Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/38

 sooner found the place evacuated, than they flew upon the spoil, and began to plunder the citizens, whom they had professedly come to relieve. The vigilant enemy seized the opportunity to rally his broken battalions, and, being reinforced from the garrison at Alkmaar, attacked the dispersed Russians with so much impetuosity, that the latter were driven from Bergen-op-zoom to Schorel, with the loss of Generals D'Hermann and Tcherchekoff, wounded and taken prisoners. This failure of the Russians compelled the other three columns of the British army to abandon the positions they had already stormed, and return to the station they had left in the morning. .For this disappointment three thousand prisoners taken in the engagement was but a poor recompense; whila the impression made upon the minds of the Dutch, by the conduct of the Russians, was incalculably injurious to the objects of the expedition. The conflict was renewed on the 2d of October, by another attack on the whole line of the enemy, the troops advancing, as before, in four columns, under Generals Abercromby, D'Esson, Dundas, and Pulteney. The centre ascended the sand-hills at Campe,.and carried the heights of Schorel; and, after a vigorous contest, the Russians and British obtained possession of the whole range of sand-hills in the neighbourhood of Bergen-op-zoom; but the severest conflict, and that which decided the fate of the day, was sustained by the first column under Sir Ralph Abercromby. He had marched without opposition to within a mile of Egmontop-Zee, where a large body of cavalry and infantry waited to receive him. Here Sir John Moore led his brigade to the charge in person; he was met by a counter-charge of the enemy, and the conflict was maintained till evening with unexampled fury. The Marquis of Huntly, who, with his regiment (the ninety-second), was eminently distinguished, received a wound by a musket-ball in the shoulder; and General Sir John Moore, after receiving two severe wounds, was reluctantly carried off the field. Sir Ralph Abercromby had two horses shot under him, but he continued to animate the troops by his example, and the most desperate efforts of the enemy were unavailing. Their loss in this day's engagement was upwards of four thousand men. During the night they abandoned their posts on the Lange Dyke and at Bergen-op-zoom, and next day the British took up the positions that had been occupied by the French at Alkmaar and Egmont-op-Zee. Brune having taken up a strong position between Beverwyck and the Zuyder Zee, it was determined to dislodge him before the arrival of his daily-expected reinforcements. In the first movements made for this purpose the British met with little opposition; but the Russians, under General D'Esson, attempting to gain a height near Buccum, were suddenly charged by an overwhelming body of the enemy. Sir Ralph Abercromby, observing the critical situation of the Russians, hastened with his column to support them. The enemy also sent up fresh forces, and the action, undesignedly by either party, became general along the whole line, from Lemmen to the sea, and was contested on both sides with the most determined obstinacy. About two o'clock in the afternoon, the right and centre of the Anglo-Russian army began to lose ground, and retire upon Egmont; where, with the co-operation of the brigade under Major- General Coote, they succeeded in keeping the enemy in check during the remainder of the day. Evening closed over the combatants, darkened by deluges of rain; yet the work of mutual destruction knew no intermission. The fire of musketry, which ran in undulating lines along the hills, with the thunder-flash of the artillery, and the fiery train of the death-charged shell, lighted up with momentary and fitful blaze the whole