St Jean de Luz

We decided to go to St Jean de Luz, because it was Wellington’s headquarters during some of the winter 1813 – 1814. Hostilities didn’t cease completely for the whole winter, but there were periods when the roads were impassable.

Well, I have to say we were very pleasantly surprised. St Jean De Luz is really pleasant. There’s a proper fishing harbour, not just a pleasure boat marina. (As an aside, I simply can’t get my head round marinas. They are usually packed with millions of pounds’ worth of boats, of which maybe one in two hundred are being used. In fact the boats often look as though they are never used, or maybe once a year, and they deteriorate faster than some other sorts of property.  So how does it make any sort of sense?)

Also there’s a very attractive old town, with lots of substantial houses built by pirates; one was used for Louis XIV, and one for the Infanta Maria Theresa, when they got married here.

The privateer's mansion used by Louis XIV

 We had a coffee in the main square, facing the Mairie, where there seemed to be a fairly constant stream of weddings, the women all clarted up like dogs’ dinners and the men mostly scruffily casual.

Wellington’s house was quite easy to find, although there's no proud plaque advertising the connection, as there were at his various houses in Spain and Portugal.

Wellington's house. Very Basque.

The commissariat was set up here, and each regiment was marched in to be issued with new uniforms. They were literally in rags, and it was winter. The supplies were brought into a deep water port, which the British called Passages, which confused us, but it’s just in Spain, and its real name is Pasaja. The wounded were sent home from here too, as soon as they were fit enough to make the journey.  Lots of entrepreneurs descended on St Jean de Luz, and the peasants were keen to provide cattle. There was a problem with what coin they would accept, so Wellington recruited 40 soldiers who had been professional coiners to melt down the available coins and turn out five franc pieces dated earlier in the century!

Then we drove through lovely countryside and lovelier Basque villages, stopping for lunch at Espelette, where they grow such superb pimentos that they are appellation controlee. The meal was Basque, and majored on pimentos, but it was good.

After lunch we went to Bera (if you’re being Basque) or Vera de Bidassoa if you’re being Spanish. It’s just on the Spanish side of the border. Here a French division retreating from an attempt to relieve San Sebastian, found themselves cut off on the Spanish side of the river, trapped by the river which had risen suddenly to flood levels. The only remaining bridge, at Bera, was guarded by Captain Daniel Cadoux and less than fifty men of the 95^th Rifles. They held the bridge for more than an hour, killing more than two hundred French and their General Vandermaesen. But of course they were overwhelmed in the end, and the French division was able to escape to France. The Rifles never forgave General Skerret for leaving Cadoux and his men to be killed, and were very pleased when he had to return home sick.

Cadoux's bridge

As a nice touch,  British accounts stress the number of French corpses in the river, being nibbled by trout. Other diarists comment on the good fishing they had and the fat trout they caught and ate!

The monument to Cadoux and his men.

I think, judging by the villages, the Basques were usually prosperous. It might be mountainous, but the valleys are usually wide and sunny, not like the glaciated ones in Norway and Switzerland, and there’s mixed farming and lots of timber. Plus, of course, whaling, fishing, piracy, and smuggling.