My master, having derived considerable benefit from the waters, at length took his departure; and for a while we fixed our quarters, with the lancers, of which he was at the head, in the city of Burgos. Of the local situation of that fine old town I need not pause to speak,--with its hills overlooking it on each side, and its citadel crowning a rocky eminence, as if in defiance of the enemy who dared attempt to reduce it. But the condition both of the garrison and the inhabitants at this moment was so curious, that I cannot think of omitting to notice it,--more especially as the truth has never, to my knowledge at least, been told, by any writer, whether French or English, who has touched upon the subject.

It is well known that the hatred borne by the Spaniards towards the French had become, in 1812, bitter in the extreme. Taught by experience that they were no match for the invaders in the field, they waged war upon them by private assassination, -- insomuch that the French armies, victorious everywhere, except where the might of England encountered them, were nowhere, throughout the Peninsula, masters of a foot of ground beyond the limits of their different encampments. In like manner, the garrisons which occupied the towns of Spain were always in a state of siege. There might be no organized force within many leagues of them, nor the smallest reason to apprehend the arrival of any such. But each cottage in the suburbs, if not in the heart of the town itself, contained a little band of foemen, in their own way more to be dreaded by far than if they were openly in the field, and banded together in companies and battalions. In and around Burgos I soon discovered that this was peculiarly the case. At first, indeed, the manners of the people deceived me quite; for I fancied that they were content, because of the gentleness and deference with which they appeared to treat not me alone, but every Frenchman with whom they came openly into contact. But the experience of a few days taught me, that this air of meekness was put on, for the sole purpose of enticing victims into their power. There was scarcely a day passed without bringing in reports of assassinations attempted, if not perpetrated, upon our people. No man could walk half a mile beyond the town without being fired at; and even in the grand promenade, which extends along the bank of the river, and is shaded on either side by rows of noble trees, the same scenes were constantly enacted. I have ridden over and over with my master, to enjoy the refreshing breezes in that shady spot, and been driven out again by showers of bullets, which knocked the leaves about us, and came, we knew not from whence. In a word, the French were, both in camp and in quarters, prisoners at large, with the comfortable assurance continually forced upon them, that even within their own lines they could not count on escaping the knife of the assassin.

When we first reached Burgos, the garrison was labouring under a terrible and contagious fever. The hospitals were all crowded; and every morning at daylight a couple of carts traversed the streets, collecting the dead from the wards in which they were lying, and transporting them to the place of sepulture. It was a ditch dug somewhere among the hills, into which the bodies were cast in heaps, no care being taken to treat them with respect, nor any mourning being made for their removal. Moreover, several detachments were by-and-by sent out to levy contributions on the surrounding districts, and Burgos became, in consequence, the grand depot of French plunder in this quarter of Spain. The Spaniards were neither unaware of this circumstance, nor ignorant of the process by which our treasures were gathered in; and in the beginning of 1812, they made a demonstration as if they had designed to appropriate them. The circumstances of the case were these:

One morning in the month of January--I have forgotten the precise date--an alarm spread that heavy columns of troops were advancing towards the town. We ran to the most elevated stations which we could find, and saw, sure enough, 6000 Spaniards at the least, marching in good order along the Madrid road, and apparently bent on carrying the town by a coup de main. Now, it so happened that the town was at this moment in a peculiarly defenceless state. The castle, indeed, stood above the reach of insult, not from this body of troops alone, but from their betters; but the town was no further fortified than by palisades, that blocked up the principal entrances, and light cannon so planted as to command the bridges. Then again, the garrison, enfeebled by sickness, was more than usually weak, in consequence of the many detachments which had gone out, consisting, as may be supposed, of our strongest and healthiest men, and commanded by our ablest battalion officers. Still, though mustering scarcely 400 combatants, the commandant put a bold face upon the matter. All the persons living on the southern side of the river were directed to cross, and to establish themselves and their baggage under the guns of the citadel. The hospitals were emptied of every man who might have strength enough to level a musket; and these being planted under cover of the palisades, were directed to maintain their post to the last extremity. At the same time the utmost care was taken to keep down a mutinous spirit, which the first rumour of an advance on the part of their countrymen had excited among the inhabitants. They were commanded by proclamation not to show themselves in the streets, and were told that wherever two should be found holding converse together they would certainly be shot. Every thing, indeed, was done, which in a very trying case courage could suggest, or prudence dictate; and the results were that courage and prudence prevailed over mere numbers, to direct which there was manifestly no head present.

Among other officers of merit my master chanced to be detached; and with me it mainly rested to save his property from the danger of confiscation. I was established in a house close to one of the barricades, where, up to this moment, the people had been particularly civil; but now, when I came to pack up and made preparations for moving, their tone entirely changed. They refused to lend a helping hand in any way; and not only rejected my application for a skin of wine, but told me with significant looks, that of wine I should not much longer stand in need. Such conduct of course served only to irritate; and I was forced to use the show of violence, by levelling a pistol at the padrone's head; but there was no occasion to go farther. I got my mules and horses laden; and securing about two gallons of wine, retired, with my fellow-servants, to the heights near the castle, whence we commanded an excellent view of the Spanish bivouac. Why did they not push on? Why did they halt, out of musket-shot of the palisades, and make there an idle display of their numbers? They ought to have known their enemies better than to suppose that they were the sort of people to be overawed by any thing of the sort. Had they made the attempt, bravely, resolutely, and without a check, it must have proved successful. How earnestly I wished that half the number of English troops had been there; for the booty would have been prodigious; all the treasures, with no inconsiderable portion of the stores of the whole French army, being, by some strange oversight, kept, not in the castle, but in the town.

The Spaniards either did not know this, or they held the garrison in too much respect; for they contented themselves with driving in, towards dusk, a solitary advanced post, and taking possession of the convent within which it had been established. We saw them then light their fires, and make preparations as if to invest the place, and try upon it the tedious process of a siege. But even to this plan, absurd enough it must be admitted, they failed to adhere. Throughout two days the blockade, such as it was continued. They were days to us of very considerable discomfort; for we knew our own weakness, and scarcely dared to hope that it was hidden from them: yet they came to an end at last, and with them all fears respecting the issue. The dawn of the third morning showed the Spanish lines abandoned. Not a man remained beside the fires, which had been recently trimmed and continued to burn, nor was so much as a dog left behind. Yet the Spaniards had not retreated in the proper sense of that term. Intelligence of the routes pursued by our various detachments having reached them, they broke up into parties, and hurried off, with the view of intercepting these on the march, and so winning both glory and riches from the spoil with which they were known to be laden. They succeeded, however, very imperfectly in both objects. Several of our detachments sustained, indeed, a heavy loss; and one, which, when it went abroad, consisted of a hundred men, returned with no more than fifty; but not in a solitary instance was the escort overpowered, or the booty taken away of which it was in charge.
It is marvellous even now to think of the extreme accuracy with which the Spaniards were accustomed to inform themselves, not only of the movements of the French troops, but of the personal habits and circumstances of the individuals by whom detached bodies were commanded. On the present occasion, for example, there was a French lieutenant-colonel sent forth with a hundred infantry in a particular direction: he was a brave and a skilful officer, and though attacked by an overwhelming force of cavalry, he repulsed them twenty times at least, keeping his treasure always in the centre of his square. But he was known to the assailants as one who never stirred abroad without carrying all his private property in a sort of valise behind him, so that, while advancing to charge, the Spaniards would call out to him that they were determined to have his doubloons, and that he had better give them up quietly. The Frenchman held his course undaunted, and had wellnigh reached Burgos ere the fatal bullet struck him. But he died at last, from a pistol-shot in the head; and his valise, containing about a hundred-and-fifty gold pieces, became the property of the brave men who had, for twelve long hours, sustained his honour and their own in a very unequal contest.

For some time after the occurrence of these events, my master and I kept our station in Burgos. He, like others, had lost a good many men from his detachment, and one officer, whose poodle dog attached itself to me; but he had received no wound himself, and, though still delicate, was able, for a while at least, to go through with his duties. I am not sure, however, that my readers would be very deeply interested were I to detail to them the manner in which day after day was spent; let me be content, therefore, to repeat one or two anecdotes, as illustrating the sort of life which at that period I led, and then we will pass together into new scenes, some of which may possibly offer to them greater attractions than the mere transcript of a prisoner's diary.

I was one day crossing the bridge at Burgos, when, to my great surprise, I encountered a man dressed in the uniform of the 12th English Light Dragoons. We entered, as may be imagined, at once into conversation, and I ascertained that he had been taken at Grenalda; that he was a farrier by trade, and then in the service of the French General, Count d'Orsun. A very extraordinary fellow was my friend, Richard Kilby; his ingenuity as a working smith surpassed all that I have ever witnessed, and, as a horse doctor, he had either great skill or great good luck; but he was a determined drunkard--a profound hater of the French nation--and, beyond compare, the most self-willed and obstinate individual of his race. He and I became, as a matter of course, sworn allies : we were much together, for I helped him to turn his shoes; and, acting as his interpreter, I first procured for him from his master those supplies of money without which his genius never could have found a channel in which to exercise itself; yet I more than once had reason to regret that an intimacy was ever struck up between us, and am forced, though reluctantly, to acknowledge that, when our destinies carried us in different directions, I shed no tears over the prospect of being separated from him for ever.

My friend Richard hated the French, and never omitted an opportunity of telling them so: to be sure, he could not speak one word of their language, nor did they understand a syllable of his, so that the pleasant epithets of “coward,” “scoundrel,” “rogue,” “thief,” with which it was his constant practice to greet them, passed by unnoticed, because unknown. But in more ways than this he delighted to tease them, and he was quite indefatigable in indulging his humours. For example, his style of shoeing was so universally and justly admired that there was no end to the applications which were made to him by the French officers. He would never attend to them, except when the purse was at the lowest ebb, and even then he took care to insult the groom by holding the charger tight with one hand, and so keeping him, till the amount of the charge--eight
francs--was put into the other. He was constantly involving himself in quarrels, from the ruinous consequences of which nothing short of his master's rank in the service could have saved him; and once, at least, even that might have failed, but for the peculiar prowess by which he opposed, and finally repulsed, the assailants. The story is this:

One Sunday, Richard and I strolled beyond the limits of the town, and entering a wine-house, drank our bottle of Malaga, on the conclusion of which Richard complained of being hungry. The woman of the house was cleaning, at the moment, a number of salt herrings, two of which Richard secured, and put upon the coals to broil. He had not perceived that some French grenadiers, who equally with ourselves chanced to be inmates of the apartment, had likewise made a purchase of herrings, and were dressing them; and, having occasion to go out for a moment, he was rendered quite furious by meeting one of these men with a couple of herrings in his hand. Richard swore that the fish were his--wrested them from the grenadier, abused him like a pickpocket, and stripping off his jacket, challenged the Frenchman to fight. Now, the Frenchman must have stood at least six feet three from the ground, whereas the extreme height of Richard could not exceed five feet; yet there was the little farrier squaring at the giant, and so conducting himself that the latter, in absolute amazement, became rooted to the spot. The landlady, in great alarm, entreated me to withdraw my friend, and, with some difficulty, I succeeded in doing so; but it was only that he might thrust himself into another situation, to the full as perilous, and far more laughable, than this. We adjourned to an old haunt of Richard's--to the house of a woman whom he had dubbed his mother; and who, being regularly put in possession of the whole amount of his earnings, could not refuse--even though it was the hour of Divine service--to open her door to her son. Accordingly, we entered, were shown into a parlour up stairs, and earnestly besought to keep quiet, otherwise the landlady must get into a scrape.

We sat quietly enough, till Dick observed a patrol of gendarmes ascending the street, and approaching the site of his mother's dwelling. His wrath against their nation was kindled, and he began first to swear and then to sing at the top of his lungs. They halted before the door, and ordered him to be quiet, but he only sang the louder. Then they knocked and tried to enter, but the door was bolted, and Dick hastened to reinforce the bolts by piling up furniture against it. The gendarmes threatened and blustered, while Dick, finding in one corner of the room a bag of large onions, opened upon them, with these strange missiles, a heavy fire. As might be expected, they were furious, and though he kept them somewhat at bay as long as his ammunition lasted, they would have certainly forced an entrance in the end, had he not plied them with water--not scalding hot, certainly, yet neither very cool, nor in its nature very limpid. The guard retreated with precipitation before such a torrent, and Richard shouted and laughed, as they shook their ears--for his supply had been both copious and very liberally dispensed.

Not having any particular desire to connect my own name with pranks of this sort, I escaped from Richard as soon as the coast was clear, and scarcely saw him again till within a day or two of our final separation; though I heard of him from time to time, and always heard with sorrow, that he continued to be the same reckless and unhappy man that he was when I first encountered him. Neither was his end unworthy of the earlier part of his career. Having accompanied his master to Pampeluna, and wellnigh exhausted his patience, Dick, in a drunken fit, deserted; and falling among the guerillas, was by them passed on from station to station, till he finally rejoined his regiment in Portugal. But he came with a constitution entirely undermined: against the excessive hardships which he encountered with the guerillas, a frame worn down by hard drinking, could not hold up; and within a few days after having reported himself to the adjutant, he expired. Richard left a son, like himself a farrier, who afterwards served with me on the cavalry staff, and many a day have we spent hours together in mutually detailing, one to another, anecdotes of his father's eccentricities.

I do not remember that there occurred any thing else of moment while I continued in Burgos, unless, indeed, the purchase of an Irish horse may be so regarded, which, when led in by a French groom, in a very miserable state, I instantly recognised as having once belonged to one of my troop-mates in the 11th. He was so savage a brute that neither his new master nor his servants could ride him; for a French officer had purchased him of an Englishman, in Portugal, for ten Napoleons, and the Count Golstein got him, in consequence, for the same sum that had been paid for him. But the horse knew me immediately: when I called him by his name, he turned his head and snuffed me all over, and became in my hands as quiet and tractable as a lamb. With none else, indeed, would he condescend to be familiar,--for even my master never rode him but once; but he followed me like a dog, and neighed and whinnied whenever he heard my voice even at a distance. The count gave him to me, and I rode him constantly for two years; at the termination of which, his vicious humours wore out, so that the count's son, to whom I ultimately transferred him, found him invaluable as a charger, and received the most satisfactory proofs of his hardihood. Mulch, as he was called, carried the young Count Golstein through the whole of the campaign to Moscow and the retreat in which it ended; and, though much reduced in flesh, was still in excellent health when he came again under my care in his master's stables.