It has been explained in an earlier chapter that ever since General Caffarelli concentrated all the available troops of the Army of the North, in order to join Souham in driving away Wellington from the siege of Burgos, the three Basque provinces, Navarre, and the coast-land of Santander had been out of hand[380]. The outward and visible sign of that fact was the intermittent stoppage of communication between Bayonne and Madrid, which had so much irritated Napoleon on his return from Russia. It was undoubtedly a just cause of anger that important dispatches should be hung up at Tolosa, or Vittoria, or Burgos, because the bands of Mina or Mendizabal or Longa were holding the defile of Salinas—the grave of so many convoy-escorts—or the pass of Pancorbo. It had been calculated in 1811 that it might often require a small column of 250 men to bring an imperial courier safely through either of those perilous narrows. But in the winter of 1812-13 things had grown far worse. ‘The insurgents of Guipuzcoa, Navarre, and Aragon,’ as Clarke wrote to Jourdan with perfect truth[381], ‘have had six months to organize and train themselves: their progress has been prodigious: they have formed many formidable corps, which no longer fear to face our troops when numbers are equal. They have called in the English, and receive every day arms, munitions, and even cannon on the coast. They have actually begun to conduct regular sieges.’ Yet it was three months and more since the King had sent back Caffarelli and the field-force of the Army of the North from Valladolid, to restore order in the regions which had slipped out of hand during the great concentration of the French armies in November.

If it be asked why the North had become so far more unquiet than it had been in previous years, the answer must be that the cause was moral and not material. It was not merely that many small places had been evacuated for a time by the French during the Burgos campaign, nor that the British fleet was throwing in arms and supplies at Castro-Urdiales or Santander. The important thing was that for the first time since 1808 the whole people had got a glimpse of hope: the French had been driven out of Madrid; they had evacuated Biscay; Old Castile and Leon had been in the power of Wellington for several months. It was true that Madrid had been recovered, that Wellington had been forced to retreat. But it was well known that the general result of the campaign of 1812 had been to free all Southern Spain, and that the French had been on the verge of ruin in the early autumn. The prestige of the Imperial armies had received at Salamanca a blow from which it never recovered. Wherefore the insurgents of the North put forth during the winter of 1812-13 an energy such as they had never before displayed, and the French generals gradually discovered that they had no longer to do with mere guerrillero bands, half-armed, half-fed wanderers in the hills, recruited only from the desperate and the reckless, but with a whole people in arms. When Caffarelli returned from Burgos, he found that the Spanish authorities had re-established themselves in every town which had been left ungarrisoned, that taxes and requisitions were being levied in a regular fashion, and that new regiments were being formed and trained in Biscay and Guipuzcoa. The nominal Spanish commander in this region was Mendizabal, theoretically Chief of the ‘Seventh Army’—but he was an officer of little resource and no authority. The real fighting man was Longa, originally a guerrillero chief, but now gazetted a colonel in the regular army. He was a gunsmith from the Rioja, a very resolute and persistent man, who had taken to the hills early, and had outlived most of his rivals and colleagues—a clear instance of the ‘survival of the fittest.’ His useful co-operation with Sir Home Popham in the last autumn has been mentioned above: his band, now reorganized as four infantry battalions, was raised from the mountaineers of the province of Santander and the region of the upper Ebro. His usual beat lay between the sea and Burgos, and he was as frequently to be found on the Cantabrian coast as at the defile of Pancorbo, where the great Bayonne chaussée crosses from the watershed of the Ebro to that of the Douro. His force never much exceeded 3,000 men, but they were tough material—great marchers and (as they proved when serving under Wellington) very staunch fighters on their own ground. West of Longa’s hunting grounds were those of Porlier, in the Eastern Asturias: the star of the ‘Marquesito,’ as he was called, had paled somewhat of late, as the reputation of Longa had increased. He had never had again such a stroke of luck as his celebrated surprise of Santander in 1811[382], and the long French occupation of the Asturias in the days of Bonnet had worn down his band to little over 2,000 men. At this moment he was mainly engaged, under the nominal command of Mendizabal, in keeping Santoña blockaded. To besiege it in form he had neither enough men nor a battering train: but if driven away once and again by Caffarelli, he never allowed himself to be caught, and was back again to stop the roads, the moment that the relieving column had marched off. In Biscay the leading spirit was Jauregui (El Pastor), another old ally of Sir Home Popham, but in addition to his band there was now on foot a new organization of a more regular sort, three Biscayan and three Guipuzcoan battalions, who had received arms from the English cruisers. They held all the interior of the country, had fortified the old citadel of Castro-Urdiales on the coast, with guns lent them from the fleet, and co-operated with Mendizabal and Longa whenever occasion offered. They had held Bilbao for a time in the autumn, but were chased out of it when Caffarelli returned from Burgos. In January they made another attempt upon it, but were repulsed by General Rouget, in command of the garrison.

Between the fields of operation of the Biscayans and Longa and that of the Navarrese insurgents, there was the line of the great Bayonne chaussée, held by a series of French garrisons at Tolosa, Bergara, Mondragon, Vittoria, Miranda del Ebro, and the castle of Pancorbo. This line of fortified places was a sore hindrance to the Spaniards, but on many occasions they crossed it. Mina’s raiding battalions from Navarre were frequently seen in the Basque provinces. And they had made communication between one garrison and another so dangerous that the post-commanders often refused to risk men on escorts between one place and the next, and had long ceased to attempt requisitions on the countryside. They were fed by convoys pushed up the high road, with heavy forces to guard them, at infrequent intervals. In Navarre, as has been already explained, Mina held the whole countryside, and had set up an orderly form of government. He had at the most 8,000 or 9,000 men, but they spread everywhere, sometimes operating in one column, sometimes in many, seldom to be caught when sought after, and capable of turning on any rash pursuing force and overwhelming it, if its strength was seen to be over-small. Mina’s sphere of action extended far into Aragon, as far as Huesca, so that he was as much a plague to Paris, the Governor of Saragossa, as to Thouvenot, Governor of Vittoria, or Abbé, Governor of Pampeluna. His strategical purpose, if we may ascribe such a thing to one who was, after all, but a guerrillero of special talent and energy, was to break the line of communication down the Ebro from Miranda to Saragossa, the route by which the King and the Army of the North kept up their touch with Suchet’s troops in Aragon. It was a tempting objective, since all down the river there were French garrisons at short distances in Haro, Logroño, Viana, Calahorra, Milagro, Tudela, and other places, none of them very large, and each capable of being isolated, and attacked for some days, before the Governor of Navarre could come to its aid with a strong relieving column. And there were other garrisons, such as those at Tafalla and Huesca, covering outlying road-centres, which were far from succour and liable to surprise-attacks at any moment.

Nor was Mina destitute of the power to call in help for one of his greater raids—he sometimes shifted towards the coast, and got in touch with the Guipuzcoans and Biscayans, while he had also communication with Duran, south of the Ebro. This officer who was theoretically a division-commander in the Valencian Army, was really the leader of a band of four or five thousand irregulars, who hung about the mountains of Soria, and kept the roads from Madrid to Saragossa and the Ebro blocked. And Duran was again in touch with the Empecinado, whose beat lay on the east side of New Castile, and whose main object was to molest the French garrisons of Guadalajara, Segovia, and Alcalá. Temporary combinations of formidable strength could be made, when several of these irregular forces joined for a common raid: but the chiefs generally worked apart, each disliking to move very far from his own district, where he was acquainted with the roads and the inhabitants. For in a country of chaotic sierras, like Northern Spain, local knowledge was all-important: to be aware of exactly what paths and passes were practicable in January snow, or what torrents were fordable in March rain, was the advantage which the guerrillero had over his enemy. It is probable that in March or April 1813 the total force of all the insurgent bands was no greater than that of the French garrisons and movable columns with which they had to contend. But the Army of the North was forced to tie down the larger half of its strength to holding strategical points and long lines of communication, while the guerrilleros could evacuate one whole region for weeks at a time, in order to mass in another. They could be unexpectedly strong in one district, yet lose nothing by temporary abandonment of another. They were admirably served for intelligence, since the whole population was by goodwill or by fear at their service: the French could only depend on afrancesados for information, and these were timid and few; they grew fewer as Mina gradually discovered and hanged traitors. When the French columns had gone by, it was easily to be guessed who had guided them or given them news—and such people perished, or had to migrate to the nearest garrison. But local knowledge was the real strength of the guerrilleros: a French column-commander, guiding his steps from the abominable maps of Lopez—the atlas which was universally used for want of a better—was always finding his enemy escape by a path unindicated on the map, or appear in his rear over some unknown cross-road, which could not have been suspected to exist. Hence the local Spanish traitor was absolutely necessary as a guide, and often he could not be found—treachery having been discovered to be a path that led inevitably to the gallows. The Army of the North had acquired, from old and painful experience of counter-marches, some general knowledge of the cross-roads between the Ebro and the Pyrenees. But when troops from a distance—sections of the Bayonne Reserve, or reinforcements from the Army of Portugal—were turned on to the game of guerrillero-hunting, they found themselves very helpless. As a rule, the most promising march ended in finding the lair still warm, but the quarry invisible.

Napoleon and his mouthpiece, the War Minister Clarke, refused to the end, as Marshal Marmont remarked[383], to see that the War of Spain was unlike any other war that the French armies had waged since 1792. The nearest parallels to it were the fighting in Switzerland in 1798 and against Hofer’s Tyrolese in 1809. But both of these earlier insurrectionary wars had been fought on a very limited area, against an enemy of no great numerical strength, practically unhelped from without. In Spain the distances were very great, the mountains—if less high than the Alps—were almost as tiresome, for in the Alps there were vast tracts completely inaccessible to both sides, but the Sierras, if rugged, are less lofty and better furnished with goat-tracks and smugglers’ by-ways, where the heavily laden infantryman cannot follow the evasive mountaineer. Moreover, the English cruisers continued to drop in the arms and munitions without which the insurgents could not have kept the field.

There can be no doubt that Napoleon undervalued the power of the Spanish guerrilleros, just as he undervalued the resources and the enterprise of Wellington. From the first moment of his return from Russia he had continued to impress on Joseph and Jourdan the necessity for pacifying the North, before the season for regular campaigning should have arrived, and Wellington should have taken the field. But his theory that the winter was the best time for dealing with the bands was rather specious than correct. For although the short days, the snow in the passes, and the swollen torrents were, no doubt, great hindrances to that freedom of movement which was the main strength of the guerrilleros, they were even greater hindrances to combined operations by bodies of regular troops. Rapid marches are impossible off the high roads in Northern Spain, during the midwinter months; and it was only by combined operations and the use of large forces that the insurgents could be dealt with. Indeed, the country roads were practically impassable for any regular troops in many regions. What officer would risk detachments in upland valleys that might be found to be blocked with snow, or cut off from their usual communication by furious streams that had overflowed the roads and made fords impracticable? Winter marches in unexplored hills are the most deadly expedients: all the weakly soldiers fall by the way—had not Drouet lost 150 men in passing the Guadarrama during the early days of December—and the Guadarrama was crossed by one of the few great royal roads of Spain? What would be the losses of columns sent out on cross-roads and caught in blizzards, or in those weeks of continuous rain which are not uncommon in the sub-Pyrenean region?

The Emperor’s view was that Caffarelli had failed in his task from want of resourcefulness. He was always trying to parry blows rather than to strike himself: he allowed the insurgents to take the initiative, and when they had executed some tiresome raid would set out in a pursuit which was seldom useful, since they naturally outran him[384]. He was always marching to deliver or revictual some threatened garrison, anywhere between Santoña and Pampeluna, instead of setting himself to destroy the main agglomeration of hostile forces. Now Caffarelli, it is true, was no great general, and may have been on occasion wanting in vigour. But the best reply to the criticism of him sent from Paris is to observe that his successor, Clausel, universally acknowledged to be the most active officer in Spain, failed in exactly the same way as his predecessor, even when he had been lent 20,000 veteran troops to aid him in his task.

Napoleon wanted a great general movement pour balayer tout le Nord. He granted that Caffarelli had not enough troops both to furnish garrisons for every important point, and to hunt down the guerrilleros with a large field-force. Therefore he ordered Reille to furnish Caffarelli’s successor with every man that he asked for. If necessary, the whole Army of Portugal might be requisitioned, since those of the South and Centre would be enough to keep Wellington in check. The letter of instructions which Clarke was directed to give to Clausel, when the latter took up his appointment, explains the Emperor’s views. ‘By a continual taking of the offensive it ought to be possible to reach a prompt and happy result. The moment that the reinforcements to be furnished by General Reille arrive (and possibly they have already put themselves at your disposition) in Navarre and Biscay, I am convinced that your usual activity will change the face of affairs. Rapid pursuits, well directed, and above all properly adapted to the topographical configuration of the district; raids made without warning on the insurgents’ dépôts of provisions, their hospitals, their stores of arms, and in general on all their magazines, will infallibly carry confusion into their operations. After you have had some successful engagements with them, it will only require politic measures to complete their disorganization. When you have scattered their juntas, all the young men they have enrolled by compulsion will melt home. If you leave them no rest, and surprise them in their remotest places of refuge, the matter should end by their going wholly to pieces.... As to the keeping open your communication with France, one particular device, to whose utility all the generals who have served in that region bear witness, is to establish at regular distances and in well chosen positions, especially where roads meet, small palisaded forts, or blockhouses, which will form a chain of posts and support each other. Owing to the wooded nature of the country they will not cost much to build—the estimate for such a system of blockhouses has been calculated to me at no more than 300,000 francs.

‘Santoña and Pampeluna must be held—the latter because its capture is Mina’s main ambition, the former because it is a terror to the English, who recently tried to have it besieged: General Caffarelli had to lead an expedition to relieve it. Pampeluna is the more important for the moment: when a division of the Army of Portugal reaches Navarre you ought to be able to make Mina change his tone. Santoña can wait—it may be reprovisioned by sea from the small ports of Biscay. As General Caffarelli has inconsiderately evacuated most of them, you should reoccupy them all, especially Bermeo and Castro-Urdiales. The latter is said to have been fortified with the help of the English. For the sake of the safety of Santoña all these places must be retaken at once: from the mouth of the Bidassoa to Santander every maritime position should be in French hands. Santander especially is, by the Emperor’s express orders, to be permanently occupied by an adequate garrison.

‘It is necessary that all these operations should be carried out simultaneously. The pursuit of Mina in Navarre should synchronize with the operations in Biscay. The insurgents should be hunted in the inland, at the same time that they are attacked on the coast. This is the only way to disorganize them, to make them weak and divided at all points.... It seems preferable to use every available man for a general simultaneous attack, than to undertake each necessary operation in succession, with a smaller force and more leisure—all the more so because the reinforcements, which are to co-operate in your scheme, may be called elsewhere by some unforeseen development of affairs[385].’

Clausel, in obedience to his instructions, tried to carry out the whole of this scheme, and had small luck therewith. He built the chain of blockhouses from Irun to Burgos, thereby tying up many battalions to sedentary duty. He hunted Mina right and left, drove the insurrectionary Junta of Biscay from its abode, occupied all the little ports from Santander to San Sebastian, stormed the well-fortified Castro-Urdiales, revictualled Pampeluna and Santoña, and at the end of three months had to report that his task was unfinished, that the insurrection was still unsubdued, and that although he had borrowed 20,000 infantry from the Army of Portugal, he must ask for another 20,000 men [where were they to be got?] in order to finish the campaign. And by this time—the end of May—Wellington was loose, and the King was falling back on the Ebro, vainly calling for the five divisions that his brother had made over to the Army of the North. But we must resume the chronicle of the Northern campaign, before commenting on its inadequate and unhappy conclusion.

The operations may be said to have begun in January, when Palombini’s Italian division marched from Old Castile to join the Army of the North, in order to replace Dumoustier’s brigade of the Young Guard, which was being recalled to France. After crossing the Guadarrama Pass in a blizzard, which cost some lives, they got to Burgos on the 28th, driving away the Cura Merino and his band, who had been blocking the road from Valladolid. From Burgos Palombini marched to Vittoria, escorting a convoy of drafts returning to France, couriers, officials, and convalescents. There he heard that Longa and Mendizabal had cut in behind him, and had again stopped communications. Wherefore he turned back, and swept the Bureba, where they were reported to be. Not finding them, he marched as far as Poza de la Sal, not far from Briviesca, but some leagues off the great chaussée. In this town his head-quarters were fixed, while the bulk of his division was sent out in flying columns to collect food. He had only 500 men with him, when on the night of February 10-11 he found himself surrounded by three Spanish columns, which had slipped through the intervals of the outlying Italian regiments, and ran in on the town from different quarters. The surprise, contrived by Longa, was complete; but Palombini, collecting his men in a clump, held out till daylight, when his battalions came flocking in to the sound of the musketry and relieved him. The Spaniards disappeared, taking with them some baggage and prisoners captured in the first rush, and were soon lost to sight in the mountains.

The Italians, lucky to have escaped so cheaply, marched back to the Ebro by way of Domingo Calzada, where there was a French garrison in imminent danger of starvation, as it had long been blockaded by local bands[386]. Palombini took it on with him, and blew up the castle, as the place was inconveniently remote from any other French post. He then returned to Vittoria by way of Haro (February 18) and next pushed on to Bilbao, where he relieved Dumoustier’s brigade of the Imperial Guard, which was at last able to obey the Emperor’s order to return to France (February 21). Caffarelli used this force as his escort back to Bayonne, and returned in some disgrace to Paris. Clausel assumed command in his stead on the next day.

Pampeluna had been declared by the new commander’s letter of instructions to be the place of which he should be most careful. But seeing no chance of visiting and relieving it till his reinforcements from the Army of Portugal should have come up, Clausel, while waiting for their arrival, came to Bilbao, where he began to make preparations for the siege of Castro-Urdiales, by far the most important, for the moment, of the ports along the coast which the Emperor had commended to him for destruction.

Meanwhile the Biscayan insurgents collected opposite Bilbao, on the Eastern side, and Mendizabal brought up Longa’s troops and some of the smaller bands to threaten it from the West. The idea was to give Clausel so much trouble about his head-quarters that he would be unable to march away against Castro. The days slipped by, and farther East Mina was more active than ever in Navarre. He had at last become the happy possessor of two siege guns, landed at Deba on the Biscay coast, and dragged by incredible exertions across mountain paths to the farthest inland. When they came to hand he set to work to beleaguer the French garrison of Tafalla, an outlying place, but less than thirty miles from Pampeluna. This was a challenge to General Abbé, the Governor of Navarre: a force which has dug trenches and brought up heavy guns is obviously asking for a fight, and not intending to abscond. Abbé marched with 3,000 infantry and 150 chasseurs to raise the siege, and found Mina with four of his battalions and his regiment of cavalry drawn up across the high road, in a mountain position at Tiebas, ten miles north of Tafalla. After a hard day’s fighting, Abbé failed to break through, and had to fall back on Pampeluna[387] (February 9). The news of his repulse disheartened the garrison, whose walls were crumbling under the fire of Mina’s heavy guns, and they surrendered on February 11th to the number of 11 officers and 317 men—the post-commander and many others had been killed during the siege.

This success of Mina’s meant nothing less than that the whole open country of Navarre was at his mercy, since Abbé had been beaten in the field; wherefore Clausel hastened to dispatch the first reinforcements from the Army of Portugal which reached him—Barbot’s division—to this quarter. But the affair created less excitement than an exploit of reckless courage carried out by one of Mina’s detachments in the following month. The old castle of Fuenterrabia commands the passage of the Bidassoa, and looks across its estuary into France: on March 11 it was surprised by escalade by a handful of guerrilleros, the garrison taken prisoner, the guns thrown into the water, and the whole building destroyed by fire. The flames were visible far into France—troops hurried up from Irun and Hendaye, but of course found the guerrilleros gone[388].

This exploit was rather spectacular than harmful to the French—quite otherwise was the last event of the month of March. Barbot’s division, on entering Navarre, was directed to help Abbé to clear the country between Pampeluna and the Ebro. Having reached Lodosa on March 30, Barbot sent out two battalions to raise requisitions in the neighbouring town of Lerin. The place was being sacked, when the scattered French were suddenly attacked by two of Mina’s battalions, while two more and 200 Navarrese lancers cut in between the enemy and Lodosa. The French, thoroughly surprised, lost heavily in the first shock, but rallied and started to cut their way back to their division, only eight miles away. In a running fight they were much mauled, and finally had to form square to receive the cavalry. In this inconvenient formation they were forced to a long musketry fight with the Navarrese, which so shook the square that it finally broke when Mina’s lancers charged. The two battalions were annihilated, 28 officers and 635 men taken prisoners—the rest cut down. Gaudin, the colonel commanding the detachment, escaped with a few mounted officers[389]. The extraordinary part of the affair was that its last crisis took place at only two miles from Lodosa, where Barbot was lying with his remaining six battalions. The French general never stirred, but only put himself in a posture of defence, thereby provoking Mina’s surprise[390], for he could have saved the column by going out to its help. After the disaster he retired to Pampeluna, with a division reduced to little over 3,000 men. But not long after Taupin’s division of the Army of Portugal also entered Navarre, and joined Abbé. This gave the latter a very heavy force—at least 13,000 men, and when Clausel had finished his own operations in the direction of Bilbao, and marched from Biscay to encircle Mina on one side, while Abbé was to hold him on the other, the great guerrillero was in grave danger. But this was only in late April and May, and before the chronicle of these weeks is reached we have to turn back westward for a space.

Napoleon’s orders had told Clausel to attack at all points at once, and to lose no time in setting to work. But it was quite clear that no general synchronized move could be made, until the divisions borrowed from Reille had all arrived. What active operations meant, before the reinforcements had come up, had been sufficiently proved by Abbé’s defeat at Tiebas: and Clausel’s own doings in March were equally discouraging, if not so disastrous. He had resolved to carry out one of the Emperor’s urgent orders by capturing Castro-Urdiales, the touching-place of British cruisers and the one fortified port which the Allies possessed on the Biscay coast. Undervaluing its strength, he marched out on March 21 with the bulk of Palombini’s Italian division and a single French battalion, intending to take it by escalade. For he had been told that its ancient walls had been indifferently repaired, and were almost without guns. When, however, he had reached the neighbourhood of Castro on the 22nd, he had to own on inspection that the enterprise would be hopeless—his commanding engineer, the historian Vacani[391]—maintained that it would take 6,000 men and a siege train of at least six heavy guns to deal with the place. And, as subsequent events showed, this was quite true. Castro is built on a rocky spit projecting into the sea, with a stout wall 20 feet high drawn across the isthmus which joins the headland to the coast. The narrow front of this wall, from water to water, had been well repaired; there were some 20 guns mounted, and an old castle on the extreme sea-ward point of the spit served as a citadel or inner fortification. Mendizabal and his lieutenant, Campillo, had come down from the interior with three or four thousand men, and were visible on the flank, ready to fall upon the Italian column if it should approach the town, through the labyrinth of vineyards and stone fences which covered its outskirts.

Clausel, always venturesome, was inclined at first to go on with his enterprise, when news reached him that Bilbao, which he had left rather weakly garrisoned, was threatened by the guerrillero Jauregui, and the battalions of the volunteers of Biscay and Guipuzcoa. He returned hastily to his head-quarters with his French battalion, but found that the danger had been exaggerated for the moment, so sent out General Rouget with two battalions to join Palombini, who had meanwhile on the 24th fought a severe action with Mendizabal. The Spaniard had tried to surround him in his camp at San Pelayo, with several outflanking columns—the Italian sallied out and drove him off with loss—but suffered himself no less[392]. Clausel, on reaching the front, came to the conclusion that Castro must not be attacked without heavy guns and a larger field-force. He directed Palombini to burn the ladders, fascines, &c., prepared for the assault, and to go off instead to raise the blockade of Santoña, while he himself returned to Bilbao. The Italian division therefore marched westward on Colindres, on the other side of the bay on which Santoña stands, thrusting aside the Spanish blockading forces, and communicated with the governor, General Lameth. A supply of small arms and ammunition, money, and food was thrown into the place. On the other hand, Lameth was ordered to get six heavy guns on shipboard, and to be prepared to run them down the coast, when next a French force should appear in front of Castro-Urdiales, along with a provision of round shot, shells, and entrenching tools. Lameth got the siege material ready, but was not asked for it till another full month had gone by, for Clausel had other business pressed upon him.

Palombini thereupon turned back, and regained Bilbao in three forced marches, unmolested by the Spaniards, for they had gone off in the direction of Balmaseda, not expecting him to return so quickly. He had only been in Bilbao for two days when Clausel sent him out again, eastward this time and not westward, with two of his regiments, for a surprise attack on Guernica, the head-quarters of the Biscayan insurgents and the seat of their Junta. A French column of two battalions of the 40th Line from Durango was to co-operate and to assail the enemy in the rear. This expedition was quite in consonance with Napoleon’s orders to strike at the enemy’s central dépôts in front and rear by unexpected raids. But it also showed the difficulty of carrying out such plans. Palombini reached Guernica, driving before him bands which gave way, but were always growing stronger: behind Guernica they made a stand—the French flanking column failed to appear—having found troubles of its own—and Palombini was repulsed and forced to cut his way back out of the hills. He reported his loss as only 80 men—but it was probably somewhat more[393] (April 2). Having picked up the stray French column, and replenished his ammunition from Bilbao, Palombini, with a laudable perseverance, attacked the Guernica position again on April 5, and this time forced it. Thence pushing east, he tried to drive the enemy before him along the coast road, on which, in the neighbourhood of St. Sebastian, a brigade from the Bayonne reserve had been set to block their flight. But the Biscayans and El Pastor evaded him and slipped south into the hills: the Guipuzcoan battalions, instinctively falling back on their own province, were in more danger. But warned in time that the coast road was stopped, some of them took refuge in the boats of English warships at Lequeytio and Motrico, and were shipped off to Castro-Urdiales in safety, while others simply dispersed. No prisoners were taken, but Palombini captured the petty magazines of the Guipuzcoans at Aspeytia and Azcoytia, and thinking that the insurrection was scotched returned to the Bayonne chaussée at Bergara (April 9).

So far was this from ending the campaign, that while Palombini was devastating Guipuzcoa, the Biscayans and El Pastor had concerted a new attack on Bilbao with Longa and Mendizabal, who had been left with no containing force in front of them when the enemy had retired from before Castro-Urdiales.

Clausel had gone off from Bilbao on March 30, with a large escort, to join at Vittoria the newly arrived divisions of the Army of Portugal, those of Taupin and Foy, and was set on organizing a new attack on Mina. In the absence of both the Commander-in-Chief and of Palombini, Bilbao was very weakly garrisoned—not more than 2,000 men were left to General Rouget to defend a rather extensive system of outworks. On April 10th the Spaniards attacked him on both sides of the Nervion river, and would probably have broken into Bilbao but for the incapacity of Mendizabal, whose main body did not come up in time to assist the attack of the Biscayans on the other bank of the river. Rouget was still holding out when Palombini came to his rescue from Bergara via Durango, in two forced marches. The Spaniards thereupon dispersed, after their usual fashion, Mendizabal disappearing to the east, the Biscayans falling back on their old head-quarters at Guernica. Palombini was strong at the moment, having been joined by the brigade from Bayonne, under General Aussenac, which had been blocking the coast road. He therefore tried to surround the Biscayans with converging columns—but when he thought that he had cut them off from the inland, and was about to drive them into the water, the bulk of them were picked up at Bermeo by English cruisers, and landed farther down the coast. Only some baggage and a store of munitions fell into the pursuer’s hands (April 14).

On this, Palombini, ‘convinced,’ says his admiring chronicler Vacani, ‘of the uselessness of trying to envelop or destroy local bands among mountains which they knew too well, when he could only dispose of columns of a few battalions for the pursuit,’ resolved to halt at Bilbao, and prepare for the siege of Castro. He put the brigade from Bayonne in charge of the high road to San Sebastian, and waited for the arrival of Foy from Vittoria. For he had been informed that this general, with his division of the Army of Portugal, was to be detailed to help him in the subjection of Biscay. Meanwhile April was half over, the insurgents had been often hunted but never caught, and Wellington might be expected to be on the move any morning: it was strange that he had not been heard of already.

Leaving Biscay to Palombini and Foy, Clausel had collected at Vittoria one of his own divisions, hitherto scattered in small detachments, but relieved by the reinforcements sent him from the Army of Portugal. For beside the four divisions lent for active service, he had taken over the whole Province of Burgos, to which Reille had sent the division of Lamartinière. With his own newly-collected division, under Vandermaesen, and Taupin’s of the Army of Portugal, Clausel set out for Navarre on April 11th, to combine his operations with those of Abbé and to hunt down Mina. As he had already sent forward to the Governor of Navarre the division of Barbot, there was now a field-force of 20,000 men available for the chase, without taking into consideration the troops tied down in garrisons. This was more than double the strength that Mina could command, and the next month was one of severe trial for the great guerrillero.

Clausel’s first idea was to catch Mina by a sweeping movement of all his four divisions, which he collected at Puente la Reyna in the valley of the Arga (April 24). Mina answered this move by dispersion, and his battalions escaped through intervals in the cordon with no great loss, and cut up more than once small detachments of their pursuers. Clausel perceiving that this system was useless, then tried another, one of those recommended by the Emperor in his letter of instruction of March 9, viz. a resolute stroke at the enemy’s magazines and dépôts. Mina kept his hospitals, some rough munition factories which he had set up, and his store of provisions, in the remote Pyrenean valley of Roncal, where Navarre and Aragon meet: it was most inaccessible and far from any high road. Nevertheless Clausel marched upon it with the divisions of Abbé, Vandermaesen, and Barbot, leaving Taupin alone at Estella to contain Western Navarre. He calculated that Mina would be forced to concentrate and fight, in order to save his stores and arsenal, and that so he might be destroyed. He was partly correct in his hypothesis—but only partly. Mina left four of his battalions in Western Navarre, in the valleys of the Amescoas, to worry Taupin, and hurried with the remaining five to cover the Roncal. There was heavy fighting in the passes leading to it on May 12 and 13, which ended in the Navarrese being beaten and dispersed with the loss of a thousand men. Clausel captured and destroyed the factories and magazines, and made prisoners of the sick in the hospitals, whom he treated with unexpected humanity. Some of the broken battalions fled south by Sanguesa into lower Navarre, others eastward into Aragon. Among these last was Mina himself with a small party of cavalry—he tried to fetch a compass round the pursuing French and to return to his own country, but he was twice headed off, and finally forced to fly far into Eastern Aragon, as far as Barbastro. This region was practically open to him for flight, for the French garrison of Saragossa was too weak to cover the whole country, or to stop possible bolt-holes. Mina was therefore able to rally part of his men there, and called in the help of scattered partidas. Clausel swept all North-Western Aragon with his three divisions, making arrests and destroying villages which had harboured the insurgents. But he did not wish to pursue Mina to the borders of Catalonia, where he would have been quite out of his own beat, and inconveniently remote from Pampeluna and Vittoria.

But meanwhile the division which he had left under Taupin in Navarre was having much trouble with Mina’s four battalions in the Amescoas, and parties drifting back from the rout in the Roncal vexed the northern bank of the Ebro, while Longa and Mendizabal, abandoning their old positions in front of Bilbao, had descended on to the Bayonne chaussée, and executed many raids upon it, from the pass of Salinas above Vittoria as far as the Ebro (April 25-May 10). The communications between Bayonne and Burgos were once more cut, and the situation grew so bad that Lamartinière’s division of the Army of Portugal had to be moved eastward, to clear the road from Burgos to Miranda, Sarrut’s to do the same between Miranda and Bilbao, while Maucune detached a brigade to relieve Lamartinière at Burgos. Of the whole Army of Portugal there was left on May 20th only one single infantry brigade at Palencia which was still at Reille’s disposition. Five and a half divisions had been lent to Clausel, and were dispersed in the north. And Wellington was now just about to move! The worst thing of all for the French cause was that the communications of the North were as bad in May as they had been in January: after Clausel had taken off the main field-army to the Roncal, and had led it from thence far into Aragon, the roads behind him were absolutely useless. Only on the line Bayonne-Vittoria, where the new blockhouses were beginning to arise, was any regular passing to and fro possible. Clausel himself was absolutely lost to sight, so far as King Joseph was concerned—it took a fortnight or twenty days to get a dispatch through to him.

Meanwhile, before turning to the great campaign of Wellington on the Douro, it is necessary to dispose of the chronicle of affairs in Biscay. Foy and his division, as we have seen, had marched from Vittoria to Bilbao and reached the latter place on April 21st[394]. On the way they had nearly caught Mendizabal at Orduña, where he chanced to be present with a guard of only 200 men; but, warned just in time, he had the luck to escape, and went back to pick up his subordinates Longa and Campillo nearer the coast.

Soon after Foy’s arrival at Bilbao he was joined by Sarrut’s division of the Army of Portugal, which had followed him from Vittoria. He had therefore, counting Palombini’s Italians, the brigade of Aussenac, and the regular garrison of Bilbao, at least 16,000 men—ample for the task that Clausel had commended to him, the capture of Castro-Urdiales, with its patched-up mediaeval wall. The only thing presenting any difficulty was getting a siege train to this remote headland: Lameth, the Governor of Santoña, as it will be remembered, had been ordered to provide one, and there were four heavy guns in Bilbao:—the roads on both sides, however, were impracticable, and the artillery had to come by water, running the chance of falling in with British cruisers.

On April 25th Foy marched out of Bilbao with his own, Sarrut’s, and Palombini’s divisions, more than 11,000 men,[395] leaving Aussenac on the Deba, to guard the road from San Sebastian, and Rouget in garrison as usual. On the same evening he reached the environs of Castro, and left Palombini there to shut in the place, while he went on himself to look for Mendizabal, who was known to be watching affairs from the hills, and to be blocking the road to Santoña, as he had so often done before. Foy then moved on to Cerdigo where he established his head-quarters for the siege, on a strong position between the sea and the river Agaera. Mendizabal was reputed to be holding the line of the Ason, ten miles farther on, but in weak force: he had only the partidas of Campillo and Herrero with him, Longa being absent in the direction of Vittoria. On the 29th Foy drove off these bands at Ampuero, and communicated with Santoña, into which he introduced a drove of 500 oxen and other victuals. The governor Lameth was ordered to ship the siege train that he had collected to Islares, under the camp at Cerdigo, on the first day when he should find the bay clear—for three English sloops, the Lyra, Royalist, and Sparrow, under Captain Bloye, were lying off Castro and watching the coast. Foy then established Sarrut’s division to cover the siege at Trucios, and sent two Italian battalions to Portugalete to guard the road to Bilbao, keeping his own division and the three other Italian battalions for the actual trench work. The heavy guns were the difficulty—those expected from Bilbao were stopped at the mouth of the Nervion by the English squadron, which was watching for them—but in the absence of the sloops on this quest, the governor of Santoña succeeded in running his convoy across the bay on May 4th. The guns from Bilbao were afterwards brought up by land, with much toil.

Foy then commenced three batteries on the high slopes which dominate the town: two were completed on the 6th, despite much long-distance fire from the British ships, and from a heavy gun which Captain Bloye had mounted on the rocky islet of Santa Anna outside the harbour. On the 7th fire was begun from two batteries against the mediaeval curtain wall, but was ineffective—one battery was silenced by the British. On the 10th, however, the third battery—much closer in—was ready, and opened with devastating results on the 11th, two hours’ fire making a breach 30 feet wide and destroying a large convent behind it.

The Governor, Pedro Alvarez, one of Longa’s colonels, had a garrison of no more than 1,000 men—all like himself from Longa’s regiments of Iberia; he made a resolute defence, kept up a continuous counter-fire, and prepared to hold the breach. But it was obvious that the old wall was no protection from modern artillery, and that Foy could blow down as much of it as he pleased at leisure. On the afternoon of the 11th part of the civil population went on board the British ships: the governor made preparations for holding the castle, on the seaside of the town projecting into the water, as a last stronghold: but it was only protected by the steepness of the rock on which it stood—its walls were ruined and worthless. Late in the day the British took off the heavy gun which they had placed on the islet—it could not have been removed after the town had fallen, and the fall was clearly inevitable.

Foy, seeing the curtain-wall continuing to crumble, and a 60-foot breach established, resolved to storm that night, and sent in at 7.20 three columns composed of eight French and eight Italian flank companies for the assault—the former to the breach, the latter to try to escalade a low angle near the Bilbao gate. Both attacks succeeded, despite a heavy but ill-aimed fire from the defenders, and the Spaniards were driven through the town and into the castle, where they maintained themselves. Alvarez had made preparations for evacuation—while two companies held the steep steps which were the only way up to the castle, the rest of the garrison embarked at its back on the boats of the British squadron. Some were killed in the water by the French fire, some drowned, but the large majority got off. By three in the morning there were only 100 men left in the castle: Alvarez had detailed them to throw the guns into the sea, and to fire the magazines, both of which duties they accomplished, before the early dawn. When, by means of ladders, the French made their way into an embrasure of the defences, some of this desperate band were killed. But it is surprising to hear that most of them got away by boat from the small jetty at the back of the castle. They probably owed their escape to the fact that the stormers had spent the night in riotous atrocities vying with those of Badajoz on a small scale. Instead of finishing off their job by taking the castle, they had spent the night in rape and plunder in the town[396].

The Spaniards declared that the total loss of their garrison was only 100 men, and the statement is borne out by the dispatch of Captain Bloye of the Lyra. Foy wrote to Clausel that the whole business had only cost him fifty men. The two statements seem equally improbable, for the siege had lasted for six days of open trenches, and both sides had fought with great resolution[397].

But the really important thing to note about this little affair is that it absorbed three French divisions for sixteen days in the most critical month of 1813. Eleven thousand men were tied down in a remote corner of Biscay, before a patched-up mediaeval wall, while Longa was running riot in Alava and breaking the line of communication with France—and (what is more important) while Wellington’s columns were silently gliding into place for the great stroke on the Douro. Colonel Alvarez could boast that his thousand men had served a very useful and honourable end during the great campaign. He and they were landed by Captain Bloye at Bermeo, and went off over the hills to join Longa: the majority of them must have been present at the battle of Vittoria, some six weeks after their escape by sea.

Having discharged the first duty set him by Clausel, Foy left the Italians at Castro, to guard the coast and keep up communications with Santoña. He sent Sarrut southward to hunt for Longa, by way of Orduña; but the Spaniard crossed the Ebro and moved into the province of Burgos, evading pursuit. Then, finding that Lamartinière’s division was guarding the great road in this direction, he turned off north-westward, and escaped by Espinosa to the mountains of Santander. Sarrut, having lost him, turned back to Biscay.

Meanwhile Foy himself, after retiring to Bilbao to give a few days of rest to his division, started out again on May 27th for a circular tour in Biscay. His object was to destroy the three Biscayan volunteer battalions which had given his predecessor so much trouble. Two he dispersed, but could not destroy, and they ultimately got together again in somewhat diminished numbers. The third was more unlucky: caught between three converging columns near Lequeytio, it was driven against the seashore and nearly annihilated—360 men were taken, 200 killed, only two companies got off into the hills (May 30th). But to achieve this result Foy had collected three brigades—5,000 men—who would have been better employed that day on the Esla, for Wellington was crossing that river at the moment—and where were the infantry of the Army of Portugal, who should have stood in his way?

So while the British Army was streaming by tens of thousands into the undefended plains of Leon, Foy and Sarrut were guerrillero-hunting in Biscay, and Taupin and Barbot had just failed in the great chase after Mina in Aragon and Navarre. Such were the results of the Emperor’s orders for the pacification of the North.