seems some foundation for Clauzel’s complaint, namely, that he had for five hours fought on his main position, and during that time no help had come, although the camp of Serres was close at hand, the distance from St. Jean de Luz to that place only four miles, and the attack in the low ground evidently a feint. This then was Soult’s error. He suffered sir John Hope to hold in play twenty-five thousand men in the low ground, while fifteen thousand under Clauzel lost the battle on the hills. 2º. The French army was inferior in numbers and many of the works were unfinished; and yet two strong divisions, Daricau’s and Foy’s, were quite thrown out of the fight, for the slight offensive movement made by the latter produced no effect whatever. Vigorous counter-attacks are no doubt essential to a good defence, and it was in allusion to this that Napoleon, speaking of Joseph’s position behind the Ebro in the beginning of the war, said, “if a river were as broad and rapid as the Danube it would be nothing without secure points for passing to the offensive.” The same maxim applies to lines, and Soult grandly conceived and applied this principle when he proposed the descent upon Aragon to Suchet. But he conceived it meanly and poorly when he ordered Foy to attack by the Gorospil mountain. That general’s numbers were too few, and the direction of the march false; one regiment in the field of battle at the decisive moment would have been worth three on a distant and secondary point. Foy’s retreat was inevitable if D’Erlon failed, and wanting the other’s aid he did fail. What success could Foy obtain? He might have driven Mina’s battalions over the Puerto de Maya and quite through the Bastan; he might have defeated Morillo and perhaps have taken general Hill’s baggage; yet all this would have weighed little against the allies’ success at Amotz; and the deeper he penetrated the more difficult would have been his retreat. The incursion into the Bastan by Yspegui proposed by him on the 6th, although properly rejected by Soult would probably have produced greater effects than the one executed by Gorospil on the 10th. A surprise on the 6th, Hill’s troops being then in march by brigades through the Alduides, might have brought some advantages to the French, and perhaps delayed the general attack beyond the 10th, when the heavy rains which set in on the 11th would have rendered it difficult to attack at all: Soult would thus have had time to complete his works.