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This page intentionally left blank
The Cambridge Introduction to
Walter Benjamin
For students of modern criticism and theory, Walter Benjamin’s
writings have become essential reading. His analyses of photography,
film, language, material culture, and the poet Charles Baudelaire, and
his vast examination of the social, political, and historical significance of
the Arcades of nineteenth-century Paris have left an enduring and
important critical legacy. This volume examines in detail a substantial
selection of his important critical writings on these topics from 1916 to
1940 and outlines his life in pre-war Germany, his association with the
Frankfurt School, and the dissemination of his ideas and methodologies
into a variety of academic disciplines since his death. David Ferris traces
the development of Benjamin’s key critical concepts and provides
students with an accessible overview of the life, work, and thought of one
of the twentieth century’s most important literary and cultural critics.

David S. Ferris is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University

of Colorado at Boulder.
The Cambridge Introduction to
Walter Benjamin

DAVID S. FERRIS
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo

Cambridge University Press

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521864589

© David S. Ferris 2008

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of

relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place
without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published in print format 2008

ISBN-13 978-0-511-42907-1 eBook (EBL)

ISBN-13 978-0-521-86458-9 hardback

ISBN-13 978-0-521-68308-1 paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls
for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not
guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
“Images – my great, my primitive passion.”
Walter Benjamin
Contents

Preface page ix
Acknowledgments xi
List of abbreviations xii

1 Life 1
1892–1912 Berlin: childhood and school years 2
1912–1917 University, war, and marriage 4
1917–1925 Pursuit of an academic career 8
1925–1933 Critical ambitions 12
1933–1940 Exile in Paris 16
1940 Flight from Europe 19

2 Contexts 22
The student youth movement and the First
World War 22
The George School 23
The Weimar Republic and the rise of National Socialism 24
Marxism and the Frankfurt School 26

3 Works 29
(a) Metaphysical beginnings 1914–1918 29
“The Life of Students” 29
“Two Poems by Friedrich Hölderlin” 33
“On Language in General and on the Language
of Man” 36
“On the Program of the Coming Philosophy” 42
(b) Raising criticism 1919–1925 45
The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism 47

vii
viii Contents

“Critique of Violence” 52
“Goethe’s Elective Affinities” 57
“The Task of the Translator” 62
Origin of the German Tragic Drama 66
(c) Culture, politics, and criticism 1926–1931 74
One-Way Street 75
“Surrealism. The Last Snapshot of the
European Intelligentsia” 78
“On the Image of Proust” 82
“Theories of German Fascism” 84
“Karl Kraus” 88
(d) Media and revolution 1931–1936 91
“Little History of Photography” 92
“The Author as Producer” 96
“Franz Kafka. On the Tenth Anniversary of His Death” 102
“The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technical
Reproducibility” 104
“The Storyteller” 111
(e) History, materialism, and the messianic
1936–1940 114
The Arcades Project 115
Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Age of
High Capitalism 122
“On the Concept of History” 130

4 Critical reception 136

Translation and early history of reception 136
Political and Marxist-influenced reception 140
Reception in literary and critical theory 141
Benjamin across disciplines and in recent
critical approaches 143

Notes 146
Guide to further reading 148
Index 155
Preface

To present the work of Walter Benjamin in the form of an introduction requires

a willingness to face the challenge posed by a body of work recognized for its
range and the difficulty of its concepts, as well as this critic’s recursive and
frequently elliptical writing style. But these are not the only reasons that an
introduction to Benjamin is challenging. Another, potentially more important
reason is given by Benjamin in a note he writes for himself in 1930–31:
Examine the sense in which “Outlines,” “Guides” and so on are
touchstones for the state of a discipline. Show that they are the most
demanding of all, and how clearly their phrasing betrays every
half-measure.
In many respects, any introduction to Benjamin will now be a reflection of the
state of the discipline since his work has found its way into so many corners of
the humanities and social sciences. At the same time, an introduction makes
demands that the professionalization of critical writing happily ignores. These
demands increase greatly when the subject is Walter Benjamin. Faced with a
critic who had the clear-sightedness to see his own work as “a contradictory
and mobile whole,” the task of grasping the nature of that whole, its contra-
dictions, its mobility, almost ensures that every phrase betrays a measure not
yet achieved. Yet, there is some justice – of a Benjaminian kind – in such a
betrayal. If an introduction has a story to tell, it should be such a story. Only
then can its most important task be fulfilled: to point beyond itself while laying
the paths that lead towards the challenges posed by Benjamin’s work.
Today, foremost among these challenges is the sheer amount of material that
has been made available by the collected editions of his writings and letters
published in Germany. Recently, the publication in English of Benjamin’s
Selected Writings has provided access to the many additional texts, fragments,
and notes that were only available in German. Despite the amount of this
material, many of the works available before the appearance of the Selected
Writings still claim the attention of an introduction since it is with these works
that many students have their first experience of Benjamin. Accordingly, most

ix
x Preface

of the works that make up the canon of Benjamin’s œuvre are presented here.
Within these works, emphasis has been placed on the writings that allow a sense
of Benjamin’s critical development to appear. Because of the desire to keep
this series of introductions to a reasonable length, it was, unfortunately, not
possible to present some works that might otherwise have been included, such
as, for example, the essays “Unpacking My Library,” “Eduard Fuchs, Collector
and Historian,” and “Problems in the Sociology of Language.” Other works are
mentioned only in passing whenever they have direct relevance to another topic
or concept. Throughout, the organizing principle has emphasized those works
that map the ways in which Benjamin’s thinking evolves from the metaphysical
tendencies of his university years through to the dialectical and materialist
analyses of his last years. Almost everywhere, the mobility of this evolution is
tempered by the contradictions it produced – contradictions that propelled
much of Benjamin’s best work even if many of them were to remain unresolved
if not unresolvable.
Acknowledgments

Special thanks are due to Graham Oddie, Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences
at the University of Colorado, Boulder – his support helped the writing of this
introduction at a crucial stage; to Hannah Blanning and Tonja van Helden
who served as research assistants in spring and fall 2007; to Patricia Paige
who zealously protected my time with her superlative administrative skills
and tact; to the students who participated in my seminars on Benjamin in
New York and Colorado; and to colleagues whose writing on Benjamin has
informed, questioned and, at times, ran parallel to my own: Andrew Benjamin,
Eduardo Cadava, Howard Caygill, Rebecca Comay, Peter Fenves, Rodolphe
Gasché, Werner Hamacher, Carol Jacobs, Michael Jennings, Rainer Nägele,
Henry Sussman, and Samuel Weber.

xi
List of abbreviations

The following abbreviations and short titles refer to works listed below. In each
case, the abbreviation will be followed by a page number (e.g. C, 21), or in the
case of the German edition of Benjamin’s writings, by volume, part, and page
number (e.g., GS 7.2, 532). On occasion, some of the translations used in this
volume have been modified from the published versions. Full bibliographical
information for the volumes listed below is included in the Guide to Further
Reading.
AB Adorno and Benjamin: The Complete Correspondence 1928–1940
AP The Arcades Project
C The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin 1920–1940
Chronicle A Berlin Chronicle
Friendship Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship
GB Gesammelte Briefe
GS Gesammelte Schriften
OGT Origin of the German Tragic Drama
SW Selected Writings 1913–1940

xii
Chapter 1

Life

1892–1912 Berlin: childhood and school years 2

1912–1917 University, war, and marriage 4
1917–1925 Pursuit of an academic career 8
1925–1933 Critical ambitions 12
1933–1940 Exile in Paris 16
1940 Flight from Europe 19

A life displaced

An account of Benjamin’s life is in many ways an account of the financial and

intellectual obstacles Benjamin faced during the twenty years he became the
foremost cultural critic of his generation. It is also an account of someone
who traveled widely through Europe, from Capri to Spain to Moscow to the
Arctic Circle and, above all, to the one place that kept such a hold on his
critical imagination, Paris; it is an account of the person who came to know
and correspond with most of the leading intellectuals and writers of his time –
Rainer Maria Rilke, André Gide, Hugo von Hofmannstahl, Georges Bataille,
Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Ernst Robert Curtius, Florens Christian
Rang, Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, Gershom Scholem, Hannah Arendt, Paul
Valéry, Hermann Hesse, André Malraux, the photographer Germaine Krull,
among many others; of the person who translated Proust and Baudelaire; of
the person who used a series of pseudonyms for publishing out of personal
choice and political necessity – Ardor, C. Conrad, K. A. Stempflinger, Detlev
Holz, Hans Fellner, J. E. Mabinn (an anagram of Benjamin), and O. E. Tal (an
anagram of lateo: I am concealed); of the person who wrote for newspapers and
journals, performed radio broadcasts; of the person whose writing spanned the
autobiographical, the critical, the academic thesis, poetry, the short story, and
radio plays for children; and finally of the person who collected toys and chil-
dren’s books in addition to his own extensive literary and philosophical library.

1
2 The Cambridge Introduction to Walter Benjamin

As this list indicates, Benjamin’s life is the intellectual life of a generation and
its cultural and historical contexts. The merely personal pales in comparison.
Perhaps, we should expect no less from someone who famously declared his
avoidance of the word “I” except in letters. For this reason, a biography of
Benjamin is dominated by the history of his intellectual engagements and their
intersection with the geographical displacements that defined his life as well as
his friendships.

1892–1912 Berlin: childhood and school years

My thinking always has Wyneken, my first teacher, as its starting point

and always returns to him.

Walter Benjamin is born in Berlin on July 15, 1892, the first of Emil and
Pauline Benjamin’s three children – his brother Georg is born in 1895 and
his sister Dora in 1901. His early years provide the privileges of an upper-
middle-class childhood (a governess, schooled at home) at a time when Berlin
is emerging as one of Europe’s principal metropolitan centers. During his
childhood, the family moves several times but remains within the upper-
middle-class neighborhoods that arose to the west of central Berlin. Benjamin’s
childhood excursions out of these neighborhoods are always under the wing
of his mother or governess with the result that he lacks the freedom to explore
the city without constraint or oversight – a situation he draws attention to in
his Berlin Chronicle when he looks back at these years as a time when he was
“enclosed” in “the old and new West End” (Chronicle, SW 2, 599–600).
Benjamin’s first move out of this sheltered situation occurs when, just before
his ninth birthday, he is enrolled in one of Berlin’s better secondary schools,
the Kaiser Friedrich School. Prior to this Benjamin has only received private
tutoring. His recollections of the Kaiser Friedrich School are not fond. When
Benjamin recalls its classrooms, he writes that “little . . . has remained in my
memory except those perfect emblems of imprisonment: the frosted windows
and infamous carved wooden embattlements over the doors” (Chronicle, SW
2, 602). Indeed, the little he does remember takes the form of “catastrophic
encounters.” In addition, his time there is punctuated by illnesses resulting in
the 1904 decision by his parents to withdraw him from the school.
In 1905, after several months without formal instruction, Benjamin is sent
to a country boarding school in the town of Haubinda, several hundred miles
southwest of Berlin. His parents see this country setting as an opportunity to
improve his health. For Benjamin, it came to offer a far different opportunity.
 Life 3

The school in Haubinda was a progressive counter-cultural institution founded

in 1901. While there he comes into contact with an educational reformer,
Gustav Wyneken, who was on the teaching staff at that time. Wyneken’s ideas
on youth culture and the reform of youth education subsequently exert con-
siderable influence on the young Benjamin. Wyneken advocated a curriculum
based on what he called the solidarity of youth, an aspect Wyneken found
in the drive towards spiritual and intellectual independence that youth natu-
rally possessed. For Wyneken, development of this tendency is part of a larger
project that aims at a cultural revolution of society through its youth. While
the influence of Wyneken’s educational theories is present in the essays Ben-
jamin writes between 1910 and 1915, the major, immediate effect of Benjamin’s
time at Haubinda is the development of his interest in German literature and
philosophy.
In 1907 Benjamin returns to Berlin and again enrolls at the Kaiser Friedrich
School. Despite the obvious pressure to conform to the traditional curricu-
lum and manner of instruction at Kaiser Friedrich, Benjamin retains what he
learned at Haubinda:

Since my return from Haubinda my philosophical and literary interests

developed generally into a specifically aesthetic interest, a natural
synthesis. I pursued this through an engagement partly with the theory
of drama and partly with great plays, most notably those of Shakespeare,
Hebbel and Ibsen; alongside the close study of Hamlet and Tasso I also
pursued a thorough engagement with Hölderlin. Above all, these
interests expressed themselves in the attempt to form my own judgment
on literary issues.1

In addition to this study of literature, Benjamin now turns to philosophy

“in order to obtain an overview of its problems and the systems of its great
thinkers.”2 At the same time, he starts to address a major shortcoming of
the classical curriculum at the Kaiser Friedrich School: its exclusion of any
serious study of modern literature. As Benjamin recalls in 1913, the most
modern writer taught was Kleist (1777–1811) but, perhaps more devastating
for Benjamin, this teaching “did not concern itself with a serious relation to
works of art.”3 As a result, Benjamin and a small group of friends form a weekly
literary evening to discuss works and writers ignored by the school curriculum.
Benjamin’s first published writings date from the last years of his sec-
ondary schooling. Several poems and some essays appear under the pseudonym
“Ardor” in a school magazine entitled Der Anfang (The Beginning). The use
of a pseudonym is apparently meant to shield Benjamin from reprisals by
the school authorities on account of what he has written. At the same time,
4 The Cambridge Introduction to Walter Benjamin

the association of the word ardor with fervor, passion, and zeal points to those
qualities of youth that Benjamin has learned to value under Wyneken’s instruc-
tion at Haubinda. While these early writings can be seen as embodying such
qualities, subsequent writings for this magazine (published during his early
university years) show a willingness to advocate for Wyneken’s educational
reforms as well as theorize about education itself.

1912–1917 University, war, and marriage

The only thing you get out of [Cohn’s seminar on the Critique of
Judgment and Schiller’s aesthetics] is that you read the texts.

After completing his final examinations at the Kaiser Friedrich School in March
1912 and after a short trip to Italy, Benjamin enrolls at the Albert Ludwigs
University in Freiburg im Breisgau in order to study philosophy. This first
semester leaves much to be desired from an intellectual standpoint. Compared
to his school years, and in particular to the weekly discussion meetings among
his friends, Freiburg offers him little. In a letter from June of this year, Benjamin
summarizes his expectations and experience at Freiburg: “it is impossible to
harvest while one is plowing” (C, 16). Benjamin’s studies at Freiburg clearly
lack the engagement with the problems and issues posed by modern experience
that have so attracted him during his school years. As a result, he not only takes
up the question of school reform advocated by Wyneken but also decides to
return to Berlin for the second semester of his university studies.
In October 1912, Benjamin enrolls at the Royal Wilhelm Friedrich Uni-
versity in Berlin. During his first semester there, he attends lectures by Ernst
Cassirer, a neo-Kantian best known for his philosophy of symbolic forms,
Benno Erdmann, also a Kantian philosopher, Adolph Goldschmidt, the Ger-
man art critic and historian, Max Erdman, a leading Kantian scholar, and the
social and economics philosopher Georg Simmel. He becomes more involved
in the school reform movement and renews his contact with Wyneken even
to the point of declaring himself his “strict and fanatical disciple” (GB 1, 64).
He also secures election as president of the Free Students Association. Despite
this commitment to the student movement in Berlin, Benjamin fails to win
re-election as president in the spring of 1913 and, as a result, decides to return
to Freiburg for the summer semester.
During his second semester in Freiburg, Benjamin attends lectures given
by the neo-Kantian philosopher Heinrich Rickert, as does Martin Heidegger.
Rickert’s lectures do not captivate the young Benjamin, who reports: “I . . . just
 Life 5

sit and pursue my own thoughts in Rickert’s seminar. After the seminar, Keller
and I go to the Marienbad, agree with each other, and believe ourselves to be
more incisive than Rickert” (C, 31). Benjamin continues his commitment to
school reform while in Freiburg. He hopes it will have a greater reception in
the setting where Wyneken’s ideas were first received by university students.
Instead, what he experiences are tensions about both the direction the move-
ment should take and its involvement in politics and culture. These tensions
surface prominently around the magazine Der Anfang – the same magazine
of his school days which now appears in a regular edition from an established
publisher. Benjamin’s position is that Der Anfang “absolutely must remain a
purely intellectual (not aesthetic or some such) publication, yet removed from
politics.” The difficulty of holding to this position becomes even clearer to
Benjamin after his return to Berlin in September 1913.
The tensions surrounding Der Anfang reflect strategic differences within the
school reform movement (as well as the pull of the different groups advocating
reform). These differences emphasize Benjamin’s tendency to seek a purer,
more philosophical understanding. In a letter from 1913, he expresses this as
“a purity of spirit” but, at the same time, recognizes that such an understanding
runs the risk of being restricted by its own goals:

To be young does not mean so much serving the spirit as awaiting it . . .

the concept of youth culture should simply be illumination that draws
even the most remote spirit to its light. For many people, however,
Wyneken . . . will be merely a “movement.” They will have committed
themselves and will no longer see the spirit where it manifests itself as
freer and more abstract. This constantly reverberating feeling for the
abstractness of pure spirit I would like to call youth. (C, 54–55)

The purity of idea and spirit Benjamin expresses here provides an impor-
tant index to his intellectual development at this time. What Benjamin sees
in Wyneken is the idea of youth as something to be preserved. Even when
Benjamin breaks with Wyneken in 1915 after Wyneken expresses support for
German participation in the First World War, his separation takes the form of
trying to preserve this purity of idea even though, as he later recognizes, it was
bound to fail (Chronicle, SW 2, 605).
Benjamin confronts other movements at this time, most notably Zionism.
His encounter with this movement occurs in August 1912 when another student
attempts to convert him to political Zionism while he is on vacation in Poland.
Although Benjamin will eventually reject a politically based Zionism, during
the next two years he does engage in a correspondence with Ludwig Strauß, a
student Benjamin knew from Freiburg, about the significance and purpose of
6 The Cambridge Introduction to Walter Benjamin

Zionism as well as his relation to it. In one of these letters, from October 1912,
Benjamin strongly critiques Zionists and distinguishes their position from the
experience of being Jewish:

Their [the Zionists] personality was not inwardly determined in any way
by Jewishness: they propagate Palestine but drink like Germans. Perhaps
these people are necessary but they are the last people who should talk of
the Jewish experience. They are brutes (Halbmenschen). Have they ever
reflected upon schools, literature, the inner life, and the state in a Jewish
way? (GB 1, 72)

While Benjamin strongly rejects Zionism with these words, it is also clear that
he attaches considerable significance to the experience of being Jewish – even
to the point of associating such an experience with the questions that attracted
him the most during his formative school and university years. Indeed, in the
same letter, he observes that there is something in Wyneken’s ideas that permits
“a close inward influence on himself and other Jews” (GB 1, 71). Here, as in the
break with Wyneken in 1915, Benjamin preserves what has become significant
for him. He rejects movements that seek simpler, concrete resolutions to the
kinds of issues he will treat with greater historical complexity in the years ahead.
In late spring of 1914, Benjamin’s letters begin to mention a love interest
in Grete Radt, the sister of Fritz Radt, a fellow student in Berlin. Benjamin
speaks fondly of her as the “only person who sees and comprehends me in my
totality” (C, 66). In July, after returning to Berlin, he announces his engagement
to Grete. Alongside this development in his personal life, 1914 also marks
Benjamin’s first experience with personal loss. At Freiburg, he has developed a
close friendship with another student, Fritz Heinle, whose poetry he champions
and seeks to have published in the journal Der Anfang. In 1914, Heinle and
another student who has been active in the youth movement, Rika Seligson,
commit suicide four days after the German invasion of Belgium. Their suicide
takes place in the room that Benjamin and his friends in the youth movement
have been using for their meetings. The choice of location underlines the ideals
of youth and the denial of these ideals by the advent of war. With Heinle’s and
Seligson’s death the enthusiasm he and his friends expressed when they initially
sought to enlist together to fight in the war evaporates. This double suicide
leads to a period of depression for Benjamin. He finds little to interest him
as he resumes his university studies in Berlin. At the next call-up of his age
group, Benjamin fakes suffering from palsy in order to avoid conscription. He
is successful and receives a year’s deferment.
In 1915, Benjamin begins a friendship with Gershom Scholem that will
continue for the rest of his life – one of the few relationships he sustains for
Another random document with
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me a more perfect idea of the disastrous effects of war than any
other object upon which I had yet looked.
When a man of peaceable habits—one, for example, who has spent
his whole life in this favoured country under the shelter of his own
sacred roof—reads of war, and the miseries attendant upon war, his
thoughts invariably turn to scenes of outrage and rapine, in which
soldiers are the actors, and to which the hurry and excitement of
battle give rise. I mean not to say that a battle is ever fought
without bringing havoc upon the face of that particular spot of earth
which chances to support it; but the mischief done by both
contending armies to the buildings and property of the inhabitants is
as nothing when compared to that which the followers of a
successful army work. These wretches tread in the steps of the
armed force with the fidelity and haste of kites and vultures. No
sooner is a battle won and the troops pushed forward, than they
spread themselves over the entire territory gained; and all which had
been spared by those in whom an act of plunder, if excusable at all,
might most readily be excused, is immediately laid waste. The
chateau of which I am speaking, for example, and which I had left
perfectly entire, fully furnished, and in good order, was now one
heap of ruins. Not a chair or a table remained; not a volume of all
the library so lately examined by me existed; nay, it was evident
from the blackened state of the walls, and the dilapidation of the
ceilings, that fire had been wantonly applied to complete the
devastation which avarice had begun. To say the truth, I could not
but regret at the moment that I had not helped myself to a little
more of Monsieur Briguette's property than the Spanish Grammar
already advertised for redemption.
Having cleared Urogne, and passed through the remains of the
barricade which I had assisted in carrying on the 10th of the last
month, I arrived next at the site of the village of which I have
formerly taken notice, as being peopled and furnished with shops
and other places of accommodation, by sutlers and adventurers. The
huts or cottages still stood, though they were all unroofed, and
many of them otherwise in ruins; but the sign of the "Jolly Soldier"
was gone. Like other incitements to folly, if not to absolute vice, it
had followed the track of the multitude. I marked, too, as I
proceeded, the bleak hillside on which our tents had so long
contended with the winds of heaven; and I could not help thinking
how many of those who had found shelter beneath their canvas,
were now sleeping upon the bosom of mother earth. Of course I
paid to their memories the tribute of a regret as unavailing as I fear
it was transitory.
By-and-by I reached the brow of the last height on the French
border, and the Bidassoa once more lay beneath me. The day on
which my present excursion was made chanced to be one of the few
lovely days with which, during that severe winter, we were favoured.
The air was frosty, but not intensely so; the sky was blue and
cloudless; and the sun shone out with a degree of warmth which
cheered without producing languor or weariness. High up, the
mountains which overhang the river were covered with snow, which
sparkled in the sunbeams, and contrasted beautifully with the
sombre hue of the leafless groves beneath; whilst the stream itself
flowed on as brightly and placidly as if it had never witnessed a
more desperate struggle than that which the fisherman maintains
with a trout of extraordinary agility and dimensions. Fain would I
have persuaded myself that I was quietly travelling in a land of
peace; but there were too many proofs of the contrary presented at
every stage to permit the delusion to keep itself for one moment in
the mind.
 CHAPTER XV.
The stone bridge which used to connect the two banks of the
Bidassoa, and which the French, after their evacuation of the
Spanish territory, had destroyed, was not, I found, repaired; but a
temporary bridge of pontoons rendered the stream passable without
subjecting the traveller to the necessity of fording. A party of
artificers were, moreover, at work renewing the arches which had
been broken down; and a new tête-de-pont on the opposite side
from the old one was already erected, to be turned to account in
case of any unlooked-for reverse of fortune, and consequent retreat
beyond the frontier. I observed, too, that the whole front of the pass
beyond the river was blocked up with redoubts, batteries, and
breastworks; and that Lord Wellington, though pressing forward with
victory in his train, was not unmindful of the fickleness of the blind
goddess.
As I was crossing the pontoon-bridge, two objects, very different in
kind, but intimately connected the one with the other, attracted my
attention almost at the same moment. A body of Spanish cavalry,
which appeared to have passed the river at one of the fords a little
higher up, presented themselves winding along a steep by-path
which communicated with the highroad just beside the old tête-de-
pont. They were guerillas, and were consequently clothed, armed,
and mounted in a manner the least uniform that can well be
imagined. Of the men, some were arrayed in green jackets, with
slouched hats and long feathers; others in blue, helmeted like our
yeomanry or artillery-drivers; several wore cuirasses and brazen
headpieces, such as they had probably plundered from their
slaughtered enemies. But, notwithstanding this absence of
uniformity in dress, the general appearance of these troopers was
exceedingly imposing. They were, on the whole, well mounted; and
they marched in that sort of loose and independent manner which,
without indicating the existence of any discipline amongst them,
bespoke no want of self-confidence in individuals. Their whole
appearance, indeed—for they could not exceed sixty or eighty men—
reminded me forcibly of a troop of bandits; and the resemblance
was not the less striking that they moved to the sound, not of
trumpets or other martial music, but of their own voices. They were
singing a wild air as they passed, in which sometimes one chanted
by himself, then two or three chimed in, and by-and-by the whole
squadron joined in a very musical and spirited chorus.
The other object which divided my attention with these bold-looking
but lawless warriors, was about half-a-dozen dead bodies, which the
flow of the tide brought at this moment in contact with the
pontoons. They were quite naked, bleached perfectly white, and so
far had yielded to the operation of decay that they floated like linen
rags on the surface of the water. Perhaps these were some of our
own men who had fallen in the passage of the river upwards of eight
weeks ago; perhaps they were the bodies of such of the French
soldiers as had perished in their retreat after one of Soult's
desperate but fruitless efforts to relieve the garrison of St Sebastian.
Who or what they were I had no means of ascertaining, nor was it
of much consequence: to whatever nation they might have once
belonged, they were now food for the fishes; and to the fishes they
were left, no one dreaming that it was requisite to pull them to land,
or to rob one set of reptiles of their prey only to feed another.
Such is a summary of the events that befell me in a morning's ride
from the cantonments at Gauthory to the town of Irun. After
crossing the river my progress was direct and of little interest. I
journeyed, indeed, amid scenes all of them familiar, and therefore in
some degree having a claim upon my own notice; but I neither saw
nor met with any object worth describing to my reader. It was a little
past the hour of noon when my horse's hoofs clanked upon the
pavement of Irun.
I found that place just recovering from the bustle which the
departure of a corps of twenty thousand Spanish infantry may be
supposed to have produced. This vast body of men had, it appeared,
behaved so badly in the action of the 9th of November that Lord
Wellington was induced to order them to the rear in disgrace; and
they had remained in quarters, in Irun and the neighbourhood, till
the day preceding my arrival, when they were again permitted to
join the army. By whom they were commanded on the day of their
shame I have totally forgotten; nor will I cast a slur upon the
reputation of any general officer by naming one at random.
Notwithstanding the departure of so great a multitude, I found the
place far from deserted either by military or civil inhabitants. A
garrison of two or three thousand soldiers was still there—a corps, I
believe, of militia or national guards; and few of the houses were
unoccupied, though whether by their rightful owners or not I take it
not upon me to determine. One thing, however, I perfectly recollect;
and that is, the extreme incivility and absence of all hospitality which
distinguished them. Whether it was that the troops, so long
quartered among them, had inspired them with their own dislike to
my countrymen, or whether that jealousy which the Spanish people
have always encouraged, and still encourage, of foreigners in
general and Englishmen in particular, was at work, I cannot tell; but
I remember that I had some difficulty in persuading the keeper of an
inn to put up my own and my servant's horses in his stable, and still
greater in prevailing upon him to dress an omelet for my dinner. Nor
was this all: my journey had been undertaken, not from curiosity
alone, but in the hope of laying in a stock of coffee, cheese, tea, &c.,
at a cheap rate. But every effort to obtain these things was fruitless,
the shopkeepers sulkily refusing to deal with me except on the most
exorbitant terms. I was not sorry, under such circumstances, when,
having finished my omelet, and baited and rested my horses, I
turned my back upon Irun, and took once more a direction towards
the front.
I would lay before my readers a detail of another excursion,
executed on Christmas-day, to St Jean de Luz, were I not fully aware
that there are few among them who are not as well acquainted as
myself with the circumstances attending the celebration of that
festival in a Roman Catholic country. On the present occasion all
things were done with as much pomp and show as the state of the
city, filled with hostile battalions, and more than half deserted by its
inhabitants and priesthood, would permit. For my own part, I viewed
the whole proceeding, not with levity, certainly, but as certainly
without devotion; because the entire scene appeared to me better
calculated to amuse the external senses and dazzle the imagination,
than to stir up the deeper and more rational sensations of piety. I
returned home, nevertheless, well pleased with the mode in which
the morning had been spent; and joining a party of some ten or
twelve who had clubbed their rations for the sake of setting forth a
piece of roast-beef worthy of the occasion, I passed my evening not
less agreeably than I had spent the morning.
Among other events that befell during our sojourn at Gauthory, a
sale of the effects of such of our brother officers as had fallen in the
late battles, deserves to be numbered. On such occasions the
sergeant-major generally acts the part of auctioneer, and a strange
compound of good and bad feeling accompanies the progress of the
auction. In every society of men some will be found whose thoughts,
centring entirely in self, regard all things as commendable, or the
reverse, solely as it increases or restricts their personal enjoyments.
Even the sale of the clothes and accoutrements of one who, but a
few weeks or days before, was their living and perhaps favourite
companion, furnishes to such food for mirth; and I am sorry to say
that during the sale of which I now speak more laughter was heard
than redounded to the credit of those who joined in or produced it.
Nor do I pretend, while thus censuring others, to screen myself; for
I fear that few laughed more heartily than I, when shirts with nine
tails, or no tails at all, were held up against the sun by the facetious
auctioneer; and sundry pairs of trousers were pressed upon our
notice as adapted for summer wear, inasmuch as their numerous
apertures promised to admit a free current of air to cool the blood.
But, with one or two exceptions, I must say that there was not a
man present who thought of the former owners of these tailless
shirts without affection, and who would not have willingly given the
full value, ay, even of the shirts themselves, could his expenditure of
such a sum have redeemed them from the power of the grave. This
sale, however, acted as a sort of warning to me. Though my
wardrobe was in as good condition as that of most men, I chose not
to have it or its owner made the subject of a joke; so I inserted
among my few memoranda a request that no article of mine should
be put up to auction, but that all should be given, in case I fell, as
expressly appointed.
I have said that the usual means of defeating ennui—namely,
shooting, coursing, and fishing—were resorted to by Grey and
myself while we inhabited these cantonments. Among other
experiments, we strolled down one lovely morning towards the sea,
with the hope of catching some fish for dinner. In that hope we were
disappointed; but the exquisite beauty of the marine view to which
our walk introduced us, amply made amends for the absence of
sport. It was one of those soft and enervating days which, even in
England, we sometimes meet with during the latter weeks of
December, and which in the south of France are very frequent at
that season. The sun was shining brightly and warmly; not a breath
of air was astir; and the only sound distinguishable by us who stood
on the summit of the cliff was the gentle and unceasing murmur of
tiny waves, as they threw themselves upon the shingle. The extent
of waters upon which we gazed was bounded on the right by the
headlands at the mouth of the Adour, and on the left by those near
Passages. Before us the waste seemed interminable; and I am not
sure that it was the less sublime, because not a boat or vessel of
any description could be descried upon it. At such moments as
these, when contemplating such a scene, it is hardly possible for any
man to hinder his thoughts from wandering away from the objects
immediately around him to I do not recollect any hour of my life
during which the thought of home came more powerfully across me
than the present. Perhaps, indeed, the season of the year had some
effect in producing this result. It was the season of mirth and
festivity, of licensed uproar and innocent irregularity; and cold the
land of his nativity and the home of his fathers. I do not recollect
any hour of my life during which the thought of home came more
powerfully across me than the present. Perhaps, indeed, the season
of the year had some effect in producing this result. It was the
season of mirth and festivity, of licensed uproar and innocent
irregularity; and cold and heartless must he be who remembers not
his home, however far removed from him, when that season comes
round. I confess that the idea of mine brought something like
moisture into my eyes, of which I had then no cause to be ashamed,
and the remembrance of which produces in me no sense of shame
even now.
The walk towards the sea became from this time my favourite; but it
was not my only one. Attended by my faithful spaniel (an animal, by
the way, which never deserted me even in battle), I wandered with a
gun across my shoulder over a great extent of country, and in all
directions. I found the scenery beautiful, but far less so than I had
expected to find it in the south of France. There was no want of
wood, it is true; and corn-fields, or rather fields lying fallow, were
intermixed in fair proportion with green meadows and sloping
downs. But there was nothing striking or romantic anywhere, except
in the bold boundary of the Pyrenees, now twenty miles distant. I
observed, however, that there was no want of chateaux and
gentlemen's seats. These were scattered about in considerable
numbers, as if this had been a favourite resort of those few among
the French gentry who prefer the quiet of the country to the bustle
and hurry of Paris. Some of these chateaux were, moreover,
exceedingly elegant in their appearance—a circumstance which,
when connected with their size and the extent of the woods about
them, led to a persuasion that they belonged to men of higher rank
than the Mayor of Biaritz. But in general they were of a description
which bespoke their owners as belonging to the class of wealthy
merchants who supported their town houses and warerooms in
Bayonne, or perhaps in Bourdeaux. All, however, were thoroughly
ransacked. Over them, as well as over the houses in our rear, the
storm of rapine had passed, leaving its usual traces of dilapidation
and ruin behind.
It is needless to continue a narrative of such events. Thus passed
several weeks, the business of one day resembling in almost every
respect the business of another. As often as the weather would
permit I made a point of living out of doors; when the contrary was
the case, I adopted the ordinary expedients to kill time within. Nor
were we all this while without a few occurrences calculated to hinder
us from forgetting that we really were in an enemy's country, and at
the seat of war. The bloody flag was more than once hoisted on the
tower of the church of Arcanques, as a signal that the French troops
were in motion; and we, in our turn, stood to our arms. But of such
alarms almost all proved to be groundless; and those which were not
designedly so might as well have been omitted. The fact was that
Soult, having been called upon at this time to detach some divisions
of his veteran soldiers to the assistance of Napoleon, already hard
pressed by the Allies in the north, was under the necessity of filling
his ranks with all the men, and even boys, that were not absolutely
required to cultivate the soil. The entire winter was accordingly spent
by him in training the conscripts to the use of arms. He marched and
countermarched them from place to place, that they might learn to
move with celerity and in order; he set up targets for them to fire at,
and caused frequent alarms to our pickets when teaching his recruits
to take a correct aim: he was, in short, now, as he always was,
indefatigable in providing for the defence of the country committed
to his care, and in his endeavours to make the most of a force
assuredly not adequate to the purpose. But we were not doomed to
be continually the dupes of false alarms, nor to be amused for ever
with the issuing of orders, which were scarcely received ere they
were retracted. A necessity for a real movement occurred at last,
and we bade adieu for ever to the cottage of Gauthory, which we
first entered with regret, and finally quitted without reluctance.
 CHAPTER XVI.
It might be about six or seven o'clock in the morning of the 3d of
January 1814, when an orderly sergeant burst into our chamber and
desired us to get the men under arms without delay, for that the
enemy were in motion. In an instant we sprang from our beds,
dressed and accoutred forthwith, ordered the trumpeter to sound
the "assembly," and our servants to prepare breakfast. The last of
these injunctions was obeyed in an incredibly short space of time,
insomuch that whilst the troops were hurrying to their stations we
were devouring our morning's repast; and, in little more than a
quarter of an hour from the first signal of alarm, the regiment was
formed in marching order upon the highroad. Nor were many
moments wasted in that situation. The word was given to advance,
and we again pressed forward towards the mayor's house.
When we reached the post or common, of which so much notice has
elsewhere been taken, we found, indeed, that the whole of the left
column was moving, but that the old battle-ground about the
chateau, and in the woods and enclosures near it, was left entirely
to the protection of the ordinary pickets. Of the enemy's forces, not
a single battalion showed itself here; and our own were all filing
towards the right—a route into which we also quickly struck, as if
following the natural current of the stream of war. In this journey we
passed over a good deal of ground which was already familiar to us,
skirting the brow of the ravine which had separated the hostile
armies during the pauses in their late contest, till, having reached
the meadow where our camp had formerly been pitched, we were
turned into a new direction, and led upwards till we gained the top
of the hill on which the church of Arcanques stands, and round the
base of which the village of Arcanques is scattered. In the
maintenance of this post we relieved a section of the light division,
which immediately took a rightward course—thus indicating that the
strength of the army would be mustered at one extremity, and other
points of the line left to the protection of a few scattered brigades.
It was evening before we reached our ground, and as yet no
provisions were issued out to us. Of course, our appetites were
excellent; indeed, the appetites of men who have nothing to eat are
seldom sickly; and this we amply demonstrated as soon as an
opportunity of proving the fact was offered. Little time, however, was
given for the enjoyment of social intercourse or bodily rest; for we
had hardly swallowed a hasty meal when the better half of the corps
was sent forward to occupy a few cottages in front of the village;
and the remainder of the night was spent in that state of excitement
and anxiety which necessarily waits upon such as form the outposts
or advanced-guard of an army.
My own station this night was not exactly at one of the most forward
posts, but in a ruinous building at the outskirts of the village, where
I was placed with a body of men to support the pickets. The thing
into which we were ushered had, no doubt, once upon a time, been
a habitable mansion: at present it consisted of little else than the
shell, and a very wretched shell, of a farmhouse. Not only were the
doors and windows gone, but the ceilings and partitions which used
to divide one apartment from another were all broken down; the
roof was in a great measure stripped off, and the fragments which
remained of it were perforated in all directions. The night was
piercingly cold. The frost had of late set in with renewed severity;
and a sharp northerly wind blowing, swept with a melancholy sound
through our dilapidated mansion. But we were on little ceremony
here. Large fires were lighted in different places upon the earthen
floor, round which we crept; and an allowance of grog being brought
up, and pipes and cigars lighted, we were soon as merry and light-
hearted as men could desire to be. It is true that at intervals—every
half-hour, for example—a party of six or eight of us sallied forth, to
patrol from picket to picket, and to see that all was right between;
but we returned from such excursions with increased predilection for
our fire-side; and the events of the ramble, be they what they might,
furnished food for conversation till another was deemed necessary.
So passed the night of the 3d; and on the morning of the 4th I
expected, as an ordinary matter, to be relieved, and to be withdrawn
to the rear; but it was not so. Men, it appeared, were scarce at this
part of the line; and hence those who formed it were called upon to
perform double duty. Instead of being removed to some place where
a sound night's rest might be enjoyed, I and my party found
ourselves, on the morning of the 4th, ordered to advance, and to
occupy the foremost chain—from which we had the satisfaction of
beholding the enemy, in very considerable strength, at the distance
of little more than a quarter of a mile from our sentries. This sight,
however, only gave a spur to our exertions, and hindered us from
repining at what we might have been otherwise tempted to consider
as an undue exercise of our powers of watchfulness.
The particular picket of which I was put in command happened to be
detached from all others, and to be nearly half a mile in front of the
rest. It occupied a sort of sugar-loaf hill, separated from our own
regular chain of posts by a deep and rugged glen, and kept apart
from the French lines only by an imaginary boundary of hedges and
paling. So exposed, indeed, was the spot, that I received orders to
abandon it as soon as darkness set in, and to retire across the
hollow to the high grounds opposite. The reader will easily believe
that, in such a situation, little leisure was given for relaxation either
of body or mind. During the entire day, my occupation consisted in
prying closely, with the aid of a telescope, into the enemy's lines, in
considering how I could best maintain myself in case of an attack,
and retreat most securely in case I should be overpowered.
The view from my picket-house was, however, extremely animating.
Beneath me, at the distance of only two fields, lay the French
outposts; about a quarter of a mile, or half a mile, in rear of which
were encamped several large bodies both of infantry and cavalry. Of
these, it was evident that vast numbers were recruits. They were at
drill, marching and countermarching, and performing various
evolutions during the greater part of the day—a circumstance which
at first excited some uneasiness on my part, inasmuch as I expected
every moment that my post would be disturbed; but as soon as I
saw a target erected, and the troops practising with ball, I became
easy. "There will be no attack to-day," thought I, "otherwise so much
ammunition would not be wasted."
I had scarcely said so when I observed a mounted officer advancing
from the enemy's camp towards the base of the hill which my party
held. He was followed by a cloud of people in apparent confusion,
but not more confused than French skirmishers generally appear to
be, who lay down behind the hedges in the immediate front of my
sentinels, as if waiting for an order to fire and rush on. I had just
ordered my people under arms, and was proceeding towards the
sentries for the purpose of giving a few necessary directions, when
the French officer halted, and a trumpeter who accompanied him
sounded a parley. I descended the hill immediately, and causing my
trumpeter to answer the signal, the Frenchman advanced. He was
the bearer of letters from such British officers and soldiers as had
been taken in the late actions; and he likewise handed over to me
several sums of money and changes of clothing for some of his
countrymen who had fallen into our hands.
This being done, we naturally entered into conversation touching the
state of Europe and the events of the war. My new acquaintance
utterly denied the truth of Napoleon's reverses, and seemed to
doubt the idea of an invasion of France by the armies of the north.
He assured me that the whole country was in arms; that every
peasant had become a soldier; that bands of partisans were forming
on all sides of us; and that it was vain to hope that we should ever
pass the Adour, or proceed farther within the sacred territory. He
spoke of the desertion of the German corps with a degree of bitter
contempt, which proved—the reverse of what he was desirous of
proving—that the event had shaken the confidence of Soult in his
auxiliaries; and, above all, he affected to regard the whole of the
recent operations as mere affairs, or trifling contests of
detachments, in no way capable of influencing the final issues of the
war. Yet he was not displeased when I laughed at his style of
oratory; and, after gasconading a good deal, both the one and the
other, we shook hands, and parted the best friends imaginable.
I had hardly quitted him, at least I had not reached my station on
the top of the hill, when I heard myself called by one of the
sentinels, and turned round. I saw the individual with whom I had
been conversing sitting in the midst of a little group of French
officers, and watching the progress of an old woman who was
coming towards our lines. She held a large bottle in her hand, which
she lifted up to attract my notice, and continued to move forward,
gabbling loudly all the while. Obeying her signal, I returned and met
her a few yards in front of the sentries, when she delivered to me
about a couple of quarts of brandy, as a present from the French
officers, who had desired her to say, that if I could spare them a
little tea in exchange, they would feel obliged. It so happened that I
had brought no such luxury to my post. Of this I informed the
female mercury; but desired her to offer my best acknowledgments
to her employers, and to add that I had sent to the rear in order to
procure it. With this message she departed, having promised to keep
in sight for at least half an hour, and to return as soon as I should
make a sign that the tea had arrived.
My bugler made good speed, and soon returned with about a
quarter of a pound of black tea, the half of the stock which remained
in my canteen. In the meanwhile the French officers continued
sitting together, and all rose when I waved my cap to their carrier.
The old lady was not remiss in taking the hint. I handed over to her
the little parcel, with numerous apologies for its tenuity, and had the
satisfaction to perceive that, trifling as it was, it proved acceptable.
The party pulled off their hats as an acknowledgment—I did the
same; and we each departed to our respective stations.
There is something extremely agreeable in carrying on hostilities
after this fashion; yet the matter may be pushed too far. Towards
the close of the war, indeed, so good an understanding prevailed
between the outposts of the two armies that Lord Wellington found
it necessary to forbid all communication whatever; nor will the
reader wonder at this when I state to him the reason. A field-officer
(I shall not say in what part of the line), going his rounds one night,
found that the whole of a sergeant's picket-guard had disappeared.
He was, of course, both alarmed and surprised at the occurrence;
but his alarm gave place to absolute astonishment when, on stealing
forward to observe whether there was any movement in the enemy's
lines, he peeped into a cottage from which a noise of revelry was
proceeding, and beheld the party sitting in the most sociable manner
with a similar party of Frenchmen, and carousing jovially. As soon as
he showed himself his own men rose, and wishing their companions
good night, returned with the greatest sang froid to their post. It is,
however, but justice to add, that the sentinels on both sides faithfully
kept their ground, and that no intention of deserting existed on
either part. In fact, it was a sort of custom, the French and British
guards visiting each other by turns.
At the period of which I have spoken above, however, no such
extraordinary intimacy had begun. As yet we were merely civil
towards one another; and even that degree of civility was for a while
interrupted, in consequence of the surprisal of a French post by a
detachment from General Beresford's division on the river Nive. Not
that the picket was wantonly cut off, or that any blame could
possibly attach to the general who ordered the proceeding. The
outpost in question occupied a hill upon the allied bank of the
stream. It was completely insulated and detached from all other
French posts, and appeared to be held as much out of perverseness
as because it commanded to a great extent a view of the British
lines. Lord Beresford had repeatedly despatched flags of truce to
request that the picket might be withdrawn, expressing great
unwillingness to violate the sacred character which had been tacitly
conferred upon the pickets; but Soult was deaf to his entreaties, and
replied to his threats only by daring him to carry them into
execution. A party was accordingly ordered out, one stormy night, to
cut off the guard; and so successful was the attempt, that an officer
and thirty soldiers, with a midshipman and a few seamen, who had
charge of the boat by which the reliefs were daily ferried over, were
taken. Not a shot was fired. The French, trusting to the storm for
protection, had called in their vedettes, leaving only one on duty at
the door of the house; and he found his arms pinioned, and himself
secured, ere the roar of the tempest permitted him to detect the
sound of approaching steps. The unfortunate subaltern who
commanded sent in a few days afterwards for his baggage; but the
reply was, that the general would forward him a halter, as the only
indulgence which he merited.
But to return to my own personal narrative. After the adventure of
the tea, nothing particular occurred so long as I continued in charge
of the post. As soon as darkness set fairly in, I proposed, in
obedience to my orders, to withdraw; and I carried the design into
effect without any molestation on the part of the enemy. It was,
however, their custom to take possession of the hill as soon as the
British troops abandoned it; and hence I had not proceeded above
half-way across the ravine when I heard the voices of a French
detachment, which must have marched into the courtyard of the
house almost at the moment that I and my men marched out of it.
But they made no attempt to annoy us, and we rejoined the corps
from which we had been detached in perfect safety.
The next day was spent in a state of rest in the chateau of
Arcanques. It is a fine old pile, and stands at the foot of the little
eminence on which the church is built. Like many mansions in
England of the date of Queen Elizabeth or Henry VIII., it is
surrounded by a high wall, within which is a paved court leading up
to the main entrance. But it too, like all the buildings near, bore
ample testimony to the merciless operation of war in its crumbling
masonry and blackened timbers. There was a grove of venerable old
firs round it, from which all the late firing had not entirely expelled
the rooks.
Of the church I have a less perfect recollection. I remember, indeed,
that its situation was highly striking, and that the view from the
churchyard was of no ordinary beauty. I recollect, likewise, several
statues of knights and ladies reposing in niches round the walls—
some with the cross upon their shields, and their legs laid athwart,
to show that they had served in Palestine; others in the more
ancient costume of chain armour; but whether they were worthy of
admiration as specimens of the art of sculpture, I cannot now take it
upon me to say. I remarked, however, that the devices on the
shields of most of these warriors, and the crests upon their helmets,
resembled the coat and crest which were emblazoned over the
gateway of the chateau; and hence I concluded that they were the
effigies of the former lords of the castle, and that the family which
owned it must have been at one period of some consequence.
It was not, however, exclusively in examining these buildings that I
found amusement for my hours of idleness. From the churchyard, as
I have already stated, the view is at all times magnificent, and it was
rendered doubly so to-day by the movements of our army. The tide
of war seemed to have taken a sudden turn; and the numerous
corps which had so lately defiled towards the right could now be
seen retracing their steps, and filing towards the left. It was a
magnificent spectacle. From the high ground on which I stood, I
could see very nearly to the two extreme points of the position; and
the effect produced by the marching of nearly 120,000 men may be
more easily imagined than described. The roads of communication
ran, for the most part, in the rear of Arcanques. They were all
crowded—cavalry, infantry, and artillery were moving; some columns
marched in echelon; others paused from time to time as if to watch
some object in their front; whilst a grove or wood would now and
again receive an armed mass into its bosom, and then seem to be
on fire, from the flashing of the sun against the bayonets. Happily
for me, it was a day of bright sunshine, consequently every object
appeared to great advantage; nor, I suspect, have many of our
oldest soldiers beheld a more striking panorama than the
combination of the objects around me this day produced.
I stood and watched with intense interest the shifting scene, till it
gradually settled down into one of quiet. The various brigades, as I
afterwards learned, were only returning from the point towards
which the appearance of danger had hurried them, and now
proceeded to establish themselves once more in their cantonments.
The French general, either awed by the state of preparedness in
which he found us, or satisfied with having called us for a few days
into the field at this inclement season, laid aside the threatening
attitude which he had assumed. It suited not the policy of our
gallant leader to expose his troops wantonly to the miseries of a
winter campaign; and hence rest and shelter were again the order of
the day. But in these the corps to which I was attached had as yet
no participation, our march being directed, on the following morning,
to the vicinity of Fort Charlotte, where the charge of the pickets was
once more assigned to us.
 CHAPTER XVII.
The transactions of the three days from the 8th to the 11th of
January, resembled so completely in all particulars the transactions
of other days during which it fell to our lot to keep guard beside the
mayor's house, that I will not try the patience of my reader by
narrating them at length. He will accordingly take it for granted that
the ordinary routine of watching and labour was gone through, that
no attempt was made on the part of the enemy to surprise or harass
us, and that, with the exception of a little suffering from extreme
cold, and the want of a moderate proportion of sleep, we had no
cause to complain of our destiny. When we first came to our ground
we found the redoubt in a state of considerable forwardness—quite
defensible, indeed, in a case of emergency; and we left it even more
perfect, and capable of containing at least a thousand men. It was
not, however, with any feeling of regret that we beheld a brigade of
Guards approaching our encampment about two hours after noon on
the 11th; nor did we experience the slightest humiliation in
surrendering to them our tents, our working tools, and the post of
honour.
Now, then, we looked forward, not only with resignation, but with
real satisfaction, to a peaceable sojourn of a few weeks at Gauthory.
We had never, it is true, greatly admired these cantonments; but the
events of the last eight or ten days had taught us to set its true
value upon a settled habitation of any description, and we
accordingly made up our minds to grumble no more. But just as the
line of march was beginning to form, intelligence reached us that the
place of our abode was changed. Other troops, it appeared, had
been introduced into our former apartments; and we were in
consequence commanded to house ourselves in the village of Bidart.
I mean not to assert that the order was received with any degree of
dissatisfaction; but feeling as at that moment we did, it was, in
truth, a matter of perfect indifference where we were stationed,
provided only we had a roof over our heads and an opportunity was
granted of resting from our labours.
The village of Bidart is built upon an eminence, immediately in rear
of the large common on which the advanced brigade lay encamped.
It consists of about thirty houses, some of them of a tolerable size,
but the majority cottages. Into one of the largest my friend and
myself were fortunate enough to be ushered; and as we found
chimneys and windows already formed, the former permitting us to
keep fires alight without the attendant misery of smoke, and the
latter proof against the weather, we sincerely congratulated
ourselves on our change of abode. Nor was it only on account of the
superiority of these over our former quarters that we rejoiced in this
migration. The country round proved to be better stocked with
game, especially with hares, than any which we had yet inhabited:
and hence we continued, by the help of our guns and greyhounds,
not only to spend the mornings very agreeably, but to keep our own
and our friends' tables well supplied.
I have mentioned, in a former chapter, that the little town of Biaritz
stands upon the sea-shore, and that it was, at the period of which I
now write, regarded as a sort of neutral ground by the French and
British armies. Patrols from both did indeed occasionally reconnoitre
it; the French, in particular, seldom permitting a day to pass without
a party of their light cavalry riding through it. Yet to visit Biaritz
became now the favourite amusement amongst us, and the greater
the risk run of being sabred or taken, the more eager were we to
incur and to escape it. But there was a cause for this, good reader,
and I will tell thee what it was.
In peaceable times Biaritz constituted, as we learned from its
inhabitants, a fashionable watering-place to the wealthy people of
Bayonne and its vicinity. It was, and no doubt is now, a remarkably
pretty village, about as large perhaps as Sandgate, and built upon
the margin of the water. The town itself lies in a sort of hollow,
between two green hills, which, towards the sea, end in broken
cliffs. Its houses were neatly whitewashed, and above all it was, and
I trust still is, distinguished as the residence of two or three
handsome women. These ladies had about them all the gaiety and
liveliness of Frenchwomen, with a good deal of the sentimentality of
our own fair countrywomen. To us they were particularly pleasant,
professing, I know not how truly, to prefer our society to that of any
persons besides; and we, of course, were far too gallant to deny
them that gratification, because we risked our lives or our freedom
at each visit. By no means. Two or three times in each week the
favoured few mounted their horses and took the road to Biaritz,
from which, on more than one occasion, they with difficulty
returned.
With the circumstances attending one of these escapes I may as
well make my reader acquainted. We were for the most part prudent
enough to cast lots previously to setting out, in order to decide on
whom, among the party, the odious task should devolve of watching
outside to prevent a surprise by the enemy's cavalry, whilst his
companions were more agreeably employed within. So many visits
had, however, been paid, without any alarm being given, that one
morning, having quitted Bidart fewer in number than usual, we
rashly determined to run all risks rather than that one of the three
should spend an hour cheerlessly by himself. The only precaution
which we took was to picket our horses, ready saddled and bridled,
at the garden gate, instead of putting them up, as we were in the
habit of doing, in the stable.
It was well for us that even this slender precaution had been taken.
We had sat about half an hour with our fair friends, and had just
ceased to joke on the probability of our suffering the fate of
Sampson, and being caught by the Philistines, when on a pause in
the conversation taking place, our ears were saluted with the sound
of horses' hoofs trampling upon the paved street. We sprang to the
window, and our consternation may be guessed at when we beheld
eight or ten French hussars riding slowly from the lower end of the
town. Whilst we were hesitating how to proceed, whether to remain
quiet, in the hope that the party might retire without searching any
of the houses, or expose ourselves to certain pursuit by flying, we
observed a rascal, in the garb of a seaman, run up to the leader of
the patrol and lay hold of his bridle, enter into conversation with
him, and point to the abode of our new acquaintances. This was hint
enough. Without pausing to say farewell to our fair friends, who
screamed, as if they, and not we, had been in danger, we ran with
all haste to the spot where our horses stood, and, springing into the
saddle, applied the spur, with very little mercy, to their flanks. We
were none of us particularly well mounted; but either our pursuers
had alighted to search the house, or they took at first a wrong
direction, for we got so much the start of them before the chase
fairly began, that possibly we might have escaped had we been
obliged to trust to our own steeds as far as the pickets. Of this,
however, I am by no means certain, for they were unquestionably
gaining upon us, as a sailor would say, hand over hand, when, by
great good fortune, a patrol of our own cavalry made its
appearance. Then, indeed, the tables were turned. The enemy
pulled up, paused for an instant, and took to their heels; whereupon
our troopers, who had trotted forward as soon as they saw what was
the matter, put their horses to the speed and followed. Whether they
overtook their adversaries, and what was the issue of the skirmish, if
indeed any skirmish took place, I cannot tell; for though we made an
attempt to revenge ourselves upon our late pursuers, we soon found
that we were distanced by both parties, and were, perforce,
contented to ride quietly home, congratulating each other by the
way on our hairbreadth deliverance. From that time forward we were
more prudent. Our visits were indeed resumed, and with their usual
frequency; but we took care not again to dispense with the
watchfulness of a sentinel, who, on the contrary, took his station
henceforth on the top of one of the heights, from which he
commanded a view of the surrounding country to the distance of
several miles. Though, therefore, we were more than once
summoned to horse because the enemy's dragoons were in sight,
we generally contrived to mount in such time as to preclude the
necessity of riding, as we had before done, for life or liberty.
By spending my mornings thus, or in a determined pursuit of game,
and my evenings in such society as a corps of gentlemanly young
men furnished, nearly a fortnight passed over my head before I was
aware that time could have made so much progress. It seldom
happens, however, that any period of human existence, whether
extensive or contracted, passes by without some circumstance
occurring calculated to awaken painful emotions. I recollect, in the
course of this fortnight, an event which, though I was no farther
concerned in it than as a spectator, made a deep and melancholy
impression on my mind. I allude to the loss of a large vessel, during
a tremendous storm, on the rocks which run out into the sea off
Bidart.
The precise day of the month on which this sad shipwreck occurred I
have forgotten; but I recollect being sent for by my friend, during
the progress of one of the heaviest gales which we had witnessed,
to come and watch with him the fate of a brig, which was in evident
distress, about a couple of miles from the land. The wind blew a
perfect hurricane on shore; and hence the question was—would the
ship succeed in weathering the cape, or would she strike? If she got
once round the headland, then her course to the harbour of Secoa
was direct; if otherwise, nothing could save her. We turned our
glasses towards her in a state of feverish anxiety, and beheld her
bending under a single close-reefed topsail, and making lee-way at a
fearful rate every moment. Presently a sort of attempt was made to
luff up or tack; it was a desperate one. I cannot even now think
without shuddering of the consequence. The sail, caught by a
sudden squall, was torn into a hundred shreds: down, down she
went before the surge; in five seconds she struck against a reef, and
in ten minutes more split into a thousand fragments. One gun only
was fired as a signal of distress; but who could regard it? We
possessed no boats; and had the contrary been the case, this was a
sea in which no boat could live. Powerless, therefore, of aid, we
could only stand and gaze upon the wreck, till, piece by piece, it
disappeared amid the raging waters. Not a soul survived to tell to
what country she belonged, or with what she was freighted; and
only one body was drifted to land. It was that of a woman
apparently about thirty years of age, genteelly dressed, and rather
elegantly formed; to whom we gave such sepulture as soldiers can
give, and such as they are themselves taught to expect.
The impression which that shipwreck made upon me was not only
far more distressing, but far more permanent, than the impression
made by any other spectacle of which, during the course of a
somewhat eventful life, I have been the spectator. For several days I
could think of hardly anything besides, and at night my dreams were
constantly of drowning men and vessels beating upon rocks; so
great is the effect of desuetude, even in painful subjects, and so
appalling is death when he comes in a form to which we are
unaccustomed. Of slaughtered men I have of course seen
multitudes, as well when life had just departed from them as when
corruption had set its seal upon their forms; but such sights never
affected me—no, not even at the commencement of my military
career—as I was affected by the loss of that ship, though she went
to pieces at too great a distance from the beach to permit more than
a very indistinct view of her perishing inmates. Yet there is nothing
in reality more terrible in drowning than in any other kind of death;
and a sailor will look upon it, I daresay, with precisely the same
degree of indifference which a soldier experiences when he
contemplates the prospect of his own dissolution by fire or steel.
In the course of my narrative I have not made any regular attempt
to convey to the mind of the reader a distinct notion of the peculiar
customs and language which distinguish the natives of this country.
Two motives have guided me to this. In the first place, it is
nowadays known to all who are likely to peruse what I write, that
the inhabitants of those provinces which lie at the immediate base of
the Pyrenees, are a race totally distinct, and essentially different in
almost all respects, from either the Spaniards or the French. They
speak a language of their own—namely, Basque—which is said by
those who profess to be acquainted with it to resemble the Celtic
more than any other known tongue. The dress of the men consists
usually of a blue or brown jacket of coarse woollen cloth, of
breeches or trousers of the same, with a waistcoat frequently of
scarlet, grey worsted stockings, and wooden shoes. On their heads
they wear a large flat bonnet, similar to the Lowland bonnet, or
scone, of Scotland. They are generally tall, but thin; and they
present altogether an appearance as uncouth as need be fancied.
The women equip themselves in many respects as the fishwomen of
the good town of Newhaven are accustomed to do, with this
difference, that they seldom cover their heads at all—and, like the
men, wear wooden clogs. They are a singular race, and appear to
take a pride in those peculiarities which keep them from coalescing
with either of the nations among whom they dwell. But all this, as I
said before, is too generally known to render it imperative upon me
minutely to repeat it.
My second motive for keeping, in a great degree, silent on the head
of manners and customs is one the efficiency of which the reader
will not, I daresay, call in question—namely, the want of opportunity
to make myself sufficiently master of the subject to enter, con
amore, upon it. No man who journeys through a country in the train
of an invading army ought to pretend to an intimate acquaintance
with the manners and customs of its inhabitants. Wherever foreign
troops swarm, the aborigines necessarily appear in false colours. The
greater part of them, indeed, abandon their homes; while such of
them as remain are servile and submissive through terror; nor do
they ever display their real characters, at least in the presence of a
stranger. Hence it is that nine-tenths of my brethren in arms who
write at all commit the most egregious blunders in those very
portions of their books where they particularly aim at enlightening
the reading public; and that the most matter-of-fact story, spun out
by the most matter-of-fact man or woman who has visited the seat
of the late war since the cessation of hostilities, contains, and must
contain, more certain information touching the fire-side occupations
of the people than all the 'Journals' or 'Letters to Friends at Home'
which this age of book-making has produced. Frankly confessing,
therefore, that any account which I could give of the manners and
habits of the Basques would deserve as little respect as the accounts
already given by other military tourists, I am content to keep my
reader's attention riveted—if, indeed, that be practicable—upon my
own little personal adventures, rather than amuse him with details
which might be true as far as I know to the contrary, but which, in
all probability, would be false.
Proceed we, then, in our own way. From the day of the shipwreck up
to the 23d of the month, I have no recollection of any occurrence
worthy to be recorded. Advantage was taken, it is true, of that
period of rest to lay in a fresh stock of tea and other luxuries, with
the means of accomplishing which an opportune disbursement of
one month's pay supplied us. These we purchased in a market which
certain speculating traders had established, and which followed the
movements of the army from post to post. The grand depot of all
was, however, Secoa, between which port and England
communication was regularly kept up; and thither I and my
comrades resorted for such more curious articles as habit or caprice
prompted us to purchase. Moreover, by coursing, shooting, and
riding,—sometimes to Biaritz, and the house of our pretty French
women; sometimes to St Jean de Luz, where, by the way, races
were regularly established; and occasionally to the cantonments of a
friend in another division—we found our days steal insensibly, and
therefore agreeably, away; nor was it without a feeling somewhat
akin to discontent that we saw ourselves again setting forth to take
our turn of outpost duty at the old station beside Fort Charlotte.
 CHAPTER XVIII.
As the circumstances attending our present tour of duty had in them
more to interest and excite than usual, I shall describe them at
greater length.
The air was cold and bracing; it was a fine clear wintry day, when
the corps to which I was attached, strengthened by the half of
another battalion, began its march to the front. Instead of employing
eighteen hundred men at the outposts, nine hundred were now
esteemed capable of providing for the safety of the left column of
the army; and such was accordingly the extent of the force which,
under the command of a lieutenant-colonel, took the direction of the
mayor's house. On arriving there we found matters in a somewhat
different order from that in which we used to find them. The enemy,
it appeared, had abandoned the ground which their pickets formerly
occupied. Our advanced parties were, in consequence, pushed
forward; and the stations of the extreme sentinels were now in front
of that ground upon which so much fighting had taken place in the
beginning of last month. The guards themselves, instead of being
hutted in and about the chateau, were disposed among a range of
cottages in the very centre of the field of battle; and the objects
which were by this means kept constantly before their eyes were
certainly not of the most cheering or encouraging description.
It was not my lot to take charge of a picket-guard on the immediate
day of our advance. My business, on the contrary, was to
superintend the erection of works, which appeared to me to be
thrown up as much for the purpose of giving the soldiers
employment, and keeping their blood in circulation, as to oppose an
obstacle to the advance of Marshal Soult, from whom no serious
attack was now apprehended. On the following morning, however, I
led my party to the front; nor have I frequently spent twenty-four
hours in a state of higher excitement than I experienced during the
progress of the day and the night which succeeded this movement.
In the first place, the weather had changed greatly for the worse.
The frost continued, indeed, as intense—perhaps it was more
intense than ever; but the snow came down in huge flakes, which a
cold north-east wind drove into our faces. The hut into which the
main body of the guard was ushered presented the same ruinous
appearance with almost every other house similarly situated; it
furnished no shelter against the blast, and very little against the
shower. Intelligence had, moreover, been conveyed to us by a
deserter, that Soult, irritated at the surprisal of his post upon the
Nive, was determined to retaliate whenever an opportunity might
occur; and it was more than hinted, that one object of the late
retrogression from our front was to draw us beyond our regular line,
and so place us in an exposed situation. The utmost caution and
circumspection were accordingly enjoined, as the only means of
frustrating his designs; and of these the necessity naturally
increased as daylight departed.
That I might not be taken by surprise, in case any attack was made
upon me after dark, I devoted a good proportion of the day to a
minute examination of the country in front and on each flank of my
post. For this purpose I strolled over the fields, and found them
strewed with the decaying bodies of what had once been soldiers.
The enemy, it was evident, had not taken the trouble to bury even
their own dead; for, of the carcasses around me, as many, indeed
more, were arrayed in French than in British uniforms. No doubt
they had furnished food for the wolves, kites, and wild dogs from
the thickets—for the flesh of the most of them was torn, and the
eyes of almost all were dug out; yet there was one body, the body of
a French soldier, quite untouched; and how it chanced to be so, the
reader may judge for himself, as soon as he has perused the
following little story.
About the middle of the line covered by my chain of sentries was a
small straggling village, containing a single street, about twenty
cottages, and as many gardens. In the street of that village lay
about half-a-dozen carcasses more than half devoured by birds and
beasts of prey, and in several of the gardens were other little
clusters similarly circumstanced. At the bottom of one of these
gardens a Frenchman lay upon his face, perfectly entire, and close
beside the body sat a dog. The poor brute, seeing us approach,
began to howl piteously, at the same time resisting every effort, not
on my part only, but on the part of another officer who accompanied
me, to draw him from the spot. We succeeded, indeed, in coaxing
him as far as the upper part of the garden—for, though large and
lank, he was quite gentle; but he left us there, returned to his post
beside the body, and, lifting up his nose into the air, howled again.
There are few things in my life that I regret more than not having
secured that dog; for it cannot I think be doubted that he was
watching beside his dead master, and that he defended him from the
teeth and talons which made a prey of all the rest. But I had at the
time other thoughts in my mind, and circumstances prevented my
paying a second visit to the place where I had found him.
Among other happy results, the more forward position in which the
pickets were now placed, furnished me with an opportunity of
obtaining a less imperfect view of the city and defences of Bayonne
than any which I had yet obtained. I say less imperfect; for even
from the tops of the houses no very accurate survey could be taken
of a place situated upon a sandy flat, and still five or six miles
distant. But I saw enough to confirm me in the idea which I had
already formed, that the moment of attack upon these
intrenchments, come when it might, could not fail to be a bloody
one.
Daylight was by this time rapidly departing; and it became
incumbent upon me to contract the chain of my vedettes, and to
establish my party a little in the rear of the cottage where we had
been hitherto stationed. By acting thus I contrived to render myself
as secure as a detachment numerically so small can ever hope to be.
There were two lakes, or rather large ponds, in the line of my
position—one on the left of the main road, the other on the right;
indeed, it was near the opposite extremity of the last-mentioned lake
that we unexpectedly found ourselves exposed to a charge of
cavalry during the late battle. Of these lakes I gladly took
advantage. Planting my people in a large house about a hundred
yards in rear, I formed my sentinels into a curved line, causing the
extremities to rest each upon its own pond, and pushing forward the
centre in the shape of a bow. "Now, then," thought I, "everything
must depend upon the vigilance of the watchmen;" and, to render
that as perfect as possible, I resolved to spend the whole night in
passing from the one to the other. Nor did I break that resolution. I
may safely say that I did not sit down for five minutes at a time from
sunset on the 24th till sunrise on the 25th.
The snow, which during an hour or two in the afternoon had ceased,
began again to fall in increased quantities after dark. The wind, too,
grew more and more boisterous every moment; it roared in the
woods, and whistled fearfully through the ruined houses; and at
every pause I could distinctly hear the wolf's long howl, and the
growl and short bark of the wild dogs, as they quarrelled over the
mangled carcasses scattered round me. Near the margin of the
right-hand lake, in particular, this horrible din was constantly audible.
There lay there, apart from each other, about ten bodies, of whom
seven wore the fragments of a British uniform; and on these a whole
troop of animals, from the thickets beyond, gorged themselves.
Close beside one of these bodies I had been under the necessity of
planting a sentinel; and the weakness of my party would not permit
me to allow him a companion. He was rather a young man, and had
selected the post for himself, in order to show that superstitious
terrors had no power over him; but he bitterly lamented his temerity,
as the situation in which I found him showed.
I visited his post about half an hour after he had assumed it—that is
to say, a little before midnight: he was neither standing nor sitting,
but leaning against a tree, and was fairly covered with a coat of
frozen snow. His firelock had dropped from his hand, and lay across
the chest of the dead man beside whom he had chosen to place
himself. When I spoke to the sentry, and desired to know why he