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The British Military Service is fertile in curious
contrasts. Among the officers who sailed from England for the East in
the spring of 1854 were three veterans who had soldiered under the Great
Duke in Portugal and Spain. The fighting career of each of those men
began almost simultaneously.; the senior of the three first confronted
an enemy’s fire in 1807, the two others in the following year. In 1854
one of these officers, who was the son of a duke and who had himself
been raised to the peerage, was the commander-in-chief of the
expeditionary army. Lord Raglan was a lieutenant-colonel at the age of
twenty-four, a colonel at twenty-seven, a major-general at thirty-seven.
He had been colonel-in-chief of a regiment since 1830 and a
lieutenant-general since 1838 ; and he was to become a field-inarshal
before the year was out. Another, who belonged, although irregularly, to
an old and good family, whose father was a distinguished if unfortunate
general, and who enjoyed the patronage and protection of one of our
great houses, belonging though he did to an arm of the service in which
promotion has always been exceptionally slow, was a lieutenant-colonel
at thirty and a colonel at forty, and was now a lieutenant-general on
the Staff and second in command of the expeditionary force. The third,
who was the son of a Glasgow carpenter, sailed for the East, it is true,
with the assurance of the command of a brigade; but, after a service of
forty-six years, his army-rank then and for three months later, was
still only that of colonel. Neither Lord Raglan nor Sir John Burgoyne
had ever heard a shot fired in anger since the memorable year of
Waterloo ; but during the long peace both had been attaining step after
step of promotion, and holding lucrative and not particularly arduous
offices. Since the Peninsular days Colin Campbell had been soldiering
his steadfast way round the world, taking campaigns and climates alike
as they came to him in the way of duty,—now a brigade-major, now serving
and conquering in the command of a division, now holding at the point of
the bayonet the most dangerous frontier of British India against
onslaught after onslaught of the turbulent hill-tribes beyond the
border. He had fought not without honour, for his Sovereign had made him
a Knight of the Bath and appointed him one of her own aides-de-camp. But
there is a certain barrenness in honours when unaccompanied by
promotion, and it had fallen to the lot of the son of the Glasgow
carpenter to serve for eighteen years in the capacity of a field-officer
commanding a regiment.
Yet even in the British military service the aphorism
occasionally holds good, that everything comes to him who knows how to
wait. Colin Campbell, the half-pay colonel of 1854, was a full general
in 1858 and a peer of the realm in the same year; in 1862 he was
gazetted a field-marshal. In less than nine years the half-pay colonel
had attained the highest rank in the service,—a promotion of unique
rapidity apart from that conferred on soldiers of royal blood. Along
with Lord Clyde were gazetted field-marshals Sir Edward Blakeney and
Lord Gough, both of whom were lieutenant-generals of some twenty years’
standing when Colin Campbell was merely a colonel. Sir John Burgoyne,
almost immeasurably his senior in 1854, did not become a field-marshal
until 1868.
Colin Campbell was born in Glasgow on the 20th of October
1792, the eldest of the four children of John Macliver, the Glasgow
carpenter, and his wife Agnes Campbell. How Colin Macliver came to bear
the name of Colin Campbell will presently be told. The family had gone
down in the world, but Colin Campbell came of good old stock on both
sides of the house. His grandfather, Laird of Ardnave in the island of
Islay, had been out in the Forty-five and so forfeited his estate.
General Shadwell, the biographer of Colin Campbell, states that his
mother was of a respectable family which had settled in Islay near two
centuries ago with its chief, the ancestor of the existing Earls of
Cawdor. But the Campbell who was the ancestor of the Cawdors was a son
of the second Earl of Argyle who fell at Flodden in 1513, and he
belonged to the first half of the sixteenth century; so that, since
Colin Campbell’s maternal family settled in*Islay with its chief, it
could reckon a longer existence than that ascribed to it by General
Shadwell. Not a few of Colin Campbell’s kinsmen had served in the army;
and the uncle after whom he was christened had fallen as a subaltern in
the war of the American Revolution.
His earliest schooling he received at the Glasgow High
School, whom at the age of ten he was removed by his mothers brother,
Colonel John Campbell, and placed by him in the Royal Military and Naval
Academy at Gosport Scarcely anything is on record regarding young
Colin’s school-days there. The first Lord Chelmsford was one of his
schoolfellows; and there is a tradition that he spent his holidays with
the worthy couple by whom the Academy was established, and by a
descendant of whom it is still carried oa When barely fifteen and a half
his uncle presented him to the Puke of York, then Commander-in-Chief,
who promised him p commission ; and supposing him to he, as he said,
“another of the clan,” put down his name as Colin Campbell, the name
which he thenceforth bore. General Shadwell states that on leaving the
Duke’s presence with his uncle, young Colin made some comment on what he
took to be a mistake on the Duke’s part in regard to his surname, to
which the shrewd uncle replied by telling him that “Campbell was a name
which it would suit him, for professional reasons, to adopt.” The
youngster was wise in his generation, and does not appear to have had
any compunctio. in dropping the not particularly euphonious surname of
Macliver. On the 26th of May 1808 young Campbell received the commission
of ensign in the Ninth Foot, now known as the Noifolk regiment; and
within five weeks from the date of his first commission he was promoted
to a lieutenancy in the same regiment.
He entered the service at an eventful moment. Napoleon
had attained the zenith of his marvellous career. He was the virtual
master of the whole of continental Europe. The royal family of Spain
were in effect his prisoners, and his brother Joseph had been proclaimed
King of Spain. The royal family of Portugal had departed to the New
World lest worse things should befall it, and Junot was ruling in Lisbon
in the name of his imperial master. But the Spaniards rose m masse in a
national insurrection; and no sooner had they raised the standard of
independence than they felt the necessity of applying to England for
aid. Almost simultaneously the Portuguese rose, and no severity on
Junot’s part availed to crush the universal revolt. Almost on the very
day on which young Campbell joined his regiment in the Isle of Wight,
the British force of nine thousand men to the command of which Sir
Arthur Wellesley was appointed, sailed from Cork for the Peninsula.
Spencer’s division joined Wellesley in Mondego Bay, and on the night of
the 8th of August 1808 thirteen thousand British soldiers bivouacked on
the beach—the advanced guard of an army which, after six years of many
vicissitudes and much hard fighting, was to expel from the Peninsula the
last French soldier and to contribute materially to the ruin of
Napoleon.
Campbell was posted to the second battalion of the Ninth,
commanded by Colonel Cameron, an officer of whom he always spoke with
affectionate regard. The first battalion of the regiment had already
sailed from Cork, and the second, which belonged to General Anstruther’s
brigade, took ship at Pamsgate for the Peninsula on July 20th. Peaching
the open sandy beach at the mouth of the Maceira on the 19th of August,
it was disembarked the same evening, and bivouacked on the beach.
Campbell notes, “lay out that night for the first time in my lifemany a
subsequent night did he lie out in divers regions! On the following day
the battalion joined the army then encamped about the village of Vimiera.
Wellesley had only landed on the 8th, but already he had been the victor
in the skirmish of Obidos and the battle of Roleia; and now, on the
21st, he was again to defeat Junot on the heights of Vimiera.
Directly in front of the village of that name rose a
rugged isolated height, with a flat summit commanding the ground in
front and to the left. Here was posted Anstruther’s brigade, its left
resting on the village church and graveyard. Young Campbell was with the
rear company of his battalion, which stood halted in open column of
companies under the fierce fire of Laborde’s artillery covering the
impending assault of his infantry. The captain of Campbell’s company, an
officer inured to war, chose the occasion for leading the lad out to the
front of the battalion and walking with him along the face of the
leading company for several minutes, after which little piece of
experience he sent Mm back to his company. In narrating the incident in
after years Campbell was wont to add : “ It was the greatest kindness
that could have been shown to me at such a time, and through life I have
been grateful for it.” It is not unlikely that the gallant and
considerate old soldier may have intended not alone to give to his young
subaltern his baptism of fire, but also to brace the nerves of the men
of a battalion which, although part of a regiment subsequently
distinguished in many campaigns and battles, was now for the first time
in its military life to confront an enemy and endure hostile fire. The
brigade was assailed at once in front and flank.
The main French column, headed by Laborde in person and
preceded by swarms of tirailleurs, mounted the face of the hill with
great fury and loud shouts. So impetuous was the onset that the British
skirmishers were driven in upon the lines, but steady volleys arrested
the advance of the French, and they broke and fled without waiting for
the impending bayonet charge. It would be interesting to know something
of the impressions made on young Campbell by his first experience of
actual war; but the curt entry in his memorandum is simply—“21st
(August), was engaged at the battle of Vimiera.”
At the end of the brief campaign Campbell was transferred
to the first battalion of the Ninth, and had the good fortune to remain
under the command of Colonel Cameron, who had also been transferred. In
the beginning of October a despatch from England reached Lisbon,
instructing Sir John Moore to take command of the British army intended
to co-operate with the forces of Spain in an attempt to expel the French
from the Peninsula. The disasters which befell the enterprise committed
to Moore need not be recounted in detail because of the circumstance
that a young lieutenant shared in them in common with the rest of the
hapless force. The battalion in which Campbell was serving was among the
earliest troops to be put in motion. It quitted its quarters at Quelus,
near Lisbon on October 12th, and reached Salamanca on November 11th.
When Moore’s army was organised in divisions, the battalion formed part
of Major-General Beresford’s brigade belonging to the division commanded
by Lieutenant-General Mackenzie Fraser. On reaching Salamanca Moore
found that the Spanish armies which he had come to support were already
destroyed, and that he himself was destitute alike of supplies and
money. In this situation it was his original intention to retire into
Portugal, which might have been his wisest course; but Moore was a man
of a high and ardent nature. When on the point of taking the offensive
in the hope of affording to the Spaniards breathing-time for organising
a defence of the southern provinces, he became aware that French forces
were converging on him from diverse points; and on the 2ith of December
began the memorable retreat, the disasters of which cannot be said to
have been compensated for by the nominal victory of Coruna.
In the hardships and horrors of that midwinter retreat
young Campbell bore his share. Little, if any fighting came in his way,
since the division to which his battalion belonged was for the most part
in front. During the retreat it experienced a loss of one hundred and
fifty men; but they are all specified as having died on the march or
having been taken prisoners by the enemy. Nor had it the good fortune to
take part in the battle of Coruna, having been stationed in the town
during the fighting. There fell to a fatigue party detailed from it the
melancholy duty of digging on the rampart of Coruna the grave of Moore,
wherein under the fire of the French guns he was laid in his “martial
cloak ” by his sorrowing Staff in the gray winter’s dawn. Beresford’s
brigade, to which Campbell’s battalion belonged, covered the embarkation
and was the last to quit a shore of melancholy memory. General Shadwell
writes that, “ To give some idea of the discomforts of the retreat, Lord
Clyde used to relate how for some time before reaching Coruna he had to
march with bare feet, the soles of his boots being completely worn away.
He had no means of replacing them, and when he got on board ship he was
unable to remove them, as from constant wear and his inability to take
them off the leather had adhered so closely to the flesh of the legs
that he was obliged to steep them in water as hot as he could bear and
have the leather cut away in strips—a painful operation, as in the
process pieces of the skin were brought away with it.”
After a stay in England of little more than six months
Campbell’s battalion was again sent on foreign service, an item of the
fine army of forty thousand men under the command of the Earl of
Chatham. The main object of the undertaking, which is known as the
Walcheren Expedition, whose story occupies one of the darkest pages of
our military history, was to reduce the fortress of Antwerp and destroy
the French fleet lying under its shelter, in the hope of disconcerting
Napoleon and creating a diversion in favour of Austria. But
opportunities were lost, time was squandered, and the expedition ended
in disastrous failure. Montresor’s brigade, to which Campbell’s
battalion belonged, disembarked on the island of South Beveland in the
beginning of August, to be the gradual prey of fever and ague in the
pestilential marshes of the island. Nothing was achieved save the barren
capture of the fortress of Flushing; and towards the end of September
most of the land forces of the expedition, including Campbell’s
battalion, returned to England. Over one-sixth of the original army of
forty thousand men had been buried in the swamps of Walcheren and South
Beveland; the survivors carried home with them the seeds of the
“Walcheren fever,” which affected them more or less for the rest of
their lives. Colin Campbell was an intermittent sufferer from it almost
if not quite to the end of his life.
The second battalion of the Ninth had been in garrison at
Gibraltar since July, 1809, and to it Colin Campbell was transferred
some time in the course of the following year. In the beginning of 1811
the French Marshal Victor was blockading Cadiz, and General Graham
(afterwards Lord Lynedoch) determined on an attempt in concert with a
Spanish force to march on his rear and break the blockade. Landing at
Tarifa he picked up a detachment, which included the flank companies of
the Ninth in which Campbell was serving. Graham’s division of British
troops was now somewhat over four thousand strong, and the Spanish army
of La Pena was at least thrice that strength. The allied force reached
the heights of Barrosa on March 5th. Graham anxiously desired to hold
that position, recognising its value \ but he had ceded the command to
La Pena, who gave him the order to quit it and move forward. In the
conviction that La Pena himself would remain there, he obeyed, leaving
on Barrosa as baggage-guard the flank companies of the Ninth and
Eighty-Second regiments under Major Brown. Graham had not gone far when
La Pena abandoned the Barrosa position with the mass of his force.
Victor had been watching events under cover of a forest, his three
divisions well in hand; and now he saw his opportunity. Villatte was to
stand fast; Laval to intercept the return of the British division to the
height; Ruffin to seize the height, sweep from it the allied rear-guard
left there, and disperse the baggage and followers. Major Brown held
together the flank companies he commanded, and withdrew slowly into the
plain. Graham promptly faced about and made haste to attack. Brown had
sent to Graham for orders, and was told that he was to fight; and the
gallant Brown, unsupported as he was, charged headlong on Ruffin’s
front. Half his detachment went down under the enemy’s first fire; but
he maintained the fight staunchly until Dilke’s division came up, when
the whole, Dilke’s people and Brown’s stanch flank companies, “ with
little order indeed, hut in a fierce mood,” in Napier’s words, rushed
upwards to close quarters. The struggle lasted for an hour and a half
and was “most violent and bloody”; only the unconquerable spirit of the
British soldiers averted disaster and accomplished the "victory. Many a
fierce fight was Colin Campbell to take part in, but none more violent
and bloody than this one on the heights of Barrosa. His record of his
own share in it is characteristically brief and modest: “At the battle
of Barrosa Lord Lynedoch was pleased to take favourable notice of my
conduct when left in command of the two flank companies of my regiment,
all the other officers being wounded.”
Late in the same year Campbell saw some casual service
while temporarily attached to the Spanish army commanded by Ballasteros
in the south of Spain. In the disturbed state of the surrounding region
many Spanish families of rank were glad to find quiet shelter within the
fortress of Gibraltar, and their society was eagerly sought by young
Campbell, who was anxious to take the opportunity of improving himself
in the French and Spanish languages. When in December, 1811, a French
force under Laval undertook what proved an abortive and final attempt to
reduce the fortified town of Tarifa, he accompanied the light company of
his battalion to take part in the vigorous and successful defence of the
place, a result achieved by the courage and devotion of the British
garrison sent to hold it by General Campbell, the wise and energetic
governor of Gibraltar, and by the skill and resource of Sir Charles
Smith the chief engineer.
At the close of 1812 Colin Campbell had just turned his
twentieth year, and had been a soldier for four and a half years, during
which time he had seen no small variety of service. Vimiera and Barrosa
had been stiff fights, but neither belonged to, the category of “big
wars” which are said to “make ambition virtue.” Young Campbell had
virtue, and certainly did not lack honest ambition. In a sense he had as
yet not been very fortunate. In a period when interest was almost
everything, he had absolutely none. While he had been on a side track of
the great war, his more fortunate comrades of the first battalion had
fought at Busaco and Salamanca under the eye of the Great Captain
himself. But the time had now come when he, too, was to belong to the
army which Wellington was to lead to final and decisive victory. He
accompanied a draft from the second battalion of his regiment which in
January 1813 was sent to join the first battalion lying in its winter
cantonments in the vicinity of Lamego on the lower Douro, and to his
great joy found himself again under the command of his original chief,
Colonel Cameron. In its winter quarters the allied army had recovered
the cohesion and discipline so sadly impaired during the retreat from
Burgos in the preceding autumn, and, strengthened by large
reinforcements, was now in fine form and high heart. The advance began
in the middle of May, when Wellington’s army, seventy thousand strong,
swept onward on a broad front, turning the positions of the French and
driving them before it towards the Pyrenees. Of the three corps
constituting that army Sir Thomas Graham’s had the left, consisting of
the first, third, and fifth divisions, to the second brigade of which,
commanded by General Hay, belonged the first battalion of the Ninth, to
the light company of which Colin Campbell was posted. The march of
Graham’s corps through the difficult mountainous region of
Tras-os-Montes and onward to Vittoria was exceptionally arduous, but the
obstacles were skilfully surmounted. Of the part taken by his battalion
on this advance Colin Campbell kept a minute daily record, which has
bc.en preserved. He acted as orderly officer to Lieutenant-Colonel
Crawford of his battalion, who commanded the flank companies of the
third and fifth divisions in the operation of crossing the Esla at
Almandra on May 31st. Continuing its march towards the north-east
Graham’s corps crossed the Ebro with some skirmishing, and on the
morning of the 18th of June its advance debouched from the defile of
Astri and marched on Osma, where the French General Reille with two
divisions was unexpectedly met. Reille occupied the heights of Astalitz.
The light companies of the first brigade were sent against the enemy,
who were evincing an intent to retreat, and Campbell accompanied his
company. He notes as follows :—"This being our first encounter of the
campaign, the men were ardent and eager, and pressed the French most
wickedly. When the enemy began their movement to the rear, they were
constrained to hurry the pace of their columns, notwithstanding the
cloud of skirmishers which covered their retreat. Lord Wellington came
up about half-past three. We continued the pursuit until dusk, when we
were relieved by the light troops of the fourth division. The ground on
which we skirmished was so thickly wooded and so rugged and uneven, that
when we were relieved by the fourth division, and the light companies
were ordered to return to their respective regiments, I found myself
incapable of further exertion from fatigue and exhaustion, occasioned by
six hours of almost continuous skirmishing.”
On the 20th Wellington’s army moved down into the basin
of Vittoria. King Joseph’s dispositions for the battle of Vittoria,
which was fought on June 21st, were distinctly bad. His right flank at
Gamara Mayor was too distant to be supported by the main body of his
army, yet the safe retreat of the latter in the event of defeat depended
on the staunchness of this isolated wing. Graham, moving southward from
Murguia by the Bilbao road, was to attack Reille who commanded the
French right, and to attempt the passage of the Zadora at Gamara Mayor
and Ariaga; should he succeed, the French would be turned, and in great
part enclosed between the Puebla mountains on one side and the Zadora on
the other by the corps of Hill and Wellington.
Graham approached the valley of the Zadora about noon.
Before moving forward on the village of Abechuco, it became necessary to
force across the river the enemy’s troops holding the heights on the
left and covering the bridges of Ariaza and Gamara Mayor. This was
accomplished after a short but sharp fight in which Colin Campbell
participated. Sarrut’s French division retired across the stream, and
the British troops occupied the ground from which the enemy had been
driven. Campbell thus describes the sequel “While we were halted the
enemy occupied Gamara Mayor in considerable force, placed two guns at
the principal entrance into the village, threw a cloud of skirmishers in
front among the cornfields, and occupied with six pieces of artillery
the heights immediately behind the village on the left bank. About
5 P.M. an order arrived from Lord Wellington to press the enemy in our
front. It was the extreme right of their line; and the lower road
leading to France, by which alone they could retire their artillery and
baggage, ran close to Gamara Mayor. The left brigade moved down in
contiguous columns of companies, and our light companies were sent to
cover the right flank of this attack. The regiments, exposed to a heavy
fire of musketry and artillery, did not take a musket from the shoulder
until they carried the village. The enemy brought forward his reserves,
and made many desperate efforts to retake the bridge, but could not
succeed. This was repeated until the bridge became so heaped with dead
and wounded that they were rolled over the parapet into the river below.
Our light companies were closed upon the Ninth, and brought into the
village to support the second brigade. We were presently ordered to the
left to cover that flank of the village, and we occupied the bank of the
river, on the opposite side of which was the enemy. After three hours’
hard fighting they retired, leaving their guns in our possession.
Crossing the Zadora in pursuit, we followed them about a league, and
encamped near Metanco.” The French left and centre had been driven in,
and Graham had closed to the enemy their retreat by the Bayonne road, so
that there remained to them only the road leading towards Pampeluna,
which was all but utterly blocked by vehicles and fugitives. In the
words of one of themselves, the French at Yitfcoria lost all their
equipages, all their guns, all their treasure, all their stores, all
their papers, so that no man could prove even how much pay was due to
him; generals and subordinate officers alike were reduced to the clothes
on their hacks, and most of them were barefooted.
After the battle of Vittoria Graham moved forward to the
investment of San Sebastian. In itself before that battle the fortress
was of little account, but since then the French General Rey had used
great energy in restoring its powers of defence; and its garrison at the
beginning of Graham’s operations reached a total of about three thousand
men. San Sebastian is situated on a peninsula jutting out into the sea,
and is connected with the mainland by a narrow isthmus. The western side
of the peninsula is washed by the sea, the eastern by the estuary of the
river Urumea. At its northern extremity rose the steep height of Monte
Urgullo, the summit of which was occupied by the castle of La Mota, a
citadel of great strength, capable of being defended after the town
should have fallen. The town, surrounded by a
fortified enceinte, occupied the entire breadth of the peninsula. The
high curtain protecting it on the southern or landward side had in front
of it a large hornwork, with a ravelin enclosed by a covered way and
glacis. The east and west defences were weak; along the eastern side the
water of the Urumea estuary receded at low tide for some distance from
the foot of the wall, leaving access thereto from the isthmus. At the
neck of the peninsula, about half a mile in advance of the town
defences, was the height of San Bartolomeo, near the eastern verge of
which was the convent of the same name. This building the French had
fortified and had thrown up a redoubt in connection with it, convent and
redoubt forming the advanced post of the garrison.
Graham was in command of the operations, his force
amounting to about ten thousand men. The obvious preliminary was the
capture of the redoubt and convent of San Bartolomeo. An attack on this
position, made on the 14th of July after an artillery preparation, had
failed with heavy loss. A second attempt made on the 17th was more
successful, three days of unintermitting artillery fire having reduced
the convent to ruins and silenced the redoubt. The attack was made in
two columns, the right one of which Colin Campbell accompanied with his
own, the light company. The chief fighting of the day was done by his
regiment, which stormed both convent and redoubt and after some hard
fighting drove the French out of the adjacent suburb of San Martino and
occupied what fire had spared of it. In this affair the Ninth lost
upwards of seventy officers and soldiers. Campbell’s laconic entry in
his journal for this day is simply, “Convent taken.” But he must have
distinguished himself conspicuously, since in Graham’s despatch to Lord
Wellington, among the officers whose gallantry was most conspicuous in
leading on their men to overcome the variety of obstacles exposed to
them was mentioned “Lieutenant Colin Campbell of the Ninth Foot.”
The Commander-in-Chief desired judicious speed, and the
operations were hurried on unduly by men who were too impetuous to
adhere to the scheme sanctioned by their chief. After a four days’
bombardment of the place the assault was ordered for the early morning
of the 25th. The storming-party consisted of a battalion of the Royals,
with the task of carrying the great breach; of the Thirty-Eighth, told
off to assail the lesser breach further to the right; and of the Ninth,
to act in support of the Royals. Colin Campbell had a special position
and a special duty, of a kind seldom entrusted to a subaltern and
markedly indicative of the estimation which he had thus early earned. He
was placed in the centre of the Royals with twenty men of his (the
light) company, having the light company of the Royals as his immediate
support and under his orders, and accompanied by a ladder-party under an
engineer officer. His specific orders were on reaching the crest of the
breach to gain the ramparts on the left, sweep the curtain to the high
work in the centre of the main front, and there establish himself. The
signal for an advance to the assault was given prematurely, while it was
still dark, by the explosion of a mine, and the head of the storming
party moved out of the trenches promptly but in straggling order. The
space between the exit from the parallel and the breach, some three
hundred yards, was very rugged, broken by projecting rocks, pools,
seaweed and other impediments. These difficulties, the darkness, and the
withering fire from the ramparts, increased the tendency to disorder,
and presently Campbell was not surprised to find an actual check. The
halted mass had opened fire and there was no moving it forward. He
pushed on past the halted body having there lost some men of his
detachment; and reached the breach, the lower part of which he observed
to be thickly strewn with killed and wounded. “There were,” to quote
from his journal, “a few individual officers spread on the face of the
breach, but nothing more. These were cheering, and gallantly exposing
themselves to the close and destructive fire directed on them from the
round tower and other defences. In going up I passed Jones of the
Engineers1 who was wounded; and on gaining the top I was shot through
the right hip and tumbled to the bottom. Finding on rising that I was
not disabled from moving, and observing two officers of the Royals who
were exerting themselves to lead some of their men from under the
line-wall near to the breach, I went to assist their endeavours and
again went up the breach with them, when I was shot through the inside
part of the left thigh.” In the language of the brilliant historian of
the Peninsular War— “It was in vain that Lieutenant Campbell, breaking
through the tumultuous crowd with the survivors of his chosen
detachment, mounted the ruins—twice he ascended, twice he was wounded,
and all around him died.”
The assault failed; and the siege of San Sebastian was
temporarily exchanged for a blockade. There was much angry discussion
and recrimination as to the causes of the disastrous issue. It was
remarked that no general or staff officer had quitted the trenches, ami
that what leading there was devolved entirely on the regimental
officers. They, at least, had fought well and exposed themselves freely,
and none had behaved himself more gallantly than Colin Campbell. This
was heartily and handsomely acknowledged by Graham when he thus wrote in
his despatch to Lord Wellington describing the assault:—“I beg to
recommend to you Lieutenant Campbell of the Ninth, who led the forlorn
hope, and who was severely wounded in the breach.” Such a recognition,
barren of immediate results though it was, Colin Campbell probably
thought cheaply earned at the cost of a mere couple of bullet holes.
These, however, hindered him from participating in the desperate
fighting of the final and successful assault on San Sebastian; and,
indeed, when after the surrender of the place his division departed, he
had to remain an invalid in the shattered town. He was now ahnut to
perpetrate the only breach of military discipline ever laid to his
charge. Having heard of the early prospect of a battle, he and a brother
officer who had also been wounded took the liberty of deserting from
hospital for the purpose of joining their regiment. How long it took
them to limp from San Sebastian to Oryarzun is not specified; but they
reached the regiment on October 6th just in time to join the midnight
march to the left hank of the Bidassoa opposite Andaya, end on the
following morning to wade the river and enter France. The British
cannonade awoke the French to find their country invaded by an enemy and
hostile cannon-balls falling in their bivouacs.
From Andaya the division in which Colin Campbell marched
sprang up the slopes to assail the key of the position, the Croix des
Bouquets. To that stronghold reinforcements were hurrying, and attacks
on it had already been made in vain; “But,” in the burning words of
Napier, “at this moment Cameron arrived with the Ninth regiment, and
rushed with great vehemence to the summit of the first height. The
French infantry opened ranks to let the guns retire, and then retreated
themselves at full speed to a second rise where they could only be
approached in a narrow front. Cameron quickly threw his men into a
single column and bore against this new position, which curving inwards
enabled the French to pour a concentrated fire upon his regiment; nor
did his violent course seem to dismay them until he was within ten
yards, when, appalled by the furious shout and charge of the Ninth, they
gave way and the ridges of the Croix des Bouquets were won as far as the
royal road.” The regiment in this encounter lost nearly one hundred men;
and Colin Campbell, who commanded the light company in its front, was
now again severely wounded. The breach of discipline he had committed in
discharging himself from the hospital his colonel condoned with no
sterner punishment than a severe reprimand, on account of his gallant
conduct in the first action fought on French soil. |
