My dear M——,
Here we are still, quiet, and in statu quo ante our last run to Pamplona. I have sent you a long account of all this business with the Prince of Orange’s despatches.
Our cavalry have been moving up, both to St. Estevan, and towards Irun. From the former place, however, for want of forage they begin to retire again. Much are left still round Pamplona, where there is only a Spanish infantry force to watch and invest. They have tried in vain to burn the corn just under the walls of the town, for this partly supplies the garrison. Marshal Beresford is gone for a week to the sea side, for bathing; I conclude, therefore, that nothing is to be immediately undertaken to turn the French out of the remaining hills near this place. I should like to have them clear out in the plains below, for I expect in about three weeks to have them plaguing us again. Something is still in agitation for this purpose, but for the present delayed. We fired, at St. Sebastian, a salute of twenty-one guns for our late victory. The garrison regularly returned two for every gun fired. They are very well supplied, it is said, and are very impudent. I fear that all our former breaches will now be quite useless, as they are, probably, before this, made the strongest points. Saragossa, or Zaragoza (the fort) has surrendered to Mina with about forty guns, and, it is said, nearly five hundred men; this will be good, if Suchet intends to come that way towards us. I think he is now retreating a little, and perhaps this late business may make him go back quicker.
Lord Wellington was on his bed yesterday, and could scarcely rise from the lumbago; but was in good humour and good spirits. His position near Sorauren and Oricain, or Orquin, was a near-run thing (this was where the last two battles were fought). General Cole was there with the fourth division. In the course of his retreat, Lord Wellington was falling back on him with his staff, saw the importance of the position and galloped over the bridge, and up to General Cole, to form his division, and take up the position at first sight. Pamplona must otherwise have been relieved. The French were so close upon Lord Wellington, that a part of his staff rather behind could not follow him over the bridge, but were cut off by the French, and obliged to find their way round. This position was afterwards strengthened by the third (Picton’s) division, and the Spaniards, and this at least saved the communication with Pamplona. I hope we should in any case have beaten the French at last, but it must have been further back certainly, and probably on the Tolosa road. General Cole’s division has had, on the whole, nearly nine days’ constant fighting and marching. It is terribly cut up in consequence.
The French vow vengeance against the Spaniards. An officer, prisoner here, told me yesterday, that the Spaniards had always complained of the French, and often with reason; but if they came again as he expected, the French were resolved to show them the difference, and let them have some reason to complain of them in earnest. He said, that France had lost nearly four hundred thousand men in Spain, in the war, and much more than half from sickness and unfair means, assassination, and treachery. He said there was not a family in France which had not put on mourning for this Spanish war, and yet scarcely any of the Spaniards had fought them like men. He said the notion the French had was that in the general peace which was expected, England and France would make arrangements to divide the best part of Spain between them, and that we should keep Cadiz, Carthagena, and all the useful maritime parts, and leave them to the Ebro. He smiled much at my disowning any such honest and honourable intentions on our part. He told me that the French armies had suffered more in their morale here in the last campaign, than by their Russian losses, for every Frenchman laid the latter disasters entirely to climate, and was satisfied he still could conquer a Russian as formerly; but here, the troops were fairly beaten, and in general would not stand. Only two brigades, he said, behaved really well at Vittoria, and Jourdan was sent to Paris under arrest for his conduct. As to the money, baggage, &c., they behaved much better on the 18th of July.
He also told me that not even an English or Spanish officer, in the best of times, had ever been so well treated as the French were when they first came here. He appeared not at all to feel how much worse this made their conduct appear since. This was drawn out by my telling him that Bonaparte had contrived now to make the French detested, almost by every nation in Europe, and that power was all he had to rely upon. The part Bernadotte had taken the French officers seem not to have known, so much are they kept in the dark about every thing. The Frenchman also said, that had it not been for the jealousies of the Guerillas, they might, by acting in concert (which they never would do), have sometimes almost annihilated whole French divisions, and that the French could scarcely have kept their ground some time since; but by local and individual jealousies the finest opportunities were lost. He considered that the good or bad behaviour of an army all depended on their having pay and food; or, on the contrary, the want of both; and I believe so much: that he rightly considered that the French discipline was the best when they had both, but that not being here ever the case, plunder was the consequence. “But why come here at all?” quoth I. “L’Empereur le veut,” was the answer, “and we as soldiers have only to obey.” “Try and enter France,” said he, “and you will soon see how the people feel, and whether your stories of a readiness to revolt, and dissatisfaction are true. So far from it, that there has been considerable zeal shown every where in replacing the Emperor’s Russian losses.” The French think there must be war, and therefore the further from home the better. We have heard before you, by French papers, of the extension of the armistice in the North. This is bad for the campaign here.
The English reviewers and others may say what they please as to Spain not having been on the decline during the last century. It has at least stood still when almost every other country in Europe made rapid advances in everything. In Spain and Portugal, no town is now, or has been lately, on the increase; but several have manifestly diminished. The decay of houses is seldom made good, even on the same ground, by new ones; I do not recollect to have observed, in the whole country, four new houses building, notwithstanding the thousands destroyed of late; nor does this seem owing to the events of the last five years and the present times, for you see no houses commenced before that time, and left unfinished, at least extremely few. In France, almost every large place had its new town as in England, only in a less degree, and evident marks of new buildings, &c., stopped by the Revolution. In Spain there are no appearances of new towns at all, nor of parts of towns, or scarcely even of houses, or unfinished buildings stopped by the present confusion—some in Vittoria, from French excitement I believe, but nothing to speak of. The churches are every where on a large and expensive scale; a few modern, but in general they are old. The Spanish towns have nearly all the appearance of what we should take to be decayed manufacturing towns. The inhabitants appear to have been asleep as to the rest of the world, and not to have made any progress whilst others made great advances. This is a sort of decline. There can have been little demand for manufactures, for the same few chairs and tables seem to have been in use these fifty or hundred years. Whitewashing and new placing the tiles seem the only repairs of the houses.
Yet, I think many districts seem to have been uncommonly happy and comfortable before this war—large tight houses, abundance of food, good clothes, cleanly habits, a general equality of rank; no rich among them at all; no very poor; and no manufactures. Almost every man could make what he wanted for his farm, and a shoemaker, a tailor, and a farrier, were nearly the only tradesmen, except farmers, in work. Occasional pedlars supplied the other wants of a people who had but few. Such must have been the independent, happy state of many large districts away from the influence of the corruptions of the large towns, where all the idle, lazy, pauper nobility lived: they were alike free from the effects of the misgovernment and oppressive conduct of their rulers. Other districts certainly were very different, and more like the dirty and ill-provided Portuguese. In Portugal, the higher classes seem, I think, to have been generally better off, and to have enjoyed themselves more in their quintas, or villas, and the poor to have been worse off. There are none of the districts in Portugal such as I have described in Spain.
I have just met General Cole, who commanded the fourth division; he is quite knocked up. He says that his division alone have one hundred and four officers killed and wounded.
Lezaca, 8th August.—Yesterday I rode up to the hill at the point of our position above Bera, from whence you see Bayonne. I stood on the top until it was nearly dark, and returned down the mountains by moonlight. The French fires were very numerous, and were burning all over the sides of a tremendous hill, which they still occupy opposite to our position. I passed the boundary stone, and got half-a-mile into France, to the highest summit of the rock, where the outlying picket is. I saw the French relieve their pickets, heard their drums as plainly as ours, saw the men at work at a redoubt to oppose us if we should advance, and, lastly, saw five thousand Spaniards come up to occupy the ground in the place of our light division, &c., who were ordered to go elsewhere. These were O’Donnell’s regiments; they were thin in numbers. A brigade, nominally three thousand, mustered eighteen hundred, but were well-dressed and good-looking men. I only hope they will fight—at least that they do not steal as adroitly as Longa’s people. We have had the latter near this place, and nothing is safe at all from their fingers—from a horse or mule down to a bit of biscuit. In my letter from Vittoria, I told you that the French as an army had escaped, and that we should hear of them again in a month. So it proved; and so I think it will be probably again, unless the two places surrender to us in a few weeks.