And now that all chance of further fighting was over for the day,
parties of the men, irritated and bent on picking a quarrel, had strayed
from their own lines, and made their way over to the bivouacs of the
British infantry regiments, where already camp fires were twinkling, and
the men around them slaking with wine throats parched by long hours of
marching and fighting.
Those were days when, after a victory, discipline went to the wall and
was practically non-existent; they were days when the bodies of those
who were killed in action were robbed, almost as they fell--nay, when
even the wounded, as they lay helpless, were stripped naked by their own
comrades and left to perish on the field (though _that_, indeed, was
common enough amongst our troops even in the Peninsular War half a
century later). And now, here at Minden, as ever after a great
engagement, when villages or towns are sacked, much plunder had fallen
into the hands of the victorious army; wine and brandy from the
wine-houses of the wrecked villages was being poured recklessly down the
ever-thirsty throats of the men, and soldiers, already half drunk, were
to be seen knocking out the heads of up-ended wine-casks the quicker to
get at their contents, whilst others, shouting and singing, reeled
about, many of them perhaps with a couple of loaves, or a ham, or what
not, stuck on their bayonets.
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