busy in our ranks--first, by the siege and storming of Ciudad Rodrigo,
and immediately after, by that of Badajos. I had heard little or
nothing of him during those stirring events of real war--and it was
not until the morning after the storming of Badajos that he again came
under my notice--from having heard that he had been missing the night
before. I there saw him turn up, like a half-drowned rat, covered with
mud and wet, which looked very much as if he had passed the night in
the inundation, adjoining the breach, up to his neck in the water, and
probably a little deeper at times, when the fire-balls were flying
thickest. He nevertheless contrived to hold on yet a little longer--one
day, (agreeably to order,) taking post in the middle of a river, with
his face towards Ispahan, to watch the enemy in that direction--and
the next day, in conformity with the same orders, applying to the
quarter-master-general for a route for himself and party to go
to Kamskatcha to recruit, he got so bewildered that he could not
distinguish between a sham and a real order, and, at last, when in the
face of the enemy, in front of Salamanca, he absolutely refused to take
the duty for which he had been ordered, and was consequently obliged
to cut.
It was the best thing that could have happened both for him and the
service; for, as I said before, he had mistaken his profession, and as
he was yet but a youth, it is to be hoped that he afterwards stumbled
upon the right one.
Atalya, which we now occupied, is a mountain village about half a
league in front of the Vadillo. The only amusing characters we found in
it were the pigs. I know not whether any process was resorted to in the
mornings to entice them from their homes to grub up the falling acorns
from the beautiful little evergreen oaks which adorned the hills above,
but it was a great scene every evening at sunset to go to the top of
the village, and see about five hundred of them coming thundering down
the face of the mountain at full speed, and each galloping in to his
own door.
We had been a considerable time there before we discovered that the
neighbourhood could furnish metal more attractive, but a shooting
excursion at last brought us acquainted with the Quinta Horquera (I
think it was called), a very respectable farm-house, situated on a
tongue of land formed by the junction of another mountain stream with
the Vadillo.
The house itself was nothing out of the common run, but its inmates
were, for we found it occupied by the chief magistrate of Ciudad
Rodrigo, with his wife and daughter, and two young female relatives.
He himself was a staunch friend of his country, and when the fortress
of Rodrigo fell into the hands of the French, rather than live in
communion with them, he retired with his family to that remote
property, in the hope that as it was so much out of the way he might
rest there in peace and security until circumstances enabled him to
resume his position in society as a true and loyal Spaniard; but as
the sequel will shew, he had reckoned without his host, for with a
British regiment in the neighbourhood, and his house filled with young
ladies he was an unreasonable man to expect peace there, and the enemy
also by and bye came down upon him, as if to prove that his notions of
security were equally fallacious.
Don Miguel himself was a splendid ruin of a man of three score,
of a majestic figure, regular features, and stern dark Castilian
countenance. He was kind and amusing withal, for though his own face
was forbidden to smile, yet he seemed to enjoy it in others, and did
all in his power to promote amusement, that is, as much as a Spaniard
ever does.
His wife was very tall and very slender--the skin of her pale fleshless
face fitting so tight as to make it look like a pin-head. She was very
passive and very good-natured, her other day having long passed by.
Their only daughter was a woman about twenty-eight years of age, with
rather a dull pock-pitted countenance, and a tall, stout, clumsy
figure. She had very little of the Spaniard in her composition, but
was nevertheless a kind good-natured girl. Her relatives, however,
were metal of another sort: the eldest was a remarkably well made
plump little figure, with a fair complexion, natural curly hair, and a
face full of dimples which shewed eternal sunshine; while her sister,
as opposite as day from night, shewed the flashing dark eye, sallow
complexion, and the light sylph-like figure for which her country-women
are so remarkable. To look at her was to see a personification of that
beautiful description of Byron's in his first canto of Childe Harold--
"Yet are Spain's maids no race of Amazons,
But formed for all the witching arts of love!"
Their house, under the circumstances in which we were placed, became
an agreeable lounge for many of us for a month or two, for though the
sports of the field, with the limited means at our disposal, formed
our daily amusement, we always contrived that it should terminate
somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Quinta, where we were sure of
three things--a hearty welcome, a dish of conversation, and another
of chestnuts fried in hog's-lard, with a glass of aguadente to wind
up with, which, after the fatigues of the day, carried us comfortably
home to our more substantial repast, with a few little pleasing
recollections to dream about.
The French marshal, as if envious of our enjoyments, meagre as they
were, put a sudden stop to them. His advance, however, was not so rapid
but that we were enabled to give our first care towards providing
for the safety of our friends of the Quinta, by assisting them with
the means of transporting themselves to a more remote glen in the
mountains, before it was necessary to look to our own, and
Although the links of love that morn
Which War's rude hands had asunder torn
had not been patent ones, yet did it savour somewhat of chivalric times
when we had been one evening in the field in the front of the Quinta
sporting with the young and the lovely of the land, as if wars and
rumours of wars were to be heard of no more.
I say I felt it rather queerish or so, to be spreading down my
boat-cloak for a bed in the same field the next night, with an enemy
in my front, for so it was, and to find myself again before day-light
next morning, from my cold clay couch, gazing at the wonderful comet of
1811, that made such capital claret, and wishing that he would wag his
fiery tale a little nearer to my face, for it was so stiff with hoar
frost that I dared neither to laugh nor cry for fear of breaking it.
We passed yet another night in the same field hallowed by such opposite
recollections; but next day, independently of the gathered strength
of the enemy in our front, we found a fight of some magnitude going
on behind us, the combat of Elbodon; and our major-general, getting
alarmed at last at his own temerity, found a sleeping place for us,
some distance in the rear, in a hollow, where none but the comet and
its companions might be indulged with a look.
Our situation was more than ticklish--with an enemy on three sides and
an almost impassable mountain on the fourth--but starting with the
lark next morning and passing through Robledillo, we happily succeeded
in joining the army in front of Guinaldo in the afternoon, to the no
small delight of his Grace of Wellington, whose judicious and daring
front with half the enemy's numbers, had been our salvation. And it
must no doubt have been a mortifying reflection to our divisional
chief, to find that his obstinacy and disobedience of orders had not
only placed his own division, but that of the whole army in such
imminent peril.
Marmont had no doubt a laurel-wreath in embryo for the following day,
but he had allowed _his_ day to go by; the night was ours and we used
it, so that when day-light broke, he had nothing but empty field-works
to wreak his vengeance on. He followed us along the road, with some
sharp partial fighting at one or two places, and there seemed a
probability of his coming on to the position in which Lord Wellington
felt disposed to give him battle; but a scarcity of provisions forced
him to retrace his steps, and break up to a certain extent for the
subsistence of his army, while our retreat terminated at Soita, which
it appeared was about the spot on which Lord Wellington had determined
to make a stand.
I shall ever remember our night at Soita for one thing. The
commissariat had been about to destroy a cask of rum in the course
of that day's retreat, when at the merciful intercession of one of
my brother officers, it was happily spared and turned over to his
safe keeping, and he shewed himself deserving of the trust, for by
wonderful dexterity and management, he contrived to get it wheeled
along to our resting-place, when establishing himself under the awning
of a splendid chestnut-tree, he hung out the usual emblem of its being
the head-quarters of a highland chief--not for the purpose of scaring
way-fairers as erst did his forefathers of yore, to exclude the worthy
Baillie Nicol Jarvie from the clachan of Aberfoyle--but for the more
hospitable one of inviting them to be partakers thereof; and need I add
that among the many wearers of empty calabashes which the chances of
war had there assembled around him, the call was cheerfully responded
to, and a glorious group very quickly assembled.
The morrow promised to be a bloody one; but we cared not for the
morrow:--"sufficient for the day is the evil thereof:"--the song and
the jest went merrily round, and, if the truth must be told, I believe
that though we carried our cups to the feast, we all went back in them,
and with the satisfaction of knowing that we had relieved our gallant
chieftain of all further care respecting the contents of the cask.
The enemy having withdrawn the same night, we retraced our steps, next
day, to our former neighbourhood; and though we were occasionally
stirred up and called together by the menacing attitudes of our
opponents, yet we remained the unusually long period of nearly three
months without coming again into actual contact with them.
No officer during that time had one fraction to rub against another;
and when I add that our paunches were nearly as empty as our pockets,
it will appear almost a libel upon common sense to say that we enjoyed
it; yet so it was,--our very privations were a subject of pride and
boast to us, and there still continued to be an _esprit de corps_,--a
buoyancy of feeling animating all, which nothing could quell; we were
alike ready for the field or for frolic, and when not engaged in the
one, went headlong into the other.
Ah me! when I call to mind that our chief support in those days of
trial was the anticipated delight of recounting those tales in after
years, to wondering and admiring groups around our domestic hearths, in
merry England; and when I find that so many of these after years have
already passed, and that the folks who people these present years, care
no more about these dear-bought tales of former ones than if they were
spinning-wheel stories of some "auld wife ayont the fire;" I say it is
not only enough to make me inflict them with a book, as I have done,
but it makes me wish that I had it all to do over again; and I think
it would be very odd if I would not do exactly as I have done, for I
knew no happier times, and they were their own reward!
It is worthy of remark that Lord Wellington, during the time I speak
of, had made his arrangements for pouncing upon the devoted fortress of
Ciudad Rodrigo, with such admirable secrecy, that his preparations were
not even known to his own army.
I remember, about a fortnight before the siege commenced, hearing that
some gabions and fascines were being made in the neighbourhood, but it
was spoken of as a sort of sham preparation, intended to keep the enemy
on the _qui vive_, as it seemed improbable that he would dare to invest
a fortress in the face of an army which he had not force enough to meet
in the field, unless on some select position; nor was it until the day
before we opened the trenches that we became quite satisfied that he
was in earnest.
The sieges, stormings, and capture of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos
followed hard on each other's heels; and as I gave a short detail of
the operations in my former volume, it only remains for me now to
introduce such anecdotes and remarks as were there omitted.
The garrison of Ciudad was weak in number, but had a superabundant
store of ammunition, which was served out to us with a liberal hand;
yet, curious enough, except what was bestowed on the working parties,
(and that was plenty in all conscience,) the greater portion of what
was intended for the supporting body was expended in air, for they
never seemed to have discovered the true position of the besieging
force; and though some few of us, in the course of each night, by
chance-shots, got transferred from natural to eternal sleep, yet their
shells were chiefly employed in the ploughing-up of a hollow way
between two hills, where we were supposed to have been, and which they
did most effectually at their own cost.
When our turn of duty came for the trenches, however, we never had
reason to consider ourselves neglected, but, on the contrary, could
well spare what was sent at random.
I have often heard it disputed whether the most daring deeds are done
by men of good or bad repute, but I never felt inclined to give either
a preference over the other, for I have seen the most desperate things
done by both. I remember one day during the siege that a shell pitched
in the trenches within a few yards of a noted bad character of the
52d regiment, who, rather than take the trouble of leaping out of the
trench until it had exploded, went very deliberately up, took it in his
arms, and pitched it outside, obliging those to jump back who had there
taken shelter from it.
A wild young officer, whose eccentricities and death, at Waterloo, were
noticed in my former volume, was at that time at variance with his
father on the subject of pecuniary matters, and in mounting the breach,
at Ciudad, sword in hand, while both sides were falling thick and fast,
he remarked to a brother-officer alongside of him, in his usual jocular
way, "Egad, if I had my old father here now, I think I should be able
to bring him to terms!"
Nothing shows the spirit of daring and inherent bravery of the British
soldier so much as in the calling for a body of volunteers for any
desperate service. In other armies, as Napier justly remarks, the
humblest helmet may catch a beam of glory; but in ours, while the
subaltern commanding the forlorn hope may look for death or a company,
and the field-officer commanding the stormers an additional step by
brevet, to the other officers and soldiers who volunteer on that
desperate service, no hope is held out--no reward given; and yet there
were as many applicants for a place in the ranks as if it led to the
highest honours and rewards.
At the stormings of Badajos and St. Sebastian I happened to be the
adjutant of the regiment, and had the selection of the volunteers
on those occasions, and I remember that there was as much anxiety
expressed, and as much interest made by all ranks to be appointed to
the post of honour, as if it had been sinecure situations, in place of
death-warrants, which I had at my disposal.
For the storming of St. Sebastian, the numbers from our battalion were
limited to twenty-five; and in selecting the best characters out of
those who offered themselves, I rejected an Irishman of the name of
Burke, who, although he had been on the forlorn hope both at Ciudad and
Badajos, and was a man of desperate bravery, I knew to be one of those
wild untameable animals that, the moment the place was carried, would
run into every species of excess.
The party had been named two days before they were called for, and
Burke besieged my tent night and day, assuring me all the while that
unless he was suffered to be of the party, the place would not be
taken! I was forced at last to yield, after receiving an application in
his behalf from the officer who was to command the party; and he was
one of the very few of that gallant little band who returned to tell
the story.
Nor was that voracious appetite for fire-eating confined to the
private soldier, for it extended alike to all ranks. On the occasion
just alluded to, our quota, as already stated, was limited to a
subaltern's command of twenty-five men; and as the post of honour was
claimed by the senior lieutenant, (Percival,) it in a manner shut the
mouths of all the juniors; yet were there some whose mouths would not
be shut,--one in particular (Lieutenant H.) who had already seen enough
of fighting to satisfy the mind of any reasonable man, for he had
stormed and bled at Ciudad Rodrigo, and he had stormed at Badajos, not
to mention his having had his share in many, and not nameless battles,
which had taken place in the interim; yet nothing would satisfy him but
that he must draw his sword in that also.
Our colonel was too heroic a soul himself to check a feeling of that
sort in those under him, and he very readily obtained the necessary
permission to be a volunteer along with the party. Having settled his
temporal affairs, namely, willing away his pelisse, jacket, two pairs
of trousers, and sundry nether garments,--and however trifling these
bequests may appear to a military youth of the present day, who happens
to be reconnoitring a merchant tailor's settlement in St. James's
Street, yet let me tell him that, at the time I speak of, they were
valued as highly as if they had been hundreds a year in reversion.
The prejudice against will-making by soldiers on service is so strong,
that had H. been a rich man in place of a poor one, he must have died
on the spot for doing what was accounted infinitely more desperate than
storming a breach; but his poverty seemed to have been his salvation,
for he was only half killed,--a ball entered under his eye, passed
down the roof of the mouth, through the palate, entered again at the
collar-bone, and was cut out at the shoulder-blade. He never again
returned to his regiment, but I saw him some years after, in his native
country (Ireland), in an active situation, and, excepting that he had
gotten an ugly mark on his countenance, and his former manly voice had
dwindled into a less commanding one, he seemed as well as ever I saw
him.
Will-making, as already hinted at, was, in the face of the enemy,
reckoned the most daring of all daring deeds, for the doer was always
considered a doomed man, and it was but too often verified--not but
that the same fatality must have marked him out without it; but
so strong was the prejudice generally on that subject that many a
goodly estate has, in consequence, passed into what, under other
circumstances, would have been forbidden hands.
On the subject of presentiments of death in going into battle, I have
known as many instances of falsification as verification. To the latter
the popular feeling naturally clings as the more interesting of the
two; but I am inclined to think that the other would preponderate
if the account could be justly rendered. The officer alluded to may
be taken as a specimen of the former--he had been my messmate and
companion at the sieges and stormings of both Ciudad and Badajos--and
on the morning after the latter, he told me that he had had a
presentiment that he would have fallen the night before, though he had
been ashamed to confess it sooner--and yet to his credit be it spoken,
so far from wishing to avoid, he coveted the post of danger--as his
duty for that day would have led him to the trenches, but he exchanged
with another officer, on purpose to ensure himself a place in the storm.
Of my own feelings on the point in consideration, I am free to say
that, while I have been engaged in fifty actions, in which I have
neither had the time, nor taken the trouble to ask myself any questions
on the subject, but encountered them in whatever humour I happened to
be--yet, in many others, (the eve of pitched battles,) when the risk
was imminent, and certain that one out of every three must go to the
ground, I have asked myself the question, "Do I feel like a _dead_
man?" but I was invariably answered point blank, "_No!_" And yet must
I still look like a superstitious character, when I declare that the
only time that I ever went into action, labouring under a regular
depression of spirits, was on the evening on which the musket-ball felt
my head at Foz d'Aronce.
But to return to the storming of Ciudad. The moment which is the most
dangerous to the honour and the safety of a British army is that in
which they have won the place they have assaulted. While outside the
walls, and linked together by the magic hand of discipline, they are
heroes--but once they have forced themselves inside they become demons
or lunatics--for it is difficult to determine which spirit predominates.
To see the two storming divisions assembled in the great square that
night, mixed up in a confused mass, shooting at each other, and firing
in at different doors and windows, without the shadow of a reason, was
enough to drive any one, who was in possession of his senses, mad. The
prisoners were formed in a line on one side of the square--unarmed, it
is true--but, on my life, had they made a simultaneous rush forward,
they might have made a second Bergen-op-Zoom of it--for so absolute
was the sway of the demon of misrule, that half of our men, I verily
believe, would have been panic-struck and thrown themselves into the
arms of death, over the ramparts, to escape a danger that either
did not exist or might have been easily avoided. After calling, and
shouting, until I was hoarse in endeavouring to restore order, and when
my voice was no longer audible, seeing a soldier raising his piece to
fire at a window, I came across his shoulders with a musket-barrel
which I had in my hand, and demanded, "What the devil, sir, are you
firing at?" to which he answered, "I don't know, sir! I am firing
because every body else is!"
The storming of a fortress was a new era to the British army of
that day, and it is not to be wondered at if the officers were not
fully alive to the responsibility which attaches to them on such an
occasion--but on their conduct every thing hinges--by judgement and
discretion men may be kept together--but once let them loose and they
are no longer redeemable.
I have often lamented that speechifying was at such a discount in those
days, for, excepting what was promulgated in Lord Wellington's orders,
which were necessarily brief, the subordinates knew nothing of the
past, present, or the future, until the glimpse of an English newspaper
some months after served to enlighten their understandings; but
there were every day occasions, in which the slightest hint from our
superiors, as to the probable results, would have led to incalculable
advantages, and in none more so than in the cases now quoted. So far
from recommending caution, the chief of one of the storming divisions
is grievously belied if he did not grant some special licenses for that
particular occasion, though I am bound to say for him that he did all
he could to repress them when he found the advantage taken.
Ciudad, being a remote frontier fortress, could boast of few persons
of any note within its walls--our worthy friends of Horquera, (the
Alcaldé, with his family,) were probably the best, and he returned and
resumed his official functions as soon as he found that the place had
reverted to its legal owners--his house had been a princely one, but
was, unfortunately, situated behind the great breach, and was blown to
atoms--so that, for the time being, he was obliged to content himself
with one more humble--though, if I may speak as I have felt, I should
say not less comfortable, for I contrived to make it my home as often
as I could find an excuse for so doing--and, as the old Proverb goes,
"where there is a will there is a way," it was as often as I could.
One portion of the ceremony of Spanish hospitality was their awaking
me about five in the morning to take a cup of chocolate, made so thick
that a tea-spoon might stand in it, which, with a little crisp brown
toast, was always administered by the fair hands of one of the damsels,
and certes I never could bring myself to consider it an annoyance,
however unusual it may seem in this cold land of ours.
CHAP. XI.
Very short, with a few anecdotes still shorter; but the
principal actors thought the scenes long enough.
After the fall of Ciudad Rodrigo, our battalion took possession for a
time of Ituera, a pretty little village on the banks of the Azava.