BOOK XI.
Pyrenees—Combat of Roncesvalles—Combat of Linzoain—Combat of Maya—Combat of Zabaldica—First Battle of Sauroren—Combat of Buenza—Second Battle of Sauroren—Combat of Doña Maria—Combats of Echallar and Ivantelly.
The battle of Vittoria was fought the 21st of June, and on the 1st of July Marshal Soult, under a decree issued at Dresden, succeeded Joseph as lieutenant to the emperor.
The 12th, travelling with surprising expedition, that marshal assumed command of the French troops, now reorganized 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.[32]
Reinforced from the interior, Soult’s army was composed of nine divisions of infantry, a reserve and two regular divisions of cavalry, besides light horsemen attached to the infantry. Including garrisons, and thirteen German, Italian, and Spanish battalions not belonging to the organization, he had one hundred and fourteen thousand men: and as the armies of Catalonia and Aragon numbered at 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.
Soult was one of the few men whose energy rendered them worthy lieutenants of the emperor, and with singular zeal and ability he now served. Nominally he had ninety-seven thousand men under arms, with eighty-six pieces of artillery; but the foreign battalions, most of which were to return to their own countries for the disciplining of new levies, only counted as part of the garrisons of Pampeluna, San Sebastian, Santoña and Bayonne: they amounted to seventeen thousand, and the permanent army of Spain furnished therefore, only seventy-seven thousand five hundred men under arms, seven thousand being cavalry. Its condition was not satisfactory. The military administration was disorganized, the soldiers were discouraged by disaster, discipline had been deteriorated, and the people were flying from the frontier.
To secure his base and restore order ere he retook the offensive was Soult’s desire; but Napoleon’s orders were imperative against delay, and he was compelled to immediate action, though Wellington’s advance from Portugal had been so rapid that the great resources of the French frontier were not immediately available, and everything was reeling and rocking in terror from the blow given to the army at Vittoria.
Bayonne, a fortress of no great strength, had been entirely neglected. But the arming and provisioning that and other places; the restoration of an intrenched camp, originally traced by Vauban to cover Bayonne; the enforcement of discipline; the removal of the immense train of Joseph’s wasteful court; the establishment of a general system for supplies, and judicious efforts to stimulate the civil authorities and excite the national spirit, soon indicated the presence of a great commander. The soldiers’ confidence then revived, and some leading merchants of Bayonne zealously seconded the general: the people were however more inclined to avoid burdens than to answer calls on their patriotism.
Soult examined the line of military positions on the 14th, and ordered Reille, who then occupied the passes of Vera and Echallar, to prepare pontoons for throwing two bridges over the Bidassoa at Biriatou; Wellington, as before said, drove him from those passes next day, yet he prepared his bridges, and by the 16th, Soult was ready for a gigantic offensive movement.
His army was divided into three corps of battle and a reserve. Clausel with the left was at St. Jean Pied de Port, and in communication, by the French frontier, with a division under General Paris at Jaca, belonging to Suchet but under Soult’s orders.
Drouet, Count D’Erlon, with the centre, occupied the heights near Espelette and Ainhoa.
Reille with the right wing was on the mountains overlooking Vera from the side of France.
The reserve, under Villatte, guarded the right bank of the Bidassoa from the mouth to Irun, at which place the stone bridge was destroyed. The heavy cavalry under Trielhard, and the light horsemen under Pierre Soult, the marshal’s brother, were on the banks of the Nive and the Adour.
To oppose this force Wellington had in Navarre and Guipuscoa above a hundred thousand men. Of these the Anglo-Portuguese furnished fifty thousand infantry and seven thousand cavalry; the Spanish regulars under Giron, Abispal, and Carlos España, about twenty-five thousand infantry; the rest were irregular; and hence the troops in line were, of the allies, eighty-two thousand, of the French seventy-eight thousand.
The theatre of operations was quadrilateral, with sides from forty to sixty miles in length, having a fortress at each angle, namely, Bayonne, San Jean Pied de Port, San Sebastian and Pampeluna, all in possession of the French. The interior, broken and tormented by peaked mountains, narrow craggy passes, deep watercourses, dreadful precipices and forests, appeared a wilderness which no military combinations could embrace. The great spinal ridge of the Pyrenees furnished a clue to the labyrinth. Running diagonally across the quadrilateral, it entirely separated Bayonne, St. Jean Pied de Port and San Sebastian from Pampeluna, and the troops blockading the latter were thus cut off from those besieging San Sebastian, the only direct communication between them being a great road running behind the mountains from Tolosa, by Irurzun, to Pampeluna.
A secondary range of mountains on the French side of the Great Spine, inclosing the valley of Bastan and lining that of the Bidassoa, furnished positions for the centre and left of the covering armies, with interior but difficult lateral communications.
The troops covering Pampeluna were on the Great Spine of the Pyrenees. Behind them were valleys into which the passes across the spine led, descending at the other side in parallel lines, and giving to each division means for a concentric retreat on Pampeluna.
Wellington having his battering-train and stores about San Sebastian, which was 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, with singularly strong positions of defence; his centre, twenty-four thousand strong, could in two marches unite with the left 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 of Pampeluna on the right.
Soult thought no decisive result would attend a direct movement upon San Sebastian, and by his seaboard intercourse he knew that place was not in extremity; but he had no communication with Pampeluna, and feared its fall. Wherefore he resolved rapidly to concentrate on his left by means of the great French roads leading to St. Jean Pied de Port, covering his movement by the Nivelle and Nive rivers, and by the positions of his centre: thus he hoped to gather on Wellington’s right quicker than that general could gather to oppose him, and, compensating by numbers the disadvantage of assailing mountain positions, force a way to Pampeluna.
That fortress succoured, he designed to seize the road of Irurzun, and either fall upon the separated divisions of the centre in detail as they descended from the Great Spine, or operate on the rear of the troops besieging San Sebastian, while a corps of observation, left on the Lower Bidassoa, menaced it in front. The siege of San Sebastian and the blockade of Pampeluna would be thus raised, the French army united in an abundant country, and its communication with Suchet secured.
To mislead Wellington by vexing his right, simultaneously with the construction of the bridges against his left, Soult directed General Paris to march from Jaca, when time suited, by the higher valleys towards Sanguessa, to drive the partizans from that side, and join the left of the army when it should have reached Pampeluna. Clausel was directed to repair the roads in his own front, push the heads of columns towards the Roncesvalles pass, and with a strong detachment menace Hill’s flank by the lateral passes of the Bastan.
On the 20th Reille’s troops on the heights of Sarre and Vera, being cautiously relieved by Villatte, marched towards St. Jean Pied de Port, which they were to reach early on the 22nd; and on that day the two divisions of cavalry and parc of artillery were to concentrate at the same place. D’Erlon, with the centre, was to hold his positions in front of Hill while these great movements were taking place.
Villatte, having fifteen thousand sabres and bayonets, remained in observation on the Bidassoa. If threatened by superior forces he was to retire upon the intrenched camp at Bayonne, halting successively on certain positions. If only a small corps crossed the river, he was to drive it vigorously back; and if the allies retired in consequence of Soult’s operations, he was to relieve San Sebastian and follow them briskly by Tolosa.
Rapidity was of vital importance to the French marshal, but heavy rains swelled the streams and ruined the roads in the deep country between Bayonne and the mountains; the head-quarters which should have arrived at St. Jean Pied de Port on the 20th, were a few miles short of that place the 21st, and Reille’s troops were forced to go round by Bayonne to gain the causeway. The cavalry was also retarded, and the army, men and horses, worn down by severe marches. Two days were thus lost, yet the 24th more than sixty thousand fighting men, including cavalry, national guards, and gens d’armes, with sixty-six pieces of artillery, were assembled to force the passes of Roncesvalles and Maya; the former being in the Great Spine, the latter giving entrance to the Bastan. The main road leading to Roncesvalles was repaired, and three hundred sets of bullocks were provided to drag the guns; the national guards of the frontier on the left, ordered to assemble in the night on the heights of Yropil, were reinforced with regular troops to vex and turn the right of the allies at the foundry of Orbaiceta.
At St. Jean Pied de Port Soult was almost in contact with the allies at the passes of the Roncesvalles, which were also the points of the defence nearest to Pampeluna. He had thirty thousand bayonets, the frontier national guards to aid, and his artillery and cavalry were massed behind his infantry; for here the great road from St. Jean Pied de Port to Pampeluna, the only one fit for cannon, entered the mountains: but to understand his movements a short description of the country is necessary, taking the point of departure from his camp.
Before him was the Val Carlos, formed by two descending shoots from the Great Spine of the Pyrenees. That on his left hand separated this valley from the valley of Orbaiceta; that on his right hand separated it from several conjoint valleys, known as the Alduides and Baygorry, the latter name being given to the lower, the former to the upper parts.
The great road to Pampeluna led up the left hand tongue by the remarkable rocks of Château Pignon, near which narrow branches went off to the village of San Carlos on the right, and to the foundry of Orbaiceta on the left. The main line, after ascending to the summit of the Great Spine, turned to the right and run along the crest until it reached the pass of Ibañeta, where, turning to the left, it led down by the famous Roncesvalles into the valley of Urros.
A lateral continuation however run along the magistral crest, beyond the Ibañeta, to another pass called the Mendichuri, which also led down into the Val de Urros; and from Mendichuri there was a way into the Alduides valley through a side pass called the Atalosti.
On Soult’s right hand the Val Carlos was bounded by the ridge and rock of Ayrola, from the summit of which there was a way directly to the Mendichuri and the lateral pass of Atalosti; and the ground between those defiles, called the Lindouz, was an accessible mountain knot, tying all the valleys together and consequently commanding them.
Continuing along the Great Spine, after passing the Atalosti, there would be on the right hand, descending towards the French frontier, the Val de Ayra, the Alduides and the Bastan. On the left hand, descending to Pampeluna, would be the Val de Zubiri and the valley of Lanz, separated from each other by a lofty wooded range. All these valleys on each side were, in their order, connected by roads leading over comparatively low portions of the Great Spine, called by the French cols, or necks, by the Spaniards puertos, or doors.
General Byng and Morillo, the first having sixteen hundred British troops, the second four thousand Spaniards, were in position before Soult. Byng, reinforced with two Spanish battalions, held the rocks of Altobiscar, just above Château Pignon. On his right a Spanish battalion was posted at the foundry of Orbaiceta; on his left Morillo’s remaining Spaniards were near the village of Val Carlos on a minor height called the Iroulepe.
Behind the Great Spine, in the valley of Urros, General Cole held the fourth division in support of Byng; but he was twelve miles off, separated by the Ibañeta pass, and could not come up under four hours. General Campbell, having a Portuguese division two thousand strong, watched the Alduides; but he was eight miles off, and separated by the lateral pass of Atalosti. General Picton, with the third division, was at Olague in the valley of Lanz, on the Spanish side of the Spine; and both he and Campbell could at pleasure gain the valley of Zubiri—Picton by a cross communication, Campbell by the pass of Urtiaga, which was directly in his rear; he could also join Cole in the valley of Urros by the pass of Sahorgain.
In this state of affairs Soult placed twelve thousand infantry within two miles of the Château Pignon, against Byng, and directed the national guards at Yropil, reinforced with regulars, to move into the valley of Orbaiceta and turn the Spaniards at the foundry. A second column, four thousand strong, was placed in the Val Carlos to assail Morillo at Iroulepe. A third column of sixteen thousand, under Reille, assembled, in the night, at the foot of the Ayrola rock, with orders to ascend at daylight and move along the crest of the ridge to seize the culminant Lindouz. From that point detachments were to be pushed through the passes of Ibañeta, Mendichuri, and Sahorgain, into the Roncesvalles, while others extended to the right as far as the pass of Urtiaga, thus cutting off Byng and Morillo from Cole and Hamilton.