It is not meant by this to decry entrenched camps within compass, and around which an active army moves as on a pivot, delivering or avoiding battle according to circumstances. The objection applies only to those extensive covering lines by which soldiers are taught to consider themselves inferior in strength and courage to their enemies. A general is thus precluded from shewing himself at important points and at critical periods; he is unable to encourage his troops or to correct errors; his sudden resources and the combinations of genius are excluded by the necessity of adhering to the works, while the assailants may make whatever dispositions they like, menace every point and select where to break through. The defenders, seeing large masses directed against them and unable to draw confidence from a like display of numbers, become fearful, knowing there must be some weak point which is the measure of strength for the whole. The assailants fall on with that heat and vehemence which belongs to those who act voluntarily and on the offensive; each mass strives to outdo those on its right and left, and failure is only a repulse, whereas the assailed having no resource but victory look to their flanks, and are more anxious about their neighbours’ fighting than their own.
All these disadvantages were experienced at the battle of the Nivelle. D’Erlon attributed his defeat to the loss of the bridge of Amotz by Conroux’s division, and to this cause also Maransin traced his misfortunes. Taupin laid his defeat at Maransin’s door, but Clauzel on the other hand ascribed itOfficial Reports of the French generals to Soult, MSS. at once to want of firmness in the troops, although he also asserted that if Daricau’s division had come to his aid from the camp of Serres, he would have maintained his ground. Soult however traced Clauzel’s defeat to injudicious measures. That generalSoult’s Official Report to the Minister of War, MSS. he said attempted to defend the village of Sarre after the redoubts of San Barbe and Grenada were carried, whereby Conroux’s division was overwhelmed in detail and driven back in flight to Amotz. Clauzel should rather have assembled his three divisions at once in the main position which was his battleground, and there, covered by the smaller Rhune, ought to have been victorious. It was scarcely credible he observed that such entrenchments as Clauzel’s and D’Erlon’s should have been carried. For his part he relied on their strength so confidently as to think the allies must sacrifice twenty-five thousand men to force them and perhaps fail then. He had been on the right when the battle began, no reports came to him, he could judge of events only by the fire, and when he reached the camp of Serres with his reserve troops and artillery Clauzel’s works were lost! His arrival had however paralyzed the march of three divisions. This was true, yet there seems some foundation for Clauzel’s complaint, namely, that he had for five hours fought on his main position, and during that time no help had come, although the camp of Serres was close at hand, the distance from St. Jean de Luz to that place only four miles, and the attack in the low ground evidently a feint. This then was Soult’s error. He suffered sir John Hope to hold in play twenty-five thousand men in the low ground, while fifteen thousand under Clauzel lost the battle on the hills.
2º. The French army was inferior in numbers and many of the works were unfinished; and yet two strong divisions, Daricau’s and Foy’s, were quite thrown out of the fight, for the slight offensive movement made by the latter produced no effect whatever. Vigorous counter-attacks are no doubt essential to a good defence, and it was in allusion to this that Napoleon, speaking of Joseph’s position behind the Ebro in the beginning of the war, said, “if a river were as broad and rapid as the Danube it would be nothing without secure points for passing to the offensive.” The same maxim applies to lines, and Soult grandly conceived and applied this principle when he proposed the descent upon Aragon to Suchet. But he conceived it meanly and poorly when he ordered Foy to attack by the Gorospil mountain. That general’s numbers were too few, and the direction of the march false; one regiment in the field of battle at the decisive moment would have been worth three on a distant and secondary point. Foy’s retreat was inevitable if D’Erlon failed, and wanting the other’s aid he did fail. What success could Foy obtain? He might have driven Mina’s battalions over the Puerto de Maya and quite through the Bastan; he might have defeated Morillo and perhaps have taken general Hill’s baggage; yet all this would have weighed little against the allies’ success at Amotz; and the deeper he penetrated the more difficult would have been his retreat. The incursion into the Bastan by Yspegui proposed by him on the 6th, although properly rejected by Soult would probably have produced greater effects than the one executed by Gorospil on the 10th. A surprise on the 6th, Hill’s troops being then in march by brigades through the Alduides, might have brought some advantages to the French, and perhaps delayed the general attack beyond the 10th, when the heavy rains which set in on the 11th would have rendered it difficult to attack at all: Soult would thus have had time to complete his works.
3º. It has been observed that a minor cause of defeat was the drawing up of the French troops in front instead of in rear of the redoubts. This may possibly have happened in some places from error and confusion, not by design, for Clauzel’s report expressly states that Maransin was directed to form in rear of the redoubts and charge the allies when they were between the works and the abbatis. It is however needless to pry closely into these matters when the true cause lies broad on the surface. Lord Wellington directed superior numbers with superior skill. The following analysis will prove this, but it must be remembered that the conscripts are not included in the enumeration of the French force: being quite undisciplined they were kept in masses behind and never engaged.
Abbé’s division, furnishing five thousand old soldiers, was posted in two lines one behind the other, and they were both paralyzed by the position of Morillo’s division and Mina’s battalions. Foy’s division was entirely occupied by the same troops. Six thousand of Wellington’s worst soldiers therefore sufficed to employ twelve thousand of Soult’s best troops during the whole day. Meanwhile Hill fell upon the decisive point where there was only D’Armagnac’s division to oppose him, that is to say, five thousand against twenty thousand. And while the battle was secured on the right of the Nivelle by this disproportion, Beresford on the other bank thrust twenty-four thousand against the ten thousand composing Conroux’s and Maransin’s divisions. Moreover as Hill and Beresford, advancing, the one from his left the other from his right, formed a wedge towards the bridge of Amotz, forty-four thousand men composing the six divisions under those generals, fell upon the fifteen thousand composing the divisions of D’Armagnac Conroux and Maransin; and these last were also attacked in detail, because part of Conroux’s troops were defeated near Sarre, and Barbot’s brigade of Maransin’s corps was beaten on the Rhune by the light division before the main position was attacked. Finally Alten with eight thousand men, having first defeated Barbot’s brigade, fell upon Taupin who had only three thousand while the rest of the French army was held in check by Freyre and Hope. Thus more than fifty thousand troops full of confidence from repeated victories were suddenly thrown upon the decisive point where there were only eighteen thousand dispirited by previous reverses to oppose them. Against such a thunderbolt there was no defence in the French works. Was it then a simple matter for Wellington so to combine his battle? The mountains on whose huge flanks he gathered his fierce soldiers, the roads he opened, the horrid crags he surmounted, the headlong steeps he descended, the wild regions through which he poured the destructive fire of more than ninety guns, these and the reputation of the French commander furnish the everlasting reply.
And yet he did not compass all that he designed. The French right escaped, because when he passed the Nivelle at San Pé he had only two divisions in hand, the sixth had not come up, three were in observation of the camp at Serres, and before he could assemble enough men to descend upon the enemy in the low ground the day had closed. The great object of the battle was therefore unattained, and it may be a question, seeing the shortness of the days and the difficulty of the roads were not unexpected obstacles, whether the combinations would not have been surer if the principal attack had been directed entirely against Clauzel’s position. Carlos D’España’s force and the remainder of Mina’s battalions could have reinforced Morillo’s division with five thousand men to occupy D’Erlon’s attention; it was not essential to defeat him, for though he attributed his retreat to Clauzel’s reverse that general did not complain that D’Erlon’s retreat endangered his position. This arrangement would have enabled the rest of Hill’s troops to reinforce Beresford and have given lord Wellington three additional divisions in hand with which to cross the Nivelle before two o’clock. Soult’s right wing could not then have escaped.
4º. In the report of the battle lord Wellington from some oversight did but scant and tardy justice to the light division. Acting alone, for Longa’s Spaniards went off towards Ascain and scarcely fired a shot, this division furnishing only four thousand seven hundred men and officers, first carried the smaller Rhune defended by Barbot’s brigade, and then beat Taupin’s division from the main position, thus driving superior numbers from the strongest works. In fine being less than one-sixth of the whole force employed against Clauzel, they defeated one-third of that general’s corps. Many brave men they lost, and of two who fell in this battle I will speak.
The first, low in rank for he was but a lieutenant, rich in honour for he bore many scars, was young of days. He was only nineteen. But he had seen more combats and sieges than he could count years. So slight in person, and of such surpassing and delicate beauty that the Spaniards often thought him a girl disguised in man’s clothing, he was yet so vigorous, so active, so brave, that the most daring and experienced veterans watched his looks on the field of battle, and implicitly following where he led, would like children obey his slightest sign in the most difficult situations. His education was incomplete, yet were his natural powers so happy, the keenest and best-furnished intellects shrunk from an encounter of wit, and every thought and aspiration was proud and noble, indicating future greatness if destiny had so willed it. Such was Edward Freer of the forty-third one of three brothers who covered with wounds have all died in the service. Assailed the night before the battle with that strange anticipation of coming death so often felt by military men, he was pierced with three balls at the first storming of the Rhune rocks, and the sternest soldiers in the regiment wept even in the middle of the fight when they heard of his fate.
On the same day and at the same hour was killed colonel Thomas Lloyd. He likewise had been a long time in the forty-third. Under him Freer had learned the rudiments of his profession, but in the course of the war promotion placed Lloyd at the head of the ninety-fourth, and it was leading that regiment he fell. In him also were combined mental and bodily powers of no ordinary kind. A graceful symmetry combined with Herculean strength, and a countenance at once frank and majestic gave the true index of his nature, for his capacity was great and commanding, and his military knowledge extensive both from experience and study. On his mirth and wit, so well known in the army, I will not dwell, save to remark, that he used the latter without offence, yet so as to increase his ascendancy over those with whom he held intercourse, for though gentle he was valiant, ambitious, and conscious of his fitness for great exploits. He like Freer was prescient of, and predicted his own fall, yet with no abatement of courage. When he received the mortal wound, a most painful one, he would not suffer himself to be moved but remained watching the battle and making observations upon the changes in it until death came. It was thus at the age of thirty, that the good the brave the generous Lloyd died. Tributes to hisWellington’s Despatches. merit have been published by lord Wellington and by one of his own poor soldiers! by the highest and by the lowest! To their testimony I add mine, letThe Eventful Life of a Sergeant. those who served on equal terms with him say whether in aught I have exceeded his deserts.