Departure from Badajoz—The wounded left to the protection of Spanish
soldiers—Subsequently removed to Elvas—The author leaves Elvas to
join the army—Spaniards and Portuguese—Rodrigo revisited—A Spanish
ball—Movements of Marshal Marmont—Fall of the forts of
Salamanca—Amicable enemies.
On the 15th of April, 1812, the heroes of Badajoz took a last farewell
of the scene of their glory and the graves of their fallen companions,
and marched towards the banks of the Coa and Agueda, where, but a few
months before, they had given proofs of their invincible valour. Indeed
it might be said, without any great stretch of historical truth, that
every inch of ground upon which they trod was a silent evidence of their
right to be its occupant—so far, at least, as right of conquest goes.
Ill as I was, in common with many others, who, like myself, lay wounded,
and were unable to accompany our friends, I arose from my truss of straw
to take a parting look at the remnant of my regiment as it mustered on
the parade; but in place of upwards of seven hundred gallant soldiers,
and four-and-twenty officers, of the former there were not three
hundred, and of the latter but five! At any time, when in the full
enjoyment of health and vigour, this sad diminution would have affected
me; but in my then frame of mind it acted powerfully upon my nerves. I
asked myself, where are the rest? I suppose I spoke louder than I
intended; for my man, Dan Carsons, ran out of his tent to inquire “who I
was looking after?”—“Dan,” replied, “I am looking for the men that are
absent from parade; where are they?”—“Kilt, sir,” replied Dan, “and the
greater part of them buried at the fut of the ould castle forenent ye.”
“Their _bodies_ are there, Dan, but where are they themselves?” “Och,
Jasus!” cried Dan to his wife, “he’s out of his sinces! Nelly! run and
fetch the pig-skin of wine; you know how it sarved him last night when
he was raving.” Nelly brought the remnant of the Tinta de la Mancha, and
a few mouthfuls of it raised my spirits considerably, but the fever with
which I was attacked was increasing rapidly.
The drums of the division beat a ruffle; the officers took their
stations; the bands played; the soldiers cheered, and, in less than half
an hour, the spot which, since the 17th of the preceding month, had been
a scene of the greatest excitement, was now a lone and deserted waste,
having no other occupants than disabled or dying officers and soldiers,
or the corpses of those who had fallen in the strife. The contrast was
indeed great, and of that cast that made the most unreflecting think,
and the reflecting feel. The sound of the drums died away; the division
was no longer visible, except by the glittering of their firelocks; at
length we lost sight of even this, and we were left alone, like so many
outcasts, to make the best of our way to the hospitals in Badajoz.
It is a task of more difficulty than may appear to the reader to
describe the feelings that a separation, such as I have told of, caused
in our breasts. More than half of our old companions—dear to us from the
intimate terms upon which we had lived together, fought together, and, I
might say, died together, for three years—were parted from us, most of
them for ever!—the others gone to a distant part of the theatre of war,
while we, enervated and worn down, either by loss of limb, or by loss of
strength and vigour, were left to seek shelter under the roofs of those
very people who had been so barbarously maltreated by our own soldiers.
Nevertheless every one betook himself to the method he thought best
suited to the occasion. Some caused themselves to be conveyed in
waggons; others rode on horseback; and many, from a disinclination to
bear the jolting of the carts, or the uneasy posture of sitting astride
a horse, hobbled on towards the dismantled walls of the fortress. As we
continued our walk, we met, at almost every step, heaps of newly
turned-up earth, beneath which lay the bodies of some of our companions;
and a little farther in advance was the olive-tree, at the foot of which
so many officers of the 3rd Division had been buried. At length we
reached the ravelin of San Roque.
The Talavera gate was opened for our admission; it was guarded by a few
ill-looking, ill-fed, and ill-appointed Spanish soldiers. As we entered,
each man we passed saluted us with respect; but the contrast between
these men, who were now our protectors, and the soldiers we had but a
short time before commanded, was great indeed; and the circumstance,
trifling as it may appear, affected us proportionally. We walked on
towards our wretched billets, and as we passed through the streets that
led to them, we saw nothing but the terrible traces of what had taken
place. Piles of dismantled furniture lay scattered here and there;
houses, disfigured by our batteries, in a ruined state; the streets
unoccupied except by vagabonds of the lowest grade, who prowled about in
search of plunder; while at the windows of some houses were to be seen a
few females in disordered dresses; but their appearance was of that
caste that served rather to increase the gloom which overhung the city.
Nevertheless, as the wounded men and officers passed, they waved their
handkerchiefs and saluted us with a _viva_; but it was pitiable to
witness the wretched state to which the unfortunate inhabitants had been
reduced.
Upon reaching the house allotted to me, I was met at the door by an old
woman who showed me my apartment. It was scantily garnished with
furniture, most of which was broken; the bed was on the tiles, but that
was rather an advantage than the contrary, because the heat was
excessive. I stood in no need of any refreshment; my man, Dan, having
been so active during the _bouleversement_ that he supplied my cellar as
well as larder; and it was fortunate that he did so, for the inhabitants
of the house, as I afterwards learned, were without a morsel of food or
a stitch of clothing, having been plundered of everything.
I lay down upon my mattress, soon fell asleep, and in less than an hour
awoke in a high fever. Dan wished that I should attack the pig-skin of
the Tinta de la Mancha, but I positively refused to do so: “Why then,
sir,” said he, “hasn’t it been the making ov yee?”—“You mean the killing
of me, Dan. Go and seek for a surgeon.” He went, and soon returned with
a young man in the uniform of the staff surgeons of our army; but from
his youthful appearance, and the unworkmanlike manner he went about
dressing my wound, I opine he was but an hospital mate. My man Dan was
decidedly of my opinion; for after the doctor had examined my breast,
and applied some dressing to it, he was about to retire, when Dan said
with an air of authority, “You’re not going to be afthur going without
looking at his hinder part?” meaning my back. The doctor took the hint,
and, turning me on my face, found a large piece of the cloth of my coat,
which had been carried in by the ball, protruding through the wound. The
doctor looked confounded; Dan looked ferocious, and though he spoke with
respect to the medical man, I plainly saw the storm which was gathering.
I feared that he was about to make use of the _fortiter in re_, in
preference to the _suaviter in modo_; so I dismissed the doctor, upon an
assurance that he would visit me the following morning.
After a lapse of three days, all the wounded capable of being removed
were ordered to Elvas. Spring waggons, carts drawn by oxen, mules
harnessed with pack-saddles, and in default of them, asses prepared in
like manner, were put in requisition for the purpose of freeing Badajoz
of as many of the disabled men, who crowded the hospitals, as possible.
I was among the number, but so ill was I as to have no recollection of
how I was transported, except that a waggon stopped at my door, and,
after some hours, I found myself in the streets of Elvas. From the
waggon I was placed in a car, and it was night before my man Dan, with
all his tact, was enabled to procure me a billet. During a space of
fifteen days I lay in a state of great pain, accompanied by fever, but
after that I soon recovered my strength, and being allowed the option of
either joining the second battalion of my regiment, to which I then
belonged, quartered at home, or going back to the army, I preferred the
latter.
My friends, Darcy and Adair, were my companions on my route to the army;
and, punctual at the appointed hour, we left Elvas at six o’clock on the
morning of the 3rd of June, without any encumbrance, such as a
detachment to look after. We had no escort except our three servants,
and Dan’s wife Nelly; and it is needless to say that they were perfectly
competent to take care of themselves, without causing us one moment’s
uneasiness, either on their account or our own; and never did any three
officers in the service of His Britannic Majesty, or in the service of
any other sovereign, set out on a route to join their companions with a
more fervent intention of making the time pass as agreeably as possible.
Our route towards Salamanca, near which city the army was stationed, lay
through the old line of march, and we were obliged, unfortunately, once
more to encounter that place of dirt and wretchedness, Niza. No matter
what change had taken place either amongst ourselves or the different
towns through which we passed, Niza was still the same; positively
dirt—comparatively dirt—superlatively dirt!—dirt! dirt! dirt! The
ditches were filled with reptiles, the houses with bugs and fleas, and
Adair, who was already blind of one eye, had the other nearly darkened
by the bite of a huge centipede. We poulticed his eye with rye bread and
cold water, and in the morning carried him, with a _wry_ face, to his
saddle.
Once clear of Niza, we traversed the country towards the Spanish
frontier; at length we got clear of Portugal, and once more reached the
village of Fuentes d'Oñoro; every house, I might almost say every face,
was familiar to me. The heaps of embanked earth, which denoted the
places where many of our old companions had been interred, were covered
with grass, which grew luxuriantly over the graves of the men who had
once stood there victorious, but who were now lifeless clay. We
traversed the churchyard where so many of the Imperial Guard and our
Highlanders had fallen; and we marked well the street where three
hundred of the former had been put to death by the 88th Regiment. Many
of the doors still retained the marks of the contest; and the chimneys,
up which the Guard had sought shelter, bore the traces of what had taken
place. The torn apertures in the large twigged chimneys, broken down by
the Guard in attempting to get up them, were in the same state we had
left them—untouched, unmended. Even the children could trace with
accuracy the footsteps of those fallen heroes.
We walked on to the chapel wall, where the 79th had suffered so
severely, and through which the French had forced their passage, under a
torrent of shot, against the bayonets of the brave Highlanders. The
chapel door was riddled through and through with bullets, and the walls
bore the marks of the round shot fired from the French batteries.
Several mounds of earth, covered as they were with herbage, still
pointed out the grave of some one who had fallen; yet, to a passing
stranger, the inequality of the ground would scarcely have been noticed,
so little attention had been paid to the arrangement of the graves,
which were dug in the hurry of the moment; but with us it was different.
We could point out every spot, and lay our finger on the place where a
grave ought to be found.
It so happened that the house I was quartered in for the night was one
of those in which some of the Imperial Guard had sought shelter. I asked
my patron why he had not mended the broken chimney? His reply was, that
he preferred the inconvenience of the smoke which the aperture caused,
for the pleasure he derived from viewing the grave, as he termed it, of
the base French who had so scandalously ravaged his country. I cannot
say that I much admired his feeling.
From Fuentes d'Oñoro we reached Rodrigo, which we had left only five
months before. The breaches were repaired, the trenches levelled, and
were it not for the different spots that had been assigned to many of
our fallen companions, which we found untouched, there was no trace of
those works which had caused us so much time and labour to construct.
But those places, well known to us, brought back to our recollection the
ground upon which we had stood a short time before, under circumstances
so different; and the change that had taken place during the short
interval—the thousands that had fallen in the two sieges,—and the
difference of our attitude as compared to what it was when we before
trod the spot we were then standing upon, afforded ample food for
reflection. From the period of our investment of Rodrigo to the capture
of Badajoz, that is to say, eighty-eight days, we lost in my regiment
alone twenty-five officers and five hundred and fifty-six men; and it
cannot be wondered at that we, who were alive and in health, should have
a feeling of regret for our less fortunate companions, as also a feeling
of thankfulness for our own escape.
There may be some who will think that such ideas are out of place, but,
in my opinion, they are not so. No truly brave man ever looked upon the
graves of his fallen companions without a feeling of regret. A man
falling in the heat of battle is quite a different thing, because
_there_ all are alike, and subject to the same chance; and it is,
moreover, wrong to mourn over the death of a comrade while the strife is
going on; but the strife once ended, then will the feelings be brought
into play, and the man who is incapable of a pang of regret for his
fallen companion is unworthy of the name of a British soldier.
My man, Dan, had scarcely arranged my billet, ere I bent my steps to the
house where I had slept on the night of the storming of the town. I had
scarcely made my appearance at the portal, when the old lady to whom the
house belonged recognised my voice. She ran forward to meet and welcome
me; her daughters accompanied her, and it was in vain that I said I had
a billet in a distant part of the town. The excuse would not be taken,
and I was forced, absolutely forced, to have my baggage conveyed to the
house where I had so short a time before entered under far different
circumstances. The old lady asked how long I was to remain at Rodrigo. I
replied, for that night only. “_J'en suis fâché_,” she replied in
French, which language she spoke tolerably well,—“_mais j’essayerai de
faire votre séjour ici plus agréable qu’elle ne l'était la dernière
fois_”—and she immediately sent an invitation to her friends to assemble
at her house the same evening.
Profiting by the confusion which of necessity took place in arrangements
for the _soirée_, I left the house and took a survey of the town and
breaches. The houses which were destroyed in the Great Square, by the
fire which had taken place on the night of the assault, as also those
near the breaches, remained in the same ruined state we had left them;
but excepting this, and a few gabions which out-topped the large breach,
whose reconstruction had not been quite completed, we could find nothing
to denote the toil and labour we had sustained during our operations. An
hour sufficed for me to make my “reminiscence” of past events. It was
eight o’clock before Darcy and Adair joined me, and when we reached my
billet, we found the saloon filled by a large and varied company.
Upon entering the room, all eyes were turned towards us, for the good
hostess had said a thousand kind things in my praise, and the height and
imposing look of Darcy were in themselves sufficient to cause a _stare_;
but the elegance of Adair’s manners, who had passed the greater part of
his life on the Continent—his perfect knowledge of the Portuguese,
Spanish, Italian, and French languages—captivated all. And although he
was some fifteen or twenty years our senior, he decidedly bore away the
palm; and in less than an hour after our _entré_, he made, to my own
knowledge, five conquests; while Darcy and myself could boast of but two
each! I never felt so humiliated—from that moment I resolved that if
ever I had a son I would make him a linguist.
The ball was opened by Avandano de Alcantara, a young Portuguese
captain, belonging to the garrison of Almeida, and Señora Dolores de
Inza, a Spanish lady, a relative of the Governor. The dance was the
bolero, of which I had heard so much, but had never seen danced before.
All eyes were turned towards the spot which the youthful couple
occupied. I was an attentive spectator. Avandano danced well, and kept
his elbows—a material point by the way—in that position which no bolero
dancer should depart from (I obtained this information at Madrid), not
to raise them higher than his ear; but he danced mechanically, like one
that had been taught, and had his lesson by rule more than by heart.
Although he moved his arms with much grace, and kept the proper measure
with his feet, there was nothing inspiring in his mode of dance, or in
the manner he used his castanettes. His partner, on the contrary, had
all the fire of the true Andalusian breed. Her movements, though not
perhaps as correct as his, were spirited, and drew down thunders of
applause from the spectators; and each plaudit, as was natural, caused
her to increase her exertions. She danced beautifully, and every one
expressed by their approbation the gratification they felt by her
display; but the dance had scarcely ended when she fainted away, in
consequence, no doubt, of the exertions she had made. She soon
recovered, and would have once more joined the dance, had not her
friends dissuaded her from so foolish an act, and she was reluctantly
obliged to be a spectator for the remainder of the night. Waltzing was
continued to a late hour; but there was no lady hardy enough to attempt
the bolero after the success of Señora Dolores in this most difficult
and graceful dance. The company at length retired to their different
homes; I bade an affectionate good-night to my hostess and her
daughters; and long before they were awake in the morning, I was several
miles on the road leading to Salamanca.
On the 17th, Darcy, Adair, and I rejoined the 88th and the 3rd Division
on the heights of San Christoval. We found that we were engaged in
“covering” the siege of the forts of Salamanca, which Marshal Marmont
was most anxious to disturb. On the 23rd of June he came up against us,
tried our lines at several points, did not like the look of them, and
after some futile manœuvring on both sides of the Tormes, fell back
upon Huerta, where he remained until the 27th, and then retreated
towards the Douro.
Meanwhile our bombardment of the Salamanca forts continued, and on the
27th its effect was so powerful that one of the magazines in the
principal fort blew up, and the fire communicating with a quantity of
wood which had been incautiously placed near the magazine, the whole
fort was soon one vast fire, and a general attack by our troops taking
place at the moment, completed the disorder which naturally prevailed.
The three forts were thus taken; our loss, which was estimated by the
enemy at thirteen hundred, did not much exceed one-third of that number;
and Salamanca was freed from the enemy.
As soon as the garrison of the forts were made prisoners, they were
marched through the streets leading from the outworks to that part of
the town that had been allotted for their reception; but it was painful
to witness the degradation which these men were obliged to endure at the
hands of the excited population. Women of the lowest grade insulted
them, and some there were base enough to spit in their faces; yet the
French soldiers bore all these insults with composed—I might say, with
truth,—gentlemanly demeanour; but it is not possible for me to express
the disgust I felt at seeing brave men so treated by a base rabble who,
but a few hours before, were on the most friendly terms with these very
men. At one time, when I saw such an indignity as mud thrown at them,
and a likelihood of something more serious taking place, I expressed
myself in strong terms against the ruffians who so acted; and whether it
was that I spoke Spanish well enough to be understood, or that I suited
the action to the word by knocking down two fellows who were the
ringleaders, I know not; but from that moment the prisoners were allowed
to move on quietly.
Thus fell the forts of Salamanca. The news soon reached Marmont, and on
the 28th he retrograded towards the Douro, and on the following day
rested at Alaejos. Lord Wellington followed the enemy’s movement, who,
on the 2nd of July, passed the Douro at Tordesillas, which post was
sufficiently formidable to embarrass a general who might be desirous of
forcing it. The line of the Douro is unexceptionable; it possesses all
the requisites which a retreating army could wish for—uneven banks,
narrow fords, and abundance of woods, sufficient to mask the operations
of a large body of troops; and Marmont did all that a general could do
to render any effort to force it more than hazardous.
On the evening of the 3rd, Picton’s division was abreast of the ford of
Pollos; some cavalry tried the depth of the river, which was deemed
fordable; but the attitude of the enemy on the opposite bank was so
imposing that the idea of forcing the passage was given up. From the 3rd
until the 12th of July the two armies remained in presence of each
other, encamped on each side of a river which at times is a formidable
sheet of water, but which was then little more than an insignificant
stream. Nevertheless, although both armies kept their guards on their
respective sides of the water, and the movements of each were cautiously
watched, not one life was lost, nor one shot fired by either army.
Indeed so different from hostility was the conduct of both nations, that
the French and British lived upon the most amicable terms. If we wanted
wood for the construction of huts, our men were allowed to pass without
molestation to the French side of the river to cut it. Each day the
soldiers of both armies used to bathe together in the same stream, and
an exchange of rations, such as biscuit and rum, between the French and
our men was by no means uncommon. A stop was, however, soon to be put to
this friendly intercourse; and it having been known in both armies that
something was about to be attempted by Marmont, on the evening of the
12th of July, we shook hands with our _vis-à-vis_ neighbours and parted
the best friends.
It is a remarkable fact that the part of the river of which I am
speaking was occupied, on our side, by our 3rd Division, on the French
side by the 7th Division. The French officers said to us on parting, “We
have met, and have been for some time friends. We are about to separate,
and may meet as enemies. As 'friends' we received each other warmly—as
'enemies' we shall do the same.” In ten days afterwards the British 3rd
and the French 7th Divisions were opposed to each other at the battle of
Salamanca—and the 7th French were destroyed by the British 3rd. But I am
now about describing one of the most memorable battles ever fought by
the British army—the battle of Salamanca.