Part 11 (1/2)

We turned out at daylight on the 10th; but, as there was a thick drizzling rain which prevented us from seeing any thing, we soon turned in again. My servant soon after came to tell me that Sir Lowry Cole, and some of his staff, had just ascended to the top of the chateau, a piece of information which did not quite please me, for I fancied that the general had just discovered our quarter to be better than his own, and had come for the purpose of taking possession of it.

However, in less than five minutes, we received an order for our battalion to move up instantly to the support of the piquets; and, on my descending to the door, to mount my horse, I found Sir Lowry standing there, who asked if we had received any orders; and, on my telling him that we had been ordered up to support the piquets, he immediately desired a staff-officer to order up one of his brigades to the rear of the chateau. This was one of the numerous instances in which we had occasion to admire the prudence and forethought of the great Wellington! He had foreseen the attack that would take place, and had his different divisions disposed to meet it. We no sooner moved up, than we found ourselves a party engaged along with the piquets; and, under a heavy skirmis.h.i.+ng fire, retiring gradually from hedge to hedge, according as the superior force of the enemy compelled us to give ground, until we finally retired within our home, the chateau, which was the first part of our position that was meant to be defended in earnest. We had previously thrown up a mud rampart around it, and loop-holed the different outhouses, so that we had nothing now to do, but to line the walls and shew determined fight. The forty-third occupied the church-yard to our left, which was also partially fortified; and the third Cacadores and our third battalion, occupied the s.p.a.ce between, behind the hedge-rows, while the fourth division was in readiness to support us from the rear. The enemy came up to the opposite ridge, in formidable numbers, and began blazing at our windows and loop-holes, and shewing some disposition to attempt it by storm; but they thought better of it and withdrew their columns a short distance to the rear, leaving the nearest hedge lined with their skirmishers. An officer of ours, Mr. Hopewood, and one of our serjeants, had been killed in the field opposite, within twenty yards of where the enemy's skirmishers now were. We were very anxious to get possession of their bodies, but had not force enough to effect it.

Several French soldiers came through the hedge, at different times, with the intention, as we thought, of plundering, but our men shot every one who attempted to go near them, until towards evening, when a French officer approached, waving a white handkerchief and pointing to some of his men who were following him with shovels. Seeing that his intention was to bury them, we instantly ceased firing, nor did we renew it again that night.

The forty-third, from their post at the church, kept up an incessant shower of musketry the whole of the day, at what was conceived, at the time, to be a very long range; but from the quant.i.ty of b.a.l.l.s which were afterwards found sticking in every tree, where the enemy stood, it was evident that their birth must have been rather uncomfortable.

One of our officers, in the course of the day, had been pa.s.sing through a deep road-way, between two banks, with hedge-rows, when, to his astonishment, a dragoon and his horse tumbled heels over head into the road, as if they had been fired out of a cloud. Neither of them were the least hurt; but it must have been no joke that tempted him to take such a flight.

Soult expected, by bringing his whole force to bear on our centre and left wing, that he would have succeeded in forcing it, or, at all events, of obliging Lord Wellington to withdraw Sir Rowland Hill from beyond the Nive; but he effected neither, and darkness left the two armies on the ground which they had fought on.

General Alten and Sir James Kempt took up their quarters with us in the chateau: our sentries and those of the enemy stood within pistol-shot of each other in the ravine below.

Young Arcangues, I presume, must have been rather disappointed at the result of the day; for, even giving him credit for every kindly feeling towards us, his wishes must still have been in favour of his countrymen; but when he found that his chateau was to be a bone of contention, it then became his interest that we should keep possession of it; and he held out every inducement for us to do so; which, by the by, was quite unnecessary, seeing that our own comfort so much depended on it. However, though his supplies of claret had failed some days before, he now discovered some fresh cases in the cellar, which he immediately placed at our disposal; and, that our dire resolve to defend the fortress should not be melted by weak woman's wailings, he fixed an arm-chair on a mule, mounted his grandmother on it, and sent her off to the rear, while the b.a.l.l.s were whizzing about the neighbourhood in a manner to which even she, poor old lady, was not altogether insensible, though she had become a mounted heroine at a period when she had given up all idea of ever sitting on any thing more lively than a coffin.

During the whole of the 11th each army retained the same ground, and though there was an occasional exchange of shots at different points, yet nothing material occurred.

The enemy began throwing up a six-gun battery opposite our chateau; and we employed ourselves in strengthening the works, as a precautionary measure, though we had not much to dread from it, as they were so strictly within range of our rifles, that he must have been a lucky artilleryman who stood there to fire a second shot.

In the course of the night a brigade of Belgians, who were with the French army, having heard that their country had declared for their legitimate king, pa.s.sed over to our side, and surrendered.

On the 12th there was heavy firing and hard fighting, all day, to our left, but we remained perfectly quiet. Towards the afternoon, Sir James Kempt formed our brigade, for the purpose of expelling the enemy from the hill next the chateau, to which he thought them rather too near; but, just as we reached our different points for commencing the attack, we were recalled, and nothing further occurred.

I went, about one o'clock in the morning, to visit our different piquets; and seeing an unusual number of fires in the enemy's lines, I concluded that they had lit them to mask some movement; and taking a patrole with me, I stole cautiously forward, and found that they had left the ground altogether. I immediately returned, and reported the circ.u.mstance to General Alten, who sent off a despatch to apprize Lord Wellington.

As soon as day began to dawn, on the morning of the 13th, a tremendous fire of artillery and musketry was heard to our right. Soult had withdrawn every thing from our front in the course of the night, and had now attacked Sir Rowland Hill with his whole force. Lord Wellington, in expectation of this attack, had, last night, reinforced Sir Rowland Hill with the sixth division; which enabled him to occupy his contracted position so strongly, that Soult, unable to bring more than his own front to bear upon him, sustained a signal and sanguinary defeat.

Lord Wellington galloped into the yard of our chateau, soon after the attack had commenced, and demanded, with his usual quickness, what was to be seen? Sir James Kempt, who was spying at the action from an upper window, told him; and, after desiring Sir James to order Sir Lowry Cole to follow him with the fourth division, he galloped off to the scene of action. In the afternoon, when all was over, he called in again, on his return to head-quarters, and told us, ”that it was the most glorious affair that he had ever seen; and that the enemy had absolutely left upwards of five thousand men, killed and wounded, on the ground.”

This was the last action in which we were concerned, near Bayonne. The enemy seemed quite satisfied with what they had got; and offered us no further molestation, but withdrew within their works.

CHAP. XVIII.

Change of Quarters. Change of Diet. Suttlers. Our new Quarter. A long-going Horse gone. New Clothing. Adam's lineal Descendants.

St. Palais. Action at Tarbes. Faubourg of Toulouse. The green Man. Pa.s.sage of the Garonne. Battle of Toulouse. Peace. Castle Sarrazin. A tender Point.

Towards the end of the month, some divisions of the French army having left Bayonne, and ascended the right bank of the Adour, it produced a corresponding movement on our side, by which our division then occupied Ustaritz, and some neighbouring villages; a change of quarters we had no reason to rejoice in.

At Arcangues, notwithstanding the influence of our messmate, ”the Seigneur du Village,” our table had, latterly, exhibited gradual symptoms of decay. But _here_, our voracious predecessors had not only swallowed the calf, but the cow, and, literally, left us nothing; so that, from an occasional turkey, or a pork-pie, we were now, all at once, reduced to our daily ration of a withered pound of beef. A great many necessaries of life could certainly be procured from St. Jean de Luz, but the prices there were absolutely suicidical. The suttlers'

shops were too small to hold both their goods and their consciences; so that, every pin's worth they sold cost us a dollar; and as every dollar cost us seven s.h.i.+llings, they were, of course, not so plenty as bad dinners. I have often regretted that the enemy never got an opportunity of having the run of their shops for a few minutes, that they might have been, in some measure, punished for their sins, even in this world.

The house that held our table, too, was but a wretched apology for the one we had left. A bitter wind continued to blow; and as the granary of a room which we occupied, on the first floor, had no fire-place, we immediately proceeded to provide it with one, and continued filling it up with such a load of bricks and mortar that the first floor was on the point of becoming the ground one; and, having only a choice of evils, on such an emergency, we, as usual, adopted that which appeared to us to be the least, cutting down the only two fruit-trees in the garden to prop it up with. We were rather on doubtful terms with the landlord before, but this put us all square--no terms at all.

Our animals, too, were in a woful plight, for want of forage. We were obliged to send our baggage ones, every week, for their rations of corn, three days' march, through oceans of mud, which ought, properly, to have been navigated with boats. The whole cavalcade always moved under the charge of an officer, and many were the anxious looks that we took with our spy-gla.s.ses, from a hill overlooking the road, on the days of their expected return, each endeavouring to descry his own.

Mine came back to me twice; but ”the pitcher that goes often to the well” was verified in his third trip, for--he perished in a muddy grave.

His death, however, was not so unexpected as it might have been, for, although I cannot literally say that he had been dying by inches, seeing that he had walked all the way from the frontiers of Portugal, yet he had, nevertheless, been doing it on the grand scale--by miles.

I only fell in with him the day before the commencement of the campaign, and, after reconnoitring him with my usual judgement, and seeing that he was in possession of the regulated quant.i.ty of eyes, legs, and mouth, and concluding that they were all calculated to perform their different functions, I took him, as a man does his wife, for better and for worse; and it was not until the end of the first day's march that I found he had a broken jaw-bone, and could not eat, and I had, therefore, been obliged to support him all along on spoon diet; he was a capital horse, only for that!

It has already been written, in another man's book, that we always require just a little more than we have got to make us perfectly happy; and, as we had given this neighbourhood a fair trial, and _that little_ was not to be found in it, we were very glad when, towards the end of February, we were permitted to look for it a little further on.