"You ask what's campaigning? As out the truth must,
'Tis a round of complaining, vexation, disgust,
Night marches and day, in pursuit of our foes,
Up hill or down dale, without prog or dry clothes;
And to add to our pleasure in every shape,
The French give us doses of round shot and grape."
Military Panorama, vol. ii.
On the evening of the 11th October, the armed guerillas who hovered on the wooded mountains which look down on the rough old winding Roman highway that leads from the dilapidated citadel of Crato to Portalegre, saw the glitter of arms in the yellow sunshine, the flashing of polished barrels and bright bayonets, and the waving of uncased colours, amid the clouds of rolling dust that betoken the march of troops; and ere long, the same picturesque gentry, in their mantles, sombreros, and sheepskin zamarras, might have heard the martial rattle of the British drum, and the shrill notes of the fife, together with wilder strain of the Scottish bagpipe, echoing between the green and fertile ranges of the sierra that there forms the northern boundary of Alentejo, and the sides of which are clothed in many places by groves of olive, laurel and orange trees; but from the latter the golden fruit had long since been gathered, ere it was quite ripe, to save it alike from the marauding soldiery of friend and foe.
Covered with the dust of a march of twenty miles from the rustic village of Gaviao, they were our old friends of the 25th, the Highlanders, and Warriston's detachment, that were now approaching the head-quarters of the division to which they were to be attached.
On this route from the Bay of Maciera, Quentin had undergone all the misery of a soldier's life during the wet season in Portugal, where the towns were then in ruins and desolate, the country utterly destroyed, and where every one who was not in arms seemed to have fled towards the coast, for, like the breath of a destroying angel, the armies of France had passed over the entire length of the land from Algarve to Galicia, laying all desolate in that wicked spirit of waste which has been so peculiar to the French soldier in all ages.
Each day, in lieu of the old Scottish reveille welcoming the morning, Quentin had heard the sharp note of the warning bugle, or of the drummer beating hastily the générale, through the ruined streets of Santarem, of Abrantes or elsewhere; through the equally silent lines of tents when they encamped on the mountains, or the miserable bivouac when they halted in some wild place where whilom maize or Indian corn grew, summoning the drowsy and weary soldiers to their ranks for the monotonous march of another day.
From the bare boards, the hard-tiled floor, or perhaps the cold ground, whereon our volunteer had slept with his knapsack for a pillow, he had been roused by the voices of the sergeant-major, or Buckle the adjutant, shouting in the grey morning, "Fall in, 25th—stand to your arms—turn out the whole!" while the rain that swept in sheet-like torrents along the desolate streets, and the gale that tore in angry gusts among the ruined gables and shattered windows, formed no pleasant prelude to a day's march that was to be begun without other breakfast, perhaps, than a ration biscuit soaked in the half-stale fluid that filled his wooden canteen.
In camp, the tents were made to hold twelve soldiers each; but some of these were always on duty. All lay with their feet to the pole and their heads to the wall or curtain. Each man's pack was his pillow, and each slept, if he could, with a blanket half under and half over him. The rain always sputtered and filtered through in their faces, till the drenched canvas tightened, and the water was carried off by a little circular trench.
Quentin shared Askerne's tent with his two subalterns.
So the night would pass, till the cry of "Rouse!" rang along the lines, and the bugles sounded the assembly, when the blankets were rolled up and strapped to the knapsacks; the wet tents were struck and folded; the pegs and mallets replaced in their bags, and the troops prepared to march in the grey morning haze, weary, wet, stiff and sore, by reposing on the damp sod.
Quentin had always fancied a bivouac a species of military pic-nic, minus the ladies, pink cream, and champagne; but on the first night he lay in one, when the baggage guard was lagging in the rear and no tents were pitched, as he was drenched in a soaking blanket under the cold October wind that swept down the rocky sierra, he began to have serious doubts whether man was really a warm-blooded animal.
"Ugh!" grumbled Monkton on this night, "who, with brains in his head-piece, would become a soldier?"
"You remind me," said Askerne, as he shook the water for the twentieth time from his bear-skin cap, "of a story I have heard of Maitland, one of our early colonels who served on the staff of the Duke of Marlborough. It was at Blenheim, I think, when he was riding along the line accompanied by the colonel and another aide-de-camp, whose head was suddenly shattered by a cannon shot from the Bavarian artillery. Perceiving that Maitland looked long and fixedly at the fallen man, Marlborough said angrily—
"'Colonel Maitland, what the devil are you wondering at?'
"'Simply, that how a man possessed of so much brains as our poor friend, ever became a soldier,' replied Maitland, and the phlegmatic victor of Blenheim and Ramilies smiled as he rode on."
Then the dinner during a halt on the march was not tempting, and the cuisine was so decidedly bad that even Monkton could not joke about it. The slices of beef fried in a camp-kettle lid, or broiled on an old ramrod—beef that had never been cold (the miserable ration bullocks after being goaded in rear of the troops for miles by muleteers and mounted guerillas, being shot, flayed and cut up the moment the drum beat to prepare for dinner) was always tough as india-rubber; while the soup which the soldiers tried to make with a few handfuls of rice and the bones of the said bullocks, lacked only the snails mentioned by Peregrine Pickle, to make it resemble the famous black broth of the Spartans.
A little more of this common-place detail, and then we have done.
For all Quentin suffered, the novelty of treading a new soil and all the varied scenery of Portugal could scarcely make amends; yet there were times when he could not but view with interest and pleasure the old arches and aqueducts, the stony skeletons of departed Rome, the ruined amphitheatres and temples, especially that of Diana which Quintus Sertorius built at Evora, while remains of baths and cisterns, columns, capitals and cornices of marble and jasper lying prostrate among the reeds and weeds in wild places, made him think of Dominie Skaill and the rapture with which he would have lingered over them. Then there were the beautiful vineyards, the verdant valleys where the lemon and orange trees grew; the steep frowning sierras, wild and barren, but majestic; the fertile plain overlooked by the thirteen spires of Santarem; and the old Roman bridges, spanning rivers that rushed in foam down the granite steeps to mingle with the Tagus.
Little convents perched in solitudes where the French had failed to penetrate, and where now the bells rang in welcome to the British; tiny wayside chapels and holy wells, presided over by local saints; wooden crosses and cairns that marked where some paisano or guerilla had been shot by the French—green mounds that marked where the French, butchered in their turn, had been buried without coffin or shroud, all seemed to tell of the new and strange land he traversed.
Though stout and hardy, poor Quentin's powers of endurance were sorely taxed. In his knapsack were all the necessaries of a soldier—to wit, one pair of shoes and long gaiters of black cloth, shirts, socks, and mitts; a forage cap, brushes, black-ball, pipeclay, hair-ribbon, and leather. He had to carry a blanket and great-coat, a canteen of wood for water, and a canvas havresack for provisions was slung over the right shoulder; a pouch with sixty rounds of ball cartridge was over the left; add to these his musket, bayonet, belts, and grenadier cap, and the reader may believe that the poor volunteer felt life a burden before he saw the hill and spires of Portalegre.
Stiff, sore, and weary, on halting he was unable to remove his trappings, or even to take off his cap without the assistance of his servant; and he usually found himself all over livid marks, as if he had been beaten about the back and shoulders with a stick. Not the least of his discomforts was to march under the hot morning sun after a night of rain, with two wet pipeclayed cross-belts smoking upon his chest.
"Ah, if Flora Warrender or Lady Rohallion could see me now!" he would think, when, at the close of each day's march, he lay breathless and powerless on the floor of a billet, or the sod of a camp, or whatever it might chance to be!
Use, however, becomes second nature, and after a time Quentin learned to carry all his harness with ease, or ceased to feel it a burden.
"Châteaux en Espagne!" He was a skilful builder of such edifices, and had often erected one of great comfort and magnificence for himself; but he found a difficulty in dreaming of them while lying under a drenched blanket, or in a tent on the sides of which the rain was rushing like Rounceval peas, while he had only a knapsack for a pillow, and Brown Bess for a bedfellow.
In the Highland regiments the gentlemen volunteers carried simply a claymore and dirk; in other regiments generally a musket only; but Cosmo was resolved to grind Quentin to the utmost; thus he compelled the poor lad to carry all the trappings of the stoutest grenadier.
Rowland Askerne, who loved the lad for his unrepining temper, manly spirit, and gentleness, and who, like the entire regiment, saw how studiously the haughty colonel ignored his existence, was unremitting in kindness to him; and Monkton never ceased to encourage him in his own fashion.
"Well, well," he would say, "it's queer work just now, of course; but some of these fine days you will receive a parchment from the king, greeting you as his 'trusty and well-beloved,' appointing you ensign to that company, whereof, I hope, Richard Monkton, Esquire, is captain; so take courage, Kennedy, my boy!"
He strove to do so, but felt thankful with all his heart for the prospect of a few days' halt, as the regiment approached the western gate of Portalegre, where a captain's guard of Cazadores was under arms as the Borderers marched in with bayonets fixed and colours flying, their band playing General Leslie's march, "All the Blue Bonnets are bound for the Border," since 1689 their invariable quick step. And now its lively measure woke all the echoes of this singularly picturesque old Portuguese town, which crowns the summit of a hill, where its narrow, dark, and tortuous streets, with quaint mansions overhanging the roadway, are surrounded by an old wall, among the ruins of which may be traced the foundations of twelve great towers, and a castle where, as the monks tell us, dwelt Lysias the son of Bacchus!
The town was crowded by the regiments composing the division of Sir John Hope; thus, the deserted convents, the two hospitals, and even the episcopal palace, had all become temporary barracks; and now in the stately chambers where the Bishops of Lisbon and the Counts of Gaviao, of old the Lords of Portalegre, with their white-robed prebends, or their steel-clad titulados, held their chapters and courts, and where a hundred years before the period of our story, Philip, Duke of Avignon, received the submission of the ancient city, the rollicking Irishman sung "Garryowen" as he pipeclayed his belts or polished his musket; the grave and stern Scottish sergeant daily and nightly called the roll, and John Bull in his shirt sleeves or shell jacket might be seen cooking his rations under a splendid marble mantelpiece, which bore the bishop's mitre and the count's coronet, with the knightly paete gules of Christ, and the green fleur de lis of St. Avis, while the fuel was supplied by the cedar wood of fine old cabinets, or gilded furniture that had survived the sojourn of the Marshal Duke d'Abrantes and his suite in the same place.
The grenadiers of the Borderers were all billeted in a narrow and antique street, which was overshadowed by the vast façade of the cathedral; and there, from the open lattices of their room (in a house the proprietors of which were either dead or had fled) Askerne and Quentin sat smoking cigars and enjoying some of the purple wine of Oporto, from the cool, vaulted bodega of a neighbouring wine-house, and with their feet planted on a charcoal brasero, they felt, on the evening after their arrival, for the first time, that they were somewhat at home and could take their ease, with belts off and coats unbuttoned. And so they sat and watched, almost in silence, the swift-coming shadows of the October evening as they deepened in the quaint vista of the old Portuguese street, where the costumes were so striking and singular; the citizen who seemed to have no lawful occupation but smoking, in his ragged mantle and broad sombrero; a secular priest with his ample paunch and shovel-shaped chapeau; a white-robed Carmelite or grey Franciscan, flitting, ghostlike, amid the masses of red coats who lounged about the doors and arcades, most of them smoking, and all chatting and laughing, till the stars came out, when the bugles would sound tattoo, and when all loiterers would have to turn in, save the quarter guards and inlying picquet.
These were ordered to be of considerable strength, as a numerous band of homeless and lawless Spanish and Portuguese guerillas, under a runaway student of Salamanca, named Baltasar de Saldos, hovered among the hills. This band was of somewhat dubious loyalty, as the members of it, more than once, had scuffles with the British foraging parties, and even fired on them—the alliance between this country and Spain being so recent, that after the long and vexatious wars of the preceding century, the people could not understand it.