Making all due allowance for this gasconading, it is quite as well to have been saved the necessity of taking Bayonne. It would have taken all our transports about sixteen days to bring up materials for four days’ open trenches from Passages by land, and we must then, for the remainder of the time, have trusted to the uncertainty of the water communication. The object of the French sortie was supposed to be the destruction of our three stores of fascines and gabions, &c., which we had been six weeks and more cutting, collecting, and forming, and for which purpose we had stripped the environs for near five miles round the town. In that respect we were quite prepared for the whole siege, and it is remarkable enough that we remained nearly all that time sufficiently near the French works to form the first parallel, and that without making works to protect ourselves, because doing so would only have drawn down a fire which no works could have enabled us to live under, and there was nothing to be done but to remain as quiet as possible until the siege began. Had we withdrawn at all, the French having seen the importance of the ground, which we got as it were almost by accident, would have made it necessary to begin the siege by the storming of the works they would soon have made there. Thus we were obliged to keep what we had got, unless resolved to turn the whole into blockade. The French engineers admire our bridge very much, and say it will figure in military history; but their officers in general in Bayonne have hitherto been very sulky, and we are yet by no means friends. Very little accommodation is afforded us in any way.
We are infinitely obliged to Bonaparte for having lost his head, and blundered as he did latterly, and suffered the Allies to enter Paris, and put an end to the war. Had he succeeded at Paris, or had Soult and Suchet united succeeded against us here, near the shores of the Mediterranean, where our next conflict would have been, you would have found, when a retreat became necessary, and that the French saw that way out of their difficulties, instead of a return to royalty, that we should have had the other party, and that a strong one, uppermost, and a cry the other way, with parties in our rear. Thinking, as we do, the French army, and a great part of the French nation, quite as much responsible and to blame as Bonaparte, for a considerable portion of the misery caused by France (for to effect this they were his willing agents so long as it was out of France, and only deserted him when he was in distress, and because his good fortune had left him, and by no means from principle)—thinking this, their excess of loyalty only disgusts us. Of course we are glad to promote it, but must despise the majority of the Bourbon shouters—a few honourable individuals, and a small party, of course, excepted.
Friday, 13th May.—Lord Wellington not yet returned, and the late very warm weather turned to a steady rain. The Paris papers of the 8th, received this morning, make Lord Wellington ambassador in France, and a Duke.
I was last night at the play to see La Reine de Golconde, an opera, with some pretty music. I mention this merely on account of a curious circumstance attending it. A French General, according to the story, fights for the deposed Queen and restores her. The troops of this French General and liberator were a part of the grenadier company of our Scotch sans culottes here in their own costume; and as they marched past, commanded and headed by the French General in the full costume of a general officer of Bonaparte’s army, the house immediately applauded the English heroes. The sensations of the French officers present must have been strange, and not very agreeable. These Scotchmen are considered by all the inhabitants (particularly of the town) as having had the principal share in their defeats in sight of the town. The mutes, bearers, and others in the procession were all English soldiers.
We have had no disturbances or quarrels here, and our officers seem all to have behaved with considerable propriety; in short, the inhabitants dread our departure, and the return of their own people. They say that all order ceases, and all security, the moment our side of the line of demarcation is passed. One furious old gentleman at the café this morning said publicly, that he thought the only regret was, that the war had not lasted three months longer, to destroy the remainder of the French brigands; and that as for Soult, he should have been sent in here, that the women might cut pieces out of his flesh with their scissors, and that he might afterwards have been executed publicly for his conduct to this city.
Saturday, Post-day.—Lord Wellington returned in the middle of the night, and, having had a cold, that and the effects of his journey make him look rather thin. He has been so taken up with business that I only saw him for a moment. Report says that he leaves us again in a day or two. I shall, if possible, ask leave, on our arrival at Bordeaux, to be independent, and find my own way home: yet I believe it would be best to go home with the army.
Head-Quarters, Toulouse, May 21, 1814.—Immediately after my last, Lord Wellington left us for Madrid. Nearly every one has quitted the army; I mean the great men, generals, &c. We are reduced to a few quiet parties and have no events to observe upon, and see no strangers to write about; everything is tame and stupid and the weather growing hot makes us languid and idle.
Lord Wellington, on his return here, was absolutely overwhelmed with business, and every department was at work in a sort of confusion and hurry that has never happened before.
On Sunday, the Duke gave a splendid ball and supper at the Prefêt’s or Palais Royal, where everything went off much as usual. The ladies dressed well, and danced admirably; and the supper was not a matter of mere form with them. Their early dinners, and their greater exertion in dancing, make them certainly more voracious than our fair ones.
On Monday, the Marquess of Buckingham returned, and was introduced to his new cousin of Wellington. The latter seemed, I understand, not a little surprised at being embraced and saluted on the cheek by his new relative. He had not been in the habit of receiving those embraces à la mode Française, and, I take it, prefers very much the kind attentions of the fair ones here, with whom he is an universal favourite.