[Illustration: BATTLE OF VITTORIA]
The bridge was seized, Joseph's outposts were completely turned, and time was given for the muster of Picton's men. Stoutly they breasted the slopes, and unsteadied the weakened French centre, which was also assailed on its northern flank. At the same time Joseph's left wing began to waver under Hill's repeated onslaughts; and, distracted by the distant cannonade, which told of a stubborn fight between Graham and Reille, the King now began to draw in his lines towards Vittoria. For a time the French firmly held the village of Arinez, but Picton's men were not to be denied. They burst through the rearguard, and the battle now became a running fight, extending over some five miles of broken country. At the last slopes, close to Vittoria, the defenders made a last heroic stand, and their artillery dealt havoc among the assailants; but our fourth division, rushing forward into the smoke, carried a hill that commanded their left, and the day was won. Nothing now remained for the French but a speedy retreat, while the gallant Reille could still hold Graham's superior force at bay.
There, too, the fight at last swirled back, albeit with many a rallying eddy, into Vittoria. That town was no place of refuge, but a death-trap; for Graham had pushed on a detachment to Durana, on the high-road leading direct to France, and thus blocked the main line of retreat. Joseph's army was now in pitiable plight. Pent up in the choked streets of Vittoria, torn by cannon-shot from the English lines, the wreckage of its three armies for a time surged helplessly to and fro, and then broke away eastwards towards Pamplona. On that side only was safety to be found, for British hussars scoured the plain to the north-east, lending wings to the flight. The narrow causeway, leading through marshes, was soon blocked, and panic seized on all: artillerymen cut their traces and fled; carriages crowded with women, once called gay, but now frantic with terror, wagons laden with ammunition, stores, treasure-chests, and the booty amassed by generals and favourites during five years of warfare and extortion, all were left pell-mell. Jourdan's Marshal's baton was taken, and was sent by Wellington to the Prince Regent, who acknowledged it by conferring on the victor the title of Field-Marshal.
Richly was the title deserved. After four years of battling with superior numbers, the British leader at last revealed the full majesty of his powers now that the omens were favourable. In six weeks he marched more than five hundred miles, crossed six rivers, and, using the Navarrese revolt as the anvil, dealt the hammer-stroke of Vittoria. It cost Napoleon 151 pieces of cannon, nearly all the stores piled up for his Peninsular campaigns—and Spain itself.[320]
As for Joseph, he left his carriage and fled on horseback towards France, reaching St. Jean de Luz "with only a napoleon left." He there also assured his queen that he had always preferred a private station to the grandeur and agitations of public life.[321] This, indeed, was one of the many weak points of his brother's Spanish policy. It rested on the shoulders of an amiable man who was better suited to the ease of Naples than to the Herculean toils of Madrid. Napoleon now saw the magnitude of his error. On July 1st he bade Soult leave Dresden at once for Paris. There he was to call on Clarke, with him repair to Cambacérès; and, as Lieutenant-General, take steps to re-establish the Emperor's affairs in Spain. A Regency was to govern in place of Joseph, who was ordered to remain, according to the state of affairs, either at Burgos(!) or St. Sebastian or Bayonne.
"All the follies in Spain" (he wrote to Cambacérès on that day) "are due to the mistaken consideration I have shown the King, who not only does not know how to command, but does not even know his own value enough to leave the military command alone."
And to Savary he wrote two days later:
"It is hard to imagine anything so inconceivable as what is now going on in Spain. The King could have collected 100,000 picked men: they might have beaten the whole of England."
Reflection, however, showed him that the fault was his own; that if, as had occurred to him when he left Paris, he had intrusted the supreme command in Spain to Soult, the disaster would never have happened.[322] His belief in Soult's capacity was justified by the last events of the Peninsular War. But neither his splendid rally of the scattered French forces, nor the skilful movements of Clausel and Suchet, nor the stubborn defence of Pamplona and San Sebastian, could now save the French cause. The sole result of these last operations was to restore the lustre of the French arms and to keep 150,000 men in Spain when the scales of war were wavering in the plains of Saxony.
Napoleon's letters betray the agitation which he felt even at the first vague rumours of the disaster of Vittoria. On the first three days of July he penned at Dresden seven despatches on that topic in a style so vehement that the compilers of the "Correspondance de Napoléon" have thought it best to omit them. He further enjoined the utmost reserve, and ordered the official journals merely to state that, after a brisk engagement at Vittoria, the French army was concentrating in Arragon, and that the British had captured about a hundred guns and wagons left behind in the town for lack of horses.