Rifles - Mark Urban [127]
The walls and hedges on the village’s outskirts were now lined with French defenders. Wellington rode across the short distance to Picton’s men where he personally formed up the 88th, the Connaught Rangers, for the advance. With a beating of drums, they marched forward in line, presented their pieces only thirty or forty yards from the enemy and game them a thumping volley, a cheer and the bayonet. The French fled back through the village. One battery of guns which had been firing in support of them was quickly limbered up by its commander, for in his trade losing your cannon was the ultimate disgrace. At this moment the artillery men got help: a counter-attack by the French infantry briefly reclaimed the village, allowing this battery to pull out. Seeing the track that the horses towing the cannon were taking, Lieutenant FitzMaurice called his men to follow him and raced across an open field to intercept them.
On arriving near the guns, FitzMaurice was running at a cracking pace. He shouted to his company, urging them forward, only to make the uncomfortable discovery that just a couple had managed to keep up with him as he ran. The Irish lieutenant threw himself onwards nevertheless, the French gunners and drivers defending themselves with whatever came to hand. There was a short, sharp, close-range fight in which a pistol was discharged almost in FitzMaurice’s face, the ball going through his shako. Soon he and another rifleman had shot one of the draught horses and were cutting the traces that connected it to the howitzer it was pulling. The lieutenant and four riflemen had captured the first French gun of the day, but certainly not the last.
As the 2nd Company burst into Arinez, Costello caught sight of Lazarro Blanco sticking a straggler with his bayonet. The Spanish private plunged the blade in manically, taking out the sufferings of his country on this unfortunate Frenchman, cursing him all the time in the most profane and abusive language.
With their enemy streaming back from Arinez, the Light and 3rd Divisions followed up. There was still heavy firing, but the French Army was disintegrating. Its battalions had broken into clumps of men running across the countryside, heading east. Near the city of Vitoria, hundreds of wagons, containing the treasures plundered by the French during their five-year occupation, fell into British hands.
Wellington had scored an emphatic triumph. The French Army lost 151 artillery pieces – all but one of those weapons that they had brought to the field. Many of the British soldiers felt a determined cavalry pursuit would have annihilated the disordered wreck of Joseph’s army. No such movement by the horse soldiers materialised and one Rifle officer noted, ‘It was impossible to deny ourselves the satisfaction of cursing them all, because a portion of them had not been there at such a critical moment.’ The Household Cavalry regiments were sent into Vitoria to stop the Allied army plundering it, Hennell of the 43rd being unable to resist a dig at these court soldiers, writing home, ‘I do not know what good they did, if any I am sure you would hear of it.’
As for the Light Division, they felt they had more than earned the rewards that might be earned from plundering the French baggage. Their role in assuring the passage of the Zadorra and attacking Arinez had been the most important part of any general action they had enjoyed since Busaco almost three years before. Some soldiers, though, were to be rewarded beyond their wildest dreams, for among the chests and cases were millions of gold doubloons and silver dollars.
‘I observed a Spanish muleteer in the French service carrying a small but exceedingly heavy portmanteau towards the town,’ wrote Costello.