Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2
O’MALLEY CASTLE, November 3.
Dear Charley, – Here we sit in the little parlor with your last letter, the “Times,” and a big map before us, drinking your health, and wishing you a long career of the same glorious success you have hitherto enjoyed. Old as I am – eighty-two or eighty-three (I forget which) in June – I envy you with all my heart. Luck has stood to you, my boy; and if a French sabre or a bayonet finish you now, you’ve at least had a splendid burst of it. I was right in my opinion of you, and Godfrey himself owns it now, – a lawyer, indeed! Bad luck to them! we’ve had enough of lawyers. There’s old Hennesy, – honest Jack, as they used to call him, – that your uncle trusted for the last forty years, has raised eighteen thousand pounds on the title-deeds, and gone off to America. The old scoundrel! But it’s no use talking; the blow is a sore one to Godfrey, and the gout more troublesome than ever. Drumgold is making a motion in Chancery about it, to break the sale, and the tenants are in open rebellion and swear they’ll murther a receiver, if one is sent down among them. Indeed, they came in such force into Galway during the assizes, and did so much mischief, that the cases for trial were adjourned, and the judges left with a military escort to protect them.
This, of course, is gratifying to our feelings; for, thank Providence, there is some good in the world yet. Kilmurry was sold last week for twelve thousand. Andy Blake would foreclose the mortgage, although we offered him every kind of satisfaction. This has done Godfrey a deal of harm; and some pitiful economy – taking only two bottles of claret after his dinner – has driven the gout to his head. They’ve been telling him he’d lengthen his days by this, and I tried it myself, and, faith, it was the longest day I ever spent in my life. I hope and trust you take your liquor like a gentleman and an Irish gentleman.
Kinshela, we hear, has issued an execution against the house and furniture; but the attempt to sell the demesne nearly killed your uncle. It was advertised in a London paper, and an offer made for it by an old general whom you may remember when down here. Indeed, if I mistake not, he was rather kind to you in the beginning. It would appear he did not wish to have his name known, but we found him out, and such a letter as we sent him! It’s little liking he’ll have to buy a Galway gentleman’s estate over his head, that same Sir George Dashwood! Godfrey offered to meet him anywhere he pleased, and if the doctor thought he could bear the sea voyage, he’d even go over to Holyhead; but the sneaking fellow sent an apologetic kind of a letter, with some humbug excuse about very different motives, etc. But we’ve done with him, and I think he with us.
When I had read thus far, I laid down the letter, unable to go on; the accumulated misfortunes of one I loved best in the world, following so fast one upon another, the insult – unprovoked, gratuitous insult – to him upon whom my hopes of future happiness so much depended, completely overwhelmed me. I tried to continue. Alas, the catalogue of evils went on; each line bore testimony to some farther wreck of fortune, some clearer evidence of a ruined house.
All that my gloomiest and darkest forebodings had pictured was come to pass; sickness, poverty, harassing unfeeling creditors, treachery, and ingratitude were goading to madness and despair a spirit whose kindliness of nature was unequalled. The shock of blasted fortunes was falling upon the dying heart; the convictions which a long life had never brought home – that men were false and their words a lie – were stealing over the man upon the brink of the grave; and he who had loved his neighbor like a brother was to be taught, at the eleventh hour, that the beings he trusted were perjured and forsworn.
A more unsuitable adviser than Considine, in difficulties like these, there could not be; his very contempt for all the forms of law and justice was sufficient to embroil my poor uncle still farther; so that I resolved at once to apply for leave, and if refused, and no other alternative offered, to leave the service. It was not without a sense of sorrow bordering on despair, that I came to this determination. My soldier’s life had become a passion with me. I loved it for its bold and chivalrous enthusiasm, its hour of battle and strife, its days of endurance and hardship, its trials, its triumphs; its very reverses were endeared by those they were shared with; and the spirit of adventure and the love of danger – that most exciting of all gambling – had now entwined themselves in my very nature. To surrender all these at once, and to exchange the daily, hourly enthusiasm of a campaign for the prospects now before me, was almost maddening. But still a sustaining sense of duty of what I owed to him, who, in his love, had sacrificed all for me, overpowered every other consideration. My mind was made up.
Father Rush’s letter was little more than a recapitulation of the count’s. Debt, distress, sickness, and the heart-burnings of altered fortunes filled it; and when I closed it, I felt like one over all whose views in life a dark and ill-omened cloud was closing forever. Webber’s I could not read; the light and cheerful raillery of a friend would have seemed, at such a time, like the cold, unfeeling sarcasm of an enemy. I sat down at last to write to the general, enclosing my application for leave, and begging of him to forward it, with a favorable recommendation, to headquarters.
This done, I lay down upon my bed, and overcome by fatigue and fretting, fell asleep to dream of my home and those I had left there; which, strangely too, were presented to my mind with all the happy features that made them so dear to my infancy.
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE TRENCHES“I have not had time, O’Malley, to think of your application,” said Crawfurd, “nor is it likely I can for a day or two. Read that.” So saying, he pushed towards me a note, written, in pencil, which ran thus: —
CIUDAD RODRIGO, December 18.
Dear C., – Fletcher tells me that the breaches will be practicable by to-morrow evening, and I think so myself. Come over, then, at once, for we shall not lose any time.
Yours, W.“I have some despatches for your regiment, but if you prefer coming along with me – ”
“My dear General, dare I ask for such a favor?”
“Well, come along; only remember that, although my division will be engaged, I cannot promise you anything to do. So now, get your horses ready; let’s away.”
It was in the afternoon of the following day that we rode into the large plain before Ciudad Rodrigo, and in which the allied armies were now assembled to the number of twelve thousand men. The loud booming of the siege artillery had been heard by me for some hours before; but notwithstanding this prelude and my own high-wrought expectations, I was far from anticipating the magnificent spectacle which burst upon my astonished view. The air was calm and still; a clear, blue, wintry sky stretched overhead, but below, the dense blue smoke of the deafening guns rolled in mighty volumes along the earth, and entirely concealed the lower part of the fortress; above this the tall towers and battlemented parapets rose into the thin, transparent sky like fairy palaces. A bright flash of flame would now and then burst forth from the walls, and a clanging crash of the brass metal be heard; but the unceasing roll of our artillery nearly drowned all other sounds, save when a loud cheer would burst from the trenches, while the clattering fall of masonry, and the crumbling stones as they rolled down, bespoke the reason of the cry. The utmost activity prevailed on all sides; troops pressed forward to the reliefs in the parallels; ammunition wagons moved to the front; general and staff officers rode furiously about the plain; and all betokened that the hour of attack was no longer far distant.
While all parties were anxiously awaiting the decision of our chief, the general order was made known, which, after briefly detailing the necessary arrangements, concluded with the emphatic words, “Ciudad Rodrigo must be stormed to-night.” All speculation as to the troops to be engaged in this daring enterprise was soon at an end; for with his characteristic sense of duty, Lord Wellington made no invidious selection, but merely commanded that the attack should be made by whatever divisions might chance to be that day in the trenches. Upon the Third and Light Divisions, therefore, this glorious task devolved. The former was to attack the main breach; to Crawfurd’s Division was assigned the, if possible, more difficult enterprise of carrying the lesser one; while Pack’s Portuguese Brigade were to menace the convent of La Caridad by a feint attack, to be converted into a real one, if circumstances should permit.
The decision, however matured and comprehensive in all its details, was finally adopted so suddenly that every staff officer upon the ground was actively engaged during the entire evening in conveying the orders to the different regiments. As the day drew to a close, the cannonade slackened on either side, a solitary gun would be heard at intervals, and in the calm stillness around, its booming thunder re-echoed along the valleys of the Sierra; but as the moon rose and night set in, these were no longer heard, and a perfect stillness and tranquillity prevailed around. Even in the trenches, crowded with armed and anxious soldiers, not a whisper was heard; and amidst that mighty host which filled the plain, the tramp of a patrol could be distinctly noted, and the hoarse voice of the French sentry upon the walls, telling that all was well in Ciudad Rodrigo.
The massive fortress, looming larger as its dark shadow stood out from the sky, was still as the grave; while in the greater breach a faint light was seen to twinkle for a moment, and then suddenly to disappear, leaving all gloomy and dark as before.
Having been sent with orders to the Third Division, of which the Eighty-eighth formed a part, I took the opportunity of finding out O’Shaughnessy, who was himself to lead an escalade party in M’Kinnon’s Brigade. He sprang towards me as I came forward, and grasping my hand with a more than usual earnestness, called out, “The very man I wanted! Charley, my boy, do us a service now!”
Before I could reply, he continued in a lower tone, “A young fellow of ours, Harry Beauclerc, has been badly wounded in the trenches; but by some blunder, his injury is reported as a slight one, and although the poor fellow can scarcely stand, he insists upon going with the stormers.”
“Come here, Major, come here!” cried a voice at a little distance.
“Follow me, O’Malley,” cried O’Shaughnessy, moving in the direction of the speaker.
By the light of a lantern we could descry two officers kneeling upon the ground; between them on the grass lay the figure of a third, upon whose features, as the pale light fell, the hand of death seemed rapidly stealing. A slight froth, tinged with blood, rested on his lip, and the florid blood which stained the buff facing of his uniform indicated that his wound was through the lungs.
“He has fainted,” said one of the officers, in a low tone.
“Are you certain it is fainting?” said the other, in a still lower.
“You see how it is, Charley,” said O’Shaughnessy; “this poor boy must be carried to the rear. Will you then, like a kind fellow, hasten back to Colonel Campbell and mention the fact. It will kill Beauclerc should any doubt rest upon his conduct, if he ever recover this.”
While he spoke, four soldiers of the regiment placed the wounded officer in a blanket. A long sigh escaped him, and he muttered a few broken words.
“Poor fellow, it’s his mother he’s talking of! He only joined a month since, and is a mere boy. Come, O’Malley, lose no time. By Jove! it is too late; there goes the first rocket for the columns to form. In ten minutes more the stormers must fall in.”
“What’s the matter, Giles?” said he to one of the officers, who had stopped the soldiers as they were moving off with their burden, – “what is it?”
“I have been cutting the white tape off his arm; for if he sees it on waking, he’ll remember all about the storming.”
“Quite right – thoughtfully done!” said the other; “but who is to lead his fellows? He was in the forlorn hope.”
“I’ll do it,” cried I, with eagerness. “Come, O’Shaughnessy, you’ll not refuse me.”
“Refuse you, boy!” said he, grasping my hand within both of his, “never! But you must change your coat. The gallant Eighty-eighth will never mistake their countryman’s voice. But your uniform would be devilish likely to get you a bayonet through it; so come back with me, and we’ll make you a Ranger in no time.”
“I can give your friend a cap.”
“And I,” said the other, “a brandy flask, which, after all, is not the worst part of a storming equipage.”
“I hope,” said O’Shaughnessy, “they may find Maurice in the rear. Beauclerc’s all safe in his hands.”
“That they’ll not,” said Giles, “you may swear. Quill is this moment in the trenches, and will not be the last man at the breach.”
“Follow me now, lads,” said O’Shaughnessy, in a low voice. “Our fellows are at the angle of this trench. Who the deuce can that be, talking so loud?”
“It must be Maurice,” said Giles.
The question was soon decided by the doctor himself, who appeared giving directions to his hospital-sergeant.
“Yes, Peter, take the tools up to a convenient spot near the breach. There’s many a snug corner there in the ruins; and although we mayn’t have as good an operation-room as in old ‘Steevens’s,’ yet we’ll beat them hollow in cases.”
“Listen to the fellow,” said Giles, with a shudder. “The thought of his confounded thumbscrews and tourniquets is worse to me than a French howitzer.”
“The devil a kinder-hearted fellow than Maurice,” said O’Shaughnessy, “for all that; and if his heart was to be known this moment, he’d rather handle a sword than a saw.”
“True for you, Dennis,” said Quill, overhearing him, “but we are both useful in our way, as the hangman said to Lord Clare.”
“But should you not be in the rear, Maurice?” said I.
“You are right, O’Malley,” said he, in a whisper; “but, you see, I owe the Cork Insurance Company a spite for making me pay a gout premium, and that’s the reason I’m here. I warned them at the time that their stinginess would come to no good.”
“I say, Captain O’Malley,” said Giles, “I find I can’t be as good as my word with you; my servant has moved to the rear with all my traps.”
“What is to be done?” said I.
“Is it shaving utensils you want?” said Maurice. “Would a scalpel serve your turn?”
“No, Doctor, I’m going to take a turn of duty with your fellows to-night.”
“In the breach, with the stormers?”
“With the forlorn hope,” said O’Shaughnessy. “Beauclerc is so badly wounded that we’ve sent him back; and Charley, like a good fellow, has taken his place.”
“Martin told me,” said Maurice, “that Beauclerc was only stunned; but, upon my conscience, the hospital-mates, now-a-days, are no better than the watchmakers; they can’t tell what’s wrong with the instrument till they pick it to pieces. Whiz! there goes a blue light.”
“Move on, move on,” whispered O’Shaughnessy; “they’re telling off the stormers. That rocket is the order to fall in.”
“But what am I to do for a coat?”
“Take mine, my boy,” said Maurice, throwing off an upper garment of coarse gray frieze as he spoke.
“There’s a neat bit of uniform,” continued he, turning himself round for our admiration; “don’t I look mighty like the pictures of George the First at the battle of Dettingen!”
A burst of approving laughter was our only answer to this speech, while Maurice proceeded to denude himself of his most extraordinary garment.
“What, in the name of Heaven, is it?” said I.
“Don’t despise it, Charley; it knows the smell of gunpowder as well as any bit of scarlet in the service;” while he added, in a whisper, “it’s the ould Roscommon Yeomanry. My uncle commanded them in the year ‘42, and this was his coat. I don’t mean to say that it was new then; for you see it’s a kind of heirloom in the Quill family, and it’s not every one I’d be giving it to.”
“A thousand thanks, Maurice,” said I, as I buttoned it on, amidst an ill-suppressed titter of laughter.
“It fits you like a sentry-box,” said Maurice, as he surveyed me with a lantern. “The skirts separate behind in the most picturesque manner; and when you button the collar, it will keep your head up so high that the devil a bit you’ll see except the blessed moon. It’s a thousand pities you haven’t the three-cocked hat with the feather trimming. If you wouldn’t frighten the French, my name’s not Maurice. Turn about here till I admire you. If you only saw yourself in a glass, you’d never join the dragoons again. And look now, don’t be exposing yourself, for I wouldn’t have those blue facings destroyed for a week’s pay.”
“Ah, then, it’s yourself is the darling, Doctor, dear!” said a voice behind me. I turned round; it was Mickey Free, who was standing with a most profound admiration of Maurice beaming in every feature of his face. “It’s yourself has a joke for every hour o’ the day.”
“Get to the rear, Mike, get to the rear with the cattle; this is no place for you or them.”
“Good-night, Mickey,” said Maurice.
“Good-night, your honor,” muttered Mike to himself; “may I never die till you set a leg for me.”
“Are you dressed for the ball?” said Maurice, fastening the white tape upon my arm. “There now, my boy, move on, for I think I hear Picton’s voice; not that it signifies now, for he’s always in a heavenly temper when any one’s going to be killed. I’m sure he’d behave like an angel, if he only knew the ground was mined under his feet.”
“Charley, Charley!” called out O’Shaughnessy, in a suppressed voice, “come up quickly!”
“No. 24, John Forbes – here! Edward Gillespie – here!”
“Who leads this party, Major O’Shaughnessy?”
“Mr. Beauclerc, sir,” replied O’Shaughnessy, pushing me forward by the arm while he spoke.
“Keep your people together, sir; spare the powder, and trust to your cold iron.” He grasped my hand within his iron grip, and rode on.
“Who was it, Dennis?” said I.
“Don’t you know him, Charley? That was Picton.”
CHAPTER XXXV
THE STORMING OF CIUDAD RODRIGOWhatever the levity of the previous moment, the scene before us now repressed it effectually. The deep-toned bell of the cathedral tolled seven, and scarcely were its notes dying away in the distance, when the march of the columns was heard stealing along the ground. A low murmuring whisper ran along the advanced files of the forlorn hope; stocks were loosened; packs and knapsacks thrown to the ground; each man pressed his cap more firmly down upon his brow, and with lip compressed and steadfast eye, waited for the word to move.
It came at last: the word “March!” passed in whispers from rank to rank, and the dark mass moved on. What a moment was that as we advanced to the foot of the breach! The consciousness that at the same instant, from different points of that vast plain, similar parties were moving on; the feeling that at a word the flame of the artillery and the flash of steel would spring from that dense cloud, and death and carnage, in every shape our imagination can conceive, be dealt on all sides; the hurried, fitful thought of home; the years long past compressed into one minute’s space; the last adieu of all we’ve loved, mingling with the muttered prayer to Heaven, while, high above all, the deep pervading sense that earth has no temptation strong enough to turn us from that path whose ending must be a sepulchre!
Each heart was too full for words. We followed noiselessly along the turf, the dark figure of our leader guiding us through the gloom. On arriving at the ditch, the party with the ladders moved to the front. Already some hay-packs were thrown in, and the forlorn hope sprang forward.
All was still and silent as the grave. “Quietly, my men, quietly!” said M’Kinnon; “don’t press.” Scarcely had he spoken when a musket whose charge, contrary to orders, had not been drawn, went off. The whizzing bullet could not have struck the wall, when suddenly a bright flame burst forth from the ramparts, and shot upward towards the sky. For an instant the whole scene before us was bright as noonday. On one side, the dark ranks and glistening bayonets of the enemy; on the other, the red uniform of the British columns: compressed like some solid wall, they stretched along the plain.
A deafening roll of musketry from the extreme right announced that the Third Division was already in action, while the loud cry of our leader, as he sprang into the trench, summoned us to the charge. The leading sections, not waiting for the ladders, jumped down, others pressing rapidly behind them, when a loud rumbling thunder crept along the earth, a hissing, crackling noise followed, and from the dark ditch a forked and livid lightning burst like the flame from a volcano, and a mine exploded. Hundreds of shells and grenades scattered along the ground were ignited at the same moment; the air sparkled with the whizzing fuses, the musketry plied incessantly from the walls, and every man of the leading company of the stormers was blown to pieces. While this dreadful catastrophe was enacting before our eyes, the different assaults were made on all sides; the whole fortress seemed girt around with fire. From every part arose the yells of triumph and the shouts of the assailants. As for us, we stood upon the verge of the ditch, breathless, hesitating, and horror-struck. A sudden darkness succeeded to the bright glare, but from the midst of the gloom the agonizing cries of the wounded and the dying rent our very hearts.
“Make way there! make way! here comes Mackie’s party,” cried an officer in the front, and as he spoke the forlorn hope of the Eighty-eighth came forward at a run; jumping recklessly into the ditch, they made towards the breach; the supporting division of the stormers gave one inspiring cheer, and sprang after them. The rush was tremendous; for scarcely had we reached the crumbling ruins of the rampart, when the vast column, pressing on like some mighty torrent, bore down upon our rear. Now commenced a scene to which nothing I ever before conceived of war could in any degree compare: the whole ground, covered with combustibles of every deadly and destructive contrivance, was rent open with a crash; the huge masses of masonry bounded into the air like things of no weight; the ringing clangor of the iron howitzers, the crackling of the fuses, the blazing splinters, the shouts of defiance, the more than savage yell of those in whose ranks alone the dead and the dying were numbered, made up a mass of sights and sounds almost maddening with their excitement. On we struggled; the mutilated bodies of the leading files almost filling the way.
By this time the Third Division had joined us, and the crush of our thickening ranks was dreadful; every moment some well-known leader fell dead or mortally wounded, and his place was supplied by some gallant fellow who, springing from the leading files, would scarcely have uttered his cheer of encouragement, ere he himself was laid low. Many a voice with whose notes I was familiar, would break upon my ear in tones of heroic daring, and the next moment burst forth in a death-cry. For above an hour the frightful carnage continued, fresh troops continually advancing, but scarcely a foot of ground was made; the earth belched forth its volcanic fires, and that terrible barrier did no man pass. In turn the bravest and the boldest would leap into the whizzing flame, and the taunting cheers of the enemy triumphed in derision at the effort.
“Stormers to the front! Only the bayonet! trust to nothing but the bayonet!” cried a voice whose almost cheerful accents contrasted strangely with the dead-notes around, and Gurwood, who led the forlorn hope of the Fifty-second, bounded into the chasm; all the officers sprang simultaneously after him; the men pressed madly on; a roll of withering musketry crashed upon them; a furious shout replied to it. The British, springing over the dead and dying, bounded like blood-hounds on their prey. Meanwhile the ramparts trembled beneath the tramp of the light division, who, having forced the lesser breach, came down upon the flank of the French. The garrison, however, thickened their numbers, and bravely held their ground. Man to man now was the combat. No cry for quarter, no supplicating look for mercy; it was the death struggle of vengeance and despair. At this instant an explosion louder than the loudest thunder shook the air; the rent and torn up ramparts sprang into the sky; the conquering and the conquered were alike the victims; for one of the greatest magazines had been ignited by a shell; the black smoke, streaked with a lurid flame, hung above the dead and the dying. The artillery and the murderous musketry were stilled, paralyzed, as it were, by the ruin and devastation before them. Both sides stood leaning upon their arms; the pause was but momentary; the cries of wounded comrades called upon their hearts. A fierce burst of vengeance rent the air; the British closed upon the foe; for one instant they were met; the next, the bayonets gleamed upon the ramparts, and Ciudad Rodrigo was won.
