Under Wellington's Command Part 6

"General Heron also reports to me that your retreat was admirably carried out," General Foy said, "and that no body of French veterans could have done better.

"Well, sir, if you are ready to give your parole not to escape, you will be at liberty to move about the town freely, until there is an opportunity of sending a batch of prisoners to France."

"Thank you, general. I am ready to give my parole not to make any attempt to escape, and am obliged to you for your courtesy."

Terence had already thought over what course he had best take, should he be offered freedom on parole, and had resolved to accept it. The probabilities of making his escape were extremely small. There would be no chance whatever of rejoining the army; and a pa.s.sage, alone, across the all-but-impa.s.sable mountains, was not to be thought of. Therefore he decided that, at any rate for the present, he would give his promise not to attempt to escape.

Quarters were a.s.signed to him in the town, in a house where several French officers were staying. These all showed him great courtesy and kindness. Between the English and French the war was, throughout, conducted on honourable terms. Prisoners were well treated, and there was no national animosity between either officers or men.

When he went out into the town one of the French officers generally accompanied him, and he was introduced to a number of others. He set to work, in earnest, to improve the small knowledge of French that he possessed and, borrowing some French newspapers, and buying a dictionary in the town, he spent a considerable portion of his time in studying them.

He remained three weeks at Plasencia. During that time he heard that the army of Venegas had been completely routed by Victor, that Cuesta had been badly beaten soon after crossing the Tagus, and Albuquerque's cavalry very roughly treated. Five guns and 400 prisoners had been taken. Ney had marched through Plasencia, on his way back to Valladolid to repress an insurrection that had broken out in that district; and on his way met Wilson, who was trying to retreat by Banos, and who was decisively beaten and his command scattered.

Terence was now told to prepare to leave, with a convoy of prisoners, for Talavera. He was the only British officer and, being on parole, the officer commanding the detachment marching with the prisoners invited him to ride with him, and the two days' journey was made very pleasantly.

At Talavera he remained for a week. The Portuguese prisoners remained there, but the British who had been captured in Plasencia, and the convalescents from the hospital at Talavera--in all 200 strong, among whom were six British officers--were to march to the frontier, there to be interned in one of the French fortresses.

The officer who had commanded the escort, on the march from Plasencia, spoke in high terms of Terence to the officer in charge of the two hundred men who were to go on with them. The party had been directed not to pa.s.s through Madrid, as the sight of over two hundred British prisoners might give rise to a popular demonstration by the excitable Spaniards, which would possibly lead to disorder. He was therefore directed to march by the road to the Escurial, and then over the Sierra to Segovia, then up through Valladolid and Burgos. The escort was entirely composed of infantry and, as Terence could not therefore take his horse with him, he joined the other officers on foot.

To his great surprise and joy he found that one of these was his chum, d.i.c.k Ryan.

"This is an unexpected pleasure, d.i.c.ky!" he exclaimed.

"Well, yes, I am as pleased as you are at our meeting, Terence; but I must own that the conditions might have been more pleasant."

"Oh, never mind the conditions!" Terence said. "It is quite enough, for the present, that we both are here; and that we have got before us a journey that is likely to be a jolly one. I suppose that you have given your parole, as I have; but when we are once in prison there will be an end of that, and it is hard if, when we put our heads together, we don't hit on some plan of escape.

"Do you know the other officers? If so, please introduce me to them."

As soon as the introductions were completed, Terence asked Ryan where he had been wounded.

"I was. .h.i.t by a piece of a French sh.e.l.l," the latter replied. "Fortunately it did not come straight at me, but sc.r.a.ped along my ribs, laying them pretty well bare. As it was a month ago, it is quite healed up; but I am very stiff still, and am obliged to be very careful in my movements. If I forget all about it, and give a turn suddenly, I regularly yell; for it feels as if a red-hot iron had been stuck against me. However, I have learned to be careful and, as long as I simply walk straight on, I am pretty well all right.

"It was a near case, at first; and I believe I should have died of starvation if the French had not come in. Those brutes of Spaniards would do nothing whatever for me, and I give you my word of honour that nothing pa.s.sed my lips, but water, for three days."

"Perhaps it was a good thing for you, d.i.c.ky, and kept down fever."

"I would have run the chance of a dozen fevers, to have got a good meal," Ryan said indignantly. "I don't know but that I would have chanced it, even for a crust of bread. I tell you, if the French had not come in when they did, there would not have been a man alive in hospital at the end of another forty-eight hours. The men were so furious that, if they could have got at arms, I believe everyone who could have managed to crawl out would have joined in a sally, and have shot down every Spaniard they met in the streets, till they were overpowered and killed.

"Now, let us hear your adventures. Of course, I saw in orders what good work you did, that day when you were in our camp, against the French when they attacked Donkin. Some of our fellows went across to see you, the morning after the big battle; but they could not find you, and heard afterwards, from some men of Hill's division, that you had been seen marching away in a body, along the hills."

Terence then gave an account of the attack by the French upon his regiment, and how he had fallen into their hands.

"That was well done, Terence. There is some pleasure in being taken prisoner, in that sort of way. What will become of your regiment, do you suppose?"

"I have no idea. Herrara may be appointed to the command. I should think that most likely he would be, but of course Sir Arthur may put another English officer at its head. However, I should say that there is no likelihood of any more fighting, this year. Ney's corps has gone north, which is a sign that there will be no invasion of Portugal at present; and certainly Sir Arthur is not likely to take the offensive again, now that his eyes have been thoroughly opened to the rascality and cowardice of the Spaniards; and by next spring we two may be back again. We have got into so many sc.r.a.pes together, and have always pulled through them, that I don't think the French will keep us long.

"Have you stuck to your Portuguese, d.i.c.ky?"

"I have, and am beginning to get on very fairly with it."

"That is right. When we get back I will apply for you as my adjutant, if I get the command of the regiment again."

Chapter 4: Guerillas.

The marches were short, as many of the prisoners were still weak and, indeed, among their guard were many convalescents who had recently been discharged from the hospital at Toledo, and who were going back to France. The little column was accompanied by four waggons, two of which were intended for the conveyance of any who should prove unable to march; and the others were filled with provisions for consumption by the way, together with a few tents, as many of the villages that would be their halting places were too small to afford accommodation for the 400 men, even if every house was taken up for the purpose. Although the first day's march was only twelve miles, the two empty waggons were quite full before they reached their halting place; and many of the guard had placed their guns and cartridge boxes on the other carts.

It was now the middle of August, and the heat in the valley of the Tagus was overpowering. The convoy, however, had marched at six in the morning; and halted at eight, in the shade of a large olive wood; and did not continue its march until five in the afternoon. The night was so warm that the English prisoners, and many of their guards, preferred lying down in the open and throwing the blanket (with which each had been furnished) over him to keep off the dew, to going into the stuffy cottages, where the fleas would give them little chance of rest.

On the third day they arrived at the village of Escurial. The next morning they began to mount the pa.s.s over the Sierra, and slept that night in an empty barracks, at Segovia. Here they left the main road leading through Valladolid and took one more to the east, stopping at small villages until they arrived at Aranda, on the Douro. Thence they marched due north, to Gamonal.

They were now on the main road to the frontier, pa.s.sed through Miranda and Zadorra, and began to ascend the slopes of the Pyrenees. The marches had, for some days, been considerably longer than when they first started. The invalids had gained strength and, having no muskets to carry, were for the most part able to march eighteen or twenty miles without difficulty. Four had been left behind in hospital at Segovia, but with these exceptions all had greatly benefited by steady exercise, and an ample supply of food.

"I could do a good deal of travelling, in this way," one of the officers said, as they marched out from Miranda. "Just enough exercise to be pleasant; no trouble about baggage or route, or where one is to stop for the night; nothing to pay, and everything managed for you. What could one want for, more?"

"We could do with a little less dust," d.i.c.k Ryan said, with a laugh; "but we cannot expect everything."

"Unfortunately, there will be an end to our marching, and not a very pleasant one," Terence said. "At present, one scarcely recognizes that one is a prisoner. The French officers certainly do all in their power to make us forget it; and their soldiers, and ours, try their best to hold some sort of conversation together. I feel that I am making great progress in French, and it is especially jolly when we halt for the night, and get the bivouac fires burning, and chat and laugh with the French officers as though we were the best friends in the world."

The march was, indeed, conducted in a comfortable and easy fas.h.i.+on. At starting, the prisoners marched four abreast, and the French two abreast at each side; but before a mile had been pa.s.sed the order was no longer strictly observed, and the men trudged along, smoking their pipes, laughing and talking, the French and English alternately breaking into a marching song. There was no fear of the prisoners trying to escape. They could, at night, have got away from their guards easily enough; but there was nowhere for them to go, if they had done so. The English, smarting from the cruelty and ill faith of the inhabitants of Talavera and the Spanish authorities, felt a burning hatred of the Spanish; while the Spaniards, on their side, deceived by the lying representations of their Juntas, had no love whatever for the English, though ready enough to receive money and arms from them.

On leaving Zadorra, the French officer in command said to Terence:

"Now, colonel, we shall have to be more careful during our marches, keeping a sharp lookout at night. The country here is infested by guerillas, whom all our efforts cannot eradicate. The mountains of Navarre and Biscay are full of them. Sometimes they are in bands of fifteen or twenty strong, sometimes they are in hundreds. Some of them are at ordinary times goatherds, shepherds, muleteers, and peasants; but a number of them are disbanded soldiers--the remains of armies we have defeated and broken up, and who prefer this wild life in the mountains to returning to their homes. Our convoys are constantly attacked, and have always to be accompanied by a strong guard."

"As we have no waggons with us, I should think that they would hardly care to molest us," Terence said.

"That renders it less likely, certainly, colonel; but they fight from hatred as much as for booty, and no French soldier who falls into their hands is ever spared. Generally they are put to death with atrocious tortures. At first there was no such feeling here and, when my regiment was quartered at Vittoria, some three years ago, things were quiet enough. You see, the feeling gradually grew. No doubt some of our men plundered. Many of the regiments were composed of young conscripts, with very slight notions of discipline. Those from the country districts were, as a rule, quiet lads enough; but among those from the towns, especially such places as Toulouse, Lyons, and Ma.r.s.eilles, were young scoundrels ready for any wickedness, and it is to these that the troubles we now have are largely due.

"Of course the peasants, when they were able to do so, retaliated upon these marauders. The feeling of hatred grew, on both sides. Straggling parties of our men were surrounded, captured, and then hung, shot, or burnt alive.

"Then, on our side, villages were destroyed and the peasants shot down. Lately, that is, after the defeats of their armies, numbers of fugitives took to the hills, threw away their uniforms, obtained peasants' dresses, and set up as what they called guerillas, which is only another term for bandits; for although their efforts are chiefly directed against us, they do not hesitate to plunder their own people, when they need provisions, and are a perfect scourge to all the villages among the hills between the Bay of Biscay and the Mediterranean. Of course, they are strongest along the line of communication with France; but it may be said that, roughly, where there are mountains there are guerillas, though there are but few of them along the hills we crossed between the valley of the Tagus and that of the Douro.

"This is for two reasons: in the first place, there are very few villages, and they would have difficulty in maintaining themselves; and in the second place, because hitherto Leon and Old Castile, on the north of the Sierra, have always been under different commands to that in the Tagus valley, and therefore there has been but small communication between them, except by messengers with despatches from Madrid. The pa.s.ses have scarcely been used and, indeed, in winter they are practically altogether impa.s.sable; except that along the valley of the Ebro. We found that to our cost, when we marched with Napoleon to cut off your British General Moore. We lost nearly two days getting through them, and the delay saved your army."

"Yes, it was a very close thing," Terence said. "As I have told you, I was with Moore; and if the troops from the south had come up but six hours earlier, it would have gone very hard with us."

"It was an awful time," the officer said, "and I think our army must have suffered quite as much as yours did. Soult's force was reduced fully to half its strength, when he first arrived on that hill near Corunna. Of course the stragglers came in rapidly, but a great number never returned to their colours again--some died of cold and hards.h.i.+p, others were cut off and murdered by the peasantry. Altogether, we had an awful time of it. Your men were, in one respect, better off than ours; for your stragglers were not regarded with hostility by the peasants, whereas no mercy was shown to ours."

"Yes, major, one of the battalions that fought at Talavera was entirely composed of men who had straggled in the retreat, and who afterwards succeeded in gaining the Portuguese frontier."

That evening they halted, for the night, at a small village high up in the pa.s.ses. The French officer took every precaution against surprise. Twenty sentries were placed at various points round the village; and as many more were posted, in pairs, three or four hundred yards farther out.

At three in the morning, several shots were fired. The troops all got under arms, and parties were sent out to the outposts. At two of these posts both the sentries were found stabbed to the heart. At others men had been seen crawling up towards them, and the shots that had aroused the troops had been fired. The outposts were recalled to the village, and the soldiers remained under arms until morning.

As soon as it was daybreak a scattered fire opened from the hills on either side of the valley, and it was evident that these were occupied by strong parties. The villagers, on being questioned, denied all knowledge of these bands; but under threats said that they had heard that Minas, with a very strong force, was in the neighbourhood, and that the Impecinado had been reported to be among the hills between the pa.s.s and that of Roncesvalles.