92nd was the last officer who quitted the town, being left to bring off the sentinels, as the French entered, and he was struck by the stones as the mine under the bridge exploded, at the very heels of his party.
Wellington's admirable foresight saved Howard's brigade, which retired to winter quarters at Coria, in Leon, when, with many other officers and soldiers, Colonel Stewart of the 50th, as brave a Scot as ever drew a sword, expired of exhaustion and fatigue. A soldier of the 50th carved a rude stone to mark where this old officer was laid.
Refreshed by six months' rest in winter quarters at Banos, in a beautiful valley of Leon, overshadowed by high mountains, Cameron, after commanding the 1st brigade during General Foy's attack on Bejar, marched with his Highlanders, when the whole army advanced to turn the famous positions of Jourdan on the Ebro and Douro, and to meet him on the green plains of Vittoria, where, on the 21st of June, 1813, he again commanded the 1st brigade of Hill's division, and carried the heights of La Peubla, when the gallant Cadogan fell amid heaps, literally heaps, of his brave Highlanders.
Sir William Stuart having ordered Cameron to secure the heights, added, "yield them to none without a written order from Sir Rowland Hill or myself, and defend them while you have a man remaining." On this Fassifern ordered the pipers to strike up the "Camerons' Gathering," and the regiment advanced with great spirit and alacrity up the mountain side.
After this victory, the most decisive of the Spanish war, Cameron pushed on with his brigade towards the Pyrenees, beyond which the conqueror drove the French like a herd of sheep, and then garrisoned the heights by a chain of outposts, previous to besieging San Sebastian, and blockading Pampeluna. On this occasion the care of the important pass of Maya was entirely assigned to Cameron, with the 1st brigade, after it had crossed the Bidassoa, and skirmished with the routed French until darkness set in, on the 7th July.
Cameron commanded this great outpost until the 25th of that month, when the French advanced to storm the heights under the Duke of Dalmatia, who had assumed the command of Jourdan's discomfited host, and was directed to retrieve all its disasters by driving the British beyond the Ebro. Full of confidence and of hope, at least to relieve the two beleaguered fortresses, this brave marshal sent his legions against the various passes in the mountains which Wellington, who was then urging the siege of San Sebastian in person, had occupied by battalions and brigades.
Cameron's force was encamped in the centre of a lonely gorge, and his outposts were far down the hillside in advance; and these, on Sunday the 25th, descried the division of General Drouet, 15,000 strong, advancing on the road that led from Urdax. Coming on with great spirit, they drove in the three light companies of the brigade (which Cameron had dispatched as skirmishers in front), and gained the high rock of Maya before the 2nd brigade of infantry could come to his support. His little band were thus left to defend that steep and narrow pass against five times their number. On this fatal morning the strength of the Gordon Highlanders was only fifty-five staff, and 762 rank and file.
To deceive the foe as to his real strength, Cameron skilfully divided his Highlanders into two wings, in open columns of companies, thus giving the slender battalion the aspect of two regiments; but this ruse was useless, as the traitor-muleteers, who, for the few weeks preceding, had been passing between the mountains and French outposts, had made Soult fully aware of the actual force left to defend the Pyrenees at every point. The moment the action commenced, Fassifern detached the 50th to the right, where, after a desperate conflict, it was driven back and forced to leave the ridge.
Under Major M'Pherson, Cameron then sent forward first the right wing, and then the left, of his brave Highlanders. Then ensued one of the most appalling scenes of carnage recorded in the annals of that protracted war. The Highlanders stood like a rampart, in which, however, frightful gaps were made by the bullets of the French, who came on, in one vast mob, shouting and brandishing their eagles. Separating the 1st and 2nd brigades, they descended upon the pass of Maya from one flank, while a fresh division poured upon its front from the Urdax road. Cameron, who had repeatedly ordered a charge, which was unheard amid the roar of the musketry, then made the whole fall back gradually upon the rock of Maya; a movement which was slowly and desperately covered by the left wings of the 71st Highland Light Infantry and of the Gordon Highlanders, which, by relieving each other, drenched in blood every inch of the ground; and there these gallant men defended the rock for ten successive hours, until—just when ammunition was falling short—the brigade of General Barnes arrived to their succour, and Lieutenant-General the Hon. Sir William Stuart, a fine old soldier whom all the troops loved well, ordered Cameron's brigade not to charge; but, exasperated by the slaughter they had endured, they rushed upon the French with the bayonet, and the Gordon Highlanders, "for the first time disregarded orders, and not only charged, but led the charge," and recovered every foot of ground as far as the pass from which they had been driven. In this headlong advance the pipers played the "Haughs of Cromdale," and the line was led by Captain Seton of Pitmedden, bonnet and claymore in hand. But the slaughter in their ranks was terrible, for 19 officers and 324 rank and file were killed, wounded, and missing. Among the wounded were—Cameron, who was shot through the thigh, and forced to leave the field; Major Mitchel, who succeeded him; Captains Holmes, and Bevan, who died when his arm was taken out of the socket, and Ronald M'Donald of Coul; Lieutenants Winchester, who commanded the light company; Donald M'Donald, Chisholm, Durie, M'Pherson, and Fife, who, after having one ball turned by a button, and another by his watch, was struck down at last; Gordon, Kerr Ross, and John Grant, who was shot through the side. Among the ensigns were Thomas and George Mitchell, Ewen Kennedy (one of Cameron's Lochaber men), who bled to death on the field, and Alaster M'Donald of Dalchosnie, a youth of eighteen, who afterwards expired of a wound in the head, and was buried by four of his brother officers in a hole outside the town-gate of Vittoria, where Holmes said a short prayer over his grave.
Sir William Napier, in his history, thus alludes to Fassifern and the two regiments of Highlanders: "And that officer (Lieutenant-Colonel Cameron), still holding the pass of Maya with the left wings of the 71st and 92nd Regiments, brought their right wings and the Portuguese guns into action, and thus maintained the fight; but so dreadful was the slaughter, that it is said the advancing enemy was actually stopped by the heaped-up mass of dead and dying. … The stern valour of the 92nd would have graced Thermopylæ."
Strange to say, Lieutenant Gordon died at Edinburgh sixteen years after, under the hands of a surgeon who was extracting the ball received at Maya, and he lies now in the Calton burying-ground. Two balls grazed Cameron, but the third pierced the fleshy part of his right thigh. In great agony he called to M'Millan, who slung his musket, rushed to his side, and led his horse by the bridle out of the field. "The gallant Cameron, who has so frequently bled for his country," says the Pilot of 12th October, 1813, "received three shots in his person, his horse received three, and three more were found in his cloak, which was strapped before his saddle in the usual manner." He lost so much blood, that, being unable to reach Vittoria, which was a hundred miles distant, and to which all the wounded were ordered to repair, he remained at an intermediate village until the scar healed and he could rejoin the regiment at Roncesvalles, after it had been engaged between Lizasso and Eguaros, and on the heights of Donna Maria, having in both affairs 120 officers and men killed and wounded. Captain Seton brought the regiment out of the field: thus the Speaker of the House of Commons, on the 24th of June, might well say that the Spaniards of future times would point with pride to the places "where a Stuart made his stand, and where the best blood of Scotland was shed in their defence." For his bravery at the Pyrenees, his Majesty was pleased to permit Cameron to bear upon his shield the word Maya.
From this period he was incessantly engaged in all the operations along the French Pyrenees, in daily skirmishes, and the capture of entrenched camps. The country was now covered by snow, and the troops endured many privations, which Sir William Stuart (brother of Lord Galloway) did all in his power to alleviate, by issuing extra allowances of rum, which won him the cognomen of Auld Grog Willie; and his popularity was so great among all the troops, that his appearance was always hailed by a noisy cheer, and shouts of "God bless you, Sir William!" Lord Wellington disliked this, and compelled the general to refund to Government all those extra allowances of rum served out to the poor soldiers amid the snows of that severe winter on the Pyrenees.
Cameron,