The day was now beginning to break and the allies were enabled to act with more unity and effect. The Germans were in possession of St. Etienne, and the reserve brigades of the guards, being properly disposed, by general Howard who had succeeded to the command, suddenly raised a loud shout, and running in upon the French drove them back into the works with such slaughter that their own writers admit a loss of one general and more than nine hundred men. But on the British side general Stopford was wounded, and the whole loss was eight hundred and thirty men and officers. Of these more than two hundred were taken, besides the commander-in-chief; and it is generally acknowledged that captain Forster’s firm defence of the fortified house first, and next the readiness and gallantry with which general Hinuber and his Germans retook St. Etienne, saved the allies from a very terrible disaster.
A few days after this piteous event the convention made with Soult became known and hostilities ceased.
All the French troops in the south were now reorganized in one body under the command of Suchet, but they were so little inclined to acquiesce in the revolution, that prince Polignac, acting for the duke of Angoulême, applied to the British commissary-general Kennedy for a sum of money to quiet them.
The Portuguese army returned to Portugal. The Spanish army to Spain, the generals being it is said inclined at first to declare for the Cortez against the king, but they were diverted from their purpose by the influence and authority of lord Wellington.
The British infantry embarked at Bordeaux, some for America, some for England, and the cavalry marching through France took shipping at Boulogne.
Thus the war terminated, and with it all remembrance of the veteran’s services.
CHAPTER VI.
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.
Marshal Soult and General Thouvenot have1814. been accused of fighting with a full knowledge of Napoleon’s abdication. This charge circulated originally by the Bourbon party is utterly unfounded. The extent of the information conveyed to Thouvenot through the advanced posts has been already noticed; it was not sufficiently authentic to induce sir John Hope to make a formal communication, and the governor could only treat it as an idle story to insult or to deceive him, and baffle his defence by retarding his counter-operations while the works for the siege were advancing. For how unlikely, nay impossible, must it not have appeared, that the emperor Napoleon, whose victories at Mont-Mirail and Champaubert were known before the close investment of Bayonne, should have been deprived of his crown in the space of a few weeks, and the stupendous event be only hinted at the outposts without any relaxation in the preparations for the siege.