3. The Battle of Maida (7)
The Rout of the French Center
But the physical aspect of the affair is only one side of it. There remains the moral. What did the men in the column feel while attacking the line? That is harder to find, for not one Frenchman in a hundred thousand wrote down his mental experiences of the trial. One did, however, and though he wrote, not of what he saw at Maida (where he did not serve), but of memories of Castalia and of other fields in Spain, the moral is so much the same that I may be permitted to quote his text:
“Why did we engage in so many general actions during the seven years that I was in the Peninsula.” wrote Marshal Bugeaud, “and never get the better of the English save in an insignificant number? The reason was plain enough. We attacked them, without bearing in mind that tactics which answered well enough against the Spaniards and others, failed with an English force in front. The usual matter-of-fact cannonade would commence the operation, then hurriedly, without reconnoitring the ground, we marched against the enemy, ‘taking the bull by the horns’; as men say.
“As soon as we got about 1,000 metres from the English line, the men would begin to get restless and excited. They exchanged ideas with each other, the march began to get somewhat precipitate. Meanwhile the English, silent and impassive, with ported arms loomed like a long red wall—an imposing attitude which impressed novices a good deal. Soon the distance diminishes; cries of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ ‘En Avant’, ‘À la baïonnette broke from the mass. Some men hoisted their shakos on the top of their muskets. The march turned into a run. The ranks began to get mixed up. The men’s agitation became a tumult; some discharged their weapons without halting and without aim. And all the while the red line in front, silent and motionless, though we had got within 300 metres, seemed unaffected by the gathering storm.
“The contrast was striking; more than one among us began to think that when the enemy’s long-reserved fire did begin it might be inconvenient presently. Our ardour began to cool. The moral influence of apparently unshakable calm is irresistible, in action against disorder which strives to make up by noise what it lacks in firmness. It used to sit heavy on our hearts. Then, at the time of most painful expectancy, the English muskets would come down—they were ‘making ready’. An undefinable impression nailed to the spot a good many of our men, who would halt and open a desultory fire. Then came that of the enemy, volleyed with precision and deadly effect, crashing upon us like thunder. Decimated, we turned half round, staggering under the blow and trying to regain our balance, when the long-pent-up silence of the enemy was broken by cheers. Then came a second volley, and perhaps a third, and with the third they were down upon us, pressing us into a disorderly retreat.”
The fact was that a column, with its two first ranks and half its flanks (which were exposed because of its narrow frontage) blown to pieces, was in a miserable plight. It speaks well for the 1st Léger at Maida that they stood three volleys, and that even from one battalion a few desperate men staggered on to cross bayonets with the two companies of the 35th and the “light bobs” of the 20th. There is said to have occurred in this quarter a little of that rarest of things in the Napoleonic Wars—bayonet fighting.
The British light infantry, with a headlong impetus, charged straight after the flying mass, which scattered and went uphill in the direction of the French camp. This was the sort of pursuit that Wellington would never have allowed: his rule was to re-form before doing anything more. But Kempt forgot or failed to restrain his men; they went uphill, shooting or making prisoners of all the slow runners among their adversaries. The 1st Léger was absolutely half destroyed; of 1,810 present at Maida only 953 were under arms when the next regimental muster was taken a month later. Four hundred and thirty were prisoners,1 four hundred and twenty-seven were killed or wounded there—176 of the former, 254 of the latter apparently. Of sixty officers present only thirty-five survived at the roll-call of September 18th; seven were killed, fourteen wounded, one an unwounded prisoner.
The rout and pursuit swept through the French camp, along the hill-side beyond, and for a mile or more; till, at the village of Maida, Kempt at last succeeded in checking and rallying his scattered men. Undoubtedly they had done their share in the battle, but the rest of it went on without their aid; they were a “spent force”, and took no further part in the action, when their intervention might have had incalculable results. For want of a general directing mind each section of the British army fought its own battle apart.
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