Aha, now I have an excuse to talk about the glorious last stand of the 10th Regiment of Foot.
Northern Spain, 1813.
The situation leading to this was a dire one, and would lead towards the most brutal and paid for conquest of the war. As Wellington's forces pushed across the Pyrenees into France to take a foothold in Toulouse, William Beresford's ragged and beaten forces were left to co-operate with a guerilla army in eradicating the last of the French forces in the Peninsular.
The army was crippled, before it even reached Vittoria, by a French backed assassin who murdered Beresford and left his forces to advance leaderless, with only a handful of guns and some units beaten down to around 30 or 40 men.
One of these units was the 10th Regiment of Foot, a furious band of men who had been fighting their way through Spain for the past two years.
In the disastrous opening battle in Vittoria-Gasteiz, the remainder of Beresford's army found itself caught between two French generals and their fresh, well supplied armies which included units of Napoleon's elite Imperial Guard. Its ragged forces set up with cannons firing on one army, and a desperate band of infantry guarding them.
As it became apparent that the army couldn't hold both sides for long, the British light cavalry gave their lives in a desperate attempt to slow the French army advancing to their rear, it was by that point a futile act of defiance; French victory in the battle was a certainty.
But even as the masses of French soldiers came to either side of them, the British Infantry held fast. None more than the 10th.
One of the French Generals, eager for glory saw this ragged group of infantry watching the rear of the British Army and saw it as weak, he and his staff officers charged in, expecting their heavy horses and sabres to tear through the regiment like hot knives through butter.
Their charge lacked enough power to break the men of the 10th, however, and they soon fled as officers were killed by the stinging thrusts of the British bayonets, this was when the 10th raised their muskets and fired at the fleeing general, cutting him down with a musket ball in his back.
Meanwhile, behind them, the second French General on the field was cut down by a cannonball, the British army was determined to make the French bleed in its final moments.
Seeing this, the French infantry began their charge, a swarm of blue and white coats overrunning the cannons and leaving the British infantry no choice but to hold their ground and keep shooting with steady determination.
Unchecked by this, the French were eager to get into hand to hand combat, where they would surely overrun the feeble British lines. The 10th still held their line, their determination to survive showing through in their brutal brawling with the French; Line or Guard, they killed them all the same.
As more of the British infantry broke, the 10th held their line, hundreds of men around them, fighting tooth and nail.
By the time they broke off from the French, the 10th had inflicted over 100 casualties, and lost less than 20 men. The rest were, I like to think, captured.
