CHAPTER XV.
Thestone bridge which used to connect the two banks of the Bidassoa, and which the French, after their evacuation of the Spanish territory, had destroyed, was not, I found, repaired; but a temporary bridge of pontoons rendered the stream passable without subjecting the traveller to the necessity of fording. A party of artificers were, moreover, at work renewing the arches which had been broken down; and a newtête-de-ponton the opposite side from the old one was already erected, to be turned to account in case of any unlooked-for reverse of fortune, and consequent retreat beyond the frontier. I observed, too, that the whole front of the pass beyond the river was blocked up with redoubts, batteries, and breastworks; and that Lord Wellington, though pressing forward with victory in his train, was not unmindful of the fickleness of the blind goddess.
As I was crossing the pontoon-bridge, two objects,very different in kind, but intimately connected the one with the other, attracted my attention almost at the same moment. A body of Spanish cavalry, which appeared to have passed the river at one of the fords a little higher up, presented themselves winding along a steep by-path which communicated with the highroad just beside the oldtête-de-pont. They were guerillas, and were consequently clothed, armed, and mounted in a manner the least uniform that can well be imagined. Of the men, some were arrayed in green jackets, with slouched hats and long feathers; others in blue, helmeted like our yeomanry or artillery-drivers; several wore cuirasses and brazen headpieces, such as they had probably plundered from their slaughtered enemies. But, notwithstanding this absence of uniformity in dress, the general appearance of these troopers was exceedingly imposing. They were, on the whole, well mounted; and they marched in that sort of loose and independent manner which, 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 a troop 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 theypassed, 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 linen rags 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; 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 of St Sebastian. Who or what they were I had no means of ascertaining, nor was it of much consequence: to whatever nation they might have 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 that befell me in a morning's ride from the cantonments at Gauthory to the town of Irun. After crossingthe 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 claim 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 place 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 9th 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 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; and few of the houses were unoccupied, though whether by their rightful owners or not I take it not upon meto 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 among them, had inspired them with their own dislike to my countrymen, or whether that jealousy which the Spanish people have always encouraged, and still encourage, of foreigners in general and Englishmen in particular, was at work, I cannot tell; but I remember that I had some difficulty in persuading the keeper of an inn to put up my own and my servant's horses in his stable, and still greater in prevailing upon him to dress an omelet for my dinner. Nor was this all: my journey 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 things was fruitless, the shopkeepers 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 asmyself 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 proceeding, not with levity, certainly, but as certainly without devotion; because the entire scene appeared 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 roast-beef worthy of the occasion, I passed my evening not less agreeably than I had spent the morning.
Among other events that befell during our sojourn at Gauthory, a sale of the effects of such of our brother officers as had fallen in the late battles, deserves to be numbered. On such occasions the sergeant-major generally acts the part of auctioneer, and a strange compound of good and bad feeling accompanies the progress of the auction. In every society of men some will be found whose thoughts, centring entirely in self, regard all things as commendable,or the reverse, solely as it increases or restricts their personal enjoyments. 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 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. Nor do I pretend, while thus censuring others, to screen myself; for 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 sundry pairs of trousers were pressed upon our notice as 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 exceptions, I must say that there was not a man present who thought of the former owners of these tailless shirts without affection, and who would not have willingly given the full value, ay, even of the shirts themselves, could his expenditure of such a 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 upto auction, but that all should be given, in case I fell, as expressly appointed.
I have said that the usual means of defeatingennui—namely, shooting, coursing, and fishing—were resorted to by Grey and myself while we inhabited these cantonments. Among other experiments, we strolled down one lovely morning towards the sea, with the hope of catching some fish for 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 season. 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 headlands 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, when contemplating such a scene, it is hardly possible forany man to hinder his thoughts from wandering away from the objects immediately around him to 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 producing this result. It was the season of mirth and festivity, of licensed uproar and innocent irregularity; and cold 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 producing this result. 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, however far removed from him, when that season comes round. 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 (an 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 beautiful, but far less so than I had expected to find it in the south of France. There was no want of wood, it is true; and corn-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 twenty miles distant. I observed, however, that there was no want of chateaux 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—a circumstance which, when connected with their size and the extent of the woods about them, led to a persuasion that they belonged to men of higher rank than the Mayor of Biaritz. But in general they 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. All, however, 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 narrative of such events. Thus passed several weeks, the business of one day resembling in almost every respect the business of another. As often as 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 within. Nor were we allthis while without a few occurrences calculated to hinder us from 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 our arms. But of such alarms almost all proved to be groundless; and those which were not designedly 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 filling his ranks with all the men, and even boys, that were 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 pickets 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 to the purpose. But we were not doomed to be continually the dupes of false alarms, nor to be amusedfor ever with the issuing of orders, which were scarcely received ere they were retracted. A necessity for a real movement occurred at last, and we bade adieu for ever to the cottage of Gauthory, which we first entered with regret, and finally quitted without reluctance.