Harispe, having Paris under his orders, and supported by Pierre Soult with a brigade of light cavalry, now covered the road from St. Jean with his left, the upper line of the Bidouze with his right; from thence Villatte, Taupin and Foy were extended to its confluence with the Adour. Hill moved against Harispe. The latter had just occupied in advance of the Bidouze a ridge called the Garris mountain, which stretched to St. Palais, when his rear-guard came plunging into a deep ravine in his front, closely followed by the light troops of the second division. Upon the parallel counter-ridge thus gained, General Hill immediately established himself, and though the evening was beginning to close his skirmishers descended into the ravine, while two guns played over it upon four thousand men, arrayed on the opposite mountain by Harispe. In this state of affairs Wellington arrived. He was anxious to turn the line of the Bidouze before Soult could strengthen himself there, and seeing the communication with General Paris, by St. Palais, was not well maintained, sent Morillo along the ridge towards that place; then menacing Harispe’s centre with Le Cor’s Portuguese division, he directed Pringle’s brigade to attack, saying with concise energy “The hill must be taken before dark.”
This expression caught the fancy of the soldiers, and was repeated by Colonel O’Callaghan, as he and Pringle placed themselves at the head of the 39th, which, followed by the 28th, immediately rushed with loud and prolonged shouts into the ravine. Pringle fell wounded, and most of the mounted officers had their horses killed; but the troops, covered by the thick wood, gained the summit of the Garris mountain, on the right of the enemy, who thinking from the shouting that a larger force was coming retreated. The 39th then wheeled to their right, intending to sweep the summit, when the French, discovering their error, came back at a charging pace and receiving a volley without flinching tried the bayonet. O’Callaghan, distinguished for strength and courage, had two strokes from that weapon, but repaid them with fatal power in each instance, and the French, nearly all conscripts, were beaten off. Twice however they came back, and fought until the fire of the 28th was beginning to be felt, when Harispe, seeing the remainder of the second division ready to support the attack, Le Cor advancing against his centre, Morillo in march towards St. Palais, retreated to that town, and calling in Paris broke down the bridges over the Bidouze. He lost altogether five hundred men, two hundred being taken, and would hardly have escaped if Morillo had not been slow. The allies lost one hundred and sixty, most of them in the bayonet contest.
During these operations Picton, marching on Hill’s left, menaced Villatte; but Beresford, though his scouting parties, on the left of Picton, approached the Bidouze, facing Taupin and Foy, remained on the Joyeuse, as the pivot upon which Wellington’s right was to sweep round the French positions. Foy however had observed the movement of two other divisions, pointing as he thought towards the French left, and his reports to that effect reached Soult at the moment the latter received notice that St. Jean Pied de Port was invested. Thinking then that Wellington would not attempt to pass the Adour above Bayonne, but win his way to that river by constantly turning the French left, he made new dispositions.
His line on the Bidouze was strong, yet too extended, and he resolved to abandon that and the Mauleon for the Gave d’Oleron, placing his right at Peyrehorade, his left at Navarrens. Villatte therefore took post at Sauveterre on the Oleron where the bridge had a well-fortified head; from thence Taupin lined the right bank to the confluence of the Gave de Pau, which Foy guarded from Peyrehorade to its confluence with the Adour, his front being prolonged by D’Erlon towards Dax. One brigade of cavalry was in reserve at Sauveterre and the head-quarters went to Orthes. But the magazines of ammunition were at Bayonne, Navarrens, and Dax; and Soult, seeing his communications with all those places likely to be intercepted before he could remove his stores, wrote to the minister of war to form new depôts.
On the 16th Wellington repaired the broken bridges of St. Palais, and after a skirmish Hill crossed the Bidouze, but the day was spent in the operation. Meanwhile the centre divisions passed the Joyeuse.
The 17th Hill advanced towards the Mauleon, while Picton, on his left, made for the heights of Somberraute, both corps converging upon General Paris, who, in defence of the Mauleon Gave, attempted to destroy the bridge of Arriveriete. Lord Wellington was too quick. The 92nd regiment, covered by the fire of some guns, passed at a ford above, and beating two French battalions from the village secured the passage. The troops halted there, having marched only five miles, and though Paris relinquished the Gave he did not retire until the morning of the 18th. The allies then seized the main road between Sauveterre and Navarrens on the left bank of the Oleron Gave, while Harispe, Villatte, and Paris, supported by a brigade of cavalry, concentrated at Sauveterre; Taupin was lower down on their right; Foy on the right of Taupin; D’Erlon on the left of the Adour, above its confluence with the Gave de Pau.
Soult, thrown from the commencement of the operations entirely upon the defensive, was now at a loss to discover his adversary’s object. In this uncertainty, sending Pierre Soult with a cavalry brigade and two battalions of infantry to act between Oleron and Pau and communicate with the partisan corps forming at Mauleon, he decided to hold the Gaves as long as he could; and, when they were forced, concentrate his army at Orthes and fall upon the first of the converging columns that approached. He had considered every likely movement, as he thought, and his conjectures had indeed embraced every plan of operation possible, except the one contemplated by his adversary, namely, the stupendous bridge over the Adour below Bayonne. That was now to be done, and Wellington designed to superintend the casting of it in person; hence, when he had established his right strongly beyond the Mauleon and Bidouze rivers and knew his pontoons were well advanced, he returned rapidly to St. Jean de Luz. Everything there depending on man was ready, but the weather was boisterous with snow for two days, and Wellington, fearful of letting Soult strengthen himself on the Gave of Oleron, returned on the 21st to Garris, deciding to press his operations on that side in person and leave Hope and Admiral Penrose to throw the bridge.
Passage of the Adour. (Feb. 1814.)
Hope had twenty-eight thousand men and twenty pieces of artillery, and in the night of the 22nd the first division, with six eighteen-pounders and a rocket battery, cautiously filed towards the river; the road was deep and one of the guns falling into a ditch delayed the march, yet at daybreak the whole reached some sand-downs which lined the river bank. The French picquets were then driven into the intrenched camp, the pontoon train and field-artillery came down opposite the village of Boucaut, and the eighteen-pounders were placed in battery on the bank. The light troops, meanwhile, closed to the edge of the marsh covering Vauban’s camp; and from Arcangues and Urdains the enemy’s attention was attracted by false attacks, which were prolonged beyond the Nive by the fifth division.
The gun-boats and chasse-marées should have reached the mouth of the Adour at the time the troops reached the bank; but the wind was contrary and none were seen. Hope, whose firmness no untoward event could ever shake, then resolved to try the passage with the army alone; the French flotilla opened fire on his columns, but his artillery and rockets retorted so fiercely that three of the gun-boats were destroyed, and the sloop so hardly handled that about one o’clock the whole took refuge higher up the river. Sixty men of the guards were then rowed in pontoons across the mouth of the river in the face of a French picquet, which, seemingly bewildered, retired without firing. A raft was formed with the remainder of the pontoons, a hawser was stretched across, and Colonel Stopford passed with six hundred of the guards, the 60th Regiment, and some rockets: yet slowly and at slack water, for the tide ran strongly and the waters were wide.