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Environmental Challenges and Solutions 2
Series Editor: Robert J. Cabin

Stephen F. McCool
Keith Bosak Editors

Reframing
Sustainable
Tourism
Environmental Challenges and Solutions

Volume 2

Series editor
Robert J. Cabin, Brevard College, Brevard, NC, USA
Aims and Scope
The Environmental Challenges and Solutions series aims to improve our
understanding of the Earth’s most important environmental challenges, and how
we might more effectively solve or at least mitigate these challenges. Books in this
series focus on environmental challenges and solutions in particular geographic
regions ranging from small to large spatial scales. These books provide multi-
disciplinary (technical, socioeconomic, political, etc.) analyses of their environ-
mental challenges and the effectiveness of past and present efforts to address them.
They conclude by offering holistic recommendations for more effectively solving
these challenges now and into the future. All books are written in a concise and
readable style, making them suitable for both specialists and non-specialists starting
at first year graduate level.

Proposals for the book series can be sent to the Series Editor, Robert J. Cabin, at
[email protected].

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11763

Stephen F. McCool • Keith Bosak
Editors

Reframing Sustainable
Tourism

123
Editors
Stephen F. McCool Keith Bosak
University of Montana University of Montana
Missoula, MT, USA Missoula, MT, USA

ISSN 2214-2827 ISSN 2214-2835 (electronic)

Environmental Challenges and Solutions
ISBN 978-94-017-7208-2 ISBN 978-94-017-7209-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-7209-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015947818

Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg New York London

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of
the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation,
broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information
storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made.

Printed on acid-free paper

Springer Science+Business Media B.V. Dordrecht is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.
springer.com)
Foreword

Tourism is a complicated, global, and growing phenomenon. The basic premise is

that travel provides benefits, some to the traveler (who seeks personal benefits at a
destination) and some to a destination host (who seeks personal benefits provided
by the traveler). One of the substantial unifying concepts in the last three decades
has been that of sustainable tourism. This book seeks to move beyond socially
acceptable, ecologically responsible, and economically viable tourism ideas by
asking fundamental questions. Case studies are used effectively to outline issues
from many areas such as Brazil, Canada, India, Jamaica, Nepal, the USA, Vietnam,
and several countries from Southern Africa.
One issue discussed is that of scale, such as geographic scales, but also
timescales. This book makes a point that many sociopolitical systems do not always
operate on linear relationships, but can be affected by sudden and unpredictable
influences. Technological changes can have massive impacts on relationships and
sharing of information, which quickly changes key aspects of the delivery of tourism
benefits.
This book concentrates at the community scale, largely in the sense of the local
community that serves as the host for the visitors. The book concentrates on the
supply part of tourism, leaving tourism demand for another day.
An important issue is the definition of community. In this book, it tends to be
geographical in concept, rather than professional or religious. But the scope of what
is in or out of a community boundary is left open-ended, as maybe it must be if the
concept is to be used widely.
The book makes it clear that tourism is just one of many human activities
that affects host communities. Industrial, agricultural, and urban developments also
occur in the same area and cause major changes. It is often difficult to disentangle
what activity caused what impact. Also, positive impacts to one person or group
may be linked to negative impacts to another person or group. Impacts seen as being
positive by one person may be seen as being negative by another person.
There are examples given about the impacts caused by a lack of tourism, such
as the cessation of tourism. These help to identify those complicated and often

v
vi Foreword

unmeasured impacts that occur when a constant flow of visitors move through a
community and are largely taken for granted. One of the most striking examples
of this, known to his observer, was the closure of most rural tourism in England
and Scotland in 2001 when the hoof and mouth disease hit domestic livestock.
This was an unintentional experiment that revealed the massive positive impact
of rural tourism and the general lack of understanding of its importance, once it
was gone. It was revealed that tourism in rural Scotland was worth 5 % of gross
domestic product, while agriculture was worth much less at 1.4 %. So government
actions of stopping rural tourism in order to help agriculture damaged the much
more economically valuable activity (Stewart 2002). One result on UK government
policy was changes in agricultural subsidies, moving benefits from agricultural food
production to landscape quality enhancement.
I once talked to a man picketing at the opening of the new visitor center
in Algonquin National Park in 1993. He was a part-time park staff member
complaining about the reduction of jobs in the park due to government funding
reductions. He stated that there are only two types of jobs in his area, tourism in the
summer and logging in the winter. This statement puts into focus the complexity of
human activities in this area. One activity, logging, is portrayed as sustainable by the
foresters but portrayed as unsustainable by park visitors. The other activity, tourism,
is seen as being sustainable by park visitors, but damaging by the loggers due to
the continual pressure by park visitors to stop logging in the park. So understanding
the financial sustainability of this man was complex and fraught with definitional
issues. Sustainable in what way, of what resource, and to whom are basic questions.
A major issue is who benefits and who pays. This of course is an issue with
all economic activities, whether it is the development of a mine, a logging activity,
or tourism. Much tourism analysis, but not in this book, ignores that tourism is
just one of many other competing economic activities in an area. In fact, tourism
may be the most sustainable activity over the long term, in that the benefits can
continue indefinitely if properly managed. This cannot be said for mining and some
manufacturing industries; these come and go.
Some aspects of sustainability can be bipolar, providing both benefits and
disbenefits at the same time. For example, some aspects of culture are changed due
to visitors’ ideas, but visitor demands for observation of local culture provide incen-
tives for preservation of some aspects of that culture. Such inherent dichotomies are
rife in the application of sustainable tourism concepts.
Sustainable tourism, a laudable goal, is essentially socialistic; it espouses
community management and control, where individual selfish desires are balanced
against community desires and benefits. Many of the papers in this book look toward
methods for such control, whereby plans are made and implemented. This only
occurs where there is the power and institutional structure to implement those plans.
One of the methods for control is the use of standards and certification of various
elements of the tourism supply chain, such as for transportation operations, tours
operators, accommodation providers, and food suppliers. These activities attempt to
ensure that worthwhile overarching standards are implemented. There is evidence
Foreword vii

that travelers expect base levels of standards, so that they are safe from the dangers
of transportation, accommodation, and food hazards while on vacation. They may
not be supportive of financial sustainability of local communities if the consumer
sees low prices as a primary goal.
I wonder if sustainability is not an end, but only a process. One can never fully
achieve the elusive goal. It is always like the mysterious blonde woman in the white
thunderbird in the 1973 movie American Graffiti. She is always a dream, out there
for sure, but one can never get as close as wanted.

Paul F.J. Eagles

Reference

Stewart, W. 2002. Inquiry into foot and mouth disease in Scotland. Edinburgh: Royal Society
of Edinburgh. http://www.scribd.com/doc/61435188/Foot-and-Mouth-Disease-in-Scotland.
Accessed 27 Jan 2015.
Preface

If we have learned anything about the search for sustainable tourism, it is the
importance of asking the right questions. In this text, we agree with American
songwriter and singer Bob Dylan that “The Times, They are a-Changin” written in
response to the political and social contentiousness of the 1960s and yet remarkably
applicable to the early twenty-first century. We believe the times are still “a-
Changin,” and therefore we ask here if the conventional paradigm of sustainable
tourism, that which occurs at the intersection of what is socially acceptable,
ecologically responsible, and economically viable, is really an appropriate and
effective way of conceptualizing tourism development in the twenty-first century?
We acknowledge this paradigm, during the first quarter century of discussion about
the objects of economic development, which focused a great deal of scientific,
philosophic, and development activity on reducing the negative impacts of tourism.
But from those experiments, we have learned much, so much that we wonder if a
more contemporary approach to tourism would be more effective as well as more in
line with our knowledge of tourism as a component of a social-ecological system as
well as the incredible complexity of the global development system. Complexity and
uncertainty greet us at every social-organizational, temporal, and spatial scale. What
is economically viable at one scale is not at another. What is socially acceptable to
one group is not for another. And what might be viewed as ecologically responsible
may be seen as negligent by others.
Given the pace, scale, and type of change we see today, can our efforts benefit
from alternative conceptualizations of sustainable tourism? We believe so. This
book is about thinking a bit differently about the aims and tools for sustainable
tourism. It is written principally for a North American audience because we see a
lack of attention to sustainable tourism in that geography. That said, the text uses
a number of examples from other continents to illustrate new perspectives, some
critical, others more helpful.
The book is organized into four sections. The first provides some foundational
material about sustainable tourism, how the concept developed historically and how
our thinking about it has evolved. In the second section, several authors provide

ix
x Preface

some frameworks about different arenas of sustainable tourism that can help us think
differently and be more effective in achieving the goals of sustainable tourism. The
third section contains several case studies reflecting ways of thinking differently
and the implications of doing so. In the final section, we suggest a way forward
that we believe will more effectively help tourism development build communities,
advance opportunities for higher-quality visitor experiences, and protect our natural
and cultural heritage.
We want to thank each of the contributors to this volume, because each not
only spent time writing up their stories but also have furthered different notions
of sustainable tourism. We also want to thank our editors and publishers at Springer
who helped bring this idea to a fruition.

Missoula, MT, USA Stephen F. McCool

Keith Bosak
Contents

Part I Foundations
1 Sustainable Tourism in an Emerging World of Complexity
and Turbulence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Stephen F. McCool
2 The Changing Meanings of Sustainable Tourism . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Stephen F. McCool
3 Tourism, Development, and Sustainability . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Keith Bosak

Part II Frameworks
4 Frameworks for Tourism as a Development Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Art Pedersen
5 Strategic Community Participation in Sustainable Tourism . . . . . . . . . . 65
Susan Snyman
6 Framework for Understanding Sustainability in the
Context of Tourism Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Kelly Bricker and Rosemary Black
7 Tourism in Protected Areas: Frameworks for Working
Through the Challenges in an Era of Change, Complexity
and Uncertainty .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Stephen F. McCool

Part III Case Studies

8 When ‘dem Come: The Political Ecology of Sustainable
Tourism in Cockpit Country, Jamaica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Jason A. Douglas

xi
xii Contents

9 Understanding the Himalayan Townscape of Shimla

Through Resident and Tourist Perception .. . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Rajinder S. Jutla
10 Community-Based Tourism and Development in the
Periphery/Semi-periphery Interface: A Case Study
from Viet Nam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Tuan-Anh Le, David Weaver, and Laura Lawton
11 The Concept of Environmental Supply in National Parks . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Barbara Jean McNicol
12 Sustainable Tourism in Brazil: Faxinal and Superagui
Case Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Jasmine Cardozo Moreira, Robert C. Burns,
and Valéria de Meira Albach
13 Tourism and Social Capital: Case Studies from Rural Nepal . . . . . . . . . 217
Martina Shakya

Part IV Conclusion
14 The Way Forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Keith Bosak and Stephen F. McCool
Contributors

Valéria de Meira Albach Departamento de Turismo, Ponta Grossa State

University, Ponta Grossa, PR, Brazil
Rosemary Black School of Environmental Sciences, Charles Sturt University,
Albury, NSW, Australia
Keith Bosak University of Montana, Missoula, MT, USA
Kelly Bricker Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism, University of Utah,
Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Robert C. Burns School of Forestry and Natural Resources, West Virginia
University, Morgantown, WV, USA
Jason A. Douglas Department of Environmental Studies, San Jose State
University, San Jose, CA, USA
Rajinder S. Jutla Missouri State University, Springfield, MO, USA
Laura Lawton Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia
Tuan-Anh Le Ha Noi University, Hanoi, Vietnam
Stephen F. McCool University of Montana, Missoula, MT, USA
Barbara Jean McNicol Mount Royal University, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Jasmine Cardozo Moreira Departamento de Turismo, Ponta Grossa State
University, PR, Brazil
Art Pedersen Independent Consultant, Helsinki, Finland
Martina Shakya Institute of Development Research and Development Policy,
Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany
Susan Snyman Environmental Policy Research Unit, University of Cape Town and
Wilderness Safaris, South Africa
David Weaver Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia
xiii
About the Authors

Valéria de Meira Albach Ms Albach is assistant professor of the Tourism

Department at Ponta Grossa State University, in Paraná, Brazil. She has a master’s
degree in geography and specialization in environmental geography and holds a
PhD from the Federal University of Paraná. She works as a tourism consultant for
protected areas, including the Superagui National Park, also in Paraná, Brazil.

Rosemary Black Dr Black gained her PhD from Monash University where she
undertook research on ecotourism. She currently serves as associate professor in the
School of Environmental Sciences, Charles Sturt University, Australia. Rosemary’s
teaching focuses on tour guiding, environmental interpretation, adventure tourism,
and outdoor recreation. She conducts research in tour guiding, interpretation,
ecotourism, and social dimensions of natural resource management. Most is applied
research that she undertakes in partnership with industry associations, protected area
managers, and communities. Prior to being an academic Rosemary worked in the
fields of adventure tourism, protected area management, and recreation planning.
She serves on the boards of Guiding Organisations Australia and Interpretation
Australia.

Keith Bosak Dr Bosak earned his PhD in geography in 2006 from the University of
Georgia where he studied the local effects of global conservation policy in the Nanda
Devi Biosphere Reserve. As a geographer, he currently serves as associate professor
at the Department of Society and Conservation at the University of Montana. Dr
Bosak’s research interests are broadly centered on the intersection of conservation
and development, and as such, he often studies nature-based tourism and sustainable
tourism in the context of development and protected areas. He has conducted
research on ecotourism and environmental justice in India, scientific tourism in
Chile, and geotourism in Montana. Aside from tourism, Dr Bosak has conducted
research on climate change impacts and adaptations among tribal populations in
the Himalaya, private protected areas in Chile, and conservation and development
initiatives in Montana. Since 2005, Dr Bosak has been instructing field courses on

xv
xvi About the Authors

tourism and sustainability in the Garhwal Himalaya. Dr Bosak and his wife Laura
founded the Nature-Link Institute, a 501(c)3 that seeks to reconnect people with
their environment through research, education, and advocacy.

Kelly S. Bricker Dr Bricker serves as professor and interim chair of the Depart-
ment of Parks, Recreation and Tourism, University of Utah, USA. She completed
her PhD research with the Pennsylvania State University, specializing in nature-
based tourism. She has research/teaching interests in ecotourism, sense of place,
resource management, and environmental and social impacts of tourism. She has
conducted research on certification, tourism and quality of life, heritage tourism,
social impacts of tourism, and impacts on natural resource tourism environments.
Since 1982, Kelly has worked in ecotourism and adventure programs such as
the Florida High Adventure Sea Base, Sobek Expeditions, World Heritage Travel
Group, and Rivers Fiji. She serves on the boards of The International Ecotourism
Society and Global Sustainable Tourism Council.

Robert Burns Dr Burns is associate professor at West Virginia University with

nearly two decades of research experience in public land social science and in
working with public land managers. Dr Burns has conducted research focused on all
aspects of monitoring visitor use in federal and state land and water-based settings.
He is responsible for an international research program in Brazil, focusing on visitor
monitoring in parks and protected areas. His expertise is in quantifying motivations,
benefits, use patterns, behaviors, and other social carrying capacity indicators in
outdoor settings.

Jason A. Douglas Dr Douglas is an environmental psychologist who conducts

research with underserved communities to develop an understanding of environ-
mental issues at the local, state, federal, and international levels. He strives to use
research to educate and empower individuals exposed to social, economic, and
environmental disparities. Dr Douglas has over 8 years of experience in community-
based participatory research and evaluation. He has worked on a wide range of
projects concerning the political ecology of participatory conservation in Jamaica,
environmental justice and education in underserved urban communities, public
policy and advocacy efforts to address root causes of childhood obesity, and hospital
system improvements related to homeless populations.

Rajinder S. Jutla Dr Rajinder S. Jutla is a professor and director of the Planning

Program in the Department of Geography, Geology, and Planning at Missouri
State University, Springfield, Missouri, USA. His undergraduate and graduate
studies are in the areas of architecture, landscape architecture, and planning. His
research interests include history and theory of urban design, historic preservation,
environmental perception, urban tourism, and cultural geography. He has presented
papers at a number of national and international conferences and has published
journal articles and book chapters in these areas.
About the Authors xvii

Laura Lawton Laura Lawton is an associate professor within the Department

of Tourism, Sport and Hotel Management at Griffith University, Australia. She
has published numerous government reports, academic journal articles, and book
chapters in several areas, including protected areas, ecotourism, resident perceptions
of tourism, and cruise ship tourism. She is a coauthor of the tourism text Tourism
Management, published by Wiley, and sits on the editorial boards of four academic
journals. Laura serves as deputy chair of The International Centre of Excellence
in Tourism and Hospitality Management Education (THE-ICE), an independent
international accreditation body that specializes in tourism, hospitality, and events
education.

Tuan-Anh Le Dr Tuan-Anh Le holds a PhD from Griffith University, Australia.

Currently, he works as a lecturer at the Faculty of Management and Tourism, Ha
Noi University, Viet Nam. His area of research interests covers community-based
tourism and sustainable development. Over the past 15 years, Mr. Le has been
active in the provision of training and consulting services for tourism projects in
Viet Nam funded by international organizations, for instance, the EuropeAid, Asian
Development Bank (ADB), UNESCO, the Netherlands Development Organization
(SNV).

Stephen F. McCool Steve is professor emeritus at the Department of Society and

Natural Resources at the University of Montana in Missoula, Montana, USA. He
has been active in research and development activities in the area of tourism and
visitor management in protected areas for over 45 years, contributing frequently
to a variety of journals and conferences. In addition, he has worked to change
how managers approach public engagement and protected area planning processes,
frequently arguing that we need to dive deeper and think differently in a world of
change, complexity, and uncertainty.

Barbara Jean McNicol Dr Barbara McNicol is an associate professor of geogra-

phy, past 6-year chair of the Department of Earth Sciences, and assistant director of
the Institute for Environmental Sustainability (IES) at Mount Royal University in
Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She is also an adjunct associate professor of geography
at the University of Calgary where she has taught in both of the international
relations and geography degree programs. Barbara is a social environmental geog-
rapher conducting behavioral research at the interface between sustainable tourism
planning and management and environmental and natural resource management
while emphasizing parks, recreation, and community land use. Barbara has worked
with the local government, such as the Town of Canmore, Economic Planning and
Development Office, in Alberta, and with Parks Canada Agency in the national
parks of Pacific Rim, Banff, and Jasper as well as independently as a tourism and
environmental research consultant.
xviii About the Authors

Jasmine Cardozo Moreira Jasmine Cardozo Moreira is associate professor and

chair of the Tourism Department at Ponta Grossa State University, in Brazil.
Her expertise is in community development, focusing on human dimensions of
tourism planning in Brazil National Parks and geoparks worldwide. She received
a bachelor’s in tourism, PhD in geography, and a postdoctoral study in Spain. She is
an active member of the federal academic accreditation team that evaluates tourism
programs throughout Brazil. Also a member of the International Academy for the
Development of Tourism Research in Brazil, she provides academic consulting to
the US Forest Service International Programs, the Brazil Park Service (ICMBio),
and the Erasmus Program.

Arthur Pedersen Art Pedersen is a consultant on protected areas and tourism

development located in Helsinki, Finland. His professional experience includes
work on tourism, protected areas, and economic development issues. He has
been a program specialist with UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre (WHC) in
Paris. Other professional experience includes work in Latin America, Europe,
Asia and Africa, and the Middle East with regional tourism strategies, national
park management plans, tourism assessment and feasibility studies, creation of
regional tourism organizations, and the development of practical tourism marketing-
promotional strategies. Many of these activities involved the push and pull of
economic development and environmental and cultural impacts. He has worked
on issues of visitor limits in fragile areas and in linking tourism benefits to local
communities with the goal to aid protection and conservation efforts.

Martina Shakya Dr Martina Shakya is senior research fellow at the Institute

of Development Research and Development Policy at Ruhr University Bochum
(RUB), Germany. She holds a master’s degree in geography, anthropology, and
political science from Münster University (1996), received postgraduate training
in international development at the German Development Institute (GDI, 1998),
and a doctorate in human geography (2009) from RUB. She has extensive practical
work and research experience in various parts of the developing world and worked
with government and nongovernment organizations in Nepal and South Africa as an
advisor for sustainable tourism development.

Susan Snyman Susan Snyman holds a PhD (economics) from the University
of Cape Town (UCT). Having completed PhD coursework at the University of
Goteborg in Sweden, the focus of her PhD research was on the socioeconomic
impact of high-end ecotourism in remote, rural communities adjacent to protected
areas, based on over 1800 community interviews in six southern African countries.
Sue has 15 years of experience in the ecotourism industry in southern Africa and
is now the Group Community Development and Culture manager for Wilderness
Safaris, as well as the regional director of Children in the Wilderness. Other
About the Authors xix

positions include vice-chair of the IUCN WCPA Tourism and Protected Areas
Specialist Groups and a research fellow at the Environmental Policy Research Unit
at UCT.

David Weaver David Weaver is professor of tourism research at Griffith Univer-

sity, Australia, and has published more than 120 journal articles, book chapters,
and books. He maintains an active research agenda in sustainable destination
management, ecotourism, and resident perceptions of tourism. Professor Weaver
has contributed extensively to leading journals, and his widely adopted textbooks
include Ecotourism (Wiley Australia), Encyclopedia of Ecotourism (CABI), and
Sustainable Tourism: Theory and Practice (Taylor & Francis). He is a fellow of the
International Academy for the Study of Tourism and has delivered numerous invited
keynote addresses around the world on innovative tourism topics.
Another random document with
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the Army of Portugal was now in touch—it was reported coming up
from Briviesca—and that a bulletin of the Grand Army was received
from Germany, telling of the victory of the Emperor at Bautzen. But
the discouraging news was appalling—the first instalment of it was
that Jourdan reported, after investigating the fortifications of Burgos,
that he considered the place untenable. During the spring building
and demolition had been taken in hand, for the purpose of linking up
the old castle, which had given so much trouble to Wellington in
1812, with the high-lying ‘Hornwork of St. Miguel’ on the rising
ground above. The scheme was wholly unfinished—the only result
achieved was that St. Miguel, as reconstructed, commanded the
castle, and that the alterations started in the enceinte of the latter,
with the object of linking it up with the former, had rendered it, in
the marshal’s opinion, incapable of holding out for a day. Yet this
would not have mattered so much if the army had been about to
resume the offensive, or to put up a stable defence in the Burgos
region.
But it was declared that this was impossible—the governor
reported that the immense convoys which had been passing through
Burgos of late, and the recent stay of considerable bodies of troops
in the place[505], had brought his magazines to such a low ebb that
he could not feed an army of 50,000 men for more than a few days.
The town was still crammed with the last great horde of Spanish and
French refugees, who had come on from Madrid, Segovia, and
Valladolid, and all the King’s private train. They were sent on at once
towards Vittoria, under escort of Lamartinière’s division—which thus
no sooner became available than it was lost again. No news had
arrived either from Foy or from Clausel: but Sarrut’s division of the
Army of Portugal had been located north of the Ebro, and would be
coming in ere very long. The news that Clausel was undiscoverable
brought King Joseph to such a pitch of excitement that he took, on
June 9th, a step which he should have taken a fortnight before, and
threw over all his fears of offending the minister at Paris or the
Emperor in Saxony. He sent direct peremptory orders to Clausel to
join him at once, and told off a column of 1,500 men to escort the
aide-de-camp who bore them: it went off by Domingo Calzada and
Logroño. As a matter of fact the order reached the general in six
days—but it might have taken longer for all that Joseph could guess.
And the King came to the conclusion that if he were at all pushed by
Wellington within the next few days, he must abandon Burgos and
retire behind the Ebro. He might even have to go without hostile
persuasion, on the mere question of food-supplies.
But on June 12 the pressure was applied. Wellington had now
got all his forces over the Pisuerga, and his two southern columns
were concentrated between Castroxeriz and Villadiego: Graham was
farther off, but not out of reach. Having reconnoitred the advanced
position of Reille on the Hormaza river, and found that his supports
were far behind, he resolved to attack him in front and flank that
morning. Only the southern column—Hill’s troops—was employed,
the centre divisions being halted in a position from which they might
be brought in on the enemy’s rear, if the King reinforced Reille, but
not if the French showed no signs of standing. But the push against
the Army of Portugal, made by the 2nd Division, Silveira’s
Portuguese, and Morillo’s Spaniards, was sufficient to dislodge the
enemy: for while they were deploying against the French front, the
cavalry brigades of Grant and Ponsonby, supported by the Light
Division, appeared behind Reille’s right flank. The enemy at once
gave way, before infantry fighting had begun, and retreating hastily
southward got behind the Urbel river, where the Army of the South
was already in line. Reille then crossed the Arlanzon by the bridge of
Buniel and took post south of Burgos. The French loss was small—
the retreat was made in good order and with great speed, before the
British infantry could arrive. Grant’s and Ponsonby’s horse, already
outflanking the rearguard, got in close, but did not deliver a general
attack—by Wellington’s own orders as it is said[506]: for (despite of
Garcia Hernandez) he held to his firm belief that cavalry cannot
break intact infantry. A half troop of the 14th Light Dragoons, under
Lieut. Southwell, charged and captured an isolated French gun,
which had fallen behind the rearguard; but this was the only contact
between the armies that day. Jourdan says that Reille lost about
fifteen men only—an exaggeration no doubt, but not a very great
one.
 The result, however, was to determine King Joseph to retreat at
once, and to abandon Burgos, before his obviously outflanked right
wing should be entirely circumvented. That night desperate
measures were taken—everything that could travel on wheels was
sent off by the high road towards the Ebro: the infantry followed,
using such side roads as were available. At dawn only cavalry
rearguards were covering Burgos. Jourdan explains the haste of the
retreat as follows. ‘It was easy to foresee that next morning that
part of the Army of the South which lay behind the Urbel river would
be attacked, and that being separated by the Arlanzon from the bulk
of the army, which lay on the south bank, it would be compromised.
Three choices lay open—first, to bring the whole army across the
Arlanzon and to fight on the Urbel; but this would have brought on
the general action which it had been determined to avoid, ever since
the King had made up his mind to call in Clausel. Second—to bring
the whole army across to the south bank of the Arlanzon, where
there was a good position: but this move would have allowed the
enemy to cut the great road and our communications with France—
and the same motives which had caused the rejection of the scheme
to retire south of the Douro on June 2 caused this alternative to be
disapproved on June 12. Third—to fall back by the great road to the
Ebro, and so secure the earliest possible concentration of all the
armies of Spain. This was the scheme adopted[507].’
It is said that Gazan was for fighting on the Urbel[508], while Reille
and D’Erlon opted for the second choice—that of abandoning the
high road to France, going south of the Arlanzon, and retreating by
the bad track to Domingo Calzada and Logroño, because Clausel,
being certainly somewhere in Navarre, would be picked up much
sooner at Logroño than at Miranda or other points higher up the
Ebro. But the Emperor’s orders that the direct communication with
France must be kept up at all costs, were adduced against them,
and settled the question.
Before leaving, the French made arrangements to blow up the
castle which had served them so well in the preceding October, and
to destroy a great store of powder and munitions for which no
transport could be procured. According to Jourdan the disaster which
followed was due to the professional ignorance of General d’Aboville,
the director-general of artillery, who maintained that shells would do
no great harm if they were exploded, not in a great mass but placed
in small groups, at distances one from another. He had 6,000 of
them laid in parcels on the ground in the castle square, and
connected with the mines which were placed under the donjon keep.
Orders were given that the fuses were only to be lit when the last
troops should have left, and the inhabitants were told that if they
would keep to their houses they would incur no danger. But the
mines by some error were fired before seven o’clock in the morning,
and the effects of the explosion had been so badly calculated, that
not only were many houses in the city injured, all the glass blown
out of the splendid cathedral, and its roof broken in several places,
but a hail of shells fell all over the surrounding quarter, and killed
100 men of Villatte’s division, who were halted in the Plaza Mayor,
and a few of Digeon’s dragoons who were crossing the bridge[509].
There were casualties also, of course, among the unfortunate
citizens. When the smoke cleared away, and the fire had gone out, it
was found that the destruction of the donjon keep and upper works
of the castle had been complete, but that most of the outer wall was
standing—as indeed it is to this day. Wellington remarked that it was
quite capable of restoration, if the fortunes of the war made it
necessary[510]. They did not; and the skeleton of the castle still
remains ruined and riven on its mound, to surprise the observer by
its moderate size. Those who go round it can only marvel that such
a small fortress should have held all Wellington’s army at bay during
so many eventful days in 1812.
The British general, hearing at Castroxeriz, on the early morning
of June 13, that the French had evacuated Burgos and blown up its
works, did not even enter the town, and sent nothing more than
cavalry scouts to follow the retreating enemy, but ordered the
instant resumption of the north-westward march of the whole army.
It was now his intention to turn the line of the Ebro, in the same
fashion that he had turned the line of the Douro on May 31—by
passing it so far to the westward that any position which the enemy
might adopt would be outflanked, even before it was fully taken up.
And he was aiming not only at turning the Ebro line, but at cutting
Joseph’s communication with France: he was already taking Vittoria,
far behind the Ebro, as the goal for which he was making.
We have Wellington’s own word for the fact that it was the
collapse of the French opposition in front of Burgos which finally
induced him to develop his original plan of campaign, spoken of
above, into the more ambitious scheme for driving the French
completely out of the Peninsula, which he now took in hand.
Unfortunately his statement was taken down many years after the
event, and his memory of details was not all that it might have been
in his old age. But the story is so interesting and fits into the
psychology of the moment so well that it must not be omitted.
‘When I heard and saw the explosion (I was within a few miles,
and the effect was tremendous) I made a sudden resolution
forthwith—to cross the Ebro instanter, and to endeavour to push the
French to the Pyrenees. We had heard of the battles of Lützen and
Bautzen, and of the Armistice, and the affairs of the Allies looked
very ill. Some of my officers remonstrated with me about the
imprudence of crossing the Ebro, and advised me to “take up the
line of the Ebro”, &c. I asked them what they meant by “taking up
the line of the Ebro”,—a river 300 miles long, and what good I was
to do along that line? In short I would not listen to that advice, and
that evening (or the very next morning) I crossed the river and
pushed the French till I afterwards beat them at Vittoria. And lucky it
was that I did! For the battle of Vittoria induced the Allies to
denounce the Armistice—then followed Leipzig and all the rest.
‘All my staff were against my crossing the Ebro: they represented
that we had done enough, that we ought not to risk the army and all
that we had obtained, that the Armistice would enable Bonaparte to
reinforce his army in Spain, and we therefore should look for a
defensive system. I thought differently—I knew that the Armistice
could not affect in the way of quick reinforcement so distant an army
as that of Spain. I thought that if I could not hustle them out of
Spain before they were reinforced, I should not be able to hold any
position in Spain after they should be. Above all I calculated on the
effect that a victory might have on the Armistice itself, so I crossed
the Ebro and fought the battle of Vittoria.’
How far is this curious confidence, made to Croker in January
1837, and taken down by him in two separate drafts (Croker Papers,
ii. p. 309, and iii. pp. 336-7), a blurred impression, coloured by after
events? It is quite true that the Burgos explosion took place early on
the morning of June 13, that the orders dictated at Villadiego that
day (Suppl. Disp. vii, p. 637) give a sudden new direction to the
army, and that next evening (June 14) the heads of the columns
were over the Ebro. But Wellington’s own dispatches seem to show
that he did not know anything of the Armistice on June 13, for he
wrote to his brother Henry that day, ‘I have no news from England.
The French have a bulletin of May 24th, when Napoleon was at
Dresden—they talk of successes, but as he was still at Dresden on
the 24th, having arrived there on the 8th, they cannot have been
very important.’ Now the Armistice of Plässwitz was signed on June
4, and on the 13th Wellington’s latest news was of May 24. But on
the 17th, when he had been two days across the Ebro, he did at last
hear something. Again he writes to his brother:
‘I have got, by Corunna, English papers of the 3rd. There were
several actions in the neighbourhood of Bautzen on the 20th-22nd
May.... Bonaparte turned then, and they retired. The Allies have lost
ground but are unhurt. He has offered (before the battle) to consent
to a congress at Prague.... An armistice is to commence when the
ministers shall arrive at Prague.... I do not think that the Russians
and Prussians can agree to the armistice, unless they submit
entirely’ (Disp. x. p. 443).
Clearly, then, Wellington on the 13th knew nothing of any
armistice, since he introduces the proposal, not the accomplishment,
of it to his most trusted correspondent on the 17th, as the last news
to hand. He was committed to the advance on Vittoria long before
he could know of its subsequent political effects. And thus in his old
age he underrated his own prescience. But the fact that his officers
doubted the wisdom of the advance, and that he swept their
objections away, is probably correct. That he had considered the
possibility of an advance far beyond the Ebro seems, as has been
said before (pp. 301-3), to be proved by orders given in the spring,
before the campaign began.
On the evening of the 13th head-quarters were at Villadiego,
while the columns were all heading northward on parallel routes.
The Galicians were moving from Aguilar on the bridge of
Rocamonde[511], the highest on the Ebro save that at its source near
Reynosa. The bulk of Graham’s column was marching by La Piedra
on the bridge of San Martin, a few miles lower down than
Rocamonde, though some of its flanking cavalry crossed at the latter
passage, ahead of the Galicians. The Head-Quarters divisions and
Hill’s column moved, using all available secondary roads, from their
position opposite the lower Urbel, by Villadiego and Montorio
respectively, on the bridge of Puente Arenas, some fifteen miles
below that of San Martin. All three columns had on the 13th-14th-
15th very hard marches, of four long Spanish leagues on three
successive days, across upland roads where artillery had never been
seen before. The move would only have been practicable at
midsummer. But the columns were absolutely unopposed, and the
upper Ebro country had been entirely neglected by the French, as
Wellington had foreseen. ‘One division could have stopped the whole
column at the bridge of San Martin,’ wrote an intelligent observer, ‘or
the other at Rocamonde, where some of our column likewise crossed
—the enemy cannot be aware of our movement[512].’ Graham was all
across the Ebro by noon on the 14th, Hill by the morning of the
16th. Wellington who had fixed his head-quarters at the lost village
of Masa in the hills, was able to declare with confidence that the
whole army would be over the river by the night—‘and then the
French must either fight, or retire out of Spain altogether.’
The Ebro country was a surprise to the British observers who had
spent so many years in the uplands of Portugal or the rolling plains
of the Tierra de Campos. ‘Winding suddenly out of a narrow pass,
we found ourselves in the river valley, which extended some distance
on our right. The beauty of the scenery was beyond description: the
rocks rose perpendicularly on every side, without any visible opening
to convey an idea of an outlet. This enchanting valley is studded
with picturesque hamlets and fruitful gardens producing every
description of vegetation. At the Puente Arenas we met a number of
sturdy women loaded with fresh butter from the mountains of the
Asturias. We had not tasted that commodity for two years, therefore
it will be unnecessary to describe how readily we made a purchase,
nibbling by the way at such a luxury[513].’ Northern or Pyrenean Spain
is a very different country from the dusty wind-swept central
plateaux: above all the lack of water, which is the curse of Castile,
ceased at last to be the bane of marching columns.
After crossing the Ebro on the 14th Graham’s column made
another four-league march on the 15th to the large town of
Villarcayo, while the Galicians got to Soncillo on the main road from
Santander to Burgos; thus Wellington was certain of the new naval
base to which he had bid the Corunna transports sail only five days
before. Hill’s troops, who had a longer march during the last two
days than the other columns, were not so far forward, but nearing
the river had occupied the heights on the southern side of the
Puente de Arenas. The three columns forming the Anglo-Portuguese
army were, as a glance at the map shows, in close touch with each
other, and in a position where the whole 80,000 men could be
concentrated by a single march. Undoubtedly the most surprising
features of the advance is that Wellington’s commissariat was able to
feed such a mass of troops in such a limited area, after they had left
the plains of Castile and plunged into the thinly inhabited mountains.
The local supplies obtainable must have been very limited. Several
diarists speak of biscuit being short[514], though meat was not. But
somehow or other the commissaries generally contrived to find more
or less food for the army—the well-organized mule trains were not
far behind the infantry columns, and the long and difficult movement
was never checked—as earlier marches had been in 1809 and
1811[515]—by the mere question of provisions, though many brigades
got but scanty meals.
 SECTION XXXVI: CHAPTER VI
WELLINGTON ON THE EBRO.
JUNE 15-20,1813

After evacuating Burgos the French army had retired, at a rather

leisurely rate, down the high road which leads by Briviesca and the
defile of Pancorbo to the valley of the Ebro. The rearguard, as we
have seen, had left Burgos on the morning of the 13th, and halted
for great part of the day at Gamonal, a few miles east of the city, on
the spot where Napoleon had won his easy victory over the Conde
de Belveder on November 10, 1808. It was only followed by Spanish
irregular horse—some of Julian Sanchez’s ubiquitous lancers. Head-
quarters that night and the next (June 14) were at Briviesca, and
remained there for forty-eight hours: on the 15th they were moved
on to Pancorbo, an admirable position with a high-lying fort in the
centre, while the road is flanked for miles by steep slopes, on which
an advantageous rearguard action might have been fought. But no
pursuing enemy came in sight: this fact began to worry the French
Head-quarters Staff. ‘What could have become of Lord Wellington?
The French Army, in full retreat, was permitted to move leisurely
along the great route, without being harassed or urged forward, not
a carriage of any description being lost. It appeared inexplicable[516].’
The French retreat was leisurely for two reasons—the first was that
King Joseph wished to gain time for the immense convoys lumbering
in front of him to reach Miranda and Vittoria without being hustled.
The second was that he thought that every day gained gave more
time for Clausel to come up: at the slow rate at which he was
proceeding he might almost hope to find the missing divisions of the
Army of Portugal converging on Miranda, at the moment when he
should arrive there himself. The Council of War at Burgos had
decided that Wellington must inevitably pursue by the great
chaussée. The routes from the Burgos region to the upper Ebro had
been reported both by French officers who claimed to know the
country, and by local Afrancesados, as presenting insuperable
difficulties to a large army. There was, it is true, the high road
Burgos-Santander by Santijanez, Pedrosa, and Reynosa—but this led
north-west in an eccentric direction, not towards Miranda or Vittoria.
That the danger lay on the rough mountain ways a little farther east,
which fall down to San Martin and Puente de Arenas, seems not to
have been suspected. Yet it was disquieting to find no pursuit in
progress: could the Allied Army possibly have been forced to halt at
Burgos for want of supplies?
On the 16th the French army descended from the defile of
Pancorbo to the Ebro, and proceeded to distribute itself in the region
round Miranda, in cantonments which permitted of rapid
concentration when it should become necessary. Nothing was yet to
be heard of Clausel—but on the other hand Lamartinière’s division
was again picked up—it handed over the duty of escorting the
convoys toward Vittoria to Joseph’s Spanish contingent, the small
division of Casapalacios. Sarrut’s division also came in from Biscay,
and reported that it had been lately in touch with Foy, who was
successfully hunting the local guerrilleros in the coast-land. But
neither Foy himself, nor the troops of the Army of the North which
had been co-operating with him of late, were anywhere near.
Strange as it may appear, that very capable officer had wholly failed
to understand the general situation: though apprised ere now of the
evacuation of Madrid and Valladolid, he had nothing in his mind save
his wholly secondary operations against the Biscay bands. His
dispatches of this period show him occupied entirely with the safety
of Bilbao, and the necessity for guarding the high road from Bergara
and Tolosa to France. There were 20,000 troops in Biscay, but they
were entirely dispersed on petty expeditions and convoy work. On
June 19, when he got from head-quarters the first dispatch that
caused him to think of concentrating and joining the main army, Foy
had only one battalion with him at the moment at Bergara. A column
of 1,000 men was moving to reinforce the garrison of Bilbao, a
brigade was at Villafranca escorting towards France the large body
of prisoners whom he had captured in his recent operations—
another brigade was waiting on the road between Vittoria and
Mondragon, to pick up a large convoy which, as he had been
warned, would be coming up the Royal Road and would require to
be protected as far as San Sebastian. He was making efforts to send
provisions by sea to Bilbao and Castro-Urdiales—a task in which he
was being worried by British cruisers off the coast—and was
preparing to go to Bilbao himself[517].
No doubt the main blame for this untimely dispersion of forces
lay with General Head-Quarters. Jourdan and Joseph ought to have
sent orders to Foy, after the evacuation of Madrid, ordering him to
cease all secondary operations, to leave minimum garrisons at a few
essential points, abandon all the rest, and collect as strong a field-
force as possible, with which to join the main army. But they had
written to the minister at Paris suggesting such moves, instead of
dispatching direct orders to that effect to the general himself. Foy
had been sent information, not orders, and had failed to realize the
full meaning of the information—absorbed as he was in his own
particular Biscayan problems. Events were marching very quickly: it
was hard to realize that Wellington, who had been on the Esla on
May 31, would have been across the upper Ebro with 70,000 men on
June 15. It had taken little more than a fortnight for him to overrun
half of Northern Spain. The fact remained that of all the French
troops operating in Biscay in June, only Sarrut’s division, from
Orduña, joined the King in time for the battle of Vittoria. Yet Foy had
under his orders not only his own division but the Italian brigade of
St. Pol, and the mobile brigade of Berlier from the Army of the
North, in addition to 10,000 men of the garrisons of the various
posts and fortresses of the North and the littoral. And he had no
enemy save the great partisan Longa in the western mountains, and
the scattered remains of the local insurgents under El Pastor and
others, whom he had defeated in April and May, and whom he was
at present harrying from hill to coast and from coast to hill. We are
once more forced to remember that the French armies in Spain were
armies of occupation as well as armies of operation, and that one of
their functions was often fatal to the other.
But to return to the moment when the King’s army came back to
the Ebro. Head-quarters were, of course, established at Miranda,
where the royal Guard served as their escort. The Army of the South
sent three divisions across to the north bank of the river; they were
cantoned on the lower Zadorra about Arminion; but Gazan kept
three brigades on the south bank as a rearguard for the present, but
(as the King hoped) to form a vanguard for a counter-advance, if
only Clausel should come up soon, and an offensive campaign
become possible. A small observing force was left at Pancorbo, into
whose castle a garrison was thrown. Cavalry exploring parties,
pushed out from this point, sought for Wellington’s approaching
columns as far as Poza de la Sal on the right, Briviesca on the high
road, and Cerezo on the left; but to no effect. They came in touch
with nothing but detachments of Julian Sanchez’s Lancers. D’Erlon,
with the Army of the Centre, went ten miles down the Ebro to Haro:
he had now recovered his missing division, Darmagnac’s, which had
been lent to Reille for the last two months. For the Army of Portugal
having now three infantry divisions collected—Maucune’s, Sarrut’s,
and Lamartinière’s—was ordered to give back the borrowed unit to
its proper commander. Reille took the right of the Ebro position,
having Maucune’s division at Frias, Sarrut’s at Espejo, and
Lamartinière’s at the Puente Lara. He was ordered to use his cavalry
to search for signs of the enemy along the upper Ebro. The King had
thus an army which, by the junction of Sarrut and Lamartinière, had
risen to over 50,000 infantry and nearly 10,000 cavalry, concentrated
on a short front of 25 miles from Frias to Haro, covering the main
road to France by Vittoria, and also the side roads to Orduña and
Bilbao on the one flank, and Logroño and Saragossa on the other.
His retreat, though dispiriting, had not yet been costly—it is doubtful
whether he had lost 1,000 casualties in the operations of the last six
weeks. With the exception of the combats at Salamanca on May 26
and Morales on June 2, there had been no engagements of any
importance. The army was angry at the long-continued retreat; the
officers were criticizing the generalship of their commanders in the
most outspoken fashion, but there was no demoralization—the
troops were clamouring for a general action.
But on June 17, when the French armies settled down into their
new position, with no detected enemy in their neighbourhood, their
fate was already determined—the Ebro line had been turned before
it was even taken up. For on this same day Wellington had not only
got his whole army north of the Ebro, but was marching rapidly
eastward, by the mountain roads twenty miles north of the river, into
the rear of Reille’s cantonments. Of all his troops only Julian Sanchez
and Carlos de España’s infantry division were left in Castile.
The movements of the Allied Army on the 15th-16th-17th June
had been carried out with surprising celerity. The Galician infantry,
who had crossed the river first, at Rocamonde, the bridge highest up
on its course, on the 13th were hurrying northward, by cross roads
not marked on the map, and obviously impracticable for guns, to
Soncillo (15th), Quintanilla de Pienza (16th), Villasana (17th), and
Valmaseda in Biscay (18th). When they had reached the last-named
town they were threatening Bilbao, and almost at its gates. This was
the great demonstration, intended to throw confusion among all the
French detachments on the northern coast. Several of the stages
exceeded thirty miles in the day.
Meanwhile the three great columns of the Anglo-Portuguese
army were executing a turning movement almost as wide as that of
Giron’s Galicians. Converging from different bridges of the Ebro—
Rocamonde (where some of Graham’s cavalry passed), San Martin
de Lines (where the bulk of Graham’s force debouched northward on
the 14th), and Puente Arenas (used by the Head-quarters column on
the 15th and by Hill’s column on the 16th[518])—the whole army
came in by successive masses on to the two neighbouring towns of
Villarcayo and Medina de Pomar. At the latter place Longa turned up
with his hard-marching Cantabrian division, and joined the army.
These considerable towns are the road-centres of the whole rugged
district between the Ebro and the Cantabrian mountains. From them
fork out the very few decent roads which exist in the land—those
northward over the great sierras to Santander, Santoña, and
Valmaseda-Bilbao: those eastward across their foot-hills to Orduña-
Vittoria and to Frias-Miranda. These five roads are the only ones
practicable for artillery and transport: there are, however, minor
tracks which can take infantry in good summer weather.
From his head-quarters at Quintana, near the bridge of Puente
Arenas, Wellington dictated on the 15th the marching orders which
governed the next stage of the campaign. With the exception of the
Galicians, already starting on their circular sweep towards Bilbao, all
his columns were directed to utilize the road parallel to the Ebro, but
twenty miles north of it, which runs from Medina de Pomar to Osma,
Orduña, and Vittoria. He deliberately avoided employing the other
high road, which runs closer to the river from Medina de Pomar to
Frias and Miranda, even for a side-column or a flying corps: only
cavalry scouts were sent along it. The reason why the whole army
was thrown on to a single road—a thing generally to be avoided,
especially when time is precious—was partly that the appearance of
British troops before Frias, where the enemy was known to have a
detachment, would give him early warning of the move. But the
more important object was to strike at the French line of
communication with Bayonne as far behind the known position of
King Joseph’s army as possible. If the line Frias-Miranda had been
chosen, the enemy would have had many miles less to march, when
once the alarm was given, if he wished to cover his proper line of
retreat. If a fight was coming, it had better be at or about Vittoria,
rather than at or about Miranda. Moreover, the high road, for a few
miles east of Frias, passes to the south bank of the Ebro, which it
recrosses at the Puente Lara—there is only a bad track north of the
river from Frias to that bridge. It would be absurd to direct any part
of the army to cross and recross the Ebro at passages which might
be defended.
So the whole force was committed to the Medina-Osma road,
except that the infantry occasionally took cross-cuts by local tracks,
in order to leave the all-important main line, as far as possible, to
the guns and transport. The three corps in which the army had
marched from the Pisuerga fell in behind each other, in the order in
which they had crossed the Ebro—Graham leading—the Head-
Quarters column following—Hill bringing up the rear. Longa’s
Cantabrians went on as a sort of flying vanguard in front of Graham,
not being burdened with artillery[519]. The road was one which could
only have been used for such a large force in summer—it hugged
the foot-hills of the Cantabrian sierras, crossing successively the
head-waters of several small rivers running south to the Ebro, each
in its own valley. The country was thinly peopled and bare, so that
little food could be got to supplement the mule-borne rations. For
this reason, as also with the object of granting the French as little
time as possible after the first alarm should be given, the pace had
to be forced. The marches were long: on the 15th the head of
Graham’s infantry was at Villarcayo: on the 16th at La Cerca (five
miles beyond Medina de Pomar): on the 17th at the mountain
villages of San Martin de Loza and Lastres de Teza: on the 18th it
was due at Osma and at Berberena—a few miles up the Osma-
Orduña road. The Head-Quarters column having no exploration to
do, since the way was reported clear in front, covered the same
distance in three marches instead of four, and was expected to reach
the neighbourhood of Osma on the 18th. Hill’s column had also to
hurry—its leading division was on that same day expected to be at
Venta de Membligo, a posting station six miles short of Osma, so
that its head would be just behind the tail of the preceding corps.
But Hill’s rear would be strung out for many miles behind. However,
all the fighting army was again in one mass—with a single exception.
Wellington had ordered the 6th division, commanded temporarily by
his own brother-in-law Pakenham, to halt at Medina de Pomar. The
reason which he gives in his dispatch[520] for depriving himself, now
that the day of crisis was at hand, of a good division of 7,000 men,
is that he left it ‘to cover the march of our magazines and stores.’
This is almost as puzzling a business as his leaving of Colville’s corps
at Hal on the day of the battle of Waterloo—the only similar incident
in the long record of his campaigns. If this was his sole reason, why
should not a smaller unit—Pack’s or Bradford’s independent brigade
—or both of them—have been left behind? For that purpose such a
force would have sufficed. We are not informed that the 6th Division
was more afflicted with sickness than any other, or that it was more
way-worn. The only supposition that suggests itself is that
Wellington may have considered the possibility of Giron’s raid into
Biscay failing, and bringing down on his rear some unsuspected
mass of French troops from Bilbao. If this idea entered his head, he
may easily have thought it worth while to leave behind a solid
reserve, on which Giron might fall back, and so to cover the rear of
his main army while he was striking at the great road to France. But
it must be confessed that this is a mere hypothesis, and that the
detachment of Pakenham’s division seems inexplicable from the
information before us. It was ordered to follow when the whole of
the transport should be clear, if no further developments had
happened to complicate the situation. Carrying out this direction
literally, Pakenham waited three days at Medina de Pomar, and so
only got to the front twenty-four hours after the battle of Vittoria.[521]
The orders which Wellington issued upon the 17th[522] brought
the head of his columns into touch with the enemy. They directed
that Graham, with the 1st and 5th Division, Pack and Bradford,
should move past Osma on to Orduña, by the two alternative routes
available between those places, while the Head-Quarters column
should not turn north toward Orduña on reaching Osma, but pursue
the roads south-eastward by Espejo and Carcamo, which lead to
Vittoria by a more southerly line. The result contemplated was very
much that which was worked out in the battle of the 21st—a frontal
attack by the main body, with an outflanking move by Graham’s
corps, which would bring it into the rear of the enemy. But the route
via Orduña was not the one which the northern column was actually
destined to take, as the events of the 18th distracted it into a
shorter but rougher road to the same destination (Murguia), which it
would have reached by a much longer turn on the high road via
Orduña.
But all the columns were not moving on the main track from
Medina de Pomar to Osma this day, for Wellington had directed the
Light Division to drop its artillery to the care of the 4th Division, and
cut across the hills south of the high road, by a country path which
goes by La Boveda, San Millan, and Villanan to a point, a few miles
south of Osma, in the same valley of the Omecillo in which that town
lies. And Hill, still far to the rear, was told to detach two brigades of
the 2nd Division, and send them to follow the Light Division along
the same line: if Alten should send back word that the route was
practicable for guns, Hill was to attach his Portuguese field battery to
this advance-column.
It was, apparently, on the morning of the 17th June only that the
French got definite indications of the direction in which the British
army might be looked for. Maucune reported from Frias, not long
after his arrival there, that hostile cavalry were across the Ebro in
the direction of Puente Arenas, and that other troops in uncertain
strength were behind them. It was clearly necessary to take new
measures, in view of the fact that the enemy was beyond the Ebro,
in a place where he had not been expected. How much did the move
imply? After consideration Joseph and Jourdan concluded, quite
correctly, that since the main body of Wellington’s army had been
invisible for so many days—it had last been seen on the Hormaza on
June 12th—it was probably continuing its old policy of circular
marches to turn the French right. This was correct, but they credited
Wellington with intending to get round them not by the shorter
routes Osma-Vittoria, but by the much longer route by Valmaseda
and Bilbao, which would cut into the high road to France at Bergara,
far behind Vittoria.
With this idea in their heads the King and the Marshal issued
orders of a lamentably unpractical scope, considering the position
occupied by Wellington’s leading divisions on June 17th. Reille was
ordered to collect his three infantry divisions at Osma, and to hurry
across the mountains by Valmaseda, to cover Bilbao from the west,
by taking up a position somewhere about Miravalles. He would find
the Biscayan capital already held by St. Pol’s Italians, and Rouget’s
brigade of the Army of the North. Foy, who was believed to be at
Tolosa, was instructed to bring up his division to the same point.
Thus a force of some 25,000 men would be collected at Bilbao.
Meanwhile Reille’s original positions at Frias and the Puente Lara
would be taken over by Gazan, who would march up the Ebro from
Arminion with two divisions of infantry and one of cavalry, to watch
the north bank of the Ebro. ‘These dispositions,’ remarks Jourdan,
‘were intended to retard the advance of the enemy in this
mountainous region, and so to gain time for the arrival of the
reinforcements we were expecting [i.e. Clausel]. But it was too late!
[523]
’
No worse orders could have been given. If Wellington had struck
twenty-four hours later than he did, and Reille had been able to
carry out his first day’s appointed move, and to get forward towards
Bilbao, the result would have been to split the French army in two,
with the main range of the Cantabrian sierras between them: since
Reille and Foy would have joined at Bilbao—three days’ forced
marches away from the King. Meanwhile Joseph, deprived of the
whole Army of Portugal, would have had Wellington striking in on his
flank by Osma, and would have been forced to fight something
resembling the battle of Vittoria with 10,000 men less in hand than
he actually owned on June 21. Either he would have suffered an
even worse defeat than was his lot at Vittoria, or he would have
been compelled to retreat without fighting, down the Ebro, or
towards Pampeluna. In either case he would have lost the line of
communication with France; and while he was driven far east, Foy
and Reille would have had to hurry back on Bayonne, with some risk
of being intercepted and cut off on the way.
As a matter of fact, Reille was checked and turned back upon the
first day of his northward march. He had sent orders to Maucune to
join him from Frias, either by the road along the Ebro by Puente
Lara, or by the mountain track which goes directly from Frias to
Espejo. Then, without waiting for Maucune, he started from Espejo
to march on Osma. He had gone only a few miles when he
discovered a British column debouching on Osma, by the road from
Berberena[524] and the north-west, which he had been intending to
take himself. Seeing his path blocked, but being loth to give way
before what might be no more than a detachment, he drew up his
two divisions on the hillside a mile south of Osma and appeared
ready to offer battle. Moreover, he was expecting the arrival of
Maucune, and judged that if he made off without delaying the
enemy in front of him, the column from Frias might be intercepted
and encircled.
 The troops which Reille had met were Graham’s main column—
the 1st and 5th divisions with Bradford’s Portuguese and Anson’s
Light Dragoons, on their march towards Orduña. Graham prepared
to attack, sent forward the German Legion light battalions of the 1st
Division, and pushed out Norman Ramsay’s horse artillery, with a
cavalry escort, to the right of Osma, forming the rest of his force for
a general advance across the Bilbao road. After estimating the
strength of the British, Reille appeared at first inclined to fight, or at
least to show an intention of fighting. But a new enemy suddenly
came up—the 4th Division appeared on a side road, descending
from the hills on the right of Graham’s line. It had just time to throw
out its light companies to skirmish[525] when Reille, seeing himself
obviously outnumbered and outflanked, retreated hastily on Espejo;
the 5th Division followed him on the left, with some tiraillade, the
4th Division on the right, but he was not caught. ‘Considerable fire
on both sides but little done,’ remarked an observer on the
hillside[526]. Reille’s loss was probably about 120 men, nearly all in
Sarrut’s division[527]: that of the British some 50 or 60.
Meanwhile there had been a much more lively fight, with heavier
casualties, a few miles farther south among the mountains nearer
the Ebro. Maucune had started before dawn from Frias, intending to
join Reille by a short cut through the hills, instead of sticking to the
better road along the river-bank by the Puente Lara. He only sent his
guns with a cavalry escort by that route. He was marching with his
two brigades at a considerable distance from each other, the rear
one being hampered by the charge of the divisional transport and
baggage.
The leading brigade had reached the hamlet of San Millan and
was resting there by a brook, when British cavalry scouts came in
upon them—these were German Legion Hussars, at the head of the
Light Division, which Wellington had sent by the cross-path over the
hills by La Boveda. The approaching column had been marching
along a narrow road, shrouded by overhanging rocks and high
banks, in which it could neither see nor be seen. On getting the
alarm the four French battalions formed up to fight, in the small
open space about the village, while the head of the British column,
Vandeleur’s brigade, deployed as fast as it could opposite them, and
attacked; the 2/95th and 3rd Caçadores in front line, the 52nd in
support. Maucune was forced to make a stand, because his rear
brigade was coming up, unseen by his enemies, and would have
been cut off from him if he had retreated at once. But when the
head of Kempt’s brigade of the Light Division appeared, and began
to deploy to the left of Vandeleur’s, he saw that he was
outnumbered, and gave ground perforce. He had been driven
through the village, and was making off along the road, with the
Rifle battalions in hot pursuit, when his second brigade, with the
baggage in its rear, came on the scene—most unexpected by the
British, for the track by which it emerged issued out between two
perpendicular rocks and had not been noticed. Perceiving the trap
into which they had fallen, the belated French turned off the road,
and made for the hillside to their right, while Kempt’s brigade started
in pursuit, scrambling over the rocky slopes to catch them up. The
line of flight of the French took them past the ground over which
Vandeleur’s men were chasing their comrades of the leading
brigade, and the odd result followed that they came in upon the rear
of the 52nd, and, though pursued, seemed to be themselves
pursuing. The Oxfordshire battalion thereupon performed the
extraordinary feat of bringing up its left shoulder, forming line facing
to the rear at a run, and charging backward. They encountered the
enemy at the top of a slope, but the French, seeing themselves
between two fires, for Kempt’s men were following hotly behind
them, avoided the collision, struck off diagonally, and scattering and
throwing away their packs went off in disorder eastward, still
keeping up a running fight. The large majority escaped, and joined
Gazan’s troops at Miranda. Meanwhile the first brigade, pursued by
the Rifles and Caçadores, got away in much better order, and
reached Reille’s main body at Espejo. The transport which had come
out of the narrow road too late to follow the regiments, was
captured whole, after a desperate resistance by the baggage-guard.
Maucune got off easily, all things considered, with the loss of three
hundred prisoners, many of them wounded, and all his
impedimenta[528]. The fight was no discredit to the general or to his
men, who saved themselves by presence of mind, when caught at
every disadvantage—inferior troops would have laid down their arms
en masse when they found themselves between two fires in rough
and unknown ground[529]. The total British loss in the two
simultaneous combats of Osma and San Millan was 27 killed and 153
wounded.
Reille, having picked up Maucune’s first brigade at Espejo,
continued his retreat, and got behind the Bayas river at Subijana
that night. The report which he had to send to head-quarters upset
all the plans of Jourdan and the King, and forced them to reconsider
their position, which was obviously most uncomfortable, as their line
of defence along the Ebro was taken in flank, and the proposed
succour to Bilbao made impossible. At least four British divisions had
been detected by Reille, but where were the rest, and where were
the Spaniards, who were known to be in some strength with
Wellington? Was the whole Allied host behind the force which had
driven in the Army of Portugal, or was there some great unseen
column executing some further inscrutable movement?
There was hot discussion at Miranda that night. Reille repeated
the proposition which had already been made at Burgos six days
back, that in consideration of the fact that the army was hopelessly
outflanked, and that its retreat by the high road to Vittoria and
Bayonne was threatened by the presence of Wellington on the
Bayas, it should abandon that line of communication altogether,
march down the Ebro, and take up the line of Pampeluna and
Saragossa, rallying Clausel and, if possible, Suchet, for a general
concentration, by which the British army could be driven back as it
had been from Burgos in 1812. Foy and the Biscay garrisons would
have to take care of themselves—it was unlikely that Wellington
would be able to fall upon them, when the whole of the rest of the
French armies of Spain were on his flank, and taking the offensive
against him.
Joseph, for the third time, refused to consider this scheme,
alleging, as before, the Emperor’s strict orders to keep to the
Bayonne base, and to hold on to the great royal chaussée. But, as is
clear, his refusal was affected by another consideration which in his
eyes had almost equally decisive weight. Vittoria was crammed with
the great convoys of French and Spanish refugees which had
accumulated there, along with all the plunder of Madrid, and the
military material representing the ‘grand train’ of the whole army of
Spain—not to speak of his own immense private baggage. There had
also arrived, within the last few days, a large consignment of hard
cash—the belated arrears of the allowance which the Emperor had
consented to give to the Army of Spain. One of Foy’s brigades had
escorted these fourgons of treasure to Vittoria, and dropped them
there, returning to Bergara with a section of the refugees in charge,
to be passed on to Bayonne.[530] The amount delivered was not less
than five million francs—bitterly needed by the troops, who were in
long arrears. All this accumulation at Vittoria was in large measure
due to the King’s reluctance during the retreat to order a general
shift of all his officials and impedimenta over the border into France.
As long as his ministers, and all the plant of royalty, remained on the
south side of the Pyrenees, he still seemed a king. And he had
hoped to maintain himself first on the Douro, then about Burgos,
then on the Ebro. It was only when this last line was forced that he
made up his mind to surrender his theoretical status, and think of
military considerations alone. The lateness of his decision was to
prove most fatal to his adherents.
Having resolved to order a general retreat on Vittoria, Joseph and
Jourdan took such precautions as seemed possible. Reiterated
orders for haste were sent to Foy and Clausel: the latter was told to
march on Vittoria not on Miranda. Unfortunately he had received the
dispatch sent from Burgos on June 15th, which gave him Miranda as
the concentration-point, and had already gathered his divisions at
Pampeluna on June 18, and started to march by Estella and Logroño
and along the north bank of the Ebro. This gave him two sides of a
triangle to cover, while if he had been assigned the route
Pampeluna-Salvatierra-Vittoria, he would have been saved eighty
miles of road. But on June 9th, when the original orders were
issued, no one could have foreseen, save Wellington, that the critical
day of the campaign would have found the French army far north of
the Ebro. And the new dispatch, sent off on the night of the 18th-
19th, started far too late to reach Pampeluna in time to stop
Clausel’s departure southward. Indeed, it did not catch him up till
the battle of Vittoria had been fought, and the King was a fugitive on
the way to France. Foy received orders a little earlier, though not
apparently those sent directly by the King, but a copy of a dispatch
to Thouvenot, governor of Vittoria, in which the latter was instructed
‘that if General Foy and his division are in your neighbourhood, you
are to bid him give up his march on Bilbao, and draw in towards
Vittoria, unless his presence is absolutely necessary at the point
where he may be at present[531].’ This unhappy piece of wording
gave Foy a choice, which he interpreted as authorizing him to
remain at Bergara, so as to cover the high road to France, a task
which he held to be ‘absolutely necessary.’
As to the troops already on the spot, Reille was ordered to
defend the line of the Bayas river, until the armies of the South and
Centre should have had time to get past his rear and reach Vittoria.
Gazan was ordered to collect the whole of the Army of the South at
Arminion, behind Miranda, drawing in at once the considerable
detachment which he had left beyond the Ebro. In this position he
was to wait till D’Erlon, with the Army of the Centre, who had to
move up from Haro, ten miles to the south, should have arrived and
have got on to the great chaussée. He was then to follow him,
acting as rearguard of the whole force. Between Arminion and
Vittoria the road passes for two miles through the very narrow defile
of Puebla, the bottle-neck through which the Zadorra river cuts its
way from the upland plain of Vittoria to the lower level of the Ebro
valley.
D’Erlon, starting at dawn from Haro, reached Arminion at 10
o’clock in the morning of the 19th, and pushed up the defile: the
head of his column was just emerging from its northern end when a
heavy cannonade began to be heard in the west. It continued all the
time that the Army of the South was pressing up the defile, and
grew nearer. This, of course, marked the approach of Wellington,
driving the covering force under Reille before him toward the
Zadorra. The British commander-in-chief had slept the night at
Berberena near Osma, and had there drafted a set of orders which
considerably modified his original scheme: probably the change was
due to topographical information, newly garnered up from the
countryside. Instead of sending Graham’s column via Orduña, to cut
in on the flank of the chaussée behind Vittoria, he had resolved to
send it by a shorter route, a mere country road which goes by Luna,
Santa Eulalia, and Jocano to Murguia—the village which it had been
ordered on the previous day to reach via Orduña and the high road.
Presumably it had been discovered that this would save time,—the
advantage of using a first-rate track being more than
counterbalanced by the fact that the Orduña road was not only ten
miles longer but crossed and recrossed by steep slopes the main
sierra, which forms the watershed between Biscay and Alava. Or
possibly it was only the discovery that the Luna-Jocano route could
be taken by artillery that settled the matter: if it had been reported
useless for wheeled traffic the old orders might have stood. At any
rate, the turning movement, which was to take Graham into the rear
of Vittoria, was made south of the main mountain chain, and not
north of it[532].
Meanwhile, though Graham diverged north-eastward, the rest of
the Army moved straight forward from the valley of the Omecillo to
that of the Bayas in four columns, all parallel to each other, and all
moving by country roads. The 3rd Division was ordered from
Berberena to Carcamo—the 7th followed behind it. The 4th Division
with D’Urban’s cavalry in front, and the Light Division with V. Alten’s
hussars in front, were directed on Subijana and Pobes, keeping in
close and constant communication with each other. Behind them
came the cavalry reserve—R. Hill’s, Grant’s, and Ponsonby’s brigades
—also the heavy artillery. Hill’s column, which had now come up into
touch with the leading divisions, kept to the high road from Osma
and Espejo towards the Puente Lara and the Ebro. But only cavalry
reconnaissances went as far as the river—the mass of the corps
turned off eastward when it had passed Espejo, and moved by
Salinas de Añana, so as to come out into the valley of the Bayas
south of the route of the Light Division. It thus became the right
wing of the army which was deploying for the frontal attack.
 It has been mentioned above that a local Spanish force from the
Cantabrian mountains had joined Wellington at Medina de Pomar;
this was the so-called ‘division’, some 3,500 bayonets, of the great
guerrillero of the coast-land, Longa, now no more an irregular but a
titular colonel, while his partida had been reorganized as four
battalions of light infantry. Longa was a tough and persistent fighter
—a case of the ‘survival of the fittest’ among many insurgent chiefs
who had perished. His men were veteran mountaineers,
indefatigable marchers, and skilled skirmishers, if rudimentary in
their drill and equipment. Wellington during the ensuing campaign
gave more work to them than to any other Spanish troops that were
at his disposal—save the Estremaduran division of Morillo, old
comrades of Hill’s corps, to which they had always been attached
since 1811. The use which Wellington now made of Longa’s men
was to employ them as a light covering shield for Graham’s turning
force. They had been sent across the hills from Quincoces[533] on the
17th to occupy Orduña—from thence they descended on the 19th on
to Murguia, thus placing themselves at the head of the turning
column. The object of the arrangement was that, if the enemy
should detect the column, he would imagine it to be a Spanish
demonstration, and not suspect that a heavy British force lay hid
behind the familiar guerrilleros. While Longa was thus brought in
sideways, to form the head of Graham’s column, the other Spanish
force which Wellington was employing was also deflected to join the
main army. Giron’s Galicians, as has been mentioned above, had
been sent by a long sweep through the sierras to demonstrate
against Bilbao. They had reached Valmaseda on the 18th, and their
approach had alarmed all the French garrisons of Biscay. Now,
having put themselves in evidence in the north, they were suddenly
recalled, ordered to march by Amurrio on Orduña and Murguia, and
so to fall into the rear of Graham’s column. The distances were
considerable, the roads steep, and Giron only came up with the
Anglo-Portuguese army on the afternoon of the battle of Vittoria, in
which (unlike Longa) he was too late to take any part. Somewhere
on his march from Aguilar to Valmaseda he picked up a
reinforcement, the very small Asturian division of Porlier—three
battalions or 2,400 men—which Mendizabal had sent to join him
from the blockade of Santoña. This raised the Galician Army to a
total of some 14,000 bayonets.
The 19th June was a very critical day, as no one knew better
than Wellington. The problem was whether, starting with the heads
of his column facing the line of the Bayas, where Reille had rallied
his three divisions and was standing at bay, he could drive in the
detaining force, and cross the Zadorra in pursuit of it, fast enough to
surprise some part of the French army still in its march up from the
south. And, as an equally important problem, there was the question
whether Graham, marching on Murguia, could reach the upper
Zadorra and cut the great road north of Vittoria, before the French
were in position to cover it. If these operations could be carried out,
there would be a scrambling fight scattered over much ground,
rather than a regular pitched battle. If they could not, there would
be a formal general action on the 20th or 21st against an enemy
established in position—unless indeed King Joseph should choose to
continue his retreat without fighting, which Wellington thought quite
possible[534].
Wellington is censured by some critics, including Napier[535], for
not making a swifter advance on the 19th. It is said that a little more
haste would have enabled him to get to Vittoria as soon as the
enemy, and to force him to fight in dislocated disorder on ground
which he had not chosen. This seems unjustifiable. The distance
between the camps of the Allied Army, in front of Osma and Espejo,
and Vittoria is some twenty miles—difficult ground, with the Bayas
river flowing through the midst of it and a formidable position held
by 15,000 French behind that stream. As Reille, conscious how much
depended on his gaining time for the King to retreat from Miranda,
was determined to detain the Allied Army as long as he could, it
would have been useless to try to drive him away by a light attack.
The rear of each of Wellington’s columns was trailing many miles
behind the leading brigade. It was necessary to bring up against
Reille a force sufficient to make serious resistance impossible, and
this Wellington did, pushing forward not only the 4th and Light
Divisions, but Hill’s column in support, on the southern flank. It took
time to get them deployed, and the attack was opened by a
cannonade. By the time that a general advance was ordered Reille
had begun to retire—he did so very neatly, and crossed the Zadorra
by the four nearest bridges without any appreciable loss. By this
time the afternoon had arrived, the rest of the French army had
passed the defile of Puebla, and Wellington judged the hour too late
for the commencement of a pitched battle[536]. Moreover, he did not
intend to fight without the co-operation of Graham’s column, and the
latter was not where he would have wished it to be. The day had
been very rainy, the cross roads were bad, and by some error of
staff-work the head of the column had not received the
countermarching orders directing it to march direct on Murguia, but
had started in accordance with the earlier plan on to the Orduña
road; the 1st and 5th Divisions had gone some way upon it before
they were recalled and counter-marched into the right path[537].
Owing to blocks and bad weather they only reached Jocano, some
six or eight miles east of Osma, by six in the evening. Murguia was
still nine miles ahead, the rain was still falling in torrents, and
Graham ordered the divisions to halt and encamp for the night. The
fate of the campaign was not to be fought out that day, nor on the
next, but on the third morning—that of June 21st, 1813.
 SECTION XXXVI: CHAPTER VII
THE BATTLE OF VITTORIA. JUNE 21, 1813
(A) The First Stage

The plain of Vittoria, into which the French army debouched on

the afternoon of June 19th, is a plain only by comparison with the
high hills which surround it on all sides, being an oval expanse of
rolling ground drained by the swift and narrow Zadorra river, which
runs on its north-eastern side. Only in its northern section, near the
city, does it show really flat ground. It is about twelve miles long
from north-east to south-west, and varies from six to eight miles in
breadth. The Zadorra is one of those mountain streams which twist
in numberless loops and bends of alternate shallows and deep pools,
in order to get round rocks or spurs which stand in the way of their
direct course[538]. At one point seven miles down-stream from
Vittoria it indulges in a complete ‘hairpin-bend’ in which are the
bridges of Tres Puentes and Villodas, as it circles round a precipitous
knoll. At several other spots it executes minor loops in its tortuous
course. The little city of Vittoria stands on an isolated rising ground
at its northern end, very visible from all directions, and dominating
the whole upland with two prominent church spires at its highest
point. The great road from France enters the plain of Vittoria and the
valley of the Zadorra three miles north-east of the city, descending
from the defile of Salinas, a long and difficult pass in which Mina and
other guerrilleros had executed some of their most daring raids on
French convoys. After passing Vittoria the road keeps to the middle
of the upland in a westerly direction, and issues from it by the defile
of La Puebla, where the Zadorra cuts its way through the Sierra de
Andia in order to join the Ebro. There is not much more than room
for road and river in the gorge, which is dominated by the heights of
La Puebla, a spur of the Andia, on the east, and by a corresponding
but lower range, the end of the heights of Morillas on the west.
But the Bayonne chaussée is by no means the only road in the
Vittoria upland. The city is the meeting point of a number of second-
class and third-class routes, debouching from various subsidiary
valleys of the Pyrenees and leading to various towns in Navarre or
Biscay. Of these the chief were (1) the Salvatierra-Pampeluna road,
running due east, and then crossing from the valley of the Zadorra
to the upper waters of the Araquil, by which it descends into
Navarre. This was a route practicable for artillery or transport, but
narrow, ill repaired, and steep—eminently not a line to be taken by a
large force in a hurry; (2) the main road to Bilbao by Villareal and
Durango, a coach road, but very tortuous, and ascending high
mountains by long curves and twists; (3) the alternative coach route
to Bilbao by Murguia and Orduña, easier than the Villareal road in its
first section, but forced to cross the main chain of the Pyrenees by
difficult gradients before descending into Biscay; (4) a bad side road
to the central Ebro, going due south by Trevino and La Guardia to
Logroño; (5) a similar route, running due east from Subijana on the
Bayas to the bridges of Nanclares three miles up-stream from the
defile of Puebla. At the opening of the battle of Vittoria Graham’s
column was already across the Murguia-Bilbao road, and in its
earliest advance blocked the Durango-Bilbao road also. Thus the
only route beside the great chaussée available for the French was
that to Salvatierra and Pampeluna. The road to Trevino and Logroño
was useless, as leading in an undesired direction.
In addition to these five coach roads there were several country
tracks running from various points on the Bayas river to minor
bridges on the Zadorra, across the lofty Monte Arrato, the watershed
between the two streams. It was these fifth-rate tracks which
Wellington used on the battle-day for the advance of some of his
central columns, while Hill on the right was forcing the defile of La
Puebla, and Graham on the left was descending from Murguia on to
the bridges of the upper Zadorra north-east of Vittoria.
 Having their troops safely concentrated east of the Zadorra on
the evening of June 19, Joseph and Jourdan made up their minds to
stand on the position behind that river, even though Clausel had not
yet come up, nor sent any intelligence as to the route by which he
was arriving. Aides-de-camp were searching for him in all directions
—but nothing had yet been ascertained, beyond the fact that he had
started from Pampeluna on June 15th, marching on Logroño[539].
There was a high chance that some one of many missives would
reach him, and turn him on to Vittoria. But the idea that Clausel
must now be very near at hand was less operative in compelling
Joseph to fight than the idea that he must at all cost save the vast
convoys accumulated around him, his treasure, his military train, his
ministers, and his refugees. He was getting them off northward by
the high road as fast as he could: one convoy marched on the 20th,
under the charge of the troops of the Army of the North who had
formed the garrison of Vittoria, another and a larger at dawn on the
21st, escorted by the whole of Maucune’s division. It had with it
many of the Old Masters stolen from the royal palace at Madrid—the
pictures of Titian, Rafael, and Velasquez, which had been the pride
of the old dynasty—with the pick of the royal armoury and cabinet of
Natural History[540]. It is almost as difficult to make out how Joseph,
already unequal in numbers to his enemy, dared to deprive himself
of Maucune’s division of the Army of Portugal, as to discover why
Wellington left the 6th Division at Medina de Pomar. It does not
seem that the morale of the unit had been shaken by its rude
experience at San Millan on the 18th, for it fought excellently in
subsequent operations: nor had it suffered any disabling losses in
that fight. A more obvious escort might have been found in
Casapalacios’ Spanish auxiliaries, who had already been utilized for
similar purposes between Madrid and Vittoria, or in the scraps of the
Army of the North which had lately joined the retreating host. But
they remained for the battle, while Maucune marched north, with
the cannon sounding behind him all day.
When Jourdan and Joseph first arrayed their host for the
expected battle, it would seem, from the line which they took up,
that they imagined that Wellington would attack them only from the