HISTORICAL RECORD

OF THE

EIGHTY-EIGHTH REGIMENT OF FOOT,

OR

CONNAUGHT RANGERS.

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When the breaking out of the war with France in 1793 occasioned considerable additions to be made to the British army, this regiment was raised in Ireland, under commission bearing date 25th September, 1793, by Colonel the Honourable Thomas de Burgh (afterwards Earl of Clanricarde). Being recruited chiefly from the province of Connaught, it assumed, as its distinctive appellation, the name of “Connaught Rangers;” and when the new-levied regiments were numbered from Seventy-Eight upwards, received for its number Eighty-Eight. Its facings were yellow, and it bore on its colours and appointments a harp and crown, with the motto “Quis separabit?”

It was not long before the active services of the new regiment were called for in the field: in the summer of 1794 a reinforcement of seven thousand men, under the command of Major-General the Earl of Moira, was sent to join the army of the Duke of York in Flanders; and of this force the Eighty-Eighth Regiment, one thousand strong, and commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Keppel, formed part. The expedition landed at Ostend on the 26th of June, at which time the Duke of York, pressed by superior numbers, was retiring upon Antwerp; and the Earl of Moira resolved not to attempt the defence of Ostend, but to endeavour to join his Royal Highness. After a tedious and difficult march, in the face of a superior and victorious enemy, whose troops were already overrunning the country in all directions, his Lordship arrived at Alost, where he was attacked by the French, on the 6th of July, with great fury; the enemy was, however, repulsed; the steadiness and valour of the troops, with the skill of their leader, overcame all difficulties, and the junction between Lord Moira’s corps and the army under his Royal Highness the Duke of York was accomplished at Malines, on the 9th of July, when the Eighty-Eighth was formed in brigade with the Fifteenth, Fifty-third, and Fifty-Fourth Regiments.

In the harassing operations of the autumn of 1794, and in the disastrous winter campaign and retreat which followed, the Eighty-Eighth had a full share. For some time it formed part of the garrison of Bergen-op-Zoom, where it was reviewed by the Prince of Orange and some Hessian officers of high rank, and received much commendation for its appearance and efficiency. When Bergen-op-Zoom was considered no longer tenable, the Eighty-Eighth was withdrawn in the night by boats, under the command of Lieutenant (afterwards Admiral Sir Home) Popham, and proceeded to join the army near Nimeguen; in which fortress it was also subsequently placed in garrison, but was withdrawn a few nights before the surrender. It was then formed in brigade with the Eighth, Thirty-Seventh, Forty-Fourth, and Fifty-Seventh Regiments, under the command of Major-General de Burgh, and stationed near the Waal, to defend the passage of that river.

On the 27th of November, 1794, General John Reid was appointed Colonel of the Regiment, in succession to Major-General de Burgh, who was removed to the Sixty-Sixth Regiment.

The Waal having become frozen so as to bear an army with its matériel, the Eighty-Eighth retired across the Leek, and the men, being exposed to the storms of a severe winter, endured great hardships. Robert Brown states in his Journal (7th January, 1795), “Nearly half the army are sick, and the other half much fatigued with hard duty; this is now the tenth night since any of us had a night’s rest.” The enemy continuing to advance in overwhelming numbers, the army retreated during the night of the 14th of January, through a country covered with ice and snow. On the subsequent days, numbers of the men, exhausted with fatigue and want of food, were unable to proceed, and many were frozen to death by the road-side. The Eighty-Eighth proceeded to Deventer, the capital of a district in the province of Overyssel; from whence the Regiment marched on the 27th of January, and, continuing its route for several days across a region of ice and snow, arrived in the Duchy of Bremen.

In April the Regiment embarked for England; after its arrival it went into quarters at Norwich, and proceeded to fill up its thinned ranks with recruits from Ireland.

In the autumn of 1795, the Eighty-Eighth was ordered to form a part of the expedition under Major-General Sir Ralph Abercrombie, destined for the reduction of the French West India Islands, and accordingly embarked under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel (now Viscount) Beresford. The disasters which attended the sailing of this expedition form a sad page in the naval history of England, and were not easily obliterated from the memory of the survivors. Various circumstances co-operated to delay the fleet, under Admiral Christian, till a very late period of the year, and it had scarcely quitted port when it encountered a hurricane by which it was completely dispersed. Many of the ships foundered at sea; some returned disabled into English ports; some were taken by the enemy, and a small part only were able to weather the storm and proceed to their original destination. The dispersion of the Eighty-Eighth Regiment was as complete as that of the fleet; two companies, commanded by Captain Trotter, were all that reached the West Indies; of the others, some were in the captured ships, some in those which put back to England, and a crazy transport, in which one division under Captain Vandeleur was embarked, was actually blown through the Straits of Gibraltar as far into the Mediterranean as Carthagena. Here the vessel was frapped together, and with great difficulty navigated back to Gibraltar, where the men were removed out of her, and on loosening the frapping the transport fell to pieces.

The two companies which reached the West Indies, after being employed in the reduction of Grenada and the siege of St. Lucie, returned to England in the autumn of 1796, when the whole battalion was again assembled, and embarked under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Beresford for Jersey, where its numbers were once more completed to a full establishment, by recruits from Ireland.

On the 1st of January, 1799, it sailed from Portsmouth for the East Indies, still commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Beresford, and arrived at Bombay 10th June, 1800.

The next active service of the Eighty-Eighth was with the expedition which the government of India fitted out, under the command of Major-General Sir David Baird, in 1800, to co-operate with the army under Lieutenant-General Sir Ralph Abercrombie, in the expulsion of the French from Egypt.

The troops sailed from India in December, and arrived at Cosseir on the Red Sea in June, 1801. On this occasion, in the fourteen days’ march across what is called the “Long Desert” from Cosseir on the Red Sea to Kenna on the Nile, the Eighty-Eighth formed the van of Sir David Baird’s army, preceding the rest of the troops a day’s march, and it was thus the first British regiment to tread this dangerous route.

From Kenna it sailed in boats down the Nile, and reached Grand Cairo on the day on which that fortress surrendered to the British troops under Major-General (afterwards Lord) Hutchinson.

On the final evacuation of Egypt by the English, the Eighty-Eighth, instead of returning to India, as had been originally intended, proceeded to England in order to be reduced, but arrived at Portsmouth on the very day that the war with France was renewed, the 5th of May, 1803, and was consequently saved from that fate. Its numbers being then much weakened by time and casualties, and its effective strength still more so by the ophthalmia, which the soldiers had contracted in Egypt, the corps was ordered into quarters in Kent and Sussex, where it remained three years.

Amongst the measures of defence taken at this time by the government to secure the country against the invasion with which it was threatened by Buonaparte, a general order was issued from the Horse-Guards on the 2nd of December, 1803, commanding that (in case of the enemy’s effecting a landing in any part of the United Kingdom) all officers below the rank of general officers, and not attached to any particular regiment, should report themselves in person to the general officer commanding the district in which they might happen to reside; and requesting all general officers not employed on the staff to transmit immediately their addresses to the Adjutant-General. The Colonel of the Eighty-Eighth, the Veteran General Reid, was then in his 82nd year; yet he immediately obeyed the summons, and transmitted his address in a letter so spirited as to deserve a place in the memoirs of the regiment which he commanded, and upon which his gallantry reflected honour.

A second battalion was formed in 1804, and a statement of its services is given at the end of this record.

In 1805, the regiment being then quartered in East Bourne barracks, together with the Derby Militia and a detachment of the Tenth Hussars, the whole under the command of Lieut.-Colonel the Honourable Alexander Duff, of the Eighty-Eighth, a quarrel unfortunately occurred between the soldiers of the two corps, which might have led to very serious results; but which that officer, with a degree of tact and knowledge of the nature and feelings of a British soldier that were highly creditable to him, not only rendered innoxious, but converted into a source of eventual benefit to the regiment.

The result of this conduct on the part of the commanding officer was the making of the two regiments such attached friends, that when, a short time after, the Derby Militia was permitted to furnish three hundred and fifty men to regiments of the line, more than two hundred of the number volunteered for the “Connaught Rangers,” although they were beset by the officers and recruiting-parties of many English regiments, who naturally, but vainly, hoped to gain the preference over a corps then exclusively Irish. The volunteers from the Derby Militia proved as good and gallant soldiers as any in the army, and a very large portion of them were killed in the various actions in which the regiment was afterwards engaged.

It was about this period that His Royal Highness the Commander in Chief ordered Sir John Moore’s improved system of drill to be adopted throughout the army: under the active superintendence of Lieutenant-Colonel Duff, the Eighty-Eighth was quickly perfected in the new system, and was, in all respects, in the highest state of discipline. The commander of the district, Major-General Sir Arthur Wellesley, was reviewing Major-General Sir Brent Spencer’s brigade, to which the Eighty-Eighth belonged, in Crowhurst Park, near Hastings, when he received an express for the regiment to march on the following day to Portsmouth, and join the expedition under Brigadier-General Robert Craufurd. When the review was over, Sir Arthur made known the orders he had received, and addressed the regiment in very flattering terms, concluding a short and animated speech with these words:—“I wish to God I was going with you!—I am sure you will do your duty—ay—and distinguish yourselves too.” He then took leave amidst the loud cheers of the corps.

The expedition[1] sailed from Falmouth on the 12th of November, 1806, and, after remaining at St. Jago, in the Cape de Verde Islands, from the 14th of December, 1806, to the 11th of January, 1807, arrived in Table Bay, Cape of Good Hope, on the 22nd of March following. Here the Eighty-Eighth landed in marching order, and was for the first time inspected by Brigadier-General Craufurd, who expressed himself in terms of approbation of its general appearance. From the Cape the expedition sailed again on the 6th of April; called at St. Helena on the 21st, to complete its stock of water and provisions; and, quitting that island on the 26th, arrived on the 14th of June at Monte Video, then occupied by the British troops under Lieutenant-General Whitelocke, who had arrived there in May, preceding, and now assumed the command of the whole British force in South America.

On the 26th of June the army arrived off Ensenada da Baragon, a port on the river Plata, about thirty-two miles distant from Buenos Ayres, and landed on the 28th without firing a shot. The Thirty-Sixth and Eighty-Eighth regiments were brigaded together under the orders of Brigadier-General the Honourable W. Lumley. On the 29th the troops moved forward; the light brigade, composed of the rifle corps and nine light infantry companies, formed the advance, which was supported by Brigadier-General Lumley’s brigade, and followed by the other corps in succession. On the 1st of July the army was concentrated near the village of Reduction, about seven miles from Buenos Ayres, from whence it again advanced on the following day, crossed the Chuelo, a rivulet, by a ford called the Chico, and traversed the low ground on the opposite bank, at the extremity of which stands the city of Buenos Ayres.

Hitherto the enemy had offered only a very feeble resistance, which the discharge of a few round shot was sufficient to overcome; but when the right column, commanded by Major-General Leveson Gower, arrived near the Coral de Miserere, the Spaniards displayed a formidable body of infantry and cavalry, supported by a brigade of guns, with others in reserve. Brigadier-General Craufurd, placing himself at the head of his brigade, consisting of the Ninety-Fifth Rifles and light battalion, immediately made a vigorous charge; drove the enemy back in confusion; captured nine guns and a howitzer; and, profiting by the panic which had seized his opponents, pursued them into the very suburbs of the city, where his career of victory terminated, and Major-General Leveson Gower ordered the troops, first to halt, and then to take up a position for the night about a mile in the rear, near the principal slaughtering-place of the town. During the advance into the town, Captain William Parker Carroll, with his company, took a tilted waggon loaded with bread, and an eight-pounder brass gun, on which Eighty-Eighth was immediately scored with the point of a soldier’s bayonet, to mark it as a regimental prize.

The troops remained under arms during the night, exposed to heavy and incessant torrents of rain. In the morning Lieutenant-General Whitelocke summoned the governor to surrender; the Spaniards, however, made an attack upon the piquets, in which the Eighty-Eighth, which had relieved the rifle corps, lost about twenty men killed and wounded. The assault of the town was now determined upon, and the morning of the 5th fixed for carrying it into execution. For this service the Eighty-Eighth regiment was divided into wings, the right being commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Duff, and the left by Major Vandeleur, who were directed to enter the town separately by two different streets, and, having gained the banks of the river on the opposite side of the city, to possess themselves of the houses and form on the flat roofs; but what further steps they were to take, or what they were to do after so forming, was not stated.

At half-past six o’clock on the morning of the 5th of July the attack commenced: the right wing of the Eighty-Eighth, formed in sections, advanced at a rapid pace through several streets unmolested, and indeed without encountering, or even seeing, a single human being. A death-like silence reigned throughout the town, or was interrupted only by the measured tread of those who were most at a loss to comprehend the meaning of the apparent solitude and desertion that surrounded them. At length a few detached shots seemed to give a prearranged signal, at which the entire population of a vast town was to burst from its concealment, and in an instant the flat roofs of the houses swarmed with a mass of musqueteers, who poured a deadly, and almost unerring, fire upon the British soldiers. Under any circumstances the combat between men exposed in an open street, and adversaries ensconced behind the parapets of the houses on each side, must have been an unequal one; but the British troops were for some time absolutely defenceless in the midst of their enemies, having been positively ordered to advance with unloaded arms.[2]

Lieutenant-Colonel Duff, however, penetrated as far as a church on the right-hand side of the street in which his column had been directed to establish itself; but the strength of the barricadoed doors defied all attempts to force an entrance. His situation now became desperate; to remain stationary was to expose himself and his little band to certain massacre, unmitigated even by the being able to sell their lives dearly; to advance was nearly as pregnant with destruction; and even returning, independent of the repugnance every British officer feels to the very idea of retreat, was “as bad as to go on.” Lieutenant-Colonel Duff’s resolution was as prompt as the necessity was urgent; he made up his mind, on the instant, to hazard every thing while there was the most distant chance of success, and determined to push on; a determination which was received by his men with shouts, and seconded by them as if every individual soldier had felt himself personally responsible for the issue of the contest. With the few brave companions that survived, he succeeded in making his way into a cross street, and forcing open two houses, the doors of which were not so ponderous, or so well secured as those of the church: the houses, however, were not carried till after a severe struggle, in which all the men that defended them were put to death: and even when taken they afforded the captors but little shelter, being lower than the surrounding buildings, and, consequently, commanded on every side. At length, after a vain and murderous contest of four hours’ duration, but not until the last round of ammunition was expended, Lieutenant-Colonel Duff and his few remaining men were reduced to the necessity of surrendering prisoners of war.

The left wing of the regiment, under Major Vandeleur, had been, in the mean time, engaged in a contest equally murderous, equally hopeless, and equally unfortunate. It had penetrated a considerable way into one of the main streets of the town before a single enemy appeared: two mounted videttes were at length observed retiring slowly, and, as they retired, constantly looking up to the tops of the houses, evidently giving directions to the armed men, who were as yet concealed behind the parapets. Major Vandeleur ordered his men to advance in double-quick time; a terrific shout now burst from behind the parapets, and, in an instant, a dreadful fire of musketry, accompanied by hand-grenades and other missiles, carried death through the British ranks. Revenge or even resistance was out of the question; nevertheless the men remained undismayed, and continued to press on. A deep trench with a parapet cut across the street stopped them but for a moment; they carried it at the point of the bayonet, though with immense loss, and, finally, surmounting every obstacle, succeeded in reaching the river, where they found themselves exposed to an enfilading fire from the guns of the citadel, at about three hundred yards’ distance: they broke open a house, but it afforded no protection, the yard being surrounded by other parapeted houses, from whence an incessant and destructive fire was poured upon them; artillery was brought against them, and a large body of troops surrounded them in a cul-de-sac, from which either advance or retreat was impracticable. For three hours and a half did this devoted little band protract the hopeless struggle, and not until they were nearly annihilated, and until the firing had ceased on every other point, and until, like their comrades under Colonel Duff, they had expended the last ball cartridge that could be found even in the pouches of their dead or dying companions, did they adopt the sad alternative of surrender.

Thus ended the fatal 5th of July, 1807, the first and only occasion on which the Eighty-Eighth sustained a defeat. They had the consolation, however, of knowing, that all that men could do they had done, and of reflecting on many individual acts of devoted bravery highly honourable to the corps. Lieutenant Robert Nickle (late Lieutenant-Colonel of the Thirty-Sixth) led the advance of Brigadier-General Craufurd’s division column into the town, and fell, dangerously wounded, after having given repeated proofs of cool intrepidity united with the most daring courage. Lieutenant William Mackie (now Major, and late Captain, in the Ninety-Fourth Regiment) was severely wounded in the thigh, but, although fainting from loss of blood, continued at the head of his men, until a second bullet struck him across the spine, and stretched him, to all appearance, dead upon the ground; contrary to every expectation, however, though to the unfeigned delight of his comrades in arms, he survived, to gather fresh laurels in the Peninsula. Lieutenant George Bury also distinguished himself by vanquishing, in single combat, a Spanish officer of grenadiers. Serjeant-Major William Bone, for his gallant conduct on the same occasion, was recommended by Lieutenant-Colonel Duff for an ensigncy, to which he was promoted, and died a Captain in the Royal African regiment.

When the regiment was ordered for embarkation, Captain Oates, who was doing duty with the first, though in fact belonging to the second battalion, volunteered and received the permission of his Royal Highness the Duke of York to accompany the regiment; being a supernumerary he was attached to the Thirty-Eighth, a company of which he commanded in the attack on the Plaza de Toros.

Some of the other divisions of the army had met with less opposition than this regiment; the Plaza de Toros, a strong post on the enemy’s right, and the Residencia, a good post on their left, were taken; at the same time part of the army had gained an advanced position opposite the enemy’s centre; but these advantages had cost two thousand five hundred men in killed, wounded, and prisoners.

The loss of the Eighty-Eighth on this occasion amounted to twenty officers, and two hundred and twenty non-commissioned officers and privates killed and wounded.

Officers killed.

Lieutenant Thompson	Ensign M‘Gregor
” Hale	Assist. Surgeon Ferguson

Wounded.

Major Iremonger	Lieut. Adair	Lieut. Bury
Captain M‘Pherson	” R. Nickle	” Mackie
” Dunne	” Graydon	” Gregg
” Chisholme	” Whittle	Adj. Robertson
” Seton	” Stewart
” Peshall	” Buller

On the following morning Lieutenant-General Whitelocke consented, at the instance of the Spanish commander, to desist from further hostilities, and to evacuate the place, on condition of having the captured regiments released.

The conduct of the Spanish towards the Eighty-Eighth, after its surrender, was marked by much kindness, and few instances occurred of officers being plundered. Captain M‘Gregor was robbed of his gold watch by a black soldier, but recovered it again three days afterwards, upon pointing out the man to a Spanish officer. The same officer was afterwards introduced by Captain Parker Carroll, who remained in the country as one of the British hostages, to General Liniers, and invited by the General to breakfast. The room in which he was received was decorated with coloured drawings of the different corps of militia and volunteers which had been raised within the last few months, and whose officers appeared to be of all hues and colours, from the real jet black to the mulatto, tawny, and even the pale mestee. The General, who entered freely into conversation with his guest, asked Captain M‘Gregor what he thought of the troops by whose portraitures he was surrounded?—receiving, of course, a complimentary answer, he replied, “Ay, it is I who have done all this for them. Those Spaniards knew nothing of military tactics until I arrived amongst them.” He spoke in terms of high praise of Brigadier-General Beresford, and said they were indebted to that officer for teaching them how to defend the town.

On the 10th of July the Eighty-Eighth re-embarked at Buenos Ayres, and descended the River Plate to Monte Video, at which place it arrived on the 18th; on the 8th of August it sailed with the first division of the army for England, and, after a tedious and boisterous passage, made Spithead on the 5th, and landed at Portsmouth on the 8th of November, 1807. During the voyage it lost two officers by death, Lieutenant Lawson and Ensign Jackson.

In February, 1807, while the regiment was abroad engaged in the arduous services just detailed, its Colonel, General John Reid,[3] died, and was succeeded in the command by W. Carr Beresford, at that time Senior Lieutenant-Colonel of the regiment, with the rank of Colonel in the army. Such an instance of promotion is unusual in the service at the present period, and must be considered, therefore, as highly complimentary, not only to Colonel Beresford, but also to the regiment of which he had been for so many years the acting commander.

Soon after its arrival in England the battalion was marched into Sussex, and from thence to Ashford in Kent. From Ashford it was moved in the spring of 1808 to Maldon, in Essex, where it received a draft of four hundred men from the second battalion; this detachment had unfortunately contracted the ophthalmia in Hilsea barracks, and, notwithstanding all the precautions that were taken to prevent the contagion spreading, upwards of two hundred men were in a short time afflicted with the disease; nor was it until towards October that the battalion again became quite effective.

On the 28th of December the Eighty-Eighth sailed from Falmouth for the Peninsula, but encountered, in the Bay of Biscay, a gale of three weeks’ duration, by which the transports on board which it was embarked, were at length forced into Cork, and detained there until the 21st of February following. While at Cork, Colonel Duff, to the great regret both of officers and soldiers, quitted the regiment, in consequence of the recent death of his uncle the Earl of Fife, and the command devolved on Major Vandeleur.

The original destination of the Eighty-Eighth was Cadiz, off which city it arrived on the 6th of March, 1809; but the Spanish Government refusing to receive any British troops into the fortress, it was ordered to Lisbon, where it landed on the 13th, and being brigaded with the Eighty-Seventh, was marched, early in April, to Coimbra. About this time, two of its non-commissioned officers, Serjeant-Major Nicholas Torrence, and Quarter-Master Serjeant William Hill, were promoted to commissions in the Portuguese army, of which the Colonel of the Eighty-Eighth (Lieutenant-General Beresford) was Commander-in-Chief, with the rank of Field Marshal.

When the combined British and Portuguese army moved from Lisbon to the north of Portugal to expel Marshal Soult from Oporto, the Eighty-Eighth was one of the regiments attached to the Portuguese army under Marshal Beresford, destined to act upon the Upper Douro and in the province of Tras os Montes, and intercept the retreat of the French. The march upon Amarante, the passage of the Douro, and the occupation of Oporto, are justly ranked high among the many brilliant achievements of the Duke of Wellington: nevertheless, the very nature of the service in which the Eighty-Eighth was engaged unquestionably tended to put to severe trial the discipline of every corps employed in it. The rapidity and length of the marches; the very unfavourable state of the weather; the obstacles presented by the nature of the country in the Tras os Montes, where the men were frequently obliged to use torch-light to avoid the risk of being dashed to pieces in the craggy paths they were obliged to traverse; the hospitality of the peasantry, who, totally ignorant of the imperious demands of military duty, were loud in commiserating and anxious to alleviate the hard fate of their deliverers thus compelled to march through their country in such inclement weather, and at such unseasonable hours; all offered temptations to straggling, which it is not at all wonderful that the men in many instances yielded to. The best-regulated army during a campaign, even if carried on under the most favourable circumstances, always becomes more or less relaxed in its discipline; and when it is considered that the wreck of the Eighty-Eighth regiment, after its capture at Buenos Ayres, was made up by drafts from the second battalion, that a few short months, only, were allowed it to recruit and re-organize before it was again employed in Portugal, it may be matter of regret, but certainly not of surprise, that it did not form an exception to the general rule. In fact many men were left behind, and some period of repose was necessary to remedy these irregularities, but that repose could not be obtained; for towards the end of June the whole disposable British force was marched into Spain, and on the 27th and 28th of July was fought the battle of Talavera de la Reyna.

The post of the Eighty-Eighth, on the first day, was in the wood on the river Alberche, and its conduct was much praised by Colonel Donkin, who commanded the brigade. It retired in line under a heavy fire, protecting by its steady front the advanced troops, who were greatly out-numbered by the enemy. During the retreat the soldiers were forbidden to fire unless they could cover their man. Corporal Thomas Kelly, of the fourth company, was the first who pulled a trigger; going up to the Adjutant, Lieutenant Stewart, and pointing out a French officer, he said, “Do you see that officer standing by the olive-tree in front of me? He is a dangerous man, and has been giving directions to his soldiers that won’t sarve us; four of the company have been hit already, but if you will allow me I think I could do for him.” “Try, then, Kelly,” was the reply;—he fired; the French officer fell, and the men, disconcerted by the loss of their leader, ceased to harass the regiment, which continued its retreat through the wood, and took post upon a hill on the left of the allied army, which was the key of the position. The hill was steep and rugged towards the enemy, but on the other side it was of smoother ascent; the French, however, resolved to attack this post.

The sun was set, and the shades of night had gathered over the hostile armies, when suddenly a body of French troops was seen advancing boldly to the attack, and in an instant the regiments were engaged in a sharp conflict. Colonel Donkin’s brigade beat the enemy in front, and the Twenty-Ninth Regiment, by a gallant charge, drove back part of the Ninth French Regiment. The enemy returned to the attack; the fighting became vehement; “and in the darkness the opposing flashes of the musketry showed with what a spirit the struggle was maintained: the combatants were scarcely twenty yards asunder, and for a time the event seemed doubtful; but soon the well-known shout of the British soldier was heard, rising above the din of arms, and the enemy’s broken troops were driven once more into the ravine below.”[4] The fighting now ceased; and the bivouac fires blazed up on both sides.

At day-break on the 28th the combat was renewed; a burst of artillery rattled round the height and swept away the English by whole sections; the roar of musketry succeeded, and the hill sparkled with fire. At length, unable to sustain the increasing fury of the British, and having lost above fifteen hundred men in the space of forty minutes, the French retired in disorder to their own lines.

About two o’clock the enemy again advanced; their commander “gave the signal for battle, and eighty pieces of artillery immediately sent a tempest of bullets before the light troops, who, coming on with the swiftness and violence of a hail-storm, were closely followed by the broad black columns in all the majesty of war. The English regiments, putting the French skirmishers aside, met the advancing columns with loud shouts, and breaking in on their front, and lapping their flanks with fire, and giving them no respite, pushed them back with a terrible carnage.”[5] The attack was, however, soon renewed; a fierce conflict raged along the whole front, and the Eighty-Eighth nobly maintained its post on the hill on the left; it had no opportunity of gaining distinction in close fight, but displayed great steadiness in sustaining a heavy fire of artillery. The French at length relaxed their efforts, the fire of the British grew hotter, and their loud and confident shouts—sure augury of success—were heard along the whole line; finally the French retreated without venturing another attack.

The loss of the Eighty-Eighth in killed and wounded amounted to six officers and one hundred and thirty non-commissioned officers and privates. The officers were Captains Blake, Graydon, and Whittle, and Lieutenant M‘Carthy killed; and Captain Browne and Lieutenant Whitelaw wounded.

In the movement upon Almaraz the Eighty-Eighth joined Brigadier-General Craufurd’s brigade. In this position, very appropriately named by the soldiers “Hungry Hill,” it suffered much from the tardy and defective supply of rations; a situation the more trying to the men from its contrast to the exuberant plenty they had recently enjoyed in the north of Portugal. Subsequently, the regiment occupied, for some time, the town of Campo Mayor, where Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Wallace joined and took the command of the battalion, which received, also, a detachment of three hundred men from the second battalion. Advantage was immediately taken of the regiments becoming, even for a short time stationary, to commence a system of drilling necessary for the re-establishment of that discipline which, during the incessant activity of the preceding months, had unavoidably been somewhat neglected. The task required great zeal and firmness, activity and energy; but Lieutenant-Colonel Wallace showed himself fully competent to it, and had the satisfaction and honour of rendering his corps, what it afterwards was acknowledged to be, one of the finest service regiments in the Peninsular army. At Campo Mayor, also, the Eighty-Eighth set the example, which was speedily followed by other regiments, of forming a regimental mess; indeed, a marked friendliness and cordiality reigned throughout the corps.

About this time Major Vandeleur died,[6] and Colonel Donkin, who commanded the brigade, quitted the army, addressing previous to his departure a letter to Colonel Wallace, from which the following are extracts:—

Towards the end of the year (1809), the Eighty-Eighth removed from Campo Mayor, and occupied the town of Pinhel in the province of Beira: it was brigaded with the Forty-Fifth and Seventy-Fourth, under Colonel Henry Mackinnon, and formed part of the third (or what was afterwards known by the appellation of the “fighting”) division of the army commanded by Lieutenant-General Picton.

The advance of Marshal Massena in the summer of 1810, preceded by the proud but vain boast, that in pursuance of the Imperial orders he would drive the English leopards into the sea, and plant the eagles of France on the towers of Lisbon; the successes with which his first operations were attended; the reduction one after another of Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, belong to the general history of the Peninsular war, into which the particular memoirs of the Eighty-Eighth regiment must glide on to the night of the 26th of September, the eve of the battle of Busaco.

On that night the combined British and Portuguese armies were assembled in line, on the ridge of a lofty and precipitous range of hills, taking its denomination from the village and convent of Busaco. The Second division, under Lieutenant-General Hill, formed the right; the Light division, commanded by Brigadier-General Craufurd, was posted on the left near the convent; the Third division was in the centre, while the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth occupied the intermediate spaces, and the First, together with the cavalry, were in reserve in the rear of the left. In their front, within little more than half a cannon shot distance, lay the army of Massena. The weather was calm and fine, and the dark mountains rising on either side were crowned with innumerable fires. The French were apparently all bustle and gaiety, and following their usual avocations with as much sang froid as if employed in preparing for a review, not a battle. Along the whole British line not a fire was to be seen; the soldiers in stern silence, examined their flints, cleaned their locks and barrels, and then stretched themselves on the ground to rest, each with his firelock within his grasp. In their rear, unsheltered by any covering but his cloak, lay their distinguished leader. During the night the French light troops, dropping by twos and threes into the lowest part of the valley, endeavoured to ascend the woody dells and hollows, and establish themselves near the British piquets.

An hour before day on the 27th of September, Lord Wellington passed through the ranks on foot. He passed in comparative silence, for the English soldiers seldom indulge in those boisterous demonstrations of joy so common with the troops of other nations, and indeed rarely are known to huzza, except when closing with the enemy; but wherever he was recognised, his presence was felt as the sure presage of another victory, to be gained by the men whom he had already led in so many fields of triumph. To be beaten when He commanded, seemed, in the opinion of his soldiers, next to impossible. As the light appeared, the fire of musketry commenced in the deep hollows which separated the two armies. Shortly afterwards two French columns, throwing forward a cloud of skirmishers, emerged from the hollow beneath.

On the left, Marshal Ney advanced against the Light division under Brigadier-General Craufurd, and, in spite of the fire of the riflemen, broke through all opposition, and mounted the crest of the ridge, to remain there, however, only for a moment, before the bayonets of the Forty-Third, Fifty-Second, and Ninety-Fifth drove him down again in confusion, leaving the ground covered with dead and wounded, and the French General Simon, who led the attack, together with many other officers and soldiers, prisoners.

In the mean time the left centre of the British army was assailed with equal impetuosity by the second corps of Massena’s army under General Reynier. The disposition of the Third division was as follows:—four companies of the Forty-Fifth and Eighty-Eighth occupied the crest of the hill to the left; the Seventy-Fourth was considerably to the right of these two battalions, the Eighth Portuguese a little to the right and rear, the Fifth and Eighty-Third British were to the left of all, and the Ninth and Twenty-First Portuguese on a rising ground to the right of the division. Major-General Lightburne and Colonel Mackinnon commanded the two British Brigades, and Colonel Champelmond the Portuguese, the whole division being under the orders of Major-General Picton. Lord Wellington, stationed on a rising ground near the Eighty-Eighth, had a full view of these dispositions.

The advance of Reynier’s corps was made with the impetuous rush on which the French troops so much depend, and a crowd of sharp-shooters pressed forward in front of the Eighty-Eighth; Lieutenant-Colonel Wallace saw he was about to be attacked by a column; a misty cloud had settled on the mountain, and he sent Captain Dunne to observe the movements of the enemy on his right, which was a little exposed.

The light troops, after a severe struggle, succeeded in driving back the enemy, but were repulsed themselves in turn. Lieutenant-Colonel Wallace with the utmost coolness, took two men from each of his battalion companies, and placing them under the command of Lieutenant Mackie, reinforced the advance, and thus for some time again kept the French in check; at length, however, they were compelled to retire before the overwhelming force that pressed upon them. The situation was in the highest degree critical, and demanded decision and coolness; the French light troops were rushing on with loud shouts, closely followed by a column of infantry; General Picton was not within reach at the instant, and the Eighty-Eighth was without orders. At this moment Colonel Wallace addressed his men.