History of the war in the Peninsula and in the south of France from the year 1807 to the year 1814, vol. 6

by William Francis Patrick Napier

The whole loss on the three days of fighting was about fourteen hundred French and sixteen hundred of the allies, one half being Spaniards, but many of the wounded were not brought in until the third day after the actions, and several perished miserably where they fell, it being impossible to discover them in those vast solitudes. Some men were also lost from want of discipline; having descended into the French villages they got drunk and were taken the next day by the enemy. Nor was the number small of those who plundered in defiance of lord Wellington’s proclamation; for he thought it necessary to arrest and send to England several officers, and renewed his proclamation, observing that if he had five times as many men he could not venture to invade France unless marauding was prevented. It is remarkable that the French troops on the same day acted towards their own countrymen in the same manner, but Soult also checked the mischief with a vigorous hand, causing a captain of some reputation to be shot as an example, for having suffered his men to plunder a house in Sarre during the action.

With exception of the slight checks sustained at Sarre and Ainhoa, the course of these operations had been eminently successful, and surely the bravery of troops who assailed and carried such stupendous positions must be admired. To them the unfinished state of the French works was not visible. Day after day, for more than a month, entrenchment had risen over entrenchment, covering the vast slopes of mountains which were scarcely accessible from their natural steepness and asperity. This they could see, yet cared neither for the growing strength of the works, the height of the mountains, nor the breadth of the river with its heavy sands, and its mighty rushing tide; all were despised, and while they marched with this confident valour, it was observed that the French fought in defence of their dizzy steeps with far less fierceness than, when, striving against insurmountable obstacles, they attempted to storm the lofty rocks of Sauroren. Continual defeat had lowered their spirit, but the feebleness of the defence on this occasion may be traced to another cause. It was a general’s not a soldier’s battle. Wellington had with overmastering combinations overwhelmed each point of attack. Taupin’s and Maucune’s divisions were each less than five thousand strong, and they were separately assailed, the first by eighteen the second by fifteen thousand men, and at neither point were Reille and Clauzel able to bring their reserves into action before the positions were won.

Soult complained that he had repeatedly told his lieutenants an attack was to be expected, andSoult’s Official Correspondence with the Minister of War, MSS. recommended extreme vigilance; yet they were quite unprepared, although they heard the noise of the guns and pontoons about Irun on the night of the 5th and again on the night of the 6th. The passage of the river he said had commenced at seven o’clock, long after daylight, the allies’ masses were then clearly to be seen forming on the banks, and there was full time for Boyer’s division to arrive before the Croix des Bouquets was lost. The battle was fought in disorder with less than five thousand men, instead of with ten thousand in good order, and supported by a part of Villatte’s reserve. To this negligence the generals added also discouragement. They had so little confidence in the strength of their positions, that if the allies had pushed vigorously forward before the marshal’s arrival from Espelette, they would have entered St. Jean de Luz, turned the right of the second position and forced the French army back upon the Nive and the Adour.

This reasoning of Soult was correct, but such a stroke did not belong to lord Wellington’s system. He could not go beyond the Adour, he doubted whether he could even maintain his army during the winter in the position he had already gained, and he was averse to the experiment, while Pampeluna held out and the war in Germany bore an undecided aspect.

CHAPTER V.

Soult was apprehensive for some days that lord1813. October. Wellington would push his offensive operations further, but when he knew by Foy’s reports, andOfficial Correspondence, MSS. by the numbers of the allies assembled on his right, that there was no design of attacking his left, he resumed his labours to advance the works covering St. Jean de Luz. He also kept a vigilant watch from his centre, holding his divisions in readiness to concentrate towards Sarre, and when he saw the heavy masses in his front disperse by degrees into different camps, he directed Clauzel to recover the fort of San Barbe. This work was constructed on a comparatively low ridge barring issue from the gorge leading out of the vale of Vera to Sarre, and it defended the narrow ground between the Rhunes and the Nivelle river. Abandoned on the 8th without reason by the French, since it did not naturally belong to the position of the allies, it was now occupied by a Spanish picquet of forty men. Some battalions were also encamped in a small wood close behind; but many officers and men slept in the fort, and on the night of the 12th, about eleven o’clock, three battalions of Conroux’s division reached the platform on which the fort stood without being perceived. The work was then escaladed, the troops behind it went off in confusion at the first alarm, and two hundred soldiers with fifteen officers were made prisoners. The Spaniards ashamed of the surprize made a vigorous effort to recover the fort at daylight, they were repulsed, and repeated the attempt with five battalions, but Clauzel brought up two guns, and a sharp skirmish took place in the wood which lasted for several hours, the French endeavouring to regain the whole of their old entrenchments and the Spaniards to recover the fort. Neither succeeded and San Barbe, too near the enemy’s position to be safely held, was resigned with a loss of two hundred men by the French and five hundred by the Spaniards. Soon after this isolated action a French sloop freighted with stores for Santona attempted to run from St. Jean de Luz, and being chased by three English brigs and cut off from the open sea, her crew after exchanging a few distant shots with one of the brigs, set her on fire and escaped in their boats to the Adour.

Head-quarters were now fixed in Vera, and the allied army was organized in three grand divisions. The right having Mina’s and Morillo’s battalions attached to it was commanded by sir Rowland Hill, and extended from Roncesvalles to the Bastan. The centre occupying Maya, the Echallar, Rhune, and Bayonette mountains, was given to marshal Beresford. The left extending from the Mandale mountain to the sea was under sir John Hope. This officer succeeded Graham who had returned to England. Commanding in chief at Coruña after sir John Moore’s death, he was superior in rank to lord Wellington during the early part of the Peninsular war, but when the latter obtained the baton of field-marshal at Vittoria, Hope with a patriotism and modesty worthy of the pupil of Abercrombie the friend and comrade of Moore offered to serve as second in command, and lord Wellington joyfully accepted him, observing that he was the “ablest officer in the army.”

The positions of the right and centre were offensive and menacing, but the left was still on the defensive, and the Bidassoa, impassable at high water below the bridge, was close behind. However the ridges were strong, a powerful artillery was established on the right bank, field-works were constructed, and although the fords below Behobia furnished but a dangerous retreat even at low water, those above were always available, and a pontoon bridge laid down for the passage of the guns during the action was a sure resource. The front was along the heights of the Croix des Bouquets facing Urogne and the camp of the Sans Culottes, and there was a reserve in an entrenched camp above Andaya. The right of the line rested on the Mandale, and from that mountain and the Bayonette the allies could descend upon the flank of an attacking army.

Soult had however no intention of renewing the offensive. He had now lost many thousand men in battle, and the old soldiers remaining did not exceed seventy-nine thousand present under arms including officers and artillery-men. Of this number the garrisons absorbed about thirteen thousand, leaving sixty-six thousand in the field, whereas the allies, counting Mina’s and Del Parque’s troops, now at Tudela, Pampeluna, and the Val de Irati, exceeded one hundred thousand, seventy-three[Appendix 7], sect. 2. thousand, including officers, sergeants, and artillery-men, being British and Portuguese. And this was below the calculation of the French general, for deceived by the exaggerated reports which the Spaniards always made of their forces, he thought Del Parque had brought up twenty thousand men and that there were one hundred and forty thousand combatants in his front. But it was not so, and as conscripts of a good description were now joining the French army rapidly, and the national guards of the Pyrenees were many, it was in the number of soldiers rather than of men, that the English general had the advantage.