Fotheringham John Knight
The Political History of England – Vol XI
VITORIA.
He advanced by the valley of the Douro; then, turning to the north-east, he compelled the French to evacuate Burgos, and passed the Ebro on June 13. Graham in command of his left wing there joined him, after forcing his way by immense efforts across the mountains of the Portuguese frontier. Hill, commanding the right wing of his composite but united army, was already with him. A depot for his commissariat and a military hospital were established at Santander, where a British fleet was lying, and whence he could draw his supplies direct from home. The French army, under Joseph and Marshal Jourdan, fell back before him by a forced night march on the 19th and took up its position in front of Vitoria, in the province of Biscay. Here, on the plain of the river Zadorra, was fought on the 21st the greatest battle of the Peninsular war. Wellington had encountered serious physical difficulties in his passage from the valley of the Ebro to that of the Zadorra; but for once his plans had been executed with admirable precision, and all his troops arrived at the appointed time on the field of battle. The French, conscious of their impending expulsion from Spain, were encumbered by enormous baggage-trains containing the fruits of five years' merciless spoliation "not of a province but of a kingdom," including treasures of art from Madrid and all the provincial capitals, with no less than 5,500,000 dollars in hard cash, besides two years' arrears of pay which Napoleon had sent to fill the military chest of Joseph's army. A vast number of vehicles, loaded with the whole imperial and royal treasure, overspread the plain and choked the great road behind the French position, by which alone such a mass of waggons could find its way into France.
The French army consisted of about 60,000 men, with 150 pieces of cannon, but strong detachments, under Foy and Clausel respectively, had been sent away to guard the roads to Bilbao and Pamplona. The British army numbered nearly 80,000, inclusive of Portuguese and Spanish, with 90 guns. The French were posted on strong ground, and held the bridges across the river. Graham, with the left column of the British, made a circuit in the direction of Bilbao, working round to cut off the French rear on the Bayonne road. Hill, with the right column, forced the pass of Puebla, in the latter direction, carried the ridge above it after much hard fighting, and made good his position on the left flank of the French. Wellington himself, in the centre, under the guidance of a Spanish peasant, pushed a brigade across one of the bridges in his front, weakly guarded, and thus mastered the others; his force then expanded itself on the plain and bore down all opposition. Graham had met with a more obstinate resistance from the French right, under Reille, but at last got possession of the great Bayonne road. Thenceforward a retreat of the French army, partly encircled, became inevitable, but it was conducted at first in good order and with frequent halts at defensible points. The only outlet left open was the mountain road to Pamplona, and this was not only impracticable for heavy traffic but obstructed by an overturned waggon. The orderly retreat was soon converted into a rout; the flying throng made its way across country and over mountains towards Pamplona, leaving all the artillery, military stores, and accumulated spoils as trophies of the British victory.
The value of these was prodigious, but the great mass of booty, except munitions of war, fell into the hands of private soldiers and camp-followers. Wellington reported to Bathurst that nearly a million sterling in money had been appropriated by the rank and file of the army, and, still worse, that so dazzling a triumph had "totally annihilated all order and discipline".51 The loss in the battle had been about 5,000, but Wellington stated that on July 8 "we had 12,500 men less under arms than we had on the day before the battle". He supposed the missing 7,500, nearly half of whom were British, to be mostly concealed in the mountain villages.52 A large number of stragglers afterwards rejoined their colours, but too late to aid in an effectual pursuit of the enemy. The immediate consequence of this great victory was the evacuation by the French of all Spain south of the Ebro. Even Suchet abandoned Valencia and distributed his forces between Tarragona and Tortosa. To his great credit, Wellington addressed to the cortes an earnest protest against wreaking vengeance on the French party in Spain, many of whom might have been driven into acceptance of a foreign yoke "by terror, by distress, or by despair". At the same time, he vigorously followed up his success by chasing and nearly surrounding Clausel's division, while Hill invested Pamplona, and Graham drove Foy across the Bidassoa, in his advance upon the fortress of St. Sebastian.
THE BATTLE OF THE PYRENEES.
The fortifications of St. Sebastian were in a very imperfect condition, but the governor, Emmanuel Rey, was nevertheless able to defend the place with success. Wellington, after laying siege to it, sanctioned a premature attempt to scale the breaches which cost Graham's force a loss of more than 500 men. This check was succeeded by another, still more serious, in the historic pass of Roncesvalles. Napoleon, hearing at Dresden of the battle of Vitoria, and instantly fathoming its momentous import, despatched Soult, as "lieutenant of the emperor," to assume command of all the French armies at Bayonne and on the Spanish frontier, still amounting nominally to 114,000 men, besides 66,000 under Suchet in Catalonia. Soult reached Bayonne on July 13, fortified it strongly, and reorganised his troops with amazing energy, inspiriting them with a warlike address in the well-known style of Napoleon's proclamations. On the 25th he set his forces in motion, with the intention of crushing the British right by a sudden irruption, and relieving Pamplona. He all but achieved his object, for, by well-concerted and well-concealed movements, he actually carried the passes of Roncesvalles and Maya, in spite of a gallant resistance and the French troops were on the point of pouring down the Pyrenees on the Spanish side, when Wellington arrived at full speed from his position before St. Sebastian.
He was opportunely reinforced, and gave battle on the rugged heights in front of Pamplona to a force numerically superior, but for the most part charging uphill. Never, even at Bussaco, did the French show greater ardour and élan in attack, and it was only after a series of bloody hand-to-hand combats on the summits and sides of the mountains that they were compelled to recoil and rolled backward down the ridge. Baffled in his attempt to relieve Pamplona, Soult turned westwards towards St. Sebastian, but was anticipated by Wellington, and faced by three divisions of Hill on his right. A second engagement followed, in which the Portuguese earned the chief honours, and 3,000 prisoners were taken. At last Soult gave orders for a retreat, and in the course of it was all but entrapped in a narrow valley where he could not have escaped the necessity of surrender. It is said that he was warned just in time by the sudden intrusion of three British marauders in uniform; at all events, he instantly changed his line of march, and ultimately led his broken army back to France, but in the utmost confusion, and not without fresh disasters. One of these befell Reille's division in the gorge of Yanzi, and another the French rear-guard under Clausel, which defended itself valiantly, but was driven headlong down the northern side of the Pyrenees from which this series of battles derives its name.
The siege of St. Sebastian was immediately renewed with a far more powerful battering train, but its defences had also been strengthened by the indefatigable governor. The final assault took place on August 31, and rivalled the storming of Badajoz in the murderous ferocity of the melée at the breaches, as well as in the horrors practised on the inhabitants by the victorious assailants, which Wellington and Graham vainly endeavoured to check. So desperate was the defence, and so insuperable appeared the obstacles to an entrance by the breaches, that Graham adopted the heroic expedient of causing his artillery to fire a few feet only over the heads of the forlorn hope, until a clear opening had been made, and deadly piles of combustibles had been exploded behind the main breach, blowing into the air 300 of the garrison. A hideous conflagration destroyed the greater part of the town. A few days later the castle, to which the governor had retired, yielded to an irresistible cannonade, and he surrendered at discretion with about 1,200 men. Several hundred wounded, including a large number of British prisoners, were found there in the hospitals.
On the 30th, the day before St. Sebastian was stormed, Soult attempted a diversion for its relief by crossing the Bidassoa, and on the following day he engaged a large body of Spaniards at St. Marcial. On this occasion Wellington held the British troops in reserve, and the Spaniards without their aid defeated the French with great slaughter. So ended a well-planned and well-executed effort to reconquer the Spanish frontier. Pamplona was still untaken, and Suchet was still in Catalonia, but no further offensive movement was undertaken by the French against Spain. Both Soult and Wellington had shown remarkable powers of generalship, and there was a moment when Soult might have snatched the prize of victory by raising the siege of Pamplona. But his ultimate success was hopeless, and his failure was complete. Before the fall of St. Sebastian and the battle of St. Marcial, Wellington estimated the French losses at 15,000 men, who could ill be spared in the interval between Napoleon's last gleam of victory at Dresden and on his signal defeat at Leipzig.
WELLINGTON ENTERS FRANCE.
But the Peninsular war, in the historical sense, was not yet over. During the summer of 1813 a mixed force of British, Germans, Spaniards, and Sicilians had been carrying on an intermittent war against the French under Suchet in the eastern provinces. Their commander, Sir John Murray, who had allowed the beaten enemy to escape at Castalla, proved equally irresolute in an attempt to capture Tarragona, countermanded the assault, and re-embarked his troops on the approach of Suchet. Soon afterwards he was superseded by Lord William Bentinck, and Suchet after the battle of Vitoria was compelled to retire behind the Ebro. Bentinck renewed the investment of Tarragona, but permitted Suchet without a battle to relieve it, demolish its fortifications, and withdraw its garrison at the end of August. An ill-judged advance of the British general into Catalonia brought about another misfortune, and, upon the whole, the series of operations conducted against Suchet were by no means glorious to British arms or generalship, however important their effect in preventing a large body of French veterans from reinforcing Soult's army at a critical time in the Western Pyrenees. Wellington himself inclined to complete the deliverance of Spain by clearing the province of Catalonia of the invaders, but the British government, having in view the prospect of crushing Napoleon in Germany, urged him to undertake an immediate invasion of France. Accordingly he moved forward on October 7, leaving Pamplona closely blockaded, threw his army across the Bidassoa on the 8th by a stroke of masterly tactics, forced the strong French lines on the north side of it, and established himself on the enemy's soil. Before entering France he issued the most stringent proclamations against plundering, which he enforced by the sternest measures, and announced that he would not suffer the peaceful inhabitants of France to be punished for the ambition of their ruler. On the 31st the French garrison of Pamplona, despairing of relief, surrendered as prisoners of war.
The prolonged defence of Pamplona gave Soult time to strengthen his position on the Nivelle. The lines which he constructed rivalled those of Torres Vedras, and the several actions by which they were at last forced and turned were among the most desperate of the whole war. The first was fought in the early part of November, and resulted in the occupation by Wellington's army of the great mountain-barrier south of Bayonne, with six miles of entrenchments along the Nivelle, and of the port of St. Jean de Luz. A month later Wellington became anxious to establish his winter-cantonments between the Nive and the Adour, partly for strategical reasons, and partly in order to command a larger and more fertile area for his supplies. On December 9, therefore, Hill with the right wing forded the Nive and drove back the French left upon their camp in front of Bayonne. Then followed three most obstinate combats on the 10th, 11th and 13th, in which Soult took the offensive, with Bayonne as the centre of his operations, and with the advantage of always moving upon interior lines resting upon a strong fortress. In the first of these attacks, he surprised and nearly succeeded in overwhelming the British left, under Hope, now Sir John, before Wellington could bring other divisions to its support. In the second, he fell suddenly on the same troops, exhausted by fatigue, and still more or less isolated, but they were rallied by Hope and Wellington in person, and remained masters of the field. In the third he concentrated his whole strength upon the British right under Hill, aided by a thick mist, and by a flood upon the Nive, which swept away a bridge of boats, and separated Hill from the rest of the army. Nevertheless, that able general, emulating the noble example of Hope in the earlier encounters, succeeded in repelling assault after assault, until Wellington himself appeared with reinforcements of imposing strength, and converted a stubborn defence into a victory.
The loss of the allies since crossing the Nive had exceeded 5,000; that of the French was 6,000, besides 2,400 Germans who deserted to the British during the night of the 9th in obedience to orders from home. Ever since he assumed the command Soult had shown military ability of a rare order. Bayonne, the base of all his operations, was indefensible before he fortified it. A great proportion of his troops were raw conscripts, or demoralised by defeat, before he inspired them with his own courage and vigour. He was practically dependent for subsistence in his own country on the very system of pillage which had roused a patriotic frenzy of resentment in Spain and other lands ravaged by French armies. He now stood at bay in the south of France, as Wellington had so long stood at bay in Portugal, and continued there during the early part of 1814 a defensive campaign not unworthy of comparison with the prodigious exploits of Napoleon himself against the invaders of his eastern provinces.
THE INVESTMENT OF BAYONNE.
A respite of two months succeeded the battles on the Nive. During this interval Wellington's difficulty in paying his troops was great, owing to the enormous drain of specie from England into Central Europe. He was further embarrassed by the appearance of the Duke of Angoulême, elder son of Charles, Count of Artois, afterwards Charles X., at his headquarters. The British government was by no means committed to a restoration of the Bourbons, and Wellington deprecated the duke's appearance as at least premature. He therefore insisted upon his remaining incognito and as a non-combatant at St. Jean de Luz. Soult was in great straits, not only because he was compelled to "make war support war" by exorbitant requisitions upon the French peasantry, but also because the exigencies of Napoleon were such that large drafts of the best troops were drawn from the army of the south. When hostilities were resumed in the middle of February, 1814, the Anglo-Portuguese and Spanish force combined outnumbered the French by nearly five to three, but Soult retained the decisive advantage of having a strong point d'appui in Bayonne at the confluence of the Nive and Adour. Careful preparations were made by Wellington for throwing a large force across the Lower Adour below Bayonne, in concert with a British fleet. Contrary winds and a violent surf delayed the arrival of the British gunboats, but on February 23 Hope sent over a body of his men on a raft of pontoons in the face of the enemy's flotilla, with the aid of a brigade armed with Congreve rockets, which had been first used at Leipzig, and produced the utmost consternation in the French ranks. The gunboats soon followed, but with the loss of one wrecked and others stranded in crossing the bar. By the joint exertions of soldiers and sailors a bridge was then constructed, by which Hope's entire army with artillery passed over the river, and, two days afterwards, began the investment of Bayonne.
Meanwhile, the centre and right wing, under the command of Wellington, had forced a passage across the Upper Adour and threatened Bayonne on the other side. Leaving a garrison of 6,000 men in Bayonne, Soult took his stand at Orthez, with an army of about 40,000 men, on the summit of a formidable ridge. Wellington attacked this ridge on the 27th, with a force of nearly equal strength in three columns so disposed as to converge from points several miles distant from each other. The veterans of the French army, admirably handled, fought with tenacity, and all but succeeded in foiling the attack before Wellington could bring up his reserves. The conscripts, however, were not equally steady, and when Hill, advancing from the extreme right, pressed upon the French left, Soult's orderly retreat became a precipitate flight. The French loss greatly exceeded the British, and was soon afterwards swelled by wholesale desertions; the road to Bordeaux was thrown open, and the royalist reaction against Napoleon, stimulated by the depredation of the French troops, ripened into a general revolt.
Meanwhile, Napoleon had lost Germany by the battle of Leipzig; early in 1814 the allied armies of Austria, Prussia, and Russia had entered France, and a congress was being held at Châtillon-sur-Seine, to formulate, if possible, terms of peace. The city of Bordeaux was the first to declare itself openly in favour of the Bourbons. Wellington sent a large detachment to preserve order, with strict instructions to Beresford, who commanded it, to remain neutral, in the event of Louis XVIII. being proclaimed, pending the negotiations with Napoleon at Châtillon. But the excitement of the people could not be restrained, and the arrival of the Duke of Angoulême evoked a burst of royalist enthusiasm which anticipated by a few weeks only the abdication of Napoleon at Fontainebleau. The defection of Bordeaux forced Soult to fall back rapidly on a very formidable position in front of Toulouse. The British army followed in pursuit, encumbered with a great artillery and pontoon train. After a lively action at Tarbes, it arrived in front of Toulouse on March 27, to find the Garonne in flood, and the French army strongly entrenched around the town, with a prospect of being joined by 20,000 or 30,000 veterans, under Suchet, from Catalonia.
THE BATTLE OF TOULOUSE.
The dispositions of Wellington, ending in the battle of Toulouse, on April 10, have not escaped criticism. Hill, with two divisions and a Spanish contingent, threw a bridge across the Garonne below Toulouse, but discovered that he could make no progress in that direction, owing to the impassable state of the roads. Beresford crossed the river with 18,000 men at another point, but a sudden flood broke up the pontoon bridge in his rear, and he remained isolated for no less than four days, exposed to an attack from Soult's whole army. Having missed this rare opportunity, Soult calmly awaited the attack, with a force numerically inferior, but with every advantage of position. On the 10th Wellington's troops advanced in two columns, separated from each other by a perilous interval of two miles. One of these, including Freyre's Spaniards and Picton's division, was fairly driven back after furious attempts to storm the ramparts of the fortified ridge held by the French. Beresford, however, who in this battle combined generalship with brilliant courage, restored the fortunes of the day by a dashing advance against the redoubts on the French right. Having carried these he swept along the ridge, which became untenable, and Soult withdrew his army within his second line of defences. Two days later, seeing that Hill menaced Toulouse on the other side, and fearing that if defeated again he would lose his only line of retreat along the Carcassonne road, he evacuated Toulouse by that route, leaving his magazines and hospitals in the hands of the British army. By so doing he left to Wellington the honour and prize of victory, but few victories have been so dearly bought, and the loss in killed and wounded was actually greater on the side of the victors than on that of the vanquished.
Toulouse received Wellington on the 12th with open arms, and as news reached him on the same day announcing the proclamation of Louis XVIII. at Paris, he no longer hesitated to assume the white cockade. Soult loyally declined to accept the intelligence until it was officially confirmed, when a military convention was made on the 18th, whereby a boundary line was established between the two armies. Suchet had already withdrawn from Spain, and at last recalled the garrisons from those Spanish fortresses in which Napoleon had so obstinately locked up picked troops which he sorely needed in his dire extremity. But on the 14th, a week after Napoleon's abdication, the famous "sortie from Bayonne" took place, in which each side lost 800 or 900 men, and Hope, wounded in two places, was made prisoner. For this waste of life the governor of Bayonne must be held responsible, since he was informed of the events at Paris by Hope, and instead of awaiting official confirmation, like Soult, chose to risk the issue of a night combat, which must needs be deadly and could not be decisive.
Thus ended the Peninsular war. This war on the British side has seldom been surpassed in the steady adherence to a settled purpose, through years of discouragement and failure, maintained by the general whose name it has made immortal. Neither his strategy nor his tactical skill was always faultless; and afterwards in comparing himself with Soult, he is reported to have said, that he often got into scrapes, but was extricated by the valour of his army, whereas Soult, when he got into a scrape, had no such men to get him out of it. However this might be, Wellington's foresight in appreciating the place to be filled by the Peninsular war in the overthrow of Napoleon's domination, and his truly heroic constancy in striving to realise his own idea will ever constitute his best claim to greatness. No other man in England or in Europe discerned as he did, that with Portugal independent and guarded by the power of Great Britain on its western coast and its eastern frontier, the permanent conquest of Spain by the French would become impossible. No one else saw beforehand, what Napoleon discovered too late, that a war in Portugal and Spain would drain the life-blood of his invincible hosts, and at length help towards the invasion of France itself. No other general would have shown equal statesmanship in managing Spanish juntas and controlling even Spanish guerillas, or equal forbearance in sparing the French people the evils which a victorious army might have inflicted upon them.