CAMPAIGN OF 1814

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Early in February 1814, Wellington, leaving a strong force to invest Bayonne, resumed the offensive, and having successfully passed a portion of his forces across the Adour and the Gaves, he fell upon Soult at Orthez and severely defeated him. Soult fell back slowly, but after a fight at Vic Bigorre it became clear to him that he must retreat on Toulouse.

Three miles from Tarbes he formed for battle once again, with Clausel in front of him, covering that town with Harispe's and Villatte's Divisions. Wellington, following up, launched the Light Division against the centre of the French position. The three Battalions of the Rifles who were in the van, made a violent attack on Harispe's Division and drove it from an exceptionally strong position without assistance.

Clausel made a skilful withdrawal upon Soult, and the latter retreated during the night.

Then ensued the operations on the Garronne which terminated in the battle of Toulouse, fought on 10th April. A few days later the news of the abdication of Napoleon arrived, and with it hostilities ceased, but not before the garrison of Bayonne had made a desperate sortie, in which many hundreds of lives were uselessly sacrificed.

There exists no more pathetic description of the treatment meted out by England to her soldiers, who had, by their gallantry and devotion, rescued Europe from the tyranny of Napoleon, than the words with which Napier brings to a close his stirring account of the long and bloody struggle in the Peninsula. "... The British infantry embarked at Bordeaux, some for America, some for England; the cavalry, marching through France, took shipping at Boulogne.

"Thus the war terminated, and with it, all remembrance of the veterans' services.

"Yet those veterans had won nineteen pitched battles and innumerable combats; had made or sustained ten sieges and taken four great fortresses; had twice expelled the French from Portugal, once from Spain; had penetrated France, and killed, wounded, or captured 200,000 enemies, leaving of their own number 40,000 dead, whose bones whiten the plains and mountains of the Peninsula."

It was not till 1848, thirty-four years after the termination of the war, that the services of the few veterans who then survived was acknowledged by the issue of a medal!


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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