During the day of the 23rd and the following night the parallel was

completed, and good communications made from it to the base, the hill

of San Bartolomé. The greater part of the enemy’s visible guns were

silenced, and the enfilading fire from the two last-erected batteries

on the isthmus set ablaze the quarter of the town immediately behind

the two breaches. This last achievement turned out to be anything but

an advantage.

For arrangements for the assault having been made for daybreak on the

24th, and the storming party and supports having been brought down to

the trenches after midnight, to wait till half low-tide, it was found

that the whole of the streets adjacent to the great breach were blazing

so fiercely that it was thought that any entry into the town would be

impossible. Graham therefore countermanded the storm--this was probably

necessary; but Rey thereby gained another day for perfecting his

internal defences.

These were most elaborate and excellent, surpassing by far even

the very competent arrangements made by Philippon at Badajoz. The

peculiar part of them was that Rey had to depend almost entirely on

engineering work--his artillery having been completely crushed during

the preliminary battering. Such guns as he contrived to use on this day

were either very remote--on the rock and its slopes--or else pieces

that had been withdrawn and kept under cover till the critical moment

should arrive. The British artillery officers, whose telescopes were

always busy, discovered some of them, but informed Graham that they

undertook to crush them when they should be brought out, provided that

light and atmospheric conditions were satisfactory[812].

But the main defence which Rey had prepared depended on fortification,

not on artillery fire. His chief advantage was that at both breaches

the stones had fallen outward, and the back of the ramparts was intact.

All along the sea-wall there was a drop of 15 to 20 feet from the

rampart-walk into the street behind: this still existed, as the core

of the wall was still standing, though the facing had given way. To

descend from the lip of the breach into the town, therefore, was

more than a feasible leap: it could not be done without ladders. Rey

had demolished some houses which had been built with their back to

the ramparts, and had cut away all stairs leading up to them. He had

blocked with stone barricades all streets opening towards the breaches,

and had loopholed all buildings commanding a view of them. When the

fire in the quarter that had been ablaze on the 24th died down, he

reoccupied the ruined houses, making shelters in the débris. He had

cut off the rampart-walk on each side of the breaches by building a

succession of stone traverses across it, so that troops who had mounted

to the top could not push out sideways. As it was clear that the

storming columns would have to advance for 300 yards parallel with the

eastern _faussebraye_ of the hornwork, and close to it, because of the

water on their right, he told off a large number of picked marksmen to

line this flank, and ranged live shells along it, which could be rolled

down on to the strand while the enemy were passing.

The preparation for a storm on the 24th, and its countermand because

of the conflagration, had been noted by the governor, who understood

the cause of the delay. Obviously the attack would come on the

following morning, so the reserved guns were got into position after

midnight--two in the casemates of the high curtain, two others in

the ditch below it, one in the eastern face of the hornwork, two in

the south front of the bastion of St. Elmo: into the towers of Los

Hornos and Amezqueta, on each side of the main breach, three pieces

were hoisted not without difficulty, since the towers, though still

standing, were in bad order. Even in the distant and lofty Mirador

battery, on top of the rock, some guns were trained on the point of

danger[813]. Having made all possible preparations Rey waited for the

assault, which came just as he had expected.

The exact share of responsibility for the details of the storm of July

25th, which fell respectively on the engineers who had settled the

scheme of attack, on Graham who designated the hour, on Oswald who

arranged the order of the troops, and on the artillery officers who had

undertaken to keep down the enemy’s fire, is not easy to determine.

All apparently have to take their portion; but that of Charles Smith,

who devised, and Sir Richard Fletcher, who approved, the choice of the

sea-wall for the breach-spot would seem to be the heaviest, and that of

the gunners the least.

The troops were to sally out from the eastern end of the long parallel

across the isthmus, when there should be a sufficient breadth of strand

exposed for them to rush straight for the breaches, passing between the

hornwork on their left and the receding tidal water on their right.

Unfortunately the hour of low tide and the hour of daybreak were not

conveniently correlated: the ideal combination would have been that

the four hours during which there was good access across the exposed

flats should have been from 5.30 a.m. till 9.30 a.m.: daybreak falling

at about 5.20 a.m. But as it chanced the extreme of low tide that day

was at 6 a.m., and the practicable hours were from 4 a.m. onward. In

order to lose none of the limited time available, Graham determined

that the rush should be made at 5 o’clock sharp, before it was full

daylight; and this choice had one unlucky effect. The engineers settled

that the signal for assault should be the blowing up of the mine in

the aqueduct[814]; but they had so little confidence in its effect,

that the only arrangements made to utilize it were that supposing it

should do much damage and blow down scarp and counterscarp (which was

hardly expected), the Portuguese companies which held the extreme left

of the parallel should make a rush at the west flank of the hornwork,

and enter over the débris. This was a very half-hearted scheme. For

the real assault General Oswald seems to have made a very faulty

disposition of his troops. The opening made in the parallel was so

narrow that not more than two or three men could issue abreast. The

troops, therefore, had to start in a sort of narrow file or procession,

and took an unconscionable time in trickling out from the trench.

The head of the column was composed of the right wing of the 3/1st

(Royal Scots); then came a ladder party from all three regiments of

Hay’s brigade; then the left wing of the Royal Scots: all these were

to strike for the main breach. Next were the 1/38th, who were directed

to pass between the leading troops and the water’s edge, and to make

for the lesser breach, along the ever-narrowing strip of exposed beach.

Last came the 1/9th, the third battalion of the brigade, with orders to

support wherever it could make itself most useful. Some picked shots

from the 8th Caçadores of Spry’s brigade were placed along the front of

the parallel, and in a ditch which had been scraped during the night a

few yards in advance of it, with orders to try to keep down the enemy’s

musketry from the eastern flank of the hornwork.

At 5 o’clock, or perhaps a little earlier[815], the mine was fired, and

did much more damage than was expected, blowing down the counterscarp

of the western flank of the hornwork, injuring the scarp, and filling

the ditch with earth. The Portuguese troops in the opposite trench

made an assault, according to their orders, swept over the covered

way and into the ditch, and tried to enter the work. They failed

with loss, because no proper preparations had been made to utilize

the opportunity[816], which indeed had hardly been taken into

consideration. They might have got in, for the French garrison flinched

at first, terrified by the explosion.

On the side of the main attack the Royal Scots led out of the parallel

immediately that the explosion was heard, and pushed forward in almost

complete darkness on to the strand. It was found to consist in many

places of hard rock overgrown with slippery seaweed, and interspersed

with deep pools. The men stumbled over, and into, many traps which

might have been avoided by daylight, and all order was lost. But for

the first few minutes there was little fire bearing on them, and

the platoons at the head of the column reached the main breach.

The conducting engineer, Lieutenant Harry Jones, and Major Fraser,

commanding the wing of the Royal Scots, had actually got to the lip

of the breach, with the leading men of the storming party, before

the enemy really opened. That the crowning of the breach was not

followed by a rush into the town was due to Rey’s precautions--there

was a sudden drop of twenty feet between the top of the wall and the

street below, and no means to descend, as all stairs and ramps had

been cut away. There were some ladders with the column, but not at its

head--they were being carried in the rear of the right wing of the

Royal Scots. As the leading company came to a halt the French began

to shoot hard from behind traverses on the rampart-walk, barricades,

and loopholed houses, and the guns in the two flanking towers played

on the breach with grape. The head of the column began to wither away;

Fraser and Jones were both wounded--the former mortally--and so was

every man who had reached the summit. The survivors on the breach

threw themselves down among the stones and began to return the enemy’s

fire--the first impetus being lost, and any chance of success with it.

But it was only about the equivalent of a company which had advanced so

far; the rear of the right wing of the Royal Scots were still passing

along the flank of the hornwork, in a straggling file, when the enemy’s

fire began to be serious. It came most fiercely from an entrenchment

which Rey had thrown up across the main ditch between the hornwork

and the high front of the demi-bastion behind it. It seems, from the

narrative of an officer who took a prominent part in the storm--Colin

Campbell of the 1/9th, who was with the ladder party--that many of the

Royal Scots, arriving in the darkness at this opening into the main

ditch, mistook it for a passage by which they might force their way

into the place, or even for the great breach itself. At any rate they

turned in toward it, and on meeting with strenuous resistance began

to fire upon the enemy. The men following gathered in upon the first

comers, and a crowd accumulated at this point, which checked the ladder

party and the left wing of the Royal Scots as they came up. Hardly

any one pressed on to join the head of the column on the slope of the

breach. Meanwhile the tail of the column was blocked, as it tried to

press on past the hornwork. The French, standing above, rolled down the

shells which had been laid ready upon the British below, and kept up a

vigorous discharge of musketry. With great exertions individual company

officers succeeded in collecting parties of their own men, and leading

them out of the crowd, so as to pass on to the great breach. But the

attack there had already come to nothing: the stones all up the slope

were strewn with dead and wounded--a few survivors were keeping up an

ineffectual return fire upon the well-concealed enemy. Three or perhaps

four attempts to mount again were made by small parties of the rear

companies of the Royal Scots, but there were never more than 80 or 90

men acting together, and the officers and leading men were always shot

down on the crest. At last the senior captain surviving, seeing the

impossibility of getting forward, ordered the stormers to retire, which

they did--only half an hour or less after the assault commenced--though

the time had seemed much longer, as was natural, to those involved

in the bloody business. The larger body of men engaged farther back,

opposite the main ditch and under the demi-bastion of St. Juan, gave

way also when the head of the column fell back among them: they had

themselves suffered heavily, and of course had made no progress. Just

as the whole body rolled back along the beach they came into collision

with the front of the 1/38th, who had only just finished filing out

of the parallel, so slow was the process of emerging from its narrow

exit. Their commanding officer, Colonel Greville, had halted them for

a short time to let their rear close up, and to prevent them from

dribbling forward in a thin string of small parties, as the Royal Scots

had done. Just as they came parallel with the north end of the hornwork

the broken mass of men from the front ran in upon them; all order was

lost at once, and after some vain attempts to get forward the 38th fell

back along with the rest over the slippery shore[817]. The disordered

crowd suffered heavily from the French grape and musketry--they were a

mark impossible to miss, and strewed the rocks and pools with dead. The

1/9th, who were just beginning to file out of the parallel, were of

course ordered back at once--‘but had lost almost as many heads as they

showed[818].’

So quickly was the whole affair over that the artillerymen, standing

by their guns on the opposite side of the Urumea, ready to co-operate

as soon as dawn should come, believed at first that there had been a

feint or a false attack. It was only when the growing light showed them

the breach strewn from lip to foot with red coats, and the strand below

thickly dotted with them also, that they realized that the assault had

been made and had failed[819], without their being given the chance to

intervene as they had promised.

The loss had, of course, been very heavy--out of 571 casualties of all

ranks[820] more than 330 belonged to the unfortunate Royal Scots, whose

right wing companies were almost exterminated. Six officers and 118

men, almost all wounded, fell into the hands of the enemy. It should

be remembered to the credit of the garrison that, the moment that the

storm was over, they collected from the foot of the breach and the

neighbouring strand many officers and men who would otherwise have been

drowned by the returning tide[821]. When it was seen that this was the

task of the French who were seen busy on the beach, a flag of truce

was hoisted, and all firing ceased for an hour. The prisoners, one of

whom, the engineer Harry Jones, has left an interesting account of his

experiences during the next six weeks[822], were very well treated.

The extremely moderate loss of the garrison was 18 killed and 49

wounded--all by musketry fire, since by the abominable misarrangement

of the assault the British artillery had no chance of acting.

Two comments by eye-witnesses on this woeful business are worth giving.

Colin Campbell wrote:

‘One main cause of failure was the narrow front and consequent length

and thinness of the column in which we advanced. This necessarily

became more loosened and disjointed by the difficult nature of the

ground it had to pass over in the dark. It reached the breach in

driblets and never in such body or number as to give the mind of the

soldier anything like confidence in success. If some means had been

devised of starting the Royals in one big honest lump, which might have

been contrived without much difficulty or danger, so that they could

have started in some dense form, with the 38th well packed up in a

front of fours in readiness to start immediately behind after them, the

stoppage at the demi-bastion would never have occurred, and some 200

men at least of the Royals would have reached the breach in a compact

body. Such a number would have forced bodily through all opposition.

Even under all the disadvantages of bad arrangements, I firmly believe

that if we had moved forward by daylight, when an officer could have

seen, and been seen by, his men, when the example of the former would

have animated the exertions of the latter, the Royals would have gone

over the breach on July 25th[823].’

Campbell’s blame, therefore, would fall mainly on Oswald, who, though

he had protested against the points chosen for attack, had actually

arranged the troops, and failed to remember that men should go ‘over

the top’ on a broad front, and on Graham, who fixed the ‘Zero’ point

half an hour before dawn. Gomm, of the 1/9th, also a most distinguished

and capable officer, goes for other game--the officers of the

scientific services:

‘I am afraid our success at Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz, owing to the

almost miraculous efforts of the troops, has stopped the progress

of science among our engineers, and perhaps done more; for it seems

to have inspired them with a contempt for so much of it as they had

attained before. Our soldiers have on all occasions stood fire so well

that our artillery have become as summary in their processes as our

engineers. Provided that they have made a hole in the wall, by which

we can claw up, they care not about destroying defences. In fact, we

have been called upon hitherto to ensure the success of our sieges

by the sacrifice of lives. Our Chief Engineers and Commandants of

Artillery remind me of Burke’s “Revolutionary Philosophers” and their

“dispositions which make them indifferent to the cause of humanity;

they think no more of men than of mice in an air pump”. We came before

the place well equipped with all the means necessary for attacking

it _en règle_, and I saw no reason for attacking it otherwise. I may

dwell longer than I ought to do on this subject. But it is, at least,

pardonable in us, who are most nearly concerned, to become tedious

in passing our censure upon the methods of those whom we cannot but

consider as the authors of our calamity; which, as it was foreseen by

others, and _might_ have been by them, could have been avoided.’

The narrative of the assault seems to show that both Campbell and

Gomm had reason for their complaints, though they chose different

points to criticize. But of the various errors made, undoubtedly the

most fatal of all was attempting to storm breaches that could only be

approached by a long defile along the flank of the hornwork, which

was intact and well garrisoned. And for this the engineers have to

take the responsibility. Camp rumour very cruelly put the blame on the

troops[824], alleging that there had been a panic: this was a monstrous

injustice. Everything that mismanagement could accomplish had been done

to discourage them; but it was not poor spirit, but physical incapacity

to finish a task impossible under the conditions set, that caused them

to retire.

[Illustration: Attack of ST SEBASTIAN between 11th July & 9th Sept 1813]

Wellington had, on the 24th, received disquieting news about movements

on the French front, and was very anxious to hear of the fall of St.

Sebastian before he might be committed to another campaign in the

field. He stopped at his head-quarters at Lesaca on the morning of

the 25th, lest more definite and threatening information might come

to hand. During the hours of dawn he was standing about in Lesaca

churchyard listening to the guns, and speculating on the cause of their

cessation at 6 o’clock, when the armistice to recover the wounded was

made. At 11 came a messenger, Colonel de Burgh, to say that the assault

had failed with loss. This was a severe and rather unexpected blow;

Wellington had counted on success as probable[825]. Taking the

chance of more news coming in from the Pyrenees during his absence,

he rode over in haste to St. Sebastian and inspected the scene of the

disaster. He declared that the siege must continue, that the Hornwork

and the demi-bastion of San Juan must be battered to pieces, and that

the engineers had better draw up an alternative scheme for an attack

_en règle_ on the land front. More guns and ammunition were expected

from England; the latter was much needed, for the reserve was low after

the rapid firing on the 22nd-24th. There would probably be some delay

before a second storm could be tried[826].

While riding back to Lesaca after his flying visit to the trenches,

Wellington was met on the road by messengers of evil. The threats of

the preceding day had turned into imminent dangers. Heavy firing had

been heard since noon from the side of the Bastan, seeming to show that

Hill’s divisions at the Pass of Maya were being attacked. And just as

he reached his head-quarters a messenger came up from Cole, at the

extreme southern end of the line, to say that he had been assailed in

the Pass of Roncesvalles by the enemy in overwhelming strength, and had

been fighting hard since dawn--results were still uncertain[827].

Without further information it was, of course, impossible to take more

than preliminary measures for parrying the French thrust. Wellington

speculated on the situation: one of its meanings might be that the

enemy was demonstrating at Roncesvalles and Maya, in order to cover

a thrust on the side of the Bidassoa, with the object of raising

the siege of St. Sebastian. He wrote at once to Graham that he must

expect to be attacked in force, telling him to ship his siege-guns at

Passages[828], to leave a minimum of troops to continue the blockade,

and to concentrate for the defence of the line of the Bidassoa. It is

clear that Wellington was thinking of the scandal caused by the loss

of Murray’s guns at Tarragona, and was determined that his own siege

train should be afloat betimes. After the guns were safe other stores

were put on shipboard.

So ended the first siege of St. Sebastian--a depressing failure not

creditable to any one engaged in it. As if the tale of disaster was

not complete, a disgraceful incident happened on the night of the

26th-27th. Rey had noted the disarmament of the batteries proceeding

all day, and the departure of troops; he resolved to try a sortie at

night, to see if the besiegers were all absconding. Before dawn five

companies emerging from the Hornwork swept along the parallel, guarded

at the moment by detachments of Spry’s Portuguese brigade. Such a bad

watch was kept that they were completely surprised, three officers

and 198 men were captured: the remainder of the trench-guard fled

back to the suburb of San Martin. When the reserves came up and made

for the parallel, it was found that the French had retired with their

prisoners, after doing some inconsiderable damage to the works[829].

SECTION XXXVIII: CHAPTER II

SOULT TAKES THE OFFENSIVE IN NAVARRE

The Duke of Dalmatia had arrived at Bayonne on the afternoon of July

11th: on the morning of the following day he had taken over from the

hands of King Joseph the command of the armies of Spain, after a short

and formal interview, at which each said little and thought much. When

the King had departed to his enforced retirement, the Marshal called

together the senior officers of all the four armies, and informed

them that by the Emperor’s orders he had to carry out a general

reorganization, which would affect the positions of many of them. There

would for the future be one Army of Spain--the separate staffs would

disappear: so would many divisional commands, administrative offices,

and departmental posts. He had been entrusted by the Emperor with full

authority to carry out the changes on his own responsibility.

This was a great moment for Soult: he had at last achieved his

ambition, and received that full power over all the armies of Spain

which he had coveted since 1808, and had never attained, either while

the Emperor pretended to direct in person the war in the Peninsula,

or while King Joseph held the nominal post of commander-in-chief. It

is true that the long-desired position came to him in consequence of

a terrible disaster to the imperial arms, but there were compensating

advantages even in this: the disaster, as he conceived, had been due

to his old enemies--at any rate it could be ascribed to them with all

plausibility. And he was thus provided with an admirable opportunity

to repay old grudges, of which he took full advantage in the famous

proclamation issued to the army before the commencement of his new

campaign: it is a series of elaborate insults to his predecessors, as a

short quotation may show.

‘Soldiers! with well-equipped fortresses in front and in rear, a

capable general possessing the confidence of his troops could by the

choice of good positions have faced and defeated the motley levies

opposed to you. Unhappily at the critical moment timid and downhearted

counsels prevailed. The fortresses were abandoned or blown up: a hasty

and disorderly retreat gave confidence to the enemy; and a veteran

army, weak in numbers (it is true) but great in everything that

constitutes military character, that army which had fought, bled, and

conquered in every province of Spain, saw with indignation its laurels

blighted, and was forced to abandon its conquests, the trophies of

many sanguinary days of battle. When at last the cries of an indignant

army stopped the dishonourable flight, and its chief, touched by a

feeling of shame, and yielding to the general desire, gave battle in

front of Vittoria, who can doubt that a general worthy of his troops

could have won the success merited by their generous enthusiasm, and

their splendid sense of honour? Did he make the arrangements and direct

the movements which should have assured to one part of his army the

help and support of the rest?... Soldiers! I sympathize with your

disappointment, your grievances, your indignation. I know that the

blame for the present situation must be imputed to others. It is your

task to repair the disaster[830].’

This may have been good ‘propaganda’ for the army--it served to soothe

their wounded pride by throwing all blame on their late commanders. But

there can be no doubt that it was inspired not so much by this very

comprehensible motive as by long-cherished malice and hatred for the

unfortunate Joseph and Jourdan. This was quite in keeping with Soult’s

character. He was a most distinguished soldier, but a most unamiable

man; and his memory was as long as his spite was strong.

We have already had much to write on this cold calculating son of a

provincial lawyer--one of the few ‘best military brains,’ as his master

called him, but also, as King Joseph truly observed, ‘untrustworthy,

perverse, dangerous[831].’ He served the Emperor well as long as their

interests coincided, but he was quite ready for any other profitable

service. Some thirteen months later, as the war minister of Louis

XVIII, he showed himself a zealous persecutor of Bonapartists[832].

Soult was the most monstrous of egotists; at this moment his ambition

served his master well: no general save William III ever won so much

credit from a series of defeats as did Soult in 1813-14 from the

operations that began with the disaster of Sorauren and ended with the

loss of Toulouse. But on the receipt of the news of the abdication at

Fontainebleau he became a zealous Royalist: eighteen months later he

was, as the minister of the Bourbons, issuing flamboyant proclamations

against ‘the usurper and adventurer, Napoleon Bonaparte[833].’ Yet in

the Hundred Days he was to be found as the ‘usurper’s’ Chief of the

Staff on the field of Waterloo! Proscribed for a short time on account

of this unhappy error in calculation, he was so far back in favour with

the ‘powers that were’ as to receive a gift of 200,000 francs from

Louis XVIII in 1820, and the grand cordon of St. Louis from Charles X

in 1825, on the occasion of his coronation at Reims.

But as long as Napoleon I was emperor, Nicholas Soult was his most

valuable lieutenant: their interests coincided, and it is certain that

none of the other marshals would have played such a creditable losing

game on the Pyrenees and the plains of Southern France against such an

adversary as Wellington.

The Army of Spain received the news of his advent with mixed feelings.

There was a considerable faction among his own old generals of

Andalusia, who welcomed back one who had been an indulgent spectator of

their peculations--of which he himself had set the example. For Soult’s

acquisitiveness was portentous--he was ready to snatch at everything

from a shadowy Portuguese crown in Oporto to inferior Murillos in the

convents of Seville. The train of his personal plunder had excited

anger, envy, or derision, according to the temper of the observer, as

it defiled through Madrid, when he quitted Spain five months back. He

had left behind him many adherents, who followed him for the same

motive for which he himself followed Napoleon. They rejoiced at his

return, believing, not in error, that his patronage would be exercised

in favour of old comrades of the Army of the South, rather than for the

benefit of strangers. Others held that he was to be welcomed because

any leadership would be better than that of King Joseph, and because

his undoubted military talents would be exercised in the best style

when he was working for his own credit, and not for that of any one

else. Like the Emperor, they had a great belief in his brains. It was

difficult to feel much personal enthusiasm for a chief so self-centred,

so cold and hard in his dealings with subordinates, so ready to shift

blame on to other men’s shoulders, so greedy in getting and so mean

in spending. But at any rate he would not be weak like Jourdan, or

rash like Marmont, or simply incapable like Dorsenne or Caffarelli. A

general who served as his senior aide-de-camp for eight uncomfortable

years, and left his staff with glee, sums him up in the following cruel

phrases:

‘In war he loved vigorous enterprises, and when once committed to a

scheme stuck to it with obstinacy and force. If I say that he loved

vigorous enterprises I must add that he loved them provided that

they did not involve too much personal danger, for he was far from

possessing the brilliant courage of Ney or Lannes. It might even be

said that he was the very reverse of rash--that he was a little too

careful of himself. This failing grew upon him after his great fortune

had come to him--and indeed it was not uncommon to meet officers

who showed no care of their lives when they were mere colonels or

brigadiers, but who in later years took cover behind their marshal’s

bâton. But this caution visible on the battlefield did not follow him

to the tent, under whose roof he conceived and ordered, often in the

presence of the enemy, movements of great audacity--whose execution

he handed over to officers of known courage and resolution[834].’

Another contemporary makes remarks to much the same effect, ‘Proud of

the reputation which he had usurped, he was full of assurance on the

day before a battle: he recovered that same assurance the day after a

defeat. But in action he seemed unable to issue good orders, to choose

good positions, or to move his troops freely. It seemed as if any

scheme which he had once conceived and written down at his desk was an

immutable decree from heaven, which he had not the power to vary by

subsequent changes[835].’

This is much what Wellington meant when he observed in familiar

conversation that Soult was not equal to Masséna. ‘He did not quite

understand a field of battle: he knew very well how to bring his troops

on to the field, but not so well how to use them when he had brought

them up[836].’

But on July 12th Soult, with his great opportunity before him, was in

his audacious mood, and it was in all sincerity that he had written to

the Emperor before he assumed his command, that he would concentrate

the army, and retake the offensive within a very few days, and that

he trusted to be able to stop the movements of Wellington. This was

no small promise considering the state in which the army was handed

over to him, and it is a marvellous proof of his driving power that he

actually succeeded in launching a most dangerous attack on Wellington’s

line by the thirteenth day after his arrival at Bayonne.

The detailed orders for the reorganization of the army were published

on July 15th. Soult had started with a general idea of the lines

on which they were to be carried out, and had just received a more

definite scheme from the Emperor, sent off from Dresden on July 5th

in pursuit of him. Napoleon ordered that not only were the armies of

the North, South, Centre, and Portugal to be abolished--their names

were now absurd anachronisms--but, despite of the great number of

troops available, no army corps were to be created. Evidently he

had come to the conclusion that not only army-commanders, but even

army-corps-commanders might be strong enough to impair the complete

control which he wished to give over to Soult. He directed that the

infantry should be divided into as many divisions of two brigades and

6,000 men each as the available total of bayonets could complete. The

Marshal was authorized to work them as he pleased, in groups of two,

three, or four divisions. To command these groups (which were really

army-corps in all but name) he might appoint three officers with the

title of lieutenant-general, who would have the divisional generals

under their orders. There were to be no special staffs for the groups,

whose composition the Marshal might alter from time to time: the

lieutenant-generals were only to be allowed a chief staff-officer and

their own personal aides-de-camp, and their pay was to be no more than

40,000 francs per annum. Clearly there was to be no recrudescence of

the enormous staffs and liberal perquisites and allowances of the old

corps-commanders.

Artillery might still be short, despite of the large number of guns

sent up to the front from Toulouse and Bordeaux. But the Emperor

directed that each infantry division ought to have two field batteries,

each cavalry division one horse artillery battery, and that Soult

ought to create an army-reserve of two horse artillery batteries and

several batteries of guns of position. There was to be one general

commanding artillery and one general commanding engineers for the whole

army, and (what was quite as important) one commissary general only,

in whose hands all responsibilities for food and transport were to be

centralized.

In a general way, but not in all details, Soult carried out these

orders. The gross total of the troops under his command would appear

to have been 117,789 of all ranks. But this included the garrisons

of St. Sebastian, Pampeluna, and Santoña, 8,200 men in all: also

5,595 half-trained conscripts of the Bayonne Reserve, 16,184 sick and

detached, and over 4,500 men of the non-combatant services--_ouvriers

militaires_, transport train, ambulance train, &c. Deducting these,

he had available 84,311 fighting men, of whom 72,664 were infantry,

7,147 cavalry, and about 4,000 artillery, sappers and miners,

gendarmerie[837], &c. This total does not include Paris’ troops from

Saragossa, who were lying at Jaca, and had not yet joined the Army of

Spain, being still credited to Suchet’s Army of Aragon and Valencia.

Soult created out of these elements nine fighting divisions of

infantry, two of cavalry, and a strong but miscellaneous Reserve

Corps, which had the equivalent of five brigades. The plan which he

adopted for the reorganization was to select nine of the old infantry

divisions (of which there had been 14-1/2) and to keep them as the

bases of the new units, drafting into them the battalions of the

other five[838]. Those abolished were the two divisions (Abbé’s and

Vandermaesen’s) of the Army of the North, Sarrut’s division of the

Army of Portugal, Leval’s of the Army of the South, and Darmagnac’s of

the Army of the Centre. Sarrut had been killed at Vittoria, Leval had

gone to Germany; but provision was made for the other three generals

whose divisions were ‘scrapped’: Abbé took over Villatte’s old division

of the Army of the South, while Villatte went to command the general

reserve. Vandermaesen was given the division of the Army of Portugal

lately under Barbot, who relapsed into the status of a brigadier.

Darmagnac went with the two French regiments of his old division to

join the surviving unit of the Army of the Centre, Cassagne’s division,

and took command of it--Cassagne, its former chief, disappearing.

Lastly, Daricau having been severely wounded at Vittoria, his division

was given to Maransin, whose independent brigade was absorbed. Thus,

of the old divisions, only those of Foy, Conroux, Maucune, Taupin,

Lamartinière, remained under their original leaders: the other four

surviving divisions got new chiefs, whose names are familiar to us, but

who had hitherto been connected with quite different troops.

Napoleon’s ideal of the ‘standard’ division of 6,000 men was not

accurately realized, owing to the fact that some corps had suffered

heavily and others hardly at all during the recent campaign. Putting

six regiments into each division, Soult found that he had created units

varying in size from Abbé’s with 8,030 men to Vandermaesen’s, with only

4,181. For there was no uniformity of size among the regiments, which

varied from 1,900 bayonets in three battalions[839] down to 430 in

one[840]. Abbé’s, Lamartinière’s, Conroux’s, and Darmagnac’s divisions

had 7,000 men each, or more; Foy’s, Taupin’s, and Maransin’s just

about 6,000; Vandermaesen’s and Maucune’s not much over 4,000 each.

It was still impossible to carry out Napoleon’s orders to give each

division two batteries of field artillery, only one apiece could be

provided; but, this moderate provision having been made, there remained

over for the general artillery reserve two batteries of horse and two

of field artillery. The army had in all 140 guns horsed--72 with the

infantry divisions, 32 with Villatte’s reserve, 12 with the cavalry

divisions, 24 as general army reserve. There were also three mountain

batteries--two- or three-pounders carried on muleback.

For his chief of the staff Soult chose Gazan, who had long served with

him in the same capacity in Andalusia. The late generals-in-chief of

the Armies of Portugal, the North and the Centre--Reille, Clausel, and

Drouet D’Erlon, naturally took the three lieutenant-generalcies: Soult

gave each of them three divisions in charge, but being prohibited from

calling these groups ‘army corps’, he styled them the ‘lieutenancies’

of the Right, Left, and Centre. These terms soon became anomalous--for

by the chances of manœuvre the ‘Centre’--D’Erlon’s group--during the

campaign of the Pyrenees fought on the right, the ‘left’ (Clausel)

in the Centre, and the ‘right’ (Reille) on the left wing. The absurd

nomenclature of the groups sometimes makes a French dispatch hard to

understand: it would have been much simpler to call the three groups

army-corps, but this designation was under taboo by the Emperor’s

special command.

Clausel took the left lieutenancy, because he and his troops, which

he had brought back from his long march in Aragon, were actually on

the left on June 15th: he had under him the two divisions, those of

Vandermaesen and Taupin, which practically represented the bulk of

his former column, with Conroux’s division which had remained at St.

Jean-Pied-du-Port when the rest of the Army of the South went to the

Bidassoa. The total of bayonets was 17,218--this was the weakest of the

‘lieutenancies’ because the individual regiments recently returned

from Aragon were low in numbers from three months of mountain warfare

against Mina.

D’Erlon had the Centre, with the divisions of Abbé and Maransin,

both consisting of old Andalusian regiments, and of Darmagnac, who

represented the French part of the Army of the Centre. His corps were

strong--just under 21,000 bayonets[841].

Reille, late chief of the Army of Portugal, had the remaining three

divisions, Foy, Maucune, and Lamartinière, all of them coming from his

own old command, and under officers who had long served in that army.

Their total strength was 17,235--many of the regiments were low in

numbers from the recent fighting in Biscay.

Each of the three ‘lieutenancies’ had a light cavalry regiment attached

to it--we should have called them corps-cavalry had the name been

permitted. They were weak--only 808 sabres between the three--but

sufficient for scouting purposes.

Adding the two cavalry divisions of Pierre Soult (the Marshal’s very

undistinguished but much cherished brother) and Treillard, the Army

of Spain had 7,147 sabres, including the remnants of the foreign

cavalry--Nassau Chasseurs, Spanish light horse, and Royal Guards, who

were something under 1,000 all told.

The very large body of troops under Villatte which Soult had left

outside his nine marching divisions, and his three ‘lieutenancies’,

consisted of a great number of battalions of the recently abolished

armies, which were left as a surplus, when the new formations had been

brought up to the six-regiment standard. They included of French troops

one odd battalion of the Army of Portugal, eleven of the Army of the

North, and six of the old Bayonne Reserve. The eighteen battalions were

mostly rather weak, and mustered only a little over 9,000 bayonets

between them.

In addition Villatte’s reserve included all the foreign

troops--Neuenstein’s _Rheinbund_ Germans, who had served so long

in the Army of the Centre, St. Pol’s Italian brigade, the King’s

Foot-Guards--a solid body of 2,000 infantry, all Frenchmen, though in

Spanish uniform--and the forlorn remnant of the _Afrancesados_--three

dwindling regiments under Casapalacios, which had shrunk from 2,000 to

1,100 bayonets during the last month.

Adding a battalion of foot-gendarmes from the evacuated Biscay

garrisons, and another of local National guards, Villatte had over

17,000 infantry--a force as big as Reille’s or Clausel’s lieutenancies.

There was some weak stuff among them[842], but the greater part were

experienced troops in nowise inferior to the units of the marching

divisions. It is hard to see why Soult did not make up a tenth

division out of the best of them: this would still have left Villatte

12,000 men, and would have been very useful in the fighting army. But

apparently, as will be seen during the narrative of the campaign of

July-August, he intended to use the Reserve in an active fashion, and

was foiled by the caution or timidity of Villatte, who discharged the

orders given him in a very half-hearted way. This mass of troops was

really quite capable of being used as a fighting unit--it had its four

batteries of field artillery, the foreign cavalry were allotted to

it, and a proportion of sappers and engineers. Even after leaving a

detachment--say the _Afrancesados_ and one or two of the weakest French

battalions--to aid the conscripts to garrison Bayonne, it could have

taken the field with 15,000 men of all arms[843].

To assume the offensive with a recently beaten army is dangerous.

Many of the regiments which Soult had to use had only a month before

recrossed the Pyrenees in a state of complete disorder: they had been

entirely out of hand, and had been guilty of outrages among the French

peasantry which recalled their worst doings in Spain. The greater

number of the senior officers had applied for service in the Army of

Germany the moment that they had crossed the frontier: it was refused

to nearly all of them. The junior officers would have made similar

applications, if they had thought that it would be of any use. Every

one of every rank was cursing King Joseph, luck, the weather, the

supply services, the War Ministry at Paris, and his own immediate

hierarchical superior: a _sentiment d’ineptie générale_ prevailed[844].

A great deal of this demoralization was mere nervous exhaustion,

resulting from long marches and semi-starvation extending over many

weeks. After a fortnight of comparative rest and more or less regular

rations it commenced to subside. The whole army consisted of veteran

troops proud of their regimental honour and their past victories: they

soon persuaded themselves that they had never been given a fair chance

in the recent campaign--Soult’s clever and malicious proclamation

exactly hit off their state of mind. It was easy to lay all the blame

on bad generalship, and to plead that a good half of the troops had

not fought at Vittoria: in full force and under a competent leader

they would have made mincemeat of the ‘motley levies’ of Wellington.

When the whole host was reassembled, after Clausel’s arrival, every

one could see that the numerical loss in the late disaster had been

very moderate: there were more French troops assembled on the Bidassoa

than any member of any of the armies had ever seen concentrated before.

Shame and anger replaced dejection in their minds: even the marauders

and deserters came back to the Eagles by thousands. Soult wrote to the

Minister of War that the disquieting state of indiscipline which he had

discovered on his arrival was subsiding, that marauding had ceased with

the distribution of regular rations, and that the morale of the army

was satisfactory.

The weakest part of the reorganization was, of course, the transport.

The army had lost all its wheeled vehicles and many of its animals in

the disaster of Vittoria: they had not been replaced in any adequate

fashion during the four short weeks that followed. By extraordinary

efforts the Commissariat had found food for every one, so long as the

main body of the army was encamped between Bayonne and the Bidassoa.

But it would be impossible to start it properly equipped for a long

mountain campaign far from its base. Soult took the desperate risk

of starting on July 23 with only four days’ rations in hand with the

marching columns: all that would be wanted later was to come up by

successive convoys sent out from the neighbourhood of Bayonne. And it

was little better with munitions for infantry and artillery alike. The

campaign became a time-problem: unless a decisive success were achieved

within the first four or five days, there was grave danger of the army

being brought to a stop. It would be helpless if it should have used

up all its cartridges in several days of continuous and severe, but

indecisive, fighting: or if bad weather should prevent the regular

appearance of convoys from the rear. This Soult knew, but thought that

his arrangements were calculated to secure that quick and decisive

victory which would justify all taking of risks.

The plan of campaign which the Marshal chose was one of the three

alternative schemes which the unlucky Jourdan had formulated during

his last days at the front[845]. It will be remembered that they were

(1) to endeavour to raise the siege of St. Sebastian by massing every

available man on the Bidassoa, and striking at Giron and Graham--who

was wrongly supposed to have only one British division with him. After

driving back Graham as far as Tolosa on the high road, it would be

possible to turn southward and relieve Pampeluna: Clausel’s corps,

meanwhile, should demonstrate in Navarre, to distract Wellington from

sending his reserves from the south to the main point of danger.

Both Jourdan on July 5 and Soult on July 23rd believed, the former

correctly, the latter wrongly, that there were three British divisions

engaged in the blockade of Pampeluna.

(2) To leave a corps of observation on the Bidassoa to contain

Graham, while the rest of the army struck at Pampeluna by the route

of Roncesvalles. This would have the advantage of raising the siege

of that place at once, though the relief of St. Sebastian would be

deferred. But, Jourdan added, it had three disadvantages--the road was

bad and might conceivably prove impracticable for artillery: the bulk

of the British divisions would probably be found concentrated for a

fight to cover the blockade: and Navarre was a country in which no army

could scrape together food enough to live upon.

(3) To leave a corps of observation on the Bidassoa, and convey the

rest of the army into Aragon, by the pass of Jaca, to join Suchet and

operate with overwhelming forces on the Ebro against Wellington’s flank

and rear. This, the operation which Jourdan regarded as the best of

the three, had since become impossible, because Paris had abandoned

Saragossa, and Suchet had taken his army to Catalonia: on July 17 he

was at Tarragona.

Soult’s plan was in essence Jourdan’s second alternative; but he

complicated it by dividing the army which was to strike at Pampeluna

into two columns. Two-thirds of the whole (Reille and Clausel) was to

march by the Roncesvalles passes; D’Erlon with the remainder was to

force the pass of Maya and to converge on Pampeluna by the Bastan and

the Col de Velate. Jourdan’s memorandum contained a special caution

against the dissemination of columns, ‘je pense que toute opération de

plusieurs corps isolés ne réussira pas.’ How frequently in military

history two columns starting from distant bases have failed to meet

on the appointed day is known to every student. It is seldom that a

complete success is secured--as at Königgrätz. Much more frequently the

enemy against whom the concentration was planned has beaten one corps

before the other--delayed by one of the uncountable chances of war--has

come upon the scene. And this was to be the case with Soult before

Pampeluna.

The advantages of Soult’s scheme were very comprehensible. The greatest

was that, owing to the existence of a first-class road from Bayonne

to St. Jean-Pied-du-Port, he could concentrate the main body of his

army upon his extreme left wing long before Wellington could make the

corresponding counter-move. In the early days of the operation he could

calculate on having an immense superiority of force on the Roncesvalles

front. It was more doubtful what would happen on the third or fourth

day, if Wellington divined his enemy’s plan at the first moment, and

ordered a general concentration before Pampeluna, as Jourdan had taken

for granted that he would. But Soult considered that he had found means

to make such a concentration impossible, by sending D’Erlon and his

20,000 men to pierce the allied left-centre at Maya, and to sweep down

the Bastan. If D’Erlon broke in on the first day, and got possession

of the positions that dominate the road-system of the Bastan--Elizondo

and the Col de Velate--the northern divisions of Wellington’s army

would only be able to join the southern divisions in front of Pampeluna

by immense détours to the west--by Santesteban and the Pass of Donna

Maria, or even by Tolosa and Yrurzun. In all human probability they

would arrive too late.

The British commander, as we shall see, did not divine Soult’s whole

purpose at the first moment, and therefore his general concentration

was ordered a day later than it might have been. And the officers who

were in charge of his extreme right at Roncesvalles gave way quicker

than he had intended. The campaign became a most interesting time

problem, which was settled in favour of Wellington in the end, by the

fact that his first-arriving northern reserves got to the positions in

front of Pampeluna a day before Soult’s secondary column under D’Erlon

came into touch with the French main body. The subordinate officers

on both sides made some extraordinary mistakes, which compromised the

plans of their superiors: the worst of them were in the line of slow

and irregular transmission of news, which in a mountain country, where

all side communications were difficult, and no general view of the

situation could be taken by the commander’s own eye, sometimes led to

ruinous miscalculations at head-quarters. It cannot be said that one

side suffered more than the other from this negligence of subordinates.

To proceed to the details. Soult’s left wing at St. Jean-Pied-du-Port

was ready to start, Conroux and Clausel’s old divisions having been

cantoned in the neighbourhood of that fortress ever since they arrived

in France; they were only one long march from their objective, the

gap of Roncesvalles. At the other end of the line, D’Erlon’s three

divisions were also within one long march of the Pass of Maya--they

already lay with their vanguard at Urdax and their last rear brigade at

Espelette. The difficulty lay with the third ‘lieutenancy’; Reille’s

three divisions of the old Army of Portugal on July 20th were on the

lower Bidassoa, holding the front opposite Graham and Giron; they had

to be got to St. Jean-Pied-du-Port, to join Clausel and co-operate

in the main attack[846]. To draw them out of their existing positions

without arousing too much attention at Wellington’s head-quarters was

comparatively easy. On the night of the 19th-20th four brigades of

Villatte’s reserve replaced Reille’s troops at the outposts. On the

following day the three fighting divisions concentrated at St. Jean de

Luz and started to march eastward, with orders to cross the Nive at

Cambo, and to get into the great _chaussée_ by Urcaray and Hellette,

which leads to St. Jean-Pied-du-Port. Drawing up a far too optimistic

time-chart, Soult had hoped that they would all be in the neighbourhood

of St. Jean-Pied-du-Port by the morning of the 22nd. As the distance

was not less than 50 miles, this would have been very hard work in

any case, for a long column marching with a large train of artillery,

as Reille was bringing up beside his own pieces three batteries for

Clausel, who had arrived gunless from Aragon. But the main cause of

delay was quite different: though the Bayonne-St. Jean-Pied-du-Port

_chaussée_ was excellent, the local cross-road from St. Jean de Luz by

St. Pée to the bridge of Cambo was not, and torrential rains on the

20th made it into a quagmire[847]. The troops got on very slowly, and

at night the bridge at Cambo was carried away by a spate, leaving the

bulk of Lamartinière’s division on the wrong side of the water. It was

repaired; but the general result was that the head of Reille’s column

only neared its destination late at night on the 22nd, while the rear

division and the guns did not get up till the 24th. The Marshal had

been waiting for them since the morning of the 21st, and had hoped to

start operations on the 23rd. He had been joined by his two cavalry

divisions, brought up from their cantonments between the Nive and the

Adour on that day, so that Reille’s delays put the movement of all the

other corps a day late.

On the 24th Soult was able to commence moving up both Clausel’s and

Reille’s columns toward the Roncesvalles gap, so that they should be

able to attack it on the 25th at an early hour. D’Erlon, being already

in position in front of Maya, was only waiting for the signal to

march. Villatte had been given orders which left a good deal to his

private judgement, to the effect that he must simulate an offensive

attitude on the Bidassoa front, but make no real attack till he knew

that D’Erlon had got well forward in the Bastan and that Graham’s flank

was threatened. He might then push the latter with confidence, as the

allied troops on the coast would have to give way, and to raise the

siege of St. Sebastian, if their centre in the Bastan had been broken

and driven westward.

It is interesting to find in a dispatch which Soult sent to Paris on

the 23rd his estimate of the position of Wellington’s line of defence.

He starts fairly well--Graham with the 1st Division is on the heights

beyond the Bidassoa: Oswald with the 5th Division and a Spanish (it

should be a Portuguese) corps besieges St. Sebastian. The 7th Division

under Lord Dalhousie holds the front Vera-Echalar. Then comes a curious

blunder--the 6th Division under General Hay is on the (French) left of

the 7th Division. Really it was in reserve at Santesteban, and under

Pack; Clinton, who had only taken over command after long sick leave on

June 22nd, having again fallen ill. General Hill, with the 2nd Division

under W. Stewart, and Hamilton’s Portuguese (Silveira had superseded

Hamilton many months back) is in the Bastan, and holds ‘with camps and

batteries’ the passes of Maya and Ispegui. We are assured that the

3rd and 4th Divisions and a Spanish corps are besieging Pampeluna.

‘There seems to be another division (probably the 8th Division) under

a General Bird in position at Altobiscar, above Roncesvalles. There is

an English (Portuguese) brigade under General Campbell in the Alduides.

The Spaniards of the Army of Galicia guard the Bidassoa from Vera to

the sea.’

It will be noted that this reconstruction of Wellington’s line makes

the covering force in front of Pampeluna too weak, for it is believed

to consist of ‘Bird’s’ division (a mistake for Byng’s brigade?) and

the force of Campbell in the Val de Alduides only. Really the Conde de

Abispal’s Andalusians had relieved the 3rd and 4th Divisions on July

16-17, and they were free, and disposable as a reserve to the troops

on the Roncesvalles front--Picton being at Olague in the valley of

the Lanz, Cole at Viscarret on the Pampeluna-Roncesvalles road: Pack

and the 6th Division at Santesteban were only a little farther away.

Moreover, Morillo’s Spaniards were up in line with Byng. The Light

Division makes no appearance in Soult’s table, unless he means the 8th

Division under ‘General Bird’ to represent it.

There is therefore a grave miscalculation when Soult ends by informing

Clarke that, after examining the whole Allied line, he has come to the

conclusion that the right wing is the weak point, and the one that

should be attacked, by a flank movement which he will continue till

he has turned its rear. If Wellington’s plans had worked out well,

there would have happened what Jourdan had foreseen, viz. so vigorous

a resistance in the passes by the British outlying troops, that Soult

would only have arrived in front of Pampeluna to find the main bulk of

Wellington’s army offering him battle in front of the besieged city.

But, as we shall see, Cole and Picton received Wellington’s orders just

too late to allow them to carry out the policy which he dictated.

Such were Soult’s views of Wellington’s situation. It remains to be

seen what Wellington made of Soult’s intentions. He was from the

first conscious that the Marshal’s appearance might mean a prompt

resumption of the offensive by the enemy[848]. And the movements of

the French were reported to him with very fair accuracy and dispatch.

As early as the 22nd he was aware that the enemy was weakening his

front on the Bidassoa, and that troops were accumulating at St.

Jean-Pied-du-Port[849]. On the 24th he knew that the force moved in

that direction must be the larger half of the French army. But his

judgement on the meaning of this movement was entirely coloured by the

fact that he had breached St. Sebastian, and that he believed, like

Graham, that it would be stormed successfully on the 24th or 25th.

He also knew that Soult was being informed, day by day, of the state

of the fortress. On the other hand, he was aware that Pampeluna was

quite safe--it had food enough to last for several weeks at least, and

he was not pressing it hard, as he was pressing St. Sebastian. From

this he deduced the conclusion that Soult could not in honour suffer

St. Sebastian to be taken almost under his eyes, as it would be unless

he intervened. Therefore the moving of troops--even large numbers of

troops--towards St. Jean-Pied-du-Port, must be a feint, because the

Marshal’s obvious duty was to save St. Sebastian--while Pampeluna was

in no danger. He read the French manœuvres as an attempt to distract

his attention from the Bidassoa. And his idea that a desperate attempt

would be made to relieve St. Sebastian seemed to be borne out by the

fact that Villatte was making flying bridges at Urogne, and that French

boats were running in to the mouth of the Bidassoa from St. Jean de

Luz. Still, if reports were correct, the enemy was likely to make

a very serious demonstration on the Roncesvalles front. Wellington

therefore wrote to Cole on the 23rd that he was not to allow himself

to be pushed in too easily towards Pampeluna. ‘You should support

Major-General Byng in the defence of the passes as effectually as you

can, without committing his troops and the 4th Division against a force

so superior that the advantage of the ground would not compensate

it. You will be good enough to make arrangements further back also,

for stopping the enemy’s progress toward Pampeluna, in the event of

your being compelled to give up the passes which General Byng now

occupies.... A sure communication should exist with General Sir Thomas

Picton, and Sir Thomas should be apprised of any movement of troops,

either upon the Roncesvalles road, or upon that of Eugui and the

Alduides, in order that he may make such arrangements as circumstances

may dictate for giving support, should such an event occur.... It is

desirable that you should transmit a daily report for the present to

Head Quarters[850].’

This was followed up by even more stringent orders on the following

day. George Murray wrote to Cole, ‘Lord Wellington has desired that

I should express still more strongly how essential he considers it

that the passes in front of Roncesvalles should be maintained to the

utmost. And I am to direct you to be so good as to make every necessary

arrangement for repelling effectually any direct attack that the enemy

may make in that quarter.... Lord Wellington attaches very little

importance to any wider turning movement which the enemy might make

upon our right. The difficulties and delays of any wider movement are

considerable obstacles, and would retard him sufficiently to give time

to make other arrangements to stop his progress[851].’

It would be most inaccurate to say that Wellington was surprised by

Soult’s offensive at the southern end of his line, as these orders

sufficiently demonstrate. At the same time he remained till late on

the night of the 25th firmly convinced that the French move in Navarre

was a feint or subsidiary operation, and that the real attack would be

on the Bidassoa. On the 24th, knowing of the accumulation of hostile

troops before Roncesvalles, he wrote to Graham that undoubtedly the

enemy is very strong on that side, ‘but only because he entertains

serious designs to draw away our attention from the side of Irun,

and then to attempt to pass the river[852].’ And on the same morning

he wrote to Giron that ‘the enemy’s main force has moved towards St.

Jean-Pied-du-Port; but his two pontoon bridges remain at Urogne. It

would seem that he intends to distract our attention to the other

side, and then to make a try at the river. But as (at 11 a.m.) I no

longer hear the guns at St. Sebastian, I am hoping that its business

has been settled[853].’ It will be remembered that the projected storm

on the 24th had been postponed because of the conflagration, so that

the cessation of the firing had not the happy meaning that Wellington

attributed to it.

On the morning of the 25th, when the unsuccessful attempt on St.

Sebastian was actually made, Wellington was up at early dawn, listening

once more to the guns, as he strode up and down in the churchyard of

Lesaca. Again they stopped, after two hours of furious fire, just as

on the preceding day; and again Wellington hoped that ‘the business

had been settled’--that the French scheme (as he conceived it) had

been foiled, because there was now no garrison at St. Sebastian left

for Soult to relieve. But ere noon there arrived a dejected messenger

to report that there had been this time no postponed assault, but a

serious attack defeated with very heavy loss. This unhappy fact upset

all Wellington’s calculations: if the failure had been very disastrous,

it would result that St. Sebastian must be reckoned as in no immediate

danger; and Soult’s heavy demonstration in front of Roncesvalles might

prove to be no feint, but a real attempt to relieve Pampeluna. Yet

Wellington still doubted this interpretation of the enemy’s move: ‘one

can hardly believe that with 30,000 men he proposes to force himself

through the passes of the mountains. The remainder of his force, one

must think, must come into operation on some other point, either

to-morrow or the day after[854].’ In fact he still opined that there

would be an assault on the Bidassoa--not understanding that the enemy’s

surplus, or the greater part of it--D’Erlon’s column of 21,000 men--was

striking at the Maya Pass, and was in possession of it at the moment

when he wrote this dispatch to Graham.

Meanwhile the great thing was to discover exactly what was the

condition of affairs at St. Sebastian, and Wellington rode over the

hills in haste to visit Graham, before any notice of the attacks of

the French at Maya and at Roncesvalles had come to hand. He spent a

long afternoon opposite the fortress, with the results that have been

explained in the preceding chapter. It was only on his ride back to

Lesaca in the dark that he met the first messenger of evil. His Chief

of the Staff, George Murray, had sent out an officer to tell him that

furious firing had been audible from the side of the Maya passes all

through the afternoon. But no explanatory dispatch had been received

either from W. Stewart in command at Maya itself, or from Hill, in

charge of the whole defence of the Bastan. This was astonishing, as

there was a properly established line of communication along the Bastan

to head-quarters; rumours had come to hand that the enemy was stopped,

but no official report. On reaching Lesaca an hour later, Wellington

found an officer sent by Cole from Roncesvalles awaiting him, who

brought the news that the French were attacking on that front in

overpowering numbers. But up to midday, when the messenger had started,

no breach had been made in the British line[855].

Late at night news did finally come from the Maya front. Stewart

sent a verbal message that he had lost the pass, and though he had

regained it for a moment by the aid of a brigade of the 7th Division,

Hill had ordered him to fall back. This was confirmed by a letter from

Hill, which said that Stewart had been driven out of the pass, but that

they were going to try to hold on in a position at Elizondo, ten miles

farther down the Bastan. It was owing to absolutely criminal negligence

on the part of his subordinates that Wellington learned the details of

a fight that had begun at about 11 a.m., only twenty miles away, at no

earlier an hour than 10 p.m. But late as it was, he had now at last the

information which enabled him to guess at Soult’s general design, and

to give orders for dealing with it.

[Illustration: The Country between BAYONNE & PAMPLONA]

SECTION XXXVIII: CHAPTER III

RONCESVALLES AND MAYA

Soult, though a day later than he had intended, was ready for his great

stroke at the passes by dawn on July 25th. The main blow was to be

delivered on the Roncesvalles front, where he had the 34,000 infantry

of Reille and Clausel assembled, not to speak of the two cavalry

divisions, which would only become useful when he should reach the

plain of Pampeluna. So much was D’Erlon’s attack on the Maya passes the

secondary part of the scheme, that we find Soult informing that general

that his advance would probably be facilitated by the arrival in the

enemy’s camp of the news that Roncesvalles had been forced: this would

compel Hill to fall back down the Bastan, and he should be pursued as

briskly as possible.

The Roncesvalles business was therefore the more important part of

the programme for July 25th. The Marshal had chosen for the routes of

Clausel and Reille two roads, which climb up from St. Jean-Pied-du-Port

and the valley of the Nive to the bleak plateau above the historic

abbey, where the relics of Roland were still shown. Between them lies a

broad and deep valley, the Val Carlos, with the mountain stream called

the Nive d’Arneguy running down its middle. The eastern road climbs

the slopes to the (French) left of the valley: it was practicable for

artillery and vehicles, and sappers had been working for the last few

days to improve some of its more tiresome curves. This road, after

passing the Venta d’Orisson, the last inhabited spot on the north

slope, and the ruined fort of Château Pignon, comes to the crest

under a hill called Leiçaratheca, immediately in front of the higher

position called Altobiscar, where the watershed lies. It then passes

for a mile along this watershed known as the ridge of Ibaneta, and

descends by curves to the abbey on the Spanish side. The other road, no

more than a mountain track in 1813, and quite impracticable for guns

or transport, climbs uphill on the western slopes of the Val Carlos,

only three or four miles from the better route as the crow flies, but

always separated from it by the broad and deep intervening combe. After

passing the village of Arneguy, it gets up on to the narrow crest of

the mountain, the Airola, which separates the Val Carlos from the Val

Haira, the next valley westward. Along this ridge it winds for five or

six miles, till the crest joins the main watershed of the Pyrenees at

a small plateau called the Linduz, about two miles or so west of the

point on the Ibaneta ridge where the other road comes in. A practicable

track along the watershed joins them. Since 1813 the whole of the

road-geography of this stretch of the Pyrenees has been changed, by the

construction of a metalled _chaussée_ from Arneguy up the Val Carlos,

which did not exist in 1813: it goes along the slopes, not along the

actual crest, like the mere track which Reille’s men had to follow on

July 25th, and is now a better route than the old high road by Venta

d’Orisson and Château Pignon. From the Linduz there is a steep path

going straight down into Spain, without joining the Roncesvalles road:

it is called the Puerto de Mendichuri, and leads to Espinal. The little

plateau has yet another exit; along the crests to its west comes in

a very bad track from the valley of the Alduides, named the path of

Atalosti. It is because it lay at such a ganglion of joining ridges,

that the Linduz was marked by a ruined earthwork--a relic of the war of

1793-4.

To understand the general lie of the fighting ground, it must be

remembered that from the Linduz to Altobiscar is about three miles of

saddle-back ridge, lowest in the middle, where the _chaussée_ crosses

the sky-line at 3,600 feet above sea-level, while the highest point of

the Linduz is about 4,200, and that of Altobiscar about 4,900 feet up.

The descent into France is much steeper than that into Spain--Burguete

and Espinal are only 700 feet below the summit of the pass, Arneguy

and the village of Val Carlos on the French side 3,000 feet below it.

This is the reason that caused Soult to send his right column along

the lofty path on the Airola ridge, from which they could approach the

Linduz on a level, instead of bidding them climb up direct from the

deep-sunk bottom of the Val Carlos trough.

It should be added that the scenery of the three miles of the

Roncesvalles front is not precipitous or Alpine. There are some

outcrops of rock in certain places--e. g. along the front of the

Leiçaratheca hill, but the prevailing aspect is rather like that of

Scottish highland scenery on a large scale. The slopes are mostly short

slippery grass, not unclimbable for a good walker, though difficult for

the soldier of 1813 carrying the 70 lb. of his fighting kit and heavy

knapsack. The lower skirts of the hills are covered in many parts with

woods of pine and beech and stunted undergrowth of oak: in some places

these stretch up right to the summits--the Linduz has thick foliage on

its eastern flank, and the ridge leading to it from the Airola spur

has trees on both sides of the narrow track which winds along its

crest, so that troops ascending it are only intermittently visible.

Much of the Ibaneta position--the central saddle between the Linduz

and Altobiscar--is covered with bush. But from the highest summits

there are long and clear views over the woods and the grass-slopes

alike--views much more commanding, it may be noted, toward the French

than toward the Spanish side. So striking is the general effect that,

even on the morning of battle, it fixed itself on the minds of several

of the combatants as a memory not to be forgotten[856]: fighting has

seldom taken place with such a broad and majestic horizon.

Soult knew that his attack would be expected on the high

road--Clausel’s troops had been visible to Byng’s outposts for some

time, and on the night of the 24th there had been a slight skirmish of

picquets between the Leiçaratheca and Château-Pignon. But he was under

the impression that he would take the enemy entirely by surprise in

his second attack, that directed against the Linduz by the obscure and

difficult path along the crest of the Airola mountain, which since the

war of 1793-4 had only been used by shepherds and smugglers. And on to

this narrow path he pushed the full half of his infantry--the whole

of Reille’s three divisions. It is probable that we must write down

the whole of this movement as a mistake: the track was so bad that it

could only be used by daylight--at night it would have been impossible

to discover the way, among steep slopes and thickets. There were so

many ups and downs, and the grass slopes on each side were so slippery,

that nothing could be done in the dark. The actual result was that

the whole 17,000 bayonets of Reille advanced with a front of two men,

or even in Indian file, forming a sort of procession many miles long.

The head battalion was fighting hard on the Linduz before the tail

battalion had begun to stir from Arneguy. Reille had made over his

batteries and his regiment of corps-cavalry to Clausel, receiving in

return eight mountain guns carried by mules, and a train of pack-beasts

laden with infantry ammunition. It is obvious that a movement of this

sort could only succeed if the enemy was surprised, since the column

had no thrusting-power; it was all length without breadth, and one

brigade ready at the Linduz might hold up the entire three divisions,

which would have no space to deploy so as to make their numbers felt.

This, as we shall see, is precisely what happened: the Linduz was found

in British occupation, and Reille was blocked for the whole day in

front of a very inferior force.

On the Château Pignon-Altobiscar road Soult had sent forward the whole

of Clausel’s force, the three divisions one behind the other, in the

order Vandermaesen-Taupin-Conroux. Behind the last infantry division

was the cavalry, and then all the guns and transport. Everything on

wheels belonging to Reille had been put in at the tail of Clausel’s

impedimenta. This made a column of interminable length. The conditions

were better for an advance on this front than on the western track,

since the road was broad and the slopes on each side of it fairly

practicable: but there were formidable positions to be carried before

the watershed could be reached.

Byng and Morillo had been for three weeks at the Roncesvalles passes,

but it was only eight days since they had been put under the command

of Cole, who had come up with the 4th Division from his long stay in

front of Pampeluna. And it was only on the 22nd that Wellington had

sent to Cole the warning that the French main body was moving toward

St. Jean-Pied-du-Port, and that he might expect to be attacked. On the

23rd Cole received the stringent orders which have been quoted on an

earlier page, but the still stronger message of the 24th seems only to

have reached him after the fighting had begun.

While Byng and Morillo were in charge they had evidently counted on

being attacked along the high-road, and possibly also in the depths

of the Val Carlos. But no serious attempt had been made to cover the

highland path that comes out on the Linduz, much farther west. It was

only watched by a picquet--one company of Morillo’s men encamped in

the ruined redoubt of 1793 on the Linduz. The other points of access

were carefully blocked: Byng had a strong first line of defence

on the Leiçaratheca hill, whose rocky upper face gave good cover

for skirmishers. It was held by the three light companies of his

brigade, the attached company of the 5/60th and one battalion[857]

and three light companies from Morillo’s right-hand brigade. Two

miles behind was the real fighting position, occupied by the Buffs

and the ‘1st Provisional’ (2/31st and 2/66th), with two of Morillo’s

battalions[858]. Byng’s third battalion, the 1/57th, was detached far

downhill to the left, on the lower slopes of the Altobiscar, watching

the Val Carlos. The third Spanish battalion of Morillo’s right-hand

brigade, Leon, was detached in a similar fashion to the right, to the

foot of the Altobiscar heights, to guard a by-path, which crosses the

main chain of the mountains and comes down into the upper valley of the

Irati river at the foundry of Orbaiceta.

The remaining battalions of Morillo’s left-hand brigade[859] were down

in the Val Carlos, on ground south of the village of the same name,

in a position blocking the upper and higher end of that deep-sunk

depression. They covered the flank of the Altobiscar heights, and were

not far from the 1/57th. Their line of retreat, if they should be

pushed, was up a very steep path, which comes into the _chaussée_ on

the Ibaneta ridge[860]. It was this brigade which supplied the picquet

on the Linduz, the only precaution taken to cover the extreme left of

the Allies’ fighting ground. The whole force on the front originally

consisted of 2,000 bayonets of Byng’s brigade and 3,800 in Morillo’s

six battalions.

When Cole took over from Byng the general responsibility for the safety

of the eastern passes, he brought up his head-quarters to Viscarret

in the valley of the Erro, but placed his first British brigade, that

of Ross, at Espinal, in the valley of the Urrobi, on the high road to

Roncesvalles, only five miles from the abbey and the ‘Puerto’, and

three from the pass of Mendichuri leading up to the Linduz. He was thus

in a position to reinforce the passes at two or three hours’ notice

with one brigade, and with his whole 6,000 bayonets in half a day’s

march. On the night of the 24th, having received both Wellington’s

first letter of warning and Byng’s report that his picquets had been

attacked, Cole resolved to bring up his reserves nearer to the front.

By the most fortunate of inspirations he directed Ross’s brigade to

march before dawn--at 2 a.m.--and to occupy the head of the Mendichuri

pass and the Linduz.

Ross, obeying orders all the more readily because he had just received

Spanish information that the Linduz was going to be attacked next

day[861], moved off in the dark, and mounted the Mendichuri, much

incommoded on the way by sharp turns where trees had been blown down in

a recent storm, and cumbered the path. He had the 20th with him: the

7th was following: the 23rd was left behind at Espinal, to start by

daylight and bring on the baggage. Though the distance to the Linduz

was only three miles, it took in the darkness more than four hours to

reach the summit[862]. There everything was found quiet at dawn--the

Spanish picquet in the old redoubt indeed was so sleepy that Ross and

his staff rode into them without having been challenged[863]. Dawn had

now come; though nothing suspicious had been observed, the general sent

out the Brunswick-Oels company attached to the brigade to reconnoitre

along the spur in front, while the 20th piled arms and lay down on the

summit, to eat and get some rest after the night march. In the far

distance to the north-west the tents of Campbell’s Portuguese, encamped

on the farther side of the Alduides valley were perfectly visible. But

shortly after 6 o’clock distant musketry began to be heard from the

other flank--the direction of the Leiçaratheca--where the busy day’s

work was just beginning. It was some time, however, before Ross’s

brigade came in for their share of it.

Soult’s attack, as we have seen, was delivered by two columns each of

17,000 men, and each striking by one narrow road at a vital point of

the enemy’s defences. There was practically no dispersion of forces

on subsidiary enterprises, for the two demonstrations which he made

on his flanks on the morning of the 25th were trifling affairs. To

distract the attention of Campbell’s brigade in the Alduides, he

directed all the National Guards of the Val de Baigorry and the other

western valleys to assemble on the mountain called Hausa, opposite

the Portuguese camp, to light many fires there, as if they marked the

bivouacs of a large force, and to show themselves at many points.

Little good came of this to the National Guards, for Campbell, an

active officer, marched at them without delay, and drove them in

helpless rout down the valley. But Soult (unlike the unfortunate local

levy) profited perceptibly from the move, for the noise of firing drew

down to the Alduides the two British generals responsible for the

Bastan--Hill and W. Stewart. And while they were absent, off their own

ground, their troops at Maya were attacked, and suffered many things

for want of a commander.

A second similar demonstration was made in the valley east of

Roncesvalles. Here the local National Guards, backed by a battalion of

the 59th under Colonel Loverdo, crossed the main chain of the mountains

and attacked Morillo’s right flank-guard--the regiment of Leon--at

the foundry of Orbaiceta in the Irati valley. The Spaniards defended

themselves stoutly, and held their ground all day. But the noise of

this skirmishing far to their right rear was decidedly trying to the

nerves of Byng and Morillo, who for some time could not be certain

that their flank had not been turned by a respectable force. However,

nothing came of this skirmish, since it grew evident by the afternoon

that the enemy was weak and unable to press forward. It is barely

worth putting on record that one battalion detached from the tail of

Conroux’s division, went up the trough of the Val Carlos, and watched

Morillo’s left-hand brigade without attempting to close with it.

Having dismissed these feints, concerning which no more need be said,

we may proceed to the real fighting. At about 6 a.m. Vandermaesen’s

division, at the head of Clausel’s long column, neared the hill of

Leiçaratheca, where the seven British and Spanish light companies were

ensconced in the rocky slope commanding the high road. The position had

obviously to be stormed by frontal attack if there was reason to hurry,

for it could only be turned by very long flanking movements over the

steep slopes on each side of the road. General Barbot, commanding the

leading brigade, deployed the 1st Line and 25th Léger, and attacked

with a swarm of _tirailleurs_ the whole front of the hill. The attack

failed completely, the defenders being under good cover and perfectly

steady. The French, when their first rush had been stopped, threw

themselves down among the stones and gorse, and kept up a useless fire

upon their almost invisible adversaries. Clausel, after three hours

of this profitless bickering, sent in high rage a message to Barbot,

that he would have him cashiered, unless he pulled his men together

and delivered a serious attack[864]. Meanwhile the French battalions

were coming up one after another from the rear, and accumulating behind

the single brigade that was engaged. Barbot called back his disordered

troops, re-formed them in column, put in a fresh battalion, and made

a second and a third attack on the hill: all naturally failed--the

troops being tired and discouraged. But the matter was finally settled

by the divisional general, Vandermaesen, leading off his three rear

battalions[865] across the steep hillside to the east, and turning the

Leiçaratheca by a long détour. At the same time Clausel began to shell

the position with six guns brought up from the rear. When Byng saw his

outlying force in danger of being cut off, he ordered it to retire to

his main body on the Altobiscar. This it did in good time, and when

Clausel again advanced against the Leiçaratheca frontally, with the

50th-Line, while the flanking column drew in on the right flank, he

received only a few shots from lingering skirmishers, and occupied the

position with the loss of 9 men killed only.

So long had the turning movement taken, that by the time that the

French had got back into order again, and could advance towards

Byng’s real fighting ground, it was past 3 o’clock in the afternoon.

The Altobiscar position was even more formidable than that on the

Leiçaratheca; Clausel looked at it, felt it, and did not like it:

it was impossible to turn save by a vast détour: this, he says in

his dispatch, he was preparing to do, by sending his rear division

(Conroux) to circumvent the whole crest of Altobiscar and the still

higher summit to the east of the road, a march of many miles. But at 5

o’clock a dense mountain fog rose, the enemies became invisible to each

other, and all movement became impossible. Byng was left unattacked

upon his chosen position--though not destined to stop there. The losses

on both sides had been absurdly small, considering that 17,000 French

had faced 6,000 British and Spaniards for eleven hours. But really only

Vandermaesen’s division on one side and the Allied light companies on

the other had been engaged. Clausel says that he had but 160 killed

and wounded--among the last General Vandermaesen himself[866]. Byng

and Morillo had 120 casualties--the former remarks that this was an

extraordinarily low figure considering that the French had shelled the

Leiçaratheca for some time--but the cover was good[867]. There were

more Spaniards hurt than British: their conduct had been exemplary.

Morillo himself had been there, exposing himself with his usual

reckless courage.

At the other end of the line the fighting was much more serious. It

will be remembered that at 6 o’clock Ross was on the Linduz, with

his leading battalion, and a second close behind: the third had only

recently started the climb up from Espinal by the Mendichuri. He sent

out his light companies to observe the northern slope of the plateau

which he had occupied, that of Brunswick-Oels being directed along the

wooded spur or crest which forms the western wall of the depression of

the Val Carlos. Meanwhile the troops listened to the commencement of

the long roll of musketry, which told how Clausel was attacking Byng on

the other side of that valley. Three or four hours passed; General Cole

rode by on his way to visit the Roncesvalles front, told Ross to keep

a good look-out, and informed him that Anson’s and Stubbs’s brigade

were coming up via Burguete, the former to reinforce the Spaniards at

the foundry of Orbaiceta, the latter to the Ibaneta to support Byng.

Somewhere about 11 o’clock, according to our best eye-witness, the

outlying picquet of the Brunswick company detected dust rolling above

the beech copses which masked the crest-path in front of them, and a

little later caught intermittent glimpses of troops passing between the

trees. It was doubted whether they were French, or some of Morillo’s

troops retiring from Val Carlos. But about noon, Ross, having been

warned to look for trouble, told the Brunswickers to advance and verify

the character of the approaching strangers, while he himself called up

the left wing of the 20th regiment and followed in support: the rest

of the brigade were directed to stand to their arms on the Linduz.

The German light company went forward some half a mile on a very

up-and-down track, till they got quite close to the oncoming troops,

who appeared to be in no particular order, a straggling crowd advancing

along the crest, which is here only thirty yards broad, with trees

and bushes on both flanks. When there was no more than eighty yards

between the parties the French dressed their front, so as to cover

the whole breadth of the ridge, and began to fire. They were the two

_compagnies d’élite_ of the 6th Léger, the leading battalion of Foy’s

division, at the head of Reille’s column; close behind them the rest

of their battalion was pushing up, as quickly as was possible with

men moving on such a narrow track. The sixty Brunswickers, finding

themselves in front of such a superior force, fell back, firing, on

their supports, pursued by the enemy. General Ross, wanting to gain

time for his brigade on the Linduz to deploy, ordered the leading

company of the 20th--No. 8, Captain Tovey’s--to charge with the bayonet

and throw the French back. There followed one of the rarest things in

the Peninsular War, a real hand-to-hand fight with the white weapon.

The French skirmishers in front gave way into the bushes, clearing the

front of the company behind them. Then the two parties, each advancing

up one side of a small declivity, met face to face at the top, with

only ten yards between them when they came in sight of each other. ‘The

French instinctively stepped back a pace,’ says the Brunswick officer

who has left us the best account of this clash, ‘several of them made

a half turn, as if about to give way; but their officers, some with

appeals, some with threats, and some with curses, kept them to their

work. They stood firm, and their bayonets came down to the charge: so

did those of Tovey’s company. For a few seconds the two sides surveyed

each other at a distance of two paces: then one French company officer

sprang forward into the middle of the British, and began cutting right

and left. He was at once bayoneted, and then the two sides began to

fence cautiously with each other, keeping their line and not breaking

forward into the enemy’s ranks; it was more like bayonet drill than a

charge. I do not think that more than a dozen men fell on either side.

After a minute the English captain saw that the French supports were

closing in--he shouted ‘right about face’, and his men trotted back.

When our front was clear of them, our five (four)[868] companies opened

fire by platoons, and as the distance was only 100 yards we saw heaps

of the French fall at each volley[869].’ Tovey’s company lost 11 killed

and 14 wounded out of about 75 present in this extraordinary adventure,

which had given the three rear companies and the Brunswickers time to

form up across the crest and in the bushes on each side of it. It is

astonishing that a man of the 8th Company got away--clearly the enemy

had been too much astonished to pursue as he might have done[870].

The fight on the path that leads to the Linduz now became a very

confused and constricted business, with many casualties on both sides,

since French and English were firing at each other along a sort of

avenue and could hardly miss. Foy’s second battalion, the 1/69th, had

now reinforced his first, and finally the left wing of the 20th, badly

thinned, gave way and fell back in some disorder to the point where

the crest-path debouches on to the Linduz plateau. Here all was ready

for defence--the right wing of the 20th, with the regimental colours

flying, was waiting ready for the enemy, with the 1/7th in immediate

support and the 1/23rd in reserve. When the narrow-fronted French

column tried to burst out of the defile, officers in front, drums

beating the _pas de charge_, a long-reserved volley smote it, and all

the leading files went down. There was a pause before the third of

Foy’s battalions, the 2/69th, got to the front and tried a similar

attack, which failed with even greater loss. For the whole of the rest

of the afternoon spasmodic fighting went on at the Linduz. ‘The enemy

was visible,’ writes one of Ross’s brigade, ‘several thousands strong,

on the higher part of the spur; every half-hour or so he sent another

company down to relieve his skirmishers. He always came up in detail

and slowly, for there was a tiresome defile to cross, over a deep

cutting in the crest[871], where only one man abreast could pass. We

could always let the head of the attack debouch, and then attack it and

throw it back upon its supports[872].’ No attempt was made to turn the

Linduz by its eastern side, among the steep slopes and thickets at the

head of Val Carlos: all attacks came straight along the spur. Reille

attributes this in his dispatch to the dreadful delays at the rear of

his long column, owing to the narrowness of the path. He acknowledges

that an attempt should have been made to push on to the Ibaneta, but

it was 3.30 before Maucune’s first battalion began to arrive to Foy’s

assistance, and 5 before the rear of his division was up. ‘By this hour

it was too late to think of turning movements’--even if the fog which

stopped Clausel had not swept down on the Linduz also. As a matter of

fact only Foy’s four front regiments--five battalions--were put into

the fight[873]. Similarly on the British side the fight was sustained

only by the 20th, relieved, after its cartridges were all spent, by the

7th and the 23rd.

Reille does not omit to mention that after the first hour of fight was

over, Cole had begun to show reserves on the Linduz which would have

made any attack by Foy’s division, unsupported, quite hopeless. It

will be remembered that the commander of the 4th Division had started

Anson’s brigade for Orbaiceta, and Stubbs’s brigade for the Ibaneta

ridge, when first the attack on Byng was reported, and he had gone to

the Altobiscar himself to watch the progress of affairs on that side.

While he was there Foy’s attack on the Linduz developed: Cole at once

rode to the left, to see how Ross was faring, and in consequence sent

downhill to bid Anson abandon his long march to the extreme right,

and to turn up the Roncesvalles pass, as Stubbs did also. The British

brigade took post on Ross’s right; the Portuguese brigade on the

Ibaneta, watching the steep path from the Val Carlos. Up this there

presently came the 1/57th and the Spanish battalions which had been

near them. Thus Cole showed a continuous line from the Altobiscar to

the Linduz, held by 11,000 men placed in a most formidable position not

more than three miles long. Nor was this all--General Campbell in the

Alduides, after scattering the National Guards who had tried to delude

him in the early morning, had heard the firing at Roncesvalles, and

(though he had no orders) thought it his duty to march with his five

Portuguese battalions toward the sound of battle. Taking the highland

track along the upper end of the Alduides, he appeared on Ross’s left

at 4 o’clock in the afternoon by the so-called path of Atalosti. He was

in a position to outflank any attempts that Reille might make to turn

Ross’s position on the western side.

When the fog fell Soult was in a very unpleasant situation. Having

chosen to attack his enemy with narrow-fronted columns of immense

depth, over two constricted routes, he had been brought to a complete

check. Clausel had driven in Byng’s outpost, but was stuck in front of

the Altobiscar: Reille had failed to move Ross at all, and was blocked

in front of the Linduz. The losses had been negligible, it is true--not

much over 500 in all if the Marshal is to be believed. But those of

the Allies were still smaller, and the confidence of the men had been

raised by the way in which they had easily blocked for some ten hours,

and with small loss, an army whose vast strength they could estimate

by the interminable file of distant troops crawling up the roads in

the rear[874]. If the men, however, were cheerful, their commander

was not. Cole estimated the French at 30,000 men and more, and quite

correctly: he had himself only 11,000 in line, with 2,000 more of

Campbell’s Portuguese in touch on his left. Picton’s 3rd Division,

which lay at Olague on the morn of the 25th, had no doubt started to

close up; but it was a long day’s march away, and could not be at

Altobiscar or on the Linduz till the 26th. Anything might be happening

in the fog which lay deep on the mountains all night. Cole determined

‘that he could not hope to maintain the passes against the very great

superiority of the force opposed to him--amounting to from 30,000 to

35,000 men[875]’, and that he must retire by night under cover of

the mist. Even if his views had been less pessimistic, he would yet

have been compelled to retreat by the action of Byng, who had fought

heroically all the day, but was obsessed by fears as the fog settled

down. He had come to the conclusion that, as the enemy had possession

of the path along the eastern hills to Orbaiceta, and had superabundant

numbers, he would be using the night to send a large force in that

direction, where only the Spanish regiment of Leon was on guard. They

could not be stopped, and when down in the valley of the Irati would

be able to take Roncesvalles from the rear, and to throw the whole

defending force on to the necessity of retiring by the Mendichuri and

Atalosti routes, on which retreat would be slow and dangerous. Byng

therefore sent a message to Cole that he must needs retire, and was

already beginning to draw off his troops, under cover of his light

companies, when he received Cole’s orders to the same effect. The moral

responsibility for the retreat lay equally on both--the technical

responsibility on Cole alone, as the superior officer: he might, of

course, have ordered Byng back to his old position, which the French

had left quite unmolested.

[Illustration: Combat of RONCESVALLES July 25th 1813]

Was Cole’s pessimism justified? Wellington thought not: he wrote to

Lord Liverpool ten days later, ‘Sir Lowry Cole, whose retreat

occasioned the retreat of the whole, retired, not because he could

not hold his position, but because his right flank was turned. It is

a great disadvantage when the officer commanding in chief is absent.

For this reason there is nothing that I dislike so much as these

extended operations, which I cannot direct myself[876].’ And he was

no doubt thinking of Cole, no less than of Picton, when he wrote that

‘all the beatings we have given the French have not given our generals

confidence in themselves and in the exertions of their troops. They

are really heroes when I am on the spot to direct them, but when I

am obliged to quit them they are children.’ Cole was an officer of

the first merit in handling troops, as he was to show at Sorauren

two days later; and that he was not destitute of initiative had been

sufficiently proved by the advance of the 4th Division at Albuera,

where he was practically acting without orders[877]. But there seems

no doubt that the scale of the operations in the Pyrenees made him

nervous: he was responsible on the 25th July not for a division but

for a small army, and he was well aware of the enemy’s superiority in

numbers. His conduct was the more surprising because he had received

before 10 o’clock Wellington’s stringent dispatch of the night of the

24th, telling him to ‘maintain the passes in front of Roncesvalles to

the utmost,’ and to disregard any wide turning movements to the east on

Soult’s part. These orders reached him at the Leiçaratheca, just as he

was witnessing Byng’s successful repulse of Barbot’s brigade. Possibly

the excitement of the moment prevented him from thoroughly appreciating

their full meaning, and for the rest of the day he was busy enough,

riding from front to front on the passes. As he wrote in his first

short account of his doings, ‘having had no sleep for two nights, and

having been on horseback from 4 a.m. till 11 at night, I am somewhat

fagged[878].’ It is, of course, quite unfair to criticize a responsible

officer in the light of subsequent events; but as a matter of fact

Cole was in no danger--the fog endured all that night and far into

the morning of the 26th. The enemy at Orbaiceta was negligible--one

battalion and a few National Guards: Soult sent no more troops on that

wretched road. And if he had done so, after the fog cleared on the

26th, they would have taken the best part of a day to get into action.

It seems certain that Cole could have held the passes for another day

without any great risk; and if he had done so, Soult’s whole plan of

campaign would have been wrecked. But, of course, the fog _might_ have

lifted at midnight: Soult _might_ have sent two divisions by a night

march to Orbaiceta, and a retreat by bad tracks like the Atalosti

would have been slow, and also eccentric, since it did not cover the

Pampeluna road, but would have taken Cole to Eugui and the Col de

Velate. Nevertheless, looking at the words of Wellington’s dispatch of

the 24th, it seems that Cole disobeyed orders: he did _not_ hold the

passes to the utmost, and he did not disregard turning movements to the

far east.

Both the Linduz and Altobiscar were evacuated in the early hours of

the night of July 25th-6th: the French did not discover the move till

morning, and by dawn the whole of Cole’s force was far on its way down

the Pampeluna road entirely unmolested, though very weary.

To understand the general situation on the morning of July 26th, we

must now turn back, to note what had been happening in the Bastan

during the long hours of Byng’s and Ross’s fight in the southern

passes. The supplementary part of Soult’s plan had been to force the

Maya defile, and thus to break in the left-centre of Wellington’s line

of defence, at the same moment that his main body turned its extreme

right flank, by forcing its way through the Roncesvalles gap. D’Erlon’s

three divisions, for whom this task had been set aside, had no long

détour to execute, like those of Reille: they were already concentrated

in front of their objective; their leading section was at Urdax, only a

few miles from the summit of the Maya ridge; their most remote reserves

at Espelette, in the valley of the Nive, were within one day’s march of

the British positions.

The orders issued by Soult to D’Erlon on July 23rd ran as follows:

‘Comte D’Erlon will make his dispositions on the 24th to attack the

enemy at dawn on the 25th, to make himself master of the Puerto of

Maya, and to pursue the enemy when he shall begin his retreat....

It is to be presumed that the hostile forces in the Bastan, in the

Alduides, and in the passes of Ispegui and Maya will draw back the

moment that they hear of [Clausel’s and Reille’s] movement, or else

that they will begin to manœuvre, so as to leave their present

positions ungarrisoned. Comte D’Erlon will seize the moment to attack

them briskly, and to seize the Maya pass. From thence he will march

by Ariscun on Elizondo, and then on the Col de Velate, or possibly by

Berderis on the pass of Urtiaga, according to the route which the enemy

may take in his retreat. He should remember that he must try to unite

as soon as possible with the main body in the direction here indicated,

and to get into communication with General Reille. Whatever may happen,

he must send strong detachments to pursue any hostile columns that may

try to get off to their left [westward], to discover their routes,

worry them, and pick up prisoners.’

These are very curious orders, as all their directions depend on the

idea that Roncesvalles will be forced with ease, and that on hearing of

its being lost all the Allied troops in the centre of Wellington’s line

will retire in haste. Soult committed himself to this hypothesis in the

words ‘it is to be presumed that the enemy will defend the position

of Altobiscar feebly, because he will see that he is being outflanked

by Reille’s divisions on the Linduz, and threatened at the same time,

on his right flank by the detachment and the National Guards who are

demonstrating in the direction of Orbaiceta.’ But what if Roncesvalles

were held for twelve hours against Clausel, if Reille were completely

blocked all day on the Linduz, and if the demonstration on Orbaiceta

proved ineffective? In this case the British troops on the Maya front

will _not_ hear of disasters in the south, they will _not_ retreat, but

stand to fight; and D’Erlon, far from having a walk over the pass, as

a commencement to a rapid pursuit of a flying enemy, will have a hard

day’s work before him.

This is what was to happen. D’Erlon, instead of running against an

enemy who was about to retreat, and pushing him forward with ease, met

with troops determined to hold their position, and found himself let

in for one of the bloodiest battles on a small scale that were fought

during the whole war. That he was finally successful, though at a

heavy cost, was due to the mistakes made by the British generals in

front of him.

The disposition of the troops which formed Wellington’s centre was as

follows. Hill was in charge of the whole sector, from the Maya Pass

to the head of the Alduides valley. His force consisted of the 2nd

Division (minus Byng’s brigade, detached to Roncesvalles nearly a month

back), and of Silveira’s Portuguese division. William Stewart held

the left, with the three available 2nd Division brigades--Cameron’s,

Pringle’s, and Ashworth’s Portuguese. The two British brigades were in

or about the Maya Pass, Ashworth was holding the Ispegui Pass, seven

miles to the east, with one battalion in the defile, and the others in

support on the road from Errazu. Silveira’s two brigades continued the

line southward, Da Costa’s watching the Col de Berderis and other minor

passes south of the Ispegui, while A. Campbell’s was in the Alduides,

on the slopes above the village of that name. Silveira himself was with

Da Costa. Campbell, as we have already seen, was in close touch with

the Roncesvalles force, and ultimately joined it.

On the other flank the 2nd Division at Maya had as its nearest

neighbour the 7th Division, which was holding the ‘Puerto’ of Echalar.

Behind lay the Light Division by Vera, and the 6th Division, now under

Pack, since Clinton’s health had again broken down, in reserve at

Santesteban.

Now on the early morning of the 25th the first troops stirring were

Soult’s National Guard detachments on the Alduides front, which (as we

have already seen) attracted the notice of Campbell’s Portuguese, and

suffered for their temerity. Their activity, most unfortunately, drew

the attention of Sir Rowland Hill in this direction. He rode out from

his head-quarters at Elizondo to visit Campbell, when the demonstration

was reported to him. And he was actually in the Alduides, at the

extreme southern end of his sector, when the French attacked in force

the Maya passes, at its extreme northern end. This was a pardonable

mishap, since he was on his own business. But it led to his being

absent from the real point of danger. Quite unpardonable, however, was

the fact that William Stewart, commanding the 2nd Division, abandoned

his own troops and went out to join Hill in the same direction[879],

toward the front of Silveira’s brigades, attracted by the news of

fighting at early dawn. He would seem to have left no note of his

probable whereabouts at Maya, so that he was sought in vain for many

hours, when his troops were attacked. In his absence the command of his

division fell to General Pringle, who had arrived from England only

two days before, to take over the brigade of which Colonel O’Callaghan

of the 39th had been in temporary charge since the opening of the

campaign. Pringle knew neither the troops nor the ground, and being

only a brigadier had no authority to make new dispositions, when his

commanding officer was still technically present, though invisible for

the moment.

The whole responsibility for what happened on the morning of the 25th,

therefore, fell on Stewart. And he must also be given the discredit of

the very inadequate arrangements that had been made for the defence

of the pass. The French at Urdax were only four miles from the crest,

and it was known that they were in strength close behind--their

large camps about Ainhoue, where Abbé’s division was cantoned, were

perfectly visible from the heights[880], and obviously crammed with

men. Considering that he was in close touch with the enemy, Stewart’s

precautions were ludicrously incomplete. The Maya position consists

of a broad open grassy saddle, between the high mountains to east

and west--the Alcorrunz peak on the left and the Aretesque peak on

the right. The saddle at its lowest point is about 2,000 ft. above

sea-level--the flanking heights run up to a thousand feet more. The

high road from Urdax and Zagaramurdi climbs the saddle in its middle,

runs westward along its summit for a mile, and then descends by a broad

curve towards Elizondo on the Spanish side. There is another lesser

track which leads up on to the saddle, from Espelette; it gets on to

the level of the Col at its extreme eastern end, under the Aretesque

height; thence, after running along the crest for a mile, it meets the

high road, crosses it, and continues along the slopes of the Alcorrunz

peak, and ultimately falls into the by-road from Santesteban to

Zagaramurdi. This path, useful for lateral communications east and

west, is still known as the _Chemin des Anglais_, from the work which

was spent upon it by Wellington’s army later in the year, when the

necessity for good tracks along the front was better understood than

it seems to have been in July. In contemporary records it is generally

called the Gorospil path.

The west end of the saddle was not inadequately guarded by Cameron’s

brigade, which was encamped by battalions on each side of the main

_chaussée_ close behind the crest, with four Portuguese guns, of Da

Cunha’s battery, mounted on a commanding knoll whence they could

sweep the road. But the east end of the position, under the hill

of Aretesque, where the minor road comes in, was almost entirely

neglected. There was only a picquet of 80 men placed to cover it,

on the spot where the _Chemin des Anglais_ gets to the crest of the

position. Pringle’s brigade, which supplied this picquet, was two and a

half miles to the rear, in the low ground about the village of Maya--an

hour’s march away, for the ascent to the picquet was a climb uphill

by a bad path. The only support immediately available for the outpost

was the four light companies of the brigade[881], which were encamped

on the back-slope of the ridge, about half-way between the hill of

Aretesque and the main body of the brigade.

There was much dead ground in front of the Maya position, where it

might be approached by ravines and combes whose bottom could not be

fathomed by the eye. And in particular the view north-eastward, towards

Espelette, was completely blocked by a high round hill half a mile

beyond the outer sentries of the Aretesque picquet. With the French

only four miles away at Urdax, and seven at Espelette, it is clear that

prudence would have dictated constant reconnaissance of all the dead

ground. Stewart had made no such arrangements--all that we hear is that

the round hill beyond the Aretesque picquet was occasionally visited by

Portuguese vedettes. Apparently none had gone out on the morning of the

25th.

D’Erlon would appear to have been well acquainted with the general

disposition of the British line, as he launched his main attack against

the under-manned eastern flank of the position, and did not tackle the

strongly held ground on the high road, at its western end, until he was

well established on the crest. Darmagnac’s division, from Espelette,

led the main column, Abbé’s division from Ainhoue fell into its rear

and followed: both took the _Chemin des Anglais_ track, which was

blocked from the view of the British picquets by the round hill already

mentioned. Maransin’s division at Urdax, on the high road, was ordered

to mass itself, but to keep under cover, and show no signs of movement

till the main body had reached and occupied the eastern end of the

saddle. It was then to assail Cameron’s brigade, advancing up the high

road.

Though the morning was bright and clear, no certain signs of a French

attack were seen till 10 o’clock, so carefully did the enemy utilize

the ‘dead ground’ in front of him. Suspicious movements indeed were

observed by the outpost of the 71st on the high road, who noted small

bodies of men crossing the sky-line in front of Urdax[882]. And the

picquet of the 34th on the Aretesque hill reported to Pringle’s

brigade-head-quarters that it had seen a small body of cavalry and

a larger force of infantry turn the corner of a distant road beyond

Ainhoue and disappear again[883]. On both points the enemy had only

been visible for a few minutes. Pringle sent up a staff-officer[884]

to the Aretesque picquet, who made nothing of the troops that had been

detected on that side, but as a measure of precaution ordered up the

four light companies of the brigade to join the picquet on the crest.

Thus there chanced to be 400 men instead of 80, when D’Erlon discovered

himself an hour later. But the five companies were as powerless a guard

against the sudden attack of 7,000 men as the one company would have

been.

At 10.30 D’Erlon had reached the point, not much over half a mile from

the most advanced British sentry, where the head of his column would

be forced to come out into the open and show itself. His dispositions

aimed at a sudden surprise--and effected it. He collected the eight

light companies of Darmagnac’s division, ordered them to take off and

stack their knapsacks, and launched them as a swarm of _tirailleurs_

at the position of the British on the Aretesque knoll (or the Gorospil

knoll, as Darmagnac calls it in his report). The 16th Léger followed

them in column, keeping to the track, while the skirmishers spread out

in a semicircle to envelop the knoll. The remainder of the division

came on as quickly as it could in support.

The French attacked at a pace that surprised their enemies; the light

companies--they were commanded by Bradbey of the 28th--were desperately

engaged within ten minutes of the firing of the first shot. Their

flanks being turned, they clubbed together on the higher slopes of the

knoll, and around some rocky outcrops on its summit, and held their

own for three-quarters of an hour, repulsing several attacks of the

voltigeurs and the 16th Léger with great loss, and suffering heavily

themselves. Meanwhile the attention of the defenders of the pass being

thus distracted, the succeeding battalions of Darmagnac’s division

hurried up unmolested one after another on to the saddle, and began to

deploy. Their general threw the 8th Line across the rear of the knoll,

blocking the path which led down to the village of Maya and the camps

of Pringle’s brigade, and drew out in succession the 28th, 51st, and

54th on the plateau to their right.

Before any succour could arrive[885] the five unlucky companies on the

Gorospil knoll were crushed by the concentric attack--six unwounded

officers and 140 men were taken prisoners among the rocks at the

summit--the other 260 were nearly all killed or wounded. Soon after

they had succumbed, tardy reinforcements began to arrive--Pringle had

started off his three battalions from the valley to climb the path

up to the crest--they arrived at intervals, for their camps were at

varying distances from the point of danger, and each acted for itself.

The Brigadier himself, finding that he was in general command, appears

to have ridden up the high road and joined Cameron’s brigade at the

Maya end of the saddle. From thence he began to send off detachments

of that brigade, to co-operate from the flank with the uphill frontal

attack which his own battalions were about to make from the valley.

He found Cameron’s brigade under arms, in good order, and unmolested.

The Portuguese guns had begun to fire, but not at any enemy, for

Maransin was holding back, according to his orders. The shots were

signals to give notice to the 7th Division, Ashworth, and other

outlying neighbours, that serious fighting had opened in the passes.

They do not seem to have commenced till 11 o’clock or even later, for

Wellington had ridden off from Lesaca towards St. Sebastian before

the cannonade began; and we know that when he started about 11 a.m.

no gunfire from the east had been reported. Cameron had already sent

off the 50th, the right-hand corps of his brigade, to push along the

watershed of the col, and stop the French from any further progress

toward the high road. This left only the 71st and 92nd under the

Rock of Maya, on the culminating point of the position, awaiting the

approach of Maransin, which obviously would not be long delayed.

The second episode of the fight consisted in a series of desperate but

ill-connected attempts by four British battalions--the 28th, 34th,

39th, 50th--to push Darmagnac’s eight battalions off the foothold

on the east end of the col, where they were now firmly established.

Abbé’s division was not yet on the ground, but was already visible

filing up the track which Darmagnac’s had already traversed. The three

British battalions from the valley arrived in succession, and attacked

frontally the mass of French on the crest above them. The 34th came up

first and alone. ‘It was death to go on against such a host, but it

was the _order_, and we went on to destruction, marching up a narrow

path with men pumped out and breathless. We had no chance. The colonel,

always a good mark, being mounted and foremost, was first knocked over,

very badly wounded. Seven more officers were wounded. We persevered,

pushed on, made a footing, and kept our ground[886].’ But the French

held the crest above, and the 34th was brought to a complete

standstill. The 39th then climbed up the slope, more to the west, and

made a similar unsuccessful push to reach the sky-line. Meanwhile the

50th, coming from the other side along the crest, attacked the French

right, and drove in the leading battalion on to the mass, but could

get no farther forward, and finally fell back. The last episode of

this struggle was a third isolated attack--Pringle had told Cameron to

detach the right wing of the 92nd from the Maya position, and to send

it on in support of the 50th. Just as the latter recoiled, this strong

half-battalion--nearly 400 muskets--came on to the ground on the crest,

and at the same moment the 28th, the last of Pringle’s battalions to

arrive from the valley, climbed the slope and came up diagonally on

the right of the 92nd companies. Pringle himself aligned the two corps

and led them against the solid mass of French. This advance ended in a

most desperate fire-duel at a range of 120 yards, in which the French

had the more casualties, but the British line was in the end shot to

pieces. Observers from the 28th and 34th speak in the most moving terms

of the extraordinary steadiness of the 92nd. ‘They stood there like a

stone wall, overmatched by twenty to one, until half their blue bonnets

lay beside those brave highland soldiers. When they retired their dead

bodies lay as a barrier to the advancing foe. O but they did fight well

that day! I can see the line now of their dead and wounded stretched

upon the heather, as the living kept closing up to the centre[887].’

It was only when sixty per cent. of these stubborn soldiers had fallen

that the senior of the two surviving officers with the wing ordered the

remnant to fall back on the 50th, who had re-formed in their rear. The

28th, who had been engaged (oddly enough!) with the French 28th, across

a dip on the south side of the crest, were cut off from the 92nd, and

retreated downhill by the way they had come, towards the village of

Maya. So did the 34th, which had been rallied some way down the slope,

below the point where they had made their unsuccessful attack, and had

been taking long shots uphill against the French flank. So also did

the 39th, or the greater part of it[888]. The progress of these spent

troops downhill was hastened by D’Erlon’s detaching two battalions to

push them away. They lapsed out of the battle, and retreated towards

Maya village, leaving Cameron’s brigade alone to maintain the struggle

upon the crest--three battalions against three divisions, for Abbé’s

men were now deploying behind Darmagnac’s, and Maransin’s long-deferred

attack was just beginning to develop.

After the wasted remnant of the right wing of the 92nd had recoiled,

the French began to advance along the _Chemin des Anglais_, pushing

the beaten troops before them, but were soon brought to a stand for

a few minutes once more. For Cameron had detached the right wing of

the 71st from the Maya position to follow up the right wing of the

92nd--the system of dribbling in small reinforcements was practised

all day--leaving only the two left wings of those regiments to hold

the pass against Maransin, who was still an impending danger only. The

newly arrived half-battalion, drawn up across the path, delivered a

very telling salvo against the front immediately opposed to them--the

enemy was now in a mixed mass with no trace of formation, acting like

a dense swarm of _tirailleurs_--and brought it to a stop for a moment.

But the French, holding back in the centre, spread out on the wings,

and began to envelop both flanks of the 71st companies, who had to

retire perforce--losing heavily, though not as the 92nd had suffered

half an hour before.[889]

There was now no chance whatever of checking D’Erlon, since the only

British troops not yet engaged, the left wings of the 71st and 92nd,

were at last feeling the commencement of Maransin’s attack, and there

were no reinforcements yet visible. Just at this moment, it was perhaps

2 p.m.[890], the long-lost William Stewart at last appeared upon the

scene and assumed command. The noise of the guns had reached him in

the distant Alduides, and drawn him back to his own business, which he

found in a most deplorable condition. A glance round the field showed

him that he must give up any hope of holding the Maya pass, and that

his only chance was to fight a detaining battle across the high road,

in the hope of receiving help from the 7th Division, to whom Pringle

had already sent urgent demands for succour.

He accordingly issued orders for the two intact half-battalions on the

crest to fall back, and take up a new position below it; while the

weary troops from the old front took shelter and re-formed behind them.

Darmagnac’s regiments were as much fought out as their opponents, and

did not press. Maransin, who had brought up his troops in two columns,

one on the road, the other up a ravine to his right, on seeing the way

left open to him, did not hurry on, but began to deploy his battalions

in succession as they filed up to the saddle of the col. Hence there

was a distinct break in the action--half an hour or even more. No

disaster was suffered by Cameron’s brigade--the only unfortunate

incident of the moment of recoil being that the four Portuguese guns

were lost. Two had been man-handled with much toil up a rocky slope,

from which it was impossible to get them down in a hurry. After firing

a round or two of case at the enemy’s approaching skirmishers, their

gunners pushed them over into a ravine and made off[891]. The other

two were taken while on the move. Wellington attributed the loss of

these four guns, which he much resented (for his army never lost

another field gun in action during the whole war), to Stewart, who had,

on his arrival, countermanded an order of Pringle’s which had directed

an earlier retreat for them.

The fourth episode of the combat of Maya, though it included much

bloody and obstinate fighting, was not such a desperate business as

the long scrambling fight along the _Chemin des Anglais_. D’Erlon

halted Darmagnac’s troops, who naturally had to re-form, for they were

in complete disorder, and had suffered most severely. He now used

Maransin’s division as his striking force, and when he had got it all

deployed attacked Stewart’s new position. Abbé’s division was brought

up to act in support. It was probably well past 3 o’clock when the new

fighting began: the delay had enabled Stewart to rearrange a fighting

line--the left wings of the 71st and 92nd were drawn up on each side

of the _chaussée_, flanked on their left by a company of the latter

regiment on a precipitous knoll, where Cameron had placed them before

the action began. This company was afterwards reinforced by another

from the 82nd, when that regiment came up[892]. About three hundred

yards behind, the right wing of the 71st and the 50th, now rallied,

made a second line. When Maransin developed his attack, the front line

delivered its fire, and fell back in an orderly fashion behind the

supports, where it re-formed across the road. The second line repeated

this manœuvre. The half-mile of ground given up in these alternate

retreats included the camping lines of the 71st and 92nd, where the

rows of tents not only broke the enemy’s formation, but tempted

individuals aside for loot. ‘They were plundering on all hands,

cutting down the tents, strewing about the officers’ linen, and tearing

open their portmanteaux, many of which contained a company’s month’s

pay, while we were obliged to stand at a distance, and view the work of

destruction[893].’

The afternoon was drawing on--it was 4.30 or later before Maransin’s

line re-formed and again advanced: Stewart’s front line again retired,

but when the enemy followed it he was surprised to be met by a

counter-attack. Stewart had just received his first reinforcements--a

weak battalion of the 82nd, the nearest troops of the 7th Division,

which had long been watching the fight from afar on the Alcorrunz

peak, and had just received their divisional general’s permission to

come in. These new-comers, joining the reserve line, met the leading

French battalions with a brisk offensive, which drove them in on their

supports. But numbers prevailed, and the fight began once more to roll

downhill. At this moment affairs looked black--Stewart had just been

wounded in the leg, but still retained the command--he was a splendid

fighting man if a careless and tiresome subordinate. Thinking the

position hopeless, and a final retreat necessary, he sent messages

to the outlying companies of the 82nd and 92nd on the knoll to the

left, who were now quite cut off from the rest of the force, to save

themselves by striking across the hills. They had been isolated for two

hours, had used up all their cartridges, and were defending themselves

by the primitive method of pelting the enemy below with whinstones,

which lay thick on the hillside[894].

[Illustration: COMBAT OF MAYA 25 July 1813]

But before the messenger, who had to take a vast détour, could reach

this desperate little party, the last episode of the combat of Maya

had begun. It was a sufficiently surprising end to the day. At about

6 o’clock there arrived, marching hard along the mountain road which

continues the _Chemin des Anglais_ westward, two battalions under

General Barnes from the 2nd Brigade of the 7th Division[895], which

Lord Dalhousie had sent from Echalar on getting the appeal for help.

These two units--the 1/6th and Brunswick-Oels--were only 1,500

bayonets, and had done nine miles at a hot pace. But they were

fresh troops, and led by a very thunderbolt of war--Barnes was the

brigadier who a few days later made what Wellington declared to be

the most gallant charge that he had seen, a charge that drew notes of

admiration from the most reticent of pens[896]. They came in diagonally

from an unexpected side road, unseen by the enemy till the moment of

contact, and crashed in upon the leading French battalion with such an

impetus that it was trampled down--losing 15 officers in a minute. The

whole of the rest of the British troops present cheered, and advanced

in the wake of Barnes’s men--even the poor wreck of the right wing

of the 92nd, headed by its one surviving piper. A counter-attack on

troops who have already done much, and are taken by surprise in what

seems the moment of success, is often astoundingly effective--as the

war of 1914-18 has showed. In this case the result was surprising:

Maransin’s leading brigade fell back in disorder on his supports, the

latter gave way also, and the whole mass retired uphill, as far as the

camping-ground of Cameron’s regiments at the head of the pass. D’Erlon,

wrongly believing that the whole 7th Division had arrived _en masse_,

threw a brigade of Abbé’s division across the crest of the col, behind

which the beaten troops took shelter. He expected to end the day with

a defensive action, and even recalled a brigade of Darmagnac’s troops,

who had been sent down towards the village of Maya, in pursuit of

Pringle’s brigade, and who had just got engaged near it with Ashworth’s

Portuguese, then retiring by order from the pass of Ispegui.

But Stewart would have been mad to press on with six battalions--three

of them mere remnants--against eighteen, and halted on the summit,

content to have blocked the pass, though the enemy had possession

of it, and of ground in front of it on which he stood deployed. The

firing continued for a time, and then died down as the dusk came on.

By 8 o’clock all was over--if D’Erlon had frankly put in Abbé’s strong

division of ten battalions, it is clear that he might yet have turned

the fortune of the day. But he did not: hypnotized by the idea that he

had the whole of the 2nd and 7th Divisions in front of him, instead

of a mere fragment of each. The battle was well over when General Hill

arrived from the Alduides, bringing with him unlucky news--he had

intercepted and read, at Elizondo, Cole’s dispatch to Head-quarters

saying that he had been attacked at Roncesvalles by 35,000 men, and

that he was giving up the pass. Wherefore Hill resolved that he also

must retire, and ordered the weary troops of Stewart and Barnes to

retreat after midnight to Elizondo and cross the upper Bidassoa. It

is scarcely credible that the men who had fought for ten hours under

such conditions on such rough ground, retained strength to move another

furlong--but the order was obeyed, though many badly wounded men had

to be abandoned, and though the _chaussée_ was strewn for miles by

dead-beat stragglers, who dropped out and slept till daylight. They

were not disturbed--for D’Erlon made no move till the sun was well

up--he had won the pass and was expecting to have to fight again at

dawn, for the right to emerge from it.

The losses in a fight so honourable to the British battalions, if so

discreditable to British generalship, had been immense in Cameron’s

brigade, heavy in Pringle’s, appreciable among Barnes’s men, who only

struck in at the eleventh hour. The first-named had lost 800 men out of

1,900 present, of whom 343 belonged to the gallant and unlucky 1/92nd.

Pringle’s three battalions had 530 casualties out of 2,000 present,

including 140 unwounded prisoners taken on the Gorospil knoll from its

light companies. Barnes and the 7th Division troops had won a glorious

success with a loss of only 140 men. The total list gives just under

1,500 casualties out of 6,000 men engaged--of whom 349 were prisoners

(200 of them wounded). These are very different figures from the

3,500 total at which D’Erlon stated Stewart’s loss--but sufficiently

distressing. The enemy had suffered still more, but from infinitely

greater numbers--their commander reported 1,400 casualties in

Darmagnac’s division out of 7,000 present, 600 in Maransin’s. Abbé was

barely engaged at the eleventh hour: one of his brigadiers (Rignoux)

was hit and only four other officers, with perhaps 100 men. The total

reported is therefore about 2,100--no very formidable proportion out

of 20,000 men present. But some battalions had been badly cut up--the

103rd of Maransin’s division, which bore the first fury of Barnes’s

attack, had 15 officers killed and wounded out of 20 present; and the

28th of Darmagnac’s division lost a similar number in sustaining the

attack of the right wing of the 1/92nd and the British 28th. But this

was a two-battalion regiment with 40 officers present. Nevertheless,

D’Erlon’s report to Soult sings victory in very modest terms--he has

captured the enemy’s position and holds it at the end of the day--the

affair had been one of the most desperate that he has ever seen--the

enemy’s loss has been far greater than his own--but there is no blowing

of trumpets.

SECTION XXXVIII: CHAPTER IV

SORAUREN. JULY 26-28

The first day’s fighting in the Pyrenean passes could not be called

satisfactory either to Wellington or to Soult. The former had lost

both the defiles in which he had intended to make his first stand,

and had lost them in a very tiresome fashion--he thought that Maya

might have been held at least for twenty-four hours, if there had

been a divisional general on the spot to direct the defence: while

Roncesvalles had not been forced, but abandoned by Cole, who could

certainly have made a longer resistance, if only the orders sent to him

had been obeyed. It was, above all things, necessary to gain time for

the concentration of the army, and a precious day had been lost--and

need not have been lost.