BOOK XIV.
Passage of the Nive—Battles in front of Bayonne—Combat of Arcangues—First Battle of Barrouilhet—Second Battle of Barrouilhet—Third Combat of Barrouilhet—Battle of St. Pierre—Operations beyond the Nive.
Soult, having lost the Nivelle, at first designed to leave part of his force in the entrenched camp of Bayonne, and take a flanking position behind the Nive, half-way between Bayonne and St. Jean Pied de Port. With his left on the entrenched mountain of Ursouia, his right on the heights above Cambo, the double bridge-head of which would enable him to make offensive movements on the left bank, he hoped to confine Wellington to the district between that river and the sea, and render his situation very uneasy during the winter if he did not retire. He was forced to modify this plan; the Bayonne camp was incomplete; the work on the Ursouia mountain had been neglected, contrary to his orders; the bridge-head at Cambo was only commenced on the right bank, and on the left constructed defectively; the river in dry weather was fordable also at Ustaritz below Cambo, and in many places above that point. Remaining therefore at Bayonne with six divisions and Villatte’s reserve, he sent D’Erlon with three divisions to reinforce Foy at Cambo.
But neither D’Erlon’s divisions nor Soult’s whole army could have stopped Wellington if other circumstances had permitted him to follow up his victory. Neither the works of the Bayonne camp nor the barrier of the Nive could have barred the progress of his fiery host, if Nature had not opposed her obstacles. The clayey country at the foot of the Pyrenees was impassable after rain, except by the royal road near the coast or by that of St. Jean Pied de Port, and both were in the power of the French. On the bye-roads the infantry sunk to the mid-leg, the cavalry above the horses’ knees, even to the saddle-girths in some places, and the artillery could not move at all. Rain and fogs on the 12th had enabled Soult to regain his camp and secure the high road to St. Jean Pied de Port; his troops then easily recovered their proper posts on the Nive, while Wellington, fixed in the swamps, could only make the ineffectual demonstration at Ustaritz and Cambo, already noticed. On the 16th, uneasy for his right flank, he directed Hill to menace Cambo again, where Foy had orders to preserve the bridge-head on the right bank in any circumstances, and only abandon the left bank in the event of a general attack; but the officer at the bridge now destroyed in a panic all the works and the bridge itself. This was a great loss to Soult, and enabled Wellington to take cantonments.
Bad weather was not the only obstacle to the British operations. During the battle of the 10th Freyre’s and Longa’s soldiers had pillaged Ascain and murdered several persons; and next day all the Spanish troops committed excesses in various places. On the right, Mina’s battalions, who were mutinous, made a plundering and murdering incursion towards Hellette; the Portuguese and British soldiers commenced like outrages, killing two persons in one town, but General Pakenham, arriving at the moment, put the perpetrators to death, nipping this wickedness in the bud at his own risk, for legally he had not that power. He was a man whose generosity, humanity and chivalric spirit, excited the admiration of every honourable person; yet is he the officer who, falling at New Orleans, has been so foully traduced by American writers. Pre-eminently distinguished by his detestation of inhumanity and outrage, he has been with astounding falsehood represented as instigating his troops there to 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 men turn with loathing from the sickening folly, what can be expected?
Terrified by these excesses the French fled even from the large towns. Wellington soon dissipated their fears. 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 mutinous battalions under Mina, placed Giron’s Andalusians in the Bastan under O’Donnel, quartered Freyre’s Gallicians between Irun and Ernani, and sent 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 people returned, and, finding strict discipline preserved, adopted an amicable intercourse with the invaders. However the loss of such a mass of troops, and the weather, reduced the army for a moment to a state of inactivity, the head-quarters were fixed at St. Jean de Luz and the troops took permanent cantonments.
The left wing extended from Bidart on the sea-coast to the Nive, on an opening of six miles. The right wing, thrown back at right angles, lined the bank of that river for eight miles. In front of Bidart, the broad ridge of Barrouilhet crossing the great coast-road was occupied, the principal post being the mayor’s house, which was covered by tanks and pools, between which the road led. The centre of the left wing was on a continuation of this ridge near the village of Arcangues; the right was on the hill of San Barbe, close to Ustaritz on the Nive.
These posts were not established without combats. On the 18th the generals, John Wilson and Vandeleur, were wounded, and next day Beresford, who had seized the small bridge of Urdains at the junction of some roads, was attacked in force, yet maintained the bridge. This acquisition covered the right flank of the troops at Arcangues, but on the 23rd the light division had an action there, very ill managed by the divisional generals, and lost ninety men, of which eighty fell in the 43rd Regiment.
Wellington, having nearly nine thousand cavalry and a hundred guns, fretted on the curb in his contracted position until December, when the weather cleared and he resolved to force the line of the Nive and extend to his right, a resolution which led to sanguinary battles, for Soult’s positions were then strong and well-chosen. Bayonne, his base, being situated at the confluence of the Nive and the Adour rivers furnished bridges for the passage of both; and though weak in itself, was covered by Vauban’s entrenched camp, which was exceedingly strong and not to be lightly attacked. In this camp Soult’s right, under Reille, three divisions including Villatte’s reserve, touched on the lower Adour, where there was a flotilla. His front was protected by inundations and a swamp, through which the royal coast-road led to St. Jean de Luz, and along which fortified outposts extended to Anglet. On his left Clausel’s three divisions extended to the Nive, being partly covered by the swamp, partly by a fortified house, partly by an artificial inundation spreading from the small bridge of Urdains to the Nive; and beyond these defences the country held by the allies was a deep clay, covered with small farm-houses and woods, very unfavourable for movement.
On the right of the Nive, Vauban’s camp being continued to the upper Adour under the name of the “Front of Mousserolles,” was held by D’Erlon’s four divisions, with posts extending up the right bank of the Nive; that is to say, D’Armagnac fronted Ustaritz, and Foy was at Cambo. The communication with the left bank of the Nive was double; circuitous through Bayonne, direct by a bridge of boats. Moreover, 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, whence it communicated with Foy’s left by the great road of St. Jean Pied de Port.
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 French had magazines at the two latter places; yet they were fed with difficulty, and 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 obtain secret intelligence from the interior, were Wellington’s inducements to force a passage over the Nive. But to place an army 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 army possessing short communications, good roads, and entrenched camps for retreat, was a delicate and dangerous operation.
Hope and Alten, having twenty-four thousand combatants and twelve guns, were ordered to drive back all the French advanced posts in front of their camp, between the Nive and the sea, on the 9th, and thus keep Soult in check while Beresford and Hill crossed the Nive—Beresford at Ustaritz with pontoons, Hill at Cambo and Larressore by fords. Both, generals were then to repair the bridges at those points with materials prepared beforehand. To cover Hill’s movement on the right and protect the valley of the Nive from General Paris, who being at Lahoussoa might have penetrated to the rear of the army during the operations, Morillo’s Spaniards were to cross at Itzassu. At this time D’Armagnac was opposite Ustaritz, Foy’s division extended from Halzou, in front of Larressore to the fords above Cambo, having the Ursouia mountain between its left and Paris: the rest of D’Erlon’s troops occupied some heights in advance of Mousserolles.