Passages of the Gaves and the Adour. (Feb. 1814.)

While the armies remained inactive, political difficulties accumulated on both sides in a strange manner. What those difficulties were and their causes must be sought for in the original History: this work treats only of battles. Yet their gravity will be understood when it is said, that Soult, surrounded with traitors and lukewarm friends, had his army again so reduced by drafts that he proposed to Napoleon, then driven from Germany and striving hard to defend France on the east, no longer to contend with Wellington in regular warfare, but to scatter his forces as great partizan corps in opposition to the invasion. On the other hand, Wellington seriously warned his Government that he looked to San Sebastian as a post where he should soon have to fight for an embarkation against the united French and Spanish armies! In fine that the war could no longer be continued. Suddenly however his position was ameliorated by a change in the Spanish councils, by the approach of fine weather, and the simultaneous receipt of a large sum in gold, which enabled him again to employ the Spaniards in France with less danger of their plundering the country. He had sent before him the fame of a just discipline and wise consideration for the people, and there was indeed nothing he dreaded more than the insurgent warfare projected by Soult. Harispe’s Basques had done him more mischief than the French army, the terrible menace of destroying their villages and killing all the male population, by which he stopped their warfare, marked his apprehensions, and he neglected no means of conciliation.

He permitted the local authorities to carry on the internal government, to take their salaries and raise the necessary taxes, and by opening the ports he drew a large commerce to support his army; he established many channels for intelligence, political and military, and would have extended his policy further if the English ministers had not abruptly and ignorantly interfered with his proceedings. Finally, foreseeing that his gold, being in foreign coin, would create embarrassment, he adopted an expedient which he had before practised in India; for knowing that in a British army a wonderful variety of vocations, good and bad, may be found, he secretly caused false coiners and die-sinkers to be sought for amongst the soldiers, and they, when assured no ill was designed for them, very readily acknowledged their peculiar talents. With these men he secretly coined gold Napoleons, marking them with a private stamp and carefully preserving their just fineness and weight, to enable the French government, when peace should be established, to call them in again. He thus avoided all the difficulties of exchange, and removed a fruitful source of quarrels between the troops and shopkeepers, the latter being always fastidious in taking and desirous of abating the real worth of strange coin; while the former attribute to fraud any declination from the value at which they receive their money. This sudden increase of current coin tended also to diminish the pressure necessarily attendant upon troubled times.

Nor was his provident sagacity less eminent in military than in administrative and political operations. During the bad weather he had formed large magazines at the ports, examined the course of the Adour, and carefully meditated on his plans. To penetrate France and rally a great Bourbon party under the protection of his army was the system he desired to follow; and though the last depended on the proceedings of the allied sovereigns, his own military operations would not clash, because to drive the French from Bayonne and blockade or besiege it were the first steps in either case.

That fortress and its citadel, comprising in their circuit the confluence of the Nive and the Adour, could not be safely invested with less than three times the number necessary to resist the garrison at any one point; and hence the whole must be so numerous as seriously to weaken the forces operating towards the interior. How and where to cross the Adour for the investment was also a subject of solicitude. It was a great river with a strong current, and well guarded by troops and gun-boats above Bayonne; still greater was it below the town, and there the ebb-tide run seven miles an hour; there also, gun-boats, a sloop of war, and armed merchant-vessels could be employed to interrupt the passage. To collect boats enough to bridge the stream above or below Bayonne, and the carriage of them, an immense operation in itself, would inevitably give notice of the design, unless the French army were first driven away; and even then the garrison of Bayonne, fifteen thousand men, might baffle the attempt. Nevertheless in the face of these difficulties he resolved to pass, his preparations being proportionate to the greatness of the design.

Many reasons concurred to make him throw his bridge below and not above Bayonne, and in that view he had collected at St. Jean de Luz forty large sailing-boats of from fifteen to thirty tons’ burthen, called chasse-marÉes, as if for the commissariat service; but he had them secretly loaded with materials for his bridge, designing with naval aid to run up the Adour to a certain point, upon which the troops and artillery were to move; then with hawsers, and rafts made of pontoons, he designed to throw over a covering body, trusting that the greatness and danger of the attempt would lull suspicion. No obstacles deterred him. All the French trading vessels in the Adour had in January secretly offered to come out upon licenses and serve his commissariat; but he was compelled to forego that advantage by the silly meddling of the English ministers, which added greatly to the difficulty of his enterprise, inasmuch as it forced him, instead of receiving these men as friends and coadjutors, to prepare means for burning their vessels.

Soult was not less active in defensive measures. He had fortified all the main passes of the rivers on the great roads leading against his left; yet the diminution of his force in January had compelled him to withdraw his outposts from Anglet, which enabled Wellington to examine the whole course of the Adour below Bayonne and arrange for the passage with more facility. Soult then, in pursuance of Napoleon’s system of warfare, which always prescribed a recourse to moral force to cover physical weakness, concentrated his left wing against the allies’ right beyond the Nive, and renewed that harassing partizan warfare already noticed, endeavouring to throw his adversary entirely upon the defensive.

He knew however he could not thus check the allies long; and judging Wellington would aim at Bordeaux and the line of the Garonne, while his own line of retreat must ultimately be in a parallel direction with the Pyrenees, he tried to organize in time a defensive system. In this view he sent Daricau, a native of the Landes, to prepare an insurgent levy in that wilderness, and directed Maransin to the High Pyrenees to extend the insurrection of the mountaineers, already commenced in the Lower Pyrenees by Harispe.

At Bordeaux there was a small reserve, which he urged the Minister of War to increase with conscripts from the interior, and he sent artillerymen there, ordering various dispositions: but there was no public spirit awakened and treason was rife in that city.

On the side of the Lower Pyrenees he improved the works of Navarrens, and designed an entrenched camp; the castle of Lourdes in the High Pyrenees was already defensible, and he gave orders to fortify the castle of Pau, thus providing supporting points for a retreat. At Mauleon he put on foot partizan corps, and had hopes of forming a reserve of seven or eight thousand national guards, gens d’armes and artillerymen at Tarbes. Dax, containing his principal depÔts, was being fortified, and the communication with it maintained across the rivers by bridges, with bridge-heads at Port de Lannes, Hastingues, Peyrehorade, and Sauveterre; but in the beginning of February floods carried away that at Port de Lannes, and the communication between Bayonne and the left of the army was thus interrupted until he established a flying bridge.

Such was his situation when Wellington retook the offensive, with one hundred and twenty thousand infantry and fifteen thousand cavalry, as Soult supposed; for he knew not of the political and financial difficulties which had reduced the English general’s power and prevented the junction of the reinforcements expected. His emissaries told him that Clinton’s Catalonian force was broken up, and the British part in march to join Wellington; that the garrisons of Carthagena, Cadiz and Ceuta were at hand, and reinforcements were coming from England and Portugal. This made him conclude there was no intention of pressing the war in Catalonia, and that all would be united to march against him; wherefore with more earnestness than before he urged that Suchet should be ordered to join him, that their united forces might form a dike against the torrent which threatened to overwhelm the south of France. The real power opposed to him was however much below these calculations. Twenty thousand British and Portuguese had been promised by their governments, but did not arrive; Clinton’s army was still in Catalonia; the regular Spanish forces available, and that only partially on account of their licentious conduct, did not exceed thirty thousand; the Anglo-Portuguese were but seventy thousand, with ninety-five pieces of artillery.

Soult, exclusive of his garrisons and detachments at Bordeaux and in the High Pyrenees, exclusive also of the conscripts of the second levy which were now beginning to arrive, had only thirty-five thousand soldiers of all arms, three thousand being cavalry, with forty pieces of artillery. But Bayonne alone, without reference to St. Jean Pied de Port and Navarrens, occupied twenty-eight thousand of the allies; and by this and other drains Wellington’s superiority was so reduced, that his penetrating into France, that France which had made all Europe tremble at her arms, must be viewed as a surprising example of courage and fine conduct, military and political.

Passage of the Gaves. (Feb. 1814.)

In the second week of February the weather set in with a strong frost, and the English general advanced, precisely at the moment when General Paris had marched with a convoy from Navarrens to make a last effort for the relief of Jaca in Spain, where a French garrison still remained. But clothing for the troops, which had been long negligently delayed in England, arrived at that moment also, and the regiments, wanting the means of carriage, had to march for it to the coast. The first design was therefore restricted to turning the French left by the sources of the rivers with Hill’s corps, marching by the roots of the Pyrenees; Beresford meanwhile keeping the centre in check upon the lower parts of the same rivers, in hope that Soult’s attention would thus be attracted while the passage of the Adour was being made below Bayonne. It would seem also, that uncertain if he should be able to force the passage of the tributary rivers with his right, Wellington intended, if his bridge was happily thrown, to push his main operations in that quarter, turning the Gaves by the right bank of the Adour: a fine conception by which his superiority of numbers would have best availed him to seize Dax and the Port de Landes, and cut Soult off from Bordeaux.

Events frustrated this plan. On the 14th Hill, having twenty thousand combatants and sixteen guns, marched in two columns; one to drive Clausel’s posts beyond the Joyeuse, another by the great road of St. Jean Pied de Port against Harispe. This last body had the Ursouia mountain on its right, while beyond it Morillo marched against the same point. Harispe, who had only three brigades, principally conscripts, retired skirmishing in the direction of St. Palais. The line of the Joyeuse was thus turned by the allies, the direct communication with St. Jean Pied de Port was out, that place was invested by Mina’s battalions, and on the 15th Hill, leaving a regiment to observe the road of St. Jean, marched upon Garris, pushing back Harispe’s rear-guard.

Soult knew of the intended operations on the 12th, but hearing the allies had collected boats and constructed a fresh battery near Urt on the Upper Adour, and that the pontoons had reached Urcurray, thought Wellington’s design was to turn his left with Hill’s corps, to press him on the Bidouze with Beresford’s, and keep Bayonne in check with the Spaniards, while Hope crossed the Adour above that fortress. Wherefore, when Hill’s movement commenced, he resolved to dispute the passage of the Bidouze, and the two Gaves of Mauleon and Oleron in succession. He had already four divisions on the Bidouze, and he recalled Paris to post him between St. Palais and St. Jean Pied de Port in observation of Mina, whom he supposed to be stronger than he was.

Combat of Garris. (Feb. 1814.)

Harispe, having Paris under his orders, and supported by Pierre Soult with a brigade of light cavalry, now covered the road from St. Jean with his left, the upper line of the Bidouze with his right; from thence Villatte, Taupin and Foy were extended to its confluence with the Adour. Hill moved against Harispe. The latter had just occupied in advance of the Bidouze a ridge called the Garris mountain, which stretched to St. Palais, when his rear-guard came plunging into a deep ravine in his front, closely followed by the light troops of the second division. Upon the parallel counter-ridge thus gained, General Hill immediately established himself, and though the evening was beginning to close his skirmishers descended into the ravine, while two guns played over it upon four thousand men, arrayed on the opposite mountain by Harispe. In this state of affairs Wellington arrived. He was anxious to turn the line of the Bidouze before Soult could strengthen himself there, and seeing the communication with General Paris, by St. Palais, was not well maintained, sent Morillo along the ridge towards that place; then menacing Harispe’s centre with Le Cor’s Portuguese division, he directed Pringle’s brigade to attack, saying with concise energy “The hill must be taken before dark.”

This expression caught the fancy of the soldiers, and was repeated by Colonel O’Callaghan, as he and Pringle placed themselves at the head of the 39th, which, followed by the 28th, immediately rushed with loud and prolonged shouts into the ravine. Pringle fell wounded, and most of the mounted officers had their horses killed; but the troops, covered by the thick wood, gained the summit of the Garris mountain, on the right of the enemy, who thinking from the shouting that a larger force was coming retreated. The 39th then wheeled to their right, intending to sweep the summit, when the French, discovering their error, came back at a charging pace and receiving a volley without flinching tried the bayonet. O’Callaghan, distinguished for strength and courage, had two strokes from that weapon, but repaid them with fatal power in each instance, and the French, nearly all conscripts, were beaten off. Twice however they came back, and fought until the fire of the 28th was beginning to be felt, when Harispe, seeing the remainder of the second division ready to support the attack, Le Cor advancing against his centre, Morillo in march towards St. Palais, retreated to that town, and calling in Paris broke down the bridges over the Bidouze. He lost altogether five hundred men, two hundred being taken, and would hardly have escaped if Morillo had not been slow. The allies lost one hundred and sixty, most of them in the bayonet contest.

During these operations Picton, marching on Hill’s left, menaced Villatte; but Beresford, though his scouting parties, on the left of Picton, approached the Bidouze, facing Taupin and Foy, remained on the Joyeuse, as the pivot upon which Wellington’s right was to sweep round the French positions. Foy however had observed the movement of two other divisions, pointing as he thought towards the French left, and his reports to that effect reached Soult at the moment the latter received notice that St. Jean Pied de Port was invested. Thinking then that Wellington would not attempt to pass the Adour above Bayonne, but win his way to that river by constantly turning the French left, he made new dispositions.

His line on the Bidouze was strong, yet too extended, and he resolved to abandon that and the Mauleon for the Gave d’Oleron, placing his right at Peyrehorade, his left at Navarrens. Villatte therefore took post at Sauveterre on the Oleron where the bridge had a well-fortified head; from thence Taupin lined the right bank to the confluence of the Gave de Pau, which Foy guarded from Peyrehorade to its confluence with the Adour, his front being prolonged by D’Erlon towards Dax. One brigade of cavalry was in reserve at Sauveterre and the head-quarters went to Orthes. But the magazines of ammunition were at Bayonne, Navarrens, and Dax; and Soult, seeing his communications with all those places likely to be intercepted before he could remove his stores, wrote to the minister of war to form new depÔts.

On the 16th Wellington repaired the broken bridges of St. Palais, and after a skirmish Hill crossed the Bidouze, but the day was spent in the operation. Meanwhile the centre divisions passed the Joyeuse.

The 17th Hill advanced towards the Mauleon, while Picton, on his left, made for the heights of Somberraute, both corps converging upon General Paris, who, in defence of the Mauleon Gave, attempted to destroy the bridge of Arriveriete. Lord Wellington was too quick. The 92nd regiment, covered by the fire of some guns, passed at a ford above, and beating two French battalions from the village secured the passage. The troops halted there, having marched only five miles, and though Paris relinquished the Gave he did not retire until the morning of the 18th. The allies then seized the main road between Sauveterre and Navarrens on the left bank of the Oleron Gave, while Harispe, Villatte, and Paris, supported by a brigade of cavalry, concentrated at Sauveterre; Taupin was lower down on their right; Foy on the right of Taupin; D’Erlon on the left of the Adour, above its confluence with the Gave de Pau.

Soult, thrown from the commencement of the operations entirely upon the defensive, was now at a loss to discover his adversary’s object. In this uncertainty, sending Pierre Soult with a cavalry brigade and two battalions of infantry to act between Oleron and Pau and communicate with the partisan corps forming at Mauleon, he decided to hold the Gaves as long as he could; and, when they were forced, concentrate his army at Orthes and fall upon the first of the converging columns that approached. He had considered every likely movement, as he thought, and his conjectures had indeed embraced every plan of operation possible, except the one contemplated by his adversary, namely, the stupendous bridge over the Adour below Bayonne. That was now to be done, and Wellington designed to superintend the casting of it in person; hence, when he had established his right strongly beyond the Mauleon and Bidouze rivers and knew his pontoons were well advanced, he returned rapidly to St. Jean de Luz. Everything there depending on man was ready, but the weather was boisterous with snow for two days, and Wellington, fearful of letting Soult strengthen himself on the Gave of Oleron, returned on the 21st to Garris, deciding to press his operations on that side in person and leave Hope and Admiral Penrose to throw the bridge.

Passage of the Adour. (Feb. 1814.)

Hope had twenty-eight thousand men and twenty pieces of artillery, and in the night of the 22nd the first division, with six eighteen-pounders and a rocket battery, cautiously filed towards the river; the road was deep and one of the guns falling into a ditch delayed the march, yet at daybreak the whole reached some sand-downs which lined the river bank. The French picquets were then driven into the intrenched camp, the pontoon train and field-artillery came down opposite the village of Boucaut, and the eighteen-pounders were placed in battery on the bank. The light troops, meanwhile, closed to the edge of the marsh covering Vauban’s camp; and from Arcangues and Urdains the enemy’s attention was attracted by false attacks, which were prolonged beyond the Nive by the fifth division.

The gun-boats and chasse-marÉes should have reached the mouth of the Adour at the time the troops reached the bank; but the wind was contrary and none were seen. Hope, whose firmness no untoward event could ever shake, then resolved to try the passage with the army alone; the French flotilla opened fire on his columns, but his artillery and rockets retorted so fiercely that three of the gun-boats were destroyed, and the sloop so hardly handled that about one o’clock the whole took refuge higher up the river. Sixty men of the guards were then rowed in pontoons across the mouth of the river in the face of a French picquet, which, seemingly bewildered, retired without firing. A raft was formed with the remainder of the pontoons, a hawser was stretched across, and Colonel Stopford passed with six hundred of the guards, the 60th Regiment, and some rockets: yet slowly and at slack water, for the tide ran strongly and the waters were wide.

General Thouvenot, deceived by spies and prisoners, thought the light division was with Hope as well as the first division, and that fifteen thousand men had been embarked at St. Jean de Luz to land between Cape Breton and the Adour; he feared therefore to send a strong force to any distance; and when he heard of Stopford’s detachment on the right hank, detached only two battalions under Macomble to gain information, because a pine-forest and the bending of the river prevented him from obtaining a view from Bayonne. Macomble menaced Stopford, but the latter, flanked by the field artillery on the other bank, received him with a discharge of rockets; projectiles which, like the elephants in ancient warfare, often turn upon their own side: this time, amenable to their directors, they smote the French column and it fled amazed with a loss of thirty wounded. It is however obvious that if Thouvenot had kept strong guards with a field-battery on the right bank of the Adour, Hope could not have passed his troops in pontoons, no vessels could have crossed the bar, and to disembark troops between the river and Cape Breton must have been attempted. This error was fatal to the French. The British remained unmolested until twelve o’clock on the 24th, and then the long-expected flotilla was seen under a press of sail making with a strong breeze for the mouth of the river.

To enter the Adour is, from the flatness of the coast, never an easy task; it was now most difficult; the high winds of the preceding days had raised a great sea, and the enemy had removed one of the guiding flag-staves by which the navigation was ordinarily directed. In front of the flotilla came the boats of the men of war, and the naval captain, O’Reilly, ran his craft, a chosen Spanish vessel, first into the midst of the breakers, which rolling in a frightful manner over the bar dashed her on to the beach. That brave officer, stretched senseless on the shore, would have perished with all his crew but for the ready succour of the soldiers; some were drowned, but the remainder with an intrepid spirit launched their boat again to aid the passage.

O’Reilly had been followed successfully by Lieutenant Debenham in a six-oared cutter, but the tide was then falling, and the remainder of the boats, the impossibility of passing until high water being evident, drew off and a pilot was landed to direct the line of navigation by concerted signals. When the flood again came, the crews being promised rewards in proportion to their successful daring, the whole flotilla approached in close order; with it however came black clouds and a driving gale which sent along the whole coast a rough tumbling sea, dashing and foaming without an interval of dark water to mark the entrance of the river. The men-of-war’s boats first drew near this terrible surge, and Mr. Bloye of the Lyra, having the chief pilot with him, heroically led into it, but in an instant his barge was ingulfed and he and all with him were drowned. The following vessels seeing the Lyra’s boat thus swallowed swerved in their course, and shooting up to the right and left kept hovering undecided on the edge of the tormented waters. Suddenly Lieutenant Cheyne of the Woodlark pulled ahead, and striking the right line with courage and fortune combined, safely passed the bar. The wind then lulled, the waves as if conquered abated somewhat of their rage, and the chasse-marÉes, manned with Spanish seamen, but having an engineer officer with a party of sappers in each who compelled them to follow the men-of-war’s boats, came plunging one after another through the huge breakers and reached the point designed for the bridge. Thus was achieved this perilous and glorious exploit. Not without more loss. Captain Elliot of the Martial, with his crew and the crews of three transports’ boats, perished close to the shore in despite of the most violent efforts made by the troops to save them; three other vessels, cast on the beach, lost part of their crews; and one large chasse-marÉe, full of men, after passing the line of surf safely, was overtaken by a swift bellying wave which broke on her deck and dashed her to pieces.

Eight thousand men were now on the right bank. They remained in the sand-hills for the night, and next morning, sweeping in a half-circle round the citadel and its entrenchments, placed their left on the Adour above the fortress, their right on the same river below; the water however made such a bend that their front was little more than two miles wide, and for the most part covered by a marshy ravine. This nice operation was effected without opposition, because the Vauban camps, menaced by the troops on the other side of the Adour, were so extensive that Thouvenot’s force was scarcely sufficient to maintain them. The bridge was then constructed three miles below Bayonne, at a place where the river was contracted to eight hundred feet by strong retaining walls, built with the view of sweeping away the bar by increasing the force of the current. Bridge and boom were the joint conception of Colonel Sturgeon and Major Todd of the Staff corps; but the execution was confided entirely to the latter, who, with a mind less brilliant than Sturgeon’s, yet more indefatigable, very ably and usefully served his country throughout this war.

Twenty-six chasse-marÉes, moored head and stem at distances of forty feet, were first bound together with ropes; two thick cables were then carried loosely across their decks, the ends, cast over the walls on each bank, being strained and fastened in various modes to the sands. They were sufficiently slack to meet the spring-tides, which rose fourteen feet, and planks were tied upon them without any supporting beams. The boom, moored with anchors above and below, was a double line of masts connected with chains and cables, so as to form a succession of squares, in the design, if a vessel broke through the outside, that it should by the shock turn round in the square and get entangled with the floating wrecks of the line it had broken. Gun-boats, with aiding batteries on the banks, were then stationed to protect the boom, and to keep off fire-vessels, row-boats were furnished with grappling irons. The whole was by the united labour of seamen and soldiers finished on the 26th, and, contrary to the general opinion on such matters, Major Todd assured the Author of this History that he found the soldiers, with minds quickened by the wider range of knowledge attendant on their service, more ready of resource, and their efforts under a regular discipline of more avail, with less loss of time, than the irregular activity of the seamen. But fortune, the errors of the enemy, the matchless skill and daring of the British seamen, and the discipline and intrepidity of the British soldiers, combined by the genius of Wellington, were all necessary to the success of this stupendous undertaking, which must always rank amongst the prodigies of war.

When the bridge was finished Hope contracted the line of investment, a difficult operation, for the position of the French outside the citadel was exceedingly strong. The flanks were protected by ravines, the sides of which were covered with fortified villas, the front being on a ridge, crowned by the village and church of St. Etienne, both dominant, strongly entrenched, and under the fire of the citadel. Three converging columns, covered by skirmishers, were employed, and the wings attained the edges of the ravines at either side, their flanks resting on the Adour above and below; but a very vigorous action happened in the centre. The German and a brigade of guards were to attack simultaneously, the guards on the left, the light German troops on the right, their heavy infantry in the centre; some accident retarded the wings, and St. Etienne being first attacked the citadel guns opened and the skirmishing fire was heavy; yet the Germans stormed church and village, forced the entrenched line of houses, and took a gun, which however they could not carry off under the fire of the citadel. The action then ceased for a time, but the people of Bayonne were in such consternation that Thouvenot to re-assure them sallied at the head of the troops, charged the Germans twice, and fought well; he was however wounded and finally lost a gun and the position of St. Etienne: the British loss was however not less than five hundred men and officers.

Passage of the Gaves continued. (Feb. 1814.)

While Hope passed the Adour, Wellington pushed his operations on the Gaves with great vigour. Six divisions of infantry and two brigades of cavalry were concentrated on the Gave d’Oleron, between Sauveterre and Navarrens. Beresford lined the Bidouze to its confluence with the Adour, and the 23rd drove Foy from his works on the lower parts of the Oleron Gave, into the bridge-head at Peyrehorade. Soult’s right and centre were thus held in check, and the rest of his army was at Orthes and Sauveterre.

On the 24th Wellington advanced to force the Gave d’Oleron. During the previous days his movements had again deceived Soult, who thought the light division was with Hope, and imagined the first division was with Beresford; he did not expect however to hold the Gave, and looked to a final concentration at Orthes.

On the 24th also, Morillo, reinforced with a detachment of cavalry, moved towards Navarrens, where rough ground concealed his real force while his scouters beat back the French outposts; then a battalion menaced the fords of the Gave at Doguen, with a view to draw the attention of the garrison from the ford of Ville Nave, three miles below, where Wellington designed really to pass. For that object a great concentric movement was now in progress. Favoured by the hilly nature of the country, which concealed all the columns, the sixth division moved towards the ford of Montfort, three miles below that of Ville Nave, while a battalion of the second division menaced the ford of Barraute below Montfort. Picton marched against the bridge-head of Sauveterre, with orders to make a feint of forcing the passage there. Vivian’s hussars, coming up from Beresford’s right, threatened other fords upon Picton’s left, and Beresford, keeping Foy in check at Peyrehorade with the seventh division, sent the fourth above the confluence of the waters to seek a fit place to throw a bridge. Thus the French front was menaced on a line of twenty-five miles, but the great force was above Sauveterre.

The first operations were not happily executed. Some of the columns missed the fords, and Picton, opening a cannonade at Sauveterre, made four companies of Keane’s brigade and some cavalry pass the Gave in the vicinity of the bridge; but they were driven back with a loss of ninety men and officers, of whom some were drowned and thirty made prisoners: the diversion was however complete and the general operations successful. Soult on the first alarm drew Harispe from Sauveterre, placing him on the road to Orthes where a range of hills parallel to the Gave of Oleron separates it from the Gave of Pau; only a division of infantry and Berton’s cavalry then remained at Sauveterre, and Villatte, alarmed by Picton’s demonstrations, abandoned his works on the left bank and destroyed the bridge. Meanwhile the sixth division passed without opposition at Montfort above Sauveterre, and the main body, meeting at the ford of Ville Nave with only a small cavalry picquet, crossed with no more loss than two men drowned: a happy circumstance, for the waters were deep and rapid, the cold intense, and the ford so narrow the passage was not completed before dark. To have forced it in face of an enemy would have been exceedingly difficult; and it is remarkable that Soult, who was with Harispe only five miles from Montfort and seven from Ville Nave, should not have sent that general down to oppose either passage.

On the 25th at daylight, Wellington pushed the French rear-guard into the suburb of Orthes, which masked the bridge there, and the Portuguese of the light division lost twenty-five men in the skirmish. The second, sixth, and light divisions, Hamilton’s Portuguese, five regiments of cavalry, and three batteries, were now massed in front of Orthes; the third division and a brigade of cavalry were in front of the broken bridge of Berenx five miles lower down the Gave; the fourth and seventh divisions, with Vivian’s cavalry, were in front of Peyrehorade, from whence Foy retired to Orthes.

On the morning of the 26th, Beresford, finding Foy had abandoned Peyrehorade, passed the Gave, partly by a pontoon bridge, partly by a ford where the current ran so strong that a column was like to have been carried away bodily; but he had previously detached the 18th Hussars to find another ford higher up, which was effected under the guidance of a miller, and the hussars gaining the high road to Orthes drove some French cavalry through Puyoo. There they rallied on their reserves and beat back the foremost of the pursuers; yet they would not await the shock of the main body, now reinforced by Vivian’s brigade and commanded by Beresford in person. In this affair Major Sewell, an officer of the staff, who had frequently manifested his personal prowess, being without a sword, pulled a large stake from a hedge and with that weapon overthrew two hussars in succession, only ceasing to fight when a third cut his club in twain.

Beresford now threw out a detachment on his left to intercept the enemy’s communication with Dax, and Wellington sent Lord Edward Somerset’s cavalry with the third division across the Gave, by some fords below the broken bridge of Berenx. Then directing Beresford to take a position for the night on some heights near the village of BaÏghts, he proceeded to throw a pontoon bridge at Berenx; and thus after a circuitous march of more than fifty miles with his right wing, and the passage of five Gaves, he had again united it with his centre and secured a direct communication with Hope.

The bridge of Orthes, an ancient and beautiful structure, could not be easily forced. Composed of irregular arches, it had a tower in the centre, the gateway of which was built up, and the principal arch in front of the tower was mined, the houses on both sides contributing to the defence. The river immediately above and below the bridge was deep, and full of needle-rocks; but above the town the water, spreading wide, with flat banks, presented the means of crossing. Wellington’s first design was to pass there with Hill’s troops and the light division, but when he heard Beresford had crossed the Gave below, he suddenly threw his bridge at Berenx. This operation was covered by Beresford, while Soult’s attention was diverted by a continual skirmish at the suburbs of Orthes; by the appearance of Hill’s columns above the town; and by Wellington’s taking cognizance of the position near the bridge so openly as to draw a cannonade. The latter thought that when Soult knew Beresford and Picton were over the Gave he would not await a battle, and the emissaries reported that he was already in retreat; a circumstance to be borne in mind, because next day’s operation required success to justify it.

Hope’s happy passage of the Adour now became known and he was instructed to establish a line of communication to the port of Lannes, where a permanent bridge was to be formed with boats brought up from Urt; a direct intercourse was thus secured; yet Wellington felt he was going beyond his strength if Suchet should send reinforcements to Soult; wherefore he called up Freyre’s Spaniards, who were to cross the Adour below Bayonne and join him by the port of Lannes. O’Donnel’s Andalusians and the Prince of Anglona’s troops were also directed to be in readiness to enter France. These orders were given with great reluctance. The feeble resistance made by the French in the difficult country already passed, left him without much uneasiness as to the power of Soult’s army in the field, but his disquietude was extreme about the danger of an insurgent warfare.

“Maintain the strictest discipline, without that we are lost,” was his expression to Freyre; and he issued a proclamation authorizing the people of the districts he had overrun to arm themselves for the preservation of order under the direction of their mayors. He invited them to arrest all straggling soldiers and followers of the army, all plunderers and evil doers, and convey them to head-quarters with proof of their crimes, promising to punish the culpable and pay for all damages. At the same time he confirmed all the local authorities who chose to retain their offices: on the sole condition of having no political or military intercourse with the countries still possessed by the French army. Nor was his proclamation a dead letter. In the night of the 25th the inhabitants of a village, near the road leading from Sauveterre to Orthes, shot one English soldier dead and wounded a second who had come with others to plunder. Wellington caused the wounded man to be hung as an example, and also forced an English colonel to quit the army for suffering his soldiers to destroy the municipal archives of a small town.

Soult had no thought of retreating. His army was concentrated, and every bridge except that at Orthes, the ancient masonry of which resisted his mines, was destroyed. One regiment of cavalry was on his right, watching the fords as far as Peyrehorade; three others, with two battalions of infantry, under Pierre Soult, watched those between Orthes and Pau. Two regiments of cavalry remained with the army, and the design was to fall upon the first column which should cross the Gave. But the officer at Puyoo, who had suffered Vivian’s hussars to pass on the 26th without opposition, made no report of the event, which enabled Beresford to complete his movement unmolested, instead of being assailed by two-thirds of the French army. It was not until three o’clock in the evening that Soult knew of his being over the Gave, although he was then close on the flank of the French army, his scouters being on the Dax road in its rear: and at the same time the sixth and light divisions were seen descending from the heights beyond the river pointing towards Berenx.

In this crisis the French marshal hesitated whether to fall upon Beresford and Picton while the latter was still passing the river, or take a defensive position. Finally, judging he had not time to form an attack, he decided upon the latter, and under cover of a skirmish, hastily threw his army on a new line across the road from Peyrehorade. His right extended to the heights of San BoËs, along which ran the road from Orthes to Dax; and the line was prolonged on the left to Castetarbe, a village close to the Gave. Having thus opposed a temporary front to Beresford, he made dispositions to receive battle next morning, bringing Villatte’s infantry and Pierre Soult’s cavalry from the other side of Orthes through that town: it was this movement that led Wellington’s emissaries to say he was retiring.

Soult’s position was on a ridge of hills, partly wooded, partly naked.

In the centre was an open rounded hill, from whence long narrow tongues shot out towards the high-road of Peyrehorade on the left; on the right by St. BoËs, towards the church of BaÏghts; the whole presented a concave front covered with a marshy ravine, which was crossed by two shorter necks coming from the round hill in the centre.

The road from Orthes to Dax passed behind the line to the village of St. BoËs; and behind the centre a succession of undulating bare heathy hills trended for several miles to the rear.

Behind the right the country was low and deep; but Orthes, receding from the river up the slope of a steep hill, was behind the left wing.

Reille, having Taupin’s, Roguet’s, and Paris’s divisions under him, commanded on the right, holding the ground from St. BoËs to the centre.

D’Erlon, commanding Foy’s and D’Armagnac’s divisions, was on Reille’s left, extending along a ridge towards the road of Peyrehorade—the second being in reserve. Villatte’s division and the cavalry were posted above the village of Rontun, on open heathy hills, from whence they overlooked the low country beyond St. BoËs, and furnished a reserve to both D’Erlon and Reille.

Harispe, whose troops as well as Villatte’s were under Clausel’s orders, occupied Orthes and the bridge, having a regiment near the ford of Souars above the town. Thus the French army extended from St. BoËs to Orthes, but the great mass was disposed towards the centre. Twelve guns were attached to Harispe, twelve were upon the round hill in the centre, sweeping the ground beyond St. BoËs, sixteen were in reserve on the Dax road.

At daybreak on the 27th, the sixth and light divisions, having passed the Gave near Berenx, by a pontoon bridge thrown in the night, wound up a narrow way between high rocks to the great road of Peyrehorade, and the third division, with Lord Edward Somerset’s cavalry, were already established there, having skirmishers pushed forwards to the edge of the wooded height occupied by D’Erlon’s left. Beresford, having the fourth and seventh divisions and Vivian’s cavalry, then gained the ridge of St. BoËs and approached the Dax road beyond. Hill, with his own British and Le Cor’s Portuguese division, menaced the bridge of Orthes, and the ford of Souars from the left bank. Between Beresford and Picton, a mile and a half, there were no troops; but half-way, in front of the French centre, was a Roman camp crowning an isolated peering hill nearly as lofty as the centre of Soult’s position.

On this camp, now covered with vineyards, but then open and grassy, with a few trees, Wellington stopped for an hour to examine the enemy’s order of battle; his two divisions were then coming up from the river, yet so hemmed in by rocks that only a few men could march abreast, and their point of union with the third division was little more than cannon-shot from the French left. It was a critical moment, and Picton did not conceal his disquietude; but Wellington, imperturbable, continued his observations without seeming to notice his dangerous position. When the troops reached the main road he reinforced Picton with the sixth, and drew the light division by cross roads behind the Roman camp, thus connecting his wings and forming a central reserve; because from that point byeways led, on the left to the church of BaÏghts and the Dax road; on the right to the Peyrehorade road; and two others led by the low necks across the marsh to the French position.

This marsh, the open hill, where Soult’s guns and reserves were gathered, and the narrow tongues on either side, combined to forbid a front attack, and the flanks were scarcely more promising. The ridge occupied by the French left sunk indeed to a gentle undulation in crossing the Peyrehorade road; yet to push there between D’Erlon and Orthes would have been useless, because that town was strongly occupied by Harispe, and covered by an ancient wall. To turn the St. BoËs flank the troops must have descended into the low marshy country beyond the Dax road, where the heathy hills trending backwards from the centre of the French position would have enabled Soult to oppose a new front, at right angles to his actual position; the whole of the allied army must then have made a circuitous flank movement within gun-shot, through a difficult country, or Beresford’s left must have been dangerously extended and the whole line weakened. Nor could the movement be hidden, because the hills, although only moderately high, were abrupt on that side, affording a full view of the low country, and Soult’s cavalry detachments were in observation on every brow.

It only remained to assail the French flanks along the narrow ridges, making the principal effort at St. BoËs, and overlapping the French right to seize the road to St. Sever, while Hill passed the Gave at Souars and cut off the road to Pau, thus enclosing the beaten army in Orthes. This was no slight affair. On Picton’s side it was easy to obtain a footing on the flank ridge near the high road; but beyond that the ground rose rapidly, and the French were gathered thickly with a narrow front and plenty of guns. On Beresford’s side they could only be assailed along the summit of the St. BoËs ridge, advancing from the high church of BaÏghts and the Dax road; but the village of St. BoËs was strongly occupied, the ground immediately behind it strangled to a narrow pass; and sixteen guns on the Dax road, placed behind the centre of Soult’s line and well covered from counter-fire, were ready to crush any column emerging from the gorge of St. BoËs.

Battle of Orthes. (Feb. 1814.)

From daybreak there had been a slight skirmish, with occasional cannon-shots on the allies’ right, and the French cavalry at times pushed parties forward on each flank; but at nine o’clock Wellington commenced the real attack. The third and sixth divisions won without difficulty the lower part of the ridges occupied by Foy, and endeavoured to extend their left towards the French centre with a sharp fire of musketry; yet the main battle was on the other flank. There Cole, keeping Anson’s brigade of the fourth division in reserve, had assailed St. BoËs with Ross’s British brigade and Vasconcellos’ Portuguese, his object being to get on to the open ground beyond. Fierce and slaughtering was the struggle; five times breaking through the scattered houses did Ross carry his battle into the wider space beyond; but ever as his troops emerged the French guns from the centre hill smote them in front, and the reserved battery on the Dax road swept through them with grape from flank to flank; while Taupin’s supporting masses, rushing forward with a wasting fire and lapping the flanks with skirmishers, which poured along the ravines on either hand, forced the shattered columns back into the village. It was in vain that with desperate valour the allies broke time after time through the narrow way and strived to spread a front beyond: Ross fell dangerously wounded, and Taupin’s troops, thickly clustered and well supported, defied every effort. Nor was Soult less happy on the other side. From the narrowness of the ground the third and sixth divisions could only engage a few men at once, no progress was made; one small detachment, which Picton extended to his left, attempting to gain the smaller tongue jutting out from the central hill, was very suddenly charged as it neared the summit, by Foy, and driven down again in confusion, losing several prisoners.

When the combat had continued with unabated fury on the side of St. BoËs for three hours, Wellington sent a caÇadore regiment of the light division from the Roman camp to protect the right flank of Ross’s brigade against the French skirmishers; this was of no avail, for the Portuguese already there under Vasconcellos being unable to sustain the violence of the enemy, had given way in disorder, and the French pouring on, the British troops retreated through St. BoËs with difficulty. This happened at the moment when the detachment on Picton’s left was repulsed, victory seemed to declare for the French, and Soult, conspicuous on his central hill, the knot of all his combinations, seeing his enemies thus broken and thrown backwards on each side, put all his reserves in movement to complete the success. It is said that in the exultation of the moment he smote his thigh, exclaiming, “At last I have him.” And it was no vain-glorious speech, the crisis seemed to justify the exultation. There was however a small black cloud rising just beneath, unheeded by the French commander amidst the thundering din and tumult that now shook the field of battle, but which soon burst with irresistible violence.

Wellington, seeing St. BoËs was inexpugnable, had suddenly changed his plan of battle. Supporting Ross with Anson’s brigade, which had not hitherto been engaged, he backed both with the seventh division and Vivian’s cavalry, thus establishing a very heavy body towards the Dax road. Then he ordered the third and sixth divisions to be thrown in mass upon the French left, and at the same time sent the 52nd Regiment down from the Roman camp, with instructions to cross the marsh in front, mount the French position, and assail the flank and rear of the troops engaged with the fourth division at St. BoËs. Colonel Colborne, so often distinguished, immediately led this regiment across the marsh under a skirmishing fire, the men sinking at every step above the knees, in some places to the middle; yet still pressing forwards with that stern resolution and order to be expected from the veterans of the light division, soldiers who had never yet met their match in the field, they soon obtained footing on firm land, and ascended the heights in line at the moment when Taupin, on the French right, was pushing vigorously through St. BoËs; and when Foy and D’Armagnac, hitherto more than masters of their positions, were being assailed on the left by the third and sixth divisions.

With a mighty shout and a rolling fire the 52nd soldiers dashed forwards between Foy and Taupin, beating down a French battalion in their course and throwing everything before them into disorder. General Bechaud was killed, Foy was dangerously wounded, and his troops, discouraged by his fall and by this sudden storm from a quarter where no enemy was expected, for the march of the 52nd had been hardly perceived save by the skirmishers, got into confusion, and the disorder spreading to Reille’s wing, he also was forced to fall back and take a new position. The narrow pass behind St. BoËs was thus opened, and Wellington, seizing the critical moment, thrust the fourth and seventh divisions, Vivian’s cavalry, and two batteries of artillery through, and spread a front beyond. Victory was thus secured. For the third and sixth divisions on the other flank had won D’Armagnac’s position and established a battery of guns on a knoll, from whence the bullets ploughed through the French masses from one flank to another; and though a squadron of French chasseurs, coming suddenly at a hard gallop down the main road of Orthes, charged these guns and rode over some of the sixth division which had advanced too far, their brave career was too madly pushed, they got entangled in a hollow way and nearly all destroyed. The third and seventh divisions then advanced and the wings of the army were united.

Soult now concentrated his forces on the heathy hills beyond the Dax road, and with Taupin’s, Roguet’s, Paris’s, and D’Armagnac’s divisions made strong battle to cover the rallying of Foy’s disordered men. But his foes were not all in front. Hill, having twelve thousand combatants, received orders, when Wellington changed his plan of attack, to force the passage of the Gave, partly to prevent Harispe from falling upon the flank of the sixth division, partly in hope of a successful issue: and so it happened. Unable to force the bridge, he forded the river above, at Souars, drove back the troops there, seized the heights, cut off the French from the road to Pau, and turned the town of Orthes. He thus menaced Soult’s only line of retreat by Salespice, on the road to St. Sever, at the moment the junction of the allies’ wings was effected on the French position. Clausel, so pressed, made Harispe abandon Orthes and close towards Villatte on the heights above Rontun, leaving however some conscript battalions on a rising point near the road of St. Sever called the Motte de Turenne, while in person he endeavoured to check Hill with two cavalry regiments and a brigade of infantry.

Soult, seeing that Hill’s passage at Souars rendered the whole position untenable, now gave orders for a general retreat. This was a perilous matter. The heathy hills upon which he was now fighting, furnished for a short distance a succession of parallel positions favourable for defence, but then resolved themselves into a low ridge running to the rear on a line parallel with the road to St. Sever; and on the opposite side of that road, at cannon-shot distance, was a corresponding ridge along which Hill, judging by the firing how matters went, was now rapidly advancing. Five miles off was the Luy de Bearn, and four miles further on the Luy de France, two rivers deep and with difficult banks. Beyond them the Lutz, the Gabas, and the Adour crossed the line; and though once beyond the wooden bridge of Sault de Navailles on the Luy de Bearn, these streams would necessarily cover the retreat, it seemed impossible to carry off by one road and one bridge a defeated army still closely engaged in front. Soult did so however. For Paris sustained the fight on his right until Foy and Taupin’s troops rallied, and when the impetuous assault of the 52nd, and a rush of the fourth and seventh divisions, drove Paris back, D’Armagnac interposed to cover him until the union of the allies’ wings was completed: then both retired, covered by Villatte. In this manner the French yielded step by step and without confusion, and the allies advanced with an incessant deafening musketry and cannonade, yet losing many men, especially on the right where the third division were very strongly opposed. As the danger of being cut off at Salespice by Hill became imminent, the retrograde movements were more hurried and confused, and Hill seeing this quickened his pace. At last both sides began to run violently, and so many men broke from the French ranks, making across the fields towards the fords, and there was such a rush by the rest to gain the bridge of Sault de Navailles, that the whole country was covered with scattered bands, amongst which General Cotton poured Lord Edward Somerset’s hussars, first breaking through a covering body opposed to him by Harispe. In this charge two or three hundred men were sabred, and two thousand threw down their arms in an inclosed field; yet from some mismanagement the greatest part, recovering their weapons, escaped, and the pursuit ceased at the Luy of Bearn.

Apparently the French army was now entirely dispersed, yet it was not so. Soult passed the Luy of Bearn and destroyed the bridge with the loss of only six guns and less than four thousand men killed, wounded, and prisoners. Many thousands of conscripts however threw away their arms, and one month afterwards the stragglers still amounted to three thousand. Nor would the passage of the Luy have been effected so happily, if Wellington had not been struck by a musket-ball just above the thigh, which caused him to ride with difficulty. The loss of the allies was two thousand three hundred, of which fifty, with three officers, were taken; among the wounded were Wellington, General Walker, General Ross, and the Duke of Richmond, then Lord March; this last had served on the head-quarter staff during the whole war without a hurt, but being made a captain in the 52nd, like a good soldier joined his regiment the night before the battle, and was shot through the chest a few hours afterwards; thus learning by experience the difference between the labours and dangers of staff and regimental officers, which are generally in the inverse ratio to their promotions.

General Berton, who had been between Pau and Orthes during the battle, was cut off by Hill’s movement; but skirting that general’s march he retreated by Mant and Samadet with his cavalry, picking up two battalions of conscripts on the road. Meanwhile Soult, having no position to rally upon, continued his retreat in the night to St. Sever, breaking down all the bridges behind him. Wellington pursued at daylight in three columns, one in the centre by the main road, the others on the right and left. At St. Sever he hoped to find the French still in confusion, but they had crossed the river, the bridge was broken, and the allied army halted. The result of the battle was however soon made known far and wide, and Daricau, who with a few hundred soldiers was endeavouring to form an insurgent levy at Dax, immediately destroyed part of the stores, removed the rest to Mont Marsan, and retreated through the Landes to Langon on the Garonne.

From St. Sever, which offered no position, Soult turned short to his own right, moving upon Barcelona up the Adour. He left D’Erlon however with two divisions of infantry, some cavalry and four guns, at Caceres on the right bank, sent Clausel into Aire on the opposite side of the river, abandoned his magazines at Mont Marsan, and opened the direct road to Bordeaux; but with his right he commanded another road by Roquefort to that city, while his left protected at Aire the magazines and artillery parc at that place, and covered the road to Pau. This movement made it difficult to judge what line he meant to adopt.

Wellington passed the Adour at St. Sever, and sent the light division and some cavalry to seize the magazines at Mont Marsan; at the same time he pushed a column towards Caceres, where a cannonade and charge of cavalry had place, and a few persons were hurt on both sides. Next day, when Hill had reached the Adour between St. Sever and Aire, D’Erlon was driven back skirmishing to Barcelona on the other bank. It was then evident that Soult had abandoned Bordeaux; yet the pursuit could not be pushed vigorously, because every bridge was broken; and a violent storm on the evening of the 1st, filling the smaller rivers and torrents, carried away the pontoon bridges and cut off all the supplies: the bulk of the army therefore halted on the right bank of the Adour until the bridges could be repaired.

Hill, who was on the left bank, had meanwhile marched to seize the magazines at Aire. Moving in two columns he reached that place on the 2nd at three o’clock, and having two divisions of infantry, a brigade of cavalry, and a battery of horse-artillery, expected no serious opposition. Clausel was however there in order of battle with Villatte’s and Harispe’s divisions, and some guns. Occupying a steep ridge, which was high and wooded on the right where it overlooked the river, but merging on the left into a wide table-land, over which the great road led to Pau, his position was strong, yet insecure. It could be readily outflanked on the left by the table-land, and was uneasy for retreat on the right, because the ridge was narrow and the ravine behind very rugged, with a mill-stream at the bottom; moreover a branch of the Adour flowing behind Aire cut it off from Barcelona, and behind the left wing was the greater Lees, a river with steep banks and only one bridge.

Combat of Aire. (Feb. 1814.)

Hill attacked without hesitation. General Stewart with two British brigades fell on the French right, a Portuguese brigade assailed their centre, and the other brigades followed in columns of march; but the action was sudden, the Portuguese were pushed forward in a slovenly manner by General Da Costa, a man of no ability, and the French under Harispe met them, on the flat summit, with so rough a charge that they gave way in flight while the rear of the allies’ column was still in march. The fight was thus like to be lost, when Stewart, having easily won the heights on the French right, where Villatte, fearing to be enclosed, made but a feeble resistance, immediately detached Barnes with the 50th and 92nd Regiments to the aid of the Portuguese, and the vehement assault of these troops turned the stream of battle; the French were broken in turn and thrown back on their reserves. Yet they rallied and renewed the action with great courage, fighting obstinately until Byng’s British brigade came up; then Harispe was driven towards the river Lees, and Villatte quite through the town of Aire into the space between the two branches of the Adour behind.

Reille, who was at Barcelona when the action began, now brought up a division to support Villatte, and the combat was continued until night at that point, while Harispe passed the Lees and broke the bridge. The French lost many men. Two generals, Dauture and Gasquet, were wounded, a colonel of engineers was killed, a hundred prisoners were taken, many of Harispe’s conscripts threw away their arms and fled to their homes, and the magazines fell into the conqueror’s hands. The British lost one hundred and fifty men, General Barnes was wounded, Colonel Hood killed. The Portuguese loss was never officially stated, it could not have been less than the British, and the vigour of the action showed that the enemy’s courage was not abated by the battle of Orthes. His retreat was now made up the Adour by both banks, but he was not followed, because new combinations were opening on both sides.

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