3-053-741 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Off the mouth of the Bidassoa, Spain, 1873. Engraving of a sketch by Captain Harold Sitwell, of the 91st Highlanders, showing '...the small river Bidassoa, which constitutes for twelve miles of its length the frontier between France and Spain...This place will ever be memorable to Englishmen for the final victory of the Duke of Wellington, Oct. 7, 1813...The Montagne d'Arrhune, rising to the left hand, above the Spanish town and church of Irun, which are seen up the valley beyond the bridge, was fortified by Soult's engineers...Its batteries commanded the bridge over the estuary...But the Duke was told that there was a fordable passage at low tide...[so], marching across well out of range of the French guns, our troops made their way "at the close of a thunderstorm" from Spanish ground to French, then rushed up the mountain side, and carried that fortified position by their unexpected assault...This neighbourhood was also the scene of much stiff fighting between Sir De Lacy Evans's British Legion and the Carlists thirty or forty years ago. The Carlists are now busy here again; and the capture of the English yacht Deerhound, while attempting to land arms and ammunition for their use, is one of the late incidents of the civil war'. From "Illustrated London News", 1873.