Nevertheless, the Marshal sent on the morning of the 26th a very flamboyant message of victory to his master the Emperor, who then lay at Mayence. Both Maya and Roncesvalles had been forced, D’Erlon had captured five guns and many hundreds of prisoners at the former pass: he himself hoped to be at Pampeluna, and to have raised its siege, by the 27th. These news were sent on from Bayonne by semaphore to Paris and the Rhine, and reached Napoleon on August 1st. At the same time, and by the same rapid method of transmission, arrived General Rey’s report of his successful repulse of the assault of July 25th. It is worth while to turn away from solid history for a moment, in order to see how the Imperial editor of the Moniteur utilized this useful material for propaganda. He first wrote to Clarke the Minister of War: ‘We can now give the public some account of affairs in Spain. The Vittoria business and the King must not be mentioned. The first note which you must put in the Moniteur should run as follows—“His Majesty has named the Duke of Dalmatia as his lieutenant-general commanding his armies in Spain. The Marshal took up the command on July 12, and made immediate dispositions for marching against the besiegers of Pampeluna and St. Sebastian.” After that put in General Rey’s first letter about the events of the 25th-27th. You had better make some small additions to the number of prisoners and of guns captured, not for French consumption but to influence European opinion. As I am printing General Rey’s dispatch in the Frankfort Journal, and have made some changes of this sort in it, I send you a corrected copy so that it may appear in the Moniteur in identical terms.’
The Emperor’s second letter to his Foreign Minister, the Duke of Bassano, sent from Dresden three days later, is even more amusing. ‘You had better circulate the news that in consequence of Marshal Soult’s victory over the English on July 25, the siege of St. Sebastian has been raised, and 30 siege-guns and 200 waggons taken. The blockade of Pampeluna was raised on the 27th: General Hill, who was in command at that siege, could not carry off his wounded, and was obliged to burn part of his baggage. Twelve siege-guns (24-pounders) were captured there. Send this to Prague, Leipzig, and Frankfort[897].’
This ‘intelligent anticipation of the future,’ for utilization in the armistice-negotiations going on with Austria, could not have been bettered. Unfortunately there arrived next day another semaphore message from Soult of the night of the 26th-27th. The Emperor has to warn Caulaincourt that yesterday’s propaganda will not stand criticism. ‘I have just got another “telegraphic dispatch” sent on by the Empress from Mayence, giving another communication from Soult, written 24 hours after the last, in which he said he would be at Pampeluna on the 27th. The enemy lost many men and seven guns. But nothing decisive seems to have happened. I am impatient for more news, in order to be able to understand in detail Soult’s dispositions, and to form from them a general idea of the situation[898].’
Alas for human ingenuity! Soult’s next dispatch, of July 29, was not to be of the sort that craved for publicity in the Moniteur, even with the most judicious editing.
But to return from Dresden to Biscay, and from the head-quarters of the Emperor to those of the ‘Sepoy General’ whom he had at last begun to recognize as capable of ‘des projets très sensés.’
If only Wellington had been at his head-quarters at Lesaca at 11 o’clock on the morning of July 25th, and if William Stewart had been on the spot at Maya, and had sent early news of D’Erlon’s attack, many things might have happened differently. Wellington would have had a long afternoon before him to concert operations, and would have possessed information to guide him in drawing up his scheme. Unfortunately he was absent—as we have seen—and only received at 6 o’clock a second-hand report from Lord Dalhousie at Echalar, to the effect that fighting was going on at Maya, with the unfortunate addition that D’Erlon had been repulsed—a most inaccurate summary of what had happened. Later on in the evening, not before 10 p.m., came Cole’s first dispatch from Roncesvalles, to say that he and Byng were heavily engaged at 1 o’clock with a large French force, and were holding their own. On these scanty data Wellington felt that no conclusions could be drawn—he wrote to Graham that there must be a great mass of French troops not yet discovered, which would come into action on some other point on the 26th, and that his policy would depend on where that force appeared—he could only account for 30,000 of Soult’s men so far. He did not commit himself to any definite guess as to the undiscovered part of the Marshal’s plan, but from his other correspondence it is clear that he suspected an attempt to relieve St. Sebastian by an attack on the lower Bidassoa—a very possible solution of the problem, but not the correct one[899].
Awaiting further developments, Wellington issued no more orders on the night of the 25th, save one to the Conde de Abispal, directing him to send one of his two infantry divisions from in front of Pampeluna to join Picton and Cole, and to keep the fortress blockaded by the other. The force thus taken away would be replaced by Carlos de España’s division, which was marching up from Burgos, and due to arrive on the 26th. In this dispatch Wellington asked the Conde to direct Mina to send up his infantry from Saragossa, and told him that he was intending to order to the front the British heavy cavalry brigades, now cantoned along the Ebro. No other movements were settled that night; but Wellington was aware that during his absence his Quartermaster-General, George Murray, had directed Lord Dalhousie to have the 7th Division massed at Echalar, prepared to move at an hour’s notice, and Charles Alten at Vera to have the Light Division got into a similar readiness. Either would be able to march off at dawn.
Somewhere late in the night[900] Wellington received more news, which made the situation clearer but more unsatisfactory. The true story of the Maya fighting came in from two sources: Hill sent a dispatch dated from Elizondo at some hour after 6 p.m., to say that on getting back from the Alduides he had found Stewart unable to hold the Pass, and had bidden him to retire. Stewart, who was wounded and unable to write, sent a verbal message, which came in about the same time, reporting that Hill had directed him to fall back on Elizondo and Berueta. The officers who brought this information stated that the French were in great force, and that the 2nd Division had been much cut up. No more reports arrived from Cole, so that the result of the Roncesvalles fighting remained unknown.
After what must have been a very short and disturbed night’s rest, Wellington was in the saddle by 4 a.m. on the 26th, and preparing to ride up the Bastan to visit Hill, and to ascertain the exact measure of the mishap at Maya. Before departing from Lesaca he gave his first definite orders in view of the events of the previous day[901]. Maya being lost, the 7th Division must fall back from Echalar to Sumbilla, on the road to Santesteban: the Light Division must retire from Vera to the west bank of the Bidassoa, and be ready to march either towards Yanzi or towards Santesteban, as might be necessary. Longa’s Cantabrians were to block the hill road from the Bidassoa to Oyarzun. Graham was told to hurry on the embarkation of the siege-train from St. Sebastian. Hill was to hold on as long as he could to the position at Irurita, in order to keep touch with the 6th Division, which was directed to feel towards him, and to be ready to join him if necessary. It was to push two of its three brigades to Legasa, on the road from Santesteban along the upper Bidassoa, which would bring them within eight miles of Hill’s proposed line of defence at Irurita. The third brigade of the 6th Division was to stand fast at Santesteban, where it would be in touch with Dalhousie, when the latter should have reached Sumbilla.
All these orders, as is obvious, are concerned only with the measures necessary to stop D’Erlon’s advance. None of them have any reference to the action of the other French force at Roncesvalles. Till news should come up from Cole and Picton, it was impossible to realize what was going on at that front, or whether the enemy was making his main attack in that direction. There might be still (as Wellington had guessed three days back) a violent demonstration towards Pampeluna, intended to distract a real attempt to relieve St. Sebastian.