When I awoke next morning, I found myself lying in a perfect puddle
beside the decaying embers of a fire. The rain had come down so
incessantly and with such violence during the night, that my cloak,
though excellent of its kind, stood not out against it, and I was now
as thoroughly saturated with water as if I had been dragged through the
Nivelle. Of course my sensations were not of a very pleasant nature;
but I considered that I was far from singular in my condition, and,
like my comrades, I laughed at an evil for which there was no remedy.
Having remained under arms till day had fully dawned, we began to make
ready for a further advance. When we lay down on the preceding evening,
several brigades of French troops were in possession of Bidart. These
we naturally laid our account with attacking; but on sending forward
a patrol, it was found that the village had been abandoned, and that
Soult had fallen back to his intrenched camp in front of Bayonne. Our
parade was accordingly dismissed; and we remained in the same situation
for about four hours, when the arrival of the tents and baggage invited
us to make ourselves somewhat more comfortable. For this purpose the
brigade was moved about a quarter of a mile to the left of the main
road; and there, on a skirt of turf comparatively sound and unbroken,
the camp was pitched.
In the immediate vicinity of the tents stood a small farmhouse, or
rather a large cottage, containing three rooms and a kitchen. Thither a
good many of the officers, and myself among the number, removed their
canteens and portmanteaus, till no fewer than forty-five individuals,
including servants as well as masters, found a temporary shelter under
its roof. I am sure, after all, that I was not more comfortable there
than I should have been in my tent; but I fancied that to sleep upon a
bed once more, even though it was a French one, would prove a luxury;
and I made the experiment. It is needless to add that the bed contained
whole hordes of living occupants besides myself, and that I did not
venture again to dispute with them the possession of their ancient
domain.
From the 12th to the 17th November nothing occurred to myself, nor were
any movements made by the left of the British army worthy of being
related. The rain continued, with hardly any intermission, during
the whole of that time, rendering the cross-roads utterly impassable
for artillery, and holding out no prospect of fresh battles or fresh
adventures. It was indeed manifest that the troops could not be kept
much longer in the field without material injury to their health,
which began already to be threatened with dysentery and ague. Nor is
it surprising that the case should be so; for the tents were not proof
against showers so heavy and incessant as fell, and canvas, when once
completely soaked, allows water to pass through it like a sieve. The
consequence was that our men were never dry, and many began to exhibit
symptoms of the complaints above alluded to.
Under these circumstances, we received with sincere rejoicing an order
in the evening of the 17th to strike our tents at dawn next morning,
and to march into winter quarters. The rain descended, however, in such
torrents, that though a temporary inconvenience promised to lead to
permanent comfort, it was deemed prudent to delay fulfilling that order
for at least some hours. We accordingly remained quiet till about one
o'clock in the afternoon of the 18th, when, the weather breaking up,
and the sun shining out, our camp was struck, and we turned our faces
towards the cantonments which had been allotted to us.
Having cleared the few fields which intervened between the situation
of the camp and the highroad, we left Bidart behind, and took a
retrograde direction towards St Jean de Luz. We had not, however,
proceeded above five or six miles, and were still a full league distant
from the town, when, on reaching a cross-road which ran in a direction
to the left, we filed off and made for a piece of elevated country,
over which some half-dozen farmhouses were scattered. These were
assigned to the corps to which I belonged. We accordingly halted on
a sort of common near the centre of them, and having cast lots as to
which house should fall to the share of the different companies, Grey,
myself, and two others, with about a hundred men, took possession of
one, with which we were perfectly satisfied.
It would be difficult for an ordinary reader to form any adequate
notion of the extreme satisfaction which soldiers experience when first
they establish themselves in winter quarters. As long as the weather
continues fine, and summer suns shed their influence over it, there are
indeed few places more agreeable than a camp. But it is not so after
the summer has departed. I have already hinted that against heavy and
continued rains a tent supplies but an inadequate shelter. A tent is,
moreover, but a narrow chamber, in which it is not easy so much as to
stand upright, excepting in one spot, and where all opportunity of
locomotion is denied. It furnishes, moreover, little protection against
cold--to light a fire within being impossible on account of the smoke;
and hence the only means of keeping yourself warm is to wrap your cloak
or a blanket about you, and to lie down. Occasionally, indeed, I have
seen red-hot shot employed as heaters; but the kind of warmth which
arises from heated iron is, at least to me, hardly more agreeable than
that which is produced by charcoal. In a word, however enthusiastic
a man may be in his profession, he begins, about the end of October
or the beginning of November, to grow heartily tired of campaigning,
and looks forward to a few weeks' rest, and a substantial protection
against cold and damps, with almost as much pleasure as he experiences
when the return of spring calls him once more into the field.
The farmhouses in the south of France, like those in Spain, are rarely
provided with fireplaces in any other apartment than the kitchen. It
is, indeed, customary for families to live during the winter months
entirely with their servants; and hence the want of a fireplace in
the parlour is not felt any more than in the bedrooms. I observed,
likewise, that hardly any _maison_ of the kind was furnished with
glazed windows, wooden lattices being almost universally substituted.
These, during the summer months, are kept open all day, and closed
only at night; and I believe that the extreme mildness of the climate
renders an open window at such seasons very agreeable. On the present
occasion, however, we anticipated no slight annoyance from the absence
of these two essential matters, a chimney and a window in our room; and
we immediately set our wits to work to remove the evil.
Both Grey's servant and my own chanced to be exceedingly ingenious
fellows; the former, in particular, could, to use a vulgar phrase, turn
his hand to anything. Under his directions we set a party of men to
work, and, knocking a hole through one corner of our room, we speedily
converted it into a fireplace. To give vent to the smoke, we took the
trouble to build an external chimney, carrying it up as high as the
roof of the house; and our pride and satisfaction were neither of them
trifling when we found that it drew to admiration. I cannot say that
the masonry was very exact, or that the sort of buttress added to the
mansion improved its general appearance; but it had the effect of
rendering our apartment exceedingly comfortable, and that was the sole
object which we had in view.
Having thus provided for our warmth, the next thing to be done was to
manufacture such a window as might supply us with light, and at the
same time resist the weather. For this purpose we lifted a couple of
lattices from their hinges, and having cut out four panels in each,
we covered the spaces with white paper soaked in oil. The light thus
admitted was not, indeed, very brilliant, but it was sufficient for all
our purposes; and we found, when the storm again returned, that our
oil-paper stood out against it stoutly. Then, having swept our floor,
unpacked and arranged the contents of our canteen, and provided good
dry hay-sacks for our couches, we felt as if the whole world could have
supplied no better or more desirable habitation.
To build the chimney and construct the window furnished occupation
enough for one day; the next was spent in cutting wood, and laying
in a store of fuel against the winter. In effecting this, it must be
confessed that we were not over-fastidious as to the source from which
it was derived; and hence a greater number of fruit-trees were felled
and cut to pieces than perhaps there was any positive necessity to
destroy. But it is impossible to guard against every little excess
when troops have established themselves in an enemy's country; and
the French have just cause of thankfulness that so little comparative
devastation marked the progress of our armies. Their own, it is well
known, were not remarkable for their orderly conduct in such countries
as they overran.
I have dwelt upon these little circumstances longer perhaps than their
insignificance in the eyes of my reader may warrant, but I could not
help it. There is no period of my life on which I look back with more
unmixed pleasure than that which saw me for the first time set down in
winter quarters. And hence every trifling incident connected with it,
however unimportant to others, appears the reverse of unimportant to
me. And such, I believe, is universally the case when a man undertakes
to be his own biographer. Things and occurrences which, to the world
at large, seem wholly undeserving of record, his own feelings prompt
him to detail with unusual minuteness, even though he may be conscious
all the while that he is entering upon details which his readers will
scarcely take the trouble to follow.
Having thus rendered our quarters as snug as they were capable of being
made, my friend and myself proceeded daily into the adjoining woods in
search of game; and as the frost set in we found them amply stored,
not only with hares and rabbits, but with woodcocks, snipes, and other
birds of passage. We were not, however, so fortunate as to fall in
with any of the wild boars which are said to frequent these thickets,
though we devoted more than one morning to the search; but we managed
to supply our own table, and the tables of several of our comrades,
with a very agreeable addition to the lean beef which was issued out
to us. Nor were other luxuries wanting. The peasantry, having recovered
their confidence, returned in great numbers to their homes, and seldom
failed to call at our mansion once or twice a-week with wine, fresh
bread, cider, and bottled beer; by the help of which we continued to
fare well as long as our fast-diminishing stock of money lasted. I say
fast-diminishing stock of money, for as yet no addition had been made
to that which each of us brought with him from England; and though the
pay of the army was now six months in arrear, but faint hopes were
entertained of any immediate donative.
It was not, however, among regimental and other inferior officers alone
that this period of military inaction was esteemed and acted upon
as one of enjoyment. Lord Wellington's fox-hounds were unkennelled;
and he himself took the field regularly twice a-week, as if he had
been a denizen of Leicestershire, or any other sporting county in
England. I need not add that few packs in any county could be better
attended. Not that the horses of all the huntsmen were of the best
breed, or of the gayest appearance; but what was wanting in individual
splendour, was made up by the number of Nimrods; nor would it be easy
to discover a field more fruitful in laughable occurrences, which no
man more heartily enjoyed than the gallant Marquess himself. When
the hounds were out, he was no longer the Commander of the Forces,
the General-in-Chief of three nations, and the representative of
three sovereigns, but the gay merry country gentleman, who rode at
everything, and laughed as loud when he fell himself as when he
witnessed the fall of a brother sportsman.
Thus passed about twenty days, during the greater number of which the
sky was clear and the air cold and bracing. Occasionally, indeed, we
varied our sporting life by visits to St Jean de Luz, and other towns
in the rear, and by seeking out old friends in other divisions of the
army. Nor were we altogether without military occupation. Here and
there a redoubt was thrown up for the purpose of rendering our position
doubly secure; and the various brigades of each division relieved one
another in taking the duty of the outposts. A trifling skirmish or
two likewise tended to keep us alive; but these were followed by no
movement of importance, nor were they very fatal either to the enemy or
ourselves.
The position which Lord Wellington thus took up extended from the
village of Bidart on the left to a place called Garret's House on the
right. It embraced various other villages, such as that of Arcanques,
Gauthory, &c. &c., between these points, and kept the extremities of
the line at a distance of perhaps six or seven miles from each other.
To a common observer it certainly had in it nothing imposing, or
calculated to give the idea of great natural strength. On the left, in
particular, our troops, when called into the field, occupied a level
plain, wooded indeed, but very little broken; whilst at different
points in the centre there were passes easy of approach, and far from
defensible in any extraordinary degree. But its strength was well
tried, as I shall take occasion shortly to relate; and the issue of the
trial proved that no error had been committed in its selection.
Of the manner in which the right and centre columns were disposed I
knew but little. The left column, consisting of the first and fifth
divisions, of two or three brigades of Portuguese infantry, one brigade
of light and one of heavy cavalry, was thus posted: The town of St Jean
de Luz, in which Lord Wellington had fixed his quarters, was occupied
by three or four battalions of Guards; its suburbs were given up to
such corps of the German legion as were attached to the first division.
In and about the town the light cavalry was likewise quartered; whilst
the heavy was sent back to Handaye and the villages near it, on account
of the facility of procuring forage which there existed. The Spaniards
had again fallen back as far as Irun, and were not brought up during
the remainder of the winter; but the Portuguese regiments were
scattered, like ourselves, among a number of detached cottages near the
road. In the village of Bidart was posted the fifth division, a battery
or two of field-artillery, and the men and horses attached to them; and
to it the duty of watching the enemy, and keeping possession of the
ground on which the pickets stood, was committed. Thus, along the line
of the highroad was housed a corps of about fifteen thousand infantry,
twelve hundred cavalry, and a due proportion of artillery--all under
the immediate command of Sir John Hope.
In direct communication with the head of this column was the light
division, under the command of Major-General Baron Alten. It consisted
of the 43d, 52d, and 95th regiments, of a brigade or two of caçadores,
and mustered in all about four or five thousand bayonets. These
occupied the church and village of Arcanques, situated upon a rising
ground, and of considerable natural strength. Beyond this division
again lay the fourth; in connection with which were the third, the
seventh, and the second divisions; whilst the sixth took post a little
in the rear, and acted as a reserve, in case a reserve should be
wanting.
I have said that Lord Wellington's headquarters were in St Jean de
Luz. Here also Sir John Hope, and several generals of division and
of brigade, established themselves; and here all the general staff
of the army was posted. Of course the place was kept in a state of
warlike gaiety, such as it had not probably witnessed before, at least
in modern times; but everything was done which could be thought of
to conciliate the goodwill of the inhabitants: nor was the slightest
outrage or riot permitted. Such is the manner in which the British army
was disposed of from the 18th of November, when it first went into
cantonments, till the 9th of December, when it was found necessary once
more to take the field.