HISTORICAL AND ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES TO CANTO XII.
The allusion at the commencement of this Canto is more especially to the admirable regulations established and enforced while our troops were upon the French territory. Never, since the days of the great Gustavus, was such discipline preserved in an enemy’s country. Captain Batty attests the excellent feeling produced amongst the inhabitants of St. Jean de Luz and its neighbourhood by the wonderful restraint observed by our army while stationed there in cantonments. (Campaign of the Western Pyrenees.) The well-known General Order of Wellington enforcing this discipline can never be forgotten, as the brightest monument of civilized war—perhaps in certain circumstances an inevitable calamity, but by him softened to the smallest infliction of injury. An official letter written from Bayonne, and quoted by Napier, book xxiv. chap. 1, contains this splendid testimony;—“The English general’s policy, and the good discipline he maintains, do us more harm than ten battles. Every peasant wishes to be under his protection.”
The principal battles are described in the order of their occurrence, and my impressions from recent visits are here recorded.
The ravines which intersect the heights of Roriça are overgrown with the beautiful shrubs, which make the wild districts of Portugal so delightful. The arbutus and myrtle I noted especially. Near the top of the middle pass is a small opening in the form of a wedge, nearly covered with these shrubs, where the severest fighting took place. The principal column in the main attack advanced under cover of some olive and cork trees, the ilex of the text. The name of this battle-ground (as remarked in my Introduction) has been frequently disfigured in English accounts. “Rolissa” is a common form of error; and the usual, but absurdly erroneous, form was for many years, “Roleia.” The true reading is that in the text. This battle was fought on the 17th August, 1808.
The difficulty of the ground, both at Vimieiro and at Roriça, struck me as only inferior to that of the terrible Serra of Busaco, and the still more gigantic inequalities of the Pyrenees. In front of the little village of Vimieiro, sweetly situated in a valley watered by the silver stream of Maceira, rises a rugged and detached flat-topped hill, commanding the passes which stretch to the south and east. A fearful ravine, the scene of great carnage, separates a mountain, that sweeps in a crescent from the coast, from another range of heights over which passes the road from Vimieiro to Lourinham, and which returns to the coast with a sudden bend backwards, terminating there in a tall and precipitous cliff. The ground between the points where the two armies were posted is wooded and broken in an extraordinary degree, especially by the deep ravine above referred to, where Brennier was for a considerable time entangled. Kellerman’s reserves were posted in a pine wood. Our 43rd regiment, stationed amongst some vineyards, covered with ripening grapes, to which allusion is made in the text, for the battle was fought on the 21st August, 1808, maintained a fierce contest against the French grenadiers, whom they eventually scattered with a furious onset of the bayonet, the regiment suffering severely. On the crest of the ridge Solignac was equally defeated; the French artillery, taken and rescued for a time, were finally retaken, and their discomfited troops compelled to retreat.
The glorious battle of Talavera was fought on the 28th July, 1809, when the “burning sun” described in the text was so fierce and scathing as to tempt the soldiers of both armies, before the commencement of the fight, down to the little brook which separated their positions, not far from the memorable hill which was the vital point of the action, where they quenched their thirst together, mingling without any attempt at mutual molestation, with a degree of reciprocal confidence which was not without something chivalrous in its character. I slaked my thirst at the same stream on my visit, and could not help smiling at the remark of a Spanish peasant, that that water to this hour is “ensangrentada!” I pointed to its limpid purity, which assuredly had nothing of the crimson hue. The mingling of the French and English troops at this stream for such a purpose reminded me of a passage in my life which occurred in 1836 at Compiègne in France, where the late lamented Duke of Orléans had formed a camp for military exercises, which I attended as a spectator. The heat was likewise then intolerable, and I slaked my thirst at a streamlet on the ground in the midst of scores of French soldiers, similarly employed, who assisted me with great politeness. At Talavera the French, posted near the Tagus, amongst some olive groves which were in full bloom at the period of my visit, commenced the battle with a tempest of bullets from no fewer than 80 pieces of artillery. The “Belluno” alluded to in the text was Marshal Victor, Duke of that name. “The English regiments met the advancing columns.” “Their loud and confident shouts—sure augury of success—were heard along the whole line.” (Napier, Hist. War in the Penins. book viii. chap. 2.) A terrible charge of cavalry was executed by the 23rd, down a nearly precipitous cleft, in which half the regiment was sacrificed. The charge of the 48th decided the day, which says Napier “was one of hard, honest fighting,” and for which Sir Arthur Wellesley first was made a Peer. “The battle was scarcely over when the dry grass and shrubs taking fire, a volume of flames passed with inconceivable rapidity across a part of the field, scorching in its course both the dead and the wounded.” (Napier, Hist. War in the Penins. book viii. chap. 2.)
My first reflection, on ascending the Serra of Busaco, was one of astonishment how any troops could act in such terrifically broken ground. It seemed almost impracticable to my mule. Yet up these tremendous steeps the French scaled rather than charged with a degree of active energy and hardihood, which well deserves the compliment paid to them by Napier: “In this battle of Busaco, the French, after astonishing efforts of valour, were repulsed, in the manner to be expected from the strength of the ground, and the goodness of the soldiers opposed to them.” (Hist. War in the Penins. book xi. chap. 7.) It was not easy in imagination to conjure up the spectacle of these elevated crags fronting the peaceful convent, and these crests of rugged mountains scattered in tumbling confusion around, bristling all over with bayonets as they did before sunrise on that eventful morning, thirty-six years since, and the French emerging from those wooded ravines, and rushing up the face of these fearful heights, down which they were hurled again, their bodies strewing the way to the very depths of the valley. A mist capped the mountain on my visit, and it was so on the day of the battle—the 27th September, 1810. “In less than half an hour the French were close upon the summit; so swiftly and with such astonishing power and resolution did they scale the mountain.” (Napier, Hist. War in the Penins. ibid.) “The Duke”’s despatch is, as usual, succinct and forcible. Massena’s character, as drawn by Napoléon, was as follows:—“Brave, decided, and intrepid * * his dispositions for battle bad, but his temper pertinacious to the last degree.” His rashness was here apparent. His ruthless cruelty and infamous burnings and destruction, in retreating from the Lines of Torres Vedras six months later, including his firing of the Convent of Alcobaça, make the name which Napoléon gave him, “the child of victory,” unworthy by the side of Ney, “the bravest of the brave.”
The battle of Fuentes de Onoro, fought on the 5th May, 1811, was no very decided triumph, although most undoubtedly a victory, since the principal object of the allies, the covering of the blockade of Almeida, was successfully accomplished. The village of Fuentes, so often attacked throughout the day, was unflinchingly and gallantly defended; and on the chapel and crags which surmount the town we maintained our ground to the last, while the French retired a cannon-shot from the stream. My attention was invited in a more lively degree by the neighbouring fortress of Almeida, which was the scene of such repeated actions during the Peninsular War, and where occurred the curious siege in 1844 by the forces of the Portuguese government, when it was occupied by a revolutionary party under the Conde do Bomfim, aiming at the subversion of Dona Maria’s prerogative.