Rifles: Six Years With Wellington's Legendary Sharpshooters (29 page)

The layout of the French defences assumed that an attacker would try to force them in the formed columns or battle lines of regular tactics, for the French officers thought that it was only by standing shoulder to shoulder with his comrades that a soldier could maintain the courage to storm such a strongpoint. Those who skirmished and hid among the rocks would surely never want to quit these safe places once the metal was flying – or so they reasoned.

Kempt’s attack, however, was ordered almost entirely in skirmish order. Having climbed a couple of thousand feet to a point close to the French trenches, the British troops were rested so they could regain their breath. The 3rd Battalion of Rifles, accompanied by some of the 1st and Portuguese, then went forward to hit the French trenches, swords fixed to their rifles. The Rifles officers knew it was important not to allow their men to get into a shooting match with the well-entrenched defenders. One observer described their advance:

With the French soldiers fleeing, the attackers quickly used their newly won position to get around the flanks of some trenches behind it. Their mission was complete and the loss trifling. Hennell of the 43rd had watched it all with pride and admiration – his own battalion had been in reserve and was not even required to fight. In a letter home, he told his brothers, ‘I firmly believe there are no better troops in the world than the 95th. They take things so coolly and deliberately and seem to know their business so well. You have no idea with what glee we saw them and how readily we fell in to advance.’

Across to the left, Colborne led the 2nd Battalion of Rifles and his own 52nd Light Infantry to a tougher objective. Like Kempt, Colborne intended to make his attack with skirmishers, using his red-coated regiment as their support or reserve. But the French in the Saint Benoit redoubt did not behave entirely as expected. Like the other defenders, they fired off some ineffective volleys which all went too high – having not been trained properly in shooting, they did not realise that those aiming down at attackers from a lofty height need to shoot much lower than feels natural, aiming almost at the feet. Colborne’s attack was
upset, though, by the actions of the fort’s commander, who led a party of his men out of the redoubt to charge the riflemen as they reloaded. This they did with some success, bayoneting some and getting close enough (perhaps ten or twenty feet) to hit others with their fire. The 2nd Battalion of Rifles was repulsed with dozens of casualties. Colborne had no choice but to order forward his own battalion (the 52nd) and the Saint Benoit was then carried.

Colborne went to reconnoitre ahead, accompanied only by Captain Smith and a handful of riflemen. To their consternation, a battalion of three hundred French light infantry appeared, right in front of them, moving up the valley towards their position. ‘The only way was to put a brave face on the matter,’ Colborne said later, ‘so I went up to them, desiring them to surrender.’ This extraordinary bluff worked. The colonel ordered the French to deposit their arms in a pile, in case they realised just who ought to be taking whom prisoner, while someone was sent with all haste to bring up some more troops. And with this gamble, the battle was effectively over for the Light Division.

The troops found themselves encamped on the wind-blasted Rhune mountain for the next few weeks, as the seasons turned and they contemplated getting to grips with the next belt of French defences. ‘We remained a whole month idle spectators of their preparations, and dearly longing for the day that should afford us an opportunity of penetrating into the more hospitable-looking low country beyond them,’ wrote Kincaid, ‘for the weather had become excessively cold and our camp stood exposed to the utmost fury of the almost nightly tempest.’

Once in the Pyrenees, the Rifles found themselves again in close quarters with the French outposts. After the hard marching of previous weeks, six men of the 1st Battalion took the opportunity to desert during late September and October. This sort of loss had not happened since Almond and the others decamped two years before. However, this time there were no executions, even when men were repeatedly caught trying to flee. One soldier of the 3rd Battalion, 95th, for example, was sentenced to be transported for life after being court-martialled for attempting desertion three times in the space of a few weeks.

With the weather deteriorating, officers were urged to keep a close eye on the men, in case others were tempted to flee the hardships of their mountain station. Riflemen of the 1st Battalion had bivouacked by a small hermitage near the summit of La Rhune, others having slightly more sheltered spots lower down its slopes. They had tents,
unlike in previous campaigns, issued just before they left winter quarters; the mules that had spent four years carrying the useless cast-iron camp kettles around Iberia were at last given a load that might be of some value to the regiment. While these get-ups kept the men alive on the top of this mountain, they did not make them comfortable. Leach wrote in his journal: ‘Whether in or outside our tents, whether asleep or awake we were never dry, never warm nor comfortable. Our chief employment was when not on picket to cut out all kinds of trenches and drains to endeavour to turn the springs of water which sprung up inside and outside our canvas habitation.’

Finding some slightly sheltered spot to get out of the wind, they would read letters from home – sometimes even newspapers enclosed by relatives – and learn of the Emperor Napoleon’s worsening fortunes in Germany. Lieutenant John FitzMaurice got one from a family friend which, referring to Bonaparte’s difficult situation at the end of August, continued, ‘The successes in Germany are most exhilarating. The Tyrant seems almost hemmed in, and his personal escape very doubtful … All this promises at least a speedy peace upon the terms of Bonaparte falling within the Rhine, the Alps and the Pyrenees, or possibly a revolution and the extinction of this scourge of the human race.’

For many officers, the sense of resignation to the apparently endless nature of the Peninsular conflict had given way, since Vitoria, to an anxiety about what might happen after Napoleon fell. They all expected the Army to contract in such a case: third and perhaps even second battalions would go – maybe the 95th would disappear altogether, as previous regiments bearing this number had thirty years earlier, after the American wars and again in 1796. A young sub or captain might then be cast out with half-pay, or worse. One officer of the 43rd told his family in a letter, ‘Peace is now I think fairly beyond doubt and it is likely to be speedy and soon. The half-pay monster is staring some of us lieutenants in the face again. However, I heartily wish for it.’ These concerns, along with a desire to know whether Wellington’s Army or some other would have the honour of penetrating deep into France first, fuelled a great thirst for information. One Light Division officer, expressing thanks for a month-old copy of
The
Times
, told his family the soldiers were ‘gaping for news like trout on a summer evening’.

Many of the officers thought that the arrival of heavy frosts and
snows would freeze the armies into winter quarters somewhere along the Pyrenean chain. George Simmons had experienced enough of campaigning and being truly wet and cold to yearn for a trip home. ‘I have been thinking of visiting you this winter after the campaign is over and we go into winter quarters … I could have leave when I chose,’ he told his parents. The only obstacle was money. While he felt he might afford the passage on a packet boat, he realised he only owned what he was wearing: ‘There is another consideration – plain clothes, which are very expensive, and I have nothing but military attire, which would make people gaze at me as upon a dancing bear.’

Simmons’s plans, alas, were arrested, and his curiosity about how the English public might react to the sight of a fighting Green Jacket on their streets was not to be satisfied. Early in November it became apparent that Wellington was preparing to force the Bidassoa line proper. For the Light Division, this would mean assaulting the slightly smaller mountain in front of theirs – named La Petite Rhune, appropriately enough – and its system of defences.

Wellington had walked along the forward slope of La Rhune with Colborne, Kempt and Alten, studying the French works on the opposite mountain. In forcing Soult’s entire system of fortifications, this was where he intended to open the ball, with the Light Division in its usual post of honour. To their front was a series of entrenchments on top of La Petite Rhune. The 43rd would be attacking this point. Slightly to the left and rear of that objective was another stone-built redoubt, the Mouiz fort, mounting several cannon, which Wellington wanted attacked by Colborne using the 52nd, 1st/95th, 3rd/95th and some Portuguese.

‘These fellows think themselves invulnerable,’ said Wellington as he studied the French lines in front, ‘but I will beat them out and with great ease.’ Colborne looked at his objective, protected in several places by precipitous rock faces, and replied: ‘That we shall beat them when your Lordship attacks, I have not doubt, but for the ease –’

Wellington cut him short, telling Colborne that the French would be assailed in many places simultaneously and did not have the men to defend all of their battlements. The British commander told Alten to move his division down into the valley between the two Rhune peaks during the hours of darkness, ‘so as to rush La Petite Rhune as day dawned, it would be of vast importance and save great loss’.

At 2 a.m. on 10 November, the Light Bobs were duly served up with
the earliest of breakfasts and began filing down to the low ground at the base of their objective. The brigadiers, fearing the enemy would be alarmed, were terrified of some man firing off his musket by accident or losing his way. Both types of misfortune actually happened, rattling everyone’s nerves. ‘That this was an anxious, I might say awful moment may well be believed,’ wrote Leach. Somehow the French did not respond, and as the sun appeared across the peaks to the east, everyone was in their start positions. The 1st/95th and the rest of their column had to pick their way up a precipice in order to emerge on the flank of the French defences.

Just after 6 a.m. the report of three cannon shots from a British battery echoed around the peaks: it was the signal for a general attack to commence. Within fifteen or twenty minutes all of the trenchworks in front of the Mouiz fort had been taken at the point of the bayonet. ‘We moved forward under a heavy fire from the enemy’s works without ever exchanging a shot until we got up to them and scaled the walls,’ wrote Simmons, ‘then the work of death commenced.’

While younger officers in the 95th usually carried rifles in battle, it was unusual for them to use the blades fixed to their barrels. Although shooting could just about be reconciled with the status of a gentleman, bayoneting was another matter entirely. Lieutenant FitzMaurice, seeing a Frenchman impaled by Second Lieutenant James Church, one of the rougher Irish soldiers of fortune who had recently joined the 95th, asked him something along the lines of ‘How could you?’ Church looked around, the crackle of gunfire echoing about him, and replied: ‘Eh, but Fitz, just see how easy it slips in!’

Storming into the positions, the riflemen found the French tents were still up and food on the boil in some of the positions. Leach looked around from this vantage point: ‘It is impossible to picture oneself anything finer than the general advance of the Army … as far as the eye could reach almost soon became one sheet of fire and smoke and of an infernal fire of light troops with frequent volleys of musquetry as the lines approached one another.’

Across on the main part of La Petite Rhune, the 43rd’s assault was beginning. Six of the regiments’ companies went forward in extended order, four remaining formed in reserve. The redcoats ploughed through the first French defensive position before coming up against more serious resistance. It turned into a vicious close-range fight. ‘One of our officers gallantly jumped into the second fort,’ according to an
officer of the 43rd. ‘A French soldier thrust a bayonet through his neckerchief, transfixed him to the wall, and fired his piece. This blew away the officer’s collar, but he jumped away unhurt.’

Barnard led the 1st Battalion of Rifles across to support the 43rd at this point, and could be seen by its officers urging his men on, and firing a rifle at the French defenders himself. Soult’s officers, for their part, did everything they could to incite their companies to continue their resistance. Simmons ‘saw some French officers trying every means in their power to make their men remain. One officer was doing prodigies of valour and would not leave the wall; he was shot and came tumbling down.’

At length, the 43rd, supported by Barnard’s riflemen, cleared La Petite Rhune and began pursuing the fleeing French down the back side of the mountain towards the sea. Barnard, who was following on horseback with his men, was at this moment shot in the chest, falling back off his horse, onto the rocky ground where several of his officers quickly attended him.

Simmons, not for the first time, put his surgeon’s training to use. He unbuttoned Barnard’s tunic and examined the wound. Foaming blood was coming from the colonel’s mouth and the gaping hole in his chest made a sucking sound – neither augured well. Barnard, fully conscious, looked up at Simmons and asked, ‘Simmons, you know my situation. Am I mortally wounded?’ The young lieutenant put a couple of fingers into the wound and probed, feeling the bottom lobe of Barnard’s left lung.

‘Colonel, it is useless to mince the matter; you are dangerously wounded, but not immediately mortally.’

‘Be candid,’ Barnard answered. ‘I am not afraid to die.’