During this action two bridges were thrown, partly on trestles partly on boats, below the fords, and the head of Villatte’s reserve crossing ascended the ridge and renewed the fight more vigorously; one brigade even reached the chapel of San Marcial and the left of the Spanish line was shaken, but the eighty-fifth regiment belonging to lord Aylmer’s brigade advanced a little way to support it, and at that moment lord Wellington rode up with his staff. Then the Spaniards who cared so little for their own officers, with that noble instinct which never abandons the poor people of any country acknowledged real greatness without reference to nation, and shouting aloud dashed their adversaries down with so much violence that many were driven into the river, and some of the French pontoon boats coming to their succour were overloaded and sunk. It was several hours before the broken and confused masses could be rallied and the bridges, which had been broken up to let the boats save the drowning men, repaired. When this was effected, Soult who overlooked the action from the summit of the mountain Louis XIV., sent the remainder of Villatte’s reserve over the river, and calling up Foy’s division prepared a more formidable and better arranged attack; and he expected greater success, inasmuch as the operation from the side of Vera, of which it is time to treat, was now making considerable progress up the Pena de Haya on the allies’ right.
Combat of Vera. General Clauzel had descended the Bayonette and Commissari mountains immediately after day-break, under cover of a thick fog, but at seven o’clock the weather cleared, and three divisions formed in heavy columns were seen, by the troops on Santa Barbara, making for the fords below Vera in the direction of two hamlets called the Salinas and the Bario de Lesaca. A fourth division and the guns remained stationary on the slopes of the mountain, and the artillery opened now and then upon the little town of Vera, from which the picquets of the light division were recalled with exception of one post in a fortified house commanding the bridge.
About eight o’clock the enemy’s columns began to pass the fords covered by the fire of their artillery, but the first shells thrown fell into the midst of their own ranks and the British troops on Santa Barbara cheered the French battery with a derisive shout. Their march was however sure, and a battalion of chosen light troops, without knapsacks, quickly commenced the battle on the left bankSoult’s Correspondence, MSS. of the river, with the Portuguese brigade, and by their extreme activity and rapid fire forced the latter to retire up the slopes of the mountain. General Inglis then reinforced the line of skirmishersManuscript Memoir by general Inglis. and the whole of his brigade was soon afterwards engaged, but Clauzel menaced his left flank from the lower ford, and the French troops still forced their way upwards in front without a check, until the whole mass disappeared fighting amidst the asperities of the Pena de la Haya. Inglis lost two hundred and seventy men and twenty-two officers, but he finally halted on a ridge commanding the intersection of the roads leading from Vera and Lesaca to Irun and Oyarzun. That is to say somewhat below the foundry of Antonio, where the fourth division, having now recovered its Portuguese brigade, was, in conjunction with Longa’s Spaniards, so placed as to support and protect equally the left of Inglis and the right of Freyre on San Marcial.
These operations, from the great height and asperity of the mountain, occupied many hours, and it was past two o’clock before even the head of Clauzel’s columns reached this point. Meanwhile as the French troops left in front of Santa Barbara made no movement, and lord Wellington had before directed the light division to aid general Inglis, a wing of the forty-third and three companies of the riflemen from general Kempt’s brigade, with three weak Spanish battalions drawn from O’Donnel’s Andalusians at Echallar, crossed the Bidassoa by the Lesaca bridge, and marched towards some lower slopes on the right of Inglis where they covered another knot of minor communications coming from Lesaca and Vera. They were followed by the remainder of Kempt’s brigade which occupied Lesaca itself, and thus the chain of connection and defence between Santa Barbara and the positions of the fourth division on the Pena de la Haya was completed.
Clauzel seeing these movements, and thinking the allies at Echallar and Santa Barbara wereClauzel’s Official Report, MSS. only awaiting the proper moment to take him in flank and rear, by the bridges of Vera and Lesaca, if he engaged further up the mountain, now abated his battle and sent notice of his situation and views to Soult. This opinion was well-founded; lord Wellington was not a general to let half his army be paralyzed by D’Erlon’s divisions. On the 30th, when he observed Soult’s first preparations in front of San Marcial, he had ordered attacks to be made upon D’Erlon from the Puerto of Echallar Zagaramurdi and Maya; general Hill was also directed to shew the heads of columns towards St. Jean Pied de Port. And on the 31st when the force and direction of Clauzel’s columns were known, he ordered lord Dalhousie to bring the remainder of the seventh division by Lesaca to aid Inglis.
Following these orders Giron, who commanded the Spaniards O’Donnel being sick, slightly skirmished on the 30th with Conroux’s advanced posts in front of Sarre, and on the 31st at day-break the whole of the French line was assailed. That is to say, Giron again fought with Conroux, feebly as before, but two Portuguese brigades of the sixth and seventh divisions, directed by lord Dalhousie and general Colville from the passes of Zagaramurdi and Maya, drove the French from their camp behind Urdax and burned it. Abbé who commanded there being thus pressed, collected his whole force in front of Ainhoa on an entrenched position, and making strong battle repulsed the allies with some loss of men by the sixth division. Thus five combats were fought in one day at different points of the general line, and D’Erlon, who had lost three or four hundred men, seeing a fresh column coming from Maya as if to turn his left, judged that a great movement against Bayonne was in progress and sent notice to Soult. He was mistaken. Lord Wellington being entirely on the defensive, only sought by these demonstrations to disturb the plan of attack, and the seventh division, following the second order sent to lord Dalhousie, marched towards Lesaca; but the fighting at Urdax having lasted until mid-day the movement was not completed that evening.
D’Erlon’s despatch reached Soult at the same time that Clauzel’s report arrived. All his arrangements for a final attack on San Marcial were then completed, but these reports and the ominous cannonade at San Sebastian, plainly heard during the morning, induced him to abandon this object and hold his army ready for a general battle on the Nivelle. In this view he sent Foy’s division which had not yet crossed the Bidassoa to the heights of Serres, behind the Nivelle, as a support to D’Erlon, and caused six chosen troops of dragoons to march upon San Pé higher up on that river. Clauzel received orders to arrest his attack and repass the Bidassoa in the night. He was to leave Maransin’s division upon the Bayonette mountain and the Col de Bera, and with the other three divisions to march by Ascain and join Foy on the heights of Serres.
Notwithstanding these movements Soult kept Reille’s troops beyond the Bidassoa, and the battle went on sharply, for the Spaniards continually detached men from the ridge, endeavouring to drive the French from the lower positions into the river, until about four o’clock when their hardihood abating they desired to be relieved; but Wellington careful of their glory seeing the French attacks were exhausted and thinking it a good opportunity to fix the military spirit of his allies, refused to relieve or to aid them; yet it would not be just to measure their valour by this fact. The English general blushed while he called upon them to fight, knowing that they had been previously famished by their vile government, and that there were no hospitals to receive no care for them when wounded. The battle was however arrested by a tempest which commencing in the mountains about three o’clock, raged for several hours with wonderful violence. Huge branches were torn from the trees and whirled through the air like feathers on the howling winds, while the thinnest streams swelling into torrents dashed down the mountains, rolling innumerable stones along with a frightful clatter. Amidst this turmoil and under cover of night the French re-crossed the river, and the head-quarters were fixed at St. Jean de Luz.
Clauzel’s retreat was more unhappy. Having received the order to retire early in the evening when the storm had already put an end to all fighting, he repassed the fords in person and before dark at the head of two brigades, ordering general Vandermaesen to follow with the remainder of his divisions. It would appear that he expected no difficulty, since he did not take possession of the bridge of Vera nor of the fortified house covering it; and apparently ignorant of the state of his own troops on theSoult’s Official Report, MSS. other bank of the river occupied himself with suggesting new projects displeasing to Soult. Meanwhile Vandermaesen’s situation became critical. Many of his soldiers attempting to cross were drowned by the rising waters, and finally, unable to effect a passage at the fords, that general marched up the stream to seize the bridge of Vera. His advanced guard surprising a corporal’s picquet rushed over, but was driven back by a rifle company posted in the fortified house. This happened about three o’clock in the morning and the riflemen defended the passage until daylight when a second company and some Portuguese Caçadores came to their aid. But the French reserve left at Vera seeing how matters stood opened a fire of guns against the fortified house from a high rock just above the town, and their skirmishers approached it on the right bank while Vandermaesen plied his musquetry from the left bank. The two rifle captains and many men fell under this cross fire, and the passage was forced, but Vandermaesen urging the attack in person was killed, and more than two hundred of his soldiers were hurt.
Soult now learning from D’Erlon that all offensiveSeptember movements on the side of Maya had ceased at twelve o’clock on the 31st, contemplated another attack on San Marcial, but in the course of the day general Rey’s report of the assault on San SebastianSoult’s Official Correspondence, MSS. reached him, and at the same time he heard that general Hill was in movement on the side of St. Jean Pied de Port. This state of affairs brought reflection. San Sebastian was lost, a fresh attempt to carry off the wasted garrison from the castle would cost five or six thousand good soldiers, and the safety of the whole army would be endangered by pushing headlong amongst the terrible asperities of the crowned mountain. For Wellington could throw his right wing and centre, forming a mass of at least thirty-five thousand men, upon the French left during the action, and he would be nearer to Bayonne than the French right when once the battle was engaged beyond the Lower Bidassoa. The army had lost in the recent actions three thousand six hundred men. General Vandermaesen had been killed, and four others, La Martiniere, Menne, Remond, and Guy, wounded, the first mortally; all the superior officers agreed that a fresh attempt would be most dangerous, and serious losses might draw on an immediate invasion of France before the necessary defensive measures were completed.