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without indicating the existence of any discipline amongst them, bespoke no want of self-confidence in individuals. Their whole appearance, indeed, for they could not exceed sixty or eighty men, reminded me forcibly of atroop of bandits; and the resemblance was not the less striking, that they moved to the sound, not of trumpets or other martial music, but of their own voices. They were singing a wild air as they passed, in which sometimes one chanted by himself, then two or three chimed in, and, by and by, the whole squadron joined in a very musical and spirited chorus.

The other object which divided my attention with these bold-looking, but lawless warriors, was about half a dozen dead bodies, which the flow of the tide brought at this moment in contact with the pontoons. They were quite naked, bleached perfectly white, and so far had yielded to the operation of decay, that they floated like rags of linen on the surface of the water. Perhaps these were some of our own men who had fallen in the passage of the river upwards of eight weeks ago; or perhaps they were the bodies of such of the French soldiers as had perished in their retreat after one of Soult's desperate, but fruitless efforts, to relieve the garrison in St Sebastian's. Who, or what they were, I had no means of ascertaining, nor was it of much consequence; to whatever nation they had once belonged, they were now food for the fishes; and to the fishes they were left, no one dreaming that it was requisite to pull them to land, or to rob one set of reptiles of their prey only to feed another.

Such is a summary of the events which befell me in a morning's ride from the cantonments at Gauthory, to the town of Irun. After crossing the river, my progress was direct, and of little interest. I journeyed, indeed, amid scenes all of them familiar, and therefore, in some degree, having a elaim upon my own notice; but I neither saw nor met with any object worth describing to my reader. It was a little past the hour of noon, when my horse's hoofs clanked upon the pavement of Irun..

I found that city just recovering from the bustle which the departure of a corps of twenty thousand Spanish infantry may be supposed to have produced. This vast body of men had,

it appeared, behaved so badly in the action of the ninth of November, that Lord Wellington was induced to order them to the rear in disgrace; and they had remained in quarters in Irun and the neighbourhood, till on the day preceding my arrival, when they were again permitted to join the army. By whom they were commanded on the day of their shame, I have totally forgotten; nor will I cast a slur upon the reputation of any general officer, by naming one at random.

Notwithstanding the departure of so great a multitude, I found the place far from deserted either by military or civil inhabitants. A garrison of two or three thousand soldiers was still there; a corps, I believe, of militia, or national guards; whilst few of the houses were unoccupied, though whether by their rightful occupants or not, I take it not upon me to determine. One thing, however, I perfectly recollect, and that is, the extreme incivility and absence of all hospitality which distinguished them. Whether it was that the troops so long quartered amongst them had filled them with hatred of my countrymen, or whether that jealousy which the Spanish people have uni formly felt, and which, in spite of all that Lord Nugent and Sir Robert Wilson may assert to the contrary, they feel, even now, towards the English, was, of its own accord, beginning to gather strength, I cannot tell; but I well remember that it was with some difficulty I persuaded the keeper of an inn to put up my own and my servant's horses in his stable; and with still greater difficulty that I could prevail upon him to dress an omelet for my dinner. Nor was this all; my journey, be it known, had been undertaken not from curiosity alone, but in the hope of laying in a stock of coffee, cheese, tea, &c., at a cheap rate. But every effort to obtain these was fruitless, the merchants sulkily refusing to deal with me, except on the most exorbitant terms. I was not sorry, under such circumstances, when, having finished my omelet, and baited and rested my horses, I turned my back upon Irun, and took once more a direction towards the front.

I would lay before my readers a detail of another excursion executed on Christmas-day, to St Jean de Luz, were I not fully aware that there are

few among them who are not as well acquainted as myself with the circumstances attending the celebration of that festival in a Roman Catholic country. On the present occasion, all things were done with as much pomp and show as the state of the city, filled with hostile battalions, and more than half-deserted by its inhabitants and priesthood, would permit. For my own part, I viewed the whole not with levity, certainly, but as certainly without devotion; the entire scene appearing to me better calculated to amuse the external senses, and dazzle the imagination, than to stir up the deeper and more rational sensations of piety. I returned home, nevertheless, well pleased with the mode in which the morning had been spent ; and, joining a party of some ten or twelve who had clubbed their rations for the sake of setting forth a piece of roastbeef worthy of the occasion, I passed my evening not less agreeably than I had passed the morning.

Among other events during our sojourn at Gauthory, a sale of the effects of such of our brother-officers as had fallen in the late battles, took place. On such occasions, the serjeant-major generally acts the part of auctioneer, and a strange compound of good and bad feeling accompanies the progress of the auction. In every party of men, there will always be some whose thoughts, centring entirely in self, regard everything as commendable, or the reverse, solely as it increases their enjoyments, or diminishes them. Even the sale of the clothes and accoutrements of one who but a few weeks or days before was their living, and perhaps favourite companion, furnishes to such men food for mirth; and I am sorry to say, that during the sale of which I now speak, more laughter was heard than redounded to the credit of those who joined in, or produced it. In passing this censure upon others, I mean not to exclude myself-by no means. I fear that few laughed more heartily than I, when shirts with nine tails, or no tails at all, were held up against the sun by the facetious auctioneer; and when sundry pairs of trowsers were pressed upon our notice as well adapted for summer-wear, inasmuch as their numerous apertures promised to admit a free current of air to cool the blood. But, with one or two exVOL. XVIII.

ceptions, I must say, that there was not a man present who thought of the former owners of these tail-less shirts without affection, and who would not have willingly given the full value of the shirts themselves, could that sum have redeemed them from the power of the grave. This sale, however, acted as a sort of warning to me. Though my wardrobe was in as good condition as that of most men, I chose not to have it or its owner made the subject of a joke, so I inserted among my few memoranda, a request that no article of mine should be put up to auction, but that all should be given, in case I fell, as expressly appointed.

I have said, that the usual means of defeating ennui, namely, shooting, coursing, and fishing, were resorted to by Graham and myself, whilst we inhabited these cantonments. Among other experiments, we strolled down one lovely morning towards the sea, with the hope of catching some fish for our dinner. In that hope we were disappointed, but the exquisite beauty of the marine view to which our walk introduced us, amply made amends for the absence of sport. It was one of those soft and enervating days which even in England we sometimes meet with, during the latter weeks of December, and which, in the south of France, are very frequent at that sea

son.

The sun was shining brightly and warmly, not a breath of air was astir, and the only sound distinguishable by us, who stood on the summit of the cliff, was the gentle and unceasing murmur of tiny waves, as they threw themselves upon the shingle. The extent of waters upon which we gazed, was bounded on the right by the head-lands at the mouth of the Adour, and on the left by those near Passages. Before us the waste seemed interminable, and I am not sure that it was the less sublime because not a boat or vessel of any description could be descried upon it. At such moments as these, and when contemplating such a scene, it is hardly possible for any man to hinder his thoughts from wandering away from the objects immediately around him, to the land of his nativity, and the home of his fathers. I do not recollect any hour of my life during which the thought of home came more powerfully across me than the present. Perhaps, indeed, the season of the year had some effect in

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producing these thoughts. It was the season of mirth and festivity-of licensed uproar and innocent irregularity; and cold and heartless must he be who remembers not his home, how ever far removed from him, when that season returns. I confess that the idea of mine brought something like moisture into my eyes, of which I had then no cause to be ashamed, and the remembrance of which produces in me no sense of shame even now.

The walk towards the sea became from this time my favourite, but it was not my only one. Attended by my faithful spaniel, (a little animal, by the way, which never deserted me even in battle,) I wandered with a gun across my shoulder over a great extent of country, and in all directions. I found the scenery cautiful, but far less beautiful than I had expected to find it in the south of France. There was no want of wood, it is true; and some fields, or rather fields lying fallow, were intermixed, in fair proportion, with green meadows, and sloping downs. But there was nothing striking or romantic anywhere, except in the bold boundary of the Pyrenees, now two aty miles distant. I observed, however, that there was no want of chateau and gentlemen's seats. These were scattered about in considerable numbers, as if this had been a favourite resort of those few among the French gentry who prefer the quiet of the country to the bustle and hurry of Paris Some of these chateaux were, moreover, exceedingly elegant in their appearance, and indicated from that, as well as from their extent, that they belonged to men of higher rank than the Mayor of Biaritz; but the generality were of a description which bespoke their owners as belonging to the class of wealthy merchants who supported their town-houses and warerooms in Bayonne, or perhaps in Bourdeaux. But all were thoroughly ransacked. Over them, as well as over the houses in our rear, the storm of rapine had passed, leaving its usual traces of dilapidation and ruin behind.

It is needless to continue a narra

tive of such events. Thus passed several weeks, the business of one day resembling, in almost every respect, the business of another. Whenever the weather would permit, I made a point of living out of doors; when the contrary was the case, I adopted the ordinary expedients to kill time with. Nor were we, all this while, without a few occurrences calculated to hinder our forgetting that we really were in an enemy's country, and at the seat of war. The bloody flag was more than once hoisted on the tower of the church of Arcanques, as a signal that the French troops were in motion, and we, in our turn, stood to arms. But of such alarms almost all proved to be groundless, and those which were not intendedly so, might as well have been omitted. The fact was that Soult, having been called upon at this time to detach some divisions of his veteran soldiers to the assistance of Napoleon, already hard pressed by the allies in the north, was under the necessity of impressing into his service every male capable of bearing arms, who was not absolutely required to cultivate the soil. The entire winter was accordingly spent by him in training the conscripts to the use of arms. He marched and countermarched them from place to place, that they might learn to move with celerity and in order. He set up targets for them to fire at, and caused frequent alarms to our picquets when teaching his recruits to take a correct aim; he was, in short, now, as he always was, indefatigable in providing for the defence of the country committed to his care, and in his endeavours to make the most of a force assuredly not adequate for the purpose. But we were not doomed to be continually the dupes of false alarms, nor to be amused for ever with the issuing of orders, which were scarcely issued when they were again retracted. A necessity for a real movement occurred at last, and we bade adieu for ever to the cottage at Gauthory, which we first entered with regret, and finally quitted without reluctance.

CHAP. XVI.

It might be about six or seven o'clock in the morning of the 3d of January, 1814, when an orderly serjeant

burst into our chamber, and desired us to get the men under arms without delay, for that the enemy were in mo

tion. In an instant we sprang from our beds, dressed and accoutred forth with, ordered the trumpeter to sound the assembly, and our servants to prepare breakfast. The last of these injunctions was obeyed in an incredibly short space of time, insomuch, that whilst the troops were hurrying to their stations, we were devouring our morning's repast; and, in little more than a quarter of an hour from the first signal of alarm, the regiment was formed in marching-order upon the high road. Nor were many moments wasted in that situation. The word was given to advance, and we again pressed forward towards the mayor's

house.

When we reached the post of Ammon, of which so much notice has already been taken, we found, indeed, that the whole of the left column was moving, but that the old battle-ground around the chateau, and in the woods and inclosures near it, was left entire ly to the protection of the ordinary picquets. Of the enemy's forces not a single battalion showed itself here; whilst our own were all filing towards the right; a rout into which we also quickly struck, as if following the natural current of the stream of war. In this journey we passed over a good deal of ground which was already familiar to us, skirting the brow of the ravine which had separated the hostile armies during the pauses in their late contest, till, having reached the meadow where our camp had formerly been pitched, we were turned into a new direction; and led upwards till we gained the top of the hill on which the church of Arcanques stands, and round the base of which the village of Arcanques is scattered. In the maintenance of this post we relieved a section of the light division, which immediately took a rightward course; thus indicating that the whole strength of the army would be mustered at one extremity, and other points of the line left to the protection of a few scattered brigades.

It was evening before we reached our ground, and as yet no provisions had been issued out to us. Of course, our appetites were excellent, indeed the appetites of men who have nothing to eat are seldom sickly; and this we amply demonstrated, as soon as an opportunity of demonstrating the fact was offered. Little time,

however, was given for the enjoyment of social intercourse or bodily rest; for we had hardly swallowed a hasty meal, when the better half of the corps was sent forward to occupy a few cottages in front of the village; and the remainder of the night was spent in that state of excitement and anxiety, which necessarily waits upon such as form the outposts or advanced guard of an army.

My own station this night was not exactly at one of the most forward posts, but in a ruinous building at the outskirts of the village, where I was placed, with a body of men, to support the picquets. The thing into which we were ushered, had, no doubt, once upon a time been a habitable mansion; at present it consisted of little else than the shell, and a very wretched shell, of a farm-house. Not only were the doors and windows gone, but the ceilings and partitions, which were wont to divide one apart ment from another, were all broken down; whilst the roof was in a great measure stripped off, and the fragments which remained of it were perforated in all directions. I well recollect that the night was piercingly cold. The frost had, of late, set in with renewed severity; and a sharp northerly wind blowing, swept with a melancholy sound through our dilapi dated mansion. But we were on little ceremony here. Large fires were lighted in different places upon the earthen floor, round which we gladly crept; whilst an allowance of grog being brought up, and pipes and segars lighted, we were soon as merry and as light-hearted as men could desire to be. It is true, that ever and anon

every half hour, for example-a party of six or eight of us sallied forth, to patrole from picquet to picquet, and to see that all was right between; but we returned from such excursions with increased predilection for our fire-side; and the events of the ramble, be they what they might, furnished food for conversation till another was deemed necessary.

So passed the night of the third and on the morning of the fourth Í expected, as an ordinary matter, to be relieved, and to be withdrawn to the rear; but it was not so. Men, it appeared, were scarce at this point of the line; and hence those who formed it were called upon to perform double

duty. Instead of being removed to some place where a sound night's rest might be enjoyed, I and my party found ourselves, on the morning of the fourth, ordered to advance, and to occupy the foremost chain; from which we had the satisfaction of beholding the enemy, in very consider able force, at the distance of little more than a quarter of a mile from our sentries. This sight, however, only gave a spur to our exertions, and hindered us from repining at what we might have been otherwise tempted to consider as an undue exercise of our powers of watchfulness.

The particular picquet of which I was placed in command happened to be detached from all others, and to be nearly half a mile in front of the rest. It was stationed on a sort of sugar-loaf hill, separated from our own regular chain of posts by a deep and rugged glen, and kept apart from the French lines only by an imaginary boundary of hedges and paling. So exposed, in deed, was the spot, that I received positive orders to abandon it as soon as darkness should set in, and to retire across the hollow to the high grounds opposite. The reader will easily believe, that, in such a situation, little leisure was given for relaxation either of body or mind. During the entire day, indeed, my occupation consisted in prying closely, with the aid of a telescope, into the enemy's lines; in considering how I could best maintain myself in case of an attack, and retreat most securely in case I should be overpowered.

The view from my picquet-house was, however, extremely animating. Beneath me, at the distance of only two fields, lay the French outposts; about a quarter of a mile or half a mile in rear of which, were encamped several large bodies both of infantry and cavalry. Of these, it was evident that vast numbers were raw recruits. They were at drill, marching and countermarching, and performing various evolutions during the greater part of the day: a circumstance which, at first, excited no little uneasiness on my part, inasmuch as I expected, every moment, that my post would be assaulted; but as soon as I saw a target erected, and the troops practising with ball, I become easy. "There will be no attack to-day," thought

I, "otherwise so much ammunition would not be wasted."

I had hardly said so, when I observed a mounted officer advancing from the enemy's camp toward the base of the hill which my party held. He was followed by a cloud of people, in apparent confusion, it is true, but not more confused than French skirmishers generally appear to be; who lay down behind the hedges in the immediate front of my sentinels, as if waiting for an order to fire and to rush on. I had just ordered my people under arms, and was proceeding towards the sentries for the purpose of giving a few necessary orders, when the French officer halted; and a trumpeter, who accompanied him, sounded a parley. Of course I descended the hill, and causing my trumpeter to answer the signal, the Frenchman advanced. He was the bearer of letters from such British officers and soldiers as had been taken in the late actions; and he likewise handed over to me several sums of money and changes of clothing for some of his countrymen who had fallen into our hands.

This being done, we naturally entered into conversation touching the state of Europe, and the events of the

war.

My new acquaintance utterly denied the truth of Napoleon's reverses, and seemed to doubt the idea of an invasion of France by the armies of the North. He assured me that the whole country was in arms; that every peasant had become a soldier; that bands of partizans were forming on all sides of us; and that it was vain to hope that we should ever pass the Adour, or proceed farther within the sacred territory than we had already proceeded. He spoke of the desertion of the German corps with a degree of bitter contempt, which proved the very reverse of what he was desirous of proving, that the event had greatly shaken the confidence of Soult in his auxiliaries; and, above all, he affected to regard the whole of the recent operations as mere affairs, or trifling contests of detachments, in no way capable of influencing the final issues of the war. Yet he was not displeased when I laughed at his style of oratory; and, after gasconading a good deal, both the one and the other, we shook hands,

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