SOULT’S RETREAT, JULY 31-AUG. 3
When Soult’s orders of the evening of July 29th had been issued, there was no longer any pretence kept up that the Army was executing a voluntary strategical movement, planmässig as the German of 1918 would have expressed the idea, and not absconding under pressure of the enemy.
At 1 o’clock midnight Clausel’s and Reille’s harassed troops at Olague and Lanz went off as fast as their tired legs would carry them, and leaving countless stragglers behind. D’Erlon could not retire till the morning, when he sent off Darmagnac and Maransin to follow the rest of the army, retaining Abbé’s division as his rearguard, which held the heights north of Lizaso for some time after their comrades had gone.
Wellington’s orders issued at nightfall[996] were such as suited Soult fairly well, for the British general had not foreseen that which was unlikely, and he had been deceived to some extent by the reports which had come in. The deductions which he drew from what he had ascertained were that a large body of the enemy had retreated eastward, and would fall into the Roncesvalles road, but that the main force would follow the Velate-Elizondo chaussée. That Soult would lead all that survived to him of his army over the Puerto de Arraiz passes, to Santesteban, had not struck him as a likely contingency. Hence his detailed orders overnight were inappropriate to the facts which appeared next morning. He directed Picton to pursue whatever was before him on the Roncesvalles road—thinking that Foy and Lamartinière would escape in that direction; but lest they should have gone off by Eugui and the Col de Urtiaga he directed Pakenham to take the 6th Division from Olague, when it should have reached that place, across the hills to Eugui, from whence he could join Picton if necessary. Campbell’s Portuguese were to turn off in the same direction and make for Eugui and the Alduides. Unfortunately, Picton was thus set to pursue nothing, while Pakenham was twelve hours behind Foy, and never likely to catch him.
The main pursuit was to be urged on the chaussée leading by Olague and Lanz to Elizondo, whither it was supposed that Soult would have taken the bulk of his army. From Ostiz and the neighbourhood Byng and Cole were to march in this direction, conducted by Wellington himself, while from the other side Hill was to lead thither his own four brigades, and the Spanish reinforcements which had reached him at the end of the combat of Beunza.
Only Dalhousie and the 7th Division were directed to take the route of the Puerto de Arraiz, and this not with the object of pursuing the main French army, but rather as a flanking movement to favour the operation allotted to Hill. And Dalhousie, unfortunately, was not well placed for the march allotted to him, since he was near Ostiz, and had to get to his destination by a cross march via Lizaso.
A separate note for Charles Alten, written at the same time as the rest of the orders, but not sent out till the following morning, directed the Light Division to march back to Zubieta where it would be able to communicate with the column that went by the Puerto de Arraiz, i.e. that of Dalhousie[997], and be well placed for flank operations against the retreating enemy.
The net result of all this was to send over half the available troops—Picton, Pakenham, Campbell, Byng, and Cole—on roads where no enemy would be found. And Hill’s force would have suffered the same fate, if it had not been in such close touch with D’Erlon that it could not help following, when it enemy’s route became evident. Unfortunately—as Soult had perhaps calculated—Hill had troops whose ranks had been terrible thinned, and who were tired out by an unsuccessful action fought on the preceding afternoon.
The day’s work was unsatisfactory. Picton, of course, found out at Zubiri that everything that had been on the Roncesvalles road—the small detachment already spoken of[998], and a mass of stragglers—had turned up toward Eugui and the Alduides on the preceding night. And Cole discovered that Foy had passed the Puerto de Urtiaga a whole march ahead of him. Wellington, with the column on the great chaussée, pressed rapidly across the Velate and reached Irurita, with the exasperating result that he discovered that only 500 to 2,000 French had passed that way[999]. On the other hand, he had news from the west that an immense mass of the enemy had gone by the Puerto de Arraiz, with Hill and Dalhousie after them. There were doubts whether the pursuing force was not dangerously small—at any rate, it would have to be cautious. And it was tiresome that the position of the Light Division was still unknown—it might (or might not) have a chance of falling on the flank of Soult’s long column, either at Santesteban or at Sumbilla. Wellington’s own troops had marched far and fast from Ostiz to Irurita, but there was in the evening enough energy left in Byng’s brigade for a short push farther. News came in that a great convoy of food from St. Jean de Luz had just reached Elizondo, where it had halted under the protection of the regiment which D’Erlon had left there on the 27th. By a forced march in the evening Byng’s flank companies surprised and captured the whole—a good supply of bread, biscuit, and brandy—the escort making off without resistance. The brigadier had the heads of the brandy casks stove in, before the weary troops could get at them, ‘it was a sight to see the disappointed soldiers lying down on their faces and lapping up the liquor with their hands[1000].’
All this, of course, was unimportant. The real interest of the doings of July 31st lay on the road from Lizaso to the Puerto de Arraiz. Hill, as was natural, was late in discovering that the whole of the French army had passed across his front, since Abbé’s division still lay at eight in the morning in battle-order blocking his way. But having got the news of the decisive success won by his chief on the preceding day, Hill had to attack the hitherto victorious enemy in front of him, knowing that the general situation was such that they could not possibly stand. His advance was not made till 10 a.m.—a sufficient proof of the difficulty of resuming the offensive with tired and beaten troops. When once, however, it began, the 2nd Division showed that if its numbers were wasted, its fighting power was still strong. And the delay in its attack allowed of the arrival of the 7th Division, who were able to co-operate in a way that would have been impossible if the fighting had started at daybreak.