The Spanish Bride (45 page)

But this was an isolated incident, the behaviour of the French people as a whole being so enthusiastic that an indignant sous-prefet wrote to inform Marshal Soult that the whole population had ceased to have any national spirit.

Soult, leaving five thousand stragglers along the route of his march, reached Toulouse two days ahead of Lord Wellington: a remarkable feat, considering the deplorable condition of his troops, and the fifty extra miles he was forced to cover. The country people reported that the French soldiers had worn out their boots, but as Toulouse was the main depot of military stores for southern France, this, and every other deficiency of equipment, could very soon be made good.

Toulouse, a medieval fortress, lay, from Lord Wellington’s point of view, on the wrong side of the Garonne; and was protected, in addition to its bastioned walls, by a very wide ditch, like a moat. On the northern and eastern sides, the Royal Canal made any approach next door to impossible; on the west the Garonne presented an even more difficult problem; and the only feasible way into the city, to the south, was guarded by the well-fortified bridgehead of St Cyprien. Between the canal, and the Ers river, on the east, the commanding heights of Mont Rave dominated the city, and had already been extensively entrenched. The heads of Lord Wellington’s columns appeared before Toulouse on the 26th March, and for the next fortnight his lordship’s temper was worn thin by a series of unsuccessful attempts to get his army across the Garonne. The fact that a certain measure of this unsuccess was due to his own refusal, at St Jean de Luz, to listen to the advice of his senior Engineer, did nothing to improve his temper.

His first plan, rather a risky one, was to force a passage at Portet, south of the city. He succeeded, by some clever demonstrations, in convincing Soult that he meant to cross downstream, north of Toulouse, but when the Marshal had obligingly drawn off four of the seven cavalry regiments patrolling the Garonne to watch the banks to the north, leaving the southern reaches almost wholly unguarded, the plan failed owing to there not being sufficient pontoons to span the swollen river. After they had been laboriously laid down on the bank, and launched, it was found that the bridge fell short by as much as eighty yards: a contingency long foreseen by Elphinstone, the Engineer. In a black rage, his lordship, clinging to his plan of crossing south of the city, had the pontoons moved three miles upstream, just above the junction of the Ariege with the Garonne. The bridge was thrown over during the night of the 30th March, at Pinsaguel; and in the morning Hill’s corps crossed without encountering any opposition.

Soult, busy strengthening his fortifications, did not discover the move for a whole day; but Hill, finding the ground sodden with rain, and the Ariege impassable, was forced to abandon his position, and to countermarch on Pinsaguel.

Up came the pontoons again, back on to their travelling-carriages. ‘Lummy, who’d be an Engineer?’ said the rest of the army.

By the and April, his lordship had made up his mind that he must cross, after all, below Toulouse. By the 4th April, the cursing Engineers had succeeded in transporting the pontoons to a point eleven miles to the north of the city, and there, at last, they threw a bridge over the river by which the army could pass. There was still no opposition from Soult; and by the afternoon, Beresford was across with three divisions of infantry, three brigades of cavalry, and some artillery.

Then the rain came. The Garonne, filling fast, swayed the pontoons this way and that, until the last of the cavalry were obliged to dismount and lead their horses over the perilous bridge. By dark, some of the moorings had broken, and one pontoon, in spite of every effort made by the drenched Engineers to save it, went bobbing away down the river. Freire’s Spanish divisions, the dragoons of the King’s German Legion, the Light division, and all the reserve artillery were left on the western bank and Marshal Beresford, separated from this force by a swollen and angry river, felt himself to be in such a hazardous position that even a visit from Lord Wellington, who had himself rowed across in a small boat, failed to convince him that he was not in the utmost danger. ‘You are safe enough, Beresford!’ said his lordship bracingly. ‘Two such armies as Soult’s could make no impression on you with that ravine in your front!’

To everyone’s surprise, Marshal Soult made no effort to drive Beresford’s force into the river. The Marshal, reinforced by conscripts, was either suffering from nervous dread, thought the English, or he did not know how few men Beresford had with him. The, rain stopped; and by the 7th April the floods began to fall. The lost pontoon was miraculously recovered, the bridge once more thrown across the river, and all but the Light division passed over to join Beresford. The Light division, moving upstream to Seilh, maintaining communications with Hill’s force, did not cross until dawn on the 10th April, and by that time his lordship had moved his troops forward to the outer defences of Toulouse, and Vivian’s cavalry had started hostilities by engaging in a brief but glorious skirmish with the French dragoons.

6

“The worst arranged battle there could be: nothing but mistakes!’ That was Colonel Colborne’s verdict on the battle of Toulouse.

It began at five in the morning, with a demonstration by Hill against the outer lines beyond the St Cyprien bridge; and it did not end until five in the afternoon, when the daylight was failing. Freire’s Spaniards, having demanded the place of honour in the attack, failed to carry the Mont Rave heights; Picton turned a false attack into a real one, and once more got his division cut up; and Beresford, playing the chief part, was forced to undertake a long, arduous flanking movement, with his columns exposed all the way to the French artillery-fire from the heights.

‘I think Lord Wellington almost deserved to have been beaten,’ Colborne said. The Light division of course thought that the battle would have been won much sooner had they been more actively employed, adding a rider to the effect that if Picton had refrained from attacking (as usual) where he ought not to have done, it would have been helpful. The Light Bobs were drawn up rather more than half a mile from the Matabiau bridge across the Royal Canal, with General Freire’s divisions on their left, by the hill of Pujade. This hill, beyond which, to the east, Beresford’s flanking movement began, was dominated by the northern end of the Mont Rave heights, upon which the French General Villatte was strongly entrenched. General Freire having, after the customary Spanish fashion, claimed the right of holding the place of honour, Lord Wellington rather surprisingly gave him the task of storming the slope of Mont Rave, and dislodging the French from their redoubts and entrenchments. The attack was not to be made until Beresford had come up on the Spaniards’ left, but General Freire, a trifle elated, launched it before even the head of Beresford’s column had shown itself. He led the attack himself, and so gallantly did the Galicians charge up the hill that sceptical observers in the Light division said that they really looked as if they intended to do the thing handsomely.

Barnard’s brigade was the nearest to the Spaniards’ right flank, and from the start Colonel Colborne expected nothing but disaster. ‘I should be sorry to have to do it with two Light divisions,’ he said, when an optimistic officer cried, by God, Freire would do the business after all!

A withering fire from the heights met the Spanish advance, but they struggled on with great courage, until the sunken road leading to Peyrolle was reached.

‘Oh, the devil!’ exclaimed Harry, his glass fixed on the slopes of Mont Rave. ‘Their officers will never get ’em out of that!’

He was quite right; the hollow road was the Spaniards’ undoing. Scrambling down into it, they found that its high banks protected them from the artillery-fire. They lost the impetus of their first gallant rush; courage had time to cool; and not all the exertions of the officers could force them to face the murderous fire again. As soon as Villatte saw that they were not going to continue their advance, he sent his infantry forward from the trenches to pour a deadly musketry-fire into the hollow road. This was more than the Spaniards could bear. One regiment only, of Morilla’s division, stood its ground; the rest flew back pell-mell to the slopes of the Pujade.

Major George Napier, of the 52nd, seeing the rout descending upon his regiment, shouted: ‘Stop them! Stop them! Don’t let them go!’

Colborne, himself slightly wounded in the flesh of his arm by a splinter of shell, called out: ‘Yes, yes, let them go, and clear our fronts! Quick, George! Throw the regiment into open column of companies, and let the Spaniards pass through!”

This was done; Barnard flung his brigade forward to cover the retreat, and the French, seeing the Light division moving to the attack, abandoned the pursuit, and retired again to their entrenchments.

‘By God, won’t old Douro be in a rage!’ exclaimed Charlie Beckwith. But his lordship, watching the rout of the Spaniards with his brother-in-law, the Adjutant-General, beside him, had given a whoop of sudden laughter, and slapped his thigh. ‘Well, damme if ever I saw ten thousand men run a race before!’ he declared. ‘Now, what’s to be done? There I am, with nothing between me and the enemy!’

‘Well, I suppose you’ll order up the Light division now!’ said Pakenham. ‘I’ll be hanged if I do!’ replied his lordship. It took the Spaniards two hours to re-form, but re-form they did, and, to their credit, attacked the heights again. Freire led them in person, but they were repulsed with a good deal of loss, while the Light Bobs swore long and fluently at their own inactivity. ‘By God, I can’t stand this!’ Harry said, in a fret of impatience. ‘If we were pushed forward now, on the Spaniards’ flank, they would succeed! It’s murder to send ’em without support! Damn Alten!’

‘Wellington’s orders,’ grunted Barnard.

‘Serve Freire right for clamouring to be allowed to start the battle!’ said Digby unsympathetically. ‘They always do it, and they’ve never yet finished anything they’ve begun. To hell with ’em!’

By the time the Spaniards fell back for the second time, Beresford, having completed his long march at the foot of the eastern slopes of Mont Rave, was fast winning the battle from the south. He forced his way up on to the heights, defeating Harispe, and began to shell Villatte’s position from the rear, just as Barnard’s brigade was at last moved forward to support the Spaniards.

Soult ordered Villatte to retire. It was not yet dark, but after twelve hours of fighting both armies were tired out, and the Allied artillery was temporarily exhausted. French and British bivouacked where they stood, Beresford and Freire occupying the heights of Mont Rave, and the French having retreated behind the barrier of the Royal Canal.

7

Those who expected Lord Wellington to launch a final offensive early on the following morning were disappointed. The ammunition-park being upon Hill’s side of the river, it was some time before fresh supplies could be brought up. The French showed no disposition to sally forth from Toulouse, and the day was spent by the Allies in succouring their wounded, and exchanging views on the engagement. Lord Wellington, encountering Colonel Colborne during the morning, called out to him, with a wave of his hand towards the northern slopes of Mont Rave: ‘Well, Colborne, did you ever see anything like that? Was that like the rout at Ocafia?’

‘Oh, I don’t know!’ Colborne said, never willing to condemn the Spaniards. ‘They ran to the bridge, I believe.’

‘To the bridge, indeed! To the Pyrenees!’ said his lordship sardonically. ‘I daresay they are all back in Spain by this time!’

There was no more fighting at Toulouse. At dusk, Soult withdrew his army from the town by the Carcassonne road; and very early on the 12th April, a deputation of citizens arrived at Lord Wellington’s headquarters with an invitation to him to enter the city. Toulouse, it seemed, was delighted with the result of the battle.

His lordship rode in later in the day, accompanied by his Staff. All the inhabitants of the town wore the white cockade, and waved white flags; and as his lordship entered the Capitol, the great statue of Napoleon was thrown off the roof, and smashed into fragments on the cobble-stones.

At five o’clock in the afternoon, Colonel Ponsonby rode in from Bordeaux with definite news of Napoleon’s abdication; so his lordship, who had been finding the situation a little awkward, was able to rise to his feet during the dinner he gave that evening, and at last drink to the health of King Louis XVIII. There was quite a riot of cheering, and General Alava, carried away by the enthusiasm, leaped up and called for a toast in honour of Wellington: liberator of Portugal!—of Spain!—of France!—of Europe!

The cheers crashed again and again. His lordship, looking down his bony nose, bowed stiffly, and called for coffee.

The news of the abdication was conveyed at once to Soult by one of his lordship’s ADCs, but not until the arrival of envoys from Paris would the Marshal believe that it was true, and that there was nothing left to fight for. Everyone found that hard to believe. Pickets were still posted, but there were no more sudden calls to arms; no more cavalry vedettes riding in circles to signal the approach of an enemy column; no more forced marches over heartbreaking roads; no more bivouacking in sodden fields. It seemed incredible at first, and Colonel Arentschildt disbelieved in the armistice so profoundly that he was discovered going to bed in his clothes, just as though he expected a night-alarm. ‘Air-mistress or no air-mistress, by Gott, I sleeps in mein breeches!’ he swore.

The Light division was moved into the suburb of Toulouse, and cantoned there. Harry requisitioned for himself and a select party of his friends, a positively luxurious chateau, engaged a French cook, borrowed some money from the Quartermaster, and spent it all on what George Simmons, restored to his regiment, called riotous living. Theatres, balls, and fetes were the order of the day, and of course it was imperative to buy dresses and ornaments for Juana, besides new boots and sashes for himself, and a splendid collar with silver bells for Vitty.