D’Armagnac’s men pushed forwards at once in several columns, and forced the picquet back with great loss upon the light companies, who sustained his vehement assault with infinite difficulty. The alarm guns were now heard from the Maya pass, and general Pringle hastened to the front, but his regiments moving hurriedly from different camps were necessarily brought into action one after the other. The thirty-fourth came up first at a running pace, yet by companies not in mass and breathless from the length and ruggedness of the ascent; the thirty-ninth and twenty-eighth followed, but not immediately nor together, and meanwhile D’Armagnac, closely supported by Abbé, with domineering numbers and valour combined, maugre the desperate fighting of the picquet of the light companies and of the thirty-fourth, had established his columns on the broad ridge of the position.
Colonel Cameron then sent the fiftieth from the left to the assistance of the overmatched troops, and that fierce and formidable old regiment charging the head of an advancing column drove it clear out of the pass of Lessessa in the centre. Yet the French were so many that, checked at one point, they assembled with increased force at another; nor could general Pringle restore the battle with the thirty-ninth and twenty-eighth regiments, which, cut off from the others were though fighting desperately forced back to a second and lower ridge crossing the main road to Elizondo. They were followed by D’Armagnac, but Abbé continued to press the fiftieth and thirty-fourth whose natural line of retreat was towards the Atchiola road on the left, because the position trended backward from Aretesque towards that point, and because Cameron’s brigade was there. And that officer, still holding the pass of Maya with the left wings of the seventy-first and ninety-second regiments, brought their right wings and the Portuguese guns into action and thus maintained the fight; but so dreadful was the slaughter, especially of the ninety-second, that it is said the advancing enemy was actually stopped by the heaped mass of dead and[Appendix, No. 3.] dying; and then the left wing of that noble regiment coming down from the higher ground smote wounded friends and exulting foes alike, as mingled together they stood or crawled before its fire.
It was in this state of affairs that general Stewart, returning from Elizondo by the mountain road, reached the field of battle. The passes of Lessessa and Aretesque were lost, that of Maya was still held by the left wing of the seventy-first, but Stewart seeing Maransin’s men gathered thickly on one side and Abbé’s men on the other, abandoned it to take a new position on the first rocky ridge covering the road over the Atchiola; and he called down the eighty-second regiment from the highest part of that mountain and sent messengers to demand further aid from the seventh division. Meanwhile although wounded himself he made a strenuous resistance, for he was a very gallant man; but during the retrograde movement, Maransin no longer seeking to turn the position, suddenly thrust the head of his division across the front of the British line and connected his left with Abbé, throwing as he passed a destructive fire into the wasted remnant of the ninety-second, which even then sullenly gave way, for the men fell until two-thirds of the whole had gone to the ground. Still the survivors fought, and the left wing of the seventy-first came into action, but, one after the other all the regiments were forced back, and the first position was lost together with the Portuguese guns.
Abbé’s division now followed D’Armagnac on the road to the town of Maya, leaving Maransin to deal with Stewart’s new position, and notwithstanding its extreme strength the French gained ground until six o’clock, for the British, shrunk in numbers, also wanted ammunition, and a part of the eighty-second under major Fitzgerald were forced to roll down stones to defend the rocks on which they were posted. In this desperate condition Stewart was upon the point of abandoning the mountain entirely, when a brigade of the seventh division, commanded by general Barnes, arrived from Echallar, and that officer charging at the head of the sixth regiment drove the French back to the Maya ridge. Stewart thus remained master of the Atchiola, and the count D’Erlon who probably thought greater reinforcements had come up, recalled his other divisions from theFrench official report, MSS. Maya road and reunited his whole corps on the Col. He had lost fifteen hundred men and a general; butBritish official return. he took four guns, and fourteen hundred British soldiers were killed or wounded.
Such was the fight of Maya, a disaster, yet one much exaggerated by French writers, and by an English author misrepresented as a surprise causedSouthey. by the negligence of the cavalry. General Stewart was surprised, his troops were not, and never did soldiers fight better, seldom so well. The stern valour of the ninety-second, principally composed of Irishmen, would have graced Thermopylæ. The Portuguese cavalry patroles, if any went out which is uncertain, might have neglected their duty, and doubtless the front should have been scoured in a more military manner; but the infantry picquets, and the light companies so happily ordered up by major Thorne, were ready, and no man wondered to see the French columns crown the great hill in front of the pass. Stewart expecting no attack at Maya, had gone to Elisondo leaving orders for the soldiersGeneral Stewart’s Official Report. to cook; from his erroneous views therefore the misfortune sprung and from no other source. Having deceived himself as to the true point of attack he did not take proper military precautions on his own front; his position was only half occupied, his troops brought into action wildly, and finally he causedWellington’s Despatches. the loss of his guns by a misdirection as to the road. General Stewart was a brave, energetic, zealous, indefatigable man and of a magnanimous spirit, but he possessed neither the calm reflective judgment nor the intuitive genius which belongs to nature’s generals.
It is difficult to understand count D’Erlon’s operations. Why, when he had carried the right of the position, did he follow two weak regiments with two divisions, and leave only one division to attack five regiments, posted on the strongest ground and having hopes of succour from Echallar? Certainly if Abbé’s division had acted with Maransin’s, Stewart who was so hardly pressed by the latter alone, must have passed the road from Echallar in retreat before general Barnes’s brigade arrived. On the other hand, Soult’s orders directedSoult’s Official Despatch, MSS. D’Erlon to operate by his left, with the view of connecting the whole army on the summit of the great chain of the Pyrenees. He should therefore either have used his whole force to crush the troops on the Atchiola before they could be succoured from Echallar; or, leaving Maransin there, have marched by the Maya road upon Ariscun to cut Sylveira’s line of retreat; instead of this he remained inactive upon the Col de Maya for twenty hours after the battle! And general Hill concentrating his whole force, now augmented by Barnes’s brigade, would probably have fallen upon him from the commanding rocks of Atchiola the next day, if intelligence of Cole’s retreat from the Roncesvalles passes had not come through the Alduides. This rendered the recovery of the Col de Maya useless, and Hill withdrawing all his troops during the night, posted the British brigades which had been engaged, together with one Portuguese brigade of infantry and a Portuguese battery, on the heights in rear of Irueta, fifteen miles from the scene of action. The other Portuguese brigade he left in front of Elizondo, thus covering the road of San Estevan on his left, that of Berderez on his right, and the pass of Vellate in his rear.
Such was the commencement of Soult’s operations to restore the fortunes of France. Three considerable actions fought on the same day had each been favourable. At St. Sebastian the allies were repulsed; at Roncesvalles they abandoned the passes; at Maya they were defeated; but the decisive blow had not yet been struck.
Lord Wellington heard of the fight at Maya on his way back from St. Sebastian, but with the false addition that D’Erlon was beaten. As early as the 22d he had known that Soult was preparing a great offensive movement, but the immovable attitude of the French centre, the skilful disposition of their reserve which was twice as strong as he at first supposed, together with the preparations made to throw bridges over the Bidassoa at Biriatou, were all calculated to mislead and did mislead him.
Soult’s complicated combinations to bring D’Erlon’s divisions finally into line on the crest of the great chain were impenetrable, and the English general could not believe his adversary would throw himself with only thirty thousand men into the valley of the Ebro unless sure of aid from Suchet, and that general’s movements indicated a determination to remain in Catalonia; moreover Wellington, in contrast to Soult, knew that Pampeluna was not in extremity, and before the failure of the assault thought that San Sebastian was. Hence the operations against his right, their full extent not known, appeared a feint, and he judged the real effort would be to throw bridges over the Bidassoa and raise the siege of San Sebastian. But in the night correct intelligence of the Maya and Roncesvalles affairs arrived, Soult’s object was then scarcely doubtful, and sir T. Graham was ordered to turn the siege into a blockade, to embark his guns and stores, and hold all his spare troops in hand to join Giron, on a position of battle marked out near the Bidassoa. General Cotton was ordered to move the cavalry up to Pampeluna, and O’Donnel was instructed to hold some of his Spanish troops ready to act in advance. This done Wellington arranged his lines of correspondence and proceeded to San Estevan, which he reached early in the morning.
While the embarkation of the guns and stores was going on it was essential to hold the posts at Vera and Echallar, because D’Erlon’s object was not pronounced, and an enemy in possession of those places could approach San Sebastian by the roads leading over the Pena de Haya, a rocky mountain behind Lesaca, or by the defiles of Zubietta leading round that mountain from the valley of Lerins. Wherefore in passing through Estevan on the morning of the 26th, Wellington merely directed general Pack to guard the bridges over the Bidassoa. But when he reached Irueta, saw the reduced state of Stewart’s division, and heard that Picton had marched from Olague, he directed all the troops within his power upon Pampeluna; and to prevent mistakes indicated the valley of Lanz asManuscript Notes by the Duke of Wellington. the general line of movement. Of Picton’s exact position or of his intentions nothing positive was known, but supposing him to have joined Cole at Linzoain, as indeed he had, Wellington judged that their combined forces would be sufficient to check the enemy until assistance could reach them from the centre or from Pampeluna, and he so advised Picton on the evening of the 26th.