The feeble resistance made by the French in the difficult country already passed, left him without much uneasiness as to the power of Soult’s army in the field, but his disquietude was extreme about the danger of an insurgent warfare. “Maintain the strictest discipline, without that we are lost,” was his expression to general Freyre, and he issued a proclamation authorizing the people of the districts he had overrun to arm themselves for the preservation of order under the direction of their mayors. He invited them to arrest all straggling soldiers and followers of the army, and all plunderers and evil-doers and convey them to head-quarters with proof of their crimes, promising to punish the culpable and to pay for all damages. At the same time he confirmed all the local authorities who chose to retain their offices, on the sole condition of having no political or military intercourse with the countries still possessed by the French army. Nor was his proclamation a dead letter, for in the night of the 25th the inhabitants of a village, situated near the road leading from Sauveterre to Orthes, shot one English soldier dead and wounded a second who had come with others to plunder. Lord Wellington caused the wounded man to be hung as an example, and he also forced an English colonel to quit the army for suffering his soldiers to destroy the municipal archives of a small town.
Soult had no thought of retreating. His previous retrograde movements had been effected with order, his army was concentrated with its front to the Gave, and every bridge, except the noble structure at Orthes the ancient masonry of which resisted his mines, had been destroyed. One regiment ofOfficial Report, MSS. cavalry was detached on the right to watch the fords as far as Peyrehorade, three others with two battalions of infantry under Pierre Soult watched those between Orthes and Pau, and a body of horsemenMemoir by general Berton, MSS. and gensd’armes covered the latter town from Morillo’s incursions. Two regiments of cavalry remained with the army, and the French general’s intention was to fall upon the head of the first column which should cross the Gave. But the negligenceCanevas de faits par general Reille et colonel de la Chasse, MS. of the officer stationed at Puyoo, who had suffered Vivian’s hussars, as we have seen, to pass on the 26th without opposition and without making any report of the event, enabled Beresford to make his movement in safety when otherwise he would have been assailed by at least two-thirds of the French army. It was not until three o’clock in the evening that Soult received intelligence of his march, and his columns were then close to Baïghts on the right flank of the French army, his scouters were on the Dax road in its rear, and at the same time the sixth and light divisions were seen descending by different roads from the heights beyond the river pointing towards Berenx.
In this crisis the French marshal hesitated whether to fall upon Beresford and Picton while the latter was still passing the river, or take a defensive position, but finally judging that he had not time to form his columns of attack he decided upon the latter. Wherefore under cover of a skirmish, sustainedSoult’s Official Report, MSS. near Baïghts by a battalion of infantry which coming from the bridge of Berenx was joined by the light cavalry from Puyoo, he hastily threw D’Erlon’s and Reille’s divisions on a new line across the road from Peyrehorade. The right extended to the heights of San Boës along which run the road from Orthes to Dax, and this line was prolonged by Clauzel’s troops to Castetarbe a village close to the Gave. Having thus opposed a temporary front to Beresford he made his dispositions to receive battle the next morning, bringing Villatte’s infantry and Pierre Soult’s cavalry from the other side of Orthes through that town, and it was this movement that led lord Wellington’s emissaries to report that the army was retiring.
Soult’s new line was on a ridge of hills partly wooded partly naked.
In the centre was an open rounded hill from whence long narrow tongues were pushed out, on the French left towards the high road of Peyrehorade, on their right by St. Boës towards the high church of Baïghts, the whole presenting a concave to the allies.
The front was generally covered by a deep and marshy ravine broken by two short tongues of land which jutted out from the principal hill.
The road from Orthes to Dax passed behind the front to the village of St. Boës and thence along the ridge forming the right flank.
Behind the centre a succession of undulating bare heathy hills trended for several miles to the rear, but behind the right the country was low and deep.
The town of Orthes, receding from the river up the slope of a steep hill and terminating with an ancient tower, was behind the left wing.
General Reille, having Taupin’s, Roguet’s, and Paris’s divisions under him, commanded on the right, and occupied all the ground from the village of St. Boës to the centre of the position.