A direct communication between the opposite banks of the river being
thus established, the remaining battalions of the Guards, the chief
part of the King's German Legion, together with a proportionate force
of cavalry and artillery, marched at daybreak on the 25th to join their
comrades among the sand-hills. The whole of the besieging army being
at the same time put in motion, the gap which prior to this date had
existed in the line of investment was filled up. Little or no fighting
took place on that occasion. The enemy, perceiving our design, offered
no serious resistance, but evacuating the village of Boucaut, after
having exchanged a few shots with our skirmishers, established their
pickets about half a mile in its rear. As yet, therefore, a good deal
more of open space was granted to them than they could long hope to
enjoy; but all opportunity of corresponding with Marshal Soult, as well
as of adding to the stock of grain and provisions already in their
magazines, was cut off.
The running and irregular fire which had been maintained throughout
the morning gradually died away, and ceased altogether about noon.
From that hour till after nightfall everything continued quiet. A
feverish excitement, necessarily consequent even upon a trifling
skirmish, prevailed indeed amongst us; nor did we venture to take off
our accoutrements, or return to our usual employments, during the
remainder of the day. But we might have done so, had we felt disposed,
with perfect safety; because the enemy were too well satisfied with
being permitted to retain what they still held of territory beyond the
glacis to endanger its loss by a useless attempt to regain what had
been wrested from them. Still we were anxious; and the anxiety which
pervaded us all the day ceased not to operate at night.
The garrison of Bayonne, we were well aware, was at once numerically
powerful and composed of the best troops in the French army. From all
that we could learn, Soult had by no means calculated upon the plan of
operations adopted by Lord Wellington. Concluding that the Marquess
would halt after the passage of the Adour, and invest that important
place with the whole of his forces, he had thrown into it fifteen
thousand picked men, assigning the command to General Thouvenot--an
officer who, by his successful defence of Burgos on a former occasion,
appeared worthy of so delicate a trust on the present. Lord
Wellington, however, knew too well how much depended in war on celerity
of movement to waste his time under the walls of Bayonne. He therefore
left Sir John Hope to mask the place with two British divisions, and
taking the remainder with himself, hung upon the rear of the retreating
enemy. These two divisions, which composed his left wing, were indeed
supported by a considerable force of Spaniards. But not even now could
much reliance be placed on Spanish troops; though it is just to add,
that they were much upon the alert at the outposts, and patient under
privations and hardships. The task assigned to Sir John Hope was not
therefore an easy one. With some thirty thousand men of all arms,
of whom only one-half might be fully trusted, he drew his lines of
circumvallation round a well-fortified town, the _enceinte_ of which
could not measure less than four English miles, and towards which he
did not as yet venture to push his pickets nearer than one mile, or
perhaps more, from the glacis.
It was felt by him, and indeed by all, that vigilance could not under
the circumstances be too keen or too constant. The besieged, moving
upon an interior line, had it in his power to throw at any moment a
superior force upon the besiegers; hence, especially for the first few
days and nights, officers and men alike kept themselves, so to speak,
constantly on the stretch of expectation. On the 25th, for example,
as all seemed to be quiet in front, we lay down at the usual hour and
slept. Our camp was pitched under the lee of a sand-hill; and just
over its brow, and at the base beyond, our pickets were posted. It was
still early, an hour or two from midnight, when a musket-shot in the
direction of the pickets roused us. There was no time to consider,
because the enemy, if a sortie was intended, would be upon us in a
moment; so we sprang from our pallets, and each dressing hastily, and
seizing his weapons, we ran to the place of muster. And now another
and another shot broke the stillness of the night. The bugles began to
sound, the baggage was hastily packed, the horses were saddled, and all
the bustle and hurry attendant upon the preparations for battle took
place. For myself, having seen that my men were in their ranks, I ran
to the top of the hill, whence I saw the flashes of several muskets
half-way between our sentinels and those of the enemy; but no sound
of advancing columns met my ear, neither was the fire returned by
our own soldiers. The perplexity occasioned by this state of affairs
was not, however, of long continuance. The officer in command of the
outposts sent in a messenger to say that no symptom of an attack was
discernible, but that several deserters had come into his lines, at
whom the French sentries were firing. This account was confirmed soon
afterwards by the arrival of the deserters in the camp; and the troops
accordingly laid aside their weapons and returned to their tents.
The alarm in that direction had hardly subsided, when another and not
less serious one arose in a different quarter. A sentry who was posted
by the bank of the river reported to his officer when visiting him
that boats were moving and oars splashing in the water. Apprehensions
were immediately excited for the safety of the bridge, against which
we naturally concluded that some attempt was about to be made. To
oppose it as far as possible, of whatever nature it might be, three
field-pieces which were attached to our brigade limbered up, and
galloped to the water's edge. These I accompanied; and certainly
the splash of oars was very audible, though the darkness would not
permit us to distinguish whence the sound proceeded. A few shots were,
however, fired in the direction of the sound, just by way of hinting
to the enemy that we were awake; and whether it was that the hint was
not lost upon them, or that they never seriously entertained the idea
of assailing the bridge, an immediate cessation of rowing was the
consequence. Having watched, therefore, for half an hour, and neither
hearing nor seeing anything indicative of danger, I left the gunners
to themselves, and returning to my cloak and blanket, wrapt myself
closely up, and slept soundly and securely till the morning.
The whole of the 26th passed over without the occurrence of any event
worthy of mention. By myself it was spent, not very profitably, in
sauntering about among the pine-woods, where little or no game was
to be found. For the troops in general, as well within as without
the walls of the beleaguered city, it might be accounted a sort
of armed truce. Hardly a cannon-shot was fired, from sunrise till
sunset, on either side; but matters were drawing to a crisis. Stores
and ammunition were conveyed day and night across the river in large
quantities; and it was manifest that even the few miles of open country
which the garrison still held would before long be taken away from
them. It was therefore no unexpected communication which reached me
on the morning of the 27th, that the corps was to stand to its arms
forthwith, and that the enemy were to be driven in all directions
within their works.
Having in a former chapter described the nature of the ground in our
immediate front, the reader will understand why no serious advance on
our part was intended. We were already within range of the guns on
the ramparts, and between the ramparts and the camp no broken ground
nor village, nor any other species of cover, existed. We could not
therefore hope to establish ourselves had we been pushed on; whereas
the French general, by opening the sluices from the river, might at
any moment lay the whole level under water. On the opposite side of
the Adour the case was different. There the most forward British
pickets were very little in advance of the village of Boucaut; and the
village of Boucaut is full four miles from the citadel. The face of the
country also between the two points being rugged and broken, numerous
positions could be taken up by the besiegers, in which, whilst they
were themselves secure from the fire of the place, they could easily
prevent the garrison from venturing beyond the ditch. Moreover, the
relative situations of the town and fortress rendered the former secure
against active annoyance till after the latter should have fallen into
our hands. Though, therefore, it was understood that the whole of our
line was to be drawn somewhat more tightly round the city, we were all
aware that the trenches would be opened, and breaching batteries thrown
up against the citadel alone.
The men being accoutred and the baggage packed, we stood quietly in our
ranks behind the sand-hill, till a gun from the opposite side of the
stream sounded the signal of attack. Upon this we extended our files
so as to give to a single weak battalion the appearance of an entire
brigade, and, ascending the heights, we stopped short where the tops of
our bayonets and caps just showed themselves over the ridge. Similar
demonstrations were likewise made by the corps which filled Anglete and
crowned the rise in connection with it; whilst occasionally a shout
was raised, as if at length the order of attack had been given, and we
were preparing to rush on. All this was done for the purpose of drawing
the attention of the enemy to many different points at the same time,
and thus hindering them from opposing with the entire strength of the
garrison the forward movements of those who were appointed to invest
the castle.
Whilst we and the divisions near us were thus amusing ourselves and the
enemy with the pomp and circumstance, rather than with the reality, of
war, the Guards and light Germans, with a corps of Portuguese infantry,
were very differently occupied on the other bank of the river. As our
situation was a commanding one, it enabled us to obtain a tolerably
distinct view of their proceedings. We saw one column of British troops
form on the sands beside Boucaut. In front of it was a body of German
riflemen, who pressed leisurely forward in skirmishing order till they
reached a picket of the French troops. Of the enemy, on the other hand,
a heavy column showed itself upon the high ground, where it halted,
and continued to send out numerous parties to support the outposts,
between whom and the Germans a hot skirmish began. But it could not
be said that any decided advantage was gained by either party during
several hours.
The column which we descried upon the sands beside Boucaut was not of
great strength; indeed the numbers of our own people discernible by
us were very inconsiderable. The fact, as I afterwards learned, was,
that the side of the hill visible to us was by far the most rugged
and least assailable of any; consequently the main attack was to be
made in another direction, the attack in this waiting till the other
should have in part succeeded. Hence the trifling progress made by our
skirmishers, who seemed to be kept back rather than animated forward by
their officers; and hence the apparently obstinate resistance of the
French pickets. But it was, nevertheless, an exceedingly interesting
spectacle, to the beauty of which the uneven and picturesque scenery
around added not a little.
I wish I could convey to the mind of the reader some notion of the
scene as it then appeared, and is still remembered by myself. Let him
imagine himself, then, lying with me upon the brow of a sand-hill, and
looking down first upon the broad and deep waters of the Adour, and
over them upon a sandy bank, which speedily ends, and is succeeded
by a green hill, having on its side--the side upon which we are
gazing--frequent cuts or gullies, or glens, some of them bare, others
wooded, with here and there a white cottage showing itself from among
the trees. Let him imagine that he sees on the summit of the heights,
and immediately in a line with himself, a portion of an armed mass,
with a single field-piece pointed towards the river's mouth. About a
mile to the rearward let him figure to himself a green field, more
level than any other part of the hillside--a sort of table-land, as
it were, having a hedge along that face of it which is turned towards
Boucaut, and a precipitous red bank under the hedge. In this field he
will observe about three hundred infantry soldiers dressed in grey
greatcoats and broad caps or shakos, who carry hairy knapsacks on their
backs, and are armed with long clear muskets, which have bayonets
screwed to their muzzles. These are Frenchmen. Under the red bank
let him farther suppose that there is a picturesque valley stocked
with tall and shadowy cork-trees, about the middle of which is a neat
mansion something larger than a farmhouse, yet hardly deserving the
name of a chateau. That house is full of light Germans; and almost
every tree about it affords cover to a rifleman, who fires as a good
aim is presented to him at the persons behind the hedge. From the
windows of the house, likewise, many shots are from time to time
discharged; and the sudden flash and uprising of smoke from various
parts of the hedge show that the French tirailleurs are not less active
than their assailants, or disposed to receive their salute without
returning it. In this skirmish little change of ground takes place.
Occasionally, indeed, a single rifleman will steal on, running from
tree to tree, till he has reached a convenient spot; whilst a Frenchman
will as often rise, and having watched him through a brake or over a
bush, will fire whenever he exposes himself to observation. But no
grand rush is made on either side, nor is any decided loss sustained
either of ground or in men.
All this while the exertions of our people were, as far as might
be, aided by a well-served cannonade from the three pieces of
artillery which had kept their station near the bank of the river
since the evening of the 25th. The fire of these guns was directed
chiefly against a large house--apparently some public work or
manufactory--which stood by the brink of the water, and was filled with
French troops. Neither were the enemy's batteries opposite to us idle.
Having wasted about twenty or thirty round-shot without effect, they
brought a couple of mortars, with a howitzer or two, to bear upon us,
from which they threw shell after shell among our ranks. But from the
effects of the cannonade the nature of the soil secured us, the shells
either burying themselves in the sand to the extinction of the fuze, or
exploding when we were all snugly laid flat, and therefore safe from
their fragments.
Matters had continued thus for an hour or two, and we were beginning
to fear that some part of our General's plan might have gone wrong, or
that the enemy were in too great force to be driven in by the divisions
opposed to them, when a sudden stir in the French column which had
hitherto stood quietly upon the heights attracted our attention. The
field-piece was all at once wheeled round, and turned in the direction
of the opposite country; the infantry collected into compact order, and
were gradually hidden from us by the brow of the hill. By-and-by a few
musket-shots were fired; then about a dozen more; then came the report
of one, two, or three field-pieces; and, lastly, a roar of cannon and
small-arms. This was kept up, hot and rapid, for half an hour. Every
moment the sound came nearer and nearer. Now the smoke, which had at
first followed each report after the interval of a few seconds, rose
at the same instant with the noise; then the glancing of arms over
the high ground was distinguishable; next came the French troops,
some retiring slowly, and firing as they fell back--others fleeing in
extreme confusion. Mounted officers were galloping over the ridge, and
apparently exerting themselves to restore order; but all would not do.
The enemy were in full flight. Down they rushed towards the river, and
away along the sands in the direction of the citadel, whilst our three
guns poured in round-shot among them, some of which we could distinctly
perceive take effect. And now the green field on which my reader and I
have so long looked was abandoned. The tirailleurs fled--the riflemen
pursued--the little column in scarlet pushed on in good order and with
a quick pace--and on the brow of the height above a British ensign was
held up as a signal for our battery to cease firing. The signal was
obeyed, and we had nothing farther to do during the remainder of the
day than to watch, which we eagerly did, the progress of our victorious
comrades.
The enemy having fled as far as the manufactory, were there joined by
reinforcements from the garrison. Here, then, the battle was renewed
with great obstinacy; but stern as was the resistance offered, it
became every hour less and less effectual. At length the building took
fire; it was abandoned, and its defenders fled; after which the entire
scene of action was hidden from us, and we were enabled to guess at
the state of affairs only by the sound of firing and the direction
which it took. That inclined every moment more and more towards the
ramparts. But it continued without intermission till darkness had set
in, when both parties were compelled to desist because they could not
distinguish friends from foes.
In this affair the loss on both sides was considerable; but we were
completely successful. The enemy were driven within their works, and
our advanced-posts were established in the village of St Esprit, about
half-pistol-shot from the nearest redoubt. In other directions little
change of ground occurred. Some Spanish divisions took up a position, I
believe, somewhat less distant than formerly from the walls of Bayonne;
but neither we nor the divisions in communication with us were in any
degree affected by it. We returned, on the contrary, to our tents,
having lost by the cannonade only one man killed and three wounded.
I stated in another part of my narrative that, except on one occasion,
I could not tax my memory with any symptom of violent or permanent
grief on the part of a soldier's wife at the death of her husband. The
case to which I then alluded occurred to-day. A fine young Irishman,
the pay-sergeant of my own company, had brought his wife with him to
the seat of war. He married her, it appeared, against the wish of her
relatives, they considering themselves in a walk of life superior to
his. To what class of society they belonged I cannot tell; but she, I
know, was a lady's-maid to some person of rank, when the handsome face
and manly form of M'Dermot stole her heart away. They had been married
about a year and a half, during the whole of which time she had borne
the most unblemished character, and they were accounted the happiest
couple in the regiment. Poor things! they were this day separated for
ever.
M'Dermot was as brave and good a soldier as any in the army; he was at
times even foolhardy. Having observed a recruit or two cower down in no
very dignified manner as a cannon-ball passed over them, M'Dermot, by
way of teaching them to despise danger, threw himself at his ease on
the summit of the sand-hill, with his head towards the enemy's guns.
He was in the act of laughing at these lads, assuring them that "every
bullet has its billet," when a round-shot struck him on the crown of
the head and smashed him to atoms. I shall never forget the shriek that
was raised. He was a prodigious favourite with all ranks; and then all
of us thought of his poor young wife, so spotless, and so completely
wrapped up in him. "Oh, who will tell Nance of this?" said another
non-commissioned officer, his principal companion. "Poor Nance!" cried
the soldiers, one and all; so true is it that virtue is respected, and
a virtuous woman nowhere more beloved than among British soldiers. But
there was no hiding it from Nance. The news reached her, heaven knows
how, long before we returned to our tents, and she was in the midst of
us in a state which beggars all description in five minutes after the
event took place.
I cannot so much as attempt to delineate the scene that followed. The
poor creature was evidently deranged, for she would not believe that
the mangled carcass before her was her husband; and she never shed a
tear. "That! oh, that is not he!" cried she; "that M'Dermot!--my own
handsome, beautiful M'Dermot! Oh no, no--take it away, or take me away,
and bring me to him!" She was removed with gentle violence to the camp,
and the body was buried, a young fir-tree being planted over it.
Several days passed before Mrs M'Dermot was sufficiently calm to look
her situation in the face. But at last the feeling of utter desolation
came over her; and instead of listening, as women in her position
generally do, to the proposals of some new suitor, all her wishes
pointed homewards. To her home she was accordingly sent. We raised
for her a handsome subscription, every officer and man contributing
something; and I have reason to believe that she is now respectably
settled in Cork, though still a widow.