The ridge slopes rapidly away at the back, toward the lowlands of the
Bidassoa; and once thrust from it, the English army would have been
cut in two--one half driven back upon their sea-base at St. Jean de
Luz: the other half left on the further side of the Adour.
And this was the gate, which had to be defended during a three days'
battle. That long copse which overhangs the road is the famous wood,
which was taken and retaken many times. You house above it,
embowered in trees, is the 'Mayor's house,' in which Sir John Hope
was so nearly captured by the French. Somewhere behind the lane
where we came down was the battery which blasted off our troops as
they ran up from the lowlands behind, to support their fellows.
Of the details of the fight you must read in Napier's 'Peninsular
War,' and in Mr. Gleig's 'Subaltern.' They are not to be described
by one who never saw a battle, great or small.
And now, if you choose to start upon your journey from the ocean to
the sea, you will take the railroad here, and run five miles through
the battle-fields into Bayonne, the quaint old fortress city, girdled
with a labyrinth of walls, and turf-dykes, and outside them meadows
as rich, and trees as stately, as if war had never swept across the
land.
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