for his conduct. He gallops
bravely up to his adversary, and exchanging their pistols, the
lieutenant's horse happened to be killed. The Scotchman very
generously dismounts, and engages him with his sword, and fairly
masters him, and carries him away prisoner; and I think this horse was
all the blood was shed in that war.
The lieutenant's name thus conquered was English, and as he was a very
stout old soldier, the disgrace of it broke his heart. The Scotchman,
indeed, used him very generously; for he treated him in the camp very
courteously, gave him another horse, and set him at liberty, gratis.
But the man laid it so to heart, that he never would appear in the
army, but went home to his own country and died.
I had enough of party-making, and was quite sick with indignation at
the cowardice of the men; and my lord was in as great a fret as I, but
there was no remedy. We durst not go about to retreat, for we should
have been in such confusion that the enemy must have discovered it; so
my lord resolved to keep the post, if possible, and send to the king
for some foot. Then were our men ready to fight with one another who
should be the messenger; and at last when a lieutenant with twenty
dragoons was despatched, he told us afterwards he found himself an
hundred strong before he was gotten a mile from the place.
In short, as soon as ever the day declined, and the dusk of the
evening began to shelter the designs of the men, they dropped away
from us one by one; and at last in such numbers, that if we had stayed
till the morning, we had not had fifty men left; out of 1200 horse and
dragoons.
When I saw how it was, consulting with some of the officers, we all
went to my Lord Holland, and pressed him to retreat, before the enemy
should discern the flight of our men; so he drew us off, and we came
to the camp the next morning, in the shamefullest condition that ever
poor men could do. And this was the end of the worst expedition ever I
made in my life.
To fight and be beaten is a casualty common to a soldier, and I have
since had enough of it; but to run away at the sight of an enemy,
and neither strike or be stricken, this is the very shame of the
profession, and no man that has done it ought to show his face
again in the field, unless disadvantages of place or number make it
tolerable, neither of which was our case.
My Lord Holland made another march a few days after, in hopes to
retrieve this miscarriage; but
|