strategic campaign is obvious. That in tactical detail it was not by
any means so brilliant an example of what Wellington and his army could
accomplish, is equally obvious. Was the General’s plan to blame? or
was a well-framed scheme wrecked by the faults of subordinates? It is
always a dangerous matter to criticize Wellington’s arrangements--so
much seems clear to the historian that could not possibly have been
known to the soldier on the morning of June 21st. It is obvious to us
now that there was a fair chance not only of beating the French army,
and of cutting off its retreat on Bayonne, but of surrounding and
destroying at least a considerable portion of it. Wellington’s orders
are always extremely reticent in stating his final aims, and give a
list of things to be done by each division, rather than a general
appreciation of what he intends the army to accomplish. But reading
his directions to Graham, Hill, and Dalhousie, and looking at the way
on which they work out on the map, and the allocation of forces in
each column, it would seem that in view of the distribution of the
French troops on the afternoon of June 20th, he planned a complete
encircling scheme, which should not only accomplish what he actually
did accomplish, but much more. Graham, with his 20,000 men, must have
been intended not only to force the line of the Zadorra and cut the
Royal Road, but to fall upon the rear of the whole French army, which
on the afternoon of the 20th had been seen to have a most inadequate
flank-guard towards the north-east. Hill’s 20,000 men were not, as
Jourdan thought, the only main attack, nor as Gazan (equally in error)
thought, a mere demonstration. They were intended to make an encircling
movement to the south, as strong as Graham’s similar movement to the
north. But obviously both the flanking columns, Hill’s far more than
Graham’s, were in danger of being repulsed, if the French could turn
large unemployed reserves upon them. Wherefore the central attacks, by
the 4th and Light Divisions on the Nanclares side, and by the 3rd and
7th Divisions on the Mendoza side, were necessary in order to contain
any troops which Jourdan might have sent off to overwhelm Hill or
Graham.
And here comes the weak point of the whole scheme--all the movements
had to be made through defiles and over rough country: Hill had to
debouch from the narrow pass of Puebla, Graham had a long mountain
road from Murguia, and, worst of all, Dalhousie, with the 3rd and 7th
Divisions, had to cross the watershed of a very considerable mountain
by mere peasants’ tracks. Only the column which marched from the
Bayas to Nanclares had decent going on a second-rate road. There was,
therefore, a considerable danger that some part of the complicated
scheme might miscarry. And any failure at one point imperilled the
whole, since the Nanclares column was not to act till Hill was well
forward, and the Mendoza column was ordered to get into touch with the
troops to its right, and regulate its movements by them; while Graham,
still farther off, was also to guide himself by what was going on upon
his right, to correct himself with the Mendoza column, and only to
attack on the Bilbao road when it should be seen that an attack would
be obviously useful to the main advance.
Hill discharged his part of the scheme to admiration, as he always did
anything committed to him, and took up the attention of the main part
of the Army of the South. But the central and left attacks did not
proceed as Wellington had desired. Graham got to his destined position
within the time allotted to him, but when he had reached it, was slow
and unenterprising in his action. He was seeking for Dalhousie’s
column, with which he had been directed to co-ordinate his operations:
he sent out cavalry scouts and Bradford’s Portuguese to his right, but
could find nothing. This, I think, explains but does not wholly excuse
his caution at noon. But it neither explains nor excuses at all his
tactics after he had received, at two o’clock, Wellington’s orders
telling him to press the enemy hard, and make his power felt. With his
two British divisions, the Portuguese of Pack and Bradford, and two
cavalry brigades, he only made a genuine attack at one point, and did
not put into serious action (as the casualty lists show) more than
four battalions--those used at Gamarra Mayor. The whole left column
was contained by little more than half of its number of French troops.
Graham says in his dispatch to Wellington that ‘in face of such force
as the enemy showed it was evidently impossible to push a column across
the river by Gamarra bridge.’ He does not explain his inactivity at
other points, except by mentioning that the enemy had ‘at least two
divisions in reserve on strong ground behind the river[615].’ There was
really only one brigade in reserve, and so far from being compelled to
attack at Gamarra only, Graham had besides Arriaga bridge on the main
road, two other bridges open to assault (those of Goveo and Yurre),
besides at least one and probably three fords. All these more southern
passages were watched by cavalry only, without infantry or guns. It
is clear that Graham could have got across the Zadorra somewhere, if
he had tried. Very probably his quiescence was due to his failing
eyesight, which had been noticed very clearly by those about him during
this campaign[616]. The only part of his corps which did really useful
work was Longa’s Spanish division, which at least cut the Bayonne road
at the proper place and time.
But if Graham’s tactics cannot be praised, Lord Dalhousie was even
more responsible for the imperfect consequence of the victory. Why
Wellington put this fussy and occasionally disobedient officer
in charge of the left-centre column, instead of Picton, passes
understanding. The non-arrival of the 7th Division, which was to lead
the attack, was due to incompetent work by him or his staff. He says in
his dispatch that he was delayed by several accidents to his artillery
(Cairnes’s battery). But from his own narrative we see that the guns
got up almost as soon as his leading infantry brigade (Grant’s), while
his two rear brigades (Barnes and Le Cor) never reached the front in
time to fire a shot. What really happened was that for want of staff
guidance, for which the divisional commander was responsible, these
troops did not take the path assigned to them, and went right over,
instead of skirting, the summit of Monte Arrato, making an apparently
short (and precipitous) cut, which turned out to be a very long
one[617]. So when Dalhousie did arrive, with one brigade and his guns,
Picton had long been waiting by Las Guetas in a state of justifiable
irritation. Finally, Dalhousie (lacking the greater part of his
division) did not attack till he got peremptory orders to do so from
the Commander-in-Chief. Hence the extreme delay, which caused grave
risk to Hill’s wing, so long engaged without support. It is fair to
add that the delay had one good effect--since it led Jourdan to think
that his right was not going to be attacked, and therefore to send off
Villatte’s and Cassagne’s divisions to the far left. If Dalhousie had
advanced an hour earlier, these divisions would have been near enough
to support Leval. But this is no justification for the late arrival and
long hesitations of the commander of the 7th Division. Undoubtedly a
part of the responsibility devolves on Wellington himself, for putting
an untried officer in charge of a crucial part of the day’s operations,
when he had in Picton an old and experienced tactician ready to hand.
The strategical plan was so good that minor faults of execution could
not mar its general success. Yet it must be remembered that, if all
had worked out with minute accuracy, the French army would have been
destroyed, instead of merely losing its artillery and train. And the
fact that 55,000 men escaped to France, even if in sorry condition,
made the later campaign of the Pyrenees possible. There would have been
no combats of Maya and Roncesvalles, no battles of Sorauren and St.
Marcial, if the eight French divisions present at Vittoria had been
annihilated, instead of being driven in disorder on to an eccentric
line of retreat.
SECTION XXXVII
EXPULSION OF THE FRENCH FROM SPAIN
CHAPTER I
THE PURSUIT OF CLAUSEL
At ten o’clock on the morning of June 22nd Wellington moved out from
Vittoria in pursuit of the French. Touch with them had been lost on
the preceding night, as the divisions which had fought the battle had
ceased to move on after dark, and had settled into bivouacs four or
five miles beyond the city. The enemy, on the other hand, had continued
his flight in the darkness, till sheer exhaustion compelled each man
to throw himself down where he was, all order having been lost in most
units, and only Reille’s rearguard of the Army of Portugal having
kept its ranks. About midnight the majority had run to a standstill,
and the hills along the Salvatierra road began to be covered with
thousands of little fires, round which small groups were cooking
the scanty rations that they had saved in their haversacks. ‘The
impromptu illumination had a very pretty effect: if the enemy had seen
it he might have thought that we had rallied and were in order. But
it was only next morning that the regiments began to coalesce, and
reorganization was not complete till we got back to France. Generals
were seeking their divisions, colonels their regiments, officers
their companies. They found them later--but one thing was never found
again--the crown of Spain, fallen for ever from the brow on which it
was not to be replaced[618].’ King Joseph himself, pushing on ahead of
the rout, reached Salvatierra, sixteen miles from the field, before he
dismounted, and shared a meagre and melancholy supper with D’Erlon and
two ministers, the Irish-Spaniard O’Farrill and the Frenchman Miot de
Melito. To them entered later Jourdan, who had been separated from
the rest of the staff in the flight. He flung himself down to the
table, saying, ‘Well, gentlemen, they _would_ have a battle, and it is
a lost battle,’ after which no one said anything more. This was the
old marshal’s reflection on the generals who, all through the retreat,
had been urging that it was shameful to evacuate Spain without risking
a general action. After three hours’ halt, sleep for some, but the
wakefulness of exhaustion for others, the King’s party got to horse at
dawn, and rode on toward Pampeluna, the army straggling behind them.
It was a miserable rainy day with occasional thunderstorms: every one,
from Joseph to the meanest camp-follower, was in the same state of
mental and physical exhaustion. But the one thing which should have
finished the whole game was wanting--there was practically no pursuit.
Of Wellington’s nine brigades of cavalry only two, those of Grant
and Anson, had been seriously engaged on the 21st, and had suffered
appreciable losses. The other seven were intact, and had not been in
action. It is obvious that they could not have been used to effect
in the darkness of the night, and over rough ground and an unknown
track. But why an early pursuit at dawn was not taken in hand it is
difficult to make out. Even the same promptness which had been shown
after Salamanca, and which had been rewarded by the lucky gleanings of
Garcia Hernandez, was wanting on this occasion. There was no excuse for
the late start of the cavalry, and in consequence it rode as far as
Salvatierra without picking up more than a few wounded stragglers and
worn-out horses and mules. The French had gone off at dawn, and were
many miles ahead.
The infantry followed slowly; not only were the men tired by the
late marches and their legitimate exertions in the battle, but many
thousands had spent the hours of darkness in a surreptitious visit to
the field of the convoy, and had come back to the regimental bivouac
with plunder of all kinds bought at the cost of a sleepless night. Many
had not come back at all, but were lying drunk or snoring among the
débris of the French camps. Wellington wrote in high wrath to Bathurst,
the Minister for War: ‘We started with the army in the highest order,
and up to the day of the battle nothing could get on better. But that
event has (as usual)[619] annihilated all discipline. The soldiers of
the army have got among them about a million sterling in money, with
the exception of about 100,000 dollars, which were got for the military
chest. They are incapable of marching in pursuit of the enemy, and
are totally knocked up. Rain has come and increased the fatigue, and
I am quite sure that we have now out of the ranks double the amount
of our loss in the battle, and that we have more stragglers in the
pursuit than the enemy have, and never in one day make more than an
ordinary march. This is the consequence of the state of discipline in
the British army. We may gain the greatest victories, but we shall do
no good till we so far alter our system as to force all ranks to do
their duty. The new regiments are as usual worst of all. The ---- are a
disgrace to the name of soldier, in action as elsewhere: I shall take
their horses from them, and send the men back to England, if I cannot
get the better of them in any other manner[620].’
This, of course, is one of Wellington’s periodical explosions of
general indiscriminating rage against the army which, as he confessed
on other occasions, had brought him out of many a dangerous scrape by
its sheer hard fighting. He went on a few days later with language that
can hardly be forgiven: ‘We have in the Service the scum of the earth
as common soldiers, and of late years have been doing everything in our
power, both by law and by publication, to relax the discipline by which
alone such men can be kept in order. The officers of the lower ranks
will not perform the duty required from them to keep the soldiers in
order. The non-commissioned officers are (as I have repeatedly stated)
as bad as the men. It is really a disgrace to have anything to say to
such men as some of our soldiers are[621].’ The Commander-in-Chief’s
own panacea was more shooting, and much more flogging. All this
language is comprehensible in a moment of irritation, but was cruelly
unjust to many corps which kept their discipline intact, never
straggled, and needed no cat-o’-nine-tails: there were battalions
where the lash was unknown for months at a time. But Wellington usually
ignored the moral side of things: he seldom spoke to his men about
honour or patriotism or _esprit de corps_, and long years afterwards
officially informed a Royal Commission on the Army that ‘he had no idea
of any great effect being produced on British soldiers by anything but
the immediate fear of corporal punishment.’ It is sad to find such
mentality in a man of strict honour and high military genius. On this
particular occasion he, no doubt, did well to be angry: but were there
no regiments which could have marched at dawn to keep up the pursuit?
Undoubtedly there were many: Ponsonby’s heavy dragoons had ridden
through the chaos of plunder without a man leaving the ranks, and had
bivouacked five miles to the front of Vittoria. There were several
infantry brigades which had been so far to the left or the right in the
action that they never came near the temptation, and only remembered
the night of the 21st as one of short commons and hard lying[622].
Perhaps the sight of the disgraceful confusion in and about Vittoria
gave the Commander-in-Chief an exaggerated impression of the general
condition of the army. And undoubtedly he had an absorbing night’s task
before him, when he sat down to work out the entire recasting of his
operations which the victory had made necessary.
His main design, as expressed in the order for the 22nd, was to send
Giron and Longa into Biscay by the great Bayonne _chaussée_, to pursue
Maucune’s convoy and to cut off, if possible, Foy and the garrison
of Bilbao, while the Anglo-Portuguese army marched in pursuit of
the French main army on Pampeluna. Clausel had been heard of in the
direction of Logroño; a zealous and patriotic innkeeper had ridden 40
miles on the night of the 20th to report to Wellington the position of
the head of his column; and it was the knowledge that he was more than
a full day’s march from Vittoria which had enabled the arrangements for
the battle to be made with complete security against any intervention
on his part[623]. But, though it was most probable that he would
have heard of the disaster to the King’s army, and have turned back
to Pampeluna or Saragossa, there was a chance that the news might not
have reached him. If so, he could be at Vittoria by the afternoon of
the 22nd, and his appearance there might prove very tiresome, as the
British hospitals and the whole spoil of the battle would have been
at his mercy. Wherefore Wellington, who somewhat underrated Clausel’s
strength[624], left behind at Vittoria the 5th Division and R. Hill’s
cavalry brigade to guard the place: the 6th Division was due to arrive
at noon, or not much later, from Medina de Pomar, so that 12,000 men
would be available if the possible but improbable event of a raid on
Vittoria should come to pass.
These precautions having been taken, the army marched off at ten
o’clock, in three columns, the ‘Centre Column’ of previous days
with head-quarters and the bulk of the cavalry sticking to the
main Salvatierra-Pampeluna road, while Hill and Graham kept to
side-tracks[625], which were available so long as the march lay in the
plain of Vittoria, but converged on Salvatierra, where the watershed
comes, and the mountains of Navarre block the way. Here all the roads
met, and there was a steep rise and a defile, before the head-waters of
the Araquil, the main river of north-western Navarre, were reached.
That afternoon Wellington’s quartermaster-general, George Murray--about
the only man who ever dared to make a suggestion to his chief--asked
him whether it might not be worth while to send a detachment northward,
by the mountain road which goes from Salvatierra to Villafranca on
the great Bayonne _chaussée_. For Giron and Longa might have been
detained by the French forts at the defile of Salinas, at Mondragon
and elsewhere, and so have failed to get forward in their pursuit of
Maucune’s convoy and the Bilbao garrison. But a force sent across
the hills from Salvatierra would cut in to the _chaussée_ behind
the fortified posts; and, if the convoy were moving slowly, might
catch it as it passed through Villafranca, or at any rate intercept
other stray bodies of French troops[626]. Wellington approved the
idea at once, and ordered Graham to take the greater part of his own
column--the 1st Division, Pack’s, and Bradford’s Portuguese, and
Anson’s cavalry brigade,--to leave the pursuit of the King’s army, and
to march to co-operate with the Spanish troops who had already been
detached to press the retreat of the French garrisons of Biscay. The
road Salvatierra-Villafranca turned out practicable for all arms, but
very trying both to cavalry and artillery, its first stage being a
long uphill pull, over a road of the most stony kind--on the watershed
at the Puerto de San Adrian it was taken through a tunnel cut in the
solid rock. The diversion of Graham’s column being an afterthought--the
orders for it were only issued at 3 p.m.--there was some delay in
finding the troops in an afternoon of blinding rain, and turning them
on to the new direction. The general himself, as his dispatch shows,
was not reached by Wellington’s orders till next morning[627]. Only the
light brigade of the German Legion got well forward on the 22nd,--the
rest of the 1st Division and Bradford’s Portuguese hardly got started.
Anson’s Light Dragoons and Pack’s Portuguese, like Graham himself,
never received their orders at all that night, having pushed on beyond
Salvatierra for two leagues or more, where the officers sent in search
of them failed to catch them up. They had actually gone forward some
miles farther towards Navarre, on the morning of the 23rd, before
they were found and set right. This caused a tiresome counter-march
of some miles to get back to Salvatierra and the cross-roads.
Wellington was much vexed with the bad staff-work, but vented his
wrath, unfortunately, not on his own aides-de-camp but on a meritorious
officer whom they had failed to find or warn. Captain Norman Ramsay,
the hero of the ‘artillery charge’ at Fuentes de Oñoro[628], was
attached with his battery to Anson’s cavalry brigade. He was still
moving eastward, on the night of the 22nd, when the Commander-in-Chief
chanced to come upon him. Wellington at once ordered him to halt,
billet his men in a neighbouring village, and wait for new directions.
According to Ramsay’s version of the words used, they were that ‘if
there were any orders for the troop in the course of the night, he
would send them[629].’ But Wellington was under the impression that
the phrase used was that Ramsay was not to move until he had direct
orders from Head-Quarters as to his route. Next morning about 6 a.m. an
assistant quartermaster-general (Captain Campbell) came to the village,
and asked Ramsay if he had yet received his directions. On hearing that
he had not, the staff-officer told him to follow Anson’s brigade, who
(as Ramsay supposed) were still moving eastward; for no hint of the
change of route had been given him on the previous night. The battery
was started off again on the road towards Pampeluna, and its commander
rode on ahead to seek for the cavalry to whom he was attached. At this
moment Wellington came up, expressed high wrath at finding the guns
on the move in the wrong direction, and asked for Ramsay, who was not
forthcoming for some time. Whereupon the angry general ordered him to
be put under arrest for flagrant disobedience, and spoke of trying him
by court martial. His version of the offence was that ‘Captain Ramsay
disobeyed a positive order given him verbally by me, in expectation of
a circumstance which occurred, namely that he might receive orders,
from someone else to move as I did not wish him to move[630].’ It is
easy to see how the vagueness in the wording of the order, or even a
misconception of the stress laid upon one of its clauses, brought about
Ramsay’s mistake. He understood that he was to halt till he got orders,
and took Campbell’s message to be the orders meant. It is pretty clear
from Wellington’s own language that Ramsay was not warned that he might
receive orders not directly proceeding from G.H.Q., which he was to
disregard entirely. Explanation of that kind would not have been in the
Wellingtonian manner.
The unfortunate battery-commander, who had done splendid service on
the 21st, and had a brilliant record behind him, gained the sympathy
of the whole army, and such senior officers as dared continued to
make intercession for his pardon. After keeping him for some weeks
under arrest, Wellington resolved not to try him, and to send him
back to his battery. But he was cut out of the reward which he had
earned at Vittoria, and did not receive the brevet advance in rank
or the decorations given to the other battery-commanders, so that he
practically lost ground in comparison with his equals and fell to the
bottom of the list. This was a deadly blow to Ramsay, who was sensitive
and full of professional pride: he kept silence--not so his comrades,
who filed the incident as another flagrant example of Wellington’s
dislike for and injustice to the artillery arm[631]. He fell, still
only a battery-commander, at Waterloo.
The result of the miscarriage of orders on the night of the 22nd and
the morning of the 23rd was that Graham’s turning column was late in
its movement. The general himself was one of the last to get the new
direction--the cavalry which should have been at the head of the march
was at its tail. The German Light Battalions were very far ahead of all
the other units, and had to hold back in order to let the rest come up.
Hence the attack on Villafranca was not delivered on the evening of the
23rd, as it might have been, but on the afternoon of the 24th, and in
the intervening twenty-four hours the greater part of the French troops
whom Graham might have cut off filed through Villafranca on their way
to Tolosa and the frontier, and only a flank-guard was brought to
action. Of this more in its proper place.
The rest of the troops under Wellington’s immediate eye, the ‘Centre
Column’ and Hill’s corps, pursued their way on the 23rd along
the Salvatierra-Pampeluna road--only Victor Alten’s hussars got
in touch with the tail of King Joseph’s fugitive host, which was
moving at a great pace and had a long start. There was now a proper
rearguard--Cassagne’s division of the Army of the Centre, which had
lost only 250 men at Vittoria, and had been more shaken than hurt,
having replaced the much-tried Army of Portugal as the covering force.
King Joseph halted for some hours at Yrurzun, and there gave orders
for Reille to diverge from the main line of retreat, and to take
his two divisions, a cavalry brigade, and all the teams of his lost
artillery by the route of Santesteban and the valley of the Bastan,
back to the French frontier on the lower Bidassoa[632]. Finding himself
so feebly pursued, he had jumped to the conclusion that Wellington
might have marched with the bulk of his force on the great _chaussée_,
making directly for Irun and Bayonne. There being nothing to stop him
save the scattered detachments under Foy, an invasion of France was
possible. Hence Reille was directed to join Foy in haste, and cover the
line of the Bidassoa. Thus Graham and Reille were now moving parallel
to each other, both in a direct northerly direction, but separated by
many a mile of impracticable mountains. The Armies of the South and
Centre continued their retreat on Pampeluna.
Meanwhile Wellington on the morning of the 23rd received some important
news from Vittoria. The unexpected had happened: Clausel having failed
to hear of the King’s defeat--as chance would have it--was marching
on the city by the Trevino road. Pakenham had already arrived there,
but the 5th Division had gone forward to join the tail of Graham’s
column on being relieved by the 6th, nothing having yet been heard
of the French till midday. The force on the spot, therefore, was
rather weak, if Clausel had meant mischief. But he did not, and was
becoming aware of the danger of his own position. He had heard on
the 20th, when he was in march along the Ebro from Logroño on Haro,
that the King had evacuated Miranda that day, and was drawing back
to Vittoria. It was obviously dangerous to seek to join him by the
road near the river, and Clausel on the 21st, the day of the battle,
was trying to recover touch with the main army by taking the route
La Guardia-Trevino. This détour removed him out of striking distance
during all the critical hours. By some strange chance he neither met
any of the King’s aides-de-camp, who were hunting for him on all sides,
nor fell in with any of the fugitives from the routed army either on
the night of the 21st nor on the morning of the 22nd. He resumed his
march from La Guardia, and reached Trevino in the afternoon. There he
heard from _afrancesados_ the news that there had been a disastrous
battle on the previous day, but could get no details. He therefore
detached some squadrons to explore along the mountain road from Trevino
to Vittoria--they made their way as far as the crest of the heights of
Puebla, above Berostigueta, driving in first some Spanish irregulars,
and then picquets of British cavalry; from the watershed they could see
allied troops getting into order, but not their numbers. Pakenham, on
being warned by the guerrilleros, had occupied Vittoria town with two
Portuguese battalions, drawn up the rest of his troops for a fight, and
sent to warn Oswald and the 5th Division, as well as Giron’s Spaniards,
who had not gone many miles yet, that trouble was at hand. Both of
these forces halted and prepared to turn back.
But on hearing the report of his horsemen Clausel had no thought of a
raid on Vittoria: his only idea was to get out of danger, and rejoin
the main army as quickly as possible. That Joseph and Jourdan had been
beaten, he was now aware; but details were wanting: he did not know
whether the rout had been complete, or whether the King’s army was
capable of rallying and making head at Pampeluna. If he had understood
that all the artillery had been lost, and that a retreat into France
was imminent, he might probably have given up the idea of a junction,
and have set out in haste to retire on Saragossa, by way of the main
road down the Ebro by Logroño and Tudela. But not knowing this, his
first plan was to march for Salvatierra by the mountainous road which
goes from Viana on the Ebro to the upper valley of the Ega. On the 23rd
he marched from Trevino to Viana, on the 24th he started out from that
place and went 20 miles as far as Santa Cruz de Campero, where he heard
that Mina and all his bands were on his flank, and that an English
column was coming down upon him from Salvatierra. The latter rumour was
false, but induced Clausel to abandon any idea of taking a short cut to
join the King. It would seem also that he had picked up some news as to
the crushing effect of Vittoria on the French army, and knew that it
must have fallen back on Pampeluna. He hurriedly retraced his steps,
picked up the garrison of Logroño and set out to move on Pampeluna
by the Mendavia-Puente la Reyna road late on the 25th. His vanguard
had got as far as Sesma when he heard that Mina had dropped down from
Estella to Lerin, blocking this road also. It might have been possible
to attack and beat him, but renewed reports that the British were also
approaching disturbed Clausel, and he swerved back to the Ebro by
cross-roads and crossed it at Lodosa on the 26th.
This move, which placed him on the high road from Logroño to Saragossa,
implied the abandonment of all hope of reaching Pampeluna and joining
the King. He had resolved to fall back on Aragon and seek refuge with
Suchet’s troops in that direction. But he had lost much time in his
counter-marches, and was on the 27th in greater danger than he knew,
since Wellington was now coming down from the north, in the hope of
heading him off and cutting his line of retreat. And if Clausel had
lost as much time in the next five days as he had in the last, his
position would have been most desperate, for Wellington had ascertained
his whereabouts, and was marching upon him in great strength, with
a good hope of intercepting him, if he were still adhering to his
original plan of making for Pampeluna and rejoining the King.
The idea that Clausel might be caught and destroyed had come to the
British general’s mind on the 26th, when he had reached the environs
of Pampeluna, and had made sure that the whole of King Joseph’s armies
were well on the road for France. The pursuit had been little more
fruitful on the 24th-25th than it had been on the 22nd-23rd. But at
least closer contact had been secured with the enemy: on the afternoon
of the 24th the leading British troops had brought D’Erlon’s rearguard
to action at the passage of the Araquil, in front of the cross-roads
at Yrurzun. This combat, in which the 1st German Hussars, the 1st and
3rd battalions of the 95th, and Ross’s battery were engaged against
Darmagnac’s division of the Army of the Centre[633] cost the enemy
about 100 casualties[634], and one of the only two guns which he
had brought off from Vittoria. It was a running fight, in which the
rearguard all the way from Yrurzun to Berrioplano was being turned and
driven in. But no large captures were made.
While this skirmish was in progress, on the afternoon of the 24th, the
main body of the French army was already on the march past Pampeluna
towards France. The troops were not allowed to enter the fortress,
where only the King, his General Staff, and his courtiers lodged on
the night of the 24th. It was feared that the famished soldiery might
plunder the stores if they got access to them, so they were taken round
by suburban roads, which did not pass through the city. Gazan with
the Army of the South started on the evening of the 24th, taking the
route by Zubiri and the Pass of Roncesvalles to St. Jean-Pied-de-Port.
D’Erlon set out nine hours later, at dawn on the 25th, using the better
road by the Col de Velate and the Pass of Maya, which took him to the
Bastan, whither Reille had gone before him. But while the Army of
Portugal passed on to the lower Bidassoa, the Army of the Centre was
ordered to halt in the Bastan and hold its ground if possible.
Only three or four hours after D’Erlon’s column had left the suburbs
of Pampeluna the first English vedettes showed themselves on the
Salvatierra road. These came from Victor Alten’s light cavalry; they
coasted round the city on the south, and picqueted the Puente la Reyna
and Tafalla roads, by either of which Clausel might conceivably be
on the move to join the King. But no trace of the French could be
found, save that of the retiring rearguard of the Army of the Centre.
Of British infantry only the Light Division appeared in front of the
fortress, on the side of Berrioplano, though the 4th and Grant’s
hussars were close behind it. Picton and Dalhousie with the 3rd and 7th
Divisions were still farther back on the Salvatierra road, and Hill’s
whole corps was told to halt until their predecessors should have
cleared the way in front of them. The 5th Division, having received the
alarm about Clausel’s raid on Vittoria, had turned back on the 23rd and
was a full march behind Hill. The 6th Division had now passed out of
Pakenham’s hands into those of Clinton, its normal commander, who had
just come up from Lisbon[635]. It remained at Vittoria when all danger
from Clausel was over, and had originally been intended to come in on
the rear of the 5th Division at Salvatierra, leaving the hospitals and
spoils under the guard of some details[636]. But other orders were soon
to reach it.
During the night of the 25th Wellington got the news from Mina that
Clausel’s column, which he had supposed to be making a hasty retreat
down the Ebro, ever since its vain appearance in front of Vittoria on
the evening of the 22nd, was much less far off than he had supposed.
Owing to its counter-marches on the 23rd-24th it had only just got
back to Logroño, and had started off from that town on the 25th by the
road north of the Ebro via Mendavia and Sesma, apparently heading for
Pampeluna. If this were Clausel’s game, he might be intercepted and
caught, and allied columns might thrust themselves between him and his
escape towards Saragossa or Jaca. The nearer he got to Pampeluna the
better, since the French main army was no longer there, but in rapid
march for its native soil.
The orders which Wellington had issued upon the afternoon of the 25th
for the movements of the army on the 26th, had contemplated nothing
more than the investment of Pampeluna by the 3rd and 7th Divisions on
the north side, and the Light and 4th Divisions on the south side of
the Arga. But the news which had come in from Mina caused a complete
change in his plans: the morning orders of the 26th direct Cole, with
the 4th and Light Divisions, not to linger near Pampeluna, but to
move off as far as the men could go on the Tudela road--to Mendavil,
half-way to Tafalla, if possible: Grant’s hussar brigade was to push
ahead in front of the infantry, and discover whether Clausel was to
be heard of on this road, or perhaps on the Estella-Puente la Reyna
road, which was an alternative (if less likely) track for him to take
if marching on Pampeluna. Hill was ordered to hurry up from the rear,
and replace in the blockade not only the troops of Cole, but those of
Picton and Dalhousie. For the 3rd and 7th Divisions were to get ready
to follow Cole’s column the moment that they were relieved: they were
to concentrate meanwhile at the village of Sielvas, south of the Arga,
and to march southward as soon as Hill came up. But it was calculated
that they would not be able to move till dawn on the 27th, as Hill had
a long way to come. Ponsonby’s cavalry brigade would attach itself to
them when the move should begin. Meanwhile, four divisions being set in
motion to head off Clausel from this side, another column was ordered
to strike across the mountains and fall in on his rear if possible.
The 6th Division was still at Vittoria on the 25th, as was R. Hill’s
brigade of heavy cavalry. Clinton (now commanding his old division in
lieu of Pakenham) received orders to start off with all speed on the
Logroño road, taking the Household Cavalry with him, and to endeavour
to catch up the retreating French. He made forced marches via Trevino
and Peñacerrada, and reached Logroño on the 27th, where he picked up
six abandoned French guns, but learned that Clausel had been gone for
two days, and had crossed the Ebro at Lodosa instead of continuing on
the Pampeluna road. There was little chance of catching him up, when he
had a start of two marches, but Clinton continued the pursuit as far as
Lerin on the Miranda-de-Arga road, where he gave it up. The Household
Cavalry returned to Logroño, where it was directed to go into billets,
as horsemen would not be wanted in the Pyrenees, while the 6th Division
marched at leisure from Lerin to Pampeluna[637].
The only real chance of catching Clausel was to head him off at Tudela,
by means of the four divisions which were descending upon him down the
Tafalla road. But a glance at the map will show that he could only
have been intercepted if he had displayed uncommon torpidity. For
having crossed the Ebro at Lodosa on the 26th he was only 35 miles from
Tudela on a good road: and marching hard he reached the town on the
afternoon of the 27th, when the advanced cavalry of the column sent to
intercept him had only got to Olite, 25 miles to the north, and the
Light Division at the head of the infantry column was 10 miles behind
at Barasoain. Clausel did not halt more than a few hours at Tudela:
there was no need for the intervention of the treacherous alcalde--who
figures in legends of the time--to bid him press on hard for Saragossa.
For the design, attributed to him by some of the contemporary British
diarists, of marching up from Tudela along the Aragon river, with the
object of reaching France and joining the King by way of Sanguesa was
never really in his mind. Ever since he had crossed the bridge of
Lodosa his only desire was to get to Saragossa in the shortest possible
time. Starting off again at dawn on the 28th, with his force increased
by the garrison of Tudela, he marched that day twenty miles to Mallen,
and on the 29th a similar distance to Alagon. On the 30th a shorter
stage of 15 miles brought him to Saragossa, where he found General
Paris, the Governor of Aragon, still completely ignorant of the battle
of Vittoria, though it had taken place nine days back.
Since the 26th Clausel had been practically out of danger, for he
had the Ebro, whose bridges at Lodosa and Tudela he had destroyed,
between him and Wellington’s columns. There was no force which could
have stopped him, for there are 20 miles less of road between Lodosa
and Tudela than between Pampeluna and Tudela. Wellington had hoped
for a moment that Mina might have intercepted the French column at
Tudela, and have held it in check long enough to allow the British to
come up. But though Mina was, so far as mere distances went, capable
of striking at Tudela, two things prevented him from being able to do
so--the first was the obstacle of the Ebro, the second the fact that
Tudela was a fortified place with a competent garrison. Even if the
great guerrillero had got his men across the river, he certainly could
not have captured Tudela, and equally certainly would have been beaten
by Clausel, when the French column--double his available force in
numbers--came up, if he had dared to offer battle in the open near the
town.
During the night of the 27th Wellington heard that Clausel had
slipped past Tudela in haste, and that Mina, quite unable to stop
him, was only able to follow him with his cavalry--to which Julian
Sanchez’s Lancers had joined themselves. At a very early hour on the
28th--before 5 o’clock in the morning--the British Commander-in-Chief
issued a fresh set of orders in view of this untoward news[638]. They
are a little difficult to understand, but internal evidence seems to
show that Wellington must have received some sort of report tending
to make him think it possible that Clausel, instead of falling back
on Saragossa and joining Suchet’s army, might march across country
by the road Tauste-Exea-Un Castillo-Jaca, or the alternative road
Exea-Luna-Murillo-Jaca, in order to cross the Pyrenees by the pass of
Canfranc and join the King’s army in Bearn. Or he might march through
Saragossa in haste, and make for Jaca by the Gallego river[639].
There was a bare possibility of intercepting him by turning the whole
pursuing column eastward, and taking it into the valley of the river
Aragon, from which it would march by Sanguesa and Berdun on Jaca. The
weak point of the scheme was that there was no certainty that Clausel
would march on Jaca at all: he might stop in Aragon and combine his
operations with those of Suchet. Or even if he did start for Jaca, when
he heard that his road was intercepted by British troops, he would
naturally turn back and cast in his lot with the French Army of Aragon,
rather than with the King.
It is therefore rather surprising to find that Wellington imposed two
days of heavy marching on his left wing, on the bare possibility that
Clausel might be intercepted at or near Jaca. The orders for the 28th
June were for the cavalry at the head of the column to make the long
march Olite-Caparrosa-Caseda, by the good but circuitous road along the
valley of the Aragon, taking in charge the artillery belonging to the
infantry divisions. The latter were to cut across from the Pampeluna to
the Sanguesa roads by country tracks in the hills--the Light Division
by Olite-Beyre-Gallipienzo, the 4th Division by Tafalla-St. Martin de
Unx-Gallipienzo. The 3rd and 7th Divisions, farther behind, went from
Mendavil by Olleta to Caseda. This move concentrated 30,000 men in a
solid body on a decent road--but left a very long gap between them and
the troops blockading Pampeluna--and the gap would grow longer each
day that the marching force pushed north-eastward up the course of the
Aragon on its way to Jaca[640].
On the following day (June 29th) the column, now with the 3rd Division
at its head and the 4th Division at its tail, had moved along the river
till its head reached Sanguesa, when Wellington suddenly made up his
mind to relinquish the scheme, which (as he himself owned) had never
been a very promising one. He wrote to Castaños that Clausel, having
passed Tudela marching hard for Saragossa, had got too long a start,
and could not be caught. The plan of intercepting him at Jaca had been
given up, firstly because it would probably have failed, and secondly
because, if it had succeeded, it would only have forced Clausel to join
Suchet--which was not a thing to be desired[641]. A third reason, which
he did not cite to Castaños but reserved for Lord Bathurst’s private
eye, was that the Army was marching very badly, with many stragglers,
and many marauders. ‘The British on the 17th June were 41,547 rank
and file: on the 29th, 35,650 rank and file--diminution, 5,897.
Now the loss in the battle was 3,164--so that the diminution from
irregularities, straggling, &c., for plunder, is 2,733.’ The Portuguese
before the battle were 25,489--their present strength is 23,044. As
they lost only 1,022 in the battle, they show an extra diminution of
another 1,423 rank and file, from the same causes as the British.
‘There are only 160 men in the hospital which I established--the others
are plundering the country in different directions.’ The truth was,
that the Army was sulky--the men had not got over the effects of the
looting at Vittoria, the weather had been bad, and the hunt after
Clausel had been regarded by officers and men alike as a wild-goose
chase.
The French General gave his men three days’ rest at Saragossa (June
30-July 2) and then started to march up the Gallego river to Jaca,
where the head of his column arrived on July 6th: he then halted his
divisions for some days, stopping in a position where he could either
cross the pass of Canfranc into France, for he had no field-guns or
wheeled transport with him, to impede his passage by that steep defile,
or else return into the plains of Aragon. If Suchet should come to
Saragossa with the Army of Valencia, he could drop back to meet him.
But on the 11th arrived the news that Saragossa had been evacuated
on the preceding day, after some indecisive fighting between General
Paris’s garrison and the bands of Mina and Duran, who had beset the
city on both sides of the Ebro. All chance of a junction with Suchet
having vanished, Clausel crossed the Pyrenees next day, after leaving
a garrison in Jaca. He came down into the Val d’Aspe on the French
side, with 11,000 infantry, 500 horse, and six mountain guns packed on
mules--his sole artillery. He had lost somewhere about 1,500 men in his
long march--some broken-down stragglers, others sick left in hospital
at Tudela and Saragossa. All these fell into the hands of Mina, but the
casualties in actual fighting had been practically _nil_. By July 15th
the whole column, marching over the Pyrenean foot-hills, had reached
St. Jean-Pied-de-Port, and come into touch with the Armies of the South
and Centre, who had so long and vainly desired to see Clausel.
Meanwhile Wellington, having stopped his eastward march on June 29th,
had given his troops one day’s rest, and then drawn them back toward
Pampeluna by the road through Monreal. He was now about to take up the
pursuit of the King’s troops, which had been abandoned on the 25th
while he went off on his fruitless hunt after Clausel--an enterprise
which would have been far better left to Mina and the guerrilleros, for
there never had been much probability of its succeeding. But the new
move required several days of preparation, since four divisions had
to be brought back from the valley of the Aragon, and one more, the
6th, to come up from Lerin via Puente La Reyna. And it was necessary
to provide a considerable force for the blockade of Pampeluna. The
instructions for July 1 were that Hill was to make the first move, by
marching northward with the 2nd Division, handing over the investment
of Pampeluna to Silveira’s Portuguese and Morillo’s Spaniards[642], to
whose assistance there would come up in 24 hours the 7th Division, and
a little later the 3rd Division. Hill was to march by the Col de Velate
and Santesteban into the Bastan, from which it was intended that he
should drive out D’Erlon’s divisions.
But these operations belong to the fighting of July, and before dealing
with them it is necessary to go back to June 22nd, in order to follow
the fortunes of the other large French force, which might have been
present at the battle of Vittoria, but was not.
SECTION XXXVII: CHAPTER II
THE PURSUIT OF FOY
We left General Foy at the decisive moment when he received the
dispatch forwarded by Thouvenot from Vittoria, which informed him of
the King’s retreat beyond the Ebro, and suggested that he might come
in to join the main army, but left him the fatal choice of deciding
whether his own immediate operations were or were not of such paramount
importance that they could not be abandoned[643]. Foy decided, and many
other generals have made a similar error in all ages, that his own
job was the really important thing. The dispatch reached him on the
19th, when he had his division concentrated at Bergara, and could have
brought it to Vittoria in time for the battle. Probably the brigade
of Berlier, belonging to the Army of the North, which was under his
orders, could also have been brought in from Villafranca to Vittoria by
the 21st.
But on the very eve of the decisive engagement, and with Jourdan’s
dispatch advising him ‘de se rapprocher de Vittoria’ before his eyes,
Foy decided that the petty affairs of the Biscay garrisons were of
more importance than the fate of the King’s Army. Instead of bringing
down his own and Berlier’s troops to Vittoria, where 5,000 bayonets
would have been most welcome to the depleted Army of Portugal, he
proceeded to disperse them. He sent, on the 20th, two battalions to El
Orrio to facilitate the retreat of the garrison of Bilbao, dispatched
two others to Deba, on the coast, to guard against a rumoured British
demonstration against that port, and remained at Bergara with the
6th Léger alone. Orders were forwarded to Berlier to stand fast
at Villafranca, and to the troops expected from Bilbao to make the
best pace that they could, as the Army of Galicia would soon be upon
them[644]. Giron’s demonstration on the Balmaseda road had convinced
Foy that the Spanish 4th Army was aiming at Bilbao--he could not know
that Wellington had brought the Galicians down by Orduña to join his
main body.
On the evening of the 21st the division of Maucune, escorting the
convoy which had started from Vittoria at dawn, came through the pass
of Salinas unmolested. Its general met Foy, and told him that he had
heard heavy cannonading for many hours behind him, but had no notion
of what was going on upon the Zadorra. The column bivouacked between
Mondragon and Bergara, and started off again before daybreak. It had
not gone more than a league when fugitives began to drop in from
Vittoria, bringing news of the disaster. The King’s army had been
routed--his artillery abandoned: he had been pushed aside on to the
Pampeluna road, and Allied columns were coming up the great _chaussée_
making for Bergara and Durango. On hearing these depressing news the
commandants of the forts which guarded the passes--those of Arlaban,
Mondragon, and Salinas--spiked their guns, and fell back without orders
to join Foy at Bergara.
The news was only too true. On the night of the battle Wellington had
issued orders for Longa’s Division to set out at dawn on the 22nd to
force the passes, and, if possible, to overtake Maucune’s unwieldy
convoy. Giron was to follow, when his men, who had suffered dreadful
fatigue in their forced march from Orduña, were capable of movement.
As the Galicians were terribly under-gunned--there appear to have
been only six pieces with the 12,000 infantry--Wellington lent them
two batteries from the British artillery reserve[645]. Giron started
from the neighbourhood of Vittoria at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, and
had gone only some six miles when the news of Clausel’s raid was sent
to him by Pakenham. The whole army halted and began to retrace its
steps, with the object of joining the 6th Division and fending off
this unexpected attack. But the return march had hardly begun when the
message arrived that Clausel’s cavalry had retreated in haste, and that
there was no danger on the side of Vittoria. Giron therefore resumed
his original advance, but only reached Escoriaza, a hamlet half-way
between Salinas and Mondragon after dark[646]. His troops were worn
out, and had not received any regular rations that day.
It thus chanced that only Longa’s Division continued the advance along
the Bayonne _chaussée_ on the 22nd, and that all day the Cantabrians
were far ahead of, and quite out of touch with, the Army of Galicia.
It was with this small force alone that Foy had to deal. The French
General had been prepared for trouble by the ominous news that Maucune
had given him on the previous day, and conceived that it was his duty
to hold the passes as long as was prudent, in order to gain time for
the convoy to get on its way, and for the garrison of Bilbao to come
in from the right rear. Accordingly he was much vexed to find that the
officers commanding the Mondragon forts had evacuated them, and had
fallen back on Bergara. He resolved to hold the defile if possible,
and marched back toward it, taking with him the only two battalions of
his division which he had at hand[647], and the garrisons of the three
forts.
The fort of Mondragon was found empty--there were no enemies visible
save some local guerilleros who fled. But on advancing a little
farther, Foy came on the head of Longa’s column, descending from
the defile of Salinas. He spent the whole afternoon in a series of
rearguard actions, making his men fall back by alternate battalions,
and defending each turn of the road. The French troops behaved with
great steadiness, and Longa was cautious, having received false news
that the Bilbao garrison had joined Foy. He contented himself with
turning each successive position that the enemy took up, and at
nightfall had only got about two miles beyond Mondragon. Here he
halted, having occupied the fort (where he found six spiked guns) and
taken 53 prisoners. Foy had lost about 200 men in all in the long
bickering, and had been himself slightly wounded in the shoulder,
though he was not disabled: the Spaniards probably somewhat less[648].
During the evening hours three more battalions of Foy’s own division
arrived at Bergara, but the garrison of Bilbao and St. Pol’s Italians
had not yet been heard of. Having now 3,000 men in hand, the French
general resolved to hold Longa up, until the missing troops should have
passed behind him and got into a safe position. He waited opposite the
Cantabrians all the morning, but was not attacked: a reconnaissance
sent out reported that the enemy was quiescent at Mondragon. The fact
was that Longa had heard that the French had received reinforcements,
and was waiting for Giron to come up with the three Galician divisions.
They arrived by noon, much fatigued and drenched by heavy rain, and
Giron contented himself with making arrangements for an attack on
Bergara on the next morning.
But this attack was never delivered, for Foy having at last picked up
the missing brigades, retreated on Villareal during the afternoon,
using St. Pol’s Italians as his rearguard. He says in his dispatch that
he had deduced from Longa’s strange quiescence the idea (quite correct
in itself) that the Spaniards were refraining from pushing him, because
they were hoping that he would linger long enough at Bergara to be cut
off by some other column, coming from Salvatierra on to Tolosa far
in his rear. And Graham’s force had actually been detached for this
very purpose that afternoon--but Giron did not know it, and was really
detained only by the exhaustion of his troops. It was not till evening
that he got a dispatch from Wellington directing him to press hard
upon Foy and delay his march, because an Anglo-Portuguese force was
moving by the Puerto de San Adrian to intercept his retreat[649]. But
Foy, having guessed what plans might be brewing for his discomfiture,
had not only retreated betimes, but ordered Maucune, who was now a
day’s march in front of him with the convoy, to drop the impedimenta
and bring all his fighting force back to Villafranca, to block the
road from Salvatierra until he and his 8,000 men should have got past
the point of danger. This order Maucune executed on the morning of the
24th, turning the convoy into Tolosa, and turning back to hold the
junction of the roads, with one of his brigades in Villafranca town,
and the other thrown forward across to the river Oria to Olaverria and
Beassayn on the south bank. News had by this time come to hand that
the march of a British column from Salvatierra across the hills had
been verified, and that the peril was a real one. Wherefore Foy pressed
his retreat, and sent Maucune orders to hold on at all costs till the
column from Bergara should have passed his rear.
Now Wellington’s orders to Graham to cut in by the Puerto de San Adrian
with the 1st Division, Pack’s and Bradford’s Portuguese, and Anson’s
Light Dragoons, had been issued late on the 22nd, but had only reached
the General and the greater part of his troops on the morning of the
23rd. Of all the column only the two Light Battalions of the King’s
German Legion and Bradford’s Portuguese had turned off that night.
Consequently on the 23rd, the critical day, Graham and the bulk of his
command were toiling up the pass in heavy rain, and had not crossed
the watershed, only Bradford and the two German battalions having
reached the village of Segura. It was not till dawn on the 24th that
Anson’s cavalry and Pack’s Portuguese got to the front; the rest of
the infantry was still far off. Graham then advanced on Villafranca,
and soon came into collision with Maucune, who was already in position
covering the cross-roads. The head of Foy’s column, coming in from the
West, was clearly visible on the other side of the Oria in the act of
passing behind the screen formed by Maucune’s covering force. He had
started from Villareal before dawn, and got clear away before Longa and
Giron were on the move, or able to delay him.
Graham attacked at once, in the hope of driving in Maucune before
Foy could get past. Bradford’s Portuguese, endeavouring to turn the
French flank, pushed to the right; Halkett’s Germans, supported by the
grenadier and light companies of Pack’s brigade, made for Beassayn on
the left wing. Bradford’s leading unit, the 5th Caçadores, attacking
recklessly on unexplored ground, was thrown back at its first assault;
but the Brigadier, extending other battalions farther to his right,
ended by taking the village of Olaverria and pushing his immediate
opponents across the river. The German light battalions carried
Beassayn at their first rush. But Maucune, retiring to a new position
on high ground immediately above Villafranca, continued his resistance,
trying to gain time at all risks. In this he was successful: Foy,
hurrying past his rear, got well forward on the Tolosa road with his
two leading brigades--the other two he dropped behind the town, to
support Maucune or relieve him when he should be driven in.
Owing to the early hour--three in the morning--at which Foy had started
on his retreat from Villareal, the bulk of Giron’s army was never able
to catch him up. Only Longa’s Cantabrians, leading the advance as
usual, came into contact with his rear brigade--St. Pol’s Italians--at
the defile of La Descarga west of Villafranca. Failing to force a
passage by a frontal attack, Longa turned the position; but the delay
permitted St. Pol to get off with small loss and to catch up the rest
of Foy’s column.
By three in the afternoon Graham was beginning to outflank Maucune’s
line about Villafranca, with Bradford’s brigade on his right and
Pack’s on his left, while Longa had come in sight upon the _chaussée_.
Thereupon the French General, having held his ground for the necessary
space of time, made a prompt retreat along the Tolosa road, pursued but
not much harmed by the Portuguese.
This ended a rather unsatisfactory day--the French had lost more men
than the Allies[650], but the trap to catch them had failed completely.
It is clear that if Graham’s column could have crossed the Puerto de
San Adrian twelve hours earlier, or if Giron had pressed Foy hard and
delayed his movements either on the 23rd or on the 24th, the scheme
would have worked. Bad staff work was apparently responsible in some
measure for both of these failures, though the extreme inclemency of
the weather was a secondary cause. Foy’s conduct of the operations on
the 22nd-23rd appears a little rash--he might have been caught but for
his good luck. But till he had picked up the troops from Bilbao, at
noon on the 23rd, he was constrained to wait at Bergara; and after he
had once received them he marched hard, and so escaped, thanks to his
wise precaution in sending Maucune to Villafranca.
After the combat of the morning Graham moved forward a few miles as
far as Ichasondo and neighbouring villages on the Tolosa road, while
Giron came up in the evening, and billeted his army in Villafranca,
Beassayn, and other places on the Oria. As the missing brigades of
the 1st Division appeared that night, there were now some 10,000
Anglo-Portuguese[651] and 16,000 Spaniards[652] massed along the
_chaussée_; Foy, having picked up the garrisons of Tolosa and some
smaller places, and having been joined by a stray brigade from the Army
of the North, had also as many as 16,000 men in hand[653], so that the
opposing forces on both sides had swollen to a considerable strength.
Graham having failed (through no fault of his own) to intercept the
enemy’s retreat at Villafranca, and regarding extreme haste as no
longer necessary, since the scheme had miscarried, set himself to
carry out Wellington’s orders to drive back the enemy to the Bidassoa
without any great hurry. He was much hampered by the fact that Giron’s
army had outmarched its train, and was therefore suffering for want of
supplies, which could not be procured in the mountains of Guipuzcoa.
On the 25th he brought the whole of the allied forces up to Alegria,
half-way to Tolosa, driving out Maucune’s division, which Foy had left
there as a rearguard. It was then discovered that the enemy had taken
up a long and extensive position on each side of Tolosa, and showed no
disposition to give ground. It was clear that he must be driven off by
force.
Foy, as he explains in his dispatch of June 28th[654], had resolved
to make a stand at the junction of roads in Tolosa, because he was
obsessed by a theory (less accurate than that which he had formed as to
Graham’s march two days before) to the effect that King Joseph might
have dispatched part or the whole of his army, by the road which leads
from Yrurzun on the Araquil to Tolosa across the mountains, in order to
transfer it to the lower Bidassoa and the Bayonne road. He was still
ignorant of the full effects of the battle of Vittoria, and having
heard cannonading far to the south-west on the 23rd[655] had jumped to
the conclusion that the main army might be moving up to join him at
Tolosa. As a matter of fact King Joseph _had_ turned a detachment off
the Pampeluna road at Yrurzun--Reille’s two divisions--but they had
been sent not by the more westerly road to Tolosa, but by the Col de
Velate route to Santesteban, on which they travelled fast because they
had no guns or transport.
But to cover the imaginary movement Foy disposed his troops in front
of the junction of roads. Tolosa town lies in a narrow defile, through
which pass the Oria river and the great _chaussée_. It had been
prepared long before for serious defence, as it was one of the chief
halting-places on the great road from Bayonne to Madrid. The old walls
had been strengthened with blockhouses, the gates were palisaded
outside and had guns mounted by them. The town blocks the defile
completely, but is commanded by steep hills on either side.
Foy sent on the great convoy which Maucune had escorted, under charge
of four battalions commanded by General Berlier. The rest of his troops
he disposed for defence. De Conchy’s brigade held the fortified town.
On the south-east Bonté’s brigade and St. Pol’s Italians were placed
on the heights above the Lizarza torrent, a forward position in which
they protected the Pampeluna road. The second brigade of Foy’s own
division was placed on the hill of Jagoz, on the same flank but nearer
the town. On the other or western bank of the Oria Rouget’s brigade
(the troops from Bilbao) were on commanding ground, flanking the town
and blocking two mountain paths which came down on to it from Azpeytia
in the valley of the Uroli. Maucune’s division was in reserve behind
Tolosa, massed on the _chaussée_. As Foy very truly observes in his
dispatch, the position was strong against frontal attack, and could
only be turned by very wide détours by any troops arriving from the
south.
This was as evident to Graham as to Foy, and the British General
prepared for a long day’s work. His intention was to outflank the
position, even though it should take many hours. In the centre the
bulk of the 1st Division, followed by Pack’s Portuguese and Giron’s
Galicians, advanced up the _chaussée_ on the left bank of the river
Oria, and halted a considerable distance from Tolosa. But Longa’s
Cantabrians and Porlier’s small Asturian division were sent off to make
a very circuitous march over the mountains on the right by Alzo and
Gastolu with the object of cutting into the Pampeluna road many miles
east of Tolosa, and then taking the town in the rear. A less wide curve
was made by a column consisting of Bradford’s Portuguese brigade, with
the three Line-battalions of the King’s German Legion in support, who
were also to operate to the east of the _chaussée_ and of the river
Oria, and were directed to cross the Lizarza ravine and carry the hill
behind it, from whence they were to push forward to the Pampeluna road
and then turn inwards against the town. A smaller column, consisting
of one battalion of Pack’s brigade and the light companies of Giron’s
3rd Division, was to make a corresponding movement to the west, and to
endeavour to get on to the hill dominating Tolosa on that side. Nor
was this all: information came to hand that Mendizabal had brought to
Aspeytia what remained of the Biscayan irregulars whom Foy had routed
and dispersed a month back[656]. Graham wrote to beg him to demonstrate
with these bands against the Bayonne _chaussée_ north of Tolosa, and
to get on to that road if possible and block it.
The main column halted while the flanking operations were pursuing
their slow course. The only fighting which took place in the morning
was an attack by Bradford’s brigade on the heights occupied by Bonté,
opposite Aleon and beyond the Lizarza torrent. The French Brigadier
had neglected to guard the passages of the ravine, and allowed the
Portuguese to get on to the ridge of his position without much
difficulty[657]. He then counter-attacked them, first with his own
brigade, then with St. Pol’s Italians also, but was unable to cast them
down from the hill: nor could Bradford get forward. All the hours of
the early afternoon were spent in an indecisive _tiraillade_ on this
front. It is curious to note that both the commanders-in-chief write in
sharp criticism of their subordinates: Foy says that Bonté was careless
and disobeyed orders; Graham that Bradford’s men, after a good start,
fought in a confused and disorderly fashion[658]. On the other flank
the Spanish-Portuguese detachment, sent to try to gain a footing on the
hills to the west of Tolosa, reported that they had come up against an
absolute precipice, and could do nothing.
So matters wore on till about six o’clock in the afternoon, when
distant firing in the rear of the French position announced that both
Longa on the right and Mendizabal on the left were in touch with
the enemy. Graham then ordered a general attack, the three German
Line-battalions, hitherto in reserve behind Bradford, being ordered
to strike at the Pampeluna road; meanwhile the main column, which
had so long waited opposite Tolosa, deployed the two light German
battalions in its front, with the Guards Brigade and Giron’s 3rd
Division supporting, and advanced against the south face of the town.
The detachment to the extreme left, which had failed to get up the
precipices in its front, was directed to turn inward to attack the west
side of Tolosa.
These orders brought on very heavy fighting, for Foy had held his
forward positions so long that he had great difficulty in withdrawing
his troops from them, when he found that he was outflanked, and
even attacked in the rear. At the south end of the field, along the
_chaussée_, the allied attack failed entirely, the strength of the
fortifications of the town having been under-estimated. When the
leading battalion (1st Light Battalion K.G.L.) approached the gate,
it came into a cross-fire from the blockhouses, and still heavier
frontal musketry from the well-lined ramparts, which proved wholly
inaccessible. Scaling ladders would have been required to mount them.
The line broke, but the men did not retire, but threw themselves down
behind walls and in ditches and tried to answer the fire from such
cover as they could find. Many took refuge in the courtyard of a
convent not far outside the Vittoria gate, from which their colonel,
Ompteda, led out a second assault, which melted away under the fire
as the first had done. In truth, the attempt was a misjudged one
on Graham’s part--possibly his bad eyesight had failed to note the
strength of the defences. The 1st Light Battalion lost five officers
and 58 men killed and wounded in a quarter of an hour[659], and had to
keep under shelter as best it could; the supporting troops were halted
and ordered to lie down, while guns were brought up from the rear to
batter the gate. This should obviously have been done before, and not
after, the assault. The check was unnecessary, as was shown a little
later when the artillery smashed the gate by a few shots, and cleared
the neighbouring walls.
Meanwhile there had been fierce fighting on the eastern side
of the town, where Bradford’s Portuguese, and the three German
line-battalions, with Longa’s men on their northern flank, had fallen
upon the three French brigades lying outside the town. Bonté’s and St.
Pol’s battalions, still frontally engaged against Bradford, suddenly
realized the danger of their position, when the Germans attacked their
left flank, and Longa appeared almost in their rear. They retreated
in haste towards Tolosa, and got jammed outside the Pampeluna gate,
which had been blocked for defence and could not readily be entered.
To avoid being crushed against the walls, they massed themselves for
a counter-stroke, and thrusting back the Germans for a moment, raced
along the river-bank, past the foot of the ramparts, till they got
under the cover of Foy’s second brigade on the hill of Jagoz, and
escaped beyond the north end of the town. The Germans, though in
great disorder, made an attack on the Pampeluna gate, which failed
for the same reason that had wrecked that on the Vittoria gate--the
impossibility of escalading a well-defended rampart.
Meanwhile there was heavy skirmishing going on to the north-west of
Tolosa: Mendizabal’s bands had appeared on the mountain road from
Aspeytia, and had engaged Rouget’s brigade, which was covering Foy’s
right flank. The French general’s dispatch confesses that the troops
from the Bilbao garrison, which included some conscript battalions
from the Bayonne reserve, behaved badly, lost ground, and had to be
rallied by their general’s personal exertions. They were apparently
thrown into a panic by an attack delivered on their flank, by the small
Spanish-Portuguese detachment which Graham had sent out on his left: it
had worked up by the narrow space between the walls of Tolosa and the
precipice above, and came up very opportunely to aid Mendizabal. Rouget
held on till dark, but with difficulty, and the knowledge that his
route of retreat was threatened added to Foy’s anxiety, for Longa was
also pushing behind the town on the other side. Accordingly he ordered
Deconchy’s brigade to evacuate Tolosa at once, just as the sun was
setting, and prepared for a general retreat.
If the order had been given half an hour later, the garrison of Tolosa
would probably have been captured whole, for Graham’s guns had just
blown the defences of the Vittoria gate to pieces, and the German
light battalions burst in with ease at the point where they had been
checked before. There was some confused fighting in the streets, but
the French got off with no great loss under cover of the darkness, and
fell in with the rear of their main column, which went off down the
_chaussée_ at great speed. Mendizabal made some prisoners from Rouget’s
brigade, as it fell back to join the rest across the slopes, and Longa
caught some fugitives on the other flank[660].
Foy says that he lost some 400 men in the fight, which would seem a
low estimate, as the Allies could show 200 prisoners, and Bonté’s
and Rouget’s brigades had been very roughly handled. Graham reports
58 killed, 316 wounded, and 45 missing--the last all from Bradford’s
brigade. Of the Spaniards Longa and Mendizabal only were engaged:
Giron’s report (as so often occurs with Spanish documents) gives no
figures, only remarking that some of Longa’s 1st battalion of Iberia
‘perished by reason of their rash courage, but had a great share in
deciding the day’--presumably by pushing far ahead in the turning
movement which caused Foy to order a general retreat. If we allow 200
Spanish killed and wounded, we shall probably not be far out of our
reckoning. Had Graham withheld his unlucky assault on the Vittoria gate
till it had been well battered, and trusted entirely to his turning
movements, he would have got off with a much smaller casualty list. His
original design of manœuvring Foy out of Tolosa was the right game,
considering the strength of the position. The French general could
plead in defence of his risky tactics that he had held up a superior
force for a whole day--but at that particular moment time did not
happen to matter--as Graham’s leisurely pursuit on the subsequent days
sufficiently shows. He was only set on getting Foy across the Bidassoa;
and nothing in the general course of the campaign depended on whether
he did so a day sooner or a day later. On the other hand, by standing
too long at Tolosa Foy nearly lost three brigades, and might indeed
have lost his whole force.
The remainder of this side-campaign displays none of the interest
of its four first days. Foy retired to Andoain on the night of the
combat of Tolosa, where he was joined by the battalions of the
40th and 101st under General Berlier, which had escorted Maucune’s
convoy to the frontier, and by the 62nd and a Spanish ‘Juramentado’
regiment withdrawn from Biscay garrisons. This, despite of his recent
losses, gave him a force of 16,000 infantry, 400 sabres, and 10 guns.
Graham did not press him, his troops being much fatigued: only the
indefatigable Longa appeared with his Cantabrians in front of the
position. On the 27th the whole French force retired unmolested to
Hernani.
It was of course all-important to Foy to know what were the situation
and intentions of the King. Nothing could be heard of the main army at
Andoain or Hernani, so he detached Berlier’s brigade to seek for news
in the Bastan, along the upper Bidassoa. On the 28th Berlier discovered
Reille and two divisions of the Army of Portugal at Vera. They were in
bad order, without guns and much under strength, though stragglers were
rejoining in considerable numbers. Reille had been as ignorant of Foy’s
whereabouts as Foy had been of that of the main army. He was rejoiced
to hear that all the Biscay garrisons had been saved, and that there
was a solid force ready to co-operate with him in the defence of the
line of the Bidassoa. His own troops were not yet fit for fighting.
Accordingly he sent Foy orders to evacuate Hernani and come back to
the frontier, though he need not actually cross the Bidassoa unless
he were compelled to do so. By stopping at Oyarzun he could keep up
communication with St. Sebastian, which must be needing attention.
The condition of that fortress, indeed, had already been troubling the
mind of Foy on his last day of independent command. It lay so near the
French border, and had been for years so far from any enemy--Guipuzcoan
guerrilleros excepted--that it had been much neglected. When General
Rey, named as Governor by King Joseph two days before the battle of
Vittoria, arrived with orders to put it in a state of defence, he
found it garrisoned only by 500 gendarmes, a battalion of recruits on
the way to join the 120th Line, and two weak companies of pioneers
and sappers--1,200 men in all. The stores of food were low, the
glacis was cumbered with huts and sheds, there was no provision of
gabions, fascines, or timber. Moreover, the town was full of Spanish
and French fugitives who had preceded the King on his retreat--there
were (it is said) as many as 7,000 of them, lingering in Spain till
the last moment, in the hope that Wellington might be stopped on the
Ebro. The news of Vittoria arrived on the 23rd, and caused hopeless
consternation--the place was not ready to stand a siege--the garrison
so small that it could not even spare a battalion to escort the
tiresome mass of refugees to Bayonne. Rey began in feverish haste to
clear the glacis, palisade the outworks, and rearrange the cannons
on the walls, but he had too few hands for work, and was in a state
resembling despair when on the 28th Foy turned up for a flying visit,
saw and acknowledged the nakedness of the land, and promised to do all
that he could to help--though it was less than the Governor required.
He took away the old garrison--the recruits were not too trustworthy,
the gendarmes not siege troops: to replace them he threw in the whole
of Deconchy’s brigade--four battalions, about 2,000 infantry--and all
the gunners that he could spare. As the garrison of Guetaria, 450
strong, escaped by sea to San Sebastian two days later, and a number
of stragglers dropped into the place before the siege began, the gross
total of the garrison was raised to some 3,000 men. Rey asked for
4,000, but Foy would not grant him another battalion--and was justified
by the course of the siege, for the place was very small and, if it
could be held at all, was defensible by the lesser number. The only
doubt was whether there would be time to get it in order before the
Allies appeared[661]. But perhaps the best service that Foy did for Rey
was that he removed, at two hours’ notice, the whole mass of refugees.
They marched, much lamenting, for Bayonne, under the escort of the old
outgoing garrison. On the 29th Reille ordered Foy to evacuate Oyarzun
and fall back to the Bidassoa, and before he had been gone three hours
Mendizabal’s Guipuzcoan irregulars, 3,000 strong, appeared in front
of the fortress and cut its communication with France. They were an
unorganized band, without artillery, but effective enough for stopping
the highway.
Graham, seeing that the French had escaped him, and had a clear retreat
to the frontier, had made no serious attempt to press them. He was
quite content that they should go at their own pace, and was determined
not to harass the 1st Division, who, as he wrote to Wellington, were in
a state of great exhaustion. To have hurried Foy out of Spain two days
earlier would have cost men, and would have had no beneficial effect
on the general course of the campaign; for Wellington and the main
army were far away in Navarre, and if Graham had reached the Bidassoa
on the 26th or 28th, with his own and Giron’s 25,000 men, they could
have done nothing, since they had in front of them the fortress of
Bayonne, with Foy’s 16,000 men, the 7,000 whom Reille had brought up
from Santesteban, and the remains of the general reserve--for though
Rouget’s battalions and other detachments had been lent from Bayonne
already, there were still a few thousand men in hand. In all, Reille
would have had an army as large as Graham’s own, and though some of
it was rather demoralized, the fortress, and the strong positions in
front of it along the Bidassoa, Nive, and Nivelle, counterbalanced
this disadvantage. If Wellington had chosen to march on Bayonne with
his main body, the day after Vittoria, the problem would have been a
very different one. But since he had preferred to move in pursuit first
of King Joseph and then of Clausel, there was nothing more which the
commander of a detached corps like that of Graham could accomplish.
He did all that his chief required of him, when he pushed Foy out of
Spain and laid siege to St. Sebastian. That the project for cutting off
the French detachments at Villafranca came to nothing was no fault of
Graham’s--being due partly to bad staff-work at Head-Quarters, partly
to the chances of rough weather, and partly to Foy’s laudable caution
and celerity.
The side-show in Guipuzcoa came to a tame end twenty-four hours after
the blockade of St. Sebastian had been formed. On the 30th Reille
ordered all the troops on the south bank of the lower Bidassoa to
retire into France. Foy’s and Maucune’s divisions crossed the bridge
of Behobie, under the protection of four battalions of the Bayonne
reserve, which remained on the heights by the hermitage of St. Marcial,
and marched to Urogne and other villages down-stream. Lamartinière’s
division remained at Vera, Fririon’s (late Sarrut’s) at Hendaye.
Late on the same afternoon the advance-guard of Graham’s army came
in sight of the Bidassoa--it consisted as usual of Longa’s untiring
Cantabrians only, the 1st Division and the Portuguese having been
halted near St. Sebastian, the bulk of the Galicians at Hernani and
Renteria. Longa, keeping to the coast, surprised and captured the
French garrison of Passages (150 men), which was too late in obeying
Reille’s order to retreat on France while the bridge of Behobie was
still available. He then came in contact with the covering force on
the heights of San Marcial[662], which was at the same time menaced by
Castañon with a brigade of the 4th Galician Division, who had come up
the high road from Renteria.
The French brigadier evacuated the position at once. Reille had told
him that he was only placed there to protect the retreat of Foy. He
crossed the Bidassoa, leaving only a detachment of sixty men in the
_tête de pont_ which covered the south or Spanish end of the bridge of
Behobie; it consisted of a stone blockhouse surrounded with palisades.
The further or French end of the long bridge was blocked by the
fortified village of Hendaye.
Next morning Graham resolved that the _tête de pont_ must be taken
or destroyed, so that the enemy should have no open road by which he
might return to Spain. While some Spanish infantry exchanged a vague
fusillade across the river with the French in Hendaye, ten guns[663]
were turned on the blockhouse. The garrison tried to blow it up and to
retreat, but their mine failed, their commanding-officer was killed,
and they were about to surrender when Foy sent two fresh companies
over the bridge to bring them off. This was done, at the cost of four
officers and 64 men, killed and wounded while crossing the much-exposed
bridge. Foy then ordered the structure to be set on fire; and as its
floor was composed of wood this was easily done: the four arches
nearest France were burnt out by the following morning (July 1).
This evacuation, without any attempt at defence, of the bridgehead
on the Bidassoa angered the Minister of War at Paris, and still
more Napoleon, when the news reached him at Wittenberg nine days
later. Foy and Reille had men enough to have held the heights of San
Marcial, against anything short of an attack by the whole of Graham’s
and Giron’s infantry. And it is certain that Graham would not have
delivered any such assault, but would have halted in front of them,
and waited for orders from Wellington. The Emperor, who--as we shall
presently see--was set on a counter-offensive from the moment when the
news of Vittoria reached him, was wild with wrath at the abandonment of
the foothold in Spain. ‘It was insane,’ he wrote to Clarke, ‘to recross
the Bidassoa: they all show themselves as timid as women[664].’
But whether it would have been possible for the French to hold the
Irun-Behobie-San Marcial _tête de pont_, when Wellington had come up
in person from the south, is another matter. Probably he would have
decided that the enemy must be thrust back across the Bidassoa, before
he dared to sit down to beleaguer San Sebastian. And undoubtedly he
had men enough to carry out that operation. But this was no excuse for
Reille’s evacuation of the position, one of the highest strategical
value, before he was compelled to do so by force. The fact was that
Reille, like most of the other French generals, was demoralized at the
moment by the recent disaster of Vittoria, and had lost confidence both
in himself and in his troops.
SECTION XXXVII: CHAPTER III
THE EAST COAST. MURRAY AT TARRAGONA
[N.B.--FOR MAP OF CATALONIA AND PLAN OF TARRAGONA SEE VOL. IV, PP. 538
AND 524]
There are certain episodes of the Peninsular War which the British
historian has to narrate with a feeling of some humiliation, but
which have to be set forth in full detail, if only for the purpose of
illustrating the manifold difficulties with which Wellington had to
cope. Of these by far the most distressing is the story of General Sir
John Murray at Tarragona.
It will be remembered that a diversion on the East Coast formed an
essential part of Wellington’s great scheme for the expulsion of the
French from Spain, and that he had devoted much care to instructing
Murray in the manner in which it was to be carried out. If sufficient
shipping to embark 10,000 men could be procured at Alicante, the bulk
of the Anglo-Sicilian army was to be transported to Catalonia, and to
strike at Tarragona, getting what aid it could from the local Spanish
forces under the Captain-General Copons. If, as was to be expected,
Suchet should fly northward from Valencia with all his available
field-army, to rescue Tarragona, the two Spanish units in the kingdom
of Murcia, Elio’s and Del Parque’s armies, were to take the offensive
against the detachments which the French Marshal would have to leave
behind him to hold down his southern conquests. Murray might fail in
Catalonia, if Suchet were rapid and lucky in his combinations; but in
that case Elio and Del Parque ought to get possession of the city of
Valencia and all its fertile plainland. Or, on the other hand, Suchet
might be loth to abandon his advanced position, might hold it in force,
and might order Decaen and the Army of Catalonia to make head against
the Anglo-Sicilian expeditionary force. If this should happen, the
Spanish generals might be held in check, but Murray would have a free
hand at Tarragona. With the aid of Copons he ought to be able to take
the place, and to throw all the French occupation of Catalonia into
disorder. In the end, Suchet would have to evacuate Valencia, in order
to save Decaen and the Catalan garrisons. At the worst the expedition
of the Anglo-Sicilian army ought at least to have the effect of giving
Suchet so much to think about, that he would have no attention to spare
for the perils of King Joseph and the fate of Castile.
This last minimum result was all that was achieved. Suchet, it is true,
had an anxious time during the critical days of Wellington’s march
to Vittoria, and sent no help to the King. But neither was Tarragona
taken by the Anglo-Sicilians, nor Valencia by the armies of Elio and
Del Parque. Both of those forces endured humiliating checks, from an
enemy over whom they had every strategical advantage. And the story
of Murray’s operations about Tarragona is not the story of an honest
and excusable failure, but one which provokes bitter irritation over
the doings of a British general who showed himself not only timid and
incompetent, but shifty, mendacious, and treacherous to his allies.
There is nothing in the whole history of the Peninsular War which
produces such an unpleasant impression as the facts revealed by the
minutes of Murray’s court-martial, supplemented by certain documents
which ought to have been forthcoming at that trial, but unfortunately
were not.
But to proceed to the details of this unhappy campaign. In obedience
to Wellington’s orders, Murray began to draw his army in to Alicante
between the 25th and 27th of May, the forward positions which the
Anglo-Sicilians had held being handed over to Elio’s troops, while
those of Del Parque, who had at last been brought up from the borders
of Andalusia, took post on Elio’s left, about Yecla and Chinchilla.
Both these armies were to move forward, as soon as Suchet should be
detected in the act of detaching divisions northward to deal with
Murray’s oncoming invasion. The appearance of the Spaniards on ground
hitherto held by British outposts gave the Marshal warning that some
new plan was developing. A raid by sea was an obvious possibility, but
he could not tell whether it might not be directed on a point as far
south as Valencia or as far north as Rosas. Till Murray showed his
hand only precautionary movements could be made. Suchet was at this
moment stronger than he had been at the time of the battle of Castalla.
Warned of his danger by the results of that fight, he had strengthened
his troops on the littoral at the expense of the garrisons inland.
Severoli’s Italian division had been ordered down from Saragossa to
Valencia[665]. This heavy draft on the northern section of his army was
rendered possible by the fact that Clausel had come far forward into
Aragon in pursuit of Mina, so that Saragossa and its region could be
held with smaller numbers than usual. The Spanish irregular forces in
this direction had full occupation found for them, by the raid of the
Army of Portugal into their sphere of operations. And this suited well
with Wellington’s general plan--the more that French troops were drawn
down to the Mediterranean, the less would there be of them available
for service in Castile, when his own blow came to be delivered.
Murray had at his disposal in the harbour of Alicante transports
sufficient to carry much more than the force of 10,000 men, which
Wellington had named as the minimum with which a raid on Catalonia
might be attempted. He was able to embark the whole of his own army,
with the exception of the regiment of Sicilian cavalry (he was short of
horse-transports), and in addition nearly the whole of Whittingham’s
Spaniards--all indeed save one battalion[666] and the attached
squadrons. This made up a force of 14,000 infantry, 800 cavalry, and
800 artillery, with 24 field-guns and the battering train which had
been sent round from Portugal. The British contingent was a little
stronger than at the time of the battle of Castalla, for if one
battalion of the King’s German Legion had been sent back to Sicily
since that fight, Wellington had permitted Murray to draw in the
2/67th, long in garrison at Cartagena, and had sent him a Portuguese
and a British company of artillery to man his battering train[667].
Moreover, two squadrons of Brunswick Hussars had arrived direct from
England.
The whole force, having been swiftly embarked at Alicante, sailed on
May 31st; and being favoured with a strong south-west wind came in
sight of the high-lying Tarragona on June 2nd. The fleet of transports
ran into the bay sheltered by Cape Salou, eight miles south of its
goal. There would have been no object in risking a more difficult
disembarkation on the long open beaches at the mouth of the Francoli
river, closer to Tarragona. Before landing his main body Murray shipped
off two battalions (2/67th and De Roll-Dillon) under Colonel Prevost,
to seize the defile of the Col de Balaguer, the point twenty miles to
the south of Tarragona where the coast-road from Tortosa curves round
a steep headland between a precipice and the sea. There was a small
French fort, San Felipe de Balaguer, blocking the Col, and Prevost was
ordered to take it if he could. But its fall was not an absolutely
essential condition to the success of the siege, for the road could be
cut, blasted away, or blocked with entrenchments north of the fort, at
several points where a thousand men could stop a whole army corps. It
was desirable to take this precaution, because the Col de Balaguer road
was the only route by which succours coming from Valencia could reach
the plain of Tarragona, without taking an immense détour inland, by
paths impracticable for artillery.
On hearing of the arrival of the British fleet off Cape Salou, General
Copons, Captain-General of Catalonia, rode down from his head-quarters
at Reus, ten miles away, to report to Murray that he had received
Wellington’s instructions, and had done his best to carry them out. The
Spanish Army of Catalonia consisted of no more than 15,000 men, even
after it had received the two battalions which Wellington had sent to
it by sea during the winter[668]. Over 5,500 of them were locked up
in garrisons in the interior; many of these were untrained recruits,
and none were available for the field. Of the remainder, Copons had
brought down twelve battalions to the neighbourhood of Tarragona,
leaving only two under his second-in-command, Eroles, to watch the
French garrisons in the north[669]. He had also with him his handful
of cavalry--370 sabres; field-guns the army had none. Altogether there
were 7,000 men ready to join Murray at once: 1,500 more might be
brought in, if the French of the northern garrisons should move down
to join General Decaen at Barcelona. Copons had certainly done all
that was in his power to aid Wellington’s scheme. Murray asked him to
lend two battalions to join the brigade that was to strike at Fort San
Felipe and to block the Col de Balaguer, and to arrange the rest so as
to cover at a distance the disembarkation of the Anglo-Sicilian army.
Copons consented, and on the next morning the whole force came ashore,
Prevost’s brigade in a creek near the Col de Balaguer, where it found
the two Spanish battalions already arrived, the rest of the army at
Salou Bay. The expeditionary force was little cumbered with transport,
and had but a small allowance of horses and mules: the infantry and
some of the field-guns with the greater part of the cavalry were ashore
by the early afternoon, and marched that same night on Tarragona,
which was invested from sea to sea, Mackenzie and Adam taking up their
position by the mouth of the Francoli, Clinton occupying the Olivo
heights, and Whittingham extending down to the shore east of the city.
The French garrison kept quiet--being of no strength sufficient to
justify the showing of a man outside the walls.
General Bertoletti had with him two battalions, one French and one
Italian[670], a company of Juramentados, two companies of artillery,
and the armed crews of three small vessels which were blockaded in the
port--they were turned on to act as auxiliary gunners. The whole did
not exceed 1,600 men. This was an entirely inadequate force, and the
defences were in an unsatisfactory condition. After Suchet had captured
the city in 1811, he had no intention of leaving locked up behind him
a garrison of the size required for such a large fortress. The outer
enceinte had been left in the condition of ruin consequent on the
siege[671], and only the Upper City on its high cliff was occupied.
Its western front, where the breaches had been, was repaired; but the
Lower City and its fortifications remained practically untouched. All
that had been done was to patch up two isolated strong-points, the
so-called Fort Royal and Bastion of St. Carlos. These had been cut off
from the mass of the ruins, and closed in at the rear: each was armed
with one gun. The object of this was merely to prevent British ships
from entering Tarragona roadstead and mooring there. These two outlying
posts, dangerously remote from the city above, were held by no more
than a company each. Bertoletti thought for a moment of abandoning
them, since he dared not detach reinforcements from his inadequate
garrison, and his communication with the forts was across half a
mile of exposed ground: nothing was more likely than that the enemy
would slip detachments among the ruined houses and walls of the Lower
City, and dig himself in between the Upper City and the weak outlying
posts, which must inevitably fall. But reflecting on the advantage of
keeping the harbour unusable, he resolved to hold on to them till the
last minute. And his policy turned out to be justified, for had they
been evacuated, even the torpid and timorous Murray could hardly have
avoided the temptation of closing in on the Upper City, which was in
no condition to hold out for the space of nine days during which the
Anglo-Sicilian army lay in front of it.
From the first moment of his landing Murray seems to have been obsessed
with the idea that every disposable French soldier in Catalonia
and Valencia would be on his back within a very few days. As his
evidence during his court martial shows, he had a notion that Suchet
would practically evacuate Valencia, and march against him with
three-quarters of his available men, while at the same time Decaen
would abandon all Catalonia save the largest towns and bring an even
greater force to Tarragona from the north. He had made elaborate,
and in part correct, calculations as to the gross force of the two
French armies, by which he made out that the enemy might conceivably
concentrate 25,000 men against him. For the fact that such a force
would have to be scraped together from very remote points, between
which communication must be very difficult, he made insufficient
allowance. Still less did he calculate out the handicap on the enemy
caused by the fact that Suchet and Decaen were out of touch with each
other, and would obviously look upon the problem presented to them from
different points of view,--all the former’s action being influenced
by his wish to hold on to Valencia, all the latter’s by his anxiety
not to have his communication with France cut off. Murray assumed that
all roads marked on his map would be practicable to the enemy, that
Suchet’s information would always be correct, that his troops would
march every day the possible maximum, and that they would have no
difficulties concerned with food, water, or weather. Every conceivable
hazard of war was to fall luckily for the enemy, unluckily for himself.
At his trial in 1814 he explained that he was never sanguine of
success, and that he did not expect when he sailed that he could take
Tarragona[672]. He chose to regard himself as the blind and unwilling
instrument of Wellington’s orders, which he would carry out, so far as
he could, with an expectation that they would lead to failure. And he
observed that the dominating motive which influenced all his doings
was that Wellington had written that ‘he would forgive everything
excepting that the corps should be beaten or dispersed’[673]. Deducing
from this phrase the general policy that he must pursue, Murray came to
the conclusion ‘the first principle is the army’s safety’. He started
intending to subordinate all chances of success to the remotest risk
of defeat. His mind obsessed with this miserable prepossession, he
was, in fact, defeated before he had ever set sail. Yet he hid his
resolve from his generals, even from the senior officer, Clinton, who
would have succeeded to the command if he had fallen sick or received a
chance bullet. They all complained that he never gave them any hint of
what were his intentions, or showed them Wellington’s orders which it
was his duty to carry out. ‘We were totally uninformed,’ said Clinton
at the court martial, ‘of the instructions which the Commander of the
forces might have for his guidance[674]. The first that we knew of
these instructions of the Commander of the forces, and then partially
only, was when he produced them at a Council of War on June 17th,’
after the siege of Tarragona was over. Clinton, Mackenzie, and Adam,
the three commanders of units, were all very confident in their men:
‘they were in the highest state of discipline and equipment[675],’
said Mackenzie, and spoiling for a fight. Hence their entire amazement
as they discovered that Murray was intending to avoid all offensive
operations: it even led to an infraction of discipline, when Mackenzie,
Adam, and General Donkin[676] called together on their commander to
urge on him a more active policy[677], and were chased out of the
room with the words ‘it will not do’--a decision which, as Mackenzie
remarked, ‘was unanswerable’. For any further urging of the point would
have amounted to military disobedience. From the moment when the army
landed at Cape Salou on June 3rd, down to the day of its ignominious
flight on June 12th, Murray was thinking of nothing but horrible
possibilities--he was what the French call a _catastrophard_.
Probably his most disastrous resolve of all was that which he came to
when first he surveyed Tarragona, on the evening of his disembarkation.
Though he noted the half-ruinous condition of the two outworks,
on which the enemy was working to the last moment, their isolated
position, and the fact that they were surrounded by all sorts of
cover easily to be seized, he resolved to lay formal siege to them,
as if they were the solid front of a regular line of defence. As
Napier remarks with perfect good sense, they should have been dealt
with as Wellington dealt with the Redoute Renaud at Rodrigo, or Hill
with the forts of Almaraz, which were far more formidable works than
the Fuerte Real or San Carlos[678]. They should have been taken by
force, escaladed, on the night of the formation of the blockade.
And being incomplete, ill-flanked, and without palisades or ditch,
and under-manned, they undoubtedly could have been rushed. But
Murray, instead of trying to gain time for the prompt attack on the
main fortress and its badly-stopped breaches, proceeded to lay out
approaches and commence batteries on the low ground by the mouth of
the Francoli river, with the object of reducing the two outworks by
regular operations. On June 4th one battery was commenced near the sea,
600 yards from San Carlos, another farther inland, 900 yards from the
Fuerte Real. Their construction was covered by a naval bombardment:
Admiral Hallowell moved into the roadstead a brig, three bomb-vessels,
and two gunboats, which shelled the Upper City freely, in order to
distract the attention of the garrison from the work on the batteries
by the Francoli. The fire was kept up from dusk till dawn on the
4th-5th, and repeated on the 6th-7th during the same hours--throughout
the day the workers in the trenches kept low. This bombardment had
the desired result of permitting the batteries to be finished without
molestation, but inflicted no great damage on the city, though it set
fire to some houses, and caused casualties both among the garrison and
the inhabitants. But unaimed night-fire had of course no effect on the
walls of the enceinte.
By dawn on the 6th the two batteries were ready and opened on the
outworks with six guns: they kept up the fire all day, and with some
effect, suffering themselves very little from the distant counter-fire
of the Upper City. At dark, according to the French narrative of the
defence, parties of skirmishers came out of the trenches, took cover
in the ruins of the lower city and kept up a persistent _tiraillade_
against the outworks[679]. It was expected that they would try to rush
them at some chosen hour--and this would undoubtedly have been the
right policy. But nothing of the kind happened; the British parties
withdrew at dawn, and Bertoletti began to ask himself whether the whole
of these feeble operations were not a mere demonstration, intended
to draw the French armies of Valencia and Catalonia toward Tarragona,
while the real blow was being delivered in some other quarter.
During the second night of naval bombardment, that of the 6th-7th,
Murray had ordered a third breaching battery to be built, near the
bridge of the Francoli, 300 yards closer to the Fuerte Real than the
original battery, No. 2. On the morning of the 7th all three batteries
were hard at work, and with good effect; the gorge of the Fuerte Real
was blown to bits by flank fire from the new battery, its one gun
silenced, its parapet levelled for a long space: the garrison had
to keep under cover. At dusk Major Thackeray, the senior engineer
of the army, reported that the work could be stormed at any moment.
According to Murray’s narrative Thackeray made at the same moment the
curious comment, that if the fort were escaladed and occupied, the
ground gained would be of no immediate use for the attack on the Upper
City, whose most accessible front--the bastions of San Juan and San
Pablo--might be much more easily battered from the slopes of the Olivo
hill, farther inland, than from the low-lying site of the Fuerte Real.
To storm the outworks would cost men--to build new advanced batteries
on or near them would cost many more, since they were completely
commanded by the Upper City. ‘As the state of the fort was now such
that it could be taken whenever convenient,’ wrote Murray, ‘I consented
to defer the attack, and directed that the fire upon it should continue
only sufficiently to prevent its being re-established[680].’
The decision seems of more than doubtful wisdom. It was from ground
near the Fuerte Real that Suchet had pushed forward his approaches
in the siege of 1811, and his batteries in the lower town had proved
effective. To resolve, after four days spent on battering the outworks,
that it was better to attack from a new front, was equivalent to
sacrificing the whole of the exertions of those four days, and starting
the siege anew. But Murray accepted Thackeray’s scheme, though the
engineer warned him that he should require fourteen days more of open
trenches to reduce the Upper City. This would relegate the crisis of
the final assault to July 21st, and meanwhile Suchet and Decaen would
have had three weeks to concentrate, instead of one. The time-problem
looked very unsatisfactory.
However the new plan was taken up--more artillery and engineer-stores
and more guns were landed on the beach west of the mouth of the
Francoli, as were also the remainder of the horses of the cavalry and
the field-guns. The disembarkation was not always easy, as the surf
on the beach grew dangerous whenever the wind was high. On several
days communication with the shore had to be given up for many hours
on end. Murray complained that the foreign troops worked slowly and
unwillingly, and that he had to replace them with British parties, in
order to get up the ammunition from the boats to the batteries[681].
However, progress was made, and in the four days between the 7th and
the 10th of June two heavy batteries were thrown up on the high-lying
slopes of the Olivo hill, in positions from which they could bring an
enfilading as well as a frontal fire to bear upon the three corner
bastions of the Upper City, including the roughly repaired breaches in
the curtain, by which Suchet had made his entry in 1811. On the 9th and
again on the 10th Admiral Hallowell sent his available vessels in-shore
to resume the bombardment; and late on the latter day the batteries
on the Olivo began their fire, which they continued on the following
morning: it was very effective, all the attacked bastions and the
curtain between them being much damaged. Meanwhile the old batteries
by the Francoli overwhelmed the Fuerte Real and San Carlos forts with
renewed fire, destroying such repairs as the garrisons had been able to
carry out. The Governor, Bertoletti, made up his mind that there would
be a general assault both on the forts and on the Upper City on the
night of the 11th, and made such preparations as he could to receive
it. But the prospect was gloomy--the garrison was worn out, the walls
were crumbling, and there seemed no hope of succour from without.
Meanwhile, harassed as the Governor might be, Murray was in an even
greater state of depression. He had never believed, as he acknowledged
at his court martial, that he could succeed. The only gleam of hope
which ever entered his mind was when on the morning of the 8th he
received news that the fort of Balaguer had been taken, so that the
road by which Suchet could most easily arrive was completely blocked.
At any rate there would be a day or two gained, since the army of
Valencia would have to take difficult and circuitous roads, instead of
a short and direct one, when it came up.
The siege of the Fort of San Felipe de Balaguer had lasted four days.
The place was small, only sixty yards square; it mounted twelve
guns, but was held by only a single company. It was in a rocky and
inaccessible position, and when Colonel Prevost had landed with his
brigade, and had reconnoitred the place on the 3rd, he found that it
must be battered by heavy guns. Shelling it with field pieces proved
unavailing. Accordingly aid was sought from the fleet, and with great
difficulty the sailors of the _Invincible_ got two 12-pounders and a
howitzer ashore, to a spot 700 yards from the fort. But the ground was
so steep and rocky that it was difficult to construct a battery, and
when the fire was opened it proved not very effective. It was only when
more guns had been hoisted up the rocks, to a position only 300 yards
from the fort, that anything was accomplished. On the evening of the
7th a lucky bomb from a mortar exploded one of the French magazines,
and the commandant surrendered[682]. It was thought that he might have
held out longer, as his main magazine was intact--but nearly a third
of his garrison of 150 men had been hurt, and their morale was low.
With the capture of Fort San Felipe the coast road became absolutely
blocked to any troops coming from Suchet’s direction, and Murray, as
he confessed, ‘entertained a ray of hope, not so much of the capture
of Tarragona itself, but that the expedition might prove, as Lord
Wellington wished it to prove, an effective diversion in favour of the
allied army in Valencia[683].’ It was this success, as he explained,
which encouraged him to remain two days longer in front of Tarragona
than he would otherwise have done, since the loss of the coast-road
would add two marches to the distance which Suchet had to cover in
order to join Decaen.
For already this downhearted general was obsessed with panic fears
that the enemy might be upon him at any moment. He was gleaning in
every rumour of the near approach of Suchet and Decaen, however
incredible. On the 4th he had received an express from Prevost, with a
message that the Marshal had reached Tortosa and might be at the Col de
Balaguer on the 5th. On the 7th there was a report that a heavy French
column was at Amposta, near the mouth of the Ebro, marching north. And
on the other side Decaen was said to be in movement--‘Could I ever
have expected,’ said Murray, a year later, ‘that his army would not be
united, that his movable column would have remained divided at Gerona,
Figueras, and Barcelona[684]?’ Accordingly he wrote that night to
Wellington, ‘I am much afraid we have undertaken more than we are able
to perform. But to execute your Lordship’s orders I shall persevere
as long as prudence will permit. I have as yet no certain information
of Suchet’s movements, nor of Decaen to the eastward. But there are
reports of both, and if they prove true, in five or six days I may be
attacked by a force infinitely superior, without the hope of a retreat
in case of misfortune. I calculate that Suchet can bring into the field
24,000 or 25,000 men without difficulty[685].’ There is not a thought
in Murray’s brain of the chance that one of the enemy’s columns might
be late, and that it might be possible from his central position to
fall upon the other, with his own forces and those of Copons united.
As a matter of fact things were working out most favourably for him.
Suchet had seen the great transport-fleet pass the coast of Valencia
on the 31st May; but he was wholly in doubt whether the expedition
might be intending to strike at Tortosa or Tarragona, at Barcelona
or Rosas. The Marshal had to make up his mind to act, before he knew
his enemy’s objective or his exact numbers. After many searchings of
heart he resolved to keep the bulk of his forces in the kingdom of
Valencia, which he was most unwilling to give up, and to march with
a column of moderate strength to reinforce the Army of Catalonia. He
left Harispe in command in the South, with his own division, that of
Habert, Severoli’s Italians, and the bulk of his cavalry, and resolved
to move on Tortosa with Musnier’s division, his hussar regiment,
three batteries of artillery, and an improvised brigade under General
Pannetier, composed of four battalions borrowed some time back from the
Army of Catalonia, one battalion of his own, and an odd squadron of
Westphalian light horse belonging to the Army of the Centre. The whole
made up about 8,000 men[686], a force so weak that it was clear that
he dared not attack Murray till he should be joined by the troops of
Decaen. Pannetier’s brigade had a long start, as it was about Castellon
and Segorbe when the order to march arrived: it reached Tortosa on
June 8th, and Perello on the Balaguer road on the 10th. Then the news
came in that the fort of San Felipe had capitulated two days before.
Pannetier halted, and sent back the information to Suchet, who had
reached Tortosa on the 9th, escorted by a squadron of dragoons. But
Musnier’s division had taken some time to assemble, only left Valencia
on the 7th, and was far behind. Suchet was in no small perplexity this
day. The coast-road was blocked: it was the only one by which guns
and transport could move directly on Tarragona. No news whatever had
been received of Decaen and the Army of Catalonia. Musnier could not
reach Tortosa till the 11th. Should he recall Pannetier, wait for the
arrival of the rest of his column, and then march with his whole force
by the circuitous inland road along the Ebro, by Ginestar, Tivisa,
and Momblanch, so as to reach the plain of Tarragona from the north?
This would lead to insufferable delays--the country was desolate and
waterless, and when the column reached its goal the Army of Copons,
with help perchance from Murray, would be in the way. Ten days might
easily be wasted, and meanwhile Tarragona would probably have fallen.
Information must at all costs be got, and the Marshal finally ordered
Pannetier to drop all his impedimenta, and push with his infantry
alone by mountain paths from Perello to Monroig, on the edge of the
hills overlooking the plain of Tarragona. This was to take a dangerous
risk--a brigade of 2,500 bayonets might easily be surrounded by the
Catalans and cut off. But the attention of Copons was at this moment
distracted to the other direction. Pannetier reached the slopes above
Monroig on the night of the 11th-12th, and could get no information
there--the people had fled up into the mountains. The only fact that
came to his notice was that no cannonading could be heard next morning
from the direction of Tarragona: the most natural deduction was
that the place had fallen. But in case it might still be resisting,
Pannetier ordered a row of bonfires to be lighted along the hillsides,
which he thought would be visible to the beleaguered garrison, and
would show that succour was at hand. He then drew off again by the
same rough paths by which he had come, and returned to Valdellos,
half-way back to Perello. From thence he could only send a report of
a negative kind to Suchet, who was left none the wiser for this risky
reconnaissance. Meanwhile Musnier’s division had at last come up, but
there had also arrived the news that Del Parque and Elio were on the
move in Valencia, and were pushing back Harispe’s advanced troops. On
the 12th-13th-14th the Marshal remained stationary, waiting vainly
for news, and fearing the worst. Murray, if he had but known it, had
nothing to fear from this quarter.
On the other flank also things were working out in the best possible
fashion for the besieger of Tarragona. There was a long delay before
the Army of Catalonia could prepare a field force which could dare
to face the Anglo-Sicilians. Decaen himself was at Gerona, far away
to the North, and got the news of Murray’s landing on June 5th, by a
dispatch sent him by Maurice Mathieu, Governor of Barcelona. He had no
troops under his hand save the four battalions of Beurmann’s brigade
of Lamarque’s division; he could only collect more men by cutting down
the garrisons of Figueras and Puycerda, and calling in two brigades
(those of Petit and Espert) which were acting as flying columns at the
moment, and were out of touch, in the sub-Pyrenean foot-hills. The news
that a very large disembarkation had taken place near Tarragona struck
him at first with such dismay that he replied to Maurice Mathieu that
they could not hope to resist such a force, and that it might even be
necessary to evacuate Barcelona[687]. However, resolving to do what
he could, he ordered Beurmann’s brigade to march on Barcelona (June
8), and sent orders around for a general shifting of the northern
garrisons, so that he hoped to collect another 4,000 men at Gerona in
the course of a week, if the flying columns could be discovered and
brought in. With this reserve he intended to come down to join the rest
of the field force about the 14th or 15th. Meanwhile he ordered Maurice
Mathieu to demonstrate against the enemy, without risking anything, or
quitting the valley of the Llobregat and the vicinity of Barcelona.
Maurice Mathieu was the only one of the generals in Catalonia, French
or allied, who deserves any credit for his conduct in this campaign
of blunders. He resolved that the one thing necessary was to take the
offensive, and to threaten the besiegers of Tarragona, even if he
dared not venture to attack them. Beurmann’s brigade having arrived on
June 10th, he marched next day with it and four battalions of his own
to Villafranca, half-way between Barcelona and Tarragona, and drove
in Copons’ outposts--leaving his base-fortress occupied by a very
inadequate garrison. He had only 6,000 infantry and 300 horse with him,
so that he was wholly incapable of facing Murray’s expeditionary force
if it should show fight. Meanwhile he sent letters to Decaen, telling
him that the honour of the Army of Catalonia was at stake, and that it
was necessary for him to come down from Gerona without delay, and with
every available man. But the Commander-in-Chief did not appear--he was
detained by a naval demonstration in the Bay of Rosas. For Sir Edward
Pellew, then in command of the Mediterranean Fleet, had run down from
his usual cruising ground opposite Toulon, and concentrated a numerous
squadron off the coast of the Ampurdam. He came close in-shore, made a
great display of boats, and even landed a few hundred marines on June
8th. The news of this disembarkation filled Decaen with the idea that
the Tarragona expedition was only a snare, intended to make him draw
off all his forces southward, and that the true blow would be struck
at Rosas. He concentrated his scattered troops with the object of
parrying it, and was so long in detecting his mistake that it was only
on June 15th that he set out from Gerona, with four battalions and
one squadron, to join Maurice Mathieu, having at last discovered that
Pellew could do no real mischief.
The Governor of Barcelona, therefore, had never more than 6,000 men
at his disposition during the critical days of the campaign--June
11th-12th-13th-14th. He had, as has been mentioned above, reached
Villafranca on the first-named day. There he received what had been
longed for in vain up till now, a detailed dispatch from Suchet,
setting forth his intentions. But it was no less than twelve days
old, having been written at Valencia on May 31st, before the Marshal
had any knowledge of Murray’s strength, objective, or intentions. It
stated that he was intending to march via Tortosa, and that he hoped
that Decaen with all his disposable field force would come down to
meet him at Reus, unless indeed the Anglo-Sicilians were aiming at
some more northern point, in which case he would have to follow them
to Upper Catalonia. But he added that it was possible that the whole
naval expedition might be a mere feint, intended to lure him northward
beyond the Ebro; the fleet might turn back again and re-land the whole
of Murray’s force near Valencia[688].
The dispatch was hopelessly out of date, and Maurice Mathieu had
no means of knowing whether Suchet had carried out his original
intentions. But his first impression was that he must seek for the
Marshal at Reus, according to the directions given. Accordingly on
June 12 he pushed his vanguard as far as Arbos, six miles in advance
of Villafranca, and some 24 miles from Tarragona. But nothing could
be heard of the Marshal’s approach, and Copons’ troops were gathering
in from all sides to block the road, while Murray was only one march
away. Seized with sudden misgivings at finding himself close to 20,000
enemies with such a trilling force, Mathieu made up his mind that
it would be madness to push on. At 10 o’clock on the night of the
12th-13th[689] he evacuated both Arbos and Villafranca, and retreated
in haste to Barcelona, to await the arrival of Decaen and the reserve.
Murray’s miserable timidity now intervened, to save Tarragona, just
when both the French forces had found themselves foiled, and had given
up the relief of the fortress as impossible. The story reads like the
plot of a stupid theatrical farce, where every character does the wrong
thing, in order to produce absurd complications in the situation. On
the 12th Pannetier, on the hills above Monroig, heard no bombardment,
because the bombardment had ceased. And Maurice Mathieu on the night of
that same day was running away from an enemy who had already absconded
that very afternoon. So, after coming within 35 miles of each other,
the two French generals had turned back in despair and given up the
game. But Murray had given it up also.
The bombardment had gone on very successfully throughout the 11th
June, and the engineers reported at noon that the Fuerte Real could
be stormed at any moment, and that the works of the Upper City were
crumbling in many places. Orders were issued that Mackenzie’s division
should storm the Fuerte Real at 10 p.m., while Clinton’s was to make
a demonstration against the Upper City. All arrangements were made,
and after dark the troops designated for the assault filed into the
advanced trenches: the signal was to be by a flight of rockets[690].
But the rockets never went up.
For some days Murray had been in a state of agonized indecision. On the
9th he had received information from a trusted secret agent in Valencia
that Suchet had marched for Tortosa on the 7th with 9,000 men--this was
absolutely certain and showed that all the previous rumours from the
South had been false. On the same day a dispatch came in from Eroles at
Vich to say that a French column (Beurmann’s brigade) had left Gerona
on the 8th, marching for Barcelona, and that he intended to follow it
with his own detachment, and would join Copons before the enemy could
concentrate. The French then were on the move on both flanks--but
still far off. On the night of the 10th General Manso, commanding on
Copons’ right flank, reported the approaching departure of Maurice
Mathieu from Barcelona, but overrated his force at 10,000 men. He
undertook to detain them in the defiles beyond Villafranca for at least
one day. This news was corroborated next evening by an officer of
Whittingham’s staff, who had seen the column, estimated it at 7,000 to
8,000 infantry, and reported that it had entered Villafranca at 4 p.m.
on the 11th[691]. But it was the movements of Suchet which gave Murray
the greater alarm: by ingenious miscalculations[692] he had arrived at
the statistical conclusion that the Marshal had got 12,000 or 13,000
men of all arms with him, instead of the real 8,000[693]. And when the
arrival of Pannetier’s brigade at Perello on the 10th was reported
to him on the following day, he proceeded to assume that the French
column was all closed up: ‘the Marshal with 13,000 men was within two
long marches of Tarragona[694].’ Many generals would have asked for no
better opportunity than that of being placed in a central position with
some 23,000 men--the Anglo-Sicilian troops and those of Copons exceeded
that figure--while two hostile columns, one of 13,000 men and the other
of 10,000, 35 miles apart, were trying to join each other across a
difficult country by bad roads. (As a matter of fact, of course, the
French force was much smaller--no more than 8,000 men on the West, and
6,000 on the East, though Murray must not be too much blamed for the
over-estimate.) But the two governing ideas that ruled in the brain
of the unfortunate general were firstly the memory of Wellington’s
warning that ‘the one thing that could not be forgiven would be that
the corps should be beaten or dispersed’, and secondly the fact that
his army was composed of heterogeneous material, some of which might
be found wanting at a crisis. But he concealed his downheartedness
till the last moment, both from his own lieutenants and from the
Spaniards. On the 10th he rode out to meet General Copons at Torre dem
Barra, to which place the Catalan head-quarters had just been moved,
and agreed with him to defend the line of the Gaya river against the
column coming from Barcelona. He promised to send up all his cavalry,
8,000 infantry, and two field batteries to join the Spanish army, which
was now concentrated across the two roads by which Tarragona could be
approached from Villafranca. Five battalions were on the northern road,
by the Col de Santa Cristina, four and the three squadrons of horse on
the southern route, nearer the sea. Warnings were issued to Clinton’s
and Whittingham’s divisions, and also to Lord Frederick Bentinck, the
cavalry brigadier, to be ready to march to the line of the Gaya[695].
This looked like business, and the spirits of the Anglo-Sicilians were
high that night.
On the morning of the 11th, while the bombardment of Tarragona was
going on in a very satisfactory way, Murray rode out again, met Copons
at Vendrils, behind the Gaya, and spent much time in inspecting
the chosen positions. He disliked them; the river was fordable in
many places, and a very long front would have to be guarded: it was
considered that the French might break through by one of the roads
before the troops guarding the other could arrive. However, adhering to
his promise of the 10th, Murray ordered up Bentinck with two squadrons
of hussars and two guns to the mouth of the Gaya, where they took over
the outposts on the coast-road. The infantry was not brought up--as the
assault on Tarragona was to take place that evening. The only news from
the front received in the afternoon were rumours that Maurice Mathieu
had actually reached Villafranca[696].
At seven o’clock Murray started home, and reached his head-quarters
before Tarragona two hours later. There he found a batch of reports
awaiting him, which finally broke down his resolution to fight, and
drove him to the ignominious flight which he had already contemplated
on more than one day during the preceding week. Two Spanish officers
had come in from the Col de Santa Cristina, to report that the
Barcelona column had certainly occupied Villafranca, and was apparently
pushing on beyond it: this was discouraging. But the document which
Murray regarded as all-important was a note from his adjutant-general,
Donkin, to the effect that peasants, who had just come in from Perello,
reported that Suchet’s column had continued its advance: ‘This corps
of infantry may be at Reus to-morrow, if they think proper to march
by Perello _without artillery_. And Decaen (i. e. Mathieu), if he
marched this day to Villafranca, can also reach Reus to-morrow. This
possibility may, perhaps, make some change in your arrangements[697].’
As a matter of fact, we have already seen that it was only Pannetier’s
brigade which had gone across the hills from Perello towards Monroig,
and that this was a mere reconnaissance.
But Donkin’s picture of Suchet and the Barcelona column joining at
Reus, in his rear, on the 12th, with forces which Murray’s imagination
raised to 25,000 men, was so much in consonance with the fears which
had been obsessing the brains of the Commander-in-Chief throughout
the last ten days, that he felt that his nightmare was coming true.
There could be no doubt that he was on the brink of a disaster like
the Ostend catastrophe of 1798[698]. Of course Suchet’s active brain
had planned his complete destruction. He tells us in his defence[699]
that he asked himself whether it was probable that an officer of the
Marshal’s activity and reputation would have left a man more than he
could help in Valencia. ‘Was it the character of a French general to
act with inadequate means when ample means were within his reach? Was
it probable that he would have brought a small force only from the
Xucar by the fatiguing march to Tortosa? Would he have left a man idle
in the south when in danger of losing his communication with France?
Every disposable corps, many more than what might be calculated to be
fairly disposable, must be with the Marshal.’ He might have not 13,000
men but many more. And the Barcelona column might be not 10,000 men but
13,000.
Rather than take the risk of waiting one day longer in his present
position, Murray resolved to abscond by sea, while the enemy was still
twenty miles away from Tarragona. By 9.30 p.m. he had sent his staff
officers with messages to his divisional generals to stop the projected
assault, to order all guns, horses, and stores to be got on shipboard,
and the infantry after them. He calculated, in his panic, that he had
only eighteen hours in hand: the re-embarkation must be over by dusk
on the 12th. But the most disgraceful part of his scheme was that he
had resolved to leave Copons and the Catalans to their fate, after
having brought them to the Gaya by definite promises of assistance,
without which they would never have taken up their fighting position,
and this though he had renewed his pledges that same morning. He sent
no warning of his real intentions to his colleague, but only told him
that recent information had made it necessary for him to re-embark his
battering train; but six Anglo-Sicilian battalions should be sent out
next morning, to strengthen the force behind the Gaya.
There followed a night and a morning of confusion. No one in the
expeditionary force had hitherto suspected Murray’s wavering
confidence, except Admiral Hallowell, to whom he had on June 9th made
the remark that he imagined that they ought to be thinking about
getting away in safety rather than about prolonging the siege, and
the Quartermaster-General, Donkin, to whom on the same day Murray
had said that he suspected that they would have ere long to depart,
whereupon that officer had drawn up a secret scheme for the details of
re-embarkation[700]. But since nothing more had been heard about such
a move on the 10th or the 11th, Hallowell and Donkin had supposed that
the idea was abandoned. Clinton and the other senior officers had been
kept entirely in the dark, till the sudden orders of 9.30 p.m. were
delivered to them. At midnight Admiral Hallowell came in to Murray’s
quarters to protest against the hasty departure, which would cause all
manner of confusion and ensure the loss of much valuable material:
they parted after an angry altercation. Colonel Williamson (commanding
the artillery) also appeared, to say that in the time given him he
could get off the guns in the batteries near the shore, but not those
on the distant Olivo. He understood the general to reply that he might
be granted some extra hours, and that the Olivo guns might be brought
down after dark on the 12th[701].
But in the morning Murray’s apprehension grew progressively worse.
He had at first intended to do something to cover Copons’ inevitable
retreat, and ordered Clinton to throw out six battalions towards the
Gaya. But he soon cancelled this order, and directed Bentinck to bring
back his cavalry and guns from Altafulla without delay. At 9 a.m. a
message was sent to Williamson, to say that the guns on the Olivo
must be spiked or destroyed, as it would be perilous to wait till
night[702]. Half an hour later Murray’s notions of retreat flickered
round to a new scheme--the troops on the shore should embark there;
but those on the northern heights--the divisions of Clinton and
Whittingham--should march to the Col de Balaguer via Constanti, and
take ship in the much better harbourage behind Cape Salou. Half an hour
later he abandoned this scheme, and ordered them down to the beach by
the Francoli, there to embark without delay.