On July 1st the last of Foy’s troops on the sea-coast front had recrossed the lower Bidassoa, leaving Graham and Giron in complete possession of the Spanish bank, and free to commence the siege of St. Sebastian. They had 25,000 men in line, without counting Mendizabal’s Biscayan irregulars, who were observing the fortress, and the 5th British Division, which was now on its march from Vittoria to the frontier, and was due to arrive on the 5th or 6th. These forces were amply sufficient to hold in check Reille, Foy, and the Bayonne Reserve.

On July 1st also Wellington began to arrange his march northward from Pampeluna, which might have begun on the 26th June if he had not taken off so many divisions for the fruitless pursuit of Clausel. The five days’ respite granted to the enemy had been very useful to him. If the King had been followed up without delay, at the moment when he had split his army into the three columns, which marched the first by Yrurzun and Santesteban (Reille), the second by the Col de Velate (D’Erlon), and the third by the Pass of Roncesvalles (Gazan), it is hard to say where or how he could have rallied or offered any effective resistance. Wellington had preferred to take the doubtful chance of intercepting and destroying a secondary force, rather than to devote himself to the relentless pursuit of the demoralized main body of the enemy. But it must be remembered that a resolve to push the chase after the flying King would have involved an instant invasion of France. And though on general military grounds a defeated enemy should be kept on the run and destroyed in detail—like Brunswick’s army after Jena—there were in June-July 1813 the strongest political reasons to deter Wellington from crossing the frontier. It was not merely that he had outmarched his transport, and had not yet got into touch with his new bases of supply at Santander and on the Biscay coast, so that for the moment he was a little short of ammunition, and also living on the country, a practice which he disliked on principle and wished to end as soon as possible[723]. Nor was his hindrance the fact that his army was tired and sulky, and that many of his stragglers had not yet rejoined—though both of these vexations had their weight[724]. Nor was the political consideration that held him back the deplorable news from Cadiz, received at Caseda on June 28th, to the effect that the Regency had deposed Castaños from his office as Captain-General of Galicia, Estremadura, and both the Castiles, and had superseded his nephew General Giron in the command of the Fourth Army[725]. This was indeed a serious blow—not so much because Wellington could always rely on Castaños, and had found Giron more obedient than most Spanish officers, but because it looked as if the Cadiz Government was aiming at an open repudiation of the bargain that had been made in January, by which they had agreed not to make or revoke appointments of the military sort without giving notice, and receiving approval. The excuses given for the changes were paltry and unconvincing—Castaños was wanted to take his seat in the Council of State—Giron was to be sent, with large reinforcements, to serve with Copons as second in command of the Army of Catalonia. Wellington concluded, and rightly, that the real causes of these attacks on his friends were petty political intrigues—the ‘Liberal’ party in Cadiz was trying to secure its own domination by evicting those who might be considered ‘Serviles’ or even ‘Moderates’ from positions of power[726]. He had resolved not to bring the relations between himself and the Regency to a crisis, by making a formal demand for the restoration of Castaños and Giron to their posts. He wrote indeed to the Minister of War to say that he considered that he had been ‘most unworthily treated’ and that there were limits to his forbearance, but he avoided an open rupture, and waited for the Regency to take the next step. He wrote, however, to his brother, the Ambassador at Cadiz, that he ought to call together in private all the more sensible and sound members of the Cortes, and to warn them of the pernicious effects of this last move: unless they wished to see him resign the position of Generalissimo, given him only six months back, they must bring pressure on their government—‘they have it in their power to interfere if they still wish that I should retain the command[727].’

But this political trouble, ominous though it might be of friction in the near future, was not the cause of Wellington’s failure to exploit to the utmost the effects of the battle of Vittoria. The real hindrance was not the state of Spanish politics, but the posture of affairs in Central Europe. The Armistice of Plässwitz had been signed on June 4, and till it came to an end on August 11 there was a possibility of peace between Napoleon and his Russian and Prussian enemies, on terms which Great Britain would be unable to accept. Wellington was sent frequent dispatches by Lord Bathurst, to keep him abreast of the latest developments in the Conferences, but inevitably it took a very long time for news from Saxony to reach London and be transmitted to Spain. Now if Napoleon should succeed in making a separate peace with the Allies, his first care would be to evict the British Army, if it should have entered France in successful pursuit of King Joseph and his demoralized host. Even if it should have taken Bayonne, crushed the enemy’s field force, and made good way towards Bordeaux, it would have no chance of standing against the enormous reserves that could be drawn from Germany, with the Emperor himself at their head. Therefore it would be better to take up a good position on the line of the Pyrenees, secured by capturing St. Sebastian and Pampeluna, than to make an irruption into France, however brilliant the immediate results of such a move might be. Still ignorant on July 12 of the tendency of the conferences at Dresden, Wellington wrote to the Secretary for War: ‘My future operations will depend a good deal upon what passes in the North of Europe: and if operations should recommence there, on the strength and description of the reinforcement which the enemy may get on our front.... I think I can hold the Pyrenees as easily as I can Portugal. I am quite certain that I can hold the position which I have got more easily than the Ebro, or any other line in Spain[728].’ In another letter he explains that he is giving his army a few days of much needed rest, by the end of which he hopes not only to have heard of the fall of St. Sebastian, but of the results of the negotiations in Germany[729]. In a third he puts the matter in the clearest terms: ‘Much depends upon the state of affairs in the North of Europe. If the war should be renewed, I should do most good by moving forward into France, and I should probably be able to establish myself there. If it is not renewed, I should only go into France to be driven out again. So I shall do my best to confine myself to securing what I have gained[730].’ In a fourth he complains that many people, even officers at the front, seem to think that after driving the French from the frontiers of Portugal to the Pyrenees, he ought to invade France immediately. ‘Some expect that we shall be at Paris in a month.’ But though he entertained no doubt that he could enter France to-morrow, and establish the Army on the Adour, he could go no farther. For if peace were made by the Allies, he must necessarily withdraw into Spain, and the retreat, though short, would be through a difficult country and a hostile population. So from what he could gather about the progress of negotiations in Germany, he had determined that it would be unsafe to think of anything in the way of an invasion of France[731].

Everything therefore at present, and for many weeks to follow, depended on the news concerning the Armistice. And the happy intelligence that it had come to an end, and that the war was renewed, with the Austrians added to the Allied forces, only reached Wellington on September 7th. The actual declaration of war by Austria took place on August 11, by which time the situation on the Spanish frontier had suffered many vicissitudes, for in the last fortnight during which the Armistice endured, there had taken place Soult’s desperate invasion of Spain, and all the bloody fighting known as the Battles of the Pyrenees.

Meanwhile we must return to July 1st, on which day Wellington had already made up his mind that his present programme should be confined to bringing up his army to the Bidassoa and the Pyrenean passes, and undertaking the siege of St. Sebastian and the blockade of Pampeluna. He was still not quite happy about the intentions of Clausel—he trusted that the French General and his 15,000 men would retire to France by the pass above Jaca[732]. If he were to remain at Saragossa, and Suchet were there to join him, a tiresome complication would be created on his right rear—wherefore he kept sending letters to William Bentinck, ordering him to keep Suchet busy at all costs, by whatever means might seem best to him[733]. It was not till July 16th that news came that this danger had ended in the desired fashion, by Clausel’s crossing the passes[734]. But whatever might happen in that direction, there was still one point that had to be settled, before it could be considered that the allied army was established on a satisfactory line for defending the Spanish frontier and covering the sieges of St. Sebastian and Pampeluna. The French were still in possession of the Bastan, the high-lying valley of the Upper Bidassoa, through which runs the main road from Pampeluna to Bayonne, by the Col de Velate, and the pass of Maya. This last corner of Spain must be cleared of the invaders, or the crest of the Pyrenees was not yet secure. Accordingly arrangements were made for marching the main body of the British Army to its destined positions through the Bastan, in order to sweep out the lingering enemy.

A sufficient corps must be left to blockade Pampeluna: during the operations against Clausel this duty had been discharged by Hill’s and Silveira’s and Morillo’s troops. As these units had enjoyed five days’ rest, while the remainder of the divisions had been marching hard in eastern Navarre, it was arranged that they should give over the service of the blockade by sections to the returning columns as each came up. Wellington intended to transfer the whole affair in the end to a Spanish force, the ‘Army of Reserve of Andalusia’ under Henry O’Donnell, which had been occupied for the last week in the siege of the forts of Pancorbo, after its very tardy arrival in the zone of operations. King Joseph, when lying at Burgos, had thrown a garrison of 700 men into these forts, which command the high road to the Ebro, in the vain hope of incommoding Wellington’s advance. But as the allied army did not march by the Camino Real at all, but cut across by side routes to Medina del Pomar, the precaution was useless, and cost the enemy a battalion. However, it was necessary to clear the defile, in order to open the easiest line of communication with Madrid, and O’Donnell was directed to capture the forts on his way north to join the main army. He invested them on June 25, and stormed the lower and weaker fort of Santa Marta on the 28th. The upper fort of Santa Engracia was a veritable eagle’s nest, on a most inaccessible position: O’Donnell succeeded with great difficulty in getting six guns up to a point on which they could bear on the work. But the reason why such a strong post surrendered by capitulation two days later was not the artillery fire, but mainly lack of water, the castle well having run nearly dry, and partly the news of Vittoria. A small party of fugitives who had escaped from the field by an incredible détour, corroborated the claims made by the Spanish general when he summoned the place, and the commandant (Major Durand of the 55th Line) surrendered with 650 men, 24 guns, and a good stock of ammunition on June 30th[735].

On getting these news Wellington, on July 2, ordered O’Donnell to come up at once, and take over the blockade of Pampeluna, for which his whole force of 11,000 men would not be too great. For the fortress was large and strongly garrisoned. The King had brought up the number of troops left to the Governor-General Cassan[736] to 3,600 men before leaving the place, and there were over eighty guns mounted on the walls, though two outlying forts in the plain had been abandoned. Wellington allowed nine days for the orders to reach O’Donnell, and for the Army of Reserve to make the long march from Pancorbo to Pampeluna: as a matter of fact it took eleven. Meanwhile the fortress had to be contained by troops from the main army, till the Andalusians should come up—they were due on July 12th. The scheme adopted was that Hill should collect the 2nd Division and Silveira’s Portuguese[737]—their usual contingent of auxiliaries—on the north side of Pampeluna on July 1st, and march on July 2; the ground which he had held being taken over by the Light 3rd and 7th Divisions, returning from the chase of Clausel. On the 3rd the 7th Division was to be relieved by the 4th, and to follow Hill. On the 5th the 6th Division (Clinton) would arrive, and relieve the Light Division which would follow the 7th. The greater part of the cavalry was to be left behind in the plains, being obviously useless in the Pyrenees except in small parties for exploration; but each of the marching divisions had a regiment attached to it.

The result of these arrangements was to leave three divisions (3rd, 4th, 6th), and nearly all the cavalry, for the blockade of Pampeluna—a rather larger force than might have been expected[738]. Four divisions (2nd, Light, 7th, and Silveira’s Portuguese) moved out to clear the Bastan, and to establish communications with Graham’s corps on the Lower Bidassoa. If the French had been in good fighting trim, four divisions would have been none too many for the task, more especially when it is remembered that they were advancing in three échelons, each separated from the next by a long day’s march. But Wellington reckoned that, although he had all Gazan’s and D’Erlon’s troops in front of him—the presence of Reille’s on the Lower Bidassoa had been reported by Graham—they would have no artillery (since it had been lost at Vittoria), would be low in numbers, because they had not yet gathered in their stragglers, and lower still in morale. His estimate was on the whole justified, for the operation was successfully carried out; but it did not go off quite so easily as had been expected. It should be mentioned that, on the bare chance that the French might make a movement from St. Jean-Pied-du-Port to disturb the blockade of Pampeluna—an unlikely possibility—the 2nd Division had detached Byng’s brigade to hold the pass of Roncesvalles, in conjunction with Morillo’s Spanish division. Hill therefore, leading the march towards the Bastan, had only three of his four brigades with him—Cameron’s[739], O’Callaghan’s[740], and Ashworth’s Portuguese. The total of the marching column, from front to rear, was about 22,000 men.

To understand the task set before Hill’s corps it is necessary to go back to the arrangements—if arrangements they can be called, for they were largely involuntary—made by the French Head-quarters Staff during the preceding week. After Reille’s divisions had turned off towards the Bidassoa, and D’Erlon’s had retreated into the Bastan, the main body of the French Army—the four and a half infantry divisions of the Army of the South, with its own cavalry and the bulk of that of the Army of Portugal[741]—had taken the route of the Pass of Roncesvalles, and reached St. Jean-Pied-du-Port, in a state of complete confusion (June 27), preceded by a vanguard of marauders several thousands strong, who swept the countryside of cattle and corn just as freely after they had reached France as while they were still in Navarre. Behind the troops who had kept to their eagles followed a rearguard of footsore stragglers and slightly wounded men, harassed till they came to the frontier by bands of local guerrilleros. The whole mass was in a state of demoralization: the French peasantry had to flee to the hills with what they could carry—every house was plundered save those in which a general or other officer of high rank had quartered himself[742]. St. Jean-Pied-du-Port was a small third-class fortress, garrisoned by a battalion of National Guards, not an arsenal or a dépôt. It was impossible to reorganize an army there, or even to feed it for a few days. The Army of the South rolled back on June 29th to the valleys of the Nivelle and Nive, so as to be near the great magazines of Bayonne, which had always been the base from which the French forces in Spain were supplied. There alone would it be possible to re-form it, and to re-equip it with all the guns and transport necessary to replace the losses of Vittoria. Gazan left one division—that of Conroux—at St. Jean, to block the pass of Roncesvalles: with the other three and a half divisions he arrived on July 1st at Ustaritz, St. Pée and Espelette in the valleys of the Nive and Nivelle, only twelve or fifteen miles from Bayonne. The cavalry was sent back still farther to the line of the Adour.

Soon after this there was a great reduction made in the mounted arm. Orders arrived from Germany that only the cavalry of the Army of the South was to remain on the frontier. Boyer’s dragoons of the Army of Portugal, Treillard’s dragoons of the Army of the Centre, and seven light cavalry regiments of the Armies of Portugal and the North were to start off at once[743]. Napoleon in his Saxon campaign had been suffering bitterly from a want of good cavalry, and had directed the King to send these veteran regiments across France with all speed, whatever might be the state of affairs in Spain.

It is quite clear that if Wellington had chosen, on June 26th, to follow Gazan across the Pyrenees, instead of turning aside to chase Clausel, he could have done anything that he pleased with the enemy. But this, for the reasons that we have detailed above—was not his game for the moment. Hence the shattered Army of Spain had a few days in which to commence reorganization. The easiest thing was the replacement of the 151 cannon lost at Vittoria. Bayonne was a great artillery storehouse, and the French gunners had brought away their teams, if they had left all their pieces behind them. On July 6th General Tirlet, the officer commanding the artillery of the united armies, could report to the King that he had already served out 80 guns—33 each to the Armies of Gazan and Reille, 10 to the Army of the Centre, and 4 to the mobile division of the Bayonne Reserve. By the end of the month he promised to have 120 or even 150 pieces ready, which would give every division its battery, as well as a good reserve. And these pledges were fulfilled—with help from the arsenals of Toulouse, Blaye, and La Rochelle. But the supply of caissons was for some time very low, and the wheeled transport for the train was much more difficult to procure, requisitions on the Pyrenean departments being difficult to enforce, and slow to collect. As to food supply, the main difficulty was that although there was a considerable accumulation of stores at Bayonne, no one had ever contemplated the chance that 60,000 starving men would be thrown on the resources of the dépôt in one mass. Much flour was there, but not enough ovens to bake it, or wagons to carry it to the troops lying fifteen or twenty miles out, on the Bidassoa or the Nive. And these troops had lost all their own carts and fourgons. Even as much as a month later the army, reorganized in other respects, had not got enough transport to carry more than a few days’ food, as Marshal Soult was to find.

King Joseph had left Pampeluna long before his troops, and taking a short cut had reached St. Jean de Luz on June 28th, and set up his last head-quarters there. He was painfully aware of the fact that his great brother would in all probability visit upon his head all his inevitable wrath for the results of the late campaign; but to the final moment of his command he strove to exercise his authority, and busied himself with the details of projected operations. He was at this moment somewhat estranged from Marshal Jourdan, who had taken to his bed, and kept complaining that the generals would neither give him information nor take his orders, but confined themselves to making ill-natured comments on the battle of Vittoria. The King, instead of relying on his advice, asked council on all sides, and hovered between many opinions.

It is a sufficient proof of the incoherence of both Jourdan’s and Joseph’s military ideas, that at this moment they were thinking seriously of resuming the offensive and re-entering Spain. When he received Clausel’s dispatches announcing his safe arrival at Saragossa, and the possibility of his junction with Suchet, the King was fascinated for the moment with the idea of bringing Wellington to a stand, by attacking his flank and rear in Aragon. This could only be done by sending large reinforcements to Clausel, and so weakening the main army. The real objection to this plan was that the troops were in no condition to march, or indeed to fight, till they should have had time for rest and reorganization. Jourdan, however, drew up on July 5—the very day on which Wellington was beginning to drive Gazan out of the Bastan—as we shall presently see—a memoir for the King’s consideration, which laid out three possible policies. One was to advance with every unit that could move, against Graham, who was wrongly supposed to have only one British division with him. The second was to march to relieve Pampeluna by Roncesvalles, after first calling in Clausel to help. The third was to accept the idea which lay at the base of Clausel’s last dispatch, to leave 15,000 men on the Bidassoa to detain Graham, and to move the rest of the army by the Jaca passes into Aragon. It was conceded that artillery could not go that way, and that Clausel had none with him—but some guns might be picked up at Saragossa and from Suchet, and a very large body of troops would be placed on Wellington’s flank. It is difficult to say which of the three schemes was more impracticable for the moment, as a policy for the starving and demoralized Army of Spain.

A more serious project, and one for which there would have been much to say, if the French Army had been at this moment in a condition to feed itself, or to manœuvre, or to commit itself to an action which would involve the expenditure of more ammunition than the infantry could carry in their pouches, was one for strengthening the front in the Bastan. While this long valley was still retained, direct communication between Wellington’s main body about Pampeluna and the large detachment under Graham on the Bidassoa was blocked. But the Bastan was occupied by the weakest section of the French forces, D’Erlon’s Army of the Centre, one of whose infantry divisions (Darmagnac’s) had been ruined at the battle of Vittoria, where it lost more men in proportion to its strength than any other unit[744], while another—Casapalacios’ Spanish division—was disappearing rapidly by desertion. There were only left, in a condition to fight, the Royal Guards—a little over 2,000 men—and Cassagne’s division, which had suffered no serious casualties in the recent campaign. Clearly the Bastan and the numerous passes which descend into it could not be held by 10,000 infantry, some of them in very bad order, even though they might get some guns from the Bayonne arsenal. Wherefore Joseph ordered D’Erlon to make over the defence of the Bastan to the Army of the South, and to fall back to the line of the Nivelle, where he should join Reille. Gazan was directed to take over charge of this important salient, with the whole of his army, save Conroux’s division left at St. Jean-Pied-du-Port[745] (July 3).

Gazan, who had only reached the Nive two days before, whose troops had not yet recovered from the starvation which they had suffered in the march from Pampeluna to Ustaritz and Espelette, who had lost his transport, and who had not yet received the 33 guns which had been sent him from Bayonne (though he was told that they were just coming up), made objections very rational in themselves to these orders. He said that his troops must have food and guns, or they could not be expected to maintain their positions. He also remarked that it was exasperating that he had not been told to march straight from St. Jean-Pied-du-Port to the Bastan by the direct pass at Ispegui, instead of being brought back two days’ march to the Nive, and then sent south again to the Maya pass, only twelve miles from his starting-point[746].

Gazan started out, unwillingly and with many protests, from his cantonments on the Nive on the morning of July 3, sending one of his divisions, Leval’s, by the inferior mountain road from Sarre on the Nivelle to Etchalar and Santesteban in the western Bastan, the rest by the Maya pass to Elizondo, the chief road-centre in the eastern or upper Bastan. From these points they were to spread themselves out, and take over all the passes south and west from D’Erlon’s troops. The commander of the Army of the Centre began to clear out his reserves northwards, and to arrange for the rapid departure of each advanced section, as it should be relieved by the arrival of Gazan’s divisions. He met his colleague on the way, handed over the charge to him, and then rode down to make his report to Jourdan at St. Pée (July 5), where he dropped the cheering remark that if the Army of the South did not receive very heavy convoys of food at once, it would go to pieces of its own accord and quit the Bastan within a few days, as his own army had eaten up the valley and no troops could live there[747].

Darmagnac’s division and the Royal Guard had been relieved by Leval, while Cassagne’s first brigade was marching north by Elizondo, though his second was still blocking the Col de Velate till Gazan’s troops should arrive, when Wellington’s attack was delivered—at the most opportune of moments. Nothing could have been better for him than that the enemy should have been caught in the middle of an uncompleted exchange of troops, before the incoming army had gained any knowledge of the ground. Moreover, though Gazan had double as many men with him as D’Erlon, they had not enjoyed the comparative rest which the Army of the Centre had gained since June 26th, but had been countermarching all the time, and were in a very dilapidated condition. Otherwise there would have been much greater difficulty in driving them out of the Bastan with the very moderate force that Wellington actually used. For he was able to finish the business with four brigades—the three of the 2nd Division and one of Silveira’s—which formed the head of his column. Of the rear échelons, the 7th Division, which started from Pampeluna on the 4th, got up only in time to see the very end of the game, and the Light Division were never engaged at all.

At noon on July 4th Cameron’s Brigade[748], forming the advanced guard of the 2nd Division, crossed the highest point of the Col de Velate, and ran into half a battalion of the 16th Léger. This was the rearguard of Braun’s brigade of Cassagne’s division, which was holding the village of Berrueta, a few miles down the northern slope of the pass, waiting till it should be relieved by Maransin’s division from Gazan’s army. This detachment was evicted from Berrueta and Aniz, and fell back on Ziga, where the other battalion of its regiment was in position. That village also was cleared, but Hill’s leading brigade then found itself in front of Maransin’s division marching rapidly up the road, with other troops visible in a long column behind. Hill, seeing that he was about to be involved in a serious fight with heavy numbers, began to deploy the rear brigades of the 2nd Division behind the ravine in front of Aniz, as each came up, abandoning the recently taken Ziga. The French, in the same fashion, gradually formed a long line on their side of the ravine, extending it eastward from the village and showing two brigades in front line and two in reserve on the heights of Irurita some way behind.

Hill appears to have felt the French front in several places, but to have desisted on discovering its strength. Skirmishing of a bloodless sort went on all the afternoon, each side waiting for its reserves to come up. Before dusk Gazan had drawn in all Villatte’s division, which had reached Santesteban earlier in the day, and the non-divisional brigade of Gruardet, so that by night he had two complete divisions and two extra brigades concentrated—at least 13,000 men[749]. Behind Hill there was only Da Costa’s brigade of Silveira’s division, which was a full march to the rear: for Wellington had ordered A. Campbell’s brigade—the other half of the Portuguese division—to take a different route, that up the Arga river by Zubiri to Eugui, which goes by a bad pass (Col de Urtiaga) into the French valley of the Alduides.

Hill’s position was a distinctly unpleasant one, since he had only three brigades up in line, with another out of any reasonable supporting distance, if the enemy should think fit to press in upon him. The 7th Division was two marches away, while the Light Division was still before Pampeluna; both were altogether out of reach. Owing to heavy losses at Vittoria, the three second division brigades can hardly have numbered 6,000 bayonets[750]. Their commander very wisely waited for the arrival of Wellington from the rear. Head-quarters that day had been at Lanz, on the road from Pampeluna to the Col de Velate.

The Commander-in-Chief came up at about midday on the 5th, following in the wake of Da Costa’s Portuguese, who were bringing up with them two batteries of artillery—the first guns that either side had shown in the Bastan. After looking at the French positions Wellington resolved to push on—this was a purely psychological resolve, for his numbers did not justify any such a move; he relied on his estimate of the morale of Gazan, and that estimate turned out to be perfectly correct.

Hill’s operations, till Wellington took over charge of the field, had been limited to cautious reconnaissances of the enemy’s flanks. But with the change in command decisive action began: Cameron’s brigade was sent out by the steep hillsides on the right to turn Gazan’s left flank; O’Callaghan’s, with Ashworth’s Portuguese in support, crossed the ravine in front of Aniz, and deployed on each side of the road to attack his centre. If Gazan had stood to fight, and brought up all his reserves, it is hard to see how he could have been moved: indeed he ought to have scored a big success if he had dared to counter-attack—for Wellington had no reserves save Da Costa’s Portuguese brigade. But, like Murray at Tarragona, the French general had been making himself dreadful pictures of the strength that might conceivably be in front of him. Three prisoners taken at Ziga on the preceding day had told him that they belonged to Hill’s corps—he presumed it complete in front of him, with all its six brigades, instead of the actual three. Then a heavy column had come up at noon—Da Costa’s brigade—Gazan judged it to be some fresh division from Pampeluna. In addition he had received a cry of alarm from Conroux at St. Jean-Pied-du-Port—that officer reported that on July 4 a Spanish corps was threatening his flank from the Val Carlos—this was no more than a reconnaissance thrown out by Morillo. Also he got news from the Alduides valley of the arrival of A. Campbell’s Portuguese brigade at Eugui—he deduced from this information, joined to the report about Morillo, a turning movement against his left flank, by forces of unknown but probably considerable strength. Lastly, by drawing in Villatte’s division to his main body, he had left open a gap on his right, between his own positions in front of Elizondo and those of Leval at Santesteban. He was seized with a panic fear lest another British column might pour into this gap, by the mountain roads leading from Lanz and Almandoz into the middle Bastan[751]. And, indeed, Wellington had started the 7th Division on one of these passes, the Puerto de Arraiz—but it was still 20 miles away.

Already on the night of the 4th Gazan had written to the King that he must ask for leave to make his stand at the Maya pass, rather than to hold all the minor defiles which converge into the Bastan—a complicated system of tracks whose defence involved a terrible dissemination of forces. By noon on the 5th, having seen Wellington’s arrival with Da Costa’s brigade, he made up his mind that if the enemy attacked him frontally it must be to engage his attention, while encircling columns closed in upon his flanks and rear, from the Alduides on the one side and the western passes on the other. When the movement against his front began, his troops in the position by Ziga retired, without waiting to receive the attack, and took cover behind Villatte’s division, drawn up on the heights of Irurita. Hill had to spend time in re-forming his lines before he could resume the offensive; but when he did so against Villatte’s troops, they gave way in turn, and retired behind Maransin’s division, which was now placed above the village of Elizondo. In this way the enemy continued to retire by échelons, without allowing the pursuers to close, until by dusk he stood still at last at the Col de Maya, where he offered battle. Gazan was extremely well satisfied with himself, and considered that he had made a masterly retreat in face of overwhelming hostile forces. As a matter of fact he had been giving way, time after time, to mere demonstrations by a force of little more than half his own strength—four weak brigades were pushing back his six. But he never made a long enough stand to enable him to discover the very moderate strength of the pursuers. The whole business was a field day exercise—the total casualties only reached a few scores on each side. Gazan’s elaborate narrative about the various occasions on which British vanguards were surprised to run into heavy fire, suffered heavily, and had to halt, find its best comment in the fact that the total loss of English and Portuguese during three days of petty combats was only 5 officers and 119 men, and that this day, July 5, was the least bloody of the three.

Well satisfied to have manœuvred the enemy out of the Bastan without any appreciable loss to himself, Wellington accepted the challenge which the Army of the South offered him by halting on the Maya positions. But he waited for the 7th Division to come up, rightly thinking that the two British and two Portuguese brigades hitherto employed were too weak a force, now that the enemy showed signs of making his final stand. The 7th Division, acting under the senior brigadier, Barnes, for Lord Dalhousie had been left behind to conduct the blockade of Pampeluna, had marched on the 4th, the day when Hill was commencing to push the French north of the Col de Velate. Wellington had intended from the first that it should take a route which would enable it to turn Gazan’s right: it went north from Marcalain, where it had concentrated on giving up its blockading work, by Lizaso, to the pass of Arraiz, by which it descended into the Bastan on the 6th. It then occupied Santesteban, from which Leval’s division had been withdrawn by Gazan at the same moment at which he fell back himself on to the pass of Maya. Pending its arrival Wellington remained halted in front of the French positions for the whole of the 6th, filling the enemy with various unjustifiable fears; for they over-valued his strength, and credited him with much more ambitious projects than those which he really entertained. This halt on the 6th seemed to them to cover some elaborate snare, while its real purpose was only to allow him to make his next move with 14,000 instead of with 8,000 men. The plan for the morning of the 7th was that Hill’s column should attack the Maya positions in front, while the 7th Division should cross the Bidassoa at Santesteban, and take a mountain road which would bring it out upon the flank of Gazan’s line, which rested on the Peak of Atchiola. This would be a hard day’s march by a rough track, along interminable crests and dips. Meanwhile, on July 8th, another British unit would come up: the Light Division was relieved at Pampeluna by the 4th Division on the 5th, and following in the track of Barnes, Charles Alten was to be at Santesteban on the night of the 7th, and at the fighting front by the next morning.

The halt which Wellington imposed on his leading column upon July 6th gave time for the French Higher Command to make an astounding series of blunders. To discriminate between true and false reports is one of the most difficult tasks for any general, and the faculty of making a correct decision after receiving a number of contradictory data is undoubtedly one of the best tests of military ability. All men may err—but greater errors have seldom been made in a day than those of Jourdan and King Joseph on July 6th. They started, perhaps naturally, with the leading idea that Wellington was about to undertake the invasion of France on a grand scale. Where would the blow fall? Graham had been quiescent for some days on the Bidassoa, and it was obvious that the troops on his front were mainly Spaniards—the Army of Galicia and Longa’s Cantabrians were alone visible. Gazan, though making constant complaints that he was outnumbered and oppressed by a ‘triple force’, had not as yet accounted for anything but Hill’s corps as present in his front. Where, then, was the rest of Wellington’s army? The concentration of troops in front of Pampeluna had been ascertained—what had become of them? Now Conroux at St. Jean-Pied-du-Port kept sending in messages of alarm. Morillo’s reconnaissances had induced him to push most of his division forward to watch the passes in his front, and he reported Byng’s brigade at Roncesvalles as a considerable accumulation of British troops. Then came the news that A. Campbell’s Portuguese brigade had entered the Alduides valley, by descending which it could cut in between Conroux and the rest of the army. Probably it was the over-emphasis of Conroux’s cries of warning which set the King and Jourdan wrong—but whatever the cause, they jumped to the conclusion that the serious invasion was to come on the inland flank—that Byng and Campbell were the forerunners of a great force marching to turn their left, by Roncesvalles and the eastern passes. Acting on this utterly erroneous hypothesis, they issued a series of orders for the hasty transference of great bodies of troops towards St. Jean-Pied-du-Port. Leval’s division of the Army of the South—which had retired to Echalar after evacuating Santesteban—Cassagne’s and Darmagnac’s divisions of the Army of the Centre—which had handed over the Bastan to Gazan and retired to St. Pée—and Thouvenot’s provisional division of troops of the Army of the North[752], from the Lower Bidassoa, were all started off by forced marches to join Conroux at St. Jean-Pied-du-Port. Only Reille with the four divisions of the Army of Portugal was left to face Graham[753], and Gazan was directed to hold the Maya positions with Maransin’s and Villatte’s divisions and Gruardet’s brigade alone. Thus, while Wellington was about to deliver his rather leisurely blow at the French centre, all the enemy’s reserves were sent off to their extreme left. Nothing could have been more convenient to the British general, if he had attacked one or two days later on the Maya front, when the troops on the move would all have got past him on their way south-eastward. But as he made his assault the day after the King’s orders were issued, it resulted that the marching columns were passing just behind the part of the enemy’s line at which he was aiming, so that Gazan had more supports at hand than might have been expected. But this was neither to the credit of the King, who had not intended to provide them, nor to the discredit of Wellington, who could not possibly have foreseen such strategical errors as those in which his enemy was indulging.

On the morning of July 7th Gazan was in battle order at Maya, with Maransin’s division and Gruardet’s brigade holding the pass, and the heights on each side of it from the hill of Alcorrunz on the west to the rock of Aretesque on the east. Villatte’s division (commanded on this day by its senior brigadier, Rignoux, for Villatte was sick) formed the reserve, on the high road to Urdax, behind the main crest. Wellington’s simple form of attack was to send O’Callaghan’s brigade to turn the French left by a mountain road, Cameron’s brigade to seize the peak of Atchiola beyond his extreme right, so as to outflank Gazan on that side, to demonstrate with the Portuguese and his two batteries in the centre, and to wait for the crucial moment when the 7th Division, on the march since the morning by the hill road from Santesteban to Urdax, should appear in the enemy’s rear. Then a general assault would take place.

The scheme did not work out accurately. The Portuguese demonstrated, as was ordered. O’Callaghan’s brigade accomplished its turning movement, and got into contact with Remond’s brigade of Maransin’s division, on the extreme French left at the rock of Aretesque. Cameron’s brigade took the hill of Alcorrunz without difficulty, but was then held up by the bulk of Villatte’s division, which came up from the rear and held the crest of the Atchiola with six battalions; it could not be dislodged. So far so good—the enemy was engaged all along the line and had used up three-fourths of his reserve. But early in the afternoon a dense fog set in, and the 7th Division never appeared in the enemy’s rear. It had got involved in the darkness, lost its way, and wandered helpless. Wherefore the other attacks were never pressed. ‘If the 7th Division had arrived in time, and the sea fog had held off for an hour or two, we should have made a good thing of it,’ wrote Wellington to Graham[754]. ‘Our loss is about 60 wounded—on the other days; (4th and 5th) there was a good deal of firing, but we sustained no loss at all.’

Early on the morning of July 8 Gazan, after having written a most insincere report concerning the skirmish of the preceding day, combat des plus opiniâtres, in which he had checked the enemy with loss, abandoned the Maya positions before he was again attacked. He had the impudence to write to Jourdan that he had only recoiled because Head-Quarters refused to send him any supports[755]. As a matter of fact the King had checked the progress of the troops marching to St. Jean-Pied-du-Port, and was sending them straight to Urdax and Ainhoue, where all the four divisions arrived on the 8th, early in the day. If Gazan had chosen to hold on to the pass he would have had 15,000 men added to his strength by the evening. But he went off at 6 a.m., and Hill occupied the crest an hour later. Wellington was so far from intending any further advance that he wrote that afternoon to Graham that he was now at leisure to take a look at the whole line of the Bidassoa down to the sea, and intended to pay his lieutenant a visit. A day later he told Lord Bathurst that ‘the whole of our right being now established on the frontier, I am proceeding to the left to superintend the operations there’—which meant in the main the siege of St. Sebastian. The troops which had been brought up to the Bastan took up permanent quarters—the Light Division at Santesteban, the 7th at Elizondo, Hill’s two British brigades at the Maya positions, to which artillery was brought up, while Ashworth’s and Da Costa’s Portuguese were set to guard the minor eastern passes which open from the Bastan into the Alduides, or Val de Baygorri—the Col d’Ispegui and the Col de Berderis. They connected themselves with A. Campbell’s Portuguese brigade, which watched the southern exit from that long French valley. Campbell, for his part, had to keep touch along the frontier with Byng and Morillo in the Roncesvalles country. The 3rd, 4th, and 6th Divisions still lay round Pampeluna, anxiously expecting to be relieved by the Army of Reserve of Andalusia. But Henry O’Donnell, though due on the 12th, did not appear and take over the blockade till the 16th-17th. This delay began to worry Wellington a few days later, but on the 8th-9th he was still content with the position of affairs, rightly judging that the enemy was in no condition to make a push in any direction, till he should have got his troops rested, his artillery replaced, and his transport reorganized.

Otherwise he could not have taken so lightly the fact that opposite the Maya positions the enemy had now accumulated six and a half divisions, expecting to be attacked by columns descending from the Bastan within the next few days. Joseph and Jourdan spent an immense amount of unnecessary pains in the hurried shifting of troops, during the short space that intervened before the thunderbolt which was coming from Germany fell on their unlucky heads. But who, in their position, could have guessed that a mainly political consideration was intervening, to prevent Wellington from undertaking that invasion of France which seemed his obvious military duty?

One last measure of precaution on their adversary’s part modified the front at the end of the petty campaign of the Bastan—but by that time Joseph and Jourdan were gone. On July 15th Wellington made up his mind that the defensive position on the lower Bidassoa, by which he was covering the siege of St. Sebastian, was not safe on its inland flank, where the French were still in possession of the town of Vera, at the gorge of the Bidassoa, where it emerges from its high upland course in the Bastan. Vera and its bridge presented an obvious point of concentration for a force intending to trouble the right wing of Graham’s corps. Wherefore it was necessary to clear the enemy out of this point of vantage, and to shorten the line between Hill in the Bastan and Giron on the lower Bidassoa. Uncertain as to whether the French would make a serious stand or not, Wellington ordered up large forces—the 7th Division and the newly-arrived Light Division from Santesteban, Longa, and one brigade of Giron’s Galicians from the covering troops. But the enemy—Lamartinière’s division of Reille’s army—offered only a rearguard action, and withdrew to the other side of the hills which separate the Bastan from the coast region—abandoning the ‘Puertos’ or passes of Vera and Echalar. They feared that the advance of the allied left centre might be the prelude to a general attack, and began to make preparations to receive it. But their anxiety disappeared when it became clear that Wellington only wanted Vera and its defile, and had no further offensive purpose. The Light Division occupied Vera: the 7th, extending to the right, took over the pass of Echalar and got into touch with Hill’s advanced guard at Maya.