The fact is that Gazan went off without orders, and left the King and D’Erlon in the lurch. Jourdan is telling the exact truth when he says that ‘General Gazan, instead of conducting his divisions to the position indicated, swerved strongly to the right, marching in retreat, so as to link up with Villatte; he continued to draw away, following the foot-hills of the mountain [of Puebla], leaving the high road and Vittoria far to his left, and a vast gap between himself and Count D’Erlon’[594].
No doubt the breach made in the French centre when Picton stormed the heights behind Ariñez had been irreparable from the first; and no doubt also the flanking movement of Morillo and Cameron on the mountain must have dislodged the Army of the South, if it had waited to come into frontal action with Cole and Hill. But Gazan showed complete disregard of all interests save his own, and went off in comparatively good condition, without orders, leaving the King, D’Erlon, and Reille to get out of the mess as best they might.
Some of the British narratives tend to show that many parts of Gazan’s line had never properly settled down into the Gomecha-Esquivel position, having reached it in such bad order that they would have required more time than was granted them to re-form. An officer present with the skirmishing line of the 4th Division writes in his absolutely contemporary diary: ‘From the time when our guns began to open, and to throw shells almost into the rear of the enemy’s height, we saw him begin to fall back in haste from his position. We [4th Division] marched on at a great pace in column. From that moment the affair became a mere hunt. Our rapid advance almost cut off four or five French battalions—they made some resistance at first, but soon dissolved and ran pell-mell, like a swarm of bees, up the steep hill, from which they began to fire down on us. We disregarded their fire, and kept on advancing—in order to carry out our main object: broken troops are easy game. When we found the enemy in this second position there was heavy artillery fire. Since his left wing was somewhat refused, we advanced in échelon from the right. When we got within musketry range, we found he had gone off out of sight. After that we drove him out of one position after another till at last we were near the gates of Vittoria[595].’ Several other 4th Division and 2nd Division narratives agree in stating that after the storming of Ariñez the French never made anything like a solid stand on the Gomecha-Esquivel heights. But (as has been said above) the best proof of it is the British casualty list, which shows that the reserve line was hardly under fire, and that the front line had very moderate losses, except at one or two points.
D’Erlon made a more creditable resistance on the French right, but he was obviously doomed if he should linger long after Gazan had gone off. After losing Crispijana and Zuazo he made a last stand on the slopes a mile in front of Vittoria, between Ali and Armentia, to which the whole of his own artillery and that of the reserve, and perhaps also some guns of the Army of the South, retired in time to take up a final position[596]. For some short space they maintained a furious fire on the 3rd Division troops which were following them up, so as to allow their infantry to re-form. But it was but for a few minutes—the column near the Zadorra (Grant, Colville, and Vandeleur) got round the flank of the village of Ali, and the line of guns was obviously in danger if it remained any longer in action. Just at this moment D’Erlon received the King’s orders for a general retreat by the route of Salvatierra. The high road to France had ceased to be available since Longa got across it in the earlier afternoon. Any attempt to force it open would obviously have taken much time, and might well have failed, since the French were everywhere closely pressed by the pursuing British. Jourdan judged the idea of reopening the passage to be hopelessly impracticable, and ordered the retreat on Pampeluna as the only possible policy, though (as his report owns) he was aware of the badness of the Salvatierra road, and doubted his power to carry off his guns, transport, and convoy of refugees by such a second-rate track. But it was the only one open, and there was no choice.
The orders issued were that the Train and Park should get off at once, that the Army of the South should retreat by the country paths south of Vittoria, the Army of the Centre by those north of it. The Army of Portugal was to hang on to its position till D’Erlon’s troops had passed its rear, and then follow them as best it could. All the cross-tracks indicated to the three armies ended by converging on the Salvatierra road east of Vittoria, so that a hopeless confusion was assured for the moment when three separate streams of retreating troops should meet, and struggle for the use of one narrow and inadequate thoroughfare. But as a matter of fact the chaos began long before that time was reached, for the road was blocked or ever the three armies got near it. The order for the retreat of the Park and convoys had been issued far too late—Gazan says that he had advised Jourdan to give it two hours before, when the first positions had been abandoned. But the Marshal had apparently high confidence in his power to hold the Hermandad-Gomecha-Esquivel line; at any rate, he had given no such command. The noise of battle rolling ever closer to Vittoria had warned the mixed multitude of civil and military hangers-on of the army who were waiting by their carriages, carts, pack-mules, and fourgons, in the open fields east of Vittoria, that the French army was being driven in. Many of those who were not under military discipline had begun to push ahead on the Salvatierra road, the moment that the alarming news flew around that the great chaussée leading to France had been blocked. The Park, however—which all day long had been sending up reserve ammunition to the front, and even one or two improvised sections of guns—had naturally remained waiting for orders. So had the immense accumulation of divisional and regimental baggage, the convoy of treasure which had arrived from Bayonne on the 19th, and the heavy carriages of the King’s personal caravan, stuffed with the plate and pictures of the palace at Madrid. And of the miscellaneous French and Spanish hangers-on of the Court—ministers, courtiers, clerks, commissaries, contractors, and the ladies who in legitimate or illegitimate capacities followed them—few had dared to go off unescorted on an early start. There was a vast accumulation of distracted womenfolk—nous étions un bordel ambulant, said one French eye-witness—some crammed together in travelling coaches with children and servants, others riding the spare horses or mules of the men to whom they belonged. When the orders for general retreat were shouted around, among the fields where the multitude had been waiting, three thousand vehicles of one sort and another tried simultaneously to get into one or another of the five field-paths which go east from Vittoria, all of which ultimately debouch into the single narrow Salvatierra road. A dozen blocks and upsets had occurred before the first ten minutes were over, and chaos supervened. Many carriages and waggons never got off on a road at all. Into the rear of this confusion there came charging, a few minutes later, batteries of artillery going at high speed, and strings of caissons, which had been horsed up and had started away early from the Park. Of course they could not get through—but the thrust which they delivered, before they came to an enforced stop, jammed the crowd of vehicles in front of them into a still more hopeless block. Dozens of carriages broke down—whereupon light-fingered fugitives began to help themselves to all that was spilt. Of course camp followers began the game, but Jourdan says that a large proportion of the French prisoners that day were soldiers who s’amusaient à piller in and about Vittoria; one of the official reports from the Army of Portugal remarks that the retreating cavalry joined in the ‘general pillage of the valuables of the army,’ and other narrators mention that the treasure-fourgons had already been broken into long before the English came upon the scene[597]. Be this as it may, there was no long delay before the terrors of the stampede culminated with the arrival of several squadrons of Grant’s hussars, who had penetrated by the gap between D’Erlon’s and Gazan’s lines of retreat, and had made a short cut through the suburbs of the town. Of the chaos that followed the firing of the first pistol shots which heralded the charge of the British light cavalry, we must not speak till we have dealt with the last fight of the Army of Portugal, on the extreme French right.
Till Grant’s and Colville’s brigades broke into Crispijana and Ali, the line of Reille’s gallant defence along the Zadorra had remained intact. Only artillery fire was going on opposite the bridge of Arriaga, where the 1st Division and the two Portuguese brigades had halted by Graham’s orders at some distance from the river, and had never advanced. The two cavalry brigades were behind them. At Gamarra Mayor the 5th Division had failed to force a passage, though it had inflicted on Lamartinière’s troops as heavy a loss as it suffered. Longa was held up half a mile beyond Durana, though he had successfully cut the Bayonne chaussée. There was considerable cannonade and skirmishing fire going on, upon a front of three miles, but no further progress reported. The whole scene, however, was changed from the moment when Grant’s and Colville’s brigades, turning the flank of D’Erlon’s line close to the Zadorra, came sweeping over the hills by Ali into the very rear of Reille’s line. The Army of Portugal had been directed to hold the bridges and keep back Graham, until the rest of the French host had got off. But the danger now came not from the front but from the rear. In half an hour more the advancing British columns would be level with the bridge of Arriaga and surrounding the infantry that held it. Reille determined on instant retreat, the only course open to him: so far as was possible it was covered by the very ample provision of cavalry which he had in hand. Digeon, who has left a good account of the crisis, made several desperate charges, to hold back the advancing British while Menne’s brigade was escaping from Arriaga. One was against infantry, which formed square and beat off the dragoons with no difficulty[598]—the other against hussars, apparently two squadrons of the 15th, which had turned northward from the suburbs of Vittoria and tried to ride in and cut off the retreat of Menne’s battalions[599]. They were beaten back, and the infantry scrambled off, leaving behind them Sarrut, their divisional general, mortally wounded as the retreat began. Moreover, all the guns in and about Arriaga had to be abandoned in the fields, where they could make no rapid progress. The gunners unhitched the horses, and escaped as best they could.
Reille had drawn up in front of Betonio the small infantry reserve (Fririon’s brigade) which he had wisely provided for himself, flanked by Boyer’s dragoons and Curto’s brigade of light cavalry. The object of this stand was not only to give Menne’s and Digeon’s troops a nucleus on which they could rally, but to gain time for Lamartinière to draw off from in front of Gamarra Mayor bridge, where he was still hotly engaged with Oswald’s division. This infantry got away in better order than most French troops on that day, and even brought off its divisional battery, though that of the cavalry which had been co-operating with it had to be left behind not far from the river-bank, having got into a marshy bottom where it stuck fast. The Franco-Spaniards of Casapalacios and their attendant cavalry escaped over the hills east of Durana, pursued by Longa, who took many prisoners from them.
When Lamartinière’s division had come in, Reille made a rapid retreat to the woods of Zurbano, a mile and a half behind Betonio, which promised good cover. He was now being pursued by the whole of Graham’s corps, which had crossed the Zadorra when the bridges were abandoned. Pack’s brigade, followed by the 1st Division and Bradford, advanced on Arriaga; they were somewhat late owing to slow filing over the bridge. At Gamarra Oswald sent in the pursuit of Lamartinière two squadrons of light dragoons[600] which had been attached to his column; these were followed by the rest of their brigade, which Graham sent up from the main road to join them, and also by Bock’s German dragoons. The object of using the smaller and more remote bridge was that cavalry crossing by it had a better chance of getting into Reille’s rear than they would have secured by passing at Arriaga. The much exhausted 5th Division followed the cavalry.