At ten o’clock we started again for the camp, and arrived there about twelve. The answer had arrived, and the Spanish General Galazo admitted of our communication with the fort, but sent thither at the same time some ridiculous proposals of his own. We set out for the fort accompanied by a Spanish aide-de-camp. The commander of the fort was General Novellard. After settling our business, the Spanish aide-de-camp proposed from his General that the French should evacuate the fort in twenty-four hours and lay down their arms on the glacis.
The Frenchman, instead of reply, gave him a most severe rowing upon the little attention paid by the Spaniards to the laws of war. The officers, he said, had neither probity nor honour. “If,” said he, “you recommence the fire, I shall destroy Elvas, while all the harm you can do to me will be the loss of ten or fifteen Frenchmen; the harm you do to the fort will injure your friends and allies the English, whose possession it now is. I had hoped that this business would have been ended in a manner worthy of civilised soldiers, and that all our rancour, our hatred, and our courage would have been reserved for another field of battle. I will have no communication with you. If you send a flag of truce I shall fire upon it; so you have served mine. There are forty Spaniards (besides two, my prisoners, who have broken their parole) offered for three French prisoners in your hands. I have made this offer twenty-five times unanswered! I consider this fort is an English possession, and in the execution of a treaty under the sanctity of the French word we will all perish. Messieurs Anglais, come to your fort; its guns shall protect your approach; here you shall be lodged, but I cannot march out my garrison until the Spaniards have decamped, for they are not soldiers, and in spite of all treaties, would assassinate my people in the road.”
So spake General Novellard, a keen, cool, sensible Frenchman with a hawk’s eye.
In reminding the Spaniards that the Convention of Lisbon allowed them to show themselves again on the Spanish frontier, as well as in the drift of his whole speech, he showed a cunning desire to set us together by the ears.
But although the Spaniards had provoked us, and we enjoyed the whole thing, we refused even a smile, or motion of assent or approbation.
The Spaniard was greatly agitated, and spoke bad French. He said he had no plans.
We then went to Elvas without asking leave of the Spaniards. Got post-horses there, O’Brien and I leaving our own horses. While taking our coffee we talked much with a Spanish Brigadier-General, who complained of our Convention. “We were sending 20,000 men (whose throats they had fondly hoped to cut), with their arms in their hands, upon the Spanish frontier. These men,” he said, “had committed such enormities, that even though a different conduct on the part of our General had caused the erasure of Lisbon and the death of half its population, it would have been witnessed with shouts of joy, so long as the French themselves were included in the crash.”
“Well, but,” said I, “we have just brought you 10,000 Spaniards from Denmark.” He smiled and said, “He had heard it.” “And,” I added, “if you will let us assist you, our greatest desire is to go with you into Spain and help you to drive out the French, whom we long to fight again. We honour the Spanish nation, and desire to be friends with it for ever.” He seemed highly pleased, and made some apology for the dress of their army before Elvas.
I said, “It was no uncommon thing to see soldiers all dressed alike, but when we saw a Spanish army in the dress of peasants, it reminded us of the glorious exertions made by the whole body of the Spanish people, and we honoured them ten times more.”
He seemed delighted, and said that “the Spanish people were the noblest in the world, that the Government had wished to clothe them, but with one voice they replied, ‘In the dress of peasants we have rescued our country and beat the French in Spain; in the dress of peasants we will utterly destroy them.’” This Spanish General then reprobated the conduct of Galazo, who, he said, had sent his troops before Elvas in consequence of the Convention made by the English.