Colin Campbell. Forbes Archibald

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СКАЧАТЬ and considerate old soldier may have intended not alone to give to his young subaltern his baptism of fire, but also to brace the nerves of the men of a battalion which, although part of a regiment subsequently distinguished in many campaigns and battles, was now for the first time in its military life to confront an enemy and endure hostile fire.

      The brigade was assailed at once in front and flank. The main French column, headed by Laborde in person and preceded by swarms of tirailleurs, mounted the face of the hill with great fury and loud shouts. So impetuous was the onset that the British skirmishers were driven in upon the lines, but steady volleys arrested the advance of the French, and they broke and fled without waiting for the impending bayonet charge. It would be interesting to know something of the impressions made on young Campbell by his first experience of actual war; but the curt entry in his memorandum is simply – "21st (August), was engaged at the battle of Vimiera."

      At the end of the brief campaign Campbell was transferred to the first battalion of the Ninth, and had the good fortune to remain under the command of Colonel Cameron, who had also been transferred. In the beginning of October a despatch from England reached Lisbon, instructing Sir John Moore to take command of the British army intended to co-operate with the forces of Spain in an attempt to expel the French from the Peninsula. The disasters which befell the enterprise committed to Moore need not be recounted in detail because of the circumstance that a young lieutenant shared in them in common with the rest of the hapless force. The battalion in which Campbell was serving was among the earliest troops to be put in motion. It quitted its quarters at Quelus, near Lisbon on October 12th, and reached Salamanca on November 11th. When Moore's army was organised in divisions, the battalion formed part of Major-General Beresford's brigade belonging to the division commanded by Lieutenant-General Mackenzie Fraser. On reaching Salamanca Moore found that the Spanish armies which he had come to support were already destroyed, and that he himself was destitute alike of supplies and money. In this situation it was his original intention to retire into Portugal, which might have been his wisest course; but Moore was a man of a high and ardent nature. When on the point of taking the offensive in the hope of affording to the Spaniards breathing-time for organising a defence of the southern provinces, he became aware that French forces were converging on him from diverse points; and on the 24th of December began the memorable retreat, the disasters of which cannot be said to have been compensated for by the nominal victory of Coruña.

      In the hardships and horrors of that midwinter retreat young Campbell bore his share. Little, if any fighting came in his way, since the division to which his battalion belonged was for the most part in front. During the retreat it experienced a loss of one hundred and fifty men; but they are all specified as having died on the march or having been taken prisoners by the enemy. Nor had it the good fortune to take part in the battle of Coruña, having been stationed in the town during the fighting. There fell to a fatigue party detailed from it the melancholy duty of digging on the rampart of Coruña the grave of Moore, wherein under the fire of the French guns he was laid in his "martial cloak" by his sorrowing Staff in the gray winter's dawn. Beresford's brigade, to which Campbell's battalion belonged, covered the embarkation and was the last to quit a shore of melancholy memory. General Shadwell writes that, "To give some idea of the discomforts of the retreat, Lord Clyde used to relate how for some time before reaching Coruña he had to march with bare feet, the soles of his boots being completely worn away. He had no means of replacing them, and when he got on board ship he was unable to remove them, as from constant wear and his inability to take them off the leather had adhered so closely to the flesh of the legs that he was obliged to steep them in water as hot as he could bear and have the leather cut away in strips – a painful operation, as in the process pieces of the skin were brought away with it."

      After a stay in England of little more than six months Campbell's battalion was again sent on foreign service, an item of the fine army of forty thousand men under the command of the Earl of Chatham. The main object of the undertaking, which is known as the Walcheren Expedition, whose story occupies one of the darkest pages of our military history, was to reduce the fortress of Antwerp and destroy the French fleet lying under its shelter, in the hope of disconcerting Napoleon and creating a diversion in favour of Austria. But opportunities were lost, time was squandered, and the expedition ended in disastrous failure. Montresor's brigade, to which Campbell's battalion belonged, disembarked on the island of South Beveland in the beginning of August, to be the gradual prey of fever and ague in the pestilential marshes of the island. Nothing was achieved save the barren capture of the fortress of Flushing; and towards the end of September most of the land forces of the expedition, including Campbell's battalion, returned to England. Over one-sixth of the original army of forty thousand men had been buried in the swamps of Walcheren and South Beveland; the survivors carried home with them the seeds of the "Walcheren fever," which affected them more or less for the rest of their lives. Colin Campbell was an intermittent sufferer from it almost if not quite to the end of his life.

      The second battalion of the Ninth had been in garrison at Gibraltar since July, 1809, and to it Colin Campbell was transferred some time in the course of the following year. In the beginning of 1811 the French Marshal Victor was blockading Cadiz, and General Graham (afterwards Lord Lynedoch) determined on an attempt in concert with a Spanish force to march on his rear and break the blockade. Landing at Tarifa he picked up a detachment, which included the flank companies of the Ninth in which Campbell was serving. Graham's division of British troops was now somewhat over four thousand strong, and the Spanish army of La Peña was at least thrice that strength. The allied force reached the heights of Barrosa on March 5th. Graham anxiously desired to hold that position, recognising its value; but he had ceded the command to La Peña, who gave him the order to quit it and move forward. In the conviction that La Peña himself would remain there, he obeyed, leaving on Barrosa as baggage-guard the flank companies of the Ninth and Eighty-Second regiments under Major Brown. Graham had not gone far when La Peña abandoned the Barrosa position with the mass of his force. Victor had been watching events under cover of a forest, his three divisions well in hand; and now he saw his opportunity. Villatte was to stand fast; Laval to intercept the return of the British division to the height; Ruffin to seize the height, sweep from it the allied rear-guard left there, and disperse the baggage and followers. Major Brown held together the flank companies he commanded, and withdrew slowly into the plain. Graham promptly faced about and made haste to attack. Brown had sent to Graham for orders, and was told that he was to fight; and the gallant Brown, unsupported as he was, charged headlong on Ruffin's front. Half his detachment went down under the enemy's first fire; but he maintained the fight staunchly until Dilke's division came up, when the whole, Dilke's people and Brown's stanch flank companies, "with little order indeed, but in a fierce mood," in Napier's words, rushed upwards to close quarters. The struggle lasted for an hour and a half and was "most violent and bloody"; only the unconquerable spirit of the British soldiers averted disaster and accomplished the victory. Many a fierce fight was Colin Campbell to take part in, but none more violent and bloody than this one on the heights of Barrosa. His record of his own share in it is characteristically brief and modest: "At the battle of Barrosa Lord Lynedoch was pleased to take favourable notice of my conduct when left in command of the two flank companies of my regiment, all the other officers being wounded."

      Late in the same year Campbell saw some casual service while temporarily attached to the Spanish army commanded by Ballasteros in the south of Spain. In the disturbed state of the surrounding region many Spanish families of rank were glad to find quiet shelter within the fortress of Gibraltar, and their society was eagerly sought by young Campbell, who was anxious to take the opportunity of improving himself in the French and Spanish languages. When in December, 1811, a French force under Laval undertook what proved an abortive and final attempt to reduce the fortified town of Tarifa, he accompanied the light company of his battalion to take part in the vigorous and successful defence of the place, a result achieved by the courage and devotion of the British garrison sent to hold it by General Campbell, the wise and energetic governor of Gibraltar, and by the skill and resource of Sir Charles Smith the chief engineer.

      At the close of 1812 Colin Campbell had just turned his twentieth year, and had been a soldier for four and a half years, during which time he had seen no small variety of service. Vimiera and Barrosa had СКАЧАТЬ