In ten minutes all were asleep on the floor, wrapped
in their greatcoats, the officer of the day taking
his place next the door so that he could be roused
easily. Every hour one or other of the two non-commissioned
officers in charge of the guard in the passage opened
the door a few inches and said softly, “I am
relieving the sentries, sir;” and each time
the officer murmured assent.
Sullivan was called at the appointed time, got up,
and stretched himself, grumbling:
“I don’t believe that I have been asleep
ten minutes.”
On going out into the passage, however, where a light
was burning, his watch told him that it was indeed
time to be moving. He woke the others, and with
the men went down to the cellars. Here the scene
of confusion was great; drunken men lay thickly about
the floor, others sat, cup in hand, talking, or singing
snatches of song, Spanish or English. Hastily
picking out enough unbroken casks for the purpose,
he set the men to carry them up to the street, and
they were then rolled along to the factory. Just
as they reached the door the bugle-call sounded; the
men were soon on their feet, refreshed by a good night’s
sleep. The casks were broached, and the wine
served out.
“It is awful, Colonel,” Sullivan said.
“There will be hundreds of men left behind.
There must have been over that number in the cellar
I went into, and there are a dozen others in the town.
I never saw such a disgusting scene.”
Scarcely had they finished when the assemble sounded,
and the regiment at once fell-in outside the factory,
every man with knapsack and haversack bulging out
with tobacco. They then joined the rest of the
troops in the main street. General Moore had
made a vain attempt to rouse the besotted men.
A few of those least overcome joined the rear-guard,
but the greater number were too drunk to listen to
orders, or even to the warning that the French would
be into the town as soon as the troops marched out.
CORUNNA
As the confusion in the streets increased from the
pouring out from the houses and cellars of the camp-followers—women
and children, together with men less drunk than their
comrades, but still unable to walk steadily—who
filled the air with shouts and drunken execrations,
Colonel Corcoran rode along the line.
“Just look at that, boys,” he said.
“Isn’t it better for you to be standing
here like dacent men, ready to do your duty, than to
be rolling about in a state like those drunken blackguards,
for the sake of half an hour’s pleasure?
Sure it is enough to make every mother’s son
of you swear off liquor till ye get home again.
When the French get inside the town there is not one
of the drunken bastes that won’t be either killed
or marched away a thousand miles to a French prison,
and all for half an hour’s drink.”
The lesson was indeed a striking one, and careless
as many of the men were, it brought home to them with
greater force than ever before in their lives, not
only the folly but the degradation of drunkenness.
A few minutes later, General Moore, who was riding
up and down the line, inspecting the condition of
the men in each regiment, came along.
