special calibre and manned by a crew which formed, perhaps, the very
élite of the French navy.  The men had been specially picked to form
the crew of the only French ship which was commanded by a Bonaparte,
the _Pomone_, selected for the command of Captain Jerome Bonaparte.
Captain Jerome Bonaparte, however, was not just now afloat, and the
_Didon_ had been selected, on account of its great speed and heavy
armament, for a service of great importance.  She was manned by the
crew chosen for the _Pomone_, placed under an officer of special skill
and daring--Captain Milias--and despatched with orders for carrying out
one more of those naval "combinations" which Napoleon often attempted,
but never quite accomplished.  The _Didon_, in a word, was to bring up
the Rochefort squadron to join the Franco-Spanish fleet under
Villeneuve.

On that fatal August 10, however, it seemed to Captain Milias that
fortune had thrust into his hands a golden opportunity of snapping up a
British sloop of war, and carrying her as a trophy into Rochefort.  An
American merchantman fell in with him, and its master reported that he
had been brought-to on the previous day by a British man-of-war, and
compelled to produce his papers.  The American told the French captain
that he had been allowed to go round the Englishman's decks and count
his guns--omitting, no doubt, to add that he was half-drunk while doing
it.  Contemplated through an American's prejudices, inflamed with grog,
the British ship seemed a very poor thing indeed.  She carried, the
American told the captain of the _Didon_, only twenty guns of light
calibre, and her captain and officers were "so cocky" that if they had
a chance they would probably lay themselves alongside even the _Didon_
and become an easy prey.  The American pointed out to the eagerly
listening Frenchmen the topgallant sails of the ship he was describing
showing above the sky-line to windward.  Captain Milias thought he saw
glory and cheap victory beckoning him, and he put his helm down, and
stood under easy sail towards the fast-rising topsails of the
Englishman.

Now, the _Phoenix_ was, perhaps, the smallest frigate in the British
navy; a stocky little craft, scarcely above the rating of a sloop; and
its captain, Baker, a man with something of Dundonald's gift for ruse,
had disguised his ship so as to look as much as possible like a sloop.
Baker, too, who believed that light guns quickly handled were capable
of more effective mischief than the slow fire of heavier guns, had
changed his heavier metal for 18-pounders.  The two ships, therefore,
were very unequal in fighting force.  The broadside of the _Didon_ was
nearly fifty per cent. heavier than that of the _Phoenix_; her crew was
nearly fifty per cent. more numerous, and she was splendidly equipped
at every point.

The yellow sides and royal yards rigged aloft told the "cocky"
_Phoenix_ that the big ship to leeward was a Frenchman, and, with all
sails spread, she bore down in the chase.  Baker was eager to engage
his enemy to leeward, that she might not escape, and he held his fire
till he could reach the desired position.  The _Didon_, however, a
quick and weatherly ship, was able to keep ahead of the _Phoenix_, and
thrice poured in a heavy broadside upon the grimly silent British ship
without receiving a shot in reply.  Baker's men were falling fast at
their quarters, and, impatient at being both foiled and raked, he at
last ran fiercely at his enemy to windward.  The heads of both ships
swung parallel, and at pistol-distance broadside furiously answered
broadside.  In order to come up with her opponent, however, the
_Phoenix_ had all sail spread, and she gradually forged ahead.  As soon
as the two ships were clear, the _Didon_, by a fine stroke of
seamanship, hauled up, crossed the stern of the _Phoenix_, and raked
her, and then repeated the pleasant operation.  The rigging of the
_Phoenix_ was so shattered that for a few minutes she was out of hand.
Baker, however, was a fine seaman, and his crew were in a high state of
discipline; and when the _Didon_ once more bore up to rake her
antagonist, the British ship, with her sails thrown aback, evaded the
Frenchman's fire.  But the stern of the _Didon_ smote with a crash on
the starboard quarter of the Phoenix; the ships were lying parallel;
the broadside of neither could be brought to bear.  The Frenchmen,
immensely superior in numbers, made an impetuous rush across their
forecastle, and leaped on the quarter-deck of the Phoenix.  The marines
of that ship, however, drawn up in a steady line across the deck,
resisted the whole rush of the French boarders; and the British
sailors, tumbling up from their guns, cutlass and boarding-pike in
hand, and wroth with the audacity of the "French lubbers" daring to
board the "cocky little _Phoenix_," with one rush, pushed fiercely
home, swept the Frenchmen back on to their own vessel.

On the French forecastle stood a brass 36-pounder carronade; this
commanded the whole of the British ship, and with it the French opened
a most destructive fire.  The British ship, as it happened, could not
bring a single gun to bear in return.  Baker, however, had fitted the
cabin window on either quarter of his ship to serve as a port, in
preparation for exactly such a contingency as this; and the aftermost
main-deck gun was dragged into the cabin, the improvised port thrown
open, and Baker himself, with a cluster of officers and men, was
eagerly employed in fitting tackles to enable the gun to be worked.  As
the sides of the two ships were actually grinding together the
Frenchmen saw the preparations being made; a double squad of marines
was brought up at a run to the larboard gangway, and opened a swift and
deadly fire into the cabin, crowded with English sailors busy rigging
their gun.  The men dropped in clusters; the floor of the cabin was
covered with the slain, its walls were splashed with blood.  But Baker
and the few men not yet struck down kept coolly to their task.  The gun
was loaded under the actual flash of the French muskets, its muzzle was
thrust through the port, and it was fired!  Its charge of langrage
swept the French ship from her larboard bow to her starboard quarter,
and struck down in an instant twenty-four men.  The deadly fire was
renewed again and again, the British marines on the quarter-deck
meanwhile keeping down with their musketry the fire of the great French
carronade.

That fierce and bloody wrestle lasted for nearly thirty minutes, then
the _Didon_ began to fore-reach.  Her great bowsprit ground slowly
along the side of the _Phoenix_.  It crossed the line of the second
aftermost gun on the British main-deck.  Its flames on the instant
smote the Frenchman's head-rails to splinters, and destroyed the
gammoning of her bowsprit.  Gun after gun of the two ships was brought
in succession to bear; but in this close and deadly contest the
_Phoenix_ had the advantage.  Her guns were lighter, her men better
drilled, and their fierce energy overbore the Frenchmen.  Presently the
_Didon_, with her foremast tottering, her maintopmast gone, her decks a
blood-stained wreck, passed out of gunshot ahead.

In the tangle between the two ships the fly of the British white ensign
at the gaff end dropped on the _Didon's_ forecastle.  The Frenchmen
tore it off, and, as the ships moved apart, they waved it triumphantly
from the _Didon's_ stern.  All the colours of the _Phoenix_, indeed, in
one way or another had vanished, and the only response the exasperated
British tars could make to the insult of the _Didon_ was to immediately
lash a boat's ensign to the larboard, and the Union Jack to the
starboard end of their cross jack yard-arm.

The wind had dropped; both ships were now lying a in a semi-wrecked
condition out of gunshot of each other, and it became a question of
which could soonest repair damages and get into fighting condition
again.  Both ships, as it happened, had begun the fight with nearly all
canvas spread, and from their splintered masts the sails now hung one
wild network of rags.  In each ship a desperate race to effect repairs
began.  On the Frenchman's decks arose a babel of sounds, the shouts of
officers, the tumult of the men's voices.  The British, on the other
hand, worked in grim and orderly silence, with no sound but the cool,
stern orders of the officers.  In such a race the British were sure to
win, and fortune aided them.  The two ships were rolling heavily in the
windless swell, and a little before noon the British saw the wounded
foremast of their enemy suddenly snap and tumble, with all its canvas,
upon the unfortunate _Didon's_ decks.  This gave new and exultant
vigour to the British.  Shot-holes were plugged, dismounted guns
refitted, fresh braces rove, the torn rigging spliced, new canvas
spread.  The wind blew softly again, and a little after noon the
_Phoenix_, sorely battered indeed, but in fighting trim, with guns
loaded, and the survivors of her crew at quarters, bore down on the
_Didon_, and took her position on that ship's weather bow.  Just when
the word "Fire!" was about to be given, the _Didon's_ flag fluttered
reluctantly down; she had struck!

The toils of the _Phoenix_, however, were not even yet ended.  The ship
she had captured was practically a wreck, its mainmast tottering to its
fall, while the prisoners greatly exceeded in numbers their captors.
The little _Phoenix_ courageously took her big prize in tow, and laid
her course for Plymouth.  Once the pair of crippled frigates were
chased by the whole of Villeneuve's fleet; once, by a few chance words
overheard, a plot amongst the French prisoners for seizing the
_Phoenix_ and then retaking the _Didon_ was detected--almost too
late--and thwarted.  The _Phoenix_, and her prize too, reached
Gibraltar when a thick fog lay on the straits, a fog which, as the
sorely damaged ships crept through it, was full of the sound of signal
guns and the ringing of bells.  The Franco-Spanish fleet, in a word, a
procession of giants, went slowly past the crippled ships in the fog,
and never saw them!

On September 3, however, the _Phoenix_ safely brought her hard-won and
stubborn-guarded prize safely into Plymouth Sound.

The fight between the two ships was marked by many heroic incidents.
During the action the very invalids in the sick-bay of the _Phoenix_
crept from their cots and tried to take some feeble part in the fight.
The purser is not usually part of the fighting staff of a ship, but the
acting purser of the _Phoenix_, while her captain was in the
smoke-filled cabin below, trying to rig up a gun to bear on the
_Didon_, took charge of the quarter-deck, kept his post right opposite
the brazen mouth of the great carronade we have described, and, with a
few marines, kept down the fire.  A little middy had the distinction of
saving his captain's life.  The _Didon's_ bowsprit was thrust, like the
shaft of a gigantic lance, over the quarter of the _Phoenix_, and a
Frenchman, lying along it, levelled his musket at Captain Baker, not
six paces distant, and took deliberate aim.  A middy named Phillips,
armed with a musket as big as himself, saw the levelled piece of the
Frenchman; he gave his captain an unceremonious jostle aside just as
the Frenchman's musket flashed, and with almost the same movement
discharged his own piece at the enemy.  The French bullet tore off the
rim of Captain Baker's hat, but the body of the man who fired it fell
with a splash betwixt the two ships into the water.  Here was a story,
indeed, for a middy to tell, to the admiration of all the gun-rooms in
the fleet.

The middy of the period, however, was half imp, half hero.  Another
youthful Nelson, aetat. sixteen, at the hottest stage of the
fight--probably at the moment the acting-purser was in command on the
quarter-deck--found an opportunity of getting at the purser's stores.
With jaws widely distended, he was in the act of sucking--in the
fashion so delightful to boys--a huge orange, when a musket ball, after
passing through the head of a seaman, went clean through both the
youth's distended cheeks, and this without touching a single tooth.
Whether this affected the flavour of the orange is not told, but the
historian gravely records that "when the wound in each cheek healed, a
pair of not unseemly dimples remained."  Happy middy!  He would
scarcely envy Nelson his peerage.

[Transcriber's note: The word "aetat." in the above paragraph is an
abbreviation of the Latin "aetatis", meaning "aged".]

THE BLOOD-STAINED HILL OF BUSACO

  "Who would not fight for England?
    Who would not fling a life
  I' the ring, to meet a tyrant's gage,
    And glory in the strife?
    *    *    *    *    *
  Now, fair befall our England,
    On her proud and perilous road;
  And woe and wail to those who make
    Her footprints red with blood!
  Up with our red-cross banner--roll
    A thunder-peal of drums!
  Fight on there, every valiant soul,
    And, courage!  England comes!
  Now, fair befall our England,
    On her proud and perilous road;
  And woe and wail to those who make
    Her footprints red with blood!

  Now, victory to our England!
    And where'er she lifts her hand
  In Freedom's fight, to rescue Right,
    God bless the dear old land!
  And when the storm has passed away,
    In glory and in calm
  May she sit down i' the green o' the day,
    And sing her peaceful psalm!
  Now, victory to our England!
    And where'er she lifts her hand
  In Freedom's fight, to rescue Right,
    God bless the dear old land!"
            --GERALD MASSEY.

Busaco is, perhaps, the most picturesque of Peninsular battles.  In the
wild nature of the ground over which it raged, the dramatic incidents
which marked its progress, the furious daring of the assault, and the
stern valour of the defence, it is almost without a rival.  The French
had every advantage in the fight, save one.  They were 65,000 strong,
an army of veterans, many of them the men of Austerlitz and Marengo.
Massena led; Ney was second in command; both facts being pledges of
daring generalship.  The English were falling sullenly back in the long
retreat which ended at Torres Vedras, and the French were in exultant
pursuit.  Massena had announced that he was going to "drive the leopard
into the sea"; and French soldiers, it may be added, are never so
dangerous as when on fire with the _élan_ of success.

Wellington's army was inferior to its foe in numbers, and of mixed
nationality, and it is probable that retreat had loosened the fibre of
even British discipline, if not of British courage.  Two days before
Busaco, for example, the light division, the very flower of the English
army, was encamped in a pine-wood about which a peasant had warned them
that it was "haunted."  During the night, without signal or visible
cause, officers and men, as though suddenly smitten with frenzy,
started from their sleep and dispersed in all directions.  Nor could
the mysterious panic be stayed until some officer, shrewder than the
rest, shouted the order, "Prepare to receive cavalry," when the
instinct of discipline asserted itself, the men rushed into rallying
squares, and, with huge shouts of laughter, recovered themselves from
their panic.

But battle is to the British soldier a tonic, and when Wellington drew
up his lines in challenge of battle to his pursuer, on the great hill
of Busaco, his red-coated soldiery were at least full of a grim
satisfaction.  One of the combatants has described the diverse aspects
of the two hosts on the night before the fight.  "The French were all
bustle and gaiety; but along the whole English line the soldiers, in
stern silence, examined their flints, cleaned their locks and barrels,
and then stretched themselves on the ground to rest, each with his
firelock within his grasp."  The single advantage of the British lay in
their position.  Busaco is a great hill, one of the loftiest and most
rugged in Portugal, eight miles in breadth, and barring the road by
which Massena was moving on Lisbon.  "There are certainly," said
Wellington, "many bad roads in Portugal, but the enemy has taken
decidedly the worst in the whole kingdom."

The great ridge, with its gloomy tree-clad heights and cloven crest,
round which the mists hung in sullen vapour, was an ideal position for
defence.  In its front was a valley forming a natural ditch so deep
that the eye could scarcely pierce its depths.  The ravine at one point
was so narrow that the English and French guns waged duel across it,
but on the British side the chasm was almost perpendicular.

From their eyrie perch on September 27, 1810, the English watched
Massena's great host coming on.  Every eminence sparkled with their
bayonets, every road was crowded with their waggons; it seemed not so
much the march of an army as the movement of a nation.  The vision of
"grim Busaco's iron ridge," glittering with bayonets, arrested the
march of the French.  But Ney, whose military glance was keen and sure,
saw that the English arrangements were not yet complete; an unfilled
gap, three miles wide, parted the right wing from the left, and he was
eager for an immediate attack.  Massena, however, was ten miles in the
rear.  According to Marbot, who has left a spirited account of Busaco,
Massena put off the attack till the next day, and thus threw away a
great opportunity.  In the gloomy depths of the ravines, however, a war
of skirmishers broke out, and the muskets rang loudly through the
echoing valleys, while the puffs of eddying white smoke rose through
the black pines.  But night fell, and the mountain heights above were
crowned with the bivouac fires of 100,000 warriors, over whom the
serene sky glittered.  Presently a bitter wind broke on the mountain
summits, and all through the night the soldiers shivered under its keen
blast.

Massena's plan of attack was simple and daring.  Ney was to climb the
steep front on the English left, and assail the light division under
Craufurd; Regnier, with a _corps d'élite_, was to attack the English
left, held by Picton's division.  Regnier formed his attack into five
columns while the stars were yet glittering coldly in the morning sky.
They had first to plunge into the savage depths of the ravine, and then
climb the steep slope leading to the English position.  The vigour of
the attack was magnificent.  General Merle, who had won fame at
Austerlitz, personally led the charge.  At a run the columns went down
the ravine; at a run, scarcely less swift, they swept up the hostile
slope.  The guns smote the columns from end to end, and the attack left
behind it a broad crimson trail of the dead and dying.  But it never
paused.  A wave of steel and fire and martial tumult, it swept up the
hill, broke over the crest in a spray of flame, brushed aside a
Portuguese regiment in its path like a wisp of straw, and broke on the
lines of the third division.

The pressure was too great for even the solid English line to sustain;
it, too, yielded to the impetuous French, part of whom seized the rocks
at the highest point of the hill, while another part wheeled to the
right, intending to sweep the summit of the sierra.  It was an
astonishing feat.  Only French soldiers, magnificently led and in a
mood of victory, could have done it; and only British soldiers, it may
be added, whom defeat hardens, could have restored such a reverse.

Picton was in command, and he sent at the French a wing of the 88th,
the famous Connaught Rangers, led by Colonel Wallace, an officer in
whom Wellington reposed great confidence.  Wallace's address was brief
and pertinent.  "Press them to the muzzle, Connaught Rangers; press on
to the rascals."  There is no better fighting material in the world
than an Irish regiment well led and in a high state of discipline, and
this matchless regiment, with levelled bayonets, ran in on the French
with a grim and silent fury there was no denying.  Vain was resistance.
Marbot says of the Rangers that "their first volley, delivered at
fifteen paces, stretched more than 500 men on the ground"; and the
threatening gleam of the bayonet followed fiercely on the flame of the
musket.

The French were borne, shouting, struggling, and fighting desperately,
over the crest and down the deep slope to the ravine below.  In a
whirlwind of dust and fire and clamour went the whole body of furious
soldiery into the valley, leaving a broad track of broken arms and
dying men.  According to the regimental records of the 88th, "Twenty
minutes sufficed to teach the heroes of Marengo and Austerlitz that
they must yield to the Rangers of Connaught!"  As the breathless
Rangers re-formed triumphantly on the ridge, Wellington galloped up and
declared he had never witnessed a more gallant charge.

But a wing of Regnier's attack had formed at right angles across the
ridge.  It was pressing forward with stern resolution; it swept before
it the light companies of the 74th and 88th regiments, and unless this
attack could be arrested the position and the battle were lost.  Picton
rallied his broken lines within _sixty yards_ of the French muskets, a
feat not the least marvellous in a marvellous fight, and then sent them
furiously at the exulting French, who held a strong position amongst
the rocks.  It is always difficult to disentangle the confusion which
marks a great fight.  Napier says that it was Cameron who formed line
with the 38th under a violent fire, and, without returning a shot, ran
in upon the French grenadiers with the bayonet and hurled them
triumphantly over the crest.  Picton, on the other hand, declares that
it was the light companies of the 74th and the 88th, under Major Smith,
an officer of great daring--who fell in the moment of victory--that
flung the last French down over the cliff.  Who can decide when such
experts, and actors in the actual scene, differ?

The result, however, as seen from the French side, is clear.  The
French, Marbot records, "found themselves driven in a heap down the
deep descent up which they had climbed, and the English lines followed
them half-way down firing murderous volleys.  At this point we lost a
general, 2 colonels, 80 officers, and 700 or 800 men."  "The English,"
he adds in explanation of this dreadful loss of life, "were the best
marksmen in Europe, the only troops who were perfectly practised in the
use of small arms, whence their firing was far more accurate than that
of any other infantry."

A gleam of humour at this point crosses the grim visage of battle.
Picton, on lying down in his bivouac the night before the battle, had
adorned his head with a picturesque and highly coloured nightcap.  The
sudden attack of the French woke him; he clapped on cloak and cocked
hat, and rode to the fighting line, when he personally led the attack
which flung the last of Regnier's troops down the slope.  At the moment
of the charge he took off his cocked hat to wave the troops onward;
this revealed the domestic head-dress he unconsciously wore, and the
astonished soldiers beheld their general on flame with warlike fury
gesticulating martially in a nightcap!  A great shout of laughter went
up from the men as they stopped for a moment to realise the spectacle;
then with a tempest of mingled laughter and cheers they flung
themselves on the enemy.

Meanwhile Ney had formed his attack on the English left, held by
Craufurd and the famous light division.  Marbot praises the
characteristic tactics of the British in such fights.  "After having,
as we do," he says, "garnished their front with skirmishers, they post
their principal forces out of sight, holding them all the time
sufficiently near to the key of the position to be able to attack the
enemy the instant they reach it; and this attack, made unexpectedly on
assailants who have lost heavily, and think the victory already theirs,
succeeds almost invariably."  "We had," he adds, "a melancholy
experience of this art at Busaco."  Craufurd, a soldier of fine skill,
made exactly such a disposition of his men.  Some rocks at the edge of
the ravine formed natural embrasures for the English guns under Ross;
below them the Rifles were flung out as skirmishers; behind them the
German infantry were the only visible troops; but in a fold of the
hill, unseen, Craufurd held the 43rd and 52nd regiments drawn up in
line.

Ney's attack, as might be expected, was sudden and furious.  The
English, in the grey dawn, looking down the ravine, saw three huge
masses start from the French lines and swarm up the slope.  To climb an
ascent so steep, vexed by skirmishers on either flank, and scourged by
the guns which flashed from the summit, was a great and most daring
feat--yet the French did it.  Busaco, indeed, is memorable as showing
the French fighting quality at its highest point.  General Simon led
Loison's attack right up to the lips of the English guns, and in the
dreadful charge its order was never disturbed nor its speed arrested.
"Ross's guns," says Napier, "were worked with incredible quickness, yet
their range was palpably contracted every round; the enemy's shot came
singing up in a sharper key; the English skirmishers, breathless and
begrimed with powder, rushed over the edge of the ascent; the artillery
drew back"--and over the edge of the hill came the bearskins and the
gleaming bayonets of the French!  General Simon led the attack so
fiercely home that he was the first to leap across the English
entrenchments, when an infantry soldier, lingering stubbornly after his
comrades had fallen back, shot him point-blank through the face.  The
unfortunate general, when the fight was over, was found lying in the
redoubt amongst the dying and the dead, with scarcely a human feature
left.  He recovered, was sent as a prisoner to England, and was
afterwards exchanged, but his horrible wound made it impossible for him
to serve again.

Craufurd had been watching meanwhile with grim coolness the onward rush
of the French.  They came storming and exultant, a wave of martial
figures, edged with a spray of fire and a tossing fringe of bayonets,
over the summit of the hill; when suddenly Craufurd, in a shrill tone,
called on his reserves to attack.  In an instant there rose, as if out
of the ground, before the eyes of the astonished French, the serried
lines of the 43rd and 52nd, and what a moment before was empty space
was now filled with the frowning visage of battle.  The British lines
broke into one stern and deep-toned shout, and 1800 bayonets, in one
long line of gleaming points, came swiftly down upon the French.  To
stand against that moving hedge of deadly and level steel was
impossible; yet each man in the leading section of the French raised
his musket and fired, and two officers and ten soldiers fell before
them.  Not a Frenchman had missed his mark!  They could do no more.
"The head of their column," to quote Napier, "was violently thrown back
upon the rear, both flanks were overlapped at the same moment by the
English wings, and three terrible discharges at five yards' distance
shattered the wavering mass."  Before those darting points of flame the
pride of the French shrivelled.  Shining victory was converted, in
almost the passage of an instant, into bloody defeat; and a shattered
mass, with ranks broken, and colours abandoned, and discipline
forgotten, the French were swept into the depths of the ravine out of
which they had climbed.

One of the dramatic episodes of the fight at this juncture is that of
Captain Jones--known in his regiment as "Jack Jones" of the 52nd.
Jones was a fiery Welshman, and led his company in the rush on General
Simon's column.  The French were desperately trying to deploy, a
_chef-de-bataillon_ giving the necessary orders with great vehemence.
Jones ran ahead of his charging men, outstripping them by speed of
foot, challenged the French officer with a warlike gesture to single
combat, and slew him with one fierce thrust before his own troops, and
the 52nd, as they came on at the run, saw the duel and its result, were
lifted by it to a mood of victory, and raised a sudden shout of
exultation, which broke the French as by a blast of musketry fire.

For hours the battle spluttered and smouldered amongst the skirmishers
in the ravines, and some gallant episodes followed.  Towards evening,
for example, a French company, with signal audacity, and apparently on
its own private impulse, seized a cluster of houses only half a musket
shot from the light division, and held it while Craufurd scourged them
with the fire of twelve guns.  They were only turned out at the point
of the bayonet by the 43rd.  But the battle was practically over, and
the English had beaten, by sheer hard fighting, the best troops and the
best marshals of France.

In the fierceness of actual fighting, Busaco has never been surpassed,
and seldom did the wounded and dying lie thicker on a battlefield than
where the hostile lines struggled together on that fatal September 27.
The _melée_ at some points was too close for even the bayonet to be
used, and the men fought with fists or with the butt-end of their
muskets.  From the rush which swept Regnier's men down the slope the
Connaught Rangers came back with faces and hands and weapons literally
splashed red with blood.  The firing was so fierce that Wellington,
with his whole staff, dismounted.  Napier, however--one of the famous
fighting trio of that name, who afterwards conquered Scinde--fiercely
refused to dismount, or even cover his red uniform with a cloak.  "This
is the uniform of my regiment," he said, "and in it I will show, or
fall this day."  He had scarcely uttered the words when a bullet
smashed through his face and shattered his jaw to pieces.  As he was
carried past Lord Wellington he waved his hand and whispered through
his torn mouth, "I could not die at a better moment!"  Of such stuff
were the men who fought under Wellington in the Peninsula.

OF NELSON AND THE NILE

  "Britannia needs no bulwarks,
    No towers along the steep;
  Her march is o'er the mountain waves,
    Her home is on the deep.
  With thunders from her native oak,
    She quells the floods below,
  As they roar on the shore
    When the stormy winds do blow;
  When the battle rages loud and long,
    And the stormy winds do blow.

  The meteor flag of England
    Shall yet terrific burn,
  Till danger's troubled night depart,
    And the star of peace return.
  Then, then, ye ocean warriors,
    Our song and feast shall flow
  To the fame of your name,
    When the storm has ceased to blow;
  When the fiery fight is heard no more,
    And the storm has ceased to blow."
            --CAMPBELL.

Aboukir Bay resembles nothing so much as a piece bitten out of the
Egyptian pancake.  A crescent-shaped bay, patchy with shoals,
stretching from the Rosetta mouth of the Nile to Aboukir, or, as it is
now called, Nelson Island, that island being simply the outer point of
a sandbank that projects from the western horn of the bay.  Flat
shores, grey-blue Mediterranean waters, two horns of land six miles
apart, that to the north projecting farthest and forming a low
island--this, ninety-eight years ago, was the scene of what might
almost be described as the greatest sea-fight in history.

On the evening of August 1, 1798, thirteen great battleships lay drawn
up in a single line parallel with the shore, and as close to it as the
sandbanks permitted.  The head ship was almost stern on to the shoal
which, running out at right angles to the shore, forms Aboukir Island.
The nose of each succeeding ship was exactly 160 yards from the stern
of the ship before it, and, allowing for one or two gaps, each ship was
bound by a great cable to its neighbour.  It was a thread of beads,
only each "bead" was a battleship, whose decks swarmed with brave men,
and from whose sides gaped the iron lips of more than a thousand heavy
guns.  The line was not exactly straight; it formed a very obtuse
angle, the projecting point at the centre being formed by the _Orient_,
the biggest warship at that moment afloat, a giant of 120 guns.

Next to her came the _Franklin_, of 80 guns, a vessel which, if not the
biggest, was perhaps the finest sample of naval architecture in
existence.  The line of ships was more than one mile and a half long,
and consisted of the gigantic flagship, three ships of the line of 80
guns, and nine of 74 guns.  In addition, it had a fringe of gunboats
and frigates, while a battery of mortars on the island guarded, as with
a sword of fire, the gap betwixt the headmost ship and the island.
This great fleet had convoyed Napoleon, with 36,000 troops crowded into
400 transports, from France, had captured Malta on the voyage, and
three weeks before had safely landed Napoleon and his soldiers in
Egypt.  The French admiral, Bruéys, knew that Nelson was coming
furiously in his track, and after a consultation with all his captains
he had drawn up his ships in the order which we have described, a
position he believed to be unassailable.  And at three o'clock on the
afternoon of August 1, 1798, his look-outs were eagerly watching the
white topsails showing above the lee line, the van of Nelson's fleet.

Napoleon had kept the secret of his Egyptian expedition well, and the
great Toulon fleet, with its swarm of transports, had vanished round
the coast of Corsica and gone off into mere space, as far as a
bewildered British Admiralty knew.  A fleet of thirteen 74-gun ships
and one of 50 guns was placed under Nelson's flag.  He was ordered to
pursue and destroy the vanished French fleet, and with characteristic
energy he set out on one of the most dramatic sea-chases known to
history.  With the instinct of genius he guessed that Napoleon's
destination was Egypt; but while the French fleet coasted Sardinia and
went to the west of Sicily, Nelson ran down the Italian coast to
Naples, called there for information, found none, and, carrying all
sail, swept through the straits of Messina.

On the night of June 22 the two fleets actually crossed each other's
tracks.  The French fleet, including the transports, numbered 572
vessels, and their lights, it might be imagined, would have lit up many
leagues of sea.  Yet, through this forest of hostile masts the English
fleet, with keen eyes watching at every masthead, swept and saw
nothing.  Nelson, for one thing, had no frigates to serve as eyes and
ears for him; his fleet in sailor-like fashion formed a compact body,
three parallel lines of phantom-like pyramids of canvas sweeping in the
darkness across the floor of the sea.  Above all a haze filled the
night; and it is not too much to say that the drifting grey vapour
which hid the French ships from Nelson's lookout men changed the face
of history.

Nelson used to explain that his ideal of perfect enjoyment would be to
have the chance of "trying Bonaparte on a wind"; and if he had caught
sound of bell or gleam of lantern from the great French fleet, and
brought it to action in the darkness of that foggy night, can any one
doubt what the result would have been?  Nelson would have done off the
coast of Sicily on June 22, 1798, what Wellington did on June 18, 1815;
and in that case there would have been no Marengo or Austerlitz, no
retreat from Moscow, no Peninsular war, and no Waterloo.  For so much,
in distracted human affairs, may a patch of drifting vapour count!

Nelson, in a word, overran his prey.  He reached Alexandria to find the
coast empty; doubled back to Sicily, zigzagging on his way by Cyprus
and Candia; and twelve hours after he had left Alexandria the topsails
of the French fleet hove in sight from that port.  Napoleon's troops
were safely landed, and the French admiral had some four weeks in which
to prepare for Nelson's return, and at 3 P.M. on August 1 the gliding
topsails of the _Swiftsure_ above Aboukir Island showed that the
tireless Englishman had, after nearly three months of pursuit,
overtaken his enemy.

The French, if frigates be included, counted seventeen ships to
fourteen, and ship for ship they had the advantage over the British
alike in crew, tonnage, and weight of fire.  In size the English ships
scarcely averaged 1500 tons; the French ships exceeded 2000 tons.
Nelson had only seventy-fours, his heaviest gun being a 32-pounder.
The average French 80-gun ship in every detail of fighting strength
exceeded an English ninety-eight, and Bruéys had three such ships in
his fleet; while his own flagship, the _Orient_, was fully equal to two
English seventy-fours.  Its weight of ball on the lower deck alone
exceeded that from the whole broadside of the _Bellerophon_, the ship
that engaged it.  The French, in brief, had an advantage in guns of
about twenty per cent., and in men of over thirty per cent.  Bruéys,
moreover, was lying in a carefully chosen position in a dangerous bay,
of which his enemies possessed no chart, and the head of his line was
protected by a powerful shore battery.

Nothing in this great fight is more dramatic than the swiftness and
vehemence of Nelson's attack.  He simply leaped upon his enemy at
sight.  Four of his ships were miles off in the offing, but Nelson did
not wait for them.  In the long pursuit he had assembled his captains
repeatedly in his cabin, and discussed every possible manner of
attacking the French fleet.  If he found the fleet as he guessed, drawn
up in battle-line close in-shore and anchored, his plan was to place
one of his ships on the bows, another on the quarter, of each French
ship in succession.

It has been debated who actually evolved the idea of rounding the head
of the French line and attacking on both faces.  One version is that
Foley, in the _Goliath_, who led the British line, owed the suggestion
to a keen-eyed middy who pointed out that the anchor buoy of the
headmost French ship was at such a distance from the ship itself as to
prove there was room to pass.  But the weight of evidence seems to
prove that Nelson himself, as he rounded Aboukir Island, and scanned
with fierce and questioning vision Bruéys' formation, with that
swiftness of glance in which he almost rivalled Napoleon, saw his
chance in the gap between the leading French ship and the shore.
"Where a French ship can swing," he held, "an English ship can either
sail or anchor."  And he determined to double on the French line and
attack on both faces at once.  He explained his plan to Berry, his
captain, who in his delight exclaimed, "If we succeed, what will the
world say?"  "There is no 'if' in the case," said Nelson; "that we
shall succeed is certain; who will live to tell the story is a very
different question."

[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF THE NILE.  Doubling on the French Line.
From Allen's "Battles of the British Navy."]

Bruéys had calculated that the English fleet must come down
perpendicularly to his centre, and each ship in the process be raked by
a line of fire a mile and a half long; but the moment the English ships
rounded the island they tacked, hugged the shore, and swept through the
gap between the leading vessel and the land.  The British ships were so
close to each other that Nelson, speaking from his own quarter-deck,
was able to ask Hood in the _Zealous_, if he thought they had water
enough to round the French line.  Hood replied that he had no chart,
but would lead and take soundings as he went.

So the British line came on, the men on the yards taking in canvas, the
leadsmen in the chains coolly calling the soundings.  The battery
roared from the island, the leading French ships broke into smoke and
flame, but the steady British line glided on.  The _Goliath_ by this
time led; and at half-past five the shadow of its tall masts cast by
the westering sun fell over the decks of the _Guerrier_, and as Foley,
its captain, swept past the Frenchman's bows, he poured in a furious
broadside, bore swiftly up, and dropped--as Nelson, with that minute
attention to detail which marks a great commander, had ordered all his
captains--an anchor from the stern, so that, without having to "swing,"
he was instantly in a fighting position on his enemy's quarter.  Foley,
however, dropped his anchor a moment too late, and drifted on to the
second ship in the line; but Hood, in the _Zealous_, coming swiftly
after, also raked the _Guerrier_, and, anchoring from the stern at the
exact moment, took the place on its quarter Foley should have taken.

The _Orion_ came into battle next, blasted the unfortunate _Guerrier_,
whose foremast had already gone, with a third broadside, and swept
outside the _Zealous_ and _Goliath_ down to the third ship on the
French line.  A French frigate, the _Sérieuse_, of thirty-six guns,
anchored inside the French line, ventured to fire on the _Orion_ as it
swept past, whereupon Saumarez, its commander, discharged his starboard
broadside into that frigate.  The _Sérieuse_ reeled under the shock of
the British guns, its masts disappeared like chips, and the unfortunate
Frenchman went down like a stone; while Saumarez, laying himself on the
larboard bow of the _Franklin_ and the quarter of the _Peuple Sovrain_,
broke upon them in thunder.  The _Theseus_ followed hard in the track
of the _Orion_, raked the unhappy _Guerrier_ in the familiar fashion
while crossing its bows, then swept through the narrow water-lane
betwixt the _Goliath_ and _Zealous_ and their French antagonists,
poured a smashing broadside into each French ship as it passed, then
shot outside the _Orion_, and anchored with mathematical nicety off the
quarter of the _Spartiate_.  The water-lane was not a pistol-shot wide,
and this feat of seamanship was marvellous.

Miller, who commanded the _Theseus_, in a letter to his wife described
the fight.  "In running along the enemy's line in the wake of the
_Zealous_ and _Goliath_, I observed," he says, "their shot sweep just
over us, and knowing well that at such a moment Frenchmen would not
have coolness enough to change their elevation, I closed them suddenly,
and, running under the arch of their shot, reserved my fire, every gun
being loaded with two, and some with three round shot, until I had the
_Guerrier's_ masts in a line, and her jib-boom about six feet clear of
our rigging.  We then opened with such effect that a second breath
could not be drawn before her main and mizzen-mast were also gone.
This was precisely at sunset, or forty-four minutes past six."

The _Audacious_, meanwhile, was too impatient to tack round the head of
the French line; it broke through the gap betwixt the first and second
ships of the enemy, delivered itself, in a comfortable manner, of a
raking broadside into both as it passed, took its position on the
larboard bow of the _Conquerant_, and gave itself up to the joy of
battle.  Within thirty minutes from the beginning of the fight, that
is, five British line-of-battle ships were inside the French line,
comfortably established on the bows or quarters of the leading ships.
Nelson himself, in the _Vanguard_, anchored on the outside of the
French line, within eighty yards of the _Spartiate's_ starboard beam;
the _Minotaur_, the _Bellerophon_, and the _Majestic_, coming up in
swift succession, and at less than five minutes' interval from each
other, flung themselves on the next ships.

How the thunder of the battle deepened, and how the quick flashes of
the guns grew brighter as the night gathered rapidly over sea, must be
imagined.  But Nelson's swift and brilliant strategy was triumphant.
Each ship in the French van resembled nothing so much as a walnut in
the jaws of a nut-cracker.  They were being "cracked" in succession,
and the rear of the line could only look on with agitated feelings and
watch the operation.

The fire of the British ships for fury and precision was overwhelming.
The head of the _Guerrier_ was simply shot away; the anchors hanging
from her bows were cut in two; her main-deck ports, from the bowsprit
to the gangway, were driven into one; her masts, fallen inboard, lay
with their tangle of rigging on the unhappy crew; while some of her
main-deck beams--all supports being torn away--fell on the guns.  Hood,
in the _Zealous_, who was pounding the unfortunate _Guerrier_, says,
"At last, being tired of killing men in that way, I sent a lieutenant
on board, who was allowed, as I had instructed him, to hoist a light,
and haul it down as a sign of submission."  But all the damage was not
on the side of the French.  The great French flagship, the _Orient_, by
this time had added her mighty voice to the tumult, and the
_Bellerophon_, who was engaged with her, had a bad time of it.  It was
the story of Tom Sayers and Heenan over again--a dwarf fighting a
giant.  Her mizzen-mast and mainmast were shot away, and after
maintaining the dreadful duel for more than an hour, and having 200 of
her crew struck down, at 8.20 P.M. the _Bellerophon_ cut her cable and
drifted, a disabled wreck, out of the fire.

Meanwhile the four ships Nelson had left in the offing were beating
furiously up to add themselves to the fight.  Night had fallen, by the
time Troubridge, in the _Culloden_, came round the island; and then, in
full sight of the great battle, the _Culloden_ ran hopelessly ashore!
She was, perhaps, the finest ship of the British fleet, and the
emotions of its crew and commander as they listened to the tumult, and
watched through the darkness the darting fires of the Titanic combat
they could not share, may be imagined.  "Our army," according to
well-known authorities, "swore terribly in Flanders."  The expletives
discharged that night along the decks and in the forecastle of the
Culloden would probably have made even a Flanders veteran open his eyes
in astonishment.

The _Swiftsure_ and the _Alexander_, taking warning by the _Culloden's_
fate, swept round her and bore safely up to the fight.  The
_Swiftsure_, bearing down through the darkness to the combat, came
across a vessel drifting, dismasted and lightless, a mere wreck.
Holliwell, the captain of the _Swiftsure_, was about to fire, thinking
it was an enemy, but on second thoughts hailed instead, and got for an
answer the words, "_Bellerophon_; going out of action, disabled."  The
_Swiftsure_ passed on, and five minutes after the _Bellerophon_ had
drifted from the bows of the _Orient_ the _Swiftsure_, coming
mysteriously up out of the darkness, took her place, and broke into a
tempest of fire.

At nine o'clock the great French flagship burst into flame.  The
painters had been at work upon her on the morning of that day, and had
left oil and combustibles about.  The nearest English ships
concentrated their fire, both of musketry and of cannon, on the burning
patch, and made the task of extinguishing it hopeless.  Bruéys, the
French admiral, had already been cut in two by a cannon shot, and
Casablanca, his commodore, was wounded.  The fire spread, the flames
leaped up the masts and crept athwart the decks of the great ship.  The
moon had just risen, and the whole scene was perhaps the strangest ever
witnessed--the great burning ship, the white light of the moon above,
the darting points of red flame from the iron lips of hundreds of guns
below, the drifting battle-smoke, the cries of ten thousand
combatants--all crowded into an area of a few hundred square yards!

The British ships, hanging like hounds on the flanks of the Orient,
knew that the explosion might come at any moment, and they made every
preparation for it, closing their hatchways, and gathering their
firemen at quarters.  But they would not withdraw their ships a single
yard!  At ten o'clock the great French ship blew up with a flame that
for a moment lit shore and sea, and a sound that hushed into stillness
the whole tumult of the battle.  Out of a crew of over a thousand men
only seventy were saved!  For ten minutes after that dreadful sight the
warring fleets seemed stupefied.  Not a shout was heard, not a shot
fired.  Then the French ship next the missing flagship broke into
wrathful fire, and the battle awoke in full passion once more.

The fighting raged with partial intermissions all through the night,
and when morning broke Bruéys' curved line of mighty battleships, a
mile and a half long, had vanished.  Of the French ships, one had been
blown up, one was sunk, one was ashore, four had fled, the rest were
prizes.  It was the most complete and dramatic victory in naval
history.  The French fought on the whole with magnificent courage; but,
though stronger in the mass, Nelson's strategy and the seamanship of
his captains made the British stronger at every point of actual battle.
The rear of the French line did not fire a shot or lose a man.  The
wonder is that when Nelson's strategy was developed, and its fatal
character understood, Villeneuve, who commanded the French rear, and
was a man of undoubted courage, did not cut his cables, make sail, and
come to the help of his comrades.  A few hundred yards would have
carried him to the heart of the fight.  Can any one doubt whether, if
the positions had been reversed, Nelson would have watched the
destruction of half his fleet as a mere spectator?  If nothing better
had offered, he would have pulled in a wash-tub into the fight!

Villeneuve afterwards offered three explanations of his own
inertness--(1) he "could not spare any of his anchors"; (2) "he had no
instructions"! (3) "on board the ships in the rear the idea of weighing
and going to the help of the ships engaged occurred to no one"!  In
justice to the French, however, it may be admitted that nothing could
surpass the fierceness and valour with which, say, the _Tonnant_ was
fought.  Its captain, Du Petit-Thouars, fought his ship magnificently,
had first both his arms and then one of his legs shot away, and died
entreating his officers not to strike.  Of the ten French ships
engaged, the captains of eight were killed or wounded.  Nelson took the
seven wounded captains on board the _Vanguard_, and, as they recovered,
they dined regularly with him.  One of the captains had lost his nose,
another an eye, another most of his teeth, with musket-shots, &c.
Nelson, who himself had been wounded, and was still half-blind as a
result, at one of his dinners offered by mischance a case of toothpicks
to the captain on his left, who had lost all his teeth.  He discovered
his error, and in his confusion handed his snuff-box to the captain on
his right, who had lost his nose!

What was the secret of the British victory?  Nelson's brilliant
strategy was only possible by virtue of the magnificent seamanship of
his captains, and the new fashion of close and desperate fighting,
which Hood and Jarvis and Nelson himself had created.  It is a French
writer, Captain Gravière, who says that the French naval habit of
evading battle where they could, and of accepting action from an enemy
rather than forcing it upon him, had ruined the _morale_ of the French
navy.  The long blockades had made Nelson's captains perfect seamen,
and he taught them that close fighting at pistol-shot distance was the
secret of victory.  "No English captain," he said, "can do wrong who,
in fight, lays a ship alongside an enemy."  It was a captain of
Nelson's school--a Scotchman--who at Camperdown, unable, just as the
action began, to read some complicated signal from his chief, flung his
signal-book on the deck, and in broad Scotch exclaimed, "D---- me! up
with the hellem an' gang in the middle o't."  That trick of "ganging
into the middle o't" was irresistible.

The battle of the Nile destroyed the naval prestige of France, made
England supreme in the Mediterranean, saved India, left Napoleon and
his army practically prisoners in Egypt, and united Austria, Russia,
and Turkey in league against France.  The night battle in Aboukir Bay,
in a word, changed the face of history.

THE FUSILEERS AT ALBUERA

  "And nearer, fast and nearer,
    Doth the red whirlwind come;
  And louder still, and still more loud,
  From underneath that rolling cloud,
  Is heard the trumpet's war-note proud,
    The trampling and the hum.
  And plainly, and more plainly,
    Now through the gloom appears,
  Far to left and far to right,
  In broken gleams of dark-blue light,
  The long array of helmets bright,
    The long array of spears."
            --MACAULAY.

Albuera is the fiercest, bloodiest, and most amazing fight in the mighty
drama of the Peninsular war.  On May 11, 1811, the English guns were
thundering sullenly over Badajos.  Wellington was beyond the Guadiana,
pressing Marmont; and Beresford, with much pluck but little skill, was
besieging the great frontier fortress.  Soult, however, a master of war,
was swooping down from Seville to raise the siege.  On the 14th he
reached Villafranca, only thirty miles distant, and fired salvos from his
heaviest guns all through the night to warn the garrison of approaching
succour.  Beresford could not both maintain the siege and fight Soult;
and on the night of the 13th he abandoned his trenches, burnt his gabions
and fascines, and marched to meet Soult at Albuera, a low ridge, with a
shallow river in front, which barred the road to Badajos.  As the morning
of May 16, 1811, broke, heavy with clouds, and wild with gusty
rain-storms, the two armies grimly gazed at each other in stern pause,
ere they joined in the wrestle of actual battle.

All the advantages, save one, were on the side of the French.  Soult was
the ablest of the French marshals.  If he had not Ney's _élan_ in attack,
or Massena's stubborn resource in retreat, yet he had a military genius,
since Lannes was dead, second only to that of Napoleon himself.  He had
under his command 20,000 war-hardened infantry, 40 guns, and 4000
magnificent cavalry, commanded by Latour Maubourg, one of the most
brilliant of French cavalry generals.  Beresford, the British commander,
had the dogged fighting courage, half Dutch and half English, of his name
and blood; but as a commander he was scarcely third-rate.  Of his army of
30,000, 15,000 were Spanish, half drilled, and more than half
starved--they had lived for days on horse-flesh--under Blake, a general
who had lost all the good qualities of Irish character, and acquired all
the bad ones peculiar to Spanish temper.  Of Beresford's remaining troop
8000 were Portuguese; he had only 7000 British soldiers.

Beresford ought not to have fought.  He had abandoned the siege at
Badajos, and no reason for giving battle remained.  The condition of
Blake's men, no doubt, made retreat difficult.  They had reached the
point at which they must either halt or lie down and die.  The real force
driving Beresford to battle, however, was the fighting effervescence in
his own blood and the warlike impatience of his English troops.  They had
taken no part in the late great battles under Wellington; Busaco had been
fought and Fuentes de Onoro gained without them; and they were in the
mood, both officers and men, of fierce determination to fight _somebody_!
This was intimated somewhat roughly to Beresford, and he had not that
iron ascendency over his troops Wellington possessed.  As a matter of
fact, he was himself as stubbornly eager to fight as any private in the
ranks.

The superiority of Soult's warlike genius was shown before a shot was
fired.  Beresford regarded the bridge that crossed the Albuera and the
village that clustered at the bridge-head as the key of his position.  He
occupied the village with Alten's German brigade, covered the bridge with
the fire of powerful batteries, and held in reserve above it his best
British brigade, the fusileers, under Cole, the very regiments who, four
hours later, on the extreme right of Beresford's position, were actually
to win the battle.  Soult's sure vision, however, as he surveyed his
enemies on the evening of the 15th, saw that Beresford's right was his
weak point.  It was a rough, broken table-land, curving till it looked
into the rear of Beresford's line.  It was weakly held by Blake and his
Spaniards.  Immediately in its front was a low wooded hill, behind which,
as a screen, an attacking force could be gathered.

In the night Soult placed behind this hill the fifth corps, under Gerard,
the whole of his cavalry, under Latour Maubourg, and the strength of his
artillery.  When the morning broke, Soult had 15,000 men and 30 guns
within ten minutes' march of Beresford's right wing, and nobody suspected
it.  No gleam of colour, no murmur of packed battalions, no ring of
steel, no sound of marching feet warned the deluded English general of
the battle-storm about to break on his right wing.  A commander with such
an unexpected tempest ready to burst on the weakest point of his line was
by all the rules of war pre-doomed.

At nine o'clock Soult launched an attack at the bridge, the point where
Beresford expected him, but it was only a feint.  Beresford, however,
with all his faults, had the soldierly brain to which the actual thunder
of the cannon gave clearness.  He noticed that the French battalions
supporting the attack on the bridge did not press on closely.  As a
matter of fact, as soon as the smoke of artillery from the battle raging
at the bridge swept over the field, they swung smartly to the left, and
at the double hastened to add themselves to the thunderbolt which Soult
was launching at Beresford's right.  But Beresford, meanwhile, had
guessed Soult's secret, and he sent officer after officer ordering and
entreating Blake to change front so as to meet Soult's attack on his
flank, and he finally rode thither himself to enforce his commands.
Blake, however, was immovable through pride, and his men through sheer
physical weakness.  They could die, but they could not march or deploy.
Blake at last tried to change front, but as he did so the French attack
smote him.  Pressing up the gentle rise, Gerard's men scourged poor
Blake's flank with their fire; the French artillery, coming swiftly on,
halted every fifty yards to thunder on the unhappy Spaniards; while
Latour Maubourg's lancers and hussars, galloping in a wider sweep,
gathered momentum for a wild ride on Blake's actual rear.

[Illustration: Battle of Albuera, 16th May, 1811.  From Napier's
"Peninsular War."]

Beresford tried to persuade the Spaniards to charge as the French were
thus circling round them.  Shouts and gesticulations were in vain.  He
was a man of giant height and strength, and he actually seized a Spanish
ensign in his iron grip, and carried him bodily, flag and all, at a run
for fifty yards towards the moving French lines, and planted him there.
When released, however, the bewildered Spaniard simply took to his heels
and ran back to his friends, as a terrified sheep might run back to the
flock.  In half-an-hour Beresford's battle had grown desperate.
Two-thirds of the French, in compact order of battle, were perpendicular
to his right; the Spaniards were falling into disorder.  Soult saw the
victory in his grasp, and eagerly pushed forward his reserves.  Over the
whole hill, mingled with furious blasts of rain, rolled the tumult of a
disorderly and broken fight.  Ten minutes more would have enabled Soult
to fling Beresford's right, a shattered and routed mass, on the only
possible line of retreat, and with the French superiority in cavalry his
army would have been blotted out.

The share of the British in the fight consisted of three great attacks
delivered by way of counter-stroke to Soult's overwhelming rush on the
hill held by Blake.  The first attack was delivered by the second
division, under Colborne, led by General Stewart in person.  Stewart was
a sort of British version of Ney, a man of vehement spirit, with a daring
that grew even more flame-like in the eddying tumult and tempest of
actual battle.  He saw Soult's attack crumpling up Blake's helpless
battalions, while the flash of the French artillery every moment grew
closer.  It was the crisis of the fight, and Stewart brought on
Colborne's men at a run.  Colborne himself, a fine soldier with cool
judgment, wished to halt and form his men in order of battle before
plunging into the confused vortex of the fight above; but Stewart, full
of breathless ardour, hurried the brigade up the hill in column of
companies, reached the Spanish right, and began to form line by
succession of battalions as they arrived.

At this moment a wild tempest of rain was sweeping over the British as,
at the double, they came up the hill; the eddying fog, thick and slab
with the smoke of powder, hid everything twenty yards from the panting
soldiers.  Suddenly the wall of changing fog to their right sparkled into
swiftly moving spots of red; it shone the next instant with the gleam of
a thousand steel points; above the thunder of the cannon, the shouts of
contending men, rose the awful sound of a tempest of galloping hoofs.
The French lancers and hussars caught the English in open order, and in
five fierce and bloody minutes almost trampled them out of existence!
Two-thirds of the brigade went down.  The 31st Regiment flung itself
promptly into square, and stood fast--a tiny island, edged with steel and
flame, amid the mad tumult; but the French lancers, drunk with
excitement, mad with battle fury, swept over the whole slope of the hill.
They captured six guns, and might have done yet more fatal mischief but
that they occupied themselves in galloping to and fro across the line of
their original charge, spearing the wounded.

One lancer charged Beresford as he sat, solitary and huge, on his horse
amid the broken English regiments.  But Beresford was at least a
magnificent trooper; he put the lance aside with one hand, and caught the
Frenchman by the throat, lifted him clean from his saddle, and dashed him
senseless on the ground!  The ensign who carried the colours of the 3rd
Buffs covered them with his body till he was slain by a dozen
lance-thrusts; the ensign who carried the other colours of the same
regiment tore the flag from its staff and thrust it into his breast, and
it was found there, stiff with his blood, after the fight.  The
Spaniards, meanwhile, were firing incessantly but on general principles
merely, and into space or into the ranks of their own allies as might
happen; and the 29th, advancing to the help of Colborne's broken men,
finding the Spaniards in their path and firing into their lines, broke
sternly into volleys on them in turn.  Seldom has a battlefield witnessed
a tumult so distracted and wild.

The first English counter-stroke had failed, but the second followed
swiftly.  The furious rain and fog which had proved so fatal to
Colborne's men for a moment, was in favour of Beresford.  Soult, though
eagerly watching the conflict, could not see the ruin into which the
British had fallen, and hesitated to launch his reserves into the fight.
The 31st still sternly held its own against the French cavalry, and this
gave time for Stewart to bring up Houghton's brigade.  But this time
Stewart, though he brought up his men with as much vehemence as before,
brought them up in order of battle.  The 29th, the 48th, and the 57th
swept up the hill in line, led by Houghton, hat in hand.  He fell,
pierced by three bullets; but over his dead body, eager to close, the
British line still swept.  They reached the crest.  A deep and narrow
ravine arrested their bayonet charge; but with stubborn valour they held
the ground they had gained, scourged with musketry fire at pistol-shot
distance, and by artillery at fifty yards' range, while a French column
smote them with its musketry on their flask.  The men fell fast, but
fought as they fell.  Stewart was twice wounded; Colonel Dutworth, of the
48th, slain; of the 57th, out of 570 men, 430, with their colonel,
Inglis, fell.  The men, after the battle, were found lying dead in ranks
exactly as they fought.  "Die hard! my men, die hard!" said Inglis when
the bullet struck him; and the 57th have borne the name of "Die hards"
ever since.  At Inkerman, indeed, more than fifty years afterwards, the
"Die hard!" of Inglis served to harden the valour of the 57th in a fight
as stern as Albuera itself.

But ammunition began to fail.  Houghton's men would not yield, but it was
plain that in a few more minutes there would be none of them left, save
the dead and the wounded.  And at this dreadful moment Beresford,
distracted with the tumult and horror of the fight, wavered!  He called
up Alten's men from the bridge to cover his retreat, and prepared to
yield the fatal hill.  At this juncture, however, a mind more masterful
and daring than his own launched a third British attack against the
victorious French and won the dreadful day.

Colonel Hardinge, afterwards famous in Indian battles, acted as
quartermaster-general of the Portuguese army; on his own responsibility
he organised the third English attack.  Cole had just come up the road
from Badajos with two brigades, and Hardinge urged him to lead his men
straight up the hill; then riding to Abercrombie's brigade, he ordered
him to sweep round the flank of the hill.  Beresford, on learning of this
movement, accepted it, and sent back Alten's men to retake the bridge
which they had abandoned.

Abercrombie's men swept to the left of the hill, and Cole, a gallant and
able soldier, using the Portuguese regiments in his brigade as a guard
against a flank attack of the French cavalry, led his two fusileer
regiments, the 7th and 23rd, straight to the crest.

At this moment the French reserves were coming on, the fragments of
Houghton's brigade were falling back, the field was heaped with carcases,
the lancers were riding furiously about the captured artillery, and with
a storm of exultant shouts the French were sweeping on to assured
victory.  It was the dramatic moment of the fight.  Suddenly through the
fog, coming rapidly on with stern faces and flashing volleys, appeared
the long line of Cole's fusileers on the right of Houghton's staggering
groups, while at the same exact moment Abercrombie's line broke through
the mist on their left.  As these grim and threatening lines became
visible, the French shouts suddenly died down.  It was the old contest of
the British line--the "thin red line"--against the favourite French
attack in column, and the story can only be told in Napier's resonant
prose.  The passage which describes the attack of the fusileers is one of
the classic passages of English battle literature, and in its syllables
can still almost be heard the tread of marching feet, the shrill clangour
of smitten steel, and the thunder of the musketry volleys:--

"Such a gallant line," says Napier, "arising from amid the smoke, and
rapidly separating itself from the confused and broken multitude,
startled the enemy's masses, which were increasing and pressing forward
as to assured victory; they wavered, hesitated, and then, vomiting forth
a storm of fire, hastily endeavoured to enlarge their front, while the
fearful discharge of grape from all their artillery whistled through the
British ranks.  Myers was killed.  Cole and the three colonels--Ellis,
Blakeney, and Hawkshawe--fell wounded, and the fusileer battalions,
struck by the iron tempest, reeled and staggered like sinking ships.
Suddenly and sternly recovering, they closed on their terrible enemies,
and then was seen with what a strength and majesty the British soldier
fights.  In vain did Soult, by voice and gesture, animate his Frenchmen;
in vain did the hardiest veterans break from the crowded columns and
sacrifice their lives to gain time for the mass to open on such a fair
field; in vain did the mass itself bear up, and, fiercely striving, fire
indiscriminately on friends and foes, while the horsemen, hovering on the
flanks, threatened to charge the advancing line.

"Nothing could stop that astonishing infantry.  No sudden burst of
undisciplined valour, no nervous enthusiasm weakened the stability of
their order; their flashing eyes were bent on the dark columns in front,
their measured tread shook the ground, their dreadful volleys swept away
the head of every formation, their deafening shouts overpowered the
dissonant cries that broke from all parts of the tumultuous crowd as
slowly and with a horrid carnage it was driven by the incessant vigour of
the attack to the farthest edge of the hill.  In vain did the French
reserves mix with the struggling multitude to sustain the fight; their
efforts only increased the irremediable confusion, and the mighty mass,
breaking off like a loosened cliff, went headlong down the ascent.  The
rain flowed after in streams discoloured with blood, and 1800 unwounded
men, the remnant of 6000 unconquerable British soldiers, stood triumphant
on the fatal hill."

The battle of Albuera lasted four hours; its slaughter was dreadful.
Within the space of a few hundred feet square were strewn some 7000
bodies, and over this Aceldama the artillery had galloped, the cavalry
had charged!  The 3rd Buffs went into the fight with 24 officers and 750
rank and file; at the roll-call next morning there were only 5 officers
and 35 men.  One company of the Royal Fusileers came out of the fight
commanded by a corporal; every officer and sergeant had been killed.
Albuera is essentially a soldier's fight.  The bayonet of the private,
not the brain of the general, won it; and never was the fighting quality
of our race more brilliantly shown.  Soult summed up the battle in words
that deserve to be memorable.  "There is no beating those troops," he
wrote, "_in spite of their generals_!"  "I always thought them bad
soldiers," he added, with a Frenchman's love of paradox; "now I am sure
of it.  For I turned their right, pierced their centre, they were
everywhere broken, the day was mine, and yet _they did not know it_, and
would not run!"

THE "SHANNON" AND THE "CHESAPEAKE"

  "The signal to engage shall be
    A whistle and a hollo;
  Be one and all but firm, like me,
    And conquest soon will follow!
  You, Gunnel, keep the helm in hand--
    Thus, thus, boys! steady, steady,
  Till right ahead you see the land--
    Then soon as you are ready,
  The signal to engage shall be
    A whistle and a hollo;
  Be one and all but firm, like me,
    And conquest soon will follow!"
            --C. DIBDIN.

On the early morning of June 1, 1813, a solitary British frigate,
H.M.S. _Shannon_, was cruising within sight of Boston lighthouse.  She
was a ship of about 1000 tons, and bore every mark of long and hard
service.  No gleam of colour sparkled about her.  Her sides were rusty,
her sails weather-stained; a solitary flag flew from her mizzen-peak,
and even its blue had been bleached by sun and rain and wind to a dingy
grey.  A less romantic and more severely practical ship did not float,
and her captain was of the same type as the ship.

Captain Philip Bowes Vere Broke was an Englishman _pur sang_, and of a
type happily not uncommon.  His fame will live as long as the British
flag flies, yet a more sober and prosaic figure can hardly be imagined.
He was not, like Nelson, a quarter-deck Napoleon; he had no gleam of
Dundonald's matchless _ruse de guerre_.  He was as deeply religious as
Havelock or one of Cromwell's major-generals; he had the frugality of a
Scotchman, and the heavy-footed common-sense of a Hollander.  He was as
nautical as a web-footed bird, and had no more "nerves" than a fish.  A
domestic Englishman, whose heart was always with the little girls at
Brokehall, in Suffolk, but for whom the service of his country was a
piety, and who might have competed with Lawrence for his self-chosen
epitaph, "Here lies one who tried to do his duty."

A sober-suited, half-melancholy common-sense was Broke's
characteristic, and he had applied it to the working of his ship, till
he had made the vessel, perhaps, the most formidable fighting machine
of her size afloat.  He drilled his gunners until, from the swaying
platform of their decks, they shot with a deadly coolness and accuracy
nothing floating could resist.  Broke, as a matter of fact, owed his
famous victory over the _Chesapeake_ to one of his matter-of-fact
precautions.  The first broadside fired by the _Chesapeake_ sent a
32-pound shot through one of the gun-room cabins into the magazine
passage of the _Shannon_, where it might easily have ignited some
grains of loose powder and blown the ship up, if Broke had not taken
the precaution of elaborately _damping_ that passage before the action
began.  The prosaic side of Broke's character is very amusing.  In his
diary he records his world-famous victory thus:--

"June 1st.--Off Boston.  Moderate."

"N.W.--W(rote) Laurence."

"P.M.--Took _Chesapeake_."

Was ever a shining victory packed into fewer or duller words?  Broke's
scorn of the histrionic is shown by his reply to one of his own men
who, when the _Chesapeake_, one blaze of fluttering colours, was
bearing down upon her drab-coloured opponent, said to his commander,
eyeing the bleached and solitary flag at the _Shannon's_ peak, "Mayn't
we have three ensigns, sir, like she has?"  "No," said Broke, "we have
always been an _unassuming_ ship!"

And yet, this unromantic English sailor had a gleam of Don Quixote in
him.  On this pleasant summer morning he was waiting alone, under easy
sail, outside a hostile port, strongly fortified and full of armed
vessels, waiting for an enemy's ship bigger than himself to come out
and fight him.  He had sent in the previous day, by way of challenge, a
letter that recalls the days of chivalry.  "As the _Chesapeake_," he
wrote to Laurence, its captain, "appears now ready for sea, I request
that you will do me the favour to meet the _Shannon_ with her, ship to
ship."  He proceeds to explain the exact armament of the _Shannon_, the
number of her crew, the interesting circumstance that he is short of
provisions and water, and that he has sent away his consort so that the
terms of the duel may be fair.  "If you will favour me," he says, "with
any plan of signals or telegraph, I will warn you should any of my
friends be too nigh, while you are in sight, until I can detach them
out of the way.  Or," he suggests coaxingly, "I would sail under a flag
of truce to any place you think safest from our cruisers, hauling it
down when fair, to begin hostilities. . . .  Choose your terms," he
concludes, "but let us meet."  Having sent in this amazing letter, this
middle-aged, unromantic, but hard-fighting captain climbs at daybreak
to his own maintop, and sits there till half-past eleven, watching the
challenged ship, to see if her foretopsail is unloosed and she is
coming out to fight.

It is easy to understand the causes which kindled a British sailor of
even Broke's unimaginative temperament into flame.  On June 18, 1812,
the United States, with magnificent audacity, declared war against
Great Britain.  England at that moment had 621 efficient cruisers at
sea, 102 being line-of-battle ships.  The American navy consisted of 8
frigates and 12 corvettes.  It is true that England was at war at the
same moment with half the civilised world; but what reasonable chance
had the tiny naval power of the United States against the mighty fleets
of England, commanded by men trained in the school of Nelson, and rich
with the traditions of the Nile and Trafalgar?  As a matter of fact, in
the war which followed, the commerce of the United States was swept out
of existence.  But the Americans were of the same fighting stock as the
English; to the Viking blood, indeed, they added Yankee ingenuity and
resource, making a very formidable combination; and up to the June
morning when the _Shannon_ was waiting outside Boston Harbour for the
_Chesapeake_, the naval honours of the war belonged to the Americans.
The Americans had no fleet, and the campaign was one of single ship
against single ship, but in these combats the Americans had scored more
successes in twelve months than French seamen had gained in twelve
years.  The _Guerrière_, the _Java_, and the _Macedonian_ had each been
captured in single combat, and every British post-captain betwixt
Portsmouth and Halifax was swearing with mere fury.

The Americans were shrewd enough to invent a new type of frigate which,
in strength of frame, weight of metal, and general fighting power, was
to a British frigate of the same class almost what an ironclad would be
to a wooden ship.  The _Constitution_, for example, was in size to the
average British frigate as 15.3 to 10.9; in weight of metal as 76 to
51; and in crew as 46 to 25.  Broke, however, had a well-founded belief
in his ship and his men, and he proposed, in his sober fashion, to
restore the tarnished honour of his flag by capturing single-handed the
best American frigate afloat.

The _Chesapeake_ was a fine ship, perfectly equipped, under a daring
and popular commander.  Laurence was a man of brilliant ingenuity and
courage, and had won fame four months before by capturing in the
_Hornet_, after a hard fight, the British brig-of-war _Peacock_.  For
this feat he had been promoted to the _Chesapeake_, and in his brief
speech from the quarterdeck just before the fight with the _Shannon_
began, he called up the memory of the fight which made him a popular
hero by exhorting his crew to "_Peacock_ her, my lads!  _Peacock_ her!"
The _Chesapeake_ was larger than the _Shannon_, its crew was nearly a
hundred men stronger, its weight of fire 598 lbs. as against the
_Shannon's_ 538 lbs.  Her guns fired double-headed shot, and bars of
wrought iron connected by links and loosely tied by a few rope yarns,
which, when discharged from the gun, spread out and formed a flying
iron chain six feet long.  Its canister shot contained jagged pieces of
iron, broken bolts, and nails.  As the British had a reputation for
boarding, a large barrel of unslacked lime was provided to fling in the
faces of the boarders.  An early shot from the _Shannon_, by the way,
struck this cask of lime and scattered its contents in the faces of the
Americans themselves.  Part of the equipment of the _Chesapeake_
consisted of several hundred pairs of handcuffs, intended for the
wrists of English prisoners.  Boston citizens prepared a banquet in
honour of the victors for the same evening, and a small fleet of
pleasure-boats followed the _Chesapeake_ as she came gallantly out to
the fight.

Never was a braver, shorter, or more murderous fight.  Laurence, the
most gallant of men, bore steadily down, without firing a shot, to the
starboard quarter of the _Shannon_.  When within fifty yards he luffed;
his men sprang into the shrouds and gave three cheers.  Broke fought
with characteristic silence and composure.  He forbade his men to
cheer, enforced the sternest silence along his deck, and ordered the
captain of each gun to fire as his piece bore on the enemy.  "Fire into
her quarters," he said, "main-deck into main-deck, quarter-deck into
quarter-deck.  Kill the men, and the ship is yours."

The sails of the _Chesapeake_ swept betwixt the slanting rays of the
evening sun and the _Shannon_, the drifting shadow darkened the English
main-deck ports, the rush of the enemy's cut-water could be heard
through the grim silence of the _Shannon's_ decks.  Suddenly there
broke out the first gun from the _Shannon_; then her whole side leaped
into flame.  Never was a more fatal broadside discharged.  A tempest of
shot, splinters, torn hammocks, cut rigging, and wreck of every kind
was hurled like a cloud across the deck of the _Chesapeake_, and of one
hundred and fifty men at stations there, more than a hundred were
killed or wounded.  A more fatal loss to the Americans instantly
followed, as Captain Laurence, the fiery soul of his ship, was shot
through the abdomen by an English marine, and fell mortally wounded.

The answering thunder of the _Chesapeake's_ guns, of course, rolled
out, and then, following quick, the overwhelming blast of the
_Shannon's_ broadside once more.  Each ship, indeed, fired two full
broadsides, and, as the guns fell quickly out of range, part of another
broadside.  The firing of the _Chesapeake_ was furious and deadly
enough to have disabled an ordinary ship.  It is computed that forty
effective shots would be enough to disable a frigate; the _Shannon_
during the six minutes of the firing was struck by no less than 158
shot, a fact which proves the steadiness and power of the American
fire.  But the fire of the _Shannon_ was overwhelming.  In those same
six fatal minutes she smote the _Chesapeake_ with no less than 362
shots, an average of 60 shots of all sizes every minute, as against the
_Chesapeake's_ 28 shots.  The _Chesapeake_ was fir-built, and the
British shot riddled her.  One _Shannon_ broadside partly raked the
_Chesapeake_ and literally smashed the stern cabins and battery to mere
splinters, as completely as though a procession of aerolites had torn
through it.

The swift, deadly, concentrated fire of the British in two
quick-following broadsides practically decided the combat.  The
partially disabled vessels drifted together, and the _Chesapeake_ fell
on board the _Shannon_, her quarter striking the starboard main-chains.
Broke, as the ships ground together, looked over the blood-splashed
decks of the American and saw the men deserting the quarter-deck guns,
under the terror of another broadside at so short a distance.  "Follow
me who can," he shouted, and with characteristic coolness "stepped"--in
his own phrase--across the _Chesapeake's_ bulwark.  He was followed by
some 32 seamen and 18 marines--50 British boarders leaping upon a ship
with a crew of 400 men, a force which, even after the dreadful
broadsides of the _Shannon_, still numbered 270 unwounded men in its
ranks.

It is absurd to deny to the Americans courage of the very finest
quality, but the amazing and unexpected severity of the _Shannon's_
fire had destroyed for the moment their _morale_, and the British were
in a mood of victory.  The boatswain of the _Shannon_, an old _Rodney_
man, lashed the two ships together, and in the act had his left arm
literally hacked off by repeated strokes of a cutlass and was killed.
One British midshipman, followed by five topmen, crept along the
_Shannon's_ foreyard and stormed the _Chesapeake's_ foretop, killing
the men stationed there, and then swarmed down by a back-stay to join
the fighting on the deck.  Another middy tried to attack the
_Chesapeake's_ mizzentop from the starboard mainyard arm, but being
hindered by the foot of the topsail, stretched himself out on the
mainyard arm, and from that post shot three of the enemy in succession.

Meanwhile the fight on the deck had been short and sharp; some of the
Americans leaped overboard and others rushed below; and Laurence, lying
wounded in his steerage, saw the wild reflux of his own men down the
after ladders.  On asking what it meant, he was told, "The ship is
boarded, and those are the _Chesapeake's_ men driven from the upper
decks by the English."  This so exasperated the dying man that he
called out repeatedly, "Then blow her up; blow her up."

The fight lasted exactly thirteen minutes--the broadsides occupied six
minutes, the boarding seven--and in thirteen minutes after the first
shot the British flag was flying over the American ship.  The _Shannon_
and _Chesapeake_ were bearing up, side by side, for Halifax.  The
spectators in the pleasure-boats were left ruefully staring at the
spectacle; those American handcuffs, so thoughtfully provided, were on
American wrists; and the Boston citizens had to consume, with what
appetite they might, their own banquet.  The carnage on the two ships
was dreadful.  In thirteen minutes 252 men were either killed or
wounded, an average of nearly twenty men for every minute the fight
lasted.  In the combat betwixt these two frigates, in fact, nearly as
many men were struck down as in the whole battle of Navarino!  The
_Shannon_ itself lost as many men as any 74-gun ship ever lost in
battle.

Judge Haliburton, famous as "Sam Slick," when a youth of seventeen,
boarded the Chesapeake as the two battered ships sailed into Halifax.
"The deck," he wrote, "had not been cleaned, and the coils and folds of
rope were steeped in gore as if in a slaughter-house.  Pieces of skin
with pendent hair were adhering to the sides of the ship; and in one
place I noticed portions of fingers protruding, as if thrust through
the outer walls of the frigate."

Watts, the first lieutenant of the _Shannon_, was killed by the fire of
his own ship in a very remarkable manner.  He boarded with his captain,
with his own hands pulled down the _Chesapeake's_ flag, and hastily
bent on the halliards the English ensign, as he thought, above the
Stars and Stripes, and then rehoisted it.  In the hurry he had bent the
English flag under the Stars and Stripes instead of above it, and the
gunners of the _Shannon_, seeing the American stripes going up first,
opened fire instantly on the group at the foot of the mizzen-mast, blew
the top of their own unfortunate lieutenant's head off with a grape
shot, and killed three or four of their own men.

Captain Broke was desperately wounded in a curious fashion.  A group of
Americans, who had laid down their arms, saw the British captain
standing for a moment alone on the break of the forecastle.  It seemed
a golden chance.  They snatched up weapons lying on the deck, and
leaped upon him.  Warned by the shout of the sentry.  Broke turned
round to find three of the enemy with uplifted weapons rushing on him.
He parried the middle fellow's pike and wounded him in the face, but
was instantly struck down with a blow from the butt-end of a musket,
which laid bare his skull.  He also received a slash from the cutlass
of the third man, which clove a portion of skull completely away and
left the brain bare.  He fell, and was grappled on the deck by the man
he had first wounded, a powerful fellow, who got uppermost and raised a
bayonet to thrust through Broke.  At this moment a British marine came
running up, and concluding that the man underneath _must_ be an
American, also raised his bayonet to give the _coup de grace_.  "Pooh,
pooh, you fool," said Broke in the most matter-of-fact fashion, "don't
you know your captain?" whereupon the marine changed the direction of
his thrust and slew the American.

The news reached London on July 7, and was carried straight to the
House of Commons, where Lord Cochrane was just concluding a fierce
denunciation of the Admiralty on the ground of the disasters suffered
from the Americans, and Croker, the Secretary to the Admiralty, was
able to tell the story of the fight off Boston to the wildly cheering
House, as a complete defence of his department.  Broke was at once
created a Baronet and a Knight of the Bath.  In America, on the other
hand, the story of the fight was received with mingled wrath and
incredulity.  "I remember," says Rush, afterwards U.S. Minister at the
Court of St. James, "at the first rumour of it, the universal
incredulity.  I remember how the post-offices were thronged for
successive days with anxious thousands; how collections of citizens
rode out for miles on the highway to get the earliest news the mail
brought.  At last, when the certainty was known, I remember the public
gloom, the universal badges of mourning.  'Don't give up the ship,' the
dying words of Laurence, were on every tongue."

It was a great fight, the most memorable and dramatic sea-duel in naval
history.  The combatants were men of the same stock, and fought with
equal bravery.  Both nations, in fact, may be proud of a fight so
frank, so fair, so gallant.  The world, we may hope, will never witness
another _Shannon_ engaged in the fierce wrestle of battle with another
_Chesapeake_, for the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes are knitted
together by a bond woven of common blood and speech and political
ideals that grows stronger every year.

For years the _Shannon_ and the _Chesapeake_ lay peacefully side by
side in the Medway, and the two famous ships might well have been
preserved as trophies.  The _Chesapeake_ was bought by the Admiralty
after the fight for exactly L21,314, 11s. 11 1/4d., and six years
afterwards she was sold as mere old timber for 500 pounds, was broken
up, and to-day stands as a Hampshire flour-mill, peacefully grinding
English corn; but still on the mill-timbers can be seen the marks of
the grape and round shot of the _Shannon_.

THE GREAT BREACH OF CIUDAD RODRIGO

  "Attend, all ye who list to hear our noble England's praise,
  I tell of the thrice famous deeds she wrought in ancient days."
            --MACAULAY.

The three great and memorable sieges of the Peninsular war are those of
Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajos, and San Sebastian.  The annals of battle
record nowhere a more furious daring in assault or a more gallant
courage in defence than that which raged in turn round each of these
three great fortresses.  Of the three sieges that of Badajos was the
most picturesque and bloody; that of San Sebastian the most sullen and
exasperated; that of Ciudad Rodrigo the swiftest and most brilliant.  A
great siege tests the fighting quality of any army as nothing else can
test it.  In the night watches in the trenches, in the dogged toil of
the batteries, and the crowded perils of the breach, all the frippery
and much of the real discipline of an army dissolves.  The soldiers
fall back upon what may be called the primitive fighting qualities--the
hardihood of the individual soldier, the daring with which the officers
will lead, the dogged loyalty with which the men will follow.  As an
illustration of the warlike qualities in our race by which empire has
been achieved, nothing better can be desired than the story of how the
breaches were won at Ciudad Rodrigo.

At the end of 1811 the English and the French were watching each other
jealously across the Spanish border.  The armies of Marmont and of
Soult, 67,000 strong, lay within touch of each other, barring
Wellington's entrance into Spain.  Wellington, with 35,000 men, of whom
not more than 10,000 men were British, lay within sight of the Spanish
frontier.  It was the winter time.  Wellington's army was wasted by
sickness, his horses were dying of mere starvation, his men had
received no pay for three months, and his muleteers none for eight
months.  He had no siege-train, his regiments were ragged and hungry,
and the French generals confidently reckoned the British army as, for
the moment at least, _une quantité négligeable_.

And yet at that precise moment, Wellington, subtle and daring, was
meditating a leap upon the great frontier fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo,
in the Spanish province of Salamanca.  Its capture would give him a
safe base of operations against Spain; it was the great frontier _place
d'armes_ for the French; the whole siege-equipage, and stores of the
army of Portugal were contained in it.  The problem of how, in the
depth of winter, without materials for a siege, to snatch a place so
strong from under the very eyes of two armies, each stronger than his
own, was a problem which might have taxed the warlike genius of a
Caesar.  But Wellington accomplished it with a combination of subtlety
and audacity simply marvellous.

He kept the secret of his design so perfectly that his own engineers
never suspected it, and his adjutant-general, Murray, went home on
leave without dreaming anything was going to happen.  Wellington
collected artillery ostensibly for the purpose of arming Almeida, but
the guns were trans-shipped at sea and brought secretly to the mouth of
the Douro.  No less than 800 mule-carts were constructed without
anybody guessing their purpose.  Wellington, while these preparations
were on foot, was keenly watching Marmont and Soult, till he saw that
they were lulled into a state of mere yawning security, and then, in
Napier's expressive phrase, he "instantly jumped with both feet upon
Ciudad Rodrigo."

This famous fortress, in shape, roughly resembles a triangle with the
angles truncated.  The base, looking to the south, is covered by the
Agueda, a river given to sudden inundations; the fortifications were
strong and formidably armed; as outworks it had to the east the great
fortified Convent of San Francisco, to the west a similar building
called Santa Cruz; whilst almost parallel with the northern face rose
two rocky ridges called the Great and Small Teson, the nearest within
600 yards of the city ramparts, and crowned by a formidable redoubt
called Francisco.  The siege began on January 8.  The soil was rocky
and covered with snow, the nights were black, the weather bitter.  The
men lacked entrenching tools.  They had to encamp on the side of the
Agueda farthest from the city, and ford that river every time the
trenches were relieved.  The 1st, 3rd, and light divisions formed the
attacking force; each division held the trenches in turn for
twenty-four hours.  Let the reader imagine what degree of hardihood it
took to wade in the grey and bitter winter dawn through a half-frozen
river, and without fire or warm food, and under a ceaseless rain of
shells from the enemy's guns, to toil in the frozen trenches, or to
keep watch, while the icicles hung from eyebrow and beard, over the
edge of the battery for twenty-four hours in succession.

Nothing in this great siege is more wonderful than the fierce speed
with which Wellington urged his operations.  Massena, who had besieged
and captured the city the year before in the height of summer, spent a
month in bombarding it before he ventured to assault.  Wellington broke
ground on January 8, under a tempest of mingled hail and rain; he
stormed it on the night of the 19th.

He began operations by leaping on the strong work that crowned the
Great Teson the very night the siege began.  Two companies from each
regiment of the light division were detailed by the officer of the day,
Colonel Colborne, for the assault.  Colborne (afterwards Lord Seaton),
a cool and gallant soldier, called his officers together in a group and
explained with great minuteness how they were to attack.  He then
launched his men against the redoubt with a vehemence so swift that, to
those who watched the scene under the light of a wintry moon, the
column of redcoats, like the thrust of a crimson sword-blade, spanned
the ditch, shot up the glacis, and broke through the parapet with a
single movement.  The accidental explosion of a French shell burst the
gate open, and the remainder of the attacking party instantly swept
through it.  There was fierce musketry fire and a tumult of shouting
for a moment or two, but in twenty minutes from Colborne's launching
his attack every Frenchman in the redoubt was killed, wounded, or a
prisoner.

The fashion in which the gate was blown open was very curious.  A
French sergeant was in the act of throwing a live shell upon the
storming party in the ditch, when he was struck by an English bullet.
The lighted shell fell from his hands within the parapet, was kicked
away by the nearest French in mere self-preservation; it rolled towards
the gate, exploded, burst it open, and instantly the British broke in.

For ten days a desperate artillery duel raged between the besiegers and
the besieged.  The parallels were resolutely pushed on in spite of
rocky soil, broken tools, bitter weather, and the incessant pelting of
the French guns.  The temper of the British troops is illustrated by an
incident which George Napier--the youngest of the three
Napiers--relates.   The three others were gallant and remarkable
soldiers.  Charles Napier in India and elsewhere made history; William,
in his wonderful tale of the Peninsular war, wrote history; and George,
if he had not the literary genius of the one nor the strategic skill of
the other, was a most gallant soldier.  "I was a field-officer of the
trenches," he says, "when a 13-inch shell from the town fell in the
midst of us.  I called to the men to lie down flat, and they instantly
obeyed orders, except one of them, an Irishman and an old marine, but a
most worthless drunken dog, who trotted up to the shell, the fuse of
which was still burning, and striking it with his spade, knocked the
fuse out; then taking the immense shell in his hands, brought it to me,
saying, 'There she is for you now, yer 'anner.  I've knocked the life
out of the crater.'"

The besieged brought fifty heavy guns to reply to the thirty light
pieces by which they were assailed, and day and night the bellow of
eighty pieces boomed sullenly over the doomed city and echoed faintly
back from the nearer hills, while the walls crashed to the stroke of
the bullet.  The English fire made up by fierceness and accuracy for
what it lacked in weight; but the sap made no progress, the guns showed
signs of being worn out, and although two apparent breaches had been
made,  the counterscarp was not destroyed.  Yet Wellington determined
to attack, and, in his characteristic fashion, to attack by night.  The
siege had lasted ten days, and Marmont, with an army stronger than his
own, was lying within four marches.  That he had not appeared already
on the scene was wonderful.

In a general order issued on the evening of the 19th Wellington wrote,
"Ciudad Rodrigo must be stormed this evening."  The great breach was a
sloping gap in the wall at its northern angle, about a hundred feet
wide.  The French had crowned it with two guns loaded with grape; the
slope was strewn with bombs, hand-grenades, and bags of powder; a great
mine pierced it beneath; a deep ditch had been cut betwixt the breach
and the adjoining ramparts, and these were crowded with riflemen.  The
third division, under General Mackinnon, was to attack the breach, its
forlorn hope being led by Ensign Mackie, its storming party by General
Mackinnon himself.  The lesser breach was a tiny gap, scarcely twenty
feet wide, to the left of the great breach; this was to be attacked by
the light division, under Craufurd, its forlorn hope of twenty-five men
being led by Gurwood, and its storming party by George Napier.  General
Pack, with a Portuguese brigade, was to make a sham attack on the
eastern face, while a fourth attack was to be made on the southern
front by a company of the 83rd and some Portuguese troops.  In the
storming party of the 83rd were the Earl of March, afterwards Duke of
Richmond; Lord Fitzroy Somerset, afterwards Lord Raglan; and the Prince
of Orange--all volunteers without Wellington's knowledge!

At 7 o'clock a curious silence fell suddenly on the battered city and
the engirdling trenches.  Not a light gleamed from the frowning
parapets, not a murmur arose from the blackened trenches.  Suddenly a
shout broke out on the right of the English attack; it ran, a wave of
stormy sound, along the line of the trenches.  The men who were to
attack the great breach leaped into the open.  In a moment the space
betwixt the hostile lines was covered with the stormers, and the gloomy
half-seen face of the great fortress broke into a tempest of fire.

Nothing could be finer than the vehement courage of the assault, unless
it were the cool and steady fortitude of the defence.  Swift as was the
upward rush of the stormers, the race of the 5th, 77th, and 94th
regiments was almost swifter.  Scorning to wait for the ladders, they
leaped into the great ditch, outpaced even the forlorn hope, and pushed
vehemently up the great breach, whilst their red ranks were torn by
shell and shot.  The fire, too, ran through the tangle of broken stones
over which they climbed; the hand-grenades and powder-bags by which it
was strewn exploded.  The men were walking on fire!  Yet the attack
could not be denied.  The Frenchmen--shooting, stabbing, yelling--were
driven behind their entrenchments.  There the fire of the houses
commanding the breach came to their help, and they made a gallant
stand.  "None would go back on either side, and yet the British could
not get forward, and men and officers falling in heaps choked up the
passage, which from minute to minute was raked with grape from two guns
flanking the top of the breach at the distance of a few yards.  Thus
striving, and trampling alike upon the dead and the wounded, these
brave men maintained the combat."

It was the attack on the smaller breach which really carried Ciudad
Rodrigo; and George Napier, who led it, has left a graphic narrative of
the exciting experiences of that dreadful night.  The light division
was to attack, and Craufurd, with whom Napier was a favourite, gave him
command of the storming party.  He was to ask for 100 volunteers from
each of the three British regiments--the 43rd, 52nd, and the Rifle
Corps--in the division.  Napier halted these regiments just as they had
forded the bitterly cold river on their way to the trenches.
"Soldiers," he said, "I want 100 men from each regiment to form the
storming party which is to lead the light division to-night.  Those who
will go with me come forward!"  Instantly there was a rush forward of
the whole division, and Napier had to take his 300 men out of a tumult
of nearly 1500 candidates.  He formed them into three companies, under
Captains Ferguson, Jones, and Mitchell.  Gurwood, of the 52nd, led the
forlorn hope, consisting of twenty-five men and two sergeants.
Wellington himself came to the trench and showed Napier and Colborne,
through the gloom of the early night, the exact position of the breach.
A staff-officer looking on, said, "Your men are not loaded.  Why don't
you make them load?"  Napier replied, "If we don't do the business with
the bayonet we shall not do it all.  I shall not load."  "Let him
alone," said Wellington; "let him go his own way."  Picton had adopted
the same grim policy with the third division.  As each regiment passed
him, filing into the trenches, his injunction was, "No powder!  We'll
do the thing with the _could_ iron."

A party of Portuguese carrying bags filled with grass were to run with
the storming party and throw the bags into the ditch, as the leap was
too deep for the men.  But the Portuguese hesitated, the tumult of the
attack on the great breach suddenly broke on the night, and the forlorn
hope went running up, leaped into the ditch a depth of eleven feet, and
clambered up the steep slope beyond,  while Napier with his stormers
came with a run behind them.  In the dark for a moment the breach was
lost, but found again, and up the steep quarry of broken stone the
attack swept.  About two-thirds of the way up Napier's arm was smashed
by a grape-shot, and he fell.  His men, checked for a moment, lifted
their muskets to the gap above them, whence the French were firing
vehemently, and forgetting their pieces were unloaded, snapped them.
"Push on with the bayonet, men!" shouted Napier, as he lay bleeding.
The officers leaped to the front, the men with a stern shout followed;
they were crushed to a front of not more than three or four.  They had
to climb without firing a shot in reply up to the muzzles of the French
muskets.

But nothing could stop the men of the light division.  A 24-pounder was
placed across the narrow gap in the ramparts; the stormers leaped over
it, and the 43rd and 52nd, coming up in sections abreast, followed.
The 43rd wheeled to the right towards the great breach, the 52nd to the
left, sweeping the ramparts as they went.

Meanwhile the other two attacks had broken into the town; but at the
great breach the dreadful fight still raged, until the 43rd, coming
swiftly along the ramparts, and brushing all opposition aside, took the
defence in the rear.  The British there had, as a matter of fact, at
that exact moment pierced the French defence.  The two guns that
scourged the breach had wrought deadly havoc amongst the stormers, and
a sergeant and two privates of the 88th--Irishmen all, and whose names
deserve to be preserved--Brazel, Kelly, and Swan--laid down their
firelocks that they might climb more lightly, and, armed only with
their bayonets, forced themselves through the embrasure amongst the
French gunners.  They were furiously attacked, and Swan's arm was hewed
off by a sabre stroke; but they stopped the service of the gun, slew
five or six of the French gunners, and held the post until the men of
the 5th, climbing behind them, broke into the battery.

So Ciudad Rodrigo was won, and its governor surrendered his sword to
the youthful lieutenant leading the forlorn hope of the light division,
who, with smoke-blackened face, torn uniform, and staggering from a
dreadful wound, still kept at the head of his men.

[Illustration: Siege of Ciudad Rodrigo, 1812.  From Napier's
"Peninsular War."]

In the eleven days of the siege Wellington lost 1300 men and officers,
out of whom 650 men and 60 officers were struck down on the slopes of
the breaches.  Two notable soldiers died in the attack--Craufurd, the
famous leader of the light division, as he brought his men up to the
lesser breach; and Mackinnon, who commanded a brigade of the third
division, at the great breach.  Mackinnon was a gallant Highlander, a
soldier of great promise, beloved by his men.  His "Children," as he
called them, followed him up the great breach till the bursting of a
French mine destroyed all the leading files, including their general.
Craufurd was buried in the lesser breach itself, and Mackinnon in the
great breach--fitting graves for soldiers so gallant.

Alison says that with the rush of the English stormers up the breaches
of Ciudad Rodrigo "began the fall of the French Empire."  That siege,
so fierce and brilliant, was, as a matter of fact, the first of that
swift-following succession of strokes which drove the French in ruin
out of Spain, and it coincided in point of time with the turn of the
tide against Napoleon in Russia.  Apart from all political results,
however, it was a splendid feat of arms.  The French found themselves
almost unable to believe the evidence of their senses.  "On the 16th,"
Marmont wrote to the Emperor, "the English batteries opened their fire
at a great distance.  On the 19th the place was taken by storm.  There
is something so _incomprehensible_ in this that I allow myself no
observations."  Napoleon, however, relieved his feelings with some very
emphatic observations.  "The fall of Ciudad Rodrigo," he wrote to
Marmont, "is an affront to you.  Why had you not advices from it twice
a week?  What were you doing with the five divisions of Souham?  It is
a strange mode of carrying on war," &c.  Unhappy Marmont!

HOW THE "HERMIONE" WAS RECAPTURED

  "They cleared the cruiser from end to end,
      From conning-tower to hold;
  They fought as they fought in Nelson's fleet--
  They were stripped to the waist, they were bare to the feet,
      As it was in the days of old."
            --KIPLING.

The story of how the _Hermione_ was lost is one of the scandals and the
tragedies of British naval history; the tale of how it was re-won is
one of its glories.  The _Hermione_ was a 32-gun frigate, cruising off
Porto Rico, in the West Indies.  On the evening of September 21, 1797,
the men were on drill, reefing topsails.  The captain, Pigot, was a
rough and daring sailor, a type of the brutal school of naval officer
long extinct.  The traditions of the navy were harsh; the despotic
power over the lives and fortunes of his crew which the captain of a
man-of-war carried in the palm of his hand, when made the servant of a
ferocious temper, easily turned a ship into a floating hell.  The
terrible mutinies which broke out in British fleets a hundred years ago
had some justification, at least, in the cruelties, as well as the
hardships, to which the sailors of that period were exposed.

Pigot was rough in speech, vehement in temper, cursed with a
semi-lunatic delight in cruelty, and he tormented his men to the verge
of desperation.  On this fatal night, Pigot, standing at the break of
his quarter-deck, stormed at the men aloft, and swore with many oaths
he would flog the last man off the mizzentop yard; and the men knew how
well he would keep his word.  The most active sailor, as the men lay
out on the yard, naturally takes the earing, and is, of course, the
last man off, as well as on, the yard.  Pigot's method, that is, would
punish not the worst sailors, but the best!  The two outermost men on
the mizzen-top yard of the _Hermione_ that night, determined to escape
the threatened flogging.  They made a desperate spring to get over
their comrades crowding into the ratlines, missed their foothold, fell
on the quarter-deck beside their furious captain, and were instantly
killed.  The captain's epitaph on the unfortunate sailors was, "Throw
the lubbers overboard!"

All the next day a sullen gloom lay on the ship.  Mutiny was breeding.
It began, as night fell, in a childish fashion, by the men throwing
double-headed shot about the deck.  The noise brought down the first
lieutenant to restore order.  He was knocked down.  In the jostle of
fierce tempers, murder awoke; knives gleamed.  A sailor, as he bent
over the fallen officer, saw the naked undefended throat, and thrust
his knife into it.  The sight kindled the men's passions to flame.  The
unfortunate lieutenant was killed with a dozen stabs, and his body
thrown overboard.  The men had now tasted blood.  In the flame of
murderous temper suddenly let loose, all the bonds of discipline were
in a moment consumed.  A wild rush was made for the officers' cabins.
The captain tried to break his way out, was wounded, and driven back;
the men swept in, and, to quote the realistic official account, "seated
in his cabin the captain was stabbed by his own coxswain and three
other mutineers, and, forced out of the cabin windows, was heard to
speak as he went astern."  With mutiny comes anarchy.  The men made no
distinction between their officers, cruel or gentle; not only the
captain, but the three lieutenants, the purser, the surgeon, the
lieutenant of marines, the boatswain, the captain's clerk were
murdered, and even one of the two midshipmen on board was hunted like a
rat through the ship, killed, and thrown overboard.  The only officers
spared were the master, the gunner, and one midshipman.

Having captured the ship, the mutineers were puzzled how to proceed.
Every man-of-war on the station, they knew, would be swiftly on their
track.  Every British port was sealed to them.  They would be pursued
by a retribution which would neither loiter nor slumber.  On the open
sea there was no safety for mutineers.  They turned the head of the
_Hermione_ towards the nearest Spanish port, La Guayra, and, reaching
it, surrendered the ship to the Spanish authorities, saying they had
turned their officers adrift in the jolly-boat.  The Spaniards were not
disposed to scrutinise too closely the story.  A transaction which put
into their hands a fine British frigate was welcomed with rapture.  The
British admiral in command of the station sent in a flag of truce with
the true account of the mutiny, and called upon the Spanish
authorities, as a matter of honour, to surrender the _Hermione_, and
hand over for punishment the murderers who had carried it off.  The
appeal, however, was wasted.

The _Hermione_, a handsome ship of 715 tons, when under the British
flag, was armed with thirty-two 12-pounders, and had a complement of
220 men.  The Spaniards cut new ports in her, increased her broadsides
to forty-four guns, and gave her a complement, including a detachment
of soldiers and artillerymen, of nearly 400 men.  She thus became the
most formidable ship carrying the Spanish flag in West Indian waters.

But the _Hermione_, under its new flag, had a very anxious existence.
It became a point of honour with every British vessel on the station to
look out for the ship which had become the symbol of mutiny, and make a
dash at her, no matter what the odds.  The brutal murders which
attended the mutiny shocked even the forecastle imagination, while the
British officers were naturally eager to destroy the ship which
represented revolt against discipline.  Both fore and aft, too, the
fact that what had been a British frigate was now carrying the flag of
Spain was resented with a degree of exasperation which assured to the
_Hermione_, under its new name and flag, a very warm time if it came
under the fire of a British ship.  The Spaniards kept the _Hermione_
for just two years, but kept her principally in port, as the moment she
showed her nose in the open sea some British ship or other, sleeplessly
on the watch for her, bore down with disconcerting eagerness.

In September 1799 the _Hermione_ was lying in Puerto Cabello, while the
_Surprise_, a 28-gun frigate, under Captain Edward Hamilton, was
waiting outside, specially detailed by the admiral, Sir Hyde Parker, to
attack her the instant she put to sea.  The _Surprise_ had less than
half the complement of the _Hermione_, and not much more than half her
weight of metal.  But Hamilton was not only willing to fight the
Hermione in the open sea against such odds; he told the admiral that if
he would give him a barge and twenty men he would undertake to carry
the Hermione with his boats while lying in harbour.  Parker pronounced
the scheme too desperate to be entertained, and refused Hamilton the
additional boat's crew for which he asked.  Yet this was the very plan
which Hamilton actually carried out without the reinforcement for which
he had asked!

Hamilton, to tempt the _Hermione_ out, kept carefully out of sight of
Puerto Cabello to leeward, yet in such a position that if the Hermione
left the harbour her topsails must become visible to the look-outs on
the mastheads of the _Surprise_; and he kept that post until his
provisions failed.  Then, as the _Hermione_ would not come out to him,
he determined to go into the _Hermione_.  Hamilton was a silent,
much-meditating man, not apt to share his counsels with anybody.  In
the cells of his brooding and solitary brain he prepared, down to the
minutest details, his plan for a dash at the _Hermione_--a ship, it
must be remembered, not only more than double his own in strength, but
lying moored head and stern in a strongly fortified port, under the
fire of batteries mounting nearly 200 guns, and protected, in addition,
by several gunboats.  In a boat attack, too, Hamilton could carry only
part of his crew with him; he must leave enough hands on board his own
ship to work her.  As a matter of fact, he put in his boats less than
100 men, and with them, in the blackness of night, rowed off to attack
a ship that carried 400 men, and was protected by the fire, including
her own broadsides, of nearly 300 guns!  The odds were indeed so great
that the imagination of even British sailors, if allowed to meditate
long upon them, might become chilled.  Hamilton therefore breathed not
a whisper of his plans, even to his officers, till he was ready to put
them into execution, and, when he did announce them, carried them out
with cool but unfaltering speed.

On the evening of October 24, Hamilton invited all the officers not on
actual duty to dine in his cabin.  The scene may be easily pictured.
The captain at the head of his table, the merry officers on either
side, the jest, the laughter, the toasts; nobody there but the silent,
meditative captain dreaming of the daring deed to be that night
attempted.  When dinner was over, and the officers alone, with a
gesture Hamilton arrested the attention of the party, and explained in
a few grim sentences his purpose.  The little party of brave men about
him listened eagerly and with kindling eyes.  "We'll stand by you,
captain," said one.  "We'll all follow you," said another.  Hamilton
bade his officers follow him at once to the quarter-deck.  A roll of
the drum called the men instantly to quarters, and, when the officers
reported every man at his station, they were all sent aft to where, on
the break of the quarter-deck, the captain waited.

It was night, starless and black, but a couple of lanterns shed a few
broken rays on the massed seamen with their wondering, upturned faces,
and the tall figure of the silent captain.  Hamilton explained in a
dozen curt sentences that they must run into port for supplies; that if
they left their station some more fortunate ship would have the glory
of taking the _Hermione_.  "Our only chance, lads," he added, "is to
cut her out to-night!"  As that sentence, with a keen ring on its last
word, swept over the attentive sailors, they made the natural response,
a sudden growling cheer.  "I lead you myself," added Hamilton,
whereupon came another cheer; "and here are the orders for the six
boats to be employed, with the names of the officers and men."
Instantly the crews were mustered, while the officers, standing in a
cluster round the captain, heard the details of the expedition.  Every
seaman was to be dressed in blue, without a patch of white visible; the
password was "Britannia," the answer "Ireland"--Hamilton himself being
an Irishman.

By half-past seven the boats were actually hoisted out and lowered, the
men armed and in their places, and each little crew instructed as to
the exact part it was to play in the exciting drama.  The orders given
were curiously minute.  The launch, for example, was to board on the
starboard bow, but three of its men, before boarding, were first to cut
the bower cable, for which purpose a little platform was rigged up on
the launch's quarter, and sharp axes provided.  The jolly-boat was to
board on the starboard quarter, cut the stern cable, and send two men
aloft to loose the mizzen topsail.  The gig, under the command of the
doctor, was to board on the larboard bow, and instantly send four men
aloft to loose the fore topsail.  If the _Hermione_ was reached without
any alarm being given, only the boarders were to leap on board; the
ordinary crews of the boats were to take the frigate in tow.  Thus, if
Hamilton's plans were carried out, the Spaniards would find themselves
suddenly boarded at six different points, their cables cut, their
topsails dropped, and their ship being towed out--and all this at the
same instant of time.  "The rendezvous," said Hamilton to his officers,
as the little cluster of boats drew away from the _Surprise_, "is the
_Hermione's_ quarter-deck!"

Hamilton himself led, standing up in his pinnace, with his night-glass
fixed on the doomed ship, and the boats followed with stern almost
touching stern, and a rope passed from each boat to the one behind.
Can a more impressive picture of human daring be imagined than these
six boats pulling silently ever the black waters and through the black
night to fling themselves, under the fire of two hundred guns, on a foe
four times more numerous than themselves!  The boats had stolen to
within less than a mile of the _Hermione_, when a Spanish challenge
rang out of the darkness before them.  Two Spanish gunboats were on
guard within the harbour, and they at once opened fire on the chain of
boats gliding mysteriously through the gloom.  There was no longer any
possibility of surprise, and Hamilton instantly threw off the rope that
connected him with the next boat and shouted to his men to pull.  The
men, with a loud "Hurrah!" dashed their oars into the water, and the
boats leaped forward towards the _Hermione_.  But Hamilton's boats--two
of them commanded by midshipmen--could not find themselves so close to
a couple of Spanish gunboats without "going" for them.  Two of the six
boats swung aside and dashed at the gunboats; only three followed
Hamilton at the utmost speed towards the _Hermione_.

That ship, meanwhile, was awake.  Lights flashed from every port; a
clamour of voices broke on the quiet of the night; the sound of the
drum rolled along the decks, the men ran to quarters.  Hamilton, in the
pinnace, dashed past the bows of the _Hermione_ to reach his station,
but a rope, stretched from the _Hermione_ to her anchor-buoy, caught
the rudder of the pinnace and stopped her in full course, the coxswain
reporting the boat "aground."  The pinnace had swung round till her
starboard oars touched the bend of the _Hermione_, and Hamilton gave
the word to "board."  Hamilton himself led, and swung himself up till
his feet rested on the anchor hanging from the _Hermione's_ cat-head.
It was covered with mud, having been weighed that day, and his feet
slipping off it, Hamilton hung by the lanyard of the _Hermione's_
foreshroud.  The crew of the pinnace meanwhile climbing with the
agility of cats and the eagerness of boys, had tumbled over their own
captain's shoulders as well as the bulwarks of the _Hermione_, and were
on that vessel's forecastle, where Hamilton in another moment joined
them.  Here were sixteen men on board a vessel with a hostile crew four
hundred strong.

Hamilton ran to the break of the forecastle and looked down, and to his
amazement found the whole crew of the _Hermione_ at quarters on the
main-deck, with battle-lanterns lit, and firing with the utmost energy
at the darkness, in which their excited fancy saw the tall masts of at
least a squadron of frigates bearing down to attack them.  Hamilton,
followed by his fifteen men, ran aft to the agreed rendezvous on the
_Hermione's_ quarter-deck.  The doctor, with his crew, had meantime
boarded, and forgetting all about the rendezvous, and obeying only the
natural fighting impulse in their own blood, charged upon the Spaniards
in the gangway.

Hamilton sent his men down to assist in the fight, waiting alone on the
quarter-deck till his other boat boarded.  Here four Spaniards rushed
suddenly upon him; one struck him over the head with a musket with a
force that broke the weapon itself, and knocked him semi-senseless upon
the combings of the hatchway.  Two British sailors, who saw their
commander's peril, rescued him, and, with blood streaming down from his
battered head upon his uniform, Hamilton flung himself into the fight
at the gangway.  At this juncture the black cutter, in command of the
first lieutenant, with the _Surprise's_ marines on board, dashed up to
the side of the _Hermione_, and the men came tumbling over the larboard
gangway.  They had made previously two unsuccessful attempts to board.
They came up first by the steps of the larboard gangway, the lieutenant
leading.  He was incontinently knocked down, and tumbled all his men
with him as he fell back into the boat.  They then tried the starboard
of the _Hermione_, and were again beaten back, and only succeeded on a
third attempt.

Three boats' crews of the British were now together on the deck of the
Hermione.  They did not number fifty men in all, but the marines were
instantly formed up and a volley was fired down the after hatchway.
Then, following the flash of their muskets, with the captain leading,
the whole party leaped down upon the maindeck, driving the Spaniards
before them.  Some sixty Spaniards took refuge in the cabin, and
shouted they surrendered, whereupon they were ordered to throw down
their arms, and the doors were locked upon them, turning them into
prisoners.  On the main-deck and under the forecastle, however, the
fighting was fierce and deadly; but by this time the other boats had
come up, and the cables fore and aft were cut, as had been arranged.
The men detailed for that task had raced up the Spaniard's rigging, and
while the desperate fight raged below, had cast loose the topsails of
the _Hermione_.  Three of the boats, too, had taken her in tow.  She
began to move seaward, and that movement, with the sound of the
rippling water along the ship's sides, appalled the Spaniards, and
persuaded them the ship was lost.

On the quarter-deck the gunner and two men--all three wounded--stood at
the wheel, and flung the head of the _Hermione_ seaward.  They were
fiercely attacked, but while one man clung to the wheel and kept
control of the ship, the gunner and his mate kept off the Spaniards.
Presently the foretopsail filled with the land breeze, the water
rippled louder along the sides of the moving vessel, the ship swayed to
the wind.  The batteries by this time were thundering from the shore,
but though they shot away many ropes, they fired with signal
ill-success.  Only fifty British sailors and marines, it must be
remembered, were actually on the deck of the _Hermione_, and amongst
the crowd of sullen and exasperated Spaniards below, who had
surrendered, but were still furious with the astonishment of the attack
and the passion of the fight, there arose a shout to "blow up the
ship."  The British had to fire down through the hatchway upon the
swaying crowd to enforce order.  By two o'clock the struggle was over,
the _Hermione_ was beyond the fire of the batteries, and the crews of
the boats towing her came on board.

There is no more surprising fight in British history.  The mere
swiftness with which the adventure was carried out is marvellous.  It
was past six P.M. when Hamilton disclosed his plan to his officers, the
_Hermione_ at that moment lying some eight miles distant; by two
o'clock the captured ship, with the British flag flying from her peak,
was clear of the harbour.  Only half a hundred men actually got on
board the _Hermione_, but what a resolute, hard-smiting, strong-fisted
band they were may be judged by the results.  Of the Spaniards, 119
were killed, and 97 wounded, most of them dangerously.  Hamilton's 50
men, that is, in those few minutes of fierce fighting, cut down four
times their own number!  Not one of the British, as it happened, was
killed, and only 12 wounded, Captain Hamilton himself receiving no less
than five serious wounds.  The _Hermione_ was restored to her place in
the British Navy List, but under a new name--the _Retribution_--and the
story of that heroic night attack will be for all time one of the most
stirring incidents in the long record of brave deeds performed by
British seamen.

FRENCH AND ENGLISH IN THE PASSES

  "Beating from the wasted vines
  Back to France her banded swarms,
  Back to France with countless blows,
  Till o'er the hills her eagles flew
  Beyond the Pyrenean pines;
  Follow'd up in valley and glen
  With blare of bugle, clamour of men,
  Roll of cannon and clash of arms,
  And England pouring on her foes.
  Such a war had such a close."
            --TENNYSON.

"In both the passes, and on the heights above them, there was desperate
fighting.  They fought on the mountain-tops, which could scarcely have
witnessed any other combat than that of the Pyrenean eagles; they
fought among jagged rocks and over profound abysses; they fought amidst
clouds and mists, for those mountain-tops were 5000 feet above the
level of the plain of France, and the rains, which had fallen in
torrents, were evaporating in the morning and noon-day sun, were
steaming heavenward and clothing the loftiest peaks with fantastic
wreaths."  These words describe, with picturesque force, the most
brilliant and desperate, and yet, perhaps, the least known chapter in
the great drama of the Peninsular war: the furious combats waged
between British and French in the gloomy valleys and on the
mist-shrouded summits of the Western Pyrenees.  The great campaign,
which found its climax at Vittoria, lasted six weeks.  In that brief
period Wellington marched with 100,000 men 600 miles, passed six great
rivers, gained one historic and decisive battle, invested two
fortresses, and drove 120,000 veteran troops from Spain.  There is no
more brilliant chapter in military history; and, at its close, to quote
Napier's clarion-like sentences, "the English general, emerging from
the chaos of the Peninsular struggle, stood on the summit of the
Pyrenees a recognised conqueror.  From those lofty pinnacles the
clangour of his trumpets pealed clear and loud, and the splendour of
his genius appeared as a flaming beacon to warring nations."

But the great barrier of the Pyrenees stretched across Wellington's
path, a tangle of mountains sixty miles in length; a wild table-land
rough with crags, fierce with mountain torrents, shaggy with forests, a