The subaltern

by G. R. Gleig

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS

EDINBURGH AND LONDON

MDCCCLXXII

PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION

OF

'THE SUBALTERN.'

Forty-six years have run their course since the concluding pages of the following narrative were written—not far short of sixty since the latest of the events recorded therein were to a living and breathing generation present realities. A large space this latter in the life of the individual man—a not inconsiderable one in the existence even of nations. Of the influence which it has exercised over the destinies of the four Powers which, at the opening of the interval, were at deadly strife one with another, this is scarcely the occasion on which to speak. The general results are indeed before us, not to be misapprehended; but the multiplicity of causes which combined to bring them about, the most painstaking and well-instructed of chroniclers would find it difficult to put in order within the limits of a volume, much more of a preface. France, which in 1813 bled at every pore in the vain attempt to sustain the First Empire, has since accepted and driven away again, one after another, the Restoration, the Orleanist rule, the Republic, and the Second Empire; and now, humiliated and maimed, is striving, under a second republic, to recruit her energies for whatever the future may present to her. From Spain, the Bourbons, whom the arms of England replaced upon the throne, are to all human appearance permanently expelled, after a long succession of plots and civil wars, which the selfish policy of the last king of the race had bequeathed to his country as a parting legacy. Portugal, likewise, though less severely tried than her neighbours, has had her troubles too, in the internecine contests of brother against brother, and uncle against niece. And if at length she may have found a way of escape from anarchy, she owes it mainly to the good sense of the two last of her sovereigns, themselves the offshoots of a family remarkable for its prudence, and more fortunate than any other royal house in Europe in giving to constitutional monarchies their existing dynasties. As to England, what shall we say of her? No foot of foreign enemy has polluted her soil, no secret conspiracy nor open revolt has set her people in array one against another. Yet the constitution which was settled for her two centuries ago, and which, in 1813, her wisest sons held to be perfect, has been left far behind. The doors of her Parliament are open now to men of all religious opinions and of none. She has determined the point, for the first time in her history, that there is no necessary connection between Church and State; and recent legislation seems to declare that the honour and interests of a great country are safer in the keeping of the uneducated and impulsive, than of the cultivated and reflecting classes. All this is true; yet let us be thankful that, in an age of revolutions, our own downward progress has not been more rapid. We have still a throne, which is assumed to be hereditary, and to which loyalty is professed. We have still in England and in Scotland established churches. We have a House of Lords also, which the wise among us reverence and look up to; and laws which, when rightly administered, are equal to any strain that can be put upon them. How long these, or any other of the institutions which we owe to "the wisdom of our ancestors," are likely to endure, is a question more easily asked than answered. This much, however, is at least probable, that if they go to the wall, they will go gradually, and that the generations which inherit the change will learn to adapt themselves to it, and to make the most of it. The greatest attainable amount of happiness to the greatest possible number of persons—that is, or ought to be, the end of all governments; and the government which most effectually achieves that end will be the best government, call it by what name you may.

The particular tract of country wherein the scene of the following narrative is laid has undergone fewer changes, whether physical or social, than might perhaps have been anticipated in the course of six long and very busy decades. All the great natural features of the district,—the hill, the vale, the river, the mountain, and the sea,—remain, of course, precisely what they were. The Gironde, as the confluence of the Garonne and the Dordogne is called, still rolls its waters, after passing through Bourdeaux, in a turbid volume towards the Bay of Biscay. The Landes, succeeding to the rich culture of vine, corn-field, and orchard, receive you now, as they did of old, into a melancholy expanse of dark forests and sandy plains. Along either bank, at the mouth of the Adour, two scrubby pine-woods take you into their shelter; while in the far distance beyond, the bold outline of the Pyrenees towers up into the horizon. Nor on the whole can it be said that man has done much to modify in any perceptible degree the general character either of places or of persons. Towns may grow larger and more populous from year to year; villages have a tendency to stretch themselves out;—and one in particular, which in 1813 was little better than a seaside hamlet, has expanded into a gay and luxurious watering-place. But the bulk of the people seem to be exactly what they were sixty years ago—frugal, hard-working, honest, not over-cleanly perhaps in their domestic habits, and, though far from melancholy, a graver race than the peasants of France are usually believed to be. In fact, considering the tendency of railway communication to break down, wherever it is established, local customs altogether, the matter to be wondered at is, that we should find so much of their primitive simplicity still surviving among these Gascons; for the rail it is which has wrought most surely whatever innovation is perceptible among them. The rail has put the old chaussée out of date, and brought the Spanish frontier within eighteen hours of Paris, and to him who shall use his opportunities aright, within thirty hours of London. Hence that which used to be regarded as an out-of-the-way corner of Europe, worth notice only because it witnessed the closing operations of the Peninsular War, is visited now by strangers from all parts of the world—some hurrying by without a pause, intent on business or pleasure elsewhere; others finding in the district itself a temporary home, which the climate, especially in winter and spring, renders as salubrious as the magnificent scenery in which it abounds makes it agreeable. The Gascons cannot, of course, fail more or less to be acted upon by this tide of immigration. As yet, however, it seems but slightly to have affected their characters and manners, which, in all essential points, continue to be what they were when the great Duke led his victorious columns through the passes of their mountains, not to plunder or harass, but to deliver their fathers from the outrages which they suffered at the hands of their own countrymen in arms.

The railroad from Bourdeaux to the frontier runs parallel, or nearly so, with the old chaussée, as far as Labenne, a little village with a station, about eight miles from Bayonne. There the two lines separate. The old road enters Bayonne, as it did long ago, to the left of the citadel, descending the steep hill on which the fortress stands, and passing through the suburb of St Esprit, in which, during the sortie on the 14th April 1814, most of the fighting took place. The railway, on the contrary, sweeps seaward, and, touching the Adour at Boucaut, runs up-stream by the brink of the river, and so passes through the lower outworks of the citadel to the station. There the traveller who desires to rest for an hour or two will alight close to a church in which General Hay was killed, and round which that desperate struggle took place of which mention is made in chapter xxiv. of the Subaltern's story.

The alterations effected in Bayonne since the siege are neither numerous nor important. The intrenched camp, of which Marshal Soult made it the key, has indeed disappeared, while the permanent works are strengthened and enlarged, so as to adapt them, in some degree at least, to those modifications in the art of attack and defence which the increased power of artillery and the resources of modern engineering skill have brought about. The town itself, however, remains very nearly such as it was. In the Rue de Gouvernment and the adjacent streets some handsome modern houses have indeed been built, but the main portion of the city retains nearly all its old landmarks. We have the same tall houses looking into each other's eyes across the narrow streets; the same narrow trottoirs beneath the houses, so completely sheltered from the sun's rays as to produce in him who walks along them some such sensation as he might experience were he at the bottom of a well. Now also, as formerly, all these narrow streets converge towards the cathedral, which stands upon the highest point of a gently-rising eminence, and forms, so to speak, the centre of a star, whence multitudinous rays are thrown out. The effect is singular, and, when looked at from the cathedral tower, is really very striking.