A history of the Peninsular War, Vol. 2, Jan.-Sep. 1809

by Charles Oman

CHAPTER I

THE SIEGE OF ROSAS

Before we follow further the fortunes of Southern Spain, it is necessary to turn back and to take up the tale of the war on the Eastern coast at the point where it was left in Section V.

The same torpor which was notable in the operations of the main armies of the Spaniards and the French during the months of September and October was to be observed in Catalonia also. On the Ter and the Llobregat the inability of the French to move was much more real, and the slackness of the Spaniards even more inexplicable, than on the Ebro and the Aragon.

In the early days of September the situation of the invaders was most perilous. After the disastrous failure of the second siege of Gerona, it will be remembered that Reille had withdrawn to Figueras, close to the French frontier, while Duhesme had cut his way back to Barcelona, after sacrificing all his artillery and his baggage on the way. Both commanders proceeded to report to the Emperor that there was need for ample reinforcements of veteran troops, or a catastrophe must inevitably ensue. Meanwhile Reille preserved a defensive attitude at the foot of the Pyrenees; while Duhesme could do no more than hold Barcelona, and as much of its suburban plain as he could safely occupy without risking overmuch his outlying detachments. He foresaw a famine in the winter, and devoted all his energies to seizing and sending into the town all foodstuffs that he could find in the neighbourhood. His position was most uncomfortable: the late expedition had reduced his force from 13,000 to 10,000 sabres and bayonets. The men were demoralized, and when sent out to forage saw somatenes behind every bush and rock. The populace of Barcelona was awaiting a good opportunity for an émeute, and was in constant communication with the insurgents outside.

The blockade was not as yet kept up by any large section of the Captain-General’s regular troops, nor had any attempt been made to run lines around the place. It was conducted by an elastic cordon of four or five thousand miqueletes, supported by no more than 2,000 infantry of the regular army and possessing five or six field-guns. The charge of the whole line was given to the Conde de Caldagues, who had so much distinguished himself in the previous month by his relief of Gerona. He had been entrusted with a force too small to man a circuit of twelve or fifteen miles, so that Duhesme had no difficulty in pushing sorties through the line of Spanish posts, whenever he chose to send out a sufficiently strong column. But any body that pressed out too far in pursuit of corn or forage, risked being beset and mishandled on its return march by the whole of the somatenes of the country-side. Hence there was a limit to the power to roam of even the largest expeditions that Duhesme could spare from his depleted garrison. The fighting along the blockading cordon was incessant, but never conclusive. On September 2 a strong column of six Italian battalions swept aside the Spaniards for a moment in the direction of San Boy, but a smaller expedition against the bridge of Molins de Rey was repulsed. The moment that the Italians returned to Barcelona, with the food that they had scraped together in the villages, Caldagues reoccupied his old positions. There were many skirmishes but no large sorties between September 2 and October 12, when Milosewitz took out 2,000 men for a cattle-hunt in the valley of the Besos. He pierced the blockading line, routing the miqueletes of Milans at San Jeronimo de la Murtra, and penetrated as far as Granollers, twenty miles from Barcelona, where he made an invaluable seizure, the food dépôt of the eastern section of the investing force. But he was now dangerously distant from his base, and as he was returning with his captures, Caldagues fell upon him at San Culgat with troops brought from other parts of the blockading line. The Italians were routed with a loss of 300 men[46], and their convoy was recaptured. After this Duhesme made no more attempts to send expeditions far afield: in spite of a growing scarcity of food, he could not afford to risk the loss of any more men by pushing his sorties into the inland.

Meanwhile Reille at Figueras was in wellnigh as forlorn a situation. His communications with Perpignan were open, so that he had not, like Duhesme, the fear of starvation before his eyes. But in other respects he was almost as badly off: the somatenes were always worrying his outposts, but this was only a secondary trial. The main trouble was the want of clothing, transport, and equipment: the heterogeneous mob of bataillons de marche, of Swiss and Tuscan conscripts, had been hurried to the frontier without any proper preparations: this mattered comparatively little during the summer; but when the autumn cold began Reille found that troops, who had neither tents nor greatcoats, and whose original summer uniforms were now worn out, could not keep the field. His ranks were so thinned by dysentery and rheumatic affections that he had to put the men under cover in Figueras and the neighbouring towns, and even to withdraw to Perpignan some of his battalions, whose clothing was absolutely dropping to pieces. His cavalry, for want of forage in the Pyrenees, were sent back into Languedoc, where occupation was found for them by Lord Cochrane who was conducting a series of daring raids on the coast villages between the mouth of the Rhone and that of the Tech[47]. Reille continued to solicit the war minister at Paris for clothing and transport, but could get nothing from him: all the resources of the empire were being strained in September and October to fit out the main army, which was about to enter Spain on the side of Biscay, and Napoleon refused to trouble himself about such a minor force as the corps at Figueras.

The Spaniards, therefore, had in the autumn months a unique opportunity for striking at the two isolated French forces in Catalonia. Two courses were open to them: they might have turned their main army against Barcelona, and attempted to besiege instead of merely to blockade Duhesme: or on the other hand they might have left a mere cordon of somatenes around Duhesme, and have sent all their regulars to join the levies of the north and sweep Reille across the Pyrenees. The resources at their disposition were far from contemptible: almost the whole garrison of the Balearic Isles having disembarked in Catalonia, there were now some 12,000 regulars in the Principality, and the local Junta had put so much energy into the equipment of the numerous tercios of miqueletes which it had raised, that the larger half of them, at least 20,000 men, were more or less ready for the field. Moreover they were aware that large reinforcements were at hand. Reding’s Granadan division, 10,000 strong, was marching up from the south, and was due to arrive early in November. The Aragonese division under the Marquis of Lazan, which had been detached from the army of Palafox, was already at Lerida. Valencia had sent up a line regiment[48], and the remains of the division of Caraffa from Portugal were being brought round by sea to the mouth of the Ebro[49]. Altogether 20,000 men of new troops were on the way to Catalonia, and the first of them had already come on the scene.

Unfortunately the Marquis Del Palacio, the new Captain-General of Catalonia, though well-intentioned, was slow and undecided to the verge of absolute torpidity. Beyond allowing his energetic subordinate Caldagues to keep up the blockade of Barcelona he did practically nothing. A couple of thousand of his regulars, based on Gerona and Rosas, lay opposite Reille, but were far too weak to attack him. About 3,000 under Caldagues were engaged in the operations around Barcelona. The rest the Captain-General held back and did not use. All through September he lay idle at Tarragona, to the great disgust of the local Junta, who at last sent such angry complaints to Aranjuez that the Central Junta recalled him, and replaced him by Vives the old Captain-General of the Balearic Islands, who took over the command on October 28.

This gave a change of commander but not of policy, for Vives was as slow and incapable as his predecessor. We have already had occasion to mention the trouble that he gave in August, when he refused to send his troops to the mainland till actually compelled to yield by their mutiny. When he took over the charge of operations he found 20,000 foot and 1,000 horse at his disposition, and the French still on the defensive both at Barcelona and at Figueras. He had a splendid opportunity, and it was not yet too late to strike hard. But all that he chose to attempt was to turn the blockade of Barcelona into an investment, by tightening the cordon round the place. To lay siege to the city does not seem to have been within the scope of his intentions, but on November 6 he moved up to the line of the Llobregat with 12,000 infantry and 700 horse, mostly regulars. He had opened negotiations with secret friends within the walls, and had arranged that when the whole forces of Duhesme were sufficiently occupied in resisting the assault from outside, the populace should take arms and endeavour to seize and throw open one of the gates. But matters never got to this point: on November 8 several Spanish columns moved in nearer to Barcelona, and began to skirmish with the outposts of the garrison. But the attack was incoherent, and never pressed home. Vives then waited till the 26th, when he had received more reinforcements, the first brigade of Reding’s long-expected Granadan division. On that day another general assault on Duhesme’s outlying posts was delivered, and this time with considerable success: several of the suburban villages were carried, over a hundred Frenchmen were captured, and the line of blockade was drawn close under the walls. Duhesme had no longer any hold outside the city. But Barcelona was strong, and its garrison, when concentrated within the place, was just numerous enough to hold its own. Duhesme had thought for a moment of evacuating the city and retiring into the citadel and the fortress of Montjuich: but on mature consideration he resolved to cling as long as possible to the whole circuit of the town. He had heard that an army of relief was at last on the way, and made up his mind to yield no inch without compulsion.

Thus Vives wasted another month without any adequate results: he had, with the whole field army of Catalonia, done nothing more than turn the French out of their first and weakest line of defence. The fortress was intact, and to all intents and purposes might have been observed as well by 10,000 somatenes as by the large force which Vives had brought against it.

Meanwhile the enemy, utterly unopposed on the line of the Pyrenees, was getting together a formidable host for the relief of Barcelona. When he had recognized that Reille’s extemporized army was insufficient alike in quantity and in quality for the task before it, the Emperor had directed on Perpignan (as we have already seen[50]) two strong divisions of the Army of Italy, one composed of ten French battalions under General Souham, the other of thirteen Italian battalions. The order to dispatch them had only been given on August 10, and the regiments, which had to be mobilized and equipped, and then to march up from Lombardy to the roots of the Pyrenees, did not begin to arrive at Perpignan till September 14: the artillery, and the troops which came from the more distant points, only appeared on October 28. Even then there was a further week’s delay, for the Emperor had monopolized for the main army, on the side of the Bidassoa, all the available battalions of the military train: the Army of the Eastern Pyrenees had no transport save that which the regiments had brought with them, and it was with the greatest difficulty that a few hundred mules and some open carts were collected from the French border districts. It was only on November 5 that the army crossed the Pyrenees, by the great pass between Bellegarde and La Junquera.

The officer placed in command was General Gouvion St. Cyr, who afterwards won his marshal’s bâton in the Russian war of 1812. He was a general of first-rate ability, who had served all through the wars of the Revolution with marked distinction: but he disliked Bonaparte and had not the art to hide the fact. This had kept him back from earlier promotion. St. Cyr was by no means an amiable character: he was detested by his officers and his troops as a confirmed grumbler, and selfish to an incredible degree[51]. He was one of those men who can always show admirable and convincing reasons for not helping their neighbours. C’était un mauvais compagnon de lit, said one of the many colleagues, whom he had left in the lurch, while playing his own game. From his morose bearing and his dislike for company he had got the nickname of ‘le hibou.’ He was cautious, cool-headed, and ready of resource, so that his troops had full confidence in him, though he never commanded their liking. Even from his history of the Catalonian war, one can gather the character of the man. It is admirably lucid, and illustrated with original documents, Spanish no less than French, in a fashion only too rare among the military books of the soldiers of the Empire. But it is not only entirely self-centred, but full of malevolent insinuations concerning Napoleon and the author’s colleagues. In his first chapter he broaches the extraordinary theory that Napoleon handed over to him the Catalonian army without resources, money, or transport, in order that he might make a fiasco of the campaign and ruin his reputation! He actually seems to have believed that his master disliked to have battles won for him by officers who had not owed to him the beginning of their fortunes[52], and would have been rather pleased than otherwise to see the attempt to relieve Barcelona end in a failure.

These are, of course, the vain imaginings of a jealous and suspicious hypochondriac. It is true that Napoleon disliked St. Cyr, but he did not want to see the campaign of Catalonia end in a disaster. He gave the new general a fine French division of veteran troops, and, as his letter to the Viceroy Eugène Beauharnais shows, the picked regiments of the whole Italian army. The Seventh Corps mustered in all more than 40,000 men, and 25,000 of these were concentrated under St. Cyr’s hand at Perpignan and Figueras. It is certain that the troops were not well equipped, and that the auxiliary services were ill represented. But this was not from exceptional malice on Napoleon’s part: he was always rather inclined to starve an army with which he was not present in person, and at this moment every resource was being strained to fit out the main force which were to deliver the great blow at Madrid. Catalonia was but a ‘side show’: and when St. Cyr tries to prove[53] that it was the most important theatre of war in the whole peninsula, he is but exaggerating, after the common fashion of poor humanity, the greatness of his own task and his own victories.

Before starting from Perpignan St. Cyr refitted, as best he could, the dilapidated battalions of Reille, which were, he says, in such a state of nudity that those who had been sent back within the French border had to be kept out of public view from motives of mere decency[54]. The whole division had suffered so much from exposure that instead of taking the field with the 8,000 men which it possessed in August, it could present only 5,500 in November, after setting aside a battalion to garrison Figueras[55].

But though Reille was weak, and the division of Chabot (a mere corps of two Neapolitan battalions and one regiment of National Guards) was an almost negligible quantity, the troops newly arrived from Italy were both numerous and good in quality. Souham’s ten French battalions had 7,000 bayonets, Pino’s thirteen Italian battalions had 7,300. Their cavalry consisted of one French and two Italian regiments, making 1,700 sabres. The total force disposable consisted of 23,680 men, of whom 2,096 were cavalry, and about 500 artillery. In this figure are not included the National Guards and dépôts left behind to garrison Bellegarde, Montlouis, and other places within the French frontier, but only the troops available for operations within Catalonia.

On his way to Perpignan, St. Cyr had visited the Emperor at Paris, so as to receive his orders in person. Napoleon informed him that he left him carte blanche as to all details; the one thing on which he insisted was that Barcelona must be preserved: ‘si vous perdiez cette place, je ne la reprendrais pas avec quatre-vingt mille hommes.’ This then was to be the main object of the coming campaign: there were about two months available for the task, for Duhesme reported that, though food was growing scarce, he could hold out till the end of December. To lessen the number of idle mouths in Barcelona he had been giving permits to depart to many of the inhabitants, and expelling others, against whom he could find excuses for severity.

The high-road from Figueras to Barcelona was blocked by the fortress of Gerona, whose previous resistance in July and August showed that its capture would be a tedious and difficult matter. St. Cyr calculated that he had not the time to spare for the siege of this place: long ere he could expect to take it, Duhesme would be starved out. He made up his mind that he would have to march past Gerona, and as the high-road is commanded by the guns of the city, he would be forced to take with him no heavy guns or baggage, but only light artillery and pack-mules, which could use the by-paths of the mountains. It was his first duty to relieve Barcelona by defeating the main army of Vives. When this had been done, it would be time enough to think of the siege of Gerona.

But there was another fortress which St. Cyr resolved to clear out of his way before starting to aid Duhesme. On the sea-shore, only ten miles before Figueras, lies the little town of Rosas, which blocks the route that crawls under the cliffs from Perpignan and Port-Vendres to the Ampurdam. The moment that the French army advanced south from Figueras, it would have Rosas on its flank, and even small expeditions based on the place could make certain of cutting the high-road, and intercepting all communications between the base and the field force that had gone forward. But it was more than likely that the Spaniards would land a considerable body of troops in Rosas, for it has an excellent harbour, and every facility for disembarkation. Several English men-of-war were lying there; it served them as their shelter and port of call while they watched for the French ships which tried to run into Barcelona with provisions, from Marseilles, Cette, or Port-Vendres. Already they had captured many vessels which endeavoured to pierce the blockade.

St. Cyr therefore was strongly of opinion that he ought to make an end of the garrison of Rosas before starting on his expedition to aid Duhesme. The place was strategically important, but its fortifications were in such bad order that he imagined that it might be reduced in a few days. The town, which counted no more than 1,500 souls, consisted of a single long street running along the shore. It was covered by nothing more than a ditch and an earthwork, resting at one end on a weak redoubt above the beach, and at the other upon the citadel. The latter formed the strength of the place: it was a pentagonal work, regularly constructed, with bastions, and a scarp and counterscarp reveted with stone. But its resisting power was seriously diminished by the fact that the great breach which the French had made during its last siege in 1794 had never been properly repaired. The government of Godoy had neglected the place, and, when the insurrection began, the Catalans had found it still in ruins, and had merely built up the gap with loose stones and barrels filled with earth. A good battering train would bring down the whole of these futile patchings in a few days. A mile to the right of the citadel was a detached work, the Fort of the Trinity, placed above a rocky promontory which forms the south-eastern horn of the harbour. It had been built to protect ships lying before the place from being annoyed by besiegers. The Trinity was built in an odd and ingenious fashion: it was commanded at the distance of only 100 yards by the rocky hill of Puig-Rom: to prevent ill effects from a plunging fire from this elevation, its front had been raised to a great height, so as to protect the interior of the work from molestation. A broad tower 110 feet high covered the whole side of the castle which faces inland. ‘Nothing in short, for a fortress commanded by adjacent heights, could have been better adapted for holding out against offensive operations, or worse adapted for replying to them. The French battery on the cliff was too elevated for artillery to reach, while the tower, which prevented their shot from reaching the body of the fort, also prevented any return fire at them, even if the fort had possessed artillery. In consequence of the elevated position of the French on the cliff, they could only breach the central portion of the tower. The lowest part of the breach they made was nearly sixty feet above its base, so that it could only be reached by long scaling ladders[56].’ It is seldom that a besieger has to complain of the difficulty caused to him by the possession of ground completely dominating a place that he has to reduce: but in the course of the siege of Fort Trinity the French were undoubtedly incommoded by the height of the Puig-Rom. The garrison below, hidden in good bomb-proofs and covered by the tower, suffered little harm from their fire. To batter the whole tower to pieces, by a downward fire, was too long and serious a business for them; they merely tried to breach it.

If the ground in front of Fort Trinity was too high for the French, that of the town of Rosas was too low. It was so marshy that in wet weather the ditches of their siege works filled at once with water, and their parapets crumbled into liquid mud. The only approach on ground of convenient firmness and elevation was opposite a comparatively narrow front of the south-eastern corner of the place.

The garrison of Rosas, when St. Cyr undertook its siege, was commanded by Colonel Peter O’Daly, an officer of the Ultonia, who had distinguished himself at Gerona; it was composed of a skeleton battalion (150 men) of the governor’s own Irish corps, of half the light infantry regiment 2nd of Barcelona, of a company of Wimpffen’s Swiss regiment, and 120 gunners. These were regulars: of new levies there were the two miquelete tercios of Lerida and Igualada, with some companies of those of Berga and Figueras. The whole force was exactly 3,000 strong. It would be wrong to omit the mention of the British succours which took part in the defence. There lay in the harbour the Excellent, 74, and two bomb-vessels: when the Excellent departed on November 21 she was replaced by the Fame, another 74-gun ship, and during the last days of the siege Lord Cochrane in his well-known frigate the Impérieuse was also present. It is well to remember their exact force, for the French narrators of the leaguer of Rosas are prone to call them ‘the British squadron,’ a term which seems rather too magnificent to apply to a group of vessels never numbering more than one line-of-battle ship, one frigate, and two bomb-vessels.

St. Cyr moved forward on November 5, with the four divisions of Souham, Pino, Reille, and Chabot, which (as we have seen) amounted in all to about 23,000 men. He had resolved to use Pino and Reille—some 12,000 men—for the actual siege, and Souham and Chabot for the covering work. Accordingly the weak division of the last-named officer was left to watch the ground at the foot of the passes, in the direction of Figueras and La Junquera, while Souham took up the line of the river Fluvia, which lay across the path of any relieving force that might come from the direction of Gerona. St. Cyr remained with the covering army, and gave the conduct of the siege to Reille, perhaps because he had already made one attack on the town in August.

On November 6 Reille marched down to the sea, driving before him the Spanish outlying pickets, and the peasantry of the suburban villages, who took refuge with their cattle in Rosas. On the seventh the investment began, Reille’s own division taking its position on the marshy ground opposite the town, while Pino encamped more to the left, upon the heights that face the fort of the Trinity. The head quarters were established at the village of Palau. A battalion of the 2nd Italian light infantry was placed far back, to the north-east, to keep off the somatenes of the coast villages about Llanza and Selva de Mar from interfering in the siege.

Next day the civil population of Rosas embarked on fishing-vessels and small merchantmen, and departed to the south, abandoning the whole town to the garrison. They just missed seeing some sharp fighting. The covering party who had been detached to the neighbourhood of Llanza were beset during a dense mist by the somatenes of the coast: two companies were cut to pieces or captured; the rest were saved by General Fontane, who led out three battalions from Pino’s lines to their assistance. While this engagement was in progress, the garrison sallied out with 2,000 men to beat up the main camp of the Italians; they were repulsed after a sharp fight; the majority got back to the citadel, but one party being surrounded, Captain West of the Excellent landed with 250 of his seamen and marines, cut his way to them, and brought them off in safety. West had his horse shot under him (a curious note to have to make concerning a naval officer), and lost ten men wounded.

After the eighth there followed seven days of continuous rain, which turned the camp of Reille’s division into a marsh, and effectually prevented the construction of siege works in the low-lying ground opposite to the town. The only active operation that could be undertaken was an attempt to storm the fort of the Trinity, which the French believed to be in far worse condition than was actually the case. It was held by eighty Spaniards, under the Irish Lieutenant-Colonel Fitzgerald, and twenty-five of the Excellent’s marines[57]. The six voltigeur and grenadier companies of the 2nd Italian light infantry delivered the assault with great dash and resolution. But as the strong frontal tower of the fort was high and unbreached, they could make no impression, their ladders proved useless, and they were repulsed with a loss of sixty men. Their leader, the chef-de-bataillon Lange, and several other officers were left dead at the foot of the walls.

Seeing that nothing was to be won by mere escalade, Reille had to wait for his siege artillery, which began to arrive from Perpignan on November 16. He at once started two batteries on the Puig-Rom to breach the Fort of the Trinity, and when the ground had begun to grow dry in front of the town, opened trenches opposite its north-eastern angle. When a good emplacement had been found a battery was established which played upon the citadel, and commanded so much of the harbour that Reille hoped that the British ships would be compelled to shift their anchorage further out to sea. The Spaniards and the Excellent replied with such a heavy fire that in a few hours the battery was silenced, after its powder magazine had been exploded by a lucky shell [November 19].

Next day, however, the French repaired the damage and mounted more guns, whose fire proved so damaging that Captain West had to move further from the shore. The assailants had established a marked superiority over the fire of the besieged, and availed themselves of it by pushing out parallels nearer to the town, and building four more breaching batteries. With these additional resources they began to work serious damage in the unstable bastions of the citadel. They also knocked a hole in the Fort of the Trinity: but the breach was so far from the foot of the wall that it was still almost inaccessible, the heaps of rubbish which fell into the ditch did not even reach the lowest part of the gap.

On the twenty-first the Excellent was relieved by the Fame, and Captain West handed over the task of co-operating with the Spaniards to Captain Bennett. The latter thought so ill of the state of affairs, that after two days he withdrew his marines from the Trinity Fort, an action most discouraging to the Spaniards. But at this juncture there arrived in the bay the Impérieuse frigate, with her indefatigable commandant Lord Cochrane, a host in himself for such a desperate enterprise as the defence of the much-battered town. He got leave from his superior officer to continue the defence, and manned the Trinity again with his own seamen and marines. They had hardly established themselves there, when the Italian brigade of Mazzuchelli made a second attempt to storm the fort: but it was repulsed without even having reached the foot of the breach.

Cochrane, seeing that the battery which was playing on the Trinity was on the very edge of a precipitous cliff, resolved to try whether it would not be possible to surprise it at night, by landing troops on the beach at the back of the Puig-Rom; if they could get possession of the guns for a few minutes he hoped to cast them over the declivity on to the rocks below. O‘Daly lent him 700 miqueletes from the garrison of the town, and this force was put ashore with thirty of the Impérieuse’s marines who were to lead the assault. The Italians, however, were not caught sleeping, the attack failed, and the assailants were beaten back to the rocks by the beach, with the loss of ten killed and twenty wounded, beside prisoners[58]. The boats of the frigate only brought off 300 men, but many more escaped along the beach into the hilly country to the east, and were neither captured nor slain [November 23]. The sortie, however, had been disastrous, and the Governor, O’Daly, was so down-hearted at the loss of men and at the way in which the walls of the citadel were crumbling before his eyes, that he began to think of surrender. Nor was he much to blame, for the state of things was so bad that it was evident that unless some new factor was introduced into the siege, the end was not far off. The utter improbability of relief from without was demonstrated on the twenty-fourth. Julian Alvarez, the Governor of Gerona and commander of the Spanish forces in the Ampurdam, was perfectly well aware that it was his duty to do what he could for the succour of Rosas. But his forces were insignificant: Vives had only given him 2,000 regular troops to watch the whole line of the Eastern Pyrenees, and of this small force half was shut up in Rosas. Nevertheless Alvarez sallied out from Gerona with two weak battalions of Ultonia and Borbon, and half of the light infantry regiment of Barcelona. Picking up 3,000 local miqueletes he advanced to the line of the Fluvia, where Souham was lying, with the division that St. Cyr had told off to cover the siege. The Spaniards drove in the French outposts at several points, but immediately found themselves opposed by very superior numbers, and brought to a complete stand. Realizing that he was far too weak to do anything, Alvarez retreated to Gerona after a sharp skirmish. If he had pushed on he would infallibly have been destroyed. O’Daly received prompt news of his colleague’s discomfiture, and saw that relief was impossible. The fact was that Vives ought to have brought up from Barcelona his whole field army of 20,000 men. With such a host Souham could have been driven back, and Reille compelled to relax the investment, perhaps even to raise the siege. But the Captain-General preferred to waste his men and his time in the futile blockade of Duhesme, who could have been just as well ‘contained’ by 10,000 somatenes as by the main Spanish army of Catalonia. The only attempt which Vives made to strengthen his force in the Ampurdam was to order up to Gerona the Aragonese division of 4,000 men under the Marquis of Lazan, which was lying at Lerida. This force arrived too late for the skirmish on the Fluvia, and when it did appear was far too small to accomplish anything. Alvarez and Lazan united had only 8,000 bayonets, while St. Cyr’s whole army (as we have already seen) was 25,000 strong, and quite able to maintain the siege, and at the same time to provide a covering force against a relieving army so weak as that which now lay at Gerona.

The siege operations meanwhile were pushed on. Fresh batteries were established to sweep the harbour, and to render more difficult the communication of the citadel and the Trinity fort with the English ships. A new attack was started against the eastern front of the town, and measures were taken to concentrate a heavier fire on the dilapidated bastion of the citadel, which had been destroyed in the old siege of 1794 and never properly repaired. On the twenty-sixth an assault was directed by Pino’s division against the town front. This was defended by no more than a ditch and earthwork: the Italians carried it at the first rush, but found more difficulty in evicting the garrison from the ruined houses along the shore. Five hundred miqueletes, who were barricaded among them, made a very obstinate resistance, and were only driven out after sharp fighting. One hundred and sixty were taken prisoners, less than a hundred escaped into the citadel: the rest perished. The besiegers at once established a lodgement in the town, covering themselves with the masonry of the demolished houses. It was in vain that the Fame and Impérieuse ran close in shore and tried to batter the Italians out of the ruins. They inflicted considerable loss, but failed to prevent the enemy from finding shelter. Next night the lodgement in the town was connected with the rest of the siege works, and used as the base for an attack against a hitherto unmolested front of the citadel.

Just after the storming of the town, the garrison received the only succour which was sent to it during the whole siege; a weak battalion of regulars from the regiment of Borbon was put ashore near the citadel under cover of the darkness. It would have been more useful on the preceding day, for the defence of the outer works. After the arrival of this small succour the Governor, O’Daly, sent eighty men of the Irish regiment of Ultonia to reinforce Cochrane in the Trinity fort, withdrawing a similar number of miqueletes to the citadel.

The guns established by the besiegers in their new batteries among the ruins of the town made such good practice upon the front of the citadel that Reille thought it worth while on the twenty-eighth to summon the Governor to surrender. O’Daly made a becoming answer, to the effect that his defences were still intact and that he was prepared to continue his resistance. To cut him off from his communication with the sea, the only side from which he could expect help, Reille now began to build batteries along the water-front of the town, which commanded the landing-places below the citadel. The English ships proved unable to subdue these new guns, and their power to help O’Daly was seriously diminished. It was only under cover of the darkness that they could send boats to land men or stores for the citadel. On the thirtieth they tried to take off the sick and wounded, who were now growing very numerous in the place: but the shore-batteries having hit the headmost boat, the rest drew off and abandoned the attempt. The prospects of the garrison had grown most gloomy.

Meanwhile the Trinity fort had been perpetually battered for ten days, and the hole in the great frontal tower was growing larger. It can hardly be called a breach, as owing to the impossibility of searching the lower courses of the wall by the plunging fire from the Puig-Rom, the lowest edge of the gap was forty feet from the ground. The part of the tower which had been opened was the upper section of a lofty bomb-proof casemate, which composed its ground story. Lord Cochrane built up, with the débris that fell inwards, and with hammocks filled with earth and sand, new walls inside the bomb proof, cutting off the hole from the interior of the tower: thus enemies entering at the gap would find that they had only penetrated into the upper part of a sort of cellar. The ingenious captain also set a long slide or shoot of greased planks just under the lip of the hole, so that any one stepping in would be precipitated thirty feet into the bottom of the casemate. But the mere sight of this mantrap, as he called it, proved enough for the enemy, who never pushed the attack into it.

On November 30 Pino’s division assaulted the fort, the storming party being composed of six grenadier and voltigeur companies of the 1st and 6th Italian regiments. They came on with great courage, and planted their ladders below the great hole, amid a heavy fire of musketry from the garrison. The leaders succeeded in reaching the edge of the ‘breach,’ but finding the chasm and the ‘mantrap’ before them, would not enter. They were all shot down: grenades were dropped in profusion into the mass at the foot of the ladders, and after a time the stormers fled back under cover, leaving two officers and forty men behind them. They were rallied and brought up again to the foot of the breach, but recoiled after a second and less desperate attempt to enter. The garrison lost only three men killed and two wounded, of whom four were Spaniards. They captured two prisoners, men who had got so far forward that they dared not go back under the terrible fire which swept the foot of the tower. These unfortunates had to be taken into the fort by a rope, so inaccessible was the supposed breach. After this bloody repulse, the besiegers left Lord Cochrane alone, merely continuing to bombard his tower, and throwing up entrenchments on the beach, from which they kept up an incessant musketry fire on the difficult landing-place by which the fort communicated with the ships.

Their main attention was now turned to the citadel, where O’Daly’s position was growing hopeless. ‘Their practice,’ says Cochrane, ‘was beautiful. So accurately was their artillery conducted that every discharge “ruled a straight line” along the lower part of the walls. This being repeated till the upper portion was without support, as a matter of course the whole fell into the ditch, forming a breach of easy ascent. The whole proceedings were clearly visible from the Trinity[59].’ On December 3 the Governor played his last card: the worst of the damage was being done by the advanced batteries placed among the ruins of the town, and it was from this point that the impending assault would evidently be delivered. O’Daly therefore picked 500 of his best men, opened a postern gate, and launched them at night upon the besiegers’ works. The sortie was delivered with great dash and vigour: the trench guards were swept away, the breaching batteries were seized, and the Spaniards began to throw down the parapets, spike the guns, and set fire to the platforms and fascines. But heavy reserves came up from the French camp, and their attack could not be resisted. Before any very serious damage had been done, the besieged were driven out of the trenches by sheer force of numbers, and forced to retire to the citadel, leaving forty-five dead behind them. Reille acknowledged the loss of one officer and twelve men killed, and nineteen men wounded.

On the fourth the siege works were pushed forward to within 200 yards of the walls of the citadel, and the breach already established in the dilapidated bastion was enlarged to a great breadth. After dark the French engineers got forward as far as the counterscarp, and reported that an assault was practicable, and could hardly fail. The same fact was perfectly evident to O’Daly, who sent out a parlementaire to ask for terms. He offered to surrender in return for leave to take his garrison off by sea. Reille naturally refused, as the Spaniards were at his mercy, and enforced an unconditional surrender.

The state of things being visible to Lord Cochrane on the next morning, he hastily evacuated the Trinity fort, which it was useless to hold after the citadel had fallen. His garrison, 100 Spaniards and eighty British sailors and marines, had to descend from the fort by rope ladders, as the enemy commanded the proper point of embarkation. They were taken off by the boats of the Fame and Impérieuse under a heavy musketry fire, but suffered no appreciable loss. The magazine was left with a slow match burning, and exploded, ruining the fort, before the garrison had got on board their ships.

St. Cyr, in his journal of the war in Catalonia, suggests that Bennett and Cochrane ought to have tried to take off the garrison of the citadel in the same fashion. But this was practically impossible: the communication between the citadel and the sea had been lost for some days, the French batteries along the beach rendering the approach of boats too dangerous to be attempted. If Captain Bennett had sent in the limited supply of boats that the Fame, the Impérieuse and the two smaller vessels[60] possessed they would probably have been destroyed. For they would have had to make many return journeys in order to remove 2,500 men, under the fire of heavy guns placed only 200 or 300 yards away from the landing-place. It was quite another thing to remove 180 men from the Trinity, where the enemy could bring practically nothing but musketry to bear, and where the whole of the garrison could be taken off at a single trip. Another futile charge made by the French against the British navy, is that the Fame shelled the beach near the citadel while the captive garrison was marching out, and killed several of the unfortunate Spaniards. If the incident happened at all (there is no mention of it in Lord Cochrane or in James) it must have been due to an attempt to damage the French trenches; Captain Bennett could not have known that the passing column consisted of Spaniards. To insinuate that the mistake was deliberate, as does Belmas, is simply malicious[61].

O’Daly went into captivity with 2,366 men, leaving about 400 more in hospital. The total of the troops who had taken part in the defence, including the reinforcements received by sea, had been about 3,500, so that about 700 must have perished in the siege. The French loss had been at least as great—Pino’s division alone lost thirty officers and 400 men killed and wounded[62], besides many sick. It is probable that the total diminution in the ranks of Reille’s two divisions was over 1,000, the bad weather having told very heavily on the ill-equipped troops.

So ended an honourable if not a very desperate defence. The place was doomed from the first, when once the torpid and purblind Vives had made up his mind to keep his whole force concentrated round Barcelona, and to send no more than the insignificant division of Alvarez and Lazan to the help of O’Daly. Considering the dilapidated condition of the citadel of Rosas, and the almost untenable state of the town section of the fortifications, the only wonder is that the French did not break in at an earlier date. The first approaches of Reille’s engineers were, according to Belmas, unskilfully conducted, and pushed too much into the marsh. When once they received a right direction, the result was inevitable. Even had the artillery failed to do its work Rosas must nevertheless have fallen within a few days, for it was insufficiently provisioned, and, as the communication with the sea had been cut off since November 30, must have yielded ere long to starvation. The French found an ample store of guns (fifty-eight pieces) and much ammunition in the place, but an utterly inadequate supply of food.

[N.B.—Belmas, St. Cyr, and Arteche have all numerous slips in their narration, from not having used the British authorities. Vacani’s account is, on the whole, the best on the French side. Much may be learnt from James’s Naval History, vol. v, but more from Lord Cochrane’s picturesque autobiography. From this, e.g., alone can it be ascertained that the column which attacked the Puig-Rom on November 23 was composed of miqueletes, not of British soldiers. Cochrane is represented by several writers as arriving on the twenty-fourth or even the twenty-sixth, while as a matter of fact he reached Rosas on the twenty-first. It may interest some to know that Captain Marryat, the novelist, served under Cochrane, and was mentioned in his dispatch. So the description of the siege of Rosas in Marryat’s Frank Mildmay, wherein his captain is so much glorified, is a genuine personal reminiscence, and not an invention of fiction.]

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SECTION X: CHAPTER II

ST. CYR RELIEVES BARCELONA: BATTLES OF CARDADEU AND MOLINS DE REY

When Rosas had fallen St. Cyr was at last able to take in hand the main operation which had been entrusted to him by Napoleon—the relief of Barcelona. While the siege was still in progress he had received two letters bidding him hasten to the relief of Duhesme without delay[63], but he had taken upon himself the responsibility of writing back that he must clear his flank and rear before he dared move, and that he should proceed with the leaguer of Rosas, which could only last a few days longer, unless he received formal orders to abandon the undertaking. He ventured to point out that the moral and political effects of taking such a step would be deplorable[64]. Napoleon’s silence gave consent, and St. Cyr’s plea was justified by the fall of the place on December 5.

Rosas having been captured, the French general had now at his disposition all his four divisions, those of Souham, Pino, Reille, and Chabot, which even after deducting the casualties suffered in the siege, and the losses experienced by the covering troops from the bad weather, still amounted to 22,000 men. After counting up the very considerable forces which the Spaniards might place in his way, he resolved to take on with him for the relief of Barcelona the troops of Souham, Pino, and Chabot, and to leave behind only those of Reille. With about 5,000 or 5,500 soldiers of not very good quality that officer was to hold Figueras and Rosas, watch Gerona, and protect the high-road to Perpignan. St. Cyr himself with the twenty-six battalions and nine squadrons forming the other three divisions, a force of some 15,000 infantry and 1,500 horse, took his way to the south.

The first obstacle in his way was Gerona: but if he stopped to besiege and take it, it was clear that he would never reach Barcelona in time to save Duhesme from starvation: that general had reported that his food would only last till the end of December, and Gerona would certainly hold out more than three weeks. Indeed, as we shall see, when it was actually beleaguered in the next year, it made a desperate defence, lasting for nearly six months[65]. St. Cyr saw from the first that he must leave the fortress alone, and slip past it. As it commanded the high-road, this resolution forced him to abandon any intention of taking forward his artillery and his wheeled transport. They could not face the rugged by-paths on to which he would be compelled to throw himself, and he marched without a single gun, and with his food and provisions borne on pack-horses and mules, of which he had a very modest provision.

St. Cyr was quite well aware that if General Vives were to resign the blockade of Barcelona to his miqueletes and somatenes, and to come against him with his whole army, the task of relieving Duhesme would be dangerous if not impossible. There are but two roads from Gerona to Barcelona, and across each of them lie half a dozen positions which, if entrenched and held by superior numbers, he could not hope to force. These two routes are the coast-road by Mataro and Arens de Mar—which the French had used for their first march to Gerona in August—and the inland road up the valley of the Besos by Hostalrich and Granollers. But the former had been so conscientiously destroyed by Lord Cochrane and the local somatenes[66] that St. Cyr regarded it as impassable; there were places where it had been blasted away for lengths of a quarter or a half of a mile. Moreover, at many points the army would have to defile under the cliffs for long distances, and might be shelled by any British men-of-war that should happen to lie off the coast[67]. Accordingly the French general determined to try the inland road, though he would have to march round Gerona and the smaller fortress of Hostalrich, and though it was cut by several admirable positions, where the Catalans might offer battle with reasonable prospects of success. It was all-important that Vives should be left as long as possible in uncertainty as to his adversary’s next move, and that the Catalans should be dealt with in detail rather than in mass. St. Cyr resolved, therefore, to make a show of attacking Gerona, and to try whether he could not catch Lazan and Alvarez, and rout them, before the Captain-General should come up to their assistance.

On December 9, therefore, St. Cyr had his whole corps, minus the division of Reille, concentrated on the left bank of the river Ter. On the next day he manœuvred as if about to envelop Gerona. He had hoped that this move would tempt Lazan and Alvarez to come out and meet him in the open. But fully conscious that their 8,000 men would be exposed to inevitable defeat, the two Spanish officers wisely kept quiet under the walls of their stronghold. Having worked round their flank, St. Cyr on the eleventh sent back the whole of his artillery and heavy baggage to Figueras, and plunged into the mountains; at La Bispal he distributed four days’ biscuit to his men, warning them that there would be no further issue of rations till they reached Barcelona. The light carts which had been dragged thus far with the food were burnt. As to munitions, each soldier had fifty cartridges in his pouch, and the pack-mules carried 150,000 more, a reserve of only ten rounds for each man[68]. The equipment of the army, in short, was such that if it failed to force its way to Barcelona within six days it must starve, while if it was forced to fight three or four heavy engagements it would be left helpless, without a cartridge for a final battle. The general, if not the men in the ranks, fully realized the peril of the situation.

On the twelfth St. Cyr pushed along the mountains above Palamos and San Feliu, brushing away a body of miqueletes from the coast-land under Juan Claros, who tried to hold the defile. On the thirteenth the French reached Vidreras, where they were again on a decent road, that which goes from Gerona to Malgrat. They now perceived that they were being followed by Lazan and the garrison of Gerona, whose camp-fires were visible on the heights to the north, while troops, evidently detached from the blockade of Barcelona, were visible in front of them. It was clear that St. Cyr had at least succeeded in placing himself between the two main forces which the enemy could oppose to him, and might engage them separately. He might also count on the Spaniards looking for him on the Malgrat-Mataro road, on which he was now established, while it was his intention to abandon it, in order to plunge inland once more, and to fall into the main chaussée to Barcelona, south of Hostalrich. That a path existed, along which such a movement could be carried out, was only known to the general by the report of a Perpignan smuggler, who had once kept sheep among these hills. But when exploring parties tried to find it, they lost their way, and reported that no such route existed. If this was the fact, St. Cyr was ruined: but he refused to believe the officers who assured him that the smuggler had erred, and pushing among the rocks finally discovered it himself. During his exploration he was nearly cut off by a party of somatenes, and his escort had to fight hard in order to save him.

But the road was found, and on the fifteenth the army followed it, almost in single file, while the dragoons had to dismount and lead their horses. They saw the fortress of Hostalrich in the valley below them, and passed it in sight of the garrison. Some of the latter came out, and skirmished with the rearguard of St. Cyr’s long column, but they were too weak to do much harm, while Lazan, whose advent from the north would have caused more serious difficulties, had been completely eluded, and never came in sight.

In the afternoon the whole expeditionary force safely descended into the Barcelona chaussée near San Celoni, from which place they drove out four battalions of miqueletes, the first troops that the tardy Vives had detached from his main army. The men were much fatigued, and the somatenes were beginning to give trouble both in flank and rear, but St. Cyr insisted that they should not encamp by San Celoni, but push southward through the difficult defile of the Trentapassos, so that they might not find it held against them on the following morning. This was done, and the best of the many positions which the Spaniards might have held to oppose the march of the invaders was occupied without the least resistance. St. Cyr encamped at the southern end of the pass, and saw before him, when the night had fallen, a line of watch-fires far down the valley of the Besos which showed that the Spaniards from the leaguer of Barcelona had at last come out to oppose him.

The conduct of Vives during the last six days had been in perfect keeping with the rest of his slow and stupid guidance of the campaign. He had received in due course news of the fall of Rosas, and soon after the additional information that St. Cyr had crossed the Ter and was threatening Gerona. Opinion was divided in the camp of the Catalans as to whether the French were about to lay siege to that fortress, or to pass it by and make a dash for the relief of Duhesme. If they sat down before Gerona there was no need to hurry: if they should pass it by, it would be necessary to move at once, in order to occupy the defiles against them. The opinion of the more intelligent officers was that St. Cyr would be forced to march to aid Duhesme, whose want of provisions was well known by secret intelligence sent out from Barcelona. Unfortunately Vives inclined to the other side: he preferred to believe the alternative which did not impose on him the necessity for instant and decisive action. He did nothing, and pretended to be waiting for further news. It reached him on the night of December 11-12, in the form of a message from the Junta of Gerona, to the effect that the French had sent back their artillery and were plunging into the mountains in the direction of La Bispal, so that it was clear that they must be marching to relieve Duhesme. It might have been expected that the Captain-General would now at last break up from his lines, and hasten to throw himself across the path of the approaching enemy. But after holding a long and fruitless council of war he contented himself with sending out Reding, with that part of the newly-arrived Granadan division which had reached Catalonia. On the twelfth therefore the Swiss General started by the inland road with seven battalions of his own Andalusian levies and a regiment of cavalry. Next day he reached Granollers and halted there. At the same time Francisco Milans, with four tercios of miqueletes, was sent out to guard the coast-road, the other possible line of approach by which St. Cyr might arrive. Reding had 5,000 men, Milans 3,000: but Vives still lay before Barcelona with two-thirds of his army, at least 16,000 or 17,000 bayonets. It was in vain that Caldagues, the preserver of Gerona, implored him to leave no more than a screen of miqueletes in the lines, and to sally forth to fight with every regular soldier that he could muster. The Captain-General refused to listen, supporting his inactivity by pleading that the advice sent from Gerona did not speak of the enemy’s force as very large: the defiles, he urged, were so difficult that Reding and Milans, aided by Lazan, ought to be able to hold them against any small expeditionary force.

Thus St. Cyr was left to work out his daring plan without any serious opposition. The only force with which he came in contact was Milans’ brigade of miqueletes, who, finding the coast-road clear, had crossed the mountains and occupied San Celoni. These were the troops whom St. Cyr drove away on the afternoon of the fifteenth, before entering the defile of the Trentapassos.

On receiving news of this combat, which had taken place only twenty-one miles from his lines, Vives at last set out in person. But persisting in his idiotic notion of blocking Barcelona to the last moment, he left Caldagues before the place with 12,000 men, and marched with a single brigade of 4,000 bayonets to join Reding. Moving all through the night of the fifteenth-sixteenth he joined the Granadans at daybreak at Cardadeu on the high-road. Their united strength was only 9,000 men, of whom 600 were cavalry, and seven guns[69]. This was the whole force which fought St. Cyr, for Lazan, moving with culpable slowness, was still far north of San Celoni, when he should have been pressing on the rear of the French, while Milans with the miqueletes, who had been beaten on the previous day, was some miles away in the mountains on the right, and quite out of touch with his commander-in-chief. Nine thousand Spaniards, in short, were within ten miles of the field, yet took no part in the battle. St. Cyr in his central position kept them apart, and they failed to combine with Vives and his force at Cardadeu.

The valley of the Besos at this point has broadened out, and is no longer the narrow defile that is seen a few miles further to the north. But there is much broken ground on both sides of the high-road. A little way north of Cardadeu is a low hill covered with pines, lying to the right of the chaussée: at the foot of the hill is a ravine which the road has to cross at right angles, and which falls into the stream called the Riera de la Roca. The country-side was composed partly of cultivated ground, partly of thickets of pine and oak, which rendered it difficult for either side to get a general view of its adversaries’ movements.

Vives, who had only reached his fighting-ground at dawn, had no time to reconnoitre his position, or to make any elaborate scheme for getting the best use out of the terrain. He hastily drew up his army in two lines across the high-road: the front line was behind the ravine, the second higher up on the pine-clad hill. Reding’s troops held the right wing on the lowest ground, and extended as far as the river Mogent, a branch of the Besos. Vives’ own Catalan regiments formed the centre and left: they were mainly placed on the hill commanding the road, with three guns in front of their centre, and two further to the left on a point from which they could enfilade a turn of the chaussée. The miqueletes of Vich, on the extreme left, held a spur of the higher mountains which bound the valley of the Besos. The reserve drawn up on the high-road, behind the main position, consisted of two guns, two squadrons of horse (Husares Españoles, lately arrived from Majorca) and two battalions.

St. Cyr could make out very little of his adversaries’ force or position; the woods and hills masked the greater part of the Spanish line. But he knew that he must attack, and that promptly, for every hour that he delayed would give time for Lazan to come up in his rear, and Milans on his left flank. He left behind him at the southern outlet of the Trentapassos the three battalions of Chabot’s division, with orders to hold the defile at all costs against Lazan, whenever the latter should appear. With the other twenty-three battalions forming the divisions of Pino and Souham he marched down the high-road to deal with Vives. It was necessary to attack at once: ‘the biscuit distributed at La Bispal was just finished: the cartridges were running low, for many had been spent in the preceding skirmishes. There was, in fact, only ammunition for one hour of battle[70].’ St. Cyr saw that he must win by one short and swift stroke, or suffer a complete disaster. Accordingly, he had resolved to form his two strong divisions—more than 13,000 men—into one great column, which was to charge the Spanish centre and burst through by its own impetus and momentum. Pino’s thirteen Italian battalions formed the head of the mass: Souham’s ten French battalions its rear. The General’s plan is best expressed in his own words: his orders to Pino, who was to lead the attack, ran as follows:—

‘The corps must fight in the order in which I have arranged it this morning. There is neither time nor means to make dispositions to beat the Spaniards more or less thoroughly. The country-side is so broken and wooded that it would take three hours to reconnoitre their position, and in two hours Lazan may be on the spot attacking our rear. Not a minute can be lost: we must simply rush at and trample down[71] the corps in our front, whatever its strength may be. Our food is done, our ammunition almost exhausted. The enemy has artillery, which is a reason the more for haste: the quicker we attack, the less time will he have to shell us. There must be no attempt to feel his position; not one battalion must be deployed. Though his position is strong we must go straight at it in column, and burst through the centre by striking at that one point with our whole force. The enemy must be given no time to prepare his defence or bring up his reserves. You must not change the disposition in column in which we march, even in order to take great numbers of prisoners. Our sole end is to break through and to get as close as we can to Barcelona this evening. Our camp-fires must be visible to the garrison by night, to show that we are at hand to raise the siege.’

This order of battle was most hazardous: if St. Cyr had found in front of him two steady English divisions instead of Reding’s raw Granadan levies and the gallant but untrained Catalan miqueletes, it is certain that affairs would have gone as at Busaco or Talavera. Dense columns attacking a fair position held by good troops in line are bound to suffer terrible losses, and ought never to succeed. But St. Cyr knew the enemies with whom he had to deal, and his method was well adapted to his end. If he ran some risk of failing at the commencement of the action, it was simply because his subordinates did not follow out his directions.

General Pino, on whom the responsibility of opening the attack devolved, started with every intention of obedience. But when he arrived at the foot of the Spanish position, and the balls began to fall thickly among his leading battalions, he lost his head. His column only faced the Spanish right centre, and the heavy flanking fire from the hostile wings daunted him. Instead of pushing straight before him with his whole force, as St. Cyr had ordered, he threw out five battalions of Mazzuchelli’s brigade to his left[72], and two battalions under General Fontane to his extreme right[73]; the six battalions of his rear brigade were not yet up to the front, and took no part in the first assault. Thus he attacked on a front of three-quarters of a mile, instead of at one single point. His columns, after driving in the Spanish front line, came to a stand half-way up the hill, in a very irregular array, the flanks thrown forward, the centre hanging somewhat back. Reding, against whom the main attack of Mazzuchelli’s brigade had been directed, brought up his second line, and when the Italians were slackening in their advance hurled at them two squadrons of hussars, and led forward his whole division. The assailants broke, and fell back with loss.

St. Cyr, coming up to the front at this moment, was horrified to mark the results of Pino’s disobedience of his orders. But he had still Souham’s division in hand, and flung it, in one solid mass of ten battalions, upon Reding’s right; at the same time he commanded Pino to throw the two regiments of his intact rear brigade upon the Spanish centre[74], while Fontane’s two battalions continued to demonstrate against the enemy’s left. The result was what might have been expected: the column of Souham burst through the Granadan division, and completely routed the right wing of the Spanish army: at the same moment Pino’s main column forced back Vives and the Catalans along the line of the high-road. All at once fell into confusion, and, when St. Cyr bade his two Italian cavalry regiments charge up the chaussée, the enemy broke his ranks and fled to the hills. Five of the seven Spanish guns were captured, with two standards and some 1,500 unwounded prisoners. Reding, who stayed behind to the last, trying to rally a rearguard for the protection of the routed host, was nearly taken prisoner, and had to draw his sword and cut his way out. Vives, whose conduct on this day was anything but creditable, scrambled up a cliff after turning his horse loose, and came almost alone to the sea-shore near Mongat, where he was picked up by the boats of the Cambrian frigate, and forwarded to Tarragona. Besides the prisoners the Spaniards lost at least a thousand men, and many of the miqueletes dispersed to their homes. St. Cyr acknowledged 600 casualties, nearly all of them, as might have been expected, in Pino’s division.

Reding at last succeeded in rallying some troops at Monmalo near San Culgat, and covered the retreat of the main mass of the fugitives to join the troops who had been left in the lines before Barcelona. As to the detached Spanish corps under Milans and the Marquis of Lazan, the former never came down from the hills till the fighting was over, though it was only four or five miles from the scene of action[75]. The latter, which was following in St. Cyr’s rear, moved with such extreme slowness that it had not yet reached San Celoni when the battle was fought, and did not even get into contact with Chabot’s division, which had been left behind to guard against its approach[76]. On learning of the defeat the Marquis marched back to Gerona, and rejoined Alvarez. Thus Vives got no assistance whatever from his outlying corps: if Lazan is to be trusted, this was largely the fault of the Commander-in-chief himself, for no dispatch from him reached his subordinates after December 14, and they had no knowledge of his movements or designs.

Meanwhile Caldagues, who had been left in charge of the blockade, had maintained his post, and repulsed a heavy sortie which Duhesme and the garrison had directed against his posts on the sixteenth. But when the news of the battle of Cardadeu reached him in the evening, he evacuated all the parts of his line which lay to the east of the Llobregat, and concentrated his 12,000 men at Molins de Rey and San Boy, on the further bank of that river. He was forced to abandon at Sarria the large dépôt of provisions from which the left wing of the investing force had been fed.

The road from Cardadeu and San Culgat to Barcelona being thus left open, St. Cyr marched in triumph into Barcelona on the morning of the seventeenth. He complains in his memoirs that he did not discover one single vedette from the garrison pushed out to meet him, and that Duhesme did not come forth to receive him, or give him a single word of thanks. Indeed, when the Governor at last presented himself to meet the commander of the Seventh Corps, he spent his first words not in expressing his appreciation for the service which had been rendered him, but in demonstrating that he had never been in danger, and could have held out for six weeks more. He was somewhat abashed when St. Cyr replied by presenting him with a copy of one of his own former dispatches to Berthier, which painted the condition of the garrison in the blackest colours, and asked for instant succours lest the worst might happen[77].

It was clear that the two generals would not work well together, but as St. Cyr held the supreme command, and was determined to assert himself, Duhesme could do no more than sulk in silence. The conduct of the operations against the Catalans had been taken completely out of his hands.

St. Cyr’s daring march to Barcelona had been crowned with complete success. It was by far the most brilliant operation on the French side during the first year of the war. That it was perilous cannot be denied: if the commander of the Seventh Corps had found the whole army of Vives entrenched at the passage of the Tordera, or across the defile of the Trentapassos, it seems impossible that he could have got forward to Barcelona. Thirty thousand men, of whom half were regular troops, might have been opposed to him, and they could have brought artillery against him, while he had not a single piece. If once checked he must have retreated in haste, for he had only ammunition for a single battle. But the rapid and unexpected character of his movements entirely puzzled the enemy, and he was fortunate in having a Vives to contend against. ‘When the enemy has no general,’ as Schepeler remarks while commenting on this campaign, ‘any stroke of luck is possible.’ Against a capable officer St. Cyr would probably have failed, but he had a shrewd suspicion of the character of his opponent from what had happened during the siege of Rosas: he dared much, and his daring was rewarded by a splendid victory.

The campaign, however, was not yet completed. Barcelona had been relieved, but only a fraction of the Spanish army had been met and beaten. Caldagues lay behind the Llobregat with 11,000[78] men who had not yet been engaged. Reding had joined him with the wrecks of the troops which had fought at Cardadeu, some 3,000 or 4,000 men. They lined the eastern bank of the river, only six or seven miles from the suburbs of Barcelona, occupying the entrenchments which had been constructed to shut in Duhesme during the blockade. These were strengthened with several redoubts, some of them armed with heavy artillery, and the positions were good, but too extensive for a force of 14,000 or 15,000 men. Their weak point was that the Llobregat even in December is fordable in many places, and that if the French attacked in mass at one point they were almost certain of being able to force their way through the line. Reding, and his second-in-command Caldagues, were both of opinion that it would be wise to evacuate the lines, if St. Cyr should come out in force against them, and to fall back on the mountains in their rear, which separate the valley of the Llobregat from the coast-plain of Tarragona. Here there was a strong position at the defile of Ordal, where it was intended to construct an entrenched camp. But there was a strong temptation to hold on in the old lines for as long a time as possible, for by retiring to Ordal the army would leave open the high-road to Lerida and Saragossa, and give up much of the plain to the incursions of the French foragers. Reding sent back to Vives, who had now landed in his rear and placed himself at Villanueva de Sitjas, to ask whether he was to retreat at once, or to hold his ground. The Captain-General sent back the inconclusive reply that ‘he might fall back on Ordal if he could not defend the line of the Llobregat.’ Thus he threw back the responsibility on his subordinate, and Reding, anxious to vindicate his courage before the eyes of the Catalans, resolved after some hesitation to retain his positions, though he had grave doubts of the possibility of resistance.

He was not allowed much time to ponder over the situation. The reply of Vives only reached him on the night of December 20-21. On the next morning St. Cyr came out of Barcelona and attacked the lines. He had brought with him every available man: Duhesme had been left to hold the city with Lecchi’s Italians alone: his other division (that of Chabran), together with the three which had formed the army of succour—those of Souham, Pino, and Chabot—were all directed against the lines. The plan of St. Cyr was to demonstrate against the bridge of Molins de Rey, the strongest part of the Spanish position, with Chabran’s 4,000 men, while he himself crossed the fords lower down the Llobregat with the 14,000 bayonets of the other three divisions, and turned the right flank of the enemy.

At five o’clock on a miserable gusty December morning the French came down towards the river: Chabran led off by making a noisy demonstration opposite the redoubts at the bridge, on the northern flank of the position. This, as St. Cyr had intended, drew Reding’s attention to that flank: he reinforced his left with troops drawn from his right wing on the lower and easier ground down stream. An hour later the other attacking columns advanced, that of Souham crossing the ford of San Juan Despi, while Pino and Chabot passed by that of San Feliu. No proper attempt was made to dispute their advance. Outnumbered, and strung out along a very extensive position, the Catalans soon saw their line broken in several places. The only serious opposition made was by the centre, which advanced down hill against Souham and tried to charge him, but gave back long before bayonets had been crossed.

The most fatal part of Reding’s position was that on his extreme right Chabot’s three battalions had got completely round his flank, and kept edging in on the rear of his southern wing, which abandoned hill after hill as it saw its retreat threatened. Pino and Souham had only to press on, and each regiment in their front gave way in turn when it saw its exposed flank in danger. At last the whole of the Spanish right and centre was pushed back in disorder on to the still intact left behind the bridge of Molins de Rey. Now was the time for Chabran to turn his demonstration into a real attack: if he had crossed the river and advanced rapidly, he would have caught the shaken masses in front, while the rest of the army chased them forward into his arms. But being timid or unenterprising, he let the flying enemy pass across his front unmolested, and only forded the river when they had gone too far to be caught. The unhappy Vives came up at this moment, just in time to see his whole army on the run, and headed their flight to the hills.

Thus the Spaniards got away without any very crushing losses, though their historian Cabanes confesses that if Chabran had moved a quarter of an hour earlier he would have captured half the army of Catalonia. As it was, St. Cyr took about 1,200 prisoners only, though his dragoons pursued the routed enemy for many miles. It was a great misfortune for the Catalans that among these captives was the Conde de Caldagues, the one first-rate officer in their ranks. He was taken by the pursuers at Vendrell, many miles from the field, when his exhausted horse fell under him. St. Cyr captured the whole artillery of the Spaniards, twenty-five cannon[79], of which several were pieces of heavy calibre, mounted in redoubts. The field-pieces were more useful to him, as he was very short of artillery; he had brought none with him, while Duhesme had been obliged to destroy the greater part of his during the retreat from Gerona in August. He also made prize of a magazine of 3,000,000 cartridges and of many thousands of muskets, which the routed enemy cast away in their haste to escape over the hills. Some of the fugitives fled south, and did not stop till they reached Tortosa and the Ebro: others dispersed in the direction of Igualada and Lerida, but the main body rallied at Tarragona.

The victorious French divisions were pushed far out from the battle-field so as to occupy not only the whole plain of the Llobregat, but also the defiles over the hills leading to Tarragona. Chabran was placed at Martorell, Chabot at San Sadurni, Souham at Vendrell, and Pino at Villanueva de Sitjas and Villafranca. Thus the pass of Ordal was in the victor’s hands, and he had it in his power to march against Tarragona without having any further positions to force. But the siege of that place did not form, at present, any part of St. Cyr’s designs. His aim was first to collect such magazines at Barcelona as would feed his whole army of 25,000 men till the harvest was ripe, and secondly to reopen his communication with France. The sea route was rendered dangerous by the English ships, which were continually hovering off the coast. The land route was blocked by the fortresses of Hostalrich and Gerona. St. Cyr imagined that it was more important to make an end of these places, and open his route to Perpignan, than to attack Tarragona. The latter place was strong, and the greater part of the Catalan army had taken refuge in it. The siege would need, as he supposed, many months, and could not be properly conducted till a battering-train and a large store of ammunition had been brought down from France.

It is possible that the French general might have come to another conclusion if he had been aware of the state of panic and disorganization among the Catalans at this moment. The miqueletes had mostly dispersed to their homes, the regular troops were mutinous, and the populace was crying treason and looking for scape-goats. The incapable Vives was frightened into resignation, and finally replaced by Reding, whose courage at least was beyond suspicion, if his abilities were not those of a great general. The smaller towns were full of tumults and assassination: at Lerida a certain Gomez declared himself dictator and began to seize and execute all suspected persons. He did not stop till he was caught and beheaded by a battalion which Reding sent out against him. In short, anarchy reigned in Catalonia for ten days, and it is possible that if St. Cyr had marched straight to Tarragona he might have taken the place, though its inhabitants were working hard at their fortifications, and vowing to emulate Saragossa. Many historians of the war have blamed the French general for not making the attempt: but there was much to urge in his defence. It is perfectly possible that the Tarragonese might have made a gallant stand, in spite of all their troubles, for the garrison was large if disorderly. If they held out, St. Cyr had neither a siege equipage nor sufficient magazines to feed his army when concentrated in a single spot. The French troops were exhausted, and suffering dreadfully from the inclement winter weather. Lazan and Alvarez were in full force in the Ampurdam, and were giving Reille’s weak division much trouble.

Probably therefore St. Cyr was justified in halting for a month, which he employed in clearing the whole country-side for thirty miles round Barcelona, and in collecting the stores of food which his army required before it could make another move. The halt allowed time for the Catalans to rally, and for Reding to reorganize his army: by February he was ready once more to try his fortune in the field. Indeed, he was ere long more formidable than St. Cyr had expected, for he was joined by the second brigade of his own Granadan division, which came up from Valencia not long after the battle of Molins de Rey, and the last reserves from Majorca had also sailed to aid him, after giving over the fortifications of the Balearic Isles to the marines of the fleet, and the urban guards of Palma and Port Mahon. The miqueletes, too, returned to their standards when the first panic was over, and in a month Catalonia could once more show an army of 30,000 men. The first incident which occurred to encourage the insurgents was that on January 1. Lazan fell upon and very severely handled a detached battalion of Reille’s division at Castellon in the Ampurdam[80], and when Reille came up against him in person with 2,500 men, inflicted on him a sharp check at the fords of the Muga. Not long after, however, the Marquis withdrew from this region, and marched back toward Aragon, taking with him his own division and leaving only the weak corps of Alvarez to deal with Reille. His retreat was caused by the news of his brother’s desperate position in Saragossa. Hoping to make a diversion in favour of Palafox, Lazan marched to Lerida, where he began to gather in all the men that he could collect before moving back to his native province. Thus the pressure on Reille was much reduced.

St. Cyr’s men, meanwhile, made many expeditions into the valleys above Barcelona. They cleared the defile of Bruch leading into the upper valley of the Llobregat, which the somatenes had held so gallantly against Schwartz and Chabran in June. They took, but did not hold, the almost inaccessible peak of Montserrat, and on the coast-road dominated the country as far as Mataro. But they could not reopen the communications with France: their general did not dare to set about the siege of Gerona while Reding had still the makings of an army in the direction of Tarragona. It was not till that brave but unfortunate officer had received his third defeat in February that St. Cyr was able to turn his attention to the north, and the road to Perpignan. For the present, the French general found himself mainly occupied by the imperious necessity for scraping together food not only for his own army, but for the great city of Barcelona, where both the garrison and the people were living from hand to mouth. For the resources of the neighbouring plain were nearly exhausted, and the only external supply came from occasional merchantmen from Cette or Marseilles, whose captains were tempted to run the British blockade by the enormous price which they could secure for their corn if it could be brought safely through. It was only somewhat later that the Emperor directed the naval authorities in Provence to dispatch regular convoys to Barcelona under a strong escort, whenever the British cruisers were reported to have been blown out to sea. Meanwhile the problem of food supplies remained almost as urgent a question for St. Cyr as the movements of his adversaries in the field.

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SECTION X: CHAPTER III

THE CAMPAIGN OF FEBRUARY, 1809: BATTLE OF VALLS

More than a month had elapsed since the battle of Molins de Rey before any important movements were made in Catalonia. Early in February St. Cyr drew in his divisions from the advanced positions in the plain of Tarragona, which they had taken up after the victory of Molins de Rey. They had eaten up the country-side, and were being much harassed by the miqueletes, who had begun to press in upon their communications with Barcelona, in spite of all the care that was taken to scour the country with small flying columns, and to scatter any nucleus of insurgents that began to grow up in the French rear. Owing to the dispersion of the divisions of the 7th Corps these operations were very laborious; between the new year and the middle of February St. Cyr calculated that his men had used up 2,000,000 cartridges in petty skirmishes, and suffered a very appreciable loss in operations that were practically worthless[81]. Accordingly he drew them closer together, in order to shorten the dangerously extended line of communication with Barcelona.

Reding, during this period of waiting, had been keeping quiet in Tarragona, where he was reorganizing and drilling the harassed troops which had been beaten at Cardadeu and Molins de Rey. He had, as we have already seen, received heavy reinforcements from the South[82] and the Balearic Isles[83]; but it was not in numbers only that his army had improved. St. Cyr’s inaction had restored their morale. They were too, as regards food and munitions, in a much better condition than their adversaries, as they could freely draw provisions from the plain of the Lower Ebro and the northern parts of Valencia, and were besides helped by corn brought in by British and Spanish vessels from the whole eastern Mediterranean. Reding had also got a good supply of arms and ammunition from England. As he found himself unmolested, he was finally able to rearrange his whole force, so as not only to cover Tarragona, but to extend a screen of troops all round the French position. He now divided his army into two wings: he himself, on the right, kept in hand at Tarragona the 1st Division, consisting mainly of the Granadan troops: while General Castro was sent to establish the head quarters of the 2nd Division, which contained most of the old battalions of the army of Catalonia, at Igualada. Their line of communication was by Santa Coloma, Sarreal, and Montblanch. This disposition was probably a mistake: while the French lay concentrated in the middle of the semicircle, the Spanish army was forced to operate on outer lines sixty miles long, and could not mass itself in less than three or four days. By a sudden movement of the enemy, either Reding or Castro might be assailed by superior numbers, and forced to fall back on an eccentric line of retreat before he could be succoured by his colleague.

It would seem that, encouraged by St. Cyr’s quiescence, his own growing strength, and the protestations of the Catalans, Reding had once more resolved to resume the offensive. The extension of his left to Igualada was made with no less ambitious a purpose than that of outflanking the northern wing of the French army, and then delivering a simultaneous concentric attack on its scattered divisions as they lay in their cantonments. Such a plan presupposed that St. Cyr would keep quiet while the preparations were being made, that he would fail to concentrate in time, and that the Spanish columns, operating from two distant bases, would succeed in timing their co-operation with perfect accuracy. At the best they could only have brought some 30,000 men against the 23,000 of St. Cyr’s field army—a superiority far from sufficient to give them a rational chance of success. It is probable that at this moment Reding’s best chance of doing something great for the cause of Spain would have been to leave a strong garrison in Tarragona, and march early in February with 20,000 men to the relief of Saragossa, which was now drawing near the end of its powers of resistance. Lannes and Junot would have had to raise the siege if an army of such size had come up against them. But, though intending to succour Saragossa in a few weeks, Reding was induced by the constant entreaties of the Catalans to undertake first an expedition against St. Cyr. He sent off no troops to aid the Marquis of Lazan in his fruitless attempt to relax the pressure on his brother’s heroic garrison, but devoted all his attention to the 7th Corps.

St. Cyr was not an officer who was likely to be caught unprepared by such a movement as Reding had planned. The extension of the Spanish line to Igualada and the upper Llobregat had not escaped his notice, and he was fully aware of the advantage which his central position gave him over an enemy who had been obliging enough to draw out his fighting strength on an arc of a circle sixty miles from end to end. Without fully realizing Reding’s intentions, he could yet see that the Spaniards were giving him a grand opportunity of beating them in detail. He resolved to strike a blow at their northern wing, convinced that if he acted with sufficient swiftness and energy he could crush it long ere it could be succoured from Tarragona.

It thus came to pass that Reding and St. Cyr began to move simultaneously—the one on exterior, the other on interior lines—with the inevitable result. On February 15 Castro, in accordance with the instructions of the Captain-General, began to concentrate his troops at Igualada, with the intention of advancing against the French divisions at San Sadurni and Martorell. At the same time orders were sent to Alvarez, the Governor of Gerona, to detach all the men he could spare for a demonstration against Barcelona, in order to distract the attention of Duhesme and the garrison. Reding himself, with the troops at Tarragona, intended to march against Souham the moment that he should receive the news that his lieutenants were ready to strike.

At the same moment St. Cyr started out on his expedition against Igualada. He took with him Pino’s Italian division[84], and ordered Chabot and Chabran to concentrate with him at Capellades, seven or eight miles to the south-east of Castro’s head quarters. By taking this route he avoided the northern bank of the Noya and the defiles of Bruch, and approached the enemy from the side where he could most easily cut him off from reinforcements coming from Tarragona.

The concentration of the three French columns was not perfectly timed, those of Pino and Chabran finding their way far more difficult than did Chabot. It thus chanced that the latter with his skeleton division of three battalions, arrived in front of Capellades many hours before his colleagues. His approach was reported to Castro at Igualada, who sent down 4,000 men against him, attacked him, and beat him back with loss[85] into the arms of Pino, who came on the scene later in the day [Feb. 17]. The Spaniards were then forced to give back, and retired to Pobla de Claramunt on the banks of the Noya, where they were joined by most of Castro’s reserves. St. Cyr had now concentrated his three divisions, and hoped that he might bring the enemy to a pitched battle. He drew up in front of them all his force, save one of Pino’s brigades, which he sent to turn their right [Feb. 18]. The Spaniards, having a fine position behind a ravine, were at first inclined to fight, and skirmished with the enemy’s main body for some hours. They narrowly missed capturing both St. Cyr and Pino, who had ridden forward with their staff to reconnoitre, and fell into an ambush of miqueletes, from which they only escaped by the speed of their horses[86].

But late in the day the Spanish General received news that Mazzuchelli, with the detached Italian brigade, was already in his rear and marching hard for Igualada. He immediately evacuated his position in great disorder, and fell back on his head quarters, closely pursued by St. Cyr. The main body of the Spaniards, with their artillery, just succeeded in passing through Igualada before the Italians came up, and fled by the road to Cervera. The rear was cut off, and had to escape in another direction by the path leading to Manresa. Both columns were much hustled and lost many prisoners, yet they fairly outmarched their pursuers and got away without any crushing disaster[87]. But their great loss was that in Igualada the French seized all the magazines which had been collected from northern Catalonia for the use of Castro’s division. This relieved St. Cyr from all trouble as to provisions for many days: he had now food enough not only to provide for his field army, but to send back to Barcelona.

St. Cyr had now done all the harm that was in his power to the Spanish left wing—he had beaten them, seized their magazines, driven them apart, and broken their line. He imagined that they were disposed of for many days, and now resolved to turn off for a blow at Reding and the other half of the Catalonian army, who might meanwhile (for all that he knew) be attacking Souham with very superior numbers.

Accordingly on Feb. 19 he started off with Pino’s division to join Souham and fall upon Reding, leaving Chabot and Chabran, with all the artillery of the three divisions, to occupy Igualada and guard the captured magazines from any possible offensive return on the part of Castro. He marched by cross-roads along the foot-hills of the mountains of the great central Catalonian sierra, intending to descend into the valley of the Gaya by San Magin and the abbey of Santas Cruces, where (as he had learnt) lay the northernmost detachments of Reding’s division[88]. Thus he hoped to take the enemy in flank and beat him in detail. He sent orders to Souham to move out of Vendrell and meet him at Villarodoña, half-way up the course of Gaya, unless he should have been already attacked by Reding and forced to take some other line.

At San Magin the French commander came upon some of Reding’s troops, about 1,200 men with two guns, under a brigadier named Iranzo. They showed fight, but were beaten and sought refuge further down the valley of the Gaya in the fortified abbey of Santas Cruces. So bare was the country-side, and so bad the maps, that St. Cyr found considerable difficulty in tracking them, and in discovering the best way down the valley. But next day he got upon their trail[89], and beset the abbey, which made a good defence and proved impregnable to a force unprovided with artillery. St. Cyr blockaded it for two days, and then descended into the plain, where he got in touch with Souham’s division, which had advanced from Vendrell, and was now pillaging the hamlets round Villarodoña, in the central valley of the Gaya[90] [February 21].

Meanwhile Reding was at last on the move. On receiving the news of the combat of Igualada, he had to choose between the opportunity of making a counter-stroke at Souham, and that of marching to the aid of his lieutenant, Castro. He adopted the latter alternative, and started from Tarragona on February 20 with an escort of about 2,000 men, including nearly all his available cavalry[91]. It was his intention to pick up on the way the outlying northern brigades of his division. This he succeeded in doing, drawing in to himself the troops which were guarding the pass of Santa Cristina, and Iranzo’s detachment at Santas Cruces. This force, warned of his approach, broke through the blockade at night, and reached its chief with little or no loss [February 21]. Thus reinforced Reding pushed on by Sarreal to Santa Coloma, where Castro joined him with the rallied troops of his wing, whom he had collected when the French attack slackened. They had between them nearly 20,000 men, an imposing force, with which some of the officers present suggested that it would be possible to fall upon Igualada, crush Chabot and Chabran, and recover the lost magazines. But Reding was nervous about Tarragona, dreading lest St. Cyr might unite with Souham and fall upon the city during his absence. After holding a lengthy council of war[92] he determined to return to protect his base of operations. Accordingly, he told off the Swiss General Wimpffen, with some 4.000 or 5,000 of Castro’s troops, to observe the French divisions at Igualada, and started homeward with the rest of his army, about 10,000 infantry, 700 cavalry, and two batteries of field artillery[93]. He had made up his mind to return by the route of Montblanch and Valls, one somewhat more remote from the position of St. Cyr on the Gaya than the way by Pla, which he had taken in setting out to join Castro. Reding could only have got home without fighting by taking a circuitous route to the east, via Selva and Reus: the suggestion that he should do so was made, but he replied that having baggage and artillery with him he was forced to keep to a high-road. He chose that by Valls, though he was aware that the place was occupied: but apparently he hoped to crush Souham before Pino could come to his aid. He was resolved, it is said, not to court a combat, but on the other hand not to refuse it if the enemy should offer to fight him on advantageous ground. [February 24.] The truth is, that he was bold even to rashness, could never forget the great day of Baylen, in which he had taken such a splendid part, and was anxious to wash out by a victory the evil memories of Cardadeu and Molins de Rey. He set out on the evening of February 24, and by daybreak next morning was drawing near the bridge of Goy, where the high-road to Tarragona crosses the river Francoli, some two miles north of the town of Valls. His troops, as was to be expected, were much exhausted by the long march in the darkness[94].

St. Cyr, meanwhile, had not been intending to strike a blow at Tarragona. He regarded it as much more necessary to beat the enemy’s field army than to close in upon the fortress, which would indubitably have offered a long and obstinate resistance. When he got news of Reding’s march to Santa Coloma he resolved to follow him: he was preparing to hasten to the succour of his divisions at Igualada, when he learnt that the Swiss general had turned back, and was hurrying home to Tarragona. He resolved, therefore, to try to intercept him on his return march, and blocked his two available roads by placing Souham’s division at Valls and Pino’s at Pla. They were only eight or nine miles apart, and whichever road the Spaniards took the unassailed French division could easily come to the aid of the other.

Reding’s night march, a move which St. Cyr does not seem to have foreseen, nearly enabled him to carry out his plan. In fact, as we shall see, he had almost made an end of the French division before the Marshal, who lay himself at Pla with the Italians, arrived to succour it[95].

In the early morning, between six and seven o’clock, the head of the long Spanish column reached the bridge of Goy, and there fell in with Souham’s vedettes. The sharp musketry fire which at once broke out warned each party that a combat was at hand. Souham hastily marched out from Valls, and drew up his two brigades in the plain to the north of the town, placing himself across the line of the enemy’s advance. Reding at first made up his mind to thrust aside the French division, whose force he somewhat undervalued, and to hurry on his march toward Tarragona. The whole of his advanced guard and part of his centre crossed the river, deployed on the left bank, and attacked the French. Souham held his ground for some hours, but as more and more Spanish battalions kept pressing across the bridge and reinforcing the enemy’s line, he began after a time to give way—the numerical odds were heavily against him, and the Catalans were fighting with great steadiness and confidence. Before noon the French division was thrust back against the town of Valls, and Reding had been able to file not only the greater part of his army but all his baggage across the Francoli. The way to Tarragona was clear, and if he had chosen to disengage his men he could have carried off the whole of his army to that city without molestation from Souham, who was too hard hit to wish to continue the combat. It is even possible that if he had hastily brought up all his reserves he might have completely routed the French detachment before it could have been succoured.

But Reding adopted neither one course nor the other. After driving back Souham, he allowed his men a long rest, probably in order to give the rear and the baggage time to complete the passage of the Francoli. While things were standing still, St. Cyr arrived at full gallop from Pla, where he had been lying with Pino’s division, to whom the news of the battle had arrived very late. He brought with him only Pino’s divisional cavalry, the ‘Dragoons of Napoleon’ and Royal Chasseurs, but had ordered the rest of the Italians to follow at full speed when they should have got together. As Pla is no more than eight miles from Valls, it was expected that they would appear within the space of three hours. But, as a matter of fact, Pino did not draw near till the afternoon: one of his brigades, which lay far out, received contradictory orders, and did not come in to Pla till past midday[96], and the Italian general would not move till it had rejoined him. Three hours were wasted by this contretemps, and meanwhile the battle might have been lost.

On arriving upon the field with the Italian cavalry, St. Cyr rode along Souham’s line, steadied it, and displayed the horsemen in his front. Seeing the French rallying, and new troops arriving to their aid, the Spanish commander jumped to the conclusion that St. Cyr had come up with very heavy reinforcements, and instead of continuing his advance, or pressing on his march toward Tarragona, suddenly changed his whole plan of operations. He would not stand to be attacked in the plain, but he resolved to fight a defensive action on the heights beyond the Francoli, from which he had descended in the morning. Accordingly, first his baggage, then his main body, and lastly his vanguard, which covered the retreat of the rest, slowly filed back over the bridge of Goy, and took position on the rolling hills to the east. Here Reding drew them up in two lines, with the river flowing at their feet as a front defence, and their batteries drawn up so as to sweep the bridge of Goy and the fords. The right wing was covered by a lateral ravine falling into the Francoli; the left, facing the village of Pixamoxons, was somewhat ‘in the air,’ but the whole position, if long, was good and eminently defensible.

St. Cyr observed his adversary’s movement with joy, for he would have been completely foiled if Reding had refused to fight and passed on toward Tarragona. Knowing the Spanish troops, a pitched battle with superior numbers was precisely what he most desired. Accordingly he took advantage of the long time of waiting, while Pino’s division was slowly drawing near the field, to rest and feed Souham’s tired troops, and then to draw them up facing the southern half of Reding’s position, with a vacant space on their right on which the Italians were to take up their ground, when at last they should arrive.

When St. Cyr had lain for nearly three hours quiescent at the foot of the heights, and no reinforcements had yet come in sight, Reding began to grow anxious. He had, as he now realized, retired with unnecessary haste from in front of a beaten force, and had assumed a defensive posture when he should have pressed the attack. At about three o’clock he made up his mind that he had committed an error, but thinking it too late to resume the fight, resolved to retire on Tarragona by the circuitous route which passes through the village of Costanti. He sent back General Marti to Tarragona to bring out fresh troops from the garrison to join him at that point, and issued orders that the army should retreat at dusk. He might perhaps have got off scatheless if he had moved away at once, though it is equally possible that St. Cyr might have fallen upon his rearguard with Souham’s division, and done him some damage. But he waited for the dark before marching, partly because he wished to rest his troops, who were desperately fatigued by the night march and the subsequent combat in the morning, partly because he did not despair of fighting a successful defensive action if St. Cyr should venture to cross the Francoli and attack him. Accordingly he lingered on the hillside in battle array, waiting for the darkness[97].

This gave St. Cyr his chance; at three o’clock Pino’s belated division had begun to come up: first Fontane’s brigade, then, an hour and a half later, that of Mazzuchelli, whose absence from Pla had caused all the delay. It was long past four, and the winter afternoon was far spent when St. Cyr had at last got all his troops in hand.

Allowing barely enough time for the Italians to form in order of battle[98], St. Cyr now led forward his whole army to the banks of the Francoli. The two divisions formed four heavy columns of a brigade each: and in this massive formation forded the river and advanced uphill, driving in before them the Spanish skirmishers. The Italian dragoons went forward in the interval between two of the infantry columns; the French cavalry led the attack on the extreme right, near the bridge of Goy.

For a moment it seemed as if the two armies would actually cross bayonets all along the line, for the Spaniards stood firm and opened a regular and well-directed fire upon the advancing columns. But St. Cyr had not miscalculated the moral effect of the steady approach of the four great bodies of infantry which were now climbing the hill and drawing near to Reding’s front. Like so many other continental troops, who had striven on earlier battle-fields to bear up in line against the French column-formation, the Spaniards could not find heart to close with the formidable and threatening masses which were rolling in upon them. They delivered one last tremendous discharge at 100 yards’ distance, and then, when they saw the enemy looming through the smoke and closing upon them, broke in a dozen different places and went to the rear in helpless disorder, sweeping away the second line, higher up the hill, which ought to have sustained them. The only actual collision was on the extreme left, near the bridge of Goy, where Reding himself charged, with his staff, at the head of his cavalry, in a vain attempt to save the desperate situation. He was met in full career by the French 24th Dragoons, and thoroughly beaten. In the mêlée he was surrounded, three of his aides-de-camp were wounded[99] and taken, and he himself only cut his way out after receiving three sabre wounds on his head and shoulders, which ultimately proved fatal.

If there had not been many steep slopes and ravines behind the Spanish position, nearly the whole of Reding’s army must have perished or been captured. But the country-side was so difficult that the majority of the fugitives got away, though many were overtaken. The total loss of the Spaniards amounted to more than 3,000 men, of whom nearly half were prisoners[100]. All the guns of the defeated army, all its baggage, and several stands of colours fell into the hands of the victors. The French lost about 1,000 men, mostly in the early part of the engagement, when Souham’s division was driven back under the walls of Valls.

The Spaniards had not fought amiss: St. Cyr, in a dispatch to Berthier, acknowledges the fact—not in order to exalt the merit of his own troops, but to demonstrate that the 7th Corps was too weak for the task set it and required further reinforcements[101]. But Reding did not give his men a fair chance; he hurried them into the fight at the end of a long night march, drew them off just when they were victorious, and altered his plan of battle thrice in the course of the day. No army could have done itself justice with such bad leading.

The wrecks of the beaten force straggled into Tarragona, their spirits so depressed that it was a long time before it was possible to trust them again in battle. When they once more took the field it was under another leader, for Reding, after lingering some weeks, died of his wounds, leaving the reputation of a brave, honest, and humane officer, but of a very poor general.

St. Cyr utilized his victory merely by blockading Tarragona. He moved Souham to Reus, and kept Pino at Valls, each throwing out detachments as far as the sea, so as to cut off the city from all its communications with the interior. An epidemic had broken out in the place, in consequence of the masses of ill-attended wounded who cumbered the hospitals. It would seem that the French General hoped that the pestilence might turn the hearts of the garrison towards surrender. If so, he was much deceived: they bore their ills with stolid patience, and being always victualled from the sea suffered no practical inconvenience from the blockade. It seems indeed that St. Cyr would have done far better to use the breathing time which he won at the battle of Valls for the commencement of a movement against Gerona. Till that place should be captured, and the high-road to Perpignan opened, there was no real security for the 7th Corps. Long months, however, were to elapse before this necessary operation was taken in hand.

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