The rain, at last, had stopped, and the dawn of Monday, June 21st, 1813, brought a dazzling, blinding sun that lanced over the Pamplona valley, over the spires of Vitoria, and into the eyes of the few British horsemen who had climbed the hills to the west of the city.
They could see nothing of the French beneath them. The wide valley in which Vitoria stood was shrouded in mist, a mist that was thickened by the smoke of myriad camp-fires. The watching horsemen appeared to be alone in a wild, dazzling landscape.
The sky was brilliantly clear. The valleys were hidden by mist, and the east was filled with the searing glory of the rising sun, yet to north and south the British horsemen could see the successive ridges of the hills etched in startling clarity against a pale sky. After the days of rain and low cloud it seemed almost indecent to be fighting on such a day as this. Yet fight they must, for, by the will of Marshal Jourdan and General Wellington, one hundred and forty thousand men had come to this misted plain from which, like a strange island in a white sea, the spires of Vitoria’s cathedral jutted golden in the sun.
From the west, in the valleys that were mysterious with shredding mist and shadow, the British army marched. They were cold from the night and few men spoke or sang as they marched, waiting for the sun and the smell of powder to warm their spirits. In every Company the sibilant hiss of stone on steel could be heard. The sharpening stones were handed round and the men honed their bayonets as they marched and prayed they would not need to use them.
They had marched across the roof of Spain, coming from Portugal to this place where, like a knife put to a throat, they threatened the Great Road that was France’s lifeline in Spain. The men knew, because their officers had told them, that a battle was imminent. Some, who had stood in the battle-line before, tried not to think of what was to come while others, who had never before seen an enemy army, wondered if they would live to remember the sight. Some, remembering the long hard marches in the high inhospitable hills, feared defeat, for, if this army was broken today and forced to retreat, they would face days of being hunted in the high valleys by the long-bladed French horsemen.
Wellington, this day, commanded Spanish, Portuguese and British troops. With him, too, was the King’s German Legion. They marched towards the valley of Vitoria, and with them went their women and children who would wait at the field’s edge while their men fought. With the army, too, were sutlers and merchants, salesmen of patent medicines, friars and priests. There were whores, beggars, horse-thieves, and politicians, and, like a lumbering, ponderous beast, the whole great mass curled and heaved itself towards the valley, towards Vitoria and towards a fight.
The French were confident this day. Their enemies had an edge in numbers, it was true, but numbers were not all in warfare. The French had picked their battlefield, chosen where to stand, and they defended their chosen place with the greatest concentration of artillery that had ever been assembled in Spain.
To the north of their position was the River Zadorra, and to the south the Heights of Puebla, and the constriction of river and highland would force the British to a frontal attack in the valley that would bring them into the face of the great guns that, in this morning of drifting mist, looked like fearsome monsters in wait for jtheir victims.
The guns that gave the French such confidence were placed on a low north-south ridge called the Arinez Hill. The French high command, knowing that soldiers, above all humankind, are superstitious, had spread the story of the Arinez Hill, and the story, on this dawn of waiting, added to the French confidence. The hill was a place of ill-luck for the English.
Centuries before this dawn, on a day of searing heat, three hundred English knights, marauding for plunder, had been surrounded by a Spanish army on the Arinez Hill. The English had dared not take off their armour, for then they would have been meat for the Spanish crossbows, and so they fought, the day long, roasting like pigs, their tongues swelling with thirst, their eyes blinded with sweat, and time after time the Spanish came up the hill to be thrust down with the long, heavy swords or beaten back with the maces and clubs. The stolid clay of the hill was slick with blood and loud with the screams of horses and men.
The English refused to surrender. They fought till the last man was choking in his own blood, and the last banner was trampled in the gore. For the English, then, this hill was a place of ill-luck, and the French knew it.
There was even more cause for the French to hope, for the war’s tide was at last turning in France’s favour again. The Empire had reeled from the defeat in Russia, had waited in trepidation for news that the Russians and the Prussians were marching into northern France, but just two days since had come the glorious news. The Emperor had won his campaign.
The bells had been rung in Vitoria, bells that carried the message to all the troops bivouacking on the plain. The news followed the clamour, news of two battles, at Bautzen and Lutzen, battles that had repelled both the northern enemies who had now signed a truce. Soon, the news promised, Bonaparte would come south. Only the British were left in the field and Bonaparte would come down and drive them in ragged defeat from Spain and the tricolour would rule again from the straits of Gibraltar to the edge of the steppes.
The waiting French were confident. The river here was rich in bridges, some going back to the Romans who had built their own city on this plain, yet none of the bridges had been destroyed. Let the British cross them, the French reasoned, and that way the gunners would know where to fire and the redcoats would walk into the killing ground, and the blasting, tearing canister would make each bridge into a blood-soaked arch of masonry to drip red into the Zadorra.
Yet, if the French Engineers had not blown the bridges, they had not been idle. They had worked for two days on a strange contraption on Vitoria’s western wall. It was built high on the ramparts so it looked over the suburbs and orchards towards the great plain where the army waited for battle. The Engineers had built tiers of seats so that the women who followed the French army could watch this French victory in comfort. To those seats the women came and there, too, came the sellers of lemonade, pastries and fruit.
The French were confident enough to order Vitoria’s largest, best hotel to prepare a victory feast for this evening. Even now, as the mist lifted and the British came towards the guns, the cooks were at work.
The French were confident enough to send troops away from the battlefield. Just that morning a whole division marched north on the Great Road, back towards France, and with the Division went a convoy of heavy wagons loaded with the treasures of the Escorial, Spain’s royal palace. What was left in Vitoria was worth far more, but the French needed to make a start and they were sure that they could beat off Wellington’s attack and escort the rest of the plunder safely to the border.
And, as if to make up for the paintings, tapestries and furniture that had gone north, a smaller convoy had come south bringing five million golden francs to give the army its arrears of pay. The wagons of coin were put into the baggage park. The coins would be paid after the battle.
A hundred and forty thousand men had come to one place for the purpose of battle. The sun burned the valley’s mist away and those British horsemen who had climbed the western hills saw, beneath them, the might of France drawn up in its battle-lines. They saw the guns. They saw the ranks of men waiting beneath their splendid banners and glinting eagles. As yet no cannon or musket smoke drifted to hide the glory that was an army in array. The river, beneath its bridges, sparked silver in the dawn. The fields, where they had not been trampled by the soldiers, were bright with poppies and cornflowers. A kingdom was at stake, and a battle to be fought.
The French headquarters, strangely empty now that the Generals were on the plain, were high on the hill that rose to Vitoria’s cathedral. On the topmost floor of the headquarters building, in a large, plain room that looked west towards the battlefield, a lone man worked at papers spread on a huge table.
Pierre Ducos had worked all night, yet the sleeplessness had not lessened his efficiency. He sorted papers, some going into a great leather travelling chest, others into a sack for burning. Though he had told no’one, Pierre Ducos planned for defeat.
He had considered going north with the convoy that had left before dawn, but there were rumours that the British had sent part of their army to cut the road and there would be more safety, Ducos decided, in staying with the army. Better, he thought, to face defeat with the main army than with the single division that had gone towards San Sebastian.
He was not certain why he was sure of defeat. It was, perhaps, that he admired Wellington. The English General had a mind of fine calculation that appealed to Ducos, who did not believe that the vainglorious Marshals of France had the measure of the Englishman. The Emperor, now, he was different. He would outcalculate and outfight any man, but the Emperor was not yet in Spain, nor was it certain that he would come.
