The news of Mike’s death spread like wildfire, and all his old friends and the convalescents crowded to do honour to his remains.
The funeral of the Duke himself could not have made a greater stir, for cavalier and foot soldier, from the drum-boy to the trumpeter, and all the women, children and camp-followers in the locality, flocked to follow his remains, the town became unusually alive, and the variegated throng, headed by the deceased sergeant, borne by four bearers, and the usual complement of soldiers with their arms reversed, slowly wound their way through the city of Salamanca. Many a jest made the streets ring with laughter, as the crowd followed the coffin, till they reached the burial-ground (near the French battery taken by us some time previously.) The bearers here proceeded to enter the gateway, when they were suddenly aroused by a slight cry from within the coffin, with a kind of scraping noise, like an effort to open it. They suddenly halted, paused, and listened. It was surely Mike scraping. On they moved again doubtfully. A second time the voice broke upon their ears. “Whist!” ejaculated the bearers, their caps moving almost off their heads. “Oh blood and ouns! where am I? Oh bad luck to yer souls, let me out, won’t you? oh, merciful Jasus, I’m smoothered.” In a twinkling out bolted the bearers from under the coffin, and a dozen bayonets in an instant were sunk under and lifted the lid. The crowd crushed dreadfully to take a look. But there lay Sergeant Michael Connelly, sure enough as stiff as a fugleman but something colder, and my old friend, that blackguard Josh Hetherington, the cockney ventriloquist, who had been one of the bearers, as “innocent” as you please, joining in the astonishment of the rest of us.
Josh winked at me and I at Josh. “Ned,” said he, “I’m blessed if I think he’s dead. Why don’t some of them chaps go for a doctor.” “To be sure,” cried the crowd, “send for the doctor.” Meanwhile a regular rush was made to press him to swallow some of his favourite liquor, but his teeth as obstinately opposed the draught, so that poor Mike was already pronounced “not himself,” when the doctor arrived.
While here, I got acquainted with a pleasant and intelligent man who belonged to the 13th Light Dragoons, and was fast recovering from a wound he had received in the shoulder. We used frequently to alleviate as much as we could the unpleasantness of our situation by a little conversation. His history both amused and interested me.
He had been taken prisoner by the French near Badajoz while serving in General Hill’s division, but managed shortly afterwards to make his escape between Vittoria and Pampeluna. The following morning he fell in with a party of General Mina’s Guerillas, who, as soon as they found him to be an Englishman, wished him to enlist in their band until he could regain his regiment. This offer he was glad to accept. After giving me a very amusing account of the manners of the Guerillas, their rich picturesque dresses and arms, and their wild military life in the mountains, he proceeded to detail several anecdotes of their cruelty and ferocity, among which I can well remember the following, from the impression it then left upon my mind, and the simple manner in which he related it:
Uniting suddenly several of his Guerilla bands in the neighbourhood of Vittoria, Mina, whose information of the movements of the French seemed unerring, one morning surprised and captured a number of waggons filled with stores. They had been sent from Madrid for the army at Vittoria, and were escorted by gendarmes, who were all either killed or taken. The prisoners, about twenty in number, were immediately marched into the mountains, but not before they had time to draw a dark augury of their own fate by seeing all their wounded comrades brutally stabbed to death on the ground where the skirmish had taken place. The prisoners, after having been stripped of nearly every article of wearing apparel, even to their boots, were confined in a space of ground encircled by pens or hurdles, and used for keeping cattle, round which were planted many sentries. In the evening the ferocious mountaineers, elated with their day’s success, being joined by a number of females, their sweethearts and wives made merry with drinking wine and dancing to the music of several guitars. During this merriment both men and women frequently taunted their wretched prisoners, recapitulated the wrongs the Spaniards had suffered at the hands of the French, until they gradually had excited their passions to a partial state of frenzy. In this state, the signal having been given by one of their number, they rushed in among their hapless prisoners, and commenced a general massacre, drowning the cries and supplications for mercy of their victims, as they gave each blow, by enumerating the different losses each had sustained in his family during the war. “Take that for my father you shot,”—“that for my son,”—“this for my brother,” &c., until the work of death was complete. The most inhuman, and perhaps most revolting trait in this general murder was some of the women having actively assisted in the slaughter.
A short time after I had heard the preceding sketch, I had an opportunity of observing that sanguinary feeling of revenge that so peculiarly characterized the Guerillas during the war. I rejoined my regiment at a little village about three leagues from Madrid, called Gataffe. In the farm-house, where the greater part of our company were quartered, was a very pretty Spanish girl who had a brother serving with the Guerillas. One hot summer evening, when several comrades and myself were sitting on a bench outside the door, joking with the girl, a swarthy, savage-looking Spaniard came up, and was welcomed with much joy by the girl and her parents. The new-comer was armed to the teeth with pistols, daggers, and a long gun, which, together with his crimson sash and free bearing, at once proclaimed him the Guerilla. At first we imagined him the girl’s brother, but soon perceived another, though equally dear tie, cemented their affection: he was her lover or suitor. While engaged in conversation with his sweetheart and her parents, we observed him take rather ostentatiously from his side a long heavy-looking silk purse, the contents of which he emptied into the lap of his mistress. The Spaniard’s eyes sparkled with pleasure; but, for the honour of a British soldier, a general disgust pervaded the minds of my comrades and myself, when we beheld a number of human ears and fingers, which glistened with the golden ornaments they still retained. He then told us, with an air of bravado, that he had cut them from off the bodies of the French whom he himself had slain in battle, each ear and finger having on a gold ring.
“Napoleon,” he observed, in his native dialect, with a grim smile—“Napoleon loves his soldiers, and so do the ravens;” as he pointed to several of those carrion birds perched on the walls of an old convent covered with ivy. “We find them plenty of food; they shall never want, so long as a Frenchman remains in Spain.” Such are the men who were considered the greatest patriots attached to the Spanish army during the war.
The chief business of the British at this time was laying siege to Burgos. The enemy having also assembled in great numbers betwixt it and Vittoria, Lord Wellington, thinking he was not able to oppose their force, ordered the whole of the divisions to retire on Salamanca. We of the light division received orders to the same effect.
On the 22nd of October we left Madrid: the contempt with which the inhabitants treated us for leaving them once more to the mercy of the French, cannot easily be forgotten.