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

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The general adopted this third plan, and prepared to decamp in the night. He ordered the fires to be kept bright, and exhorted the troops to make a great effort, which he trusted would be the last required of them. The face of the country immediately in the rear of the position was intersected by stone walls and a number of intricate lanes. Precautions were taken to mark the right track by placing bundles of straw at certain distances, and officers were appointed to guide the columns. At ten o’clock the troops silently quitted their ground, and retired in excellent order; but at this critical juncture a terrible storm of wind and rain arose, so that the marks were destroyed and the guides lost the true direction. Only one of the divisions gained the main road; the other two were bewildered, and when daylight broke, the rear columns were still near Lugo. The fatigue and depression of mind occasioned by this misfortune, and the want of shoes especially, contributed to break the order of the march, and the stragglers were becoming numerous, when, unhappily, one of the generals commanding a leading division, thinking to relieve the men during a nightly halt, desired them to take refuge from the weather in some houses a little way off the road. Complete disorder followed this untimely indulgence. From that moment it became impossible to make the soldiers of the division keep their ranks; and in this disastrous condition the main body of the army, which had bivouacked for six hours in the rain, arrived at Betanzos on the evening of the 9th. During the two following days Sir John Moore was indefatigable in restoring the needful order and discipline. He assembled the army in one solid mass. The loss of men in the march from Lugo to Betanzos had been greater than in all the former part of the retreat; so that the infantry then in column did not much exceed fourteen thousand men.