Sacoa is a very safe harbour; for small vessels drawing under ten feet, quite safe. They lie there high and dry, according to the tide. The houses of the former merchants are rather magnificent, though some are in ruins, and their number, for the size of the town, considerable. It has been called a sort of little Paris for the Basques. Near the sea the water has been, and is, gaining on the town and bay. There are many ruins; one is part of an old convent, now beyond the sea-wall, and almost in the sea, and some say a whole street has been washed away. The great sea-wall made by Bonaparte, six hundred yards long, was constructed to save the town, and makes a good dry walk.
Sibour is also a very large village, or small town, of inferior houses, where at present two brigades of Guards are, and two other regiments of Lord Aylmer’s brigade, besides some staff cavalry, &c. Most of the better houses have French papers from Paris, and it looks very well. The whole wall forms one landscape, like tapestry—sea-ports from Vernet or Claude, &c.; some in colours, some in bistre or an imitation of Indian ink, some Chinese, but in better perspective. The brown and black are very pretty. Most of the walls are papered. The lower parts of the houses are all a sort of warehouse (where they are not shops); this serves us for stabling, but they are flagged, which having no straw is noisy, and they smell much also. Almost all the men of a better sort went away from St. Jean de Luz; several women, for the most part old, stayed, and many have since returned; but no society, or anything of that sort, is as yet set on foot here. The deputy mayor, who stayed, sold all the wine he could appropriate, his own, and all unclaimed, as well as other things, and is, I believe, making money of us very fast. The town is now all a market or fair, and full of Spaniards and Portuguese, as well as French and Bascos, all pillaging poor John Bull, by selling turkeys for 25s. and 30s., and fowls for 12s. and 14s.
The people from Bilboa have been most active. Little has arrived from England or Lisbon as yet, which is extraordinary; but the danger of the coast is, probably, the cause. During the bad weather ten vessels of ours found their way into Bayonne, one with fifty-two Irish bullocks, by which we lost part of the best beef we ever get, and one with seven hundred trusses of hay, others with biscuit, &c. This is very provoking. The Bayonne mayor showed us the post-list of the whole taken in each ship. How we shall get on with our animals I know not, for they tell me that they hear from England, in the Commissariat, there is but little hay on the sea for us, from want of transport, and there is no straw to be got at all now within thirteen leagues, or about forty miles, from hence. I am, however, advised to send for it; and if this movement shall come to nothing, will do so to-morrow.
It is fortunate that we are so near the sea, and have some advantage as to transport in the river Nivelle also, for our transport is much diminished by desertion of the muleteers from want of pay. The army is more numerous than when at Frenada and in Portugal, and our transport is now less. Were we to wander into France (as you suppose), away from the coast, we should find it difficult to live at all. The boats of this place are famous, and the men stayed here, or have escaped here, and are all in our pay now, and thus things are brought round from Passages here by sea, and then up to the division by the river as far as Ustaritz, where they are then distributed to the mules of each division. Even with this help the army cannot be supplied with rum, except by buying it very dear on the spot of the suttlers, for nearly all our remaining mules are required for bread and a little corn for the staff. The meat supplies itself in a way—that is, about two-thirds only of the flesh which leaves Valencia, &c., in Spain, arriving here, falls under the butcher’s knife, besides the number which die on the road; and yet all that can be stopped, when fagged or lame, are distributed at the stations on the way. The suttlers, by the great profit they make, can pay the muleteers as high as two dollars a-day for each mule to carry up their produce, making us pay for it in the end. This evil increases, for our muleteers, who only have one dollar a-day for each mule (and enough in all conscience), are tempted to desert and get into the service of the suttlers, who thus supply the men with rum only at a dear rate, when we cannot do it. The pay of our muleteers is now over-due twenty-one months for each mule: they have, therefore, their own way, and are under no control at all. Nothing but a sort of esprit de corps, and the fear of losing all claim to the debt, makes them keep with us at all; and we must submit to their fraud and carelessness, for we have no remedy.
As an instance of this, it may be mentioned that one brigade of mules, which had twenty-four thousand pounds of barley given to them to bring here, five leagues from Passages, only delivered eighteen thousand, and almost openly admitted that they had taken the rest, which I suppose they had sold to raise money. We could only set off the value against their debt, for fear of losing them without getting others. There was a grand consultation the other day, at which Lord Wellington, the Commissary-general and his people, General Alava the Spanish General, and most of the principal Spanish Capistras, or directors of the mules and owners, were present, to settle what could be done. They resolved to make the arrears all a debt, to acknowledge it, and then begin a sort of new score. This is in imitation of the Portuguese; only they do not pay the debt at all, but wipe off the arrears. One month’s pay was also given by bills on the Treasury at a great discount, still this was something to go on with, and we have not Marshal Beresford’s absolute power to control these Spaniards, as he does the Portuguese. Somehow, however, you see we get on.
Head-Quarters, St. Jean de Luz, Sunday, January 9th, post-day again.—As to length, at least, you shall have no reason to complain this mail, though I am at work again at business; for on Friday night all our warriors returned home to their respective quarters, and the Commander-in-Chief to his papers. The latter had so increased upon him in his five days’ absence, that he was quite overwhelmed; and when I went in with a great bundle to add to them, he put his hands before his eyes and said, “Put them on that table; and do not say anything about them now, or let me look at them at all.”
This week’s manœuvring has not this time ended in smoke, but without smoke, as nearly as possible, for our men could not get within a long shot of the French, without following them beyond what our present plans would admit. They remained a short time on our side of the river Arrun, as it is called, in Casini’s great map, and Gambouri, in my part of the French National Atlas, a small river which runs by La Bastide and falls into the Adour, near Urt, a place half-way between Bayonne and where the Gaves fall into the Adour.
We collected on the heights above Bastide, and made the signal by a little mountain gun to advance. The French made use of the same signal to commence their retreat across the river, and scarcely a shot was fired. La Bastide, which is on this side of the river, we never entered: but remaining satisfied with that line, the matter ended there. A change of weather, to rain of no trifling kind, will probably, I think, oblige both parties to be quiet for some little time again, until sun and air return to us without wet, and dry roads enable the troops to move a little this difficult country. It is at present very hard work to get on, even in the best roads, and across the country, which is much intersected with streams and rivers, and has only clayey poached roads, and strong fences of hedge and ditch; it is almost impassable. Lord Wellington, I believe, always went back to his brother Marshal, Beresford, at Ustaritz, to which place he sent for some English hay for his horses. The Adjutant-general’s department remained mostly at Hasparren, which is, it is said, a very pretty small town in a rich cultivated valley of meadows, where they fell in with a small stock of excellent hay, not quite eaten by our cavalry, who are in that part of the country.
All the people at head-quarters have come back safe and sound; but with horses a little knocked up, and rather stiff with riding about twelve or even fourteen hours a-day. Most of them, however, look the better for the exercise. The most fagged of all I saw was our naval hero, Sir G. Collier, with his lame leg. He had ridden everywhere after Lord Wellington in hopes of seeing a fight, and coming in, I suppose, for another knock on shore, but all in vain. He says, that the French never will stand when he comes, and nothing is ever done. He is about to leave this station.
And now for a little account of the Spaniards, in order to show you how they plague Lord Wellington. We have undertaken to assist and direct, with our engineers, in putting St. Sebastian into some order, and into a state of defence. The actual working-party are, however, nearly all Spanish. These have nearly all deserted, and little or nothing is going on but quarrels between our people and the Spaniards in authority, who thwart them. At first Lord Wellington thought that we were to blame, and seemed angry; but he told Col. E—— at last, “If they go on so, d—— them, they may finish the work for themselves; but go over and see about it, and make a report to me.”