The cathedral itself, which in 1814 had suffered grievously from years of neglect, has had of late a good deal of attention paid to it. Indeed it was one of the most praiseworthy characteristics of the era of the Second Empire, that considerable efforts were made in it, both by the Government and private persons, to blot out the traces of the Vandalism which had prevailed under the First Empire and during the First Republic, especially with regard to churches. Here a capital sum, producing not less than fifteen hundred a-year of interest, was bequeathed by a pious individual for the purpose of restoration; and the will of the testator having been carefully attended to, the edifice stands forth again in something like its original splendour. The cathedral of Bayonne is about as large as one of our own cathedrals of the second order—to which, indeed, in its proportions and general style of architecture, it bears a close resemblance.
Of the works thrown up by the English during the last siege, not a vestige remains. The Blue House, as we used to call a chateau standing in the suburb of St Pierre, and in the garden of which we established our most formidable mortar-battery, retains no traces of the fire to which it was then exposed. The shot-holes are all filled up, the walls are whitewashed, and the avenue by which it is approached has been replanted. Nobody could tell that our axes cut down trees as umbrageous as those which now flank the roadway on either side, that their stems might be converted into platforms, and their tops and stouter branches into stockades and abattis. In one particular, however, commendable care has been taken to save from obliteration a memorial of the siege. The graves of the British officers who fell in the sortie are well kept up, each English consul as he came into office having received the charge from his predecessor, and all religiously attending to it.
The railway from Bayonne to the frontier passes over the Adour and the Nive upon a new bridge, higher up the stream than the old stone bridge. It then runs along the valley in which lie the small lakes or large ponds referred to in this narrative. These it leaves to the right, and crossing the chaussée, enters a tunnel driven beneath the ridge on which the mayor's house stands. By-and-by the train rushes through another valley, sighting the villages of Bidart and Gauthory, and so on to St Jean de Luz. The station for St Jean de Luz is at a point just outside the town, where the road to Ascaen branches off. Leaving it behind, we hurry through a succession of tortuous glens, and by-and-by, having traversed a deep cutting, we find ourselves at Handaye, the last town on the French frontier. We are now on the right of the great Spanish road, which crosses the Bidassoa at the same point where, in 1813, we found the bridge broken down, and its ruins blocked by a tête-de-pont. Here some delay takes place, national jealousies having contrived that the gauges on either side of the stream should be different, and the Customs regulations stringent. The traveller is not, however, put thereby to very serious inconvenience. If he be disposed to eat, he will find both at Handaye and at Irun excellent buffets; if he prefer spending an hour among the outward forms of nature, the views that meet his gaze on every side will well repay the time lent to survey them.
Leaving him there, I will ask my reader to return with me to the point where we last rested, and to visit in my company certain spots of which he will find mention made in the course of the Subaltern's narrative; and among these, one in particular will naturally attract his attention. It was but the other day the favourite summer haunt of an imperial household: it is still a place much resorted to by fashionable seekers after health. Sixty years ago it was nothing more than the quiet village of Biaritz, occupied in perpetuity by fishermen and lodging-house keepers, and visited in the autumn for sea-bathing purposes by the wealthier citizens of Bayonne. This latter phase of its existence is represented by a few old-fashioned houses which stretch vaguely along the southern ridge towards the church, and thence dip down again in the direction of the sea, till they reach Porte Vieux. Even these, however, are rapidly making way for more stately mansions, though enough of them still remain to present a striking contrast to the eastern or modern section of the town. This latter, facing the sea, extends from Porte Vieux well-nigh to the lighthouse. There the Villa Eugénie comes in, planted at the foot of the lighthouse hill, and occupying, with its pleasure-grounds and well-kept alleys, a space which, sixty years ago, was nothing more than a tract of barren sand.
You can reach Biaritz from Bayonne by rail, arriving at the station at Nigresse; or you may travel from Bayonne by a new road, which, turning off from the Spanish road at the fifth kilometre, avoids the village of Anglete, through which the old road ran. This latter, which, after crowning the heights of the Phare, led over an interesting country, is now quite deserted. At the point where it joins the great Spanish road used to stand a post-house, with a vast range of stables and out-buildings. The post-house, stables, and out-buildings are still there, but the business has gone from the place, and it is falling fast into decay. It was along that old road that the Subaltern and his two friends rode for their lives when chased by French cavalry out of Biaritz. Neglect has rendered the greater portion of it impassable, which indeed it would have become throughout, had not the Emperor caused it to be repaired where it abuts upon Biaritz, and carried it on a new line round the lake, and through the woods that surround the mayor's house. This promenade or drive, to which he gave the name of Bois de Boulogne, is extremely pretty in itself, and commands from various points glimpses of very interesting scenery. But the point of most interest to the English traveller is undoubtedly the mayor's house itself, which, with the grounds about it, the present proprietor, Monsieur la Bride, has had the good taste to preserve in all their leading features very much as they were when the four days' battle was fought.
The landscape, as seen from the top of the house, is magnificent. From it the traveller commands now, as Sir John Hope did sixty years ago, a full view of the entire battle-field, including Arcanques and Ustaritz, with all the country eastward as far as the Cambo Hills, and southwards to the Ebrun Mountains and the Spanish Pyrenees. The more minute features of the scene of action are likewise taken in. The hollow road in which the French formed for their last rush at the house, remains as it was on the 11th of December 1813. Between it and the house lies the triangular field, just outside the wood, where the carnage was fiercest, and of which the proprietor says, that, well manured by the dead, it still produces such crops as to command thrice the amount of rent that is given for any other similar extent of ground in the district. Beyond it, over the hill, and sloping towards Bayonne, extends the scraggy copse or belt of wood through which the fighting was close and desperate; and just below the railway lies the lake into which many of the French, horse and man, were driven. They were driven not without great promptitude of action on our part; for there the French cavalry fell upon us with such rapidity and determination, that, being scattered in loose order, we had just time, favoured by the swampy nature of the ground, to throw ourselves into circles and receive them. All these objects Monsieur la Bride points out with unwearied politeness to the English who visit him, not forgetting the graves of British officers whom their comrades buried in his garden, and of which he generously and religiously keeps the outlines sacred.
Leaving the mayor's house, and returning to the great road, we enter upon the common or broken plain where, on the 10th December 1813, the other corps of the left column of the army came up in support of the hard-pressed and hard-fighting fifth division. It was a wild bleak spot in winter, sixty years ago; it is little changed now. The redoubt which we threw up, and named after one of the mayor's daughters, has indeed disappeared; but the belt of wood round which the squadrons of the 12th and 16th Light Dragoons made their charge keeps its place exactly as it did then; and the hollow in which the brigade to which the Subaltern was attached bivouacked that night lacks only the embers of their watch-fires to make it precisely what it was when they left it. The same may be said of Bidart and Gauthory, two villages which we reach in succession—the former lying at the farther base of the eminence or plateau where the operations just referred to took place—the latter scattered on either side of the highway, some two or three miles nearer to St Jean de Luz. In both, the clusters of houses, which afforded winter quarters to the 85th Light Infantry, appear as if they had been evacuated but yesterday.
In St Jean de Luz few changes have been effected. The one great novelty is a sort of breakwater or digue which Napoleon III. began to construct, with a view to develop the capacities of the port as a harbour of refuge and an entrepôt of commerce. But the work is incomplete, and is not likely to be carried further till a more stable government than the present be set up in France. As to the bridge over the Nivelle, it is exactly in the state in which we left it; the piers of the arches which the French blew up stand where they did, as well as the beams and planks with which we replaced the broken roadway. It is pointed out to all who are curious in such matters as the Wellington Bridge. In other respects the town retains all its original characteristics. The quays, the churches, the hôtel de ville, the very shops themselves, the house which was Lord Wellington's headquarters, are precisely what they were; while, as if to preserve unbroken the associations of the past, the railway station itself has been constructed outside the town, and is not in any conspicuous manner connected with it.
Our next point of interest is Urogne. There it lies as it lay sixty years ago, in the low ground, overlooked by the heights which Soult had fortified, and which, he flattered himself, would stop our further progress. There, too, before descending the hillside on the right of the old carriage-road, stands the chateau, in the library of which we found, on the 11th of November 1813, a captured English mail. It seems to be, as far as outward appearances can be trusted, precisely what it was on that day when I carried off from it two bits of plunder—a Spanish grammar, which I still retain, and a small and prettily-enamelled pair of bellows. Alas! this latter, of which the value could not be overrated in bivouac, has long ago disappeared. Sic transit gloria mundi. Gone, too, is the three-gun battery, the fire from which swept the main street of the town, and struck against the old church wall without passing through it. My blessing be upon that sacred pile! It gave me shelter in the night between the 10th and the 11th, and some hundreds of brave men besides, all of them wearied with long hours of watching and battle. They had not failed before lying down to cover with the consecrated earth of the churchyard such of their comrades as had fallen. Where now are they themselves?
"Their swords are rust,
Their bodies are dust,
Their souls are with the Lord, we trust."