The little town or village of Urogne has lost all traces of the struggle which went on, first to carry, and afterwards to keep it. Its four straight streets, its "place" or square, the central point of which is the church just referred to, are all as if the sound of war had never been heard among them. So appear to be the hedgerows and deep shady lanes that give to the surrounding district an aspect singularly English. As we approach the frontier, however, and in a still more remarkable degree after we pass it, a great change becomes perceptible. If we put our trust in outward appearances, Handaye, on the Trench side of the Bidassoa, might have been the scene of a battle last year or last month. Almost every house in the town, with the exception of a few recently constructed, are more or less in ruins. It seems never to have recovered the first shock of the invasion on the 8th October 1813. All the inhabitants fled that day, leaving their dwellings to their fate, and few ever returned to reclaim and restore them. In like manner Fontarabia, of which the view from Handaye is very fine, is still as it was sixty years ago—a ruinous city. The town stands within a circle of stone walls, the church being especially perceptible over them; but the walls still exhibit their ancient breaches, never in all human probability to be repaired. So likewise, as you pursue your journey, leaving the heights of San Marcial on your left hand, and bearing down towards Irun, the spectacle which meets your gaze is that of a country not long delivered from the miseries of war. The narrow glen through which the river runs waves indeed with Indian corn, as it did sixty years ago; and the slopes of the hills on the French side, below the bridge, are covered with vines, which, as in Lombardy, festoon themselves over tall poles, or from the boughs of poplars. But the houses, wherever you encounter them—the chateau equally with the cottage and farmhouse—seem to be in a state of dilapidation. To be sure, this district bore the brunt of the Carlist rising five-and-thirty years ago; yet the practised eye can detect here and there relics of the great Duke's army, especially in the mounds which mark the spots where, before advancing into France, he took the precaution to block the gorges of passes with a succession of redoubts.
Passages is as quiet and beautiful now as it ever was. Along the south side of the land-locked bay the railroad winds, from above which, and indeed on every hand, cork woods look down upon a harbour little frequented, yet capable of affording shelter to no inconsiderable navy. Passages seems to be not only unchanged but unchangeable. It is not so with St Sebastian. There all things are new. The fortifications have disappeared; and where bastion and curtain once stood, long boulevards are drawn out. The town has been rebuilt with great regularity; and along the banks of the Urumea, where our storming-parties crossed, the process of construction is still going on. St Sebastian, in fact, has ceased to be one of the keys of Spain towards France. The citadel alone remains to tell that such it once was. The town is now a fashionable watering-place, with its promenades running seaward, and its umbrageous walks commanding one of the finest views in the world, both inland and over the broad Atlantic.
Such is the general aspect of a tract of country which, peaceful, almost somnolent, as it has become, is, and must be to the end, associated in the memory of the writer of these pages with scenes of great enjoyment, though they be of warfare. For the aged live most fondly upon the past, as the young do upon the future, till both alike lose themselves in that vast present, which, for aught he knows to the contrary, may be as near to the latter as to the former.
And now a word or two respecting the volume which is again submitted for public consideration, after passing through many editions, and reaching to the forty-sixth year of its separate existence. Whence it came to pass that it was written at all, from what materials it was compiled, and how it made its way into popular favour, are points which naturally keep their hold upon the memory of the author, and may not, perhaps, be without some interest to his readers.
Though a mere boy, barely seventeen years of age, when I embarked for the seat of war in the summer of 1813, I was so fortunate as to have formed a close friendship with a man of more matured years and experience than myself—Charles Grey, the younger of Morwick, in Northumberland, the captain of the company to which I was attached, and as good a soldier, in the best sense of that term, as the British army has ever produced. To him I was indebted for many useful customs; and, among others, for the habit of noting down, at the close of every day, brief notices of the most memorable of the events that might have distinguished it while passing. A small blank-paper volume—a little memorandum-book—with a pencil attached, was his constant companion and mine; and regularly as the night closed in we drew them from our bosoms, and, often by the light of our bivouac fire, registered in a couple of lines the materials of much thought in after-years. The characters thus loosely sketched, we filled in with ink on the first convenient opportunity; and so contrived, amid the bustle and excitement of a campaign, each to keep his journal with a degree of accuracy which cannot always be predicated of the diaries of men better furnished with all the appliances of authorship.
I can hardly tell how it happened that these records of a young soldier's life during the progress of the war, both in the Peninsula and America, were not lost. No care whatever was taken of them by me after my return home; indeed I gave them, unless my memory be at fault, to my sister, and for some years never thought of inquiring whether they were in existence. But an occasional paper or two contributed to 'Blackwood's Magazine,' descriptive of detached adventures in the Peninsula, having been well received, it was suggested to me—I think by the late Mr Blackwood himself—that a personal narrative of my military service, in a connected form, would be popular. I took up the idea, and worked it out with all my heart; for it would be sheer affectation to deny even now, when time has wrought its accustomed changes on me, and a long dedication of my best energies to different pursuits has greatly modified my tastes, that the years which were spent amid the toils and dangers of active warfare, are those on which I continue to look back as the happiest in my life. And if this be the case now, it is hardly necessary to acknowledge, that the feeling was stronger in the year 1825, when the first page of 'The Subaltern' was written. Nor must the moralist blame me for this, without inquiring further. They who write and speak of war as of a succession of horrors, and nothing else, know not what they are describing. Under the admirable discipline of the great Duke of Wellington, a British camp was a community better regulated by far than any town or city in the world where one-half the amount of human beings congregate. There was little crime, no violence—I had well-nigh said, no vice anywhere. By stragglers from the rear, offences might be committed; and the absence, from the hospitals, of religious instruction and comfort, was sorely felt. But the Duke of Wellington was not to blame for that; indeed, his public despatches prove that he made many, though fruitless efforts, to remedy the evil. On the other hand, the lives and properties of the peaceable inhabitants were as secure, wherever his influence extended, as if their country had been under the management of the most efficient civil government; and if, during the progress of active operations, houses and gardens suffered, the loss thereby sustained was made good to the owners by bills upon the English treasury. Hence, though it may be very shocking to witness the death, by violence, of our fellow-creatures, and sadder still, when the fray is over, to contemplate the wrecks which war has left behind, the day of battle, be it remembered, is not of constant recurrence; while the intervals that came between one and the other of these crowning operations of the campaign were, wherever the Duke of Wellington commanded, fruitful in enjoyment. We had the full spring-time of youth about us then. We, the Duke's devoted followers, had neither care for the past nor anxiety in regard to the future. Our constitutions, hardened by much exposure to the open air, kept us above the reach of sickness, or else failed us quite. And as I, for one, never knew what sickness was, except when wounds—and these not very severe—induced it, my memory does not bring back, at this moment, one hour, or half-hour, of all that were spent in Spain and the south of France, of which I would erase the record, were it granted me so to do, or scruple to live it over again. There are darker griefs in civil life than warfare such as that of which I now speak occasions. For, even in reference to the highest of all concerns, I am not sure whether, to a well-constituted mind, the tented field be not as apt a school of piety and true devotion as the crowded capital, or even the quiet village.
Of the manner in which the work was begun and carried on, it is hardly worth while to make mention. It appeared originally as a series of papers in 'Blackwood's Magazine,' and obtained, perhaps, as large a share of public favour as was ever bestowed upon a narrative of the kind. For this, both I and my publisher were grateful; and the latter having proposed to me to collect the papers and bring them out as a separate volume, I readily acted on his suggestion. And now it was that the measure of my pride as an author was filled up, on hearing, from more than one quarter, that the little book had attracted the attention, and received the approval, of the Duke of Wellington. I was recommended also to solicit his Grace's permission to dedicate the volume to him, and I did so. The following is the Duke's reply, addressed, be it remembered, to one who had not at that time the honour of being even by appearance known to him, and with whom he had never exchanged a word. They who saw the Duke only from afar spoke of him as cold and heartless. There is evidence, as it seems to me, in this letter, of a temperament the very opposite of cold and heartless.
"London, 9th Nov. 1826.
"Dear Sir,—I have this day received your letter of the 7th inst., and I beg to assure you that you have been correctly informed that I had read your work with the greatest interest, and that I admired the simplicity and truth with which you had related the various events which you had witnessed, the scenes in which you had been an actor, and the circumstances of the life which you had led as an officer of the 85th Regiment in the army in the Peninsula and south of France.