Note 942 — SECTION XXXVIII: CHAPTER IV

There is a most curious and difficult point in this history of the first phase of the action. Clausel says, and he is of course a primary authority, that though Conroux was already deeply engaged with the 6th Division, ‘was being fired on from all sides, was suffering severe losses, and had already had one of his brigadiers disabled’ [Schwitter], he told him that he must join in the attack ‘swerving to the left so as to mount the hill in the direction originally assigned to him’, which was done and Conroux immediately repulsed. I cannot see how this was physically possible. How could Conroux, if already disadvantageously engaged with the 6th Division, and ‘fired at from all sides’, break off this fight and attack any point of the hill of Oricain? If he had gone away in that direction, who was there to hold Sorauren against Pack’s people, who were pressing in on it, and (as Clausel says) only a musket-shot away from it? As far as I can make out, Conroux must have been sufficiently employed in fending off Pack and maintaining Sorauren, so as to cover the flank of the other divisions, for the next hour or two. No other authority but Clausel gives any hint that Conroux got away from Pack and joined in the general assault. And I am constrained to think that Clausel (strange as it may seem) is making a misstatement—and that when Conroux is said to have been ordered to attack the hill by swerving to the left, he can only have been keeping off Pack. I note that Vidal de la Blache and Mr. Fortescue try to accept Clausel’s story, but that General Beatson (With Wellington in the Pyrenees, pp. 170-2) ignores it.