CHAPTER II.

DURING the night of November 8th, the Imperial quarters were removed from Vittoria to Miranda. Next day the whole army of the centre, of which our hussars formed a part, commenced its march under the command of Napoleon himself. We were to make a determined attempt upon Burgos, where the centre of the Spaniards was stationed, then, by a rapid advance, to menace the flanks of their right and left in Biscay, and towards the frontiers of Navarre and Arragon. We wished to prevent these troops, if they retired, from concentrating themselves at Madrid; and to destroy their communications, by throwing ourselves on their rear, if they offered any resistance.

To effect this, our army of the right, composed of the troops under Marshals Victor and Lefevre, were to prosecute their march against the army of Blake, who, having been repulsed from Durango and Valmeceda, was now retiring upon Espinosa. Our army of the left, commanded by Marshals Lannes and Moncey, remained in the neighbourhood of Logrono and Tafalla, waiting only for the result of the action, which we confidently expected at Burgos, to ascend the Ebro, and march towards Saragossa.

On the evening of the 9th, the Imperial quarters were taken up at Breviesca. The army, commanded by the Emperor, was cantoned in the neighbourhood of the town. The inhabitants of the country had all fled to the mountains when we approached. At daybreak of the 10th, Marshal Soult, with a division of infantry, went to reconnoitre the positions of the enemy in the direc tion of Burgos. On arriving at the village of Gamonal, he was met with a discharge of thirty pieces of cannon. The French received it as the signal for attack. Marshal Soult, without waiting for the rest of our army which followed, instantly engaged and broke the Walloons and Spanish guards who formed the enemy's principal strength. Marshal Bessieres then arriving with the cavalry, successfully attacked the wings, completed their discomfiture, and entered Burgos pell-mell with the fugitives.

Of the whole army, our brigade of hussars alone was not engaged. Our cantonment was an out-ofthe-way place, about two leagues from Breviesca. The adjutant, whose duty it was to bring us our orders to march, went astray, from not having a guide; and we only set out at nine in the morning to follow the army. The whole day we pursued the same track, without suspecting what had passed in the forenoon. When night approached, we discerned at a great distance the fires of the advanced guard. Notwithstanding the darkness, we perceived, by the motion of our horses, that we were in the act of passing a field of battle. Every now and then they slackened their pace, * A French league is about 23 English miles. VOL. II.

B

and lifted their feet cautiously, as if afraid of doing injury to the inanimate dead who lay below. Sometimes they would stop for a moment, and, bending their heads, would smell with evident terror the carcasses of the horses that had been killed.

Burgos was completely deserted by its inhabitants. That large city was one vast solitude when our troops arrived there after the battle, and it was at once given up to be pillaged. In the quarter where we entered, the confused hum of voices, and the noise of the soldiers going hither and thither, seeking provisions and cooking utensils in the forsaken houses, were heard every where around us. To afford light to themselves, they carried in their hands immense waxen tapers, which they found in the neighbouring convents. In a distant part of the city, less resorted to by our soldiers, the hollow mournful moanings of the sick and aged were heard, who, too feeble for flight, had taken refuge in a church, where they were crowded together in heaps. They awaited there the death which they believed approaching, repeating their prayers with their clergy. The glass windows of the church were dimly lighted with sacred lamps. The Spaniards, in the full confidence that they would obtain a great victory over us, had collected immense quantities of wool to take to the south of France. We passed through the enormous packs, built up like two lofty walls on either side, which they confidently expected to take with them along with the baggage of their troops. It was but one hour to midnight when we arrived at the place where we were appointed to bivouac, on the banks of the Arlanzon. At daybreak we saw, in the shallow rivers which

ran near us, the corpses of some Spanish soldiers and monks, who had been killed in the battle of the preceding day.

On the 11th, at sunrise, our troop of light ca valry commenced to explore the country up the Arlanzon. We discovered at a distance, as we proceeded up the river, bands of the townsmen and peasantry skulking behind the heights, or among the precipices of the opposite banks. Often we perceived their heads from time to time raised above the brushwood, to observe if we were past.

Some of our flankers fell in with a few poor nuns, who had abandoned Burgos during the battle of the preceding day. These sisters, some of whom had never been beyond their own cloisters, had fled in their terror as far as they had strength to go, and had come to hide themselves in the thickets adjoining the river. They were scattered about when they first saw us at a dis tance; but they ran together on our approach, and kept kneeling close beside each other, muffled in their cloaks, and their heads bent to the ground. One of them, who seemed to possess more courage than the rest, stood up, and placed herself before her companions. Her appearance indicated sincerity and dignity, and the calm stillness of despair. As the soldiers passed before her, while she touched the beads of her rosary, she addressed to them these three words, all she knew of our language," Bonjours, Messieurs Français," as if claiming their protection. These poor nuns were suffered to remain in peace.

We spent four days in a town about four leagues from Burgos, the name of which I never learned, as we found no person at whom to inquire. The

Imperial quarters continued at Burgos till the 22d, That town was the centre of all the military operations, and from thence it was easy to hold communications with the different corps in Biscay and Arragon, to attend to their movements, and to reinforce them if required.

The day after the engagement at Burgos, several detachments were sent in pursuit of the enemy, to annihilate an army which one victory had easily dispersed, but still could not have entirely destroyed. Ten thousand cavalry, with twenty pieces of light artillery, were despatched with all haste by way of Placencia, Leon, and Zamora, to fall be hind the English army, which was believed to be at Valladolid. Marshal Soult placed himself on the rear of the Spanish army of the left, by Villarcayo and Reynosa. A division of infantry proceeded by a near route, to take possession of the passes of the mountains of Saint Ander. These troops saw no more of the enemy, notwithstanding the rapidity of their march. Since the affair at Durango, the army of General Blake had in vain attempted to rally successively at Guenes and Valmeceda. Pursued by Marshal Victor in the direction of Espinosa, by Marshal Lefevre in that of Villarcayo, after two days hard fighting, it was at last completely overthrown on the 6th of November at Espinosa.

The Spanish armies of the centre and left having now been overcome in every direction, it was only necessary to disperse their right, in order to march upon Madrid. For thie purpose, the corps of Marshal Ney was despatched from Burgos, through Lerma and Aranda, with instructions first to ascend the Douro, then to descend in the dis