CHAPTER XII.
Reported renewal of Operations against St. Sebastian—Effects of the War on Spain and Portugal—Wellington’s Account of recent Proceedings—Courts-martial—Prisoners Shot—Discussions on War between Wellington and a French Deserter—The Siege resumed—Work of the Heavy Batteries—Trial of General O’Halloran—Volunteers for the Storming-parties.Head-quarters, Lezaca,August 21, 1813.
Reported renewal of Operations against St. Sebastian—Effects of the War on Spain and Portugal—Wellington’s Account of recent Proceedings—Courts-martial—Prisoners Shot—Discussions on War between Wellington and a French Deserter—The Siege resumed—Work of the Heavy Batteries—Trial of General O’Halloran—Volunteers for the Storming-parties.
Head-quarters, Lezaca,August 21, 1813.
My dear M——,
Severalof our Vittoria sick and wounded now begin to return and join their regiments. Major Freemantle came back just in time for dinner yesterday, and amused us with an account of all your madness in England about the battle of Vittoria.
General Cole, with whom I told you I was going to dine, lives very comfortably. To do this, even in his way, he has now travelling with him about ten or twelve goats for milk, a cow, and about thirty-six sheep at least, with a shepherd, who always march, feed on the road side, on the mountains, &c., and encamp with him. When you think of this, that wine and everything is to be carried about, from salt and pepper and tea-cups to saucepans, boilers, dishes, chairs, and tables, on mules, you may guess the trouble and expense of a good establishment here.
I mentioned to you the iron-works all about this country, and their simple construction; they make, however, I believe, excellent iron. For this purpose theymix the ore of this country, which is too brittle, with the ore they fetch from near Bilboa, which is rather too ductile and soft, and of the two form an excellent compound, which used to supply much of the southern part of France.
Our great guns are, I am told, to begin pounding to-day at St. Sebastian again, but I have not heard them yet. The old breach will not do at all; it is, we are told, mined and filled with little intended explosions. A seventy-four and some frigates are now near. I wish they would let the sailors try the sea side when we storm. I think they would get in somehow at once into the castle.
August the 23rd.—I have now a fresh set of Courts in every division again, as my last are broken up. One Deputy Judge-Advocate sent me, out of curiosity, a history of his Court-casualties, &c., nine members out of fifteen, and the Judge-Advocate, killed or severely wounded, since the 22nd of May, two prosecutors and three witnesses, all officers. We are trying to clear as we go, and to prevent all arrears, and we hang away to prevent desertion. I am told that the French do the same and still more, but their people will go home to the rear; this is more natural. We are told that ten men from each company are gone by orders to the rear also—some foolishly say to quell riots, for which purpose ten old men would be the most useless possible; but the most plausible account is, to drill new conscripts. Some deserters say they are sent even to Italy for this; I believe just now that they are not prepared to move, and will be content to remain quiet. We have alternate accounts, of course, of war and peace. To-day two women (one French, the other Spanish,) of the French prisoners from Vittoria, came in here on their way to join the French. Lord Wellington, however, has stopped them, and says he will have no more sent over until theFrench release about three hundred mothers and wives, &c., of the Guerillas, who were carried off by them as hostages for the return home of the Guerilla relations, so they cry and think this very sad to be put upon the same footing as such creatures. One of the ladies asked the Adjutant-general whether she had better write to her friends openly, to propose an exchange, or in cipher? Upon which he thought a cipher lady should not remain here, at least long. We now give some flour to Longa’s people for bread, and try to make regulars of them.
It is very terrible that our people, muleteers, soldiers, &c., do more mischief by far than the French, except when the latter do it by way of punishment and revenge; at ordinary times their discipline is much better than ours. The heads of the Indian corn are now nearly all eaten off about here by the cattle, and cut by the soldiers to roast, as well as the leaves for our animals. The Spaniards, however, in some degree have their revenge; we bring a quantity of money into the country in spite of our bad pay, and this they fleece us out of in high style. They sell everything like Jews, and are naturally exorbitant, greedy, and avaricious; this seems the general character. So we go on! They cheat our men as much as they can, and our men get all they can gratis; upon the whole, however, if we remain stationary, we benefit the country.
Lord Wellington yesterday said it was stated in his letters from Lisbon, that Portugal was miserable without us. No money, no markets, nothing doing. I believe he was half joking with the Portuguese agent here; but he really meant that we were much missed there. The muleteers with us are the worst. Their terms were, a dollar a-day each mule, and one for a man for every three mules, and rations. They have gone on four years, and more; they are now, I believe, sixteen months in arrears in their pay, having just got one month lately. If paidup they would make fortunes, and have no pretence to behave ill. As it is, they steal, plunder, turn out their mules in the corn, &c., and from one of the most orderly classes in Spain, are become the least so. There are about ten thousand of the mules in this state, and I suppose four thousand muleteers. Their pay is almost more than the army; and when is it to be paid or how? there lies the rub.
The people say that we have brought the plague of flies, and I really believe we have increased the swarms by the number of dead carcasses, and various kinds of filth caused by the density of the population at present. We do not bury so regularly as the French, either our offal or dead animals, or anything; the Spaniards not at all, unless we do it for them. To give you a notion of the flies, they eat up all my wafers, if left open, and spot my letters all over if left one day on the table.
Nothing can look better than the condition of the Portuguese troops. They are cleaner than our men; or look so, at least. They are better clothed now by far, for they have taken the best care of their clothes; they are much gayer, and have an air, and aje ne sais quoi, particularly the Caçadores both the officers and private men, quite new in a Portuguese. It is curious to observe the effects of good direction and example, how soon it tells. The French seem to do the same with Italians, and with every one; or rather have done so, for I hope this may not cease in part at least.
Head-Quarters, Lezaca, 24th.—Having been writing nearly all day yesterday, I took an evening stroll, and then went and sat down on the churchyard parapet wall. In ten minutes who should come there but Lord Wellington, alone. After one turn he came and sat on the wall with me, and talked for more than half an hour. Amongst other things I said, I hoped that you in England would hear Soult’s account of the Maya businessfirst, as you then would be alarmed, and value the latter account by the Prince of Orange as it deserved.
He said, “Why, at one time it was rather alarming, certainly, and it was a close-run thing. When I came to the bridge of Sorauren, I saw the French on the hills, on one side, and it was clear that we could make a stand on the other hills in our position on the 28th; but I found that we could not keep Sorauren, for it was exposed to their fire and not to ours. I determined to take the position, but was obliged to write my orders accordingly at Sorauren, to be sent back instantly, for had they not been dispatched back directly by the way I had come, I must have sent four leagues round in a quarter of an hour later. I stopped, therefore, to write accordingly, people saying to me all the time, ‘The French are coming! The French are coming!’ I looked pretty sharp after them, however, every now and then, until I had completed my orders, and then set off, and I saw them just near one end of the village as I went out at the other end; and then we took our ground.”
I then observed that the only time I felt a little uneasy was, when we were stopped at Lanz, and sent across to Lisasso, for all faces seemed very long, and the removal of the wounded was very much pressed. This led him to explain more; and he said: “Had I been as regularly informed of how matters stood on the 26th and 27th as I was of what had passed on the 25th, that need not have happened; but General Cole never told me exactly how far he found it necessary to give way, or let me know by what a superior force he was pressed, and that he intended giving way, or my arrangements would have been quite different; and the French might have been stopped sooner than they were. In truth, I suspected that all Soult’s plan was merely by manœuvres to get me out of the hills, and to relieve one or both of the besieged places, as things should turn up and succeed for him;and I expected him to turn short round towards St. Sebastian accordingly. I had then no notion that with an army so lately beaten he had serious thoughts, as I am now sure he had, of driving us behind the Ebro. The consequence was that the second division halted a day and a half at Trinita and Berrueta, on the 26th, and till three on the 27th; and the seventh division only took a short march to St. Estevan, as I was unwilling to lose a bit more of the mountains than was absolutely necessary, from the probable loss of men in recovering such ground. On the night before we marched, or at three in the morning of the 26th, I knew all that had passed on the first attack, and acted accordingly. Had I been as well informed, and had everything been communicated to me as punctually on the next evening, the march of several divisions would have been different. I should and could have pressed them more on the 27th; there would not have been the risk and apparent alarm as to head-quarters, &c.; and we should probably have stopped the French sooner. As it is, however, and as I had men who could fight, as the English did when they recovered the hill which had been lost, it has all ended very well.”
We then got upon the expedition on the other side of the Peninsula; and he explained some of the reasons for his instructions there. He was rather stiff with the lumbago; but in high spirits. He said that the Spanish Generals thought the reason the French beat them was, that they had no good cavalry; and that whenever they had our cavalry with them, they wanted to fight. This was what he was anxious to prevent, “For,” said he “our cavalry never gained a battle yet. When the infantry have beaten the French, then the cavalry, if they can act, make the whole complete, and do wonders; but they never yet beat the French themselves.”
Talking on this subject another day, Lord Wellington and all the officers present seemed to agree that a cavalryregiment did not know what real infantry fire was. They talk of a sharp carbine fire, which kills ten or twenty horses and half as many men; but they could not exist ten minutes in a fire to which our infantry battalions are at times exposed; they would be annihilated if they did not go threes about very quick indeed. Even in the infantry at times it was said, that in less than half an hour every mounted officer would be dismounted, from his own or his horse’s wounds, and perhaps not six men in a company out of sixty, would remain.
Head-Quarters, Lezaca, August 25th.—We are as quiet here as at Frenada. Desertion is terrible. I think, however, Lord Wellington must stop it. We have only as yet tried five out of sixteen sent for trial: they are all sentenced to death, and all shot! This will, I think, at least have a good effect on our new reinforcements. One of our officers did an odd thing to stop it; and it answered, or has done so hitherto; he called his men together and, addressing them, said, “I want no men who wish to go to the French, and if any now will say they wish to go, I promise to send them in with a flag of truce.” No one stirred, nor has any one stirred since; but as to the legality of this plan there may be a query?
Our great guns have now just begun pounding again at St. Sebastian; we are to demolish everything this time; but still I fear we shall scarcely get in easily at last.
As to Pamplona, the reports are, that they are now on half-rations, and have enough at that rate to last till the 15th of next month. It is provoking how much they have picked up. They have tried to send out another batch of inhabitants, but these have been sent in again to help eat; a hard fate to be made a mere tool for starvation! and I conclude they will not have the best commons even Pamplona can afford.
Head-Quarters, Lezaca, August 28th, 1813.—Here we are still quiet, and very busy; and Courts-martial all at work. In these hills, however, our Provosts are not the most secure; and common precautions will not do against men who know they are probably to be shot in a day or two. A Court was adjourned till yesterday morning, for a witness for the prisoner, and in the night he was off. Another man under sentence of death, near Maya, and three other deserters just taken as they were going over to the French, were put foolishly under the care of a man and a lad armed to convoy them a little way. They rose on them, took away their arms, and went over with them to the French post. I am sorry to say, however, that we have still enough to hang.
The French deserter, the talkative Lieutenant-Colonel, is here again, and has one great merit—he induces Lord Wellington to talk and discuss his old battles, &c., when this man was on the other side. Thus from the two I pick up a little of the cause of things. Yesterday the conversation turned upon the retreat of the last year. The Frenchman said that all their officers blamed Soult for his conduct after crossing the Tormes; that he was in fact nearer Rodrigo than our army, and might and ought to have cut us off, if he had pushed on. Lord Wellington observed, “I fully expected to find him on the high road: and I ordered nothing at all that way in consequence on the first day; afterwards, when I found he was not there, I took to it.” The French officer replied, “From the rain and hazy weather, and bad roads, Soult was puzzled and afraid—he did not in the least know the English plans. He heard of some troops, and did not know whether they were a rear-guard or the main army, and so on; but when he found your lordship making a stand collected at St. Munos, he said, ‘Ah que j’avois tort.’” He then tried to pump Lord Wellington, and said, “If he had cut you off, perhaps you wouldhave recrossed the Tormes, and made for the Benevente road? but you would have suffered much.” Upon which Lord Wellington observed, “No, I certainly should have done no such thing: that would have been ruin. But if you must know what I should have done, I should have done that which many thought I ought to have done as it was—I should have fought, and trusted to the bravery of my troops to get me out of the scrape.” The Frenchman then said, “No one ought to have blamed you for not doing that, unless it were absolutely necessary, for the French were twenty thousand stronger than you were, and their cavalry was then very numerous, and in the highest order.”
These conversations give a value to the Frenchman which he does not otherwise possess, though a clever man. I found Lord Wellington the day before yesterday busy with all the Spanish staff and General Murray, with a dozen great Spanish drawings and plans of the mountains about them; they were comparing our several labours together. The Spanish staff draughtsmen have a good character. I should like to have been called in, but I was only waiting an audience at the other end of the room.
Yesterday, Lord Wellington went off on horseback over the mountains, for Irun; he then went on to St. Sebastian, and was not back here till nearly nine at night. They are pounding away at that fortress from fifty-one pieces of ordnance, mortars and all; but nothing is done yet.
The 29th.—No news yet. Still battering away at St. Sebastian. We had a ridiculous event here yesterday: an enraged bull—belonging, I believe, to the Commissariat—broke into the quarters of the Commissary-general, Sir Robert Kennedy, and contriving to get to the room of the clerks, put all to flight, one this way, the other that, in the greatest alarm. All were dispersed inan instant. After upsetting a few things, the bull retreated into the garden, and jumped over the wall, without doing any serious mischief. The joke was, that the owner had contrived this, on account of nonpayment of his demand.
Our fifty-one battering pieces have now been at work three days, and have laid open one end of the entire wall of the town of St. Sebastian, and to-morrow is talked of for the assault. Two days since the garrison made another sortie, and carried off a few men; and, upon the whole, I think people are not quite satisfied with the conduct of the fifth division, who are employed. Ever since our retreat and the former sortie, they seem to have had in some measure a sort of panic. We have had a general Court-martial on Major O’Halloran, for neglect on that occasion as field-officer in the trenches; but he is acquitted on the ground that the orders he gave were correct, but that he was disobeyed. The facts on the trial were these:—
A sortie was expected all the night, and peculiar precautions were taken accordingly; every fifth man sentry, &c., by order of the General. All was quiet until an hour after daybreak and more; then a Captain Canvers, of the Portuguese service, who has since shot himself, seems to have suffered the sentries to enter the trenches, and rest on their arms for security, without orders, or rather against orders. At a little after six out came the French, and another Portuguese captain seems to have misunderstood his orders, and did not suffer his sentries to fire instantly, thinking that he had no orders to this effect; he was made prisoner. In short, the consequence was, that about fifty French were in an instant in the trenches, when half-a-dozen of our people fired and fell back. The Portuguese were mostly in a panic, and they were nearly six hundred out of seven hundred then employed. They did once attempt to get up the bank and form, butthe sandy ground gave way, and in they went again. This increased the confusion, and no exertions of our or their officers could rally the men, until they had been quite driven out of the trenches, and pursued to the little village in ruins under the convent. There Major O’Halloran rallied them, and, with a fresh English working-party just arrived, drove the French back again to the town, but in the meantime many prisoners were made.
Lord Wellington himself, I think, is not pleased with the fifth division; and, as some proof of this, has ordered three hundred of the first division, one hundred and fifty of the light, one hundred and fifty of the fourth, and, I believe, one hundred and fifty of the third (of each of which one-third are to be of the Portuguese regiments), to march to-day to assist in forming the storming-party to-morrow. This is a cut at the fifth; and these men are all volunteers, and the orders are to send men who, by their cool courage and good conduct, will be likely to succeed. In a measure the success of this will depend on these qualities. The fifth division ought now to volunteer, trying first alone, I think.
There was nothing but confusion in the two divisions here last night, (the light and fourth,) from the eagerness of the officers to volunteer, and the difficulty of determining who were to be refused and who allowed to go and run their heads into a hole in the wall, full of fire and danger! Major Napier was here quite in misery, because, though he had volunteered first, Lieutenant-colonel Hunt of the 52nd, his superior officer, insisted on his right to go. The latter said that Napier had been in the breach at Badajoz, and he had a fair claim to go now. So it is among the subalterns; ten have volunteered where two are to be accepted. Hunt, being Lieutenant-colonel, has nothing but honour to look to; as to promotion, he is past that. The men say that they don’t know what they are to do, but they are ready to go anywhere.
I fear we shall find the French have run a ditch across and a new second wall behind those we have destroyed, and that we may have tough work yet. The shells, however, which are sent every ten minutes into the castle, and shake the dust out of its roof in a fine style, must make the place rather too warm to hold just now; and I heartily wish it would induce them to give in before all the bloodshed begins. They fire now but very little. Lord Wellington and every one is gone over to St. Sebastian to-day; and having nothing to do, I have made up my mind to be off also.
August 30th.—I was on the point of setting out when I heard that the storming was put off a day; as the French are in motion, and making pretence at least to relieve St. Sebastian, and as the fourth division marched accordingly this morning, and head-quarters may, therefore, suddenly be off, I determined to be quiet here, especially as I do not feel quite well. Lord Wellington came home at nine o’clock, and was off again before eight this morning. We remain here much in the dark, of course, when he is away. General Murray stays here to protect us with the light division in our front.