CHAPTER XXXIX. SAN SEBASTIAN.
“But, hark! that hewy sound breaks in once more,
As if the clouds its echo would repeat;
And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before!
Arm! arm! it is—it is—the cannon’s opening roar!”
Childe Harold.
To the buzz of voices round me I had been fully conscious for the last five minutes; but the first words I understood distinctly, was an earnest inquiry, on the part of Lieutenant Crotty, regarding the safety of what he termed “the stolen horse;” and great was his sorrow on learning that the charger was defunct.
“Blessed Bridget!” he exclaimed; “what a pity! Worth two hundred, if he was worth a taaster. * Well—it only shows that old swin’s true—What comes over the old lad’s back, whisks away under his belly. But I would like to know what the divil killed the rider? I’ve groped him all over, and sorra scratch I can find upon him but this clip upon the head, and many a worse I’ve got often at a hurling match. As he’s dead, however—”
* Anglice,—Tester, a sixpence.
“I am not dead, Peter!” I muttered.
“Then, upon my sowl I’m glad to hear it from such good authority!” returned Mr. Crotty. “Give him another taste out of the canteen! If there’s life in a man, brandy’s the thing to find it out. Here we are—safe and comfortable against every thing but shells;—I thought I heard the whiz of one of them a while ago—may the curse o’ God light upon their inventor! You must know 1 have a mortal dread of them—and I’ll tell ye why.—The day before Salamanca, when Marmont and my Lord were watching each other like two pickpockets, the column halted, to let the men cook dinner, if they had any to cook. Well—I had none,—so I set out on the ramble, to see if luck would stand my friend—and who should I find behind a big rock, and eating cold pork, but Pat Dogherty and Charley Blake, of the ould “rough and readies,”—the 13th. “Peter!” says Charley, “didye get ye’r dinner yet?” “Divil a pick!” says I; “and, what’s more, I wish somebody would tell me where it’s to come from?”
“Draw a chair,” says he, jokin’, “and take share of the pork.”
“Arrah, niver say it again,” says I, so down I pops upon the grass, and, feaks, made a beautiful dinner of it. Well—out came the canteens, in coorse; and we begins drinkin’—when bang goes two or three guns from the hill opposite us, on which the French were marchin’.
“What’s that?” says Charley. “Nothing,” says Pat Dogherty, “only that thief Marmont is bent upon some roguery; and just wants, by kickin’ up a row, to draw off the old lad’s attention—manin, ye see, Lord Wellington.”
“Blessed be God! we’re as safe here as if we were in Kilmainham Gaol,” says I, looking up at the rock that was between us and the French. “If Marmont batters away till he rises the price of gunpowder, he’ll do us no harm.” Well, Pat Dogherty stepped round, to see what the firing was about—and Charley Blake had lifted the canteen:—“Here’s the pope!” says he, taking a pull of the spirits; and giving the health of his reverence out o’ compliment to me, because he thought I was a Catholic. As he said the words, down drops an eight-inch shell between us. “Murder!” says I, rowlin’ myself down the hill, like a butter-firkin. “What’s that?” says Charley, who was always a stupid divil, and never could bear to be interrupted in his drink. Och! before I could make him sensible, bang went the shell! and when Pat and I got up, we found Charley as dead as a mackarel; and dinner, drink, and Pat Dogherty’s new cloak-case, blown regularly to the divil! No wonder I hate the whiz of them—— “Well, how do ye find yerself?”
[Original]
“Oh—pretty well; but a confounded dizziness of the head annoys me.”
“Well,—take another drop. Look round, Mark—isn’t that the name ye answer to? Turn a man or two over, and you’ll find a fresh canteen, for this one’s empty.”
Indeed, there was no great difficulty in obtaining a liberal supply; for the hollow that Peter Crotty had selected as uniting safety with comfort, was thickly studded with dead and dying men: and there was scarcely a corpse, particularly a Frenchman’s, from which a canteen was not obtainable.
In the mean time, the roar of battle gradually subsided into a spattering fire of musketry, interspersed by the booming of heavy guns, as the horse artillery hung upon the French rear, and cannonaded the dense masses of broken soldiery who hurried off in the direction of Salvatierra. But, lightened of their anus, and covered by their cavalry who still showed a steady front, they reached Metaueo, closely followed; there night ended the pursuit, and the victors and the vanquished claimed that season for repose which previous fatigue had rendered so desirable to both.
There is no defeat on record, in which a beaten army lost so much and lost so little, contradictory as the statement may appear. The whole materiel of war, the entire park of artillery, with stores, ammunition, trophies, treasure, and the most enormous collection of plunder that ever an invading army attempted to carry from the country it had for years despoiled, fell into the hands of the victors, or rather into those of the degraded wretches who followed them,—while in men the French loss scarcely exceeded that of the conquerors.
Before we had been an hour on the field, we were picked up, stowed away in a French calech, from which a danseuse on King Joseph’s establishment had been ejected—and carried through the wreck of the enemy’s plunder and military stores, into a city it had only vacated at midday. Mr. Crotty’s wound was not very important, as the ball had passed clean through the thigh, and the hemorrhage been stopped by a proper ligature. Mine was a more serious accident, and gave me considerable annoyance for several weeks after it occurred. It is true that I had much reason to be thankful, if I would only put faith in the report of my medical attendant; for he demonstrated, clear as an axiom, that had the ball struck me the eighteenth part of an inch in “fuller front,” it would have popped through the “os frontis” to a moral, and I should have been then “past praying for.”
Three weeks elapsed—the painful effects occasioned by the contusion gradually subsided, and within a month I was perfectly convalescent. As to Peter Crotty, his disabled member was speedily restored—and, at the end of a fortnight, he could have danced the pater-o-pee. One thing occasioned some surprise. Lord ‘Wellington, in the excitement of his victory, forgot to make personal inquiries after his old partner’s state of health,—and although his hospitality embraced the elite of his prisoners, and even the captured ladies were guests at his table during his brief sojourn at Vittoria, by some unaccountable oversight, a cover for Peter Crotty was forgotten—and if an invitation had been sent him for a quiet rubber at head quarters, unfortunately, it never reached its destination. Crotty, however, ascribed this apparent forgetfulness to its true cause—a press of business—and on one occasion, when we nearly ran against his lordship in the street, Peter bolted round the corner, feeling, very properly, that greetings in the market-place consumed valuable time, and between old friends were quite unnecessary.
The subsequent operations after the victory of the 21st of June, though not very important in themselves, proved the forerunners of great events. Soult came from Germany, by Napoleon’s order, to assume the chief command and rally the beaten armies. Joseph Buonaparte’s royal puppetism ended, and he retired into France—and Wellington followed up his victory by advancing to the Pyrenees, blockading Pampeluna, and regularly investing San Sebastian.
At Vittoria the mixed character of which an army is composed, was strikingly exhibited. Never, in the history of modern warfare, did defeat tempt the cupidity of the soldier with more extensive or more valuable booty,—and, to use the words of the historian, “the fighting troops marched upon gold and silver without stooping to pick it up.” But to others, the display of wealth was too trying for their moral endurance to withstand—the onward step of victory was stayed for filthy plunder, and, to the eternal disgrace of the delinquents, it was known that some officers, forgetting caste and honour, shared in “the disgraceful gain.” The evil consequences were so mischievous, as in some degree to paralyse the subsequent operations, and rob Vittoria of what would have otherwise been its grand results. The soldiers, instead of preparing food, and resting themselves after the battle, dispersed in the night to plunder, and were so fatigued, that when the rain came on next day, they were incapable of marching, and the allied army had more stragglers than the beaten one. Eighteen days after the Victory, twelve thousand five hundred men, chiefly British, were absent, most of them marauding in the mountains. *
* Wellington Despatches.
No wonder, then, that the promptest means were used to thin the hospitals of the sick and wounded, and forward the convalescent to their regiments. Peter Crotty had been declared “ready for action and with some fifty privates and non-commissioned officers pronounced food for gunpowder” again. I determined to keep him company,—and on the morning of the 18th of July, we quitted Vittoria, a month after we had entered it, and took the route to rejoin the fourth division in the Pyrenees. We reached Leyra on the 22d, and then learned that San Sebastian had been sufficiently battered to warrant an assault—and, as it was generally believed, the attempt would be made next day.
Here was a noble opening for young ambition. Within a sharp ride of a beleaguered city—and it, too, on the very point of being carried by assault! Why, my father was a very prophet—and the glorious contingency he had only regarded with the eye of hope, was absolutely thrown by fortune in my way. I was also a free agent—and while Peter Crotty, “a man under authority,” of necessity, headed towards the mountains with “his charge of foot,” I had only to turn to the sea—and if I pleased, gain laurels in the breach, or there get “a quietus.” I consulted the fosterer—and he at once declared that it would not only be shameful but sinful, to let slip an opportunity of the kind, “for the Lord only knew when such luck would fall in our way again!”
Peter Crotty was taken into the number of our counsellors—and he confirmed Mark Antony’s reasoning to the very letter—accompanied by a long jeremiade at being prohibited by duty from engaging in an agreeable excursion. He, Peter, would never forget Badajoz—Lord! what fun there was after it—he did not particularise the fun that was at it, nor detail the pleasant accompaniments of men being blown up by the company. He, Peter, had been wounded, and resided afterwards at a widow’s house—a friendlier little woman he never met with,—she was better to him than a bad step-mother—they went regularly to mass—and he, Peter, was happy as the day was long. Indeed, he had great doubts about the propriety of marrying her at once—but her husband, not having “gone to glory,” but to Mexico, although he had not written for six months, still the devil, meaning the husband aforesaid—might be alive after all.—“Oh! blessed Mary 1 what fun you’ll have!” concluded Peter. “You may rob a church, murder a bishop, and bad luck to the inquiry, good nor bad, afterwards.”
Pleasure thus unexpectedly presented, and accompanied with such brilliant advantages, was not to be declined; and as I had recovered my lost horse, and procured a stout mule for the fosterer, we took the road to glory—namely, the cross one running through Gozueta to San Sebastian.
The defeat at Vittoria rendered the maintenance of this ancient fortress an object of great importance to the French. Hitherto the place had been greatly neglected, and even a part of its artillery removed. Instant orders, however, were issued by Joseph Buonaparte to restore the works, replace the guns, and render it, as far as possible, defensible. A garrison under General Key was hastily thrown in—and that of Gueteria, after blowing up that place, reinforced it—stores and provisions were sent by sea from France—whither, also, an enormous influx of Spanish and French refugees, who had sought safety in the city, were directed to repair—and with a brave garrison—and better still—a determined governor, San Sebastian prepared, by a vigorous and, as it was expected, a successful defence, to emulate those of Rodrigo, Badajoz, and Burgos, which had conferred so much honour on their respective commandants.
The investing army, amounting to about ten thousand men, was composed chiefly of the fifth division, and two Portuguese brigades,—General Graham commanded in chief—General Oswald en second—and Colonel Dickson directed the siege artillery, amounting to forty pieces of different descriptions, but all of heavy calibre.
On the night of the 10th, operations actively commenced. On the morning of the 17th, a strong outwork called San Bartolomeo, with the adjacent suburb of San Martin, were carried by assault—and on the 20th, the whole of the batteries commenced breaching at once, without having first ruined the defences—a departure from established practice which afterwards occasioned a galling failure, attended with a hewy loss of gallant men.
It was the evening of the 23d, when I and my foster brother topped a rising ground, which commanded a more immediate view of the beleaguered city, and the investing army which encompassed it. For fifteen miles the booming of hewy artillery gave us full assurance, that, if our intent was “up to the breach!” we were still in excellent time. The thunder of the British batteries seemed to redouble as we neared the fortress—and while the fire of the besieged was slack and feeble, compared with that of the assailants; the roar from the Chofre batteries was continuous—and the practice so beautiful and correct, that a new breach on the right of the main one, had been formed by that day’s fire, and the wall for thirty yards exhibited a perfect ruin.
It was a sight which, suddenly presented to an eye inexperienced in the “circumstance of war,” would never fade from memory. The sun was nearly setting—but there was no lack of light to induce the besiegers to silence the fire of their guns. The mortar battery, erected the preceding day to destroy the defences, and ruin a stockade which insulated the high curtain on the land front, had set the houses in the immediate vicinity of the great breach in flames; and, as they spread rapidly, the safety of the town from that wild element appeared as much endangered, as from the impending outburst of human violence. Although in immediate expectation of the assault, this calamity did not abate the confidence of the gallant old man who commanded; but for a day, and under an erroneous belief that the burning houses would isolate the breach if carried, the fearful trial was postponed. All was ready to deliver the assault—the storming parties were in the trenches—but on the morning, the fire still raged with such unconquered violence, that it was dreaded it would prove as formidable to the assailants, as it had been found embarrassing to the assailed—and consequently the storm was delayed, a circumstance, it was said, that abated the ardour of the troops, and tended much to produce the unfortunate failure which occurred next morning.
That awful pause—the day of the 24th, was not like the calm which precedes the tempest. The batteries on the Chofre sand-hills opened again, and a whirlwind of heavy shot enlarged the ruins at the breaches, and, as it was hoped, injured the defences materially. The fire of the garrison was nearly silenced—and while the means of aggression were evidently reduced, they laboured diligently to render those of resistance formidable and efficient. A cavalier that commanded the curtain was armed with field pieces—and every point, whether of the castle or the hill, which looked upon the breach or its approaches, was furnished with heavier artillery. The fausse brave beneath which the storming parties must advance, was lined with shells and other destructive missiles, to be rolled down upon the assailants as they advanced along its base—while every house within musket range was loop-holed, and the breach carefully retrenched; but even had it been crowned successfully, still a sheer descent of fifteen feet remained before the assailants could reach a street composed entirely of burning houses.
In war, there are wonderful accidents which lead frequently to failure or defeat—and from fortuitous circumstances, great results arise. In carrying a parallel across the Isthmus to reach the land defences, the working party broke through the water-course of a ruined aqueduct. An engineer boldly crept into the dark and narrow drain—explored it carefully—and at the end of two hundred and thirty yards, found himself separated from the counterscarp only by a door, and directly in face of the right demi-bastion of the horn-work. Here fortune had befriended the besiegers, and supplied them with an admirable mine. The engineers formed a globe of compression at the extremity, and loaded it with an enormous charge of powder—and though this dangerous operation was effected under the feet of the French sentries, none took alarm, and the work was silently and effectually completed.
The plan of attack was to assault the greater and lesser breaches together, when the spring of the mine, formed in the head of the aqueduct, should give the signal. It was expected that the explosion there would fill the ditch of the horn-work with rubbish—and in the confusion and surprise, the Portuguese might possibly escalade at that point, and effect a lodgement in the place. The Royals were directed against the great breach, supported by the ninth regiment—and the thirty-eighth were ordered to carry the smaller one. An elite detachment, formed of the three light companies of these regiments, attended by an engineer and ladder party, were designed to have escaladed the high curtain, while the breaches were assaulted, and clear the enemy from it with the bayonet; and to this party, Mark Antony and I attached ourselves.
Soon after midnight, the storming parties with the columns of attack entered the trenches—and within three hundred yards of the breaches, waited impatiently for sun-rise, when it had been arranged that the assault was to be given.
There is no use in concealing it—that interval of two hours was the most anxious passage of my history. I felt that, as it on the hazard of a die, life or death depended. Darkness and silence prevailed—the latter only broken by the thunder of the breaching batteries, which were kept in full play upon the breaches and defences. Many an anxious inquiry was made to know “how time went,”—many an eager look was cast eastward to watch for early dawn—but hundreds were fated never to witness the rising of another sun. While it was still dark, the globe of compression formed in the head of the aqueduct was fired. The storming parties rushed forward from the trenches—and the work of death began.
The explosion of the mine was unfortunately not heard at the Chofre batteries, and the guns, instead of ceasing, continued in full play upon the place. Hence, the assailants as they advanced, were scourged by a double fire, and suffered more from the grape of their own batteries than the enemy’s cannonade. The narrow slip of ground by which the stormers approached the breaches, contracted between the river on one side, and the retaining wall of the horn-work on the other, was embarrassed with rocks and pools of water, and consequently, the movement of the column became disorderly. Under a withering fire, the breach was gained—up flew the leading officers—a few gallant soldiers followed—but the supports moved slowly—the troops came straggling to the breach—and instead of mounting to the assistance of the gallant few who had already crowned the ruins, the greater portion of the assailants stopped at the bottom, and interchanged musketry with the French who lined the ramparts, and kept up a deadly fusilade on the disordered mass below. The towers of Los Hornos and Mesquitas opened a hewy flanking fire; and from the St. Elmo and the Mirador, grape fell in torrents upon the broken column—the Castle threw shells with great precision—grenades were flung from the ramparts—a stream of fire issued from the loop-holed houses—while flames raging behind the breach, seemed to forbid approach, even had offensive means been unemployed.
Still though the men fell by fifties, their officers endeavoured to rally them and crown the breach anew; but every moment the chances of success became more desperate. The regiments got intermixed, and that terrible confusion of troops mobbed in a narrow space between the breach and the Urumea, became irretrievable. At that moment the remnant of our light companies pushed through the disordered column, and Campbell, its chivalrous leader, followed by a daring few, gained the summit. Mid-way up, my foster-brother fell—while I, with a dozen or two, a second time reached the rampart. We held it but a moment. Under the storm of musketry all went down; and there were but two or three standing, when a bullet stretched me beside those with whom “life had ended.”
It was the final effort; the remnant of the assailants hurried off, the regiments mobbed together, to seek shelter in the trenches; marking, unhappily and too plainly, the lines of the advance and retreat with the bodies of the dead and dying. The French fire ceased; and although the British batteries opened with redoubled violence on the enemy’s defences to cover the retirement of the shattered columns, several of the gallant defenders of the breach braved the storm, to remove the wounded within the town, and save them from the indiscriminating destruction which the British artillery poured alike on friend and foe.
For a minute I was unconscious of what was passing; and when memory returned, I was in the act of being turned over by a French soldier, who found, that from hwing fallen on my face, my present position was not exactly favourable for his intended operations. I looked wildly round; several men in blue uniforms were examining the fallen soldiers, who lay thickly on the summit of the breach as lewes in autumn. Different objects influenced the examination: some were seeking plunder—others, on a nobler errand, were separating the wounded from the dead, to remove the former out of fire, and obtain for them surgical assistance. As the grenadier rolled me over, an officer stepped forward and inquired if I were “living or dead?” The voice was perfectly familiar; with my cuff I wiped away the blood, which, trickling from my forehead, had partially prevented me from looking at the speaker before. “Is that Cammaran?” I muttered, as I caught a glance of his well-remembered features.
[Original]
“Ha!” exclaimed the Frenchman,—“‘my name! Sacre!—who have we here? Baise his head, Antoine. By heaven!—the very man on earth I would shed my heart’s blood to save!” Next moment he was kneeling at my side—and held me gently in his arms, until I was lifted by four soldiers from the ground, and removed carefully from the breach and out of the range of fire.
“Are you much hurt, my friend?” inquired the gallant Frenchman. “And where is your companion, my brave deliverer?”
“Alas!” I replied, “I fear that he is lost to me. He fell half way up the breach—and—”
‘Ere my reply was given, Cammaran, after directing the party to bear me to a neighbouring church which the French had converted into an hospital, rushed to the breach again. Calling on a soldier to follow, he descended the ruins of the broken wall, and, among a heap of dead and dying, commenced looking for the object of his search. It was a daring, an almost desperate attempt; for, irritated at the failure of the storming parties, every gun in battery was madly turned against the breach and curtain, and showers of round and grape-shot splintered against the unbroken masonry, or knocked the rubbish wildly about, occasioning double danger to all within its reach. Undismayed, the gallant Frenchman persevered; and to his unfeigned delight, in a man who had raised himself upon one elbow and was gazing despondingly around, he recognised the person he risked so much danger to discover—his former camarado—the fosterer.
With the assistance of the grenadier who accompanied him, Mark Antony was carried safely from the breach; and in a few minutes after my wounds had been carefully dressed, I had the happiness to find my foster brother placed on a mattress beside my own, and hear the French surgeon, on a hasty examination, announce to Captain Cammaran the gratifying intelligence, that Mark Antony was “not past praying for” yet, but, with moderate good luck, might still survive, to do “the state some service,” and figure in another breach.