The incident of the defence of the mountain top by flinging down rocks, is taken from the previous combat, where it occurred as described by Napier in the following words: “The British, shrunk in numbers, also wanted ammunition, and a part of the eighty-second under Major Fitzgerald was forced to roll down stones to defend the rocks on which they were posted.” (_Hist. ibid._) The allusions to Sisyphus and to Ajax will I trust be excused. It is difficult to exaggerate such incidents. There was surely something Titanic in the character of this Pyrenean warfare.
The Spanish regiment which gave way towards the end of the battle (the poor soldiers were starved by their miserable commissariat) was that of El Pravia, which was stationed on the left of the fortieth, and the latter regiment justly styled by Napier the “invincible” victoriously concluded the combat. “Four times this assault was renewed, and the French officers were seen to pull up their tired men by the belts, so fierce and resolute they were to win. It was, however the labour of Sisyphus.” (Napier, _ibid._) The cavalry engagement was maintained by our tenth and eighteenth hussars. I occasionally detach my heroes, Nial and Morton, to other infantry corps for poetic effect.
The terrible scene at the bridge of Yanzi is described by Captain Cooke in his _Memoirs_ as follows:--“We overlooked the enemy at stone’s throw, and from the summit of a tremendous precipice. The river separated us, but the French were wedged in a narrow road with inaccessible rocks on one side and the river on the other. Confusion impossible to describe followed, the wounded were thrown down in the rush and trampled upon, the cavalry drew their swords and endeavoured to charge up the pass of Echallar, but the infantry beat them back; and several, horses and all, were precipitated into the river; some fired vertically at us, the wounded called out for quarter, while others pointed to them supported as they were on branches of trees, on which were suspended great coats clotted with gore, and blood-stained sheets taken from different habitations to aid the sufferers.”
The incident of extricating Wellington by the agency of Nial and Morton from his imminent peril of falling into the hands of the French is taken from the following passage at the end of Napier’s description of the combat of Ivantelly: “Lord Wellington narrowly escaped the enemy’s hands. He had carried with him towards Echallar half a company of the forty-third as an escort, and placed a sergeant named Blood with a party to watch in front while he examined his maps. The French who were close at hand sent a detachment to cut the party off; and such was the nature of the ground that their troops, rushing on at speed, would infallibly have fallen unawares upon Lord Wellington, if Blood, a young intelligent man, seeing the danger, had not with surprising activity, leaping rather than running down the precipitous rocks he was posted on, given the general notice, and as it was the French arrived in time to send a volley of shot after him as he galloped away.” (_Hist._ book xxi. c. 5.)