Clausel’s second division, on the other side of Sauroren, seeing this dire conflict, with a hurried movement assailed the chapel height to draw off Cole’s fire from the troops in the valley, and gallantly did the French soldiers throng up the craggy steep; yet the general unity of the attack was ruined; neither the third division nor Reille’s brigades had yet received the signal, and their attacks were made irregularly, in succession, running from right to left as the necessity of aiding others became apparent. It was however a terrible battle and well fought. One column darting out of the village of Sauroren, silently, sternly, without firing a shot, worked up to the chapel under a tempest of bullets, which swept away whole ranks without abating the speed and power of the mass; the Portuguese there shrunk abashed, and that part of the position was won; soon however they rallied on Ross’s British brigade, and the whole, running forward, charged the French with a loud shout and dashed them down the hill. Heavily stricken the latter were, yet undismayed, they re-formed, and again ascended, to be again broken and overturned. But the other columns of attack now bore upwards through the smoke and flame with which the skirmishers covered the face of the mountain, and another Portuguese regiment, fighting on the right of Ross, yielded to their fury; thus a heavy body crowned the heights, and wheeling against Ross’s exposed flank forced him back also, and his ground was instantly occupied by the enemies with whom he had been engaged in front. Now the fight raged close and desperate on the crest of the position, charge succeeding charge, each side yielding and advancing by turns. This astounding effort of French valour was however of no avail. Wellington brought Byng’s brigade forward at a running pace, and calling the 27th and 48th British Regiments, from the higher ground in the centre, against the crowded masses, rolled them backward in disorder, and threw them, one after the other, violently down the mountain-side; yet with no child’s play; the two British regiments had to fall upon the enemy three separate times with the bayonet, and lost more than half their own numbers.
During this battle on the mountain-top, the sixth division gained ground in the Lanz valley, and when it arrived on a front with the left of the victorious troops near the chapel, Wellington, seeing the momentary disorder of the enemy, ordered Madden’s Portuguese brigade beyond the Lanz, which had never ceased its fire against the right flank of the French column, to assail the village of Sauroren in rear; but the state of the action in other parts and the exhaustion of the troops soon induced him to countermand this movement.
On the French left, Reille’s brigades, connecting their right with Clausel’s third division, had environed the Spanish hill and ascended it unchecked, at the moment when the fourth division was so hardly pressed from Sauroren; a Spanish regiment then gave way on the left of the 40th, but a Portuguese battalion, rushing forward, again covered the flank of that invincible regiment, which waited in stern silence until the French set their feet upon the broad summit. Scarcely did their glittering arms appear over the brow of the mountain when the charging British cry was heard, the fierce shock given, the French mass was broken to pieces and a tempest of bullets followed it down the mountain. Four times this assault was renewed, and the French officers were seen even to pull up their tired men by the belts, so fierce and resolute they were to win, but it was the labour of Sisyphus; the vehement shout and shock of the British soldier always prevailed, and at last, with thinned ranks, tired limbs, and fainting hearts, hopeless from repeated failures, the French were so abashed that three British companies sufficed to bear down a whole brigade.[35]
While the battle was thus being fought on the mountain, Soult’s cavalry beyond the Guy river passed a rivulet, and with a fire of carbines forced the 10th Hussars to yield some rocky ground on Picton’s right, but the 18th Hussars renewed the combat, killed two officers, and drove them over the rivulet again.
Such were the leading events of this sanguinary struggle, which Lord Wellington, fresh from the fight, with homely emphasis called “bludgeon work.” Two generals and eighteen hundred men had been killed or wounded on the French side, following their official reports; a number far below the estimate made at the time by the allies, whose loss amounted to two thousand six hundred. These discrepancies between hostile calculations ever occur, and there is little wisdom in disputing where proof is unattainable; yet the numbers actually engaged were twenty-five thousand French and twelve thousand allies; hence, if the strength of the latter’s position did not save them from the greater loss, their steadfast courage is more to be admired.
The 29th the armies rested in position without firing a shot, and the wandering divisions on both sides were now entering the line.
Hill had sent all his baggage, artillery, and wounded men to Berioplano behind Picton’s ridge, but still occupied his position, covering the Marcalain and Irurzun roads; thus posted, he likewise menaced the valley of Lanz in rear of Soult’s right, his communication with Oricain being maintained by the seventh division; the light division was also approaching Hill’s left, and therefore on Wellington’s side the crisis was over. He had vindicated his position with only sixteen thousand combatants, and now, including the Spanish troops blockading Pampeluna, he had fifty thousand in close military combination. Thirty thousand flushed with recent successes were in hand, and Hill’s troops were well placed for re-taking the offensive.
Soult’s situation was proportionably difficult. Seeing he could not force the position, he had sent his artillery, part of his cavalry, and his wounded men, back to France immediately after the battle, ordering the two former to join Villatte on the Lower Bidassoa and await further instructions. Having shaken off this burthen he awaited D’Erlon’s arrival by the valley of Lanz, and that general did reach Ostiz, a few miles above Sauroren, at mid-day on the 29th, bringing intelligence, obtained indirectly during his march, that Graham had retired from the Bidassoa and Villatte had crossed that river. This gave Soult a hope that his first movements had disengaged San Sebastian, and he instantly conceived a new plan of operations, dangerous indeed, yet conformable to the critical state of his affairs.
No success was to be expected from another attack, yet he could not, being reinforced with eighteen thousand men, retire by the road he came without some dishonour; nor could he remain where he was, because his supplies of provisions and ammunition, derived from distant magazines by slow and small convoys, were unequal to the consumption. Two-thirds of the British troops, great part of the Portuguese and all the Spaniards, were, as he supposed, assembled in his front under Wellington, or on his right flank under Hill; and it was probable other reinforcements were on the march; wherefore he resolved to prolong his right with D’Erlon’s corps, and cautiously drawing off the rest of his army place the whole between the allies and the Bastan, in military connection with his reserve and closer to his frontier magazines. Thus posted he could combine all his forces in one operation to relieve San Sebastian, and profit from new combinations.
In the evening of the 29th the second division of cavalry, which was in the valley of Zubiri, passed over to that of Lanz and joined D’Erlon, who was ordered to march early on the 30th by the cross road, leading on Marcalain, which Hill had followed to get out of that valley. During the night the first division of cavalry and La Martinière’s division of infantry, both on the extreme left of the French army, retired over the mountains to Eugui, in the upper part of the Zubiri valley, having orders to cross the separating ridge there and join D’Erlon in the valley of Lanz. The remainder of Reille’s wing moved by the crest of the position to Sauroren, being gradually to relieve Clausel’s troops, which were then to move up the Lanz valley, follow D’Erlon, and be followed in like manner by Reille: meanwhile Clausel detached two regiments to the ridges beyond the Lanz river, to cover his own march and open a military connection with D’Erlon, whose new line of operations was just beyond those heights.