The French marshal had however no hope of checking the allies long by these means. He judged justly that Wellington was resolved to obtain Bordeaux and the line of the Garonne, and foreseeing that his own line of retreat must ultimately be in a parallel direction with the Pyrenees, he desired to organize in time a strong defensive system in the country behind him and to cover Bordeaux if possible. In this view he sent general Darricau a native of the Landes to prepare an insurgent levy in that wilderness, and directed Maransin to the High Pyrenees to extend the insurrection of the mountaineers already commenced in the Lower Pyrenees by Harispe. The castle of Jaca was still held by eight hundred men but they were starving, and a convoy collected at Navarrens being stopped by the snow in the mountain-passes made a surrender inevitable. Better would it have been to have withdrawn the troops at an early period; for though the Spaniards would thus have gained access to the rear of the French army and perhaps ravaged a part of the frontier, they could have done no essential mischief to the army; and their excesses would have disposed the people of those parts who had not yet felt the benefit of lord Wellington’s politic discipline to insurrection.
At Bordeaux there was a small reserve commandedFebruary. by general La Huillier, Soult urged the minister of war to increase it with conscripts from the interior. Meanwhile he sent artillery-men from Bayonne, ordered fifteen hundred national guards to be selected as a garrison for the citadel of Blaye, and desired that the Médoc and Paté forts and the batteries along the banks of the Garonne should be put in a state of defence. The vessels in that river fit for the purpose he desired might be armed, and a flotilla of fifty gun-boats established below Bordeaux, with a like number to navigate that river above the city as far as Toulouse. But these orders were feebly carried into execution or entirely neglected, for there was no public spirit, and treason and disaffection were rife in the city.
On the side of the Lower Pyrenees Soult enlarged and improved the works of Navarrens and designed to commence an entrenched camp in front of it. The castle of Lourdes in the High Pyrenees was already defensible, and he gave orders to fortify the castle of Pau, thus providing a number of supporting points for the retreat which he foresaw. At Mauleon he put on foot some partizan corps, and the imperial commissary Caffarelli gave him hopes of being able to form a reserve of seven or eight thousand national guards, gensd’armes, and artillery-men, at Tarbes. Dax containing his principal depôts was already being fortified, and the communication with it was maintained across the rivers by the bridges and bridge-heads at Port de Lannes, Hastingues, Pereyhorade, and Sauveterre; but the floods in the beginning of February carried away his bridge at the Port de Lannes, and the communication between Bayonne and the left of the army was thus interrupted until he established a flying bridge in place of the one carried away.
Such was the situation of the French general when lord Wellington advanced, and as the former supposed with one hundred and twenty thousand infantry and fifteen thousand cavalry, for he knew nothing of the various political and financial difficulties which had reduced the English general’s power and prevented all the reinforcements he expected from joining him. His emissaries told him that Clinton’s force was actually broken up, and the British part in march to join Wellington; that the garrisons of Carthagena Cadiz and Ceuta were on the point of arriving and that reinforcements were coming from England and Portugal. This information made him conclude that there was no intention of pressing the war in Catalonia and that all the allied troops would be united and march against him; wherefore with more earnestness than before he urged that Suchet should be ordered to join him that their united forces might form a “dike against the torrent” which threatened to overwhelm the south of France. The real power opposed to him was however very much below his calculations. The twenty thousand British and Portuguese reinforcements promised had not arrived, Clinton’s army was still in Catalonia; and though it is impossible to fix the exact numbers of the Spaniards, their regular forces available, and that only partially and with great caution on account of their licentious conduct, did not exceed the following approximation.
Twelve thousand Gallicians under Freyre including Carlos D’España’s division; four thousand under Morillo; six thousand Andalusians under O’Donnel; eight thousand of Del Parque’s troops under the prince of Anglona. In all thirty thousand. The Anglo-Portuguese present under arms were by the morning states on the 13th of February, the day on which the advance commenced, about seventy thousand men and officers of all arms, nearly ten thousand being cavalry. The whole force, exclusive of Mina’s bands which were spread as we have seen from Navarre to the borders of Catalonia, was therefore, one hundred thousand men and officers, with one hundred pieces of field-artillery of which ninety-five were Anglo-Portuguese.
It is difficult to fix with precision the number of the French army at this period, because the imperial muster-rolls, owing to the troubled state of the emperor’s affairs were either not continued beyond December 1813 or have been lost. But from Soult’s correspondence and other documents it would appear, that exclusive of his garrisons, his reserves and detachments at Bordeaux and in the department of the High Pyrenees, exclusive also of the conscripts of the second levy which were now beginning to arrive, he could place in line of battle about thirty-five thousand soldiers of all arms, three thousand being cavalry, with forty pieces of artillery. But Bayonne alone without reckoning the fortresses of St. Jean Pied de Port and Navarrens occupied twenty-eight thousand of the allies; and by this and other drains lord Wellington’s superiority in the field was so reduced, that his penetrating into France, that France which had made all Europe tremble at her arms, must be viewed as a surprising example of courage and fine conduct, military and political.
PASSAGE OF THE GAVES.
In the second week of February the weather set in with a strong frost, the roads became practicable and the English general, eagerly seizing the long-expected opportunity, advanced at the moment when general Paris had again marched with the convoy from Navarrens to make a last effort for the relief of Jaca. But the troops were at this time receiving the clothing which had been so long delayed in England, and the regiments wanting the means of carriage, marched to the stores; the English general’s first design was therefore merely to threaten the French left and turn it by the sources of the rivers with Hill’s corps, which was to march by the roots of the Pyrenees, while Beresford kept the centre in check upon the lower parts of the same rivers. Soult’s attention would thus he hoped be drawn to that side while the passage of the Adour was being made below Bayonne. And it would seem that uncertain if he should be able to force the passage of the tributary rivers with his right, he intended, if his bridge was happily thrown, to push his main operations on that side and thus turn the Gaves by the right bank of the Adour: a fine conception by which his superiority of numbers would have best availed him to seize Dax and the Port de Landes and cut Soult off from Bordeaux.
On the 12th and 13th Hill’s corps, which including Picton’s division and five regiments of cavalry furnished twenty thousand combatants with sixteen guns, being relieved by the sixth and seventh divisions in front of Mousseroles and on the Adour, was concentrated about Urcurray and Hasparen. The 14th it marched in two columns. One by BonlocPlan 9. to drive the French posts beyond the Joyeuse; another by the great road of St. Jean Pied de Port against Harispe who was at Hellette. This second column had the Ursouia mountain on the right, and a third, composed of Morillo’s Spaniards, having that mountain on its left marched from La Houssoa against the same point. Harispe who had only three brigades, principally conscripts, retired skirmishing in the direction of St. Palais and took a position for the night at Meharin. Not more than thirty men on each side were hurt but the line of the Joyeuse was turned by the allies, the direct communication with St. Jean Pied de Port cut, and that place was immediately invested by Mina’s battalions.
On the 15th Hill, leaving the fifty-seventh regiment at Hellette to observe the road to St. Jean Pied de Port, marched through Meharin upon Garris, eleven miles distant, but that road being impracticable for artillery the guns moved by Armendaritz more to the right. Harispe’s rear-guard was overtaken and pushed back fighting, and meanwhile lord Wellington directed Beresford to send a brigade of the seventh division from the heights of La Costa across the Gamboury to the Bastide de Clerence. The front being thus extended from Urt by Briscons, the Bastide and Isturitz, towards Garris, a distance of more than twenty miles, was too attenuated; wherefore he caused the fourth division to occupy La Costa in support of the troops at the Bastide. At the same time learning that the French had weakened their force at Mousseroles, and thinking that might be to concentrate on the heights of Anglet, which would have frustrated his plan for throwing a bridge over the Adour, he directed Hope secretly to occupy the back of those heights in force and prevent any intercourse between Bayonne and the country.