Читать книгу The Story of a Peninsular Veteran. Sergeant in the Forty-Third Light Infantry, during the Peninsular War онлайн

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After exchanging several shots with the enemy, wherever appearances called for resistance, the army retired to Lugo, in front of which the entire force was assembled; and on the 7th of January Sir John Moore announced his intention to offer battle. Scarcely was the order issued, when the line of battle, hitherto so peeled and spread abroad, was filled with vigorous men, full of confidence and courage. At day-break on the 8th the two armies were still embattled. On the French side seventeen thousand infantry, four thousand cavalry, and fifty pieces of artillery were in line; but Soult deferred the attack till the 9th. On the English side sixteen thousand infantry, eighteen hundred cavalry, and forty pieces of artillery awaited the assault. No advance was, however, made; darkness fell without a shot being fired; and with it the English general’s hope of engaging his enemy on equal terms.

This was a season of singular and almost unexampled peril. The French were posted on the declivity of a precipitous range of mountains, with a numerous body of cavalry to protect their infantry, wherever necessary. Besides this, twenty thousand fresh troops were at the distance of two short marches in the rear. Then it should be considered that the British army was not in a condition to fight more than one battle. It was unprovided with draught cattle, had no means of transporting reserve ammunition, no magazines, no hospitals, no second line, no provisions. In the opinion of competent judges a defeat would have been irretrievably ruinous, and a victory of no real use. Some have suggested that Sir John Moore might have remained longer in expectation of a battle. That was not only inexpedient, but impossible. The state of the magazines decided the matter; for there was not bread for another day’s consumption in the stores at Lugo. It is true the soldiers were at the moment in fighting mood, but want of necessary food would have deprived them of physical energy; so that to expose an army of gallant but starving men to the uncertain issue of an obstinate and probably prolonged engagement would, not only have been absurd in policy, but have amounted to a wanton and unmeaning waste of human life. An effort, therefore, to gain a march as quietly as possible, and get on board without molestation, or at least so to establish the army as to cover the embarkation, was the most, if not the only, reasonable proposition to which prudence ought to listen.