The Age of Elegance (10 page)

twenty miles to the south-west, ordered a general retreat. The line of the Ebro had gone the same way as those of the Douro, Carrion and Pisuerga.

On the 20th the French army, 58,000 strong, with 20,000 useless followers, came pouring into the valley of Vittoria. Here the river Zadora, winding between mountains, made a miniature plain twelve miles by seven, tapering towards its eastern end into a bottleneck where the little twin-spired town of Vittoria nestled under the spurs of the Pyrenees and the great high-road to France ran into the hills. Here a number of lesser roads me
t, one going eastwards to Salva
tierra and Pamplona—the only way of escape left to the French should the Bayonne
chaussee
be cut.

The British did not stay for the attack. They meant to destroy Joseph before he could get his baggage-train through the guerrilla-haunted mountains and before Clausel, still labouring in
the Navar
rese defiles, could join him. They waited a day in the Bayas valley to collect their forces; then at dawn on June 21st advanced for battle. They came out of the west in three columns, 75,000 strong. The southernmost under Rowland Hill crossed the Zadora and Madrid highway eight miles below Vittoria and in the clear morning sunlight climbed the rocky Puebla ridge that enfiladed Joseph's lines to the south. Ever since his first fight against them at Rolica, Wellington had realised the sensitiveness of Napoleon's intelligent and imaginative infantry to any threat to their flanks. And, as he intended, Hill's eastward feint along the ridge drew off their reserves in that direction.

It was not till the early afternoon that the main British attack developed on the other side of the valley. It was directed partly against the French centre over the bridges of the winding Zadora, and partly four miles further east where Graham, with the ist and 4th Divisions and Longa's Spaniards, was driving along the Bilbao-Vittoria road towards the vital highway to France. Unfortunately both Graham and the four divisions attacking in the centre were delayed by the rough ground they had to cover between the Bayas and their battle stations. The difficulty of Wellington's convergent attack—forced on him by the character of the
terrain
—was its timing; inter-communication between his widely separated columns was almost impossible, and they had to be guided mainly by the sound of one another's fire.

But for the resource of the Light Division, one of whose brigades crossed the Zadora unseen and took up a position in the very heart of Joseph's lines, and the fiery spirit of General Picton, the attack in the centre might have come too late. Lord Dalhousie, who had recently arrived from England to command the 7th Division and who was to have led the attack, failed to bring up his men in time, and, though aide-de-camp after aide-de-camp arrived with orders, the assault on the bridges hung fire. Picton, who alone had reached

his station punctually, waited till he could stand it no more. Conspicuous in a blue frock-coat and a broad-brimmed top-hat,
¹
he rode up to one of Wellington's messengers to ascertain his orders. On hearing that they were for the 7th Division to attack the Mendoza bridge, he shouted back, "Then you may tell Lord Wellington that the 3 rd Division under my command shall in less than ten minutes attack that bridge and carry it!" Upon which he set his men in motion towards the valley, calling out with customary oaths as he rode beside them, "Come on, ye rascals! Come on, you fighting villains!"

Supported by the 4th and the remainder of the Light Division,

¹
To protect an inflamed eye. He swore, wrote his admirer Kincaid, as roundly as if he had been wearing two cocked ones. Kincaid, 222. See Robinson,
Picton,
ii,
195-6.

the Fighting Third crossed the river and broke the enemy's centre. Though the ground was suitable for defence—vineyards, woods and standing corn, interspersed with ditches and villages—the French infantry did not fight well that day. They were depressed by their long retreat, had lost confidence in their leaders and knew that the British outnumbered them. And as the threat to their flanks grew, they began, commanders and privates alike, to look over their shoulders.

Thereafter the end was certain. About five o'clock Longa's guerrillas on Graham's left flank cut the Vittoria-Bayonne
chaussee
at Durana, two miles beyond the town. The direct line of retreat to France was gone. Only the valour of General Reille's men in delaying Graham's advance prevented a complete encirclement. Holding the last high ground before Vittoria, their muskets flashing like lightning and the guns shaking the earth as the gunners bounded to and fro through the smoke, the remnants of the old Army of Portugal kept back the left prong of Wellington's pincers until the rest of the French could escape to the east.

But they did not go as an army or stand upon the order of their going. Hitherto they had retired with their guns and train; now they went without. A mile beyond Vittoria, on the narrow road to Pamplona, the treasure-wagons and carriages of King Joseph's Court were blocked in indescribable confusion. As the British shot crashed overhead and pursuing cavalry appeared on the skyline, panic broke out. Soldiers and civilians cut the draft-horses' traces and rode off, leaving their vehicles to the victors: ladies were thrown off their mounts or flung from their carriages; sacks of dollars and jewels were torn open by the retreating infantry and spilt about the road. Among those carried away in the tumult were King Joseph and Marshal Jourdan; the latter's baton was picked up by a British hussar, and sent to the Prince Regent.

The battle of Vittoria was over. As the victorious columns moved forward across the plain and the artillery galloped to the front, the sun began to sink behind the western hills, gilding the helmets of thousands of horsemen. Before them the French empire in Spain was dissolving. Had the pursuing cavalry been led by Cotton, Uxbridge or Le Marchant, few of the enemy would have reached the safety of Pamplona and the mountains. But Le Marchant had fallen at Salamanca, Uxbridge was in disgrace expiating a scandalous elopement with Wellington's sister-in-law; and Cotton, who had been on sick leave in England, was detained by contrary winds in the Bay. There was no one at that moment with the initiative to weld the British cavalry into a cohesive and destroying whole. The rest of the army was tired out after five weeks' continuous marching and the long day's battle.
¹

As a result the French were able to escape along the single road to the east. They reached Pamplona two days later. "They robbed and plundered everywhere," wrote one of their pursuers, "women and young girls were found on their own hearthstones outraged and dead; houses fired and furniture used for hasty cooking. Such is war!"
²
They left to the victors all but one of their 152 guns, every vehicle they had, and more booty than had fallen to the lot of a modern European army in any single battle.

There was another reason why the pursuit flagged. To Wellington's rage the King's baggage train proved too much for his men's discipline. Around it the soldiers of three nations, with powder-blackened faces, fought one another for boxes of dollars, rummaged state papers, pictures, and furniture, dressed up in fine clothes, and feasted on the wines and foods of a luxurious court. "Come, boys," shouted an Irish grenadier, "help yourselves wid anything yez like best, free gratis and for nothing at all! The King left all behind him for our day's trouble. Who'll have a dhrink o' wine?" For miles the Pamplona road was strewn with the plunder of six years' predatory war: here the personal baggage of a king, there the decorations of a theatre, war stores and china, arms, drums, trumpets, silks, jewellery and plate; "wounded soldiers, deserted women and children of all ages imploring aid and assistance—here a lady upset in her carriage— in the next an actress or a
femme de chambre;
sheep, goats and droves of oxen roaming and bellowing about, with loose horses, cows and donkeys." That night the abandoned carriages were turned into the stands of an impromptu torchlit fair. According to Wellington's dispatch to the Secretary for War, nearly half a million pounds passed into the hands of his soldiers. When next day the pursuit was resumed, they were so gorged and laden they could scarcely move.

¹
The account of the battle is based on Oman, VI, 384-450; Fortescue, IX, 152-87; Napier, Book XXX, Ch. viii; Gurwood;
Supplementary Dispatches;
Bell, I, 83-91; Tomkinson, 243-54; Schaumann, 374-81; Kincaid, 217-26:
Johnny Newcome,
223-32; Simmons, 289; Gomm, 304-6; Costello, 157-65; Smith, I, 95-102; Blakiston,
Twelve Years of Military Adventure,
II, 206-10; Jourdan,
Memoires;
Maxwell, II, 40-3; Leith Hay, II, 10-208; Robinson,
Picton,
II, 195-200.

²
Bell,
1,
96-8. See also Simmons, 291; Smith,
1,
102^3. "The seat of war," wrote the latter, "is hell upon earth."

Yet, though as a result only 2000 prisoners were taken, and more than 50,000 French escaped by Pamplona and the Pyrenean passes to France, Vittoria was one of the decisive battles of the war. It liberated Spain, exposed France to invasion and heartened Europe to make the final effort to break its chains. When on the night of June 30th the news reached the Allied camp on the Silesian border, Count Stadion broke into Prince Metternich's bedroom with a shout of "Le
roi Joseph est—en Espagne!"
At that moment Austria's attitude and the prolongation of the armistice were in the balance. Next day Napoleon, who had been on the point of taking the field again against the still inadequately equipped Russians and Prussians, agreed to a conference and a six weeks' extension of the truce. It was the period the Austrians needed to complete the mobilisation of their army. For a moment Britain became the idol of resurgent German youth; in Vienna Beethoven wrote an overture on the theme of "Rule Britannia," and even the Russians sang, for the only time in their history, a
Te Deum
in gratitude for a foreign victory.

CHAPTER
FOUR

Across the Pyrenees

"Beating from the wasted vines Back to France her banded swarms, Back to France with countless blows, Till o'er the hills her eagles flew Beyond the Pyrenean pines, Follow'd up in valley and glen With blare of bugle, clamour of men, Roll of cannon and clash of arms, And England pouring on her fo
es. Such a war had such a close
'

Tennyson

B

efore
Napoleon had signed the extension of his truce with the eastern Powers Wellington's men were on the Pyrenees. Graham with the left wing reached the sea and Bidassoa on June 25th. The centre and right, stretching south-eastwards along the frontier, rested on the mountain passes of Maya and Roncesvalles. "We fired our last shots into the
parlez-vous"
wrote Bell, "as we slashed them over the hills into their own country, while they carried along with them the curses of a whole kingdom." It was five years since Canning had predicted that one day Europe would see a British army looking down on France from the Pyrenees.

Napoleon was not the man to brook invasion of his territories. He reacted to the news of Vittoria with passionate rage. Forbidding all reference to it in his closed Press, he put Joseph and Jourdan under house arrest and replaced them by the man whose disobedience had been the cause of half their troubles. On July ist Soult left Dresden for Bayonne with orders "to re-establish the imperial business in Spain." He reached the headquarters of the demoralised army on the 12th and at once set to work to restore its morale. A superb organiser and, when driven to it, like all the great Revolutionary leaders, a dynamo of energy, the big, bullying Marshal completed his task in less than a fortnight. After five years of sulkily serving under others, he had at last achieved his ambitio
n. In a flamboyant proclamation
he told his troops that they had been expelled from Spain through the incompetence of their leaders and that under his command they would annihilate the enemy's "motley levies."

At that moment Wellington was occupied with the reduction— by storm or starvation—of the two remaining Spanish fortresses in French hands behind his lines. Profoundly distrustful of the armistice in Germany and of his country's new allies, he had no intention of advancing into France without securing his rear. His front, extending for fifty miles into the mountains, necessitated the division of his force into a number of isolated posts along the frontier passes. His left under Graham, who was in charge of the operations against St. Sebastian, was on the coastal plain; his centre under Hill in the mountain
massif
'called the Bastan; his right under Picton and Lowry Cole on the high Roncesvalles road from Pamplona to St. Jean Pied de Port in France. His strategy, for the present a defensive one, was to hold the passes with small delaying forces against any French thrust until his main strength could be concentrated to give battle behind them. It meant reposing more trust in his scattered subordinates than he cared for, but Pyrenean geography left him no alternative. His own headquarters was at the hill village of Lesaca, half-way between St. Sebastian and the Bastan. It was far nearer his ocean left than his mountain right, but it was at the former, where the main road from France crossed the Bidassoa, that he expected trouble. He had ordered St. Sebastian to be stormed at once and he believed that Soult would try to relieve it. Reports of French movements towards the passes in the south he regarded as feints to distract his attention from the coastal sector.

In this he was wrong. Soult's plan, a most daring one, was to throw 35,000 bayonets—two-thirds of his force—against the Allied right at Roncesvalles, while D'Erlon with the remainder stormed the Maya pass to the north and, dominating all roads through the Bastan, interposed himself between Wellington and his threatened right in front of Pamplona where 5000 veteran troops and the main French artillery park were besieged by the Spaniards. Once the fortress was relieved, the whole army was to drive towards Tolosa or Vittoria in Wellington's rear, so turning on him the tables of his own campaign and forcing him to retreat. It was a gamble, for, being without transport since its defeat, the French army was bound to starve unless it could reach Pamplona and capture its besiegers' stores within four days. But it was helped by the existence of a lateral road system on the French side of the Pyrenees that was lacking on the other, and by the fact that Wellington, being about to storm St. Sebastian, was expecting Soult to strike in the north to relieve it.

At dawn on July 25th Graham's storming parties moved against St. Sebastian. By midday Wellington, listening in Lesaca churchyard to the guns ten miles away, knew that the attack had failed. But hardly had he left Lesaca for the coast to discuss the next move with Graham, when heavy gunfire was heard from the opposite direction. Here D'Erlon had launched his attack on the Bastan against Hill's outposts in the Maya pass. A further twenty miles to the south-east 6000 British, Portuguese and Spaniards under Major-General Byng had been defending the defiles of Altobiscar and Linduz since dawn against 35,000 assailants.

Despite the odds against them Byng's men had held their positions before Roncesvalles without difficulty, for Soult's columns, strung out along narrow mountain roads, had no room to deploy. But at five that evening a dense fog fell, and Sir Lowry Cole, the commander of the 4th Division, fearful for his flanks, decided against orders to fall back along the Pamplona road on Picton and the 3 rd Division behind him. Nearer Wellington, in the Bastan, Sir William Stewart's two brigades repulsed D'Erlon's three divisions, thanks to a desperate stand by the 92nd Highlanders. "They stood there," wrote an eye-witness, "like a stone wall, until half their blue bonnets lay beside those brave Highland soldiers.
...
I can see now the line of their dead and wounded stretched upon the heather."
¹
At
nightfall all the ground lost was regained by a sudden attack on the French flank by two battalions from Lord Dalhousie's 7th Division under a young brigadier named Barnes. Yet here, also, what the pluck of the rank and file had held, the fears of their commanders yielded. For, with the Maya pass sealed once more against the French, Sir Rowland Hill arrived with news that Cole was overwhelmed at Roncesvalles and that a retreat was necessary to straighten the line. So it came about that on the morning of the 26th, both Soult and D'Erlon found to their surprise the British gone and the passes open. Instead of having to admit failure, the Duke of Dalmatia was able to send a flamboyant dispatch to Dresden which caused Napoleon, going one better, to announce that Pamplona and

¹
Bell, I, 104.