This was the day for glory. The Duke attacked Soult on the right and left at once, which proving successful, he dashed at the centre. This was now a change from defence to attack, and the enemy in a few hours were driven from all their strong points, and retreated. Yet they fought desperately: at one village alone--the first on the main road from Pamplona to the pass of _Maia_--the British were driven back four times; but took and held it on the fifth: the road here was covered with dead of both sides, and well proved the valour with which both fought, in that masterly victory which opened the barrier of France to the allies--led the Portuguese and Spaniards to the glory of shouting “Retribution” in their persecutor’s country--and once more passed the ranks of heroes over the consecrated ground of Roncesvalles. The whole of the road over which we pursued the retreating and broken army, was covered with the wreck of its baggage and artillery--hundreds of dead mules were lying about, having been killed with fatigue, or hurled off the precipices along which the road sometimes passed--waggons, guns, carriages, tumbrils, casks, medicine chests, and dead men, were the objects that every where, like Rosamond’s clue, marked the track of the devoted victims:--a sickening sight, which, while engaged in the heat of pursuit, was viewed without emotion; but when calm reflection took her seat in the soldier’s mind, was not to be contemplated by him without unenviable feelings. On this march nothing remarkable occurred in the part of the army where I was stationed. The siege of San Sebastian was begun by Sir Thomas Graham, while the front of our main force occupied the border line of France on the Bidassoa. The two contending armies remained in sight of each other--Soult fortifying the frontier of his threatened country, and Wellington refreshing his victorious troops until after the fall of San Sebastian. All this time the Duke’s head-quarters were at Lesacco, in the mountains, a town about four leagues south of Passages; and these four leagues, I may say, with a little allowance--was up _one_ side of a mountain and down the other,--a wretched town; and perhaps never before had it to boast of the domicile of so many heroes--such glittering nobility. Here, for the greatest part of a rainy and raw winter, the indefatigable Commander of the Forces fixed his quarters; and here I have seen him working with an energy which often threatened his life. He rode so much one week, that he was confined for several succeeding days to his bed; and I have seen his fifteen valuable English chargers led out by the groom to exercise, with scarcely any flesh on their bones--so active and vigilant was their noble rider, and so much were his horses used. Every day during the siege of San Sebastian, I saw the Duke, unattended by his staff, riding by my window, in a narrow street of Renteria, on his way to the besieged