martial in 1814 he produced seven separate orders which he had
received between dawn and 1.30 that day: they were all contradictory,
and deserve record as showing Murray’s state of mind during the
critical hours. (1) The first, received early, directed him to take
six battalions towards the Gaya, to cover the retreat of Copons from
Altafulla. (2) The second, sent off at 9 o’clock, told him not to
execute this march, but to wait till the Spaniards had cleared off,
and then to move, not with six battalions but with the whole of his
own and Whittingham’s divisions, to Constanti[703]. (3) The third
was to the effect that the baggage should be sent to the Col de
Balaguer, to which the whole army would now proceed[704]. (4) Half an
hour later Clinton was told to cancel the last two dispatches, and to
come down to head-quarters on the nearest beach. (5) A supplementary
verbal order directed that the guns in the Olivo batteries should be
spiked. (6) Twenty minutes later Clinton was told that the guns might
still be saved: Whittingham’s Spaniards should remain on the Olivo
and guard them till dusk, when the artillery would try to get them
down to the shore. (7) Lastly, at 1.30, the final order cancelled the
sixth, it directed (once more) that Whittingham’s troops must follow
Clinton’s for instant embarkation, and that the guns should be spiked
without delay. This was done, to the intense disgust of the gunners,
who had been getting everything ready for an orderly retreat after
dusk. Seventeen heavy pieces in good condition, and one more which had
been disabled, were spiked and left in the Olivo batteries, while the
infantry hurried down to the shore.
The momentary wavering in Murray’s orders during the early morning,
when he seemed inclined to risk a longer stay, and to march Clinton’s
division and the baggage by land to the anchorage by the Col de
Balaguer, was apparently caused partly by new remonstrances from
Hallowell, partly by an interview with some of his subordinates,
somewhere between 8 and 9 a.m., Mackenzie, Adam, Donkin, and Thackeray,
the chief engineer, entered the house of the Commander-in-Chief
together, and Adam, as their spokesman, urged him with great heat
not to embark, but to advance, join Copons, and attack the French
on the Gaya with every available man. Murray replied that if he did
so, the French would refuse to fight and give back toward Barcelona;
while Suchet, coming from the other direction, would cut him off from
the fleet and relieve Tarragona. But if, on the other hand, he were
to march against Suchet, and stop him, then the Barcelona column
would relieve Tarragona and get the expeditionary force separated
from its transports. Either course would be equally ruinous. He also
said that Wellington had told him ‘not to commit the army’. The
generals withdrew--further insistence would have amounted to military
insubordination. The final hurry-scurry order, to destroy the guns and
embark pell-mell, was caused by news from Copons that the French at
Villafranca had advanced as far as Arbos, only ten miles from the Gaya,
and seemed still to be coming on.
During the night and the morning that followed all the guns from the
lower batteries, much valuable material, some of the cavalry, and the
infantry of Adam, were got aboard. The shipment of artillery stores
was still proceeding at 10 o’clock, when Murray ordered that nothing
but men should now be embarked--all else must be abandoned. Admiral
Hallowell, who was superintending the work on the beach in person, was
much incensed with this resolve, and took it upon himself to direct the
sailors in the boats to refuse infantry, and to go on lading stores.
Then came a deadlock--Hallowell said that there was plenty of time
to take off everything: Donkin, coming down from Murray’s quarters,
maintained that the French were only two and a half hours’ march away,
and that the infantry must be got off at all costs: horses and mules
might have to be shot, and food and ammunition abandoned[705]. There
was much disputing, but the naval men, obeying the admiral, continued
to embark horses and artillery material till midday, when Mackenzie’s
infantry began to pour down to the beaches, followed by Clinton’s
and Whittingham’s battalions[706]. All through the afternoon the
shipping off of troops continued without any interruption, till only
a rearguard of 500 of Clinton’s men was left on shore. No news of the
French coming to hand, there was a relaxation of the wild hurry which
had prevailed between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. Murray permitted Bentinck to
take that part of the cavalry which had not yet embarked round to the
anchorage by the Col de Balaguer by land[707], and sent on behind
them twelve field-guns escorted by a half battalion of the 2/27th.
Meanwhile, the troops having all got off, the boats began to load again
with transport mules, entrenching tools, spare shot, platform timbers,
sand bags, and biscuit. The rear guard was not taken off till late
at night; and, even after it was gone and dawn had come, the sailors
continued to find and take off various valuable leavings[708]. No
molestation whatever was suffered from the garrison, who regarded the
whole movement as inexplicable, and only crept out with caution after
the last British troops had disappeared, to find 18 spiked guns and
some artillery stores in the Olivo batteries, and a certain amount of
flour and beef barrels left on the shore. The most distressing part of
the chronicle of this wretched day’s work is Murray’s dealings with
Copons. He had induced the Captain-General to bring his army to the
line of the Gaya, by the promise of supporting him with 8,000 men,
renewed on the morning of the 11th. At dawn on the 12th the message was
sent that six battalions only could be spared. An hour or two later
Copons received the crushing news that the whole expeditionary army was
about to re-embark, abandoning him to his own resources. If Murray’s
view of the situation had been correct, the Spaniards must have been
caught between Suchet advancing on Reus and Mathieu converging on the
same point from Villafranca. His moral guilt, therefore, was very
great. But, as a matter of fact, nothing disastrous happened. On
hearing that he had been left in the lurch, Copons withdrew the troops
which he had at Altafulla on the coast-road, to join those at the
Col de Santa Cristina, leaving the way to Tarragona open to Maurice
Mathieu, and preparing to retreat into the mountains if necessary. He
kept a close look-out upon the French column, and was astonished on
the morning of the 13th to learn that, after sending a vanguard to
Arbos on the previous day, six miles down the southern road, it had
turned back at ten o’clock at night, and was now in full retreat on
Barcelona. The crisis was over for the moment. Copons returned to his
old head-quarters at Reus, threw out a slight screen of troops to the
line of Gaya, and reoccupied Villafranca with a few cavalry. He was
quite ready to retreat into the mountains once more if any untoward
developments should supervene.
On June 13th Murray had all his army on shipboard,[709] save Prevost’s
two battalions at the Col de Balaguer, and the guns and cavalry with
Bentinck, which had marched by land to that same pass. Wellington’s
orders told him that if he failed at Tarragona he was to return to
Valencia, join Elio and Del Parque, and fall upon the diminished French
force on the Xucar before Suchet could get back. It was his obvious
duty to pick up Prevost’s and Bentinck’s detachments, and to depart at
once. He did nothing of the kind, but proceeded to employ himself for
several days in minor operations, in the vain hope of redeeming the
disgrace of June 12th.
On the morning of the 13th Murray received news from Colonel Prevost
at San Felipe to the effect that the French column in front of him
(Pannetier’s brigade), about 3,000 strong, had marched from Perello
by mountain paths eastward, but had not been followed by Suchet’s
main body. Prevost thought that it might be intending to cut him off
from the rest of the army by dropping down into the coast-road in his
rear. Pannetier’s movement was also reported by Bentinck, whose flank
patrols had run against similar parties of the French while on their
way to the Col de Balaguer. It was necessary to bring off Prevost, the
cavalry, and the guns by sea, if the French were trying to get round
them. So Murray asked Admiral Hallowell to send ships in-shore to the
Col, and with them part of Mackenzie’s division[710], to act as a
covering force for the re-embarkation of Prevost’s detachment. These
troops--apparently three battalions--were landed near the fort late on
the evening of the 13th.
Now during that day Pannetier, conscious that he was too far away from
his chief, and quite ‘in the air,’ had drawn back from near Monroig
to Valdellos, ten miles nearer to Perello. The same idea had occurred
to Suchet, who simultaneously brought up his main body from Tortosa
to Perello, though he knew that the coast-road was blocked by the
British force holding Fort San Felipe. But on the morning of the 14th
the Marshal, exploring toward the Col, sighted not only Mackenzie’s
infantry on shore, but the whole transport fleet lying off the coast
from opposite the fort as far as Cape Salou--180 ships small and great,
as he counted. A frigate and two brigs took a number of long shots at
the Marshal and his large escort, which had to retire in haste. Suchet
saw the whole expeditionary force before him, and recognized that he
was too weak to tackle it. Wherefore he sent orders to Pannetier to
fall back and rejoin him--and came to a halt. Early on the morning of
the 15th he wrote to Decaen:
‘The loss of the Col de Balaguer has foiled all my plans. The English
fleet fired more than a thousand shot at us. Menaced by forces of four
times my own strength, I wish to know what you propose to do. The enemy
[Del Parque] has attacked my lines on the Xucar[711].’
This last fact, at the moment, was worrying Suchet even more than the
unknown fate of Tarragona, for Harispe had just reported that the two
Spanish armies in Valencia had advanced against him in force, and on
a long front. Now, while the Marshal halted in indecision, Murray was
seized with a spasmodic fit of energy--he knew that Maurice Mathieu was
for the moment out of the game; he saw that Suchet was blocked, and
that Pannetier was in a dangerously advanced position. He conceived
the idea that he might land more troops at the Col, and strike in
between the French main body and the brigade at Valdellos. To the
astonishment of his subordinates he ordered the rest of Mackenzie’s
troops and all Clinton’s to be landed, as also the remainder of the
cavalry, and instructed Mackenzie to make a forced march on Valdellos
and beat up Pannetier’s camp. The General did so, but arrived only just
in time to see the French rearguard absconding on the 15th[712]. This
demonstration of energy having failed, as it was pretty certain to do
(for events like the surprise of Arroyo dos Molinos are not common),
Murray had another inspiration. On the evening of the 15th[713] he
suggested to Admiral Hallowell that the garrison of Tarragona must now
be quite off their guard, that they had not been strengthened, and that
it might be possible to re-embark 5,000 men secretly at Fort Balaguer,
land them at Cambrils, and make a sudden dash at Tarragona by escalade
or surprise. The Admiral answered that as Murray had not felt himself
equal to storming Tarragona when the whole army was with him, and the
batteries playing on the place, he (Hallowell) did not think him equal
to it now with 5,000 men[714]. The idea was dropped: it was not without
its merits, but though Picton or Craufurd might have succeeded in such
a desperate stroke, Murray would certainly have failed from lack of
nerve at the decisive moment, as the Admiral meant to insinuate.
This wretched campaign was now nearing its end--but still reserved two
extraordinary surprises for its last days. On the 16th Suchet, much
impressed with the strength which Murray had shown, judging from the
stroke at Valdellos that he was thinking of taking the offensive, and
harassed by fresh news of Del Parque’s advance on Valencia, retired
from Perello, and took his main body back across the Ebro to Amposta,
which he reached on the 17th. He left only Pannetier’s brigade and the
hussar regiment to watch Murray. Thus the Anglo-Sicilians had opposite
them on the south only 3,000 men, from whom no possible danger could be
apprehended. But their General had no idea as yet that only a rearguard
lay before him, and imagined that the Marshal and his main body were
close in Pannetier’s rear.
The second surprise took place on the other front. Maurice Mathieu
had got back to Barcelona by a forced march on the 13th. On the next
day spies brought him the news that Murray had raised the siege of
Tarragona, and gone away with his whole army by sea. There was nothing
to prevent him from relieving Bertoletti’s garrison, save Copons’
troops holding the line of the Gaya. Therefore, although Decaen had
not yet arrived from the North, and indeed had written that he could
not start from Gerona until the 17th, Mathieu resolved to make a
second attempt to reach Tarragona. He could still count on no greater
force than the 6,000 men with which he had made his first fruitless
expedition, but he thought this sufficient to deal with the Catalans.
He moved once more upon Villafranca early on the 15th, and reached
that place the same night. Next day a forced march of twenty-four
miles brought him to Tarragona unopposed; for Copons would not fight
when unsupported by Murray, and had withdrawn his troops to Valls. At
Tarragona Mathieu learned that the Anglo-Sicilians had not disappeared
entirely from Catalonia, as he had hitherto believed, but were
concentrated at and about the Col de Balaguer. Though no news had been
received from Suchet, it might be conjectured that Murray had landed at
the Col in order to hold back the Marshal, who could not be very far
off. On the morning of the 17th Mathieu resolved to take the risky step
of advancing by the coast-road to feel for Murray’s rear, and marched
out to Cambrils six miles west of Tarragona, hoping to hear that Suchet
was simultaneously attacking the front of the Anglo-Sicilians. He was
thereby exposing himself to fearful danger, for Murray had his whole
15,000 men in hand, and quite disposable, since Suchet had withdrawn
southward on the 16th. And Copons at Valls was in a position to cut in
upon the rear of the Barcelona column with 6,000 men more: each of them
was only ten miles from Cambrils, and they were in full communication
with each other. Indeed, Murray had sent to Copons late on the 16th,
imploring him to fall upon the flank of the enemy, though he spoilt the
effect of the appeal by explaining that he was going to be attacked
by Suchet and the Barcelona column simultaneously, and expected to
be outnumbered--the Marshal had 24,000 men (!), while 8,000 men were
coming via Tarragona against his rear. Startled by these astounding
figures, the Spanish General did not actually attack Maurice Mathieu,
but contented himself with bringing forward his infantry to La Selva
and feeling for the French column by cavalry patrols sent out from Reus.
The 17th June was a day as full of ridiculous cross-purposes as the
12th. Suchet’s main body was in full march for Amposta and the road to
Valencia[715], just as Maurice Mathieu was at last coming to look for
it. Murray in the centre was expecting to be attacked on both sides
of the Col de Balaguer, believing that the reckless advance of the
Barcelona column was timed to coincide with a desperate assault on the
Col by Suchet and his whole army. Mathieu was advancing in ignorance
into a death-trap, if he had only known it, expecting every moment to
hear guns in his front, or to get news of Suchet by spies or patrols.
Copons was hanging back on Mathieu’s flank, deterred from pressing in
by Murray’s ridiculous overstatement of the total French force. If
Murray had marched from the Col that morning early with 10,000 men
and had met the French column at Cambrils, while the Catalans closed
in on its rear, no possible chance could have saved it from complete
destruction.
But Murray was doing something very different; after having made his
urgent appeal to Copons to take part in a general action on the 17th,
it occurred to him that a general action might perhaps be avoided by
the simple method of absconding once more by sea--and again leaving the
Catalans to shift for themselves. Mackenzie was back from Valdellos,
and the whole force was concentrated in the pass, with the immense
transport fleet at its elbow, and several decent embarkation places.
In the morning he called a council of war--which, as the old military
proverb goes, ‘never fights’--though he had assured Admiral Hallowell
on the preceding night that he had chosen his positions, and intended
to stand and receive the enemy’s attack[716]. The council of war voted,
by a large majority, for embarkation--probably as has been acutely
observed[717], because none of the generals liked the idea of being
commanded in action by Murray, after their recent experience of his
methods. The preparations for departure were begun on the afternoon of
the 17th, but no notice of them was sent to Copons.
Meanwhile Maurice Mathieu had halted at Cambrils: he could get no news
of Suchet, and no firing could be heard in front. On the other hand,
British warships ran close in-shore, and began to cannonade his column,
as it defiled along the coast-road. And his cavalry patrols discovered
those of Copons in front of Reus, and afterwards got in touch with the
Spanish infantry behind them. The situation was getting unpleasant; and
realizing that he had better draw back, Mathieu turned the head of his
column inland to Reus, for he was determined not to expose it a second
time to the fire of the British ships, which swept the coast-road at
many points. Marching in the night of the 17th-18th he almost surprised
Copons, who had brought his infantry up to Reus in order to fall in
with Murray’s plan for attacking the enemy in flank. But the Spaniard
was warned in time, and escaped to La Selva, from whence he wrote to
Murray, to complain that the British had not kept their part of the
bargain, nor even sent him news of Mathieu’s retirement from their
front.
At Reus the French General picked up the spy to whom Suchet had
entrusted his despairing note of June 15, which avowed his impotence
and asked what the Army of Catalonia could do[718]. Seeing that he must
hope for no help from the Marshal, Mathieu retreated by the inland road
to Constanti, two miles from Tarragona (June 18), where he halted for a
day, after sending on Suchet’s letter to his chief Decaen, and renewing
his former petitions that the reserves from the North should get to
Barcelona as soon as possible. It was clear that the Army of Catalonia
must save itself, without any aid from the Army of Valencia.
While Maurice Mathieu stood doubting at Cambrils, and all through
the night hours while he was marching on Reus, there had been a
rapid shifting of scenes at the Col de Balaguer. Murray’s orders for
re-embarkation were just drawn up when a formidable fleet of men-of-war
became visible on the horizon, and presently ran close in-shore. This
was Sir Edward Pellew with the Toulon blockading squadron, twelve line
of battle ships, besides smaller craft. They had run down from the Bay
of Rosas, after picking up at Port Mahon a vessel from Sicily, on which
was Lord William Bentinck, who had at last arrived to assume command of
the Anglo-Sicilian army. He had torn himself away with some reluctance
from his plans for raising a general insurrection in Italy against
Napoleon, having satisfied himself that there was no risk of Murat’s
invading Sicily in his absence, and that the local politics of Palermo
were deplorable but not dangerous[719]. When the signal was made from
Pellew’s flagship that Lord William had arrived, Admiral Hallowell
answered with the counter-signal, ‘We are all delighted,’ which was
sincere and accurate, but not officially correct. It was remembered
against him afterwards, as an improper ebullition of misplaced humour.
Bentinck landed at San Felipe without a moment’s delay, took over
the command from Murray, and heard his report. He also talked with
Hallowell and the senior land-officers. He made up his mind very
promptly: the embarkation which had begun was to continue, and the
Army was to be taken back to Valencia at once, in strict consonance
with Wellington’s original orders. He explained in his next dispatch
home that he was aware that he might have chased Maurice Mathieu, and
probably have compelled him to throw himself into Tarragona. But he
conceived that a second siege of that fortress would take many days,
and would not be so profitable to the general cause as an unexpected
return to Valencia to join Del Parque and Elio. The Army, as he wrote
to Wellington, was in the best spirits, but most dissatisfied as to
what had happened before Tarragona, ‘concerning which, from motives of
delicacy, he would refrain from saying anything[720].’ But there had
been much material lost, the horses and mules were in a bad way, from
having been so often landed and reshipped, and it was better to return
to Alicante and reorganize everything than to start another Catalan
campaign.
The troops were got on board very rapidly, and the whole transport
fleet set sail southward on the 18th. The fort of San Felipe was
blown up, as Bentinck was not willing to leave any troops behind to
garrison it. Unfortunately, the good weather which had been granted
to Murray at the starting of the expedition was denied to Bentinck
during its return. A furious north-east wind was blowing, which
scattered the ships, and drove no less than fourteen of them ashore
on the projecting sands at the estuary of the Ebro. Ten were got off
when the storm moderated, but four had to be burned, after the crews
and troops had been taken off. Bentinck, after four days at sea, got
into Alicante on the 22nd June, ahead of the great majority of the
transports, which continued to drop in, some much disabled, for three
or four days after. This caused a tiresome delay in the reorganization
of the army, as odd companies of every regiment were missing, and the
units could not be re-formed and marched inland for some time. The
delay gave Bentinck time to write long dispatches to the Secretary
for War and to Wellington. These went off on the 23rd by special
messenger, and along with them lengthy screeds from Murray and Admiral
Hallowell. The two officers wrote most bitterly of each other to the
Commander-in-Chief--the Admiral detailing all the General’s hesitations
and tergiversations with caustic irony, while the General wrote that
‘if I had only allowed the Admiral to command the army you would never
have been troubled with the long letter which accompanies this....
He thinks that prejudice against him led me to act as I did. These
are the real grounds of all his outcry[721].’ Murray’s long dispatch
was not only very disingenuous in suppression of facts, but so vague
concerning all necessary dates and figures, that Wellington, when it
came to hand, showed profound dissatisfaction. He observed that it
‘left him entirely ignorant of what had occurred,’ and administered
a searching interrogatory of eleven questions, answers to which were
necessary before a judgement could be formed by himself or the Home
Government on what had really happened in Catalonia[722]. Murray’s
replies were as unconvincing as his original dispatches, and the matter
ended in a long-deferred and lengthy court martial at Winchester in
1814, after the war had come to an end. To describe it here would
interrupt unseasonably the narrative of the summer campaign of 1813.
But it may suffice to say that he did not get his deserts. He was only
convicted of an error of judgement, and not of the ‘disobedience to
orders and neglect of duty, highly to the prejudice of the service, and
detrimental to the British military character’ for which he was put on
trial. He was never even indicted for his worst offence--the callous
betrayal of the Spanish colleague who had done his best to serve him.
SECTION XXXVII: CHAPTER IV
WELLINGTON ON THE BIDASSOA
On July 1st the last of Foy’s troops on the sea-coast front had
recrossed the lower Bidassoa, leaving Graham and Giron in complete
possession of the Spanish bank, and free to commence the siege of St.
Sebastian. They had 25,000 men in line, without counting Mendizabal’s
Biscayan irregulars, who were observing the fortress, and the 5th
British Division, which was now on its march from Vittoria to the
frontier, and was due to arrive on the 5th or 6th. These forces were
amply sufficient to hold in check Reille, Foy, and the Bayonne Reserve.
On July 1st also Wellington began to arrange his march northward from
Pampeluna, which might have begun on the 26th June if he had not taken
off so many divisions for the fruitless pursuit of Clausel. The five
days’ respite granted to the enemy had been very useful to him. If
the King had been followed up without delay, at the moment when he
had split his army into the three columns, which marched the first
by Yrurzun and Santesteban (Reille), the second by the Col de Velate
(D’Erlon), and the third by the Pass of Roncesvalles (Gazan), it is
hard to say where or how he could have rallied or offered any effective
resistance. Wellington had preferred to take the doubtful chance of
intercepting and destroying a secondary force, rather than to devote
himself to the relentless pursuit of the demoralized main body of the
enemy. But it must be remembered that a resolve to push the chase after
the flying King would have involved an instant invasion of France.
And though on general military grounds a defeated enemy should be
kept on the run and destroyed in detail--like Brunswick’s army after
Jena--there were in June-July 1813 the strongest political reasons to
deter Wellington from crossing the frontier. It was not merely that he
had outmarched his transport, and had not yet got into touch with his
new bases of supply at Santander and on the Biscay coast, so that for
the moment he was a little short of ammunition, and also living on
the country, a practice which he disliked on principle and wished to
end as soon as possible[723]. Nor was his hindrance the fact that his
army was tired and sulky, and that many of his stragglers had not yet
rejoined--though both of these vexations had their weight[724]. Nor was
the political consideration that held him back the deplorable news from
Cadiz, received at Caseda on June 28th, to the effect that the Regency
had deposed Castaños from his office as Captain-General of Galicia,
Estremadura, and both the Castiles, and had superseded his nephew
General Giron in the command of the Fourth Army[725]. This was indeed
a serious blow--not so much because Wellington could always rely on
Castaños, and had found Giron more obedient than most Spanish officers,
but because it looked as if the Cadiz Government was aiming at an open
repudiation of the bargain that had been made in January, by which
they had agreed not to make or revoke appointments of the military
sort without giving notice, and receiving approval. The excuses given
for the changes were paltry and unconvincing--Castaños was wanted to
take his seat in the Council of State--Giron was to be sent, with
large reinforcements, to serve with Copons as second in command of
the Army of Catalonia. Wellington concluded, and rightly, that the
real causes of these attacks on his friends were petty political
intrigues--the ‘Liberal’ party in Cadiz was trying to secure its own
domination by evicting those who might be considered ‘Serviles’ or even
‘Moderates’ from positions of power[726]. He had resolved not to bring
the relations between himself and the Regency to a crisis, by making a
formal demand for the restoration of Castaños and Giron to their posts.
He wrote indeed to the Minister of War to say that he considered that
he had been ‘most unworthily treated’ and that there were limits to
his forbearance, but he avoided an open rupture, and waited for the
Regency to take the next step. He wrote, however, to his brother, the
Ambassador at Cadiz, that he ought to call together in private all the
more sensible and sound members of the Cortes, and to warn them of
the pernicious effects of this last move: unless they wished to see
him resign the position of Generalissimo, given him only six months
back, they must bring pressure on their government--‘they have it in
their power to interfere if they still wish that I should retain the
command[727].’
But this political trouble, ominous though it might be of friction in
the near future, was not the cause of Wellington’s failure to exploit
to the utmost the effects of the battle of Vittoria. The real hindrance
was not the state of Spanish politics, but the posture of affairs in
Central Europe. The Armistice of Plässwitz had been signed on June
4, and till it came to an end on August 11 there was a possibility
of peace between Napoleon and his Russian and Prussian enemies, on
terms which Great Britain would be unable to accept. Wellington was
sent frequent dispatches by Lord Bathurst, to keep him abreast of the
latest developments in the Conferences, but inevitably it took a very
long time for news from Saxony to reach London and be transmitted to
Spain. Now if Napoleon should succeed in making a separate peace with
the Allies, his first care would be to evict the British Army, if it
should have entered France in successful pursuit of King Joseph and
his demoralized host. Even if it should have taken Bayonne, crushed
the enemy’s field force, and made good way towards Bordeaux, it would
have no chance of standing against the enormous reserves that could be
drawn from Germany, with the Emperor himself at their head. Therefore
it would be better to take up a good position on the line of the
Pyrenees, secured by capturing St. Sebastian and Pampeluna, than to
make an irruption into France, however brilliant the immediate results
of such a move might be. Still ignorant on July 12 of the tendency of
the conferences at Dresden, Wellington wrote to the Secretary for War:
‘My future operations will depend a good deal upon what passes in the
North of Europe: and if operations should recommence there, on the
strength and description of the reinforcement which the enemy may get
on our front.... I think I can hold the Pyrenees as easily as I can
Portugal. I am quite certain that I can hold the position which I have
got more easily than the Ebro, or any other line in Spain[728].’ In
another letter he explains that he is giving his army a few days of
much needed rest, by the end of which he hopes not only to have heard
of the fall of St. Sebastian, but of the results of the negotiations
in Germany[729]. In a third he puts the matter in the clearest terms:
‘Much depends upon the state of affairs in the North of Europe. If
the war should be renewed, I should do most good by moving forward
into France, and I should probably be able to establish myself there.
If it is not renewed, I should only go into France to be driven out
again. So I shall do my best to confine myself to securing what I
have gained[730].’ In a fourth he complains that many people, even
officers at the front, seem to think that after driving the French from
the frontiers of Portugal to the Pyrenees, he ought to invade France
immediately. ‘Some expect that we shall be at Paris in a month.’ But
though he entertained no doubt that he could enter France to-morrow,
and establish the Army on the Adour, he could go no farther. For if
peace were made by the Allies, he must necessarily withdraw into Spain,
and the retreat, though short, would be through a difficult country and
a hostile population. So from what he could gather about the progress
of negotiations in Germany, he had determined that it would be unsafe
to think of anything in the way of an invasion of France[731].
Everything therefore at present, and for many weeks to follow, depended
on the news concerning the Armistice. And the happy intelligence that
it had come to an end, and that the war was renewed, with the Austrians
added to the Allied forces, only reached Wellington on September 7th.
The actual declaration of war by Austria took place on August 11, by
which time the situation on the Spanish frontier had suffered many
vicissitudes, for in the last fortnight during which the Armistice
endured, there had taken place Soult’s desperate invasion of Spain, and
all the bloody fighting known as the Battles of the Pyrenees.
Meanwhile we must return to July 1st, on which day Wellington had
already made up his mind that his present programme should be confined
to bringing up his army to the Bidassoa and the Pyrenean passes, and
undertaking the siege of St. Sebastian and the blockade of Pampeluna.
He was still not quite happy about the intentions of Clausel--he
trusted that the French General and his 15,000 men would retire to
France by the pass above Jaca[732]. If he were to remain at Saragossa,
and Suchet were there to join him, a tiresome complication would be
created on his right rear--wherefore he kept sending letters to William
Bentinck, ordering him to keep Suchet busy at all costs, by whatever
means might seem best to him[733]. It was not till July 16th that news
came that this danger had ended in the desired fashion, by Clausel’s
crossing the passes[734]. But whatever might happen in that direction,
there was still one point that had to be settled, before it could be
considered that the allied army was established on a satisfactory line
for defending the Spanish frontier and covering the sieges of St.
Sebastian and Pampeluna. The French were still in possession of the
Bastan, the high-lying valley of the Upper Bidassoa, through which
runs the main road from Pampeluna to Bayonne, by the Col de Velate,
and the pass of Maya. This last corner of Spain must be cleared of the
invaders, or the crest of the Pyrenees was not yet secure. Accordingly
arrangements were made for marching the main body of the British Army
to its destined positions through the Bastan, in order to sweep out the
lingering enemy.
A sufficient corps must be left to blockade Pampeluna: during the
operations against Clausel this duty had been discharged by Hill’s
and Silveira’s and Morillo’s troops. As these units had enjoyed five
days’ rest, while the remainder of the divisions had been marching
hard in eastern Navarre, it was arranged that they should give over
the service of the blockade by sections to the returning columns as
each came up. Wellington intended to transfer the whole affair in the
end to a Spanish force, the ‘Army of Reserve of Andalusia’ under Henry
O’Donnell, which had been occupied for the last week in the siege of
the forts of Pancorbo, after its very tardy arrival in the zone of
operations. King Joseph, when lying at Burgos, had thrown a garrison of
700 men into these forts, which command the high road to the Ebro, in
the vain hope of incommoding Wellington’s advance. But as the allied
army did not march by the Camino Real at all, but cut across by side
routes to Medina del Pomar, the precaution was useless, and cost the
enemy a battalion. However, it was necessary to clear the defile,
in order to open the easiest line of communication with Madrid, and
O’Donnell was directed to capture the forts on his way north to join
the main army. He invested them on June 25, and stormed the lower
and weaker fort of Santa Marta on the 28th. The upper fort of Santa
Engracia was a veritable eagle’s nest, on a most inaccessible position:
O’Donnell succeeded with great difficulty in getting six guns up to a
point on which they could bear on the work. But the reason why such
a strong post surrendered by capitulation two days later was not the
artillery fire, but mainly lack of water, the castle well having run
nearly dry, and partly the news of Vittoria. A small party of fugitives
who had escaped from the field by an incredible détour, corroborated
the claims made by the Spanish general when he summoned the place, and
the commandant (Major Durand of the 55th Line) surrendered with 650
men, 24 guns, and a good stock of ammunition on June 30th[735].
On getting these news Wellington, on July 2, ordered O’Donnell to come
up at once, and take over the blockade of Pampeluna, for which his
whole force of 11,000 men would not be too great. For the fortress was
large and strongly garrisoned. The King had brought up the number of
troops left to the Governor-General Cassan[736] to 3,600 men before
leaving the place, and there were over eighty guns mounted on the
walls, though two outlying forts in the plain had been abandoned.
Wellington allowed nine days for the orders to reach O’Donnell, and for
the Army of Reserve to make the long march from Pancorbo to Pampeluna:
as a matter of fact it took eleven. Meanwhile the fortress had to be
contained by troops from the main army, till the Andalusians should
come up--they were due on July 12th. The scheme adopted was that Hill
should collect the 2nd Division and Silveira’s Portuguese[737]--their
usual contingent of auxiliaries--on the north side of Pampeluna on July
1st, and march on July 2; the ground which he had held being taken
over by the Light 3rd and 7th Divisions, returning from the chase of
Clausel. On the 3rd the 7th Division was to be relieved by the 4th, and
to follow Hill. On the 5th the 6th Division (Clinton) would arrive, and
relieve the Light Division which would follow the 7th. The greater part
of the cavalry was to be left behind in the plains, being obviously
useless in the Pyrenees except in small parties for exploration; but
each of the marching divisions had a regiment attached to it.
The result of these arrangements was to leave three divisions (3rd,
4th, 6th), and nearly all the cavalry, for the blockade of Pampeluna--a
rather larger force than might have been expected[738]. Four divisions
(2nd, Light, 7th, and Silveira’s Portuguese) moved out to clear the
Bastan, and to establish communications with Graham’s corps on the
Lower Bidassoa. If the French had been in good fighting trim, four
divisions would have been none too many for the task, more especially
when it is remembered that they were advancing in three échelons,
each separated from the next by a long day’s march. But Wellington
reckoned that, although he had all Gazan’s and D’Erlon’s troops in
front of him--the presence of Reille’s on the Lower Bidassoa had
been reported by Graham--they would have no artillery (since it had
been lost at Vittoria), would be low in numbers, because they had
not yet gathered in their stragglers, and lower still in morale. His
estimate was on the whole justified, for the operation was successfully
carried out; but it did not go off quite so easily as had been
expected. It should be mentioned that, on the bare chance that the
French might make a movement from St. Jean-Pied-du-Port to disturb
the blockade of Pampeluna--an unlikely possibility--the 2nd Division
had detached Byng’s brigade to hold the pass of Roncesvalles, in
conjunction with Morillo’s Spanish division. Hill therefore, leading
the march towards the Bastan, had only three of his four brigades with
him--Cameron’s[739], O’Callaghan’s[740], and Ashworth’s Portuguese. The
total of the marching column, from front to rear, was about 22,000 men.
To understand the task set before Hill’s corps it is necessary to go
back to the arrangements--if arrangements they can be called, for they
were largely involuntary--made by the French Head-quarters Staff during
the preceding week. After Reille’s divisions had turned off towards the
Bidassoa, and D’Erlon’s had retreated into the Bastan, the main body
of the French Army--the four and a half infantry divisions of the Army
of the South, with its own cavalry and the bulk of that of the Army of
Portugal[741]--had taken the route of the Pass of Roncesvalles, and
reached St. Jean-Pied-du-Port, in a state of complete confusion (June
27), preceded by a vanguard of marauders several thousands strong, who
swept the countryside of cattle and corn just as freely after they
had reached France as while they were still in Navarre. Behind the
troops who had kept to their eagles followed a rearguard of footsore
stragglers and slightly wounded men, harassed till they came to the
frontier by bands of local guerrilleros. The whole mass was in a state
of demoralization: the French peasantry had to flee to the hills with
what they could carry--every house was plundered save those in which
a general or other officer of high rank had quartered himself[742].
St. Jean-Pied-du-Port was a small third-class fortress, garrisoned
by a battalion of National Guards, not an arsenal or a dépôt. It was
impossible to reorganize an army there, or even to feed it for a few
days. The Army of the South rolled back on June 29th to the valleys of
the Nivelle and Nive, so as to be near the great magazines of Bayonne,
which had always been the base from which the French forces in Spain
were supplied. There alone would it be possible to re-form it, and
to re-equip it with all the guns and transport necessary to replace
the losses of Vittoria. Gazan left one division--that of Conroux--at
St. Jean, to block the pass of Roncesvalles: with the other three
and a half divisions he arrived on July 1st at Ustaritz, St. Pée and
Espelette in the valleys of the Nive and Nivelle, only twelve or
fifteen miles from Bayonne. The cavalry was sent back still farther to
the line of the Adour.
Soon after this there was a great reduction made in the mounted arm.
Orders arrived from Germany that only the cavalry of the Army of the
South was to remain on the frontier. Boyer’s dragoons of the Army of
Portugal, Treillard’s dragoons of the Army of the Centre, and seven
light cavalry regiments of the Armies of Portugal and the North were
to start off at once[743]. Napoleon in his Saxon campaign had been
suffering bitterly from a want of good cavalry, and had directed the
King to send these veteran regiments across France with all speed,
whatever might be the state of affairs in Spain.
It is quite clear that if Wellington had chosen, on June 26th, to
follow Gazan across the Pyrenees, instead of turning aside to chase
Clausel, he could have done anything that he pleased with the enemy.
But this, for the reasons that we have detailed above--was not his game
for the moment. Hence the shattered Army of Spain had a few days in
which to commence reorganization. The easiest thing was the replacement
of the 151 cannon lost at Vittoria. Bayonne was a great artillery
storehouse, and the French gunners had brought away their teams, if
they had left all their pieces behind them. On July 6th General
Tirlet, the officer commanding the artillery of the united armies,
could report to the King that he had already served out 80 guns--33
each to the Armies of Gazan and Reille, 10 to the Army of the Centre,
and 4 to the mobile division of the Bayonne Reserve. By the end of the
month he promised to have 120 or even 150 pieces ready, which would
give every division its battery, as well as a good reserve. And these
pledges were fulfilled--with help from the arsenals of Toulouse, Blaye,
and La Rochelle. But the supply of caissons was for some time very low,
and the wheeled transport for the train was much more difficult to
procure, requisitions on the Pyrenean departments being difficult to
enforce, and slow to collect. As to food supply, the main difficulty
was that although there was a considerable accumulation of stores at
Bayonne, no one had ever contemplated the chance that 60,000 starving
men would be thrown on the resources of the dépôt in one mass. Much
flour was there, but not enough ovens to bake it, or wagons to carry
it to the troops lying fifteen or twenty miles out, on the Bidassoa or
the Nive. And these troops had lost all their own carts and fourgons.
Even as much as a month later the army, reorganized in other respects,
had not got enough transport to carry more than a few days’ food, as
Marshal Soult was to find.
King Joseph had left Pampeluna long before his troops, and taking a
short cut had reached St. Jean de Luz on June 28th, and set up his
last head-quarters there. He was painfully aware of the fact that his
great brother would in all probability visit upon his head all his
inevitable wrath for the results of the late campaign; but to the final
moment of his command he strove to exercise his authority, and busied
himself with the details of projected operations. He was at this moment
somewhat estranged from Marshal Jourdan, who had taken to his bed, and
kept complaining that the generals would neither give him information
nor take his orders, but confined themselves to making ill-natured
comments on the battle of Vittoria. The King, instead of relying on his
advice, asked council on all sides, and hovered between many opinions.
It is a sufficient proof of the incoherence of both Jourdan’s and
Joseph’s military ideas, that at this moment they were thinking
seriously of resuming the offensive and re-entering Spain. When
he received Clausel’s dispatches announcing his safe arrival at
Saragossa, and the possibility of his junction with Suchet, the King
was fascinated for the moment with the idea of bringing Wellington to
a stand, by attacking his flank and rear in Aragon. This could only
be done by sending large reinforcements to Clausel, and so weakening
the main army. The real objection to this plan was that the troops
were in no condition to march, or indeed to fight, till they should
have had time for rest and reorganization. Jourdan, however, drew up
on July 5--the very day on which Wellington was beginning to drive
Gazan out of the Bastan--as we shall presently see--a memoir for the
King’s consideration, which laid out three possible policies. One was
to advance with every unit that could move, against Graham, who was
wrongly supposed to have only one British division with him. The second
was to march to relieve Pampeluna by Roncesvalles, after first calling
in Clausel to help. The third was to accept the idea which lay at the
base of Clausel’s last dispatch, to leave 15,000 men on the Bidassoa
to detain Graham, and to move the rest of the army by the Jaca passes
into Aragon. It was conceded that artillery could not go that way, and
that Clausel had none with him--but some guns might be picked up at
Saragossa and from Suchet, and a very large body of troops would be
placed on Wellington’s flank. It is difficult to say which of the three
schemes was more impracticable for the moment, as a policy for the
starving and demoralized Army of Spain.
A more serious project, and one for which there would have been much to
say, if the French Army had been at this moment in a condition to feed
itself, or to manœuvre, or to commit itself to an action which would
involve the expenditure of more ammunition than the infantry could
carry in their pouches, was one for strengthening the front in the
Bastan. While this long valley was still retained, direct communication
between Wellington’s main body about Pampeluna and the large detachment
under Graham on the Bidassoa was blocked. But the Bastan was occupied
by the weakest section of the French forces, D’Erlon’s Army of the
Centre, one of whose infantry divisions (Darmagnac’s) had been ruined
at the battle of Vittoria, where it lost more men in proportion to its
strength than any other unit[744], while another--Casapalacios’ Spanish
division--was disappearing rapidly by desertion. There were only left,
in a condition to fight, the Royal Guards--a little over 2,000 men--and
Cassagne’s division, which had suffered no serious casualties in the
recent campaign. Clearly the Bastan and the numerous passes which
descend into it could not be held by 10,000 infantry, some of them in
very bad order, even though they might get some guns from the Bayonne
arsenal. Wherefore Joseph ordered D’Erlon to make over the defence of
the Bastan to the Army of the South, and to fall back to the line of
the Nivelle, where he should join Reille. Gazan was directed to take
over charge of this important salient, with the whole of his army, save
Conroux’s division left at St. Jean-Pied-du-Port[745] (July 3).
Gazan, who had only reached the Nive two days before, whose troops
had not yet recovered from the starvation which they had suffered in
the march from Pampeluna to Ustaritz and Espelette, who had lost his
transport, and who had not yet received the 33 guns which had been sent
him from Bayonne (though he was told that they were just coming up),
made objections very rational in themselves to these orders. He said
that his troops must have food and guns, or they could not be expected
to maintain their positions. He also remarked that it was exasperating
that he had not been told to march straight from St. Jean-Pied-du-Port
to the Bastan by the direct pass at Ispegui, instead of being brought
back two days’ march to the Nive, and then sent south again to the Maya
pass, only twelve miles from his starting-point[746].
Gazan started out, unwillingly and with many protests, from his
cantonments on the Nive on the morning of July 3, sending one of his
divisions, Leval’s, by the inferior mountain road from Sarre on the
Nivelle to Etchalar and Santesteban in the western Bastan, the rest
by the Maya pass to Elizondo, the chief road-centre in the eastern or
upper Bastan. From these points they were to spread themselves out,
and take over all the passes south and west from D’Erlon’s troops. The
commander of the Army of the Centre began to clear out his reserves
northwards, and to arrange for the rapid departure of each advanced
section, as it should be relieved by the arrival of Gazan’s divisions.
He met his colleague on the way, handed over the charge to him, and
then rode down to make his report to Jourdan at St. Pée (July 5), where
he dropped the cheering remark that if the Army of the South did not
receive very heavy convoys of food at once, it would go to pieces of
its own accord and quit the Bastan within a few days, as his own army
had eaten up the valley and no troops could live there[747].
Darmagnac’s division and the Royal Guard had been relieved by Leval,
while Cassagne’s first brigade was marching north by Elizondo, though
his second was still blocking the Col de Velate till Gazan’s troops
should arrive, when Wellington’s attack was delivered--at the most
opportune of moments. Nothing could have been better for him than that
the enemy should have been caught in the middle of an uncompleted
exchange of troops, before the incoming army had gained any knowledge
of the ground. Moreover, though Gazan had double as many men with him
as D’Erlon, they had not enjoyed the comparative rest which the Army
of the Centre had gained since June 26th, but had been countermarching
all the time, and were in a very dilapidated condition. Otherwise
there would have been much greater difficulty in driving them out of
the Bastan with the very moderate force that Wellington actually used.
For he was able to finish the business with four brigades--the three
of the 2nd Division and one of Silveira’s--which formed the head of
his column. Of the rear échelons, the 7th Division, which started from
Pampeluna on the 4th, got up only in time to see the very end of the
game, and the Light Division were never engaged at all.
At noon on July 4th Cameron’s Brigade[748], forming the advanced guard
of the 2nd Division, crossed the highest point of the Col de Velate,
and ran into half a battalion of the 16th Léger. This was the rearguard
of Braun’s brigade of Cassagne’s division, which was holding the
village of Berrueta, a few miles down the northern slope of the pass,
waiting till it should be relieved by Maransin’s division from Gazan’s
army. This detachment was evicted from Berrueta and Aniz, and fell back
on Ziga, where the other battalion of its regiment was in position.
That village also was cleared, but Hill’s leading brigade then found
itself in front of Maransin’s division marching rapidly up the road,
with other troops visible in a long column behind. Hill, seeing that he
was about to be involved in a serious fight with heavy numbers, began
to deploy the rear brigades of the 2nd Division behind the ravine in
front of Aniz, as each came up, abandoning the recently taken Ziga.
The French, in the same fashion, gradually formed a long line on their
side of the ravine, extending it eastward from the village and showing
two brigades in front line and two in reserve on the heights of Irurita
some way behind.
Hill appears to have felt the French front in several places, but to
have desisted on discovering its strength. Skirmishing of a bloodless
sort went on all the afternoon, each side waiting for its reserves to
come up. Before dusk Gazan had drawn in all Villatte’s division, which
had reached Santesteban earlier in the day, and the non-divisional
brigade of Gruardet, so that by night he had two complete divisions
and two extra brigades concentrated--at least 13,000 men[749]. Behind
Hill there was only Da Costa’s brigade of Silveira’s division, which
was a full march to the rear: for Wellington had ordered A. Campbell’s
brigade--the other half of the Portuguese division--to take a different
route, that up the Arga river by Zubiri to Eugui, which goes by a bad
pass (Col de Urtiaga) into the French valley of the Alduides.
Hill’s position was a distinctly unpleasant one, since he had
only three brigades up in line, with another out of any reasonable
supporting distance, if the enemy should think fit to press in upon
him. The 7th Division was two marches away, while the Light Division
was still before Pampeluna; both were altogether out of reach. Owing to
heavy losses at Vittoria, the three second division brigades can hardly
have numbered 6,000 bayonets[750]. Their commander very wisely waited
for the arrival of Wellington from the rear. Head-quarters that day had
been at Lanz, on the road from Pampeluna to the Col de Velate.
The Commander-in-Chief came up at about midday on the 5th, following in
the wake of Da Costa’s Portuguese, who were bringing up with them two
batteries of artillery--the first guns that either side had shown in
the Bastan. After looking at the French positions Wellington resolved
to push on--this was a purely psychological resolve, for his numbers
did not justify any such a move; he relied on his estimate of the
morale of Gazan, and that estimate turned out to be perfectly correct.
Hill’s operations, till Wellington took over charge of the field, had
been limited to cautious reconnaissances of the enemy’s flanks. But
with the change in command decisive action began: Cameron’s brigade
was sent out by the steep hillsides on the right to turn Gazan’s
left flank; O’Callaghan’s, with Ashworth’s Portuguese in support,
crossed the ravine in front of Aniz, and deployed on each side of
the road to attack his centre. If Gazan had stood to fight, and
brought up all his reserves, it is hard to see how he could have been
moved: indeed he ought to have scored a big success if he had dared
to counter-attack--for Wellington had no reserves save Da Costa’s
Portuguese brigade. But, like Murray at Tarragona, the French general
had been making himself dreadful pictures of the strength that might
conceivably be in front of him. Three prisoners taken at Ziga on the
preceding day had told him that they belonged to Hill’s corps--he
presumed it complete in front of him, with all its six brigades,
instead of the actual three. Then a heavy column had come up at
noon--Da Costa’s brigade--Gazan judged it to be some fresh division
from Pampeluna. In addition he had received a cry of alarm from Conroux
at St. Jean-Pied-du-Port--that officer reported that on July 4 a
Spanish corps was threatening his flank from the Val Carlos--this was
no more than a reconnaissance thrown out by Morillo. Also he got news
from the Alduides valley of the arrival of A. Campbell’s Portuguese
brigade at Eugui--he deduced from this information, joined to the
report about Morillo, a turning movement against his left flank, by
forces of unknown but probably considerable strength. Lastly, by
drawing in Villatte’s division to his main body, he had left open a gap
on his right, between his own positions in front of Elizondo and those
of Leval at Santesteban. He was seized with a panic fear lest another
British column might pour into this gap, by the mountain roads leading
from Lanz and Almandoz into the middle Bastan[751]. And, indeed,
Wellington had started the 7th Division on one of these passes, the
Puerto de Arraiz--but it was still 20 miles away.
Already on the night of the 4th Gazan had written to the King that
he must ask for leave to make his stand at the Maya pass, rather
than to hold all the minor defiles which converge into the Bastan--a
complicated system of tracks whose defence involved a terrible
dissemination of forces. By noon on the 5th, having seen Wellington’s
arrival with Da Costa’s brigade, he made up his mind that if the
enemy attacked him frontally it must be to engage his attention,
while encircling columns closed in upon his flanks and rear, from the
Alduides on the one side and the western passes on the other. When
the movement against his front began, his troops in the position by
Ziga retired, without waiting to receive the attack, and took cover
behind Villatte’s division, drawn up on the heights of Irurita. Hill
had to spend time in re-forming his lines before he could resume the
offensive; but when he did so against Villatte’s troops, they gave
way in turn, and retired behind Maransin’s division, which was now
placed above the village of Elizondo. In this way the enemy continued
to retire by échelons, without allowing the pursuers to close,
until by dusk he stood still at last at the Col de Maya, where he
offered battle. Gazan was extremely well satisfied with himself, and
considered that he had made a masterly retreat in face of overwhelming
hostile forces. As a matter of fact he had been giving way, time after
time, to mere demonstrations by a force of little more than half his
own strength--four weak brigades were pushing back his six. But he
never made a long enough stand to enable him to discover the very
moderate strength of the pursuers. The whole business was a field
day exercise--the total casualties only reached a few scores on each
side. Gazan’s elaborate narrative about the various occasions on which
British vanguards were surprised to run into heavy fire, suffered
heavily, and had to halt, find its best comment in the fact that the
total loss of English and Portuguese during three days of petty combats
was only 5 officers and 119 men, and that this day, July 5, was the
least bloody of the three.
Well satisfied to have manœuvred the enemy out of the Bastan without
any appreciable loss to himself, Wellington accepted the challenge
which the Army of the South offered him by halting on the Maya
positions. But he waited for the 7th Division to come up, rightly
thinking that the two British and two Portuguese brigades hitherto
employed were too weak a force, now that the enemy showed signs of
making his final stand. The 7th Division, acting under the senior
brigadier, Barnes, for Lord Dalhousie had been left behind to conduct
the blockade of Pampeluna, had marched on the 4th, the day when
Hill was commencing to push the French north of the Col de Velate.
Wellington had intended from the first that it should take a route
which would enable it to turn Gazan’s right: it went north from
Marcalain, where it had concentrated on giving up its blockading work,
by Lizaso, to the pass of Arraiz, by which it descended into the Bastan
on the 6th. It then occupied Santesteban, from which Leval’s division
had been withdrawn by Gazan at the same moment at which he fell
back himself on to the pass of Maya. Pending its arrival Wellington
remained halted in front of the French positions for the whole of the
6th, filling the enemy with various unjustifiable fears; for they
over-valued his strength, and credited him with much more ambitious
projects than those which he really entertained. This halt on the 6th
seemed to them to cover some elaborate snare, while its real purpose
was only to allow him to make his next move with 14,000 instead of with
8,000 men. The plan for the morning of the 7th was that Hill’s column
should attack the Maya positions in front, while the 7th Division
should cross the Bidassoa at Santesteban, and take a mountain road
which would bring it out upon the flank of Gazan’s line, which rested
on the Peak of Atchiola. This would be a hard day’s march by a rough
track, along interminable crests and dips. Meanwhile, on July 8th,
another British unit would come up: the Light Division was relieved at
Pampeluna by the 4th Division on the 5th, and following in the track of
Barnes, Charles Alten was to be at Santesteban on the night of the 7th,
and at the fighting front by the next morning.
The halt which Wellington imposed on his leading column upon July
6th gave time for the French Higher Command to make an astounding
series of blunders. To discriminate between true and false reports is
one of the most difficult tasks for any general, and the faculty of
making a correct decision after receiving a number of contradictory
data is undoubtedly one of the best tests of military ability. All
men may err--but greater errors have seldom been made in a day than
those of Jourdan and King Joseph on July 6th. They started, perhaps
naturally, with the leading idea that Wellington was about to undertake
the invasion of France on a grand scale. Where would the blow fall?
Graham had been quiescent for some days on the Bidassoa, and it was
obvious that the troops on his front were mainly Spaniards--the Army
of Galicia and Longa’s Cantabrians were alone visible. Gazan, though
making constant complaints that he was outnumbered and oppressed
by a ‘triple force’, had not as yet accounted for anything but
Hill’s corps as present in his front. Where, then, was the rest of
Wellington’s army? The concentration of troops in front of Pampeluna
had been ascertained--what had become of them? Now Conroux at St.
Jean-Pied-du-Port kept sending in messages of alarm. Morillo’s
reconnaissances had induced him to push most of his division forward
to watch the passes in his front, and he reported Byng’s brigade
at Roncesvalles as a considerable accumulation of British troops.
Then came the news that A. Campbell’s Portuguese brigade had entered
the Alduides valley, by descending which it could cut in between
Conroux and the rest of the army. Probably it was the over-emphasis of
Conroux’s cries of warning which set the King and Jourdan wrong--but
whatever the cause, they jumped to the conclusion that the serious
invasion was to come on the inland flank--that Byng and Campbell were
the forerunners of a great force marching to turn their left, by
Roncesvalles and the eastern passes. Acting on this utterly erroneous
hypothesis, they issued a series of orders for the hasty transference
of great bodies of troops towards St. Jean-Pied-du-Port. Leval’s
division of the Army of the South--which had retired to Echalar after
evacuating Santesteban--Cassagne’s and Darmagnac’s divisions of the
Army of the Centre--which had handed over the Bastan to Gazan and
retired to St. Pée--and Thouvenot’s provisional division of troops of
the Army of the North[752], from the Lower Bidassoa, were all started
off by forced marches to join Conroux at St. Jean-Pied-du-Port. Only
Reille with the four divisions of the Army of Portugal was left to
face Graham[753], and Gazan was directed to hold the Maya positions
with Maransin’s and Villatte’s divisions and Gruardet’s brigade alone.
Thus, while Wellington was about to deliver his rather leisurely blow
at the French centre, all the enemy’s reserves were sent off to their
extreme left. Nothing could have been more convenient to the British
general, if he had attacked one or two days later on the Maya front,
when the troops on the move would all have got past him on their way
south-eastward. But as he made his assault the day after the King’s
orders were issued, it resulted that the marching columns were passing
just behind the part of the enemy’s line at which he was aiming, so
that Gazan had more supports at hand than might have been expected.
But this was neither to the credit of the King, who had not intended
to provide them, nor to the discredit of Wellington, who could not
possibly have foreseen such strategical errors as those in which his
enemy was indulging.
On the morning of July 7th Gazan was in battle order at Maya, with
Maransin’s division and Gruardet’s brigade holding the pass, and the
heights on each side of it from the hill of Alcorrunz on the west to
the rock of Aretesque on the east. Villatte’s division (commanded on
this day by its senior brigadier, Rignoux, for Villatte was sick)
formed the reserve, on the high road to Urdax, behind the main crest.
Wellington’s simple form of attack was to send O’Callaghan’s brigade to
turn the French left by a mountain road, Cameron’s brigade to seize the
peak of Atchiola beyond his extreme right, so as to outflank Gazan on
that side, to demonstrate with the Portuguese and his two batteries in
the centre, and to wait for the crucial moment when the 7th Division,
on the march since the morning by the hill road from Santesteban to
Urdax, should appear in the enemy’s rear. Then a general assault would
take place.
The scheme did not work out accurately. The Portuguese demonstrated, as
was ordered. O’Callaghan’s brigade accomplished its turning movement,
and got into contact with Remond’s brigade of Maransin’s division, on
the extreme French left at the rock of Aretesque. Cameron’s brigade
took the hill of Alcorrunz without difficulty, but was then held up
by the bulk of Villatte’s division, which came up from the rear and
held the crest of the Atchiola with six battalions; it could not be
dislodged. So far so good--the enemy was engaged all along the line and
had used up three-fourths of his reserve. But early in the afternoon a
dense fog set in, and the 7th Division never appeared in the enemy’s
rear. It had got involved in the darkness, lost its way, and wandered
helpless. Wherefore the other attacks were never pressed. ‘If the 7th
Division had arrived in time, and the sea fog had held off for an hour
or two, we should have made a good thing of it,’ wrote Wellington to
Graham[754]. ‘Our loss is about 60 wounded--on the other days; (4th and
5th) there was a good deal of firing, but we sustained no loss at all.’
Early on the morning of July 8 Gazan, after having written a most
insincere report concerning the skirmish of the preceding day, _combat
des plus opiniâtres_, in which he had checked the enemy with loss,
abandoned the Maya positions before he was again attacked. He had
the impudence to write to Jourdan that he had only recoiled because
Head-Quarters refused to send him any supports[755]. As a matter of
fact the King had checked the progress of the troops marching to St.
Jean-Pied-du-Port, and was sending them straight to Urdax and Ainhoue,
where all the four divisions arrived on the 8th, early in the day.
If Gazan had chosen to hold on to the pass he would have had 15,000
men added to his strength by the evening. But he went off at 6 a.m.,
and Hill occupied the crest an hour later. Wellington was so far
from intending any further advance that he wrote that afternoon to
Graham that he was now at leisure to take a look at the whole line of
the Bidassoa down to the sea, and intended to pay his lieutenant a
visit. A day later he told Lord Bathurst that ‘the whole of our right
being now established on the frontier, I am proceeding to the left to
superintend the operations there’--which meant in the main the siege of
St. Sebastian. The troops which had been brought up to the Bastan took
up permanent quarters--the Light Division at Santesteban, the 7th at
Elizondo, Hill’s two British brigades at the Maya positions, to which
artillery was brought up, while Ashworth’s and Da Costa’s Portuguese
were set to guard the minor eastern passes which open from the Bastan
into the Alduides, or Val de Baygorri--the Col d’Ispegui and the Col
de Berderis. They connected themselves with A. Campbell’s Portuguese
brigade, which watched the southern exit from that long French valley.
Campbell, for his part, had to keep touch along the frontier with
Byng and Morillo in the Roncesvalles country. The 3rd, 4th, and 6th
Divisions still lay round Pampeluna, anxiously expecting to be relieved
by the Army of Reserve of Andalusia. But Henry O’Donnell, though
due on the 12th, did not appear and take over the blockade till the
16th-17th. This delay began to worry Wellington a few days later,
but on the 8th-9th he was still content with the position of affairs,
rightly judging that the enemy was in no condition to make a push in
any direction, till he should have got his troops rested, his artillery
replaced, and his transport reorganized.
Otherwise he could not have taken so lightly the fact that opposite the
Maya positions the enemy had now accumulated six and a half divisions,
expecting to be attacked by columns descending from the Bastan within
the next few days. Joseph and Jourdan spent an immense amount of
unnecessary pains in the hurried shifting of troops, during the short
space that intervened before the thunderbolt which was coming from
Germany fell on their unlucky heads. But who, in their position, could
have guessed that a mainly political consideration was intervening,
to prevent Wellington from undertaking that invasion of France which
seemed his obvious military duty?
One last measure of precaution on their adversary’s part modified
the front at the end of the petty campaign of the Bastan--but by
that time Joseph and Jourdan were gone. On July 15th Wellington made
up his mind that the defensive position on the lower Bidassoa, by
which he was covering the siege of St. Sebastian, was not safe on
its inland flank, where the French were still in possession of the
town of Vera, at the gorge of the Bidassoa, where it emerges from its
high upland course in the Bastan. Vera and its bridge presented an
obvious point of concentration for a force intending to trouble the
right wing of Graham’s corps. Wherefore it was necessary to clear the
enemy out of this point of vantage, and to shorten the line between
Hill in the Bastan and Giron on the lower Bidassoa. Uncertain as to
whether the French would make a serious stand or not, Wellington
ordered up large forces--the 7th Division and the newly-arrived Light
Division from Santesteban, Longa, and one brigade of Giron’s Galicians
from the covering troops. But the enemy--Lamartinière’s division of
Reille’s army--offered only a rearguard action, and withdrew to the
other side of the hills which separate the Bastan from the coast
region--abandoning the ‘Puertos’ or passes of Vera and Echalar. They
feared that the advance of the allied left centre might be the
prelude to a general attack, and began to make preparations to receive
it. But their anxiety disappeared when it became clear that Wellington
only wanted Vera and its defile, and had no further offensive purpose.
The Light Division occupied Vera: the 7th, extending to the right, took
over the pass of Echalar and got into touch with Hill’s advanced guard
at Maya.
[Illustration: _King Joseph at Mortefontaine_
_from the portrait by Girardet_]
SECTION XXXVII: CHAPTER V
EXIT KING JOSEPH
While Wellington was pressing his victorious advance to the Ebro, the
Emperor Napoleon had been so entirely engrossed in the management of
his own great campaign in Saxony that he had little or no time to
spare for considering the affairs of Spain. King Joseph had continued
to receive dispatches from Paris, which purported to set forth his
brother’s orders and commands. But, as he well knew, they were really
the compositions of the War-Minister Clarke, who, from the general
directions which the Emperor had left when departing for Germany,
and such curt comments as intermittently came back from Dresden or
Wittenberg, used to construct lectures or critical essays, which he
tried to make appropriate to the last news that came up from Spain. The
original instructions were completely out of date, and no new general
scheme of operations could be got out of Napoleon, who could only find
time to make commentaries of a caustic kind on any correspondence
that came from beyond the Pyrenees[756]. Clarke’s dispatches to the
King were quite useless, and they were often offensive in tone--it is
clear that the minister took a personal pleasure in making sarcastic
observations on the conduct of the war in Spain, which he could foist
on King Joseph as his brother’s composition. They generally arrived
at moments which made them particularly absurd reading--what could be
more annoying to the King than to be told that Wellington’s Army was
a wreck, and that there was little chance of the Allies taking the
offensive, at the very moment when the French Head-Quarters was moving
ever northward, pushed on by what seemed in the eyes of Joseph and
Jourdan to be overwhelming numbers? It was absurd to be given hints
on the defence of the Douro when the retreating host was already on
the Ebro, or lectures on the advantages of the line of the Ebro, when
the Pyrenees had already been crossed. The habit of Clarke, however,
which most irritated the King, was that of corresponding directly
with the minor army-commanders in Spain, over the head of the nominal
commander-in-chief[757]. Joseph held very strongly to the opinion that
a main part of his disasters was due to Clarke’s dispatches to Clausel
and Suchet, which gave those generals excellent excuses for ignoring
orders from Head-Quarters, and carrying out their own designs, under
pretence that they were more consonant with the Emperor’s intentions
than the directions which came to them from Madrid, Valladolid, or
Burgos.
But the Emperor’s attention was at last attracted to Spain by a
disaster which could not be overlooked, or ignored as a passing worry.
The news of Vittoria reached him at Dresden on July 1--nine days
after the battle had been lost--forwarded by Clarke with imperfect
details. For the minister could only transmit a second-hand narrative
written by Foy, who had not been present at the battle, and Joseph’s
first short note from Yrurzun, dated July 23rd, which concealed much
and told little. There was, however, enough information to rouse the
Emperor to wild rage. He had three weeks before (June 4) concluded the
armistice of Plässwitz with the allied sovereigns, so that he was not
entirely absorbed in the details of his own strategy, and could at
last find time to devote some attention to the affairs of Spain, whose
consideration he had been putting off from week to week all through
the last two months. His own situation was still perilous enough--he
was uncertain whether he could come to terms with Russia and Prussia,
despite of his recent victories. And the idea that Austria might be
meaning mischief, and not merely playing for the enviable position of
general arbitrator between the belligerents, was already present. But
at least he was not wholly occupied by the strategical and tactical
needs of each day, and could turn to contemplate the Spanish campaign
as part of the European crisis. The exasperating thing was not so much
that the Imperial arms had suffered a hideous affront, though this
was a not unimportant consideration, which might encourage Alexander
and Frederick William III to renew the war. It was rather that the
position of Spain, as a counter in the negotiations which were going
on at Prague, was completely changed. On May 25th the Franco-Spanish
kingdom of Joseph Bonaparte made an imposing appearance--Madrid was
still occupied, and a solid block of territory from the Esla to the
Guadalaviar--more than half the Peninsula--showed on the map as part
of the Napoleonic empire. On July 1 it was known that the King was a
fugitive on the French border, that the Castiles, Leon, Navarre, and
Biscay had all been lost, that Valencia would certainly, and Aragon
probably, go the same way within a week or two. The pretence that
Joseph was King of Spain had suddenly become absurd. In continuing
the hagglings at Prague for a new European settlement, it would be
ludicrous to insist on the restoration to Madrid of a king whose only
possessions beyond the Pyrenees were a few scattered fortresses. For
Catalonia, it must be remembered, did not count as part of Joseph’s
kingdom; it had been formally annexed to France by the iniquitous
decree of February 1812[758].
It was a bitter blow to the new Charlemagne to see the largest of his
vassal-kingdoms suddenly torn from him, by a stroke dealt by an enemy
whom he affected to despise, while his attention had been distracted
for the moment to the Elbe and the Oder. The unexampled rapidity of
the campaign of Vittoria was astounding--there was nothing to compare
with it in recent military history, save his own overrunning of the
Prussian monarchy in the autumn of 1806. Wellington’s army had crossed
the Tormes on May 26th--by June 26th King Joseph was a fugitive in
France, and the main French Army of Spain was pouring back as a
disorganized rabble across the passes of the Pyrenees. The whole affair
seemed incredible--even ludicrous[759]--the armies of King Joseph still
appeared on the imperial muster-rolls as well over 100,000 strong, not
including Suchet’s forces on the East Coast. It was only a month or so
back that the Emperor had been comforting himself with the idea that
Wellington could not put 40,000 British troops in the field, and was
no longer a serious danger[760]. Obviously the only explanation of the
disaster must be colossal incapacity in the French Higher Command in
Spain, amounting to criminal negligence. That there might be another
explanation, viz. that a war could not be successfully conducted in
those pre-telegraphic days by orders sent from five hundred miles
away, by dispatches liable to constant delay or loss, and by a
commander-in-chief much distracted by other business, hardly occurred
to him[761]. His own system of managing the affairs of Spain, as has
been set forth in many earlier pages of this book[762], was really the
source of all evil. His nominal transference of the supreme command
to King Joseph had been a solemn farce, because he still permitted
interference by the minister at Paris, acting in his name, tolerated
private reports from army-commanders, which were concealed from the
King, and refused to allow of the punishment of flagrant instances of
disobedience to his vicegerent’s commands.
This perhaps the Emperor could hardly be expected to see. The news of
Vittoria having arrived, a culprit had to be sought, and the culprit
was obviously King Joseph, who with a magnificent army at his disposal,
and a good military situation, had allowed himself to be turned
out of Spain by a contemptible enemy. It went for nothing that the
unfortunate monarch had repeatedly asked for leave to abdicate, and had
demonstrated again and again that he was not allowed the real authority
of a commander-in-chief. The blame must be laid on his shoulders, and
he must be disgraced at once--not with too great public scandal, for
after all he was the Emperor’s brother--but in the manner which would
prove most wounding to his own feelings. ‘All the fault was his ...
if there was one man wanting in the army it was a real general, and
if there was one man too many with the army it was the King[763].’
Clarke was told to write to him a dispatch which not only superseded
him in command, and deprived him of even the services of his own Royal
Guard, but put him under a sort of arrest. He was on no account to go
to Paris. ‘The importance of the interests that are at stake in the
North, and the effect that your Majesty’s appearance could not fail to
produce on public opinion--both in Europe at large and more especially
in France--are so great, that the Emperor is constrained to issue
his formal orders that your Majesty should stop at Pampeluna or St.
Sebastian, or at least come no further than Bayonne.... Extraordinary
precautions have been taken to prevent the newspapers from mentioning
either the event of June 21st [the battle of Vittoria], or the
Emperor’s decision concerning your Majesty.... It is at Bayonne, where
the Emperor foresees that your Majesty has probably arrived, that
his further intentions will be signified, when he has acquired full
information as to the recent events. It is his definite order that your
Majesty should come no further into France, nor most especially to
Paris, under any pretext whatever. For the same reasons no officer of
your Majesty’s suite, and none of the Spanish exiles, must come beyond
the Garonne. They may be directed to establish themselves at Auch.’
But though this was bad enough, the greatest insult in King Joseph’s
eyes was that he was directed to hand over the command of the army and
his own Guards to his old enemy Soult, whose expulsion from Spain he
had procured with so much difficulty, and whom he had denounced to the
Emperor as selfish, disloyal, disobedient, and perjured, ‘the author
of that infamous letter found at Valencia[764]’ which had accused
the King of conspiring with the Cadiz Cortes against the interests
of his own brother. When Soult had returned from Spain the Emperor
had decided that all the accusations against him were frivolous, ‘des
petitesses.’ He might not be an amiable character--how many of the
marshals were?--but he had ‘the only military brain in the Peninsula’.
He was not given the command of any of the army corps in Saxony, nor
any administrative post of importance, but kept at Head-Quarters,
at the Emperor’s disposition, for two whole months. Apparently even
before the news of Vittoria arrived, his master had thought of sending
him back to Spain, but had postponed the scheme, because he did not
desire an open breach with his brother. But when Joseph’s _débâcle_
was announced, the Marshal received orders to leave Dresden at a few
hours’ notice, to call upon Clarke at Paris on the way, in order to
pick up the latest military information, and then to assume the command
at Bayonne at the earliest possible moment. He was posted up in all the
Emperor’s latest political and military schemes--even, as it seems,
entrusted with the secret that if matters went very badly it might be
necessary to open secret negotiations with the Cadiz Regency, on the
base that the Emperor might restore Ferdinand VII to his subjects, and
withdraw all his troops from Spain, if the Cortes could be persuaded
to make a separate peace, and to repudiate the British alliance[765].
It seems to have escaped Napoleon’s observation that the return of the
ultra-conservative and narrow-minded Ferdinand would be the last thing
desired by the Liberal party now dominant in the Cortes. But all the
disappointments of the treaty of Valençay were still in the far future.
Among the instructions entrusted to Soult, for use if they should prove
necessary, was a warrant authorizing him to put Joseph under arrest,
if he should openly flout his brother’s orders to halt at Bayonne,
and should show any intention of setting out for Paris. This warrant
had actually to be employed--the most maddening insult of all in the
eyes of the King--it made his treacherous enemy into his jailer, as he
complained.
Joseph received the first notice of his supersession from the mouth
of the Senator Roederer, who had been sent off by Clarke a few hours
in advance of Soult, in order that there might not be any scandalous
scene, such as might have occurred if the Marshal had presented himself
in person to inform the King of his fate. Roederer had served under
Joseph as King of Naples, was friendly to him, and broke the unpleasant
tidings as tactfully as he could. The results were what might have
been expected--the unfortunate monarch said that he had realized that
he must go, that he was already drafting another act of abdication.
But it was an insult to send Soult to take over the command, after
all the proofs of the Marshal’s perversity and disloyalty which he
had forwarded to the Emperor. He did not object to being deposed,
or imprisoned, or put on his trial for treason, but he did object to
being made the prisoner of Soult. ‘As often as he got on this topic his
Majesty grew quite frantic[766].’
But when Soult presented himself next morning there was no scene.
The King handed him over his papers and dispatches, and said that he
intended to establish himself in a country house just outside the gates
of Bayonne (July 12). Three days later, however, he made a sudden and
secret departure, and was well on the way to Bagnères de Bigorre before
his escape was discovered. He had to be pursued, stopped by force, and
shown the imperial warrant which authorized Soult to put him under
arrest. For eight days he was a prisoner at the Château of Poyanne,
when a dispatch arrived from Dresden, in which the Emperor said that
he might be allowed to retire to his own estate of Mortefontaine, on
condition that he saw no one, and never visited Paris [July 24]. If he
should make himself a centre of intrigues, and should fail to realize
that he was in disgrace, the Minister of Police had orders to imprison
him[767].
And thus Joseph disappears from the purview of students of the
Peninsular War, though he was to have one more short moment of
notoriety in the following spring, when he was made the nominal head
of the Council of Regency, which purported to govern France for a few
weeks, before the Northern Allies forced their way into the French
capital. He did not shine in that capacity, and would have done better
to content himself with escaping the notice of the world in the
semi-captivity to which his brother had condemned him in July 1813. But
Joseph, however much he might deny the impeachment, loved a prominent
place, however incapable he might be of filling it in a competent
fashion.
This, indeed, is the secret of his whole unfortunate career. The chance
which made him the brother of Napoleon put within his grasp ambitions
with which his very moderate talents could not cope. He was by no
means a bad man: the Spaniards would gladly have drawn him as a tyrant
or a monster, if it had been possible to do so; but had to content
themselves with representing him as a ludicrous and contemptible
character, ‘Pepe Botellas’[768], a comic-opera king, too much addicted
to wine and women, and tricked by his courtiers and mistresses. There
seems no reason to suppose that the charge of inebriety had any
particular foundation; but Joseph--long separated from his wife by
the chances of war--undoubtedly sought consolations in more than one
other quarter at Madrid. His amatory epistles and souvenirs, captured
in his carriage at Vittoria, provoked a smile and a caustic remark
from Wellington. As to the taunt that he was continually cheated and
exploited by those about him, there is no doubt that the unfortunate
King was possessed of the delusion that his personal charm and affable
manners won all hearts; he wasted much time in cajoling every person of
any importance with whom he came in contact, and had many sad moments
of disillusion, when he discovered that supposed friends had failed
him. His most persistent and dangerous error was that he imagined that
he could win over the Spaniards to his cause, by generous treatment and
emotional speeches. For years he went on enlisting in his ‘national
army’ every prisoner who was willing to save himself a tramp to a
French prison, by taking an easy oath of allegiance. When given arms
and uniforms they deserted: first and last Joseph enlisted 60,000
Spaniards in his leaky regiments--about 1,500 crossed the Bidassoa with
him at the moment of his fall. With those above the rank and file he
was a little more successful, because officers and politicians were
marked men, when once they had risked their necks by forswearing their
allegiance to Ferdinand VII. They knew that there would be no such easy
pardon for them as was granted to the common soldier. There had been
moments of intense depression for the Spanish cause, such as those
following the capture of Madrid in December 1808, and the invasion of
Andalusia in 1810, at which many timid or selfish souls had despaired
of the game, and had taken service with the adversary. Having once done
so it was impossible to go back--hence the King, when his star began to
wane, was overloaded with hundreds, and even thousands, of downhearted
and pessimistic dependants, who had no faith in his ultimate triumph,
yet still hung on to his skirts, and petitioned for the doles which
he was no longer able to give them. Few served him zealously--those
who did were in the main adventurers as destitute of morality as of
national feeling, who strove for their own profit rather than their
master’s--his prefects and intendants had villainous reputations for
the most part.
Though vain and self-confident, Joseph was entirely lacking in
backbone--he endured all the Emperor’s insults and taunts without any
real feeling of resentment, though he protested loudly enough. Unlike
his brothers, Lucien and Louis, he never dared to set his will against
Napoleon’s--his threatened abdications never became realities. He
pretended that his submission was the result of loyalty and brotherly
affection--in reality he had an insufficient sense of righteous
indignation and self-respect, and an exaggerated love of royalty--even
of its shadow. An intelligent French observer summed up his character
in the following curious phrases:
‘The King’s most striking characteristic is his easy temper. It does
not come from a generous heart or a real magnanimity, but from a facile
disposition and a total absence of decision. He has not the courage to
refuse to do things which his own reason condemns, and is often guilty
of acts which he himself acknowledges to be unwise. At bottom he is an
honest man, but he has not the firmness to maintain his principles if
he is pressed and harried. Tiresome solicitation may induce him to cast
aside principle and act like a rogue. His greatest hobby is a belief in
his own _finesse_--a great perspicacity in discovering the secret and
selfish motives of those about him. He often gives them credit for more
Machiavellian ingenuity than they really possess. He does not always
withdraw his favour from those whom he has discovered cheating him,
but rejoices in making them feel that he has found out their private
designs. He is incapable of owning that he has done an injustice:
when he discovers that he has wronged one of his followers, he shirks
meeting him, and tries to get rid of him by circuitous methods. Hence
he often persists in acts of injustice, because he is ashamed of
confessing himself to have been mistaken.’
The natural result of this lack of moral backbone was that Joseph was
systematically disobeyed and cheated. Very little was to be feared
from his anger, much could be got by threatening or worrying him. It
is true that he was much handicapped by the constant interference
of the Emperor, and even of the French Minister of War, in all his
attempts to create a Spanish administration, and to co-ordinate the
efforts of the various armies in the Peninsula. Nevertheless there
was much truth in his brother’s savage comments on his character--‘he
cannot get himself obeyed’--‘he has neither military talent nor
administrative ability’--‘he does not know how to draw up accounts’--he
‘cannot command an army himself, but he can prevent other and more
competent people from doing so’--‘the greatest moral error is to take
up a profession which one does not understand: that the King was not
a professional soldier was not his fault, but he was responsible for
trying to be one[769].’ To this last and perfectly just remark Joseph
could have made an unanswerable reply, by asking who was responsible
for the promotion of a person who was not, and never could be, a
professional soldier, to the post of Commander-in-Chief of all the
Armies of Spain.
It is only fair to concede to this unlucky prince his good qualities:
he was never cruel--no usurper ever shed so little blood: he was
a good master to many ungrateful servants: he was courteous and
considerate, liberal so far as his scanty means allowed, and interested
in literature and art. Unfortunately his artistic tastes brought him
only ridicule. He was greatly given to pulling down slums and eyesores
in Madrid, but never had the money to replace them by the stately
buildings which he had designed--his good intentions were only shown
by empty spaces--whence the people called him _El rey Plazuelos_. This
was rather to his credit than otherwise--less so the interest in art
shown by his eleventh-hour pilfering of the best pictures of the Madrid
Galleries, of which Wellington recaptured a selection at Vittoria.
To sum him up in a single phrase, Joseph Bonaparte was the mildest
mannered man who ever stole a crown--or rather acted as receiver of a
crown stolen by his ruthless brother.
With King Joseph his Chief-of-the-Staff went into the depths of
disgrace. Napoleon wrote that he never wanted to hear of Jourdan
again. He must go into complete retirement at his estate of Coudray
near Orleans. He was cut down to the strictest minimum of retired
pay--not over 20,000 francs a year[770], which left him in miserable
straits--for he had a large family, and he was honest, and had never
feathered his nest like other marshals. The only notice to be taken of
him was that he was to be ordered to draw up a memorandum explaining
how the battle of Vittoria had been fought and lost--if any explanation
were possible[771]. But Napoleon, when he pardoned Joseph a few months
later, pardoned Jourdan also. He was given the command of the Rouen
Military District, where he did competent administrative work in the
spring of 1814, so far as his broken health permitted. It is surprising
to find that, with all his ailments, this worthy old officer--the
Cassandra of the great drama of 1812-13--survived till 1833, when he
died, after having been for many years Governor of the Invalides.
His military memoirs, first published in a scattered and incomplete
form in Ducasse’s _Life and Correspondence of Joseph Bonaparte_, and
afterwards in a better shape so late as 1908, form one of the best
critical commentaries on the Peninsular War. As a purveyor of hard
truths concerning his imperial master, and the marshals who were his
colleagues in Spain, Jourdan has no rival.
SECTION XXXVIII
THE BATTLES OF THE PYRENEES
CHAPTER I
THE SIEGE OF ST. SEBASTIAN. FIRST PERIOD
Having pushed his whole front line up to the French border, from Giron
at Irun, hard by the ocean, to Byng, far inland on the watershed of the
historic Pass of Roncesvalles, Wellington turned his attention to the
siege of St. Sebastian, on which he intended to press hard and rapidly,
while Pampeluna was to be left for the present to the slower process
of blockade and starvation. He had no intention of pushing forward
into France till the result of the negotiations in Germany should be
known. He was kept informed of the doings at Dresden from time to time,
but occasionally bad weather in the Bay of Biscay delayed the courier
from Downing Street, and there was an interval of many days, during
which the absence of political information began to cause him anxiety.
On the whole, as he was informed, it was probable that the war would
be renewed; but the intentions of Austria were still suspect, and the
danger of a separate peace in the North never ceased to disturb him
until hostilities actually recommenced in the middle of August. On
July 10th he had still many weeks to wait, before the news arrived
that Metternich had broken with Napoleon--after a certain famous and
stormy interview--and that Austria had come into the Grand Alliance.
Meanwhile he intended to make his defensive position on the Pyrenean
frontier sure, by the capture of the fortresses. It is curious to note
that Napoleon understood and approved from the military point of view
of this policy. On Aug. 5 he wrote to his minister Maret from Dresden,
‘it is certain that Lord Wellington had a very sensible scheme: he
wished to take St. Sebastian and Pampeluna before the French Army could
be reorganized. He supposed that it had suffered more heavily than was
actually the case, and thought that more than a month would be required
to refurnish it with artillery[772].’ This was a guess that came very
near the truth, though the Emperor could not know that the cause of the
British general’s delay was mainly political and not military.
It was fortunate for Wellington that the astounding triumph of Vittoria
had put him in a position to dictate his own policy to the Ministry
at home. For Lord Bathurst and Lord Liverpool had been sending him
suggestions which filled him with grave apprehensions. Before the
news of Vittoria reached London, the War Minister had ‘thrown out for
consideration’ two most inept projects. If the French in Spain had
been driven beyond the Ebro, would it not be possible to ‘contain’
them for the future by Spanish and Portuguese armies, and to bring
round Wellington himself and the bulk of his British troops to Germany,
leaving only a small nucleus to serve as a backbone for the native
levies of the Peninsula? The appearance of Wellington with 40,000 of
his veterans on the Elbe would probably induce the Allies to appoint
him Generalissimo against Napoleon, and if Great Britain had the chief
command in Germany she could dictate the policy of the Coalition. But
supposing that the war was not resumed in Central Europe, and that a
general peace was negotiated, would it be possible or expedient to
allow the Emperor to retain the boundary of the Ebro for the French
Empire, on condition that he yielded to the demands of the Allies in
other parts of the Continent? Or would Wellington guarantee that in
the event of a Peace from which Great Britain stood out, he would be
able to maintain himself in Spain and Portugal, as in 1810 and 1811,
even though Napoleon had no other enemies left, and could send what
reinforcements he pleased across the Pyrenees?[773]
Even after the great event of June 21st had become known in London,
we find the Prime Minister repeating some of Lord Bathurst’s most
absurd suggestions. He wrote in a tentative and deferential style,
to set forth the hypothesis that it might be possible to so fortify
the Spanish frontier that it might be held by a small British force
aided by Spanish levies, ‘applying the principle upon which the Lines
before Lisbon were formed to the passes of the Pyrenees’; and he
inquired whether the warlike Navarrese and Biscayans could not defend
this new Torres Vedras, if backed by a small force--20,000 or at most
30,000--veteran Anglo-Portuguese troops[774]. If this could be done
Lord Liverpool obviously hoped great things from the effect of the
appearance of Wellington, with his new prestige and the bulk of his
victorious battalions, in Central Europe.
The recipient of these ill-advised suggestions would have nothing to
do with them. When on July 12th he got Bathurst’s dispatch of June
23rd, he replied that, being the servant of the State, he must obey
any orders given him by the Prince Regent and the Ministry, but that
he saw no profit in going to Germany, which he did not know, and where
he was not known, whereas in Spain he had a unique advantage in ‘the
confidence that everybody feels that what I do is right’. ‘Nobody
could enjoy that same advantage here--while I should be no better
than another in Germany. If any British army should be left in the
Peninsula, therefore, it is best that I should remain with it.’ As to
making any general peace which left the French the line of the Ebro as
a frontier, that problem had been settled by the battle of Vittoria. ‘I
recommend you not to give up an inch of Spanish territory; I think I
can hold the Pyrenees as easily as I can Portugal.’ It would really be
better to have Joseph Bonaparte as King of Spain (considering how ready
all Bonapartes are to break away from their brother), than to have
Ferdinand back with the Ebro as his frontier. ‘In the latter case Spain
would inevitably belong to the French[775].’
As to the ridiculous idea of fortifying the Pyrenean passes in the
style of the Lines of Torres Vedras, Wellington speaks with no
uncertain sound. ‘I do not think we could successfully apply to the
frontier of Spain the system on which we fortified the country between
Lisbon and the sea. That line was a short one, and the communications
easiest and shortest on our side. The Pyrenees are a very long line;
there are not fewer than seventy passes through these mountains, and
the better communications, so far as I have been able to learn, are on
the side of the enemy. We may facilitate defence by fortifying some of
the passes: but we can never make in the Pyrenees what we made between
the Tagus and the sea[776].’
It looks as if Lord Liverpool, in serene ignorance of local geography,
imagined the Pyrenees to be a simple line of precipices, pierced by
a limited number of passes, which could be sealed up with walls, in
the style in which Alexander the Great in the mediaeval romance dealt
with the ‘Caucasian Gates’. For we cannot suppose that even the most
unmilitary of politicians could have conceived it possible to build
something like the Great Wall of China for several hundred miles, along
the whole frontier from Fuenterrabia to Figueras. Yet this is what
his proposal, if taken literally, would have meant; and Wellington,
to show its absurdity, gave the total number of passes available for
mules or pedestrians between the Bay of Biscay and the Mediterranean.
Those by which guns or wheeled transport could pass were (of course)
no more than five or six--but there would be no finality in sealing
up these few: for the enemy could turn the flanks of any of them with
infantry scrambling up accessible slopes--as Soult indeed did during
the battles of the Pyrenees, only a month after Lord Liverpool had made
his egregious suggestion--or as Napoleon had done at the Somosierra in
the winter of 1808.
Lastly, as to the Prime Minister’s proposal to hand over the
defence of the Pyrenees to Spanish armies backed by a mere 20,000
Anglo-Portuguese, Wellington replied that the Spanish Government had
shown itself most consistently unable to feed, pay, and clothe its
armies, or to provide the transport which would make them mobile. In
June 1813 there were 160,000 men on the Spanish muster rolls, but only
a third of that number at the front and actively engaged with the
French, even when all troops in the Pyrenees, Aragon, and Catalonia
were reckoned up. To trust the defence of the frontier to a government
which could not move or feed more than a third of its own troops,
would be to invite disaster. The best way to help the Spaniards was
not to ask for more men, but to improve their finances, so that they
should be able to employ a greater proportion of their already existing
troops. As things stood at present, it would be insane to request them
to take over the main burden of the war. ‘It is my opinion that you
ought not to have less than 60,000 British troops in the field, let the
Spaniards have what numbers they may[777].’
Wellington had by this time established himself in such a commanding
position that the ministers had to accept his decision--however much
they would have liked to move him round to Germany, and to press for
his appointment to the unenviable position which Prince Schwarzenberg
occupied during the second campaign of 1813. The best proof of the
wisdom of his determination to remain in the Peninsula was that the
French, far from adopting a defensive policy, resumed the offensive
under Soult within a few weeks. It would be an unprofitable, as also a
dismal, task to consider what would have happened during the battles
of the Pyrenees had Soult been opposed, not by Wellington and his old
army, but by a Spanish host under O’Donnell or Freire, backed by two or
three Anglo-Portuguese divisions.
Controversy with Lord Bathurst on general principles was only one of
Wellington’s distractions during the middle weeks of July: he was
at the same time carrying on an acrimonious correspondence with the
Spanish Minister of War, concerning the removal of Castaños and Giron
from their posts, and enduring many controversial letters from Sir
John Murray regarding the Tarragona fiasco. Murray had realized the
disgust which his wretched policy had roused, alike in the army and
in the British public, and was endeavouring to justify himself to his
commander-in-chief by long argumentative epistles. Wellington refused
to commit himself to any judgement, and agreed with the ministers at
home that a court martial would be required[778]. He suggested to the
authorities at the Horse Guards that Murray should be charged firstly
with making no proper arrangements to raise the siege of Tarragona or
to bring off his guns, secondly with having disobeyed the clause of his
instructions which bade him return at once to Alicante if he failed in
Catalonia, and thirdly with having betrayed General Copons, by bringing
him down to the coast and then absconding without giving any proper
warning of his departure[779]. After mature reflection, however, he
advised that the third charge should be dropped, not because it was
unjustified, but because there would be great inconvenience in bringing
Copons or his representatives to bear witness at a British court
martial, when they were wanted in Catalonia.
But all this correspondence, and much more on less important
subjects, did not prevent Wellington from paying his promised visit
to General Graham, to inspect in person the allied positions on the
lower Bidassoa, and to supervise the arrangements for the siege of
St. Sebastian, which indeed required supervision, for already it was
evident that things were not going so well as might have been hoped in
this direction (July 12).
The first impression made on the observer by the fortress of St.
Sebastian is that it is an extremely small place. This is true--though
it is also true that its effect is somewhat dwarfed by its immense
surroundings--the limitless expanse of the Ocean on one side, and the
high and fantastic peaks of the Jaizquibel, the Peña de la Haya, and
the Four Crowns, which have just been passed by the traveller coming
from the side of Bayonne. The fortress consists of a lofty sandstone
rock, as steep as Edinburgh Castle and 400 ft. high, beaten on three
sides by the sea, and united to the land by a low sandy isthmus about
900 yards long. There was an old castle called La Mota, on the summit
of the rock, which is named Monte Urgull, with three modern batteries
on its southern or landward face[780], which is very steep and only
accessible at two points by winding roads. But these were not the main
defences of the place, which lay lower down. The town of St. Sebastian
was built on the lower ground below the rock, extending from sea to
sea and occupying about a third of the isthmus, the rest of which was
broken sandy ground about 400 yards broad. At the southern neck of the
isthmus was a hill crowned by the large monastery of San Bartolomé,
which the French held as an outwork at the beginning of the siege. The
space between this hill and the wall of the town, now thickly packed
with the hotels and avenues of a fashionable seaside resort, was in
1813 waste ground dotted with a few isolated houses and gardens, which
the governor was busily engaged in levelling when the blockading force
arrived. At two points there was a sufficient accumulation of buildings
to form a small suburb. One group was at the head of the bridge across
the river Urumea, which joined the peninsula to the eastern mainland;
this was named Santa Catalina, from a chapel of that saint which
lay in it. The other, called (for a similar reason) San Martin, was
immediately at the foot of the hill of San Bartolomé. The bridge had
been blown up by the French when the Spaniards first appeared, and the
suburbs set on fire, but their roofless and partly fallen houses still
gave a good deal of cover.
The land-front of St. Sebastian was very formidable; it was only
400 yards broad and was composed of a very high curtain from which
projected one large bastion in the centre and two demi-bastions
overhanging the water on each flank, that of San Juan, above the
estuary of the Urumea, that of Santiago on the western side nearest
the harbour. In front of the bastions was a very broad hornwork,
having outside it the usual counterscarp, covered-way, and glacis.
Specialists, wise after the event, criticized the whole land-front:
they found its trace defective, considered that the scarp of the
hornwork ought to have been more than 23 feet high, and pointed out
that in the rear line the two demi-bastions did not well protect the
flanks, since they were not themselves covered by the hornwork, and had
no ditch or glacis, because the salt water came up to their foot at
high tide[781].
But as the land-front was never attacked, these objections were of
comparatively little importance. The weak side of St. Sebastian was
really its eastern water-front. The western water-front on the open
bay was inaccessible; but on the opposite side, where the town wall ran
along the estuary of the river Urumea, the conditions were peculiar.
The Urumea is a tidal river--at high water it washes right up to the
foot of the walls, but at low tide it recedes into a narrow channel and
leaves exposed an expanse of rock and sand, ranging in breadth from
50 to 150 yards, all along the water-wall for a length of some 400
yards--half the east side of the town. The rampart here was a plain
curtain, not very high and only 8 feet thick: of course it could have
no ditch or other outer fittings, since the salt water reached right up
to it for half the day. Its only salients, from which flank fire could
be used, were one small bastion (St. Elmo) and two ancient round towers
called Los Hornos and Amezqueta, which projected slightly from the
straight curtain.
At high tide this water-front was unapproachable--at low tide it was
weak and accessible, for the Urumea was fordable in many places, and
shrank into a channel only 50 yards broad, meandering through a waste
of shingle, rocks, and mud. On its eastern bank were rolling sandhills
of some height, which commanded the isthmus and the southern half of
the town, from a distance of no more than 700 or 800 yards. To the
right of the sandhills, called Los Chofres, was a steep hill, the Monte
Olia, facing the castle of St. Sebastian across the broader part of
the estuary, and by no means out of gunshot of it, since not more than
1,000 or 1,100 yards of water lies between them.
Since it had been rebuilt as a fortress of the Vauban-Cohorn style
in the last years of the seventeenth century, St. Sebastian had only
once been besieged: for during the Revolutionary War of 1792-5 it
surrendered without any resistance to the Jacobin armies, while in 1808
Napoleon had seized it by treachery and not by force. The one formal
attack made on it was by the Duke of Berwick in 1719, when the armies
of the Regent Orleans crossed the Bidassoa, in the short war provoked
by the ambitions of Elizabeth Farnese and Cardinal Alberoni. Berwick
had established his siege-batteries not on the isthmus, to batter the
land-front, but on the Chofres sandhills, from whence he pounded the
eastern sea-front to pieces. Several breaches having been made in it,
and trenches on the isthmus having been pushed as far as the glacis
of the hornwork, the governor very tamely surrendered, without waiting
for an assault[782]. Unwarned by this revelation of the weakness of
the defences along the Urumea, the engineers of Philip V made no
improvements in them when they were reconstructed after the war, and
the fortress was in 1813 little different from what it had been in 1719.
The easy success of Marshal Berwick turned out a very unhappy thing
for the British army; for the history of the last siege being well
remembered, Major Charles Smith, the senior engineer with Graham’s
column, reported that Berwick’s plan was the right one[783], when the
first survey of the place was made. And when the head-quarters staff
came up, his superior officer, Sir Richard Fletcher, agreed with him,
as did Colonel Dickson commanding the artillery. They all forgot that
to make a breach with ease is not necessarily the same thing as to
capture a fortress, and that the eighteenth-century slackness of the
governor, who capitulated when his walls were once breached, gave no
indication of what might be done by a very resourceful and resolute
French officer, who had in his mind Napoleon’s edict of 1811 that
every commandant who hauled down his flag before standing at least one
assault should be sent before a court martial. Nor is there any doubt
that Wellington himself must take his share of the responsibility,
as he went round the place on July 12th and had a good look at it,
in company with Charles Smith and Dickson, from Monte Olia and the
Chofres sandhills. Dickson summed up the results of their discussion as
follows:--‘The project is to effect a breach in the uncovered sea-wall
forming an angle on the left of the land-front, between two towers [Los
Hornos and Amezqueta], being the same spot the Duke of Berwick breached
in 1719, when he took St. Sebastian. The convent of San Bartolomé,
which the French have fortified and occupied in force, is absolutely
necessary to take first, in order to be able to advance on the isthmus
in support of our breaching operations from the Chofres. The plan of
attack was the proposition of Major Smith[784].’
This, of course, was not the regular and orthodox way to attack such a
fortress--as it involved the making of breaches only accessible at low
tide, in a part of the wall to which no trenches could draw near, since
its lower courses were six feet under water for half the hours of the
day. There would have to be a long advance from the nearest dry ground
on which approaches could be dug, across the tidal waste, in order to
reach the spot selected for breaching. And this would undoubtedly be a
very bloody business for the exposed storming troops. The advantages
to be gained were rapid action and a quick end, without the necessity
which an orthodox scheme would have involved of sapping up to the
hornwork, storming it, and then tackling the lofty bastion behind it.
The British engineer who wrote the history of the siege considered that
‘the operations against San Sebastian afford a most impressive lesson
on the advantage of due attention to science and rule in the attack
of fortified places: the effort then made to overcome and trample on
such restrictions caused an easy and certain operation of eighteen or
twenty days to extend over sixty days, and to cost the besiegers 3,500
men killed, wounded, or taken, bearing strong testimony to the truth of
the maxim laid down by Marshal Vauban, that hurry in sieges does not
lead to an early success, often delays it, and always makes it very
bloody[785].’
St. Sebastian had been abandoned to its own resources on June 28, when,
after the departure of Foy’s troops from Oyarzun, the Spaniards had
closed in on the place, and established a blockade. The force employed
was four battalions of Biscayan volunteers under Mendizabal, the
remains of the bands which Foy had beaten in May, and which had taken
part on June 26 along with the British 1st Division in the combat of
Tolosa[786]. They were very irregular troops, and their indiscipline
and incompetence shocked General Graham when he came to visit their
lines on July 6th[787]. They had no notion of guarding themselves, and
had suffered severely, first from an attempt to storm San Bartolomé
on June 28th, and later from a French sortie on July 3, when Rey
sent out two columns of 700 men from the Convent, which surprised
their camp, took many prisoners, and drove them back for nearly two
miles. Graham recommended that they should be replaced at once by
solid troops, and at Wellington’s suggestion told off the British 5th
Division and the unattached Portuguese brigade of Bradford for the
siege[788]. Mendizabal’s men were sent off to join in the blockade of
Santoña[789]. On July 7th the siege-troops arrived; the independent
brigade established itself on the Chofres, the 5th Division--still
under Oswald as at Vittoria--took post on the heights of Ayete, facing
the hill and convent of San Bartolomé. From this moment the serious
operations may be considered to have begun. A blockade of the seaside
had been established, in a rather intermittent fashion, four days
earlier, when Sir George Collier appeared in the bay with a frigate,
the _Surveillante_, a corvette, and two brigs, all the force that he
could collect for the moment in response to Wellington’s appeals to the
Admiralty. The amount was wholly inadequate, even when supplemented
by some local fishing craft and pinnaces, which were manned by the
battalion of marines from Giron’s Galician army. All through the siege
French _trincadores_ and luggers from Bayonne and St. Jean de Luz ran
the blockade at night, bringing in food, munitions, and reinforcements.
For Rey having asked for more gunners, he was sent several detachments
of them, who all arrived in safety, while he got rid of many of his
wounded by the returning vessels. Wellington was full of justifiable
wrath at the miserable help given him--his objurgations brought
from Lord Melville an unsatisfactory reply, to the effect that the
operations in the Baltic and the American War absorbed many of the
British light craft which would have been available in earlier years,
and that the Admiralty had not been warned in the spring that any
large fighting force would be wanted on the Biscay coast in July.
‘Neither from you, nor from any other person at your suggestion, did
we ever receive the slightest intimation that more was expected than
the protection of your convoys, till the actual arrival of Sir Thomas
Graham on the coast after the battle of Vittoria.’ Melville then
proceeded to write lengthy observations on the dangerous nature of the
coast of Northern Spain, ‘where ships cannot anchor without extreme
risk, and are exposed to almost certain destruction in a gale, when
from its direction they can neither haul off shore nor run for shelter
into a port. If you will ensure the ships a continuance of east winds,
they could remain with you, but not otherwise. All the small craft in
the British navy could not prevent the occasional entry of small boats
by night into San Sebastian’s, though it may be rendered more difficult
and uncertain.’ Melville then proceeded to tax Wellington with grave
professional irregularity, for having written to Sir George Collier,
and other naval officers, letters taxing the Admiralty with neglect and
incompetence. ‘Appeals to subordinate officers against their superiors
are not customary in any branch of the service, and must be injurious
to the public interest[790].’
It was not so much the arguments used by Melville as his offensive
tone which Wellington resented. The victor of Salamanca was naturally
irritated at finding himself treated _de haut en bas_ by a personage
of such complete insignificance, who had not even the equivocal
reputation of his father (the devisor of so many unlucky expeditions,
the impeached minister of 1806) to lend weight to his lectures. He
replied in a very short letter that he was not desirous of getting into
discussions, that his demands for more naval assistance had begun in
the winter of 1812-13, and that after reading over again his letters
to naval officers he could see nothing to find fault with--save that
he had once sent to Sir George Collier an extract of a dispatch to
Lord Bathurst, instead of a separate communication on the same topic
addressed to Collier personally--a trifling subject on which to start
a controversy[791]. Meanwhile he considered, as a dozen letters show,
that he was being poorly served by the Admiralty, and ‘formed private
opinions on the subject--which private opinions may not perhaps deserve
much attention,’ as he sardonically observed.
One thing, however, the Admiralty had contrived to carry out according
to Wellington’s request--the stores and battering train, which he had
accumulated at Corunna in the spring, had come round to the Biscay
coast as soon as could have been expected; they had been sent to
Santander, as he directed, and arrived in that harbour on the very day
(June 29) on which Major Frazer, sent off four days after Vittoria,
came from Head-Quarters to inquire for them[792]. The orders were to
land them at Deba in Guipuzcoa, fifteen miles west of St. Sebastian;
but just as the disembarkation was commencing (July 3), a change of
destination was made--everything was to be put ashore at Passages, a
much more convenient place, only a couple of miles from the blockaded
fortress. This is a most astonishing little harbour, the safest port
on the coast, for it is absolutely land-locked; its entrance is so
narrow that the circular basin looks like a lake without an issue,
till the eye has with some difficulty discovered its exit. It pays for
its security, however, by being hard to enter in time of storm, when
very careful navigation is required. But a besieging army has seldom
been granted a base so near to its field of operations--it was only
two and a half miles from the water’s edge at Passages to the Chofres
sandhills, where the chief batteries were to be constructed, though
four miles to the head of the isthmus where the left attack was to
be made. And the fording of the Urumea, whose bridge the French had
burned, was sometimes dangerous--more than one gun was lost in the
quicksands[793].
By the time that Wellington had worked out the scheme of assault with
Charles Smith, the guns were already arriving, not only the battering
train from Corunna, which had begun to come ashore on July 7, but the
heavy artillery reserve of the army, which had traversed all the weary
miles of road from Ciudad Rodrigo. The total of pieces available was
twenty-eight from the convoy, six from the heavy battery of the army
reserve, and six lent by Sir George Collier from the main deck of his
ship, the _Surveillante_--or forty in all[794]--a very different train
from the miserable four guns which had battered Burgos in the preceding
autumn.
Before any regular siege work could begin, it was obviously necessary
to clear the French out of the monastery of San Bartolomé, on its
hill at the neck of the isthmus: till this should be taken, it was
impossible to get forward on the shore from which the assault was to
be delivered. Under-estimating the strength of the post Graham and the
engineers, contrary to the advice of Major Hartmann of the K.G.L.,
the senior artillery officer present before Dickson’s arrival[795],
had tried to reduce it on July 7th by the fire of a Portuguese field
battery belonging to the artillery reserve; but the walls proved too
solid for 8-pounders to damage, and some firing with red hot shot
failed to set fire to the roof. It was clear that it would be necessary
to wait for the heavy guns to come up. Meanwhile the French continued
to strengthen San Bartolomé, throwing up an earthwork in its cemetery
and loopholing and barricading the ruined houses near it, as well as
those in the burnt-out suburb of San Martin, which lay at its foot.
They also commenced a redoubt on the isthmus, half-way between the
outlying convent and the hornwork in front of the city wall.
While the siege train was being got ashore, the engineers made
ready the emplacements for the guns--they started with throwing up
two batteries on the Ayete heights to play on the convent of San
Bartolomé[796], three on the Chofres sandhills[797] to act against the
sea-wall where the main breach was to be formed, and one on the lofty
Monte Olia, for long-distance fire against all the fortifications,
including those of the rock of Monte Urgull[798]. But on the 14th, when
the battering began, the only guns used were those on the left attack
opposite the convent, as it was considered unwise to molest the city
fortifications before there was any way of getting near them: approach
was impossible as long as the isthmus was all in the enemy’s hands.
Two days’ battering (July 14-15) brought down the roof and part of
the walls of San Bartolomé, and damaged the subsidiary works around
it severely. But General Rey was determined to hold on to his outer
defences as long as possible: the best part of two battalions was told
off to hold the ruins and the suburb of San Martin behind them. On the
afternoon of the 15th General Oswald, judging from the dilapidation of
the buildings that they were untenable, sent in the 8th Caçadores from
his Portuguese brigade to storm them; but the French had dug themselves
well in, a furious fire broke out against the assailants, and the
attack was turned back with the loss of 65 men[799]. It was obvious
that more battering was required to evict the gallant garrison, so the
fire was resumed on the 16th, with the aid of a field battery playing
across the Urumea to enfilade the defences, and to pound the ruined
houses of San Martin, where the French reserves were sheltering.
The fire was very effective: the inner woodwork of the monastery
blazed up, its porch was levelled to the ground, great gaps appeared
in the walls, and the earthwork in the cemetery was much damaged. At
10 a.m. on the 17th a second storm was tried, with forces much larger
than those used at the first--not one battalion, but the equivalent
of three: Oswald drew upon Bradford’s independent brigade from across
the Urumea for 700 Portuguese volunteers. Two columns were launched
against the French position, each consisting of a screen of Caçadores,
a support of Portuguese Line troops, and a reserve of British companies
from the first brigade of the 5th Division[800]. The right column
aimed at the cemetery earthwork and the fortified houses--the left at
the main buildings of the convent, which were still smouldering from
the fire. Both achieved their purpose without any very serious loss,
and the garrison was driven down hill into the suburb of San Martin,
pursued by the stormers. Here the French reserves intervened, and for
a moment the attack was turned back; but the companies of the 1/9th
which formed the British supports re-established the fight, and the
enemy retired in disorder towards the town. Unfortunately the victors
pursued recklessly, and came under the fire of the French guns in the
hornwork and the bastion behind it, whence many unnecessary casualties.
For it had never been intended that the troops should advance on to the
isthmus, where of course they could do nothing against an intact front
of fortifications. The total losses of the assailants were 207 killed
and wounded--the 1/9th which had headed the rush on to the bare ground
suffering most, with 70 casualties. The French had 40 killed and 200
wounded.
It was now possible to commence the subsidiary attack on the side
of the isthmus, as the French held nothing outside the walls save
the recently constructed redoubt in front of the hornwork[801]. Two
batteries were thrown up on the San Bartolomé hill, and on the 18th
the guns with which the convent had been breached were moved down
into them[802]. The main object of these batteries was to enfilade
the stretch of sea-wall, on which the greater weight of metal on the
Chofres downs was to play from the front. Two additional batteries
were thrown up, more to the right, which, while aiding the enfilading
fire, were also intended to shell the land-front, and keep down the
fire from the bastion and hornwork[803]. Finally, the Chofres attack
was strengthened with two more batteries[804]. On the night of the
19th sixteen guns in all were in place on the isthmus front, or left
attack, twenty-three on the right attack to the east of the Urumea,
including six on the summit of the lofty Monte Olia, on the extreme
flank[805]. Meanwhile the approaches, by which the troops would have
to move out to assault the breaches when made, were not nearly so far
forward as could have been desired: little more had been done than to
push a zig-zag down the slope of San Bartolomé into the ruins of San
Martin--further advance was made difficult by the fact that the French
were still holding the forward position of the redoubt in the centre of
the isthmus. It was only on the night between the 19th and 20th that
they evacuated this post[806]. Moreover the fire of the defence was as
yet intact, since the British heavy batteries had not begun their work:
hence the sap-head was a decidedly unhealthy place.
At 8 a.m. on the morning of July 20 nine of the eleven siege batteries
opened--all but the two new ones on San Bartolomé, where the work
was a little belated. The effect of the first day’s work was fairly
satisfactory--the parapet of the sea-wall began to crumble, the enemy’s
guns _en barbette_ on the land-front were partly silenced, and the high
trajectory fire from the lofty Monte Olia battery searched the streets,
the back of the bastion, and the interior of the hornwork. The enemy
concentrated all his attention on the largest British battery upon the
Chofres dunes, the eleven guns which were farthest forward (No. 3)
and were doing much damage to the sea-wall. The counter-fire here was
severe--one gun was split by a ball striking its muzzle, others had
wheels broken, three had to stop firing because their embrasures, badly
built with sand, fell in and could not be kept clear[807]. By evening
only six of the eleven guns were still at work.
An afternoon of wind and showers, which had made accurate aim
difficult, was followed on the night of the 20th-21st by a torrential
rain, which much impeded the special work which had been set aside for
the dark hours. Seven hundred men from Spry’s Portuguese brigades had
been told off to open a parallel right across the isthmus, starting
from the lodgment already established in the ruined houses of San
Martin. ‘In the perfect deluge the working parties sneaked away by
degrees into houses and holes and corners. After numerous difficulties
and exertions only about 150 could be collected and set to work at 11
p.m. The party was not discovered, and the soil being light soon got
under cover.... But the parallel finished was for only about one-third
of the extent required[808].’
On the next morning Sir Thomas Graham sent out a _parlementaire_ to
summon the governor to surrender--rather prematurely as it would seem,
for no real breach had yet been formed, nor had the fire of the defence
been subdued. General Rey having made the answer that might be expected
from a resolute officer[809], the battering recommenced, and was
continued on the 21st-22nd-23rd-24th July. It was quite effective: on
the 23rd fifty yards of the curtain, between the towers of Los Hornos
and Amezqueta, fell outward on to the strand that was exposed at low
water--appearing to present a practicable breach. But partly to make
things sure, and partly because the trenches on the isthmus were still
remote from the point which it was intended to reach, the battering was
continued for two days longer. Not only was more of the wall thrown
down near the tower of Los Hornos, but at Graham’s desire a second and
minor breach was made, some distance farther north in the sea-wall than
the first[810]. The temptation to make it was that Spanish refugees
brought intelligence that the ramparts here were very thin--which
proved to be the case, as one day’s battering brought down a broad
patch of stones. On the other hand the specialists are said to have
warned Graham that the second breach would be rather useless, because
the space of shore below it exposed at low tide was very narrow--under
50 feet wide--and could only be reached by skirting along for 300 yards
below the walls and past the foot of the first breach. However, the
creation of a second point of attack would certainly distract part of
the attention of the garrison from the real place of danger, and if the
small breach could be carried, the flank of the defenders of the great
breach would be effectually turned.
It was a thousand pities that the formation of the first breach on
July 23rd was not followed by an immediate attempt to storm, as the
enemy was given two whole days to perfect his inner defences. But an
assault was impossible till the approaches should have got close to
the walls, and owing to the initial delays they were not ready till
two days later. On the night of the 22nd-23rd the parallel reaching
right across the isthmus was begun and half completed, with the French
‘Cask Redoubt’ at its left extremity. Digging close to this spot, the
working parties found a large drain or channel 4 feet high and 3 feet
wide, which belonged to the aqueduct which supplied the town with
water. It was empty, as the Spaniards had cut it off at its source
when they first blockaded the town. Lieutenant Reid of the Engineers
volunteered to explore it, and crawling 230 yards forward, found that
he was under the west corner of the counterscarp of the hornwork, where
the French had cut off the channel and blocked it with a door. This
discovery suggested to the engineers that the channel might be used as
a mine; if its farther end were filled with powder, and then built up
with sandbags, the explosion might bring down the counterscarp and fill
the ditch, so that the hornwork might be stormed across the débris.
Unfortunately there was complete uncertainty as to whether the plan
would work: quite conceivably it might result in the door being blown
open, and the force of the powder might be spent in sending a local
blast along the ditch, without much damaging the superincumbent earth.
However, the experiment was tried; layers of sandbags were placed
against the door, then thirty barrels of powder were inserted, standing
on end but not tamped in, for foul air greatly troubled the miners, so
that there was much empty space above and between the barrels. The near
end was then built up with more sandbags and a train laid to the mouth
of the channel in the trenches[811].