ttentively viewing the combat which raged
below, when Sir Edward Pakenham galloped up to him, and said, 'Do you
see that, Wallace?'--'I do,' replied the colonel; 'and I would rather
drive the French out of the town than cover a retreat across the
Coa.'--'Perhaps,' said Sir Edward, 'his lordship don't think it
tenable.' Wallace answering, said, 'I shall take it with my regiment,
and keep it too.'--'Will you?' was the reply; 'I'll go and tell Lord
Wellington so.' In a moment or two, Pakenham returned at a gallop, and
waving his hat, called out, 'He says you may go.--Come along, Wallace!'"

Poor Pakenham! ever foremost to lead a charge or brave a peril. He
deserved a better fate, after his glorious exploits in the Peninsula,
than to be picked off by a sneaking Yankee rifle, in the swampy plains
of New Orleans. But the same "boiling spirit and hasty temper" that won
him laurels in Europe, led him to his death in another hemisphere.
Over-confidence may be pardoned in a man who had so often driven before
him the redoubtable cohorts of the modern Alexander. And one mistake
cannot obliterate the memory of fifty gallant feats.--Full of fight, and
led on by Pakenham, Mackinnon, and Wallace, the Eighty-eighth advanced
at a smart trot into the town, where the French Ninth regiment and a few
hundreds of the Imperial Guard awaited them. Their charge was
irresistible; they cleared the place and drove the enemy into the river.
They even pursued them through it, and several Rangers fell on the
French side of the stream. About a hundred and fifty of the Old Guard
ran into a street, of which the further end was barricaded. Mr Grattan,
whose account of the affair is a graphic and interesting piece of
military narrative, is amusingly cool and _naif_ in referring to this
incident. "Mistakes of this kind," he says, "will sometimes occur, and
when they do, the result is easily imagined.... In the present instance,
every man was put to death; but our soldiers, _as soon as they had
leisure_, paid the enemy that respect which is due to brave men." We
apprehend that, with the Connaughters, _leisure_, in this sense, was
scanty, at least at Fuentes d'Onore; but, in so close and desperate a
fight, hot blood is apt to drown mercy. The dashing charge of the
Eighty-eighth nearly closed the day's performances, although the French
batteries, admirably served, still peppered the town. Men and officers
sheltered themselves as well as they could, but many wer