AND AMERICAN RURAL SPORTS. 



289 



SPORTING WITH HUMANITY. 



The following narrative is extracted from the journal of a 

 British officer who served under the Duke of Wellington, 

 at the time of Massena's memorable retreat from before 

 Lisbon. 



"The French army had long suffered terrible privations. 

 We all knew that Massena could not much longer retain his 

 position, and the "Great Lord" (so the Spaniards call 

 Wellington) allowed famine to do the work of a charge of 

 bayonets. Our army was weary of the lines. It felt as if 

 cooped up by an enemy it yet despised, and would have 

 gladly marched out to storm the formidable French en- 

 campment; and such was the first idea that struck many of 

 us, when, on the 5th of March, the army was put in motion, 

 and the animating music of the regimental bands rang 

 through the rocky ridges of Torres Vedras. But it was 

 soon universally understood, that the French were in full 

 retreat; there was now no hope of a great pitched battle, 

 and all that I could expect was, that as our regiment formed 

 part of the advance, we might now and then have a brush 

 with the rear-gviard of the French, which was, you know, 

 composed of the flower of the army, and commanded by 

 Michael Ney, the ' bravest of the brave. ' 



"I will give you, in another letter, an account of the 

 most striking scenes I witnessed during the pursuit after our 

 ferocious enemy. They had been cheated out of a victory 

 over us, — so they said, and so in Gallic presumption, they 

 probably felt, — when, some months before, Massena beheld 

 that army which he threatened to drive into the sea, frown- 

 ing on him from impregnable heights, all bristling with 

 cannon. Instead of battle and conquest, and triumph, they 

 had long remained in hopeless inactivity, and at last, their 

 convoys being intercepted by the guerillas, they had en- 

 dured all the intensest miseries of famine. Accordingly, 

 when they broke up, the soul of the French army was in a 

 burning fever of savage wrath. The consummate skill of 

 their leaders, and the unmitigated severity of their disci- 

 pline, kept the troops in firm and regular order; and cer- 

 tainly, on all occasions, when I had an opportunity of see- 

 ing the rear-guard, its movements were most beautiful. I 

 could not help admiring the mass moving slowly away, like 

 a multitude of demons, all obeying the signs of one master 

 spirit. Call me not illiberal in thus speaking of our foe. 

 Wait till you hear from me a detailed account of their mer- 

 ciless butcheries, and then you will admit, that a true knight 

 violates not the laws of chivalry in uttering his abhorrence 

 of ***** . The ditches were often literally 

 filled with clotted and coagulated blood, as with mire — the 

 4 D 



bodies of peasants, put to death like dogs, were lying there 

 horribly mangled; little naked infants, of a j^ear old, or less, 

 were found besmeared in the mud of the road, transfixed 

 with bayonet wounds, and in one instance, a child, of about 

 a month old, I myself saw with the bayonet left still stick- 

 ing in its neck; young women and matrons were found 

 lying dead with cruel and shameful wounds; and, as if some 

 general law to that effect had been promulgated to the army, 

 the pi-iests were hanged upon trees by the road side. But 

 no more of this at present. 



"I wish now to give you some idea of a scene I witness- 

 ed at Miranda do Cervo, on the ninth day of our pursuit; 

 yet I fear that a sight so terrible cannot be shadowed out, 

 except in the memory of him who beheld it. I entered the 

 town about dusk. It had been a black, grim, and gloomy 

 sort of a day — at one time fierce blasts of wind, and at 

 another perfect stillness, with far-off thunder. Altogether 

 there was a wild adaptation of the weather and the day to 

 the retreat of a great army. Huge masses of clouds lay 

 motionless on the sky before us; and then they would break 

 up suddenly, as with a whirlwind, and roll off in the red 

 and bloody distance. I felt m3'self, towards the fall of the 

 evening, in a state of strange excitement. My imagination 

 got the better entirely of all my other faculties, and I was 

 like a man in a grand but a terrific dream, who never thinks 

 of questioning any thing he sees or hears, but identifies all 

 the phantasms around with a strength of belief, seemingly 

 proportioned to their utter dissimilarity, to the objects of 

 the real world of nature. 



"Just as I was passing the great Cross in the principal 

 street, I met an old haggard looking wretch — a woman, who 

 seemed to have in her hollow eyes an unaccountable expres- 

 sion of cruelty — a glance like that of madness; but her de- 

 portment was quiet and rational, and she was evidently of 

 the middle rank of society, though her dress was faded and 

 squalid. She told me (without being questioned) in broken 

 English, that I would find comfortable accommodation in 

 an old convent that stood at some distance, among a grove 

 of cork trees; pointing to them at the same time with her ' 

 long shrivelled hand and arm, and giving a sort of hysteric 

 laugh. You will find, said she, nobody there to disturb 

 you. 



"I followed her advice with a kind of superstitious ac- 

 quiescence. There was no reason to anticipate any adven- ' 

 ture or danger in the convent ; yet the wild eyes and the 

 wilder voice of the old crone powerfully affected me ; and 

 thougli, after all, she was only such an old woman as one 

 may see any where, I really began to invest her with many 

 imposing qualities, till I found that, in a sort of reverie, I 

 had walked up a pretty long flight of steps, and was stand- 

 ing at the entrance of the cloisters of the convent. I then 



