right embraced a beautiful well-wooded country, thickly studded
with towns and villages, as far as the eye could reach.
Sir Thomas Graham, with the left wing of the army, had, the same
morning, passed the Bidassoa, and established them, also, within the
French boundary. A brigade of Spaniards, on our right, had made a
simultaneous attack on La Rhune, the highest mountain on this part of
the Pyrenees, and which, since our last advance, was properly now a
part of our position. The enemy, however, refused to quit it; and the
firing between them did not cease until long after dark.
The affair in which we were engaged terminated, properly speaking,
when we had expelled the enemy from the mountain; but some of our
straggling skirmishers continued to follow the retiring foe into the
valley beyond, with a view, no doubt, of seeing what a French house
contained.
Lord Wellington, preparatory to this movement, had issued an order
requiring that private property, of every kind, should be strictly
respected; but we had been so long at war with France, that our men
had been accustomed to look upon them as their natural enemies, and
could not, at first, divest themselves of the idea that they had not a
right to partake of the good things abounding about the cottage-doors.
Our commandant, however, was determined to see the order rigidly
enforced, and it was, therefore, highly amusing to watch the return of
the depredators. The first who made his appearance was a bugler,
carrying a goose, which, after he had been well beaten about the head
with it, was transferred to the provost-marshal. The next was a
soldier, with a calf; the soldier was immediately sent to the
quarter-guard, and the calf to the provost-marshal. He was followed by
another soldier, mounted on a horse, who were, also, both consigned to
the same keeping; but, on the soldier stating that he had only got the
horse in charge from a volunteer, who was at that time attached to the
regiment, he was set at liberty. Presently the volunteer himself came
up, and, not observing the colonel lying on the grass, called out
among the soldiers, "Who is the ---- rascal that sent my horse to the
provost-marshal?" "It was I!" said the colonel, to the utter confusion
of the querist. Our chief was a good deal nettled at these
irregularities; and, some time after, on going to his tent, which was
pitched between the roofless walls of a house, conceive his
astonishment at finding the calf
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