No doubt the main blame for this untimely dispersion of forces lay with General Head-Quarters. Jourdan and Joseph ought to have sent orders to Foy, after the evacuation of Madrid, ordering him to cease all secondary operations, to leave minimum garrisons at a few essential points, abandon all the rest, and collect as strong a field-force as possible, with which to join the main army. But they had written to the minister at Paris suggesting such moves, instead of dispatching direct orders to that effect to the general himself. Foy had been sent information, not orders, and had failed to realize the full meaning of the information—absorbed as he was in his own particular Biscayan problems. Events were marching very quickly: it was hard to realize that Wellington, who had been on the Esla on May 31, would have been across the upper Ebro with 70,000 men on June 15. It had taken little more than a fortnight for him to overrun half of Northern Spain. The fact remained that of all the French troops operating in Biscay in June, only Sarrut’s division, from Orduña, joined the King in time for the battle of Vittoria. Yet Foy had under his orders not only his own division but the Italian brigade of St. Pol, and the mobile brigade of Berlier from the Army of the North, in addition to 10,000 men of the garrisons of the various posts and fortresses of the North and the littoral. And he had no enemy save the great partisan Longa in the western mountains, and the scattered remains of the local insurgents under El Pastor and others, whom he had defeated in April and May, and whom he was at present harrying from hill to coast and from coast to hill. We are once more forced to remember that the French armies in Spain were armies of occupation as well as armies of operation, and that one of their functions was often fatal to the other.
But to return to the moment when the King’s army came back to the Ebro. Head-quarters were, of course, established at Miranda, where the royal Guard served as their escort. The Army of the South sent three divisions across to the north bank of the river; they were cantoned on the lower Zadorra about Arminion; but Gazan kept three brigades on the south bank as a rearguard for the present, but (as the King hoped) to form a vanguard for a counter-advance, if only Clausel should come up soon, and an offensive campaign become possible. A small observing force was left at Pancorbo, into whose castle a garrison was thrown. Cavalry exploring parties, pushed out from this point, sought for Wellington’s approaching columns as far as Poza de la Sal on the right, Briviesca on the high road, and Cerezo on the left; but to no effect. They came in touch with nothing but detachments of Julian Sanchez’s Lancers. D’Erlon, with the Army of the Centre, went ten miles down the Ebro to Haro: he had now recovered his missing division, Darmagnac’s, which had been lent to Reille for the last two months. For the Army of Portugal having now three infantry divisions collected—Maucune’s, Sarrut’s, and Lamartinière’s—was ordered to give back the borrowed unit to its proper commander. Reille took the right of the Ebro position, having Maucune’s division at Frias, Sarrut’s at Espejo, and Lamartinière’s at the Puente Lara. He was ordered to use his cavalry to search for signs of the enemy along the upper Ebro. The King had thus an army which, by the junction of Sarrut and Lamartinière, had risen to over 50,000 infantry and nearly 10,000 cavalry, concentrated on a short front of 25 miles from Frias to Haro, covering the main road to France by Vittoria, and also the side roads to Orduña and Bilbao on the one flank, and Logroño and Saragossa on the other. His retreat, though dispiriting, had not yet been costly—it is doubtful whether he had lost 1,000 casualties in the operations of the last six weeks. With the exception of the combats at Salamanca on May 26 and Morales on June 2, there had been no engagements of any importance. The army was angry at the long-continued retreat; the officers were criticizing the generalship of their commanders in the most outspoken fashion, but there was no demoralization—the troops were clamouring for a general action.
But on June 17, when the French armies settled down into their new position, with no detected enemy in their neighbourhood, their fate was already determined—the Ebro line had been turned before it was even taken up. For on this same day Wellington had not only got his whole army north of the Ebro, but was marching rapidly eastward, by the mountain roads twenty miles north of the river, into the rear of Reille’s cantonments. Of all his troops only Julian Sanchez and Carlos de España’s infantry division were left in Castile.
The movements of the Allied Army on the 15th-16th-17th June had been carried out with surprising celerity. The Galician infantry, who had crossed the river first, at Rocamonde, the bridge highest up on its course, on the 13th were hurrying northward, by cross roads not marked on the map, and obviously impracticable for guns, to Soncillo (15th), Quintanilla de Pienza (16th), Villasana (17th), and Valmaseda in Biscay (18th). When they had reached the last-named town they were threatening Bilbao, and almost at its gates. This was the great demonstration, intended to throw confusion among all the French detachments on the northern coast. Several of the stages exceeded thirty miles in the day.
Meanwhile the three great columns of the Anglo-Portuguese army were executing a turning movement almost as wide as that of Giron’s Galicians. Converging from different bridges of the Ebro—Rocamonde (where some of Graham’s cavalry passed), San Martin de Lines (where the bulk of Graham’s force debouched northward on the 14th), and Puente Arenas (used by the Head-quarters column on the 15th and by Hill’s column on the 16th[518])—the whole army came in by successive masses on to the two neighbouring towns of Villarcayo and Medina de Pomar. At the latter place Longa turned up with his hard-marching Cantabrian division, and joined the army. These considerable towns are the road-centres of the whole rugged district between the Ebro and the Cantabrian mountains. From them fork out the very few decent roads which exist in the land—those northward over the great sierras to Santander, Santoña, and Valmaseda-Bilbao: those eastward across their foot-hills to Orduña-Vittoria and to Frias-Miranda. These five roads are the only ones practicable for artillery and transport: there are, however, minor tracks which can take infantry in good summer weather.
From his head-quarters at Quintana, near the bridge of Puente Arenas, Wellington dictated on the 15th the marching orders which governed the next stage of the campaign. With the exception of the Galicians, already starting on their circular sweep towards Bilbao, all his columns were directed to utilize the road parallel to the Ebro, but twenty miles north of it, which runs from Medina de Pomar to Osma, Orduña, and Vittoria. He deliberately avoided employing the other high road, which runs closer to the river from Medina de Pomar to Frias and Miranda, even for a side-column or a flying corps: only cavalry scouts were sent along it. The reason why the whole army was thrown on to a single road—a thing generally to be avoided, especially when time is precious—was partly that the appearance of British troops before Frias, where the enemy was known to have a detachment, would give him early warning of the move. But the more important object was to strike at the French line of communication with Bayonne as far behind the known position of King Joseph’s army as possible. If the line Frias-Miranda had been chosen, the enemy would have had many miles less to march, when once the alarm was given, if he wished to cover his proper line of retreat. If a fight was coming, it had better be at or about Vittoria, rather than at or about Miranda. Moreover, the high road, for a few miles east of Frias, passes to the south bank of the Ebro, which it recrosses at the Puente Lara—there is only a bad track north of the river from Frias to that bridge. It would be absurd to direct any part of the army to cross and recross the Ebro at passages which might be defended.
So the whole force was committed to the Medina-Osma road, except that the infantry occasionally took cross-cuts by local tracks, in order to leave the all-important main line, as far as possible, to the guns and transport. The three corps in which the army had marched from the Pisuerga fell in behind each other, in the order in which they had crossed the Ebro—Graham leading—the Head-Quarters column following—Hill bringing up the rear. Longa’s Cantabrians went on as a sort of flying vanguard in front of Graham, not being burdened with artillery[519]. The road was one which could only have been used for such a large force in summer—it hugged the foot-hills of the Cantabrian sierras, crossing successively the head-waters of several small rivers running south to the Ebro, each in its own valley. The country was thinly peopled and bare, so that little food could be got to supplement the mule-borne rations. For this reason, as also with the object of granting the French as little time as possible after the first alarm should be given, the pace had to be forced. The marches were long: on the 15th the head of Graham’s infantry was at Villarcayo: on the 16th at La Cerca (five miles beyond Medina de Pomar): on the 17th at the mountain villages of San Martin de Loza and Lastres de Teza: on the 18th it was due at Osma and at Berberena—a few miles up the Osma-Orduña road. The Head-Quarters column having no exploration to do, since the way was reported clear in front, covered the same distance in three marches instead of four, and was expected to reach the neighbourhood of Osma on the 18th. Hill’s column had also to hurry—its leading division was on that same day expected to be at Venta de Membligo, a posting station six miles short of Osma, so that its head would be just behind the tail of the preceding corps. But Hill’s rear would be strung out for many miles behind. However, all the fighting army was again in one mass—with a single exception. Wellington had ordered the 6th division, commanded temporarily by his own brother-in-law Pakenham, to halt at Medina de Pomar. The reason which he gives in his dispatch[520] for depriving himself, now that the day of crisis was at hand, of a good division of 7,000 men, is that he left it ‘to cover the march of our magazines and stores.’ This is almost as puzzling a business as his leaving of Colville’s corps at Hal on the day of the battle of Waterloo—the only similar incident in the long record of his campaigns. If this was his sole reason, why should not a smaller unit—Pack’s or Bradford’s independent brigade—or both of them—have been left behind? For that purpose such a force would have sufficed. We are not informed that the 6th Division was more afflicted with sickness than any other, or that it was more way-worn. The only supposition that suggests itself is that Wellington may have considered the possibility of Giron’s raid into Biscay failing, and bringing down on his rear some unsuspected mass of French troops from Bilbao. If this idea entered his head, he may easily have thought it worth while to leave behind a solid reserve, on which Giron might fall back, and so to cover the rear of his main army while he was striking at the great road to France. But it must be confessed that this is a mere hypothesis, and that the detachment of Pakenham’s division seems inexplicable from the information before us. It was ordered to follow when the whole of the transport should be clear, if no further developments had happened to complicate the situation. Carrying out this direction literally, Pakenham waited three days at Medina de Pomar, and so only got to the front twenty-four hours after the battle of Vittoria.[521]
The orders which Wellington issued upon the 17th[522] brought the head of his columns into touch with the enemy. They directed that Graham, with the 1st and 5th Division, Pack and Bradford, should move past Osma on to Orduña, by the two alternative routes available between those places, while the Head-Quarters column should not turn north toward Orduña on reaching Osma, but pursue the roads south-eastward by Espejo and Carcamo, which lead to Vittoria by a more southerly line. The result contemplated was very much that which was worked out in the battle of the 21st—a frontal attack by the main body, with an outflanking move by Graham’s corps, which would bring it into the rear of the enemy. But the route via Orduña was not the one which the northern column was actually destined to take, as the events of the 18th distracted it into a shorter but rougher road to the same destination (Murguia), which it would have reached by a much longer turn on the high road via Orduña.
But all the columns were not moving on the main track from Medina de Pomar to Osma this day, for Wellington had directed the Light Division to drop its artillery to the care of the 4th Division, and cut across the hills south of the high road, by a country path which goes by La Boveda, San Millan, and Villanan to a point, a few miles south of Osma, in the same valley of the Omecillo in which that town lies. And Hill, still far to the rear, was told to detach two brigades of the 2nd Division, and send them to follow the Light Division along the same line: if Alten should send back word that the route was practicable for guns, Hill was to attach his Portuguese field battery to this advance-column.
It was, apparently, on the morning of the 17th June only that the French got definite indications of the direction in which the British army might be looked for. Maucune reported from Frias, not long after his arrival there, that hostile cavalry were across the Ebro in the direction of Puente Arenas, and that other troops in uncertain strength were behind them. It was clearly necessary to take new measures, in view of the fact that the enemy was beyond the Ebro, in a place where he had not been expected. How much did the move imply? After consideration Joseph and Jourdan concluded, quite correctly, that since the main body of Wellington’s army had been invisible for so many days—it had last been seen on the Hormaza on June 12th—it was probably continuing its old policy of circular marches to turn the French right. This was correct, but they credited Wellington with intending to get round them not by the shorter routes Osma-Vittoria, but by the much longer route by Valmaseda and Bilbao, which would cut into the high road to France at Bergara, far behind Vittoria.