6º. The intrepid constancy with which Byng and Ross defended their several positions on the 25th, the able and clean retreat made by general Cole as far as the heights of Linzoain, gave full effect to the errors of Reille and D’Erlon, and would probably have baffled Soult at an early period if general Picton had truly comprehended the importance of his position. Lord Wellington says that the concentration of the army would have been effected on the 27th if that officer and general Cole had not agreed in thinking it impossible to make a stand behind Linzoain; and surely the necessity of retreating on that day may be questioned. For if Cole with ten thousand men maintained the position in front of Altobiscar, Ibañeta, and Atalosti, Picton might have maintained the more contracted one behind Linzoain and Erro with twenty thousand. And that number he could have assembled, because Campbell’s Portuguese reached Eugui long before the evening of the 26th, and lord Wellington had directed O’Donnel to keep three thousand five hundred of the blockading troops in readiness to act in advance, of which Picton could not have been ignorant. It was impossible to turn him by the valley of Urroz that line being too rugged for the march of an army and not leading directly upon Pampeluna. The only roads into the Val de Zubiri were by Erro and Linzoain, lying close together and both leading upon the village of Zubiri over the ridges which Picton occupied, and the strength of which was evident from Soult’s declining an attack on the evening of the 26th when Cole only was before him. To abandon this ground so hastily when the concentration of the army depended upon keeping it, appears therefore an error, aggravated by the neglect of sending timely information to the commander-in-chief, for lord Wellington did not know of the retreat until the morning of the 27th and then only from general Long. It might be that Picton’s messenger failed, but many should have been sent when a retrograde movement involving the fate of Pampeluna was contemplated. [Sidenote: Note by General Cole, MSS.] [Sidenote: Ibid.]