History of the Peninsular War, Volume 6 (of 6)Southey, Robert
History
History of the Peninsular War, Volume 6 (of 6)
Southey, Robert
Peninsular War, 1807-1814
Meantime Lieutenant Jones of the engineers with an officer and nine
men of the first royals, gained the top of the great breach; and men
were rushing up to follow them, when the enemy sprung a mine in one
place, and in another drew the supports from under a false bridge,
thus blowing up some of the assailants, and precipitating others upon
the spikes which had been fixed below. The men who were at the foot
of the breach were then panic-stricken; they, as well as the French,
remembered that in such situations the victory is not to the brave or
the strong, if superior skill is opposed to courage and strength: they
ran back, ... it was impossible to rally them, and they suffered much.
The intention was, that another column should pass in the rear of the
first, between it and the sea to the second breach, and storm it; but
the discomfiture of the first party prevented this, and none of these
reached their destination. The whole was over before morning had fairly
opened, and in the course of an hour, 45 officers and above 800 men
were killed, wounded, or missing.
The river prevented any immediate communication, so that at the
batteries it was thought that hardly anything more than a false alarm
had taken place, till, as day dawned, they discovered through their
glasses the bodies of officers and men in the breach, and under the
demi-bastion and retaining wall. Presently one or two of the enemy
appeared on the breach, and a serjeant came down among the wounded,
raising some, and speaking to others. The firing which had been
continued occasionally on the breach was then stopped; more of the
French appeared; a kind of parley took place between them and the men
at the head of the trenches; and half an hour’s truce was agreed on for
the purpose of removing the wounded and the dead; but so jealous were
the French that they would not allow the dead who were nearest them
to be approached; some of the wounded they carried into the town, and
others were borne by their soldiers into the British lines. While the
troops were yet under arms, not knowing whether another attack might
be ordered, a British officer saw one of his Portugueze soldiers start
off, and reproved him for so doing, when after awhile the man returned;
but the Portugueze replied, scarcely able to command his voice or
restrain his tears as he spake, that he had only been burying his
comrade, ... and in fact it appeared that with no other implement than
his bayonet and his hand, he had given his poor friend and countryman a
soldier’s burial in the sand. The officers who fell in this attack were
buried together, each in a shell, in one grave, in a garden near the
encampment.
♦THE SIEGE SUSPENDED.♦
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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