During the night the French general, defeated but undismayed, replaced the ammunition expended in the action, re-organized and augmented his field artillery from the arsenal of Toulouse, and made dispositions for fighting the next morning behind the canal. Yet looking to the final necessity of a retreat he wrote to Suchet to inform him of the result of the contest and proposed a combined plan of operations illustrative of the firmness and pertinacity of his temper. “March,” said he, “with the whole of your forces by Quillan upon Carcassonne, I will meet you there with my army, we can then retake the initiatory movement, transfer the seat of war to the Upper Garonne, and holding on by the mountains oblige the enemy to recall his troops from Bordeaux, which will enable Decaen to recover that city and make a diversion in our favour.”
On the morning of the 11th he was again ready to fight, but the English general was not. The French position, within musquet-shot of the walls of Toulouse, was still inexpugnable on the northern and eastern fronts. The possession of Mont Rave was only a preliminary step to the passage of the canal at the bridge of the Demoiselles and other points above the works of Sacarin and Cambon, with the view of throwing the army as originally designed on to the south side of the town. But this was a great affair requiring fresh dispositions, and a fresh provision of ammunition only to be obtained from the parc on the other side of the Garonne. Hence to accelerate the preparations, to ascertain the state of general Hill’s position, and to give that general farther instructions, lord Wellington repaired on the 11th to St. Cyprien; but though he had shortened his communications by removing the pontoon bridge from Grenade to Seilh, the day was spent before the ammunition arrived and the final arrangements for the passage of the canal could be completed. The attack was therefore deferred until daylight on the 12th.
Meanwhile all the light cavalry were sent up the canal, to interrupt the communications with Suchet and menace Soult’s retreat by the road leading to Carcassonne. The appearance of these horsemen on the heights of St. Martyn, above Baziege, together with the preparations in his front, taught Soult that he could no longer delay if he would not be shut up in Toulouse. Wherefore, having terminated all his arrangements, he left eight pieces of heavy artillery, two generals, the gallant Harispe being one, and sixteen hundred men whose wounds were severe, to the humanity of the conquerors; then filing out of the city with surprising order and ability, he made a forced march of twenty-two miles, cut the bridges over the canal and the Upper Ers, and the 12th established his army at Villefranche. On the same day general Hill’s troops were pushed close to Baziege in pursuit, and the light cavalry, acting on the side of Montlaur, beat the French with the loss of twenty-five men, and cut off a like number of gensd’armes on the side of Revel.
Lord Wellington now entered Toulouse in triumph, the white flag was displayed, and, as at Bordeaux, a great crowd of persons adopted the Bourbon colours, but the mayor, faithful to his sovereign, had retired with the French army. The British general, true to his honest line of policy, did not fail to warn the Bourbonists that their revolutionary movement must be at their own risk, but in the afternoon two officers, the English colonel Cooke, and the French colonel St. Simon, arrived from Paris. Charged to make known to the armies the abdication of Napoleon they had been detained near Blois by the officiousness of the police attending the court of the empress Louisa, and the blood of eight thousand brave men had overflowed the Mont Rave in consequence. Nor did their arrival immediately put a stop to the war. When St. Simon in pursuance of his mission reached Soult’s quarters on the 13th, that marshal, not without just cause, demurred to his authority, and proposed to suspend hostilities until authentic information could be obtained from the ministers of the emperor: then sending all his incumbrances by the canal to Carcassonne, he took a position of observation at Castelnaudary and awaited the progress of events. Lord Wellington refused to accede to his proposal, and as general Loverdo, commanding at Montauban, acknowledged the authority of the provincial government and readily concluded an armistice, he judged that Soult designed to make a civil war and therefore marched against him. The 17th the outposts were on the point of engaging when the duke of Dalmatia, who had now received official information from the chief of the emperor’s staff, notified his adhesion to the new state of affairs in France: and with this honourable distinction that he had faithfully sustained the cause of his great monarch until the very last moment.
A convention which included Suchet’s army was immediately agreed upon, but that marshal had previously adopted the white colours of his own motion, and lord Wellington instantly transmitted the intelligence to general Clinton in Catalonia and to the troops at Bayonne. Too late it came for both and useless battles were fought. That at Barcelona has been already described, but at Bayonne misfortune and suffering had fallen upon one of the brightest soldiers of the British army.
SALLY FROM BAYONNE.
During the progress of the main army in the interior sir John Hope conducted the investment of Bayonne, with all the zeal the intelligence and unremitting vigilance and activity which the difficult nature of the operation required. He had gathered great stores of gabions and fascines and platforms, and was ready to attack the citadel when rumours of the events at Paris reached him, yet indirectly and without any official character to warrant a formal communication to the garrison without lord Wellington’s authority. These rumours were however made known at the outposts, and perhaps lulled the vigilance of the besiegers, but to such irregular communications which might be intended to deceive the governor naturally paid little attention.
The piquets and fortified posts at St. Etienne were at this time furnished by a brigade of the fifth division, but from thence to the extreme right the guards had charge of the line, and they had also one company in St. Etienne itself. General Hinuber’s German brigade was encamped as a support to the left, the remainder of the first division was encamped in the rear, towards Boucaut. In this state, about one o’clock in the morning of the 14th, a deserter, coming over to general Hay who commanded the outposts that night, gave an exact account of the projected sally. The general not able to speakBeamish’s History of the German Legion. French sent him to general Hinuber, who immediately interpreting the man’s story to general Hay, assembled his own troops under arms, and transmitted the intelligence to sir John Hope. It would appear that Hay, perhaps disbelieving the man’s story, took no additional precautions, and it is probable that neither the German brigade nor the reserves of the guards would have been put under arms but for the activity of general Hinuber. However at three o’clock the French, commencing with a false attack on the left of the Adour as a blind, poured suddenly out of the citadel to the number of three thousand combatants. They surprised the piquets, and with loud shouts breaking through the chain of posts at various points, carried with one rush the church, and the whole of the village of St. Etienne with exception of a fortified house which was defended by captain Forster of the thirty-eighth regiment. Masters of every other part and overthrowing all who stood before them they drove the picquets and supports in heaps along the Peyrehorade road, killed general Hay, took colonel Townsend of the guards prisoner, divided the wings of the investing troops, and passing in rear of the right threw the whole line into confusion. Then it was that Hinuber, having his Germans well in hand, moved up on the side of St. Etienne, rallied some of the fifth division, and being joined by a battalion of general Bradford’s Portuguese from the side of St. Esprit bravely gave the counter-stroke to the enemy and regained the village and church.
The combat on the right was at first even more disastrous than in the centre, neither the piquets nor the reserves were able to sustain the fury of the assault and the battle was most confused and terrible; for on both sides the troops, broken into small bodies by the enclosures and unable to recover their order, came dashing together in the darkness, fighting often with the bayonet, and sometimes friends encountered sometimes foes: all was tumult and horror. The guns of the citadel vaguely guided by the flashes of the musquetry sent their shot and shells booming at random through the lines of fight, and the gun-boats dropping down the river opened their fire upon the flank of the supporting columns, which being put in motion by sir John Hope on the first alarm were now coming up from the side of Boucaut. Thus nearly one hundred pieces of artillery were in full play at once, and the shells having set fire to the fascine depôts and to several houses, the flames cast a horrid glare over the striving masses.
Amidst this confusion sir John Hope suddenly disappeared, none knew how or wherefore at the time, but it afterwards appeared, that having brought up the reserves on the right, to stem the torrent in that quarter, he pushed for St. Etienne by a hollow road which led close behind the line of picquets; the French had however lined both banks, and when he endeavoured to return a shot struck him in the arm, while his horse, a large one as was necessary to sustain the gigantic warrior, received eight bullets and fell upon his leg. His followers had by this time escaped from the defile, but two of them, captain Herries, and Mr. Moore a nephew of sir John Moore, seeing his helpless state turned back and alighting endeavoured amidst the heavy fire of the enemy to draw him from beneath the horse. While thus engaged they were both struck down with dangerous wounds, the French carried them all off, and sir John Hope was again severely hurt in the foot by an English bullet before they gained the citadel.