CHAP. XI. Very short, with a few anecdotes still shorter; but the principal actors thought the scenes long enough.

After the fall of Ciudad Rodrigo, our battalion took possession for a time of Ituera, a pretty little village on the banks of the Azava.

It was a delightful coursing country, abounding in hares; and as the chase in those days afforded a double gratification—the one present, and the other in perspective, (the dinner hour,) it was always followed with much assiduity. The village, too, happened to be within a short ride of Ciudad, so that frequent visits to our friends formed an agreeable variety, and rendered our short sojourn there a season of real enjoyment.

I was much struck, on first entering Spain, in observing what appeared to be a gross absurdity in their religious observances; for whenever one of those processions was heard approaching, the girls, no matter how they had been employed, immediately ran to the window, where, kneeling down, they continued repeating their aves until it had passed, when they jumped up again and were ready for any frolic or mischief.

Such was the effect produced inwardly by the outward passage of the Hoste, but it was not until I went to Ituera that I had an opportunity of witnessing the fatal results of a more familiar visit from those gentlemen bearing torches and dark lanterns, for they certainly seemed to me to put several souls to flight before they were duly prepared for it.

One happened to be the landlady of the house in which I was quartered, a woman about three score, and blind; but she was, nevertheless, as merry as a cricket, and used to amuse us over the fireside in the evening, while "twisting her rock and her wee pickle tow," in chaunting Malbrook and other ditties equally interesting, with a voice which at one time might have had a little music in it, but had then degenerated into the squeak of a penny trumpet.

In her last evening on earth, she had treated us with her usual serenade, and seemed as likely to live a dozen years longer as any one of the group around her; but on my return from a field-day next forenoon, I met the Padré, the sexton, and their usual accompaniments, marching out of the house to the tune of that grave air of theirs; and I saw that further question was needless, for the tears of the attendant damsels told me the tale of woe.

Her sudden departure was to me most unaccountable, nor could I ever obtain an explanation beyond that she was very aged; that they had sent for the Father to comfort her, and now she was happy in the keeping of their blessed Virgin.

There was much weeping and wailing for a day or two, and her grand-daughter, a tall thin lath of a girl, about eleven or twelve years of age, seemed the most distressed of the group. It so happened that a few days after, an order was promulgated authorising us to fill up our ranks with Spanish recruits, to the extent of ten men for each company, and I started off to some of the neighbouring villages, where we were well-known, in the hope of being able to pick up some good ones. On my return I was rather amused to find that the damsel already mentioned, whom I had left ten days before bathed in tears, was already a blushing bride in the hands of a strapping muleteer.

While on the subject of those Spanish recruits I may here remark that we could not persuade the countrymen to join us, and it was not until we got to Madrid that we succeeded in procuring the prescribed number for our battalion. Those we got, however, were a very inferior sample of the Spaniard, and we therefore expected little from them, but to their credit be it recorded, they turned out admirably well—they were orderly and well-behaved in quarters, and thoroughly good in the field; and they never went into action that they had not their full portion of casualties.

There were fifty of them originally, and at the close of the war, (about a year and a half after,) I think there were about seventeen remaining, and there had not been a single desertion from among them. When we were leaving the country they received some months' gratuitous pay and were discharged, taking with them our best wishes, which they richly merited.

Lord Wellington during the whole of the war kept a pack of fox-hounds, and while they contributed not a little to the amusement of whatever portion of the army happened to be within reach of head-quarters, they were to his Lordship valuable in many ways; for while he enjoyed the chase as much as any, it gave him an opportunity of seeing and conversing with the officers of the different departments, and other individuals, without attracting the notice of the enemy's emissaries; and the pursuits of that manly exercise, too, gave him a better insight into the characters of the individuals under him, than he could possibly have acquired by years of acquaintance under ordinary circumstances.

It is not unusual to meet, in the society of the present day, some old Peninsular trump, with the rank very probably of a field officer, and with a face as polished, and its upper story as well furnished as the figure-head of his sword hilt, gravely asserting that all the merit which the Duke of Wellington has acquired from his victories was due to the troops! And having plundered the Commander-in-Chief of his glory, and divided it among the followers, he, as an officer of those same followers, very complacently claims a field officer's allowance in the division of the spoil.

I would stake all I have in this world that no man ever heard such an opinion from the lips of a private soldier—I mean a thorough good service one—for the ideas of such men are beyond it; and I have ever found that their proudest stories relate to the good or gallant deeds of those above them. It is impossible, therefore, to hear such absurdities advanced by one in the rank of an officer, without marvelling by what fortuitous piece of luck he, with the military capacity of a baggage animal, had contrived to hold his commission, for he must have been deeply indebted to the clemency of those above, and takes the usual method of that class of persons, to shew his sense thereof, by kicking down the ladder by which he ascended.

Our civil brethren in general are of necessity obliged to swallow a considerable portion of whatever we choose to place before them. But when they meet with such an one as I have described, they may safely calculate that whenever the items of his services can be collected, it will be found that his Majesty has had a hard bargain! For, knowing, as every one does, what the best ship's crew would be afloat in the wide world of waters without a master, they may, on the same principle, bear in mind that there can no more be an efficient army without a good general, than there can be an efficient general without a good army, for the one is part and parcel of the other—they cannot exist singly!

The touching on the foregoing subject naturally obliges me to wander from my narrative to indulge in a few professional observations, illustrative not only of war but of its instruments.

Those unaccustomed to warfare, are apt to imagine that a field of battle is a scene of confusion worse confounded, but that is a mistake, for, except on particular occasions, there is in general no noise or confusion any thing like what takes place on ordinary field days in England. I have often seen half the number of troops put to death, without half the bluster and confusion which takes place in a sham fight in the Phœnix-Park of Dublin.

The man who blusters at a field day is not the man who does it on the field of battle: on the contrary his thoughts there are generally too big for utterance, and he would gladly squeeze himself into a nutshell if he could. The man who makes a noise on the field of battle is generally a good one, but all rules have their exceptions, for I have seen one or two thorough good ones, who were blusterers in both situations; but it nevertheless betrays a weakness in any officer who is habitually noisy about trifles, from the simple fact that when any thing of importance occurs to require an extraordinary exertion of lungs, nature cannot supply him with the powers requisite to make the soldiers understand that it is the consequence of an occurrence more serious, than the trifle he was in the habit of making a noise about.

In soldiering, as in every thing else, except Billingsgate and ballad singing, the cleverest things are done quietly.

At the storming of the heights of Bera, on the 8th of October, 1813, Colonel, now Sir John Colbourne, who commanded our second brigade, addressed his men before leading them up to the enemy's redoubt with, "Now, my lads, we'll just charge up to the edge of the ditch, and if we can't get in, we'll stand there and fire in their faces." They charged accordingly, the enemy fled from the works, and in following them up the mountain, Sir John, in rounding a hill, accompanied only by his brigade-major and a few riflemen, found that he had headed a retiring body of about 300 of the French, and whispering to his brigade-major to get as many men together as he could, he without hesitation rode boldly up to the enemy's commander, and demanded his sword! The Frenchman surrendered it with the usual grace of his countrymen, requesting that the other would bear witness that he had conducted himself like a good and valiant soldier! Sir John answered the appeal with an approving nod; for it was no time to refuse bearing witness to the valour of 300 men, while they were in the act of surrendering to half a dozen.

If a body of troops is under fire, and so placed as to be unable to return it, the officer commanding should make it a rule to keep them constantly on the move, no matter if it is but two side steps to the right or one to the front, it always makes them believe they are doing something, and prevents the mind from brooding over a situation which is the most trying of any.

The coolness of an officer in action, if even shewn in trifles, goes a great way towards maintaining the steadiness of the men. At the battle of Waterloo, I heard Sir John Lambert call one of his commanding officers to order for repeating his (the general's) word of command, reminding him that when the regiments were in contiguous close columns, they ought to take it from himself! As the brigade was under a terrific fire at the time, the notice of such a trifling breach of rule shewed, at all events, that the gallant general was at home!

In the course of the five days' fighting which took place near Bayonne, in December, 1813, a singular change of fate, with its consequent interchange of civilities, took place between the commanding officer of a French regiment and one of ours; I forget whether it was the 4th or 9th, but I think it was one of the regiments of that brigade—it had been posted amongst some enclosures which left both its flanks at the mercy of others.

The fighting at that place had been very severe, with various success, and while the regiment alluded to was hotly engaged in front, a French corps succeeded in getting in their rear; when the enemy's commandant advancing to the English one, apologised for troubling him, but begged to point out that he was surrounded, and must consider himself his prisoner! While the British colonel was listening to the mortifying intelligence, and glancing around to see if no hope of escape was left, he observed another body of English in the act of compassing the very corps by which he had been caught; and, returning the Frenchman's salute, begged his pardon for presuming to differ with him in opinion, but that he was labouring under a mistake, for he (the Frenchman) was, on the contrary, his prisoner, pointing in his turn to the movement that had taken place while they had been disputing the point. As the fact did not admit of a doubt, the Frenchman giving a shrug of the shoulders, and uttering a lament over the fickleness of the war-goddess, quietly surrendered.