The subaltern

by G. R. Gleig

There is something extremely agreeable in carrying on hostilities after this fashion; yet the matter may be pushed too far. Towards the close of the war, indeed, so good an understanding prevailed between the outposts of the two armies that Lord Wellington found it necessary to forbid all communication whatever; nor will the reader wonder at this when I state to him the reason. A field-officer (I shall not say in what part of the line), going his rounds one night, found that the whole of a sergeant's picket-guard had disappeared. He was, of course, both alarmed and surprised at the occurrence; but his alarm gave place to absolute astonishment when, on stealing forward to observe whether there was any movement in the enemy's lines, he peeped into a cottage from which a noise of revelry was proceeding, and beheld the party sitting in the most sociable manner with a similar party of Frenchmen, and carousing jovially. As soon as he showed himself his own men rose, and wishing their companions good night, returned with the greatest sang froid to their post. It is, however, but justice to add, that the sentinels on both sides faithfully kept their ground, and that no intention of deserting existed on either part. In fact, it was a sort of custom, the French and British guards visiting each other by turns.

At the period of which I have spoken above, however, no such extraordinary intimacy had begun. As yet we were merely civil towards one another; and even that degree of civility was for a while interrupted, in consequence of the surprisal of a French post by a detachment from General Beresford's division on the river Nive. Not that the picket was wantonly cut off, or that any blame could possibly attach to the general who ordered the proceeding. The outpost in question occupied a hill upon the allied bank of the stream. It was completely insulated and detached from all other French posts, and appeared to be held as much out of perverseness as because it commanded to a great extent a view of the British lines. Lord Beresford had repeatedly despatched flags of truce to request that the picket might be withdrawn, expressing great unwillingness to violate the sacred character which had been tacitly conferred upon the pickets; but Soult was deaf to his entreaties, and replied to his threats only by daring him to carry them into execution. A party was accordingly ordered out, one stormy night, to cut off the guard; and so successful was the attempt, that an officer and thirty soldiers, with a midshipman and a few seamen, who had charge of the boat by which the reliefs were daily ferried over, were taken. Not a shot was fired. The French, trusting to the storm for protection, had called in their vedettes, leaving only one on duty at the door of the house; and he found his arms pinioned, and himself secured, ere the roar of the tempest permitted him to detect the sound of approaching steps. The unfortunate subaltern who commanded sent in a few days afterwards for his baggage; but the reply was, that the general would forward him a halter, as the only indulgence which he merited.

But to return to my own personal narrative. After the adventure of the tea, nothing particular occurred so long as I continued in charge of the post. As soon as darkness set fairly in, I proposed, in obedience to my orders, to withdraw; and I carried the design into effect without any molestation on the part of the enemy. It was, however, their custom to take possession of the hill as soon as the British troops abandoned it; and hence I had not proceeded above half-way across the ravine when I heard the voices of a French detachment, which must have marched into the courtyard of the house almost at the moment that I and my men marched out of it. But they made no attempt to annoy us, and we rejoined the corps from which we had been detached in perfect safety.

The next day was spent in a state of rest in the chateau of Arcanques. It is a fine old pile, and stands at the foot of the little eminence on which the church is built. Like many mansions in England of the date of Queen Elizabeth or Henry VIII., it is surrounded by a high wall, within which is a paved court leading up to the main entrance. But it too, like all the buildings near, bore ample testimony to the merciless operation of war in its crumbling masonry and blackened timbers. There was a grove of venerable old firs round it, from which all the late firing had not entirely expelled the rooks.

Of the church I have a less perfect recollection. I remember, indeed, that its situation was highly striking, and that the view from the churchyard was of no ordinary beauty. I recollect, likewise, several statues of knights and ladies reposing in niches round the walls—some with the cross upon their shields, and their legs laid athwart, to show that they had served in Palestine; others in the more ancient costume of chain armour; but whether they were worthy of admiration as specimens of the art of sculpture, I cannot now take it upon me to say. I remarked, however, that the devices on the shields of most of these warriors, and the crests upon their helmets, resembled the coat and crest which were emblazoned over the gateway of the chateau; and hence I concluded that they were the effigies of the former lords of the castle, and that the family which owned it must have been at one period of some consequence.

It was not, however, exclusively in examining these buildings that I found amusement for my hours of idleness. From the churchyard, as I have already stated, the view is at all times magnificent, and it was rendered doubly so to-day by the movements of our army. The tide of war seemed to have taken a sudden turn; and the numerous corps which had so lately defiled towards the right could now be seen retracing their steps, and filing towards the left. It was a magnificent spectacle. From the high ground on which I stood, I could see very nearly to the two extreme points of the position; and the effect produced by the marching of nearly 120,000 men may be more easily imagined than described. The roads of communication ran, for the most part, in the rear of Arcanques. They were all crowded—cavalry, infantry, and artillery were moving; some columns marched in echelon; others paused from time to time as if to watch some object in their front; whilst a grove or wood would now and again receive an armed mass into its bosom, and then seem to be on fire, from the flashing of the sun against the bayonets. Happily for me, it was a day of bright sunshine, consequently every object appeared to great advantage; nor, I suspect, have many of our oldest soldiers beheld a more striking panorama than the combination of the objects around me this day produced.

I stood and watched with intense interest the shifting scene, till it gradually settled down into one of quiet. The various brigades, as I afterwards learned, were only returning from the point towards which the appearance of danger had hurried them, and now proceeded to establish themselves once more in their cantonments. The French general, either awed by the state of preparedness in which he found us, or satisfied with having called us for a few days into the field at this inclement season, laid aside the threatening attitude which he had assumed. It suited not the policy of our gallant leader to expose his troops wantonly to the miseries of a winter campaign; and hence rest and shelter were again the order of the day. But in these the corps to which I was attached had as yet no participation, our march being directed, on the following morning, to the vicinity of Fort Charlotte, where the charge of the pickets was once more assigned to us.

CHAPTER XVII.

The transactions of the three days from the 8th to the 11th of January, resembled so completely in all particulars the transactions of other days during which it fell to our lot to keep guard beside the mayor's house, that I will not try the patience of my reader by narrating them at length. He will accordingly take it for granted that the ordinary routine of watching and labour was gone through, that no attempt was made on the part of the enemy to surprise or harass us, and that, with the exception of a little suffering from extreme cold, and the want of a moderate proportion of sleep, we had no cause to complain of our destiny. When we first came to our ground we found the redoubt in a state of considerable forwardness—quite defensible, indeed, in a case of emergency; and we left it even more perfect, and capable of containing at least a thousand men. It was not, however, with any feeling of regret that we beheld a brigade of Guards approaching our encampment about two hours after noon on the 11th; nor did we experience the slightest humiliation in surrendering to them our tents, our working tools, and the post of honour.

Now, then, we looked forward, not only with resignation, but with real satisfaction, to a peaceable sojourn of a few weeks at Gauthory. We had never, it is true, greatly admired these cantonments; but the events of the last eight or ten days had taught us to set its true value upon a settled habitation of any description, and we accordingly made up our minds to grumble no more. But just as the line of march was beginning to form, intelligence reached us that the place of our abode was changed. Other troops, it appeared, had been introduced into our former apartments; and we were in consequence commanded to house ourselves in the village of Bidart. I mean not to assert that the order was received with any degree of dissatisfaction; but feeling as at that moment we did, it was, in truth, a matter of perfect indifference where we were stationed, provided only we had a roof over our heads and an opportunity was granted of resting from our labours.