CHAPTER XVI.
Itmight be about six or seven o'clock in the morning of the 3d of January 1814, when an orderly sergeant burst into our chamber and desired us to get the men under arms without delay, for that the enemy were in motion. In an instant we sprang from our beds, dressed and accoutred forthwith, 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 highroad. 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 or common, of which so much notice has elsewhere been taken, we found, indeed, that the whole of the left column was moving,but that the old battle-ground about the chateau, and in the woods and enclosures near it, was left entirely to the protection of the ordinary pickets. Of the enemy's forces, not a single battalion showed itself here; and our own were all filing towards the right—a route 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 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 were 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 proving 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 pickets. 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 farmhouse. Not only were the doors and windows gone, but the ceilings and partitions which used to divide one apartment from another were all broken down; the roof was in a great measure stripped off, and the fragments which remained of it were perforated in all directions. 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 dilapidated mansion. But we were on little ceremony here. Large fires were lighted in different places upon the earthen floor, round which we crept; and an allowance of grogbeing brought up, and pipes and cigars lighted, we were soon as merry and light-hearted as men could desire to be. It is true that at intervals—every half-hour, for example—a party of six or eight of us sallied forth, to patrol from picket to picket, 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 3d; and on the morning of the 4th I 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 part 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 4th, ordered to advance, and to occupy the foremost chain—from which we had the satisfaction of beholding the enemy, in very considerable strength, 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 picket of which I was put in commandhappened to be detached from all others, and to be nearly half a mile in front of the rest. It occupied 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, indeed, was the spot, that I received orders to abandon it as soon as darkness 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, 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 picket-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 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 some uneasiness on my part, inasmuch as I expected every moment thatmy post would be disturbed; but as soon as I saw a target erected, and the troops practising with ball, I became easy. "There will be no attack to-day," thought I, "otherwise so much ammunition would not be wasted."
I had scarcely said so when I observed a mounted officer advancing from the enemy's camp towards the base of the hill which my party held. He was followed by a cloud of people in apparent confusion, 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 rush on. I had just ordered my people under arms, and was proceeding towards the sentries for the purpose of giving a few necessary directions, when the French officer halted, and a trumpeter who accompanied him sounded a parley. I descended the hill immediately, 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 utterlydenied 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 partisans 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. He spoke of the desertion of the German corps with a degree of bitter contempt, which proved—the reverse of what he was desirous of proving—that the event had 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, and parted the best friends imaginable.
I had hardly quitted him, at least I had not reached my station on the top of the hill, when I heard myself called by one of the sentinels, and turned round. I saw the individual with whom I had been conversing sitting in the midst of a little group of French officers, and watching the progress of an old woman who was coming towards our lines. She held a large bottle in her hand, which she liftedup to attract my notice, and continued to move forward, gabbling loudly all the while. Obeying her signal, I returned and met her a few yards in front of the sentries, when she delivered to me about a couple of quarts of brandy, as a present from the French officers, who had desired her to say, that if I could spare them a little tea in exchange, they would feel obliged. It so happened that I had brought no such luxury to my post. Of this I informed the female mercury; but desired her to offer my best acknowledgments to her employers, and to add that I had sent to the rear in order to procure it. With this message she departed, having promised to keep in sight for at least half an hour, and to return as soon as I should make a sign that the tea had arrived.
My bugler made good speed, and soon returned with about a quarter of a pound of black tea, the half of the stock which remained in my canteen. In the meanwhile the French officers continued sitting together, and all rose when I waved my cap to their carrier. The old lady was not remiss in taking the hint. I handed over to her the little parcel, with numerous apologies for its tenuity, and had the satisfaction to perceive that, trifling as it was, it proved acceptable. The party pulled off their hats as an acknowledgment—I did the same; and we each departed to our respective stations.
There is something extremely agreeable in carrying on hostilities after this fashion; yet the matter may be pushed too far. Towards the close of the war, indeed, so good an understanding prevailed between the outposts of the two armies that Lord Wellington found it necessary to forbid all communication whatever; nor will the reader wonder at this when I state to him the reason. A field-officer (I shall not say in what part of the line), going his rounds one night, found that the whole of a sergeant's picket-guard had disappeared. He was, of course, both alarmed and surprised at the occurrence; but his alarm gave place to absolute astonishment when, on stealing forward to observe whether there was any movement in the enemy's lines, he peeped into a cottage from which a noise of revelry was proceeding, and beheld the party sitting in the most sociable manner with a similar party of Frenchmen, and carousing jovially. As soon as he showed himself his own men rose, and wishing their companions good night, returned with the greatestsang froidto their post. It is, however, but justice to add, that the sentinels on both sides faithfully kept their ground, and that no intention of deserting existed on either part. In fact, it was a sort of custom, the French and British guards visiting each other by turns.
At the period of which I have spoken above, however,no such extraordinary intimacy had begun. As yet we were merely civil towards one another; and even that degree of civility was for a while interrupted, in consequence of the surprisal of a French post by a detachment from General Beresford's division on the river Nive. Not that the picket was wantonly cut off, or that any blame could possibly attach to the general who ordered the proceeding. The outpost in question occupied a hill upon the allied bank of the stream. It was completely insulated and detached from all other French posts, and appeared to be held as much out of perverseness as because it commanded to a great extent a view of the British lines. Lord Beresford had repeatedly despatched flags of truce to request that the picket might be withdrawn, expressing great unwillingness to violate the sacred character which had been tacitly conferred upon the pickets; but Soult was deaf to his entreaties, and replied to his threats only by daring him to carry them into execution. A party was accordingly ordered out, one stormy night, to cut off the guard; and so successful was the attempt, that an officer and thirty soldiers, with a midshipman and a few seamen, who had charge of the boat by which the reliefs were daily ferried over, were taken. Not a shot was fired. The French, trusting to the storm for protection, had called in their vedettes, leaving only one onduty at the door of the house; and he found his arms pinioned, and himself secured, ere the roar of the tempest permitted him to detect the sound of approaching steps. The unfortunate subaltern who commanded sent in a few days afterwards for his baggage; but the reply was, that the general would forward him a halter, as the only indulgence which he merited.
But to return to my own personal narrative. After the adventure of the tea, nothing particular occurred so long as I continued in charge of the post. As soon as darkness set fairly in, I proposed, in obedience to my orders, to withdraw; and I carried the design into effect without any molestation on the part of the enemy. It was, however, their custom to take possession of the hill as soon as the British troops abandoned it; and hence I had not proceeded above half-way across the ravine when I heard the voices of a French detachment, which must have marched into the courtyard of the house almost at the moment that I and my men marched out of it. But they made no attempt to annoy us, and we rejoined the corps from which we had been detached in perfect safety.
The next day was spent in a state of rest in the chateau of Arcanques. It is a fine old pile, and stands at the foot of the little eminence on which the church is built. Like many mansions in Englandof the date of Queen Elizabeth or Henry VIII., it is surrounded by a high wall, within which is a paved court leading up to the main entrance. But it too, like all the buildings near, bore ample testimony to the merciless operation of war in its crumbling masonry and blackened timbers. There was a grove of venerable old firs round it, from which all the late firing had not entirely expelled the rooks.
Of the church I have a less perfect recollection. I remember, indeed, that its situation was highly striking, and that the view from the churchyard was of no ordinary beauty. I recollect, likewise, several statues of knights and ladies reposing in niches round the walls—some with the cross upon their shields, and their legs laid athwart, to show that they had served in Palestine; others in the more ancient costume of chain armour; but whether they were worthy of admiration as specimens of the art of sculpture, I cannot now take it upon me to say. I remarked, however, that the devices on the shields of most of these warriors, and the crests upon their helmets, resembled the coat and crest which were emblazoned over the gateway of the chateau; and hence I concluded that they were the effigies of the former lords of the castle, and that the family which owned it must have been at one period of some consequence.
It was not, however, exclusively in examining these buildings that I found amusement for my hours of idleness. From the churchyard, as I have already stated, the view is at all times magnificent, and it was rendered doubly so to-day by the movements of our army. The tide of war seemed to have taken a sudden turn; and the numerous corps which had so lately defiled towards the right could now be seen retracing their steps, and filing towards the left. It was a magnificent spectacle. From the high ground on which I stood, I could see very nearly to the two extreme points of the position; and the effect produced by the marching of nearly 120,000 men may be more easily imagined than described. The roads of communication ran, for the most part, in the rear of Arcanques. They were all crowded—cavalry, infantry, and artillery were moving; some columns marched in echelon; others paused from time to time as if to watch some object in their front; whilst a grove or wood would now and again receive an armed mass into its bosom, and then seem to be on fire, from the flashing of the sun against the bayonets. Happily for me, it was a day of bright sunshine, consequently every object appeared to great advantage; nor, I suspect, have many of our oldest soldiers beheld a more striking panorama than the combination of the objects around me this day produced.
I stood and watched with intense interest the shifting scene, till it gradually settled down into one of quiet. The various brigades, as I afterwards learned, were only returning from the point towards which the appearance of danger had hurried them, and now proceeded to establish themselves once more in their cantonments. The French general, either awed by the state of preparedness in which he found us, or satisfied with having called us for a few days into the field at this inclement season, laid aside the threatening attitude which he had assumed. It suited not the policy of our gallant leader to expose his troops wantonly to the miseries of a winter campaign; and hence rest and shelter were again the order of the day. But in these the corps to which I was attached had as yet no participation, our march being directed, on the following morning, to the vicinity of Fort Charlotte, where the charge of the pickets was once more assigned to us.