Napoleonic Literature
Kincaid: Adventures in the Rifle Brigade
Chapter XV

An Anniversary Dinner. Affair with the Enemy, and Fall of St Sebastian. A Building Speculation. A Fighting one, storming the Heights of Bera. A Picture of France from the Pyrenees. Returns after an Action. Sold by my Pay-Serjeant. A Recruit born at his Post. Between Two Fires, a Sea and a Land one. Position of La Rhune. My Picture taken in a Storm. Refreshing Invention for wintry Weather.

THE 25th of August, being our regimental anniversary, was observed by the officers of our three battalions with all due conviviality. Two trenches, calculated to accommodate seventy gentlemen's legs, were dug in the green sward; the earth between them stood for a table, and behind was our seat, and though the table could not boast of all the delicacies of a civic entertainment, yet

"The worms they crept in, and the worms they crept out,"
as the earth almost quaked with the weight of the feast, and the enemy certainly did from the noise of it. For so many fellows holding such precarious tenures of their lives could not meet together in commemoration of such an event without indulging in an occasional cheer — not a whispering cheer, but one that echoed far and wide into the French lines, and as it was a sound that had often pierced them before, and never yet boded them any good, we heard afterwards that they were kept standing at their arms the greater part of the night in consequence.
    At the time of Soult's last irruption into the Pyrenees Sir Thomas Graham had made an unsuccessful attempt to carry St Sebastian by storm, and having, ever since, been prosecuting the siege with unremitting vigour, the works were now reduced to such a state as to justify a second attempt, and our division sent forth their three hundred volunteers to join the storming party.* The morning on which we expected the assault to take place we had turned out before daylight, as usual, and as a thick fog hung on the French position, which prevented our seeing them, we turned in again at the usual time, but had scarcely done so when the mist rode off on a passing breeze, showing us the opposite hills bristling with their bayonets and their columns descending rapidly towards us. The bugles instantly sounded to arms and we formed on our alarm posts. We thought at first that the attack was intended for us, but they presently began to pass the river, a little below the village of Bera, and to advance against the Spaniards on our left. They were covered by some mountain guns, from which their first shell fell short, and made such a breach in their own leading column that we could not resist giving three cheers to their marksman. Leaving a strong covering party to keep our division in check at the bridge of Bera, their main body followed the Spaniards, who, offering little opposition, continued retiring towards St. Sebastian.
    We remained quiet the early part of the day under a harmless fire from their mountain guns; but towards the afternoon our battalion, with part of the forty-third and supported by a brigade of Spaniards, were ordered to pass by the bridge of Le Secca and to move in a parallel direction with the French along the same ridge of hills.
    The different flanking-posts of the enemy permitted the forty-third and us to pass them quietly, thinking, I suppose, that it was their interest to keep the peace; but not so with the Spaniards, whom they kept in a regular fever, under a smart fire, the whole way. We took up a position at dark on a pinnacle of the same mountain, within three or four hundred yards of them. There had been a heavy firing all day to our left, and we heard, in the course of the night, of the fall of St Sebastian, as well as of the defeat of the force which we had seen following the Spaniards in that direction.
    As we always took the liberty of abusing our friends, the commissaries, whether with or without reason, whenever we happened to be on short allowance, it is but fair to say that when our supporting Spanish brigadier came to compare notes with us here, we found that we had three days rations in the haversack against his none. He very politely proposed to relieve us from half of ours and to give a receipt for it, but we told him that the trouble in carrying it was a pleasure!
    At daylight next morning we found that the enemy had altogether disappeared from our front. The heavy rains during the past night had rendered the Bidassoa no longer fordable, and the bridge of Bera being the only retreat left open, it was fortunate for them that they took advantage of it before we had time to occupy the post with a sufficient force to defend the passage, otherwise they would have been compelled, in all probability, to have laid down their arms.
    As it was they suffered very severely from two companies of our second battalion who were on piquet there. The two captains commanding them were, however, killed in the affair.
    We returned in the course of the day and resumed our post at Bera, the enemy continuing in hold theirs beyond it.
    The ensuing month passed by without producing the slightest novelty, and we began to get heartily tired of our situation. Our souls, in fact, were strung for war, and peace afforded no enjoyment, unless the place did, and there was none to be found in a valley of the Pyrenees which the ravages of contending armies had reduced to a desert. The labours of the French on the opposite mountain had, in the first instance, been confined to fortification; but, as the season advanced, they seemed to think that the branch of a tree, or a sheet of canvas, was too slender a barrier between them and a frosty night, and their fortified camp was gradually becoming a fortified town of regular brick and mortar.
    Though we were living under the influence of the same sky, we did not think it necessary to give ourselves the same trouble, but reasoned on their proceedings like philosophers, and calculated, from the aspect of the times, that there was a probability of a speedy transfer of property, and that it might still be reserved for us to give their town a name; nor were we disappointed. Late on the night of the 7th of October Colonel Barnard arrived from headquarters with the intelligence that the next was to be the day of trial. Accordingly, on the morning of the 8th the fourth division came up to support us and we immediately marched down to the foot of the enemy's position, shook off our knapsacks before their faces and went at them.
    The action commenced by five companies of our third battalion advancing, under Colonel Ross, to dislodge the enemy from a hill which they occupied in front of their entrenchments; and there never was a movement more beautifully executed, for they walked quietly and steadily up and swept them regularly off without firing a single shot until the enemy had turned their backs, when they then served them out with a most destructive discharge. The movement excited the admiration of all who witnessed it and added another laurel to the already crowded wreath which adorned the name of that distinguished officer.
    At the first look of the enemy's position, it appeared as if our brigade had got the most difficult task to perform; but, as the capture of this hill showed us a way round the flank of their entrenchments, we carried one after the other, until we finally gained the summit with very little loss. Our second brigade, however, were obliged to take "the bull by the horns" on their side, and suffered more severely; but they rushed at everything with a determination that defied resistance, carrying redoubt after redoubt at the point of the bayonet, until they finally joined us on the summit of the mountain with three hundred prisoners in their possession.
    We now found ourselves firmly established within the French territory, with a prospect before us that was truly refreshing, considering that we had not seen the sea for three years, and that our views for months had been confined to fogs and the peaks of mountains. On our left the Bay of Biscay lay extended as far as the horizon, while several of our ships of war were seen sporting upon her bosom. Beneath us lay the pretty little town of St Jean de Luz, which looked as if it had just been framed out of the Lilliputian scenery of a toy-shop. The town of Bayonne, too, was visible in the distance; and the view to the right embraced a beautiful well-wooded country, thickly studded with towns and villages as far as the eye could reach.
    Sir Thomas Graham, with the left wing of the army, had the same morning passed the Bidassoa and established them also within the French boundary. A brigade of Spaniards, on our right, had made a simultaneous attack on La Rhune, the highest mountain on this part of the Pyrenees, and which, since our last advance, was properly now a part of our position. The enemy, however, refused to quit it and the firing between them did not cease until long after dark.
    The affair in which we were engaged terminated, properly speaking, when we had expelled the enemy from the mountain, but some of our straggling skirmishers continued to follow the retiring foe into the valley beyond, with a view, no doubt, of seeing what a French house contained.
    Lord Wellington, preparatory to this movement, had issued an order requiring that private property of every kind should be strictly respected, but we had been so long at war with France that our men had been accustomed to look upon them as their natural enemies, and could not, at first, divest themselves of the idea that they had not a right to partake of the good things abounding about the cottage-doors. Our commandant, however, was determined to see the order rigidly enforced, and it was, therefore, highly amusing to watch the return of the depredators. The first who made his appearance was a bugler, carrying a goose, which, after he had been well beaten about the head with it, was transferred to the provost-marshal. The next was a soldier, with a calf; the soldier was immediately sent to the quarter-guard, and the calf to the provost-marshal. He was followed by another soldier, mounted on a horse, who were also both consigned to the same keeping; but, on the soldier stating that he had only got the horse in charge from a volunteer, who was at that time attached to the regiment, he was set at liberty. Presently the volunteer himself came up, and, not observing the colonel lying on the grass, called out among the soldiers, "Who is the — rascal that sent my horse to the provost-marshal?" "It was I!" said the colonel, to the utter confusion of the querist. Our chief was a good deal nettled at these irregularities, and, some time after, on going to his tent, which was pitched between the roofless walls of a house, conceive his astonishment at finding the calf and the goose hanging in his own larder! He looked serious for a moment, but, on receiving an explanation, and after the row he had made about them, the thing was too ridiculous, and he burst out laughing. It is due to all concerned to state that they had, at last, been honestly come by, for I, as one of his messmates, had purchased the goose from the proper quarter, and another had done the same by the calf.
    Not anticipating this day's fight, I had given my pay~sergeant twenty-five guineas the day before to distribute among the company; and I did not discover until too late that he had neglected to do it, as he disappeared in the course of the action and was never afterwards heard of. If he was killed, or taken prisoner, he must have been a prize to somebody, though he left me a blank.
    Among other incidents of the day, one of our men had a son and heir presented to him by his Portuguese wife soon after the action. She had been taken in labour while ascending the mountain; but it did not seem to interfere with her proceedings in the least, for she, and her child, and her donkey, came all three screeching into the camp immediately after, telling the news as if it had been something very extraordinary, and none of them a bit the worse.
    On the morning of the 9th we turned out, as usual, an hour before daylight. The sound of musketry to our right, in our own hemisphere, announced that the French and Spaniards had resumed their unfinished argument of last night, relative to the occupation of La Rhune; while, at the same time, "from our throne of clouds," we had an opportunity of contemplating, with some astonishment, the proceedings of the nether world. A French ship of war, considering St Jean de Luz no longer a free port, had endeavoured, under cover of the night, to steal alongshore to Bayonne and when daylight broke they had an opportunity of seeing that they were not only within sight of their port, but within sight of a British gun-brig, and, if they entertained any doubts as to which of the two was nearest, their minds were quickly relieved on that point by finding that they were not within reach of their port, and strictly within reach of the guns of the brig, while two British frigates were bearing down with a press of canvas. The Frenchman returned a few broadsides; he was double the size of the one opposed to him, but, conceiving his case to be hopeless, he at length set fire to the ship and took to his boats. We watched the progress of the flames until she finally blew up and disappeared in a column of smoke. The boats of our gun-brig were afterwards seen employed in picking up the odds and ends.
    Our friends the Spaniards, I have no doubt, would have been very glad to have got rid of their opponents in the same kind of way, either by their going without the mountain, or by their taking it with them. But the mountain stood, and the French stood, until we began to wish the mountain, the French and the Spaniards at the devil; for, although we knew that the affair between them was a matter of no consequence whichever way it went, yet it was impossible for us to feel quite at ease while a fight was going on so near; it was, therefore, a great relief when, in the afternoon, a few companies of our second brigade were sent to their assistance, as the French then retired without firing another shot. Between the French and us there was no humbug, it was either peace or war. The war on both sides was conducted on the grand scale, and, by a tacit sort of understanding, we never teazed each other unnecessarily.
    The French, after leaving La Rhune, established their advanced post on Petite La Rhune, a mountain that stood as high as most of its neighbours, but, as its name betokens, it was but a child to its gigantic namesake, of which it seemed as if it had, at a former period, formed a part; but, having been shaken off like a useless galloche, it now stood gaping, open-mouthed, at the place it had left, (and which had now become our advanced post) while the enemy proceeded to furnish its jaws with a set of teeth, or, in other words, to face it with breastworks, &c, a measure which they invariably had recourse to in every new position.
    Encamped on the face of La Rhune, we remained a whole month idle spectators of their preparations and dearly longing for the day that should afford us an opportunity of penetrating into the more hospitable-looking low country beyond them; for the weather had become excessively cold and our camp stood exposed to the utmost fury of the almost nightly tempest. Oft have I, in the middle of the night, awoke from a sound sleep and found my tent on the point of disappearing in the air like a balloon, and, leaving my warm blankets, been obliged to snatch the mallet and rush out in the midst of a hail-storm to peg it down. I think that I now see myself looking like one of those gay creatures of the elements who dwelt (as Shakespeare has it) among the rainbows!
    By way of contributing to the warmth of my tent, I dug a hole inside, which I arranged as a fireplace, carrying the smoke underneath the walls, and building a turf-chimney outside. I was not long in proving the experiment, and, finding that it went exceedingly well, I was not a little vain of the invention. However, it came on to rain very hard while I was dining at a neighbouring tent, and, on my return to my own, I found the fire not only extinguished, but a fountain playing from the same place up to the roof, watering my bed and baggage and all sides of it most refreshingly. This showed me, at the expense of my night's repose, that the rain oozed through the thin spongy surface of earth, and, in particular places, rushed down in torrents between the earth and the rock which it covered, and any incision in the former was sure to produce a fountain.
    It is very singular that, notwithstanding our exposure to all the severities of the worst of weather, that we had not a single sick man in the battalion while we remained there.

* Lieutenants Percival and Hamilton commanded those from our battalion, and were both desperately wounded [Author's footnote]. Return to paragraph text.

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