ABSTRACT
I N 1808, GEORGE CANNING had remarked that one day, a British army would stand on the Pyrenees and look down into France. And so it was now. One soldier described it thus:
A pause of a month followed the crossing of the Bidassoa until on 31 October Pamplona surrendered thus releasing all British, Portuguese and German troops, as well as the best of the Spanish, for offensive operations into France. Soult's new defensive position on the line of the Nivelle river was forced by the allies on 10 November, but both it and the battle on the Nive, where Soult's terrible counter-attack almost broke the allies, properly belong to the story of the invasion of France; an invasion which Napoleon had made inevitable by his refusal, on the day before the Nive, of the allies' offer to guarantee the natural frontiers of France.
