The pursuit was continued on the 24th; but the enemy made exceedingly long marches, and had little to encumber them while hastening to their resources both in men and means, and the pursuers having to bring up their supplies far from behind could not keep up an equal pace. On that day they only came up with the rear-guard, which hastened away at their approach. On the following the advance halted for the army to close up; Colonel Arentschild’s brigade entered Arevalo; and a non-commissioned officer’s patrol captured two officers and 27 men of Joseph’s own cavalry, in Blasco Sancho, between Arevalo and Avila. The Intruder had reached that place, hastening with the army of the centre to join Marmont upon the Tormes; he was met there with tidings of the defeat, and then turned towards Segovia, as if retreating upon Madrid: soon however receiving fuller advices, he endeavoured to divert the pursuers by threatening an advance upon their flank. The routed army, meantime, whose movements were conducted with great ability by Clausel, concentrated themselves on the right bank of the Douro, between Puente de Duero and the other bridge at Tudela de Duero; they crossed the river as soon as the allies advanced towards them, hastened to Valladolid, and making no tarriance there, continued their retreat to Burgos. Lord Wellington entered Valladolid on the 30th amid the acclamations of the people. There he discontinued the pursuit, and prepared to march against the Intruder, with the intention of either bringing him to action, or driving him from Madrid.
♦Proceedings of Sir Home Popham on the coast of Biscay.♦
Meantime, a squadron under Sir Home Popham which sailed from Coruña, to co-operate with the Guerrillas, and occupy the enemy upon the side of Biscay, rendered all the service which had been expected from it. Sir Howard Douglas and General Carrol embarked in the Venerable with Sir Home. They arrived off Lequeitio on the 18th of June, where the French had possession of a hill-fort, commanding the town, and strong enough to resist any body of infantry; they had also 200 men fortified in a convent within the town, and into this the garrison retired when the Pastor D. Gaspar Jauregui arrived with his party to act in concert with the squadron. The convent might have been destroyed by the ships, but the town must in that case have suffered also; it was determined, therefore, to attack the fort, which was so situated that the enemy thought it quite inaccessible to cannon. They knew not what British seamen are capable of on shore. At a time when the sea broke with such violence against the rocks at the foot of the hill, that it was doubtful whether a boat could reach the land, Lieutenant Groves succeeded in landing a gun there. It was hove up for a short distance by a moveable capstan; but this was too tedious an operation, and it was dragged to the summit by six and thirty pair of oxen, 400 of the Pastor’s men, and 100 seamen, headed by the Honourable Captain Bouverie. It was immediately mounted; the first shot was fired at four in the afternoon, and so well was it served, that by sunset a practicable breach was made. The Guerrillas volunteered to storm; they were repulsed in the first attempt, but succeeded in the second, and such of the enemy as escaped on the opposite side got into the convent. In the course of the evening the sea had abated, a landing was effected upon the island of S. Nicholas, from whence the convent could be battered without damage to the town; three carronades were planted there; at dawn, a 24-pounder was brought to the east side of the town, within 200 yards of the convent, and another was in the act of being landed upon the island to bombard it, when the French commandant beat a parley, and surrendered with 290 men. The Guerrillas had lost 50 in killed and wounded, not a man belonging to the squadron was hurt. The muskets, stores, and three small guns, which were found there were given to the Pastor. Two 18-pounders in the fort were rendered useless; the fort itself was demolished and the convent blown up. The next morning a column of 1100 men were seen which had arrived within two leagues of Lequeitio, but hearing from the peasantry that the English had disembarked 2000 men, they retired. Some intercepted letters were now transmitted to Sir Home, by which the commandant at Guernica was instructed to prepare rations for a French general and 2600 of the Imperial Guards.
The squadron was now to have co-operated in an attack upon Bilbao, but the wind proved unfavourable for getting round Cape Machichago, and part of the ships fetched the anchorage of Bermeo. The enemy had retired from that place, leaving a small magazine of provisions ♦June 23.♦ in a fortified convent; these were distributed to the poor; and the battery on the hill and all the fortified places which the French had occupied were destroyed: the works at Plencia were in like manner demolished, and the batteries on each side of the ♦June 24.♦ inlet below the bar of the Ybeyzabal, or Narrow River, the beautiful and tranquil stream which forms the port of Bilbao: on one side were the castle of Galea, and the batteries of Algorta and Begona; on the other the batteries of El Campillo, Las Quersas and Xebiles. Early on the following morning some parties of the enemy entered the destroyed batteries of Algorta, but retired upon the squadron’s making a disposition to stand up the inlet; they then formed in the plain, and were found to consist of 2000 men at Algorta, while 400 were sent to Puerta Galetta. Three of the British sloops closed with the fort there, silenced it, and drove them from thence. It was supposed that this was the corps for which rations had been ordered at Guernica, and that it had been thus drawn off from its original destination.
♦July 2.♦
The squadron then made for Guetaria; two companies of marines were landed for the purpose of reconnoitring the place, previous to an intended attack, but the Guerrillas who were expected to co-operate were engaged with the enemy in a different quarter; parties of the French were seen crossing the hills; the intention, therefore, was relinquished, ♦July 6.♦ and the marines re-embarked without loss. Sir Home then sailed for Castro, where Sir George Collier had landed a company of marines to assist Longa in a concerted attack. Longa was there at the time and place appointed; more marines were landed, and guns with hearty exertions of well-directed skill were drawn up heights that might have seemed inaccessible to men less earnest in their duty. They were placing them in a battery to the east of the town, when 2500 of the enemy appeared on the heights of S. Pelayo; the parties upon this were re-embarked, and Longa found it necessary to change his ground, after which he sustained an action, in which no advantage was gained over him. Somewhat disheartened by this, the French marched into the town that evening, and were driven out of it on the morrow by the fire of the squadron: they then took post on the hills, and under favour of the night retired towards Laredo. The castle then surrendered with 150 men, and having been put in a state of defence, was garrisoned by ♦July 10.
July 11.♦ the marines and Spanish artillerymen of the Iris. Their next attempt was a combined attack upon Puerta Galleta, which was abandoned because the enemy were found to be in greater strength than had been expected; the French on their part failed equally in endeavouring to recover Castro. Their moveable column had now been drawn by a feint to Santona; from thence it could not reach Guetaria in less than four days; another attempt therefore was made upon that place in concert with the Pastor, and with one of Mina’s battalions. The latter, after two days’ severe march, did not arrive till it was too late; for when the enemy’s guns on one side had been silenced, ♦July 19.♦ and a battery was ready to open upon them on the other, intelligence was received that a considerable body of French troops was hastening thither by forced marches. The Guerrillas maintained a brave action against them, till the superiority of the enemy’s numbers was ascertained, and made it necessary for them to retreat; but this action prevented the re-embarkation of the British in time, so that two guns were in consequence destroyed, and 32 men made prisoners.
These operations of Sir Home Popham’s squadron were of service in many ways. Troops were thus occupied who would otherwise have joined Marmont before the battle of Salamanca; the corps which relieved Guetaria was recalled from that direction, and Caffarelli was prevented from sending the infantry who were to have assisted in driving the English into the Tagus. The ports which were liberated lost no time in conveying supplies to the free parts of the kingdom, and vessels from them arrived daily at Coruña laden with corn and wine. And the Guerrillas, as well as the regular troops of Spain, received a countenance and support which enabled them to hold towards the enemy the language of confident hope. Renovales, who was Commandant-General in Biscay, addressed a letter to the French Governor of Bilbao, General Roquet, remonstrating against the cruelties which General Mouton had committed with his column: “for the security of a fortress,” he said, “or to prevent an insurrection, the rules of military precaution might render it proper to put some few persons of respectability in confinement, but that cottages and private dwellings should be outraged, and that peaceable persons should be tortured by stripes, by the bayonet, and by fire, was what no laws of war could justify. The Spaniards were a people who might be softened by generosity though not subdued by it; but if this system of terror were persisted in towards them, ... if it were still to be war at the knife’s point, the Biscayans, instead of yielding a foot to him, would meet him half way in such warfare. Four and twenty officers were in his hands, and should suffer for the next act of cruelty on the part of the French. He concluded by assuring Roquet that the day was not far distant when Bilbao would be delivered, and that he, Renovales, would then, at the head of 10,000 Biscayans, fulfil his duty as he had hitherto done, and first of all towards himself.
CHAPTER XLII.
LORD WELLINGTON ENTERS MADRID. THE FRENCH RETIRE FROM ANDALUSIA. SIEGE OF BURGOS, AND RETREAT OF THE ALLIES.
♦July, 1812.♦