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 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 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 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 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 packet[Appendix, 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 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 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 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 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; 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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; 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 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.