The Passage of the Lower Bidassoa. (Oct. 1813.)
On the 6th the night set in heavily. A sullen thunderstorm, gathering about the craggy summit of the Peña 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, disposed a number of guns and howitzers along the crest of San Marcial, and his columns secretly attained their stations along the banks of the river. The Spaniards, one brigade of Guards, and Wilson’s Portuguese, stretching from the Biriatu fords to the broken bridge of Behobia, were ensconced behind the lower ridge of San Marcial, which had been seized by the French in the attack of the 31st; another brigade of Guards and the Germans were concealed near Irun, close to a ford, below bridge, called the Great Jonco; the fifth division were covered by a river embankment opposite Andaya; Sprye’s Portuguese and Lord Aylmer’s brigade were posted in the ditch of Fuenterabia.
All the tents were left standing in the camps, and the enemy, seeing no change on the morning of the 7th, were unsuspicious; but at seven o’clock, the fifth division and Aylmer’s brigade, emerging from their concealment took the sands in two columns. The left one moved against the French camp of the Sans Culottes, the other against the ridge of Andaya, but no shot was fired until they passed the low water channel, when an English rocket was sent up from the steeple of Fuenterabia as a signal. Then the artillery opened from San Marcial, the troops near Irun, covered by the fire of a battery, made for the Jonco, and the passage above the bridge also commenced.
From the crest of San Marcial seven columns could now be seen at once, attacking on a line of five miles; those above bridge plunging at once into the fiery contest, those below, appearing in the distance like huge serpents sullenly winding over the heavy sands. The Germans missed the Jonco ford and got into deep water, yet 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 made a false attack on D’Erlon’s positions; the Portuguese brigade under Colonel Douglas, was however pushed too far and got beaten with the loss of a hundred and fifty men.
Soult now comprehending the true state of affairs hurried to his right, but his camps on the Bidassoa were lost before he arrived. For when the British artillery first opened, Maucune’s troops assembled at their different posts, and the French guns opened from the Louis XIV. and Caffé Républicain; then the alarm spread, and Boyer marched from Urogne to support Maucune, without waiting for the junction of his 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, were menacing 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. Andaya, guarded only by a picquet, was meanwhile abandoned, and Reille, thinking the camp of the Sans Culottes would be lost before Boyer’s men could reach it, sent a battalion there from the centre; he thus weakened the chief point; for the British brigades of the fifth division were now bearing from Andaya towards the Croix des Bouquets under a fire of guns and musketry.
The first division had passed the river, one column above bridge, preceded by Wilson’s Portuguese, the other below, preceded by the German light troops, who with the aid of the artillery on San Marcial won the Caffé Républicain and the mountain of Louis XIV., driving the French to the Croix des Bouquets. This last was the key of the position, and towards it guns and troops were now hastening from both sides, but the Germans were there brought to a check, for the heights were strong and Boyer’s leading battalions close at hand; at that moment however, Colonel Cameron, coming up with the 9th Regiment, passed through the German skirmishers and vehemently ascended the first height, whereupon the French opened their ranks to let their guns retire, and then retreated at full speed to a second ridge, somewhat lower, but only to be approached on a narrow front. Cameron as quickly threw his men into a single column and bore against this new position under a concentrated fire, yet his violent course did not seem to dismay the French until within ten yards when the furious shout and charge of the 9th appalled them and the ridges of the Croix des Bouquets were won as far as the royal road. Cameron 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, had gathered on other ridges close at hand.
The entrenched camp above Biriatu had been at first well defended in front, but the Spanish right wing being opposed only by a single battalion, soon won the Mandale mountain whereupon the French fell back from the camp to the Calvaire d’Urogne. Then Reille, beaten at the Croix des Bouquets and having both his flanks turned, the left by the Spaniards, the right along the sea-coast, retreated in great disorder through the village of Urogne. The British skirmishers entered that place in pursuit, but were immediately beaten out again by the second brigade of Boyer’s division; for Soult had now arrived with part of Villatte’s reserve and many guns, and by his presence restored order just as retreat was degenerating into flight.
Reille lost eight guns and four hundred men; the allies only six hundred men, of which half were Spaniards, so easy had the skill of the English general rendered this stupendous operation. But if Soult, penetrating Wellington’s design, had met the allies with the sixteen thousand troops of that quarter, instead of the five thousand actually engaged, the passage could scarcely have been forced; and a simple check would have been tantamount to a terrible disaster, because in two hours the returning tide would have come with a swallowing flood upon the rear.