermaster-general preceded the troops, accompanied by the brigade-majors and the quartermasters of regiments; and after marking off certain houses for his general and staff, he split the remainder of the town between the majors of brigades: they in their turn provided for their generals and staff, and then made a wholesale division of streets among the quartermasters of regiments, who, after providing for their commanding officers and staff, retailed the remaining houses, in equal proportions, among the companies; so that, by the time that the regiment arrived, there was nothing to be done beyond the quartermaster's simply telling each captain, "Here's a certain number of houses for you."
    Like all other places on the line of march, we found Arruda totally deserted, and its inhabitants had fled in such a hurry that the keys of their house doors were the only things they carried away; so that when we got admission, through our usual key,* we were not a little gratified to find that the houses were not only regularly furnished, but most of them had some food in the larder and a plentiful supply of good wines in the cellar; and, in short, that they only required a few lodgers capable of appreciating the good things which the gods had provided; and the deuce is in it if we were not the very folks who could!
    Unfortunately for ourselves, and still more so for the proprietors, we never dreamt of the possibility of our being able to keep possession of the town, as we thought it a matter of course that the enemy would attack our lines; and, as this was only an outpost, that it must fall into their hands; so that, in conformity with the system upon which we had all along been retreating, we destroyed everything that we could not use ourselves, to prevent their benefiting by it. But, when we continued to hold the post beyond the expected period, our indiscretion was visited on our own heads, as we had destroyed in a day what would have made us luxurious for months. We were in hopes that, afterwards, the enemy would have forced the post, if only for an hour, that we might have saddled them with the mischief., but, as they never even made the attempt, it left it in the power of ill-natured people to say that we had plundered one of our own towns. This was the only instance during the war in which the light division had reason to blush for their conduct, and even in that we had the law martial on our side, whatever gospel law might have said against it.
    The day after our arrival Mr Simmons and myself had the curiosity to look into the church, which was in nowise injured, and was fitted up in a style of magnificence becoming such a town. The body of a poor old woman was there, lying dead before the altar. It seemed as if she had been too infirm to join in the general flight, and had just dragged herself to that spot by a last effort of nature and expired. We immediately determined that as her's was the only body that we had found in the town, either alive or dead, that she should have more glory in the grave than she appeared to have enjoyed on this side of it; and, with our united exertions, we succeeded in raising a marble slab which surmounted a monumental vault and was beautifully embellished with armorial blazonry, and, depositing the body inside, we replaced it again carefully. If the personage to whom it belonged happened to have a tenant of his own for it soon afterwards he must have been rather astonished at the manner in which the apartment was occupied.
    Those who wish a description of the lines of Torres Vedras must read Napier, or some one else who knows all about them; for my part I know nothing, excepting that I was told that one end of them rested on the Tagus and the other somewhere on the sea; and I saw with my own eyes a variety of redoubts and field-works on the various hills which stand between. This, however, I do know, that we have since kicked the French out of more formidable looking and stronger places; and, with all due deference be it spoken, I think that the Prince of Essling ought to have tried his luck against them, as he could only have been beaten by fighting, as he afterwards was without it! And if he thinks that he would have lost as many men by trying as he did by not trying, he must allow me to differ in opinion with him!
    In very warm or very wet weather it was customary to put us under cover in the town during the day, but we were always moved back to our bivouac on the heights during the night; and it was rather amusing to observe the different notions of individual comfort in the selection of furniture which officers transferred from their town house to their no house on the heights. A sofa, or a mattress, one would have thought most likely to be put in requisition; but it was not unusual to see a full-length looking-glass preferred to either.
    The post of the company to which I belonged on the heights was near a redoubt, immediately behind Arruda; there was a cattle-shed near it, which we cleaned out and used as a sort of quarter. On turning out from breakfast one morning we found that the butcher had been about to offer up the usual sacrifice of a bullock to the wants of the day; but it had broken loose, and, in trying to regain his victim, had caught it by the tail, which he twisted round his hand; and, when we made our appearance, they were performing a variety of evolutions at a gallop, to the great amusement of the soldiers; until an unlucky turn brought them down upon our house, which had been excavated out of the face of the hill, on which the upper part of the roof rested, and in they went, heels over head, butcher, bullock, tail and all, bearing down the whole fabric with a tremendous crash.
    N.B. It was very fortunate that we happened to be outside; and very unfortunate, as we were now obliged to remain out.
    We certainly lived in clover while we remained here; everything we saw was our own, seeing no one there who had a more legitimate claim; and every field was a vineyard. Ultimately it was considered too much trouble to pluck the grapes, as there were a number of poor native thieves in the habit of coming from the rear every day to steal some, so that a soldier had nothing to do but to watch one until he was marching off with his basket full, when he would very deliberately place his back against that of the Portuguese and relieve him of his load without wasting any words about the bargain. The poor wretch would follow the soldier to the camp in the hope of having his basket returned, as it generally was, when emptied.
    Masséna, conceiving any attack upon our lines to be hopeless, as his troops were rapidly mouldering away with sickness and want, at length began to withdraw them nearer to the source of his supplies.
    He abandoned his position opposite to us on the night of the 9th of November, leaving some stuffed-straw gentlemen occupying their usual posts. Some of them were cavalry, some infantry, and they seemed such respectable representatives of their spectral predecessors that, in the haze of the following morning, we thought that they had been joined by some well-fed ones from the rear; and it was late in the day before we discovered the mistake and advanced in pursuit. In passing by the edge of a mill-pond after dark our adjutant and his horse tumbled in, and, as the latter had no tail to hold on by, they were both very nearly drowned.
    It was late ere we halted for the night on the side of the road near to Allenquer, and I got under cover in a small house, which looked as if it had been honoured as the headquarters of the tailor-general of the French army, for the floor was strewed with variegated threads, various complexioned buttons, with particles and remnants of cabbage; and, if it could not boast of the flesh and fowl of Noah's ark, there was an abundance of the creeping things which it were to be wished that that commander had not left behind. We marched before daylight next morning, leaving a rousing fire in the chimney, which shortly became too small to hold it; for we had not proceeded far before we perceived that the well-dried thatched roof had joined in the general blaze, a circumstance which caused us no little uneasiness, for our general, the late Major-general Robert Crawford, had brought us up in the fear of our master; and, as he was a sort of person who would not see a fire of that kind in the same light that we did, I was by no means satisfied that my commission lay snug in my pocket until we had fairly marched it out of sight, and in which we were aided not a little by a slight fire of another kind, which he was required to watch with the advanced guard.
    On our arrival at Vallé, on the 12th of Nov. we found the enemy behind the Rio Maior, occupying the heights of Santarem, and exchanged some shots with their advanced posts. In the course of the night we experienced one of those tremendous thunderstorms which used to precede the Wellington victories, and which induced us to expect a general action on the following day. I had disposed myself to sleep in a beautiful green hollow way, and, before I had time even to dream of the effects of their heavy rains, I found myself floating most majestically towards the river in a fair way of becoming food for the fishes. I ever after gave those inviting-looking spots a wide birth, as I found that they were regular watercourses.
    Next morning our division crossed the river and commenced a false attack on the enemy's left, with a view of making them show their force; and it was to have been turned into a real attack if their position was found to be occupied by a rearguard only; but after keeping up a smart skirmishing fire the greater part of the day Lord Wellington was satisfied that their whole army was present and we were consequently withdrawn.
    This affair terminated the campaign of 1810. Our division took possession of the village of Vallé and its adjacents, and the rest of the army was placed in cantonments, under whatever cover the neighbouring country afforded.
    Our battalion was stationed in some empty farm-houses near the end of the bridge of Santarem, which was nearly half a mile long; and our sentries and those of the enemy were within pistol-shot of each other on the bridge.
    I do not mean to insinuate that a country is never so much at peace as when at open war, but I do say that a soldier can nowhere sleep so soundly, nor is he anywhere so secure from surprise, as when within musket-shot of his enemy.
    We lay four months in this situation, divided only by a rivulet, without once exchanging shots. Every evening at the hour
"When bucks to dinner go,
And cits to sup,"
it was our practice to dress for sleep: we saddled our horses, buckled on our armour, and lay down with the bare floor for a bed and a stone for a pillow, ready for anything, and reckless of everything but the honour of our corps and country; for I will say (to save the expense of a trumpeter) that a more devoted set of fellows were never associated.
    We stood to our arms every morning at an hour before daybreak and remained there until a grey horse could be seen a mile off, (which is the military criterion by which daylight is acknowledged and the hour of surprise past,) when we proceeded to unharness and to indulge in such luxuries as our toilet and our table afforded.
    The Maior, as far as the bridge of Vallé, was navigable for the small craft from Lisbon, so that our table, while we remained there, cut as respectable a figure as regular supplies of rice, salt fish, and potatoes could make it; not to mention that our pigskin was, at all times, at least three-parts full of a common red wine, which used to be dignified by the name of black-strap. We had the utmost difficulty, however, in keeping up appearances in the way of dress. The jacket, in spite of shreds and patches, always maintained something of the original about it; but woe befel the regimental small-clothes, and they could only be replaced by very extraordinary apologies, of which I remember that I had two pair at this period; one of a common brown Portuguese cloth, and the other, or Sunday's pair, of black velvet. We had no women with the regiment and the ceremony of washing a shirt amounted to my servant's taking it by the collar and giving it a couple of shakes in the water and then hanging it up to dry. Smoothing-irons were not the fashion of the times, and, if a fresh well-dressed aide-de-camp did occasionally come from England, we used to stare at him with about as much respect as Hotspur did at his "waiting gentlewoman."
    The winter here was uncommonly mild. I am not the sort of person to put myself much in the way of ice, except on a warm summer's day; but the only inconvenience that I felt in bathing in the middle of December was the quantity of leeches that used to attach themselves to my personal supporters, obliging me to cut a few capers to shake them off after leaving the water.
    Our piquet-post at the bridge became a regular lounge for the winter to all manner of folks.
    I used to be much amused at seeing our naval officers come up from Lisbon riding on mules, with huge ships' spy-glasses, like six-pounders, strapped across the backs of their saddles. Their first question invariably was, "Who is that fellow there?" (pointing to the enemy's sentry close to us,) and, on being told that he was a Frenchman, "Then why the devil don't you shoot him?"
    Repeated acts of civility passed between the French and us during this tacit suspension of hostilities. The greyhounds of an officer followed a hare on one occasion into their lines, and they very politely returned them.
    I was one night on piquet at the end of the bridge when a ball came from the French sentry and struck the burning billet of wood round which we were sitting, and they sent in a flag of truce next morning to apologize for the accident and to say that it had been done by a stupid fellow of a sentry who imagined that people were advancing upon him. We admitted the apology, though we knew well enough that it had been done by a malicious rather than a stupid fellow, from the situation we occupied.
    General Junot, one day reconnoitring, was severely wounded by a sentry, and Lord Wellington, knowing that they were at that time destitute of everything in the shape of comfort, sent to request his acceptance of anything that Lisbon afforded that could be of any service to him; but the French general was too much of a politician to admit the want of anything.

* Transmitting a rifle-ball through the key hole: it opens every lock. Return to paragraph text.

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