as
long, as the lean lathy Frenchman, who has never known the liberal
rations and fat diet the other is accustomed to. When a certain period
of active service and long marches has given the English soldier his
campaigning legs, he must still have his regular grog, or he soon flags,
if he does not grumble and become insubordinate. Rations were bad, and
hard to be got, on the retreat from Burgos. Then, Mr Grattan tells us,
the superior marching qualities of the Irish were manifest. There had
been very little beef-steak and bacon expended in _their_ bringing up;
scanty fare was nothing new to them, and by no means affected their
gaiety and good-humour. And when shoes were scarce, what cared they? The
stones in Connaught are not a bit softer than those in Spain; and
nine-tenths of the boys had trotted about, from infancy upwards, with
"divel a brogue, save the one on their tongues." Some of the English
regiments--the Forty-fifth for instance, chiefly composed of Nottingham
weavers--would, under ordinary circumstances, march as well as any
Irishman of them all: "But if it came to a hard tug, and that we had
neither rations nor shoes, then, indeed, the Connaught Rangers would be
in their element, and out-march almost any battalion in the service." On
the retreat from Burgos to Portugal, they gave proof of their toughness
and endurance; for whilst other regiments were decimated by fatigue and
sickness, the Eighty-eighth scarcely lost a man, except by the enemy's
fire. It was a time when the good qualities of all were severely tested.
The movement began in a most unfavourable season. The roads were nearly
impassable from heavy rains, and for days together there was not a dry
jacket in the army. At night they lay in the open country, often in a
swamp, without a tent to shelter them; the baggage was detached, and
they never saw it till they reached Ciudad Rodrigo. It was share and
share alike amongst men and officers, and many of the latter were mere
striplings, who had but lately left the comforts of their English homes.
When they halted from their weary day's march, the ill-conditioned
beasts collected for rations had to be slaughtered; sometimes they came
too late to be of any use, or the camp-kettles did not arrive in time to
cook them; and the famished soldiers had to set out again, with a few
pieces of dry biscuit rattling in their neglected stomachs, and driven
to satisfy the cravings of hunger with the acorns that strewed