Meanwhile, Sarsfield's movements appearing too dilatory to the Christino government, he was replaced by General Valdes, and appointed Viceroy of Navarre. The arrival of winter, however, and a heavy fall of snow, in some degree paralyzed the operations of the Christinos, whilst this occasioned incredible sufferings to the Carlists. One battalion of the latter, in passing from Navarre to Guipuzcoa, across the mountains of Aralár, lost 460 men out of 620, of which it consisted. Numbed by cold, and worn out by fatigue, they remained to die upon the road, or dragged themselves for shelter to lonely hamlets and isolated farmhouses, where many of them were discovered and taken by Christino detachments sent to hunt them down. "Truly," says Zaratiegui, "it was a lamentable sight to behold these unfortunate men, who were unable to move hand or foot, thus persecuted. But even in this state of impotence and peril, not one of them chose to avail himself of the pardon which the Christino generals at that time freely offered to those who should renounce Don Carlos. Doubtless a great proof of how noble and constant was their first resolution."
In order not to inconvenience the inhabitants, Zumalacarregui was in the habit of distributing his troops over large districts, himself frequently remaining with only a handful of men about him. On one of these occasions an incident occurred which is related at considerable length by General Zaratiegui, who evidently attaches the greatest importance to his late chief's most trifling actions, and, in the course of his book, compares him to or sets him above various renowned heroes of ancient and modern times. The anecdote, however, is curious, as showing the constant state of vigilance and anxiety in which the Carlists were kept during these early days of their uprising.
"Zumalacarregui had taken up his quarters in the hamlet of Zabal, which consisted of only four houses; and, as the season was unfavourable for a bivouac, he had scattered the troops through various small villages in the neighbourhood. With himself there remained only a guard of fifteen or twenty men, and a few aides-de-camp. It was in the middle of December, when the nights are at the longest, and consequently the most favourable time of the year for an enemy to accomplish a surprise. The Carlist general lay awake in his bed, watching for the dawn, which seemed to him longer than usual in appearing; till at last his own restlessness and impatience made him fancy that the Christinos were coming to surprise him. A distant noise which he heard, and which resembled the trot of horses, confirmed the hallucination. He sprang from his bed, and, nearly naked as he was, descended the stairs, opened the door of the house, and tried to snatch away the musket of the sentinel posted there, in order to defend himself against the approaching enemy. The sentry, at once recognising him, kept him off with his hand, and said firmly—'General, leave me my arms; when needful, I shall know how to use them.' The man had only joined the Carlists three days before, and, excepting his musket, bore no mark or sign of his new profession, not even a cartouch-box; and, to complete the singularity of the scene, he was mounting guard bareheaded. The horses, of which Zumalacarregui, with extraordinary fineness of ear, had detected the approach at a very great distance, soon afterwards made their appearance. They were mounted by the men whose duty it was to go from one village to another during the night, collecting rations. Things returned to their previous state of tranquillity, and the sentinel was rewarded for his steadiness and presence of mind.
"This incident," concludes Zaratiegui, "recalls to my recollection an anecdote told by a Spanish author, of the great Captain Gonzalo de Cordova. When that hero was laying siege to a fortress on the island of Cephalonia, which was defended by the Turks, he was many times seen to get up in his sleep, and to cry out to his soldiers to come and repel the enemy; and it is also said, that owing to these alarms the Spaniards more than once escaped a surprise."
Without reference to a map, it would be difficult for our readers to appreciate a description of the extraordinary marches and countermarches by which Zunalacarregui avoided his enemy until such time as he was able to fight him. Sarsfield had no sooner established himself in his vice-royalty at Pampeluna, that he collected all the troops he had at his disposal, and began running after the Carlist chief. He displayed great activity, made forced and rapid marches, and on arriving one evening at the town of Puente la Reyna, found himself, by the result of a well-planned movement, within an hour and a half's march of Artajona, where Zumalacarregui had halted. Sarsfield made sure of coming to blows the next morning; but he had forgotten to take into consideration the insensibility to fatigue, and capacity of exertion, of the Navarrese mountaineers. In the middle of the night, Zumalacarregui turned out his men in dead silence, without sound of drum or trumpet, and began retracing his steps along the road which he had that day followed. The next morning, before Sarsfield arrived at Artajona, Zumalacarregui was at Dicastillo, a long day's march off, and precisely at the same distance from the Christino general at which he had been when the latter commenced his pursuit. Sarsfield found matter for reflection in this, and perceiving, doubtless, that a war in such a country as Navarre, and against such a man as Zumalacarregui, was likely to prove a shoal upon which more than one military reputation would be wrecked, he confided the direction of operations to Generals Lorenzo and Oraa, and returned to Pampeluna, whence he no more issued forth.
The first encounter between Zumalacarregui and the Christinos took place on the 29th of December, near the village of Asarta. The Carlist force consisted of seven small battalions or corps, together about 2500 men, knowing, for the most part, little or nothing of a soldier's duty. Many of the muskets were useless, and the ammunition so scarce, that ten cartridges formed the allowance with which these troops went, for the first time, under fire. In the combat that ensued, the Christinos suffered considerable loss; and although the Carlists, who had most of them expended their ammunition, finally retreated in haste and disorder, the mere fact of having sustained for some time the assault of an enemy so far superior to them in discipline and equipments, inspired these raw recruits with fresh courage and confidence. The resistance that had been made contrasted advantageously with the facility with which, at the first commencement of the war, far larger bodies of the insurgents had been put to flight. Several Christino officers came over to the Carlists after this trifling action, of which the moral effect was altogether highly favourable to the cause of Don Carlos.
Dividing his forces into three detachments, Zumalacarregui sent two of these to draw off the attention of Lorenzo and Oraa, whilst he himself suddenly appeared before the royal manufactory of shot and shell at Orbaiceta, near the French frontier. The garrison, consisting of two hundred men, capitulated, although it might very well have held out the place against an enemy without artillery, until the arrival of assistance, which would have been certain to come in two or three days. Here were found two hundred excellent muskets, a brass four-pounder, and more than 50,000 cartridges; besides an immense quantity of round-shot and other projectiles, which at that time were useless to the Carlists, as they had no artillery.
When, instead of the news which they had been expecting to receive, of the extermination of the royalist faction, the Pampelonese learned that Orbaiceta was captured; and that Lorenzo and Oraa had succeeded in nothing except in knocking up their horses and fagging their men; they sent to Valdes, the general-in-chief of the army of the North, who was then in Biscay, imploring him to come and make an end of the Carlists. Valdes hastened to Pampeluna, and on arriving there at once made a sortie with five or six thousand men. Zumalacarregui posted himself in a narrow pass, on the road along which the Christinos were advancing, and awaited their arrival. Having done this, he sent out a number of officers and soldiers, who were well acquainted with the country, to observe the movements of the Queen's troops, and give notice of their approach. The evening was drawing in, when a peasant came up in all haste, laden with a large stone of a thin flat form, nearly a foot and a half long. On reaching the presence of Zumalacarregui, he laid it down, and requested the general to read what was written on it. One of the scouts having no writing materials, and thinking the peasant incapable of bearing a verbal message correctly, had taken this novel means of conveying intelligence to his chief. In danger of being outflanked, Zumalacarregui was compelled to abandon his advantageous position. The following day a skirmish took place without result; and at last Valdes, finding that he only fatigued his men uselessly, by pursuing an adversary whom it was impossible to overtake, remained for some days inactive.
A week had elapsed, which Zumalacarregui had passed at Navascues, busied in organizing his troops, and making various important administrative arrangements, when the approach of Oraa compelled him to a change of place. On the evening of the 17th of February, the Christino general having put up his infantry in the hamlets of Zubiri and Urdaniz, and the detachments of cavalry that accompanied him, at a large venta or inn between those two places, Zumalacarregui resolved upon a nocturnal attack.