Campaign of 1811 opens. Massena's Retreat. Wretched Condition of
the Inhabitants on the Line of March. Affairs with the Enemy,
near Pombal. Description of a Bivouac. Action near Redinha.
Destruction of Condacia and Action near it. Burning of the
Village of Illama, and Misery of its Inhabitants. Action at Foz
D'Aronce. Confidential Servants with Donkey-Assistants.
The campaign of 1811 commenced on the 6th of March, by the retreat of
the enemy from Santarem.
Lord Wellington seemed to be perfectly acquainted with their
intentions, for he sent to apprize our piquets, the evening before,
that they were going off, and to desire that they should feel for them
occasionally during the night, and give the earliest information of
their having started. It was not, however, until daylight that we
were quite certain of their having gone, and our division was
instantly put in motion after them, passing through the town of
Santarem, around which their camp fires were still burning.
Santarem is finely situated, and probably had been a handsome town. I
had never seen it in prosperity, and it now looked like a city of the
plague, represented by empty dogs and empty houses; and, but for the
tolling of a convent-bell by some unseen hand, its appearance was
altogether inhuman.
We halted for the night near Pyrnes. This little town, and the few
wretched inhabitants who had been induced to remain in it under the
faithless promises of the French generals, shewed fearful signs of a
late visit from a barbarous and merciless foe. Young women were lying
in their houses brutally violated,--the streets were strewed with
broken furniture, intermixed with the putrid carcasses of murdered
peasants, mules, and donkeys, and every description of filth, that
filled the air with pestilential nausea. The few starved male
inhabitants who were stalking amid the wreck of their friends and
property, looked like so many skeletons who had been permitted to
leave their graves for the purpose of taking vengeance on their
oppressors, and the mangled body of every Frenchman who was
unfortunate or imprudent enough to stray from his column, shewed how
religiously they performed their mission.
March 8th.--We overtook their rear guard this evening, snugly put up
for the night in a little village, the name of which I do not
recollect, but a couple of six pounders, supported by a few of our
rifles, induced them to extend their walk.
March 9th.--While moving along the road this morning, we found a man,
who had deserted from us a short time before, in the uniform of a
French dragoon, with his head laid open by one of our bullets. He was
still alive, exciting any thing but sympathy among his former
associates. Towards the afternoon we found the enemy in force, on the
plain in front of Pombal, where we exchanged some shots.
March 11th.--They retired yesterday to the heights behind Pombal, with
their advanced posts occupying the town and moorish castle, which our
battalion, assisted by some Cacadores, attacked this morning, and
drove them from with considerable loss. Dispositions were then made
for a general attack on their position, but the other divisions of our
army did not arrive until too late in the evening. We bivouacked for
the night in a ploughed field, under the castle, with our sentries
within pistol shot, while it rained in torrents.
As it is possible that some of my readers might never have had the
misfortune to experience the comforts of a bivouac, and as the one
which I am now in, contains but a small quantity of sleep, I shall
devote a waking hour for their edification.
When a regiment arrives at its ground for the night, it is formed in
columns of companies, at full, half, or quarter distance, according
to the space which circumstances will permit it to occupy. The officer
commanding each company then receives his orders; and, after
communicating whatever may be necessary to the men, he desires them to
"pile arms, and make themselves comfortable for the night." Now, I
pray thee, most sanguine reader, suffer not thy fervid imagination to
transport thee into elysian fields at the pleasing exhortation
conveyed in the concluding part of the captain's address, but rest
thee contentedly in the one where it is made, which in all probability
is a ploughed one, and that, too, in a state of preparation to take a
model of thy very beautiful person, under the melting influence of a
shower of rain. The soldiers of each company have a hereditary claim
to the ground next to their arms, as have their officers to a wider
range on the same line, limited to the end of a bugle sound, if not by
a neighbouring corps, or one that is not neighbourly, for the nearer a
man is to his enemy, the nearer he likes to be to his friends. Suffice
it, that each individual knows his place as well as if he had been
born on the estate, and takes immediate possession accordingly. In a
ploughed or a stubble field there is scarcely a choice of quarters;
but, whenever there is a sprinkling of trees, it is always an object
to secure a good one, as it affords shelter from the sun by day and
the dews by night, besides being a sort of home or sign post for a
group of officers, as denoting the best place of entertainment; for
they hang their spare clothing and accoutrements among the branches,
barricade themselves on each side with their saddles, canteens, and
portmanteaus, and, with a blazing fire in their front, they indulge,
according to their various humours, in a complete state of
gipsyfication.
There are several degrees of comfort to be reckoned in a bivouac, two
of which will suffice.
The first, and worst, is to arrive at the end of a cold wet day, too
dark to see your ground, and too near the enemy to be permitted to
unpack the knapsacks or to take off accoutrements; where,
unincumbered with baggage or eatables of any kind, you have the
consolation of knowing that things are now at their worst, and that
any change must be for the better. You keep yourself alive for a
while, in collecting material to feed your fire with. You take a smell
at your empty calibash, which recalls to your remembrance the
delicious flavour of its last drop of wine. You curse your servant for
not having contrived to send you something or other from the baggage,
(though you know that it was impossible). You then damn the enemy for
being so near you, though probably, as in the present instance, it was
you that came so near them. And, finally, you take a whiff at the end
of a cigar, if you have one, and keep grumbling through the smoke,
like distant thunder through a cloud, until you tumble into a most
warlike sleep.
The next, and most common one, is, when you are not required to look
quite so sharp, and when the light baggage and provisions come in at
the heel of the regiment. If it is early in the day, the first thing
to be done is to make some tea, the most sovereign restorative for
jaded spirits. We then proceed to our various duties. The officers of
each company form a mess of themselves. One remains in camp to attend
to the duties of the regiment; a second attends to the mess: he goes
to the regimental butcher, and bespeaks a portion of the only
purchaseable commodities, hearts, livers, and kidneys; and also to see
whether he cannot _do_ the commissary out of a few extra biscuit, or a
canteen of brandy; and the remainder are gentlemen at large for the
day. But while they go hunting among the neighbouring regiments for
news, and the neighbouring houses for curiosity, they have always an
eye to their mess, and omit no opportunity of adding to the general
stock.
Dinner hour, for fear of accidents, is always the hour when dinner can
be got ready; and the 14th section of the articles of war is always
most rigidly attended to, by every good officer parading himself round
the camp-kettle at the time fixed, with his haversack in his hand. A
haversack on service is a sort of dumb waiter. The mess have a good
many things in common, but the contents of the haversack are
exclusively the property of its owner; and a well regulated one ought
never to be without the following furniture, unless when the
perishable part is consumed, in consequence of every other means of
supply having failed, viz. a couple of biscuit, a sausage, a little
tea and sugar, a knife, fork, and spoon, a tin cup, (which answers to
the names of _tea-cup_, _soup-plate_, _wine-glass_, and _tumbler_,) a
pair of socks, a piece of soap, a tooth-brush, towel, and comb, and
half a dozen cigars.
After doing justice to the dinner, if we feel in a humour for
additional society, we transfer ourselves to some neighbouring mess,
taking our cups, and whatever we mean to drink, along with us, for in
those times there is nothing to be expected from our friends beyond
the pleasure of their conversation: and, finally, we retire to rest.
To avoid inconvenience by the tossing off of the bed-clothes, each
officer has a blanket sewed up at the sides, like a sack, into which
he scrambles, and, with a green sod or a smooth stone for a pillow,
composes himself to sleep; and, under such a glorious reflecting
canopy as the heavens, it would be a subject of mortification to an
astronomer to see the celerity with which he tumbles into it. Habit
gives endurance, and fatigue is the best nightcap; no matter that the
veteran's countenance is alternately stormed with torrents of rain,
heavy dews, and hoar-frosts; no matter that his ears are assailed by a
million mouths of chattering locusts, and by some villanous donkey,
who every half hour pitches a _bray_ note, which, as a congregation of
presbyterians follow their clerk, is instantly taken up by every mule
and donkey in the army, and sent echoing from regiment to regiment,
over hill and valley, until it dies away in the distance; no matter
that the scorpion is lurking beneath his pillow, the snake winding his
slimy way by his side, and the lizard galloping over his face, wiping
his eyes with its long cold tail.
All are unheeded, until the warning voice of the brazen instrument
sounds to arms. Strange it is, that the ear which is impervious to
what would disturb the rest of the world besides, should alone be
alive to one, and that, too, a sound which is likely to sooth the
sleep of the citizens, or at most, to set them dreaming of their
loves. But so it is: the first note of the melodious bugle places the
soldier on his legs, like lightning; when, muttering a few curses at
the unseasonableness of the hour, he plants himself on his alarm post,
without knowing or caring about the cause.
Such is a bivouac; and our sleep-breaker having just sounded, the
reader will find what occurred, by reading on.
March 12th.--We stood to our arms before daylight. Finding that the
enemy had quitted the position in our front, we proceeded to follow
them; and had not gone far before we heard the usual morning's
salutation, of a couple of shots, between their rear and our advanced
guard. On driving in their outposts, we found their whole army drawn
out on the plain, near Redinha, and instantly quarrelled with them on
a large scale.
As every body has read Waverley and the Scottish Chiefs, and knows
that one battle is just like another, inasmuch as they always conclude
by one or both sides running away; and as it is nothing to me what
this or t'other regiment did, nor do I care three buttons what this or
t'other person thinks he did, I shall limit all my descriptions to
such events as immediately concerned the important personage most
interested in this history.
Be it known then, that I was one of a crowd of skirmishers who were
enabling the French ones to carry the news of their own defeat through
a thick wood, at an infantry canter, when I found myself all at once
within a few yards of one of their regiments in line, which opened
such a fire, that had I not, rifleman like, taken instant advantage of
the cover of a good fir tree, my name would have unquestionably been
transmitted to posterity by that night's gazette. And, however
opposed it may be to the usual system of drill, I will maintain, from
that day's experience, that the cleverest method of teaching a recruit
to stand at attention, is to place him behind a tree and fire balls at
him; as, had our late worthy disciplinarian, Sir David Dundas,
himself, been looking on, I think that even _he_ must have admitted
that he never saw any one stand so fiercely upright as I did behind
mine, while the balls were rapping into it as fast as if a fellow had
been hammering a nail on the opposite side, not to mention the numbers
that were whistling past, within the eighth of an inch of every part
of my body, both before and behind, particularly in the vicinity of my
nose, for which the upper part of the tree could barely afford
protection.
This was a last and a desperate stand made by their rear-guard, for
their own safety, immediately above the town, as their sole chance of
escape depended upon their being able to hold the post until the only
bridge across the river was clear of the other fugitives. But they
could not hold it long enough; for, while we were undergoing a
temporary sort of purgatory in their front, our comrades went working
round their flanks, which quickly sent them flying, with us
intermixed, at full cry, down the streets.
Whether in love or war, I have always considered that the pursuer has
a decided advantage over the pursued. In the first, he may gain and
cannot lose; but, in the latter, when one sees his enemy at full speed
before him, one has such a peculiar conscious sort of feeling that he
is on the right side, that I would not exchange places for any
consideration.
When we reached the bridge, the scene became exceedingly interesting,
for it was choked up by the fugitives who were, as usual, impeding
each other's progress, and we did not find that the application of our
swords to those nearest to us tended at all towards lessening their
disorder, for it induced about a hundred of them to rush into an
adjoining house for shelter, but that was netting regularly out of the
frying-pan into the fire, for the house happened to be really in
flames, and too hot to hold them, so that the same hundred were
quickly seen unkennelling again, half-cooked, into the very jaws of
their consumers.
John Bull, however, is not a blood-thirsty person, so that those who
could not better themselves, had only to submit to a simple transfer
of personal property to ensure his protection. We, consequently, made
many prisoners at the bridge, and followed their army about a league
beyond it, keeping up a flying fight until dark.
Just as Mr. Simmons and myself had crossed the river, and were talking
over the events of the day, not a yard asunder, there was a Portuguese
soldier in the act of passing between us, when a cannon-ball plunged
into his belly--his head doubled down to his feet, and he stood for a
moment in that posture before he rolled over a lifeless lump.
March 13th.--Arrived on the hill above Condacia in time to see that
handsome little town in flames. Every species of barbarity continued
to mark the enemy's retreating steps. They burnt every town or
village through which they passed, and if we entered a church, which,
by accident, had been spared, it was to see the murdered bodies of the
peasantry on the altar.
While Lord Wellington, with his staff, was on a hill a little in front
of us, waiting the result of a flank-movement which he had directed,
some of the enemy's sharpshooters stole, unperceived, very near to him
and began firing, but, fortunately, without effect. We immediately
detached a few of ours to meet them, but the others ran off on their
approach.
We lay by our arms until towards evening, when the enemy withdrew a
short distance behind Condacia, and we closed up to them. There was a
continued popping between the advanced posts all night.
March 14th.--Finding, at daylight, that the enemy still continued to
hold the strong ground before us, some divisions of the army were sent
to turn their flanks, while ours attacked them in front.
We drove them from one strong hold to another, over a large track of
very difficult country, mountainous and rocky, and thickly intersected
with stone walls, and were involved in one continued hard skirmish
from daylight until dark. This was the most harassing day's fighting
that I ever experienced.
Daylight left the two armies looking at each other, near the village
of Illama. The smoking roofs of the houses showed that the French had
just quitted and, as usual, set fire to it, when the company to which
I belonged was ordered on piquet there for the night. After posting
our sentries, my brother-officer and myself had the curiosity to look
into a house, and were shocked to find in it a mother and her child
dead, and the father, with three more, living, but so much reduced by
famine as to be unable to remove themselves from the flames. We
carried them into the open air, and offered the old man our few
remaining crumbs of biscuit, but he told us that he was too far gone
to benefit by them, and begged that we would give them to his
children. We lost no time in examining such of the other houses as
were yet safe to enter, and rescued many more individuals from one
horrible death, probably to reserve them for another equally so, and
more lingering, as we had nothing to give them, and marched at
daylight the following morning.
Our post that night was one of terrific grandeur. The hills behind
were in a blaze of light with the British camp-fires, as were those in
our front with the French ones. Both hills were abrupt and lofty, not
above eight hundred yards asunder, and we were in the burning village
in the valley between. The roofs of houses every instant falling in,
and the sparks and flames ascending to the clouds. The streets were
strewed with the dying and the dead,--some had been murdered and some
killed in action, which, together with the half-famished wretches whom
we had saved from burning, contributed in making it a scene which was
well-calculated to shake a stout heart, as was proved in the instance
of one of our sentries, a well known "devil-may-care" sort of fellow.
I know not what appearances the burning rafters might have reflected
on the neighbouring trees at the time, but he had not been long on his
post before he came running into the piquet, and swore, by all the
saints in the calendar, that he saw six dead Frenchmen advancing upon
him with hatchets over their shoulders!
We found by the buttons on the coats of some of the fallen foe, that
we had this day been opposed to the French ninety-fifth regiment, (the
same number as we were then,) and I cut off several of them, which I
preserved as trophies.
March 15th.--We overtook the enemy a little before dark this
afternoon. They were drawn up behind the Ceira, at Fez D'Aronce, with
their rear-guard, under Marshal Ney, imprudently posted on our side of
the river, a circumstance which Lord Wellington took immediate
advantage of; and, by a furious attack, dislodged them, in such
confusion, that they blew up the bridge before half of their own
people had time to get over. Those who were thereby left behind, not
choosing to put themselves to the pain of being shot, took to the
river, which received them so hospitably that few of them ever quitted
it. Their loss, on this occasion, must have been very great, and, we
understood, at the time, that Ney had been sent to France, in
disgrace, in consequence of it.
About the middle of the action, I observed some inexperienced light
troops rushing up a deep road-way to certain destruction, and ran to
warn them out of it, but I only arrived in time to partake the reward
of their indiscretion, for I was instantly struck with a musket-ball
above the left ear, which deposited me, at full length, in the mud.
I know not how long I lay insensible, but, on recovering, my first
_feeling_ was for my head, to ascertain if any part of it was still
standing, for it appeared to me as if nothing remained above the
mouth; but, after repeated applications of all my fingers and thumbs
to the doubtful parts, I, at length, proved to myself, satisfactorily,
that it had rather increased than diminished by the concussion; and,
jumping on my legs, and hearing, by the whistling of the balls from
both sides, that the rascals who had got me into the scrape had been
driven back and left me there, I snatched my cap, which had saved my
life, and which had been spun off my head to the distance of ten or
twelve yards, and joined them, a short distance in the rear, when one
of them, a soldier of the sixtieth, came and told me that an officer
of ours had been killed, a short time before, pointing to the spot
where I myself had fallen, and that he had tried to take his jacket
off, but that the advance of the enemy had prevented him. I told him
that I was the one that had been killed, and that I was deucedly
obliged to him for his _kind_ intentions, while I felt still more so
to the enemy for their timely advance, otherwise, I have no doubt, but
my _friend_ would have taken a fancy to my trousers also, for I found
that he had absolutely unbuttoned my jacket.
There is nothing so gratifying to frail mortality as a good dinner
when most wanted and least expected. It was perfectly dark before the
action finished, but, on going to take advantage of the fires which
the enemy had evacuated, we found their soup-kettles in full
operation, and every man's mess of biscuit lying beside them, in
stockings, as was the French mode of carrying them; and it is needless
to say how unceremoniously we proceeded to do the honours of the
feast. It ever after became a saying among the soldiers, whenever they
were on short allowance, "well, d--n my eyes, we must either fall in
with the French or the commissary to-day, I don't care which."
As our baggage was always in the rear on occasions of this kind, the
officers of each company had a Portuguese boy, in charge of a donkey,
on whom their little comforts depended. He carried our boat-cloaks and
blankets, was provided with a small pig-skin for wine, a canteen for
spirits, a small quantity of tea and sugar, a goat tied to the donkey,
and two or three dollars in his pocket, for the purchase of bread,
butter, or any other luxury which good fortune might throw in his way
in the course of the day's march. We were never very scrupulous in
exacting information regarding the source of his supplies; so that he
had nothing to dread from our wrath, unless he had the misfortune to
make his appearance empty-handed. They were singularly faithful and
intelligent in making their way to us every evening, under the most
difficult circumstances. This was the only night during Massena's
retreat in which ours failed to find us; and, wandering the greater
part of the night in the intricate maze of camp-fires, it appeared
that he slept, after all, among some dragoons, within twenty yards of
us.