That the winter was fast approaching, and it was the intention of the General to keep them there during that season: the privations consequently, which they would have to undergo would be even worse than those they had already experienced. Under these circumstances, therefore, and the prospect of better food, and the chances that might, more than probably, offer themselves for their escaping through the Pyrenees into France, which closely bordered on San Sebastian, I would strongly urge them to return to their regiments. I spoke to them as a man who had once borne a musket. Their claims I acknowledged as just.[[31]]
Here they all produced their agreements, duly signed by the officer with whom they first engaged, to serve for one or two years, as might be preferred by the individual so entering the service of her Catholic Majesty the Queen of Spain.
Being empowered to grant full rations to those who volunteered, I also promised them immediate relief to their hunger.
They requested a quarter of an hour’s consideration, and in that time decided, on condition of further certificates being given them, so that they should be obliged to serve only for the two years from the time they first engaged. These, signed by Colonel Arbuthnot and myself, were afterwards given them; and a number, to the amount of fifty non-commissioned officers and privates, who that night volunteered, sat down, for the first time for many months, to a bellyful; but these only were allowed it, which in this case was a wise though a cruel expedient, for that meal bought their birthright, and, for the sake of a similar supply to the cravings of nature, then almost extinct, eighty more signed their names, making in all one hundred and twenty.[[32]]
The next morning it was my duty to march them to Santander, and embark them on board a steamer for San Sebastian. But to get them ready for this was a difficult task, for many of them had not even—as I before stated—clothing to cover their nakedness. The convent was ransacked everywhere; all the old rugs were soon monopolized, and divided amongst them; and even the old parchment records which had been left by the monks, were converted into covers for decency.
I never shall forget the sight, as these poor fellows slowly emerged from the convent. Numbers alone kept them going, when, perhaps, singly, each man would have died rather than have undergone such an exposure; that blush which should have for ever dyed the cheeks of their oppressors, now mantled up those of the unfortunate victims, and they bent their heads in agony as they hurried through the streets of Santander. The inhabitants, struck at the melancholy procession, murmured, as they crowded after them, “Povres Ingleses! povres Ingleses!” (poor English! poor English!) So much for the generous English, “defenders of the liberty of nations.” It was a great relief to me to see them on board. I returned to Carbon the same evening, and found those whom I had left in a state of mutiny; for two of their number had been wounded, during my absence, by the Spanish guard. One, belonging to the Lancers, had been shot through the arm; the other, one of the 6th, had received a bayonet stab in the breast. This, I was informed, was occasioned by their having strayed beyond the boundaries. I spoke to the Captain of the Spanish guard, on the cowardice of his men firing on the unarmed English. He answered me only with a shrug of the shoulder. My blood rose at his apathy—old times, when I myself had been, as it were, one of themselves, flashed across my memory, and lighted up the indignation that now stifled all thoughts of my rank and present distance. I felt as a man; and could not forbear telling him, that, had his British victims been armed, I would have made him pay dearly for his cold-blooded villainy. But the phlegmatic scoundrel had neither courage nor sympathy, and so far from granting me the satisfaction I required of him, shrunk from me with the hangman’s plea, that he had merely fulfilled orders.
What most surprised me was, that the men, naked as they were, had not rushed on the Spaniards, and taken their arms from them. But on second reflection, I attributed this want of spirit to their half-starved, weakened condition—surrounded, too, as they were, by officers on whom even their claims of compatriotism seemed lost amid the general apathy to every manly feeling.
I had the poor men conveyed to the general hospital, and put myself immediately in communication with Colonel Arbuthnot. But the gallant Commandant of Santander had become so completely Spanish, that no reply even was sent; and I was obliged, at last, to press the matter personally.
“We must not quarrel with the Spaniards,” was all I could get out of him. On my return I used every means in my power to alleviate their forlorn condition. But my authority, as Commandant, was a mere mockery, for we were entirely at the disposal of the Spanish guard. It was truly painful, despite the frequency of the scene, to witness the daily return of misery. Midnight, that hour when wretchedness generally forgets itself in sleep, seemed to have lost the influence here, its silence being broken by the passing footsteps of those unhappy men, as many passed the time telling me the oft repeated list of grievances, while they promenaded the gloomy avenues and colonnades of the old convent. At times, and when the moon shone, the whole building had the appearance of a splendid mausoleum, and the sufferers as they passed from cell to cell, looked unearthly, and put me in mind almost of the fabled and ghastly inhabitants of the other world.
By custom, however, we got so familiarized to everything revolting, that, at length, these horrors became as ordinary matters of course. A journalist would have thrown his pen aside, in the monotony of daily cruelty; and I myself, by the lapse of a few years, am only now, as it were, aroused from the lethargy it had thrown me into. I look back with a thrill. I see them still, as it were, before me,—the fierce look!—the quick order!—the lash!—and the gaunt, misery-stricken countenances of one hundred and fifty men, and all the changes their tyrants had rung amongst them!