Ensign Bell in the Peninsular War

This book is one of the least known accounts of life on the battlefield and on campaign during the Peninsular War. If its obscurity was in some way, a reflection of its quality this might be understandable, but George Bell’s account is so well written it surely deserves to be among the best known and most highly regarded Napoleonic period memoirs. Written with youthful enthusiasm and humour, Bell takes us to war against the French in the company of his irrepressible Irish soldiers, Biddy Skiddy the camp follower and the wildly eccentric Maurice Quill, the surgeon. Packed full of dialogue and incident this is a highly entertaining narrative and invaluable Napoleonic memoir.

We had to be always ready for a move, or a march, or a change of ground, or a fight, as the bugle sounded. Always on the “qui vive,” night and day, and much need too, for we expected the army of France to be upon us at any moment. I bought a pony “on tick” just now, i.e. to be paid for by instalments as we might get our pay. This was the practice, and the price I paid was eighty dollars, being glad of anything to get my feet off the ground, I was so much knocked up. As for forage, my caballo was not entitled to forage, or anything but what he could pick up for himself. He would eat acorns like a pig, and lie down by the camp fire like a Christian at night. ‘Yonder they come’, is echoed by a hundred voices. The bugles sound, and the old word runs along, ‘Fall in’.

The French now are seen in dense dark columns, crossing the Tormes by the fords. The train of artillery miles long, cavalry in front and on the flanks—all move on quietly towards us for a while, when they bring up their right shoulders and sweep along the base of the Aripiles out of our sight, but right under the eye of Wellington and his guns. From this point he offers to deliver battle to the French Marshal, but that crafty General will not accept the challenge. He had made an effort to get us into his net by a combination of movements, but would not fight. It is a great thing to fight an important battle against such a General as Wellington, and such troops as the British, and to win. But Soult might have been excused, if he thought twice before putting the life and fame of so many thousands upon the event of a day, for here, on this very ground, three months before, General Marmont was beaten, and his army nearly destroyed. Wellington now courted a battle on the Aripiles, or on the Tormes. He opened a cannonade, did all he could to invite them on, but no go, they declined to quarrel.

My regiment was formed in quarter-distance column on the breast of the hill ready for action, all the French on
the other side out of our sight. Anxious as we were to get a peep at those ugly customers, we could not see one of
them. An aide-de-camp came riding down the hill now, and asked our Colonel if he had a mounted officer.
‘Yes, I believe there is one.’
‘Please send him up to the crest of the hill there, where the Duke is with his staff, and let him report himself to the Quartermaster-General.’
‘Always in luck,’ said a few of my comrades, as I jumped on my dirty white steed.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but there is bad as well as good luck at one’s heels everywhere.’
‘Never mind, come down and tell us, if we are going to fight today, for it is getting late.’
When I got up and swept my eye over the plain below, what a grand spectacle! The massive dark columns of the
whole French army standing at ease or with arms piled; dragoons alongside their horses, and the guns limbered
up, our artillery pounding at them without provoking a return shot. I saw they were beginning to move, so asked
for my orders at once.
‘Go off,’ he said, ‘as fast as you can to Algiho, and order the baggage of the 2nd Division to push on to Ciudad
Rodrigo.’
‘I don’t know the way, sir. How am I to find the place? Nor do I know the distance.’
‘Right in that direction,’ he said, pointing with his glass, ‘and the first village you come to ask for a guide: now be off, quick.’
I could now see that instead of a fight we were likely to continue our retreat; so I jogged on to the first village to get my guide. The town was empty and pillaged, inhabitants all gone, night was on me, I got bewildered, but rode on in the direction I was told as well as I could remember. As the dark clouds left the bright moon clear, I got a glimpse now and then of the skeletons of man and horse lying where they fell in the great battle of July, looking grim and ghastly.
I had been in company with Captain Percival, my commanding-officer before alluded to, from the time of my first coming down to the division before daylight; and now he and I, hearing the heart-piercing and afflicting groans which arose from the numbers of wounded still lying in the ditch, set to work to get as many of these poor fellows removed as was in our power. This we found a most arduous and difficult undertaking, as we could not do it without the aid of a considerable number of men; and it was a work of danger to attempt to force the now lawless soldiers to obey, and stop with us till this work of necessity and humanity was accomplished.

All thought of what they owed their wounded comrades, and of the probability that ere long a similar fate might be their own, was swallowed up in their abominable rage for drink and plunder; however, by perseverance, and by occasionally using his stick, my commandant at length compelled a few fellows to
lend their assistance in removing what we could into the town, where it was intended that hospitals should be established. But this was a most heartrending duty, for, from the innumerable cries of,—Oh! for God’s sake, come and remove me!” it was difficult to select the most proper objects for such care. Those
who appeared likely to die, of course it would have been but cruelty to put them to the pain of a removal; and many who, from the nature of their wounds, required great care and attention in carrying them, the half-drunken brutes whom we were forced to employ exceedingly tortured and injured; nay, in carrying
one man out of the ditch they very frequently kicked or trode upon several others, whom to touch was like death to them, and which produced the most gonizing cries imaginable.

I remember at this time Colonel (the late Sir Niel) Campbell passed out at the breach, and, as he had formerly been a Captain in our regiment, many of the poor fellows who lay there knew him, and beseeched him in the most piteous manner to have them removed. He came to me, and urged upon me in the strongest manner to use every exertion to get the poor fellows away. This evinced he had a feeling heart; but he was not probably aware, that for that very purpose both my commanding-officer and myself had been labouring for hours; but it soon began to
grow excessively hot, and what with the toil and the heat of the sun, and the very unpleasant effluvia which now arose from the numerous dead and wounded, we were both compelled, about mid-day, to desist from our distressing though ratifying labours.

It was now between twelve and one o’clock, and though we had had a great many removed, a much greater number lay groaning in the ditch; but our strength was exhausted, for he was lame and unable to move much, and I had been obliged to assist in carrying many myself, the drunken scoundrels whom we had pressed into the service seldom making more than one or two trips till they deserted us. But my lamented friend and messmate, poor Cary, was still to search for, and, after a considerable time, he was found beneath one of the ladders by which they had
descended into the ditch. He was shot through the head, and I doubt not received his death-wound on the ladder, from which in all probability he fell. He was stripped completely naked, save a flannel waistcoat which he wore next his skin. I had him taken up and placed upon a shutter, (he still breathed a little, though quite insensible,) and carried him to the camp. A sergeant and some men, whom we had pressed to carry him, were so drunk that they let him fall from off their shoulders, and his body fell with great force to the ground. I shuddered, but poor Cary, I believe, was past all feeling, or the fall would have greatly injured him. We laid him in bed in his tent, but it was not long ere my kind, esteemed, and lamented friend breathed his last. Poor Croudace had also died mmediately after reaching the hospital, whither he had been carried when he was shot.

Thus I lost two of my most particular and intimate acquaintances, from both of whom I had received many acts of kindness and friendship. They will long live in my memory. Cary was buried next day behind our tents, one of the officers (my other messmate) reading the funeral service.

I cannot help adverting to some of the scenes which I witnessed in the ditch, while employed there as above noticed. One of the first strange sights that attracted our notice, was soon after our arrival. An officer with yellow facings came out of the town with a frail fair one leaning on his arm, and carrying in her other hand a cage with a bird in it; and she tripped it over the bodies of the dead and dying with all the ease and indifference of a person, moving in a ball-room,— no more concern being evinced by either of them, than if nothing extraordinary had occurred. It was really lamentable to see such an utter absence of all right feeling.


Soon after this the men began to come out with their plunder. Some of them had dressed themselves in priests’ or friars’ garments—some appeared in female dresses, as nuns, &c.; and, in short, all the whimsical and fantastical figures imaginable almost were to be seen coming reeling out of the town, for by this time they were nearly all drunk. I penetrated no farther into the town that day than to a house a little beyond the breach, where I had deposited the wounded; but I saw enough in this short trip to disgust me with the doings in Badajos at this time. I learnt that no house, church, or convent, was held sacred by the infuriated and now ungovernable soldiery, but that priests or nuns, and common people, all shared alike, and that any who showed the least resistance were nstantly sacrificed to their fury. They had a method of firing through the lock of any door that happened to be shut against them, which almost invariably had
the effect of forcing it open; and such scenes were witnessed in the streets as baffle description.