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of him and frequently dined with him. On one of these occasions Lord Wellington was telling his next neighbour the story of the battle of Vimieira. The rest of the table stopped talking to hear him; the cessation of the buzz attracted his attention, and he broke off saying, 'Ah, well, there are plenty of fellows who can tell the story as well as I can.' He was averse to talking of his prowess, but in those days he always kept the anniversary of Vimieira (August 21, 1808), the first pitched battle in which he commanded against the French, celebrating it by a dinner.

It does not seem that the Spaniards had any particular prejudice in our favour, or any remarkable confidence in our soldiersin the early days, at all events. When the army under Sir John Moore was retreating to Corunna, some Spanish women were heard to say, 'Well, they are fine men, but they are great cowards.'

Moreover, there were officers in the army who had not the same blind confidence in their great commander which they afterwards had. William Napier was very critical. In the advance from Ciudad Rodrigo, in 1813, he once vented his feelings thus : 'Well, here we go again. We shall get so far, and then have our

kicked and come back here again.' We certainly had advanced into Spain and retreated three times, but on this occasion Lord Wellington felt so much certainty in his coming success, that in crossing the frontier he cried out, Adieu, Portugal,' having made arrangements to shift his base of operations to Santander, in the north-east of Spain.

The feeling that gradually grew up among the rank and file is illustrated by the following story, told by the Duke himself to Sir John Macdonald, the Adjutant-General of later years. 'The greatest compliment I have had paid in my life,' he said, 'was once when our fellows got into a scrape in the north of Spain and had been beaten back in some disorder. I rode up and rallied them and led them back, and they recovered the lost ground. Just as I rode up, one of the men stepped out of the ranks and called out, "Here comes the as knows how."'

Our army had sometimes to contend not only with the passive opposition and indolence of the Spanish, but also with the deliberate assistance they gave to the French, against whom we were assisting them.

When the English army had to retire after Talavera owing to the failure of the Spaniards to co-operate and to hold the passes on our flank, it was transferred to the north-eastern frontier of

Portugal, and four companies of the 1st Battalion of Rifles were posted along the Agueda. They held the village of Barba del Puerco, opposite to which, on the other side of the river, was San Felice, held by the French, and the two villages were connected by a bridge, which was the only one below Ciudad Rodrigo. Our officers used to go down to the village and dance with the girls, and an old woman used to sing a song about the celebrated guerilla—

Don Julian Sanchez

Con sus lanceros

Yban a Rodrigo

Tomar los Franceses.

The Padre did not like all this, and went and informed the French. Their commanding officer determined on a surprise. He posted 600 men in the shadow of the rocks, and one night when the dancing had gone on till twelve o'clock, the French crept across the bridge and fell on our posts higher up the hill. They were finally driven back, however, by the Rifles under Sidney Beckwith.

This was the first meeting of English and French after Talavera, and was the opening of Masséna's campaign of 1810. Don Julian Sanchez was in Ciudad Rodrigo when it was surrounded by the French, but cut his way out, and in doing so even attacked a French cavalry force and carried off some prisoners. Those of his troopers who had wives carried them with them, and they did their share of the fighting.

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Lieutenant Molloy after this went home and joined the Military College at Marlow, where he had as a fellow-student the future Sir George Brown, who was also in the 95th. His father was at the Horse Guards, and one day Brown said to him, 'Jack, I'm going to exchange into the This was a surprise. Why leave the old corps?' he said. 'However, I suppose your father knows best.' The exchange took place, and the explanation soon followed, for shortly after almost all the officers were exchanged to other regiments, and Brown found himself near the top of the list.

Sir George Brown was a rough-mannered but kindly officer. When he was Adjutant-General in 1851, Colonel Molloy was sitting in his office when an cfficer came in to ask for an extension of leave. 'Go back to your regiment at once, sir,' was the answer. 'I say, George, you might have been more civil; you've got a

devil of a name outside,' said Molloy. The answer was, 'My dear Jack, he only wants to stay among the gambling-houses.'

The future Sir Harry Smith was in the Rifle Brigade. The lady who was to become his wife was a native of Badajoz, and when we captured it by storm in 1812, to save herself from the excesses of the soldiery she fled out of the town with her sister, and they placed themselves under the protection of the British officers. 'Juanita' afterwards moved with the army. She used to ride a beautiful little Arab, and she would come out to the skirmishers when they were in action and look for her husband, saying, 'Donde esta mi Enrique?' Forty years later, when Sir Harry Smith was Governor and Commander-in-Chief at the Cape, he wrote to his old friend Lieutenant-Colonel Molloy: 'Juanita is very well, but very stout; but her ankles are as beautiful as ever.' Lady Smith lived till a few years ago, and I remember her describing how they all hurried off from Brussels on the road to Antwerp when the news came during the day of the battle of Waterloo that the English were driven back—intelligence brought by some troops (Belgian, I think) who took an early opportunity of retiring from the field where their Lion is now so prominent.

The French and English officers who came in contact with each other on outpost duty in Spain, got in the course of time on very friendly terms, and were willing to avoid useless bloodshed. One day when the armies were near Bayonne, Molloy's company was separated from the French by a stream crossed by a bridge. It was necessary to cross the bridge for some purpose or other. Molloy called out to the French officer on the other side of the stream, 'Je vais vous attaquer bientôt.' The French outpost had just cooked their dinner, and perhaps thought it was merely to take a rise out of them. At all events, the officer replied merely, 'Ah, bah!' But the Rifles did attack, and the French had to bolt, leaving their dinner behind them.

One day, when in charge of the outlying pickets in the South of France or North of Spain, a small stream separating the two armies, his sergeant came to Lieutenant Molloy while at mess and said that five French officers wanted to see him. He went to meet them on the other side of the brook. The senior of these said, 'Monsieur, j'aperçois que vous avez votre épée.' So Lieutenant Molloy unbuckled his sword and threw it across the stream. 'Now,' he said, 'you are five and I am one.' They asked for groceries and newspapers, which he got them. One of the papers

contained the bulletin which had just arrived setting forth the reverses at Leipsic which the Grand Army had suffered. 'Oh!' said the senior French officer, who afterwards turned out to be Count Reille, 'ne parlons pas de ça, parlons d'amour.' So they talked of their sweethearts at Madrid and elsewhere. The pickets used to exchange little presents of delicacies of food, &c., and even letters to the ladies the French officers had left behind were duly conveyed to them.

After the battle of Toulouse the officers used sometimes to steal into the villages within the French lines. Molloy was discussing with some milliners as to some shirts they were to make him for a hundred francs each, when an orderly came up and said the Commandant wished to see him. He went, and found it was Reille, whom he had met at the outposts as just related. Reille blew him up, and sent him and his friend Johnson, who had been playing billiards in the same town, back to their lines.

This Johnson was, in point of fact, the first man to get into Ciudad Rodrigo, though he did not get the credit. He was a very active man, and some days before the assault he marked a place, apart from the breach, where he would get in. He did so, and some men followed. Gurwood led the forlorn hope of the Light Division, and his party, who came in by the breach, found Johnson and his party already inside. But Gurwood went straight to the Commandant's house and got his sword.

Lord Wellington's plans for the battle of Vittoria depended on a very wide turning movement to be made by Sir Thomas Graham, Of the troops under his immediate command, the Light Division got first down to the river which formed the front of the French position. They were near a bridge, and were waiting for the other divisions on their left to get to their positions on the river. While thus waiting, Lord Wellington rode up, and was talking to Colonel Barnard, who commanded the Rifles, and seeing some of the officers looking out with their glasses, he asked Lieutenant George Simmonds if he saw anything. 'Yes, my lord, I see a smoke or dust in that direction.' Ah, let me see,' said he, and after looking in the direction indicated, which was probably where he expected Sir Thomas Graham to emerge from the mountains in the north, he said to Sir Andrew Barnard, 'All right; get along, Barnard.' So they got under arms, and went down and crossed the bridge; and afterwards Picton came up

and crossed it too, and said his men were the first. 'But we were the first for all that,' said Colonel Molloy.

In the last rush of this battle a French officer of high rank, wearing a star, was passing him, and he caught him by the ribbon, which with the star came off. The star was that of an order founded by Joseph when King of the Two Sicilies, and is now in my possession.

In the débâcle the men were ordered to keep the ranks and not to move, but an officer named Stillwell, said to have been a natural son of the Duke of York, who went in the regiment by the name of Scamp, seeing a carriage abandoned, jumped in to see what it might contain, when an officer of rank rode up and asked what he was doing there. 'I'm looking for papers, sir,' said Scamp. Go back to your regiment at once, sir,' which order was, of course, obeyed; but Scamp went back again very soon, when the staff officer had gone away, and found some plunder.

Some Lifeguardsmen in a hollow road a few paces from where Lieutenant Molloy was, were appropriating the contents of the military chest which was captured. Gold was so plentiful that they did not trouble to carry away the silver, which no doubt the camp-followers appropriated. There were 5 millions of dollars, and none of it came into the public chest. One of the riflemen managed to get hold of a lot of doubloons, and he and his wife sewed them up in a large old Portuguese saddle, which they always carried about with them. Molloy dined with the banker at Dover, where they landed after the war, and he told him that one of his soldiers had that day deposited 3,000l. in the bank. It was this man, and as it was noticed that he could always command money to get drunk, it probably mostly went in that way.

Lord Wellington expected his officers to be able to rely on their own resources in difficulty, and not to be always dependent on him to extricate them. At the battle of Nivelle an officer on his staff noticed a regiment getting into difficulties, and called his attention to it, asking whether a regiment should not be sent to its assistance. The Commander-in-Chief's answer was, 'Let every man fry his own fish.'

At Tarbes, Molloy and Leach and some others were lying down behind some bushes, laughing and talking, when Molloy to see what was going on, and found a battalion of French

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