HISTORY
OF THE
WAR IN THE PENINSULA

AND IN THE

SOUTH OF FRANCE,

FROM THE YEAR 1807 TO THE YEAR 1814.

BY

W. F. P. NAPIER, C.B.

COLONEL H. P. FORTY-THIRD REGIMENT, MEMBER OF THE ROYAL SWEDISH
ACADEMY OF MILITARY SCIENCES.

VOL. VI.

PREFIXED TO WHICH ARE

SEVERAL JUSTIFICATORY PIECES

IN REPLY TO

COLONEL GURWOOD, MR. ALISON, SIR WALTER SCOTT,

LORD BERESFORD, AND THE QUARTERLY REVIEW.

LONDON:

THOMAS & WILLIAM BOONE, NEW BOND-STREET.

MDCCCXL.

This volume was nearly printed when my attention was called to a passage in an article upon the duke of Wellington’s despatches, published in the last number of the “British and Foreign Quarterly Review.”

After describing colonel Gurwood’s proceedings to procure the publication of the despatches the reviewer says,

“We here distinctly state, that no other person ever had access to any documents of the duke, by his grace’s permission, for any historical or other purpose, and that all inferential pretensions to such privilege are not founded in fact.”

This assertion, which if not wholly directed against my history certainly includes it with others, I distinctly state to be untrue.

For firstly, the duke of Wellington gave me access to the original morning states of his army for the use of my history; he permitted me to take them into my possession, and I still have possession of them.

Secondly. The duke of Wellington voluntarily directed me to apply to sir George Murray for the “orders of movements.” That is to say the orders of battle issued by him to the different generals previous to every great action. Sir George Murray thought proper, as the reader will see in the justificatory pieces of this volume, to deny all knowledge of these “orders of movements.” I have since obtained some of them from others, but the permission to get them all was given to me at Strathfieldsaye, in the presence of lord Fitzroy Somerset, who was at the same time directed to give me the morning states and he did do so. These were documents of no ordinary importance for a history of the war.

Thirdly. Lord Fitzroy Somerset, with the consent of the duke of Wellington, put into my hands king Joseph’s portfolio, taken at Vittoria and containing that monarch’s correspondence with the emperor, with the French minister of war, and with the marshals and generals who at different periods were employed in the Peninsula. These also were documents of no slight importance for a history of the war, and they are still in my possession.

When I first resolved to write this History, I applied verbally to the duke of Wellington to give me papers in aid of my undertaking. His answer in substance was, that he had arranged all his own papers with a view to publication himself—that he had not decided in what form they should be given to the world, or when, probably not during his lifetime, but he thought his plan would be to “write a plain didactic history” to be published after his death—that he was resolved never to publish anything unless he could tell the whole truth, but at that time he could not tell the whole truth without wounding the feelings of many worthy men, without doing mischief: adding in a laughing way “I should do as much mischief as Buonaparte.” Then expatiating upon the subject he related to me many anecdotes illustrative of this observation, shewing errors committed by generals and others acting with him, or under him, especially at Waterloo; errors so materially affecting his operations that he could not do justice to himself if he suppressed them, and yet by giving them publicity he would ungraciously affect the fame of many worthy men whose only fault was dulness.

For these reasons he would not, he said, give me his own private papers, but he gave me the documents I have already noticed, and told me he would then, and always, answer any questions as to facts which I might in the course of my work think necessary to put. And he has fulfilled that promise rigidly, for I did then put many questions to him verbally and took notes of his answers, and many of the facts in my History which have been most cavilled at and denied by my critics have been related by me solely upon his authority. Moreover I have since at various times sent to the duke a number of questions in writing, and always they have been fully and carefully answered without delay, though often put when his mind must have been harassed and his attention deeply occupied by momentous affairs.

But though the duke of Wellington denied me access to his own peculiar documents, the greatest part of those documents existed in duplicate; they were in other persons’ hands, and in two instances were voluntarily transferred with other interesting papers to mine. Of this truth the reader may easily satisfy himself by referring to my five first volumes, some of which were published years before colonel Gurwood’s compilation appeared. He will find in those volumes frequent allusions to the substance of the duke’s private communications with the governments he served; and in the Appendix a number of his letters, printed precisely as they have since been given by colonel Gurwood. I could have greatly augmented the number if I had been disposed so to swell my work. Another proof will be found in the Justificatory Pieces of this volume, where I have restored the whole reading of a remarkable letter of the duke’s which has been garbled in colonel Gurwood’s compilation, and this not from any unworthy desire to promulgate what the duke of Wellington desired to suppress, but that having long before attributed, on the strength of that passage, certain strong opinions to his grace, I was bound in defence of my own probity as an historian to reproduce my authority.

W. F. P. NAPIER.

March 28th, 1840.

Having in my former volumes printed several controversial papers relating to this History, I now complete them, thus giving the reader all that I think necessary to offer in the way of answer to those who have assailed me. The Letter to marshal Beresford and the continuation of my Reply to the Quarterly Review have been published before, the first as a pamphlet, the second in the London and Westminster Review. And the former is here reproduced, not with any design to provoke the renewal of a controversy which has been at rest for some years, but to complete the justification of a work which, written honestly and in good faith from excellent materials, has cost me sixteen years of incessant labour. The other papers being new shall be placed first in order and must speak for themselves.

ALISON.

Some extracts from Alison’s History of the French Revolution reflecting upon the conduct of sir John Moore have been shewn to me by a friend. In one of them I find, in reference to the magazines at Lugo, a false quotation from my own work, not from carelessness but to sustain a miserable censure of that great man. This requires no further notice, but the following specimen of disingenuous writing shall not pass with impunity.

Speaking of the prevalent opinion that England was unable to succeed in military operations on the continent, Mr. Alison says:—

“In sir John Moore’s case this universal and perhaps unavoidable error was greatly enhanced by his connection with the opposition party, by whom the military strength of England had been always underrated, the system of[ii] continental operations uniformly decried, and the power and capacity of the French emperor, great as they were, unworthily magnified.”

Mr. Alison here proves himself to be one of those enemies to sir John Moore who draw upon their imaginations for facts and upon their malice for conclusions.

Sir John Moore never had any connection with any political party, but during the short time he was in parliament he voted with the government. He may in society have met with some of the leading men of opposition thus grossly assailed by Mr. Alison, yet it is doubtful if he ever conversed with any of them, unless perhaps Mr. Wyndham, with whom, when the latter was secretary at war, he had a dispute upon a military subject. He was however the intimate friend of Mr. Pitt and of Mr. Pitt’s family. It is untrue that sir John Moore entertained or even leaned towards exaggerated notions of French prowess; his experience and his natural spirit and greatness of mind swayed him the other way. How indeed could the man who stormed the forts of Fiorenza and the breach of Calvi in Corsica, he who led the disembarkation at Aboukir Bay, the advance to Alexandria on the 13th, and defended the ruins of the camp of Cæsar on the 21st of March, he who had never been personally foiled in any military exploit feel otherwise than confident in arms? Mr. Alison may calumniate but he cannot hurt sir John Moore.

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

In the last volume of sir Walter Scott’s life by Mr. Lockhart, page 143, the following passage from sir Walter’s diary occurs:—

“He (Napier) has however given a bad sample of accuracy in the case of lord Strangford, where his pointed affirmation has been as pointedly repelled.”

This peremptory decision is false in respect of grammar, of logic, and of fact.

Of grammar because where, an adverb of place, has[iii] no proper antecedent. Of logic, because a truth may be pointedly repelled without ceasing to be a truth. Of fact because lord Strangford did not repel but admitted the essential parts of my affirmation, namely, that he had falsified the date and place of writing his dispatch, and attributed to himself the chief merit of causing the royal emigration from Lisbon. Lord Strangford indeed, published two pamphlets to prove that the merit really attached to him, but the hollowness of his pretensions was exposed in my reply to his first pamphlet; theVide Times, Morning Chronicle, Sun, &c. 1828. accuracy of my statement was supported by the testimony of disinterested persons, and moreover many writers, professing to know the facts, did, at the time, in the newspapers, contradict lord Strangford’s statements.

The chief point of his second pamphlet, was the reiterated assertion that he accompanied the prince regent over the bar of Lisbon.

To this I could have replied, 1º. That I had seen a letter, written at the time by Mr. Smith the naval officer commanding the boat which conveyed lord Strangford from Lisbon to the prince’s ship, and in that letter it was distinctly stated, that they did not reach that vessel until after she had passed the bar. 2º. That I possessed letters from other persons present at the emigration of the same tenor, and that between the writers of those letters and the writer of the Bruton-street dispatch, to decide which were the better testimony, offered no difficulty.

Why did I not so reply? For a reason twice before published, namely, that Mr. Justice Bailey had done it for me. Sir Walter takes no notice of the judge’s answer, neither does Mr. Lockhart; and yet it was the most important point of the case. Let the reader judge.

The editor of the Sun newspaper after quoting an article from the Times upon the subject of my controversy with lord Strangford, remarked, that his lordship “wouldVide Sun newspaper 28th Nov. 1828. hardly be believed upon his oath, certainly not upon his honour at the Old Bailey.”

Lord Strangford obtained a rule to shew cause why a criminal information should not be filed against the editor for a libel. The present lord Brougham appeared for the[iv] defence and justified the offensive passage by references to lord Strangford’s own admissions in his controversy with me. The judges thinking the justification good, discharged the rule by the mouth of lord Tenterden.

During the proceedings in court the attorney-general, on the part of lord Strangford, referring to that nobleman’s dispatch which, though purporting to be written on the 29th November from H.M.S. Hibernia off the Tagus was really written the 29th of December in Bruton-street, said, “Every body knew that in diplomacy there were twoReport in the Sun newspaper copies prepared of all documents, No. 1 for the minister’s inspection, No. 2 for the public.”

Mr. Justice Bayley shook his head in disapprobation.

Attorney-general—“Well, my lord, it is the practice of these departments and may be justified by necessity.”

Mr. Justice Bayley—“I like honesty in all places, Mr. Attorney.”

And so do I, wherefore I recommend this pointed repeller to Mr. Lockhart when he publishes another edition of his father-in-law’s life.

COLONEL GURWOOD.

In the eighth volume of the Duke of Wellington’s Despatches page 531, colonel Gurwood has inserted the following note:—

“Lieutenant Gurwood fifty-second regiment led the “forlorn hope” of the light division in the assault of the lesser breach. He afterwards took the French governor general Barrié in the citadel; and from the hands of lord Wellington on the breach by which he had entered, he received the sword of his prisoner. The permission accorded by the duke of Wellington to compile this work has doubtless been one of the distinguished consequences resulting from this service, and lieutenant Gurwood feels pride as a soldier of fortune in here offering himself as an encouraging example to the subaltern in future wars.”—“The detail of the assault of Ciudad Rodrigo by the lesser breach is of too little importance except to those[v] who served in it to become a matter of history. The compiler however takes this opportunity of observing that colonel William Napier has been misinformed respecting the conduct of the “forlorn hope,” in the account given of it by him as it appears in the Appendix of the fourth volume of his History of the Peninsular War. A correct statement and proofs of it have been since furnished to colonel William Napier for any future edition of his book which will render any further notice of it here unnecessary.”

My account is not to be disposed of in this summary manner, and this note, though put forth as it were with the weight of the duke of Wellington’s name by being inserted amongst his Despatches, shall have an answer.

Colonel Gurwood sent me what in the above note he calls “a correct statement and proofs of it.” I know of no proofs, and the correctness of his statement depends on his own recollections which the wound he received in the head at this time seems to have rendered extremely confused, at least the following recollections of other officers are directly at variance with his. Colonel Gurwood in his “correct statement” says, “When I first went up the breach there were still some of the enemy in it, it was very steep and on my arrival at the top of it under the gun I was knocked down either by a shot or stone thrown at me. I can assure you that not a lock was snapped as you describe, but finding it impossible that the breach from its steepness and narrowness could be carried by the bayonet I ordered the men to load, certainly before the arrival of the storming party, and having placed some of the men on each side of the breach I went up the middle with the remainder, and when in the act of climbing over the disabled gun at the top of the breach which you describe, I was wounded in the head by a musquet shot fired so close to me that it blew my cap to pieces, and I was tumbled over senseless from the top to the bottom of the breach. When I recovered my senses I found myself close to George,[2] who was sitting on a stone with his arm broken, I asked him how the thing was going on, &c. &c.”

[vi]

Now to the above statement I oppose the following letters from the authors of the statements given in the Appendix to my fourth volume.

Major-General Sir George Napier to Colonel William Napier.

“I am sorry our gallant friend Gurwood is not satisfied with and disputes the accuracy of your account of the assault of the lesser breach at Ciudad Rodrigo as detailed in your fourth volume. I can only say, that account was principally, if not wholly taken from colonel Fergusson’s, he being one of my storming captains, and my own narrative of that transaction up to the period when we were each of us wounded. I adhere to the correctness of all I stated to you, and beg further to say that my friend colonel Mitchell, who was also one of my captains in the storming party, told me the last time I saw him at the commander-in-chief’s levee, that my statement was “perfectly correct.” And both he and colonel Fergusson recollected the circumstance of my not permitting the party to load, and also that upon being checked, when nearly two-thirds up the breach, by the enemy’s fire, the men forgetting their pieces were not loaded snapped them off, but I called to them and reminded them of my orders to force their way with the bayonet alone! It was at that moment I was wounded and fell, and I never either spoke to or saw Gurwood afterwards during that night, as he rushed on with the other officers of the party to the top of the breach. Upon looking over a small manuscript of the various events of my life as a soldier, written many years ago, I find all I stated to you corroborated in every particular. Of course as colonel Gurwood tells you he was twice at the top of the breach, before any of the storming party entered it, I cannot take upon myself to contradict him, but I certainly do not conceive how it was possible, as he and myself jumped into the ditch together, I saw him wounded, and spoke to him after having mounted the faussbraye with him, and before we rushed up the breach in the body of the place. I never saw him or spoke to him after I was struck down, the whole affair did not last above twenty-five or thirty minutes, but as I fell when about two-thirds up the breach I can only answer[vii] for the correctness of my account to that period, as soon after I was assisted to get down the breach by the Prince of Orange (who kindly gave his sash to tie up my shattered arm and which sash is now in my possession) by the present duke of Richmond and lord Fitzroy Somerset, all three of whom I believe were actively engaged in the assault. Our friend Gurwood did his duty like a gallant and active soldier, but I cannot admit of his having been twice in the breach before the other officers of the storming party and myself!

“I believe yourself and every man in the army with whom I have the honor to be acquainted will acquit me of any wish or intention to deprive a gallant comrade and brother-officer of the credit and honor due to his bravery, more particularly one with whom I have long been on terms of intimate friendship, and whose abilities I admire as much as I respect and esteem his conduct as a soldier; therefore this statement can or ought only to be attributed to my sense of what is due to the other gallant officers and soldiers who were under my command in the assault of the lesser breach of Ciudad Rodrigo, and not to any wish or intention on my part to detract from the distinguished services of, or the laurels gained by colonel Gurwood on that occasion. Of course you are at liberty to refer to me if necessary and to make what use you please of this letter privately or publicly either now or at any future period, as I steadily adhere to all I have ever stated to you or any one else and I am &c. &c.

“George Napier.”

Extract of a letter from colonel James Fergusson, fifty-second regiment (formerly a captain of the forty-third and one of the storming party.) Addressed to Sir George Napier.

“I send you a memorandum I made some time back from memory and in consequence of having seen various accounts respecting our assault. You are perfectly correct as to Gurwood and your description of the way we carried the breach is accurate; and now I have seen your memorandum I recollect the circumstance of the men’s arms not[viii] being loaded and the snapping of the firelocks.”—“I was not certain when you were wounded but your description of the scene on the breach and the way in which it was carried is perfectly accurate.”

Extract of a letter from colonel Fergusson to colonel William Napier.

“I think the account you give in your fourth volume of the attack of the little breach at Ciudad Rodrigo is as favorable to Gurwood as he has any right to expect, and agrees perfectly both with your brother George’s recollections of that attack and with mine. Our late friend Alexander Steele who was one of my officers declared he was with Gurwood the whole of the time, for a great part of the storming party of the forty-third joined Gurwood’s party who were placing the ladders against the work, and it was the engineer officer calling out that they were wrong and pointing out the way to the breach in the fausse braye that directed our attention to it. Jonathan Wyld[3] of the forty-third was the first man that run up the fausse braye, and we made directly for the little breach which was defended exactly as you describe. We were on the breach some little time and when we collected about thirty men (some of the third battalion rifle brigade in the number) we made a simultaneous rush, cheered, and run in, so that positively no claim could be made as to the first who entered the breach. I do not want to dispute with Gurwood but I again say (in which your brother agrees) that some of the storming party were before the forlorn hope. I do not dispute that Gurwood and some of his party were among the number that rushed in at the breach, but as to his having twice mounted the breach before us, I cannot understand it, and Steele always positively denied it.”

Having thus justified myself from the charge of writing upon bad information about the assault of the little breach I shall add something about that of the great breach.

[ix]

Colonel Gurwood offers himself as an encouraging example for the subalterns of the British army in future wars; but the following extract from a statement of the late major Mackie, so well known for his bravery worth and modesty, and who as a subaltern led the forlorn hope at the great breach of Ciudad Rodrigo, denies colonel Gurwood’s claim to the particular merit upon which he seems inclined to found his good fortune in after life.

Extracts from a memoir addressed by the late Major Mackie to Colonel Napier. October 1838.

“The troops being immediately ordered to advance were soon across the ditch, and upon the breach at the same instant with the ninety-fourth who had advanced along the ditch. To mount under the fire of the defenders was the work of a moment, but when there difficulties of a formidable nature presented themselves; on each flank a deep trench was cut across the rampart isolating the breach, which was enfiladed with cannon and musquetry, while in front, from the rampart into the streets of the town, was a perpendicular fall of ten or twelve feet; the whole preventing the soldiers from making that bold and rapid onset so effective in facilitating the success of such an enterprize. The great body of the fire of defence being from the houses and from an open space in front of the breach, in the first impulse of the moment I dropt from the rampart into the town. Finding myself here quite alone and no one following, I discovered that the trench upon the right of the breach was cut across the whole length of the rampart, thereby opening a free access to our troops and rendering what was intended by the enemy as a defence completely the reverse. By this opening I again mounted to the top of the breach and led the men down into the town. The enemy’s fire which I have stated had been, after we gained the summit of the wall, confined to the houses and open space alluded to, now began to slacken, and ultimately they abandoned the defence. Being at this time in advance of the whole of the third division, I led what men I could collect along the street, leading in a direct line from the great breach into the centre of the town, by which street[x] the great body of the enemy were precipitately retiring. Having advanced considerably and passed across a street running to the left, a body of the enemy came suddenly from that street, rushed through our ranks and escaped. In pursuit of this body, which after passing us held their course to the right, I urged the party forwards in that direction until we reached the citadel, where the governor and garrison had taken refuge. The outer gate of the enclosure being open, I entered at the head of the party composed of men of different regiments who by this time had joined the advance. Immediately on entering I was hailed by a French officer asking for an English general to whom they might surrender. Pointing to my epaulets in token of their security, the door of the keep or stronghold of the place was opened and a sword presented to me in token of surrender, which sword I accordingly received. This I had scarcely done when two of their officers laid hold of me for protection, one on each arm, and it was while I was thus situated that lieutenant Gurwood came up and obtained the sword of the governor.

“In this way, the governor, with lieutenant Gurwood and the two officers I have mentioned still clinging to my arms, the whole party moved towards the rampart. Having found when there, that in the confusion incident to such a scene I had lost as it were by accident that prize which was actually within my reach, and which I had justly considered as my own, in the chagrin of the moment I turned upon my heel and left the spot. The following day, in company with captain Lindsay of the eighty-eighth regiment I waited upon colonel Pakenham, then assistant adjutant-general to the third division, to know if my name had been mentioned by general Picton as having led the advance of the right brigade. He told me that it had and I therefore took no further notice of the circumstance, feeling assured that I should be mentioned in the way of which all officers in similar circumstances must be so ambitious. My chagrin and disappointment may be easily imagined when lord Wellington’s dispatches reached the army from England to find my name altogether omitted, and the right brigade deprived of their just meed of praise.”—“Sir,[xi] it is evident that the tendency of this note” (colonel Gurwood’s note quoted from the Despatches) “is unavoidably, though I do him the justice to believe by no means intentionally upon colonel Gurwood’s part, to impress the public with the belief that he was himself the first British officer that entered the citadel of Ciudad Rodrigo, consequently the one to whom its garrison surrendered. This impression the language he employs is the more likely to convey, inasmuch as to his exertions and good fortune in this particular instance he refers the whole of his professional success, to which he points the attention of the future aspirant as a pledge of the rewards to be expected from similar efforts to deserve them. To obviate this impression and in bare justice to the right brigade of the third division and, as a member of it, to myself, I feel called on to declare that though I do not claim for that brigade exclusively the credit of forcing the defences of the great breach, the left brigade having joined in it contrary to the intention of lord Wellington under the circumstances stated, yet I do declare on the word of a man of honour, that I was the first individual who effected the descent from the main breach into the streets of the town, that I preceded the advance into the body of the place, that I was the first who entered the citadel, and that the enemy there assembled had surrendered to myself and party before lieutenant Gurwood came up. Referring to the inference which colonel Gurwood has been pleased to draw from his own good fortune as to the certainty and value of the rewards awaiting the exertions of the British soldier, permit me, sir, in bare justice to myself to say that at the time I volunteered the forlorn hope on this occasion, I was senior lieutenant of my own regiment consequently the first for promotion. Having as such succeeded so immediately after to a company, I could scarcely expect nor did I ask further promotion at the time, but after many years of additional service, I did still conceive and do still maintain, that I was entitled to bring forward my services on that day as a ground for asking that step of rank which every officer leading a forlorn hope had received with the exception of myself.

[xii]

“May I, sir, appeal to your sense of justice in lending me your aid to prevent my being deprived of the only reward I had hitherto enjoyed, in the satisfaction of thinking that the services which I am now compelled most reluctantly to bring in some way to the notice of the public, had during the period that has since elapsed, never once been called in question. It was certainly hard enough that a service of this nature should have been productive of no advantage to me in my military life. I feel it however infinitely more annoying that I should now find myself in danger of being stript of any credit to which it might entitle me, by the looseness of the manner in which colonel Gurwood words his statement. I need not say that this danger is only the more imminent from his statement appearing in a work which as being published under the auspices of the duke of Wellington as well as of the Horse Guards, has at least the appearance of coming in the guise of an official authority,” “I agree most cordially with colonel Gurwood in the opinion he has expressed in his note, that he is himself an instance where reward and merit have gone hand in hand. I feel compelled however, for the reasons given to differ from him materially as to the precise ground on which he considers the honours and advantages that have followed his deserts to be not only the distinguished but the just and natural consequences of his achievements on that day. I allude to the claim advanced by colonel Gurwood to be considered the individual by whom the governor of Ciudad Rodrigo was made prisoner of war. It could scarcely be expected that at such a moment I could be aware that the sword which I received was not the governor’s being in fact that of one of his aide-de-camps. I repeat however that before lieutenant Gurwood and his party came up, the enemy had expressed their wish to surrender, that a sword was presented by them in token of submission and received by me as a pledge, on the honour of a British officer, that according to the laws of war, I held myself responsible for their safety as prisoners under the protection of the British arms. Not a shadow of resistance was afterwards made and I appeal to every impartial mind in the[xiii] least degree acquainted with the rules of modern warfare, if under these circumstances I am not justified in asserting that before, and at the time lieutenant Gurwood arrived, the whole of the enemy’s garrison within the walls of the citadel, governor included, were both de jure and de facto prisoners to myself. In so far, therefore, as he being the individual who made its owner captive, could give either of us a claim to receive that sword to which colonel Gurwood ascribes such magic influence in the furthering of his after fortunes, I do maintain that at the time it became de facto his, it was de jure mine.”

Something still remains to set colonel Gurwood right upon matters which he has apparently touched upon without due consideration. In a note appended to that part of the duke of Wellington’s Despatches which relate to the storming of Ciudad Rodrigo he says that the late captain Dobbs of the fifty-second at Sabugal “recovered the howitzer, taken by the forty-third regiment but retaken by the enemy.” This is totally incorrect. The howitzer was taken by the forty-third and retained by the forty-third. The fifty-second regiment never even knew of its capture until the action was over. Captain Dobbs was a brave officer and a very generous-minded man, he was more likely to keep his own just claims to distinction in the back-ground than to appropriate the merit of others to himself. I am therefore quite at a loss to know upon what authority colonel Gurwood has stated a fact inaccurate itself and unsupported by the duke of Wellington’s dispatch about the battle of Sabugal, which distinctly says the howitzer was taken by the forty-third regiment, as in truth it was, and it was kept by that regiment also.

While upon the subject of colonel Gurwood’s compilation I must observe that in my fifth volume, when treating of general Hill’s enterprise against the French forts at Almaraz I make lord Wellington complain to the ministers that his generals were so fearful of responsibility the slightest movements of the enemy deprived them of their judgment. Trusting that the despatches then in progress of publication would bear me out, I did not give my authority[xiv] at large in the Appendix; since then, the letter on which I relied has indeed been published by colonel Gurwood in the Despatches, but purged of the passage to which I allude and without any indication of its being so garbled. This omission might hereafter give a handle to accuse me of bad faith, wherefore I now give the letter in full, the Italics marking the restored passage:—

From lord Wellington to the Earl of Liverpool.

Fuente Guinaldo, May 28th, 1812.

My dear lord,

You will be as well pleased as I am at general Hill’s success, which certainly would have been still more satisfactory if he had taken the garrison of Mirabete; which he would have done if general Chowne had got on a little better in the night of the 16th, and if sir William Erskine had not very unnecessarily alarmed him, by informing him that Soult’s whole army were in movement, and in Estremadura. Sir Rowland therefore according to his instructions came back on the 21st, whereas if he had staid a day or two he would have brought his heavy howitzers to bear on the castle and he would either have stormed it under his fire or the garrison would have surrendered. But notwithstanding all that has passed I cannot prevail upon the general officers to feel a little confidence in their situation. They take alarm at the least movement of the enemy and then spread the alarm, and interrupt every thing, and the extraordinary circumstance is, that if they are not in command they are as stout as any private soldiers in the army. Your lordship will observe that I have marked some passages in Hill’s report not to be published. My opinion is that the enemy must evacuate the tower of Mirabete and indeed it is useless to keep that post, unless they have another bridge which I doubt. But if they see that we entertain a favourable opinion of the strength of Mirabete, they will keep their garrison there, which might be inconvenient to us hereafter, if we should wish to establish there our own bridge. I enclose a Madrid[xv] Gazette in which you will see a curious description of the state of king Joseph’s authority and his affairs in general, from the most authentic sources.

Ever, my dear lord, &c. &c.
Wellington.

VILLA MURIEL.

The following statement of the operations of the fifth division at the combat of Muriel 25th October, 1812, is inserted at the desire of sir John Oswald. It proves that I have erroneously attributed to him the first and as it appeared to me unskilful disposition of the troops; but with respect to the other portions of his statement, without denying or admitting the accuracy of his recollections, I shall give the authority I chiefly followed, first printing his statement.

Affair of Villa Muriel.

On the morning 25th of October 1812 major-general Oswald joined and assumed the command of the fifth division at Villa Muriel on the Carion. Major-general Pringle had already posted the troops, and the greater portion of the division were admirably disposed of about the village as also in the dry bed of a canal running in its rear, in some places parallel to the Carion. Certain of the corps were formed in columns of attack supported by reserves, ready to fall upon the enemy if in consequence of the mine failing he should venture to push a column along the narrow bridge. The river had at some points been reported fordable, but these were said to be at all times difficult and in the then rise of water as they proved hardly practicable. As the enemy closed towards the bridge, he opened a heavy fire of artillery on the village. At that moment lord Wellington entered it and passed the formed columns well sheltered both from fire and observation. His lordship approved of the manner the post was[xvi] occupied and of the advantage taken of the canal and village to mask the troops. The French supported by a heavy and superior fire rushed gallantly on the bridge, the mine not exploding and destroying the arch till the leading section had almost reached the spot. Shortly after, the main body retired, leaving only a few light troops. Immediately previous to this an orderly officer announced to lord Wellington that Palencia and its bridges were gained by the foe. He ordered the main body of the division immediately to ascend the heights in its rear, and along the plateau to move towards Palencia in order to meet an attack from that quarter. Whilst the division was in the act of ascending, a report was made by major Hill of the eighth caçadores that the ford had been won, passed by a body of cavalry causing the caçadores to fall back on the broken ground. The enemy, it appears, were from the first, acquainted with these fords, for his push to them was nearly simultaneous with his assault on the bridge. The division moved on the heights towards Palencia, it had not however proceeded far, before an order came directing it to retire and form on the right of the Spaniards, and when collected to remain on the heights till further orders. About this time the cavalry repassed the river, nor had either infantry or artillery passed by the ford to aid in the attack, but in consequence of the troops being withdrawn from the village and canal a partial repair was given to the bridge, and small bodies of infantry were passed over skirmishing with the Spaniards whose post on the heights was directly in front of Villa Muriel. No serious attack from that quarter was to be apprehended until an advance from Palencia. It was on that point therefore that attention was fixed. Day was closing when lord Wellington came upon the heights and said all was quiet at Palencia and that the enemy must now be driven from the right bank. General Oswald enquired if after clearing the village the division was to remain there for the night. His lordship replied, the village was to be occupied in force and held by the division till it was withdrawn, which would probably be very early in the morning. He directed the first brigade under brigadier-general Barnes[xvii] to attack the enemy’s flank, the second under Pringle to advance in support extending to the left so as to succour the Spaniards who were unsuccessfully contending with the enemy in their front. The casualties in the division were not numerous especially when the fire it was exposed to is considered. The enemy sustained a comparative heavy loss. The troops were by a rapid advance of the first brigade cut off from the bridge and forced into the river where many were drowned. The allies fell back in the morning unmolested.

John Oswald, &c. &c. &c.

Memoir on the combat of Muriel by captain Hopkins, fourth regiment.

As we approached Villa Muriel the face of the country upon our left flank as we were then retrograding appeared open, in our front ran the river Carrion, and immediately on the opposite side of the river and parallel to it there was a broad deep dry canal. On our passing the bridge at Villa Muriel we had that village on our left, from the margin of the canal the ground sloped gradually up into heights, the summit forming a fine plateau. Villa Muriel was occupied by the brigadier Pringle with a small detachment of infantry but at the time we considered that it required a larger force, as its maintenance appeared of the utmost importance to the army, we were aware that the enemy had passed the Carrion with cavalry and also that Hill’s caçadores had given way at another part of the river. Our engineers had partly destroyed the bridge of Villa Muriel, the enemy attacked the village, at the time the brigadier and his staff were there,[4] passing the ruins of the bridge by means of ladders, &c. The enemy in driving the detachment from the village made some prisoners. We retired to the plateau of the heights, under a fire of musquetry and artillery, where we halted in close column; the enemy strengthened the village.

Lord Wellington arrived with his staff on the plateau, and immediately reconnoitred the enemy whose reinforcements[xviii] had arrived and were forming strong columns on the other side of the river. Lord Wellington immediately ordered some artillery to be opened on the enemy. I happened to be close to the head-quarter staff and heard lord Wellington say to an aide-de-camp, “Tell Oswald I want him.” On sir John Oswald arriving he said, “Oswald, you will get the division under arms and drive the enemy from the village and retain possession of it.” He replied, “My lord, if the village should be taken I do not consider it as tenable.” Wellington then said, “It is my orders, general.” Oswald replied, “My lord as it is your orders they shall be obeyed.” Wellington then gave orders to him “that he should take the second brigade of the division and attack in line, that the first brigade should in column first descend the heights on the right of the second, enter the canal and assist in clearing it of the enemy,” and saying, “I will tell you what I will do, Oswald. I will give you the Spaniards and Alava into the bargain, headed by a company of the ninth regiment upon your left.” The attack was made accordingly, the second battalion of the fourth regiment being left in reserve in column on the slope of the hill exposed to a severe cannonade which for a short time caused them some confusion. The enemy were driven from the canal and village, and the prisoners which they made in the morning were retaken. The enemy lost some men in this affair, but general Alava was wounded, the officer commanding the company of Brunswickers killed, and several of the division killed and wounded. During the attack lord Wellington sent the prince of Orange under a heavy fire for the purpose of preventing the troops exposing themselves at the canal, two companies defended the bridge with a detachment just arrived from England. The possession of the village proved of the utmost importance, as the retrograde movement we made that night could not have been effected with safety had the enemy been on our side of the river, as it was we were enabled to pass along the river with all arms in the most perfect security.

[xix]

A LETTER

TO

GENERAL LORD VISCOUNT BERESFORD,

BEING

An Answer to his Lordships Assumed Refutation

OF

COL. NAPIER’S JUSTIFICATION OF HIS THIRD VOLUME.

My Lord,

You have at last appeared in print without any disguise. Had you done so at first it might have spared us both some trouble. I should have paid more deference to your argument and would willingly have corrected any error fairly pointed out. Now having virtually acknowledged yourself the author of the two publications entitled “Strictures” and “Further Strictures,” &c. I will not suffer you to have the advantage of using two kinds of weapons, without making you also feel their inconvenience. I will treat your present publication as a mere continuation of your former two, and then my lord, how will you stand in this controversy?

Starting anonymously you wrote with all the scurrility that bad taste and mortified vanity could suggest to damage an opponent, because in the fair exercise of his judgement he had ventured to deny your claim to the title of a great commander: and you coupled this with such fulsome adulation of yourself that even in a dependent’s mouth it would have been sickening. Now when you have suffered defeat, when all the errors misquotations and misrepresentations of your anonymous publications have been detected and exposed, you come forward in your own name as if a new and unexceptionable party had appeared, and you expect to be allowed all the advantage of fresh statements and arguments and fresh assertions, without the least reference to your former damaged evidence. You expect that I should have that deference for you, which your age, your rank, your services, and your authority under other circumstances might have fairly claimed at my hands; that I should acknowledge by my silence how much I was in error, or that I should defend myself by another tedious[xx] dissection and exposition of your production. My lord, you will be disappointed. I have neither time nor inclination to enter for the third time upon such a task; and yet I will not suffer you to claim a victory which you have not gained. I deny the strength of your arguments, I will expose some prominent inconsistencies, and as an answer to those which I do not notice I will refer to your former publications to show, that in this controversy, I am now entitled to disregard any thing you may choose to advance, and that I am in justice exonerated from the necessity of producing any more proofs.

You have published above six hundred pages at three different periods, and you have taken above a year to digest and arrange the arguments and evidence contained in your present work; a few lines will suffice for the answer. The object of your literary labours is to convince the world that at Campo Mayor you proved yourself an excellent general, and that at Albuera you were superlatively great! Greater even than Cæsar! My lord, the duke of Wellington did not take a much longer time to establish his European reputation by driving the French from the Peninsula; and methinks if your exploits vouch not for themselves your writings will scarcely do it for them. At all events, a plain simple statement at first, having your name affixed, would have been more effectual with the public, and would certainly have been more dignified than the anonymous publications with which you endeavoured to feel your way. Why should not all the main points contained in the laboured pleadings of your Further Strictures, and the still more laboured pleadings of your present work, have been condensed and published at once with your name? if indeed it was necessary to publish at all! Was it that by anonymous abuse of your opponent and anonymous praise of yourself you hoped to create a favourable impression on the public before you appeared in person? This, my lord, seems very like a consciousness of weakness. And then how is it that so few of the arguments and evidences now adduced should have been thought of before? It is a strange thing that in the first defence of your generalship, for one short campaign, you should have neglected proofs[xxi] and arguments sufficient to form a second defence of two hundred pages.

You tell us, that you disdained to notice my “Reply to various Opponents,” because you knew the good sense of the public would never be misled by a production containing such numerous contradictions and palpable inconsistencies, and that your friends’ advice confirmed you in this view of the matter. There were nevertheless some things in that work which required an answer even though the greatest part of it had been weak; and it is a pity your friends did not tell you that an affected contempt for an adversary who has hit hard only makes the bystanders laugh. Having condescended to an anonymous attack it would have been wiser to refute the proofs offered of your own inaccuracy than to shrink with mock grandeur from a contest which you had yourself provoked. My friends, my lord, gave me the same advice with respect to your anonymous publications, and with more reason, because they were anonymous; but I had the proofs of your weakness in my hands, I preferred writing an answer, and if you had been provided in the same manner you would like me have neglected your friends’ advice.

My lord, I shall now proceed with my task in the manner I have before alluded to. You have indeed left me no room for that refined courtesy with which I could have wished to soften the asperities of this controversy, but I must request of you to be assured, and I say it in all sincerity, that I attribute the errors to which I must revert, not to any wilful perversion or wilful suppression of facts, but entirely to a natural weakness of memory, and the irritation of a mind confused by the working of wounded vanity. I acknowledge that it is a hard trial to have long-settled habits of self satisfaction suddenly disturbed,—

It was thus the flattering muse of poetry lulled you with her sweet strains into a happy dream of glory, and none can wonder at your irritation when the muse of history awakened you with the solemn clangour of her trumpet to[xxii] the painful reality that you were only an ordinary person. My lord, it would have been wiser to have preserved your equanimity, there would have been some greatness in that.

In your first Strictures you began by asserting that I knew nothing whatever of you or your services; and that I was actuated entirely by vulgar political rancour when I denied your talents as a general. To this I replied that I was not ignorant of your exploits. That I knew something of your proceedings at Buenos Ayres, at Madeira, and at Coruña; and in proof thereof I offered to enter into the details of the first, if you desired it. To this I have received no answer.

You affirmed that your perfect knowledge of the Portuguese language was one of your principal claims to be commander of the Portuguese army. In reply I quoted from your own letter to lord Wellington, your confession, that, such was your ignorance of that language at the time you could not even read the communication from the regency, relative to your own appointment.

You asserted that no officer, save sir John Murray, objected at the first moment to your sudden elevation of rank. In answer I published sir John Sherbroke’s letter to sir J. Cradock complaining of it.

You said the stores (which the Cabildo of Ciudad Rodrigo refused to let you have in 1809) had not been formed by lord Wellington. In reply I published lord Wellington’s declaration that they had been formed by him.

You denied that you had ever written a letter to the junta of Badajos, and this not doubtfully or hastily, but positively and accompanied with much scorn and ridicule of my assertion to that effect. You harped upon the new and surprising information I had obtained relative to your actions, and were, in truth, very facetious upon the subject. In answer I published your own letter to that junta! So much for your first Strictures.

In your second publication (page 42) you asserted that colonel Colborne was not near the scene of action at Campo Mayor; and now in your third publication (page 48) you show very clearly that he took an active part in those operations.

[xxiii]

You called the distance from Campo Mayor to Merida two marches, and now you say it is four marches.

Again, in your first “Strictures,” you declared that the extent of the intrigues against you in Portugal were exaggerated by me; and you were very indignant that I should have supposed you either needed, or had the support and protection of the duke of Wellington while in command of the Portuguese army. In my third and fourth volumes, published since, I have shown what the extent of those intrigues was: and I have still something in reserve to add when time shall be fitting. Meanwhile I will stay your lordship’s appetite by two extracts bearing upon this subject, and upon the support which you derived from the duke of Wellington.

1º. Mr. Stuart, writing to lord Wellesley, in 1810, after noticing the violence of the Souza faction relative to the fall of Almeida, says,—“I could have borne all this with patience if not accompanied by a direct proposal that the fleet and transports should quit the Tagus, and that the regency should send an order to marshal Beresford to dismiss his quarter-master-general and military secretary; followed by reflections on the persons composing the family of that officer, and by hints to the same purport respecting the Portuguese who are attached to lord Wellington.”

2º. Extract from a letter written at Moimenta de Beira by marshal Beresford, and dated 6th September, 1810.—“However, as I mentioned, I have no great desire to hold my situation beyond the period lord Wellington retains his situation, or after active operations have ceased in this country, even should things turn out favourably, of which I really at this instant have better hopes than I ever had though I have been usually sanguine. But in regard to myself, though I do not pretend to say the situation I hold is not at all times desirable to hold, yet I am fully persuaded that if tranquillity is ever restored to this country under its legal government, that I should be too much vexed and thwarted by intrigues of all sorts to reconcile either my temper or my conscience to what would then be my situation.”

For the further exposition of the other numerous errors and failures of your two first publications, I must refer the[xxiv] reader to my “Reply” and “Justification,” but the points above noticed it was necessary to fix attention upon, because they give me the right to call upon the public to disregard your present work. And this right I cannot relinquish. I happened fortunately to have the means of repelling your reckless assaults in the instances above mentioned, but I cannot always be provided with your own letters to disprove your own assertions. The combat is not equal my lord, I cannot contend with such odds and must therefore, although reluctantly, use the advantages which by the detection of such errors I have already obtained.

These then are strong proofs of an unsound memory upon essential points, and they deprive your present work of all weight as an authority in this controversy. Yet the strangest part of your new book (see page 135) is, that you avow an admiration for what you call the generous principle which leads French authors to misstate facts for the honour of their country; and not only you do this but sneer at me very openly for not doing the same! you sneer at me, my lord, for not falsifying facts to pander to the morbid vanity of my countrymen, and at the same time, with a preposterous inconsistency you condemn me for being an inaccurate historian! My lord, I have indeed yet to learn that the honour of my country either requires to be or can be supported by deliberate historical falsehoods. Your lordship’s personal experience in the field may perhaps have led you to a different conclusion but I will not be your historian: and coupling this, your expressed sentiment, with your forgetfulness on the points which I have before noticed, I am undoubtedly entitled to laugh at your mode of attacking others. What, my lord? like Banquo’s ghost you rise, “with twenty mortal murthers on your crown to push us from our stools.” You have indeed a most awful and ghost-like way of arguing: all your oracular sentences are to be implicitly believed, and all my witnesses to facts sound and substantial, are to be discarded for your airy nothings.

Captain Squire! heed him not, he was a dissatisfied, talking, self-sufficient, ignorant officer.

The officer of dragoons who charged at Campo Mayor![xxv] He is nameless, his narrative teems with misrepresentations, he cannot tell whether he charged or not.

Colonel Light! spunge him out, he was only a subaltern.

Captain Gregory! believe him not, his statement cannot be correct, he is too minute, and has no diffidence.

Sir Julius Hartman, Colonel Wildman, Colonel Leighton! Oh! very honourable men, but they know nothing of the fact they speak of, all their evidence put together is worth nothing! But, my lord, it is very exactly corroborated by additional evidence contained in Mr. Long’s publication. Aye! aye! all are wrong; their eyes, their ears, their recollections, all deceived them. They were not competent to judge. But they speak to single facts! no matter!

Well, then, my lord, I push to you your own despatch! Away with it! It is worthless, bad evidence, not to be trusted! Nothing more likely, my lord, but what then, and who is to be trusted? Nobody who contradicts me: every body who coincides with me, nay, the same person is to be believed or disbelieved exactly as he supports or opposes my assertion; even those French authors, whose generous principles lead them to write falsehoods for the honour of their country. Such, my lord, after a year’s labour of cogitation, is nearly the extent of your “Refutation.”

In your first publication you said that I should have excluded all hearsay evidence, and have confined myself to what could be proved in a court of justice; and now when I bring you testimony which no court of justice could refuse, with a lawyer’s coolness you tell the jury that none of it is worthy of credit; that my witnesses, being generally of a low rank in the army, are not to be regarded, that they were not competent to judge. My lord, this is a little too much: there would be some shew of reason if these subalterns’ opinions had been given upon the general dispositions of the campaign, but they are all witnesses to facts which came under their personal observation. What! hath not a subaltern eyes? Hath he not ears? Hath he not understanding? You were once a subaltern yourself, and you cannot blind[xxvi] the world by such arrogant pride of station, such overweening contempt for men’s capacity because they happen to be of lower rank than yourself. Long habits of imperious command may have so vitiated your mind that you cannot dispossess yourself of such injurious feelings, yet, believe me it would be much more dignified to avoid this indecent display of them.

I shall now, my lord, proceed to remark upon such parts of your new publication as I think necessary for the further support of my history, that is, where new proofs, or apparent proofs, are brought forward. For I am, as I have already shewn, exonerated by your former inaccuracies from noticing any part of your “Refutation” save where new evidence is brought forward; and that only in deference to those gentlemen who, being unmixed with your former works, have a right either to my acquiescence in the weight of their testimony, or my reasons for declining to accept it. I have however on my hands a much more important labour than contending with your lordship, and I shall therefore leave the greatest part of your book to those who choose to take the trouble to compare your pretended Refutation with my original Justification in combination with this letter, being satisfied that in so doing I shall suffer nothing by their award.

1st. With respect to the death of the lieutenant-governor of Almeida, you still harp upon my phrase that it was the only evidence. The expression is common amongst persons when speaking of trials; it is said the prisoner was condemned by such or such a person’s evidence, never meaning that there was no other testimony, but that in default of that particular evidence he would not have been condemned. Now you say that there was other evidence, yet you do not venture to affirm that Cox’s letter was not the testimony upon which the lieutenant-governor was condemned, while the extract from lord Stuart’s letter, quoted by me, says it was. And, my lord, his lordship’s letter to you, in answer to your enquiry, neither contradicts nor is intended to contradict my statement; nor yet does it in any manner deny the authenticity of my extracts, which indeed were copied verbatim from his letter to lord Castlereagh.

[xxvii]

Lord Stuart says, that extract is the only thing bearing on the question which he can find. Were there nothing more it would be quite sufficient, but his papers are very voluminous, more than fifty large volumes, and he would naturally only have looked for his letter of the 25th July, 1812, to which you drew his attention. However, in my notes and extracts taken from his documents, I find, under the date of August, 1812, the following passage:—

This passage I have not marked in my book of notes as being lord Stuart’s words; it must therefore be only taken as an abstract of the contents of one of his papers; but comparing it with the former passage, and with the facts that your lordship’s words are still very vague and uncertain as to the main point in question, namely, the evidence on which this man was really condemned, I see no reason to doubt the substantial accuracy of the statement in my first edition, nor the perfect accuracy of it as amended in the second edition of my third volume, published many months ago. You will find that I have there expunged the word “only,” and made the sentence exactly to accord with the extract from lord Stuart’s letter. You will also observe, my lord, that I never did do more than mention the simple fact, for which I had such good authority; and that so far from imputing blame to you for the execution of the sentence I expressly stated that the man richly deserved death.

Passing now to the subject of the eighth Portuguese regiment, I will first observe, that when I said the eighth Portuguese regiment was broken to pieces I imputed no blame to it. No regiment in the world could have stemmed the first fury of that French column which attacked the mountain where the eighth was posted. If the eighth was[xxviii] not broken by it, as sir James Douglas’s letter would seem to imply, what was it doing while the enemy by their flank movement gained the crest of the position in such numbers as to make it a most daring exploit of the ninth British regiment to attack them there. It is a strange thing that a heavy column of French who were resolute to gain the crest of such a position should have made “a flank movement,” to avoid one wing of a regiment of Portuguese conscripts. I should rather imagine, with all deference, that it was the conscripts who made the flank movement, and that some optical deception had taken place, like that which induces children while travelling in a carriage to think the trees and rocks are moving instead of themselves. However, with this I have nothing to do, I have given my authority, namely, the statement of major Waller, a staff-officer present, and the statement of colonel Taylor (for he is my nameless eye-witness) of the ninth, the very regiment to which sir James Douglas appeals for support of his account. These are my authorities, and if their recollections are irreconcilable with that of sir James Douglas it only shows how vain it is to expect perfect accuracy of detail. I knew not of sir James Douglas’s negative testimony, but I had two positive testimonies to my statement, and as I have still two to one, I am within the rules of the courts of justice to which your lordship would refer all matter of history; moreover, some grains of allowance must be made for the natural partiality of every officer for his own regiment. The following extract from sir James Leith’s report on the occasion is also good circumstantial evidence in favour of my side of the question.

“The face of affairs in this quarter now wore a different aspect, for the enemy who had been the assailant, having dispersed or driven every thing there opposed to him, was in possession of the rocky eminence of the sierra at this part of major-general Picton’s position without a shot being fired at him. Not a moment was to be lost. Major-general Leith resolved instantly to attack the enemy with the bayonet. He therefore ordered the ninth British regiment, which had been hitherto moving rapidly by its left in columns in order to gain the most advantageous ground[xxix] for checking the enemy, to form the line, which they did with the greatest promptitude accuracy and coolness under the fire of the enemy, who had just appeared formed on that part of the rocky eminence which overlooks the back of the ridge, and who had then for the first time also perceived the British brigade under him. Major general Leith had intended that the thirty-eighth, second battalion, should have moved on in the rear and to the left of the ninth regiment, to have turned the enemy beyond the rocky eminence which was quite inaccessible towards the rear of the sierra, while the ninth should have gained the ridge on the right of the rocky height, the royals to have been posted (as they were) in reserve; but the enemy having driven every thing before them in that quarter, afforded him the advantage of gaining the top of the rocky ridge, which is accessible in front, before it was possible for the British brigade to have reached that position, although not a moment had been lost in marching to support the point attacked, and for that purpose it had made a rapid movement of more than two miles without halting and frequently in double quick time.”

Here we have nothing of flank movements to avoid a wing of Portuguese conscripts, but the plain and distinct assertion twice over, that every thing in front was dispersed or driven away—and that not even a shot was fired at the enemy. Where then was the eighth Portuguese? Did the French column turn aside merely at the menacing looks of these conscripts? If so, what a pity the latter had not been placed to keep the crest of the position. There is also another difficulty. Sir James Douglas says he was with the royals in the attack, and sir James Leith says that the royals were held in reserve while the ninth drove away the enemy; besides which, the eighth Portuguese might have been broke by the enemy when the latter were mounting the hill and yet have rallied and joined in the pursuit when the ninth had broken the French. Moreover, my lord, as you affirm that both yourself and the duke of Wellington saw all the operations of the eighth Portuguese on this occasion, I will extend my former extract from colonel Taylor’s letter, wherein you will perceive something[xxx] which may perhaps lead you to doubt the accuracy of your recollection on that head.

“No doubt general Leith’s letter to the duke was intended to describe the aspect of affairs in so critical a situation, and where the duke himself could not possibly have made his observations; and also Leith wished to have due credit given to his brigade, which was not done in the despatches. On the contrary, their exertions were made light of, and the eighth Portuguese regiment was extolled, which I know gave way to a man, save their commanding officer and ten or a dozen men at the outside; but he and they were amongst the very foremost ranks of the ninth British.”—“General Leith’s correspondence would be an interesting document to colonel Napier, as throwing considerable light upon the operations at Busaco, between Picton and Hill’s corps, a very considerable extent of position which could not of possibility be overlooked from any other part of the field.”

Charge of the nineteenth Portuguese. Your lordship has here gained an advantage; I cannot indeed understand some of general M‘Bean’s expressions, but it is impossible for me to doubt his positive statement; I believe therefore that he was in front of the convent wall and that he charged some body of the enemy. It is however necessary to restore the question at issue between your lordship and myself to its true bearing. You accused me of a desire to damage the reputation of the Portuguese army, and you asked why I did not speak of a particular charge made by the nineteenth Portuguese regiment at Busaco. This charge you described as being against one of Ney’s attacking columns, which had, you said, gained the ascent of the position, and then forming advanced on the plain above before it was charged by the nineteenth regiment. As this description was certainly wrong I treated the whole as a magniloquent allusion to an advance which I had observed to have been made by a Portuguese regiment posted on the mountain to the right. (General M‘Bean is mistaken when he quotes me as saying that his line was never nearer to the enemy’s lines than a hundred yards. I spoke of a Portuguese regiment, which might[xxxi] possibly be the nineteenth.) I never denied that any charge had been made, but that a charge such as described by you had taken place, and in fact general M‘Bean’s letter while it confirms the truth of your general description, by implication denies the accuracy of the particulars. Certainly Ney’s columns never passed the front of the light division nor advanced on the plain behind it.

The difficulty I have to reconcile general M‘Bean’s statement with my own recollections and with the ground and position of the light division, may perhaps arise from the general’s meaning to use certain terms in a less precise sense than I take them. Thus he says he was posted in front of the convent-wall, and also on the right of the light division; but the light division was half a mile in front of the convent-wall, and hence I suppose he does not mean as his words might imply immediately under the wall. He speaks also of the light division as being to his left, but unless he speaks of the line of battle with reference to the sinuosities of the ground, the light division was with respect to the enemy and the convent in his front; and if he does speak with regard to those sinuosities, his front would have been nearly at right angles to the front of the fifty-second and forty-third, which I suppose to be really the case. Again he says that he charged and drove the French from their position down to the bottom of the ravine; but the enemy’s position, properly so called, was on the opposite side of the great ravine, and as all his artillery and cavalry, all the eighth corps and the reserves of the sixth corps, were in order of battle there, ten regiments, much less one, dared not to have crossed the ravine which was of such depth that it was difficult to distinguish troops at the bottom. I conclude therefore, general M‘Bean here means by the word position some accidental ground on which the enemy had formed. Taking this to be so, I will now endeavour to reconcile general M‘Bean’s statement with my own recollection; because certainly I do still hold my description of the action at that part to be accurate as to all the main points.

The edge of the table-land or tongue on which the light division stood was very abrupt, and formed a salient[xxxii] angle, behind the apex of which the forty-third and fifty-second were drawn up in a line, the right of the one and the left of the other resting on the very edges; the artillery was at the apex looking down the descent, and far below the Caçadores and the ninety-fifth were spread on the mountain side as skirmishers. Ney employed only two columns of attack. The one came straight against the light division; the head of it striking the right company of the fifty-second and the left company of the forty-third was broken as against a wall; and at the same time the wings of those regiments reinforced by the skirmishers of the ninety-fifth, who had retired on the right of the forty-third, advanced and lapped over the broken column on both sides. No other troops fought with them at that point. In this I cannot be mistaken, because my company was in the right wing of the forty-third, we followed the enemy down to the first village which was several hundred yards below the edge, and we returned leisurely; the ground was open to the view on the right and on the left, we saw no other column, and heard of none save that which we were pursuing.

When we returned from this pursuit the light division had been reformed on the little plain above, and some time after several German battalions, coming from under the convent wall, passed through our ranks and commenced skirmishing with Ney’s reserve in the woods below.

General M‘Bean says he saw no German infantry, and hence it is clear that it was not at this point his charge had place. But it is also certain Ney had only two columns of attack. Now his second, under the command of general Marchand, moved up the hollow curve of the great mountain to the right of the light division, and having reached a pine-wood, which however was far below the height on which the light division stood, he sent skirmishers out against Pack’s brigade which was in his front. A part of Ross’s troops of artillery under the direction of lieutenant, now colonel M‘Donald, played very sharply upon this column in the pine-wood. I was standing in company with captain Loyd of my own regiment,[xxxiii] close to the guns watching their effect, and it was then I saw the advance of the Portuguese regiment to which I have alluded; but general M‘Bean again assures me that the nineteenth regiment was not there. Two suppositions therefore present themselves. The enemy’s skirmishers from this column were very numerous. Some of them might have passed the left flank of Pack’s skirmishers, and gathering in a body have reached the edge of the hill on which the light division were posted, and then rising behind it have been attacked by general M‘Bean; or, what is more likely, the skirmishers, or a small flanking detachment from the column which attacked the light division, might have passed under the edge of the descent on the right of the light division, and gathering in a like manner have risen under general M‘Bean’s line.

Either of these suppositions, and especially the last, would render the matter clear to me in all points save that of attacking the enemy’s position, which as I have before observed, may be only a loose expression of the general’s to denote the ground which the French opposed to him had attained on our position. This second supposition seems also to be confirmed by a fact mentioned by general M‘Bean, namely, that the enemy’s guns opened on him immediately after his charge. The French guns did open also on that part of the light division which followed the enemy down the hill to the first village, thus the time that the nineteenth charged seems marked, and as I was one of those who went to the village, it also accounts for my not seeing that charge. However considering all things, I must admit that I was so far in error that I really did not, nor do I now possess any clear recollection of this exploit of the nineteenth regiment; and in proof of the difficulty of attaining strict accuracy on such occasions, I can here adduce the observation of general M‘Bean viz. that he saw no Germans save the artillery; yet there was a whole brigade of that nation near the convent wall, and they advanced and skirmished sharply with the enemy soon after the charge of the nineteenth would appear to have taken place. Very often also, things appear greater to those who perform them than to[xxxiv] the bye-standers, and I would therefore ask how many men the nineteenth lost in the charge, how many prisoners it took, and how many French were opposed to it? for I still maintain that neither by the nineteenth Portuguese, nor by any other regiment, save those of the light division, was any charge made which called for particular notice on my part as a general historian. I am not bound to relate all the minor occurrences of a great battle; “those things belong to the history of regiments,” is the just observation of Napoleon. Yet general M‘Bean may be assured that no desire to underrate either his services or the gallantry of the Portuguese soldiers ever actuated me, and to prove it, if my third volume should ever come to a third edition, I will take his letter as my ground for noticing this charge, although I will not promise to make it appear so prominent as your lordship would have me to do.

Your lordship closes this subject by the following observation. “As colonel Napier represents himself as having been an eye-witness of a gallant movement made by a certain Portuguese regiment,—which regiment he does not profess to know,—but which movement took place a mile distant from the position given to the nineteenth regiment, it is evident he could not also have been an eye-witness of what was passing a mile to the left. Nor can he therefore negative what is said to have occurred there. It is extraordinary that the historian should not have perceived the predicament in which he has placed himself.” Now your lordship does not say that the two events occurred at the same time, wherefore your conclusion is what the renowned Partridge calls a “non sequitur;” and as general M‘Bean expressly affirms his charge to have taken place on the right of the light division, it was not absolutely necessary that I should look to the left in order to see the said charge. Hence the predicament in which I am placed, is that of being obliged to remark your lordship’s inability to reason upon your own materials.

Your next subject is captain Squire, but I will pass over that matter as having been I think sufficiently discussed before, and I am well assured that the memory of that[xxxv] very gallant and able officer will never suffer from your lordship’s angry epithets. Campo Mayor follows. In your “Further Strictures” you said that colonel Colborne was not near the scene of action; you now show in detail that he was actively engaged in it. You denied also that he was in support of the advanced guard, and yet quote his own report explaining how he happened to be separated from the advanced guard just before the action, thus proving that he was marching in support of it. You refuse any credit to the statements of captain Gregory and colonel Light; and you endeavour to discredit and trample upon the evidence of the officer of the thirteenth dragoons who was an actor in the charge of that regiment, but with respect to him a few remarks are necessary.

1º. The accuracy of that gentleman’s narrative concerns my Justification very little, except in one part. I published it whole as he gave it to me, because I thought it threw light upon the subject. I think so still, and I see nothing in your lordship’s observation to make me doubt its general correctness. But it was only the part which I printed in italics that concerned me. I had described a remarkable combat of cavalry, wherein the hostile squadrons had twice passed through each other, and then the British put the French to flight. Your lordship ridiculed this as a nursery tale; you called my description of it a “country dance,” and you still call it my “scenic effect.” Did the hostile masses meet twice, and did the British then put their opponents to flight? These were the real questions. The unusual fact of two cavalry bodies charging through each other, was the point in dispute; it is scenic, but is it true? Now my first authority, whom I have designated as an “eye-witness,” was colonel Colborne; my second authority colonel Dogherty of the thirteenth dragoons, an actor; and when your lordship so coolly says the latter’s statement does not afford “the slightest support to my scenic description,” I must take the liberty of laughing at you. Why, my lord, you really seem disposed to treat common sense as if it were a subaltern. Colonel Dogherty bears me out even to the letter; for as the second charge took place with the same violence that the third did, if the[xxxvi] hostile bodies had not passed through to their original position, the French must have fled towards the allied army; but they fled towards Badajos. The English must therefore have passed through and turned, and it was then that in the personal conflict with the sabre which followed the second charge the thirteenth dragoons defeated the French.

My lord, you will never by such special pleading, I know of no other term by which I can properly designate your argument, you will never, I say, by such special pleading, hide your bad generalship at Campo Mayor. The proofs of your errors there are too many and too clear; the errors themselves too glaring too gross to leave you the least hope; the same confusion of head which prevented you from seizing the advantages then offered to you seems to prevail in your writing; and yet while impeaching every person’s credit where their statements militate against your object, you demand the most implicit confidence in your own contradictory assertions and preposterous arguments. My lord, you only fatigue yourself and your readers by your unwieldy floundering, you are heavy and throw much mud about; like one of those fine Andalusian horses so much admired in the Peninsula, you prance and curvet and foam and labour in your paces but you never get on. At Campo Mayor you had an enormous superiority of troops, the enemy were taken by surprize, they were in a plain, their cavalry were beaten, their artillery-drivers cut down, their infantry, hemmed in by your horsemen and under the play of your guns, were ready to surrender; yet you suffered them to escape and to carry off their captured artillery and then you blamed your gallant troops. The enemy escaped from you, my lord, but you cannot escape from the opinion of the world by denying the truth of all statements which militate against you.

The march by Merida. If you had said at once that the duke of Wellington forbade you to go by Merida, there would have been an end of all my arguments against your skill; yet it by no means follows that these arguments would be futile in themselves, though not[xxxvii] applicable to you personally. New combinations were presented, and the duke of Wellington might very probably have changed his instructions had he been present on the spot. But, why was this your justification withheld until now? why was so plain, so clear, so decisive a defence of yourself never thought of before? and why is it now smothered with such a heap of arguments as you have added, to prove that you ought not to have gone by Merida? Have you found out that I am not such a bad reasoner upon military affairs as you were pleased to style me in your former publication? Have you found out that pleading high rank is not a sufficient answer to plain and well supported statements? It is good however that you have at last condescended to adopt a different mode of proceeding. I applaud you for it, and with the exception of two points I will leave you in the full enjoyment of any triumph which the force of your arguments may procure you; always, however, retaining my right to assume that your lordship’s memory with respect to the duke of Wellington’s negative, may have been as treacherous as it was about your own letter to the junta of Badajos.

I have therefore nothing to add to the arguments I have already used in my Justification, and in my History, in favour of the march to Merida; if I am wrong the world will so judge me. But the two points I have reserved are, 1º. That you assert now, in direct contradiction to your former avowal, that the march to Merida would have been one of four days instead of two; and that the road by Albuquerque was the only one which you could use. In answer to this last part I observe, that the French before, and the Spaniards then, marched by the road of Montigo; and that a year after, when lord Hill’s expedition against Almaraz took place, the whole of his battering and pontoon train, with all the ammunition belonging to it, moved with great facility in three days from Elvas, by this very road of Montigo, to Merida; and Elvas as your Lordship knows is rather further than Campo Mayor from Merida.

The second point is that mode of conducting a controversy which I have so often had occasion to expose in your[xxxviii] former publications, viz. mis-stating my arguments to suit your own reasoning. I never said that you should have attempted, or could have succeeded in a “coup de main” against Badajos; I never even said you should have commenced the siege immediately. What I did say was, that by the march through Merida you could have placed your army at once between Badajos and the French army, and so have thrown the former upon its own resources at a most inconvenient time; that in this situation you could have more readily thrown your bridge at Jerumenha, and proceeded at your convenience.

Further than this I do not think it necessary to dissect and expose your new fallacies and contradictions; it requires too much time. You have written upwards of six hundred pages, four hundred of them I have before demolished; but my own volumes are rather thick and to me at least much more important than yours; your lordship must therefore spare me the other two hundred, or at least permit me to treat them lightly. I will leave the whole siege of Badajos to you, it is matter of opinion and I will not follow your example in overloading what is already clear by superfluity of argument. I will only expose one error into which you have been led by colonel La Marre’s work. On his authority you say the garrison on the 10th of April had three months’ provisions; but the following extract from a letter of marshal Soult’s to the prince of Wagram will prove that La Marre is wrong:—

“Seville, 18th April.

“From the 11th of this month the place was provisioned, according to the report of general Phillipon, for two months and some days as to subsistence; and there are 100 milliers of powder,” &c. &c.

Let us now come to the battle of Albuera.

You still doubt that the position as I explained it is four miles long, and you rest upon the superior accuracy of major Mitchell’s plan, on which you have measured the distance with your compasses. I also am in possession of one of major Mitchell’s plans, and I find by the aid of my pair of compasses, that even from the left of the[xxxix] Portuguese infantry (without noticing Otway’s squadron of cavalry) to the right of the Spanish line, as placed at the termination of the battle, is exactly four miles; and every body knows that a line over the actual ground will from the latter’s rises and falls exceed the line on paper. Wherefore as my measurement does not coincide with your lordship’s, and as we are both Irishmen, I conclude that either your compasses are too short or that mine are too long.

Your grand cheval de bataille is, however, the numbers of the armies on each side. Thirty-eight long pages you give us, to prove what cannot be proved, namely, that my estimate is wrong and yours right; and at the end you are just where you began. All is uncertain, there are no returns, no proof! the whole matter is one of guess upon probabilities as to the allies, and until lately was so also with respect to the French.

Mine was a very plain statement. I named a certain number as the nearest approximation I could make, and when my estimate was questioned by you I explained as briefly as possible the foundation of that estimate. You give in refutation thirty-eight pages of most confused calculations, and what is the result? why that the numbers of the allies on your own shewing still remain uncertain; and your estimate of the French, as I will shew by the bye, is quite erroneous.

I said in my History, you had more than two thousand cavalry in the field, and in my Justification I gave reasons for believing you had nearly three thousand; you now acknowledge two thousand; my history then is not far wrong. But your lordship does not seem to know the composition of your own divisions. General Long’s morning states, now before me, do not include general Madden’s cavalry. That officer’s regiments were the fifth and eighth, and if I mistake not the sixth and ninth also were under him; those in general Long’s division are the first and seventh. I find from general Madden’s own account of his services, given in the Military Calendar, that a part of his brigade, namely, the eighth regiment, under colonel Windham, was in the battle of Albuera.[xl] Now taking the eighth to be between two hundred and seventy and two hundred and eighty-one troopers, which were the respective strengths of the first and seventh regiments in Long’s Division on the 29th of May, I have above eighteen hundred troopers, namely, fifteen hundred and eighty-seven in Long’s division, and two hundred and seventy-five in the eighth regiment, and to these I add about two hundred and fifty officers and sergeants, making in all more than two thousand sabres. In general Long’s states of the 8th of May, those two Portuguese regiments had indeed fewer under arms than on the 29th, but then six hundred and eighty-nine men and forty-four serjeants and trumpeters were on command, of which more than four hundred belonged to those two Portuguese regiments. Many of these men must surely have joined before the battle, because such an unusual number on command could only be temporary. Again I find in the state of the 29th of May, one hundred and fifteen serjeants trumpeters and troopers returned as prisoners of war; and when the killed and wounded in the battle are added, we may fairly call the British and Portuguese cavalry above two thousand. Your lordship admits the Spaniards to have had seven hundred and fifty; but I will for clearness place this in a tabular form:

GENERAL LONG’S STATES.

To which are to be added the killed and wounded of the Anglo-Portuguese, and the men rejoined from command.

Thus, the statements in my History and in my Justification are both borne out; for the numbers are above two thousand as set down in the first, and nearly three thousand as stated in the last. Moreover, a general historian is not blameable for small inaccuracies. If he has reasonably good authority for any fact he cannot be justly censured for stating that fact, and you should make a distinction between that which is stated in my History and that which is stated in my controversial writings. All mistakes in the latter however trifling are fair; but to cavil at trifles in the former rather hurts yourself. Now with respect to the artillery there is an example of this cavilling, and also an illustration of your lordship’s mode of raising a very confused argument on a very plain fact. I said there were so many guns in the field, and that so many were nine-pounders; you accused me of arbitrarily deciding upon their calibre. In reply I shewed you that I took the number on the report of[xlii] colonel Dickson, the commanding officer of artillery, the calibre upon the authority of your own witness and quarter-master-general, sir Benjamin D’Urban. The latter was wrong and there the matter should have ended. Your lordship, however, requires me, as a mark of ingenuousness, to acknowledge as my mistake that which is the mistake of sir Benjamin D’Urban, and you give a grand table, with the gross number of pounds of iron as if the affair had been between two ships. You set down in your columns the statements of the writer of a note upon your Strictures, the statement of the Strictures themselves, and my statement; and then come on with your own observations as if there were three witnesses on your side. But the author of the note is again your witness D’Urban, who thus shews himself incorrect both as to number and weight; and the author of the Strictures is yourself. This is not an ingenuous, though it is an ingenious mode of multiplying testimony. In your Further Strictures also you first called in sir B. D’Urban in person, you then used his original memoir, you also caused him to write anonymously a running commentary upon yours and his own statements, and now you comment in your own name upon your own anonymous statements, thus making five testimonies out of two.

The answer is simple and plain. When I took sir Benjamin D’Urban as a guide he led me wrong; and you instead of visiting his error upon his own head visit it upon mine, and require me and your readers to follow him implicitly upon all points while to do so avails for your defence, but not when they contradict it. From sir B. D’Urban I took the calibre of the allies’ guns employed in the battle of Albuera, and he was wrong! From him, if I had not possessed sir A. Dickson’s official return, I should also have taken the number of guns, and I should have been wrong, because he calls them thirty-four instead of thirty-eight. He also (see page 26 of the Appendix to your Further Strictures) says that the Spaniards had six guns, whereas Dickson says, they had but four; and if his six guns were reckoned there would have been forty pieces of artillery, which he however reduced to thirty-four[xliii] by another error, namely, leaving out a whole brigade of German artillery. On sir Benjamin’s authority I called major Dickson the commander of the artillery, and this also was wrong. From sir Benjamin D’Urban’s Memoir, I took the statement that the fourth division arrived on the field of battle at six o’clock in the morning, and yet I am assured that they did not arrive until nine o’clock, and after the action had commenced. And this last is a very serious error because it gives the appearance of skill to your lordship’s combinations for battle and to sir Benjamin’s arrangements for the execution, which they do not merit, if, as I now believe, that division arrived at nine o’clock. But the latter hour would be quite in keeping with the story of the cavalry going to forage, and both together would confirm another report very current, namely, that your lordship did not anticipate any battle on the 16th of May. Setting this however aside, I know not why, in the face of all these glaring errors and a multitude of smaller ones, I am to take sir Benjamin D’Urban’s authority upon any disputed point.

I will now, my lord, admit one complete triumph which you have attained in your dissertation upon the numbers of the troops. I did say that from the 20th of March to the 16th of May, was only twenty days, and though the oversight is so palpably one that could not be meant to deceive, I will not deny your right to ridicule and to laugh at it. I have laughed at so many of your lordship’s oversights that it would be unfair to deny you this opportunity for retaliation, which I also admit you have used moderately.

I have since I wrote my Justification procured some proofs about the French numbers, you will find them in the following extracts from the duke of Dalmatia’s correspondence of that time. They are worth your attention. They throw some light upon the numbers of the allies, and one of them shows unquestionably that my estimate of the French numbers was, as I have before said, too high instead of too low. I give the translations to avoid the trouble and expense of printing in two languages, and I beg your lordship to observe that these extracts are not[xliv] liable to the praise of that generous patriotism which you alluded to in speaking of French authors, because they were written before the action and for the emperor’s information, and because it was the then interest of the writer rather to exaggerate than to lessen his own numbers, in order to give his sovereign an idea of his activity and zeal.

Extract of a letter from Marshal Soult to the Prince of Wagram.

Seville, 22d April, 1811.

“General Latour Maubourg announces to me that general Beresford commanding the Anglo-Portuguese army, and the Spanish generals Castaños and Ballesteros with the remains of the corps of their nation are united at Zafra, and I am assured that the whole of their forces is twenty-five thousand men, of which three thousand are cavalry.”

“Colonel Quennot of the ninth regiment of dragoons, who commands upon the line of the Tinto and observes the movements on that side as far as Ayamonte, informs me that on the 18th and 19th, general Blake disembarked ten thousand infantry and seven hundred cavalry between the mouths of the Piedra and the Guadiana. These troops come from Cadiz, they have cannon, and Blake can unite in that part fifteen thousand men.”

Ditto to Ditto.

“May 4th, 1811.

“Cordova is menaced by a corps of English Portuguese and Spaniards, many troops are concentrated in Estremadura, Badajos is invested, Blake has united on the Odiel an army of fifteen to sixteen thousand men.” “I depart in four days with twenty thousand men, three thousand horses, and thirty pieces of cannon to drive across the Guadiana the enemy’s corps which are spread in Estremadura, to disengage Badajos and to facilitate the arrival of count D’Erlon. If the troops which that general brings can unite with mine, and if the troops coming from the armies of the north and centre, and which I have[xlv] already in part arranged, arrive in time, I shall have in Estremadura, thirty-five thousand men five thousand horses and forty pieces of artillery.”

Now, my lord, I find by the imperial returns that count D’Erlon marched towards Andalusia with twelve thousand men present under arms, and that he did not arrive until the 14th June. There remain three thousand men as coming from the armies of the north and centre, to make up the thirty-five thousand men mentioned by Soult, and I find the following passage in his letter to the prince of Wagram, dated the 9th of May.

“The 12th, I shall be at Fuente Cantos, general Bron commands there, he brings with him the first reinforcement coming from the armies of the north and centre, and I shall employ him in the expedition.”

Hence, if we take the first reinforcement at half of the whole number expected, we add one thousand five hundred men and five guns to the twenty thousand, making a total for the battle of Albuera of twenty-one thousand five hundred men of all arms, and thirty-five guns. From these must be deducted the detachments left at Villalba, stragglers on the march, and some hussars sent to scout on the flanks, for I find in general Madden’s narrative of his services, that he was watched by part of the enemy’s cavalry on the day of the battle.

I have now, my lord, given you positive and undeniable testimony that the French numbers were overrated instead of being underrated by me, and I have given you corroborative evidence, that the number of the allies was as great as I have stated it to be; for we find in the above extracts Soult giving Blake fifteen thousand men, of which, at least, seven hundred are cavalry, before the battle, and twenty-five thousand, of which three thousand are cavalry, to your lordship, Castaños, &c. We find the French general’s information, taking into consideration the troops which joined Blake in the Niebla, not differing essentially from Mr. Henry Wellesley’s report of the numbers of Blake’s army, namely twelve thousand, of which one thousand one hundred were cavalry; and we find both in some manner confirmed by lord Wellington’s repeated[xlvi] statements of the forces of Blake’s army after the battle, that is to say, making a reasonable allowance for the numbers lost in the action. Soult and Mr. Wellesley also agree in making out the Spanish cavalry more numerous than your lordship will admit of. Blake alone had from seven to eleven hundred cavalry, following the statement of these persons, and there was in addition the corps of Penne Villemur, which, as I have said in my Justification, was not less than five hundred.

In closing your calculation of numbers you exultingly observe that it is the first time you ever heard of a general’s being censured for keeping one-third of his force in reserve and beating the enemy with the other two. Aye—but this involves the very pith of the question. At Albuera the general did not beat the enemy. My lord, you have bestowed great pains on your argument about the battle of Albuera, and far be it from me to endeavour to deprive you of any addition to your reputation which you may thus obtain. I have no desire to rob you of any well-earned laurels, my observations were directed against what appeared to me your bad generalship; if I have not succeeded in pointing that out to the satisfaction of the public I have nothing further to offer in fairness and certainly will not by any vile sophistry endeavour to damage your fame. But do not think that I acknowledge the force of your present arguments. If I do not take the trouble to dissect them for reasons before mentioned, be assured it is not from any want of points to fasten upon; indeed, my lord, your book is very weak, there are many failures in it, and a few more I will touch upon that you may estimate my forbearance at its proper value. I will begin with your observations on captain Gregory’s testimony, not in defence of that gentleman’s credit, for in truth, as his and the other officers’ evidence is given to facts of which they were personally cognizant I cannot pay the slightest regard to your confused arguments in opposition to their honour. I am aware that you do not mean to impeach anything but their memory; but if I were to attempt to defend them from your observations it would appear as if I thought otherwise. My lord, you[xlvii] have missed captain Gregory, but you have hit yourself very hard.

Behold the proof.

At page 167 you say, “I will now point out the gross and palpable errors of captain Gregory’s narrative.”—“He says, that on receiving the intelligence from an orderly of the thirteenth dragoons who came in from a picquet on the right with intelligence that the enemy was crossing the river, general Long galloped off.” I conclude to the right, “and found half the army across,” and to the right. Why, every other authority has stated that the enemy’s first movement was from the wood along the right bank of the Albuera upon our left; and that we were not at all aware of their intention to cross above our right and there make an attack, till after their first movement was considerably advanced and the action had actually commenced with Godinot’s corps on the opposite side of the river to our left. It is quite surprising that colonel Napier should have overlooked a blunder so gross as to destroy the value of the whole of his friend’s testimony.

Now, my lord, compare the passage marked by italics (pardon me the italics) in the above, with the following extract from your own despatch.

“The enemy on the 16th did not long delay his attack: at eight o’clock” (the very time mentioned by captain Gregory,) “he was observed to be in movement, and his cavalry were seen passing the rivulet of Albuera considerably above our right, and shortly after, he marched, out of the wood opposite to us, a strong force of cavalry and two heavy columns of infantry, posting them to our front, as if to attack the village and bridge of Albuera. During this time he was filing the principal body of his infantry over the river beyond our right, and it was not long before his intention appeared to be to turn us by that flank.” Your lordship has, indeed in another part discarded the authority of your despatch, as appears most necessary in treating of this battle, but is rather hard measure to attack me so fiercely for having had some faith in it.

With respect to sir Wm. Lumley’s letter I cannot but[xlviii] admire his remembrance of the exact numbers of the British cavalry. A recollection of twenty-three years, founded on a few hasty words spoken on a field of battle is certainly a rare thing; yet I was not quite unprepared for such precision, for if I do not greatly mistake, sir William was the general, who at Santarem edified the head-quarters by a report, that “the enemy were certainly going to move either to their right or to their left, to their front or to their rear.” One would suppose that so exact a person could never be in error; and yet the following extract from general Harvey’s journal would lead me to suppose that his memory was not quite so clear and powerful as he imagines. Sir William Lumley says, that to the best of his recollection he was not aware of the advance of the fuzileers and Harvey’s brigade until they had passed his left flank; that they then came under his eye; that as the rain and smoke cleared away he saw them as one body moving to engage, and although they had become so oblique, relative to the point where he stood, that he could not well speak as to their actual distance from one another, there did not appear any improper interval between them.

Now hear general Harvey!

“The twenty-third and one battalion of the seventh fuzileers were in line. The other battalion at quarter distance, forming square, at every halt to cover the right which the cavalry continued to menace. Major-general Lumley, with the British cavalry, was also in column of half squadrons in rear of our right and moved with us, being too weak to advance against the enemy’s cavalry.”

There, my lord, you see that generals as well as doctors differ. Sir W. Lumley, twenty-three years after the event, recollects seeing the fuzileers and Harvey’s brigade at such a distance, and so obliquely, that he could not speak to their actual distance from one another. General Harvey writing the day after the event, says, sir William Lumley had his cavalry in half squadrons close in rear of these very brigades, and was moving with them! This should convince your lordship that it is not wise to cry out and cavil at every step in the detail of a battle.

[xlix]

As to the term gap, I used the word without the mark of quotation, because it was my own and it expressed mine and your meaning very well. You feared that the cavalry of the French would overpower ours, and break in on your rear and flank when the support of the fuzileers was taken away. I told you that general Cole had placed Harvey’s brigade in the gap, that is, in such a situation that the French could not break in. I knew very well that Harvey’s brigade followed in support of the attack of the fuzileers because he says so in his journal; but he also says, that both ours and the enemy’s cavalry made a corresponding movement. Thus the fear of the latter breaking in was chimerical, especially as during the march Harvey halted, formed, received and beat off a charge of the French horsemen.

But I have not yet done with sir W. Lumley’s numbers. How curious it is that brigade-major Holmes’s verbal report on the field of battle, as recollected by sir William, should give the third dragoon guards and the fourth dragoons, forming the heavy brigade, the exact number of five hundred and sixty men, when the same brigade-major Holmes in his written morning state of the 8th of May, one week before the battle, gives to those regiments seven hundred and fifty-two troopers present under arms, and one hundred and eighty-three on command. What became of the others in the interval? Again, on the 29th of May, thirteen days after the battle, he writes down these regiments six hundred and ninety-five troopers present under arms, one hundred and eighty-two on command, and thirty-two prisoners of war. In both cases also the sergeants, trumpeters, &c. are to be added; and I mark this circumstance, because in the French returns all persons from the highest officer to the conductors of carriages are included in the strength of men. I imagine neither of the distinguished regiments alluded to will be willing to admit that their ranks were full before and after, but empty on the day of battle. It is contrary to the English custom. Your lordship, also, in a parenthesis (page 125) says that the thirteenth dragoons had not three hundred men at this time to produce; but this perverse brigade-major Holmes[l] writes that regiment down also on the 8th of May, at three hundred and fifty-seven troopers present under arms, and sixty-three on command; and on the 29th of May, three hundred and forty-one present seventy-nine on command, eighty-two prisoners-of-war. Staff-officers are notoriously troublesome people.

One point more, and I have done.

You accuse me of having placed sir A. Dickson in a position where he never was, and you give a letter from that officer to prove the fact. You also deny the correctness of sir Julius Hartman’s statement, and you observe that even were it accurate, he does not speak of an order to retreat, but an order to cover a retreat. Now to say that I place Dickson in a wrong position is scarcely fair, because I only use sir Julius Hartman’s words, and that in my Justification; whereas in my History, I have placed colonel Dickson’s guns exactly in the position where he himself says they were. If your lordship refers to my work you will see that it is so; and surely it is something akin to quibbling, to deny, that artillery posted to defend a bridge was not at the bridge because its long range enabled it to effect its object from a distance.

You tell me also that I had your quarter-master general’s evidence to counteract sir Julius Hartman’s relative to this retreat. But sir Benjamin D’Urban had already misled me more than once; and why, my lord, did you garble sir A Dickson’s communication? I will answer for you. It contained positive evidence that a retreat was ordered. Your lordship may ask how I know this. I will tell you that also. Sir Alexander Dickson at my request sent me the substance of his communication to you at the same time. You are now I hope, convinced that it is not weakness which induces me to neglect a complete analysis of your work. I do assure you it is very weak in every part.

My lord, you have mentioned several other letters which you have received from different officers, colonel Arbuthnot, colonel Colborne, &c. as confirming your statements, but you have not, as in the cases of sir James Douglas and general M‘Bean, where they were wholly on your own[li] side, given these letters in full; wherefore, seeing the gloss you have put upon lord Stuart’s communication, and this garbling of sir A. Dickson’s letter, I have a right to suppose that the others do not bear up your case very strongly,—probably they contradict it on some points as sir Alexander Dickson’s does. I shall now give the latter entire.

“The Portuguese artillery under my command (twelve guns) attached to general Hamilton’s division was posted on favourable ground about 750 or 800 yards from the bridge, and at least 700 yards S. W. of the village of Albuera, their fire bore effectually upon the bridge and the road from it to the bridge, and I received my orders to take this position from lord Beresford when the enemy threatened their main attack at the bridge. At a certain period of the day, I should judge it to have been about the time the fourth division moved to attack, I received a verbal order in English from Don Jose Luiz de Souza (now Conde de Villa Real, an aid-de-camp of lord Beresford) to retire by the Valverde road, or upon the Valverde road, I am not sure which; to this I strongly expressed words of doubt, and he then rode off towards Albuera; as, however, I could see no reason for falling back, and the infantry my guns belonged to being at hand, I continued in action, and though I believe I limbered up once or twice previous to the receipt of this message and moved a little to improve my position, I never did so to retire. Soon after Don Jose left me, seeing lord Beresford and some of his staff to my right, I rode across to satisfy myself that I was acting correctly, but perceiving that the French were giving way I did not mention the order I had received, and as soon as lord Beresford saw me, he asked what state my guns were in, and then ordered me to proceed as quickly as I could with my nine-pounders to the right, which I did in time to bring them into action against the retiring masses of the enemy. The foregoing is the substance of an explanation given to lord Beresford which he lately requested.”

Thus you have the whole of what sir Alexander Dickson (as he tells me) wrote to you; and here therefore I might stop, my lord, to enjoy your confusion. I might[lii] harp upon this fact, as being so formidable a bar to your lordship’s argument, that rather than give it publicity, you garbled your own correspondent’s letter. But my object is not to gain a triumph over you, it is to establish the truth, and I will not follow your example by suppressing what may tend to serve your argument and weaken mine. It is of no consequence to me whether you gave orders for a retreat or not. I said in my History that you did not do so, thinking the weight of testimony to be on that side, and it was only when your anonymous publications called forth new evidence that I began to doubt the correctness of my first statement.[5] But if the following observation in sir Alexander Dickson’s letter can serve your argument, you are welcome to it, although it is not contained in the substance of what he wrote to you; and here also I beg of you to remember that this letter of sir Alexander’s was written to me after my Justification was printed.

“I had never mentioned the matter to any one, except to Hartman, with whom I was on the greatest habits of intimacy, and indeed I was from the first induced to attribute Souza’s message to some mistake, as neither in my conversation with lord Beresford was there any allusion to it, nor did any thing occur to indicate to me that he was aware of my having received such an order.”

Your lordship will no doubt deny that the Count of Villa Real had any authority from you to order this retreat, so be it; but then you call upon me and others to accept this Count of Villa Real’s evidence upon other points, and you attempt to discredit some of my witnesses, because their testimony is opposed to the testimony of the Count of Villa Real; if you deny him at Albuera, you cannot have him at Campo Mayor. And behold, my lord, another difficulty you thus fall into. Your publications are intended to prove your talent as a general, and yet we find you acknowledging, that in the most critical period of this great and awful battle of Albuera, your own staff had so little[liii] confidence in your ability, that sir Henry Hardinge took upon himself to win it for you, while the Conde de Villa Real took upon himself to lose it; the one ordering an advance, which gained the day; the other ordering a retreat, which would have ruined all. My lord, be assured that such liberties are never taken by the staff of great commanders.

In ancient times it was reckoned a worthy action to hold the mirror of truth up to men placed in high stations, when the partiality of friends, the flattery of dependents, and their own human vanity had given them too exalted notions of their importance. You, my lord, are a man in a high station, and you have evidently made a false estimate of your importance, or you would not treat men of inferior rank with so much disdain as you have expressed in these your publications; wherefore it may be useful, and certainly will be just, to let you know the judgment which others have formed of your talents. The following character was sketched about two months after the battle of Albuera. The author was a man of great ability, used to public affairs, experienced in the study of mankind, opposed to you by no personal interest, and withal had excellent opportunities of observing your disposition; and surely his acuteness will not be denied by those who have read your three publications in this controversy.

“Marshal Beresford appears to possess a great deal of information upon all subjects connected with the military establishments of the kingdom, the departments attached to the army, and the resources of the country. But nothing appears to be well arranged and digested in his head; he never fixes upon a point, but deviates from his subject, and overwhelms a very slender thread of argument by a profusion of illustrations, stories, and anecdotes, most of which relate to himself. He is captious and obstinate, and difficult to be pleased. He appears to grasp at every thing for his own party, without considering what it would be fair, and reasonable, and decent to expect from the other party.”

I now take leave of you, my lord, and notwithstanding all that has passed, I take leave of you with respect, because[liv] I think you to be a brave soldier, and even an able organizer of an army. I know that you have served your country long, I firmly believe to the utmost of your ability, and I admit that ability to have been very considerable; but history, my lord, deals with very great men, and you sink in the comparison. She will speak of you as a general far above mediocrity, as one who has done much and a great deal of it well, yet when she looks at Campo Mayor and Albuera she will not rank you amongst great commanders, and if she should ever cast her penetrating eyes upon this your present publication, she will not class you amongst great writers.

[lv]

REPLY

TO THE

Third Article in the Quarterly Review

ON

COL. NAPIER’S HISTORY OF THE PENINSULAR WAR.

‘Now there are two of them; and one has been called Crawley, and the other is Honest Iago.’—Old Play.

This article is the third of its family, and like its predecessors is only remarkable for malignant imbecility and systematic violation of truth. The malice is apparent to all; it remains to show the imbecility and falseness.

The writer complains of my ill-breeding, and with that valour which belongs to the incognito menaces me with his literary vengeance for my former comments. His vengeance! Bah! The ass’ ears peep too far beyond the lion’s hide. He shall now learn that I always adapt my manners to the level of the person I am addressing; and though his petty industry indicates a mind utterly incapable of taking an enlarged view of any subject he shall feel that chastisement awaits his malevolence. And first with respect to the small sketches in my work which he pronounces to be the very worst plans possible. It is expressly stated on the face of each that they are only ‘Explanatory Sketches,’ his observations therefore are a mere ebullition of contemptible spleen; but I will now show my readers why they are only sketches and not accurate plans.

When I first commenced my work, amongst the many persons from whom I sought information was sir George Murray, and this in consequence of a message from him, delivered to me by sir John Colborne, to the effect, that if I would call upon him he would answer any question I put to him on the subject of the Peninsular War. The interview took place, but sir George Murray, far from giving me information seemed intent upon persuading me to abandon my design; repeating continually that it was his intention to write the History of the War himself. He appeared also[lvi] desirous of learning what sources of information I had access to. I took occasion to tell him that the duke of Wellington had desired me to ask him particularly for the ‘Order of Movements,’ as essentially necessary to a right understanding of the campaign and the saving of trouble; because otherwise I should have to search out the different movements through a variety of documents. Sir George replied that he knew of no such orders, that he did not understand me. To this I could only reply that I spoke as the duke had desired me, and knew no more.[6] I then asked his permission to have reduced plans made from captain Mitchell’s fine drawings, informing him that officer was desirous so to assist me. His reply was uncourteously vehement—‘No! certainly not!’ I proposed to be allowed to inspect those drawings if I were at any time at a loss about ground. The answer was still ‘No!’ And as sir George then intimated to me that my work could only be a momentary affair for the booksellers and would not require plans I took my leave. I afterwards discovered that he had immediately caused captain Mitchell’s drawings to be locked up and sealed.

I afterwards waited on sir Willoughby Gordon, the quarter-master-general, who treated me with great kindness, and sent me to the chief of the plan department in his office with an order to have access to everything which might be useful. From that officer I received every attention; but he told me that sir George Murray had been there the day before to borrow all the best plans relating to the Peninsular War, and that consequently little help could be given to me. Now Captain Mitchell’s drawings were made by him after the war, by order of the government, and at the public expense. He remained in the Peninsula for more than two years with pay as a staff-officer,[lvii] his extra expenses were also paid:[7] he was attended constantly by two Spanish dragoons as a protection and the whole mission was costly. Never was money better laid out, for I believe no topographical drawings, whether they be considered for accuracy of detail, perfection of manner, or beauty of execution, ever exceeded Mitchell’s. But those drawings belong to the public and were merely placed in sir George Murray’s official keeping. I believe they are still in his possession and it would be well if some member of parliament were to ask why they are thus made the property of a private man?[8]

Here I cannot refrain from observing that, in the course of my labours, I have asked information of many persons of various nations, even of Spaniards, after my first volume was published, and when the unfavourable view I took of their exertions was known. And from Spaniards, Portuguese, English, French, and Germans, whether of high or low rank, I have invariably met with the greatest kindness, and found an eager desire to aid me. Sir George Murray only has thrown obstacles in my way; and if I am rightly informed of the following circumstance, his opposition has not been confined to what I have stated above. Mr. Murray, the bookseller, purchased my first volume with the right of refusal for the second volume. When the latter was nearly ready a friend informed me that he did not think Murray would purchase, because he had heard him say that sir George Murray had declared it was not ‘The Book.’ He did not point out any particular error; but it was not ‘The Book;’ meaning doubtless that his own production, when it appeared, would be ‘The Book.’ My friend’s prognostic was good. I was offered just half of the sum given for the first volume. I declined it, and published on my own account; and certainly I have had no reason to regret that Mr. Murray waited for ‘The Book:’ indeed he has since told me very frankly that[lviii] he had mistaken his own interest. Now whether three articles in ‘The Quarterly,’ and a promise of more,[9] be a tribute paid to the importance of ‘My Book,’ or whether they be the puff preliminary to ‘The Book,’ I know not; but I am equally bound to Mr. Editor Lockhart for the distinction, and only wish he had not hired such a stumbling sore-backed hackney for the work. Quitting this digression, I return to the Review.

My topographical ignorance is a favourite point with the writer, and he mentions three remarkable examples on the present occasion:—1. That I have said Oporto is built in a hollow; 2. That I have placed the Barca de Avintas only three miles from the Serra Convent, instead of nine miles; 3. That I have described a ridge of land near Medellin where no such ridge exists.

These assertions are all hazarded in the hope that they will pass current with those who know no better, and will be unnoticed by those who do. But first a town may be on a hill and yet in a hollow. If the reader will look at lieutenant Godwin’s Atlas,[10] or at Gage’s Plan of Oporto, or at Avlis’ Plan of that city—all three published by Mr. Wylde of Charing Cross—he will find that Oporto, which by the way is situated very much like the hot-wells at Bristol, is built partly on the slopes of certain heights partly on the banks of the river; that it is surrounded on every side by superior heights; and that consequently my description of it, having relation to the Bishop’s lines of defence and the attack of the French army, is militarily correct. Again, if the reader will take his compasses and any or all of the three maps above-mentioned, he will find that the Barca de Avintas is, as I have said, just three miles from the Serra Convent, and not nine miles as the reviewer asserts. Lord Wellington’s despatch called it four miles from Oporto, but there is a bend in the river which makes the distance greater on that side.

[lix]

Such being the accuracy of this very correct topographical critic upon two or three examples, let us see how he stands with respect to the third.

Extracts from marshal Victors Official Report and Register of the Battle of Medellin.

Now ‘rideau’ can only be rendered, with respect to ground, a steppe or a ridge; but, in this case, it could not mean a steppe, since the Spanish army was hidden behind it, and on a steppe it would have been seen. Again, it must have been a high ridge, because it not only perfectly commanded the basin of the Guadiana, overlooking the steppe which formed that basin, but was itself not overlooked by the very high hill on the left of Medellin. What is my description of the ground?—‘The plain on the side of Don Benito was bounded by a high ridge of land, mark, reader, not a mountain ridge, behind which Cuesta kept the Spanish infantry concealed, showing only his cavalry and guns in advance.’ Here then we have another measure of value for the reviewer’s topographical pretensions.

The reference to French military reports and registers[lx] has not been so far, much to the advantage of the reviewer; and yet he rests the main part of his criticisms upon such documents. Thus, having got hold of the divisional register of general Heudelet, which register was taken, very much mutilated, in the pursuit of Soult from Oporto, he is so elated with his acquisition that he hisses and cackles over it like a goose with a single gosling. But I have in my possession the general report and register of Soult’s army, which enables me to show what a very little callow bird his treasure is. And first, as he accuses me of painting the wretched state of Soult’s army at St. Jago, previous to the invasion of Portugal, for the sole purpose of giving a false colouring to the campaign, I will extract Soult’s own account, and the account of Le Noble, historian of the campaign, and ordonnateur en chef or comptroller of the civil administration of the army.

Extract from Soult’s Official Journal of the Expedition to Portugal, dated Lugo, 30th May, 1809.

Extract from Le Noble’s History.

Who now is the false colourist? But what can be expected from a writer so shameless in his statements as this reviewer? Let the reader look to the effrontery with which he asserts that I have celebrated marshal Soult for the reduction of two fortresses, Ferrol and Coruña, which were not even defended, whereas my whole passage is a censure upon the Spaniards for not defending them, and without one word of praise towards the French marshal.

To return to general Heudelet’s register. The first notable discovery from this document is, that it makes no mention of an action described by me as happening on the 17th of February at Ribadavia; and therefore the reviewer says no such action happened, though I have been so particular as to mention the strength of the Spaniards’ position, their probable numbers, and the curious fact that twenty priests were killed, with many other circumstances, all of which he contradicts. Now this is only the old story of ‘the big book which contains all that sir George does not know.’ For, first, Heudelet’s register, being only divisional, would not, as a matter of course, take notice of an action in which other troops were also engaged, and where the commander-in-chief was present. But that the action did take place, as I have described it, and on the 17th February, the following extracts will prove, and also the futility of the reviewer’s other objections. And I request the reader, both now and always, to look at the passages quoted from my work, in the work itself, and not trust the garbled extracts of the reviewer, or he will have a very false notion of my meaning.

Extract from Soult’s General Report.

The reviewer further says that, with my habitual inaccuracy as to dates, I have concentrated all Soult’s division at Orense on the 20th. But Soult himself says, ‘The 19th, Franceschi and Heudelet marched upon Orense, and seized the bridge. The 20th, the other divisions followed the movement upon Orense.’ Here then, besides increasing the bulk of the book, containing what sir George does not know, the reviewer has only proved his own habitual want of truth.

In the above extracts nothing is said of the ‘eight or ten thousand Spaniards;’ nothing of the ‘strong rugged hill’ on which they were posted; nothing of ‘Soult’s presence in the action.’ But the reader will find all these particulars in the Appendix to the ‘Victoires et Conquêtes des Français,’ and in ‘Le Noble’s History of Soult’s Campaign.’ The writers in each work were present, and the latter, notwithstanding the reviewer’s sneers, and what is of more consequence, notwithstanding many serious errors as to the projects and numbers of his enemies, is highly esteemed by his countrymen, and therefore good authority for those operations on his own side which he witnessed. Well, Le Noble says there were 15,000 or 20,000 insurgents[lxiii] and some regular troops in position, and he describes that position as very rugged and strong, which I can confirm, having marched over it only a few weeks before. Nevertheless, as this estimate was not borne out by Soult’s report, I set the Spaniards down at 8,000 or 10,000, grounding my estimate on the following data: 1st. Soult says that 800 men fell back on a body far more numerous. 2d. It required a considerable body of troops and several combinations to dislodge them from an extensive position. 3d. ‘Three or four thousand fugitives went off by one road only.’ Finally, the expression eight or ten thousand showed that I had doubts.

Let us proceed with Heudelet’s register. In my history it is said that Soult softened the people’s feelings by kindness and by enforcing strict discipline. To disprove this the reviewer quotes, from Heudelet’s register, statements of certain excesses, committed principally by the light cavalry, and while in actual pursuit of the enemy—excesses, however, which he admits that count Heudelet blamed and rigorously repressed, thus proving the truth of my statement instead of his own, for verily the slow-worm is strong within him. Yet I will not rely upon this curious stupidity of the reviewer. I will give absolute authority for the fact that Soult succeeded in soothing the people’s feelings, begging the reader to observe that both Heudelet and my history speak of Soult’s stay at Orense immediately after the action at Ribadavia.

Extract from Soult’s General Report.

Animated by a disgraceful anxiety which has always distinguished the Quarterly Review to pander to the bad feelings of mankind by making the vituperation of an[lxiv] enemy the test of patriotism, this critic accuses me of an unnatural bias, and an inclination to do injustice to the Spaniards, because I have not made the report of some outrages, committed by Soult’s cavalry, the ground of a false and infamous charge against the whole French army and French nation. Those outrages he admits himself were vigorously repressed, and they were committed by troops in a country where all the inhabitants were in arms, where no soldier could straggle without meeting death by torture and mutilation, and, finally, where the army lived from day to day on what they could take in the country. I shall now put this sort of logic to a severe test, and leave the Reviewer’s patriots to settle the matter as they can. That is, I shall give from lord Wellington’s despatches, through a series of years, extracts touching the conduct of British officers and soldiers in this same Peninsula, where they were dealt with, not as enemies, not mutilated, tortured, and assassinated, but well provided and kindly treated.

Sir A. Wellesley to Mr. Villiers.

Sir Arthur Wellesley to lord Castlereagh, May 31, 1809.

Sir Arthur Wellesley to Mr. Villiers, June 13, 1809.

Sir Arthur Wellesley to colonel Donkin, June, 1809.

Sir Arthur Wellesley to lord Castlereagh, June, 1809.

Sir Arthur Wellesley to Mr. Villiers, July, 1809.

Sir Arthur to lord Wellesley, August, 1809.

Sir Arthur Wellesley to Mr. Villiers, September, 1809.

Lord Wellington to lord Liverpool, January, 1810.

Lord Wellington to the adjutant-general of the forces, 1810.

Lord Wellington to lord Liverpool, 1810.

Lord Wellington to sir S. Cotton, 1810.

Lord Wellington to lord Liverpool, May, 1812.

Many more extracts I could give, but let us now see what was the conduct of the French towards men who did not murder and mutilate prisoners:—

Lord Wellington to sir H. Wellesley, August, 1810.

Lord Wellington to admiral Berkeley, October, 1810.

Having thus displayed the conduct of the British army, as described by its own general through a series of years; and having also from the same authority, shown the humane treatment English officers and soldiers, when they happened to be made prisoners, experienced from the French, I demand of any man with a particle of honour, truth or conscience in his composition,—of any man, in fine, who is not at once knave and fool, whether these outrages perpetrated by British troops upon a friendly people can be suppressed, and the outrages of French soldiers against implacable enemies enlarged upon with justice? Whether it is right and decent to impute relentless ferocity, atrocious villainy, to the whole French army, and stigmatize the whole French nation for the excesses of some bad soldiers, prating at the same time of the virtue of England and the excellent conduct of her troops; and this too in the face of Wellington’s testimony to the kindness with which they treated our men, and in the face also of his express declaration (see letter to lord Wellesley, 26th January, 1811), that the majority of the French soldiers were ‘sober, well disposed, amenable to order, and in some degree educated.’ But what intolerable injustice it would be to stigmatise either nation for military excesses which are common to all armies and to all wars; and when I know that the general characteristic of the British and French troops alike, is generosity, bravery, humanity, and honour.

And am I to be accused of an unnatural bias against the Spaniards because I do not laud them for running away in battle; because I do not express my admiration of their honour in assassinating men whom they dared not face in fight; because I do not commend their humanity for mutilating, torturing, and murdering their prisoners. I have indeed heard of a British staff-officer, high in rank, who, after the battle of Talavera, looked on with apparent satisfaction at a Spaniard beating a wounded Frenchman’s brains out with a stone, and even sneered at the indignant emotion and instant interference of my informant. Such[lxix] an adventure I have heard of, yet there are few such cold-blooded men in the British army. But what have I said to the disparagement of the Spaniards in my history without sustaining it by irrefragable testimony? Nothing, absolutely nothing! I have quoted the deliberate judgment of every person of note, French and English, who had to deal with them; nay, I have in some instances supported my opinion by the declaration even of Spanish generals. I have brought forward the testimony of sir Hew Dalrymple, of sir John Moore, of sir John Craddock, of Mr. Stuart, of Mr. Frere, of general Graham, of lord William Bentinck, of sir Edward Pellew, of lord Collingwood, of sir Edward Codrington, and of Mr. Sydenham, and a crowd of officers of inferior rank. Lastly, I have produced the testimony of the duke of Wellington; and I will now add more proofs that his opinion of the Spanish character coincides with that expressed in my history.

Extracts from lord Wellington’s Correspondence, 1809.

Extracts, 1810.

[lxxi]

Wellington to sir H. Wellesley, 1810.

Wellington to lord Wellesley, 1810.

Wellington to sir H. Wellesley, Dec. 1810.

Wellington to general Graham, 1811.

So much for Wellington’s opinion of the Spanish soldiers and statesmen; let us now hear him as to the Spanish generals:—

Now reader, the following is the character given to Romana in my history; compare it with the above:—

‘Romana was a man of talent, quickness, and information, but disqualified by nature for military command.’ And again, speaking of his death, I say, ‘He was a worthy man and of quick parts, although deficient in military talent. His death was a great loss.’ If the expressions are more positive than Wellington’s, it is because this was the duke’s first notion of the marquis; he was more positive afterwards, and previous circumstances unknown to him, and after circumstances known to him, gave me a right to be more decided. The following additional[lxxiii] proofs, joined to those already given in my former reply, must suffice for the present. Sir John Moore, in one of his letters, says, ‘I am sorry to find that Romana is a shuffler.’ And Mr. Stuart, the British envoy, writing about the same period to general Doyle to urge the advance of Palafox and Infantado, says, ‘I know that Romana has not supported the British as he ought to have done, and has left our army to act alone when he might have supported it with a tolerably efficient force.’

In 1812, during the siege of Burgos, Mr. Sydenham, expressing lord Wellington’s opinions, after saying that Wellington declared he had never met with a really able man in Spain, while in Portugal he had found several, proceeds thus—

If to this the reader will add what I have set forth in my history about Vives, Imas, Contreras, Campo Verde, Cuesta, and Areyasaga, and that he is not yet satisfied, I can still administer to his craving. In 1809 Wellington speaks with dread of ‘Romana’s cormorants flying into Portugal,’ and says, ‘that foolish fellow the Duque del Parque has been endeavouring to get his corps destroyed on the frontier.’ Again—

Again in 1811, defending himself from an accusation, made by the Spaniards, that he had caused the loss of Valencia, he says, ‘the misfortunes of Valencia are to be attributed to Blake’s ignorance of his profession and to Mahy’s cowardice and treachery.’

Now if any passage in my history can be pointed out more disparaging to the Spaniards than the expressions of lord Wellington and the other persons quoted above, I am content to be charged with an ‘unnatural bias’ against that people. But if this cannot be done, it is clear that the reviewer has proved, not my unnatural bias to the French but his own natural bias to calumny. He has indeed a wonderful aversion to truth, for close under his eye, in my second volume which he was then reviewing, was the following passage; and there are many of a like tendency in my work relative to the Spaniards which he leaves unnoticed.

I would stop here, but the interests of truth and justice, and the interests of society require that I should thoroughly expose this reviewer. Let the reader therefore mark his reasoning upon Soult’s government of Oporto and the intrigue of the Anti-Braganza party. Let him however look first at the whole statement of these matters[lxxv] in my book, and not trust the garbled extracts made by the reviewer. Let him observe how Heudelet’s expedition to Tuy is by this shameless writer, at one time made to appear as if it took place after Soult had received the deputations and addresses calling for a change of dynasty; and this to show that no beneficial effect had been produced in the temper of the people, as I had asserted, and of which I shall presently give ample proof. How at another time this same expedition of Heudelet is used as happening before the arrival of the addresses and deputations, with a view to show that Soult had laboured to procure those addresses, a fact which, far from denying, I had carefully noticed. Let him mark how an expression in my history, namely, that Soult was unprepared for one effect of his own vigorous conduct, has been perverted, for the purpose of deceit; and all this with a spirit at once so malignant and stupid, that the reviewer is unable to see that the garbled extracts he gives from Heudelet’s and Riccard’s Registers, not only do not contradict but absolutely confirm the essential point of my statement.

Certainly Soult was not unprepared for the submission of the Portuguese to the French arms because it was the object and bent of his invasion to make them so submit. But there is a great difference between that submission of which Heudelet and Riccard speak, and the proposal coming from the Portuguese for the establishment of a new and independent dynasty; a still greater difference between that and offering the crown to Soult himself; and it was this last which the word unprepared referred to in my history. So far from thinking or saying that Soult was unprepared for the deputations and addresses, I have expressly said, that he ‘encouraged the design,’ that he ‘acted with great dexterity,’ and I called the whole affair an ‘intrigue.’ But if I had said that he was unprepared for the whole affair it would have been correct in one sense. He was unprepared to accede to the extent of the Anti-Braganza party’s views. He had only received authority from his sovereign to conquer Portugal, not to establish a new and independent dynasty, placing a French prince upon the throne; still less to accept that throne for[lxxvi] himself. These were dangerous matters to meddle with under such a monarch as Napoleon; but the weakness of Soult’s military position made it absolutely necessary to catch at every aid, and it would have been a proof that the duke of Dalmatia was only a common man and unsuited for the great affairs confided to his charge if he had rejected such a powerful auxiliary to his military operations: wisely, therefore, and even magnanimously did he encourage the Anti-Braganza party, drawing all the military benefit possible from it, and trusting to Napoleon’s sagacity and grandeur of soul for his justification. Nor was he mistaken in either. Yet I am ready to admit that all this must appear very strange to Quarterly Reviewers and parasites, whose knowledge of the human mind is confined to an accurate measure of the sentiments of patrons, rich and powerful, but equally with themselves incapable of true greatness and therefore always ready to ridicule it.

The facts then stand thus. Heudelet’s expedition through the Entre Minho e Douro took place between the 5th of April and the 27th of that month, and the country people being then in a state of exasperation opposed him vehemently; in my history the combats he sustained are mentioned, and it is said that previous to the Anti-Braganza intrigue the horrible warfare of assassinations had been carried on with infinite activity. But the intrigue of the malcontents was not completed until the end of April, and the good effect of it on the military operations was not apparent until May, consequently could not have been felt by Heudelet in the beginning of April. In my history the difference of time in these two affairs is expressly marked, inasmuch as I say that in treating of the intrigue I have anticipated the chronological order of events. Truly if Mr. Lockhart has paid for this part of the Review as criticism Mr. Murray should disallow the unfair charge in his accounts.

I shall now give two extracts from Soult’s general report, before quoted, in confimation of my statements:—

It would be too tedious and unprofitable to the reader to continue thus following the reviewer step by step. Wherefore, neglecting his farrago about the principles of war, and his application of them to show how I am wrong in my statement, that, in a strategic point of view it was better to attack Victor, but that especial circumstances led sir Arthur to fall upon Soult, I hold it sufficient to place sir Arthur’s own statement before the reader and leave him to compare it with mine.

‘Lisbon, April 24, 1809.

The assertion of the reviewer that I have underrated Cuesta’s force, inasmuch as it was only 19,000 infantry and 1,500 cavalry, instead of 30,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry, as I have stated it to be, and that consequently the greatest numbers could not be brought to bear on Victor, is one of those curious examples of elaborate misrepresentation in which this writer abounds. For first, admitting that Cuesta had only 20,000 men, sir Arthur would have brought 24,000 to aid him, and Victor had only 30,000. The allies would then have had double the number opposed to Soult. But the pith of the misrepresentation lies in this, that the reviewer has taken Cuesta’s account of his actual force on the 23d of April, and suppresses the facts, that reinforcements were continually pouring into him at that time, and that he actually did advance against Victor with rather greater numbers than those stated by me.

PROOFS.

Sir Arthur to lord Castlereagh, April 24, 1809.

[lxxix]

To general Mackenzie, May 1, 1809.

Mr. Frere to sir Arthur Wellesley, Seville, May 4.

Sir Arthur Wellesley to lord Castlereagh, June 17, 1809.

To lord Wellesley, August 8, 1809.

Extract from a Memoir by sir A. Wellesley, 1809.

All the reviewer’s remarks about Cuesta’s numbers, and about the unfordable nature of the Tagus, are a reproduction of misrepresentations and objections before exposed and refuted by me in my controversy with marshal Beresford; but as it is now attempted to support them by garbled extracts from better authorities, I will again and completely expose and crush them. This will however be more conveniently done farther on. Meanwhile I repeat, that the Tagus is only unfordable during the winter, and not then if there is a few days dry weather; that six months of the year it is always fordable in many places, and as low down as Salvaterra near Lisbon; finally, that my expression, ‘a river fordable at almost every season,’ is strictly correct, and is indeed not mine but lord Wellington’s expression. To proceed with the rest:—

Without offering any proof beyond his own assertion, the reviewer charges me with having exaggerated the importance of D’Argenton’s conspiracy for the sole purpose of[lxxx] excusing Soult’s remissness in guarding the Douro. But my account of that conspiracy was compiled from the duke of Wellington’s letters—some public, some private addressed to me; and from a narrative of the conspiracy written expressly for my guidance by major-general sir James Douglas, who was the officer employed to meet and conduct D’Argenton to and from the English army;—from Soult’s own official report; from Le Noble’s history; and from secret information which I received from a French officer who was himself one of the principal movers—not of that particular conspiracy—but of a general one of which the one at Oporto was but a branch.

Again, the reviewer denies that I am correct in saying, that Soult thought Hill’s division had been disembarked from the ocean; that he expected the vessels would come to the mouth of the Douro; and that considering that river secure above the town his personal attention was directed to the line below Oporto. Let Soult and Le Noble answer this.

Extract from Soult’s General Report.

Extract from Le Noble.

Such is the value of this carping disingenuous critic’s observations on this point; and I shall now demolish his other misstatements about the passage of the Douro.

1st. The poor barber’s share in the transaction is quite true; my authority is major-general sir John Waters who[lxxxi] was the companion of the barber in the daring exploit of bringing over the boats. And if Waters had recollected his name, it is not the despicable aristocratic sneer of the reviewer about the ‘Plebeian’ that would have prevented me from giving it. 2d. The Barca de Avintas, where sir John Murray crossed, has already been shown by a reference to the maps and to lord Wellington’s despatch, to be not nine miles from the Serra Convent as the reviewer says, but three miles as I have stated: moreover, two Portuguese leagues would not make nine English miles. But to quit these minor points, the reviewer asks, ‘Why colonel Napier departed from the account of the events given in the despatch of sir Arthur Wellesley?’ This is the only decent passage in the whole review, and it shall have a satisfactory answer.

Public despatches, written in the hurry of the moment, immediately after the events and before accurate information can be obtained, are very subject to errors of detail, and are certainly not what a judicious historian would rely upon for details without endeavouring to obtain other information. In this case I discovered several discrepancies between the despatch and the accounts of eye-witnesses and actors written long afterwards and deliberately. I knew also, that the passage of the Douro, though apparently a very rash action and little considered in England, was a very remarkable exploit, prudent skilful and daring. Anxious to know the true secret of the success, I wrote to the duke of Wellington, putting a variety of questions relative to the whole expeditions. In return I received from him distinct answers, with a small diagram of the seminary and ground about it to render the explanation clear. Being thus put in possession of all the leading points relative to the passage of the Douro by the commanders on each side, for I had before got Soult’s, I turned to the written and printed statements of several officers engaged in the action for those details which the generals had not touched upon.

Now the principal objections of the reviewer to my statement are,—1st. That I have given too many troops to sir John Murray. 2d. That I have unjustly accused[lxxxii] him of want of military hardihood. 3d. That I have erroneously described the cause of the loss sustained by the fourteenth dragoons in retiring from their charge. In reply I quote my authorities; and first, as to the numbers with Murray.

Extract from lord Wellington’s answers to colonel Napier’s questions.

Armed with this authority, I did set aside the despatch, because, though it said that Murray was sent with a battalion and a squadron, it did not say that he was not followed by others. And in lord Londonderry’s narrative I found the following passage:—

And his lordship, further on, says, that he himself charged several times and with advantage at the head of those squadrons. His expression is ‘the dragoons from Murray’s corps.’

With respect to the loss of the dragoons sustained by having to fight their way back again, I find the following account in the narrative of sir James Douglas, written, as I have before said, expressly for my guidance:—

[lxxxiii]

Thus, even in this small matter, the reviewer is not right. And now with the above facts fixed I shall proceed to rebut the charge of having calumniated sir John Murray.

First, the reviewers assertion, that Murray’s troops were never within several miles of the seminary, and that they would have been crushed by Soult if they had attacked the enemy, is evidently false from the following facts. Lord Wellington expressly says, in his answer to my questions quoted before,—That the right of the troops in the seminary was protected by the troops under Murray; which could not be if the latter were several miles off. Again, if the dragoons of Murray’s corps could charge repeatedly with advantage, the infantry and guns of that corps might have followed up the attack without danger upon a confused, flying, panic-stricken body of men who had been surprised and were at the same time taken both in flank and rear. But if Murray dared not with any prudence even approach the enemy,—if it were absolutely necessary for him to retire as he did,—what brought him there at all? Is the duke of Wellington a general to throw his troops wantonly into such a situation,—and on ground which his elevated post at the Serra Convent enabled him to command perfectly, and where the men and movements of both sides were as much beneath his eye as the men and movements on a chess-board? Bah!

But the fact is that a part of the Germans under Murray, aye!—a very small part! did actually engage the enemy with success. Major Beamish, in his ‘History of the German Legion,’ on the authority of one of the German officers’ journals, writes thus:—

Murray wanted hardihood. And it is no answer to say[lxxxiv] lord Wellington did not take notice of his conduct. A commander-in-chief is guided by many circumstances distinct from the mere military facts, and it might be, that, on this occasion he did not choose to judge rashly or harshly a man, who had other good qualities, for an error into which, perhaps, a very bold and able man might have fallen by accident. And neither would I have thus judged sir John Murray from this fact alone, although the whole army were disgusted at the time by his want of daring and openly expressed an unfavourable opinion of his military vigour. But when I find that the same want of hardihood was again apparent in him at Castalla, as I have shown in my fifth volume, and still more glaringly displayed by him at Taragona, as I shall show in my sixth volume, the matter became quite different, and the duty of the historian is to speak the truth even of a general, strange as that may and I have no doubt does appear to this reviewer.

Having disposed of this matter, I shall now set down some passages evincing the babbling shallowness and self-conceit of the critic, and beneath them my authorities, whereby it will appear that the big book containing all sir George does not know is increasing in bulk:—

Indeed! Reader, mark the following question to, and answer from the duke of Wellington.

Question to the duke of Wellington by colonel Napier.

Why did the duke halt the next day after the passage of the Douro?

[lxxxv]

And, in the answer to another question, the following observation occurs:—‘The relative numbers and the nature of the troops must be considered in all these things; and this fact moreover, that excepting to attain a very great object we could not risk the loss of a corps.’

I pass over the reviewer’s comments upon my description of Soult’s retreat, because a simple reference to my work will at once show their folly and falseness; but I beg to inform this acute and profound historical critic that the first field-marshal captured by an English general was marshal Tallard, and that the English general who captured him was called John, duke of Marlborough. And, with respect to his sneers about the ‘little river of Ruivaens;’ ‘Soult’s theatrical speech;’ ‘the use of the twenty-five horsemen;’ ‘the non-repairs of the Ponte Nova;’ and the ‘Romance composed by colonel Napier and Le Noble;’ I shall, in answer, only offer the following authorities, none of which, the reader will observe, are taken from Le Noble.

Extract from Soult’s General Report.

Extract from the ‘Victoires et Conquêtes des Français’.

[lxxxvi]

Then follows a detailed account of the Misserella bridge, or Saltador, and its abbatis and other obstacles; of Dulong’s attack; of his being twice repulsed; and of his carrying of the bridge, the Leaper as it was called, at the third assault, falling dreadfully wounded at the moment of victory; finally, of the care and devotion with which his soldiers carried him on their shoulders during the rest of the retreat. And the reader will observe that this account is not a mere description in the body of the work, but a separate paper in the Appendix, written by some officer evidently well acquainted with all the facts, perhaps Dulong himself,[lxxxvii] and for the express purpose of correcting the errors of detail in the body of that work. Theatrical to the critic, and even ridiculous it may likely enough appear. The noble courage and self-devotion of such a soldier as Dulong is a subject which no person will ever expect a Quarterly viewer to understand.

In the foregoing comments I have followed the stream of my own thoughts, rather than the order of the reviewer’s criticisms; I must therefore retrace my steps to notice some points which have been passed over. His observations about Zaragoza have been already disposed of in my reply to his first articles published in my fifth volume, but his comments upon Catalonian affairs shall now be noticed.

The assertion that lord Collingwood was incapable of judging of the efforts of the Catalans, although he was in daily intercourse with their chiefs, co-operating with their armies and supplying them with arms and stores, because he was a seaman, is certainly ingenious. It has just so much of pertness in it as an Admiralty clerk of the Melville school might be supposed to acquire by a long habit of official insolence to naval officers, whose want of parliamentary interest exposed them to the mortification of having intercourse with him. And it has just so much of cunning wisdom as to place it upon a par with that which dictated the inquiry which we have heard was sent out to sir John Warren during the late American war, namely, “whether light—very light frigates, could not sail up the St. Lawrence to Lake Ontario?” And with that surprising providence, which did send out birch-brooms and tanks to hold fresh water for the use of the ships on the said lake of Ontario. But quitting these matters, the reviewer insinuates what is absolutely untrue, namely, that I have only quoted lord Collingwood as authority for my statements about Catalonia. The readers of my work know that I have adduced in testimony the Spanish generals themselves, namely, Contreras, Lacy, and Rovira; the testimony of sir Edward Codrington, of sir Edward Pellew, of colonel Doyle, and of other Englishmen. That I have referred to St. Cyr, Suchet, Lafaille, and other French writers; that I have quoted Vacani and Cabane’s Histories,[lxxxviii] the first an Italian serving with the French army in Catalonia, the last a Spaniard and chief of the staff to the Catalan army: and now, to complete the reviewer’s discomfiture, I will add the duke of Wellington, who is a landsman and therefore according to this reviewer’s doctrine, entitled to judge:—

Letter to lord Liverpool, 19th Dec. 1809.

So much for light frigates, birch-brooms, fresh-water tanks, and Collingwood’s incapacity to judge of the Catalans, because he was a seaman; and as for Reding’s complaints of the Spaniards when dying, they must go to sir George’s big book with this marginal note, that St. Cyr is not the authority. But for the grand flourish, the threat to prove at another time, ‘from Wellington’s despatches,’ that the Spaniards gave excellent intelligence and made no false reports, let the reader take the following testimony in anticipation:—

Extracts from lord Wellington’s Correspondence, 1809.

Wellington to lord Liverpool, 1810. Cartaxo.

Wellington to sir H. Wellesley, 1810.

The reader must be now somewhat tired of quotations; let us therefore turn for relaxation to the reviewer’s observations about light troops,—of which he seems indeed to know as much as the wise gentleman of the Admiralty did about the facility of sailing up the St. Lawrence to Lake Ontario; but though that wise gentleman did not know much about sailing-craft, the reviewer knows something of another kind of craft, namely misrepresentation. Thus he quotes a passage from captain Kincaid’s amusing and clever work as if it told in his favour; whereas it in no manner supports his foolish insinuation—namely, that the 43d and 52d regiments of the light division were not light troops, never acted as such, and never skirmished! Were he to say as much to the lowest bugler of these corps, he would give him the fittest answer for his folly—that is to say, laugh in his face.

‘There are but two kinds of soldiers in the world’ said Napoleon, ‘the good and the bad.’

Now, the light division were not only good but, I will say it fearlessly, the best soldiers in the world. The three British regiments composing it had been formed by sir John Moore precisely upon the same system. There was no difference save in the colour of the riflemen’s jackets and the weapons which they carried. Captain Kincaid’s[xci] observation, quoted by the reviewer, merely says, what is quite true, that the riflemen fought in skirmishing order more frequently than the 43d and 52d did. Certainly they did, and for this very sufficient reason—their arms, the rifle and sword, did not suit any other formation; it is a defect in the weapon, which is inferior to the musket and bayonet, fitted alike for close or open order. Napoleon knew this so well that he had no riflemen in his army, strange as it may appear to those persons who have read so much about French riflemen. The riflemen of the light division could form line, columns, and squares—could move as a heavy body—could do, and did do everything that the best soldiers in the world ought to do; and in like manner the 52d and 43d regiments skirmished and performed all the duties of light troops with the same facility as the riflemen; but the difference of the weapon made it advisable to use the latter nearly always in open order: I do not, indeed, remember ever to have seen them act against the enemy either in line or square. Captain Kincaid is too sensible and too good a soldier, and far too honest a man, to serve the purpose of this snarling blockhead, who dogmatizes in defiance of facts and with a plenitude of pompous absurdity that would raise the bile of an alderman. Thus, after quoting from my work the numbers of the French army, he thus proceeds:—

Now this relates to the period following sir John Moore’s death, which was on the 16th of January. That general’s fine movement upon Sahagun, and his subsequent retreat, had drawn the great bulk of the French forces towards Gallicia, and had paralyzed many corps. The war with Austria had drawn Napoleon himself and the imperial guards away from the Peninsula. Joseph was establishing his court at Madrid; Victor remained very inactive in Estremadura; Soult marched into Portugal;—in fine, this was precisely the period of the whole war in which the[xcii] French army were most insert. Napoleon has fixed upon the four months of February, March, April, and May, 1809, as the period in which the King let the Peninsula slip from his feeble hands.

Let us see then what the Spaniards did during that time. And first it is false to say that they were unaided. They were aided against Victor by the vicinity of sir John Craddock’s troops; they were aided on the Gallician coast by an English squadron; they were aided on the Beira frontier, against Lapisse, by the Portuguese troops under sir Robert Wilson; they were aided on the Catalonian coast by lord Collingwood’s fleet; they were aided at Cadiz by the presence of general M‘Kenzie’s troops, sent from Lisbon; and they were aided everywhere by enormous supplies of money arms and ammunition sent from England. Finally, they were aided, and most powerfully so, by sir John Moore’s generalship, which had enabled them to rally and keep several considerable armies on foot in the southern parts of the country. What did these armies—these invincible Spaniards—do? They lost Zaragoza, Monzon, and Jaca, in the east; the fortresses of Ferrol and Coruña, and their fleet, in the north; they lost Estremadura, La Mancha, Aragon, the Asturias, and Gallicia; they lost the battles of Ucles and of Valls; the battle of Monterrey, that of Ciudid Real, and the battle of Medellin. They won nothing! they did not save themselves, it was the British army and the indolence and errors of the French that saved them.

Extract from Napoleon’s Memoirs.

Extracts from lord Wellington’s Correspondence. 1809.

The reviewer is not only a great critic, he is a great general also. He has discovered that there are no positions in the mountains of Portugal; nay, he will scarcely allow that there are mountains at all; and he insists that they offer no defence against an invader, but that the rivers do—that the Douro defends the eastern frontier of Beira, and that the frontier of Portugal generally is very compact and strong for defence, and well suited for a weak army to fight superior numbers;—that the weak army cannot be turned and cut off from Lisbon, and the strong army must invade in mass and by one line.

Now, first, it so happened, unluckily for this lucid military notion of Portugal, that in Massena’s invasion lord Wellington stopped to fight on the mountain of Busaco, and stopped Massena altogether at the mountains of Alhandra, Aruda, Sobral, and Torres Vedras—in other words at the lines, and that he did not once stop him or attempt to stop him by defending a river. That Massena, in his retreat, stopped lord Wellington on the mountain of Santarem, attempted to stop him on the mountains of Cazal Nova, Moita, and Guarda, but never attempted to stop him by defending a river, save at Sabugal, and then he was instantly beaten. Oh, certainly, ’tis a most noble general, and a very acute critic! Nevertheless, I must support my own opinions about the frontier of Portugal, the non-necessity of invading this country in one mass, and the unfordable nature of the Tagus, by the testimony of two generals as distinguished as honest Iago.

Extract of a letter from sir John Moore.

Extracts from lord Wellington’s Correspondence.

In the above extracts, the fordable nature of the Tagus has been pretty clearly shown, but I will continue my proofs upon that fact to satiety.

Lord Wellington to Charles Stuart, Esq.

Lord Wellington to general Hill, August.

Lord Wellington to general Hill, October.

Sir Arthur Wellesley to general Hill.

Sir Arthur Wellesley to marshal Beresford.

Sir Arthur Wellesley to admiral Berkeley.

Sir John Craddock to lord Castlereagh, April.

Thus we see that, in nearly every month in the year, this unfordable Tagus of the reviewer is fordable in many places, and that in fact it is no barrier except in very heavy rains. But to render this still clearer I will here give one more and conclusive proof. In an elaborate manuscript memoir upon the defence of Portugal, drawn up by the celebrated general Dumourier for the duke of Wellington, that officer[xcvi] argues like this reviewer, that the Tagus is unfordable and a strong barrier. But a marginal note in Wellington’s hand-writing runs thus:—‘He (Dumourier) does not seem to be aware of the real state of the Tagus at any season.’

What can I say more? Nothing upon this head, but much upon others. I can call upon the reader to trace the deceitful mode in which the reviewer perverts or falsifies my expressions throughout. How he represents the Spaniards at one moment so formidable as to resist successfully the utmost efforts of more than 300,000 soldiers, the next breath calls them a poor unarmed horde of peasants incapable of making any resistance at all. How he quotes me as stating that the ministers had unbounded confidence in the success of the struggle in Spain; whereas my words are, that the ministers professed unbounded confidence. How he represents me as saying, the Cabinet were too much dazzled to analyse the real causes of the Spanish Revolution; whereas it was the nation not the Cabinet of which I spoke. And this could not be mistaken, because I had described the ministers as only anxious to pursue a warlike system necessary to their own existence, and that they were actuated by a personal hatred of Napoleon. Again, how he misrepresents me as wishing the British to seize Cadiz, and speaks of a mob in that city, when I have spoken only of the people (oh, true Tory!); and never proposed to seize Cadiz at all, and have also given the unexceptionable authority of Mr. Stuart, general M‘Kenzie, and sir George Smith, for my statement. And here I will notice a fine specimen of this reviewer’s mode of getting up a case. Having undertaken to prove that every river in Portugal is a barrier, except the Zezere which I had fixed upon as being an important line, he gives an extract of a letter from lord Wellington to a general Smith, to the effect that, as the Zezere might be turned at that season in so many ways, he did not wish to construct works to defend it then. Now, first, it is necessary to inform the reader that there is no letter to general Smith. The letter in question was to general Leith, and the mistake was not without its object, namely, to prevent any curious person from discovering that the very next sentence is as follows:—‘If,[xcvii] however, this work can be performed, either by the peasantry or by the troops, without any great inconvenience, the line of the Zezere may, hereafter, become of very great importance.’

All this is very pitiful, and looks like extreme soreness in the reviewer; but the effrontery with which he perverts my statements about the Austrian war surpasses all his other efforts in that line, and deserves a more elaborate exposure.

In my history it is stated, that some obscure intrigues of the princess of Tour and Taxis, and the secret societies on the continent, emanating from patrician sources, excited the sympathy, and nourished certain distempered feelings in the English ministers, which feeling made them see only weakness and disaffection in France. This I stated, because I knew that those intrigues were, in fact, a conspiracy concocted, with Talleyrand’s connivance, for the dethronement of Napoleon; and the English ministers neglected Spain and every other part of their foreign affairs for the moment, so intent were they upon this foolish scheme and so sanguine of success. These facts are not known to many, but they are true.

In the same paragraph of my history it is said, the warlike preparations of Austria, and the reputation of the archduke Charles, whose talents were foolishly said to exceed Napoleon’s, had awakened the dormant spirit of coalitions; meaning, as would be evident to any persons not wilfully blind, had awakened that dormant spirit in the English ministers.

Now reader, mark the candour and simplicity of the reviewer. He says that I condemned these ministers, ‘for nourishing their distempered feelings by combining the efforts of a German monarch in favour of national independence.’ As if it were the Austrian war, and not the obscure intrigues for dethroning Napoleon that the expression of distempered feelings applied to. As if the awakening the dormant spirit of coalitions, instead of being a reference to the sentiments of the English ministers, meant the exciting the Austrians and other nations to war, and the forming of a vast plan of action by those ministers![xcviii] And for fear any mistake on that head should arise, it is so asserted in another part of the review in the following terms:—

The Quarterly’s attention to Spanish affairs seems to have rendered it very intimate with the works of Ferdinand Mendez Pinto. But since it has thus claimed the Austrian war as the work of its former patrons, the ministers of 1809, I will throw some new light upon the history of that period, which, though they should prove little satisfactory to the Quarterly, may, as the details are really curious, in some measure repay the reader for his patience in wading through the tedious exposition of this silly and unscrupulous writer’s misrepresentations.

After the conference of Erfurth, the Austrian count Stadion, a man of ability and energy, either believing, or affecting to believe, that Napoleon was determined to destroy Austria and only waited until Spain was conquered, resolved to employ the whole force of the German empire against the French monarch in a war of destruction for one or other of the contending states. With this view his first efforts were directed to change the opinions of the archduke Charles and those immediately about him who were averse to a war; and though he was long and vigorously resisted by general Grün, an able man and the archduke’s confidant, he finally succeeded. Some time before this France had insisted upon a reduction of the Austrian forces, and being asked if she would do the same for the sake of peace, replied that she would maintain no more troops in Germany than should be found necessary; but the army of the Confederation must be kept up as a constitutional force, and it was impossible during the war with England to reduce the French troops in other quarters. To this succeeded an attempt at a triple treaty, by[xcix] which the territories of Austria, Russia, and France, were to be mutually guaranteed. Champagny and Romanzow suggested this plan, but the Austrian minister did not conceive Russia strong enough to guarantee Austria against France. Stadion’s project was more agreeable, and a note of a declaration of war was sent to Metternich, then at Paris, to deliver to the French government. The archduke Charles set off for the army, and was followed by the emperor.

When the war was thus resolved upon, it remained to settle whether it should be carried on for the sole benefit of Austria, or in such a manner as to interest other nations. Contrary to her usual policy Austria decided for the latter, and contrary to her usual parsimony she was extremely liberal to her general officers and spies. It was determined that the war should be one of restitution, and in that view secret agents had gone to Italy, and were said to have made great progress in exciting the people; officers had been also sent to Sicily and Sardinia to urge those courts to attempt their own restoration to the continental thrones. The complete restoration of Naples, of Tuscany, and the Pope’s dominions, and large additions to the old kingdom of Piedmont were proposed, and Austria herself only demanded a secure frontier, namely, the Tyrol, the river Po, and the Chiusa, which was not much more than the peace of Campo Formio had left her.

Such were her views in the south where kings were to be her coadjutors, but in the north she was intent upon a different plan. There she expected help from the people, who were discontented at being parcelled out by Napoleon. Treaties were entered into with the elector of Hesse, the dukes of Brunswick and Oels, and it was understood that the people there and in the provinces taken from Prussia, were ready to rise on the first appearance of an Austrian soldier. Hanover was to be restored to England; but Austria was so discontented with the Prussian king, that the restoration of the Prussian provinces, especially the duchy of Warsaw, was to depend upon his conduct in the war.

[c]

The means of effecting this mighty project were the great resources which Stadion had found or created; they were greater than Austria had ever before produced and the enthusiasm of her people was in proportion. The landwehr levy had been calculated at only 150 battalions; it produced 300 battalions, besides the Hungarian insurrection. The regular army was complete in everything, and the cavalry good, though not equal to what it had been in former wars. There were nine ‘corps d’armée.’ The archduke Ferdinand with one was to strike a blow in the duchy of Warsaw. The archduke Charles commanded in chief. Marching with six corps, containing 160,000 regular troops besides the landwehr attached to them, he was to cross the frontier and fall on the French army, supposed to be only 40,000. That is to say, the first corps, under Belgarde and Klenau, were to march by Peterwalde and Dresden against Bernadotte who was in that quarter. The second corps, under Kollowrath and Brady, were to march by Eger upon Bareith and Wurzburg, to prevent the union of Davoust and Bernadotte. The third corps, under prince Rosenberg, was to move by Waldmunchen, in the Upper Palatinate, and after beating Wrede at Straubingen, to join the archduke Charles near Munich. The archduke himself was to proceed against that city with the reserves of prince John of Lichtenstein, Hiller’s corps, Stipchitz, and those of Hohenzollern’s, and the archduke Louis’. The archduke John was to attack Italy; and the different corps, exclusive of landwehr, amounted to not less than 260,000 men.

The project was gigantic, the force prodigious, and though the quarter-master-general Meyer, seeing the vice of the military plan, resigned his situation, and that Meerfelt quarrelled with the archduke Charles, the general feeling was high and sanguine; and the princes of the empire were, with the exception of Wirtemberg and Westphalia, thought to be rather favourable towards the Austrians. But all the contributions were in kind; Austria had only a depreciated paper currency which would not serve her beyond her own frontiers; wherefore England, at that time the paymaster of all Europe,[ci] was looked to. England, however, had no ambassador, no regular accredited agent at Vienna; all this mighty armament and plan were carried on without her aid, almost without her knowledge; and a despatch from the Foreign Office, dated the 8th of December, but which only arrived the 10th of March, refused all aid whatsoever! and even endeavoured to prove that Austria could not want, and England was not in a situation to grant. Yet this was the period in which such lavish grants had been made to Spain without any condition—so lavish, that, in Cadiz, nearly four hundred thousand pounds, received from England, was lying untouched by the Spaniards. They were absolutely glutted with specie, for they had, at that moment, of their own money, and lying idle in their treasury, fourteen millions of dollars, and ten millions more were on the way from Vera Cruz and Buenes Ayres. Such was the wisdom, such the providence of the English ministers! heaping money upon money at Cadiz, where it was not wanted, and if it had been wanted, ill bestowed; but refusing it to Austria to forward the explosion of the enormous mine prepared against Napoleon in Germany and Italy. Their agent, Mr. Frere, absolutely refused even to ask for a loan of some of this money from the Spaniards. This is what the reviewer, wilfully perverting my expression, namely, ‘awakened the dormant spirit of coalitions,’ calls ‘the forming a combination of the states of Europe!’ The English ministers were treated as mere purse-bearers, to be bullied or cajoled as the case might be; and in these two instances, not without reason, for they neither know how to give nor how to refuse in the right time or place. Nor were their military dispositions better arranged, as we shall presently see.

To proceed with our narrative. Stadion, to prevent the mischief which this despatch from England might have produced, by encouraging the peace-party at the court, and discouraging the others, only imparted it to the emperor and his secret council, but hid it from those members of the cabinet who were wavering. Even this was like to have cost him his place; and some members of the council actually proposed to reduce one-third of the[cii] army. In fine, a cry was arising against the war, but the emperor declared himself on Stadion’s side, and the cabinet awaited the result of count Walmoden’s mission to London. That nobleman had been despatched with full powers to conclude a treaty of alliance and subsidy with England, and to learn the feeling of the English cabinet upon an extraordinary measure which Austria had resorted to; for being utterly unable to pay her way at the outset, and trusting to the importance of the crisis, and not a little to the known facility with which the English ministers lavished their subsidies, she had resolved to raise, through the principal bankers in Vienna, £150,000 a month, by making drafts through Holland upon their correspondents in London, to be repaid from the subsidy TO BE granted by England! Prince Staremberg was sent at the same time with a special mission to London, to arrange a definite treaty for money, and a convention regulating the future object and conduct of the war—a very curious proceeding—because Staremberg had been recalled before for conduct offensive to the English cabinet; but he was well acquainted with London, and the emperor wished to get him away lest he should put himself at the head of the peace-party in Vienna. Thus the English ministers continued so to conduct their affairs, that, while they gave their money to Spain and their advice to Austria, and both unprofitably, they only excited the contempt of both countries.

From the conference of Erfurth, France had been earnest with Russia to take an active part, according to treaty, against Austria; and Romanzow, who was an enemy of England, increased Alexander’s asperity toward that country, but nothing was done against Austria; and when Caulaincourt, the French ambassador at Petersburg, became clamorous, Alexander pretended to take the Austrian ambassador Swartzenberg to task for the measures of his court, but really gave him encouragement, by repairing immediately afterwards to Finland without inviting Caulaincourt. A contemporaneous official note, from Romanzow to Austria, was indeed couched in terms to render the intention of Alexander apparently doubtful,[ciii] but this was only a blind for Napoleon. There was no doubt of the favourable wishes and feelings of the court, the Russian troops in Poland did not stir, and Stadion, far from having any dread of them, calculated upon their assistance in case of any marked success in the outset. The emperor Alexander was, however, far from inattentive to his own interests, for he sent general Hitroff at this time to Turkey to demand Moldavia and Wallachia as the price of a treaty, hoping thus to snatch these countries during the general commotion. He was foiled by the Austrian cabinet, which secretly directed the Turks sent to meet Hitroff, to assume a high tone and agree to no negociation in which England was not a party: hence, when the Russians demanded the dismissal of Mr. Adair from Constantinople Hitroff was himself sent away.

While the affairs with Russia were in this state, the present king of Holland arrived, incognito, at Vienna, to offer his services either as heir to the stadtholdership, as a prince of the German empire, or as a near and confidential connection of the house of Brandenberg; but it was only in the latter view he could be useful, and it was evident he expected the Austrian court would make their policy in the north coincide with that of the Prussian court. He said the secret voyage of the royal family to Petersburg had exposed them to mortifications and slights which had changed the sentiments of both the king and queen towards France, and the queen, bowed down by misfortune, dreaded new reverses and depressed the spirit of the king. They stood alone in their court, ministers and officers alike openly maintained opinions diametrically opposed to the sovereign, and at a grand council held in Koningsberg every minister had voted for war with Napoleon. The king assented, but the next day the queen induced him to retract. However, the voice of the people and of the army was for war, and any order to join the troops to those of the Rhenish confederation was sure to produce an explosion. There were between 30,000 and 40,000 regular troops under arms, and Austria was assured, that if any Austrian force approached the frontier,[civ] the Prussian soldiers would, bag and baggage, join it, despite of king or queen.

In this state of affairs, and when a quarrel had arisen between Bernadotte and the Saxon king (for the people of that country were ill-disposed towards the French), it is evident that a large English army appearing in the north of Germany would have gathered around it all the people and armies of the north, and accordingly Stadion proposed a landing in the Weser and the Elbe. Now England had at that time the great armament which went to Walcheren, the army under Wellington in the Peninsula, and that under sir John Stuart in Sicily, that is to say, she had about 80,000 or 90,000 men disposable; and yet so contriving were the ministers, that they kept Wellington too weak in Spain, Stuart too strong in Sicily; and instead of acting in the north of Germany where such a great combination awaited them, they sent their most powerful force to perish in the marshes of Walcheren, where the only diversion they caused was the bringing together a few thousand national guards from the nearest French departments. And this the reviewer calls ‘the forming a combination of those states in Europe which still retained some degree of independence and magnanimity to resist the ambition of a conqueror.’ What a profound, modest, and, to use a Morning Post compound, not-at-all-a-flagitious writer this reviewer is.

Well, notwithstanding this grand ‘combination,’ things did not turn out well. The Austrians changed their first plan of campaign in several particulars. Napoleon suddenly and unexpectedly appeared at the head of his army, which, greatly inferior in number, and composed principally of German contingents, was not very well disposed towards him; and yet, such was the stupendous power of this man’s genius and bravery, he in a few days by a series of movements unequalled in skill by any movement known in military records, broke through the Austrian power, separated her armies, drove them in disorder before him, and seized Vienna; and but for an accident, one of those minor accidents so frequent in war, which enabled[cv] the archduke Charles to escape over the Danube at Ratisbon, he would have terminated this gigantic contest in ten days. The failure there led to the battle of Esling, where the sudden swell of the Danube again baffled him and produced another crisis, which might have been turned to his hurt if the English army had been in the north of Germany; but it was then perishing amongst the stagnant ditches of Walcheren, and the only combination of the English ministers to be discovered was a combination of folly, arrogance, and conceit. I have now done with the review. Had all the objections contained in it been true, it would have evinced the petty industry of a malicious mind more than any just or generous interest in the cause of truth; but being, as I have demonstrated, false even in the minutest particular, I justly stigmatise it as remarkable only for malignant imbecility and systematic violation of truth.

The reviewers having asserted that I picked out of Foy’s history the charge against lord Melville of saying “the worst men made the best soldiers,” I replied that I drew for it on my own clear recollection of the fact.

Since then a friend has sent me the report of lord Melville’s speech, extracted from the Annual Register (Baldwin’s) 1808, p. 112, and the following passage extracted from his lordship’s speech bears out my assertion and proves the effrontery with which the reviewers deny facts.

HISTORY

OF THE

WAR IN THE PENINSULA.

[Pg 1]

HISTORY

OF THE

PENINSULAR WAR.

BOOK XXI.

CHAPTER I.

The fate of Spain was decided at Vittoria, but on1813. June. the fields of Lutzen and Bautzen Napoleon’s genius restored the general balance, and the negociations which followed those victories affected the war in the Peninsula.

Lord Wellington’s first intention was to reduce Pampeluna by force, and the sudden fall of the Pancorbo forts, which opened the great Madrid road was a favourable event; but Portugal being relinquished as a place of arms, a new base of operations was required, lest a change of fortune should force the allies to return to that country when all the great military establishments were broken up, when the opposition of the native government to British influence was become rancorous, and the public sentiment quite averse to English supremacy. The Western Pyrenees, in conjunction with the ocean, offered such a base, yet the harbours were few, and the English general desired to secure a convenient one, near the new[2] positions of the army; wherefore to reduce San Sebastian was of more immediate importance than to reduce Pampeluna; and it was essential to effect this during the fine season because the coast was iron-bound and very dangerous in winter.

Pampeluna was strong. A regular attack required three weeks for the bringing up of ordnance and stores, five or six weeks more for the attack, and from fifteen to twenty thousand of the best men, because British soldiers were wanted for the assault; but an investment could be maintained by fewer and inferior troops, Spaniards and Portuguese, and the enemy’s magazines were likely to fail under blockade sooner than his ramparts would crumble under fire. Moreover on the eastern coast misfortune and disgrace had befallen the English arms. Sir John Murray had failed at Taragona. He had lost the honoured battering-train intrusted to his charge, and his artillery equipage was supposed to be ruined. The French fortresses in Catalonia and Valencia were numerous, the Anglo-Sicilian army could neither undertake an important siege, nor seriously menace the enemy without obtaining some strong place as a base. Suchet was therefore free to march on Zaragoza, and uniting with Clauzel and Paris, to operate with a powerful mass against the right flank of the allies. For these reasons Wellington finally concluded to blockade Pampeluna and besiege San Sebastian, and the troops, as they returned from the pursuit of Clauzel,July. marched to form a covering army in the mountains. The peasantry of the vicinity were then employed on the works of the blockade which was ultimately intrusted to O’Donnel’s Andalusian reserve.

Confidently did the English general expect the[3] immediate fall of San Sebastian, and he was intent to have it before the negociations for the armistice in Germany should terminate; but mighty pains and difficulties awaited him, and ere these can be treated of, the progress of the war in other parts, during his victorious march from Portugal to the Pyrenees, must be treated of.

CONTINUATION OF THE OPERATIONS ON THE EASTERN COAST.

It will be remembered that the duke Del ParqueVol. V. p. 512. was to move from the Sierra Morena, by Almanza, to join Elio, whose army had been reinforced from Minorca; the united troops were then to act against Suchet, on the Xucar, while sir John Murray sailed to attack Taragona. Del Parque received his orders the 24th of April, he had long known of the project and the march was one of twelve days, yet he did not reach his destination until the end of May. This delay resulted, partly from the bad state of his army, partly from the usual procrastination of Spaniards, partly from the conduct of Elio, whose proceedings, though probably springing from a dislike to serve under Del Parque, created doubts of his own fidelity.

It has been already shewn, how, contrary to his agreement with Murray, Elio withdrew his cavalryVol. V. p. 460. when Mijares was at Yecla, whence sprung that general’s misfortune; how he placed the regiment of Velez Malaga in Villena, a helpless prey for Suchet; how he left the Anglo-Sicilian army to fight the battle of Castalla unaided. He now persuaded Del Parque to move towards Utiel instead of Almanza, and to send a detachment under Mijares to Requeña, thereby threatening[4] Suchet’s right, but exposing the Spanish army to a sudden blow, and disobeying his instructions which prescribed a march by Almanza.

This false movement Elio represented as DelMay. Parque’s own, but the latter, when Murray remonstrated, quickly approached Castalla by Jumilla, declaring his earnest desire to obey Wellington’s orders. The divergence of his former march had, however, already placed him in danger; his left flank was so exposed, while coming by Jumilla, that Murray postponed his own embarkation to concert with Elio a combined operation, from Biar and Sax, against Fuente de la Higuera where Suchet’s troops were lying in wait. Previous to this epoch Elio had earnestly urged the English general, to disregard Del Parque altogether and embark at once for Taragona, undertaking himself to secure the junction with his fellow-commander. And now, after agreeing to co-operate with Murray he secretly withdrew his cavalry from Sax, sent Whittingham in a false direction, placed Roche without support at Alcoy, retired himself to the city of Murcia, and at the same time one of his regiments quartered at Alicant fired upon a British guard. Roche was attacked and lost eighty men, and Del Parque’s flank was menaced from Fuente de la Higuera, but the British cavalry, assembling at Biar, secured his communication with Murray on the 25th, and the 27th the Anglo-Sicilians broke up from their quarters to embark at Alicant.

The French were now very strong. Suchet unmolested for forty days after the battle of Castalla, had improved his defensive works, chased the bands from his rear, called up his reinforcements, rehorsed his cavalry and artillery, and prepared[5] for new operations, without losing the advantage of foraging the fertile districts immediately in front of the Xucar. On the other hand lord William Bentinck, alarmed by intelligence of an intended descent upon Sicily, had recalled more British troops; and as Whittingham’s cavalry, and Roche’s division, were left at Alicant, the force actually embarked to attack Taragona, including a fresh English regiment from Carthagena, scarcely exceeded fourteen thousand present under arms. OfAppendix, No. 6. these, less than eight thousand were British or German, and the horsemen were only seven hundred. Yet the armament was formidable, for the battering train was complete and powerful, the materials for gabions and fascines previously collected at Ivica, and the naval squadron, under admiral Hallowel, consisted of several line-of-battle ships, frigates, bomb-vessels and gun-boats, besides the transports. There was however no cordiality between general Clinton and Murray, nor between the latter and his quarter-master-general Donkin, nor between Donkin and the admiral; subordinate officers also, in both services, adopting false notions, some from vanity, some from hearsay, added to the uneasy feeling which prevailed amongst the chiefs. Neither admiral nor general seem to have had sanguine hopes of success even at the moment of embarkation, and there was in no quarter a clear understanding of lord Wellington’s able plan for the operations.

While Del Parque’s army was yet in march, Suchet, if he had no secret understanding with Elio or any of his officers, must have been doubtful of the allies’ intentions, although the strength of the battering-train at Alicant indicated some siege of[6] importance. He however recalled Pannetier’s brigade from the frontier of Aragon, and placed it on the road to Tortoza; and at the same time, knowing Clauzel was then warring down the partidas in Navarre, he judged Aragon safe, and drew Severoli’s Italian brigade from thence, leaving only the garrisons, and a few thousand men under general Paris as a reserve at Zaragoza: and this was the reason the army of Aragon did not co-operate to crush Mina after his defeat by ClauzelVol. V. p. 495. in the valley of Roncal. Decaen also sent some reinforcements, wherefore, after completing his garrisons, Suchet could furnish the drafts required by Napoleon, and yet bring twenty thousand men into the field. He was however very unquiet, and notwithstanding Clauzel’s operations, in fear for his troops in Aragon, where Paris had been attacked by Goyan, even in Zaragoza; moreover now, for the first time since its subjugation, an unfriendly feeling was perceptible in Valencia.

On the 31st of May Murray sailed from Alicant. Suchet immediately ordered Pannetier’s brigade to close towards Tortoza, but kept his own positions in front of Valencia until the fleet was seen to pass the Grāo with a fair wind. Then feeling assured the expedition aimed at Catalonia, he prepared to aid that principality; but the column of succour being drawn principally from the camp of Xativa, forty miles from Valencia, he could not quit the latter before the 7th of June. He took with himJune. nine thousand men of all arms, leaving Harispe on the Xucar, with seven thousand infantry and cavalry, exclusive of Severoli’s troops which were in full march from Teruel. Meanwhile sir John Murray’s armament, having very favourable weather,[7] anchored on the evening of the 2d in the bay of Taragona, whence five ships of war under captain Adam, and two battalions of infantry with some guns under colonel Prevot, were detached to attack San Felippe de Balaguer.

The strength and value of this fort arose from its peculiar position. The works, garrisoned by a hundred men, were only sixty feet square, but the site was a steep isolated rock, standing in the very gorge of a pass, and blocking the only carriageway from Tortoza to Taragona. The mountains on either hand, although commanding the fort, were nearly inaccessible themselves, and great labour was required to form the batteries.

Prevot, landing on the 3d, was joined by a Spanish brigade of Copons’ army, and in concert with the navy immediately commenced operations by placing two six-pounders on the heights south of the pass, from whence at six or seven hundred yards distance they threw shrapnel-shells; but this projectile is, when used with guns of small calibre, insignificant save as a round shot.

On the 4th two twelve-pounders, and a howitzer, being brought to the same point by the sailors, opened their fire, and at night the seamen with extraordinary exertions dragged up five twenty-four-pounders and their stores. The troops then constructed one battery, for two howitzers, on the slope of the grand ridge to the northward of the pass, and a second, for four heavy guns, on the rock where the fort stood at a distance of one hundred and fifty yards. To form these batteries earth was carried from below, and every thing else, even water, brought from the ships, though the landing place was more than a mile and a half off.[8] Hence, as time was valuable, favourable terms were offered to the garrison, but the offer was refused. The 5th the fire was continued, but with slight success, the howitzer battery on the great ridge was relinquished, and at night a very violent storm retarded the construction of the breaching batteries. Previous to this colonel Prevot had warned Murray, that his means were insufficient, and a second Spanish brigade was sent to him. Yet the breaching batteries were still incomplete on the 6th, so severe was the labour of carrying up the guns, and out of three, already mounted, one was disabled by a shot from the fort.

Suchet, who was making forced marches to Tortoza, had ordered the governor of that place to succour San Felippe. He tried, and would undoubtedly have succeeded, if captain Peyton, of the Thames frigate, had not previously obtained from admiral Hallowel two eight-inch mortars, which, beingNotes by sir Henry Peyton, R.N. MSS. placed just under the fort and worked by Mr. James of the marine artillery, commencing at day-break on the 7th, soon exploded a small magazine in the fort, whereupon the garrison surrendered. The besiegers who had lost about fifty men and officers then occupied the place, and meanwhile sir John Murray had commenced the

SECOND SIEGE OF TARAGONA.

Although the fleet cast anchor in the bay on the evening of the 2d, the surf prevented the disembarkation of the troops until the next day. The rampart of the lower town had been destroyed by Suchet, but Fort Royal remained and though in bad condition served, together with the ruins of the San Carlos bastion, to cover the western front which[9] was the weakest line of defence. The governor Bertoletti, an Italian, was supposed by Murray to be disaffected, but he proved himself a loyal and energetic officer; and his garrison sixteen hundred strong, five hundred being privateer seamen and Franco-Spaniards, served him well.

The Olivo, and Loretto heights were occupied the first day by Clinton’s and Whittingham’s divisions, the other troops remaining on the low ground about the Francoli river; the town was then bombarded during the night by the navy, but the fire was sharply returned and the flotilla suffered the most. The next day two batteries were commenced six hundred yards from San Carlos, and nine hundred yards from Fort Royal. They opened the 6th, but being too distant to produce much effect, a third was commenced six hundred yards from Fort Royal. The 8th a practicable breach was made in that outwork, yet the assault was deferred, and some pieces removed to play from the Olivo; whereupon the besieged, finding the fire slacken, repaired the breach at Fort Royal and increased the defences. The subsequent proceedings cannot be understood without an accurate knowledge of the relative positions of the French and allied armies.

Taragona though situated on one of a cluster of heights, which terminate a range descending from the northward to the sea, is, with the exception of that range, surrounded by an open country calledPlan, No. 1. the Campo de Taragona, which is again environed by very rugged mountains, through which the several roads descend into the plain.

Westward there were only two carriage ways, one direct, by the Col de Balaguer to Taragona; the other circuitous, leading by Mora, Falcet, Momblanch[10] and Reus. The first was blocked by the taking of San Felippe; the second, although used by Suchet for his convoys during the French siege of Taragona, was now in bad order, and at best only available for small mountain-guns.

Northward there was a carriage way, leading from Lerida, which united with that from Falcet at Momblanch.

Eastward there was the royal causeway, coming from Barcelona, through Villa Franca, Arbos, Vendrills, and Torredembarra; this road after passing Villa Franca sends off two branches to the right, one passing through the Col de Cristina, the other through Masarbones and Col de Leibra, leading upon Braffin and Valls. It was by the latter branch that M‘Donald passed to Reus in 1810; he had, however, no guns or carriages, and his whole army laboured to make the way practicable.

Between these various roads the mountains were too rugged to permit any direct cross communications; and troops, coming from different sides, could only unite in the Campo de Taragona now occupied by the allies. Wherefore, as Murray had, including sergeants, above fifteen thousand fighting men, and Copons, reinforced with two regiments sent by sea from Coruña, was at Reus with six thousand regulars besides the irregular division of Manso, twenty-five thousand combatants were in possession of the French point of junction.

The Catalans, after Lacy’s departure, had, with the aid of captain Adam’s ship, destroyed two small forts at Perillo and Ampolla, and Eroles had blockaded San Felippe de Balaguer for thirty-six days, but it was then succoured by Maurice Mathieu; and the success at Perillo was more than[11] balanced by a check which Sarzfield received on the 3d of April from some of Pannetier’s troops. The partida warfare had, however, been more active in Upper Catalonia, and Copons claimed two considerable victories, one gained by himself on the 17th of May, at La Bispal near the Col de Cristina, where he boasted to have beaten six thousand French with half their numbers, destroying six hundred, as they returned from succouring San Felippe de Balaguer. In the other, won by colonel Lander near Olot on the 7th of May, it was said twelve hundred of Lamarque’s men fell. These exploits are by French writers called skirmishes, and the following description of the Catalan army, given to sir John Murray by Cabanes, the chief of Copons’ staff, renders the French version the most credible.

“We do not,” said that officer, “exceed nine or ten thousand men, extended on different points of a line running from the neighbourhood of Reus along the high mountains to the vicinity of Olot. The soldiers are brave, but without discipline, without subordination, without clothing, without artillery, without ammunition, without magazines, without money, and without means of transport!”

Copons himself, when he came down to the Campo, very frankly told Murray, that as his troops could only fight in position, he would not join in any operation which endangered his retreat into the high mountains. However, with the exception of twelve hundred men left at Vich under Eroles, all his forces, the best perhaps in Spain, were now at Reus and the Col de Balaguer, ready to intercept the communications of the different French corps, and to harass their marches if they should descend into the Campo. Murray could also calculate[12] upon seven or eight hundred seamen and marines to aid him in pushing on the works of the siege, or in a battle near the shore; and he expected three thousand additional troops from Sicily. Sir Edward Pellew, commanding the great Mediterranean fleet, had promised to divert the attention of the French troops by a descent eastward of Barcelona, and the armies of Del Parque and Elio were to make a like diversion westward of Tortoza. Finally, a general rising of the Somatenes might have been effected, and those mountaineers were all at Murray’s disposal, to procure intelligence, to give timely notice of the enemy’s approach, or to impede his march by breaking up the roads.

On the French side there was greater but more scattered power. Suchet had marched with nine thousand men from Valencia, and what with Pannetier’s brigade and some spare troops from Tortoza, eleven or twelve thousand men with artillery, might have come to the succour of Taragona from that side, if the sudden fall of San Felippe de Balaguer had not barred the only carriage way on the westward. A movement by Mora, Falcet, and Momblanch, remained open, yet it would have been tedious, and the disposable troops at Lerida were few. To the eastward therefore the garrison looked for the first succour. Maurice Mathieu, reinforced with a brigade from Upper Catalonia, could bring seven thousand men with artillery from Barcelona, and Decaen could move from the Ampurdam with an equal number, hence twenty-five thousand men might finally bear upon the allied army.

But Suchet, measuring from the Xucar, had more than one hundred and sixty miles to march;[13] Maurice Mathieu was to collect his forces from various places and march seventy miles after Murray had disembarked; nor could he stir at all, until Taragona was actually besieged, lest the allies should reimbark and attack Barcelona. Decaen had in like manner to look to the security of the Ampurdam, and he was one hundred and thirty miles distant. Wherefore, however active the French generals might be, the English general could calculate upon ten days’ clear operations, after investment, before even the heads of the enemy’s columns, coming from different quarters, could issue from the hills bordering the Campo.

Some expectation also he might have, that Suchet would endeavour to cripple Del Parque, before he marched to the succour of Taragona; and it was in his favour, that eastward and westward, the royal causeway was in places exposed to the fire of the naval squadron. The experience of captain Codrington during the first siege of Taragona, had proved indeed, that an army could not be stopped by this fire, yet it was an impediment not to be left out of the calculation. Thus, the advantage of a central position, the possession of the enemy’s point of junction, the initial movement, the good will of the people, and the aid of powerful flank diversions, belonged to Murray; superior numbers and a better army to the French, since the allies, brave, and formidable to fight in a position, were not well constituted for general operations.

Taragona, if the resources for an internal defence be disregarded, was a weak place. A simple revetment three feet and a half thick, without[14] ditch or counterscarp, covered it on the west; the two outworks of Fort Royal and San Carlos, slight obstacles at best, were not armed, nor even repaired until after the investment, and the garrison, too weak for the extent of rampart, was oppressed with labour. Here then, time being precious to both sides, ordinary rules should have been set aside and daring operations adopted. Lord WellingtonAppendix, No. 6. had judged ten thousand men sufficient to take Taragona. Murray brought seventeen thousand, of which fourteen thousand were effective. To do this he had, he said, so reduced his equipments, stores, and means of land transport, that his army could not move from the shipping; he was yet so unready for the siege, that Fort Royal was not stormed on the 8th, because the engineer was unprepared to profit from a successful assault.

This excuse, founded on the scarcity of stores, was not however borne out by facts. The equipments left behind, were only draft animals and commissariat field-stores; the thing wanting was vigour in the general, and this was made manifest in various ways. Copons, like all regular Spanish officers, was averse to calling out the Somatenes, and Murray did not press the matter. Suchet took San Felippe de Balaguer by escalade. Murray attacked in form, and without sufficient means; for if captain Peyton had not brought up the mortars, which was an afterthought, extraneous to the general’s arrangements, the fort could not have been reduced before succour arrived from Tortoza. Indeed the surrender was scarcely creditable to the French commandant, for his works were uninjured, and only a small part of his powder destroyed. It is also said, I believe[15] truly, that one of the officers employed to regulate the capitulation had in his pocket, an order from Murray to raise the siege and embark, spiking the guns! At Taragona, the troops on the low ground, did not approach so near, by three hundred yards, as they might have done; and the outworks should have been stormed at once, as Wellington stormed Fort Francisco at the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo. Francisco was a good outwork and complete. The outworks of Taragona were incomplete, ill-flanked, without palisades or casements, and their fall would have enabled the besiegers to form a parallel against the body of the place as Suchet had done in the former siege; a few hours’ firing would then have brought down the wall and a general assault might have been delivered. The French had stormed a similar breach in that front, although defended by eight thousand Spanish troops, and the allies opposed by only sixteen hundred French and Italians, soldiers and seamen, were in some measure bound by honour to follow that example, since colonel Skerrett, at the former siege, refused to commit twelve hundred British troops in the place, on the special ground that it was indefensible, though so strongly garrisoned. Murray’s troops were brave, they had been acting together for nearly a year; and after the fight at Castalla had become so eager, that an Italian regiment, which at Alicant, was ready to go over bodily to the enemy, now volunteered to lead the assault on Fort Royal. This confidence was not shared by their general. Even at the moment of victory, he had resolved, if Suchet advanced a second time, to relinquish the position of Castalla and retire to Alicant!

It is clear, that, up to the 8th, sir John Murray’s[16] proceedings were ill-judged, and his after operations, were more injudicious.

As early as the 5th, false reports had made Suchet reach Tortoza, and had put two thousand French in movement from Lerida. Murray then openly avowed his alarm and his regret at having left Alicant; yet he proceeded to construct two heavy counter-batteries near the Olivo, sent a detachment to Valls in observation of the Lerida road, and desired Manso to watch that of Barcelona.

On the 9th his emissaries said the French were coming from the east, and from the west; and would, when united, exceed twenty thousand. Murray immediately sought an interview with the admiral, declaring his intention to raise the siege; his views were changed during the conference but he was discontented; and the two commanders were now evidently at variance, for Hallowel refused to join in a summons to the governor, and his flotilla again bombarded the place.

The 10th the spies in Barcelona gave notice that eight or ten thousand French with fourteen guns, would march from that city the next day. Copons immediately joined Manso, and Murray, as if he now disdained his enemy, continued to disembark stores, landed several mortars, armed the batteries at the Olivo, and on the 11th opened their fire, in concert with that from the ships of war.

This was the first serious attack, and the English general, professing a wish to fight the column coming from Barcelona, sent the cavalry under lord Frederick Bentinck to Altafalla, and in person sought a position of battle to the eastward. He left orders to storm the outworks that night, but returned, before the hour appointed, extremely disturbed[17] by intelligence that Maurice Mathieu was at Villa Franca with eight thousand combatants, and Suchet closing upon the Col de Balaguer. The infirmity of his mind was now apparent to the whole army. At eight o’clock he repeated his order to assault the outworks; at ten o’clock the storming party was in the dry bed of the Francoli, awaiting the signal, when a countermand arrived; the siege was then to be raised and the guns removed immediately from the Olivo; the commander of the artillery remonstrated, and the general then promised to hold the batteries until the next night. Meanwhile the detachment at Valls and the cavalry at Altafalla were called in, without any notice to general Copons, though he depended on their support.

The parc and all the heavy guns of the batteries on the low grounds were removed to the beach for embarkation on the morning of the 12th, and at twelve o’clock lord Frederick Bentinck arrived from Altafalla with the cavalry. It is said he was ordered to shoot his horses, but refused to obey, and moved towards the Col de Balaguer. The detachment from Valls arrived next, and the infantry marched to Cape Salou to embark, but the horsemen followed lord Frederick, and were themselves followed by fourteen pieces of artillery; each body moved independently, and all was confused, incoherent, afflicting, and dishonorable to the British arms.

While the seamen were embarking the guns, the quarter-master-general came down to the beach, with orders to abandon that business and collect boats for the reception of troops, the enemy being supposed close at hand; and notwithstanding Murray’s promise to hold the Olivo until nightfall, fresh directions were given to spike the guns there,[18] and burn the carriages. Then loud murmurs arose on every side, and from both services; army and navy were alike indignant, and so excited, that it is said personal insult was offered to the general. Three staff-officers repaired in a body to Murray’s quarters, to offer plans and opinions, and the admiral who it would appear did not object to raising the siege but to the manner of doing it, would not suffer the seamen to discontinue the embarkation of artillery. He even urged an attack upon the column coming from Barcelona, and opposed the order to spike the guns at the Olivo, offering to be responsible for carrying all clear off during the night.

Thus pressed, Murray again wavered. Denying that he had ordered the battering pieces to be spiked, he sent counter-orders, and directed a part of Clinton’s troops to advance towards the Gaya river. Yet a few hours afterwards he reverted to his former resolution, and peremptorily renewed the order for the artillery to spike the guns on the Olivo, and burn the carriages. Nor was even this unhappy action performed without confusion. The different orders received by Clinton in the course of the day had indicated the extraordinary vacillation of the commander-in-chief, and Clinton himself, forgetful of his own arrangements, with an obsolete courtesy took off his hat to salute an enemy’s battery which had fired upon him; but this waving of his hat from that particular spot was also the conventional signal for the artillery to spike the guns, and they were thus spiked prematurely. The troops were however all embarked in the night of the 12th, and many of the stores and horses were shipped on the 13th without the slightest interruption from the enemy; but eighteen or nineteen battering pieces, whose carriages[19] had been burnt, were, with all the platforms, fascines, gabions, and small ammunition, in view of the fleet and army, triumphantly carried into the fortress. Sir J. Murray meanwhile seemingly unaffectedAdmiral Hallowel’s evidence on the trial. by this misfortune, shipped himself on the evening of the 12th and took his usual repose in bed.

While the English general was thus precipitately abandoning the siege, the French generals, unable to surmount the obstacles opposed to their junction, unable even to communicate by their emissaries, were despairing of the safety of Taragona. Suchet did not reach Tortoza before the 10th, but a detachment from the garrison, had on the 8th attempted to succour San Felipe, and nearly captured the naval captain Adam, colonel Prevot, and other officers, who were examining the country. On the other side Maurice Mathieu, having gathered troops from various places, reached Villa Franca early on the 10th, and deceiving even his own peopleLaffaille Campagne de Catalonia. as to his numbers, gave out that Decaen, who he really expected, was close behind with a powerful force. To give effect to this policy, he drove Copons from Arbos on the 11th, and his scouting parties entered Vendrills, as if he was resolved singly to attack Murray. Sir Edward Pellew had however landed his marines at Rosas, which arrested Decaen’s march; and Maurice Mathieu alarmed at the cessation of fire about Taragona, knowing nothing of Suchet’s movements, and too weak to fight the allies alone, fell back in the night of the 12th to the Llobregat, his main body never having passed Villa Franca.

Suchet’s operations to the westward were even less decisive. His advanced guard under Panettier, reached Perillo the 10th. The 11th not hearing[20] from his spies, he caused Panettier to pass by his left over the mountains through Valdillos to some heights which terminate abruptly on the Campo, above Monroig. The 12th that officer reached the extreme verge of the hills, being then about twenty-five miles from Taragona. His patroles descending into the plains, met with lord Frederick Bentinck’s troopers reported that Murray’s whole army was at hand, wherefore he would not enter the Campo, but at night he kindled large fires to encourage the garrison of Taragona. These signals were however unobserved, the country people had disappeared, no intelligence could be procured, and Suchet could not follow him with a large force into those wild desert hills, where there was no water. Thus on both sides of Taragona the succouring armies were quite baffled at the moment chosen by Murray for flight.

Suchet now received alarming intelligence from Valencia, yet still anxious for Taragona, he pushed, on the 14th, along the coast-road towards San Felippe de Balaguer, thinking to find Prevôt’s division alone; but the head of his column was suddenly cannonaded by the Thames frigate, and he was wonderfully surprised to see the whole British fleet anchored off San Felippe, and disembarking troops. Murray’s operations were indeed as irregular as those of a partizan, yet without partizan vigour. He had heard in the night of the 12th, from colonel Prevôt, of Panettier’s march to Monroig, and to protect the cavalry and guns under lord Frederick Bentinck, sent Mackenzie’s division by sea to Balaguer on the 13th, following with the whole army on the 14th. Mackenzie drove back the French posts on both sides of the pass, the[21] embarkation of the cavalry and artillery then commenced, and Suchet, still uncertain if Taragona had fallen, moved towards Valdillos to bring off Panettier.

At this precise period, Murray heard that Maurice Mathieu’s column, which he always erroneously supposed to be under Decaen, had retired to the Llobregat, that Copons was again at Reus, and that Taragona had not been reinforced. Elated by this information, he revolved various projects in his mind, at one time thinking to fall upon Suchet, at another to cut off Panettier, now resolving to march upon Cambrills, and even to menace Taragona again by land; then he was for sending a detachment by sea to surprise the latter, but finally he disembarked his whole force on the 15th, and being ignorant of Suchet’s last movement decided to strike at Panettier. In this view, he detachedSee Plan, No. 1. Mackenzie, by a rugged valley leading from the eastward to Valdillos, and that officer reached it on the 16th, but Suchet had already carried off Panettier’s brigade, and the next day the British detachment was recalled by Murray, who now only thought of re-embarking.

This determination was caused by a fresh alarm from the eastward, for Maurice Mathieu, whose whole proceedings evinced both skill and vigour, hearing that the siege of Taragona was raised, and the allies re-landed at the Col de Balaguer, retraced his steps and boldly entered Cambrills the 17th. On that day, however, Mackenzie returned, and Murray’s whole army was thus concentrated in the pass. Suchet was then behind Perillo, Copons at Reus, having come there at Murray’s desire to attack Maurice Mathieu, and the latter would have[22] suffered, if the English general had been capable of a vigorous stroke. On the other hand it was fortunate for Mackenzie, that Suchet, too anxious for Valencia, disregarded his movement upon Valdillos; but, taught by the disembarkation of the whole English army that the fate of Taragona, whether for good or evil, was decided, he had sent an emissary to Maurice Mathieu on the 16th, and then retired to Perillo and Amposta. He reached the latter place the 17th, attentive only to the movement of the fleet, and meanwhile Maurice Mathieu endeavoured to surprize the Catalans at Reus.

Copons was led into this danger by sir John Murray, who had desired him to harass Maurice Mathieu’s rear, with a view to a general attack, and then changed his plan without giving the Spanish general any notice. However he escaped. The French moved upon Taragona, and Murray was left free to embark or to remain at the Col de Balaguer. He called a council of war, and it was concluded to re-embark, but at that moment, the great Mediterranean fleet appeared in the offing, and admiral Hallowel, observing a signal announcing lord William Bentinck’s arrival, answered with more promptitude than propriety, “we are all delighted.”

Sir John Murray’s command having thus terminated, the general discontent rendered it impossible to avoid a public investigation, yet the difficulty of holding a court in Spain, and some disposition at home to shield him, caused great delay. He was at last tried in England. Acquitted of two charges, on the third he was declared guilty of an error in judgement, and sentenced to be admonished; but even that slight mortification was not inflicted.

This decision does not preclude the judgement of[23] history, nor will it sway that of posterity. The court-martial was assembled twenty months after the event, when the war being happily terminated, men’s minds were little disposed to treat past failures with severity. There were two distinct prosecutors, having different views; the proceedings were conducted at a distance from the scene of action, defects of memory could not be remedied by references to localities, and a door was opened for contradiction and doubt upon important points. There was no indication that the members of the court were unanimous in their verdict; they were confined to specific charges, restricted by legal rules of evidence, and deprived of the testimony of all the Spanish officers, who were certainly discontented with Murray’s conduct, and whose absence caused the serious charge of abandoning Copons’ army to be suppressed. Moreover the warmth of temper displayed by the principal prosecutor, admiral Hallowel, together with his signal on lord William Bentinck’s arrival, whereby, to the detriment of discipline, he manifested his contempt for the general with whom he was acting, gave Murray an advantage which he improved skilfully, for he was a man sufficiently acute and prompt when not at the head of an army. He charged the admiral with deceit, factious dealings, and disregard of the service; described him as a man of a passionate overweening, busy disposition, troubled with excess of vanity, meddling with everything, and thinking himself competent to manage both troops and ships.

Nevertheless sir John Murray had signally failed, both as an independent general, and as a lieutenant acting under superior orders. On his trial, blending these different capacities together, with[24] expert sophistry he pleaded his instructions in excuse for his errors as a free commander, and his discretionary power in mitigation of his disobedience as a lieutenant; but his operations were indefensible in both capacities. Lord Wellington’s instructions, precise, and founded upon the advantages offered by a command of the sea, prescribed an attack upon Taragona, with a definite object, namely, to deliver Valencia.

“You tell me,” said he, “that the line of the Xucar, which covers Valencia, is too strong to force; turn it then by the ocean, assail the rear of the enemy, and he will weaken his strong line to protect his communication; or, he will give you an opportunity to establish a new base of operations behind him.”

This plan however demanded promptness and energy, and Murray professed neither. The weather was so favourable, that a voyage which might have consumed nine or ten days was performed in two, the Spanish troops punctually effected their junction, the initial operations were secured, Fort Balaguer fell, the French moved from all sides to the succour of Taragona, the line of the Xucar was weakened, the diversion was complete. In the night of the 12th the bulk of Murray’s army was again afloat, a few hours would have sufficed to embark the cavalry at the Col de Balaguer, and the whole might have sailed for the city of Valencia, while Suchet’s advanced guard was still on the hills above Monroig, and he, still uncertain as to the fate of Taragona, one hundred and fifty miles from the Xucar. In fine Murray had failed to attain the first object pointed out by Wellington’s instructions, but the second was within his reach;[25] instead of grasping it he loitered about the Col de Balaguer, and gave Suchet, as we shall find, time to reach Valencia again.

Now whether the letter or the spirit of Wellington’s instructions be considered, there was here a manifest dereliction on the part of Murray. What was that officer’s defence? That no specific period being named for his return to Valencia, he was entitled to exercise his discretion! Did he then as an independent general perform any useful or brilliant action to justify his delay? No! his tale was one of loss and dishonour! The improvident arrangements for the siege of San Felippe de Balaguer, and the unexpected fortune which saved him from the shame of abandoning his guns there also have been noted; and it has been shown, that when the gain of time was the great element of success, he neither urged Copons to break up the roads, nor pushed the siege of Taragona with vigour. The feeble formality of this latter operation has indeedDefence of sir J. Murray in Phillipart’s Military Calendar. been imputed to the engineer major Thackary, yet unjustly so. It was the part of that officer to form a plan of attack agreeable to the rules of art, it might be a bold or a cautious plan, and many persons did think Taragona was treated by him with too much respect; but it was the part of the commander-in-chief, to decide, if the general scheme of operations required a deviation from the regular course. The untrammelled engineer could then have displayed his genius. Sir John Murray made no sign. His instructions and his ultimate views were withheld alike, from his naval colleague, from his second in command, and from his quarter-master-general; and while the last-named functionary was quite shut out from the confidence of[26] his commander, the admiral, and many others, both of the army and navy, imagined him to be the secret author of the proceedings which were hourly exciting their indignation. Murray however declared on his trial, that he had rejected general Donkin’s advice, an avowal consonant to facts, since that officer urged him to raise the siege on the 9th and had even told him where four hundred draught bullocks were to be had, to transport his heavy artillery. On the 12th he opposed the spiking of the guns, and urged Murray to drag them to Cape Salou, of which place he had given as early as the third day of the siege, a military plan, marking a position, strong in itself, covering several landing places, and capable of being flankedSee Plan, No. 1. on both sides by the ships of war: it had no drawback save a scarcity of water, yet there were some springs, and the fleet would have supplied the deficiency.

It is true that Donkin, unacquainted with Wellington’s instructions, and having at Castalla seen no reason to rely on sir John Murray’s military vigour, was averse to the enterprize against Taragona. He thought the allies should have worked Suchet out of Valencia by operating on his right flank. And so Wellington would have thought, if he had only looked at their numbers and not at their quality; he had even sketched such a planVol. V. p. 512. for Murray, if the attack upon Taragona should be found impracticable. But he knew the Spaniards too well, to like such combinations for an army, two-thirds of which were of that nation, and not even under one head; an army ill-equipped, and with the exception of Del Parque’s troops, unused to active field operations. Wherefore, calculating[27] their power with remarkable nicety, he preferred the sea-flank, and the aid of an English fleet.

Here it may be observed, that Napoleon’s plan of invasion did not embrace the coast-lines where they could be avoided. It was an obvious disadvantage to give the British navy opportunities of acting against his communications. The French indeed, seized Santona and Santander in the Bay of Biscay, because, these being the only good ports on that coast, the English ships were thus in a manner shut out from the north of Spain. They likewise worked their invasion by the Catalonian and Valencian coast, because the only roads practicable for artillery run along that sea-line; but their general scheme was to hold, with large masses, the interior of the country, and keep their communications aloof from the danger of combined operations by sea and land. The providence of the plan was proved by Suchet’s peril on this occasion.

Sir John Murray, when tried, grounded his justification on the following points. 1º. That he did not know with any certainty until the night of the 11th that Suchet was near. 2º. That the fall of Taragona being the principal object, and the drawing of the French from Valencia the accessary, he persisted in the siege, because he expected reinforcements from Sicily, and desired to profit from the accidents of war. 3º. That looking only to the second object, the diversion would have been incomplete, if the siege had been raised sooner, or even relaxed; hence the landing of guns and stores after he despaired of success. 4º. That he dared not risk a battle to save his battering train, because Wellington would not pardon a defeat. Now had he adopted a vigorous plan, or persisted until the[28] danger of losing his army was apparent, and then made a quick return to Valencia, this defence would have been plausible, though inconclusive. But when every order, every movement, every expression, discovered his infirmity of purpose, his pleading can only be regarded as the subtle tale of an advocate.

The fault was not so much in the raising of the siege as in the manner of doing it, and in the feebleness of the attack. For first, however numerous the chances of war are, fortresses expecting succour do not surrender without being vigorously assailed. The arrival of reinforcements from Sicily was too uncertain for reasonable calculation, and it was scarcely possible for the governor of Taragona, while closely invested, to discover that no fresh stores or guns were being landed; still less could he judge so timeously of Murray’s final intention by that fact, as to advertize Suchet that Taragona was in no danger. Neither were the spies, if any were in the allies’ camp, more capable of drawing such conclusions, seeing that sufficient artillery and stores for the siege were landed the first week. And the landing of more guns could not have deceived them, when the feeble operations of the general, and the universal discontent, furnished surer guides for their reports.

Murray designed to raise the siege as early as the 9th and only deferred it, after seeing the admiral, from his natural vacillation. It was therefore mere casuistry to say, that he first obtained certain information of Suchet’s advance on the night of the 11th. On the 8th and 10th through various channels he knew the French marshal was in march for Tortoza, and that his advanced guard[29] menaced the Col de Balaguer. The approach of Maurice Mathieu on the other side was also known; he should therefore have been prepared to raise the siege without the loss of his guns on the 12th. Why were they lost at all? They could not be saved, he said, without risking a battle in a bad position, and Wellington had declared he would not pardon a defeat! This was the after-thought of a sophister, and not warranted by Wellington’s instructions, which on that head, referred only to the duke Del Parque and Elio.

But was it necessary to fight a battle in a bad position to save the guns? All persons admitted that they could have been embarked before mid-day on the 13th. Panettier was then at Monroig, Suchet still behind Perillo, Maurice Mathieu falling back from Villa Franca. The French on each side were therefore respectively thirty-six and thirty-four miles distant on the night of the 12th, and their point of junction was Reus. Yet how form that junction? The road from Villa Franca by the Col de Cristina was partially broken up by Copons, the road from Perillo to Reus was always impracticable for artillery, and from the latter place to Taragona was six miles of very rugged country. The allies were in possession of the point of junction, Maurice Mathieu was retiring, not advancing. And if the French could have marched thirty-four and thirty-six miles, through the mountains in one night, and been disposed to attack in the morning without artillery, they must still have ascertained the situation of Murray’s army; they must have made arrangements to watch Copons, Manso, and Prevôt, who would have been on their rear and flanks; they must have formed an order of battle[30] and decided upon the mode of attack before they advanced. It is true that their junction at Reus would have forced Murray to suspend his embarkation to fight; but not, as he said, in a bad position, with his back to the beach, where the ships’ guns could not aid him, and where he might expect a dangerous surf for days. The naval officers denied the danger from surf at that season of the year; and it was not right to destroy the guns and stores when the enemy was not even in march for Reus. Coolness and consideration would have enabled Murray to see that there was no danger. In fact no emissaries escaped from the town, and the enemy had no spies in the camp, since no communication took place between the French columns until the 17th. On the 15th Suchet knew nothing of the fate of Taragona.

The above reasoning leaves out the possibility of profiting from a central position to fall with superior forces upon one of the French columns. It supposes however that accurate information was possessed by the French generals; that Maurice Mathieu was as strong as he pretended to be, Suchet eager and resolute to form a junction with him. But in truth Suchet knew not what to do after the fall of Fort Balaguer, Maurice Mathieu had less than seven thousand men of all arms, he was not followed by Decaen, and he imagined the allies to have twenty thousand men, exclusive of the Catalans. Besides which the position at Cape Salou was only six miles distant, and Murray might with the aid of the draft bullocks discovered by Donkin, have dragged all his heavy guns there, still maintaining the investment; he might have shipped his battery train, and when the enemy approached[31] Reus, have marched to the Col de Balaguer, where he could, as he afterwards did, embark or disembark in the presence of the enemy. The danger of a flank march, Suchet being at Reus, could not have deterred him, because he did send his cavalry and field artillery by that very road on the 12th, when the French advanced guard was at Monroig and actually skirmished with lord Frederick Bentinck. Finally he could have embarked his main body, leaving a small corps with some cavalry to keep the garrison in check and bring off his guns. Such a detachment, together with the heavy guns, would have been afloat in a couple ofNaval evidence on the trial. hours and on board the ships in four hours; it could have embarked on the open beach, or, if fearful of being molested by the garrison, might have marched to Cape Salou, or to the Col de Balaguer; and if the guns had thus been lost, the necessity would have been apparent, and the dishonour lessened. It is clear therefore that there was no military need to sacrifice the battery pieces. And those were the guns that shook the bloody ramparts of Badajos!

Wellington felt their loss keenly, sir John Murray spoke of them lightly. “They were of small value, old iron! he attached little importance to the sacrifice of artillery, it was his principle, he had approved of colonel Adam losing his guns at Biar, and he had also desired colonel Prevôt, if pressed, to abandon his battering train before the Fort of Balaguer.” “Such doctrine might appear strange to a British army, but it was the rule with the continental armies and the French owed much of their successes to the adoption of it.”

Strange indeed! Great commanders have risked their own lives, and sacrificed their bravest men,[32] charging desperately in person, to retrieve even a single piece of cannon in a battle. They knew the value of moral force in war, and that of all the various springs and levers on which it depends military honour is the most powerful. No! it was not to the adoption of such a doctrine, that the French owed their great successes. It was to the care with which Napoleon fostered and cherished a contrary feeling. Sir John Murray’s argument would have been more pungent, more complete, if he had lost his colours, and pleaded that they were only wooden staves, bearing old pieces of silk!

Lord William Bentinck arrived without troops, for,1813. June. having removed the queen from Sicily, he feared internal dissension and Napoleon had directed Murat to invade the island with twenty thousand men, the Toulon squadron being to act in concert. Sir Edward Pellew admitted that the latter might easily gain twenty-four hours’ start of his fleet, and lord William judged that ten thousand invaders would suffice to conquer. Murat however, opened a secret negociation, and thus, that monarch, Bernadotte, and the emperor Francis endeavoured to destroy a hero connected with them by marriage and to whom they all owed their crowns either by gift or clemency!

This early defection of Murat is certain, and hisAppendix, No. 1. declaration that he had instructions to invade Sicily was corroborated by a rumour, rife in the French camps before the battle of Vittoria, that the Toulon fleet had sailed and the descent actually made. Nevertheless there is some obscurity about the matter. The negociation was never completed, Murat left Italy to command Napoleon’s cavalry and at the battle of Dresden contributed much to the success of that day. Now it is conceivable that he should mask his plans by joining the grand army, and that his fiery spirit should in the battle forget everything except victory. But to disobey Napoleon’s[34] orders as to the invasion of Sicily and dare to face that monarch immediately after, was so unlikely as to indicate rather a paper demonstration to alarm lord Wellington than a real attack. And it would seem from the short observation of the latter in answer to lord William Bentinck’s detailed communication on this subject, namely “Sicily is in no danger,” that he viewed it so, or thought it put forward by Murat to give more value to his defection. However it sufficed to hinder reinforcements going to Murray.

Lord William Bentinck on landing was informed that Suchet was at Tortoza with from eight to twelve thousand men, Maurice Mathieu with seven thousand at Cambrils. To drive the latter back and re-invest Taragona was easy, and the place would have fallen because the garrison had exhausted all their powder in the first siege; but this lord William did not know, and to renew the attack vigorously was impossible, because all the howitzers and platforms and fascines had been lost, and the animals and general equipment of the army were too much deteriorated by continual embarkations, and disembarkations, to keep the field in Catalonia. Wherefore he resolved to return to Alicant, not without hope still to fulfil Wellington’s instructions by landing at Valencia between Suchet and Harispe. The re-embarkation was unmolested, the fort of Balaguer was destroyed, and one regiment of Whittingham’s division, destined to reinforce Copons’ army, being detached to effect a landing northward of Barcelona, the fleet put to sea; but misfortune continued to pursue this unhappy armament. A violent tempest impeded the voyage, fourteen sail of transports struck upon the sands off the[35] mouth of the Ebro, and the army was not entirely disembarked at Alicant before the 27th. Meanwhile marshal Suchet, seeing the English fleet under sail and taught by the destruction of the fort of Balaguer, that the allies had relinquished operations in Lower Catalonia, marched with such extraordinary diligence as to reach Valencia in forty-eight hours after quitting Tortoza, thus frustrating lord William’s project of landing at Valencia.

During his absence Harispe had again proved the weakness of the Spanish armies, and demonstrated the sagacity and prudence of lord Wellington. That great man’s warning about defeat was distinctly addressed to the Spanish generals, because the chief object of the operations was not to defeat Suchet but to keep him from aiding the French armies in the north. Pitched battles were therefore to be avoided their issue being always doubtful, and the presence of a numerous and increasing force on the front and flank of the French was more sure to obtain the end in view. But all Spanish generals desired to fight great battles, soothing their national pride by attributing defeats to want of cavalry. It was at first doubtful if Murray could transport his horsemen to Taragona, and if left behind they would have been under Elio and Del Parque, whereby those officers would have been encouraged to fight. Hence the English general’s menacing intimation. And he also considered that as the army of Del Parque had been for three years in continued activity under Ballesteros without being actually dispersed, it must be more capable than Elio’s in the dodging warfare suitable for Spaniards. Moreover Elio was best acquainted with the country between the Xucar and Alicant.[36] Wherefore Del Parque was directed to turn the enemy’s right flank by Requeña, Elio to menace the front, which, adverting to the support and protection furnished by Alicant and the mountains behind Castalla, was the least dangerous operation.

But to trust Spanish generals was to trust the winds and the clouds. General Elio persuaded the duke Del Parque to adopt the front attack, took the flank line himself, and detached general Mijares to fall upon Requeña. And though Suchet had weakened his line on the 2d of June, Del Parque was not ready until the 9th, thus giving the French a week for the relief of Taragona, and for the arrival of Severoli at Liria.

At this time Harispe had about eight thousand men of all arms in front of the Xucar. The Spaniards, including Roche’s and Mijares’ divisions and Whittingham’s cavalry, were twenty-five thousand strong; and the Empecinado, Villa Campa, and the Frayle, Nebot, waited in the Cuenca and Albaracyn mountains to operate on the French rear. Notwithstanding this disproportion, the contest was short, and for the Spaniards, disastrous. They advanced in three columns. Elio, by the pass of Almanza; Del Parque by Villena and Fuente de la Higuera menacing Moxente; Roche and the prince of Anglona from Alcoy, by Onteniente and the pass of Albayda, menacing San Felippe de Xativa and turning Moxente.

Harispe abandoned those camps on the 11th, and took the line of the Xucar, occupying the entrenchments in front of his bridges at Alcira and Barca del Rey, near Alberique; and during this retrograde movement general Mesclop, commanding the rear-guard, being pressed by the Spanish horsemen,[37] wheeled round and drove them in great confusion upon the infantry.

On the 15th Mijares took the fort of Requeña, thus turning the line of the Xucar, and securing the defiles of Cabrillas through which the Cuenca road leads to Valencia. Villa Campa immediately joined him thereby preventing Severoli from uniting with Harispe, and meanwhile Del Parque, after razing the French works at Moxente and San Felippe, advanced towards Alcira in two columns, the one moving by the road of Cargagente, the other by the road of Gandia. General Habert overthrew the first with one shock, took five hundred prisoners, and marched to attack the other, but it was already routed by general Gudin. After this contest Del Parque and Harispe maintained their respective positions, while Elio joined Mijares at Requeña. Villa Campa then descended to Chiva, and Harispe’s position was becoming critical, when on the 23d the head of Suchet’s column coming from the Ebro entered Valencia, and on the 24th Del Parque resumed the position of Castalla.

Thus in despite of Wellington’s precautions every thing turned contrary to his designs. Elio had operated by the flank, Del Parque by the front, and the latter was defeated because he attacked the enemy in an entrenched position. Murray had failed entirely. His precipitancy at Taragona and his delays at Balaguer were alike hurtful, and would have caused the destruction of one or both of the Spanish armies but for the battle of Vittoria. For Suchet, having first detached general Musnier to recover the fort of Requeña and drive back Villa Campa, had assembled the bulk of his forces in his old positions, of San Felippe and Moxente, before[38] the return of the Anglo-Sicilian troops; and as Elio, unable to subsist at Utiel, had then returned towards his former quarters, the French marshal was upon the point of striking a fatal blow against him, or Del Parque, or both, when the news of Wellington’s victory averted the danger.

Here the firmness, the activity and coolness of Suchet, may be contrasted with the infirmity of purpose displayed by Murray. Slow in attack, precipitate in retreat, the English commander always mistimed his movements; the French marshal doubled his force by rapidity. The latter was isolated by the operations of lord Wellington; his communication with Aragon was interrupted, and that province placed in imminent danger; the communication between Valencia and Catalonia was exposed to the attacks of the Anglo-Sicilian army and the fleet; nearly thirty thousand Spaniards menaced him on the Xucar in front; Villa Campa, the Frayle and the Empecinado could bring ten thousand men on his right flank; yet he did not hesitate to leave Harispe with only seven or eight thousand men to oppose the Spaniards, while with the remainder of his army he relieved Taragona and yet returned in time to save Valencia.

Such was the state of affairs when lord William Bentinck brought the Anglo-Sicilian troops once more to Alicant. His first care was to re-organize the means of transport for the commissariat and artillery, but this was a matter of difficulty. Sir John Murray, with a mischievous economy, and strange disregard of that part of Wellington’s instructions, which proscribed active field operations in Valencia if he should be forced to return from Catalonia, had discharged six hundred mules, and[39] two hundred country carts, that is to say five-sixths of the whole field equipment, before he sailed for Taragona. The army was thus crippled, while Suchet gathered strong in front, and Musnier’s division retaking Requeña forced the Spaniards to retire from that quarter. Lord William urged Del Parque to advance meanwhile from Castalla, but he had not means of carrying even one day’s biscuit, and at the same time Elio pressed by famine went off towards Cuenca. It was not until the 1st of July that the Anglo-Sicilian troops could even advance towards Alcoy.

Lord William Bentinck commanded the SpanishJuly. armies as well as his own, and letters passed between him and lord Wellington relative to further operations. The latter, keeping to his original views, advised a renewed attack on Taragona or on Tortoza, if the ordnance still in possession of the army would admit of such a measure; but supposing this could not be, he recommended a general advance to seize the open country of Valencia, the British keeping close to the sea and in constant communication with the fleet.

Lord William’s views were different. He found the Spanish soldiers robust and active, but their regimental officers bad, and their organization generally so deficient that they could not stand against even a small French force, as proved by their recent defeat at Alcira. The generals however pleased him at first, especially Del Parque, that is, like all Spaniards, they had fair words at command, and lord William Bentinck without scanning very nicely their deeds, thought he could safely undertake a grand stragetic operation in conjunction with them.

To force the line of the Xucar he deemed unadvisable,[40] inasmuch as there were only two carriage roads, both of which led to Suchet’s entrenched bridges; and though the river was fordable the enemy’s bank was so favourable for defence as to render the passage by force dangerous. The Anglo-SiciliansLord William Bentinck’s Correspondence, MSS. were unaccustomed to great tactical movements, the Spaniards altogether incapable of them. Wherefore, relinquishing an attack in front, lord William proposed to move the allied armies in one mass and turn the enemy’s right flank either by Utiel and Requeña, or, by a wider march, to reach Cuenca and from thence gaining the Madrid road to Zaragoza, communicate with Wellington’s army and operate down the Ebro. In either case it was necessary to cross the Albaracyn mountains and there were no carriage roads, save those of Utiel and Cuenca. But the passes near Utiel were strongly fortified by the French, and a movement on that line would necessarily lead to an attack upon Suchet which was to be avoided. The line of Cuenca was preferable though longer, and being in the harvest season provisions he said would not fail. The allies would thus force Suchet to cross the Ebro, or attack him in a chosen position where Wellington could reinforce them if necessary, and in the event of a defeat they could retire for shelter upon his army.

Wellington, better acquainted with Spanish warfare, and the nature of Spanish co-operation, told him, provisions would fail on the march to Cuenca, even in harvest time, and without money he would get nothing; moreover by separating himself from the fleet, he would be unable to return suddenly to Sicily if that island should be really exposed to any imminent danger.

[41]

While these letters were being exchanged the Anglo-Sicilians marched towards Villena on Del Parque’s left, and Suchet was preparing to attack when intelligence of the battle of Vittoria, reaching both parties, totally changed the aspect of affairs. The French general instantly abandoned Valencia, and lord William entered that city.

Suchet knew that Clauzel was at Zaragoza, and desirous of maintaining himself there to secure a point of junction for the army of Aragon with the king’s army, if the latter should re-enter Spain. It was possible therefore, by abandoning all the fortresses in Valencia and some of those in Catalonia, to have concentrated more than thirty thousand men with which to join Clauzel, and the latter having carried off several small garrisons during his retreat, had fifteen thousand. Lord Wellington’s position would then have been critical, since forty-five thousand good troops, having many supporting fortresses, would have menaced his right flank at the moment when his front was assailed by a new general and a powerful army. But if this junction with Clauzel invited Suchet on the one hand, on the other, with a view of influencing the general negociations during the armistice in Germany, it was important to appear strong in Spain. On such occasions men generally endeavour to reconcile both objects and obtain neither. Suchet resolved to march upon Zaragoza and at the same time retain his grasp upon Valencia by keeping large garrisons in the fortresses. This reduced his field force, a great error, it was so proved by the result. But if the war in the north of Spain and in Germany had taken a different turn, his foresight and prudence would have been applauded.

[42]

The army of Aragon now counted thirty-two thousand effective men. Four thousand were in Zaragoza, two thousand in Mequinenza, Venasque, Monzons, Ayerbe, Jaca, and some smaller posts. Twenty-six thousand remained. Of these one hundred and ten were left in Denia, with provisions for eight months; twelve hundred and fifty in Saguntum, where there were immense stores, eight months’ provisions for the garrison, and two months’ subsistenceSuchet’s Memoirs. for the whole army; four hundred with provisions for a year, were in Peniscola, and in Morella one hundred and twenty with magazines for six months. Into Tortoza, where there was a large artillery parc, Suchet threw a garrison of nearly five thousand men and then destroying the bridges on the Xucar, marched from Valencia on the 5th of July, taking the coast road for Tortoza.

The inhabitants, grateful for the discipline he had maintained, were even friendly, and while the main body thus moved, Musnier retreated from Requeña across the mountains towards Caspe, the point of concentration for the whole army: but ere it could reach that point, Clauzel’s flight to Jaca, unnecessary for he was only pursued from Tudela by Mina, became known, and the effect was fatal. All the Partidas immediately united and menaced Zaragoza, whereupon Suchet ordered Paris to retire upon Caspe, and pressed forward himself to Favara. Musnier, meanwhile, reached the former town, having on the march picked up Severoli’s brigade and the garrisons of Teruel and Alcanitz. Thus on the 12th the whole army was in military communication but extended along the Ebro from Tortoza to Caspe. Mina had, however, seized the[43] Monte Torrero on the 8th, and general Paris evacuated Zaragoza in the night of the 9th, leaving five hundred men in the castle with much ordnance. Encumbered with a great train of carriages he got entangled in the defiles of Alcubiere, and being attacked lost many men and all his baggage and artillery. Instead of joining Suchet he fled to Huesca, where he rallied the garrison of Ayerbe and then made for Jaca, reaching it on the 14th at the moment when Clauzel, after another ineffectual attempt to join the king, had returned to that place. Duran then invested the castle of Zaragoza, and the fort of Daroca. The first surrendered on the 30th, but Daroca did not fall until the 11th of August.

This sudden and total loss of Aragon made Suchet think it no longer possible to fix a base in that province, nor to rally Clauzel’s troops on his own. He could not remain on the right bank of the Ebro, neither could he feed his army permanently in the sterile country about Tortoza while Aragon was in possession of the enemy. Moreover, the allies having the command of the sea, might land troops, and seize the passes of the hills behind him, wherefore fixing upon the fertile country about Taragona for his position, he passed the Ebro at Tortoza, Mora, and Mequinenza, on the 14th and 15th, detaching Isidore Lamarque to fetch off the garrisons of Belchite, Fuentes, Pina, and Bujarola, and bring the whole to Lerida. Meanwhile the bulk of the army moving on the road from Tortoza to Taragona, although cannonaded by the English fleet, reached Taragona with little hurt and the walls were mined for destruction, but the place was still held with a view to field operations.

[44]

The general state of the war seems to have been too little considered by Suchet at this time, or he would have made a more vigorous effort to establish himself in Aragon. Had he persisted to march on Zaragoza he would have raised the siege of the castle, perchance have given a blow to Mina whose orders were to retire upon Tudela where Wellington designed to offer battle; but Suchet might have avoided this, and to have appeared upon Wellington’s flank were it only for a fortnight, would, as shall be hereafter shewn, have changed the aspect of the campaign. Suchet’s previous rapidity and excellent arrangements had left the allies in Valencia far behind, they could not have gathered in force soon enough to meddle with him, and their pursuit now to be described, was not so cautiously conducted but that he might have turned and defeated them.

The 9th of July, four days after the French abandoned Valencia, lord William Bentinck entered that city and made it his place of arms instead of Alicant. On the 16th, marching by the coast road, in communication with the fleet and masking Peniscola, a fortress now of little importance, he followed the enemy; but Suchet had on that day completed the passage of the Ebro, he might have been close to Zaragoza, and Del Parque’s army was still near Alicant in a very disorderly condition. And though Elio and Roche were at Valencia, the occupation of that town, and the blockades of Denia and Murviedro, proved more than a sufficient task for them: the garrison of the latter place received provisions continually, and were so confident as to assemble in order of battle on the glacis when the allies marched past.

[45]

The 20th lord William entered Vinaros and remained there until the 26th. Suchet might then have been at Tudela or Sanguessa, and it shall be shewn that Wellington could not have met him at the former place as he designed.

During this period various reports were received. “The French had vainly endeavoured to regain France by Zaragoza.” “Taragona was destroyed.” “The evacuation of Spain was certain.” “A large detachment had already quitted Catalonia.” The English general, who had little time to spare from the pressure of Sicilian affairs, became eager to advance. He threw a flying bridge over the Ebro at Amposta, and having before embarked Clinton’s division with a view to seize the Col de Balaguer, resolved to follow Suchet with the remainder of his army, which now included Whittingham’s cavalry. A detachment from Tortoza menaced his bridge on the 25th, but the troops were reinforced and the passage of the Ebro completed on the 27th. The next day Villa Campa arrived with four thousand men and meanwhile the Col de Balaguer was secured.

On the 29th the cavalry being in march was threatened by infantry from Tortoza, near the Col de Alba, but the movements generally were unopposed, and the army got possession of the mountains beyond the Ebro.

Suchet was at this time inspecting the defences of Lerida and Mequinenza, and his escort was necessarily large because Copons was hanging on his flanks in the mountains about Manresa; but his position about Villa Franca was exceedingly strong. Taragona and Tortoza covered the front; Barcelona, the rear; the communication with Decaen was[46] secure, and on the right flank stood Lerida, to which the small forts of Mequinenza and Monzon served as outposts.

The Anglo-Sicilian troops reinforced with Whittingham’s cavalry did not exceed ten thousand effective men, of which one division was on board ship from the 22d to the 26th. Elio and Roche were at Valencia in a destitute condition. Del Parque’s army thirteen thousand strong, including Whittingham’s infantry, was several marches in the rear, it was paid from the British subsidy but very ill-provided and the duke himself disinclined to obedience. Villa Campa did not join until the 28th, and Copons was in the mountains above Vich. Lord William therefore remained with ten thousand men and a large train of carriages, for ten days without any position of battle behind him nearer than the hills about Saguntum. His bridge over the Ebro was thrown within ten miles of Tortoza where there was a garrison of five thousand men, detachments from which could approach unperceived through the rugged mountains near the fortress; and Suchet’s well-organised experienced army was within two marches. That marshal however, expecting a sharp warfare, was visiting his fortresses in person, and his troops quartered for the facility of feeding were unprepared to strike a sudden blow; moreover, judging his enemy’s strength in offence what it might have been rather than what it was, he awaited the arrival of Decaen’s force from Upper Catalonia before he offered battle.

But Decaen was himself pressed. The great English fleet menacing Rosas and Palamos had encouraged a partial insurrection of the Somatenes, which was supported by the divisions of Eroles, Manso, and[47] Villamiel. Several minor combats took place on the side of Besala and Olot, Eroles invested Bañolas, and though beaten there in a sharp action by Lamarque on the 23d of June the insurrection spread. To quell it Decaen combined a double operation from the side of Gerona upon Vich, which was generally the Catalan head-quarters. Designing to attack by the south himself, he sent Maximilian Lamarque, with fifteen hundred French troops and some Miguelets, by the mountain paths of San Felice de Pallarols and Amias. On the 8th of July that officer gained the heights of Salud, seized the road from Olot and descended from the north upon Roda and Manlieu, in the expectation of seeing Decaen attacking from the other side. He perceived below him a heavy body in march, and at the same time heard the sound of cannon and musquetry about Vich. Concluding this was Decaen he advanced confidently against the troops in his front, although very numerous, thinking they were in retreat, but they fought him until dark without advantage on either side.

In the night an officer came with intelligence, that Decaen’s attack had been relinquished in consequence of Suchet’s orders to move to the Llobregat, and it then appeared that a previous despatch had been intercepted, that the whole Catalan force to the amount of six or seven thousand combatants was upon Lamarque’s hands, and the firing heard at Vich was a rejoicing for lord Wellington’s victories in Navarre. A retreat was imperative. The Spaniards followed at daylight, and Lamarque getting entangled in difficult ground near Salud was forced to deliver battle. The fight lasted many hours, all his ammunition was expended, he lost four hundred[48] men and was upon the point of destruction, when general Beurmann came to his succour with four fresh battalions, and the Catalans were finally defeated with great loss. After this vigorous action Decaen marched to join Suchet, and the Catalans, moving by the mountains in separate divisions, approached lord William Bentinck.

The allies having thus passed the Ebro several officers of both nations conceived the siege of Tortoza would be the best operation. Nearly forty thousand men, that is to say, Villa Campa’s, Copons’, Del Parque’s, Whittingham’s, some of Elio’s forces and the Anglo-Sicilians, could be united for the siege, and the defiles of the mountains on the left bank of the Ebro would enable them to resist Suchet’s attempts to succour the place on that side, and force him to move by the circuitous route of Lerida. Wellington also leaned towards this operation, but lord William Bentinck resolved to push at once for Taragona, and even looked to an attack upon Barcelona; certainly a rash proceeding, inasmuch as Suchet awaited his approach with an army every way superior. It does not however follow that to besiege Tortoza would have been advisable, for though the battering train, much larger than Murray’s losses gave reason at first to expect, was equal to the reduction of the place, the formal siege of such a fortress was a great undertaking. The vicinity was unhealthy and it would have been difficult to feed the Spanish troops. They were quite inexperienced in sieges, this was sure to be long, not sure to be successful, and Suchet seeing the allies engaged in such a difficult operation might have marched at once to Aragon.

It would seem lord William Bentinck was at this[49] time misled, partly by the reports of the Catalans, partly by lord Wellington’s great successes, into a belief that the French were going to abandon Catalonia. His mind also ran upon Italian affairs, and he did not perceive that Suchet judiciously posted and able to draw reinforcements from Decaen was in fact much stronger than all the allies united. The two armies of Aragon and Catalonia, numberedImperial Muster-rolls. sixty-seven thousand men. Of these, about twenty-seven thousand, including Paris’ division then at Jaca, were in garrison, five thousand were sick, the remainder in the field. In Catalonia the allies were not principals, they were accessories. They were to keep Suchet from operating on the flank of the allies in Navarre and their defeat would have been a great disaster. So entirely was this lord Wellington’s view, that the duke Del Parque’s army was to make forced marches on Tudela if Suchet should either move himself or detach largely towards Aragon. Lord William after passing the Ebro could have secured the defiles of the mountains with his own and Villa Campa’s troops, that is to say, with twenty thousand men including Whittingham’s division. He could have insulted the garrison of Tortoza, and commenced the making of gabions and fascines, which would have placed Suchet in doubt as to his ulterior objects while he awaited the junction of del Parque’s, Copons’, and the rest of Elio’s troops. Thus forty thousand men, three thousand being cavalry and attended by a fleet, could have descended into the Campo, still leaving a detachment to watch Tortoza. If Suchet then came to the succour of Taragona the allies superior in numbers could have fought in a position chosen[50] beforehand. Still it is very doubtful if all these corps would, or could have kept together.

Lord William Bentinck’s operations were headlong. He had prepared platforms and fascines for a siege in the island of Yvica, and on the 30th quitting the mountains suddenly invested Taragona with less than six thousand men, occupying ground three hundred yards nearer to the walls the first day than Murray had ever done. He thus prevented the garrison from abandoning the place, if, as was supposed, they had that intention; yet the fortress could not be besieged because of Suchet’s vicinity and the dissemination of the allies. The 31st the bridge at Amposta was accidentally broken, three hundred bullocks were drowned, and the head of Del Parque’s army, being on the left of the Ebro, fell back a day’s march. However Whittingham’s division and the cavalry came up, and on the 3rd, the bridge being restored, Del Parque also joined the investing army. Copons then promised to bring up his Catalans, Sarzfield’s division now belonging to the second army arrived, and Elio had been ordered to reinforce it with three additional battalions while Villa Campa observed Tortoza. Meanwhile lord William seeing that Suchet’s troops were scattered and the marshal himself at Barcelona, thought of surprizing his posts and seizing the mountain line of the Llobregat; but Elio sent no battalions, Copons, jealous of some communications between the English general and Eroles, was slow, the garrison of Tortoza burned the bridge at Amposta, and Suchet taking alarm suddenly returned from Barcelona and concentrated his army.

Up to this time the Spaniards giving copious but false information to lord William, and no information[51] at all to Suchet, had induced a series of faults on both sides balancing each other, a circumstance not uncommon in war, which demands all the faculties of the greatest minds. The Englishman thinking his enemy retreating had pressed rashly forward. The Frenchman deeming from the other’s boldness the whole of the allies were at hand, thought himself too weak, and awaited the arrival of Decaen, whose junction was retarded as we have seen by the combined operations of the Catalan army and the English fleet.

In this state of affairs Suchet heard of new andAugust. important successes gained in Navarre by lord Wellington, one of his Italian battalions was at the same time cut off at San Sadurni by Manso, and lord William Bentinck took a position of battle beyond the Gaya. His left, composed of Whittingham’s division, occupied Braffin, the Col de Liebra, and Col de Christina, his right covered the great coast-road. These were the only carriage ways by which the enemy could approach, but they were ten miles apart, Copons held aloof, and Whittingham thought himself too weak to defend the passes alone; hence, when Suchet, reinforced by Decaen with eight thousand sabres and bayonets, finally advanced, lord William who had landed neither guns nor stores decided to refuse battle. For such a resolute officer, this must have been a painful decision. He had now nearly thirty thousand fighting men, including a thousand marines which had been landed to join the advanced guard at Altafalla; he had assumed the offensive, invested Taragona where the military honour of England had suffered twice before, in fine provoked the action which he now declined. But Suchet had equal numbers of a[52] better quality; the banks of the Gaya were rugged to pass in retreat if the fight should be lost; much must have been left to the general officers at different points; Del Parque’s was an uneasy coadjutor, and if any part was forced the whole line would have been irretrievably lost. His reluctance was however manifest, for though he expected the enemy on the 9th he did not send his field artillery and baggage to the rear until the 11th, the day on which Decaen reached Villa Franca.

The French general dreading the fire of the fleet endeavoured by false attacks on the coast road to draw the allies from the defiles beyond Braffin, towards which he finally carried his whole army, and those defiles were indeed abandoned, not as his Memoirs state because of these demonstrations, but because lord William had previously determined to retreat. On the 16th finding the passes unguarded, he poured through and advanced upon Valls thus turning the allies, but he had lost time and the latter were in full retreat towards the mountains, the left wing by Reus, the right wing by Cambrills. The march of the former was covered by lord Frederick Bentinck who leading the British and German cavalry defeated the fourth French hussars with a loss of forty or fifty men; and it is said that either general Habert or Harispe was taken but escaped in the confusion.

The Anglo-Sicilians and Whittingham’s division now entrenched themselves near the Col de Balaguer, and Del Parque marched with his own and Sarzfield’s troops to invest Tortoza, but the garrison fell upon his rear while passing the Ebro and some loss was sustained. Meanwhile Suchet, more swayed by the remembrance of Castalla than by his recent[53] success, would not again prove the courage of the British troops on a mountain position. Contrary to the wishes of his army he returned to Taragona and destroyed the ancient walls, which from the extreme hardness of the Roman cement proved a tedious and difficult matter: then resuming his old positions about Villa Franca and on the Llobregat he sent Decaen to Upper Catalonia. This terminated lord William Bentinck’s first effort and the general result was favourable. He had risked much on insufficient grounds, yet his enemy made no profit and lost Taragona with its fertile Campo, Tortoza was invested, and Suchet was kept away from Navarre.

It is strange that this renowned French general suffered his large force to be thus paralyzed at such a crisis. Above twenty-seven thousand of his soldiers if we include the isolated division of ParisImperial Muster-rolls, MSS. were shut up in garrison, but thirty-two thousand remained with which he marched to and fro in Catalonia while the war was being decided in Navarre. Had he moved to that province by Aragon before the end of July lord Wellington would have been overpowered. What was to be feared? That lord William Bentinck would follow, or attack one of his fortresses? If the French were successful in Navarre the loss of a fortress in Catalonia would have been a trifle, it was not certain that any would have fallen, and lord William could not abandon the coast. Suchet pleaded danger to France if he abandoned Catalonia; but to invade France, guarded as she was by her great military reputation, and to do so by land, leaving behind the fortresses of Valencia and Catalonia the latter barring all the carriage roads was chimerical. Success in Navarre would have made an invasion by sea pass as a partizan[54] descent, and moreover France, wanting Suchet’s troops to defend her in Navarre, was ultimately invaded by Wellington and in a far more formidable manner. This question shall however be treated more largely in another place, it is sufficient to observe here, that Clarke the minister of war, a man without genius or attachment to the emperor’s cause, discouraged any great combined plan of action, and Napoleon absorbed by his own immense operations did not interpose.

Lord William now intent upon the siege of Tortoza wished lord Wellington to attack Mequinenza with a detachment of his army; but this the situation of affairs in Navarre and Guipuscoa did not admit of, and he soon discovered that to assail Tortoza was an undertaking beyond his own means. Elio when desired to gather provisions and assist in the operations demanded three weeks for preparation; all the Spanish troops were in want, Roche’s division, blockading Murviedro, although so close to Valencia was on half rations; and the siege of Tortoza was necessarily relinquished, because no great or sustained operation could be conducted in concert with such generals and such armies. Suchet’s fear of them was an illustration of Napoleon’s maxim, that war is an affair of discrimination. It is more essential to know the quality than the quantity of enemies.

It was difficult for lord William Bentinck to apply his mind vigorously to the campaign he was conducting, because fresh changes injurious to the British policy in Sicily called him to that island, and his thoughts were running upon the invasion of Italy; but as the Spaniards, deceived by the movements of escorts and convoys, reported that Suchet had marched with twelve thousand men to join[55] Soult, he once more fixed his head-quarters at Taragona, and, following lord Wellington’s instructions, detached Del Parque’s troops by forced marches upon Tudela.

On the 5th of September the army entered VillaSeptember. Franca, and the 12th, detachments of Calabrese, Swiss, German, and British infantry, a squadron of cavalry and one battery, in all about twelve hundred men under colonel Adam, occupied the heights of Ordal. At this place, ten miles in advance of Villa Franca, being joined by three of Sarzfield’s battalions and a Spanish squadron they took a position; but it now appeared that very few French troops had been detached; that Suchet had concentrated his whole force on the Llobregat; and that his army was very superior in numbers, because the allies, reduced by the loss of Del Parque’s troops, had also left Whittingham’s division at Reus and Valls to procure food. Sarzfield’s division was feeding on the British supplies, and lord William again looked to a retreat, yet thinking the enemy disinclined to advance desired to preserve his forward position as long as possible.

He had only two lines of operation to watch. The one menacing his front from Molino del Rey by the main road, which colonel Adam blocked by his position at Ordal; the other from Martorel, by San Sadurni, menacing his left; but on this route, a difficult one, he had pushed the Catalans under Eroles and Manso reinforcing them with some Calabrese; there was indeed a third line by Avionet on his right, but it was little better than a goat-path. He had designed to place his main body close up to the Ordal on the evening of the 12th, yet from some slight[56] cause delayed it until the next day. Meanwhile he viewed the country in advance of that defile without discovering an enemy. His confidential emissaries assured him the French were not going to advance, and he returned, satisfied that Adam’s detachment was safe, and so expressed himself to that officer. A report of a contrary tendency was indeed made by colonel Reeves of the twenty-seventh, on the authority of a Spanish woman who had before proved her accuracy and ability as a spy; she was now however disbelieved, and this incredulity was unfortunate. For Suchet thus braved, and his communication with Lerida threatened by Manso on the side of Martorel, was already in march to attack Ordal with the army of Aragon, while Decaen and Maurice Mathieu, moving with the army of Catalonia from Martorel by San Sardurni, turned the left of the allies.

COMBAT OF ORDAL.

The heights occupied by colonel Adam although rugged rose gradually from a magnificent bridge, by which the main road was carried over a very deep and impracticable ravine. The second battalion of the twenty-seventh British regiment was posted on the right, the Germans and De Roll’s Swiss with the artillery, defended an old Spanish fort commanding the main road; the Spaniards were in the centre, the Calabrese on the left; and the cavalry were in reserve. A bright moonlight facilitated the movements of the French, and a little before midnight, their leading column under general Mesclop passing the bridge without let or hindrance, mounted the heights with a rapid pace and driving back the picquets gave the first[57] alarm. The allied troops lying on their arms in order of battle were ready instantly and the fight commenced. The first effort was against the twenty-seventh, then the Germans and the Spanish battalions were vigorously assailed in succession as the French columns got free of the bridge, but the Calabrese were too far on the left to take a share in the action. The combat was fierce and obstinate. Harispe who commanded the French constantly outflanked the right of the allies, and at the same time pressed their centre, where the Spaniards fought gallantly.

Colonel Adam was wounded very early, the command devolved upon colonel Reeves, and that officer seeing his flank turned and his men falling fast, in short, finding himself engaged with a whole army on a position of which colonel Adam had lost the key by neglecting the bridge, resolved to retreat. In this view he first ordered the guns to fall back, and to cover the movement charged a column of the enemy which was pressing forward on the high road, but he was severely wounded in this attack and there was no recognized commander on the spot to succeed him. Then the affair became confused. For though the order to retreat was given the Spaniards were fighting desperately, and the twenty-seventh thought it shame to abandon them; wherefore the Germans and De Roll’s regiment still held the old fort and the guns came back. The action was thus continued with great fury. Colonel Carey now brought the Calabrese into line from the left, and menaced the right flank of the French, but he was too late; the Spaniards overwhelmed in the centre were broken, the right was completely turned, the old fort was lost, the enemy’s skirmishers got into[58] the allies’ rear, and at three o’clock the whole dispersed, the most part in flight; the Spanish cavalry were then overthrown on the main road by the French hussars and four guns were taken in the tumult.

Captain Waldron, with the twenty-seventh reduced to eighty men, and captain Müller with about the same number of Germans and Swiss, breaking through several small parties of the enemy effected their retreat in good order by the hills on each side of the road. Colonel Carey endeavoured at first to gain the road of Sadurni on the left, but meeting with Decaen’s people on that side he retraced his steps, and crossing the field of battle in the rear of Suchet’s columns made for Villa Nueva de Sitjes. There he finally embarked without loss, save a few stragglers who fell into the hands of a flanking battalion of French infantry which had moved through the mountains by Begas and Avionet. The overthrow was complete and the prisoners were at first very numerous, but the darkness enabled many to escape, and two thousand men reached Manso and Eroles.

Suchet pursuing his march came up with lord William about eight o’clock. The latter retired skirmishing and with excellent order beyond Villa Franca, followed by the French horsemen some of which assailed his rear-guard while others edged to their right to secure the communication with Decaen. The latter was looked for by both parties with great anxiety, but he had been delayed by the resistance of Manso and Eroles in the rugged country between Martorel and San Sadurni. Suchet’s cavalry and artillery continued however to infest the rear of the retreating army until it reached a deep baranco, near the Venta de Monjos, where the passage being[59] dangerous and the French horseman importunate, that brave and honest soldier, lord Frederick Bentinck, charged their right, and fighting hand to hand with the enemy’s general Myers wounded him and overthrew his light cavalry; they rallied upon their dragoons and advanced again, endeavouring to turn the flank, but were stopped by the fire of two guns which general Clinton opened upon them. Meanwhile the cuirassiers, on the left, pressed the Brunswick hussars and menaced the infantry yet they were finally checked by the fire of the tenth regiment. This cavalry action was vigorous, the twentieth and the Germans although few in numbers lost more than ninety men. The baranco was however safely passed and about three o’clock the army having reached Arbos the pursuit ceased. The Catalans meanwhile had retreated towards Igualada and the Anglo-Sicilians retired to Taragona.

It was now thought Suchet would make a movement to carry off the garrisons of Lerida and Tortoza, but this did not happen, and lord William went to Sicily, leaving the command of the army to sir William Clinton.

OBSERVATIONS.

1º. Lord William Bentinck committed errors, yet he has been censured without discrimination. “He advanced rashly.” “He was undecided.” “He exposed his advanced guard without support.” Such were the opinions expressed at the time. Their justness may be disputed. His first object was to retain all the French force in Catalonia; his second, to profit from Suchet’s weakness if he[60] detached largely. He could do neither by remaining inactive on the barren hills behind Hospitalet, because the Spaniards would have dispersed for want of provisions and the siege of Tortoza was found to be impracticable. It was therefore the part of a bold and skilful general to menace his enemy, if he could be sure of retreating again without danger or dishonour. The position at Villa Franca fulfilled this condition. It was strong in itself and offensive; sir Edward Pellew’s fleet was in movement to create diversions in Upper Catalonia, and all the emissaries and Spanish correspondents concurred in declaring, though falsely, that the French general had detached twelve thousand men.

It is indeed one of the tests of a sagacious general to detect false intelligence, yet the greatest are at times deceived, and all must act, if they act at all, upon what appears at the time to be true. Lord William’s advance was founded on erroneous data, but his position in front of Villa Franca was well chosen. It enabled him to feed Whittingham’s division in the fertile country about Reus and Valls, and there were short and easy communications from Villa Franca to the sea-coast. The army could only be seriously assailed on two lines. In front, by the main road, which though broad was from Molino del Rey to the heights of Ordal one continued defile. On the left by San Sardurni, a road still more rugged and difficult than the other. And the Catalans were launched on this side as their natural line of operations, because, without losing their hold of the mountains they protected the left of the allies, menacing at the same time the right of the enemy and his communications[61] with Lerida. Half a march to the rear would bring the army to Vendrills, beyond which the enemy could not follow without getting under the fire of the ships; neither could he forestall this movement by a march through the Liebra and Cristina defiles, because the Catalans falling back on Whittingham’s division could hold him in check.

2º. Ordal and San Sadurni were the keys of the position. The last was well secured, the first not so, and there was the real error of lord William Bentinck. It was none however to push an advanced guard of three thousand five hundred men, with cavalry and artillery, to a distance of ten miles for a few hours. He had a right to expect the commander of such a force would maintain his post until supported, or at least retreat without disaster. An officer of capacity would have done so. But whoever relies upon the capacity of sir Frederick Adam either in peace or war will be disappointed.

In 1810 lord Wellington detached general Robert Craufurd with two or three thousand men to a much greater distance, not for one night but for many weeks. And that excellent officer, though close to Massena’s immense army the very cavalry of which was double his whole numbers; though he had the long line of the Agueda a fordable river to guard; though he was in an open country and continually skirmishing, never lost so much as a patrole and always remained master of his movements for his combat on the Coa was a studied and wilful error. It was no fault therefore to push colonel Adam’s detachment to Ordal, but it was a fault that lord William, having determined to[62] follow with his whole force, should have delayed doing so for one night, or that delaying he did not send some supporting troops forward. It was a fault not to do so because there was good reason to do so, and to delay was to tempt fortune. There was good reason to do so as well to profit of the advantage of the position as to support Adam. Had lord William Bentinck been at hand with his main body when the attack on Ordal commenced, the head of Suchet’s force which was kept at bay for three hours by a detachment so ill commanded would have been driven into the ravine behind, and the victorious allies would still have had time to march against Decaen by the road along which colonel Cary endeavoured to join Manso. In fine, Suchet’s dispositions were vicious in principle and ought not to have succeeded. He operated on two distinct lines having no cross communications, and before an enemy in possession of a central position with good communications.

3º. It was another fault that lord William Bentinck disregarded the Spanish woman’s report to colonel Reeves; his observations made in front of the bridge of Ordal on the evening of the 12th accorded indeed with the reports of his own emissaries, but the safe side should always be the rule of precaution. He also, although on the spot, overlooked the unmilitary dispositions of colonel Adam on the heights of Ordal. The summit could not be defended against superior numbers with a small corps, and that officer had nevertheless extended the Calabrese so far on the left that they could take no share in the action, and yet could not retreat without great difficulty. A commander who understood his business, would have blocked up the[63] bridge in front of the heights, and defended it by a strong detachment, supporting that detachment by others placed in succession on the heights behind, but keeping his main body always in hand, ready either to fall on the head of the enemy’s column of attack, or to rally the advanced detachments and retreat in order. There were plenty of trees and stones to block the bridge, its own parapet would have supplied materials, and the ravine was so deep and rugged, that the enemy could not have crossed it on the flanks in the dark.

It is no defence to say colonel Adam only took his ground in the evening after a march; that he expected the main body up the next morning and that lord William assured him he was safe from attack. Every officer is responsible for the security of his own troops, and the precautions prescribed by the rules of war should never be dispensed with or delayed at an outpost. Now it does not appear that colonel Adam ever placed an infantry picquet on the bridge, or sent a cavalry patrole beyond it; and I have been informed by a French soldier, one of a party sent to explore the position, that they reached the crest of the heights without opposition and returned safely, whereupon Mesclop’s brigade instantly crossed the bridge and attacked.

4º. Ordal might be called a surprize with respect to the general-in-chief, yet the troops engaged were not surprised; they were beaten and dispersed because colonel Adam was unskilful. The French general’s victory was complete; but he has in his Memoirs exaggerated his difficulties and the importance of his success, his private report to the emperor was more accurate. The Memoirs state that[64] the English grenadiers defended certain works which commanded the ascent of the main road, and in the accompanying atlas a perspective view of well-conditioned redoubts with colours flying, is given. The reader is thus led to imagine these were regular forts of a fresh construction defended by select troops; but in the private report they are correctly designated as ancient retrenchments,Appendix, No. 5. being in fact the ruins of some old Spanish field-works and of no more advantage to the allies than any natural inequality of ground. Again in the Memoirs the attack of the French cavalry near Villa Franca is represented as quite successful; but the private report only says the rear was harassed by repeated charges, which is true, and moreover those charges were vigorously repulsed. The whole French loss was about three hundred men, that of the allies, heavy at Ordal, was lightened by escape of prisoners during the night and ultimately did not exceed a thousand men including Spaniards.

Turning from the war in Catalonia to the operations1813. June. in Navarre and Guipuscoa, we shall find lord Wellington’s indomitable energy overcoming every difficulty. It has been already shown how, changing his first views, he disposed the Anglo-Portuguese divisions to cover the siege of San Sebastian and the blockade of Pampeluna, at the same time attacking with the Spanish divisions Santona on the coast, and the castles of Daroca, Morella, Zaragoza, and the forts of Pancorbo in the interior. These operations required many men, but the early fall of Pancorbo enabled O’Donnel’s reserve to blockade Pampeluna, and Don Carlos D’España’s division, four thousand strong, which had remained at Miranda del Castanar to improve its organization when lord Wellington advanced to the Ebro, was approaching to reinforce him.

The harbour of Passages was the only port near the scene of operations suited for the supply of the army. Yet it had this defect, that being situated between the covering and the besieging army, the stores and guns once landed were in danger from every movement of the enemy. The Deba river, between San Sebastian and Bilbaō, was unfit for large vessels, and hence no permanent depôt could be established nearer than Bilbaō. At that port therefore, and at St. Ander and Coruña, the great depôts of the army were fixed, the stores being transported[66] to them from the establishments in Portugal; but the French held Santona, and their privateers interrupted the communication along the coast of Spain while American privateers did the same between Lisbon and Coruña. On the other hand the intercourse between San Sebastian and the ports of France was scarcely molested, and the most urgent remonstrances failed to procure a sufficient naval force on the coast of Biscay. It was in these circumstances Wellington commenced

THE SIEGE OF SAN SEBASTIAN.

This place was built on a low sandy isthmus formed by the harbour on one side and the river Urumea on the other. Behind it rose the Monte Orgullo, a rugged cone nearly four hundred feet high, washed by the ocean and crowned with the small castle of La Mota. Its southern face overlooking the town, was yet cut off from it by a line of defensive works and covered with batteries; but La Mota itself was commanded, at a distance of thirteen hundred yards, by the Monte Olia on the other side of the Urumea.

The land front of San Sebastian was three hundred and fifty yards wide, stretching quite across the isthmus. It consisted of a high curtain or rampart, very solid, strengthened by a lofty casemated flat bastion or cavalier placed in the centre, and by half bastions at either end. A regular horn-work was pushed out from this front, and six hundred yards beyond the horn-work the isthmus was closed by the ridge of San Bartolomeo, at the foot of which stood the suburb of San Martin.

On the opposite side of the Urumea were certain sandy hills called the Chofres, through which the[67] road from Passages passed to the wooden bridge over the river, and thence, by the suburb of Santa Catalina, along the top of a sea-wall which formed a fausse braye for the horn-work.

The flanks of the town were protected by simple ramparts. The one was washed by the water of the harbour, the other by the Urumea which at high tide covered four of the twenty-seven feet comprised in its elevation. This was the weak side of the fortress, for though covered by the river there was only a single wall ill-flanked by two old towers, and by the half bastion of San Elmo which was situated at the extremity of the rampart close under the Monte Orgullo. There was no ditch, no counter-scarp, or glacis, the wall could be seen to its base from the Chofre hills at distances varying from five hundred to a thousand yards, and when the tide was out the Urumea left a dry strand under the rampart as far as St. Elmo. However the guns from the batteries at Monte Orgullo especially that called the Mirador, could see this strand.

The other flank of the town was secured by the harbour, in the mouth of which was a rocky island, called Santa Clara, where the French had established a post of twenty-five men.

When the battle of Vittoria happened San Sebastian was nearly dismantled; many of the guns had been removed to form battering trains or to arm smaller ports on the coast, there were no bomb-proofs nor pallisades nor outworks, the wells were foul and the place was supplied with water by a single aqueduct. Joseph’s defeat restored its importance as a fortress. General Emanuel Rey entered it the 22d of June, bringing with him the[68] escort of the convoy which had quitted Vittoria the day before the battle. The town was thus filled with emigrant Spanish families, with the ministers and other persons attached to the court; the population ordinarily eight thousand was increased to sixteen thousand and disorder and confusion were predominant. Rey, pushed by necessity, immediately forced allBellas’ Journal of French Sieges in Spain. persons not residents to march at once to France granting them only a guard of one hundred men; the people of quality went by sea, the others by land, and fortunately all arrived safely for the Partidas would have given them no quarter.

On the 27th general Foy while retreating before sir Thomas Graham threw a reinforcement into the place. The next day Mendizabal’s Spaniards appeared on the hills behind the ridge of San Bartolomeo and on the Chofres, whereupon general Rey burned the wooden bridge and both the suburbs, and commenced fortifying the heights of San Bartolomeo. The 29th the Spaniards slightly attacked San Bartolomeo, and were repulsed.

The 1st of July the governor of Gueteria abandonedJuly. that place, and with detestable ferocity secretlySir G. Collier’s Despatch. left a lighted train which exploded the magazine and destroyed many of the inhabitants. His troops three hundred in number entered San Sebastian, and at the same time a vessel from St. Jean de Luz arrived with fifty-six cannoneers and some workmen; the garrison was thus increased to three thousand men and all persons not able to provide subsistence for themselves in advance were ordered to quit the place. Meanwhile Mendizabal, having cut off the aqueduct, made some approaches towards the head of the burned bridge on the right of the Urumea and molested the workmen on the heights of Bartolomeo.

[69]

On the 3d, the Surveillante frigate and a sloop with some small craft arrived to blockade the harbour, yet the French vessels from St. Jean de Luz continued to enter by night. The same day the governor made a sally with eleven hundred men in three columns to obtain news, and after some hours’ skirmishing returned with a few prisoners.

The 6th some French vessels with a detachment of troops and a considerable convoy of provisions came from St. Jean de Luz.

The 7th Mendizabal tried, unsuccessfully, to set fire to the convent of San Bartolomeo.

On the 9th sir Thomas Graham arrived with a corps of British and Portuguese troops, and on the 13th the Spaniards marched, some to reinforce the force blockading Santona, the remainder to rejoin the fourth army on the Bidassoa.

At this time general Reille held the entrances to the Bastan by Vera and Echallar, but Wellington drove him thence on the 15th and established the seventh and light divisions there, thus covering the passes over the Peña de Haya by which the siege might have been interrupted.

Before general Graham arrived the French had constructed a redoubt on the heights of San Bartolomeo, and connected it with the convent of that name which they also fortified. These outworks were supported by posts in the ruined houses of the suburb of San Martin behind, and by a low circular redoubt, formed of casks on the main road, half-way between the convent and the horn-work. Hence to reduce the place, working along the isthmus, it was necessary to carry in succession three lines of defence covering the town, and a fourth at the foot of Monte Orgullo, before the castle of La Mota[70] could be assailed. Seventy-six pieces of artillery were mounted upon these works and others were afterwards obtained from France by sea.

The besieging army consisted of the fifth division under general Oswald, and the independent Portuguese brigades of J. Wilson and Bradford reinforced by detachments from the first division. Thus, including the artillery-men some seamen commanded by lieutenant O’Reilly of the Surveillante and one hundred regular sappers and miners, now for the first time used in the sieges of the Peninsula, nearly ten thousand men were employed. The guns available for the attack, in the first instance, were a new battering train originally prepared for the siege of Burgos, consisting of fourteen iron twenty-fourJones’s Journal of British Sieges. pounders, six eight-inch brass howitzers, four sixty-eight-pound iron carronades, and four iron ten-inch mortars. To these were added six twenty-four pounders lent by the ships of war, and six eighteen pounders which had moved with the army from Portugal, making altogether forty pieces commanded by colonel Dickson. The distance from the depôt of siege at Passages to the Chofre sand-hills was one mile and a half of good road, and a pontoon bridge was laid over the Urumea river above the Chofres, but from thence to the height of Bartolomeo was more than five miles of very bad road.

Early in July the fortress had been twice closely examined by Major Smith, the engineer who had so ably defended Tarifa. He proposed a plan of siege founded upon the facility furnished by the Chofre hills to destroy the flanks, rake the principal front and form a breach with the same batteries, the works being at the same time secured, except at low water, by the Urumea. Counter-batteries, to be[71] constructed on the left of that river, were to rake the line of defence in which the breach was to be formed; and against the castle and its outworks he relied principally upon vertical fire, instancing the reduction of Fort Bourbon in the West Indies in proof of its efficacy. This plan would probably have reduced San Sebastian in a reasonable time without any remarkable loss of men, and lord Wellington approving of it, though he doubted the efficacy of the vertical fire, ordered the siege to be commenced. He renewed his approval afterwards when he had examined the works in person, and all his orders were in the same spirit; but neither the plan nor his orders were followed, the siege, which should have been an ordinary event of war has obtained a mournful celebrity, and lord Wellington has been unjustly charged with a contempt for the maxims of the great masters of the art. Anxious he was no doubt to save time, yet he did not for that urge the engineer beyond the rules. Take the place in the quickest manner, yet do not from over speed fail to take it, was the sense of his instructions; but sir Thomas Graham, one of England’s best soldiers, appears to have been endowed with a genius for war intuitive rather than reflective; and this joined to his natural modesty and a certain easiness of temper, caused him at times to abandon his own correct conceptions, for the less judicious counsels of those about him who advised deviations from the original plan.

Active operations were commenced on the night of the 10th by the construction of two batteries against the convent and redoubt of San Bartolomeo. And on the night of the 13th four batteries to contain twenty of the heaviest guns and four eight-inch[72] howitzers, were marked out on the Chofre sand-hills, at distances varying from six hundred to thirteen hundred yards from the eastern rampart of the town. The river was supposed to be unfordable, wherefore no parallel of support was made, yet good trenches of communications, and subsequently regular approaches were formed. Two attacks were thus established. One on the right bank of the Urumea entrusted to the unattached Portuguese brigades; one on the left bank to the fifth division; but most of the troops were at first encamped on the right bank to facilitate a junction with the covering army in the event of a general battle.

On the 14th a French sloop entered the harbour with supplies, and the batteries of the left attack, under the direction of the German major Hartman, opened against San Bartolomeo, throwing hot shot into that building. The besieged responded with musquetry from the redoubt, with heavy guns from the town, and with a field-piece which they had mounted on the belfry of the convent itself.

The 15th of July sir Richard Fletcher took the chief command of the engineers, but major Smith retained the direction of the attack from the Chofre Hills and lord Wellington’s orders continued to pass through his hands. This day the batteries of the left attack, aided by some howitzers from the right of the Urumea, set the convent on fire, silenced the musquetry of the besieged, and so damaged the defences that the Portuguese troops attached to the fifth division were ordered to feel the enemy’s post. They were however repulsed with great loss, the French sallied, and the firing did not cease until nightfall.

A battery for seven additional guns to play against Bartolomeo was now commenced on the[73] right of the Urumea, and the original batteries set fire to the convent several times, but the flames were extinguished by the garrison.

In the night of the 16th general Rey sounded the Urumea as high as Santa Catalina, designing to pass over and storm the batteries on the Chofres; but the fords discovered were shifting, and the difficulty of execution deterred him from this project.

The 17th, the convent being nearly in ruins, the assault was ordered without waiting for the effect of the new battery raised on the other side of the Urumea. The storming party was formed in two columns. Detachments from Wilson’s Portuguese, supported by the light company of the ninth British regiment and three companies of the royals, composed the right, which under the direction of general Hay was destined to assail the redoubt. General Bradford directed the left which being composed of Portuguese, supported by three companies of the ninth British regiment under colonel Cameron, was ordered to assail the convent.

ASSAULT OF SAN BARTOLOMEO.

At ten o’clock in the morning two heavy six-pounders opened against the redoubt; and a sharp fire of musquetry in return from the French, who had been reinforced and occupied the suburb of San Martin, announced their resolution to fight. The allied troops were assembled behind the crest of the hill overlooking the convent, and the first signal was given, but the Portuguese advanced slowly at both attacks, and the supporting companies of the ninth regiment on each side, passing through them fell upon the enemy with the usual impetuosity of British soldiers. Colonel Cameron[74] while leading his grenadiers down the face of the hill was exposed to a heavy cannonade from the horn-work, but he soon gained the cover of a wall fifty yards from the convent and there awaited the second signal. However his rapid advance, which threatened to cut off the garrison from the suburb, joined to the fire of the two six-pounders and that of some other field-pieces on the farther side of the Urumea, caused the French to abandon the redoubt. Seeing this, Cameron jumped over the wall and assaulted both the convent and the houses of the suburb. At the latter a fierce struggle ensued and captain Woodman of the ninth was killed in the upper room of a house after fighting his way up from below; but the grenadiers carried the convent with such rapidity that the French, unable to explode some small mines they had prepared, hastily joined the troops in the suburb. There however the fighting continued and colonel Cameron’s force being very much reduced the affair was becoming doubtful, when the remaining companies of his regiment, which he had sent for after the attack commenced, arrived, and the suburb was with much fighting entirely won. At the right attack the company of the ninth, although retarded by a ravine by a thick hedge by the slowness of the Portuguese and by a heavy fire, entered the abandoned redoubt with little loss, but the troops were then rashly led against the cask redoubt, contrary to general Oswald’s orders, and were beaten back by the enemy.

The loss of the French was two hundred andBellas Journaux des Sièges. forty men, that of the allies considerable; the companies of the ninth under colonel Cameron, alone, had seven officers and sixty men killed or wounded, and the operation although successful was an error.[75] The battery erected on the right bank of the Urumea was not opened, wherefore, either the assault was precipitated or the battery not necessary; but the loss justified the conception of the battery.

When the action ceased the engineers made a lodgement in the redoubt, and commenced two batteries for eight pieces to rake the horn-work and the eastern rampart of the place. Two other batteries to contain four sixty-eight-pound carronades and four ten-inch mortars were also commenced on the right bank of the Urumea.

The 18th the besieged threw up traverses on the land front to meet the raking fire of the besiegers, and the latter dragged four pieces up the Monte Olia to plunge into the Mirador and other batteries on the Monte Orgullo. In the night a lodgement was made on the ruins of San Martin, the two batteries at the right attack were armed, and two additional mortars dragged up the Monte Olia.

The 19th all the batteries at both attacks were armed, and in the night two approaches being commenced from the suburb of San Martin towards the cask redoubt the French were driven from that small work.

On the 20th the whole of the batteries opened their fire, the greatest part being directed to form the breach.

Major Smith’s plan was similar to that followed by marshal Berwick a century before. He proposed a lodgement on the horn-work before the breach should be assailed, but he had not then read theNotes of the Siege by sir C. Smith, MSS. description of that siege and therefore unknowingly fixed the breaching-point precisely where the wall had been most strongly rebuilt after Berwick’s[76] attack. This was the first fault, yet a slight one because the wall did not resist the batteries very long, but it was a serious matter that sir Thomas Graham at the suggestion of the commander of the artillery began his operations by breaching. Major Smith objected to it, and sir R. Fletcher acquiesced reluctantly on the understanding that the ruining of the defences was only postponed, an understanding afterwards unhappily forgotten.

The result of the first day’s attack was not satisfactory, the weather proved bad, the guns mounted on ship carriages failed, one twenty-four pounder was rendered unserviceable by the enemy, another became useless from an accident, a captain of engineers was killed, and the besiegers’ shot had little effect upon the solid wall. In the night however the ship-guns were mounted on better carriages, and a parallel across the isthmus was projected; but the greatest part of the workmen, to avoid a tempest, sought shelter in the suburb of San Martin and when day broke only one-third of the work was performed.

The 21st the besiegers’ batteries ceased firing to allow of a summons, but the governor refused to receive the letter and the firing was resumed. The main wall still resisted yet the parapets and embrazures crumbled away fast, and the batteries on Monte Olia plunged into the horn-work, although at sixteen hundred yards distance, with such effect, that the besieged having no bomb-proofs were forced to dig trenches to protect themselves. The counter-fire directed solely against the breaching batteries was feeble, but at midnight a shell thrown from the castle into the bay gave the signal for a sally, and during the firing which ensued several French[77] vessels with supplies entered the harbour. This night also the besieged isolated the breach by cuts in the rampart and other defences. On the other hand the besiegers’ parallel across the isthmus was completed, and in its progress laid bare the mouth of a drain, four feet high and three feet wide, containing the pipe of the aqueduct cut off by the Spaniards. Through this dangerous opening lieutenant Reid of the engineers, a young and zealous officer, crept even to the counterscarp of the horn-work, and finding the passage there closed by a door returned without an accident. Thirty barrels of powder were placed in this drain, and eight feet was stopped with sand-bags, thus forming a globe of compression designed to blow, as through a tube, so much rubbish over the counterscarp as might fill the narrow ditch of the horn-work.

On the 22d the fire from the batteries, unexampled from its rapidity and accuracy, opened what appeared a practicable breach in the eastern flank wall, between the towers of Los Hornos and LasPlan 3. Mesquitas. The counter-fire of the besieged now slackened, but the descent into the town behind the breach was more than twelve feet perpendicular, and the garrison were seen from Monte Olia diligently working at the interior defences to receive the assault: they added also another gun to the battery of St. Elmo, just under the Mirador battery, to flank the front attack. On the other hand the besiegers had placed four sixty-eight pound carronades in battery to play on the defences of the breach, but the fire on both sides slackened because the guns were greatly enlarged at the vents with constant practice.

On the 23d the sea blockade being null the French[78] vessels returned to France with the badly wounded men. This day the besiegers judging the breach between the towers quite practicable turned the guns, at the suggestion of general Oswald, to break the wall on the right of the main breach. Major Smith opposed this, urging, that no advantage would be gained by making a second opening to get at which the troops must first pass the great breach; that time would be thus uselessly lost to the besiegers, and that there was a manifest objection on account of the tide and depth of water at the new point attacked. His counsel was overruled, and in the course of the day, the wall being thin the stroke heavy and quick, a second breach thirty feet wide was rendered practicable.

The defensive fire of the besieged being now much diminished, the ten-inch mortars and sixty-eight pound carronades were turned upon the defences of the great breach, and upon a stockade which separated the high curtain on the land front, from the lower works of the flank against which the attack was conducted. The houses near the breach were soon in flames which spread rapidly, destroyed some of the defences of the besieged and menacing the whole town with destruction. The assault was ordered for the next morning. But when the troops assembled in the trenches the burning houses appeared so formidable that the attack was deferred and the batteries again opened, partly against the second breach, partly against the defences, partly to break the wall in a third place between the half bastion of St. John on the land front and the main breach.

During the night the vigilant governor expecting the assault mounted two field-pieces on the cavalier,[79] in the centre of the land front, which being fifteen feet above the other defences commanded the high curtain, and they still had on the horn-work a light piece, and two casemated guns on the flank of the cavalier. Two other field-pieces were mounted on an entrenchment which crossing the ditch of the land front bore on the approaches to the main breach; a twenty-four pounder looked from the tower of Las Mesquitas, between the main breach and where the third opening was being made and consequently flanking both; two four-pounders were in the tower of Hornos; two heavy guns were on the flank of St. Elmo, and two others, placed on theBellas, &c. right of the Mirador, could play upon the breaches from within the fortified line of Monte Orgullo. Thus fourteen pieces were still available for defence, the retaining sea-wall or fausse braye which strengthened the flank of the horn-work, and between which and the river the storming parties must necessarily advance, was covered with live shells to roll over on the columns, and behind the flaming houses near the breach other edifices were loop-holed and filled with musqueteers. However the fire extending rapidly and fiercely greatly injured the defences, the French to save their guns withdrew them until the moment of attack, and the British artillery officers were confident that in daylight they could silence the enemy’s guns and keep the parapet clear of men; wherefore sir Thomas Graham renewed the order for

THE ASSAULT.

In the night of the 24th two thousand men of the fifth division filed into the trenches on the isthmus. This force was composed of the third[80] battalion of the royals under major Frazer, destined to storm the great breach; the thirty-eighth regiment under colonel Greville, designed to assail the lesser and most distant breach; the ninth regiment under colonel Cameron, appointed to support the royals; finally a detachment, selected from the light companies of all those battalions, was placed in the centre of the royals under the command of lieutenant Campbell of the ninth regiment. This chosen detachment, accompanied by the engineer Machel with a ladder party, was intended to sweep the high curtain after the breach should be won.

The distance from the trenches to the points of attack was more than three hundred yards along the contracted space lying between the retaining wall of the horn-work and the river; the ground was strewed with rocks covered by slippery sea-weeds; the tide had left large and deep pools of water; the parapet of the horn-work was entire as well as the retaining wall; the parapets of the other works and the two towers, which closely flanked the breach, although injured were far from being ruined, and every place was thickly garnished with musqueteers. The difficulties of the attack were obvious, and a detachment of Portuguese placed in a trench opened beyond the parallel on the isthmus, within sixty yards of the ramparts, was ordered to quell if possible the fire of the horn-work.

While it was still dark the storming columns moved out of the trenches, and the globe of compression in the drain was exploded with great effect against the counterscarp and glacis of the horn-work. The garrison astonished by the unlooked-for event abandoned the flanking parapet, and the troops rushed onwards, the stormers for the main breach[81] leading and suffering more from the fire of their own batteries on the right of the Urumea than from the enemy. Major Frazer and the engineer Harry Jones first reached the breach. The enemy had fallen back in confusion behind the ruins of the still burning houses, and those brave officers rushed up expecting that their troops would follow, but not many followed, for it was extremely dark, the natural difficulties of the way had contracted the front and disordered the column in its whole length, and the soldiers, straggling and out of wind, arrived in small disconnected parties at the foot of the breach. The foremost gathered near their gallant leaders, but the depth of the descent into the town and the volumes of flames and smoke which still issued from the burning houses behind awed the stoutest; and more than two-thirds of the storming column, irritated by the destructive flank fire, had broken off at the demi-bastion to commence a musquetry battle with the enemy on the rampart. Meanwhile the shells from the Monte Orgullo fell rapidly, the defenders of the breach rallied and with a smashing musquetry from the ruins and loopholed houses smote the head of the column, while the men in the towers smote them on the flanks; and from every quarter came showers of grape and hand-grenades tearing the ranks in a dreadful manner.

Major Frazer was killed on the flaming ruins, the intrepid Jones stood there awhile longer amidst a few heroic soldiers, hoping for aid, but none came and he and those with him were struck down. The engineer Machel had been killed early and the men bearing ladders fell or were dispersed. Thus the rear of the column was in absolute confusion before[82] the head was beaten. It was in vain that colonel Greville of the thirty-eighth, colonel Cameron of the ninth, captain Archimbeau of the royals, and many other regimental officers exerted themselves to rally their discomfited troops and refill the breach; it was in vain that lieutenant Campbell, breaking through the tumultuous crowd with the survivors of his chosen detachment, mounted the ruins; twice he ascended, twice he was wounded, and all around him died. The royals endeavouring to retire got intermixed with the thirty-eighth, and with some companies of the ninth which had unsuccessfully endeavoured to pass them and get to the lesser breach. Then swayed by different impulses and pent up in the narrow way between the horn-work and the river, the mass reeling to and fro could neither advance nor go back until the shells and musquetry, constantly plied both in front and flank, had thinned the concourse and the trenches were regained in confusion. At daylight a truce was agreed to for an hour, during which the French, who had already humanely removed the gallant Jones and the other wounded men from the breach, now carried off the more distant sufferers lest they should be drowned by the rising of the tide.

Five officers of engineers including sir Richard Fletcher, and forty-four officers of the line with five hundred and twenty men, had been killed, wounded, or made prisoners in this assault the failure of which was signal, yet the causes were obvious and may be classed thus.

1º. Deviation from the original project of siege and from lord Wellington’s instructions.

2º. Bad arrangements of detail.

3º. Want of vigour in the execution.

[83]

In respect of the first, lord Wellington having visited the Chofre trenches on the 22d confirmed his former approval of Smith’s plan, and gave that officer final directions for the attack finishing thus, “Fair daylight must be taken for the assault.” These instructions and their emphatic termination were repeated by major Smith in the proper quarter, but they were not followed, no lodgement was made on the horn-work, the defences were nearly entire both in front and flank, and the assault was made in darkness. Major Smith had also, by calculation and by consultations with the fishermen, ascertained that the ebb of tide would serve exactly at day-break on the 24th; but the assault was made the 25th, and then before daylight, when the water being too high contracted the ground, increased the obstacles, and forced the assaulting column to march on a narrow front and a long line, making an uneasy progress and trickling onwards instead of dashing with a broad surge against the breach. In fine the rules of art being neglected and no extraordinary resource substituted the operation failed.

The troops filed out of the long narrow trenches in the night, a tedious operation, and were immediatelyNotes on the siege, by sir C. Smith, MSS. exposed to a fire of grape from their own batteries on the Chofres. This fire, intended to keep down that of the enemy, should have ceased when the globe of compression was sprung in the drain, but owing to the darkness and the noise the explosion could neither be seen nor heard. The effect of it however drove the enemy from the horn-work, the Portuguese on that side advanced to the ditch, and a vigorous escalade would probably have succeeded but they had no ladders. Again the stormers of the great breach marched first, filling[84] up the way and rendering the second breach, as major Smith had foretold, useless, and the ladder-bearers never got to their destination. The attack was certainly ill-digested, and there was a neglect of moral influence followed by its natural consequence want of vigour in execution.

The deferring of the assault from the 24th to the 25th expressly because the breach was too difficult rendered the troops uneasy, they suspected some hidden danger, and in this mood emerging from the trenches they were struck by the fire of their own batteries; then wading through deep pools of water, or staggering in the dark over slippery rocks, and close under the enemy’s flanking works whence every shot told with fatal effect, how could they manifest their natural conquering energy? It is possible that a second and more vigorous assault on the great breach might have been effected by a recognized leader, but no general or staff officer went out of the trenches with the troops, and the isolated exertions of the regimental officers were unavailing. Nor were there wanting other sinister influences. General Oswald had in the councils earnestly and justly urged the dangers arising from the irregular mode of attack, but this anticipation of ill success, in which other officers of rank joined, was freely expressed out of council, and it said even in the hearing of the troops abating that daring confidence which victory loves.

Lord Wellington repaired immediately to St. Sebastian. The causes of the failure were apparent and he would have renewed the attack, but wanting ammunition, deferred it until the powder and additional ordnance which he had written for to England as early as the 26th of June should arrive.[85] The next day other events caused him to resort to a blockade and the battering train was transported to Passages, two guns and two howitzers only being retained on the Chofres and the Monte Olia. This operation was completed in the night of the 26th, but at day-break the garrison made a sally from the horn-work, surprised the trenches and swept off two hundred Portuguese and thirty British soldiers. To avoid a repetition of this disaster the guards of the trenches were concentrated in the left parallel, and patroles only were sent out, yet one of those also was cut off on the 1st of August. Thus terminated the first part of the siege of San Sebastian in which the allies lost thirteen hundred soldiers and seamen, exclusive of Spaniards during Mendizabal’s blockade.

The battle of Vittoria was fought on the 21st of June.

The 1st of July marshal Soult, under a decree1813. July. issued at Dresden, succeeded Joseph as lieutenant to the emperor, who thus shewed how little his mind had been affected by his brother’s accusations.

The 12th, Soult, travelling with surprising expedition, assumed the command of the armies of the “north,” the “centre” and the “south” now reorganised in one body, called “the army of Spain.” And he had secret orders to put Joseph forcibly aside if necessary, but that monarch voluntarily retired from the army.

At this period general Paris remained at Jaca, as belonging to Suchet’s command, but Clauzel had entered France, and the “army of Spain,” reinforced from the interior, was composed of nine divisions of infantry, a reserve, and two regular divisions of cavalry besides the light horsemen attached to the infantry. Following the imperial muster-rolls this army, including the garrisons and thirteen German Italian and Spanish battalions not belonging to the organisation, amounted to oneAppendix, No. 8. hundred and fourteen thousand men; and as the armies of Catalonia and of Aragon numbered at[87] the same period above sixty-six thousand, the whole force still employed against Spain exceeded one hundred and eighty thousand men with twenty thousand horses; and of this number one hundred and fifty-six thousand were present under arms, while in Germany and Poland above seven hundred thousand French soldiers were in activity.

Such great forces, guided by Napoleon, seemed sufficient to defy the world, but moral power which he has himself described as constituting three-fourths of military strength, that power which puny essayists declaiming for their hour against the genius of warriors, are unable to comprehend although by far the most important part of the art which they decry, was wanting. One half of this force, organized in peace and setting forth in hope at the beginning of a war, would have enabled Napoleon to conquer; but now, near the close of a terrible struggle, with a declining fate and the national confidence in his fortune and genius shaken, although that genius was never more surpassingly displayed, his military power was a vast but unsound machine. The public mind was bewildered by the intricacy and greatness of combinations the full scope of which he alone could see clearly, and generals and ministers doubted and feared when they should have supported him, neglecting their duty or coldly executing his orders when their zeal should have redoubled. The unity of impulse so essential to success was thus lost, and his numerous armies carried not with them proportionate strength. To have struggled with hope under such astounding difficulties was scarcely to be expected from the greatest minds, but like the emperor, to calculate and combine the most stupendous efforts with calmness[88] and accuracy, to seize every favourable chance with unerring rapidity, to sustain every reverse with undisturbed constancy, never urged to rashness by despair yet enterprizing to the utmost verge of daring consistent with reason, was a display of intellectual greatness so surpassing, that it is not without justice Napoleon has been called, in reference as well to past ages as to the present, the foremost of mankind.

The suddenness, as well as the completeness, of the destruction caused by the snows of Russia, had shattered the emperor’s military and political system, and the broken parts of the former, scattered widely, were useless until he could again bind them together. To effect this he rushed with a raw army into the midst of Germany, for his hope was to obtain by celerity a rallying point for his veterans, who having survived the Russian winter and the succeeding pestilence were widely dispersed. His first effort was successful, but without good cavalry victory cannot be pushed far, and the practised horsemen of France had nearly disappeared; their successors badly mounted and less skilful were too few and too weak, and thus extraordinary exertion was required from soldiers, whose youth and inexperience rendered them unfit even for the ordinary hardships of war.

The measure of value for Wellington’s campaign is thus attained, for if Joseph had opposed him with only moderate ability and had avoided a great battle, not less than fifty thousand veterans could have been drawn off to reinforce and give stability to the young soldiers in Germany. On the side of Spain those veterans were indeed still numerous, but the spirit of the French people behind them[89] almost worn out by victory, was now abashed by defeat, and even the military men who had acquired grandeur and riches beyond their hopes, were with few exceptions averse to further toil. Napoleon’s astonishing firmness of mind was understood by few in high stations, shared by fewer; and many were the traitors to him and to France and to the glories of both. However his power was still enormous, and wherever he led in person his brave and faithful soldiers, fighting with the true instinct of patriotism, conquered. Where he was not their iron hardihood abated.

Marshal Soult was one of the few men whose indefatigable energy rendered them worthy lieutenants of the emperor; and with singular zeal, vigour and ability he now served. His troops, nominally above one hundred thousand men ninety-seven thousand being present under arms with eighty-six pieces of artillery, were not all available for field operations. The garrisons of Pampeluna, San Sebastian, Santona, and Bayonne, together with the foreign battalions, absorbed seventeen thousand; and most of the latter had orders to regain their own countries with a view to form the new levies. The permanent “army of Spain” furnished therefore only seventy-seven thousand five hundred men present under arms, seven thousand of which were cavalry, and its condition was not satisfactory. The people on the frontier were flying from the allies, the military administration was disorganized, and the recent disasters had discouraged the soldiers and deteriorated their discipline. Under these circumstances Soult was desirous of some delay to secure his base and restore order ere he[90] attempted to regain the offensive, but his instructions on that point were imperative.

Napoleon’s system was perfectly adapted for great efforts, civil or military; but so rapid had been lord Wellington’s advance from Portugal, so decisive his operations that the resources of France were in a certain degree paralyzed, and the army still reeled and rocked from the blows it had received. Bayonne, a fortress of no great strength in itself, had been entirely neglected, and the arming and provisioning that and other places was indispensible. The restoration of an entrenched camp originally traced by Vauban to cover Bayonne followed, and the enforcement of discipline, the removal of the immense train of Spanish families, civil administrators, and other wasteful followers of Joseph’s court, the arrangement of a general system for supply of money and provisions, aided by judicious efforts to stimulate the civil authorities and excite the national spirit, were amongst the first indications that a great commander was in the field. The soldiers’ confidence soon revived and some leading merchants of Bayonne zealously seconded the general; but the people of the south were generally more inclined to avoid the burthen of defending their country than to answer appeals to their patriotism.

On the 14th Soult examined the line of military positions, and ordered Reille, who then occupied the passes of Vera and Echallar, to prepare pontoons for throwing two bridges over the Bidassoa at Biriatou. That general as we have seen was driven from those passes the next day, but he prepared his bridges; and such was Soult’s activity that on the[91] 16th all the combinations for a gigantic offensive movement were digested, the means of executing it rapidly advancing, and orders were issued for the preliminary dispositions.

At this time the French army was divided into three corps of battle, and a reserve. Clauzel commanding the left wing was at St. Jean Pied de Port and in communication, by the French frontier, with general Paris at Jaca. Drouet, count D’Erlon,Soult’s Official Correspondence, MSS. commanding the centre, occupied the heights near Espelette and Ainhoa, with an advanced guard behind Urdax. General Reille commanding the right wing was in position on the mountains overlooking Vera from the side of France. The reserve under Villatte, comprising a separate body of light horsemen and the foreign battalions, guarded the banks of the Bidassoa from the mouth upwards to Irun, at which place the stone bridge was destroyed. The division of heavy cavalry under Trielhard, and that of light cavalry under Pierre Soult, the Marshal’s brother, were on the banks of the Nive and the Adour.

The counter-disposition of the allies was as follows.

Byng’s brigade of British infantry, detached from the second division and reinforced by Morillo’s Spaniards, was on the extreme right. These troops had early in June driven the French from the village of Valcarlos in the valley of that name, and had foraged the French territory, but finding no good permanent position, retreated again to the rocks in front of the passes of Roncesvalles and Ibañeta.

On the left of Byng, Campbell’s brigade detached from Hamilton’s Portuguese division, was[92] posted in the Alduides and supported by general Cole, who was with the fourth division at Viscayret in the valley of Urroz.

On the left of Campbell general Hill defended the Bastan with the remainder of the second division, and with Hamilton’s Portuguese, now commanded by Sylveira, Conde D’Amarante. Picton, with the third division, was stationed at Olague as a reserve to those troops and to Cole.

On the left of Hill the seventh and light divisions occupied a chain of mountains running by Echallar to Vera, and behind them at the town of San Estevan was posted the sixth division.

Longa’s Spaniards continued the line of defence from Vera to general Giron’s position, which extending along the mountains bordering the Bidassoa to the sea, crossed the great road of Irun. Behind Giron was the besieging army under sir Thomas Graham.

Thirty-six pieces of field artillery, and some regiments of British and Portuguese cavalry, were with the right wing and centre, but the bulk of the horsemen and the heavy guns were behind the mountains, chiefly about Tafalla. The great hospitals were in Vittoria, the commissariat depôts were principally on the coast, and to supply the troops in the mountains was exceedingly difficult and onerous.

Henry O’Donnel, Conde de la Bispal, blockaded Pampeluna with the Andalusian army of reserve, and Carlos D’España’s division was on the march to join him. Mina, Julian Sanchez, Duran, Empecinado, Goyan and some smaller bands, were on the side of Zaragoza and Daroca, cutting the communication[93] between Soult and Suchet, and the latter, thinking Aragon lost, was, as we have seen, falling back upon Catalonia.

The whole force under lord Wellington’s immediate command, that is to say in Navarre and Guipuscoa, was certainly above one hundred thousand men, of which the Anglo-Portuguese furnished fifty-seven thousand present under arms, sevenAppendix, 7. thousand being cavalry; but the Spanish regulars under Giron, Labispal and Carlos D’España, including Longa’s division and some of Mendizabal’sNotes by the Duke of Wellington, MSS. army, scarcely amounted to twenty-five thousand. According to the respective muster-rolls, the troops in line actually under arms and facing each other, were, of the allies, about eighty-two thousand, of the French about seventy-eight thousand; but as the rolls of the latter include every man and officer of all arms belonging to the organization, and the British and Portuguese rolls so quoted, would furnish between ten and twelve thousand additional combatants, the French force must be reduced, or the allies augmented in that proportion. This surplus was however now compensated by the foreign battalions temporarily attached to Soult’s army, and by the numerous national guards, all mountaineers, fierce warlike and very useful as guides. In other respects lord Wellington stood at a disadvantage.

The theatre of operations was a trapezoid, with sides from forty to sixty miles in length, and having Bayonne, St. Jean Pied de Port, St. Sebastian and Pampeluna, all fortresses, in possession of the French at the angles. The interior, broken and tormented by dreadful mountains, narrow craggy passes, deep water-courses, precipices and forests, would at first[94] sight appear a wilderness which no military combinations could embrace, and susceptible only of irregular and partizan operations. But the great spinal ridge of the Pyrenees furnishes a clue to the labyrinth of hills and valleys. Running diagonally across the quadrilateral, it separated Bayonne St. Jean Pied de Port and San Sebastian from Pampeluna, and thus the portion of the allied army which more especially belonged to the blockade of Pampeluna, was in a manner cut off from that which belonged to the siege of San Sebastian. They were distinct armies, each having its particular object, and the only direct communication between them was the great road running behind the mountains from Toloza, by Irurzun, to Pampeluna. The centre of the allies was indeed an army of succour and connection, but of necessity very much scattered, and with lateral communications so few, difficult and indirect as to prevent any unity of movement; nor could general Hill’s corps move at all until an attack was decidedly pronounced against one of the extremities, lest the most direct gun-road to Pampeluna which it covered should be unwarily opened to the enemy. In short the French general, taking the offensive, could by beaten roads concentrate against any part of the English general’s line, which, necessarily a passively defensive one, followed an irregular trace of more than fifty miles of mountains.

Wellington having his battering train and stores about San Sebastian, which was also nearer and more accessible to the enemy than Pampeluna, made his army lean towards that side. His left wing, including the army of siege, was twenty-one thousand strong with singularly strong positions of[95] defence, and the centre, about twenty-four thousand strong, could in two marches unite with the left wing to cover the siege or fall upon the flanks of an enemy advancing by the high road of Irun; but three days or more were required by those troops to concentrate for the security of the blockade on the right. Soult however judged that no decisive result would attend a direct movement upon San Sebastian; because Guipuscoa was exhausted of provisions, and the centre of the allies could fall on his flank before he reached Ernani, which, his attack in front failing, would place him in a dangerous position. Moreover by means of his sea communication he knew that San Sebastian was not in extremity; but he had no communication with Pampeluna and feared its fall. Wherefore he resolved to operate by his left.

Profiting by the roads leading to St. Jean Pied de Port, and covering his movement by the Nivelle and Nive rivers and by the positions of his centre, he hoped to gather on Wellington’s right quicker than that general could gather to oppose him, and thus compensating by numbers the disadvantage of assailing mountain positions force a way to Pampeluna. That fortress once succoured, he designed to seize the road of Irurzun, and keeping in mass either fall upon the separated divisions of the centre in detail as they descended from the hills, or operate on the rear of the force besieging San Sebastian, while a corps of observation, which he proposed to leave on the Lower Bidassoa, menaced it in front and followed it in retreat. The siege of San Sebastian, the blockade of Pampeluna and probably that of Santona, would be thus raised, and the French army united in an abundant country, and its communication[96] with Suchet secured, would be free either to co-operate with that marshal or to press its own attack.

In this view, and to mislead lord Wellington by vexing his right simultaneously with the construction of the bridges against his left, Soult wrote to general Paris, desiring him to march when time suited from Jaca by the higher valleys towards Aviz or Sanguessa, to drive the partizans from that side and join the left of the army when it should have reached Pampeluna. Meanwhile Clauzel was directed to repair the roads in his own front, to push the heads of his columns towards the passes of Roncesvalles, and by sending a strong detachment into the Val de Baygorry, towards the lateral pass of Yspegui, to menace Hill’s flank which was at that pass, and the front of Campbell’s brigade in the Alduides.

On the 20th Reille’s troops on the heights above Vera and Sarre, being cautiously relieved by Villatte, marched through Cambo towards St. Jean Pied de Port. They were to reach the latter early on the 22d, and on that day also the two divisions of cavalry and the park of artillery were to be concentrated at the same place. D’Erlon with the centre meanwhile still held his positions at Espelette, Ainhoüe or Ainhoa, and Urdax, thus covering and masking the great movements taking place behind.

Villatte who including the foreign battalions had eighteen thousand troops on the rolls, furnishing about fifteen thousand sabres and bayonets, remained in observation on the Bidassoa. If threatened by superior forces he was to retire slowly and in mass upon the entrenched camp commenced at Bayonne, yet halting successively on the positions of Bordegain in front of St. Jean de Luz, and on the heights[97] of Bidart in rear of that town. He was especially directed to shew only French troops at the advanced posts, and if the assailants made a point with a small corps, to drive them vigorously over the Bidassoa again. But if the allies should in consequence of Soult’s operations against their right retire, Villatte was to relieve San Sebastian and to follow them briskly by Tolosa.

Rapidity was of vital importance to the French general, but heavy and continued rains swelled the streams, and ruined the roads in the deep country between Bayonne and the hills; the head-quarters, which should have arrived at St. Jean Pied de Port on the 20th, only reached Olhonce, a few milesSoult’s Official Correspondence, MSS. short of that place, the 21st; and Reille’s troops unable to make way at all by Cambo took the longer road of Bayonne. The cavalry was retarded in like manner, and the whole army, men and horses, were worn down by the severity of the marches. Two days were thus lost, but on the 24th more than sixty thousand fighting men including cavalry national guards and gensd’armes, with sixty-six pieces of artillery, were assembled to force the passes of Roncesvalles and Maya. The main road leading to the former was repaired, three hundred sets of bullocks were provided to draw the guns up the mountain, and the national guards of the frontier on the left were ordered to assemble in the night on the heights of Yropil, to be reinforced on the morning of the 25th by detachments of regular troops with a view to vex and turn the right of the allies which extended to the foundry of Orbaiceta.

Such were Soult’s first dispositions, but as mountain warfare is complicated in the extreme, it will be well to consider more in detail the relative positions[98] and objects of the hostile forces and the nature of the country.

It has been already stated that the great spine of the hills, trending westward, run diagonally across the theatre of operations. From this spine huge ridges shot out on either hand, and the communications between the valleys thus formed on both sides of the main chain passed over certain comparatively low places called “cols” by the French, and puertos by the Spaniards. The Bastan, the Val Carlos, and the Val de Baygorry the upper part of which is divided into the Alduides and the Val de Ayra, were on the French side of the great chain; on the Spanish side were the valleys of Ahescoa or Orbaiceta, the valley of Iscua or Roncesvalles, the valley of Urros, the Val de Zubiri, and the valley of Lanz, the two latter leading down directly upon Pampeluna which stands within two miles of the junction of their waters. Such being the relative situations of the valleys, the disposition, and force, of the armies, shall now be traced from left to right of the French, and from right to left of the allies. But first it must be observed that the main chain, throwing as it were a shoulder forward from Roncesvalles towards St. Jean Pied de Port, placed the entrance to the Spanish valley of Ahescoa or Orbaiceta, in the power of Soult, who could thus by Yropil turn the extreme right of his adversary with detachments, although not with an army.

Val Carlos.—Two issues led from this valley over the main chain, namely the Ibañeta and Mendichuri passes; and there was also the lateral pass of Atalosti leading into the Alduides, all comprised within a space of two or three miles.

The high road from St. Jean Pied de Port to[99] Pampeluna, ascending the left-hand ridge or boundary of Val Carlos, runs along the crest until it joins the superior chain of mountains, and then along the summit of that also until it reaches the pass of Ibañeta, whence it descends to Roncesvalles. Ibañeta may therefore be called the Spanish end of the pass; but it is also a pass in itself, because a narrow road, leading through Arnegui and the village of Val Carlos, ascends directly to Ibañeta and falls into the main road behind it.

Clauzel’s three divisions of infantry, all the artillery and the cavalry were formed in two columns in front of St. Jean Pied de Port. The head of one was placed on some heights above Arnegui about two miles from the village of Val Carlos; the head of the other at the Venta de Orrisson, on the main road and within two miles of the remarkable rocks of Chateau Piñon, a little beyond which one narrow way descended on the right to the village of Val Carlos, and another on the left to the foundry of Orbaiceta.

On the right-hand boundary of Val Carlos, near the rock of Ayrola, Reille’s divisions were concentrated, with orders to ascend that rock at daylight, and march by the crest of the ridge towards a culminant point of the great chain called the Lindouz, which gained, Reille was to push detachments through the passes of Ibañeta and Mendichuri to the villages of Roncesvalles and Espinal. He was, at the same time, to seize the passes of Sahorgain and Urtiaga immediately on his right, and even approach the more distant passes of Renecabal and Bellate, thus closing the issues from the Alduides, and menacing those from the Bastan.

Val de Ayra. The Alduides. Val de Baygorry.[100] The ridge of Ayrola, at the foot of which Reille’sPlan, No. 2. troops were posted, separates Val Carlos from these valleys which must be designated by the general name of the Alduides for the upper part, and the Val de Baygorry for the lower. The issues from the Alduides over the great chain towards Spain were the passes of Sahorgain and Urtiaga; and there was also a road running from the village of Alduides through the Atalosti pass to Ibañeta a distance of eight miles, by which general Campbell’s brigade communicated with and could join Byng and Morillo.

Bastan. This district, including the valley of Lerins and the Cinco Villas, is separated from the Alduides and Val de Baygorry by the lofty mountain of La Houssa, on which the national guards of the Val de Baygorry and the Alduides were ordered to assemble on the night of the 24th, and to light fires so as to make it appear a great body was menacing the Bastan by that flank. The Bastan however does not belong to the same geographical system as the other valleys. Instead of opening to the French territory it is entirely enclosed with high mountains, and while the waters of the Val Carlos, the Alduides, and Val de Baygorry run off northward by the Nive, those of the Bastan run off westward by the Bidassoa, from which they are separated by the Mandale, Commissari, La Rhune, Santa Barbara, Ivantelly, Atchiola and other mountains.

The entrances to the Bastan with reference to the position of the French army, were by the passes of Vera and Echallar on its right; by the Col de Maya and Arietta passes in the centre; and on the left by the lateral passes of Yspegui, Lorrieta, and[101] Berderez, which lead from the Val de Baygorry and the Alduides. The issues over the principal chain of the Pyrenees in the direct line from the Maya entrances, were the passes of Renecabal and Bellate; the first leading into the valley of Zubiri, the second into the valley of Lanz. There was also the pass of Artesiaga leading into the Val de Zubiri, but it was nearly impracticable, and all the roads through the Bastan were crossed by strong positions dangerous to assail.

The Col de Maya comprised several passages in a space of four miles, all of which were menaced by D’Erlon from Espelete and Urdax; and he had twenty-one thousand men, furnishing about eighteen thousand bayonets. His communications with Soult were maintained by cavalry posts through the Val de Baygorry, and his orders were to attack the allies when the combinations in the Val Carlos and on the Houssa mountain should cause them to abandon the passes at Maya; but he was especially directed to operate by his left, so as to secure the passes leading towards Reille with a view to the concentration of the whole army. Thus if Hill retreated by the pass of Bellate D’Erlon was to move by Berderez and the Alduides; but if Hill retired upon San Estevan D’Erlon was to move by the pass of Bellate. Such being the dispositions of the French general, those of the allies shall now be traced.

General Byng and Morillo guarded the passes in front of Roncesvalles. Their combined forceWellington’s Morning States. consisted of sixteen hundred British and from three to four thousand Spaniards. Byng’s brigade and two Spanish battalions occupied the rocks of Altobiscar on the high road facing Chateau Piñon;[102] one Spanish battalion was at the foundry in the valley of Orbaiceta on their right; Morillo with the remainder of the Spaniards occupied the heights of Iroulepe, on the left of the road leading to the village of Val Carlos and overlooking the nearest houses of that straggling place.

These positions, distant only four and five miles from the French columns assembled at Venta de Orrisson and Arnegui, were insecure. The ground was indeed steep and difficult of access but too extensive; moreover, although the passes led into the Roncesvalles that valley did not lead direct to Pampeluna; the high road after descending a few miles turned to the right, and crossing two ridges and the intervening valley of Urros entered the valley of Zubiri, down which it was conducted to Pampeluna: wherefore after passing Ibañeta in retreat the allied troops could not avoid lending their right flank to Reille’s divisions as far as Viscayret in the valley of Urroz. It was partly to obviate this danger, partly to support O’Donnel while Clauzel’s force was in the vicinity of Jaca, that theWellington’s Morning States. fourth division, about six thousand strong, occupied Viscayret, six miles from the pass of Ibañeta, ten miles from Morillo’s position, and twelve miles from Byng’s position. But when Clauzel retired to France, general Cole was directed to observe the roads leading over the main chain from the Alduides district, and to form a rallying point and reserve for Campbell, Byng, and Morillo, his instructions being to maintain the Roncesvalles passes against a front attack, but not to commit his troops in a desperate battle if the flanks were insecure.

On the left of Byng and Morillo, Campbell’sIbid. Portuguese, about two thousand strong, were encamped[103] above the village of Alduides on a mountain called Mizpira. They observed the national guards of the Val de Baygorry, preserved the communication between Byng and Hill, and in some measure covered the right flank of the latter. From the Alduides Campbell could retreat through the pass of Sahorgain upon Viscayret in the valley of Urroz, and through the passes of Urtiaga and Renacabal upon Eugui in the Val de Zubiri; finally by the lateral pass of Atalosti he could join Byng and the fourth division. The communication between all these posts was maintained by Long’s cavalry.

Continuing the line of positions to the left, general Hill occupied the Bastan with the second British division, Sylveira’s Portuguese, and some squadrons of horse, but Byng’s and Campbell’s brigades being detached, he had not more than nine thousand sabres and bayonets. His two British brigades underWellington’s States. general William Stewart guarded the Col de Maya; Sylveira’s Portuguese were at Erazu, on the right of Stewart, observing the passes of Arrieta, Yspegui and Elliorita; of which the two former were occupied by Major Brotherton’s cavalry and by the sixth Caçadores. The direct line of retreat and point of concentration for all these troops was Elizondo.

From Elizondo the route of Pampeluna over the great chain was by the pass of Bellate and the valley of Lanz. The latter running nearly parallel with the valley of Zubiri is separated from it by a wooded and rugged ridge, and between them there were but three communications: the one high up, leading from Lanz to Eugui, and prolonged from thence to Viscayret in the valley of Urros; the[104] other two lower down, leading from Ostiz and Olague to the village of Zubiri. At Olague the third division, furnishing four thousand three hundred bayonets under Picton, was posted ready to support Cole or Hill as occasion required.

Continuing the front line from the left of Stewart’s position at the Col de Maya, the trace run along the mountains forming the French boundary of the Bastan. It comprized the passes of Echallar and Vera, guarded by the seventh division under lord Dalhousie, and by the light division under general Charles Alten. The former furnishing fourWellington’s Morning States. thousand seven hundred bayonets communicated with general Stewart by a narrow road over the Atchiola mountain, and the eighty-second regiment was encamped at its junction with the Elizondo road, about three miles behind the pass of Maya. The light division, four thousand strong, was at Vera, guarding the roads which led behind the mountains through Sumbilla and San Estevan to Elizondo.

These two divisions being only observed by the left wing of Villatte’s reserve were available for the succour of either wing, and behind them, at the town of San Estevan, was the sixth division of sixIbid. thousand bayonets, now under general Pack. Placed at equal distances from Vera and Maya, having free communication with both and a direct line of march to Pampeluna over the main chain of the Pyrenees by the Puerto de Arraiz, sometimes called the pass of Doña Maria, this division was available for any object and could not have been better posted.

Around Pampeluna, the point to which all the lines of march converged, the Spanish troops under O’Donnel maintained the blockade, and they[105] were afterwards joined by Carlos D’España’s division at a very critical moment. Thus reinforced they amounted to eleven thousand, of which seven thousand could be brought into action without abandoning the works of blockade.

Head-quarters were at Lesaca, and the line of correspondence with the left wing was over the Peña de Haya, that with the right wing by San Estevan, Elizondo and the Alduides. The line of correspondence between sir Thomas Graham and Pampeluna was by Goizueta and the high road of Irurzun.

As the French were almost in contact with the allies’ positions at Roncesvalles, which was also the point of defence nearest to Pampeluna, it followed that on the rapidity or slowness with which Soult overcame resistance in that quarter depended his success; and a comparative estimate of numbers and distances will give the measure of his chances.

Clauzel’s three divisions furnished about sixteen thousand bayonets, besides the cavalry, the artillery, and the national guards menacing the valley of Orbaiceta. Byng and Morillo were therefore with five thousand infantry, to sustain the assault of sixteen thousand until Cole could reinforce them; but Cole being twelve miles distant could not come up in fighting order under four or five hours. And as Reille’s divisions, of equal strength with Clauzel’s, could before that time seize the Lindouz and turn the left, it was clear the allied troops, although increased to eleven thousand by the junction of the fourth division, must finally abandon their ground to seek a new field of battle where the third division could join them from the valley of Lanz, and Campbell’s brigade from the Alduides. Thus[106] raised to seventeen or eighteen thousand bayonets with some guns, they might on strong ground oppose Clauzel and Reille’s thirty thousand; but as Picton’s position at Olague was more than a day’s march from Byng’s position at Altobiscar, their junction could only be made in the valley of the Zubiri and not very distant from Pampeluna. And when seven thousand Spaniards from the blockade, and two or three thousand cavalry from the side of the Ebro are added, we have the full measure of the allies’ strength in this quarter.

General Hill, menaced by D’Erlon with a very superior force, and having the pass of Maya, half a day’s march further from Pampeluna than the passes of Roncesvalles, to defend, could not give ready help. If he retreated rapidly D’Erlon could follow as rapidly, and though Picton and Cole would thus be reinforced with ten thousand men Soult would gain eighteen thousand. Hill could not however move until he knew that Byng and Cole were driven from the Roncesvalles passes; in fine he could not avoid a dilemma. For if he maintained the passes at Maya and affairs went wrong near Pampeluna, his own situation would be imminently dangerous; if he maintained Irrueta, his next position, the same danger was to be dreaded; and the passes of Maya once abandoned, D’Erlon, moving by his own left towards the Alduides, could join Soult in the valley of Zubiri before Hill could join Cole and Picton by the valley of Lanz. But if Hill did not maintain the position of Irrueta D’Erlon could follow and cut the sixth and seventh divisions off from the valley of Lanz. The extent and power of Soult’s combinations are thus evinced. Hill forced to await orders and hampered[107] by the operations of D’Erlon, required, it might be three days to get into line near Pampeluna; but D’Erlon after gaining Maya could in one day and a half, by the passes of Berderez and Urtiaga, join Soult in the Val de Zubiri. Meanwhile Byng, Morillo, Cole, Campbell, and Picton would be exposed to the operations of double their own numbers; and however firm and able individually those generals might be, they could not when suddenly brought together be expected to seize the whole system of operations and act with that decision and nicety of judgment which the occasion demanded. It was clear therefore that Hill’s force must be in some measure paralyzed at first, and finally thrown with the sixth, seventh, and light divisions, upon an external line of operations while the French moved upon internal lines.

On the other hand it is also clear that the corps of Byng, Morillo, Campbell, Cole, Picton, and Hill were only pieces of resistance on lord Wellington’s board, and that the sixth, seventh, and light divisions were those with which he meant to win his game. There was however a great difference in their value. The light division and the seventh, especially the former, being at the greatest distance from Pampeluna, having enemies close in front and certain points to guard, were, the seventh division a day, the light division two days, behind the sixth division, which was quite free to move at an instant’s notice and was, the drag of D’Erlon’s corps considered, a day nearer to Pampeluna than Hill. Wherefore upon the rapid handling of this well-placed body the fate of the allies depended. If it arrived in time, nearly thirty thousand infantry[108] with sufficient cavalry and artillery would be established, under the immediate command of the general-in-chief, on a position of strength to check the enemy until the rest of the army arrived. Where that position was and how the troops were there gathered and fought shall now be shown.

BATTLES OF THE PYRENEES.

Combat of Roncesvalles.—On the 23d Soult issued1813. July. an order of the day remarkable for its force and frankness. Tracing with a rapid pen the leadingPlan 3. events of the past campaign, he shewed that the disasters sprung from the incapacity of the king, not from the weakness of the soldiers whose military virtue he justly extolled, and whose haughty courage he inflamed by allusions to former glories. He has been, by writers who disgrace English literature with unfounded aspersions of a courageous enemy, accused of unseemly boasting as to his ultimate operations at this time, but the calumny is refuted by the following passage from his dispatch to the minister at war.

“I shall move directly upon Pampeluna, and if I succeed in relieving it I will operate towards my right to embarrass the enemy’s troops in Guipuscoa, Biscay, and Alava, and to enable the reserve to join me, which will relieve St. Sebastian and Santona. If this should happen I will then consider what is to be done, either to push my own attack or to help the army of Aragon, but to look so far ahead would now be temerity.”

It is true that conscious of superior abilities he did not suppress the sentiment of his own worth as[110] a commander, but he was too proud to depreciate brave adversaries on the eve of battle.

“Let us not,” he said, “defraud the enemy of the praise which is due to him. The dispositions of the general have been prompt, skilful, and consecutive, the valour and steadiness of his troops have been praiseworthy.”

Having thus stimulated the ardour of his troops he put himself at the head of Clauzel’s divisions, and on the 25th at daylight led them up against the rocks of Altobiscar.

General Byng, warned the evening before that danger was near, and jealous of some hostile indications towards the village of Val Carlos, had sent the fifty-seventh regiment down there but kept the rest of his men well in hand and gave notice to general Cole who had made a new disposition of his troops. Ross’s brigade was now at Espinal two miles in advance of Viscayret, six miles from the pass of Ibañeta, and eleven from Byng’s position, but somewhat nearer to Morillo. Anson’s brigade was close behind Ross, Stubbs’ Portuguese behind Anson, and the artillery was at Linzoain.

Such was the exact state of affairs when Soult, throwing out a multitude of skirmishers and pushing forward his supporting columns and guns as fast as the steepness of the road and difficult nature of the ground would permit, endeavoured to force Byng’s position; but the British general, undismayed at the multitude of assailants, fought strongly, the French fell fast among the rocks, and their rolling musketry pealed in vain for hours along that cloudy field of battle elevated five thousand feet above the level of the plains. Their numbers however continually increased in front,[111] and the national guards from Yropil, reinforced by Clauzel’s detachments, skirmished with the Spanish battalions at the foundry of Orbaiceta and threatened to turn the right. The Val Carlos was at the same time menaced from Arnegui, and Reille’s divisions ascending the rock of Airola turned Morillo’s left.

About mid-day general Cole arrived at Altobiscar, but his brigades were still distant, and the French renewing their attack neglected the Val Carlos to gather more thickly on the front of Byng. He resisted all their efforts, but Reille made progress along the summit of the Airola ridge. Morillo then fell back towards Ibañeta, and the French were already nearer to that pass than the troops at Altobiscar were, when Ross’s brigade, coming up the pass of Mendichuri, suddenly appeared on the Lindouz, at the instant when the head of Reille’s column being close to Atalosti was upon the point of cutting the communication with Campbell. This officer’s picquets had been attacked early in the morning by the national guards of the Val de Baygorry, but he soon discovered that it was only a feint and therefore moved by his right towards Atalosti when he heard the firing on that side. His march was secured by the Val d’Ayra which separated him from the ridge of Airola along which Reille was advancing, but noting that general’s strength, and at the same time seeing Ross’s brigade labouring up the steep ridge of Mendichuri, Campbell judged that the latter was ignorant of what was going on above. Wherefore sending advice of the enemy’s proximity and strength to Cole, he offered to pass the Atalosti and join in the battle if he could be furnished with[112] transport for his sick, and provisions on the new line of operations.

Before this message could reach Cole, the head of Ross’s column, composed of a wing of the twentieth regiment and a company of Brunswickers, was on the summit of the Lindouz, where most unexpectedly it encountered Reille’s advanced guard. The moment was critical, but Ross an eager hardy soldier called aloud to charge, and captain Tovey of the twentieth running forward with his company crossed a slight wooded hollow and full against the front of the sixth French light infantry dashed with the bayonet. Brave men fell by that weapon onAppendix, No. 3. both sides, but numbers prevailing these daring soldiers were pushed back again by the French, Ross however gained his object, the remainder of his brigade had come up and the pass of Atalosti was secured, yet with a loss of one hundred and forty men of the twentieth regiment and forty-one of the Brunswickers.

Previous to this vigorous action general Cole seeing the French in the Val Carlos and in the valley of Orbaiceta, that is to say on both flanks of Byng whose front was not the less pressed, had ordered Anson to reinforce the Spaniards at the foundry, and Stubbs to enter the Val Carlos in support of the fifty-seventh. He now recalled Anson to assist in defence of the Lindouz, and learning from Campbell how strong Reille was, caused Byng, with a view to a final retreat, to relinquish his advanced position at Altobiscar and take a second nearer the Ibañeta. This movement uncovered the road leading down to the foundry of Orbaiceta, but it concentrated all the troops, and at the same[113] time general Campbell, although he could not enter the line of battle, because Cole was unable to supply his demands, made so skilful a display of his Portuguese as to impress Reille with the notion that their numbers were considerable.

During these movements the skirmishing of the light troops continued, but a thick fog coming up the valley prevented Soult from making dispositions for a general attack with his six divisions, and when night fell general Cole still held the great chain of the mountains with a loss of only three hundred and eighty men killed and wounded. His right was however turned by Orbaiceta, he had but ten or eleven thousand bayonets to oppose to thirty thousand, and his line of retreat being for four or five miles down hill and flanked all the way by the Lindouz, was uneasy and unfavourable. Wherefore putting the troops silently in march after dark, he threaded the passes and gained the valley of Urros. His rear-guard composed of Anson’s brigade followed in the morning, general Campbell retired from the Alduides by the pass of Urtiaga to Eugui in the valley of Zubiri, and the Spanish battalion retreating from the foundry of Orbaiceta by the narrow way of Navala rejoined Morillo near Espinal. The great chain was thus abandoned, but the result of the day’s operation was unsatisfactory to the French general; he acknowledged a loss of four hundred men, he had not gained ten miles, and from the passes now abandoned, to Pampeluna, the distance was not less than twenty-two miles, with strong defensive positions in the way where increasing numbers of intrepid enemies were to be expected.

Soult’s combinations, contrived for greater success,[114] had been thwarted, partly by fortune, partly by errors of execution the like of which all generals must expect, and the most experienced are the most resigned as knowing them to be inevitable. The interference of fortune was felt in the fog which rose at the moment when he was ready to thrust forward his heavy masses of troops entire. The failure in execution was Reille’s tardy movement. His orders were to gain with all expedition the Lindouz, that is to say the knot tying the heads of the Alduides, the Val Carlos, the Roncesvalles, and the valley of Urroz. From that position he would have commanded the Mendichuri, Atalosti, Ibañeta and Sahorgain passes, and by moving along the crest of the hills could menace the Urtiaga, Renacabal, and Bellate passes, thus endangering Campbell’s and Hill’s lines of retreat. But when he should have ascended the rocks of Airola he halted to incorporatePellot, Mémoires des Campagnes des Pyrennées. two newly arrived conscript battalions and to issue provisions, and the hours thus lost would have sufficed to seize the Lindouz before general Ross got through the pass of Mendichuri. The fog would still have stopped the spread of the French columns to the extent designed by Soult, but fifteen or sixteen thousand men, placed on the flank and rear of Byng and Morillo, would have separated them from the fourth division, and forced the latter to retreat beyond Viscayret.

Soult however overrated the force opposed to him, supposing it to consist of two British divisions,Official Despatch to the Minister of war, MSS. besides Byng’s brigade and Morillo’s Spaniards. He was probably deceived by the wounded men, who hastily questioned on the field would declare they belonged to the second and fourth divisions, because Byng’s brigade was part of the former;[115] but that general and the Spaniards had without aid sustained Soult’s first efforts, and even when the fourth division came up, less than eleven thousand men, exclusive of sergeants and officers, were present in the fight. Campbell’s Portuguese never entered the line at all, the remainder of the second division was in the Bastan, and the third division was at Olague in the valley of Lanz.

On the 26th the French general put Clauzel’s wing on the track of Cole, and ordered Reille to follow the crest of the mountains and seize the passes leading from the Bastan in Hill’s rear while D’Erlon pressed him in front. That general would thus, Soult hoped, be crushed or thrown on the side of San Estevan; D’Erlon could then reach his proper place in the valley of Zubiri, while the right descended the valley of Lanz and prevented Picton quitting it to aid Cole. A retreat by those generals and on separate lines would thus be inevitable, and the French army could issue forth in a compact order of battle from the mouths of the two valleys against Pampeluna.

COMBAT OF LINZOAIN.

All the columns were in movement at day-break, but every hour brought its obstacle. The fog still hung heavy on the mountain-tops, Reille’s guides, bewildered, refused to lead the troops along the crests, and at ten o’clock having no other resource he marched down the pass of Mendichuri upon Espinal, and fell into the rear of the cavalry and artillery following Clauzel’s divisions. Meanwhile Soult, although retarded also by the fog and the difficulties of the ground, overtook Cole’s rear-guard in front of Viscayret. The leading troops[116] struck hotly upon some British light companies incorporated under the command of colonel Wilson of the forty-eighth, and a French squadron passing round their flank fell on the rear; but Wilson facing about, drove off these horsemen and thus fighting, Cole, about two o’clock, reached the heights of Linzoain a mile beyond Viscayret, where general Picton met him with intelligence that Campbell had reached Eugui from the Alduides, and that the third division having crossed the hills from Olague was at Zubiri. The junction of all these troops was thus secured, the loss of the day was less than two hundred, and neither wounded men nor baggage had been left behind. However the French gathered in front and at four o’clock seized some heights on the allies’ left which endangered their position, wherefore again falling back a mile, Cole offered battle on the ridge separating the valley of Urroz from that of Zubiri. During this skirmish Campbell coming from Eugui shewed his Portuguese on the ridges above the right flank of the French, but they were distant, Picton’s troops were still at Zubiri, and there was light for an action. Soult however disturbed with intelligence received from D’Erlon, and perhaps doubtful what Campbell’s troops might be, put off the attack until next morning, and after dark the junction of all the allies was effected.

This delay on the part of the French general seems injudicious. Cole was alone for five hours. Every action, by increasing the number of wounded men and creating confusion in the rear, would have augmented the difficulties of the retreat; and the troops were fatigued with incessant fighting and marching for two days and one night. Moreover[117] the alteration of Reille’s march, occasioned by the fog, had reduced the chances dependant on the primary combinations to the operations of D’Erlon’s corps, but the evening reports brought the mortifying conviction that he also had gone wrong, and by rough fighting only could Soult now attain his object. It is said that his expressions discoveredEdouard de LaPene Campagne 1813, 1814. a secret anticipation of failure, if so, his temper was too stedfast to yield for he gave the signal to march the next day, and more strongly renewed his orders to D’Erlon whose operations must now be noticed.

That general had three divisions of infantry, furnishing twenty-one thousand men of which about eighteen thousand were combatants. Early on the morning of the 25th he assembled two of them behind some heights near the passes of Maya, having caused the national guards of Baygorry to make previous demonstrations towards the passes of Arriette, Yspeguy, and Lorietta. No change had been made in the disposition of general Hill’s force, but general Stewart, deceived by the movements of the national guards, looked towards Sylveira’s posts on the right rather than to his own front; his division, consisting of two British brigades, was consequently neither posted as it should be nor otherwise prepared for an attack. The ground to be defended was indeed very strong, but however rugged a mountain position may be, if it is too extensive for the troops or those troops are not disposed with judgment, the very inequalities constituting its defensive strength become advantageous to an assailant.

There were three passes to defend. Aretesque on the right, Lessessa in the centre, Maya on the[118] left, and from these entrances two ways led to Elisondo in parallel directions; one down the valley through the town of Maya, receiving in its course the Erazu road; the other along the Atchiola mountain. General Pringle’s brigade was charged to defend the Aretesque, and colonel Cameron’s brigade the Maya and Lessessa passes. The Col itself was broad on the summit, about three miles long, and on each flank lofty rocks and ridges rose one above another; those on the right blending with the Goramendi mountains, those on the left with the Atchiola, near the summit of which the eighty-second regiment belonging to the seventh division was posted.

Cameron’s brigade, encamped on the left, had a clear view of troops coming from Urdax; but at Aretesque a great round hill, one mile in front, masked the movements of an enemy coming from Espelette. This hill was not occupied at night, nor in the daytime save by some Portuguese cavalry videttes, and the next guard was an infantry piquet posted on that slope of the Col which fronted the great hill. Behind this piquet of eighty men there was no immediate support, but four light companies were encamped one mile down the reverse slope which was more rugged and difficult of access than that towards the enemy. The rest of general Pringle’s brigade was disposed at various distances from two to three miles in the rear, and the signal for assembling on the position was to be the fire of four Portuguese guns from the rocks above the Maya pass. Thus of six British regiments furnishing more than three thousand fighting men, half only were in line of battle, and those chiefly massed on the left of a position, wide open and of an easy ascent from the Aretesque side, and[119] their general, Stewart, quite deceived as to the real state of affairs, was at Elisondo when about mid-day D’Erlon commenced the battle.

COMBAT OF MAYA.

Captain Moyle Sherer, the officer commanding the picquet at the Aretesque pass, was told by hisPlan 3. predecessor, that at dawn a glimpse had been obtained of cavalry and infantry in movement along the hills in front, some peasants also announced the approach of the French, and at nine o’clock major Thorne, a staff-officer, having patroled round the great hill in front of the pass discovered sufficient to make him order up the light companies to support the picquet. These companies had just formed on the ridge with their left at the rock of Aretesque, when D’Armagnac’s division coming from Espelette mounted the great hill in front, Abbé followed, and general Maransin with a third division advanced from Ainhoa and Urdax against the Maya pass, meaning also to turn it by a narrow way leading up the Atchiola mountain.

D’Armagnac’s men pushed forwards at once in several columns, and forced the picquet back with great loss upon the light companies, who sustained his vehement assault with infinite difficulty. The alarm guns were now heard from the Maya pass, and general Pringle hastened to the front, but his regiments moving hurriedly from different camps were necessarily brought into action one after the other. The thirty-fourth came up first at a running pace, yet by companies not in mass and breathless from the length and ruggedness of the ascent; the thirty-ninth and twenty-eighth followed, but not immediately nor together, and meanwhile D’Armagnac,[120] closely supported by Abbé, with domineering numbers and valour combined, maugre the desperate fighting of the picquet of the light companies and of the thirty-fourth, had established his columns on the broad ridge of the position.

Colonel Cameron then sent the fiftieth from the left to the assistance of the overmatched troops, and that fierce and formidable old regiment charging the head of an advancing column drove it clear out of the pass of Lessessa in the centre. Yet the French were so many that, checked at one point, they assembled with increased force at another; nor could general Pringle restore the battle with the thirty-ninth and twenty-eighth regiments, which, cut off from the others were though fighting desperately forced back to a second and lower ridge crossing the main road to Elizondo. They were followed by D’Armagnac, but Abbé continued to press the fiftieth and thirty-fourth whose natural line of retreat was towards the Atchiola road on the left, because the position trended backward from Aretesque towards that point, and because Cameron’s brigade was there. And that officer, still holding the pass of Maya with the left wings of the seventy-first and ninety-second regiments, brought their right wings and the Portuguese guns into action and thus maintained the fight; but so dreadful was the slaughter, especially of the ninety-second, that it is said the advancing enemy was actually stopped by the heaped mass of dead andAppendix, No. 3. dying; and then the left wing of that noble regiment coming down from the higher ground smote wounded friends and exulting foes alike, as mingled together they stood or crawled before its fire.

It was in this state of affairs that general Stewart,[121] returning from Elizondo by the mountain road, reached the field of battle. The passes of Lessessa and Aretesque were lost, that of Maya was still held by the left wing of the seventy-first, but Stewart seeing Maransin’s men gathered thickly on one side and Abbé’s men on the other, abandoned it to take a new position on the first rocky ridge covering the road over the Atchiola; and he called down the eighty-second regiment from the highest part of that mountain and sent messengers to demand further aid from the seventh division. Meanwhile although wounded himself he made a strenuous resistance, for he was a very gallant man; but during the retrograde movement, Maransin no longer seeking to turn the position, suddenly thrust the head of his division across the front of the British line and connected his left with Abbé, throwing as he passed a destructive fire into the wasted remnant of the ninety-second, which even then sullenly gave way, for the men fell until two-thirds of the whole had gone to the ground. Still the survivors fought, and the left wing of the seventy-first came into action, but, one after the other all the regiments were forced back, and the first position was lost together with the Portuguese guns.

Abbé’s division now followed D’Armagnac on the road to the town of Maya, leaving Maransin to deal with Stewart’s new position, and notwithstanding its extreme strength the French gained ground until six o’clock, for the British, shrunk in numbers, also wanted ammunition, and a part of the eighty-second under major Fitzgerald were forced to roll down stones to defend the rocks on which they were posted. In this desperate condition Stewart was upon the point of abandoning the mountain entirely,[122] when a brigade of the seventh division, commanded by general Barnes, arrived from Echallar, and that officer charging at the head of the sixth regiment drove the French back to the Maya ridge. Stewart thus remained master of the Atchiola, and the count D’Erlon who probably thought greater reinforcements had come up, recalled his other divisions from theFrench official report, MSS. Maya road and reunited his whole corps on the Col. He had lost fifteen hundred men and a general; butBritish official return. he took four guns, and fourteen hundred British soldiers were killed or wounded.

Such was the fight of Maya, a disaster, yet one much exaggerated by French writers, and by an English author misrepresented as a surprise causedSouthey. by the negligence of the cavalry. General Stewart was surprised, his troops were not, and never did soldiers fight better, seldom so well. The stern valour of the ninety-second, principally composed of Irishmen, would have graced Thermopylæ. The Portuguese cavalry patroles, if any went out which is uncertain, might have neglected their duty, and doubtless the front should have been scoured in a more military manner; but the infantry picquets, and the light companies so happily ordered up by major Thorne, were ready, and no man wondered to see the French columns crown the great hill in front of the pass. Stewart expecting no attack at Maya, had gone to Elisondo leaving orders for the soldiersGeneral Stewart’s Official Report. to cook; from his erroneous views therefore the misfortune sprung and from no other source. Having deceived himself as to the true point of attack he did not take proper military precautions on his own front; his position was only half occupied, his troops brought into action wildly, and finally he causedWellington’s Despatches. the loss of his guns by a misdirection as to the road.[123] General Stewart was a brave, energetic, zealous, indefatigable man and of a magnanimous spirit, but he possessed neither the calm reflective judgment nor the intuitive genius which belongs to nature’s generals.

It is difficult to understand count D’Erlon’s operations. Why, when he had carried the right of the position, did he follow two weak regiments with two divisions, and leave only one division to attack five regiments, posted on the strongest ground and having hopes of succour from Echallar? Certainly if Abbé’s division had acted with Maransin’s, Stewart who was so hardly pressed by the latter alone, must have passed the road from Echallar in retreat before general Barnes’s brigade arrived. On the other hand, Soult’s orders directedSoult’s Official Despatch, MSS. D’Erlon to operate by his left, with the view of connecting the whole army on the summit of the great chain of the Pyrenees. He should therefore either have used his whole force to crush the troops on the Atchiola before they could be succoured from Echallar; or, leaving Maransin there, have marched by the Maya road upon Ariscun to cut Sylveira’s line of retreat; instead of this he remained inactive upon the Col de Maya for twenty hours after the battle! And general Hill concentrating his whole force, now augmented by Barnes’s brigade, would probably have fallen upon him from the commanding rocks of Atchiola the next day, if intelligence of Cole’s retreat from the Roncesvalles passes had not come through the Alduides. This rendered the recovery of the Col de Maya useless, and Hill withdrawing all his troops during the night, posted the British brigades which had been engaged, together with one Portuguese brigade of[124] infantry and a Portuguese battery, on the heights in rear of Irueta, fifteen miles from the scene of action. The other Portuguese brigade he left in front of Elizondo, thus covering the road of San Estevan on his left, that of Berderez on his right, and the pass of Vellate in his rear.

Such was the commencement of Soult’s operations to restore the fortunes of France. Three considerable actions fought on the same day had each been favourable. At St. Sebastian the allies were repulsed; at Roncesvalles they abandoned the passes; at Maya they were defeated; but the decisive blow had not yet been struck.

Lord Wellington heard of the fight at Maya on his way back from St. Sebastian, but with the false addition that D’Erlon was beaten. As early as the 22d he had known that Soult was preparing a great offensive movement, but the immovable attitude of the French centre, the skilful disposition of their reserve which was twice as strong as he at first supposed, together with the preparations made to throw bridges over the Bidassoa at Biriatou, were all calculated to mislead and did mislead him.

Soult’s complicated combinations to bring D’Erlon’s divisions finally into line on the crest of the great chain were impenetrable, and the English general could not believe his adversary would throw himself with only thirty thousand men into the valley of the Ebro unless sure of aid from Suchet, and that general’s movements indicated a determination to remain in Catalonia; moreover Wellington, in contrast to Soult, knew that Pampeluna was not in extremity, and before the failure of the assault thought that San Sebastian was. Hence the operations against his right, their full[125] extent not known, appeared a feint, and he judged the real effort would be to throw bridges over the Bidassoa and raise the siege of San Sebastian. But in the night correct intelligence of the Maya and Roncesvalles affairs arrived, Soult’s object was then scarcely doubtful, and sir T. Graham was ordered to turn the siege into a blockade, to embark his guns and stores, and hold all his spare troops in hand to join Giron, on a position of battle marked out near the Bidassoa. General Cotton was ordered to move the cavalry up to Pampeluna, and O’Donnel was instructed to hold some of his Spanish troops ready to act in advance. This done Wellington arranged his lines of correspondence and proceeded to San Estevan, which he reached early in the morning.

While the embarkation of the guns and stores was going on it was essential to hold the posts at Vera and Echallar, because D’Erlon’s object was not pronounced, and an enemy in possession of those places could approach San Sebastian by the roads leading over the Pena de Haya, a rocky mountain behind Lesaca, or by the defiles of Zubietta leading round that mountain from the valley of Lerins. Wherefore in passing through Estevan on the morning of the 26th, Wellington merely directed general Pack to guard the bridges over the Bidassoa. But when he reached Irueta, saw the reduced state of Stewart’s division, and heard that Picton had marched from Olague, he directed all the troops within his power upon Pampeluna; and to prevent mistakes indicated the valley of Lanz asManuscript Notes by the Duke of Wellington. the general line of movement. Of Picton’s exact position or of his intentions nothing positive was[126] known, but supposing him to have joined Cole at Linzoain, as indeed he had, Wellington judged that their combined forces would be sufficient to check the enemy until assistance could reach them from the centre or from Pampeluna, and he so advised Picton on the evening of the 26th.

In consequence of these orders the seventh division abandoned Echallar in the night of the 26th, the sixth division quitted San Estevan at daylight on the 27th, and general Hill concentrating his own troops and Barnes’s brigade on the heights of Irueta, halted until the evening of the 27th but marched during the night through the pass of Vellate upon the town of Lanz. Meanwhile the light division quitting Vera also on the 27th retired by Lesaca to the summit of the Santa Cruz mountain, overlooking the valley of Lerins, and there halted, apparently to cover the pass of Zubieta until Longa’s Spaniards should take post to block the roads leading over the Pena de Haya and protect the embarkation of the guns on that flank. That object being effected it was to thread the passes and descend upon Lecumberri on the great road of Irurzun, thus securing sir Thomas Graham’s communication with the army round Pampeluna. These various movements spread fear and confusion far and wide. All the narrow valleys and roads were crowded with baggage, commissariat stores, artillery and fugitive families; reports of the most alarming nature were as usual rife; each division, ignorant of what had really happened to the other, dreaded that some of the numerous misfortunes related might be true; none knew what to expect or where they were to meet the enemy, and one universal[127] hubbub filled the wild regions through which the French army was now working its fiery path towards Pampeluna.

D’Erlon’s inactivity gave great uneasiness to Soult, who repeated the order to push forward by his left whatever might be the force opposed, and thus stimulated he advanced to Elizondo on the 27th, but thinking the sixth division was still at San Estevan, again halted, and it was not until the morning of the 28th, when general Hill’s retreat had opened the way, that he followed through the pass of Vellate. His further progress belongs to other combinations arising from Soult’s direct operations which are now to be continued.

General Picton, having assumed the command of all the troops in the valley of Zubiri on the evening of the 26th, recommenced the retreat before dawn on the 27th, and without the hope or intention of covering Pampeluna. Soult followed in the morning, having first sent scouts towards the ridges where Campbell’s troops had appeared the evening before. Reille marched by the left bank of the Guy river, Clauzel by the right bank, the cavalry and artillery closed the rear and as the whole moved in compact order the narrow valley was overgorged with troops, a hasty bicker of musketry alone marking the separation of the hostile forces. Meanwhile the garrison of Pampeluna made a sally and O’Donnel in great alarm spiked some of his guns, destroyed his magazines, and would have suffered a disaster, if Carlos D’España had not fortunately arrived with his division and checked the garrison. Nevertheless the danger was imminent, for general Cole, first emerging from the valley of Zubiri, had passed Villalba, only[128] three miles from Pampeluna, in retreat; Picton, following close, was at Huarte, and O’Donnel’s Spaniards were in confusion; in fine Soult was all but successful when Picton, feeling the importance of the crisis, suddenly turned on some steep ridges, which, stretching under the names of San Miguel Mont Escava and San Cristoval quite across the mouths of the Zubiri and Lanz valleys, screen Pampeluna.

Posting the third division on the right of Huarte he prolonged his line to the left with Morillo’s Spaniards, called upon O’Donnel to support him, and directed Cole to occupy some heights between Oricain and Arletta. But that general having with a surer eye observed a salient hill near Zabaldica, one mile in advance and commanding the road to Huarte, demanded and obtained permission to occupy it instead of the heights first appointed. Two Spanish regiments belonging to the blockading troops were still posted there, and towards them Cole directed his course. Soult had also marked this hill, a French detachment issuing from the mouth of the Val de Zubiri was in full career to seize it, and the hostile masses were rapidly approaching the summit on either side when the Spaniards, seeing the British so close, vindicated their own post by a sudden charge. This was for Soult the stroke of fate. His double columns just then emerging, exultant, from the narrow valley, were arrested at the sight of ten thousand men which under Cole crowned the summit of the mountain in opposition; and two miles further back stood Picton with a greater number, for O’Donnel had now taken post on Morillo’s left. To advance by the Huarte road was impossible, and to stand[129] still was dangerous, because the French army contracted to a span in front was cleft in its whole length by the river Guy, and compressed on each side by the mountains which in that part narrowed the valley to a quarter of a mile. Soult however, like a great and ready commander, at once shot the head of Clauzel’s columns to his right across the mountain which separated the Val de Zubiri from the Val de Lanz, and at the same time threw one of Reille’s divisions of infantry and a body of cavalrySoult’s Official Correspondence, MSS. across the mountains on his left, beyond the Guy river, as far as the village of Elcano, to menace the front and right flank of Picton’s position at Huarte. The other two divisions of infantry he established at the village of Zabaldica in the Val de Zubiri, close under Cole’s right, and meanwhile Clauzel seized the village of Sauroren close under that general’s left.

While the French general thus formed his line of battle, lord Wellington who had quitted sir Rowland Hill’s quarters in the Bastan very early on the 27th, crossed the main ridge and descended the valley of Lanz without having been able toNotes by Lord Wellington, MSS. learn any thing of Picton’s movements or position, and in this state of uncertainty reached Ostiz, a few miles from Sauroren, where he found general Long with the brigade of light cavalry which had furnished the posts of correspondence in the mountains. Here learning that Picton having abandoned the heights of Linzoain was moving on Huarte, he left his quarter-master-general with instructions to stop all the troops coming down the valley of Lanz until the state of affairs at Huarte should be ascertained. Then at racing speed he made for Sauroren. As he entered that village[130] he saw Clauzel’s divisions moving from Zabaldica along the crest of the mountain, and it was clear that the allied troops in the valley of Lanz were intercepted, wherefore pulling up his horse he wrote on the parapet of the bridge of Sauroren fresh instructions to turn every thing from that valley to the right, by a road which led through Lizasso and Marcalain behind the hills to the village of Oricain, that is to say, in rear of the position now occupied by Cole. Lord Fitzroy Somerset, the only staff-officer who had kept up with him, galloped with these orders out of Sauroren by one road, the French light cavalry dashed in by another, and the English general rode alone up the mountain to reach his troops. One of Campbell’s Portuguese battalions first descried him and raised a cry of joy, and the shrill clamour caught up by the next regiments swelled as it run along the line into that stern and appalling shout which the British soldier is wont to give upon the edge of battle, and which no enemy ever heard unmoved. Lord Wellington suddenly stopped in a conspicuous place, he desired that both armies should know he was there, and a double spy who was present pointed out Soult, then so near that his features could be plainly distinguished. The English general, it is said, fixed his eyes attentively upon this formidable man, and speaking as if to himself, said, “Yonder is a great commander, but he is a cautious one and will delay his attack to ascertain the cause of these cheers; that will give time for the sixth division to arrive and I shall beat him.” And certain it is that the French general made no serious attack that day.

The position adopted by Cole was the summit[131] of a mountain mass which filled all the space between the Guy and the Lanz rivers as far back as Huarte and Villalba. It was highest in the centre, and boldly defined towards the enemy, but the trace was irregular, the right being thrown back towards the village of Arletta so as to flank the high road to Huarte. This road was also swept by some guns placed on a lower range, or neck, connecting the right of Cole with Picton and Morillo.

Overlooking Zabaldica and the Guy river was the bulging hill vindicated by the Spaniards; it was a distinct point on the right of the fourth division, dependent upon the centre of the position but considerably lower. The left of the position also abating in height was yet extremely rugged and steep overlooking the Lanz river and the road to Villalba. General Ross’s brigade of the fourth division was posted on that side, having a Portuguese battalion, whose flank rested on a small chapel, in his front. General Campbell was on the right of Ross. General Anson was on the highest ground, partly behind, and partly on the right of Campbell. General Byng’s brigade was on a second mass of hills in reserve, and the Spanish hill was reinforced by a battalion of the fourth Portuguese regiment.

The front of battle being less than two miles was well filled, and the Lanz and Guy river washed the flanks. Those torrents continuing their course break by narrow passages through the steep ridges of San Miguel and Cristoval, and then flowing past Huarte and Villalba meet behind those places to form the Arga river. On the ridges thus cleft by the waters the second line was posted, that is to say, at the distance of two miles from, and nearly[132] parallel to the first position, but on a more extended front. Picton’s left was at Huarte, his right strengthened with a battery stretched to the village of Goraitz, covering more than a mile of ground on that flank. Morillo prolonged Picton’s left along the crest of San Miguel to Villalba, and O’Donnel continued the line to San Cristoval; Carlos D’España’s division maintained the blockade behind these ridges, and the British cavalry under General Cotton, coming up from Tafalla and Olite, took post, the heavy brigades on some open ground behind Picton, the hussar brigade on his right. This second line being on a wider trace than the first and equally well filled with troops, entirely barred the openings of the two valleys leading down to Pampeluna.

Soult’s position was also a mountain filling the space between the two rivers. It was even more rugged than the allies’ mountain and they were only separated by a deep narrow valley. Clauzel’s three divisions leaned to the right on the village of Sauroren, which was quite down in the valley of Lanz and close under the chapel height where the left of the fourth division was posted. His left was prolonged by two of Reille’s divisions, which also occupied the village of Zabaldica quite down in the valley of Zubiri under the right of the allies. The remaining division of this wing and a division of cavalry, were, as I have before stated, thrown forward on the mountains at the other side of the Guy river, menacing Picton and seeking for an opportunity to communicate with the garrison of Pampeluna. Some guns were pushed in front of Zabaldica, but the elevation required to send the shot upward rendered their fire ineffectual and the greatest part of[133] the artillery remained therefore in the narrow valley of Zubiri.

Combat of the 27th. Soult’s first effort was to gain the Spaniards’ hill and establish himself near the centre of the allies’ line of battle. The attack was vigorous but the French were valiantly repulsed about the time lord Wellington arrived, and he immediately reinforced that post with the fortieth British regiment. There was then a general skirmish along the front, under cover of which Soult carefully examined the whole position, and the firing continued on the mountain side until evening, when a terrible storm, the usual precursor of English battles in the Peninsula, brought on premature darkness and terminated the dispute. This was the state of affairs at day-break on the 28th, but a signal alteration had place before the great battle of that day commenced, and the movements of the wandering divisions by which this change was effected must now be traced.

It has been shewn that the Lanz covered the left of the allies and the right of the French. Nevertheless the heights occupied by either army were prolonged beyond that river, the continuation of the allies’ ridge sweeping forward so as to look into the rear of Sauroren, while the continuation of the French heights fell back in a direction nearly parallel to the forward inclination of the opposing ridge. They were both steep and high, yet lower and less rugged than the heights on which the armies stood opposed, for the latter were mountains where rocks piled on rocks stood out like castles, difficult to approach and so dangerous to assail that the hardened veterans of the Peninsula only would have dared the trial. Now the road by which[134] the sixth division marched on the 27th, after clearing the pass of Doña Maria, sends one branch to Lanz, another to Ostiz, a third through Lizasso and Marcalain; the first and second fall into the road from Bellate and descend the valley of Lanz to Sauroren; the third passing behind the ridges, just described as prolonging the positions of the armies, also falls into the valley of Lanz, but at the village of Oricain, that is to say one mile behind the ground occupied by general Cole’s left.

It was by this road of Marcalain that Wellington now expected the sixth and seventh divisions, but the rapidity with which Soult seized Sauroren caused a delay of eighteen hours. For the sixth division, having reached Olague in the valley of Lanz about one o’clock on the 27th, halted there until four, and then following the orders brought by lord Fitzroy Somerset marched by Lizasso to gain the Marcalain road; but the great length of these mountain marches, and the heavy storm which had terminated the action at Zabaldica sweeping with equal violence in this direction, prevented the division from passing Lizasso that night. However the march was renewed at daylight on the 28th, and meanwhile general Hill, having quitted the Bastan on the evening of the 27th, reached the town of Lanz on the morning of the 28th, and rallying general Long’s cavalry and his own artillery, which were in that valley, moved likewise upon Lizasso. At that place he met the seventh division coming from San Estevan, and having restored general Barnes’s brigade to lord Dalhousie, took a position on a ridge covering the road to Marcalain. The seventh division being on his right, was in military communication with the sixth division, and thus[135] lord Wellington’s left was prolonged, and covered the great road leading from Pampeluna by Irurzun to Tolosa. And during these important movements, which were not completed until the evening of the 28th, which brought six thousand men into the allies’ line of battle, and fifteen thousand more into military communication with their left, D’Erlon remained planted in his position of observation near Elizondo!

The near approach of the sixth division early on the morning of the 28th and the certainty of Hill’s junction, made Wellington imagine that Soult would not venture an attack, and certainly that marshal, disquieted about D’Erlon of whom he only knew that he had not followed his instructions, viewed the strong position of his adversary with uneasy anticipations. Again with anxious eyes he took cognizance of all its rugged strength, and seemed dubious and distrustful of his fortune. He could not operate with advantage by his own left beyond the Guy river, because the mountains there were rough, and Wellington having shorter lines of movement could meet him with all arms combined; and meanwhile the French artillery, unable to emerge from the Val de Zubiri except by the Huarte road, would have been exposed to a counter-attack. He crossed the Lanz river and ascended the prolongation of the allies’ ridge, which, as he had possession of the bridge of Sauroren, was for the moment his own ground. From this height he could see all the left and rear of Cole’s position, looking down the valley of Lanz as far as Villalba, but the country beyond the ridge towards Marcalain was so broken that heSoult’s Correspondence, MSS. could not discern the march of the sixth division; he knew however from the deserters, that Wellington[136] expected four fresh divisions from that side, that is to say, the second, sixth, and seventh British, and Sylviera’s Portuguese division which always marched with Hill. This information and the nature of the ground decided the plan of attack. The valley of Lanz growing wider as it descended, offered the means of assailing the allies’ left in front and rear at one moment, and the same combination would cut off the reinforcements expected from the side of Marcalain.

One of Clauzel’s divisions already occupied Sauroren, and the other two coming from the mountain took post upon each side of that village. The division on the right hand was ordered to throw some flankers on the ridge from whence Soult was taking his observations, and upon a signal given to move in one body to a convenient distance down the valley and then, wheeling to its left, assail the rear of the allies’ left flank while the other two divisions advancing from their respective positions near Sauroren assailed the front. Cole’s left, which did not exceed five thousand men, would thus be enveloped by sixteen thousand, and Soult expected to crush it notwithstanding the strength of the ground. Meanwhile Reille’s two divisions advancing from the mountain on the side of Zabaldica, were each to send a brigade against the hill occupied by the fortieth regiment; the right of this attack was to be connected with the left of Clauzel, the remaining brigades were closely to support the assailing masses, the divisions beyond the Guy were to keep Picton in check, and Soult who had no time to lose ordered his lieutenants to throw their troops frankly and at once into action.

First battle of Sauroren.—It was fought on the fourth anniversary of the battle of Talavera.

[137]

About mid-day the French gathered at the foot of the position and their skirmishers rushing forward spread over the face of the mountain, working upward like a conflagration; but the columns of attack were not all prepared when Clauzel’s division in the valley of Lanz, too impatient to await the general signal of battle, threw out its flankers on the ridge beyond the river and pushed down the valley in one mass. With a rapid pace it turned Cole’s left and was preparing to wheel up on his rear, when a Portuguese brigade of the sixth division, suddenly appearing on the crest of the ridge beyond the river, drove the French flankers back and instantly descended with a rattling fire upon the right and rear of the column in the valley. And almost at the same instant, the main body of the sixth division emerging from behind the same ridge, near the village of Oricain, formed in order of battle across the front. It was the counter-stroke of Salamanca! The French, striving to encompass the left of the allies were themselves encompassed, for two brigades of the fourth division turned and smote them from the left, the Portuguese smote them from the right; and while thus scathed on both flanks with fire, they were violently shocked and pushed back with a mighty force by the sixth division, yet not in flight, but fighting fiercely and strewing the ground with their enemies’ bodies as well as with their own.

Clauzel’s second division, seeing this dire conflict, with a hurried movement assailed the chapel height to draw off the fire from the troops in the valley, and gallantly did the French soldiers throng up the craggy steep, but the general unity of the attack was ruined; neither their third division nor Reille’s brigades had yet received the signal, and their attacks[138] instead of being simultaneous were made in succession, running from right to left as the necessity of aiding the others became apparent. It was however a terrible battle and well fought. One column darting out of the village of Sauroren, silently, sternly, without firing a shot, worked up to the chapel under a tempest of bullets which swept away whole ranks without abating the speed and power of the mass. The seventh Caçadores shrunk abashed and that part of the position was won. Soon however they rallied upon general Ross’s British brigade, and the whole running forward charged the French with a loud shout and dashed them down the hill. Heavily stricken they were, yet undismayed, and recovering their ranks again, they ascended in the same manner to be again broken and overturned. But the other columns of attack were now bearing upwards through the smoke and flame with which the skirmishers had covered the face of the mountain, and the tenth Portuguese regiment fighting on the right of Ross’s brigade yielded to their fury; a heavy body crowned the heights and wheeling against the exposed flank of Ross forced that gallant officer also to go back. His ground was instantly occupied by the enemies with whom he had been engaged in front, and the fight raged close and desperate on the crest of the position, charge succeeded charge and each side yielded and recovered by turns; yet this astounding effort of French valour was of little avail. Lord Wellington brought Byng’s brigade forward at a running pace, and sent the twenty-seventh and forty-eighth British regiments belonging to Anson’s brigade down from the higher ground in the centre against the crowded masses, rolling them backward in disorder and throwing them one after the other violently down the[139] mountain side; and with no child’s play; the two British regiments fell upon the enemy three separate times with the bayonet and lost more than half their own numbers.

During this battle on the mountain-top, the British brigades of the sixth division strengthened by a battery of guns, gained ground in the valley of Lanz and arrived on the same front with the left of the victorious troops about the chapel. Lord Wellington then seeing the momentary disorder of the enemy ordered Madden’s Portuguese brigade, which had never ceased its fire against the right flank of the French column, to assail the village of Sauroren in the rear, but the state of the action in other parts and the exhaustion of the troops soon induced him to countermand this movement. Meanwhile Reille’s brigades, connecting their right with the left of Clauzel’s third division, had environed the Spanish hill, ascended it unchecked, and at the moment when the fourth division was so hardly pressed made the regiment of El Pravia give way on the left of the fortieth. A Portuguese battalion rushing forward covered the flank of that invincible regiment, which waited in stern silence until the French set their feet upon the broad summit; but when their glittering arms appeared over the brow of the mountain the charging cry was heard, the crowded mass was broken to pieces and a tempest of bullets followed its flight. Four times this assault was renewed, and the French officers were seen to pull up their tired men by the belts, so fierce and resolute they were to win. It was however the labour of Sysiphus. The vehement shout and shock of the British soldier always prevailed, and at last, with thinned ranks, tired limbs, hearts fainting,[140] and hopeless from repeated failures, they were so abashed that three British companies sufficed to bear down a whole brigade.

While the battle was thus being fought on the height the French cavalry beyond the Guy river, passed a rivulet, and with a fire of carbines forced the tenth hussars to yield some rocky ground on Picton’s right, but the eighteenth hussars having better firearms than the tenth renewed the combat, killed two officers, and finally drove the French over the rivulet again.

Such were the leading events of this sanguinary struggle, which lord Wellington fresh from the fight with homely emphasis called “bludgeon work.” Two generals and eighteen hundred men had been killed or wounded on the French side, following their official reports, a number far below the estimate made at the time by the allies whose loss amounted to two thousand six hundred. These discrepancies between hostile calculations ever occur, and there is little wisdom in disputing where proof is unattainable; but the numbers actually engaged were, of French, twenty-five thousand, of the allies twelve thousand, and if the strength of the latter’s position did not save them from the greater loss their stedfast courage is to be the more admired.

The 29th the armies rested in position without firing a shot, but the wandering divisions on both sides were now entering the line.

General Hill, having sent all his baggage artillery and wounded men to Berioplano behind the Cristoval ridge, still occupied his strong ground between Lizasso and Arestegui, covering the Marcalain and Irurzun roads, and menacing that leading[141] from Lizasso to Olague in rear of Soult’s right. His communication with Oricain was maintained by the seventh division, and the light division was approaching his left. Thus on Wellington’s side the crisis was over. He had vindicated his position with only sixteen thousand combatants, and now, including the troops still maintaining the blockade, he had fifty thousand, twenty thousand being British, in close military combination. Thirty thousand flushed with recent success were in hand, and Hill’s troops were well-placed for retaking the offensive.

Soult’s situation was proportionably difficult. Finding that he could not force the allies’ position in front, he had sent his artillery part of his cavalry and his wounded men back to France immediately after the battle, ordering the two former to join Villatte on the Lower Bidassoa and there await further instructions. Having shaken off this burthen he awaited D’Erlon’s arrival by the valley of Lanz, and that general reached Ostiz a few miles above Sauroren at mid-day on the 29th, bringing intelligence, obtained indirectly during his march, that general Graham had retired from the Bidassoa and Villatte had crossed that river. This gave Soult a hope that his first movements had disengaged San Sebastian, and he instantly conceived a new plan of operations, dangerous indeed yet conformable to the critical state of his affairs.

No success was to be expected from another attack, yet he could not at the moment of being reinforced with eighteen thousand men, retire by the road he came without some dishonour; nor could he remain where he was, because his supplies[142] of provisions and ammunition derived from distant magazines by slow and small convoys was unequal to the consumption. Two-thirds of the BritishSoult’s Official Correspondence, MSS. troops, the greatest part of the Portuguese, and all the Spaniards were, as he supposed, assembled in his front under Wellington, or on his right flank under Hill, and it was probable that other reinforcements were on the march; wherefore he resolved to prolong his right with D’Erlon’s corps, and then cautiously drawing off the rest of his army place himself between the allies and the Bastan, in military connection with his reserve and closer to his frontier magazines. Thus posted and able to combine all his troops in one operation, he expected to relieve San Sebastian entirely and profit from the new state of affairs.

In the evening of the 29th the second division of cavalry, which was in the valley of Zubiri, passed over the position to the valley of Lanz, and joined D’Erlon, who was ordered to march early on the 30th by Etulain upon Lizasso, sending out strong scouting parties to his left on all the roads leading upon Pampeluna, and also towards Letassa and Irurzun. During the night the first division of cavalry and La Martiniere’s division of infantry, both at Elcano on the extreme left of the French army, retired overPlan 2. the mountains by Illurdos to Eugui, in the upper part of the valley of the Zubiri, having orders to cross the separating ridge enter the valley of Lanz and join D’Erlon. The remainder of Reille’s wing was at the same time to march by the crest of the position from Zabaldica to the village of Sauroren, and gradually relieve Clauzel’s troops which were then to assemble behind Sauroren, that is to[143] say towards Ostiz, and thus following the march of D’Erlon were to be themselves followed in like manner by Reille’s troops. To cover these last movements Clauzel detached two regiments to occupy the French heights beyond the Lanz river, and they were also to maintain his connection with D’Erlon whose line of operations was just beyond those heights. He was however to hold by Reille rather than by D’Erlon until the former had perfected his dangerous march across Wellington’s front.

In the night of the 29th Soult heard from the deserters that three divisions were to make an offensive movement towards Lizasso on the 30th, and when daylight came he was convinced the men spoke truly, because from a point beyond Sauroren he discerned certain columns descending the ridge of Cristoval and the heights above Oricain, while others were in march on a wide sweep apparently to turn Clauzel’s right flank. These columns were Morillo’s Spaniards, Campbell’s Portuguese, and the seventh division, the former rejoining Hill to whose corps they properly belonged, the others adapting themselves to a new disposition of Wellington’s line of battle which shall be presently explained.

At six o’clock in the morning Foy’s division of Reille’s wing was in march along the crest of the mountain from Zabaldica towards Sauroren, where Maucune’s division had already relieved Conroux’s; the latter, belonging to Clauzel’s wing, was moving up the valley of Lanz to rejoin that general, who had, with exception of the two flanking regiments before mentioned, concentrated his remaining divisions between Olabe and Ostiz. In this state of[144] affairs Wellington opening his batteries from the chapel height sent skirmishers against Sauroren, and the fire spreading to the allies’ right became brisk between Cole and Foy. It subsided however at Sauroren, and Soult, relying on the strength of the position, ordered Reille to maintain it until nightfall unless hardly pressed, and went off himself at a gallop to join D’Erlon, for his design was to fallSoult’s Official Report, MSS. upon the division attempting to turn his right and crush them with superior numbers: a daring project, well and quickly conceived, but he had to deal with a man whose rapid perception and rough stroke rendered sleight of hand dangerous. The marshal overtook D’Erlon at the moment when that general, having entered the valley of Ulzema with three divisions of infantry and two divisions of heavy cavalry, was making dispositions to assail Hill who was between Buenza and Arestegui.

Combat of Buenza. The allies who were about ten thousand fighting men, including Long’s brigade of light cavalry, occupied a very extensive mountain ridge. Their right was strongly posted on rugged ground, but the left prolonged towards Buenza was insecure, and D’Erlon who including his two divisions of heavy cavalry had not less than twenty thousand sabres and bayonets, was followed by La Martiniere’s division of infantry now coming from Lanz. Soult’s combination was therefore extremely powerful. The light troops were already engaged when he arrived, and the same soldiers on both sides who had so strenuously combated at Maya on the 25th were again opposed to each other.

D’Armagnac’s division was directed to make a false attack upon Hill’s right; Abbé’s division,[145] emerging by Lizasso, endeavoured to turn the allies’ left and gain the summit of the ridge in the direction of Buenza; Maranzin followed Abbé, and the divisions of cavalry entering the line supported and connected the two attacks. The action was brisk at both points, but D’Armagnac pushing his feint too far became seriously engaged, and was beaten by Da Costa and Ashworth’s Portuguese aided by a part of the twenty-eighth British regiment. Nor were the French at first more successful on the other flank, being repeatedly repulsed, until Abbé, turning that wing gained the summit of the mountain and rendered the position untenable. General Hill who had lost about four hundred men then retired to the heights of Equaros behind Arestegui and Berasin, thus drawing towards Marcalain with his right and throwing back his left. Here being joined by Campbell and Morillo he again offered battle, but Soult whose principal loss was in D’Armagnac’s division had now gained his main object; he had turned Hill’s left, secured a fresh line of retreat, a shorter communication with Villatte by the pass of Donna Maria, and withal, the great Irurzun road to Toloza distant only one league and a half was in his power. His first thought was toSoult’s Official despatch, MS. seize it and march through Lecumberri either upon Toloza, or Andoain and Ernani. There was nothing to oppose except the light division whose movements shall be noticed hereafter, but neither the French marshal nor general Hill knew of its presence, and the former thought himself strong enough to force his way to San Sebastian and there unite with Villatte, and his artillery which following his previous orders was now on the Lower Bidassoa.

[146]

This project was feasible. Lamartiniere’s division, of Reille’s wing, coming from Lanz, was not far off. Clauzel’s three divisions were momentarily expected, and Reille’s during the night. On the 31st therefore, Soult with at least fifty thousand men would have broken into Guipuscoa, thrusting aside the light division in his march, and menacing sir Thomas Graham’s position in reverse while Villatte’s reserve attacked it in front. The country about Lecumberri was however very strong for defence and lord Wellington would have followed, yet scarcely in time, for he did not suspect his views and was ignorant of his strength, thinking D’Erlon’s force, to be originally two divisions of infantry and now only reinforced with a third division, whereas that general had three divisions originally and was now reinforced by a fourth division of infantry and two of cavalry. This error however did not prevent him from seizing with the rapidity of a great commander, the decisive point of operation, and giving a counter-stroke which Soult trusting to the strength of Reille’s position little expected.

When Wellington saw that La Martiniere’s divisions and the cavalry had abandoned the mountains above Elcano, and that Zabaldica was evacuated, he ordered Picton, reinforced with two squadrons of cavalry and a battery of artillery, to enter the valley of Zubiri and turn the French left; the seventh division was directed to sweep over the hills beyond the Lanz river upon the French right; the march of Campbell and Morillo insured the communication with Hill; and that general was to point his columns upon Olague and Lanz threatening the French rear, but meeting as we have[147] seen with D’Erlon was forced back to Eguaros. The fourth division was to assail Foy’s position, but respecting its great strength the attack was to be measured according to the effect produced on the flanks. Meanwhile Byng’s brigade and the sixth division, the latter having a battery of guns and some squadrons of cavalry, were combined to assault Sauroren. La Bispal’s Spaniards followed the sixth division. Fane’s horsemen were stationed at Berioplano with a detachment pushed to Irurzun, the heavy cavalry remained behind Huarte, and Carlos D’España maintained the blockade.

Second battle of Sauroren.—These movements began at daylight. Picton’s advance was rapid. He gained the valley of Zubiri and threw his skirmishers at once on Foy’s flank, and about the same time general Inglis, one of those veterans who purchase every step of promotion with their blood, advancing with only five hundred men of the seventh division, broke at one shock the two French regiments covering Clauzel’s right, and drove them down into the valley of Lanz. He lost indeed one-third of his own men, but instantly spreading the remainder in skirmishing order along the descent, opened a biting fire upon the flank of Conroux’s division, which was then moving up the valley from Sauroren, sorely amazed and disordered by this sudden fall of two regiments from the top of the mountain into the midst of the column.

Foy’s division, marching to support Conroux and Maucune, was on the crest of the mountains between Zabaldica and Sauroren at the moment of attack, but too far off to give aid, and his own light troops were engaged with the skirmishers of the fourth division; and Inglis had been so sudden and[148] vigorous, that before the evil could be well perceived it was past remedy. For Wellington instantly pushed the sixth division, now commanded by general Pakenham Pack having been wounded on the 28th, to the left of Sauroren, and shoved Byng’s brigade headlong down from the chapel height against that village, which was defended by Maucune’s division. Byng’s vigorous assault was simultaneously enforced from the opposite direction by Madden’s Portuguese of the sixth division, and at the same time the battery near the chapel sent its bullets crashing through the houses, and booming up the valley towards Conroux’s column, which Inglis never ceased to vex and he was closely supported by the remainder of the seventh division.

The village and bridge of Sauroren and the straits beyond were now covered with a pall of smoke, the musquetry pealed frequent and loud, and the tumult and affray echoing from mountain to mountain filled all the valley. Byng with hard fighting carried the village of Sauroren, and fourteen hundred prisoners were made, for the two French divisions thus vehemently assailed in the front and flank were entirely broken. Part retreated along the valley towards Clauzel’s other divisions which were now beyond Ostiz; part fled up the mountain side to seek a refuge with Foy, who had remained on the summit a helpless spectator of this rout; but though he rallied the fugitives in great numbers, he had soon to look to himself, for by this time his skirmishers had been driven up the mountain by those of the fourth division, and his left was infested by Picton’s detachments. Thus pressed, he abandoned his strong position, and fell back along the summit of the mountain between the[149] valley of Zubiri and valley of Lanz, and the woods enabled him to effect his retreat without much loss; but he dared not descend into either valley, and thinking himself entirely cut off, sent advice of his situation to Soult and then retired into the Alduides by the pass of Urtiaga. Meanwhile Wellington pressing up the valley of Lanz drove Clauzel as far as Olague, and the latter now joined by La Martiniere’s division took a position in the evening covering the roads of Lanz and Lizasso. The English general whose pursuit had been damped by hearing of Hill’s action also halted near Ostiz.

The allies lost nineteen hundred men killed and wounded, or taken, in the two battles of this day, and of these nearly twelve hundred were Portuguese, the soldiers of that nation having borne the brunt of both fights. On the French side the loss was enormous. Conroux’s and Maucune’s divisions were completely disorganized; Foy with eight thousand men, including the fugitives he had rallied, was entirely separated from the main body; two thousand men at the lowest computation had been killed or wounded, many were dispersed in the woods and ravines, and three thousand prisoners were taken. This blow joined to former losses reduced Soult’s fighting men to thirty-five thousand, of which the fifteen thousand under Clauzel and Reille were dispirited by defeat, and the whole were placed in a most critical situation. Hill’s force now increased to fifteen thousand men by the junction of Morillo and Campbell was in front, and thirty thousand were on the rear in the valley of Lanz, or on the hills at each side; for the third division finding no more enemies in the valley of Zubiri,[150] had crowned the heights in conjunction with the fourth division.

Lord Wellington had detached some of La Bispal’s Spaniards to Marcalain when he heard of Hill’s action, but he was not yet aware of the true state of affairs on that side. His operations were founded upon the notion that Soult was in retreat towards the Bastan. He designed to follow closely pushing his own left forward to support sir Thomas Graham on the Bidassoa, but always underrating D’Erlon’s troops he thought La Martiniere’s division had retreated by the Roncesvalles road; and as Foy’s column was numerous and two divisions had been broken at Sauroren, he judged the force immediately under Soult to be weak and made dispositions accordingly. The sixth division and the thirteenth light dragoons were to march by Eugui to join the third division, which was directed upon Linzoain and Roncesvalles. The fourth division was to descend into the valley of Lanz. General Hill, supported by the Spaniards at Marcalain, was to press Soult closely, always turning his right but directing his own march upon Lanz, from whence he was to send Campbell’s brigade to the Alduides. The seventh division which had halted on the ridges between Hill and Wellington, was to suffer the former to cross its front and then march for the pass of Doña Maria.

It appears from these arrangements, that Wellington expecting Soult would rejoin Clauzel and make for the Bastan by the pass of Vellate, intended to confine and press him closely in that district. But the French marshal was in a worse position than his adversary imagined, being too far advanced towards[151] Buenza to return to Lanz; in fine he was between two fires and without a retreat save by the pass of Doña Maria upon San Estevan. Wherefore calling in Clauzel, and giving D’Erlon whose divisions, hitherto successful were in good order and undismayed, the rear-guard, he commenced his march soon after midnight towards the pass. But mischief was thickening around him.

Sir Thomas Graham having only the blockade of San Sebastian to maintain was at the head of twenty thousand men, ready to make a forward movement, and there remained besides the light division under Charles Alten of whose operations it is time to speak. That general, as we have seen, took post on the mountain of Santa Cruz the 27th. From thence on the evening of the 28th he marched to gain Lecumberri on the great road of Irurzun; but whether by orders from sir Thomas Graham or in default of orders, the difficulty of communication being extreme in those wild regions, I know not, he commenced his descent into the valley of Lerins very late. His leading brigade, getting down with some difficulty, reached Leyza beyond the great chain by the pass of Goriti or Zubieta, but darkness caught the other brigade and the troops dispersed in that frightful wilderness of woods and precipices. Many made faggot torches waving them as signals, and thus moving about, the lights served indeed to assist those who carried them but misled and bewildered others who saw them at a distance. The heights and the ravines were alike studded with these small fires, and the soldiers calling to each other for directions filled the whole region with their clamour. Thus they continued to rove and shout until morning shewed the face of the[152] mountain covered with tired and scattered men and animals who had not gained half a league of ground beyond their starting place, and it was many hours, ere they could be collected to join the other brigade at Leyza.

General Alten, who had now been separated for three days from the army, sent mounted officers in various directions to obtain tidings, and at six o’clock in the evening renewed his march. At Areysa he halted for some time without suffering fires to be lighted, for he knew nothing of the enemy and was fearful of discovering his situation, but at night he again moved and finally established his bivouacs near Lecumberri early on the 30th. The noise of Hill’s battle at Buenza was clearly heard in the course of the day, and the light division was thus again comprized in the immediate system of operations directed by Wellington in person. Had Soult continued his march upon Guipuscoa Alten would have been in great danger, but the French general being forced to retreat, the light division was a new power thrown into his opponent’s hands, the value of which will be seen by a reference to the peculiarity of the country through which the French general was now to move.

It has been shewn that Foy cut off from the main army was driven towards the Alduides; that the French artillery and part of the cavalry were again on the Bidassoa, whence Villatte, contrary to the intelligence received by Soult, had not advanced, though he had skirmished with Longa, leaving the latter however in possession of heights above Lesaca. The troops under Soult’s immediate command were therefore completely isolated, and had no resources save what his ability and their own courage could[153] supply. His single line of retreat by the pass of Doña Maria was secure as far as San Estevan, and from that town he could march up the Bidassoa to Elizondo and so gain France by the Col de Maya, or down the same river towards Vera by Sumbilla and Yanzi, from both of which places roads branching off to the right lead over the mountains to the passes of Echallar. There was also a third mountain-road leading direct from Estevan to Zagaramurdi and Urdax, but it was too steep and rugged for his wounded men and baggage.

The road to Elizondo was very good, but that down the Bidassoa was a long and terrible defile, and so contracted about the bridges of Yanzi and Sumbilla that a few men only could march abreast. This then Soult had to dread; that Wellington who by the pass of Vellate could reach Elizondo before him would block his passage on that side; that Graham would occupy the rocks about Yanzi, blocking the passage there and by detachments cut off his line of march upon Echallar. Then, confined to the narrow mountain-way from San Estevan to Zagaramurdi, he would be followed hard by general Hill, exposed to attacks in rear and flank during his march, and perhaps be headed at Urdax by the allied troops moving through Vellate Elizondo and the Col de Maya. In this state, his first object being to get through the pass of Doña Maria, he commenced his retreat as we have seen in the night of the 30th, and Wellington still deceived as to the real state of affairs did not take the most fitting measures to stop his march, that is to say, he continued in his first design, halting in the valley of Lanz while Hill passed his front to enter[154] the Bastan, into which district he sent Byng’s brigade as belonging to the second division. But early on the 31st, when Soult’s real strength became known, he directed the seventh division to aid Hill, followed Byng through the pass of Vellate with the remainder of his forces, and thinking the light division might be at Zubieta in the valley of Lerins, sent Alten orders to head the French if possible at San Estevan, or at Sumbilla, in fine to cut in upon their line of march somewhere; Longa also was ordered to come down to the defiles at Yanzi, thus aiding the light division to block the way on that side, and sir Thomas Graham was advertised to hold his army in readiness to move in the same view, and it would appear that the route of the sixth and third divisions were also changed for a time.

Combat of Doña Maria.—At ten o’clock in the morning of the 31st, general Hill overtook Soult’s rear-guard between Lizasso and the Puerto. The seventh division, coming from the hills above Olague, was already ascending the mountain on his right, and the French only gained a wood on the summit of the pass under the fire of Hill’s guns. There, however, they turned and throwing out their skirmishers made strong battle. General Stewart, leading the attack of the second division, now for the third time engaged with D’Erlon’s troops, was again wounded and his first brigade was repulsed, but general Pringle who succeeded to the command, renewed the attack with the second brigade, and the thirty-fourth regiment leading, broke the enemy at the moment that the seventh division did the same on the right. Some prisoners were taken, but a thick fog prevented further pursuit, and the loss of the[155] French in the action is unknown, probably less than that of the allies which was something short of four hundred men.

The seventh division remained on the mountain, but Hill fell back to Lizasso, and then, following his orders, moved by a short but rugged way, leading between the passes of Doña Maria and Vellate over the great chain to Almandoz, to join Wellington, who had during the combat descended into the Bastan by the pass of Vellate. Meanwhile Byng reached Elizondo, and captured a large convoy of provisions and ammunition left there under guard of a battalion by D’Erlon on the 29th; he made several hundred prisoners also after a sharp skirmish and then pushed forward to the pass of Maya. Wellington now occupied the hills through which the road leads from Elizondo to San Estevan, and full of hope he was to strike a terrible blow; for Soult, not being pursued after passing Doña Maria, had halted in San Estevan, although by his scouts he knew that the convoy had been taken at Elizondo. He was in a deep narrow valley, and three British divisions with one of Spaniards were behind the mountains overlooking the town; the seventh division was on the mountain of Doña Maria; the light division and sir Thomas Graham’s Spaniards were marching to block the Vera and Echallar exits from the valley; Byng was already at Maya, and Hill was moving by Almandoz just behind Wellington’s own position. A few hours gained and the French must surrender or disperse. Wellington gave strict orders to prevent the lighting of fires the straggling of soldiers or any other indication of the presence of troops; and he placed himself amongst[156] some rocks at a commanding point from whence he could observe every movement of the enemy. Soult seemed tranquil, and four of his “gensd’armes” were seen to ride up the valley in a careless manner. Some of the staff proposed to cut them off; the English general whose object was to hide his ownNotes by the duke of Wellington, MSS. presence, would not suffer it, but the next moment three marauding English soldiers entered the valley and were instantly carried off by the horsemen. Half an hour afterwards the French drums beat to arms and their columns began to move out of San Estevan towards Sumbilla. Thus the disobedience of three plundering knaves, unworthy of the name of soldiers, deprived one consummate commander of the most splendid success, and saved another from the most terrible disaster.

The captives walked from their prison but their chains hung upon them. The way was narrow, the multitude great, and the baggage, and wounded men borne on their comrades’ shoulders, filed with such long procession, that Clauzel’s divisions forming the rear-guard were still about San Estevan on the morning of the 1st of August, and scarcely had they marched a league of ground, when the skirmishers of the fourth division and the Spaniards thronging along the heights on the right flank opened a fire to which little reply could be made. The troops and baggage then got mixed with an extreme disorder, numbers of the former fled up the hills, and the commanding energy of Soult whose personal exertions were conspicuous could scarcely prevent a general dispersion. However prisoners and baggage fell at every step into the hands of the pursuers, the boldest were dismayed at the peril,[157] and worse would have awaited them in front, if Wellington had been on other points well seconded by his subordinate generals.

The head of the French column instead of taking the first road leading from Sumbilla to Echallar, had passed onward towards that leading from the bridge near Yanzi; the valley narrowed to a mere cleft in the rocks as they advanced, the Bidassoa was on their left, and there was a tributary torrent to cross, the bridge of which was defended by a battalion of Spanish Caçadores detached to that point from the heights of Vera by general Barceñas. The front was now as much disordered as the rear, and had Longa or Barceñas reinforced the Caçadores, those only of the French who being near Sumbilla could take the road from that place to Echallar would have escaped; but the Spanish generals kept aloof and D’Erlon won the defile. However Reille’s divisions were still to pass, and when they came up a new enemy had appeared.

It will be remembered that the light division wasAugust. directed to head the French army at San Estevan, or Sumbilla. This order was received on the evening of the 31st, and the division, repassing the defiles of the Zubieta, descended the deep valley of Lerins and reached Elgoriaga about mid-day on the 1st of August, having then marched twenty-four miles and being little more than a league from Estevan and about the same distance from Sumbilla. The movement of the French along the Bidassoa was soon discovered, but the division instead of moving on Sumbilla turned to the left, clambered up the great mountain of Santa Cruz and made for the bridge of Yanzi. The weather was exceedingly sultry, the mountain steep and[158] hard to overcome, many men fell and died convulsed and frothing at the mouth, while others whose spirit and strength had never before been quelled, leaned on their muskets and muttered in sullen tones that they yielded for the first time.

Towards evening, after marching for nineteen consecutive hours over forty miles of mountain roads, the head of the exhausted column reached the edge of a precipice near the bridge of Yanzi. Below, within pistol-shot, Reille’s divisions were seen hurrying forward along the horrid defile in which they were pent up, and a fire of musketry commenced, slightly from the British on the high rock, more vigorously from some low ground near the bridge of Yanzi, where the riflemen had ensconced themselves in the brushwood. The scene which followed is thus described by an eye-witness.

“We overlooked the enemy at stone’s throw, andCaptain Cooke’s Memoirs. from the summit of a tremendous precipice. The river separated us, but the French were wedged in a narrow road with inaccessible rocks on one side and the river on the other. Confusion impossible to describe followed, the wounded were thrown down in the rush and trampled upon, the cavalry drew their swords and endeavoured to charge up the pass of Echallar, but the infantry beat them back, and several, horses and all, were precipitated into the river; some fired vertically at us, the wounded called out for quarter, while others pointed to them, supported as they were on branches of trees, on which were suspended great coats clotted with gore, and blood-stained sheets taken from different habitations to aid the sufferers.”

On these miserable supplicants brave men could not fire, and so piteous was the spectacle that it[159] was with averted or doubtful aim they shot at the others, although the latter rapidly plied their muskets in passing, and some in their veteran hardihood even dashed across the bridge of Yanzi to make a counter-attack. It was a soldier-like but a vain effort! the night found the British in possession of the bridge, and though the great body of the enemy escaped by the road to Echallar, the baggage was cut off and fell, together with many prisoners, into the hands of the light troops which were still hanging on the rear in pursuit from San Estevan.

The loss of the French this day was very great, that of the allies about a hundred men, of which sixty-five were British, principally of the fourth division. Nevertheless lord Wellington was justly discontented with the result. Neither Longa nor general Alten had fulfilled their mission. The former excused himself as being too feeble to oppose the mass Soult led down the valley; but the rocks were so precipitous that the French could not have reached him, and the resistance made by the Spanish caçadores was Longa’s condemnation. A lamentable fatuity prevailed in many quarters. If Barceñas had sent his whole brigade instead of a weak battalion, the small torrent could not have been forced by D’Erlon; and if Longa had been near the bridge of Yanzi the French must have surrendered, for the perpendicular rocks on their right forbade even an escape by dispersion. Finally if the light division instead of marching down the valley of Lerins as far as Elgoriaga, had crossed the Santa Cruz mountain by the road used the night of the 28th, it would have arrived much earlier at the bridge of Yanzi, and then belike Longa and Barceñas would also have come down. Alten’s[160] instructions indeed prescribed Sumbilla and San Estevan as the first points to head the French army, but judging them too strong at Sumbilla he marched as we have seen upon Yanzi; and if he had passed the bridge there and seized the road to Echallar with one brigade, while the other plied the flank with fire from the left of the Bidassoa, he would have struck a great blow. It was for that the soldiers had made such a prodigious exertion, yet the prize was thrown away.

During the night Soult rallied his divisions about Echallar, and on the morning of the 2d occupied the “Puerto” of that name. His left was placed at the rocks of Zagaramurdi; his right at the rock of Ivantelly communicating with the left of Villatte’s reserve, which was in position on the ridges between Soult’s right and the head of the great Rhune mountain. Meanwhile Clauzel’s three divisions, now reduced to six thousand men, took post on a strong hill between the “Puerto” and town of Echallar. This position was momentarily adopted by Soult to save time, to examine the country, and to make Wellington discover his final object, but that general would not suffer the affront. He had sent the third and sixth divisions to reoccupy the passes of Roncesvalles and the Alduides; Hill had reached the Col de Maya, and Byng was at Urdax; the fourth, seventh, and light divisions remained in hand, and with these he resolved to fall upon Clauzel whose position was dangerously advanced.

Combats of Echallar and Ivantelly.—The light division held the road running from the bridge of Yanzi to Echallar until relieved by the fourth division, and then marched by Lesaca to Santa Barbara, thus turning Clauzel’s right. The fourth[161] division marched from Yanzi upon Echallar to attack his front, and the seventh moved from Sumbilla against his left; but Barnes’s brigade, contrary to lord Wellington’s intention, arrived unsupported before the fourth and light divisions were either seen or felt, and without awaiting the arrival of more troops assailed Clauzel’s strong position. The fire became vehement, but neither the steepness of the mountain nor the overshadowing multitude of the enemy clustering above in support of their skirmishers could arrest the assailants, and then was seen the astonishing spectacle of fifteen hundred men driving, by sheer valour and force of arms, six thousand good troops from a position, so rugged that there would have been little to boast of if the numbers had been reversed and the defence made good. It is true that the fourth division arrived towards the end of the action, that the French had fulfilled their mission as a rear-guard, that they were worn with fatigue and ill-provided with ammunition, having exhausted all their reserve stores during the retreat, but the real cause of their inferiority belongs to the highest part of war.

The British soldiers, their natural fierceness stimulated by the remarkable personal daring of their general, Barnes, were excited by the pride of success; and the French divisions were those which had failed in the attack on the 28th, which had been utterly defeated on the 30th, and which had suffered so severely the day before about Sumbilla. Such then is the preponderance of moral power. The men who had assailed the terrible rocks above Sauroren, with a force and energy that all the valour of the hardiest British veterans scarcely sufficed to repel, were now, only five days afterwards,[162] although posted so strongly, unable to sustain the shock of one-fourth of their own numbers. And at this very time eighty British soldiers, the comrades and equals of those who achieved this wonderful exploit, having wandered to plunder surrendered to some French peasants, who lord Wellington truly observed, “they would under other circumstances have eat up!” What gross ignorance of human nature then do those writers display who assert, that the employing of brute force is the highest qualification of a general!

Clauzel, thus dispossessed of the mountain, fell back fighting to a strong ridge beyond the pass of Echallar, having his right covered by the Ivantelly mountain which was strongly occupied. Meanwhile the light division emerging by Lesaca from the narrow valley of the Bidassoa, ascended the broad heights of Santa Barbara without opposition, and halted there until the operations of the fourth and seventh divisions were far enough advanced to render it advisable to attack the Ivantelly. This lofty mountain lifted its head on the right, rising as it were out of the Santa Barbara heights, and separating them from the ridges through which the French troops beaten at Echallar were now retiring. Evening was coming on, a thick mist capped the crowning rocks which contained a strong French regiment, the British soldiers besides their long and terrible march the previous day had been for two days without sustenance, and were leaning, weak and fainting, on their arms, when the advancing fire of Barnes’s action about Echallar indicated the necessity of dislodging the enemy from Ivantelly. Colonel Andrew Barnard instantly led five companies of his riflemen to the[163] attack, and four companies of the forty-third followed in support. The misty cloud had descended, and the riflemen were soon lost to the view, but the sharp clang of their weapons heard in distinct reply to the more sonorous rolling musketry of the French, told what work was going on. For some time the echoes rendered it doubtful how the action went, but the following companies of the forty-third could find no trace of an enemy save the killed and wounded. Barnard had fought his way unaided and without a check to the summit, where his dark-clothed swarthy veterans raised their victorious shout from the highest peak, just as the coming night shewed the long ridges of the mountains beyond sparkling with the last musket-flashes from Clauzel’s troops retiring in disorder from Echallar.

This day’s fighting cost the British four hundred men, and lord Wellington narrowly escaped the enemy’s hands. He had carried with him towards Echallar half a company of the forty-third as an escort, and placed a serjeant named Blood with a party to watch in front while he examined his maps. The French who were close at hand sent a detachment to cut the party off; and such was the nature of the ground that their troops, rushing on at speed, would infallibly have fallen unawares upon lord Wellington, if Blood a young intelligent man, seeing the danger, had not with surprising activity, leaping rather than running down the precipitous rocks he was posted on, given the general notice, and as it was the French arrived in time to send a volley of shot after him as he galloped away.

Soult now caused count D’Erlon to re-occupy the hills about Ainhoa, Clauzel to take post on the heights in advance of Sarre, and Reille to[164] carry his two divisions to St. Jean de Luz in second line behind Villatte’s reserve. Foy, who had rashly uncovered St. Jean Pied de Port by descending upon Cambo, was ordered to return and reinforce his troops with all that he could collect of national guards and detachments.

Wellington had on the 1st directed general Graham to collect his forces and bring up pontoons for crossing the Bidassoa, but he finally abandoned this design, and the two armies therefore rested quiet in their respective positions, after nine days of continual movement during which they had fought ten serious actions. Of the allies, including the Spaniards, seven thousand three hundred officers and soldiers had been killed wounded or taken, and many were dispersed from fatigue or to plunder. On the French side the loss was terrible and the disorder rendered the official returns inaccurate. Nevertheless a close approximation may be made. Lord Wellington at first called it twelve thousand, but hearing that the French officers admitted more he raised his estimate to fifteen thousand. The engineer, Belmas, in his Journals of Sieges, compiled from official documents by order of the French government, sets down above thirteen thousand. Soult in his dispatches at the time, stated fifteen hundred as the loss at Maya, four hundred at Roncesvalles, two hundred on the 27th, and eighteen hundred on the 28th, after which he speaks no more of losses by battle. There remains therefore to be added the killed and wounded at the combats of Linzoain on the 26th, the double battles of Sauroren and Buenza on the 30th, the combats of the 31st, and those of the 1st and 2d of August; finally, four thousand unwounded[165] prisoners. Let this suffice. It is not needful to sound the stream of blood in all its horrid depths.

OBSERVATIONS.

1º. The allies’ line of defence was weak. Was it therefore injudiciously adopted?

The French beaten at Vittoria were disorganized and retreated without artillery or baggage on excentric lines; Foy by Guipuscoa, Clauzel by Zaragoza, Reille by San Estevan, the King by Pampeluna. There was no reserve to rally upon, the people fled from the frontier, Bayonne and St. Jean Pied de Port if not defenceless were certainly in a very neglected state, and the English general might have undertaken any operation, assumed any position, offensive or defensive, which seemed good to him. Why then did he not establish the Anglo-Portuguese beyond the mountains, leaving the Spaniards to blockade the fortresses behind him? The answer to this question involves the difference between the practice and the theory of war.

“The soldiers, instead of preparing food and restingWellington’s Dispatches. themselves after the battle dispersed in the night to plunder, and were so fatigued that when the rain came on the next day they were incapable of marching and had more stragglers than the beaten enemy. Eighteen days after the victory twelve thousand five hundred men, chiefly British, were absent, most of them marauding in the mountains.”

Such were the reasons assigned by the English general for his slack pursuit after the battle of Vittoria, yet he had commanded that army for six[166] years! Was he then deficient in the first qualification of a general, the art of disciplining and inspiring troops, or was the English military system defective? It is certain that he always exacted the confidence of his soldiers as a leader. It is not so certain that he ever gained their affections. The barbarity of the English military code excited public horror, the inequality of promotion created public discontent; yet the general complained he had no adequate power to reward or punish, and he condemned alike the system and the soldiers it produced. The latter “were detestable for every thing but fighting, and the officers as culpable as the men.” The vehemence of these censures is inconsistent with his celebrated observation, subsequently made, namely, “that he thought he could go any where and do any thing with the army that fought on the Pyrenees,” and although it cannot be denied that his complaints were generally too well-founded, there were thousands of true and noble soldiers, and zealous worthy officers, who served their country honestly and merited no reproaches. It is enough that they have been since neglected, exactly in proportion to their want of that corrupt aristocratic influence which produced the evils complained of.

2º. When the misconduct of the troops had thus weakened the effect of victory, the question of following Joseph at once into France assumed a new aspect. Wellington’s system of warfare had never varied after the battle of Talavera. Rejecting dangerous enterprize, it rested on profound calculation both as to time and resources for the accomplishment of a particular object, namely, the gradual liberation of Spain by the Anglo-Portuguese army. Not that he held it impossible to attain that[167] object suddenly, and his battles in India, the passage of the Douro, the advance to Talavera, prove that by nature he was inclined to daring operations; but such efforts, however glorious, could not be adopted by a commander who feared even the loss of a brigade lest the government he served should put an end to the war. Neither was it suitable to the state of his relations with the Portuguese and Spaniards; their ignorance jealousy and passionate pride, fierce in proportion to their weakness and improvidence, would have enhanced every danger.

No man could have anticipated the extraordinary errors of the French in 1813. Wellington did not expect to cross the Ebro before the end of the campaign, and his battering train was prepared for the siege of Burgos not for that of Bayonne. A sudden invasion of France her military reputation considered, was therefore quite out of the pale of his methodized system of warfare, which was founded upon political as well as military considerations; and of the most complicated nature, seeing that he had at all times to deal with the personal and factious interests and passions, as well as the great state interests of three distinct nations two of which abhorred each other. At this moment also, the uncertain state of affairs in Germany strongly influenced his views. An armistice which might end in a separate peace excluding England, would have brought Napoleon’s whole force to the Pyrenees, and Wellington held cheap both the military and political proceedings of the coalesced powers. “I would not move a corporal’s guard in reliance upon such a system,” was the significant phrase he employed to express his contempt.

These considerations justified his caution as to[168] invading France, but there were local military reasons equally cogent. 1º. He could not dispense with a secure harbour, because the fortresses still in possession of the French, namely, Santona, Pancorbo, Pampeluna, and St. Sebastian, interrupted his communications with the interior of Spain; hence the siege of the latter place. 2º. He had to guard against the union of Suchet and Clauzel on his right flank; hence his efforts to cut off the last-named general; hence also the blockade of Pampeluna in preference to siege and the launching of Mina and the bands on the side of Zaragoza.

3º. After Vittoria the nature of the campaign depended upon Suchet’s operations, which were rendered more important by Murray’s misconduct. The allied force on the eastern coast was badly organized, it did not advance from Valencia as we have seen until the 16th, and then only partially and by the coast, whereas Suchet had assembled more than twenty thousand excellent troops on the Ebro as early as the 12th of July; and had he continued his march upon Zaragoza he would have saved the castle of that place with its stores. Then rallying Paris’ division, he could have menaced Wellington’s flank with twenty-five thousand men exclusive of Clauzel’s force, and if that general joined him with forty thousand.

On the 16th, the day lord William Bentinck quitted Valencia, Suchet might have marched from Zaragoza on Tudela or Sanguessa, and Soult’s preparations originally made as we have seen to attack on the 23d instead of the 25th, would have naturally been hastened. How difficult it would then have been for the allies to maintain themselves beyond the Ebro is evident, much more so to hold[169] a forward position in France. That Wellington feared an operation of this nature is clear from his instructions to lord William Bentinck and to Mina; and because Picton’s and Cole’s divisions instead of occupying the passes were kept behind the mountains solely to watch Clauzel; when the latter had regained the frontier of France Cole was permitted to join Byng and Morillo. It follows that the operations after the battle of Vittoria were well considered and consonant to lord Wellington’s general system. Their wisdom would have been proved if Suchet had seized the advantages within his reach.

4º. A general’s capacity is sometimes more taxed to profit from a victory than to gain one. Wellington, master of all Spain, Catalonia excepted, desired to establish himself solidly in the Pyrenees, lest a separate peace in Germany should enable Napoleon to turn his whole force against the allies. In this expectation, with astonishing exertion of body and mind, he had in three days achieved a rigorous examination of the whole mass of the Western Pyrenees, and concluded that if Pampeluna and San Sebastian fell, a defensive position as strong as that of Portugal, and a much stronger one than could be found behind the Ebro, might be established. But to invest those places and maintain so difficult a covering line was a greater task than to win the battle of Vittoria. However, the early fall of San Sebastian he expected, because the errors of execution in that siege could not be foreseen, and also for gain of time he counted upon the disorganized state of the French army, upon Joseph’s want of military capacity, and upon the moral ascendancy which his own troops had acquired over the enemy[170] by their victories. He could not anticipate the expeditious journey, the sudden arrival of Soult, whose rapid reorganization of the French army, and whose vigorous operations contrasted with Joseph’s abandonment of Spain, illustrated the old Greek saying, that a herd of deer led by a lion are more dangerous than a herd of lions led by a deer.

5º. The duke of Dalmatia was little beholden to fortune at the commencement of his movements. Her first contradiction was the bad weather, which breaking up the roads delayed the concentration of his army at St. Jean Pied de Port for two days; all officers know the effect which heavy rain and hard marches have upon the vigour and confidence of soldiers who are going to attack. If Soult had commenced on the 23d instead of the 25th the surprise would have been more complete his army more brisk; and as no conscript battalions would have arrived to delay Reille, that general would probably have been more ready in his attack, and might possibly have escaped the fog which on the 26th stopped his march along the superior crest of the mountain towards Vellate. On the other hand the allies would have been spared the unsuccessful assault on San Sebastian, and the pass of Maya might have been better furnished with troops. However Soult’s combinations were so well knit that more than one error in execution, and more than one accident of fortune, were necessary to baffle him. Had count D’Erlon followed his instructions even on the 26th general Hill would probably have been shouldered off the valley of Lanz, and Soult would have had twenty thousand additional troops in the combats of the 27th and 28th. Such failures however generally attend extensively combined movements, and it is by[171] no means certain that the count would have been able to carry the position of the Col de Maya on the 25th, if all general Stewart’s forces had been posted there. It would therefore perhaps have been more strictly within the rules of art, if D’Erlon had been directed to leave one of his three divisions to menace the Col de Maya while he marched with the other two by St. Etienne de Baygorry up the Alduides. This movement, covered by the national guards who occupied the mountain of La Houssa, could not have been stopped by Campbell’s Portuguese brigade, and would have dislodged Hill from the Bastan while it secured the junction of D’Erlon with Soult on the crest of the superior chain.

6º. The intrepid constancy with which Byng and Ross defended their several positions on the 25th, the able and clean retreat made by general Cole as far as the heights of Linzoain, gave full effect to the errors of Reille and D’Erlon, and would probably have baffled Soult at an early period if general Picton had truly comprehended the importance of his position. Lord Wellington says that the concentration of the army would have been effected on the 27th if that officer and general Cole had not agreed in thinking it impossible to make a stand behind Linzoain; and surely the necessity of retreating on that day may be questioned. For if Cole with ten thousand men maintained the position in front of Altobiscar, Ibañeta, and Atalosti, Picton might have maintained the more contracted one behind Linzoain and Erro with twenty thousand. And that number he could have assembled, because Campbell’s Portuguese reached Eugui long before the evening of the 26th, and lord Wellington had directed O’Donnel to keep three thousand five hundred of[172] the blockading troops in readiness to act in advance, of which Picton could not have been ignorant. It was impossible to turn him by the valley of Urroz that line being too rugged for the march of an army and not leading directly upon Pampeluna. The only roads into the Val de Zubiri were by Erro and Linzoain, lying close together and both leading upon the village of Zubiri over the ridges which Picton occupied, and the strength of which was evident from Soult’s declining an attack on the evening of the 26th when Cole only was before him. To abandon this ground so hastily when the concentration of the army depended upon keeping it, appears therefore an error, aggravated by the neglect of sending timely information to the commander-in-chief,Original Note by the Duke of Wellington, MSS. for lord Wellington did not know of the retreat until the morning of the 27th and then only from general Long. It might be that Picton’s messenger failed, but many should have been sent when a retrograde movement involving the fate of Pampeluna was contemplated.

It has been said that general Cole was the adviser of this retreat which if completed would have ruined lord Wellington’s campaign. This is incorrect, Picton was not a man to be guided by others. General Cole indeed gave him a report, drawn up by colonel Bell one of the ablest staff-officers of the army, which stated that no position suitable for aNote by General Cole, MSS. very inferior force existed between Zubiri and Pampeluna, and this was true in the sense of the report, which had reference only to a division not to an army; moreover, although the actual battle of Sauroren was fought by inferior numbers, the whole position, including the ridges of the second line occupied by Picton and the Spaniards, was only maintained[173] by equal numbers; and if Soult had made the attack of the 28th on the evening of the 27th before the sixth division arrived, the position would have been carried. However there is no doubt thatIbid. colonel Bell’s report influenced Picton, and it was only when his troops had reached Huarte and Villalba that he suddenly resolved on battle. That was a military resolution, vigorous and prompt; and not the less worthy of praise that he so readily adopted Cole’s saving proposition to regain the more forward heights above Zabaldica.

7º. Marshal Soult appeared unwilling to attack on the evenings of the 26th and 27th. Yet success depended upon forestalling the allies at their point of concentration; and it is somewhat inexplicable that on the 28th, having possession of the ridge beyond the Lanz river and plenty of cavalry, he should have known so little of the sixth division’s movements. The general conception of his scheme on the 30th has also been blamed by some of his own countrymen, apparently from ignorance of the facts and because it failed. Crowned with success it would have been cited as a fine illustration of the art of war. To have retired at once by the two valleys of Zubiri and Lanz after being reinforced with twenty thousand men would have given great importance to his repulse on the 28th; his reputation as a general capable of restoring the French affairs would have vanished, and mischief only have accrued, even though he should have effected his retreat safely, which, regard being had to the narrowness of the valleys the position of general Hill on his right and the boldness of his adversary, was not certain. To abandon the valley of Zubiri and secure that of Lanz; to obtain another and shorter line of[174] retreat by the Doña Maria pass; to crush general Hill with superior numbers, and thus gaining the Irurzun road to succour San Sebastian, or failing of that, to secure the union of the whole army and give to his retreat the appearance of an able offensive movement; to combine all these chances by one operation immediately after a severe check was Soult’s plan, it was not impracticable and was surely the conception of a great commander.

To succeed however it was essential either to beat general Hill off-hand and thus draw Wellington to that side by the way of Marcalain, or to secure the defence of the French left in such a solid manner that no efforts against it should prevail to the detriment of the offensive movement on the right: neither was effected. The French general indeed brought an overwhelming force to bear upon Hill, and drove him from the road of Irurzun, but he did not crush him, because that general fought so strongly and retired with such good order, that beyond the loss of the position no injury was sustained. Meanwhile the left wing of the French was completely beaten, and thus the advantage gained on the right was more than nullified. Soult trusted to the remarkable defensive strength of the ground occupied by his left, and he had reason to do so, for it was nearly impregnable. Lord Wellington turned it on both flanks at the same time, but neither Picton’s advance into the valley of Zubiri on Foy’s left, nor Cole’s front attack on that general, nor Byng’s assault upon the village of Sauroren, would have seriously damaged the French without the sudden and complete success of general Inglis beyond the Lanz. The other attacks would indeed have forced the French to retire somewhat hastily up the valley of[175] the Lanz, yet they could have held together in mass secure of their junction with Soult. But when the ridges running between them and the right wing of the French army were carried by Inglis, and the whole of the seventh division was thrown upon their flank and rear, the front attack became decisive. It is clear therefore that the key of the defence was on the ridge beyond the Lanz, and instead of two regiments Clauzel should have placed two divisions there.

8º. Lord Wellington’s quick perception and vigorous stroke on the 30th were to be expected from such a consummate commander, yet he certainly was not master of all the bearings of the French general’s operations; he knew neither the extent of Hill’s danger nor the difficulties of Soult, otherwise it is probable that he would have put stronger columns in motion, and at an earlier hour, towards the pass of Doña Maria on the morning of the 31st. Hill did not commence his march that day until 8 o’clock, and it has been shewn that even with the help of the seventh division he was too weak against the heavy mass of the retreating French army. The faults and accidents which baffled Wellington’s after operations have been sufficiently touched upon in the narrative, but he halted in the midst of his victorious career, when Soult’s army was broken and flying, when Suchet had retired into Catalonia, and all things seemed favourable for the invasion of France.

His motives for this were strong. He knew the armistice in Germany had been renewed with a view to peace, and he had therefore reason to expect Soult would be reinforced. A forward position in France would have lent his right to the enemy who[176] pivotted upon St. Jean Pied de Port could operate against his flank. His arrangements for supply, and intercourse with his depôts and hospitals, would have been more difficult and complicated, and as the enemy possessed all the French and Spanish fortresses commanding the great roads, his need to gain one, at least, before the season closed, was absolute if he would not resign his communications with the interior of Spain. Then long marches and frequent combats had fatigued his troops destroyed their shoes and used up their musquet ammunition; and the loss of men had been great, especially of British in the second division where their proportion to foreign troops was become too small. The difficulty of re-equipping the troops would have been increased by entering an enemy’s state, because the English system did not make war support war and his communications would have been lengthened. Finally it was France that was to be invaded, France in which every person was a soldier, where the whole population was armed and organised under men, not as in other countries inexperienced in war but who had all served more or less. Beyond the Adour the army could not advance, and if a separate peace was made by the northern powers, if any misfortune befel the allies in Catalonia so as to leave Suchet at liberty to operate towards Pampeluna, or if Soult profiting from the possession of San Jean Pied de Port should turn the right flank of the new position, a retreat into Spain would become necessary, and however short would be dangerous from the hostility and warlike disposition of the people directed in a military manner.

These reasons joined to the fact, that a forward position, although offering better communications[177] from right to left, would have given the enemy greater facilities for operating against an army which must until the fortresses fell hold a defensive and somewhat extended line, were conclusive as to the rashness of an invasion; but they do not appear so conclusive as to the necessity of stopping short after the action of the 2d of August. The questions were distinct. The one was a great measure involving vast political and military conditions, the other was simply whether Wellington should profit of his own victory and the enemy’s distresses; and in this view the objections above-mentioned, save the want of shoes the scarcity of ammunition and the fatigue of the troops, are inapplicable. But in the two last particulars the allies were not so badly off as the enemy, and in the first not so deficient as to cripple the army, wherefore if the advantage to be gained was worth the effort it was an error to halt.

The solution of this problem is to be found in the comparative condition of the armies. Soult had recovered his reserve his cavalry and artillery, but Wellington was reinforced by general Graham’s corps which was more numerous and powerful than Villate’s reserve. The new chances then were for the allies, and the action of the 2d of August demonstrated that their opponents however strongly posted could not stand before them; one more victory would have gone nigh to destroy the French force altogether; for such was the disorder that Maucune’s division had on the 2d only one thousandSoult’s Official Report, MSS. men left out of more than five thousand, and on the 6th it had still a thousand stragglers besides killed and wounded: Conroux’s and La Martinière’s divisions were scarcely in better plight, and the[178] losses of the other divisions although less remarkable were great. It must also be remembered that general Foy with eight thousand men was cut off from the main body; and the Nivelle, the sources of which were in the allies’ power, was behind the French. With their left pressed from the pass of Maya, and their front vigorously assailed by the main body of the allies, they could hardly have keptSoult’s Official Report, MSS. together, since more than twenty-one thousand men exclusive of Foy’s troops were then absent from their colours. And as late as the 12th of August Soult warned the minister of war that he was indeed preparing to assail his enemy again, but he had not the means of resisting a counter-attack, although he held a different language to his armyAppendix, 4. and to the people of the country.

Had Cæsar halted because his soldiers were fatigued, Pharsalia would have been but a common battle.

CHAPTER I.

After the combat of Echallar Soult adopted a permanent1813. August. position and reorganized his army. The left wing under D’Erlon occupied the hills of Ainhoa, with an advanced guard on the heights overlooking Urdax and Zuguramurdi. The centre under Clauzel was in advance of Sarre guarding the issues from Vera and Echallar, his right resting on the greatest of the Rhune mountains. The right wing under Reille composed of Maucune’s and La Martinière’sSoult’s Official Report, MSS. divisions extended along the Lower Bidassoa to the sea; Villatte’s reserve was encamped behind the Nivelle near Serres, and Reille’s third division, under Foy, covered in conjunction with the national guards, St. Jean Pied de Port and the roads leading into France on that side. The cavalry for the convenience of forage were quartered, one division between the Nive and the Nivelle rivers, the other as far back as Dax.

Lord Wellington occupied his old positions from the pass of Roncesvalles to the mouth of the Bidassoa, but the disposition of his troops was different. Sir Rowland Hill, reinforced by Morillo, held the Roncesvalles and Alduides throwing up field-works at the former. The third and sixth divisions were in the Bastan guarding the Puerto de Maya, and the[180] seventh division, reinforced by O’Donnel’s army of reserve, occupied the passes at Echallar and Zugaramurdi. The light division was posted on the Santa Barbara heights having picquets in the town of Vera; their left rested on the Bidassoa, their right on the Ivantelly rock, round which a bridle communication with Echallar was now made by the labour of the soldiers. Longa’s troops were beyond the Bidassoa on the left of the light division; the fourth division was in reserve behind him, near Lesaca; the fourth Spanish army, now commanded by general Freyre, prolonged the line from the left of Longa to the sea; it crossed the royal causeway occupied Irun and Fontarabia and guarded the Jaizquibel mountain. The first division was in reserve behind these Spaniards; the fifth division was destined to resume the siege of San Sebastian; the blockade of Pampeluna was maintained by Carlos D’España’s troops.

This disposition, made with increased means, was more powerful for defence than the former occupation of the same ground. A strong corps under a single command was well entrenched at Roncesvalles; and in the Bastan two British divisions admonished by Stewart’s error were more than sufficient to defend the Puerto de Maya. The Echallar mountains were with the aid of O’Donnel’s Spaniards equally secure, and the reserve instead of occupying San Estevan was posted near Lesaca in support of the left, now become the most important part of the line.

The castles of Zaragoza and Daroca had fallen, the Empecinado was directed upon Alcanitz and he maintained the communication between the Catalan army, and Mina. The latter now joined by Duran[181] was gathering near Jaca from whence his line of retreat was by Sanguessa upon Pampeluna; in this position he menaced general Paris, who marched after a slight engagement on the 11th into France, leaving eight hundred men in the town and castle. At this time lord William Bentinck having crossed the Ebro was investing Taragona, and thus the allies, acting on the offensive, were in direct military communication from the Mediteranean to the Bay of Biscay, while Suchet though holding the fortresses could only communicate with Soult through France.

This last-named marshal, being strongly posted, did not much expect a front attack, but the augmentation of the allies on the side of Roncesvalles and Maya gave him uneasiness, lest they should force him to abandon his position by operating along the Nive river. To meet this danger general Paris took post at Oleron in second line to Foy, and the fortresses of St. Jean Pied de Port and Navareins were put in a state of defence as pivots of operation on that side, while Bayonne served a like purpose on the other flank of the army. But with great diligence the French general fortified his line from the mouth of the Bidassoa to the rocks of Mondarain and the Nive.

Lord Wellington, whose reasons for not invading France at this period have been already noticed, and who had now little to fear from any renewal of the French operations against his right wing, turned his whole attention to the reduction of San Sebastian. In this object he was however crossed in a manner to prove that the English ministers were the very counterparts of the Spanish and Portuguese statesmen. Lord Melville was at the head of the board[182] of admiralty; under his rule the navy of England for the first time met with disasters in battle, and his neglect of the general’s demands for maritime aid went nigh to fasten the like misfortunes upon the army. This neglect combined with the cabinet scheme of employing lord Wellington in Germany, would seem to prove that experience had taught the English ministers nothing as to the nature of the Peninsular war, or that elated with the array of sovereigns against Napoleon they were now careless of a cause so mixed up with democracy. Still it would be incredible that lord Melville, a man of ordinary capacity, should have been suffered to retard the great designs and endanger the final success of a general, whose sure judgement and extraordinary merit were authenticated by exploits unparalleled in English warfare, if lord Wellington’s correspondence and that of Mr. Stuart did not establish the following facts.

1º. Desertion from the enemy was stopped, chiefly because the Admiralty, of which lord Melville was the head, refused to let the ships of war carry deserters or prisoners to England; they were thus heaped up by hundreds at Lisbon and maltreated by the Portuguese government, which checked all desire in the French troops to come over.

2º. When the disputes with America commenced, Mr. Stuart’s efforts to obtain flour for the army were most vexatiously thwarted by the board of admiralty, which permitted if it did not encourage the English ships of war to capture American vessels trading under the secret licenses.

3º. The refusal of the admiralty to establish certain cruisers along the coast, as recommended by lord Wellington, caused the loss of many store-ships[183] and merchantmen, to the great detriment of the army before it quitted Portugal. Fifteen were taken off Oporto, and one close to the bar of Lisbon in May. And afterwards, the Mediterranean packetAppendix, No. 1. bearing despatches from lord William Bentinck was captured, which led to lamentable consequences; for the papers were not in cypher, and contained detailed accounts of plots against the French in Italy, with the names of the principal persons engaged.

4º. A like neglect of the coast of Spain caused ships containing money, shoes, and other indispensable stores to delay in port, or risk the being taken on the passage by cruizers issuing from Santona, Bayonne, and Bordeaux. And while the communicationsWellington’s Despatches, MSS. of the allies were thus intercepted, the French coasting vessels supplied their army and fortresses without difficulty.

5º. After the battle of Vittoria lord Wellington was forced to use French ammunition, though too small for the English muskets, because the ordnance store-ships which he had ordered from Lisbon to Santander could not sail for want of convoy. When the troops were in the Pyrenees, a reinforcement of five thousand men was kept at Gibraltar and Lisbon waiting for ships of war, and the transports employed to convey them were thus withdrawn from the service of carrying home wounded men, at a time when the Spanish authorities at Bilbao refused even for payment to concede public buildings for hospitals.

6º. When snow was falling on the Pyrenees the soldiers were without proper clothing, because the ship containing their great coats, though ready to sail in August, was detained at Oporto until November[184] waiting for convoy. When the victories of July were to be turned to profit ere the fitting season for the siege of San Sebastian should pass away, the attack of that fortress was retarded sixteen days because a battering train and ammunition, demanded several months before by lord Wellington, had not yet arrived from England.

7º. During the siege the sea communication with Bayonne was free. “Any thing in the shape of a naval force,” said lord Wellington, “would drive away sir George Collier’s squadron.” The garrison received reinforcements artillery ammunition and all necessary stores for its defence, sending away the sick and wounded men in empty vessels. The Spanish general blockading Santona complained at the same time that the exertions of his troops were useless, because the French succoured the place by sea when they pleased; and after the battle of Vittoria not less than five vessels laden with stores and provisions, and one transport having British soldiers and clothing on board, were taken by cruizers issuing out of that port. The great advantage of attacking San Sebastian by water as well as by land was foregone for want of naval means, and from the same cause British soldiers were withdrawn from their own service to unload store-ships; the gun-boats employed in the blockade were Spanish vessels manned by Spanish soldiers withdrawn from the army, and the store-boats were navigated by Spanish women.

8º. The coasting trade between Bordeaux and Bayonne being quite free, the French, whose military means of transport had been so crippled by their losses at Vittoria that they could scarcely have collected magazines with land carriage only, received[185] their supplies by water, and were thus saved trouble and expense and the unpopularity attending forced requisitions.

Between April and August, more than twenty applications and remonstrances, were addressed by lord Wellington to the government upon these points without producing the slightest attention to his demands. Mr. Croker, the under-secretary of the Admiralty, of whose conduct he particularly complained, was indeed permitted to write an offensive official letter to him, but his demands and the dangers to be apprehended from neglecting them were disregarded, and to use his own words, “since Great Britain had been a naval power a British army had never before been left in such a situation at a most important moment.”

Nor is it easy to determine whether negligence and incapacity or a grovelling sense of national honour prevailed most in the cabinet, when we find this renowned general complaining that the government, ignorant even to ridicule of military operations, seemed to know nothing of the nature of the element with which England was surrounded, and lord Melville so insensible to the glorious toils of the Peninsula as to tell him that his army was the last thing to be attended to.

RENEWED SIEGE OF SEBASTIAN.

Villatte’s demonstration against Longa on the 28th of July had caused the ships laden with the battering train to put to sea, but on the 5th of August the guns were re-landed and the works against the fortress resumed. On the 8th, a notion having spread that the enemy was mining under the cask redoubt, the engineers seized the occasion[186] to exercise their inexperienced miners by sinking a shaft and driving a gallery. The men soon acquired expertness, and as the water rose in the shaft at twelve feet, the work was discontinued when the gallery had attained eighty feet. Meanwhile the old trenches were repaired, the heights of San Bartolomeo were strengthened, and the convent of Antigua, built on a rock to the left of those heights, was fortified and armed with two guns to scour the open beach and sweep the bay. The siege however languished for want of ammunition; and during this forced inactivity the garrison received supplies and reinforcements by sea, their damaged works were repaired, new defences constructed, the magazines filled, and sixty-seven pieces of artillery put in a condition to play. Eight hundred and fifty men had been killed and wounded since the commencement of the attack in July, but as fresh men came by sea, more than two thousand six hundred good soldiers were still present under arms. And to show that their confidence was unabated they celebrated the Emperor’s birthday by crowning the castle with a splendid illumination; encircling it with a fiery legend to his honour in characters so large as to be distinctly read by the besiegers.

On the 19th of August, that is to say after a delay of sixteen days, the battering train arrived from England, and in the night of the 22d fifteen heavy pieces were placed in battery, eight at the right attack and seven at the left. A second battering train came on the 23d, augmenting the number of pieces of various kinds to a hundred and seventeen, including a large Spanish mortar; but with characteristic negligence this enormous armament[187] had been sent out from England with no more shot and shells than would suffice for one day’s consumption!

In the night of the 23d the batteries on the Chofre sand-hills were reinforced with four long pieces and four sixty-eight pound carronades, and the left attack with six additional guns. Ninety sappers and miners had come with the train from England, the seamen under Mr. O’Reilly were again attached to the batteries, and part of the field artillerymen were brought to the siege.

On the 24th the attack was recommenced with activity. The Chofre batteries were enlarged to contain forty-eight pieces, and two batteries for thirteen pieces were begun on the heights of Bartolomeo, designed to breach at seven hundred yards distance the faces of the left demi-bastion of the horn-work, that of St. John on the main front, and the end of the high curtain, for these works rising in gradation one above another were in the same line of shot. The approaches on the isthmus were now also pushed forward by the sap, but the old trenches were still imperfect, and before daylight on the 25th the French coming from the horn-work swept the left of the parallel, injured the sap, and made some prisoners before they were repulsed.

On the night of the 25th the batteries were all armed on both sides of the Urumea, and on the 26th fifty-seven pieces opened with a general salvo, and continued to play with astounding noise and rapidity until evening. The firing from the Chofre hills destroyed the revêtement of the demi-bastion of St. John, and nearly ruined the towers near the old breach together with the wall connecting them;[188] but at the isthmus, the batteries although they injured the horn-work made little impression on the main front from which they were too distant.

Lord Wellington, present at this attack and discontented with the operation, now ordered a battery for six guns to be constructed amongst some ruined houses on the right of the parallel, only three hundred yards from the main front, and two shafts were sunk with a view to drive galleries for the protection of this new battery against the enemy’s mines, but the work was slow because of the sandy nature of the soil.

At 3 o’clock in the morning of the 27th the boats of the squadron, commanded by lieut. Arbuthnot of the Surveillante and carrying a hundred soldiers of the ninth regiment under captain Cameron, pulled to attack the island of Santa Clara. A heavy fire was opened on them, and the troops landed with some difficulty, but the island was then easily taken and a lodgement made with the loss of only twenty-eight men and officers, of which eighteen were seamen.

In the night of the 27th, about 3 o’clock, the French sallied against the new battery on the isthmus, but as colonel Cameron of the ninth regiment met them on the very edge of the trenches with the bayonet the attempt failed, yet it delayed the arming of the battery. At day-break the renewed fire of the besiegers, especially that from the Chofres sand-hills, was extremely heavy, and the shrapnel shells were supposed to be very destructive; nevertheless the practice with that missile was very uncertain, the bullets frequently flew amongst the guards in the parallel and one struck the field-officer. In the course of the day another sally was commenced,[189] but the enemy being discovered and fired upon did not persist. The trenches were now furnished with banquettes and parapets as fast as the quantity of gabions and fascines would permit, yet the work was slow, because the Spanish authorities of Guipuscoa, like those in every other part of Spain, neglected to provide carts to convey the materials from the woods, and this hard labour was performed by the Portuguese soldiers. It would seem however an error not to have prepared all the materials of this nature during the blockade.

Lord Wellington again visited the works this day, and in the night the advanced battery, which, at the desire of sir Richard Fletcher had been constructed for only four guns, was armed. The 29th it opened, but an accident had prevented the arrival of one gun, and the fire of the enemy soon dismounted another, so that only two instead of six guns as lord Wellington had designed, smote at short range the face of the demi-bastion of St. John and the end of the high curtain; however the general firing was severe both upon the castle and the town-works and great damage was done to the defences. By this time the French guns were nearly silenced and as additional mortars were mounted on the Chofre batteries, making in all sixty-three pieces of which twenty-nine threw shells or spherical case-shot, the superiority of the besiegers was established.

The Urumea was now discovered to be fordable. Captain Alexander Macdonald of the artillery, without orders, waded across in the night passed close under the works to the breach and returned safely. Wherefore as a few minutes would suffice to bring the enemy into the Chofre batteries, to save the guns[190] from being spiked their vents were covered with iron plates fastened by chains; and this was also done at the advanced battery on the isthmus.

This day the materials and ordnance for a battery of six pieces, to take the defences of the Monte Orgullo in reverse, were sent to the island of Santa Clara; and several guns in the Chofre batteries were turned upon the retaining wall of the horn-work, in the hope of shaking down any mines the enemy might have prepared there, without destroying the wall itself which offered cover for the troops advancing to the assault.

The trenches leading from the parallel on the isthmus were now very wide and good, the sap was pushed on the right close to the demi-bastion of the horn-work, and the sea-wall supporting the high road into the town, which had increased the march and cramped the formation of the columns in the first assault, was broken through to give access to the strand and shorten the approach to the breaches. The crisis was at hand and in the night of the 29th a false attack was ordered to make the enemy spring his mines; a desperate service and bravely executed by lieutenant Macadam of the ninth regiment. The order was sudden, no volunteers were demanded, no rewards offered, no means of excitement resorted to; yet such is the inherent bravery of British soldiers, that seventeen men of the royals, the nearest at hand, immediately leaped forth ready and willing to encounter what seemed certain death. With a rapid pace, all the breaching batteries playing hotly at the time, they reached the foot of the breach unperceived, and then mounted in extended order shouting and firing; but the French were too steady to be imposed upon and their musquetry laid the[191] whole party low with the exception of their commander, who returned alone to the trenches.

On the 30th the sea-flank of the place being opened from the half-bastion of St. John on the right to the most distant of the old breaches, that is to say, for five hundred feet, the batteries on the Chofres were turned against the castle and other defences of the Monte Orgullo, while the advanced battery on the isthmus, now containing three guns, demolished, in conjunction with the fire from the Chofres, the face of the half-bastion of St. John’s and the end of the high curtain above it. The whole of that quarter was in ruins, and at the same time the batteries on San Bartolomeo broke the face of the demi-bastion of the horn-work and cut away the palisades.

The 30th the batteries continued their fire, and about three o’clock lord Wellington after examining the enemy’s defence resolved to make a lodgement on the breach, and in that view ordered the assault to be made the next day at eleven o’clock when the ebb of tide would leave full space between the horn-work and the water.

The galleries in front of the advanced battery on the isthmus were now pushed close up to the sea wall, under which three mines were formed with the double view of opening a short and easy way for the troops to reach the strand, and rendering useless any subterranean works the enemy might have made in that part. At two o’clock in the morning of the 31st they were sprung, and opened three wide passages which were immediately connected, and a traverse of gabions, six feet high, was run across the mouth of the main trench on the left, to screen the opening from the grape-shot of[192] the castle. Everything was now ready for the assault, but before describing that terrible event it will be fitting to shew the exact state of the besieged in defence.

Sir Thomas Graham had been before the place for fifty-two days, during thirty of which the attack was suspended. All this time the garrison had laboured incessantly, and though the heavy fire of the besiegers since the 26th appeared to have ruined the defences of the enormous breach in the sea flank, it was not so. A perpendicular fall behind of more than twenty feet barred progress, and beyond that, amongst the ruins of the burned houses, was a strong counter-wall fifteen feet high, loopholed for musquetry, and extending in a parallel direction with the breaches, which were also cut off from the sound part of the rampart by traverses at the extremities. The only really practicable road into the town was by the narrow end of the high curtain above the half bastion of St. John.

In front of the counter-wall, about the middle of the great breach, stood the tower of Los Hornos still capable of some defence, and beneath it a mine charged with twelve hundred weight of powder. The streets were all trenched, and furnished with traverses to dispute the passage and to cover a retreat to the Monte Orgullo; but before the assailants could reach the main breach it was necessary either to form a lodgment in the horn-work, or to pass as in the former assault under a flanking fire of musquetry for a distance of nearly two hundred yards. And the first step was close under the sea-wall covering the salient angle of the covered way, where two mines charged with eight[193] hundred pounds of powder were prepared to overwhelm the advancing columns.

To support this system of retrenchments and mines the French had still some artillery in reserve. One sixteen-pounder mounted at St. Elmo flanked the left of the breaches on the river face; a twelve and an eight-pounder preserved in the casemates of the Cavalier were ready to flank the land face of the half-bastion of St. John; many guns from the Monte Orgullo especially those of the MiradorBelmas. could play upon the columns, and there was a four-pounder hidden on the horn-work to be brought into action when the assault commenced. Neither the resolution of the governor nor the courage of the garrison were abated, but the overwhelming fire of the last few days had reduced the number of fighting men; General Rey had only two hundred and fifty men in reserve, and he demanded of Soult whether his brave garrison should be exposed to another assault. “The army would endeavour to succour him” was the reply, and he abided his fate.

Napoleon’s ordinance, 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, and to condemn an enemy’s system from which we have ourselves suffered will scarcely bring it into disrepute. But the argument runs, that the besiegers working by the rules of art must make a way into the place, and to risk an assault for the sake of military glory or to augment the loss of the enemy is to sacrifice brave men uselessly; that capitulation always followed a certain advance of the besiegers in Louis the Fourteenth’s time, and[194] to suppose Napoleon’s upstart generals possessed of superior courage or sense of military honour to the high-minded nobility of that age was quite inadmissible; and it has been rather whimsically added that obedience to the emperor’s orders might suit a predestinarian Turk but could not be tolerated by a reflecting Christian. From this it would seem, that certain nice distinctions as to the extent and manner reconcile human slaughter with Christianity, and that the true standard of military honour was fixed by the intriguing, depraved and insolent court of Louis the Fourteenth. It may however be reasonably supposed, that as the achievements of Napoleon’s soldiers far exceeded the exploits of Louis’s cringing courtiers they possessed greater military virtues.

But the whole argument seems to rest upon false grounds. To inflict loss upon an enemy is the very essence of war, and as the bravest men and officers will always be foremost in an assault, the loss thus occasioned may be of the utmost importance. To resist when nothing can be gained or saved is an act of barbarous courage which reason spurns at; but how seldom does that crisis happen in war? Napoleon wisely insisted upon a resistance which should make it dangerous for the besiegers to hasten a siege beyond the rules of art, he would not have a weak governor yield to a simulation of force not really existing; he desired that military honour should rest upon the courage and resources of men rather than upon the strength of walls: in fine he made a practical application of the proverb that necessity is the mother of invention.

Granted that a siege artfully conducted and with sufficient means must reduce the fortress attacked;[195] still there will be some opportunity for a governor to display his resources of mind. Vauban admits of one assault and several retrenchments, after a lodgment is made on the body of the place; Napoleon only insisted that every effort which courage and genius could dictate should be exhausted before a surrender, and those efforts can never be defined or bounded before-hand. Tarifa is a happy example. To be consistent, any attack which deviates from the rules of art must also be denounced as barbarous; yet how seldom has a general all the necessary means at his disposal. In Spain not one siege could be conducted by the British army according to the rules. And there is a manifest weakness in praising the Spanish defence of Zaragoza, and condemning Napoleon because he demanded from regular troops a devotion similar to that displayed by peasants and artizans. What governor was ever in a more desperate situation than general Bizanet at Bergen-op-Zoom, when sir Thomas Graham, with a hardihood and daring which would alone place him amongst the foremost men of enterprize which Europe can boast of, threw more than two thousand men upon the ramparts of that almost impregnable fortress. The young soldiers of the garrison frightened by a surprise in the night, were dispersed, were flying. The assailants had possession of the walls for several hours, yet some cool and brave officers rallying the men towards morning, charged up the narrow ramps and drove the assailants over the parapets into the ditch. They who could not at first defend their works were now able to retake them, and so completely successful and illustrative of Napoleon’s principle was[196] this counter-attack that the number of prisoners equalled that of the garrison. There are no rules to limit energy and genius, and no man knew better than Napoleon how to call those qualities forth; he possessed them himself in the utmost perfection and created them in others.

STORMING OF SAN SEBASTIAN.

To assault the breaches without having destroyed1813. August. the enemy’s defences or established a lodgment on the horn-work, was, notwithstanding the increased fire and great facilities of the besiegers, obviously a repetition of the former fatal error. And the same generals who had before so indiscreetly made their disapproval of such operations public, now even more freely and imprudently dealt out censures, which not ill-founded in themselves were most ill-timed, since there is much danger when doubts come down from the commanders to the soldiers. Lord Wellington thought the fifth division had been thus discouraged, and incensed at the cause, demanded fifty volunteers from each of the fifteen regiments composing the first, fourth, and light divisions, “men who could shew other troops how to mount a breach.” This was the phrase employed, and seven hundred and fifty gallant soldiers instantly marched to San Sebastian in answer to the appeal. Colonel Cooke and major Robertson led the guards and Germans of the first division, major Rose commanded the men of the fourth division, and colonel Hunt, a daring officer who had already won his promotion at former assaults, was at the head of the[198] fierce rugged veterans of the light division, yet there were good officers and brave soldiers in the fifth division.

It being at first supposed that lord Wellington merely designed a simple lodgment on the great breach, the volunteers and one brigade of the fifth division only were ordered to be ready; but in a council held at night major Smith maintained that the orders were misunderstood, as no lodgment could be formed unless the high curtain was gained. General Oswald being called to the council was of the same opinion, whereupon the remainder of the fifth division was brought to the trenches, and general Bradford having offered the services of his Portuguese brigade, was told he might ford the Urumea and assail the farthest breach if he judged it advisable.

Sir James Leith had resumed the command of the fifth division, and being assisted by general Oswald directed the attack from the isthmus. He was extremely offended by the arrival of the volunteers and would not suffer them to lead the assault; some he spread along the trenches to keep down the fire of the horn-work, the remainder were held as a reserve along with general Hay’s British and Sprye’s Portuguese brigades of the fifth division. To general Robinson’s brigade the assault was confided. It was formed in two columns, one to assault the old breach between the towers, the other to storm the bastion of St. John and the end of the high curtain. The small breach on the extreme right was left for general Bradford’s Portuguese who were drawn up on the Chofre hills; some large boats filled with troops, were directed to make a demonstration against the sea-line of the[199] Monte Orgullo, and sir Thomas Graham overlooked the whole operations from the right bank of the river.

The morning of the 31st broke heavily, a thick fog hid every object, and the besiegers’ batteries could not open until eight o’clock. From that hour a constant shower of heavy missiles was poured upon the besieged until eleven, when Robinson’s brigade getting out of the trenches passed through the openings in the sea-wall and was launched bodily against the breaches. While the head of the column was still gathering on the strand, about thirty yards from the salient angle of the horn-work, twelve men, commanded by a serjeant whose heroic death has not sufficed to preserve his name, running violently forward leaped upon the covered way with intent to cut the sausage of the enemy’s mines. The French startled by this sudden assault fired the train prematurely, and though the serjeant and his brave followers were all destroyed and the high sea-wall was thrown with a dreadful crash upon the head of the advancing column, not more than forty men were crushed by the ruins and the rush of the troops was scarcely checked. The forlorn hope had already passed beyond the play of the mine, and now speeded along the strand amidst a shower of grape and shells, the leader lieutenant Macguire of the fourth regiment, conspicuous from his longMemoirs of Captain Cooke. white plume his fine figure and his swiftness, bounded far ahead of his men in all the pride of youthful strength and courage, but at the foot of the great breach he fell dead, and the stormers went sweeping like a dark surge over his body; many died however with him and the trickling of wounded men to the rear was incessant.

[200]

This time there was a broad strand left by the retreating tide and the sun had dried the rocks, yet they disturbed the order and closeness of the formation, the distance to the main breach was still nearly two hundred yards, and the French, seeing the first mass of assailants pass the horn-work regardless of its broken bastion, immediately abandoned the front and crowding on the river face of that work, poured their musketry into the flank of the second column as it rushed along a few yards below them; but the soldiers still running forward towards the breach returned this fire without slackening their speed. The batteries of the Monte Orgullo and the St. Elmo now sent their showers of shot and shells, the two pieces on the cavalier swept the face of the breach in the bastion of St. John, and the four-pounder in the horn-work being suddenly mounted on the broken bastion poured grape-shot into their rear.

Thus scourged with fire from all sides, the stormers, their array broken alike by the shot and by the rocks they passed over, reached their destinations, and the head of the first column gained the top of the great breach; but the unexpected gulf below could only be passed at a few places where meagre parcels of the burned houses were still attached to the rampart, and the deadly clatter of the French musquets from the loop-holed wall beyond soon strewed the narrow crest of the ruins with dead. In vain the following multitude covered the ascent seeking an entrance at every part; to advance was impossible and the mass of assailants, slowly sinking downwards remained stubborn and immoveable on the lower part of the breach. Here they were covered from the musquetry in front, but[201] from several isolated points, especially the tower of Las Hornos under which the great mine was placed, the French still smote them with small arms, and the artillery from the Monte Orgullo poured shells and grape without intermission.

Such was the state of affairs at the great breach, and at the half bastion of St. John it was even worse. The access to the top of the high curtain being quite practicable, the efforts to force a way were more persevering and constant, and the slaughter was in proportion; for the traverse on the flank, cutting it off from the cavalier, was defended by French grenadiers who would not yield; the two pieces on the cavalier itself swept along the front face of the opening, and the four-pounder and the musquetry from the horn-work, swept in like manner along the river face. In the midst of this destruction some sappers and a working party attached to the assaulting columns endeavoured to form a lodgement, but no artificial materials had been provided, and most of the labourers were killed before they could raise the loose rocky fragments into a cover.

During this time the besiegers’ artillery kept up a constant counter-fire which killed many of the French, and the reserve brigades of the fifth division were pushed on by degrees to feed the attack until the left wing of the ninth regiment only remained in the trenches. The volunteers also who had been with difficulty restrained in the trenches, “calling out to know, why they had been brought there if they were not to lead the assault,” these men, whose presence had given such offence to general Leith that he would have kept them altogether from the assault, being now let loose went like[202] a whirlwind to the breaches, and again the crowded masses swarmed up the face of the ruins, but reaching the crest line they came down like a falling wall; crowd after crowd were seen to mount, to totter, and to sink, the deadly French fire was unabated, the smoke floated away, and the crest of the breach bore no living man.

Sir Thomas Graham, standing on the nearest of the Chofre batteries, beheld this frightful destruction with a stern resolution to win at any cost; and he was a man to have put himself at the head of the last company and died sword in hand upon the breach rather than sustain a second defeat, but neither his confidence nor his resources were yet exhausted. He directed an attempt to be made on the horn-work, and turned all the Chofre batteries and one on the Isthmus, that is to say the concentrated fire of fifty heavy pieces upon the high curtain. The shot ranged over the heads of the troops who now were gathered at the foot of the breach, and the stream of missiles thus poured along the upper surface of the high curtain broke down the traverses, and in its fearful course shattering all things strewed the rampart with the mangled limbs of the defenders. When this flight of bullets firstManuscript Memoir by colonel Hunt. swept over the heads of the soldiers a cry arose, from some inexperienced people, “to retire because the batteries were firing on the stormers;” but the veterans of the light division under Hunt being at that point were not to be so disturbed, and in the very heat and fury of the cannonade effected a solid lodgement in some ruins of houses actually within the rampart on the right of the great breach.

For half an hour this horrid tempest smote upon the works and the houses behind, and then suddenly[203] ceasing the small clatter of the French musquets shewed that the assailants were again in activity; and at the same time the thirteenth Portuguese regiment led by Major Snodgrass and followed by a detachment of the twenty-fourth under colonel Macbean entered the river from the Chofres. The ford was deep the water rose above the waist, and when the soldiers reached the middle of the stream which was two hundred yards wide, a heavy gun struck on the head of the column with a shower of grape; the havoc was fearful but the survivors closed and moved on. A second discharge from the same piece tore the ranks from front to rear, still the regiment moved on, and amidst a confused fire of musquetry from the ramparts, and of artillery from St. Elmo, from the castle, and from the Mirador, landed on the left bank and rushed against the third breach. Macbean’s men who had followed with equal bravery then reinforced the great breach, about eighty yards to the left of the other although the line of ruins seemed to extend the whole way. The fighting now became fierce and obstinate again at all the breaches, but the French musquetry still rolled with deadly effect, the heaps of slain increased, and once more the great mass of stormers sunk to the foot of the ruins unable to win; the living sheltered themselves as they could, but the dead and wounded lay so thickly that hardly could it be judged whether the hurt or unhurt were most numerous.

It was now evident that the assault must fail unless some accident intervened, for the tide was rising, the reserves all engaged, and no greater effort could be expected from men whose courage[204] had been already pushed to the verge of madness. In this crisis fortune interfered. A number of powder barrels, live shells, and combustible materials which the French had accumulated behind the traverses for their defence caught fire, a bright consuming flame wrapped the whole of the high curtain, a succession of loud explosions were heard, hundreds of the French grenadiers were destroyed, the rest were thrown into confusion, and while the ramparts were still involved with suffocating eddies of smoke the British soldiers broke in at the first traverse. The defenders bewildered by this terrible disaster yielded for a moment, yet soon rallied, and a close desperate struggle took place along the summit of the high curtain, but the fury of the stormers whose numbers increased every moment could not be stemmed. The French colours on the cavalier were torn away by lieutenant Gethin of the eleventh regiment. The horn-work and the land front below the curtain, and the loop-holed wall behind the great breach were all abandoned; the light division soldiers who had already established themselves in the ruins on the French left, immediately penetrated to the streets, and at the same moment the Portuguese at the small breach, mixed with British who had wandered to that point seeking for an entrance, burst in on their side.

Five hours the dreadful battle had lasted at the walls and now the stream of war went pouring into the town. The undaunted governor still disputed the victory for a short time with the aid of his barricades, but several hundreds of his men being cut off and taken in the horn-work, his garrison was so reduced that even to effect a retreat behind the line of defences which separated the town from the[205] Monte Orgullo was difficult. Many of his troops flying from the horn-work along the harbour flank of the town broke through a body of the British who had reached the vicinity of the fortified convent of Santa Téresa before them, and this post was the only one retained by the French in the town. It was thought by some distinguished officers engaged in the action that Monte Orgullo might have been carried on this day, if a commander of sufficient rank to direct the troops had been at hand; but whether from wounds or accident no general entered the place until long after the breach had been won, the commanders of battalions were embarrassed for want of orders, and a thunder-storm, which came down from the mountains with unbounded fury immediately after the place was carried, added to the confusion of the fight.

This storm seemed to be the signal of hell for the perpetration of villainy which would have shamed the most ferocious barbarians of antiquity. At Ciudad Rodrigo intoxication and plunder had been the principal object; at Badajos lust and murder were joined to rapine and drunkenness; but at San Sebastian, the direst, the most revolting cruelty was added to the catalogue of crimes. One atrocity of which a girl of seventeen was the victim, staggers the mind by its enormous, incredible, indescribable barbarity. Some order was at first maintained, but the resolution of the troops to throw off discipline was quickly made manifest. A British staff-officer was pursued with a volley of small arms and escaped with difficulty from men who mistook him for the provost-martial of the fifth division; a Portuguese adjutant, who endeavoured to prevent some atrocity, was put to death in the market-place, not with sudden[206] violence from a single ruffian, but deliberately by a number of English soldiers. Many officers exerted themselves to preserve order, many men were well conducted, but the rapine and violence commenced by villains soon spread, the camp-followers crowded into the place, and the disorder continued until the flames following the steps of the plunderer put an end to his ferocity by destroying the whole town.

Three generals, Leith, Oswald, and Robinson, had been hurt in the trenches, sir Richard Fletcher the chief engineer, a brave man who had served his country honorably was killed, and colonel Burgoyne the next in command of that arm was wounded.

The carnage at the breaches was appalling. The volunteers, although brought late into the action, had nearly half their number struck down, most of the regiments of the fifth division suffered in the same proportion, and the whole loss since the renewal of the siege exceeded two thousand five hundred men and officers.

The town being thus taken, the Monte Orgullo was to be attacked, but it was very steep and difficult to assail. The castle served as a citadel and just below it four batteries connected with masonry stretched across the face of the hill. From the Mirador and Queen’s batteries at the extremities of this line, ramps, protected by redans, led to the convent of Santa Teresa which was the most salient part of the defence. On the side of Santa Clara and behind the mountain were some sea batteries, and if all these works had been of good construction, the troops fresh and well supplied, the siege would have been long and difficult; but the garrison was shattered by the recent assault, most of the engineers[207] and leaders killed, the governor and many others wounded, five hundred men were sick or hurt, the soldiers fit for duty did not exceed thirteen hundred, and they had four hundred prisoners to guard. The castle was small, the bomb-proofs scarcely sufficed to protect the ammunition and provisions, and only ten guns remained in a condition for service, three of which were on the sea line. There was very little water and the troops were forced to lie out on the naked rock exposed to the fire of the besiegers, or only covered by the asperities of ground. General Rey and his brave garrison were however still resolute to fight, and they received nightly by sea supplies of ammunition though in small quantities.

Lord Wellington arrived the day after the assault.September. Regular approaches could not be carried up the steep naked rock, he doubted the power of vertical fire, and ordered batteries to be formed on the captured works of the town, intending to breach the enemy’s remaining lines of defence and then storm the Orgullo. And as the convent of Santa Teresa would enable the French to sally by the rampart on the left of the allies’ position in the town, he composed his first line with a few troops strongly barricaded, placing a supporting body in the market-place, and strong reserves on the high curtain and flank ramparts. Meanwhile from the convent, which being actually in the town might have been easily taken at first, the enemy killed many of the besiegers, and when after several days it was assaulted, they set the lower parts on fire and retired by a communication made from the roof to a ramp on the hill behind. All this time the flames were destroying the town, and the Orgullo was overwhelmed with shells shot upward from the besiegers’ batteries.

[208]

On the 3d of September, the governor being summoned to surrender demanded terms inadmissible, his resolution was not to be shaken, and the vertical fire was therefore continued day and night, though the British prisoners suffered as well as the enemy; for the officer commanding in the castle, irritated byJones’ Sieges. the misery of the garrison cruelly refused to let the unfortunate captives make trenches to cover themselves. The French on the other hand complainBellas’ Sieges. that their wounded and sick men, although placed in an empty magazine with a black flag flying, were fired upon by the besiegers, although the English prisoners in their red uniforms were placed around it to strengthen the claim of humanity.

The new breaching batteries were now commenced, one for three pieces on the isthmus, the other for seventeen pieces on the land front of the horn-work. These guns were brought from the Chofres at low water across the Urumea, at first in the night, but the difficulty of labouring in the water during darkness induced the artillery officers to transport the remainder in daylight, and within reach of the enemy’s batteries, which did not fire a shot. In the town the besiegers’ labours were impeded by the flaming houses, but near the foot of the hill the ruins furnished shelter for the musqueteers employed to gall the garrison, and the guns on the island of Santa Clara being reinforced were actively worked by the seamen. The besieged replied but little, their ammunition was scarce and the horrible vertical fire subdued their energy. In this manner the action was prolonged until the 8th of September when fifty-nine heavy battering pieces opened at once from the island the isthmus the horn-work and the Chofres. In two hours both the Mirador and the[209] Queen’s battery were broken, the fire of the besieged was entirely extinguished, and the summit and face of the hill torn and furrowed in a frightful manner; the bread-ovens were destroyed, a magazine exploded, and the castle, small and crowded with men, was overlaid with the descending shells. Then the governor proudly bending to his fate surrendered. On the 9th this brave man and his heroic garrison, reduced to one-third of their original number and leaving five hundred wounded behind them in the hospital, marched out with the honours of war. The Spanish flag was hoisted under a salute of twenty-one guns, and the siege terminated after sixty-three days open trenches, precisely when the tempestuous season, beginning to vex the coast, would have rendered a continuance of the sea blockade impossible.

OBSERVATIONS.

1º. San Sebastian a third-rate fortress and in bad condition when first invested, resisted a besieging army, possessing an enormous battering train, for sixty-three days. This is to be attributed partly to the errors of the besiegers, principally to obstructions extraneous to the military operations. Amongst the last are to be reckoned the misconduct of the Admiralty, and the negligence of the government relative to the battering train and supply of ammunition; the latter retarded the second siege for sixteen days; the former enabled the garrison to keep up and even increase its means as the siege proceeded.

Next, in order and importance, was the failure of[210] the Spanish authorities, who neglected to supply carts and boats from the country, and even refused the use of their public buildings for hospitals. Thus between the sea and the shore, receiving aid from neither, lord Wellington had to conduct an operation of war which more than any other depends for success upon labour and provident care. 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!

Another impediment was Soult’s advance towards Pampeluna, but the positive effect of this was slight since the want of ammunition would have equally delayed the attack. The true measure of the English government’s negligence is thus obtained. It was more mischievous than the operations of sixty thousand men under a great general.

2º. The errors of execution having been before touched upon need no further illustration. The greatest difference between the first and second part of the siege preceding the assaults, was that in the latter, the approaches near the isthmus being carried further on and openings made in the sea-wall, the troops more easily and rapidly extricated themselves from the trenches, the distance to the breach was shortened, and the French fire bearing on the fronts of attack was somewhat less powerful. These advantages were considerable, but not proportionate to the enormous increase of the besiegers’ means; and it is quite clear from the terrible effects of the cannonade during the assault, that the whole of the defences might have been ruined, even those of the castle, if this overwhelming fire had in compliance with the rules of art been first employed to silence[211] the enemy’s fire. A lodgement in the horn-work could then have been made with little difficulty, and the breach attacked without much danger.

3º. As the faults leading to failure in the first part of the siege were repeated in the second, while the enemy’s resources had increased by the gain of time, and because his intercourse with France by sea never was cut off, it follows that there was no reasonable security for success; not even to make a lodgement on the breach, since no artificial materials were prepared and the workmen failed to effect that object. But the first arrangement and the change adopted in the council of war, the option given to general Bradford, the remarkable fact, that the simultaneous attack on the horn-work was only thought of when the first efforts against the breach had failed, all prove, that the enemy’s defensive means were underrated, and the extent of the success exceeded the preparations to obtain it.

The place was won by accident. For first the explosion of the great mine under the tower of Los Hornos, was only prevented by a happy shot which cut the sausage of the train during the fight, and this was followed by the ignition of the French powder-barrels and shells along the high curtain, which alone opened the way into the town. Sir Thomas Graham’s firmness and perseverance in the assault, and the judicious usage of his artillery against the high curtain during the action, an operation however which only belonged to daylight, were no mean helps to the victory. It was on such sudden occasions that his prompt genius shone conspicuously, yet it was nothing wonderful that heavy guns at short distances, the range being perfectly known, should strike with certainty along a line of[212] rampart more than twenty-seven feet above the heads of the troops. Such practice was to be expected from British artillery, and Graham’s genius was more evinced by the promptness of the thought and the trust he put in the valour of his soldiers. It was far more extraordinary that the stormers did not relinquish their attack when thus exposed to their own guns, for it is a mistake to say that no mischief occurred; a serjeant of the ninth regiment was killed by the batteries close to his commanding officer, and it is probable that other casualties also had place.

4º. The explosion on the ramparts is generally supposed to have been caused by the cannonade from the Chofre batteries, yet a cool and careful observer, whose account I have adopted, because he was aCaptain Cooke, forty-third regiment. Vide his Memoirs. spectator in perfect safety and undisturbed by having to give or receive orders, affirms that the cannonade ceased before colonel Snodgrass forded the river, whereas the great explosion did not happen until half an hour after that event. By some persons that intrepid exploit of the Portuguese was thought one of the principal causes of success, and it appears certain that an entrance was made at the small breach by several soldiers, British and Portuguese, many of the former having wandered from the great breach and got mixed with the latter, before the explosion happened on the high curtain. Whether those men would have been followed by greater numbers is doubtful, but the lodgement made by the light division volunteers within the great breach was solid and could have been maintained. The French call the Portuguese attack a feint. SirBellas. Thomas Graham certainly did not found much upon it. He gave general Bradford the option to attack or remain tranquil, and colonel M‘Bean[213] actually received counter-orders when his column was already in the river and too far advanced to be withdrawn.

5º. When the destruction of San Sebastian became known, it was used by the anti-British party at Cadiz to excite the people against England. The political chief of Guipuscoa publicly accused sir Thomas Graham, “that he sacked and burned the place because it had formerly traded entirely with France,” his generals were said to have excited the furious soldiers to the horrid work, and his inferior officers to have boasted of it afterwards. A newspaper, edited by an agent of the Spanish government, repeating these accusations, called upon the people to avenge the injury upon the British army, and the Spanish minister of war, designated by lord Wellington as the abettor and even the writer of this and other malignant libels published at Cadiz, officially demanded explanations.

Lord Wellington addressed a letter of indignant denial and remonstrance to sir Henry Wellesley. “It was absurd,” he said, “to suppose the officers of the army would have risked the loss of all their labours and gallantry, by encouraging the dispersion of the men while the enemy still held the castle. To him the town was of the utmost value as a secure place for magazines and hospitals. He had refused to bombard it when advised to do so, as he had previously refused to bombard Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos, because the injury would fall on the inhabitants and not upon the enemy; yet nothing could have been more easy, or less suspicious than this method of destroying the town if he had been so minded. It was the enemy who set fire to the houses, it was part of the defence; the British officers strove to[214] extinguish the flames, some in doing so lost their lives by the French musquetry from the castle, and the difficulty of communicating and working through the fire was so great, that he had been on the point of withdrawing the troops altogether. He admitted the plunder, observing, that he knew not whether that or the libels made him most angry; he had taken measures to stop it, but when two-thirds of the officers had been killed or wounded in the action, and when many of the inhabitants taking part with the enemy fired upon the troops, to prevent it was impossible. Moreover he was for several days unable from other circumstances to send fresh men to replace the stormers.”

This was a solid reply to the scandalous libels circulated, but the broad facts remained. San Sebastian was a heap of smoking ruins, and atrocities degrading to human nature had been perpetrated by the troops. Of these crimes, the municipal and ecclesiastic bodies the consuls and principal persons of San Sebastian, afterwards published a detailed statement, solemnly affirming the truth of each case; and if Spanish declarations on this occasion are not to be heeded, four-fifths of the excesses attributed to the French armies must be effaced as resting on a like foundation. That the town was first set on fire behind the breaches during the operations, and that it spread in the tumult following the assault is undoubted; yet it is not improbable that plunderers, to forward their own views increased it, and certainly the great destruction did not befall until long after the town was in possession of the allies. I have been assured by a surgeon, that he was lodged the third day after the assault at a house well furnished, and in a street then untouched by fire[215] or plunderers, but house and street were afterwards plundered and burned. The inhabitants could only have fired upon the allies the first day, and it might well have been in self-defence for they were barbarously treated. The abhorrent case alluded to was notorious, so were many others. I have myself heard around the picquet fires, when soldiers as every experienced officer knows, speak without reserve of their past deeds and feelings, the abominable actions mentioned by the municipality related with little variation long before that narrative was published; told however with sorrow for the sufferers and indignation against the perpetrators, for these last were not so numerous as might be supposed from the extent of the calamities they inflicted.

It is a common but shallow and mischievous notion, that a villain makes never the worse soldier for an assault, because the appetite for plunder supplies the place of honour; as if the compatability of vice and bravery rendered the union of virtue and courage unnecessary in warlike matters. In all the host which stormed San Sebastian there was not a man who being sane would for plunder only have encountered the danger of that assault, yet under the spell of discipline all rushed eagerly to meet it. Discipline however has its root in patriotism, or how could armed men be controuled at all, and it would be wise and far from difficult to graft moderation and humanity upon such a noble stock. The modern soldier is not necessarily the stern bloody-handed man the ancient soldier was, there is as much difference between them as between the sportsman and the butcher; the ancient warrior, fighting with the sword and reaping his harvest of death when the enemy was in flight, became habituated to the act[216] of slaying. The modern soldier seldom uses his bayonet, sees not his peculiar victim fall, and exults not over mangled limbs as proofs of personal prowess. Hence preserving his original feelings, his natural abhorrence of murder and crimes of violence, he differs not from other men unless often engaged in the assault of towns, where rapacity, lust, and inebriety, unchecked by the restraints of discipline, are excited by temptation. It is said that no soldier can be restrained after storming a town, and a British soldier least of all, because he is brutish and insensible to honor! Shame on such calumnies! What makes the British soldier fight as no other soldier ever fights? His pay! Soldiers of all nations receive pay. At the period of this assault, a serjeant of the twenty-eighth regiment, namedColonel Cadell’s Memoirs. Ball, had been sent with a party to the coast from Roncesvalles, to make purchases for his officers. He placed the money he was entrusted with, two thousand dollars, in the hands of a commissary and having secured a receipt persuaded his party to join in the storm. He survived, reclaimed the money, made his purchases, and returned to his regiment. And these are the men, these the spirits who are called too brutish to work upon except by fear. It is precisely fear to which they are most insensible.

Undoubtedly if soldiers hear and read, that it is impossible to restrain their violence they will not be restrained. But let the plunder of a town after an assault, be expressly made criminal by the articles of war, with a due punishment attached; let it be constantly impressed upon the troops that such conduct is as much opposed to military honour and discipline as it is to morality; let a select permanent[217] body of men receiving higher pay form a part of the army, and be charged to follow storming columns to aid in preserving order, and with power to inflict instantaneous punishment, death if it be necessary. Finally, as reward for extraordinary valour should keep pace with chastisement for crimes committed under such temptation, it would be fitting that money, apportioned to the danger and importance of the service, should be insured to the successful troops and always paid without delay. This money might be taken as ransom from enemies, but if the inhabitants are friends, or too poor, government should furnish the amount. With such regulations the storming of towns would not produce more military disorders than the gaining of battles in the field.

While San Sebastian was being stormed Soult1813. August. fought a battle with the covering force, not willingly nor with much hope of success, but he was averse to let San Sebastian fall without another effort, and thought a bold demeanour would best hide his real weakness. Guided however by the progress of the siege, which he knew perfectly through his sea communication, he awaited the last moment of action, striving meanwhile to improve his resources and to revive the confidence of the army and of the people. Of his dispersed soldiers eight thousand had rejoined their regiments by the 12th of August, and he was promised a reinforcement of thirty thousand conscripts; these last were however yet to be enrolled, and neither the progress of the siege, nor the general panic along the frontier which recurred with increased violence after the late battles, would suffer him to remain inactive.

He was in no manner deceived as to his enemy’s superior strength of position number and military confidence; but his former efforts on the side of Pampeluna had interrupted the attack of San Sebastian, and another offensive movement would necessarily produce a like effect; wherefore he hoped by repeating the disturbance, as long as a free intercourse by sea enabled him to reinforce and supply[219] the garrison, to render the siege a wasting operation for the allies. To renew the movement against Pampeluna was most advantageous, but it required fifty thousand infantry for the attack, and twenty thousand as a corps of observation on the Lower Bidassoa, and he had not such numbers to dispose of. The subsistence of his troops also was uncertain, because the loss of all the military carriages at Vittoria was still felt, and the resources of the country were reluctantly yielded by the people. To act on the side of St. Jean Pied de Port was therefore impracticable. And to attack the allies’ centre, at Vera, Echallar, and the Bastan, was unpromising, seeing that two mountain-chains were to be forced before the movement could seriously affect lord Wellington: moreover, the ways being impracticable for artillery, success if such should befall, would lead to no decisive result. It only remained to attack the left of the allies by the great road of Irun.

Against that quarter Soult could bring more than forty thousand infantry, but the positions were of perilous strength. The Upper Bidassoa was in Wellington’s power, because the light division, occupying Vera and the heights of Santa Barbara on the right bank, covered all the bridges; but the Lower Bidassoa flowing from Vera with a bend to the left separated the hostile armies, and against this front about nine miles wide Soult’s operations were necessarily directed. On his right, that is to say, from the broken bridge of Behobia in front of Irun to the sea, the river, broad and tidal, offered no apparent facility for a passage; and between the fords of Biriatu and those of Vera, a distance of three miles, there was only the one passage of Andarlassa[220] about two miles below Vera; along this space also the banks of the river, steep craggy mountain ridges without roads, forbade any great operations. Thus the points of attack were restricted to Vera and the fords between Biriatu and the broken bridge of Behobia.

To raise the siege it was only necessary to forcePlan 5. a way to Oyarzun, a small town about seven or eight miles beyond the Bidassoa, from thence the assailants could march at once upon Passages and upon the Urumea. To gain Oyarzun was therefore the object of the French marshal’s combinations. The royal road led directly to it by the broad valley which separates the Peña de Haya from the Jaizquibel mountain. The latter was on the sea-coast, but the Peña de Haya, commonly called the four-crowned mountain, filled with its dependent ridges all the space between Vera, Lesaca, Irun and Oyarzun. Its staring head bound with a rocky diadem was impassable, but from the bridges of Vera and Lesaca, several roads, one of them not absolutely impracticable for guns, passed over its enormous flanks to Irun at one side and to Oyarzun on the other, falling into the royal road at both places. Soult’s first design was to unite Clauzel’s and D’Erlon’s troops, drive the light division from the heights of Santa Barbara, and then using the bridges of Lesaca and Vera force a passage over the Peña de Haya on the left of its summit, and push the heads of columns towards Oyarzun and the Upper Urumea; meanwhile Reille and Villatte, passing the Bidassoa at Biriatu, were to fight their way also to Oyarzun by the royal road. He foresaw thatSoult’s Official Correspondence, MSS. Wellington might during this time collect his right wing and seek to envelope the French army, or[221] march upon Bayonne; but he thought the general state of his affairs required bold measures, and the progress of the besiegers at San Sebastian soon drove him into action.

On the 29th Foy, marching by the road of Lohoussoa, crossed the Nive at Cambo and reached Espelette, leaving behind him six hundred men, and the national guards who were very numerous, with orders to watch the roads and valleys leading upon St. Jean Pied de Port. If pressed by superior forces, this corps of observation was to fall back upon that fortress, and it was supported with a brigade of light cavalry stationed at St. Palais.

In the night two of D’Erlon’s divisions were secretly drawn from Ainhoa, Foy continued his march through Espelette, by the bridges of Amotz and Serres to San Jean de Luz, from whence the reserve moved forward, and thus in the morning of the 30th two strong French columns of attack were assembled on the Lower Bidassoa.

The first, under Clauzel, consisted of four divisions, furnishing twenty thousand men with twenty pieces of artillery. It was concentrated in the woods behind the Commissary and Bayonette mountains, above Vera.

The second, commanded by general Reille, was composed of two divisions and Villatte’s reserve in all eighteen thousand men; but Foy’s division and some light cavalry were in rear ready to augment this column to about twenty-five thousand, and there were thirty-six pieces of artillery and two bridge equipages collected behind the camp of Urogne on the royal road.

Reille’s troops were secreted, partly behind the Croix des Bouquets mountain, partly behind that[222] of Louis XIV. and the lower ridges of the Mandale near Biriatu. Meanwhile D’Erlon, having Conroux’s and Abbé’s divisions and twenty pieces of artillery under his command, held the camps in advance of Sarre and Ainhoa. If the allies in his front marched to reinforce their own left on the crowned mountain, he was to vex and retard their movements, always however avoiding a serious engagement, and feeling to his right to secure his connection with Clauzel’s column; that is to say, he was with Abbé’s division, moving from Ainhoa, to menace the allies towards Zagaramurdi and the Puerto de Echallar; and with Conroux’s division, then in front of Sarre, to menace the light division, to seize the rock of Ivantelly if it was abandoned, and be ready to join Clauzel if occasion offered. On the other hand, should the allies assemble a large force and operate offensively by the Nive and Nivelle rivers, D’Erlon, without losing his connection with the main army, was to concentrate on the slopes descending from the Rhune mountains towards San Pé. Finally, if the attack on the Lower Bidassoa succeeded, he was to join Clauzel, either by Vera, or by the heights of Echallar and the bridge of Lesaca. Soult also desired to support D’Erlon with the two divisions of heavy cavalry, but forage could only be obtained for the artillery horses, two regiments of light horsemen, six chosen troops of dragoons and two or three hundred gensd’armes, which were all assembled on the royal road behind Reille’s column.

It was the French marshal’s intention to attack at daybreak on the 30th, but his preparations being incomplete he deferred it until the 31st, and took rigorous precautions to prevent intelligence passing[223] over to the allies’ camps. Nevertheless Wellington’s emissaries advised him of the movements in the night of the 29th, the augmentation of troops in front of Irun was observed in the morning of the 30th, and in the evening the bridge equipage and the artillery were descried on the royal road beyond the Bidassoa. Thus warned he prepared for battle with little anxiety. For the brigade of English foot-guards, left at Oporto when the campaign commenced, was now come up; most of the marauders and men wounded at Vittoria had rejoined; and three regiments just arrived from England formed a new brigade under lord Aylmer, making the total augmentation of British troops in this quarter little less than five thousand men.

The extreme left was on the Jaizquibel. ThisPlan 5. narrow mountain ridge, seventeen hundred feet high, runs along the coast, abutting at one end upon the Passages harbour and at the other upon the navigable mouth of the Bidassoa. Offering no mark for an attack it was only guarded by a flanking detachment of Spaniards, and at its foot the small fort of Figueras commanding the entrance of the river was garrisoned by seamen from the naval squadron. Fuenterabia a walled place, also at its base, was occupied, and the low ground between that town and Irun defended by a chain of eight large field redoubts, which connected the position of Jaizquibel with the heights covering the royal road to Oyarzun.

On the right of Irun, between Biriatu and the burned bridge of Behobia, there was a sudden bend in the river, the concave towards the French, and their positions commanded the passage of the fords below; but opposed to them was the exceedingly[224] stiff and lofty ridge, called San Marcial, terminating one of the great flanks of the Pena de Haya. The water flowed round the left of this ridge, confining the road leading from the bridge of Behobia to Irun, a distance of one mile, to the narrow space between its channel and the foot of the height, and Irun itself, strongly occupied and defended by a field-work, blocked this way. It followed that the French, after forcing the passage of the river, must of necessity win San Marcial before their army could use the great road.

About six thousand men of the fourth Spanish army now under general Freyre, were established on the crest of San Marcial, which was strengthened by abbattis and temporary field-works.

Behind Irun the first British division, under general Howard, was posted, and lord Aylmer’s brigade was pushed somewhat in advance of Howard’s right to support the left of the Spaniards.

The right of San Marcial falling back from the river was, although distinct as a position, connected with the Pena de Haya, and in some degree exposed to an enemy passing the river above Biriatu, wherefore Longa’s Spaniards were drawn off from those slopes of the Pena de Haya which descended towards Vera, to be posted on those descending towards Biriatu. In this situation he protected and supported the right of San Marcial.

Eighteen thousand fighting men were thus directly opposed to the progress of the enemy, and the fourth division quartered near Lesaca was still disposable. From this body a Portuguese brigade had been detached, to replace Longa on the heights opposite Vera, and to cover the roads leading from the bridge and fords of that place over the flanks of[225] the Pena de Haya. Meanwhile the British brigades of the division were stationed up the mountain, close under the foundry of San Antonio and commanding the intersection of the roads coming from Vera and Lesaca; thus furnishing a reserve to the Portuguese brigade to Longa and to Freyre, they tied the whole together. The Portuguese brigade was however somewhat exposed, and too weak to guard the enormous slopes on which it was placed, wherefore Wellington drew general Inglis’s brigade of the seventh division from Echallar to reinforce it, and even then the flanks of the Pena de Haya were so rough and vast that the troops seemed sprinkled here and there with little coherence. The English general aware that his positions were too extensive had commenced the construction of several large redoubts on commanding points of the mountain, and had traced out a second fortified camp on a strong range of heights, which immediately in front of Oyarzun connected the Haya with the Jaizquibel, but these works were unfinished.

During the night of the 30th Soult garnished with artillery all the points commanding the fords of Biriatu, the descent to the broken bridge and the banks below it, called the Bas de Behobia. This was partly to cover the passage of the fords and the formation of his bridges, partly to stop gun-boats coming up to molest the troops in crossing, and in this view also he spread Casa Palacio’sSoult’s Official Correspondence, MSS. brigade of Joseph’s Spanish guards along the river as far down as Andaya, fronting Fuenterabia.

General Reille, commanding La Martiniere’s, Maucune’s, and Villatte’s divisions, directed the attack. His orders were to storm the camp of San Marcial, and leaving there a strong reserve to keep in check[226] any reinforcement coming from the side of Vera or descending from the Pena de Haya, to drive the allies with the remainder of his force from ridge to ridge, until he gained that flank of the great mountain which descends upon Oyarzun. The royal road being thus opened, Foy’s division with thePlan 5. cavalry and artillery in one column, was to cross by bridges to be laid during the attack on San Marcial. And it was Soult’s intention under any circumstances to retain this last-named ridge, and to fortify it as a bridge-head with a view to subsequent operations.

To aid Reille’s progress and to provide for the concentration of the whole army at Oyarzun, Clauzel was directed to make a simultaneous attack from Vera, not as at first designed by driving the allies from Santa Barbara and seizing the bridges, but leaving one division and his guns on the ridges above Vera to keep the light division in check, to cross the river by two fords just below the town of Vera with the rest of his troops, and assail that slope of the Pena de Haya where the Portuguese brigade and the troops under general Inglis were posted. Then forcing his way upwards to the forge of San Antonio, which commanded the intersection of the roads leading round the head of the mountain, he could aid Reille directly by falling on the rear of San Marcial, or meet him at Oyarzun by turning the rocky summit of the Pena de Haya.

Combat of San Marcial. At daylight on theAugust. 31st, Reille, under protection of the French guns, forded the river above Biriatu with two divisions and two pieces of artillery. He quickly seized a detached ridge of inferior height just under San Marcial,[227] and leaving there one brigade as a reserve detached another to attack the Spanish left by a slope which descended in that quarter to the river. Meanwhile with La Martiniere’s division he assailed their right. But the side of the mountain was covered with brushwood and remarkably steep, theSoult’s Official Report, MSS. French troops being ill-managed preserved no order, the supports and the skirmishers mixing in one mass got into confusion, and when two-thirds of the height were gained the Spaniards charged in columns and drove the assailants headlong down.

During this action two bridges were thrown, partly on trestles partly on boats, below the fords, and the head of Villatte’s reserve crossing ascended the ridge and renewed the fight more vigorously; one brigade even reached the chapel of San Marcial and the left of the Spanish line was shaken, but the eighty-fifth regiment belonging to lord Aylmer’s brigade advanced a little way to support it, and at that moment lord Wellington rode up with his staff. Then the Spaniards who cared so little for their own officers, with that noble instinct which never abandons the poor people of any country acknowledged real greatness without reference to nation, and shouting aloud dashed their adversaries down with so much violence that many were driven into the river, and some of the French pontoon boats coming to their succour were overloaded and sunk. It was several hours before the broken and confused masses could be rallied and the bridges, which had been broken up to let the boats save the drowning men, repaired. When this was effected, Soult who overlooked the action from the summit of the mountain Louis XIV.,[228] sent the remainder of Villatte’s reserve over the river, and calling up Foy’s division prepared a more formidable and better arranged attack; and he expected greater success, inasmuch as the operation from the side of Vera, of which it is time to treat, was now making considerable progress up the Pena de Haya on the allies’ right.

Combat of Vera. General Clauzel had descended the Bayonette and Commissari mountains immediately after day-break, under cover of a thick fog, but at seven o’clock the weather cleared, and three divisions formed in heavy columns were seen, by the troops on Santa Barbara, making for the fords below Vera in the direction of two hamlets called the Salinas and the Bario de Lesaca. A fourth division and the guns remained stationary on the slopes of the mountain, and the artillery opened now and then upon the little town of Vera, from which the picquets of the light division were recalled with exception of one post in a fortified house commanding the bridge.

About eight o’clock the enemy’s columns began to pass the fords covered by the fire of their artillery, but the first shells thrown fell into the midst of their own ranks and the British troops on Santa Barbara cheered the French battery with a derisive shout. Their march was however sure, and a battalion of chosen light troops, without knapsacks, quickly commenced the battle on the left bankSoult’s Correspondence, MSS. of the river, with the Portuguese brigade, and by their extreme activity and rapid fire forced the latter to retire up the slopes of the mountain. General Inglis then reinforced the line of skirmishersManuscript Memoir by general Inglis. and the whole of his brigade was soon afterwards engaged, but Clauzel menaced his left flank from[229] the lower ford, and the French troops still forced their way upwards in front without a check, until the whole mass disappeared fighting amidst the asperities of the Pena de la Haya. Inglis lost two hundred and seventy men and twenty-two officers, but he finally halted on a ridge commanding the intersection of the roads leading from Vera and Lesaca to Irun and Oyarzun. That is to say somewhat below the foundry of Antonio, where the fourth division, having now recovered its Portuguese brigade, was, in conjunction with Longa’s Spaniards, so placed as to support and protect equally the left of Inglis and the right of Freyre on San Marcial.

These operations, from the great height and asperity of the mountain, occupied many hours, and it was past two o’clock before even the head of Clauzel’s columns reached this point. Meanwhile as the French troops left in front of Santa Barbara made no movement, and lord Wellington had before directed the light division to aid general Inglis, a wing of the forty-third and three companies of the riflemen from general Kempt’s brigade, with three weak Spanish battalions drawn from O’Donnel’s Andalusians at Echallar, crossed the Bidassoa by the Lesaca bridge, and marched towards some lower slopes on the right of Inglis where they covered another knot of minor communications coming from Lesaca and Vera. They were followed by the remainder of Kempt’s brigade which occupied Lesaca itself, and thus the chain of connection and defence between Santa Barbara and the positions of the fourth division on the Pena de la Haya was completed.

Clauzel seeing these movements, and thinking[230] the allies at Echallar and Santa Barbara wereClauzel’s Official Report, MSS. only awaiting the proper moment to take him in flank and rear, by the bridges of Vera and Lesaca, if he engaged further up the mountain, now abated his battle and sent notice of his situation and views to Soult. This opinion was well-founded; lord Wellington was not a general to let half his army be paralyzed by D’Erlon’s divisions. On the 30th, when he observed Soult’s first preparations in front of San Marcial, he had ordered attacks to be made upon D’Erlon from the Puerto of Echallar Zagaramurdi and Maya; general Hill was also directed to shew the heads of columns towards St. Jean Pied de Port. And on the 31st when the force and direction of Clauzel’s columns were known, he ordered lord Dalhousie to bring the remainder of the seventh division by Lesaca to aid Inglis.

Following these orders Giron, who commanded the Spaniards O’Donnel being sick, slightly skirmished on the 30th with Conroux’s advanced posts in front of Sarre, and on the 31st at day-break the whole of the French line was assailed. That is to say, Giron again fought with Conroux, feebly as before, but two Portuguese brigades of the sixth and seventh divisions, directed by lord Dalhousie and general Colville from the passes of Zagaramurdi and Maya, drove the French from their camp behind Urdax and burned it. Abbé who commanded there being thus pressed, collected his whole force in front of Ainhoa on an entrenched position, and making strong battle repulsed the allies with some loss of men by the sixth division. Thus five combats were fought in one day at different points of the general line, and D’Erlon, who had lost three or four hundred men, seeing a[231] fresh column coming from Maya as if to turn his left, judged that a great movement against Bayonne was in progress and sent notice to Soult. He was mistaken. Lord Wellington being entirely on the defensive, only sought by these demonstrations to disturb the plan of attack, and the seventh division, following the second order sent to lord Dalhousie, marched towards Lesaca; but the fighting at Urdax having lasted until mid-day the movement was not completed that evening.

D’Erlon’s despatch reached Soult at the same time that Clauzel’s report arrived. All his arrangements for a final attack on San Marcial were then completed, but these reports and the ominous cannonade at San Sebastian, plainly heard during the morning, induced him to abandon this object and hold his army ready for a general battle on the Nivelle. In this view he sent Foy’s division which had not yet crossed the Bidassoa to the heights of Serres, behind the Nivelle, as a support to D’Erlon, and caused six chosen troops of dragoons to march upon San Pé higher up on that river. Clauzel received orders to arrest his attack and repass the Bidassoa in the night. He was to leave Maransin’s division upon the Bayonette mountain and the Col de Bera, and with the other three divisions to march by Ascain and join Foy on the heights of Serres.

Notwithstanding these movements Soult kept Reille’s troops beyond the Bidassoa, and the battle went on sharply, for the Spaniards continually detached men from the ridge, endeavouring to drive the French from the lower positions into the river, until about four o’clock when their hardihood abating they desired to be relieved; but Wellington careful of their glory seeing the French attacks[232] were exhausted and thinking it a good opportunity to fix the military spirit of his allies, refused to relieve or to aid them; yet it would not be just to measure their valour by this fact. The English general blushed while he called upon them to fight, knowing that they had been previously famished by their vile government, and that there were no hospitals to receive no care for them when wounded. The battle was however arrested by a tempest which commencing in the mountains about three o’clock, raged for several hours with wonderful violence. Huge branches were torn from the trees and whirled through the air like feathers on the howling winds, while the thinnest streams swelling into torrents dashed down the mountains, rolling innumerable stones along with a frightful clatter. Amidst this turmoil and under cover of night the French re-crossed the river, and the head-quarters were fixed at St. Jean de Luz.

Clauzel’s retreat was more unhappy. Having received the order to retire early in the evening when the storm had already put an end to all fighting, he repassed the fords in person and before dark at the head of two brigades, ordering general Vandermaesen to follow with the remainder of his divisions. It would appear that he expected no difficulty, since he did not take possession of the bridge of Vera nor of the fortified house covering it; and apparently ignorant of the state of his own troops on theSoult’s Official Report, MSS. other bank of the river occupied himself with suggesting new projects displeasing to Soult. Meanwhile Vandermaesen’s situation became critical. Many of his soldiers attempting to cross were drowned by the rising waters, and finally, unable to effect a passage at the fords, that general[233] marched up the stream to seize the bridge of Vera. His advanced guard surprising a corporal’s picquet rushed over, but was driven back by a rifle company posted in the fortified house. This happened about three o’clock in the morning and the riflemen defended the passage until daylight when a second company and some Portuguese Caçadores came to their aid. But the French reserve left at Vera seeing how matters stood opened a fire of guns against the fortified house from a high rock just above the town, and their skirmishers approached it on the right bank while Vandermaesen plied his musquetry from the left bank. The two rifle captains and many men fell under this cross fire, and the passage was forced, but Vandermaesen urging the attack in person was killed, and more than two hundred of his soldiers were hurt.

Soult now learning from D’Erlon that all offensiveSeptember movements on the side of Maya had ceased at twelve o’clock on the 31st, contemplated another attack on San Marcial, but in the course of the day general Rey’s report of the assault on San SebastianSoult’s Official Correspondence, MSS. reached him, and at the same time he heard that general Hill was in movement on the side of St. Jean Pied de Port. This state of affairs brought reflection. San Sebastian was lost, a fresh attempt to carry off the wasted garrison from the castle would cost five or six thousand good soldiers, and the safety of the whole army would be endangered by pushing headlong amongst the terrible asperities of the crowned mountain. For Wellington could throw his right wing and centre, forming a mass of at least thirty-five thousand men, upon the French left during the action, and he would be nearer to[234] Bayonne than the French right when once the battle was engaged beyond the Lower Bidassoa. The army had lost in the recent actions three thousand six hundred men. General Vandermaesen had been killed, and four others, La Martiniere, Menne, Remond, and Guy, wounded, the first mortally; all the superior officers agreed that a fresh attempt would be most dangerous, and serious losses might draw on an immediate invasion of France before the necessary defensive measures were completed.

Yielding to these reasons he resolved to recover his former positions and thenceforward remain entirely on the defensive, for which his vast knowledge of war, his foresight, his talent for methodical arrangement and his firmness of character, peculiarly fitted him. Twelve battles or combats fought in seven weeks, bore testimony that he had strived hard to regain the offensive for the French army, and willing still to strive if it might be so, he had called upon Suchet to aid him and demanded fresh orders from the emperor; but Suchet helped him not, and Napoleon’s answer indicated at once his own difficulties and his reliance upon the duke of Dalmatia’s capacity and fidelity.

“I have given you my confidence and can add neither to your means nor to your instructions.”

The loss of the allies was one thousand Anglo-Portuguese, and sixteen hundred Spaniards. Wherefore the cost of men on this day, including the storming of San Sebastian, exceeded five thousand, but the battle in no manner disturbed the siege. The French army was powerless against such strong positions. Soult had brought forty-five thousand men to bear in two columns upon a square of less[235] than five miles, and the thirty thousand French actually engaged, were repulsed by ten thousand, for that number only of the allies fought.

But the battle was a half measure and ill-judged on Soult’s part. Lord Wellington’s experience of French warfare, his determined character, coolness and thorough acquaintance with the principles of his art, left no hope that he would suffer two-thirds of his army to be kept in check by D’Erlon’s two divisions; and accordingly, the moment D’Erlon was menaced Soult stopped his own attack to make a counter-movement and deliver a decisive battle on favourable ground. Perhaps his secret hope was to draw his opponent to such a conclusion, but if so, the combat of San Marcial was too dear a price to pay for the chance.

A general who had made up his mind to force a way to San Sebastian, would have organized his rear so that no serious embarrassment could arise from any partial incursions towards Bayonne; he would have concentrated his whole army, and have calculated his attack so as to be felt at San Sebastian before his adversary’s counter-movement could be felt towards Bayonne. In this view D’Erlon’s two divisions should have come in the night of the 30th to Vera, which without weakening the reserve opposed to the light division would have augmented Clauzel’s force by ten thousand men; and on the most important line, because San Marcial offered no front for the action of great numbers, and the secret of mountain warfare is, by surprise or the power of overwhelming numbers, to seize such commanding points as shall force an enemy either to abandon his strong position, or become the assailant to recover those he has thus lost. Now the[236] difficulty of defending the crowned mountain was evinced by the rapid manner in which Clauzel at once gained the ridges as far as the foundry of San Antonio; with ten thousand additional men he might have gained a commanding position on the rear and left flank of San Marcial, and forced the allies to abandon it. That lord Wellington thought himself weak on the Haya mountain is proved by his calling up the seventh division from Echallar, and by his orders to the light division.

Soult’s object was to raise the siege, but his plan involved the risk of having thirty-five thousand of the allies interposed during his attack between him and Bayonne, clearly a more decisive operation than the raising of the siege, therefore the enterprise may be pronounced injudicious. He admitted indeed, that excited to the enterprise, partlyCorrespondence with the minister of war, MSS. by insinuations, whether from the minister of war or his own lieutenants does not appear, partly by a generous repugnance to abandon the brave garrison, he was too precipitate, acting contrary to his judgment; but he was probably tempted by the hope of obtaining at least the camp of San Marcial as a bridge-head, and thus securing a favourable point for after combinations.

Lord Wellington having resolved not to invade France at this time, was unprepared for so great an operation as throwing his right and centre upon Soult’s left; and it is obvious also that on the 30th he expected only a partial attack at San Marcial. The order he first gave to assail D’Erlon’s position, and then the counter-order for the seventh division to come to Lesaca, prove this, because the latter was issued after Clauzel’s numbers and the direction of his attack were ascertained. The efforts[237] of two Portuguese brigades against D’Erlon sufficed therefore to render null the duke of Dalmatia’s great combinations, and his extreme sensitiveness to their operations marks the vice of his own. Here it may be observed, that the movement of the forty-third the rifle companies and the Spaniards, to secure the right flank of Inglis, was ill-arranged. Dispatched by different roads without knowing precisely the point they were to concentrate at, each fell in with the enemy at different places; the Spaniards got under fire and were forced to alter their route; the forty-third companies stumbling on a French division had to fall back half a mile; it was only by thus feeling the enemy at different points that the destined position was at last found, and a disaster was scarcely prevented by the fury of the tempest. Nevertheless those detachments were finally well placed to have struck a blow the next morning, because their post was only half an hour’s march from the high ground behind Vandermaesen’s column when he forced the bridge at Vera, and the firing would have served as a guide. The remainder of Kempt’s brigade could also have moved upon the same point from Lesaca. It is however very difficult to seize such occasions in mountain warfare where so little can be seen of the general state of affairs.

A more obvious advantage was neglected by general Skerrit. The defence of the bridge at Vera by a single company of rifles lasted more than an hour, and four brigades of the enemy, crossing in a tumultuous manner, could not have cleared the narrow passage after it was won in a moment. Lord Wellington’s despatch erroneously describes the French as passing under the fire of great part of general Skerrit’s brigade, whereas that officer remained in[238] order of battle on the lower slopes of Santa Barbara, half a mile distant, and allowed the enemy to escape. It is true that a large mass of French troops were on the counter slopes of the Bayonette mountain, beyond Vera, but the seventh division, being then close to San Barbara, would have prevented any serious disaster if the blow had failed. A great opportunity was certainly lost, but war in rough mountains is generally a series of errors.

Soult, now on the defensive, was yet so fearful of1813. September. an attack along the Nive, that his uneasy movements made the allies think he was again preparing for offensive operations. This double misunderstanding did not however last long, and each army resumed its former position.

The fall of San Sebastian had given lord Wellington a new port and point of support, had increased the value of Passages as a depôt, and let loose a considerable body of troops for field operations; the armistice in Germany was at an end, Austria had joined the allies, and it seemed therefore certain that he would immediately invade France. The English cabinet had promised the continental sovereigns that it should be so when the French were expelled from Spain, meaning Navarre and Guipuscoa; and the newspaper editors were, as usual, actively deceiving the people of all countries by their dictatorial absurd projects and assumptions. Meanwhile the partizans of the Bourbons were secretly endeavouring to form a conspiracy in the south, and the duke of Berri desired to join the British army, pretending that twenty thousand Frenchmen were already armed and organized at the head of which he would place himself. In fine all was exultation and extravagance. But lord[240] Wellington, well understanding the inflated nature of such hopes and promises, while affecting to rebuke the absurdity of the newspapers, took the opportunity to check similar folly in higher places, by observing, “that if he had done all that was expected he should have been before that period in the moon.”

With respect to the duke of Berri’s views, it was for the sovereigns he said to decide whether the restoration of the Bourbons should form part of their policy, but as yet no fixed line of conduct on that or any other political points was declared. It was for their interest to get rid of Napoleon, and there could be no question of the advantage or propriety of accepting the aid of a Bourbon party without pledging themselves to dethrone the emperor. The Bourbons might indeed decline, in default of such a pledge, to involve their partizans in rebellion, and he advised them to do so, because Napoleon’s power rested internally upon the most extensive and expensive system of corruption ever established in any country, externally upon his military force which was supported almost exclusively by foreign contributions; once confined to the limits of France he would be unable to bear the double expense of his government and army, the reduction of either would be fatal to him, and the object of the Bourbons would thus be obtained without risk. But, if they did not concur in this reasoning, the allies in the north of Europe must declare they would dethrone Napoleon before the duke of Berri should be allowed to join the army; and the British government must make up its mind upon the question.

This reasoning put an end to the project, because neither the English cabinet nor the allied sovereigns[241] were ready to adopt a decisive open line of policy. The ministers exulting at the progress of aristocratic domination, had no thought save that of wasting England’s substance by extravagant subsidies and supplies, taken without gratitude by the continental powers who held themselves no-ways bound thereby to uphold the common cause, which each secretly designed to make available for peculiar interests. Moreover they all still trembled before the conqueror and none would pledge themselves to a decided policy. Lord Wellington alone moved with a firm composure, the result of profound and well-understood calculations; yet his mind, naturally so dispassionate, was strangely clouded at this time by personal hatred of Napoleon.

Where is the proof, or even probability, of that great man’s system of government being internally dependent upon “the most extensive corruption ever established in any country”?

The annual expenditure of France was scarcely half that of England, and Napoleon rejected public loans which are the very life-blood of state corruption. He left no debt. Under him no man devoured the public substance in idleness merely because he was of a privileged class; the state servants were largely paid but they were made to labour effectually for the state. They did not eat their bread and sleep. His system of public accounts, remarkable for its exactness simplicity and comprehensiveness, was vitally opposed to public fraud, and therefore extremely unfavourable to corruption. Napoleon’s power was supported in France by that deep sense of his goodness as a sovereign, and that admiration for his genius which pervaded the poorer and middle classes of the[242] people; by the love which they bore towards him, and still bear for his memory because he cherished the principles of a just equality. They loved him also for his incessant activity in the public service, his freedom from all private vices, and because his public works, wondrous for their number their utility and grandeur, never stood still; under him the poor man never wanted work. To France he gave noble institutions, a comparatively just code of laws, and glory unmatched since the days of the Romans. His Cadastre, more extensive and perfect than the Doomsday Book, that monument of the wisdom and greatness of our Norman Conqueror, was alone sufficient to endear him to the nation. Rapidly advancing under his vigorous superintendence, it registered and taught every man the true value and nature of his property, and all its liabilities public or private. It was designed and most ably adapted to fix and secure titles to property, to prevent frauds, to abate litigation, to apportion the weight of taxes equally and justly, to repress the insolence of the tax-gatherer without injury to the revenue, and to secure the sacred freedom of the poor man’s home. The French Cadastre, although not original, would from its comprehensiveness, have been when completed the greatest boon ever conferred upon a civilized nation by a statesman.

To say that the emperor was supported by his soldiers, is to say that he was supported by the people; because the law of conscription, that mighty staff on which France leaned when all Europe attempted to push her down, the conscription, without which she could never have sustained the dreadful war of antagonist principles entailed upon her by the revolution; that energetic law,[243] which he did not establish but which he freed from abuse, and rendered great, national, and endurable by causing it to strike equally on all classes, the conscription made the soldiers the real representatives of the people. The troops idolized Napoleon, well they might, and to assert that their attachment commenced only when they became soldiers, is to acknowledge that his excellent qualities and greatness of mind turned hatred into devotion the moment he was approached. But Napoleon never was hated by the people of France; he was their own creation and they loved him so as never monarch was loved before. His march from Cannes to Paris, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of poor men, who were not soldiers, can never be effaced or even disfigured. For six weeks, at any moment, a single assassin might by a single shot have acquired the reputation of a tyrannicide, and obtained vast rewards besides from the trembling monarchs and aristocrats of the earth, who scrupled not to instigate men to the shameful deed. Many there were base enough to undertake but none so hardy as to execute the crime, and Napoleon, guarded by the people of France, passed unharmed to a throne from whence it required a million of foreign bayonets to drive him again. From the throne they drove him, but not from the thoughts and hearts of men.

Lord Wellington having shaken off the weight of the continental policy, proceeded to consider the question of invading France simply as a military operation, which might conduce to or militate against the security of the Peninsula while Napoleon’s power was weakened by the war in Germany; and such was his inflexible probity of character,[244] that no secret ambitious promptings, no facility of gaining personal reputation, diverted him from this object, all the renown of which he already enjoyed, the embarrassments mortifications and difficulties, enormous, although to the surface-seeing public there appeared none, alone remaining.

The rupture of the congress of Prague, Austria’s accession to the coalition, and the fall of San Sebastian were favourable circumstances; but he relied not much on the military skill of the banded sovereigns, and a great defeat might at any moment dissolve their alliance. Napoleon could then reinforce Soult and drive the allies back upon Spain, where the French still possessed the fortresses of Santona, Pampeluna, Jaca, Venasque, Monzon, Fraga, Lerida, Mequinenza, Figueras, Gerona, Hostalrich, Barcelona, Tortoza, Morella, Peniscola, Saguntum and Denia. Meanwhile lord William Bentinck, misled by false information, had committed a serious error in sending Del Parque’s army to Tudela, because the Ordal disaster and subsequent retreat shewed that Suchet was strong enough, if it so pleased him, to drive the Anglo-Sicilian army back even to the Xucar and recover all his strong places. In fine the affairs of Catalonia were in the same unsatisfactory state they had been in from the first. It was not even certain that a British army would remain there at all, for lord William assured of Murat’s defection was intent upon invading Italy; and the ministers seemed to have leaned towards the project, since Wellington now seriously desired to know whether the Anglo-Sicilians were to go or stay in Spain.

Lord William himself had quitted that army, making the seventh change in fifteen months;[245] this alone was sufficient to account for its misfortunes, and the Spanish generals, who had been placed under the English commander, ridiculed the latter’s ill success and spoke vauntingly of themselves. Strenuously did lord Wellington urge the appointment of some commander for the Anglo-Sicilian troops who would devote his whole attention to his business, observing that at no period of the war would he have quitted his own army even for a few days without danger to its interests. But the English minister’s ignorance of every thing relating to war was profound, and at this time he was himself being stript of generals. Graham, Picton, Leith, lord Dalhousie, H. Clinton, and Skerrit, had gone or were going to England on account of ill health wounds or private business; and marshal Beresford was at Lisbon, where dangerous intrigues to be noticed hereafter menaced the existence of the Portuguese army. Castaños and Giron had been removed by the Spanish regency from their commands, and O’Donnel, described as an able officer but of the most impracticable temper, being denied the chief command of Elio’s, Copons’, and Del Parque’s troops, quittedWellington’s Dispatches, MSS. the army under pretext that his old wounds had broken out; whereupon, Giron was placed at the head of the Andalusians. The operations in Catalonia were however so important, that lord Wellington thought of going there himself; and he would have done so, if the after misfortunes of Napoleon in Germany, had not rendered it impossible for that monarch to reinforce his troops on the Spanish frontier.

These general reasons for desiring to operate on the side of Catalonia were strengthened also by the[246] consideration, that the country, immediately beyond the Bidassoa, being sterile, the difficulty of feeding the army in winter would be increased; and the twenty-five thousand half-starved Spaniards in his army, would certainly plunder for subsistence and incense the people of France. Moreover Soult’s actual position was strong, his troops still numerous, and his entrenched camp furnished a secure retreat. Bayonne and St. Jean Pied de Port were so placed that no serious invasion could be made until one or both were taken, or blockaded, which, during the tempestuous season and while the admiralty refused to furnish sufficient naval means, was scarcely possible; even to get at those fortresses would be a work of time difficult against Soult alone, impracticable if Suchet, as he well might, came to the other’s support. Towards Catalonia therefore lord Wellington desired to turn when the frontier of the western Pyrenees should be secured by the fall of Pampeluna. Yet he thought it not amiss meanwhile to yield something to the allied sovereigns, and give a spur to public feeling by occupying a menacing position within the French territory. A simple thing this seemed but the English general made no slight concession when he thus bent his military judgment to political considerations.

The French position was the base of a triangle of which Bayonne was the apex, and the great roads leading from thence to Irun and St. Jean Pied de Port, were the sides. A rugged mass of mountains intervened between the left and centre, but nearly all the valleys and communications, coming from Spain beyond the Nive, centred at St. Jean Pied de Port and were embraced by an entrenched[247] camp which Foy occupied in front of that fortress. That general could, without calling upon Paris who was at Oleron, bring fifteen thousand men including the national guards into action, and serious dispositions were necessary to dislodge him; but these could not be made secretly, and Soult calculated upon having time to aid him and deliver a general battle on chosen ground. Meanwhile Foy barred any movement along the right bank of the Nive, and he could, either by the great road leading to Bayonne or by shorter communications through Bidaray, reach the bridge of Cambo on the Nive and so gain Espelette behind the camps of Ainhoa. From thence, passing the Nivelle by the bridges at Amotz and Serres he could reach St. Jean de Luz, and it was by this route he moved to aid in the attack of San Marcial. However, the allies marching from the Alduides and the Bastan could also penetrate by St. Martin D’Arosa and the Gorospil mountain to Bidaray, that is to say, between Foy’s and D’Erlon’s positions. Yet the roads were very difficult, and as the French sent out frequent scouting detachments and the bridge of Cambo was secured by works, Foy could not be easily cut off from the rest of the army.

D’Erlon’s advanced camps were near Urdax, and on the Mondarain and Choupera mountains, but his main position was a broad ridge behind Ainhoa, thePlans 5 and 6. right covering the bridge of Amotz. Beyond that bridge Clauzel’s position extended along a range of strong hills, trending towards Ascain and Serres, and as the Nivelle swept with a curve quite round his rear his right flank rested on that river also. The redoubts of San Barbe and the camp of Sarre, barring the roads leading from Vera and the Puerto[248] de Echallar, were in advance of his left, and the greater Rhune, whose bare rocky head lifted two thousand eight hundred feet above the sea level overtopped all the neighbouring mountains, formed, in conjunction with its dependants the Commissary and Bayonette, a mask for his right.

From the Bayonette the French position run along the summit of the Mandale or Sulcogain mountain, on a single line, but from thence to the sea the ridges suddenly abated and there were two lines of defence; the first along the Bidassoa, the second commencing near St. Jean de Luz stretched from the heights of Bordegain towards Ascain, having the camps of Urogne and the Sans Culottes in advance. Reille’s divisions guarded these lines, and the second was connected with Clauzel’s position by Villatte’s reserve which was posted at Ascain. Finally the whole system of defence was tied to that of St. Jean Pied de Port, by the double bridge-head at Cambo which secured the junction of Foy with the rest of the army.

The French worked diligently on their entrenchments, yet they were but little advanced when the castle of San Sebastian surrendered, and Wellington had even then matured a plan of attack as daring as any undertaken during the whole war. This was to seize the great Rhune mountain and its dependents, and at the same time to force the passage of the Lower Bidassoa and establish his left wing in the French territory. He would thus bring the Rhune Commissary and Bayonette mountains, forming a salient menacing point of great altitude and strength towards the French centre, within his own system, and shorten his communications by gaining the command of the road running along[249] the river from Irun to Vera. Thus also he would obtain the port of Fuentarabia, which, though bad in winter, was some advantage to a general whose supplies came from the ocean, and who with scanty means of land-transport had to encounter the perverse negligence and even opposition of the Spanish authorities. Moreover Passages, his nearest port, was restricted in its anchorage-ground, hard to make from the sea and dangerous when full of vessels.

He designed this operation for the middle of September, immediately after the castle of San Sebastian fell and before the French works acquired strength, but some error retarded the arrival of his pontoons, the weather became bad, and the attack, which depended as we shall find upon the state of the tides and fords, was of necessity deferred until the 7th of October. Meanwhile to mislead Soult, to ascertain Foy’s true position about St. Jean Pied de Port, and to strengthen his own right, he brought part of Del Parque’s force up from Tudela to Pampeluna. The Andalusian division which had remained at the blockade after the battle of Sauroren then rejoined Giron at Echallar, and at the same time Mina’s troops gathered in the neighbourhood of Roncesvalles. Wellington himself repaired to that quarter on the 1st of October, and in his way, passing throughOctober. the Alduides, he caused general Campbell to surprize some isolated posts on the rock of Airola,Foy’s report to Soult, 2d October, MSS. a French scouting detachment was also cut off near the foundry of Baygorry, and two thousand sheep were swept from the valley.

These affairs awaked Soult’s jealousy. He was in daily expectation of an attack without being[250] able to ascertain on what quarter the blow would fall, and at first, deceived by false information that the fourth division had reinforced Hill, he thought the march of Mina’s troops and the Andalusians was intended to mask an offensive movement bySoult’s Official Correspondence, MSS. the Val de Baygorry. The arrival of light cavalry in the Bastan, lord Wellington’s presence at Roncesvalles, and the loss of the post at Airola seemed to confirm this; but he knew the pontoons were at Oyarzun, and some deserters told him that the real object of the allies was to gain the great Rhune. On the other hand a French commissary, taken at San Sebastian and exchanged after remaining twelve days at Lesaca, assured him, that nothing at Wellington’s head-quarters indicated a serious attack, although the officers spoke of one and there were many movements of troops; and this weighed much with the French general, because the slow march of the pontoons and the wet weather had caused a delay contradictory to the reports of the spies and deserters. It was also beyond calculation that Wellington should, against his military judgment, push his left wing into France merely to meet the wishes of the allied sovereigns in Germany, and as the most obvious line for a permanent invasion was by his right and centre, there was no apparent cause for deferring his operations.

The true reason of the procrastination, namely the state of the tides and fords on the Lower Bidassoa, was necessarily hidden from Soult, who finally inclined to the notion that Wellington only designed to secure his blockade at Pampeluna from interruption by menacing the French and impeding their labours, the results of which were now[251] becoming visible. However, as all the deserters and spies came with the same story he recommended increased vigilance along the whole line. And yet so little did he anticipate the nature of his opponent’s project, that on the 6th he reviewed D’Erlon’s divisions at Ainhoa, and remained that night at Espelette, doubting if any attack was intended and no way suspecting that it would be against his right. But Wellington could not diminish his troops on the side of Roncesvalles and the Alduides, lest Foy and Paris and the light cavalry under Pierre Soult should unite at St. Jean Pied de Port to raise the blockade of Pampeluna; the troops at Maya were already posted offensively, menacing Soult between the Nive and the Nivelle, and it was therefore only with his left wing and left centre, and against the French right that he could act.

Early in October a reinforcement of twelve hundred British soldiers arrived from England. Mina was then in the Ahescoa, on the right of general Hill, who was thus enabled to relieve Campbell’s Portuguese in the Alduides; and the latter marching to Maya replaced the third division, which, shifting to its left occupied the heights above Zagaramurdi, to enable the seventh division to relieve Giron’s Andalusians in the Puerto de Echallar.

These dispositions were made with a view to the attack of the great Rhune and its dependents, the arrangements for which shall now be described.

Giron, moving with his Andalusians from the Ivantelly, was to assail a lofty ridge or saddle, uniting the Commissari and the great Rhune. A[252] battalion, stealing up the slopes and hollows on his right flank, was to seize the rocky head of the last-named mountain, and after placing detachments there in observation of the roads leading round itWellington’s Order of Movements, MSS. from Sarre and Ascain, was to descend upon the saddle and menace the rear of the enemy’s position at the Puerto de Vera. Meanwhile the principalPlan 5. attack was to be made in two columns, but to protect the right and rear against a counter-attack from Sarre, the Spanish general was to leave one brigade in the narrow pass leading from Vera, between the Ivantelly and the Rhune to that place.

On the left of Giron the light division was to assail the Bayonette mountain and the Puerto de Vera, connecting its right with Giron’s left by skirmishers.

Longa, who had resumed his old positions above the Salinas de Lesaca, was to move in two columns across the Bidassoa. One passing by the ford of Salinas was to aid the left wing of the light division in its attack on the Bayonette; the other passing by the bridge of Vera, was to move up the ravine separating the slopes of the Bayonette from the Puerto de Vera, and thus connect the two attacks of the light division. During these operations Longa was also to send some men over the river at Andarlasa, to seize a telegraph which the French used to communicate between the left and centre of their line.

Behind the light division general Cole was to take post with the fourth division on Santa Barbara, pushing forward detachments to secure the commanding points gained by the fighting troops[253] in front. The sixth division was meanwhile to make a demonstration on the right by Urdax and Zagaramurdi, against D’Erlon’s advanced posts. Thus without weakening his line between Roncesvalles and Echallar lord Wellington put nearly twenty thousand men in motion against the Rhune mountain and its dependents, and he had still twenty-four thousand disposable to force the passage of the Lower Bidassoa.

It has been already shewn that between Andarlasa and Biriatu, a distance of three miles, there were neither roads nor fords nor bridges. The French trusting to this difficulty of approach, and to their entrenchments on the craggy slopes of the Mandale, had collected their troops principally, where the Bildox or green mountain, and the entrenched camp of Biriatu overlooked the fords. Against these points Wellington directed general Freyre’s Spaniards, who were to descend from San Marcial, cross the upper fords of Biriatu, assail the Bildox and Mandale mountains, and turn the left of that part of the enemy’s line which being prolonged from Biriatu crossed the royal road and passed behind the town of Andaya.

Between Biriatu and the sea the advanced points of defence were the mountain of Louis XIV., the ridge called the Caffé Republicain, and the town of Andaya. Behind these the Calvaire d’Urogne, the Croix des Bouquets, and the camp of the Sans Culottes, served as rallying posts.

For the assault on these positions Wellington designed to employ the first and fifth divisions and the unattached brigades of Wilson and lord Aylmer, in all about fifteen thousand men. By the help of Spanish fishermen he had secretly discovered[254] three fords, practicable at low water, between the bridge of Behobia and the sea, and his intent was to pass his column at the old fords above, and at the new fords below the bridge, and this though the tides rose sixteen feet, leaving at the ebb open heavy sands not less than half a mile broad. The left bank of the river also was completely exposed to observation from the enemy’s hills, which though low in comparison of the mountains above the bridge, were nevertheless strong ridges of defence; but relying on his previous measures to deceive the enemy the English general disdained these dangers, and his anticipations were not belied by the result.

The unlikelihood that a commander, having a better line of operations, would pass such a river as the Bidassoa at its mouth, deceived the French general. Meanwhile his lieutenants were negligent. Of Reille’s two divisions La Martiniere’s, now commanded by general Boyer, was at the camp of Urogne, and on the morning of the seventh was dispersed as usual to labour at the works; Villatte’s reserve was at Ascain and Serres; the five thousand men composing Maucune’s division were indeed on the first line but unexpectant of an attack, and though the works on the Mandale were finished and those at Biriatu in a forward state, from the latter to the sea they were scarcely commenced.

Passage of the Bidassoa. The night set in heavily. A sullen thunder-storm gathering about the craggy summit of the Pena de Haya came slowly down its flanks, and towards morning rolling over the Bidassoa fell in its greatest violence upon the French positions. During this turmoil Wellington whose pontoons and artillery were close up to Irun,[255] disposed a number of guns and howitzers along the crest of San Marcial, and his columns attained their respective stations along the banks of the river. Freyre’s Spaniards one brigade of the guards and Wilson’s Portuguese, stretching from the Biriatu fords to that near the broken bridge of Behobia, were ensconced behind the detached ridge which the French had first seized in the attack of the 31st. The second brigade of guards and the Germans of the first division were concealed near Irun, close to a ford below the bridge of Behobia called the great Jonco. The British brigades of the fifth division covered themselves behind a largePlan 5. river embankment opposite Andaya; Sprye’s Portuguese and lord Aylmer’s brigade were posted in the ditch of Fuenterabia.

As all the tents were left standing in the camps of the allies, the enemy could perceive no change on the morning of the 7th, but at seven o’clock, the fifth division and lord Aylmer’s brigade emerging from their concealment took the sands in two columns, that on the left pointing against the French camp of the Sans Culottes, that on the right against the ridge of Andaya. No shot was fired, but when they had passed the fords of the low-water channel a rocket was sent up from the steeple of Fuenterabia as a signal. Then the guns and howitzers opened from San Marcial, the troops near Irun, covered by the fire of a battery, made for the Jonco ford, and the passage above the bridge also commenced. From the crest of San Marcial seven columns could be seen at once, attacking on a line of five miles, those above the bridge plunging at once into the fiery contest, those below it appearing in the distance like huge[256] sullen snakes winding over the heavy sands. The Germans missing the Jonco ford got into deep water but quickly recovered the true line, and the French, completely surprised, permitted even the brigades of the fifth division to gain the right bank and form their lines before a hostile musket flashed.

The cannonade from San Marcial was heard by Soult at Espelette, and at the same time the sixth division, advancing beyond Urdax and Zagaramurdi, made a false attack on D’Erlon’s positions; the Portuguese brigade under colonel Douglas, were however pushed too far and repulsed with the loss of one hundred and fifty men, and the French marshal instantly detecting the true nature of this attack hurried to his right, but his camps on the Bidassoa were lost before he arrived.

When the British artillery first opened, Maucune’s troops had assembled at their different posts of defence, and the French guns, established principally near the mountain of Louis XIV. and the Caffé Republicain, commenced firing. The alarm spread, and Boyer’s marched from the second line behind Urogne to support Maucune without waiting for the junction of the working parties; but his brigades moved separately as they could collect, and before the first came into action, Sprye’s Portuguese, forming the extreme left of the allies, menaced the camp of the Sans Culottes; thither therefore one of Boyer’s regiments was ordered, while the others advanced by the royal road towards the Croix des Bouquets. But Andaya, guarded only by a piquet, was abandoned, and Reille thinking the camp of the Sans Culottes would be lost before Boyer’s men reached it, sent a battalion there from the centre,[257] thus weakening his force at the chief point of attack; for the British brigades of the fifth division, were now advancing left in front from Andaya, and bearing under a sharp fire of artillery and musquetry towards the Croix des Bouquets.

By this time the columns of the first division had passed the river, one above the bridge, preceded by Wilson’s Portuguese, one below, preceded by Colin Halkett’s German light troops, who aided by the fire of the guns on San Marcial, drove back the enemy’s advanced posts, won the Caffé Republicain, the mountain of Louis XIV. and drove the French from those heights to the Croix des Bouquets: this was the key of the position, and towards it guns and troops were now hastening from every side. The Germans who had lost many men in the previous attacks were here brought to a check, for the heights were very strong, and Boyer’s leading battalions were now close at hand; but at this critical moment colonel Cameron arrived with the ninth regiment of the fifth division, and passing through the German skirmishers rushed with great vehemence to the summit of the first height. The French infantry instantly opened their ranks to let their guns retire, and then retreated themselves at full speed to a second ridge, somewhat lower but where they could only be approached on a narrow front. Cameron as quickly threw his men into a single column and bore against this new position, which curving inwards enabled the French to pour a concentrated fire upon his regiment; nor did his violent course seem to dismay them until he was within ten yards, when appalled by the furious shout and charge of the ninth they gave way, and the ridges of the Croix des Bouquets were won as far as the royal road. The British[258] regiment however lost many men and officers, and during the fight the French artillery and scattered troops, coming from different points and rallying on Boyer’s battalions, were gathered on the ridges to the French left of the road.

The entrenched camp above Biriatu and the Bildox, had been meanwhile defended with success in front, but Freyre turned them with his right wing, which being opposed only by a single battalion soon won the Mandale mountain, and the French fell back from that quarter to the Calvaire d’Urogne and Jollimont. Reille thus beaten at the Croix des Bouquets, and his flanks turned, the left by the Spaniards on the Mandale, the right by the allies along the sea-coast, retreated in great disorder along the royal causeway and the old road of Bayonne. He passed through the village of Urogne and the British skirmishers at first entered it in pursuit, but they were beaten out again by the second brigade of Boyer’s division, for Soult now arrived with part of Villatte’s reserve and many guns, and by his presence and activity restored order and revived the courage of the troops at the moment when the retreat was degenerating into a flight.

Reille lost eight pieces of artillery and about four hundred men, the allies did not lose more than six hundred of which half were Spaniards, so slight and easy had the skill of the general rendered this stupendous operation. But if the French commander penetrating Wellington’s design, and avoiding the surprize, had opposed all his troops, amounting with what Villatte could spare to sixteen thousand, instead of the five thousand actually engaged, the passage could scarcely have been forced; and a check would have been tantamount[259] to a terrible defeat, because in two hours the returning tide would have come with a swallowing flood upon the rear.

Equally unprepared and equally unsuccessful were the French on the side of Vera, although the struggle there proved more fierce and constant.

At day-break Giron had descended from the Ivantelly rocks and general Alten from Santa Barbara; the first to the gorge of the pass leading from Vera to Sarre, the last to the town of Vera, where he was joined by half of Longa’s force.

One brigade, consisting of the forty-third the seventeenth Portuguese regiment of the line and the first and third battalions of riflemen, drew up in column on an open space to the right of Vera. The other brigade under colonel Colborne, consisting of the fifty-second two battalions of Caçadores and a battalion of British riflemen, was disposed on the left of Vera. Half of Longa’s division was between these brigades, the other half after crossing the ford of Salinas drew up on Colborne’s left. The whole of the narrow vale of Vera was thus filled with troops ready to ascend the mountains, and general Cole displaying his force to advantage on the heights of Santa Barbara presented a formidable reserve.

Taupin’s division guarded the enormous positions in front of the allies. His right was on the Bayonette, from whence a single slope descended to a small plain about two parts down the mountain.Plan 5. From this platform three distinct tongues shot into the valley below, each was defended by an advanced post, and the platform itself secured by a star redoubt, behind which, about half-way up the single slope, there was a second retrenchment with abbatis.[260] Another large redoubt and an unfinished breast-work on the superior crest completed the system of defence for the Bayonette.

The Commissari, which is a continuation of the Bayonette towards the great Rhune, was covered by a profound gulf thickly wooded and defended with skirmishers, and between this gulf and another of the same nature the main road, leading from Vera over the Puerto, pierced the centre of the French position. Rugged and ascending with short abrupt turns this road was blocked at every uncovered point with abbatis and small retrenchments; each obstacle was commanded, at half musquet shot, by small detachments placed on all the projecting parts overlooking the ascent, and a regiment, entrenched above on the Puerto itself, connected the troops on the crest of the Bayonette and Commissari with those on the saddle-ridge, against which Giron’s attack was directed.

But between Alten’s right and Giron’s left was an isolated ridge called by the soldiers the Boar’s back, the summit of which, about half a mile long and rounded at each end, was occupied by four French companies. This huge cavalier, thrown as it were into the gulf to cover the Puerto and saddle ridges, although of mean height in comparison of the towering ranges behind, was yet so great that the few warning shots fired from the summit by the enemy, reached the allies at its base with that slow singing sound which marks the dying force of a musquet-ball. It was essential to take the Boar’s back before the general attack commenced, and five companies of British riflemen, supported by the seventeenth Portuguese regiment, were ordered to assail it at the Vera end, while a battalion of Giron’s Spaniards[261] preceded by a detached company of the forty-third attacked it on the other.

At four o’clock in the morning Clauzel had received intelligence that the Bayonette was to be assaulted that day or the next, and at seven o’clock he heard from Conroux, who commanded at Sarre, that Giron’sClauzel’s Official Report, MSS. camps were abandoned although the tents of the seventh division were still standing; at the same time the sound of musquetry was heard on the side of Urdax, a cannonade on the side of Irun, and then came Taupin’s report that the vale of Vera was filled with troops. To this last quarter Clauzel hurried. The Spaniards had already driven Conroux’s outposts from the gorge leading to Sarre, and a detachment was creeping up towards the unguarded head of the great Rhune. He immediately ordered four regiments of Conroux’s division to occupy the summit the front and the flanks of that mountain, and he formed a reserve of two other regiments behind. With these troops he designed to secure the mountain and support Taupin, but ere they could reach their destination that general’s fate was decided.

Second Combat of Vera.—Soon after seven o’clock a few cannon-shot from some mountain-guns, of which each side had a battery, were followed by the Spanish musquetry on the right, and the next moment the “Boars back” was simultaneously assailed at both ends. The riflemen on the Vera side ascended to a small pine-wood two-thirds of thePlan 5. way up and there rested, but soon resuming their movement with a scornful gallantry they swept the French off the top, disdaining to use their rifles beyond a few shots down the reverse side, to show that they were masters of the ridge. This was the signal for the general attack. The seventeenth Portuguese[262] followed the victorious sharp-shooters, the forty-third, preceded by their own skirmishers and by the remainder of the riflemen of the right wing, plunged into the rugged pass, Longa’s troops entered the gloomy wood of the ravine on the left, and beyond them Colborne’s brigade moving by narrow paths and throwing out skirmishers assailed the Bayonette, the fifty-second took the middle tongue, the Caçadores and riflemen the two outermost and all bore with a concentric movement against the star redoubt on the platform above. Longa’s second brigade should have flanked the left of this attack with a wide skirting movement, but neither he nor his starved soldiers knew much of such warfare, and therefore quietly followed the riflemen in reserve.

Soon the open slopes of the mountains were covered with men and with fire, a heavy confused sound of mingled shouts and musquetry filled the deep hollows between, and the white smoke came curling up above the dark forest trees which covered their gloomy recesses. The French compared with their assailants seemed few and scattered on the mountain side, and Kempt’s brigade soon forced its way without a check through all the retrenchments on the main pass, his skirmishers spreading wider and breaking into small detachments of support as the depth of the ravine lessened and the slopes melted into the higher ridges. When about half-way up an open platform gave a clear view over the Bayonette slopes, and all eyes were turned that way. Longa’s right brigade, fighting in the gulf between, seemed labouring and overmatched, but beyond, on the broad open space in front of the star fort, the Caçadores and riflemen of Colborne’s[263] brigade, were seen coming out, in small bodies, from a forest which covered the three tongues of land up to the edge of the platform. Their fire was sharp, their pace rapid, and in a few moments they closed upon the redoubt in a mass as if resolved to storm it. The fifty-second were not then in sight, and the French thinking from the dark clothing that all were Portuguese rushed in close order out of the entrenchment; they were numerous and very sudden; the rifle as a weapon is overmatched by the musket and bayonet, and this rough charge sent the scattered assailants back over the rocky edge of the descent. With shrill cries the French followed, but just then the fifty-second appeared, partly in line partly in column, on the platform, and raising their shout rushed forward. The red uniform and full career of this regiment startled the hitherto adventurous French, they stopped short, wavered, and then turning fled to their entrenchment; the fifty-second following hard entered the works with them, the riflemen and Caçadores who had meanwhile rallied passed it on both flanks, and for a few moments every thing was hidden by a dense volume of smoke. Soon however the British shout pealed again and the whole mass emerged on the other side, the French, now the fewer, flying the others pursuing, until the second entrenchment, half-way up the parent slope, enabled the retreating troops to make another stand.

The exulting and approving cheers of Kempt’s brigade now echoed along the mountain side, and with renewed vigour the men continued to scale the craggy mountain, fighting their toilsome way to the top of the Puerto. Meanwhile Colborne after[264] having carried the second entrenchment above the star fort, was brought to a check by the works on the very crest of the mountain, from whence the French not only plied his troops with musquetry at a great advantage, but rolled huge stones down the steep.

These works were extensive well lined with men and strengthened by a large redoubt on the right, but the defenders soon faltered, for their left flank was turned by Kempt and the effects of lord Wellington’s skilful combinations were now felt in another quarter. Freyre’s Spaniards after carrying the Mandale mountain, between Biriatu and the Bayonette, had pushed to a road leading from the latter by Jollimont to St. Jean de Luz, and thisPlan 5. was the line of retreat from the crest of the Bayonette for Taupin’s right wing; but Freyre’s Spaniards got there first, and if Longa’s brigade instead of slowly following Colborne had spread out widely on the left, a military line would have been completed from Giron to Freyre. Still Taupin’s right was cut off on that side, and he was forced to file it under fire along the crest of the Bayonette to reach the Puerto de Vera road, where he was joined by his centre. He effected this but lost his mountain battery and three hundred men. These last, apparently the garrison of the large fort on the extreme right of the Bayonette crest, were captured by Colborne in a remarkable manner. Accompanied by only one of his staff and half-a-dozen riflemen, he crossed their march unexpectedly, and with great presence of mind and intrepidity ordered them to lay down their arms, an order which they thinking themselves entirely cut off obeyed. Meanwhile the French skirmishers in the deep[265] ravine, between the two lines of attack, being feebly pushed by Longa’s troops, retreated too slowly and getting amongst some rocks from whence there was no escape surrendered to Kempt’s brigade.

The right and centre of Taupin’s division being now completely beaten fled down the side of the mountain towards Olette, they were pursued by a part of the allies until they rallied upon Villatte’s reserve, which was in order of battle on a ridge extending across the gorge of Olette between Urogne and Ascain. The Bayonette and Commissari, with the Puerto de Vera, were thus won after five hours’ incessant fighting and toiling up their craggy sides. Nevertheless the battle was still maintained by the French troops on the Rhune.

Giron after driving Conroux’s advanced post from the gorge leading from Vera to Sarre had, following his orders, pushed a battalion from that side towards the head of the great Rhune, and placed a reserve in the gorge to cover his rear from any counter-attack which Conroux might make. And when his left wing was rendered free to move by the capture of the “Boar’s back” he fought his way up abreast with the British line until near the saddle-ridge, a little to his own right of the Puerto. There however he was arrested by a strong line of abbattis from behind which two French regiments poured a heavy fire. The Spaniards stopped, and though the adventurer Downie, now a Spanish general, encouraged them with his voice and they kept their ranks, they seemed irresolute and did not advance. There happened to be present an officer of the forty-third regiment named Havelock, who being attached to general Alten’s staff was sent to ascertain Giron’s[266] progress. His fiery temper could not brook the check. He took off his hat, he called upon the Spaniards to follow him, and putting spurs to his horse, at one bound cleared the abbattis and went headlong amongst the enemy. Then the soldiers, shouting for “El chico bianco” “the fair boy” so they called him, for he was very young and had light hair, with one shock broke through the French, and this at the very moment when their centre was flying under the fire of Kempt’s skirmishers from the Puerto de Vera.

The two regiments thus defeated by the Spaniards retired by their left along the saddle-ridge to the flanks of the Rhune, so that Clauzel had now eight regiments concentrated on this great mountain. Two occupied the crest including the highest rock called the Hermitage; four were on the flanks, descending towards Ascain on one hand, and towards Sarre on the other; the remaining two occupied a lower and parallel crest behind called the small Rhune. In this situation they were attacked at four o’clock by Giron’s right wing. The Spaniards first dislodged a small body from a detached pile of crags about musket-shot below the summit, and then assailed the bald staring rocks of the Hermitage itself, endeavouring at the same time to turn it by their right. In both objects they were defeated with loss. The Hermitage was impregnable, the French rolled down stones large enough to sweep away a whole column at once, and the Spaniards resorted to a distant musketry which lasted until night. This day’s fighting cost Taupin’s division two generals and four hundred men killed and wounded, and five hundred prisoners. The loss of the allies was nearly a thousand, of which about five hundred[267] were Spaniards, and the success was not complete, for while the French kept possession of the summit of the Rhune the allies’ new position was insecure.

The front and the right flank of that great mountain were impregnable, but lord Wellington observing that the left flank, descending towards Sarre, was less inaccessible, concentrated the Spaniards on that side on the 8th, designing a combined attack against the mountain itself, and against the camp of Sarre. At three o’clock in the afternoon the rocks which studded the lower parts of the Rhune slope were assailed by the Spaniards, and at the same time detachments of the seventh division descended from the Puerto de Echallar upon the fort of San Barbe, and other outworks covering the advanced French camp of Sarre. The Andalusians soon won the rocks and an entrenched height that commanded the camp, for Clauzel, too easily alarmed at some slight demonstrations made by the sixth division towards the bridge of Amotz inPlan 6. rear of his left, thought he should be cut off from his great camp, and very suddenly abandoned not only the slope of the mountain but all his advanced works in the basin below, including the fort of San Barbe. His troops were thus concentrated on the height behind Sarre still holding with their right the smaller Rhune, but the consequences of his error were soon made apparent. Wellington immediately established a strong body of the Spanish troops close up to the rocks of the Hermitage, and the two French regiments there, seeing the lower slopes and the fort of San Barbe given up, imagined they also would be cut off, and without orders abandoned the impregnable rocks of the Hermitage[268] and retired in the night to the smaller Rhune. The next morning some of the seventh division rashly pushed into the village of Sarre, but they were quickly repulsed and would have lost the camp and works taken the day before if the Spaniards had not succoured them.

The whole loss on the three days of fighting was about fourteen hundred French and sixteen hundred of the allies, one half being Spaniards, but many of the wounded were not brought in until the third day after the actions, and several perished miserably where they fell, it being impossible to discover them in those vast solitudes. Some men were also lost from want of discipline; having descended into the French villages they got drunk and were taken the next day by the enemy. Nor was the number small of those who plundered in defiance of lord Wellington’s proclamation; for he thought it necessary to arrest and send to England several officers, and renewed his proclamation, observing that if he had five times as many men he could not venture to invade France unless marauding was prevented. It is remarkable that the French troops on the same day acted towards their own countrymen in the same manner, but Soult also checked the mischief with a vigorous hand, causing a captain of some reputation to be shot as an example, for having suffered his men to plunder a house in Sarre during the action.

With exception of the slight checks sustained at Sarre and Ainhoa, the course of these operations had been eminently successful, and surely the bravery of troops who assailed and carried such stupendous positions must be admired. To them the unfinished state of the French works was not visible.[269] Day after day, for more than a month, entrenchment had risen over entrenchment, covering the vast slopes of mountains which were scarcely accessible from their natural steepness and asperity. This they could see, yet cared neither for the growing strength of the works, the height of the mountains, nor the breadth of the river with its heavy sands, and its mighty rushing tide; all were despised, and while they marched with this confident valour, it was observed that the French fought in defence of their dizzy steeps with far less fierceness than, when, striving against insurmountable obstacles, they attempted to storm the lofty rocks of Sauroren. Continual defeat had lowered their spirit, but the feebleness of the defence on this occasion may be traced to another cause. It was a general’s not a soldier’s battle. Wellington had with overmastering combinations overwhelmed each point of attack. Taupin’s and Maucune’s divisions were each less than five thousand strong, and they were separately assailed, the first by eighteen the second by fifteen thousand men, and at neither point were Reille and Clauzel able to bring their reserves into action before the positions were won.

Soult complained that he had repeatedly told his lieutenants an attack was to be expected, andSoult’s Official Correspondence with the Minister of War, MSS. recommended extreme vigilance; yet they were quite unprepared, although they heard the noise of the guns and pontoons about Irun on the night of the 5th and again on the night of the 6th. The passage of the river he said had commenced at seven o’clock, long after daylight, the allies’ masses were then clearly to be seen forming on the banks, and there was full time for Boyer’s division to arrive before the Croix des Bouquets was lost. The[270] battle was fought in disorder with less than five thousand men, instead of with ten thousand in good order, and supported by a part of Villatte’s reserve. To this negligence the generals added also discouragement. They had so little confidence in the strength of their positions, that if the allies had pushed vigorously forward before the marshal’s arrival from Espelette, they would have entered St. Jean de Luz, turned the right of the second position and forced the French army back upon the Nive and the Adour.

This reasoning of Soult was correct, but such a stroke did not belong to lord Wellington’s system. He could not go beyond the Adour, he doubted whether he could even maintain his army during the winter in the position he had already gained, and he was averse to the experiment, while Pampeluna held out and the war in Germany bore an undecided aspect.

Soult was apprehensive for some days that lord1813. October. Wellington would push his offensive operations further, but when he knew by Foy’s reports, andOfficial Correspondence, MSS. by the numbers of the allies assembled on his right, that there was no design of attacking his left, he resumed his labours to advance the works covering St. Jean de Luz. He also kept a vigilant watch from his centre, holding his divisions in readiness to concentrate towards Sarre, and when he saw the heavy masses in his front disperse by degrees into different camps, he directed Clauzel to recover the fort of San Barbe. This work was constructed on a comparatively low ridge barring issue from the gorge leading out of the vale of Vera to Sarre, and it defended the narrow ground between the Rhunes and the Nivelle river. Abandoned on the 8th without reason by the French, since it did not naturally belong to the position of the allies, it was now occupied by a Spanish picquet of forty men. Some battalions were also encamped in a small wood close behind; but many officers and men slept in the fort, and on the night of the 12th, about eleven o’clock, three battalions of Conroux’s division reached the platform on which the fort stood without being perceived. The work was then escaladed, the troops behind it went off in confusion at the first alarm,[272] and two hundred soldiers with fifteen officers were made prisoners. The Spaniards ashamed of the surprize made a vigorous effort to recover the fort at daylight, they were repulsed, and repeated the attempt with five battalions, but Clauzel brought up two guns, and a sharp skirmish took place in the wood which lasted for several hours, the French endeavouring to regain the whole of their old entrenchments and the Spaniards to recover the fort. Neither succeeded and San Barbe, too near the enemy’s position to be safely held, was resigned with a loss of two hundred men by the French and five hundred by the Spaniards. Soon after this isolated action a French sloop freighted with stores for Santona attempted to run from St. Jean de Luz, and being chased by three English brigs and cut off from the open sea, her crew after exchanging a few distant shots with one of the brigs, set her on fire and escaped in their boats to the Adour.

Head-quarters were now fixed in Vera, and the allied army was organized in three grand divisions. The right having Mina’s and Morillo’s battalions attached to it was commanded by sir Rowland Hill, and extended from Roncesvalles to the Bastan. The centre occupying Maya, the Echallar, Rhune, and Bayonette mountains, was given to marshal Beresford. The left extending from the Mandale mountain to the sea was under sir John Hope. This officer succeeded Graham who had returned to England. Commanding in chief at Coruña after sir John Moore’s death, he was superior in rank to lord Wellington during the early part of the Peninsular war, but when the latter obtained the baton of field-marshal at Vittoria, Hope with a patriotism and modesty worthy of the pupil of Abercrombie[273] the friend and comrade of Moore offered to serve as second in command, and lord Wellington joyfully accepted him, observing that he was the “ablest officer in the army.”

The positions of the right and centre were offensive and menacing, but the left was still on the defensive, and the Bidassoa, impassable at high water below the bridge, was close behind. However the ridges were strong, a powerful artillery was established on the right bank, field-works were constructed, and although the fords below Behobia furnished but a dangerous retreat even at low water, those above were always available, and a pontoon bridge laid down for the passage of the guns during the action was a sure resource. The front was along the heights of the Croix des Bouquets facing Urogne and the camp of the Sans Culottes, and there was a reserve in an entrenched camp above Andaya. The right of the line rested on the Mandale, and from that mountain and the Bayonette the allies could descend upon the flank of an attacking army.

Soult had however no intention of renewing the offensive. He had now lost many thousand men in battle, and the old soldiers remaining did not exceed seventy-nine thousand present under arms including officers and artillery-men. Of this number the garrisons absorbed about thirteen thousand, leaving sixty-six thousand in the field, whereas the allies, counting Mina’s and Del Parque’s troops, now at Tudela, Pampeluna, and the Val de Irati, exceeded one hundred thousand, seventy-threeAppendix 7, sect. 2. thousand, including officers, sergeants, and artillery-men, being British and Portuguese. And this was below the calculation of the French general, for[274] deceived by the exaggerated reports which the Spaniards always made of their forces, he thought Del Parque had brought up twenty thousand men and that there were one hundred and forty thousand combatants in his front. But it was not so, and as conscripts of a good description were now joining the French army rapidly, and the national guards of the Pyrenees were many, it was in the number of soldiers rather than of men, that the English general had the advantage.

In this state of affairs Soult’s policy was to maintain a strict defensive, under cover of which the spirit of the troops might be revived, the country in the rear organized, and the conscripts disciplined and hardened to war. The loss of the Lower Bidassoa was in a political view mischievous to him, it had an injurious effect upon the spirit of the frontier departments, and gave encouragement to the secret partizans of the Bourbons; but in a military view it was a relief. The great development of the mountains bordering the Bidassoa had rendered their defence difficult; while holding them he had continual fear that his line would be pierced and his army suddenly driven beyond the Adour. His position was now more concentrated.

The right, under Reille, formed two lines. One across the royal road on the fortified heights of Urogne and the camp of the Sans Culottes; the other in the entrenched camps of Bourdegain andPlan 6. Belchena, covering St. Jean de Luz and barring the gorges of Olhette and Jollimont.

The centre under Clauzel was posted on the ridges between Ascain and Amotz holding the smaller Rhune in advance; but one division was retained by Soult in the camp of Serres on the[275] right of the Nivelle, overhanging Ascain. To replace it one of D’Erlon’s divisions crossed to the left of the Nivelle and reinforced Clauzel’s left flank above Sarre.

Villatte’s reserve was about St. Jean de Luz but having the Italian brigade in the camp of Serres.

D’Erlon’s remaining divisions continued in their old position, the right connected with Clauzel’s line by the bridge of Amotz; the left, holding the Choupera and Mondarin mountains, bordered on the Nive.

Behind Clauzel and D’Erlon Soult had commenced a second chain of entrenched camps, prolonged from the camp of Serres up the right bank of the Nivelle to San Pé, thence by Suraide to the double bridge-head of Cambo on the Nive, and beyond that river to the Ursouia mountain, covering the great road from Bayonne to St. Jean Pied de Port. He had also called general Paris up from Oleron to the defence of the latter fortress and its entrenched camp, and now drew Foy down the Nive to Bidarray half-way between St. Jean Pied de Port and Cambo. There watching the issues from the Val de Baygorry he was ready to occupy the Ursouia mountain on the right of the Nive, or, moving by Cambo, to reinforce the great position on the left of that river according to circumstances.

To complete these immense entrenchments, which between the Nive and the sea were double and on an opening of sixteen miles, the whole army laboured incessantly, and all the resources of the country whether of materials or working men were called out by requisition. Nevertheless this defensive warfare was justly regarded by the duke of Dalmatia as unsuitable to the general state of affairs. Offensive operations were most consonant[276] to the character of the French soldiers, and to the exigencies of the time. Recent experience had shown the impregnable nature of the allies’ positions against a front attack, and he was too weak singly to change the theatre of operations. But when he looked at the strength of the armies appropriated by the emperor to the Spanish contest, he thought France would be ill-served if her generals could not resume the offensive successfully. Suchet had just proved his power at Ordal against lord William Bentinck, and that nobleman’s successor, with inferior rank and power, with an army unpaid and feeding on salt meat from the ships, with jealous and disputing colleagues amongst the Spanish generals, none of whom were willing to act cordially with him upon a fixed and well-considered plan, was in no condition to menace the French seriously. And that he was permitted at this important crisis to paralyze from fifty to sixty thousand excellent French troops possessing all the strong places of the country, was one of the most singular errors of the war.

Exclusive of national guards and detachments of the line, disposed along the whole frontier to guard the passes of the Pyrenees against sudden marauding excursions, the French armies counted at this time about one hundred and seventy thousand men and seventeen thousand horses. Of these one hundredAppendix 8, sect. 2. and thirty-eight thousand were present under arms, and thirty thousand conscripts were in march to join them. They held all the fortresses of Valencia and Catalonia, and most of those in Aragon Navarre and Guipuscoa, and they could unite behind the Pyrenees for a combined effort in safety. Lord Wellington could not, including the Anglo-Sicilians[277] and all the Spaniards in arms on the eastern coast, bring into line one hundred and fifty thousand men; he had several sieges on his hands, and to unite his forces at any point required great dispositions to avoid an attack during a flank march. Suchet had above thirty thousand disposable men, he could increase them to forty thousand by relinquishing some unimportant posts, his means in artillery were immense, and distributed in all his strong places, so that he could furnish himself from almost any point. It is no exaggeration therefore to say that two hundred pieces of artillery and ninety thousand old soldiers might have united at this period upon the flank of lord Wellington, still leaving thirty thousand conscripts and the national guards of the frontier, supported by the fortresses and entrenched camps of Bayonne and St. Jean Pied de Port, the castles of Navarens and Jaca on one side, and the numerous garrisons of the fortresses in Catalonia on the other, to cover France from invasion.

To make this great power bear in a right direction was the duke of Dalmatia’s object, and his plans were large, and worthy of his reputation. Yet he could never persuade Suchet to adopt his projects, and that marshal’s resistance would appear to have sprung from personal dislike contracted during Soult’s sojourn near Valencia in 1812. It has been already shown how lightly he abandoned Aragon and confined himself to Catalonia after quitting Valencia. He did not indeed then know that Soult had assumed the command of the army of Spain and was preparing for his great effort to relieve Pampeluna; but he was aware that Clauzel and Paris were on the side of Jaca, and[278] he was too good a general not to know that operating on the allies’ flank was the best mode of palliating the defeat of Vittoria. He might have saved both his garrison and castle of Zaragoza; the guns and other materials of a very large field-artillery equipment were deposited there, and from thence, by Jaca, he could have opened a sure and short communication with Soult, obtained information of that general’s projects, and saved Pampeluna.

It may be asked why the duke of Dalmatia did not endeavour to communicate with Suchet. The reason was simple. The former quitted Dresden suddenly on the 4th of July, reached Bayonne the 12th, and on the 20th his troops were in full march towards St. Jean Pied de Port, and it was during this very rapid journey that the other marshal abandoned Valencia. Soult therefore knew neither Suchet’s plans nor the force of his army, nor his movements, nor his actual position, and there was no time to wait for accurate information. However between the 6th and the 16th of August, that is to say, immediately after his own retreat from Sauroren, he earnestly prayed that the army of Aragon should march upon Zaragoza, open a communication by Jaca, and thus drawing off some of Wellington’s forces facilitate the efforts of the army of Spain to relieve San Sebastian. In this communication he stated, that his recent operations had caused troops actually in march under general Hill towards Catalonia to be recalled. This was an error. His emissaries were deceived by the movements, and counter-movements in pursuit of Clauzel immediately after the battle of Vittoria, and by the change in Wellington’s plans as to the siege of[279] Pampeluna. No troops were sent towards Catalonia, but it is remarkable that Picton, Hill, Graham, and the Conde de La Bispal were all mentioned, in this correspondence between Soult and Suchet, as being actually in Catalonia, or on the march, the three first having been really sounded as to taking the command in that quarter, and the last having demanded it himself.

Suchet treated Soult’s proposal as chimerical. His movable troops he said did not exceed eleven thousand, and a march upon Zaragoza with so few men would be to renew the disaster of Baylen, unless he could fly into France by Venasque where he had a garrison. An extraordinary view of affairs which he supported by statements still more extraordinary!

“General Hill had joined lord William Bentinck with twenty-four thousand men.” “La Bispal had arrived with fifteen thousand.” “There were more than two hundred thousand men on the Ebro.” “The Spanish insurrection was general and strongly organized.” “He had recovered the garrison of Taragona and destroyed the works, and he must revictual Barcelona and then withdraw to the vicinity of Gerona and remain on the defensive”!

This letter was written on the 23d of August, when lord William Bentinck had just retreated from the Gaya into the mountains above Hospitalet. The imperial muster-rolls prove that the two armies of Catalonia and Aragon, both under his command,Appendix 8, Sect. 2. exceeded sixty-five thousand men, fifty-six thousand being present under arms. Thirty thousand were united in the field when he received Soult’s letter. There was nothing to prevent him marching upon Tortoza, except lord William Bentinck’s[280] army which had just acknowledged by a retreat its inability to cope with him; there was nothing at all to prevent him marching to Lerida. The count of Bispal had thrown up his command from bad health, leaving his troops under Giron on the Echallar mountains. Sir Rowland Hill was at Roncesvalles, and not a man had moved from Wellington’s army. Elio and Roche were near Valencia in a starving condition. The Anglo-Sicilian troops only fourteen thousand strong including Whittingham’s division, were on the barren mountains above Hospitalet, where no Spanish army could remain; Del Parque’s troops and Sarzfield’s division had gone over the Ebro, and Copons’ Catalans had taken refuge in the mountains of Cervera. In fine not two hundred thousand but less than thirty-five thousand men, half-organized ill-fed and scattered from Vich to Vinaros were opposed to Suchet; and their generals had different views and different lines of operations. The Anglo-Sicilians could not abandon the coast, Copons could not abandon the mountains. Del Parque’s troops soon afterwards marched to Navarre, and to use lord Wellington’s phrase there was nothing to prevent Suchet “tumbling lord William Bentinck back even to the Xucar.” The true nature of the great insurrection which the French general pretended to dread shall be shown when the political condition of Spain is treated of.

Suchet’s errors respecting the allies were easily detected by Soult, those touching the French in Catalonia he could not suspect and acquiesced in the objections to his first plan; but fertile of resource he immediately proposed another, akin to that which he had urged Joseph to adopt in 1812[281] after the battle of Salamanca, namely, to change the theatre of war. The fortresses in Spain would he said, inevitably fall before the allies in succession if the French armies remained on the defensive, and the only mode of rendering offensive operations successful was a general concentration of means and unity of action. The levy of conscripts under an imperial decree, issued in August, would furnish, in conjunction with the depôts of the interior, a reinforcement of forty thousand men. Ten thousand would form a sufficient corps of observation about Gerona. The armies of Aragon and Catalonia could, he hoped, by sacrificing some posts produce twenty thousand infantry in the field. The imperial muster-rolls prove that they could have produced forty thousand, but Soult misled by Suchet’s erroneous statements assumed only twenty thousand, and he calculated that he could himself bring thirty-five or forty thousand good infantry and all his cavalry to a given point of junction for the two bodies between Tarbes and Pau. Fifteen thousand of the remaining conscripts were also to be directed on that place, and thus seventy or seventy-five thousand infantry all the cavalry of both armies and one hundred guns, would be suddenly assembled, to thread the narrow pass of Jaca and descend upon Aragon. Once in that kingdom they could attack the allied troops in Navarre if the latter were dispersed, and if they were united retire upon Zaragoza, there to fix a solid base and deliver a general battle upon the new line of operations. Meanwhile the fifteen thousand unappropriated conscripts might reinforce the twenty or twenty-five thousand old soldiers left to cover Bayonne.

[282]

An army so great and strongly constituted appearing in Aragon would, Soult argued, necessarily raise the blockades of Pampeluna, Jaca, Fraga, and Monzon, the two last being now menaced by the bands, and it was probable that Tortoza and even Saguntum would be relieved. The great difficulty was to pass the guns by Jaca, yet he was resolved to try, even though he should convey them upon trucks to be made in Paris and sent by post to Pau. He anticipated no serious inconvenience from the union of the troops in France since Suchet had already declared his intention of retiring towards Gerona; and on the Bayonne side the army to be left there could dispute the entrenched line between Cambo and St. Jean de Luz. If driven from thence it could take a flanking position behind the Nive, the right resting upon the entrenched camp of Bayonne, the left upon the works at Cambo and holding communication by the fortified mountain of Ursouia with St. Jean Pied de Port. But there could be little fear for this secondary force when the great army was once in Aragon. That which he most dreaded was delay, because a fall of snow, always to be expected after the middle of October, would entirely close the pass of Jaca.

This proposition written the 2d of September, immediately after the battle of San Marcial, reached Suchet the 11th and was peremptorily rejected. If he withdrew from Catalonia discouragement, he said, would spread, desertion would commence, and France be immediately invaded by lord William Bentinck at the head of fifty thousand men. The pass of Jaca was impracticable and the power of man could not open it for carriages under[283] a year’s labour. His wish was to act on the defensive, but if an offensive movement was absolutely necessary, he offered a counter-project; that is, he would first make the English in his front re-embark at Taragona, or he would drive them over the Ebro and then march with one hundred guns and thirty thousand men by Lerida to the Gallego river near Zaragoza. Soult’s army, coming by Jaca without guns, might there meet him, and the united forces could then do what was fitting. But to effect this he required a reinforcement of conscripts, and to have Paris’s division and the artillery-men and draft horses of Soult’s army sent to Catalonia; he demanded also that two thousand bullocks for the subsistence of his troops should be provided to meet him on the Gallego. Then touching upon the difficulties of the road from Sanguessa to Pampeluna, he declared, that after forcing Wellington across the Ebro, he would return to Catalonia to revictual his fortresses and prevent an invasion of France. This plan he judged far less dangerous than Soult’s, yet he enlarged upon its difficulties and its dangers if the combined movements were not exactly executed. In fine, he continued, “The French armies are entangled amongst rocks, and the emperor should direct a third army upon Spain, to act between the Pyrenees and the Ebro in the centre, while the army of Spain sixty thousand strong and that of Aragon thirty thousand strong operate on the flanks. Thus the reputation of the English army, too easily acquired at Salamanca and Vittoria, will be abated.”

This illiberal remark combined with the defects of his project, proves that the duke of Albufera[284] was far below the duke of Dalmatia’s standard both in magnanimity and in capacity. The one giving his adversary just praise, thought the force already supplied by the emperor sufficient to dispute for victory; the other, with an unseemly boast, desired overwhelming numbers.

Soult’s letter reached Suchet the day before the combat of Ordal, and in pursuance of his own plan he should have driven lord William Bentinck over the Ebro, as he could well have done, because the Catalan troops there separated from the Anglo-Sicilians. In his former letters he had estimated the enemies in his front at two hundred thousand fighting men, and affirmed that his own disposable force was only eleven thousand, giving that as a reason why he could not march to Aragon. Now, forgetful of his previous objections and estimates, he admitted that he had thirty thousand disposable troops, and proposed the very movement which he had rejected as madness when suggested by the duke of Dalmatia. And the futility of his arguments relative to the general discouragement, the desertion of his soldiers, and the temptation to an invasion of France if he adopted Soult’s plan, is apparent; for these things could only happen on the supposition that he was retreating from weakness, a notion which would have effectually covered the real design until the great movement in advance should change the public opinion. Soult’s plan was surer better imagined and grander than his; it was less dangerous in the event of failure and more conformable to military principles. Suchet’s project involved double lines of operation without any sure communications, and consequently without any certainty of just co-operation;[285] his point of junction was within the enemy’s power, and the principal army was to be deprived of its artillery. There was no solidity in this design; a failure would have left no resource. But in Soult’s project the armies were to be united at a point beyond the enemy’s reach, and to operate afterwards in mass with all arms complete, which was conformable to the principles of war. Suchet indeed averred the impracticability of moving the guns by Jaca, yet Soult’s counter-opinion claims more respect. Clauzel and Paris who had lately passed with troops through that defile were in his camp, he had besides made very exact inquiries of the country people, had caused the civil engineers of roads and bridges on the frontiers to examine the route, and from their reports he judged the difficulty to be not insurmountable.

Neither the inconsistency, nor the exaggerations of Suchet’s statements, escaped Soult’s observation, but anxious to effect something while Pampeluna still held out, and the season permitted operations in the mountains he frankly accepted the other’s modification, and adopted every stipulation, save that of sending the artillery-men and horses of his army to Catalonia which he considered dangerous. Moreover he doubted not to pass his own guns by Jaca. The preparations for this great movement were therefore immediately commenced, and Suchet on his part seemed equally earnest although he complained of increasing difficulties, pretended that Longa’s and Morillo’s divisions had arrived in Catalonia, that general Graham was also in march with troops to that quarter, and deplored the loss of Fraga from whence the Empecinado had just driven his garrison. This post commanded indeed[286] a bridge over the Cinca a river lying in his way and dangerous from its sudden and great floods but he still possessed the bridge of Monzon.

During this correspondence between the French marshals, Napoleon remained silent, yet at a later period he expressed his discontent at Suchet’s inactivity, and indirectly approved of Soult’s plans by recommending a movement towards Zaragoza which Suchet however did not execute. It would appear that the emperor having given all the reinforcements he could spare, and full powers to both marshals to act as they judged fitting for his service, would not, at a distance and while engaged in such vast operations as those he was carrying on at Dresden, decide so important a question. The vigorous execution essential to success was not to be expected if either marshal acted under constraint and against his own opinion; Soult had adopted Suchet’s modification and it would have been unwise to substitute a new plan which would have probably displeased both commanders. Meanwhile Wellington passed the Bidassoa, and Suchet’s project was annulled by the approach of winter and by the further operations of the allies.

If the plan of uniting the two armies in Aragon had been happily achieved, it would certainly have forced Wellington to repass the Ebro or fight a great battle with an army much less strongly constituted than the French army. If he chose the latter, victory would have profited him little, because his enemy strong in cavalry could have easily retired on the fortresses of Catalonia. If he received a check he must have gone over the Ebro, perhaps back to Portugal, and the French would have recovered Aragon, Navarre,[287] and Valencia. It is not probable however that such a great operation could have been conducted without being discovered in time by Wellington. It has been already indicated in this History, that besides the ordinary spies and modes of gaining intelligence employed by all generals, he had secret emissaries amongst Joseph’s courtiers, and even amongst French officers of rank; and it has been shown that Soult vainly endeavoured to surprise him on the 31st of August when the combinations were only two days old. It is true that the retreat of Suchet from Catalonia and his junction with Soult in France at the moment when Napoleon was pressed in Germany, together with the known difficulty of passing guns by Jaca, would naturally have led to the belief that it was a movement of retreat and fear; nevertheless the secret must have been known to more than one person about each marshal, and the English general certainly had agents who were little suspected. Soult would however still have had the power of returning to his old positions, and, with his numbers increased by Suchet’s troops, could have repeated his former attack by the Roncesvalles. It might be that his secret design was thus to involve that marshal in his operations, and being disappointed he was not very eager to adopt the modified plan of the latter, which the approach of the bad season, and the menacing position of Wellington, rendered each day less promising. His own project was hardy, and dangerous for the allies, and well did it prove lord Wellington’s profound acquaintance with his art. For he had entered France only in compliance with the wishes of the allied sovereigns, and always watched closely for Suchet, averring that the true military line of[288] operations was towards Aragon and Catalonia. Being now however actually established in France, and the war in Germany having taken a favourable turn for the allies, he resolved to continue the operations on his actual front awaiting only the

FALL OF PAMPELUNA.

This event was produced by a long blockade,September. less fertile of incident than the siege of San Sebastian yet very honourable to the firmness of the governor general Cassan.

The town, containing fifteen thousand inhabitants, stood on a bold table-land on which a number of valleys opened, and where the great roads, coming from St. Jean Pied de Port, Sanguessa, Tudela, Estella, Vittoria, and Irurzun, were concentrated. The northern and eastern fronts of the fortress were covered by the Arga, and the defences there consisted of simple walls edging the perpendicular rocky bank of the river, but the other fronts were regularly fortified with ditches, covered way, and half-moons. Two bad unfinished outworks were constructed on the south front, but the citadel which stood on the south west was a regular pentagon, with bomb-proofs and magazines, vaulted barracks for a thousand men, and a complete system of mines.

Pampeluna had been partially blockaded by Mina for eighteen months previous to the battle of Vittoria, and when Joseph arrived after the action, the place was badly provisioned. The stragglers of his army increased the garrison to something more than three thousand five hundred men of all arms, who were immediately invested by the allies. Many of the inhabitants went off during the short[289] interval between the king’s arrival and departure, and general Cassan, finding his troops too few for action and yet too many for the food, abandoned the two outworks on the south, demolished everything which could interfere with his defence outside, and commenced such works as he deemed necessary to improve it inside. Moreover foreseeing that the French army might possibly make a sudden march without guns to succour the garrison, he prepared a field-train of forty pieces to meet the occasion.

It has been already shown that Wellington,July. although at first inclined to besiege Pampeluna, finally established a blockade and ordered works of contravallation to be constructed. Cassan’s chief object was then to obtain provisions, and on the 28th and 30th of June he sustained actions outside the place to cover his foragers. On the 1st of July he burned the suburb of Madalina, beyond the river Arga, and forced many inhabitants to quit the place before the blockaders’ works were completed. Skirmishes now occurred almost daily, the French always seeking to gather the grain, and vegetables which were ripe and abundant beyond the walls, and the allies endeavouring to set fire to the standing corn within range of the guns of the fortress.

On the 14th of July, O’Donnel’s Andalusians were permanently established as the blockading force, and the next day the garrison made a successful forage on the south side of the town. This operation was repeated towards the east beyond the Arga on the 19th, when a sharp engagement of cavalry took place, during which the remainder of the garrison carried away a great deal of corn.

The 26th the sound of Soult’s artillery reached the place, and Cassan, judging rightly that the[290] marshal was in march to succour Pampeluna, made a sally in the night by the Roncesvalles road; he was driven back, but the next morning he came out again with eleven hundred men and two guns, overthrew the Spanish outguards, and advanced towards Villalba at the moment when Picton was falling back with the third and fourth divisions. Then O’Donnel, as I have before related, evacuated some of the entrenchments, destroyed a great deal of ammunition, spiked a number of guns, and but for the timely arrival of Carlos D’España’s division, and the stand made by Picton at Huarte, would have abandoned the blockade altogether.

Soon the battle on the mountains of Oricain commenced, the smoke rose over the intervening heights of Escava and San Miguel, the French cavalry appeared on the slopes above El Cano, and the baggage of the allies was seen filing in the opposite direction by Berioplano along the road of Irurzun. The garrison thought deliverance sure, and having reaped a good harvest withdrew into the place. The bivouac fires of the French army cheered them during the night, and the next morning a fresh sally being made with the greatest confidence, a great deal of corn was gathered with little loss of men. Several deserters from the foreign regiments in the English service also came over with intelligence exaggerated and coloured after the manner of such men, and the French re-entered the place elated with hope; but in the evening the sound of the conflict ceased and the silence of the next day shewed that the battle was not to the advantage of Soult. However the governor losing no time made another sally and again obtained provisions from the south side.

[291]

The 30th the battle recommenced but the retreating fire of the French told how the conflict was decided and the spirit of the soldiers fell. Nevertheless their indefatigable officers led another sally on the south side, whence they carried off grain and some ammunition which had been left in one of the abandoned outworks.

On the 31st Carlos D’España’s troops and two thousand of O’Donnel’s Andalusians, in all about seven thousand men, resumed the blockade, and maintained it until the middle of September, whenSeptember. the Prince of Anglona’s division of Del Parque’s army, relieved the Andalusians who rejoined their own corps near Echallar. The allies’ works of contravallation were now augmented, and when Paris retired into France from Jaca, part of Mina’s troops occupied the valleys leading from the side of Sanguessa to Pampeluna and made entrenchments to bar the escape of the garrison that way.

In October Cassan put his fighting men upon rations of horse-flesh, four ounces to each, with some rice, and he turned more families out of the town, but this time they were fired upon by their countrymen and forced to re-enter.

On the 9th of September baron Maucune, who had conducted most of the sallies during the blockade, attacked and carried some fortified houses on the east side of the place; he was immediately assailed by the Spanish cavalry, but he beat them and pursued the fugitives close to Villalba. Carlos D’España then advanced to their aid in person with a greater body and the French were driven in with the loss of eighty men, yet the Spaniards lost a far greater number, Carlos D’España himself was[292] wounded, and the garrison obtained some corn which was their principal object.

The soldiers were now feeding on rats and other disgusting animals; seeking also for roots beyond the walls many in their hunger poisoned themselves with hemlock, and a number of others unable to bear their misery deserted. In this state CassanOctober. made a general sally on the 10th of October, to ascertain the strength of the lines around him, with a view to breaking through, but after some fighting, his troops were driven in with the loss of seventy men and all hope of escape vanished. Yet he still spoke of attempting it, and the public manner in which he increased the mines under the citadel induced Wellington to reinforce the blockade, and to bring up his cavalry into the vicinity of Pampeluna.

The scurvy now invaded the garrison. One thousand men were sick, eight hundred had been wounded, the deaths by battle and disease exceeded four hundred, one hundred and twenty had deserted, and the governor moved by the great misery, offered on the 26th to surrender if he was allowed to retire into France with his troops and six pieces of cannon. This being refused he proposed to yield on condition of not serving for a year and a day, which being also denied, he broke off the negociation, giving out that he would blow up the works of the fortress and break through the blockade. To deter him a menacing letter was thrown to his outposts, and lord Wellington being informed of his design denounced it as contrary to the laws of war, and directed Carlos D’España to put him, all his officers and non-commissioned officers, and a tenth of the[293] soldiers to death when the place should be taken if any damage were done to the works.

Cassan’s object being merely to obtain better terms this order remained dormant, and happily so, for the execution would never have borne the test of public opinion. To destroy the works of Pampeluna and break through the blockading force, as Brennier did at Almeida, would have been a very noble exploit, and a useful one for the French army if Soult’s plan of changing the theatre of war by descending into Aragon had been followed. There could therefore be nothing contrary to the laws of war in a resolute action of that nature. On the other hand if the governor, having no chance whatever of success, made a hopeless attempt the pretence for destroying a great fortress belonging to the Spaniards and depriving the allies of the fruits of their long blockade and glorious battles, the conquerors might have justly exercised that severe but undoubted right of war, refusing quarter to an enemy. But lord Wellington’s letter to D’España involved another question, namely the putting of prisoners to death. For the soldiers could not be decimated until captured, and their crime would have been only obedience to orders in a matter of which they dared not judge. This would have been quite contrary to the usages of civilized nations, and the threat must undoubtedly be considered only as a device to save the works of Pampeluna and to avoid the odium of refusing quarter.

A few days longer the governor and garrison endured their distress and then capitulated, having defended themselves more than four months with great constancy. The officers and soldiers became prisoners of war. The first were allowed to keep[294] their arms and baggage, the second their knapsacks, expressly on the ground that they had treated the inhabitants well during the investment. This compliment was honourable to both sides, but there was another article, enforced by D’España without being accepted by the garrison, for which it is difficult to assign any motive but the vindictive ferocity of the Spanish character. No person of either sex was permitted to follow the French troops, and women’s affections were thus barbarously brought under the action of the sword.

There was no stronghold now retained by the French in the north of Spain except Santona, and as the blockade of that place had been exceedingly tedious, lord Wellington, whose sea communications were interrupted by the privateers from thence, formed a small British corps under lord Aylmer with a view to attack Laredo, which being on the opposite point of the harbour to Santona commanded the anchorage. Accidental circumstances however prevented this body from proceeding to its destination and Santona remained in the enemy’s possession. With this exception the contest in the northern parts of Spain was terminated and the south of France was now to be invaded; but it is fitting first to show with what great political labour Wellington brought the war to this state, what contemptible actions and sentiments, what a faithless alliance, and what vile governments his dazzling glory hid from the sight of the world.

Political state of Portugal. In this country the1813. national jealousy which had been compressed by the force of invasion expanded again with violence as danger receded, and the influence of England sunk precisely in the measure that her army assured the safety of Portugal. When Wellington crossed the Ebro, the Souza faction, always opposed in the council to the British policy, became elate; and those members of the government who had hitherto cherished the British ascendancy because it sustained them against the Brazilian court intrigues, now sought popularity by taking an opposite direction. Each person of the regency had his own line of opposition marked out. Noguera vexatiously resisted or suspended commercial and financial operations; the Principal Souza wrangled more fiercely and insolently at the council-board; the Patriarch fomented ill-will atMr. Stuart’s Correspondence, MSS. Lisbon and in the northern provinces; Forjas, ambitious to command the national troops, became the organ of discontent upon military matters. The return of the prince-regent, the treaty of commerce, the Oporto company, the privileges of the British factory merchants, the mode of paying the subsidy, the means of military transport, the convention with Spain relative to the supply of the Portuguese troops in that country, the recruiting,[296] the organization, the command of the national army, and the honours due to it, all furnished occasions for factious proceedings, which were conducted with the ignoble subtlety that invariably characterizes the politics of the Peninsula. Moreover the expenditure of the British army had been immense, the trade and commerce dependent upon it, now removed to the Spanish ports, enormous. Portugal had lived upon England. Her internal taxes carelessly or partially enforced were vexatious to the people without being profitable to the government. Nine-tenths of the revenue accrued from duties upon British trade, and the sudden cessation of markets and of employment, the absence of ready money, the loss of profit, public and private, occasioned by the departure of the army while the contributions and other exactions remained the same, galled all classes, and the whole nation was ready to shake off the burthen of gratitude.

In this state of feeling emissaries were employed to promulgate in various directions tales, some true some false, of the disorders perpetrated by the military detachments on the lines of communication, adding that they were the result of secret orders from Wellington to satisfy his personal hatred of Portugal! At the same time discourses and writings against the British influence abounded in Lisbon and at Rio Janeiro, and were re-echoed or surpassed by the London newspapers, whose statements overflowing of falsehood could be traced to the Portuguese embassy in that capital. It was asserted that England intending to retain her power in Portugal opposed the return of the prince-regent; that the war itself being removed[297] to the frontier of France was become wholly a Spanish cause; that it was not for Portugal to levy troops, and exhaust her resources to help a nation whose aggressions she must be called upon sooner or later to resist.

Mr. Stuart’s diplomatic intercourse with the government always difficult was now a continual remonstrance and dispute; his complaints were met with insolence or subterfuge, and illegal violence against the persons and property of British subjects was pushed so far, that Mr. Sloane, an English gentleman upon whom no suspicion rested, was cast into prison for three months because he had come to Lisbon without a passport. The rights of the English factory were invaded, and the Oporto company which had been established as its rival in violation of treaty was openly cherished. Irresponsible and rapacious, this pernicious company robbed every body, and the prince-regent promising either to reform or totally abolish it ordered a preparatory investigation, but to use the words of Mr. Stuart, the regency acted on the occasion no less unfairly by their sovereign than unjustly by their ally.

Especial privileges claimed by the factory merchants were another cause of disquiet. They pretended to exemption from certain taxes, and from billets, and that a fixed number of their clerks domestics and cattle should be exonerated of military service. These pretensions were disputed. The one touching servants and cattle, doubtful at best, had been grossly abused, and that relating to billets unfounded; but the taxes were justly resisted, and the merchants offered a voluntary contribution to the same amount. The government[298] rudely refused this offer, seized their property, imprisoned their persons, impressed their cattle to transport supplies that never reached the troops, and made soldiers of their clerks and servants without any intention of reinforcing the army. Mr. Stuart immediately deducted from the subsidy the amount of the property thus forcibly taken, and repaid the sufferers. The regency then commenced a dispute upon the fourth article of the treaty of commerce, and the prince, though he openly ordered it to be executed, secretly permitted count Funchal, his prime minister, to remain in London as ambassador until the disputes arising upon this treaty generally were arranged. Funchal who disliked to quit London took care to interpose many obstacles to a final decision, always advising delay under pretence of rendering ultimate concession of value in other negociations then depending.

When the battle of Vittoria became known, the regency proposed to entreat the return of the prince from the Brazils, hoping thereby to excite the opposition of Mr. Stuart; but when he, contrary to their expectations, approved of the proposal they deferred the execution. The British cabinet which had long neglected Wellington’s suggestions on this head, then pressed the matter at Rio Janeiro, and Funchal who had been at first averse now urged it warmly, fearing that if the prince remained he could no longer defer going to the Brazils. However few of the Portuguese nobles desired the return of the royal family, and when the thing was proposed to the regent he discovered no inclination for the voyage.

But the most important subject of discord was[299] the army. The absence of the sovereign and the intrigues which ruled the court of Rio Janeiro had virtually rendered the government at Lisbon an oligarchy without a leader, in other words, a government formed for mischief. The whole course of this history has shewn that all Wellington’s energy and ability, aided by the sagacity and firmness of Mr. Stuart and by the influence of England’s power and riches, were scarcely sufficient to meet the evils flowing from this foul source. Even while the French armies were menacing the capital the regency was split into factions, the financial resources were neglected or wasted, the public servants were insolent incapable and corrupt, the poorer people oppressed, and the military force for want of sustenance was at the end of 1812 on the point of dissolving together. The strenuous interference of the English general and envoy, seconded by the extraordinary exertions of the British officers in the Portuguese service, restored indeed the efficiency of the army, and in the campaign of 1813 the spirit of the troops was surpassing. Even the militia-men, who had been deprived of their colours and drafted into the line to punish their bad conduct at Guarda under general Trant in 1812, nobly regained their standards on the Pyrenees.

But this state of affairs acting upon the naturally sanguine temperament and vanity of the Portuguese, created a very exaggerated notion of their military prowess and importance, and withal aMr. Stuart’s Correspondence, MSS. morbid sensitiveness to praise or neglect. General Picton had thrown some slur upon the conduct of a regiment at Vittoria, and marshal Beresford complained[300] that full justice had not been done to their merits. The eulogiums passed in the English parliament and in the despatches upon the conduct of the British and Spanish troops, but not extended to the Portuguese, galled the whole nation, and the remarks and omissions of the London newspapers were as wormwood.

Meanwhile the regency, under pretext of a dispute with Spain relative to a breach of the military convention of supply, neglected the subsistence of the army altogether; and at the same time so many obstacles to the recruiting were raised, that the depôts, which ought to have furnished twelve thousand men to replace the losses sustained in the campaign, only contained four thousand, who were also without the means of taking the field. This matter became so serious that Beresford quitting the army in October came to Lisbon, to propose a new regulation which should disregard the exemptions claimed by the nobles the clergy and the English merchants for their servants and followers. On his arrival Forjas urged the public discontent at the political position of the Portuguese troops. They were, he said, generally incorporated with the British divisions, commanded by British officers, and having no distinct recognized existence their services were unnoticed and the glory of the country suffered. The world at large knew not how many men Portugal furnished for the war. It was known indeed that there were Portuguese soldiers, as it was known that there were Brunswickers and Hanoverians, but as a national army nothing was known of them; their exertions, their courage, only went to swell the general triumph of[301] England, while the Spaniards, inferior in numbers, and far inferior in all military qualities, were flattered, praised, thanked in the public despatches, in the English newspapers, and in the discourses and votes of the British parliament. He proposed therefore to have the Portuguese formed into a distinct army acting under lord Wellington.

It was objected that the brigades incorporated with the British divisions were fed by the British commissariat the cost being deducted from the subsidy, an advantage the loss of which the Portuguese could not sustain. Forjas rejoined that they could feed their own troops cheaper if the subsidy was paid in money, but Beresford referred him to his scanty means of transport, so scanty that the few stores they were then bound to furnish for the unattached brigades depending upon the Portuguese commissariat were not forwarded. Foiled on this point Forjas proposed gradually to withdraw the best brigades from the English divisions, to incorporate them with the unattached brigades of native troops and so form an auxiliary corps; but the same objection of transport still applied and this matter dropped for the moment. The regency then agreed to reduce the legal age of men liable to the conscription for the army, but the islands, which ought to have given three hundred men yearly, were exempt from their controul, and the governors supported by the prince-regent refused to permit any levies in their jurisdictions, and even granted asylums to all those who wished to avoid the levy in Portugal. In the islands also the persons so unjustly and cruelly imprisoned in 1810 were still kept in durance, although the regency yielding[302] to the persevering remonstrances of Mr. Stuart and lord Wellington had released those at Lisbon.

Soon after this Beresford desired to go to England, and the occasion was seized by Forjas to renew his complaints and his proposition for a separate army which he designed to command himself. General Sylveira’s claim to that honour was however supported by the Souzas, to whose faction he belonged, and the only matter in which all agreed was the display of ill-will towards England. Lord Wellington became indignant. The English newspapers, he said, did much mischief by their assertions, but he never suspected they could by their omissions alienate the Portuguese nation and government. The latter complained that their troops were not praised in parliament, nothing could be more different from a debate within the house than the representation of it in the newspapers. The latter seldom stated an event or transaction as it really occurred, unless when they absolutely copied what was written for them; and even then their observations branched out so far from the text, that they appeared absolutely incapable of understanding much less of stating the truth upon any subject. The Portuguese people should therefore be cautious of taking English newspapers as a test of the estimation in which the Portuguese army was held in England, where its character stood high and was rising daily. “Mr. Forjas is,” said lord Wellington, “the ablest man of business I have met with in the Peninsula, it is to be hoped he will not on such grounds have the folly to alter a successful military system. I understand something of the organization and feeding[303] of troops, and I assure him that separated from the British, the Portuguese army could not keep the field in a good state although their government were to incur ten times the expense under the actual system; and if they are not in a fitting state for the field they can gain no honour, they must suffer dishonour! The vexatious disputes with Spain are increasing daily, and if the omissions or assertions of newspapers are to be the causes of disagreement with the Portuguese I will quit the Peninsula for ever”!

This remonstrance being read to the regency, Forjas replied officially.

“The Portuguese government demanded nothing unreasonable. The happy campaign of 1813 was not to make it heedless of sacrifices beyond its means. It had a right to expect greater exertions from Spain, which was more interested than Portugal in the actual operations since the safety of the latter was obtained. Portugal only wanted a solid peace, she did not expect increase of territory, nor any advantage save the consideration and influence which the services and gallantry of her troops would give her amongst European nations, and which, unhappily, she would probably require in her future intercourse with Spain. The English prince-regent his ministers and his generals, had rendered full justice to her military services in the official reports, but that did not suffice to give them weight in Europe. Official reports did not remove this inconvenience. It was only the public expressions of the English prince and his ministers that could do justice. The Portuguese army was commanded by Marshal Beresford, Marquis of Campo Mayor. It ought always to be[304] so considered and thanked accordingly for its exploits, and with as much form and solemnity by the English parliament and general as was used towards the Spanish army. The more so that the Portuguese had sacrificed their national pride to the common good, whereas the Spanish pride had retarded the success of the cause and the liberty of Europe. It was necessary also to form good native generals to be of use after the war; but putting that question aside, it was only demanded to have the divisions separated by degrees and given to Portuguese officers. Nevertheless such grave objections being advanced they were willing, he said, to drop the matter altogether.”

The discontent however remained, for the argument had weight, and if any native officers’ reputation had been sufficient to make the proceeding plausible, the British officers would have been driven from the Portuguese service, the armies separated, and both ruined. As it was, the regency terminated the discussion from inability to succeed; from fear not from reason. The persons who pretended to the command were Forjas and Sylveira; but the English officers who were as yet well-liked by the troops, would not have served under the former, and Wellington objected strongly to the latter, having by experience discovered that he was an incapable officer seeking a base and pernicious popularity by encouraging the views of the soldiers. Beresford then relinquished his intention of going to England, and the justice of the complaint relative to the reputation of the Portuguese army being obvious, the general orders became more marked in favour of the troops. But the most effectual check to the project[305] of the regency was the significant intimation of Mr. Stuart, that England, being bound by no conditions in the payment of the subsidy, had a right if it was not applied in the manner most agreeable to her, to withdraw it altogether.

To have this subsidy in specie and to supply their own troops continued to be the cry of the regency, until their inability to effect the latter became at last so apparent that they gave the matter up in despair. Indeed Forjas was too able a man ever to have supposed, that the badly organized administration of Portugal, was capable of supporting an efficient army in the field five hundred miles from its own country; the real object was to shake off the British influence if possible without losing the subsidy. For the honour of the army or the welfare of the soldiers neither the regency nor the prince himself had any care. While the former were thus disputing for the command, they suffered their subordinates to ruin an establishment at Ruña, the only asylum in Portugal for mutilated soldiers, and turned the helpless veterans adrift. And the prince while he lavished honours upon the dependents and creatures of his court at Rio Janeiro, placed those officers whose fidelity and hard fighting had preserved his throne in Portugal at the bottom of the list, amongst the menial servants of the palace who were decorated with the same ribands! Honour, justice, humanity, were alike despised by the ruling men and lord Wellington thus expressed his strong disgust.

“The British army which I have the honour to command has met with nothing but ingratitude from the government and authorities in Portugal for their services, every thing that could be done has[306] been done by the civil authorities lately to oppress the officers and soldiers on every occasion in which it has by any accident been in their power. I hope however that we have seen the last of Portugal”!

Such were the relations of the Portuguese government with England, and with Spain they were not more friendly. Seven envoys from that country had succeeded each other at Lisbon in three years. The Portuguese regency dreaded the democratic opinions which had obtained ground in Spain, and the leading party in the Cortez were intent to spread those opinions over the whole Peninsula. The only bond of sympathy between the two governments was hatred of the English who had saved both. On all other points they differed. The exiled bishop of Orense, from his asylum on the frontier of Portugal, excited the Gallicians against the Cortez so vigorously, that his expulsion from Portugal, or at least his removal from the northern frontier, was specially demanded by the Spanish minister; but though a long and angry discussion followed the bishop was only civilly requested by the Portuguese government to abstain from acts disagreeable to the Spanish regency. The latter then demanded that he should be delivered up as a delinquent, whereupon the Portuguese quoted a decree of the Cortez which deprived the bishop of his rights as a Spanish citizen and denaturalized him. However he was removed twenty leagues from the frontier, nor was the Portuguese government itself quite free from ecclesiastic troubles. The bishop of Braganza preached doctrines which were offensive to the patriarch and the government; he was confined but soon released and an[307] ecclesiastical sentence pronounced against him, which only increased his followers and extended the influence of his doctrines.

Another cause of uneasiness, at a later period, was the return of Ballesteros from his exile at Ceuta. He had been permitted towards the end of 1813, and as lord Wellington thought with no good intent, to reside at Fregenal. The Portuguese regency, fearing that he would rally round him other discontented persons, set agents to watch his proceedings, and under pretence of putting down robbers who abounded on that frontier, established a line of cavalry and called out the militia, thus making it manifest that but a little was wanting to kindle a war between the two countries.

Political state of Spain. Lord Wellington’s victories had put an end to the intercourse between Joseph and the Spaniards who desired to make terms with the French; but those people not losing hope, formed a strong anti-English party and watched to profit by the disputes between the two great factions at Cadiz, which had now become most rancorous and dangerous to the common cause. The serviles extremely bigoted both in religion and politics had the whole body of the clergy on their side. They were the most numerous in the Cortez and their views were generally in accord with the feelings of the people beyond the Isla de Leon, although their doctrines were comprised in two sentences—An absolute king, An intolerant church. The liberals supported and instigated by all ardent innovators, by the commercial body and populace of Cadiz, had also partizans beyond the Isla; and taking as guides the[308] revolutionary writings of the French philosophers were hastening onwards to a democracy, without regard to ancient usages or feelings, and without practical ability to carry their theories into execution. There was also a fourth faction in the Cortez, formed by the American deputies, who were secretly labouring for the independence of the colonies; they sometimes joined the liberals, sometimes the serviles, as it suited their purposes, and thus often produced anomalous results, because they were numerous enough to turn the scale in favour of the side which they espoused. Jealousy of England was however common to all, and “Inglesismo” was used as a term of contempt. Posterity will scarcely believe, that when lord Wellington was commencing the campaign of 1813 the Cortez was with difficulty, and by threats rather than reason, prevented from passing a law forbidding foreign troops to enter a Spanish fortress. Alicant, Tarifa, Cadiz itself where they held their sittings, had been preserved; Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajos, had been retaken for them by British valour; English money had restored their broken walls and replenished their exhausted magazines; English and Portuguese blood still smoked from their ramparts; but the men from whose veins that blood had flowed, were to be denied entrance at gates which they could not approach, without treading on the bones of slaughtered comrades who had sacrificed their lives to procure for this sordid ungrateful assembly the power to offer the insult.

The subjection of the bishops and other clergy, who had in Gallicia openly opposed the abolition[309] of the inquisition and excited the people to resistance, was an object of prominent interest with an active section of the liberals called the Jacobins. And this section generally ruled the Cortez, because the Americanos leaned strongly towards their doctrines, and the interest of the anti-English, or French party, was to produce dissensions which could be best effected by supporting the most violent public men. A fierce and obstinate faction they were, and they compelled the churchmen to submit for the time, but not until the dispute became so serious that lord Wellington when in the Pyrenees expected a civil war on his communications, and thought the clergy and the peasantry would take part with the French. This notion which gives his measure for the patriotism of both parties, proved however unfounded; his extreme discontent at the progress of liberal doctrines had somewhat warped his judgment; the people were less attached to the church than he imagined, the clergy of Gallicia, meeting with no solid support, submitted to the Cortez, and the archbishop of Santiago fled to Portugal.

Deep unmitigated hatred of democracy was indeed the moving spring of the English tories’ policy. Napoleon was warred against, not as they pretended because he was a tyrant and usurper, for he was neither; not because his invasion of Spain was unjust, but because he was the powerful and successful enemy of aristocratic privileges. The happiness and independence of the Peninsula were words without meaning in their state-papers and speeches, and their anger and mortification were extreme when they found success against the[310] emperor had fostered that democracy it was their object to destroy. They were indeed only prevented by the superior prudence and sagacity of their general, from interfering with the internal government of Spain in so arrogant and injudicious a manner, that an open rupture wherein the Spaniards would have had all appearance of justice, must have ensued. This folly was however stifled by Wellington, who desired to wait until the blow could be given with some effect, and he was quite willing to deal it himself; yet the conduct of the Cortez, and that of the executive government which acted under its controul, was so injurious to Spain and to his military operations, and so unjust to him personally, that the warmest friends of freedom cannot blame his enmity. Rather should his moderation be admired, when we find his aristocratic hatred of the Spanish constitution exacerbated by a state of affairs thus described by Vegas, a considerable member of the Cortez and perfectly acquainted with the subject.

Speaking of the “Afrancesados” or French party, more numerous than was supposed and active to increase their numbers, he says, “The thingOriginal Letter, MSS. which they most enforced and which made most progress was the diminution of the English influence.” Amongst the serviles they gained proselytes, by objecting the English religion and constitution which restricted the power of the sovereign. With the liberals, they said the same constitution gave the sovereign too much power; and the Spanish constitution having brought the king’s authority under that of the Cortez was an object of jealousy to the English cabinet and aristocracy,[311] who, fearing the example would encourage the reformers of England, were resolved that the Spanish constitution should not stand. To the Americans they observed that lord Wellington opposed them, because he did not help them and permitted expeditions to be sent from Spain; but to the Europeans who wished to retain the colonies and exclude foreign trade, they represented the English as fomenters and sustainers of the colonial rebellion, because they did not join their forces with Spain to put it down. To the honest patriots of all parties they said, that every concession to the English general was an offence against the dignity and independence of the nation. If he was active in the field, he was intent to subjugate Spain rather than defeat the enemy; if he was careful in preparation, his delay was to enable the French to conquer; if he was vigorous in urging the government to useful measures, his design was to impose his own laws; if he neglected the Spanish armies, he desired they should be beaten; if he meddled with them usefully, it was to gain the soldiers turn the army against the country and thus render Spain dependent on England. And these perfidious insinuations were effectual because they flattered the national pride, as proving that the Spaniards could do every thing for themselves without the aid of foreigners. Finally that nothing could stop the spread of such dangerous doctrines but new victories, which would bring the simple honesty and gratitude of the people at large into activity. Those victories came and did indeed stifle the French party in Spain, but many of their arguments were too well founded to be stifled with their party.

[312]

The change of government which had place in the beginning of the year, gave hope that the democratic violence of the Cortez would decline under the control of the cardinal Bourbon; but that prince, who was not of true royal blood in the estimation of the Spaniards, because his father had married without the consent of the king, was from age, and infirmity, and ignorance, a nullity. The new regency became therefore more the slaves of the Cortez than their predecessors, and the Cadiz editors of newspapers, pre-eminent in falsehood and wickedness even amongst their unprincipled European brotherhood, being the champions of the Jacobins directed the populace of that city as they pleased. And always the serviles yielded under the dread of personal violence. Their own crimes had become their punishment. They had taught the people at the commencement of the contest that murder was patriotism, and now their spirit sunk and quailed, because at every step to use the terribly significant expression of Wellington, “The ghost of Solano was staring them in the face.”

The principal points of the Jacobins’ policy in support of their crude constitution, which they considered as perfect as an emanation from the Deity, were, 1º. The abolition of the Inquisition, the arrest and punishment of the Gallician bishops, and the consequent warfare with the clergy. 2º. The putting aside the claim of Carlotta to the regency. 3º. The appointment of captain-generals and other officers to suit their factious purposes. 4º. The obtaining of money for their necessities, without including therein the nourishment of the armies. 5º. The control of the elections for a new Cortez so as to procure an assembly of their own way of[313] thinking, or to prevent its assembling at the legal period in October.

The matter of the bishops as we have seen nearly involved them in a national war with Portugal, and a civil war with Gallicia. The affair of the princess was less serious, but she had never ceased intriguing, and her pretensions, wisely opposed by the British ministers and general while the army was cooped up in Portugal, were, although she was a declared enemy to the English alliance, now rather favoured by sir Henry Wellesley as a mode of checking the spread of democracy. Lord Wellington however still held aloof, observing that if appointed according to the constitution, she would not be less a slave to the Cortez than her predecessors, and England would have the discredit of giving power to the “worst woman in existence.”

To remove the seat of government from the influence of the Cadiz populace was one mode of abating the power of the democratic party, and the yellow fever, coming immediately after the closing of the general Cortez in September, had apparently given the executive government some freedom of action, and seemed to furnish a favourable opportunity for the English ambassador to effect its removal. The regency, dreading the epidemic, suddenly resolved to proceed to Madrid, telling sir Henry Wellesley, who joyfully hastened to offer pecuniary aid, that to avoid the sickness was their sole motive. They had secretly formed this resolution at night and proposed to commence the journey next day, but a disturbance arose in the city and the alarmed regents convoked the extraordinary Cortez; the ministers were immediately called before it and bending in fear before their masters, declared[314] with a scandalous disregard of truth, that there was no intention to quit the Isla without consulting the Cortez. Certain deputies were thereupon appointedAppendix, No. 2. to inquire if there was any fever, and a few cases being discovered, the deputation, apparently to shield the regents, recommended that they should remove to Port St. Mary.

This did not satisfy the assembly. The government was commanded to remain at Cadiz until the new general Cortez should be installed, and a committee was appointed to probe the whole affair or rather to pacify the populace, who were so offended with the report of the first deputation, that the speech of Arguelles on presenting it was hissed from the galleries, although he was the most popular and eloquent member of the Cortez. The more moderate liberals thus discovered that they were equally with the serviles the slaves of the newspaper writers. Nevertheless the inherent excellence of freedom, though here presented in such fantastic and ignoble shapes, was involuntarily admitted by lord Wellington when he declared, that wherever the Cortez and government should fix themselves the press would follow to control, and the people of Seville, Granada, or Madrid, would become as bad as the people of Cadiz.

The composition of the new Cortez was naturally an object of hope and fear to all factions, and the result being uncertain, the existing assembly took such measures to prolong its own power that it was expected two Cortez would be established, the one at Cadiz, the other at Seville, each striving for mastery in the nation. However the new body after many delays was installed at Cadiz in November, and the Jacobins, strong in the violence of the[315] populace, still swayed the assembly, and kept the seat of government at Cadiz until the rapid spread of the fever brought a stronger fear into action. Then the resolution to repair to Madrid was adopted, and the sessions in the Isla closed on the 29th of November. Yet not without troubles. For the general belief being, that no person could take the sickness twice, and almost every resident family had already suffered from former visitations, the merchants with an infamous cupidity declaring thatAppendix, No. 2. there was no fever, induced the authorities flagitiously to issue clean bills of health to ships leaving the port, and endeavoured by intimidation to keep the regency and Cortez in the city.

An exact and copious account of these factions and disputes, and of the permanent influence which these discussions of the principles of government, this constant collision of opposite doctrines, had upon the character of the people, would, if sagaciously traced, form a lesson of the highest interest for nations. But to treat the subject largely would be to write a political history of the Spanish revolution, and it is only the effect upon the military operations which properly appertains to a history of the war. That effect was one of unmitigated evil, but it must be observed that this did not necessarily spring from the democratic system, since precisely the same mischiefs were to be traced in Portugal, where arbitrary power, called legitimate government, was prevalent. In both cases alike, the people and the soldiers suffered for the crimes of factious politicians.

It has been shewn in a former volume, that one Spanish regency contracted an engagement with lord Wellington on the faith of which he took the[316] command of their armies in 1813. It was scrupulously adhered to by him, but systematically violated by the new regency and minister of war, almost as soon as it was concluded. His recommendations for promotion after Vittoria were disregarded, orders were sent direct to the subordinate generals, and changes were made in the commands and in the destinations of the troops without his concurrence, and without passing through him as generalissimo. Scarcely had he crossed the Ebro when Castaños, captain-general of Gallicia, Estremadura, and Castile, was disgracefully removed from his government under pretence of calling him to assist in the council of state. His nephew general Giron was at the same time deprived of his command over the Gallician army, although both he and Castaños had been largely commended for their conduct by lord Wellington. General Frere, appointed captain-general of Castile and Estremadura, succeeded Giron in command of the troops, and the infamous Lacy replaced Castaños in Gallicia, chosen, it was believed, as a fitter tool to work out the measures of the Jacobins against the clergy in that kingdom. Nor was the sagacity of that faction at fault, for Castaños would, according to lord Wellington, have turned his arms against the Cortez if an opportunity had offered. He and others were now menaced with death, and the Cortez contemplated an attack upon the tithes, upon the feudal and royal tenths, and upon the estates of the grandees. All except the last very fitting to do if the times and circumstances had been favourable for a peaceful arrangement; but most insane when the nation generally was averse, and there was an invader in the country to whom the discontented[317] could turn. The clergy were at open warfare with the government, many generals were dissatisfied, and menacing in their communications with the superior civil authorities, the soldiers were starving and the people tired of their miseries only desired to get rid of the invaders, and to avoid the burthen of supplying the troops of either side. The English cabinet, after having gorged Spain with gold and flattery was totally without influence. A terrible convulsion was at hand if the French could have maintained the war with any vigour in Spain itself; and the following passages, from Wellington’s letters to the ministers, prove, that even he contemplated a forcible change in the government and constitution.

“If the mob of Cadiz begin to remove heads from shoulders as the newspapers have threatened Castaños, and the assembly seize upon landed property to supply their necessities, I am afraid we must do something more than discountenance them.”—“It is quite impossible such a system can last. What I regret is that I am the person that maintains it. If I was out of the way there are plenty of generals who would overturn it. Ballesteros positively intended it, and I am much mistaken if O’Donnel and even Castaños, and probably others are not equally ready. If the king should return he also will overturn the whole fabric if he has any spirit.”—“I wish you would let me know whether if I should find a fair opportunity of striking at the democracy the government would approve of my doing it.” And in another letter he seriously treated the question of withdrawing from the contest altogether. “The government were the best judges,” he said, “of whether they could[318] or ought to withdraw,” but he did not believe that Spain could be a useful ally, or at all in alliance with England, if the republican system was not put down. Meanwhile he recommended to the English government and to his brother, to take no part either for or against the princess of Brazil, to discountenance the democratical principles and measures of the Cortez, and if their opinion was asked regarding the formation of a new regency, to recommend an alteration of that part of the constitution which lodged all power with the Cortez, and to give instead, some authority to the executive government whether in the hands of king or regent. To fill the latter office one of royal blood uniting the strongest claims of birth with the best capacity should he thought be selected, but if capacity was wanting in the royal race then to choose the Spaniard who was most deserving in the public estimation! Thus necessity teaches privilege to bend before merit.

The whole force of Spain in arms was at this period about one hundred and sixty thousand men. Of this number not more than fifty thousand were available for operations in the field, and those only because they were paid clothed and armed by England, and kept together by the ability and vigour of the English general. He had proposed when at Cadiz an arrangement for the civil and political government of the provinces rescued from the French, with a view to the supply of the armies, but his plan was rejected and his repeated representations of the misery the army and the people endured under the system of the Spanish government were unheeded. Certain districts were allotted for the support of each army, yet, with a jealous fear[319] of military domination, the government refused the captain-generals of those districts the necessary powers to draw forth the resources of the country, powers which lord Wellington recommended that they should have, and wanting which the whole system was sure to become a nullity. Each branch of administration was thus conductedLetter to the Spanish minister of war, 30th Aug. 1813. by chiefs independent in their attributes, yet each too restricted in authority, generally at variance with one another, and all of them neglectful of their duty. The evil effect upon the troops was thus described by the English general as early as August.

“More than half of Spain has been cleared of the enemy above a year, and the whole of Spain excepting Catalonia and a small part of Aragon since the months of May and June last. The most abundant harvest has been reaped in all parts of the country; millions of money spent by the contending armies are circulating every where, and yet your armies however weak in numbers are literally starving. The allied British and Portuguese armies under my command have been subsisted, particularly latterly, almost exclusively upon the magazines imported by sea, and I am concerned to inform your excellency, that besides money for the pay of all the armies, which has been given from the military chest of the British army and has been received from no other quarter, the British magazines have supplied quantities of provisions to all the Spanish armies in order to enable them to remain in the field at all. And notwithstanding this assistance I have had the mortification of seeing the Spanish troops on the outposts, obliged to[320] plunder the nut and apple-trees for subsistence, and to know that the Spanish troops, employed in the blockade of Pampeluna and Santona, were starving upon half an allowance of bread, while the enemy whom they were blockading were at the same time receiving their full allowance. The system then is insufficient to procure supplies for the army and at the same time I assure your excellency that it is the most oppressive and injurious to the country that could be devised. It cannot be pretended that the country does not produce the means of maintaining the men necessary for its defence; those means are undoubtedly superabundant, and the enemy has proved that armies can be maintained in Spain, at the expense of the Spanish nation, infinitely larger than are necessary for its defence.”

These evils he attributed to the incapacity of the public servants, and to their overwhelming numbers, that certain sign of an unprosperous state; to the disgraceful negligence and disregard of public duties, and to there being no power in the country for enforcing the law; the collection of the revenue cost in several branches seventy and eighty per cent. Meanwhile no Spanish officers capable of commanding a large body of troops or keeping it in an efficient state had yet appeared, no efficient staff, no system of military administration had been formed, and no shame for these deficiencies, no exertions to amend were visible.

From this picture two conclusions are to be drawn, 1º. that the provinces, thus described as superabounding in resources, having been for several years occupied by the French armies, the warfare of the latter could not have been so devastating[321] and barbarous as it was represented. 2º. That Spain, being now towards the end as helpless as she had been at the beginning and all through the war, was quite unequal to her own deliverance either by arms or policy; that it was English valour English steel, directed by the genius of an English general, which rising superior to all obstacles, whether presented by his own or the peninsular governments or by the perversity of national character, worked out her independence. So utterly inefficient were the Spaniards themselves, that now, at the end of six years’ war, lord Wellington declared thirty thousand of their troops could not be trusted to act separately; they were only useful when mixed in the line with larger numbers of other nations. And yet all men in authority to the lowest alcalde were as presumptuous as arrogant and as perverse as ever. Seeming to be rendered callous to public misery by the desperate state of affairs, they were reckless of the consequences of their actions and never suffered prudential considerations or national honour to check the execution of any project. The generals from repeated failures had become insensible to misfortunes, and without any remarkable display of personal daring, were always ready to deliver battle on slight occasions, as if that were a common matter instead of being the great event of war.

The government agents were corrupt, and the government itself was as it had ever been tyrannical faithless mean and equivocating to the lowest degree. In 1812 a Spaniard of known and active patriotism thus commenced an elaborate plan of defence for the provinces. “Catalonia abhors France as her oppressor but she abhors still more the[322] despotism which has been carried on in all the branches of her administration since the beginning of the war.” In fine there was no healthy action in any part of the body politic, every thing was rotten except the hearts of the poorer people. Even at Cadiz Spanish writers compared the state to a vessel in a hurricane without captain, pilot, compass, chart sails or rudder, and advised the crew to cry to heaven as their sole resource. But they only blasphemed.

When Wellington, indignant at the systematic breach of his engagement, remonstrated, he was answered that the actual regency did not hold itself bound by the contracts of the former government. Hence it was plain no considerations of truth, for they had themselves also accepted the contract, nor of honest policy, nor the usages of civilized states with respect to national faith, had any influence on their conduct. Enraged at this scandalous subterfuge, he was yet conscious how essential it was he should retain his command. And seeing all Spanish generals more or less engaged in political intrigues, none capable of co-operating with him, and that no Spanish army could possibly subsist as a military body under the neglect and bad arrangement of the Spanish authorities, conscious also that public opinion in Spain would, better than the menaces of the English government, enable him to obtain a counterpoise to the democratic party, he tendered indeed his resignation if the government engagement was not fulfilled, but earnestly endeavoured by a due mixture of mildness argument and reproof to reduce the ruling authorities to reason. Nevertheless there were, he told them, limits to his forbearance to his submission[323] under injury, and he had been already most unworthily treated, even as a gentleman, by the Spanish government.

From the world these quarrels were covered by an appearance of the utmost respect and honour. He was made a grandee of the first class, and the estate of Soto de Roma in Grenada, of which the much-maligned and miserable Prince of Peace had been despoiled, was settled upon him. He accepted the gift, but, as he had before done with his Portuguese and Spanish pay, transferred the proceeds to the public treasury during the war. The regents however, under the pressure of the Jacobins, and apparently bearing some personal enmity, although one of them, Ciscar, had been instrumental in procuring him the command of the Spanish army, were now intent to drive him from it; and the excesses committed at San Sebastian served their factious writers as a topic for exciting the people not only to demand his resignation, but to commence a warfare of assassination against the British soldiers. Moreover, combining extreme folly with wickedness, they pretended amongst other absurdities that the nobility had offered, if he would change his religion, to make him king of Spain. This tale was eagerly adopted by the English newspapers, and three Spanish grandees thought it necessary to declare that they were not among the nobles who made the proposition. His resignation was accepted in the latter end of September, and he held the command only until the assembling of the new Cortez, but the attempt to render him odious failed even at Cadiz, owing chiefly to the personal ascendancy which all great minds so surely attain over[324] the masses in troubled times. Both the people and the soldiers respected him more than they did their own government, and the Spanish officers had generally yielded as ready obedience to his wishes before he was appointed generalissimo, as they did to his orders when holding that high office. It was this ascendancy which enabled him to maintain the war with such troublesome allies; and yet so little were the English ministers capable of appreciating its importance, that after the battle of Vittoria they entertained the design of removing him from Spain to take part in the German operations. His answer was short and modest, but full of wisdom.

“Many might be found to conduct matters as well as I can both here and in Germany, but nobody would enjoy the same advantages here, and I should be no better than another in Germany.”

The egregious folly which dictated this proposition was thus checked, and in December the new Cortez decided that he should retain the command of the armies and the regency be bound to fulfil its predecessor’s engagements. Nevertheless so deeply had he been offended by the libels relative to San Sebastian that a private letter to his brother terminated thus:—“It will rest with the king’s government to determine what they will do upon a consideration of all the circumstances of the case, but if I was to decide I would not keep the army in Spain for one hour.” And to many other persons at different times he expressed his fears and conviction that the cause was lost and that he should fail at last. It was under these, and other enormous difficulties he carried on his military operations. It was with an enemy at his back more to be dreaded than[325] the foe in his front that he invaded the south of France; and that is the answer to those French writers who have described him as being at the head of more than two hundred thousand well-furnished soldiers, supported by a well-organized insurrection of the Spanish people, unembarrassed in his movements, and luxuriously rioting in all the resources of the Peninsula and of England.

CHAPTER I.

WAR IN THE SOUTH OF FRANCE.

While Pampeluna held out, Soult laboured to1813. November. complete his works of defence, especially the entrenched camp of St. Jean Pied de Port, that he might be free to change the theatre of war to Aragon. He pretended to entertain this project as late as November; but he must have secretly renounced all hope before that period, because the snows of an early and severe winter had rendered even the passes of the Lower Pyrenees impracticable in October. Meanwhile his political difficulties were not less than lord Wellington’s, all his efforts to draw forth the resources of France were met with apathy, or secret hostility, and there was no money in the military chest to answer the common daily expenses. A junta of the leading merchants in Bayonne voluntarily provided for the most pressing necessities of the troops, but their means were limited and Soult vainly urged the merchants of Bordeaux and Toulouse to follow the patriotic example. It required therefore all his firmness of character to support the crisis; and if the English naval force had been sufficient to intercept the coasting vessels between Bordeaux and[327] Bayonne, the French army must have retired beyond the Adour. As it was, the greatest part of the field artillery and all the cavalry were sent so far to the rear for forage, that they could not be counted a part of the fighting troops; and the infantry, in addition to their immense labours, were forced to carry their own provisions from the navigable points of the rivers to the top of the mountains.

Soult was strongly affected. “Tell the emperor,” he wrote to the minister of war, “tell him when you make your next report that on the very soil of France, this is the situation of the army destined to defend the southern provinces from invasion; tell him also that the unheard-of contradictions and obstacles I meet with shall not make me fail in my duty.”

The French troops suffered much, but the privations of the allies were perhaps greater, for being on higher mountains, more extended, more dependent upon the sea, their distress was in proportion to their distance from the coast. A much shorter line had been indeed gained for the supply of the centre, and a bridge was laid down at Andarlassa which gave access to the roots of the Bayonette mountain, yet the troops were fed with difficulty; and so scantily, that lord Wellington in amends reduced the usual stoppage of pay, and invoked the army by its military honour to sustain with firmness the unavoidable pressure. The effect was striking. The murmurs, loud in the camps before, were hushed instantly, although the soldiers knew that some commissaries leaguing with the speculators upon the coast, secretly loaded the provision mules with condiments and other luxuries, to sell on the mountains at enormous profit. The desertion was[328] however great, more than twelve hundred men went over to the enemy in less than four months; and they were all Germans, Englishmen or Spaniards, for the Portuguese who abandoned their colours invariably went back to their own country.

This difficulty of feeding the Anglo-Portuguese, the extreme distress of the Spaniards and the certainty that they would plunder in France and so raise the people in arms, together with the uneasy state of the political affairs in the Peninsula, rendered lord Wellington very averse to further offensive operations while Napoleon so tenaciously maintained his positions on the Elbe against the allied sovereigns. It was impossible to make a formidable and sustained invasion of France with the Anglo-Portuguese alone, and he had neither money nor means of transport to feed the Spaniards, even if policy warranted such a measure. The nature of the country also forbad a decisive victory, and hence an advance was attended with the risk of returning to Spain again during the winter, when a retreat would be dangerous and dishonouring. But on the 20th of October a letter from the governor of Pampeluna was intercepted, and lord Fitzroy Somerset, observing that the compliment of ceremony at the beginning was also in numerals, ingeniously followed the cue and made out the whole. It announced that the place could not hold out more than a week, and as intelligence of Napoleon’s disasters in Germany became known at the same time, lord Wellington was induced to yield once more to the wishes of the allied sovereigns and the English ministers, who were earnest that he should invade France.

His intent was to attack Soult’s entrenched camp[329] on the 29th, thinking Pampeluna would fall before that period. In this he was mistaken; and bad weather stopped his movements, for in the passes above Roncesvalles the troops were knee-deep in snow. The preparations however continued and strict precautions were taken to baffle the enemy’s emissaries. Soult was nevertheless perfectly informed by the deserters of the original design and the cause of the delay; and he likewise obtained from a serjeant-major of artillery who losing his road was taken on the 29th, certain letters and orders indicating an attack in the direction of the bridge of Amotz, between D’Erlon’s right and Clauzel’s left. Some French peasants also who had been allowed to pass the allied outposts declared they had been closely questioned about that bridge and the roads leading to it. The defences there were therefore augmented with new redoubts and abbatis, and Soult having thus as he judged, sufficiently provided for its safety, and being in no pain for his right, nor for Clauzel’s position, covered as the latter was by the smaller Rhune, turned his attention towards Foy’s corps.

That general had been posted at Bidarray, half way between St. Jean Pied de Port and Cambo, to watch certain roads, which leading to the Nive from Val Baigorry by St. Martin d’Arosa, and from the Bastan by Yspegui and the Gorospil mountain, gave Soult anxiety for his left; but now expecting the principal attack at the bridge of Amotz, and not by these roads, nor by St. Jean Pied de Port, as he at first supposed and as lord Wellington had at one time designed, he resolved to use Foy’s division offensively. In this view on the 3d of November he instructed him if St. Jean Pied de Port should be[330] only slightly attacked, to draw all the troops he could possibly spare from its defence to Bidarray, and when the allies assailed D’Erlon, he was to seize the Gorospil mountain and fall upon their right as they descended from the Puerto de Maya. If on the other hand he was himself assailed by those lines, he was to call in all his detached troops from St. Jean Pied de Port, repass the Nive by the bridge of Bidarray, make the best defence possible behind that river, and open a communication with Pierre Soult and Trielhard, whose divisions of cavalry were at St. Palais and Orthes.

On the 6th Foy, thinking the Gorospil difficult to pass, proposed to seize the Col de Yspegui from the side of St. Jean Pied de Port, and so descend into the Bastan. Soult however preferred Bidarray as a safer point and more united with the main body of the army; but he gave Foy a discretionary power to march along the left of the Nive upon Itzatzu and Espelette, if he judged it fitting to reinforce D’Erlon’s left rather than to attack the enemy.

Having thus arranged his regular defence, the French general directed the prefect of the Lower Pyrenees to post the organized national guards at the issues of all the valleys about St. Jean Pied de Port, but to keep the mass of the people quiet until the allies penetrating into the country should at once provoke and offer facilities for an irregular warfare.

On the 9th, being still uneasy about the San Martin d’Arosa and Gorospil roads, he brought up his brother’s cavalry from St. Palais to the heights above Cambo, and the next day the long-expected storm burst.

[331]

Allured by some fine weather on the 6th and 7th of November, lord Wellington had moved sir Rowland Hill’s troops from the Roncesvalles to the Bastan with a view to attack Soult, leaving Mina on the position of Altobiscar and in the Alduides. The other corps had also received their orders, and the battle was to commence on the 8th, but general Freyre suddenly declared, that unable to subsist on the mountains he must withdraw a part of his troops. This was a scheme to obtain provisions from the English magazines, and it was successful, for the projected attack could not be made without his aid. Forty thousand rations of flour with a formal intimation that if he did not co-operate the whole army must retire again into Spain, contented Freyre for the moment; but the extravagant abuses of the Spanish commissariat were plainly exposed when the chief of the staff declared that the flour would only suffice for two days, although there were less than ten thousand soldiers in the field. Spain therefore furnished at the rate of two rations for every fighting man and yet her troops were starving!

When this difficulty was surmounted heavy rain caused the attack to be again deferred, but on the 10th ninety thousand combatants of allAppendix, 7, No. 3. arms and ranks above seventy-four thousand being Anglo-Portuguese, descended to the battle, and with them went ninety-five pieces of artillery, which under the command of colonel Dickson were all with inconceivable vigour and activity thrown into action. Nor in this host do I reckon four thousand five hundred cavalry, nor the Spaniards of the blockading division which remained in reserve. On the other hand the French numbers were now increased by the new levy of conscripts, but many had deserted[332] again into the interior, and the fighting men did not exceed seventy-nine thousand including the garrisons. Six thousand of these were cavalry, andAppendix, No. 8. as Foy’s operations were extraneous to the line of defence scarcely sixty thousand infantry and artillery were opposed to the allies.

Lord Wellington seeing that the right of Soult’s line could not be forced without great loss, resolved to hold it in check while he turned it by forcing the centre and left, pushing down the Nivelle to San Pé. In this view the second and sixth British division, Hamilton’s Portuguese, Morillo’s Spaniards, four of Mina’s battalions, and Grant’s brigade of light cavalry, in all twenty-six thousand fighting men and officers with nine guns, were collected under general Hill in the Bastan to attack D’Erlon. The position of Roncesvalles was meanwhile occupied by the remainder of Mina’s troops supported by the blockading force under Carlos D’España.

The third fourth and seventh divisions, andWellington’s Order of Movements, MSS. Giron’s Andalusians, the whole under the command of marshal Beresford, were disposed about Zagaramurdi, the Puerto de Echallar, and the lower parts of those slopes of the greater Rhune which descended upon Sarre. On the left of this body the light division and Longa’s Spaniards, both under Charles Alten, were disposed on those slopes of the greater Rhune which led down towards Ascain. Victor Alten’s brigade of light cavalry and three British batteries, were placed on the road to Sarre, and six mountain-guns followed Giron’s and Charles Alten’s troops. Thus thirty-six thousand fighting men and officers, with twenty-four guns, were concentrated in this quarter to attack Clauzel.

General Freyre’s Spaniards, about nine thousand[333] strong, with six guns, were disposed on Alten’s left,Plan 6. at the fort of Calvary and towards Jollimont, ready to fall upon any troops which might be detached from the camp of Serres by the bridge of Ascain, to support Clauzel.

General Hope having the first and fifth divisions, Wilson’s, Bradford’s, and lord Aylmer’s brigades of infantry, Vandeleur’s brigade of light dragoons, and the heavy German cavalry, in all about nineteen thousand men and officers with fifty-four guns, was opposed to Soult’s right wing; and the naval squadron hovering on Hope’s left flank was to aid the land operations.

On the French side each lieutenant-general had a special position to defend. D’Erlon’s first line, its left resting on the fortified rocks of Mondarin which could not be turned, run from thence along the Choupera and Atchuleguy mountains by the forge of Urdax to the Nivelle. This range was strongly entrenched and occupied by one of Abbé’s and one of D’Armagnac’s brigades, Espelette being behind the former and Ainhoa behind the latter. The second line or main position was several miles distant on a broad ridge, behind Ainhoa, and it was occupied by the remaining brigades of the two divisions. The left did not extend beyond the centre of the first line, but the right reaching to the bridge of Amotz stretched with a wider flank, because the Nivelle flowing in a slanting direction towards the French gave greater space as their positions receded. Three great redoubts were constructed in a line on this ridge, and a fourth had been commenced close to the bridge.

On the right of D’Erlon’s second line, that is to say beyond the bridge of Amotz, Clauzel’s position[334] extended to Ascain, also along a strong range of heights fortified with many redoubts trenches and abbatis, and as the Nivelle after passing Amotz swept in a curve completely round the range to Ascain, both flanks rested alike upon that river, having communication by the bridges of Amotz and Ascain on the right and left, and a retreat by the bridges of San Pé and Harastagui which were in rear of the centre. Two of Clauzel’s divisions reinforced by one of D’Erlon’s under general Maransin were here posted. In front of the left were the redoubts of St. Barbe and Grenada covering the village and ridge of Sarre. In front of the right was the smaller Rhune which was fortified and occupied by a brigade of Maransin’s division. A new redoubt with abbatis was also commenced to cover the approaches to the bridge of Amotz.

On the right of this line beyond the bridge of Ascain, Daricau’s division belonging to Clauzel’s corps, and the Italian brigade of San Pol drawn from Villatte’s reserve, were posted to hold the entrenched camp of Serres and to connect Clauzel’s position with Villatte’s, which was as I have before said on a ridge crossing the gorges of Olette and Jollimont. The French right wing under Reille, strongly fortified on the lower ground and partially covered by inundations, was nearly impregnable.

Soult’s weakest point of general defence was certainly the opening between the Rhune mountains and the Nivelle. Gradually narrowing as it approached the bridge of Amotz this space was the most open, the least fortified, and the Nivelle being fordable above that bridge could not hamper the allies’ movements. Wherefore a powerful force acting in this direction could pass by D’Erlon’s first line[335] and breaking in upon the main position, between the right of that general’s second line and Clauzel’s left, turn both by the same attack.

Lord Wellington thus designed his battle. General Hill, leaving Minas four battalions on the Gorospil mountain facing the rocks of Mondarin, moved in the night by the different passes of the Puerto de Maya, Morillo’s Spaniards being to menace the French on the Choupera and Atchuleguy mountains, the second division to attack Ainhoa and Urdax. The sixth division and Hamilton’s Portuguese were to assault the works covering the bridge of Amotz, either on the right or left bank of the Nivelle according to circumstances. Thus the action of twenty-six thousand men was combined against D’Erlon’s position, and on their left Beresford’s corps was assembled. The third division under general Colville, descending from Zagaramurdi, was to move against the unfinished redoubts and entrenchments covering the approaches to the bridge of Amotz on the left bank of the Nivelle, thus turning D’Erlon’s right at the moment when it was attacked in front by Hill’s corps. On the left of the third division, the seventh, descending from the mouth of the Echallar pass, was to storm the Grenada redoubt, and then passing the village of Sarre assail Clauzel’s main position abreast with the attack of the third division. On the left of the seventh, the fourth division, assembling on the lower slopes of the greater Rhune, was to descend upon the redoubt of San Barbe, and then moving through Sarre also to assail Clauzel’s main position abreast with the seventh division. On the left of the fourth division, Giron’s Spaniards, gathered higher up on the flank of the great Rhune, were to move abreast[336] with the others leaving Sarre on their right. They were to drive the enemy from the lower slopes of the smaller Rhune and then in concert with the rest attack Clauzel’s main position. In this way Hill’s and Beresford’s corps, forming a mass of more than forty thousand infantry were to be thrust, on both sides of the bridge of Amotz, between Clauzel and D’Erlon to break their line of battle.

Charles Alten with the light division and Longa’s Spaniards, furnishing together about eight thousand men, was likewise to attack Clauzel’s line on the left of Giron, while Freyre’s Gallicians approached the bridge of Ascain to prevent reinforcements coming from the camp of Serres. But ere Alten could assail Clauzel’s right the smaller Rhune which covered it was to be stormed. This mountain outwork was a hog’s-back ridge rising abruptly out of table-land and parallel with the greater Rhune. It was inaccessible along its front, which was precipitous and from fifty to two hundred feet high; but on the enemy’s left these rocks gradually decreased, descending by a long slope to the valley of Sarre, and about two-thirds of the way down the thirty-fourth French regiment was placed, with an advanced post on some isolated crags situated in the hollow between the two Rhunes. On the enemy’s right the hog’s-back sunk by degrees into the plain or platform. It was however covered at that point by a marsh scarcely passable, and the attacking troops were therefore first to move up against the perpendicular rocks in front, and then to file to their left under fire, between the marsh and the lower crags, until they gained an accessible point from whence they could fight their way along the narrow ridge of the hog’s-back But the[337] bristles of the latter were huge perpendicular crags connected with walls of loose stones so as to form several small forts or castles communicating with each other by narrow foot-ways, and rising one above another until the culminant point was attained. The table-land beyond this ridge was extensive and terminated in a very deep ravine on every side, save a narrow space on the right of the marsh, where the enemy had drawn a traverse of loose stones, running perpendicularly from behind the hog’s-back and ending in a star fort which overhung the edge of the ravine.

This rampart and fort, and the hog’s-back itself, were defended by Barbot’s brigade of Maransin’s division, and the line of retreat was towards a low narrow neck of land, which bridging the deep ravine linked the Rhune to Clauzel’s main position: a reserve was placed here, partly to sustain the thirty-fourth French regiment posted on the slope of the mountain towards Sarre, partly to protect the neck of land on the side of that village. As this neck was the only approach to the French position in that part, to storm the smaller Rhune was a necessary preliminary to the general battle, wherefore Alten, filing his troops after dark on the 9th from the Hermitage, the Commissary mountain, and the Puerto de Vera, collected them at midnight on that slope of the greater Rhune which descended towards Ascain. The main body of the light division, turning the marsh by the left, was to assail the stone traverse and lap over the star fort by the ravine beyond; Longa, stretching still farther on the left, was to turn the smaller Rhune altogether; and the forty-third regiment supported by the seventeenth Portuguese was to assail the hog’s-back.[338] One battalion of riflemen and the mountain-guns were however left on the summit of the greater Rhune, with orders to assail the craggy post between the Rhunes and connect Alten’s attack with that of Giron’s Spaniards. All these troops gained their respective stations so secretly that the enemy had no suspicion of their presence, although for several hours the columns were lying within half musket-shot of the works. Towards morning indeed five or six guns, fired in a hurried manner from the low ground near the sea, broke the stillness, but the French on the Rhune remained quiet, and the British troops awaited the rising of the sun when three guns fired from the Atchubia mountain were to give the signal of attack.

BATTLE OF THE NIVELLE.

The day broke with great splendour, and as the first ray of light played on the summit of the lofty Atchubia the signal-guns were fired in rapid succession from its summit. The soldiers instantly leaped up, and the French beheld with astonishment several columns rushing forward from the flank of the great Rhune. Running to their defences with much tumult they opened a few pieces, which were answered from the top of the greater Rhune by the mountain-artillery, and at the same moment two companies of the forty-third were detached to cross the marsh if possible, and keep down the enemy’s fire from the lower part of the hog’s-back. The action being thus commenced the remainder of the regiment, formed partly in line partly in a column of reserve, turned the marsh by the right and advanced against the high rocks. From these crags the French shot fast and thickly, but the quick[339] even movement of the British line deceived their aim, and the soldiers, running forward very swiftly though the ground was rough, turned suddenly between the rocks and the marsh, and were immediately joined by the two companies which had passed that obstacle notwithstanding its depth. Then all together jumped into the lower works, but the men exhausted by their exertions, for they had passed over half a mile of very difficult ground with a wonderful speed, remained for a few minutes inactive within half pistol-shot of the first stone castle from whence came a sharp and biting musketry. When they had recovered breath they arose and with a stern shout commenced the assault.

The defenders were as numerous as the assailants, and for six weeks they had been labouring on their well-contrived castles; but strong and valiant in arms must the soldiers have been who stood in that hour before the veterans of the forty-third. One French grenadier officer only dared to sustain the rush. Standing alone on the high wall of the first castle and flinging large stones with both his hands, a noble figure, he fought to the last and fell, while his men shrinking on each side sought safety among the rocks on his flanks. Close and confused then was the action, man met man at every turn, but with a rattling fire of musketry, sometimes struggling in the intricate narrow paths sometimes climbing the loose stone walls, the British soldiers won their desperate way until they had carried the second castle, called by the French the place of arms, and the magpie’s nest, because of a lofty pillar of rock which rose above it and on which a few marksmen were perched. From these points the defenders were driven into their last castle, which being higher and larger[340] than the others and covered by a natural ditch or cleft in the rocks, fifteen feet deep, was called the Donjon. Here they made a stand, and the assailants, having advanced so far as to look into the rear of the rampart and star fort on the table-land below, suspended the vehement throng of their attack for a while, partly to gather a head for storming the Donjon, partly to fire on the enemy beneath them, who were now warmly engaged with the two battalions of riflemen, the Portuguese Caçadores, and the seventeenth Portuguese. This last regiment was to have followed the forty-third but seeing how rapidly and surely the latter were carrying the rocks, had moved at once against the traverse on the other side of the marsh; and very soon the French defending the rampart, being thus pressed in front, and warned by the direction of the fire that they were turned on the ridge above, seeing also the fifty-second, forming the extreme left of the division, now emerging from the deep ravine beyond the star fort on the other flank, abandoned their works. Then the forty-third gathering a strong head stormed the Donjon. Some leaped with a shout down the deep cleft in the rock, others turned it by the narrow paths on each flank, and the enemy abandoned the loose walls at the moment they were being scaled. Thus in twenty minutes six hundred old soldiers were hustled out of this labyrinth; yet not so easily but that the victors lost eleven officers and sixty-seven men.

The whole mountain was now cleared of the French, for the riflemen dropping perpendicularly down from the greater Rhune upon the post of crags in the hollow between the Rhunes seized it with small loss; but they were ill-seconded by[341] Giron’s Spaniards and were hardly handled by the thirty-fourth French regiment, which maintaining its post on the slope, covered the flight of the confused crowd which came rushing down the mountain behind them towards the neck of land leading to the main position. At that point they all rallied and seemed inclined to renew the action, but after some hesitation continued their retreat. This favourable moment for a decisive stroke had been looked for by the commander of the forty-third, but the officer entrusted with the reserve companies of the regiment had thrown them needlessly into the fight, thus rendering it impossible to collect a body strong enough to assail such a heavy mass.

The contest at the stone rampart and star fort, being shortened by the rapid success on the hog’s-back, was not very severe, but general Kempt, always conspicuous for his valour, was severely wounded, nevertheless he did not quit the field and soon reformed his brigade on the platform he had thus so gallantly won. Meanwhile the fifty-second having turned the position by the ravine was now approaching the enemy’s line of retreat, when general Alten, following his instructions, halted the division partly in the ravine itself to the left of the neck, partly on the table-land, and during this action Longa’s Spaniards having got near Ascain were in connection with Freyre’s Gallicians. In this position with the enemy now and then cannonading Longa’s people and the troops in the ravine, Alten awaited the progress of the army on his right, for the columns there had a long way to march and it was essential to regulate the movements.

The signal-guns from the Atchubia which sent the light division against the Rhune, had also put[342] the fourth and seventh divisions in movement against the redoubts of San Barbe and Grenada. Eighteen guns were immediately placed in battery against the former, and while they poured their stream of shot the troops advanced with scaling ladders and the skirmishers of the fourth division got into the rear of the work, whereupon the French leaped out and fled. Ross’s battery of horse artillery galloping to a rising ground in rear of the Grenada fort drove the enemy from there also, and then the fourth and seventh divisions carried the village of Sarre and the position beyond it and advanced to the attack of Clauzel’s main position.

It was now eight o’clock and from the smaller Rhune a splendid spectacle of war opened upon the view. On one hand the ships of war slowly sailing to and fro were exchanging shots with the fort of Socoa; Hope menacing all the French lines in the low ground sent the sound of a hundred pieces of artillery bellowing up the rocks, and they were answered by nearly as many from the tops of the mountains. On the other hand the summit of the great Atchubia was just lighted by the rising sun, and fifty thousand men rushing down its enormous slopes with ringing shouts, seemed to chase the receding shadows into the deep valley. The plains of France so long overlooked from the towering crags of the Pyrenees were to be the prize of battle, and the half-famished soldiers in their fury, broke through the iron barrier erected by Soult as if it were but a screen of reeds.

The principal action was on a space of seven or eight miles, but the skirts of battle spread wide, and in no point had the combinations failed. Far on the right general Hill after a long and difficult[343] night march had got within reach of the enemy a little before seven o’clock. Opposing Morillo’s and Mina’s Spaniards to Abbé’s troops on the Mondarain and Atchuleguy rocks, he directed the second division against D’Armagnac’s brigade and brushed it back from the forge of Urdax and the village of Ainhoa. Meanwhile the aid of the sixth division and Hamilton’s Portuguese being demanded by him, they passed the Nivelle lower down and bent their march along the right bank towards the bridge of Amotz. Thus while Mina’s battalion and Morillo’s division kept Abbé in check on the mountains, the three Anglo-Portuguese divisions, marching left flank in advance, approached D’Erlon’s second position, but the country being very rugged it was eleven o’clock before they got within cannon-shot of the French redoubts. Each of these contained five hundred men, and they were placed along the summit of a high ridge which being thickly clothed with bushes, and covered by a deep ravine was very difficult to attack. However general Clinton, leading the sixth division on the extreme left, turned this ravine and drove the enemy from the works covering the approaches to the bridge, after which wheeling to his right he advanced against the nearest redoubt, and the garrison not daring to await the assault abandoned it. Then the Portuguese division passing the ravine and marching on the right of the sixth menaced the second redoubt, and the second division in like manner approached the third redoubt. D’Armagnac’s troops now set fire to their hutted camp and retreated to Helbacen de Borda behind San Pé, pursued by the sixth division. Abbé’s second brigade forming the French left was separated by a ravine from D’Armagnac’s ground, but[344] he also after some hesitation retreated towards Espelette and Cambo, where his other brigade, which had meanwhile fallen back from the Mondarain before Morillo, rejoined him.

It was the progress of the battle on the left of the Nive that rendered D’Erlon’s defence so feeble. After the fall of the St. Barbe and Grenada redoubts Conroux’s right and centre endeavoured to defend the village and heights of Sarre; but while the fourth and seventh divisions, aided by the ninety-fourth regiment detached from the third division, attacked and carried those points, the third division being on their right and less opposed pushed rapidly towards the bridge of Amotz, forming in conjunction with the sixth division the narrow end of the wedge into which Beresford’s and Hill’s corps were now thrown. The French were thus driven from all their new unfinished works covering the approaches to that bridge on both sides of the Nivelle, and Conroux’s division, spreading from Sarre to Amotz, was broken by superior numbers at every point. That general indeed vigorously defended the old works around the bridge itself, but he soon fell mortally wounded, his troops were again broken, and the third division seized the bridge and established itself on the heights between that structure and the redoubt of Louis the XIV. which having been also lately commenced was unfinished. This happened about eleven o’clock and D’Erlon fearing to be cut off from St. Pé yielded as we have seen at once to the attack of the sixth division, and at the same time the remainder of Conroux’s troops fell back in disorder from Sarre, closely pursued by the fourth and seventh divisions, which were immediately established on the left of the third. Thus the communication[345] between Clauzel and D’Erlon was cut, the left flank of one and the right flank of the other broken, and a direct communication between Hill and Beresford secured by the same blow.

D’Erlon abandoned his position, but Clauzel stood firm with Taupin’s and Maransin’s divisions. The latter now completed by the return of Barbot’s brigade from the smaller Rhune, occupied the redoubt of Louis the XIV. and supported with eight field-pieces attempted to cover the flight of Conroux’s troops. The guns opened briskly but they were silenced by Ross’s battery of horse artillery, the only one which had surmounted the difficulties of the ground after passing Sarre, the infantry were then assailed, in front by the fourth and seventh divisions, in flank by the third division, the redoubt of Louis XIV. was stormed, the garrison bayonetted, Conroux’s men continued to fly, Maransin’s after a stiff combat were cast headlong into the ravines behind their position, and Maransin himself was taken but escaped in the confusion. Giron’s Spaniards now came up on the left of the fourth division, somewhat late however, and after having abandoned the riflemen on the lower slopes of the smaller Rhune.

On the French side Taupin’s division and a large body of conscripts forming Clauzel’s right wing still remained to fight. The left rested on a large work called the signal redoubt, which had no artillery but overlooked the whole position; the right was covered by two redoubts overhanging a ravine which separated them from the camp of Serres, and some works in the ravine itself protected the communication by the bridge of Ascain. Behind the signal redoubt, on a ridge crossing the road to San Pé and[346] along which Maransin and Conroux’s beaten divisions were now flying in disorder, there was another work called the redoubt of Harastaguia, and Clauzel thinking he might still dispute the victory, if his reserve division, posted in the camp of Serres, could come to his aid, drew the thirty-first French regiment from Taupin, and posted it in front of this redoubt of Harastaguia. His object was to rally Maransin’s and Conroux’s troops there and so form a new line, the left on the Harastaguia, the right on the signal redoubt, into which last he threw six hundred of the eighty-eighth regiment. In this position having a retreat by the bridge of Ascain he resolved to renew the battle, but his plan failed at the moment of conception, because Taupin could not stand before the light division which was now again in full action.

About half-past nine, general Alten, seeing the whole of the columns on his right, as far as the eye could reach, well engaged with the enemy, had crossed the low neck of land in his front. It was first passed by the fifty-second regiment with a rapid pace and a very narrow front, under a destructive cannonade and fire of musketry from the entrenchments which covered the side of the opposite mountain; a road coming from Ascain by the ravine led up the position, and as the fifty-second pushed their attack along it the enemy abandoned his entrenchments on each side, and forsook even his crowning works above. This formidable regiment was followed by the remainder of Alten’s troops, and Taupin, though his division was weak from its losses on the 7th of October and now still further diminished by the absence of the thirty-first regiment, awaited the assault above, being supported[347] by the conscripts drawn up in his rear. But at this time Longa, having turned the smaller Rhune, approached Ascain, and being joined by part of Freyre’s troops their skirmishers opened a distantClauzel’s Official Report to Soult, MSS. musketry against the works covering that bridge on Taupin’s right; a panic immediately seized the French, the seventieth regiment abandoned the twoTaupin’s Official Report, MSS. redoubts above, and the conscripts were withdrawn. Clauzel ordered Taupin to retake the forts but this only added to the disorder, the seventieth regiment instead of facing about disbanded entirely and were not reassembled until next day. There remained only four regiments unbroken, one, the eighty-eighth, was in the signal redoubt, two under Taupin in person kept together in rear of the works on the right, and the thirty-first covered the fort of Harastaguia now the only line of retreat.

In this emergency, Clauzel, anxious to bring off the eighty-eighth regiment, ordered Taupin to charge on one side of the signal redoubt, intending to do the same himself on the other at the head of the thirty-first regiment; but the latter was now vigorously attacked by the Portuguese of the seventh division, and the fourth division was rapidly interposing between that regiment and the signal redoubt. Moreover Alten previous to this had directed the forty-third, preceded by Barnard’s riflemen, to turn at the distance of musquet shot the right flank of the signal redoubt, wherefore Taupin instead of charging, was himself charged in front by the riflemen, and being menaced at the same time in flank by the fourth division, retreated, closely pursued by Barnard until that intrepid officer fell dangerously wounded. During this struggle the seventh division broke the thirty-first, the[348] rout was complete; the French fled to the different bridges over the Nivelle and the signal redoubt was left to its fate.

This formidable work barred the way of the light division, but it was of no value to the defence when the forts on its flanks were abandoned. Colborne approached it in front with the fifty-second regiment, Giron’s Spaniards menaced it on Colborne’s right, the fourth division was passing to its rear, and Kempt’s brigade was as we have seen turning it on the left. Colborne whose military judgment was seldom at fault, halted under the brow of the conical hill on which the work was situated, but some of Giron’s Spaniards making a vaunting though feeble demonstration of attacking it on his right were beaten back, and at that moment a staff-officer without warrant, for general Alten on the spot assured the Author of this History that he sent no such order, rode up and directed Colborne to advance. It was not a moment for remonstrance and his troops covered by the steepness of the hill reached the flat top which was about forty yards across to the redoubt; then they made their rush, but a wide ditch, thirty feet deep well fraised and pallisaded, stopped them short, and the fire of the enemy stretched all the foremost men dead. The intrepid Colborne, escaping miraculously for he was always at the head and on horseback, immediately led the regiment under cover of the brow to another point, and thinking to take the French unawares made another rush, yet with the same result. At three different places did he rise to the surface in this manner, and each time the French fire swept away the head of his column. Resorting then to persuasion he held out a white handkerchief and summoned the[349] commandant, pointing out to him how his work was surrounded and how hopeless his defence, whereupon the garrison yielded having had only one man killed, whereas on the British side there fell two hundred soldiers of a regiment never surpassed in arms since arms were first borne by men.

During this affair Clauzel’s divisions had crossed the Nivelle in great disorder, Maransin’s and Conroux’s troops near San Pé, the thirty-first regiment at Harastaguia, Taupin between that place and the bridge of Serres. They were pursued by the third and seventh divisions, and the skirmishers of the former crossing by Amotz and a bridge above San Pé entered that place while the French were in the act of passing the river below. It was now past two o’clock, Conroux’s troops pushed on to Helbacen de Borda, a fortified position on the road from San Pé to Bayonne, where they were joined by Taupin and by D’Erlon with D’Armagnac’s division, but Clauzel rallied Maransin’s men and took post on some heights immediately above San Pé. Meanwhile Soult had hurried from St. Jean de Luz to the camp of Serres with all his reserve artillery and spare troops to menace the allies’ left flank by Ascain, and Wellington thereupon halted the fourth and light divisions, and Giron’s Spaniards, on the reverse slopes of Clauzel’s original position, facing the camp of Serres, waiting until the sixth division, then following D’Armagnac’s retreat on the right of the Nivelle, was well advanced. When he was assured of Clinton’s progress he crossed the Nivelle with the third and seventh divisions and drove Maransin from his new position after a hard struggle, in which general Inglis was wounded and the fifty-first[350] and sixty-eighth regiments handled very roughly. This ended the battle in the centre, for darkness was coming on and the troops were exhausted, especially the sixth division which had been marching or fighting for twenty-four hours. However three divisions were firmly established in rear of Soult’s right wing of whose operations it is now time to treat.

In front of Reille’s entrenchments were two advanced positions, the camp of the Sans Culottes on the right, the Bons Secours in the centre covering Urogne. The first had been attacked and carried early in the morning by the fifth division, which advanced to the inundation covering the heights of Bordegain and Ciboure. The second after a short cannonade was taken by Halket’s Germans and the guards, and immediately afterwards the eighty-fifth regiment, of lord Aylmer’s brigade, drove a French battalion out of Urogne. The first division, being on the right, then menaced the camp of Belchena, and the German skirmishers passed a small stream covering this part of the line, but they were driven back by the enemy whose musketry and cannonade were brisk along the whole front. Meanwhile Freyre, advancing in two columns from Jollimont and the Calvaire on the right of the first division, placed eight guns in battery against the Nassau redoubt, a large work constructed on the ridge occupied by Villate to cover the approaches to Ascain. The Spaniards were here opposed by their own countrymen under Casa Palacio who commanded the remains of Joseph’s Spanish guards, and during the fight general Freyre’s skirmishers on the right united with Longa’s men. Thus a kind of false battle was maintained along the whole line to the sea until nightfall, with equal loss of men but[351] great advantage to the allies, because it entirely occupied Reille’s two divisions and Villatte’s reserve, and prevented the troops in the camp of Serres from passing by the bridge of Ascain to aid Clauzel, who was thus overpowered. When that event happened and lord Wellington had passed the Nivelle at San Pé, Daricau and the Italian brigade withdrew from Serres, and Villatte’s reserve occupied it, whereupon Freyre and Longa entered the town of Ascain. Villatte however held the camp above until Reille had withdrawn into St. Jean de Luz and destroyed all the bridges on the Lower Nivelle; when that was effected the whole retired and at daybreak reached the heights of Bidart on the road to Bayonne.

During the night the allies halted on the position they had gained in the centre, but an accidental conflagration catching a wood completely separated the picquets towards Ascain from the main body, and spreading far and wide over the heath lighted up all the hills, a blazing sign of war to France.

On the 11th the army advanced in order of battle. Sir John Hope on the left, forded the river above St. Jean de Luz with his infantry, and marched on Bidart. Marshal Beresford in the centre moved by the roads leading upon Arbonne. General Hill, communicating by his right with Morillo who was on the rocks of Mondarain, brought his left forward into communication with Beresford, and with his centre took possession of Suraide and Espelette facing towards Cambo. The time required to restore the bridges for the artillery at Ciboure, and the change of front on the right rendered these movements slow, and gave the duke of Dalmatia time to rally his army upon a third[352] line of fortified camps which he had previously commenced, the right resting on the coast at Bidart, the centre at Helbacen Borda, the left at Ustaritz on the Nive. This front was about eight miles, but the works were only slightly advanced and Soult dreading a second battle on so wide a field drew back his centre and left to Arbonne and Arauntz, broke down the bridges on the Nive at Ustaritz, and at two o’clock a slight skirmish, commenced by the allies in the centre, closed the day’s proceedings. The next morning the French retired to the ridge of Beyris, having their right in advance at Anglet and their left in the entrenched camp of Bayonne near Marac. During this movement a dense fog arrested the allies, but when the day cleared sir John Hope took post at Bidart on the left, and Beresford occupied Ahetze, Arbonne, and the hill of San Barbe, in the centre. General Hill endeavoured to pass the fords and restore the broken bridges of Ustaritz and he also made a demonstration against the works at Cambo, but the rain which fell heavily in the mountains on the 11th rendered the fords impassable and both points were defended successfully by Foy whose operations had been distinct from the rest.

In the night of the 9th D’Erlon, mistrusting the strength of his own position, had sent that general orders to march from Bidaray to Espelette, but the messenger did not arrive in time and on the morning of the 10th about eleven o’clock Foy, following Soult’s previous instructions, drove Mina’s battalions from the Gorospil mountain; then pressing against the flank of Morillo he forced him also back fighting to the Puerto de Maya. However D’Erlon’s battle was at this period receding fast, and Foy fearing to be cut off retired with the loss of a colonel[353] and one hundred and fifty men, having however taken a quantity of baggage and a hundred prisoners. Continuing his retreat all night he reached Cambo and Ustaritz on the 11th, just in time to relieve Abbé’s division at those posts, and on the 12th defended them against general Hill. Such were the principal circumstances of the battle of the Nivelle, whereby Soult was driven from a mountain position which he had been fortifying for three months. He lost four thousand two hundred and sixty-five men and officers including twelve or fourteen hundred prisoners, and one general was killed. His field-magazines at St. Jean de Luz and Espelette fell into the hands of the victors, and fifty-one pieces of artillery were taken, the greater part having been abandoned in the redoubts of the low country to sir John Hope. The allies had two generals, Kempt and Byng, wounded, and they lost two thousand six hundred and ninety-four men and officers.

OBSERVATIONS.

1º. Soult fared in this battle as most generals will who seek by extensive lines to supply the want of numbers or of hardiness in the troops. Against rude commanders and undisciplined soldiers lines may avail, seldom against accomplished generals, never when the assailants are the better soldiers. Cæsar at Alesia resisted the Gauls, but his lines served him not at Dyrrachium against Pompey. Crassus failed in Calabria against Spartacus, and in modern times the duke of Marlborough broke through all the French lines in Flanders. If Wellington[354] triumphed at Torres Vedras it was perhaps because his lines were not attacked, and, it may be, Soult was seduced by that example. His works were almost as gigantic and upon the same plan, that is to say a river on one flank, the ocean on the other, and the front upon mountains covered with redoubts and partially protected by inundations. But the duke of Dalmatia had only three months to complete his system, his labours were under the gaze of his enemy, his troops, twice defeated during the execution, were inferior in confidence and numbers to the assailants. Lord Wellington’s lines at Torres Vedras had been laboured for a whole year. Massena only knew of them when they stopped his progress, and his army inferior in numbers had been repulsed in the recent battle of Busaco.

It is not meant by this to decry entrenched camps within compass, and around which an active army moves as on a pivot, delivering or avoiding battle according to circumstances. The objection applies only to those extensive covering lines by which soldiers are taught to consider themselves inferior in strength and courage to their enemies. A general is thus precluded from shewing himself at important points and at critical periods; he is unable to encourage his troops or to correct errors; his sudden resources and the combinations of genius are excluded by the necessity of adhering to the works, while the assailants may make whatever dispositions they like, menace every point and select where to break through. The defenders, seeing large masses directed against them and unable to draw confidence from a like display of numbers, become fearful, knowing there must be some weak point which is the measure of strength for the[355] whole. The assailants fall on with that heat and vehemence which belongs to those who act voluntarily and on the offensive; each mass strives to outdo those on its right and left, and failure is only a repulse, whereas the assailed having no resource but victory look to their flanks, and are more anxious about their neighbours’ fighting than their own.

All these disadvantages were experienced at the battle of the Nivelle. D’Erlon attributed his defeat to the loss of the bridge of Amotz by Conroux’s division, and to this cause also Maransin traced his misfortunes. Taupin laid his defeat at Maransin’s door, but Clauzel on the other hand ascribed itOfficial Reports of the French generals to Soult, MSS. at once to want of firmness in the troops, although he also asserted that if Daricau’s division had come to his aid from the camp of Serres, he would have maintained his ground. Soult however traced Clauzel’s defeat to injudicious measures. That generalSoult’s Official Report to the Minister of War, MSS. he said attempted to defend the village of Sarre after the redoubts of San Barbe and Grenada were carried, whereby Conroux’s division was overwhelmed in detail and driven back in flight to Amotz. Clauzel should rather have assembled his three divisions at once in the main position which was his battleground, and there, covered by the smaller Rhune, ought to have been victorious. It was scarcely credible he observed that such entrenchments as Clauzel’s and D’Erlon’s should have been carried. For his part he relied on their strength so confidently as to think the allies must sacrifice twenty-five thousand men to force them and perhaps fail then. He had been on the right when the battle began, no reports came to him, he could judge of events only by the fire, and when he reached the[356] camp of Serres with his reserve troops and artillery Clauzel’s works were lost! His arrival had however paralyzed the march of three divisions. This was true, yet there seems some foundation for Clauzel’s complaint, namely, that he had for five hours fought on his main position, and during that time no help had come, although the camp of Serres was close at hand, the distance from St. Jean de Luz to that place only four miles, and the attack in the low ground evidently a feint. This then was Soult’s error. He suffered sir John Hope to hold in play twenty-five thousand men in the low ground, while fifteen thousand under Clauzel lost the battle on the hills.

2º. The French army was inferior in numbers and many of the works were unfinished; and yet two strong divisions, Daricau’s and Foy’s, were quite thrown out of the fight, for the slight offensive movement made by the latter produced no effect whatever. Vigorous counter-attacks are no doubt essential to a good defence, and it was in allusion to this that Napoleon, speaking of Joseph’s position behind the Ebro in the beginning of the war, said, “if a river were as broad and rapid as the Danube it would be nothing without secure points for passing to the offensive.” The same maxim applies to lines, and Soult grandly conceived and applied this principle when he proposed the descent upon Aragon to Suchet. But he conceived it meanly and poorly when he ordered Foy to attack by the Gorospil mountain. That general’s numbers were too few, and the direction of the march false; one regiment in the field of battle at the decisive moment would have been worth three on a distant and secondary point. Foy’s retreat was inevitable if[357] D’Erlon failed, and wanting the other’s aid he did fail. What success could Foy obtain? He might have driven Mina’s battalions over the Puerto de Maya and quite through the Bastan; he might have defeated Morillo and perhaps have taken general Hill’s baggage; yet all this would have weighed little against the allies’ success at Amotz; and the deeper he penetrated the more difficult would have been his retreat. The incursion into the Bastan by Yspegui proposed by him on the 6th, although properly rejected by Soult would probably have produced greater effects than the one executed by Gorospil on the 10th. A surprise on the 6th, Hill’s troops being then in march by brigades through the Alduides, might have brought some advantages to the French, and perhaps delayed the general attack beyond the 10th, when the heavy rains which set in on the 11th would have rendered it difficult to attack at all: Soult would thus have had time to complete his works.

3º. It has been observed that a minor cause of defeat was the drawing up of the French troops in front instead of in rear of the redoubts. This may possibly have happened in some places from error and confusion, not by design, for Clauzel’s report expressly states that Maransin was directed to form in rear of the redoubts and charge the allies when they were between the works and the abbatis. It is however needless to pry closely into these matters when the true cause lies broad on the surface. Lord Wellington directed superior numbers with superior skill. The following analysis will prove this, but it must be remembered that the conscripts are not included in the enumeration of the French[358] force: being quite undisciplined they were kept in masses behind and never engaged.

Abbé’s division, furnishing five thousand old soldiers, was posted in two lines one behind the other, and they were both paralyzed by the position of Morillo’s division and Mina’s battalions. Foy’s division was entirely occupied by the same troops. Six thousand of Wellington’s worst soldiers therefore sufficed to employ twelve thousand of Soult’s best troops during the whole day. Meanwhile Hill fell upon the decisive point where there was only D’Armagnac’s division to oppose him, that is to say, five thousand against twenty thousand. And while the battle was secured on the right of the Nivelle by this disproportion, Beresford on the other bank thrust twenty-four thousand against the ten thousand composing Conroux’s and Maransin’s divisions. Moreover as Hill and Beresford, advancing, the one from his left the other from his right, formed a wedge towards the bridge of Amotz, forty-four thousand men composing the six divisions under those generals, fell upon the fifteen thousand composing the divisions of D’Armagnac Conroux and Maransin; and these last were also attacked in detail, because part of Conroux’s troops were defeated near Sarre, and Barbot’s brigade of Maransin’s corps was beaten on the Rhune by the light division before the main position was attacked. Finally Alten with eight thousand men, having first defeated Barbot’s brigade, fell upon Taupin who had only three thousand while the rest of the French army was held in check by Freyre and Hope. Thus more than fifty thousand troops full of confidence from repeated victories were suddenly thrown upon the[359] decisive point where there were only eighteen thousand dispirited by previous reverses to oppose them. Against such a thunderbolt there was no defence in the French works. Was it then a simple matter for Wellington so to combine his battle? The mountains on whose huge flanks he gathered his fierce soldiers, the roads he opened, the horrid crags he surmounted, the headlong steeps he descended, the wild regions through which he poured the destructive fire of more than ninety guns, these and the reputation of the French commander furnish the everlasting reply.

And yet he did not compass all that he designed. The French right escaped, because when he passed the Nivelle at San Pé he had only two divisions in hand, the sixth had not come up, three were in observation of the camp at Serres, and before he could assemble enough men to descend upon the enemy in the low ground the day had closed. The great object of the battle was therefore unattained, and it may be a question, seeing the shortness of the days and the difficulty of the roads were not unexpected obstacles, whether the combinations would not have been surer if the principal attack had been directed entirely against Clauzel’s position. Carlos D’España’s force and the remainder of Mina’s battalions could have reinforced Morillo’s division with five thousand men to occupy D’Erlon’s attention; it was not essential to defeat him, for though he attributed his retreat to Clauzel’s reverse that general did not complain that D’Erlon’s retreat endangered his position. This arrangement would have enabled the rest of Hill’s troops to reinforce Beresford and have given lord Wellington three[360] additional divisions in hand with which to cross the Nivelle before two o’clock. Soult’s right wing could not then have escaped.

4º. In the report of the battle lord Wellington from some oversight did but scant and tardy justice to the light division. Acting alone, for Longa’s Spaniards went off towards Ascain and scarcely fired a shot, this division furnishing only four thousand seven hundred men and officers, first carried the smaller Rhune defended by Barbot’s brigade, and then beat Taupin’s division from the main position, thus driving superior numbers from the strongest works. In fine being less than one-sixth of the whole force employed against Clauzel, they defeated one-third of that general’s corps. Many brave men they lost, and of two who fell in this battle I will speak.

The first, low in rank for he was but a lieutenant, rich in honour for he bore many scars, was young of days. He was only nineteen. But he had seen more combats and sieges than he could count years. So slight in person, and of such surpassing and delicate beauty that the Spaniards often thought him a girl disguised in man’s clothing, he was yet so vigorous, so active, so brave, that the most daring and experienced veterans watched his looks on the field of battle, and implicitly following where he led, would like children obey his slightest sign in the most difficult situations. His education was incomplete, yet were his natural powers so happy, the keenest and best-furnished intellects shrunk from an encounter of wit, and every thought and aspiration was proud and noble, indicating future greatness if destiny had so willed it.[361] Such was Edward Freer of the forty-third one of three brothers who covered with wounds have all died in the service. Assailed the night before the battle with that strange anticipation of coming death so often felt by military men, he was pierced with three balls at the first storming of the Rhune rocks, and the sternest soldiers in the regiment wept even in the middle of the fight when they heard of his fate.

On the same day and at the same hour was killed colonel Thomas Lloyd. He likewise had been a long time in the forty-third. Under him Freer had learned the rudiments of his profession, but in the course of the war promotion placed Lloyd at the head of the ninety-fourth, and it was leading that regiment he fell. In him also were combined mental and bodily powers of no ordinary kind. A graceful symmetry combined with Herculean strength, and a countenance at once frank and majestic gave the true index of his nature, for his capacity was great and commanding, and his military knowledge extensive both from experience and study. On his mirth and wit, so well known in the army, I will not dwell, save to remark, that he used the latter without offence, yet so as to increase his ascendancy over those with whom he held intercourse, for though gentle he was valiant, ambitious, and conscious of his fitness for great exploits. He like Freer was prescient of, and predicted his own fall, yet with no abatement of courage. When he received the mortal wound, a most painful one, he would not suffer himself to be moved but remained watching the battle and making observations upon the changes in it until death came. It was thus at the age of thirty, that the good the[362] brave the generous Lloyd died. Tributes to hisWellington’s Despatches. merit have been published by lord Wellington and by one of his own poor soldiers! by the highest and by the lowest! To their testimony I add mine, letThe Eventful Life of a Sergeant. those who served on equal terms with him say whether in aught I have exceeded his deserts.

Soult having lost the Nivelle, at first designed to1813. November. leave part of his forces in the entrenched camp of Bayonne, and with the remainder take a flanking position behind the Nive, half-way between Bayonne and St. Jean Pied de Port, securing his left by the entrenched mountain of Ursouia, and his right on the heights above Cambo, the bridge-head of which would give him the power of making offensive movements. He could thus keep his troops together and restore their confidence, while he confined the allies to a small sterile district of France between the river and the sea, and rendered their situation very uneasy during the winter if they did not retire. However he soon modified this plan. The works of the Bayonne camp were not complete and his presence was necessary to urge their progress. The camp on the Ursouia mountain had been neglected contrary to his orders, and the bridge-head at Cambo was only commenced on the right bank. On the left it was indeed complete but constructed on a bad trace. Moreover he found that the Nive in dry weather was fordable at Ustaritz below Cambo, and at many places above that point. Remaining therefore at Bayonne himself with six divisions and Villatte’s reserve, he sent D’Erlon with three divisions to reinforce Foy at Cambo. Yet neither D’Erlon’s divisions nor Soult’s whole army could have stopped lord Wellington at this time if[364] other circumstances had permitted the latter to follow up his victory as he designed.

The hardships and privations endured on the mountains by the Anglo-Portuguese troops had been beneficial to them as an army. The fine air and the impossibility of the soldiers committing their usual excesses in drink had rendered them unusually healthy, while the facility of enforcing a strict discipline, and their natural impatience to win the fair plains spread out before them, had raised their moral and physical qualities in a wonderful degree. Danger was their sport, and their experienced general in the prime and vigour of life was as impatient for action as his soldiers. Neither the works of the Bayonne camp nor the barrier of the Nive, suddenly manned by a beaten and dispirited army, could have long withstood the progress of such a fiery host, and if Wellington could have let their strength and fury loose in the first days succeeding the battle of the Nivelle France would have felt his conquering footsteps to her centre. But the country at the foot of the Pyrenees is a deep clay, quite impassable after rain except by the royal road near the coast and that of St. Jean Pied de Port, both of which were in the power of the French. On the bye-roads the infantry sunk to the mid leg, the cavalry above the horses’ knees, and even to the saddle-girths in some places. The artillery could not move at all. The rain had commenced on the 11th, the mist in the early part of the 12th had given Soult time to regain his camp and secure the high road to St. Jean Pied de Port, by which his troops easily gained their proper posts on the Nive, while his adversary fixed in the swamps could only make the[365] ineffectual demonstration at Ustaritz and Cambo already noticed.

Wellington uneasy for his right flank while the French commanded the Cambo passage across the Nive directed general Hill to menace it again on the 16th. Foy had received orders to preserve the bridge-head on the right bank in any circumstances, but he was permitted to abandon the work on the left bank in the event of a general attack; however at Hill’s approach the officer placed there in command destroyed all the works and the bridge itself. This was a great cross to Soult, and the allies’ flank being thus secured they were put into cantonments to avoid the rain, which fell heavily. The bad weather was however not the only obstacle to the English general’s operations. On the very day of the battle Freyre’s and Longa’s soldiers entering Ascain pillaged it and murdered several persons; the next day the whole of the Spanish troops continued these excesses in various places, and on the right Mina’s battalions, some of whom were also in a state of mutiny, made a plundering and murdering incursion from the mountains towards Hellette. The Portuguese and British soldiers of the left wing had commenced the like outrages and two French persons were killed in one town, however the adjutant-general Pakenham arriving at the moment saw and instantly put the perpetrators to death thus nipping this wickedness in the bud, but at his own risk for legally he had not that power. This general whose generosity humanity and chivalric spirit excited the admiration of every honourable person who approached him, is the man who afterwards fell at New Orleans and who has been so foully traduced by American[366] writers. He who was pre-eminently distinguished by his detestation of inhumanity and outrage has been with astounding falsehood represented as instigating his troops to the most infamous excesses. But from a people holding millions of their fellow-beings in the most horrible slavery while they prate and vaunt of liberty until all men turn with loathing from the sickening folly, what can be expected?

Terrified by these excesses the French people fled even from the larger towns, but Wellington quickly relieved their terror. On the 12th, although expecting a battle, he put to death all the Spanish marauders he could take in the act, and then with many reproaches and despite of the discontent of their generals, forced the whole to withdraw into their own country. He disarmed the insubordinate battalions under Mina, quartered Giron’s Andalusians in the Bastan where O’Donnel resumed the command; sent Freyre’s Gallicians to the district between Irun and Ernani, and Longa over the Ebro. Morillo’s division alone remained with the army. These decisive proceedings marking the lofty character of the man proved not less politic than resolute. The French people immediately returned, and finding the strictest discipline preserved and all things paid for adopted an amicable intercourse with the invaders. However the loss of such a mass of troops and the effects of weather on the roads reduced the army for the moment to a state of inactivity; the head-quarters were suddenly fixed at St. Jean de Luz, and the troops were established in permanent cantonments with the following line of battle.

The left wing occupied a broad ridge on bothPlan 7. sides of the great road beyond Bidart, the principal[367] post being at a mansion belonging to the mayor of Biaritz. The front was covered by a small stream spreading here and there into large ponds or tanks between which the road was conducted. The centre posted partly on the continuation of this ridge in front of Arcangues, partly on the hill of San Barbe, extended by Arrauntz to Ustaritz, the right being thrown back to face count D’Erlon’s position, extended by Cambo to Itzassu. From this position which might stretch about six miles on the front and eight miles on the flank, strong picquets were pushed forwards to several points, and the infantry occupied all the villages and towns behind as far back as Espelette, Suraide, Ainhoa, San Pé, Sarre, and Ascain. One regiment of Vandeleur’s cavalry was with the advanced post on the left, the remainder were sent to Andaya and Urogne, Victor Alten’s horsemen were about San Pé, and the heavy cavalry remained in Spain.

In this state of affairs the establishment of the different posts in front led to several skirmishes. In one on the 18th, general John Wilson and general Vandeleur were wounded; but on the same day Beresford drove the French from the bridge of Urdains, near the junction of the Ustaritz and San Pé roads, and though attacked in force the next day he maintained his acquisition. A more serious action occurred on the 23d in front of Arcangues. This village held by the picquets of the light division was two or three miles in front of Arbonne where the nearest support was cantoned. It is built on the centre of a crescent-shaped ridge, and the sentries of both armies were so close that the reliefs and patroles actually passed each other in their rounds, so that a surprise was inevitable if it[368] suited either side to attempt it. Lord Wellington visited this post and the field-officer on duty made known to him its disadvantages, and the means of remedying them by taking entire possession of the village, pushing picquets along the horns of the crescent, and establishing a chain of posts across the valley between them. He appeared satisfied with this project, and two days afterwards the forty-third and some of the riflemen were employed to effect it, the greatest part of the division being brought up in support. The French after a few shots abandoned Arcangues, Bussussary, and both horns of the crescent, retiring before the picquets to a large fortified house situated at the mouth of the valley. The project suggested by the field-officer was thus executed with the loss of only five men wounded and the action should have ceased, but the picquets of the forty-third suddenly received orders to attack the fortified house, and the columns of support were shewn at several points of the semicircle; the French then conceiving they were going to be seriously assailed reinforced their post; a sharp skirmish ensued and the picquets were finally withdrawn to the ground they had originally gained and beyond which they should never have been pushed. This ill-managed affair cost eighty-eight men and officers of which eighty were of the forty-third.

Lord Wellington, whose powerful artillery and cavalry, the former consisting of nearly one hundred field-pieces and the latter furnishing more than eight thousand six hundred sabres, were paralysedOriginal Morning States, MSS. in the contracted space he occupied, was now anxious to pass the Nive, but the rain which continued to fall baffled him, and meanwhile Mina’s Spaniards descending once more from the Alduides to plunder[369] Baigorry were beaten by the national guards of that valley. However early in December the weatherDecember. amended, forty or fifty pieces of artillery were brought up, and other preparations made to surprize or force the passage of the Nive at Cambo and Ustaritz. And as this operation led to sanguinary battles it is fitting first to describe the exact position of the French.

Bayonne situated at the confluence of the NivePlans 7 and 8. and the Adour commands the passage of both. A weak fortress of the third order its importance was in its position, and its entrenched camp, exceedingly strong and commanded by the fortress could not be safely attacked in front, wherefore Soult kept only six divisions there. His right composed of Reille’s two divisions and Villatte’s reserve touched on the Lower Adour where there was a flotilla of gun-boats. It was covered by a swamp and artificial inundation, through which the royal road led to St. Jean de Luz, and the advanced posts, well entrenched, were pushed forward beyond Anglet on this causeway. His left under Clauzel, composed of three divisions, extended from Anglet to the Nive; it was covered partly by the swamp, partly by the large fortified house which the light division assailed on the 23d, partly by an inundation spreading below Urdains towards the Nive. Thus entrenched the fortified outposts may be called the front of battle, the entrenched camp the second line, and the fortress the citadel. The country in front a deep clay soil, enclosed and covered with small wood and farm-houses, was very difficult to move in.

Beyond the Nive the entrenched camp stretching[370] from that river to the Adour was called the front of Mousseroles. It was in the keeping of D’Erlon’s four divisions, which were also extended up the right bank of the Nive; that is to say, D’Armagnac’s troops was in front of Ustaritz, and Foy prolonged the line to Cambo. The remainder of D’Erlon’s corps was in reserve, occupying a strong range of heights about two miles in front of Mousseroles, the right at Villefranque on the Nive, the left at Old Moguerre towards the Adour. D’Erlon’s communications with the rest of the army were double, one circuitous through Bayonne, the other direct by a bridge of boats thrown above that place.

After the battle of the Nivelle Soult brought general Paris’s division from St. Jean Pied de Port to Lahoussoa close under the Ursouia mountain, where it was in connection with Foy’s left, communicating by the great road to St. Jean Pied de Port which ran in a parallel direction to the river.

The Nive, the Adour, and the Gave de Pau which falls into the latter many miles above Bayonne, were all navigable, the first as far as Ustaritz, the second to Dax, the third to Peyrehorade, and the great French magazines were collected at the two latter places. But the army was fed with difficulty, and hence to restrain Soult from the country beyond the Nive, to intercept his communications with St. Jean Pied de Port, to bring a powerful cavalry into activity, and to obtain secret intelligence from the interior of Spain were Wellington’s inducements to force a passage over the Nive. Yet to place the troops on both sides of a navigable river with communications bad at all times and subject to entire interruptions from rain; to do this in face of an[371] army possessing short communications good roads and entrenched camps for retreat, was a delicate and dangerous operation.

On the 7th orders were issued for forcing the passage on the 9th. On that day sir John Hope and Charles Alten, with the first, fifth, and light divisions, the unattached brigades of infantry, Vandeleur’sOriginal States, MSS. cavalry and twelve guns, in all about twenty-four thousand combatants, were to drive back the French advanced posts along the whole front of the entrenched camp between the Nive and the sea. This movement was partly to examine the course of the Lower Adour with a view to subsequent operations, but principally to make Soult discover his dispositions of defence on that side, and to keep his troops in check while Beresford and Hill crossed the Nive. To support this double operation the fourth and seventh divisions were secretly brought up from Ascain and Espelette on the 8th, the latter to the hill of St. Barbe, from whence it detached one brigade to relieve the posts of the third division. There remained the second the third and the sixth divisions, Hamilton’s Portuguese, and Morillo’s Spaniards, for the passage. Beresford leading the third and sixth reinforced with six guns and a squadron of cavalry, was to cross at Ustaritz with pontoons, Hill having the second division, Hamilton’s Portuguese, Vivian’s and Victor Alten’s cavalry, and fourteen guns, was to ford the river at Cambo and Larressore. Both generals were then to repair the bridges at these respective points with materials prepared beforehand; and to cover Hill’s movement on the right and protect the valley of the Nive from Paris, who being at Lahoussoa might have penetrated to the rear of the army[372] during the operations, Morillo’s Spaniards were to cross at Itzassu. At this time Foy’s division was extended from Halzou in front of Larressore, to the fords above Cambo, the Ursouia mountain being between his left and Paris. The rest of D’Erlon’s troops remained on the heights of Moguerre in front of Mousserolles.

PASSAGE OF THE NIVE
AND
BATTLES IN FRONT OF BAYONNE.

At Ustaritz the French had broken both bridges, but the island connecting them was in possession of the British. Beresford laid his pontoons down onPlans 7 and 8. the hither side in the night of the 8th and in the morning of the 9th a beacon lighted on the heights above Cambo gave the signal of attack. The passage was immediately forced under the fire of the artillery, the second bridge was laid, and D’Armagnac’s brigade was driven back by the sixth division; but the swampy nature of the country between the river and the high road retarded the allies’ march and gave the French time to retreat with little loss. At the same time Hill’s troops, also covered by the fire of artillery, forced the passage in three columns above and below Cambo with slight resistance, though the fords were so deep that several horsemen were drowned, and the French strongly posted, especially at Halzou where there was a deep and strong mill-race to cross as well as the river.

Foy seeing, by the direction of Beresford’s fire, that his retreat was endangered, retired hastily with his left leaving his right wing under general Berlier at Halzou without orders. Hence when[373] general Pringle attacked the latter from Larressore, the sixth division was already on the high road between Foy and Berlier, who escaped by cross roads towards Hasparen, but did not rejoin his division until two o’clock in the afternoon. Meanwhile Morillo crossed at Itzassu, and Paris retired to Hellette where he was joined by a regiment of light cavalry belonging to Pierre Soult who was then on the Bidouse river. Morillo followed, and in one village near Hellette his troops killed fifteen peasants, amongst them several women and children.

General Hill having won the passage, placed a brigade of infantry at Urcurray to cover the bridge of Cambo, and to support the cavalry which he despatched to scour the roads towards Lahoussoa, St. Jean Pied de Port, and Hasparen, and to observe Paris and Pierre Soult. With the rest of his troops he marched to the heights of Lormenthoa in front of the hills of Moguerre and Villefranque, and was there joined by the sixth division, the third remaining to cover the bridge of Ustaritz. It was now about one o’clock, and Soult, coming hastily from Bayonne, approved of the disposition made by D’Erlon, and offered battle, his line being extended so as to bar the high road. D’Armagnac’s brigade which had retired from Ustaritz was now in advance at Villefranque and a heavy cannonade and skirmish ensued along the front, but no general attack was made because the deep roads had retarded the rear of Hill’s columns. However the Portuguese of the sixth division, descending from Lormenthoa about three o’clock, drove D’Armagnac’s brigade with sharp fighting and after one repulse out of Villefranque. A brigade of the second division was then established in advance connecting[374] Hill’s corps with the troops in Villefranque. Thus three divisions of infantry, wanting the brigade left at Urcurray, hemmed up four French divisions; and as the latter, notwithstanding their superiority of numbers, made no advantage of the broken movements of the allies caused by the deep roads, the passage of the Nive may be judged a surprize. Wellington thus far overreached his able adversary, yet he had not trusted to this uncertain chance alone.

The French masses falling upon the heads of his columns at Lormenthoa while the rear was still labouring in the deep roads, might have caused some disorder, but could not have driven either Hill or Beresford over the river again, because the third division was close at hand to reinforce the sixth, and the brigade of the seventh, left at San Barbe, could have followed by the bridge of Ustaritz, thus giving the allies the superiority of numbers. The greatest danger was, that Paris, reinforced by Pierre Soult’s cavalry, should have returned and fallen either upon Morillo or the brigade left at Urcurray in the rear, while Soult, reinforcing D’Erlon with fresh divisions brought from the other side of the Nive, attacked Hill and Beresford in front. It was to prevent this that Hope and Alten whose operations are now to be related pressed the enemy on the left bank.

The first-named general having twelve miles to march from St. Jean de Luz before he could reach the French works, put his troops in motion during the night, and about eight o’clock passed between the tanks in front of Barrouilhet with his right, while his left descended from the platform of Bidart and crossed the valley towards Biaritz. The French outposts retired fighting, and Hope sweeping with a half circle to his right, and being preceded by[375] the fire of his guns and many skirmishers, arrived in front of the entrenched camp about one o’clock. His left then rested on the Lower Adour, his centre menaced a very strong advanced work on the ridge of Beyris beyond Anglet, and his right was in communication with Alten. That general having a shorter distance to move, halted about Bussussary and Arcangues until Hope’s fiery crescent was closing on the French camp, and then he also advanced, but with the exception of a slight skirmish at the fortified house there was no resistance. Three divisions, some cavalry, and the unattached brigades, equal to a fourth division, sufficed therefore to keep six French divisions in check on this side.

When evening closed the allies fell back towards their original positions, but under heavy rain, and with great fatigue to Hope’s wing, for even the royal road was knee-deep of mud and his troops were twenty-four hours under arms. The whole day’s fighting cost about eight hundred men for each side, the loss of the allies being rather greater on the left bank of the Nive than on the right.

Wellington’s wings being now divided by the Nive the French general resolved to fall upon one of them with the whole of his forces united; and misled by the prisoners who assured him that the third and fourth divisions were both on the heights of Lormenthoa, he resolved, being able to assemble his troops with greater facility on the left of the Nive where also the allies’ front was most extended, to choose that side for his counter-stroke. The garrison of Bayonne was eight thousand strong, partly troops of the line partly national guards, with which he ordered the governor to occupy the entrenched camp of Mousserolles; then stationing ten gun-boats on the Upper Adour to watch that river as high[376] as the confluence of the Gave de Pau, he made D’Erlon file his four divisions over the bridge of boats between the fortress and Mousserolles, directing him to gain the camp of Marac and take post behind Clauzel’s corps on the other side of the river. He thus concentrated nine divisions of infantry and Villatte’sImperial Muster-rolls, MSS. reserve, a brigade of cavalry and forty guns, furnishing in all about sixty thousand combatants, including conscripts, to assail a quarter where the allies, although stronger by one division than theOriginal Morning States. French general imagined, had yet only thirty thousand infantry with twenty-four pieces of cannon.

The French marshal’s first design was to burst with his whole army on the table-land of BussussaryCorrespondence with the minister of war, MSS. and Arcangues, and then to act as circumstances should dictate; and he judged so well of his position that he desired the minister of war to expect good news for the next day. Indeed the situation of the allies although better than he knew of gave him some right to anticipate success. On no point was there any expectation of this formidable counter-attack. Lord Wellington was on the left of the Nive preparing to assault the heights where he had last seen the French the evening before. Hope’s troops, with the exception of Wilson’s Portuguese now commanded by general Campbell and posted at Barrouilhet, had retired to their cantonments; the first division was at St. Jean de Luz and Ciboure more than six miles distant from the outposts; the fifth division was between those places and Bidart, and all exceedingly fatigued. The light division had orders to retire from Bussussary to Arbonne a distance of four miles, and part of the second brigade had already marched, when fortunately general Kempt, somewhat suspicious of the enemy’s movements, delayed obedience until he[377] could see what was going on in his front, he thus as the event proved saved the position.

The extraordinary difficulty of moving through the country even for single horsemen, the numerous enclosures and copses which denied any distinct view, the easy success of the operation to cross the Nive, and a certain haughty confidence the sure attendant of a long course of victory, seems to have rendered the English general at this time somewhat negligent of his own security. Undoubtedly the troops were not disposed as if a battle was expected. The general position, composed of two distinct parts was indeed very strong; the ridge of Barrouilhet could only be attacked along the royal road on a narrow front between the tanks, and he had directed entrenchments to be made; but there was only one brigade there, and a road made with difficulty by the engineers supplied a bad flank communication with the light division. This Barrouilhet ridge was prolonged to the platform of Bussussary, but in its winding bulged out too near the enemy’s works in the centre to be safely occupied in force, and behind it there was a deep valley or basin extending to Arbonne.

The ridge of Arcangues on the other side of this basin was the position of battle for the centre. Three tongues of land shot out from this part to the front, and the valleys between them as well as their slopes were covered with copse-woods almost impenetrable. The church of Arcangues, a gentleman’s house, and parts of the village, furnished rallying points of defence for the picquets, which were necessarily numerous because of the extent of front. At this time the left-hand ridge or tongue of land was occupied by the fifty-second[378] regiment which had also posts in the great basin separating the Arcangues position from that of Barrouilhet; the central tongue was held by the picquets of the forty-third with supporting companies placed in succession towards Bussussary, where was an open common across which troops in retreat would have to pass to the church of Arcangues. The third tongue was guarded, partly by the forty-third, partly by the riflemen, but the valley between was not occupied, and the picquets on the extreme right extended to an inundation, across a narrow part of which, near the house of the senator Garrat, there was a bridge: the facility for attack was there however small.

One brigade of the seventh division continued this line of posts to the Nive, holding the bridge of Urdains, the rest of the division was behind San Barbe and belonged rather to Ustaritz than to this front. The fourth division was several miles behind the right of the light division.

In this state of affairs if Soult had, as he first designed, burst with his whole army upon Bussussary and Arcangues it would have been impossible for the light division, scattered as it was over such an extent of difficult ground, to have stopped him for half an hour; and there was no support within several miles, no superior officer to direct the concentration of the different divisions. Lord Wellington had indeed ordered all the line to be entrenched, but the works were commenced on a great scale, and, as is common when danger does not spur, the soldiers had laboured so carelessly that beyond a few abbatis, the tracing of some lines and redoubts, and the opening of a road of communication, the ground remained in its natural state. The French[379] general would therefore quickly have gained the broad open hills beyond Arcangues, separated the fourth and seventh divisions from the light division, and cut them off from Hope. Soult however, in the course of the night, for reasons which I do not find stated, changed his project, and at day-break Reille marched with Boyer’s and Maucune’s divisions, Sparre’s cavalry and from twenty to thirty guns against Hope by the main road. He was followed by Foy and Villatte, but Clauzel assembled his troops under cover of the ridges near the fortified house in front of Bussussary, and one of D’Erlon’s divisions approached the bridge of Urdains.

Combat of the 10th.—A heavy rain fell in the night yet the morning broke fair, and soon after dawn the French infantry were observed by the picquets of the forty-third pushing each other about as if at gambols, yet lining by degrees the nearest ditches; a general officer was also seen behind a farm-house close to the sentinels, and at the same time the heads of columns could be perceived in the rear. Thus warned some companies of the forty-third were thrown on the right into the basin to prevent the enemy from penetrating that way to the small plain between Bussussary and Arcangues. General Kempt was with the picquets, and his foresight in delaying his march to Arbonne now saved the position, for he immediately placed the reserves of his brigade in the church and mansion-house of Arcangues. Meanwhile the French breaking forth with loud cries, and a rattling musquetry, fell at a running pace upon the picquets of the forty-third both on the tongue and in the basin, and a cloud of skirmishers descending on their left, penetrating[380] between them and the fifty-second regiment, sought to turn both. The right tongue was in like manner assailed and at the same time the picquets at the bridge near Garrat’s house were driven back.

The assault was so strong and rapid, the enemy so numerous, and the ground so extensive, that it would have been impossible to have reached the small plain beyond Bussussary in time to regain the church of Arcangues if any serious resistance had been attempted; wherefore delivering their fire at pistol-shot distance the picquets fell back in succession, and never were the steadiness and intelligence of veteran soldiers more eminently displayed; for though it was necessary to run at full speed to gain the small plain before the enemy, who was constantly outflanking the line of posts by the basin, though the ways were so deep and narrow that no formation could be preserved, though the fire of the French was thick and close, and their cries vehement as they rushed on in pursuit, the instant the open ground at Bussussary was attained, the apparently disordered crowd of fugitives became a compact and well-formed body defying and deriding the fruitless efforts of their adversaries.

The fifty-second being about half a mile to the left, though only slightly assailed fell back also to the main ridge, for though the closeness of the country did not permit colonel Colborne to observe the strength of the enemy he could see the rapid retreat of the forty-third, and thence judging how serious the affair was, so well did the regiments of the light division understand each other’s qualities, withdrew his outposts to secure the main position. And in good time he did so.

On the right-hand tongue the troops were not so[381] fortunate, for whether they delayed their retreat too long, or that the country was more intricate, the enemy moving by the basin, reached Bussussary before the rear arrived, and about a hundred of the forty-third and riflemen were thus intercepted. The French were in a hollow road and careless, never doubting that the officer of the forty-third, ensign Campbell, a youth scarcely eighteen years of age, would surrender; but he with a shout broke into their column sword in hand, and though the struggle was severe and twenty of the forty-third and thirty of the riflemen with their officer remained prisoners, reached the church with the rest.

D’Armagnac’s division of D’Erlon’s corps now pushed close up to the bridge of Urdains, and Clauzel assembled his three divisions by degrees at Bussussary, opening meanwhile a sharp fire of musquetry. The position was however safe. The mansion-house on the right, covered by abbatis and not easily accessible, was defended by a rifle battalion and the Portuguese. The church and church-yard were occupied by the forty-third who were supported with two mountain-guns, their front being covered by a declivity of thick copse-wood, filled with riflemen, and only to be turned by narrow hollow roads leading on each side to the church. On the left the fifty-second now supported by the remainder of the division, spread as far as the great basin which separated the right wing from the ridge of Barrouilhet, towards which some small posts were pushed, but there was still a great interval between Alten’s and Hope’s positions.

The skirmishing fire grew hot, Clauzel brought up twelve guns to the ridge of Bussussary, with which he threw shot and shells into the[382] church-yard of Arcangues, and four or five hundred infantry then made a rush forwards, but a heavy fire from the forty-third sent them back over the ridge where their guns were posted. Yet the practice of the latter, well directed at first, would have been murderous if this musquetry from the church-yard had not made the French gunners withdraw their pieces a little behind the ridge, which caused their shot to fly wild and high. General Kempt thinking the distance too great, was at first inclined to stop this fire, but the moment it lulled the French gunners pushed their pieces forwards again and their shells knocked down eight men in an instant. The small arms then recommenced and the shells again flew high. The French were in like manner kept at bay by the riflemen in the village and mansion-house, and the action, hottest where the fifty-second fought, continued all day. It was not very severe but it has been noticed in detail because both French and English writers, misled perhaps by an inaccurate phrase in the public despatch, have represented it as a desperate attack by which the light division was driven into its entrenchments, whereas it was the picquets only that were forced back, there were no entrenchments save those made on the spur of the moment by the soldiers in the church-yard, and the French can hardly be said to have attacked at all. The real battle was at Barrouilhet.

On that side Reille advancing with two divisions about nine o’clock, drove Campbell’s Portuguese from Anglet, and Sparre’s cavalry charging during the fight cut down a great many men. The French infantry then assailed the ridge at Barrouilhet, but moving along a narrow ridge and confined on each[383] flank by the tanks, only two brigades could get into action by the main road, and the rain of the preceding night had rendered all the bye-roads so deep that it was mid-day before the French line of battle was filled. This delay saved the allies, for the attack here also was so unexpected, that the first division and lord Aylmer’s brigade were at rest in St. Jean de Luz and Bidart when the action commenced. The latter did not reach the position before eleven o’clock; the foot-guards did not march from St. Jean until after twelve, and only arrived at three o’clock in the afternoon when the fight was done; all the troops were exceedingly fatigued, only ten guns could be brought into play, and from some negligence part of the infantry were at first without ammunition.

Robinson’s brigade of the fifth division first arrived to support Campbell’s Portuguese, and fight the battle. The French spread their skirmishers along the whole valley in front of Biaritz, but their principal effort was directed by the great road and against the platform of Barrouilhet about the mayor’s house, where the ground was so thick of hedges and coppice-wood that a most confused fight took place. The assailants cutting ways through the hedges poured on in smaller or larger bodies as the openings allowed, and were immediately engaged with the defenders; at some points they were successful at others beaten back, and few knew what was going on to the right or left of where they stood. By degrees Reille engaged both his divisions, and some of Villatte’s reserve also entered the fight, and then Bradford’s Portuguese and lord Aylmer’s brigade arrived on the allies’ side, which enabled colonel Greville’s brigade of the fifth division,[384] hitherto kept in reserve, to relieve Robinson’s; that general was however dangerously wounded and his troops suffered severely.

And now a very notable action was performed by the ninth regiment under colonel Cameron. This officer was on the extreme left of Greville’s brigade, Robinson’s being then shifted in second line and towards the right, Bradford’s brigade was at the mayor’s house some distance to the left of the ninth regiment, and the space between was occupied by a Portuguese battalion. There was in front of Greville’s brigade a thick hedge, but immediately opposite the ninth was a coppice-wood possessed by the enemy, whose skirmishers were continually gathering in masses and rushing out as if to assail the line, they were as often driven back, yet the ground was so broken that nothing could be seen beyond the flanks and when some time had passed in this manner, Cameron, who had received no orders, heard a sudden firing along the main road close to his left. His adjutant was sent to look out and returned immediately with intelligence that there was little fighting on the road, but a French regiment, which must have passed unseen in small bodies through the Portuguese between the ninth and the mayor’s house, was rapidly filing into line on the rear. The fourth BritishManuscript note by lieutenant-general sir John Cameron. regiment was then in close column at a short distance, and its commander colonel Piper was directed by Cameron to face about, march to the rear, and then bring up his left shoulder when he would infallibly fall in with the French regiment. Piper marched, but whether he misunderstood the order, took a wrong direction, or mistook the enemy for Portuguese, he passed them. No firing was heard,[385] the adjutant again hurried to the rear, and returned with intelligence that the fourth regiment was not to be seen, but the enemy’s line was nearly formed. Cameron leaving fifty men to answer the skirmishing fire which now increased from the copse, immediately faced about and marched in line against the new enemy, who was about his own strength, as fast as the rough nature of the ground would permit. The French fire, slow at first, increased vehemently as the distance lessened, but when the ninth, coming close up, sprung forwards to the charge the adverse line broke and fled to the flanks in the utmost disorder. Those who made for their own right brushed the left of Greville’s brigade, and even carried off an officer of the royals in their rush, yet the greatest number were made prisoners, and the ninth having lost about eighty men and officers resumed their old ground.

The final result of the battle at Barrouilhet was the repulse of Reille’s divisions, but Villatte still menaced the right flank, and Foy, taking possession of the narrow ridge connecting Bussussary with the platform of Barrouilhet, threw his skirmishers into the great basin leading to Arbonne, and connecting his right with Reille’s left menaced Hope’s flank at Barrouilhet. This was about two o’clock, Soult, whose columns were now all in hand gave orders to renew the battle, and his masses were beginning to move when Clauzel reported that a large body of fresh troops, apparently coming from the other side of the Nive, was menacing D’Armagnac’s division from the heights above Urdains. Unable to account for this, Soult, who saw the guards and Germans moving up fast from St. Jean de Luz and all the unattached brigades already in line, hesitated,[386] suspended his own attack, and ordered D’Erlon,Soult’s Official Report, MSS. who had two divisions in reserve, to detach one to the support of D’Armagnac: before this disposition could be completed the night fell.

The fresh troops seen by Clauzel were the third fourth sixth and seventh divisions, whose movements during the battle it is time to notice. When lord Wellington, who remained on the right of the Nive during the night of the 9th, discovered at daybreak, that the French had abandoned the heights in Hill’s front, he directed that officer to occupy them, and push parties close up to the entrenched camp of Mousseroles while his cavalry spread beyond Hasparen and up the Adour. Meanwhile, the cannonade on the left bank of the Nive being heard, he repaired in person to that side, first making the third and sixth divisions repass the river, and directing Beresford to lay another bridge of communication lower down the Nive, near Villefranque, to shorten the line of movement. When he reached the left of the Nive and saw how the battle stood, he made the seventh division close to the left from the hill of San Barbe, placed the third division at Urdains, and brought up the fourth division to an open heathy ridge on a hill about a mile behind the church of Arcangues. From this point general Cole sent Ross’s brigade down into the basin on the left of Colborne, to cover Arbonne, being prepared himself to march with his whole division if the enemy attempted to penetrate in force between Hope and Alten. These dispositions were for the most part completed about two o’clock, and thus Clauzel was held in check at Bussussary, and the renewed attack by Foy, Villatte, and Reille’s divisions on Barrouilhet prevented.

[387]

This day’s battle cost the Anglo-Portuguese more than twelve hundred men killed and wounded, two generals were amongst the latter and about three hundred men were made prisoners. The French had one general, Villatte, wounded, and lost about two thousand men, but when the action terminated two regiments of Nassau and one of Frankfort, the whole under the command of a colonel Kruse, came over to the allies. These men were not deserters. Their prince having abandoned Napoleon in Germany sent secret instructions to his troops to do so likewise, and in good time, for orders to disarm them reached Soult the next morning. The generals on each side, the one hoping to profit the other to prevent mischief, immediately transmitted notice of the event to Catalonia where several regiments of the same nations were serving. Lord Wellington failed for reasons to be hereafter mentioned, but Suchet disarmed his Germans with reluctance thinking they could be trusted, and the Nassau troops at Bayonne were perhaps less influenced by patriotism than by an old quarrel; for when belonging to the army of the centre they had forcibly foraged Soult’s district early in the year, and carried off the spoil in defiance of his authority, which gave rise to bitter disputes at the time and was probably not forgotten by him.

Combat of the 11th.—In the night of the 10th Reille withdrew behind the tanks as far as Pucho, Foy and Villatte likewise drew back along the connecting ridge towards Bussussary, thus uniting with Clauzel’s left and D’Erlon’s reserve, so that on the morning of the 11th the French army, with the exception of D’Armagnac’s division which remained in front of Urdains, was concentrated, for Soult[388] feared a counter-attack. The French deserters indeed declared that Clauzel had formed a body of two thousand choice grenadiers to assault the village and church of Arcangues, but the day passed without any event in that quarter save a slight skirmish in which a few men were wounded. Not so on the side of Barrouilhet. There was a thick fog, and lord Wellington, desirous to ascertain what the French were about, directed the ninth regiment about ten o’clock to open a skirmish beyond the tanks towards Pucho, and to push the action if the French augmented their force. Cameron did so and the fight was becoming warm, when colonel Delancy, a staff-officer, rashly directed the ninth to enter the village. The error was soon and sharply corrected, for the fog cleared up, and Soult, who had twenty-four thousand men at that point, observing the ninth unsupported, ordered a counter-attack which was so strong and sudden that Cameron only saved his regiment with the aid of some Portuguese troops hastily brought up by sir John Hope. The fighting then ceased and lord Wellington went to the right, leaving Hope with orders to push back the French picquets and re-establish his former outposts on the connecting ridge towards Bussussary.

Soult had hitherto appeared undecided, but roused by this second insult, he ordered Darricau’s division to attack Barrouilhet along the connecting ridge, while Boyer’s division fell on by the main road between the tanks. This was about two o’clock and the allies expecting no battle had dispersed to gather fuel, for the time was wet and cold. In an instant the French penetrated in all directions, they outflanked the right, they passed the tanks, seized the out-buildings of the mayor’s house, and occupied[389] the coppice in front of it; they were indeed quickly driven from the out-buildings by the royals, but the tumult was great and the coppice was filled with men of all nations intermixed and fighting in a perilous manner. Robinson’s brigade was very hardly handled, the officer commanding it was wounded, a squadron of French cavalry suddenly cut down some of the Portuguese near the wood, and on the right the colonel of the eighty-fourth having unwisely engaged his regiment in a hollow road where the French possessed the high bank, was killed with a great number of men. However the ninth regiment posted on the main road plied Boyer’s flank with fire, the eighty-fifth regiment of lord Aylmer’s brigade came into action, and sir John Hope conspicuous from his gigantic stature and heroic courage, was seen wherever danger pressed rallying and encouraging the troops; at one time he was in the midst of the enemy, his clothes were pierced with bullets, and he received a severe wound in the ankle, yet he would not quit the field and by his great presence of mind and calm intrepidity restored the battle. The French were finally beaten back from the position of Barrouilhet yet they had recovered their original posts, and continued to gall the allies with a fire of shot and shells until the fall of night. The total loss in this fight was about six hundred men of a side, and as the fifth division was now considerably reduced in numbers the first division took its place on the front line. Meanwhile Soult sent his cavalry over the Nive to Mousseroles to check the incursions of Hill’s horsemen.

Combat of the 12th.—The rain fell heavily in the night, and though the morning broke fair neither side seemed inclined to recommence hostilities. The[390] advanced posts were however very close to each other and about ten o’clock a misunderstanding arose. The French general observing the fresh regimentsSoult’s Official Despatches, MSS. of the first division close to his posts, imagined the allies were going to attack him and immediately reinforced his front; this movement causing an English battery to fall into a like error it opened upon the advancing French troops, and in an instant the whole line of posts was engaged. Soult then brought up a number of guns, the firing continued without an object for many hours, and three or four hundred men of a side were killed and wounded, but the great body of the French army remained concentrated and quiet on the ridge between Barrouilhet and Bussussary.

Lord Wellington as early as the 10th had expected Soult would abandon this attack to fall upon Hill, and therefore had given Beresford orders to carry the sixth division to that general’s assistance by the new bridge and the seventh division by Ustaritz, without waiting for further instructions, if Hill was assailed; now observing Soult’s tenacity at Barrouilhet he drew the seventh division towards Arbonne. Beresford had however made a movement towards the Nive, and this with the march of the seventh division and some changes in the position of the fourth division, caused Soult to believe the allies were gathering with a view to attack his centre on the morning of the 13th; and it is remarkable that the deserters at this early period told him the Spaniards had re-entered France although orders to that effect were not as we shall find given until the next day. Convinced then that his bolt was shot on the left of the Nive, he left two divisions and Villatte’s reserve in the entrenched camp,[391] and marched with the other seven to Mousseroles intending to fall upon Hill.

That general had pushed his scouting parties to the Gambouri, and when general Sparre’s horsemen arrived at Mousseroles on the 12th, Pierre Soult advanced from the Bidouze with all the light cavalry. He was supported by the infantry of general Paris and drove the allies’ posts from Hasparen. Colonel Vivian, who commanded there, immediately ordered major Brotherton to charge with the fourteenth dragoons across the bridge, but it was an ill-judged order, and the impossibility of succeeding so manifest, that when Brotherton, noted throughout the army for his daring, galloped forward, only two men and one subaltern, lieutenant Southwell, passed the narrow bridge with him, and they were all taken. Vivian then seeing his error charged with his whole brigade to rescue them, yet in vain, he was forced to fall back upon Urcuray where Morillo’s Spaniards had relieved the British infantry brigade on the 11th. This threatening movement induced general Hill to put the British brigade in march again for Urcuray on the 12th, but he recalled it at sunset, having then discovered Soult’s columns passing the Nive by the boat-bridge above Bayonne.

Lord Wellington now feeling the want of numbers, brought forward a division of Gallicians to St. Jean de Luz, and one of Andalusians from the Bastan to Itzassu, and to prevent their plundering fed them from the British magazines. The Gallicians were to support Hope, the Andalusians to watch the upper valley of the Nive and protect the rear of the army from Paris and Pierre Soult, who could easily be reinforced with a strong body of national guards.[392] Meanwhile Hill had taken a position of battle on a front of two miles.

His left, composed of the twenty-eighth, thirty-fourth, and thirty-ninth regiments under general Pringle, occupied a wooded and broken range crowned by the chateau of Villefranque; it covered the new pontoon bridge of communication, which was a mile and a half higher up the river, but it was separated from the centre by a small stream forming a chain of ponds in a very deep and marshy valley.

The centre placed on both sides of the high road near the hamlet of St. Pierre, occupied a crescent-shapedPlan 8. height, broken with rocks and close brushwood on the left hand, and on the right hand enclosed with high and thick hedges, one of which, covering, at the distance of a hundred yards, part of the line, was nearly impassable. Here Ashworth’s Portuguese and Barnes’s British brigade of the second division were posted. The seventy-first regiment was on the left, the fiftieth in the centre, the ninety-second on the right. Ashworth’s Portuguese were posted in advance immediately in front of St. Pierre, and their skirmishers occupied a small wood covering their right. Twelve guns under the colonels Ross and Tullock were concentrated in front of the centre, looking down the great road, and half a mile in rear of this point Lecor’s Portuguese division was stationed with two guns as a reserve.

The right under Byng was composed of the third, fifty-seventh, thirty-first, and sixty-sixth. One of these regiments, the third, was posted on a height running nearly parallel with the Adour called the ridge of Partouhiria, or Old Moguerre, because[393] a village of that name was situated upon the summit. This regiment was pushed in advance to a point where it could only be approached by crossing the lower part of a narrow swampy valley which separated Moguerre from the heights of St. Pierre. The upper part of this valley was held by Byng with the remainder of his brigade, and his post was well covered by a mill-pond leading towards the enemy and nearly filling all the valley.

One mile in front of St. Pierre was a range of counter heights belonging to the French, but the basin between was broad open and commanded in every part by the fire of the allies, and in all parts the country was too heavy and too much enclosed for the action of cavalry. Nor could the enemy approach in force, except on a narrow front of battle and by the high road, until within cannon-shot, when two narrow difficult lanes branched off to the right and left, and crossing the swampy valleys on each side, led, the one to the height where the third regiment was posted on the extreme right of the allies, the other to general Pringle’s position on the left.

In the night of the 12th the rain swelled the Nive and carried away the allies’ bridge of communication. It was soon restored, but on the morning of the 13th general Hill was completely cut off from the rest of the army; and while seven French divisions of infantry, furnishing at least thirty-five thousand combatants, approached him in front, an eighth under general Paris and the cavalry division of Pierre Soult menaced him in rear. To meet theAppendix 7, sect. 4. French in his front he had less than fourteen thousand, men and officers with fourteen guns in[394] position; and there were only four thousand Spaniards with Vivian’s cavalry at Urcuray.

Battle of St. Pierre.—The morning broke with a See Plan 8. heavy mist under cover of which Soult formed his order of battle. D’Erlon, having D’Armagnac’s Abbé’s and Daricau’s divisions of infantry, Sparre’s cavalry and twenty-two guns, marched in front; he was followed by Foy and Maransin, but the remainder of the French army was in reserve, for the roads would not allow of any other order. The mist hung heavily and the French masses, at one moment quite shrouded in vapour, at another dimly seen or looming sudden and large and dark at different points, appeared like thunder-clouds gathering before the storm. At half-past eight Soult pushed back the British picquets in the centre, the sun burst out at that moment, the sparkling fire of the light troops spread wide in the valley, and crept up the hills on either flank, while the bellowing of forty pieces of artillery shook the banks of the Nive and the Adour. Darricau marching on the French right was directed against general Pringle. D’Armagnac, moving on their left and taking Old Moguerre as the point of direction, was ordered to force Byng’s right. Abbé assailed the centre at St. Pierre, where general Stewart commanded, for sir Rowland Hill had taken his station on a commanding mount in the rear, from whence he could see the whole battle and direct the movements.

Abbé, a man noted for vigour, pushed his attack with great violence and gained ground so rapidly with his light troops, on the left of Ashworth’s Portuguese, that Stewart sent the seventy-first regiment and two guns from St. Pierre to the latter’s aid; the[395] French skirmishers likewise won the small wood on Ashworth’s right, and half of the fiftieth regiment was also detached from St. Pierre to that quarter. The wood was thus retaken, and the flanks of Stewart’s position secured, but his centre was very much weakened, and the fire of the French artillery was concentrated against it. Abbé then pushed on a column of attack there with such a power that in despite of the play of musquetry on his flanks and a crashing cannonade in his front, he gained the top of the position, and drove back the remainder of Ashworth’s Portuguese and the other half of the fiftieth regiment which had remained in reserve.

General Barnes who had still the ninety-second regiment in hand behind St. Pierre, immediately brought it on with a strong counter-attack. The French skirmishers fell back on each side leaving two regiments composing the column to meet the charge of the ninety-second; it was rough and pushed home, the French mass wavered and gave way. Abbé immediately replaced it and Soult redoubling the heavy play of his guns from the height he occupied, sent forward a battery of horse artillery which galloping down into the valley opened its fire close to the allies with most destructive activity. The cannonade and musquetry rolled like a prolonged peal of thunder, and the second French column, regardless of Ross’s guns, though they tore the ranks in a horrible manner, advanced so steadily up the high road that the ninety-second yielding to the tempest slowly regained its old position behind St. Pierre. The Portuguese guns, their British commanding officer having fallen wounded, then limbered up to retire and the French skirmishers reached the impenetrable hedge in front of Ashworth’s right.[396] General Barnes now seeing that hard fighting only could save the position, made the Portuguese guns resume their fire, and the wing of the fiftieth and the Caçadores gallantly held the small wood on the right; but Barnes was soon wounded, the greatest part of his and general Stewart’s staff were hurt, and the matter seemed desperate. For the light troops overpowered by numbers were all driven in except those in the wood, the artillerymen were falling at the guns, Ashworth’s line of Portuguese crumbled away rapidly before the musquetry and cannonade, the ground was strewed with the dead in front, and the wounded crawling to the rear were many.

If the French light troops could then have penetrated through the thick hedge in front of the Portuguese, defeat would have been inevitable on this point, for the main column of attack still steadily advanced up the main road, and a second column launched on its right was already victorious, because the colonel of the seventy-first had shamefully withdrawn that gallant regiment out of action and abandoned the Portuguese. Pringle was indeed fighting strongly against Daricau’s superior numbers on the hill of Villefranque, but on the extreme right the colonel of the third regiment had also abandoned his strong post to D’Armagnac, whose leading brigade was thus rapidly turning Byng’s other regiments on that side. And now Foy’s and Maransin’s divisions, hitherto retarded by the deep roads, were coming into line ready to support Abbé, and this at the moment when the troops opposed to him were deprived of their reserve. For when general Hill beheld the retreat of the third and seventy-first regiments he descended in haste from his mount, met, and turned the latter back to renew the fight, and then in person[397] leading one brigade of Le Cor’s reserve division to the same quarter sent the other against D’Armagnac on the hill of Old Moguerre. Thus at the decisive moment of the battle the French reserve was augmented and that of the allies thrown as a last resource into action. However the right wing of the fiftieth and Ashworth’s Caçadores, both spread as skirmishers, never lost the small wood in front, upholding the fight there and towards the high road with such unflinching courage that the ninety-second regiment had time to reform behind the hamlet of St. Pierre. Then its gallant colonel Cameron once more led it down the road with colours flying and music playing resolved to give the shock to whatever stood in the way. At this sight the British skirmishers on the flanks, suddenly changing from retreat to attack, rushed forward and drove those of the enemy back on each side; yet the battle seemed hopeless for Ashworth was badly wounded, his line was shattered to atoms, and Barnes who had not quitted the field for his former hurt was now shot through the body.

The ninety-second was but a small body comparedPublished Memoir on the battle by captain Pringle, engineers. with the heavy mass in its front, and the French soldiers seemed willing enough to close with the bayonet; but an officer riding at their head suddenly turned his horse waved his sword and appeared to order a retreat, then they faced about and immediately retired across the valley to their original position, in good order however and scarcely pursued by the allies, so exhausted were the victors. This retrograde movement, for there was no panic or disorder, was produced partly by the gallant advance of the ninety-second and the returning rush of the skirmishers,[398] partly by the state of affairs immediately on the right of the French column. For the seventy-first indignant at their colonel’s conduct had returned to the fight with such alacrity, and were so well aided by Le Cor’s Portuguese, generals Hill and Stewart each in person leading an attack, that the hitherto victorious French were overthrown there also in the very moment when the ninety-second came with such a brave shew down the main road: Le Cor was however wounded.

This double action in the centre being seen from the hill of Villefranque, Daricau’s division, already roughly handled by Pringle, fell back in confusion; and meantime on the right, Buchan’s Portuguese, detached by Hill to recover the Moguerre or Partouhiria ridge, crossed the valley, and ascending under a heavy flank fire from Soult’s guns rallied the third regiment; in happy time, for D’Armagnac’s first brigade having already passed the flank of Byng’s regiments at the mill-pond was actually in rear of the allies’ lines. It was now twelve o’clock, and while the fire of the light troops in the front and the cannonade in the centre continued the contending generals restored their respective orders of battle. Soult’s right wing had been quite repulsed by Pringle, his left was giving way before Buchan, and the difficult ground forbad his sending immediate succour to either; moreover in the exigency of the moment he had called D’Armagnac’s reserve brigade to sustain Abbé’s retiring columns. However that brigade and Foy’s and Maransin’s divisions were in hand to renew the fight in the centre, and the allies could not, unsuccoured, have sustained a fresh assault; for their ranks[399] were wasted with fire, nearly all the staff had been killed or wounded, and three generals had quitted the field badly hurt.

In this crisis general Hill seeing that Buchan was now well and successfully engaged on the Partouhiria ridge, and that Byng’s regiments were quite masters of their ground in the valley of the mill-pond, drew the fifty-seventh regiment from the latter place to reinforce his centre. At the same time the bridge above Villefranque having been restored, the sixth division, which had been marching since daybreak, appeared in order of battle on the mount from whence Hill had descended to rally the seventy-first. It was soon followed by the fourth division, and that again by the brigades of the third division; two other brigades of the seventh division were likewise in march. With the first of these troops came lord Wellington who had hurried from Barrouilhet when the first sound of the cannon reached him, yet he arrived only to witness the close of the battle, the crisis was past, Hill’s day of glory was complete. Soult had, according to the French method, made indeed another attack, or rather demonstration, against the centre, to cover his new dispositions, an effort easily repulsed, but at the same moment Buchan drove D’Armagnac headlong off the Partouhiria ridge. The sixth division then appeared on the commanding mount in the rear of St. Pierre, and though the French masses still maintained a menacing position on the high road, and on a hillock rising between the road and the mill-pond, they were quickly dispossessed. For the English general being now supported by the sixth division, sent Byng with two battalions against the hillock, and some troops from the centre against[400] those on the high road. At this last point the generals and staff had been so cut down that colonel Currie, the aid-de-camp who brought the order, could find no superior officer to deliver it to and led the troops himself to the attack, but both charges were successful; and two guns of the light battery sent down in the early part of the fight by Soult, and which had played without ceasing up to this moment, were taken.

The battle now abated to a skirmish of light troops, under cover of which the French endeavoured to carry off their wounded and rally their stragglers, but at two o’clock lord Wellington commanded a general advance of the whole line. Then the French retreated fighting, and the allies following close on the side of the Nive plied them with musquetry until dark. Yet they maintained their line towards the Adour, for Sparre’s cavalry passing out that way rejoined Pierre Soult on the side of Hasparen. This last-named general and Paris had during the day menaced Morillo and Vivian’s cavalry at Urcuray, however not more than thirty men of a side were hurt, and when Soult’s ill success became known the French retired to Bonloc.

In this bloody action Soult had designed to employ seven divisions of infantry with one brigade of cavalry on the front, and one brigade of infantry with a division of cavalry on the rear; but the state of the roads and the narrow front he was forced to move upon did not permit more than five divisions to act at St. Pierre, and only half of those were seriously engaged. His loss was certainly three thousand, making a total on the five days’ fighting of six thousand men with two generals, Villatte and Maucomble, wounded. The estimate made by the British at the time far exceeded this number, and[401] one French writer makes their loss ten thousand including probably the Nassau and Frankfort regiments. The same writer however estimates the loss of the allies at sixteen thousand! Whereas HillLapene. had only three generals and about fifteen hundred men killed and wounded on the 13th and Morillo lost but twenty-six men at Urcuray. The real loss of the allies in the whole five days’ fighting was only five thousand and nineteen, including however five generals, Hope, Robinson, Barnes, Lecor, and Ashworth. Of this number five hundred were prisoners.

The duke of Dalmatia, baffled by the unexpected result of the battle of St. Pierre, left D’Erlon’s three divisions in front of the camp of Mousseroles, sent two others over the Nive to Marac, and passing the Adour himself during the night with Foy’s division, spread it along the right bank of that river as far as the confluence of the Gave de Pau.

OBSERVATIONS.

1º. The French general’s plan was conceived with genius but the execution offers a great contrast to the conception. What a difference between the sudden concentration of his whole army on the platforms of Arcangues and Bussussary, where there were only a few picquets to withstand him, and from whence he could have fallen with the roll of an avalanche upon any point of the allies’ line! what a difference between that and the petty attack of Clauzel, which a thousand men of the light division sufficed to arrest at the village and church of Arcangues. There beyond question was the weak[402] part of the English general’s cuirass. The spear pushed home there would have drawn blood. For the disposition and movements of the third fourth and seventh divisions, were made more with reference to the support of Hill than to sustain an attack from Soult’s army, and it is evident that Wellington, trusting to the effect of his victory on the 10th of November, had treated the French general and his troops, more contemptuously than he could have justified by arms without the aid of fortune. I know not what induced marshal Soult to direct his main attack by Anglet and the connecting ridge of Bussussary, against Barrouilhet, instead of assailing Arcangues as he at first proposed; but this is certain, that for three hours after Clauzel first attacked the picquets at the latter place, there were not troops enough to stop three French divisions, much less a whole army. And this point being nearer to the bridge by which D’Erlon passed the Nive, the concentration of the French troops could have been made sooner than at Barrouilhet, where the want of unity in the attack caused by the difficulty of the roads ruined the French combinations.

The allies were so unexpectant of an attack, that the battle at Barrouilhet which might have been fought with seventeen thousand men, was actually fought by ten thousand. And those were not brought into action at once, for Robinson’s brigade and Campbell’s Portuguese, favoured by the narrow opening between the tanks, resisted Reille’s divisions for two hours, and gave time for the rest of the fifth division and Bradford’s brigade to arrive. But if Foy’s division and Villatte’s reserve had been able to assail the flank at the same time, by the ridge coming from Bussussary, the battle would[403] have been won by the French; and meanwhile three divisions under Clauzel and two under D’Erlon remained hesitating before Urdains and Arcangues, for the cannonade and skirmishing at the latter place were the very marks and signs of indecision.

2º. On the 11th the inactivity of the French during the morning may be easily accounted for. The defection of the German regiments, the necessity of disarming and removing those that remained, the care of the wounded, and the time required to re-examine the allies’ position and ascertain what changes had taken place during the night, must have given ample employment to the French general. His attack in the afternoon also was well judged because already he must have seen from the increase of troops in his front, from the intrenched battery and other works rapidly constructed at the church of Arcangues, that no decisive success could be expected on the left of the Nive, and that his best chance was to change his line of attack again to the right bank. To do this with effect, it was necessary, not only to draw all lord Wellington’s reserves from the right of the Nive but to be certain that they had come, and this could only be done by repeating the attacks at Barrouilhet. The same cause operated on the 12th, for it was not until the fourth and seventh divisions were seen by him on the side of Arbonne that he knew his wile had succeeded. Yet again the execution was below the conception, for first, the bivouac fires on the ridge of Bussussary were extinguished in the evening, and then others were lighted on the side of Mousseroles, thus plainly indicating the march, which was also begun too early, because the leading[404] division was by Hill seen to pass the bridge of boats before sun-set.

These were serious errors yet the duke of Dalmatia’s generalship cannot be thus fairly tested. There are many circumstances which combine to prove, that when he complained to the emperor of the contradictions and obstacles he had to encounter he alluded to military as well as to political and financial difficulties. It is a part of human nature to dislike any disturbance of previous habits, and soldiers are never pleased at first with a general, who introduces and rigorously exacts a system of discipline differing from what they have been accustomed to. Its utility must be proved and confirmed by habit ere it will find favour in their eyes. Now Soult suddenly assumed the command of troops, who had been long serving under various generals and were used to much license in Spain. They were therefore, men and officers, uneasy at being suddenly subjected to the austere and resolute command of one who, from natural character as well as the exigency of the times, the war being now in his own country, demanded a ready and exact obedience, and a regularity which long habits of a different kind rendered onerous. Hence we find in all the French writers, and in Soult’s own reports, manifest proofs that his designs were frequently thwarted or disregarded by his subordinates when circumstances promised impunity. His greatest and ablest military combinations were certainly rendered abortive by the errors of his lieutenants in the first operations to relieve Pampeluna, and on the 31st of August a manifest negligence of his earnest recommendations to vigilance led to serious danger and loss at the passage of the Lower[405] Bidassoa. Complaint and recrimination were rife in all quarters about the defeat on the 10th of November, and on the 19th the bridge-head of Cambo was destroyed contrary to the spirit of his instructions. These things, joined to the acknowledged jealousy and disputes prevalent amongst the French generals employed in Spain, would indicate that the discrepancy between the conception and execution of the operations in front of Bayonne was not the error of the commander-in-chief. Perhaps king Joseph’s faction, so inimical to the duke of Dalmatia, was still powerful in the army and difficult to deal with.

3º. Lord Wellington has been blamed for putting his troops in a false position, and no doubt he under-valued, it was not the first time, the military genius and resources of his able adversary, when he exposed Hill’s troops on the left of the Nive to a species of surprize. But the passage of the Nive itself, the rapidity with which he moved his divisions from bank to bank, and the confidence with which he relied upon the valour of his troops, so far from justifying the censures which have been passed upon him by French writers, emphatically mark his mastery in the art. The stern justice of sending the Spaniards back into Spain after the battle of the Nivelle is apparent, but the magnanimity of that measure can only be understood by considering lord Wellington’s military situation at the time. The battle of the Nivelle was delivered on political grounds, but of what avail would his gaining it have been if he had remained enclosed as it were in a net between the Nive and the sea, Bayonne and the Pyrenees, unable to open communications with the disaffected in France, and having[406] the beaten army absolutely forbidding him to forage or even to look beyond the river on his right. The invasion of France was not his own operation, it was the project of the English cabinet and the allied sovereigns; both were naturally urging him to complete it, and to pass the Nive and free his flanks was indispensable if he would draw any profit from his victory of the 10th of November. But he could not pass it with his whole army unless he resigned the sea-coast and his communications with Spain. He was therefore to operate with a portion only of his force and consequently required all the men he could gather to ensure success. Yet at that crisis he divested himself of twenty-five thousand Spanish soldiers!

Was this done in ignorance of the military glory awaiting him beyond the spot where he stood?

“If I had twenty thousand Spaniards paid and fed,” he wrote to lord Bathurst, “I should have Bayonne. If I had forty thousand I do not know where I should stop. Now I have both the twenty thousand and the forty thousand, but I have not the means of paying and supplying them, and if they plunder they will ruin all.”

Requisitions which the French expected as a part of war would have enabled him to run this career, but he looked further; he had promised the people protection and his greatness of mind was disclosed in a single sentence. “I must tell your lordship that our success and every thing depends upon our moderation and justice.” Rather than infringe on either, he sent the Spaniards to the rear and passed the Nive with the British and Portuguese only, thus violating the military rule which forbids a general to disseminate his troops before an enemy who remains[407] in mass lest he should be beaten in detail. But genius begins where rules end. A great general always seeks moral power in preference to physical force. Wellington’s choice here was between a shameful inactivity or a dangerous enterprise. Trusting to the influence of his reputation, to his previous victories, and to the ascendancy of his troops in the field, he chose the latter, and the result, though he committed some errors of execution, justified his boldness. He surprised the passage of the Nive, laid his bridges of communication, and but for the rain of the night before, which ruined the roads and retarded the march of Hill’s columns, he would have won the heights of St. Pierre the same day. Soult could not then have withdrawn his divisions from the right bank without being observed. Still it was an error to have the troops on the left bank so unprepared for the battle of the 10th. It was perhaps another error not to have occupied the valley or basin between Hope and Alten, and surely it was negligence not to entrench Hill’s position on the 10th, 11th, and 12th. Yet with all this so brave so hardy so unconquerable were his soldiers that he was successful at every point, and that is the justification of his generalship. Hannibal crossed the Alps and descended upon Italy, not in madness but because he knew himself and his troops.

4º. It is agreed by French and English that the battle of St. Pierre was one of the most desperate of the whole war. Lord Wellington declared that he had never seen a field so thickly strewn with dead, nor can the vigour of the combatants be well denied where five thousand men were killed or wounded in three hours upon a space of one mile square. How then did it happen, valour being so conspicuous on both sides, that six English and Portuguese brigades,[408] furnishing less than fourteen thousand men and officers with fourteen guns, were enabled toAppendix 7, Sect. 4. withstand seven French divisions, certainly furnishing thirty-five thousand men and officers with twenty-two guns? The analysis of this fact shows upon what nice calculations and accidents war depends.

If Hill had not observed the French passing their bridge on the evening of the 12th, and their bivouac fires in the night, Barnes’s brigade, with which he saved the day, would have been at Urcuray, and Soult could not have been stopped. But the French general could only bring five divisions into action, and those only in succession, so that in fact three divisions or about sixteen thousand men with twenty-two guns actually fought the battle. Foy’s and Maransin’s troops did not engage until after the crisis had passed. On the other hand the proceedings of colonel Peacocke of the seventy-first, and colonel Bunbury of the third, for which they were both obliged to quit the service, forced general Hill to carry his reserve away from the decisive point at that critical period which always occurs in a well-disputed field and which every great general watches for with the utmost anxiety. This was no error, it was a necessity, and the superior military quality of the British troops rendered it successful.

The French officer who rode at the head of the second attacking column might be a brave man, doubtless he was; he might be an able man, but he had not the instinct of a general. On his right flank indeed Hill’s vigorous counter-attack was successful, but the battle was to be won in the centre; his column was heavy, undismayed, and only one weak battalion, the ninety-second, was before it; a short exhortation, a decided gesture, a daring example, and it would have overborne[409] the small body in its front, Foy’s, Maransin’s, and the half of D’Armagnac’s divisions would then have followed in the path thus marked out. Instead of this he weighed chances and retreated. How different was the conduct of the British generals, two of whom and nearly all their staff fell at this point, resolute not to yield a step at such a critical period; how desperately did the fiftieth andPublished Memoir by Captain Pringle of the Royal Engineers. Portuguese fight to give time for the ninety-second to rally and reform behind St. Pierre; how gloriously did that regiment come forth again to charge with their colours flying and their national music playing as if going to a review. This was to understand war. The man who in that moment and immediately after a repulse thought of such military pomp was by nature a soldier.

I have said that sir Rowland Hill’s employment of his reserve was no error, it was indeed worthy of all praise. From the commanding mount on which he stood, he saw at once, that the misconduct of the two colonels would cause the loss of his position more surely than any direct attack upon it, and with a promptness and decision truly military he descended at once to the spot, playing the soldier as well as the general, rallying the seventy-first and leading the reserve himself; trusting meanwhile with a noble and well-placed confidence to the courage of the ninety-second and the fiftieth to sustain the fight at St. Pierre. He knew indeed that the sixth division was then close at hand and that the battle might be fought over again, but like a thorough soldier he was resolved to win his own fight with his own troops if he could. And he did so after a manner that in less eventful times would have rendered him the hero of a nation.

To understand all the importance of the battle of1813. December. St. Pierre, the nature of the country and the relative positions of the opposing generals before and after that action must be considered. Bayonne although a mean fortress in itself was at this period truly designated by Napoleon as one of the great bulwarks of France. Covered by its entrenched camp, which the inundations and the deep country rendered impregnable while there was an army to defend it, this place could not be assailed until that army was drawn away, and it was obviously impossible to pass it and leave the enemy to act upon the communications with Spain and the sea-coast. To force the French army to abandon Bayonne was therefore lord Wellington’s object, and his first step was the passage of the Nive; he thus cut Soult’s direct communication with St. Jean Pied de Port, obtained an intercourse with the malcontents in France, opened a large tract of fertile country for his cavalry, and menaced the navigation of the Adour so as to render it difficult for the French general to receive supplies. This was however but a first step, because the country beyond the Nive was still the same deep clayey soil with bad roads; and it was traversed by many rivers more or less considerable, which flooding with every shower in the mountains,[411] formed in their concentric courses towards the Adour a number of successive barriers, behind which Soult could maintain himself on lord Wellington’s right and hold communication with St. Jean Pied de Port. He could thus still hem in the allies as before; upon a more extended scale however and with less effect, for he was thrown more on the defensive, his line was now the longest, and his adversary possessed the central position.

On the other hand, Wellington could not, in that deep impracticable country, carry on the wide operations necessary to pass the rivers on his right, and render the French position at Bayonne untenable, until fine weather hardened the roads, and the winter of 1813 was peculiarly wet and inclement.

From this exposition it is obvious that to nourish their own armies and circumvent their adversaries in that respect were the objects of both generals, Soult aimed to make Wellington retire into Spain, Wellington to make Soult abandon Bayonne entirely, or so reduce his force in the entrenched camp that the works might be stormed. The French general’s recent losses forbad him to maintain his extended positions except during the wet season; three days’ fine weather made him tremble; and the works of his camp were still too unfinished to leave a small force there. The difficulty of the roads and want of military transport threw his army almost entirely upon water-carriage for subsistence, and his great magazines were therefore established at Dax on the Adour, and at Peyrehorade on the Gave of Pau, the latter being about twenty-four miles from Bayonne. These places he fortified to resist sudden incursions, and he threw a bridge across the Adour at the port of Landes, just above[412] its confluence with the Gave de Pau. But the navigation of the Adour below that point, especially at Urt, the stream being confined there, could be interrupted by the allies who were now on the left bank. To remedy this Soult ordered Foy to pass the Adour at Urt and construct a bridge with a head of works, but the movement was foreseen by Wellington, and Foy, menaced with a superior force, recrossed the river. The navigation was then carried on at night by stealth, or guarded by the French gun-boats and exposed to the fire of the allies. Thus provisions became scarce, and the supply would have been quite unequal to the demand if the French coasting trade, now revived between Bordeaux and Bayonne, had been interrupted by the navy, but lord Wellington’s representations on this head were still unheeded.

Soult was embarrassed by Foy’s failure at Urt. He reinforced him with Boyer’s and D’Armagnac’s divisions, which were extended to the Port de Lannes; then leaving Reille with four divisions to guard the entrenched camp and to finish the works, he completed the garrison of Bayonne and transferred his head-quarters to Peyrehorade. Clauzel with two divisions of infantry and the light cavalry now took post on the Bidouze, being supported with Trielhard’s heavy dragoons, and having his left in communication with Paris and with St. Jean Pied de Port where there was a garrison of eighteen hundred men besides national guards. He soon pushed his advanced posts to the Joyeuse or Gambouri, and the Aran, streams which unite to fall into the Adour near Urt, and he also occupied Hellette, Mendionde, Bonloc, and the Bastide de Clerence. A bridge-head was constructed at[413] Peyrehorade, Hastingues was fortified on the Gave de Pau, Guiche, Bidache and Came, on the Bidouze, and the works of Navarens were augmented. In fine Soult with equal activity and intelligence profited from the rain which stopped the allies’ operations in that deep country.

Lord Wellington also made some changes of position. Having increased his works at Barrouilhet he was enabled to shift some of Hope’s troops towards Arcangues, and he placed the sixth division on the heights of Villefranque, which permitted general Hill to extend his right up the Adour to Urt. The third division was posted near Urcuray, the light cavalry on the Joyeuse facing Clauzel’s outposts, and a chain of telegraphs was established from the right of the Nive by the hill of San Barbe to St. Jean de Luz. Freyre’s Gallicians were placed in reserve about St. Pé, and Morillo was withdrawn to Itzassu where supported by the Andalusian division and by Freyre, he guarded the valley of the Upper Nive and watched general Paris beyond the Ursouia mountain. Such was the state of affairs in1814. January. the beginning of January, but some minor actions happened before these arrangements were completed.

In December the allies seized the island of Holriague near La Honce on the Adour, which gave them a better command of that river, but Foy kept possession of the islands of Berens and Broc above Holriague. The allies’ bridges of communication on the Nive were now carried away by floods which occasioned some embarrassment, and meanwhile, without any orders from lord Wellington, probably with a view to plunder, for his troops were exceedingly licentious, Morillo obtained from Victor Alten[414] two squadrons of the eighteenth hussars, under pretence of exploring the enemy’s position towards Mendionde and Maccaye. Their commander, major Hughes, having with difficulty ascertained that he was to form an advanced guard in a close wooded country, demanded the aid of some Spanish Caçadores, and then moving forwards drove in the picquets, crossed the bridge of Mendionde and commenced a skirmish. But during this action Morillo withdrew his division without giving any notice, and at the same time the Caçadores fled in a shameful manner from the left, the cavalry were thus turned and escaped with difficulty, having had one captain killed, two other captains and a lieutenant, and Hughes himself, badly wounded. The unfortunate issue of this skirmish was attributed at the time to the bad conduct of the eighteenth hussars, against whom lord Wellington was by malicious misrepresentation previously prejudiced; for at Vittoria they were unjustly accused of being more licentious than others in plundering the captured property on the field, whereas they had fought well and plundered less than many who were praised for their orderly demeanour.

About the same time that this disaster occurred at Mendionde, Mina, acting independently, and being pressed for provisions in the mountains, invaded the Val de Baigorry and the Val des Osses, where his men committed the greatest enormities, plundering and burning, and murdering men women and children without distinction. The people of these valleys, distinguished amongst the Basques for their warlike qualities, immediately took arms under the command of one of their principal men, named Etchevery, and being reinforced with two hundred[415] and fifty men from St. Jean Pied de Port, surprised one of Mina’s battalions, and attacked the rest with great vigour. This event gave Soult hopes of exciting the Basques to commence such a war as they had carried on at the commencement of the French revolution. His efforts to accomplish it were unceasing, and he had for two months been expecting the arrival of general Harispe an officer whose courage and talents have been frequently noticed in this History, and who being the head of an ancient Basque family had great local influence, which was increased by his military reputation. It was thought that if he had come when first expected, about November, lord Wellington’s strict discipline being then unknown to the people, he would have raised a formidable partizan war in the mountains. But now the English general’s attention to all complaints, his proclamation, and the proof he gave of his sincerity by sending the Spaniards back when they misconducted themselves, had, in conjunction with the love of gain that master passion with all mountaineers, tamed the Basque spirit and disinclined them to exchange ease and profit for turbulence and ravage. Nevertheless this incursion by Mina and the licentious conduct of Morillo’s troops, awakened the warlike propensities of the Val de Baygorry Basques, and Harispe was enabled to make a levy with which he immediately commenced active operations, and was supported by general Paris.

Soult with a view to aid Harispe, to extend his own cantonments, and to restrict those of the allies, now resolved to drive the latter’s detachments altogetherClauzel’s Official Reports and Orders MSS. from the side of St. Jean Pied de Port, and fix Clauzel’s left at Hellette, the culminant point of[416] the great road to that fortress. To effect this, on the 3d of January, he caused Clauzel to establish twoPlan 9. divisions of infantry at the heights of La Costa, near the Bastide de Clerence and beyond the Joyeuse river. Buchan’s Portuguese brigade, placed in observation there, was thus forced to retreat upon Briscons, and at the same time Paris advancing to Bonloc connected his right with Clauzel’s left at Ayherre, while the light cavalry menaced all the allies’ line of outposts. Informed of this movement by telegraph, Wellington, thinking Soult was seeking a general battle on the side of Hasparen, made the fifth division and lord Aylmer’s brigade relieve the light division which marched to Arauntz; the fourth division then passed the Nive at Ustaritz, and the sixth division made ready to march from Villefranque, by the high road of St. Jean Pied de Port, towards Hasparen, as a reserve to the third fourth and seventh divisions. The latter were concentrated beyond Urcuray on the 4th, their left in communication with Hill’s right at Briscons, and their right, supported by Morillo, who advanced from Itzassu for this purpose.

The English general’s intent was to fall upon the enemy at once, but the swelling of the small rivers prevented him. However on the 5th having ascertained the true object and dispositions of the French general, and having twenty-four thousand infantry in hand with a division of cavalry and four or five brigades of artillery, he resolved to attack Clauzel’s divisions on the heights of La Costa. In this view Le Cor’s Portuguese marched against the French right, the fourth division marched against their centre, the third division supported by cavalry against their left; the remainder of the cavalry and[417] the seventh division, the whole under Stapleton Cotton, were posted at Hasparen to watch Paris on the side of Bonloc. Soult was in person at the Bastide de Clerence and a general battle seemed inevitable, but the intention of the English general was merely to drive back the enemy from the Joyeuse, and the French general, thinking the whole allied army was in movement resolved to act on the defensive, and directed the troops at La Costa to retire fighting upon the Bidouze: the affair terminated therefore with a slight skirmish on the evening of the 6th. The allies then resumed their old positions on the right of the Nive, the Andalusians were ordered back to the Bastan, and Carlos D’España’s Gallicians were brought up to Ascain in their place.

When Clauzel saw that nothing serious was designed he sent his horsemen to drive away general Hill’s detachments, which had taken advantage of the great movements to forage on the lower parts of the Joyeuse and Aran rivers. Meanwhile Soult observing how sensitive his adversary was to any demonstration beyond the Bidouze resolved to maintain the line of those two rivers. In this view he reduced his defence of the Adour to a line drawn from the confluence of the Aran to Bayonne, which enabled him to reinforce Clauzel with Foy’s division and all the light cavalry. Meantime general Harispe having the division of Paris and the brigade of general Dauture placed under his orders to support his mountaineers, fixed his quarters at Hellette and commenced an active partizan warfare. On the 8th he fell upon Mina in the Val des Osses and drove him with loss into Baygorry. On the 10th returning to Hellette he surprised Morillo’s[418] foragers with some English dragoons on the side of Maccaye, and took a few prisoners. On the 12th he again attacked Mina and drove him up into the Alduides. During these affairs at the outposts lord Wellington might have stormed the entrenched camp in front of Bayonne, but he could not hold it except under the fire of the fortress, and not being prepared for a siege avoided that operation. Nor would the weather, which was again become terrible, permit him to make a general movement to drive Harispe from his position in the upper country; wherefore he preferred leaving that general in quiet possession to irritating the mountaineers by a counter-warfare. He endeavoured however to launch some armed boats on the Adour above Bayonne, where Soult had increased the flotilla to twenty gun-boats for the protection of his convoys, which were notwithstanding forced to run past Urt under the fire of a battery constructed by general Hill.

Lord Wellington now dreading the bad effect which the excesses committed by Mina’s and Morillo’s men were likely to produce, for the Basques were already beginning to speak of vengeance, put forth his authority in repression. Rebuking Morillo for his unauthorized and disastrous advance upon Mendionde, and for the excesses of his troops, he ordered him to keep the latter constantly under arms. This was resented generally by the Spanish officers, and especially by Morillo whose savage untractable and bloody disposition, since so horribly displayed in South America, prompted him to encourage violence. He asserted falsely that his troops were starving, declared that a settled design to ill-use the Spaniards existed, and that the British soldiers were suffered to commit every crime with impunity. The[419] English general in reply explained himself both to Morillo, and to Freyre, who had alluded to the libels about San Sebastian, with a clearness and resolution that showed how hopeless it would be to strive against him.

“He had not,” he said, “lost thousands of men to pillage and ill-treat the French peasantry, he preferred a small army obedient to a large one disobedient and undisciplined. If his measures to enforce good order deprived him of the Spanish troops the fault would rest with those who suffered their soldiers to commit disorders. Professions without corresponding actions would not do, he was determined to enforce obedience one way or another and would not command insubordinate troops. The question between them was whether they should or should not pillage the French peasants. His measures were taken to prevent it and the conduct which called them forth was more dishonouring to the Spaniards than the measures themselves. For libels he cared not, he was used to them and he did not believe the union of the two nations depended upon such things; but if it did he desired no union founded upon such an infamous interest as pillage. He had not lost twenty thousand men in the campaign to enable Morillo to plunder and he would not permit it. If the Spaniards were resolved to do so let them march their great armies into France under their own generals, he would meanwhile cover Spain itself and they would find they could not remain in France for fifteen days. They had neither money nor magazines, nothing to maintain an army in the field, the country behind was incapable of supporting them and were he scoundrel enough to permit pillage[420] France rich as it was could not sustain the burthen. Even with a view to living on the enemy by contributions it would be essential to prevent plunder; and yet in defiance of all these reasons he was called an enemy by the Spanish generals because he opposed such conduct, and his measures to prevent it were considered dishonouring!

“Something also he could say against it in a political point of view, but it was unnecessary because careless whether he commanded a large or a small army he was resolved that it should obey him and should not pillage.

“General Morillo expressed doubts of his right to interfere with the Spaniards. It was his right and his duty, and never before did he hear that to put soldiers under arms was a disgrace. It was a measure to prevent evil and misfortunes. Mina could tell by recent experience what a warfare the French peasants could carry on, and Morillo was openly menaced with a like trial. It was in vain for that general to palliate or deny the plundering of his division, after having acknowledged to general Hill that it was impossible to prevent it because the officers and soldiers received by every post letters from their friends, congratulating them upon their good luck in entering France and urging them to seize the opportunity of making fortunes. General Morillo asserted that the British troops were allowed to commit crimes with impunity. Neither he nor any other man could produce an instance of injury done where proof being adduced the perpetrators had escaped punishment. Let him enquire how many soldiers had been hanged, how many stricken with minor chastisements and made to pay for damages done. But had the English troops[421] no cause of complaint against the Spaniards? Officers and soldiers were frequently shot and robbed on the high roads and a soldier had been lately murdered between Oyarzun and Lesaca; the English stores and convoys were plundered by the Spanish soldiers, a British officer had been put to death at Vittoria and others were ill-treated at Santander.”

A sullen obedience followed this correspondence for the moment, but the plundering system was soon renewed, and this with the mischief already done was sufficient to rouse the inhabitants of Bidarray as well as those of the Val de Baygorry into action. They commenced and continued a partizan warfare until lord Wellington, incensed by their activity, issued a proclamation calling upon them to take arms openly and join Soult or stay peaceably at home, declaring that he would otherwise burn their villages and hang all the inhabitants. Thus it appeared that notwithstanding all the outcries made against the French for resorting to this system of repressing the warfare of peasants in Spain, it was considered by the English general both justifiable and necessary. However the threat was sufficient for this occasion. The Basques set the pecuniary advantages to be derived from the friendship of the British and Portuguese troops and the misery of an avenging warfare against the evils of Spanish plunder, and generally disregarded Harispe’s appeals to their patriotism.

Meanwhile Soult who expected reinforcements seeing that little was to be gained by insurrection and being desirous to resume the offensive, ordered Harispe to leave only the troops absolutely necessary for the defence of St. Jean Pied de Port and[422] its entrenched camp with a few Basques as scouts in the valleys, and to concentrate the remainder of his force at Mendionde, Hellette and La Houssoa, thus closely hemming in the right of the allies’ line with a view to making incursions beyond the Upper Nive. This was on the 14th, on the 23rd Harispe, getting information that Morillo was to forage in force on the side of Bidarray, endeavoured to cut him off, the supporting troops consisting of Spanish infantry and some English hussars repulsed his first attack, but they were finally pushed back with some loss in horses and mules. About the same time one of Hill’s posts near the confluence of the Aran with the Adour was surprised by some French companies who remained in advance until fresh troops detached from Urt forced them to repass the river again. This affair was a retaliation for the surprise of a French post a few days before by the sixth division, which was attended with some circumstances repugnant to the friendly habits long established between the French and British troops at the outposts. The value of such a generous intercourse old soldiers well understand, and some illustrations of it at this period may be quoted.

On the 9th of December, the forty-third was assembled in column on an open space within twenty yards of the enemy’s out-sentry, yet the latter continued to walk his beat for an hour without concern, relying so confidently on the customary system that he placed his knapsack on the ground to ease his shoulders. When at last the order to advance was given, one of the British soldiers stepping out told him to go away and helped him to replace his pack, the firing then commenced; the next morning the[423] French in like manner warned a forty-third sentry to retire. But the most remarkable instance happened on the occasion of lord Wellington’s being desirous of getting to the top of a hill occupied by the enemy near Bayonne. He ordered the riflemen who escorted him to drive the French away, and seeing the former stealing up, as he thought too close, called out to commence firing; with a loud voice one of those old soldiers replied “no firing!” and then holding up the butt of his rifle towards the French, tapped it in a peculiar way. At the well-understood signal which meaned “we must have the hill for a short time,” the French who though they could not maintain would not have relinquished the post without a fight if they had been fired upon, quietly retired. And this signal would never have been made if the post had been one capable of a permanent defence, so well do veterans understand war and its proprieties.

The English general now only waited until the roads were practicable, to take the offensive with an army superior in every point of view to Soult’s. That general’s numbers were also about to be reduced. His conscripts were deserting fast, and the inclemency of the weather was filling his hospitals, while the bronzed veterans of Wellington’s army impassive to fatigue, patient to endure, fierce in execution, were free from serious maladies, ready and able to plant their colours wherever their general listed. At this time however the country was a vast quagmire; it was with difficulty that provisions or even orders could be conveyed to the different quarters, and a Portuguese brigade on the right of the Nive, was several days without food from the swelling of the rivulets which stopped the[424] commissariat mules. At the sea-side the troops were better off, yet with a horrible counterpoise, for on that iron-bound coast storms and shipwrecks were so frequent, that scarcely a day passed but some vessel, sometimes many together, were seen embayed and drifting towards the reefs which shoot out like needles for several miles. Once in this situation there was no human help! a faint cry might be heard at intervals, but the tall ship floated slowly and solemnly onwards until the first rock arrested her, a roaring surge then dashed her to pieces and the shore was strewed with broken timbers and dead bodies. December and January were thus passed by the allies, but February saw Wellington break into France the successful invader of that mighty country. Yet neither his nor Soult’s military operations can be understood without a previous description of political affairs which shall be given in the next chapter.

Portugal.—It has been shewn that marshal1814. Beresford’s arrival at Lisbon put a momentary check upon the intrigues of the regency relative to the command of the troops, when he rejoined the army the vexatious conduct of the government was renewed with greater violence, and its ill-will was vented upon the English residents, whose goods were arbitrarily seized and their persons imprisoned without regard to justice or international law. The supply and reinforcing of the army were the pretences for these exactions, yet the army was neither supplied nor recruited, for though the new regulationsMr. Stuart’s Correspondence, MSS. had produced nine thousand trained soldiers, they were, in contempt of the subsidizing treaty, retained in the depôts. At first this was attributed to the want of transport to enable them to march through Spain, but though lord Wellington obtained in the beginning of 1814 shipping to convey them to the army, the Portuguese government still withheld the greatest number, alleging in excuse the ill-conduct of the Spaniards relative to the military convention established between the two countries.

This convention had been concluded in 1812 to enable the Portuguese troops to establish hospitals and to draw certain resources from Spain upon fixed conditions. One of these was that all supplies[426] might be purchased, half with ready money half with bills on the Portuguese treasury; nevertheless in December 1813 the Spanish envoy at Lisbon informed the Portuguese government, that to give up the shells of certain public buildings for hospitals was the only effect they would give to the convention. Wherefore as neither troops nor horses could march through Spain, and the supply of those already with the army became nearly impossible, the regency detained the reinforcements. Lord Wellington strongly reproached the Spanish government for this foul conduct, yet observed with great force to the Portuguese regency, that the treaty by which a certain number of soldiers were to be constantly in the field was made with England, not with Spain; and as the government of the former country continued to pay the subsidy and provided ships for the transport of the troops there was no excuse for retaining them in Portugal.

His remonstrances, Beresford’s orders, and Mr. Stuart’s exertions although backed by the menaces of lord Castlereagh, were however alike powerless; the regency embarked only three thousand men out of nine thousand, and those not until the month of March when the war was on the point of terminating. Thus instead of thirty thousand Portuguese under arms lord Wellington had less than twenty thousand, and yet Mr. Stuart affirmed that by doing away with the militia and introducing the Prussian system of granting furloughs, one hundred thousand troops of the line might have been furnished and supported by Portugal, without pressing more severely on the finances of the country than the actual system which supplied these twenty thousand. The regency were now more than usually[427] importunate to have the subsidy paid in specie in which case their army would have disappeared altogether. Mr. Stuart firmly opposed this, knowing the money would be misapplied if it fell into their hands, and thinking their importunity peculiarly ill-timed when their quota of troops was withheld, and when lord Wellington, forced to pay ready money for his supplies in France, wanted all the specie that could be procured for the military chest. Such was the countenance assumed by Portugal towards England in return for the independence which the latter had secured for her; and it is obvious that if the war had not terminated immediately afterwards the alliance could not have continued. The British army deserted by Portugal and treated hostilely, as we shall find, by the Spaniards, must then have abandoned the Peninsula.

Spain.—The malice evinced towards lord Wellington by the Spanish government, the libels upon him and upon the Anglo-Portuguese army, the vices of the system by which the Spanish troops were supplied, and their own evil propensities fostered by long and cruel neglect and suffering, the activity of those intriguing politicians who were inimical to the British alliance, the insolence and duplicity of the minister of war, the growing enmity between Spain and Portugal, the virulence of all parties and the absolute hostility of the local authorities towards the British army, the officers and soldiers of which were on all occasions treated as if they were invaders rather than friends, drove lord Wellington in the latter end of November to extremity. He judged the general disposition of the Spanish people to be still favourable to the English alliance, and with the aid of the serviles hoped to[428] put down the liberals; but an open rupture with the government he thought inevitable, and if the liberal influence should prove most powerful with the people he might be unable to effect a retreat into Portugal. Wherefore he recommended the British ministers to take measures with a view to a war against Spain! And this at the very moment when, victorious in every battle, he seemed to have placed the cause he supported beyond the power of fortune. Who when Napoleon was defeated at Leipsic, when all Europe and even part of Asia were pouring their armed hordes into the northern and eastern parts of France, when Soult was unable to defend the western frontier; who then looking only on the surface could have supposed that Wellington, the long-enduring general, whose profound calculations and untiring vigour in war had brought the affairs of the Peninsula to their apparently prosperous state, that he the victorious commander could with truth thus describe his own uneasy situation to his government?

“Matters are becoming so bad between us and the Spaniards that I think it necessary to draw your attention seriously to the subject. You will have seen the libels about San Sebastian, which I know were written and published by an officer of the war department and I believe under the direction of the minister at war Don Juan O’Donoju. Advantage has been taken of the impression made by these libels to circulate others in which the old stories are repeated about the outrages committed by sir John Moore’s army in Gallicia, and endeavours are made to irritate the public mind about our still keeping garrisons in Cadiz and Carthagena, and particularly in Ceuta. They exaggerate[429] the conduct of our traders in South America, and every little concern of a master of a ship who may behave ill in a Spanish port is represented as an attack upon the sovereignty of the Spanish nation. I believe these libels all proceed from the same source, the government and their immediate servants and officers; and although I have no reason to believe that they have as yet made any impression on the nation at large they certainly have upon the officers of the government, and even upon the principal officers of the army. These persons must see that if the libels are not written or encouraged by the government they are at least not discouraged, they know that we are odious to the government and they treat us accordingly. The Spanish troops plunder every thing they approach, neither their own nor our magazines are sacred. Until recently there was some semblance of inquiry and of a desire to punish offenders, lately these acts of disorder have been left entirely unnoticed, unless when I have interfered with my authority as commander-in-chief of the Spanish army. The civil magistrates in the country have not only refused us assistance but have particularly ordered the inhabitants not to give it for payment, and when robberies have been discovered and the property proved to belong to the commissariat the law has been violated and possession withheld. This was the case lately at Tolosa.

“Then what is more extraordinary and more difficult to understand is a transaction which occurred lately at Fuenterabia. It was settled that the British and Portuguese hospitals should go to that town. There is a building there which has been a Spanish hospital, and the Spanish authority who[430] gave it over wanted to carry off, in order to burn as fire-wood, the beds, that our soldiers might not have the use of them; and these are people to whom we have given medicines instruments and other aids, who when wounded and sick we have taken into our hospitals, and to whom we have rendered every service in our power after having recovered their country from the enemy! These are not the people of Spain but the officers of government, who would not dare to conduct themselves in this manner if they did not know that their conduct was agreeable to their employers. If this spirit is not checked, if we do not show that we are sensible of the injury done to our characters, and of the injustice and unfriendly nature of such proceedings, we must expect that the people at large will soon behave towards us in the same manner, and that we shall have no friend or none who will dare to avow him as such in Spain. Consider what will be the consequence of this state of affairs if any reverse should happen, or if an aggravation of the insults and injuries or any other cause should cause the English army to be withdrawn. I think I should experience great difficulty, the Spanish people being hostile, in retiring through Spain into Portugal from the peculiar nature of our equipments, and I think I might be able to embark the army at Passages in spite of all the French and Spanish armies united. But I should be much more certain of getting clear off as we ought if we had possession of San Sebastian, and this view of the subject is the motive for the advice I am about to give you as the remedy for the evils with which I have made you acquainted.

“First then I recommend to you to alter the nature of your political relations with Spain and to[431] have nothing there but a “chargé d’affaires.” Secondly to complain seriously of the conduct of the government and their servants, to remind them that Cadiz, Carthagena, and I believe, Ceuta, were garrisoned by British troops at their earnest request, and that the troops were not sent to the two former till the government agreed to certain conditions. If we had not garrisoned the last it would before now have fallen into the hands of the Moors. Thirdly to demand, as security for the safety of the king’s troops against the criminal disposition of the government and of those in authority under them, that a British garrison should be admitted into San Sebastian, giving notice that unless this demand was complied with the troops should be withdrawn. Fourthly. To withdraw the troops if this demand be not complied with, be the consequences what they may, and to be prepared accordingly. You may rely upon this, that if you take a firm decided line and shew your determination to go through with it, you will have the Spanish nation with you, and will bring the government to their senses, and you will put an end at once to all the petty cabals and counter-action existing at the present moment, and you will not be under the necessity of bringing matters to extremities; if you take any other than a decided line and one which in its consequences will involve them in ruin you may depend upon it you will gain nothing and will only make matters worse. I recommend these measures whatever may be the decision respecting my command of the army. They are probably the more necessary if I should keep my command. The truth is that a crisis is approaching in our connection with Spain and if you do not bring the government and nation[432] to their senses before they go too far, you will inevitably lose all the advantages which you might expect from services rendered to them.”

Thus it appears that lord Wellington at the end of the war described the Spaniards precisely as sir John Moore described them at the beginning. But the seat of government was now transferred to Madrid and the new Cortez, as I have already noticed, decided, against the wishes of the regency, that the English general should keep the command of the Spanish armies. The liberals indeed with great diligence had previously sought to establish a system of controul over the Cortez by means of the populace of Madrid as they had done at Cadiz, and they were so active and created so much alarm by their apparent success, that the serviles, backed by the Americans, were ready to make the princess Carlotta sole regent as the only resource for stemming the progress of democracy. However when they had proved their strength upon the question of lord Wellington’s command, they deferred the princess’s affair and resolved to oppose their adversaries more vigorously in the assembly. They were encouraged also by a tumult which happened at Madrid, where the populace instigated by their agents, or disliking the new constitution, for the measures of the democratic party were generally considered evil in the great towns beyond the Isla, rose and forced the authorities to imprison a number of obnoxious persons; the new Cortez then arrived, the serviles got the upper hand and being resolved to change the regency took as their ground of attack its conduct towards the English general. Pursuing this scheme of opposition with ardour they caused the minister of war to be dismissed, and[433] were ready to attack the regency itself, expecting full success, when to their amazement and extreme anger lord Wellington, far from desiring to have his personal enemies thus thrust out of power, expressed his earnest desire to keep them in their stations.

To men who were alike devoid of patriotism or principle, and whose only rule of action was the momentary impulse of passion, such a proceeding was incomprehensible; yet it was a wise and well-considered political change on his part, shewing that private feelings were never the guides of his conduct in public matters, and that he ever seemed to bear in mind the maxim which Sophocles has put into the mouth of Ajax, “carrying himself towards his friends as if they might one day become enemies and treating his foes as men who might become friends.” The new spirit had given him no hopes of any general alteration of the system, nor was he less convinced that sooner or later he must come to extremities with the Spaniards; but he was averse to any appearance of disunion becoming public at the moment he was invading France, lest it should check his projects of raising an anti-Napoleon party in that country. He therefore advised the British government to keep his hostile propositions in abeyance, leaving it to him and to his brother to put them in execution or not as events might dictate. Meanwhile he sent orders to evacuate Cadiz and Carthagena, and opposed the projected change in the Spanish government, observing that “the minister of war being dismissed, the most obnoxious opponent of military arrangement was gone; that the mob of Madrid, being worked upon by the same press in the hands of the same people who had made the mob of Cadiz so ungovernable, would become as[434] bad as these last, and though the mercantile interest would not have so much power in the capital they would not want partizans when desirous of carrying a question by violence. The grandees were too poor to retain their former natural influence, and the constitution gave them no political power. The only chance which the serviles had was to conduct themselves with prudence, and when in the right with a firm contempt for the efforts of the press and the mob; but this was what no person in Spain ever did and the smaller party being wiser bolder and more active would soon govern the Cortez at Madrid as they did that at Cadiz.”

No permanent change for the better could be expected, and meanwhile the actual government, alarmed by the tumults in the capital, by the strength of the serviles in the Cortez, by the rebukes and remonstrances of the English general and ministers, and by the evident danger of an open rupture with England, displayed, according to lord Wellington, the utmost prudence and fairness in a most important affair which occurred at this time. That is to say, their own views and interests coinciding with those of the English commander and government there was a momentary agreement, and Wellington wisely preferred this opening for conciliation to the more dangerous mode he had before recommended.

The event which called forth his approval of their conduct was the secret arrival of the duke of San Carlos at Madrid in December. He brought with him a treaty of peace, proposed by Napoleon and accepted by Ferdinand, called the treaty of Valençay. It acknowledged Ferdinand as king of Spain and the Indies, and the integrity of the[435] Spanish empire was recognized. He was in return to make the English evacuate Spain, and the French troops were to abandon the country at the same time. The contracting powers were to maintain their respective maritime rights as they had been stipulated by the treaty of Utrecht and observed until 1792. The sales of the national domains made by Joseph were to be confirmed; all the Spaniards who had attached themselves to the French cause were to be reinstated in their dignities and property, those who chose to quit Spain were to have ten years to dispose of their possessions. Prisoners, including all those delivered up by Spain to the English, were to be sent home on both sides. The king was to pay annually thirty millions of reals to his father Charles IV., and two millions to his widow; a treaty of commerce was to be arranged.

Ferdinand being entirely devoid of principle acted with that cunning which marked his infamous career through life. He gave the duke of San Carlos secret instructions to tell the serviles, if he found them all-powerful in the Cortez, to ratify this treaty with a secret resolution to break it when time served; but if the Jacobins were strongest San Carlos was merely to ask them to ratify it, Ferdinand in that case reserving to himself the task of violating it on his own authority. These instructions were made known to the English ministers and the English general, but they, putting no trust in such a negociator, and thinking his intention was rather to deceive the allies than Napoleon, thwarted him as much as they could, and in this they were joined by the PortugueseMr. Stuart’s Correspondence, MSS. government. The British authorities were naturally little pleased with the prospect of being[436] forced to abandon Spain under a treaty, which would necessarily give Napoleon great influence over that country in after times, and for the present enable him to concentrate all the old troops on the eastern frontier of his empire; nor was the Jacobinical Spanish government more content to have a master. Wherefore, all parties being agreed, the regency, keeping the matter secret, dismissed San Carlos on the 8th of January with a copy of the decree passed by the Cortez, which rendered null and void all acts of Ferdinand while a prisoner, and forbad negociation for peace while a French army remained in the Peninsula. And that the king might fully understand them, they told him “the monster despotism had been driven from the throne of Spain.” Meanwhile Joseph Palafox, who had been a prisoner ever since the siege of Zaragoza, was by the French emperor first sent to Valençay, after which he was to follow San Carlos and he arrived at Madrid four days after the latter’s departure. But his negociations were equally fruitless with the regency, and in the secret sittings of the Cortez measures were discussed for watching the king’s movements and forcing him to swear to the constitution and to the Cortez before he passed the frontier.

Lord Wellington was alarmed at the treaty of Valençay. He had, he said, long suspected Napoleon would adopt such an expedient and if he had shewn less pride and more common sense it would have succeeded. This sarcasm was perhaps well applied to the measure as it appeared at the time, but the emperor’s real proceedings he was unacquainted with, and this splenetic ebullition only indicated his own vexation at approaching mischief,[437] for he was forced to acknowledge that the project was not unlikely even then to succeed, because the misery of Spain was so great and so clearly to be traced to the views of the government and of the new constitution, that many persons must have been desirous to put an end to the general suffering under the sanction of this treaty. “If Napoleon,” he said, “had withdrawn the garrisons from Catalonia and Valencia and sent Ferdinand who must be as useless a person in France as he would probably be in Spain at once to the frontier, or into the Peninsula, peace would have been made or the war at least rendered so difficult as to be almost impracticable and without hope of great success.” Now this was precisely what Napoleon had designed, and it seems nearly certain that he contemplated the treaty of Valençay and the restoration of Ferdinand as early as the period of the battle of Vittoria, if not before.

The scheme was one which demanded the utmost secrecy, that it might be too sudden for the English influence to defeat it; the emperor had therefore arranged that Ferdinand should enter Spain early in November, that is at the very moment when it would have been most injurious to the English interest, because then the disputes in the Cortez between the serviles and Jacobins were most rancorous, and the hostility of the regencies both in Portugal and Spain towards the English general and English influence undisguised. Suchet had then also proved his superiority to the allies in Catalonia, and Soult’s gigantic lines being unessayed seemed impregnable. But in Napoleon’s council were persons seeking only to betray him. It was the great misfortune of his life to have been[438] driven by circumstances to suffer such men as Talleyrand and Fouché, whose innate treachery has become proverbial, to meddle in his affairs or even to approach his court. Mischief of this kind, however, necessarily awaits men who like Napoleon and Oliver Cromwell have the courage to attempt after great convulsions and civil wars the rebuilding of the social edifice without spilling blood. Either to create universal abhorrence by their cruelty, or to employ the basest of men, the Talleyrands, Fouchés, and Monks, of revolutions, is their inevitable fate; and never can they escape the opposition, more dangerous still, of honest and resolute men, who unable to comprehend the necessity of the times see nothing but tyranny in the vigour which prevents anarchy.

The treaty of Valençay was too important a measure to escape the sagacity of the traitors around Napoleon, and when their opposition in the council and their secret insinuations proved unavailing to dissuade him from it, they divulged the secret to the partizans of the Bourbons. Taking advantage of the troubled state of public affairs which occupied the emperor’s time and distracted his attention, they contrived that Ferdinand’s emissaries should precede him to Madrid, and delayed his own departure until March when the struggle was at an end. Nevertheless the chances of success for this scheme, even in its imperfect execution, were so many and so alarming that lord Wellington’s sudden change from fierce enmity to a warm support of the regency, when he found it resolute and frank in its rejection of the treaty, although it created so much surprize and anger at the moment, cannot be judged otherwise than as the wise and[439] prudent proceeding of a consummate statesman. Nor did he fail to point out to his own government the more distant as well as the immediate danger to England and Spain involved in this singularly complicated and important affair.

The evils as affecting the war and English alliance with Spain were obvious, but the two articles relating to the provision for Ferdinand’s father and mother, and to the future state of the Spaniards who had joined the French involved great interests. It was essential, he said, that the Spanish government should explicitly declare its intentions. Negociations for a general peace were said to be commenced, of that he knew nothing, but he supposed such being the case that a basis would be embodied in a preliminary treaty which all the belligerents would ratify, each power then to arrange its own peculiar treaty with France under protection of the general confederation. Napoleon would necessarily put forward his treaty with Ferdinand. It could be got rid of by the statement that the latter was a prisoner when negociating; but new articles would then have to be framed and therefore the Spanish government should be called upon previously to declare what their intentions were as to the two articles in the treaty of Valençay. His objections to them were that the allowance to Charles IV. was beyond the financial means of Spain, and were it not so, Napoleon should not be allowed to stipulate for any provision for him. Neither should he be suffered to embody or establish a permanent French party in Spain, under protection of a treaty, an article of which provided for the restoration of the Spaniards who had taken part with the French. It would[440] give him the right, which he would not fail to exercise, of interfering in their favour in every question of property, or other interest, and the Spanish government would be involved in perpetual disputes with France. It was probable the allied sovereigns would be desirous of getting rid of this question and would think it desirable that Spain should pardon her rebellious subjects. For this reason he had before advised the Spanish government to publish a general amnesty, with the view of removing the difficulty when a general peace should come to be negociated, and this difficulty and danger be enhanced, if not before provided for, by the desire which each of the allied powers would feel, when negociating on their separate grounds, to save their finances by disbanding their armies.

This suggestion of an amnesty, made ten days before the battle of Vittoria, illustrates Wellington’s sagacity, his long and provident reach of mind, his discriminating and magnanimous mode of viewing the errors and weaknesses of human nature. Let it be remembered that in the full tide of success, after having passed the Douro, and when Joseph surprised and bewildered was flying before him, that he who had been called the iron duke in the midst of his bivouac fires, found time to consider, and had sufficient humanity and grandeur of mind thus to address the Spanish government on this subject.

“A large number of Spaniards who have taken the side of the French are now with the enemy’s army, many of these are highly meritorious and have rendered most essential service to the cause even during the period in which they have been in the service of the enemy. It is also a known fact that fear, the misery and distress which they suffered[441] during the contest, and despair of the result, were the motives which induced many of these unfortunate persons to take the part which they have taken, and I would suggest for consideration whether it is expedient to involve the country in all the consequences of a rigid adherence to the existing law in order to punish such persons. I am the last man who will be found to diminish the merit of those Spaniards who have adhered to the cause of the country during the severe trial which I hope has passed, particularly of those, who, having remained amongst the enemy without entering their service, have served their country at the risk of their lives. But at the same time that I can appreciate the merits of these individuals and of the nation at large I can forgive the weakness of those who have been induced by terror by distress or by despair to pursue a different line of conduct.

“I entreat the government to advert to the circumstances of the commencement and of the different stages of this eventful contest, and to the numerous occasions in which all men must have imagined that it was impossible for the powers of the Peninsula, although aided by Great Britain, to withstand the colossal power by which they were assailed and nearly overcome. Let them reflect upon the weakness of the country at the commencement of the contest, upon the numerous and almost invariable disasters of the armies, and upon the ruin and disorganization that followed, and let them decide whether those who were witnesses of these events are guilty because they could not foresee what has since occurred. The majority are certainly not guilty in any other manner, and many now deemed guilty in the eye of the law as having served the[442] pretended king have by that very act acquired the means of serving and have rendered important services to their country. It is my opinion that the policy of Spain should lead the government and the Cortez to grant a general amnesty with certain exceptions. This subject deserves consideration in the two views of failing or succeeding in freeing the country from its oppressors. If the effort fail the enemy will by an amnesty be deprived of the principal means now in his hands of oppressing the country in which his armies will be stationed; he will see clearly that he can place no reliance on any partizans in Spain, and he will not have even a pretence for supposing that the country is divided in opinion. If the effort succeed the object of the government should be to pacify the country and to heal the divisions which the contest has unavoidably occasioned. It is impossible to accomplish this object while there exists a great body of the Spanish nation, some possessing the largest property in the country and others endowed with considerable talents, who are proscribed for their conduct during the contest, conduct which has been caused by the misfortunes to which I have above adverted. These persons their friends and relations will if persecuted naturally endeavour to perpetuate the divisions in the country in the hope at some time to take advantage of them, and adverting to their number and to that power which they must derive from their property and connections it must be feared that they will be too successful.

“But there are other important views of this question. First should the effort to free the country from its oppressors succeed, at some time or other approaches to peace must be made between the two[443] nations and the amnesty to the persons above described will remove the greatest difficulty in the way of such an arrangement. Secondly, should even Spain be at peace with France and the proscription against these persons be continued, they will remain in France a perpetual instrument in the hands of that restless power to disturb the internal tranquillity of Spain; and in case of a renewal of the war, which will be their wish and object, they will be the most mischievous and most inveterate enemies of their country, of that country which with mistaken severity aggravates her misfortunes by casting off from her thousands of her useful subjects. On every ground then it is desirable that the measure should be adopted and the present moment should be seized for adopting it.”

Then pointing out with great accuracy and justice those who should be exempted from an amnesty he thus terminated this record of his own true greatness, and of the littleness of the people to whom it was fruitlessly addressed.

“In bringing this subject under the consideration of the government I am perhaps intruding my opinion on a subject in which as a stranger I have no concern, but having had an advantage enjoyed by few of being acquainted with the concerns of the country since the commencement of the contest, and having been sensible both in the last and present campaign of the disadvantages suffered by Spain from the want of a measure of this description, I have thought it proper as a well-wisher to the cause to bring it under the consideration of the government assuring them at the same time that I have never had the slightest communication on the subject with the government of my country, nor do[444] I believe that they have ever turned their attention to it. What I have above stated are my own opinions to which I may attribute more weight than they merit but they are founded upon a sincere devotion to the interests of the country.”

Such was the general political state of the Peninsula as bearing upon the military operations at the close of the year 1813, and the state of England and France shall be shewn in the next chapters. But however hateful and injurious to England the conduct of the Peninsular government appears, and however just and well-founded were the greatest part of lord Wellingtons complaints, it is not to be assumed that the Spanish government and Cortez were totally without excuse for their hostility or ingratitude. It was not solely upon military grounds that they were obnoxious to the English general. He united heartily with the English government in hatred of democratic institutions as opposed to aristocratic domination. Spain with the former seemed scarcely worth saving from France, and in a letter written about that period to the Conde de la Bispal, who it would appear proposed some immediate stroke of violence against the regency, he openly avows that he was inimical to the constitution, because it admitted a free press and refused to property any political influence beyond what naturally belonged to it. That is, it refused to heap undue honours privileges and power upon those who already possessed all the luxury and happiness which riches can bestow; it refused to admit the principle that those who have much should have more, that the indolence corruption and insolence naturally attendant upon wealth should be supported and increased by irresponsible power;[445] that those who laboured and produced all things should enjoy nothing, that the rich should be tyrants and the poor slaves. But these essential principles of aristocratic government have never yet been, and never will be quietly received and submitted to by any thinking people: where they prevail there is no real freedom. Property inevitably confers power on its possessors, and far from adding to that natural power by political privileges it should be the object of all men who love liberty to balance it by raising the poorer classes to political importance: the influence and insolence of riches ought to be tamed and subdued instead of being inflated and excited by political institutions. This was the guiding principle of the most celebrated Greek legislators, the opposite principle produced the domestic dissensions of the Romans, and was the ruin of Carthage. It was the cause also of the French revolution. But after many years of darkness, the light of reason is now breaking forth again, and that ancient principle of justice which places the right of man in himself, above the right of property, is beginning to be understood. A clear perception of it has produced the American republic. France and Spain have admitted it and England ripens for its adoption. Yet pure and bright and beautiful and healthful as the light of freedom is in itself, it fell at this time on such foul and stagnant pools, such horrid repulsive objects, that millions turned at first from its radiance with disgust and wished for darkness again.

The force and energy of Napoleon’s system of1813. government was evinced in a marvellous manner by the rapidity with which he returned to Germany, at the head of an enormous army, before his enemies had time even to understand the extent of his misfortunes in the Russian campaign. The victories of Lutzen and Bautzen then seemed to reinstate him as the arbiter of Europe. But those battles were fought with the heads of columns the rear of which were still filing out of France. They were fought also with young troops. Wherefore the emperor when he had given himself a fixed and menacing position in Germany more readily listened to the fraudful negociations of his trembling opponents, partly in hopes of attaining his object without further appeal to arms, partly to obtain time to organize and discipline his soldiers, confident in his own unmatched skill in directing them if war was finally to decide his fate. He counted also upon the family ties between him and Austria, and believed that power willing to mediate sincerely. Not that he was so weak as to imagine the hope of regaining some of its former power and possessions was not uppermost, nor was he unprepared to make concessions; but he seems to have been quite unsuspecting[447] of the long course of treachery and deceit followed by the Austrian politicians.

It has been already shewn that while negociating with France an offensive and defensive treaty inVol. v. p. 49 1812, the Austrian cabinet was cognizant of, and secretly aiding the plan of a vast insurrection extending from the Tyrol to Calabria and the Illyrian provinces. The management of this scheme was entrusted by the English cabinet to general Nugent and Mr. King who were at Vienna; their agents went from thence to Italy and the Illyrian coast, many Austrian officers were engaged in the project; and Italians of great families entered into commercialAppendix, No. 1. houses to enable them with more facility to carry on this plan. Moreover Austria while actually signing the treaty with Napoleon was with unceasing importunity urging Prussia to join the Russians in opposition to him. The feeble operations of Prince Swartzenberg, the manner in which he uncovered the emperor’s right flank and permitted Tchitchagoff to move to the Beresina in the Russian campaign, were but continuations of this deceitful policy. And it was openly advanced as a merit by the Austrian cabinet that her offer of mediation after the battle of Bautzen was made solely with the view of gaining time to organize the army which was to join the Russians and Prussians. Finally the armistice itself was violated, hostilities being commenced before its termination, to enable the Russian troops safely to join the Austrians in Bohemia.

Nevertheless Napoleon’s genius triumphed at Dresden over the unskilful operations of the allies, directed by Swartzenberg, whose incapacity as a commander was made manifest in this campaign.[448] Nor would the after misfortunes of Vandamme and Marshal Macdonald, or the defeat of Oudinot and Ney have prevented the emperor’s final success but for the continuation of a treachery, which seemed at the time to be considered a virtue by sovereigns who were unceasingly accusing their more noble adversary of the very baseness that they were practising so unblushingly. He had conceived a project so vast so original so hardy, so far above the imaginations of his contemporary generals, that even Wellington’s sagacity failed to pierce it, and he censured the emperor’s long stay on the Elbe as an obstinacy unwarranted by the rules of art. But Napoleon had more profoundly judged his own situation. The large forces he left at Dresden at Torgau, and Wittemberg, for which he has been so much blamed by shallow military critics as lessening his numbers on the field of Leipsic, were essential parts of his gigantic plan. He quitted Dresden, apparently in retreat, to deceive his enemies, but with the intention of marching down the Elbe, recrossing that river and throwing his opponents into a false position. Then he would have seized Berlin and reopening his communications with his garrisons both on the Elbe and the Oder have operated between those rivers; and with an army much augmented in power, because he would have recovered many thousand old soldiers cooped up in the garrisons; an army more compact and firmly established also, because he would have been in direct communication with the Danes and with Davoust’s force at Hamburgh, and both his flanks would have been secured by his chains of fortresses on the two rivers. Already had Blucher and the Swedes felt his first stroke, the next would have taught the[449] allies that the lion was still abroad in his strength, if at the very moment of execution without any previous declaration the Bavarians, upon whose operations he depended for keeping the Austrians in the valley of the Danube in check, had not formed common cause with his opponents and the whole marched together towards the Rhine. The battle of Leipsic followed, the well-known treason of the Saxon troops led to the victory gained there by the allies, and Napoleon, now the prey of misfortune, reached France with only one-third of his army, having on the way however trampled in the dust the Bavarian Wrede who attempted to stop his passage at Hannau.

Meanwhile the allied sovereigns, by giving hopes to their subjects that constitutional liberty would be the reward of the prodigious popular exertions against France, hopes which with the most detestable baseness they had previously resolved to defraud, assembled greater forces than they were able to wield, and prepared to pass the Rhine. But distrusting even their immense superiority of numbers they still pursued their faithless system. When Napoleon in consequence of the Bavarian defection marched to Leipsic, he sent orders to Gouvion St. Cyr to abandon Dresden and unite with the garrisons on the Lower Elbe, the messengers were intercepted, and St. Cyr, too little enterprising to execute such a plan of his own accord, surrendered on condition of being allowed to regain France. The capitulation was broken and general and soldiers remained prisoners.

After the Leipsic battle, Napoleon’s adherents fell away by nations. Murat the husband of his sister joined Austria and thus forced prince Eugene to[450] abandon his position on the Adige. A successful insurrection in favour of the prince of Orange broke out in Holland. The neutrality of Switzerland was violated, and more than half a million of armed men were poured across the frontiers of France in all the violence of brute force, for their military combinations were contemptible and their course marked by murder and devastation. But previous to this the allies gave one more notable example of their faithless cunning.

St. Aignan the French resident minister at Gotha had been taken at Leipsic and treated at first as a prisoner of war. He remonstrated and being known to entertain a desire for peace was judged a good tool with which to practise deception. Napoleon had offered on the field of battle at Leipsic to negociate, no notice was taken of it at the time, but now the Austrian Metternich and the Russian Nesselrode had an interview with St. Aignan at Frankfort, and they assured him the Prussian minister agreed in all things with them. They had previously arranged that lord Aberdeen should come in during the conference as if by accident; nothing was put down in writing, yet St. Aignan was suffered to make minutes of their proposals in reply to the emperor’s offer to negociate. These were generally that the alliance of the sovereigns was indissoluble—that they would have only a general peace—that France was to be confined to her naturalDiplomatic Correspondence, MSS. limits, viz. the Alps the Rhine and the Pyrenees—that the independence of Germany was a thing not to be disputed—that the Spanish Peninsula should be free and the Bourbon dynasty be restored—that Austria must have a frontier in Italy the line of which could be afterwards discussed,[451] but Italy itself was to be independent of any preponderating power—that Holland was also to be independent and her frontier to be matter for after discussion—that England was ready to make great sacrifices for peace upon these bases and would acknowledge that freedom of commerce and of navigation which France had a right to pretend to. St. Aignan here observed that Napoleon believed England was resolved to restrict France to the possession of thirty sail of the line, lord Aberdeen replied that it was not true.

This conference had place at the emperor of Austria’s head-quarters on the 10th of November, and lord Aberdeen inclosed the account of it in a despatch dated at Smalcalde the 16th of November. He had objected verbally to the passage relating to the maritime question with England, nevertheless he permitted it to remain in St. Aignan’s minutes. It was decided also that the military operations should go on notwithstanding the negociation, and in truth the allies had not the slightest design to make peace. They thought Napoleon would refuse the basis proposed, which would give them an opportunity to declare he was opposed to all reasonable modes of putting an end to the war and thus work upon the French people. This is proved by what followed. For when contrary to their expectations the emperor’s minister signified, on the 16th of November, that he accepted the propositions, observing that the independence of all nations at sea as well as by land had been always Napoleon’s object, Metternich in his reply, on the 25th of November, pretended to consider this answer as avoiding the acceptation of the basis. The emperor however put that obstacle aside, on the 2d of December, by[452] accepting explicitly the basis, generally and summarily, such as it had been presented to him, adding, that France would make great sacrifices but the emperor was content if by like sacrifices on the part of England, that general peace which was the declared object of the allies could be obtained. Metternich thus driven from his subterfuge required Napoleon to send a like declaration to each of the allies separately when negociations might, he said, commence.

Meanwhile lord Aberdeen, who had permitted St. Aignan to retain the article relating to maritime rights in his minutes of conference, presented to Metternich on the 27th of November a note declaring that England would not admit the turn given by France to her share of the negociation; that she was ready to yield all the rights of commerce and navigation which France had a right to pretend to, but the question would turn upon what that right was. England would never permit her navigation laws to be discussed at a congress, it was a matter essentially foreign to the object of such an assembly, and England would never depart from the great principle thereby announced as to her maritime rights. Metternich approved of lord Aberdeen’s views, saying they were his own and those of his court, thus proving that the negociation had been a deceit from the beginning. This fact was however placed beyond doubt by lord Castlereagh’s simultaneous proceedings in London.

In a note dated the 30th November that minister told lord Aberdeen England admitted as a basis, that the Alps the Rhine and the Pyrenees should be the frontier of France, subject to such modifications as might be necessary to give a secure[453] frontier to Holland, and to Switzerland also, although the latter had not been mentioned in the proposals given by St. Aignan. He applauded the resolution to pursue military operations notwithstanding the negociations, and he approved of demanding nothing but what they were resolved to have. Nevertheless he said that any sacrifice to be made by England was only to secure the independence of Holland and Switzerland, and the former having already declared for the house of Nassau was now out of the pale of discussion. Finally he recommended that any unnecessary delay or equivocation on the part of the enemy should be considered as tantamount to a rejection of the basis, and that the allies should then put forward the offer of peace to show that it was not they but France that opposed an honourable termination of the war. Having thus thrown fresh obstacles in the way of that peace which the allies pretended to have so much at heart, he, on the 21st December, sent notes to the different ambassadors of the allied powers then in London demanding explicit answers about the intentions of their courts as to England’s maritime code. To this they all responded that their cabinets would not suffer any question relative to that code to be entertained at a congress in which England was represented, and this on the express ground that it would mar the great object of peace.

Lord Castlereagh thus provided, declared that France should be informed of their resolutions before negociations commenced, but twenty days before this Napoleon having decreed a fresh levy of three hundred thousand conscripts the allies had published a manifesto treating this measure, so essentially a defensive one since they would not[454] suspend their military operations, as a fresh provocation on his part, because the motives assigned for the conscription contained a just and powerful description of their past deceits and violence with a view to rouse the national spirit of France. Thus having first by a pretended desire for peace and a willingness on the part of England to consent to an arrangement about her maritime code, inveigled the French emperor into negociations and thereby ascertained that the maritime question was uppermost in his mind and the only obstacle to peace, they declared that vital question should not even be discussed. And when by this subtlety they had rendered peace impossible proclaimed that Napoleon alone resisted the desire of the world for tranquillity. And at this very moment Austria was secretly endeavouring to obtain England’s consent to her seizing upon Alsace a project which was stopped by lord Wellington who forcibly pointed out the danger of rousing France to a general insurrection by such a proceeding.

The contrast between these wiles to gain a momentary advantage, and the manly, vigorous policy of lord Wellington must make honest men of all nations blush for the cunning which diplomatists call policy. On one side the arts of guileful negociation masked with fair protestations but accompanied by a savage and revolting system of warfare; on the other a broad open hostility declared on manly and just grounds followed up with a strict regard to humanity and good faith; nothing put forward with an equivocal meaning and the actions true to the word. On the eastern frontier the Cossack let loose to ravage with all the barbarity of Asiatic warfare. On the western frontier the Spaniards[455] turned back into their own country in the very midst of triumph, for daring to pass the bounds of discipline prescribed by the wise and generous policy of their commander. Terror and desolation and the insurrection of a people rendered frantic by the cruelty of the invaders marked the progress of the ferocious multitudes who crossed the Rhine. Order and tranquillity, profound even on the very edge of the battle-field, attended the march of the civilized army which passed the Bidassoa. And what were the military actions? Napoleon rising even above himself hurtled against the armed myriads opposed to him with such a terrible energy that though ten times his number they were rolled back on every side in confusion and dismay. But Wellington advanced without a check, victorious in every battle, although one half of the veterans opposed to him would have decided the campaign on the eastern frontier. Nor can this be gainsaid, since Napoleon’s career in this campaign was only stayed by the defection of his brother-in-law Murat, and by the sickening treachery of two marshals to whom he had been prodigal of benefits. It is undeniable that lord Wellington with sixty thousand Anglo-Portuguese acting in the south, effected more than half a million of the allies were able to effect on the opposite side of France; and yet Soult’s army on the 10th of November was stronger than that with which Napoleon fought the battle of Brienne.

That great man was never personally deceived by the allies’ pretended negociations. He joined issue with them to satisfy the French people that he was not averse to peace, but his instructions dated the 4th of January and addressed to Caulaincourt prove at once his sagacity and firmness. “I think,” he[456] said, “that both the allies good faith and the wish of England to make peace is doubtful; for my part I desire peace but it must be solid and honourable. I have accepted the basis proposed at Frankfort yet it is more than probable the allies have other notions. These propositions are but a mask, the negociations are placed under the influence of the military operations and it is easy to foresee what the consequences of such a system must be. It is necessary therefore to listen to and observe every thing. It is not certain even that you will be admitted to the head-quarters of the allies. The Russians and the English watch to prevent any opening for explanation and reconciliation with the emperor of Austria. You must therefore endeavour to ascertain the real views of the allies and let me know day by day what you learn that I may frame instructions for which at present I have no sure grounds.”

The internal state of France was more disquieting to his mind than foreign negociations or the number of invaders. The sincere republicans were naturally averse to him as the restorer of monarchy, yet they should have felt that the sovereign whose ruin was so eagerly sought by the legitimate kings and nobles of Europe could not be really opposed to liberty. Meanwhile the advocates of legitimacy shrunk from him as an usurper, and all those tired of war, and they were a majority of the nation, judging from the stupendous power of his genius that he had only to will peace to attain it with security, blamed his tardiness in negociation. An unexpected opposition to his wishes was also displayed in the legislative body, and the partizans of the Bourbons were endeavouring to form a great conspiracy[457] in favour of that house. There were many traitors likewise to him and to their country, men devoid of principle, patriotism, or honour, who with instinctive hatred of a failing cause plotted to thwart his projects for the defence of the nation. In fine the men of action and the men of theories were alike combined for mischief. Nor is this outbreak of passion to be wondered at when it is considered how recently Napoleon had stopped the anarchy of the revolution and rebuilt the social and political structure in France. But of all who by their untimely opposition to the emperor hurt their country, the most pernicious were those silly politicians, whom he so felicitously described as “discussing abstract systems of government when the battering ram was at the gates.”

Such however has been in all ages the conduct of excited and disturbed nations, and it seems to be inherent in human nature, because a saving policy can only be understood and worked to good by master-spirits, and they are few and far between, their time on earth short, their task immense. They have not time to teach, they must command although they know that pride and ignorance and even honesty will carp at the despotism which brings general safety. It was this vain short-sighted impatience that drove Hannibal into exile, caused the assassination of Cæsar, and strewed thorns beneath the gigantic footsteps of Oliver Cromwell. It raged fiercely in Spain against lord Wellington, and in France against Napoleon, and always with the most grievous injury to the several nations. Time only hallows human institutions. Under that guarantee men will yield implicit obedience and respect to the wildest caprices of the most stupid[458] tyrant that ever disgraced a throne, and wanting it they will cavil at and reject the wisest measures of the most sublime genius. The painful notion is thus excited, that if governments are conducted with just the degree of stability and tranquillity which they deserve and no more, the people of all nations, much as they may be oppressed, enjoy upon an average of years precisely the degree of liberty they are fitted for. National discontents mark, according to their bitterness and constancy, not so much the oppression of the rulers as the real progress of the ruled in civilization and its attendant political knowledge. When from peculiar circumstances those discontents explode in violent revolutions, shattering the fabric of society and giving free vent and activity to all the passions and follies of mankind, fortunate is the nation which possesses a Napoleon or an Oliver Cromwell “to step into their state of dominion with spirit to controul and capacity to subdue the factions of the hour and reconstruct the frame of reasonable government.”

For great as these two men were in the field of battle, especially the former, they were infinitely greater when they placed themselves in the seat of power, and put forth the gigantic despotism of genius essential to the completion of their holy work. Nor do I hold the conduct of Washington to be comparable to either of those men. His situation was one of infinitely less difficulty, and there is no reason to believe that his capacity would have been equal to the emergencies of a more formidable crisis than he had to deal with. Washington could not have made himself master of all had it been necessary and he so inclined, for he was neither the foremost general nor the foremost statesman of his[459] nation. His forbearance was a matter of necessity, and his love of liberty did not prevent him from bequeathing his black slaves to his widow.

Such was Napoleon’s situation, and as he read the signs of the times truly he knew that in his military skill and the rage of the peasants at the ravages of the enemy he must find the means to extricate himself from his difficulties, or rather to extricate his country, for self had no place in his policy save as his personal glory was identified with France and her prosperity. Never before did the world see a man, soaring so high and devoid of all selfish ambition. Let those who honestly seeking truth doubt this, study Napoleon carefully; let them read the record of his second abdication published by his brother Lucien, that stern republican who refused kingdoms as the price of his principles, and they will doubt no longer. It is not however with these matters that this History has to deal but with the emperor’s measures affecting his lieutenants on the Spanish frontier of France. There disaffection to his government was extensive but principally from local causes. The conscription was peculiarly hateful to the wild mountaineers, who like most borderers cherish very independent notions. The war with England had ruined the foreign commerce of their great towns, and the advantage of increased traffic by land on the east was less directly felt in the south. There also the recollection of the Vendean struggle still lingered and the partizans of the Bourbons had many connections. But the chief danger arose from the just and politic conduct of lord Wellington which, offering no cause of anger and very much of private advantage to the[460] people, gave little or no hope of insurrection from sufferings.

While France was in this state England presented a scene of universal exultation. Tory politics were triumphant, opposition in the parliament was nearly crushed by events, the press was either subdued by persecution or in the pay of the ministers, and the latter with undisguised joy hailed the coming moment when aristocratic tyranny was to be firmly established in England. The most enormous subsidies and military supplies were poured into the continent, and an act was passed to enable three-fourths of the militia to serve abroad. They were not however very forward to volunteer, and a new army which ought to have reinforced Wellington was sent, under the command of general Graham, to support the insurrection of Holland, where it was of necessity engaged in trifling or unsuccessful operations in no manner affecting the great objects of the war. Meanwhile the importance of lord Wellington’s army and views was quite overlooked or misunderstood. The ministers persevered in the foolish plan of removing him to another quarter of Europe, and at the same time, instigated by the ambassadors of the allied sovereigns, were continually urging him to push his operations with more vigour in France. As if he was the man who had done least!

His letters were filled with strong and well-founded complaints that his army was neglected. Let his real position be borne in mind. He had, not as a military man but with a political view and to meet the wishes of the allied sovereigns backed by the importunities of his own government,[461] placed himself in a confined and difficult district of France, where his operations were cramped by rivers and fortresses and by a powerful army occupying strong positions on his front and flanks. In this situation, unable to act at all in wet weather, he was necessarily dependent upon the ocean for supplies and reinforcements, and upon the Spanish authorities for his hospitals, depôts, and communications. Numbers were requisite to balance the advantages derived by the enemy from the peculiar conformation of the country and the position of the fortresses. Money also was wanted to procure supplies which he could not carry with him, and must pay for exactly, if he would avoid a general insurrection and the consequent ruin of the political object for which he had adopted such critical military operations. But though he had undertaken the invasion of France at the express desire of the government the latter seemed to be alike ignorant of its importance and of the means to accomplish it, at one moment urging progress beyond reason, at another ready to change lightly what they had proposed ignorantly. Their unsettled policy proved their incapacity even to comprehend the nature of the great tide of events on which they floated rather than sailed. Lord Wellington was forced day by day to teach them the value of their own schemes, and to show them how small their knowledge was of the true bearing of the political and military affairs they pretended to direct.

“Assure,” he wrote on the 21st of December to lord Bathurst, in reply to one of their ill-founded remonstrances, “Assure the Russian ambassador there is nothing I can do to forward the general interest that I will not do. What do they require?[462] I am already further advanced on the French territory than any of the allied powers, and better prepared to take advantage of any opportunities which might offer as a consequence of my own situation or of their proceedings.”—“In military operations there are some things which can not be done, and one is to move troops in this country during or immediately after a violent fall of rain. To attempt it will be to lose more men than can be replaced, a guilty waste of life.”

“The proper scene of action for the army was undoubtedly a question for the government to decide, but with thirty thousand men in the Peninsula, he had for five years held two hundred thousand of Napoleon’s best soldiers in check, since it was ridiculous to suppose that the Spaniards and Portuguese could have resisted for a moment if the British troops had been withdrawn. The French armies actually employed against him could not be less than one hundred thousand men, more if he included garrisons, and the French newspapers spoke of orders to form a fresh reserve of one hundred thousand at Bordeaux. Was there any man weak enough to suppose one-third of the number first mentioned would be employed against the Spaniards and Portuguese if the British were withdrawn? They would if it were an object with Buonaparte to conquer the Peninsula and he would in that case succeed; but he was more likely to give peace to the Peninsula and turn against the allied sovereigns his two hundred thousand men of which one hundred thousand were such troops as their armies had not yet dealt with. The war every day offered a crisis the result of which might affect the world for ages, and to change the scene of[463] operations for the British army would render it incapable of fighting for four months, even if the scene were Holland, and it would even then be a deteriorated machine.”

“The ministers might reasonably ask how by remaining where he was he could induce Napoleon to make peace. The answer was ready. He held a commanding situation on the most vulnerable frontier of France, probably the only vulnerable one, and if he could put twenty thousand Spaniards in activity, and he could do it if he had money and was properly supported by the fleet, Bayonne the only fortress on the frontier, if it could be called a fortress, would fall to him in a short time. If he could put forty thousand Spaniards in motion his posts would soon be on the Garonne, and did any man believe that Napoleon would not feel an army in such a position more than he would feel thirty or forty thousand British troops laying siege to one of his fortresses in Holland? The resources in men and money of which the emperor would be thus deprived, and the loss of reputation would do ten times more to procure peace than ten armies on the side of Flanders. But if he was right in believing a strong Bourbon party existed in France and that it preponderated in the south, what mischief would not an advance to the Garonne do Napoleon! What sacrifices would he not make to get rid of the danger!”

“It was for the government not for him to dispose of the nation’s resources, he had no right to give an opinion upon the subject, but military operations in Holland and in the Peninsula could not be maintained at the same time with British troops; one or other must be given up, the British military establishment was not equal to maintain two armies in[464] the field. He had begun the recent campaign with seventy thousand Anglo-Portuguese, and if the men got from the English militia, and the Portuguese recruits which he expected, had been added to his force, even though the Germans were removed from his army according to the ministers’ plan, he might have taken the field early in 1814 with eighty thousand men. That was now impossible. The formation of a Hanoverian army was the most reasonable plan of acting on the continent but the withdrawal of the Germans would reduce his force to fifty thousand men unless he received real and efficient assistance to bring up the Portuguese recruits. This would increase his numbers to fifty-five or even sixty thousand if his own wounded recovered well and he had no more battles, but he would even then be twenty thousand less than he had calculated upon, and it was certain that if the government extended their operations to other countries new means must be put in activity or the war must be stinted on the old stage. He did not desire to complain but every branch of the service in the Peninsula was already stinted especially in what concerned the navy and the supplies which came directly from England!”

While thus combating the false views of the English cabinet as to the general state of affairs he had also to struggle with its negligence and even opposition to his measures in details.

The general clothing of the Spanish troops and the great coats of the British soldiers for 1813, were not ready in January 1814, because the inferior departments could not comprehend that the opening of new scenes of exertion required new means, and the soldiers had to brave the winter half naked, first on the snowy mountains, then in the more chilling[465] damps of the low country about Bayonne. The clothing of the British soldiers for 1814 should have arrived in the end of 1813 when the army lying inactive near the coast by reason of the bad weather could have received and fitted it without difficulty. It did not however arrive until the troops were in progress towards the interior of France, wherefore, there being no means of transporting it by land, many of the best regiments were obliged to return to the coast to receive it, and the army as we shall find had to fight a critical battle without them.

He had upon commencing the invasion of France issued a proclamation promising protection to persons and property. This was construed by the French to cover their vessels in the Nivelle when the battle of that name gave the allies St. Jean de Luz. Lord Wellington sacrificing personal profit to the good of the service admitted this claim as tending to render the people amicable, but it clashed with the prize-money pretensions of lord Keith who commanded the fleet of which Collier’s squadron formed a detached portion. The serious evils endured by the army in default of sufficient naval assistance had been treated as of very slight importance, the object of a trifling personal gain for the navy excited a marvellous activity, and vigorous interference on the part of the government. Upon these subjects, and others of a like vexatious nature affecting his operations, lord Wellington repeatedly and forcibly declared his discontent during the months of December, January, and February.

“As to the naval affairs,” he said, “the reports of the number of ships on the stations striking off those coming out and going home would shew whether he had just ground of complaint, and whatever their[466] numbers there remained the right of complaint because they did not perform the service required. The French had recommenced their coast navigation from Bordeaux to Bayonne, and if the blockade of Santona had been maintained the place would have been forced to surrender at an early period. The proclamation of protection which he had issued, and the licenses which he had granted to French vessels, every act of that description, and two-thirds of the acts which he performed every day could not he knew be considered of any avail as affecting the king’s government, unless approved of and confirmed by the prince regent; and he knew that no power short of the regent’s could save the property of French subjects on the seas from the British navy. For that reason he had requested the sanction of the government to the sea passports which he had granted. His proclamation of protection had been construed whether rightfully or wrongfully to protect the French ships in the rivers; his personal interest, greater than others, would lead him to deny this, but he sacrificed his profit to the general good.

“Were lord Keith and sir George Collier because the latter happened to have a brig or two cruizing off the coast, to claim as prizes all the vessels lying in every river which the army might pass in its operations? and this to the detriment of the cause which required the strictest respect for private property. For the last five years he had been acting in the confidence that his conduct would be approved of and supported, and he concluded it would be so still; but he was placed in a novel situation and asked for legal advice to determine, whether lord Keith and the channel fleet, were to be considered as engaged in a conjoint expedition with the army[467] under his command against the subjects of France, neither having any specific instructions from government, and the fleet having nothing to do with the operations by land. He only required that fleet to give him a free communication with the coast of Spain, and prevent the enemy’s sea communication between the Garonne and the Adour, and this last was a part of its duty before the army arrived. Was his proclamation of protection to hold good as regarded the ships in the rivers? He desired to have it sanctioned by the prince regent, or that he might be permitted to issue another declaring that it was of no value.”

This remonstrance produced so much effect that lord Keith relinquished his claims, and admiral Penrose was sent to command upon the station instead of sir George Collier. The immediate intercourse of lord Wellington with the navy was thus ameliorated by the superior power of this officer, who was remarkable for his suavity. Yet the licenses given to French vessels were strongly condemned by the government, and rendered null, for we find him again complaining that “he had granted them only in hopes of drawing money and supplies from France, and of interesting the French mercantile men to aid the army; but he feared the government were not aware of, and did not feel the difficulties in which he was placed at all times for want of money, and judged his measures without adverting to the necessity which occasioned them; hence their frequent disapprobation of what he did.”

Strange this may sound to those who seeing the duke of Wellington in the fulness of his glory have been accustomed to regard him as the star of England’s greatness; but those who at that period frequented the society of ministers know well that[468] he was then looked upon by those self-sufficient men as a person whose views were wild and visionary, requiring the corroboration of older and wiser heads before they could be assented to. Yea! even thus at the eleventh hour was the giant Wellington measured by the political dwarfs.

Although he gained something by making San Jean de Luz a free port for all nations not at war with France, his financial situation was nearly intolerable, and at the moment of greatest pressure colonel Bunbury, under-secretary of state, was sent out to protest against his expenses. One hundred thousand pounds a month was the maximum in specie which the government would consent to supply, a sum quite inadequate to his wants. And this remonstrance was addressed to this victorious commander at the very crisis of his stupendous struggle, when he was overwhelmed with debts and could scarcely stir out of his quarters on account of the multitude of creditors waiting at his door for payment of just claims.

“Some of his muleteers he said were twenty-sixWellington’s Despatches. months in arrears, and recently, instigated by British merchants, they had become so clamorous that rather than lose their services he had given them bills on the treasury for a part of their claims, though he knew they would sell these bills at a discount to the sharks, who had urged them to be thus importunate and who were waiting at the ports to take advantage of the public distresses. A dangerous measure which he desired not to repeat.

“It might be true that the supply of one hundred thousand pounds a month had been even exceeded for some time past, but it was incontestible[469] that the English army and all its departments, and the Spanish and Portuguese armies were at the moment paralyzed for want of money. The arrears of pay to the soldiers was entering the seventh month, the debt was immense, and the king’s engagements with the Spanish and Portuguese governments were not fulfilled. Indebted in every part of Spain he was becoming so in France, the price of all commodities was increasing in proportion to the delay of payment, to the difficulty of getting food at all, and the want of credit into which all the departments of the army had fallen. Of two hundred thousand dollars given to marshal Beresford for the pay of his troops on account of the Portuguese subsidy he had been forced to take back fifty thousand to keep the Spaniards together, and was even then forced to withhold ten thousand to prevent the British cavalry from perishing. Money to pay the Spaniards had sailed from Cadiz, but the vessel conveying it, and another containing the soldiers’ great coats, were by the admiralty arrangements obliged to go first to Corunna, and neither had arrived there in January although the money had been ready in October. But the ship of war designed to carry it did not arrive at Cadiz until the end of December. Sixteen thousand Spanish troops were thus rendered useless because without pay they could not be trusted in France.”

“The commissary-in-chief in England had been regularly informed of the state of the supplies of the military chest and of the wants and prospects of the army, but those wants were not attended to. The monthly hundred thousand pounds spoken of as the maximum, even if it had been given regularly, would not cover the ordinary expenses of the[470] troops, and there were besides the subsidies other outlays requiring ready money, such as meat for the soldiers, hospital expenses, commissariat labourers, and a variety of minor engagements. The Portuguese government had been reduced to a monthly sum of two hundred thousand dollars out of a subsidy of two millions sterling. The Spanish government got what they could out of a subsidy of one million. And when money was obtained for the government in the markets of Lisbon and Cadiz, it came not in due time, because, such were the admiralty arrangements, there were no ships to convey the treasure to the north coast of Spain. The whole sum which had passed through the military chest during the past year was scarcely more than two millions four hundred thousand pounds, out of which part of the subsidies had been paid. This was quite inadequate, the Government had desired him to push his operations to the Garonne during the winter, he was prepared to do so in every point excepting money, and he knew the greatest advantages would accrue from such a movement but he could not stir. His posts were already so distant from the coast that his means of transport were daily destroyed by the journeys, he had not a shilling to pay for any thing in the country and his credit was gone. He had been obliged privately to borrow the expense of a single courier sent to general Clinton. It was not his duty to suggest the fitting measures for relief, but it was obvious that an immediate and large supply from England was necessary and that ships should be provided to convey that which was obtained at Lisbon and Cadiz to the army.”

Such was the denuded state of the victorious Wellington at a time when millions, and the worth[471] of more millions were being poured by the English ministers into the continent; when every petty German sovereign, partizan, or robber, who raised a band, or a cry against Napoleon, was supplied to satiety. And all this time there was not in England one public salary reduced, one contract checked, one abuse corrected, one public servant rebuked for negligence; not a writer dared to expose the mischief lest he should be crushed by persecution; no minister ceased to claim and to receive the boasting congratulations of the tories, no whig had sense to discover or spirit to denounce the iniquitous system, no voice of reprehension was heard from that selfish faction unless it were in sneering contempt of the general whose mighty genius sustained England under this load of folly.

Nor were these difficulties all that lord Wellington had to contend with. We have seen that the Portuguese regency withheld his reinforcements even when he had provided transports for their conveyance. The duke of York meanwhile insisted upon withdrawing his provisional battalions, which being all composed of old soldiers, the remains of regiments reduced by the casualties of war, were of more value in a winter campaign than three times their numbers of new men. With respect to the English militia regiments, he had no desire for them, because they possessed, he said, all the worst faults of the regulars and some peculiar to themselves besides. What he desired was that eight or ten thousand men should be drafted from them to fill up his ranks, he could then without much injury let his foreign battalions be taken away to reform a Hanoverian army on the continent; and this plan he was inclined to, because the Germans, brave and[472] strong soldiers, were yet extremely addicted to desertion and in that particular set a bad example to the British: this suggestion was however disregarded, and other reinforcements were promised to him.

But the most serious of all the secondary vexations he endured sprung from the conduct of the Spanish authorities. His hospitals and depôts were for the most part necessarily in the Spanish territories and principally at Santander. To avoid inconvenience to the inhabitants he had caused portable wooden houses to be brought from England in which to shelter his sick and wounded men; and he paid extravagantly and regularly for every aid demanded from the natives. Nevertheless the natural arrogance or ill-will which produced the libels about St. Sebastian the insolence of the minister of war and the sullen insubordination of Morillo and other generals broke out here also. After much underhand and irritating conduct at different times, the municipality, resolute to drive the hospitals from their town, suddenly, and under the false pretext that there was a contagious fever, placed all the British hospitals with their officers and attendants under quarantine. This was in the middle of January. Thirty thousand men had been wounded since June in the service of Spain, and the return was to make those wounded men close prisoners and drive their general to the necessity of fixing his hospitals in England. Vessels coming from Santander were thus rendered objects of dread, and the municipalities of the other ports, either really fearing or pretending to fear the contagion, would not suffer them to enter their waters. To such a height did this cowardice and villainy attain that[473] the political chief of Guipuscoa, without giving any notice to lord Wellington, shut all the ports of that province against vessels coming from Santander, and the alcalde of Fuenterabia endeavoured to prevent a Portuguese military officer from assisting an English vessel which was about to be and was afterwards actually cast away, because she came from Santander.

Now in consequence of the difficulties and dangers of navigating the Bay of Biscay in the winter and the badness of the ports near the positions of the army, all the stores and provisions coming by sea went in the first instance to Santander, the only good port, there to wait until favourable opportunities occurred for reaching the more eastern harbours. Moreover all the provision magazines of the Spanish army were there, but this blow cut them off, the army was reduced to the smaller magazines at Passages which could only last for a few days, and when that supply was expended lord Wellington would have had no resource but to withdraw across the Pyrenees! “Here,” he exclaimed, “here are the consequences of the system by which these provinces are governed! Duties of the highest description, military operations, political interests, and the salvation of the state, are made to depend upon the caprices of a few ignorant individuals, who have adopted a measure unnecessary and harsh without adverting to its objects or consequences, and merely with a view to their personal interests and convenience.”

They carried it into execution also with the utmost hardness caprice and injustice, regardless of the loss of ships and lives which must follow, and finally desired lord Wellington to relinquish the harbour[474] and town of Santander altogether as a depôt! However his vigorous remonstrances stopped this nefarious proceeding in time to avert the danger which it menaced.

Be it remembered now, that these dangers and difficulties, and vexations, although related in succession, happened, not one after another, but altogether; that it was when crossing the Bidassoa, breaking through the mountain fortifications of Soult, passing the Nive, fighting the battles in front of Bayonne, and when still greater and more intricate combinations were to be arranged, that all these vials of folly and enmity were poured upon his head. Who then shall refuse to admire the undaunted firmness, the unwearied temper and vigilance, the piercing judgement with which he steered his gallant vessel and with a flowing sail, unhurt through this howling storm of passion this tumultuous sea of folly.

CONTINUATION OF THE WAR IN THE EASTERN PARTS OF SPAIN.

When general Clinton succeeded lord William1813. September. Bentinck, his whole force, composed of the Anglo-Sicilians, Whittingham’s and Sarzfield’s Spaniards, and two battalions of Roche’s division, did not furnish quite nineteen thousand men under arms. Copons, blockading Mequinenza Lerida and MonzonAppendix 6. and having garrisons in Cardona and the Seo d’Urgel, the only places in his possession, could not bring more than nine thousand men into the field. Elio had nominally twenty-five thousand, but this included Sarzfield’s and Roche’s troops the greater part of which were with Clinton. It included likewise the bands of Villa Campa Duran and the Empecinado, all scattered in Castile Aragon and Valencia, and acting according to the caprices of their chiefs. His force, daily diminishing also from the extreme unhealthiness of the country about Tortoza, was scarcely sufficient to maintain the blockades of the French fortresses beyond the Ebro.

Copons’ army having no base but the mountains about Vich and Monserrat, having no magazines or depôts or place of arms, having very little artillery and scarcely any cavalry, lived as it could from day to day; in like manner lived Sarzfield’s and Whittingham’s troops, and Clinton’s army was chiefly[476] fed on salt provisions from the ships. The two former having no means of transport were unable to make even one day’s march with ease, they were continually upon the point of starvation and could never be reckoned as a moveable force. Nor indeed could the Anglo-Sicilians, owing to their scanty means of transport, make above two or three marches from the sea; and they were at this time more than usually hampered, being without pay and shut out from their principal depôts at Gibraltar and Malta, by plague at the first and yellow fever at the second place. In fine, the courage and discipline of the British and Germans set aside, it would be difficult to find armies less efficient for an offensive campaign than those of the allies in Catalonia. Moreover lord William Bentinck had been invested with the command of all the Spanish armies, but Clinton had only Whittingham’s and Sarzfield’s troops under him, and notwithstanding his constant endeavours to conciliate Copons, the indolence and incapacity of that general impeded or baffled all useful operations: and to these disqualifications he added an extreme jealousy of Eroles and Manso, men designated by the public voice as the most worthy of command.

This analysis shows that Elio being entirely engaged in Valencia, and Sarzfield and Whittingham unprovided with the means of movement, the army of Copons and the Anglo-Sicilians, together furnishing, when the posts and escorts and the labourers employed on the fortifications of Taragona were deducted, not more than eighteen thousand men in line of battle, were the only troops to be counted on to oppose Suchet, who having sixty-five thousand men, of which fifty-six thousand were[477] present under arms, could without drawing a man from his garrisons attack them with thirty thousand. But Copons and Clinton could not act together above a few days because their bases and lines of retreat were on different sides. The Spaniard depended upon the mountains and plains of the interior for security and subsistence, the Englishman’s base was Taragona and the fleet. Hence the only mode of combining on a single line was to make Valencia a common base, and throwing bridges over the Ebro construct works on both sides to defend them. This was strongly recommended by lord Wellington to lord William and to Clinton; but the former had several times lost his bridges partly from the rapidity of the stream, partly from the activity of the garrison of Tortoza. And for general Clinton the difficulty was enhanced by distance, because Taragona, where all his materials were deposited was sixty miles from Amposta, and all his artificers were required to restore the defences of the former place. The blockade of Tortoza was therefore always liable to be raised, and the troops employed there exposed to a sudden and fatal attack, since Suchet, sure to separate the Anglo-Sicilians from Copons when he advanced, could penetrate between them; and while the former rallied at Taragona and the latter at Igualada his march would be direct upon Tortoza. He could thus either carry off his strong garrison, or passing the Ebro by the bridge of the fortress, move without let or hindrance upon Peniscola, Saguntum, and Valencia, and driving Elio back upon Alicant collect his garrisons and return too powerful to be meddled with.

In these circumstances lord Wellington’s opinion[478] was, that the blockade of Tortoza should be given up and the two armies acting on their own peculiar lines, the one from Taragona the other from the mountains, harass in concert the enemy’s flanks and rear, alternately if he attacked either, but together if he moved upon Tortoza. To besiege or blockade that place with safety it was necessary to throw two bridges over the Ebro below, to enable the armies to avoid Suchet, by either bank when he should succour the place, as he was sure to do. But it was essential that Copons should not abandon Catalonia and difficult for him to do so, wherefore it would be advisable to make Taragona the point of retreat for both armies in the first instance, after which they could separate and infest the French rear.

The difficulties of besieging Tortoza he thought insuperable, and he especially recommended that they should be well considered before-hand, and if it was invested, that the troops should be entrenched around it. In fine all his instructions tended towards defence and were founded upon his conviction of the weak and dangerous position of the allies, yet he believed them to have more resources than they really had, and to be superior in number to the French, a great error as I have already shewn. Nothing therefore could be more preposterous than Suchet’s alarm for the frontier of France at this time, and it is unquestionable that his personal reluctance was the only bar to aiding Soult either indirectly by marching on Tortoza and Valencia, or directly by adopting that marshal’s great project of uniting the two armies in Aragon. So certain indeed is this that general Clinton, seeing the difficulties of his own situation, only retained the[479] command from a strong sense of duty, and lord Wellington despairing of any advantage in Catalonia recommended that the Anglo-Sicilian army should be broken up and employed in other places. The French general’s inactivity was the more injurious to the interests of his sovereign, because any reverse or appearance of reverse to the allies would at this time have gone nigh to destroy the alliance between Spain and England; but personal jealousy, the preference given to local and momentary interests before general considerations, hurt the French cause at all periods in the Peninsula and enabled the allies to conquer.

General Clinton had no thoughts of besieging Tortoza, his efforts were directed to the obtaining a secure place of arms, yet, despite of his intrinsic weakness, he resolved to show a confident front, hoping thus to keep Suchet at arm’s length. In this view he endeavoured to render Taragona once more defensible notwithstanding the nineteen breaches which had been broken in its walls; the progress of the work was however tedious and vexatious because he depended for his materials upon the Spanish authorities. Thus immersed in difficulties of all kinds he could make little change in his positions which were generally about the Campo, Sarzfield’s division only being pushed to Villafranca. Suchet meanwhile held the line of the Llobregat, and apparently to colour his refusal to join Soult, grounded on the great strength of the allies in Catalonia, he suffered general Clinton to remain in tranquillity.

Towards the end of October reports that theOctober. French were concentrating, for what purpose was not known, caused the English general, although[480] Taragona was still indefensible to make a forward movement. He dared not indeed provoke a battle, but unwilling to yield the resources which Villafranca and other districts occupied by the allies still offered, he adopted the resolution of pushing an advanced guard to the former place. He even fixed his head-quarters there, appearing ready to fight, yet his troops were so disposed in succession at Arbos, Vendrills and Torredembarra that he could retreat without dishonour if the French advanced in force, or could concentrate at Villafranca in time to harass their flank and rear if they attempted to carry off their garrisons on the Segre. In this state of affairs Suchet made several demonstrations, sometimes against Copons sometimes against Clinton, but the latter maintained his offensive attitude with firmness, and even in opposition to lord Wellington’s implied opinion that the line of the Ebro was the most suitable to his weakness; for he liked not to abandon Taragona the repairs of which were now advancing though slowly to completion. His perseverance was crowned with success; he preserved the few resources left for the support of the Spanish troops, and furnished Suchet with that semblance of excuse which he desired for keeping aloof from Soult.

In this manner October and November were passed, but on the 1st of December the FrenchDecember. general attempted to surprise the allies’ cantonments at Villafranca, as he had before surprised them at Ordal. He moved in the same order. One column marched by San Sadurni on his right, another by Bejer and Avionet on his left, and the main body kept the great road. But he did not find colonel Adam there. Clinton had blocked the[481] Ordal so as to render a night surprise impossible, and the natural difficulties of the other roads delayed the flanking columns. Hence when the French reached Villafranca, Sarzfield was in full march for Igualada, and the Anglo-Sicilians, who had only three men wounded at one of the advanced posts, were on the strong ground about Arbos, where being joined by the supporting divisions they offered battle; but Suchet retired to the Llobregat apparently so mortified by his failure that he has not even mentioned it in his Memoirs.

Clinton now resumed his former ground, yet his embarrassments increased, and though he transferred two of Whittingham’s regiments to Copons and sent Roche’s battalions back to Valencia, the country was so exhausted that the enduring constancy of the Spanish soldiers under privations alone enabled Sarzfield to remain in the field: more than once, that general, a man of undoubted firmness and courage, was upon the point of re-crossing the Ebro to save his soldiers from perishing of famine. Here as in other parts, the Spanish government not only starved their troops but would not even provide a piece of ordnance or any stores for the defence of Taragona, now, by the exertions of the English general, rendered defensible. Nay! when admiral Hallowell in conjunction with Quesada the Spanish commodore at Port Mahon, brought some ship-guns from that place to the fortress, the minister of war, O’Donoju, expressed his disapprobation, observing with a sneer that the English might provide the guns wanting from the Spanish ordnance moved into Gibraltar by general Campbell when he destroyed the lines of San Roque!

The 9th Suchet pushed a small corps by Bejer[482] between the Ordal and Sitjes, and on the 10th surprised at the Ostel of Ordal an officer and thirty men of the Anglo-Sicilian cavalry. This disaster was the result of negligence. The detachment after patroling to the front had dismounted without examining the buildings of the inn, and some French troopers who were concealed within immediately seized the horses and captured the whole party.

On the 17th, French troops appeared at Martorel, the Ordal, and Bejer, with a view to mask the march of a large convoy coming from Upper Catalonia to Barcelona; they then resumed their former positions, and at the same time Soult’s and lord Wellington’s respective letters announcing the defection of the Nassau battalions in front of Bayonne arrived. Lord Wellington’s came first, and enclosed a communication from colonel Kruse to his countryman, colonel Meder, who was serving in Barcelona and as Kruse supposed willing to abandon the French. But when Clinton by the aid of Manso transmitted the letter to Meder, that officer handed it to general Habert who had succeeded Maurice Mathieu in the command of the city. All the German regiments, principally cavalry, were immediately disarmed and sent to France. Severoli’s Italians were at the same time recalled to Italy and a number of French soldiers, selected to fill the wasted ranks of the imperial guards, marched with them; two thousand officers and soldiers were likewise detached to the depôts of the interior to organize the conscripts of the new levy destined to reinforce the army of Catalonia. Besides these drafts a thousand gensd’armes hitherto employed on the Spanish frontier in aid of the regular troops were withdrawn; Suchet[483] thus lost seven thousand veterans, yet he had still an overwhelming power compared to the allies.

It was in this state of affairs that the duke of San Carlos, bearing the treaty of Valençay, arrived secretly at the French head-quarters on his way to Madrid. Copons knew this, and it seems certain was only deterred from openly acceding to the views of the French emperor and concluding a military convention, by the decided conduct of the Cortez, and the ascendancy which lord Wellington had obtained over him in common with the other Spanish officers: an ascendancy which had not escaped Soult’s sagacity, for he early warned the French minister that nothing could be expected from them while under the powerful spell of the English general. Meanwhile Clinton, getting information that the French troops were diminished in numbers, especially in front of Barcelona and on the Llobregat, proposed to pass that river and invest Barcelona if Copons, who was in the mountains, would undertake to provision Sarzfield’s division and keep the French troops between Barcelona and Gerona in check. For this purpose he offered him the aid of a Spanish regiment of cavalry which Elio had lent for the operations in Catalonia; but Copons, whether influenced by San Carlos’ mission and his secret wishes for its success, or knowing that the enemy were really stronger than Clinton imagined, declared that he was unable to hold the French troops between Gerona and Barcelona in check, and that he could not provision either Sarzfield’s division or the regiment of cavalry. He suggested instead of Clinton’s plan, a combined attack upon some of Suchet’s posts on the Llobregat, promising to send Manso to Villafranca to confer upon the execution.[484] Clinton’s proposal was made early in January yet it was the middle of that month before Copons replied, and then he only sent Manso to offer the aid of his brigade in a combined attack upon two thousand French who were at Molino del Rey. It was however at last arranged that Manso should at day-break on the 16th seize the high ground above Molino, on the left of the Llobregat, to intercept the enemy’s retreat upon Barcelona, while the Anglo-Sicilians fell upon them from the right bank.

Success depended upon Clinton’s remaining quiet1814. January. until the moment of execution, wherefore he could only use the troops immediately in hand about Villafranca, in all six thousand men with three pieces of artillery; but with these he made a night march of eighteen miles, and was close to the ford of San Vicente about two miles below the fortified bridge of Molino del Rey before daylight. The French were tranquil and unsuspicious, and he anxiously but vainly awaited the signal of Manso’s arrival. When the day broke, the French piquets at San Vicente descrying his troops commenced a skirmish, and at the same time a column with a piece of artillery, coming from Molino, advanced to attack him thinking there was only a patroling detachment to deal with, for he had concealed his main body. Thus pressed he opened his guns per force and crippled the French piece, whereupon the reinforcements retired hastily to the entrenchments at Molino; he could then easily have forced the passage at the ford and attacked the enemy’s works in the rear, but this would not have ensured the capture of their troops, wherefore he still awaited Manso’s arrival relying on that partizan’s zeal and knowledge of the country. He appeared[485] at last, not, as agreed upon, at St. Filieu, between Molino and Barcelona, but at Papiol above Molino, and the French immediately retreated by San Filieu. Sarzfield, and the cavalry, which Clinton now detached across the Llobregat, followed them hard, but the country was difficult, the distance short, and they soon gained a second entrenched camp above San Filieu. A small garrison remained in the masonry-works at Molino, general Clinton endeavoured to reduce them but his guns were not of a calibre to break the walls and the enemy was strongly reinforced towards evening from Barcelona; whereupon Manso went off to the mountains, and Clinton returned to Villafranca having killed and wounded about one hundred and eighty French, and lost only sixty-four men, all Spaniards.

Manso’s failure surprized the English general, because that officer, unlike the generality of his countrymen, was zealous, skilful, vigilant, modest, and humane, and a sincere co-operator with the British officers. He however soon cleared himself of blame, assuring Clinton that Copons, contrary to his previous declarations, had joined him with four thousand men, and taking the controul of his troops not only commenced the march two hours too late, but without any reason halted for three hours on the way. Nor did that general offer any excuse or explanation of his conduct, merely observing, that the plan having failed nothing more could be done and he must return to his mountainous asylum about Vich. A man of any other nation would have been accused of treachery, but with the Spaniards there is no limit to absurdity, and from their actions no conclusion can be drawn as to their motives.

[486]

The great events of the general war were now beginning to affect the struggle in Catalonia. Suchet finding that Copons dared not agree to the military convention dependent upon the treaty of Valençay, resigned all thoughts of carrying off his garrisons beyond the Ebro, and secretly instructed the governor of Tortoza, that when his provisions, calculated to last until April, were exhausted, he should march upon Mequinenza and Lerida, unite the garrisons there to his own, and make way by Venasque into France. Meanwhile he increased the garrison of Barcelona to eight thousand men and prepared to take the line of the Fluvia; for the allied sovereigns were in France and Napoleon had recalled more of his cavalry and infantry, in all ten thousand men with eighty pieces of artillery, from Catalonia, desiring that they should march as soon as the results expected from the mission of San Carlos were felt by the allies. Suchet prepared the troops but proposed that instead of waiting for the uncertain result of San Carlos’ mission, Ferdinand should himself be sent to Spain through Catalonia and be trusted on his faith to restore the garrisons in Valencia. Then he said he could march with his whole army to Lyons which would be more efficacious than sending detachments. The restoration of Ferdinand was the Emperor’s great object, but this plausible proposition can only be viewed as a colourable counter-project to Soult’s plan for a junction of the two armies in Bearn, since the Emperor was undoubtedly the best judge of what was required for the warfare immediately under his own direction.

It was in the midst of these operations that Clinton attacked Molino del Rey and as we have seen[487] would but for the interference of Copons have stricken a great blow, which was however soon inflicted in another manner.

There was at this time in the French service a Spaniard of Flemish descent called Van Halen. This man, of fair complexion, handsome person, and a natural genius for desperate treasons, appearsMemoir by Sir Wm. Clinton, MSS. to have been at first attached to Joseph’s court. After that monarch’s retreat from Spain he was placed by the duke de Feltre on Suchet’s staff; but the French party was now a failing one and Van Halen only sought by some notable treachery to make his peace with his country. Through the medium of a young widow, who followed him without suffering their connection to appear, he informed Eroles of his object. He transmitted through the same channel regular returns of Suchet’s force and other matters of interest, and at last having secretly opened Suchet’s portfolio he copied the key of his cypher, and transmitted that also, with an intimation that he would now soon pass over and endeavour to perform some other service at the same time. The opportunity soon offered. Suchet went to Gerona to meet the duke of San Carlos, leaving Van Halen at Barcelona, and the latter immediately taking an escort of three hussars went to Granollers where the cuirassiers were quartered. Using the marshal’s name he ordered them to escort him to the Spanish outposts, which being in the mountains could only be approached by a long and narrow pass where cavalry would be helpless. In this pass he ordered the troops to bivouac for the night, and when their colonel expressed his uneasiness, Van Halen quieted him and made a solitary mill their common quarters. He[488] had before this, however, sent the widow to give Eroles information of the situation into which he would bring the troops and now with anxiety awaited his attack; but the Spanish general failed to come and at daybreak Van Halen, still pretending he carried a flag of truce from Suchet, rode off with his first escort of hussars and a trumpeter to the Spanish lines. There he ascertained that the widow had been detained by the outposts and immediately delivered over his escort to their enemies, giving notice also of the situation of the cuirassiers with a view to their destruction, but they escaped the danger.

Van Halen and Eroles now forged Suchet’s signature, and the former addressed letters in cypher to the governors of Tortoza, Lerida, Mequinenza, and Monzon, telling them that the emperor in consequence of his reverses required large drafts of men from Catalonia, and had given Suchet orders to negotiate a convention by which the garrisons south of the Llobregat were to join the army with arms and baggage and followers. The result was uncertain, but if the treaty could not be effected the governors were to join the army by force, and they were therefore immediately to mine their principal bastions and be prepared to sally forth at an appointed time. The marches and points of junction were all given in detail, yet they were told that if the convention took place the marshal would immediately send an officer of his staff to them, with such verbal instructions as might be necessary. The document finished with deploring the necessity which called for the sacrifice of conquests achieved by the valour of the troops.

Spies and emissaries who act for both sides are[489] common in all wars, but in the Peninsula so many pretended to serve the French and were yet true to the Spaniards, that to avoid the danger of betrayal Suchet had recourse to the ingenious artifice of placing a very small piece of light-coloured hair in the cyphered paper, the latter was then enclosed in a quill sealed and wrapped in lead. When received, the small parcel was carefully opened on a sheet of white paper and if the hair was discovered the communication was good, if not, the treachery was apparent because the hair would escape the vigilance of uninitiated persons and be lost by any intermediate examination. Van Halen knew this secret also, and when his emissaries had returned after delivering the preparatory communication, he proceeded in person with a forged convention, first to Tortoza, for Suchet has erroneously stated in his Memoirs that the primary attempts were made at Lerida and Mequinenza. He was accompanied by several Spanish officers and by some French deserters dressed in the uniforms of the hussars he had betrayed to the Spanish outposts. The governor Robert though a vigilant officer was deceived and prepared to evacuate the place. During the night however a true emissary arrived with a letter from Suchet of later date than the forged convention. Robert then endeavoured to entice Van Halen into the fortress, but the other was too wary and proceeded at once to Mequinenza and Lerida where he completely overreached the governors and then went to Monzon.

This small fortress had now been besieged since the 28th of September 1813, by detachments from the Catalan army and the bands from Aragon. Its[490] means of defence were slight, but there was within a man of resolution and genius called St. Jacques. He was a Piedmontese by birth and only a private soldier of engineers, but the commandant appreciating his worth was so modest and prudent as to yield the direction of the defence entirely to him. Abounding in resources, he met, and at every point baffled the besiegers who worked principally by mines, and being as brave as he was ingenious always led the numerous counter-attacks which he contrived to check the approaches above and below ground. The siege continued until the 18th of February when the subtle Van Halen arrived, and by his Spanish wiles obtained in a few hours what Spanish courage and perseverance had vainly strived to gain for one hundred and forty days. The commandant was suspicious at first, but when Van Halen suffered him to send an officer to ascertain that Lerida and Mequinenza were evacuated, he was beguiled like the others and marched to join the garrisons of those places.

Sir William Clinton had been informed of this project by Eroles as early as the 22d of January and though he did not expect any French general would be so egregiously misled, readily promised the assistance of his army to capture the garrisons on their march. But Suchet was now falling back upon the Fluvia, and Clinton, seeing the fortified line of the Llobregat weakened and being uncertain of Suchet’s real strength and designs, renewed his former proposal to Copons for a combined attack which should force the French general to discover his real situation and projects. Ere he could obtain an answer, the want of forage obliged him to[491] refuse the assistance of the Spanish cavalry lent to him by Elio, and Sarzfield’s division was reduced to its last ration. The French thus made their retreat unmolested, for Clinton’s project necessarily involved the investment of Barcelona after passing the Llobregat, and the Anglo-Sicilian cavalry, being mounted on small Egyptian animals the greatest part of which were foundered or unserviceable from sand-cracks, a disease very common amongst the horses of that country, were too weak to act without the aid of Elio’s horsemen. Moreover as a division of infantry was left at Taragona awaiting the effect of Van Halen’s wiles against Tortoza the aid of Sarzfield’s troops was indispensable.

Copons accepted the proposition towards the end of the month, the Spanish cavalry was then gone to the rear, but Sarzfield having with great difficulty obtained some provisions the army wasFebruary. put in movement on the 3d of February, and as Suchet was now near Gerona, it passed the Llobregat at the bridge of Molino del Rey without resistance. On the 5th Sarzfield’s picquets were vigorously attacked at San Filieu by the garrison of Barcelona, he however supported them with his whole division and being reinforced with some cavalry repulsed the French and pursued them to the walls. On the 7th the city was invested on the land side by Copons who was soon aided by Manso; on the sea-board by admiral Hallowell, who following the movements of the army with the fleet blockaded the harbour with the Castor frigate, and anchored the Fame a seventy-four off Mataro. On the 8th intelligence arrived of Van Halen’s failure at Tortoza, but the blockade of Barcelona continued uninterrupted until the 16th when Clinton was informed[492] by Copons of the success at Lerida, Mequinenza, and Monzon. The garrisons, he said, would march upon Igualada, and Eroles who, under pretence of causing the convention to be observed by the Somatenes, was to follow in their rear, proposed to undeceive and disarm them at that place. On the 17th however he sent notice that Martorel had been fixed upon in preference to Igualada for undeceiving and disarming the French, and as they would be at the former place that evening general Clinton was desired to send some of his troops there to ensure the success of the project.

This change of plan and the short warning, for Martorel was a long march from Barcelona, together with the doubts and embarrassments which Copons’ conduct always caused, inclined the English general to avoid meddling with the matter at all; yet fearing that it would fail in the Spaniard’s hands he finally drafted a strong division of troops and marched in person to Martorel. There he met Copons who now told him that the French would not pass Esparaguera that night, that Eroles was close in their rear, and another division of the Catalan army at Bispal blocking the bridge of Martorel. Clinton immediately undertook to pass the Llobregat, meet the French column, and block the road of San Sadurni; and he arranged with Copons the necessary precautions and signals.

About nine o’clock general Isidore La Marque arrived with the garrisons at Martorel, followed at a short distance by Eroles. No other troops were to be seen and after a short halt the French continued their march on the right bank of the Llobregat, where the Barcelona road enters a narrow pass between the river and a precipitous hill. When[493] they were completely entangled Clinton sent an officer to forbid their further progress and referred them to Copons who was at Martorel for an explanation, then giving the signal all the heights around were instantly covered with armed men. It was in vain to offer resistance, and two generals, having two thousand six hundred men, four guns, and a rich military chest, capitulated, but upon conditions, which were granted and immediately violated with circumstances of great harshness and insult to the prisoners. The odium of this baseness which was quite gratuitous, since the French helpless in the defile must have submitted to any terms, attaches entirely to the Spaniards. Clinton refused to meddle in any manner with the convention, he had not been a party to Van Halen’s deceit, he appeared only to ensure the surrender of an armed force in the field which the Spaniards could not have subdued without his aid, he refused even to be present at any consultation previous to the capitulation, and notwithstanding an assertion to the contrary in Suchet’s Memoirs no appeal on the subject from that marshal ever reached him.

During the whole of these transactions the infatuation of the French leaders was extreme. The chief of one of the battalions more sagacious than his general told Lamarque in the night of the 16th at Igualada that he was betrayed, at the same time urging him vainly to abandon his artillery and baggage and march in the direction of Vich, to which place they could force their way in despite of the Spaniards. It is remarkable also that Robert when he had detected the imposture and failed to entice Van Halen into Tortoza did not make a sudden[494] sally upon him and the Spanish officers who were with him, all close to the works. And still more notable is it that the other governors, the more especially as Van Halen was a foreigner, did not insist upon the bearer of such a convention remaining to accompany their march. It has been well observed by Suchet that Van Halen’s refusal to enter the gates was alone sufficient to prove his treachery.

The detachment recalled by Napoleon now moved into France, and in March was followed by a second column of equal force which was at first directed upon Lyons, but the arrival of lord Wellington’s troops on the Garonne caused, as we shall hereafter find, a change in its destination. Meanwhile by order of the minister at war Suchet entered into a fresh negociation with Copons, to deliver up all the fortresses held by his troops except Figueras and Rosas, provided the garrisons were allowed to rejoin the army. The Spanish commander assented and the authorities generally were anxious to adopt the proposal, but the regency referred the matter to lord Wellington who rejected it without hesitation, as tending to increase the force immediately opposed to him. Thus baffled and overreached at all points, Suchet destroyed the works of Olot, Besalu, Bascara and Palamos, dismantled Gerona and Rosas, and concentrated his forces at Figueras. He was followed by Copons, but though he still had twelve thousand veterans besides the national guards and depôts of the French departments, he continued most obstinately to refuse any aid to Soult, and yet remained inactive himself. The blockade of Barcelona was therefore maintained by[495] the allies without difficulty or danger save what arose from their commissariat embarrassments and the efforts of the garrison.

On the 23d of February Habert made a sally with six battalions, thinking to surprize Sarzfield, he was however beaten, and colonel Meder the Nassau officer who had before shewn his attachment to the French cause was killed. The blockadeMarch. was thus continued until the 12th of March when Clinton received orders from lord Wellington to break up his army, send the foreign troops to lord William Bentinck in Sicily, and march with the British battalions by Tudela to join the great army in France. Clinton at first prepared to obey but Suchet was still in strength, Copons appeared to be provoking a collision though he was quite unable to oppose the French in the field; and to maintain the blockade of Barcelona in addition, after the Anglo-Sicilians should depart, was quite impossible. The latter therefore remained and on the 19th of March king Ferdinand reached the French frontier.

This event, which happening five or even three months before would probably have changed the fate of the war, was now of little consequence. Suchet first proposed to Copons to escort Ferdinand with the French army to Barcelona and put him in possession of that place, but this the Spanish general dared not assent to, for he feared lord Wellington and his own regency, and was closely watched by colonel Coffin who had been placed near him by sir William Clinton. The French general then proposed to the king a convention for the recovery of his garrisons, to which Ferdinand agreed with the facility of a false heart. His great anxiety was to[496] reach Valencia, because the determination of the Cortez to bind him to conditions before he recovered his throne was evident, the Spanish generals were apparently faithful to the Cortez, and the British influence was sure to be opposed to him while he was burthened with French engagements.

Suchet had been ordered to demand securities for the restoration of his garrisons previous to Ferdinand’s entry into Spain, but time was precious and he determined to escort him at once with the whole French army to the Fluvia, having first received a promise to restore the garrisons. He also retained his brother Don Carlos as a hostage forSuchet’s Memoirs. their return, but even this security he relinquished when the king in a second letter written from Gerona solemnly confirmed his first promise. On the 24th therefore in presence of the Catalan and French armies, ranged in order of battle on either bank of the Fluvia, Ferdinand passed that river and became once more king of Spain. He had been a rebellious son in the palace, a plotting traitor at Aranjuez, a dastard at Bayonne, an effeminate superstitious fawning slave at Valençay, and now after six years’ captivity he returned to his own country an ungrateful and cruel tyrant. He would have been the most odious and contemptible of princes if his favourite brother Don Carlos had not existed. Reaching the camp at Barcelona on the 30th he dined with sir William Clinton, reviewed the allied troops and then proceeded first to Zaragoza and finally to Valencia. Marshal Suchet says the honours of war were paidMemoirs by sir Wm. Clinton, MSS. to him by all the French garrisons but this was not the case at Barcelona: no man appeared, even on the walls. After this event the French marshal repassed the Pyrenees leaving only one division at[497] Figueras and Clinton proceeded to break up his army, but was again stopped by the vexatious conduct of Copons who would not relieve the Anglo-Sicilians at the blockade, nor indeed take any notice of the English general’s communications on the subject before the 11th of April. On the 14th however the troops marched, part to embark at Taragona, part to join lord Wellington. Copons then became terrified lest general Robert, abandoning Tortoza, should join Habert at Barcelona, and enclose him between them and the division at Figueras, wherefore Clinton once more halted to protect the Spaniards.

Copons had indeed some reason to fear, forApril. Habert about this time received, and transmitted to Robert, the emperor’s orders to break out of Tortoza and gain Barcelona instead of passing by the valley of Venasque as Suchet had before prescribed: the twelve thousand men thus united were then to push into France. This letter was intercepted, copied, and sent on to Robert, whose answer being likewise intercepted shewed that he was not prepared and had no inclination for the enterprise. This seen Clinton continued his embarkation and thus completed his honourable but difficult task. With a force weak in numbers, and nearly destitute of every thing that constitutes strength in the field, he had maintained a forward and dangerous position for eight months; and though Copons’ incapacity and ill-will, and other circumstances beyond control, did not permit him to perform any brilliant actions, he occupied the attention of a very superior army, suffered no disaster and gained some advantages.

While his troops were embarking, Habert, in furtherance of the emperor’s project, made a vigorous[498] sally on the 18th, and though repulsed with loss he killed or wounded eight hundred Spaniards. This was a lamentable combat. The war had terminated long before, yet intelligence of the cessation of hostilities only arrived four days later. Habert was now repeatedly ordered by Suchet and the duke of Feltre to give up Barcelona, but warned by the breach of former conventions he held it until he was assured that all the French garrisonsLafaille. in Valencia had returned safely to France, which did not happen until the 28th of May, when he yielded up the town and marched to his own country. This event, the last operation of the whole war, released the duchess of Bourbon. She and the old prince of Conti had been retained prisoners in the city during the Spanish struggle, the prince died early in 1814, the duchess survived, and now returned to France.

How strong Napoleon’s hold of the Peninsula had been, how little the Spaniards were able of their own strength to shake him off, was now apparent to all the world. For notwithstanding lord Wellington’s great victories, notwithstanding the invasion of France, six fortresses, Figueras, Barcelona, Tortoza, Morella, Peniscola, Saguntum and Denia were recovered, not by arms but by the general peace. And but for the deceits of Van Halen there would have been three others similarly situated in the eastern parts alone, while in the north Santona was recovered in the same manner; for neither the long blockade nor the active operations against that place, of which some account shall now be given, caused it to surrender.

The site of Santona is one of those promontories frequent on the coast of Spain which connected by[499] low sandy necks with the main land offer good harbours. Its waters deep and capacious furnished two bays. The outer one or roadstead was commanded by the works of Santona itself, and by those of Laredo, a considerable town lying at the foot of a mountain on the opposite point of the harbour. A narrow entrance to the inner port was between a spit of land, called the Puntal, and the low isthmus on which the town of Santona is built. The natural strength of the ground was very great, but the importance of Santona arose from its peculiar situation as a harbour and fort of support in the Montaña de Santander. By holding it the French shut out the British shipping from the only place which being defensible on the land side furnished a good harbour between San Sebastian and Coruña; they thus protected the sea-flank of their long line of invasion, obtained a port of refuge for their own coasting vessels, and a post of support for the moveable columns sent to chase the partidas which abounded in that rough district. And when the battle of Vittoria placed the allies on the Bidassoa, from Santona issued forth a number of privateers who, as we have seen, intercepted lord Wellington’s supplies and interrupted his communication with Coruña, Oporto, Lisbon, and even with England.

The advantages of possessing Santona were feltVol. 3. Book XI. Chapter V. early by both parties; the French seized it at once and although the Spaniards recovered possession of it in 1810 they were driven out again immediately. The English ministers then commenced deliberating and concocting extensive and for that reason injudicious and impracticable plans of offensive operations,Ibid. Book XII. Chapter I. to be based upon the possession of Santona;[500] meanwhile Napoleon fortified it and kept it to the end of the war. In August 1812 its importance was better understood by the Spaniards, and it was continually menaced by the numerous bands of Biscay, the Asturias and the Montaña. Fourteen hundred men, including the crew of a corvette, then formed its garrison, the works were not very strong and only forty pieces of artillery were mounted. Napoleon however, foreseeing the disasters which Marmont was provoking, sent general Lameth, a chosen officer, to take charge of the defence. He immediately augmented the works and constructed advanced redoubts on two hills, called the Gromo and the Brusco, which like San Bartolomeo at San Sebastian closed the isthmus inland. He also erected a strong redoubt and blockhouse on the Puntal to command the straits, and to sweep the roadstead in conjunction with the fort of Laredo which he repaired. This done he formed several minor batteries and cast a chain to secure the narrow entrance to the inner harbour, and then covered the rocky promontory of Santona itself with defensive works.

Some dismounted guns remained in the arsenal, others which had been thrown into the sea by the Spaniards when they took the place in 1810 were fished up, and the garrison felling trees in the vicinity made carriages for them; by these means a hundred and twenty guns were finally placed in battery and there was abundance of ammunition. The corvette was not sea-worthy, but the governor established a flotilla of gun-boats, and other small craft, which sallied forth whenever the signal-posts on the head-land gave notice of the approach of vessels liable to attack, or of French coasters[501] bringing provisions and stores. The garrison had previously lost many men, killed in a barbarous manner by the partidas, and in revenge they never gave quarter to their enemies. Lameth shocked at their inhumanity resolutely forbad under pain of death any farther reprisals, rewarded those men who brought in prisoners and treated the latter with gentleness: the Spaniards discovering this also changed their system and civilization resumed its rights. From this time military operations were incessant, the garrison sometimes made sallies, sometimes sustained partial attacks, sometimes aided the moveable columns employed by the different generals of the army of the north to put down the partizan warfare, which was seldom even lulled in the Montaña.

After the battle of Vittoria Santona being left to its own resources was invested on the land side by a part of the troops composing the Gallician or fourth Spanish army. It was blockaded on the sea-board by the English ships of war, but only nominally, for the garrison received supplies, and the flotilla vexed lord Wellington’s communications, took many of his store-ships and other vessels, delayed his convoys, and added greatly to the difficulties of his situation. The land blockade thus also became a nullity and the Spanish officers complained with reason that they suffered privations and endured hardships without an object. These complaints and his own embarassments, caused by lord Melville’s neglect, induced lord Wellington in October, 1813, when he could ill spare troops, to employ a British brigade under lord Aylmer in the attack of Santona; the project for reasons already mentioned was not executed, but an English engineer,[502] captain Wells, was sent with some sappers and miners to quicken the operations of the Spanish officers, and his small detachment hasVictoires et Conquêtes. been by a French writer magnified into a whole battalion.

Captain Wells remained six months, for the Spanish generals though brave and willing were tainted with the national defect of procrastination. The siege made no progress until the 13th of1814. February. February 1814 when general Barco the Spanish commander carried the fort of Puntal in the night by escalade, killing thirty men and taking twenty-three prisoners, yet the fort being under the heavy fire of the Santona works was necessarily dismantled and abandoned the next morning. A picquet was however left there and the French opened their batteries, but as this did not dislodge the Spaniards Lameth embarked a detachment and recovered his fort. However in the night of the 21st general Barco ordered an attack to be made with a part of his force upon the outposts of El Grumo and Brusco, on the Santona side of the harbour, and led the remainder of his troops in person to storm the fort and town of Laredo. He carried the latter and also some outer defences of the fort, which being on a rock was only to be approached by an isthmus so narrow as to be closed by a single fortified house. In the assault of the body of this fort Barco was killed and the attack ceased, but the troops retained what they had won and established themselves at the foot of the rock where they were covered from fire. The attack on the other side, conducted by colonel Llorente, was successful; he carried the smallest of the two outworks on the Brusco, and closely invested the largest after an ineffectual attempt[503] by mine and assault to take it. A large breach was however made and the commandant seeing he could no longer defend his post, valiantly broke through the investment and gained the work of the Grumo. He was however aided by the appearance on the isthmus of a strong column which sallied at the same time from the works on the Santona promontory, and the next day the Grumo itself was abandoned by the French.

Captain Wells, who had been wounded at the Puntal escalade, now strenuously urged the Spaniards to crown the counter-scarp of the fort at Laredo and attack vigorously, but they preferred establishing four field-pieces to batter it in form at the distance of six hundred yards. These guns as might be expected were dismounted the moment they began to fire, and thus corrected, the Spanish generals committed the direction of the attack to Wells. He immediately opened a heavy musquetryProfessional papers by the royal engineers. fire on the fort to stifle the noise of his workmen, then pushing trenches up the hill close to the counterscarp in the night, he was proceeding to burst open the gate with a few field-pieces and to cut down the pallisades, when the Italian garrison, whose musquets from constant use had become so foul that few would go off, mutinied against their commander and making him a prisoner surrendered the place. This event gave the allies the command of the entranceApril. to the harbour, and Lameth offered to capitulate in April upon condition of returning to France with his garrison. Lord Wellington refused the condition, Santona therefore remained a few days longer in possession of the enemy, and was finally evacuated at the general cessation of hostilities.

Having now terminated the narrative of all military[504] and political events which happened in the Peninsula, the reader will henceforth be enabled to follow without interruption the events of the war in the south of France which shall be continued in the next book.

CHAPTER I.

Lord Wellington’s difficulties have been described.1814. January. Those of his adversary were even more embarrassing because the evil was at the root; it was not misapplication of power but the want of power itself which paralyzed Soult’s operations. Napoleon trusted much to the effect of his treaty with Ferdinand who, following his intentions, should have entered Spain in November, but the intrigues to retard his journey continued, and though Napoleon, when the refusal of the treaty by the Spanish government became known, permitted him to return without any conditions, as thinking his presence would alone embarrass and perhaps break the English alliance with Spain, he did not as we have seen arrive until March. How the emperor’s views were frustrated by his secret enemies is one of the obscure parts of French history, at this period, which time may possibly clear but probably only with a feeble and uncertain light. For truth can never be expected in the memoirs, if any should appear, of such men as Talleyrand, Fouché, and other politicians of their stamp, whose plots rendered his supernatural efforts to rescue France from her invaders abortive. Meanwhile there is nothing to check and expose the political and literary empirics who never fail on such occasions to poison the sources of history.

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Relying upon the effect which the expected journey of Ferdinand would produce, and pressed by the necessity of augmenting his own weak army, Napoleon gave notice to Soult that he must ultimately take from him, two divisions of infantry and one of cavalry. The undecided nature of his first battle at Brienne caused him to enforce this notice in the beginning of February, but he had previously sent imperial commissaries to the different departments of France, with instructions to hasten the new conscription, to form national and urban guards, to draw forth all the resources of the country, and to aid the operations of the armies by the action of the people. These measures however failed generally in the south. The urban cohorts were indeed readily formed as a means of police, and the conscription was successful, but the people remained sullen and apathetic; and the civil commissaries are said toSoult’s Despatches, MSS. have been, with some exceptions, pompous, declamatory, and affecting great state and dignity without energy and activity. Ill-will was also produced by the vexatious and corrupt conduct of the subordinate government agents, who seeing in the general distress and confusion a good opportunity to forward their personal interests, oppressed the people for their own profit. This it was easy to do, because the extreme want of money rendered requisitions unavoidable, and under the confused direction of civilians, partly ignorant and unused to difficult times, partly corrupt, and partly disaffected to the emperor, the abuses inevitably attendant upon such a system were numerous; and to the people so offensive, that numbers to avoid them passed with their carts and utensils into the lines of the allies. An official letter written from Bayonne at this period[507] run thus: “The English general’s policy and the good discipline he maintains does us more harm than ten battles. Every peasant wishes to be under his protection.”

Another source of anger was Soult’s works near Bayonne, where the richer inhabitants could not bear to have their country villas and gardens destroyed by the engineer, he who spares not for beauty or for pleasure where his military traces are crossed. The merchants, a class nearly alike in all nations, with whom profit stands for country, had been with a few exceptions long averse to Napoleon’s policy which from necessity interfered with their commerce. And this feeling must have been very strong in Bayonne and Bordeaux, for one Batbedat, a banker of the former place, having obtained leave to go to St. Jean de Luz under pretence of settling the accounts of English officers, prisoners of war, to whom he had advanced money, offered lord Wellington to supply his army with various commodities and even provide money for bills on the English treasury. In return he demanded licenses for twenty vessels to go from Bordeaux, Rochelle and Mants, to St. Jean de Luz, and they were given on condition that he should not carry back colonial produce. The English navy however shewed so little inclination to respect them that the banker and his coadjutors hesitated to risk their vessels, and thus saved them, for the English ministers refused to sanction the licenses and rebuked their general.

During these events the partizans of the Bourbons,February. coming from Brittany and La Vendée, spread themselves all over the south of France and entered into direct communication with lord Wellington. One of the celebrated family of La Roche Jacquelin[508] arrived at his head-quarters, Bernadotte sent an agent to those parts, and the count of Grammont, then serving as a captain in the British cavalry, was at the desire of the marquis de Mailhos, another of the malcontents, sent to England to call the princes of the house of Bourbon forward. Finally the duke of Angoulême arrived suddenly at the head-quarters, and he was received with respect in private though not suffered to attend the movements of the army. The English general indeed, being persuaded that the great body of the French people especially in the south, were inimical to Napoleon’s government, was sanguine as to the utility of encouraging a Bourbon party. Yet he held his judgment in abeyance, sagaciously observing that he could not come to a safe conclusion merely from the feelings of some people in one corner of France; and as the allied sovereigns seemed backward to take the matter in hand unless some positive general movement in favour of the Bourbons was made, and there were negociations for peace actually going on, it would be, he observed, unwise and ungenerous to precipitate the partizans of the fallen house into a premature outbreak and then leave them to the vengeance of the enemy.

That lord Wellington should have been convinced the prevailing opinion was against Napoleon is not surprising, because every appearance at the time would seem to prove it so; and certain it is that a very strong Bourbon party and one still stronger averse to the continuation of war existed. But in civil commotions nothing is more dangerous, nothing more deceitful, than the outward show and declarations on such occasions. The great mass of men in all nations are only endowed with moderate capacity[509] and spirit, and as their thoughts are intent upon the preservation of their families and property they must bend to circumstances; thus fear and suspicion, ignorance baseness and good feeling, all combine to urge men in troubled times to put on the mask of enthusiasm for the most powerful, while selfish knaves ever shout with the loudest. Let the scene change and the multitude will turn with the facility of a weathercock. Lord Wellington soon discovered that the count of Viel Chastel, Bernadotte’s agent, while pretending to aid the Bourbons was playing a double part, and only one year after this period Napoleon returned from Elba, and neither the presence of the duke of Angoulême, nor the energy of the duchess, nor all the activity of their partizans, could raise in this very country more than the semblance of an opposition to him. The tricolor was every where hoisted and the Bourbon party vanished. And this was the true test of national feeling, because in 1814 the white colours were supported by foreign armies, and misfortune had bowed the great democratic chief to the earth; but when rising again in his wondrous might he came back alone from Elba, the poorer people, with whom only patriotism is ever really to be found, and that because they are poor and therefore unsophisticated, crowded to meet and hail him as a father. Not because they held him entirely blameless. Who born of woman is? They demanded redress of grievances even while they clung instinctively to him as their stay and protection against the locust tyranny of aristocracy.

There was however at this period in FranceJanuary. enough of discontent passion and intrigue, enough of treason, and enough of grovelling spirit in adversity,[510] added to the natural desire of escaping the ravages of war, a desire so carefully fostered by the admirable policy of the English general, as to render the French general’s position extremely difficult and dangerous. Nor is it the least remarkable circumstance of this remarkable period, that while Soult expected relief by the Spaniards falling away from the English alliance, lord Wellington received from the French secret and earnest warnings to beware of some great act of treachery meditated by the Spaniards. It was at this period also that Morillo and other generals encouraged their soldiers’ licentiousness, and displayed their own ill-will by sullen discontent and captious complaints, while the civil authorities disturbed the communications and made war in their fashion against the hospitals and magazines.

His apprehensions and vigilance are plainly to be traced in his correspondence. Writing about general Copons he says, “his conduct is quite unjustifiable both in concealing what he knew of the duke de San Carlos’ arrival and the nature of his mission.” In another letter he observes, that the Spanish military people about himself desired peace with Napoleon according to the treaty of Valençay; that they all had some notion of what had occurred and yet had been quite silent about it; that he had repeated intelligence from the French of some act of treachery meditated by the Spaniards; that several persons of that nation had come from Bayonne to circulate reports of peace, and charges against the British which he knew would be well received on that frontier; that he had arrested a man calling himself an agent of and actually bearing a letter of credence from Ferdinand.

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But the most striking proof of the alarm he felt was his great satisfaction at the conduct of the Spanish government in rejecting the treaty brought by San Carlos and Palafox. Sacrificing all his former great and just resentment he changed at once from an enemy to a friend of the regency, supported the members of it even against the serviles, spoke of the matter as being the most important concern of all that had engaged his attention, and when the count of La Bispal, the deadly enemy of the regency, proposed some violent and decided action of hostility which a few weeks before would have been received with pleasure, he checked and softened him, observing, that the conduct of the government about the treaty should content every Spaniard, that it was not possible to act with more frankness and loyalty, and that they had procured honour for themselves and for their nation not only in England but all over Europe. Such is the light mode in which words are applied by public men, even by the noblest and greatest, when their wishes are fulfilled. This glorious and honourable conduct of the regency was simply a resolution to uphold their personal power and that of their faction, both of which would have been destroyed by the arrival of the king.

Napoleon hoping much from the effect of these machinations not only intimated to Soult, as I have already shewn, that he would require ten thousand of his infantry immediately, but that twice that number with a division of cavalry would be called away if the Spaniards fell off from the English alliance. The duke of Dalmatia then foreseeing the ultimate result of his own operations against Wellington, conceived a vast general plan of action which[512] showed how capable a man he was to treat the greatest questions of military policy.

“Neither his numbers nor means of supply after Wellington had gained the banks of the Adour above Bayonne would, he said, suffice to maintain his positions covering that fortress and menacing the allies’ right flank; the time therefore approached when he must, even without a reduction of force, abandon Bayonne to its own resources and fight his battles on the numerous rivers which run with concentric courses from the Pyrenees to the Adour. Leval’s and Boyer’s divisions of infantry were to join the grand army on the eastern frontier, Abbé’s division was to reinforce the garrison of Bayonne and its camp to fourteen thousand men, but he considered this force too great for a simple general of division and wished to give it to general Reille whose corps would be broken up by the departure of the detachments. That officer was however altogether averse, and as an unwilling commander would be half beaten before the battle commenced he desired that count D’Erlon should be appointed in Reille’s place.

“The active army remaining could not then be expected to fight the allies in pitched battles, and he therefore recommended the throwing it as a great partizan corps on the left, touching always upon the Pyrenees and ready to fall upon lord Wellington’s flank and rear if he should penetrate into France. Clauzel a native of those parts and speaking the country language was by his military qualities and knowledge the most suitable person to command. General Reille could then march with the troops called to the great army, and as there would be nothing left for him, Soult, to do in these parts he[513] desired to be employed where he could aid the emperor with more effect. This he pressed urgently because, notwithstanding the refusal of the Cortez to receive the treaty of Valençay, it was probable the war on the eastern frontier would oblige the emperor to recall all the troops designated. It would then become imperative to change from a regular to an irregular warfare, in which a numerous corps of partizans would be more valuable than the shadow of a regular army without value or confidence, and likely to be destroyed in the first great battle. For these partizans it was necessary to have a central power and director. Clauzel was the man most fitted for the task. He ought to have under his orders all the generals who were in command in the military departments between the Garonne and the Pyrenees, with power to force all the inhabitants to take arms and act under his directions.

“I am sensible,” he continued, “that this system, one of the least unhappy consequences of which would be to leave the enemy apparently master of all the country between the mountains and the Garonne, can only be justified by the necessity of forming an army in the centre of France sufficiently powerful to fend off the multitude of our enemies from the capital; but if Paris falls all will be lost, whereas if it be saved the loss of a few large towns in the south can be repaired. I propose then to form a great army in front of Paris by a union of all the disposable troops of the armies on the different frontiers, and at the same time to spread what remains of the latter as partizans wherever the enemy penetrates or threatens to penetrate. All the marshals of France the generals and other officers, either in activity or in retirement, who shall not be[514] attached to the great central army, should then repair to their departments to organize the partizan corps and bring those not actively useful as such up to the great point of union, and they should have military power to make all men able to bear arms, find them at their own expense.” “This measure is revolutionary but will infallibly produce important results, while none or at least a very feeble effect will be caused by the majority of the imperial commissioners already sent to the military divisions. They are grand persons, they temporize, make proclamations and treat every thing as civilians instead of acting with vigour to obtain promptly a result which would astonish the world; for notwithstanding the cry to the contrary, the resources of France are not exhausted, what is wanted is to make those who possess resources use them for the defence of the throne and the emperor.”

Having thus explained his views, he again requested to be recalled to Paris to serve near the emperor, but declared that he was ready to obey any order and serve in any manner; all he demanded was clear instructions with reference to the events that might occur. 1º. What he should do if the treaty arrangements with Ferdinand had no effect and the Spanish troops remained with lord Wellington. 2º. If those troops retired and the British seeing the French weakened by detachments should alone penetrate into France. 3º. If the changes in Spain should cause the allies to retire altogether.

Such was Soult’s plan of action but his great project was not adopted and the emperor’s reasons for neglecting it have not been made known. Nor can the workings of that capacious mind be judged of without a knowledge of all the objects and conditions[515] of his combinations. Yet it is not improbable that at this period he did not despair of rejecting the allies beyond the Rhine either by force of arms, by negociation, or by working upon the family pride of the emperor of Austria. With this hope he would be naturally averse to incur the risk of a civil war by placing France under martial law, or of reviving the devouring fire of revolution which it had been his object for so many years to quell; and this is the more probable because it seems nearly certain, that one of his reasons for replacing Ferdinand on the Spanish throne was his fear lest the republican doctrines which had gained ground in Spain should spread to France. Was he wrong? The fierce democrat will answer Yes! But the man who thinks that real liberty was never attained under a single unmixed form of government giving no natural vent to the swelling pride of honour birth or riches; those who measure the weakness of pure republicanism by the miserable state of France at home and abroad when Napoleon by assuming power saved her; those who saw America with all her militia and her licentious liberty unable to prevent three thousand British soldiers from passing three thousand miles of ocean and burning her capital, will hesitate to condemn him. And this without detriment to the democratic principle which in substance may and should always govern under judicious forms. Napoleon early judged, and the event has proved he judged truly, that the democratic spirit of France however violent was unable to overbear the aristocratic and monarchic tendencies of Europe; wisely therefore while he preserved the essence of the first by fostering equality, he endeavoured to blend[516] it with the other two; thus satisfying as far as the nature of human institutions would permit the conditions of the great problem he had undertaken to solve. His object was the reconstruction of the social fabric which had been shattered by the French revolution, mixing with the new materials all that remained of the old sufficiently unbroken to build with again. If he failed to render his structure stable it was because his design was misunderstood, and the terrible passions let loose by the previous stupendous explosion were too mighty even for him to compress.

To have accepted Soult’s project would have been to endanger his work, to save himself at the expense of his system, and probably to plunge France again into the anarchy from which he had with so much care and labour drawn her. But as I have before said, and it is true, Napoleon’s ambition was for the greatness and prosperity of France, for the regeneration of Europe, for the stability of the system which he had formed with that end, never for himself personally; and hence it is that the multitudes of many nations instinctively revere his memory. And neither the monarch nor the aristocrat, dominant though they be by his fall, feel themselves so easy in their high places as to rejoice much in their victory.

Whatever Napoleon’s motive was he did not adopt Soult’s project, and in February two divisions of infantry and Trielhard’s cavalry with many batteries were withdrawn. Two thousand of the best soldiers were also selected to join the imperial guards, and all the gensd’armes were sent to the interior. The total number of old soldiers left, did not, including the division of General Paris, exceed[517] forty thousand exclusive of the garrison of Bayonne and other posts, and the conscripts, beardless youths, were for the most part unfit to enter the line nor were there enough of musquets in the arsenals to arm them. It is remarkable also, as shewing how easily military operations may be affected by distant operations, that Soult expected and dreaded at this time the descent of a great English army upon the coast of La Vendée, led thereto by intelligence of an expedition preparing in England, under sir Thomas Graham, really to aid the Dutch revolt.

While the French general’s power was thus diminished, lord Wellington’s situation was as suddenly ameliorated. First by the arrival of reinforcements, next by the security he felt from the rejection of the treaty of Valençay, lastly by the approach of better weather, and the acquisition of a very large sum in gold which enabled him not only to put his Anglo-Portuguese in activity but also to bring the Spaniards again into line with less danger of their plundering the country. During the forced cessation of operations he had been actively engaged preparing the means to enter France with power and security, sending before him the fame of a just discipline and a wise consideration for the people who were likely to fall under his power, for there was nothing he so much dreaded as the partizan and insurgent warfare proposed by Soult. The peasants of Baygorry and Bidarray had done him more mischief than the French army, and his terrible menace of destroying their villages, and hanging all the population he could lay his hands upon if they ceased not their hostility, marks his apprehensions in the strongest manner. Yet he left all the local authorities[518] free to carry on the internal government, to draw their salaries, and raise the necessary taxes in the same mode and with as much tranquillity as if perfect peace prevailed; he opened the ports and drew a large commerce which served to support his own army and engage the mercantile interests in his favour; he established many sure channels for intelligence political and military, and would have extended his policy further and to more advantage if the English ministers had not so abruptly and ignorantly interfered with his proceedings. Finally foreseeing that the money he might receive would, being in foreign coin, create embarrassment, he adopted an expedient which he had before practised in India to obviate this. Knowing that in a British army a wonderful variety of knowledge and vocations good and bad may be found, he secretly caused the coiners and die-sinkers amongst the soldiers to be sought out, and once assured that no mischief was intended them, it was not difficult to persuade them to acknowledge their peculiar talents. With these men he established a secret mint at which he coined gold Napoleons, marking them with a private stamp and carefully preserving their just fineness and weight with a view of enabling the French government when peace should be established to call them in again. He thus avoided all the difficulties of exchange, and removed a very fruitful source of quarrels and ill-will between the troops and the country people and shopkeepers; for the latter are always fastidious in taking and desirous of abating the current worth of strange coin, and the former attribute to fraud any declination from the value at which they receive their money. This sudden increase of the current coin tended also[519] to diminish the pressure necessarily attendant upon troubled times.

Nor was his provident sagacity less eminently displayed in purely military matters than in his administrative and political operations. During the bad weather he had formed large magazines at the ports, examined the course of the Adour, and carefully meditated upon his future plans. To penetrate into France and rally a great Bourbon party under the protection of his army was the system he desired to follow; and though the last point depended upon the political proceedings and successes of the allied sovereigns the military operations most suitable at the moment did not clash with it. To drive the French army from Bayonne and either blockade or besiege that place were the first steps in either case. But this required extensive and daring combinations. For the fortress and its citadel, comprising in their circuit the confluence of the Nive and the Adour, could not be safely invested with less than three times the number necessary to resist the garrison at any one point, because the communications of the invested being short internal and secure, those of the investers external difficult and unsafe, it behoved that each division should be able to resist a sally of the whole garrison. Hence, though reduced to the lowest point, the whole must be so numerous as seriously to weaken the forces operating towards the interior.

How and where to cross the Adour with a view to the investment was also a subject of solicitude. It was a great river with a strong current and well guarded by troops and gun-boats above Bayonne; still greater was it below the town; there the ebb tide run seven miles an hour, there also there were[520] gun-boats, a sloop of war, and several merchant-vessels which could be armed and employed to interrupt the passage. The number of pontoons or other boats required to bridge the stream across either above or below, and the carriage of them, an immense operation in itself, would inevitably give notice of the design and render it abortive, unless the French army were first driven away, and even then the garrison of Bayonne nearly fifteen thousand strong might be sufficient to baffle the attempt. Nevertheless in the face of these difficulties he resolved to pass, the means adopted being proportionate to the greatness of the design.

He considered, that, besides the difficulty of bringing the materials across the Nive and through the deep country on each side of that river, he could not throw his bridge above Bayonne without first driving Soult entirely from the confluents of the Adour and from the Adour itself; that when he had effected this his own communications between the bridge and his magazines at the sea-ports would still be difficult and unsafe, because his convoys would have a flank march, passing the Nive as well as the Adour and liable to interruption from the overflowing of those rivers; finally, that his means of transport would be unequal to the wear and tear of the deep roads and be interrupted by rain. But throwing his bridge below the town he would have the Adour itself as a harbour, while his land convoys used the royal causeway leading close to the river and not liable to be interrupted by weather. His line of retreat also would then be more secure if any unforeseen misfortune should render it necessary to break up the investment. He had no fear that Soult, while retiring before the active force he intended to employ against[521] him on the upper parts of the rivers, would take his line of retreat by the great Bordeaux road and fall upon the investing force: that road led behind Bayonne through the sandy wilderness called the Landes, into which the French general would not care to throw himself, lest his opponent’s operations along the edge of the desert should prevent him from ever getting out. To draw the attention of the French army by an attack on their left near the roots of the Pyrenees would be sure to keep the lower Adour free from any formidable defensive force, because the rapidity and breadth of the stream there denied the use of common pontoons, and the mouth, about six miles below Bayonne, was so barred with sand, so beaten by surges, and so difficult of navigation even with the help of the landmarks, some of which had been removed, that the French would never expect small vessels fit for constructing a bridge could enter that way. Yet it was thus lord Wellington designed to achieve his object. He had collected forty large sailing boats of from fifteen to thirty tons burthen, called chasse marées, as if for the commissariat service, but he secretly loaded them with planks and other materials for his bridge. These and some gun-boats he designed, with the aid of the navy, to run up the Adour to a certain point upon which he meant also to direct the troops and artillery, and then with hawsers, and pontoons formed into rafts, to throw over a covering body and destroy a small battery near the mouth of the river. He trusted to the greatness and danger of the attempt for success and in this he was favoured by fortune.

The French trading vessels in the Adour had offered secretly to come out upon licenses and enter[522] the service of his commissariat, but he was obliged to forego the advantage because of the former interference and dissent of the English ministers about the passports he had previously granted. This added greatly to the difficulty of the enterprize. He was thus forced to maltreat men willing to be friends, to prepare grates for heating shot, and a battery of Congreve rockets with which to burn their vessels and the sloop of war, or at least to drive them up the river, after which he proposed to protect his bridge with the gun-boats and a boom.

While he was thus preparing for offensive operations the French general was active in defensive measures. He had fortified all the main passes of the rivers by the great roads leading against his left, but the diminution of his force in January obliged him to withdraw his outposts from Anglet, which enabled lord Wellington to examine the whole course of the Adour below Bayonne and arrange for the passage with more facility. Soult then in pursuance of Napoleon’s system of warfare, which always prescribed a recourse to moral force to cover physical weakness, immediately concentrated his left wing against the allies’ right beyond the Nive, and redoubled that harassing partizan warfare which I have already noticed, endeavouring to throw his adversary entirely upon the defensive. Thus on the 26th of January, Morillo having taken possession of an advanced post near Mendionde not properly belonging to him, Soult, who desired to ascertain the feelings of the Spaniards about the English alliance, caused Harispe under pretence of remonstrating to sound him; he did not respond and Harispe then drove him, not without a vigorous resistance, from the post.

[523]

The French marshal had however no hope of checking the allies long by these means. He judged justly that Wellington was resolved to obtain Bordeaux and the line of the Garonne, and foreseeing that his own line of retreat must ultimately be in a parallel direction with the Pyrenees, he desired to organize in time a strong defensive system in the country behind him and to cover Bordeaux if possible. In this view he sent general Darricau a native of the Landes to prepare an insurgent levy in that wilderness, and directed Maransin to the High Pyrenees to extend the insurrection of the mountaineers already commenced in the Lower Pyrenees by Harispe. The castle of Jaca was still held by eight hundred men but they were starving, and a convoy collected at Navarrens being stopped by the snow in the mountain-passes made a surrender inevitable. Better would it have been to have withdrawn the troops at an early period; for though the Spaniards would thus have gained access to the rear of the French army and perhaps ravaged a part of the frontier, they could have done no essential mischief to the army; and their excesses would have disposed the people of those parts who had not yet felt the benefit of lord Wellington’s politic discipline to insurrection.

At Bordeaux there was a small reserve commandedFebruary. by general La Huillier, Soult urged the minister of war to increase it with conscripts from the interior. Meanwhile he sent artillery-men from Bayonne, ordered fifteen hundred national guards to be selected as a garrison for the citadel of Blaye, and desired that the Médoc and Paté forts and the batteries along the banks of the Garonne should be put in a state of defence. The vessels in that river fit[524] for the purpose he desired might be armed, and a flotilla of fifty gun-boats established below Bordeaux, with a like number to navigate that river above the city as far as Toulouse. But these orders were feebly carried into execution or entirely neglected, for there was no public spirit, and treason and disaffection were rife in the city.

On the side of the Lower Pyrenees Soult enlarged and improved the works of Navarrens and designed to commence an entrenched camp in front of it. The castle of Lourdes in the High Pyrenees was already defensible, and he gave orders to fortify the castle of Pau, thus providing a number of supporting points for the retreat which he foresaw. At Mauleon he put on foot some partizan corps, and the imperial commissary Caffarelli gave him hopes of being able to form a reserve of seven or eight thousand national guards, gensd’armes, and artillery-men, at Tarbes. Dax containing his principal depôts was already being fortified, and the communication with it was maintained across the rivers by the bridges and bridge-heads at Port de Lannes, Hastingues, Pereyhorade, and Sauveterre; but the floods in the beginning of February carried away his bridge at the Port de Lannes, and the communication between Bayonne and the left of the army was thus interrupted until he established a flying bridge in place of the one carried away.

Such was the situation of the French general when lord Wellington advanced, and as the former supposed with one hundred and twenty thousand infantry and fifteen thousand cavalry, for he knew nothing of the various political and financial difficulties which had reduced the English general’s power and prevented all the reinforcements he expected[525] from joining him. His emissaries told him that Clinton’s force was actually broken up, and the British part in march to join Wellington; that the garrisons of Carthagena Cadiz and Ceuta were on the point of arriving and that reinforcements were coming from England and Portugal. This information made him conclude that there was no intention of pressing the war in Catalonia and that all the allied troops would be united and march against him; wherefore with more earnestness than before he urged that Suchet should be ordered to join him that their united forces might form a “dike against the torrent” which threatened to overwhelm the south of France. The real power opposed to him was however very much below his calculations. The twenty thousand British and Portuguese reinforcements promised had not arrived, Clinton’s army was still in Catalonia; and though it is impossible to fix the exact numbers of the Spaniards, their regular forces available, and that only partially and with great caution on account of their licentious conduct, did not exceed the following approximation.

Twelve thousand Gallicians under Freyre including Carlos D’España’s division; four thousand under Morillo; six thousand Andalusians under O’Donnel; eight thousand of Del Parque’s troops under the prince of Anglona. In all thirty thousand. The Anglo-Portuguese present under arms were by the morning states on the 13th of February, the day on which the advance commenced, about seventy thousand men and officers of all arms, nearly ten thousand being cavalry. The whole force, exclusive of Mina’s bands which were spread as we have seen from Navarre to the borders of Catalonia, was therefore, one hundred thousand men and officers, with[526] one hundred pieces of field-artillery of which ninety-five were Anglo-Portuguese.

It is difficult to fix with precision the number of the French army at this period, because the imperial muster-rolls, owing to the troubled state of the emperor’s affairs were either not continued beyond December 1813 or have been lost. But from Soult’s correspondence and other documents it would appear, that exclusive of his garrisons, his reserves and detachments at Bordeaux and in the department of the High Pyrenees, exclusive also of the conscripts of the second levy which were now beginning to arrive, he could place in line of battle about thirty-five thousand soldiers of all arms, three thousand being cavalry, with forty pieces of artillery. But Bayonne alone without reckoning the fortresses of St. Jean Pied de Port and Navarrens occupied twenty-eight thousand of the allies; and by this and other drains lord Wellington’s superiority in the field was so reduced, that his penetrating into France, that France which had made all Europe tremble at her arms, must be viewed as a surprising example of courage and fine conduct, military and political.

PASSAGE OF THE GAVES.

In the second week of February the weather set in with a strong frost, the roads became practicable and the English general, eagerly seizing the long-expected opportunity, advanced at the moment when general Paris had again marched with the convoy from Navarrens to make a last effort for the relief of Jaca. But the troops were at this time receiving the clothing which had been so long delayed in England, and the regiments wanting the means of carriage,[527] marched to the stores; the English general’s first design was therefore merely to threaten the French left and turn it by the sources of the rivers with Hill’s corps, which was to march by the roots of the Pyrenees, while Beresford kept the centre in check upon the lower parts of the same rivers. Soult’s attention would thus he hoped be drawn to that side while the passage of the Adour was being made below Bayonne. And it would seem that uncertain if he should be able to force the passage of the tributary rivers with his right, he intended, if his bridge was happily thrown, to push his main operations on that side and thus turn the Gaves by the right bank of the Adour: a fine conception by which his superiority of numbers would have best availed him to seize Dax and the Port de Landes and cut Soult off from Bordeaux.

On the 12th and 13th Hill’s corps, which including Picton’s division and five regiments of cavalry furnished twenty thousand combatants with sixteen guns, being relieved by the sixth and seventh divisions in front of Mousseroles and on the Adour, was concentrated about Urcurray and Hasparen. The 14th it marched in two columns. One by BonlocPlan 9. to drive the French posts beyond the Joyeuse; another by the great road of St. Jean Pied de Port against Harispe who was at Hellette. This second column had the Ursouia mountain on the right, and a third, composed of Morillo’s Spaniards, having that mountain on its left marched from La Houssoa against the same point. Harispe who had only three brigades, principally conscripts, retired skirmishing in the direction of St. Palais and took a position for the night at Meharin. Not more than thirty men on each side were hurt but the line of the Joyeuse[528] was turned by the allies, the direct communication with St. Jean Pied de Port cut, and that place was immediately invested by Mina’s battalions.

On the 15th Hill, leaving the fifty-seventh regiment at Hellette to observe the road to St. Jean Pied de Port, marched through Meharin upon Garris, eleven miles distant, but that road being impracticable for artillery the guns moved by Armendaritz more to the right. Harispe’s rear-guard was overtaken and pushed back fighting, and meanwhile lord Wellington directed Beresford to send a brigade of the seventh division from the heights of La Costa across the Gamboury to the Bastide de Clerence. The front being thus extended from Urt by Briscons, the Bastide and Isturitz, towards Garris, a distance of more than twenty miles, was too attenuated; wherefore he caused the fourth division to occupy La Costa in support of the troops at the Bastide. At the same time learning that the French had weakened their force at Mousseroles, and thinking that might be to concentrate on the heights of Anglet, which would have frustrated his plan for throwing a bridge over the Adour, he directed Hope secretly to occupy the back of those heights in force and prevent any intercourse between Bayonne and the country.

Soult knew of the intended operations against his left on the 12th, but hearing the allies had collected boats and constructed a fresh battery near Urt on the Upper Adour, and that the pontoons had reached Urcurray, he thought lord Wellington designed to turn his left with Hill’s corps, to press him on the Bidouze with Beresford’s, and to keep the garrison of Bayonne in check with the Spaniards while Hope crossed the Adour above that fortress.[529] Wherefore, on the 14th, when Hill’s movement commenced, he repaired to Passarou near the Bastide de Clerence and made his dispositions to dispute the passage, first of the Bidouze and the Soissons or Gave of Mauleon, and then of the Gave of Oleron. He had four divisions in hand with which he occupied a position on the 15th along the Bidouze; and heSoult’s Official Reports, MSS. recalled general Paris, posting him on the road between St. Palais and St. Jean Pied de Port, with a view to watch Mina’s battalions which he supposed to be more numerous than they really were. Jaca thus abandoned capitulated on the 17th, the garrison returning to France on condition of not serving until exchanged. This part of the capitulation it appears was broken by the French, but the recent violation by the Spaniards of the convention made with the deluded garrisons of Lerida, Mequinenza, and Monzon, furnished a reply.

Harispe, having Paris under his command and being supported by Pierre Soult with a brigade of light cavalry, now covered the road from St. Jean Pied de Port with his left, and the upper line of the Bidouze with his right. Lower down that river, Villatte occupied Ilharre, Taupin was on the heights of Bergoney below Villatte, and Foy guarded the banks of the river from Came to its confluence with the Adour. The rest of the army remained under D’Erlon on the right of the latter river.

Combat of Garris.—Harispe had just taken a position in advance of the Bidouze, on a height called the Garris mountain which stretched to St. Palais, when his rear-guard came plunging into a deep ravine in his front closely followed by the light troops of the second division. Upon the parallel counter-ridge thus gained by the allies general[530] Hill’s corps was immediately established, and though the evening was beginning to close the skirmishers descended into the ravine, and two guns played over it upon Harispe’s troops. These last to the number of four thousand were drawn up on the opposite mountain, and in this state of affairs Wellington arrived. He was anxious to turn the line of the Bidouze before Soult could strengthen himself there, and seeing that the communication with general Paris by St. Palais was not well maintained, sent Morillo by a flank march along the ridge now occupied by the allies towards that place; then menacing the enemy’s centre with Le Cor’s Portuguese division he at the same time directed the thirty-ninth and twenty-eighth regiments forming Pringle’s brigade to attack, observing with a concise energy, “you must take the hill before dark.”

The expression caught the attention of theMemoir of the action published in the United Service Journal. troops, and it was repeated by colonel O’Callaghan as he and general Pringle placed themselves at the head of the thirty-ninth, which, followed by the twenty-eighth, rushed with loud and prolonged shouts into the ravine. The French fire was violent, Pringle fell wounded and most of the mounted officers had their horses killed, but the troops covered by the thick wood gained with little loss the summit of the Garris mountain, on the right of the enemy who thought from the shouting that a larger force was coming against them and retreated. The thirty-ninth then wheeled to their own right intending to sweep the summit, but soon the French discovering their error came back at a charging pace, and receiving a volley without flinching tried the bayonet. Colonel O’Callaghan distinguished[531] by his strength and courage received two strokes of that weapon but repaid them with fatal power in each instance, and the French, nearly all conscripts, were beaten off. Twice however they came back and fought until the fire of the twenty-eighth was beginning to be felt, when Harispe seeing the remainder of the second division ready to support the attack, Le Cor’s Portuguese advancing against the centre, and the Spaniards in march towards St. Palais, retreated to that town and calling in Paris See Plan 9. from the side of Mauleon immediately broke down the bridges over the Bidouze. He lost on this day nearly five hundred men, of whom two hundred were prisoners, and he would hardly have escaped if Morillo had not been slow. The allies lost only one hundred and sixty of whom not more than fifty fell at Garris, and these chiefly in the bayonet contest, for the trees and the darkness screened them at first.

During these operations at Garris Picton moved from Bonloc to Oreque, on Hill’s left, menacing Villatte, but though Beresford’s scouting parties, acting on the left of Picton, approached the Bidouze facing Taupin and Foy, his principal force remained on the Gamboury, the pivot upon which Wellington’s line hinged while the right sweeping forward turned the French positions. Foy however though in retreat observed the movement of the fourth and seventh divisions on the heights between the Nive and the Adour, pointing their march as he thought towards the French left, and his reports to that effect reached Soult at the moment that general Blondeau gave notice of the investment of St. Jean Pied de Port. The French general being thus convinced[532] that lord Wellington’s design was not to pass the Adour above Bayonne, but to gain the line of that river by constantly turning the French left, made new dispositions.

The line of the Bidouze was strong, if he could have supported Harispe at St. Palais, and guarded at the same time the passage of the Soissons at Mauleon; but this would have extended his front, already too wide, wherefore he resolved to abandon both the Bidouze and the Soissons and take the line of the Gave d’Oleron, placing his right at Peyrehorade and his left at Navarrens. In this view D’Erlon was ordered to pass the Adour by the flying bridge at the Port de Landes and take post on the left bank of that river, while Harispe, having Paris’ infantry still attached to his division, defended the Gave de Mauleon and pushed parties onSoult’s Official Report. his left towards the town of that name. Villatte occupied Sauveterre, where the bridge was fortified with a head on the left bank, and from thence Taupin lined the right bank to Sordes near the confluence of the Gave de Pau. Foy occupied the works of the bridge-head at Peyrehorade and Hastingues guarding that river to its confluence with the Adour; this line was prolonged by D’Erlon towards Dax, but Soult still kept advanced parties on the lower Bidouze at the different entrenched passages of that river. One brigade of cavalry was in reserve at Sauveterre, another distributed along the line. Head-quarters were transported to Orthes, and the parc of artillery to Aire. The principal magazines of ammunition were however at Bayonne, Navarrens, and Dax, and the French general seeing that his communications with all[533] these places were likely to be intercepted before he could remove his stores, anticipated distress and wrote to the minister of war to form new depôts.

On the 16th lord Wellington repaired the broken bridges of St. Palais, after a skirmish in which a few men were wounded. Hill then crossed the Bidouze, the cavalry and artillery by the repaired bridge, the infantry by the fords, but the day being spent in the operation the head of the column only marched beyond St. Palais. Meanwhile the fourth and part of the seventh divisions occupied the Bastide de Clerence on the right of the Joyeuse, and the light division came up in support to the heights of La Costa on the left bank of that river.

The 17th Hill, marching at eight o’clock, passed through Domenzain towards the Soissons, while the third division advancing from Oreque on his left passed by Masparraute to the heights of Somberraute, both corps converging upon general Paris, who was in position at Arriveriete to defend the Soissons above its confluence with the Gave d’Oleron. The French outposts were immediately driven across the Gave. General Paris attempted to destroy the bridge of Arriveriete but lord Wellington was too quick; the ninety-second regiment covered by the fire of some guns crossed at a ford above the bridge, and beating two French battalions from the village secured the passage. The allies then halted for the day near Arriveriete having marched only five miles and lost one man killed with twenty-three wounded. Paris relinquished the Soissons but remained between the two rivers during the night and retired on the morning of the 18th. The allies then seized the great road, which here runs from[534] Sauveterre to Navarrens up the left bank of the Oleron Gave.

Harispe, Villatte, and Paris, supported by a brigadeSoult’s Official Correspondence, MSS. of cavalry were now at Sauveterre occupying the bridge-head on the left bank, Taupin’s division was opposite the Bastide de Bearn lower down on the right, Foy on the right of Taupin, and D’Erlon on the left of the Adour above its confluence with the Gave de Pau. Meanwhile the fourth division advanced to Bidache on the Bidouze, and the light division followed in support to the Bastide de Clerence, the seventh division remaining as before, partly in that vicinity partly extended on the left to the Adour. The cavalry of the centre, under sir Stapleton Cotton, arrived also on the banks of the Bidouze connecting the fourth with the third division at Somberraute. In this state of affairs Hill sent Morillo up the Soissons to guard the fords as high as Nabas, then spreading Fane’s cavalry and the British and Portuguese infantry between that river and the Gave d’Oleron, he occupied all the villages along the road to Navarrens and at the same time cannonaded the bridge-head of Sauveterre.

Soult thrown from the commencement of the operations entirely upon the defensive was now at a loss to discover his adversary’s object. The situation of the seventh division, and the march of the fourth and light divisions, led him to think his works at Hastingues and Peyrehorade would be assailed. The weakness of his line, he having only Taupin’s division to guard the river between Sauveterre and Sordes a distance of ten miles, made him fear the passage of the Gave would be forced near the Bastide de Bearn, to which post[535] there was a good road from Came and Bidache. On the other hand the prolongation of Hill’s line up the Gave towards Navarrens indicated a design to march on Pau, or it might be to keep him in check on the Gaves while the camp at Bayonne was assaulted. In this uncertainty he sent Pierre Soult, with a cavalry brigade and two battalions of infantry to act between Oleron and Pau, and keep open a communication with the partizan corps forming at Mauleon. That done he decided to hold the Gaves as long as he could, and when they were forced, to abandon the defensive concentrate his whole force at Orthes and fall suddenly upon the first of the allies’ converging columns that approached him.

The French general’s various conjectures embraced1814. February. every project but the true one of the English general. The latter did indeed design to keep him in check upon the rivers, not to obtain an opportunity of assaulting the camp of Bayonne but to throw his stupendous bridge over the Adour; yet were his combinations so made that failing in that he could still pursue his operations on the Gaves. When therefore he had established his offensive line strongly beyond the Soissons and the Bidouze, and knew that his pontoon train was well advanced towards Garris, he on the 19th returned rapidly to St. Jean de Luz. Everything there depending on man was ready, but the weather was boisterous with snow for two days, and Wellington, fearful of letting Soult strengthen himself on the Gave of Oleron, returned on the 21st to Garris, having decided to press his operations on that side in person and leave to sir John Hope and admiral Penrose the charge of effecting

THE PASSAGE OF THE ADOUR.

The heights of Anglet had been occupied since the 15th by the guards and Germans, small parties were cautiously pushed towards the river through the pine-forest called the wood of Bayonne, and the[537] fifth division, now commanded by general Colville, occupied Bussussary and the bridge of Urdains. On the 21st Colville relieved the sixth division in the blockade of Mousseroles on the right of the Nive. To replace these troops at Bussussary, Freyre’s Spaniards passed the Bidassoa, but the Andalusians and Del Parque’s troops and the heavy British and Portuguese cavalry were still retained within the frontiers of Spain. Sir John Hope had therefore only two British and two Spanish divisions, three independent brigades of Anglo-PortugueseOriginal Morning States, MSS. infantry and Vandeleur’s brigade of cavalry, furnishing altogether about twenty-eight thousand men and officers with twenty pieces of artillery. There were however two regiments which had been sent to the rear sick and several others expected from England destined to join him.

In the night of the 22d the first division, six eighteen pounders, and the rocket battery, were cautiously filed from the causeway near Anglet towards the Adour, but the road was deep and heavy and one of the guns falling into a ditch delayed the march. Nevertheless at daybreak the whole reached some sand-downs which extendedPlan 7. behind the pine-forest to the river. The French picquets were then driven into the entrenched camp at Beyris, the pontoon train and the field-artillery were brought down to the Adour opposite to the village of Boucaut, and the eighteen-pounders were placed in battery on the bank. The light troops meanwhile closed to the edge of the marsh which covered the right of the French camp, and Carlos España’s division taking post on the heights of Anglet, in concert with the independent brigades, which were at Arcangues and the bridge of Urdains,[538] attracted the enemy’s attention by false attacks which were prolonged beyond the Nive by the fifth division.

It was intended that the arrival of the gun-boats and chasse-marées at the mouth of the Adour should have been simultaneous with that of the troops, but the wind having continued contrary none were to be seen, and sir John Hope whose firmness no untoward event could ever shake resolved to attempt the passage with the army alone. The French flotilla opened its fire on his columns about nine o’clock, his artillery and rockets retorted upon the French gun-boats and the sloop of war so fiercely, that three of the former were destroyed and the sloop so hardly handled that about one o’clock the whole took refuge higher up the river. Meanwhile sixty men of the guards were rowed in a pontoon across the mouth of the river in the face of a French picquet, which, seemingly bewildered, retired without firing. A raft was then formed with the remainder of the pontoons and a hawser being stretched across, six hundred of the guards and the sixtieth regiment, with a part of the rocket battery, the whole under colonel Stopford, passed, yet slowly, and at slack water only, for the tide run strongly and the waters were wide.

During this operation general Thouvenot deceived by spies and prisoners thought that the light division was with Hope as well as the first division, and that fifteen thousand men were embarked atThouvenot’s Official Report St. Jean de Luz to land between Cape Breton and the Adour. Wherefore fearing to endanger his garrison by sending a strong force to any distance down the river, when he heard Stopford’s detachment was on the right bank, he detached only two[539] battalions under general Macomble to ascertain the state of affairs, for the pine-forest and a great bending of the river prevented him from obtaining any view from Bayonne. Macomble made a show of attacking Stopford, but the latter, flanked by the field-artillery from the left bank, received him with a discharge of rockets, projectiles which like the elephants in ancient warfare often turn upon their own side. This time however, amenable to their directors they smote the French column and it fled, amazed, and with a loss of thirty wounded. It is nevertheless obvious that if Thouvenot had kept strong guards, with a field-battery, on the right bank of the Adour, sir John Hope could not have passed over the troops in pontoons, nor could any vessels have crossed the bar; no resource save that of disembarking troops between the river and Cape Breton would then have remained. This error was fatal to the French. The British continued to pass all night, and until twelve o’clock on the 24th, when the flotilla was seen under a press of sail making with a strong breeze for the mouth of the river.

To enter the Adour is from the flatness of the coast never an easy task, it was now most difficult, because the high winds of the preceding days had raised a great sea and the enemy had removed one of the guiding flag-staves by which the navigation was ordinarily directed. In front of the flotilla came the boats of the men-of-war, and ahead of all, the naval captain, O’Reilly, run his craft, a chosen Spanish vessel, into the midst of the breakers, which rolling in a frightful manner over the bar dashed her on to the beach. That brave officer stretched senseless on the shore would have perished with his crew but for the ready succour of the soldiers,[540] however a few only were drowned and the remainder with an intrepid spirit launched their boat again to aid the passage of the troops which was still going on. O’Reilly was followed and successfully by lieutenant Debenham in a six-oared cutter, but the tide was falling, wherefore the remainder of the boats, the impossibility of passing until high water being evident drew off, and a pilot was landed to direct the line of navigation by concerted signals.

When the water rose again the crews were promised rewards in proportion to their successful daring and the whole flotilla approached in close order, but with it came black clouds and a driving gale which covered the whole line of coast with a rough tumbling sea, dashing and foaming without an interval of dark water to mark the entrance of the river. The men-of-war’s boats first drew near this terrible line of surge and Mr. Bloye of the Lyra, having the chief pilot with him, heroically led into it, but in an instant his barge was engulphed and he and all with him were drowned. The Lyra’s boat thus swallowed up the following vessels swerved in their course, and shooting up to the right and left kept hovering undecided on the edge of the tormented waters. Suddenly lieutenant Cheyne of the Woodlark pulled ahead, and striking the right line, with courage and fortune combined safely passed the bar. The wind then lulled, the waves as if conquered abated somewhat of their rage, and the chasse-marées, manned with Spanish seamen but having an engineer officer with a party of sappers in each who compelled them to follow the men-of-war’s boats, came plunging one after another through the huge breakers and reached the point designed for the bridge. Thus was achieved[541] this perilous and glorious exploit, but captain Elliot of the Martial with his launch and crew and three transports’ boats, perished close to the shore in despite of the most violent efforts made by the troops to save them; three other vessels cast on the beach lost part of their crews; and one large chasse-marée, full of men, after passing the line of surf safely was overtaken by a swift bellying wave which breaking on her deck dashed her to pieces.

The whole of the first division and Bradford’s Portuguese, in all eight thousand men, being now on the right bank took post on the sand-hills for the night. The next morning, sweeping in a half circle round the citadel and its entrenchments, they placed their left on the Adour above the fortress, and their right on the same river below the place; for the water here made such a bend in their favour that their front was little more than two miles wide, and for the most part covered by a marshy ravine. This nice operation was effected without opposition because the entrenched camps, menaced by the troops on the other side of the Adour, were so enormous that Thouvenot’s force was scarcely sufficient to maintain them. Meanwhile the bridge was constructed, about three miles below Bayonne, at a place where the river was contracted to eight hundred feet by strong retaining walls, built with the view of sweeping away the bar by increasing the force of the current. The plan of the bridge and boom were the conception of colonel Sturgeon and major Todd, but the execution was confided entirely to the latter, who, with a mind less brilliant than Sturgeon’s but more indefatigable, very ably and usefully served his country throughout this war.

[542]

Twenty-six of the chasse-marées moored head and stern at distances of forty feet, reckoning from centre to centre, were bound together with ropes, two thick cables were then carried loosely across their decks, and the ends being cast over the walls on each bank were strained and fastened in various modes to the sands. They were sufficiently slack to meet the spring-tides which rose fourteen feet, and planks were laid upon them without any supporting beams. The boom, moored with anchors above and below, was a double line of masts connected with chains and cables, so as to form a succession of squares, in the design that if a vessel broke through the outside, it should by the shock turn round in the square and become entangled with the floating wrecks of the line through which it had broken. Gun-boats, with aiding batteries on the banks, were then stationed to protect the boom, and to keep off fire-vessels, many row-boats were furnished with grappling irons. The whole was by the united labour of seamen and soldiers finished on the 26th. And contrary to the general opinion on such matters, major Todd assured the Author of this History that he found the soldiers, with minds quickened by the wider range and variety of knowledge attendant on their service, more ready of resource and their efforts, combined by a more regular discipline, of more avail, with less loss of time, than the irregular activity of the seamen.

The agitation of the water in the river from the force of the tides was generally so great that to maintain a pontoon bridge on it was impossible. A knowledge of this had rendered the French officers too careless of watch and defence, and this year the shifting sands had given the course of the Adour[543] such a slanting direction towards the west that it run for some distance almost parallel to the shore; the outer bank thus acting as a breakwater lessened the agitation within and enabled the large two-masted boats employed, to ride safely and support the heaviest artillery and carriages. Nevertheless this fortune, the errors of the enemy, the matchless skill and daring of the British seamen, and the discipline and intrepidity of the British soldiers, all combined by the genius of Wellington, were necessary to the success of this stupendous undertaking which must always rank amongst the prodigies of war.

When the bridge was finished sir John Hope resolved to contract his line of investment round the citadel. This was a serious affair. The position of the French outside that fort was exceedingly strong, for the flanks were protected by ravines the sides of which were covered with fortified villas; and in the centre a ridge, along which the great roads from Bordeaux and Peyrehorade led into Bayonne, was occupied by the village and church of St. Etienne, both situated on rising points of ground strongly entrenched and under the fire of the citadel guns. The allies advanced in three converging columns covered by skirmishers. Their wings easily attained the edges of the ravines at either side, resting their flanks on the Adour above and below the town, at about nine hundred yards from the enemy’s works. But a severe action took place in the centre. The assailing body composed of Germans and a brigade of guards was divided into three parts which should have attacked simultaneously, the guards on the left, the light battalions of Germans on the right, and their heavy infantry in the centre.[544] The flanks were retarded by some accident and the centre first attacked the heights of St. Etienne. The French guns immediately opened from the citadel and the skirmishing fire became heavy, but the Germans stormed church and village, forced the entrenched line of houses, and took a gun, which however they could not carry off under the close fire from the citadel. The wings then gained their positions and the action ceased for a time, but the people of Bayonne were in such consternation that Thouvenot to re-assure them sallied at the head of the troops. He charged the Germans twice and fought well but was wounded and finally lost his gun and the position of St. Etienne. There is no return of the allies’ loss, it could not have been less than five hundred men and officers of which four hundred were Germans, and the latter were dissatisfied that their conduct was unnoticed in the despatch: an omission somewhat remarkable because their conduct was by sir John Hope always spoken of with great commendation.

The new position thus gained was defended by ravines on each flank, and the centre being close to the enemy’s works on the ridge of St. Etienne was entrenched. Preparations for besieging the citadel were then commenced under the direction of the German colonel Hartmann, a code of signals was established, and infinite pains taken to protect the bridge and to secure a unity of action between the three investing bodies. The communications however required complicated arrangements, for the ground on the right bank of the river being low was overflowed every tide, and would have occasioned great difficulty but for the retaining[545] wall which being four feet thick was made use of as a carriage road.

While these events were in progress at Bayonne lord Wellington pushed his operations on the Gaves with great vigour. On the 21st he returned as we have seen to Garris, the pontoons had already reached that place and on the 23d they were carried beyond the Gave de Mauleon. During his absence the sixth and light divisions had come up, and thus six divisions of infantry and two brigades of cavalry were concentrated beyond that river on the Gave d’Oleron, between Sauveterre and Navarrens. Beresford meanwhile held the line of the Bidouze down to its confluence with the Adour,French Official Correspondence, MSS. and apparently to distract the enemy threw a battalion over the latter river near Urt, and collected boats as if to form a bridge there. In the evening he recalled this detachment, yet continued the appearance of preparations for a bridge until late in the 23d, when he moved forward and drove Foy’s posts from the works at Oeyergave and Hastingues, on the lower parts of the Oleron Gave, into the entrenchments of the bridge-head at Peyrehorade. The allies lost fifty men, principally Portuguese, but Soult’s right and centre were thus held in check, for Beresford having the fourth and seventh divisions and Vivian’s cavalry was strong enough for Foy at Peyrehorade and Taupin at the Bastide of Beam. The rest of the French army was distributed at Orthes and Sauveterre, feeling towards Navarrens, and on the 24th Wellington put his troops in motion to pass the Gave d’Oleron.

During the previous days his movements and the arrival of his reinforcements had again deceived the French general, who seems to have known nothing[546] of the presence of the light division, and imagined the first division was at Came on the 22d as well as the fourth and seventh divisions. However his dispositions remained the same, he did not expect to hold the Gave and looked to a final concentration at Orthes.

On the 24th Morillo reinforced with a strong detachment of cavalry moved to the Laussette, a small river running in front of Navarrens, where rough ground concealed his real force, while his scouters beat back the French outposts, and a battalion marching higher up menaced the fords of the Gave at Doguen, with a view to draw the attention of the garrison of Navarrens from the ford of Ville Nave. This ford about three miles below Doguen was the point where lord Wellington designed really to pass, and a great concentric movement was now in progress towards it. Le Cor’s Portuguese division marched from Gestas, the light division from Aroue crossing the Soissons at Nabas; the second division, three batteries of artillery, the pontoons, and four regiments of cavalry moved from other points. Favoured by the hilly nature of the country the columns were well concealed from the enemy, and at the same time the sixth division advanced towards the fords of Montfort about three miles below that of Ville Nave. A battalion of the second division was sent to menace the ford of Barraute below Monfort, while the third division, reinforced with a brigade of hussars and the batteries of the second division, marched by Osserain and Arriveriette against the bridge-head of Sauveterre, with orders to make a feint of forcing a passage there. The bulk of the light cavalry remained in reserve under Cotton, but Vivian’s hussars coming up from[547] Beresford’s right, threatened all the fords between Picton’s left and the Bastide of Beam; and below this Bastide some detachments were directed upon the fords of Sindos Castagnhede and Hauterive. During this movement Beresford keeping Foy in check at Peyrehorade with the seventh division, sent the fourth towards Sordes and Leren above the confluence of the Gaves to seek a fit place to throw a bridge. Thus the whole of the French front was menaced on a line of twenty-five miles, but the great force was above Sauveterre.

The first operations were not happily executed. The columns directed on the side of Sindos missed the fords. Picton opened a cannonade against the bridge-head of Sauveterre and made four companies of Keane’s brigade and some cavalry pass the Gave in the vicinity of the bridge; they were immediately assailed by a French regiment and driven across the river again with a loss of ninety men and officers, of whom some were drowned and thirty were made prisoners, whereupon the cavalry returned to the left bank and the cannonade ceased. Nevertheless the diversion was complete and the general operations were successful. Soult on the first alarm drew Harispe from Sauveterre and placed him on the road to Orthes at Monstrueig, where a range of hills running parallel to the Gave of Oleron separates it from that of Pau; thus only a division of infantry and Berton’s cavalry remained under Villatte at Sauveterre, and that general, notwithstanding his success against the four companies, alarmed by the vigour of Picton’s demonstrations, abandoned his works on the left bank and destroyed the bridge. Meanwhile the sixth division passed without opposition at Montfort above Sauveterre,[548] and at the same time the great body of the other troops coming down upon the ford of Villenave met only with a small cavalry picquet and crossed with no more loss than two men drowned: a happy circumstance for the waters were deep and rapid, the cold intense, and the ford so narrow that the passage was not completed before dark. To have forced it in face of an enemy would have been exceedingly difficult and dangerous, and it is remarkable that Soult who was with Harispe, only five miles from Montfort and about seven from Villenave, should not have sent that general down to oppose the passage. The heads of the allies’ columns immediately pushed forward to the range of hills before spoken of, the right being established near Loubeing, the left towards Sauveterre, from whence Villatte and Berton had been withdrawn by Clauzel, who commanding at this part seems to have kept a bad watch when Clinton passed at Montfort.

The French divisions now took a position to give time for Taupin to retire from the lower parts of the Gave of Oleron, towards the bridge of Berenx on the Gave of Pau, for both he and Foy had received orders to march upon Orthes and break down all the bridges as they passed. When the night fell Soult sent Harispe’s division also over the bridge of Orthes and D’Erlon was already established in that town, but general Clauzel remained until the morning at Orion to cover the movement. Meanwhile Pierre Soult, posted beyond Navarrens with his cavalry and two battalions of infantry to watch the road to Pau, was pressed by Morillo, and being cut off from the army by the passage of the allies at Villenave was forced to retreat by Monein.

[549]

On the 25th at daylight, lord Wellington with some cavalry and guns pushed Clauzel’s rear-guard from Magret into the suburb of Orthes, which covered the bridge of that place on the left bank. He also cannonaded the French troops beyond the river, and the Portuguese of the light division, skirmishing with the French in the houses to prevent the destruction of the bridge, lost twenty-five men.

The second sixth and light divisions, Hamilton’s Portuguese, five regiments of cavalry, and three batteries were now massed in front of Orthes; the third division and a brigade of cavalry was in front of the broken bridge of Berenx about five miles lower down the Gave; the fourth and seventh divisions with Vivian’s cavalry were in front of Peyrehorade, from whence Foy retired by the great Bayonne road to Orthes. Affairs being in this state Morillo was directed to invest Navarrens. And as Mina’s battalions were no sure guarantee against the combined efforts of the garrison of St. Jean Pied de Port and the warlike inhabitants of Baygorry, five British regiments, which had gone to the rear for clothing and were now coming up separately, were ordered to halt at St. Palais in observation, relieving each other in succession as they arrived at that place.

On the morning of the 26th, Beresford, finding that Foy had abandoned the French works at Peyrehorade, passed the Gave, partly by a pontoon bridge partly by a ford, where the current ran so strong that a column of the seventh division was like to have been carried away bodily. He had previously detached the eighteenth hussars to find another ford higher up, and this being effected under the guidance of a miller, the hussars gained the high road about[550] half-way between Peyrehorade and Orthes, and drove some French cavalry through Puyoo and Ramous. The French rallying upon their reservesMemoir by colonel Hughes, eighteenth hussars, MSS. turned and beat back the foremost of the pursuers, but they would not await the shock of the main body now reinforced by Vivian’s brigade and commanded by Beresford in person. In this affair major Sewell, an officer of the staff, who had frequently distinguished himself by his personal prowess, happening to be without a sword, pulled a large stake from a hedge and with that weapon overthrew two hussars in succession, and only relinquished the combat when a third had cut his club in twain.

Beresford now threw out a detachment to Habas on his left to intercept the enemy’s communication with Dax, and lord Wellington immediately ordered lord Edward Somerset’s cavalry and the third division to cross the Gave by fords below the broken bridge of Berenx. Then directing Beresford to take a position for the night on some heights near the village of Baïghts he proceeded to throw a pontoon bridge at Berenx, and thus after a circuitous march of more than fifty miles with his right wing he again united it with his centre and secured a direct communication with Hope.

During the 25th and 26th he had carefully examined Soult’s position. The bridge of Orthes could not be easily forced. That ancient and beautiful structure consisted of several irregular arches, with a high tower in the centre the gateway of which was built up by the French, the principal arch in front of the tower was mined, and the houses on both sides contributed to the defence. The river above and below was deep and full of tall pointed rocks, but above the town the water spreading[551] wide with flat banks presented the means of crossing. Lord Wellington’s first design was to pass there with Hill’s troops and the light division, but when he heard that Beresford had crossed the Gave he suddenly changed his design, and as we have seen passed the third division over and threw his bridge at Berenx. This operation was covered by Beresford, while Soult’s attention was diverted by the continual skirmish at the suburbs of Orthes, by the appearance of Hill’s columns above, and by Wellington’s taking cognizance of the position near the bridge so openly as to draw a cannonade.

The English general did not expect Soult would, when he found Beresford and Picton were over the Gave, await a battle, and his emissaries reported that the French army was already in retreat, a circumstance to be borne in mind because the next day’s operation required success to justify it. Hope’s happy passage of the Adour being now known that officer was instructed to establish a line of communication to the port of Lannes, where a permanent bridge was to be formed with boats brought up from Urt. A direct line of intercourse was thus secured with the army at Bayonne. But lord Wellington felt that he was pushing his operations beyond his strength if Suchet should send reinforcements to Soult; wherefore he called up Freyre’s Spaniards, ordering that general to cross the Adour below Bayonne, with two of his divisions and a brigade of Portuguese nine-pounders, and join him by the port of Lannes. O’Donnel’s Andalusians and the prince of Anglona’s troops were also directed to be in readiness to enter France.

These orders were given with the greatest reluctance.

[552]

The feeble resistance made by the French in the difficult country already passed, left him without much uneasiness as to the power of Soult’s army in the field, but his disquietude was extreme about the danger of an insurgent warfare. “Maintain the strictest discipline, without that we are lost,” was his expression to general Freyre, and he issued a proclamation authorizing the people of the districts he had overrun to arm themselves for the preservation of order under the direction of their mayors. He invited them to arrest all straggling soldiers and followers of the army, and all plunderers and evil-doers and convey them to head-quarters with proof of their crimes, promising to punish the culpable and to pay for all damages. At the same time he confirmed all the local authorities who chose to retain their offices, on the sole condition of having no political or military intercourse with the countries still possessed by the French army. Nor was his proclamation a dead letter, for in the night of the 25th the inhabitants of a village, situated near the road leading from Sauveterre to Orthes, shot one English soldier dead and wounded a second who had come with others to plunder. Lord Wellington caused the wounded man to be hung as an example, and he also forced an English colonel to quit the army for suffering his soldiers to destroy the municipal archives of a small town.

Soult had no thought of retreating. His previous retrograde movements had been effected with order, his army was concentrated with its front to the Gave, and every bridge, except the noble structure at Orthes the ancient masonry of which resisted his mines, had been destroyed. One regiment ofOfficial Report, MSS. cavalry was detached on the right to watch the[553] fords as far as Peyrehorade, three others with two battalions of infantry under Pierre Soult watched those between Orthes and Pau, and a body of horsemenMemoir by general Berton, MSS. and gensd’armes covered the latter town from Morillo’s incursions. Two regiments of cavalry remained with the army, and the French general’s intention was to fall upon the head of the first column which should cross the Gave. But the negligenceCanevas de faits par general Reille et colonel de la Chasse, MS. of the officer stationed at Puyoo, who had suffered Vivian’s hussars, as we have seen, to pass on the 26th without opposition and without making any report of the event, enabled Beresford to make his movement in safety when otherwise he would have been assailed by at least two-thirds of the French army. It was not until three o’clock in the evening that Soult received intelligence of his march, and his columns were then close to Baïghts on the right flank of the French army, his scouters were on the Dax road in its rear, and at the same time the sixth and light divisions were seen descending by different roads from the heights beyond the river pointing towards Berenx.

In this crisis the French marshal hesitated whether to fall upon Beresford and Picton while the latter was still passing the river, or take a defensive position, but finally judging that he had not time to form his columns of attack he decided upon the latter. Wherefore under cover of a skirmish, sustainedSoult’s Official Report, MSS. near Baïghts by a battalion of infantry which coming from the bridge of Berenx was joined by the light cavalry from Puyoo, he hastily threw D’Erlon’s and Reille’s divisions on a new line across the road from Peyrehorade. The right extended to the heights of San Boës along which run the road from Orthes to Dax, and this line was prolonged by[554] Clauzel’s troops to Castetarbe a village close to the Gave. Having thus opposed a temporary front to Beresford he made his dispositions to receive battle the next morning, bringing Villatte’s infantry and Pierre Soult’s cavalry from the other side of Orthes through that town, and it was this movement that led lord Wellington’s emissaries to report that the army was retiring.

Soult’s new line was on a ridge of hills partly wooded partly naked.

In the centre was an open rounded hill from whence long narrow tongues were pushed out, on the French left towards the high road of Peyrehorade, on their right by St. Boës towards the high church of Baïghts, the whole presenting a concave to the allies.

The front was generally covered by a deep and marshy ravine broken by two short tongues of land which jutted out from the principal hill.

The road from Orthes to Dax passed behind the front to the village of St. Boës and thence along the ridge forming the right flank.

Behind the centre a succession of undulating bare heathy hills trended for several miles to the rear, but behind the right the country was low and deep.

The town of Orthes, receding from the river up the slope of a steep hill and terminating with an ancient tower, was behind the left wing.

General Reille, having Taupin’s, Roguet’s, and Paris’s divisions under him, commanded on the right, and occupied all the ground from the village of St. Boës to the centre of the position.

Count D’Erlon, commanding Foy’s and D’Armagnac’s divisions, was on the left of Reille. He placed the first along a ridge extending towards the road of[555] Peyrehorade, the second in reserve. In rear of this last Villatte’s division and the cavalry wereSoult’s Official Report, MSS. posted above the village of Rontun, that is to say, on the open hills behind the main position. In this situation with the right overlooking the low country beyond St. Boës, and the left extended towards Orthes this division furnished a reserve to both D’Erlon and Reille.

Harispe, whose troops as well as Villatte’s were under Clauzel, occupied Orthes and the bridge, having a regiment near the ford of Souars above the town. Thus the French army extended from St. Boës to Orthes, but the great mass was disposed towards the centre. Twelve guns were attached to general Harispe’s troops, twelve were upon the round hill in the centre, sweeping in their range the ground beyond St. Boës, and sixteen were in reserve on the Dax road.

The 27th at day-break the sixth and light divisions, having passed the Gave near Berenx by the pontoon bridge thrown in the night, wound up a narrow way between high rocks to the great road of Peyrehorade. The third division and lord Edward Somerset’s cavalry were already established there in columns of march with skirmishers pushed forwards to the edge of the wooded height occupied by D’Erlon’s left, and Beresford with the fourth and seventh divisions and Vivian’s cavalry had meanwhile gained the ridge of St. Boës and approached the Dax road beyond. Hill remained with the second British, and Le Cor’s Portuguese divisions menacing the bridge of Orthes and the ford of Souars. Between Beresford and Picton, a distance of a mile and a half, there were no troops; but about half-way, exactly in front of the French centre, was a Roman camp crowning an isolated[556] peering hill of singular appearance and nearly as lofty as the centre of Soult’s position.

On this camp, now covered with vineyards, but then open and grassy with a few trees, lord Wellington, after viewing the country on Beresford’s left, stopped for an hour or more to examine the enemy’s disposition for battle. During this time the two divisions were coming up from the river, but so hemmed in by rocks that only a few men could march abreast, and their point of union with the third division was little more than cannon-shot from the enemy’s position. The moment was critical, Picton did not conceal his disquietude, but Wellington undisturbed as the deep sea continued his observations without seeming to notice the dangerous position of his troops. When they had reached the main road he reinforced Picton with the sixth, and drew the light division by cross roads behind the Roman camp, thus connecting his wings and forming a central reserve. From this point bye-ways led, on the left to the high church of Baïghts and the Dax road, on the right to the Peyrehorade road; and two others led straight across the marsh to the French position.

This marsh, the open hill about which Soult’s guns and reserves were principally gathered, the form and nature of the ridges on the flanks, all combined to forbid an attack in front, and the flanks were scarcely more promising. The extremity of the French left sunk indeed to a gentle undulation in crossing the Peyrehorade road, yet it would have been useless to push troops on that line towards Orthes, between D’Erlon and Caste Tarbe, for the town was strongly occupied by Harispe and was there covered by an ancient wall and the bed of a[557] torrent. It was equally difficult to turn the St. Boës flank because of the low marshy country into which the troops must have descended beyond the Dax road; and the brows of the hills trending backwards from the centre of the French position would have enabled Soult to oppose a new and formidable front at right angles to his actual position. The whole of the allied army must therefore have made a circuitous flank movement within gun-shot and through a most difficult country, or Beresford’s left must have been dangerously extended and the whole line weakened. Nor could the movement be hidden, because the hills although only moderately high were abrupt on that side, affording a full view of the low country, and Soult’s cavalry detachments were in observation on every brow.

It only remained to assail the French flanks along the ridges, making the principal efforts on the side of St. Boës, with intent if successful to overlap the French right beyond, and seize the road of St. Sever while Hill passed the Gave at Souars and cut off the road to Pau, thus enclosing the beaten army in Orthes. This was however no slight affair. On Picton’s side it was easy to obtain a footing on the flank ridge near the high road, but beyond that the ground rose rapidly and the French were gathered thickly with a narrow front and plenty of guns. On Beresford’s side they could only be assailed along the summit of the St. Boës ridge, advancing from the high church of Baïghts and the Dax road. But the village of St. Boës was strongly occupied, the ground immediately behind it was strangled to a narrow pass by the ravine, and the French reserve of sixteen guns, placed on the Dax[558] road, behind the hill in the centre of Soult’s line, and well covered from counter-fire, was in readiness to crush the head of any column which should emerge from the gorge of St. Boës.

BATTLE OF ORTHES.

During the whole morning a slight skirmish with now and then a cannon-shot had been going on with the third division on the right, and the French cavalry at times pushed parties forward on each flank, but at nine o’clock Wellington commenced the real attack. The third and sixth divisions won without difficulty the lower part of the ridges opposed to them, and endeavoured to extend their left along the French front with a sharp fire of musquetry; but the main battle was on the other flank. There general Cole, keeping Anson’s brigade of the fourth division in reserve, assailed St. Boës with Ross’s British brigade and Vasconcellos’ Portuguese; his object was to get on to the open ground beyond it, but fierce and slaughtering was the struggle. Five times breaking through the scattered houses did Ross carry his battle into the wider space beyond; yet ever as the troops issued forth the French guns from the open hill smote them in front, and the reserved battery on the Dax road swept through them with grape from flank to flank. And then Taupin’s supporting masses rushed forwards with a wasting fire, and lapping the flanks with skirmishers, which poured along the ravines on either hand, forced the shattered columns back into the village. It was in vain that with desperate valour the allies time after time broke through the[559] narrow way and struggled to spread a front beyond, Ross fell dangerously wounded, and Taupin, whose troops were clustered thickly and well supported defied their utmost efforts. Nor was Soult less happy on the other side. The nature of the ground would not permit the third and sixth divisions to engage many men at once, so that no progress was made; and one small detachment which Picton extended to his left, having made an attempt to gain the smaller tongue jutting out from the central hill, was suddenly charged, as it neared the summit, by Foy, and driven down again in confusion, losing several prisoners.

When the combat had thus continued with unabated fury on the side of St. Boës for about three hours, lord Wellington sent a caçadore regiment of the light division from the Roman camp to protect the right flank of Ross’s brigade against the French skirmishers; but this was of no avail, for Vasconcellos’ Portuguese, unable to sustain the violence of the enemy any longer, gave way in disorder, and the French pouring on, the British troops retreated through St. Boës with difficulty. As this happened at the moment when the detachment on Picton’s left was repulsed, victory seemed to declare for the French, and Soult, conspicuous on his commanding open hill, the knot of all his combinations, seeing his enemies thus broken and thrown backwards on each side put all his reserves in movement to complete the success. It is said that in the exultation of the moment he smote his thigh exclaiming, “At last I have him.” Whether this be so or not it was no vain-glorious speech, for the moment was most dangerous. There was however a small black cloud rising just beneath him, unheeded at[560] first amidst the thundering din and tumult that now shook the field of battle, but which soon burst with irresistible violence. Wellington seeing that St. Boës was inexpugnable had suddenly changed his plan of battle. Supporting Ross with Anson’s brigade which had not hitherto been engaged, he backed both with the seventh division and Vivian’s cavalry now forming one heavy body towards the Dax road. Then he ordered the third and sixth divisions to be thrown in mass upon Foy’s left flank, and at the same time sent the fifty-second regiment down from the Roman camp with instructions to cross the marsh in front, to mount the French ridge beyond, and to assail the flank and rear of the troops engaged with the fourth division at St. Boës.

Colonel Colborne, so often distinguished in this war, immediately led the fifty-second down and crossed the marsh under fire, the men sinking at every step above the knees, in some places to the middle, but still pressing forwards with that stern resolution and order to be expected from the veterans of the light division, soldiers who had never yet met their match in the field. They soon obtained footing on firm land and ascended the heights in line at the moment that Taupin was pushing vigorously through St. Boës, Foy and D’Armagnac, hitherto more than masters of their positions, being at the same time seriously assailed on the other flank by the third and sixth divisions. With a mighty shout and a rolling fire the fifty-second soldiers dashed forwards between Foy and Taupin, beating down a French battalion in their course and throwing everything before them into disorder. General Bechaud was killed in Taupin’s division, Foy was dangerously wounded, and his troops, discouraged by his fall and by this sudden[561] burst from a quarter where no enemy was expected, for the march of the fifty-second had been hardly perceived save by the skirmishers, got into confusion, and the disorder spreading to Reille’s wingSoult’s Official Reports, MSS. he also was forced to fall back and take a new position to restore his line of battle. The narrow pass behind St. Boës was thus opened, and Wellington seizing the critical moment thrust the fourth and seventh divisions, Vivian’s cavalry, and two batteries of artillery through, and spread a front beyond.

The victory was thus secured. For the third and sixth divisions had now won D’Armagnac’s position and established a battery of guns on a knoll, from whence their shot ploughed through the French masses from one flank to another. Suddenly a squadron of French chasseurs came at a hard gallop down the main road of Orthes to charge these guns, and sweeping to their right they rode over some of the sixth division which had advanced too far; but pushing this charge too madly got into a hollow lane and were nearly all destroyed. The third and seventh divisions then continued to advance and the wings of the army were united. The French general rallied all his forces on the open hills beyond the Dax road, and with Taupin’s, Roguet’s, Paris’, and D’Armagnac’s divisions made strong battle to cover the reformation of Foy’s disordered troops, but his foes were not all in front. This part of the battle was fought with only two-thirds of the allied army. Hill who had remained with twelve thousand combatants, cavalry and infantry, before the bridge of Orthes, received orders, when Wellington changed his plan of attack, to force the passage of the Gave, partly in the view of preventing Harispe from falling upon the flank of the sixth division,[562] partly in the hope of a successful issue to the attempt: and so it happened. Hill though unable to force the bridge, forded the river above at Souars, and driving back the troops posted there seized the heights above, cut off the French from the road to Pau, and turned the town of Orthes. He thus menaced Soult’s only line of retreat by Salespice, on the road to St. Sever, at the very moment when the fifty-second having opened the defile of St. Boës the junction of the allies’ wings was effected on the French position.

Clauzel immediately ordered Harispe to abandon Orthes and close towards Villatte on the heights above Rontun, leaving however some conscript battalions on a rising point beyond the road of St. Sever called the “Motte de Turenne.” Meanwhile in person he endeavoured to keep general Hill in check by the menacing action of two cavalry regiments and a brigade of infantry; but Soult arrived at the moment and seeing that the loss of Souars had rendered his whole position untenable, gave orders for a general retreat.

This was a perilous matter. The heathy hills upon which he was now fighting, although for a short distance they furnished a succession of parallel positions favourable enough for defence, soon resolved themselves into a low ridge running to the rear on a line parallel with the road to St. Sever; and on the opposite side of that road about cannon-shot distance was a corresponding ridge along which general Hill, judging by the firing how matters went, was now rapidly advancing. Five miles distant was the Luy de Bearn, and four miles beyond that the Luy de France, two rivers deep and with difficult banks. Behind these the Lutz, the Gabas, and the[563] Adour, crossed the line, and though once beyond the wooden bridge of Sault de Navailles on the Luy de Bearn, these streams would necessarily cover the retreat, to carry off by one road and one bridge a defeated army still closely engaged in front seemed impossible. Nevertheless Soult did so. For Paris sustained the fight on his right until Foy and Taupin’s troops rallied, and when the impetuous assault of the fifty-second and the rush of the fourth and seventh divisions drove Paris back, D’Armagnac interposed to cover him until the union of the allies’ wings was completed, then both retired, being covered in turn by Villatte. In this manner the French yielded, step by step and without confusion, the allies advancing with an incessant deafening musketry and cannonade, yet losing many men especially on the right where the third division were very strongly opposed. However as the danger of being cut off at Salespice by Hill became more imminent the retrograde movements were more hurried and confused; Hill seeing this, quickened his pace until at last both sides began to run violently, and so many men broke from the French ranks making across the fields towards the fords, and such a rush was necessarily made by the rest to gain the bridge of Sault de Navailles, that the whole country was covered with scattered bands. Sir Stapleton Cotton then breaking with lord Edward Somerset’s hussars through a small covering body opposed to him by Harispe sabred two or three hundred men, and the seventh hussars cut off about two thousand who threw down their arms in an enclosed field; yet some confusion or mismanagement occurring the greatest part recovering their weapons escaped, and the pursuit ceased at the Luy of Bearn.

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The French army appeared to be entirely dispersed, but it was more disordered in appearance than reality, for Soult passed the Luy of Bearn and destroyed the bridge with the loss of only six guns and less than four thousand men killed wounded and prisoners. Many thousands of conscripts however threw away their arms, and we shall find one month afterwards the stragglers still amounting to three thousand. Nor would the passage of the river have been effected so happily if lord Wellington had not been struck by a musket-ball just above the thigh, which caused him to ride with difficulty, whereby the vigour and unity of the pursuit was necessarily abated. The loss of the allies was two thousand three hundred, of which fifty with three officers were taken, but among the wounded were lord Wellington, general Walker, general Ross, and the duke of Richmond, then lord March. He had served on lord Wellington’s personal staff during the whole war without a hurt, but being made a captain in the fifty-second, like a good soldier joined his regiment the night before the battle. He was shot through the chest a few hours afterwards, thus learning by experience, the difference between the labours and dangers of staff and regimental officers, which are generally in the inverse ratio to their promotions.

General Berton, stationed between Pau and OrthesMemoir by general Berton, MSS. during the battle, had been cut off by Hill’s movement, yet skirting that general’s march he retreated by Mant and Samadet with his cavalry, picking up two battalions of conscripts on the road. Meanwhile Soult having no position to rally upon, continued his retreat in the night to St. Sever, breaking down all the bridges behind him. Lord Wellington pursued at daylight in three columns, the[565] right by Lacadée and St. Medard to Samadet, the centre by the main road, the left by St. Cricq. At St. Sever he hoped to find the enemy still in confusion, but he was too late; the French were across the river, the bridge was broken, and the army halted. The result of the battle was however soon made known far and wide, and Darricau who with a few hundred soldiers was endeavouring to form an insurgent levy at Dax, the works of which were incomplete and still unarmed, immediately destroyed part of the stores, the rest had been removed to Mont Marsan, and retreated through the Landes to Langon on the Garonne.

From St. Sever which offered no position Soult turned short to the right and moved upon Barcelona higher up the Adour; but he left D’Erlon with two divisions of infantry some cavalry and four guns at Caceres on the right bank, and sent Clauzel to occupy Aire on the other side of the river. He thus abandoned his magazines at Mont Marsan and left open the direct road to Bordeaux, but holding Caceres with his right he commanded another road by Rocquefort to that city, while his left being at Aire protected the magazines and artillery parc at that place and covered the road to Pau. Meanwhile the main body at Barcelona equally supported Clauzel and D’Erlon, and covered the great roads leading to Agen and Toulouse on the Garonne, and to the mountains by Tarbes.

In this situation it was difficult to judge what line of operations he meant to adopt. Wellington however passed the Adour about one o’clock, partly by the repaired bridge of St. Sever partly by a deep ford below, and immediately detached Beresford with the light division and Vivian’s cavalry to seize[566] the magazines at Mont Marsan; at the same time he pushed the head of a column towards Caceres where a cannonade and charge of cavalry had place, and a few men and officers were hurt on both sides. The next day Hill’s corps marching from Samadet reached the Adour between St. Sever and Aire, and D’Erlon was again assailed on the right bank and driven back skirmishing to Barcelona. This event proved that Soult had abandoned Bordeaux, but the English general could not push the pursuit more vigorously, because every bridge was broken and a violent storm on the evening of the 1st had filled the smaller rivers and torrents, carried away the pontoon bridges, and cut off all communication between the troops and the supplies.

The bulk of the army was now necessarily haltedMarch. on the right bank of the Adour until the bridges could be repaired, but Hill who was on the left bank marched to seize the magazines at Aire. Moving in two columns from St. Savin and St. Gillies on the 2d, he reached his destination about three o’clock with two divisions of infantry a brigade of cavalry and a battery of horse-artillery; he expected no serious opposition, but general Clauzel had arrived a few hours before and was in order of battle covering the town with Villatte’s and Harispe’s divisions and some guns. The French occupied a steep ridge in front of Aire, high and wooded on the right where it overlooked the river, but merging on the left into a wide table-land over which the great road led to Pau. The position was strong for battle yet it could be readily outflanked on the left by the table-land, and was an uneasy one for retreat on the right where the ridge was narrow, the ravine behind steep and rugged with a mill-stream at the[567] bottom between it and the town. A branch of the Adour also flowing behind Aire cut it off from Barcelona, while behind the left wing was the greater Lees a river with steep banks and only one bridge.

COMBAT OF AIRE.

General Hill arriving about two o’clock attacked without hesitation. General Stewart with two British brigades fell on the French right, a Portuguese brigade assailed their centre, and the other brigades followed in columns of march. The action was however very sudden, the Portuguese were pushed forward in a slovenly manner by general Da Costa, a man of no ability, and the French under Harispe met them on the flat summit of the height with so rough a charge that they gave way in flight. The rear of the allies’ column being still in march the battle was like to be lost, but general Stewart having by this time won the heights on the French right, where Villatte, fearing to be enclosed made but a feeble resistance, immediately detached general Barnes with the fiftieth and ninety-second regiments to the aid of the Portuguese. The vehement charge of these troops turned the stream of battle, the French were broken in turn and thrown back on their reserves, yet they rallied and renewed the action with great courage, fighting obstinately until General Byng’s British brigade came up, when Harispe was driven towards the river Lees, and Villate quite through the town of Aire into the space between the two branches of the Adour behind.

General Reille who was at Barcelona when the[568] action began, brought up Roguet’s division to support Villatte, the combat was thus continued until night at that point, meanwhile Harispe crossed the Lees and broke the bridge, but the French lost many men. Two generals, Dauture and Gasquet, were wounded, a colonel of engineers was killed, a hundred prisoners were taken, many of Harispe’s conscripts threw away their arms and fled to their homes, and the magazines fell into the conqueror’s hands. The loss of the British troops was one hundred and fifty, general Barnes was wounded and colonel Hood killed. The loss of the Portuguese was never officially stated, yet it could not have been less than that of the British, and the vigour of the action proved that the French courage was very little abated by the battle of Orthes. Soult immediately retreated up the Adour by both banks towards Maubourget and Marciac, and he was not followed for new combinations were now opened to the generals on both sides.

OBSERVATIONS.

1º. On the 14th of February the passage of the Gaves was commenced, by Hill’s attack on Harispe at Hellette. On the 2d of March the first series of operations was terminated by the combat at Aire. In these sixteen days lord Wellington traversed with his right wing eighty miles, passed five large and several small rivers, forced the enemy to abandon two fortified bridge-heads and many minor works, gained one great battle and two combats, captured six guns and about a thousand prisoners, seized the magazines at Dax, Mont Marsan, and[569] Aire, forced Soult to abandon Bayonne and cut him off from Bordeaux. And in this time he also threw his stupendous bridge below Bayonne and closely invested that fortress after a sharp and bloody action. Success in war like charity in religion covers a multitude of sins; but success often belongs to fortune as much as skill, and the combinations of Wellington, profound and sagacious, might in this manner be confounded with the lucky operations of the allies on the other side of France, where the presumption and the vacillation of ignorance alternately predominated.

2º. Soult attributed the loss of his positions to the superior forces of the allies. Is this well-founded? The French general’s numbers cannot be determined exactly, but after all his losses in December, after the detachments made by the emperor’s order in January, and after completing the garrison of Bayonne to fourteen thousand men, he informed theOfficial Correspondence, MSS. minister of war that thirty thousand infantry, three thousand cavalry and forty pieces of artillery were in line. This did not include the conscripts of the new levy, all youths indeed and hastily sent to the army by battalions as they could be armed, but brave and about eight thousand of them might have joined before the battle of Orthes. Wherefore deducting the detachments of cavalry and infantry under Berton on the side of Pau, and under Daricau on the side of Dax, it may be said that forty thousand combatants of all arms were engaged in that action. Thirty-five thousand were very excellent soldiers, for the conscripts of the old levy who joined before the battle of the Nivelle were stout men; their vigorous fighting at Garris and Aire proved it, for of them was Harispe’s division composed.

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Now lord Wellington commenced his operations with the second third fourth and seventh British divisions, the independent Portuguese division under Le Cor, Morillo’s Spaniards, forty-eight pieces of artillery, and only four brigades of light cavalry, for Vandaleur’s brigade remained with Hope and all the heavy cavalry and the Portuguese were left in Spain. Following the morning states of the army, this would furnish, exclusive of Morillo’s Spaniards, something more than forty thousand fighting men and officers of all arms, of which four thousand were horsemen. But five regiments of infantry, and amongst them two of the strongest British regiments of the light division, were absent to receive their clothing; deduct these and we have about thirty-seven thousand Anglo-Portuguese combatants. It is true that Mina’s battalions and Morillo’s aided in the commencement of the operations, but the first immediately invested St. Jean Pied de Port and the latter invested Navarrens. Lord Wellington was therefore in the battle superior by a thousand horsemen and eight guns, but Soult outnumbered him in infantry by four or five thousand, conscripts it is true, yet useful. Why then was the passage of the Gaves so feebly disputed? Because the French general remained entirely on the defensive in positions too extended for his numbers.

3º. Offensive operations must be the basis of a good defensive system. Let Soult’s operations be tried by this rule. On the 12th he knew that the allies were in motion for some great operation and he judged rightly that it was to drive him from the Gaves. From the 14th to the 18th his left was continually assailed by very superior numbers, but during part of that time Beresford could only oppose to his right[571] and centre, the fourth and a portion of the seventh divisions with some cavalry; and those not in a body and at once but parcelled and extended, for it was not until the 16th that the fourth seventh and light divisions were so closed towards the Bidouze as to act in one mass. On the 15th lord Wellington admitted that his troops were too extended, Villatte’s, Taupin’s, and Foy’s divisions, were never menaced until the 18th, and there was nothing to prevent D’Erlon’s divisions which only crossed the Adour on the 17th from being on the Bidouze the 15th. Soult might therefore by rapid and well-digested combinations have united four divisions of infantry and a brigade of cavalry to attack Beresford on the 15th or 16th between the Nive and the Adour. If successful the defeated troops, pushed back upon the sixth division, must have fought for life with the rivers on their flanks, Soult in front, and the garrison of Bayonne issuing from the works of Mousseroles on their rear. If unsuccessful the French retreat behind the Gave of Oleron could not have been prevented.

It is however to be pleaded that Soult was not exactly informed of the numbers and situation of his opponents. He thought Beresford had the firstSoult’s Official Reports, MSS. division also on the Lower Bidouze; he knew that Wellington had large reserves to employ, and, that general’s design of passing the Adour below Bayonne being unknown to him, he naturally supposed they would be used to support the operations on the Gaves: he therefore remained on the defensive. It might possibly also have been difficult to bring D’Erlon’s division across the Adour by the Port de Lannes before the 17th, because the regular bridge had been carried away and the communications interrupted[572] a few days before by the floods. In fine there are many matters of detail in war known only to a general-in-chief which forbid the best combinations, and this it is that makes the art so difficult and uncertain. Great captains worship Fortune.

On the 24th the passage of the Gave d’Oleron was effected. Soult then recognised his error and concentrated his troops at Orthes to retake the offensive. It was a fine movement and effected with ability, but he suffered another favourable opportunity of giving a counter-blow to escape him. The infantry under Villatte, Harispe, and Paris, supported by a brigade of cavalry, were about Sauveterre, that is to say, four miles from Montfort and only seven from Villenave, where the principal passage was effected, where the ford was deep, the stream rapid, and the left bank although favourable for the passage not entirely commanding the right bank. How then did it happen that the operation was effected without opposition? Amongst the allies it was rumoured at the time that Soult complained of the negligence of a general who had orders to march against the passing troops. The position of Harispe’s division at Monstrueig, forming a reserve at equal distances from Sauveterre and Villenave, would seem to have been adopted with that view, but I find no confirmation of the report in Soult’s correspondence, and it is certain he thought Picton’s demonstrations at Sauveterre was a real attack.

4º. The position adopted by the French general at Orthes was excellent for offence. It was not so for defence, when Beresford and Picton had crossed the Gave below in force. Lord Wellington could then throw his whole army on that side, and secure his communication with Hope, after which outflanking[573] the right of the French he could seize the defile of Sault de Navailles, cut them off from their magazines at Dax, Mont Marsan and Aire, and force them to retreat by the Pau road leaving open the way to Bordeaux. To await this attack was therefore an error, but Soult’s originalOfficial Correspondence, MSS. design was to assail the head of the first column which should come near him and Beresford’s approach to Baïghts on the 26th furnished the opportunity. It is true that the French light cavalry gave intelligence of that general’s march too late and marred the combination, but there was still time to fall on the head of the column while the third division was in the act of passing the river and entangled in the narrow way leading from the ford toNotes by general Reille and colonel De la Chasse, MSS. the Peyrehorade road: it is said the French marshal appeared disposed to do this at first, but finally took a defensive position in which to receive battle.

However when the morning came he neglected another opportunity. For two hours the third division and the hussars remained close to him, covering the march of the sixth and light divisions through the narrow ways leading from the bridge of Berenx up to the main road; the infantry had no defined position, the cavalry had no room to extend, and there were no troops between them and Beresford who was then in march by the heights of Baïghts to the Dax road. If the French general had pushed a column across the marsh to seize the Roman camp he would have separated the wings of the allies; then pouring down the Peyrehorade road with Foy’s, D’Armagnac’s and Villatte’s divisions he would probably have overwhelmed the third division before the other two could have extricated themselves from the defiles. Picton therefore had grounds for uneasiness.

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With a subtle skill did Soult take his ground of battle at Orthes, fiercely and strongly did he fight, and wonderfully did he effect his retreat across the Luy of Bearn, but twice in twenty-four hours he had neglected those happy occasions which in war take birth and flight at the same instant; and as the value of his position, essentially an offensive one, was thereby lost, a slowness to strike may be objected to his generalship. Yet there is no commander, unless a Hannibal or a Napoleon surpassing the human proportions, but will abate something of his confidence and hesitate after repeated defeats, Soult in this campaign as in many others proved himself a hardy captain full of resources.

5º. Lord Wellington with a vastness of conception and a capacity for arrangement and combination equal to his opponent, possessed in a high degree that daring promptness of action, that faculty of inspiration for suddenly deciding the fate of whole campaigns with which Napoleon was endowed beyond all mankind. It is this which especially constitutes military genius. For so vast so complicated are the combinations of war, so easily and by such slight causes are they affected, that the best generals do but grope in the dark, and they acknowledge the humiliating truth. By the number and extent of their fine dispositions then, and not by their errors, the merit of commanders is to be measured.

In this campaign lord Wellington designed to penetrate France, not with a hasty incursion but solidly, to force Soult over the Garonne, and if possible in the direction of Bordeaux, because it was the direct line, because the citizens were inimical to the emperor, and the town, lying on the left bank of the river, could not be defended; because a junction[575] with Suchet would thus be prevented. Finally if by operating against Soult’s left he could throw the French army into the Landes, where his own superior cavalry could act, it would probably be destroyed.

To operate against Soult’s left in the direction of Pau was the most obvious method of preventing a junction with Suchet, and rendering the positions which the French general had fortified on the Gaves useless. But the investment of Bayonne required a large force, which was yet weak against an outer attack because separated in three parts by the rivers; hence if lord Wellington had made a wide movement on Pau, Soult might have placed the Adour between him and the main army and then fallen upon Hope’s troops on the right side of that river. The English general was thus reduced to act upon a more contracted line, and to cross all the Gaves. To effect this he collected his principal mass on his right by the help of the great road leading to St. Jean Pied de Port, then by rapid marches and reiterated attacks he forced the passage of the rivers above the points which Soult had fortified for defence, and so turned that general’s left with the view of finally cutting him off from Suchet and driving him into the wilderness of the Landes. During these marches he left Beresford on the lower parts of the rivers to occupy the enemy’s attention and cover the troops blockading Mousseroles. Meanwhile by the collection of boats at Urt and other demonstrations indicating a design of throwing a bridge over the Adour above Bayonne, he diverted attention from the point chosen below the fortress for that operation, and at the same time provided the means of throwing another bridge at the Port de Lannes to[576] secure the communication with Hope by the right bank whenever Soult should be forced to abandon the Gaves. These were fine combinations.

I have shown that Beresford’s corps was so weak at first that Soult might have struck a counter-blow. Lord Wellington admitted the error. Writing on the 15th he says, “If the enemy stand upon the Bidouze I am not so strong as I ought to be,” and he ordered up the fourth and light divisions; but this excepted, his movements were conformable to the principles of war. He chose the best strategic line of operations, his main attack was made with heavy masses against the enemy’s weakest points, and in execution he was prompt and daring. His conduct was conformable also to his peculiar situation. He had two distinct operations in hand, namely to throw his bridge below Bayonne and to force the Gaves. He had the numbers required to obtain these objects but dared not use them lest he should put the Spanish troops into contact with the French people; yet he could not entirely dispense with them; wherefore bringing Freyre up to Bayonne, Morillo to Navarrens, and Mina to St. Jean Pied de Port, he seemed to put his whole army in motion, thus gaining the appearance of military strength with as little political danger as possible. Nevertheless so terrible had the Spaniards already made themselves by their cruel lawless habits that their mere return across the frontier threw the whole country into consternation.

6º. When in front of Orthes it would at first sight appear as if lord Wellington had changed his plan of driving the enemy upon the Landes, but it was not so. He did not expect a battle on the 27th. This is proved by his letter to sir John Hope in[577] which he tells that general that he anticipated no difficulty in passing the Gave of Pau, that on the evening of the 26th the enemy were retiring, and that he designed to visit the position at Bayonne. To pass the Gave in the quickest and surest manner, to re-establish the direct communications with Hope and to unite with Beresford, were his immediate objects; if he finally worked by his left it was a sudden act and extraneous to the general design, which was certainly to operate with Hill’s corps and the light division by the right.

It was after passing the Gave at Berenx on the morning of the 27th lord Wellington first discovered Soult’s intention to fight, and that consequently he was himself in a false position. Had he shewn any hesitation, any uneasiness, had he endeavoured to take a defensive position with either Beresford’s or Picton’s troops, he would inevitably have drawn the attention of the enemy to his dangerous situation. Instead of this, judging that Soult would not on the instant change from the defensive to the offensive, he confidently pushed Picton’s skirmishers forward as if to assail the left of the French position, and put Beresford in movement against their right, and this with all the coolness imaginable. The success was complete. Soult who supposed the allies stronger than they really were, naturally imagined the wings would not be so bold unless well supported in the centre where the Roman camp could hide a multitude. He therefore held fast to his position until the movement was more developed, and in two hours the sixth and light divisions were up and the battle commenced. It was well fought on both sides but the crisis was decided by the fifty-second, and when[578] that regiment was put in movement only a single Portuguese battalion was in reserve behind the Roman camp: upon such nice combinations of time and place does the fate of battles turn.

7º. Soult certainly committed an error in receiving battle at Orthes, and it has been said that lord Wellington’s wound at the most critical period of the retreat alone saved the hostile army. Nevertheless the clear manner in which the French general carried his troops away, his prompt judgement, shown in the sudden change of his line of retreat at St. Sever, the resolute manner in which he halted and showed front again at Caceres, Barcelonne, and Aire, were all proofs of no common ability. It was Wellington’s aim to drive the French on to the Landes, Soult’s to avoid this, he therefore shifted from the Bordeaux line to that of Toulouse, not in confusion but with the resolution of a man ready to dispute every foot of ground. The loss of the magazines at Mont Marsan was no faultSoult’s Official Correspondence, MSS. of his; he had given orders for transporting them towards the Toulouse side fifteen days before, but the matter depending upon the civil authorities was neglected. He was blamed by some of his officers for fighting at Aire, yet it was necessary to cover the magazines there, and essential to his design of keeping up the courage of the soldiers under the adverse circumstances which he anticipated. And here the palm of generalship remained with him, for certainly the battle of Orthes was less decisive than it should have been. I speak not of the pursuit to Sault de Navailles, nor of the next day’s march upon St. Sever, but of Hill’s march on the right. That general halted near Samade the 28th, reached St. Savin on the Adour the 1st and fought[579] the battle of Aire on the evening of the 2d of March. But from Samadet to Aire is not longer than from Samadet to St. Savin where he was on the 1st. He could therefore, if his orders had prescribed it so, have seized Aire on the 1st before Clauzel arrived, and thus spared the obstinate combat at that place. It may also be observed that his attack did not receive a right direction. It should have been towards the French left, because they were more weakly posted there, and the ridge held by their right was so difficult to retire from, that no troops would stay on it if any progress was made on the left. This was however an accident of war, general Hill had no time to examine the ground, his orders were to attack, and to fall without hesitation upon a retiring enemy after such a defeat as Orthes was undoubtedly the right thing to do; but it cannot be said that lord Wellington pushed the pursuit with vigour. Notwithstanding the storm on the evening of the 1st he could have reinforced Hill and should not have given the French army time to recover from their recent defeat. “The secret of war,” says Napoleon, “is to march twelve leagues, fight a battle and march twelve more in pursuit.”

Extremely perilous and disheartening was the1814. March. situation of the French general. His army was greatly reduced by his losses in battle and by the desertion of the conscripts, and three thousand stragglers, old soldiers who ought to have rejoined their eagles, were collected by different generals, into whose districts they had wandered, and employed to strengthen detached corps instead of being restored to the army. All his magazines were taken, discontent the natural offspring of misfortune prevailed amongst his officers, a powerful enemy was in front, no certain resources of men or money behind, and his efforts were ill-seconded by the civil authorities. The troops indignant at the people’s apathy behaved with so much violence and insolence, especially during the retreat from St. Sever, that Soult, who wanted officers very badly, proposed toSoult’s Official Correspondence, MSS. fill the vacancies from the national guards that he might have “men who would respect property.” On the other hand the people comparing the conduct of their own army with the discipline of the Anglo-Portuguese, and contrasting the requisitions necessarily imposed by their countrymen with the ready and copious disbursements in gold made by their enemies, for now one commissary preceded each division to order rations for the troops and another followed to arrange and pay on the spot, were[581] become so absolutely averse to the French army that Soult writing to the minister of war thus expressed himself. “If the population of the departments of the Landes of Gers, and the Lower Pyrenees, were animated with a good spirit, this is the moment to make the enemy suffer by carrying off his convoys and prisoners, but they appear more disposed to favour the invaders than to second the army. It is scarcely possible to obtain a carriage for transport and I shall not be surprised to find in a short time these inhabitants taking arms against us.” Soult was however a man formed by nature and by experience to struggle against difficulties, always appearing greater when in a desperate condition than when more happily circumstanced. At Genoa under Massena, at Oporto, and in Andalusia, he had been inured to military distress, and probably for that reason the emperor selected him to sustain this dangerous contest in preference to others accounted more ready tacticians on a field of battle.

On the 3d and 4th he retreated by Plaissance and Madiran to Rabastens, Marciac, and Maubourget where he halted, covering Tarbes, for his design was to keep in mass and await the development of the allies’ plans. In this view he called in the detachments of cavalry and infantry which had been left on the side of Pau before the battle of Orthes, and hearing that Darricau was at Langon with a thousand men he ordered him to march by Agen and join the army immediately. He likewise put the national guards and gensd’armes in activity on the side of the Pyrenees, and directed the commanders of the military districts in his rear to keep their old soldiers, of which there were many[582] scattered through the country, in readiness to aid the army.

While thus acting he received from the minister of war a note dictated by the emperor.

“Fortresses,” said Napoleon, “are nothing in themselves when the enemy having the command of the sea can collect as many shells and bullets and guns as he pleases to crush them. Leave therefore only a few troops in Bayonne, the way to prevent the siege is to keep the army close to the place. Resume the offensive, fall upon one or other of the enemy’s wings, and though you should have but twenty thousand men if you seize the proper moment and attack hardily you ought to gain some advantage. You have enough talent to understand my meaning.”

This note came fourteen days too late. But what if it had come before? Lord Wellington after winning the battle of St. Pierre the 13th of December was firmly established on the Adour above Bayonne, and able to interrupt the French convoys as they descended from the Port de Landes. It was evident then that when dry weather enabled the allies to move Soult must abandon Bayonne to defend the passage of the Gaves, or risk being turned and driven upon the Landes from whence it would be difficult for him to escape. Napoleon however desired him to leave only a few men in Bayonne, another division would thus have been added to his field army, and this diminution of the garrison would not have increased lord Wellington’s active forces, because the investment of Bayonne would still have required three separate corps: moreover until the bridge-head at Peyrehorade was abandoned to concentrate at Orthes, Bayonne was not rigorously speaking left to its own defence.

[583]

To the emperor’s observations Soult therefore replied, that several months before, he had told the minister of war Bayonne was incapable of sustaining fifteen days open trenches unless the entrenched camp was well occupied, and he had been by the minister authorised so to occupy it. Taking that as his base he had left a garrison of thirteen thousand five hundred men, and now that he knew the emperor’s wishes it was no longer in his power to withdraw them. With respect to keeping close to the place he had done so as long as he could without endangering the safety of the army; but lord Wellington’s operations had forced him to abandon it, and he had only changed his line of operations at St. Sever when he was being pushed back upon Bordeaux with little prospect of being able to pass the Garonne in time. He had for several months thought of establishing a pivot of support for his movements at Dax, in the design of still holding by Bayonne, and with that view had ordered the old works of the former place to be repaired and a camp to be fortified; but from poverty of means even the body of the place was not completed or armed at the moment when the battle of Orthes forced him to relinquish it. Moreover the insurgent levy of the Landes upon which he depended to man the works had failed, not more than two hundred men had come forward. Neither was he very confident of the advantage of such a position, because Wellington with superior numbers would probably have turned his left and forced him to retire precipitately towards Bordeaux by the desert of the greater Landes.

The emperor ordered him to take the offensive were it only with twenty thousand men. He would[584] obey with this observation, that from the 14th of February to that moment he had had no power to take the initiatory movement, having been constantly attacked by infinitely superior numbers. He had defended himself as he could, but had not expected to succeed against the enormous disproportion of force. It being thus impossible, even though he sacrificed his last man in the attempt, to stop the enemy, he now sought to prolong the war as much as possible on the frontier, and by defending every position to keep the invaders in check and prevent them from attacking Bordeaux or Toulouse, save by detachments. He had taken his line of operations by the road of Tarbes, St. Gaudens, and Toulouse, that is to say, by the roots of the Pyrenees, calculating that if lord Wellington sent small detachments against Bordeaux or Toulouse, the generals commanding at those places would be able if the national guards would fight for their country to defend them.

If the enemy made large detachments, an attack in front while he was thus weakened would bring them back again. If he marched with his whole army upon Bordeaux he could be followed and forced to face about. If he attempted to march by Auch against Toulouse he might be stopped by an attack in flank. If he remained stationary he should be provoked by an advance to develop his objects. But if, as was to be expected, the French army was itself attacked it would defend its position vigorously, and then retreating by St. Gaudens draw the allies into a difficult mountain country, where the ground might be disputed step by step the war be kept still on the frontier and the passage of the Garonne be delayed. He had meditated deeply upon his task and could find no better mode.[585] But his army was weakened by combats, still more by desertion; the conscripts went off so fast that of five battalions lately called up from Toulouse two-thirds were already gone without having seen an enemy.

Soult was mistaken as to the real force of the allies in the recent operations. In other respects he displayed clear views and great activity. He reorganized his army in six divisions, called in his detachments, urged the imperial commissioners and local authorities to hasten the levies and restore deserters, and he prepared a plan of action for the partizans which had been organized towards the mountains. Nevertheless his difficulties increased. The conscripts who did arrive were for the most part unarmed and he had none to spare. The imperial commissary Cornudet, and the prefect of the Gironde, quitted Bordeaux, and when general L’Huillier attempted to remove the military stores belonging to the army from Langon, Podensac, and Bordeaux, the inferior authorities opposed him. There was no money they said to pay the expense, but in truth Bordeaux was the focus of Bourbon conspiracy, and the mayor, count Lynch, was eager to betray his sovereign.

Nor was Wellington without embarrassments. The storms prevented him following up his victory while the French army was in confusion. Now it was reorganized on a new line and could retreat for many days in a direction parallel to the Pyrenees with strong defensive positions. Should he press it closely? His army weakened at every step would have to move between the mountains and the Garonne exposing its flanks and rear to the operations of any force which the French might be able to collect on those boundaries; that is to say all the power of[586] France beyond the Garonne. It was essential to find some counterpoise, and to increase his field army. To establish a Bourbon party at Bordeaux was an obvious mode of attaining the first object. Should he then seize that city by a detachment? He must employ twelve thousand men and remain with twenty-six thousand to oppose Soult, who he erroneously believed was being joined by the ten thousand men which Suchet had sent to Lyons. The five regiments detached for their clothing had rejoined the army and all the reserves of cavalry and artillery were now called up, but the reinforcements from England and Portugal, amounting to twenty thousand men, upon which he had calculated were detained by the respective governments. Wherefore, driven by necessity he directed Freyre to join him by the Port de Landes with two divisions of the Gallician army, a measure which was instantly followed by innumerable complaints of outrages and excesses, although the Spaniards were entirely provided from the English military chest. Now also Clinton was ordered to send the British and Germans of the Anglo-Sicilian army to St. Jean de Luz. This done he determined to seize Bordeaux. Meanwhile he repaired the destroyed bridges, brought up one of Morillo’s brigades from Navarrens to the vicinity of Aire, sent Campbell’s Portuguese dragoons to Rocquefort, general Fane with two regiments of cavalry and a brigade of infantry to Pau, and pushed posts towards Tarbes and Vic Bigorre.

Soult, now fearing the general apathy and ill-will of the people would become fatal to him, endeavoured to arouse the energies of the people and the army by the following proclamation which has been unreasonably railed at by several English[587] writers, for it was a judicious well-timed and powerful address.

“Soldiers, at the battle of Orthes you did your duty, the enemy’s losses surpassed yours, his blood moistened all the ground he gained. You may consider that feat of arms as an advantage. Other combats are at hand, no repose for us until his army, formed of such extraordinary elements, shall evacuate the French territory or be annihilated. Its numbers and progress may be great, but at hand are unexpected perils. Time will teach the enemy’s general that French honour is not to be outraged with impunity.

“Soldiers, he has had the indecency to provoke you and your countrymen to revolt and sedition, he speaks of peace but firebrands of discord follow him! He speaks of peace and excites the French to a civil war! Thanks be to him for making known his projects, our forces are thereby centupled; and he himself rallies round the imperial eagles all those who deceived by appearances believed our enemies would make a loyal war. No peace with the disloyal and perfidious nation! no peace with the English and their auxiliaries until they quit the French territory! they have dared to insult the national honour, the infamy to incite Frenchmen to become perjured towards the emperor. Revenge the offence in blood. To arms! Let this cry resound through the south of France, the Frenchman that hesitates abjures his country and belongs to her enemies.

“Yet a few days and those who believe in English delicacy and sincerity will learn to their cost that cunning promises are made to abate their courage and subjugate them. They will learn also that if the English pay to-day and are generous,[588] they will to-morrow retake and with interest in contributions what they disburse. Let the pusillanimous beings who calculate the cost of saving their country remember that the English have in view to reduce Frenchmen to the same servitude as the Spaniards Portuguese and Sicilians who groan under their domination. Past history will recall to those unworthy Frenchmen who prefer momentary enjoyment to the safety of the great family, the English making Frenchmen kill Frenchmen at Quiberon; it will show them at the head of all conspiracies, all odious political intrigues plots and assassinations, aiming to overthrow all principles, to destroy all grand establishments of trade to satisfy their immeasurable ambition, their insatiable cupidity. Does there exist upon the face of the globe a point known to the English where they have not destroyed by seditions and violence all manufactures which could rival their own? Thus they will do to the French establishments if they prevail.

“Devote then to opprobrium and execration all Frenchmen who favour their insidious projects, aye! even those who are under his power if they seek not to hurt him. Devote to opprobrium and reject as Frenchmen those who think under specious pretexts to avoid serving their country; and those also who from corruption or indolence hide deserters instead of driving them back to their colours. With such men we have nothing in common, and history will pass their names with execrations to posterity. As to us soldiers our duty is clear. Honour and fidelity. This is our motto and we will fight to the last the enemies of our emperor and France. Respect persons and property. Grieve for those who have momentarily fallen under the enemy’s yoke, and hasten the[589] moment of their deliverance. Be obedient and disciplined, and bear implacable hatred towards traitors and enemies of the French name! War to death against those who would divide us to destroy us; and to those cowards who desert the imperial eagles to range themselves under another banner. Remember always that fifteen ages of glory, triumphs innumerable, have illustrated our country. Contemplate the prodigious efforts of our great sovereign, his signal victories which immortalize the French name. Let us be worthy of him and we can then bequeath without a taint to our posterity the inheritance we hold from our fathers. Be in fine Frenchmen and die arms in hand sooner than survive dishonour.”

Let the time and the occasion of this proclamation be considered. Let it be remembered that no English writer orator or politician, had for many years used milder terms than robbers, murderers, atheists, and tyrant, when speaking of Frenchmen and their sovereign, that lord Wellington even at this time refused that sovereign his title of emperor, calling him Buonaparte; that on entering France he had published an order of the day accusing the French commanders of authorising and encouraging the cruelties of their soldiers in Spain; finally that for six years the Spanish Portuguese and English state papers were filled with most offensive ribald abuse of Napoleon his ministers and commanders. Let all this be remembered and the acrimony of Soult’s proclamation cannot be justly blamed, while the noble energy, the loyalty of the sentiments, the exciting passionate feeling of patriotism which pervades it must be admired. Was he, sprung from the ranks, a soldier of the[590] republic, a general of the empire, after fighting thirty years under the tri-colour, to be tame and measured to squeamishness in his phrases when he saw his country invaded by foreigners, and a pretender to the throne stalking behind their bayonets beckoning his soldiers to desert their eagles, inviting his countrymen to betray their sovereign and dishonour their nation! Why the man was surrounded by traitors, and proud and scornful of danger was his spirit to strive so mightily against defeat and treason combined.

It has been said in condemnation of him that the English general did not encourage the Bourbon party. Is that true? Did it so appear to the French general? Had not the duke of Angoulême come to the English head-quarters with mystery, and following the invading army and protected by its arms assemble round him all the ancient partizans of his house, sending forth agents, scattering proclamations even in Soult’s camp, endeavouring to debauch his soldiers and to aid strangers to subjugate France. Soult not only knew this but was suffering under the effects. On every side he met with opposition and discontent from the civil authorities, his movements were made known to the enemy and his measures thwarted in all directions. At Bordeaux a party were calling aloud with open arms to the invaders. At Tarbes the fear of provoking an action near the town had caused the dispersion of the insurrectional levy organized by the imperial commissioner Caffarelli. At Pau the aristocracy had secretly assembled to offer homage to the duke of Angoulême, and there was a rumour that he was to be crowned at the castle of Henry IV. Was the French general to disregard these facts[591] and symptoms because his opponent had avoided any public declaration in favour of the Bourbon family? Lord Wellington would have been the first to laugh at his simplicity if he had.

And what was the reason that the English general did not openly call upon the Bourbon partizans to raise the standard of revolt? Simply that Napoleon’s astounding genius had so baffled the banded sovereigns and their innumerable hordes that a peace seemed inevitable to avoid fatal disasters; and therefore lord Wellington, who had instructions from his government not to embarrassSecret instructions from Lord Bathurst, MSS. any negociation for peace by pledges to a Bourbon party, acting as an honest statesman and commander, would not excite men to their own ruin for a momentary advantage. But so far from discouraging treason to Napoleon on any other groundPublished Despatches. he avowed his anxious desire for it, and his readiness to encourage every enemy of that monarch. He had seen and consulted with La Roche Jacquelin, with de Mailhos and other vehement partizans for an immediate insurrection; and also with Viel Castel an agent of Bernadotte’s until he found him intriguing against the Bourbons. He advised the duke of Angoulême to form regular battalions, promised him arms and actually collected eighty thousand stand, to arm the insurgents. Finally he rebuked the timid policy of the English ministers who having such an opportunity of assailing Napoleon refrained from doing it. Before Soult’s proclamation appeared he thus wrote to lord Bathurst.

“I find the sentiment as we advance in the country still more strong against the Buonaparte dynasty and in favour of the Bourbons, but I am[592] quite certain there will be no declaration on the part of the people if the allies do not in some manner declare themselves.” “I cannot discover the policy of not hitting one’s enemy as hard as one can and in the most vulnerable place. I am certain that he would not so act by us, he would certainly overturn the British authority in Ireland if it were in his power.”

Soult and Wellington acted and wrote, each in the manner most suitable to their situation, but it was not a little remarkable that Ireland should so readily occur to the latter as a parallel case.

It was in this state of affairs that the English general detached Beresford with twelve thousand men against Bordeaux, giving him instructions to occupy that city and acquire the Garonne as a port for the allies, but to make the French authorities declare whether they would or would not continue to exercise their functions under the conditions announced by proclamation. For hitherto lord Wellington had governed the country as he advanced in this public manner, thus nullifying the misrepresentations of political intriguers, obviating the dangers of false reports and rumours of his projects, making his justice and moderation known to the poorest peasant, and securing the French local authorities who continued to act under him from any false and unjust representation of their conduct to the imperial government if peace should be made with Napoleon. This expedition against Bordeaux however involved political as well as military interests. Beresford was instructed that there were many partizans of the Bourbons in that city who might propose to hoist the white standard and[593] proclaim Louis the Eighteenth under protection of the troops. They were to be told that the British nation and its allies wished well to their cause, and while public tranquillity was maintained in the districts occupied by the troops there would be no hindrance to their political proceedings: they or any party opposed to Napoleon would receive assistance. Nevertheless, as the allied sovereigns were negociating with the French emperor, however well inclined the English general might be to support a party against the latter during war, he could give no help if peace were concluded, and this they must weigh well before they revolted. Beresford was therefore not to meddle with any declaration in favour of Louis the Eighteenth; but he was not to oppose it, and if revolt took place he was to supply the revolters with the arms and ammunition collected at Dax.

On the 8th Beresford marched towards Langon with the fourth and seventh divisions, Vivian’s horsemen, and some guns; he was joined on the road by some of Vandeleur’s cavalry from Bayonne, and he had orders to observe the enemy’s movements towards Agen, for it was still in Soult’s power by a forced march on that side to cross the Garonne and enter Bordeaux before him. La Roche Jacquelin preceded the troops and the duke of Angoulême followed closely, but his partizans in the city frightened at the danger of their enterprize now besought Beresford to delay his march. La Roche Jacquelin vehemently condemned their hesitation, and his influence supported by the consternation which the battle of Orthes had created amongst the Napoleonists decided the question in favour of revolt.

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Long before this epoch, Soult, foreseeing that the probable course of the war would endanger Bordeaux, had given orders to place the forts in a state of defence, to arm the flotilla and to organize the national guards and the urban legions; he had urged these measures again when the imperial commissioner Cornudet first arrived, but according to the usual habits of civilians who have to meddle with military affairs every thing was promised and nothing done. Cornudet and the prefect quitted the city as early as the 4th, first burning with a silly affectation of vigour some ships of war upon the stocks; general L’Huillier, unable to oppose the allies, then destroyed the fort of Médoc on the left bank of the Garonne, disarmed some of the river batteries, and passing in the night of the 11th to the right bank occupied the fortress of Blaye, the Paté and other points. Meanwhile Beresford who reached Langon the 10th, left lord Dalhousie there with the bulk of the forces and advanced with eight hundred cavalry.

Entering Bordeaux the 12th, he met the municipality and a great body of Bourbonists, at the head of whom was the mayor count Lynch, decorated with the scarf of his office and the legion of honour, both conferred upon him, and probably at his own solicitation, by the sovereign he was then going to betray. After some formal discourse in which Beresford explicitly made known his instructions Lynch very justly tore the tricolor, the emblem of his country’s glory, from his own shoulders, the white flag was then displayed and the allies took peaceable possession of the city. The duke of Angoulême arrived on the same day and Louis the Eighteenth was formally proclaimed. This event, the act of a party, was not generally approved, and the mayor[595] conscious of weakness immediately issued with the connivance of the duke of Angoulême a proclamation, in which he asserted, that “the British Portuguese and Spanish armies were united in the south, as the other nations were united in the north, solely to destroy Napoleon and replace him by a Bourbon king who was conducted thither by these generous allies, and only by accepting that king could the French appease the resentment of the Spaniards.” At the same time the duke of Angoulême, as if quite master of the country, appointed prefects and other authorities in districts beyond the limits of Bordeaux.

Both the duke and the mayor soon repented of their precipitancy. The English fleet which should have acted simultaneously with the troops had not arrived; the Regulus a French seventy-four with several inferior vessels of war were anchored below Blaye, and Beresford was recalled with the fourth division and Vivian’s cavalry. Lord Dalhousie remained with only the seventh division and three squadrons to oppose L’Huillier’s troops and other French corps which were now on the Garonne. He could not guard the river below Bordeaux, and some French troops recrossing again took possession of the fort of Grave near the mouth; a new army was forming under general Decaen beyond the Garonne, the Napoleonists recovering from their first stupor began to stir themselves, and a partizan officer coming down to St. Macaire on the 18th surprised fifty men which lord Dalhousie had sent across the Garonne from Langon to take possession of a French magazine. In the Landes the peasants forming bands burned the houses of the gentlemen who had joined the white standard, and in Bordeaux[596] itself a counter-insurrection was preparing whenever Decaen should be ready to advance.

The prince frightened at these symptoms of reaction desired lord Dalhousie to bring his troops into Bordeaux to awe the Napoleonists, and meanwhile each party strove to outvie the other in idle rumours and falsehoods relating to the emperor. Victories and defeats were invented or exaggerated, Napoleon was dead from illness, had committed suicide, was poisoned, stabbed; and all these things were related as certain with most circumstantial details. Meanwhile Wellington, writing to the duke of Angoulême, denied the veracity of the mayor’s proclamation and expressed his trust that the prince was not a party to such a mendacious document. The latter however with some excuses about hurry and confusion avowed his participation in its publication, and defended the mayor’s conduct. He also forwarded a statement of the danger his party was exposed to and demanded aid of men and money, supporting his application by a note of council in which with more ingenuity than justice, it was argued, that as civil government could not be conducted without executive power, and as lord Wellington had suffered the duke of Angoulême to assume the civil government at Bordeaux without an adequate executive force, he was bound to supply the deficiency from his army, and even to furnish money until taxes could be levied under the protection of the soldiers.

The English general was not a man to bear with such sophistry in excuse for a breach of faith. Sorry he was he said to find that the principle by which he regulated his conduct towards the Bourbon[597] party, though often stated, had made so little impression that the duke could not perceive how inconsistent it was with the mayor’s proclamation. Most cautious therefore must be his future conduct, seeing that as the chief of an army and the confidential agent of three independent nations, he could not permit his views to be misrepresented upon such an important question. He had occupied Bordeaux as a military point, but certain persons contrary to his advice and opinion thought proper to proclaim Louis the Eighteenth. Those persons made no exertions, subscribed not a shilling, raised not a soldier, yet because he would not extend the posts of his army beyond what was proper and convenient, merely to protect their families and property, exposed to danger, not on account of their exertions for they had made none, but on account of their premature declaration contrary to his advice, they took him to task in a document delivered to lord Dalhousie by the prince himself. The writer of that paper and all such persons however might be assured that nothing should make him swerve from what he thought his duty to the sovereigns who employed him, he would not risk even a company of infantry to save properties and families placed in a state of danger contrary to his advice. The duke had better then conduct his policy and compose his manifestos in such a manner as not to force a public contradiction of them. His royal highness was free to act as he pleased for himself, but he was not free to adduce the name and authority of the allied governments in support of his measures when they had not been consulted, nor of their general when he had been consulted but had given his opinion against those measures.

[598]

He had told him that if any great town or extensive district declared in favour of the Bourbons he would not interfere with the government of that town or district, and if there was a general declaration in favour of his house he would deliver the civil government of all the country overrun by the army into his hands, but the fact was that even at Bordeaux the movement in favour of the Bourbons was not unanimous. The spirit had not spread elsewhere, not even to La Vendée, nor in any part occupied by the army. The events contemplated had not therefore occurred, and it would be a great breach of duty towards the allied sovereigns and cruel to the inhabitants if he were to deliver them over to his royal highness prematurely or against their inclinations. He advised him therefore to withdraw his prefects and confine his government to Bordeaux. He could give him no money and after what had passed he was doubtful if he should afford him any countenance or protection. The argument of the note of council, affirming that he was bound to support the civil government of his royal highness, only rendered it more incumbent upon him to beware how he gave farther encouragement, or to speak plainly, permission to the Bourbonists to declare themselves. It was disagreeable to take any step which should publicly mark a want of good understanding between himself and the duke, but count Lynch had not treated him with common fairness or with truth, wherefore as he could not allow the character of the allied sovereigns or his own to be doubted, if his royal highness did not within ten days contradict the objectionable parts of the mayor’s proclamation he would do so himself.

Thus it appeared that with the French as with the[599] Spaniards and Portuguese neither enthusiastic declarations nor actual insurrection offered any guarantee for sense truth or exertion; and most surely all generals and politicians of every country who trust to sudden popular commotions will find that noisy declamations, vehement demonstrations of feeling, idle rumours and boasting, the life-blood of such affairs, are essentially opposed to useful public exertions.

When Beresford marched to rejoin the army the line of occupation was too extensive for lord Dalhousie and lord Wellington ordered him to keep clear of the city and hold his troops together, observing that his own projected operations on the Upper Garonne would keep matters quiet on the lower part of that river. Nevertheless if the war had continued for a month that officer’s situation would have been critical. For when Napoleon knew that Bordeaux had fallen he sent Decaen byOfficial Reports and Correspondence of general Decaen upon the formation of the army of the Gironde, 1814, MSS. post to Libourne to form the “army of the Gironde.” For this object general Despeaux acting under Soult’s orders collected a body of gensd’armes custom-house officers and national guards on the Upper Garonne, between Agen and La Reolle, and it was one of his detachments that surprised lord Dalhousie’s men at St. Macaire on the 18th. A battery of eight guns was sent down from Narbonne, other batteries were despatched from Paris to arrive at Perigueux on the 11th of April, and three or four hundred cavalry coming from the side of Rochelle joined Le Huillier who with a thousand infantry was in position at St. André de Cubsac beyond the Dordogne. Behind these troops all the national guards custom-house officers and gensd’armes of five departments were ordered to assemble, and march to[600] the Dordogne; but the formidable part of the intended army was a body of Suchet’s veterans, six thousand in number under general Beurman, who had been turned from the road of Lyons and directed upon Libourne.

Decaen entered Mucidan on the 1st of April but Beurman’s troops had not then reached Perigeaux, and lord Dalhousie’s cavalry were in Libourne between him and L’Huillier. The power of concentration was thus denied to the French and meanwhile admiral Penrose had secured the command of the Garonne. It appears lord WellingtonPublished despatches. thought this officer dilatory, but on the 27th he arrived with a seventy-four and two frigates, whereupon the Regulus, and other French vessels then at Royan, made sail up the river and were chased to the shoal of Talmont, but they escaped through the narrow channel on the north side and cast anchor under some batteries. Previous to this event Mr. Ogilvie a commissary, being on the river in a boatOfficial Report by Mr. Ogilvie, MSS. manned with Frenchmen, discovered the Requin sloop, half French half American, pierced for twenty-two guns, lying at anchor not far below Bordeaux, at the same time he saw a sailor leap hastily into a boat above him and row for the vessel. This man being taken proved to be the armourer of the Requin, he said there were not many men on board, and Mr. Ogilvie observing his alarm and judging that the crew would also be fearful, with ready resolution bore down upon the Requin, boarded, and took her without any opposition either from her crew or that of his own boat, although she had fourteen guns mounted and eleven men with two officers on board.

The naval co-operation being thus assured lord[601] Dalhousie crossed the Garonne above the city, droveApril. the French posts beyond the Dordogne, pushed scouring parties to La Reolle and Marmande, and sending his cavalry over the Dordogne intercepted Decaen’s and La Huilhier’s communications; the former was thus forced to remain at Mucidan with two hundred and fifty gensd’armes awaiting the arrival of Beurman, and he found neither arms nor ammunition nor a willing spirit to enable him to organize the national guards.

The English horsemen repassed the Dordogne on the 2d of April, but on the 4th lord Dalhousie crossed it again lower down, near St. André de Cubzac, with about three thousand men, intending to march upon Blaye, but hearing that L’Huillier had halted at Etauliers he turned suddenly upon him. The French general formed his line on an open common occupying some woods in front with his detachments. Overmatched in infantry he had three hundred cavalry opposed to one weak squadron, and yet his troops would not stand the shock of the battle. The allied infantry cleared the woods in a moment, the artillery then opened upon the main body which retired in disorder, horsemen and infantry together, through Etauliers, leaving behind several scattered bodies upon whom the British cavalry galloped and made two or three hundred men and thirty officers prisoners.

If the six thousand old troops under Beurman had, according to Napoleon’s orders, arrived at this time in lord Dalhousie’s rear, his position would have been embarrassing but they were delayed on the road until the 10th. Meanwhile admiral Penrose, having on the 2d observed the French flotilla, consisting of fifteen armed vessels and gun-boats,[602] coming down from Blaye to join the Regulus at Talmont sent the boats of his fleet to attack them, whereupon the French vessels run on shore and the crews aided by two hundred soldiers from Blaye lined the beach to protect them. Lieutenant Dunlop who commanded the English boats landing all his seamen and marines, beat these troops and carried off or destroyed the whole flotilla with a loss to himself of only six men wounded and missing. This operation completed and the action at Etauliers known, the admiral, now reinforced with a second ship of the line, resolved to attack the French squadron and the shore batteries, but in the night of the 6th the enemy set fire to their vessels. Captain Harris of the Belle Poule frigate then landed with six hundred seamen and marines and destroyed the batteries and forts on the right bank from Talmont to the Courbe point. Blaye still held out, but at Paris treason had done its work and Napoleon, the man of mightiest capacity known for good, was overthrown to make room for despots, who with minds enlarged only to cruelty avarice and dissoluteness, were at the very moment of triumph intent to defraud the people, by whose strength and suffering they had conquered, of the only reward they demanded, just government. The war was virtually over, but on the side of Toulouse, Bayonne, and Barcelona, the armies ignorant of this great event were still battling with unabated fury.

While Beresford was moving upon Bordeaux1814. March. Soult and Wellington remained in observation, each thinking the other stronger than himself. For the English general having intelligence of Beurman’s march, believed that his troops were intended to reinforce and had actually joined Soult. On the other hand that marshal, who knew not of Beresford’s march until the 13th, concluded Wellington still had the twelve thousand men detached to Bordeaux. The numbers on each side were however nearly equal. The French army was thirty-one thousand, infantry and cavalry, yet three thousand being stragglers detained by the generals of the military districts, Soult could only put into line, exclusive of conscripts without arms, twenty-eight thousand sabres and bayonets with thirty-eight pieces of artillery. On the allies’ sideOfficial Report, MSS. twenty-seven thousand sabres and bayonets were under arms, with forty-two guns, but from this number detachments had been sent to Pau on one side, Roquefort on the other, and the cavalry scouts were pushed into the Landes and to the Upper Garonne.

Lord Wellington expecting Soult would retreat upon Auch and designing to follow him, had causedApril. Beresford to keep the bulk of his troops towards[604] the Upper Garonne that he might the sooner rejoin the army; but the French general having early fixed his line of retreat by St. Guadens was only prevented from retaking the offensive on the 9th or 10th by the loss of his magazines, which forced him first to organize a system of requisition for the subsistence of his army. Meanwhile his equality of force passed away, for on the 13th Freyre came up with eight thousand Spanish infantry, and the next day Ponsonby’s heavy cavalry arrived. Lord Wellington was then the strongest, yet he still awaited Beresford’s troops, and was uneasy about his own situation. He dreaded the junctionSee Chap. VI., Book XXIII. of Suchet’s army, for it was at this time the Spanish regency referred the convention, proposed by that marshal for the evacuation of the fortresses, to his decision. He gave a peremptory negative, observing that it would furnish twenty thousand veterans for Soult while the retention of Rosas and Figueras would bar the action of the Spanish armies of Catalonia in his favour. But his anxiety was great because he foresaw that Ferdinand’s return and his engagement with Suchet, already related, together with the evident desire of Copons that the garrisons should be admitted to a convention would finally render that measure inevitable. Meanwhile the number of his own army was likely to decrease. The English cabinet, less considerate even than the Spanish government, had sent the militia, permitted by the recent act of parliament to volunteer for foreign service, to Holland, and with them the other reinforcements originally promised for the army in France: two or three regiments of militia only came to the Garonne when the war was over. To make amends the ministers proposed that lord[605] William Bentinck should send four thousand men from Sicily to land at Rosas, or some point in France, and so join lord Wellington, who was thus expected to extend his weakened force from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean in order to cover the junction of this uncertain reinforcement. In fine experience had taught the English statesmen so little that we find their general thus addressing them only one week previous to the termination of the war.

Having before declared that he should be, contrary to his wishes, forced to bring more Spaniards into France, he says:—

“There are limits to the numbers with which this army can contend and I am convinced your lordship would not wish to see the safety and honour of this handful of brave men depend upon the doubtful exertions and discipline of an undue proportion of Spanish troops.”—“The service in Holland may doubtless be more important to the national interest than that in this country, but I hope it will be considered that that which is most important of all is not to lose the brave army which has struggled through its difficulties for nearly six years.”

The French infantry was now re-organized in six divisions commanded by Darricau, D’Armagnac, Taupin, Maransin, Villatte and Harispe; general Paris’ troops hitherto acting as an unattachedSoult’s Official Report, MSS. body were thus absorbed, the cavalry composed of Berton’s and Vial’s brigades was commanded by Pierre Soult, and there was a reserve division of seven thousand conscripts, infantry under general Travot. The division into wings and a centre, each commanded by a lieutenant-general[606] continued, yet this distinction was not attended to in the movements. Reille though commanding the right wing was at Maubourget on the left of the line of battle; D’Erlon commanding the centre was at Marsiac on the right covering the road to Auch; Clauzel was at Rabastens forming a reserve to both. The advanced guards were towards Plaissance on the right, Madiran in the centre, and Lembege on the left. Soult thus covered Tarbes, and could move on a direct line by good roads either to Auch or Pau.

Lord Wellington driven by necessity now sentMarch. orders to Giron’s Andalusians and Del Parque’s troops to enter France from the Bastan, although Freyre’s soldiers had by their outrages already created a wide-spread consternation. His head-quarters were fixed at Aire, his army was in position on each side of the Adour, he had repaired all the bridges behind him, restored that over the Lees in his front, and dispersed some small bands which had appeared upon his left flank and rear: Soult had however organized a more powerful system of partizans towards the mountains and only wanted money to put them in activity. The main bodies of the two armies were a long day’s march asunder, but their advanced posts were not very distant, the regular cavalry had frequent encounters and both generals claimed the superiority though neither made any particular report.

On the night of the 7th Soult thinking to find only some weak parties at Pau sent a strong detachment there to arrest the nobles who had assembled to welcome the duke of Angoulême, but general Fane getting there before him with a brigade of infantry and two regiments of cavalry the[607] stroke failed; however the French returning by another road made prisoners of an officer and four or five English dragoons. Meanwhile a second detachment penetrating between Pau and Aire carried off a post of correspondence; and two days after, when Fane had quitted Pau, a French officer accompanied by only four hussars captured there thirty-four Portuguese with their commander and ten loaded mules. The French general having by these excursions obtained exact intelligence of Beresford’s march to Bordeaux resolved to attack the allies, and the more readily that Napoleon had recently sent him instructions to draw the war to the side of Pau keeping his left resting on the Pyrenees, which accorded with his own designs.

Lord Wellington’s main body was now concentrated round Aire and Barcelona, yet divided by the Adour and the advanced guards were pushed to Garlin, Conchez, Viella, Riscle and Pouydraguien,See plan 10. that is to say, on a semicircle to the front and about half a march in advance. Soult therefore thought to strike a good blow, and gathering his divisions on the side of Maubourget the 12th, marched on the 13th, designing to throw himself upon the high tabular land between Pau and Aire, and then act according to circumstances.

The country was suited to the action of all arms, offering a number of long and nearly parallel ridges of moderate height, the sides of which were sometimes covered with vineyards, but the summits commonly so open that troops could move along them without much difficulty, and between these ranges a number of small rivers and muddy fords descended from the Pyrenees to the Adour. This conformation determined the order of[608] the French general’s march which followed the courses of these rivers. Leaving one regiment of cavalry to watch the valley of the Adour he moved with the rest of his army by Lembege upon Conchez down the smaller Lees. Clauzel thus seized the high land of Daisse and pushed troops to Portet; Reille supported him at Conchez; D’Erlon remained behind that place in reserve. In this position the head of the columns, pointing direct upon Aire, separated Viella from Garlin which was the right of general Hill’s position, and menaced that general’s posts on the great Lees. Meanwhile Pierre Soult marching with three regiments of cavalry along the high land between the two Lees, reached Mascaras and the castle of Sault, he thus covered the left flank of the French army and pushed Fane’s cavalry posts back with the loss of two officers taken and a few men wounded. During this movement Berton advancing from Madiran with two regiments of cavalry towards Viella, on the right flank of the French army, endeavoured toMemoirs by general Berton, MSS. cross the Saye river at a difficult muddy ford near the broken bridge. Sir John Campbell leading a squadron of the fourth Portuguese cavalry overthrewNote by sir John Campbell, MSS. the head of his column, but the Portuguese horsemen were too few to dispute the passage and Berton finally getting a regiment over higher up, gained the table-land above, and charging the rear of the retiring troops in a narrow way leading to the Aire road killed several and took some prisoners, amongst them Bernardo de Sà the since well-known count of Bandeira.

This terminated the French operations for the day, and lord Wellington imagining the arrival of Suchet’s troops had made Soult thus bold, resolved[609] to keep on the defensive until his reinforcements and detachments could come up. Hill however passed the greater Lees partly to support his posts partly to make out the force and true direction of the French movement, but he recrossed that river during the night and finally occupied the strong platform between Aire and Garlin which Soult had designed to seize. Lord Wellington immediately brought the third and sixth division and the heavy cavalry over the Adour to his support, leaving the light division with the hussar brigade still on the right bank. The bulk of the army thus occupied a strong position parallel with the Pau road. The right was at Garlin, the left at Aire, the front covered by the greater Lees a river difficult to pass; Fane’s cavalry was extended along the Pau road as far as Boelho, and on the left of the Adour the hussars pushed the French cavalry regiment left there back upon Plaissance.

On the morning of the 14th Soult intending to fall on Hill, whose columns he had seen the evening before on the right of the Lees, drove in the advanced posts which had been left to cover the retrograde movement, and then examined the allies’ new position; but these operations wasted the day, and towards evening he disposed his army on the heights between the two Lees, placing Clauzel and D’Erlon at Castle Pugon opposite Garlin, and Reille in reserve at Portet. Meanwhile Pierre Soult carried three regiments of cavalry to Clarac, on the Pau road, to intercept the communications with that town and to menace the right flank of the allies, against which the whole French army was now pointing. Fane’s outposts being thus assailed retired with some loss at first but they were soon[610] supported and drove the French horsemen in disorder clear off the Pau road to Carere.

Soult now seeing the strength of the position above Aire, and hearing from the peasants that forty or fifty thousand men were concentrated there, feared to attack, but changing his plan resolved to hover about the right flank of the allies in the hopes of enticing them from their vantage-ground. Lord Wellington on the other hand drew his cavalry posts down the valley of the Adour, and keeping close on that side massed his forces on the right in expectation of an attack. In fine each general acting upon false intelligence of the other’s strength was afraid to strike. The English commander’s error as to the junction of Suchet’s troops was encouraged by Soult, who had formed his battalions upon two ranks instead of three to give himself an appearance of strength, and in the same view had caused his reserve of conscripts to move in rear of his line of battle. And he also judged the allies’ strength by what it might have been rather than by what it was; for though Freyre’s Spaniards and Ponsonby’sMorning States, MSS. dragoons were now up, the whole force did not exceed thirty-six thousand men, including the light division and the hussars who were on the right bank of the Adour. This number was however increasing every hour by the arrival of detachments and reserves; and it behoved Soult, who was entangled in a country extremely difficult if rain should fall, to watch that Wellington while holding the French in check with his right wing did not strike with his left by Maubourget and Tarbes, and thus cast them upon the mountains about Lourdes.

This danger, and the intelligence now obtained of the fall of Bordeaux, induced the French general to[611] retire before day on the 16th to Lembege and Simacourbe, where he occupied both sides of the two branches of the Lees and the heights between them; however his outposts remained at Conchez, and Pierre Soult again getting upon the Pau road detached a hundred chosen troopers against the allies’ communication with Orthes. Captain Dania commanding these men making a forced march reached Hagetnau at nightfall, surprised six officers and eight medical men with their baggage, made a number of other prisoners and returned on the evening of the 18th. This enterprize extended to such a distance from the army was supposed to be executed by the bands, and seemed to indicate a disposition for insurrection; wherefore lord Wellington to check it seized the civil authorities at Hagetnau, and declared that he would hang all the peasants caught in arms and burn their villages.

The offensive movement of the French general had now terminated, he sent his conscripts at once to Toulouse and prepared for a rapid retreat on that place. His recent operations had been commenced too late, he should have been on the Lees the 10th or 11th when there were not more than twenty thousand infantry and two thousand five hundred cavalry to oppose him between Aire and Garlin. On the other hand the passive state of Wellington, which had been too much prolonged, was now also at an end, all his reinforcements and detachments were either up or close at hand, and he could put in motion six Anglo-Portuguese and three Spanish divisions of infantry, furnishing forty thousand bayonets,Morning States, MSS. with five brigades of cavalry, furnishing nearly six thousand sabres, and from fifty to sixty pieces of artillery.

[612]

On the evening of the 17th, the English general pushed the hussars up the valley of the Adour, towards Plaissance, supporting them with the light division, which was followed at the distance of half a march by the fourth division coming from the side of Roquefort, on its return from Langon.

The 18th at daylight the whole army was in movement, the hussars with the light and the fourth division, forming the left, marched upon Plaissance; Hill’s troops forming the right marched from Garlin upon Conchez, keeping a detachment on the road to Pau in observation of Pierre Soult’s cavalry. ThePlan 10. main body moved in the centre, under Wellington in person, to Viella, by the high road leading from Aire to Maubourget. The French right was thus turned by the valley of the Adour, while general Hill with a sharp skirmish, in which about eighty British and Germans were killed and wounded, drove back their outposts upon Lembege.

Soult retired during the night to a strong ridge having a small river with rugged banks, called the Laiza, in his front, and his right under D’Erlon was extended towards Vic Bigorre on the great road of Tarbes. Meanwhile Berton’s cavalry, one regimentBerton’s Memoir, MSS. of which retreating from Viella on the 16th disengaged itself with some difficulty and loss, reached Maubourget, and took post in column behind that place, the road being confined on each side by deep and wide ditches. In this situation pressed by Bock’s cavalry, which preceded the centre column of the allies, the French horsemen suddenly charged the Germans, at first with success, taking an officer and some men, but finally they were beaten and retreated through Vic Bigorre. Soult thinking a flanking column only was on this side in the valley of the Adour,[613] resolved to fall upon it with his whole army; but he recognised the skill of his opponent when he found that the whole of the allies’ centre, moving by Madiran,Soult’s Official Report, MSS. had been thrown on to the Tarbes road while he was retiring from Lembege. This heavy mass was now approaching Vic Bigorre, the light division, coming from Plaissance up the right bank of the Adour, were already near Auriebat, pointing to Rabastens, upon which place the hussars had already driven the French cavalry left in observation when the army first advanced: Vic Bigorre was thus turned, Berton’s horsemen had passed it in retreat and the danger was imminent. The French general immediately ordered Berton to support the cavalry regiment at Rabastens and cover that road to Tarbes. Then directing D’Erlon to take post at Vic Bigorre and check the allies on the main road, he marched, in person and in all haste, with Clauzel’s and Reille’s divisions to Tarbes by a circuitous road leading through Ger-sur-landes.

D’Erlon not seeming to comprehend the crisis moved slowly, with his baggage in front, and having the river Lechez to cross, rode on before his troops expecting to find Berton at Vic Bigorre, but he met the German cavalry there. Then indeed he hurried his march yet he had only time to place Darricau’s division, now under general Paris, amongst some vineyards, two miles in front of Vic Bigorre, when hither came Picton to the support of the cavalry and fell upon him.

Combat of Vic Bigorre.—The French left flank was secured by the Lechez river, but their right, extending towards the Adour, being loose was menaced by the German cavalry while the front was attacked by Picton. The action commenced about[614] two o’clock, and Paris was soon driven back in disorder, but then D’Armagnac’s division entered the line and extending to the Adour renewed the fight, which lasted until D’Erlon, after losing many men, saw his right turned, beyond the Adour, by the light division and by the hussars who were now close to Rabastens, whereupon he likewise fell back behind Vic Bigorre, and took post for the night. The action was vigorous. About two hundred and fifty Anglo-Portuguese, men and officers, fell, and amongst them died colonel Henry Sturgeon so often mentioned in this history. Skilled to excellence in almost every branch of war and possessing a variety of accomplishments, he used his gifts so gently for himself and so usefully for the service that envy offered no bar to admiration, and the whole army felt painfully mortified that his merits were passed unnoticed in the public despatches.

Soult’s march through the deep sandy plain of Ger was harassing, and would have been dangerous if lord Wellington had sent Hill’s cavalry, now reinforced by two regiments of heavy dragoons, in pursuit; but the country was unfavorable for quick observation and the French covered their movements with rear-guards whose real numbers it was difficult to ascertain. One of these bodies was posted on a hill the end of which abutted on the high road, the slope being clothed with trees and defended by skirmishers. Lord Wellington was desirous to know whether a small or a large force thus barred his way, but all who endeavoured to ascertain the fact were stopped by the fire of the enemy. At last captain William Light, distinguished by the variety of his attainments, an artist, musician, mechanist, seaman, and soldier, made the trial. He rode forward[615] as if he would force his way through the French skirmishers, but when in the wood dropt his reins and leaned back as if badly wounded; his horse appeared to canter wildly along the front of the enemy’s light troops, and they thinking him mortally hurt ceased their fire and took no further notice. He thus passed unobserved through the wood to the other side of the hill, where there were no skirmishers, and ascending to the open summit above, put spurs to his horse and galloped along the French main line counting their regiments as he passed. His sudden appearance, his blue undress, his daring confidence and his speed, made the French doubt if he was an enemy, and a few shots only were discharged, while he, dashing down the opposite declivity, broke from the rear through the very skirmishers whose fire he had first essayed in front. Reaching the spot where lord Wellington stood he told him there were but five battalions on the hill.

Soult now felt that a rapid retreat upon Toulouse by St. Gaudens was inevitable, yet determined to dispute every position which offered the least advantage, his army was on the morning of the 20th again in line of battle on the heights of Oleac, two or three miles behind Tarbes, and covering Tournay on the road to St. Gaudens: however he still held Tarbes with Clauzel’s corps, which was extended on the right towards Trie, as if to retain a power of retreat by that road to Toulouse. The plain of Tarbes although apparently open was full of deep ditches which forbad the action of horsemen, wherefore he sent his brother with five regiments of cavalry to the Trie road, with orders to cover the right flank and observe the route to Auch, for he[616] feared lest Wellington should intercept his retreat by that line.

At day-break the allies again advanced in two columns. The right under Hill moved along the high road. The left under Wellington in person was composed of the light division and hussars, Ponsonby’s heavy cavalry, the sixth division and Freyre’s Spaniards. It marched by the road from Rabastens, and general Cole still making forced marches with the fourth division and Vivian’s cavalry, followed from Beaumarchez and La Deveze, sending detachments through Marciac to watch Pierre Soult on the side of Trie.

Combat of Tarbes.—The Adour separated Wellington’s columns, but when the left approached Tarbes, the light division and the hussars bringingPlan 10. up their right shoulders attacked the centre of Harispe’s division, which occupied the heights of Orliex and commanded the road from Rabastens with two guns. Under cover of this attack general Clinton made a flank movement to his left through the village of Dours, and opening a cannonade against Harispe’s right endeavoured to get between that general and Soult’s main position at Oleac. Meanwhile general Hill moving by the other bank of the Adour assailed the town and bridge of Tarbes, which was defended by Villatte’s division. These operations were designed to envelope and crush Clauzel’s two divisions, which seemed the more easy because there appeared to be only a fine plain, fit for the action of all the cavalry, between him and Soult. The latter however, having sent his baggage and encumbrances off during the night, saw the movement without alarm, he was better acquainted with the nature of the plain behind[617] Harispe and had made roads to enable him to retreat upon the second position without passing through Tarbes. Nevertheless Clauzel was in some danger, for while Hill menaced his left at Tarbes, the light division supported with cavalry and guns fell upon his centre at Orleix, and general Clinton opening a brisk cannonade passed through the villages of Oleat and Boulin, penetrated between Harispe and Pierre Soult, and cut the latter off from the army.

The action was begun about twelve o’clock. Hill’s artillery thundered on the right, Clinton’s answered it on the left, and Alten threw the light division in mass upon the centre where Harispe’s left brigade posted on a strong hill was suddenly assailed by the three rifle battalions. Here the fight was short yet wonderfully fierce and violent, for the French, probably thinking their opponents to be Portuguese on account of their green dress, charged with great hardiness, and being encountered by men not accustomed to yield, they fought muzzle to muzzle, and it was difficult to judge at first who would win. At last the French gave way, and Harispe’s centre being thus suddenly overthrown he retired rapidly through the fields, by the ways previously opened, before Clinton could get into his rear. Meanwhile Hill forced the passage of the Adour at Tarbes and Villatte also retreated along the high road to Tournay, but under a continued cannonade. The flat country was now covered with confused masses of pursuers and pursued, all moving precipitately with an eager musquetry, the French guns also replying as they could to the allies’ artillery. The situation of the retreating troops seemed desperate, but as Soult[618] had foreseen, the deep ditches and enclosures and the small copses, villages, and farm-houses, prevented the British cavalry from acting; Clauzel therefore extricating his troops with great ability from their dangerous situation, finally gained the main position, where four fresh divisions were drawn up in order of battle and immediately opened all their batteries on the allies. The pursuit was thus checked, and before lord Wellington could make arrangements for a new attack darkness came on and the army halted on the banks of the Larret and Larros rivers. The loss of the French is unknown, that of the allies did not exceed one hundred and twenty, but of that number twelve officers and eighty men were of the rifle battalions.

During the night Soult retreated in two columns,Official Report, MSS. one by the main road, the other on the left of it, guided by fires lighted on different hills as points of direction. The next day he reached St. Gaudens with D’Erlon’s and Reille’s corps, while Clauzel,Clauzel’s Orders, MSS. who had retreated across the fields, halted at Monrejean and was there rejoined by Pierre Soult’s cavalry. This march of more than thirty miles was made with a view to gain Toulouse in the most rapid manner. For the French general, having now seen nearly all Wellington’s infantry and his five thousand horsemen, and hearing from his brother that the fourth division and Vivian’s cavalry were pointing towards Mielan on his right, feared that the allies would by Trie and Castlenau suddenly gain the plains of Muret and intercept his retreat upon Toulouse, which was his great depôt, the knot of all his future combinations, and the only position where he could hope to make a successful stand with his small army.

[619]

The allies pursued in three columns by St. Gaudens, Galan, and Trie, but their marches were short.

On the 21st Beresford who had assumed the command of the left column was at Castlenau, Hill in the vicinity of Lannemezan, Wellington at Tournay.

The 22d Beresford was at Castlenau, Wellington at Galan, Hill at Monrejean, and Fane’s horsemen pushed forwards to St. Gaudens. Here four squadrons of French cavalry were drawn up in front of the town. Overthrown by two squadrons of the thirteenth dragoons at the first shock, they galloped in disorder through St. Gaudens, yet rallied on the other side and were again broken and pursued for two miles, many being sabred and above a hundred taken prisoners. In this action the veteran major Dogherty of the thirteenth was seen charging between his two sons at the head of the leading squadron.

On the 23d Hill was at St. Gaudens, Beresford at Puymauren, Wellington at Boulogne.

The 24th Hill was in St. Martory, Beresford in Lombez, Wellington at Isle en Dodon.

The 25th Hill entered Caceres, Beresford reached St. Foy, and Wellington was at Samatan.

The 26th Beresford entered St. Lys and marching in order of battle by his left, while his cavalry skirmished on the right, took post on the Auch road behind the Aussonnelle stream, facing the French army, which was on the Touch covering Toulouse. The allies thus took seven days to march what Soult had done in four.

This tardiness, idly characterized by French military writers as the sign of timidity and indecision of character, has been by English writers excused on the score of wet weather and the encumbrance of[620] a large train of artillery and pontoons; yet the rain equally affected the French, and the pontoons might have been as usefully waited for on the Garonne after the French army had been pressed in its retreat of ninety miles. It is more probable that the English general, not exactly informed of Soult’s real numbers nor of his true line of retreat, nor perfectly acquainted with the country, was cautious; because being then acrimoniously disputing with the duke of Angoulême he was also uneasy as to the state of the country behind him and on his flanks. The partizans were beginning to stir, his reinforcements from England and Portugal were stopped, and admiral Penrose had not yet entered the Garonne. On the other hand Ferdinand had entered Spain and formed that engagement with Suchet about the garrisons already mentioned. In fine, lord Wellington found himself with about forty-five thousand men composed of different nations, the Spaniards being almost as dangerous as useful to him, opposed to an able and obstinate enemy, and engaged on a line of operations running more than a hundred and fifty miles along the French frontier. His right flank was likely to be vexed by the partizans forming in the Pyrenees, his left flank by those behind the Garonne on the right bank of which a considerable regular force was also collecting, while the generals commanding the military districts beyond Toulouse were forming corps of volunteers national guards and old soldiers of the regular depôts: and ever he expected Suchet to arrive on his front and overmatch him in numbers. He was careful therefore to keep his troops well in hand, and to spare them fatigue that the hospitals might not increase. In battle their[621] bravery would he knew bring him through any crisis, but if wearing down their numbers by forced marches he should cover the country with small posts and hospital stations, the French people would be tempted to rise against him. So little therefore was his caution allied to timidity that it was no slight indication of daring to have advanced at all.

It does seem however that with an overwhelming cavalry, and great superiority of artillery he should not have suffered the French general so to escape his hands. It must be admitted also that Soult proved himself a very able commander. His halting on the Adour, his success in reviving the courage of his army, and the front he shewed in hopes to prevent his adversary from detaching troops against Bordeaux, were proofs not only of a firm unyielding temper but of a clear and ready judgment. For though, contrary to his hopes, lord Wellington did send Beresford against Bordeaux, it was not on military grounds but because treason was there to aid him. Meanwhile he was forced to keep his army for fifteen days passive within a few miles of an army he had just defeated, permitting his adversary to reorganize and restore the discipline and courage of the old troops, to rally the dispersed conscripts, to prepare the means of a partizan warfare, to send off all his encumbrances and sick to Toulouse, and to begin fortifying that city as a final and secure retreat: for the works there were commenced on the 3d or 4th of March, and at this time the entrenchments covering the bridge and suburb of St. Cyprien were nearly completed. The French general was even the first to retake the offensive after Orthes, too late indeed,[622] and he struck no important blow, and twice placed his army in dangerous situations; but his delay was a matter of necessity arising from the loss of his magazines, and if he got into difficulties they were inseparable from his operations and he extricated himself again.

That he gained no advantages in fight is rather argument for lord Wellington than against Soult. The latter sought but did not find a favourable opportunity to strike, and it would have been unwise, because his adversary gave him no opening, to have fallen desperately upon superior numbers in a strong position with an army so recently defeated, and whose restored confidence it was so essential not to shake again by a repulse. He increased that confidence by appearing to insult the allied army with an inferior force, and in combination with his energetic proclamation encouraged the Napoleonists and alarmed the Bourbonists; lastly, by his rapid retreat from Tarbes he gained two days to establish and strengthen himself on his grand position at Toulouse. And certainly he deceived his adversary, no common general and at the head of no common army; for so little did Wellington expect him to make a determined stand there, that in a letter written on the 26th to sir John Hope, he says, “I fear the Garonne is too full and large for our bridge, if not we shall be in that town (Toulouse) I hope immediately.”

The French general’s firmness and the extent of his views cannot however be fairly judged by merely considering his movements in the field. Having early proved the power of his adversary, he had never deceived himself about the ultimate course of the campaign and therefore struggled[623] without hope, a hard and distressing task; yet he showed no faintness, fighting continually, and always for delay as thinking Suchet would finally cast personal feelings aside and strike for his country. Nor did he forbear importuning that marshal to do so. Notwithstanding his previousChoumara. disappointments he wrote to him again on the 9th of February, urging the danger of the crisis, the certainty that the allies would make the greatest effort on the western frontier, and praying him to abandon Catalonia and come with the bulk of his troops to Bearn: in the same strain he wrote to the minister of war, and his letters reached their destinations on the 13th. Suchet, having no orders to the contrary, could therefore have joined him with thirteen thousand men before the battle of Orthes; but that marshal giving a deceptive statement of his forces in reply, coldly observed, that if he marched anywhere it would be to join the emperor and not the duke of Dalmatia. The latter continued notwithstanding to inform him of all his battles and his movements, and his accumulating distresses, yet in vain, and Suchet’s apathy would be incredible but for the unequivocal proofs of it furnished in the work of the French engineer Choumara.

The two armies being now once more in presence of1814. March. each other and with an equal resolution to fight, it is fitting to show the peculiar calculations upon which the generals founded their respective combinations. Soult, born in the vicinity, knew the country and chose Toulouse as a strategic post, because that ancient capital of the south contained fifty thousand inhabitants, commanded the principal passage of the Garonne, was the centre of a great number of roads on both sides of that river, and the chief military arsenal of the south of France. Here he could most easily feed his troops, assemble arm and discipline the conscripts, controul and urge the civil authorities, and counteract the machinations of the discontented. Posted at Toulouse he was master of various lines of operations. He could retire upon Suchet by Carcassone, or towards Lyons by Alby. He could take a new position behind the Tarn and prolong the contest by defending successively that river and the Lot, retreating if necessary upon Decaen’s army of the Gironde, and thus drawing the allies down the right bank of the Garonne as he had before drawn them up the left bank, being well assured that lord Wellington must follow him, and with weakened forces as it would be necessary to leave troops in observation of Suchet.

His first care was to place a considerable body of[625] troops, collected from the depôts and other parts of the interior at Montauban, under the command of general Loverdo, with orders to construct a bridge-head on the left of the Tarn. The passage of that river, and a strong point of retreat and assembly for all the detachments sent to observe the Garonne below Toulouse, was thus secured, and withal the command of a number of great roads leading to the interior of France, consequently the power of making fresh combinations. To maintain himself as long as possible in Toulouse was however a great political object. It was the last point which connected him at once with Suchet and with Decaen; and while he held it, both the latter general and the partizans in the mountains about Lourdes could act, each on their own side, against the long lines of communications maintained by Wellington with Bordeaux and Bayonne. Suchet also could do the same, either by marching with his whole force or sending a detachment through the Arriege department to the Upper Garonne, where general Lafitte having seven or eight hundred men, national guards and other troops, was already in activity. These operations Soult now strongly urged Suchet to adopt, but the latter treated the proposition, as he had done all those before made from the same quarter, with contempt.

Toulouse was not less valuable as a position of battle.

The Garonne, flowing on the west, presented to the allies a deep loop, at the bottom of which was the bridge, completely covered by the suburb of St. Cyprien, itself protected by an ancient brick wall three feet thick and flanked by two massive towers: these defences Soult had improved and he added a line of exterior entrenchments.

[626]

Beyond the Garonne was the city, surrounded byPlan 10. an old wall flanked with towers, and so thick as to admit sixteen and twenty-four pound guns.

The great canal of Languedoc, which joined the Garonne a few miles below the town, wound for the most part within point-blank shot of the walls, covering them on the north and east as the Garonne and St. Cyprien did on the west.

The suburbs of St. Stephen and Guillermerie, built on both sides of this canal, furnished outworks on the west, for they were entrenched and connected with and covered by the hills of Sacarin and Cambon, also entrenched and flanking the approaches to the canal both above and below these suburbs.

Eight hundred yards beyond these hills a strong ridge, called the Mont Rave, run nearly parallel with the canal, its outer slope was exceedingly rugged and overlooked a marshy plain through which the Ers river flowed.

The south side of the town opened on a plain, but the suburb of St. Michel lying there, between the Garonne and the canal, furnished another advanced defence, and at some distance beyond, a range of heights called the Pech David commenced, trending up the Garonne in a direction nearly parallel to that river.

Such being the French general’s position, he calculated, that as lord Wellington could not force the passage by the suburb of St. Cyprien without an enormous sacrifice of men, he must seek to turn the flanks above or below Toulouse, and leave a sufficient force to blockade St. Cyprien under pain of having the French army issue on that side against his communications. If he passed the Garonne above its confluence with the Arriege, he would have to cross[627] that river also, which could not be effected nearer than Cintegabelle, one march higher up. Then he must come down by the right of the Arriege, an operation not to be feared in a country which the recent rains had rendered impracticable for guns. If the allies passed the Garonne below the confluence of the Arriege, Soult judged that he could from the Pech David, and its continuation, overlook their movements, and that he should be in position to fall upon the head of their column while in the disorder of passing the river: if he failed in this he had still Toulouse and the heights of Mont Rave to retire upon, where he could fight again, his retreat being secure upon Montauban.

For these reasons the passage of the Garonne above Toulouse would lead to no decisive result and he did not fear it, but a passage below the city was a different matter. Lord Wellington could thus cut him off from Montauban and attack Toulouse from the northern and eastern quarters; and if the French then lost the battle they could only retreat by Carcassonne to form a junction with Suchet in Roussillon, where having their backs to the mountains and the allies between them and France they could not exist. Hence feeling certain the attack would finally be on that side, Soult lined the left bank of the Garonne with his cavalry as far as the confluence of the Tarn, and called up general Despeaux’s troops from Agen in the view of confining the allies to the space between the Tarn and the Garonne: for his first design was to attack them there rather than lose his communication with Montauban.

On the other hand lord Wellington whether from error from necessity or for the reasons I have before touched upon, having suffered the French army to[628] gain three days’ march in the retreat from Tarbes, had now little choice of operations. He could not halt until the Andalusians and Del Parque’s troops should join him from the Bastan, without giving Soult all the time necessary to strengthen himself and organize his plan of defence, nor without appearing fearful and weak in the eyes of the French people, which would have been most dangerous. Still less could he wait for the fall of Bayonne. He had taken the offensive and could not resume the defensive with safety, the invasion of France once begun it was imperative to push it to a conclusion. Leading an army victorious and superior in numbers his business was to bring his adversary to battle as soon as possible, and as he could not force his way through St. Cyprien in face of the whole French army, nothing remained but to pass the Garonne above or below Toulouse.

It has been already shown that in a strategic view this passage should have been made below that town, but seeing that the south side of the city was the most open to attack, the English general resolved to cast his bridge at Portet, six miles above Toulouse, designing to throw his right wing suddenlyManuscript notes by the duke of Wellington. into the open country between the Garonne and the canal of Languedoc, while with his centre and left he assailed the suburb of St. Cyprien. With this object, at eight o’clock in the evening of the 27th, one of Hill’s brigades marched up from Muret, some men were ferried over and the bridge was commenced, the remainder of that general’s troops being to pass at midnight. But when the river was measured the width was found too great for the pontoons and there were no means of substituting trestles, wherefore this plan was abandoned. Had it been executed[629] some considerable advantage would probablyFrench Official Correspondence, MSS. have been gained, since it does not appear that Soult knew of the attempt until two days later, and then only by his emissaries, not by his scouts.

Wellington thus baffled tried another scheme, he drove the enemy from the Touch river on the 28th, and collected the infantry of his left and centre about Portet, masking the movement with his cavalry. In the course of the operation a single squadron of the eighteenth hussars, under major Hughes, being inconsiderately pushed by colonel Vivian across the bridge of St. Martyn de la Touch, suddenly came uponMemoir by colonel Hughes, MSS. a whole regiment of French cavalry; the rashness of the act, as often happens in war, proved the safety of the British, for the enemy thinking that a strong support must be at hand discharged their carbines and retreated at a canter. Hughes followed, the speed of both sides increased, and as the nature of the road did not admit of any egress to the sides, this great body of French horsemen was pushed headlong by a few men under the batteries of St. Cyprien.

During these movements Hill’s troops were withdrawn to St. Roques, but in the night of the 30th a new bridge being laid near Pensaguel, two miles above the confluence of the Arriege, that general passed the Garonne with two divisions of infantry, Morillo’s Spaniards, Gardiner’s and Maxwell’s artillery, and Fane’s cavalry, in all thirteen thousand sabres and bayonets, eighteen guns, and a rocket brigade. The advanced guard moved with all expedition by the great road, having orders to seize the stone bridge of Cintegabelle, fifteen miles up the Arriege, and, on the march, to secure a ferry-boat known to be at Vinergue. The remainder of the troops followed, the intent being to pass the Arriege[630] river hastily at Cintegabelle, and so come down the right bank to attack Toulouse on the south while lord Wellington assailed St. Cyprien. This march was to have been made privily in the night, but the bridge, though ordered for the evening of the 30th, was not finished until five o’clock in the morning of the 31st. Soult thus got notice of the enterprise in time to observe from the heights of Old Toulouse the strength of the column, and to ascertain that the great body of the army still remained in front of St. Cyprien. The marshy nature of the country on the right of the Arriege was known to him, and the suburbs of St. Michel and St. Etienne being now in a state to resist a partial attack, the matter appeared a feint to draw off a part of his army from Toulouse while St. Cyprien was assaulted, or the Garonne passed below the city. In this persuasion he keptOfficial Correspondence, MSS. his infantry in hand, and sent only his cavalry up the right bank of the Arriege to observe the march of the allies; but he directed general Lafitte, who had collected some regular horsemen and the national guards of the department, to hang upon their skirts and pretend to be the van of Suchet’s army. He was however somewhat disquieted, because the baggage, which to avoid encumbering the march had been sent up the Garonne to cross at Carbonne, being seen by his scouts, was reported to be a second column, increasing Hill’s force to eighteen thousand men.

While in this uncertainty he heard of the measurement of the river made at Portet on the night of the 27th, and that many guns were still collected there, wherefore, being ignorant of the cause why the bridge was not thrown, he concluded there was a design to cross there also when Hill should descend[631] the Arriege. To meet this danger, he put fourOfficial Correspondence, MSS. divisions under Clauzel, with orders to fall upon the head of the allies if they should attempt the passage before Hill came down, resolving in the contrary case to fight in the suburbs of Toulouse and on the Mont-Rave, because the positions on the right of the Arriege were all favourable to the assailants. He was however soon relieved from anxiety. General Hill effected indeed the passage of the Arriege at Cintegabelle and sent his cavalry towards Villefranche and Nailloux, but his artillery were quite unable to move in the deep country there, and as success and safety alike depended on rapidity he returned during the night to Pinsaguel, recrossed the Garonne, and taking up his pontoons left only a flying bridge with a small guard of infantry and cavalry on the right bank. His retreat was followed by Lafitte’s horsemen who picked up a few stragglers and mules, but no other event occurred, and Soult remained well pleased that his adversary had thus lost three or four important days.

The French general was now sure the next attemptApril. would be below Toulouse, yet he changed his design of marching down the Garonne to fight between that river and the Tarn rather than lose his communications with Montauban. Having completed his works of defence for the city and the suburbs, and fortified all the bridges over the canal, he concluded not to abandon Toulouse under any circumstances, and therefore set his whole army and all the working population to entrench the Mont Rave, between the canal and the Ers river, thinking he might thus securely meet the shock of battle let it come on which side it would. Meanwhile the[632] Garonne continued so full and rapid that lord Wellington was forced to remain inactive before St. Cyprien until the evening of the 3d; then the waters falling, the pontoons were carried in the night to Grenade, fifteen miles below Toulouse, where the bridge was at last thrown and thirty guns placed in battery on the left bank to protect it. The third fourth and sixth divisions of infantry and three brigades of cavalry, the whole under Beresford, immediately passed, and the cavalry being pushed out two leagues on the front and flanks captured a large herd of bullocks destined for the French army. But now the river again swelled so fast, that the light division and the Spaniards were unable to follow, the bridge got damaged and the pontoons were taken up.

This passage was made known to Soult immediately by his cavalry scouts, yet he knew not the exact force which had crossed, and as Morillo’s Spaniards, whom he mistook for Freyre’s, had taken the outposts in front of St. Cyprien he imagined Hill also had moved to Grenade, and that the greatest part of the allied army was over the Garonne. Wherefore merely observing Beresford with his cavalry he continued to strengthen his field of battle about Toulouse, his resolution to keep that city being confirmed by hearing on the 7th that the allied sovereigns had entered Paris.

On the 8th the waters subsided, the allies’ bridge was again laid down, Freyre’s Spaniards and the Portuguese artillery crossed, and lord Wellington taking the command in person advanced to the heights of Fenoulhiet within five miles of Toulouse. Marching up both banks of the Ers his columns were separated by that river, which was impassable without[633] pontoons, and it was essential to secure as soon as possible one of the stone bridges. Hence when his left approached the heights of Kirie Eleison, on the great road of Alby, Vivian’s horsemen drove Berton’s cavalry up the right of the Ers towards the bridge of Bordes, and the eighteenth hussars descended towards that of Croix d’Orade. The latter was defended by Vial’s dragoons, and after some skirmishing the eighteenth was suddenly menaced by a regiment in front of the bridge, the opposite bank of the river being lined with dismounted carbineers. The two parties stood facing each other, hesitating to begin, until the approach of some British infantry, when both sides sounded a charge at the same moment, but the English horses were so quick the French were in an instant jammed up on the bridge, their front ranks were sabred, and the mass breaking away to the rear went off in disorder, leaving many killed and wounded and above a hundred prisoners in the hands of the victors. They were pursued through the village of Croix d’Orade, but beyond it they rallied on the rest of their brigade and advanced again, the hussars then recrossed the bridge, which was now defended by the British infantry whose fire stopped the French cavalry. The communication between the allied columns was thus secured.

The credit of this brilliant action was given to Colonel Vivian in the despatch, incorrectly, for that officer was wounded by a carbine shot previous to the charge at the bridge: the attack was conceived and conducted entirely by major Hughes of the eighteenth.

Lord Wellington from the heights of Kirie Eleison, carefully examined the French general’s position[634] and resolved to attack on the 9th. Meanwhile to shorten his communications with general Hill he directed the pontoons to be removed from Grenade and relaid higher up at Seilh. The light division were to cross at the latter place at daybreak, but the bridge was not relaid until late in the day, and the English general extremely incensed at the failure was forced to defer his battle until the 10th.

Soult’s combinations were now crowned with success. He had by means of his fortresses, his battles, the sudden change of his line of operations after Orthes, his rapid retreat from Tarbes, and his clear judgment in fixing upon Toulouse as his next point of resistance, reduced the strength of his adversary to an equality with his own. He had gained seventeen days for preparation, had brought the allies to deliver battle on ground naturally adapted for defence, and well fortified; where one-third of their force was separated by a great river from the rest, where they could derive no advantage from their numerous cavalry, and were overmatched in artillery notwithstanding their previous superiority in that arm.

His position covered three sides of Toulouse. Defending St. Cyprien on the west with his left, he guarded the canal on the north with his centre, and with his right held the Mont Rave on the east. His reserve under Travot manned the ramparts of Toulouse, and the urban guards while maintaining tranquillity aided to transport the artillery and ammunition to different posts. Hill was opposed to his left, but while the latter, well fortified at St. Cyprien, had short and direct communication with the centre by the great bridge of Toulouse, the former could only communicate with the main body under[635] Wellington by the pontoon bridge at Seilh, a circuit of ten or twelve miles.

The English general was advancing from the north, but his intent was still to assail the city on the south side, where it was weakest in defence. With this design he had caused the country on the left of the Ers to be carefully examined, in the view of making, under cover of that river, a flank march round the eastern front and thus gaining the open ground which he had formerly endeavoured to reach by passing at Portet and Pinsaguel. But again he was baffled by the deep country, which he could not master so as to pass the Ers by force, because all the bridges with the exception of that at Croix d’Orade were mined or destroyed by Soult, and the whole of the pontoons were on the Garonne. There was then no choice save to attack from the northern and eastern sides. The first, open and flat, and easily approached by the great roads of Montauban and Alby, was yet impregnable in defence, because the canal, the bridges over which were strongly defended by works, was under the fire of the ramparts of Toulouse, and for the most part within musquet-shot. Here then, as at St. Cyprien, it was a fortress and not a position which was opposed to him, and his field of battle was necessarily confined to the Mont Rave or eastern front.

This range of heights, naturally strong and rugged, and covered by the Ers river, which as we have seen was not to be forded, presented two distinct platforms, that of Calvinet, and that of St. Sypiere on which the extreme right of the French was posted. Between them, where the ground dipped a little, two roads leading from Lavaur and Caraman were conducted to Toulouse, passing the canal behind[636] the ridge at the suburbs of Guillemerie and St. Etienne.

The Calvinet platform was fortified on its extreme left with a species of horn-work, consisting of several open retrenchments and small works, supported by two large redoubts, one of which flanked the approaches to the canal on the north: a range of abbatis was also formed there by felling the trees on the Alby road. Continuing this line to the right, two other large forts, called the Calvinet and the Colombette redoubts, terminated the works on this platform.

On that of St. Sypiere there were also two redoubts, one on the extreme right called St. Sypiere, the other without a name nearer to the road of Caraman.

The whole range of heights occupied was about two miles long, and an army attacking in front would have to cross the Ers under fire, advance through ground, naturally steep and marshy, and now rendered almost impassable by means of artificial inundations, to the assault of the ridge and the works on the summit; and if the assailants should even force between the two platforms, they would, while their flanks were battered by the redoubts above, come upon the works of Cambon and Saccarin. If these fell the suburbs of Guillemerie and St. Steven, the canal, and finally the ramparts of the town, would still have to be carried in succession. But it was not practicable to pass the Ers except by the bridge of Croix d’Orade which had been seized so happily on the 8th. Lord Wellington was therefore reduced to make a flank marchManuscript Notes by the Duke of Wellington. under fire, between the Ers and the Mont Rave, and then to carry the latter with a view of crossing the[637] canal above the suburb of Guillemerie, and establishing his army on the south side of Toulouse, where only the city could be assailed with any hope of success.

To impose this march upon him all Soult’s dispositions had been directed. For this he had mined all the bridges on the Ers, save only that of Croix d’Orade, thus facilitating a movement between the Ers and the Mont Rave, while he impeded one beyond that river by sending half his cavalry over to dispute the passage of the numerous streams in the deep country on the right bank. His army was now disposed in the following order. General Reille defended the suburb of St. Cyprien with Taupin’s and Maransin’s divisions. Daricau’s division lined the canal on the north from its junction with the Garonne to the road of Alby, defending with his left the bridge-head of Jumeaux, the convent of the Minimes with his centre, and the Matabiau bridge with his right. Harispe’s division was established in the works on the Mont-Rave. His right at St. Sypiere looked towards the bridge of Bordes, his centre was at the Colombette redoubt, about which Vial’s horsemen were also collected; his left looked down the road of Alby towards the bridge of Croix d’Orade. On this side a detached eminence within cannon-shot, called the Hill of Pugade, was occupied by St. Pol’s brigade, drawn from Villatte’s division. The two remaining divisions of infantryPlan 10. were formed in columns at certain points behind the Mont Rave, and Travot’s reserve continued to man the walls of Toulouse behind the canal. This line of battle presented an angle towards the Croix d’Orade, each side about two miles in length and the apex covered by the brigade on the Pugade.

[638]

Wellington having well observed the ground on the 8th and 9th, made the following disposition of attack for the 10th. General Hill was to menace St. Cyprien, augmenting or abating his efforts to draw the enemy’s attention according to the progress of the battle on the right of the Garonne, which he could easily discern. The third and light divisions and Freyre’s Spaniards, being already on the left of the Ers, were to advance against the northern front of Toulouse. The two first supported by Bock’s German cavalry were to make demonstrations against the line of canal defended by Daricau. That is to say, Picton was to menace the bridge of Jumeaux and the convent of the Minimes, while Alten maintained the communication between him and Freyre who, reinforced with the Portuguese artillery, was to carry the hill of Pugade and then halt to cover Beresford’s column of march. This last composed of the fourth and sixth division with three batteries was, after passing the bridge of Croix d’Orade, to move round the left of the Pugade and along the low ground between the French heights and the Ers, until the rear should pass the road of Lavaur, when the two divisions were to wheel into line and attack the platform of St. Sypiere. Freyre was then to assail that of Calvinet, and Ponsonby’s dragoons following close were to connect that general’s left with Beresford’s column. Meanwhile lord Edward Somerset’s hussars were to move up the left of the Ers, while Vivian’s cavalry moved up the right of that river, each destined to observe Berton’s cavalry, which, having possession of the bridges of Bordes and Montaudran higher up, could pass from the right bank to the left, and destroying the bridge fall upon the head of Beresford’s troops while in march.

[639]

BATTLE OF TOULOUSE.

The 10th of April at two o’clock in the morning the light division passed the Garonne by the bridge at Seilh, and about six o’clock the whole army moved forwards in the order assigned for the different columns. Picton and Alten, on the right, drove the French advanced posts behind the works at the bridge over the canal. Freyre’s columns, marching along the Alby road, were cannonaded by St. Pol with two guns until they had passed a small stream by the help of some temporary bridges, when the French general following his instructions retired to the horn-work on the Calvinet platform. The Spaniards were thus established on the Pugade, from whence the Portuguese guns under major Arentschild opened a heavy cannonade against Calvinet. Meanwhile Beresford, preceded by the hussars, marched from Croix d’Orade in three columns abreast. Passing behind the Pugade, through the village of Montblanc, he entered the marshy ground between the Ers river and the Mont Rave, but he left his artillery at Montblanc, fearing to engage it in that deep and difficult country under the fire of the enemy. Beyond the Ers on his left, Vivian’s cavalry, now under colonel Arentschild, drove Berton’s horsemenMemoir by general Berton, MSS. back with loss, and nearly seized the bridge of Bordes which the French general passed and destroyed with difficulty at the last moment. However the German hussars succeeded in gaining the bridge of Montaudran higher up, though it was barricaded, and defended by a detachment of cavalryMemoir by colonel Hughes, MSS. sent there by Berton who remained himself in[640] position near the bridge of Bordes, looking down the left of the Ers.

While these operations were in progress, general Freyre who had asked as a favour to lead the battle at Calvinet, whether from error or impatience assailed the horn-work on that platform about eleven o’clock and while Beresford was still in march. The Spaniards, nine thousand strong, moved in two lines and a reserve, and advanced with great resolution at first, throwing forwards their flanks so as to embrace the end of the Calvinet hill. The French musquetry and great guns thinned the ranks at every step, yet closing upon their centre they still ascended the hill, the formidable fire they were exposed to increasing in violence until their right wing, which was also raked from the bridge of Matabiau, unable to endure the torment wavered. The leading ranks rushing madly onwards jumped for shelter into a hollow road, twenty-five feet deep in parts, and covering this part of the French entrenchments; but the left wing and the second line run back in great disorder, the Cantabrian fusiliers under colonel Leon de Sicilia alone maintaining their ground under cover of a bank which protected them. Then the French came leaping out of their works with loud cries, and lining the edge of the hollow road poured an incessant stream of shot upon the helpless crowds entangled in the gulph below, while the battery from the bridge of Matabiau, constructed to rake this opening, sent its bullets from flank to flank hissing through the quivering mass of flesh and bones.

The Spanish generals rallying the troops who had fled, led them back again to the brink of the[641] fatal hollow, but the frightful carnage below and the unmitigated fire in front filled them with horror. Again they fled, and again the French bounding from their trenches pursued, while several battalions sallying from the bridge of Matabiau and from behind the Calvinet followed hard along the road of Alby. The country was now covered with fugitives whose headlong flight could not be restrained, and with pursuers whose numbers and vehemence increased, until lord Wellington, who was at that point, covered the panic-stricken troops with Ponsonby’s cavalry, and the reserve artillery which opened with great vigour. Meanwhile the Portuguese guns on the Pugade never ceased firing, and a brigade of the light division, wheeling to its left, menaced the flank of the victorious French who immediately retired to their entrenchments on Calvinet: but more than fifteen hundred Spaniards had been killed or wounded and their defeat was not the only misfortune.

General Picton, regardless of his orders, which, his temper on such occasions being known were especially given, had turned his false attack into a real one against the bridge of Jumeaux, and the enemy fighting from a work too high to be forced without ladders and approachable only along an open flat, repulsed him with a loss of nearly four hundred men and officers: amongst the latter colonel Forbes of the forty-fifth was killed, and general Brisbane who commanded the brigade was wounded. Thus from the hill of Pugade to the Garonne the French had completely vindicated their position, the allies had suffered enormously, and beyond the Garonne, although general Hill had now forced the first line of entrenchments covering[642] St. Cyprien and was menacing the second line, the latter being much more contracted and very strongly fortified could not be stormed. The musquetry battle therefore subsided for a time, but a prodigious cannonade was kept up along the whole of the French line, and on the allies’ side from St. Cyprien to Montblanc, where the artillery left by Beresford, acting in conjunction with the Portuguese guns on the Pugade, poured its shot incessantly against the works on the Calvinet platform: injudiciously it has been said because the ammunition thus used for a secondary object was afterwards wanted when a vital advantage might have been gained.

It was now evident that the victory must be won or lost by Beresford, and yet from Picton’s error lord Wellington had no reserves to enforce the decision; for the light division and the heavy cavalry only remained in hand, and these troops were necessarily retained to cover the rallying of the Spaniards, and to protect the artillery employed to keep the enemy in check. The crisis therefore approached with all happy promise to the French general. The repulse of Picton, the utter dispersion of the Spaniards, and the strength of the second line of entrenchments at St. Cyprien, enabled him to draw, first Taupin’s whole division, and then one of Maransin’s brigades from that quarter, to reinforce his battle on the Mont Rave. Thus three divisions and his cavalry, that is to say nearly fifteen thousand combatants, were disposable for an offensive movement without in any manner weakening the defence of his works on Mont Rave or on the canal. With this mass he might have fallen uponMorning States, MSS. Beresford, whose force, originally less than thirteen[643] thousand bayonets, was cruelly reduced as it made slow and difficult way for two miles through a deep marshy country crossed and tangled with water-courses. For sometimes moving in mass, sometimes filing under the French musquetry, and always under the fire of their artillery from the Mont Rave, without a gun to reply, the length of the column had augmented so much at every step from the difficulty of the way that frequent halts were necessary to close up the ranks.

The flat miry ground between the river and the heights became narrower and deeper as the troops advanced, Berton’s cavalry was ahead, an impassable river was on the left, and three French divisions supported by artillery and horsemen overshadowed the right flank! Fortune came to their aid. Soult always eyeing their march, had, when the Spaniards were defeated, carried Taupin’s division to the platform of St. Sypiere, and supporting it with a brigade of D’Armagnac’s division disposed the whole about the redoubts. From thence after a short hortative to act vigorously he ordered Taupin to fall on with the utmost fury, at the same time directing a regiment of Vial’s cavalry to descend the heights by the Lavaur road and intercept the line of retreat, while Berton’s horsemen assailed the other flank from the side of the bridge of Bordes. But this was not half of the force which the French general might have employed. Taupin’s artillery, retarded in its march, was still in the streets of Toulouse, and that general instead of attacking at once took ground to his right, waiting until Beresford having completed his flank march had wheeled into lines at the foot of the heights.

[644]

Taupin’s infantry, unskilfully arranged for action it is said, at last poured down the hill, but some rockets discharged in good time ravaged the ranks and with their noise and terrible appearance, unknown before, dismayed the French soldiers; then the British skirmishers running forwards plied them with a biting fire, and Lambert’s brigade of the sixth division, aided by Anson’s brigade and some provisional battalions of the fourth division, for it is an error to say the sixth division alone repulsed this attack, Lambert’s brigade I say, rushed forwards with a terrible shout, and the French turning fled back to the upper ground. Vial’s horsemen trotting down the Lavaur road now charged on the right flank, but the second and third lines of the sixth division being thrown into squares repulsed them, and on the other flank general Cole had been so sudden in his advance up the heights, that Berton’s cavalry had no opportunity to charge. Lambert, following hard upon the beaten infantry in his front, killed Taupin, wounded a general of brigade, and without a check won the summit of the platform, his skirmishers even descended in pursuit on the reverse slope, and meanwhile, on his left, general Cole meeting with less resistance had still more rapidly gained the height at that side: so complete was the rout that the two redoubts were abandoned from panic, and the French with the utmost disorder sought shelter in the works of Sacarin and Cambon.

Soult astonished at this weakness in troops from whom he had expected so much, and who had but just before given him assurances of their resolution and confidence, was in fear that Beresford pushing his success would seize the bridge of the Demoiselles[645] on the canal. Wherefore, covering the flight as he could with the remainder of Vial’s cavalry, he hastily led D’Armagnac’s reserve brigade to the works of Sacarin, checked the foremost British skirmishers and rallied the fugitives; Taupin’s guns arrived from the town at the same moment, and the mischief being stayed a part of Travot’s reserve immediately moved to defend the bridge of the Demoiselles. A fresh order of battle was thus organized, but the indomitable courage of the British soldiers overcoming all obstacles and all opposition, had decided the first great crisis of the fight.

Lambert’s brigade immediately wheeled to its right across the platform on the line of the Lavaur road, menacing the flank of the French on the Calvinet platform, while Pack’s Scotch brigade and Douglas’s Portuguese, composing the second and third lines of the sixth division, were disposed on the right with a view to march against the Colombette redoubts on the original front of the enemy. And now also the eighteenth and German hussars, having forced the bridge of Montaudran on the Ers river, came round the south end of the Mont Rave, where in conjunction with the skirmishers of the fourth division they menaced the bridge of the Demoiselles, from whence and from the works of Cambon and Sacarin the enemy’s guns played incessantly.

The aspect and form of the battle were thus entirely changed. The French thrown entirely on the defensive occupied three sides of a square. Their right, extending from the works of Sacarin to the redoubts of Calvinet and Colombette, was closely menaced by Lambert, who was solidly posted on the platform of St. Sypiere while the redoubts themselves[646] were menaced by Pack and Douglas. The French left thrown back to the bridge-head of Matabiau awaited the renewed attack of the Spaniards, and the whole position was very strong, not exceeding a thousand yards on each side with the angles all defended by formidable works. The canal and city of Toulouse, its walls and entrenched suburbs, offered a sure refuge in case of disaster, while the Matabiau on one side, Sacarin and Cambon on the other, insured the power of retreat.

In this contracted space were concentrated Vial’s cavalry, the whole of Villatte’s division, one brigade of Maransin’s, another of D’Armagnac’s, and with the exception of the regiment driven from the St. Sypiere redoubt the whole of Harispe’s division. On the allies’ side therefore defeat had been staved off, but victory was still to be contended for, and with apparently inadequate means; for Picton being successfully opposed by Darricau was so far paralyzed, the Spaniards rallying slowly were not to be depended upon for another attack, and there remained only the heavy cavalry and the light division, which lord Wellington could not venture to thrust into the action under pain of being left without any reserve in the event of a repulse. The final stroke therefore was still to be made on the left, and with a very small force, seeing that Lambert’s brigade and the fourth division were necessarily employed to keep in check the French troops at the bridge of the Demoiselles, Cambon and Sacarin. This heavy mass, comprising one brigade of Travot’s reserve, the half of D’Armagnac’s division and all of Taupin’s, together with the regiment belonging to Harispe which had abandoned the forts of St. Sypiere, was commanded by general Clauzel,[647] who disposed the greater part in advance of the entrenchments as if to retake the offensive.

Such was the state of affairs about half-past two o’clock, when Beresford renewed the action with Pack’s Scotch brigade, and the Portuguese of the sixth division under colonel Douglas. These troops, ensconced in the hollow Lavaur road on Lambert’s right, had been hitherto well protected from the fire of the French works, but now scrambling up the steep banks of that road, they wheeled to their left by wings of regiments as they could get out, and ascending the heights by the slope facing the Ers, under a wasting fire of cannon and musquetry carried all the French breast-works, and the Colombette, and Calvinet redoubts. It was a surprising action when the loose disorderly nature of the attack imposed by the difficulty of the ground is considered; but the French although they yielded at first to the thronging rush of the British troops soon rallied and came back with a reflux. Their cannonade was incessant, their reserves strong, and the struggle became terrible. For Harispe, who commanded in person at this part, and under whom the French seemed always to fight with redoubled vigour, brought up fresh men, and surrounding the two redoubts with a surging multitude absolutely broke into the Colombette, killed or wounded four-fifths of the forty-second, and drove the rest out. The British troops were however supported by the seventy-first and ninety-first, and the whole clinging to the brow of the hill fought with a wonderful courage and firmness, until so many men had fallen that their order of battle was reduced to a thin line of skirmishers. Some of the British cavalry then rode up from the low ground and attempted a[648] charge, but they were stopped by a deep hollow road, of which there were many, and some of the foremost troopers tumbling headlong in perished. Meanwhile the combat about the redoubts continued fiercely, the French from their numbers had certainly the advantage, but they never retook the Calvinet fort, nor could they force their opponents down from the brow of the hill. At last when the whole of the sixth division had rallied and again assailed them, flank and front, when their generals Harispe and Baurot had fallen dangerously wounded and the Colombette was retaken by the seventy-ninth, the battle turned, and the French finally abandoned the platform, falling back partly by their right to Sacarin, partly by their left towards the bridge of Matabiau.

It was now about four o’clock. The Spaniards during this contest had once more partially attacked, but they were again put to flight, and the French thus remained masters of their entrenchments in that quarter; for the sixth division had been very hardly handled, and Beresford halted to reform his order of battle and receive his artillery: it came to him indeed about this time, yet with great difficulty and with little ammunition in consequence of the heavy cannonade it had previously furnished from Montblanc. However Soult seeing that the Spaniards, supported by the light division, had rallied a fourth time, that Picton again menaced the bridge of Jumeaux and the Minime convent, while Beresford, master of three-fourths of Mont Rave, was now advancing along the summit, deemed farther resistance useless and relinquished the northern end of the Calvinet platform also. About five o’clock he withdrew his whole army behind the canal,[649] still however holding the advanced works of Sacarin and Cambon. Lord Wellington then established the Spaniards in the abandoned works and so became master of the Mont Rave in all its extent. Thus terminated the battle of Toulouse. The French had five generals, and perhaps three thousand men killed or wounded and they lost one piece of artillery. The allies lost four generals and four thousand six hundred and fifty-nine men and officers, of which two thousand were Spaniards. A lamentable spilling of blood, and a useless, for before this period Napoleon had abdicated the throne of France and a provisional government was constituted at Paris.

During the night the French general, defeated but undismayed, replaced the ammunition expended in the action, re-organized and augmented his field artillery from the arsenal of Toulouse, and made dispositions for fighting the next morning behind the canal. Yet looking to the final necessity of a retreat he wrote to Suchet to inform him of the result of the contest and proposed a combined plan of operations illustrative of the firmness and pertinacity of his temper. “March,” said he, “with the whole of your forces by Quillan upon Carcassonne, I will meet you there with my army, we can then retake the initiatory movement, transfer the seat of war to the Upper Garonne, and holding on by the mountains oblige the enemy to recall his troops from Bordeaux, which will enable Decaen to recover that city and make a diversion in our favour.”

On the morning of the 11th he was again ready to fight, but the English general was not. The French position, within musquet-shot of the walls[650] of Toulouse, was still inexpugnable on the northern and eastern fronts. The possession of Mont Rave was only a preliminary step to the passage of the canal at the bridge of the Demoiselles and other points above the works of Sacarin and Cambon, with the view of throwing the army as originally designed on to the south side of the town. But this was a great affair requiring fresh dispositions, and a fresh provision of ammunition only to be obtained from the parc on the other side of the Garonne. Hence to accelerate the preparations, to ascertain the state of general Hill’s position, and to give that general farther instructions, lord Wellington repaired on the 11th to St. Cyprien; but though he had shortened his communications by removing the pontoon bridge from Grenade to Seilh, the day was spent before the ammunition arrived and the final arrangements for the passage of the canal could be completed. The attack was therefore deferred until daylight on the 12th.

Meanwhile all the light cavalry were sent up the canal, to interrupt the communications with Suchet and menace Soult’s retreat by the road leading to Carcassonne. The appearance of these horsemen on the heights of St. Martyn, above Baziege, together with the preparations in his front, taught Soult that he could no longer delay if he would not be shut up in Toulouse. Wherefore, having terminated all his arrangements, he left eight pieces of heavy artillery, two generals, the gallant Harispe being one, and sixteen hundred men whose wounds were severe, to the humanity of the conquerors; then filing out of the city with surprising order and ability, he made a forced march of twenty-two miles, cut the bridges over the canal and the Upper[651] Ers, and the 12th established his army at Villefranche. On the same day general Hill’s troops were pushed close to Baziege in pursuit, and the light cavalry, acting on the side of Montlaur, beat the French with the loss of twenty-five men, and cut off a like number of gensd’armes on the side of Revel.

Lord Wellington now entered Toulouse in triumph, the white flag was displayed, and, as at Bordeaux, a great crowd of persons adopted the Bourbon colours, but the mayor, faithful to his sovereign, had retired with the French army. The British general, true to his honest line of policy, did not fail to warn the Bourbonists that their revolutionary movement must be at their own risk, but in the afternoon two officers, the English colonel Cooke, and the French colonel St. Simon, arrived from Paris. Charged to make known to the armies the abdication of Napoleon they had been detained near Blois by the officiousness of the police attending the court of the empress Louisa, and the blood of eight thousand brave men had overflowed the Mont Rave in consequence. Nor did their arrival immediately put a stop to the war. When St. Simon in pursuance of his mission reached Soult’s quarters on the 13th, that marshal, not without just cause, demurred to his authority, and proposed to suspend hostilities until authentic information could be obtained from the ministers of the emperor: then sending all his incumbrances by the canal to Carcassonne, he took a position of observation at Castelnaudary and awaited the progress of events. Lord Wellington refused to accede to his proposal, and as general Loverdo, commanding at Montauban, acknowledged the authority of the provincial[652] government and readily concluded an armistice, he judged that Soult designed to make a civil war and therefore marched against him. The 17th the outposts were on the point of engaging when the duke of Dalmatia, who had now received official information from the chief of the emperor’s staff, notified his adhesion to the new state of affairs in France: and with this honourable distinction that he had faithfully sustained the cause of his great monarch until the very last moment.

A convention which included Suchet’s army was immediately agreed upon, but that marshal had previously adopted the white colours of his own motion, and lord Wellington instantly transmitted the intelligence to general Clinton in Catalonia and to the troops at Bayonne. Too late it came for both and useless battles were fought. That at Barcelona has been already described, but at Bayonne misfortune and suffering had fallen upon one of the brightest soldiers of the British army.

SALLY FROM BAYONNE.

During the progress of the main army in the interior sir John Hope conducted the investment of Bayonne, with all the zeal the intelligence and unremitting vigilance and activity which the difficult nature of the operation required. He had gathered great stores of gabions and fascines and platforms, and was ready to attack the citadel when rumours of the events at Paris reached him, yet indirectly and without any official character to warrant a formal communication to the garrison without lord Wellington’s authority. These rumours were however[653] made known at the outposts, and perhaps lulled the vigilance of the besiegers, but to such irregular communications which might be intended to deceive the governor naturally paid little attention.

The piquets and fortified posts at St. Etienne were at this time furnished by a brigade of the fifth division, but from thence to the extreme right the guards had charge of the line, and they had also one company in St. Etienne itself. General Hinuber’s German brigade was encamped as a support to the left, the remainder of the first division was encamped in the rear, towards Boucaut. In this state, about one o’clock in the morning of the 14th, a deserter, coming over to general Hay who commanded the outposts that night, gave an exact account of the projected sally. The general not able to speakBeamish’s History of the German Legion. French sent him to general Hinuber, who immediately interpreting the man’s story to general Hay, assembled his own troops under arms, and transmitted the intelligence to sir John Hope. It would appear that Hay, perhaps disbelieving the man’s story, took no additional precautions, and it is probable that neither the German brigade nor the reserves of the guards would have been put under arms but for the activity of general Hinuber. However at three o’clock the French, commencing with a false attack on the left of the Adour as a blind, poured suddenly out of the citadel to the number of three thousand combatants. They surprised the piquets, and with loud shouts breaking through the chain of posts at various points, carried with one rush the church, and the whole of the village of St. Etienne with exception of a fortified house which was defended by captain Forster of the thirty-eighth regiment. Masters of every other part and overthrowing[654] all who stood before them they drove the picquets and supports in heaps along the Peyrehorade road, killed general Hay, took colonel Townsend of the guards prisoner, divided the wings of the investing troops, and passing in rear of the right threw the whole line into confusion. Then it was that Hinuber, having his Germans well in hand, moved up on the side of St. Etienne, rallied some of the fifth division, and being joined by a battalion of general Bradford’s Portuguese from the side of St. Esprit bravely gave the counter-stroke to the enemy and regained the village and church.

The combat on the right was at first even more disastrous than in the centre, neither the piquets nor the reserves were able to sustain the fury of the assault and the battle was most confused and terrible; for on both sides the troops, broken into small bodies by the enclosures and unable to recover their order, came dashing together in the darkness, fighting often with the bayonet, and sometimes friends encountered sometimes foes: all was tumult and horror. The guns of the citadel vaguely guided by the flashes of the musquetry sent their shot and shells booming at random through the lines of fight, and the gun-boats dropping down the river opened their fire upon the flank of the supporting columns, which being put in motion by sir John Hope on the first alarm were now coming up from the side of Boucaut. Thus nearly one hundred pieces of artillery were in full play at once, and the shells having set fire to the fascine depôts and to several houses, the flames cast a horrid glare over the striving masses.

Amidst this confusion sir John Hope suddenly disappeared, none knew how or wherefore at the[655] time, but it afterwards appeared, that having brought up the reserves on the right, to stem the torrent in that quarter, he pushed for St. Etienne by a hollow road which led close behind the line of picquets; the French had however lined both banks, and when he endeavoured to return a shot struck him in the arm, while his horse, a large one as was necessary to sustain the gigantic warrior, received eight bullets and fell upon his leg. His followers had by this time escaped from the defile, but two of them, captain Herries, and Mr. Moore a nephew of sir John Moore, seeing his helpless state turned back and alighting endeavoured amidst the heavy fire of the enemy to draw him from beneath the horse. While thus engaged they were both struck down with dangerous wounds, the French carried them all off, and sir John Hope was again severely hurt in the foot by an English bullet before they gained the citadel.

The day was now beginning to break and the allies were enabled to act with more unity and effect. The Germans were in possession of St. Etienne, and the reserve brigades of the guards, being properly disposed, by general Howard who had succeeded to the command, suddenly raised a loud shout, and running in upon the French drove them back into the works with such slaughter that their own writers admit a loss of one general and more than nine hundred men. But on the British side general Stopford was wounded, and the whole loss was eight hundred and thirty men and officers. Of these more than two hundred were taken, besides the commander-in-chief; and it is generally acknowledged that captain Forster’s firm defence of the fortified house first, and next the readiness and[656] gallantry with which general Hinuber and his Germans retook St. Etienne, saved the allies from a very terrible disaster.

A few days after this piteous event the convention made with Soult became known and hostilities ceased.

All the French troops in the south were now reorganized in one body under the command of Suchet, but they were so little inclined to acquiesce in the revolution, that prince Polignac, acting for the duke of Angoulême, applied to the British commissary-general Kennedy for a sum of money to quiet them.

The Portuguese army returned to Portugal. The Spanish army to Spain, the generals being it is said inclined at first to declare for the Cortez against the king, but they were diverted from their purpose by the influence and authority of lord Wellington.

The British infantry embarked at Bordeaux, some for America, some for England, and the cavalry marching through France took shipping at Boulogne.

Thus the war terminated, and with it all remembrance of the veteran’s services.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.

Marshal Soult and General Thouvenot have1814. been accused of fighting with a full knowledge of Napoleon’s abdication. This charge circulated originally by the Bourbon party is utterly unfounded. The extent of the information conveyed to Thouvenot through the advanced posts has been already noticed; it was not sufficiently authentic to induce sir John Hope to make a formal communication, and the governor could only treat it as an idle story to insult or to deceive him, and baffle his defence by retarding his counter-operations while the works for the siege were advancing. For how unlikely, nay impossible, must it not have appeared, that the emperor Napoleon, whose victories at Mont-Mirail and Champaubert were known before the close investment of Bayonne, should have been deprived of his crown in the space of a few weeks, and the stupendous event be only hinted at the outposts without any relaxation in the preparations for the siege.

As false and unsubstantial is the charge against Soult.

The acute remark of an English military writer,Memoirs of captain Kincaid. that if the duke of Dalmatia had known of the peace before he fought, he would certainly have announced it after the battle, were it only to maintain[658] himself in that city and claim a victory, is unanswerable: but there are direct proofs of the falsehood of the accusation. How was the intelligence to reach him? It was not until the 7th that the provisional government wrote to him from Paris, and the bearer could not have reached Toulouse under three days even by the most direct way, which was through Montauban. Now the allies were in possession of that road on the 4th, and on the 9th the French army was actually invested. The intelligence from Paris must therefore have reached the allies first, as in fact it did, and it was not Soult, it was lord Wellington who commenced the battle. The charge would therefore bear more against the English general, who would yet have been the most insane as well as the wickedest of men to have risked his army and his fame in a battle where so many obstacles seemed to deny success. He also was the person of all others called upon, by honour, gratitude, justice and patriotism, to avenge the useless slaughter of his soldiers, to proclaim the infamy and seek the punishment of his inhuman adversary.

Did he ever by word or deed countenance the calumny?

Lord Aberdeen, after the passing of the English reform bill, repeated the accusation in the house of lords and reviled the minister for being on amicable political terms with a man capable of such a crime. Lord Wellington rose on the instant and emphatically declared that marshal Soult did not know, and that it was impossible he could know of the emperor’s abdication when he fought the battle. The detestable distinction of sporting with men’s lives by wholesale attaches to no general on the records of history save the Orange William, the murderer of Glencoe.[659] And though marshal Soult had known of the emperor’s abdication he could not for that have been justly placed beside that cold-blooded prince, who fought at St. Denis with the peace of Nimeguen in his pocket, because “he would not deny himself a safe lesson in his trade.”

The French marshal was at the head of a brave army and it was impossible to know whether Napoleon had abdicated voluntarily or been constrained. The authority of such men as Talleyrand, Fouché, and other intriguers, forming a provisional government, self-instituted and under the protection of foreign bayonets, demanded no respect from Soult. He had even the right of denying the emperor’s legal power to abdicate. He had the right, if he thought himself strong enough, to declare, that he would not suffer the throne to become the plaything of foreign invaders, and that he would rescue France even though Napoleon yielded the crown. In fine it was a question of patriotism and of calculation, a national question which the general of an army had a right to decide for himself, having reference always to the real will and desire of the people at large.

It was in this light that Soult viewed the matter, even after the battle and when he had seen colonel St. Simon.

Writing to Talleyrand on the 22d, he says, “TheOfficial Correspondence, MSS. circumstances which preceded my act of adhesion are so extraordinary as to create astonishment. The 7th the provisional government informed me of the events which had happened since the 1st of April. The 6th and 7th, count Dupont wrote to me on the same subject. On the 8th the duke of Feltre, in his quality of war minister, gave me notice, that having[660] left the military cipher at Paris he would immediately forward to me another. The 9th the prince Berthier vice-constable and major-general, wrote to me from Fontainbleau, transmitting the copy of a convention and armistice which had been arranged at Paris with the allied powers; he demanded at the same time a state of the force and condition of my army; but neither the prince nor the duke of Feltre mentioned events, we had then only knowledge of a proclamation of the empress, dated the 3rd, which forbade us to recognize any thing coming from Paris.

“The 10th I was attacked near Toulouse by the whole allied army under the orders of lord Wellington. This vigorous action, where the French army the weakest by half showed all its worth, cost the allies from eight to ten thousand men: lord Wellington might perhaps have dispensed with it.

“The 12th I received through the English the first hint of the events at Paris. I proposed an armistice, it was refused, I renewed the demand it was again refused. At last I sent count Gazan to Toulouse, and my reiterated proposal for a suspension of arms was accepted and signed the 18th, the armies being then in presence of each other. The 19th I ratified this convention and gave my adhesion to the re-establishment of Louis XVIII. And upon this subject I ought to declare that I sought to obtain a suspension of arms before I manifested my sentiments in order that my will and that of the army should be free. That neither France nor posterity should have power to say it was torn from us by force of arms. To follow only the will of the nation was a homage I owed to my country.”

The reader will observe in the above letter certain assertions, relative to the numbers of the contending[661] armies and the loss of the allies, which are at variance with the statements in this History; and this loose but common mode of assuming the state of an adverse force has been the ground-work for great exaggeration by some French writers, who strangely enough claim a victory for the French army although the French general himself made no such claim at the time, and so far as appears has not done so since.

Victories are determined by deeds and their consequences. By this test we shall know who won the battle of Toulouse.

Now all persons, French and English, who have treated the subject, including the generals on both sides, are agreed, that Soult fortified Toulouse the canal and the Mont Rave as positions of battle; that he was attacked, that Taupin’s division was beaten, that the Mont Rave with all its redoubts and entrenchments fell into the allies’ power. Finally that the French army abandoned Toulouse, leaving there three wounded generals, sixteen hundred men, several guns and a quantity of stores at the discretion of their adversaries: and this without any fresh forces having joined the allies, or any remarkable event affecting the operations happening elsewhere.

Was Toulouse worth preserving? Was the abandonment of it forced or voluntary? Let the French general speak! “I have entrenched the suburb ofSoult to Suchet, 29th March. St. Cyprien which forms a good bridge-head. The enemy will not I think attack me there unless he desires to lose a part of his army. Two nights ago he made a demonstration of passing the Garonne two leagues above the city, but he will probably try to pass it below, in which case I will attack him[662] whatever his force may be, because it is of the utmost importance to me not to be cut off from Montauban where I have made a bridge-head.”—“I think the enemy will not move on your side unless I move that way first, and I am determined to avoid that as long as I can.”—“If I could remain a month on the Garonne I should be able to put six or eight thousand conscripts into the ranks who now embarass me, and who want arms which I expect with great impatience from Perpignan.”—“I am resolved to deliver battle near Toulouse whatever may be theSoult to Suchet, 7th April. superiority of the enemy. In this view I have fortified a position, which, supported by the town and the canal, furnishes me with a retrenched camp susceptible of defence.”—“I have received the unhappy news of the enemy’s entrance into Paris. This misfortune strengthens my determination to defend Toulouse whatever may happen. The preservation of the place which contains establishments of all kinds is of the utmost importance to us, but if unhappily I am forced to quit it, my movements will naturally bring me nearer to you. In that case you cannot sustain yourself at Perpignan because the enemy will inevitably follow me.”—“The enemy appears astonished at the determination I have taken to defend Toulouse, four days ago he passed the Garonne and has done nothing since, perhaps the bad weather is the cause.”

From these extracts it is clear that Soult resolved if possible not to fall back upon Suchet, and was determined even to fight for the preservation of his communications with Montauban; yet he finally resigned this important object for the more important one of defending Toulouse. And so intent upon its preservation was he, that having on the[663] 25th of March ordered all the stores and artillerySoult’s Orders. not of immediate utility, to be sent away, he on the 2d of April forbade further progress in that work and even had those things already removed brought back. Moreover he very clearly marks that to abandonChoumara. the city and retreat towards Suchet will be the signs and consequences of defeat.

These points being fixed, we find him on the evening of the 10th writing to the same general thus.

“The battle which I announced to you took place to-day, the enemy has been horribly maltreated, but he succeeded in establishing himself upon a position which I occupied to the right of Toulouse. The general of division Taupin has been killed, general Harispe has lost his foot by a cannon-ball, and three generals of brigade are wounded. I am prepared to recommence to-morrow if the enemy attacks, but I do not believe I can stay in Toulouse, it might even happen that I shall be forced to open a passage to get out.”

On the 11th of April he writes again:

“As I told you in my letter of yesterday I am in the necessity of retiring from Toulouse, and I fear being obliged to fight my way at Baziege where the enemy is directing a column to cut my communications. To-morrow I will take a position at Villefranche, because I have good hope that this obstacle will not prevent my passing.”

To the minister of war he also writes on the 10th.

“To-day I rest in position. If the enemy attacks me I will defend myself. I have great need to replenish my means before I put the army in march, yet I believe that in the coming night I shall be forced to abandon Toulouse, and it is probable I[664] shall direct my movements so as to rally upon the troops of the duke of Albufera.”

Soult lays no claim here to victory. He admits that all the events previously indicated by him as the consequences of defeat were fulfilled to the letter. That is to say, the loss of the position of battle, the consequent evacuation of the city, and the march to join Suchet. On the other hand lord Wellington clearly obtained all that he sought. He desired to pass the Garonne and he did pass it; he desired to win the position and works of Mont Rave and he did win them; he desired to enter Toulouse and he did enter it as a conqueror at the head of his troops.

Amongst the French writers who without denying these facts lay claim to a victory Choumara is most deserving of notice. This gentleman, known as an able engineer, with a praise-worthy desire to render justice to the great capacity of marshal Soult, shews very clearly that his genius would have shone in this campaign with far greater lustre if marshal Suchet had adopted his plans and supported him in a cordial manner. But Mr. Choumara heated by his subject completes the picture by a crowning victory at Toulouse which the marshal himself appears not to recognize. The work is a very valuable historical document with respect to the disputes between Soult and Suchet, but with respect to the battle of Toulouse it contains grave errors as to facts, and the inferences are untenable though the premises were admitted.

The substance of Mr. Choumara’s argument is, that the position of Toulouse was of the nature of a fortress. That the canal was the real position of battle, the Mont Rave an outwork, the loss of[665] which weighed little in the balance, because the French army was victorious at Calvinet against the Spaniards, at the convent of the Minimes against the light division, at the bridge of Jumeaux against Picton, at St. Cyprien against General Hill. Finally that the French general certainly won the victory because he offered battle the next day and did not retreat from Toulouse until the following night.

Now admitting that all these facts were established, the fortress was still taken.

But the facts are surprisingly incorrect. For first marshal Soult himself tells Suchet that the Mont Rave was his position of battle, and that the town and the canal supported it. Nothing could be more accurate than this description. For when he lost the Mont Rave, the town and the canal enabled him to rally his army and take measures for a retreat. But the loss of the Mont Rave rendered the canal untenable, why else was Toulouse abandoned? That the line of the canal was a more formidable one to attack in front than the Mont Rave is true, yet that did not constitute it a position; it was not necessary to attack it, except partially at Sacarin and Cambon and the bridge of the Demoiselles; those points once forced the canal would, with the aid of the Mont Rave, have helped to keep the French in Toulouse as it had before helped to keep the allies out. Lord Wellington once established on the south side of the city and holding the Pech David could have removed the bridge from Seilh to Portet, above Toulouse, thus shortening and securing his communication with Hill; the French army must then have surrendered, or broken out, no easy matter in[666] such a difficult and strangled country. The Mont Rave was therefore not only the position of battle, it was also the key of the position behind the canal, and Mr. de Choumara is placed in this dilemma. He must admit the allies won the fight, or confess the main position was so badly chosen that a slight reverse at an outwork was sufficient to make the French army abandon it at every other point.

But were the French victorious at every other point? Against the Spaniards they were, and Picton also was repulsed. The order of movements for the battle proves indeed that this general’s attack was intended to be a false one; he disobeyedAppendix, No. 9. his orders however, and one of his brigades was repulsed; but to check one brigade with a loss of three or four hundred men, is a small matter in a battle where more than eighty thousand combatants were engaged.

The light division made a demonstration against the convent of the Minimes and nothing more. Its loss on the whole day was only fifty-six men and officers, and no French veteran of the PeninsulaOfficial Returns. but would laugh at the notion that a real attack by that matchless division could be so stopped.

It is said the exterior line of entrenchments at St. Cyprien was occupied with a view to offensive movements, and to prevent the allies from establishing batteries to rake the line of the canal from that side of the Garonne; but whatever may have been the object, General Hill got possession of it, and was so far victorious. He was ordered not to assail the second line seriously and he did not, for his whole loss scarcely exceeded eighty men andIbid. officers.

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From these undeniable facts, it is clear that the French gained an advantage against Picton, and a marked success against the Spaniards; but Beresford’s attack was so decisive as to counterbalance these failures and even to put the defeated Spaniards in possession of the height they had originally contended for in vain.

Mr. Choumara attributes Beresford’s success to Taupin’s errors and to a vast superiority of numbers on the side of the allies. “Fifty-three thousand infantry, more than eight thousand cavalry, and a reserve of eighteen thousand men of all arms, opposed to twenty-five thousand French infantry, two thousand five hundred cavalry, and a reserve of seven thousand conscripts three thousand of which were unarmed.” Such is the enormous disproportion assumed on the authority of general Vaudoncourt.

Now the errors of Taupin may have been great, and his countrymen are the best judges of his demerit; but the numbers here assumed are most inaccurate. The imperial muster-rolls are not of a later date than December 1813, yet an official table of the organization of Soult’s army, published byKock’s Campaign of 1814. the French military historian Kock, gives thirty-six thousand six hundred and thirty-five combatants on the 10th of March. Of these, in round numbers, twenty-eight thousand six hundred were infantry, two thousand seven hundred cavalry, and five thousand seven hundred were artillery-men, engineers, miners, sappers, gensd’armes, and military workmen. Nothing is said of the reserve division of conscripts commanded by general Travot, but general Vaudoncourt’s table of the same army on the 1st of April, adopted by Choumara, supplies the deficiency.[668] The conscripts are there set down seven thousand two hundred and sixty-seven, and this cipher being added to Kock’s, gives a total of forty-three thousand nine hundred fighting men. The loss in combats and marches from the 10th of March to the 1st of April must be deducted, but on the other hand we find Soult informing the minister of war, on the 7th of March, that three thousand soldiers dispersed by the battle of Orthes were still wandering behind the army: the greatest part must have joined before the battle of Toulouse. There was also the regular garrison of that city, composed of the depôts of several regiments and the urban guards, all under Travot. Thus little less than fifty thousand men were at Soult’s disposal.

Let twelve thousand be deducted for, 1º. the urban guard which was only employed to maintain the police of the town, 2º. the unarmed conscripts, 3º. the military workmen not brought into action, 4º. the detachments employed on the flanks to communicate with La Fitte in the Arriege, and to reinforce general Loverdo at Montauban. There will remain thirty-eight thousand fighting men of all arms. And with a very powerful artillery; for we find Soult after the action, directing seven field-batteries of eight pieces each to attend the army; and the French writers mention, besides this field-train, 1º. fifteen pieces which were transferred during the battle from the exterior line of St. Cyprien to the northern and eastern fronts. 2º. Four twenty-four pounders and several sixteen-pounders mounted on the walls of the city. 3º. The armaments of the bridge-heads, the works on Calvinet and those at Saccarin and Cambon. Wherefore[669] not less than eighty, or perhaps ninety, pieces of French artillery were engaged.

An approximation to the strength of the French army being thus made it remains to show the number of the allies, and with respect to the Anglo-Portuguese troops that can be done very exactly, not by approximative estimates but positively from the original returns.

The morning state delivered to lord WellingtonSee note at the end of the Appendix. on the 10th of April bears forty-three thousand seven hundred and forty-four British and Germans, and twenty thousand seven hundred and ninety-three Portuguese, in all sixty-four thousand five hundred and thirty-seven soldiers and officers present under arms, exclusive of artillery-men. Of this number nearly ten thousand were cavalry, eleven hundred and eighty-eight being Portuguese.

The Spanish auxiliaries, exclusive of Mina’s bands investing St. Jean Pied de Port, were 1º. Giron’s Andalusians and the third army under O’Donnel, fifteen thousand. 2º. The Gallicians under general Freyre, fourteen thousand. 3º. Three thousand Gallicians under Morillo and as many more under Longa, making with the Anglo-Portuguese a total of ninety thousand combatants with somewhat more than a hundred pieces of field-artillery.

Of this force, O’Donnel’s troops were in the valley of the Bastan, Longa’s on the Upper Ebro; one division of Freyre’s Gallicians was under Carlos D’España in front of Bayonne; one half of Morillo’s division was blockading Navarens, the other half and the nine thousand Gallicians remaining under Freyre, were in front of Toulouse. Of the Anglo-Portuguese, the first and fifth divisions, and three unattached brigades of infantry with one brigade of[670] cavalry, were with sir John Hope at Bayonne; the seventh division was at Bordeaux; the household brigade of heavy cavalry was on the march from the Ebro where it had passed the winter; the Portuguese horsemen were partly employed on the communications in the rear, partly near Agen, where sirSee note at the end of the Appendix. John Campbell commanding the fourth regiment had an engagement on the 11th with the celebrated partizan Florian. The second, third, fourth, sixth,Appendix 7, sections 6 and 7. and light divisions of infantry, and Le Cor’s Portuguese, called the unattached division, were with lord Wellington, who had also Bock’s, Ponsonby’s, Fane’s, Vivian’s, and lord E. Somerset’s brigades of cavalry.

These troops on the morning of the 10th mustered under arms, in round numbers, thirty-one thousand infantry, of which four thousand three hundred were officers sergeants and drummers, leaving twenty-six thousand and six hundred bayonets. Add twelve thousand Spaniards under Freyre and Morillo, and we have a total of forty-three thousand five hundred infantry. The cavalry amounted to seven thousand, and there were sixty-four pieces of artillery. Hence about fifty-two thousand of all ranks and arms were in line to fight thirty-eight thousand French with more than eighty pieces of artillery, some being of the largest calibre.

But of the allies only twenty-four thousand men with fifty-two guns can be said to have been seriously engaged. Thirteen thousand sabres and bayonets with eighteen guns were on the left of the Garonne under general Hill. Neither the light division nor Ponsonby’s heavy cavalry, nor Bock’s Germans were really engaged. Wherefore twelve thousand six hundred sabres and bayonets under Beresford, nine thousand bayonets under Freyre, and two thousand[671] five hundred of Picton’s division really fought the battle. Thus the enormous disproportion assumed by the French writers disappears entirely; for if the allies had the advantage of numbers it was chiefly in cavalry, and horsemen were of little avail against the entrenched position and preponderating artillery of the French general.

The duke of Dalmatia’s claim to the admiration of his countrymen is well-founded and requires no vain assumption to prop it up. Vast combinations, inexhaustible personal resources, a clear judgment, unshaken firmness and patience under difficulties, unwavering fidelity to his sovereign and his country, are what no man can justly deny him. In this celebrated campaign of only nine months, although counteracted by the treacherous hostility of many of his countrymen, he repaired and enlarged the works of five strong places and entrenched five great camps with such works as Marius himself would not have disdained; once he changed his line of operations and either attacking or defending delivered twenty-four battles and combats. Defeated in all he yet fought the last as fiercely as the first, remaining unconquered in mind, and still intent upon renewing the struggle when peace came to put a stop to his prodigious efforts. Those efforts were fruitless because Suchet renounced him, because the people of the south were apathetic and fortune was adverse; because he was opposed to one of the greatest generals of the world at the head of unconquerable troops. For what Alexander’s Macedonians were at Arbela, Hannibal’s Africans at Cannæ, Cæsar’s Romans at Pharsalia, Napoleon’s guards at Austerlitz, such were Wellington’s British soldiers at this period. The same men who had fought at[672] Vimiera and Talavera contended at Orthes and Toulouse. Six years of uninterrupted success had engrafted on their natural strength and fierceness a confidence which rendered them invincible. It is by this measure Soult’s firmness and the constancy of his army is to be valued, and the equality to which he reduced his great adversary at Toulouse is a proof of ability which a judicious friend would put forward rather than suppress.

Was he not a great general who being originally opposed on the Adour by nearly double his own numbers, for such was the proportion after the great detachments were withdrawn from the French army by the emperor in January, did yet by the aid of his fortresses, by his able marches and combinations, oblige his adversary to employ so many troops for blockades sieges and detached posts, that at Toulouse his army was scarcely more numerous than the French? Was it nothing to have drawn Wellington from such a distance along the frontier, and force him at last, either to fight a battle under the most astonishing disadvantages or to retreat with dishonour. And this not because the English general had committed any fault, but by the force of combinations which embracing all the advantages offered by the country left him no option.

That Soult made some mistakes is true, and perhaps the most important was that which the emperor warned him against, though too late, the leaving so many men in Bayonne. He did so he says because the place could not hold out fifteen days without the entrenched camp, and the latter required men; but the result proved Napoleon’s sagacity, for the allies made no attempt to try the strength of the camp, and on the 18th of March lord[673] Wellington knew not the real force of the garrison. Up to that period sir John Hope was inclined to blockade the place only, and from the difficulty of gathering the necessary stores and ammunition on the right bank of the Adour, the siege though resolved upon was not even commenced on the 14th of April when that bloody and most lamentable sally was made. Hence the citadel could not even with a weaker garrison have been taken before the end of April, and Soult might have had Abbé’s division of six thousand good troops in the battles of Orthes and Toulouse. Had Suchet joined him, his army would have been numerous enough to bar lord Wellington’s progress altogether, especially in the latter position. Here it is impossible not to admire the sagacity of the English general, who from the first was averse to entering France and only did so for a political object, under the promise of great reinforcements and in the expectation that he should be allowed to organize a Bourbon army. What could he have done if Soult had retained the twenty thousand men drafted in January, or if Suchet had joined, or the people had taken arms?

How well Soult chose his ground at Toulouse, how confidently he trusted that his adversary would eventually pass the Garonne below and not above the city, with what foresight he constructed the bridge-head at Montauban, and prepared the difficulties lord Wellington had to encounter have been already touched upon. But Mr. Choumara has assumed that the English general’s reason for relinquishing the passage of the Garonne at Portet on the night of the 27th, was not the want of pontoons but the fear of being attacked during the operation, adducing in proof Soult’s orders to assail the heads[674] of his columns. Those orders are however dated the 31st, three days after the attempt of which Soult appears to have known nothing at the time: they were given in the supposition that lord Wellington wished to effect a second passage at that point to aid general Hill while descending the Arriege. And what reason has any man to suppose that the same general and troops who passed the Nive and defeated a like counter-attack near Bayonne, would be deterred by the fear of a battle from attempting it on the Garonne? The passage of the Nive was clearly more dangerous, because the communication with the rest of the army was more difficult, Soult’s disposable force larger, his counter-movements more easily hidden until the moment of execution. At Portet the passage, designed for the night season, would have been a surprise, and the whole army, drawn close to that side could have been thrown over in three or four hours with the exception of the divisions destined to keep the French in check at St. Cyprien. Soult’s orders did not embrace such an operation. They directed Clauzel to fall upon the head of the troops and crush them while in the disorder of a later passage which was expected and watched for.

General Clauzel having four divisions in hand was no doubt a formidable enemy, and Soult’s notion of defending the river by a counter-attack was excellent in principle; but to conceive is one thing to execute is another. His orders were, as I have said, only issued on the 31st, when Hill was across both the Garonne and the Arriege. Lord Wellington’s design was then not to force a passage at Portet, but to menace that point, and really attack St. Cyprien when Hill should have descended the[675] Arriege. Nor did Soult himself much expect Clauzel would have any opportunity to attack, for in his letter to the minister of war he said, the positions between the Arriege and the canal were all disadvantageous to the French and his intention was to fight in Toulouse if the allies approached from the south; yet he still believed Hill’s movement to be only a blind and that lord Wellington would finally attempt the passage below Toulouse.

The French general’s views and measures were profoundly reasoned but extremely simple. His first care on arriving at Toulouse was to secure the only bridge over the Garonne by completing the works of St. Cyprien, which he had begun while the army was still at Tarbes. He thus gained time, and as he felt sure that the allies could not act in the Arriege district, he next directed his attention to the bridge-head of Montauban to secure a retreat behind the Tarn and the power of establishing a fresh line of operations. Meanwhile contrary to his expectation lord Wellington did attempt to act on the Arriege, and the French general, turning of necessity in observation to that side, entrenched a position on the south; soon however he had proof that his first notion was well-founded, that his adversary after losing much time must at last pass below Toulouse; wherefore he proceeded with prodigious activity to fortify the Mont Rave and prepare a field of battle on the northern and eastern fronts of the city. These works advanced so rapidly, while the wet weather by keeping the rivers flooded reduced lord Wellington to inactivity, that Soult became confident in their strength, and being influenced also by the news from Paris, relinquished his first design of opposing the passage of the Garonne and preserving[676] the line of operations by Montauban. To hold Toulouse then became his great object, nor was he diverted from this by the accident which befel lord Wellington’s bridge at Grenade. Most writers, French and English, have blamed him for letting slip that opportunity of attacking Beresford. It is said that general Reille first informed him ofNotes by general Berton, MSS. the rupture of the bridge, and strongly advised him to attack the troops on the right bank; but Choumara has well defended him on that point; the distance was fifteen miles, the event uncertain, the works on the Mount Rave would have stood still meanwhile, and the allies might perhaps have stormed St. Cyprien.

Lord Wellington was however under no alarm for Beresford, or rather for himself, because each day he passed the river in a boat and remained on that side. His force was not less than twenty thousandMorning State of lord Wellington, 4th of April, MSS. including sergeants and officers, principally British; his position was on a gentle range the flanks covered by the Ers and the Garonne; he had eighteen guns in battery on his front, which was likewise flanked by thirty other pieces placed on the left of the Garonne. Nor was he without retreat. He could cross the Ers, and Soult dared not have followed to any distance lest the river should subside and the rest of the army pass on his rear, unless, reverting to his original design of operating by Montauban, he lightly abandoned his now matured plan of defending Toulouse. Wisely therefore he continued to strengthen his position round that city, his combinations being all directed to force the allies to attack him between the Ers and the Mount Rave where it seemed scarcely possible to succeed.

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He has been also charged with this fault, that he did not entrench the Hill of Pugade. Choumara holds that troops placed there would have been endangered without adequate advantage. This does not seem conclusive. The hill was under the shot of the main height, it might have been entrenched with works open to the rear, and St. Pol’s brigade would thus have incurred no more danger than when placed there without any entrenchments. Beresford could not have moved up the left bank of the Ers until these works were carried, and this would have cost men. It is therefore probable that want of time caused Soult to neglect this advantage. He committed a graver error during the battle by falling upon Beresford with Taupin’s division only when he could have employed D’Armagnac’s and Villatte’s likewise in that attack. He should have fallen on him also while in the deep country below, and before he had formed his lines at the foot of the heights. What hindered him? Picton was repulsed, Freyre was defeated, the light division was protecting the fugitives, and one of Maransin’s brigades withdrawn from St. Cyprien had reinforced the victorious troops on the extreme left of the Calvinet platform. Beresford’s column entangled in the marshy ground, without artillery and menaced both front and rear by cavalry, could not have resisted such an overwhelming mass, and lord Wellington can scarcely escape criticism for placing him in that predicament.

A commander is not indeed to refrain from high attempts because of their perilous nature, the greatest have ever been the most daring, and the English general who could not remain inactive before Toulouse was not deterred by danger or difficulty: twice he passed the broad and rapid Garonne[678] and reckless of his enemy’s strength and skill worked his way to a crowning victory. This was hardihood, greatness. But in Beresford’s particular attack he did not overstep the rules of art, he hurtled against them, and that he was not damaged by the shock is owing to his good fortune the fierceness of his soldiers and the errors of his adversary. What if Beresford had been overthrown on the Ers? Wellington must have repassed the Garonne, happy if by rapidity he could reunite in time with Hill on the left bank. Beresford’s failure would have been absolute ruin and that alone refutes the French claim to a victory. Was there no other mode of attack? That can hardly be said. Beresford passed the Lavaur road to assail the platform of St. Sypiere, and he was probably so ordered to avoid an attack in flank by the Lavaur road, and because the platform of Calvinet on the side of the Ers river was more strongly entrenched than that of St. Sypiere. But for this gain it was too much to throw his column into the deep ground without guns, and quite separated from the rest of the army seeing that the cavalry intended to maintain the connection were unable to act in that miry labyrinth of water-courses. If the Spaniards were judged capable of carrying the strongest part of the Calvinet platform, Beresford’s fine Anglo-Portuguese divisions were surely equal to attacking this same platform on the immediate left of the Spaniards, and an advanced guard would have sufficed to protect the left flank. The assault would then have been made with unity, by a great mass and on the most important point: for the conquest of St. Sypiere was but a step towards that of Calvinet, but the conquest of Calvinet would have rendered St. Sypiere untenable. It is however to be observed[679] that the Spaniards attacked too soon and their dispersion exceeded all reasonable calculation: so panic-stricken they were as to draw from lord Wellington at the time the bitter observation, that he had seen many curious spectacles but never before saw ten thousand men running a race.

Soult’s retreat from Toulouse, a model of order and regularity, was made in the night. This proves the difficulty of his situation. Nevertheless it was not desperate; nor was it owing to his adversary’s generous forbearance that he passed unmolested under the allies’ guns as an English writer has erroneously assumed. For first those guns had no ammunition, and this was one reason why lord Wellington though eager to fall upon him on the 11th could not do so. On the 12th Soult was gone, and his march covered by the great canal could scarcely have been molested, because the nearest point occupied by the allies was more than a mile and a half distant. Nor do I believe that Soult, as some other writers have imagined, ever designed to hold Toulouse to the last. It would have been an avowal of military insolvency to which his proposal, that Suchet should join him at Carcassone and retake the offensive, written on the night of the 11th, is quite opposed. Neither was it in the spirit of French warfare. The impetuous valour and susceptibility of that people are ill-suited for stern Numantian despair. 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 anything. But[680] the unrelenting vigour of the British infantry in resistance wears his fury out; it was so proved in the Peninsula, where the sudden deafening shout, rolling over a field of battle more full and terrible than that of any other nation, and followed by the strong unwavering charge, often startled and appalled a French column before whose fierce and vehement assault any other troops would have given way.

Napoleon’s system of war was admirably adapted to draw forth and augment the military excellence and to strengthen the weakness of the national character. His discipline, severe but appealing to the feelings of hope and honour, wrought the quick temperament of the French soldiers to patience under hardships and strong endurance under fire; he taught the generals to rely on their own talents, to look to the country wherein they made war for resources, and to dare every thing even with the smallest numbers, that the impetuous valour of France might have full play: hence the violence of their attacks. But he also taught them to combine all arms together, and to keep strong reserves that sudden disorders might be repaired and the discouraged troops have time to rally and recover their pristine spirit, certain that they would then renew the battle with the same confidence as before. He thus made his troops, not invincible indeed, nature had put a bar to that in the character of the British soldier, but so terrible and sure in war that the number and greatness of their exploits surpassed those of all other nations: the Romans not excepted if regard be had to the shortness of the period, nor the Macedonians if the quality of their opponents be considered.

Let their amazing toils in the Peninsular war alone, which though so great and important was but[681] an episode in their military history, be considered. “In Spain large armies will starve and small armies will be beaten” was the saying of Henry IV. of France, and this was no light phrase of an indolent monarch but the profound conclusion of a sagacious general. Yet Napoleon’s enormous armies were so wonderfully organized that they existed and fought in Spain for six years, and without cessation, for to them winters and summers were alike. Their large armies endured incredible toils and privations but were not starved out, nor were their small armies beaten by the Spaniards. And for their daring and resource a single fact recorded by lord Wellington will suffice. They captured more than one strong place in Spain without any provision of bullets save those fired at them by their enemies, having trusted to that chance when they formed the siege! Before the British troops they fell, but how terrible was the struggle! how many defeats they recovered from, how many brave men they slew, what changes and interpositions of fortune occurred before they could be rolled back upon their own frontiers! And this is the glory of England, that her soldiers and hers only were capable of overthrowing them in equal battle. I seek not to defraud the Portuguese of his well-earned fame, nor to deny the Spaniard the merit of his constancy. England could not alone have triumphed in the struggle, but for her share in the deliverance of the Peninsula let this brief summary speak.

She expended more than one hundred millions sterling on her own operations, she subsidised Spain and Portugal besides, and with her supplies of clothing arms and ammunition maintained the armies of both even to the guerillas. From thirty up[682] to seventy thousand British troops were employed by her constantly, and while her naval squadrons continually harassed the French with descents upon the coasts, her land forces fought and won nineteen pitched battles and innumerable combats; they made or sustained ten sieges, took four great fortresses, twice expelled the French from Portugal, preserved Alicant, Carthagena, Cadiz, Lisbon; they killed wounded and took about two hundred thousand enemies, and the bones of forty thousand British soldiers lie scattered on the plains and mountains of the Peninsula.

Finally, for Portugal she re-organized a native army and supplied officers who led it to victory, and to the whole Peninsula she gave a general whose like has seldom gone forth to conquer. And all this and more was necessary to redeem the Peninsula from France!

The duke of Wellington’s campaigns furnish lessons for generals of all nations, but they must always be peculiarly models for British commanders in future continental wars, because he modified and reconciled the great principles of art with the peculiar difficulties which attend generals controlled by politicians who depending upon private intrigue prefer parliamentary to national interests. An English commander must not trust his fortune. He dare not risk much however conscious he may be of personal resources when one disaster will be his ruin at home. His measures must therefore be subordinate to this primary consideration. Lord Wellington’s caution, springing from that source, has led friends and foes alike into wrong conclusions as to his system of war. The French call it want of enterprize, timidity; the[683] English have denominated it the Fabian system. These are mere phrases. His system was the same as that of all great generals. He held his army in hand, keeping it with unmitigated labour always in a fit state to march or to fight; and thus prepared he acted indifferently as occasion offered on the offensive or defensive, displaying in both a complete mastery of his art. Sometimes he was indebted to fortune, sometimes to his natural genius, but always to his untiring industry, for he was emphatically a pains-taking man.

That he was less vast in his designs, less daring in execution, neither so rapid nor so original a commander as Napoleon must be admitted, and being later in the field of glory it is to be presumed that he learned something of the art from that greatest of all masters; yet something besides the difference of genius must be allowed for the difference of situation; Napoleon was never even in his first campaign of Italy so harassed by the French as Wellington was by the English Spanish and Portuguese governments. Their systems of war were however alike in principle, their operations being necessarily modified by their different political positions. Great bodily exertion, unceasing watchfulness, exact combinations to protect their flanks and communications without scattering their forces, these were common to both. In defence firm, cool, enduring; in attack fierce and obstinate; daring when daring was politic, but always operating by the flanks in preference to the front: in these things they were alike, but in following up a victory the English general fell short of the French emperor. The battle of Wellington was the stroke of a battering-ram, down went the wall in ruins. The[684] battle of Napoleon was the swell and dash of a mighty wave, before which the barrier yielded and the roaring flood poured onwards covering all.

Yet was there nothing of timidity or natural want of enterprize to be discerned in the English general’s campaigns. Neither was he of the Fabian school. He recommended that commander’s system to the Spaniards, but he did not follow it himself. His military policy more resembled that of Scipio Africanus. Fabius dreading Hannibal’s veterans, red with the blood of four consular armies, hovered on the mountains, refused battle, and to the unmatched skill and valour of the great Carthaginian opposed the almost inexhaustible military resources of Rome. Lord Wellington was never loath to fight when there was any equality of numbers. He landed in Portugal with only nine thousand men, with intent to attack Junot who had twenty-four thousand. At Roliça he was the assailant, at Vimiera he was assailed, but he would have changed to the offensive during the battle if others had not interfered. At Oporto he was again the daring and successful assailant. In the Talavera campaign he took the initiatory movements, although in the battle itself he sustained the shock. His campaign of 1810 in Portugal was entirely defensive, because the Portuguese army was young and untried, but his pursuit of Massena in 1811 was as entirely aggressive although cautiously so, as well knowing that in mountain warfare those who attack labour at a disadvantage. The operations of the following campaign, including the battles of Fuentes Onoro and Albuera the first siege of Badajos and the combat of Guinaldo, were of a mixed character; so was the campaign of Salamanca; but the campaign of Vittoria and that in[685] the south of France were entirely and eminently offensive.

Slight therefore is the resemblance to the Fabian warfare. And for the Englishman’s hardiness and enterprise bear witness the passage of the Douro at Oporto, the capture of Ciudad Rodrigo, the storming of Badajos, the surprise of the forts at Mirabete, the march to Vittoria, the passage of the Bidassoa, the victory of the Nivelle, the passage of the Adour below Bayonne, the fight of Orthes, the crowning battle of Toulouse! To say that he committed faults is only to say that he made war; but to deny him the qualities of a great commander is to rail against the clear mid-day sun for want of light. How few of his combinations failed. How many battles he fought, victorious in all! Iron hardihood of body, a quick and sure vision, a grasping mind, untiring power of thought, and the habit of laborious minute investigation and arrangement; all these qualities he possessed, and with them that most rare faculty of coming to prompt and sure conclusions on sudden emergencies. This is the certain mark of a master spirit in war, without it a commander may be distinguished, he may be a great man, but he cannot be a great captain: where troops nearly alike in arms and knowledge are opposed the battle generally turns upon the decision of the moment.

At the Somosierra, Napoleon’s sudden and what to those about him appeared an insensate order, sent the Polish cavalry successfully charging up the mountain when more studied arrangements with ten times that force might have failed. At Talavera, if Joseph had not yielded to the imprudent heat of Victor, the fate of the allies would have[686] been sealed. At the Coa, Montbrun’s refusal to charge with his cavalry saved general Craufurd’s division, the loss of which would have gone far towards producing the evacuation of Portugal. At Busaco, Massena would not suffer Ney to attack the first day, and thus lost the only favourable opportunity for assailing that formidable position. At Fuentes Onoro, the same Massena suddenly suspended his attack when a powerful effort would probably have been decisive. At Albuera, Soult’s column of attack instead of pushing forward halted to fire from the first height they had gained on Beresford’s right, which saved that general from an early and total defeat; again at a later period of that battle the unpremeditated attack of the fusileers decided the contest. At Barosa, general Graham with a wonderful promptitude snatched the victory at the very moment when a terrible defeat seemed inevitable. At Sabugal, not even the astonishing fighting of the light division could have saved it if general Reynier had possessed this essential quality of a general. At El Bodon, Marmont failed to seize the most favourable opportunity which occurred during the whole war for crushing the allies. At Orthes, Soult let slip two opportunities of falling upon the allies with advantage, and at Toulouse he failed to crush Beresford.

At Vimiera, lord Wellington was debarred by Burrard from giving a signal illustration of this intuitive generalship, but at Busaco and the heights of San Cristoval, near Salamanca, he suffered Massena and Marmont to commit glaring faults unpunished. On the other hand he has furnished many examples of that successful improvisation in which Napoleon seems to have surpassed all mankind.[687] His sudden retreat from Oropesa across the Tagus by the bridge of Arzobispo; his passage of the Douro in 1809; his halt at Guinaldo in the face of Marmont’s overwhelming numbers; the battle of Salamanca; his sudden rush with the third division to seize the hill of Arinez at Vittoria; his counter-stroke with the sixth division at Sauroren; his battle of the 30th two days afterwards; his sudden passage of the Gave below Orthes. Add to these his wonderful battle of Assye, and the proofs are complete that he possesses in an eminent degree that intuitive perception which distinguishes the greatest generals.

Fortune however always asserts her supremacy in war, and often from a slight mistake such disastrous consequences flow that in every age and every nation the uncertainty of arms has been proverbial. Napoleon’s march upon Madrid in 1808 before he knew the exact situation of the British army is an example. By that march he lent his flank to his enemy. Sir John Moore seized the advantage and though the French emperor repaired the error for the moment by his astonishing march from Madrid to Astorga, the fate of the Peninsula was then decided. If he had not been forced to turn against Moore, Lisbon would have fallen, Portugal could not have been organized for resistance, and the jealousy of the Spaniards would never have suffered Wellington to establish a solid base at Cadiz: that general’s after-successes would then have been with the things that are unborn. It was not so ordained. Wellington was victorious, the great conqueror was overthrown. England stood the most triumphant nation of the world. But with an enormous debt, a dissatisfied people, gaining peace[688] without tranquillity, greatness without intrinsic strength, the present time uneasy, the future dark and threatening. Yet she rejoices in the glory of her arms! And it is a stirring sound! War is the condition of this world. From man to the smallest insect all are at strife, and the glory of arms which cannot be obtained without the exercise of honour, fortitude, courage, obedience, modesty and temperance, excites the brave man’s patriotism and is a chastening corrective for the rich man’s pride. It is yet no security for power. Napoleon the greatest man of whom history makes mention, Napoleon the most wonderful commander, the most sagacious politician, the most profound statesman, lost by arms, Poland, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain and France. Fortune, that name for the unknown combinations of infinite power, was wanting to him, and without her aid the designs of man are as bubbles on a troubled ocean.

Nº. 1. Vol. 6.

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Nº. 2. Vol. 6.

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Nº. 3. Vol. 6.

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Nº. 6. Vol. 6.

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Nº. 10. Vol. 6.

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No. I.

JUSTIFICATORY PIECES.

Lord William Bentinck to sir E. Pellew.

At sea, June 18th, 1813.

Sir,

Y. E. has seen the information I have received of a projected attack upon Sicily by Murat, in conjunction with the Toulon fleet. It seems necessary that the French fleet should leave Toulon, should reach the coast of Naples, embark the men and land them in Sicily, or cover their passage from Calabria or the Bay of Naples, if the intention be, as in the last instance, to transport them to Sicily in the tonnage and small craft of the country.—The most important question is, whether this can be effected by the enemy.—I have no difficulty in saying on my part, that in the present disposition of the Neapolitan army in Sicily, and in the non-existence of any national force, and the imperfect composition of the British force, if half the number intended for this expedition should land in Sicily the island would be conquered.

(Signed)      W. Bentinck.

Sir E. Pellew to lord W. Bentinck.

H. M. S. Caledonia, June 19th, 1813.

My lord,

I feel it my duty to state to your lordship that in my judgment the Toulon fleet may evade mine without difficulty under a strong N. W. wind to carry them through the passage of the Hieres islands, without the possibility of my interrupting them, and that they may have from twelve to twenty-four hours’ start of me in[692] chasing them. When blown off the coast, my look-out ships would certainly bring me such information as would enable me to follow them immediately to the Bay of Naples. Your lordship is most competent to judge whether in the interval of their arrival and my pursuit, the French admiral would be able to embark Murat’s army artillery and stores, and land them on the coast of Sicily before I came up with them.—The facility of communication by telegraph along the whole coast of Toulon would certainly apprize Murat of their sailing at a very short notice, but for my own part, I should entertain very sanguine hopes of overtaking them either in the Bay of Naples or on the coast of Sicily before they could make good their landing.

Lord Wm. Bentinck to lord Wellington.

At sea, June 20th, 1813.

My lord,

By the perusal of the accompanying despatch to lord Castlereagh, your lordship will perceive that Murat has opened a negociation with us, the object of which is friendship with us and hostility to Buonaparte. You will observe in one of the conversations with Murat’s agent, that he informed me that Buonaparte had ordered Murat to hold twenty thousand men in readiness for the invasion of Sicily in conjunction with the Toulon fleet. I enclose the copy of a letter I have in consequence addressed to Sir E. Pellew, together with his answer, upon the practicability of the Toulon fleet sailing without the knowledge of the blockading fleet. Your lordship will have received my letter of the 21st of May enclosing a copy of my dispatch to Lord Bathurst, relative to the discontent of the Neapolitan troops in Sicily and the consequent state of weakness if not of danger resulting from it to that island. I stated also that this circumstance had induced me to detain in Sicily the two battalions which had been withdrawn from Spain.

Lord Wellington to lord William Bentinck.

Huarte, July 1st, 1813.

My lord,

In answer to your lordship’s despatch, I have to observe, that I conceive that the island of Sicily is at present in no danger whatever.

[693]

No. II.

Letter from general Nugent to lord William Bentinck.

Vienna, January 24th, 1812.

My dear lord William,

I hope you have received the letter I wrote to you shortly after my arrival here by a person sent for that purpose. Soon after his departure the affair of La Tour happened, as King mentions in his letter. It required some time before I could judge of the result it would have and the manner it would be considered by the emperor and the government here, and then to settle again the manner of sending officers down to the Mediterranean, for some of those then destined to be sent were implicated. All these circumstances caused the delay of the present which otherwise you would have had much sooner. Another cause of the delay was that I wanted to inform you of the answer which would be given by this house to the speculations that I was commissioned by the prince-regent to propose relative to the arch-duke. There was no decisive answer given, and the only manner of forming an opinion upon that subject was by observing and getting information of their true intentions. I am now firmly convinced that these are such as we could wish, and that it is only fear of being committed that prevents them to speak in a more positive manner. Their whole conduct proves this, more particularly in La Tour’s affair which has produced no change whatsoever nor led to any discovery of views or connexions. There is even now less difficulty than ever for officers going to the Mediterranean. They get passports from government here without its inquiring or seeming to know the real object. As it can do nothing else but connive, to which this conduct answers, I think a more explicit declaration is not even requisite and I am convinced that when the thing is once done they will gladly agree. This is likewise King’s and Hardenberg’s and Johnson’s opinion upon the subject, and as such they desire me to express it to you, and to observe that the situation of things here makes the forwarding of the measures you may think expedient in the Mediterranean and the Adriatic the more desirable.

They are here extremely satisfied with the conduct of government in England, and by the accounts we have the latter is much pleased with the conduct of this country, particularly relative to the affairs of Prussia. These are however not decided yet. But[694] whatever the consequence may be and whatever this country may do for the present, I am convinced that your measures will ultimately contribute much to the result. I am happy to perceive by the last information from England that every thing seems to have been settled there by you. The recruiting business of major Burke is going on rapidly. As it was not begun at the time of my departure I can only attribute it to your presence. The letters contain likewise that government is come to the most favorable resolutions relative to the arch-duke, and I hope the formation of the troops will soon be effectuated. The dispositions of the Adriatic coasts and the Tyrol are as good as can be, but all depends upon establishing a basis and without that all partial exertions would be useless or destructive. At the same time that some regiments would be formed, I think it would be very expedient, to form at the same place a Dalmatian or a Croat regiment, particularly as in the present state of things it will be much easier even than the other. The men could be easily recruited in Bosnia, and sent from Durazzo to the place you should appoint. The bearer will give you every information upon the subject, and at all events, I should propose to you to send him immediately back to Durazzo, and, should you adopt the above, to give him the necessary orders and the commission for recruiting and sending the men to the place of formation. No person can be better qualified than he is. He knows the languages, the country, and the character of the people, and understands every thing that relates to commercial affairs. As to the place of formation, I think I already proposed Cephalonia to you. Lissa or one of the nearer islands would give too much jealousy in the beginning in those parts, until our capital increases so as to undertake an important enterprise, at all events it is important to form a noyau of the three nations; it is then that we may hope to be joined by the whole of Dalmatia and Croatia after a short time. Major and other officers will shortly proceed to the Mediterranean. They will be directed to Messina where I request you will send orders for them. It would be very useful and saving to provide means for transporting them to that place from Durazzo, and if possible to establish a more frequent and regular intercourse between you and the latter. Johnson who soon sets off from here will in the meantime establish a communication across Bosnia to Durazzo. His presence in those parts will be productive of many good effects. You will find that he is an able active and zealous man and will certainly be very useful in forwarding your views. I can answer for his being worthy of[695] your full confidence, should you adopt the proposition relative to the recruiting it would be necessary to put at his disposal the requisite funds.

You will judge by the account the bearer of this will give you whether cloth &c. can be had at a cheaper rate from this country or where you are, and he will bring back your directions for this object. Allow me to observe that it would be highly useful to have clothes for a considerable number of men prepared beforehand. Many important reasons have prevented me hitherto from proceeding to the Mediterranean as speedily as I wished. I hope however not to be detained much longer and soon to have removed every obstacle. I think to set off from here in the beginning of March, and request you will be so kind as to provide with the return of the bearer to Durazzo the means of my passage from thence, where I shall come with a feigned name. I hope he will be back there by the time of my arrival. I shall endeavour to hasten my journey as I have important information in every respect. By that time we shall know the decision relative to the north. King has informed you of the reasons which made an alteration necessary in regard to Frozzi’s journey. Part of your object is in fact fulfilled already, and there are agents in Italy &c. As to the other and principal part relative to connections in the army, and the gaining an exact knowledge of it and of the government in Italy, with other circumstances, I expect soon to have a person of sufficient consequence and ability to execute your instructions, and he will go to Milan &c. as soon as it can be done with safety. His permanent residence in that country seems to be necessary, that he may be able to accomplish fully the object, and as the sum you have assigned for this purpose is sufficient for a considerable time, you can determine whether he is to remain there permanently or not. Frozzi will bring you an exact account of what has been arranged relative to this business, and will himself be a very proper person for communications between you and Italy or this country. He will for that purpose go back to Italy, the obstacle that opposed it hitherto being now no more. I cannot but repeat the importance of giving all possible extent to the arch-duke’s establishment, and particularly the raising of as much troops as possible, for all will depend upon having the means of landing. We are then sure of augmenting very speedily, and finding the greatest assistance. The place for beginning cannot be determined on exactly, but there is much to be expected in Dalmatia and Croatia where we could be joined by the inhabitants[696] and troops. The lower part would be best adapted in case we begin with a small force. I shall send and bring officers particularly acquainted with the country and provide every other assistance such as plans &c. and I think it would be expedient to prevent for the present any enterprize in that country that would alarm them. Since I began my letter a courier has arrived from Paris.

The contingent of the Rhenish confederacy have got orders to be ready for marching. Reinforcements are sending from France to the north and every preparation is making for war. Buonaparte told to Swartzenburg that he would begin in April and all circumstances seem to agree with this. On the other side Russia is very slow in making peace with Turkey. He entirely neglects Prussia, and for this reason it is to be feared that the latter will place his capital with Buonaparte notwithstanding that this cabinet is endeavouring to prevent it. I should be then very much afraid for the conduct of this house well inclined as the emperor is. Proposals were made by France but no resolution has been taken until it is known how things turn out. The worst is that Romanzow is still in credit with Alexander, which prevents all confidence in other houses and makes Russia adopt half measures. This sketch of the situation will give you some idea of the wavering and uncertain state people are in. There is no calculation to be made as to the conduct of government, nor must we be surprised at any thing they may do. On the other side our speculations are not built upon them, but upon the disposition of the people; and whatever may happen I am convinced that this is a good foundation if the measures are taken and the means prepared. A principal object of mine in these parts has been to prepare the measures for the case that it comes here to the very worst. The most important thing is the augmenting in every possible manner the force at your disposition. The accounts we have to-day of your return and the powers I hope you have give me the best hopes of your overcoming every difficulty. I must yet observe that as Johnson’s proceedings are entirely subordinate to, and make a part of your plans and operations in general, and that he cannot of course depend upon King, you will be so good as to give him decisive instructions to that purpose, and assign him the means and powers for acting in consequence. I shall combine with him in my passage through Bosnia every thing in the hopes that you will approve of this.

[697]

Letter from Mr. King to lord William Bentinck.

Vienna, January 24th, 1812.

My lord,

I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your lordship’s letter of the 25th of August, which was delivered to me towards the latter end of October by captain Frizzi whom I should immediately have furnished with the means of proceeding to Italy for the purpose of carrying your lordship’s instructions into effect, had it not appeared to me that the measures which I had taken on my arrival here had already in a great degree anticipated your lordship’s intentions. As a confirmation of this, I beg leave to transmit for your lordship’s perusal the reports (marked A) of three messengers whom I sent to the north of Italy for the purpose of ascertaining the state of the public mind, particularly in the ci-devant Venetian territories and adjacent districts. These reports confirm in a very satisfactory manner the assurances, which I have received through various other channels, that the inhabitants of those countries are ready and determined to avail themselves of the first opportunity to shake off a yoke which is become insupportable. I have also the honour to transmit to your lordship the copy of a letter from count Montgelas, the minister of foreign affairs in Bavaria, to the commissary-general at Nimpten, from which it appears that the Bavarian government is not altogether ignorant of the intentions of the Swiss and Tyroleze, but I am happy to have it in my power to inform your lordship that the persons who seem to have excited the suspicions of the Bavarian government do not enjoy the confidence of our friends in Switzerland, and have not been made acquainted with their intentions; it is nevertheless indispensably necessary that we should act with the greatest possible caution in the employment of emissaries, lest the French and Bavarian governments should take the alarm and adopt measures which would defeat our projects or at least occasion a premature explosion. On these grounds (having previously consulted with general N. to whom captain Frizzi was particularly addressed and who entirely coincides in my opinion) I think it eligible to send this officer back to Sicily and I trust that in so doing I shall meet with your lordship’s approbation. I beg leave to observe that the only service captain Frizzi could render in Italy at the present moment would be to ascertain the number and distribution of the French forces in this country, but as these undergo continual changes I think it will be sufficient to despatch[698] a confidential agent to your lordship with the latest intelligence from Italy, at a period when the northern war and consequent occupation of the French troops will enable your lordship to derive advantage from such intelligence.

The general opinion is that hostilities will commence between France and Russia in the month of April at which period the preparations of the French government will be completed, and there is little reason to hope that the Russians will avail themselves of the interval, either to annihilate the army of the duchy of Warsaw or to advance to the assistance of the king of Prussia, who will in all probability ally himself with France notwithstanding his former declarations to the contrary. The latest intelligence from Berlin states that count St. Marsan had presented the ultimatum of his government, which demands an unconditional surrender of all the Prussian fortresses, and insists on the military force and resources of Prussia being placed at the disposal of French generals. It is positively asserted that the king is inclined to submit to these humiliating proposals, but nothing has been as yet definitively concluded. I am sorry to inform your lordship that the aspect of affairs in this country is highly discouraging; the injudicial financial measures which count Wallis has thought proper to adopt have rendered it impossible for government to place the army on a respectable footing, and have considerably increased the discontent of the people, who however still retain their characteristic aversion to the French. The government is determined to maintain a strict neutrality during the approaching crisis if possible.

In my former letter I mentioned to your lordship my intention of establishing a person at Durazzo in order to forward messengers &c. &c. and to transmit to me occasionally intelligence of the state of things in the Adriatic. But having received of late repeated assurances of the increasing discontent of the inhabitants of those parts of the coast who have the misfortune to be under the dominion of the French, and of their willingness to make every effort to shake off the yoke, and being aware how important it is at the present moment not to neglect an object of this nature I have desired Mr. Johnson to proceed thither in order to form connections in Albania, Dalmatia, and to avail himself in every possible manner of the spirit of discontent which has so decidedly manifested itself. Mr. Johnson who has been employed on the continent for some years past as an agent of government, and who has given proofs of his zeal and abilities, will repair to Durazzo, or[699] according to circumstances to some other town in the neighbourhood of the Adriatic and will there reside as agent of the British government. He will communicate his arrival to your lordship with as little delay as possible.

By the following piece of information which I have derived from an authentic source your lordship will perceive that the French and Swedish governments are far from being on friendly terms. An alliance has been proposed by the former to the latter and instantaneously rejected. The terms of the alliance were as follows, viz. 1st, a body of 30,000 Swedes to be placed at the disposal of France. 2nd, 3000 seamen to be furnished to the French marine, and 3rd, a regiment of Swedes to be raised for the service of France as was the case before the French revolution. I transmit this letter to your lordship by captain Steinberg and ensign Ferandi, two officers who have served creditably in the Austrian army. The former has connections and local knowledge in his native country which may become particularly useful. I fear it will not be in my power to send 50 subaltern officers to Sicily as your lordship desired. I shall however occasionally despatch some intelligent officers who will I think be extremely useful in the formation of new corps.

No. III.

Extracts from the correspondence of sir Henry Wellesley, sir Charles Stuart, and Mr. Vaughan.

Mr. Vaughan to sir Charles Stuart.

Cadiz, August 3d, 1813.

“The Spanish troops in Catalonia and elsewhere are starving, and the government are feeding them with proclamations to intendants. Since I have known Spain I have never known the seat of government in a worse state. There is a strong feeling against the English and a miserable jacobin party which is violent beyond measure.”

Ditto to Ditto.

Chichana, Nov. 2d, 1813.

“Never was any thing so disgraceful in the annals of the world as the conduct of all the Spanish authorities on the occasion[700] of the sickness breaking out. It is believed that no persons have the sickness twice, and as almost every family in Cadiz has passed the epidemic of the fever the interested merchants would not allow it to be said that the epidemic existed, they have continued to issue clear bills of health to vessels leaving the port in the height of the mortality and did all they could to intimidate the government and Cortez into remaining amongst them.”

Sir Henry Wellesley to lord Wellington.

Sept. 13th, 1813.

“A curious scene has been passing here lately. The permanent deputation[13] having been appointed the Cortez closed their session on the 14th. There had been for some days reports of the prevalence of the yellow fever which had excited alarm. On the 16th in the evening, I received an official note from the ministers of state apprizing me of the intention of the government to proceed to Madrid on the following day, but without assigning any reason for so sudden a resolution. At night I went to the regency, thinking this was an occasion when it would be right to offer them some pecuniary assistance. I found Agar and Ciscar together, the cardinal being ill of the gout. They told me that the prevalence of the disorder was the sole cause of their determination to leave Cadiz; and Ciscar particularly dwelt upon the necessity of removing, saying he had seen the fatal effects of delay at Carthagena. They then told me that there was disturbance in the town, in consequence of which they determined on summoning the extraordinary Cortez. I went from the regency to the Cortez. A motion was made for summoning the ministers to account for the proceedings of the regency. Never was I witness to so disgraceful a scene of lying and prevarication. The ministers insisted that it was not the intention of the regency to leave Cadiz until the Cortez had been consulted, although I had in my pocket the official note announcing their intention to do so, and had been told by Ciscar that the extraordinary Cortez was assembled for no other reason than because there were disturbances in the town.”

Ditto to Ditto.

Cadiz, Dec. 10th, 1813.

“The party for placing the princess at the head of the Spanish regency is gaining strength, and I should not be surprised if that[701] measure were to be adopted soon after our arrival at Madrid, unless a peace and the return of Ferdinand should put an end to all such projects.”

Mr. Stuart to lord Wellington.

June 11th, 1813.

“The repugnance of the Admiralty to adopt the measures suggested by your lordship at the commencement of the American war for the protection of the coast, has been followed by events which have fully justified your opinion. Fifteen merchantmen have been taken off Oporto in a fortnight and a valuable Portuguese homeward-bound merchant ship was captured three days ago close to the bar of Lisbon.”

No. IV.

Extract from a manuscript memoir by captain Norton, thirty-fourth regiment.

COMBAT OF MAYA.

The thirty-ninth regiment, commanded by the hon. col. O’Callaghan, then immediately engaged with the French and after a severe contest also retired, the fiftieth was next in succession and they also after a gallant stand retired, making way for the ninety-second which met the advancing French column first with its right wing drawn up in line, and after a most destructive fire and heavy loss on both sides the remnant of the right wing retired, leaving a line of killed and wounded that appeared to have no interval; the French column advanced up to this line and then halted, the killed and wounded of the ninety-second forming a sort of rampart, the left wing then opened its fire on the column, and as I was but a little to the right of the ninety-second I could not help reflecting painfully how many of the wounded of their right wing must have unavoidably suffered from the fire of their comrades. The left wing after doing good service and sustaining a loss equal to the first line retired.

[702]

COMBAT OF RONCESVALLES.

Extracts from general Cole’s and marshal Soult’s Official Reports, MSS.

General Cole to lord Wellington.

Heights in front of Pampeluna, July 27th, 1813.

——“The enemy having in the course of the night turned those posts, were now perceived moving in very considerable force along the ridge leading to the Puerto de Mendichurri. I therefore proceeded in that direction and found that their advance had nearly reached the road leading from Roncesvalles pass to Los Alduides, from which it is separated by a small wooded valley. Owing to the difficulty of the communications the head of major-general Ross’s brigade could not arrive there sooner; the major-general however, with great decision, attacked them with the Brunswick company and three companies of the twentieth, all he had time to form; these actually closed with the enemy and bayonetted several in the ranks. They were however forced to yield to superior numbers, and to retire across the valley, the enemy attempted to follow them but were repulsed with loss, the remainder of the brigade having come up.”

Marshal Soult to the Minister of War.

“Linzoin, 26 Juiller, 1813.

“Leurs pertes ont également été considérables, soit à l’attaque du Lindouz par le général Reille ou le 20^me regiment a été presque détruit à la suite d’une charge à la bayonnette executée par un bataillon du 6^me leger, division Foy, soit à l’attaque d’Altobiscar par le général Clauzel.”

Extract from the correspondence of the duke of Dalmatia with the Minister of War.

Ascain, 12 Août, 1813.

“Dés a présent V. E. voit la situation de l’armée, elle connait ses forces, celles de l’ennemi, et elle se fait sans doute une idée de ses projets, et d’avance elle peut apprécier ce qu’il est en notre pouvoir de faire; je ne charge point le tableau, je dis ma pensée sans détour, et j’avoue que si l’ennemi emploie tous ses moyens,[703] ainsi que probablement il le fera, ceux que nous pourrons en ce moment lui opposer etant de beaucoup inferieurs, nous ne pourrons pas empêcher qu’ils ne fasse beaucoup de mal. Mon devoir est de le dire à V. E. quoique je tienne une autre language aux troupes et au pays, et que d’ailleurs je ne néglige aucun moyen pour remplir de mon mieux la tache qui m’est imposée.”

No. V.

Extracted from the Imperial Muster-Rolls.

Report of the movements of the army of Arragon during the first fifteen days of September, 1813.

“Le 12^eme toute l’armée d’Aragon se reunit a Molino del Rey; partie de celle de Catalonia et la garrison de Barcelonne se placent a droite a Ollessa et Martorel, pour partir tous ensemble a 8 heures du soir et se porter le droite par San Sadurni, le rest par le grande route d’Ordal sur Villa Franca, ou l’armée Anglaise etait rasemble. General Harispe rencontré a onze heures du soir un fort advant garde au Col d’Ordal dans les anciens ratranchemens. Un combat de plus vif s’engagea sous les ordres du general de l’avant garde Mesclop. Le 7^eme et 44^eme reg^ns. montrerent une haute valeur, ainsi qu’une partie d’116^eme. Les positions sont prise et reprise, et nous restent enfin, couvert des morts et de blesses Anglais. Dans la pursuite le 4^eme houssards se saissirent des 4 pieces de cannon Anglais, &c. avec trois ou quatre cents prisoniers, presque tous de la 27^eme reg^n. Anglais. Le droit, ayant rencontrer des obstacles et quelques troupes ennemis a combattre dans les passages, est retarde dans sa marche, et n’arriva pas avec le jour au rendezvouz entre L’Ongat et Grenada. Un battalion de 117^eme venant à gauche, par Bejas sur Avionet, rejoint l’armée en position, avec des prisoniers.

“Le marechal Suchet directé une movement de cavalrie et de l’artillerie qui tenaient la tête pour donner le tems à l’infanterie d’entrer en ligne. Les Anglais etaient en battaile sur trois lignes en avant de Villa Franca, ils commencerent aussitot leur retraite en bon ordre. On les poursuiverent et on les harcelerent, la cavalrie fit plusieurs charges assez vive. Ils opposerent de la resistance, essuyerent des pertes, surtout en cavalrie, precipiterent leur[704] marche, brulerent un pont et s’eloignerent vers Arbos et Vendrils, laissant plus que 150 hommes pris et beaucoup des morts et des blesses, surtout des houssards de Brunswick. Nôtre avant garde va ce soir à Vendrils et plusieurs certaines de deserteurs sont ramassé.”

No. VI.

No. 1.—Extract from the official state of the allied army, commanded by lieutenant-general sir John Murray, at the Col de Balaguer, 17th June, 1813. Exclusive of officers, sergeants, and drummers.

No. 2.—Extract from the original weekly state of the Anglo-Sicilian force, commanded by lieutenant-general sir William Clinton. Head-quarters, Taragona, 25th September, 1813. Exclusive of officers, sergeants, and drummers.

No. 3.—Extract from the original state of the Mallorquina division (Whittingham’s.) Taragona, 15th of December, 1813.

No. 4.—Extract from the original state of the first army commanded by the camp-marshal, Don Francisco Copons et Navia. Head-quarters, Vich, 1st of August, 1813.

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No. 5.—Extract from the original state of the second army commanded by the camp-marshal, Don Francisco Xavier Elio. Vinaros, 19th September, 1833.

Note.—This state includes Villa Campa’s, Sarzfield’s, Duran’s, the Empecinado’s, and Roche’s divisions, besides the troops immediately under Elio himself.

No. VII.

No. 1.—Force of the Anglo-Portuguese army under the marquis of Wellington’s command. Extracted from the original morning state for the 24th of July, 1813.

No. 2.—Anglo-Portuguese force. Extracted from the original morning state, 15th of October, 1813.

No. 3.—Anglo-Portuguese force, from the original morning state, 9th November, 1813.

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No. 4.—Sir Rowland Hill’s force at the battle of St. Pierre. Extracted from the original morning state, 13th December, 1813.

No. 5.—Anglo-Portuguese force. Extracted from the original morning state, 13th February, 1814.

No. 6.—Anglo-Portuguese force. Extracted from the original morning state, 10th of April, 1814.

No. 7.—Actual strength of the infantry divisions engaged in the battle of Toulouse. Extracted from the original morning state, 10th April, 1814.

Note.—There is no separate state for the cavalry on the 10th of April, but on the 15th of May, 1814, they stood as follows.

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Note.—My authority for the number of guns employed during this campaign are copies of the returns given to me by sir Alexander Dickson who commanded that arm. The number of artillerymen is not borne on the morning states, but in the original weekly state of the 15th of May, 1814, I find the artillerymen, engineers, drivers, and waggon-train, amounted to four thousand eight hundred and twenty-one, with five thousand and thirty horses and mules. This may be taken as the average strength during the campaign, but more than half were with sir John Hope and some with lord Dalhousie. Wherefore, the number at the battle of Toulouse could not have exceeded fifteen hundred, making a total of all ranks and arms of fifty-three thousand combatants.

No. VIII.

No. 1.—General state of the French armies under Soult and Suchet. Extracted from the Imperial Muster-rolls, July 1813. The armies of the north centre and south being by an imperial decree reorganised in one body, taking the title of the army of Spain.

No. 2.—15th of September, 1813.

Note.—The garrison of San Sebastian though captive is borne on this state.

This is the last general state of the French army in my possession but the two following notes were inserted in the Imperial Rolls.

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No. 3.—Detailed state of the army of Spain, July 1813, when Soult took the command.

No. 4.—Detailed state of the army of Spain, 16th of September, 1813.

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No. IX.

Orders for the several divisions of the allied army for the attack of the enemy’s fortified position in front of Toulouse for to-morrow, 1st April, 1814. Published in the United Service Journal, October 1838.

(Extract.)

“St. Jory, 9th April, 1814.

“The front attack of the third division is to extend from the river Garonne to the great road which leads from the village of La Lande to Toulouse (the road from Montauban) inclusive of that road.

“The light division will be immediately on the left of the third division, and it will extend its front of attack from the great road above-mentioned until it connects its left flank with the right of the Spanish troops.

“The operations of these two divisions are meant, however, more as diversions than as real attacks; it not being expected that they will be able to force any of the passes of the canal which covers Toulouse. The line of the canal is to be threatened chiefly at the bridges and at the locks or any other points where the form of the ground, or other circumstances most favour the advance of the troops. A considerable part both of the third and of the light divisions must be kept in reserve.”

Note.—The analysis of the allied army on the 10th of April, given in Appendix VII. Sections 6 and 7, has been very carefully made and faithfully set down; but as the real number of the allies has lately become a point of dispute between French and English writers, I here give the Morning State of the whole army, accurately printed from the original document delivered by the adjutant-general to lord Wellington on the morning of the 10th of April, 1814. The reader will thus be enabled, with the help of my text, to trace each division in its course and ascertain its true numbers.

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No. X.

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MORNING STATE of the FORCES in the PENINSULA, under the Command of HIS EXCELLENCY FIELD-MARSHAL THE MARQUIS OF WELLINGTON, K.G. Head-Quarters, St. Jory, 10th April, 1814.