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The 95th In The Retreat to Corunna and Vigo
By Robert C. Young
Towards the end of the year, however, the positions were reversed, Moore s own slender line of communications was being threatened by the enemy, who outnumbered the British at least 10 to 1. No help could be expected from the defeated and demoralized Spanish armies, and just before Christmas, 1808, the British began their long retreat from Sahagun to the sea The greater part of the army marched via Benevente in order to deny the French the Castro Gonzalo bridge across the Esla river. Two battalions of the 95th formed part of the rearguard, the 1st battalion numbering about 700 served under Major General Edward Paget in the Reserve Division, whilst the 2nd battalion, about 750 strong, formed part of Crawford s 1st Light Brigade. Lieutenant Cox of the 95th wrote in his diary, news of Napoleon s advance. Retreat of the British Army not a very cheering prospect a winter s retreat through mountains covered with snow lies before us but the frost thawed and the snow was followed by four days of incessant rain. The troops, dragging their way along roads and tracks ankle deep in mud, already exasperated at having to retreat from an enemy they were convinced they could beat, began to run amok. Although the rearguard maintained their morale, discipline had already broken down among the main body and villages on the line of march were sacked or destroyed. In one village the inhabitants rang their church bells as soon as the last soldier passed through, according to Quartermaster Sergeant Surtees of the 95th to evince their gratitude to Heaven for having got rid of such a band of heretics. As the wet daylight faded on 28th December, the last stragglers staggered through the village of Castro Gonzalo and crossed the stone bridge. Craufurd s Light Brigade held the far side of the river through the night and all the next day, whilst the engineers worked to drive their charges deep enough into the solid masonry to destroy the bridge. French attacks were beaten off and finally, at midnight, the charges were blown and two arches crashed into the swollen waters of the Esla. The rifleman withdrew, walking in single file on planks laid across the broken arches. When the last man was across the remaining charges were fired, bringing down the central pier. Such was the force of the explosion that Rifleman Harris was knocked flat on his face by the blast and obviously suffered concussion for, after a while I recovered, but it was not without extreme difficulty, and many times falling again, that I succeeded in regaining the columns. At Benevente Moore had given his men a day s rest to re-organize, this they used to beg, borrow or steal wine. A party of light infantry incensed by a fat abbot who tried to hide his monastery s wine, promptly drowned him in one of his own vats to teach him. Not to be so damned stingy with it. Elsewhere in the town hundreds of pipes of wine were shot apart by musketry fire and drunken soldiers lay in the gutters almost awash in streams of wine. On New Year s Eve, the rearguard stumbled into Astorga, the Gate of the Galician Mountains, jammed with over 10,000 men of Romanas beaten army. From here, Sir John Moore wrote in a despatch to England, The people run away, the villages are deserted, and I have been obliged to destroy great part of the ammunition and leave military stores. For the same reason I am obliged to leave the sick. In short, my sole object is to save the Army. The 1st and2nd Light Brigades now turned westwards towards Vigo to guard the southern flank, whilst the remainder of the army, with the Reserve Division as rearguard, marched towards Corunna, the full horrors of the retreat were about to begin. No man but one formed of stuff like General Craufurd could have saved the brigade from perishing altogether. I detest the sight of the lash, but I am convinced the British Army can never go on without it, so wrote Rifleman Harris in his memoirs. The route taken by the Light Brigades was even more appalling than that of the main army and Craufurd was determined to keep his men together. At Ponferrada, an officer being carried across the river on the back of one of his men was, dropped like a hot potato into the stream when Craufurd bellowed to the bearer, Put him down, sir! Put him down, instantly,. Some rifleman, trying to find a bridge in order to avoid wading waist high through the river, were flogged and then made to cross in the deepest water that Craufurd could find. Later in the retreat, two men caught straying were given an immediate drum head court martial and each sentenced to 100 lashes. Rifleman Dan Howans turned to two of his comrades, Harris and Jagger, and in an undertone damned Crawfurd s eyes, adding that he would do better to find them something to eat. Black Bob, overheard the comment and snatching one of their rifles laid the butt across Jagger,s head. Howans then admitted that it was he who spoken, whereupon he was promptly tried and awarded 300 lashes. At the time, the enemy was too close for the sentence to be carried out and the brigade moved on. At dawn next day, Howans received his punishment without a murmur, and his wife, a strapping Irishwoman, covered his lacerated back with a greatcoat and marched with him, carrying his knapsack and accoutrements. An hour later Craufurd again halted the men and said, Bring out the two men of the 95th who were tried last night., At this point their commanding officer, Lieut. Colonel Hamilton Wade, asked pardon for his men on the ground they had fought well in all the battles of Portugal. Craufurds Concession was to allow them to draw lots, and the winner shall escape but one of the two I am determined to make an example of. Finally, on 12th January, the brigades staggered into Vigo linked together arm in arm to keep themselves moving. Almost all were without shoes and stockings, many had their clothes and accountremets in fragments whilst not a few had now, from toil and fatigue, become quite blind, wrote one of the survivors. Meanwhile, the main body struggled over the snow bound mountain passes towards Corunna locking more of a Spanish rabble than a British army. At the first halt, the wretched town of Bembibre, more than a 1,000 men were too drunk to move. A sergeant of the 95th has recorded that they spent most of the day in dragging the drunken stragglers into the streets yet little could be effected with men incapable of standing, much less of marching. Shortly after the rearguard had move on, the majority of those left behind were butchered by French dragoons. At Cacebelos, a small village overlooking a river. Moore turned at bay to fight a delaying action. It was in this battle that Rifleman Tom Plunkett of the 95th killed the French General Colberg with one well aimed shot. It is recorded that he laid on his back, propped up on his left elbow and supported the rifle with his foot through the sling, a stance which was to be used at Bisley over 160 years later. Plunkett was a notable marksman who had been responsible for the deaths of about 20 Spaniards during the battle of Buenos Aires in 1807, hoisted on to the roof of an outbuilding he had killed everyone of the enemy imprudent enough to come within range. The retreat continued with the route signposted
by the dead and dying by the side of the track and the continuous
line of bloody footprints leading up into the mountains. On 11th
January, the naked frost-bitten feet of the army trod the coastal
plain towards the harbour, before them lay the death of Moore and
the Battle of Corunna in which the tattered British army was to
redeem itself. The last shots from the rearguard were fired by the
95th seven years later the first shots heralding the
final downfall of Napoleon were also to be fired by the 95th
at a place called Quatre Bras.
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