The harbour of Passages was the only port near the scene of operations suited for the supply of the army. Yet it had this defect, that being situated between the covering and the besieging army, the stores and guns once landed were in danger from every movement of the enemy. The Deba river, between San Sebastian and Bilbaō, was unfit for large vessels, and hence no permanent depôt could be established nearer than Bilbaō. At that port therefore, and at St. Ander and Coruña, the great depôts of the army were fixed, the stores being transported to them from the establishments in Portugal; but the French held Santona, and their privateers interrupted the communication along the coast of Spain while American privateers did the same between Lisbon and Coruña. On the other hand the intercourse between San Sebastian and the ports of France was scarcely molested, and the most urgent remonstrances failed to procure a sufficient naval force on the coast of Biscay. It was in these circumstances Wellington commenced
THE SIEGE OF SAN SEBASTIAN.
This place was built on a low sandy isthmus formed by the harbour on one side and the river Urumea on the other. Behind it rose the Monte Orgullo, a rugged cone nearly four hundred feet high, washed by the ocean and crowned with the small castle of La Mota. Its southern face overlooking the town, was yet cut off from it by a line of defensive works and covered with batteries; but La Mota itself was commanded, at a distance of thirteen hundred yards, by the Monte Olia on the other side of the Urumea.
The land front of San Sebastian was three hundred and fifty yards wide, stretching quite across the isthmus. It consisted of a high curtain or rampart, very solid, strengthened by a lofty casemated flat bastion or cavalier placed in the centre, and by half bastions at either end. A regular horn-work was pushed out from this front, and six hundred yards beyond the horn-work the isthmus was closed by the ridge of San Bartolomeo, at the foot of which stood the suburb of San Martin.
On the opposite side of the Urumea were certain sandy hills called the Chofres, through which the road from Passages passed to the wooden bridge over the river, and thence, by the suburb of Santa Catalina, along the top of a sea-wall which formed a fausse braye for the horn-work.
The flanks of the town were protected by simple ramparts. The one was washed by the water of the harbour, the other by the Urumea which at high tide covered four of the twenty-seven feet comprised in its elevation. This was the weak side of the fortress, for though covered by the river there was only a single wall ill-flanked by two old towers, and by the half bastion of San Elmo which was situated at the extremity of the rampart close under the Monte Orgullo. There was no ditch, no counter-scarp, or glacis, the wall could be seen to its base from the Chofre hills at distances varying from five hundred to a thousand yards, and when the tide was out the Urumea left a dry strand under the rampart as far as St. Elmo. However the guns from the batteries at Monte Orgullo especially that called the Mirador, could see this strand.
The other flank of the town was secured by the harbour, in the mouth of which was a rocky island, called Santa Clara, where the French had established a post of twenty-five men.
When the battle of Vittoria happened San Sebastian was nearly dismantled; many of the guns had been removed to form battering trains or to arm smaller ports on the coast, there were no bomb-proofs nor pallisades nor outworks, the wells were foul and the place was supplied with water by a single aqueduct. Joseph’s defeat restored its importance as a fortress. General Emanuel Rey entered it the 22d of June, bringing with him the escort of the convoy which had quitted Vittoria the day before the battle. The town was thus filled with emigrant Spanish families, with the ministers and other persons attached to the court; the population ordinarily eight thousand was increased to sixteen thousand and disorder and confusion were predominant. Rey, pushed by necessity, immediately forced allBellas’ Journal of French Sieges in Spain. persons not residents to march at once to France granting them only a guard of one hundred men; the people of quality went by sea, the others by land, and fortunately all arrived safely for the Partidas would have given them no quarter.
On the 27th general Foy while retreating before sir Thomas Graham threw a reinforcement into the place. The next day Mendizabal’s Spaniards appeared on the hills behind the ridge of San Bartolomeo and on the Chofres, whereupon general Rey burned the wooden bridge and both the suburbs, and commenced fortifying the heights of San Bartolomeo. The 29th the Spaniards slightly attacked San Bartolomeo, and were repulsed.
The 1st of July the governor of Gueteria abandonedJuly. that place, and with detestable ferocity secretlySir G. Collier’s Despatch. left a lighted train which exploded the magazine and destroyed many of the inhabitants. His troops three hundred in number entered San Sebastian, and at the same time a vessel from St. Jean de Luz arrived with fifty-six cannoneers and some workmen; the garrison was thus increased to three thousand men and all persons not able to provide subsistence for themselves in advance were ordered to quit the place. Meanwhile Mendizabal, having cut off the aqueduct, made some approaches towards the head of the burned bridge on the right of the Urumea and molested the workmen on the heights of Bartolomeo.