While Clausel was directed to use the chaussée and pursue Cole along the Pampeluna road past Roncesvalles, Burguete, and Espinal, Reille was once more ordered[909] ‘to follow the crest of the mountains to the right, and to try to take in the rear the hostile corps which has been holding the pass of Maya against Count D’Erlon.’ The itinerary seems insane: there was a mule track and no more, and Soult proposed to engage upon it a column of 17,000 men, with a front of one file and a depth of at least six miles, allowing for the battalion- and brigade-intervals. The crest was not a flat plateau, but an interminable series of ups and downs, often steep and stony, occasionally wooded. Campbell’s brigade had traversed part of it on the 25th, but to move a brigade on a fine day is a different thing from moving an army corps in a fog.
Reille obeyed orders, though the fog was lying as densely upon the mountains as on the preceding night. Apparently Soult had supposed that it would lift at dawn—but it did not till midday. Lamartinière’s division was left to guard the Linduz and the debouch of the Atalosti path: Foy’s, followed by Maucune’s, tried to keep to the crest, with the most absurd results. It was supposed to be guided by French-Basque peasants (smugglers, no doubt) who were reputed to know the ground. After going no more than a mile or two in the fog, the guides, at a confusion of tracks in the middle of a wood, came to a standstill, and talked volubly to Foy in unintelligible Basque. Whether they had lost their way, or were giving advice, the General could not quite discover. In despair he allowed the leading battalion to take the most obvious track. They had got completely off the Atalosti path, and after two miles of downhill marching found themselves on the chaussée not far from Espinal, with the rear of Clausel’s corps defiling past them[910]. It would still have been possible to stop the column, for only one brigade had reached the foot of the mountain, and Maucune and Lamartinière were still on the crest. But Reille took upon himself the responsibility of overriding his commander’s impracticable directions, and ordered Foy to go on, and the rest to follow, and to fall in to the rear of Clausel’s impedimenta. ‘Il est fort dangereux dans les hautes montagnes de s’engager sans guides et en brouillard,’ as he very truly observed. Justifying himself in a letter of that night to Soult, he wrote that if it were absolutely necessary to get on the crest-path again, it could be done by turning up the Arga valley at Zubiri, and following it to Eugui, from which there were tracks both to the Col de Velate and to Irurita.[911]
Thus ended Soult’s impracticable scheme for seizing the Col de Velate by marching three divisions along a precipitous mule track. Even if there had been no fog, it is hard to believe that anything could have come of it, as Campbell’s Portuguese would have been found at Eugui well on in the day, and after Reille’s column would have been much fatigued. Any show of resistance, even by one brigade, would have checked Foy, and compelled Reille to deploy—an interminable affair, as the fight on the Linduz upon the preceding afternoon had sufficiently demonstrated. But to try this manœuvre in a dense fog was insane, and Reille was quite right to throw it up.
The whole interest, therefore, of the French operation on July 26th turns on the doing of Clausel’s column. It advanced very cautiously down the slopes to the Abbey of Roncesvalles, discovering no trace of the enemy save a few abandoned wounded. Having reached the upland valley of Burguete, Clausel sent out cavalry patrols, and found, after much searching in the fog, that Cole had gone off with his whole force towards Espinal. His rearguard was discovered bivouacking along the road beyond that village. When it sighted the French it retired towards Viscarret. Clausel then ordered his infantry to pursue, but they were far to the rear and it was only about 3 p.m. when Taupin’s division came into touch with the light companies of Anson’s brigade, just as they were falling back on the whole 4th Division, drawn up in a favourable position on heights behind the Erro river, near the village of Linzoain. The day had at last become clear and fine. The 31st Léger, leading the French column, exchanged a lively fusillade with the light companies, while a squadron of chasseurs tried a charge on their flank. But both were driven off, and Clausel halted when he saw Cole waiting for him in order of battle. It was not till he had brought up and deployed two divisions that he ventured to press the Allied front, and nothing serious happened till after 4 o’clock.
Meanwhile Picton had come up from the rear, and joined Cole at Linzoain: the head of his troops had reached Zubiri only three miles behind. The arrival of the truculent general, looking even more eccentric than usual, for he was wearing a tall round civilian hat above a blue undress frock-coat, and was using a furled umbrella by way of riding whip, was taken by the 4th-Division soldiers as a sign of battle[912]. ‘Here comes old Tommy: now, boys, make up your minds for a fight’ passed down the ranks[913]. But, oddly enough, this was about the only day in Sir Thomas’s military career when he did not take a fair risk. He certainly came up in a bellicose mood, for he ordered Ross’s brigade to be ready to move forward when the 3rd Division should have come up to support it. But after riding to the front, and holding a long talk with Cole, he agreed with the latter that it would be dangerous to fight on ground which could be turned on both flanks, with an enemy who was known to have 35,000 men in hand. Only part of the French were up—Reille’s divisions after their stroll in the fog were far to the rear behind Clausel—so it would be possible to hold on till night, and slip away in the dark. Picton wrote to Wellington to report his decision, and does not seem in his dispatch to have realized in the least that he was contravening the whole spirit of his commander’s instructions of July 23rd with reference to the ‘stopping of the enemy’s progress towards Pampeluna in the event of the passes being given up[914].’ He merely stated that he had received these instructions too late to make it possible for him to reach Roncesvalles, or to join Cole before the latter had evacuated his positions[915]. As there was no favourable ground between the Erro river and the immediate vicinity of Pampeluna, on which a smaller force could make an effectual stand against a much larger one, he had determined to retire at once, and proposed to ‘take up a position at as short a distance as practicable from Pampeluna’—by which he meant the heights of San Cristobal, only two or three miles out from that fortress. He was thus intending to give up without further fighting ten miles of most difficult hilly country, where the enemy could be checked for a time at every successive ridge—though, no doubt, all the positions could be turned one after the other by long flank détours. But the net result was that Picton gave Soult a clear road on the 27th, and allowed him to arrive in front of Pampeluna on that day, whereas the least show of resistance between Zubiri and the debouch into the plains at Huarte, would have forced the French to deploy and waste time, and they could not have reached the open country till the 28th. This is sufficiently proved by the extreme difficulty which Soult found in conducting his march, even when he was not opposed.
So determined was Picton not to fight on the Erro river, or on the Arga, that he did not bring up his own division from Zubiri, but let it stand, only three miles behind the line on which Cole kept up a mild detaining action during the late afternoon hours of the 26th. Soult attacked with great caution, and more by way of flank movements than by frontal pressure. By evening Cole had drawn back one mile, and had 168 casualties, all but four of them in Anson’s brigade[916]. Those of the French can hardly have been more numerous: they seem all to have been in Taupin’s division[917].
On the afternoon of the 26th Picton had nearly 19,000 men at his disposition[918], Soult had somewhat less, since Reille’s column was so far to the rear that it could not get up before dark. There was no wonder, therefore, that the enemy made no resolute attack; and it can only be said that the Marshal was acting very wisely, for the French force on the ground was not sufficient to move the opposing body, until Reille should have come up; and Cole and Picton had resolved not to give way before dark. But when the fires of the French, shining for many miles on each side of the road, showed that they had settled down for the night, Cole drew off his division, and retired on Zubiri, where he passed through Picton’s troops, who were to take over the rearguard duty, as they were fresh and well rested. Campbell’s Portuguese dropped into the line of march from Eugui, by orders issued to them that afternoon, and by 11 p.m. the whole corps was in march for Pampeluna. Its departure had passed wholly unnoticed by the enemy. Meanwhile, Wellington’s aide-de-camp, riding through the night from Almandoz, with orders to Picton to maintain the ground which he was abandoning, can only have met the column when it was drawing near its destination.
It was quite early in the morning, though the sun was well up, when the head of the retreating column reached the village of Zabaldica, where the valley of the Arga begins to open out into the plain of Pampeluna, between the last flanking heights which constrict it. In front was the very ill-chosen position which Picton intended to hold, along a line of hills which are quite separate from the main block of the mountains, and stretch isolated in the lowland for some five miles north-west and south-east. These are the hill of Huarte on the right, parted from the mountains by the valley of the Egues river; the hill of San Miguel in the centre, on the other side of the high road and of the Arga river, and on the left the very long ridge of San Cristobal, separated from San Miguel by the Ulzama river, which flows all along its front.
Now these hills are strong posts in themselves, each with a good glacis of slope in its front; the gaps between them are stopped by the large villages of Villaba and Huarte, both susceptible of obstinate defence; and the two flanking hills are covered in front by river-beds—though fordable ones. But they are far too close to Pampeluna, which is but one single mile from San Cristobal: the guns of the fortress actually commanded at a range of only 1,200 yards, the sole road of communication along the rear of the position. Cassan’s garrison of 3,000 men was not large enough to furnish men for any large sortie—though he made a vigorous sally against O’Donnell’s blockading division on the 27th, and destroyed some of its trenches[919]. But no army should fight with a hostile fortress less than two miles in its rear, and commanding its line of retreat: it is surprising that such an old soldier as Picton chose this ground—presumably he was seduced by the fine position for both infantry and guns which it shows looking towards the enemy’s road of arrival.
Apparently Cole had a better eye for ground than Picton, for as they were riding together between Zabaldica and Huarte, he pointed out to his senior the advantage that would be gained by throwing forward the left wing of the army to a position much more remote from Pampeluna, the hill of Oricain or Sorauren, which faces the San Cristobal ridge from the other side of the Ulzama river[920]. This height is the last roll of the mountains, but almost separated from their main massif: it is only joined to the next summit by a high col at its right centre. For the rest of its length it is separated from its neighbour-height by a well-marked ravine. Its flanks are guarded by the beds of the Arga to the right and the Ulzama to the left. It is well under two miles long, about 1,000 feet high, and except at the Col has a very formidable front of steep slopes, covered with gorse and scattered bushes. The whole formed a strong and self-contained position, whose weak point was that it was rather too much in advance of the Huarte-San Miguel heights, which trend away southward, so that when the army was drawn out its right was much ‘refused,’ and its left very much thrown forward. It was also inconvenient that the access to the crest from the rear was bad, a steep climb by sheep-tracks from Oricain or Arre, up which all food or munitions would have to be brought. From the north there was a slightly better path to the summit from Sorauren, leading up to the small pilgrimage chapel of San Salvador on the left end of the crest. But this would be of more use to the assailants than to the defenders of the heights. Between the Col and the river Arga, and close above the village of Zabaldica, there was a spur or under-feature of the main position, which formed a sort of outwork or flank protection to it. At the moment when the retreating army was passing on towards Huarte, this spur was being held by two Spanish battalions, part of the division which O’Donnell, by Wellington’s orders, had detached to reinforce Picton. It was perhaps the sight of this small force in a very good position which suggested to Cole that the right policy was to prolong his line in continuation of it, across the Col and as far as the chapel above Sorauren.