Soult had hitherto appeared undecided, but roused by this second insult, he ordered Darricau’s division to attack Barrouilhet along the connecting ridge, while Boyer’s division fell on by the main road between the tanks. This was about two o’clock and the allies expecting no battle had dispersed to gather fuel, for the time was wet and cold. In an instant the French penetrated in all directions, they outflanked the right, they passed the tanks, seized the out-buildings of the mayor’s house, and occupied the coppice in front of it; they were indeed quickly driven from the out-buildings by the royals, but the tumult was great and the coppice was filled with men of all nations intermixed and fighting in a perilous manner. Robinson’s brigade was very hardly handled, the officer commanding it was wounded, a squadron of French cavalry suddenly cut down some of the Portuguese near the wood, and on the right the colonel of the eighty-fourth having unwisely engaged his regiment in a hollow road where the French possessed the high bank, was killed with a great number of men. However the ninth regiment posted on the main road plied Boyer’s flank with fire, the eighty-fifth regiment of lord Aylmer’s brigade came into action, and sir John Hope conspicuous from his gigantic stature and heroic courage, was seen wherever danger pressed rallying and encouraging the troops; at one time he was in the midst of the enemy, his clothes were pierced with bullets, and he received a severe wound in the ankle, yet he would not quit the field and by his great presence of mind and calm intrepidity restored the battle. The French were finally beaten back from the position of Barrouilhet yet they had recovered their original posts, and continued to gall the allies with a fire of shot and shells until the fall of night. The total loss in this fight was about six hundred men of a side, and as the fifth division was now considerably reduced in numbers the first division took its place on the front line. Meanwhile Soult sent his cavalry over the Nive to Mousseroles to check the incursions of Hill’s horsemen.
Combat of the 12th.—The rain fell heavily in the night, and though the morning broke fair neither side seemed inclined to recommence hostilities. The advanced posts were however very close to each other and about ten o’clock a misunderstanding arose. The French general observing the fresh regimentsSoult’s Official Despatches, MSS. of the first division close to his posts, imagined the allies were going to attack him and immediately reinforced his front; this movement causing an English battery to fall into a like error it opened upon the advancing French troops, and in an instant the whole line of posts was engaged. Soult then brought up a number of guns, the firing continued without an object for many hours, and three or four hundred men of a side were killed and wounded, but the great body of the French army remained concentrated and quiet on the ridge between Barrouilhet and Bussussary.
Lord Wellington as early as the 10th had expected Soult would abandon this attack to fall upon Hill, and therefore had given Beresford orders to carry the sixth division to that general’s assistance by the new bridge and the seventh division by Ustaritz, without waiting for further instructions, if Hill was assailed; now observing Soult’s tenacity at Barrouilhet he drew the seventh division towards Arbonne. Beresford had however made a movement towards the Nive, and this with the march of the seventh division and some changes in the position of the fourth division, caused Soult to believe the allies were gathering with a view to attack his centre on the morning of the 13th; and it is remarkable that the deserters at this early period told him the Spaniards had re-entered France although orders to that effect were not as we shall find given until the next day. Convinced then that his bolt was shot on the left of the Nive, he left two divisions and Villatte’s reserve in the entrenched camp, and marched with the other seven to Mousseroles intending to fall upon Hill.
That general had pushed his scouting parties to the Gambouri, and when general Sparre’s horsemen arrived at Mousseroles on the 12th, Pierre Soult advanced from the Bidouze with all the light cavalry. He was supported by the infantry of general Paris and drove the allies’ posts from Hasparen. Colonel Vivian, who commanded there, immediately ordered major Brotherton to charge with the fourteenth dragoons across the bridge, but it was an ill-judged order, and the impossibility of succeeding so manifest, that when Brotherton, noted throughout the army for his daring, galloped forward, only two men and one subaltern, lieutenant Southwell, passed the narrow bridge with him, and they were all taken. Vivian then seeing his error charged with his whole brigade to rescue them, yet in vain, he was forced to fall back upon Urcuray where Morillo’s Spaniards had relieved the British infantry brigade on the 11th. This threatening movement induced general Hill to put the British brigade in march again for Urcuray on the 12th, but he recalled it at sunset, having then discovered Soult’s columns passing the Nive by the boat-bridge above Bayonne.
Lord Wellington now feeling the want of numbers, brought forward a division of Gallicians to St. Jean de Luz, and one of Andalusians from the Bastan to Itzassu, and to prevent their plundering fed them from the British magazines. The Gallicians were to support Hope, the Andalusians to watch the upper valley of the Nive and protect the rear of the army from Paris and Pierre Soult, who could easily be reinforced with a strong body of national guards. Meanwhile Hill had taken a position of battle on a front of two miles.
His left, composed of the twenty-eighth, thirty-fourth, and thirty-ninth regiments under general Pringle, occupied a wooded and broken range crowned by the chateau of Villefranque; it covered the new pontoon bridge of communication, which was a mile and a half higher up the river, but it was separated from the centre by a small stream forming a chain of ponds in a very deep and marshy valley.
The centre placed on both sides of the high road near the hamlet of St. Pierre, occupied a crescent-shapedPlan 8. height, broken with rocks and close brushwood on the left hand, and on the right hand enclosed with high and thick hedges, one of which, covering, at the distance of a hundred yards, part of the line, was nearly impassable. Here Ashworth’s Portuguese and Barnes’s British brigade of the second division were posted. The seventy-first regiment was on the left, the fiftieth in the centre, the ninety-second on the right. Ashworth’s Portuguese were posted in advance immediately in front of St. Pierre, and their skirmishers occupied a small wood covering their right. Twelve guns under the colonels Ross and Tullock were concentrated in front of the centre, looking down the great road, and half a mile in rear of this point Lecor’s Portuguese division was stationed with two guns as a reserve.
The right under Byng was composed of the third, fifty-seventh, thirty-first, and sixty-sixth. One of these regiments, the third, was posted on a height running nearly parallel with the Adour called the ridge of Partouhiria, or Old Moguerre, because a village of that name was situated upon the summit. This regiment was pushed in advance to a point where it could only be approached by crossing the lower part of a narrow swampy valley which separated Moguerre from the heights of St. Pierre. The upper part of this valley was held by Byng with the remainder of his brigade, and his post was well covered by a mill-pond leading towards the enemy and nearly filling all the valley.
One mile in front of St. Pierre was a range of counter heights belonging to the French, but the basin between was broad open and commanded in every part by the fire of the allies, and in all parts the country was too heavy and too much enclosed for the action of cavalry. Nor could the enemy approach in force, except on a narrow front of battle and by the high road, until within cannon-shot, when two narrow difficult lanes branched off to the right and left, and crossing the swampy valleys on each side, led, the one to the height where the third regiment was posted on the extreme right of the allies, the other to general Pringle’s position on the left.
In the night of the 12th the rain swelled the Nive and carried away the allies’ bridge of communication. It was soon restored, but on the morning of the 13th general Hill was completely cut off from the rest of the army; and while seven French divisions of infantry, furnishing at least thirty-five thousand combatants, approached him in front, an eighth under general Paris and the cavalry division of Pierre Soult menaced him in rear. To meet the[Appendix 7], sect. 4. French in his front he had less than fourteen thousand, men and officers with fourteen guns in position; and there were only four thousand Spaniards with Vivian’s cavalry at Urcuray.