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In August, 1813, as the preparations for the renewed siege of San Sebastian were advancing, the besieged demonstrated their confidence by celebrating the Emperor’s birthday with a splendid illumination. The castle, upon whose crest it was exhibited, is seen from a great distance; and the besiegers could plainly read the letters of fire in which the name of Napoléon was written high in air.

The incidents of the siege I have derived chiefly from Napier’s History of the War in the Peninsula, book xxii. chapters 1 and 2, and from Jones’s Journals of Peninsular Sieges. The topography of San Sebastian will be found sufficiently illustrated in either of those works.

The small castle of La Mota is most picturesquely situated like a crown on the conical hill of Monte Orgullo, which rising immediately behind the town westward, is nearly four hundred feet high, and washed by the sea. “The Hill has a broad base of 400 by 600 feet, and is crowned by fort La Mota.” Jones, Journal of Peninsular Sieges, vol. ii.

General Jones’s description of cutting off the aqueduct, and converting it into a globe of compression, is thus prosaic but practical and deadly:—“The parallel crost a drain level with the ground, 4 feet high, and 3 feet wide, through which ran a pipe to convey water into the town. Lieut. Reid ventured to explore it, and at the end of 230 yards, he found it closed by a door in the counterscarp, opposite to the face of the right demi-bastion of the hornwork: as the ditch was narrow, it was thought that by forming a mine, the explosion would throw earth sufficient against the escarpe, only 24 feet high, to form a road over it: eight feet at the end of the aqueduct was therefore stopped with filled sand bags, and 30 barrels of powder of 90 lb. each, lodged against it, and a saucisson led to the mouth of the drain.” Journals of the Sieges undertaken by the Allies in Spain, Supplementary Chapter. The aqueduct had been cut off at the commencement of the siege by the Spanish general, Mendizabal. “It was formed into a globe of compression designed to blow, as through a tube, so much rubbish over the counterscarp as might fill the narrow ditch.” Napier, Hist. book xxi. c. 3. This plan was subsequently realized, and with complete success, “creating” says Jones “much astonishment in the enemy,” at the period of the first assault, which took place on the 25th July, five weeks before the second and memorable storming. I have transferred the incident to the latter part of the siege.

The incident of the discovery of the spring upon Monte Orgullo after the cutting off of the aqueduct, but for which fortunate accident the town would have been probably forced to surrender much sooner, was communicated to me by an officer who was present at the siege. It was found about half way up the cliff where it overhangs the ocean, and surrounded by masonry is carefully preserved to the present day. The water is excellent, and the flow abundant. There were not wanting French partisans at the time, especially amongst the elderly female residents in San Sebastian, who believed the discovery of this spring to be miraculous!

When Marshal Berwick attacked San Sebastian in 1719, he threw up batteries on the same Chofre hills where the Allies now planted theirs. He then pushed his approaches along the isthmus, and established himself on the covered-way of the land front. As soon as the breach was practicable, the governor capitulated. But the present governor, Ney, was made of different stuff. Capitulation was the last thing that he thought of, and Napoléon’s instructions to the defenders of besieged towns were never more terribly fulfilled than by this very gallant man. “Napoléon’s ordinance,” says Napier, “which forbade the surrender of a fortress without having stood at least one assault, has been strongly censured by English writers upon slender grounds. The obstinate defences made by French governors in the Peninsula were the results. * * It may be reasonably supposed that, as the achievements of Napoléon’s soldiers far exceeded the exploits of Louis (XIV.)’s cringing courtiers, they possessed greater military virtues.”—Hist. book xxii. c. 1.

The attack was in a great degree carried on from the midst of “circling orchards.” From the ground taken up by the besiegers to Ernani, the whole country is covered with orchards.

For the costume and other particulars of the Basque barqueras, or boat-girls of the Bidassoa and Urumea, the reader is referred to the tours of Madame D’Aulnoy and M. de Bourgoing. The xaquetilla is a “little jacket” or spencer.

As reference is made to the Guerrillas in this canto, the following brief sketch of the leaders may be acceptable:—

Mina was a man of powerful frame and noble aspect—a fine specimen of Nature’s nobility. He was rather tall, of portly size, with fine chest and shoulders, and gigantic arms. His features were more English than Spanish in their aspect, being by no means dark, and their expression powerful, dignified, and heroic. There is a fine portrait of him in Somerset House, London. Like almost all the Guerrilleros, however, he was cruel. The French, whom they cut off by their most harassing mode of warfare, were mercilessly slaughtered. Mina, who was of the common class of peasant-farmers, began with a band of about twenty men whom he formed from amongst his neighbours, appointing a sergeant and corporal. Repeated successes and the character of the chief swelled this band to 300 in number. Mina then appointed a lieutenant. The latter plotted against his commander, and Mina shot him dead with a pistol, after taxing him with his treason, in presence of his men. The rough Spanish mountaineers liked his daring and resolute character, his band swelled to a thousand, and his new lieutenant again conspired to oust his leader. Mina had this man drowned in a well. He was subsequently left unmolested in his command, until his powerful genius organized and led an army. At his death, which occurred about ten years since in Barcelona, he was a Field Marshal, a Grandé of Spain, and Vice-Roy of Navarre. His widow became Aya or Governess to the present Queen of Spain, Isabel, and held that post till the expulsion of Espartero. Mina had a brother, Xavier Mina, who entered the regular army at an early period of life, and likewise rose to the rank of Field Marshal. He was treacherously shot in Mexico by Morillo.

The Empecinado was in person a still finer man than Mina, but of a much less pleasing aspect. His face was stamped with savage resolution and ferocity. His appearance was strictly Spanish, his complexion being much darker than that of Mina. Both were black-haired, but the Empecinado’s was of a raven intensity of jet. He was one of the strongest men in Europe, tall and square-built—a Hercules to the eye as well as in reality. Some nearly incredible feats are recorded of his prodigious strength. The last of all was the most worthy of note, and recalls the main incident of our fine old English ballad of “Adam Bell, Clym o’ the Clough, and William of Cloudeslie.” During the fatal year of the Duke of Angoulême’s invasion, 1823, when so many Constitutionalists fell victims to Ferdinand’s gloomy ferocity, and Riego was villainously butchered at Madrid, the Empecinado was seized by the myrmidons of Absolutism at a village about twenty miles distant, caged and tortured for three days, and at the end of that time led out for execution. At the foot of the furca or gallows-tree, with one effort he burst the thick cord with which his arms were bound, and seized a gun from one of the soldiers near him. Had he not been instantly slain, there is little doubt that with the butt-end he would have slaughtered a hecatomb of the satellites of power. But the whole file poured their fire into him at once, and he was hung notwithstanding, though the rope was adjusted on a corpse! The Curate Merino was distinguished for bush-fighting, and a rather treacherous and Parthian mode of assault, and his aspect corresponded with his character. His influence over his comrades was secured by promises of eternal happiness.

Blanca’s figuring in childhood in the character of an angel is thus accounted for. The feast of San Sebastian is every year a great event in that ancient town. The celebration is in many respects interesting, including a procession in which female children chosen for their beauty take a very prominent part, bearing baskets of flowers, arrows typical of the martyr’s fate, and other interesting emblems. Their dresses are of the richest description—a little gaudy, to be sure, but beneath the brilliant sky of Spain this is, perhaps, excusable. They represent angels, and are provided with crowns set with mock diamonds, rubies, and topazes of the largest size, and with gauze wings bound round with gold or silver tissue. Short skirts of the ballet class, satin shoes, and white silk stockings, complete an array of splendour which excites, as may well be believed, terrific admiration in their mammas and envy in all the rest of the town. A chorus from time immemorial is sung to celebrate their progress, of which the burthen is:

Vivan las niñas

De San Sebastian!

III. “Bartolomeo’s heights”—“Antigua’s rocks.”

Convents in the vicinity of San Sebastian, which were seized by the besiegers and fortified.

“And comes the battering train of cannon fell.”

Ma il Capitan, ch’espugnar mai le mura

Non crede senza i bellici stromenti.

Tasso, Ger. Lib. iii. 71.

V. “—War proclaiming ‘to the knife’ ’Gainst Tyrants!”

“Guerra al Cuchillo!” the celebrated proclamation of Palafox at the Siege of Zaragoza.

“Like the Caÿstrian bird.”

——Quæ Asia circum

Dulcibus in stagnis rimantur prata Caystri.

Virg. Georg. i. 382.

“With death-notes rife.”

——Ut olim

Carmina jam moriens canit exequialia cygnus.

Tabuit; inque leves paulatim evanuit auras!

Ovid. Met. xiv. 430.

These lines are dictated by the same feeling, which prompted Cervantes’s last poetical address (in anticipation of death) to the great Conde de Lemos:

Puesto ya el pié en el estribo,

Con las ansias de la muerte,

Gran Señor, esta te escribo.

X. “Soon in Rey a noble foeman knew:”

The French Governor of San Sebastian.

XI. “’Neath rapid Ocean’s amorous embrace.”

Labitur ripâ, Jove non probante,

Uxorius amnis.

Horat. Carm. i. 2.

“And on the Sierra swung the Convent bells.”

San Bartolomeo.

“The stabled charger bids the monk retire.”

Sir Thomas More commemorates the housing of cattle in churches. “They stop the course of agriculture, reserving only the churches, that they may lodge their sheep in them.” (Utopia, book i.) Bayle has a similar story in his Dictionary of an abbot who converted his church into a stable, an example which was speedily followed by revolutionary France. During the French invasion of Portugal the cavalry were frequently quartered in churches, and during the Miguelite war in that country I have been assured that the same thing was witnessed more than once, and I know of a Constitutionalist, at present a dignified, clergyman, who upon its being found that the priest was absent upon some Saint’s festival, stept forward himself and said mass for the assembled soldiers, booted and spurred as he was and in dragoon regimentals! I have often seen this pious gentleman in Lisbon, whom the populace declare to have taken from an image of the Virgin the ring which he now sports upon his finger!

XII. “Olia’s side.”

The batteries of Monte Olia commanded the Castle at a distance of 1,600 yards, from the north side of the Urumea, Olia and Orgullo buttressing the entrance of the river magnificently on either side, and standing apart like giant ramparts.

“The Mirador.”

A battery on the eastern side of Monte Orgullo. The name signifies “a look out,” the use to which it was formerly applied. It reminded me very much of the Signal House at Gibraltar, only that I missed those sapphire and chrysolite tints of the Mediterranean, which struck me so much when I saw the moon rise from that elevated ground under the auspices of the stalwart Sergeant MacDonald.

XIII. “And totter to their base Tirynthian walls.”

—Τίρυνθά τε τειχιόεσσαν.—Hom. Il. ii. 559.

Tiryns is the first walled city upon record. Its walls were supposed to have been erected by the Cyclops, and the stones of which they were composed were of such prodigious size, that the least of them could not be moved by a pair of oxen. (Pausanias, lib. ii.) The ruins subsist to the present day, and the traces are still gigantic. Pindar mentions Tiryns in his Olympionics, Nemeonics, and Isthmionics. These shattered remains present the earliest specimen of the Cyclopean architecture.

“The deadly sappers’ stroke that like an earthquake stuns.”

This was the first time that sappers were employed by us in the Peninsular sieges, or that a corps of sappers formed any regular portion of the British army. It was likewise the first time that Shrapnell shells were used.

XIV. “But what can like the British bayonet mar

Thy prowess, France?”

The bayonet, originally a French invention (deriving, as is well known, its name from the town of Bayonne), became ultimately the very instrument of French defeat—for by the universal testimony of military men, when wielded by British hands, the French have invariably fled before it:—

—Neque enim lex æquior ulla,

Quàm necis artifices arte perire suâ.

Ovid. de Arte Amandi.

But it would be as grossly unjust as ungenerous to dispute the ardour and frequent brilliancy of French courage. Upon this subject the discriminating testimony of Napier is as follows: “Place an attainable object of war before the French soldier and he will make supernatural efforts to gain it, but failing he becomes proportionally discouraged. Let some new chance be opened, some fresh stimulus applied to his ardent, sensitive temper, and he will rush forward again with unbounded energy: the fear of death never checks him, he will attempt any thing. But the unrelenting vigour of the British infantry in resistance wears his fury out.”—Hist. War in the Penins. book xxiv. chap. 6.

XV. “With glancing steel upon the trenches’ edge.”

Wie glänzt im sonnenstrahl

So bräutlich hell der stahl—

Hurrah!

Körner, Schwertlied.

How glances bride-like bright

The steel which sunbeams strike,—

Hurrah!

XVII. “See many a bark that swan-like floats the tide.”

Eis mil nadantes aves pelo argento

Da furiosa Thetis inquieta.

Camóens, Lus. iv. 49.

“Was never seen the like!”

“It was probably the first time that an important siege was maintained by women’s exertions; the stores of the besiegers were landed from boats rowed by Spanish girls!”—Napier.

XIX. “The small black olive that the mountain loves.”

—Lecta de pinguissimis

Oliva ramis arborum.—Hor. Epod. ii.

XXI. “As Atlas’ daughter in her sunlit isle.”

Calypso.

Ἄτλαντος θυγάτηρ ὀλούφρονος, ὅστε θαλάσσης. κ. τ. λ.

Hom. Od. i. 52.

XXIII. “Both man and dame excludes the Nereid throng.”

——τὸν εὐγενῆ

... πεντήκοντα Νηρῄδων χορόν.

Eurip. Iph. in Taur. 273.

“The illustrious band of the fifty Nereids.”

XXIV. “And swam with matchless skill—their element the sea.”

Nadan en su cristal ninfas bizarras,

Compitiendo con el candidos pechos.

Lope de Vega, Sonetos.

XXVII. —“Britannia’s hand

Made Earth and Ocean feel her trident stroke.”

Vide Virg. Geor. i. 13.

—“Feeble councils numbed at home the arms

Which even thus paralyzed Gaul’s legions broke.”

Under the administration of Lord Melville, the Navy of England for the first time sustained disasters in battle, and ships containing stores and money for the Peninsular army were suffered to be taken on the passage by French and American cruisers; while the despicable absurdity was witnessed of two successive investments and assaults of San Sebastian without the co-operation of a fleet.

XXVIII. “Oh, glorious rivalship!” &c.

Vide Wordsworth’s “Convention of Cintra.”

“Gibraltar’s griefs—St. Vincent’s memory rending.”

The memorable siege, in which the Spaniards were finally defeated on the 13th September, 1782.—The battle of St. Vincent, in which Jervis destroyed the Spanish fleet, 14th February, 1797.

XXIX. “Spain’s Partidas.”

Partidas was the generic name of the partisan bands, who maintained the indomitable Guerrilla warfare against the French, and of whom there were not less than 50,000 at one period in Spain. A favourite weapon of these legitimate successors of the Almugavars, or ancient mountaineer troops of Spain, was the trabuco, or blunderbuss. The two most famous Partida chiefs were those whose names are recorded in the text. The Mina alluded to is Espoz y Mina, the Scanderbeg of Spain, uncle to the Student of the same name.

XXX. “But Nations ne’er yet died when Tyrants pleased!”

The strongest proof of the inherent vitality of a Nation is that Spain survived the villanies of Godoy.

XXXIII. “Reptile, dost Him defy?”

Wer empfinden

Und sich unterwinden

Zu sagen: ich glaub’ ihn nicht?

Der Allumfasser!

Der Allerhalter!

Goethe, Faust.

“Who can feel, and dare to say: ‘I believe in Him not?’ the All-encompasser, the All-sustainer!”