English Passage of the Bidassoa and Second Combat of Vera (Oct. 1813.)
The fall of San Sebastian gave Lord Wellington a new port, and let loose a considerable body of troops; Austria had joined the allies in Germany; the English cabinet had promised the continental sovereigns that France should be immediately invaded; the English newspaper editors were actively deceiving the people of all countries by their dictatorial absurd projects and assumptions; the Bourbon partizans were conspiring, and the Duke of Berri desired to join the British army, pretending that twenty thousand Frenchmen were armed and organized to receive him. All was exultation and extravagance, but Wellington, despising such inflated hopes and promises, exposed the absurdity of the newspapers, and checked 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.”
Far from designing to invade France, he felt his own position insecure while Suchet was master of Catalonia: and he was only prevented from transferring the war to that province by the disasters Napoleon now experienced in Germany, rendering it impossible to reinforce Soult. However, pressed by the ministers and the allied sovereigns, he so far bent his military judgment to political pressure, as to undertake the establishing his army in a menacing position on French ground; and in that view matured an offensive movement as daring as any undertaken during the whole war. But to comprehend all the audacious grandeur of this operation, the relative positions of the hostile armies must be glanced at.
Soult’s base and place of arms was Bayonne, from whence roads spread out to the Pyrenees like a fan. Two only were great causeways. One, on the French left hand, run to St. Jean Pied de Port; the other, on their right, run along the sea-coast through St. Jean de Luz to Irun. Between these points, a distance of nearly forty miles, the space was filled transversely by a double range of mountain ridges nearly parallel to each other, on which the armies were posted; not in a continuous line, for there were no direct lateral communications, but as the passes and inaccessible peaks governed the dispositions. Thus on the French left, at St. Jean Pied de Port, Foy occupied with fifteen thousand men an entrenched camp in front of that fortress, and was opposed by Hill’s right wing, which was planted at the head of the Val Carlos, in the Roncesvalles and Alduides; but Foy could only communicate by a circuitous road, leading across the Nive river at Cambo, with the French centre, entrenched, under D’Erlon, at Ainhoa and Urdax, opposite the Maya passes, and menacing the Bastan, where Hill’s left was posted.
At Urdax the Nivelle river bisected the French positions, and then, turning to the left, run to St. Jean de Luz. The line of their right centre, beyond that river, was under Clausel, and thrown forward to Vera, along another batch of mountainous ridges, which, touching on the Bidassoa, lined its right bank to the bridge of Behobia near Iran.
From Clausel’s right to the mouth of the Bidassoa, Soult’s right wing, under Reille, guarded the French territory.
Clausel’s ground comprised the Great La Rhune mountain, two thousand seven hundred feet high, whose bleak rocky head overlooked everything around, and from whose flanks the positions of Sarre shot out on the French left, and on their right the Commissari, Bayonette, and Mandale ridge—the two first overhanging Vera, the last lining the Bidassoa down to San Marcial and Irun.
Opposed to Clausel Wellington held, first the Atchiola mountain on the left of Maya, then the Echallar ridges as far as the Ivantelly mountain facing Sarre, and the Santa Barbara ridge abutting on the Bidassoa at Vera, facing the Bayonette and Commissari. On the left bank of the Bidassoa he occupied the flanks of the Peña de Haya to San Marcial, from whence his redoubts, as before noticed, run along the river to the Jaizquibel.
Soult had commenced a chain of entrenched camps and redoubts along his whole line, and in the low country, from the end of the Mandale to the sea, was constructing a double chain of entrenched positions and camps bearing many names and to be noticed in the narrative. These works were approaching completion when Wellington resolved to seize the Great La Rhune with its dependents on both flanks, at the same time forcing the passage of the Lower Bidassoa in face of Soult’s entrenchments. Thus he would establish his left in the French territory, from Sarre to the sea, and bring within his own lines the Rhune, the Commissari, and Bayonette mountains, which would give him a salient menacing point of impregnable strength towards France, and shorten his lateral communication on both flanks of those mountains. It would also give entire command of a road running up the Bidassoa from Irun to Vera, and secure the port of Fuenterabia, which, though bad in winter, was desirable for a general whose supplies came from the ocean, and who with scanty means of transport had to sustain the perverse negligence always, and often the hostility of the Spanish authorities.
He had designed to force the passage in the middle of September before the French works were advanced, but his pontoons were delayed by a negligence of orders; the weather then became bad, and the attempt, which depended upon the state of the tides and fords, was of necessity deferred to the 7th of October.
Great subtlety was to be combined with wonderful boldness, for the Bidassoa was broad and tidal below Irun, and the ridges lining it above that point rough and terrible to assail; both water and mountain line were strengthened with works, incomplete indeed, but already of strength in defence; the river was also to be passed and the positions beyond carried between tides, or the troops would be swallowed by the returning flood. Hence to mislead Soult, to support the blockade of Pampeluna, and to ascertain Foy’s true position and strength at St. Jean Pied de Port, which menaced anew that blockade, Wellington brought up Del Parque’s army from Tudela to Pampeluna, transferred the Andalusians at the latter place to Giron at Echallar, and directed Mina to gather his irregulars around the Roncesvalles: then repairing himself to that quarter on the 1st of October, he surprised a French post on the Ayrola rock, cut off a scouting party in the Val de Baygorry, and swept away two thousand sheep.
These movements awakened Soult’s jealousy. He expected an invasion of France without being able to ascertain from what quarter, and at first, deceived by false information that Cole had reinforced Hill, thought Mina’s troops and the Andalusians were used to mask an attack by the Val de Baygorry. The arrival of the light cavalry in the Bastan, Wellington’s presence at Roncesvalles, and the loss of the Ayrola post, seemed to confirm this; but he knew that pontoons were at Oyarzun, and the deserters, very numerous at this time, said the real object was the Great Rhune. On the other hand, a French commissary, taken at San Sebastian and exchanged after remaining twelve days at Wellington’s head-quarters, assured him nothing there indicated a serious attack. This weighed much, because the negligence about 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, merely to please the allied sovereigns in Germany, should thereby seek to establish his left wing in France, when the most obvious line for a permanent invasion was by his right and centre, and there was no apparent cause for deferring his operations.
The cause of the procrastination, namely, the state of the tides and fords on the Lower Bidassoa, was necessarily impenetrable, and Soult finally inclined to think the only design was to secure the blockade of Pampeluna by menacing the French, and impeding their entrenchments which were now becoming strong. Nevertheless, as all the deserters and spies came with the same story, he recommended increased vigilance along the whole line; yet so little did he anticipate the real 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 having no fear for his right. But Wellington could not diminish his troops on the side of Roncesvalles, lest a force should unite at St. Jean Pied de Port to raise the blockade of Pampeluna; and at Maya, Hill was already menacing Soult between the Nive and the Nivelle: it was therefore only with his left wing and left centre, and against the French right, that he could act while Pampeluna held out.
Early in October a reinforcement of twelve hundred British soldiers arrived from England. Mina was then on the right of Hill, who was thus enabled to call Campbell’s Portuguese from the Alduides, and replace at Maya the third division, which, shifting to its left, then occupied the heights of Zagaramurdi and enabled 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, for which Wellington assembled the fourth and light divisions on Santa Barbara, Giron’s Spaniards being on their right, and Longa’s on their left. The sixth division, supported by the third, was at Zagaramurdi to make a demonstration against D’Erlon’s advanced posts. Thus, without weakening his line between Roncesvalles and Echallar, he could assail the Rhune mountain and its dependents with twenty thousand men, and had still twenty-four thousand disposable for the passage of the Lower Bidassoa.
It has been before said that between the Andarlasa ford, below Vera, and the fords of 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, and against them Wellington directed Freyre’s Spaniards from San Marcial.
Between Biriatu and the sea the advanced points of defence were the mountain of Louis XIV., a ridge called the Caffé Républicain, and the town of Andaya; behind which the Calvaire d’Urogne, the Croix des Bouquets, and the camp of the Sans Culottes, served as rallying posts. The first and fifth divisions, and the unattached brigades of Wilson and Lord Aylmer, in all fifteen thousand men, were destined to assault these works; and the Spanish fishermen had secretly indicated three fords practicable at low water between the bridge of Behobia and the sea. Wellington therefore, with an astonishing hardihood, designed to pass his columns at the old known fords above and these secret fords below bridge, 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 strong ridges of defence; but relying on his previous measures the English general disdained these dangers, and his anticipations were not belied by the result. For the unlikelihood that, having a better line of operations, he would force such a river as the Bidassoa at its mouth, entirely deceived Soult, whose lieutenants were also very negligent. Of Reille’s two divisions, one under Boyer was dispersed, labouring on the entrenched camp of Urogne far from the river; Villatte’s reserve was at Ascain and Serres; and five thousand men of Maucune’s division, though on the first line, were unexpectant of an attack. The works on the Mandale were finished, those at Biriatu in a forward state, but from the latter to the sea all were imperfect.