The Royal Regiment, and Other NovelettesGrant, James
History
The Royal Regiment, and Other Novelettes
Grant, James
Scotland -- Fiction; Scotland -- History, Military -- Fiction
By this time the smoke of the blazing presbytery had enveloped the
whole church, which, as a wooden edifice, it was supposed would soon
catch fire. Now Roland remembered the supposition of the French
peasant, that Aurelia might be there, and we may imagine the
sensations with which he beheld the dark smoke-wreaths eddying around
its taper spire!
"Carry the church by storm!" was now the order of Sir John Colborne;
and while a straggling fire was poured upon the column, from the
house of the seigneur and others, Wetherall ordered his
grenadiers--we had such soldiers still--to lead the van, the post of
honour and peril being ever theirs by traditional right.
The blood of all the troops was fairly up, and as the column went
forward surging and storming, and firing with the bayonets pointed
upward at an angle, the soldiers of the Royal Regiment raised the
shout of "Scotland for ever!"--a _cri de guerre_ first used by the
Greys at Waterloo, and last by the Duke of Albany's Highlanders at
the storming of Kotah in 1858.
Pouring in by the shattered windows, leaping over every obstacle, and
plunging like a torrent among the armed crowd within the church, the
Royals made a terrible havoc, and among those who fought here was
Roland, as yet untouched, and amid all the carnage and mad confusion
around him, having but one thought in his heart.
At the same time, some other of the battalion companies, led by Major
Ward and Captain Bell (afterwards Sir George and colonel of the
regiment in 1868), a Peninsular officer who in this war commanded the
fort and garrison of Coteau du Lac, an important post on the
frontier, and received the thanks of Sir John Colborne for his
exertions in recovering all the 24-pound guns and 4000 shot from the
bottom of the river, and getting them in position amid the winter
snows to face the rebels--led these and other officers we say, the
rest of the Royals gradually fought their way into the church by the
rear, and bayoneting all who resisted, set it on fire, and the
corpses were consumed in the flames.
One hundred and eighteen men taken prisoners.
"_Quartier! Quartier! Je me livre a vous!_" (I yield myself up to
you) was now the cry of the French colonists.
"Quarter for the love of God, and her Majesty the Queen!" echoed the
British rebels, on finding that all was over.
Papineau, if there, was nowhere to be found; and Smash, though seen
often, had disappeared.
In the apartment where we left her, Aurelia Darnel had heard all the
dreadful uproar around her--the myriad horrible sounds of a combat on
which she dared not look, and she lay in a corner, gathered, as it
were, in a heap, though on her knees, unable even to form a prayer,
stunned, crushed, and bewildered, with but one thought--"Roland dead!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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