History of the war in the Peninsula and in the south of France from the year 1807 to the year 1814, vol. 6

by William Francis Patrick Napier

CHAPTER V.

BATTLES OF THE PYRENEES.

Combat of Roncesvalles.—On the 23d Soult issued1813. July. an order of the day remarkable for its force and frankness. Tracing with a rapid pen the leadingPlan 3. events of the past campaign, he shewed that the disasters sprung from the incapacity of the king, not from the weakness of the soldiers whose military virtue he justly extolled, and whose haughty courage he inflamed by allusions to former glories. He has been, by writers who disgrace English literature with unfounded aspersions of a courageous enemy, accused of unseemly boasting as to his ultimate operations at this time, but the calumny is refuted by the following passage from his dispatch to the minister at war.

“I shall move directly upon Pampeluna, and if I succeed in relieving it I will operate towards my right to embarrass the enemy’s troops in Guipuscoa, Biscay, and Alava, and to enable the reserve to join me, which will relieve St. Sebastian and Santona. If this should happen I will then consider what is to be done, either to push my own attack or to help the army of Aragon, but to look so far ahead would now be temerity.”

It is true that conscious of superior abilities he did not suppress the sentiment of his own worth as a commander, but he was too proud to depreciate brave adversaries on the eve of battle.

“Let us not,” he said, “defraud the enemy of the praise which is due to him. The dispositions of the general have been prompt, skilful, and consecutive, the valour and steadiness of his troops have been praiseworthy.”

Having thus stimulated the ardour of his troops he put himself at the head of Clauzel’s divisions, and on the 25th at daylight led them up against the rocks of Altobiscar.

General Byng, warned the evening before that danger was near, and jealous of some hostile indications towards the village of Val Carlos, had sent the fifty-seventh regiment down there but kept the rest of his men well in hand and gave notice to general Cole who had made a new disposition of his troops. Ross’s brigade was now at Espinal two miles in advance of Viscayret, six miles from the pass of Ibañeta, and eleven from Byng’s position, but somewhat nearer to Morillo. Anson’s brigade was close behind Ross, Stubbs’ Portuguese behind Anson, and the artillery was at Linzoain.

Such was the exact state of affairs when Soult, throwing out a multitude of skirmishers and pushing forward his supporting columns and guns as fast as the steepness of the road and difficult nature of the ground would permit, endeavoured to force Byng’s position; but the British general, undismayed at the multitude of assailants, fought strongly, the French fell fast among the rocks, and their rolling musketry pealed in vain for hours along that cloudy field of battle elevated five thousand feet above the level of the plains. Their numbers however continually increased in front, and the national guards from Yropil, reinforced by Clauzel’s detachments, skirmished with the Spanish battalions at the foundry of Orbaiceta and threatened to turn the right. The Val Carlos was at the same time menaced from Arnegui, and Reille’s divisions ascending the rock of Airola turned Morillo’s left.

About mid-day general Cole arrived at Altobiscar, but his brigades were still distant, and the French renewing their attack neglected the Val Carlos to gather more thickly on the front of Byng. He resisted all their efforts, but Reille made progress along the summit of the Airola ridge. Morillo then fell back towards Ibañeta, and the French were already nearer to that pass than the troops at Altobiscar were, when Ross’s brigade, coming up the pass of Mendichuri, suddenly appeared on the Lindouz, at the instant when the head of Reille’s column being close to Atalosti was upon the point of cutting the communication with Campbell. This officer’s picquets had been attacked early in the morning by the national guards of the Val de Baygorry, but he soon discovered that it was only a feint and therefore moved by his right towards Atalosti when he heard the firing on that side. His march was secured by the Val d’Ayra which separated him from the ridge of Airola along which Reille was advancing, but noting that general’s strength, and at the same time seeing Ross’s brigade labouring up the steep ridge of Mendichuri, Campbell judged that the latter was ignorant of what was going on above. Wherefore sending advice of the enemy’s proximity and strength to Cole, he offered to pass the Atalosti and join in the battle if he could be furnished with transport for his sick, and provisions on the new line of operations.

Before this message could reach Cole, the head of Ross’s column, composed of a wing of the twentieth regiment and a company of Brunswickers, was on the summit of the Lindouz, where most unexpectedly it encountered Reille’s advanced guard. The moment was critical, but Ross an eager hardy soldier called aloud to charge, and captain Tovey of the twentieth running forward with his company crossed a slight wooded hollow and full against the front of the sixth French light infantry dashed with the bayonet. Brave men fell by that weapon on[Appendix, No. 3.] both sides, but numbers prevailing these daring soldiers were pushed back again by the French, Ross however gained his object, the remainder of his brigade had come up and the pass of Atalosti was secured, yet with a loss of one hundred and forty men of the twentieth regiment and forty-one of the Brunswickers.

Previous to this vigorous action general Cole seeing the French in the Val Carlos and in the valley of Orbaiceta, that is to say on both flanks of Byng whose front was not the less pressed, had ordered Anson to reinforce the Spaniards at the foundry, and Stubbs to enter the Val Carlos in support of the fifty-seventh. He now recalled Anson to assist in defence of the Lindouz, and learning from Campbell how strong Reille was, caused Byng, with a view to a final retreat, to relinquish his advanced position at Altobiscar and take a second nearer the Ibañeta. This movement uncovered the road leading down to the foundry of Orbaiceta, but it concentrated all the troops, and at the same time general Campbell, although he could not enter the line of battle, because Cole was unable to supply his demands, made so skilful a display of his Portuguese as to impress Reille with the notion that their numbers were considerable.

During these movements the skirmishing of the light troops continued, but a thick fog coming up the valley prevented Soult from making dispositions for a general attack with his six divisions, and when night fell general Cole still held the great chain of the mountains with a loss of only three hundred and eighty men killed and wounded. His right was however turned by Orbaiceta, he had but ten or eleven thousand bayonets to oppose to thirty thousand, and his line of retreat being for four or five miles down hill and flanked all the way by the Lindouz, was uneasy and unfavourable. Wherefore putting the troops silently in march after dark, he threaded the passes and gained the valley of Urros. His rear-guard composed of Anson’s brigade followed in the morning, general Campbell retired from the Alduides by the pass of Urtiaga to Eugui in the valley of Zubiri, and the Spanish battalion retreating from the foundry of Orbaiceta by the narrow way of Navala rejoined Morillo near Espinal. The great chain was thus abandoned, but the result of the day’s operation was unsatisfactory to the French general; he acknowledged a loss of four hundred men, he had not gained ten miles, and from the passes now abandoned, to Pampeluna, the distance was not less than twenty-two miles, with strong defensive positions in the way where increasing numbers of intrepid enemies were to be expected.

Soult’s combinations, contrived for greater success, had been thwarted, partly by fortune, partly by errors of execution the like of which all generals must expect, and the most experienced are the most resigned as knowing them to be inevitable. The interference of fortune was felt in the fog which rose at the moment when he was ready to thrust forward his heavy masses of troops entire. The failure in execution was Reille’s tardy movement. His orders were to gain with all expedition the Lindouz, that is to say the knot tying the heads of the Alduides, the Val Carlos, the Roncesvalles, and the valley of Urroz. From that position he would have commanded the Mendichuri, Atalosti, Ibañeta and Sahorgain passes, and by moving along the crest of the hills could menace the Urtiaga, Renacabal, and Bellate passes, thus endangering Campbell’s and Hill’s lines of retreat. But when he should have ascended the rocks of Airola he halted to incorporatePellot, Mémoires des Campagnes des Pyrennées. two newly arrived conscript battalions and to issue provisions, and the hours thus lost would have sufficed to seize the Lindouz before general Ross got through the pass of Mendichuri. The fog would still have stopped the spread of the French columns to the extent designed by Soult, but fifteen or sixteen thousand men, placed on the flank and rear of Byng and Morillo, would have separated them from the fourth division, and forced the latter to retreat beyond Viscayret.

Soult however overrated the force opposed to him, supposing it to consist of two British divisions,Official Despatch to the Minister of war, MSS. besides Byng’s brigade and Morillo’s Spaniards. He was probably deceived by the wounded men, who hastily questioned on the field would declare they belonged to the second and fourth divisions, because Byng’s brigade was part of the former; but that general and the Spaniards had without aid sustained Soult’s first efforts, and even when the fourth division came up, less than eleven thousand men, exclusive of sergeants and officers, were present in the fight. Campbell’s Portuguese never entered the line at all, the remainder of the second division was in the Bastan, and the third division was at Olague in the valley of Lanz.

On the 26th the French general put Clauzel’s wing on the track of Cole, and ordered Reille to follow the crest of the mountains and seize the passes leading from the Bastan in Hill’s rear while D’Erlon pressed him in front. That general would thus, Soult hoped, be crushed or thrown on the side of San Estevan; D’Erlon could then reach his proper place in the valley of Zubiri, while the right descended the valley of Lanz and prevented Picton quitting it to aid Cole. A retreat by those generals and on separate lines would thus be inevitable, and the French army could issue forth in a compact order of battle from the mouths of the two valleys against Pampeluna.

COMBAT OF LINZOAIN.

All the columns were in movement at day-break, but every hour brought its obstacle. The fog still hung heavy on the mountain-tops, Reille’s guides, bewildered, refused to lead the troops along the crests, and at ten o’clock having no other resource he marched down the pass of Mendichuri upon Espinal, and fell into the rear of the cavalry and artillery following Clauzel’s divisions. Meanwhile Soult, although retarded also by the fog and the difficulties of the ground, overtook Cole’s rear-guard in front of Viscayret. The leading troops struck hotly upon some British light companies incorporated under the command of colonel Wilson of the forty-eighth, and a French squadron passing round their flank fell on the rear; but Wilson facing about, drove off these horsemen and thus fighting, Cole, about two o’clock, reached the heights of Linzoain a mile beyond Viscayret, where general Picton met him with intelligence that Campbell had reached Eugui from the Alduides, and that the third division having crossed the hills from Olague was at Zubiri. The junction of all these troops was thus secured, the loss of the day was less than two hundred, and neither wounded men nor baggage had been left behind. However the French gathered in front and at four o’clock seized some heights on the allies’ left which endangered their position, wherefore again falling back a mile, Cole offered battle on the ridge separating the valley of Urroz from that of Zubiri. During this skirmish Campbell coming from Eugui shewed his Portuguese on the ridges above the right flank of the French, but they were distant, Picton’s troops were still at Zubiri, and there was light for an action. Soult however disturbed with intelligence received from D’Erlon, and perhaps doubtful what Campbell’s troops might be, put off the attack until next morning, and after dark the junction of all the allies was effected.

This delay on the part of the French general seems injudicious. Cole was alone for five hours. Every action, by increasing the number of wounded men and creating confusion in the rear, would have augmented the difficulties of the retreat; and the troops were fatigued with incessant fighting and marching for two days and one night. Moreover the alteration of Reille’s march, occasioned by the fog, had reduced the chances dependant on the primary combinations to the operations of D’Erlon’s corps, but the evening reports brought the mortifying conviction that he also had gone wrong, and by rough fighting only could Soult now attain his object. It is said that his expressions discoveredEdouard de LaPene Campagne 1813, 1814. a secret anticipation of failure, if so, his temper was too stedfast to yield for he gave the signal to march the next day, and more strongly renewed his orders to D’Erlon whose operations must now be noticed.

That general had three divisions of infantry, furnishing twenty-one thousand men of which about eighteen thousand were combatants. Early on the morning of the 25th he assembled two of them behind some heights near the passes of Maya, having caused the national guards of Baygorry to make previous demonstrations towards the passes of Arriette, Yspeguy, and Lorietta. No change had been made in the disposition of general Hill’s force, but general Stewart, deceived by the movements of the national guards, looked towards Sylveira’s posts on the right rather than to his own front; his division, consisting of two British brigades, was consequently neither posted as it should be nor otherwise prepared for an attack. The ground to be defended was indeed very strong, but however rugged a mountain position may be, if it is too extensive for the troops or those troops are not disposed with judgment, the very inequalities constituting its defensive strength become advantageous to an assailant.

There were three passes to defend. Aretesque on the right, Lessessa in the centre, Maya on the left, and from these entrances two ways led to Elisondo in parallel directions; one down the valley through the town of Maya, receiving in its course the Erazu road; the other along the Atchiola mountain. General Pringle’s brigade was charged to defend the Aretesque, and colonel Cameron’s brigade the Maya and Lessessa passes. The Col itself was broad on the summit, about three miles long, and on each flank lofty rocks and ridges rose one above another; those on the right blending with the Goramendi mountains, those on the left with the Atchiola, near the summit of which the eighty-second regiment belonging to the seventh division was posted.

Cameron’s brigade, encamped on the left, had a clear view of troops coming from Urdax; but at Aretesque a great round hill, one mile in front, masked the movements of an enemy coming from Espelette. This hill was not occupied at night, nor in the daytime save by some Portuguese cavalry videttes, and the next guard was an infantry piquet posted on that slope of the Col which fronted the great hill. Behind this piquet of eighty men there was no immediate support, but four light companies were encamped one mile down the reverse slope which was more rugged and difficult of access than that towards the enemy. The rest of general Pringle’s brigade was disposed at various distances from two to three miles in the rear, and the signal for assembling on the position was to be the fire of four Portuguese guns from the rocks above the Maya pass. Thus of six British regiments furnishing more than three thousand fighting men, half only were in line of battle, and those chiefly massed on the left of a position, wide open and of an easy ascent from the Aretesque side, and their general, Stewart, quite deceived as to the real state of affairs, was at Elisondo when about mid-day D’Erlon commenced the battle.

COMBAT OF MAYA.

Captain Moyle Sherer, the officer commanding the picquet at the Aretesque pass, was told by hisPlan 3. predecessor, that at dawn a glimpse had been obtained of cavalry and infantry in movement along the hills in front, some peasants also announced the approach of the French, and at nine o’clock major Thorne, a staff-officer, having patroled round the great hill in front of the pass discovered sufficient to make him order up the light companies to support the picquet. These companies had just formed on the ridge with their left at the rock of Aretesque, when D’Armagnac’s division coming from Espelette mounted the great hill in front, Abbé followed, and general Maransin with a third division advanced from Ainhoa and Urdax against the Maya pass, meaning also to turn it by a narrow way leading up the Atchiola mountain.

D’Armagnac’s men pushed forwards at once in several columns, and forced the picquet back with great loss upon the light companies, who sustained his vehement assault with infinite difficulty. The alarm guns were now heard from the Maya pass, and general Pringle hastened to the front, but his regiments moving hurriedly from different camps were necessarily brought into action one after the other. The thirty-fourth came up first at a running pace, yet by companies not in mass and breathless from the length and ruggedness of the ascent; the thirty-ninth and twenty-eighth followed, but not immediately nor together, and meanwhile D’Armagnac, closely supported by Abbé, with domineering numbers and valour combined, maugre the desperate fighting of the picquet of the light companies and of the thirty-fourth, had established his columns on the broad ridge of the position.

Colonel Cameron then sent the fiftieth from the left to the assistance of the overmatched troops, and that fierce and formidable old regiment charging the head of an advancing column drove it clear out of the pass of Lessessa in the centre. Yet the French were so many that, checked at one point, they assembled with increased force at another; nor could general Pringle restore the battle with the thirty-ninth and twenty-eighth regiments, which, cut off from the others were though fighting desperately forced back to a second and lower ridge crossing the main road to Elizondo. They were followed by D’Armagnac, but Abbé continued to press the fiftieth and thirty-fourth whose natural line of retreat was towards the Atchiola road on the left, because the position trended backward from Aretesque towards that point, and because Cameron’s brigade was there. And that officer, still holding the pass of Maya with the left wings of the seventy-first and ninety-second regiments, brought their right wings and the Portuguese guns into action and thus maintained the fight; but so dreadful was the slaughter, especially of the ninety-second, that it is said the advancing enemy was actually stopped by the heaped mass of dead and[Appendix, No. 3.] dying; and then the left wing of that noble regiment coming down from the higher ground smote wounded friends and exulting foes alike, as mingled together they stood or crawled before its fire.

It was in this state of affairs that general Stewart, returning from Elizondo by the mountain road, reached the field of battle. The passes of Lessessa and Aretesque were lost, that of Maya was still held by the left wing of the seventy-first, but Stewart seeing Maransin’s men gathered thickly on one side and Abbé’s men on the other, abandoned it to take a new position on the first rocky ridge covering the road over the Atchiola; and he called down the eighty-second regiment from the highest part of that mountain and sent messengers to demand further aid from the seventh division. Meanwhile although wounded himself he made a strenuous resistance, for he was a very gallant man; but during the retrograde movement, Maransin no longer seeking to turn the position, suddenly thrust the head of his division across the front of the British line and connected his left with Abbé, throwing as he passed a destructive fire into the wasted remnant of the ninety-second, which even then sullenly gave way, for the men fell until two-thirds of the whole had gone to the ground. Still the survivors fought, and the left wing of the seventy-first came into action, but, one after the other all the regiments were forced back, and the first position was lost together with the Portuguese guns.

Abbé’s division now followed D’Armagnac on the road to the town of Maya, leaving Maransin to deal with Stewart’s new position, and notwithstanding its extreme strength the French gained ground until six o’clock, for the British, shrunk in numbers, also wanted ammunition, and a part of the eighty-second under major Fitzgerald were forced to roll down stones to defend the rocks on which they were posted. In this desperate condition Stewart was upon the point of abandoning the mountain entirely, when a brigade of the seventh division, commanded by general Barnes, arrived from Echallar, and that officer charging at the head of the sixth regiment drove the French back to the Maya ridge. Stewart thus remained master of the Atchiola, and the count D’Erlon who probably thought greater reinforcements had come up, recalled his other divisions from theFrench official report, MSS. Maya road and reunited his whole corps on the Col. He had lost fifteen hundred men and a general; butBritish official return. he took four guns, and fourteen hundred British soldiers were killed or wounded.

Such was the fight of Maya, a disaster, yet one much exaggerated by French writers, and by an English author misrepresented as a surprise causedSouthey. by the negligence of the cavalry. General Stewart was surprised, his troops were not, and never did soldiers fight better, seldom so well. The stern valour of the ninety-second, principally composed of Irishmen, would have graced Thermopylæ. The Portuguese cavalry patroles, if any went out which is uncertain, might have neglected their duty, and doubtless the front should have been scoured in a more military manner; but the infantry picquets, and the light companies so happily ordered up by major Thorne, were ready, and no man wondered to see the French columns crown the great hill in front of the pass. Stewart expecting no attack at Maya, had gone to Elisondo leaving orders for the soldiersGeneral Stewart’s Official Report. to cook; from his erroneous views therefore the misfortune sprung and from no other source. Having deceived himself as to the true point of attack he did not take proper military precautions on his own front; his position was only half occupied, his troops brought into action wildly, and finally he causedWellington’s Despatches. the loss of his guns by a misdirection as to the road. General Stewart was a brave, energetic, zealous, indefatigable man and of a magnanimous spirit, but he possessed neither the calm reflective judgment nor the intuitive genius which belongs to nature’s generals.

It is difficult to understand count D’Erlon’s operations. Why, when he had carried the right of the position, did he follow two weak regiments with two divisions, and leave only one division to attack five regiments, posted on the strongest ground and having hopes of succour from Echallar? Certainly if Abbé’s division had acted with Maransin’s, Stewart who was so hardly pressed by the latter alone, must have passed the road from Echallar in retreat before general Barnes’s brigade arrived. On the other hand, Soult’s orders directedSoult’s Official Despatch, MSS. D’Erlon to operate by his left, with the view of connecting the whole army on the summit of the great chain of the Pyrenees. He should therefore either have used his whole force to crush the troops on the Atchiola before they could be succoured from Echallar; or, leaving Maransin there, have marched by the Maya road upon Ariscun to cut Sylveira’s line of retreat; instead of this he remained inactive upon the Col de Maya for twenty hours after the battle! And general Hill concentrating his whole force, now augmented by Barnes’s brigade, would probably have fallen upon him from the commanding rocks of Atchiola the next day, if intelligence of Cole’s retreat from the Roncesvalles passes had not come through the Alduides. This rendered the recovery of the Col de Maya useless, and Hill withdrawing all his troops during the night, posted the British brigades which had been engaged, together with one Portuguese brigade of infantry and a Portuguese battery, on the heights in rear of Irueta, fifteen miles from the scene of action. The other Portuguese brigade he left in front of Elizondo, thus covering the road of San Estevan on his left, that of Berderez on his right, and the pass of Vellate in his rear.

Such was the commencement of Soult’s operations to restore the fortunes of France. Three considerable actions fought on the same day had each been favourable. At St. Sebastian the allies were repulsed; at Roncesvalles they abandoned the passes; at Maya they were defeated; but the decisive blow had not yet been struck.

Lord Wellington heard of the fight at Maya on his way back from St. Sebastian, but with the false addition that D’Erlon was beaten. As early as the 22d he had known that Soult was preparing a great offensive movement, but the immovable attitude of the French centre, the skilful disposition of their reserve which was twice as strong as he at first supposed, together with the preparations made to throw bridges over the Bidassoa at Biriatou, were all calculated to mislead and did mislead him.

Soult’s complicated combinations to bring D’Erlon’s divisions finally into line on the crest of the great chain were impenetrable, and the English general could not believe his adversary would throw himself with only thirty thousand men into the valley of the Ebro unless sure of aid from Suchet, and that general’s movements indicated a determination to remain in Catalonia; moreover Wellington, in contrast to Soult, knew that Pampeluna was not in extremity, and before the failure of the assault thought that San Sebastian was. Hence the operations against his right, their full extent not known, appeared a feint, and he judged the real effort would be to throw bridges over the Bidassoa and raise the siege of San Sebastian. But in the night correct intelligence of the Maya and Roncesvalles affairs arrived, Soult’s object was then scarcely doubtful, and sir T. Graham was ordered to turn the siege into a blockade, to embark his guns and stores, and hold all his spare troops in hand to join Giron, on a position of battle marked out near the Bidassoa. General Cotton was ordered to move the cavalry up to Pampeluna, and O’Donnel was instructed to hold some of his Spanish troops ready to act in advance. This done Wellington arranged his lines of correspondence and proceeded to San Estevan, which he reached early in the morning.

While the embarkation of the guns and stores was going on it was essential to hold the posts at Vera and Echallar, because D’Erlon’s object was not pronounced, and an enemy in possession of those places could approach San Sebastian by the roads leading over the Pena de Haya, a rocky mountain behind Lesaca, or by the defiles of Zubietta leading round that mountain from the valley of Lerins. Wherefore in passing through Estevan on the morning of the 26th, Wellington merely directed general Pack to guard the bridges over the Bidassoa. But when he reached Irueta, saw the reduced state of Stewart’s division, and heard that Picton had marched from Olague, he directed all the troops within his power upon Pampeluna; and to prevent mistakes indicated the valley of Lanz asManuscript Notes by the Duke of Wellington. the general line of movement. Of Picton’s exact position or of his intentions nothing positive was known, but supposing him to have joined Cole at Linzoain, as indeed he had, Wellington judged that their combined forces would be sufficient to check the enemy until assistance could reach them from the centre or from Pampeluna, and he so advised Picton on the evening of the 26th.

In consequence of these orders the seventh division abandoned Echallar in the night of the 26th, the sixth division quitted San Estevan at daylight on the 27th, and general Hill concentrating his own troops and Barnes’s brigade on the heights of Irueta, halted until the evening of the 27th but marched during the night through the pass of Vellate upon the town of Lanz. Meanwhile the light division quitting Vera also on the 27th retired by Lesaca to the summit of the Santa Cruz mountain, overlooking the valley of Lerins, and there halted, apparently to cover the pass of Zubieta until Longa’s Spaniards should take post to block the roads leading over the Pena de Haya and protect the embarkation of the guns on that flank. That object being effected it was to thread the passes and descend upon Lecumberri on the great road of Irurzun, thus securing sir Thomas Graham’s communication with the army round Pampeluna. These various movements spread fear and confusion far and wide. All the narrow valleys and roads were crowded with baggage, commissariat stores, artillery and fugitive families; reports of the most alarming nature were as usual rife; each division, ignorant of what had really happened to the other, dreaded that some of the numerous misfortunes related might be true; none knew what to expect or where they were to meet the enemy, and one universal hubbub filled the wild regions through which the French army was now working its fiery path towards Pampeluna.

D’Erlon’s inactivity gave great uneasiness to Soult, who repeated the order to push forward by his left whatever might be the force opposed, and thus stimulated he advanced to Elizondo on the 27th, but thinking the sixth division was still at San Estevan, again halted, and it was not until the morning of the 28th, when general Hill’s retreat had opened the way, that he followed through the pass of Vellate. His further progress belongs to other combinations arising from Soult’s direct operations which are now to be continued.

General Picton, having assumed the command of all the troops in the valley of Zubiri on the evening of the 26th, recommenced the retreat before dawn on the 27th, and without the hope or intention of covering Pampeluna. Soult followed in the morning, having first sent scouts towards the ridges where Campbell’s troops had appeared the evening before. Reille marched by the left bank of the Guy river, Clauzel by the right bank, the cavalry and artillery closed the rear and as the whole moved in compact order the narrow valley was overgorged with troops, a hasty bicker of musketry alone marking the separation of the hostile forces. Meanwhile the garrison of Pampeluna made a sally and O’Donnel in great alarm spiked some of his guns, destroyed his magazines, and would have suffered a disaster, if Carlos D’España had not fortunately arrived with his division and checked the garrison. Nevertheless the danger was imminent, for general Cole, first emerging from the valley of Zubiri, had passed Villalba, only three miles from Pampeluna, in retreat; Picton, following close, was at Huarte, and O’Donnel’s Spaniards were in confusion; in fine Soult was all but successful when Picton, feeling the importance of the crisis, suddenly turned on some steep ridges, which, stretching under the names of San Miguel Mont Escava and San Cristoval quite across the mouths of the Zubiri and Lanz valleys, screen Pampeluna.

Posting the third division on the right of Huarte he prolonged his line to the left with Morillo’s Spaniards, called upon O’Donnel to support him, and directed Cole to occupy some heights between Oricain and Arletta. But that general having with a surer eye observed a salient hill near Zabaldica, one mile in advance and commanding the road to Huarte, demanded and obtained permission to occupy it instead of the heights first appointed. Two Spanish regiments belonging to the blockading troops were still posted there, and towards them Cole directed his course. Soult had also marked this hill, a French detachment issuing from the mouth of the Val de Zubiri was in full career to seize it, and the hostile masses were rapidly approaching the summit on either side when the Spaniards, seeing the British so close, vindicated their own post by a sudden charge. This was for Soult the stroke of fate. His double columns just then emerging, exultant, from the narrow valley, were arrested at the sight of ten thousand men which under Cole crowned the summit of the mountain in opposition; and two miles further back stood Picton with a greater number, for O’Donnel had now taken post on Morillo’s left. To advance by the Huarte road was impossible, and to stand still was dangerous, because the French army contracted to a span in front was cleft in its whole length by the river Guy, and compressed on each side by the mountains which in that part narrowed the valley to a quarter of a mile. Soult however, like a great and ready commander, at once shot the head of Clauzel’s columns to his right across the mountain which separated the Val de Zubiri from the Val de Lanz, and at the same time threw one of Reille’s divisions of infantry and a body of cavalrySoult’s Official Correspondence, MSS. across the mountains on his left, beyond the Guy river, as far as the village of Elcano, to menace the front and right flank of Picton’s position at Huarte. The other two divisions of infantry he established at the village of Zabaldica in the Val de Zubiri, close under Cole’s right, and meanwhile Clauzel seized the village of Sauroren close under that general’s left.

While the French general thus formed his line of battle, lord Wellington who had quitted sir Rowland Hill’s quarters in the Bastan very early on the 27th, crossed the main ridge and descended the valley of Lanz without having been able toNotes by Lord Wellington, MSS. learn any thing of Picton’s movements or position, and in this state of uncertainty reached Ostiz, a few miles from Sauroren, where he found general Long with the brigade of light cavalry which had furnished the posts of correspondence in the mountains. Here learning that Picton having abandoned the heights of Linzoain was moving on Huarte, he left his quarter-master-general with instructions to stop all the troops coming down the valley of Lanz until the state of affairs at Huarte should be ascertained. Then at racing speed he made for Sauroren. As he entered that village he saw Clauzel’s divisions moving from Zabaldica along the crest of the mountain, and it was clear that the allied troops in the valley of Lanz were intercepted, wherefore pulling up his horse he wrote on the parapet of the bridge of Sauroren fresh instructions to turn every thing from that valley to the right, by a road which led through Lizasso and Marcalain behind the hills to the village of Oricain, that is to say, in rear of the position now occupied by Cole. Lord Fitzroy Somerset, the only staff-officer who had kept up with him, galloped with these orders out of Sauroren by one road, the French light cavalry dashed in by another, and the English general rode alone up the mountain to reach his troops. One of Campbell’s Portuguese battalions first descried him and raised a cry of joy, and the shrill clamour caught up by the next regiments swelled as it run along the line into that stern and appalling shout which the British soldier is wont to give upon the edge of battle, and which no enemy ever heard unmoved. Lord Wellington suddenly stopped in a conspicuous place, he desired that both armies should know he was there, and a double spy who was present pointed out Soult, then so near that his features could be plainly distinguished. The English general, it is said, fixed his eyes attentively upon this formidable man, and speaking as if to himself, said, “Yonder is a great commander, but he is a cautious one and will delay his attack to ascertain the cause of these cheers; that will give time for the sixth division to arrive and I shall beat him.” And certain it is that the French general made no serious attack that day.

The position adopted by Cole was the summit of a mountain mass which filled all the space between the Guy and the Lanz rivers as far back as Huarte and Villalba. It was highest in the centre, and boldly defined towards the enemy, but the trace was irregular, the right being thrown back towards the village of Arletta so as to flank the high road to Huarte. This road was also swept by some guns placed on a lower range, or neck, connecting the right of Cole with Picton and Morillo.

Overlooking Zabaldica and the Guy river was the bulging hill vindicated by the Spaniards; it was a distinct point on the right of the fourth division, dependent upon the centre of the position but considerably lower. The left of the position also abating in height was yet extremely rugged and steep overlooking the Lanz river and the road to Villalba. General Ross’s brigade of the fourth division was posted on that side, having a Portuguese battalion, whose flank rested on a small chapel, in his front. General Campbell was on the right of Ross. General Anson was on the highest ground, partly behind, and partly on the right of Campbell. General Byng’s brigade was on a second mass of hills in reserve, and the Spanish hill was reinforced by a battalion of the fourth Portuguese regiment.

The front of battle being less than two miles was well filled, and the Lanz and Guy river washed the flanks. Those torrents continuing their course break by narrow passages through the steep ridges of San Miguel and Cristoval, and then flowing past Huarte and Villalba meet behind those places to form the Arga river. On the ridges thus cleft by the waters the second line was posted, that is to say, at the distance of two miles from, and nearly parallel to the first position, but on a more extended front. Picton’s left was at Huarte, his right strengthened with a battery stretched to the village of Goraitz, covering more than a mile of ground on that flank. Morillo prolonged Picton’s left along the crest of San Miguel to Villalba, and O’Donnel continued the line to San Cristoval; Carlos D’España’s division maintained the blockade behind these ridges, and the British cavalry under General Cotton, coming up from Tafalla and Olite, took post, the heavy brigades on some open ground behind Picton, the hussar brigade on his right. This second line being on a wider trace than the first and equally well filled with troops, entirely barred the openings of the two valleys leading down to Pampeluna.

Soult’s position was also a mountain filling the space between the two rivers. It was even more rugged than the allies’ mountain and they were only separated by a deep narrow valley. Clauzel’s three divisions leaned to the right on the village of Sauroren, which was quite down in the valley of Lanz and close under the chapel height where the left of the fourth division was posted. His left was prolonged by two of Reille’s divisions, which also occupied the village of Zabaldica quite down in the valley of Zubiri under the right of the allies. The remaining division of this wing and a division of cavalry, were, as I have before stated, thrown forward on the mountains at the other side of the Guy river, menacing Picton and seeking for an opportunity to communicate with the garrison of Pampeluna. Some guns were pushed in front of Zabaldica, but the elevation required to send the shot upward rendered their fire ineffectual and the greatest part of the artillery remained therefore in the narrow valley of Zubiri.

Combat of the 27th. Soult’s first effort was to gain the Spaniards’ hill and establish himself near the centre of the allies’ line of battle. The attack was vigorous but the French were valiantly repulsed about the time lord Wellington arrived, and he immediately reinforced that post with the fortieth British regiment. There was then a general skirmish along the front, under cover of which Soult carefully examined the whole position, and the firing continued on the mountain side until evening, when a terrible storm, the usual precursor of English battles in the Peninsula, brought on premature darkness and terminated the dispute. This was the state of affairs at day-break on the 28th, but a signal alteration had place before the great battle of that day commenced, and the movements of the wandering divisions by which this change was effected must now be traced.

It has been shewn that the Lanz covered the left of the allies and the right of the French. Nevertheless the heights occupied by either army were prolonged beyond that river, the continuation of the allies’ ridge sweeping forward so as to look into the rear of Sauroren, while the continuation of the French heights fell back in a direction nearly parallel to the forward inclination of the opposing ridge. They were both steep and high, yet lower and less rugged than the heights on which the armies stood opposed, for the latter were mountains where rocks piled on rocks stood out like castles, difficult to approach and so dangerous to assail that the hardened veterans of the Peninsula only would have dared the trial. Now the road by which the sixth division marched on the 27th, after clearing the pass of Doña Maria, sends one branch to Lanz, another to Ostiz, a third through Lizasso and Marcalain; the first and second fall into the road from Bellate and descend the valley of Lanz to Sauroren; the third passing behind the ridges, just described as prolonging the positions of the armies, also falls into the valley of Lanz, but at the village of Oricain, that is to say one mile behind the ground occupied by general Cole’s left.

It was by this road of Marcalain that Wellington now expected the sixth and seventh divisions, but the rapidity with which Soult seized Sauroren caused a delay of eighteen hours. For the sixth division, having reached Olague in the valley of Lanz about one o’clock on the 27th, halted there until four, and then following the orders brought by lord Fitzroy Somerset marched by Lizasso to gain the Marcalain road; but the great length of these mountain marches, and the heavy storm which had terminated the action at Zabaldica sweeping with equal violence in this direction, prevented the division from passing Lizasso that night. However the march was renewed at daylight on the 28th, and meanwhile general Hill, having quitted the Bastan on the evening of the 27th, reached the town of Lanz on the morning of the 28th, and rallying general Long’s cavalry and his own artillery, which were in that valley, moved likewise upon Lizasso. At that place he met the seventh division coming from San Estevan, and having restored general Barnes’s brigade to lord Dalhousie, took a position on a ridge covering the road to Marcalain. The seventh division being on his right, was in military communication with the sixth division, and thus lord Wellington’s left was prolonged, and covered the great road leading from Pampeluna by Irurzun to Tolosa. And during these important movements, which were not completed until the evening of the 28th, which brought six thousand men into the allies’ line of battle, and fifteen thousand more into military communication with their left, D’Erlon remained planted in his position of observation near Elizondo!

The near approach of the sixth division early on the morning of the 28th and the certainty of Hill’s junction, made Wellington imagine that Soult would not venture an attack, and certainly that marshal, disquieted about D’Erlon of whom he only knew that he had not followed his instructions, viewed the strong position of his adversary with uneasy anticipations. Again with anxious eyes he took cognizance of all its rugged strength, and seemed dubious and distrustful of his fortune. He could not operate with advantage by his own left beyond the Guy river, because the mountains there were rough, and Wellington having shorter lines of movement could meet him with all arms combined; and meanwhile the French artillery, unable to emerge from the Val de Zubiri except by the Huarte road, would have been exposed to a counter-attack. He crossed the Lanz river and ascended the prolongation of the allies’ ridge, which, as he had possession of the bridge of Sauroren, was for the moment his own ground. From this height he could see all the left and rear of Cole’s position, looking down the valley of Lanz as far as Villalba, but the country beyond the ridge towards Marcalain was so broken that heSoult’s Correspondence, MSS. could not discern the march of the sixth division; he knew however from the deserters, that Wellington expected four fresh divisions from that side, that is to say, the second, sixth, and seventh British, and Sylviera’s Portuguese division which always marched with Hill. This information and the nature of the ground decided the plan of attack. The valley of Lanz growing wider as it descended, offered the means of assailing the allies’ left in front and rear at one moment, and the same combination would cut off the reinforcements expected from the side of Marcalain.

One of Clauzel’s divisions already occupied Sauroren, and the other two coming from the mountain took post upon each side of that village. The division on the right hand was ordered to throw some flankers on the ridge from whence Soult was taking his observations, and upon a signal given to move in one body to a convenient distance down the valley and then, wheeling to its left, assail the rear of the allies’ left flank while the other two divisions advancing from their respective positions near Sauroren assailed the front. Cole’s left, which did not exceed five thousand men, would thus be enveloped by sixteen thousand, and Soult expected to crush it notwithstanding the strength of the ground. Meanwhile Reille’s two divisions advancing from the mountain on the side of Zabaldica, were each to send a brigade against the hill occupied by the fortieth regiment; the right of this attack was to be connected with the left of Clauzel, the remaining brigades were closely to support the assailing masses, the divisions beyond the Guy were to keep Picton in check, and Soult who had no time to lose ordered his lieutenants to throw their troops frankly and at once into action.

First battle of Sauroren.—It was fought on the fourth anniversary of the battle of Talavera.

About mid-day the French gathered at the foot of the position and their skirmishers rushing forward spread over the face of the mountain, working upward like a conflagration; but the columns of attack were not all prepared when Clauzel’s division in the valley of Lanz, too impatient to await the general signal of battle, threw out its flankers on the ridge beyond the river and pushed down the valley in one mass. With a rapid pace it turned Cole’s left and was preparing to wheel up on his rear, when a Portuguese brigade of the sixth division, suddenly appearing on the crest of the ridge beyond the river, drove the French flankers back and instantly descended with a rattling fire upon the right and rear of the column in the valley. And almost at the same instant, the main body of the sixth division emerging from behind the same ridge, near the village of Oricain, formed in order of battle across the front. It was the counter-stroke of Salamanca! The French, striving to encompass the left of the allies were themselves encompassed, for two brigades of the fourth division turned and smote them from the left, the Portuguese smote them from the right; and while thus scathed on both flanks with fire, they were violently shocked and pushed back with a mighty force by the sixth division, yet not in flight, but fighting fiercely and strewing the ground with their enemies’ bodies as well as with their own.

Clauzel’s second division, seeing this dire conflict, with a hurried movement assailed the chapel height to draw off the fire from the troops in the valley, and gallantly did the French soldiers throng up the craggy steep, but the general unity of the attack was ruined; neither their third division nor Reille’s brigades had yet received the signal, and their attacks instead of being simultaneous were made in succession, running from right to left as the necessity of aiding the others became apparent. It was however a terrible battle and well fought. One column darting out of the village of Sauroren, silently, sternly, without firing a shot, worked up to the chapel under a tempest of bullets which swept away whole ranks without abating the speed and power of the mass. The seventh Caçadores shrunk abashed and that part of the position was won. Soon however they rallied upon general Ross’s British brigade, and the whole running forward charged the French with a loud shout and dashed them down the hill. Heavily stricken they were, yet undismayed, and recovering their ranks again, they ascended in the same manner to be again broken and overturned. But the other columns of attack were now bearing upwards through the smoke and flame with which the skirmishers had covered the face of the mountain, and the tenth Portuguese regiment fighting on the right of Ross’s brigade yielded to their fury; a heavy body crowned the heights and wheeling against the exposed flank of Ross forced that gallant officer also to go back. His ground was instantly occupied by the enemies with whom he had been engaged in front, and the fight raged close and desperate on the crest of the position, charge succeeded charge and each side yielded and recovered by turns; yet this astounding effort of French valour was of little avail. Lord Wellington brought Byng’s brigade forward at a running pace, and sent the twenty-seventh and forty-eighth British regiments belonging to Anson’s brigade down from the higher ground in the centre against the crowded masses, rolling them backward in disorder and throwing them one after the other violently down the mountain side; and with no child’s play; the two British regiments fell upon the enemy three separate times with the bayonet and lost more than half their own numbers.

During this battle on the mountain-top, the British brigades of the sixth division strengthened by a battery of guns, gained ground in the valley of Lanz and arrived on the same front with the left of the victorious troops about the chapel. Lord Wellington then seeing the momentary disorder of the enemy ordered Madden’s Portuguese brigade, which had never ceased its fire against the right flank of the French column, to assail the village of Sauroren in the rear, but the state of the action in other parts and the exhaustion of the troops soon induced him to countermand this movement. Meanwhile Reille’s brigades, connecting their right with the left of Clauzel’s third division, had environed the Spanish hill, ascended it unchecked, and at the moment when the fourth division was so hardly pressed made the regiment of El Pravia give way on the left of the fortieth. A Portuguese battalion rushing forward covered the flank of that invincible regiment, which waited in stern silence until the French set their feet upon the broad summit; but when their glittering arms appeared over the brow of the mountain the charging cry was heard, the crowded mass was broken to pieces and a tempest of bullets followed its flight. Four times this assault was renewed, and the French officers were seen to pull up their tired men by the belts, so fierce and resolute they were to win. It was however the labour of Sysiphus. The vehement shout and shock of the British soldier always prevailed, and at last, with thinned ranks, tired limbs, hearts fainting, and hopeless from repeated failures, they were so abashed that three British companies sufficed to bear down a whole brigade.

While the battle was thus being fought on the height the French cavalry beyond the Guy river, passed a rivulet, and with a fire of carbines forced the tenth hussars to yield some rocky ground on Picton’s right, but the eighteenth hussars having better firearms than the tenth renewed the combat, killed two officers, and finally drove the French over the rivulet again.

Such were the leading events of this sanguinary struggle, which lord Wellington fresh from the fight with homely emphasis called “bludgeon work.” Two generals and eighteen hundred men had been killed or wounded on the French side, following their official reports, a number far below the estimate made at the time by the allies whose loss amounted to two thousand six hundred. These discrepancies between hostile calculations ever occur, and there is little wisdom in disputing where proof is unattainable; but the numbers actually engaged were, of French, twenty-five thousand, of the allies twelve thousand, and if the strength of the latter’s position did not save them from the greater loss their stedfast courage is to be the more admired.

The 29th the armies rested in position without firing a shot, but the wandering divisions on both sides were now entering the line.

General Hill, having sent all his baggage artillery and wounded men to Berioplano behind the Cristoval ridge, still occupied his strong ground between Lizasso and Arestegui, covering the Marcalain and Irurzun roads, and menacing that leading from Lizasso to Olague in rear of Soult’s right. His communication with Oricain was maintained by the seventh division, and the light division was approaching his left. Thus on Wellington’s side the crisis was over. He had vindicated his position with only sixteen thousand combatants, and now, including the troops still maintaining the blockade, he had fifty thousand, twenty thousand being British, in close military combination. Thirty thousand flushed with recent success were in hand, and Hill’s troops were well-placed for retaking the offensive.

Soult’s situation was proportionably difficult. Finding that he could not force the allies’ position in front, he had sent his artillery part of his cavalry and his wounded men back to France immediately after the battle, ordering the two former to join Villatte on the Lower Bidassoa and there await further instructions. Having shaken off this burthen he awaited D’Erlon’s arrival by the valley of Lanz, and that general reached Ostiz a few miles above Sauroren at mid-day on the 29th, bringing intelligence, obtained indirectly during his march, that general Graham had retired from the Bidassoa and Villatte had crossed that river. This gave Soult a hope that his first movements had disengaged San Sebastian, and he instantly conceived a new plan of operations, dangerous indeed yet conformable to the critical state of his affairs.

No success was to be expected from another attack, yet he could not at the moment of being reinforced with eighteen thousand men, retire by the road he came without some dishonour; nor could he remain where he was, because his supplies of provisions and ammunition derived from distant magazines by slow and small convoys was unequal to the consumption. Two-thirds of the BritishSoult’s Official Correspondence, MSS. troops, the greatest part of the Portuguese, and all the Spaniards were, as he supposed, assembled in his front under Wellington, or on his right flank under Hill, and it was probable that other reinforcements were on the march; wherefore he resolved to prolong his right with D’Erlon’s corps, and then cautiously drawing off the rest of his army place himself between the allies and the Bastan, in military connection with his reserve and closer to his frontier magazines. Thus posted and able to combine all his troops in one operation, he expected to relieve San Sebastian entirely and profit from the new state of affairs.

In the evening of the 29th the second division of cavalry, which was in the valley of Zubiri, passed over the position to the valley of Lanz, and joined D’Erlon, who was ordered to march early on the 30th by Etulain upon Lizasso, sending out strong scouting parties to his left on all the roads leading upon Pampeluna, and also towards Letassa and Irurzun. During the night the first division of cavalry and La Martiniere’s division of infantry, both at Elcano on the extreme left of the French army, retired overPlan 2. the mountains by Illurdos to Eugui, in the upper part of the valley of the Zubiri, having orders to cross the separating ridge enter the valley of Lanz and join D’Erlon. The remainder of Reille’s wing was at the same time to march by the crest of the position from Zabaldica to the village of Sauroren, and gradually relieve Clauzel’s troops which were then to assemble behind Sauroren, that is to say towards Ostiz, and thus following the march of D’Erlon were to be themselves followed in like manner by Reille’s troops. To cover these last movements Clauzel detached two regiments to occupy the French heights beyond the Lanz river, and they were also to maintain his connection with D’Erlon whose line of operations was just beyond those heights. He was however to hold by Reille rather than by D’Erlon until the former had perfected his dangerous march across Wellington’s front.

In the night of the 29th Soult heard from the deserters that three divisions were to make an offensive movement towards Lizasso on the 30th, and when daylight came he was convinced the men spoke truly, because from a point beyond Sauroren he discerned certain columns descending the ridge of Cristoval and the heights above Oricain, while others were in march on a wide sweep apparently to turn Clauzel’s right flank. These columns were Morillo’s Spaniards, Campbell’s Portuguese, and the seventh division, the former rejoining Hill to whose corps they properly belonged, the others adapting themselves to a new disposition of Wellington’s line of battle which shall be presently explained.

At six o’clock in the morning Foy’s division of Reille’s wing was in march along the crest of the mountain from Zabaldica towards Sauroren, where Maucune’s division had already relieved Conroux’s; the latter, belonging to Clauzel’s wing, was moving up the valley of Lanz to rejoin that general, who had, with exception of the two flanking regiments before mentioned, concentrated his remaining divisions between Olabe and Ostiz. In this state of affairs Wellington opening his batteries from the chapel height sent skirmishers against Sauroren, and the fire spreading to the allies’ right became brisk between Cole and Foy. It subsided however at Sauroren, and Soult, relying on the strength of the position, ordered Reille to maintain it until nightfall unless hardly pressed, and went off himself at a gallop to join D’Erlon, for his design was to fallSoult’s Official Report, MSS. upon the division attempting to turn his right and crush them with superior numbers: a daring project, well and quickly conceived, but he had to deal with a man whose rapid perception and rough stroke rendered sleight of hand dangerous. The marshal overtook D’Erlon at the moment when that general, having entered the valley of Ulzema with three divisions of infantry and two divisions of heavy cavalry, was making dispositions to assail Hill who was between Buenza and Arestegui.

Combat of Buenza. The allies who were about ten thousand fighting men, including Long’s brigade of light cavalry, occupied a very extensive mountain ridge. Their right was strongly posted on rugged ground, but the left prolonged towards Buenza was insecure, and D’Erlon who including his two divisions of heavy cavalry had not less than twenty thousand sabres and bayonets, was followed by La Martiniere’s division of infantry now coming from Lanz. Soult’s combination was therefore extremely powerful. The light troops were already engaged when he arrived, and the same soldiers on both sides who had so strenuously combated at Maya on the 25th were again opposed to each other.

D’Armagnac’s division was directed to make a false attack upon Hill’s right; Abbé’s division, emerging by Lizasso, endeavoured to turn the allies’ left and gain the summit of the ridge in the direction of Buenza; Maranzin followed Abbé, and the divisions of cavalry entering the line supported and connected the two attacks. The action was brisk at both points, but D’Armagnac pushing his feint too far became seriously engaged, and was beaten by Da Costa and Ashworth’s Portuguese aided by a part of the twenty-eighth British regiment. Nor were the French at first more successful on the other flank, being repeatedly repulsed, until Abbé, turning that wing gained the summit of the mountain and rendered the position untenable. General Hill who had lost about four hundred men then retired to the heights of Equaros behind Arestegui and Berasin, thus drawing towards Marcalain with his right and throwing back his left. Here being joined by Campbell and Morillo he again offered battle, but Soult whose principal loss was in D’Armagnac’s division had now gained his main object; he had turned Hill’s left, secured a fresh line of retreat, a shorter communication with Villatte by the pass of Donna Maria, and withal, the great Irurzun road to Toloza distant only one league and a half was in his power. His first thought was toSoult’s Official despatch, MS. seize it and march through Lecumberri either upon Toloza, or Andoain and Ernani. There was nothing to oppose except the light division whose movements shall be noticed hereafter, but neither the French marshal nor general Hill knew of its presence, and the former thought himself strong enough to force his way to San Sebastian and there unite with Villatte, and his artillery which following his previous orders was now on the Lower Bidassoa.

This project was feasible. Lamartiniere’s division, of Reille’s wing, coming from Lanz, was not far off. Clauzel’s three divisions were momentarily expected, and Reille’s during the night. On the 31st therefore, Soult with at least fifty thousand men would have broken into Guipuscoa, thrusting aside the light division in his march, and menacing sir Thomas Graham’s position in reverse while Villatte’s reserve attacked it in front. The country about Lecumberri was however very strong for defence and lord Wellington would have followed, yet scarcely in time, for he did not suspect his views and was ignorant of his strength, thinking D’Erlon’s force, to be originally two divisions of infantry and now only reinforced with a third division, whereas that general had three divisions originally and was now reinforced by a fourth division of infantry and two of cavalry. This error however did not prevent him from seizing with the rapidity of a great commander, the decisive point of operation, and giving a counter-stroke which Soult trusting to the strength of Reille’s position little expected.

When Wellington saw that La Martiniere’s divisions and the cavalry had abandoned the mountains above Elcano, and that Zabaldica was evacuated, he ordered Picton, reinforced with two squadrons of cavalry and a battery of artillery, to enter the valley of Zubiri and turn the French left; the seventh division was directed to sweep over the hills beyond the Lanz river upon the French right; the march of Campbell and Morillo insured the communication with Hill; and that general was to point his columns upon Olague and Lanz threatening the French rear, but meeting as we have seen with D’Erlon was forced back to Eguaros. The fourth division was to assail Foy’s position, but respecting its great strength the attack was to be measured according to the effect produced on the flanks. Meanwhile Byng’s brigade and the sixth division, the latter having a battery of guns and some squadrons of cavalry, were combined to assault Sauroren. La Bispal’s Spaniards followed the sixth division. Fane’s horsemen were stationed at Berioplano with a detachment pushed to Irurzun, the heavy cavalry remained behind Huarte, and Carlos D’España maintained the blockade.

Second battle of Sauroren.—These movements began at daylight. Picton’s advance was rapid. He gained the valley of Zubiri and threw his skirmishers at once on Foy’s flank, and about the same time general Inglis, one of those veterans who purchase every step of promotion with their blood, advancing with only five hundred men of the seventh division, broke at one shock the two French regiments covering Clauzel’s right, and drove them down into the valley of Lanz. He lost indeed one-third of his own men, but instantly spreading the remainder in skirmishing order along the descent, opened a biting fire upon the flank of Conroux’s division, which was then moving up the valley from Sauroren, sorely amazed and disordered by this sudden fall of two regiments from the top of the mountain into the midst of the column.

Foy’s division, marching to support Conroux and Maucune, was on the crest of the mountains between Zabaldica and Sauroren at the moment of attack, but too far off to give aid, and his own light troops were engaged with the skirmishers of the fourth division; and Inglis had been so sudden and vigorous, that before the evil could be well perceived it was past remedy. For Wellington instantly pushed the sixth division, now commanded by general Pakenham Pack having been wounded on the 28th, to the left of Sauroren, and shoved Byng’s brigade headlong down from the chapel height against that village, which was defended by Maucune’s division. Byng’s vigorous assault was simultaneously enforced from the opposite direction by Madden’s Portuguese of the sixth division, and at the same time the battery near the chapel sent its bullets crashing through the houses, and booming up the valley towards Conroux’s column, which Inglis never ceased to vex and he was closely supported by the remainder of the seventh division.

The village and bridge of Sauroren and the straits beyond were now covered with a pall of smoke, the musquetry pealed frequent and loud, and the tumult and affray echoing from mountain to mountain filled all the valley. Byng with hard fighting carried the village of Sauroren, and fourteen hundred prisoners were made, for the two French divisions thus vehemently assailed in the front and flank were entirely broken. Part retreated along the valley towards Clauzel’s other divisions which were now beyond Ostiz; part fled up the mountain side to seek a refuge with Foy, who had remained on the summit a helpless spectator of this rout; but though he rallied the fugitives in great numbers, he had soon to look to himself, for by this time his skirmishers had been driven up the mountain by those of the fourth division, and his left was infested by Picton’s detachments. Thus pressed, he abandoned his strong position, and fell back along the summit of the mountain between the valley of Zubiri and valley of Lanz, and the woods enabled him to effect his retreat without much loss; but he dared not descend into either valley, and thinking himself entirely cut off, sent advice of his situation to Soult and then retired into the Alduides by the pass of Urtiaga. Meanwhile Wellington pressing up the valley of Lanz drove Clauzel as far as Olague, and the latter now joined by La Martiniere’s division took a position in the evening covering the roads of Lanz and Lizasso. The English general whose pursuit had been damped by hearing of Hill’s action also halted near Ostiz.

The allies lost nineteen hundred men killed and wounded, or taken, in the two battles of this day, and of these nearly twelve hundred were Portuguese, the soldiers of that nation having borne the brunt of both fights. On the French side the loss was enormous. Conroux’s and Maucune’s divisions were completely disorganized; Foy with eight thousand men, including the fugitives he had rallied, was entirely separated from the main body; two thousand men at the lowest computation had been killed or wounded, many were dispersed in the woods and ravines, and three thousand prisoners were taken. This blow joined to former losses reduced Soult’s fighting men to thirty-five thousand, of which the fifteen thousand under Clauzel and Reille were dispirited by defeat, and the whole were placed in a most critical situation. Hill’s force now increased to fifteen thousand men by the junction of Morillo and Campbell was in front, and thirty thousand were on the rear in the valley of Lanz, or on the hills at each side; for the third division finding no more enemies in the valley of Zubiri, had crowned the heights in conjunction with the fourth division.

Lord Wellington had detached some of La Bispal’s Spaniards to Marcalain when he heard of Hill’s action, but he was not yet aware of the true state of affairs on that side. His operations were founded upon the notion that Soult was in retreat towards the Bastan. He designed to follow closely pushing his own left forward to support sir Thomas Graham on the Bidassoa, but always underrating D’Erlon’s troops he thought La Martiniere’s division had retreated by the Roncesvalles road; and as Foy’s column was numerous and two divisions had been broken at Sauroren, he judged the force immediately under Soult to be weak and made dispositions accordingly. The sixth division and the thirteenth light dragoons were to march by Eugui to join the third division, which was directed upon Linzoain and Roncesvalles. The fourth division was to descend into the valley of Lanz. General Hill, supported by the Spaniards at Marcalain, was to press Soult closely, always turning his right but directing his own march upon Lanz, from whence he was to send Campbell’s brigade to the Alduides. The seventh division which had halted on the ridges between Hill and Wellington, was to suffer the former to cross its front and then march for the pass of Doña Maria.

It appears from these arrangements, that Wellington expecting Soult would rejoin Clauzel and make for the Bastan by the pass of Vellate, intended to confine and press him closely in that district. But the French marshal was in a worse position than his adversary imagined, being too far advanced towards Buenza to return to Lanz; in fine he was between two fires and without a retreat save by the pass of Doña Maria upon San Estevan. Wherefore calling in Clauzel, and giving D’Erlon whose divisions, hitherto successful were in good order and undismayed, the rear-guard, he commenced his march soon after midnight towards the pass. But mischief was thickening around him.

Sir Thomas Graham having only the blockade of San Sebastian to maintain was at the head of twenty thousand men, ready to make a forward movement, and there remained besides the light division under Charles Alten of whose operations it is time to speak. That general, as we have seen, took post on the mountain of Santa Cruz the 27th. From thence on the evening of the 28th he marched to gain Lecumberri on the great road of Irurzun; but whether by orders from sir Thomas Graham or in default of orders, the difficulty of communication being extreme in those wild regions, I know not, he commenced his descent into the valley of Lerins very late. His leading brigade, getting down with some difficulty, reached Leyza beyond the great chain by the pass of Goriti or Zubieta, but darkness caught the other brigade and the troops dispersed in that frightful wilderness of woods and precipices. Many made faggot torches waving them as signals, and thus moving about, the lights served indeed to assist those who carried them but misled and bewildered others who saw them at a distance. The heights and the ravines were alike studded with these small fires, and the soldiers calling to each other for directions filled the whole region with their clamour. Thus they continued to rove and shout until morning shewed the face of the mountain covered with tired and scattered men and animals who had not gained half a league of ground beyond their starting place, and it was many hours, ere they could be collected to join the other brigade at Leyza.

General Alten, who had now been separated for three days from the army, sent mounted officers in various directions to obtain tidings, and at six o’clock in the evening renewed his march. At Areysa he halted for some time without suffering fires to be lighted, for he knew nothing of the enemy and was fearful of discovering his situation, but at night he again moved and finally established his bivouacs near Lecumberri early on the 30th. The noise of Hill’s battle at Buenza was clearly heard in the course of the day, and the light division was thus again comprized in the immediate system of operations directed by Wellington in person. Had Soult continued his march upon Guipuscoa Alten would have been in great danger, but the French general being forced to retreat, the light division was a new power thrown into his opponent’s hands, the value of which will be seen by a reference to the peculiarity of the country through which the French general was now to move.

It has been shewn that Foy cut off from the main army was driven towards the Alduides; that the French artillery and part of the cavalry were again on the Bidassoa, whence Villatte, contrary to the intelligence received by Soult, had not advanced, though he had skirmished with Longa, leaving the latter however in possession of heights above Lesaca. The troops under Soult’s immediate command were therefore completely isolated, and had no resources save what his ability and their own courage could supply. His single line of retreat by the pass of Doña Maria was secure as far as San Estevan, and from that town he could march up the Bidassoa to Elizondo and so gain France by the Col de Maya, or down the same river towards Vera by Sumbilla and Yanzi, from both of which places roads branching off to the right lead over the mountains to the passes of Echallar. There was also a third mountain-road leading direct from Estevan to Zagaramurdi and Urdax, but it was too steep and rugged for his wounded men and baggage.

The road to Elizondo was very good, but that down the Bidassoa was a long and terrible defile, and so contracted about the bridges of Yanzi and Sumbilla that a few men only could march abreast. This then Soult had to dread; that Wellington who by the pass of Vellate could reach Elizondo before him would block his passage on that side; that Graham would occupy the rocks about Yanzi, blocking the passage there and by detachments cut off his line of march upon Echallar. Then, confined to the narrow mountain-way from San Estevan to Zagaramurdi, he would be followed hard by general Hill, exposed to attacks in rear and flank during his march, and perhaps be headed at Urdax by the allied troops moving through Vellate Elizondo and the Col de Maya. In this state, his first object being to get through the pass of Doña Maria, he commenced his retreat as we have seen in the night of the 30th, and Wellington still deceived as to the real state of affairs did not take the most fitting measures to stop his march, that is to say, he continued in his first design, halting in the valley of Lanz while Hill passed his front to enter the Bastan, into which district he sent Byng’s brigade as belonging to the second division. But early on the 31st, when Soult’s real strength became known, he directed the seventh division to aid Hill, followed Byng through the pass of Vellate with the remainder of his forces, and thinking the light division might be at Zubieta in the valley of Lerins, sent Alten orders to head the French if possible at San Estevan, or at Sumbilla, in fine to cut in upon their line of march somewhere; Longa also was ordered to come down to the defiles at Yanzi, thus aiding the light division to block the way on that side, and sir Thomas Graham was advertised to hold his army in readiness to move in the same view, and it would appear that the route of the sixth and third divisions were also changed for a time.

Combat of Doña Maria.—At ten o’clock in the morning of the 31st, general Hill overtook Soult’s rear-guard between Lizasso and the Puerto. The seventh division, coming from the hills above Olague, was already ascending the mountain on his right, and the French only gained a wood on the summit of the pass under the fire of Hill’s guns. There, however, they turned and throwing out their skirmishers made strong battle. General Stewart, leading the attack of the second division, now for the third time engaged with D’Erlon’s troops, was again wounded and his first brigade was repulsed, but general Pringle who succeeded to the command, renewed the attack with the second brigade, and the thirty-fourth regiment leading, broke the enemy at the moment that the seventh division did the same on the right. Some prisoners were taken, but a thick fog prevented further pursuit, and the loss of the French in the action is unknown, probably less than that of the allies which was something short of four hundred men.

The seventh division remained on the mountain, but Hill fell back to Lizasso, and then, following his orders, moved by a short but rugged way, leading between the passes of Doña Maria and Vellate over the great chain to Almandoz, to join Wellington, who had during the combat descended into the Bastan by the pass of Vellate. Meanwhile Byng reached Elizondo, and captured a large convoy of provisions and ammunition left there under guard of a battalion by D’Erlon on the 29th; he made several hundred prisoners also after a sharp skirmish and then pushed forward to the pass of Maya. Wellington now occupied the hills through which the road leads from Elizondo to San Estevan, and full of hope he was to strike a terrible blow; for Soult, not being pursued after passing Doña Maria, had halted in San Estevan, although by his scouts he knew that the convoy had been taken at Elizondo. He was in a deep narrow valley, and three British divisions with one of Spaniards were behind the mountains overlooking the town; the seventh division was on the mountain of Doña Maria; the light division and sir Thomas Graham’s Spaniards were marching to block the Vera and Echallar exits from the valley; Byng was already at Maya, and Hill was moving by Almandoz just behind Wellington’s own position. A few hours gained and the French must surrender or disperse. Wellington gave strict orders to prevent the lighting of fires the straggling of soldiers or any other indication of the presence of troops; and he placed himself amongst some rocks at a commanding point from whence he could observe every movement of the enemy. Soult seemed tranquil, and four of his “gensd’armes” were seen to ride up the valley in a careless manner. Some of the staff proposed to cut them off; the English general whose object was to hide his ownNotes by the duke of Wellington, MSS. presence, would not suffer it, but the next moment three marauding English soldiers entered the valley and were instantly carried off by the horsemen. Half an hour afterwards the French drums beat to arms and their columns began to move out of San Estevan towards Sumbilla. Thus the disobedience of three plundering knaves, unworthy of the name of soldiers, deprived one consummate commander of the most splendid success, and saved another from the most terrible disaster.

The captives walked from their prison but their chains hung upon them. The way was narrow, the multitude great, and the baggage, and wounded men borne on their comrades’ shoulders, filed with such long procession, that Clauzel’s divisions forming the rear-guard were still about San Estevan on the morning of the 1st of August, and scarcely had they marched a league of ground, when the skirmishers of the fourth division and the Spaniards thronging along the heights on the right flank opened a fire to which little reply could be made. The troops and baggage then got mixed with an extreme disorder, numbers of the former fled up the hills, and the commanding energy of Soult whose personal exertions were conspicuous could scarcely prevent a general dispersion. However prisoners and baggage fell at every step into the hands of the pursuers, the boldest were dismayed at the peril, and worse would have awaited them in front, if Wellington had been on other points well seconded by his subordinate generals.

The head of the French column instead of taking the first road leading from Sumbilla to Echallar, had passed onward towards that leading from the bridge near Yanzi; the valley narrowed to a mere cleft in the rocks as they advanced, the Bidassoa was on their left, and there was a tributary torrent to cross, the bridge of which was defended by a battalion of Spanish Caçadores detached to that point from the heights of Vera by general Barceñas. The front was now as much disordered as the rear, and had Longa or Barceñas reinforced the Caçadores, those only of the French who being near Sumbilla could take the road from that place to Echallar would have escaped; but the Spanish generals kept aloof and D’Erlon won the defile. However Reille’s divisions were still to pass, and when they came up a new enemy had appeared.

It will be remembered that the light division wasAugust. directed to head the French army at San Estevan, or Sumbilla. This order was received on the evening of the 31st, and the division, repassing the defiles of the Zubieta, descended the deep valley of Lerins and reached Elgoriaga about mid-day on the 1st of August, having then marched twenty-four miles and being little more than a league from Estevan and about the same distance from Sumbilla. The movement of the French along the Bidassoa was soon discovered, but the division instead of moving on Sumbilla turned to the left, clambered up the great mountain of Santa Cruz and made for the bridge of Yanzi. The weather was exceedingly sultry, the mountain steep and hard to overcome, many men fell and died convulsed and frothing at the mouth, while others whose spirit and strength had never before been quelled, leaned on their muskets and muttered in sullen tones that they yielded for the first time.

Towards evening, after marching for nineteen consecutive hours over forty miles of mountain roads, the head of the exhausted column reached the edge of a precipice near the bridge of Yanzi. Below, within pistol-shot, Reille’s divisions were seen hurrying forward along the horrid defile in which they were pent up, and a fire of musketry commenced, slightly from the British on the high rock, more vigorously from some low ground near the bridge of Yanzi, where the riflemen had ensconced themselves in the brushwood. The scene which followed is thus described by an eye-witness.

“We overlooked the enemy at stone’s throw, andCaptain Cooke’s Memoirs. from the summit of a tremendous precipice. The river separated us, but the French were wedged in a narrow road with inaccessible rocks on one side and the river on the other. Confusion impossible to describe followed, the wounded were thrown down in the rush and trampled upon, the cavalry drew their swords and endeavoured to charge up the pass of Echallar, but the infantry beat them back, and several, horses and all, were precipitated into the river; some fired vertically at us, the wounded called out for quarter, while others pointed to them, supported as they were on branches of trees, on which were suspended great coats clotted with gore, and blood-stained sheets taken from different habitations to aid the sufferers.”

On these miserable supplicants brave men could not fire, and so piteous was the spectacle that it was with averted or doubtful aim they shot at the others, although the latter rapidly plied their muskets in passing, and some in their veteran hardihood even dashed across the bridge of Yanzi to make a counter-attack. It was a soldier-like but a vain effort! the night found the British in possession of the bridge, and though the great body of the enemy escaped by the road to Echallar, the baggage was cut off and fell, together with many prisoners, into the hands of the light troops which were still hanging on the rear in pursuit from San Estevan.

The loss of the French this day was very great, that of the allies about a hundred men, of which sixty-five were British, principally of the fourth division. Nevertheless lord Wellington was justly discontented with the result. Neither Longa nor general Alten had fulfilled their mission. The former excused himself as being too feeble to oppose the mass Soult led down the valley; but the rocks were so precipitous that the French could not have reached him, and the resistance made by the Spanish caçadores was Longa’s condemnation. A lamentable fatuity prevailed in many quarters. If Barceñas had sent his whole brigade instead of a weak battalion, the small torrent could not have been forced by D’Erlon; and if Longa had been near the bridge of Yanzi the French must have surrendered, for the perpendicular rocks on their right forbade even an escape by dispersion. Finally if the light division instead of marching down the valley of Lerins as far as Elgoriaga, had crossed the Santa Cruz mountain by the road used the night of the 28th, it would have arrived much earlier at the bridge of Yanzi, and then belike Longa and Barceñas would also have come down. Alten’s instructions indeed prescribed Sumbilla and San Estevan as the first points to head the French army, but judging them too strong at Sumbilla he marched as we have seen upon Yanzi; and if he had passed the bridge there and seized the road to Echallar with one brigade, while the other plied the flank with fire from the left of the Bidassoa, he would have struck a great blow. It was for that the soldiers had made such a prodigious exertion, yet the prize was thrown away.

During the night Soult rallied his divisions about Echallar, and on the morning of the 2d occupied the “Puerto” of that name. His left was placed at the rocks of Zagaramurdi; his right at the rock of Ivantelly communicating with the left of Villatte’s reserve, which was in position on the ridges between Soult’s right and the head of the great Rhune mountain. Meanwhile Clauzel’s three divisions, now reduced to six thousand men, took post on a strong hill between the “Puerto” and town of Echallar. This position was momentarily adopted by Soult to save time, to examine the country, and to make Wellington discover his final object, but that general would not suffer the affront. He had sent the third and sixth divisions to reoccupy the passes of Roncesvalles and the Alduides; Hill had reached the Col de Maya, and Byng was at Urdax; the fourth, seventh, and light divisions remained in hand, and with these he resolved to fall upon Clauzel whose position was dangerously advanced.

Combats of Echallar and Ivantelly.—The light division held the road running from the bridge of Yanzi to Echallar until relieved by the fourth division, and then marched by Lesaca to Santa Barbara, thus turning Clauzel’s right. The fourth division marched from Yanzi upon Echallar to attack his front, and the seventh moved from Sumbilla against his left; but Barnes’s brigade, contrary to lord Wellington’s intention, arrived unsupported before the fourth and light divisions were either seen or felt, and without awaiting the arrival of more troops assailed Clauzel’s strong position. The fire became vehement, but neither the steepness of the mountain nor the overshadowing multitude of the enemy clustering above in support of their skirmishers could arrest the assailants, and then was seen the astonishing spectacle of fifteen hundred men driving, by sheer valour and force of arms, six thousand good troops from a position, so rugged that there would have been little to boast of if the numbers had been reversed and the defence made good. It is true that the fourth division arrived towards the end of the action, that the French had fulfilled their mission as a rear-guard, that they were worn with fatigue and ill-provided with ammunition, having exhausted all their reserve stores during the retreat, but the real cause of their inferiority belongs to the highest part of war.

The British soldiers, their natural fierceness stimulated by the remarkable personal daring of their general, Barnes, were excited by the pride of success; and the French divisions were those which had failed in the attack on the 28th, which had been utterly defeated on the 30th, and which had suffered so severely the day before about Sumbilla. Such then is the preponderance of moral power. The men who had assailed the terrible rocks above Sauroren, with a force and energy that all the valour of the hardiest British veterans scarcely sufficed to repel, were now, only five days afterwards, although posted so strongly, unable to sustain the shock of one-fourth of their own numbers. And at this very time eighty British soldiers, the comrades and equals of those who achieved this wonderful exploit, having wandered to plunder surrendered to some French peasants, who lord Wellington truly observed, “they would under other circumstances have eat up!” What gross ignorance of human nature then do those writers display who assert, that the employing of brute force is the highest qualification of a general!

Clauzel, thus dispossessed of the mountain, fell back fighting to a strong ridge beyond the pass of Echallar, having his right covered by the Ivantelly mountain which was strongly occupied. Meanwhile the light division emerging by Lesaca from the narrow valley of the Bidassoa, ascended the broad heights of Santa Barbara without opposition, and halted there until the operations of the fourth and seventh divisions were far enough advanced to render it advisable to attack the Ivantelly. This lofty mountain lifted its head on the right, rising as it were out of the Santa Barbara heights, and separating them from the ridges through which the French troops beaten at Echallar were now retiring. Evening was coming on, a thick mist capped the crowning rocks which contained a strong French regiment, the British soldiers besides their long and terrible march the previous day had been for two days without sustenance, and were leaning, weak and fainting, on their arms, when the advancing fire of Barnes’s action about Echallar indicated the necessity of dislodging the enemy from Ivantelly. Colonel Andrew Barnard instantly led five companies of his riflemen to the attack, and four companies of the forty-third followed in support. The misty cloud had descended, and the riflemen were soon lost to the view, but the sharp clang of their weapons heard in distinct reply to the more sonorous rolling musketry of the French, told what work was going on. For some time the echoes rendered it doubtful how the action went, but the following companies of the forty-third could find no trace of an enemy save the killed and wounded. Barnard had fought his way unaided and without a check to the summit, where his dark-clothed swarthy veterans raised their victorious shout from the highest peak, just as the coming night shewed the long ridges of the mountains beyond sparkling with the last musket-flashes from Clauzel’s troops retiring in disorder from Echallar.

This day’s fighting cost the British four hundred men, and lord Wellington narrowly escaped the enemy’s hands. He had carried with him towards Echallar half a company of the forty-third as an escort, and placed a serjeant named Blood with a party to watch in front while he examined his maps. The French who were close at hand sent a detachment to cut the party off; and such was the nature of the ground that their troops, rushing on at speed, would infallibly have fallen unawares upon lord Wellington, if Blood a young intelligent man, seeing the danger, had not with surprising activity, leaping rather than running down the precipitous rocks he was posted on, given the general notice, and as it was the French arrived in time to send a volley of shot after him as he galloped away.

Soult now caused count D’Erlon to re-occupy the hills about Ainhoa, Clauzel to take post on the heights in advance of Sarre, and Reille to carry his two divisions to St. Jean de Luz in second line behind Villatte’s reserve. Foy, who had rashly uncovered St. Jean Pied de Port by descending upon Cambo, was ordered to return and reinforce his troops with all that he could collect of national guards and detachments.

Wellington had on the 1st directed general Graham to collect his forces and bring up pontoons for crossing the Bidassoa, but he finally abandoned this design, and the two armies therefore rested quiet in their respective positions, after nine days of continual movement during which they had fought ten serious actions. Of the allies, including the Spaniards, seven thousand three hundred officers and soldiers had been killed wounded or taken, and many were dispersed from fatigue or to plunder. On the French side the loss was terrible and the disorder rendered the official returns inaccurate. Nevertheless a close approximation may be made. Lord Wellington at first called it twelve thousand, but hearing that the French officers admitted more he raised his estimate to fifteen thousand. The engineer, Belmas, in his Journals of Sieges, compiled from official documents by order of the French government, sets down above thirteen thousand. Soult in his dispatches at the time, stated fifteen hundred as the loss at Maya, four hundred at Roncesvalles, two hundred on the 27th, and eighteen hundred on the 28th, after which he speaks no more of losses by battle. There remains therefore to be added the killed and wounded at the combats of Linzoain on the 26th, the double battles of Sauroren and Buenza on the 30th, the combats of the 31st, and those of the 1st and 2d of August; finally, four thousand unwounded prisoners. Let this suffice. It is not needful to sound the stream of blood in all its horrid depths.

OBSERVATIONS.

1º. The allies’ line of defence was weak. Was it therefore injudiciously adopted?

The French beaten at Vittoria were disorganized and retreated without artillery or baggage on excentric lines; Foy by Guipuscoa, Clauzel by Zaragoza, Reille by San Estevan, the King by Pampeluna. There was no reserve to rally upon, the people fled from the frontier, Bayonne and St. Jean Pied de Port if not defenceless were certainly in a very neglected state, and the English general might have undertaken any operation, assumed any position, offensive or defensive, which seemed good to him. Why then did he not establish the Anglo-Portuguese beyond the mountains, leaving the Spaniards to blockade the fortresses behind him? The answer to this question involves the difference between the practice and the theory of war.

“The soldiers, instead of preparing food and restingWellington’s Dispatches. themselves after the battle dispersed in the night to plunder, and were so fatigued that when the rain came on the next day they were incapable of marching and had more stragglers than the beaten enemy. Eighteen days after the victory twelve thousand five hundred men, chiefly British, were absent, most of them marauding in the mountains.”

Such were the reasons assigned by the English general for his slack pursuit after the battle of Vittoria, yet he had commanded that army for six years! Was he then deficient in the first qualification of a general, the art of disciplining and inspiring troops, or was the English military system defective? It is certain that he always exacted the confidence of his soldiers as a leader. It is not so certain that he ever gained their affections. The barbarity of the English military code excited public horror, the inequality of promotion created public discontent; yet the general complained he had no adequate power to reward or punish, and he condemned alike the system and the soldiers it produced. The latter “were detestable for every thing but fighting, and the officers as culpable as the men.” The vehemence of these censures is inconsistent with his celebrated observation, subsequently made, namely, “that he thought he could go any where and do any thing with the army that fought on the Pyrenees,” and although it cannot be denied that his complaints were generally too well-founded, there were thousands of true and noble soldiers, and zealous worthy officers, who served their country honestly and merited no reproaches. It is enough that they have been since neglected, exactly in proportion to their want of that corrupt aristocratic influence which produced the evils complained of.

2º. When the misconduct of the troops had thus weakened the effect of victory, the question of following Joseph at once into France assumed a new aspect. Wellington’s system of warfare had never varied after the battle of Talavera. Rejecting dangerous enterprize, it rested on profound calculation both as to time and resources for the accomplishment of a particular object, namely, the gradual liberation of Spain by the Anglo-Portuguese army. Not that he held it impossible to attain that object suddenly, and his battles in India, the passage of the Douro, the advance to Talavera, prove that by nature he was inclined to daring operations; but such efforts, however glorious, could not be adopted by a commander who feared even the loss of a brigade lest the government he served should put an end to the war. Neither was it suitable to the state of his relations with the Portuguese and Spaniards; their ignorance jealousy and passionate pride, fierce in proportion to their weakness and improvidence, would have enhanced every danger.

No man could have anticipated the extraordinary errors of the French in 1813. Wellington did not expect to cross the Ebro before the end of the campaign, and his battering train was prepared for the siege of Burgos not for that of Bayonne. A sudden invasion of France her military reputation considered, was therefore quite out of the pale of his methodized system of warfare, which was founded upon political as well as military considerations; and of the most complicated nature, seeing that he had at all times to deal with the personal and factious interests and passions, as well as the great state interests of three distinct nations two of which abhorred each other. At this moment also, the uncertain state of affairs in Germany strongly influenced his views. An armistice which might end in a separate peace excluding England, would have brought Napoleon’s whole force to the Pyrenees, and Wellington held cheap both the military and political proceedings of the coalesced powers. “I would not move a corporal’s guard in reliance upon such a system,” was the significant phrase he employed to express his contempt.

These considerations justified his caution as to invading France, but there were local military reasons equally cogent. 1º. He could not dispense with a secure harbour, because the fortresses still in possession of the French, namely, Santona, Pancorbo, Pampeluna, and St. Sebastian, interrupted his communications with the interior of Spain; hence the siege of the latter place. 2º. He had to guard against the union of Suchet and Clauzel on his right flank; hence his efforts to cut off the last-named general; hence also the blockade of Pampeluna in preference to siege and the launching of Mina and the bands on the side of Zaragoza.

3º. After Vittoria the nature of the campaign depended upon Suchet’s operations, which were rendered more important by Murray’s misconduct. The allied force on the eastern coast was badly organized, it did not advance from Valencia as we have seen until the 16th, and then only partially and by the coast, whereas Suchet had assembled more than twenty thousand excellent troops on the Ebro as early as the 12th of July; and had he continued his march upon Zaragoza he would have saved the castle of that place with its stores. Then rallying Paris’ division, he could have menaced Wellington’s flank with twenty-five thousand men exclusive of Clauzel’s force, and if that general joined him with forty thousand.

On the 16th, the day lord William Bentinck quitted Valencia, Suchet might have marched from Zaragoza on Tudela or Sanguessa, and Soult’s preparations originally made as we have seen to attack on the 23d instead of the 25th, would have naturally been hastened. How difficult it would then have been for the allies to maintain themselves beyond the Ebro is evident, much more so to hold a forward position in France. That Wellington feared an operation of this nature is clear from his instructions to lord William Bentinck and to Mina; and because Picton’s and Cole’s divisions instead of occupying the passes were kept behind the mountains solely to watch Clauzel; when the latter had regained the frontier of France Cole was permitted to join Byng and Morillo. It follows that the operations after the battle of Vittoria were well considered and consonant to lord Wellington’s general system. Their wisdom would have been proved if Suchet had seized the advantages within his reach.

4º. A general’s capacity is sometimes more taxed to profit from a victory than to gain one. Wellington, master of all Spain, Catalonia excepted, desired to establish himself solidly in the Pyrenees, lest a separate peace in Germany should enable Napoleon to turn his whole force against the allies. In this expectation, with astonishing exertion of body and mind, he had in three days achieved a rigorous examination of the whole mass of the Western Pyrenees, and concluded that if Pampeluna and San Sebastian fell, a defensive position as strong as that of Portugal, and a much stronger one than could be found behind the Ebro, might be established. But to invest those places and maintain so difficult a covering line was a greater task than to win the battle of Vittoria. However, the early fall of San Sebastian he expected, because the errors of execution in that siege could not be foreseen, and also for gain of time he counted upon the disorganized state of the French army, upon Joseph’s want of military capacity, and upon the moral ascendancy which his own troops had acquired over the enemy by their victories. He could not anticipate the expeditious journey, the sudden arrival of Soult, whose rapid reorganization of the French army, and whose vigorous operations contrasted with Joseph’s abandonment of Spain, illustrated the old Greek saying, that a herd of deer led by a lion are more dangerous than a herd of lions led by a deer.

5º. The duke of Dalmatia was little beholden to fortune at the commencement of his movements. Her first contradiction was the bad weather, which breaking up the roads delayed the concentration of his army at St. Jean Pied de Port for two days; all officers know the effect which heavy rain and hard marches have upon the vigour and confidence of soldiers who are going to attack. If Soult had commenced on the 23d instead of the 25th the surprise would have been more complete his army more brisk; and as no conscript battalions would have arrived to delay Reille, that general would probably have been more ready in his attack, and might possibly have escaped the fog which on the 26th stopped his march along the superior crest of the mountain towards Vellate. On the other hand the allies would have been spared the unsuccessful assault on San Sebastian, and the pass of Maya might have been better furnished with troops. However Soult’s combinations were so well knit that more than one error in execution, and more than one accident of fortune, were necessary to baffle him. Had count D’Erlon followed his instructions even on the 26th general Hill would probably have been shouldered off the valley of Lanz, and Soult would have had twenty thousand additional troops in the combats of the 27th and 28th. Such failures however generally attend extensively combined movements, and it is by no means certain that the count would have been able to carry the position of the Col de Maya on the 25th, if all general Stewart’s forces had been posted there. It would therefore perhaps have been more strictly within the rules of art, if D’Erlon had been directed to leave one of his three divisions to menace the Col de Maya while he marched with the other two by St. Etienne de Baygorry up the Alduides. This movement, covered by the national guards who occupied the mountain of La Houssa, could not have been stopped by Campbell’s Portuguese brigade, and would have dislodged Hill from the Bastan while it secured the junction of D’Erlon with Soult on the crest of the superior chain.

6º. The intrepid constancy with which Byng and Ross defended their several positions on the 25th, the able and clean retreat made by general Cole as far as the heights of Linzoain, gave full effect to the errors of Reille and D’Erlon, and would probably have baffled Soult at an early period if general Picton had truly comprehended the importance of his position. Lord Wellington says that the concentration of the army would have been effected on the 27th if that officer and general Cole had not agreed in thinking it impossible to make a stand behind Linzoain; and surely the necessity of retreating on that day may be questioned. For if Cole with ten thousand men maintained the position in front of Altobiscar, Ibañeta, and Atalosti, Picton might have maintained the more contracted one behind Linzoain and Erro with twenty thousand. And that number he could have assembled, because Campbell’s Portuguese reached Eugui long before the evening of the 26th, and lord Wellington had directed O’Donnel to keep three thousand five hundred of the blockading troops in readiness to act in advance, of which Picton could not have been ignorant. It was impossible to turn him by the valley of Urroz that line being too rugged for the march of an army and not leading directly upon Pampeluna. The only roads into the Val de Zubiri were by Erro and Linzoain, lying close together and both leading upon the village of Zubiri over the ridges which Picton occupied, and the strength of which was evident from Soult’s declining an attack on the evening of the 26th when Cole only was before him. To abandon this ground so hastily when the concentration of the army depended upon keeping it, appears therefore an error, aggravated by the neglect of sending timely information to the commander-in-chief,Original Note by the Duke of Wellington, MSS. for lord Wellington did not know of the retreat until the morning of the 27th and then only from general Long. It might be that Picton’s messenger failed, but many should have been sent when a retrograde movement involving the fate of Pampeluna was contemplated.

It has been said that general Cole was the adviser of this retreat which if completed would have ruined lord Wellington’s campaign. This is incorrect, Picton was not a man to be guided by others. General Cole indeed gave him a report, drawn up by colonel Bell one of the ablest staff-officers of the army, which stated that no position suitable for aNote by General Cole, MSS. very inferior force existed between Zubiri and Pampeluna, and this was true in the sense of the report, which had reference only to a division not to an army; moreover, although the actual battle of Sauroren was fought by inferior numbers, the whole position, including the ridges of the second line occupied by Picton and the Spaniards, was only maintained by equal numbers; and if Soult had made the attack of the 28th on the evening of the 27th before the sixth division arrived, the position would have been carried. However there is no doubt thatIbid. colonel Bell’s report influenced Picton, and it was only when his troops had reached Huarte and Villalba that he suddenly resolved on battle. That was a military resolution, vigorous and prompt; and not the less worthy of praise that he so readily adopted Cole’s saving proposition to regain the more forward heights above Zabaldica.

7º. Marshal Soult appeared unwilling to attack on the evenings of the 26th and 27th. Yet success depended upon forestalling the allies at their point of concentration; and it is somewhat inexplicable that on the 28th, having possession of the ridge beyond the Lanz river and plenty of cavalry, he should have known so little of the sixth division’s movements. The general conception of his scheme on the 30th has also been blamed by some of his own countrymen, apparently from ignorance of the facts and because it failed. Crowned with success it would have been cited as a fine illustration of the art of war. To have retired at once by the two valleys of Zubiri and Lanz after being reinforced with twenty thousand men would have given great importance to his repulse on the 28th; his reputation as a general capable of restoring the French affairs would have vanished, and mischief only have accrued, even though he should have effected his retreat safely, which, regard being had to the narrowness of the valleys the position of general Hill on his right and the boldness of his adversary, was not certain. To abandon the valley of Zubiri and secure that of Lanz; to obtain another and shorter line of retreat by the Doña Maria pass; to crush general Hill with superior numbers, and thus gaining the Irurzun road to succour San Sebastian, or failing of that, to secure the union of the whole army and give to his retreat the appearance of an able offensive movement; to combine all these chances by one operation immediately after a severe check was Soult’s plan, it was not impracticable and was surely the conception of a great commander.

To succeed however it was essential either to beat general Hill off-hand and thus draw Wellington to that side by the way of Marcalain, or to secure the defence of the French left in such a solid manner that no efforts against it should prevail to the detriment of the offensive movement on the right: neither was effected. The French general indeed brought an overwhelming force to bear upon Hill, and drove him from the road of Irurzun, but he did not crush him, because that general fought so strongly and retired with such good order, that beyond the loss of the position no injury was sustained. Meanwhile the left wing of the French was completely beaten, and thus the advantage gained on the right was more than nullified. Soult trusted to the remarkable defensive strength of the ground occupied by his left, and he had reason to do so, for it was nearly impregnable. Lord Wellington turned it on both flanks at the same time, but neither Picton’s advance into the valley of Zubiri on Foy’s left, nor Cole’s front attack on that general, nor Byng’s assault upon the village of Sauroren, would have seriously damaged the French without the sudden and complete success of general Inglis beyond the Lanz. The other attacks would indeed have forced the French to retire somewhat hastily up the valley of the Lanz, yet they could have held together in mass secure of their junction with Soult. But when the ridges running between them and the right wing of the French army were carried by Inglis, and the whole of the seventh division was thrown upon their flank and rear, the front attack became decisive. It is clear therefore that the key of the defence was on the ridge beyond the Lanz, and instead of two regiments Clauzel should have placed two divisions there.

8º. Lord Wellington’s quick perception and vigorous stroke on the 30th were to be expected from such a consummate commander, yet he certainly was not master of all the bearings of the French general’s operations; he knew neither the extent of Hill’s danger nor the difficulties of Soult, otherwise it is probable that he would have put stronger columns in motion, and at an earlier hour, towards the pass of Doña Maria on the morning of the 31st. Hill did not commence his march that day until 8 o’clock, and it has been shewn that even with the help of the seventh division he was too weak against the heavy mass of the retreating French army. The faults and accidents which baffled Wellington’s after operations have been sufficiently touched upon in the narrative, but he halted in the midst of his victorious career, when Soult’s army was broken and flying, when Suchet had retired into Catalonia, and all things seemed favourable for the invasion of France.

His motives for this were strong. He knew the armistice in Germany had been renewed with a view to peace, and he had therefore reason to expect Soult would be reinforced. A forward position in France would have lent his right to the enemy who pivotted upon St. Jean Pied de Port could operate against his flank. His arrangements for supply, and intercourse with his depôts and hospitals, would have been more difficult and complicated, and as the enemy possessed all the French and Spanish fortresses commanding the great roads, his need to gain one, at least, before the season closed, was absolute if he would not resign his communications with the interior of Spain. Then long marches and frequent combats had fatigued his troops destroyed their shoes and used up their musquet ammunition; and the loss of men had been great, especially of British in the second division where their proportion to foreign troops was become too small. The difficulty of re-equipping the troops would have been increased by entering an enemy’s state, because the English system did not make war support war and his communications would have been lengthened. Finally it was France that was to be invaded, France in which every person was a soldier, where the whole population was armed and organised under men, not as in other countries inexperienced in war but who had all served more or less. Beyond the Adour the army could not advance, and if a separate peace was made by the northern powers, if any misfortune befel the allies in Catalonia so as to leave Suchet at liberty to operate towards Pampeluna, or if Soult profiting from the possession of San Jean Pied de Port should turn the right flank of the new position, a retreat into Spain would become necessary, and however short would be dangerous from the hostility and warlike disposition of the people directed in a military manner.

These reasons joined to the fact, that a forward position, although offering better communications from right to left, would have given the enemy greater facilities for operating against an army which must until the fortresses fell hold a defensive and somewhat extended line, were conclusive as to the rashness of an invasion; but they do not appear so conclusive as to the necessity of stopping short after the action of the 2d of August. The questions were distinct. The one was a great measure involving vast political and military conditions, the other was simply whether Wellington should profit of his own victory and the enemy’s distresses; and in this view the objections above-mentioned, save the want of shoes the scarcity of ammunition and the fatigue of the troops, are inapplicable. But in the two last particulars the allies were not so badly off as the enemy, and in the first not so deficient as to cripple the army, wherefore if the advantage to be gained was worth the effort it was an error to halt.

The solution of this problem is to be found in the comparative condition of the armies. Soult had recovered his reserve his cavalry and artillery, but Wellington was reinforced by general Graham’s corps which was more numerous and powerful than Villate’s reserve. The new chances then were for the allies, and the action of the 2d of August demonstrated that their opponents however strongly posted could not stand before them; one more victory would have gone nigh to destroy the French force altogether; for such was the disorder that Maucune’s division had on the 2d only one thousandSoult’s Official Report, MSS. men left out of more than five thousand, and on the 6th it had still a thousand stragglers besides killed and wounded: Conroux’s and La Martinière’s divisions were scarcely in better plight, and the losses of the other divisions although less remarkable were great. It must also be remembered that general Foy with eight thousand men was cut off from the main body; and the Nivelle, the sources of which were in the allies’ power, was behind the French. With their left pressed from the pass of Maya, and their front vigorously assailed by the main body of the allies, they could hardly have keptSoult’s Official Report, MSS. together, since more than twenty-one thousand men exclusive of Foy’s troops were then absent from their colours. And as late as the 12th of August Soult warned the minister of war that he was indeed preparing to assail his enemy again, but he had not the means of resisting a counter-attack, although he held a different language to his army[Appendix, 4.] and to the people of the country.

Had Cæsar halted because his soldiers were fatigued, Pharsalia would have been but a common battle.