After issuing a spirited proclamation to his army, Soult lost no time in commencing operations. His corps had been organised anew, strongly reinforced, and strengthened in every arm, and more particularly in artillery. To relieve Pamplona, it would be necessary to carry the passes of Maya and Roncesvalles; and accordingly, the French marshal suddenly assembled the wings of his army and a division of the centre, at St. Jean Pied de Port; while D’Erlon, with the remainder of the corps, concentrated at Espaletta.
By feints upon the smaller passes of Espagne and Lereta, D’Erlon masked his real attempt, which was to be made upon that of Maya, by a mountain path from Espaletta. From several suspicious appearances an attack was dreaded by the allies, and some light companies had been ordered up, and, with the pickets, they were assailed at noon in such force that, though supported by the 34th, 50th, and 92nd, they were driven back on a height communicating with Echalar when, reinforced by Barnes’s brigade of the seventh division, they succeeded in repulsing the attack and holding their ground again.
The affair was very sanguinary. One wing of the 92nd was nearly cut to pieces. All the regiments engaged highly distinguished themselves, and the 82nd in particular. The allies lost nearly two thousand men, and four pieces of artillery.
Soult’s advance on Roncesvalles was made in imposing force, but his movements were foreseen, and necessary dispositions had been made for defeating them. General Byng, who commanded, sent Morillo’s Spanish division to observe the road of Arbaicete, by which the pass of Maya might have been turned on the right; and descending the heights, placed his own brigade in a position by which that important road might be covered more effectually. Soult, however, directed his true attack upon the left. Cole was overpowered and driven back; but the fusilier brigade sustained him, and the attack throughout being met with steady gallantry, was eventually defeated.
On Byng’s division the French marshal directed his next effort; and with a force so superior, that, though obstinately resisted, it proved successful, so far as it obliged the weak brigades of the British general to fall back upon the mountains, and abandon the Arbaicete road, while Morillo’s Spaniards were driven on the fourth division. Necessarily the whole fell back at nightfall, and took a position in front of Zubiri.
Picton’s division united with the fourth next morning, and both fell leisurely back as the Duke of Dalmatia advanced. Picton continued retiring on the 27th July, and that evening took a position in front of Pamplona to cover the blockade, General Hill having already fallen back on Irurita.
Nearly at this time Lord Wellington had come up; putting in motion the several corps which lay in his route to the scene of action, and at one end of a mountain village he pencilled a despatch, as a French detachment had entered by the other.
Riding at full speed, he reached the village of Sorauren, and his eagle glance detected Clausel’s column in march along the ridge of Zabaldica. Convinced that the troops in the valley of the Lanz must be intercepted by this movement, he sprang from his saddle, and pencilled a note on the parapet of the bridge, directing the troops to take the road to Oricain, and gain the rear of Cole’s position. The scene that followed was highly interesting. Lord Fitzroy Somerset, the only staff-officer who had kept up with him, galloped with these orders out of Sorauren by one road, the French light cavalry dashed in by another, and the British general rode alone up the mountain to reach his troops. One of Campbell’s Portuguese battalions first descried him, and raised a cry of joy, and the shrill clamour caught up by the next regiments swelled as it run along the line into that stern and appalling shout which the British soldier is wont to give upon the edge of battle, and which no enemy ever heard unmoved. Lord Wellington suddenly stopped in a conspicuous place; he desired that both armies should know he was there; and a double spy who was present pointed out Soult, then so near that his features could be plainly distinguished.
The British general, it is said, fixed his eyes attentively upon this formidable man, and speaking as if to himself, said, “Yonder is a great commander, but he is a cautious one, and will delay his attack to ascertain the cause of these cheers; that will give time for the 6th division to arrive, and I shall beat him.” And certain it is that the French general made no serious attack that day.
Twelve British regiments were embattled on the Pyrenees who had fought at Talavera; and there were present not a few who might recall an incident to memory, that would present a striking but amusing contrast. Cuesta, examining his battleground four years before in lumbering state, seated in an unwieldy coach, and drawn by eight pampered mules; Wellington, on an English hunter, dashing from post to post at headlong speed, and at a pace that distanced the best mounted of his staff.