Late on the same afternoon the advance-guard of Graham’s army came in sight of the Bidassoa—it consisted as usual of Longa’s untiring Cantabrians only, the 1st Division and the Portuguese having been halted near St. Sebastian, the bulk of the Galicians at Hernani and Renteria. Longa, keeping to the coast, surprised and captured the French garrison of Passages (150 men), which was too late in obeying Reille’s order to retreat on France while the bridge of Behobie was still available. He then came in contact with the covering force on the heights of San Marcial[662], which was at the same time menaced by Castañon with a brigade of the 4th Galician Division, who had come up the high road from Renteria.
The French brigadier evacuated the position at once. Reille had told him that he was only placed there to protect the retreat of Foy. He crossed the Bidassoa, leaving only a detachment of sixty men in the tête de pont which covered the south or Spanish end of the bridge of Behobie; it consisted of a stone blockhouse surrounded with palisades. The further or French end of the long bridge was blocked by the fortified village of Hendaye.
Next morning Graham resolved that the tête de pont must be taken or destroyed, so that the enemy should have no open road by which he might return to Spain. While some Spanish infantry exchanged a vague fusillade across the river with the French in Hendaye, ten guns[663] were turned on the blockhouse. The garrison tried to blow it up and to retreat, but their mine failed, their commanding-officer was killed, and they were about to surrender when Foy sent two fresh companies over the bridge to bring them off. This was done, at the cost of four officers and 64 men, killed and wounded while crossing the much-exposed bridge. Foy then ordered the structure to be set on fire; and as its floor was composed of wood this was easily done: the four arches nearest France were burnt out by the following morning (July 1).
This evacuation, without any attempt at defence, of the bridgehead on the Bidassoa angered the Minister of War at Paris, and still more Napoleon, when the news reached him at Wittenberg nine days later. Foy and Reille had men enough to have held the heights of San Marcial, against anything short of an attack by the whole of Graham’s and Giron’s infantry. And it is certain that Graham would not have delivered any such assault, but would have halted in front of them, and waited for orders from Wellington. The Emperor, who—as we shall presently see—was set on a counter-offensive from the moment when the news of Vittoria reached him, was wild with wrath at the abandonment of the foothold in Spain. ‘It was insane,’ he wrote to Clarke, ‘to recross the Bidassoa: they all show themselves as timid as women[664].’
But whether it would have been possible for the French to hold the Irun-Behobie-San Marcial tête de pont, when Wellington had come up in person from the south, is another matter. Probably he would have decided that the enemy must be thrust back across the Bidassoa, before he dared to sit down to beleaguer San Sebastian. And undoubtedly he had men enough to carry out that operation. But this was no excuse for Reille’s evacuation of the position, one of the highest strategical value, before he was compelled to do so by force. The fact was that Reille, like most of the other French generals, was demoralized at the moment by the recent disaster of Vittoria, and had lost confidence both in himself and in his troops.
SECTION XXXVII: CHAPTER III
THE EAST COAST. MURRAY AT TARRAGONA
[N.B.—For Map of Catalonia and Plan of Tarragona see Vol. IV, pp. 538 and 524]
There are certain episodes of the Peninsular War which the British historian has to narrate with a feeling of some humiliation, but which have to be set forth in full detail, if only for the purpose of illustrating the manifold difficulties with which Wellington had to cope. Of these by far the most distressing is the story of General Sir John Murray at Tarragona.
It will be remembered that a diversion on the East Coast formed an essential part of Wellington’s great scheme for the expulsion of the French from Spain, and that he had devoted much care to instructing Murray in the manner in which it was to be carried out. If sufficient shipping to embark 10,000 men could be procured at Alicante, the bulk of the Anglo-Sicilian army was to be transported to Catalonia, and to strike at Tarragona, getting what aid it could from the local Spanish forces under the Captain-General Copons. If, as was to be expected, Suchet should fly northward from Valencia with all his available field-army, to rescue Tarragona, the two Spanish units in the kingdom of Murcia, Elio’s and Del Parque’s armies, were to take the offensive against the detachments which the French Marshal would have to leave behind him to hold down his southern conquests. Murray might fail in Catalonia, if Suchet were rapid and lucky in his combinations; but in that case Elio and Del Parque ought to get possession of the city of Valencia and all its fertile plainland. Or, on the other hand, Suchet might be loth to abandon his advanced position, might hold it in force, and might order Decaen and the Army of Catalonia to make head against the Anglo-Sicilian expeditionary force. If this should happen, the Spanish generals might be held in check, but Murray would have a free hand at Tarragona. With the aid of Copons he ought to be able to take the place, and to throw all the French occupation of Catalonia into disorder. In the end, Suchet would have to evacuate Valencia, in order to save Decaen and the Catalan garrisons. At the worst the expedition of the Anglo-Sicilian army ought at least to have the effect of giving Suchet so much to think about, that he would have no attention to spare for the perils of King Joseph and the fate of Castile.