Here it might have been hoped that the bloody account ♦Sally of the French from Bayonne.♦ of this long war had closed; even this last bloodshed might have been spared if, through some great treachery or inexcusable neglect, there had not been either delay in sending off tidings of the cessation of hostilities, or in impeding them upon the road; for the courier, who was dispatched on the first of the month, ought to have arrived a week before the battle; indeed suspicions were expressed in the Moniteur that orders and dispatches had been intercepted, with the view of giving Marshal Soult an opportunity of retrieving the reputation of the French armies by fighting in a position which he thought inexpugnable. Colonels Cooke and S. Simon had passed through Bourdeaux, and advice was dispatched from thence to Sir John Hope before Bayonne, while they proceeded to Toulouse. As this advice was not official, Sir John did not think proper to notify it officially to General Thouvenot, till he should receive orders from Lord Wellington; but he caused it to be communicated to the French officers at their advanced piquets, in the hope and expectation that it might prevent any hostilities in the mean time. The intimation seems to have produced a very different effect. On the night of the 13th, two deserters came from the town, and gave information that the garrison were to make a sortie in great strength early on the morrow. The first division, upon this, was ordered to ♦April 14.♦ arms at three in the morning; and in a few minutes afterward a feint attack was made upon the outposts in front of Anglet. But it soon appeared that the chief effort would be on the right of the Adour. Parties from the citadel crept up the hill on which the piquets were stationed, took them almost by surprise, and instantly two columns rushed forward with loud cheers, and by their numbers broke through the line of piquets between St. Etienne and St. Bernard; another strong column advancing at the same time against the former village. The line of outposts through this village, and along the heights towards Boucaut, was marked by a road worn in some places to a deep hollow way, and in others bounded by high garden-walls, so that it was not easy to get out of it, except where gaps at long intervals had been broken down for the passage of the troops. The piquets, therefore, were cut off from their supports; and, fighting with desperate animosity on both sides, heaps of slain were found here, both French and English, mostly killed with the bayonet. Sir John Hope, hastening with his staff, in the early part of the attack, to St. Etienne, entered this road, as the shortest way, not aware that great part of it was in the enemy’s possession, and that the piquets of the right flank had fallen back when the line of outposts had been pierced. As soon as he discovered this, he endeavoured to retire; but having been in front himself, with his aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Moore, and Captain Herries of the Quarter-Master-General’s department, they were consequently the last in retiring; and before they could get out of this hollow way, the French came up within a few yards, and began firing. Sir John’s horse was struck with three balls, and falling dead, brought his rider to the ground. Captain Herries and Lieutenant ♦Sir J. Hope taken prisoner.♦ Moore dismounted to assist him, for his foot was under the dead horse; but the first of these officers was instantly brought down himself severely wounded, and the latter had his right arm shattered; the General was also wounded in the arm; and the French coming immediately up, made them all three prisoners. As they were carrying them to Bayonne, Sir John received a second and severe wound in the foot, from a ball which was supposed to come from his own piquets. Major-General Hay was in command of the outposts for the night; and having just given directions that the church of St. Etienne should be defended till the last, he was killed shortly after the attack commenced. The enemy, having here a great superiority of numbers, got into the village towards the left, and obtained possession of the whole, except one house, which Captain Foster of the 38th occupied with a piquet, and bravely maintained, though the greater part of his men were killed or wounded, till a brigade of the German Legion retook the village.
It had been supposed that the French would make it their main object to destroy the bridge, which would have been the only reasonable or justifiable object of such a sortie in that state of the siege, when neither stores nor artillery were on the ground, nor the works commenced. To guard against this, Lord Saltoun had intrenched the convent of St. Bernard, and with great ability converted it into a respectable little fortress; and Colonel Maitland now formed the first brigade of Guards on the heights above it, to charge the enemy in flank, should he advance toward the bridge. But, though their gun-boats came down the river, and opened a heavy flanking cannonade, no attempt was made on the bridge by water; and it was soon perceived that they had as little intention of attacking it by land, their efforts being wholly directed against the centre of the countervallation opposite to the citadel. Major-General Howard now directed Maitland to support the right flank, and Major-General Stopford, with the 2nd brigade of guards, to co-operate in recovering the ground between that flank and St. Etienne; that officer was soon after wounded, and the command of the brigade fell to General Guise.
♦The French repulsed.♦
The night was very dark; but the French from time to time sent up blue lights from the citadel, obtaining light enough thereby to direct their guns, of which nearly 70 were constantly firing to support their attack. Some of their shells and fire-balls fell upon the depôt of fascines, and several houses also were set on fire by the same means. These partial illuminations made the darkness deeper in those places to which the light did not extend; and the guards when they approached the French line could distinguish it only by the fire of musketry from behind the hedges and walls. They were directed to lie down and wait till orders could be communicated to the Coldstream guards, under Lieutenant-Colonel Woodford, who were to charge simultaneously for recovering the old position in the hollow road. Meanwhile they kept close to the ground, for the eminence on which they were was so exposed to the citadel, that had they stood up for a few minutes they must have been nearly destroyed: but when the signal was given they rose and rushed forward; the Coldstream charged on the opposite flank at the same moment, and the contest on this part of the line was decided by this well-combined attack: the French ran with all speed lest their retreat should be intercepted; and they suffered from a most destructive fire which both battalions poured upon them as they retired over the glacis of the citadel. When also they were driven out of St. Etienne by the German Legion, a field-piece was brought to bear on their columns, and thirteen rounds of grape and canister were fired at them with dreadful effect as they retreated down the great road into St. Esprit. The moon rose toward the close of the action; and, as day broke, French and English were seen lying on all sides, killed or wounded, and so intermixed, that there seemed to have been no distinct line belonging to either party. The loss was severe on both sides: on the part of the allies 143 were killed, 452 wounded, and 231 made prisoners; the loss of the French amounted to 913, of whom only twenty were prisoners.
During the short truce which took place on the outposts when the engagement was over, the British officers expressed their regret that so many brave men should thus uselessly have been sacrificed; and they were justly disgusted at the heartless levity with which the French officers affected to treat the affair, saying it had been nothing more than a petite promenade militaire! Under all circumstances it seemed indeed to have been planned less in a military spirit than with a feeling of bitter enmity; made as it was when the French had reason to know that the war was at an end, ... and when, if it had been otherwise, no object but that of the immediate slaughter could be effected, there being no works to be destroyed, no cannon to be spiked; and when whatever ♦Batty’s Campaign, 158, 165.♦ loss might have been inflicted could not have been so great as to prevent or delay the operations of the siege. Major-General Colville, on whom the command devolved, landed his guns, and made preparations upon a scale which, if hostilities had been renewed, would, in all human probability, in the course of a very few weeks have added Bayonne to the British conquests. But no new conquest, no farther victories were needed for the honour of the British name. The reputation of the English soldiers had not been higher in the days of the Black Prince, nor that of a British commander in the days of Marlborough.
♦Suchet and Soult acknowledge the new government.♦
Colonels Cooke and S. Simon made no tarriance in Toulouse, but hastened on to inform Marshal Soult of Buonaparte’s deposition, and the consequent termination of the war. The Marshal discovered no willingness to acquiesce in the new order of things; the information, he said, came to him without any character of authenticity, nevertheless, inasmuch as Lord Wellington seemed persuaded of its truth, he proposed an armistice, that he might have time to receive from the Emperor’s government official advices, which might direct him how to act. When Colonel Cooke returned to Toulouse with this reply, Lord Wellington dispatched a second letter to Marshal Soult, saying, it appeared to him that Colonel Simon had been sent to the French Marshal by the Provisional Government of France, just as Colonel Cooke had been to him by the British minister who was with the King of Prussia, both bearers of official intelligence; nor could the truth of that intelligence be doubted, nor did it require proof. Without requiring his Excellency to come to a decision, whatever that might be, he himself, he added, must not depart from the line of conduct which the allied sovereigns had pursued in their negotiations at Paris; but were he to consent to an armistice before his Excellency should have followed the example of his companions in arms, and declared his adhesion to the Provisional Government, he should be sacrificing the interest not only of the allies, but of France itself, whom it concerned so much to be saved from a civil war. Meantime Colonel S. Simon proceeded to Marshal Suchet, whom he found at Narbonne with about 12,000 men, all whom he could bring out of Spain. His last act in Catalonia had been to demolish the fortifications of Rosas; Denia and Morella had capitulated; he left garrisons blockaded in Figueras, Hostalric, Barcelona, Tortosa, Murviedro, and Peñiscola, in which latter place the governor with his staff, and many others, perished by the explosion of a magazine. Marshal Suchet was far from approving the latter movements of Marshal Soult, and from his own dispatches had been led to believe that he could surely have maintained himself at Toulouse. Upon Colonel S. Simon’s arrival, he assembled his superior officers, laid the information before them, and with their unanimous consent sent in the adhesion of the army of Aragon and Catalonia. Soult had now no choice; the allies were moving against ♦April 19.♦ him ready to have acted if he had hesitated longer; yielding an unwilling consent, he then acknowledged the Provisional Government, and a convention for the suspension of hostilities was arranged.
Thus was the war concluded, happily for all parties, even for the French, whom nothing but such a series of defeats could have delivered from the tyranny which their former victories had brought upon themselves. It was by the national spirit which had first shown itself in the Peninsula, by the persevering efforts of Great Britain in the peninsular war, the courage of her troops, and the skill of her great commander, that Buonaparte’s fortune had been checked at its height, and successfully resisted, till other governments were encouraged, and other nations roused by the example; and that power, the most formidable which had ever been known in the civilized world, was then beaten down. The independence of Spain and Portugal had been triumphantly vindicated and secured; and if the civil liberties of both countries were not restored, and firmly established upon a sure foundation, the cause is to be found, not in any foreign influence exercised ill, nor in the perverse disposition, nor malignant designs of any individual or set of men, but in old evils which time had rendered inveterate, for which there is no sudden cure, and which when it is attempted to remove them by the knife and the cautery, must ever be rendered worse.
♦Disposition of Ferdinand on his return.♦
Ferdinand had returned from captivity with the belief in which he had been trained up, that by right of birth, and by the laws and customs of his country, he was an absolute King; and in this the great majority of the nation entirely agreed with him. But he had been accustomed to yield to circumstances which he could not control, feeling in himself neither the wish nor the strength to struggle against them; and had the general opinion been in favour of the new constitution, he would have submitted to it, as he had to his detention at Valençay, if with no better will, with the same apparent contentment, and the same convenient insensibility. Certain it is that he had no intention of overthrowing it when he arrived at Zaragoza:... “there are many parts of it,” said he, “which I do not approve; but if any opposition on my part were likely to cause the shedding of one drop of Spanish blood, I would swear to it immediately.” He soon found that this was not the national wish; that the people cared for the constitution as little as they understood it, that they execrated the Liberales, and hated the Cortes for their ♦Impolitic measures of the Cortes.♦ sake. That assembly, indeed, had acted toward all classes with such strange impolicy as to offend or injure all. The nobles, though the constitution gave them not that weight in the political scale, without which there can be no well-balanced monarchy, might nevertheless have submitted to it without repugnance, because they possessed no authority as an order under the old government: but their property had been attacked; and a sweeping decree had abolished those feudal rights and customs from which a large portion of their hereditary revenues was derived. The clergy might have acquiesced in the suppression of the Inquisition, if they had not been required to proclaim the triumph of the Liberales, ... a triumph whereby nothing was gained for toleration, death being still the punishment for any one who should dare dissent from the Roman Catholic faith. The monasteries might have been quietly reduced, as Pombal had begun to reduce them, without wrong to the existing communities, and without offence to the feelings or prejudices of the nation, simply by forbidding the admittance of new members: by suppressing them the Cortes not only made the monks and friars their enemies, but the people also, among whom the revenues of the former were expended, and over whom the latter exercised far greater influence than either the gospel or the laws. This measure, indeed, would have been impolitic, even if the whole expected profit to the treasury had accrued from it; but as a measure of finance it was worse than a failure. Purchasers could not be found for church property thus confiscated, in a country where the people revolted at this species of sacrilege; the estates, therefore, were administered for the government; and what with the excuses and opportunities which were afforded for mal-administration and peculation, it was generally found that the costs of management consumed the whole proceeds; whereas a regular impost might always have been levied upon the former possessors. The necessity of raising money to support the war was the plea for this suppression; yet the pay of the armies was always greatly in arrear; and it has been seen how much they suffered for want of proper clothing and of sufficient food: such evils are always imputed to the government under which they exist; and as the Cortes had, in fact, assumed the government, the Cortes were as unpopular with the soldiers as with the great body of the people. Nothing but the army could support them if the King should refuse to take upon himself the yoke which they had prepared for him; yet such was the infatuation of the Liberales, that one of their most influential members said the liberties of the country could never be safe if there were even four paid soldiers and a corporal in it; and another described the army as composed of privileged mercenaries and hired assassins.