An Anniversary Dinner. Affair with the Enemy, and Fall of St.
Sebastian. A Building Speculation. A Fighting one, storming the
Heights of Bera. A Picture of France from the Pyrenees. Returns
after an Action. Sold by my Pay-Serjeant. A Recruit born at his
Post. Between Two Fires, a Sea and a Land one. Position of La
Rhune. My Picture taken in a Storm. Refreshing Invention for
wintry Weather.
The 25th of August, being our regimental anniversary, was observed by
the officers of our three battalions with all due conviviality. Two
trenches, calculated to accommodate seventy gentlemen's legs, were dug
in the green sward; the earth between them stood for a table, and
behind was our seat, and though the table could not boast of _all_
the delicacies of a civic entertainment, yet
"The worms they crept in, and the worms they crept out,"
As the earth almost quaked with the weight of the feast, and the enemy
certainly did, from the noise of it. For so many fellows holding such
precarious tenures of their lives could not meet together in
commemoration of such an event, without indulging in an occasional
cheer--not a whispering cheer, but one that echoed far and wide into
the French lines, and as it was a sound that had often pierced them
before, and never yet boded them any good, we heard afterwards that
they were kept standing at their arms the greater part of the night in
consequence.
At the time of Soult's last irruption into the Pyrenees, Sir Thomas
Graham had made an unsuccessful attempt to carry St. Sebastian by
storm, and having, ever since, been prosecuting the siege with
unremitting vigour, the works were now reduced to such a state as to
justify a second attempt, and our division sent forth their three
hundred volunteers to join the storming party.[3] The morning on which
we expected the assault to take place, we had turned out before
daylight, as usual, and as a thick fog hung on the French position,
which prevented our seeing them, we turned in again at the usual time,
but had scarcely done so, when the mist rode off on a passing breeze,
showing us the opposite hills bristling with their bayonets, and their
columns descending rapidly towards us. The bugles instantly sounded to
arms, and we formed on our alarm posts. We thought at first that the
attack was intended for us, but they presently began to pass the
river, a little below the village of Bera, and to advance against the
Spaniards on our left. They were covered by some mountain guns, from
which their first shell fell short, and made such a breach in their
own leading column, that we could not resist giving three cheers to
their marksman. Leaving a strong covering party to keep our division
in check at the bridge of Bera, their main body followed the
Spaniards, who, offering little opposition, continued retiring towards
St. Sebastian.
[Footnote 3: Lieutenants Percival and Hamilton commanded
those from our battalion, and were both desperately wounded.]
We remained quiet the early part of the day, under a harmless fire
from their mountain guns; but, towards the afternoon, our battalion,
with part of the forty-third, and supported by a brigade of Spaniards,
were ordered to pass by the bridge of Le Secca, and to move in a
parallel direction with the French, along the same ridge of hills.
The different flanking-posts of the enemy permitted the forty-third
and us to pass them quietly, thinking, I suppose, that it was their
interest to keep the peace; but not so with the Spaniards, whom they
kept in a regular fever, under a smart fire, the whole way. We took up
a position at dark, on a pinnacle of the same mountain, within three
or four hundred yards of them. There had been a heavy firing all day
to our left, and we heard, in the course of the night, of the fall of
St. Sebastian, as well as of the defeat of the force which we had seen
following the Spaniards in that direction.
As we always took the liberty of abusing our friends, the
commissaries, whether with or without reason, whenever we happened to
be on short allowance, it is but fair to say that when our supporting
Spanish brigadier came to compare notes with us here, we found that we
had three days' rations in the haversack against his none. He very
politely proposed to relieve us from half of ours, and to give a
receipt for it, but we told him that the trouble in carrying it was a
pleasure!
At daylight next morning we found that the enemy had altogether
disappeared from our front. The heavy rains during the past night had
rendered the Bidassoa no longer fordable, and the bridge of Bera being
the only retreat left open, it was fortunate for them that they took
advantage of it before we had time to occupy the post with a
sufficient force to defend the passage, otherwise they would have been
compelled, in all probability, to have laid down their arms.
As it was, they suffered very severely from two companies of our
second battalion, who were on piquet there. The two captains
commanding them were, however, killed in the affair.
We returned in the course of the day and resumed our post at Bera, the
enemy continuing to hold theirs beyond it.
The ensuing month passed by, without producing the slightest novelty,
and we began to get heartily tired of our situation. Our souls, in
fact, were strung for war, and peace afforded no enjoyment, unless the
place did, and there was none to be found in a valley of the Pyrenees,
which the ravages of contending armies had reduced to a desert. The
labours of the French on the opposite mountain had, in the first
instance, been confined to fortification; but, as the season advanced,
they seemed to think that the branch of a tree, or a sheet of
canvass, was too slender a barrier between them and a frosty night,
and their fortified camp was gradually becoming a fortified town, of
regular brick and mortar. Though we were living under the influence of
the same sky, we did not think it necessary to give ourselves the same
trouble, but reasoned on their proceedings like philosophers, and
calculated, from the aspect of the times, that there was a probability
of a speedy transfer of property, and that it might still be reserved
for us to give their town a name; nor were we disappointed. Late on
the night of the 7th of October, Colonel Barnard arrived from
head-quarters, with the intelligence that the next was to be the day
of trial. Accordingly, on the morning of the 8th, the fourth division
came up to support us, and we immediately marched down to the foot of
the enemy's position, shook off our knapsacks before their faces, and
went at them.
The action commenced by five companies of our third battalion
advancing, under Colonel Ross, to dislodge the enemy from a hill which
they occupied in front of their entrenchments; and there never was a
movement more beautifully executed, for they walked quietly and
steadily up, and swept them regularly off without firing a single shot
until the enemy had turned their backs, when they then served them out
with a most destructive discharge. The movement excited the admiration
of all who witnessed it, and added another laurel to the already
crowded wreath which adorned the name of that distinguished officer.
At the first look of the enemy's position, it appeared as if our
brigade had got the most difficult task to perform; but, as the
capture of this hill showed us a way round the flank of their
entrenchments, we carried one after the other, until we finally gained
the summit, with very little loss. Our second brigade, however, were
obliged to take "the bull by the horns," on their side, and suffered
more severely; but they rushed at every thing with a determination
that defied resistance, carrying redoubt after redoubt at the point of
the bayonet, until they finally joined us on the summit of the
mountain, with three hundred prisoners in their possession.
We now found ourselves firmly established within the French territory,
with a prospect before us that was truly refreshing, considering that
we had not seen the sea for three years, and that our views, for
months, had been confined to fogs and the peaks of mountains. On our
left, the Bay of Biscay lay extended as far as the horizon, while
several of our ships of war were seen sporting upon her bosom. Beneath
us lay the pretty little town of St. Jean de Luz, which looked as if
it had just been framed out of the Lilliputian scenery of a toy-shop.
The town of Bayonne, too, was visible in the distance; and the view to
the right embraced a beautiful well-wooded country, thickly studded
with towns and villages, as far as the eye could reach.
Sir Thomas Graham, with the left wing of the army, had, the same
morning, passed the Bidassoa, and established them, also, within the
French boundary. A brigade of Spaniards, on our right, had made a
simultaneous attack on La Rhune, the highest mountain on this part of
the Pyrenees, and which, since our last advance, was properly now a
part of our position. The enemy, however, refused to quit it; and the
firing between them did not cease until long after dark.
The affair in which we were engaged terminated, properly speaking,
when we had expelled the enemy from the mountain; but some of our
straggling skirmishers continued to follow the retiring foe into the
valley beyond, with a view, no doubt, of seeing what a French house
contained.
Lord Wellington, preparatory to this movement, had issued an order
requiring that private property, of every kind, should be strictly
respected; but we had been so long at war with France, that our men
had been accustomed to look upon them as their natural enemies, and
could not, at first, divest themselves of the idea that they had not a
right to partake of the good things abounding about the cottage-doors.
Our commandant, however, was determined to see the order rigidly
enforced, and it was, therefore, highly amusing to watch the return of
the depredators. The first who made his appearance was a bugler,
carrying a goose, which, after he had been well beaten about the head
with it, was transferred to the provost-marshal. The next was a
soldier, with a calf; the soldier was immediately sent to the
quarter-guard, and the calf to the provost-marshal. He was followed by
another soldier, mounted on a horse, who were, also, both consigned to
the same keeping; but, on the soldier stating that he had only got the
horse in charge from a volunteer, who was at that time attached to the
regiment, he was set at liberty. Presently the volunteer himself came
up, and, not observing the colonel lying on the grass, called out
among the soldiers, "Who is the ---- rascal that sent my horse to the
provost-marshal?" "It was I!" said the colonel, to the utter confusion
of the querist. Our chief was a good deal nettled at these
irregularities; and, some time after, on going to his tent, which was
pitched between the roofless walls of a house, conceive his
astonishment at finding the calf and the goose hanging in his own
larder! He looked serious for a moment, but, on receiving an
explanation, and after the row he had made about them, the thing was
too ridiculous, and he burst out laughing. It is due to all concerned
to state that they had, at last, been honestly come by, for I, as one
of his messmates, had purchased the goose from the proper quarter, and
another had done the same by the calf.
Not anticipating this day's fight, I had given my pay-serjeant
twenty-five guineas, the day before, to distribute among the company;
and I did not discover, until too late, that he had neglected to do
it, as he disappeared in the course of the action, and was never
afterwards heard of. If he was killed, or taken prisoner, he must have
been a prize to somebody, though he left me a blank.
Among other incidents of the day, one of our men had a son and heir
presented to him by his Portuguese wife, soon after the action. She
had been taken in labour while ascending the mountain; but it did not
seem to interfere with her proceedings in the least, for she, and her
child, and her donkey, came all three screeching into the camp,
immediately after, telling the news, as if it had been something very
extraordinary, and none of them a bit the worse.
On the morning of the 9th, we turned out, as usual, an hour before
daylight. The sound of musketry, to our right, in our own hemisphere,
announced that the French and Spaniards had resumed their unfinished
argument of last night, relative to the occupation of La Rhune; while,
at the same time, "from our throne of clouds," we had an opportunity
of contemplating, with some astonishment, the proceedings of the
nether world. A French ship of war, considering St. Jean de Luz no
longer a free port, had endeavoured, under cover of the night, to
steal alongshore to Bayonne; and, when daylight broke, they had an
opportunity of seeing that they were not only within sight of their
port, but within sight of a British gun-brig, and, if they entertained
any doubts as to which of the two was nearest, their minds were
quickly relieved, on that point, by finding that they were not within
reach of their port, and strictly within reach of the _guns_ of the
brig, while two British frigates were bearing down with a press of
canvass. The Frenchman returned a few broadsides; he was double the
size of the one opposed to him, but, conceiving his case to be
hopeless, he at length set fire to the ship, and took to his boats. We
watched the progress of the flames until she finally blew up, and
disappeared in a column of smoke. The boats of our gun-brig were
afterwards seen employed in picking up the odds and ends.
Our friends, the Spaniards, I have no doubt, would have been very glad
to have got rid of their opponents in the same kind of way, either by
their going without the mountain, or by their taking it with them. But
the mountain stood, and the French stood, until we began to wish the
mountain, the French, and the Spaniards at the devil; for, although we
knew that the affair between them was a matter of no consequence
whichever way it went, yet it was impossible for us to feel quite at
ease, while a fight was going on so near; it was, therefore, a great
relief when, in the afternoon, a few companies of our second brigade
were sent to their assistance, as the French then retired without
firing another shot. Between the French and us there was no humbug, it
was either peace or war. The war, on both sides, was conducted on the
grand scale, and, by a tacit sort of understanding, we never teased
each other unnecessarily.
The French, after leaving La Rhune, established their advanced post on
Petite La Rhune, a mountain that stood as high as most of its
neighbours; but, as its name betokens, it was but a child to its
gigantic namesake, of which it seemed as if it had, at a former
period, formed a part; but, having been shaken off, like a useless
_galloche_, it now stood gaping, open-mouthed, at the place it had
left, (and which had now become our advanced post,) while the enemy
proceeded to furnish its jaws with a set of teeth, or, in other words,
to face it with breast-works, &c. a measure which they invariably had
recourse to in every new position.
Encamped on the face of La Rhune, we remained a whole month idle
spectators of their preparations, and dearly longing for the day that
should afford us an opportunity of penetrating into the more
hospitable-looking low country beyond them; for the weather had become
excessively cold, and our camp stood exposed to the utmost fury of the
almost nightly tempest. Oft have I, in the middle of the night, awoke
from a sound sleep, and found my tent on the point of disappearing in
the air, like a balloon; and, leaving my warm blankets, been obliged
to snatch the mallet, and rush out in the midst of a hailstorm, to peg
it down. I think that I now see myself looking like one of those gay
creatures of the elements who dwelt (as Shakspeare has it) among the
rainbows!
By way of contributing to the warmth of my tent, I dug a hole inside,
which I arranged as a fire-place, carrying the smoke underneath the
walls, and building a turf-chimney outside. I was not long in proving
the experiment, and, finding that it went exceedingly well, I was not
a little vain of the invention. However, it came on to rain very hard
while I was dining at a neighbouring tent, and, on my return to my
own, I found the fire not only extinguished, but a fountain playing
from the same place, up to the roof, watering my bed and baggage, and
all sides of it, most refreshingly. This showed me, at the expense of
my night's repose, that the rain oozed through the thin spongy surface
of earth, and, in particular places, rushed down in torrents between
the earth and the rock which it covered; and any incision in the
former was sure to produce a fountain.
It is very singular that, notwithstanding our exposure to all the
severities of the worst of weather, that we had not a single sick man
in the battalion while we remained there.