Note 159 — SIEGE OF CIUDAD RODRIGO.
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“The first men that surmounted the difficulties the breach presented, were a sergeant and two privates of the 88th. The French, who still remained beside the gun, whose sweeping fire had hitherto been so fatal to those who led the storm, attacked these brave men furiously—a desperate hand-to-hand encounter succeeded. The Irishmen, undaunted by the superior number of their assailants, laid five or six of the gunners at their feet. The struggle was observed—and some soldiers of the 5th regiment scrambled up to the assistance of their gallant comrades—and the remnant of the French gunners perished by their bayonets.
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“Lieutenant Mackie, who led the forlorn hope, had miraculously escaped without a wound—and pressing ‘over the dying and the dead,’ he reached the further bank of the retrenchment, and found himself in solitary possession of the street beyond the breach, while the battle still raged behind him.”D
The following anecdote is descriptive of those personal affairs that the mêlée attendant on the first entrance of a defended town so frequently produces. The actor, since dead, was a personal and an attached friend of the author.
“Each affray in the streets was conducted in the best manner the moment would admit of, and decided more by personal valour than discipline, and in some instances officers as well as privates had to combat with the imperial troops. In one of those encounters, Lieutenant George Faris, of the 88th, by an accident so likely to occur in an affair of this kind, separated a little too far from a dozen or so of his regiment, found himself opposed to a French soldier, who apparently was similarly placed: it was a curious coincidence, and it would seem as if each felt that he individually was the representative of the country to which he belonged; and had the fate of the two nations hung upon the issue of the combat I am about to describe, it could not have been more heroically contested. The Frenchman fired at, and wounded Faris in the thigh, and made a desperate push with his bayonet at his body, but Faris parried the thrust, and the bayonet only lodged in his leg; he saw at a glance the peril of his situation, and that nothing short of a miracle could save him; the odds against him were too great, and if he continued a scientific fight, he must inevitably be vanquished; he sprang forward, and seizing hold of the Frenchman by the collar, a struggle of a most nervous kind took place; in their mutual efforts to gain an advantage, they lost their caps, and as they were men of nearly equal strength, it was doubtful what the issue would be. They were so entangled with each other, their weapons were of no avail, but Faris at length disengaged himself from the grasp which held him, and he was able to use his sabre; he pushed the Frenchman from him, and ere he could recover himself, he laid his head open nearly to the chin; his sword-blade, a heavy, soft, ill-made Portuguese one, was doubled up with the force of the blow, and retained some pieces of skull and clotted hair! At this moment I reached the spot with about twenty men, composed of different regiments, all being by this time mixed pell-mell with each other. I ran up to Faris—he was nearly exhausted, but he was safe. The French grenadier lay upon the pavement, while Faris, though tottering from fatigue, held his sword firmly in his grasp, and it was crimsoned to the very hilt.”—Grattan.
It is strange how the lighter occurrences of human life ridiculously intermingle with its graver concerns. An officer with a shattered leg crawled into the corner of a traverse to avoid the rush of friends and foes, each equally fatal. Presently the contest changed from his neighbourhood, and the adjacent streets were deserted.
An hour passed—none disturbed his melancholy rest—when a footstep was heard, and an 88th man staggered round the corner with a bundle of sundry articles he had managed to collect. Unable to get further, he placed it beneath his head—fixed his bayonet—and lay down to sleep in peace. In a few moments a Portuguese camp-follower peeped round the corner, looked suspiciously about, substituted a truss of straw for the bundle, and absconded with the plunder the drunken Ranger had, as he imagined, so carefully secured.