The house that held our table, too, was but a wretched apology for the one we had left. A bitter wind continued to blow; and as the granary of a room which we occupied, on the first floor, had no fire-place, we immediately proceeded to provide it with one, and continued filling it up with such a load of bricks and mortar that the first floor was on the point of becoming the ground one; and, having only a choice of evils, on such an emergency, we, as usual, adopted that which appeared to us to be the least, cutting down the only two fruit-trees in the garden to prop it up with. We were rather on doubtful terms with the landlord before, but this put us all square—no terms at all.
Our animals, too, were in a woful plight, for want of forage. We were obliged to send our baggage ones, every week, for their rations of corn, three days' march, through oceans of mud, which ought, properly, to have been navigated with boats. The whole cavalcade always moved under the charge of an officer, and many were the anxious looks that we took with our spy-glasses, from a hill overlooking the road, on the days of their expected return, each endeavouring to descry his own. Mine came back to me twice; but "the pitcher that goes often to the well" was verified in his third trip, for—he perished in a muddy grave.
His death, however, was not so unexpected as it might have been, for, although I cannot literally say that he had been dying by inches, seeing that he had walked all the way from the frontiers of Portugal, yet he had, nevertheless, been doing it on the grand scale—by miles. I only fell in with him the day before the commencement of the campaign, and, after reconnoitring him with my usual judgement, and seeing that he was in possession of the regulated quantity of eyes, legs, and mouth, and concluding that they were all calculated to perform their different functions, I took him, as a man does his wife, for better and for worse; and it was not until the end of the first day's march that I found he had a broken jaw-bone, and could not eat, and I had, therefore, been obliged to support him all along on spoon diet; he was a capital horse, only for that!
It has already been written, in another man's book, that we always require just a little more than we have got to make us perfectly happy; and, as we had given this neighbourhood a fair trial, and that little was not to be found in it, we were very glad when, towards the end of February, we were permitted to look for it a little further on. We broke up from quarters on the 21st, leaving Sir John Hope, with the left wing of the army, in the investment of Bayonne, Lord Wellington followed Soult with the remainder.
The new clothing for the different regiments of the army had, in the mean time, been gradually arriving at St. Jean de Luz; and, as the commissariat transport was required for other purposes, not to mention that a man's new coat always looks better on his own back than it does on a mule's, the different regiments marched there for it in succession. It did not come to our turn until we had taken a stride to the front, as far as La Bastide; our retrograde movement, therefore, obliged us to bid adieu to our division for some time.
On our arrival at St. Jean de Luz, we found our new clothing, and some new friends in the family of our old friend, Arcangues, which was one of the most respectable in the district, and who showed us a great deal of kindness. As it happened to be the commencement of Lent, the young ladies were, at first, doubtful as to the propriety of joining us in any of the gaieties; but, after a short consultation, they arranged it with their consciences, and joined in the waltz right merrily. Mademoiselle was really an exceedingly nice girl, and the most lively companion in arms (in a waltz) that I ever met.
Our clothing detained us there two days; on the third, we proceeded to rejoin the division.
The pride of ancestry is very tenaciously upheld among the Basques, who are the mountaineers of that district. I had a fancy that most of them grew wild, like their trees, without either fathers or mothers, and was, therefore, much amused, one day, to hear a fellow, with a Tam O'Shanter's bonnet, and a pair of bare legs, tracing his descent from the first man, and maintaining that he spoke the same language too. He might have added, if further proof were wanting, that he, also, wore the same kind of shoes and stockings.
On the 27th February, 1814, we marched, all day, to the tune of a cannonade; it was the battle of Orthes; and, on our arrival, in the evening, at the little town of St. Palais, we were very much annoyed to find the seventy-ninth regiment stationed there, who handed us a general order, desiring that the last-arrived regiment should relieve the preceding one in charge of the place. This was the more vexatious, knowing that there was no other regiment behind to relieve us. It was a nice little town, and we were treated, by the inhabitants, like friends and allies, experiencing much kindness and hospitality from them; but a rifleman, in the rear, is like a fish out of the water; he feels that he is not in his place. Seeing no other mode of obtaining a release, we, at length, began detaining the different detachments who were proceeding to join their regiments, with a view of forming a battalion of them; but, by the time that we had collected a sufficient number for that purpose, we received an order, from head-quarters, to join the army; when, after a few days' forced marches, we had, at length, the happiness of overtaking our division a short distance beyond the town of Aire. The battle of Orthes was the only affair of consequence that had taken place during our absence.
We remained stationary, near Aire, until the middle of March, when the army was again put in motion.