CHAP. X. Shewing how a volunteer may not be what Doctor Johnson made him.—A mayor's nest.—Cupping.—The Author's reasons for punishing the world with a book.—And some volunteers of the right sort.

When we next changed our quarter we found the new one peopled exclusively by old wives and their husbands, and, as the enemy were at a distance, we should certainly have gone defunct through sheer ennui, had not fortune sent us a fresh volunteer—a regular "broth of a boy," from the Emerald Isle, who afforded ample scope for the exercise of our mischievous propensities during our hours of idleness.

A volunteer—be it known to all who know it not—is generally a young man with some pretensions to gentility—and while, with some, those pretensions are so admirably disguised as to be scarcely visible to the naked eye, in others they are conspicuous; but, in either case, they are persons who, being without the necessary influence to obtain a commission at home, get a letter of introduction to the commander of the forces in the field, who, if he approves, attaches them to regiments, and, while they are treated as gentlemen out of the field, they receive the pay, and do the duty of private soldiers in it. In every storming party or service of danger, in which any portion of a regiment is engaged, if a volunteer is attached to it, he is expected to make one of the number, and, if a bullet does not provide for him in the meantime, he eventually succeeds to the commission of some officer who has fallen in action.

Tommy Dangerfield, the hero of my tale, was, no doubt, (as we all are,) the hero of his mother—in stature he was middle sized—rather bull shouldered, and walked with bent knees—his face was a fresh good-natured one, but with the usual sinister cast in the eye worn by common Irish country countenances—in short, Tommy was rather a good-looking, and, in reality, not a bad, fellow, and the only mistake which he seemed to have made, was in the choice of his profession, for which his general appearance and his ideas altogether disqualified him—nevertherless, had he fallen into other hands it is possible that he might have passed muster with tolerable repute until the termination of the war; but I don't know how it was, nor do I know whether we differed from other regiments in the same respect, but our first and most uncharitable aim was to discover the weak points of every fresh arrival, and to attack him through them. If he had redeeming qualities, he, of course, came out scatheless, but, if not, he was dealt with most unmercifully. Poor Tommy had none such—he was weak on all sides, and therefore went to the wall.

At the time he joined, we were unusually situated with regard to the enemy, for, on ordinary occasions, we had their sentries opposite to ours within a few hundred yards; but, at that period, we had the French garrison of Ciudad Rodrigo behind us, with the 52d regiment between; while the nearest enemy in our front was distant some ten or twelve miles—nevertheless, our first essay was to impress Tommy with a notion that our village was a fortified place, and that we were closely blockaded on all sides—and it became our daily amusement to form a reconnoitring party to endeavour to penetrate beyond the posts—which posts, be it remarked, were held by a few of our own men, disguised for the purpose, and posted at the out-skirts of the village wood.

Tommy, though not a desperate character, shewed no want of pluck—wherever we went he followed, and wherever we fled he led the way!

On the first occasion of the kind we got him on horseback, and conducting him through the wood until we received the expected volley, we took to our heels in the hope that he would get unseated in the flight, but he held on like grim death, and arrived in the village with the loss of his cap only. It was, however, brought to him in due time by an old rifleman of the name of Brotherwood, who had commanded the enemy on that occasion, but who claimed peculiar merit in its recovery; and, having taken the opportunity of cutting a hole in it as if a ball had passed through, he got a dollar for the cut!

Poor Tommy, from that time, led the life of the devil—he could not shew his nose outside his own house that he was not fired at—and whenever we made up a larger party to shew him more of the world it was only to lead him into further mischief.

I was some time after this removed into the left wing of our regiment, which belonged to a different brigade, so that I ceased to be a daily witness of his torments, though aware that they went on as theretofore.

Tommy continued to rub on for a considerable time. Death had become busy in our ranks—first, by the siege and storming of Ciudad Rodrigo, and immediately after, by that of Badajos. I had heard little or nothing of him during those stirring events of real war—and it was not until the morning after the storming of Badajos that he again came under my notice—from having heard that he had been missing the night before. I there saw him turn up, like a half-drowned rat, covered with mud and wet, which looked very much as if he had passed the night in the inundation, adjoining the breach, up to his neck in the water, and probably a little deeper at times, when the fire-balls were flying thickest. He nevertheless contrived to hold on yet a little longer—one day, (agreeably to order,) taking post in the middle of a river, with his face towards Ispahan, to watch the enemy in that direction—and the next day, in conformity with the same orders, applying to the quarter-master-general for a route for himself and party to go to Kamskatcha to recruit, he got so bewildered that he could not distinguish between a sham and a real order, and, at last, when in the face of the enemy, in front of Salamanca, he absolutely refused to take the duty for which he had been ordered, and was consequently obliged to cut.

It was the best thing that could have happened both for him and the service; for, as I said before, he had mistaken his profession, and as he was yet but a youth, it is to be hoped that he afterwards stumbled upon the right one.

Atalya, which we now occupied, is a mountain village about half a league in front of the Vadillo. The only amusing characters we found in it were the pigs. I know not whether any process was resorted to in the mornings to entice them from their homes to grub up the falling acorns from the beautiful little evergreen oaks which adorned the hills above, but it was a great scene every evening at sunset to go to the top of the village, and see about five hundred of them coming thundering down the face of the mountain at full speed, and each galloping in to his own door.

We had been a considerable time there before we discovered that the neighbourhood could furnish metal more attractive, but a shooting excursion at last brought us acquainted with the Quinta Horquera (I think it was called), a very respectable farm-house, situated on a tongue of land formed by the junction of another mountain stream with the Vadillo.

The house itself was nothing out of the common run, but its inmates were, for we found it occupied by the chief magistrate of Ciudad Rodrigo, with his wife and daughter, and two young female relatives. He himself was a staunch friend of his country, and when the fortress of Rodrigo fell into the hands of the French, rather than live in communion with them, he retired with his family to that remote property, in the hope that as it was so much out of the way he might rest there in peace and security until circumstances enabled him to resume his position in society as a true and loyal Spaniard; but as the sequel will shew, he had reckoned without his host, for with a British regiment in the neighbourhood, and his house filled with young ladies he was an unreasonable man to expect peace there, and the enemy also by and bye came down upon him, as if to prove that his notions of security were equally fallacious.

Don Miguel himself was a splendid ruin of a man of three score, of a majestic figure, regular features, and stern dark Castilian countenance. He was kind and amusing withal, for though his own face was forbidden to smile, yet he seemed to enjoy it in others, and did all in his power to promote amusement, that is, as much as a Spaniard ever does.

His wife was very tall and very slender—the skin of her pale fleshless face fitting so tight as to make it look like a pin-head. She was very passive and very good-natured, her other day having long passed by.

Their only daughter was a woman about twenty-eight years of age, with rather a dull pock-pitted countenance, and a tall, stout, clumsy figure. She had very little of the Spaniard in her composition, but was nevertheless a kind good-natured girl. Her relatives, however, were metal of another sort: the eldest was a remarkably well made plump little figure, with a fair complexion, natural curly hair, and a face full of dimples which shewed eternal sunshine; while her sister, as opposite as day from night, shewed the flashing dark eye, sallow complexion, and the light sylph-like figure for which her country-women are so remarkable. To look at her was to see a personification of that beautiful description of Byron's in his first canto of Childe Harold—

Their house, under the circumstances in which we were placed, became an agreeable lounge for many of us for a month or two, for though the sports of the field, with the limited means at our disposal, formed our daily amusement, we always contrived that it should terminate somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Quinta, where we were sure of three things—a hearty welcome, a dish of conversation, and another of chestnuts fried in hog's-lard, with a glass of aguadente to wind up with, which, after the fatigues of the day, carried us comfortably home to our more substantial repast, with a few little pleasing recollections to dream about.

The French marshal, as if envious of our enjoyments, meagre as they were, put a sudden stop to them. His advance, however, was not so rapid but that we were enabled to give our first care towards providing for the safety of our friends of the Quinta, by assisting them with the means of transporting themselves to a more remote glen in the mountains, before it was necessary to look to our own, and

had not been patent ones, yet did it savour somewhat of chivalric times when we had been one evening in the field in the front of the Quinta sporting with the young and the lovely of the land, as if wars and rumours of wars were to be heard of no more.

I say I felt it rather queerish or so, to be spreading down my boat-cloak for a bed in the same field the next night, with an enemy in my front, for so it was, and to find myself again before day-light next morning, from my cold clay couch, gazing at the wonderful comet of 1811, that made such capital claret, and wishing that he would wag his fiery tale a little nearer to my face, for it was so stiff with hoar frost that I dared neither to laugh nor cry for fear of breaking it.

We passed yet another night in the same field hallowed by such opposite recollections; but next day, independently of the gathered strength of the enemy in our front, we found a fight of some magnitude going on behind us, the combat of Elbodon; and our major-general, getting alarmed at last at his own temerity, found a sleeping place for us, some distance in the rear, in a hollow, where none but the comet and its companions might be indulged with a look.

Our situation was more than ticklish—with an enemy on three sides and an almost impassable mountain on the fourth—but starting with the lark next morning and passing through Robledillo, we happily succeeded in joining the army in front of Guinaldo in the afternoon, to the no small delight of his Grace of Wellington, whose judicious and daring front with half the enemy's numbers, had been our salvation. And it must no doubt have been a mortifying reflection to our divisional chief, to find that his obstinacy and disobedience of orders had not only placed his own division, but that of the whole army in such imminent peril.

Marmont had no doubt a laurel-wreath in embryo for the following day, but he had allowed his day to go by; the night was ours and we used it, so that when day-light broke, he had nothing but empty field-works to wreak his vengeance on. He followed us along the road, with some sharp partial fighting at one or two places, and there seemed a probability of his coming on to the position in which Lord Wellington felt disposed to give him battle; but a scarcity of provisions forced him to retrace his steps, and break up to a certain extent for the subsistence of his army, while our retreat terminated at Soita, which it appeared was about the spot on which Lord Wellington had determined to make a stand.

I shall ever remember our night at Soita for one thing. The commissariat had been about to destroy a cask of rum in the course of that day's retreat, when at the merciful intercession of one of my brother officers, it was happily spared and turned over to his safe keeping, and he shewed himself deserving of the trust, for by wonderful dexterity and management, he contrived to get it wheeled along to our resting-place, when establishing himself under the awning of a splendid chestnut-tree, he hung out the usual emblem of its being the head-quarters of a highland chief—not for the purpose of scaring way-fairers as erst did his forefathers of yore, to exclude the worthy Baillie Nicol Jarvie from the clachan of Aberfoyle—but for the more hospitable one of inviting them to be partakers thereof; and need I add that among the many wearers of empty calabashes which the chances of war had there assembled around him, the call was cheerfully responded to, and a glorious group very quickly assembled.

The morrow promised to be a bloody one; but we cared not for the morrow:—"sufficient for the day is the evil thereof:"—the song and the jest went merrily round, and, if the truth must be told, I believe that though we carried our cups to the feast, we all went back in them, and with the satisfaction of knowing that we had relieved our gallant chieftain of all further care respecting the contents of the cask.

The enemy having withdrawn the same night, we retraced our steps, next day, to our former neighbourhood; and though we were occasionally stirred up and called together by the menacing attitudes of our opponents, yet we remained the unusually long period of nearly three months without coming again into actual contact with them.

No officer during that time had one fraction to rub against another; and when I add that our paunches were nearly as empty as our pockets, it will appear almost a libel upon common sense to say that we enjoyed it; yet so it was,—our very privations were a subject of pride and boast to us, and there still continued to be an esprit de corps,—a buoyancy of feeling animating all, which nothing could quell; we were alike ready for the field or for frolic, and when not engaged in the one, went headlong into the other.

Ah me! when I call to mind that our chief support in those days of trial was the anticipated delight of recounting those tales in after years, to wondering and admiring groups around our domestic hearths, in merry England; and when I find that so many of these after years have already passed, and that the folks who people these present years, care no more about these dear-bought tales of former ones than if they were spinning-wheel stories of some "auld wife ayont the fire;" I say it is not only enough to make me inflict them with a book, as I have done, but it makes me wish that I had it all to do over again; and I think it would be very odd if I would not do exactly as I have done, for I knew no happier times, and they were their own reward!

It is worthy of remark that Lord Wellington, during the time I speak of, had made his arrangements for pouncing upon the devoted fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo, with such admirable secrecy, that his preparations were not even known to his own army.

I remember, about a fortnight before the siege commenced, hearing that some gabions and fascines were being made in the neighbourhood, but it was spoken of as a sort of sham preparation, intended to keep the enemy on the qui vive, as it seemed improbable that he would dare to invest a fortress in the face of an army which he had not force enough to meet in the field, unless on some select position; nor was it until the day before we opened the trenches that we became quite satisfied that he was in earnest.

The sieges, stormings, and capture of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos followed hard on each other's heels; and as I gave a short detail of the operations in my former volume, it only remains for me now to introduce such anecdotes and remarks as were there omitted.

The garrison of Ciudad was weak in number, but had a superabundant store of ammunition, which was served out to us with a liberal hand; yet, curious enough, except what was bestowed on the working parties, (and that was plenty in all conscience,) the greater portion of what was intended for the supporting body was expended in air, for they never seemed to have discovered the true position of the besieging force; and though some few of us, in the course of each night, by chance-shots, got transferred from natural to eternal sleep, yet their shells were chiefly employed in the ploughing-up of a hollow way between two hills, where we were supposed to have been, and which they did most effectually at their own cost.

When our turn of duty came for the trenches, however, we never had reason to consider ourselves neglected, but, on the contrary, could well spare what was sent at random.

I have often heard it disputed whether the most daring deeds are done by men of good or bad repute, but I never felt inclined to give either a preference over the other, for I have seen the most desperate things done by both. I remember one day during the siege that a shell pitched in the trenches within a few yards of a noted bad character of the 52d regiment, who, rather than take the trouble of leaping out of the trench until it had exploded, went very deliberately up, took it in his arms, and pitched it outside, obliging those to jump back who had there taken shelter from it.

A wild young officer, whose eccentricities and death, at Waterloo, were noticed in my former volume, was at that time at variance with his father on the subject of pecuniary matters, and in mounting the breach, at Ciudad, sword in hand, while both sides were falling thick and fast, he remarked to a brother-officer alongside of him, in his usual jocular way, "Egad, if I had my old father here now, I think I should be able to bring him to terms!"

Nothing shows the spirit of daring and inherent bravery of the British soldier so much as in the calling for a body of volunteers for any desperate service. In other armies, as Napier justly remarks, the humblest helmet may catch a beam of glory; but in ours, while the subaltern commanding the forlorn hope may look for death or a company, and the field-officer commanding the stormers an additional step by brevet, to the other officers and soldiers who volunteer on that desperate service, no hope is held out—no reward given; and yet there were as many applicants for a place in the ranks as if it led to the highest honours and rewards.

At the stormings of Badajos and St. Sebastian I happened to be the adjutant of the regiment, and had the selection of the volunteers on those occasions, and I remember that there was as much anxiety expressed, and as much interest made by all ranks to be appointed to the post of honour, as if it had been sinecure situations, in place of death-warrants, which I had at my disposal.

For the storming of St. Sebastian, the numbers from our battalion were limited to twenty-five; and in selecting the best characters out of those who offered themselves, I rejected an Irishman of the name of Burke, who, although he had been on the forlorn hope both at Ciudad and Badajos, and was a man of desperate bravery, I knew to be one of those wild untameable animals that, the moment the place was carried, would run into every species of excess.

The party had been named two days before they were called for, and Burke besieged my tent night and day, assuring me all the while that unless he was suffered to be of the party, the place would not be taken! I was forced at last to yield, after receiving an application in his behalf from the officer who was to command the party; and he was one of the very few of that gallant little band who returned to tell the story.

Nor was that voracious appetite for fire-eating confined to the private soldier, for it extended alike to all ranks. On the occasion just alluded to, our quota, as already stated, was limited to a subaltern's command of twenty-five men; and as the post of honour was claimed by the senior lieutenant, (Percival,) it in a manner shut the mouths of all the juniors; yet were there some whose mouths would not be shut,—one in particular (Lieutenant H.) who had already seen enough of fighting to satisfy the mind of any reasonable man, for he had stormed and bled at Ciudad Rodrigo, and he had stormed at Badajos, not to mention his having had his share in many, and not nameless battles, which had taken place in the interim; yet nothing would satisfy him but that he must draw his sword in that also.

Our colonel was too heroic a soul himself to check a feeling of that sort in those under him, and he very readily obtained the necessary permission to be a volunteer along with the party. Having settled his temporal affairs, namely, willing away his pelisse, jacket, two pairs of trousers, and sundry nether garments,—and however trifling these bequests may appear to a military youth of the present day, who happens to be reconnoitring a merchant tailor's settlement in St. James's Street, yet let me tell him that, at the time I speak of, they were valued as highly as if they had been hundreds a year in reversion.

The prejudice against will-making by soldiers on service is so strong, that had H. been a rich man in place of a poor one, he must have died on the spot for doing what was accounted infinitely more desperate than storming a breach; but his poverty seemed to have been his salvation, for he was only half killed,—a ball entered under his eye, passed down the roof of the mouth, through the palate, entered again at the collar-bone, and was cut out at the shoulder-blade. He never again returned to his regiment, but I saw him some years after, in his native country (Ireland), in an active situation, and, excepting that he had gotten an ugly mark on his countenance, and his former manly voice had dwindled into a less commanding one, he seemed as well as ever I saw him.

Will-making, as already hinted at, was, in the face of the enemy, reckoned the most daring of all daring deeds, for the doer was always considered a doomed man, and it was but too often verified—not but that the same fatality must have marked him out without it; but so strong was the prejudice generally on that subject that many a goodly estate has, in consequence, passed into what, under other circumstances, would have been forbidden hands.

On the subject of presentiments of death in going into battle, I have known as many instances of falsification as verification. To the latter the popular feeling naturally clings as the more interesting of the two; but I am inclined to think that the other would preponderate if the account could be justly rendered. The officer alluded to may be taken as a specimen of the former—he had been my messmate and companion at the sieges and stormings of both Ciudad and Badajos—and on the morning after the latter, he told me that he had had a presentiment that he would have fallen the night before, though he had been ashamed to confess it sooner—and yet to his credit be it spoken, so far from wishing to avoid, he coveted the post of danger—as his duty for that day would have led him to the trenches, but he exchanged with another officer, on purpose to ensure himself a place in the storm.

Of my own feelings on the point in consideration, I am free to say that, while I have been engaged in fifty actions, in which I have neither had the time, nor taken the trouble to ask myself any questions on the subject, but encountered them in whatever humour I happened to be—yet, in many others, (the eve of pitched battles,) when the risk was imminent, and certain that one out of every three must go to the ground, I have asked myself the question, "Do I feel like a dead man?" but I was invariably answered point blank, "No!" And yet must I still look like a superstitious character, when I declare that the only time that I ever went into action, labouring under a regular depression of spirits, was on the evening on which the musket-ball felt my head at Foz d'Aronce.

But to return to the storming of Ciudad. The moment which is the most dangerous to the honour and the safety of a British army is that in which they have won the place they have assaulted. While outside the walls, and linked together by the magic hand of discipline, they are heroes—but once they have forced themselves inside they become demons or lunatics—for it is difficult to determine which spirit predominates.

To see the two storming divisions assembled in the great square that night, mixed up in a confused mass, shooting at each other, and firing in at different doors and windows, without the shadow of a reason, was enough to drive any one, who was in possession of his senses, mad. The prisoners were formed in a line on one side of the square—unarmed, it is true—but, on my life, had they made a simultaneous rush forward, they might have made a second Bergen-op-Zoom of it—for so absolute was the sway of the demon of misrule, that half of our men, I verily believe, would have been panic-struck and thrown themselves into the arms of death, over the ramparts, to escape a danger that either did not exist or might have been easily avoided. After calling, and shouting, until I was hoarse in endeavouring to restore order, and when my voice was no longer audible, seeing a soldier raising his piece to fire at a window, I came across his shoulders with a musket-barrel which I had in my hand, and demanded, "What the devil, sir, are you firing at?" to which he answered, "I don't know, sir! I am firing because every body else is!"

The storming of a fortress was a new era to the British army of that day, and it is not to be wondered at if the officers were not fully alive to the responsibility which attaches to them on such an occasion—but on their conduct every thing hinges—by judgement and discretion men may be kept together—but once let them loose and they are no longer redeemable.

I have often lamented that speechifying was at such a discount in those days, for, excepting what was promulgated in Lord Wellington's orders, which were necessarily brief, the subordinates knew nothing of the past, present, or the future, until the glimpse of an English newspaper some months after served to enlighten their understandings; but there were every day occasions, in which the slightest hint from our superiors, as to the probable results, would have led to incalculable advantages, and in none more so than in the cases now quoted. So far from recommending caution, the chief of one of the storming divisions is grievously belied if he did not grant some special licenses for that particular occasion, though I am bound to say for him that he did all he could to repress them when he found the advantage taken.

Ciudad, being a remote frontier fortress, could boast of few persons of any note within its walls—our worthy friends of Horquera, (the Alcaldé, with his family,) were probably the best, and he returned and resumed his official functions as soon as he found that the place had reverted to its legal owners—his house had been a princely one, but was, unfortunately, situated behind the great breach, and was blown to atoms—so that, for the time being, he was obliged to content himself with one more humble—though, if I may speak as I have felt, I should say not less comfortable, for I contrived to make it my home as often as I could find an excuse for so doing—and, as the old Proverb goes, "where there is a will there is a way," it was as often as I could.

One portion of the ceremony of Spanish hospitality was their awaking me about five in the morning to take a cup of chocolate, made so thick that a tea-spoon might stand in it, which, with a little crisp brown toast, was always administered by the fair hands of one of the damsels, and certes I never could bring myself to consider it an annoyance, however unusual it may seem in this cold land of ours.