Upon reaching the house allotted to me, I was met at the door by an old woman who showed me my apartment. It was scantily garnished with furniture, most of which was broken; the bed was on the tiles, but that was rather an advantage than the contrary, because the heat was excessive. I stood in no need of any refreshment; my man, Dan, having been so active during the bouleversement that he supplied my cellar as well as larder; and it was fortunate that he did so, for the inhabitants of the house, as I afterwards learned, were without a morsel of food or a stitch of clothing, having been plundered of everything.
I lay down upon my mattress, soon fell asleep, and in less than an hour awoke in a high fever. Dan wished that I should attack the pig-skin of the Tinta de la Mancha, but I positively refused to do so: “Why then, sir,” said he, “hasn’t it been the making ov yee?”—“You mean the killing of me, Dan. Go and seek for a surgeon.” He went, and soon returned with a young man in the uniform of the staff surgeons of our army; but from his youthful appearance, and the unworkmanlike manner he went about dressing my wound, I opine he was but an hospital mate. My man Dan was decidedly of my opinion; for after the doctor had examined my breast, and applied some dressing to it, he was about to retire, when Dan said with an air of authority, “You’re not going to be afthur going without looking at his hinder part?” meaning my back. The doctor took the hint, and, turning me on my face, found a large piece of the cloth of my coat, which had been carried in by the ball, protruding through the wound. The doctor looked confounded; Dan looked ferocious, and though he spoke with respect to the medical man, I plainly saw the storm which was gathering. I feared that he was about to make use of the fortiter in re, in preference to the suaviter in modo; so I dismissed the doctor, upon an assurance that he would visit me the following morning.
After a lapse of three days, all the wounded capable of being removed were ordered to Elvas. Spring waggons, carts drawn by oxen, mules harnessed with pack-saddles, and in default of them, asses prepared in like manner, were put in requisition for the purpose of freeing Badajoz of as many of the disabled men, who crowded the hospitals, as possible. I was among the number, but so ill was I as to have no recollection of how I was transported, except that a waggon stopped at my door, and, after some hours, I found myself in the streets of Elvas. From the waggon I was placed in a car, and it was night before my man Dan, with all his tact, was enabled to procure me a billet. During a space of fifteen days I lay in a state of great pain, accompanied by fever, but after that I soon recovered my strength, and being allowed the option of either joining the second battalion of my regiment, to which I then belonged, quartered at home, or going back to the army, I preferred the latter.
My friends, Darcy and Adair, were my companions on my route to the army; and, punctual at the appointed hour, we left Elvas at six o’clock on the morning of the 3rd of June, without any encumbrance, such as a detachment to look after. We had no escort except our three servants, and Dan’s wife Nelly; and it is needless to say that they were perfectly competent to take care of themselves, without causing us one moment’s uneasiness, either on their account or our own; and never did any three officers in the service of His Britannic Majesty, or in the service of any other sovereign, set out on a route to join their companions with a more fervent intention of making the time pass as agreeably as possible. Our route towards Salamanca, near which city the army was stationed, lay through the old line of march, and we were obliged, unfortunately, once more to encounter that place of dirt and wretchedness, Niza. No matter what change had taken place either amongst ourselves or the different towns through which we passed, Niza was still the same; positively dirt—comparatively dirt—superlatively dirt!—dirt! dirt! dirt! The ditches were filled with reptiles, the houses with bugs and fleas, and Adair, who was already blind of one eye, had the other nearly darkened by the bite of a huge centipede. We poulticed his eye with rye bread and cold water, and in the morning carried him, with a wry face, to his saddle.
Once clear of Niza, we traversed the country towards the Spanish frontier; at length we got clear of Portugal, and once more reached the village of Fuentes d'Oñoro; every house, I might almost say every face, was familiar to me. The heaps of embanked earth, which denoted the places where many of our old companions had been interred, were covered with grass, which grew luxuriantly over the graves of the men who had once stood there victorious, but who were now lifeless clay. We traversed the churchyard where so many of the Imperial Guard and our Highlanders had fallen; and we marked well the street where three hundred of the former had been put to death by the 88th Regiment. Many of the doors still retained the marks of the contest; and the chimneys, up which the Guard had sought shelter, bore the traces of what had taken place. The torn apertures in the large twigged chimneys, broken down by the Guard in attempting to get up them, were in the same state we had left them—untouched, unmended. Even the children could trace with accuracy the footsteps of those fallen heroes.
We walked on to the chapel wall, where the 79th had suffered so severely, and through which the French had forced their passage, under a torrent of shot, against the bayonets of the brave Highlanders. The chapel door was riddled through and through with bullets, and the walls bore the marks of the round shot fired from the French batteries. Several mounds of earth, covered as they were with herbage, still pointed out the grave of some one who had fallen; yet, to a passing stranger, the inequality of the ground would scarcely have been noticed, so little attention had been paid to the arrangement of the graves, which were dug in the hurry of the moment; but with us it was different. We could point out every spot, and lay our finger on the place where a grave ought to be found.
It so happened that the house I was quartered in for the night was one of those in which some of the Imperial Guard had sought shelter. I asked my patron why he had not mended the broken chimney? His reply was, that he preferred the inconvenience of the smoke which the aperture caused, for the pleasure he derived from viewing the grave, as he termed it, of the base French who had so scandalously ravaged his country. I cannot say that I much admired his feeling.
From Fuentes d'Oñoro we reached Rodrigo, which we had left only five months before. The breaches were repaired, the trenches levelled, and were it not for the different spots that had been assigned to many of our fallen companions, which we found untouched, there was no trace of those works which had caused us so much time and labour to construct. But those places, well known to us, brought back to our recollection the ground upon which we had stood a short time before, under circumstances so different; and the change that had taken place during the short interval—the thousands that had fallen in the two sieges,—and the difference of our attitude as compared to what it was when we before trod the spot we were then standing upon, afforded ample food for reflection. From the period of our investment of Rodrigo to the capture of Badajoz, that is to say, eighty-eight days, we lost in my regiment alone twenty-five officers and five hundred and fifty-six men; and it cannot be wondered at that we, who were alive and in health, should have a feeling of regret for our less fortunate companions, as also a feeling of thankfulness for our own escape.
There may be some who will think that such ideas are out of place, but, in my opinion, they are not so. No truly brave man ever looked upon the graves of his fallen companions without a feeling of regret. A man falling in the heat of battle is quite a different thing, because there all are alike, and subject to the same chance; and it is, moreover, wrong to mourn over the death of a comrade while the strife is going on; but the strife once ended, then will the feelings be brought into play, and the man who is incapable of a pang of regret for his fallen companion is unworthy of the name of a British soldier.
My man, Dan, had scarcely arranged my billet, ere I bent my steps to the house where I had slept on the night of the storming of the town. I had scarcely made my appearance at the portal, when the old lady to whom the house belonged recognised my voice. She ran forward to meet and welcome me; her daughters accompanied her, and it was in vain that I said I had a billet in a distant part of the town. The excuse would not be taken, and I was forced, absolutely forced, to have my baggage conveyed to the house where I had so short a time before entered under far different circumstances. The old lady asked how long I was to remain at Rodrigo. I replied, for that night only. “J'en suis fâché,” she replied in French, which language she spoke tolerably well,—“mais j’essayerai de faire votre séjour ici plus agréable qu’elle ne l'était la dernière fois”—and she immediately sent an invitation to her friends to assemble at her house the same evening.