After the fall of Ciudad Rodrigo, our battalion took possession for a time of Ituera, a pretty little village on the banks of the Azava.
It was a delightful coursing country, abounding in hares; and as the chase in those days afforded a double gratification—the one present, and the other in perspective, (the dinner hour,) it was always followed with much assiduity. The village, too, happened to be within a short ride of Ciudad, so that frequent visits to our friends formed an agreeable variety, and rendered our short sojourn there a season of real enjoyment.
I was much struck, on first entering Spain, in observing what appeared to be a gross absurdity in their religious observances; for whenever one of those processions was heard approaching, the girls, no matter how they had been employed, immediately ran to the window, where, kneeling down, they continued repeating their aves until it had passed, when they jumped up again and were ready for any frolic or mischief.
Such was the effect produced inwardly by the outward passage of the Hoste, but it was not until I went to Ituera that I had an opportunity of witnessing the fatal results of a more familiar visit from those gentlemen bearing torches and dark lanterns, for they certainly seemed to me to put several souls to flight before they were duly prepared for it.
One happened to be the landlady of the house in which I was quartered, a woman about three score, and blind; but she was, nevertheless, as merry as a cricket, and used to amuse us over the fireside in the evening, while "twisting her rock and her wee pickle tow," in chaunting Malbrook and other ditties equally interesting, with a voice which at one time might have had a little music in it, but had then degenerated into the squeak of a penny trumpet.
In her last evening on earth, she had treated us with her usual serenade, and seemed as likely to live a dozen years longer as any one of the group around her; but on my return from a field-day next forenoon, I met the Padré, the sexton, and their usual accompaniments, marching out of the house to the tune of that grave air of theirs; and I saw that further question was needless, for the tears of the attendant damsels told me the tale of woe.
Her sudden departure was to me most unaccountable, nor could I ever obtain an explanation beyond that she was very aged; that they had sent for the Father to comfort her, and now she was happy in the keeping of their blessed Virgin.
There was much weeping and wailing for a day or two, and her grand-daughter, a tall thin lath of a girl, about eleven or twelve years of age, seemed the most distressed of the group. It so happened that a few days after, an order was promulgated authorising us to fill up our ranks with Spanish recruits, to the extent of ten men for each company, and I started off to some of the neighbouring villages, where we were well-known, in the hope of being able to pick up some good ones. On my return I was rather amused to find that the damsel already mentioned, whom I had left ten days before bathed in tears, was already a blushing bride in the hands of a strapping muleteer.
While on the subject of those Spanish recruits I may here remark that we could not persuade the countrymen to join us, and it was not until we got to Madrid that we succeeded in procuring the prescribed number for our battalion. Those we got, however, were a very inferior sample of the Spaniard, and we therefore expected little from them, but to their credit be it recorded, they turned out admirably well—they were orderly and well-behaved in quarters, and thoroughly good in the field; and they never went into action that they had not their full portion of casualties.
There were fifty of them originally, and at the close of the war, (about a year and a half after,) I think there were about seventeen remaining, and there had not been a single desertion from among them. When we were leaving the country they received some months' gratuitous pay and were discharged, taking with them our best wishes, which they richly merited.