But the Bayonne chaussée is by no means the only road in the Vittoria upland. The city is the meeting point of a number of second-class and third-class routes, debouching from various subsidiary valleys of the Pyrenees and leading to various towns in Navarre or Biscay. Of these the chief were (1) the Salvatierra-Pampeluna road, running due east, and then crossing from the valley of the Zadorra to the upper waters of the Araquil, by which it descends into Navarre. This was a route practicable for artillery or transport, but narrow, ill repaired, and steep—eminently not a line to be taken by a large force in a hurry; (2) the main road to Bilbao by Villareal and Durango, a coach road, but very tortuous, and ascending high mountains by long curves and twists; (3) the alternative coach route to Bilbao by Murguia and Orduña, easier than the Villareal road in its first section, but forced to cross the main chain of the Pyrenees by difficult gradients before descending into Biscay; (4) a bad side road to the central Ebro, going due south by Trevino and La Guardia to Logroño; (5) a similar route, running due east from Subijana on the Bayas to the bridges of Nanclares three miles up-stream from the defile of Puebla. At the opening of the battle of Vittoria Graham’s column was already across the Murguia-Bilbao road, and in its earliest advance blocked the Durango-Bilbao road also. Thus the only route beside the great chaussée available for the French was that to Salvatierra and Pampeluna. The road to Trevino and Logroño was useless, as leading in an undesired direction.
In addition to these five coach roads there were several country tracks running from various points on the Bayas river to minor bridges on the Zadorra, across the lofty Monte Arrato, the watershed between the two streams. It was these fifth-rate tracks which Wellington used on the battle-day for the advance of some of his central columns, while Hill on the right was forcing the defile of La Puebla, and Graham on the left was descending from Murguia on to the bridges of the upper Zadorra north-east of Vittoria.
Having their troops safely concentrated east of the Zadorra on the evening of June 19, Joseph and Jourdan made up their minds to stand on the position behind that river, even though Clausel had not yet come up, nor sent any intelligence as to the route by which he was arriving. Aides-de-camp were searching for him in all directions—but nothing had yet been ascertained, beyond the fact that he had started from Pampeluna on June 15th, marching on Logroño[539]. There was a high chance that some one of many missives would reach him, and turn him on to Vittoria. But the idea that Clausel must now be very near at hand was less operative in compelling Joseph to fight than the idea that he must at all cost save the vast convoys accumulated around him, his treasure, his military train, his ministers, and his refugees. He was getting them off northward by the high road as fast as he could: one convoy marched on the 20th, under the charge of the troops of the Army of the North who had formed the garrison of Vittoria, another and a larger at dawn on the 21st, escorted by the whole of Maucune’s division. It had with it many of the Old Masters stolen from the royal palace at Madrid—the pictures of Titian, Rafael, and Velasquez, which had been the pride of the old dynasty—with the pick of the royal armoury and cabinet of Natural History[540]. It is almost as difficult to make out how Joseph, already unequal in numbers to his enemy, dared to deprive himself of Maucune’s division of the Army of Portugal, as to discover why Wellington left the 6th Division at Medina de Pomar. It does not seem that the morale of the unit had been shaken by its rude experience at San Millan on the 18th, for it fought excellently in subsequent operations: nor had it suffered any disabling losses in that fight. A more obvious escort might have been found in Casapalacios’ Spanish auxiliaries, who had already been utilized for similar purposes between Madrid and Vittoria, or in the scraps of the Army of the North which had lately joined the retreating host. But they remained for the battle, while Maucune marched north, with the cannon sounding behind him all day.
When Jourdan and Joseph first arrayed their host for the expected battle, it would seem, from the line which they took up, that they imagined that Wellington would attack them only from the direction of the Bayas, and paid no attention to Graham’s flanking movement, though afterwards they wrote dispatches to prove that they had not ignored it. For they drew up the Army of the South on a short front, from the exit of the defile of Puebla on the south to the bridge of Villodas on the north, a front of three miles, with D’Erlon’s two divisions in second line on each side of the village of Gomecha, two miles farther back, and the Army of Portugal and the King’s Guards as a third line in reserve about Zuazo, not far in front of Vittoria, along with the bulk of the cavalry. This order of battle, as a glance at the map shows, presupposed a frontal attack from the line of the Bayas, where Wellington was known to be. It was ill-suited to face an attack from the north-west on the line of the Zadorra above Villodas, and still more so an attack from the due north by the roads from Orduña and Murguia. On the morning of the 20th cavalry reconnaissances went out to look for the Allied Army—they reported that the camps along the Bayas above Subijana Morillos did not seem very large, and that on the Murguia road they had fallen in with and pushed back Longa’s irregulars, obviously a Spanish demonstration[541]. ‘No indication being available of the details of a projected attack, and further information being unprocurable, only conjectures could be made[542].’
It is interesting to know from the narrative of Jourdan himself what these conjectures were. ‘Wellington,’ he writes, ‘had shown himself since the start of the campaign more disposed to manœuvre his opponents out of their positions, by constantly turning their right wing, than to attack them frontally and force on a battle. It was thought probable that, pursuing this system, he would march on Bilbao by Orduña, and from thence on Durango, so as to force them to fall back promptly on Mondragon[543], in order to retain their communications with France. He might even hope to force them to evacuate Spain by this move, because it would be impossible to feed a great army on that section of the Pyrenees. The King, knowing that Clausel was on the move, had little fear of the results of a march on Bilbao, for on receiving Clausel’s corps he would be strong enough to take the offensive himself, and would strike at Wellington’s communications. It did not escape him that if the enemy, instead of wasting more time on flank movements, should attack him before the arrival of Clausel, he was in a perilous position. For there was little chance of getting the better of an adversary who had about double numbers, and a lost battle would cut off the army from the road to France, and force it to retire on Pampeluna by a road difficult, if not impracticable, for the train and artillery of a great host. To avoid the risk of an instant attack from Wellington, ought we to fall back and take up the position above the pass of Salinas?[544] But to do this was to sacrifice the junction with Clausel, who was expected on the 21st at latest. And how could the army have been fed in the passes? The greater part of the cavalry and the artillery horses would have had to be sent back to France at once—famine would have forced the infantry to follow. Then the King would have been accused of cowardice, for evacuating Spain without trying the fortune of battle. To justify such a retreat we should have had to be certain that we were to be attacked before the 22nd, and we considered that, if Wellington did decide to fight, it would be unlikely that he could do so before the 22nd, because of the difficulty of the roads which he had taken. After mature consideration of the circumstance the King resolved to stand fast at Vittoria.’
Putting aside the gross over-estimate of Wellington’s strength—he fought with a superiority of 75,000[545] to 57,000, not with two to one—the main point to note in this curious and interesting argument is its defective psychology. Because Wellington had hitherto avoided frontal attacks, when flank movements suited him better, was it safe to conclude that he would do so ad infinitum? That he was capable of a sudden onslaught was obvious to every one who remembered the battle of Salamanca. Why, if he were about to repeat his previous encircling policy, should he go by Orduña, Bilbao, and Durango, rather than by the shorter turn Osma-Murguia-Vittoria? Apparently the French staff underrated the possibilities of that road, and took the presence of Longa upon it as a sign that it was only to be used for a Spanish demonstration[546]. Should not the speed with which Wellington had traversed the detestable country paths between the Arlanzon and the Ebro have served as a warning that, if he chose to push hard, he could cover at a very rapid rate the rather less formidable tracks north of the Zadorra? In short, the old marshal committed the not uncommon fault of making false deductions from an imperfect set of premises. It is much more difficult to say what should have been his actual course under the existing circumstances of June 20. Napier holds that he might still have adopted Reille’s old plan of June 12 and June 18, i.e. that he should have thrown up the line of communication with France by the high road, have made ready to retreat on Pampeluna instead of on Bayonne, and have looked forward to making Saragossa his base. After having picked up first Clausel and then so much of the Army of Aragon as could be collected, he might have got 100,000 men together and have started an offensive campaign[547]. This overlooks the impossibility of getting the convoys and train safely along the bad road from Vittoria to Pampeluna, and the difficulty of making Saragossa, where there were no great accumulations of stores and munitions, the base of an army of the size projected. All communication with France would have been thrown on the hopelessly long and circuitous route from Saragossa to Perpignan, for the pass by Jaca was impracticable for wheeled traffic. Certainly Joseph would have had to destroy, as a preliminary measure to a retreat via Salvatierra or Pampeluna, the greater part of his train. And what would have become of his wretched horde of refugees?
Another school of critics—among them Belmas—urge that while it was perfectly correct to cling as a primary necessity to the great road to France, Vittoria was not the right point at which to defend it, but the pass of Salinas. Jourdan’s objection that the cavalry would be useless in the mountains is declared to have little weight, and his dread of famine to be groundless. For Wellington could not have remained for many days in front of the passes—he must have attacked at once a very formidable position, or Foy and the other troops in Biscay would have had time to join the King; and with 15,000 extra bayonets the French would have been hard to dislodge. The danger to Clausel would have been not very great, since Wellington would not have dared to detach a force sufficient to crush him, while the main French army was in his front, intact and ready to resume the offensive. And on the other flank Biscay, no doubt, would have been exposed to an invasion by Giron’s Galicians, when Foy had withdrawn its garrisons to join the main army. But it is improbable that this movement would have been backed by any large section of the Anglo-Portuguese force; for Wellington, as his previous action showed, was intending to keep all his own old divisions in one body. He would not have risked any of his own troops between the Pyrenees and the sea, by trying to thrust them in on the back of the French position, to Durango or Mondragon. And if Giron alone went to Bilbao and Durango, his presence in that direction, and any threats which he might make on the King’s rear, would be tiresome rather than dangerous.
Be this as it may, whatever the general policy of Jourdan and Joseph should have been, their particular dispositions for occupying the Vittoria position were very faulty. It was as well known to every practical soldier then as it is now, that a normal river-position cannot be held by a continuous line of troops placed at the water’s edge. For there will be loops and bends at which the ground on one’s own side is commanded and enfiladed by higher ground on the enemy’s side. If troops are pushed forward into such bends, they will be crushed by artillery fire, or run danger of being cut off by attacks on the neck of the loop in their rear[548]. Unless the general who has to defend a river front is favoured with a stream in front of him absolutely straight, and with all the commanding ground on his own side (an unusual chance), he must rather look to arranging his army in such a fashion as to hold as strong points all the favourable sections of the front, while the unfavourable ones must be watched from suitable positions drawn back from the water’s edge. By judicious disposition of artillery, the occupation and preparation of villages, woods, or other cover, and (if necessary) the throwing up of trenches, the enemy, though he cannot be prevented from crossing the river at certain points, can be kept from debouching out of the sections of the hither bank which he has mastered. And if he loads up the captured ground with heavy masses of troops which cannot get forward, he will suffer terribly from artillery fire, while if he does not hold them strongly, he will be liable to counter-attacks, which will throw the troops who have crossed back into the river. The most elementary precaution for the general on the defensive to take is, of course, to blow up all bridges, and to place artillery to command all fords, also to have local reserves ready at a proper distance behind every section where a passage is likely to be tried[549].
We may excuse Joseph and Jourdan for not entrenching all the weak sections of their front—hasty field works were little used in the Peninsular War; indeed the trenches which Wellington threw up on the second day of Fuentes de Oñoro were an almost unique instance of such an expedient. But the other precautions to be taken were commonplaces of contemporary tactics. And they were entirely neglected. The front liable to attack was very long for the size of the defending army: whole sections of it were neglected. Bridges and fords were numerous on the Zadorra: incredible as it may seem, not one of eleven bridges between Durana to the north and Nanclares to the south was blown up. The numerous fords seem not to have been known accurately to either the attacking or the defending generals, but some of the most obvious of them were ignored in Joseph’s original disposition of his troops. Several alike of bridges and fords were lightly watched by cavalry only, with no further precaution taken. What is most astonishing is to find that bridges which were actually used by French exploring parties on June 20th, so that their existence was thoroughly realized, were found intact and in some cases unguarded on the 21st[550]. The fact would seem to be that the King’s head-quarters staff was dominated by a false idea: that Wellington’s attack would be delivered on the south part of the river front, from the defile of Puebla to the bridge of Villodas; and that the troops discovered on the Murguia road were Longa’s irregulars only, bound on a demonstration. An acute British observer remarked that the French position had two main defects—the more important one was that it faced the wrong way[551]: this was quite true.
The final arrangement, as taken up on the morning of June 20 was that the Army of the South arrayed itself so as to block the debouches from the defile of La Puebla and the bridges immediately up-stream from it—those of Nanclares and Villodas. Gazan did not occupy the entrance of the defile of La Puebla—to do so he must have stretched his line farther south and east than his numbers permitted. But he held its exits, with some voltigeur companies from Maransin’s brigade, perched high up on the culminating ground immediately above the river.