CAMPAIGN OF 1812: RETREAT TO THE LINES OF TORRES VEDRAS—WINTER OF
1812-13.
The army concentrated again under the dear Duke of Wellington, and took
up its old victorious position on the Arapiles [14 Nov.], but not with
the same prospects. Soult, an able fellow, had nearly double our force,
and so soon as our rear was open the army was in full march on Ciudad
Rodrigo. It rained in torrents, and the roads rose above the soldiers’
ankles. Our supplies were _nil_, and the sufferings of the soldiers
were considerable. Many compared this retreat with that of Coruña,
at which I then laughed, and do now. The whole distance from Ciudad
Rodrigo is only forty-four miles. On one day to Coruña we marched
thirty-seven miles, fighting every yard, and the cold was intense; on
this retreat it was cold, but no _frost_ in the atmosphere.
In crossing the Huebra [17 Nov.], at San Muños, the enemy pressed our
rear-guard very sharply, and we had some very heavy skirmishing. Sir
E. Paget, by his own obstinacy in not believing the French Dragoons
had intervened upon our line of march, was taken prisoner, and our
rear-guard (my Brigade) driven from the ford. They had to take to the
river as well as they were able, the soldiers leaping from a steep bank
into it.
The sense and strength of my wife’s Spanish horse were this day put
to the test, for she had nothing for it but to make him leap into the
river from the high bank, which the noble animal did, all fours like
a dog. The poor Padre attempted the same, with the result that he and
pony floated down the stream, and the pony was drowned, but his large
Spanish _capa_ or cloak kept him afloat, and he was dragged out by some
of our soldiers. His holiness began now to think I had not exaggerated
the hardships of a soldier’s life. When well out of the river, he
quietly asked my poor old West for a horse I always had ready to jump
on in case my own were killed. West very quietly said, “Never lend
master’s other fighting horse, not to nobody.” My wife interceded for
the poor Padre, but had the same refusal. Old West says, “We shan’t
march far; the river bothered us, it will stop the French. Our Riflemen
don’t mean to let those fellows over. Night and the walk will warm you.”
I, seeing the distress my poor wife was likely to be in, had told her
particularly to stay with the 52nd, thinking they would move into
bivouac, while the Riflemen held the bed of the river where we had
crossed, to which alone my attention was drawn. There was a ford,
however, lower down the river, to which the 52nd were suddenly ordered.
It was impassable, but in the enemy’s attempt to cross, a heavy
skirmish ensued, in which poor Captain Dawson was killed and forty or
fifty men wounded; my wife in the thick of it, and the friar.
As soon as the ford was ascertained impassable, I was sent to bring
back the 52nd, when, to my astonishment and alarm, I found my young
wife drenched with leaping in the river, as much as from the torrents
of rain above. The poor Padre might have been drawn for “the Knight of
the Woeful Countenance.” I brought the whole into our wet and miserable
bivouac, and gave some Portuguese of my Brigade a dollar for a large
fire, when, cold and shivery as she was, she laughed at the Padre. We
had nothing to eat that night, as our mules were sent on, and there
was this young and delicate creature, in the month of November in the
north of Spain, wet as a drowned rat, with nothing to eat, and no cover
from the falling deluge. Not a murmur escaped her but once. I had had
no sleep for three nights, our rear being in a very ticklish position.
In sitting by the fire I had fallen asleep, and fell between the fire
and her. She had previously been roasted on one side, a cold mud on the
other. This change of temperature awoke her, and for the only time in
her life did she cry and say I might have avoided it. She had just woke
out of her sleep, and when cold and shivery our feelings are acute. In
a moment she exclaimed, “How foolish! you must have been nice and warm,
and to know that is enough for me.”
I took the Padre a mule; the rain broke, the little rivulet would soon
be fordable, and at daylight the next morning we expected a regular
squeeze from the enemy. To amend matters, too, in place of our moving
off before daylight and getting a start, we were to follow the 1st
Division, and this did not move. General Alten sent repeatedly to poor
dear Sir William Stewart (who gave me my commission), to represent the
prospect he had of a brush which ought to be avoided, when up rides to
Charlie Beckwith, our A.Q.M.G., the Honourable Arthur Upton, saying,
“My _dear-e_ Beckwith, you could not inform me where I could get a
_paysano_ (a peasant)? The 1st Division can’t move; we have no guide.”
“Oh, d——,” says Charlie, “is that it? We will do anything to get you
out of our way. Come to Harry Smith. He has a paysano, _I know_.”
I always had three or four poor fellows in charge of a guard, so
requisite are guides with light troops. I gave him his paysano, and by
this time the sun was an hour high at least. To our delight, in place
of a _fight retreating_, which partakes neither of the pomp nor majesty
of war, but of nothing but hard and often inglorious losses, we saw the
French army dismissed, all drying their clothes, and as little in a
state to attack as we were desirous of their company. We had a clear,
cold, but unmolested long march, and fell in with some stores coming.
Yesterday the soldier’s life was one of misery, to-day all joy and
elasticity!
Just as the rear-guard had moved off the ground, I heard the voice
of a soldier familiar to me calling out, “Oh, Mr. Smith!” (The Rifle
soldiers ever called me “Mr. Smith.”) “Don’t leave me here.” I rode
up. As gallant a Rifleman as ever breathed, by name O’Donnell, lay
there with his thigh fractured the day before by a cannon-shot. I was
grieved for him. I had no means to assist him but one which I deemed
it impossible he could avail himself of—the tumbril of a gun. He
said, “Oh, I can ride.” I galloped to Ross, who literally sent back
with me a six-pounder, and took the poor fellow on the tumbril, the
gunner cheerfully giving him his place. It was grievous to see poor
O’Donnell hoisted up with his thigh smashed. We got him there, though,
and he said, “I shall do now.” He died in two hours. I shall ever feel
grateful to Ross; few men could have done it, but his guns were drawn
by noble horses, and he was, and is, a SOLDIER.
Over the bivouac fire this night the Padre became eloquent and
sentimental. “When you told me at Madrid what were the hardships and
privations of a soldier’s life in retreat, pursued by a vigorous
enemy, I considered I had a very correct idea; I now see I had no
conception whatever. But what appears to me so extraordinary is that
every one acts for himself alone. _There_ you see a poor knocked-up
soldier sitting in the mud, unable to move; _there_ come grooms with
led horses. No one asks the sick man to ride, no one sympathizes
with the other’s feelings—in short, every one appears to struggle
against difficulties for himself alone.” I could see the Padre had not
forgotten my old man West’s refusal of my second war-horse.
On the day following [19 Nov.], the weather was clear but bitterly
cold. We reached the suburbs of Ciudad Rodrigo, happy enough to know
that for this campaign the fighting was over. Although some of our
troops had a long march before them into Portugal, we Light Division
gentlemen were close at home. Many of our stoutest officers were sick,
John Bell, Charlie Eeles, etc., and we had many wounded to look after.
The Padre and my cheerful, light-hearted wife were cooking in a little
house all day long. The Padre was a capital cook, and equally good when
the food was prepared. I went out coursing every day, and some of our
regiment fellows, notwithstanding the “retreat” and its hardships, went
out duck-shooting, up to their middles in water, Jonathan Leach among
the rest.
My brigade was ordered into our old villages of Alameda, Fuentes
d’Oñoro, Guinaldo, and to march _viâ_ San Felices el chico, there to
cross the Agueda. The weather was very rainy and cold, but my vivacious
little wife was full of animation and happiness, and the Padre usually
cooking.
Fuentes d’Oñoro was to be the head-quarters of our Brigade. General
Vandeleur took up his quarters in the Curé’s house, around which in
the battle had been a sanguinary conflict. I was at the other end of
the village for the sake of an excellent stable. It belonged to the
father of the beautiful Maria Josefa, who fled from her father’s house
with a commissary, was infamously treated by him, returned to her
fathers house, and was received by the good old man kindly, although
with nearly a broken heart. Songs were sung about her all over Spain,
and she was universally condemned, pitied, and pardoned. I put the
Padre in this house, told him the tale of woe, and, to his credit, he
did everything a Christian clergyman ought, to urge on the parents
pardon of the ill-used penitent. Nor did he plead in vain, the poor
thing was forgiven by every one but herself. The Padre requested my
generous-hearted wife to see her, and this was a consolation to poor
Maria Josefa worth a general action to behold.
My billet was some little distance from the stable, and while there my
landlord married a second wife. The inhabitants of this part of Spain
are very peculiar and primitive in their manners, dress, and customs;
they are called Charras. The dress of the women is most costly, and
a marriage feast exceeds any feast that I ever saw, or that has been
described by Abyssinian Bruce. We had fun and much feasting for three
days. One of the ceremonies is that during a dance in which the bride
is, of course, the _prima donna_, her relatives and friends make her
presents, which she receives while dancing in the most graceful, though
rustic, attitudes. The presents are frequently considerable sums in
gold, or gold and silver ornaments of singular workmanship. All
relatives and friends give something, or it is regarded as a slight.
My wife, who learned to dance the rustic measure on purpose, presented
a doubloon in the most elegant and graceful manner, to the delight of
her compatriots around, although, being an Estremenha, she was regarded
by these primitive, but hospitable and generous, creatures, as half
a foreigner. The bride has a knife in her uplifted hand, upon it an
apple, and the smaller presents are presented by cutting the apple, and
placing in the cut the money or ornament.
In this part of Spain the pigs are fed most delicately; they are driven
first into woods of cork trees, which produce beautiful, sweet acorns,
then into woods of magnificent chestnut trees, the keeper getting into
the trees and flogging down the acorns and chestnuts with an immense
long whip. The pigs thus fed yield a meat different from the usual meat
of the animal. They are of a beautiful breed, become exceedingly fat,
and the season of killing them and making black puddings and sausages
for the year’s supply is one of continual feasting. The peasants also
cure the meat along each side of the backbone called _loma de puerco_.
This they do in a very peculiar manner with salt, red pepper, and of
course a _soupçon_ of garlic in a thick slice; and, notwithstanding the
little garlic, when simply boiled, it is the most delicious food, for
breakfast particularly, that even a French cook could boast of.
During our stay at Fuentes, many were the rides my wife took on her
horse Tiny to our friends in the different villages. At last, however,
an order came to our Brigade head-quarters to vacate Fuentes d’Oñoro,
as it was required for a part of the head-quarters establishment not
far off at Freneda, and we moved to Guinaldo, to our deep regret. The
Padre a few days before had taken his departure for his living at
Vicalbaro. Two most magnificent mules, and his servant, came for him.
We parted with mutual regret, but I am sorry to say he only wrote to us
twice afterwards, and once to ask a favour for some individual.
At this time I was sporting mad. The Duke had a capital pack of
fox-hounds. James Stewart, my chum, our A.Q.M.G., had an excellent
pack of harriers to which I acted as whipper-in. After a very severe
run, swimming two rivers, my Andalusian, which produced the doubloons
at Alcala, died soon after he got back to his stable. Mr. Commissary
Haines, at head-quarters, had a beautiful pack of little beagles.
I was too proud to look at them. I had the best greyhounds in the
world,—“Moro,” and some of his almost equally celebrated sons.