Head-Quarters, Lezaca, 24th.—Having been writing nearly all day yesterday, I took an evening stroll, and then went and sat down on the churchyard parapet wall. In ten minutes who should come there but Lord Wellington, alone. After one turn he came and sat on the wall with me, and talked for more than half an hour. Amongst other things I said, I hoped that you in England would hear Soult’s account of the Maya business first, as you then would be alarmed, and value the latter account by the Prince of Orange as it deserved.
He said, “Why, at one time it was rather alarming, certainly, and it was a close-run thing. When I came to the bridge of Sorauren, I saw the French on the hills, on one side, and it was clear that we could make a stand on the other hills in our position on the 28th; but I found that we could not keep Sorauren, for it was exposed to their fire and not to ours. I determined to take the position, but was obliged to write my orders accordingly at Sorauren, to be sent back instantly, for had they not been dispatched back directly by the way I had come, I must have sent four leagues round in a quarter of an hour later. I stopped, therefore, to write accordingly, people saying to me all the time, ‘The French are coming! The French are coming!’ I looked pretty sharp after them, however, every now and then, until I had completed my orders, and then set off, and I saw them just near one end of the village as I went out at the other end; and then we took our ground.”
I then observed that the only time I felt a little uneasy was, when we were stopped at Lanz, and sent across to Lisasso, for all faces seemed very long, and the removal of the wounded was very much pressed. This led him to explain more; and he said: “Had I been as regularly informed of how matters stood on the 26th and 27th as I was of what had passed on the 25th, that need not have happened; but General Cole never told me exactly how far he found it necessary to give way, or let me know by what a superior force he was pressed, and that he intended giving way, or my arrangements would have been quite different; and the French might have been stopped sooner than they were. In truth, I suspected that all Soult’s plan was merely by manœuvres to get me out of the hills, and to relieve one or both of the besieged places, as things should turn up and succeed for him; and I expected him to turn short round towards St. Sebastian accordingly. I had then no notion that with an army so lately beaten he had serious thoughts, as I am now sure he had, of driving us behind the Ebro. The consequence was that the second division halted a day and a half at Trinita and Berrueta, on the 26th, and till three on the 27th; and the seventh division only took a short march to St. Estevan, as I was unwilling to lose a bit more of the mountains than was absolutely necessary, from the probable loss of men in recovering such ground. On the night before we marched, or at three in the morning of the 26th, I knew all that had passed on the first attack, and acted accordingly. Had I been as well informed, and had everything been communicated to me as punctually on the next evening, the march of several divisions would have been different. I should and could have pressed them more on the 27th; there would not have been the risk and apparent alarm as to head-quarters, &c.; and we should probably have stopped the French sooner. As it is, however, and as I had men who could fight, as the English did when they recovered the hill which had been lost, it has all ended very well.”
We then got upon the expedition on the other side of the Peninsula; and he explained some of the reasons for his instructions there. He was rather stiff with the lumbago; but in high spirits. He said that the Spanish Generals thought the reason the French beat them was, that they had no good cavalry; and that whenever they had our cavalry with them, they wanted to fight. This was what he was anxious to prevent, “For,” said he “our cavalry never gained a battle yet. When the infantry have beaten the French, then the cavalry, if they can act, make the whole complete, and do wonders; but they never yet beat the French themselves.”
Talking on this subject another day, Lord Wellington and all the officers present seemed to agree that a cavalry regiment did not know what real infantry fire was. They talk of a sharp carbine fire, which kills ten or twenty horses and half as many men; but they could not exist ten minutes in a fire to which our infantry battalions are at times exposed; they would be annihilated if they did not go threes about very quick indeed. Even in the infantry at times it was said, that in less than half an hour every mounted officer would be dismounted, from his own or his horse’s wounds, and perhaps not six men in a company out of sixty, would remain.
Head-Quarters, Lezaca, August 25th.—We are as quiet here as at Frenada. Desertion is terrible. I think, however, Lord Wellington must stop it. We have only as yet tried five out of sixteen sent for trial: they are all sentenced to death, and all shot! This will, I think, at least have a good effect on our new reinforcements. One of our officers did an odd thing to stop it; and it answered, or has done so hitherto; he called his men together and, addressing them, said, “I want no men who wish to go to the French, and if any now will say they wish to go, I promise to send them in with a flag of truce.” No one stirred, nor has any one stirred since; but as to the legality of this plan there may be a query?
Our great guns have now just begun pounding again at St. Sebastian; we are to demolish everything this time; but still I fear we shall scarcely get in easily at last.
As to Pamplona, the reports are, that they are now on half-rations, and have enough at that rate to last till the 15th of next month. It is provoking how much they have picked up. They have tried to send out another batch of inhabitants, but these have been sent in again to help eat; a hard fate to be made a mere tool for starvation! and I conclude they will not have the best commons even Pamplona can afford.
Head-Quarters, Lezaca, August 28th, 1813.—Here we are still quiet, and very busy; and Courts-martial all at work. In these hills, however, our Provosts are not the most secure; and common precautions will not do against men who know they are probably to be shot in a day or two. A Court was adjourned till yesterday morning, for a witness for the prisoner, and in the night he was off. Another man under sentence of death, near Maya, and three other deserters just taken as they were going over to the French, were put foolishly under the care of a man and a lad armed to convoy them a little way. They rose on them, took away their arms, and went over with them to the French post. I am sorry to say, however, that we have still enough to hang.
The French deserter, the talkative Lieutenant-Colonel, is here again, and has one great merit—he induces Lord Wellington to talk and discuss his old battles, &c., when this man was on the other side. Thus from the two I pick up a little of the cause of things. Yesterday the conversation turned upon the retreat of the last year. The Frenchman said that all their officers blamed Soult for his conduct after crossing the Tormes; that he was in fact nearer Rodrigo than our army, and might and ought to have cut us off, if he had pushed on. Lord Wellington observed, “I fully expected to find him on the high road: and I ordered nothing at all that way in consequence on the first day; afterwards, when I found he was not there, I took to it.” The French officer replied, “From the rain and hazy weather, and bad roads, Soult was puzzled and afraid—he did not in the least know the English plans. He heard of some troops, and did not know whether they were a rear-guard or the main army, and so on; but when he found your lordship making a stand collected at St. Munos, he said, ‘Ah que j’avois tort.’” He then tried to pump Lord Wellington, and said, “If he had cut you off, perhaps you would have recrossed the Tormes, and made for the Benevente road? but you would have suffered much.” Upon which Lord Wellington observed, “No, I certainly should have done no such thing: that would have been ruin. But if you must know what I should have done, I should have done that which many thought I ought to have done as it was—I should have fought, and trusted to the bravery of my troops to get me out of the scrape.” The Frenchman then said, “No one ought to have blamed you for not doing that, unless it were absolutely necessary, for the French were twenty thousand stronger than you were, and their cavalry was then very numerous, and in the highest order.”