in the horse-market at Lisbon, of which one who had been through the business writes:—
“The only convenient opportunity to make the purchase was at a sort of fair held every Tuesday in the lower part of the town. There horses, mules, and asses were bought and sold, and (as in all markets) the price chiefly depended on the demand. The Portuguese horse-dealer has all the avidity of the English jockey to pick your pocket, but is not so au fait at the business. At this Fair you buy or sell your animal, the bargain is struck, the money paid, and the contract is indissoluble. English guineas had no attraction: the dollar or the moidore was the medium; but since the guinea has been introduced in the payment of the army (1813) the Portuguese begin to appreciate its value. It was customary for officers who wanted cash to give their draft on some house in London; but it was purchasing money very dearly, giving at the rate of six and sixpence for a dollar that would only bring five shillings, so losing eighteen pence on every crown.”[275]
Good and large Spanish mules cost as much, or almost as much, as the small horses of the country. Fifty to ninety dollars was an ordinary price. Thirty to forty-five pounds was considered cheap for an English riding horse.[276] A Portuguese nag might be bought for fifteen or twenty.
Concerning Messes
“In consequence of the difficulty of transporting baggage,” writes one of the liveliest commentators on daily life at the front, “a regiment on active service could not keep up a regular mess, as in England. Each officer was obliged to manage for himself: they generally divided themselves into mess-parties by twos and threes. This greatly incommoded the subaltern: allowed only the carriage of half an animal [or at the most of one] it was not possible to admit, for the purpose of having extra eatables, any addition to his share of baggage. The mere ration was all that he got, with a camp-kettle for culinary purposes. Besides we must recollect the difficulty of getting extra food, and also the want of money. So the bit of beef and the ration of biscuit was frequent fare for perhaps two-thirds of the officers—with the allowance of ration-rum or wine (generally execrable stuff). The prime luxuries were a drop of brandy and a segar. With respect to articles of dress, the contents of a small portmanteau being all that could be taken about, if a subaltern wore out or lost his regimental jacket, he had to improvise a substitute, e.g. his great coat. Waistcoats were as fancy directed, black, blue, or green, silk or velvet.”
Nevertheless, though the officer, or at least the junior officer, thought himself much stinted in baggage, the private mules of the regiment, and in particular those of the senior officers, made up quite a drove—at least some thirty or forty. In addition there were the public mules of the corps, some thirteen in number—one for each company’s camp kettles, one for entrenching tools, one for the paymaster’s books, one for the surgeon’s medical paniers. If we add to these the private riding horses of the senior officers and such of the juniors as could afford them, there was quite a cavalcade—enough to block a road or to encumber a ford. And unfortunately the mules and horses presupposed drivers and attendants. Wellington set his face against the withdrawal from the ranks of soldier-servants to act as muleteers.[277] Each officer, of course, had one; but they were supposed to be available for service, and could only look to their master’s business in the halts and encampments. Hence native servants had to be hired—even the poorest pair of ensigns wanted a Portuguese boy to look after their single mule. The colonel had probably three or four followers. Thus to take charge of its baggage, private and public, each battalion had a following of twenty or thirty such attendants, a few English, the large majority Spanish or Portuguese.
The Camp Followers
It cannot be denied that these fellows had a villainous reputation, and largely deserved it. Though many decent peasant lads were picked up in the countryside by the earlier comers, and made trustworthy and loyal servants, the majority were not satisfactory. The sort of followers whom the officers of a newly-landed regiment engaged at short notice upon the quays of Lisbon, when only two or three days were given them for selection, were mostly “undesirables.” If there were a few among them who were merely “broken men,”—ruined peasants seeking bread at any hand that would give it,—the majority were the scum of a great harbour city, ruffians of the lowest sort. The best of the Portuguese were with the army: the net of the conscription was making wide sweeps, and few young men of the decent class escaped the line or the militia. Personal service under an English officer, who was certainly an incomprehensible foreigner, and might well be a hard and unreasonable master, was not so attractive as to draw the pick of the Portuguese working classes. It did, on the other hand, appeal to needy rascals who wanted the chance of cheating an employer who knew nothing of the country, its customs, and its prices. There was splendid opportunity for embezzlement. Moreover, many looked for more lucrative, if more dangerous gains. The diaries show that a very considerable proportion of the hastily-hired muleteers and servants absconded, after a few days, with their master’s mule and portmanteau, and were never seen again. Those who did not, were looking after the plunder of the battlefield, the camp, and the wayside. It was they who robbed drunken soldiers, ill-guarded commissary stores, or lonely villages. They slunk out at night to make privy plunder in the lines of the regiments in which they were not employed. On the battlefield they were ruthless strippers of the wounded—English and Portuguese no less than French—as well as of the dead. Unless report much mistreats them, they habitually knocked a wounded Frenchman on the head, if they were out of sight of the red-coats.[278] Considering the atrocities of which the French had been guilty in Portugal, this might pass for not unnatural retaliation; but it is certain that the British wounded were also frequently plundered, and there is more than a suspicion that they were sometimes murdered. The Spanish camp-followers passed as being even more blood-thirsty than the Portuguese. Of course it was not the officers’ private employés alone who were guilty of these misdemeanours; the public muleteers of the commissariat staff, and other hangers-on of the army, had an equally bad reputation. The most daring theft of the whole war, as has been already mentioned, was done by two “authorized followers,” who burglariously entered the house of the Commissary-General in 1814, and got off with no less than £2000 in gold. They were detected, and naturally suffered the extreme punishment of the law. By their names one would seem to have been French, the other a Spaniard. There is an awful story, told in two diaries, of a camp follower who in a time of starvation sold to British soldiers as pork slices cut off a French corpse.[279] He got away before he could be caught and shot. But enough of these ghouls!
The Soldiers’ Wives
The followers of a British army were by no means exclusively foreign. One of the worst impediments to the free movement of the host came from the unhappy practice that then prevailed of allowing corps on foreign service to take with them a proportion of soldiers’ wives—four or six per company. Forty or sixty of these women, mostly mounted on donkeys, formed the most unmanageable portion of every regimental train. They were always straggling or being left behind, because they could not keep up with the long marches that the army had often to take. Wayside tragedies of this sort are to be found recorded in almost every Peninsular memoir—often of the most harrowing sort. In especial we may mention the number of these poor women who dropped in the Corunna retreat, and died in the snow, or fell into the hands of the French. The interesting little book of a married sergeant of the 42nd, who took his wife about with him during the last three years of the war, is full of curious little shifts and anxieties that they went through.[280] The best description of this curious stratum of the Peninsular Army that I know is in the autobiography of Bell of the 34th.[281]