THE BATTLES OF THE PYRENEES.
PART FIRST.
1813.
Wellington was now in possession of the passes of the Pyrenees; and
in the short space of two months had moved his victorious army across
the kingdom of Spain, and changed his cantonments from the frontier of
Portugal to a position in the Pyrenees, from which he looked down upon
the southern provinces of France.
Napoleon received intelligence of Lord Wellington’s success with
feelings of undissembled anger and surprise. To recover the line of the
Ebro was his instant determination, for he knew the dangerous effect
the presence of a British army on the frontier of “beautiful France”
must of necessity produce.
Like the tidings of Marmont’s disaster at Salamanca, the news of
Joseph’s defeat reached Napoleon at a crisis, when a lost battle was
a calamity indeed. With him, every previous armistice had obtained
concessions; and, had Vitoria terminated differently, battles, in no
way decisive, might from a fortunate success in Spain, have produced
results similar to those of Marengo, Austerlitz, and Jena. With
ominous rapidity, the intelligence reached every European court that
Joseph had been driven from his throne, and Wellington overlooked the
fields of France--and none could gainsay it--a conqueror. With what
astonishment these tidings were received, those immediately round
the person of Napoleon have since narrated. Nothing could be more
humiliating--nothing, the time considered, more ruinous. His brother
no longer prosecuted the war in Spain, but, defeated and shaken in
confidence, had sought shelter in the plains of Gascony.
Accustomed as he had been to receive reports from the Peninsula little
calculated to give satisfaction, or to confirm his impression of the
invincible qualities of those troops which he had personally ever led
to certain victory, so extensive and alarming a reverse as that now
made must have been as unexpected as it was disastrous; but with all
the promptitude of a person born to command, instead of yielding to
gloomy circumstances, he issued orders for a bold effort to counteract
the tide of war, to recover the ground lost by Vitoria, and to awaken
to energy, as he conceived, the dormant spirit of his soldiers.
Marshal Soult was, therefore, specially despatched from Germany to
assume the chief command of the beaten army, and, if possible, restore
its fallen fortunes.
Wellington foresaw the coming storm, and turned his immediate attention
to the reduction of Pamplona and San Sebastian. From the strength of
the former, and the excellent condition of its defences, the allied
commander decided on a blockade; and it was accordingly closely
invested by General Hill. Redoubts were thrown up within fifteen
hundred yards of the place, armed with the cannon taken at Vitoria,
and to the Spanish army under O’Donel the conduct of the blockade was
entrusted.
Graham, with his corps augmented to ten thousand men, was directed to
besiege San Sebastian; and on the 11th of July he sat down before the
place.
San Sebastian is built on a peninsula, its western defences washed
by the sea, and its eastern by the river Urumea, which at high water
rises several feet above the base of the escarp wall. A bold and rocky
height, called Monte Orgullo, rises at the extreme point of a narrow
neck of land, and on its summit stands the citadel of La Mota.
Eight hundred yards distant from the land-front, the convent of San
Bartolemeo, with a redoubt and circular fieldwork, were garrisoned.
These advanced posts were strongly fortified, and, as it was determined
to breach the eastern wall and storm it afterwards at low water, when
the receding tide should permit an advance by the left of the Urumea,
it became necessary, as a preliminary step, to dislodge the enemy from
the convent.
On the 14th of July, the guns in battery opened a heavy fire on San
Bartolemeo; and by the next day the walls of the building were injured
considerably. Another battery, erected beyond the Urumea, fired with
equal success upon the bastion; and on the 17th both works were carried
by assault. Batteries, armed with thirty-two siege guns and howitzers,
opened on the town wall from the sandhills; and on the 25th two
breaches were effected, one of thirty yards extent, and the other of
ten. A mine was also driven under the glacis, and at its explosion was
the appointed signal for an assault upon the breaches.
At first the astounding noise distracted the garrison, and enabled
the advance of both storming parties to gain the breaches; but the
French recovered from their panic, and poured such a fire of grape and
musketry on the assailants, that the breach was heaped with dead and
dying, and the allies were driven back to the trenches with a loss of
above six hundred men. The loss of the British, from the 7th to the
27th of July, amounted to two hundred and four killed, seven hundred
and seventy-four wounded, and three hundred missing.
This severe repulse, added to the certain intelligence that Soult was
preparing to strike a grand blow, induced Lord Wellington to issue
immediate orders to raise the siege.
Circumstances, indeed, rendered that step unavoidable. The French were
already in motion; Soult had forced the passes on the right, penetrated
the valleys of the Pyrenees, and was marching to relieve Pamplona.
Lord Wellington had a most extensive, and, consequently, a very
difficult position to defend, his _corps d’armée_ covering an extent of
country extending, from flank to flank, over sixty miles of mountains,
without lateral communications, or the means of holding a disposable
reserve in the rear of the passes, all of which must be defended, as
the loss of one would render the defence of the others unavailing.
After issuing a spirited proclamation to his army, Soult lost no time
in commencing operations. His corps had been organised anew, strongly
reinforced, and strengthened in every arm, and more particularly in
artillery. To relieve Pamplona, it would be necessary to carry the
passes of Maya and Roncesvalles; and accordingly, the French marshal
suddenly assembled the wings of his army and a division of the centre,
at St. Jean Pied de Port; while D’Erlon, with the remainder of the
corps, concentrated at Espaletta.
By feints upon the smaller passes of Espagne and Lereta, D’Erlon masked
his real attempt, which was to be made upon that of Maya, by a mountain
path from Espaletta. From several suspicious appearances an attack was
dreaded by the allies, and some light companies had been ordered up,
and, with the pickets, they were assailed at noon in such force that,
though supported by the 34th, 50th, and 92nd, they were driven back
on a height communicating with Echalar when, reinforced by Barnes’s
brigade of the seventh division, they succeeded in repulsing the attack
and holding their ground again.
The affair was very sanguinary. One wing of the 92nd was nearly cut to
pieces. All the regiments engaged highly distinguished themselves, and
the 82nd in particular. The allies lost nearly two thousand men, and
four pieces of artillery.
Soult’s advance on Roncesvalles was made in imposing force, but his
movements were foreseen, and necessary dispositions had been made for
defeating them. General Byng, who commanded, sent Morillo’s Spanish
division to observe the road of Arbaicete, by which the pass of Maya
might have been turned on the right; and descending the heights, placed
his own brigade in a position by which that important road might be
covered more effectually. Soult, however, directed his true attack
upon the left. Cole was overpowered and driven back; but the fusilier
brigade sustained him, and the attack throughout being met with steady
gallantry, was eventually defeated.
On Byng’s division the French marshal directed his next effort; and
with a force so superior, that, though obstinately resisted, it proved
successful, so far as it obliged the weak brigades of the British
general to fall back upon the mountains, and abandon the Arbaicete
road, while Morillo’s Spaniards were driven on the fourth division.
Necessarily the whole fell back at nightfall, and took a position in
front of Zubiri.
Picton’s division united with the fourth next morning, and both fell
leisurely back as the Duke of Dalmatia advanced. Picton continued
retiring on the 27th July, and that evening took a position in front of
Pamplona to cover the blockade, General Hill having already fallen back
on Irurita.
Nearly at this time Lord Wellington had come up; putting in motion
the several corps which lay in his route to the scene of action, and
at one end of a mountain village he pencilled a despatch, as a French
detachment had entered by the other.
Riding at full speed, he reached the village of Sorauren, and his eagle
glance detected Clausel’s column in march along the ridge of Zabaldica.
Convinced that the troops in the valley of the Lanz must be intercepted
by this movement, he sprang from his saddle, and pencilled a note on
the parapet of the bridge, directing the troops to take the road to
Oricain, and gain the rear of Cole’s position. The scene that followed
was highly interesting. Lord Fitzroy Somerset, the only staff-officer
who had kept up with him, galloped with these orders out of Sorauren
by one road, the French light cavalry dashed in by another, and the
British general rode alone up the mountain to reach his troops. One
of Campbell’s Portuguese battalions first descried him, and raised a
cry of joy, and the shrill clamour caught up by the next regiments
swelled as it run along the line into that stern and appalling shout
which the British soldier is wont to give upon the edge of battle, and
which no enemy ever heard unmoved. Lord Wellington suddenly stopped in
a conspicuous place; he desired that both armies should know he was
there; and a double spy who was present pointed out Soult, then so near
that his features could be plainly distinguished.
The British general, it is said, fixed his eyes attentively upon this
formidable man, and speaking as if to himself, said, “Yonder is a great
commander, but he is a cautious one, and will delay his attack to
ascertain the cause of these cheers; that will give time for the 6th
division to arrive, and I shall beat him.” And certain it is that the
French general made no serious attack that day.
Twelve British regiments were embattled on the Pyrenees who had fought
at Talavera; and there were present not a few who might recall an
incident to memory, that would present a striking but amusing contrast.
Cuesta, examining his battleground four years before in lumbering
state, seated in an unwieldy coach, and drawn by eight pampered mules;
Wellington, on an English hunter, dashing from post to post at headlong
speed, and at a pace that distanced the best mounted of his staff.
Having despatched the order, he galloped to the place where Picton’s
divisions were drawn up--the third, on the right, in front of Huarte,
and extending to the heights of Olaz, and the fourth, with Byng’s and
Campbell’s brigades, formed on the left; their right on the road from
Roncesvalles to Zubiri, and the left commanding that from Ostiz to
Pamplona. The reserve was formed of the corps of Morillo and O’Donel,
while, on the only ground on which cavalry could act, the British
dragoons were formed under Sir Stapleton Cotton.
Soult had occupied the high grounds in the front of those held by
the allies, and in the evening he made an effort to possess a hill
occupied by a Portuguese and Spanish brigade on the right of the fourth
division. These troops steadily resisted the attack, and, supported by
a British and Spanish regiment, repulsed the French, until darkness
ended the firing on both sides.
Pack’s division came up on the 28th, and took a position in the rear
of the fourth division, covering the valley of the Lanz. The village
of Sorauren in their front was held by the French; from which, in
considerable force, they moved forward, and attacked the sixth
division. But this movement was exposed to a flanking fire, that
obliged the enemy to retire after suffering a serious loss. On the left
of the division, a regiment of Portuguese caçadores was driven back
by a simultaneous attack, but Ross’s brigade came rapidly forward,
and completely repulsed the French. On the right, a renewed effort
partially succeeded, as the Spanish regiments were deforced; but the
40th came to the charge, and cleared the hill of the enemy.
The French marshal’s efforts had been directed against the whole of the
height held by the fourth division. In almost all he was repelled; but
on the right of the brigade of Ross, Soult was for a time successful,
and Campbell’s Portuguese regiments, unable to bear the furious and
sustained attack, lost ground, and allowed the enemy to establish a
strong body of troops within the allied position. Of necessity, General
Ross, having his flank turned, immediately fell back. Wellington saw
the crisis, and the 27th and 48th were directed to recover the ground
with the bayonet. Ross moved forward in support, a brilliant and bloody
struggle terminated in the total repulse of the French division,
which with severe loss, was precipitately driven from the height it
had with such difficulty gained. At this period of the fight, Pack’s
brigade advanced up the hill. The French gave up further efforts on the
position, and a long, sanguinary, and determined contest terminated.
The fourth division in this affair had been most gloriously
distinguished. The bayonet, in every trying exigency, was resorted
to; the charges were frequent, and some regiments, the fusiliers (7th
and 23rd), with the 20th and 40th, repeatedly checked an advance, or
recovered lost ground, by “steel alone.”
Hill’s division had marched by Lanz, and Lord Dalhousie from San
Estevan on Lizasso, and reached it on the 28th, while the seventh
division moved to Marcelain, and covered the Pamplona road. Soult,
failing in his efforts on the front of the position, determined to
attack Hill’s corps, turn the left of the allies, and thus relieve
Pamplona.
D’Erlon had reached Ostiz on the 29th, and Soult detached a division
from his own position to strengthen him. During the night of the 29th,
he crossed the Lanz, and occupied the heights in front of the sixth and
seventh divisions, and withdrawing the corps hitherto posted opposite
the third British division, his left wing closed in on the main
position of the mountain, directly in front of the fourth division.
D’Erlon’s corps, now considerably strengthened, communicated by the
right of the Lanz with the heights occupied by their left.
These dispositions of the French marshal were at once penetrated by
Lord Wellington, and he decided on driving the enemy from the main
position, which, from its importance, was very strongly occupied.
Picton, crossing the heights from which the French corps had been
recently withdrawn, turned the left of their position on the road to
Roncesvalles, while Lord Dalhousie advanced against the heights in
front of the seventh division, and gained their right flank. Packenham,
with the sixth division, turned the village of Sorauren, and, assisted
by Byng’s brigade, carried that of Ostiz. These flank movements were
executed with admirable rapidity, and enabled Cole, with part of the
fourth division, to assault the front of the enemy’s position. His
attack succeeded. The French gave way, a noble chain of posts was
forced on every side, as well by the dashing gallantry of the troops as
the excellent dispositions of their leader.
The French had endeavoured to outflank General Hill; but Pringle’s
brigade manœuvred on the heights above the La Zarza road, and as the
enemy extended by the right, they observed a parallel direction, During
these movements front attacks were frequently and furiously made, and
always repulsed by the bayonet. Sir Rowland steadily maintained his
position behind Lizasso, until a strong corps, detached by D’Erlon,
succeeded in filing round the left flank of the British brigades.
No result of any importance ensued, for Hill leisurely retired on a
mountain position at Eguarras, a mile in the rear, and every attempt
made by D’Erlon to dislodge him proved a failure.
That night, Soult, discomfited in his numerous and well-sustained
attacks on every position of the allied lines, fell back, and was
vigorously pursued by his opponent. Two divisions were overtaken at the
pass of Donna Maria, and brought to action. Although most formidably
posted, they were driven from their ground by the second and seventh
divisions, while at another point, Barnes’s brigade made a daring and
successful attack on a corps of much superior strength, formed in a
difficult position.
Wellington continued the pursuit to Irurita, the French retiring
rapidly towards the frontier, from whence they had so confidently
advanced, and on which they were as promptly obliged to recede. In
their retreat through the valley of the Bidassao, the enemy’s loss in
prisoners and baggage was considerable. A large convoy was taken at
Elizondo, and on the night of the 1st of August, the entire of the
French corps were driven from the Spanish territory, and the British
bivouacs once more established on the same ground which they had
occupied previous to the advance of the Duke of Dalmatia.
During the continued series of bold operations, and constant and
sustained attacks, the loss on both sides could not but be immense.
Soult’s amounted to at least eight thousand, and Wellington’s to eight
hundred and eighty-one killed, five thousand five hundred and ten
wounded, and seven hundred and five missing. That the French marshal
was perfectly confident of succeeding, could be inferred from the tone
of his address to the army, and the mass of cavalry and immense parc
of guns, with which he had provided himself, and which, as they could
not be employed in mountain combats, were evidently designed to assist
in future operations that should succeed his deforcement of the allies
from the Pyrenees, and the raising of the blockade of Pamplona.
Nothing could have been more annoying to the French marshal, than that
he should have actually reached within one league of the blockaded
fortress, and never be permitted afterwards to open the slightest
communication with its garrison.