Passage Illustrated: Mickey Free's Notable Military Exploit

“That must be your fellow, O’Malley; that must be your Irish groom!” cried a brother officer. There could be no doubt of it. It was Mike himself.

“I’ll be hanged, if he’s not playing with them!” said Baker. “Look at the villain! He’s holding in; that’s more than the Frenchmen are doing. Look! look at the fellow on the gray horse! He has flung his trumpet to his back, and drawn his sabre.”

A loud cheer burst from the French lines; the trumpeter was gaining at every stride. Mike had got into deep ground, and the horses would not keep together. “Let the brown horse go! Let him go, man!” shouted the dragoons, while I re-echoed the cry with my utmost might. But not so, Mike held firmly on, and spurring madly, he lifted his horse at each stride, turning from time to time a glance at his pursuer. A shout of triumph rose from the French side; tin; trumpeter was beside him; his arm was uplifted; the sabre above his head. A yell broke from the British, and with difficulty could the squadron be restrained. For above a minute the horses went side by side, but the Frenchman delayed his stroke until he could get a little in the front. My excitement had rendered me speechless; if a word could have saved my poor fellow, I could not have spoken. A mist seemed to gather across my eyes, and the whole plain and its peopled thousands danced before my vision.

“He’s down!” “He’s down, by heavens!” “No! no, no!” “Look there! Nobly done!” “Gallant fellow!” “He has him! he has him, by ——!” A cheer that rent the very air above us broke from the squadrons, and Mike galloped in among us, holding the Frenchman by the throat with one hand; the bridle of his horse he firmly grasped with his own in the other.

A cheer that rent the very air above us broke from the squadrons, and Mike galloped in among us, holding the Frenchman by the throat with one hand; the bridle of his horse he firmly grasped with his own in the other.

“How was it? How did he do it?” cried I. [Chapter XCVIII, "Mickey Free's Adventure," 506]

Commentary: The Customary Mickey Free Comic Relief

Although this plate continues the jolly mood of A Hunting turn-out in the Peninsula (the initial plate in the August 1841 instalment), it marks the return to combat of O'Malley and the Fourteenth. The French force of sixty thousand under Marmont have received reinforcements, and relieved the beleaguered garrison at Cuidad Rodrigo. With a force of ten thousand infantry, Wellington seems badly outnumbered as he orders his forces down the hill to engage the enemy on the plain. In the midst of this tense pre-battle scene comes a moment of comic relief as "a roar of laughter shook the entire division" (505). The French trumpeter has drawn his sabre, and for a moment it looks as if Mickey is going to be cut down. But Mickey grasps his victim by the collar as O'Malley's principal mount, a brown charger that Mickey had been leading just a moment before, gallops to the British lines of his own accord (right). A two-hour battle of infantry, artillery, and cavalry manoeuvering ensues. Despite the vastly superior French numbers, the British squares hold.

Related Material

• Charles Lever's Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon (1840-41)
• Hablot Knight Browne, 1815-1882; A Brief Biography
• Cattermole and Phiz: The First illustrators of Barnaby Rudge: A Team Effort by "The Clock Works" (1841)
• Horses by "Phiz" for Charles Lever's Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon (Nov.-Dec. 1841, rpt., 1873)
• Phiz: 'A Good Hand at a Horse' — A Gallery and Brief Overview of Phiz's Illustrations of Horses for Defoe, Dickens, Lever, and Ainsworth (1836-64)

Bibliography

Lester, Valerie Browne. Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.

Lever, Charles. Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon. "Edited by Harry Lorrequer." Dublin: William Curry, Jun. London: W. S. Orr, 1841. 2 vols.

Lever, Charles. Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablot Knight Browne]. Published serially in The Dublin University Magazine from Vol. XV (March 1840) through XVIII (December 1841). Dublin: William Curry, March 1840 through December 1841. London: Samuel Holdsworth, 1842; rpt., Chapman and Hall, 1873.

Lever, Charles. Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablot Knight Browne]. Novels and Romances of Charles Lever. Vol. I and II. In two volumes. Project Gutenberg. Last Updated: 2 September 2016.

Steig, Michael. Chapter Two: "The Beginnings of 'Phiz': Pickwick, Nickleby, and the Emergence from Caricature." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 24-50.

Stevenson, Lionel. Chapter V, "Renegade from Physic, 1839-1841." Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. London: Chapman and Hall, 1939. Pp. 73-93.

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Created 31 March 2023