We rode along with the column until dark, when we left it to take up our quarter for the night at a farm-house, which we saw on the left, in a valley, at the distance of about a quarter of a mile. Here we passed the time pleasantly, having met with hospitable people who accommodated us with what we wished. My friend had purchased a brace of woodcocks in the village where we slept on the previous night, and my servant was busy cooking them: while we sat at the fire along with the farmer, his wife and three children, enjoying ourselves with a glass of good Tafalia wine, about seven o’clock, a youth who was in the employ of the farmer, lifted the latch, and entered, covered with snow; his face was as white as his clothes, and he evidently laboured under extreme terror. His master demanded what was the matter—in the Basque language, which we did not understand, and which is the language of the country people in that quarter: the boy, in the most apparently incoherent manner, spoke for several minutes, shuddering as he spoke. We supposed that he had encountered a mountain ghost in full costume; but the master explained in Spanish the cause of his servant’s fright to be nothing etherial. He said that the boy had been returning from a neighbouring farmer’s house, and was crossing the main road in the snow, when he stumbled over something, and fell; it was quite dark; at first he thought it was a Borachio,[10] or a sack of corn that thus tripped him, and put down his hand to it. He felt it warm, and on closer examination found it to be a dead body quite naked, and bleeding warm blood from the throat and breast, with which the boy’s hands were covered. He ran towards a gap to get into the field which led him towards his master’s, and in climbing up, his foot slipped by occasion of the snow, and down he fell into the ditch upon another dead, naked, and bleeding body! At first I was at a loss to account for this extraordinary affair, but the Spaniard, who was a shrewd man, soon awakened me to the cause. “They are French,” said he;—“French prisoners killed by the soldiers of the escort, for their knapsacks and clothes.” A shudder of horror passed through the nerves of both my friend and myself. At first we thought of proceeding on after the column, and to remonstrate with the Spanish Commanding-officer; but a moment’s reflection showed us the uselessness as well as danger of such an undertaking: we therefore contented ourselves with condemning the dastard villany of the action, and in plans of preventing the like outrages for the remainder of the march.

The next morning we mounted our horses a little after daylight, and proceeded to the main road in order to pursue our route to Tolosa, and there the scene which opened upon us was one of the most heart-sinking nature: at least thirty bodies were scattered along the road, for the distance of about two miles; most of them stabbed in the breast, side, and abdomen—others with their throats cut; and some who had not died of their wounds were gasping in death, hastened by the extreme inclemency of the weather to which they had been exposed the whole of the night—and all completely naked! We stopped with one young man who could just speak a little; I put my canteen to his lips, and he swallowed a mouthful of brandy, which for a moment lighted up the expiring spark of life. The suffering victim told us that the Spanish soldiers stabbed him in the breast when it became quite dark. He said that happening to be on the flank of the column, and being a little tired and weak, he straggled out from it a moment, when one of the Spaniards dragged him into the ditch and plunged his steel into his body; then took off his knapsack and clothes, leaving him naked as he was, exposed all night to the snow and sleet. We threw our blankets down, and lifted him upon them—the blood gushed out afresh from his side. We immediately commenced to carry him back to the house we had slept in the preceding night; but before we had gone many yards with the unhappy soldier, he died.

We lost no time in proceeding onwards to overtake the column, and we came up with it in about two hours. The poor jaded prisoners looked at us as if they thought we could protect them from their abominable persecutors, and many of them begged our interference, and corroborated what the dying soldier told us. We heard the same melancholy complaint from the French commandant and his officers. He said he remonstrated with the commanding-officer of the Spaniards, but was answered that the men should keep close in the column, and then they would not be exposed to the danger of being murdered! My friend and I immediately rode up to the Spanish officer in command, and represented the horrid scene which was acted on the preceding night; but instead of a humane and soldier-like consideration of the report, he cooly observed that he did not see them doing it, and that the prisoners must be more careful not to straggle. I asked him to investigate the matter, and concluded by hoping that the horrors of the night before would not be renewed that night. My friend added, that it was a disgrace to the name of a nation to murder their prisoners thus. He said he could not help it, and that these things must happen in spite of the officers. We plainly saw that those men, who from their rank should have been supposed to have known better, were indirectly as much of the base assassin as the wretches they commanded: however, I believe they were not the regular troops of the line, but the militia of the province. God forbid that all the Spanish army were such as this sample! For the sake of human nature, I hope they were not. The Spaniards had certainly suffered much from the French invading army; but nothing should have operated so disgraceful a crime in them, as to murder the helpless prisoners entrusted to their protection. The British soldiers, with all their faults, never stained the name of their country with conduct like this: they have pilfered—they have plundered—they have rioted in drunkenness and debauchery; but they never struck a prostrate foe: they were the most formidable enemies to the French in Spain; but they were the first to whom the fallen of that nation looked to for protection—and not in vain—except in one grand instance * * * But in this, thank Heaven! the Nation, although bearing the blame, unjustly bears it; for it was the act of its evil director, and wholly unsanctioned by the hearts of its people.

We obtained a sort of promise, however, from the Spanish officers, not again to allow such conduct as disgraced the preceding night; and having cautioned the French in the rear to keep close together, we went to our quarters in a little village, with some hopes that the murderers would not again go to their infernal work; but we were disappointed; for next morning the front room of the cottage in which we passed the night, was filled with Spanish soldiers at day-break, (for it happened to be a sort of wine-house,) and every one of them had a knapsack or two which they took from the French on the preceding evening: and no doubt for every knapsack which we counted, there was a murdered prisoner. We were horror-struck when we beheld them, and spoke in very decided terms of the brutality of the soldiers; but they only replied by recommending the English officers to mind their own men, and let Spaniards do as they liked!—nay, they made no secret of their atrocity, but boasted to each other of the manner in which they selected the prisoners who carried the largest knapsacks, and of the celerity with which they detached them from their comrades and slaughtered them. These wretches held a sort of fair or market in front of this cottage, selling the clothes and contents of the plundered knapsacks to the peasants of the village.

This proved to be the last day of slaughter for the poor unhappy prisoners; for they arrived at Tolosa that evening by four o’clock, and their further march was only to Passages (one day’s march) where they were to embark. My friend and I, however, to guard against further outrage, reported the affair to the Spanish authorities at Tolosa, who, although promising to effectually prevent a recurrence, excused the murderers by saying, “that they had not received a shilling pay for two years; and this,” said they, “is owing to these infernal French.” There would have been some reason in this, if the murdered had been the men who designed and moved the Spanish invasion; but these unhappy prisoners were as much the victims of it as the Spaniards themselves.

I now proceeded to my quarters at Urogne, beyond the Bidassoa, between Fontarabia and St. Jean de Luz. From the appearance of the town, the armies must have had severe fighting there: the houses were all in ruins, and no inhabitants to be seen: here I remained until the advance of the army to its ultimate conquest at Toulouse, which began the winter’s campaign in France.—But, as the crossing of the Bidassoa, properly speaking, was the end of the Last Campaign in the Peninsula, I must with it conclude this sketch—on which I have already, perhaps, dwelt too long.

NIGHTS IN THE GUARD-HOUSE.
No. V.

“Holloa! what is that, sentry?”

“They are firing on the hills, sir.”