Soult complained that he had repeatedly told his lieutenants an attack was to be expected, and recommended extreme vigilance; yet they were quite unprepared, although they heard the noise of the guns and pontoons about Irun on the night of the 5th and again on the night of the 6th. The passage of the river he said had commenced at seven o’clock, long after daylight, the allies’ masses were then clearly to be seen forming on the banks, and there was full time for Boyer’s division to arrive before the Croix des Bouquets was lost. The battle was fought in disorder with less than five thousand men, instead of with ten thousand in good order, and supported by a part of Villatte’s reserve. To this negligence the generals added also discouragement. They had so little confidence in the strength of their positions, that if the allies had pushed vigorously forward before the marshal’s arrival from Espelette, they would have entered St. Jean de Luz, turned the right of the second position and forced the French army back upon the Nive and the Adour. This reasoning of Soult was correct, but such a stroke did not belong to lord Wellington’s system. He could not go beyond the Adour, he doubted whether he could even maintain his army during the winter in the position he had already gained, and he was averse to the experiment, while Pampeluna held out and the war in Germany bore an undecided aspect. CHAPTER V. [Sidenote: 1813. October.] [Sidenote: Official Correspondence, MSS.] Soult was apprehensive for some days that lord Wellington would push his offensive operations further, but when he knew by Foy’s reports, and by the numbers of the allies assembled on his right, that there was no design of attacking his left, he resumed his labours to advance the works covering St. Jean de Luz. He also kept a vigilant watch from his centre, holding his divisions in readiness to concentrate towards Sarre, and when he saw the heavy masses in his front disperse by degrees into different camps, he directed Clauzel to recover the fort of San Barbe. This work was constructed on a comparatively low ridge barring issue from the gorge leading out of the vale of Vera to Sarre, and it defended the narrow ground between the Rhunes and the Nivelle river. Abandoned on the 8th without reason by the French, since it did not naturally belong to the position of the allies, it was now occupied by a Spanish picquet of forty men. Some battalions were also encamped in a small wood close behind; but many officers and men slept in the fort, and on the night of the 12th, about eleven o’clock, three battalions of Conroux’s division reached the platform on which the fort stood without being perceived. The work was then escaladed, the troops behind it went off in confusion at the first alarm, and two hundred soldiers with fifteen officers were made prisoners. The Spaniards ashamed of the surprize made a vigorous effort to recover the fort at daylight, they were