[257] In October, the garrison were put upon an allowance of four ounces of horseflesh each man. In a week that too failed; every domestic animal had been consumed; rats were eagerly sought for, and weeds supplied the place of vegetables. A feeble sally was made upon the 10th, but it was repulsed with a loss of eighty men. Disease generally accompanies famine—scurvy broke out—a thousand men were reported to be in the hospital, as many were wounded, and death and desertion had lessened the garrison by six hundred. In these desperate circumstances, Cassan, the governor, sent out to offer a surrender, provided he was allowed to retire into France with six pieces of artillery. A peremptory rejection of this condition was followed by a proposition that the soldiers should not serve for a year. This, too, being refused, it was intimated to the Spanish general, that after blowing up the works, Cassan would imitate Brennier, and trust to fortune and gallantry for the deliverance of his exhausted garrison. This proceeding on the part of the French governor was so repugnant to the rules of war, that a letter was conveyed to his advanced post, denouncing the attempt as inhuman, involving in a desperate experiment the destruction of unfortunate beings who had already borne the horrors of a siege, with an assurance that, should it be attempted, the governor and officers would be shot, and the private soldiers decimated. Most probably the threat of mining the city had been merely used to obtain more favourable terms, and neither the abominable experiment was made, nor the terrible retaliation which would have followed was required. On the 31st the garrison surrendered, and the finest fortress on the Peninsula became thus a bloodless conquest.
[258] “The cattle brought for the consumption of the troops through a great part of Spain, arrived in a jaded and lean condition—those who lived to reach the place of slaughter—for the roads along which they had been driven might easily be traced by their numerous carcasses, lying half-buried or unburied by the way-side—sad proofs of the wasteful inhumanity of war! The weather had been more stormy than was usual even on that coast and at that season. The transports at Passages were moored stem and stem in rows, and strongly confined by their moorings; yet they were considered in danger even in that land-locked harbour: some were driven forward by the rising of the swell, while others, close alongside, were forced backwards by its fall, so that the bowsprits of some were entangled in the mizen-chains of others. The cold on the mountains was so intense, that several men perished. A picket in the neighbourhood of Roncesvalles was snowed up: the parties who were sent to rescue it drove bullocks before them as some precaution against the danger of falling into chasms, and the men were brought off; but the guns could not be removed, and were buried under the snow in the ditch of the redoubt.”—Southey.
[259] “The successful result of the battle was owing in no inconsiderable degree to the able direction of the artillery under Colonel Dickson. Guns were brought to bear on the French fortifications from situations which they considered totally inaccessible to that arm.
“Mountain guns on swivel carriages, harnessed on the backs of mules purposely trained for that service, ascended the rugged ridges of the mountains, and showered destruction on the intrenchments below. The foot and horse-artillery displayed a facility of movement which must have astonished the French, the artillerymen dragging the guns with ropes up steep precipices, or lowering them down to positions from whence they could with more certain aim pour forth their fatal volleys against the enemy.”—Batty.
[260] During the short term of inaction which the inclemency of the weather had occasioned, one of those periods of conventional civility which not unfrequently occurred during the Peninsular campaigns, took place between the French and allied outposts. “A disposition,” says Quartermaster Surtees, “had for some time been gaining ground with both armies, to mitigate the miseries of warfare, as much as was consistent with each doing their duty to their country; and it had by this time proceeded to such an extent, as to allow us to place that confidence in them that they would not molest us, even if we passed their outposts.”
Lord Wellington, however, discountenanced those friendly relations, where the arrangements were so perfectly amicable, that the parties not only took charge of love letters, but even “plundered in perfect harmony.”
“Before this order was issued, the most unbounded confidence subsisted between us, and which it was a pity to put a stop to, except for such weighty reasons. They used to get us such things as we wanted from Bayonne, particularly brandy, which was cheap and plentiful; and we in return gave them occasionally a little tea, of which some of them had learned to be fond. Some of them also, who had been prisoners of war in England, sent letters through our army-post to their sweethearts in England, our people receiving the letters and forwarding them.”
“The next day, there being no firing between us and those in our front, three French officers, seemingly anxious to prove how far politeness and good breeding could be carried between the two nations, when war did not compel them to be unfriendly, took a table and some chairs out of a house which was immediately in our front, and one which we had lately occupied as a barrack; and bringing them down into the middle of the field which separated the advance of the two armies, sat down within a hundred yards of our picket, and drank wine, holding up their glasses, as much as to say, ‘Your health,’ every time they drank. Of course we did not molest them, but allowed them to have their frolic out.
“During the day, also, we saw soldiers of the three nations, viz. English, Portuguese, and French, all plundering at the same time in one unfortunate house, where our pie, our pig, and wine had been left. It stood about 150 or 200 yards below the church, on a sort of neutral ground between the two armies; hence the assemblage at the same moment of such a group of these motley marauders. They plundered in perfect harmony, no one disturbing the other on account of his nation or colour.”
[261] “The mist hung heavily; and the French masses, at one moment quite shrouded in vapour, at another dimly seen, or looming sudden and large and dark at different points, appeared like thunder-clouds gathering before the storm. At half-past eight, Soult pushed back the British pickets in the centre; the sun burst out at that moment, the sparkling fire of the light troops spread wide in the valley, and crept up the hills on either flank, while the bellowing of forty pieces of artillery shook the banks of the Nive and the Adour. Darricau, marching on the French right, was directed against General Pringle. D’Armagnac, moving on their left and taking Old Monguerre as the point of direction, was ordered to force Byng’s right. Abbé assailed the centre at St. Pierre, where General Stewart commanded; for Sir Rowland Hill had taken his station on a commanding mount in the rear, from whence he could see the whole battle and direct the movements.”—Napier.