Peninsular War · Talavera, 1809

The Deserter

On the eve of his execution, an Irish soldier recalls enlisting at Kilkenny, leaving the British ranks at Talavera in 1809, and giving the French what he knew.

Watch on YouTube ↗ · Published November 11, 2026

Lyrics

They gave me paper and a stub of lead,
a candle till the morning.
The priest would have my soul, the King my body.
This is what is left.

The sergeant came to Kilkenny fair
with ribbons on his coat.
He paid the porter all night long
and never wet his throat.
He talked of glory, talked of pay,
of Spanish girls and wine.
I woke up with a shilling
that was never really mine.

Everything is bought and sold
in the market of the living.
I was the cheapest thing on offer,
and I thought that I was giving.

At Talavera in July
the grass was dry as straw.
The guns set fire to the field
where the wounded couldn’t crawl.
I heard them burning where they lay,
I heard them cry for water.
I dropped my musket in the smoke.
I didn’t even run.

I crossed the river in the dark
and gave the French my name.
I told them where the guns were parked,
which roads the convoys came.
I said it was for Ireland,
I said it was for Ninety-Eight.
I wore that hatred like a coat.
It was fear. It’s always fear.

Everything is bought and sold
in the market of the living.
I sold the strength of my old brigade,
the count of men still living.

The chaplain came at two o’clock
with water and a book.
He said there’s mercy even now.
I didn’t even look.
Go spend it on a man who’ll use it, Father,
I’d only waste it too.
Not heaven and not Ireland,
not France, not King, not home:
I sold the key to every door,
and now I knock on stone.

In a wine shop in Castile
a woman filled my cup.
I told her all of it, God help me,
every time she filled it up.
She poured the way the sergeant poured
and never touched her own,
and I woke the way I’d woken once:
sold, and far from home.

Everything is bought and sold
in the market of the living.
She got eight reales for my life.
It was fair. I’ve done the sums.

They’ll form the whole division square
and set my coffin down,
and every man will be marched past
what’s left of me on the ground.
It’s the only use they’ve found for me,
the only good I’ve done:
I’ll teach a thousand frightened boys
which way they mustn’t run.

Everything is bought and sold
in the market of the living.
Tomorrow I’m out of it.
This one I’m only giving.

The drums go on toward the Pyrenees.
They’ll call it glory there.
I was in it too.

The last night

Paper, a stub of lead and a candle give the condemned man one night to put his story in order. At Kilkenny fair a recruiting sergeant fills his cup. In a Castilian wine shop a woman does the same before turning him in. Between those scenes the soldier trades information to the French about the brigade he has left. The recurring drink and the sums of money make him remember each bargain from both sides. At the fair and in the wine shop he is the man being bargained over. When he crosses the lines he is the one who decides what to sell.

Talavera and the burning field

On July 27 and 28, 1809, the British and Spanish forces of Sir Arthur Wellesley and General Gregorio de la Cuesta fought the French near Talavera de la Reina. The National Army Museum preserves part of the allied order of march. A victory broadside held by the National Library of Ireland puts Wellesley at the centre of the story. In January 1810, the Lords debated the vote of thanks and questioned what the victory had achieved when the army lacked transport and provisions for a further advance.

Campaign veteran Jonathan Leach recalled wounded men from both armies dying after dry grass and brush caught fire. His account gives the ballad its setting at ground level. The narrator’s first act of desertion is to let his musket fall in the smoke. His decision to give the French information comes later. The gap between those acts gives the song room to ask how far fear explains what he does next.

Kilkenny and the memory of 1798

Wartime demand for recruits brought many Irish men into the British regular army, as research based on military records at Maynooth University shows. The fair, the porter and the King’s shilling give that broad history a fictional recruit’s point of view. His later appeal to “Ninety-Eight” invokes the United Irishmen’s rebellion, documented in the National Archives of Ireland. He reaches for the memory of resistance to explain crossing to the French, then admits to fear. The song makes that admission his own. Irish recruits served for varied reasons, and their birthplace alone tells us little about an individual’s politics.

What the army wanted the ranks to see

The British National Archives holds courts-martial records alongside other evidence of desertion, including a register of men who surrendered under proclamation between 1803 and 1815. Those records show that desertion could end in more than one way. Peninsular veteran Edward Costello recalled a military execution of deserters before assembled troops. In the ballad, the coffin and the assembled division make punishment a warning to the men still in the ranks. The condemned soldier spends the night trying to explain his choices. By morning the army has a much shorter story to tell about him.

The narrator, his final letter and the payment of eight reales belong to the ballad’s fiction. The military records and memoirs establish the setting and show how desertion and punishment entered the historical record.

Sources

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