TWELVE MONTHS IN THE BRITISH LEGION.
THE author of this lively and agreeable little volume saw the first, and, so far as appearances go, pretty well the last of the British Legion. He arrived with the earliest detachment at San Sebastian, and partook of the festivities and drillings of the new corners, as well as of the first affair with the Carlists at Hernani. On the march, and in quarters at Portugalete and Bilboa, he began to taste the hardships of actual service, in the shape of wet, fatigue, and hunger. From Bilboa he was despatched with a cargo of invalids and soldiers' wives to Santander; and so missed the opportunity of bearing a part in General EVANS'S countermarch to Vitoria. As a set-off; however, he was enabled to witness a ludicrous specimen of Spanish seamanship, and to visit Burgos in company with a batch of recruits and baggage-waggons, that marched to Vitoria through that city, performing a countermarch of their own to avoid the Carlists by traversing the "two sides of a triangle instead of its base." At Vitoria he passed the winter in safety ; and then had a touch of the typhus, but not sufficiently violent to prevent his bearing a part in the different skirmishes that took place in the early spring. When EVANS, wearied out with the incapacity or treachery of CORDOVA, determined on taking the auxiliaries to San Sebastian, and acting upon his own account, our Officer of course accompanied him ; and was present at the brilliant although main-strength affair by which the Carlist lines were carried, and the city preserved to the Queen. In this action the writer was wounded, became invalided, and after he was sufficiently recovered to bear the voyage, returned home.
The origin, purpose, and nature of the book, have been stated so distinctly by the author, that we cannot do better than quote his words.
44ft was the author's habit," says the Preface, "during his absence in Spain, to write home accounts every week or fortnight of any thing new and striking that fell under his observations in the course of his wanderings. On his return to England, the idea occurred to him of rewriting these notes, so that, without omitting any of she first impressions as rapidly delineated in the intervals of repose from duty, they should be worked up into a continuous narrative, not so much of the events ot the campaign as of his personal adventures during that period. It would have been useless for him to attempt to give a military history of the proceedings of the British Legion, and to confine himself solely to the details of manceuvres and actions ; such a task was less Titled to one who filled a subordinate situation in the service, and whose opportunities of gaining information on military movements were but few, than to many other officers of superior rank and experience, who, as commanders of battalions and brigades, were necessarily conversant with the projects of the Lieutenant-General. He thought, therefore, that to give a personal account of what he himself saw, and did, and felt, with as much of military tactics as came within the scope Of his intelligence and observation at the time, would prove more interesting to the reader, and perhaps give a better idea of the nature of the service, than a history in imitation of that style of which Caesar is the founder and :Napier a disciple."
There is this characteristic of a definite plan, that it always proves clearness of view, if it is not a guarantee for the necessary executive ability. On the present occasion these essentials are both combined. The author very completely accomplishes his purpose. What he tells is both new and striking. In "rewriting his notes," he has got rid of every thing of mere personal or individual inierest, without losing any of the freshness of "first impressions his sketches of the appearance, domestic habits, and modes of living of the Spaniards with whom he came in contact, are spirited and natural ; and his military narrative presents the reader with a lively, clear, and faithful picture of the medley of hardships, excitements, dangers, horrors, drolleries, and carousings, which make up war and warlike life. In addition to these qualities, the book is throughout pervaded by a spirit of kindly and goodnatured sympathy, more rare and more valuable than mere literary accomplishments. It has, moreover, another merit—it is not too long; and no endeavour has been made to extend the materials beyond what they would bear.
There will be no difficulty in making extracts, for almost every page would afford some pleasant reading, or some characteristic touches ; but we shall principally confine ourselves to passages which throw a light on war—general or particular.
CAMP LADIES.
It was with feelings of the greatest joy and satisfaction that I rejoined my regiment after more than a month's absence ; for I was weary of looking after the impedimenta, and being pestered with the eternal complaints and quarrels of aeldiers wives. The swell:rims of the British "fair sex" brought over by the Legion were certainly not calculated to impress the Spaniards with high notions of our female beauty ; and their tattered' appearance with duty straw bonnets and blowsy mob-caps, was enough to astonish the trim senoras, and pull into their mouths the ofteu-repeated question, " Whether all women in England were like these? "
The tribes of shoeless Moll Flaggons, from the Green Isle, who came over with our Irish regiments, are past all description ; and the figure they cut ie the rear of a battalion on the march, with a pyramid of babes on their backs and a couple trotting on each side, was singularly marvellous in the eyes of the natives, who at last looked upon them as a regular and necessary adjunct to the British Legion, or as a supernumerary company of wives and washers women to each regiment. How the numbers that came up with the convoy contrived to subsist on the march, I never could divine ; for as their presence with the troops at that period was contrary to orders, they were allowed no rations, and were totally without money, having had no opportunity of receiving any from their husbands for the last six weeks. And yet they trudged along, through dust and mire, in fair weather and in foul, for many a weary league, with light hearts and red cheek*, bidding defiance alike to the orders of the General and the accumulating hardships of the road, until they had the:satisfaction of passing the gates of Vitoria.
RECOLLECTIONS OF VITORIA.
My recollections of Vitoria are not of the most agreeable. The natural gloominess of the town, added to the universal sickness that broke out at this period, gave it the look of the city of the plague. The hospitals were full bf sick and dying ; and from dawn of day till set of sun the streets reechoed to the melancholy sounds of the fife and drum playing the Dead March as the departed soldier was borne to his last home. The air seemed loaded with fever ; and those who marched in the train followed with a lacklustre eye, as if aware that their turn was next. The boys in the streets, struck with the mournful soletnnity of a ceremony which is unknown in the Spanish army, paraded up and down with sticks reversed, and whistling the funeral anthem ; the ladies in the balconies caught up the air and continued it on their pianos ; the very bugles that sounded the reveil and advance had a lugubrious sound, as if blown by a man in his grave ; awl at length the Dead March in Saul became the only piece of music current in 'Vitoria during the whole of the five months the Legion MIS quartered there and in its vicinity. The number of deaths speedily augmented to such a degree that all attempt at ceremony was abolished, and the bodies were can ied away in carts to the burial-ground, where they were thrown six or seven into the same hole. Those that died of our regiment were buried in a piece of ground outside the walls, called the Campo Santo, where we prevailed on the priest to mutter over a prayer or two, by assuring him that the deceased was a good Catholic. " Half a loaf is better than no bread," and it was thought that a Catholic prayer over a dead Protestant was better than no prayer at all. On one occasion, being in command of a funeral party, and finding, on our arrival at the ground, that the priest had failed in his appointment, I placed a corporal with a file of men in the street to waylay the first churchman that passed by, and bring him vi et armis before me, as I knew that all sorts of excuses would be made, if I followed the more peaceful and reverent mode of requesting him to perform the ceremony. I had not waited long in
the churchyard, with the coffin placed at the brink of the grave, and the soldiers drawn up in single file on each side, before I heard a sort of scuffling and noise in the porch, and beheld the corporal fulfilling his instructions to the let
ter, hauling up a refractory priest by the skirt of his garment, and explaining to him by words and signs, that "soldier muerto wanted Paternoster—ofieial no quiere stay any longer." The poor old gentleman, who fancied that the heretics were going to make an end of him then and there, came very humbly to me with his long fore-and-aft cocked-hat in his hand, and begged to know what crime he had committed, to be seized and dragged up before what appeared to him an execution.party of twenty men with muskets and bayonets, aud a grave ready dug to bury him in. Apologizing for the rudeness of the men. I pointed to the coffin, and begged him to perform the funeral ceremony. " Was the defunct a true Catholic ?" asked the priest with earnestness. " Oh yes, a very good Catholic." " Si, si, si, Catholic, Catholic," murmured the men, who
were beginning to get impatient; and the priest, satisfied by these testimonials of the orthodoxy of the deceased, commenced his work in earnest, and had it
over in a crack. Laying down his beaver, he put on a black silk nightcap to protect him from the damp—" Paternoster, mumble jumble—Ave Maria, ditto, ditto—rteetera, etcetera, Amen"—three signs of the cross, a handful of dust, and the man was buried.
All the accounts of the military affairs are graphic and faithful to a high degree; deriving a something of both qualities from the inexperience of the writer, which prompts him to note down particulars that would seem to the veteran mere things of course. Of these, the attack on the lines round San Sebastian is the fullest and most finished, and conveys a very spirited idea of all alit. would fall under the notice of a regimental officer, until his career was cut short by a musket-ball. The subsequent adventures, however, seem to us to possess the greatest interest; so we take a part of them. The "rotatory motion," like a roll down Greenwich Hill, the plump upon the dying body, the hairbreadth escape from the Carlists, and other details that the reader will not fail to notice, form a truer picture of actual war than any general history of battles. The second line of defences has Just been carried, and the Legion is advancing against the third— I had just reached the Colonel's side, and was crossing the field at the top of may speed, when a shot struck me on the left hip ; and with a stunning shock in) heels flew up into the air, at the same time that the charging regiment passed over me; and I was left alone, extended on my back in the middle of the plain. I rose on my feet, but fell down as if pinned to the earth by a tent-peg. I looked at the wound, and saw a neat round hole on the seam of the trousers, frorn which a few drops of blood were slowly trickling out. The field was bare, and not a soul in sight except the white-headed Carlists, as they rose to fire over the parapet, while the splashes of mud that sprinkled over my face told of the vollies that fell around. I gave a roll towards the breast-work I had quitted, and saw my sword, whit-li had flown out of my hand with the violence of the shock, lying at some distance. With difficulty I crawled back to the spot, and had just gained possession of the hilt, when a second bullet struck my right hand, and passing through the fleshy part of the thumbAlodged next to the skin on the other side. The pain was not acute—it felt like a benumbing shock of electricity. A Spanish sergeant passed over my body towards some shelter ; I hailed him in Spanish, por amor de Dios, to raise inc on my legs; but, leaping the parapet, he left me to my fate. It was now evident that there was nothing to hope for from others; and, with a sort of feeling of uncertainty like that of a man hanging over a precipice by a single thread, I commenced rolling towards the breastwork ; on which I lifted myself with considerable pain and difficulty, and swinging my legs over the top, tumbled into the muddy lane below. I was aware of the danger of sticking fast in the mud ; and, making plunge across the path, I seated myself on the causeway on the other side, where,
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