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To explain how this last event was possible we must retrace our steps. After Soult was driven by Wellington from the mountains at the back of the town of Orthez, he drew back his shattered troops over the River Adour, and then turned sharply to the east in order to join hands with Suchet's corps.
He almost lost his English flavour when he spoke in downright approval of a small French fellow, coming from Orthez, near the Pyrenees, for senselessly dashing and kicking at a couple of English who jeered to hear Orthez named a place trampled under Wellington's heels, on his march across conquered France.
Augereau was betraying softness and irresolution in the Lyonnais in front of a smaller Austrian force. Suchet and Davoust were shut up in Catalonia and Hamburg. St. Cyr and Vandamme were prisoners. Soult had kept a bold front near Bayonne: but now news was to hand that Wellington had surprised and routed him at Orthez.
Meanwhile, the centre and right wing, under the command of Wellington, had forced a passage across the Upper Adour and threatened Bayonne on the other side. Leaving a garrison of 6,000 men in Bayonne, Soult took his stand at Orthez, with an army of about 40,000 men, on the summit of a formidable ridge.
Here we touch again the line of that masterly retreat of Soult's before the superior forces of Wellington, to which Napier has done such ample and deserved justice. Boes, and the High Church of Baights, the scene of the terrible battle of Orthez. The Roman camp, then 'open and grassy, with a few trees, says Napier, is now covered with vineyards.
He liked best the company of his little French friend from Orthez, over whose shoulder his hand was laid sometimes as they strolled and chatted in two languages. He really went a long way to make French fellows popular, and the boys were sorry that little Emile was off to finish his foreign education in Germany. His English was pretty good, thanks to Matey.
I was not much worried by this arrest; but now the older gendarme said that he did not intend to go to Orthez. He belonged to the station at Peyrehorade, and I must follow him there.
In his journey of fifty days in 1854, he went from Orthez the country of Gaston Phoebus to the mountains of Auvergne, in spite of the rigours of the weather. During that journey he collected 20,000 francs. In all, as we have said, he collected, during his life-time, more than a million and a half of francs, all of which he devoted to the cause of philanthropy.
GREAT marvel it is to think and consider of a thing that I will tell you, and that was told to me in the house of the Comte de Foix at Orthez, by him who gave me to know concerning the battle of Juberot.
The Count therefore sent his wife to her brother at Pampeluna, that she might arrange the matter; but the end of it was that she stayed in Navarre, and did not return to her lord. Meanwhile her son Gaston grew up at Orthez, and married a daughter of the Count of Armagnac, being now a lad of sixteen, a good squire, and in all things very like his father.
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