English Battles and Sieges in the Peninsula.: Extracted from his 'Peninsula War'.Napier, William Francis Patrick
History
English Battles and Sieges in the Peninsula.: Extracted from his 'Peninsula War'.
Napier, William Francis Patrick
Peninsular War, 1807-1814
Wellington repaired immediately to St. Sebastian and would have renewed
the attack, but there was no ammunition, and next day extraneous events
compelled him to turn the siege into a blockade. The battering train
was then sent to Passages, and at daybreak the garrison sallied and
swept off two hundred Portuguese with thirty British soldiers. This
terminated the first siege of San Sebastian, in which the allies lost
thirteen hundred men.
BOOK XI.
Pyrenees--Combat of Roncesvalles--Combat of Linzoain--Combat of
Maya--Combat of Zabaldica--First Battle of Sauroren--Combat of
Buenza--Second Battle of Sauroren--Combat of Doña Maria--Combats
of Echallar and Ivantelly.
The battle of Vittoria was fought the 21st of June, and on the 1st of
July Marshal Soult, under a decree issued at Dresden, succeeded Joseph
as lieutenant to the emperor.
The 12th, travelling with surprising expedition, that marshal assumed
command of the French troops, now reorganized in one body, called _the
army of Spain_, and he had secret orders to put Joseph forcibly aside
if necessary, but that monarch voluntarily retired.[32]
Reinforced from the interior, Soult’s army was composed of nine
divisions of infantry, a reserve and two regular divisions of cavalry,
besides light horsemen attached to the infantry. Including garrisons,
and thirteen German, Italian, and Spanish battalions not belonging
to the organization, he had one hundred and fourteen thousand men:
and as the armies of Catalonia and Aragon numbered at the same period
above sixty-six thousand, the whole force still employed against Spain
exceeded one hundred and eighty thousand men, with twenty thousand
horses.
Soult was one of the few men whose energy rendered them worthy
lieutenants of the emperor, and with singular zeal and ability he
now served. Nominally he had ninety-seven thousand men under arms,
with eighty-six pieces of artillery; but the foreign battalions, most
of which were to return to their own countries for the disciplining
of new levies, only counted as part of the garrisons of Pampeluna,
San Sebastian, Santoña and Bayonne: they amounted to seventeen
thousand, and the permanent _army of Spain_ furnished therefore, only
seventy-seven thousand five hundred men under arms, seven thousand
being cavalry. Its condition was not satisfactory. The military
administration was disorganized, the soldiers were discouraged by
disaster, discipline had been deteriorated, and the people were flying
from the frontier.
To secure his base and restore order ere he retook the offensive was
Soult’s desire; but Napoleon’s orders were imperative against delay,
and he was compelled to immediate action, though Wellington’s advance
from Portugal had been so rapid that the great resources of the French
frontier were not immediately available, and everything was reeling and
rocking in terror from the blow given to the army at Vittoria.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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