Chapter II…

Chapter II

[Sidenote: 1813. November.]

Soult having lost the Nivelle, at first designed to leave part of his forces in the entrenched camp of Bayonne, and with the remainder take a flanking position behind the Nive, half-way between Bayonne and St. Jean Pied de Port, securing his left by the entrenched mountain of Ursouia, and his right on the heights above Cambo, the bridge-head of which would give him the power of making offensive movements. He could thus keep his troops together and restore their confidence, while he confined the allies to a small sterile district of France between the river and the sea, and rendered their situation very uneasy during the winter if they did not retire. However he soon modified this plan. The works of the Bayonne camp were not complete and his presence was necessary to urge their progress. The camp on the Ursouia mountain had been neglected contrary to his orders, and the bridge-head at Cambo was only commenced on the right bank. On the left it was indeed complete but constructed on a bad trace. Moreover he found that the Nive in dry weather was fordable at Ustaritz below Cambo, and at many places above that point. Remaining therefore at Bayonne himself with six divisions and Villatte’s reserve, he sent D’Erlon with three divisions to reinforce Foy at Cambo. Yet neither D’Erlon’s divisions nor Soult’s whole army could have stopped lord Wellington at this time if other circumstances had permitted the latter to follow up his victory as he designed.

The hardships and privations endured on the mountains by the Anglo-Portuguese troops had been beneficial to them as an army. The fine air and the impossibility of the soldiers committing their usual excesses in drink had rendered them unusually healthy, while the facility of enforcing a strict discipline, and their natural impatience to win the fair plains spread out before them, had raised their moral and physical qualities in a wonderful degree. Danger was their sport, and their experienced general in the prime and vigour of life was as impatient for action as his soldiers. Neither the works of the Bayonne camp nor the barrier of the Nive, suddenly manned by a beaten and dispirited army, could have long withstood the progress of such a fiery host, and if Wellington could have let their strength and fury loose in the first days succeeding the battle of the Nivelle France would have felt his conquering footsteps to her centre. But the country at the foot of the Pyrenees is a deep clay, quite impassable after rain except by the royal road near the coast and that of St. Jean Pied de Port, both of which were in the power of the French. On the bye-roads the infantry sunk to the mid leg, the cavalry above the horses’ knees, and even to the saddle-girths in some places. The artillery could not move at all. The rain had commenced on the 11th, the mist in the early part of the 12th had given Soult time to regain his camp and secure the high road to St. Jean Pied de Port, by which his troops easily gained their proper posts on the Nive, while his adversary fixed in the swamps could only make the ineffectual demonstration at Ustaritz and Cambo already noticed.

Wellington uneasy for his right flank while the French commanded the Cambo passage across the Nive directed general Hill to menace it again on the 16th. Foy had received orders to preserve the bridge-head on the right bank in any circumstances, but he was permitted to abandon the work on the left bank in the event of a general attack; however at Hill’s approach the officer placed there in command destroyed all the works and the bridge itself. This was a great cross to Soult, and the allies’ flank being thus secured they were put into cantonments to avoid the rain, which fell heavily. The bad weather was however not the only obstacle to the English general’s operations. On the very day of the battle Freyre’s and Longa’s soldiers entering Ascain pillaged it and murdered several persons; the next day the whole of the Spanish troops continued these excesses in various places, and on the right Mina’s battalions, some of whom were also in a state of mutiny, made a plundering and murdering incursion from the mountains towards Hellette. The Portuguese and British soldiers of the left wing had commenced the like outrages and two French persons were killed in one town, however the adjutant-general Pakenham arriving at the moment saw and instantly put the perpetrators to death thus nipping this wickedness in the bud, but at his own risk for legally he had not that power. This general whose generosity humanity and chivalric spirit excited the admiration of every honourable person who approached him, is the man who afterwards fell at New Orleans and who has been so foully traduced by American writers. He who was pre-eminently distinguished by his detestation of inhumanity and outrage has been with astounding falsehood represented as instigating his troops to the most infamous excesses. But from a people holding millions of their fellow-beings in the most horrible slavery while they prate and vaunt of liberty until all men turn with loathing from the sickening folly, what can be expected?

Terrified by these excesses the French people fled even from the larger towns, but Wellington quickly relieved their terror. On the 12th, although expecting a battle, he put to death all the Spanish marauders he could take in the act, and then with many reproaches and despite of the discontent of their generals, forced the whole to withdraw into their own country. He disarmed the insubordinate battalions under Mina, quartered Giron’s Andalusians in the Bastan where O’Donnel resumed the command; sent Freyre’s Gallicians to the district between Irun and Ernani, and Longa over the Ebro. Morillo’s division alone remained with the army. These decisive proceedings marking the lofty character of the man proved not less politic than resolute. The French people immediately returned, and finding the strictest discipline preserved and all things paid for adopted an amicable intercourse with the invaders. However the loss of such a mass of troops and the effects of weather on the roads reduced the army for the moment to a state of inactivity; the head-quarters were suddenly fixed at St. Jean de Luz, and the troops were established in permanent cantonments with the following line of battle.

[Sidenote: Plan 7.]

The left wing occupied a broad ridge on both sides of the great road beyond Bidart, the principal post being at a mansion belonging to the mayor of Biaritz. The front was covered by a small stream spreading here and there into large ponds or tanks between which the road was conducted. The centre posted partly on the continuation of this ridge in front of Arcangues, partly on the hill of San Barbe, extended by Arrauntz to Ustaritz, the right being thrown back to face count D’Erlon’s position, extended by Cambo to Itzassu. From this position which might stretch about six miles on the front and eight miles on the flank, strong picquets were pushed forwards to several points, and the infantry occupied all the villages and towns behind as far back as Espelette, Suraide, Ainhoa, San Pé, Sarre, and Ascain. One regiment of Vandeleur’s cavalry was with the advanced post on the left, the remainder were sent to Andaya and Urogne, Victor Alten’s horsemen were about San Pé, and the heavy cavalry remained in Spain.

In this state of affairs the establishment of the different posts in front led to several skirmishes. In one on the 18th, general John Wilson and general Vandeleur were wounded; but on the same day Beresford drove the French from the bridge of Urdains, near the junction of the Ustaritz and San Pé roads, and though attacked in force the next day he maintained his acquisition. A more serious action occurred on the 23d in front of Arcangues. This village held by the picquets of the light division was two or three miles in front of Arbonne where the nearest support was cantoned. It is built on the centre of a crescent-shaped ridge, and the sentries of both armies were so close that the reliefs and patroles actually passed each other in their rounds, so that a surprise was inevitable if it suited either side to attempt it. Lord Wellington visited this post and the field-officer on duty made known to him its disadvantages, and the means of remedying them by taking entire possession of the village, pushing picquets along the horns of the crescent, and establishing a chain of posts across the valley between them. He appeared satisfied with this project, and two days afterwards the forty-third and some of the riflemen were employed to effect it, the greatest part of the division being brought up in support. The French after a few shots abandoned Arcangues, Bussussary, and both horns of the crescent, retiring before the picquets to a large fortified house situated at the mouth of the valley. The project suggested by the field-officer was thus executed with the loss of only five men wounded and the action should have ceased, but the picquets of the forty-third suddenly received orders to attack the fortified house, and the columns of support were shewn at several points of the semicircle; the French then conceiving they were going to be seriously assailed reinforced their post; a sharp skirmish ensued and the picquets were finally withdrawn to the ground they had originally gained and beyond which they should never have been pushed. This ill-managed affair cost eighty-eight men and officers of which eighty were of the forty-third.

[Sidenote: December.]

[Sidenote: Original Morning States, MSS.]

Lord Wellington, whose powerful artillery and cavalry, the former consisting of nearly one hundred field-pieces and the latter furnishing more than eight thousand six hundred sabres, were paralysed in the contracted space he occupied, was now anxious to pass the Nive, but the rain which continued to fall baffled him, and meanwhile Mina’s Spaniards descending once more from the Alduides to plunder Baigorry were beaten by the national guards of that valley. However early in December the weather amended, forty or fifty pieces of artillery were brought up, and other preparations made to surprize or force the passage of the Nive at Cambo and Ustaritz. And as this operation led to sanguinary battles it is fitting first to describe the exact position of the French.

[Sidenote: Plans 7 and 8.]

Bayonne situated at the confluence of the Nive and the Adour commands the passage of both. A weak fortress of the third order its importance was in its position, and its entrenched camp, exceedingly strong and commanded by the fortress could not be safely attacked in front, wherefore Soult kept only six divisions there. His right composed of Reille’s two divisions and Villatte’s reserve touched on the Lower Adour where there was a flotilla of gun-boats. It was covered by a swamp and artificial inundation, through which the royal road led to St. Jean de Luz, and the advanced posts, well entrenched, were pushed forward beyond Anglet on this causeway. His left under Clauzel, composed of three divisions, extended from Anglet to the Nive; it was covered partly by the swamp, partly by the large fortified house which the light division assailed on the 23d, partly by an inundation spreading below Urdains towards the Nive. Thus entrenched the fortified outposts may be called the front of battle, the entrenched camp the second line, and the fortress the citadel. The country in front a deep clay soil, enclosed and covered with small wood and farm-houses, was very difficult to move in.

Beyond the Nive the entrenched camp stretching from that river to the Adour was called the front of Mousseroles. It was in the keeping of D’Erlon’s four divisions, which were also extended up the right bank of the Nive; that is to say, D’Armagnac’s troops was in front of Ustaritz, and Foy prolonged the line to Cambo. The remainder of D’Erlon’s corps was in reserve, occupying a strong range of heights about two miles in front of Mousseroles, the right at Villefranque on the Nive, the left at Old Moguerre towards the Adour. D’Erlon’s communications with the rest of the army were double, one circuitous through Bayonne, the other direct by a bridge of boats thrown above that place.

After the battle of the Nivelle Soult brought general Paris’s division from St. Jean Pied de Port to Lahoussoa close under the Ursouia mountain, where it was in connection with Foy’s left, communicating by the great road to St. Jean Pied de Port which ran in a parallel direction to the river.

The Nive, the Adour, and the Gave de Pau which falls into the latter many miles above Bayonne, were all navigable, the first as far as Ustaritz, the second to Dax, the third to Peyrehorade, and the great French magazines were collected at the two latter places. But the army was fed with difficulty, and hence to restrain Soult from the country beyond the Nive, to intercept his communications with St. Jean Pied de Port, to bring a powerful cavalry into activity, and to obtain secret intelligence from the interior of Spain were Wellington’s inducements to force a passage over the Nive. Yet to place the troops on both sides of a navigable river with communications bad at all times and subject to entire interruptions from rain; to do this in face of an army possessing short communications good roads and entrenched camps for retreat, was a delicate and dangerous operation.

[Sidenote: Original States, MSS.]

On the 7th orders were issued for forcing the passage on the 9th. On that day sir John Hope and Charles Alten, with the first, fifth, and light divisions, the unattached brigades of infantry, Vandeleur’s cavalry and twelve guns, in all about twenty-four thousand combatants, were to drive back the French advanced posts along the whole front of the entrenched camp between the Nive and the sea. This movement was partly to examine the course of the Lower Adour with a view to subsequent operations, but principally to make Soult discover his dispositions of defence on that side, and to keep his troops in check while Beresford and Hill crossed the Nive. To support this double operation the fourth and seventh divisions were secretly brought up from Ascain and Espelette on the 8th, the latter to the hill of St. Barbe, from whence it detached one brigade to relieve the posts of the third division. There remained the second the third and the sixth divisions, Hamilton’s Portuguese, and Morillo’s Spaniards, for the passage. Beresford leading the third and sixth reinforced with six guns and a squadron of cavalry, was to cross at Ustaritz with pontoons, Hill having the second division, Hamilton’s Portuguese, Vivian’s and Victor Alten’s cavalry, and fourteen guns, was to ford the river at Cambo and Larressore. Both generals were then to repair the bridges at these respective points with materials prepared beforehand; and to cover Hill’s movement on the right and protect the valley of the Nive from Paris, who being at Lahoussoa might have penetrated to the rear of the army during the operations, Morillo’s Spaniards were to cross at Itzassu. At this time Foy’s division was extended from Halzou in front of Larressore, to the fords above Cambo, the Ursouia mountain being between his left and Paris. The rest of D’Erlon’s troops remained on the heights of Moguerre in front of Mousserolles.

PASSAGE OF THE NIVE AND BATTLES IN FRONT OF BAYONNE.

[Sidenote: Plans 7 and 8.]

At Ustaritz the French had broken both bridges, but the island connecting them was in possession of the British. Beresford laid his pontoons down on the hither side in the night of the 8th and in the morning of the 9th a beacon lighted on the heights above Cambo gave the signal of attack. The passage was immediately forced under the fire of the artillery, the second bridge was laid, and D’Armagnac’s brigade was driven back by the sixth division; but the swampy nature of the country between the river and the high road retarded the allies’ march and gave the French time to retreat with little loss. At the same time Hill’s troops, also covered by the fire of artillery, forced the passage in three columns above and below Cambo with slight resistance, though the fords were so deep that several horsemen were drowned, and the French strongly posted, especially at Halzou where there was a deep and strong mill-race to cross as well as the river.

Foy seeing, by the direction of Beresford’s fire, that his retreat was endangered, retired hastily with his left leaving his right wing under general Berlier at Halzou without orders. Hence when general Pringle attacked the latter from Larressore, the sixth division was already on the high road between Foy and Berlier, who escaped by cross roads towards Hasparen, but did not rejoin his division until two o’clock in the afternoon. Meanwhile Morillo crossed at Itzassu, and Paris retired to Hellette where he was joined by a regiment of light cavalry belonging to Pierre Soult who was then on the Bidouse river. Morillo followed, and in one village near Hellette his troops killed fifteen peasants, amongst them several women and children.

General Hill having won the passage, placed a brigade of infantry at Urcurray to cover the bridge of Cambo, and to support the cavalry which he despatched to scour the roads towards Lahoussoa, St. Jean Pied de Port, and Hasparen, and to observe Paris and Pierre Soult. With the rest of his troops he marched to the heights of Lormenthoa in front of the hills of Moguerre and Villefranque, and was there joined by the sixth division, the third remaining to cover the bridge of Ustaritz. It was now about one o’clock, and Soult, coming hastily from Bayonne, approved of the disposition made by D’Erlon, and offered battle, his line being extended so as to bar the high road. D’Armagnac’s brigade which had retired from Ustaritz was now in advance at Villefranque and a heavy cannonade and skirmish ensued along the front, but no general attack was made because the deep roads had retarded the rear of Hill’s columns. However the Portuguese of the sixth division, descending from Lormenthoa about three o’clock, drove D’Armagnac’s brigade with sharp fighting and after one repulse out of Villefranque. A brigade of the second division was then established in advance connecting Hill’s corps with the troops in Villefranque. Thus three divisions of infantry, wanting the brigade left at Urcurray, hemmed up four French divisions; and as the latter, notwithstanding their superiority of numbers, made no advantage of the broken movements of the allies caused by the deep roads, the passage of the Nive may be judged a surprize. Wellington thus far overreached his able adversary, yet he had not trusted to this uncertain chance alone.

The French masses falling upon the heads of his columns at Lormenthoa while the rear was still labouring in the deep roads, might have caused some disorder, but could not have driven either Hill or Beresford over the river again, because the third division was close at hand to reinforce the sixth, and the brigade of the seventh, left at San Barbe, could have followed by the bridge of Ustaritz, thus giving the allies the superiority of numbers. The greatest danger was, that Paris, reinforced by Pierre Soult’s cavalry, should have returned and fallen either upon Morillo or the brigade left at Urcurray in the rear, while Soult, reinforcing D’Erlon with fresh divisions brought from the other side of the Nive, attacked Hill and Beresford in front. It was to prevent this that Hope and Alten whose operations are now to be related pressed the enemy on the left bank.

The first-named general having twelve miles to march from St. Jean de Luz before he could reach the French works, put his troops in motion during the night, and about eight o’clock passed between the tanks in front of Barrouilhet with his right, while his left descended from the platform of Bidart and crossed the valley towards Biaritz. The French outposts retired fighting, and Hope sweeping with a half circle to his right, and being preceded by the fire of his guns and many skirmishers, arrived in front of the entrenched camp about one o’clock. His left then rested on the Lower Adour, his centre menaced a very strong advanced work on the ridge of Beyris beyond Anglet, and his right was in communication with Alten. That general having a shorter distance to move, halted about Bussussary and Arcangues until Hope’s fiery crescent was closing on the French camp, and then he also advanced, but with the exception of a slight skirmish at the fortified house there was no resistance. Three divisions, some cavalry, and the unattached brigades, equal to a fourth division, sufficed therefore to keep six French divisions in check on this side.

When evening closed the allies fell back towards their original positions, but under heavy rain, and with great fatigue to Hope’s wing, for even the royal road was knee-deep of mud and his troops were twenty-four hours under arms. The whole day’s fighting cost about eight hundred men for each side, the loss of the allies being rather greater on the left bank of the Nive than on the right.

[Sidenote: Imperial Muster-rolls, MSS.]

[Sidenote: Original Morning States.]

Wellington’s wings being now divided by the Nive the French general resolved to fall upon one of them with the whole of his forces united; and misled by the prisoners who assured him that the third and fourth divisions were both on the heights of Lormenthoa, he resolved, being able to assemble his troops with greater facility on the left of the Nive where also the allies’ front was most extended, to choose that side for his counter-stroke. The garrison of Bayonne was eight thousand strong, partly troops of the line partly national guards, with which he ordered the governor to occupy the entrenched camp of Mousserolles; then stationing ten gun-boats on the Upper Adour to watch that river as high as the confluence of the Gave de Pau, he made D’Erlon file his four divisions over the bridge of boats between the fortress and Mousserolles, directing him to gain the camp of Marac and take post behind Clauzel’s corps on the other side of the river. He thus concentrated nine divisions of infantry and Villatte’s reserve, a brigade of cavalry and forty guns, furnishing in all about sixty thousand combatants, including conscripts, to assail a quarter where the allies, although stronger by one division than the French general imagined, had yet only thirty thousand infantry with twenty-four pieces of cannon.

[Sidenote: Correspondence with the minister of war, MSS.]

The French marshal’s first design was to burst with his whole army on the table-land of Bussussary and Arcangues, and then to act as circumstances should dictate; and he judged so well of his position that he desired the minister of war to expect good news for the next day. Indeed the situation of the allies although better than he knew of gave him some right to anticipate success. On no point was there any expectation of this formidable counter-attack. Lord Wellington was on the left of the Nive preparing to assault the heights where he had last seen the French the evening before. Hope’s troops, with the exception of Wilson’s Portuguese now commanded by general Campbell and posted at Barrouilhet, had retired to their cantonments; the first division was at St. Jean de Luz and Ciboure more than six miles distant from the outposts; the fifth division was between those places and Bidart, and all exceedingly fatigued. The light division had orders to retire from Bussussary to Arbonne a distance of four miles, and part of the second brigade had already marched, when fortunately general Kempt, somewhat suspicious of the enemy’s movements, delayed obedience until he could see what was going on in his front, he thus as the event proved saved the position.

The extraordinary difficulty of moving through the country even for single horsemen, the numerous enclosures and copses which denied any distinct view, the easy success of the operation to cross the Nive, and a certain haughty confidence the sure attendant of a long course of victory, seems to have rendered the English general at this time somewhat negligent of his own security. Undoubtedly the troops were not disposed as if a battle was expected. The general position, composed of two distinct parts was indeed very strong; the ridge of Barrouilhet could only be attacked along the royal road on a narrow front between the tanks, and he had directed entrenchments to be made; but there was only one brigade there, and a road made with difficulty by the engineers supplied a bad flank communication with the light division. This Barrouilhet ridge was prolonged to the platform of Bussussary, but in its winding bulged out too near the enemy’s works in the centre to be safely occupied in force, and behind it there was a deep valley or basin extending to Arbonne.

The ridge of Arcangues on the other side of this basin was the position of battle for the centre. Three tongues of land shot out from this part to the front, and the valleys between them as well as their slopes were covered with copse-woods almost impenetrable. The church of Arcangues, a gentleman’s house, and parts of the village, furnished rallying points of defence for the picquets, which were necessarily numerous because of the extent of front. At this time the left-hand ridge or tongue of land was occupied by the fifty-second regiment which had also posts in the great basin separating the Arcangues position from that of Barrouilhet; the central tongue was held by the picquets of the forty-third with supporting companies placed in succession towards Bussussary, where was an open common across which troops in retreat would have to pass to the church of Arcangues. The third tongue was guarded, partly by the forty-third, partly by the riflemen, but the valley between was not occupied, and the picquets on the extreme right extended to an inundation, across a narrow part of which, near the house of the senator Garrat, there was a bridge: the facility for attack was there however small.

One brigade of the seventh division continued this line of posts to the Nive, holding the bridge of Urdains, the rest of the division was behind San Barbe and belonged rather to Ustaritz than to this front. The fourth division was several miles behind the right of the light division.

In this state of affairs if Soult had, as he first designed, burst with his whole army upon Bussussary and Arcangues it would have been impossible for the light division, scattered as it was over such an extent of difficult ground, to have stopped him for half an hour; and there was no support within several miles, no superior officer to direct the concentration of the different divisions. Lord Wellington had indeed ordered all the line to be entrenched, but the works were commenced on a great scale, and, as is common when danger does not spur, the soldiers had laboured so carelessly that beyond a few abbatis, the tracing of some lines and redoubts, and the opening of a road of communication, the ground remained in its natural state. The French general would therefore quickly have gained the broad open hills beyond Arcangues, separated the fourth and seventh divisions from the light division, and cut them off from Hope. Soult however, in the course of the night, for reasons which I do not find stated, changed his project, and at day-break Reille marched with Boyer’s and Maucune’s divisions, Sparre’s cavalry and from twenty to thirty guns against Hope by the main road. He was followed by Foy and Villatte, but Clauzel assembled his troops under cover of the ridges near the fortified house in front of Bussussary, and one of D’Erlon’s divisions approached the bridge of Urdains.

Combat of the 10th.—A heavy rain fell in the night yet the morning broke fair, and soon after dawn the French infantry were observed by the picquets of the forty-third pushing each other about as if at gambols, yet lining by degrees the nearest ditches; a general officer was also seen behind a farm-house close to the sentinels, and at the same time the heads of columns could be perceived in the rear. Thus warned some companies of the forty-third were thrown on the right into the basin to prevent the enemy from penetrating that way to the small plain between Bussussary and Arcangues. General Kempt was with the picquets, and his foresight in delaying his march to Arbonne now saved the position, for he immediately placed the reserves of his brigade in the church and mansion-house of Arcangues. Meanwhile the French breaking forth with loud cries, and a rattling musquetry, fell at a running pace upon the picquets of the forty-third both on the tongue and in the basin, and a cloud of skirmishers descending on their left, penetrating between them and the fifty-second regiment, sought to turn both. The right tongue was in like manner assailed and at the same time the picquets at the bridge near Garrat’s house were driven back.

The assault was so strong and rapid, the enemy so numerous, and the ground so extensive, that it would have been impossible to have reached the small plain beyond Bussussary in time to regain the church of Arcangues if any serious resistance had been attempted; wherefore delivering their fire at pistol-shot distance the picquets fell back in succession, and never were the steadiness and intelligence of veteran soldiers more eminently displayed; for though it was necessary to run at full speed to gain the small plain before the enemy, who was constantly outflanking the line of posts by the basin, though the ways were so deep and narrow that no formation could be preserved, though the fire of the French was thick and close, and their cries vehement as they rushed on in pursuit, the instant the open ground at Bussussary was attained, the apparently disordered crowd of fugitives became a compact and well-formed body defying and deriding the fruitless efforts of their adversaries.

The fifty-second being about half a mile to the left, though only slightly assailed fell back also to the main ridge, for though the closeness of the country did not permit colonel Colborne to observe the strength of the enemy he could see the rapid retreat of the forty-third, and thence judging how serious the affair was, so well did the regiments of the light division understand each other’s qualities, withdrew his outposts to secure the main position. And in good time he did so.

On the right-hand tongue the troops were not so fortunate, for whether they delayed their retreat too long, or that the country was more intricate, the enemy moving by the basin, reached Bussussary before the rear arrived, and about a hundred of the forty-third and riflemen were thus intercepted. The French were in a hollow road and careless, never doubting that the officer of the forty-third, ensign Campbell, a youth scarcely eighteen years of age, would surrender; but he with a shout broke into their column sword in hand, and though the struggle was severe and twenty of the forty-third and thirty of the riflemen with their officer remained prisoners, reached the church with the rest.

D’Armagnac’s division of D’Erlon’s corps now pushed close up to the bridge of Urdains, and Clauzel assembled his three divisions by degrees at Bussussary, opening meanwhile a sharp fire of musquetry. The position was however safe. The mansion-house on the right, covered by abbatis and not easily accessible, was defended by a rifle battalion and the Portuguese. The church and church-yard were occupied by the forty-third who were supported with two mountain-guns, their front being covered by a declivity of thick copse-wood, filled with riflemen, and only to be turned by narrow hollow roads leading on each side to the church. On the left the fifty-second now supported by the remainder of the division, spread as far as the great basin which separated the right wing from the ridge of Barrouilhet, towards which some small posts were pushed, but there was still a great interval between Alten’s and Hope’s positions.

The skirmishing fire grew hot, Clauzel brought up twelve guns to the ridge of Bussussary, with which he threw shot and shells into the church-yard of Arcangues, and four or five hundred infantry then made a rush forwards, but a heavy fire from the forty-third sent them back over the ridge where their guns were posted. Yet the practice of the latter, well directed at first, would have been murderous if this musquetry from the church-yard had not made the French gunners withdraw their pieces a little behind the ridge, which caused their shot to fly wild and high. General Kempt thinking the distance too great, was at first inclined to stop this fire, but the moment it lulled the French gunners pushed their pieces forwards again and their shells knocked down eight men in an instant. The small arms then recommenced and the shells again flew high. The French were in like manner kept at bay by the riflemen in the village and mansion-house, and the action, hottest where the fifty-second fought, continued all day. It was not very severe but it has been noticed in detail because both French and English writers, misled perhaps by an inaccurate phrase in the public despatch, have represented it as a desperate attack by which the light division was driven into its entrenchments, whereas it was the picquets only that were forced back, there were no entrenchments save those made on the spur of the moment by the soldiers in the church-yard, and the French can hardly be said to have attacked at all. The real battle was at Barrouilhet.

On that side Reille advancing with two divisions about nine o’clock, drove Campbell’s Portuguese from Anglet, and Sparre’s cavalry charging during the fight cut down a great many men. The French infantry then assailed the ridge at Barrouilhet, but moving along a narrow ridge and confined on each flank by the tanks, only two brigades could get into action by the main road, and the rain of the preceding night had rendered all the bye-roads so deep that it was mid-day before the French line of battle was filled. This delay saved the allies, for the attack here also was so unexpected, that the first division and lord Aylmer’s brigade were at rest in St. Jean de Luz and Bidart when the action commenced. The latter did not reach the position before eleven o’clock; the foot-guards did not march from St. Jean until after twelve, and only arrived at three o’clock in the afternoon when the fight was done; all the troops were exceedingly fatigued, only ten guns could be brought into play, and from some negligence part of the infantry were at first without ammunition.

Robinson’s brigade of the fifth division first arrived to support Campbell’s Portuguese, and fight the battle. The French spread their skirmishers along the whole valley in front of Biaritz, but their principal effort was directed by the great road and against the platform of Barrouilhet about the mayor’s house, where the ground was so thick of hedges and coppice-wood that a most confused fight took place. The assailants cutting ways through the hedges poured on in smaller or larger bodies as the openings allowed, and were immediately engaged with the defenders; at some points they were successful at others beaten back, and few knew what was going on to the right or left of where they stood. By degrees Reille engaged both his divisions, and some of Villatte’s reserve also entered the fight, and then Bradford’s Portuguese and lord Aylmer’s brigade arrived on the allies’ side, which enabled colonel Greville’s brigade of the fifth division, hitherto kept in reserve, to relieve Robinson’s; that general was however dangerously wounded and his troops suffered severely.

[Sidenote: Manuscript note by lieutenant-general sir John Cameron.]

And now a very notable action was performed by the ninth regiment under colonel Cameron. This officer was on the extreme left of Greville’s brigade, Robinson’s being then shifted in second line and towards the right, Bradford’s brigade was at the mayor’s house some distance to the left of the ninth regiment, and the space between was occupied by a Portuguese battalion. There was in front of Greville’s brigade a thick hedge, but immediately opposite the ninth was a coppice-wood possessed by the enemy, whose skirmishers were continually gathering in masses and rushing out as if to assail the line, they were as often driven back, yet the ground was so broken that nothing could be seen beyond the flanks and when some time had passed in this manner, Cameron, who had received no orders, heard a sudden firing along the main road close to his left. His adjutant was sent to look out and returned immediately with intelligence that there was little fighting on the road, but a French regiment, which must have passed unseen in small bodies through the Portuguese between the ninth and the mayor’s house, was rapidly filing into line on the rear. The fourth British regiment was then in close column at a short distance, and its commander colonel Piper was directed by Cameron to face about, march to the rear, and then bring up his left shoulder when he would infallibly fall in with the French regiment. Piper marched, but whether he misunderstood the order, took a wrong direction, or mistook the enemy for Portuguese, he passed them. No firing was heard, the adjutant again hurried to the rear, and returned with intelligence that the fourth regiment was not to be seen, but the enemy’s line was nearly formed. Cameron leaving fifty men to answer the skirmishing fire which now increased from the copse, immediately faced about and marched in line against the new enemy, who was about his own strength, as fast as the rough nature of the ground would permit. The French fire, slow at first, increased vehemently as the distance lessened, but when the ninth, coming close up, sprung forwards to the charge the adverse line broke and fled to the flanks in the utmost disorder. Those who made for their own right brushed the left of Greville’s brigade, and even carried off an officer of the royals in their rush, yet the greatest number were made prisoners, and the ninth having lost about eighty men and officers resumed their old ground.

[Sidenote: Soult’s Official Report, MSS.]

The final result of the battle at Barrouilhet was the repulse of Reille’s divisions, but Villatte still menaced the right flank, and Foy, taking possession of the narrow ridge connecting Bussussary with the platform of Barrouilhet, threw his skirmishers into the great basin leading to Arbonne, and connecting his right with Reille’s left menaced Hope’s flank at Barrouilhet. This was about two o’clock, Soult, whose columns were now all in hand gave orders to renew the battle, and his masses were beginning to move when Clauzel reported that a large body of fresh troops, apparently coming from the other side of the Nive, was menacing D’Armagnac’s division from the heights above Urdains. Unable to account for this, Soult, who saw the guards and Germans moving up fast from St. Jean de Luz and all the unattached brigades already in line, hesitated, suspended his own attack, and ordered D’Erlon, who had two divisions in reserve, to detach one to the support of D’Armagnac: before this disposition could be completed the night fell.

The fresh troops seen by Clauzel were the third fourth sixth and seventh divisions, whose movements during the battle it is time to notice. When lord Wellington, who remained on the right of the Nive during the night of the 9th, discovered at daybreak, that the French had abandoned the heights in Hill’s front, he directed that officer to occupy them, and push parties close up to the entrenched camp of Mousseroles while his cavalry spread beyond Hasparen and up the Adour. Meanwhile, the cannonade on the left bank of the Nive being heard, he repaired in person to that side, first making the third and sixth divisions repass the river, and directing Beresford to lay another bridge of communication lower down the Nive, near Villefranque, to shorten the line of movement. When he reached the left of the Nive and saw how the battle stood, he made the seventh division close to the left from the hill of San Barbe, placed the third division at Urdains, and brought up the fourth division to an open heathy ridge on a hill about a mile behind the church of Arcangues. From this point general Cole sent Ross’s brigade down into the basin on the left of Colborne, to cover Arbonne, being prepared himself to march with his whole division if the enemy attempted to penetrate in force between Hope and Alten. These dispositions were for the most part completed about two o’clock, and thus Clauzel was held in check at Bussussary, and the renewed attack by Foy, Villatte, and Reille’s divisions on Barrouilhet prevented.

This day’s battle cost the Anglo-Portuguese more than twelve hundred men killed and wounded, two generals were amongst the latter and about three hundred men were made prisoners. The French had one general, Villatte, wounded, and lost about two thousand men, but when the action terminated two regiments of Nassau and one of Frankfort, the whole under the command of a colonel Kruse, came over to the allies. These men were not deserters. Their prince having abandoned Napoleon in Germany sent secret instructions to his troops to do so likewise, and in good time, for orders to disarm them reached Soult the next morning. The generals on each side, the one hoping to profit the other to prevent mischief, immediately transmitted notice of the event to Catalonia where several regiments of the same nations were serving. Lord Wellington failed for reasons to be hereafter mentioned, but Suchet disarmed his Germans with reluctance thinking they could be trusted, and the Nassau troops at Bayonne were perhaps less influenced by patriotism than by an old quarrel; for when belonging to the army of the centre they had forcibly foraged Soult’s district early in the year, and carried off the spoil in defiance of his authority, which gave rise to bitter disputes at the time and was probably not forgotten by him.

Combat of the 11th.—In the night of the 10th Reille withdrew behind the tanks as far as Pucho, Foy and Villatte likewise drew back along the connecting ridge towards Bussussary, thus uniting with Clauzel’s left and D’Erlon’s reserve, so that on the morning of the 11th the French army, with the exception of D’Armagnac’s division which remained in front of Urdains, was concentrated, for Soult feared a counter-attack. The French deserters indeed declared that Clauzel had formed a body of two thousand choice grenadiers to assault the village and church of Arcangues, but the day passed without any event in that quarter save a slight skirmish in which a few men were wounded. Not so on the side of Barrouilhet. There was a thick fog, and lord Wellington, desirous to ascertain what the French were about, directed the ninth regiment about ten o’clock to open a skirmish beyond the tanks towards Pucho, and to push the action if the French augmented their force. Cameron did so and the fight was becoming warm, when colonel Delancy, a staff-officer, rashly directed the ninth to enter the village. The error was soon and sharply corrected, for the fog cleared up, and Soult, who had twenty-four thousand men at that point, observing the ninth unsupported, ordered a counter-attack which was so strong and sudden that Cameron only saved his regiment with the aid of some Portuguese troops hastily brought up by sir John Hope. The fighting then ceased and lord Wellington went to the right, leaving Hope with orders to push back the French picquets and re-establish his former outposts on the connecting ridge towards Bussussary.

Soult had hitherto appeared undecided, but roused by this second insult, he ordered Darricau’s division to attack Barrouilhet along the connecting ridge, while Boyer’s division fell on by the main road between the tanks. This was about two o’clock and the allies expecting no battle had dispersed to gather fuel, for the time was wet and cold. In an instant the French penetrated in all directions, they outflanked the right, they passed the tanks, seized the out-buildings of the mayor’s house, and occupied the coppice in front of it; they were indeed quickly driven from the out-buildings by the royals, but the tumult was great and the coppice was filled with men of all nations intermixed and fighting in a perilous manner. Robinson’s brigade was very hardly handled, the officer commanding it was wounded, a squadron of French cavalry suddenly cut down some of the Portuguese near the wood, and on the right the colonel of the eighty-fourth having unwisely engaged his regiment in a hollow road where the French possessed the high bank, was killed with a great number of men. However the ninth regiment posted on the main road plied Boyer’s flank with fire, the eighty-fifth regiment of lord Aylmer’s brigade came into action, and sir John Hope conspicuous from his gigantic stature and heroic courage, was seen wherever danger pressed rallying and encouraging the troops; at one time he was in the midst of the enemy, his clothes were pierced with bullets, and he received a severe wound in the ankle, yet he would not quit the field and by his great presence of mind and calm intrepidity restored the battle. The French were finally beaten back from the position of Barrouilhet yet they had recovered their original posts, and continued to gall the allies with a fire of shot and shells until the fall of night. The total loss in this fight was about six hundred men of a side, and as the fifth division was now considerably reduced in numbers the first division took its place on the front line. Meanwhile Soult sent his cavalry over the Nive to Mousseroles to check the incursions of Hill’s horsemen.

[Sidenote: Soult’s Official Despatches, MSS.]

Combat of the 12th.—The rain fell heavily in the night, and though the morning broke fair neither side seemed inclined to recommence hostilities. The advanced posts were however very close to each other and about ten o’clock a misunderstanding arose. The French general observing the fresh regiments of the first division close to his posts, imagined the allies were going to attack him and immediately reinforced his front; this movement causing an English battery to fall into a like error it opened upon the advancing French troops, and in an instant the whole line of posts was engaged. Soult then brought up a number of guns, the firing continued without an object for many hours, and three or four hundred men of a side were killed and wounded, but the great body of the French army remained concentrated and quiet on the ridge between Barrouilhet and Bussussary.

Lord Wellington as early as the 10th had expected Soult would abandon this attack to fall upon Hill, and therefore had given Beresford orders to carry the sixth division to that general’s assistance by the new bridge and the seventh division by Ustaritz, without waiting for further instructions, if Hill was assailed; now observing Soult’s tenacity at Barrouilhet he drew the seventh division towards Arbonne. Beresford had however made a movement towards the Nive, and this with the march of the seventh division and some changes in the position of the fourth division, caused Soult to believe the allies were gathering with a view to attack his centre on the morning of the 13th; and it is remarkable that the deserters at this early period told him the Spaniards had re-entered France although orders to that effect were not as we shall find given until the next day. Convinced then that his bolt was shot on the left of the Nive, he left two divisions and Villatte’s reserve in the entrenched camp, and marched with the other seven to Mousseroles intending to fall upon Hill.

That general had pushed his scouting parties to the Gambouri, and when general Sparre’s horsemen arrived at Mousseroles on the 12th, Pierre Soult advanced from the Bidouze with all the light cavalry. He was supported by the infantry of general Paris and drove the allies’ posts from Hasparen. Colonel Vivian, who commanded there, immediately ordered major Brotherton to charge with the fourteenth dragoons across the bridge, but it was an ill-judged order, and the impossibility of succeeding so manifest, that when Brotherton, noted throughout the army for his daring, galloped forward, only two men and one subaltern, lieutenant Southwell, passed the narrow bridge with him, and they were all taken. Vivian then seeing his error charged with his whole brigade to rescue them, yet in vain, he was forced to fall back upon Urcuray where Morillo’s Spaniards had relieved the British infantry brigade on the 11th. This threatening movement induced general Hill to put the British brigade in march again for Urcuray on the 12th, but he recalled it at sunset, having then discovered Soult’s columns passing the Nive by the boat-bridge above Bayonne.

Lord Wellington now feeling the want of numbers, brought forward a division of Gallicians to St. Jean de Luz, and one of Andalusians from the Bastan to Itzassu, and to prevent their plundering fed them from the British magazines. The Gallicians were to support Hope, the Andalusians to watch the upper valley of the Nive and protect the rear of the army from Paris and Pierre Soult, who could easily be reinforced with a strong body of national guards. Meanwhile Hill had taken a position of battle on a front of two miles.

His left, composed of the twenty-eighth, thirty-fourth, and thirty-ninth regiments under general Pringle, occupied a wooded and broken range crowned by the chateau of Villefranque; it covered the new pontoon bridge of communication, which was a mile and a half higher up the river, but it was separated from the centre by a small stream forming a chain of ponds in a very deep and marshy valley.

[Sidenote: Plan 8.]

The centre placed on both sides of the high road near the hamlet of St. Pierre, occupied a crescent-shaped height, broken with rocks and close brushwood on the left hand, and on the right hand enclosed with high and thick hedges, one of which, covering, at the distance of a hundred yards, part of the line, was nearly impassable. Here Ashworth’s Portuguese and Barnes’s British brigade of the second division were posted. The seventy-first regiment was on the left, the fiftieth in the centre, the ninety-second on the right. Ashworth’s Portuguese were posted in advance immediately in front of St. Pierre, and their skirmishers occupied a small wood covering their right. Twelve guns under the colonels Ross and Tullock were concentrated in front of the centre, looking down the great road, and half a mile in rear of this point Lecor’s Portuguese division was stationed with two guns as a reserve.

The right under Byng was composed of the third, fifty-seventh, thirty-first, and sixty-sixth. One of these regiments, the third, was posted on a height running nearly parallel with the Adour called the ridge of Partouhiria, or Old Moguerre, because a village of that name was situated upon the summit. This regiment was pushed in advance to a point where it could only be approached by crossing the lower part of a narrow swampy valley which separated Moguerre from the heights of St. Pierre. The upper part of this valley was held by Byng with the remainder of his brigade, and his post was well covered by a mill-pond leading towards the enemy and nearly filling all the valley.

One mile in front of St. Pierre was a range of counter heights belonging to the French, but the basin between was broad open and commanded in every part by the fire of the allies, and in all parts the country was too heavy and too much enclosed for the action of cavalry. Nor could the enemy approach in force, except on a narrow front of battle and by the high road, until within cannon-shot, when two narrow difficult lanes branched off to the right and left, and crossing the swampy valleys on each side, led, the one to the height where the third regiment was posted on the extreme right of the allies, the other to general Pringle’s position on the left.

[Sidenote: Appendix 7, sect. 4.]

In the night of the 12th the rain swelled the Nive and carried away the allies’ bridge of communication. It was soon restored, but on the morning of the 13th general Hill was completely cut off from the rest of the army; and while seven French divisions of infantry, furnishing at least thirty-five thousand combatants, approached him in front, an eighth under general Paris and the cavalry division of Pierre Soult menaced him in rear. To meet the French in his front he had less than fourteen thousand, men and officers with fourteen guns in position; and there were only four thousand Spaniards with Vivian’s cavalry at Urcuray.

[Sidenote: See Plan 8.]

Battle of St. Pierre.—The morning broke with a heavy mist under cover of which Soult formed his order of battle. D’Erlon, having D’Armagnac’s Abbé’s and Daricau’s divisions of infantry, Sparre’s cavalry and twenty-two guns, marched in front; he was followed by Foy and Maransin, but the remainder of the French army was in reserve, for the roads would not allow of any other order. The mist hung heavily and the French masses, at one moment quite shrouded in vapour, at another dimly seen or looming sudden and large and dark at different points, appeared like thunder-clouds gathering before the storm. At half-past eight Soult pushed back the British picquets in the centre, the sun burst out at that moment, the sparkling fire of the light troops spread wide in the valley, and crept up the hills on either flank, while the bellowing of forty pieces of artillery shook the banks of the Nive and the Adour. Darricau marching on the French right was directed against general Pringle. D’Armagnac, moving on their left and taking Old Moguerre as the point of direction, was ordered to force Byng’s right. Abbé assailed the centre at St. Pierre, where general Stewart commanded, for sir Rowland Hill had taken his station on a commanding mount in the rear, from whence he could see the whole battle and direct the movements.

Abbé, a man noted for vigour, pushed his attack with great violence and gained ground so rapidly with his light troops, on the left of Ashworth’s Portuguese, that Stewart sent the seventy-first regiment and two guns from St. Pierre to the latter’s aid; the French skirmishers likewise won the small wood on Ashworth’s right, and half of the fiftieth regiment was also detached from St. Pierre to that quarter. The wood was thus retaken, and the flanks of Stewart’s position secured, but his centre was very much weakened, and the fire of the French artillery was concentrated against it. Abbé then pushed on a column of attack there with such a power that in despite of the play of musquetry on his flanks and a crashing cannonade in his front, he gained the top of the position, and drove back the remainder of Ashworth’s Portuguese and the other half of the fiftieth regiment which had remained in reserve.

General Barnes who had still the ninety-second regiment in hand behind St. Pierre, immediately brought it on with a strong counter-attack. The French skirmishers fell back on each side leaving two regiments composing the column to meet the charge of the ninety-second; it was rough and pushed home, the French mass wavered and gave way. Abbé immediately replaced it and Soult redoubling the heavy play of his guns from the height he occupied, sent forward a battery of horse artillery which galloping down into the valley opened its fire close to the allies with most destructive activity. The cannonade and musquetry rolled like a prolonged peal of thunder, and the second French column, regardless of Ross’s guns, though they tore the ranks in a horrible manner, advanced so steadily up the high road that the ninety-second yielding to the tempest slowly regained its old position behind St. Pierre. The Portuguese guns, their British commanding officer having fallen wounded, then limbered up to retire and the French skirmishers reached the impenetrable hedge in front of Ashworth’s right. General Barnes now seeing that hard fighting only could save the position, made the Portuguese guns resume their fire, and the wing of the fiftieth and the Caçadores gallantly held the small wood on the right; but Barnes was soon wounded, the greatest part of his and general Stewart’s staff were hurt, and the matter seemed desperate. For the light troops overpowered by numbers were all driven in except those in the wood, the artillerymen were falling at the guns, Ashworth’s line of Portuguese crumbled away rapidly before the musquetry and cannonade, the ground was strewed with the dead in front, and the wounded crawling to the rear were many.

If the French light troops could then have penetrated through the thick hedge in front of the Portuguese, defeat would have been inevitable on this point, for the main column of attack still steadily advanced up the main road, and a second column launched on its right was already victorious, because the colonel of the seventy-first had shamefully withdrawn that gallant regiment out of action and abandoned the Portuguese. Pringle was indeed fighting strongly against Daricau’s superior numbers on the hill of Villefranque, but on the extreme right the colonel of the third regiment had also abandoned his strong post to D’Armagnac, whose leading brigade was thus rapidly turning Byng’s other regiments on that side. And now Foy’s and Maransin’s divisions, hitherto retarded by the deep roads, were coming into line ready to support Abbé, and this at the moment when the troops opposed to him were deprived of their reserve. For when general Hill beheld the retreat of the third and seventy-first regiments he descended in haste from his mount, met, and turned the latter back to renew the fight, and then in person leading one brigade of Le Cor’s reserve division to the same quarter sent the other against D’Armagnac on the hill of Old Moguerre. Thus at the decisive moment of the battle the French reserve was augmented and that of the allies thrown as a last resource into action. However the right wing of the fiftieth and Ashworth’s Caçadores, both spread as skirmishers, never lost the small wood in front, upholding the fight there and towards the high road with such unflinching courage that the ninety-second regiment had time to reform behind the hamlet of St. Pierre. Then its gallant colonel Cameron once more led it down the road with colours flying and music playing resolved to give the shock to whatever stood in the way. At this sight the British skirmishers on the flanks, suddenly changing from retreat to attack, rushed forward and drove those of the enemy back on each side; yet the battle seemed hopeless for Ashworth was badly wounded, his line was shattered to atoms, and Barnes who had not quitted the field for his former hurt was now shot through the body.

[Sidenote: Published Memoir on the battle by captain Pringle, engineers.]

The ninety-second was but a small body compared with the heavy mass in its front, and the French soldiers seemed willing enough to close with the bayonet; but an officer riding at their head suddenly turned his horse waved his sword and appeared to order a retreat, then they faced about and immediately retired across the valley to their original position, in good order however and scarcely pursued by the allies, so exhausted were the victors. This retrograde movement, for there was no panic or disorder, was produced partly by the gallant advance of the ninety-second and the returning rush of the skirmishers, partly by the state of affairs immediately on the right of the French column. For the seventy-first indignant at their colonel’s conduct had returned to the fight with such alacrity, and were so well aided by Le Cor’s Portuguese, generals Hill and Stewart each in person leading an attack, that the hitherto victorious French were overthrown there also in the very moment when the ninety-second came with such a brave shew down the main road: Le Cor was however wounded.

This double action in the centre being seen from the hill of Villefranque, Daricau’s division, already roughly handled by Pringle, fell back in confusion; and meantime on the right, Buchan’s Portuguese, detached by Hill to recover the Moguerre or Partouhiria ridge, crossed the valley, and ascending under a heavy flank fire from Soult’s guns rallied the third regiment; in happy time, for D’Armagnac’s first brigade having already passed the flank of Byng’s regiments at the mill-pond was actually in rear of the allies’ lines. It was now twelve o’clock, and while the fire of the light troops in the front and the cannonade in the centre continued the contending generals restored their respective orders of battle. Soult’s right wing had been quite repulsed by Pringle, his left was giving way before Buchan, and the difficult ground forbad his sending immediate succour to either; moreover in the exigency of the moment he had called D’Armagnac’s reserve brigade to sustain Abbé’s retiring columns. However that brigade and Foy’s and Maransin’s divisions were in hand to renew the fight in the centre, and the allies could not, unsuccoured, have sustained a fresh assault; for their ranks were wasted with fire, nearly all the staff had been killed or wounded, and three generals had quitted the field badly hurt.

In this crisis general Hill seeing that Buchan was now well and successfully engaged on the Partouhiria ridge, and that Byng’s regiments were quite masters of their ground in the valley of the mill-pond, drew the fifty-seventh regiment from the latter place to reinforce his centre. At the same time the bridge above Villefranque having been restored, the sixth division, which had been marching since daybreak, appeared in order of battle on the mount from whence Hill had descended to rally the seventy-first. It was soon followed by the fourth division, and that again by the brigades of the third division; two other brigades of the seventh division were likewise in march. With the first of these troops came lord Wellington who had hurried from Barrouilhet when the first sound of the cannon reached him, yet he arrived only to witness the close of the battle, the crisis was past, Hill’s day of glory was complete. Soult had, according to the French method, made indeed another attack, or rather demonstration, against the centre, to cover his new dispositions, an effort easily repulsed, but at the same moment Buchan drove D’Armagnac headlong off the Partouhiria ridge. The sixth division then appeared on the commanding mount in the rear of St. Pierre, and though the French masses still maintained a menacing position on the high road, and on a hillock rising between the road and the mill-pond, they were quickly dispossessed. For the English general being now supported by the sixth division, sent Byng with two battalions against the hillock, and some troops from the centre against those on the high road. At this last point the generals and staff had been so cut down that colonel Currie, the aid-de-camp who brought the order, could find no superior officer to deliver it to and led the troops himself to the attack, but both charges were successful; and two guns of the light battery sent down in the early part of the fight by Soult, and which had played without ceasing up to this moment, were taken.

The battle now abated to a skirmish of light troops, under cover of which the French endeavoured to carry off their wounded and rally their stragglers, but at two o’clock lord Wellington commanded a general advance of the whole line. Then the French retreated fighting, and the allies following close on the side of the Nive plied them with musquetry until dark. Yet they maintained their line towards the Adour, for Sparre’s cavalry passing out that way rejoined Pierre Soult on the side of Hasparen. This last-named general and Paris had during the day menaced Morillo and Vivian’s cavalry at Urcuray, however not more than thirty men of a side were hurt, and when Soult’s ill success became known the French retired to Bonloc.

[Sidenote: Lapene.]

In this bloody action Soult had designed to employ seven divisions of infantry with one brigade of cavalry on the front, and one brigade of infantry with a division of cavalry on the rear; but the state of the roads and the narrow front he was forced to move upon did not permit more than five divisions to act at St. Pierre, and only half of those were seriously engaged. His loss was certainly three thousand, making a total on the five days’ fighting of six thousand men with two generals, Villatte and Maucomble, wounded. The estimate made by the British at the time far exceeded this number, and one French writer makes their loss ten thousand including probably the Nassau and Frankfort regiments. The same writer however estimates the loss of the allies at sixteen thousand! Whereas Hill had only three generals and about fifteen hundred men killed and wounded on the 13th and Morillo lost but twenty-six men at Urcuray. The real loss of the allies in the whole five days’ fighting was only five thousand and nineteen, including however five generals, Hope, Robinson, Barnes, Lecor, and Ashworth. Of this number five hundred were prisoners.

The duke of Dalmatia, baffled by the unexpected result of the battle of St. Pierre, left D’Erlon’s three divisions in front of the camp of Mousseroles, sent two others over the Nive to Marac, and passing the Adour himself during the night with Foy’s division, spread it along the right bank of that river as far as the confluence of the Gave de Pau.

OBSERVATIONS.

1º. The French general’s plan was conceived with genius but the execution offers a great contrast to the conception. What a difference between the sudden concentration of his whole army on the platforms of Arcangues and Bussussary, where there were only a few picquets to withstand him, and from whence he could have fallen with the roll of an avalanche upon any point of the allies’ line! what a difference between that and the petty attack of Clauzel, which a thousand men of the light division sufficed to arrest at the village and church of Arcangues. There beyond question was the weak part of the English general’s cuirass. The spear pushed home there would have drawn blood. For the disposition and movements of the third fourth and seventh divisions, were made more with reference to the support of Hill than to sustain an attack from Soult’s army, and it is evident that Wellington, trusting to the effect of his victory on the 10th of November, had treated the French general and his troops, more contemptuously than he could have justified by arms without the aid of fortune. I know not what induced marshal Soult to direct his main attack by Anglet and the connecting ridge of Bussussary, against Barrouilhet, instead of assailing Arcangues as he at first proposed; but this is certain, that for three hours after Clauzel first attacked the picquets at the latter place, there were not troops enough to stop three French divisions, much less a whole army. And this point being nearer to the bridge by which D’Erlon passed the Nive, the concentration of the French troops could have been made sooner than at Barrouilhet, where the want of unity in the attack caused by the difficulty of the roads ruined the French combinations.

The allies were so unexpectant of an attack, that the battle at Barrouilhet which might have been fought with seventeen thousand men, was actually fought by ten thousand. And those were not brought into action at once, for Robinson’s brigade and Campbell’s Portuguese, favoured by the narrow opening between the tanks, resisted Reille’s divisions for two hours, and gave time for the rest of the fifth division and Bradford’s brigade to arrive. But if Foy’s division and Villatte’s reserve had been able to assail the flank at the same time, by the ridge coming from Bussussary, the battle would have been won by the French; and meanwhile three divisions under Clauzel and two under D’Erlon remained hesitating before Urdains and Arcangues, for the cannonade and skirmishing at the latter place were the very marks and signs of indecision.

2º. On the 11th the inactivity of the French during the morning may be easily accounted for. The defection of the German regiments, the necessity of disarming and removing those that remained, the care of the wounded, and the time required to re-examine the allies’ position and ascertain what changes had taken place during the night, must have given ample employment to the French general. His attack in the afternoon also was well judged because already he must have seen from the increase of troops in his front, from the intrenched battery and other works rapidly constructed at the church of Arcangues, that no decisive success could be expected on the left of the Nive, and that his best chance was to change his line of attack again to the right bank. To do this with effect, it was necessary, not only to draw all lord Wellington’s reserves from the right of the Nive but to be certain that they had come, and this could only be done by repeating the attacks at Barrouilhet. The same cause operated on the 12th, for it was not until the fourth and seventh divisions were seen by him on the side of Arbonne that he knew his wile had succeeded. Yet again the execution was below the conception, for first, the bivouac fires on the ridge of Bussussary were extinguished in the evening, and then others were lighted on the side of Mousseroles, thus plainly indicating the march, which was also begun too early, because the leading division was by Hill seen to pass the bridge of boats before sun-set.

These were serious errors yet the duke of Dalmatia’s generalship cannot be thus fairly tested. There are many circumstances which combine to prove, that when he complained to the emperor of the contradictions and obstacles he had to encounter he alluded to military as well as to political and financial difficulties. It is a part of human nature to dislike any disturbance of previous habits, and soldiers are never pleased at first with a general, who introduces and rigorously exacts a system of discipline differing from what they have been accustomed to. Its utility must be proved and confirmed by habit ere it will find favour in their eyes. Now Soult suddenly assumed the command of troops, who had been long serving under various generals and were used to much license in Spain. They were therefore, men and officers, uneasy at being suddenly subjected to the austere and resolute command of one who, from natural character as well as the exigency of the times, the war being now in his own country, demanded a ready and exact obedience, and a regularity which long habits of a different kind rendered onerous. Hence we find in all the French writers, and in Soult’s own reports, manifest proofs that his designs were frequently thwarted or disregarded by his subordinates when circumstances promised impunity. His greatest and ablest military combinations were certainly rendered abortive by the errors of his lieutenants in the first operations to relieve Pampeluna, and on the 31st of August a manifest negligence of his earnest recommendations to vigilance led to serious danger and loss at the passage of the Lower Bidassoa. Complaint and recrimination were rife in all quarters about the defeat on the 10th of November, and on the 19th the bridge-head of Cambo was destroyed contrary to the spirit of his instructions. These things, joined to the acknowledged jealousy and disputes prevalent amongst the French generals employed in Spain, would indicate that the discrepancy between the conception and execution of the operations in front of Bayonne was not the error of the commander-in-chief. Perhaps king Joseph’s faction, so inimical to the duke of Dalmatia, was still powerful in the army and difficult to deal with.

3º. Lord Wellington has been blamed for putting his troops in a false position, and no doubt he under-valued, it was not the first time, the military genius and resources of his able adversary, when he exposed Hill’s troops on the left of the Nive to a species of surprize. But the passage of the Nive itself, the rapidity with which he moved his divisions from bank to bank, and the confidence with which he relied upon the valour of his troops, so far from justifying the censures which have been passed upon him by French writers, emphatically mark his mastery in the art. The stern justice of sending the Spaniards back into Spain after the battle of the Nivelle is apparent, but the magnanimity of that measure can only be understood by considering lord Wellington’s military situation at the time. The battle of the Nivelle was delivered on political grounds, but of what avail would his gaining it have been if he had remained enclosed as it were in a net between the Nive and the sea, Bayonne and the Pyrenees, unable to open communications with the disaffected in France, and having the beaten army absolutely forbidding him to forage or even to look beyond the river on his right. The invasion of France was not his own operation, it was the project of the English cabinet and the allied sovereigns; both were naturally urging him to complete it, and to pass the Nive and free his flanks was indispensable if he would draw any profit from his victory of the 10th of November. But he could not pass it with his whole army unless he resigned the sea-coast and his communications with Spain. He was therefore to operate with a portion only of his force and consequently required all the men he could gather to ensure success. Yet at that crisis he divested himself of twenty-five thousand Spanish soldiers!

Was this done in ignorance of the military glory awaiting him beyond the spot where he stood?

“If I had twenty thousand Spaniards paid and fed,” he wrote to lord Bathurst, “I should have Bayonne. If I had forty thousand I do not know where I should stop. Now I have both the twenty thousand and the forty thousand, but I have not the means of paying and supplying them, and if they plunder they will ruin all.”

Requisitions which the French expected as a part of war would have enabled him to run this career, but he looked further; he had promised the people protection and his greatness of mind was disclosed in a single sentence. “I must tell your lordship that our success and every thing depends upon our moderation and justice.” Rather than infringe on either, he sent the Spaniards to the rear and passed the Nive with the British and Portuguese only, thus violating the military rule which forbids a general to disseminate his troops before an enemy who remains in mass lest he should be beaten in detail. But genius begins where rules end. A great general always seeks moral power in preference to physical force. Wellington’s choice here was between a shameful inactivity or a dangerous enterprise. Trusting to the influence of his reputation, to his previous victories, and to the ascendancy of his troops in the field, he chose the latter, and the result, though he committed some errors of execution, justified his boldness. He surprised the passage of the Nive, laid his bridges of communication, and but for the rain of the night before, which ruined the roads and retarded the march of Hill’s columns, he would have won the heights of St. Pierre the same day. Soult could not then have withdrawn his divisions from the right bank without being observed. Still it was an error to have the troops on the left bank so unprepared for the battle of the 10th. It was perhaps another error not to have occupied the valley or basin between Hope and Alten, and surely it was negligence not to entrench Hill’s position on the 10th, 11th, and 12th. Yet with all this so brave so hardy so unconquerable were his soldiers that he was successful at every point, and that is the justification of his generalship. Hannibal crossed the Alps and descended upon Italy, not in madness but because he knew himself and his troops.

[Sidenote: Appendix 7, Sect. 4.]

4º. It is agreed by French and English that the battle of St. Pierre was one of the most desperate of the whole war. Lord Wellington declared that he had never seen a field so thickly strewn with dead, nor can the vigour of the combatants be well denied where five thousand men were killed or wounded in three hours upon a space of one mile square. How then did it happen, valour being so conspicuous on both sides, that six English and Portuguese brigades, furnishing less than fourteen thousand men and officers with fourteen guns, were enabled to withstand seven French divisions, certainly furnishing thirty-five thousand men and officers with twenty-two guns? The analysis of this fact shows upon what nice calculations and accidents war depends.

If Hill had not observed the French passing their bridge on the evening of the 12th, and their bivouac fires in the night, Barnes’s brigade, with which he saved the day, would have been at Urcuray, and Soult could not have been stopped. But the French general could only bring five divisions into action, and those only in succession, so that in fact three divisions or about sixteen thousand men with twenty-two guns actually fought the battle. Foy’s and Maransin’s troops did not engage until after the crisis had passed. On the other hand the proceedings of colonel Peacocke of the seventy-first, and colonel Bunbury of the third, for which they were both obliged to quit the service, forced general Hill to carry his reserve away from the decisive point at that critical period which always occurs in a well-disputed field and which every great general watches for with the utmost anxiety. This was no error, it was a necessity, and the superior military quality of the British troops rendered it successful.

[Sidenote: Published Memoir by Captain Pringle of the Royal Engineers.]

The French officer who rode at the head of the second attacking column might be a brave man, doubtless he was; he might be an able man, but he had not the instinct of a general. On his right flank indeed Hill’s vigorous counter-attack was successful, but the battle was to be won in the centre; his column was heavy, undismayed, and only one weak battalion, the ninety-second, was before it; a short exhortation, a decided gesture, a daring example, and it would have overborne the small body in its front, Foy’s, Maransin’s, and the half of D’Armagnac’s divisions would then have followed in the path thus marked out. Instead of this he weighed chances and retreated. How different was the conduct of the British generals, two of whom and nearly all their staff fell at this point, resolute not to yield a step at such a critical period; how desperately did the fiftieth and Portuguese fight to give time for the ninety-second to rally and reform behind St. Pierre; how gloriously did that regiment come forth again to charge with their colours flying and their national music playing as if going to a review. This was to understand war. The man who in that moment and immediately after a repulse thought of such military pomp was by nature a soldier.

I have said that sir Rowland Hill’s employment of his reserve was no error, it was indeed worthy of all praise. From the commanding mount on which he stood, he saw at once, that the misconduct of the two colonels would cause the loss of his position more surely than any direct attack upon it, and with a promptness and decision truly military he descended at once to the spot, playing the soldier as well as the general, rallying the seventy-first and leading the reserve himself; trusting meanwhile with a noble and well-placed confidence to the courage of the ninety-second and the fiftieth to sustain the fight at St. Pierre. He knew indeed that the sixth division was then close at hand and that the battle might be fought over again, but like a thorough soldier he was resolved to win his own fight with his own troops if he could. And he did so after a manner that in less eventful times would have rendered him the hero of a nation.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter III

[Sidenote: 1813. December.]

To understand all the importance of the battle of St. Pierre, the nature of the country and the relative positions of the opposing generals before and after that action must be considered. Bayonne although a mean fortress in itself was at this period truly designated by Napoleon as one of the great bulwarks of France. Covered by its entrenched camp, which the inundations and the deep country rendered impregnable while there was an army to defend it, this place could not be assailed until that army was drawn away, and it was obviously impossible to pass it and leave the enemy to act upon the communications with Spain and the sea-coast. To force the French army to abandon Bayonne was therefore lord Wellington’s object, and his first step was the passage of the Nive; he thus cut Soult’s direct communication with St. Jean Pied de Port, obtained an intercourse with the malcontents in France, opened a large tract of fertile country for his cavalry, and menaced the navigation of the Adour so as to render it difficult for the French general to receive supplies. This was however but a first step, because the country beyond the Nive was still the same deep clayey soil with bad roads; and it was traversed by many rivers more or less considerable, which flooding with every shower in the mountains, formed in their concentric courses towards the Adour a number of successive barriers, behind which Soult could maintain himself on lord Wellington’s right and hold communication with St. Jean Pied de Port. He could thus still hem in the allies as before; upon a more extended scale however and with less effect, for he was thrown more on the defensive, his line was now the longest, and his adversary possessed the central position.

On the other hand, Wellington could not, in that deep impracticable country, carry on the wide operations necessary to pass the rivers on his right, and render the French position at Bayonne untenable, until fine weather hardened the roads, and the winter of 1813 was peculiarly wet and inclement.

From this exposition it is obvious that to nourish their own armies and circumvent their adversaries in that respect were the objects of both generals, Soult aimed to make Wellington retire into Spain, Wellington to make Soult abandon Bayonne entirely, or so reduce his force in the entrenched camp that the works might be stormed. The French general’s recent losses forbad him to maintain his extended positions except during the wet season; three days’ fine weather made him tremble; and the works of his camp were still too unfinished to leave a small force there. The difficulty of the roads and want of military transport threw his army almost entirely upon water-carriage for subsistence, and his great magazines were therefore established at Dax on the Adour, and at Peyrehorade on the Gave of Pau, the latter being about twenty-four miles from Bayonne. These places he fortified to resist sudden incursions, and he threw a bridge across the Adour at the port of Landes, just above its confluence with the Gave de Pau. But the navigation of the Adour below that point, especially at Urt, the stream being confined there, could be interrupted by the allies who were now on the left bank. To remedy this Soult ordered Foy to pass the Adour at Urt and construct a bridge with a head of works, but the movement was foreseen by Wellington, and Foy, menaced with a superior force, recrossed the river. The navigation was then carried on at night by stealth, or guarded by the French gun-boats and exposed to the fire of the allies. Thus provisions became scarce, and the supply would have been quite unequal to the demand if the French coasting trade, now revived between Bordeaux and Bayonne, had been interrupted by the navy, but lord Wellington’s representations on this head were still unheeded.

Soult was embarrassed by Foy’s failure at Urt. He reinforced him with Boyer’s and D’Armagnac’s divisions, which were extended to the Port de Lannes; then leaving Reille with four divisions to guard the entrenched camp and to finish the works, he completed the garrison of Bayonne and transferred his head-quarters to Peyrehorade. Clauzel with two divisions of infantry and the light cavalry now took post on the Bidouze, being supported with Trielhard’s heavy dragoons, and having his left in communication with Paris and with St. Jean Pied de Port where there was a garrison of eighteen hundred men besides national guards. He soon pushed his advanced posts to the Joyeuse or Gambouri, and the Aran, streams which unite to fall into the Adour near Urt, and he also occupied Hellette, Mendionde, Bonloc, and the Bastide de Clerence. A bridge-head was constructed at Peyrehorade, Hastingues was fortified on the Gave de Pau, Guiche, Bidache and Came, on the Bidouze, and the works of Navarens were augmented. In fine Soult with equal activity and intelligence profited from the rain which stopped the allies’ operations in that deep country.

[Sidenote: 1814. January.]

Lord Wellington also made some changes of position. Having increased his works at Barrouilhet he was enabled to shift some of Hope’s troops towards Arcangues, and he placed the sixth division on the heights of Villefranque, which permitted general Hill to extend his right up the Adour to Urt. The third division was posted near Urcuray, the light cavalry on the Joyeuse facing Clauzel’s outposts, and a chain of telegraphs was established from the right of the Nive by the hill of San Barbe to St. Jean de Luz. Freyre’s Gallicians were placed in reserve about St. Pé, and Morillo was withdrawn to Itzassu where supported by the Andalusian division and by Freyre, he guarded the valley of the Upper Nive and watched general Paris beyond the Ursouia mountain. Such was the state of affairs in the beginning of January, but some minor actions happened before these arrangements were completed.

In December the allies seized the island of Holriague near La Honce on the Adour, which gave them a better command of that river, but Foy kept possession of the islands of Berens and Broc above Holriague. The allies’ bridges of communication on the Nive were now carried away by floods which occasioned some embarrassment, and meanwhile, without any orders from lord Wellington, probably with a view to plunder, for his troops were exceedingly licentious, Morillo obtained from Victor Alten two squadrons of the eighteenth hussars, under pretence of exploring the enemy’s position towards Mendionde and Maccaye. Their commander, major Hughes, having with difficulty ascertained that he was to form an advanced guard in a close wooded country, demanded the aid of some Spanish Caçadores, and then moving forwards drove in the picquets, crossed the bridge of Mendionde and commenced a skirmish. But during this action Morillo withdrew his division without giving any notice, and at the same time the Caçadores fled in a shameful manner from the left, the cavalry were thus turned and escaped with difficulty, having had one captain killed, two other captains and a lieutenant, and Hughes himself, badly wounded. The unfortunate issue of this skirmish was attributed at the time to the bad conduct of the eighteenth hussars, against whom lord Wellington was by malicious misrepresentation previously prejudiced; for at Vittoria they were unjustly accused of being more licentious than others in plundering the captured property on the field, whereas they had fought well and plundered less than many who were praised for their orderly demeanour.

About the same time that this disaster occurred at Mendionde, Mina, acting independently, and being pressed for provisions in the mountains, invaded the Val de Baigorry and the Val des Osses, where his men committed the greatest enormities, plundering and burning, and murdering men women and children without distinction. The people of these valleys, distinguished amongst the Basques for their warlike qualities, immediately took arms under the command of one of their principal men, named Etchevery, and being reinforced with two hundred and fifty men from St. Jean Pied de Port, surprised one of Mina’s battalions, and attacked the rest with great vigour. This event gave Soult hopes of exciting the Basques to commence such a war as they had carried on at the commencement of the French revolution. His efforts to accomplish it were unceasing, and he had for two months been expecting the arrival of general Harispe an officer whose courage and talents have been frequently noticed in this History, and who being the head of an ancient Basque family had great local influence, which was increased by his military reputation. It was thought that if he had come when first expected, about November, lord Wellington’s strict discipline being then unknown to the people, he would have raised a formidable partizan war in the mountains. But now the English general’s attention to all complaints, his proclamation, and the proof he gave of his sincerity by sending the Spaniards back when they misconducted themselves, had, in conjunction with the love of gain that master passion with all mountaineers, tamed the Basque spirit and disinclined them to exchange ease and profit for turbulence and ravage. Nevertheless this incursion by Mina and the licentious conduct of Morillo’s troops, awakened the warlike propensities of the Val de Baygorry Basques, and Harispe was enabled to make a levy with which he immediately commenced active operations, and was supported by general Paris.

[Sidenote: Clauzel’s Official Reports and Orders MSS.]

[Sidenote: Plan 9.]

Soult with a view to aid Harispe, to extend his own cantonments, and to restrict those of the allies, now resolved to drive the latter’s detachments altogether from the side of St. Jean Pied de Port, and fix Clauzel’s left at Hellette, the culminant point of the great road to that fortress. To effect this, on the 3d of January, he caused Clauzel to establish two divisions of infantry at the heights of La Costa, near the Bastide de Clerence and beyond the Joyeuse river. Buchan’s Portuguese brigade, placed in observation there, was thus forced to retreat upon Briscons, and at the same time Paris advancing to Bonloc connected his right with Clauzel’s left at Ayherre, while the light cavalry menaced all the allies’ line of outposts. Informed of this movement by telegraph, Wellington, thinking Soult was seeking a general battle on the side of Hasparen, made the fifth division and lord Aylmer’s brigade relieve the light division which marched to Arauntz; the fourth division then passed the Nive at Ustaritz, and the sixth division made ready to march from Villefranque, by the high road of St. Jean Pied de Port, towards Hasparen, as a reserve to the third fourth and seventh divisions. The latter were concentrated beyond Urcuray on the 4th, their left in communication with Hill’s right at Briscons, and their right, supported by Morillo, who advanced from Itzassu for this purpose.

The English general’s intent was to fall upon the enemy at once, but the swelling of the small rivers prevented him. However on the 5th having ascertained the true object and dispositions of the French general, and having twenty-four thousand infantry in hand with a division of cavalry and four or five brigades of artillery, he resolved to attack Clauzel’s divisions on the heights of La Costa. In this view Le Cor’s Portuguese marched against the French right, the fourth division marched against their centre, the third division supported by cavalry against their left; the remainder of the cavalry and the seventh division, the whole under Stapleton Cotton, were posted at Hasparen to watch Paris on the side of Bonloc. Soult was in person at the Bastide de Clerence and a general battle seemed inevitable, but the intention of the English general was merely to drive back the enemy from the Joyeuse, and the French general, thinking the whole allied army was in movement resolved to act on the defensive, and directed the troops at La Costa to retire fighting upon the Bidouze: the affair terminated therefore with a slight skirmish on the evening of the 6th. The allies then resumed their old positions on the right of the Nive, the Andalusians were ordered back to the Bastan, and Carlos D’España’s Gallicians were brought up to Ascain in their place.

When Clauzel saw that nothing serious was designed he sent his horsemen to drive away general Hill’s detachments, which had taken advantage of the great movements to forage on the lower parts of the Joyeuse and Aran rivers. Meanwhile Soult observing how sensitive his adversary was to any demonstration beyond the Bidouze resolved to maintain the line of those two rivers. In this view he reduced his defence of the Adour to a line drawn from the confluence of the Aran to Bayonne, which enabled him to reinforce Clauzel with Foy’s division and all the light cavalry. Meantime general Harispe having the division of Paris and the brigade of general Dauture placed under his orders to support his mountaineers, fixed his quarters at Hellette and commenced an active partizan warfare. On the 8th he fell upon Mina in the Val des Osses and drove him with loss into Baygorry. On the 10th returning to Hellette he surprised Morillo’s foragers with some English dragoons on the side of Maccaye, and took a few prisoners. On the 12th he again attacked Mina and drove him up into the Alduides. During these affairs at the outposts lord Wellington might have stormed the entrenched camp in front of Bayonne, but he could not hold it except under the fire of the fortress, and not being prepared for a siege avoided that operation. Nor would the weather, which was again become terrible, permit him to make a general movement to drive Harispe from his position in the upper country; wherefore he preferred leaving that general in quiet possession to irritating the mountaineers by a counter-warfare. He endeavoured however to launch some armed boats on the Adour above Bayonne, where Soult had increased the flotilla to twenty gun-boats for the protection of his convoys, which were notwithstanding forced to run past Urt under the fire of a battery constructed by general Hill.

Lord Wellington now dreading the bad effect which the excesses committed by Mina’s and Morillo’s men were likely to produce, for the Basques were already beginning to speak of vengeance, put forth his authority in repression. Rebuking Morillo for his unauthorized and disastrous advance upon Mendionde, and for the excesses of his troops, he ordered him to keep the latter constantly under arms. This was resented generally by the Spanish officers, and especially by Morillo whose savage untractable and bloody disposition, since so horribly displayed in South America, prompted him to encourage violence. He asserted falsely that his troops were starving, declared that a settled design to ill-use the Spaniards existed, and that the British soldiers were suffered to commit every crime with impunity. The English general in reply explained himself both to Morillo, and to Freyre, who had alluded to the libels about San Sebastian, with a clearness and resolution that showed how hopeless it would be to strive against him.

“He had not,” he said, “lost thousands of men to pillage and ill-treat the French peasantry, he preferred a small army obedient to a large one disobedient and undisciplined. If his measures to enforce good order deprived him of the Spanish troops the fault would rest with those who suffered their soldiers to commit disorders. Professions without corresponding actions would not do, he was determined to enforce obedience one way or another and would not command insubordinate troops. The question between them was whether they should or should not pillage the French peasants. His measures were taken to prevent it and the conduct which called them forth was more dishonouring to the Spaniards than the measures themselves. For libels he cared not, he was used to them and he did not believe the union of the two nations depended upon such things; but if it did he desired no union founded upon such an infamous interest as pillage. He had not lost twenty thousand men in the campaign to enable Morillo to plunder and he would not permit it. If the Spaniards were resolved to do so let them march their great armies into France under their own generals, he would meanwhile cover Spain itself and they would find they could not remain in France for fifteen days. They had neither money nor magazines, nothing to maintain an army in the field, the country behind was incapable of supporting them and were he scoundrel enough to permit pillage France rich as it was could not sustain the burthen. Even with a view to living on the enemy by contributions it would be essential to prevent plunder; and yet in defiance of all these reasons he was called an enemy by the Spanish generals because he opposed such conduct, and his measures to prevent it were considered dishonouring!

“Something also he could say against it in a political point of view, but it was unnecessary because careless whether he commanded a large or a small army he was resolved that it should obey him and should not pillage.

“General Morillo expressed doubts of his right to interfere with the Spaniards. It was his right and his duty, and never before did he hear that to put soldiers under arms was a disgrace. It was a measure to prevent evil and misfortunes. Mina could tell by recent experience what a warfare the French peasants could carry on, and Morillo was openly menaced with a like trial. It was in vain for that general to palliate or deny the plundering of his division, after having acknowledged to general Hill that it was impossible to prevent it because the officers and soldiers received by every post letters from their friends, congratulating them upon their good luck in entering France and urging them to seize the opportunity of making fortunes. General Morillo asserted that the British troops were allowed to commit crimes with impunity. Neither he nor any other man could produce an instance of injury done where proof being adduced the perpetrators had escaped punishment. Let him enquire how many soldiers had been hanged, how many stricken with minor chastisements and made to pay for damages done. But had the English troops no cause of complaint against the Spaniards? Officers and soldiers were frequently shot and robbed on the high roads and a soldier had been lately murdered between Oyarzun and Lesaca; the English stores and convoys were plundered by the Spanish soldiers, a British officer had been put to death at Vittoria and others were ill-treated at Santander.”

A sullen obedience followed this correspondence for the moment, but the plundering system was soon renewed, and this with the mischief already done was sufficient to rouse the inhabitants of Bidarray as well as those of the Val de Baygorry into action. They commenced and continued a partizan warfare until lord Wellington, incensed by their activity, issued a proclamation calling upon them to take arms openly and join Soult or stay peaceably at home, declaring that he would otherwise burn their villages and hang all the inhabitants. Thus it appeared that notwithstanding all the outcries made against the French for resorting to this system of repressing the warfare of peasants in Spain, it was considered by the English general both justifiable and necessary. However the threat was sufficient for this occasion. The Basques set the pecuniary advantages to be derived from the friendship of the British and Portuguese troops and the misery of an avenging warfare against the evils of Spanish plunder, and generally disregarded Harispe’s appeals to their patriotism.

Meanwhile Soult who expected reinforcements seeing that little was to be gained by insurrection and being desirous to resume the offensive, ordered Harispe to leave only the troops absolutely necessary for the defence of St. Jean Pied de Port and its entrenched camp with a few Basques as scouts in the valleys, and to concentrate the remainder of his force at Mendionde, Hellette and La Houssoa, thus closely hemming in the right of the allies’ line with a view to making incursions beyond the Upper Nive. This was on the 14th, on the 23rd Harispe, getting information that Morillo was to forage in force on the side of Bidarray, endeavoured to cut him off, the supporting troops consisting of Spanish infantry and some English hussars repulsed his first attack, but they were finally pushed back with some loss in horses and mules. About the same time one of Hill’s posts near the confluence of the Aran with the Adour was surprised by some French companies who remained in advance until fresh troops detached from Urt forced them to repass the river again. This affair was a retaliation for the surprise of a French post a few days before by the sixth division, which was attended with some circumstances repugnant to the friendly habits long established between the French and British troops at the outposts. The value of such a generous intercourse old soldiers well understand, and some illustrations of it at this period may be quoted.

On the 9th of December, the forty-third was assembled in column on an open space within twenty yards of the enemy’s out-sentry, yet the latter continued to walk his beat for an hour without concern, relying so confidently on the customary system that he placed his knapsack on the ground to ease his shoulders. When at last the order to advance was given, one of the British soldiers stepping out told him to go away and helped him to replace his pack, the firing then commenced; the next morning the French in like manner warned a forty-third sentry to retire. But the most remarkable instance happened on the occasion of lord Wellington’s being desirous of getting to the top of a hill occupied by the enemy near Bayonne. He ordered the riflemen who escorted him to drive the French away, and seeing the former stealing up, as he thought too close, called out to commence firing; with a loud voice one of those old soldiers replied “no firing!” and then holding up the butt of his rifle towards the French, tapped it in a peculiar way. At the well-understood signal which meaned “we must have the hill for a short time,” the French who though they could not maintain would not have relinquished the post without a fight if they had been fired upon, quietly retired. And this signal would never have been made if the post had been one capable of a permanent defence, so well do veterans understand war and its proprieties.

The English general now only waited until the roads were practicable, to take the offensive with an army superior in every point of view to Soult’s. That general’s numbers were also about to be reduced. His conscripts were deserting fast, and the inclemency of the weather was filling his hospitals, while the bronzed veterans of Wellington’s army impassive to fatigue, patient to endure, fierce in execution, were free from serious maladies, ready and able to plant their colours wherever their general listed. At this time however the country was a vast quagmire; it was with difficulty that provisions or even orders could be conveyed to the different quarters, and a Portuguese brigade on the right of the Nive, was several days without food from the swelling of the rivulets which stopped the commissariat mules. At the sea-side the troops were better off, yet with a horrible counterpoise, for on that iron-bound coast storms and shipwrecks were so frequent, that scarcely a day passed but some vessel, sometimes many together, were seen embayed and drifting towards the reefs which shoot out like needles for several miles. Once in this situation there was no human help! a faint cry might be heard at intervals, but the tall ship floated slowly and solemnly onwards until the first rock arrested her, a roaring surge then dashed her to pieces and the shore was strewed with broken timbers and dead bodies. December and January were thus passed by the allies, but February saw Wellington break into France the successful invader of that mighty country. Yet neither his nor Soult’s military operations can be understood without a previous description of political affairs which shall be given in the next chapter.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter IV

[Sidenote: 1814.]

[Sidenote: Mr. Stuart’s Correspondence, MSS.]

Portugal.—It has been shewn that marshal Beresford’s arrival at Lisbon put a momentary check upon the intrigues of the regency relative to the command of the troops, when he rejoined the army the vexatious conduct of the government was renewed with greater violence, and its ill-will was vented upon the English residents, whose goods were arbitrarily seized and their persons imprisoned without regard to justice or international law. The supply and reinforcing of the army were the pretences for these exactions, yet the army was neither supplied nor recruited, for though the new regulations had produced nine thousand trained soldiers, they were, in contempt of the subsidizing treaty, retained in the depôts. At first this was attributed to the want of transport to enable them to march through Spain, but though lord Wellington obtained in the beginning of 1814 shipping to convey them to the army, the Portuguese government still withheld the greatest number, alleging in excuse the ill-conduct of the Spaniards relative to the military convention established between the two countries.

This convention had been concluded in 1812 to enable the Portuguese troops to establish hospitals and to draw certain resources from Spain upon fixed conditions. One of these was that all supplies might be purchased, half with ready money half with bills on the Portuguese treasury; nevertheless in December 1813 the Spanish envoy at Lisbon informed the Portuguese government, that to give up the shells of certain public buildings for hospitals was the only effect they would give to the convention. Wherefore as neither troops nor horses could march through Spain, and the supply of those already with the army became nearly impossible, the regency detained the reinforcements. Lord Wellington strongly reproached the Spanish government for this foul conduct, yet observed with great force to the Portuguese regency, that the treaty by which a certain number of soldiers were to be constantly in the field was made with England, not with Spain; and as the government of the former country continued to pay the subsidy and provided ships for the transport of the troops there was no excuse for retaining them in Portugal.

His remonstrances, Beresford’s orders, and Mr. Stuart’s exertions although backed by the menaces of lord Castlereagh, were however alike powerless; the regency embarked only three thousand men out of nine thousand, and those not until the month of March when the war was on the point of terminating. Thus instead of thirty thousand Portuguese under arms lord Wellington had less than twenty thousand, and yet Mr. Stuart affirmed that by doing away with the militia and introducing the Prussian system of granting furloughs, one hundred thousand troops of the line might have been furnished and supported by Portugal, without pressing more severely on the finances of the country than the actual system which supplied these twenty thousand. The regency were now more than usually importunate to have the subsidy paid in specie in which case their army would have disappeared altogether. Mr. Stuart firmly opposed this, knowing the money would be misapplied if it fell into their hands, and thinking their importunity peculiarly ill-timed when their quota of troops was withheld, and when lord Wellington, forced to pay ready money for his supplies in France, wanted all the specie that could be procured for the military chest. Such was the countenance assumed by Portugal towards England in return for the independence which the latter had secured for her; and it is obvious that if the war had not terminated immediately afterwards the alliance could not have continued. The British army deserted by Portugal and treated hostilely, as we shall find, by the Spaniards, must then have abandoned the Peninsula.

Spain.—The malice evinced towards lord Wellington by the Spanish government, the libels upon him and upon the Anglo-Portuguese army, the vices of the system by which the Spanish troops were supplied, and their own evil propensities fostered by long and cruel neglect and suffering, the activity of those intriguing politicians who were inimical to the British alliance, the insolence and duplicity of the minister of war, the growing enmity between Spain and Portugal, the virulence of all parties and the absolute hostility of the local authorities towards the British army, the officers and soldiers of which were on all occasions treated as if they were invaders rather than friends, drove lord Wellington in the latter end of November to extremity. He judged the general disposition of the Spanish people to be still favourable to the English alliance, and with the aid of the serviles hoped to put down the liberals; but an open rupture with the government he thought inevitable, and if the liberal influence should prove most powerful with the people he might be unable to effect a retreat into Portugal. Wherefore he recommended the British ministers to take measures with a view to a war against Spain! And this at the very moment when, victorious in every battle, he seemed to have placed the cause he supported beyond the power of fortune. Who when Napoleon was defeated at Leipsic, when all Europe and even part of Asia were pouring their armed hordes into the northern and eastern parts of France, when Soult was unable to defend the western frontier; who then looking only on the surface could have supposed that Wellington, the long-enduring general, whose profound calculations and untiring vigour in war had brought the affairs of the Peninsula to their apparently prosperous state, that he the victorious commander could with truth thus describe his own uneasy situation to his government?

“Matters are becoming so bad between us and the Spaniards that I think it necessary to draw your attention seriously to the subject. You will have seen the libels about San Sebastian, which I know were written and published by an officer of the war department and I believe under the direction of the minister at war Don Juan O’Donoju. Advantage has been taken of the impression made by these libels to circulate others in which the old stories are repeated about the outrages committed by sir John Moore’s army in Gallicia, and endeavours are made to irritate the public mind about our still keeping garrisons in Cadiz and Carthagena, and particularly in Ceuta. They exaggerate the conduct of our traders in South America, and every little concern of a master of a ship who may behave ill in a Spanish port is represented as an attack upon the sovereignty of the Spanish nation. I believe these libels all proceed from the same source, the government and their immediate servants and officers; and although I have no reason to believe that they have as yet made any impression on the nation at large they certainly have upon the officers of the government, and even upon the principal officers of the army. These persons must see that if the libels are not written or encouraged by the government they are at least not discouraged, they know that we are odious to the government and they treat us accordingly. The Spanish troops plunder every thing they approach, neither their own nor our magazines are sacred. Until recently there was some semblance of inquiry and of a desire to punish offenders, lately these acts of disorder have been left entirely unnoticed, unless when I have interfered with my authority as commander-in-chief of the Spanish army. The civil magistrates in the country have not only refused us assistance but have particularly ordered the inhabitants not to give it for payment, and when robberies have been discovered and the property proved to belong to the commissariat the law has been violated and possession withheld. This was the case lately at Tolosa.

“Then what is more extraordinary and more difficult to understand is a transaction which occurred lately at Fuenterabia. It was settled that the British and Portuguese hospitals should go to that town. There is a building there which has been a Spanish hospital, and the Spanish authority who gave it over wanted to carry off, in order to burn as fire-wood, the beds, that our soldiers might not have the use of them; and these are people to whom we have given medicines instruments and other aids, who when wounded and sick we have taken into our hospitals, and to whom we have rendered every service in our power after having recovered their country from the enemy! These are not the people of Spain but the officers of government, who would not dare to conduct themselves in this manner if they did not know that their conduct was agreeable to their employers. If this spirit is not checked, if we do not show that we are sensible of the injury done to our characters, and of the injustice and unfriendly nature of such proceedings, we must expect that the people at large will soon behave towards us in the same manner, and that we shall have no friend or none who will dare to avow him as such in Spain. Consider what will be the consequence of this state of affairs if any reverse should happen, or if an aggravation of the insults and injuries or any other cause should cause the English army to be withdrawn. I think I should experience great difficulty, the Spanish people being hostile, in retiring through Spain into Portugal from the peculiar nature of our equipments, and I think I might be able to embark the army at Passages in spite of all the French and Spanish armies united. But I should be much more certain of getting clear off as we ought if we had possession of San Sebastian, and this view of the subject is the motive for the advice I am about to give you as the remedy for the evils with which I have made you acquainted.

“First then I recommend to you to alter the nature of your political relations with Spain and to have nothing there but a “chargé d’affaires.” Secondly to complain seriously of the conduct of the government and their servants, to remind them that Cadiz, Carthagena, and I believe, Ceuta, were garrisoned by British troops at their earnest request, and that the troops were not sent to the two former till the government agreed to certain conditions. If we had not garrisoned the last it would before now have fallen into the hands of the Moors. Thirdly to demand, as security for the safety of the king’s troops against the criminal disposition of the government and of those in authority under them, that a British garrison should be admitted into San Sebastian, giving notice that unless this demand was complied with the troops should be withdrawn. Fourthly. To withdraw the troops if this demand be not complied with, be the consequences what they may, and to be prepared accordingly. You may rely upon this, that if you take a firm decided line and shew your determination to go through with it, you will have the Spanish nation with you, and will bring the government to their senses, and you will put an end at once to all the petty cabals and counter-action existing at the present moment, and you will not be under the necessity of bringing matters to extremities; if you take any other than a decided line and one which in its consequences will involve them in ruin you may depend upon it you will gain nothing and will only make matters worse. I recommend these measures whatever may be the decision respecting my command of the army. They are probably the more necessary if I should keep my command. The truth is that a crisis is approaching in our connection with Spain and if you do not bring the government and nation to their senses before they go too far, you will inevitably lose all the advantages which you might expect from services rendered to them.”

Thus it appears that lord Wellington at the end of the war described the Spaniards precisely as sir John Moore described them at the beginning. But the seat of government was now transferred to Madrid and the new Cortez, as I have already noticed, decided, against the wishes of the regency, that the English general should keep the command of the Spanish armies. The liberals indeed with great diligence had previously sought to establish a system of controul over the Cortez by means of the populace of Madrid as they had done at Cadiz, and they were so active and created so much alarm by their apparent success, that the serviles, backed by the Americans, were ready to make the princess Carlotta sole regent as the only resource for stemming the progress of democracy. However when they had proved their strength upon the question of lord Wellington’s command, they deferred the princess’s affair and resolved to oppose their adversaries more vigorously in the assembly. They were encouraged also by a tumult which happened at Madrid, where the populace instigated by their agents, or disliking the new constitution, for the measures of the democratic party were generally considered evil in the great towns beyond the Isla, rose and forced the authorities to imprison a number of obnoxious persons; the new Cortez then arrived, the serviles got the upper hand and being resolved to change the regency took as their ground of attack its conduct towards the English general. Pursuing this scheme of opposition with ardour they caused the minister of war to be dismissed, and were ready to attack the regency itself, expecting full success, when to their amazement and extreme anger lord Wellington, far from desiring to have his personal enemies thus thrust out of power, expressed his earnest desire to keep them in their stations.

To men who were alike devoid of patriotism or principle, and whose only rule of action was the momentary impulse of passion, such a proceeding was incomprehensible; yet it was a wise and well-considered political change on his part, shewing that private feelings were never the guides of his conduct in public matters, and that he ever seemed to bear in mind the maxim which Sophocles has put into the mouth of Ajax, “carrying himself towards his friends as if they might one day become enemies and treating his foes as men who might become friends.” The new spirit had given him no hopes of any general alteration of the system, nor was he less convinced that sooner or later he must come to extremities with the Spaniards; but he was averse to any appearance of disunion becoming public at the moment he was invading France, lest it should check his projects of raising an anti-Napoleon party in that country. He therefore advised the British government to keep his hostile propositions in abeyance, leaving it to him and to his brother to put them in execution or not as events might dictate. Meanwhile he sent orders to evacuate Cadiz and Carthagena, and opposed the projected change in the Spanish government, observing that “the minister of war being dismissed, the most obnoxious opponent of military arrangement was gone; that the mob of Madrid, being worked upon by the same press in the hands of the same people who had made the mob of Cadiz so ungovernable, would become as bad as these last, and though the mercantile interest would not have so much power in the capital they would not want partizans when desirous of carrying a question by violence. The grandees were too poor to retain their former natural influence, and the constitution gave them no political power. The only chance which the serviles had was to conduct themselves with prudence, and when in the right with a firm contempt for the efforts of the press and the mob; but this was what no person in Spain ever did and the smaller party being wiser bolder and more active would soon govern the Cortez at Madrid as they did that at Cadiz.”

No permanent change for the better could be expected, and meanwhile the actual government, alarmed by the tumults in the capital, by the strength of the serviles in the Cortez, by the rebukes and remonstrances of the English general and ministers, and by the evident danger of an open rupture with England, displayed, according to lord Wellington, the utmost prudence and fairness in a most important affair which occurred at this time. That is to say, their own views and interests coinciding with those of the English commander and government there was a momentary agreement, and Wellington wisely preferred this opening for conciliation to the more dangerous mode he had before recommended.

The event which called forth his approval of their conduct was the secret arrival of the duke of San Carlos at Madrid in December. He brought with him a treaty of peace, proposed by Napoleon and accepted by Ferdinand, called the treaty of Valençay. It acknowledged Ferdinand as king of Spain and the Indies, and the integrity of the Spanish empire was recognized. He was in return to make the English evacuate Spain, and the French troops were to abandon the country at the same time. The contracting powers were to maintain their respective maritime rights as they had been stipulated by the treaty of Utrecht and observed until 1792. The sales of the national domains made by Joseph were to be confirmed; all the Spaniards who had attached themselves to the French cause were to be reinstated in their dignities and property, those who chose to quit Spain were to have ten years to dispose of their possessions. Prisoners, including all those delivered up by Spain to the English, were to be sent home on both sides. The king was to pay annually thirty millions of reals to his father Charles IV., and two millions to his widow; a treaty of commerce was to be arranged.

[Sidenote: Mr. Stuart’s Correspondence, MSS.]

Ferdinand being entirely devoid of principle acted with that cunning which marked his infamous career through life. He gave the duke of San Carlos secret instructions to tell the serviles, if he found them all-powerful in the Cortez, to ratify this treaty with a secret resolution to break it when time served; but if the Jacobins were strongest San Carlos was merely to ask them to ratify it, Ferdinand in that case reserving to himself the task of violating it on his own authority. These instructions were made known to the English ministers and the English general, but they, putting no trust in such a negociator, and thinking his intention was rather to deceive the allies than Napoleon, thwarted him as much as they could, and in this they were joined by the Portuguese government. The British authorities were naturally little pleased with the prospect of being forced to abandon Spain under a treaty, which would necessarily give Napoleon great influence over that country in after times, and for the present enable him to concentrate all the old troops on the eastern frontier of his empire; nor was the Jacobinical Spanish government more content to have a master. Wherefore, all parties being agreed, the regency, keeping the matter secret, dismissed San Carlos on the 8th of January with a copy of the decree passed by the Cortez, which rendered null and void all acts of Ferdinand while a prisoner, and forbad negociation for peace while a French army remained in the Peninsula. And that the king might fully understand them, they told him “the monster despotism had been driven from the throne of Spain.” Meanwhile Joseph Palafox, who had been a prisoner ever since the siege of Zaragoza, was by the French emperor first sent to Valençay, after which he was to follow San Carlos and he arrived at Madrid four days after the latter’s departure. But his negociations were equally fruitless with the regency, and in the secret sittings of the Cortez measures were discussed for watching the king’s movements and forcing him to swear to the constitution and to the Cortez before he passed the frontier.

Lord Wellington was alarmed at the treaty of Valençay. He had, he said, long suspected Napoleon would adopt such an expedient and if he had shewn less pride and more common sense it would have succeeded. This sarcasm was perhaps well applied to the measure as it appeared at the time, but the emperor’s real proceedings he was unacquainted with, and this splenetic ebullition only indicated his own vexation at approaching mischief, for he was forced to acknowledge that the project was not unlikely even then to succeed, because the misery of Spain was so great and so clearly to be traced to the views of the government and of the new constitution, that many persons must have been desirous to put an end to the general suffering under the sanction of this treaty. “If Napoleon,” he said, “had withdrawn the garrisons from Catalonia and Valencia and sent Ferdinand who must be as useless a person in France as he would probably be in Spain at once to the frontier, or into the Peninsula, peace would have been made or the war at least rendered so difficult as to be almost impracticable and without hope of great success.” Now this was precisely what Napoleon had designed, and it seems nearly certain that he contemplated the treaty of Valençay and the restoration of Ferdinand as early as the period of the battle of Vittoria, if not before.

The scheme was one which demanded the utmost secrecy, that it might be too sudden for the English influence to defeat it; the emperor had therefore arranged that Ferdinand should enter Spain early in November, that is at the very moment when it would have been most injurious to the English interest, because then the disputes in the Cortez between the serviles and Jacobins were most rancorous, and the hostility of the regencies both in Portugal and Spain towards the English general and English influence undisguised. Suchet had then also proved his superiority to the allies in Catalonia, and Soult’s gigantic lines being unessayed seemed impregnable. But in Napoleon’s council were persons seeking only to betray him. It was the great misfortune of his life to have been driven by circumstances to suffer such men as Talleyrand and Fouché, whose innate treachery has become proverbial, to meddle in his affairs or even to approach his court. Mischief of this kind, however, necessarily awaits men who like Napoleon and Oliver Cromwell have the courage to attempt after great convulsions and civil wars the rebuilding of the social edifice without spilling blood. Either to create universal abhorrence by their cruelty, or to employ the basest of men, the Talleyrands, Fouchés, and Monks, of revolutions, is their inevitable fate; and never can they escape the opposition, more dangerous still, of honest and resolute men, who unable to comprehend the necessity of the times see nothing but tyranny in the vigour which prevents anarchy.

The treaty of Valençay was too important a measure to escape the sagacity of the traitors around Napoleon, and when their opposition in the council and their secret insinuations proved unavailing to dissuade him from it, they divulged the secret to the partizans of the Bourbons. Taking advantage of the troubled state of public affairs which occupied the emperor’s time and distracted his attention, they contrived that Ferdinand’s emissaries should precede him to Madrid, and delayed his own departure until March when the struggle was at an end. Nevertheless the chances of success for this scheme, even in its imperfect execution, were so many and so alarming that lord Wellington’s sudden change from fierce enmity to a warm support of the regency, when he found it resolute and frank in its rejection of the treaty, although it created so much surprize and anger at the moment, cannot be judged otherwise than as the wise and prudent proceeding of a consummate statesman. Nor did he fail to point out to his own government the more distant as well as the immediate danger to England and Spain involved in this singularly complicated and important affair.

The evils as affecting the war and English alliance with Spain were obvious, but the two articles relating to the provision for Ferdinand’s father and mother, and to the future state of the Spaniards who had joined the French involved great interests. It was essential, he said, that the Spanish government should explicitly declare its intentions. Negociations for a general peace were said to be commenced, of that he knew nothing, but he supposed such being the case that a basis would be embodied in a preliminary treaty which all the belligerents would ratify, each power then to arrange its own peculiar treaty with France under protection of the general confederation. Napoleon would necessarily put forward his treaty with Ferdinand. It could be got rid of by the statement that the latter was a prisoner when negociating; but new articles would then have to be framed and therefore the Spanish government should be called upon previously to declare what their intentions were as to the two articles in the treaty of Valençay. His objections to them were that the allowance to Charles IV. was beyond the financial means of Spain, and were it not so, Napoleon should not be allowed to stipulate for any provision for him. Neither should he be suffered to embody or establish a permanent French party in Spain, under protection of a treaty, an article of which provided for the restoration of the Spaniards who had taken part with the French. It would give him the right, which he would not fail to exercise, of interfering in their favour in every question of property, or other interest, and the Spanish government would be involved in perpetual disputes with France. It was probable the allied sovereigns would be desirous of getting rid of this question and would think it desirable that Spain should pardon her rebellious subjects. For this reason he had before advised the Spanish government to publish a general amnesty, with the view of removing the difficulty when a general peace should come to be negociated, and this difficulty and danger be enhanced, if not before provided for, by the desire which each of the allied powers would feel, when negociating on their separate grounds, to save their finances by disbanding their armies.

This suggestion of an amnesty, made ten days before the battle of Vittoria, illustrates Wellington’s sagacity, his long and provident reach of mind, his discriminating and magnanimous mode of viewing the errors and weaknesses of human nature. Let it be remembered that in the full tide of success, after having passed the Douro, and when Joseph surprised and bewildered was flying before him, that he who had been called the iron duke in the midst of his bivouac fires, found time to consider, and had sufficient humanity and grandeur of mind thus to address the Spanish government on this subject.

“A large number of Spaniards who have taken the side of the French are now with the enemy’s army, many of these are highly meritorious and have rendered most essential service to the cause even during the period in which they have been in the service of the enemy. It is also a known fact that fear, the misery and distress which they suffered during the contest, and despair of the result, were the motives which induced many of these unfortunate persons to take the part which they have taken, and I would suggest for consideration whether it is expedient to involve the country in all the consequences of a rigid adherence to the existing law in order to punish such persons. I am the last man who will be found to diminish the merit of those Spaniards who have adhered to the cause of the country during the severe trial which I hope has passed, particularly of those, who, having remained amongst the enemy without entering their service, have served their country at the risk of their lives. But at the same time that I can appreciate the merits of these individuals and of the nation at large I can forgive the weakness of those who have been induced by terror by distress or by despair to pursue a different line of conduct.

“I entreat the government to advert to the circumstances of the commencement and of the different stages of this eventful contest, and to the numerous occasions in which all men must have imagined that it was impossible for the powers of the Peninsula, although aided by Great Britain, to withstand the colossal power by which they were assailed and nearly overcome. Let them reflect upon the weakness of the country at the commencement of the contest, upon the numerous and almost invariable disasters of the armies, and upon the ruin and disorganization that followed, and let them decide whether those who were witnesses of these events are guilty because they could not foresee what has since occurred. The majority are certainly not guilty in any other manner, and many now deemed guilty in the eye of the law as having served the pretended king have by that very act acquired the means of serving and have rendered important services to their country. It is my opinion that the policy of Spain should lead the government and the Cortez to grant a general amnesty with certain exceptions. This subject deserves consideration in the two views of failing or succeeding in freeing the country from its oppressors. If the effort fail the enemy will by an amnesty be deprived of the principal means now in his hands of oppressing the country in which his armies will be stationed; he will see clearly that he can place no reliance on any partizans in Spain, and he will not have even a pretence for supposing that the country is divided in opinion. If the effort succeed the object of the government should be to pacify the country and to heal the divisions which the contest has unavoidably occasioned. It is impossible to accomplish this object while there exists a great body of the Spanish nation, some possessing the largest property in the country and others endowed with considerable talents, who are proscribed for their conduct during the contest, conduct which has been caused by the misfortunes to which I have above adverted. These persons their friends and relations will if persecuted naturally endeavour to perpetuate the divisions in the country in the hope at some time to take advantage of them, and adverting to their number and to that power which they must derive from their property and connections it must be feared that they will be too successful.

“But there are other important views of this question. First should the effort to free the country from its oppressors succeed, at some time or other approaches to peace must be made between the two nations and the amnesty to the persons above described will remove the greatest difficulty in the way of such an arrangement. Secondly, should even Spain be at peace with France and the proscription against these persons be continued, they will remain in France a perpetual instrument in the hands of that restless power to disturb the internal tranquillity of Spain; and in case of a renewal of the war, which will be their wish and object, they will be the most mischievous and most inveterate enemies of their country, of that country which with mistaken severity aggravates her misfortunes by casting off from her thousands of her useful subjects. On every ground then it is desirable that the measure should be adopted and the present moment should be seized for adopting it.”

Then pointing out with great accuracy and justice those who should be exempted from an amnesty he thus terminated this record of his own true greatness, and of the littleness of the people to whom it was fruitlessly addressed.

“In bringing this subject under the consideration of the government I am perhaps intruding my opinion on a subject in which as a stranger I have no concern, but having had an advantage enjoyed by few of being acquainted with the concerns of the country since the commencement of the contest, and having been sensible both in the last and present campaign of the disadvantages suffered by Spain from the want of a measure of this description, I have thought it proper as a well-wisher to the cause to bring it under the consideration of the government assuring them at the same time that I have never had the slightest communication on the subject with the government of my country, nor do I believe that they have ever turned their attention to it. What I have above stated are my own opinions to which I may attribute more weight than they merit but they are founded upon a sincere devotion to the interests of the country.”

Such was the general political state of the Peninsula as bearing upon the military operations at the close of the year 1813, and the state of England and France shall be shewn in the next chapters. But however hateful and injurious to England the conduct of the Peninsular government appears, and however just and well-founded were the greatest part of lord Wellingtons complaints, it is not to be assumed that the Spanish government and Cortez were totally without excuse for their hostility or ingratitude. It was not solely upon military grounds that they were obnoxious to the English general. He united heartily with the English government in hatred of democratic institutions as opposed to aristocratic domination. Spain with the former seemed scarcely worth saving from France, and in a letter written about that period to the Conde de la Bispal, who it would appear proposed some immediate stroke of violence against the regency, he openly avows that he was inimical to the constitution, because it admitted a free press and refused to property any political influence beyond what naturally belonged to it. That is, it refused to heap undue honours privileges and power upon those who already possessed all the luxury and happiness which riches can bestow; it refused to admit the principle that those who have much should have more, that the indolence corruption and insolence naturally attendant upon wealth should be supported and increased by irresponsible power; that those who laboured and produced all things should enjoy nothing, that the rich should be tyrants and the poor slaves. But these essential principles of aristocratic government have never yet been, and never will be quietly received and submitted to by any thinking people: where they prevail there is no real freedom. Property inevitably confers power on its possessors, and far from adding to that natural power by political privileges it should be the object of all men who love liberty to balance it by raising the poorer classes to political importance: the influence and insolence of riches ought to be tamed and subdued instead of being inflated and excited by political institutions. This was the guiding principle of the most celebrated Greek legislators, the opposite principle produced the domestic dissensions of the Romans, and was the ruin of Carthage. It was the cause also of the French revolution. But after many years of darkness, the light of reason is now breaking forth again, and that ancient principle of justice which places the right of man in himself, above the right of property, is beginning to be understood. A clear perception of it has produced the American republic. France and Spain have admitted it and England ripens for its adoption. Yet pure and bright and beautiful and healthful as the light of freedom is in itself, it fell at this time on such foul and stagnant pools, such horrid repulsive objects, that millions turned at first from its radiance with disgust and wished for darkness again.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter V

[Sidenote: 1813.]

The force and energy of Napoleon’s system of government was evinced in a marvellous manner by the rapidity with which he returned to Germany, at the head of an enormous army, before his enemies had time even to understand the extent of his misfortunes in the Russian campaign. The victories of Lutzen and Bautzen then seemed to reinstate him as the arbiter of Europe. But those battles were fought with the heads of columns the rear of which were still filing out of France. They were fought also with young troops. Wherefore the emperor when he had given himself a fixed and menacing position in Germany more readily listened to the fraudful negociations of his trembling opponents, partly in hopes of attaining his object without further appeal to arms, partly to obtain time to organize and discipline his soldiers, confident in his own unmatched skill in directing them if war was finally to decide his fate. He counted also upon the family ties between him and Austria, and believed that power willing to mediate sincerely. Not that he was so weak as to imagine the hope of regaining some of its former power and possessions was not uppermost, nor was he unprepared to make concessions; but he seems to have been quite unsuspecting of the long course of treachery and deceit followed by the Austrian politicians.

[Sidenote: Vol. v. p. 49]

[Sidenote: Appendix, No. 1.]

It has been already shewn that while negociating with France an offensive and defensive treaty in 1812, the Austrian cabinet was cognizant of, and secretly aiding the plan of a vast insurrection extending from the Tyrol to Calabria and the Illyrian provinces. The management of this scheme was entrusted by the English cabinet to general Nugent and Mr. King who were at Vienna; their agents went from thence to Italy and the Illyrian coast, many Austrian officers were engaged in the project; and Italians of great families entered into commercial houses to enable them with more facility to carry on this plan. Moreover Austria while actually signing the treaty with Napoleon was with unceasing importunity urging Prussia to join the Russians in opposition to him. The feeble operations of Prince Swartzenberg, the manner in which he uncovered the emperor’s right flank and permitted Tchitchagoff to move to the Beresina in the Russian campaign, were but continuations of this deceitful policy. And it was openly advanced as a merit by the Austrian cabinet that her offer of mediation after the battle of Bautzen was made solely with the view of gaining time to organize the army which was to join the Russians and Prussians. Finally the armistice itself was violated, hostilities being commenced before its termination, to enable the Russian troops safely to join the Austrians in Bohemia.

Nevertheless Napoleon’s genius triumphed at Dresden over the unskilful operations of the allies, directed by Swartzenberg, whose incapacity as a commander was made manifest in this campaign. Nor would the after misfortunes of Vandamme and Marshal Macdonald, or the defeat of Oudinot and Ney have prevented the emperor’s final success but for the continuation of a treachery, which seemed at the time to be considered a virtue by sovereigns who were unceasingly accusing their more noble adversary of the very baseness that they were practising so unblushingly. He had conceived a project so vast so original so hardy, so far above the imaginations of his contemporary generals, that even Wellington’s sagacity failed to pierce it, and he censured the emperor’s long stay on the Elbe as an obstinacy unwarranted by the rules of art. But Napoleon had more profoundly judged his own situation. The large forces he left at Dresden at Torgau, and Wittemberg, for which he has been so much blamed by shallow military critics as lessening his numbers on the field of Leipsic, were essential parts of his gigantic plan. He quitted Dresden, apparently in retreat, to deceive his enemies, but with the intention of marching down the Elbe, recrossing that river and throwing his opponents into a false position. Then he would have seized Berlin and reopening his communications with his garrisons both on the Elbe and the Oder have operated between those rivers; and with an army much augmented in power, because he would have recovered many thousand old soldiers cooped up in the garrisons; an army more compact and firmly established also, because he would have been in direct communication with the Danes and with Davoust’s force at Hamburgh, and both his flanks would have been secured by his chains of fortresses on the two rivers. Already had Blucher and the Swedes felt his first stroke, the next would have taught the allies that the lion was still abroad in his strength, if at the very moment of execution without any previous declaration the Bavarians, upon whose operations he depended for keeping the Austrians in the valley of the Danube in check, had not formed common cause with his opponents and the whole marched together towards the Rhine. The battle of Leipsic followed, the well-known treason of the Saxon troops led to the victory gained there by the allies, and Napoleon, now the prey of misfortune, reached France with only one-third of his army, having on the way however trampled in the dust the Bavarian Wrede who attempted to stop his passage at Hannau.

Meanwhile the allied sovereigns, by giving hopes to their subjects that constitutional liberty would be the reward of the prodigious popular exertions against France, hopes which with the most detestable baseness they had previously resolved to defraud, assembled greater forces than they were able to wield, and prepared to pass the Rhine. But distrusting even their immense superiority of numbers they still pursued their faithless system. When Napoleon in consequence of the Bavarian defection marched to Leipsic, he sent orders to Gouvion St. Cyr to abandon Dresden and unite with the garrisons on the Lower Elbe, the messengers were intercepted, and St. Cyr, too little enterprising to execute such a plan of his own accord, surrendered on condition of being allowed to regain France. The capitulation was broken and general and soldiers remained prisoners.

After the Leipsic battle, Napoleon’s adherents fell away by nations. Murat the husband of his sister joined Austria and thus forced prince Eugene to abandon his position on the Adige. A successful insurrection in favour of the prince of Orange broke out in Holland. The neutrality of Switzerland was violated, and more than half a million of armed men were poured across the frontiers of France in all the violence of brute force, for their military combinations were contemptible and their course marked by murder and devastation. But previous to this the allies gave one more notable example of their faithless cunning.

[Sidenote: Diplomatic Correspondence, MSS.]

St. Aignan the French resident minister at Gotha had been taken at Leipsic and treated at first as a prisoner of war. He remonstrated and being known to entertain a desire for peace was judged a good tool with which to practise deception. Napoleon had offered on the field of battle at Leipsic to negociate, no notice was taken of it at the time, but now the Austrian Metternich and the Russian Nesselrode had an interview with St. Aignan at Frankfort, and they assured him the Prussian minister agreed in all things with them. They had previously arranged that lord Aberdeen should come in during the conference as if by accident; nothing was put down in writing, yet St. Aignan was suffered to make minutes of their proposals in reply to the emperor’s offer to negociate. These were generally that the alliance of the sovereigns was indissoluble—that they would have only a general peace—that France was to be confined to her natural limits, viz. the Alps the Rhine and the Pyrenees—that the independence of Germany was a thing not to be disputed—that the Spanish Peninsula should be free and the Bourbon dynasty be restored—that Austria must have a frontier in Italy the line of which could be afterwards discussed, but Italy itself was to be independent of any preponderating power—that Holland was also to be independent and her frontier to be matter for after discussion—that England was ready to make great sacrifices for peace upon these bases and would acknowledge that freedom of commerce and of navigation which France had a right to pretend to. St. Aignan here observed that Napoleon believed England was resolved to restrict France to the possession of thirty sail of the line, lord Aberdeen replied that it was not true.

This conference had place at the emperor of Austria’s head-quarters on the 10th of November, and lord Aberdeen inclosed the account of it in a despatch dated at Smalcalde the 16th of November. He had objected verbally to the passage relating to the maritime question with England, nevertheless he permitted it to remain in St. Aignan’s minutes. It was decided also that the military operations should go on notwithstanding the negociation, and in truth the allies had not the slightest design to make peace. They thought Napoleon would refuse the basis proposed, which would give them an opportunity to declare he was opposed to all reasonable modes of putting an end to the war and thus work upon the French people. This is proved by what followed. For when contrary to their expectations the emperor’s minister signified, on the 16th of November, that he accepted the propositions, observing that the independence of all nations at sea as well as by land had been always Napoleon’s object, Metternich in his reply, on the 25th of November, pretended to consider this answer as avoiding the acceptation of the basis. The emperor however put that obstacle aside, on the 2d of December, by accepting explicitly the basis, generally and summarily, such as it had been presented to him, adding, that France would make great sacrifices but the emperor was content if by like sacrifices on the part of England, that general peace which was the declared object of the allies could be obtained. Metternich thus driven from his subterfuge required Napoleon to send a like declaration to each of the allies separately when negociations might, he said, commence.

Meanwhile lord Aberdeen, who had permitted St. Aignan to retain the article relating to maritime rights in his minutes of conference, presented to Metternich on the 27th of November a note declaring that England would not admit the turn given by France to her share of the negociation; that she was ready to yield all the rights of commerce and navigation which France had a right to pretend to, but the question would turn upon what that right was. England would never permit her navigation laws to be discussed at a congress, it was a matter essentially foreign to the object of such an assembly, and England would never depart from the great principle thereby announced as to her maritime rights. Metternich approved of lord Aberdeen’s views, saying they were his own and those of his court, thus proving that the negociation had been a deceit from the beginning. This fact was however placed beyond doubt by lord Castlereagh’s simultaneous proceedings in London.

In a note dated the 30th November that minister told lord Aberdeen England admitted as a basis, that the Alps the Rhine and the Pyrenees should be the frontier of France, subject to such modifications as might be necessary to give a secure frontier to Holland, and to Switzerland also, although the latter had not been mentioned in the proposals given by St. Aignan. He applauded the resolution to pursue military operations notwithstanding the negociations, and he approved of demanding nothing but what they were resolved to have. Nevertheless he said that any sacrifice to be made by England was only to secure the independence of Holland and Switzerland, and the former having already declared for the house of Nassau was now out of the pale of discussion. Finally he recommended that any unnecessary delay or equivocation on the part of the enemy should be considered as tantamount to a rejection of the basis, and that the allies should then put forward the offer of peace to show that it was not they but France that opposed an honourable termination of the war. Having thus thrown fresh obstacles in the way of that peace which the allies pretended to have so much at heart, he, on the 21st December, sent notes to the different ambassadors of the allied powers then in London demanding explicit answers about the intentions of their courts as to England’s maritime code. To this they all responded that their cabinets would not suffer any question relative to that code to be entertained at a congress in which England was represented, and this on the express ground that it would mar the great object of peace.

Lord Castlereagh thus provided, declared that France should be informed of their resolutions before negociations commenced, but twenty days before this Napoleon having decreed a fresh levy of three hundred thousand conscripts the allies had published a manifesto treating this measure, so essentially a defensive one since they would not suspend their military operations, as a fresh provocation on his part, because the motives assigned for the conscription contained a just and powerful description of their past deceits and violence with a view to rouse the national spirit of France. Thus having first by a pretended desire for peace and a willingness on the part of England to consent to an arrangement about her maritime code, inveigled the French emperor into negociations and thereby ascertained that the maritime question was uppermost in his mind and the only obstacle to peace, they declared that vital question should not even be discussed. And when by this subtlety they had rendered peace impossible proclaimed that Napoleon alone resisted the desire of the world for tranquillity. And at this very moment Austria was secretly endeavouring to obtain England’s consent to her seizing upon Alsace a project which was stopped by lord Wellington who forcibly pointed out the danger of rousing France to a general insurrection by such a proceeding.

The contrast between these wiles to gain a momentary advantage, and the manly, vigorous policy of lord Wellington must make honest men of all nations blush for the cunning which diplomatists call policy. On one side the arts of guileful negociation masked with fair protestations but accompanied by a savage and revolting system of warfare; on the other a broad open hostility declared on manly and just grounds followed up with a strict regard to humanity and good faith; nothing put forward with an equivocal meaning and the actions true to the word. On the eastern frontier the Cossack let loose to ravage with all the barbarity of Asiatic warfare. On the western frontier the Spaniards turned back into their own country in the very midst of triumph, for daring to pass the bounds of discipline prescribed by the wise and generous policy of their commander. Terror and desolation and the insurrection of a people rendered frantic by the cruelty of the invaders marked the progress of the ferocious multitudes who crossed the Rhine. Order and tranquillity, profound even on the very edge of the battle-field, attended the march of the civilized army which passed the Bidassoa. And what were the military actions? Napoleon rising even above himself hurtled against the armed myriads opposed to him with such a terrible energy that though ten times his number they were rolled back on every side in confusion and dismay. But Wellington advanced without a check, victorious in every battle, although one half of the veterans opposed to him would have decided the campaign on the eastern frontier. Nor can this be gainsaid, since Napoleon’s career in this campaign was only stayed by the defection of his brother-in-law Murat, and by the sickening treachery of two marshals to whom he had been prodigal of benefits. It is undeniable that lord Wellington with sixty thousand Anglo-Portuguese acting in the south, effected more than half a million of the allies were able to effect on the opposite side of France; and yet Soult’s army on the 10th of November was stronger than that with which Napoleon fought the battle of Brienne.

That great man was never personally deceived by the allies’ pretended negociations. He joined issue with them to satisfy the French people that he was not averse to peace, but his instructions dated the 4th of January and addressed to Caulaincourt prove at once his sagacity and firmness. “I think,” he said, “that both the allies good faith and the wish of England to make peace is doubtful; for my part I desire peace but it must be solid and honourable. I have accepted the basis proposed at Frankfort yet it is more than probable the allies have other notions. These propositions are but a mask, the negociations are placed under the influence of the military operations and it is easy to foresee what the consequences of such a system must be. It is necessary therefore to listen to and observe every thing. It is not certain even that you will be admitted to the head-quarters of the allies. The Russians and the English watch to prevent any opening for explanation and reconciliation with the emperor of Austria. You must therefore endeavour to ascertain the real views of the allies and let me know day by day what you learn that I may frame instructions for which at present I have no sure grounds.”

The internal state of France was more disquieting to his mind than foreign negociations or the number of invaders. The sincere republicans were naturally averse to him as the restorer of monarchy, yet they should have felt that the sovereign whose ruin was so eagerly sought by the legitimate kings and nobles of Europe could not be really opposed to liberty. Meanwhile the advocates of legitimacy shrunk from him as an usurper, and all those tired of war, and they were a majority of the nation, judging from the stupendous power of his genius that he had only to will peace to attain it with security, blamed his tardiness in negociation. An unexpected opposition to his wishes was also displayed in the legislative body, and the partizans of the Bourbons were endeavouring to form a great conspiracy in favour of that house. There were many traitors likewise to him and to their country, men devoid of principle, patriotism, or honour, who with instinctive hatred of a failing cause plotted to thwart his projects for the defence of the nation. In fine the men of action and the men of theories were alike combined for mischief. Nor is this outbreak of passion to be wondered at when it is considered how recently Napoleon had stopped the anarchy of the revolution and rebuilt the social and political structure in France. But of all who by their untimely opposition to the emperor hurt their country, the most pernicious were those silly politicians, whom he so felicitously described as “discussing abstract systems of government when the battering ram was at the gates.”

Such however has been in all ages the conduct of excited and disturbed nations, and it seems to be inherent in human nature, because a saving policy can only be understood and worked to good by master-spirits, and they are few and far between, their time on earth short, their task immense. They have not time to teach, they must command although they know that pride and ignorance and even honesty will carp at the despotism which brings general safety. It was this vain short-sighted impatience that drove Hannibal into exile, caused the assassination of Cæsar, and strewed thorns beneath the gigantic footsteps of Oliver Cromwell. It raged fiercely in Spain against lord Wellington, and in France against Napoleon, and always with the most grievous injury to the several nations. Time only hallows human institutions. Under that guarantee men will yield implicit obedience and respect to the wildest caprices of the most stupid tyrant that ever disgraced a throne, and wanting it they will cavil at and reject the wisest measures of the most sublime genius. The painful notion is thus excited, that if governments are conducted with just the degree of stability and tranquillity which they deserve and no more, the people of all nations, much as they may be oppressed, enjoy upon an average of years precisely the degree of liberty they are fitted for. National discontents mark, according to their bitterness and constancy, not so much the oppression of the rulers as the real progress of the ruled in civilization and its attendant political knowledge. When from peculiar circumstances those discontents explode in violent revolutions, shattering the fabric of society and giving free vent and activity to all the passions and follies of mankind, fortunate is the nation which possesses a Napoleon or an Oliver Cromwell “to step into their state of dominion with spirit to controul and capacity to subdue the factions of the hour and reconstruct the frame of reasonable government.”

For great as these two men were in the field of battle, especially the former, they were infinitely greater when they placed themselves in the seat of power, and put forth the gigantic despotism of genius essential to the completion of their holy work. Nor do I hold the conduct of Washington to be comparable to either of those men. His situation was one of infinitely less difficulty, and there is no reason to believe that his capacity would have been equal to the emergencies of a more formidable crisis than he had to deal with. Washington could not have made himself master of all had it been necessary and he so inclined, for he was neither the foremost general nor the foremost statesman of his nation. His forbearance was a matter of necessity, and his love of liberty did not prevent him from bequeathing his black slaves to his widow.

Such was Napoleon’s situation, and as he read the signs of the times truly he knew that in his military skill and the rage of the peasants at the ravages of the enemy he must find the means to extricate himself from his difficulties, or rather to extricate his country, for self had no place in his policy save as his personal glory was identified with France and her prosperity. Never before did the world see a man, soaring so high and devoid of all selfish ambition. Let those who honestly seeking truth doubt this, study Napoleon carefully; let them read the record of his second abdication published by his brother Lucien, that stern republican who refused kingdoms as the price of his principles, and they will doubt no longer. It is not however with these matters that this History has to deal but with the emperor’s measures affecting his lieutenants on the Spanish frontier of France. There disaffection to his government was extensive but principally from local causes. The conscription was peculiarly hateful to the wild mountaineers, who like most borderers cherish very independent notions. The war with England had ruined the foreign commerce of their great towns, and the advantage of increased traffic by land on the east was less directly felt in the south. There also the recollection of the Vendean struggle still lingered and the partizans of the Bourbons had many connections. But the chief danger arose from the just and politic conduct of lord Wellington which, offering no cause of anger and very much of private advantage to the people, gave little or no hope of insurrection from sufferings.

While France was in this state England presented a scene of universal exultation. Tory politics were triumphant, opposition in the parliament was nearly crushed by events, the press was either subdued by persecution or in the pay of the ministers, and the latter with undisguised joy hailed the coming moment when aristocratic tyranny was to be firmly established in England. The most enormous subsidies and military supplies were poured into the continent, and an act was passed to enable three-fourths of the militia to serve abroad. They were not however very forward to volunteer, and a new army which ought to have reinforced Wellington was sent, under the command of general Graham, to support the insurrection of Holland, where it was of necessity engaged in trifling or unsuccessful operations in no manner affecting the great objects of the war. Meanwhile the importance of lord Wellington’s army and views was quite overlooked or misunderstood. The ministers persevered in the foolish plan of removing him to another quarter of Europe, and at the same time, instigated by the ambassadors of the allied sovereigns, were continually urging him to push his operations with more vigour in France. As if he was the man who had done least!

His letters were filled with strong and well-founded complaints that his army was neglected. Let his real position be borne in mind. He had, not as a military man but with a political view and to meet the wishes of the allied sovereigns backed by the importunities of his own government, placed himself in a confined and difficult district of France, where his operations were cramped by rivers and fortresses and by a powerful army occupying strong positions on his front and flanks. In this situation, unable to act at all in wet weather, he was necessarily dependent upon the ocean for supplies and reinforcements, and upon the Spanish authorities for his hospitals, depôts, and communications. Numbers were requisite to balance the advantages derived by the enemy from the peculiar conformation of the country and the position of the fortresses. Money also was wanted to procure supplies which he could not carry with him, and must pay for exactly, if he would avoid a general insurrection and the consequent ruin of the political object for which he had adopted such critical military operations. But though he had undertaken the invasion of France at the express desire of the government the latter seemed to be alike ignorant of its importance and of the means to accomplish it, at one moment urging progress beyond reason, at another ready to change lightly what they had proposed ignorantly. Their unsettled policy proved their incapacity even to comprehend the nature of the great tide of events on which they floated rather than sailed. Lord Wellington was forced day by day to teach them the value of their own schemes, and to show them how small their knowledge was of the true bearing of the political and military affairs they pretended to direct.

“Assure,” he wrote on the 21st of December to lord Bathurst, in reply to one of their ill-founded remonstrances, “Assure the Russian ambassador there is nothing I can do to forward the general interest that I will not do. What do they require? I am already further advanced on the French territory than any of the allied powers, and better prepared to take advantage of any opportunities which might offer as a consequence of my own situation or of their proceedings.”—“In military operations there are some things which can not be done, and one is to move troops in this country during or immediately after a violent fall of rain. To attempt it will be to lose more men than can be replaced, a guilty waste of life.”

“The proper scene of action for the army was undoubtedly a question for the government to decide, but with thirty thousand men in the Peninsula, he had for five years held two hundred thousand of Napoleon’s best soldiers in check, since it was ridiculous to suppose that the Spaniards and Portuguese could have resisted for a moment if the British troops had been withdrawn. The French armies actually employed against him could not be less than one hundred thousand men, more if he included garrisons, and the French newspapers spoke of orders to form a fresh reserve of one hundred thousand at Bordeaux. Was there any man weak enough to suppose one-third of the number first mentioned would be employed against the Spaniards and Portuguese if the British were withdrawn? They would if it were an object with Buonaparte to conquer the Peninsula and he would in that case succeed; but he was more likely to give peace to the Peninsula and turn against the allied sovereigns his two hundred thousand men of which one hundred thousand were such troops as their armies had not yet dealt with. The war every day offered a crisis the result of which might affect the world for ages, and to change the scene of operations for the British army would render it incapable of fighting for four months, even if the scene were Holland, and it would even then be a deteriorated machine.”

“The ministers might reasonably ask how by remaining where he was he could induce Napoleon to make peace. The answer was ready. He held a commanding situation on the most vulnerable frontier of France, probably the only vulnerable one, and if he could put twenty thousand Spaniards in activity, and he could do it if he had money and was properly supported by the fleet, Bayonne the only fortress on the frontier, if it could be called a fortress, would fall to him in a short time. If he could put forty thousand Spaniards in motion his posts would soon be on the Garonne, and did any man believe that Napoleon would not feel an army in such a position more than he would feel thirty or forty thousand British troops laying siege to one of his fortresses in Holland? The resources in men and money of which the emperor would be thus deprived, and the loss of reputation would do ten times more to procure peace than ten armies on the side of Flanders. But if he was right in believing a strong Bourbon party existed in France and that it preponderated in the south, what mischief would not an advance to the Garonne do Napoleon! What sacrifices would he not make to get rid of the danger!”

“It was for the government not for him to dispose of the nation’s resources, he had no right to give an opinion upon the subject, but military operations in Holland and in the Peninsula could not be maintained at the same time with British troops; one or other must be given up, the British military establishment was not equal to maintain two armies in the field. He had begun the recent campaign with seventy thousand Anglo-Portuguese, and if the men got from the English militia, and the Portuguese recruits which he expected, had been added to his force, even though the Germans were removed from his army according to the ministers’ plan, he might have taken the field early in 1814 with eighty thousand men. That was now impossible. The formation of a Hanoverian army was the most reasonable plan of acting on the continent but the withdrawal of the Germans would reduce his force to fifty thousand men unless he received real and efficient assistance to bring up the Portuguese recruits. This would increase his numbers to fifty-five or even sixty thousand if his own wounded recovered well and he had no more battles, but he would even then be twenty thousand less than he had calculated upon, and it was certain that if the government extended their operations to other countries new means must be put in activity or the war must be stinted on the old stage. He did not desire to complain but every branch of the service in the Peninsula was already stinted especially in what concerned the navy and the supplies which came directly from England!”

While thus combating the false views of the English cabinet as to the general state of affairs he had also to struggle with its negligence and even opposition to his measures in details.

The general clothing of the Spanish troops and the great coats of the British soldiers for 1813, were not ready in January 1814, because the inferior departments could not comprehend that the opening of new scenes of exertion required new means, and the soldiers had to brave the winter half naked, first on the snowy mountains, then in the more chilling damps of the low country about Bayonne. The clothing of the British soldiers for 1814 should have arrived in the end of 1813 when the army lying inactive near the coast by reason of the bad weather could have received and fitted it without difficulty. It did not however arrive until the troops were in progress towards the interior of France, wherefore, there being no means of transporting it by land, many of the best regiments were obliged to return to the coast to receive it, and the army as we shall find had to fight a critical battle without them.

He had upon commencing the invasion of France issued a proclamation promising protection to persons and property. This was construed by the French to cover their vessels in the Nivelle when the battle of that name gave the allies St. Jean de Luz. Lord Wellington sacrificing personal profit to the good of the service admitted this claim as tending to render the people amicable, but it clashed with the prize-money pretensions of lord Keith who commanded the fleet of which Collier’s squadron formed a detached portion. The serious evils endured by the army in default of sufficient naval assistance had been treated as of very slight importance, the object of a trifling personal gain for the navy excited a marvellous activity, and vigorous interference on the part of the government. Upon these subjects, and others of a like vexatious nature affecting his operations, lord Wellington repeatedly and forcibly declared his discontent during the months of December, January, and February.

“As to the naval affairs,” he said, “the reports of the number of ships on the stations striking off those coming out and going home would shew whether he had just ground of complaint, and whatever their numbers there remained the right of complaint because they did not perform the service required. The French had recommenced their coast navigation from Bordeaux to Bayonne, and if the blockade of Santona had been maintained the place would have been forced to surrender at an early period. The proclamation of protection which he had issued, and the licenses which he had granted to French vessels, every act of that description, and two-thirds of the acts which he performed every day could not he knew be considered of any avail as affecting the king’s government, unless approved of and confirmed by the prince regent; and he knew that no power short of the regent’s could save the property of French subjects on the seas from the British navy. For that reason he had requested the sanction of the government to the sea passports which he had granted. His proclamation of protection had been construed whether rightfully or wrongfully to protect the French ships in the rivers; his personal interest, greater than others, would lead him to deny this, but he sacrificed his profit to the general good.

“Were lord Keith and sir George Collier because the latter happened to have a brig or two cruizing off the coast, to claim as prizes all the vessels lying in every river which the army might pass in its operations? and this to the detriment of the cause which required the strictest respect for private property. For the last five years he had been acting in the confidence that his conduct would be approved of and supported, and he concluded it would be so still; but he was placed in a novel situation and asked for legal advice to determine, whether lord Keith and the channel fleet, were to be considered as engaged in a conjoint expedition with the army under his command against the subjects of France, neither having any specific instructions from government, and the fleet having nothing to do with the operations by land. He only required that fleet to give him a free communication with the coast of Spain, and prevent the enemy’s sea communication between the Garonne and the Adour, and this last was a part of its duty before the army arrived. Was his proclamation of protection to hold good as regarded the ships in the rivers? He desired to have it sanctioned by the prince regent, or that he might be permitted to issue another declaring that it was of no value.”

This remonstrance produced so much effect that lord Keith relinquished his claims, and admiral Penrose was sent to command upon the station instead of sir George Collier. The immediate intercourse of lord Wellington with the navy was thus ameliorated by the superior power of this officer, who was remarkable for his suavity. Yet the licenses given to French vessels were strongly condemned by the government, and rendered null, for we find him again complaining that “he had granted them only in hopes of drawing money and supplies from France, and of interesting the French mercantile men to aid the army; but he feared the government were not aware of, and did not feel the difficulties in which he was placed at all times for want of money, and judged his measures without adverting to the necessity which occasioned them; hence their frequent disapprobation of what he did.”

Strange this may sound to those who seeing the duke of Wellington in the fulness of his glory have been accustomed to regard him as the star of England’s greatness; but those who at that period frequented the society of ministers know well that he was then looked upon by those self-sufficient men as a person whose views were wild and visionary, requiring the corroboration of older and wiser heads before they could be assented to. Yea! even thus at the eleventh hour was the giant Wellington measured by the political dwarfs.

Although he gained something by making San Jean de Luz a free port for all nations not at war with France, his financial situation was nearly intolerable, and at the moment of greatest pressure colonel Bunbury, under-secretary of state, was sent out to protest against his expenses. One hundred thousand pounds a month was the maximum in specie which the government would consent to supply, a sum quite inadequate to his wants. And this remonstrance was addressed to this victorious commander at the very crisis of his stupendous struggle, when he was overwhelmed with debts and could scarcely stir out of his quarters on account of the multitude of creditors waiting at his door for payment of just claims.

[Sidenote: Wellington’s Despatches.]

“Some of his muleteers he said were twenty-six months in arrears, and recently, instigated by British merchants, they had become so clamorous that rather than lose their services he had given them bills on the treasury for a part of their claims, though he knew they would sell these bills at a discount to the sharks, who had urged them to be thus importunate and who were waiting at the ports to take advantage of the public distresses. A dangerous measure which he desired not to repeat.

“It might be true that the supply of one hundred thousand pounds a month had been even exceeded for some time past, but it was incontestible that the English army and all its departments, and the Spanish and Portuguese armies were at the moment paralyzed for want of money. The arrears of pay to the soldiers was entering the seventh month, the debt was immense, and the king’s engagements with the Spanish and Portuguese governments were not fulfilled. Indebted in every part of Spain he was becoming so in France, the price of all commodities was increasing in proportion to the delay of payment, to the difficulty of getting food at all, and the want of credit into which all the departments of the army had fallen. Of two hundred thousand dollars given to marshal Beresford for the pay of his troops on account of the Portuguese subsidy he had been forced to take back fifty thousand to keep the Spaniards together, and was even then forced to withhold ten thousand to prevent the British cavalry from perishing. Money to pay the Spaniards had sailed from Cadiz, but the vessel conveying it, and another containing the soldiers’ great coats, were by the admiralty arrangements obliged to go first to Corunna, and neither had arrived there in January although the money had been ready in October. But the ship of war designed to carry it did not arrive at Cadiz until the end of December. Sixteen thousand Spanish troops were thus rendered useless because without pay they could not be trusted in France.”

“The commissary-in-chief in England had been regularly informed of the state of the supplies of the military chest and of the wants and prospects of the army, but those wants were not attended to. The monthly hundred thousand pounds spoken of as the maximum, even if it had been given regularly, would not cover the ordinary expenses of the troops, and there were besides the subsidies other outlays requiring ready money, such as meat for the soldiers, hospital expenses, commissariat labourers, and a variety of minor engagements. The Portuguese government had been reduced to a monthly sum of two hundred thousand dollars out of a subsidy of two millions sterling. The Spanish government got what they could out of a subsidy of one million. And when money was obtained for the government in the markets of Lisbon and Cadiz, it came not in due time, because, such were the admiralty arrangements, there were no ships to convey the treasure to the north coast of Spain. The whole sum which had passed through the military chest during the past year was scarcely more than two millions four hundred thousand pounds, out of which part of the subsidies had been paid. This was quite inadequate, the Government had desired him to push his operations to the Garonne during the winter, he was prepared to do so in every point excepting money, and he knew the greatest advantages would accrue from such a movement but he could not stir. His posts were already so distant from the coast that his means of transport were daily destroyed by the journeys, he had not a shilling to pay for any thing in the country and his credit was gone. He had been obliged privately to borrow the expense of a single courier sent to general Clinton. It was not his duty to suggest the fitting measures for relief, but it was obvious that an immediate and large supply from England was necessary and that ships should be provided to convey that which was obtained at Lisbon and Cadiz to the army.”

Such was the denuded state of the victorious Wellington at a time when millions, and the worth of more millions were being poured by the English ministers into the continent; when every petty German sovereign, partizan, or robber, who raised a band, or a cry against Napoleon, was supplied to satiety. And all this time there was not in England one public salary reduced, one contract checked, one abuse corrected, one public servant rebuked for negligence; not a writer dared to expose the mischief lest he should be crushed by persecution; no minister ceased to claim and to receive the boasting congratulations of the tories, no whig had sense to discover or spirit to denounce the iniquitous system, no voice of reprehension was heard from that selfish faction unless it were in sneering contempt of the general whose mighty genius sustained England under this load of folly.

Nor were these difficulties all that lord Wellington had to contend with. We have seen that the Portuguese regency withheld his reinforcements even when he had provided transports for their conveyance. The duke of York meanwhile insisted upon withdrawing his provisional battalions, which being all composed of old soldiers, the remains of regiments reduced by the casualties of war, were of more value in a winter campaign than three times their numbers of new men. With respect to the English militia regiments, he had no desire for them, because they possessed, he said, all the worst faults of the regulars and some peculiar to themselves besides. What he desired was that eight or ten thousand men should be drafted from them to fill up his ranks, he could then without much injury let his foreign battalions be taken away to reform a Hanoverian army on the continent; and this plan he was inclined to, because the Germans, brave and strong soldiers, were yet extremely addicted to desertion and in that particular set a bad example to the British: this suggestion was however disregarded, and other reinforcements were promised to him.

But the most serious of all the secondary vexations he endured sprung from the conduct of the Spanish authorities. His hospitals and depôts were for the most part necessarily in the Spanish territories and principally at Santander. To avoid inconvenience to the inhabitants he had caused portable wooden houses to be brought from England in which to shelter his sick and wounded men; and he paid extravagantly and regularly for every aid demanded from the natives. Nevertheless the natural arrogance or ill-will which produced the libels about St. Sebastian the insolence of the minister of war and the sullen insubordination of Morillo and other generals broke out here also. After much underhand and irritating conduct at different times, the municipality, resolute to drive the hospitals from their town, suddenly, and under the false pretext that there was a contagious fever, placed all the British hospitals with their officers and attendants under quarantine. This was in the middle of January. Thirty thousand men had been wounded since June in the service of Spain, and the return was to make those wounded men close prisoners and drive their general to the necessity of fixing his hospitals in England. Vessels coming from Santander were thus rendered objects of dread, and the municipalities of the other ports, either really fearing or pretending to fear the contagion, would not suffer them to enter their waters. To such a height did this cowardice and villainy attain that the political chief of Guipuscoa, without giving any notice to lord Wellington, shut all the ports of that province against vessels coming from Santander, and the alcalde of Fuenterabia endeavoured to prevent a Portuguese military officer from assisting an English vessel which was about to be and was afterwards actually cast away, because she came from Santander.

Now in consequence of the difficulties and dangers of navigating the Bay of Biscay in the winter and the badness of the ports near the positions of the army, all the stores and provisions coming by sea went in the first instance to Santander, the only good port, there to wait until favourable opportunities occurred for reaching the more eastern harbours. Moreover all the provision magazines of the Spanish army were there, but this blow cut them off, the army was reduced to the smaller magazines at Passages which could only last for a few days, and when that supply was expended lord Wellington would have had no resource but to withdraw across the Pyrenees! “Here,” he exclaimed, “here are the consequences of the system by which these provinces are governed! Duties of the highest description, military operations, political interests, and the salvation of the state, are made to depend upon the caprices of a few ignorant individuals, who have adopted a measure unnecessary and harsh without adverting to its objects or consequences, and merely with a view to their personal interests and convenience.”

They carried it into execution also with the utmost hardness caprice and injustice, regardless of the loss of ships and lives which must follow, and finally desired lord Wellington to relinquish the harbour and town of Santander altogether as a depôt! However his vigorous remonstrances stopped this nefarious proceeding in time to avert the danger which it menaced.

Be it remembered now, that these dangers and difficulties, and vexations, although related in succession, happened, not one after another, but altogether; that it was when crossing the Bidassoa, breaking through the mountain fortifications of Soult, passing the Nive, fighting the battles in front of Bayonne, and when still greater and more intricate combinations were to be arranged, that all these vials of folly and enmity were poured upon his head. Who then shall refuse to admire the undaunted firmness, the unwearied temper and vigilance, the piercing judgement with which he steered his gallant vessel and with a flowing sail, unhurt through this howling storm of passion this tumultuous sea of folly.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

VI. CONTINUATION OF THE WAR IN THE EASTERN PARTS OF SPAIN

[Sidenote: 1813. September.]

[Sidenote: Appendix 6.]

When general Clinton succeeded lord William Bentinck, his whole force, composed of the Anglo-Sicilians, Whittingham’s and Sarzfield’s Spaniards, and two battalions of Roche’s division, did not furnish quite nineteen thousand men under arms. Copons, blockading Mequinenza Lerida and Monzon and having garrisons in Cardona and the Seo d’Urgel, the only places in his possession, could not bring more than nine thousand men into the field. Elio had nominally twenty-five thousand, but this included Sarzfield’s and Roche’s troops the greater part of which were with Clinton. It included likewise the bands of Villa Campa Duran and the Empecinado, all scattered in Castile Aragon and Valencia, and acting according to the caprices of their chiefs. His force, daily diminishing also from the extreme unhealthiness of the country about Tortoza, was scarcely sufficient to maintain the blockades of the French fortresses beyond the Ebro.

Copons’ army having no base but the mountains about Vich and Monserrat, having no magazines or depôts or place of arms, having very little artillery and scarcely any cavalry, lived as it could from day to day; in like manner lived Sarzfield’s and Whittingham’s troops, and Clinton’s army was chiefly fed on salt provisions from the ships. The two former having no means of transport were unable to make even one day’s march with ease, they were continually upon the point of starvation and could never be reckoned as a moveable force. Nor indeed could the Anglo-Sicilians, owing to their scanty means of transport, make above two or three marches from the sea; and they were at this time more than usually hampered, being without pay and shut out from their principal depôts at Gibraltar and Malta, by plague at the first and yellow fever at the second place. In fine, the courage and discipline of the British and Germans set aside, it would be difficult to find armies less efficient for an offensive campaign than those of the allies in Catalonia. Moreover lord William Bentinck had been invested with the command of all the Spanish armies, but Clinton had only Whittingham’s and Sarzfield’s troops under him, and notwithstanding his constant endeavours to conciliate Copons, the indolence and incapacity of that general impeded or baffled all useful operations: and to these disqualifications he added an extreme jealousy of Eroles and Manso, men designated by the public voice as the most worthy of command.

This analysis shows that Elio being entirely engaged in Valencia, and Sarzfield and Whittingham unprovided with the means of movement, the army of Copons and the Anglo-Sicilians, together furnishing, when the posts and escorts and the labourers employed on the fortifications of Taragona were deducted, not more than eighteen thousand men in line of battle, were the only troops to be counted on to oppose Suchet, who having sixty-five thousand men, of which fifty-six thousand were present under arms, could without drawing a man from his garrisons attack them with thirty thousand. But Copons and Clinton could not act together above a few days because their bases and lines of retreat were on different sides. The Spaniard depended upon the mountains and plains of the interior for security and subsistence, the Englishman’s base was Taragona and the fleet. Hence the only mode of combining on a single line was to make Valencia a common base, and throwing bridges over the Ebro construct works on both sides to defend them. This was strongly recommended by lord Wellington to lord William and to Clinton; but the former had several times lost his bridges partly from the rapidity of the stream, partly from the activity of the garrison of Tortoza. And for general Clinton the difficulty was enhanced by distance, because Taragona, where all his materials were deposited was sixty miles from Amposta, and all his artificers were required to restore the defences of the former place. The blockade of Tortoza was therefore always liable to be raised, and the troops employed there exposed to a sudden and fatal attack, since Suchet, sure to separate the Anglo-Sicilians from Copons when he advanced, could penetrate between them; and while the former rallied at Taragona and the latter at Igualada his march would be direct upon Tortoza. He could thus either carry off his strong garrison, or passing the Ebro by the bridge of the fortress, move without let or hindrance upon Peniscola, Saguntum, and Valencia, and driving Elio back upon Alicant collect his garrisons and return too powerful to be meddled with.

In these circumstances lord Wellington’s opinion was, that the blockade of Tortoza should be given up and the two armies acting on their own peculiar lines, the one from Taragona the other from the mountains, harass in concert the enemy’s flanks and rear, alternately if he attacked either, but together if he moved upon Tortoza. To besiege or blockade that place with safety it was necessary to throw two bridges over the Ebro below, to enable the armies to avoid Suchet, by either bank when he should succour the place, as he was sure to do. But it was essential that Copons should not abandon Catalonia and difficult for him to do so, wherefore it would be advisable to make Taragona the point of retreat for both armies in the first instance, after which they could separate and infest the French rear.

The difficulties of besieging Tortoza he thought insuperable, and he especially recommended that they should be well considered before-hand, and if it was invested, that the troops should be entrenched around it. In fine all his instructions tended towards defence and were founded upon his conviction of the weak and dangerous position of the allies, yet he believed them to have more resources than they really had, and to be superior in number to the French, a great error as I have already shewn. Nothing therefore could be more preposterous than Suchet’s alarm for the frontier of France at this time, and it is unquestionable that his personal reluctance was the only bar to aiding Soult either indirectly by marching on Tortoza and Valencia, or directly by adopting that marshal’s great project of uniting the two armies in Aragon. So certain indeed is this that general Clinton, seeing the difficulties of his own situation, only retained the command from a strong sense of duty, and lord Wellington despairing of any advantage in Catalonia recommended that the Anglo-Sicilian army should be broken up and employed in other places. The French general’s inactivity was the more injurious to the interests of his sovereign, because any reverse or appearance of reverse to the allies would at this time have gone nigh to destroy the alliance between Spain and England; but personal jealousy, the preference given to local and momentary interests before general considerations, hurt the French cause at all periods in the Peninsula and enabled the allies to conquer.

General Clinton had no thoughts of besieging Tortoza, his efforts were directed to the obtaining a secure place of arms, yet, despite of his intrinsic weakness, he resolved to show a confident front, hoping thus to keep Suchet at arm’s length. In this view he endeavoured to render Taragona once more defensible notwithstanding the nineteen breaches which had been broken in its walls; the progress of the work was however tedious and vexatious because he depended for his materials upon the Spanish authorities. Thus immersed in difficulties of all kinds he could make little change in his positions which were generally about the Campo, Sarzfield’s division only being pushed to Villafranca. Suchet meanwhile held the line of the Llobregat, and apparently to colour his refusal to join Soult, grounded on the great strength of the allies in Catalonia, he suffered general Clinton to remain in tranquillity.

[Sidenote: October.]

Towards the end of October reports that the French were concentrating, for what purpose was not known, caused the English general, although Taragona was still indefensible to make a forward movement. He dared not indeed provoke a battle, but unwilling to yield the resources which Villafranca and other districts occupied by the allies still offered, he adopted the resolution of pushing an advanced guard to the former place. He even fixed his head-quarters there, appearing ready to fight, yet his troops were so disposed in succession at Arbos, Vendrills and Torredembarra that he could retreat without dishonour if the French advanced in force, or could concentrate at Villafranca in time to harass their flank and rear if they attempted to carry off their garrisons on the Segre. In this state of affairs Suchet made several demonstrations, sometimes against Copons sometimes against Clinton, but the latter maintained his offensive attitude with firmness, and even in opposition to lord Wellington’s implied opinion that the line of the Ebro was the most suitable to his weakness; for he liked not to abandon Taragona the repairs of which were now advancing though slowly to completion. His perseverance was crowned with success; he preserved the few resources left for the support of the Spanish troops, and furnished Suchet with that semblance of excuse which he desired for keeping aloof from Soult.

[Sidenote: December.]

In this manner October and November were passed, but on the 1st of December the French general attempted to surprise the allies’ cantonments at Villafranca, as he had before surprised them at Ordal. He moved in the same order. One column marched by San Sadurni on his right, another by Bejer and Avionet on his left, and the main body kept the great road. But he did not find colonel Adam there. Clinton had blocked the Ordal so as to render a night surprise impossible, and the natural difficulties of the other roads delayed the flanking columns. Hence when the French reached Villafranca, Sarzfield was in full march for Igualada, and the Anglo-Sicilians, who had only three men wounded at one of the advanced posts, were on the strong ground about Arbos, where being joined by the supporting divisions they offered battle; but Suchet retired to the Llobregat apparently so mortified by his failure that he has not even mentioned it in his Memoirs.

Clinton now resumed his former ground, yet his embarrassments increased, and though he transferred two of Whittingham’s regiments to Copons and sent Roche’s battalions back to Valencia, the country was so exhausted that the enduring constancy of the Spanish soldiers under privations alone enabled Sarzfield to remain in the field: more than once, that general, a man of undoubted firmness and courage, was upon the point of re-crossing the Ebro to save his soldiers from perishing of famine. Here as in other parts, the Spanish government not only starved their troops but would not even provide a piece of ordnance or any stores for the defence of Taragona, now, by the exertions of the English general, rendered defensible. Nay! when admiral Hallowell in conjunction with Quesada the Spanish commodore at Port Mahon, brought some ship-guns from that place to the fortress, the minister of war, O’Donoju, expressed his disapprobation, observing with a sneer that the English might provide the guns wanting from the Spanish ordnance moved into Gibraltar by general Campbell when he destroyed the lines of San Roque!

The 9th Suchet pushed a small corps by Bejer between the Ordal and Sitjes, and on the 10th surprised at the Ostel of Ordal an officer and thirty men of the Anglo-Sicilian cavalry. This disaster was the result of negligence. The detachment after patroling to the front had dismounted without examining the buildings of the inn, and some French troopers who were concealed within immediately seized the horses and captured the whole party.

On the 17th, French troops appeared at Martorel, the Ordal, and Bejer, with a view to mask the march of a large convoy coming from Upper Catalonia to Barcelona; they then resumed their former positions, and at the same time Soult’s and lord Wellington’s respective letters announcing the defection of the Nassau battalions in front of Bayonne arrived. Lord Wellington’s came first, and enclosed a communication from colonel Kruse to his countryman, colonel Meder, who was serving in Barcelona and as Kruse supposed willing to abandon the French. But when Clinton by the aid of Manso transmitted the letter to Meder, that officer handed it to general Habert who had succeeded Maurice Mathieu in the command of the city. All the German regiments, principally cavalry, were immediately disarmed and sent to France. Severoli’s Italians were at the same time recalled to Italy and a number of French soldiers, selected to fill the wasted ranks of the imperial guards, marched with them; two thousand officers and soldiers were likewise detached to the depôts of the interior to organize the conscripts of the new levy destined to reinforce the army of Catalonia. Besides these drafts a thousand gensd’armes hitherto employed on the Spanish frontier in aid of the regular troops were withdrawn; Suchet thus lost seven thousand veterans, yet he had still an overwhelming power compared to the allies.

It was in this state of affairs that the duke of San Carlos, bearing the treaty of Valençay, arrived secretly at the French head-quarters on his way to Madrid. Copons knew this, and it seems certain was only deterred from openly acceding to the views of the French emperor and concluding a military convention, by the decided conduct of the Cortez, and the ascendancy which lord Wellington had obtained over him in common with the other Spanish officers: an ascendancy which had not escaped Soult’s sagacity, for he early warned the French minister that nothing could be expected from them while under the powerful spell of the English general. Meanwhile Clinton, getting information that the French troops were diminished in numbers, especially in front of Barcelona and on the Llobregat, proposed to pass that river and invest Barcelona if Copons, who was in the mountains, would undertake to provision Sarzfield’s division and keep the French troops between Barcelona and Gerona in check. For this purpose he offered him the aid of a Spanish regiment of cavalry which Elio had lent for the operations in Catalonia; but Copons, whether influenced by San Carlos’ mission and his secret wishes for its success, or knowing that the enemy were really stronger than Clinton imagined, declared that he was unable to hold the French troops between Gerona and Barcelona in check, and that he could not provision either Sarzfield’s division or the regiment of cavalry. He suggested instead of Clinton’s plan, a combined attack upon some of Suchet’s posts on the Llobregat, promising to send Manso to Villafranca to confer upon the execution. Clinton’s proposal was made early in January yet it was the middle of that month before Copons replied, and then he only sent Manso to offer the aid of his brigade in a combined attack upon two thousand French who were at Molino del Rey. It was however at last arranged that Manso should at day-break on the 16th seize the high ground above Molino, on the left of the Llobregat, to intercept the enemy’s retreat upon Barcelona, while the Anglo-Sicilians fell upon them from the right bank.

[Sidenote: 1814. January.]

Success depended upon Clinton’s remaining quiet until the moment of execution, wherefore he could only use the troops immediately in hand about Villafranca, in all six thousand men with three pieces of artillery; but with these he made a night march of eighteen miles, and was close to the ford of San Vicente about two miles below the fortified bridge of Molino del Rey before daylight. The French were tranquil and unsuspicious, and he anxiously but vainly awaited the signal of Manso’s arrival. When the day broke, the French piquets at San Vicente descrying his troops commenced a skirmish, and at the same time a column with a piece of artillery, coming from Molino, advanced to attack him thinking there was only a patroling detachment to deal with, for he had concealed his main body. Thus pressed he opened his guns per force and crippled the French piece, whereupon the reinforcements retired hastily to the entrenchments at Molino; he could then easily have forced the passage at the ford and attacked the enemy’s works in the rear, but this would not have ensured the capture of their troops, wherefore he still awaited Manso’s arrival relying on that partizan’s zeal and knowledge of the country. He appeared at last, not, as agreed upon, at St. Filieu, between Molino and Barcelona, but at Papiol above Molino, and the French immediately retreated by San Filieu. Sarzfield, and the cavalry, which Clinton now detached across the Llobregat, followed them hard, but the country was difficult, the distance short, and they soon gained a second entrenched camp above San Filieu. A small garrison remained in the masonry-works at Molino, general Clinton endeavoured to reduce them but his guns were not of a calibre to break the walls and the enemy was strongly reinforced towards evening from Barcelona; whereupon Manso went off to the mountains, and Clinton returned to Villafranca having killed and wounded about one hundred and eighty French, and lost only sixty-four men, all Spaniards.

Manso’s failure surprized the English general, because that officer, unlike the generality of his countrymen, was zealous, skilful, vigilant, modest, and humane, and a sincere co-operator with the British officers. He however soon cleared himself of blame, assuring Clinton that Copons, contrary to his previous declarations, had joined him with four thousand men, and taking the controul of his troops not only commenced the march two hours too late, but without any reason halted for three hours on the way. Nor did that general offer any excuse or explanation of his conduct, merely observing, that the plan having failed nothing more could be done and he must return to his mountainous asylum about Vich. A man of any other nation would have been accused of treachery, but with the Spaniards there is no limit to absurdity, and from their actions no conclusion can be drawn as to their motives.

The great events of the general war were now beginning to affect the struggle in Catalonia. Suchet finding that Copons dared not agree to the military convention dependent upon the treaty of Valençay, resigned all thoughts of carrying off his garrisons beyond the Ebro, and secretly instructed the governor of Tortoza, that when his provisions, calculated to last until April, were exhausted, he should march upon Mequinenza and Lerida, unite the garrisons there to his own, and make way by Venasque into France. Meanwhile he increased the garrison of Barcelona to eight thousand men and prepared to take the line of the Fluvia; for the allied sovereigns were in France and Napoleon had recalled more of his cavalry and infantry, in all ten thousand men with eighty pieces of artillery, from Catalonia, desiring that they should march as soon as the results expected from the mission of San Carlos were felt by the allies. Suchet prepared the troops but proposed that instead of waiting for the uncertain result of San Carlos’ mission, Ferdinand should himself be sent to Spain through Catalonia and be trusted on his faith to restore the garrisons in Valencia. Then he said he could march with his whole army to Lyons which would be more efficacious than sending detachments. The restoration of Ferdinand was the Emperor’s great object, but this plausible proposition can only be viewed as a colourable counter-project to Soult’s plan for a junction of the two armies in Bearn, since the Emperor was undoubtedly the best judge of what was required for the warfare immediately under his own direction.

It was in the midst of these operations that Clinton attacked Molino del Rey and as we have seen would but for the interference of Copons have stricken a great blow, which was however soon inflicted in another manner.

[Sidenote: Memoir by Sir Wm. Clinton, MSS.]

There was at this time in the French service a Spaniard of Flemish descent called Van Halen. This man, of fair complexion, handsome person, and a natural genius for desperate treasons, appears to have been at first attached to Joseph’s court. After that monarch’s retreat from Spain he was placed by the duke de Feltre on Suchet’s staff; but the French party was now a failing one and Van Halen only sought by some notable treachery to make his peace with his country. Through the medium of a young widow, who followed him without suffering their connection to appear, he informed Eroles of his object. He transmitted through the same channel regular returns of Suchet’s force and other matters of interest, and at last having secretly opened Suchet’s portfolio he copied the key of his cypher, and transmitted that also, with an intimation that he would now soon pass over and endeavour to perform some other service at the same time. The opportunity soon offered. Suchet went to Gerona to meet the duke of San Carlos, leaving Van Halen at Barcelona, and the latter immediately taking an escort of three hussars went to Granollers where the cuirassiers were quartered. Using the marshal’s name he ordered them to escort him to the Spanish outposts, which being in the mountains could only be approached by a long and narrow pass where cavalry would be helpless. In this pass he ordered the troops to bivouac for the night, and when their colonel expressed his uneasiness, Van Halen quieted him and made a solitary mill their common quarters. He had before this, however, sent the widow to give Eroles information of the situation into which he would bring the troops and now with anxiety awaited his attack; but the Spanish general failed to come and at daybreak Van Halen, still pretending he carried a flag of truce from Suchet, rode off with his first escort of hussars and a trumpeter to the Spanish lines. There he ascertained that the widow had been detained by the outposts and immediately delivered over his escort to their enemies, giving notice also of the situation of the cuirassiers with a view to their destruction, but they escaped the danger.

Van Halen and Eroles now forged Suchet’s signature, and the former addressed letters in cypher to the governors of Tortoza, Lerida, Mequinenza, and Monzon, telling them that the emperor in consequence of his reverses required large drafts of men from Catalonia, and had given Suchet orders to negotiate a convention by which the garrisons south of the Llobregat were to join the army with arms and baggage and followers. The result was uncertain, but if the treaty could not be effected the governors were to join the army by force, and they were therefore immediately to mine their principal bastions and be prepared to sally forth at an appointed time. The marches and points of junction were all given in detail, yet they were told that if the convention took place the marshal would immediately send an officer of his staff to them, with such verbal instructions as might be necessary. The document finished with deploring the necessity which called for the sacrifice of conquests achieved by the valour of the troops.

Spies and emissaries who act for both sides are common in all wars, but in the Peninsula so many pretended to serve the French and were yet true to the Spaniards, that to avoid the danger of betrayal Suchet had recourse to the ingenious artifice of placing a very small piece of light-coloured hair in the cyphered paper, the latter was then enclosed in a quill sealed and wrapped in lead. When received, the small parcel was carefully opened on a sheet of white paper and if the hair was discovered the communication was good, if not, the treachery was apparent because the hair would escape the vigilance of uninitiated persons and be lost by any intermediate examination. Van Halen knew this secret also, and when his emissaries had returned after delivering the preparatory communication, he proceeded in person with a forged convention, first to Tortoza, for Suchet has erroneously stated in his Memoirs that the primary attempts were made at Lerida and Mequinenza. He was accompanied by several Spanish officers and by some French deserters dressed in the uniforms of the hussars he had betrayed to the Spanish outposts. The governor Robert though a vigilant officer was deceived and prepared to evacuate the place. During the night however a true emissary arrived with a letter from Suchet of later date than the forged convention. Robert then endeavoured to entice Van Halen into the fortress, but the other was too wary and proceeded at once to Mequinenza and Lerida where he completely overreached the governors and then went to Monzon.

This small fortress had now been besieged since the 28th of September 1813, by detachments from the Catalan army and the bands from Aragon. Its means of defence were slight, but there was within a man of resolution and genius called St. Jacques. He was a Piedmontese by birth and only a private soldier of engineers, but the commandant appreciating his worth was so modest and prudent as to yield the direction of the defence entirely to him. Abounding in resources, he met, and at every point baffled the besiegers who worked principally by mines, and being as brave as he was ingenious always led the numerous counter-attacks which he contrived to check the approaches above and below ground. The siege continued until the 18th of February when the subtle Van Halen arrived, and by his Spanish wiles obtained in a few hours what Spanish courage and perseverance had vainly strived to gain for one hundred and forty days. The commandant was suspicious at first, but when Van Halen suffered him to send an officer to ascertain that Lerida and Mequinenza were evacuated, he was beguiled like the others and marched to join the garrisons of those places.

Sir William Clinton had been informed of this project by Eroles as early as the 22d of January and though he did not expect any French general would be so egregiously misled, readily promised the assistance of his army to capture the garrisons on their march. But Suchet was now falling back upon the Fluvia, and Clinton, seeing the fortified line of the Llobregat weakened and being uncertain of Suchet’s real strength and designs, renewed his former proposal to Copons for a combined attack which should force the French general to discover his real situation and projects. Ere he could obtain an answer, the want of forage obliged him to refuse the assistance of the Spanish cavalry lent to him by Elio, and Sarzfield’s division was reduced to its last ration. The French thus made their retreat unmolested, for Clinton’s project necessarily involved the investment of Barcelona after passing the Llobregat, and the Anglo-Sicilian cavalry, being mounted on small Egyptian animals the greatest part of which were foundered or unserviceable from sand-cracks, a disease very common amongst the horses of that country, were too weak to act without the aid of Elio’s horsemen. Moreover as a division of infantry was left at Taragona awaiting the effect of Van Halen’s wiles against Tortoza the aid of Sarzfield’s troops was indispensable.

[Sidenote: February.]

Copons accepted the proposition towards the end of the month, the Spanish cavalry was then gone to the rear, but Sarzfield having with great difficulty obtained some provisions the army was put in movement on the 3d of February, and as Suchet was now near Gerona, it passed the Llobregat at the bridge of Molino del Rey without resistance. On the 5th Sarzfield’s picquets were vigorously attacked at San Filieu by the garrison of Barcelona, he however supported them with his whole division and being reinforced with some cavalry repulsed the French and pursued them to the walls. On the 7th the city was invested on the land side by Copons who was soon aided by Manso; on the sea-board by admiral Hallowell, who following the movements of the army with the fleet blockaded the harbour with the Castor frigate, and anchored the Fame a seventy-four off Mataro. On the 8th intelligence arrived of Van Halen’s failure at Tortoza, but the blockade of Barcelona continued uninterrupted until the 16th when Clinton was informed by Copons of the success at Lerida, Mequinenza, and Monzon. The garrisons, he said, would march upon Igualada, and Eroles who, under pretence of causing the convention to be observed by the Somatenes, was to follow in their rear, proposed to undeceive and disarm them at that place. On the 17th however he sent notice that Martorel had been fixed upon in preference to Igualada for undeceiving and disarming the French, and as they would be at the former place that evening general Clinton was desired to send some of his troops there to ensure the success of the project.

This change of plan and the short warning, for Martorel was a long march from Barcelona, together with the doubts and embarrassments which Copons’ conduct always caused, inclined the English general to avoid meddling with the matter at all; yet fearing that it would fail in the Spaniard’s hands he finally drafted a strong division of troops and marched in person to Martorel. There he met Copons who now told him that the French would not pass Esparaguera that night, that Eroles was close in their rear, and another division of the Catalan army at Bispal blocking the bridge of Martorel. Clinton immediately undertook to pass the Llobregat, meet the French column, and block the road of San Sadurni; and he arranged with Copons the necessary precautions and signals.

About nine o’clock general Isidore La Marque arrived with the garrisons at Martorel, followed at a short distance by Eroles. No other troops were to be seen and after a short halt the French continued their march on the right bank of the Llobregat, where the Barcelona road enters a narrow pass between the river and a precipitous hill. When they were completely entangled Clinton sent an officer to forbid their further progress and referred them to Copons who was at Martorel for an explanation, then giving the signal all the heights around were instantly covered with armed men. It was in vain to offer resistance, and two generals, having two thousand six hundred men, four guns, and a rich military chest, capitulated, but upon conditions, which were granted and immediately violated with circumstances of great harshness and insult to the prisoners. The odium of this baseness which was quite gratuitous, since the French helpless in the defile must have submitted to any terms, attaches entirely to the Spaniards. Clinton refused to meddle in any manner with the convention, he had not been a party to Van Halen’s deceit, he appeared only to ensure the surrender of an armed force in the field which the Spaniards could not have subdued without his aid, he refused even to be present at any consultation previous to the capitulation, and notwithstanding an assertion to the contrary in Suchet’s Memoirs no appeal on the subject from that marshal ever reached him.

During the whole of these transactions the infatuation of the French leaders was extreme. The chief of one of the battalions more sagacious than his general told Lamarque in the night of the 16th at Igualada that he was betrayed, at the same time urging him vainly to abandon his artillery and baggage and march in the direction of Vich, to which place they could force their way in despite of the Spaniards. It is remarkable also that Robert when he had detected the imposture and failed to entice Van Halen into Tortoza did not make a sudden sally upon him and the Spanish officers who were with him, all close to the works. And still more notable is it that the other governors, the more especially as Van Halen was a foreigner, did not insist upon the bearer of such a convention remaining to accompany their march. It has been well observed by Suchet that Van Halen’s refusal to enter the gates was alone sufficient to prove his treachery.

The detachment recalled by Napoleon now moved into France, and in March was followed by a second column of equal force which was at first directed upon Lyons, but the arrival of lord Wellington’s troops on the Garonne caused, as we shall hereafter find, a change in its destination. Meanwhile by order of the minister at war Suchet entered into a fresh negociation with Copons, to deliver up all the fortresses held by his troops except Figueras and Rosas, provided the garrisons were allowed to rejoin the army. The Spanish commander assented and the authorities generally were anxious to adopt the proposal, but the regency referred the matter to lord Wellington who rejected it without hesitation, as tending to increase the force immediately opposed to him. Thus baffled and overreached at all points, Suchet destroyed the works of Olot, Besalu, Bascara and Palamos, dismantled Gerona and Rosas, and concentrated his forces at Figueras. He was followed by Copons, but though he still had twelve thousand veterans besides the national guards and depôts of the French departments, he continued most obstinately to refuse any aid to Soult, and yet remained inactive himself. The blockade of Barcelona was therefore maintained by the allies without difficulty or danger save what arose from their commissariat embarrassments and the efforts of the garrison.

[Sidenote: March.]

On the 23d of February Habert made a sally with six battalions, thinking to surprize Sarzfield, he was however beaten, and colonel Meder the Nassau officer who had before shewn his attachment to the French cause was killed. The blockade was thus continued until the 12th of March when Clinton received orders from lord Wellington to break up his army, send the foreign troops to lord William Bentinck in Sicily, and march with the British battalions by Tudela to join the great army in France. Clinton at first prepared to obey but Suchet was still in strength, Copons appeared to be provoking a collision though he was quite unable to oppose the French in the field; and to maintain the blockade of Barcelona in addition, after the Anglo-Sicilians should depart, was quite impossible. The latter therefore remained and on the 19th of March king Ferdinand reached the French frontier.

This event, which happening five or even three months before would probably have changed the fate of the war, was now of little consequence. Suchet first proposed to Copons to escort Ferdinand with the French army to Barcelona and put him in possession of that place, but this the Spanish general dared not assent to, for he feared lord Wellington and his own regency, and was closely watched by colonel Coffin who had been placed near him by sir William Clinton. The French general then proposed to the king a convention for the recovery of his garrisons, to which Ferdinand agreed with the facility of a false heart. His great anxiety was to reach Valencia, because the determination of the Cortez to bind him to conditions before he recovered his throne was evident, the Spanish generals were apparently faithful to the Cortez, and the British influence was sure to be opposed to him while he was burthened with French engagements.

[Sidenote: Suchet’s Memoirs.]

[Sidenote: Memoirs by sir Wm. Clinton, MSS.]

Suchet had been ordered to demand securities for the restoration of his garrisons previous to Ferdinand’s entry into Spain, but time was precious and he determined to escort him at once with the whole French army to the Fluvia, having first received a promise to restore the garrisons. He also retained his brother Don Carlos as a hostage for their return, but even this security he relinquished when the king in a second letter written from Gerona solemnly confirmed his first promise. On the 24th therefore in presence of the Catalan and French armies, ranged in order of battle on either bank of the Fluvia, Ferdinand passed that river and became once more king of Spain. He had been a rebellious son in the palace, a plotting traitor at Aranjuez, a dastard at Bayonne, an effeminate superstitious fawning slave at Valençay, and now after six years’ captivity he returned to his own country an ungrateful and cruel tyrant. He would have been the most odious and contemptible of princes if his favourite brother Don Carlos had not existed. Reaching the camp at Barcelona on the 30th he dined with sir William Clinton, reviewed the allied troops and then proceeded first to Zaragoza and finally to Valencia. Marshal Suchet says the honours of war were paid to him by all the French garrisons but this was not the case at Barcelona: no man appeared, even on the walls. After this event the French marshal repassed the Pyrenees leaving only one division at Figueras and Clinton proceeded to break up his army, but was again stopped by the vexatious conduct of Copons who would not relieve the Anglo-Sicilians at the blockade, nor indeed take any notice of the English general’s communications on the subject before the 11th of April. On the 14th however the troops marched, part to embark at Taragona, part to join lord Wellington. Copons then became terrified lest general Robert, abandoning Tortoza, should join Habert at Barcelona, and enclose him between them and the division at Figueras, wherefore Clinton once more halted to protect the Spaniards.

[Sidenote: April.]

Copons had indeed some reason to fear, for Habert about this time received, and transmitted to Robert, the emperor’s orders to break out of Tortoza and gain Barcelona instead of passing by the valley of Venasque as Suchet had before prescribed: the twelve thousand men thus united were then to push into France. This letter was intercepted, copied, and sent on to Robert, whose answer being likewise intercepted shewed that he was not prepared and had no inclination for the enterprise. This seen Clinton continued his embarkation and thus completed his honourable but difficult task. With a force weak in numbers, and nearly destitute of every thing that constitutes strength in the field, he had maintained a forward and dangerous position for eight months; and though Copons’ incapacity and ill-will, and other circumstances beyond control, did not permit him to perform any brilliant actions, he occupied the attention of a very superior army, suffered no disaster and gained some advantages.

[Sidenote: Lafaille.]

While his troops were embarking, Habert, in furtherance of the emperor’s project, made a vigorous sally on the 18th, and though repulsed with loss he killed or wounded eight hundred Spaniards. This was a lamentable combat. The war had terminated long before, yet intelligence of the cessation of hostilities only arrived four days later. Habert was now repeatedly ordered by Suchet and the duke of Feltre to give up Barcelona, but warned by the breach of former conventions he held it until he was assured that all the French garrisons in Valencia had returned safely to France, which did not happen until the 28th of May, when he yielded up the town and marched to his own country. This event, the last operation of the whole war, released the duchess of Bourbon. She and the old prince of Conti had been retained prisoners in the city during the Spanish struggle, the prince died early in 1814, the duchess survived, and now returned to France.

How strong Napoleon’s hold of the Peninsula had been, how little the Spaniards were able of their own strength to shake him off, was now apparent to all the world. For notwithstanding lord Wellington’s great victories, notwithstanding the invasion of France, six fortresses, Figueras, Barcelona, Tortoza, Morella, Peniscola, Saguntum and Denia were recovered, not by arms but by the general peace. And but for the deceits of Van Halen there would have been three others similarly situated in the eastern parts alone, while in the north Santona was recovered in the same manner; for neither the long blockade nor the active operations against that place, of which some account shall now be given, caused it to surrender.

The site of Santona is one of those promontories frequent on the coast of Spain which connected by low sandy necks with the main land offer good harbours. Its waters deep and capacious furnished two bays. The outer one or roadstead was commanded by the works of Santona itself, and by those of Laredo, a considerable town lying at the foot of a mountain on the opposite point of the harbour. A narrow entrance to the inner port was between a spit of land, called the Puntal, and the low isthmus on which the town of Santona is built. The natural strength of the ground was very great, but the importance of Santona arose from its peculiar situation as a harbour and fort of support in the Montaña de Santander. By holding it the French shut out the British shipping from the only place which being defensible on the land side furnished a good harbour between San Sebastian and Coruña; they thus protected the sea-flank of their long line of invasion, obtained a port of refuge for their own coasting vessels, and a post of support for the moveable columns sent to chase the partidas which abounded in that rough district. And when the battle of Vittoria placed the allies on the Bidassoa, from Santona issued forth a number of privateers who, as we have seen, intercepted lord Wellington’s supplies and interrupted his communication with Coruña, Oporto, Lisbon, and even with England.

[Sidenote: Vol. 3. Book XI. Chapter V.]

[Sidenote: Ibid. Book XII. Chapter I.]

The advantages of possessing Santona were felt early by both parties; the French seized it at once and although the Spaniards recovered possession of it in 1810 they were driven out again immediately. The English ministers then commenced deliberating and concocting extensive and for that reason injudicious and impracticable plans of offensive operations, to be based upon the possession of Santona; meanwhile Napoleon fortified it and kept it to the end of the war. In August 1812 its importance was better understood by the Spaniards, and it was continually menaced by the numerous bands of Biscay, the Asturias and the Montaña. Fourteen hundred men, including the crew of a corvette, then formed its garrison, the works were not very strong and only forty pieces of artillery were mounted. Napoleon however, foreseeing the disasters which Marmont was provoking, sent general Lameth, a chosen officer, to take charge of the defence. He immediately augmented the works and constructed advanced redoubts on two hills, called the Gromo and the Brusco, which like San Bartolomeo at San Sebastian closed the isthmus inland. He also erected a strong redoubt and blockhouse on the Puntal to command the straits, and to sweep the roadstead in conjunction with the fort of Laredo which he repaired. This done he formed several minor batteries and cast a chain to secure the narrow entrance to the inner harbour, and then covered the rocky promontory of Santona itself with defensive works.

Some dismounted guns remained in the arsenal, others which had been thrown into the sea by the Spaniards when they took the place in 1810 were fished up, and the garrison felling trees in the vicinity made carriages for them; by these means a hundred and twenty guns were finally placed in battery and there was abundance of ammunition. The corvette was not sea-worthy, but the governor established a flotilla of gun-boats, and other small craft, which sallied forth whenever the signal-posts on the head-land gave notice of the approach of vessels liable to attack, or of French coasters bringing provisions and stores. The garrison had previously lost many men, killed in a barbarous manner by the partidas, and in revenge they never gave quarter to their enemies. Lameth shocked at their inhumanity resolutely forbad under pain of death any farther reprisals, rewarded those men who brought in prisoners and treated the latter with gentleness: the Spaniards discovering this also changed their system and civilization resumed its rights. From this time military operations were incessant, the garrison sometimes made sallies, sometimes sustained partial attacks, sometimes aided the moveable columns employed by the different generals of the army of the north to put down the partizan warfare, which was seldom even lulled in the Montaña.

[Sidenote: Victoires et Conquêtes.]

After the battle of Vittoria Santona being left to its own resources was invested on the land side by a part of the troops composing the Gallician or fourth Spanish army. It was blockaded on the sea-board by the English ships of war, but only nominally, for the garrison received supplies, and the flotilla vexed lord Wellington’s communications, took many of his store-ships and other vessels, delayed his convoys, and added greatly to the difficulties of his situation. The land blockade thus also became a nullity and the Spanish officers complained with reason that they suffered privations and endured hardships without an object. These complaints and his own embarassments, caused by lord Melville’s neglect, induced lord Wellington in October, 1813, when he could ill spare troops, to employ a British brigade under lord Aylmer in the attack of Santona; the project for reasons already mentioned was not executed, but an English engineer, captain Wells, was sent with some sappers and miners to quicken the operations of the Spanish officers, and his small detachment has been by a French writer magnified into a whole battalion.

[Sidenote: 1814. February.]

Captain Wells remained six months, for the Spanish generals though brave and willing were tainted with the national defect of procrastination. The siege made no progress until the 13th of February 1814 when general Barco the Spanish commander carried the fort of Puntal in the night by escalade, killing thirty men and taking twenty-three prisoners, yet the fort being under the heavy fire of the Santona works was necessarily dismantled and abandoned the next morning. A picquet was however left there and the French opened their batteries, but as this did not dislodge the Spaniards Lameth embarked a detachment and recovered his fort. However in the night of the 21st general Barco ordered an attack to be made with a part of his force upon the outposts of El Grumo and Brusco, on the Santona side of the harbour, and led the remainder of his troops in person to storm the fort and town of Laredo. He carried the latter and also some outer defences of the fort, which being on a rock was only to be approached by an isthmus so narrow as to be closed by a single fortified house. In the assault of the body of this fort Barco was killed and the attack ceased, but the troops retained what they had won and established themselves at the foot of the rock where they were covered from fire. The attack on the other side, conducted by colonel Llorente, was successful; he carried the smallest of the two outworks on the Brusco, and closely invested the largest after an ineffectual attempt by mine and assault to take it. A large breach was however made and the commandant seeing he could no longer defend his post, valiantly broke through the investment and gained the work of the Grumo. He was however aided by the appearance on the isthmus of a strong column which sallied at the same time from the works on the Santona promontory, and the next day the Grumo itself was abandoned by the French.

[Sidenote: Professional papers by the royal engineers.]

[Sidenote: April.]

Captain Wells, who had been wounded at the Puntal escalade, now strenuously urged the Spaniards to crown the counter-scarp of the fort at Laredo and attack vigorously, but they preferred establishing four field-pieces to batter it in form at the distance of six hundred yards. These guns as might be expected were dismounted the moment they began to fire, and thus corrected, the Spanish generals committed the direction of the attack to Wells. He immediately opened a heavy musquetry fire on the fort to stifle the noise of his workmen, then pushing trenches up the hill close to the counterscarp in the night, he was proceeding to burst open the gate with a few field-pieces and to cut down the pallisades, when the Italian garrison, whose musquets from constant use had become so foul that few would go off, mutinied against their commander and making him a prisoner surrendered the place. This event gave the allies the command of the entrance to the harbour, and Lameth offered to capitulate in April upon condition of returning to France with his garrison. Lord Wellington refused the condition, Santona therefore remained a few days longer in possession of the enemy, and was finally evacuated at the general cessation of hostilities.

Having now terminated the narrative of all military and political events which happened in the Peninsula, the reader will henceforth be enabled to follow without interruption the events of the war in the south of France which shall be continued in the next book.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us