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Soult, after re-organising the divisions, made a great effort to help the French garrison left in Pamplona, but in vain. They were forced to capitulate and Marshal Soult had to take his troops back across the Bidassoa.
There was a pause of two months after the fall of St. Sebastian, and it was not until the 10th of November that Wellington hurled his forces against the lines which, in imitation of those of Torres Vedras, Soult had formed and fortified on the river Nivelle to withstand the invasion of France.
When, at the close of their period of encampment, the King was passing them in review as a special compliment, he warmly asked Marshal Soult what he thought of the new corps. The Marshal, in replying, emphatically expressed the wish that His Majesty had thirty such battalions instead of only one.
Now he has again got the troops that had been taken from him, and will be further reinforced before Sir Arthur arrives on the Alberche; and of course Soult has had plenty of time to get everything in readiness to cross the mountains, and fall upon the British rear, as soon as he hears that they are fairly on their way towards Madrid.
The stream at the point we forded was nearly four feet deep, and had Soult been aware of what we were about, we should have found the passage of the river a very arduous undertaking. Three miles above, we discovered the French army, and ere long found ourselves under fire.
Mr Bulwer also promised to take him to an evening party, to be given on September 3rd by Marshal Soult. But Sir Moses was longing to return to England, and would not prolong his stay. August 30th. We left the French capital for Beauvais, where we remained over Sabbath. On Sunday we proceeded to Boulogne, and on Thursday, September 5th, we arrived safely at Dover.
He sometimes meditated a march southwards, collecting on his way the armies of Augereau and Soult, and re-opening the campaign as circumstances might recommend, behind either the Loire or the Alps. At other times the chance of yet rousing the population of Paris recurred to his imagination.
However, Marshal Soult, after concentrating several divisions below the ramparts of Bayonne, once more attacked the Anglo-Portuguese. On the 9th of December, at Saint-Pierre de Rube, there was a battle which lasted for five days, and was one of the bloodiest of the war, for it cost the enemy 16,000 lives and the French 10,000, but we were able to remain in position around Bayonne.
The King could have collected 100,000 picked men: they might have beaten the whole of England." Reflection, however, showed him that the fault was his own; that if, as had occurred to him when he left Paris, he had intrusted the supreme command in Spain to Soult, the disaster would never have happened. His belief in Soult's capacity was justified by the last events of the Peninsular War.
In 1841, in the presence of the royal family and of a vast concourse, the remains of Napoleon were deposited with great pomp in a magnificent tomb under the dome of the Church of the Invalides. Marshal Soult superseded Thiers at the head of the ministry ; but Guizot was the ruling spirit in the cabinet, and was associated with the king until his dethronement.
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