THE CANTONMENT.
Soon after this the army broke up from Caja, and went into cantonments
along the Tagus, the headquarters being at Portalegre. We were here joined
by four regiments of infantry lately arrived from England, and the 12th
Light Dragoons. I shall not readily forget the first impression created
among our reinforcements by the habits of our life at this period.
[Illustration: A HUNTING TURN-OUT IN THE PENINSULA.]
Brimful of expectation, they had landed at Lisbon, their minds filled with
all the glorious expectancy of a brilliant campaign; sieges, storming, and
battle-fields floated before their excited imagination. Scarcely,
however, had they reached the camp, when these illusions were dissipated.
Breakfasts, dinners, private theatricals, pigeon matches, formed our daily
occupation. Lord Wellington’s hounds threw off regularly twice a week;
and here might be seen every imaginable species of equipment, from the
artillery officer mounted on his heavy troop horse, to the infantry
subaltern on a Spanish jennet. Never was anything more ludicrous than our
turn-out. Every quadruped in the army was put into requisition. And even
those who rolled not from their saddles from sheer necessity, were most
likely to do so from laughing at their neighbors. The pace may not have
equalled Melton, nor the fences have been as stubborn as in Leicestershire,
but I’ll be sworn there was more laughter, more fun, and more merriment,
in one day with us, than in a whole season with the best organized pack in
England. With a lively trust that the country was open and the leaps easy,
every man took the field. Indeed, the only anxiety evinced at all, was to
appear at the meet in something like jockey fashion, and I must confess
that this feeling was particularly conspicuous among the infantry. Happy
the man whose kit boasted a pair of cords or buck skins; thrice happy he
who sported a pair of tops. I myself was in that enviable position, and
well remember with what pride of heart I cantered up to cover in all the
superior _éclat_ of my costume, though, if truth were to be spoken, I doubt
if I should have passed muster among my friends of the “Blazers.” A round
cavalry jacket and a foraging cap with a hanging tassel were the strange
accompaniments of my more befitting nether garments. Whatever our costumes,
the scene was a most animated one. Here the shell-jacket of a heavy dragoon
was seen storming the fence of a vineyard; there the dark green of a
rifleman was going the pace over the plain. The unsportsmanlike figure of
a staff officer might be observed emerging from a drain, while some
neck-or-nothing Irishman, with light infantry wings, was flying at every
fence before him, and overturning all in his way. The rules and regulations
of the service prevailed not here; the starred and gartered general, the
plumed and aiguilletted colonel obtained but little deference and less
mercy from his more humble subaltern. In fact, I am half disposed to think
that many an old grudge of rigid discipline or severe duty met with its
retribution here. More than once have I heard the muttered sentences around
me which boded like this,--
“Go the pace, Harry, never flinch it! There’s old Colquhoun--take him in
the haunches; roll him over!”
“See here, boys--watch how I’ll scatter the staff--Beg your pardon,
General, hope I haven’t hurt you. Turn about--fair play--I have taught
_you_ to take up a position now.”
I need scarcely say there was one whose person was sacred from all such
attacks. He was well mounted upon a strong, half-breed horse; rode always
foremost, following the hounds with the same steady pertinacity with which
he would have followed the enemy, his compressed lip rarely opening for a
laugh when even the most ludicrous misadventure was enacting before him;
and when by chance he would give way, the short ha! ha! was over in a
moment, and the cold, stern features were as fixed and impassive as before.
All the excitement, all the enthusiasm of a hunting-field, seemed powerless
to turn his mind from the pre-occupation which the mighty interests he
presided over, exacted. I remember once an incident which, however trivial
in itself, is worth recording as illustrative of what I mean. We were going
along at a topping pace, the hounds, a few fields in advance, were hidden
from our view by a small beech copse. The party consisted of not more than
six persons, one of whom was Lord Wellington himself. Our run had been a
splendid one, and as we were pursuing the fox to earth, every man of us
pushed his horse to his full stride in the hot enthusiasm of such a moment.
“This way, my lord, this way,” said Colonel Conyers, an old Melton man, who
led the way. “The hounds are in the valley; keep to the left.” As no reply
was made, after a few moments’ pause Conyers repeated his admonition, “You
are wrong, my lord, the hounds are hunting yonder.”
“I know it!” was the brief answer given, with a shortness that almost
savored of asperity; for a second or two not a word was spoken.
“How far is Niza, Gordon?” inquired Lord Wellington.
“About five leagues, my lord,” replied the astonished aide-de-camp.
“That’s the direction, is it not?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Let’s go over and inspect the wounded.”
No more was said, and before a second was given for consideration, away
went his lordship, followed by his aide-de-camp, his pace the same
stretching gallop, and apparently feeling as much excitement, as he dashed
onwards towards the hospital, as though following in all the headlong
enthusiasm of a fox chase.
Thus passed our summer; a life of happy ease and recreation succeeding to
the harassing fatigues and severe privations of the preceding campaign.
Such are the lights and shadows of a soldier’s life; such the checkered
surface of his fortunes. Constituting, by their very change, that buoyant
temperament, that happy indifference, which enables him to derive its full
enjoyment from each passing incident of his career.
While thus we indulged in all the fascinations of a life of pleasure, the
rigid discipline of the army was never for a moment forgotten. Reviews,
parades, and inspections were of daily occurrence, and even a superficial
observer could not fail to detect that under this apparent devotion to
amusement and enjoyment, our commander-in-chief concealed a deep stroke of
his policy.
The spirits of both men and officers, broken, in spite of their successes,
by the incessant privations they had endured, imperatively demanded this
period of rest and repose. The infantry, many of whom had served in the
ill-fated campaign of Walcharen, wore still suffering from the effects of
the intermittent fever. The cavalry, from deficient forage, severe marches,
and unremitting service, were in great part unfit for duty. To take the
field under circumstances like these was therefore impossible; and with the
double object of restoring their wonted spirit to his troops, and checking
the ravages which sickness and the casualties of war had made within his
ranks, Lord Wellington embraced the opportunity of the enemy’s inaction to
take up his present position on the Tagus.
But while we were enjoying all the pleasures of a country life, enhanced
tenfold by daily association with gay and cheerful companions, the
master-mind, whose reach extended from the profoundest calculations of
strategy to minutest details of military organization, was never idle.
Foreseeing that a period of inaction, like the present, must only be like
the solemn calm that preludes the storm, he prepared for the future by
those bold conceptions and unrivalled combinations which were to guide him
through many a field of battle and of danger to end his career of glory in
the liberation of the Peninsula.
The failure of the attack upon Badajos had neither damped his ardor nor
changed his views; and he proceeded to the investment of Ciudad Rodrigo
with the same intense determination of uprooting the French occupation in
Spain by destroying their strongholds and cutting off their resources.
Carrying aggressive war in one hand, he turned the other towards the
maintenance of those defences which, in the event of disaster or defeat,
must prove the refuge of the army.
To the lines of Torres Vedras he once more directed his attention. Engineer
officers were despatched thither; the fortresses were put into repair; the
bridges broken or injured during the French invasion were restored; the
batteries upon the Tagus were rendered more effective, and furnaces for
heating shot were added to them.
The inactivity and apathy of the Portuguese government but ill corresponded
with his unwearied exertions; and despite of continual remonstrances and
unceasing representations, the bridges over the Leira and Alva were left
unrepaired, and the roads leading to them, so broken as to be almost
impassable, might seriously have endangered the retreat of the army, should
such a movement be deemed necessary.
It was in the first week of September. I was sent with despatches for the
engineer officer in command at the lines, and during the fortnight of my
absence, was enabled for the first time to examine those extraordinary
defences which, for the space of thirty miles, extended over a country
undulating in hill and valley, and presenting, by a succession of natural
and artificial resources, the strongest and most impregnable barrier that
has ever been presented against the advance of a conquering army.