At this time the mine was sprung, and with as much effect as had been intended. It brought down a considerable length of the counterscarp and glacis, and astonished the enemy so greatly, that they abandoned for awhile that part of the works. When the Portugueze who were to take advantage of this hastened to the spot, there were no scaling-ladders, ... an officer ran to the foot of the breach, in hope the engineers there might be provided with them; ... if he had but one ladder, he said, he could post his whole party in the town: ... but ladders had not been needed here, and not thought of for the point where they might be required. The enemy had thus time to recover from their surprise; and the Portugueze, standing their ground with soldier-like fidelity, were miserably sacrificed, nearly the whole of this party being killed before the order for recalling them arrived.
Meantime Lieutenant Jones of the engineers with an officer and nine men of the first royals, gained the top of the great breach; and men were rushing up to follow them, when the enemy sprung a mine in one place, and in another drew the supports from under a false bridge, thus blowing up some of the assailants, and precipitating others upon the spikes which had been fixed below. The men who were at the foot of the breach were then panic-stricken; they, as well as the French, remembered that in such situations the victory is not to the brave or the strong, if superior skill is opposed to courage and strength: they ran back, ... it was impossible to rally them, and they suffered much. The intention was, that another column should pass in the rear of the first, between it and the sea to the second breach, and storm it; but the discomfiture of the first party prevented this, and none of these reached their destination. The whole was over before morning had fairly opened, and in the course of an hour, 45 officers and above 800 men were killed, wounded, or missing.
The river prevented any immediate communication, so that at the batteries it was thought that hardly anything more than a false alarm had taken place, till, as day dawned, they discovered through their glasses the bodies of officers and men in the breach, and under the demi-bastion and retaining wall. Presently one or two of the enemy appeared on the breach, and a serjeant came down among the wounded, raising some, and speaking to others. The firing which had been continued occasionally on the breach was then stopped; more of the French appeared; a kind of parley took place between them and the men at the head of the trenches; and half an hour’s truce was agreed on for the purpose of removing the wounded and the dead; but so jealous were the French that they would not allow the dead who were nearest them to be approached; some of the wounded they carried into the town, and others were borne by their soldiers into the British lines. While the troops were yet under arms, not knowing whether another attack might be ordered, a British officer saw one of his Portugueze soldiers start off, and reproved him for so doing, when after awhile the man returned; but the Portugueze replied, scarcely able to command his voice or restrain his tears as he spake, that he had only been burying his comrade, ... and in fact it appeared that with no other implement than his bayonet and his hand, he had given his poor friend and countryman a soldier’s burial in the sand. The officers who fell in this attack were buried together, each in a shell, in one grave, in a garden near the encampment.
♦The siege suspended.♦
Lord Wellington came over from Lesaca on the same day about noon, and determined upon renewing the attack; the second breach was to be completed, the demi-bastion thrown down, and fresh troops appointed for another assault. But the ammunition was now running low; and upon his return that night he received intelligence of movements on the enemy’s part in the Pyrenees, which made him forthwith dispatch orders for withdrawing the guns from the batteries and converting the siege into a blockade.
♦Soult appointed Commander-in-chief.♦
Marshal Soult had been sent back from Germany as Lieutenant of the Emperor, and Commander-in-chief of the French armies in Spain. Of all the French Generals employed in the Peninsula, he had obtained the highest reputation; and undoubtedly no one could be better entitled to the praise of those authors who write history, with a mere military feeling, reckless of all higher considerations. That impassibility which he considered as one of the first essentials for a general in such a war, and of which proof had been given in his proclamations and his acts, recommended him to Buonaparte not less than his great ability. The remains of the armies of Portugal, of the centre and of the north, were united; their ranks, which had so often been thinned, were filled by a new conscription; and the whole being re-formed into nine divisions of infantry, was called the army of Spain; the right, centre, and left, were under Generals Reille, Drouet, Compte d’Erlon, and Clausel; the reserve, under General Villatte: there were two divisions of dragoons under Generals Treillard and Tilly, and a light division under General Pierre Soult. In the expectation of success every exertion had been used to increase the strength of their cavalry, though of little use in the Pyrenees, that the war might be once more carried beyond the Ebro; and with the same view a large proportion of artillery was provided. The decree which appointed Marshal Soult bore date on the first of July; he took the command on the 13th, and his preparations were forwarded with the ability, activity, and hopefulness by which the French are characterized in such ♦His address to the troops.♦ things. He issued an address to his troops, containing more truth than was usually admitted into a French state paper, because the truth in that place could not possibly be concealed; but it was sufficiently coloured with artful misrepresentations and with falsehood. “The armies of France,” it said, “guided by the powerful and commanding genius of the Emperor Napoleon, had achieved in Germany a succession of victories as brilliant as any that adorned their annals. The presumptuous hopes of the enemy had thus been confounded; and the Emperor, who was always inclined to consult the welfare of his subjects, by following moderate counsels, had listened to the pacific overtures which the enemy made to him after their defeat. But in the interim, the English, who, under the pretence of succouring the inhabitants of the Peninsula, were in reality devoting them to ruin, had taken advantage of the opportunity afforded them. A skilful leader,” said Marshal Soult, “might have discomfited their motley levies; and who could doubt what would have been the result of the day at Vittoria if the general had been worthy of his troops? Let us not however,” he continued, “defraud the enemy of the praise which is their due. The dispositions and arrangements of their general have been prompt, skilful, and consecutive; and the valour and steadiness of his troops have been praiseworthy. Yet do not forget that it is to the benefit of your example they owe their present military character; and that whenever the relative duties of a French general and his troops have been ably fulfilled, their enemies have commonly had no other resource than in flight.” In one part of this address Marshal Soult rendered justice to Lord Wellington; but this latter assertion strikingly exemplifies the character of the vain-glorious people whom he was addressing. He himself had been repulsed by a far inferior British force at Coruña; had been driven from Porto, and defeated in the bloody field of Albuhera. He was addressing men who had been beaten at Vimeiro, beaten at Talavera, beaten at Busaco, beaten at Fuentes d’Onoro, routed at Salamanca, and scattered like sheep at Vittoria. They had been driven from Lisbon into France; and yet the general who had so often been baffled addressed this language to the very troops who had been so often and so signally defeated! “The present situation of the army,” he pursued, “is imputable to others: let the merit of repairing it be yours. I have borne testimony to the Emperor of your bravery and your zeal. His instructions are to drive the enemy from those heights which enable them arrogantly to survey our fertile valleys, and to chase them across the Ebro. It is on the Spanish soil that your tents must next be pitched, and your resources drawn. Let the account of our successes be dated from Vittoria, and the birth-day of the Emperor be celebrated in that city.”
♦Critical situation of the allied army.♦
Lord Wellington’s situation had not during the whole war been so critical as at this time. He had two blockades to maintain, and two points to cover, sixty miles distant from each other, in a mountainous country, where the heights were so impassable that there could be no lateral communication between his divisions. His force was necessarily divided in order that none of the passes might be left undefended, but the enemy could choose their point of attack, and bring their main force to bear upon it; thus they would have the advantage of numbers; and they had the farther advantage, that a considerable proportion of their troops, all who had belonged to the army of the north, had been accustomed to mountain warfare, in which the British and Portugueze had had no experience.
♦Soult’s movements for the relief of Pamplona.♦