Chapter XXIV: Book XVI (2)

At half-past two o’clock Beresford renewed the action with the brigades of Pack and Douglas. Ensconced in the Lavaur road on Lambert’s right, they had been hitherto protected from the fire of the French redoubts; but now scrambling up the steep banks of the road, under a wasting fire of cannon and musketry, they carried all the French breastworks--the Colombette and Augustine redoubts being taken by the 42nd and 79th Regiments. It was a surprising action when the loose attack imposed by the ground is considered; and the French, although they yielded to the first thronging rush of the British, came back with a reflux, their cannonade was incessant, their reserves strong, and the struggle became terrible. Harispe, under whom the French seemed always to fight with extraordinary vigour, surrounded the redoubts with a surging multitude, broke into the Colombette, killed or wounded four-fifths of the 42nd, and retook the Augustine also; but then the 11th and 91st Regiments came up and the French again abandoned those works: yet so many of the allies had fallen that they appeared only as a thin line of skirmishers.

Some British cavalry, riding up from the low ground, now attempted to charge, but were stopped by a deep hollow road, into which several troopers fell and there perished. Meanwhile the combat about the redoubts continued, yet the French, though most numerous, never could retake the Platform; and when Harispe and General Baurot had fallen dangerously wounded, drew off by their right to Sacarin, and by their left towards the Matabiau.

During this contest the Spaniards had again attacked the Calvinet platform from Pugade hill, but were again put to flight; the French thus remained masters of their entrenchments in that quarter, and Beresford halted to reform his battle and receive his artillery, which came to him with great difficulty, and little ammunition from the heavy cannonade it had previously furnished. However, Soult, seeing the Spaniards, supported by the light division, had rallied a fourth time; that Picton again menaced the bridge of Jumeaux and the Minime convent; and that Beresford, master of three-fourths of Mont Rave, was now ready to advance along the summit, relinquished the Calvinet platform entirely, and withdrew about five o’clock behind the canal, still holding Sacarin and Cambon. Wellington was then master of the Mont Rave, and so ended the battle of Toulouse, in which the French had five generals and about three thousand men killed or wounded, and they lost a gun. The allies lost four generals and more than four thousand six hundred men and officers, two thousand being Spaniards. A lamentable spilling of blood, and useless, for before this period Napoleon had abdicated the throne of France, and a provisional government was constituted at Paris.

During the night Soult replaced the ammunition expended in the action, reorganized and augmented his field artillery from the arsenal of Toulouse, and made dispositions for fighting the next morning behind the canal. Looking however to a final retreat, he wrote to Suchet to inform him of the result of the contest, and proposed a combined plan of operations illustrative of the firmness and pertinacity of his temper. “March,” said he, “with the whole of your forces by Quillan upon Carcassonne. I will meet you there with my army, we can then retake the initiatory movement, transfer the seat of war to the Upper Garonne, and holding on by the mountains compel the enemy to recall his troops from Bordeaux, which will enable Decaen to recover that city and make a diversion in our favour.”

On the morning of the 11th he was again ready, but Wellington was not. The French position, within musket-shot of the city walls, was still inexpugnable on the northern and eastern fronts; the conquest of Mont Rave was only a preliminary step to the passage of the canal, and throwing of the army on the south side of the town; a great matter, requiring fresh dispositions, and provision of ammunition only to be obtained from the parc on the other side of the Garonne. Hence, to accelerate the preparations, to ascertain Hill’s state, and give him further instructions, Wellington repaired on the 11th by Seilh to St. Cyprien; but the day was spent before the arrangements for the passage of the canal could be completed, and the attack was therefore deferred until daylight.

Meanwhile the light cavalry were sent up the canal, to interrupt the communications with Suchet and menace Soult’s retreat on Carcassonne. Their appearance on the heights above Baziege, together with the preparations in front, taught Soult he would soon be shut up in Toulouse instead of fighting; wherefore, leaving eight pieces of heavy artillery, two generals, Harispe being one, and sixteen hunched men whose wounds were severe, to the humanity of the conquerors, he filed out of the city with surprising order and ability, made a forced march of twenty-two miles, cut the bridges over the canal and the Upper Ers, and the 12th established his army at Villefranche. Hill followed, and at Baziege the light cavalry beat the French with the loss of twenty-five men, cutting off a like number of _gens d’armes_ on the side of Revel.

Now Wellington entered Toulouse in triumph, the white flag was displayed, and, as at Bordeaux, a great crowd of persons adopted the Bourbon colours; but the mayor, faithful to his sovereign, retired with the French army; and the British general, true to his honest line of policy, again warned the Bourbonists that their revolutionary movement must be at their own risk. In the afternoon however two officers, the English colonel, Cooke, and the French colonel, St. Simon, arrived from Paris, charged to make known to the armies the abdication of Napoleon. They had been detained near Blois by the officiousness of the police attending the court of the Empress Louisa, and the blood of eight thousand brave men had overflowed the Mont Rave in consequence: nor did their arrival immediately put a stop to the war. When St. Simon, in pursuance of his mission, reached Soult’s quarters on the 13th, that marshal, not without just cause, demurred to his authority, and proposed to suspend hostilities until authentic information could be obtained from the ministers of the emperor; then sending all his incumbrances by the canal to Carcassonne, he took a position of observation at Castelnaudary and awaited the progress of events. Wellington refused to accede to his proposal, and as General Loverdo, commanding at Montauban, had acknowledged the authority of the provincial government, he thought Soult designed to make a civil war, and therefore marched against him. The 17th the outposts were on the point of engaging, when the Duke of Dalmatia, having then received official information from the chief of the emperor’s staff, notified his adhesion to the new state of affairs in France; with this honourable distinction, that he had faithfully sustained the cause of his great monarch until the very last moment.[40]

Lord Wellington immediately transmitted the intelligence to the troops at Bayonne. Too late. Misfortune and suffering had there fallen upon one of the brightest soldiers of the British army.

SALLY FROM BAYONNE. (April, 1814.)

During the progress of the main army in the interior, General Hope had conducted the investment of Bayonne with all the unremitting vigilance that difficult operation required. He had gathered gabions and fascines and platforms, and was ready to attack the citadel, when rumours of the events at Paris reached him, yet indirectly and without any official character to warrant a formal communication to the garrison: he made them known indeed at the outposts, but to such irregular communications, which might be intended to deceive, the governor naturally paid little attention. At this time the fortified posts at St. Etienne were held by a brigade of the fifth division; from thence to the extreme right the Guards had charge of the line, one company being in St. Etienne itself; Hinuber’s German brigade was encamped as a support to the left; the remainder of the first division was in the rear.

In this state, about one o’clock in the morning of the 14th, a deserter gave General Hay, who commanded the outposts that night, an exact account of a projected sally; the general could not speak French, and sent him to Hinuber, who interpreted the man’s story to Hay, put his own troops under arms, and transmitted the intelligence to Hope. It would appear that Hay, perhaps disbelieving the man’s story, took no additional precautions, and it is probable neither the German brigade nor the reserves of the Guards would have been under arms but for Hinuber. However, at three o’clock, the French, commencing with a false attack on the left of the Adour as a blind, poured suddenly out of the citadel to the number of three thousand combatants; they surprised the picquets, and with loud shouts, breaking through the chain of posts at various points, carried with one rush the church and the village of St. Etienne, with exception of a fortified house defended by Captain Forster of the 38th. Masters of every other part, and overbearing all before them, they drove picquets and supports in heaps along the Peyrehorade road, killed General Hay, took Colonel Townsend of the Guards prisoner, divided the wings of the investing troops, and, passing in rear of the right, threw the whole line into confusion. Then it was that Hinuber, having his Germans in hand, moved up to Etienne, rallied some of the fifth division, and being joined by a battalion of Bradford’s Portuguese, bravely gave the counter-stroke to the enemy and regained the village and church.

On the right the combat was still more disastrous. Neither picquets nor reserves could sustain the fury of the assault, and the battle was most confused and terrible; for on both sides the troops, broken into small bodies by the inclosures, and unable to recover their order, came dashing together in the darkness, fighting often with the bayonet;--and sometimes friends encountered, sometimes foes--all was tumult and horror. The guns of the citadel, vaguely guided by the flashes of the musketry, sent their shot and shells booming at random through the lines of fight, while some gun-boats, dropping down the river, opened their fire upon the flank of the supporting columns, which being put in motion by Hope on the first alarm were now coming up. One hundred pieces of artillery were thus in full play at once, the shells set fire to the fascine depôts, and to several houses, the flames from which cast a horrid glare over the striving masses.

Amidst this confusion General Hope suddenly disappeared, none knew how or wherefore at the time. Afterwards it became known, that having brought up the reserves, he had pushed for St. Etienne by a hollow road behind the line of picquets; but the French were on both banks; he endeavoured to return, was wounded, and his horse, a large one, as was necessary to sustain the gigantic warrior, having received eight bullets fell on his leg. His staff had escaped from the defile, yet two of them, Captain Herries and Mr. Moore, nephew to Sir John Moore, returning, endeavoured to draw him from beneath the horse, but were both dangerously wounded and carried off with Hope, who was again badly hurt in the foot by an English bullet.

Light now beginning to break enabled the allies to act with more unity. The Germans were in possession of St. Etienne, the reserve brigades of the foot Guards, rallied in mass by General Howard, suddenly raised their shout, and running in upon the French drove them back to their works with such slaughter, that their own writers admit a loss of one general and more than nine hundred men. On the British side General Hay was killed, Stopford wounded, and the whole loss was eight hundred and thirty men and officers, of which more than two hundred, with the commander-in-chief, were taken. Captain Forster’s firm defence of the fortified house first, and next the ready gallantry with which Hinuber’s Germans retook St. Etienne, had staved off a very terrible disaster.

A few days after this piteous event the convention made with Soult became known and hostilities ceased.

All the French troops in the south were then reorganized in one body under Suchet, but so little inclined to acquiesce in the revolution, that Prince Polignac, acting for the duke of Angoulême, applied to the British commissary-general Kennedy, for a sum of money to quiet them.

The Portuguese soldiers returned to Portugal; the Spaniards to Spain; their generals, it is said, being inclined to declare for the Cortes against the king, but they were diverted from it by the influence of Lord Wellington.

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 two hundred thousand enemies--leaving of their own number forty thousand dead, whose bones whiten the plains and mountains of the Peninsula.

THE END.

LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET, AND CHARING CROSS.

FOOTNOTES

[1] The Chaplain-General Gleig has in one of his publications contradicted this fact, on the authority of a German Chelsea-pensioner, who affirms, according to Mr. Gleig, that it was he who awakened Sir Arthur, and that he was cool and collected. My authority is the Duke of Wellington, who assured me that it was not only a German officer, but a titled one; a Baron; and that he was anything but cool or collected. The name had escaped his memory at the time, but he made frequent attempts to recover it, and said several times that he was a Baron. The two authorities may be weighed by those who are fastidious.

[2] General Brennier published a denial of this fact; but it may well be imagined that a short sentence uttered at such a moment by a prisoner wounded and highly excited, would escape his recollection. My authority is the Duke of Wellington, who not only caught the words at the time, and questioned the other prisoners as to their value, but drew from them a conclusion on which to rest a great counter movement.

[3] Now Marquis of Londonderry.

[4] Lieut.-General Sir Loftus Otway.

[5] Marquis of Anglesey.

[6] The present Lord Hardinge.

[7] A writer, or rather writers in the _Quarterly Review_, for there were two of them, indulging in the graceless effrontery of assertion so common with anonymous critics, treated these reasons for halting with ridicule, calling them imaginary, and affirming that they were unknown to the General-in-Chief! My authority however was that very General-in-Chief. The Duke of Wellington not only gave me verbally a description of his motives and proceedings on this occasion, but supplied me with written notes, from which and from a memoir received from Marshal Soult, and information derived from Colonel Waters and other officers engaged, my narrative was composed.

[8] My authority for this colloquy is a written communication from Marshal Jourdan.

[9] In a recent work upon the war in Algeria, written by General Yusuf, a French Zoave, evidently a man of great military talent, a march of sixty miles in twenty-six hours by a French detachment is recorded, and by an English writer has been compared with this of the light division. But the French soldier does not carry more than two-thirds of the weight an English soldier carries, and Yusuf does not say how many stragglers there were; moreover the light division had previously made a march of twenty miles with only a few hours to rest, or rather to wash and cook: their real march was therefore eighty-two miles.

[10] Now Sir Charles Rowan, Metropolitan Police.

[11] This altercation, though public and known to the whole division, has been ridiculously denied by the writer of Picton’s life.

[12] For this anecdote my authority was Colonel D’Esmenard, Ney’s first aide-de-camp, the officer employed. He said Massena was in bed, and spoke to him through the door.

[13] This forcible expression, now become common, is generally supposed to be an original saying of the late Lord Melbourne; but it is not so. It was first employed by the Spanish government in a manifesto, to characterise the battle of Baylen, and Lord Melbourne adopted it without acknowledging its source.

[14] Lord Lynedoch.

[15] Now Lieut.-Gen. Sir A. M‘Lean.

[16] General Sir A. Barnard.

[17] Lieut.-General Brotherton.

[18] Lord Londonderry.

[19] Now Lord Seaton.

[20] All Phillipon’s views and preparations are taken from his original journal of siege in manuscript.

[21] Now Lieut.-General Sir C. Smith.

[22] Now Lord Gough.

[23] General Sir G. Napier.

[24] Now Major-General Shaw Kennedy. Captain Nicholas when dying, told the story of this effort, adding that he saw Shaw, while thus standing alone, deliberately pull out his watch and repeating the hour aloud declare that the breach could not be carried that night.

[25] Now Serjeant-major at the Tower.

[26] For this council of war, and the opinions, I have the personal authority of Marshal Jourdan.

[27] For the Duke’s secret views here I have his own authority.

[28] The details of this curious event were told to me by the Duke of Wellington.

[29] The conception and execution of this movement has been repeatedly given to Picton. Erroneously so. My authority is the Duke of Wellington.

[30] Now Sir W. Reid, Governor of Malta.

[31] Now Major-General Sir Colin Campbell in the Crimea.

[32] For this fact Marshal Soult is my authority.

[33] In my original work, misled by false information, I said the soldiers of the 92nd were all Irish: but their Colonel, McDonald, afterwards gave me irrefragable proof, by a list of names, that they were Scotchmen.

[34] All these conjectures and proceedings are given on the Duke’s personal authority.

[35] For this fact I had the authority of a French colonel of artillery.

[36] The facts as here stated were supplied to me by the Duke of Wellington.

[37] Memoirs of Captain, now Lieut.-Colonel Cooke, Gentleman-at-Arms.

[38] Colonel Havelock, since killed in the Punjaub at the head of the 14th Dragoons.

[39] This plan and the reasons for it are taken from MS. notes written by the Duke of Wellington in reply to my inquiries.

[40] Soult has been foully and falsely accused of fighting at Toulouse, knowing that the war was over, and the slander was repeated by Lord Aberdeen in the House of Lords, when the Marshal was minister in France. The Duke of Wellington, with a generous warmth, instantly rose and truly declared that Soult did not know, and it was impossible he could know, of the Emperor’s abdication when he fought the battle.

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

Text uses both Mackenzie and M^cKenzie.

The running headers of the original book included dates. In this eBook, those dates appear in parentheses, next to the Section headings.