Percy Blake; or, the Young Rifleman

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VOL. I. — SEE PAGE 20. OK, THE YOUNG RIFLEMAN. BY CAPTAIN EAFTEE, AUTHOR OF " THE GUARDS," " OUR INDIAN ARMY," &C. " There was an ancient sage philosopher, Who had read Alexander Ross over ; And swore the world, as he eould prove. Was made of fighting and of love." — Hudtbras. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: HURST AND BLACKETT, PU&LISHEES, SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN, 13, -BEAT MARLBOROTJGH STUEET. 1855. LONDON : Printed by Schulze and Co., 13, Poland Street.

Chapter I. The Irish Brigade

It is customary, I believe, with authors who have but little to relate, to press into their service every possible resource of the literary art ; that, by the charm of their elo quence, they may hide the paucity of their material. The contrary, however, being my case, I trust the reader will be content to receive a plain, unvarnished tale of military life, instead of a flowing dissertation de omni bus rebus, which I have neither ability nor inclination to cook up for his amusement. VOL. I. B I was born in a smad country town, in the south of Ireland, which has furnished more officers to the army, than any place in the United Kingdom of thrice its importance. I leave it to casuists to determine whether this was owing to the proverbial pugnacity of the Tipperary boys, or to the idle and unoccupied life of the small gentry, whose family pride made them scorn that trade which was best calculated to repair their family indigence.

Certain it is, however, that the soil of many lands has been moistened by the blood, or has witnessed the sufferings of many of my townsmen and school-fellows ; who began their career in life as I did myself, about the com mencement of that tremendous struggle, in which the genius and good-fortune of Napo leon sank, at length, under the wealth, the power, and the energies of Great Britain. My family is traditionady said to be of Spanish descent ; but, without looking so far back into the misty days of Eld, it will be sufficient, as an appropriate introduction to the sayings and doings of my own checquered existence, to state that it was one of the numerous Irish famdies ruined by a too faithful adherence to the cause of the Stuarts ; the battle of the Boyne having effectuady disposed of a handsome estate, which had belonged to the catholic branch of the Blakes for many preceding ages.

After that celebrated " passage of arms," my pugnacious ancestor, William Blake, who had exchanged his " dirty acres " for the doubtful honour of following King James to the field, obtained a company from the French monarch in the Irish Brigade, and continued to serve in that glorious band of expatriated heroes for several years, tid an ardent desire to see his family and native seat once more, brought him again to Ireland. His relations, however, were ad dispersed or dead, his estate forfeited to the crown by that loyalty to his sovereign which, under the new reign, was caded rebellion ; and marrying soon after a ladv in London, with whom he B received a moderate fortune, he gave up foreign adventure and settled for the re mainder of his days in his native country. From this gentleman I am lineady descended.

One brother, a sister and myself were the last living of thirteen children. We loved one another with great affection ; but as I was the youngest by ten years, their love for me had more of a parental character, whde mine for them was mingled with that deep respect necessarily inspired by their more advanced age and superior attainments. They were both married, and immersed in the cares of the world, when my infant memory first began to dawn ; and at a very early period of my boyhood, I was led to think myself a person of some consequence, by having several playfellows of my own age and size, who invariably saluted me as their uncle, and treated me with ad the deference due to so revered a title. __ Whether this early habit of authority and protectorship had any influence in imparting to me the steadiness and decision of character, and principle of self-reliance which have marked my subsequent career, I leave to the discussion of metaphysicians and ideologists; sufficient for me is the conviction that, without this upholding principle, mercifully implanted in my nature, I must have sunk long since under the strange trials that have signalized my scramble through life. > At an early period of my existence, though I read with unbounded voracity such works as pleased my fancy and captivated my ima gination, I held everything in the shape of a task in horror ; having a special aversion to the confinement, and, as I foolishly deemed it, the drudgery of schools.

Hence I took every opportunity of playing truant, and never felt myself completely happy but when roving at liberty through the fields, by the banks of the river, over bog, heath,- and mountain ; indulging in dreams and reveries without end, fighting over again the battles of the Greeks and Trojans, or dwelling with delight on the adventures of Romulus and Remus, the fortitude of Mutius Scævola, the magnanimity of Horatius Codes, but, above ad, on the glorious self-devotion of Leonidas. With these classical reminiscences, were mixed up the mongrel compositions of a later age, such as Don Belianis of Greece, the Seven Champions of Christendom, and other specimens of what may be caded mediæval fiction ; but not without some fittle appreciation of their respective merits, as compared with the pure and classic models.

With the exception of the injury I was unconsciously doing myself by the neglect of my school duties, these solitary rambles were of a perfectly innocent character ; for, absorbed as I was in heroic and poetical imaginings, the idea of anything in the shape of depreda tions on orchards or gardens never once entered my mind. On the contrary, I always left home with some creature comfort in my pocket, in the shape of a cake, or a few apples, with which I was perfectly content for the whole day ; caring little for any other nourish ment, till night brought me back, tired, hungry, and penitent, to the casa paterna. As Lamartine says of himself, " J'avais la fievre perpetuelle de la liberte ; j'avais le delire de la nature." Such, indeed, was the extreme simplicity of my enjoyment, con sisting in little more than the mental excitement occasioned by incessant locomotion, which is to this day a favourite luxury of mine, that the countrypeople looked upon me generally as a respectable and harmless sort of lunatic, and I was universady known amongst them by the title of the " fairy hunter."

This soubriquet arose, no doubt, from the partiality I always evinced for those conical, round-headed hills so numerous in many parts of Ireland, and which are commonly called Danish forts and fairy-mounts. The tradi tionary lore connected with these curious elevations is redolent of " Faery," and some of our Irish romancists have made ample use of it. Their great attraction to me was their commanding height, their green velvet sod, and the uninterrupted day-dreams I indulged in on their lofty summits, so far removed from the smad-beer doings of this work-day world. Here, also, my schoolfellows and I had many a pleasant sham fight when, mustering in large numbers, " on a sunshine holiday," and dividing our forces into two equal bodies of Danes and Irish, under distinguished leaders, of whom I had always the honour of being one, we struggled hard in many a fierce assault for the mastery of the fairy-mount.

Nor were these pastimes always of a sham description ; for we not unfrequently had to do battle in good earnest with boys not be longing to our clique ; who, envious of our real, or fancied superiority, often provoked us with taunts and other hostile demonstrations. We accordingly fought many a desperate action with the young ragamuffins of two notorious suburbs — one very properly called " Dirty Lane," and the other the " Spital ;" the latter of which, from the showers of stones always flying there, we christened " The Dardanelles." These battles of ours were sometimes fought in the church-yard, when every tomb stone became a redoubt, and the church itself a citadel ; and sometimes in the " old gardens." These were spacious wastes which had once been the gardens of houses and of famdies long since gone to decay, but which now lay either entirely open, or badly fenced against the intrusion of idlers, who resorted thither at all hours of the day, either to play pitch-and-toss, or to enjoy those gym nastic exercises, such as running, jumping, putting the stone, &c, &c, in which the Irish have been always considered to excel.

It is not, however, to be supposed that I enjoyed this truant disposition of mine with impunity. Though indulged by my father as his last and favourite child, with more than usual freedom, my frequent absence from B school was a source of great uneasiness to him; but, unwdling to punish me himself, he generally left the disagreeable task to the schoolmaster, who had frequently to send a detachment of boys in search of me, with stern directions to bring me back vi et armis, if necessary, to the hateful confinement and drudgery of the school-room. This academy, to which I had been sent as a boarder, by my own desire, in preference to entering business, as my father wished, was an establishment of high repute, to which the principal gentry of the town and neighbour hood sent their sons for education.

Here, though passionately fond of the literature of the ancients, which I devoured incessantly through the medium of translations, I never made much progress in their languages, having acquired from my school studies, like many other great men, " little Latin and less Greek." But what was infinitely more useful to me in after life, I became thoroughly grounded in French, and even respectably acquainted with Spanish ; our French teacher who had been originady intended for the Catholic priesthood, having graduated at St. Omer, and also at Salamanca.

Chapter II. The Recruiting Sergeant

I often look back with mingled feelings of pleasure and regret on my first false step in rejecting my father's wish that I should go into business : regret at the wanton sacrifice I made of comfort, independence, and perhaps wealth and civic honours ; and pleasure at the career I thus opened for my self of strange and foreign adventure, and practical knowledge of those singular vicissitudes with which the world abounds, and of which I have had a share sufficiently ample to satisfy the most romantic imagination. I must, however, say, in extenuation of my folly, that the scenes and recollections of my childhood were all of a martial character, calculated to unfit the mind for the ordinary routine and sober relations of life. Then our domestic traditions were all of a military cast, the decline of our family having sprung from a too heroic adherence to the fortunes of a fallen race.

My father himself wns an old retired officer of the army, and loved to indulge in relations of foreign adventure; especially in connection with Prince Fer dinand and the Battle of Minden, where he had been desperately wounded. His ordinary costume was somewhat allied to the Keven huller-hat and Ramilies-wig style of the Marlborough mditary dandies ; while instead of an ordinary walking-stick, he generally carried over his shoulder a long, gold headed cane, a faint vestige of the old espontoon ; and when of an evening, by his own fireside, he indulged in a sober glass, and a song that smacked of the German wars, I listened delighted to strains that fired my young blood, but of which I can now recollect nothing more than such scraps as this : " All hail to great Cæsar ! Long life, love, and pleasure !

May the King live for ever ! 'Tis the better for us, boys ! Or else the following jovial chorus : " Then why svould we quarrel for riches. Or any such glittering toys ? A light heart and a thin pair of breeches, Will go through the world, my brave boys." When I add to these incentives, the abso lute manner in which I was adowed to indulge in my taste for chivalrous reading, to the total exclusion of everything practically useful ; and the unrestrained freedom with which I was permitted to ramble over moor and mountain, field and meadow, absorbed in day-dreams, and thick-coming fancies ; the PERCY BL\KE. 15 reader will not be surprised that my young mind should have received a bias so decided and so durable, that, even to this hour, it imparts a tinge to the sere and yedow leaf into which my days have faden.

But my wayward imagination was further impressed, fascinated as it were, with the daily occurrences of a pugnacious character springing from the semi-barbarous state of society which then prevailed in Ireland, and of which a mere English reader can have no adequate conception. Long before Father Matthew had ever dreamtof the modern miracle he has since accomplished, when the unlimited abuse of ardent spirits kept up to fever heat the passions of an excitable people, private feuds and quarrels were of constant re currence ; the pistol of the gentleman and the wattle of the plebeian making frequent inroads on the peace of society, and carrying mourn ing and desolation into many a dwelling. In addition to these occasional interludes, the grand drama of factious warfare was carried on with a degree of method and martial tactics, unknown, perhaps, in any other country beneath the sun.

A register, something like an adjutant's roister, seems to have been kept by the infatuated leaders of the two great factions which divided the country for miles around ; and in this not only the numbers, names, and physical qualities of their respective adherents were carefully registered, but also the days of battle appointed for months previous, to admit of necessary preparations. During this interval, the most active partisans on both sides were in constant requisition ; beating up for re cruits, lecturing on. military science, inspiring the timid and exhorting the brave, to prepare for the glorious day that was to crown with triumph their respective clans ; for defeat or dishonour never seems to have formed a part of their anticipations. During this period of combustion every description of business was, of course, sadly neglected ; irregularity and drunkenness in creased, and the whole framework of society was disorganized, till, at length, the day, " big with the fate" of one or other of the contending factions arrived.

This, as a matter of course, was a fair-day, when vast numbers of the peasantry arrived from ad quarters, with horses, black cattle, pigs, poultry, and other country produce for the market; and at the same time, ready for all-glorious war as soon as the vulgar business of sale and purchase should be despatched. Innumerable wounds and occasional deaths were the sad results of these ferocious battles, in the course of which deeds of individual heroism were performed that would have immortalized the actors in a worthy cause : but alas ! the strength and courage that might have wrought miracles under the sacred inspiration of patriotism produced nothing in these suicidal struggles but private misery, general wretchedness, and dissolute habits, which laid a sure foundation for the fearful ruin that has since fallen upon the unhappy land.

Breathing thus, as it were, a martial atmos phere, where every individual thought himself justified in taking the law into his own hands ; and the family idiosyncracy being, moreover, essentially bellicose, my longing for a mditary life was natural enough. But the culminating point of my destiny, which gave the finishing touch to my incipient mditary mania, was the arrival in our town of my maternal uncle ; who, having run away from school several years before, and enlisted as a private sol dier, had returned to his native place in all the seductive glory of a recruiting-ser geant. 5 In these degenerate days, when one hears of nothing but temperance societies and peace congresses, when the military virtues seem to be scouted, and manhood cried down, as if by general consent ; it is refreshing to cast a glance back upon those gadant fedows, whose united valour gave a splendour to the British arms which they had never attained before, and perhaps never will again.

Mick Flaherty was one of those old war bull-dogs, who were so accustomed to sport with death, and to brave the grim tyrant to his very teeth, that enterprise and danger never came amiss to them ; though their actions in civil life, were too often looked upon by the ordinary run of mankind, as the result of madness or intoxication. On many trying occasions, Mick had dis played such admirable courage and address, that, even at the commencement of his career, he would have been elevated far beyond his humble position of a private soldier ; but unfortunately he had two propensities, which always operated as a drag-chain to his ambi tion, and a stumbling-block to his valour. Most unfortunate men, when lamenting their evil destiny, and anathematising some besetting vice to which they attribute it, are in the habit of exclaiming, " That's the rock upon which I split !"

Now my poor uncle had two rocks to split upon, one of which was women, and the other wine : either is enough, heaven knows, to do any man's business ; but Sergeant Flaherty was never thoroughly satisfied, unless he combined both, and then the consequences were what any rational man may anticipate. In spite of all this, however, his distin guished conduct in the field was rewarded with the worsted epaulette j and as Sergeant Flaherty he was sent home to recruit, at a period when the urgency of the service called for redoubled exertion on the part of all who were interested in the glory of the British arms. A better theatre could not possibly be chosen for the trial of my uncle's wheedling powers, than the town of Tipperary; and here on a market-day, at the head of his recruiting party, he exhibited his martial figure, and bunches of beautiful ribbons, to the admiration of rural belles, and the e'nvy and jealousy of their beaux and spouses.

All acknowledged that he was a brave-looking man, a beautiful-elegant man, aye, and a fine spoken man to boot, as evinced in his numerous harangues to the public ; but when he entered a tavern, and invited ad to partake of his hospitality, there were no bounds to rustic enthusiasm, and all joined uproariously in the burthen of his well-known song — THE RECRUITING SERGEANT. I. " Come, take these ribbons, then," said he, " And give me no denial : You may rise to the rank of a great grandee, Or a prince ofthe blood royal;* And have an empress for your wife, With a coach and six, and a very merry life !" CHORUS. Huzza ! huzza ! huzza ! * This is not so purely imaginative as may, at first sight, appear ; for by a recent decree of the Emperor of Austria, that soldier of fortune, Ra detzky, has been (very properly, we think) created a prince of the blood. — Ed. " A wooden leg, or a golden chain, Is the maxum of the brave ; And if you are King of France and Spain, What more would you wish to have ?

Unless for India you'd like to pull, And there you may be the Great Mogul !" CHORUS. Huzza ! huzza ! huzza ! In short, nothing could exceed the popu larity of Sergeant Flaherty, especiady amongst the fair sex ; and though he picked up more recruits than ad his predecessors put together, he might have carried off a wife for every one of them, if the regulations had adowed him to beat up for petticoats. It could not be expected that so fascinating a man should be free from enemies ; for as the poet truly sings, "Envy doth merit as its shade pursue," and some snarling critic is always at hand to tarnish the fairest fame. Some of this class contented themselves with shrugs and shakes ofthe head, as the safest mode of expressing their senti ments and opinions : others hinted that " talk's cheap, and that ' many a bowld word comes off a weak stomach.' The sergeant, no doubt, spoke very slightingly of battle, murder and sudden death, which the prayer book taught all sober people to look upon with becoming reverence ; but, for all that, when the hour of trial came, he might not be a whit better than other men who held their tongues and minded their own affairs."

Of this a proof was very soon afforded. One market-day, when the main street of Tipperary was more than usually crowded, and the recruiting party was parading up and down, with ribbons flying, and drums and fifes playing " Rory O'More," the most inspiring quick step that ever was composed ; while hundreds, I may say thousands, of the admiring rabblement surrounded and accompanied their glorious march ; Sergeant O'Flaherty (for he had recently tagged the great O to his otherwise vulgar patronymic) thinking it a good opportunity to display his eloquence, gracefully waved his flashing sword, and cried out with stentorian lungs : " Recruit ing party, halt !" Then, hemming signifi cantly thrice to clear his manly voice, he was about to address the smiling multitudes of males and females who crowded around him, with his customary eloquence.

Suddenly a terrific shout arose at the top of the main street, which increased rapidly in volume, intermingled with shrieks and yeds of terror ; tdl at length the words " Mad bud ! mad bull !" were distinguished in the gathering tumult. All fled in horror and con fusion ; men, women and chddren, tumbling headlong over each other, in their heedless hurry to escape the fury of the savage monster; soldiers, drummers, fifers, all, in short, fled, except the bold O'Flaherty, who, to the general amazement, stood there alone in his glory. The bud, raging mad with the noise and confusion he himself had caused, was now seen tearing down the street, goring some, and tossing others head over heels on the rough pavement; tid the tad, motionless figure of the recruiting-sergeant met his sight glowing in all the colours of the rainbow.

With a bedow of intense and concentrated rage, he made directly at him, whde hundreds of pitying voices cried out : " Run sergeant ! Run for the love of God, and save your self !" Firm as a rock, however, stood the bold O'Flaherty, as if determined to take the bull by the horns, literally and in downright earnest ; whde the crowd, forgetting their own terror, gazed in stupid wonder at the inevitable destruction of their universal favourite. My uncle, however, had witnessed a few bud-fights whde he was a prisoner of war in Spain (for he was captured in Whitelock's un happy expedition to Buenos Ayres) and had seen with delight the perfect sang froid with VOL. I. C which the matador awaits the onset of the savage monster, and the dexterity with which he gives him the coup de grdce. With equal coolness he now stood erect, alert and ready for action.

Just as the bull, with a furious bound, and a savage bellow, lowered his head to toss him in the air, O'Flaherty stept aside ; and, as the animal passed him in headlong haste, he seized him by the tad with his left hand, holding on firmly, in spite of the violent lunges of his enraged enemy ; then with two rapid and wed-directed blows of his sabre, he cut the tendons of both hind legs ; and the ham-strung animal, in a vain attempt to rush forward, fell helpless and exhausted upon the pavement, while a shout of joy and triumph rang through the air, from the astonished and delighted multi tude. Before the close of that eventful day, fifty young fellows, in the ardour of theh en thusiasm, took the King's shilling from Sergeant O'Flaherty ; and I made a secret, but a solemn vow, that I would never adopt any other profession than that of my gaUant uncle. c

Chapter III. The Gage D'amour

For a long time the whole country rang with the exploit of the brave O'Flaherty: he was deified by the mob, courted by the middle-classes, and even visited by the gentry, and feasted at their houses ; being himself of gentle blood, though a wdd scion of an ancient race. It was actually proposed to get up a subscription to purchase him an ensigncy ; but he disdained the idea of acquiring the silver epaulette through the medium of filthy lucre, exclaiming that " he'd win it on the breach, or not at ad." For my part, I became wdd to " fodow to the field," so renowned a leader ; and day and night worried my poor brains to accomplish this first, and only wish of my heart. Fortune at length, whether for good or evil, seemed disposed to favour my juvenile aspirations ; and an opportunity was afforded me, when I least expected it, of escaping from the loathed drudgery of civd life.

My brother, who was in business, and evidently on the high road to fortune, having occasion to go to London, offered to take me with him, and procure me a commission ; while I was so delighted with the idea, that I never gave my father a moment's peace tid he consented to let me go, with the proviso, however, that I should limit my ambition to the militia; and thus, as the phrase is, he abandoned the last prop of his declining age, to gratify my boyish propensity. Behold me, then, scarcely in my fifteenth year, about to launch on the great unknown world, in a profession, the difficulties of which I had no possible means of ascertaining, and whose splendour alone occupied my thoughts. Great, indeed, was the envy of my school-fedows at the fame and fortune that awaited me, in that ever-glorious career which first enlists the sympathies of the youthful heart ; and greater stdl was their admiration at the pictures I drew from reading and imagination, alas ! how unlike the reality of a soldier's life.

I became to them an object of intense interest; many vowed they would embrace no other profession than the military, while several made me promise to correspond with them, and give them a regular account of ad the battles, sieges, and single combats in which I might be engaged. Thrice happy age ! when the banquet of life is enjoyed in advance, and the writing on the wad is lost in the splendour of imagination, and the dreams of a heated fancy ! I shad never forget the day I rode out of Tipperary on this my first start in life, at a period when other boys were immersed in the drudgery of school, and possessing no other knowledge of the world than what I had gleaned from books of imagina tion ; which, like the flimsy novels of our penny periodicals, contained any thing but faithful pictures of real life and manners.

My brother had preceded me to Clonmel, about twenty miles distant, where he had some business to transact, and where I was to join him. For this purpose, I was mounted on a large powerful horse which, though I had frequently ridden him after the stag-hounds, was big enough for a general's charger. My holsters contained a very tidy brace of brass-barreded pistols, the last gift of my poor father, and my clothes "were packed in a large valise fixed upon the crupper ; on the top of which was also strapped an old silver-hilted sword of formidable length, which had decorated my father's thigh at the battle of Minden. This deadly weapon, protrud ing at either end far beyond the dimensions of the valise, seemed to indicate that its owner was a sort of person that was never to be taken alive. Having bade my parents a last farewell, very affecting on their part, and very light hearted on mine, I rode, thus accoutred, through the main street of Tipperary, accompanied by my most attached playfedows, to the admiration and amusement of the towns folk.

Some of these affected to be frightened at my martial aspect, some offered me friendly advice and scraps of proverbial wisdom for my future guidance, whde others laughed heartily at my curious equipage, and one graceless varlet exclaimed : " I'll roast on my finger all that you'll kdl in the wars." Too happy, however, in my own thoughts to regard their idle bantering, I proceeded onward at an easy pace, tid I finady bade adieu to my school-companions, with renewed protestations and promises of mutual corres pondence. But my greatest trial was yet to come. Amongst my young relatives, I had a little cousin, Honoria Blake, a child of extraordinary sensibility and intedect ; who, though several years younger than myself, had formed such a singular attachment to me that she could scarcely be said to exist out of my presence.

She was singularly precocious, and had con tracted at a very early age such a fondness for reading, that a book was in reality the only rival I had in her affections, though even that always yielded to my superior claims. My great delight was in ministering to this early passion of my little cousin's for literature, and ad my pocket-money went in purchasing food for its gratification. To this, and the facility with which I invented fairy tales for her amusement, may be attri buted, I suppose, her excessive partiality for me ; but, whatever may have been the cause, the poor little soul was never happy unless walking, running, or riding her little pony by the side of her cousin Percy ; or lying in his c arms, whde he recounted to her the marvedous legends of Fion McCoul, Mouldewarp, and the Headless Coach.