THE BOY-GENERAL.

THE STORY OF JEAN CAVALIER.

THE BOY-GENERAL.

THE STORY OF JEAN CAVALIER.

'Guillot—you here! Why have you left the mountain of St. Julian?'

'To be with you, brother Jean—to fight for the Cevennes.'

'With a beardless face and a feeble hand!'

'I have about as much beard as you, mon frère; and if my hand be feeble, it has brought down many a wolf in Mialet and the Gevaudan,' replied Guillot, slapping the butt of his carbine emphatically.

The speakers were young Guillot Cavalier and his elder brother Jean, who was then, at the age of seventeen years, actually a general and second in command of the Camisard army, the Insurgent Protestants of Languedoc; who fought many a battle with Villars and De Montrevel, the best leaders of the age; who, with Roland, led the great revolt in 1703; and who in his twentieth year became a full colonel in the English army!

Both were very handsome lads, and both wore the white tunic (in Languedocian, camisa) to distinguish themselves from their enemies, and hence their well-known name of Camisards. Both were well armed, with swords, silver-mounted pistols, and short carbines; but the elder wore over his shoulder the scarf of a French general, and in his white velvet cap the wing of an eagle. Strong—and tender as strong—was the bond of affection between these two lads, who had both been born in the village of Ribaute, among the pastoral mountains north of the Valley of Garden; and though Jean was ready to face any peril and to 'do all that may become a man' for the cause in which he had been so suddenly made a leader, and in which he had already won such high distinction, his heart sank at the contemplation of Guillot—a delicate boy, and their mother's chief care—encountering the risks of that most savage and rancorous Civil War which now devastated Languedoc.

Jean, as a very little boy, had been bred a shepherd, and was afterwards apprenticed to a baker at Anduze; and it was from the employ of the latter that, with a carbine in his hand, he went forth to become a Camisard, 'and soon proved himself to be,' as history tells us, 'a most able general, as well as a powerful prophet and preacher.'

'Return, Guillot—return,' he is said to have urged again; 'our poor mother cannot spare us both.'

'La Bonne Madelon is the mother we must serve just now, and I will not quit your camp,' replied Guillot, whose eyes lit up, as he referred to one of those wild, half-frenzied, and wholly enthusiastic prophetesses, or female preachers, who thronged the camps of the Camisards, attended their councils, and followed them into battle.

'Then be it so,' said Jean Cavalier resignedly; adding, 'I have good news for you and all the faithful, Guillot. The Queen of Great Britain—the good Queen Anne—is sending a fleet to our aid.'

'Of what use will it be to us among the mountains?' asked Guillot, laughing.

'It brings us troops, Guillot—troops, who will help us to beat those of Montrevel,' replied Jean, referring to the expedition consisting of thirty-five British and twelve Dutch ships of the line, which was to sail on the 1st of July, 1703, from St. Helens, to the assistance of the Cevennois, and to the arrival of this expedition off the coast the elder Cavalier looked confidently forward to repulsing the column of De Montrevel, while Roland was fighting the King's troops elsewhere. And now to explain briefly what brought all these affairs about.

In the 'Histoire des Pasteurs du Désert,' and other annals, we are told the terrible story of that Civil War in which 30,000 Cevennois perished in battle or on the scaffold, between November, 1702, and December, 1704. Well fitted for desultory warfare are the mountains of Cevennes, with their rocky labyrinth of deep gorges and dark defiles, which a mere handful of bold peasantry were able to hold against the best troops of Louis XIV., and where, to this hour, the population is almost entirely Protestant, inhabiting some six hundred villages, which are all but inaccessible.

The white-shirted Camisards had these steep ridges to encamp on; gorges for ambuscades; forests to rally in; paths trodden only by the wolf or the fox to retreat by; and caverns which became their arsenals and fortresses. Army after army came to annihilate these peasants as heretics, after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, but only to be destroyed or hurled in ruin and defeat into the valleys; but the miseries of the war, the slaughter of women and children, the burning and pillaging were fearful, and spread from thence to the ocean on the south, and the Rhone on the east, among the hundred churches of Dauphine. With much sublime piety and heroic valour the armed peasantry, as in the similar case of the Scottish Covenanters, combined a great amount of psalm-singing and the strongest religious fervour, bordering at times upon fanaticism, and prophets and prophetesses, like La Bonne Madelon, roused a wildness of enthusiasm never seen in France since the days of Joan of Arc. 'The spirit of resistance began to show itself, drawn forth by the recital of their wrongs, the denunciation of their tyrants, and the assurance of support from heaven; conventicles were held, in spite of the terrors of prison, torture, and the soldiery, and in the open air among the rocks and caverns.'

Roland and Cavalier levied their troops from the different parishes, each of which furnished its quota of armed men and money, and fresh heroes to fill up the vacancies in the ranks. Many believed themselves to be sword or bullet proof, while 'the seizures, tortures, executions by breaking on the wheel and burning alive (the common modes of punishing a Camisard), led to reprisals on their part—to the slaying of priests and the sacking and burning of Catholic churches.' But in the spirit of outrage, the French troops were far surpassed by the guerilla bands, called Florentins, in the pay of the Grand Monarque.

Jean Cavalier thought of these things keenly now, as he gazed on the soft boyish face of his brother Guillot, when posting his column of Camisards in ambush one morning, ere dawn, to give a hot welcome to the royal forces under the Sieur de Montrevel, an officer high in repute for great valour, but merciless in his severity.

The sound of the drums had died away, but the sheeny bayonets glistened in the sun, and the white Bourbon colours of the regiments, with their golden fleur-de-lys, were waving in the wind, as the column of royal troops began to penetrate a defile that was clothed with the olive, the vine, and the fig-tree. The church and hamlet there had perished by fire; the place was desolate; not a human being was visible, and without halting, the troops pushed on, with an advanced guard to 'feel the way,' in front, till they reached a portion of the defile where the impending rocks were higher, the way narrower, and the trailing vines had given place to the dense, dark, and woody luxuriance of forest trees. The flower of the column was composed of one of the four battalions of the ancient regiment of Champagne, raised so far back as the reign of Henry II.

'Halt!' cried the officer of the advanced guard, whose quick eye had detected the bright flash of steel amid the green branches. In another moment, a combination of fearful sounds burst like a storm upon the silent air, while the soldiers halted, panting with the exertion of climbing the long and steep ascent. An enormous fragment of rock, dislodged from above, crashed with the sound of thunder into the defile below, a mass that must have annihilated the entire advanced guard, had the officer not halted it in time. Other masses of rock and rubbish came thundering down, barring all advance, while more than a thousand voices made the defile re-echo with the shouts of fierce exultation, mingled with a religious hymn.

On the fallen rock in front there was suddenly seen a female, 'the Good Madelon,' kneeling in an attitude of frenzied supplication, her arms thrown wildly up, her hands clasped, her black hair floating loose, her drapery streaming on the wind, and by her side stood Cavalier. As yet no shots had been fired.

'Voilà! 'Tis the rebel Cavalier!' cried De Montrevel, almost leaping in his saddle with exultation; and his sharp words of command followed fast.

A volley was poured in front and on both flanks, and from these three points it was closely responded to; and then the soldiers, who were in great force, began, at the bayonet's point, to push up the woody sides of the defile, firing as they went and driving the peasantry before them; and meanwhile the prophetess—she of the supposed charmed life, La Bonne Madelon, remained on her knees immovable, absorbed in prayer, half seen, half hidden, amid the eddying smoke. Guillot strove to lead her aside, but in vain; and when a bullet grazed his cheek, he rushed away to join his brother, who, like him, strongly believed in the power of immunity from death possessed by Madelon, and was now busy in the act of concentrating and directing the operations of his scattered followers.

It is said that when the prophetess, whose eyes had in them the gleam of insanity, felt the bullets whiz about her, a sense of danger came with the sound, and that she opened her eyes and glanced about her, as if seeking to escape, but she was grasped by four soldiers of the line; and that when the Camisards beheld her feeble hands bound with cords, while her head sunk on her breast, and she was dragged away, they became for a time panic-stricken, and though they hovered on the precipice above the corpse-strewn defile, they ceased to fire, and gazed on her conveyance to the rear in a species of stupid wonder.

'She can save herself,' Cavalier is reported to have said, so perfect was his belief, as a credulous mountaineer, in her divine mission; 'we cannot rescue her now, but,' he added, lifting his cap and looking upward, 'some miracle from heaven will.'

But no miracle was wrought, and with his solitary prisoner the Sieur de Montrevel marched down, somewhat triumphantly, to the nearest town, the white houses of which could be seen a league or two distant from the mountains. That night Guillot, with a chosen party, stole from them, and entered the silent street, from which all the inhabitants had fled, hoping to find some trace of the Good Madelon, perhaps in the public prison, from which they might see a way to free her.

But Montrevel and his men had departed, leaving in the market-place a fearful object, which greeted the eyes of Guillot and his followers when daybreak came in. Suspended by the neck from a gibbet in the centre of the place hung the body of their prophetess in its well-known drapery, and literally full of bullets, as the departing Florentins had made a target of it. She had been a beautiful woman, whose husband and children had been cruelly destroyed before her, and sorrow had doubtless turned her brain.

Accustomed though they had become to atrocities, the Camisards gazed at each other in horror at this spectacle, and then bore away her body for interment, sadly, slowly, and reverentially, and from the side of her grave went up the united vow for vengeance!

The fleet of Sir Cloudesley Shovel failed to land either succour or allies, and returning to England, says Schomberg, in his 'Naval Chronology,' was off the Isle of Wight on the 16th of November; so the Camisards now had no hopes but in their own hearts and hands.

Intent on avenging the barbarous death of the Good Madelon, Jean Cavalier, with 1,500 Camisards, took post near La Tour de Bellot, a deserted sheep-farm and watch-tower to the westward of Alais, from whence he meant to issue and attack De Montrevel, who was, he believed, ignorant of his vicinity, and who, keeping somewhat careless guard, was encamped not far off among the mountains. In the afternoon the Camisards were plentifully supplied with food by a wealthy miller on the Garden, whom they believed to be true to their cause. By nightfall, Cavalier had reconnoitred all the country; and as the sun set, dark clouds gathered fast, and premature twilight shrouded the valleys. Through them the wind howled, foreboding a storm, and Cavalier laughed with stern joy, when telling his followers that their attack would be veiled by the war of the elements.

He had laid out his plans with wisdom, and alone, and a little apart from his troops, was waiting the time to give them the signal to move, when from all points around the Tour de Bellot burst forth a half-random storm of musketry, and the boom of cannon announced that the King's troops were upon him!

'We are betrayed!' cried Guillot, rushing bare-headed to his side.

'By whom?'

'The miller of the Garden!' replied Guillot, passionately.

And so it was; ere the Camisard outposts had been able to give the alarm, they were cut to pieces, and only Cavalier and a few of his men were able to sally from the tower before it was invested on all sides. Guillot and others were shut up in it! Furious were the efforts made by Cavalier—efforts urged by filial love and despair—to drive back the soldiers and relieve those in the tower, from the windows and every cranny of which its slender garrison poured a deadly fire for eight hours, till their ammunition was expended, and then the edifice was set on fire; 290 perished in it, says history, 100 Camisards lay dead outside, and around it were 1,200 of the King's troops killed or wounded!

Compelled to retire some distance, yet fighting every inch of the way, Cavalier beheld, with horror, the tower sheeted with fire. His soul died within him as he thought of his brother, the boyish and gentle Guillot, and all who were perishing there, and he strove to fight his way back just as day was breaking, and by the light of it he could see, apart from all the hurly-burly of the strife, a remarkable combat proceeding, and on the very verge of a cliff close by.

It was a boy—a boy, sword in hand—Guillot, fighting with a young officer of the Regiment of Champagne. His cap was off—his white camisa was stained by blood and dirt and scorched with fire. Borne back by bayonets, Cavalier could only look on in agony, as he saw his brother driven step by step to the very verge of the dreadful cliff behind him, and of which he was unaware. Unyielding, though retreating, Guillot kept parrying thrusts and warding cuts with consummate skill, till a cry escaped him, and he vanished!

A groan from the breast of Cavalier echoed that cry; a mist came over his sight, yet he continued to fight, like a blind man, to cover the retreat of the wreck of his followers, by whom wild justice was soon after done on the treacherous miller. He was seized, condemned to death, and led out to execution in front of the insurgents, who, according to their wont, knelt around him, while offering up prayers for his soul. His parting embrace was refused by his two sons, who served under Cavalier, and who looked on unmoved by the terrible death he had to die.

That his brother Guillot might perish in battle, or by torture in the hands of the enemy, Cavalier had always dreaded; but the catastrophe by which he lost him was altogether unconceived: and the fortunes of the conflict led him far from the vicinity of La Tour de Bellot, thus he could neither search for the remains of Guillot, nor bestow funeral rites upon them.

For months the war went on. The bright valour and cool judgment of Cavalier, 'the Boy-General,' for such he was, exalted him still more above all other leaders of the Camisards, and especially so when he succeeded in utterly defeating a considerable body of the royal troops at Martinarque, under the Sieur de Montrevel, who commanded them.

The 6th of April, 1704, saw Cavalier again betrayed by one he trusted. At the head of 900 foot and 300 horse, all well equipped, he entered the Vaunage, or Valley of Noyes, so called from a little town of that name, in the fertile district westward of Nismes, intending to waylay the Marechal de Montrevel, who was on the way to Montpellier, but was himself lured into a dreadful ambuscade, and surrounded on all sides by the royal troops, including a great body of King James's-Irish, who had recently fought at the battle of the Boyne.

On all sides burst forth from amid the shelter of trees and hedgerows the withering fire of musketry, the boom of the cannon, and the hissing showers of grape.

Undismayed by the sudden scene of carnage, and by numbers six times exceeding his own, Cavalier, perceiving a design of the enemy to completely cut him off, 'wheeled his column rapidly round under the hottest fire, and in the face of a charge of bayonets drew off his men, retreating in echelon—a masterly manœuvre of the baker's boy, which drew forth the admiration of the Marechal Duc de Villars.'

Eventually, however, his retreat was cut off, the royal troops occupied every height, every avenue and pass that remained, and nothing was left for him now but to cut his way out at all hazards, or die! He was not long in choosing. 'Throwing aside his magnificent uniform and white plume, he put on a common dress,' we are told, and ordering his comrades to close their ranks, made a headlong dash at the enemy.

'Notre Dame de frappe morte!' was the shout of the regiments of Champagne and Normandy, as they brought their bayonets to the charge; but Cavalier broke through the first line. In the attack on the second, he was singled out when discovered, and a soldier seized the bridle of his horse, but had his hand hewn off by a young Camisard wearing a scarlet scarf over his white camisa. He was next grasped by a dragoon, whom he pistolled; but now, beyond appeared another line and a whole squadron of dragoons barring his way to the Pont de Rosni—the only issue. Panic-struck, his fugitive horsemen poured madly down upon it sword in hand, forgetful for a time of their leader, who was in the rear, and who would probably have been cut off but for the young Camisard in the red scarf—his brother—his brother Guillot (of whose escape anon), who suddenly appeared upon the ground—'his brother, a boy ten (?) years old,' says the French account, 'who drew his horse across the bridge, and with a pistol presented to the fugitives, summoned them to defend their chief and not abandon him.'

Cavalier, with the remainder of his force, escaped into the forest of Cannes. This battle extended over all the ground from the mill of Langlode to the town of Noyes. Of one thousand dead who lay on the field, one half were Camisards. During the whole of the conflict one of their prophets, named Daniel Gui, stood on the summit of a rock, amid six female enthusiasts, three of whom were afterwards shot, invoking the God of Battles to favour their cause.

The miraculous restoration of his brother—for such it was deemed—alone was a palliation to the heart of Cavalier for the deep mortification of his defeat; and yet it had come about simply enough. Recent rains had formed a deep basin of water under the cliff from which he fell, in a place where jagged rocks alone had been visible shortly before. Sinking, he rose to the surface, struggled to the bank, faint and wounded, and had found shelter, till well and whole, in a shepherd's hut, till he could join his brother in the Valley of the Noyes, and now tender indeed was their meeting and the mutual embrace they gave each other.

But brief time had they for mutual explanations, as ere long the report of musketry began to wake the echoes of the forest, and Daniel Gui came rushing in with tidings that the Sieur de Lalande was putting to the sword the entire inhabitants of the village of Euzet. Entering it suddenly, he had found a bullock newly-skinned, and bales of hams, bread, and sausages made up for the men of Cavalier, whom he at once traced and attacked with vigour, and defeated with the loss of 170 men. Final vengeance now fell on the unhappy villagers of Euzet, which, together with a cavern close by, was found to be full of the wounded, ammunition, medicine, and stores of Cavalier's forces. This sealed the fate of the former; and every human being lying there was slaughtered, including the helpless creatures in the cavern. Such was the awful system on which this war was carried on.

Cavalier's commissariat was supplied by requisitions upon districts, irrespective of their faith, and when not given with goodwill, he was compelled to write thus to the chief magistrate of the place:

'MM.,—Vous ne manquerez point de nous préparer demain le diner, son peine d'être assiégé et mis à feu et à sang!—CAVALIER.'

But it was while he was still struggling manfully and bravely to maintain a desperate cause against the whole force of the French army that the crushing intelligence came to him of the fall of his compatriot, Roland Laporte. This was on the 13th of August, 1704, at Castelnau, near the Ners, a river which in winter rolls down from the mountains in a mighty flood.

His presence there would seem to have been betrayed to the Duc de Villars. At midnight, when he and his companions were fast asleep, the sentinel on the tower-head suddenly heard amid the stillness of the hour the distant noise of horses approaching at a furious gallop, and gave the alarm just as a column of cavalry was entering the town.

Half-clad and half-armed, the Camisards rushed to the stables, and mounting their horses bare-backed, rode off without saddles, bits, or spurs; thus they were soon after taken in a deep hollow way, and compelled to halt and dismount. Planting his back against an aged olive tree, Roland made a desperate resistance, to every summons of 'Rendez vous! bas les armes coquin!' replying by a blow of his sword, or shots from his pistols, a row of which he carried in his girdle. He slew several dragoons, ere one by a musket-shot brought him down, by a mortal wound, on which his comrades threw themselves above his body, and were seized and bound.

On the 16th of August his body was dragged at the tail of a cart into Nismes and burnt, while five of his companions were broken alive on the wheel around his funeral pyre. Many Camisards perished thus here, the most memorable executions being those of Catenat and Ravenel, who were burned alive, almost within sight of the battle-field on which they had defeated the Comte de Broglie.

Jean Cavalier found himself almost alone now, yet his spirit did not quail.

Marshal Villars had now come to the conclusion that the warfare seemed likely to become interminable; that it was possible to harass the hardy mountaineers of the Cevennes, but not to conquer them. So resolute was the spirit of the Camisards, so impregnable their hilly fortresses, that all hope of ending the war so long as one was left alive, was relinquished by this able officer; and we are told that in the heart of Cavalier, who beheld the sufferings of the peasantry from incessant toil and famine, there rose a great longing for peace, if it were possible with safety and honour; and on ascertaining that 10,000 of the Huguenots were ready to lay down their arms and submit to the king, he consented to hold an amicable parley with any officer the latter might send.

Cavalier's first interview was with Lalande, who was sent by Marshal Villars. 'Lalande surveyed the worn garments and pale cheeks of the young hero, whose deeds had reached the ears and troubled the mind of Louis XIV., in the midst of his mighty foreign wars; he looked upon the bodyguard of the rebel chief, and saw there, too, signs of poverty and extreme physical suffering, and believed that he knew how to treat with men in such a condition.'

He proffered a large sum in gold, not a coin of which Cavalier would touch, though he allowed his followers to accept it for their starving wives and children; and he made preliminary arrangements with Lalande for a final interview with the Marechal Duc de Villars.

It was in the summer of 1704 that the latter, the renowned antagonist of Marlborough, entered the garden of the Recollets, at St. Cesaire, near Nismes, the site of which is now occupied by a theatre, to discuss peace and war with 'the Boy-General,' Jean Cavalier, who, resolved to produce all the effect he could, appeared on this occasion magnificently mounted, with a richly-laced coat, and a hat plumed with white feathers. Cavalier's young face looked sad, we are told, and the tone of his voice was melancholy, 'and Villars looked on him with a deep admiration and sympathy.'

On this occasion Cavalier's bodyguard was a mounted force of Camisards in white tunics.

The result of this memorable conference was, that the insurgents laid down their arms on the assurances of justice and tolerance in religion to the persecuted Protestants of the Cevennes, and flattering promises of reward and rank in the army of France to Jean Cavalier; but neither one nor the other was destined to be kept or fulfilled, and the Place de Boucarini, at Nismes, was soon deluged with the blood of all who fell into the hands of the Government. The Camisards now repudiated the treaty made by Cavalier, and, finding himself reviled by many of these on the one hand, and neglected by the Court on the other he became an exile, and entered the army of Queen Anne at the head of a regiment entirely formed of Huguenots.

As a colonel, in his twentieth year, he fought in the British Army in Spain at the Battle of Almanza, under the Earl of Peterborough, and there, in the defeat, his battalion of Camisards was almost cut to pieces by the victorious French, and there young Guillot, its major, died sword in hand.

Of the after life of Cavalier we can trace little. It is only known that by the British Government he was made Governor of the Isle of Jersey, and died at Chelsea in the May of 1740.

It has been more than once asserted that he died in the Hospital a pensioner, which is a mistake the records there distinctly prove.

In the year before his death, on the 2nd of July, he and his countryman, Colonel Balthazar Rivas de Foisac, were appointed Major-Generals in the British Army.

THE

BUGLE-BOY OF BADAJOZ.

THE BUGLE-BOY OF BADAJOZ.

'Mother! mother! come out of the cold ground; come to your little José, who is so lonely now!' wailed a boy stretched on his mother's grave, while wetting with his tears the flowers that had been laid there, and the green turf, into which he dug his little hands in the wildness of his great grief.

It was in the cemetery of the Penha Convent at Cintra, and when ravaged Portugal lay wasted and bleeding under the feet of the French army, led by Marshal Junot, the Duc d'Abrantes, to Lisbon, in 1808, a period that seems long ago now, yet was fresh enough in the memory of our fathers.

It was on a glorious evening in autumn, and the hill of Cintra, the base of which is clothed with wood, but which terminates in loose crags and splintered pinnacles, was bathed in warm light, while every fissure was covered with amaryllis and aglow with crimson geranium, and giant evergreen oaks and cork-trees were intertwined with vines, all adding to the beauty of the scene.

On one hand towered up the hill with the Penha Convent, on the other were the ruins of a Moorish castle; but the sunshine and the scenery were lost on the orphan boy. He saw only his mother's grave, and all the rest of the world seemed dark to him indeed.

'Look up, my boy,' said a voice, as a hand was kindly laid on his neck, and, rising from the turf, he found himself face to face with an officer of Cazadores, or Portuguese Light Infantry. He was a handsome and pleasant-looking man, clad in green uniform faced with scarlet, and wearing silver epaulettes. 'Who lies here that you weep for?' he asked.

'My mother,' replied the boy, in a tone of infinite tenderness.

'And your father?'

'Was De Castro, the guerilla chief, whom the French shot at the gate of the Torre Vilha. You have heard, perhaps?'

'Yes; he was taken prisoner in Lisbon; a brave fellow—I knew him well,' replied the officer, with kindling eyes and lowering brow.

'My mother never held up her head afterwards—and—and three days ago she left me—and—and they brought her here,' said the boy, with a fresh fit of heavy weeping, as he pressed his knuckles into his inflamed eyes.

In tatters, and dusky in complexion, yet rich in colour, like the beggar-boys of Murillo's famous picture in the Dulwich Gallery, he was a handsome little fellow, with a clear olive skin, sparkling eyes of the deepest hazel, and thick, wavy black hair.

'Have you no brother or sister?' asked the officer, patting his uncovered head, for poor José was without hat or cap.

'None now. I had a sister once.'

'And she?'

'Was carried off by the French voltigeurs, and was never seen again. Poor Theresa!' said the boy, in a gasping voice.

'And have you no home, my little fellow?'

'None, but the church porch.'

'Then come with me, and I will find you another.'

'Where, senhor?'

'Under the colours of His Majesty Pedro the Third.'

The boy's face lighted up. It was too soon for him to despair yet; he had youth and hope, 'youth, with which the linen folds seem robes of purple, the chaplet of cowslips becomes a monarch's crown, and the wooden bench is as an ivory throne of empire.'

So little José Francisco de Castro, for such was his name, gave his hand in confidence to Captain Dom Pedro de Lobiera, and became a bugle-boy in the Seventh Regiment of Cazadores, among the Portuguese troops under the gallant Marshal Beresford, and destined to co-operate more immediately with that division of the British army which, led by Lieutenant-General Sir John Hope, took possession of Lisbon in 1808.

A curious combination of wrath and exultation made José's heart beat tumultuously on the day he first assumed his uniform, and he slung with a green cord over his shoulder the bugle with which he was to summon his comrades.

He had an admirable ear for music, and soon mastered all the many bugle-calls requisite for the manœuvres of light troops in the field, and by his coolness and bravery, while yet in his teens, became a prime favourite with his captain, with his colonel, the Viscount de Sa (whose 'orderly bugler' he became), and with the whole of the Seventh Cazadores he became a species of regimental pet.

When the battle of Salamanca was won by Wellington in the glorious summer of 1812, when we attacked the Duc de Ragusa, and when Park's Portuguese column was foiled in the first attempt to storm the Arapiles, two steep, rugged, and solitary hills that overlook the plain, it was José's bugle sounding the 'rally' amid the hottest of the fire that caused the southern hill to be re-won; and when Marshal Beresford was unhorsed and wounded in the leg, while charging at the head of the 11th Light Dragoons, and again while leading a Portuguese brigade, it was 'José de Castro, a bugle-boy of the Seventh Cazadores,' that helped him to remount, as the Portuguiz Telegrafo of that week records.

On the plains of Talavera de la Reyna, at the heights of Busaco, and by the green hill of Albuera, when the Anglo-Portuguese army fought Soult—that memorable hill, by whose slope, at the close of the terrible day, the men of our old 'Die Hards' of the 57th were seen lying in two distinct ranks, dead but victorious—the Seventh Cazadores, when wavering under the dreadful fire of the French infantry, and menaced by the heavy cavalry of Latour-Maubourg, were rallied in square by the bugle of José de Castro.

He was 'ever foremost in the path of danger,' says the Jornal de Commercio of Lisbon; 'and the notes of his bugle were heard in many of the desperate onsets and bayonet charges of those well-fought fields. In all these actions he did his duty; but his name ought ever to be remembered for a deed of valour, for which, at the time, he gained well-merited applause, and which was long afterwards passed from mouth to mouth whenever the terrible siege of Badajoz was mentioned.'

It is to the third siege of the city that the paper refers.

'Give me your hand, José,' said the Viscount de Sa on one occasion. 'What a boy you are! You beat the trumpeter who blew two trumpets at once at the siege of Argos.'

As yet he seemed to have a charmed life; no ball had ever touched him. He was a good, devout, and very grave boy, for, as Captain de Lobiera said, he believed 'that the spirit of his dead mother accompanied him wherever he went.'

It was on the 6th of March, 1812, that the army of Wellington broke up from its cantonments, and, ten days after, crossed the Guadiana, and three divisions, under Beresford and Picton, at once invested Badajoz, then garrisoned by five thousand men under Generals Phillipon and Vaillant, whose tenacious resistance caused some uneasiness to the British leader, as a defeat under its walls might have seriously disarranged all his plans for the future.

Before the Seventh Cazadores entered the trenches they had halted a few miles from Badajoz, after a long and harassing day's march. The rain fell in torrents that night. Amid the misty gloom, in the distance, the guns of the beleaguered city were seen to flash redly out upon the night, and weird was the glare of the port fires as they sputtered on the gusty wind.

All that comfortless night, José, like the rest of his comrades, spent the weary hours in the open air. He placed his canteen on the ground, put his knapsack above it, and, thus improvising a seat, strove to sleep, with his greatcoat and blanket spread over his shoulders for warmth. And when the chill gray dawn came, he was so stiff that, at first, he could scarcely place the cold mouth of the bugle to his lips.

'Now, my men—la générale!' cried the Viscount de Sa, as he leaped on his horse, and the buglers, at the head of whom stood little José de Castro, poured clearly and melodiously on the morning wind, 'the générale,' that old warning for the march—a warning long since disused in the British service, where it was well known once.

Then the Cazadores took the road for Badajoz, and that night were there in the trenches.

It is recorded of José that before the Cazadores marched that morning he and a comrade bugler, Diaz of Belem, gave up the little pay they possessed to repair the loss of a poor woman whose hen-roost had been pillaged of its inmates in the night.

The early weeks of 1812 were cold and rainy at Badajoz, and the howling tempests of wind often concealed at night the noise of the shovels and pickaxes, as the troops broke ground, within a hundred and sixty yards of Fort Picurina, and pushed forward the trenches, till they achieved an opening four thousand feet long—a work of five days' duration, under a dreadful shower of shot and shell.

Our artillery had succeeded in making a practicable breach, by which the columns of assault might enter whenever the order to advance was given; but the position of the enemy was strong by nature, and made more so by art. Enormous beams of timber, loaded shell, huge stones, hand grenades, cold shot, all to be launched from the hand, with relays of ready-loaded muskets, were there, for those who were to keep the breaches; in these, too, were hundreds of live bombs and sunken powder-barrels, ready to blow an assaulting force to pieces; and it became evident that the chances of that force proving successful were small, unless some of the unforeseen accidents of war turned the tide in their favour.

This point, say the Portuguese, it was the good fortune of José de Castro to achieve. For the actual truth of the episode which won him the name of 'The Bugle Boy of Badajoz,' we do not vouch. There is not a word of it in Napier, or in the despatches of the Duke of Wellington; but yet it was universally believed in the army of Marshal Beresford.

It is related in history that when the final, and, to so many, fatal, night of the 6th of April came—that awful night of horror and of triumph when Badajoz was won—when more than two thousand of our officers and men perished in the breaches alone, and when the heart of the 'Iron Duke' gave way to a passionate burst of grief for the slaughter of his gallant soldiers—on that night, we say, the 'unforeseen accident,' recorded by history, was a feint attack unexpectedly becoming a real one; but the Portuguese have it that José de Castro, being of an inquiring turn of mind, and having, during his service, had many opportunities of hearing the French bugle-calls, had learned them all to perfection, and now resolved to turn his knowledge thereof to good account.

After a lighted carcase, composed of the direst combustibles, and of giant size, had been flung blazing from the walls by the French, compelling the assault to be anticipated by half-an-hour, when the stormers neared the great breach, José and his comrade, Diaz of Belem, advanced with the rest of the Cazadores.

When Diaz was in the act of taking some brandy from his canteen, a sixteen-pound shot took off his head. Yet, bugle in hand, José kept on, resolved to put in practice the scheme he had formed, and with which he had acquainted his colonel, the Viscount de Sa, and his captain, De Lobiera.

As leaves are swept before a tempest, the stormers came sweeping up the rough débris of the breach covered with dead and wounded men, encumbered by these at every step, shells bursting, shot and grenades falling among them. Their shouts were terrible; the yells of the French more terrible still! Up, up they went, till they found the perilous gap was crossed by a glittering, dreadful, and impassable chevaux-de-frise, composed of sword-blades, keenly edged and sharply pointed, fixed in ponderous beams, chained together, and strongly wedged in the shot-riven ruins. Beyond it were masses of the French pouring in their deadly fire, sweeping the gap with sheets of lead as the wind sweeps a tunnel.

Under the chevaux-de-frise the gallant José contrived to creep unseen, and, getting beyond it, to conceal himself among a heap of dead. On again crept, his dark blue uniform, splashed with blood clay, enabling him to pass unnoticed among the French, till he reached an angle of the ramparts.

Then he put his bugle to his lips and blew loudly and clearly, again and again, above the awful din of the assault, the French recall!

On this the French gave way, fell back, and eventually fled across the river into Fort San Christoval, where, next day, they surrendered as prisoners of war to Lord Fitzroy Somerset, the future Lord Raglan of Crimean fame.

The action of José de Castro, say the Portuguese, was noised about, after the surrender of Badajoz, until it reached the ears of the Commander-in-Chief—the great Duke—who sent for him, and presented him with a sum equal to a hundred guineas English, which, in consequence of his youth, Captain Pedro de Lobiera was to pay him in small instalments. It is also said that the Duke gave the money from his own private purse. José also received a good service medal, and the Portuguese decoration No. 3.

He was now only eighteen, and the honours he received might have turned an older head; but he continued to be as grave, modest, and well-dispositioned as, when a boy, Captain de Lobiera found him beside his mother's grave in the cemetery of the Penha Convent at Cintra; and while many were promoted to commissions, he followed the fortunes of the Peninsular army with his bugle slung at his back.

That bugle was heard on the plains of Vittoria, and among the passes of the Pyrenees, where De Castro was wounded and conveyed to the town of Elizondo. There, while stretched on a pallet of straw, in the vestibule of a convent, which had been turned into a military hospital, he was attended and nursed by a lay sister, who turned out to be his sister Theresa, who had been carried off by the French, but had achieved her escape after their defeat and total rout at Vittoria.

It would be difficult to describe the mingled joy and grief of such a meeting; but both were of brief duration. As soon as José was reported fit for duty, he rejoined the Seventh Cazadores, with whom he served at Nivelle, Orthes, and Bordeaux.

His bugle was heard for the last time in battle near the hill of Toulouse, when he sounded the charge by the order of the Viscount de Sa. In that advance the latter fell wounded from his horse, and, seeing that Captain de Lobiera, the next senior officer, was defenceless, his sword-blade having been broken off near the hilt by a ball, he gave him his own, saying:

'Lead on, De Lobiera! forward, the Cazadores! I can do no more to-day.'

And once again the bugle of José sounded the command to charge.

When the army was disbanded at the peace, José endeavoured to support himself by teaching music, but in a way so humble that he led a life of privation and penury, and sought, in vain, a pension from the Portuguese Government.

It was at the little town of Golega, on the Tagus, in Portuguese Estramadura, that we last heard of 'the Bugler of Badajoz.' This was more than twenty years ago, and he was earning a precarious livelihood by teaching the cornet.

He was then an old man, bent with years and infirmity, and had for the last time renewed his prayer for a pension to the Portuguese Government. 'Let us charitably hope it will be granted,' said a writer in the Lisbon Jornal de Commercio of that year, 'for there is now in the Ministry a soldier who has not forgotten the part he bore himself in the bloody episodes of the Peninsular War, one who has left an arm on a gory battlefield, and whose hearing has been destroyed by the thunder of artillery—the noble and valiant Viscount de Sa (the son of his old colonel). This gallant soldier will yet have ears for the petition of the poor trombadero, and be able to award him the meed he merits.'

THE

VOYAGE OF THE 'BON ACCORD'.

THE VOYAGE OF THE 'BON ACCORD.'

My name is Bob Slingsby, and in the autumn of last year I was senior apprentice, or midshipman (for we wore a smart uniform), on board the good ship Bon Accord of Aberdeen, freighted from London to Hong Kong, and a few who may survive to read these lines will recall the story I am about to tell—the plain unvarnished one of a sailor boy (I was then only sixteen) in the Indian seas.

We had left Swatow on the 24th of September, after getting on board a pilot, who was the cause of all the mischief that followed.

The Bon Accord was a fine full-rigged clipper ship, of Aberdeen build, 900 tons, coppered to the bends, with masts that raked well aft; she was straight as an arrow in her planksheer, and was well armed, for there are some ugly customers to be met with in these seas beyond the ordinary track of our cruisers, as we found to our cost.

The ship's company consisted of Captain Archibald, a good and resolute seaman, who hailed from the port of Leith; three mates, the doctor, Joe Ruddersford, boatswain, two apprentices (myself and my chum, little Charlie Newcome, for we were three short according to our tonnage), and thirty men—thirty-eight all told, and a few lubberly Lascars who all bolted when the first sign of danger came.

We had been well warned on nearing Hong Kong to keep a bright look-out for Macao piratical boats, and particularly for one large lorcha manned by only such desperadoes as are to be found about these shores; and the captain of which, we were informed—Long Kiang by name—was as great a ruffian as ever figured of old, when Hong Kong was named by the Spaniards the Island of Ladrones, or thieves.

In a copy of the China Mail brought on board at Aden, we read a description of Long Kiang, which told us that he had been pierced and scarred by many wounds; that one of his eyes had been scorched out by gunpowder, and that his left arm, having been severely shattered by a shot from a swivel gun, had never been properly set, the fragments had worked themselves out, and this gave him the singular appearance of having an arm and elbow adhering to the shoulder by the flesh and tendons alone; yet this arm possessed double the strength of his right, and it was his boast that he had slain more men by it than with the other.

We made the name of Long Kiang a kind of joke—a bogie—on board during the voyage through the bay of Bengal and into the China seas, and had nearly forgotten all about him, when without other adventure than a foul wind or so we reached Swatow, some fifty miles distant from Hong Kong, and after anchoring for a little time, left it, as I have said, on the 24th of September, with a light fair wind, and by sunset had made an offing.

As evening deepened upon the crimson sea, the wind became lighter; then it fell calm, and the fore and main courses were hauled up, while the top-sails were left to flap idly against the masts; and now it was that a native boat came alongside with a pilot, who offered to take us to our destination for a certain sum in British money, and his services were accepted by Captain Archibald, to whom he showed, of course, good and well-attested certificates.

No trousers covered the long, lean, mahogany-coloured legs of this official; an ample abba was rolled round his body, and a tattered keffiah, of no particular hue, thrown loosely round his head, partly muffled his face, so that we could see but little of his features.

The wind freshened after a time; we let fall the courses and stretched them home, glad to make way on the ship; which had been drifting with a current.

Instead of standing by the binnacle and giving instructions to a steersman, the native pilot grasped the wheel unaided in his powerful hands, and from time to time it seemed to me that he cast his eyes oftener to the shore than aloft to keep the canvas full. As he stood there between us and the moonlight, his tall and muscular form and fantastic dress, when viewed in dark outline, had something weird and mysterious about them, and so thought Charlie Newcome, who was watching him narrowly, as we stood on the starboard side of the quarter-deck.

The mate of the watch was forward, looking after the 'ground tackle' and large anchor, and the captain was below, when suddenly Charlie, on whom the tall, stark figure of the stranger seemed to make an impression, twitched my sleeve and whispered:

'Look, Bob! look now! By Jove! isn't he like—like——'

'Like who?'

'Long Kiang, that we talked so much about—the fellow described in the China Mail.'

'You've got Long Kiang on the brain,' said I, laughing; but the laughter ceased when I did look.

The light breeze had partly deranged the Arab-like keffiah that enveloped his head, and by the rays of the binnacle lamp we saw that he was minus the left eye, that the whole of that side of his face was distorted as if scorched by powder, and for a moment or two the strange malformation of his left arm was distinctly visible, as he gasped one of the under-spokes of the wheel.

'It cannot be,' said I. 'How about his certificates, Charlie?'

'Another man's papers—stolen, no doubt.'

'If he should, after all, be Long Kiang,' I began, and then paused, for as I spoke the name seemed to catch his ear, and he turned on me his solitary eye, which in the moonlight glistened redly, like that of a rattlesnake. A knife of portentous length was in the same sheath with his chopsticks, a knife suggestive of cutting other things than yams or salt junk.

'Won't you youngsters turn in?' said the mate, coming aft. 'You are both in the middle watch.'

'Thank you, sir; not just yet,' said I, for, truth to tell, we were disposed to be wide awake as weasels.

Long Kiang had been such a standing joke during the latter part of our voyage—at least after leaving Aden—that neither of us, whatever we thought, ventured to tell our fears or suspicions to the mate, or to the men forward. While we were talking to the mate, the captain, who had come on deck, called him to the port side of the ship, which was going before the wind, but very slowly.

The captain was a tall, stout, and well-built man, with a florid complexion and a mass of iron-grey hair, luxuriant as when in youth, and likely to be so for years to come. There was an air of sturdy Scotch power and strength of mind and body about him that showed at once his resolute will and energetic brain.

He and the mate of the watch were in close conference at the port quarter, and looking at some object with an interest that soon became anxiety after they had resorted to the use of a night-glass, on seeing which the tall pilot grinned and showed all his white teeth like a row of dominoes.

'It is a lorcha—full of men, and evidently dodging us—a Macao lorcha, too,' said the captain, in a low voice. 'You see that craft?' he said suddenly to the pilot, who had evidently for some time affected not to do so.

'Si—si—yaas—senhor,' he replied in the broken lingo peculiar to Macao.

'And what do you think of her?'

'That piecey boat makey fightey if you meddle with her,' he replied quietly, in what is called 'pigeon English' in these regions.

'Oh, she will, will she?' exclaimed the captain; 'bring the starboard tacks aft. Keep the ship away a few points.'

But the breeze was so light that the lorcha was able to pass and repass us with ease, on each tack coming nearer us, and, indeed, it became but too evident that the steersman handled the ship in such a way that in a short time the stranger would be quite able to overhaul us. She was already within half-a-mile of us when Captain Archibald roughly accused the pilot of treachery, and ordered the third mate to take the wheel. Ere he could do so the native uttered a shout, quitted the spokes, letting them revolve at will, throwing the ship in the wind, and then he leaped overboard.

An exclamation burst from all, for had the breeze been fresher the top-mast would have snapped off at the caps and left us a helpless wreck; but the captain—quick, ready, and powerful—caught the wheel in a moment, brought the ship again upon a wind, and without looking whether the traitor who had left us sank or swam, ordered the ship to be close hauled, as she was clipper-built, and to be steered 'full and by.'

Some of the watch said the lorcha had picked up our pilot. Charlie and I now spoke, and not a doubt remained in the minds of all that we had been deceived by Long Kiang, who, using the papers of some man he had robbed, and very probably destroyed, had steered the ship to a part of the coast of Swatow, where his vessel and men had been concealed in some bay or creek.

By nine p.m. the lorcha, which we knew must be manned by the ferocious half-breeds who are the sons of Chinese and Tartar slaves, with a mixture of Caffre and Portuguese, the refuse of Macao, was so close, that in the moonlight we could see them distinctly, and reckoned that she must have at least seventy of these on board, and all armed to the teeth!

Charlie and I had read much about pirates and wild adventures, and had longed to meet some; and now the time had come with a vengeance!

The Scottish firm to whom the Bon Accord belonged had wisely armed her well.

'Now, my lads,' cried Captain Archibald, as all the small arms were brought on deck, and the crew mustered aft the mizenmast, 'obey me; act well and steadily; have faith in yourselves, for without it no man succeeds.'

A cheer responded, and under the care of the old boatswain, who had sailed with Archibald for more than twenty years, the guns were cast loose and loaded, and as some of our fellows belonged to the Royal Naval Reserve, they were at no loss how to go to work.

In common with several others, Charlie and I had revolvers; but somehow, as I loaded mine, my heart was beating wildly, and, like Charlie Newcome, I thought of my mother, far away in Kent, as I had never thought of her before!