The Sun.
London, England, 1847-05-20 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

ADVENTURES OF THE CONNAUGHT
RANGERS. 2 Vols. By Wihiam Grattan.

Little if anything could be desired with reference to
the victorious campaigns of the Duke of Wellington in
the Peninsula after the masterly vo%imes of Napier.
Of a purely historical character nothin, indeed is requi.
site after the works that have already been published,
but of the anecdotal adventures, of the hair-breadth
escapes, and the personal rencontres of that stormy
epoch much—very much—remained unchronicled. Mr.
Grattan had done well towards the filling up of the
hiatus. As Lieutenant of the Connaught Rangers
during the days when that valorous regiment was ac-
quiring its chief renown and covering itself with im-
perishable glory, he is in a peculiar manner entitled to
command our attention when speaking of the military
achievements of a body of men whose bravery, and
ardour, and audacity, and perseverance, and
success have imparted to them the distill.
guised title of the Fighting .Eighty Eighth. But
Mr. Grattan is no dry didactic narrator of events. lie
can describe a siege or a pitched battle with all the pre-
cision of a Napier and all the minuteness of a Sihorne,
if not with the eloquence of a Gibbon or the enthusiasm
of a Tacitus. Beyond this, he tells an anecdote with the
gusto of Harry Lorrequer—proving himself to be a
rare companion over a dish of walnuts and a flask of
Madeira. There is an unction, too, about his humorous
Passages that irresistibly tickles one into laughter. And
all the advantages are "set off" by a winning modesty
as regards his own personal movements, and a delightful
and unaffected bonhommie. Where, moreover, could a
soldier find at fairer field for discursive chat than the
peninsula of Iberia and Lusitania, when the marshals of
the Emperor Napoleon and the generals of England were
contending for the mastery amidst a fruitful vegetation,
a delicious climate, and a distracted people ? And
where could the lovers of military adventure look
for incident, for merriment, for daring, for vicissitude,
and for a very forgiveabla rascality, if not to the Con-
naught Rangers—the Boys—the Fighting Eighty-Eighth?
Surely nowhere. Mr. Grattan has chosen a glorious
theme, and he has treated it gloriously. The book,
though rambling and discursive to an inordinate extent,
is enthralling from page 1 to page 675. As Phia-like
illustrations to Napier's Peninsular History, these
chapters are excellent and invaluable. They testify in
a brilliant manner to the indomitable courage, the un-
repining endurance, and the national peculiarities of the
British troops ; but, like the descriptions of all battle-
grounds, they arc mournful in their very pleasantry, and
ghastly .in their very facetiousness. We hanour Mr.
Grattan, especially because he shows here and there
throughout his volumes that there is a tender
core to his Heart of Oak that he has a
bosom to feel for the suffering as well as to bear the
brunt of the bayonet—that he can, in no maudlin tones
of affectation, but with a manly candour and explicitness,
lament over the desolations and woes of war as well as
exult over its glory and its heroism. In this respect he
effects a sort of compromise between Captain Pea and
Captain Sword. As a specimen of the drolleries con-
tained in these adventures, we extract the following
characteristic remarks upon Wellington from the lips of
a Connaught Ranger with the felicitous name of Paddy
Airy:_
" Well!' said he, 'now ids all past and gone, and wasn't
it the divil's own dthroll business, the taking that same place;
and wasn't Long-nose (meaning the Duke of Wellington) a
sure lad to sthrive to get into it, seeing how it was detinded!
But what else could he do, afther all ? didn't he recave
ordhers to do it ; and didn't he say to us all, Boys,' says he,
ids myself that's sorry to throuble yees upon this dirty
.errand;' but we must do it, for all that; and iv yees can get
into it, by hook or by crook, be the powers, id 'ill be the
Making ov yees all—and ov me too!' and didn't he spake
the thruth Sure,' says he, did I ever tell yees a lie, or
spake a word to yees that wasn't as thrue as the Gospil ?
and, iv yees folly my directions, there's nothin can bate
11"?' And sure, afther we got in, was he like the rest,
!thriving to put us out before we diverted ourselves? Not
be, faith. It was he that spoke to the ' boys' decently.
Well, boys,' says he, when he met myself and a few more
airing a house ov a thrifle, ' well, boys,' say, he (for he knew
the button), God bless your work ! ids myself that's proud
to think how completely yees tuck the concate cut uv
the Frinch 88th, in the "castel last night.' Why sir,'
says I (forgettin to call him my Lord), the divil a Frinch
Connaught Ranger ever was horn that the Irish Connaught
„e Rangers isn't able to take the concate out ov;' and ids what
a said upon the same, splitting his sides with laffin, that it
:elaa thrue for me there wasn't; and blur.an-ouns, boys, aint
he the man to stand by? Don't he take the rough and the
smooth with us, and wouldn't it be a pity not to give him
dew? don't he expose himself to the wet and the cowld
with us, lie out on the grass at night, like any other baste?
7 aint he afthur kicking the French before him, just as
_w_ d kick an old foot-ball? Be the powers, whin I see him
_Trai.n next or nigh me, my heart gets so big that my body
ttu_ big enough to hould it, and it jumps up chine into tny
wiTaf---to get room! And don't think that I'm romancin,
prac.l tell yees how he said we tuck the concate out ov the
"a h 88th; he said every word ov it, and more too—iv I
could repate it in his own words.'
replied Cornet' Fagan, what you say is par-
sfacu:tlay Wthhy'
rue
; we ought to stand by him—and didn't we?
as 'e thine;
remember how Mlsther Mackie ran up the laddher
a lifsnl °le as a cat, and poor Misther Martin thought to do
etoTa, till he was kilt ! and didn't Captain Seton owe his
whin "t 3 being so thin that the French couldn't hit him? and
lades e
ejell
thin?
a man to direct as, and such officers to
us on,
and ith
opinion of the capacity of their leader,
thick and
swhu
ci 1 what else can we do but folly them through
h an aptitude fur fingering the trigger
it is PArlaunßing forward with the pike themselves,
arms Ica difficult to comprehend how the British
tagonist nle predominant over a dejected en-
ing the and estranged commanders. In review-
Peninsi c4i/iPaigns of the Spanish and Portuguese
W as
ther;
it must never be overlooked that England
Strength enabled to concentrate all her militery
upon those two countries while France was
battling against the leagueret! arms of northern, eastern
western, and southern Europe. A very mournful sub-
ject is brought under consideration in the present work,
namely, the anomalous character of the immortal
Picton. Though the conduct of that illustrious warrior
Was certainly of a very questionable, if' not of an en' irely
reprehensible, kind towards the 88th Regiment, it is cer-
tain that he has entitled himself to the respectful and
lasting remembrance of his countrymen by his enter-
prizing life and his heroic death. Mr. Grattan speaks
out boldly, and with apparent reason, upon that General's
behaviour to his comrades. We cannot resist the feeling of
antipathy we have, however,forthe.contemplationof these
doubtful blemishes in the disposition of a popular hero
like Picton. The hero of Sindo would have afforded
him a very different notion of the care due to privates
and subordinate officers—and so also would the hero of
To desist, however, abruptly from this painful
"Vic, here is a picture for the contemplation of those who
taciee only the laurels and not the blood, who hear only
triumphal symphonies and not the shrieks and
blasphemies,th__. who note only the bauble medals, and not
telling i. 41)
mused victims of the battle-field and the pillaged
It is an incident thus mentioned by the author in
about the terrific storm of Ciudad Rodrigo:—
"During a contest of such a nature, kept up in the night,
supposed, much was of necessity left to the guid-
ance the subordinate officers, if not to the soldiers them-
ma'ritnser Each affray in the streets was conducted in the best
Persenalthe moment would admit of, and decided more by
lie,. valour than discipline, and in some instances officers
" as privates had to combat with the imperial troops.
one of these encounters, Lieutenant George Faris, of the.
kind, an accident so likely to occur in an affair of this
inept separated a little too far from a dozen or so of his regi-
reatix found himself opposed to a French solc'ier who appa-
kid it w.as similarly placedwas a curious coincidence,
repse,e nuld seem as if each ;—itfelt that he individually was the
t ntative of the country to which he belonged; and had
Ilia rn fate„ :the two nations hung upon the issue of the combat
enntes`.o_ tto describe, it could not have been more heroically
the t),e(l, • The Frenchman fired at, and wounded Faris in
hi3lZ;gu, and made a desperate push with his bayonet at
at but Faris parried the thrust, and the bayonet only
in his leg; he saw at a glance the paril,;of his situation,
04_that nothing short of a miracle could save him ;—the
aci`iesn,,gainst him were too great, and if he continued a
foal fight he tnust inevitably be vanquished ;he sprang
ard, and seizing hold of the Frenchman by the collar,
abtaturuggle of the most nervous kind took place; in their
4:llnd :I efforts to gain an advantage they lost their caps,
they were men of nearly equal strength, it was doubt-
fuj the issue would be. They were so entangled with
each other, their weapons were of no avail, but Faris at
length disengaged himself from the grasp which held him,
Lad he was able to use his sabre ; he pushed the French-
nian from him, and ere he could recover himself he laid his
head open nearly to the chin ; his sword blade, a heavy,
Soft, made Portuguese one, was doubled up with the force
of the blow, and retained some pieces of the scull and clotted
hair! At this moment I reached the spot with about twenty
rnen, composed of different regiments, all being by this time
Mixed pelf meal with each other. I ran up to Faris—he
Was nearly exhausted, but he was safe. The French gre-
nadier lay upon the pavement, while Faris, though totter-
ing from fatigue, held his sword firmly in his grasp, and it
was crimson to the hilt. The appearance of the two com-
batants was frightful !—one lying dead on the ground, the
other faint from agitation and loss of blood ; but the soldiers
2"13' applauded him, and the feeling uppermost with them
:I,l.!that our man had the best of it ! It was a shocking
Zg_nt, but it would be rather a hazardous experiment to
begin n moralising at such a moment and in such a place."
oeatr,tekrisn.d of companion-story to this very ghastly
in a hollo
anecdote,
eededs ,we give the following account of the execution
"At •
• eight (),
clock the division was under arms, and formed
was the wprseuare Marshal, dimensions •, in the centre of it
arking
was the
accompanied by his followers,
ceteraa for tn.' spades, shovels, and all the necessary et-
the unfortun
they ate
out and forming the graves into which
delinents were to be deposited as soon as
flour received the last and most imposing of military ho-
sthat of beingafte few moments
rwards, the rolling shot to death In
pant aids'
of the death of muffled drums—this usual accom-
• ndthe soldiers
alohn guarded the risoa march—was hnearind
The divi-
re_n_ beeeved
a death-likee 7ileernecseo°as the gprisoners defiled
Wards the insideofwasturned to-
wards the the square ; every eye
ratter, ttr ; but Mangin, from his well-known good cha-
sound
of
the
an object of general solicitude. The solitary
the guard. muffled drums at last died away into silence-7
Bonersdrew up in the centre of the square, and the pri-
from "ad, for the last time, a view of their companions
th whom they had deserted, and of their colours which
index of orsaken ; but if their countenances were a just
the ha had their they seemed to repent greatly the act
their ,hir"ramitted The three men of the 60th were in
Wore the ,t3' as Was also Mangin, of the 88th, but Curtis
in alt ht._ old red rag,' most likely from necessity, having,
by no rnifrian Probability, no shirt to die in; a circumstance
enans rare with the soldiers of the Peninsular army.
and 'finndinecessary preliminaries, such as reading the crime,
General g the sentence, had finished, when the Adjutant.
inim,diaat:inounced the pardon granted to Mangin, who was
la rear of 031. "Pd4cted away, and placed at a short distance
where their e division; the rest staggered onward to the spot
their graves had been dug, and having been placed on
banda,,3knees,N their legs hanging over the edge of the grave, a
then,
withval tied over their eves; the Provost-Marshal
cocked, and a party of twenty musketeers, their firelocks
Prisoners the recover, silently moved in front of the
giving two
reached to within five paces of them, and
oth
re • er to fire—the f
ceive them four men fell into the pit prepared to
n. The three
Were near' Germans were dead—indeed they
of their nerves was before they were fired at! And if the state
p 0 p gtui
would
a criterion to go by, a moderate sized
Qum have been aufficiently destructive to have