The stone bridge which used to connect the two banks of the Bidassoa,
and which the French, after their evacuation of the Spanish territory,
had destroyed, was not, I found, repaired; but a temporary bridge of
pontoons rendered the stream passable without subjecting the traveller
to the necessity of fording. A party of artificers were, moreover,
at work renewing the arches which had been broken down; and a new
_tête-de-pont_ on the opposite side from the old one was already
erected, to be turned to account in case of any unlooked-for reverse of
fortune, and consequent retreat beyond the frontier. I observed, too,
that the whole front of the pass beyond the river was blocked up with
redoubts, batteries, and breastworks; and that Lord Wellington, though
pressing forward with victory in his train, was not unmindful of the
fickleness of the blind goddess.
As I was crossing the pontoon-bridge, two objects, very different
in kind, but intimately connected the one with the other, attracted
my attention almost at the same moment. A body of Spanish cavalry,
which appeared to have passed the river at one of the fords a little
higher up, presented themselves winding along a steep by-path which
communicated with the highroad just beside the old _tête-de-pont_. They
were guerillas, and were consequently clothed, armed, and mounted in a
manner the least uniform that can well be imagined. Of the men, some
were arrayed in green jackets, with slouched hats and long feathers;
others in blue, helmeted like our yeomanry or artillery-drivers;
several wore cuirasses and brazen headpieces, such as they had probably
plundered from their slaughtered enemies. But, notwithstanding this
absence of uniformity in dress, the general appearance of these
troopers was exceedingly imposing. They were, on the whole, well
mounted; and they marched in that sort of loose and independent
manner which, without indicating the existence of any discipline
amongst them, bespoke no want of self-confidence in individuals. Their
whole appearance, indeed--for they could not exceed sixty or eighty
men--reminded me forcibly of a troop of bandits; and the resemblance
was not the less striking that they moved to the sound, not of trumpets
or other martial music, but of their own voices. They were singing a
wild air as they passed, in which sometimes one chanted by himself,
then two or three chimed in, and by-and-by the whole squadron joined in
a very musical and spirited chorus.
The other object which divided my attention with these bold-looking but
lawless warriors, was about half-a-dozen dead bodies, which the flow
of the tide brought at this moment in contact with the pontoons. They
were quite naked, bleached perfectly white, and so far had yielded to
the operation of decay that they floated like linen rags on the surface
of the water. Perhaps these were some of our own men who had fallen
in the passage of the river upwards of eight weeks ago; perhaps they
were the bodies of such of the French soldiers as had perished in their
retreat after one of Soult's desperate but fruitless efforts to relieve
the garrison of St Sebastian. Who or what they were I had no means of
ascertaining, nor was it of much consequence: to whatever nation they
might have once belonged, they were now food for the fishes; and to the
fishes they were left, no one dreaming that it was requisite to pull
them to land, or to rob one set of reptiles of their prey only to feed
another.
Such is a summary of the events that befell me in a morning's ride
from the cantonments at Gauthory to the town of Irun. After crossing
the river my progress was direct and of little interest. I journeyed,
indeed, amid scenes all of them familiar, and therefore in some degree
having a claim upon my own notice; but I neither saw nor met with any
object worth describing to my reader. It was a little past the hour of
noon when my horse's hoofs clanked upon the pavement of Irun.
I found that place just recovering from the bustle which the departure
of a corps of twenty thousand Spanish infantry may be supposed to have
produced. This vast body of men had, it appeared, behaved so badly in
the action of the 9th of November that Lord Wellington was induced to
order them to the rear in disgrace; and they had remained in quarters,
in Irun and the neighbourhood, till the day preceding my arrival, when
they were again permitted to join the army. By whom they were commanded
on the day of their shame I have totally forgotten; nor will I cast a
slur upon the reputation of any general officer by naming one at random.
Notwithstanding the departure of so great a multitude, I found the
place far from deserted either by military or civil inhabitants. A
garrison of two or three thousand soldiers was still there--a corps,
I believe, of militia or national guards; and few of the houses were
unoccupied, though whether by their rightful owners or not I take it
not upon me to determine. One thing, however, I perfectly recollect;
and that is, the extreme incivility and absence of all hospitality
which distinguished them. Whether it was that the troops, so long
quartered among them, had inspired them with their own dislike to my
countrymen, or whether that jealousy which the Spanish people have
always encouraged, and still encourage, of foreigners in general and
Englishmen in particular, was at work, I cannot tell; but I remember
that I had some difficulty in persuading the keeper of an inn to put
up my own and my servant's horses in his stable, and still greater in
prevailing upon him to dress an omelet for my dinner. Nor was this all:
my journey had been undertaken, not from curiosity alone, but in the
hope of laying in a stock of coffee, cheese, tea, &c., at a cheap rate.
But every effort to obtain these things was fruitless, the shopkeepers
sulkily refusing to deal with me except on the most exorbitant terms.
I was not sorry, under such circumstances, when, having finished my
omelet, and baited and rested my horses, I turned my back upon Irun,
and took once more a direction towards the front.
I would lay before my readers a detail of another excursion, executed
on Christmas-day, to St Jean de Luz, were I not fully aware that
there are few among them who are not as well acquainted as myself
with the circumstances attending the celebration of that festival in
a Roman Catholic country. On the present occasion all things were
done with as much pomp and show as the state of the city, filled with
hostile battalions, and more than half deserted by its inhabitants
and priesthood, would permit. For my own part, I viewed the whole
proceeding, not with levity, certainly, but as certainly without
devotion; because the entire scene appeared to me better calculated
to amuse the external senses and dazzle the imagination, than to stir
up the deeper and more rational sensations of piety. I returned home,
nevertheless, well pleased with the mode in which the morning had been
spent; and joining a party of some ten or twelve who had clubbed their
rations for the sake of setting forth a piece of roast-beef worthy of
the occasion, I passed my evening not less agreeably than I had spent
the morning.
Among other events that befell during our sojourn at Gauthory, a
sale of the effects of such of our brother officers as had fallen
in the late battles, deserves to be numbered. On such occasions the
sergeant-major generally acts the part of auctioneer, and a strange
compound of good and bad feeling accompanies the progress of the
auction. In every society of men some will be found whose thoughts,
centring entirely in self, regard all things as commendable, or the
reverse, solely as it increases or restricts their personal enjoyments.
Even the sale of the clothes and accoutrements of one who, but a few
weeks or days before, was their living and perhaps favourite companion,
furnishes to such food for mirth; and I am sorry to say that during the
sale of which I now speak more laughter was heard than redounded to the
credit of those who joined in or produced it. Nor do I pretend, while
thus censuring others, to screen myself; for I fear that few laughed
more heartily than I, when shirts with nine tails, or no tails at all,
were held up against the sun by the facetious auctioneer; and sundry
pairs of trousers were pressed upon our notice as adapted for summer
wear, inasmuch as their numerous apertures promised to admit a free
current of air to cool the blood. But, with one or two exceptions, I
must say that there was not a man present who thought of the former
owners of these tailless shirts without affection, and who would not
have willingly given the full value, ay, even of the shirts themselves,
could his expenditure of such a sum have redeemed them from the power
of the grave. This sale, however, acted as a sort of warning to me.
Though my wardrobe was in as good condition as that of most men, I
chose not to have it or its owner made the subject of a joke; so I
inserted among my few memoranda a request that no article of mine
should be put up to auction, but that all should be given, in case I
fell, as expressly appointed.
I have said that the usual means of defeating _ennui_--namely,
shooting, coursing, and fishing--were resorted to by Grey and myself
while we inhabited these cantonments. Among other experiments, we
strolled down one lovely morning towards the sea, with the hope of
catching some fish for dinner. In that hope we were disappointed; but
the exquisite beauty of the marine view to which our walk introduced
us, amply made amends for the absence of sport. It was one of those
soft and enervating days which, even in England, we sometimes meet
with during the latter weeks of December, and which in the south
of France are very frequent at that season. The sun was shining
brightly and warmly; not a breath of air was astir; and the only sound
distinguishable by us who stood on the summit of the cliff was the
gentle and unceasing murmur of tiny waves, as they threw themselves
upon the shingle. The extent of waters upon which we gazed was bounded
on the right by the headlands at the mouth of the Adour, and on the
left by those near Passages. Before us the waste seemed interminable;
and I am not sure that it was the less sublime, because not a boat or
vessel of any description could be descried upon it. At such moments
as these, when contemplating such a scene, it is hardly possible for
any man to hinder his thoughts from wandering away from the objects
immediately around him to I do not recollect any hour of my life during
which the thought of home came more powerfully across me than the
present. Perhaps, indeed, the season of the year had some effect in
producing this result. It was the season of mirth and festivity, of
licensed uproar and innocent irregularity; and cold the land of his
nativity and the home of his fathers. I do not recollect any hour of
my life during which the thought of home came more powerfully across
me than the present. Perhaps, indeed, the season of the year had
some effect in producing this result. It was the season of mirth and
festivity, of licensed uproar and innocent irregularity; and cold and
heartless must he be who remembers not his home, however far removed
from him, when that season comes round. I confess that the idea of mine
brought something like moisture into my eyes, of which I had then no
cause to be ashamed, and the remembrance of which produces in me no
sense of shame even now.
The walk towards the sea became from this time my favourite; but it
was not my only one. Attended by my faithful spaniel (an animal, by
the way, which never deserted me even in battle), I wandered with a
gun across my shoulder over a great extent of country, and in all
directions. I found the scenery beautiful, but far less so than I
had expected to find it in the south of France. There was no want of
wood, it is true; and corn-fields, or rather fields lying fallow, were
intermixed in fair proportion with green meadows and sloping downs.
But there was nothing striking or romantic anywhere, except in the
bold boundary of the Pyrenees, now twenty miles distant. I observed,
however, that there was no want of chateaux and gentlemen's seats.
These were scattered about in considerable numbers, as if this had been
a favourite resort of those few among the French gentry who prefer the
quiet of the country to the bustle and hurry of Paris. Some of these
chateaux were, moreover, exceedingly elegant in their appearance--a
circumstance which, when connected with their size and the extent of
the woods about them, led to a persuasion that they belonged to men
of higher rank than the Mayor of Biaritz. But in general they were of
a description which bespoke their owners as belonging to the class
of wealthy merchants who supported their town houses and warerooms
in Bayonne, or perhaps in Bourdeaux. All, however, were thoroughly
ransacked. Over them, as well as over the houses in our rear, the storm
of rapine had passed, leaving its usual traces of dilapidation and ruin
behind.
It is needless to continue a narrative of such events. Thus passed
several weeks, the business of one day resembling in almost every
respect the business of another. As often as the weather would permit
I made a point of living out of doors; when the contrary was the case,
I adopted the ordinary expedients to kill time within. Nor were we
all this while without a few occurrences calculated to hinder us from
forgetting that we really were in an enemy's country, and at the seat
of war. The bloody flag was more than once hoisted on the tower of the
church of Arcanques, as a signal that the French troops were in motion;
and we, in our turn, stood to our arms. But of such alarms almost all
proved to be groundless; and those which were not designedly so might
as well have been omitted. The fact was that Soult, having been called
upon at this time to detach some divisions of his veteran soldiers
to the assistance of Napoleon, already hard pressed by the Allies in
the north, was under the necessity of filling his ranks with all the
men, and even boys, that were not absolutely required to cultivate
the soil. The entire winter was accordingly spent by him in training
the conscripts to the use of arms. He marched and countermarched them
from place to place, that they might learn to move with celerity and
in order; he set up targets for them to fire at, and caused frequent
alarms to our pickets when teaching his recruits to take a correct aim:
he was, in short, now, as he always was, indefatigable in providing
for the defence of the country committed to his care, and in his
endeavours to make the most of a force assuredly not adequate to the
purpose. But we were not doomed to be continually the dupes of false
alarms, nor to be amused for ever with the issuing of orders, which
were scarcely received ere they were retracted. A necessity for a real
movement occurred at last, and we bade adieu for ever to the cottage
of Gauthory, which we first entered with regret, and finally quitted
without reluctance.