On the first of September, 1811, we broke up from our cantonments at Borba, and commenced our march for Portalegre. Under a burning sun, and parched with thirst and heat, we arrived at Monteforte in the evening; and on the following day once more entered Portalegre, where we took up our quarters near a large open space called the Praça de Rocio. The sufferings of the men were extreme during this route, for, loaded as they were, each with three days provisions, and sixty rounds of ball cartridge, together with a well filled knapsack, they were almost overcome; and on arriving at the termination of this journey were scarcely able to proceed to their allotted billets. Many went into the hospital, and for a considerable time the regiment did not recover from the effects of that unusually long and harassing march. The officers, most of whom walked, were likewise foundered, and the sick report was for several weeks after filled with their names. Ensign Alexander Hay, a very promising young man, who had joined at Torre de Moro, with the detachment last come out, was attacked by fever, in consequence of drinking incautiously of cold water while under the influence of excessive heat, and he died in a few days, sincerely regretted by his companions and brother soldiers.
Our stay at Portalegre was unmarked by any extraordinary event. The miserable quarters in which the 50th was condemned to pass the winter months, were rather calculated to diminish our zeal for military life, while on the other hand, their attractions being so slight, our ardour to embark in some active business was rather encreased than otherwise. We had not, indeed, been exactly placed so as to encounter all the inclemency of the weather, but we had indisputably undergone a tolerably rough seasoning while stationed there. My quarters were at the house of Donna Elvira, an ancient maiden, who had counted at least fifty winters, her forbidding aspect might lead one to presume that no small portion of the murky gloom of those winters had been imparted to her visage, which frowned in a darkened scowl upon her ill-fated guest. A dilapidated hovel was the tenement of this famed sybil, and scanty indeed was the accommodation afforded within its shattered walls; like those in the suburbs of all Portuguese towns, it was fraught with poverty; and, as if to harmonize more with its dingy patrona, all the appendages contained therein were of broken, filthy, and crumbling materials.
I was introduced by the aforesaid hostess into a chamber of sadness, without the vestige of any thing in the shape of furniture to garnish its interior; with the exception of two broken chairs, and a rickety table, as venerable as their proprietor, tottering upon three legs, gnawed into holes by vermin, hordes of which had long maintained undisturbed possession of the premises. After throwing an old colchaō upon a floor unswept for ages, the presiding genius of the place departed slowly, muttering from her toothless jaws sundry uncouth sounds, which had very much the tone of maledictions.
CHAPTER IX.
Orders from Lord Wellington having arrived, General Hill was directed to proceed with his division towards Merida and Caceres, in hopes of being able to surprise and intercept a corps of the French army, under General Girard, as well as to re-open the communication between La Pena's Spanish troops and those of Castanos. The 2nd division marched accordingly, on the 22nd of October, from Portalegre and the out quarters. The 1st brigade, consisting of the 50th, 71st, and 92nd, under Major General Howard, was on the alarm post at an early hour; and by daylight we were pretty far on our route in the direction previously ordered.
When the clouds and mist had cleared away, the ancient castle of Alegrete, placed on the summit of a barren chain of mountains was discernible. To our left extended a long range of heights, in some parts clothed with wood, and in others with verdant pasture, the brightness of which gave the prospect a lively effect. The road was broken and uneven, and, in general, so bad, that our baggage animals could scarcely make their way. Towards noon the heaviest rain we had ever experienced set in, increasing as we pushed onwards against the storm, pelting most furiously, and blown into our faces through the clefts and openings of the mountain sides close to which we travelled. We were thoroughly wet to the skin, benumbed by the intense coldness of the cutting blast, and well nigh deprived of life and motion. However, supporting each other with hopes of better times, we jogged on amidst the ceaseless war of hail, wind and rain. We halted at the village of Codiceira, just within the Spanish frontier, where a few of us darted into one of the best looking habitations we could see. There, after taking up without ceremony a good position in the chimney corner, and before a blazing pile of fagots, we got rid of our well drenched garments; in exchange for which, cloaks and mantillas were supplied by the hands of a benevolent old dame, whose exertions to administer comfort to our exhausted frames deserve to be recorded in the annals of her country.
While we are enjoying the comforts of this snug place of refuge, I will take the opportunity of saying a few words as to certain persons who seemed to think that we had no title to such a luxury. The dragoons sometimes acted towards the infantry in rather a cavalier manner, and appeared to treat them as if they were quite an inferior order of beings. Whether it was because they had the honour of being a little more elevated from the ground, or that to their visage were appended the whisker and mustachio, and they talked their mother tongue in a lisping style, it would be difficult to determine. It is at all events pretty certain, that many of them, recently imported from the purlieus of St. James's, assumed a great variety of airs and graces, unbecoming in the field, however beautiful they might have seemed in Bond Street, and which the rough and dirty work of war and fighting failed to do away with. I can never forget the conduct of one of their noble sprigs, whose regiment happened to arrive at the town when we were halted. It was a poor place after a hard march, under bad weather and very heavy rain, but we were glad to obtain any sort of shelter in the wretched village. We had scarcely entered, when our ears were saluted with the noise of cavalry, coming down the street, and in a short space we had a sample of dragooning, such as it would be vain to look for even among the Cherokees.
Three or four of us were seated round the wide fireplace of a Spanish hearth, after taking off our well drenched jackets and accoutrements, and were enjoying the benefit of a fine blazing pile of fire, the very counterpart of that I have just described, and our servants were preparing for the culinary operations, when a loud hammering was heard at the door of the hovel, accompanied by the clanking of carbines, sabres, sabredashes, and other warlike appurtenances. At the same moment, in burst a tall, raw-boned trooper, (armed cap-a-pied, with a countenance well furnished with a most abundant crop, in which the crows might have built their nest,) followed by two others, carrying sundry hampers belonging to their masters. The intruder, who proved to be the officer commanding, gazed with awful stare upon the lodgers already in the house, and drawing himself up, as if, like Sampson, he were about to raise the building on his shoulders, called, or rather growled out, in the tone of an angry mastiff, while he curled the points of his black mustachios, "these quarters are not too good for a Col—o—nel of Dra—goons—eh!" and suiting the action to the word, he flung his implements of war on a table close at hand, with a degree of violence that shook our frail tenement to its base. His claims to supremacy being intimated to us, we gathered up our traps, and bundled out indignantly, looking round, with no very gracious glances, at the statue in whose possession we quietly left the premises, to go in search of another billet.
There was a want of courtesy and good feeling here, not in any way consistent with high bearing, and these, with many other traits of character, produced a jealousy between us, so that no very cordial intimacy could take place; nor was there much love wasted on either side. Engaged in one common cause, in duty on the same field together, all those ideas of superiority should have been forgotten, and those heroes with spurs of at least half a yard in length, should have packed up all their high opinions and fine notions, and sent them to the stores in England, there to be made use of at some future period. Such commodities never do for service, nor will they harmonize with camp or bivouac. They may pass current at home, where the pride of wealth, gold lace, and dress, go far to raise a man in public estimation; but lying in a wet ditch, or stretched by the side of a tree upon the ground, with a tattered cloak for covering, they are of little value. In that situation, a good blanket, and a well filled haversack, are worth all the lace, fringe, feathers, and aiguillettes in the British army.
About this time I remember an officer joined our camp from England, with a canteen profusely stocked, as well as a good kit. He was moreover a well dressed young man, apparently fresh from the hands of Dodd, of St. James's Street, equipped in garments that seemed as if they were pasted on his body, besides a grey frock coat, lined throughout with silk, and adorned with frogs and tassels in abundance.