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.