But Wellington also was embarrassed. The weather had stopped his pursuit when vigorous action would have been decisive; Soult had rallied on a new line of retreat with strong defensive positions; the allied army, weakened by every step in advance, would, if it followed the French, have to move between the Garonne and the Pyrenees, exposing both its flanks and its rear to all the power which the French government could command. It was, therefore, necessary to find a counterpoise by increasing his own force and strengthening the Bourbonists. He had long been promised twenty thousand additional men from England and Portugal, but the governments of both countries failed in their engagements. He had heard and believed that Suchet had detached ten thousand men to join Soult, and he had, as before shown, called up Freyre’s Gallicians through the Landes, because there was less temptation for plunder there, and he had provided them entirely from the English magazines and military chest; yet their entrance into France was instantly marked by outrages which began to dispose the people to listen to Soult’s proclamation, and an insurrection was to be feared. Inactive, however, he could not remain, and while awaiting the junction of the Spaniards he detached Beresford with twelve thousand men against Bordeaux, remaining with only twenty-six thousand in position to observe Soult, who could from Tarbes move by Roquefort, and gain Bordeaux before Beresford. That general entered the city on the 12th; and the mayor, Lynch, eager to betray his sovereign, very quickly tore his own scarf of honour off to meet the invaders with a welcome. The Duke of Angoulême then arrived, the Bourbonists took the ascendant, and Beresford returned to the army with the fourth division and Vivian’s cavalry, leaving Lord Dalhousie behind with the seventh division and three squadrons.
Then the Napoleonists, recovering from their first stupor, bestirred themselves. A partizan officer cut off fifty men sent by Lord Dalhousie over the Garonne; the peasants of the Landes formed bands and burned the houses of gentlemen who had assumed the white colours; forces of various descriptions were being assembled beyond the Garonne, and General Decaen was sent by the emperor to organize and command them. General Beurman also, who had been detached by Suchet with six thousand men to aid Lyons, was now directed to descend the Garonne towards Bordeaux, where a counter-insurrection was being prepared. But then the English fleet under Admiral Penrose entered the Garonne, sweeping it of French vessels of war, and ruining the batteries on the banks; whereupon Lord Dalhousie crossed the river, and, meeting with General L’Huillier at Etauliers, took three hundred prisoners, the French flying at the first onset. Better troops were, however, gathering in that quarter, and the British force would have been eventually in danger, if Napoleon, the man of mightiest capacity for good known to history since the days of Alexander the Great, had not been just then overthrown to make room for despots; who, with minds enlarged only to cruelty, avarice, dissoluteness, and treachery, were secretly intent to defraud their people of the just government they demanded as the compensation for serving ungrateful masters.
While Beresford was detached, Soult and Wellington remained in observation, each thinking the other stronger than himself; for the English general, hearing of Beurman’s march, believed his troops had joined Soult, and the latter, not knowing of Beresford’s march until the 13th, concluded Wellington had still those twelve thousand men. The numbers on each side were, however, nearly equal. Three thousand French stragglers had been collected, but were kept back by the generals of the military districts, and Soult had therefore in line, exclusive of conscripts without arms, only twenty-eight thousand sabres and bayonets, with thirty-eight pieces of artillery. Wellington had twenty-seven thousand sabres and bayonets, with forty-two guns; having, besides, pushed detachments to Pau, to Roquefort, into the Landes, and towards the Upper Garonne.
Two great roads led to Toulouse; one on the English left from Aire by Auch; the other on their right from Pau by Tarbes; Soult commanded both, and Wellington thought he would take that of Auch; wherefore he desired Beresford to lean towards it in returning from Bordeaux; but Soult had arranged for the other line, and was only prevented from retaking the offensive, on the 9th or 10th, by the loss of his magazines, which forced him to organize a system of requisition first for subsistence. Meanwhile his equality of force passed away; for on the 13th, the day on which he heard of Beresford’s absence, Freyre came up with eight thousand Spanish infantry, and next day Ponsonby’s heavy cavalry arrived. Wellington was then the strongest, yet awaited Beresford’s arrival, and was uneasy about his own situation. He dreaded the junction of Suchet’s twenty thousand veterans; the English ministers, instead of troops, had sent ridiculous projects. The French army in his front, having recovered its stragglers, and being reinforced by conscripts, was now reorganized in six divisions, under Daricau, Maransin, Villatte, D’Armagnac, Taupin, and Harispe. General Paris’s troops, hitherto acting as an unattached body, were thus absorbed; the cavalry, composed of Berton’s and Vial’s brigades, was commanded by Pierre Soult, and seven thousand conscript infantry under Travot formed a reserve. Again, therefore, driven by necessity, Wellington called Giron’s Andalusians and Del Parque’s troops also into France, although Freyre’s soldiers had by their outrages already created wide-spread consternation.
The head-quarters had been fixed at Aire, with the army on each side of the Adour, all the bridges being restored, and some small bands which had appeared upon the left flank and rear were dispersed by the cavalry; Soult was, however, organizing an extensive system of partizans towards the mountains, waiting only for money to give it activity. Meanwhile, though the main bodies were a long day’s march asunder, the regular cavalry had frequent encounters, and both generals claimed the superiority. In this desultory warfare, on the night of the 7th, Soult sent a strong detachment to Pau to arrest some nobles who had assembled to welcome the Duke of Angoulême; but General Fane got there first with a brigade of infantry and two regiments of cavalry, and the stroke failed; the French, however, returning by another road, made prisoners of an officer and four or five English dragoons. A second French detachment, penetrating between Pau and Aire, carried off a post of correspondence; and two days after, when Fane had quitted Pau, a French officer with only four hussars captured there thirty-four Portuguese, with their commander and ten loaded mules.
It was these excursions which gave Soult a knowledge of Beresford’s march, and he resolved to attack the allies, thinking to strike a good blow on the 13th, by throwing his army offensively upon the high tabular land between Pau and Aire; the country was open for all arms, yet the movement produced only a few skirmishes. Pierre Soult pushed back Fane’s cavalry posts on the English right with the loss of two officers and a few men wounded; on the left, Berton, having two regiments, sought to pass a difficult muddy ford, but the head of his column was overthrown by Sir John Campbell with a squadron of the 4th Portuguese cavalry. The latter were however too few to bar the passage, and Berton, getting a regiment over higher up, charged the retiring troops in a narrow way, killed several, and took some prisoners, amongst them Bernardo de Sà, since well known as Count of Bandeira.
Wellington, imagining the arrival of Suchet’s troops had caused Soult’s boldness, made only defensive dispositions, and on the 14th Pierre Soult again drove back Fane’s horsemen; at first with some loss, yet finally was himself driven clear off the Pau road. Both generals, acting under false information, were afraid to strike, each thought his adversary stronger than he really was; but Soult, who was in a tangled country, now hearing that Bordeaux had fallen, first took alarm, and retreated in the night of the 16th. Pierre Soult then again got on to the Pau road, and detached a hundred chosen troopers under Captain Dania to molest the communication with Orthes. By a forced march that partizan reached Hagetnau at nightfall, surprised six officers and eight medical men with their baggage, made a number of other prisoners, and returned on the evening of the 18th. This enterprise, so far in the rear, was supposed to be an insurgent exploit; wherefore Wellington seized the authorities at Hagetnau, and again declared he would hang all the peasants caught in arms, and burn their villages.
Soult’s offensive operations had now terminated. He sent his conscripts to Toulouse and prepared for a rapid retreat on that place. His recent operations had been commenced too late, he should have moved the 10th or 11th, when there were not more than twenty-two thousand men in his front. Wellington’s passive state, which had been too much prolonged, was also at an end; all his reinforcements and detachments were either up or close at hand, and he could now put in motion forty thousand bayonets, six thousand sabres, and sixty pieces of artillery.
On the evening of the 17th the hussars went up the valley of the Adour, closely supported by the light division, and, half a march behind, by the fourth division coming from Bordeaux.
The 18th, the hussars, the light and the fourth division, advanced towards Plaissance; and Hill’s troops, on the right, marched against Conchez, keeping a detachment on the Pau road in observation of Pierre Soult’s cavalry; the centre, under Wellington, moved by the high road leading from Aire to Toulouse. The French right was thus turned by the valley of the Adour, while Hill, with a sharp skirmish in which eighty British and Germans were killed or wounded, drove back their outposts upon Lembege.