Wellington having his battering train and stores about San Sebastian, which was also nearer and more accessible to the enemy than Pampeluna, made his army lean towards that side. His left wing, including the army of siege, was twenty-one thousand strong with singularly strong positions of defence, and the centre, about twenty-four thousand strong, could in two marches unite with the left wing to cover the siege or fall upon the flanks of an enemy advancing by the high road of Irun; but three days or more were required by those troops to concentrate for the security of the blockade on the right. Soult however judged that no decisive result would attend a direct movement upon San Sebastian; because Guipuscoa was exhausted of provisions, and the centre of the allies could fall on his flank before he reached Ernani, which, his attack in front failing, would place him in a dangerous position. Moreover by means of his sea communication he knew that San Sebastian was not in extremity; but he had no communication with Pampeluna and feared its fall. Wherefore he resolved to operate by his left. Profiting by the roads leading to St. Jean Pied de Port, and covering his movement by the Nivelle and Nive rivers and by the positions of his centre, he hoped to gather on Wellington’s right quicker than that general could gather to oppose him, and thus compensating by numbers the disadvantage of assailing mountain positions force a way to Pampeluna. That fortress once succoured, he designed to seize the road of Irurzun, and keeping in mass either fall upon the separated divisions of the centre in detail as they descended from the hills, or operate on the rear of the force besieging San Sebastian, while a corps of observation, which he proposed to leave on the Lower Bidassoa, menaced it in front and followed it in retreat. The siege of San Sebastian, the blockade of Pampeluna and probably that of Santona, would be thus raised, and the French army united in an abundant country, and its communication with Suchet secured, would be free either to co-operate with that marshal or to press its own attack. In this view, and to mislead lord Wellington by vexing his right simultaneously with the construction of the bridges against his left, Soult wrote to general Paris, desiring him to march when time suited from Jaca by the higher valleys towards Aviz or Sanguessa, to drive the partizans from that side and join the left of the army when it should have reached Pampeluna. Meanwhile Clauzel was directed to repair the roads in his own front, to push the heads of his columns towards the passes of Roncesvalles, and by sending a strong detachment into the Val de Baygorry, towards the lateral pass of Yspegui, to menace Hill’s flank which was at that pass, and the front of Campbell’s brigade in the Alduides.