King Joseph had left Pampeluna long before his troops, and taking a short cut had reached St. Jean de Luz on June 28th, and set up his last head-quarters there. He was painfully aware of the fact that his great brother would in all probability visit upon his head all his inevitable wrath for the results of the late campaign; but to the final moment of his command he strove to exercise his authority, and busied himself with the details of projected operations. He was at this moment somewhat estranged from Marshal Jourdan, who had taken to his bed, and kept complaining that the generals would neither give him information nor take his orders, but confined themselves to making ill-natured comments on the battle of Vittoria. The King, instead of relying on his advice, asked council on all sides, and hovered between many opinions.
It is a sufficient proof of the incoherence of both Jourdan’s and Joseph’s military ideas, that at this moment they were thinking seriously of resuming the offensive and re-entering Spain. When he received Clausel’s dispatches announcing his safe arrival at Saragossa, and the possibility of his junction with Suchet, the King was fascinated for the moment with the idea of bringing Wellington to a stand, by attacking his flank and rear in Aragon. This could only be done by sending large reinforcements to Clausel, and so weakening the main army. The real objection to this plan was that the troops were in no condition to march, or indeed to fight, till they should have had time for rest and reorganization. Jourdan, however, drew up on July 5—the very day on which Wellington was beginning to drive Gazan out of the Bastan—as we shall presently see—a memoir for the King’s consideration, which laid out three possible policies. One was to advance with every unit that could move, against Graham, who was wrongly supposed to have only one British division with him. The second was to march to relieve Pampeluna by Roncesvalles, after first calling in Clausel to help. The third was to accept the idea which lay at the base of Clausel’s last dispatch, to leave 15,000 men on the Bidassoa to detain Graham, and to move the rest of the army by the Jaca passes into Aragon. It was conceded that artillery could not go that way, and that Clausel had none with him—but some guns might be picked up at Saragossa and from Suchet, and a very large body of troops would be placed on Wellington’s flank. It is difficult to say which of the three schemes was more impracticable for the moment, as a policy for the starving and demoralized Army of Spain.
A more serious project, and one for which there would have been much to say, if the French Army had been at this moment in a condition to feed itself, or to manœuvre, or to commit itself to an action which would involve the expenditure of more ammunition than the infantry could carry in their pouches, was one for strengthening the front in the Bastan. While this long valley was still retained, direct communication between Wellington’s main body about Pampeluna and the large detachment under Graham on the Bidassoa was blocked. But the Bastan was occupied by the weakest section of the French forces, D’Erlon’s Army of the Centre, one of whose infantry divisions (Darmagnac’s) had been ruined at the battle of Vittoria, where it lost more men in proportion to its strength than any other unit[744], while another—Casapalacios’ Spanish division—was disappearing rapidly by desertion. There were only left, in a condition to fight, the Royal Guards—a little over 2,000 men—and Cassagne’s division, which had suffered no serious casualties in the recent campaign. Clearly the Bastan and the numerous passes which descend into it could not be held by 10,000 infantry, some of them in very bad order, even though they might get some guns from the Bayonne arsenal. Wherefore Joseph ordered D’Erlon to make over the defence of the Bastan to the Army of the South, and to fall back to the line of the Nivelle, where he should join Reille. Gazan was directed to take over charge of this important salient, with the whole of his army, save Conroux’s division left at St. Jean-Pied-du-Port[745] (July 3).
Gazan, who had only reached the Nive two days before, whose troops had not yet recovered from the starvation which they had suffered in the march from Pampeluna to Ustaritz and Espelette, who had lost his transport, and who had not yet received the 33 guns which had been sent him from Bayonne (though he was told that they were just coming up), made objections very rational in themselves to these orders. He said that his troops must have food and guns, or they could not be expected to maintain their positions. He also remarked that it was exasperating that he had not been told to march straight from St. Jean-Pied-du-Port to the Bastan by the direct pass at Ispegui, instead of being brought back two days’ march to the Nive, and then sent south again to the Maya pass, only twelve miles from his starting-point[746].
Gazan started out, unwillingly and with many protests, from his cantonments on the Nive on the morning of July 3, sending one of his divisions, Leval’s, by the inferior mountain road from Sarre on the Nivelle to Etchalar and Santesteban in the western Bastan, the rest by the Maya pass to Elizondo, the chief road-centre in the eastern or upper Bastan. From these points they were to spread themselves out, and take over all the passes south and west from D’Erlon’s troops. The commander of the Army of the Centre began to clear out his reserves northwards, and to arrange for the rapid departure of each advanced section, as it should be relieved by the arrival of Gazan’s divisions. He met his colleague on the way, handed over the charge to him, and then rode down to make his report to Jourdan at St. Pée (July 5), where he dropped the cheering remark that if the Army of the South did not receive very heavy convoys of food at once, it would go to pieces of its own accord and quit the Bastan within a few days, as his own army had eaten up the valley and no troops could live there[747].
Darmagnac’s division and the Royal Guard had been relieved by Leval, while Cassagne’s first brigade was marching north by Elizondo, though his second was still blocking the Col de Velate till Gazan’s troops should arrive, when Wellington’s attack was delivered—at the most opportune of moments. Nothing could have been better for him than that the enemy should have been caught in the middle of an uncompleted exchange of troops, before the incoming army had gained any knowledge of the ground. Moreover, though Gazan had double as many men with him as D’Erlon, they had not enjoyed the comparative rest which the Army of the Centre had gained since June 26th, but had been countermarching all the time, and were in a very dilapidated condition. Otherwise there would have been much greater difficulty in driving them out of the Bastan with the very moderate force that Wellington actually used. For he was able to finish the business with four brigades—the three of the 2nd Division and one of Silveira’s—which formed the head of his column. Of the rear échelons, the 7th Division, which started from Pampeluna on the 4th, got up only in time to see the very end of the game, and the Light Division were never engaged at all.
At noon on July 4th Cameron’s Brigade[748], forming the advanced guard of the 2nd Division, crossed the highest point of the Col de Velate, and ran into half a battalion of the 16th Léger. This was the rearguard of Braun’s brigade of Cassagne’s division, which was holding the village of Berrueta, a few miles down the northern slope of the pass, waiting till it should be relieved by Maransin’s division from Gazan’s army. This detachment was evicted from Berrueta and Aniz, and fell back on Ziga, where the other battalion of its regiment was in position. That village also was cleared, but Hill’s leading brigade then found itself in front of Maransin’s division marching rapidly up the road, with other troops visible in a long column behind. Hill, seeing that he was about to be involved in a serious fight with heavy numbers, began to deploy the rear brigades of the 2nd Division behind the ravine in front of Aniz, as each came up, abandoning the recently taken Ziga. The French, in the same fashion, gradually formed a long line on their side of the ravine, extending it eastward from the village and showing two brigades in front line and two in reserve on the heights of Irurita some way behind.
Hill appears to have felt the French front in several places, but to have desisted on discovering its strength. Skirmishing of a bloodless sort went on all the afternoon, each side waiting for its reserves to come up. Before dusk Gazan had drawn in all Villatte’s division, which had reached Santesteban earlier in the day, and the non-divisional brigade of Gruardet, so that by night he had two complete divisions and two extra brigades concentrated—at least 13,000 men[749]. Behind Hill there was only Da Costa’s brigade of Silveira’s division, which was a full march to the rear: for Wellington had ordered A. Campbell’s brigade—the other half of the Portuguese division—to take a different route, that up the Arga river by Zubiri to Eugui, which goes by a bad pass (Col de Urtiaga) into the French valley of the Alduides.
Hill’s position was a distinctly unpleasant one, since he had only three brigades up in line, with another out of any reasonable supporting distance, if the enemy should think fit to press in upon him. The 7th Division was two marches away, while the Light Division was still before Pampeluna; both were altogether out of reach. Owing to heavy losses at Vittoria, the three second division brigades can hardly have numbered 6,000 bayonets[750]. Their commander very wisely waited for the arrival of Wellington from the rear. Head-quarters that day had been at Lanz, on the road from Pampeluna to the Col de Velate.
The Commander-in-Chief came up at about midday on the 5th, following in the wake of Da Costa’s Portuguese, who were bringing up with them two batteries of artillery—the first guns that either side had shown in the Bastan. After looking at the French positions Wellington resolved to push on—this was a purely psychological resolve, for his numbers did not justify any such a move; he relied on his estimate of the morale of Gazan, and that estimate turned out to be perfectly correct.