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of missile were hurled from the ramparts, beneath which our gallant fellows dropped like corn before the reaper; in so much, that in the space of two minutes the river was literally choked up with the bodies of the killed and wounded, over whom, without discrimination, the advancing division pressed on. The opposite bank was soon gained, and the short space between the landing-place and the foot of the breach rapidly cleared without a single shot having been returned by the assailants. But here the most alarming prospect awaited them. Instead of a wide and tolerably level chasm, the breach presented the appearance only of an ill-built wall thrown considerably from its perpendicular, to ascend which, even though unopposed, would be no easy task. It was, however, too late to pause; besides, the men's blood was hot and their courage on fire, so they pressed on, clambering up as they best could, and effectually hindering one another from falling, each by the eagerness of the rear ranks to follow those in front. Shouts and groans were now mingled with the roar of cannon and the rattle of musketry: our front ranks likewise had an opportunity of occasionally firing with effect, and the slaughter on both sides was dreadful. At length the head of the column forced its way to the summit of the breach, where it was met in the most gallant style by the bayonets of the garrison. When I say the summit of the breach, I mean not to assert that our soldiers stood upon a level with their enemies, for this was not the case. There was a high step, perhaps two or three feet in length, which the assailants must surmount before they could gain the same ground with the defenders, and a very considerable period elapsed ere that step was surmounted. Here bayonet met bayonet, and sabre met sabre, in close and desperate strife, without the one party being able to advance or the other succeeding in driving them back.

6

Things had continued in this state for nearly a quarter of an hour, when Major Snodgrass, at the head of the thirteenth Portugueze regiment, dashed across the river by his own ford, and assaulted the lesser breach. This attack was made in the most cool and determined manner, but here, too, the obstacles were almost insurmountable; nor is it probable that the place would have been carried at all but for a measure adopted by General Graham, such as has never perhaps been adopted before. Perceiving that matters were almost desperate, he had recourse to a desperate remedy, and ordered our own artillery to fire upon the breach. Nothing could be more exact or beautiful than this practice. Though our men stood only about two feet below the breach, scarcely a single ball from the guns of our batteries struck amongst them, whilst all told with fearful exactness among the enemy. The fire had been kept up only a few minutes, when all at once an explosion took place such as drowned every other noise, and apparently confounded, for an instant, the combatants on both sides. A shell from one of our mortars had exploded near the train which communicated with a quantity of gunpowder placed under the breach. This mine the French had intended to spring as soon as our troops should have made good their footing or established themselves on the summit, but the fortunate accident just mentioned anticipated them. It exploded whilst 300 grenadiers, the

elite of the garrison, stood over it; and instead of sweeping the storming party into eternity, it only cleared a way for their advance. It was a spectacle as appalling and grand as the imagination can conceive, the sight of that explosion. The noise was more awful than any which I have ever heard before or since, whilst a bright flash, instantly succeeded by a smoke so dense as to obscure all vision, produced an effect upon those who witnessed it, such as no powers of language are adequate to describe. Such, indeed, was the effect of the whole occurrence, that for perhaps half a minute after not a shot was fired on either side. Both parties stood still to gaze upon the havoc which had been produced! in so much, that a whisper might have caught your ear for a distance of several yards. The state of stupefaction into which they were at first thrown did not, however, last long with the British troops. As the smoke and dust of the ruins cleared away, they beheld before them a space empty of defenders, and they instantly rushed forward to occupy it. Uttering an appalling shout, the troops sprang over the dilapidated parapet, and the rampart was their own. Now then began all those maddening scenes which are witnessed only in a storm, of flight and slaughter, and parties rallying only to be broken and dispersed, till finally, having cleared the works to the right and left, the soldiers poured down into the town.'-p. 49.

Having thus exhibited our author in his character of a man of violence, we deem it right to let our readers see in what frame of mind he contemplates, at a moment of inaction, the scene of a battle passed by. In company with some of his brother officers he visited St. Sebastian's about a fortnight after it had fallen.

'The reader will easily believe that a man who has spent some of the best years of his life amid scenes of violence and bloodshed, must have witnessed many spectacles highly revolting to the purest feelings of our nature; but a more appalling picture of war passed by-of war in its darkest colours,—those which distinguish it when its din is over-than was presented by St. Sebastian's, and the country in its immediate vicinity, I certainly never beheld. Whilst an army is stationary in any district, you are wholly unconscious of the work of devastation which is proceeding―you see only the hurry and pomp of hostile operations. But, when the tide has rolled on, and you return by chance to the spot over which it has last swept, the effect upon your mind is such, as cannot even be imagined by him who has not experienced it. Little more than a week had elapsed, since the division employed in the siege of St. Sebastian's had moved forward. Their trenches were not yet filled up, nor their batteries demolished; yet the former had, in some places, fallen in of their own accord, and the latter were beginning to crumble to pieces. We passed them by, however, without much notice. It was, indeed, impossible not to acknowledge, that the perfect silence which prevailed was far more awful than the bustle and stir that lately pervaded them; whilst the dilapidated condition of the convent, and of the few cottages which stood near it, stripped, as they were, of roofs, doors, and windows, and perforated with cannon shot, inspired us, now that they were deserted, with sensations somewhat gloomy. But these were trifling—a mere

nothing,

nothing, when compared with the feelings which a view of the town itself excited.

'As we pursued the main road, and approached St. Sebastian's by its ordinary entrance, we were at first surprized at the slight degree of damage done to its fortifications by the fire of our batteries. The walls and battlements beside the gate-way appeared wholly uninjured, the very embrasures being hardly defaced. But the delusion grew gradually more faint as we drew nearer, and had totally vanished before we reached the glacis. We found the draw-bridge fallen down across the ditch, in such a fashion that the endeavour to pass it was not without danger. The folding gates were torn from their hinges, one lying flat upon the ground, and the other leaning against the wall; whilst our own steps, as we moved along the arched passage, sounded loud and melancholy.

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Having crossed this, we found ourselves at the commencement of what had once been the principal street in the place. No doubt it was, in its day, both neat and regular; but of the houses nothing now remained except the outward shells, which, however, appeared to be of an uniform height and style of architecture. As far as I could judge, they stood five stories from the ground, and were faced with a sort of freestone, so thoroughly blackened and defiled as to be hardly cognizable. The street itself was, moreover, choked up with heaps of ruins, among which were strewed about fragments of household furniture and clothing, mixed with caps, military accoutrements, round shot, pieces of shells, and all the other implements of strife. Neither were there wanting other evidences of the drama which had been lately acted here, in the shape of dead bodies, putrefying, and infecting the air with the most horrible stench. Of living creatures, on the other hand, not one was to be seen, not even a dog or a cat; indeed, we traversed the whole city without meeting more than six human beings. These, from their dress and abject appearance, struck me as being some of the inhabitants who had survived the assault. They looked wild and haggard, and moved about here and there, poking among the ruins, as if they were either in search of the bodies of their slaughtered relatives, or hoped to find some little remnant of their property.'

The fall of St. Sebastian's was speedily followed by the advance of the whole army. On the 7th of October, the Bidassoa was crossed, and the heights above carried at the point of the bayonet, the allied army taking possession of the ground which had been previously held by the troops of Marshal Soult; but it was not till the 10th of November that circumstances would authorize a further progress into an enemy's country. Pampluna still held out; and to leave a place of so much consequence, in his rear, accorded not with the policy of Lord Wellington. As soon, however, as intelligence reached him that that city had actually surrendered, he once more put his columns in motion; drove the French from the stupendous position of St. Jean de Luz; and having rendered his communications as secure as it was possible to render them, placed the different divisions in cantonments

for

for the winter. Though we have already made longer extracts from the Subalteru, than we are in the habit of making from works likely to be extensively read, we cannot avoid laying before our readers the following lively sketch of the life of a soldier in his winter-quarters. After relating by what means, and in what manner he and his friend contrived to render their apartment habitable, our author proceeds to say:

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Having thus rendered our quarters as snug as they were capable of being made, my friend and myself proceeded daily into the adjoining woods in search of game; and as the frost set in, we found them amply stored, not only with hares and rabbits, but with cocks, snipes, and other birds of passage. We were not, however, so fortunate as to fall in with any of the wild boars which are said to frequent these thickets, though we devoted more than one morning to the search; but we managed to supply our own tables, and the tables of several of our comrades, with a very agreeable addition to the lean beef which was issued out to us. Nor were other luxuries wanting. The peasantry, having recovered their confidence, returned in great numbers to their homes, and seldom failed to call at our mansion, once or twice a week, with wine, fresh bread, cider, and bottled beer; by the help of which we contrived to fare well, as long as our fast-diminishing stock of money lasted. I say fast-diminishing stock of money; for as yet no addition had been made to that which each of us brought with him from England; and though the pay of the army was now six months in arrear, but faint hopes were entertained of any immediate donations.

'It was not, however, among regimental and other inferior officers, that this period of military inaction was esteemed and acted upon as one of enjoyment. Lord Wellington's fox-hounds were unkennelled; and he himself took the field regularly twice a week as if he had been a denizen of Leicestershire, or any other sporting county in England. I need not add that few parks in any country could be better attended. Not that the horses of all the huntsmen were of the best breed, or of the gayest appearance; but what was wanting in individual splendour was made up by the number of Nimrods; nor would it be easy to discover a field more fruitful in laughable occurrences, which no man more heartily enjoyed than the gallant Marquis himself. When the hounds were out he was no longer the commander of the forces, the general-in-chief of three armies, and the representative of three sovereigns; but the gay, merry, country gentleman, who rode at every thing, and laughed as loud when he fell himself, as when he witnessed the fall of a brother sports

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From these comfortable cantonments the British army was again moved on the ninth day of December. The object of this movement being merely to throw the right across the Nivelle, which had hitherto interrupted its line of communications, that object was no sooner attained, and a recognizance of the intrenched camp in front of Bayonne effected, than the different brigades in the left and centre columns once more returned to their quarters.

But

But in these they were not left long unmolested. On the morning of the 10th the outposts were attacked with great fury; and a battle ensued, which with hardly any interruption continued, during the hours of daylight, throughout the whole of the 10th, the 11th, and the 12th. Our author's description of this battle is a great deal too long for insertion; but we can safely recommend it to the notice of our readers, as in no respect less spirited, or less correct, than the account of the storming of St. Sebastian which we have already given.

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We cannot afford room to follow our young soldier through the remaining details of his amusing work; nor is it necessary that we should. The passages we have extracted present no partial picture of the volume: it is written throughout, not indeed with uniform elegance, but with unfailing spirit; and to the accuracy and truth of his sketches the author has, as we understand, received infinitely higher testimony than we could furnish. The Young Rifleman' presents a lively contrast to the highspirited Subaltern.' This adventurer also tells his own tale-and he tells it very amusingly. A poor young barber-surgeon of Erfurt is inveigled into the service of Buonaparte in 1806, and performs several of the Spanish campaigns in the capacity of a private footsoldier. He is at last taken prisoner by the English, and being smitten with prodigious admiration of the beef, pudding, comfortable clothing, and easy-paced steeds of his countrymen in the King's German Legion, enlists into that fine corps at Lisbon. He serves with them both in Spain and in Sicily, and has the opportunity of seeing England herself, and admiring her cheer. This, indeed, is the great object of the Riflemanbarber's attention throughout all his wanderings. He is in his way a sort of Dugald Dalgetty-doing his duty, we have no doubt, but uniformly reserving his best zeal for the collecting of Provende. He, through half his book, represents the French army as a set of innocent lambs horribly ill treated by the Spaniards -unjustly, and even without the shadow of excuse, condemned by that obstinate race to a long protracted penance of hard marches and meagre fare. But the very first steam of our fleshpots converts him, and he becomes, from that moment, fully sensible to all the atrocity of Napoleon's invasion. He is of the opinion of Sancho Panza at Camacho's wedding, that there are but two lineages in the world, the House of Have and the House of Want, and, like Sancho, gives all his loyalty to the former. The perfect good faith with which this character describes him taking money from a poor girl in a Posada for not beting a little love-secret that accident had let him into, without apparently entertaining the slightest suspicion that his conduct was at all un

as

worthy

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