Napoleonic Literature
Kincaid: Adventures in the Rifle Brigade
Chapter XIV
March to intercept Clausel. Tafalla. Olite. The dark End of a Night
March to Casada. Clausel's Escape. Sanguessa. My Tent struck. Return to
Villalba. Weighty Considerations on Females. St Esteban. A Severe Dance.
Position at Bera. Soult's Advance, and Battle of the Pyrenees. His Defeat
and subsequent Actions. A Morning's Ride.
June 26th, 1813. — OUR division fell in this morning at daylight, and,
marching out of Villalba, circled round the southern side of Pampeluna
until we reached the great road leading to Tafalla, where we found ourselves
united with the third and fourth divisions, and a large body of cavalry;
the whole, under the immediate command of Lord Wellington, proceeded southward
with a view to intercept General Clausel, who, with a strong division of
the French army, had been at Logrona on the day of the battle of Vittoria,
and was now endeavouring to pass into the Pyrenees by our right. We marched
until sunset and halted for the night in a wood.
On the morning of the 27th we were again in motion,
and passing through a country abounding in fruits and all manner of delightful
prospects, and through the handsome town of Tafalla, where we were enthusiastically
cheered by the beauteous occupants of the numerous balconies overhanging
the streets. We halted for the night in an olive-grove a short distance
from Olite.
At daylight next morning we passed through the town
of Olite and continued our route until we began to enter among the mountains
about midday, when we halted two hours to enable the men to cook, and again
resumed our march. Darkness overtook us while struggling through a narrow
rugged road which wound its way along the bank of the Arragon and we did
not reach our destination at Casada until near midnight, where, amid torrents
of rain, and in the darkness of the night, we could find nothing but ploughed
fields on which to repose our weary limbs, nor could we find a particle
of fuel to illuminate the cheerless scene.
Breathed there a man of soul so dead,
Who would not to himself have said,
This is — a confounded comfortless dwelling*.
Dear Sir Walter, — pray excuse the Casadians from your curse entailed on
home haters, for if any one of them ever succeeds in getting beyond the
mountain by the road which I traversed he ought to be anathematized if
ever he seek his home again.
We passed the whole of the next day in the same
place. It was discovered that Clausel had been walking blindly into the
lion's den when the alcaldé of a neighbouring village had
warned him of his danger, and he was thereby enabled to avoid us by turning
off towards Saragossa. We heard that Lord Wellington had caused the informer
to be hanged. I hope he did, but I don't believe it.
On the 30th we began to retrace our steps to Pampeluna,
in the course of which we halted two nights at Sanguessa, a populous mountain
town full of old rattle-trap houses, a good many of which we pulled down
for firewood, by way of making room for improvements.
I was taking advantage of this extra day's halt
to communicate to my friends the important events of the past fortnight
when I found myself all at once wrapped into a bundle, with my tentpole,
and sent rolling upon the earth, mixed up with my portable table and writing
utensils, while the devil himself seemed to be dancing a hornpipe over
my body! Although this is a sort of thing that one will sometimes submit
to when it comes by way of illusion at its proper time and place, such
as a midnight visit from a nightmare yet, as I seemed now to be visited
by a horse as well as a mare, and that, too, in the middle of the day and
in the midst of a crowded camp, it was rather too much of a joke, and I
therefore sung out most lustily. I was not long in getting extricated,
and found that the whole scene had been arranged by two rascally donkies,
who, in a frolicsome humour, had been chasing each other about the neighbourhood
until they finally tumbled into my tent with a force which drew every peg
and rolled the whole of it over on the top of me! It might have been good
sport to them, but it was none to me!
On the 3d of July we resumed our quarters in Villalba,
where we halted during the whole of the next day and were well supplied
with fish, fresh butter, and eggs, brought by the peasantry of Biscay,
who are the most manly set of women that I ever saw. They are very square
across the shoulders; and, what between the quantity of fish and the quantity
of yellow petticoats, they carry a load which an ordinary mule might boast
of.
A division of Spaniards having relieved us in the
blockade of Pampeluna, our division, on the 5th of July, advanced into
the Pyrenees.
On the 7th we took up our quarters in the little
town of St Esteban, situated in a lovely valley watered by the Bidassoa.
The different valleys in the Pyrenees are very rich and fertile. The towns
are clean and regular, and the natives very handsome. They are particularly
smart about the limbs, and in no other part of the world have I seen anything,
natural or artificial, to rival the complexions of the ladies, i.e. to
the admirers of pure red and white.
We were allowed to remain several days in this enchanting
spot, and enjoyed ourselves exceedingly. They had an extraordinary style
of dancing, peculiar to themselves. At a particular part of the tune they
all began thumping the floor with their feet as hard and as fast as they
were able, not in the shape of a figure or flourish of any kind, but even
down pounding. I could not, myself, see any thing either graceful or difficult
in the operation; but they seemed to think that there was only one lady
amongst them who could do it in perfection; she was the wife of a French
Colonel and had been left in the care of her friends, (and his enemies):
she certainly could pound the ground both harder and faster than any one
there, eliciting the greatest applause after every performance; and yet
I do not think that she could have caught a French husband by her
superiority in that particular step.
After our few days halt we advanced along the banks
of the Bidassoa through a succession of beautiful little fertile valleys,
thickly studded with clean respectable looking farm-houses and little villages,
and bounded by stupendous, picturesque, and well wooded mountains, until
we came to the hill next to the village of Bera, which we found occupied
by a small force of the enemy, who, after receiving a few shots from our
people, retired through the village into their position behind it. Our
line of demarcation was then clearly seen. The mountain which the French
army occupied was the last ridge of the Pyrenees; and their sentries stood
on the face of it, within pistol shot of the village of Bera, which now
became the advanced post of our division. The Bidassoa takes a sudden turn
to the left at Bera and formed a natural boundary between the two armies
from thence to the sea; but all to our right was open and merely marked
a continuation of the valley of Bera, which was a sort of neutral ground
in which the French foragers and our own frequently met and helped themselves,
in the greatest good humour, while any forage remained, without exchanging
either words or blows. The left wing of the army, under Sir Thomas Graham,
now commenced the siege of St Sebastian; and as Lord Wellington had, at
the same time, to cover both that and the blockade of Pampeluna, our army
occupied an extended position of many miles.
Marshal Soult having succeeded to the command of
the French army, and finding, towards the end of July, that St Sebastian
was about to be stormed, and that the garrison of Pampeluna were beginning
to get on short allowance, he determined on making a bold push for the
relief of both places and, assembling the whole of his army, he forced
the pass of Maya, and advanced rapidly upon Pampeluna. Lord Wellington
was never to be caught napping. His army occupied too extended a position
to offer effectual resistance at any of their advanced posts; but, by the
time that Marshal Soult had worked his way up to the last ridge of the
Pyrenees, and within sight of "the haven of his wishes," he found his lordship
waiting for him, with four divisions of the army, who treated him to one
of the most signal and sanguinary defeats that he ever experienced.
Our division, during the important movements on
our right, was employed in keeping up the communication between the troops
under the immediate command of Lord Wellington and those under Sir Thomas
Graham at St Sebastian. We retired the first day to the mountains behind
Le Secca, and, just as we were about to lie down for the night, we were
again ordered under arms and continued our retreat in utter darkness through
a mountain path where in many places a false step might have rolled a fellow
as far as the other world. The consequence was that, although we were kept
on our legs during the whole of the night, we found, when daylight broke,
that the tail of the column had not got a quarter of a mile from their
starting-post.
On a good broad road it is all very well; but, on
a narrow bad road a night march is like a nightmare, harassing a man to
no purpose.
On the 26th we occupied a ridge of mountain near
enough to hear the battle, though not in a situation to see it and remained
the whole of the day in the greatest torture for want of news. About midnight
we heard the joyful tidings of the enemy's defeat, with the loss of four
thousand prisoners. Our division proceeded in pursuit at daylight on the
following morning.
We moved rapidly by the same road on which we had
retired and, after a forced march, found ourselves, when near sunset, on
the flank of their retiring column on the Bidassoa, near the bridge of
Janca, and immediately proceeded to business.
The sight of a Frenchman always acted like a cordial
on the spirits of a rifleman and the fatigues of the day were forgotten
as our three battalions extended among the brushwood and went down to "knock
the dust out of their hairy knapsacks,"**
as our men were in the habit of expressing themselves; but, in place of
knocking the dust out of them, I believe that most of their knapsacks were
knocked in the dust; for the greater part of those who were not floored
along with their knapsacks shook them off by way of enabling the owner
to make a smarter scramble across that portion of the road on which our
leaden shower was pouring; and, foes as they were, it was impossible not
to feel a degree of pity for their situation, pressed by an enemy in the
rear, an inaccessible mountain on their right, and a river on their left,
lined by an invisible foe from whom there was no escape but the desperate
one of running the gauntlet. However, "as every — has his day," and this
was ours, we must stand excused for making the most of it. Each company,
as they passed, gave us a volley; but as they had nothing to guide their
aim except the smoke from our rifles we had very few men hit.
Amongst other papers found on the road that night
one of our officers discovered the letter-book of the French military secretary,
with his correspondence included to the day before. It was immediately
sent to Lord Wellington.
We advanced next morning and occupied our former
post, at Bera. The enemy still continued to hold the mountain of Echelar
which, as it rose out of the right end of our ridge, was, properly speaking,
a part of our property, and we concluded that a sense of justice would
have induced them to leave it of their own accord in the course of the
day; but when, towards the afternoon, they shewed no symptoms of quitting,
our division, leaving their kettles on the fire, proceeded to eject them.
As we approached the mountain the peak of it caught a passing cloud that
gradually descended in a thick fog and excluded them from our view. Our
three battalions, however, having been let loose under Colonel Barnard,
we soon made ourselves "Children of the Mist", and, guided to our opponents
by the whistling of their balls, made them descend from their "high estate";
and, handing them across the valley into their own position, we then retired
to ours, where we found our tables ready spread and a comfortable dinner
waiting for us.
This was one of the most gentleman-like day's fighting
that I ever experienced, although we had to lament the vacant seats of
one or two of our messmates.
August 22d. — I narrowly escaped being taken prisoner
this morning, very foolishly. A division of Spaniards occupied the ground
to our left beyond the Bidassoa, and, having mounted my horse to take a
look at their post, I passed through a small village and then got on a
rugged path winding along the edge of the river, where I expected to find
their outposts. The river
at that place was not above knee-deep and about ten or twelve yards
across and though I saw a number of soldiers gathering chestnuts from a
row of trees which lined the opposite bank, I concluded that they were
Spaniards and kept moving onwards; but, observing at last that I was an
object of greater curiosity than I ought to be to people who had been in
the daily habit of seeing the uniform, it induced me to take a more particular
look at my neighbours, when, to my consternation, I saw the French eagle
ornamenting the front of every cap. I instantly wheeled my horse to the
right about, and, seeing that I had a full quarter of a mile to traverse
at a walk before I could get clear of them, I began to whistle, with as
much unconcern as I could muster, while my eye was searching like lightning
for the means of escape in the event of their trying to cut me off. I had
soon the satisfaction of observing that none of them had firelocks, which
reduced my capture to the chances of a race; for, though the hill on my
right was inaccessible to a horseman, it was not so to a dismounted Scotchman
and I therefore determined, in case of necessity, to abandon my horse and
shew them what I could do on my own bottom at a pinch. Fortunately they
did not attempt it and I could scarcely credit my good luck when I found
myself once more in my own tent.
* A parody of lines from Scott's The Lay of the Last Minstrel
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** The French knapsack is made of unshorn goat-skin
[Author's footnote] Return to paragraph text.
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