Note 10 — HISTORICAL RECORD

The following very spirited description of the charge of the Fifth Dragoon Guards, and Third and Fourth Dragoons, is copied from Colonel Napier's admirable History of the Peninsular War:—

"While Pakenham, bearing onward with a conquering violence, was closing on their flank, and the fifth division advancing with a storm of fire on their front, the interval between the two attacks was suddenly filled with a whirling cloud of dust, which moving swiftly forward carried within its womb the trampling sound of a charging multitude. As it passed the left of the third division Le Marchant's heavy horsemen, flanked by Anson's light cavalry, broke forth from it at full speed, and the next instant twelve hundred French infantry though formed in several lines were trampled down with a terrible clamour and disturbance. Bewildered and blinded, they cast away their arms and ran through the openings of the British squadrons stooping and demanding quarter, while the dragoons, big men and on big horses, rode onward smiting with their long glittering swords in uncontrollable power, and the third division followed at speed, shouting as the French masses fell in succession before this dreadful charge."

"Nor were these valiant swordsmen yet exhausted. Their own general, Le Marchant, and many officers had fallen, but Cotton and all his staff were at their head, and with ranks confused, and blended together in one mass, still galloping forward they sustained from a fresh column an irregular stream of fire which emptied a hundred saddles; yet with fine courage, and downright force, the survivors broke through this the third and strongest body of men that had encountered them, and Lord Edward Somerset, continuing his course at the head of one squadron, with a happy perseverance, captured five guns. The French left was entirely broken, more than two thousand prisoners were taken, the French light horsemen abandoned that part of the field, and Thomiere's division no longer existed as a military body. Anson's cavalry, which had passed quite over the hill, and had suffered little in the charge, was now joined by D'Urban's troopers, and took the place of Le Marchant's exhausted men; the heavy German dragoons followed in reserve, and with the third and fifth divisions and the guns formed one formidable line two miles in advance of where Pakenham first attacked, and that impetuous officer with unmitigated strength still pressed forward spreading terror and disorder on the enemy's left."