Beresford, preceded by the hussars, marched from Croix d’Orade in three columns abreast, masked by the Pugade until he entered the marshy ground; but he left his guns behind, fearing to engage them in that deep and difficult country. Beyond the Ers, on his left, Vivian’s cavalry, now under Colonel Arentschildt, drove Berton’s horsemen back over the bridge of Bordes, which the French general destroyed with difficulty. The German hussars then gained the bridge of Montaudran higher up, though defended by a detachment sent there by Berton, who remained in position near the bridge of Bordes, looking down the left of the Ers.
During these operations Freyre, who had demanded leave to lead the battle at Calvinet, from error or impatience assailed while Beresford was still in march, and his Spaniards, nine thousand strong, advanced in two lines and a reserve with great resolution, throwing forward their flanks so as to embrace the hill. The French musketry and great guns thinned their ranks at every step, but closing upon the centre they mounted the ascent under a formidable fire, which increased in violence until their right wing, raked also from the bridge of Matabiau, became unable to endure the torment, and the leading ranks madly jumped for shelter into a hollow road, twenty-five feet deep, covering this part of the French entrenchments; the left wing and the second line ran back in disorder, the Cantabrian fusiliers, under Colonel Leon de Sicilia, alone maintaining their ground under cover of a bank which protected them. Then the French came leaping out of their works with loud cries, and lining the edge of the hollow road, poured an incessant stream of shot upon the helpless crowds in the gulf below, while a battery from the Matabiau, constructed to rake the hollow, sent its bullets from flank to flank, hissing through the quivering mass of flesh and bones.
The Spanish generals rallied their troops and led them back again to the brink of the fatal hollow; but the frightful carnage below, with the unmitigated fire in front, filled them with horror: again they fled, and again the French bounding from their trenches pursued, while several battalions sallying from the Matabiau and Calvinet also followed them. The country was now covered with fugitives, and the pursuers’ numbers and vehemence increased, until Wellington pushed forward with Ponsonby’s cavalry and the reserve artillery, while a brigade of the light division, wheeling to its left, menaced the flank of the French, who then returned to the Calvinet.
More than fifteen hundred Spaniards had been killed or wounded, and their defeat was not the only misfortune. Picton, regardless of his orders, which, his temper on such occasions being known, were especially given both verbally and in writing, had turned his false attack into a real one against the bridge of Jumeaux; but the enemy, fighting from a work too high to be forced without ladders, and approachable only on open ground, repulsed him with a loss of four hundred men and officers; amongst the latter Colonel Forbes of the 45th was killed, and General Brisbane was wounded. Thus from the hill of Pugade to the Garonne the French had vindicated their position, the allies had suffered enormously; and beyond the Garonne, although Hill forced the exterior line of entrenchments, the inner line, more contracted and strongly fortified, could not be stormed. The musketry now subsided for a time, yet a prodigious cannonade was kept up along the whole of the French line; and by the allies, from St. Cyprien to where the artillery left by Beresford was, in concert with the guns on the Pugade, pouring shot incessantly against the Calvinet platform; injudiciously it has been said by Beresford’s guns, because the ammunition, thus used for a secondary object, was afterwards wanted when a vital advantage might have been gained.
In this state the victory depended on Beresford’s attack, and, from Picton’s error, Wellington had no reserves to enforce the decision; for the light division and the heavy cavalry only remained in hand, and were necessarily retained to cover the rallying of the Spaniards, and protect the artillery employed to keep the enemy in check. The crisis therefore approached with all happy promise to the French. The repulse of Picton, the dispersion of the Spaniards, and the strength of St. Cyprien, enabled Soult to draw Taupin’s whole division first, and then one of Maransin’s brigades, from that quarter, to reinforce his battle on Mont Rave; thus three divisions and the cavalry, in all fifteen thousand combatants, were disposable for a counter-attack. With this mass he might have fallen upon Beresford, whose force, originally less than thirteen thousand bayonets, was cruelly reduced, as it made slow way for two miles through ground deep and tangled with watercourses: sometimes moving in mass, sometimes filing under the French musketry, always under fire of their guns without one to reply, the length of the column augmented at every step, and frequent halts were necessary to close up.
Between the river and the heights the ground became narrower, and more miry as the troops advanced, Berton’s cavalry was a-head, an impassable river was on the left, and three French divisions supported by artillery and horsemen overshadowed the right flank! Meanwhile Soult, eyeing this terrible march, had carried Taupin’s division to the platform of St. Sypière, supporting it with one of D’Armagnac’s brigades, and now, after a short hortative, ordered Taupin to fall on, while a regiment of Vial’s cavalry descended the Lavaur road to intercept retreat, and Berton’s horsemen assailed the flank from the bridge of Bordes. But this was not half the force which might have been employed. Taupin’s artillery, retarded in its march, was still in the streets of Toulouse, and that general, instead of attacking frankly, waited until Beresford had completed his flank march and formed his lines at the foot of the heights. Then the French infantry poured down the hill, but some well-directed rockets, whose noise and dreadful aspect were unknown before, dismayed his soldiers; whereupon the British skirmishers running forwards plied them with a biting fire, Lambert’s brigade of the sixth division, aided by Anson’s and some provisional battalions of the fourth division, followed with a terrible shout, and the French fled to the upper ground. Vial’s horsemen, trotting down the Lavaur road, had meanwhile charged the right flank, but Beresford’s second and third lines being thrown into squares repulsed them; and on the other flank Cole had been so sudden in his advance that Berton’s cavalry had no opportunity to charge. Lambert killed Taupin, wounded a general of brigade, and without a check won the summit of the platform; his skirmishers even pursued down the reverse slope, while Cole, meeting with less resistance, had still more rapidly gained the height at his side: so complete was the rout that the two redoubts were abandoned from panic, and the French sought shelter in Sacarin and Cambon.
Soult, astonished at this weakness in troops from whom he had expected so much, and who had but just before given him assurances of their resolution and confidence, was now in fear that Beresford would seize the bridge of the Demoiselles on the canal, and so gain the south side of Toulouse. Wherefore, covering the flight as he could with Vial’s cavalry, he hastily led D’Armagnac’s other brigade to Sacarin, checked the British skirmishers there, and rallied the fugitives; Taupin’s guns arrived from the town at the same moment, and the mischief being thus stayed, a part of Travot’s conscripts moved to the bridge of the Demoiselles. This new order of battle required fresh dispositions for attack, but the indomitable courage of the British soldiers had decided the first great crisis of the fight, and was still buoyant. Lambert’s brigade wheeled to its right across the platform, menacing the French left flank on the Calvinet platform, while Pack’s Scotch brigade and Douglas’s Portuguese, composing the second and third lines of the sixth division, formed on his right, to march against the Colombette redoubts. Then also Arentschildt’s cavalry came down from the bridge of Montaudran on the Ers river, round the south end of the Mont Rave, where in conjunction with the skirmishers of the fourth division it again menaced the bridge of the Demoiselles.
Entirely changed now was the aspect and form of the battle. The French, thrown entirely on the defensive, occupied three sides of a square. Their right, extending from Sacarin to the Calvinet platform, was closely menaced by Lambert, solidly established on the St. Sypière; the redoubts of Colombette and Augustines were menaced by Pack and Douglas, and the left, thrown back to the Matabiau, awaited a renewed attack: the whole position was very strong, not exceeding a thousand yards on each side, with the angles defended by formidable works. The canal and the city furnished a refuge, while the Matabiau on one side, Sacarin and Cambon on the other, insured retreat.
In this contracted space were concentrated Vial’s cavalry, Villatte’s division, one brigade of Maransin’s, another of D’Armagnac’s, and the whole of Harispe’s division, except the regiment driven from the Sypière redoubt. The victory was therefore still to be contended for, and with apparently inadequate means; for on the right Picton was paralyzed by Daricau, the Spaniards not to be depended upon, and there remained only the heavy cavalry and light division; which Wellington could not thrust into action under pain of being without a reserve in the event of a repulse. The final stroke therefore was still to be made on the left, and with a small force, seeing Lambert’s brigade, and Cole’s division, were necessarily employed to keep in check the French at the bridge of the Demoiselles, at Cambon and Sacarin, where Clausel seemed disposed to retake the offensive.
At half-past two o’clock Beresford renewed the action with the brigades of Pack and Douglas. Ensconced in the Lavaur road on Lambert’s right, they had been hitherto protected from the fire of the French redoubts; but now scrambling up the steep banks of the road, under a wasting fire of cannon and musketry, they carried all the French breastworks—the Colombette and Augustine redoubts being taken by the 42nd and 79th Regiments. It was a surprising action when the loose attack imposed by the ground is considered; and the French, although they yielded to the first thronging rush of the British, came back with a reflux, their cannonade was incessant, their reserves strong, and the struggle became terrible. Harispe, under whom the French seemed always to fight with extraordinary vigour, surrounded the redoubts with a surging multitude, broke into the Colombette, killed or wounded four-fifths of the 42nd, and retook the Augustine also; but then the 11th and 91st Regiments came up and the French again abandoned those works: yet so many of the allies had fallen that they appeared only as a thin line of skirmishers.