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.