1830.] The Captain of Rifes. 441 



lingered until the 6th of March, without firing a shot, with his army 

 perishing, his enemy conquering him by the mere force of want and 

 the weather, and his reputation ruined in Europe. Massena on his 

 return to France was thrown into total obscurity by the public scorn 

 for his conduct in this campaign, and suffered the penalty richly 

 deserved by a long course of military violence and robbery and remorse- 

 less rapine. 



The French are cruel alike in advance and retreat, and their hatred 

 of the Portuguese brought out their cruelty in the deepest colouring. 

 They murdered and burned wherever the sword or the torch could be 

 applied. One scene of atrocity among many of the same kind on the 

 march, is strikingly yet simply described. After a perpetual firing on 

 the French rear-guard from day-break till evening " daylight left the 

 two armies looking at each other, near the village of Illama. The 

 smoking roofs of the houses showed that the French had just quitted it, 

 and, as usual, set fire to it ; when the company to which I belonged was 

 ordered on piquet there for the night. After posting our sentries, my 

 brother officer and myself had the curiosity to look into a house, and 

 were shocked to find in it a mother and her child dead, and the father 

 with three more so much reduced by famine, as to be unable to remove 

 them from the flames. We carried them into the open air, and offered 

 the old man our few remaining crumbs of biscuit ; but he told us that 

 he was too far gone to benefit by them, and begged that we would give 

 them to his children. We lost no time in examining such of the other 

 houses as were yet safe to enter, and rescued many more individuals from 

 a horrible death. 



<c Our post that night was one of terrific grandeur. The hills behind 

 us were in a blaze with the British camp fires, as were those in our front 

 with the French ones. Both hills were abrupt and lofty, not above 

 eight hundred yards asunder, and we were in the burning village in the 

 valley between them, the roofs of houses every instant falling in, and 

 the sparks and flames ascending to the clouds ; the streets were strewed 

 with the dying and the dead some killed in action, some murdered 

 which, together with the half-famished wretches whom we had saved 

 from burning, contributed to make it a scene well calculated to shake 

 a stout heart, as was proved in the instance of one of our sentries, a 

 well-known devil-may-care fellow. I know not what appearances the 

 burning rafters might have reflected on the neighbouring trees at the 

 time ; but he had not been long on his post, before he came running into 

 the piquet, and swearing, by all the saints in the calendar, that he saw 

 six dead Frenchmen advancing upon him, with hatchets over their 

 shoulders !" 



The pursuit continued with incessant vigour, the French rear occa- 

 sionally facing about, and commencing a fire on the pursuing light troops, 

 to give time for their main body to take up a position. On one of these 

 occasions, our Rifleman's history was near being brought to a conclu- 

 sion. Seeing some of the 60th running along a deep road, which would, 

 in another moment, have exposed them to the fire of the French line ; he 

 ran forward to warn them. A ball struck him, and he lay for dead long 

 enough to attract the attention of one of the 60th, who, in the usual 

 spirit of military activity on such occasions, began to strip him, and had 

 unbuttoned his jacket, when, luckily for him, a volley from the French 

 drove the 60th off the ground. On recovering, his first feeling was for 



M.M. New Series. VOL. IX. No. 52. 3 L 



