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 Yedras. 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-guard 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 Tear-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 year 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 priests 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 myself, 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 
though, 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 
