Page:Viscount Hardinge and the Advance of the British Dominions into the Punjab.djvu/19

Rh extracts from a letter which Hardinge himself wrote to his relative, Lord Camden, in August, 1808, giving interesting details of the battle of Vimiera. 'Be assured that I should have written the day after the action on the 21st, had I not been prevented by a numbness in my right hand occasioned by my wound.' The letter then proceeds to describe how our troops, after having forced the heights and pass, beneath which the village of Roliça stands, had frustrated all attempts of the enemy to harass their advance, and how the position of Vimiera was taken up. The army having been reinforced by the troops under Generals Anstruther and Acland on the morning of the 21st, General Ferguson's brigade was ordered to the left, supported by the brigade under General Nightingall and covered by the skirmishers of the 95th, now the Rifle Brigade. The French began the attack on the centre, and were received with so hot a fire that before they had reached the valley they turned and fled. On the left of the British centre two strong columns of the enemy advanced, the officers and men 'evincing a resolution and steady courage improved by discipline.' Their commander. Colonel Patervil, was shot down in the act of carrying his hat on the point of his sword, the whole mass shouting  'En avant.' 

Let me again quote Hardinge's own words at this juncture: — 'H. M.'s 50th and 43rd received them steadily; then, wheeling up four companies, made a noble charge upon four times their number, over-