A brave general of the ordinary kind would have marched in quest of the French, lying in front of Madrid; would have defeated them, and taken the capital. All the smaller bodies of French in Spain would then have been called round the King; and in July a second battle would have been fought in Arragon, or in front of Burgos. One more victory,—a third, supposing the English to have been always victorious, might have sent the French out of Spain; but any mistake or mishap might have prevented this. But Wellington, by masterly tactics, always threatening to turn the enemy’s right wing and to get upon his communications, backed his foe as a man backs a horse, till he could bring the opposing army into a position fit for his purpose; and then, delivering at once a knock-down blow, he drove the whole mass, king and army, in four-and-twenty hours, out of Spain.
King Joseph had reckoned, in the spring, upon a direct attack by the great road of Madrid; but when it would come, or where it would fall, he could not divine, for Wellington kept him constantly in doubt, by a variety of feigned movements.
At last, towards the end of May, he found that Wellington, sending 40,000 men under Graham through the difficult passes of the Tras-os-Montes, and moving himself a week after on the Esla, had carried his whole army, by the 4th of June, over the Douro, and was now in full march for Valladolid. If he should gain that place, Joseph well knew that his communications would be cut off, and his whole army taken, to use Napoleon’s phrase, “flagrante delicto.” Hastily, therefore, Madrid was abandoned, the whole army put in retreat; and now Joseph would make his stand at Burgos.
Thus 100 miles of Spanish ground had been cleared of the French without firing a shot. And now, Joseph would fight for his kingdom in this, his second position. But his Generals examined the country, and disliked the prospect. Meanwhile Wellington pushed on, conducting his operations continually on the same principle,—pushing forwards his left wing, and out-flanking and turning the French right. Again perplexed, Joseph now abandoned his second purpose, as he had abandoned his first. Burgos must be given up, and the retreat must be continued on Vittoria. Into Vittoria there was poured, therefore, the artillery depôts of Madrid, of Valladolid, and of Burgos, and the baggage and stores of several armies; with the King’s valuables, the archives, and papers of the State and of the army, and a large amount of treasure.
Vittoria is only 26 miles from Irun, on the French frontier. Here, therefore, had been driven together, like a flock of sheep, the intruders and plunderers of Spain, and one vigorous assault only was needed to rid the land of them altogether. It was not long delayed.
It was about the 15th of June when King Joseph found his army assembled round Vittoria, reckoning, Napier tells us, from 60,000 to 70,000 men. Wellington had left his sixth division at Medina de Pomar, and therefore had 60,000 English and Portuguese, besides some Spanish troops. In the number and calibre of their guns the French had the advantage.
From the mountain-region through which the British army was marching, the way to Vittoria lay over many a rugged steep, and through many dangerous defiles; but no difficulty was allowed to stop their march. “Six days they toiled unceasingly; but on the seventh, swelled by a Spanish reinforcement, they burst like raging streams from every defile, and went foaming into the basin of Vittoria.”
The French army was drawn up round this basin, which is a small plain about 10 miles in length, by 8 in breadth, through which runs the river Zadora. As this battle-field was approached by various mountain-passes, Wellington resolved to enter it from three sides at once, forming three distinct combats. General Graham, with a corps of about 20,000 men, was to attack from the British left, and to pass the Zadora at Ariaga, near the city of Vittoria. Hill was to attack from the right with an equal force. Wellington stationed himself in the centre, with a rather larger force, which was to descend from the mountain ridges, to cross the Zadora by various roads, and to march straight upon Vittoria. In fact, the whole battle was merely an attack on a strong army hemmed in, by an army equally strong, and marching to the attack on three sides at the same moment.
At daybreak the English began to move; but the distance to Vittoria was several miles, and every step was to be contended for. Hill reached the village of Puebla about ten in the morning; pushed on, fighting hard, till he gained the village of Subijana de Alava, and so placed himself in communication with the English centre. Graham had to make a march of several miles to reach Ariaga, near Vittoria; but about one o’clock his attack began to tell. This was a serious one for the French; for, if successful, it would cut them off from the great road to Bayonne. King Joseph, finding both his flanks thus threatened, sent an order to the centre to retire. But the troops were fiercely engaged, and retreat was difficult. Meanwhile, however, three attacks of the English, right, left, and centre, were all succeeding; and step by step, the French were being pushed back upon Vittoria.
“At six o’clock,” says Napier, “the French reached the last defensible height in front of Vittoria. Behind them was the plain in which the city stood, and beyond the city were thousands of carriages and animals, and of men, women, and children, crowded together in all the madness of terror; and as the English shot went booming overhead, the vast crowd started and swerved with a convulsive movement, while a dull and horrid cry of distress arose; but there was no hope, no stay for army or multitude, it was the wreck of a nation!” Still the courage of the French soldiers was unquelled. Their artillery for a time kept the Allies in check, but suddenly the fourth English division, rushing forward, carried a hill on the left, and the heights were at once abandoned. Joseph finding the main road so completely blocked up by carriages that the artillery could not pass, indicated the road of Salvatierra as the line of retreat, and the army went off in a confused and yet compact body on that side, leaving Vittoria on its left. The British infantry followed hard, and the light cavalry galloped through the town to intercept the new line of retreat. All became disorder and confusion, the guns were left, while the artillerymen fled with the horses. Vehemently and closely did the British pursue, and nothing could stop their victorious career until night and the disappearance of the flying masses had ended the struggle. The French lost all their artillery, all their baggage, all their equipages, all their stores, treasures, and papers, “so that no man,” says a French writer, “could prove even how much pay was due to him. Generals and subordinate officers were alike reduced to the clothes on their backs, and many of them were barefooted.”