SECTION XXXVI: CHAPTER VI
WELLINGTON ON THE EBRO.
JUNE 15-20,1813
After evacuating Burgos the French army had retired, at a rather leisurely rate, down the high road which leads by Briviesca and the defile of Pancorbo to the valley of the Ebro. The rearguard, as we have seen, had left Burgos on the morning of the 13th, and halted for great part of the day at Gamonal, a few miles east of the city, on the spot where Napoleon had won his easy victory over the Conde de Belveder on November 10, 1808. It was only followed by Spanish irregular horse—some of Julian Sanchez’s ubiquitous lancers. Head-quarters that night and the next (June 14) were at Briviesca, and remained there for forty-eight hours: on the 15th they were moved on to Pancorbo, an admirable position with a high-lying fort in the centre, while the road is flanked for miles by steep slopes, on which an advantageous rearguard action might have been fought. But no pursuing enemy came in sight: this fact began to worry the French Head-quarters Staff. ‘What could have become of Lord Wellington? The French Army, in full retreat, was permitted to move leisurely along the great route, without being harassed or urged forward, not a carriage of any description being lost. It appeared inexplicable[516].’ The French retreat was leisurely for two reasons—the first was that King Joseph wished to gain time for the immense convoys lumbering in front of him to reach Miranda and Vittoria without being hustled. The second was that he thought that every day gained gave more time for Clausel to come up: at the slow rate at which he was proceeding he might almost hope to find the missing divisions of the Army of Portugal converging on Miranda, at the moment when he should arrive there himself. The Council of War at Burgos had decided that Wellington must inevitably pursue by the great chaussée. The routes from the Burgos region to the upper Ebro had been reported both by French officers who claimed to know the country, and by local Afrancesados, as presenting insuperable difficulties to a large army. There was, it is true, the high road Burgos-Santander by Santijanez, Pedrosa, and Reynosa—but this led north-west in an eccentric direction, not towards Miranda or Vittoria. That the danger lay on the rough mountain ways a little farther east, which fall down to San Martin and Puente de Arenas, seems not to have been suspected. Yet it was disquieting to find no pursuit in progress: could the Allied Army possibly have been forced to halt at Burgos for want of supplies?
On the 16th the French army descended from the defile of Pancorbo to the Ebro, and proceeded to distribute itself in the region round Miranda, in cantonments which permitted of rapid concentration when it should become necessary. Nothing was yet to be heard of Clausel—but on the other hand Lamartinière’s division was again picked up—it handed over the duty of escorting the convoys toward Vittoria to Joseph’s Spanish contingent, the small division of Casapalacios. Sarrut’s division also came in from Biscay, and reported that it had been lately in touch with Foy, who was successfully hunting the local guerrilleros in the coast-land. But neither Foy himself, nor the troops of the Army of the North which had been co-operating with him of late, were anywhere near. Strange as it may appear, that very capable officer had wholly failed to understand the general situation: though apprised ere now of the evacuation of Madrid and Valladolid, he had nothing in his mind save his wholly secondary operations against the Biscay bands. His dispatches of this period show him occupied entirely with the safety of Bilbao, and the necessity for guarding the high road from Bergara and Tolosa to France. There were 20,000 troops in Biscay, but they were entirely dispersed on petty expeditions and convoy work. On June 19, when he got from head-quarters the first dispatch that caused him to think of concentrating and joining the main army, Foy had only one battalion with him at the moment at Bergara. A column of 1,000 men was moving to reinforce the garrison of Bilbao, a brigade was at Villafranca escorting towards France the large body of prisoners whom he had captured in his recent operations—another brigade was waiting on the road between Vittoria and Mondragon, to pick up a large convoy which, as he had been warned, would be coming up the Royal Road and would require to be protected as far as San Sebastian. He was making efforts to send provisions by sea to Bilbao and Castro-Urdiales—a task in which he was being worried by British cruisers off the coast—and was preparing to go to Bilbao himself[517].
No doubt the main blame for this untimely dispersion of forces lay with General Head-Quarters. Jourdan and Joseph ought to have sent orders to Foy, after the evacuation of Madrid, ordering him to cease all secondary operations, to leave minimum garrisons at a few essential points, abandon all the rest, and collect as strong a field-force as possible, with which to join the main army. But they had written to the minister at Paris suggesting such moves, instead of dispatching direct orders to that effect to the general himself. Foy had been sent information, not orders, and had failed to realize the full meaning of the information—absorbed as he was in his own particular Biscayan problems. Events were marching very quickly: it was hard to realize that Wellington, who had been on the Esla on May 31, would have been across the upper Ebro with 70,000 men on June 15. It had taken little more than a fortnight for him to overrun half of Northern Spain. The fact remained that of all the French troops operating in Biscay in June, only Sarrut’s division, from Orduña, joined the King in time for the battle of Vittoria. Yet Foy had under his orders not only his own division but the Italian brigade of St. Pol, and the mobile brigade of Berlier from the Army of the North, in addition to 10,000 men of the garrisons of the various posts and fortresses of the North and the littoral. And he had no enemy save the great partisan Longa in the western mountains, and the scattered remains of the local insurgents under El Pastor and others, whom he had defeated in April and May, and whom he was at present harrying from hill to coast and from coast to hill. We are once more forced to remember that the French armies in Spain were armies of occupation as well as armies of operation, and that one of their functions was often fatal to the other.
But to return to the moment when the King’s army came back to the Ebro. Head-quarters were, of course, established at Miranda, where the royal Guard served as their escort. The Army of the South sent three divisions across to the north bank of the river; they were cantoned on the lower Zadorra about Arminion; but Gazan kept three brigades on the south bank as a rearguard for the present, but (as the King hoped) to form a vanguard for a counter-advance, if only Clausel should come up soon, and an offensive campaign become possible. A small observing force was left at Pancorbo, into whose castle a garrison was thrown. Cavalry exploring parties, pushed out from this point, sought for Wellington’s approaching columns as far as Poza de la Sal on the right, Briviesca on the high road, and Cerezo on the left; but to no effect. They came in touch with nothing but detachments of Julian Sanchez’s Lancers. D’Erlon, with the Army of the Centre, went ten miles down the Ebro to Haro: he had now recovered his missing division, Darmagnac’s, which had been lent to Reille for the last two months. For the Army of Portugal having now three infantry divisions collected—Maucune’s, Sarrut’s, and Lamartinière’s—was ordered to give back the borrowed unit to its proper commander. Reille took the right of the Ebro position, having Maucune’s division at Frias, Sarrut’s at Espejo, and Lamartinière’s at the Puente Lara. He was ordered to use his cavalry to search for signs of the enemy along the upper Ebro. The King had thus an army which, by the junction of Sarrut and Lamartinière, had risen to over 50,000 infantry and nearly 10,000 cavalry, concentrated on a short front of 25 miles from Frias to Haro, covering the main road to France by Vittoria, and also the side roads to Orduña and Bilbao on the one flank, and Logroño and Saragossa on the other. His retreat, though dispiriting, had not yet been costly—it is doubtful whether he had lost 1,000 casualties in the operations of the last six weeks. With the exception of the combats at Salamanca on May 26 and Morales on June 2, there had been no engagements of any importance. The army was angry at the long-continued retreat; the officers were criticizing the generalship of their commanders in the most outspoken fashion, but there was no demoralization—the troops were clamouring for a general action.
But on June 17, when the French armies settled down into their new position, with no detected enemy in their neighbourhood, their fate was already determined—the Ebro line had been turned before it was even taken up. For on this same day Wellington had not only got his whole army north of the Ebro, but was marching rapidly eastward, by the mountain roads twenty miles north of the river, into the rear of Reille’s cantonments. Of all his troops only Julian Sanchez and Carlos de España’s infantry division were left in Castile.
The movements of the Allied Army on the 15th-16th-17th June had been carried out with surprising celerity. The Galician infantry, who had crossed the river first, at Rocamonde, the bridge highest up on its course, on the 13th were hurrying northward, by cross roads not marked on the map, and obviously impracticable for guns, to Soncillo (15th), Quintanilla de Pienza (16th), Villasana (17th), and Valmaseda in Biscay (18th). When they had reached the last-named town they were threatening Bilbao, and almost at its gates. This was the great demonstration, intended to throw confusion among all the French detachments on the northern coast. Several of the stages exceeded thirty miles in the day.
Meanwhile the three great columns of the Anglo-Portuguese army were executing a turning movement almost as wide as that of Giron’s Galicians. Converging from different bridges of the Ebro—Rocamonde (where some of Graham’s cavalry passed), San Martin de Lines (where the bulk of Graham’s force debouched northward on the 14th), and Puente Arenas (used by the Head-quarters column on the 15th and by Hill’s column on the 16th[518])—the whole army came in by successive masses on to the two neighbouring towns of Villarcayo and Medina de Pomar. At the latter place Longa turned up with his hard-marching Cantabrian division, and joined the army. These considerable towns are the road-centres of the whole rugged district between the Ebro and the Cantabrian mountains. From them fork out the very few decent roads which exist in the land—those northward over the great sierras to Santander, Santoña, and Valmaseda-Bilbao: those eastward across their foot-hills to Orduña-Vittoria and to Frias-Miranda. These five roads are the only ones practicable for artillery and transport: there are, however, minor tracks which can take infantry in good summer weather.
From his head-quarters at Quintana, near the bridge of Puente Arenas, Wellington dictated on the 15th the marching orders which governed the next stage of the campaign. With the exception of the Galicians, already starting on their circular sweep towards Bilbao, all his columns were directed to utilize the road parallel to the Ebro, but twenty miles north of it, which runs from Medina de Pomar to Osma, Orduña, and Vittoria. He deliberately avoided employing the other high road, which runs closer to the river from Medina de Pomar to Frias and Miranda, even for a side-column or a flying corps: only cavalry scouts were sent along it. The reason why the whole army was thrown on to a single road—a thing generally to be avoided, especially when time is precious—was partly that the appearance of British troops before Frias, where the enemy was known to have a detachment, would give him early warning of the move. But the more important object was to strike at the French line of communication with Bayonne as far behind the known position of King Joseph’s army as possible. If the line Frias-Miranda had been chosen, the enemy would have had many miles less to march, when once the alarm was given, if he wished to cover his proper line of retreat. If a fight was coming, it had better be at or about Vittoria, rather than at or about Miranda. Moreover, the high road, for a few miles east of Frias, passes to the south bank of the Ebro, which it recrosses at the Puente Lara—there is only a bad track north of the river from Frias to that bridge. It would be absurd to direct any part of the army to cross and recross the Ebro at passages which might be defended.
So the whole force was committed to the Medina-Osma road, except that the infantry occasionally took cross-cuts by local tracks, in order to leave the all-important main line, as far as possible, to the guns and transport. The three corps in which the army had marched from the Pisuerga fell in behind each other, in the order in which they had crossed the Ebro—Graham leading—the Head-Quarters column following—Hill bringing up the rear. Longa’s Cantabrians went on as a sort of flying vanguard in front of Graham, not being burdened with artillery[519]. The road was one which could only have been used for such a large force in summer—it hugged the foot-hills of the Cantabrian sierras, crossing successively the head-waters of several small rivers running south to the Ebro, each in its own valley. The country was thinly peopled and bare, so that little food could be got to supplement the mule-borne rations. For this reason, as also with the object of granting the French as little time as possible after the first alarm should be given, the pace had to be forced. The marches were long: on the 15th the head of Graham’s infantry was at Villarcayo: on the 16th at La Cerca (five miles beyond Medina de Pomar): on the 17th at the mountain villages of San Martin de Loza and Lastres de Teza: on the 18th it was due at Osma and at Berberena—a few miles up the Osma-Orduña road. The Head-Quarters column having no exploration to do, since the way was reported clear in front, covered the same distance in three marches instead of four, and was expected to reach the neighbourhood of Osma on the 18th. Hill’s column had also to hurry—its leading division was on that same day expected to be at Venta de Membligo, a posting station six miles short of Osma, so that its head would be just behind the tail of the preceding corps. But Hill’s rear would be strung out for many miles behind. However, all the fighting army was again in one mass—with a single exception. Wellington had ordered the 6th division, commanded temporarily by his own brother-in-law Pakenham, to halt at Medina de Pomar. The reason which he gives in his dispatch[520] for depriving himself, now that the day of crisis was at hand, of a good division of 7,000 men, is that he left it ‘to cover the march of our magazines and stores.’ This is almost as puzzling a business as his leaving of Colville’s corps at Hal on the day of the battle of Waterloo—the only similar incident in the long record of his campaigns. If this was his sole reason, why should not a smaller unit—Pack’s or Bradford’s independent brigade—or both of them—have been left behind? For that purpose such a force would have sufficed. We are not informed that the 6th Division was more afflicted with sickness than any other, or that it was more way-worn. The only supposition that suggests itself is that Wellington may have considered the possibility of Giron’s raid into Biscay failing, and bringing down on his rear some unsuspected mass of French troops from Bilbao. If this idea entered his head, he may easily have thought it worth while to leave behind a solid reserve, on which Giron might fall back, and so to cover the rear of his main army while he was striking at the great road to France. But it must be confessed that this is a mere hypothesis, and that the detachment of Pakenham’s division seems inexplicable from the information before us. It was ordered to follow when the whole of the transport should be clear, if no further developments had happened to complicate the situation. Carrying out this direction literally, Pakenham waited three days at Medina de Pomar, and so only got to the front twenty-four hours after the battle of Vittoria.[521]
The orders which Wellington issued upon the 17th[522] brought the head of his columns into touch with the enemy. They directed that Graham, with the 1st and 5th Division, Pack and Bradford, should move past Osma on to Orduña, by the two alternative routes available between those places, while the Head-Quarters column should not turn north toward Orduña on reaching Osma, but pursue the roads south-eastward by Espejo and Carcamo, which lead to Vittoria by a more southerly line. The result contemplated was very much that which was worked out in the battle of the 21st—a frontal attack by the main body, with an outflanking move by Graham’s corps, which would bring it into the rear of the enemy. But the route via Orduña was not the one which the northern column was actually destined to take, as the events of the 18th distracted it into a shorter but rougher road to the same destination (Murguia), which it would have reached by a much longer turn on the high road via Orduña.
But all the columns were not moving on the main track from Medina de Pomar to Osma this day, for Wellington had directed the Light Division to drop its artillery to the care of the 4th Division, and cut across the hills south of the high road, by a country path which goes by La Boveda, San Millan, and Villanan to a point, a few miles south of Osma, in the same valley of the Omecillo in which that town lies. And Hill, still far to the rear, was told to detach two brigades of the 2nd Division, and send them to follow the Light Division along the same line: if Alten should send back word that the route was practicable for guns, Hill was to attach his Portuguese field battery to this advance-column.
It was, apparently, on the morning of the 17th June only that the French got definite indications of the direction in which the British army might be looked for. Maucune reported from Frias, not long after his arrival there, that hostile cavalry were across the Ebro in the direction of Puente Arenas, and that other troops in uncertain strength were behind them. It was clearly necessary to take new measures, in view of the fact that the enemy was beyond the Ebro, in a place where he had not been expected. How much did the move imply? After consideration Joseph and Jourdan concluded, quite correctly, that since the main body of Wellington’s army had been invisible for so many days—it had last been seen on the Hormaza on June 12th—it was probably continuing its old policy of circular marches to turn the French right. This was correct, but they credited Wellington with intending to get round them not by the shorter routes Osma-Vittoria, but by the much longer route by Valmaseda and Bilbao, which would cut into the high road to France at Bergara, far behind Vittoria.
With this idea in their heads the King and the Marshal issued orders of a lamentably unpractical scope, considering the position occupied by Wellington’s leading divisions on June 17th. Reille was ordered to collect his three infantry divisions at Osma, and to hurry across the mountains by Valmaseda, to cover Bilbao from the west, by taking up a position somewhere about Miravalles. He would find the Biscayan capital already held by St. Pol’s Italians, and Rouget’s brigade of the Army of the North. Foy, who was believed to be at Tolosa, was instructed to bring up his division to the same point. Thus a force of some 25,000 men would be collected at Bilbao. Meanwhile Reille’s original positions at Frias and the Puente Lara would be taken over by Gazan, who would march up the Ebro from Arminion with two divisions of infantry and one of cavalry, to watch the north bank of the Ebro. ‘These dispositions,’ remarks Jourdan, ‘were intended to retard the advance of the enemy in this mountainous region, and so to gain time for the arrival of the reinforcements we were expecting [i.e. Clausel]. But it was too late![523]’
No worse orders could have been given. If Wellington had struck twenty-four hours later than he did, and Reille had been able to carry out his first day’s appointed move, and to get forward towards Bilbao, the result would have been to split the French army in two, with the main range of the Cantabrian sierras between them: since Reille and Foy would have joined at Bilbao—three days’ forced marches away from the King. Meanwhile Joseph, deprived of the whole Army of Portugal, would have had Wellington striking in on his flank by Osma, and would have been forced to fight something resembling the battle of Vittoria with 10,000 men less in hand than he actually owned on June 21. Either he would have suffered an even worse defeat than was his lot at Vittoria, or he would have been compelled to retreat without fighting, down the Ebro, or towards Pampeluna. In either case he would have lost the line of communication with France; and while he was driven far east, Foy and Reille would have had to hurry back on Bayonne, with some risk of being intercepted and cut off on the way.
As a matter of fact, Reille was checked and turned back upon the first day of his northward march. He had sent orders to Maucune to join him from Frias, either by the road along the Ebro by Puente Lara, or by the mountain track which goes directly from Frias to Espejo. Then, without waiting for Maucune, he started from Espejo to march on Osma. He had gone only a few miles when he discovered a British column debouching on Osma, by the road from Berberena[524] and the north-west, which he had been intending to take himself. Seeing his path blocked, but being loth to give way before what might be no more than a detachment, he drew up his two divisions on the hillside a mile south of Osma and appeared ready to offer battle. Moreover, he was expecting the arrival of Maucune, and judged that if he made off without delaying the enemy in front of him, the column from Frias might be intercepted and encircled.
The troops which Reille had met were Graham’s main column—the 1st and 5th divisions with Bradford’s Portuguese and Anson’s Light Dragoons, on their march towards Orduña. Graham prepared to attack, sent forward the German Legion light battalions of the 1st Division, and pushed out Norman Ramsay’s horse artillery, with a cavalry escort, to the right of Osma, forming the rest of his force for a general advance across the Bilbao road. After estimating the strength of the British, Reille appeared at first inclined to fight, or at least to show an intention of fighting. But a new enemy suddenly came up—the 4th Division appeared on a side road, descending from the hills on the right of Graham’s line. It had just time to throw out its light companies to skirmish[525] when Reille, seeing himself obviously outnumbered and outflanked, retreated hastily on Espejo; the 5th Division followed him on the left, with some tiraillade, the 4th Division on the right, but he was not caught. ‘Considerable fire on both sides but little done,’ remarked an observer on the hillside[526]. Reille’s loss was probably about 120 men, nearly all in Sarrut’s division[527]: that of the British some 50 or 60.
Meanwhile there had been a much more lively fight, with heavier casualties, a few miles farther south among the mountains nearer the Ebro. Maucune had started before dawn from Frias, intending to join Reille by a short cut through the hills, instead of sticking to the better road along the river-bank by the Puente Lara. He only sent his guns with a cavalry escort by that route. He was marching with his two brigades at a considerable distance from each other, the rear one being hampered by the charge of the divisional transport and baggage.
The leading brigade had reached the hamlet of San Millan and was resting there by a brook, when British cavalry scouts came in upon them—these were German Legion Hussars, at the head of the Light Division, which Wellington had sent by the cross-path over the hills by La Boveda. The approaching column had been marching along a narrow road, shrouded by overhanging rocks and high banks, in which it could neither see nor be seen. On getting the alarm the four French battalions formed up to fight, in the small open space about the village, while the head of the British column, Vandeleur’s brigade, deployed as fast as it could opposite them, and attacked; the 2/95th and 3rd Caçadores in front line, the 52nd in support. Maucune was forced to make a stand, because his rear brigade was coming up, unseen by his enemies, and would have been cut off from him if he had retreated at once. But when the head of Kempt’s brigade of the Light Division appeared, and began to deploy to the left of Vandeleur’s, he saw that he was outnumbered, and gave ground perforce. He had been driven through the village, and was making off along the road, with the Rifle battalions in hot pursuit, when his second brigade, with the baggage in its rear, came on the scene—most unexpected by the British, for the track by which it emerged issued out between two perpendicular rocks and had not been noticed. Perceiving the trap into which they had fallen, the belated French turned off the road, and made for the hillside to their right, while Kempt’s brigade started in pursuit, scrambling over the rocky slopes to catch them up. The line of flight of the French took them past the ground over which Vandeleur’s men were chasing their comrades of the leading brigade, and the odd result followed that they came in upon the rear of the 52nd, and, though pursued, seemed to be themselves pursuing. The Oxfordshire battalion thereupon performed the extraordinary feat of bringing up its left shoulder, forming line facing to the rear at a run, and charging backward. They encountered the enemy at the top of a slope, but the French, seeing themselves between two fires, for Kempt’s men were following hotly behind them, avoided the collision, struck off diagonally, and scattering and throwing away their packs went off in disorder eastward, still keeping up a running fight. The large majority escaped, and joined Gazan’s troops at Miranda. Meanwhile the first brigade, pursued by the Rifles and Caçadores, got away in much better order, and reached Reille’s main body at Espejo. The transport which had come out of the narrow road too late to follow the regiments, was captured whole, after a desperate resistance by the baggage-guard. Maucune got off easily, all things considered, with the loss of three hundred prisoners, many of them wounded, and all his impedimenta[528]. The fight was no discredit to the general or to his men, who saved themselves by presence of mind, when caught at every disadvantage—inferior troops would have laid down their arms en masse when they found themselves between two fires in rough and unknown ground[529]. The total British loss in the two simultaneous combats of Osma and San Millan was 27 killed and 153 wounded.
Reille, having picked up Maucune’s first brigade at Espejo, continued his retreat, and got behind the Bayas river at Subijana that night. The report which he had to send to head-quarters upset all the plans of Jourdan and the King, and forced them to reconsider their position, which was obviously most uncomfortable, as their line of defence along the Ebro was taken in flank, and the proposed succour to Bilbao made impossible. At least four British divisions had been detected by Reille, but where were the rest, and where were the Spaniards, who were known to be in some strength with Wellington? Was the whole Allied host behind the force which had driven in the Army of Portugal, or was there some great unseen column executing some further inscrutable movement?
There was hot discussion at Miranda that night. Reille repeated the proposition which had already been made at Burgos six days back, that in consideration of the fact that the army was hopelessly outflanked, and that its retreat by the high road to Vittoria and Bayonne was threatened by the presence of Wellington on the Bayas, it should abandon that line of communication altogether, march down the Ebro, and take up the line of Pampeluna and Saragossa, rallying Clausel and, if possible, Suchet, for a general concentration, by which the British army could be driven back as it had been from Burgos in 1812. Foy and the Biscay garrisons would have to take care of themselves—it was unlikely that Wellington would be able to fall upon them, when the whole of the rest of the French armies of Spain were on his flank, and taking the offensive against him.
Joseph, for the third time, refused to consider this scheme, alleging, as before, the Emperor’s strict orders to keep to the Bayonne base, and to hold on to the great royal chaussée. But, as is clear, his refusal was affected by another consideration which in his eyes had almost equally decisive weight. Vittoria was crammed with the great convoys of French and Spanish refugees which had accumulated there, along with all the plunder of Madrid, and the military material representing the ‘grand train’ of the whole army of Spain—not to speak of his own immense private baggage. There had also arrived, within the last few days, a large consignment of hard cash—the belated arrears of the allowance which the Emperor had consented to give to the Army of Spain. One of Foy’s brigades had escorted these fourgons of treasure to Vittoria, and dropped them there, returning to Bergara with a section of the refugees in charge, to be passed on to Bayonne.[530] The amount delivered was not less than five million francs—bitterly needed by the troops, who were in long arrears. All this accumulation at Vittoria was in large measure due to the King’s reluctance during the retreat to order a general shift of all his officials and impedimenta over the border into France. As long as his ministers, and all the plant of royalty, remained on the south side of the Pyrenees, he still seemed a king. And he had hoped to maintain himself first on the Douro, then about Burgos, then on the Ebro. It was only when this last line was forced that he made up his mind to surrender his theoretical status, and think of military considerations alone. The lateness of his decision was to prove most fatal to his adherents.
Having resolved to order a general retreat on Vittoria, Joseph and Jourdan took such precautions as seemed possible. Reiterated orders for haste were sent to Foy and Clausel: the latter was told to march on Vittoria not on Miranda. Unfortunately he had received the dispatch sent from Burgos on June 15th, which gave him Miranda as the concentration-point, and had already gathered his divisions at Pampeluna on June 18, and started to march by Estella and Logroño and along the north bank of the Ebro. This gave him two sides of a triangle to cover, while if he had been assigned the route Pampeluna-Salvatierra-Vittoria, he would have been saved eighty miles of road. But on June 9th, when the original orders were issued, no one could have foreseen, save Wellington, that the critical day of the campaign would have found the French army far north of the Ebro. And the new dispatch, sent off on the night of the 18th-19th, started far too late to reach Pampeluna in time to stop Clausel’s departure southward. Indeed, it did not catch him up till the battle of Vittoria had been fought, and the King was a fugitive on the way to France. Foy received orders a little earlier, though not apparently those sent directly by the King, but a copy of a dispatch to Thouvenot, governor of Vittoria, in which the latter was instructed ‘that if General Foy and his division are in your neighbourhood, you are to bid him give up his march on Bilbao, and draw in towards Vittoria, unless his presence is absolutely necessary at the point where he may be at present[531].’ This unhappy piece of wording gave Foy a choice, which he interpreted as authorizing him to remain at Bergara, so as to cover the high road to France, a task which he held to be ‘absolutely necessary.’
As to the troops already on the spot, Reille was ordered to defend the line of the Bayas river, until the armies of the South and Centre should have had time to get past his rear and reach Vittoria. Gazan was ordered to collect the whole of the Army of the South at Arminion, behind Miranda, drawing in at once the considerable detachment which he had left beyond the Ebro. In this position he was to wait till D’Erlon, with the Army of the Centre, who had to move up from Haro, ten miles to the south, should have arrived and have got on to the great chaussée. He was then to follow him, acting as rearguard of the whole force. Between Arminion and Vittoria the road passes for two miles through the very narrow defile of Puebla, the bottle-neck through which the Zadorra river cuts its way from the upland plain of Vittoria to the lower level of the Ebro valley.
D’Erlon, starting at dawn from Haro, reached Arminion at 10 o’clock in the morning of the 19th, and pushed up the defile: the head of his column was just emerging from its northern end when a heavy cannonade began to be heard in the west. It continued all the time that the Army of the South was pressing up the defile, and grew nearer. This, of course, marked the approach of Wellington, driving the covering force under Reille before him toward the Zadorra. The British commander-in-chief had slept the night at Berberena near Osma, and had there drafted a set of orders which considerably modified his original scheme: probably the change was due to topographical information, newly garnered up from the countryside. Instead of sending Graham’s column via Orduña, to cut in on the flank of the chaussée behind Vittoria, he had resolved to send it by a shorter route, a mere country road which goes by Luna, Santa Eulalia, and Jocano to Murguia—the village which it had been ordered on the previous day to reach via Orduña and the high road. Presumably it had been discovered that this would save time,—the advantage of using a first-rate track being more than counterbalanced by the fact that the Orduña road was not only ten miles longer but crossed and recrossed by steep slopes the main sierra, which forms the watershed between Biscay and Alava. Or possibly it was only the discovery that the Luna-Jocano route could be taken by artillery that settled the matter: if it had been reported useless for wheeled traffic the old orders might have stood. At any rate, the turning movement, which was to take Graham into the rear of Vittoria, was made south of the main mountain chain, and not north of it[532].
Meanwhile, though Graham diverged north-eastward, the rest of the Army moved straight forward from the valley of the Omecillo to that of the Bayas in four columns, all parallel to each other, and all moving by country roads. The 3rd Division was ordered from Berberena to Carcamo—the 7th followed behind it. The 4th Division with D’Urban’s cavalry in front, and the Light Division with V. Alten’s hussars in front, were directed on Subijana and Pobes, keeping in close and constant communication with each other. Behind them came the cavalry reserve—R. Hill’s, Grant’s, and Ponsonby’s brigades—also the heavy artillery. Hill’s column, which had now come up into touch with the leading divisions, kept to the high road from Osma and Espejo towards the Puente Lara and the Ebro. But only cavalry reconnaissances went as far as the river—the mass of the corps turned off eastward when it had passed Espejo, and moved by Salinas de Añana, so as to come out into the valley of the Bayas south of the route of the Light Division. It thus became the right wing of the army which was deploying for the frontal attack.
It has been mentioned above that a local Spanish force from the Cantabrian mountains had joined Wellington at Medina de Pomar; this was the so-called ‘division’, some 3,500 bayonets, of the great guerrillero of the coast-land, Longa, now no more an irregular but a titular colonel, while his partida had been reorganized as four battalions of light infantry. Longa was a tough and persistent fighter—a case of the ‘survival of the fittest’ among many insurgent chiefs who had perished. His men were veteran mountaineers, indefatigable marchers, and skilled skirmishers, if rudimentary in their drill and equipment. Wellington during the ensuing campaign gave more work to them than to any other Spanish troops that were at his disposal—save the Estremaduran division of Morillo, old comrades of Hill’s corps, to which they had always been attached since 1811. The use which Wellington now made of Longa’s men was to employ them as a light covering shield for Graham’s turning force. They had been sent across the hills from Quincoces[533] on the 17th to occupy Orduña—from thence they descended on the 19th on to Murguia, thus placing themselves at the head of the turning column. The object of the arrangement was that, if the enemy should detect the column, he would imagine it to be a Spanish demonstration, and not suspect that a heavy British force lay hid behind the familiar guerrilleros. While Longa was thus brought in sideways, to form the head of Graham’s column, the other Spanish force which Wellington was employing was also deflected to join the main army. Giron’s Galicians, as has been mentioned above, had been sent by a long sweep through the sierras to demonstrate against Bilbao. They had reached Valmaseda on the 18th, and their approach had alarmed all the French garrisons of Biscay. Now, having put themselves in evidence in the north, they were suddenly recalled, ordered to march by Amurrio on Orduña and Murguia, and so to fall into the rear of Graham’s column. The distances were considerable, the roads steep, and Giron only came up with the Anglo-Portuguese army on the afternoon of the battle of Vittoria, in which (unlike Longa) he was too late to take any part. Somewhere on his march from Aguilar to Valmaseda he picked up a reinforcement, the very small Asturian division of Porlier—three battalions or 2,400 men—which Mendizabal had sent to join him from the blockade of Santoña. This raised the Galician Army to a total of some 14,000 bayonets.
The 19th June was a very critical day, as no one knew better than Wellington. The problem was whether, starting with the heads of his column facing the line of the Bayas, where Reille had rallied his three divisions and was standing at bay, he could drive in the detaining force, and cross the Zadorra in pursuit of it, fast enough to surprise some part of the French army still in its march up from the south. And, as an equally important problem, there was the question whether Graham, marching on Murguia, could reach the upper Zadorra and cut the great road north of Vittoria, before the French were in position to cover it. If these operations could be carried out, there would be a scrambling fight scattered over much ground, rather than a regular pitched battle. If they could not, there would be a formal general action on the 20th or 21st against an enemy established in position—unless indeed King Joseph should choose to continue his retreat without fighting, which Wellington thought quite possible[534].
Wellington is censured by some critics, including Napier[535], for not making a swifter advance on the 19th. It is said that a little more haste would have enabled him to get to Vittoria as soon as the enemy, and to force him to fight in dislocated disorder on ground which he had not chosen. This seems unjustifiable. The distance between the camps of the Allied Army, in front of Osma and Espejo, and Vittoria is some twenty miles—difficult ground, with the Bayas river flowing through the midst of it and a formidable position held by 15,000 French behind that stream. As Reille, conscious how much depended on his gaining time for the King to retreat from Miranda, was determined to detain the Allied Army as long as he could, it would have been useless to try to drive him away by a light attack. The rear of each of Wellington’s columns was trailing many miles behind the leading brigade. It was necessary to bring up against Reille a force sufficient to make serious resistance impossible, and this Wellington did, pushing forward not only the 4th and Light Divisions, but Hill’s column in support, on the southern flank. It took time to get them deployed, and the attack was opened by a cannonade. By the time that a general advance was ordered Reille had begun to retire—he did so very neatly, and crossed the Zadorra by the four nearest bridges without any appreciable loss. By this time the afternoon had arrived, the rest of the French army had passed the defile of Puebla, and Wellington judged the hour too late for the commencement of a pitched battle[536]. Moreover, he did not intend to fight without the co-operation of Graham’s column, and the latter was not where he would have wished it to be. The day had been very rainy, the cross roads were bad, and by some error of staff-work the head of the column had not received the countermarching orders directing it to march direct on Murguia, but had started in accordance with the earlier plan on to the Orduña road; the 1st and 5th Divisions had gone some way upon it before they were recalled and counter-marched into the right path[537]. Owing to blocks and bad weather they only reached Jocano, some six or eight miles east of Osma, by six in the evening. Murguia was still nine miles ahead, the rain was still falling in torrents, and Graham ordered the divisions to halt and encamp for the night. The fate of the campaign was not to be fought out that day, nor on the next, but on the third morning—that of June 21st, 1813.