CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY. THE CENTRAL JUNTA. WELLESLEY AND WELLINGTON
Between the 20th of August, 1809, when Robert Craufurd’s Light Brigade[1] withdrew from the Bridge of Almaraz, to follow the rest of the British army across the mountains to the neighbourhood of Badajoz, and February 27, 1810, when part of that same brigade was engaged in the first skirmish of Barba del Puerco, not a shot was fired by any of Wellington’s troops. This gap of over six months in his active operations may appear extraordinary, and it was bitterly criticized at the time. Between August and March there was hard fighting both in the south of Spain and along the north-eastern frontier of Portugal; but the British army, despite many invitations, took no part in it. Wellington adhered to his resolve never to commit himself again to a campaign in company with the Spaniards, unless he should be placed in a position in which he could be independent of the freaks of their government and the perversity of their generals. Two months’ experience of the impracticability of Cuesta, of the deliberate disobedience of Venegas, of the fruitless promises of the commissary-general Lozano de Torres, of the insane demands and advice sent in by the Central Junta, had convinced him that he dare not risk his army in a second venture such as that which had led him to Talavera. If he were made commander-in-chief by the Spanish Government, and granted a free hand in the direction of the Spanish armies, matters would look different[2]. But there was at present no chance whatever that he would receive such a mark of confidence. Only a small minority of the leading men at Seville could endure with patience the idea of a British commander-in-chief. Wellington himself had long dismissed the project—which Frère had broached in the spring[3]—as impracticable.
Meanwhile the French advance had no sooner ceased—after the rather objectless combat of Arzobispo—than the Junta began to press upon the British general schemes for a resumption of the offensive and a second march toward Madrid. The political situation, and not any military considerations, was the originating cause of their untimely activity. They felt that their authority was waning, that their popularity had vanished, that their critics were daily growing more venomous, and they saw that success in the war would be the only possible way out of their difficulties. Hence at the very moment when Wellington was withdrawing his half-starved army from the Tagus, and impeaching in letters of stinging irony the conduct of the Junta’s mendacious commissaries, he was being pressed to resume the offensive. Countless appeals were made to him. Both formal and argumentative invitations from the ministers at Seville, and private remonstrances by individuals, Spanish and English, were showered upon him[4]. The Junta even went so far as to offer him command of the Spanish troops in Estremadura, though this offer was qualified by their statement that they intended to reduce those troops to 12,000 men, the larger half of the army being under orders to march eastward into La Mancha and join the force of Venegas. This proposal did not in the least meet Wellington’s main objection to resuming active operations; viz. that he could not trust the Spanish Government to feed his army, nor the Spanish generals to carry out with punctual accuracy any scheme for a joint campaign which might be laid before him. He put the matter very plainly—‘till the evils of which I think that I have reason to complain are remedied: till I see magazines established for the supply of the troops, and a regular system adopted for keeping them filled: till I see an army upon whose exertions I can depend, commanded by officers capable and willing to carry into execution the operations which have been planned by mutual agreement, I cannot enter upon any system of co-operation with the Spanish armies[5].’ This statement was for publication: in private correspondence with his brother, the ambassador at Seville, he added still more cogent reasons for declining to take the field with Venegas or Eguia. He had witnessed with his own eyes the panic of Portago’s division on the night before Talavera, ‘when whole corps threw away their arms and ran off in my presence, while neither attacked nor threatened with attack, but frightened (I believe) by their own fire’: he had seen Albuquerque’s cavalry, the day after the combat of Arzobispo, lurking in every village for twenty miles round, and ‘had heard Spanish officers telling of nineteen or twenty actions of the same description as that of Arzobispo, an account of which (I believe) has never been published.’ The army of Estremadura consisted, he concluded, ‘of troops by no means to be depended upon’—on every ground, therefore, he ought to avoid ‘risking the King’s army again in such company[6].’
There was no getting over this fundamental objection of Wellington’s, and his brother, therefore, was placed in a very uncomfortable position. During all his negotiations with the Central Junta, Lord Wellesley’s task indeed was a most invidious one. He had been directed by his government to profess an earnest desire to aid the Spaniards in bringing the war to a successful conclusion, and to pledge the aid of Great Britain, yet he was forced to refuse every definite proposal made to him by the Junta. On the other hand, there were clauses in his instructions which provoked the most openly-displayed suspicion and resentment, when he touched upon them in his conversations with Martin de Garay and the other Spanish ministers. Such were the proposal to place the whole Spanish army under a British commander (i.e. Wellington), the attempt to open up the subject of a certain measure of free trade with Spanish America, and—most of all—the offer to send British troops to garrison Cadiz. For despite the fiasco of the preceding winter, the Portland ministry were still harping on this old string, and allusions to it occur in nearly every dispatch sent from London to the ambassador at Seville[7].
Wellesley’s position was made even more difficult by the fact that all the Spanish factions opposed to the Central Junta tried to draw him into their schemes, by making lavish professions of what they were ready to do if only the present government were evicted from office. Of these factions there were many: the old ‘Council of Castile,’ which the Junta had superseded, still clung together, making protests as to the legality of their successor’s position. The local assemblies were equally jealous of the central authority—the Juntas of Estremadura and Valencia, in especial, were always intriguing behind its back, and the former at least made many tempting proposals both to Wellesley and to Wellington. But the most dangerous enemies of the existing government were the malcontents close at its gates—the Andalusian conspirators, led by the members of the old Junta of Seville, and by the intriguers like the Conde de Montijo, the dukes of Infantado and Ossuna, and Francisco Palafox. The dissatisfaction caused by the incapacity, indecision, and—as it was openly said—the nepotism and venality of the Junta was so general, that a plan was formed in Seville to seize them, deport them all to the Canaries, and proclaim a Regency. The troops in the place were tampered with, some demagogues were ready to raise the mob, and Infantado[8], who was in the thick of the plot, came to Wellesley one night to divulge the arrangements for the ‘Pronunciamento’ and to bespeak his aid. Much as he disliked the Junta and its methods, the Ambassador scornfully refused to make himself a member of a conspiracy, and after warning Infantado of his intention, went straight to the Secretary Garay and gave him all the information as to the project, though without divulging any names. Some of the plotters fled, others were arrested. ‘For the last two days,’ writes Wellesley to his brother, ‘I have been employed in endeavouring to save the necks of these caitiffs from the just fury and indignation of the people and soldiery, and I have succeeded. A regular plot was formed to seize (and I believe to hang) them all. But I could not suffer such outrages under my nose, so I interfered and saved the curs from the rope. They were all gratitude for an hour [Wellesley was offered and refused the Order of the Golden Fleece next morning], but now that they think themselves secure they have begun to cheat me again[9].’
Much as every patriot should deprecate the employment of coups d’état while a foreign war is on hand, there was much to excuse the conduct of the enemies of the Junta. That body was now more than a year old; it had been from the first regarded as a stop-gap, as a provisional government which was destined to give place to something more regular and constitutional when occasion should serve. A ‘Committee of Public Safety’ which fails to preserve the state stands self-condemned, and the history of the Central Junta had been one record of consistent disaster. A body of over thirty persons is too large for a ministry, too small for a representative assembly. Every intelligent Spaniard, whatever his politics, was desirous of seeing it give place to a regular government. The Conservatives and bureaucrats would have been contented if it had appointed a Regency of four or five persons, and then abdicated. The Liberals demanded that it should summon the national Cortes, and leave to that body the creation of an executive. Pamphlets were showered by dozens from the press—now more or less free, for the first time in Spanish history—to advocate one or other of these courses. The Junta, however, had no intention of surrendering its power, whatever pretence of disinterestedness it might assume and proclaim. Its first attempts to put off the evil day when it must yield to public opinion were ingeniously absurd. It issued, as early as May 22, a proclamation acknowledging the advisability of summoning a Cortes, and then invited all well-thinking Spaniards to send in schemes and suggestions during the next two months concerning the best way in which the national assembly could be organized, and the reforms and constitutional improvements which it should take in hand. These documents were to be read and pondered over by a Commission, mainly composed of members of the Junta, which was to issue a report in due time, embodying the best of the suggestions and the results of its own discussion[10]. This was an admirable device for wasting time and putting off the assembly of the Cortes. The Commission finally decided, on September 19, after many weeks of session, that a supreme Executive Council of five persons should be appointed, carefully avoiding the name of Regency. But only existing members of the Central Junta were to be eligible as Councillors, and the Council was to be changed at short intervals, till every member of the Junta had taken a turn in it[11]. The only laudable clause of this scheme was one providing that Spanish America should be represented in the Junta, and therefore ultimately in the Executive Council. The arrangement satisfied nobody—it merely substituted a rapidly changing committee of the Junta for the whole of that body as the supreme ruling power: and it was clear that the orders of the Council would be those of the Junta, though they might be voiced by fewer mouths. The assembly of the Cortes would be put off ad infinitum.
Any effect which the report of the Commission might have had, was spoilt by the fact that it was followed by a minority report, or manifesto, drawn up by the Marquis of La Romana, who had been one of the Commissioners. The Junta had called him back from Galicia, and compelled him to surrender the army that he had re-formed, under the pretext that he had been co-opted as a member of their own body. A death-vacancy had been created in the representation of the kingdom of Valencia: he had been named to fill it, summoned to Seville, and placed on the constitutional Commission. Dissenting from every word of the report of the majority, he published on October 14 a counter-scheme, in which he declared that the venality, nepotism, and dilatory incapacity of the Junta made it necessary for Spain to seek a new executive which should be wholly independent of that body. Accordingly he suggested that a Regency of five members should be constituted, as the supreme governing body of the realm. No member of the Junta was to sit therein. It was to be assisted, for consultative purposes, by a body of six persons—one of whom was to be a South American. This second committee, to be called ‘the Permanent Deputation of the Realm,’ was to be considered to represent the Cortes till that assembly should meet. It was not to meddle with executive matters, but was to devote itself to drawing up the details of the constitution of the future Cortes, and to suggesting practical reforms.
So far as the declaration in favour of a Regency went, most sensible Spaniards liked La Romana’s scheme, and it obtained Wellesley’s approval also. But the idea of the ‘Permanent Deputation’ frightened the Liberals, who feared that its existence would be made the excuse for putting off the summoning of the Cortes for an indefinite time. Moreover it was rumoured that La Romana intended to resign his seat in the Junta, and to become a candidate for the position of Senior Regent, so that his proposals must be intended to benefit himself. The suspicion that his personal ambitions inspired his patriotic denunciation of the Junta’s misdoings was made the more likely by events that occurred at the same moment in Valencia. There the leading personage of the moment was the governor, General José Caro, the younger brother of La Romana, who had complete control of the local Junta, and exercised what his enemies called a tyranny in the province. He and his following were already on the worst terms with the Seville Government, and now took the opportunity of bursting out into open rebellion. They issued a sounding manifesto against the Supreme Junta, declared their intention of refusing to obey it any longer, and republished and sent in all directions to the other local Juntas La Romana’s report in favour of a Regency, of which Caro had struck off 6,000 copies. They threatened to turn back by force General Castro whom the Supreme Junta had sent to supersede Caro, and declared their second representative in that body, the Conde de Contamina, deposed for ‘disobedience to the will of the people.’ It looked as if La Romana might be intending to overthrow the central government by means of his brother’s Valencian army. Apparently he must be acquitted of this charge, his fiery and ambitious kinsman having gone far beyond his intentions.
In the midst of all these intrigues, plots, and manifestos the Central Junta had only one hope—to rehabilitate themselves by means of a great military success. With ruinous consequences they tried to direct the course of the war with political rather than strategical ends in view. Of the unhappy autumn campaign which their rashness precipitated we shall speak in its proper place; but before narrating the disasters of Ocaña and Alba de Tormes, we must turn back for some months to consider the situation of Eastern Spain, where the continuous chronicle of events has been conducted no further than Blake’s rout at Belchite in June, and St. Cyr’s victory of Valls in February 1809. Much had happened in Catalonia and Aragon even before the day of Talavera. Much more was to take place before the ill-judged November campaign of the Junta’s armies in New Castile and Leon had begun.
N.B.—This is a military history: for the war of pamphlets and manifestos, plots and intrigues, between the Seville Government and its adversaries, the reader who is anxious to master the disheartening details may consult Toreno’s Tenth Book; Schepeler, iii. 460-86; Baumgarten, vol. i. chapter viii; Arteche, vol. vii. chapter vi, and above all the volume of the Marquis of Wellesley’s Spanish Dispatches (London, 1838). There is a good and lively description of the chief members of the Junta and the ministry, and of the intrigues against them, in William Jacob’s Travels in the South of Spain (London, 1811).
SECTION XVII: CHAPTER II
EVENTS IN EASTERN SPAIN DURING THE SUMMER AND AUTUMN OF 1809. THE SIEGE OF GERONA BEGUN
In the spring of 1809 the theatres of operations of the two French army-corps entrusted with the reduction of Aragon and of Catalonia were still divided by a broad belt of territory which was in the hands of the Spaniards, around the fortresses of Lerida, Mequinenza, and Tortosa. Only once had communication been opened between Suchet and St. Cyr, and then the force which had crossed from Aragon into Catalonia found itself unable to return. The only way of getting a dispatch from Saragossa to Barcelona was to send it by the circuitous road through France. Co-operation between the 3rd and the 7th Corps would have been difficult in any case; but since each of the two corps-commanders was interested in his own problems alone, and found them all-absorbing, the war in Catalonia and the war in Aragon went on during 1809 and the first half of 1810 as separate affairs from the French point of view. It was otherwise with the Spaniards: Blake had been placed in command of the whole of the Coronilla, the three provinces of Valencia, Aragon, and Catalonia which had formed the ancient kingdom of Aragon[12]. He had Suchet on his left and St. Cyr on his right, was equally interested in the operations of each, and might, so far as the rules of strategy go, have turned his main force against whichever of the two he might please, leaving a comparatively small force to ‘contain’ the other. Unfortunately he proved unable to make head against either of his adversaries. We have already seen how, in the early summer, he threw himself upon Suchet, and was beaten off at Maria and routed at Belchite. In the later months of the year it was mainly with St. Cyr that he had to deal, and his efforts were equally unsuccessful. It would seem that he found it very difficult to concentrate any preponderant portion of his troops for a blow to either side: very few battalions from Catalonia accompanied his Valencians and Aragonese to Maria: very few Valencians were brought up to aid the Catalans in the operations about Gerona. The problems of food and transport had something to do with this, but the main difficulty was that the armies of both provinces, more especially the Catalans, were essentially local levies, and disliked being drawn far from their homes. There was always some threatening danger in their own district which made them loath to leave it unguarded, while they were taken off on some distant expedition. The complaints and arguments of the Juntas, the manifest unwillingness of the officers and men, fettered the hands of the commander-in-chief, whenever he strove to accomplish a general concentration. Hence it came to pass that for the most part St. Cyr was opposed by Catalan troops only, Suchet by Valencians and Aragonese only, during the campaigns of 1809.
The tasks of the commander of the 3rd Corps in the months that followed his victories over Blake were both less interesting and less important than those imposed upon his colleague in Catalonia. They were however laborious enough; after having driven the Spanish regular armies out of Aragon, Suchet had now to tame the country-side. For even after Belchite he held little more than the towns of Saragossa and Jaca, and the ground on which his camps were pitched from day to day. When he had concentrated his corps to fight Blake, the rest of the province had slipped out of his hands. Its reconquest was a tedious matter, even though he had only to contend with scattered bands of peasants, stiffened by stragglers from the army that had dispersed after Belchite. The plain of the Ebro, which forms the central strip of Aragon, was easily subdued, but the mountains to the north and south were well fitted to be the refuge of insurgents. The Aragonese, along with the Galicians, were the first of the Spaniards to take to systematic guerrilla warfare. Undismayed by the fate of Blake’s army, they had resolved to defend themselves to the last. There was more than one focus of resistance: a colonel Renovales, who had been one of the defenders of Saragossa, and had escaped after the capitulation, was at the head of the bands of the north-western mountains, in the vale of Roncal and on the borders of Navarre. In the north-eastern region, about the upper waters of the Cinca and the hills beyond Jaca, two local chiefs named Perena and Sarasa kept the war on foot, getting their stores and ammunition from the Catalans on the side of Lerida. In an entirely distinct part of the province, south of the Ebro, lay Gayan and Villacampa, whose centres of activity were Daroca and Molina, mountain towns from which they were often driven up into that central ganglion of all the ranges of Spain, the Sierra de Albaracin, from which descend in diverging directions the sources of the Tagus, the Guadalaviar, and the Xucar. Both Gayan and Villacampa were officers of the regular army, holding commissions under Blake: the band of the former had as its nucleus the regiment of La Princesa, whose extraordinary escape across northern Spain after the combat of Santander has been told in another place[13].
Suchet’s work, during the later summer and the autumn of 1809, was to break up and as far as possible to destroy these bands. His success was considerable but not complete: in July he stormed Gayan’s stronghold, the mountain sanctuary of Nuestra Señora del Aguila, captured his magazines, and drove him up into the mountains of Molina. Continuing his campaign south of the Ebro, he sent the Pole Chlopiski against Villacampa, who abandoned Calatayud, Daroca, and the other hill towns, and retired into the Sierra de Albaracin, where he took refuge at the remote convent of El Tremendal, one of the most out-of-the-way spots in the whole Peninsula. Here, nevertheless, the partisan was followed up on Nov. 23-4 by a column under Colonel Henriot, who manœuvred him out of his position, surprised him by a night attack, and drove him over the Valencian border. The convent was blown up, the dependent village of Orihuela sacked, and the French withdrew[14].
These operations had been carried out by Musnier’s division; but meanwhile movements of a very similar sort were being undertaken by another division, that of Laval, on the other side of Aragon, along the slopes and gorges of the Pyrenees[15]. In the end of August a column of 3,000 men stormed the convent of San Juan de la Peña, close to Jaca, which Sarasa and Renovales were wont to make their head quarters. It was an ancient building containing the tombs of the early kings of Aragon, who reigned in the mountains before Saragossa had been recovered from the Moor; it had never seen an enemy for eight hundred years, and was reputed holy and impregnable. Hence its capture dealt a severe blow to the confidence of the insurgents. Renovales, however, held out in the western upland, continuing to defend himself in the valley of Roncal, till he was beset on all sides, for Suchet had obtained leave from Paris to call up the National Guards of the Ariége, Basses Pyrénées and Haute Garonne, and their bataillons d’élite attacked the insurgents in the rear from across the high mountains, while the 3rd Corps advanced against them from the front. After much scattered fighting Renovales capitulated, on condition that he should be allowed a free departure. He retired to Catalonia with some of his men: the rest dispersed for the moment, but only to reassemble a few weeks later, under another and a more wary and obstinate chief, the younger Mina, who commenced in this same autumn to make the borders of Aragon and Navarre the theatre of his hazardous exploits. But the region was comparatively quiet in September and October, and Suchet transferred the activity of his movable column further to the eastward, where he drove some partidas out of the valleys of the Cinca and Essera, and tried to open up a new line of communication with France by way of the valley of Venasque. This was accomplished, for a moment, by the aid of national guards from beyond the Pyrenees, who entered the valley from the north while the troops of Suchet were operating from the south. But the road remained unsafe, and could only be used for the passage of very large bodies of troops, so that it was practically of little importance.
In December Suchet completed the formal conquest of Aragon, by moving up the whole of Laval’s division into the high-lying district of Teruel, in the extreme south-east of the province, the only part of it that had never yet seen the French eagles. The Junta of Aragon fled from thence over the border of the kingdom of Valencia, but Villacampa and his bands remained in the mountains unsubdued, and while they continued to exist the conquest of the upland was incomplete. The moment that its towns ceased to be held by large garrisons, it was clear that the insurgents would descend to reoccupy them. Nevertheless Suchet had done much in this year: besides the crushing of Blake he had accomplished the complete subjection of the plains of Central Aragon, and had obtained a grip upon its two mountain regions. He had fortified Monzon, Fraga, Alcañiz, and Caspe as outposts against the Catalans, and, having received large drafts from France in the autumn, was on the last day of the year at the head of a fine corps of 26,000 men, from which he might hope to produce in the next spring a field army sufficient for offensive operations against Catalonia or Valencia, after providing garrisons for his various posts of strength[16]. The weak point of his position was that the guerrilleros had learned caution, refused for the future to fight save under the most favourable conditions, and devoted themselves to the safe and vexatious policy of intercepting communications and cutting up small parties and stragglers. They were much harder to deal with, when once they had learnt that not even in fastnesses like El Tremendal or San Juan de la Peña was it wise to offer the French battle. Unless Suchet left a garrison in every town, nay, in every considerable village, of the sierras, the insurgents dominated the whole region. If he did take such measures for holding down the upland, he was forced to immobilize a very large proportion of his army. We shall note that in 1810 he was only able to draw out 12,000 of his 26,000 men for the invasion of Western Catalonia.
While the commander of the 3rd Corps was making steady progress with the conquest of Aragon, the fortunes of his colleague of the 7th Corps had been far more chequered. Indeed for the greater part of 1809 St. Cyr was brought to a complete standstill by the unexpected obstinacy of the gallant garrison of Gerona, who for no less than eight months kept the main body of the army of Catalonia detained in front of their walls.
When last we dealt with the operations in this region we left St. Cyr victorious at the well-contested battle of Valls, after which he advanced into the plain of Tarragona, made some demonstrations against that fortress, but returned after a few weeks to Barcelona (March 18) without having made any serious attempt to turn his victory to practical account. This retreat after a brilliant success may be compared to Victor’s similar evacuation of Southern Estremadura after Medellin, and was brought about, in the main, by the same cause, want of supplies. For when he had consumed the resources of the newly-subdued district between Valls and Tarragona, St. Cyr had no means of providing his army with further subsistence. Barcelona, his base, could not feed him, for the city was itself on the edge of famine: it was still beset to north and west by the local miqueletes, who had returned to their old haunts when the main French army had gone off southward on the campaign of Valls. It was stringently blockaded on the sea side by the British Mediterranean fleet, and it could not draw food from France by land, because the high-road to Perpignan passed through the fortress of Gerona, which was still in Spanish hands. St. Cyr himself, it will be remembered, had only reached Barcelona by turning off on to side tracks through the mountain, and winning his way down to the shore by the hard-fought battle of Cardadeu. Till Gerona should fall, and the garrison of Barcelona be placed in direct communication with France, there was little use in making ambitious offensive movements against Tarragona or any other point in Southern or Central Catalonia. It was absolutely necessary to reduce Gerona, and so to bring the division left behind under Reille, in the Ampurdam and on the frontier of Roussillon, into free communication with the remainder of the 7th Corps. From the moment when St. Cyr passed the mountains during the winter Reille had been fighting out a petty campaign against the northern Catalans, which had no connexion whatever with his superior’s operations at Molins de Rey and Valls, and had little definite result of any kind.
No one saw more clearly than Napoleon the need for the reduction of Gerona: as early as January he had issued orders both to St. Cyr and to Reille to prepare for the enterprise. But St. Cyr was now out of touch, and Reille was far too weak in the early spring to dream of any such an adventure: he had been left no more than seven depleted battalions to maintain his hold on Northern Catalonia, when St. Cyr took the rest of the army across the hills to Barcelona. The Emperor was not slow to realize that the 7th Corps must be reinforced on a large scale. He did so by sending thither in the spring of 1809 a brigade of Berg troops (four battalions), the regiment of Würzburg (two battalions), and a division (seven battalions) of Westphalians: it will be noted that now, as always, he was most chary of drafting native French troops to Catalonia, and always fed the war in that direction with auxiliaries in whose fate he was little interested: the campaign in eastern Spain was, after all, but a side issue in the main struggle[17]. When these reinforcements had arrived Reille began to collect material at Bascara on the Fluvia, to which siege-guns laboriously dragged across the Pyrenees were added: several companies of heavy artillery and sappers were brought up from France.
St. Cyr meanwhile, four weeks after his retreat from the plain of Tarragona, moved on to Vich upon April 18, with the divisions of Souham, Pino, Lecchi, and Chabot, leaving Duhesme with his original French division, which had held Barcelona since the outbreak of the war, in charge of his base of operations. His departure was partly designed to spare the stores of Barcelona, where the pinch of famine was beginning to be felt; for he intended to subsist his army on the upland plain of Vich, a rich corn-bearing district hitherto untouched by the war. But a few days after he had marched forth Barcelona was freed from privation, by the lucky arrival of a squadron of victuallers from Toulon, convoyed by Admiral Cosmao, which had put to sea in a storm and eluded the British blockading squadron (April 27). The position of Vich, however, had been chosen by St. Cyr not only for reasons of supply, but because the place was happily situated for covering the projected siege of Gerona against any interruption by Blake. If the Spanish commander-in-chief brought up the wrecks of the old Catalan army from Tarragona, with his Valencian levies added, he would almost certainly take the inland road by Manresa and Vich, since the coast-road was practically barred to him by the French occupation of Barcelona. As a matter of fact the commencement of the leaguer of Gerona was not vexed by any such interruption, for Blake had his eyes fixed on Saragossa in May and June, and was so far from dreaming of an assault on St. Cyr, that he drew off part of the Catalan army for his unhappy invasion of Aragon, which finished with the disaster of Belchite. During the early months of this long siege the only external helpers of the garrison of Gerona were the small force of regulars under the Swiss Wimpfen, and the miqueletes of Claros and Rovira from the Ampurdam, Reille’s opponents during the spring. At Tarragona the Marquis of Coupigny, the senior officer now in Catalonia, had no more than 6,000 men left of Reding’s old army, and was helpless to interfere with St. Cyr who had some 20,000 men concentrated at Vich.
The preparations for the siege therefore went on in the end of April and the beginning of May without any hindrance, save from the normal bickerings of the French outlying detachments with the local somatenes, which never ceased. Around Vich matters were particularly lively, for the whole population of the town and the surrounding plains had gone up into the hills, where they wandered miserably for three months, much hunted by French foraging parties, which they occasionally succeeded in destroying. St. Cyr opened up his communications with Reille by sending to him Lecchi’s Italian division, which cut its way amid constant skirmishes along the banks of the Ter to Gerona, and met the troops from the Ampurdam under its walls. Reille had moved forth from Bascara on May 4, and on the eighth expelled the Spanish outposts from all the villages round the fortress, not without some lively skirmishing. He had brought up some 10,000 infantry—including his own old division and all the newly arrived Germans—with some 1,300 artillerymen and engineers. Almost at the same moment arrived dispatches from Paris, announcing that the Emperor, just before departing for the Austrian war, had superseded both St. Cyr and Reille, being discontented with their handling of affairs in Catalonia. It is unfortunate that no statement in detail of his reasons appears in the Correspondance[18], but it would seem that he thought that the victories of Molins de Rey and Valls should have had greater results, disapproved of St. Cyr’s retreat from in front of Tarragona, and thought that Reille had shown great weakness in dealing with the insurgents of the Ampurdam. He ignored the special difficulties of the war in Catalonia, thinking that the 30,000 men of the 7th Corps ought to have sufficed for its complete conquest. Indeed he showed his conception of the general state of affairs by recommending St. Cyr in March to undertake simultaneously the sieges of Gerona, Tarragona, and Tortosa[19]. The leaguer of one, and that the smallest, of these places was destined to occupy the whole army of Catalonia, when largely reinforced, for eight months. If it had been cut up according to the imperial mandate, it is probable that at least one of its sections would have been destroyed. St. Cyr wrote in his memoirs that his master was jealous of him, and wished to see him fail, even at the cost of wrecking the 7th Corps. This is of course absurd; but there can be no doubt that the Emperor disliked his lieutenant, all the more because of the long string of complaints, and of demands for more men, money, and stores, which he was now receiving week by week from Catalonia. He loved generals who achieved the impossible, and hated grumblers and frondeurs, a class to which St. Cyr, despite all his talents, undoubtedly belonged. It is possible that Napoleon’s determination to replace him may have been fostered by intrigues on the part of the officer to whom the 7th Corps was now turned over. Marshal Augereau had served with great credit in the old republican campaign in Catalonia during 1793 and 1794, imagined himself to have a profound knowledge of the country, and was anxious to try his hand in it. It was many years since he had been trusted with an independent command; both in the wars of 1806-7 and in that of 1809 he had been lost in the ranks of the Grand Army. His nomination to supersede St. Cyr was made early in May, but on his way to the seat of war he was seized with a fit of the gout, and was detained in bed at Perpignan for many weeks. Thus his predecessor, though apprised of his disgrace, was obliged to continue in command, and to commence the operations of which the Marshal, as he well knew, would take all the credit. At the same moment Reille was displaced by Verdier, the general who had conducted the first unlucky siege of Saragossa—an experience which seems to have made him very cautious when dealing with Spaniards behind walls.
Lecchi’s division forced its way back to St. Cyr on May 18, bringing him the intelligence of his supersession, but at the same time apprising him that Augereau would not arrive as yet, and that the duty of commencing the siege of Gerona would still fall to his lot. At the same time Verdier sent letters urging that his 10,000 infantry formed too small a force to surround such a large fortress, and that he must ask for reinforcements from the covering army. If they were denied him, he should refuse to begin the siege, throwing the responsibility for this disobedience of the Emperor’s commands on his superior: he had reported the situation to Paris. St. Cyr was incensed at the tone of this dispatch[20], above all at the fact that Verdier was appealing straight to the Emperor, instead of corresponding through his hierarchical superior, according to the rules of military etiquette. But he saw that Verdier had a good case, and he had just learnt that Blake had turned off against Aragon, so that no trouble from that quarter need be feared. Accordingly he, very grudgingly, sent back Lecchi’s division to Gerona. It was the worst that he possessed, being composed of no more than four Neapolitan and three Italian battalions, with a strength of little over 3,000 bayonets[21]. He added to it a regiment of Italian light horse, several of his own batteries, and nearly all the engineers and sappers of his corps, so that the total reinforcement sent to Verdier consisted of more than 4,000 men.
Having received these succours, which brought up his total force to 14,000 infantry and cavalry, and 2,200 artillerymen, sappers and engineers, Verdier commenced on May 24 his operations against Gerona: on that day Lecchi’s division took its post in the plain of Salt, on the west of the town, while the French and Westphalian divisions were already close to the place on its eastern and northern sides. The head quarters and the French brigades of Joba and Guillot lay by Sarria and the bridge of Pont-Mayor, where the magazines were established, while the Germans had been sent up on to the heights east of the fortress and held the plateaux of Campdura, San Medir, and Domeny. The rocky southern side of Gerona, in the direction of the gorge of the Oña, was not yet properly invested.
Something has already been said, in an earlier volume of this work, concerning the situation of Gerona, when its two earlier sieges by Duhesme were narrated[22]. It must suffice to repeat here that the town is built on the steep down-slope of two lofty heights, with the river Oña at its foot: the stream is crossed by two bridges, but is fordable everywhere save in times of spate. Beyond it lies the suburb of the Mercadal, surrounded by fortifications which form an integral part of the defences of the city. The river Ter, coming from the west, joins the Oña at the north side of the Mercadal and washes the extreme north-western corner of the walls of the city proper. The two heights upon whose lower slopes Gerona is built are separated from each other by a deep ravine, called the Galligan, down which run an intermittent watercourse and a road, the only one by which approach to the city from the east is possible. The northern height is crowned by the strong fort of Monjuich, the most formidable part of the city defences, with its three outlying redoubts called San Narciso, San Luis and San Daniel. The crest of the southern height is covered in a similar fashion by the three forts of the Capuchins, Queen Anne, and the Constable, with the Calvary redoubt lower down the slope above the Galligan, facing San Daniel on the other side of the ravine. Two other small fortifications, the redoubts of the ‘Chapter’ and the ‘City,’ cover the path which leads down from the forts to Gerona. Neither the Monjuich nor the Capuchin heights are isolated hills; each is the end of a spur running down from the higher mountains. But while the southern summit rises high above the hilly reach which joins it to the mountain of Nuestra Señora de los Angeles, the northern summit (where lies Monjuich) is at the end of a plateau extending far to the north. The Capuchin heights, therefore, can only be attacked uphill, while Monjuich can be assailed from ground of a level little inferior to itself. But except on this point both heights are very strong, their slopes being in many places absolutely precipitous, especially towards the Galligan, and everywhere steep. Nevertheless there are winding paths leading up both, from Sarria and Pont-Mayor in the case of Monjuich, from Casa de Selva and other villages towards the east and the sea in the case of the Capuchin heights. All the ground is bare rock, with no superincumbent soil.
All the fortifications were somewhat antiquated in type, nothing having been done to modernize the defences since the war of the Spanish Succession[23]. Ferdinand VI and Charles III had neglected Gerona in favour of the new fortress of Figueras, nearer to the frontier, on which large sums had been expended—for the benefit of the French who seized it by treachery in 1808, and were now using it as their base of operations. The actual wall of enceinte of the city was mediaeval—a plain rampart twenty-five feet high, too narrow for artillery and set thickly with small towers; only at its two ends, on the Oña and the Ter, two bastions (called those of La Merced and Santa Maria) had been inserted, and properly armed. This weakness of the walls went for little so long as Monjuich, the Capuchins, and the other forts held firm, since the enemy could only approach the town-enceinte at its two ends, where the bastions lay. Far more dangerous was the feebleness of the Mercadal, whose ramparts formed the southern section of the exterior defences of the place. Its circuit had five plain bastions, but no demi-lunes or other outer defences, no covered way nor counterscarp: its profile, only some eighteen or twenty feet high, was visible, across the flat ground which surrounds it, from the foot to the summit of the wall, for want of ditch or glacis. The ground leading up to it was favourable for siege approaches, since the soil was soft and easy to dig, and was seamed with hollow roads and stone walls, giving much cover to an assailant. Aware of the defects of the fortifications of the Mercadal, the Spaniards had prepared a line of defence behind it, along the further bank of the Oña. They had made the river-front of the city proper defensible to a certain extent, by building up the doors and windows of all the houses which abut upon the water, mining the two bridges, and fixing a stockade and entanglements in the bed of the Oña, along the considerable space, where it is fordable in dry weather[24]. They had indeed repaired the whole circuit of the defences since Duhesme’s sieges of 1808, having cleared out the ditches of Monjuich and of the bastions of La Merced and Santa Maria, walled up many posterns, and repaired with new and solid masonry all the parts of the walls that had been dilapidated at the moment of the first siege. They had also pulled down many isolated houses outside the walls, and demolished the nearer half of the suburban village of Pedret, which lies (most inconveniently for the defence) along the bank of the Ter between the water and the slopes of Monjuich.
All these precautions must be put to the credit of the governor, Mariano Alvarez de Castro, a man to be mentioned with all honour and respect, and probably the best soldier that Spain produced during the whole Peninsular War. He was a veteran of the Revolutionary and Portuguese wars, and had a good reputation, but no special credit for military science, down to the moment when he was put to the test. He had been the officer in charge of the castle of Barcelona on the occasion when it was seized by Duhesme in March 1808: his spirit had been deeply wounded by that vile piece of treachery, and he had at once adhered to the national cause. Since then he had been serving in the Ampurdam against Reille, till the moment when he was appointed governor of Gerona. Alvarez is described by those who served under him as a severe, taciturn man of a puritan cast of mind. ‘I should call him,’ wrote one of his brigadiers, ‘an officer without the true military talents, but with an extreme confidence in Providence—almost, one might say, a believer in miracles. His soul was great, capable of every sacrifice, full of admirable constancy; but I must confess that his heroism always seemed to me that of a Christian martyr rather than of a professional soldier[25].’ General Fournas, who wrote this somewhat depreciatory sketch of his chief, was one of those who signed the capitulation while Alvarez was moaning no quiero rendirme on his sick-bed, so that his judgement is hardly to be taken as unprejudiced; but his words point the impression which the governor left on his subordinates. The details of his defence sufficiently show that he was a skilful and resourceful as well as an obstinate general. His minute care to utilize every possible means of defence prove that he was no mere waiter on miracles. That he was a very devout practising Catholic is evident from some of his doings; at the opening of the siege a great religious ceremony was held, at which the local patron saint, Narcissus, was declared captain of the city and presented with a gold-hilted sword. The levy en masse of the citizens was called ‘the Crusade,’ and their badge was the red cross. The ideas of religion and patriotism were so closely intertwined that to the lay companies of this force were afterwards added two clerical companies, one composed of monks and friars, the other of secular priests: about 200 of these ecclesiastics were under arms[26]. Even the women were organized in squads for the transport of wounded, the care of the hospitals, and the carrying of provisions to the soldiery on the walls: about 300 served, under the command of Donna Lucia Fitzgerald and Donna Maria Angela Bibern, wives of two officers of the regiment of Ultonia. Five of this ‘company of St. Barbara’ were killed and eleven wounded during the siege.
The garrison at the moment of Verdier’s first attack consisted of about 5,700 men, not including the irregulars of the Crusade. There were seven battalions of the old army, belonging to the regiments of Ultonia[27], Borbon, and Voluntarios de Barcelona, with three battalions of miqueletes, two local corps, 1st and 2nd of Gerona, and the 1st of Vich. Of cavalry there was a single squadron, newly levied, the ‘escuadron de San Narciso.’ Of artillery there were but 278 men, a wholly insufficient number: the officers of that arm were given 370 more to train, partly miqueletes of the 2nd Gerona battalion, partly sailors having some small experience of gunnery. It was difficult to make proper use of the great store of cannon in the fortress, when more than half the troops allotted to them had never before seen, much less served, a heavy gun of position. To the above 5,700 men of all arms must be added about 1,100 irregulars of the ‘Crusade’—seven lay and two clerical companies of fusiliers and two more of artificers. But these were set to guard almost unapproachable parts of the wall, or held in reserve: most of the stress fell upon the organized troops. The defence was altogether conducted on scientific principles, and had nothing in common with that of Saragossa. Here the irregulars formed only a small fraction of the garrison[28], and were never hurled in senseless fury against the French batteries, but used carefully and cautiously as an auxiliary force, capable of setting free some part of the trained men for service on the more important points of the enceinte[29].
For the first two months of the siege Alvarez received no help whatever from without: in May the central government of Catalonia had been left in a perfectly paralysed condition, when Blake went off himself and took with him the best of the regular troops, in order to engage in the campaign of Alcañiz and Maria. Coupigny, the interim commander at Tarragona, had only 6,000 organized men, and he and the Catalan provincial junta were during that month much engrossed with an enterprise which distracted them from the needs of Gerona. A wide-spread conspiracy had been formed within the walls of Barcelona, with the object of rising against the garrison in St. Cyr’s absence. A secret committee of priests, merchants, and retired officers had collected all the arms in the city, smuggled in many muskets from without, and enlisted several thousand persons in a grand design for an outbreak and a sort of ‘Sicilian Vespers’ fixed—after two postponements—for the 11th of May. They opened communication with Coupigny and with the captains of the British frigates blockading the port. The one was to bring his troops to the gates, the others to deliver an attack on the port, upon the appointed night. No Spaniard betrayed the plot, though 6,000 citizens are said to have been in the secret, but it was frustrated by two foreigners. Conscious that the town could not be freed if the citadel of Monjuich was retained by the French, the conspirators sounded two Italian officers named Captain Dottori, fort adjutant of Monjuich, and Captain Provana, who was known to be discontented and thought to be corruptible. They offered them an immense bribe—1,000,000 dollars, it is said—to betray the postern of Monjuich to the troops of Coupigny, who were to be ready in the ditch at midnight. But they had mistaken their men: the officers conferred with Duhesme, and consented to act as agents provocateurs: they pretended to join the conspiracy, were introduced to and had interviews with the chiefs, and informed the governor. On the morning before the appointed date many of the leaders were arrested. Duhesme placed guards in every street, and proclaimed that he knew all. The citizens remained quiet in their despair, the chiefs who had not been seized fled, and the troops on the Llobregat retired to Tarragona. Duhesme hanged his captives, two priests named Gallifa and Pou, a young merchant named Massana, Navarro an old soldier, and four others. ‘They went to the gallows,’ says Vacani, an eye-witness, ‘with pride, convinced every one of them that they had done the duty of good citizens in behalf of king, country, and religion[30].’
Engrossed in this plot, the official chiefs of Catalonia half forgot Gerona, and did nothing to help Alvarez till long after the siege had begun. The only assistance that he received from without was that the miqueletes and somatenes of the Ampurdam and the mountain region above Hostalrich were always skirmishing with Verdier’s outposts, and once or twice cut off his convoys of munitions on their way from Figueras to the front.
The French engineers were somewhat at variance as to the right way to deal with Gerona. There were two obvious alternatives. An attack on the weak front of the Mercadal was certain to succeed: the ground before the walls was suitable for trenches, and the fortifications were trifling. But when a lodgement had been made in this quarter of the town it would be necessary to work forward, among the narrow lanes and barricades, to the Oña, and then to cross that river in order to continue similar operations through the streets of Gerona. Even when the city had been subdued, the garrison might still hold out in the formidable works on the Monjuich and Capuchin heights. The reduction of the Mercadal and the city, moreover, would have to be carried out under a continuous plunging fire from the forts above, which overlooked the whole place. This danger was especially insisted upon by some of the engineer officers, who declared that it would be impossible for the troops to work their way forward over ground so exposed. As a matter of fact it was proved, after the siege was over and the forts had been examined by the captors, that this fear had been exaggerated; the angle of fire was such that large sections of the town were in no way commanded from the heights, and the streets could not have been searched in the fashion that was imagined. But this, obvious in December, could not have been known in May[31]. The second alternative was to commence the attack on Gerona not from the easiest but from the most difficult side, by battering the lofty fort of Monjuich from the high plateau beside it. The defences here were very formidable: the ground was bare exposed rock: but if Monjuich were once captured it was calculated that the town must surrender, as it was completely overlooked by the fort, and had no further protection save its antiquated mediaeval wall. The deduction that it would be cheaper in the end to begin with the difficult task of taking Monjuich, rather than the easier operations against the Mercadal, seemed plausible: its fault was that it presupposed that Alvarez and his garrison would behave according to the accepted rules of siegecraft, and yield when their situation became hopeless. But in dealing with Spanish garrisons the rules of military logic did not always act. Alvarez essayed the impossible, and held out behind his defective defences for four months after Monjuich fell. The loss of men and time that he thereby inflicted on the French was certainly no less than that which would have been suffered if the besiegers had begun with the Mercadal, and worked upwards by incessant street fighting towards the forts on the height. But it is hard to say that Verdier erred: he did not know his adversary, and he did know, from his experiences at Saragossa, what street fighting meant.
It may be added that Verdier’s views were accepted by the engineer-general, Sanson, who had been specially sent from France by the Emperor, to give his opinion on the best mode of procedure. The document which Verdier, Sanson, and Taviel (the commanding artillery officer of the 7th Corps) sent to Paris, to justify their choice of the upper point of attack, lays stress mainly on the impossibility of advancing from the Mercadal under the fire of the upper forts[32]. But there were other reasons for selecting Monjuich as the point of attack. It lay far nearer to the road to France and the central siege-dépôts beside Sarria and the Pont Mayor. The approaches would be over highly defensible ground where, if a disaster occurred, the defeated assailant could easily recover himself and oppose a strong front to the enemy. The shortness of the front was suitable for an army of the moderate strength of 14,000 men, which had to deal with a fortress whose perimeter, allowing for outlying forts and inaccessible precipices, was some six miles. Moreover, the ground in front of the Mercadal had the serious inconvenience of being liable to inundation; summer spates on the Ter and Oña are rare, but occur from time to time; and there was the bare chance that when the trenches had been opened all might be swept away by the rivers[33].
Verdier’s opinion was arrived at after mature reflection: the French had appeared in front of Gerona on May 8: the outlying villages on the east had been occupied between the twelfth and eighteenth: Lecchi’s Italians had closed the western exits by occupying the plain of Salt on the twenty-fourth: the inner posts of observation of the Spaniards had been cleared off when, on May 30, the Italians seized the suburban village of Santa Eugenia, and on June 1 the Germans took possession of the mountain of Nuestra Señora de los Angeles. But it was only on June 6 that the besiegers broke ground, and commenced their trenches and batteries on the plateau of Monjuich. It was necessary to make a beginning by subduing the outer defences of the fort, the towers or redoubts of San Luis, San Narciso, and San Daniel: two batteries of 24-pounders were constructed against them, while a third battery of mortars on the ‘Green Mound’ by the Casa den Roca on the west bank of the Ter, was to play upon the north end of the town: Verdier hoped that the bombardment would break the spirit of the citizens—little knowing the obstinate people with whom he had to deal. Five thousand bombs thrown into the place in June and July produced no effect whatever. More batteries on the heights were thrown up upon the 13th and 15th of June, while on the former day, to distract the attention of the Spaniards, Lecchi’s division, in the plain below, was ordered to open a false attack upon the Mercadal. This had good effect as a diversion, since Alvarez had expected an assault in this quarter, and the long line of trenches thrown up by the Italians in front of Santa Eugenia attracted much of his attention. Three days of battering greatly damaged San Luis and San Narciso, which were no more than round towers of masonry with ditches cut in the rock, and only two or three guns apiece. The French also took possession on the night of the fourteenth and fifteenth of the remains of the half-destroyed suburb of Pedret, between Monjuich and the Ter, as if about to establish themselves in a position from which they could attack the low-lying north gate of the town and the bastion of Santa Maria.
Hitherto the defence had seemed a little passive, but at dawn on the morning of the seventeenth Alvarez delivered the first of the many furious sallies which he made against the siege lines. A battalion of Ultonia rushed suddenly down-hill out of Monjuich and drove the French, who were taken completely by surprise, out of the ruins of Pedret. Aided by a smaller detachment, including the artificers of the Crusade, who came out of the Santa Maria gate, they destroyed all the works and lodgements of the besiegers in the suburb, and held it till they were driven out by two French and one Westphalian battalion sent up from Verdier’s reserves. The Spaniards were forced back into the town, but retired in good order, contented to have undone three days of the besiegers’ labour. They had lost 155 men, the French 128, in this sharp skirmish.
Two days later the towers of San Luis and San Narciso, which had been reduced to shapeless heaps of stone, were carried by assault, with a loss to the French of only 78 men; but an attempt to carry San Daniel by the same rush was beaten off, this redoubt being still in a tenable state. Its gorge, however, was completely commanded from the ruins of San Luis, and access to or exit from it was rendered so dangerous that Alvarez withdrew its garrison on the next night. The possession of these three outworks brought the French close up to Monjuich, which they could now attack from ground which was favourable in every respect, save that it was bare rock lacking soil. It was impossible to excavate in it, and all advances had to be made by building trenches (if the word is not a misnomer in this case) of sandbags and loose stones on the surface of the ground. The men working at the end of the sap were therefore completely exposed, and the work could only proceed at a great expense of life. Nevertheless the preparations advanced rapidly, and on the night of July 2 an enormous battery of sandbags (called the Batterie Impériale) was thrown up at a distance of only four hundred yards from Monjuich. Next morning it opened on the fort with twenty 16- and 24-pounders, and soon established a superiority over the fire of the defence. Several Spanish pieces were dismounted, others had to be removed because it was too deadly to serve them. But a steady fire was returned against the besiegers from the Constable and Calvary forts, on the other side of the Galligan ravine. Nevertheless Monjuich began to crumble, and it looked as if the end of the siege were already approaching. On July 3 there was a breach thirty-five feet broad in the fort’s north-eastern bastion, and the Spanish flag which floated over it was thrown down into the ditch by a chance shot. A young officer named Montorro climbed down, brought it up, and nailed it to a new flagstaff under the fire of twenty guns. Meanwhile long stretches of the parapet of Monjuich were ruined, the ditch was half-filled with débris, and the garrison could only protect themselves by hasty erections of gabions and sandbags, placed where the crest of the masonry had stood.
By this time St. Cyr and the covering army had abandoned the position in the plain of Vich which they had so long occupied. The general had, as it seems, convinced himself at last that Blake, who was still engaged in his unlucky Aragonese campaign, was not likely to appear. He therefore moved nearer to Gerona, in order to repress the efforts of the local somatenes, who were giving much trouble to Verdier’s communications. On June 20 he established his head quarters at Caldas de Malavella, some nine miles to the south-east of Gerona. That same evening one of his Italian brigades intercepted and captured a convoy of 1,200 oxen which the Governor of Hostalrich was trying to introduce into the beleaguered city along one of the mountain-paths which lead to the Capuchin heights from the coast. St. Cyr strung out his 14,000 men in a line from San Feliu de Guixols on the sea to the upper Ter, in a semicircle which covered all the approaches to Gerona saving those from the Ampurdam. He visited Verdier’s camp, inspected the siege operations, and expressed his opinion that an attack on the Mercadal front would have been preferable to that which had been actually chosen. But he washed his hands of all responsibility, told Verdier that, since he had chosen to correspond directly with Paris, he must take all the praise or blame resulting from his choice, and refused to countermand or to alter any of his subordinate’s dispositions. On July 2 however he sent, with some lack of logic, a summons of his own to Alvarez, inviting him to surrender on account of the desperate state of his defences: this he did without informing Verdier of his move. The Governor returned an indignant negative, and Verdier wrote in great wrath to complain that if the siege was his affair, as he had just been told, it was monstrous that his commander should correspond with the garrison without his knowledge[34]. The two generals were left on even worse terms than before. St. Cyr, however, gave real assistance to the siege operations at this time by storming, on July 5, the little fortified harbour-town of Palamos, which lies on the point of the sea-coast nearest to Gerona, and had been hitherto used by the miqueletes as a base from which they communicated by night with the fortress, and at the same time kept in touch with Tarragona and the English ships of the blockading squadron.
On the night of the 4th and 5th of July the defences of Monjuich appeared in such a ruinous condition that Commandant Fleury, the engineer officer in charge of the advanced parallel, took the extraordinary and unjustifiable step of assaulting them at 10 p.m. with the troops—two companies only—which lay under his orders, trusting that the whole of the guards of the trenches would follow if he made a lodgement. This presumptuous attack, made contrary to all the rules of military subordination, was beaten off with a loss of forty men. Its failure made Verdier determine to give the fort three days more of continuous bombardment, before attempting to storm it: the old batteries continued their fire, a new one was added to enfilade the north-western bastion, and cover was contrived at several points to shelter the troops which were to deliver the assault, till the actual moment of the storm arrived[35]. But three hundred yards of exposed ground still separated the front trenches from the breach—a distance far too great according to the rules of siegecraft. The Spaniards meanwhile, finding it impossible under such a fire to block the breach, which was now broad enough for fifty men abreast[36], threw up two walls of gabions on each side of it, sank a ditch filled with chevaux-de-frise in front of it, and loopholed some interior buildings of the fort, which bore upon its reverse side.
Monjuich, however, looked in a miserable state when, just before sunrise on July 7, Verdier launched his columns of assault upon it. He had collected for the purpose the grenadier and voltigeur companies of each of the twenty French, German, and Italian battalions of the besieging army, about 2,500 men in all[37]. They were divided into two columns, the larger of which went straight at the breach, while the smaller, which was furnished with ladders, was directed to escalade the left face of the demi-lune which covers the northern front of Monjuich. The troops passed with no great loss over the open space which divided them from the work, as its guns had all been silenced, and the fire from the more distant forts was ineffective in the dusk. But when they got within close musketry range they began to fall fast; the head of the main column, which was composed of some sapper companies and the Italian Velites of the Guard, got up on to the face of the breach, but could never break in. Every officer or man who reached the cutting and its chevaux-de-frise was shot down; the concentric fire of the defenders so swept the opening that nothing could live there. Meanwhile the rear of the column was brought to a stand, partly in, partly outside, the ditch. The Spaniards kept playing upon it with musketry and two or three small 2- and 4-pounders, which had been kept under cover and reserved for that purpose, firing canister into it at a distance of twenty or thirty yards. Flesh and blood could not bear this for long, and the whole mass broke and went to the rear. Verdier, who had come out to the Batterie Impériale to view the assault, had the men rallied and sent forward a second time: the head of the column again reached the breach, and again withered away: the supporting mass gave way at once, and fell back much more rapidly than on the first assault. Yet the General, most unwisely, insisted on a third attack, which, made feebly and without conviction, by men who knew that they were beaten, only served to increase the casualty list. Meanwhile the escalade of the demi-lune by the smaller column had been repelled with ease: the assailants barely succeeded in crossing the ditch and planting a few ladders against the scarp: no one survived who tried to mount them, and the troops drew off.
This bloody repulse cost the French 1,079 casualties, including seventy-seven officers killed or wounded—much more than a third of the troops engaged. It is clear, therefore, that it was not courage which had been lacking: nor could it be said that the enemy’s artillery fire had not been subdued, nor that the breach was insufficient, nor that the 300 yards of open ground crossed by the column had been a fatal obstacle; indeed, they had been passed with little loss. The mistake of Verdier had been that he attacked before the garrison was demoralized—the same error made by the English at Badajoz in 1811 and at San Sebastian in 1813. A broad breach by itself does not necessarily make a place untenable, if the spirit of the defenders is high, and if they are prepared with all the resources of the military art for resisting the stormers, as were the Geronese on July 7-8. The garrison lost, it may be remarked, only 123 men, out of a strength of 787 present in the fort that morning. The casualty list, however, was somewhat increased by the accidental explosion, apparently by a careless gunner, of the magazine of the tower of San Juan, alongside of the Galligan, which was destroyed with its little garrison of twenty-five men.
The repulse of the assault of Monjuich thoroughly demoralized the besieging army: the resistance of the Spaniards had been so fierce, the loss they had inflicted so heavy, that Verdier’s motley collection of French, German, Lombard, and Neapolitan regiments lost heart and confidence. Their low spirits were made manifest by the simultaneous outbreak of desertion and disease, the two inevitable marks of a decaying morale. All through the second half of July and August the hospitals grew gradually fuller, not only from sunstroke cases (which were frequent on the bare, hot, rocky ground of the heights), but from dysentery and malaria. The banks of the Ter always possessed a reputation for epidemics—twice in earlier centuries a French army had perished before the walls of Gerona by plagues, which the citizens piously attributed to their patron, San Narciso. It was mainly because he realized the depression of his troops that Verdier refrained from any more assaults, and went on from July 9 to August 4 battering Monjuich incessantly, while he cautiously pushed forward his trenches, till they actually reached the ditch of the demi-lune which covers the northern front of the fort. The garrison was absolutely overwhelmed by the incessant bombardment, which destroyed every piece of upstanding masonry, and prevented them from rebuilding anything that was demolished. They were forced to lurk in the casemates, and to burrow for shelter in the débris which filled the interior of the work. Three large breaches had been made at various points, yet Verdier would never risk another assault, till on August 4 his approaches actually crowned the lip of the ditch of the demi-lune, and his sappers had blown in its counterscarp. The ruined little outwork was then stormed with a loss of only forty men. This put the French in the possession of good cover only a few yards from the main body of the fort. Proceeding with the same caution as before, they made their advances against Monjuich by mining: on the night of the 8th–9th August no less than twenty-three mines under the glacis of the fort were exploded simultaneously. This left a gaping void in front of the original breach of July 7, and filled up the ditch with débris for many yards on either side: part of the interior of the fort was clearly visible from the besiegers’ trenches.
Only one resource for saving Monjuich remained to Alvarez—a sortie for the expulsion of the enemy from their advanced works. It was executed with great courage at midday on August 9, while at the same time separate demonstrations to distract the enemy were made at two other points. The column from Monjuich had considerable success; it stormed two advanced batteries, spiked their guns, and set fire to their gabions; the French were cleared out of many of their trenches, but made head behind one of the rear batteries, where they were joined by their reserves, who finally thrust back the sallying force into the fort. The damage done, though considerable, could be repaired in a day. Verdier gave orders for the storm of the dilapidated fort on the night of August 11, and borrowed a regiment from St. Cyr’s covering army to lead the assault, being still very doubtful of the temper of his own troops. But at six on the preceding afternoon an explosion was heard in Monjuich, and great part of its battered walls flew up into the air. The Spaniards had quietly evacuated it a few minutes before, after preparing mines for its demolition. The French, when they entered, found nothing but a shapeless mass of stones and eighteen disabled cannon. The garrison had lost, in the sixty-five days of its defence, 962 men killed and wounded; the besiegers had, first and last, suffered something like three times this loss.
While the bombardment of Monjuich was going on, the Spanish generals outside the fortress had at last begun to make serious efforts for its assistance. Not only had the somatenes redoubled their activity against Verdier’s convoys, and several times succeeded in destroying them or turning them back, but Coupigny had at last begun to move, for he saw that since Blake’s rout at Belchite on June 18 he, and he alone, possessed an organized body of troops on this side of Spain, small though it was. Unable to face St. Cyr in the field, he tried at least to throw succours into Gerona by the mountain paths from the south, if he could do no more. The first attempt was disastrous: three battalions started from Hostalrich under an English adventurer, Ralph Marshall, whom Alvarez had suggested for the command of this expedition. They evaded the first line of the covering army, but at Castellar, on July 10, ran into the very centre of Pino’s division, which had concentrated from all sides for their destruction. Marshall escaped into Gerona with no more than twelve men: 40 officers and 878 rank and file laid down their arms; the rest of the column, some 600 or 700 men, evaded surrender by dispersion[38].
Equally disastrous, though on a smaller scale, was another attempt made on August 4 by a party of 300 miqueletes to enter Gerona: they eluded St. Cyr, but on arriving at the entry of the Galligan, close under the forts, made the unfortunate mistake of entering the convent of San Daniel, which the garrison had been compelled to evacuate a few days before. It was now in the French lines, and the Catalans were all taken prisoners. It was not till August 17, six days after the fall of Monjuich, that Alvarez obtained his first feeble reinforcement: the miquelete battalion of Cervera, with a draft for that of Vich already in the garrison, altogether 800 bayonets, got into the city on the west side, by eluding Lecchi’s Italians in the plain and fording the Ter. They were much needed, for Alvarez was complaining to the Catalan Junta that he had now only 1,500 able-bodied men left of his original 5,000[39].
Verdier had written to his master, after the capture of Monjuich, to announce that Gerona must infallibly surrender within eight or ten days[40], now that it had nothing but an antiquated mediaeval wall to oppose to his cannon. So far, however, was he from being a true prophet that, as a matter of fact, the second and longer episode of the siege, which was to be protracted far into the winter, had only just begun.
SECTION XVII: CHAPTER III
THE FALL OF GERONA. AUGUST–DECEMBER, 1809
When Monjuich had been evacuated, the position of Gerona was undoubtedly perilous: of the two mountain summits which command the city one was now entirely in the hands of the French; for not only the great fort itself but several of the smaller works above the ravine of the Galligan—such as the fortified convent of San Daniel and the ruined tower of San Juan—had been lost. The front exposed to attack now consisted of the northern section of the old city wall, from the bastion of Santa Maria at the water’s edge, to the tower of La Gironella, which forms the north-eastern angle of the place, and lies further up the slope of the Capuchin heights than any other portion of the enceinte. The space between these two points was simply covered by a mediaeval wall set with small round towers: neither the towers nor the curtain between them had been built to hold artillery. Indeed the only spots on this front where guns had been placed were (1) the comparatively modern bastion of Santa Maria, (2) a work erected under and about the Gironella, and called the ‘Redoubt of the Germans,’ and (3, 4) two parts of the wall called the platforms[41] of San Pedro and San Cristobal, which had been widened till they could carry a few heavy guns. On the rest of the enceinte, owing to its narrowness, nothing but wall-pieces and two-pounders could be mounted. The parts of the curtain most exposed to attack were the sections named Santa Lucia, San Pedro, San Cristobal, and Las Sarracinas, from churches or quarters which lay close behind them. With nothing but an antiquated wall, seven to nine feet thick, thirty feet high, and destitute of a ditch, it seemed that this side of Gerona was doomed to destruction within a few days.
But there were points in the position which rendered the attack more difficult than might have been expected. The first was that any approaches directed against this front would be exposed to a flanking fire from the forts on the Capuchin heights, especially from the Calvary and Chapter redoubts. The second was that the greater part of the weak sections of the wall were within a re-entering angle; for the tower of Santa Lucia and the ‘Redoubt of the Germans’ by the Gironella project, and the curtains between them are in a receding sweep of the enceinte. Attacks on these ill-fortified sections would be outflanked and enfiladed by the two stronger works. The only exposed part of the curtain was that called Santa Lucia, running from the tower of that name down to the bastion of Santa Maria. Lastly, the parallels which the French might construct from their base on Monjuich would have to be built on a down slope, overlooked by loftier ground, and when they reached the foot of the walls they would be in a sort of gulley or bottom, into which the defenders of the city could look down from above. The only point from which the north end of Gerona could be approached from flat ground and without disadvantages of slope, is the short front of less than 200 yards breadth between the foot of Monjuich and the bank of the Ter. Here, in the ruins of the suburb of Pedret, there was plenty of cover, a soil easy to work, and a level terrain as far as the foot of the Santa Maria bastion. The engineers of the besieging army selected three sections of wall as their objective. The first was the ‘Redoubt of the Germans’ and the tower of La Gironella, the highest and most commanding works in this part of the enceinte: once established in these, they could overlook and dominate the whole city. The other points of attack were chosen for the opposite reason—because they were intrinsically weak in themselves, not because they were important or dominating parts of the defences. The curtain of Santa Lucia in particular seemed to invite attack, as being in a salient angle, unprotected by flanking fire, and destitute of any artillery of its own.
Verdier, therefore, on the advice of his engineers, set to work to attack these points of the enceinte between La Gironella and Santa Maria. New batteries erected amid the ruins of Monjuich were levelled against them, in addition to such of the older batteries as could still be utilized. On the front by Pedret also, where nothing had hitherto been done, works were prepared for guns to be directed against Santa Maria and Santa Lucia. Meanwhile a perpetual bombardment with shell was kept up, against the whole quarter of the town that lay behind the selected points of attack. Mortars were always playing, not only from the Monjuich heights but from two batteries erected on the so-called ‘Green Mound’ in the plain beyond the river Ter. Their effect was terrible: almost every house in the northern quarter of Gerona was unroofed or destroyed: the population had to take refuge in cellars, where, after a few days, they began to die fast—all the more so that food was just beginning to run short as August advanced. From the 14th to the 30th of that month Verdier’s attack was developing itself: by its last day four breaches had been established: one, about forty feet broad, in the curtain of St. Lucia, two close together in the works at La Gironella[42], the fourth and smallest in the platform of San Cristobal. But the approaches were still far from the foot of the wall, the fire of the outlying Spanish works, especially the Calvary fort, was unsubdued, and though the guns along the attacked front had all been silenced, the French artillery had paid dearly both in lives and in material for the advantage they had gained. Moreover sickness was making dreadful ravages in the ranks of the besieging army. The malarious pestilence on which the Spaniards had relied had appeared, after a sudden and heavy rainfall had raised the Ter and Oña beyond their banks, and inundated the whole plain of Salt. By malaria, dysentery and sunstroke Verdier had lost 5,000 men, in addition to his casualties in the siege. Many of them were convalescents in the hospitals of Perpignan and Figueras, but it was hard to get them back to the front; the somatenes made the roads impassable for small detachments, and the officers on the line of communication, being very short of men, were given to detaining drafts that reached them on their way to Gerona[43]. Hence Verdier, including his artillerymen and sappers, had less than 10,000 men left for the siege, and these much discouraged by its interminable length, short of officers, and sickly. This was not enough to guard a periphery of six miles, and messengers were continually slipping in or out of Gerona, between the widely scattered camps of the French.
On August 31 a new phase of the siege began. In response to the constant appeals of Alvarez to the Catalan Junta, and the consequent complaints of the Junta alike to the Captain-General Blake, and to the central government at Seville, something was at last about to be done to relieve Gerona. The supreme Central Junta, in reply to a formal representation of the Catalans dated August 16[44], had sent Blake 6,000,000 reals in cash, and a peremptory order to march on Gerona whatever the state of his army might be, authorizing him to call out all the somatenes of the province in his aid. The general, who had at last returned to Tarragona, obeyed, though entirely lacking confidence in his means of success; and on the thirty-first his advance guard was skirmishing with St. Cyr’s covering army on the heights to the south of the Ter.
Blake’s army, it will be remembered, had been completely routed at Belchite by Suchet on June 18. The wrecks of his Aragonese division had gradually rallied at Tortosa, those of his Valencian divisions at Morella: but even by the end of July he had only a few thousand men collected, and he had lost every gun of his artillery. For many weeks he could do nothing but press the Junta of Valencia to fill the depleted ranks of his regiments with recruits, to reconstitute his train, and to provide him with new cannon. Aragon had been lost—nothing could be drawn from thence: Catalonia, distracted by Suchet’s demonstration on its western flank, did not do as much as might have been expected in its own defence. The Junta was inclined to favour the employment of miqueletes and somatenes, and to undervalue the troops of the line: it forgot that the irregulars, though they did admirable work in harassing the enemy, could not be relied upon to operate in large masses or strike a decisive blow. Still, the regiments at Tarragona, Lerida, and elsewhere had been somewhat recruited before August was out.
Blake’s field army was composed of some 14,000 men: there were five Valencian regiments—those which had been least mishandled in the campaign of Aragon—with the relics of six of the battalions which Reding had brought from Granada in 1808[45], two of Lazan’s old Aragonese corps, and five or six of the regiments which had formed the original garrison of Catalonia. The battalions were very weak—it took twenty-four of them to make up 13,000 infantry: of cavalry there were only four squadrons, of artillery only two batteries. Those of the rank and file who were not raw recruits were the vanquished of Molins de Rey and Valls, or of Maria and Belchite. They had no great confidence in Blake, and he had still less in them. Despite the orders received from Seville, which bade him risk all for the relief of Gerona, he was determined not to fight another pitched battle. The memories of Belchite were too recent to be forgotten. Though much obloquy has been poured upon his head for this resolve, he was probably wise in his decision. St. Cyr had still some 12,000 men in his covering army, who had taken no share in the siege: their morale was intact, and they had felt little fatigue or privation. They could be, and were in fact, reinforced by 4,000 men from Verdier’s force when the stress came. Blake, therefore, was, so far as regular troops went, outnumbered by the French, especially in cavalry and artillery. He could not trust in time of battle the miqueletes, of whom some 4,000 or 5,000 from the Ampurdam and Central Catalonia came to join him. He thought that it might be possible to elude or outflank St. Cyr, to lure him to divide his forces into scattered bodies by threatening many points at once, or, on the other hand, to induce him to concentrate on one short front, and so to leave some of the exits of Gerona open. But a battle with the united French army he would not risk under any conditions.
St. Cyr, however, was too wary for his opponent: he wanted to fight at all costs, and he was prepared to risk a disturbance of the siege operations, if he could catch Blake in the open and bring him to action. The moment that pressure on his outposts, by regular troops coming from the south, was reported, he drew together Souham’s and Pino’s divisions on the short line between San Dalmay on the right and Casa de Selva on the left, across the high road from Barcelona. At the same time he sent stringent orders to Verdier to abandon the unimportant sections of his line of investment, and to come to reinforce the field army at the head of his French division, which still counted 4,000 bayonets. Verdier accordingly marched to join his chief, leaving Lecchi’s Italians—now little more than 2,000 strong—to watch the west side of Gerona, and handing over the charge of the works on Monjuich, the new approaches, and the park at Pont Mayor, to the Westphalians. He abandoned all the outlying posts on the heights, even the convent of San Daniel, the village of Campdura, and the peak of Nuestra Señora de los Angeles. Only 4,600 infantry and 2,000 gunners and sappers were left facing the garrison: but Alvarez was too weak to drive off even such a small force.
On September 1 Blake ostentatiously displayed the heads of his columns in front of St. Cyr’s position; but while the French general was eagerly awaiting his attack, and preparing his counter-stroke, the Spaniard’s game was being played out in another quarter. While Rovira and Claros with their miqueletes made noisy demonstration from the north against the Westphalians, and threatened the park and the camp at Sarria, Blake had detached one of his divisions, that of Garcia Conde, some 4,000 strong, far to the left beyond St. Cyr’s flank: this corps had with it a convoy of more than a thousand mules laden with provisions, and a herd of cattle. It completely escaped the notice of the French, and marching from Amer at break of day came down into the plain of Salt at noon, far in the rear of St. Cyr’s army. Garcia Conde had the depleted Italian division of the siege corps in front of him: one of the brigadiers, the Pole Milosewitz, was in command that day, Lecchi being in hospital. This small force, which vainly believed itself covered from attack by St. Cyr’s corps, had kept no look-out to the rear, being wholly intent on watching the garrison. It was surprised by the Spanish column, cut into two halves, and routed. Garcia Conde entered the Mercadal in triumph with his convoy, and St. Cyr first learnt what had occurred when he saw the broken remnants of the Italians pouring into the rear of his own line at Fornells.
That night Gerona was free of enemies on its southern and eastern sides, and Alvarez communicated freely with Rovira’s and Claros’s irregulars, who had forced in the Westphalian division and compelled it to concentrate in Monjuich and the camp by the great park near Sarria. The garrison reoccupied the ruined convent of San Daniel by the Galligan, and placed a strong party in the hermitage on the peak of Nuestra Señora de los Angeles. It also destroyed all the advanced trenches on the slopes of Monjuich. On the next morning, however, it began to appreciate the fact that the siege had not been raised. St. Cyr sent back Verdier’s division to rejoin the Westphalians, and with them the wrecks of Lecchi’s routed battalions. He added to the force under Verdier half Pino’s Italian division—six fresh battalions. With these reinforcements the old siege-lines could be reoccupied, and the Spaniards were forced back from the points outside the walls which they had reoccupied on the night of September 1.
By sending away such a large proportion of the 16,000 men that he had concentrated for battle on the previous day, St. Cyr left himself only some 10,000 men for a general action with Blake, if the latter should resolve to fight. But the Spanish general, being without Garcia Conde’s division, had also no more than 10,000 men in line. Not only did he refuse to advance, but when St. Cyr, determined to fight at all costs, marched against him with offensive intentions, he hastily retreated as far as Hostalrich, two marches to the rear. There he broke up his army, which had exhausted all its provisions. St. Cyr did the same and for the same reasons; his men had to disperse in order to live. He says in his memoirs that if Blake had shown a bold front against him, and forced him to keep the covering army concentrated for two more days, the siege would have had to be raised. For the covering army had advanced against the Spaniards on September 2 with only two days’ rations, it had exhausted its stores, and eaten up the country-side. On the fourth it would have had to retire, or to break up into small fractions, leaving the siege-corps unprotected. St. Cyr doubted whether the retreat would have ceased before Figueras was reached. But it is more probable that he would have merely fallen back to join Verdier, and to live for some days on the dépôts of Pont Mayor and Sarria. He could have offered battle again under the walls of Gerona, with all his forces united. Blake might have got into close touch with Alvarez, and have thrown what convoys he pleased into the town; but as long as St. Cyr and Verdier with 22,000 men lay opposite him, he could not have risked any more. The situation, in short, would have been that which occurred in February 1811 under the walls of Badajoz, when Mortier faced Mendizabal, and would probably have ended in the same fashion, by the French attacking and driving off the relieving army. Blake, then, may be blamed somewhat for his excessive caution in giving way so rapidly before St. Cyr’s advance: but if we remember the quality of his troops and the inevitable result of a battle, it is hard to censure him overmuch.
Meanwhile Garcia Conde, whose movements were most happy and adroit, reinforced the garrison of Gerona up to its original strength of 5,000 bayonets, by making over to Alvarez four whole battalions and some picked companies from other corps, and prepared to leave the town with the rest of his division and the vast drove of mules, whose burden had been discharged into the magazines. If he had dedicated his whole force to strengthening the garrison, the additional troops would have eaten up in a few days all the provisions that the convoy had brought in[46]. Accordingly he started off at two a.m. on September 4 with some 1,200 men, by the upland path that leads past the hermitage of Los Angeles: St. Cyr had just placed Pino’s troops from the covering army to guard the heights to the south-east of Gerona, but Garcia Conde, warned by the peasants of their exact position, slipped between the posts and got off to Hostalrich with a loss of no more than fifty men[47].
Before he could consider his position safe, Verdier had to complete the lines of investment: this he did on September 5 by driving off the intermediate posts which Alvarez had thrown out from the Capuchin heights, to link the town with the garrison in the hermitage of Nuestra Señora de los Angeles. Mazzuchelli’s brigade stormed the hermitage itself on the following day, with a loss of about eighty men, and massacred the greater part of the garrison. On that same day, however, the French suffered a small disaster in another part of the environs. General Joba, who had been sent with three battalions to clear the road to Figueras from the bands of Claros and Rovira, was beaten and slain at San Gregorio by those chiefs. But the miqueletes afterwards retired to the mountains, and the road became intermittently passable, at least for large bodies of men.
It was not till September 11, however, that Verdier recommenced the actual siege, and bade his batteries open once more upon Gerona. The eleven days of respite since Blake interrupted the bombardment on September 1 had been invaluable to the garrison, who had cleared away the débris from the foot of the breaches, replaced the damaged artillery on the front of attack, and thrown up interior defences behind the shattered parts of the wall. They had also destroyed all the advanced trenches of the besiegers, which had to be reconstructed at much cost of life. In four days Verdier had recovered most of the lost ground, when he was surprised by a vigorous sally from the gate of San Pedro: the garrison, dashing out at three p.m., stormed the three nearest breaching batteries, spiked their guns, and filled in all the trenches which were advancing towards the foot of the walls. Four days’ work was thus undone in an hour, and it was only on September 19 that Verdier had reconstructed his works, and pushed forward so far towards his objective that he considered an assault possible. He then begged St. Cyr to lend him a brigade of fresh troops, pleading that the siege-corps was now so weak in numbers, and so demoralized by its losses, that he did not consider that the men would do themselves justice at a storm. The losses of officers had been fearful: one battalion was commanded by a lieutenant, another had been reduced to fifty men; desertion was rampant among several of the foreign corps. Of 14,000 infantry[48] of the French, Westphalian, and Italian divisions less than 6,000 now remained. So far as mere siegecraft went, as he explained to St. Cyr, ‘the affair might be considered at an end. We have made four large practicable breaches, each of them sufficient to reduce the town. But the troops cannot be trusted.’ St. Cyr refused to lend a man for the assault, writing with polite irony that ‘every general has his own task: yours is to take Gerona with the resources placed at your disposal by the government for that object, and the officers named by the government to conduct the siege[49].’ He added that he considered, from its past conduct, that the morale of the siege-corps was rather good than bad. He should not, therefore, allow the covering army to join the assault; but he would lend the whole of Pino’s division to take charge of Monjuich and the camps, during the storm, and would make a demonstration against the Mercadal, to distract the enemy from the breaches. With this Verdier had to be content, and, after making two final protests, concentrated all his brigades save those of the Westphalian division, and composed with them four columns, amounting to some 3,000 men, directing one against each of the four breaches. That sent against the platform of San Cristobal was a mere demonstration of 150 men, but the other three were heavy masses: the Italians went against Santa Lucia, the French brigade against the southern breach in the ‘Redoubt of the Germans,’ the Berg troops against the northern one. A separate demonstration was made against the Calvary fort, whose unsubdued fire still flanked the breaches, in the hope that its defenders might be prevented from interfering in the main struggle.
Alvarez, who had noted the French columns marching from all quarters to take shelter, before the assault, in the trenches on the slopes of Monjuich and in front of Pedret, had fair warning of what was coming, and had done his best to provide against the danger. The less important parts of the enceinte had been put in charge of the citizens of the ‘Crusade,’ and the picked companies of every regiment had been told off the breaches. The Englishman, Ralph Marshall, was in charge of the curtain of Santa Lucia, William Nash, the Spanish-Irish colonel of Ultonia, commanded at the two breaches under La Gironella: Brigadier Fournas, the second-in-command of the garrison, had general supervision of the defences; he had previously taken charge of Monjuich during the great assault in August. Everything had been done to prepare a second line of resistance behind the breaches; barricades had been erected, houses loopholed, and a great many marksmen disposed on roofs and church towers, which looked down on the rear-side of the gaps in the wall.
At four o’clock in the afternoon of September 19 the three columns destined for the northern breaches descended from Monjuich on the side of San Daniel, crossed the Galligan, and plunged into the hollow at the foot of the ‘Redoubt of the Germans.’ At the same moment the fourth column started from the ruins of the tower of San Juan to attack the curtain of Santa Lucia. The diversion against the Calvary fort was made at the same moment, and beaten off in a few minutes, so that the fire of this work was not neutralized during the assault according to Verdier’s expectation. The main assault, nevertheless, was delivered with great energy, despite the flanking fire. At the two points of attack under La Gironella the stormers twice won, crossed, and descended from the breach, forcing their way into the ruined barracks behind. But they were mown down by the terrible musketry fire from the houses, and finally expelled with the bayonet. At the Santa Lucia curtain the Italians scaled the breach, but were brought up by a perpendicular drop of twelve feet behind it—the foot of the wall in this quarter chancing to be much higher than the level of the street below. They held the crest of the breach for some time, but were finally worsted in a long and furious exchange of fire with the Spaniards on the roofs and churches before them, and recoiled. The few surviving officers rallied the stormers, and brought them up for a second assault, but at the end of two hours of hard fighting all were constrained to retire to their trenches. They had lost 624 killed and wounded, including three colonels (the only three surviving in the whole of Verdier’s corps) and thirty other officers. The Spanish loss had been 251, among them Colonel Marshall, who was mortally wounded at his post on the Santa Lucia front.
Verdier accused his troops of cowardice, which seems to have been unjust. St. Cyr wrote to the Minister of War to express his opinion that his subordinate was making an excuse to cover his own error, in judging that a town must fall merely because there were large breaches in its walls[50]. ‘The columns stopped for ninety minutes on the breaches under as heavy a fire as has ever been seen. There was some disorder at the end, but that is not astonishing in view of the heavy loss suffered before the retreat. I do not think that picked grenadiers would have done any better, and I am convinced that the assault failed because the obstacles to surmount were too great.’ The fact was that the Spaniards had fought with such admirable obstinacy, and had so well arranged their inner defences, that it did not suffice that the breaches should have been perfectly practicable. At the northern assault the stormers actually penetrated into the buildings behind the gaps in the ruined wall, but could not get further forward[51]. In short, the history of the siege of Gerona gives a clear corroboration of the old military axiom that no town should ever surrender merely because it has been breached, and justifies Napoleon’s order that every governor who capitulated without having stood at least one assault should be sent before a court martial. It refutes the excuses of the too numerous commanders who have surrendered merely because there was a practicable breach in their walls, like Imaz at Badajoz in 1811. If all Spanish generals had been as wary and as resolute as Mariano Alvarez, the Peninsular War would have taken some unexpected turns. The moral of the defences of Tarifa, Burgos, and San Sebastian will be found to be the same as that of the defence of Gerona.
The effect of the repulse of September 19 on the besieging army was appalling. Verdier, after writing three venomous letters to the Emperor, the War Minister, and Marshal Augereau[52], in which he accused St. Cyr of having deliberately sacrificed the good of the service to his personal resentments, declared himself invalided. He then went off to Perpignan, though permission to depart was expressly denied him by his superior: his divisional generals, Lecchi and Morio, had already preceded him to France. Disgust at the failure of the storm had the same effect on the rank and file: 1,200 men went to the hospital in the fortnight that followed the assault, till by October 1 the three divisions of the siege-corps numbered little more than 4,000 bayonets—just enough to hold Monjuich and the camps by the great dépôts at Pont Mayor and Sarria. The store of ammunition in the park had been used up for the tremendous bombardment poured upon the breaches from the 15th to the 17th of September. A new supply was wanted from Perpignan, yet no troops could be detached to bring it forward, for the miqueletes were again active, and on September 13 had captured or destroyed near Bascara a convoy guarded by so many as 500 men.
St. Cyr, left in sole charge of the siege by Verdier’s departure, came to the conclusion that it was useless to proceed with the attack by means of trenches, batteries, and assaults, and frankly stated that he should starve the town out, but waste no further lives on active operations. He drew in the covering corps closer to Gerona, so that it could take a practical part in the investment, put the wrecks of Lecchi’s troops—of whom less than 1,000 survived—into Pino’s division, and sent the French brigade of Verdier’s old division to guard the line between Bascara and the Frontier. Thus the distinction between the siege-corps and the covering troops ceased to exist, and St. Cyr lay with some 16,000 men in a loose circle round Gerona, intent not on prosecuting advances against the walls, but only on preventing the introduction of further succours. He was aware that acute privations were already being suffered by the Spaniards: Garcia Conde’s convoy had brought in not much more than eight days’ provisions for the 5,000 men of the reinforced garrison and the 10,000 inhabitants who still survived. There was a considerable amount of flour still left in store, but little else: meat, salt and fresh, was all gone save horseflesh, for Alvarez had just begun to butcher his draught horses and those of his single squadron of cavalry. There was some small store of chocolate, tobacco, and coffee, but wine and aguardiente had run out, so had salt, oil, rice, and—what was most serious with autumn and winter approaching—wood and charcoal. All the timbers of the houses destroyed by the bombardment had been promptly used up, either for fortification or for cooking[53]. Medical stores were wholly unobtainable: the chief hospital had been burnt early in the siege, and the sick and wounded, laid in vaults or casemates for safety, died off like flies in the underground air. The seeds of pestilence were spread by the number of dead bodies of men and animals which were lying where they could not be reached, under the ruins of fallen houses. The spirit alike of garrison and troops still ran high: the repulse of the great assault of September 19, and the cessation of the bombardment for many days after had encouraged them. But they were beginning to murmur more and more bitterly against Blake: there was a general, if erroneous, opinion that he ought to have risked a battle, instead of merely throwing in provisions, on September 1. Alvarez himself shared this view, and wrote in vigorous terms to the Junta of Catalonia, to ask if his garrison was to perish slowly by famine.
Blake responded by a second effort, less happily planned than that of September 1. He called together his scattered divisions, now about 12,000 strong, and secretly concentrated them at La Bispal, between Gerona and the sea. He had again got together some 1,200 mules laden with foodstuffs, and a large drove of sheep and oxen. Henry O’Donnell, an officer of the Ultonia regiment, who had been sent out by Alvarez, marched at the head of the convoy with 2,000 picked men; a division of 4,000 men under General Wimpfen followed close behind to cover its rear. Blake, with the rest, remained at La Bispal: he committed the egregious fault of omitting to threaten other parts of the line of investment, so as to draw off St. Cyr’s attention from the crucial point. He trusted to secrecy and sudden action, having succeeded in concentrating his army without being discovered by the French, who thought him still far away beyond Hostalrich. Thus it came to pass that though O’Donnell struck sharply in, defeated an Italian regiment near Castellar, and another three miles further on, and reached the Constable fort with the head of the convoy, yet the rest of Pino’s division and part of Souham’s concentrated upon his flank and rear, because they were not drawn off by alarms in other quarters. They broke in between O’Donnell and his supports, captured all the convoy save 170 mules, and destroyed the leading regiment of Wimpfen’s column, shooting also, according to the Spanish reports, many scores of the unarmed peasants who were driving the beasts of burden[54]. About 700 of Wimpfen’s men were taken prisoners, about 1,300 killed or wounded, for little quarter was given. The remnant recoiled upon Blake, who fell back to Hostalrich next day, September 27, without offering to fight. The amount of food which reached the garrison was trifling, and Alvarez declared that he had no need for the additional mouths of O’Donnell’s four battalions, and refused to admit them into the city. They lay encamped under the Capuchin fort for some days, waiting for an opportunity to escape.
After having thus wrecked Blake’s second attempt to succour Gerona, and driven him from the neighbourhood, St. Cyr betook himself to Perpignan, in order, as he explained to the Minister of War[55], to hurry up provisions to the army at the front, and to compel the officers at the base to send forward some 3,000 or 4,000 convalescents fit to march, whose services had been persistently denied him[56]. Arrived there he heard that Augereau, whose gout had long disappeared, was perfectly fit to take the field, and could have done so long before if he had not preferred to shift on to other shoulders the responsibility for the siege of Gerona. He was, on October 1, at the baths of Molitg, ‘destroying the germs of his malady’ as he gravely wrote to Paris,—amusing himself, as St. Cyr maintains in his memoirs. Convinced that the siege had still a long time to run, and eager to do an ill turn to the officer who had intrigued to get his place, St. Cyr played on the Marshal precisely the same trick that Verdier had played on himself a fortnight before. He announced that he was indisposed, wrote to congratulate Augereau on his convalescence, and to resign the command to his hands, and departed to his home, without waiting for an answer, or obtaining leave from Paris—a daring act, as Napoleon was enraged, and might have treated him hardly. He was indeed put under arrest for a short time.
From the first to the eleventh of October Souham remained in charge of the army, but on the twelfth Augereau appeared and took command, bringing with him the mass of convalescents who had been lingering at Perpignan. Among them was Verdier, whose health became all that could be desired when St. Cyr had disappeared. The night following the Marshal’s arrival was disturbed by an exciting incident. Henry O’Donnell from his refuge on the Capuchin heights, had been watching for a fortnight for a good chance of escape. There was a dense fog on the night of the 12th-13th: taking advantage of it O’Donnell came down with his brigade, made a circuit round the town, crossed the Oña and struck straight away into the plain of Salt, which, being the most open and exposed, was also the least guarded section of the French lines of investment. He broke through the chain of vedettes almost without firing, and came rushing before dawn into Souham’s head-quarters camp on the heights of Aguaviva. The battalion sleeping there was scattered, and the general forced to fly in his shirt. O’Donnell swept off his riding-horses and baggage, as also some prisoners, and was out of reach in half an hour, before the rallying fractions of the French division came up to the rescue of their chief. By six o’clock the escaping column was in safety in the mountains by Santa Coloma, where it joined the miqueletes of Milans. For this daring exploit O’Donnell was made a major-general by the Supreme Junta. His departure was a great relief to Alvarez, who had to husband every mouthful of food, and had already put both the garrison and the townsfolk on half-rations of flour and horseflesh.
Augereau was in every way inferior as an officer to St. Cyr. An old soldier of fortune risen from the ranks, he had little education or military science; his one virtue was headlong courage on the battlefield, yet when placed in supreme command he often hesitated, and showed hopeless indecision. He had been lucky enough to earn a great reputation as Napoleon’s second-in-command in the old campaigns of Italy in 1796-7. Since then he had made his fortune by becoming one of the Emperor’s most zealous tools and flatterers. He was reckoned a blind and reckless Bonapartist, ready to risk anything for his master, but spoilt his reputation for sincerity by deserting him at the first opportunity in 1814. He was inclined to a harsh interpretation of the laws of war, and enjoyed a doubtful reputation for financial integrity. Yet he was prone to ridiculous self-laudatory proclamations and manifestos, written in a bombastic strain which he vainly imagined to resemble his master’s thunders of the Bulletins. Scraps of his address to the citizens of Gerona may serve to display his fatuity—
‘Unhappy inhabitants—wretched victims immolated to the caprice and madness of ambitious men greedy for your blood—return to your senses, open your eyes, consider the ills which surround you! With what tranquillity do your leaders look upon the graves crammed with your corpses! Are you not horror-struck at these cannibals, whose mirth bursts out in the midst of the human hecatomb, and who yet dare to lift their gory hands in prayer towards the throne of a God of Peace? They call themselves the apostles of Jesus Christ! Tremble, cruel and infamous men! The God who judges the actions of mortals is slow to condemn, but his vengeance is terrible.... I warn you for the last time, inhabitants of Gerona, reflect while you still may! If you force me to throw aside my usual mildness, your ruin is inevitable. I shall be the first to groan at it, but the laws of war impose on me the dire necessity.... I am severe but just. Unhappy Gerona! if thy defenders persist in their obstinacy, thou shalt perish in blood and flame.
(Signed) Augereau.’
Stuff of this sort was not likely to have much effect on fanatics like Alvarez and his ‘Crusaders.’ If it is so wrong to cause the deaths of men—they had only to answer—Why has Bonaparte sent his legions into Spain? On the Marshal’s line of argument, that it is wrong to resist overwhelming force, it is apparently a sin before God for any man to attempt to defend his house and family against any bandit. There is much odious and hypocritical nonsense in some of Napoleon’s bulletins, where he grows tender on the miseries of the people he has conquered, but nothing to approach the maunderings of his copyist.
Augereau found the army about Gerona showing not more than 12,000 bayonets fit for the field—gunners and sappers excluded. The men were sick of the siege, and it would seem that the Marshal was forced, after inspecting the regiments and conferring with the generals, to acquiesce in St. Cyr’s decision that any further assaults would probably lead to more repulses. He gave out that he was resolved to change the system on which the operations had hitherto been conducted, but the change amounted to nothing more than that he ordered a slow but steady bombardment to be kept up, and occasionally vexed the Spaniards by demonstrations against the more exposed points of the wall. It does not appear that either of these expedients had the least effect in shaking the morale of the garrison. It is true that during October and November the hearts of the Geronese were commencing to grow sick, but this was solely the result of starvation and dwindling numbers. As to the bombardment, they were now hardened to any amount of dropping fire: on October 28 they celebrated the feast of San Narciso, their patron, by a procession all round the town, which was under fire for the whole time of its progress, and paid no attention to the casualties which it cost them.
Meanwhile, when the second half of October had begun, Blake made the third and last of his attempts to throw succours into Gerona. It was even more feebly carried out than that of September 26, for the army employed was less numerous. Blake’s force had not received any reinforcement to make up for the men lost in the last affair, a fact that seems surprising, since Valencia ought now to have been able to send him the remainder of the regiments which had been reorganized since the disasters of June. But it would seem that José Caro, who was in command in that province, and the local Junta, made excuses for retaining as many men as possible, and cared little for the danger of Gerona, so long as the war was kept far from their own frontier. It was, at any rate, with no more than 10,000 or 12,000 men, the remains of his original force, that Blake once more came forward on October 18, and threatened the blockading army by demonstrations both from the side of La Bispal and that of Santa Coloma. He had again collected a considerable amount of food at Hostalrich, but had not yet formed a convoy: apparently he was waiting to discover the weakest point in the French lines before risking his mules and his stores, both of which were by now very hard to procure. There followed a fortnight of confused skirmishing, without any battle, though Augereau tried with all his might to force on a general engagement. One of his Italian brigades was roughly handled near La Bispal on the twenty-first, and another repulsed near Santa Coloma on the twenty-sixth, but on each occasion, when the French reinforcements came up, Blake gave back and refused to fight. On November 1 the whole of Souham’s division marched on Santa Coloma, and forced Loygorri and Henry O’Donnell to evacuate it and retire to the mountains. Souham reported that he had inflicted a loss of 2,000 men on the Spaniards, at the cost of eleven killed and forty-three wounded on his own side! The real casualty list of the two Spanish divisions seems to have been somewhat over 100 men[57].
Nothing decisive had taken place up to November 7, when Augereau conceived the idea that he might make an end of Blake’s fruitless but vexatious demonstrations, by dealing a sudden blow at his magazines in Hostalrich. If these were destroyed it would cost the Spaniards much time to collect another store of provisions for Gerona. Accordingly Pino marched with three brigades to storm the town, which was protected only by a dilapidated mediaeval wall unfurnished with guns, though the castle which dominated it was a place of considerable strength, and proof against a coup de main. Only one of Blake’s divisions, that of Cuadrado, less than 2,000 strong, was in this quarter, and Augereau found employment for the others by sending some of Souham’s troops against them. The expedition succeeded: while Mazzuchelli’s brigade occupied the attention of Cuadrado, the rest of the Italians stormed Hostalrich, which was defended only by its own inhabitants and the small garrison of the castle. The Spaniards were driven up into that stronghold after a lively fight, and all the magazines fell into Pino’s hands and were burnt. At a cost of only thirty-five killed and sixty-four wounded the food, which Blake had collected with so much difficulty, was destroyed[58]. Thereupon the Spanish general gave up the attempt to succour Gerona, and withdrew to the plain of Vich, to recommence the Sisyphean task of getting together one more convoy. It was not destined to be of any use to Alvarez and his gallant garrison, for by the time that it was collected the siege had arrived at its final stage.
The Geronese were now reaching the end of their strength: for the first time since the investment began in May some of the defenders began to show signs of slackening. The heavy rains of October and the commencement of the cold season were reducing alike troops and inhabitants to a desperate condition. They had long used up all their fuel, and found the chill of winter intolerable in their cellars and casemates. Alvarez, though reduced to a state of physical prostration by dysentery and fever, was still steadfast in heart. But there was discontent brewing among some of his subordinates: it is notable, as showing the spirit of the time, that the malcontents were found among the professional soldiers, not among the citizens. Early in November several officers were found holding secret conferences, and drawing up an address to the local Junta, setting forth the desperate state of the city and the necessity for deposing the governor, who was represented as incapacitated for command by reason of his illness: it was apparently hinted that he was going mad, or was intermittently delirious[59]. Some of the wild sayings attributed to Alvarez during the later days of the siege might be quoted as a support for their representations. To a captain who asked to what point he was expected to retire, if he were driven from his post, it is said that he answered, ‘to the cemetery.’ To another officer, the first who dared to say that capitulation was inevitable because of the exhaustion of the magazines, he replied, ‘When the last food is gone we will start eating the cowards, and we will begin with you.’ Though aware that their conspiracies were known, the malcontents did not desist from their efforts, and Alvarez made preparations for seizing and shooting the chiefs. But on the night of November 19 eight of them, including three lieutenant-colonels[60], warned by a traitor of their approaching fate, fled to Augereau’s camp. Their arrival was the most encouraging event for the French that had occurred since the commencement of the siege. They spoke freely of the exhaustion of the garrison, and said that Alvarez was mad and moribund.
It was apparently this information concerning the desperate state of the garrison which induced Augereau to recommence active siege operations. He ordered up ammunition from Perpignan to fill the empty magazines, and when it arrived began to batter a new breach in the curtain of Santa Lucia. On December 2 Pino’s Italians stormed the suburb of La Marina, outside the southern end of the town, a quarter hitherto unassailed, and made a lodgement therein, as if to open a new point of attack. But this was only done to distract the enemy from the real design of the Marshal, which was nothing less than to cut off the forts on the Capuchin heights from Gerona by seizing the redoubts, those of the ‘Chapter’ and the ‘City,’ which covered the steep upward path from the walls to the group of works on the hilltop. At midnight on December 6 the voltigeur and grenadier companies of Pino’s division climbed the rough southern face of the Capuchin heights, and surprised and escaladed the ‘Redoubt of the City,’ putting the garrison to the sword. Next morning the batteries of the forts above and the city below opened a furious fire upon the lost redoubt, and Alvarez directed his last sally, sending out every man that he could collect to recover the work. This led to a long and bloody fight on the slopes, which ended most disastrously for the garrison. Not only was the sortie repulsed, but in the confusion the French carried the Calvary and Chapter redoubts, the other works which guarded the access from Gerona to the upper forts. On the afternoon of December 7 the communication with them was completely cut off, and as their garrisons possessed no separate magazines, and had been wont to receive their daily dole from the city, it was clear that they must be starved out. They had only food for forty-eight hours at the moment[61].
The excitement of the sally had drained away the governor’s last strength: he took to his bed that evening, was in delirium next day, and on the morning of the ninth received the last sacraments of the Church, the doctors having declared that his hours were numbered. His last conscious act was to protest against any proposal to surrender, before he handed over the command to the senior officer present, General Juliano Bolivar. Had Alvarez retained his senses, it is certain that an attempt would have been made to hold the town, even when the starving garrisons of the forts should have surrendered. But the moment that his stern hand was removed, his successor, Bolivar, called together a council of war, to which the members of the Junta, no less than the officers commanding corps, were invited. They voted that further resistance was impossible, and sent out Brigadier-General Fournas, the man who had so well defended Monjuich, to obtain terms from Augereau. On the morning of the tenth the Marshal received him, and dictated a simple surrender, without any of the favourable conditions which Fournas at first demanded. His only concession was that he offered to exchange the garrison for an equal number of the unhappy prisoners from Dupont’s army, now lying in misery on the pontoons at Cadiz, if the Supreme Junta concurred. But the bargain was never ratified, as the authorities at Seville were obdurate.
On the morning of December 11 the survivors of the garrison marched out, and laid down their arms on the glacis of the Mercadal. Only 3,000 men came forth; these looked like living spectres, so pale, weak, and tattered that ‘the besiegers,’ as eye-witnesses observed, ‘felt ashamed to have been held at bay so long by dying men.’ There were 1,200 more lying in the hospitals. The rest of the 9,000 who had defended the place from May, or had entered with Garcia Conde in September, were dead. A detailed inspection of figures shows that of the 5,723 men of Alvarez’s original command only 2,008 survived, while of the 3,648 who had come later there were still 2,240 left: i. e. two-thirds of the old garrison and one-third of the succours had perished. The mortality by famine and disease far exceeded that by the sword: 800 men had died in the hospitals in October, and 1,300 in November, from mere exhaustion. The town was in a dreadful state: about 6,000 of the 14,000 inhabitants had perished, including nearly all the very young and the very old. 12,000 bombs and 8,000 shells had been thrown into the unhappy city: it presented a melancholy vista of houses roofless, or with one or two of the side-walls knocked in, of streets blocked by the fallen masonry of churches or towers, under which half-decayed corpses were partially buried. The open spaces were strewn with broken muskets, bloody rags, wheels of disabled guns and carts, fragments of shells, and the bones of horses and mules whose flesh had been eaten. The stench was so dreadful that Augereau had to keep his troops out of the place, lest infection should be bred among them. In the magazines nothing was found save a little unground corn; all the other provisions had been exhausted. There were also 168 cannon, mostly disabled; about 10,000 lb. of powder, and a million musket cartridges. The military chest handed over contained 562 reals—about 6l. sterling.
Augereau behaved very harshly to the garrison: many feeble or diseased men were made to march to Perpignan and perished by the way. The priests and monks of the ‘Crusade’ were informed that they were combatants, and sent off with the soldiery. But the fate of the gallant Governor provokes especial indignation. Alvarez did not die of his fever: when he was somewhat recovered he was forwarded to Perpignan, and from thence to Narbonne, where he was kept for some time and seemed convalescent. Orders then came from Paris that he was to be sent back to Spain—apparently to be tried as a traitor, for it was alleged that in the spring of 1808 he had accepted the provisional government installed by Murat. He was separated from his aide-de-camp and servants, and passed on from dungeon to dungeon till he reached Figueras. The day after his arrival at that place he was found dead, on a barrow—the only bed granted him—in the dirty cellar where he had been placed. It is probable that he perished from natural causes, but many Spaniards believed that he had been murdered[62].
Great as the losses of the garrison of Gerona had been, they were far exceeded, both positively and proportionately, by those of the besieging army. The French official returns show that on June 15 the three divisions charged with the attack, those of Verdier, Morio, and Lecchi, had 14,456 bayonets, and the two divisions of the covering army, those of Souham and Pino, 15,732: there were 2,637 artillerymen and engineers over and above these figures. On December 31, twenty days after the surrender, and when the regiments had been joined by most of their convalescents, the three siege-divisions counted 6,343 men, the covering divisions 11,666, and the artillery and engineers, 2,390.
This shows a loss of over 13,000 men; but on examination the deficit is seen to be even larger, for two new battalions from France had just joined Verdier’s division in December, and their 1,000 bayonets should be deducted from his total. It would seem, then, that the capture of Gerona cost the 7th Corps about 14,000 men, as well as a whole campaigning season, from April to December. The attack on Catalonia had been brought to a complete standstill, and when Gerona fell the French occupied nothing but the ruined city, the fortresses of Rosas and Figueras hard by the frontier, and the isolated Barcelona, where Duhesme, with the 6,000 men of his division, had been lying quiescent all the summer and autumn. Such a force was too weak to make detachments to aid St. Cyr or Augereau, since 4,000 men at least were needed for the garrison of the citadel and the outlying forts, and it would have been hopeless for the small remainder to take the field. Duhesme only conducted one short incursion to Villafranca during the siege of Gerona. In the last months of the year Barcelona was again in a state of partial starvation: the food brought in by Cosmao’s convoy in the spring had been exhausted, while a second provision-fleet from Toulon, escorted by five men-of-war, had been completely destroyed in October. Admiral Martin surprised it off Cape Creus, drove ashore and burnt two line-of-battle ships and a frigate, and captured most of the convoy. The rest took refuge in the harbour of Rosas, where Captain Halliwell attacked them with the boats of the squadron and burnt them all[63].
While Gerona was enduring its last month of starvation, those whose care it should have been to succour the place at all costs were indulging in a fruitless exchange of recriminations, and making preparations when it was all too late. Blake, after retiring to Vich on November 10, informed the Junta of Catalonia that he was helpless, unless more men could be found, and that they must find them. Why he did not rather insist that the Valencian reserves should be brought up, and risk stripping Tarragona and Lerida of their regular garrisons, it is hard to say. This at any rate would have been in his power. The Catalan Junta replied by summoning a congress at Manresa on November 20, to which representatives of every district of the principality were invited. The congress voted that a levy en masse of all the able-bodied men from seventeen to forty-five years of age should be called out[64], and authorized a loan of 10,000,000 reals for equipping them. They also wrote to Seville, not for the first time, to demand reinforcements from the Central Junta. But the battle of Ocaña had just been fought and lost, and Andalusia could not have spared a man, even if there had been time to transport troops to Tarragona. All that the Catalans received was honorary votes of approval for the gallant behaviour of the Geronese. The levy en masse was actually begun, but there was an insuperable difficulty in collecting and equipping the men in winter time, when days were short and roads were bad. The weeks passed by, and Gerona fell long before enough men had been got together to induce Blake to try a new offensive movement. Why was the congress not called in September rather than in November? Blake had always declared that he was too weak to risk a battle with the French for the raising of the siege, but till the last moment the Catalans contented themselves with arguing with him, and writing remonstrances to the Central Junta, instead of lending him the aid of their last levies.
One or two points connected with this famous siege require a word of comment. It is quite clear that St. Cyr during its early stages did not try his honest best to help Verdier. During June and July his covering army was doing no good whatever at Vich: he pretended that he had placed it there in order to ward off possible attacks by Blake. But it was matter of public knowledge that Blake was far away in Aragon, engaged in his unhappy campaign against Suchet, and that Coupigny, left at Tarragona with a few thousand men, was not a serious danger. St. Cyr could have spared a whole division more for the siege operations, without risking anything. If he had done so, Gerona could have been approached on two sides instead of one, the Mercadal front might have been attacked, and the loose blockade, which was all that Verdier could keep up, for want of more men, might have been made effective. But St. Cyr all through his military career earned a reputation for callous selfishness and habitual leaving of his colleagues in the lurch. On this occasion he was bitterly offended with Verdier, for giving himself the airs of an equal, and corresponding directly with the Emperor. There can be no doubt that he took a malicious pleasure in seeing his failures. It is hardly disguised in his clever and plausible Journal des Opérations de l’Armée de Catalogne en 1808-1809[65].
Verdier, on the other hand, seems to have felt all through that he was being asked to perform a task almost impossible, when he was set to take Gerona with his own 14,000 men, unaided by the covering army. His only receipt for success was to try to hurry on the matter by delivering desperate blows. Both the assault on Monjuich on July 8 and that on the city on September 19 were premature; there was some excuse for the former: Verdier had not yet realized how well Alvarez could fight. But the second seems unpardonable, after the warning received at Monjuich. If the general, as he declared before delivering his assault, mistrusted his own troops, he had no right to order a storm at all, considering his experience of the way in which the Spaniards had behaved in July. He acted on the fallacious theory that a practicable breach implies a town that can be taken, which is far from being the case if the garrison are both desperate and ingenious in defending themselves. The only way to deal with such a resolute and capable adversary was to proceed by the slow and regular methods of siegecraft, to sap right up to the ditch before delivering an assault, and batter everything to pieces before risking a man. This was how Monjuich was actually taken, after the storm had failed. Having neither established himself close under the walls, nor subdued the flanking fires from the Calvary and Chapter redoubts, nor ascertained how far the Spaniards had prepared inner defences for themselves, he had no right to attack at all.
As to Blake, even after making all possible allowances for the fact that he could not trust his troops—the half-rallied wrecks of Maria and Belchite—for a battle in the field, he must yet be pronounced guilty of feebleness and want of ingenuity. If he could never bring up enough regulars to give him a chance of facing St. Cyr, the fault was largely his own: a more forcible general would have insisted that the Valencian reserves should march[66], and would have stripped Lerida and Tarragona of men: it could safely have been done, for neither Suchet nor Duhesme was showing any signs of threatening those points. He might have insisted that the Catalan Junta should call out the full levy of somatenes in September instead of in November. He might also have made a better use of the irregulars already in the field, the bands of Rovira, Milans, and Claros. These miqueletes did admirable service all through the siege, by harassing Verdier’s rear and cutting off his convoys, but they were not employed (as they should have been) in combination with the regulars, but allowed, as a rule, to go off on excursions of their own, which had no relation to the main objects of Blake’s strategy. The only occasion on which proper use was made of them was when, on September 1, they were set to threaten Verdier’s lines, while Garcia Conde’s convoy was approaching Gerona. It may be pleaded in the Spanish general’s defence that it was difficult to exact obedience from the chiefs: there was a distinct coolness between the regulars and the irregulars, which sometimes led to actual quarrels and conflicts when they met. But here again the reply is that more forcible captain-generals were able to control the miqueletes, and if Blake failed to do so, it was only one more sign of his inadequacy. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that he mismanaged matters, and that if in his second and third attempts to relieve Gerona he had repeated the tactics of his first, he would have had a far better chance of success. On September 1 only did he make any scientific attempt to distract the enemy’s attention and forces, and on that occasion he was successful. Summing things up, it may be said that he was not wrong to refuse battle with the troops that he had actually brought up to Gerona: they would undoubtedly have been routed if he had risked a general engagement. His fault was that he did not bring up larger forces, when it was in his power to do so, by the exercise of compulsion on the Catalan and Valencian Juntas. But these bodies must share Blake’s responsibilities: they undoubtedly behaved in a slack and selfish fashion, and let Gerona perish, though it was keeping the war from their doors for a long eight months.
All the more credit is due to Alvarez, considering the way in which he was left unsuccoured, and fed with vain promises. A less constant soul would have abandoned the defence long before: the last two months of resistance were his sole work: if he had fallen sick in October instead of December, his subordinates would have yielded long before. But it is not merely for heroic obstinacy that he must be praised. Every detail of the defence shows that he was a most ingenious and provident general: nothing was left undone to make the work of the besiegers hard. Moreover, as Napier has observed, it is not the least of his titles to merit that he preserved a strict discipline, and exacted the possible maximum of work from soldier and civilian alike, without the use of any of those wholesale executions which disgraced the defence of Saragossa. His words were sometimes truculent, but his acts were just and moderate. He never countenanced mob-law, as did Palafox, yet he was far better obeyed by the citizens, and got as good service from them as did the Aragonese commander. He showed that good organization is not incompatible with patriotic enthusiasm, and is far more effective in the hour of danger than reckless courage and blind self-sacrifice.
SECTION XVII: CHAPTER IV
THE AUTUMN CAMPAIGN OF 1809: TAMAMES, OCAÑA, AND ALBA DE TORMES
As early as August 30, when Wellington had not fully completed his retreat from Almaraz and Jaraicejo to Badajoz and Merida, the central Junta had already begun to pester him and his brother, the Ambassador at Seville, with plans for a resumption of the offensive in the valley of the Tagus. On that day Martin de Garay, the Secretary of State, wrote to represent to Wellesley that he had good reason to believe that the troops of Victor, Mortier, and Soult were making a general movement to the rear, and that the moment had arrived when the allied armies in Estremadura and La Mancha should ‘move forward with the greatest activity, either to observe more closely the movements of the enemy, or to attack him when circumstances may render it expedient[67].’ The French movement of retreat was wholly imaginary, and it is astonishing that the Spanish Government should have been so mad as to believe it possible that ‘their retrograde movement may have originated in accounts received from the North, which compel the enemy either to retire into the interior of France, or to take up a position nearer to the Pyrenees.’ On a groundless rumour, of the highest intrinsic improbability, they were ready to hurl the newly-rallied troops of Eguia and Venegas upon the French, and to invite Wellington to join in the advance. Irresponsible frivolity could go no further. But the Junta, as has been already said, were eager for a military success, which should cause their unpopularity to be forgotten, and were ready to seize on any excuse for ordering their troops forward. This particular rumour died away—the French were still in force on the Tagus, and, as a matter of fact, the only movement northwards on their part had been the return of Ney’s corps to Salamanca. But though the truth was soon discovered, the Junta only began to look out for new excuses for recommencing active operations.
Wellington, when these schemes were laid before him, reiterated his refusal to join in any offensive campaign, pointed out that the allied forces were not strong enough to embark on any such hazardous undertaking, and bluntly expressed his opinion that ‘he was much afraid, from what he had seen of the proceedings of the Central Junta, that in the distribution of their forces they do not consider military defence and military operations so much as political intrigue, and the attainment of petty political objects.’ He then proceeded to make an estimate of the French armies, to show their numerical superiority to the allies; in this he very much under-estimated the enemy’s resources, calculating the whole force of the eight corps in Spain at 125,000 men, exclusive of sick and garrisons not available for active service. As a matter of fact there were 180,000 men, not 125,000, with the Eagles at that moment, after all deductions had been made, so that his reasoning was far more cogent than he supposed[68]. But this only makes more culpable the obstinate determination of the Junta to resume operations with the much inferior force which they had at their disposal.
Undismayed by their first repulse, the Spanish ministers were soon making new representations to Wellesley and Wellington, in order to induce them to commit the English army to a forward policy. They sent in repeated schemes for supplying Wellington with food and transport on a lavish scale[69]; but he merely expressed his doubts as to whether orders that looked admirable on paper would ever be carried out in practice. He consented for the present to remain at Badajoz, as long as he could subsist his army in its environs, but warned the Junta that it was more probable that he would retire within the Portuguese border, for reasons of supply, than that he would join in another campaign on the Tagus.
Despite of all, the government at Seville went on with its plans for a general advance, even after they recognized that Wellington was not to be moved. A grand plan of operations was gradually devised by the War-Minister Cornel and his advisers. Stated shortly it was as follows. The army in La Mancha, which Venegas had rallied after the disaster of Almonacid, was to be raised to a strength of over 50,000 men by the drafting into it of a full two-thirds of Cuesta’s old army of Estremadura. On September 21 Eguia marched eastwards up the Guadiana, with three divisions of infantry and twelve or thirteen regiments of cavalry, to join Venegas[70]. The remaining force, amounting to two divisions of infantry and 2,500 cavalry, was left in Estremadura under the Duke of Albuquerque, the officer to whom the government was obliged to assign this army, because the Junta of Badajoz pressed for his appointment and would not hear of any other commander. He was considered an Anglophil, and a friend of some of the Andalusian malcontents, so the force left with him was cut down to the minimum. All the old regular regiments were withdrawn from him, save one single battalion, and he was left with nothing save the newly-raised volunteer units, some of which had behaved so badly at Talavera[71]. His cavalry was soon after reduced by the order to send a brigade to join the Army of the North, so that he was finally left with only five regiments of that arm or about 1,500 sabres. Of his infantry, about 12,000 strong, over 4,000 were absorbed by the garrison of Badajoz, so that he had only 8,000 men available for service in the field.
Eguia, on the other hand, carried with him to La Mancha some 25,000 men, the picked corps of the Estremaduran army; and, as the remains of Venegas’s divisions rallied and recruited after Almonacid, amounted to rather more than that number, the united force exceeded 50,000 sabres and bayonets. With this army the Junta intended to make a direct stroke at Madrid, while Albuquerque was directed to show himself on the Tagus, in front of Almaraz and Talavera, with the object of detaining at least one of the French corps in that direction. It was hoped, even yet, that Wellington might be induced to join in this demonstration. If once the redcoats reappeared at the front, neither Soult nor Mortier could be moved to oppose the army of La Mancha. Meanwhile Ney and the French corps in Leon and Old Castile were to be distracted by the use of a new force from the north, whose composition must be explained. The Junta held that the last campaign had failed only because the allies had possessed no force ready to detain Soult and Ney. If they had not appeared at Plasencia, Wellington, Cuesta, and Venegas would have been able to drive King Joseph out of his capital. Two months later the whole position was changed, in their estimation, by the fact that Spain once more possessed a large ‘Army of the Left,’ which would be able to occupy at least two French corps, while the rest of the allies marched again on Madrid. That such a force existed did indeed modify the aspect of affairs. La Romana had been moved to Seville to become a member of the Junta, but his successor, the Duke Del Parque, was collecting a host very formidable as far as numbers went. The old army of Galicia had been reformed into four divisions under Martin de la Carrera, Losada, Mahy, and the Conde de Belveder—the general whose name was so unfortunately connected with the ill-fought combat of Gamonal. These four divisions now comprised 27,000 men, of whom more than half were newly-raised Galician recruits, whom La Romana had embodied in the depleted cadres of his original battalions, after Ney and Soult had evacuated the province in July. A few of the ancient regiments that had made the campaign of Espinosa had died out completely—their small remnants having been drafted into other corps[72]. On the other hand there were a few new regiments of Galician volunteers—but La Romana had set his face against the creation of such units, wisely preferring to place his new levies in the ranks of the old battalions of the regular army[73]. In the main, therefore, the new ‘Army of the Left’ represented, as far as names and cadres went, Blake’s original ‘Army of Galicia[74].’ It had the same cardinal fault as that army, in that it had practically no cavalry whatever: the single dragoon regiment that Blake had owned (La Reina) having been almost completely destroyed in 1808[75]. Each division had a battery; the guns, of which La Romana’s army had been almost destitute in the spring, had been supplied from England, and landed at Corunna during the summer.
But the Galician divisions, though the most numerous, were not the only units which were told off to the new ‘Army of the Left.’ Asturias had been free of invaders since Ney and Bonnet retired from its borders in June 1809. The Central Junta ordered Ballasteros to join the main army with the few regular troops in the principality, and ten battalions of the local volunteers, a force of over 9,000 men. The Asturian Junta, always very selfish and particularist in its aims, made some protests but obeyed. Nine of its less efficient regiments were left behind to watch Bonnet.
Finally the Duke Del Parque himself had been collecting fresh levies about Ciudad Rodrigo, while the plains of Leon lay abandoned by the French during the absence of Ney’s corps in the valley of the Tagus. Including the garrison of Rodrigo he had 9,000 men, all in new units save one old line battalion and one old militia regiment[76]. Deducting the 3,500 men which held the fortress, there were seven battalions—nearly 6,000 bayonets—and a squadron or two of horse available for the strengthening of the field army. These were now told off as the ‘5th Division of the Army of the Left’; that of Ballasteros was numbered the 3rd Division.
The Galician, Asturian, and Leonese divisions had between them less than 500 horsemen. To make up for this destitution the Central Junta directed the Duke of Albuquerque to send off to Ciudad Rodrigo, via the Portuguese frontier, a brigade of his cavalry. Accordingly the Prince of Anglona marched north with three regiments[77], only 1,000 sabres in all, and joined Del Parque on September 25. Thus at the end of that month the ‘Army of the Left’ numbered nearly 50,000 men—all infantry save 1,500 horse and 1,200 gunners. But they were scattered all over North-Western Spain, from Oviedo to Astorga, and from Astorga to Ciudad Rodrigo, and had to be concentrated before they could act. Nor was the concentration devoid of danger, for the French might fall upon the Asturians or the Leonese before they had joined the Galician main body. As a matter of fact the 50,000 never took the field in one mass, for Del Parque left a division under Mahy to protect Galicia, and, when these regiments and the garrison of Rodrigo were deducted, he had but 40,000 in all, including sick and men on detachment. This, nevertheless, constituted a formidable force—if it had been in existence in July, Soult and Ney could never have marched against Wellington with their whole strength, and the Talavera campaign might have had another end. But the troops were of varying quality—the Leonese division was absolutely raw: the Galicians had far too many recruits with only two months’ training in their ranks, the Estremaduran cavalry had a bad record of disasters. A general of genius might have accomplished something with the Army of the Left—but Del Parque, though more cautious than many of his compeers, was no genius.
The Junta had a deeply-rooted notion that if sufficient pressure were applied to Wellesley and Wellington, they would permit Beresford’s Portuguese army, now some 20,000 strong, to join Del Parque for the advance into the plains of Leon. They had mistaken their men: Wellington returned as peremptory a refusal to their request for the aid of the Portuguese troops as to their demand that his own British army should advance with Albuquerque to the Tagus[78].
Nothing could be more hazardous than the plan finally formulated at the Seville War Office for the simultaneous advance of the armies of La Mancha, the North, and Estremadura. Even if it had been energetically supported by Wellington and Beresford, it would have been rash: converging operations by several armies starting from distant bases against an enemy concentrated in their midst are proverbially disastrous. In this particular plan three forces—numbering in all about 110,000 men, and starting from points so far apart as Ciudad Rodrigo, Truxillo, and the Passes by La Carolina, were to fall upon some 120,000 men, placed in a comparatively compact body in their centre. A single mistake in the timing of operations, the chance that one Spanish army might outmarch another, or that one of the three might fail to detain any hostile force in its front (as had happened with Venegas during the Talavera Campaign) was bound to be ruinous. The French had it in their power to deal with their enemies in detail, if the least mischance should occur: and with Spanish generals and Spanish armies it was almost certain that some error would be made.
Meanwhile the Junta made their last preparation for the grand stroke, by deposing Venegas from the command of the united army in La Mancha. Eguia held the interim command for a few days, but was to be replaced by Areizaga, an elderly general who had never commanded more than a single division, and had to his credit only courage shown in a subordinate position at the battle of Alcañiz. He was summoned from Lerida, and came hastily to take up his charge.
The sole advantage which the Spaniards possessed in October 1809 was that their enemy did not expect to be attacked. A month after Talavera matters had apparently settled down for the whole autumn, as far as the French generals could calculate. With the knowledge that the Austrian War was over, and that unlimited reinforcements could now be poured into Spain by his brother, King Joseph was content to wait. He had refused to allow Soult to make his favourite move of invading Portugal in the end of August, because he wished the Emperor to take up the responsibility of settling the next plan of campaign, and of determining the number of new troops that would be required to carry it out. The French corps, therefore, were in a semicircle round Madrid: Soult and Mortier in the central Tagus Valley at Plasencia and Talavera, Victor in La Mancha, with Sebastiani supporting him at Toledo and Aranjuez, Ney at Salamanca, Dessolles and the Royal Guard as a central reserve in the capital. This was a purely defensive position, and Joseph intended to retain it, till the masses of troops from Germany, with the Emperor himself perchance at their head, should come up to his aid. It does not seem to have entered into his head that the enemy would again take the offensive, after the fiasco of the Talavera campaign, and the bloody lesson of Almonacid.
In September and the early days of October the French hardly moved at all. Ney left his corps at Salamanca, and went on a short leave to Paris on September 25, so little was any danger expected in the plains of Leon. The charge of the 6th corps was handed over to Marchand, his senior divisional general. There was an even more important change of command pending—Jourdan had been soliciting permission to return to France ever since July. He had been on excellent terms with King Joseph, but found it hard to exact obedience from the marshals—indeed he was generally engaged in a controversy either with Victor or with Soult. The Emperor was not inclined to allow him to quit Spain, but Jourdan kept sending in applications to be superseded, backed by medical certificates as to his dangerous state of health. Finally he was granted leave to return, by a letter which reached him on October 25, just as the new campaign was beginning to develop into an acute phase. But he gladly handed over his duties to Soult, who thus became ‘major-general’ or chief of the Staff to King Joseph, and departed without lingering or reluctance for France, glad to be quit of a most invidious office[79].
Before Jourdan’s departure there had been some small movements of the French troops: hearing vague rumours of the passage eastward of Eguia’s army, King Joseph ordered a corresponding shift of his own troops towards that quarter. Soult and the 2nd Corps were ordered from Plasencia to Oropesa and Talavera, there relieving Mortier and the 5th Corps, who were to push up the Tagus toward Toledo. This would enable Victor to call up Sebastiani’s cavalry and two of his infantry divisions from Toledo into La Mancha. Having thus got together some 25,000 men, Victor advanced to Daimiel, and pressed in the advanced posts of the main Spanish army on October 15. Eguia, who was still in temporary command, since Areizaga had not yet arrived, made no attempt to stand, but retired into the passes of the Sierra Morena. This apparent timidity of the enemy convinced the Marshal that nothing dangerous was on hand in this quarter. He drew back his army into cantonments, in a semicircle from Toledo to Tarancon, leaving the cavalry of Milhaud and Paris out in his front.
Nothing more happened in La Mancha for a fortnight: but on the other wing, in the kingdom of Leon, matters came to a head sooner. About the middle of September the bulk of the Galician army, the divisions of Losada, Belveder and La Carrera, had moved down the Portuguese frontier via Alcanizas, and joined Del Parque at Ciudad Rodrigo. On the twenty-fifth of the same month the Prince of Anglona, with the cavalry brigade from Estremadura, also came in to unite himself to the Army of the Left. Del Parque had thus 25,000 infantry and 1,500 horse concentrated. He had still to be joined by Ballasteros and the Asturians, who had to pick their way with caution through the plains of Leon. Mahy and the 4th division of the Galicians had been left in the passes above Astorga, to cover the high-road into Galicia. He had a vanguard in Astorga, under Santocildes, and the town, whose walls had been repaired by the order of La Romana, was now capable of making some defence.
Facing Del Parque and his lieutenants there were two distinct forces. The 6th Corps, now under Marchand, was concentrated at Salamanca. Having received few or no drafts since its return from Galicia it was rather weak—its twenty-one battalions and four cavalry regiments only counted at the end of September some 13,000 bayonets and 1,200 sabres[80] effective—the sick being numerous. In the north of Leon and in Old Castile Kellermann was in charge, with an independent force of no great strength: his own division of dragoons, nearly 3,000 sabres, was its only formidable unit. The infantry was composed of three Swiss battalions, and four or five French battalions, which had been left in garrisons in Old Castile when the regiments to which they belonged went southward in the preceding winter[81]. The whole did not amount to more than 3,500 bayonets. The dragoons were very serviceable in the vast plains of Leon, but it was with difficulty, and only by cutting down garrisons to a dangerous extent, that Kellermann could assemble a weak infantry brigade of 2,000 men to back the horsemen.
It was nevertheless on Kellermann’s side, and by the initiative of the French, that the first clash took place in north-western Spain. Hearing vague reports of the movement of the Galician divisions towards Ciudad Rodrigo, Kellermann sent General Carrié, with two regiments of dragoons and 1,200 infantry, to occupy Astorga, being ignorant apparently that it was now garrisoned and more or less fortified. Carrié found the place occupied, made a weak attack upon it on October 9, and was beaten off. He was able to report to his chief that the Spaniards (i. e. Mahy’s division) were in some force in the passes beyond.
At much the same moment that this fact was ascertained Del Parque began to move: he had been lying since September 24 at Fuente Guinaldo in the highland above Ciudad Rodrigo. On October 5 he made an advance as far as Tamames, on the by-road from Rodrigo to Salamanca which skirts the mountains, wisely avoiding the high-road in the more level ground by San Martin del Rio and Castrejon. He had with him his three Galician divisions and his 1,500 horse, but he had not brought forward his raw Leonese division under Castrofuerte, which still lay by Rodrigo. On hearing of the duke’s advance Marchand sent out reconnaissances, and having discovered the position of the Spaniards, resolved at once to attack them. On October 17 he started out from Salamanca, taking with him his whole corps, except the two battalions of the 50th regiment, which were left to garrison the town.
On the afternoon of the next day Marchand came in sight of the enemy, who was drawn up ready to receive him on the heights above Tamames. The French general had with him nineteen battalions, some 12,000 bayonets—his 1,200 horse, and fourteen guns. Del Parque had 20,000 Galician infantry, Anglona’s cavalry, and eighteen guns: his position was so strong, and his superiority in infantry so marked, that he was probably justified in risking a battle on the defensive.
Tamames, an unwalled village of moderate size, lies at the foot of a range of swelling hills. Its strategical importance lies in the fact that it is the meeting-place of the two country roads from Ciudad Rodrigo to Salamanca via Matilla, and from Ciudad Rodrigo to Bejar and the Pass of Baños via Nava Redonda. Placed there, Del Parque’s army threatened Salamanca, and had a choice of lines of retreat, the roads to Rodrigo and to the passes into Estremadura being both open. But retreat was not the duke’s intention. He had drawn up his army on the heights above Tamames, occupying the village below with a battalion or two. On the right, where the hillside was steeper, he had placed Losada and the 2nd Division: on the left, where the ridge sinks down gently into the plain, was Martin de la Carrera with the Vanguard Division. The Conde de Belveder’s division—the third—formed the reserve, and was drawn up on the reverse slope, behind La Carrera. The Prince of Anglona’s cavalry brigade was out on the extreme left, partly hidden by woods, in the low ground beyond the flank of the Vanguard.
Marchand, arriving on the ground in the afternoon after a march of fourteen miles from Matilla, was overjoyed to see the enemy offering battle, and attacked without a moment’s hesitation. His arrangements much resembled those of Victor at Ucles—though his luck was to be very different. It was clear that the Spanish left was the weak point, and that the heights could be turned and ascended on that side with ease. Accordingly Maucune’s brigade (six battalions in all)[82] and the light cavalry, strengthened by one regiment of dragoons, were ordered to march off to the right, to form in a line perpendicular to that of Del Parque, and break down his flank. When this movement was well developed, Marcognet’s brigade (six battalions)[83] was to attack the Spanish centre, to the east of the village of Tamames, while the 25th Léger (two battalions) was to contain the hostile right by a demonstration against the high and difficult ground in that direction. Marchand kept in reserve, behind his centre, the 27th and 59th of the Line (six battalions) and his remaining regiment of dragoons. The vice of this formation was that the striking force—Maucune’s column—was too weak: it would have been wise to have strengthened it at the expense of the centre, and to have made a mere demonstration against the heights above the village of Tamames, as well as on the extreme French left.
Maucune accomplished his flank march undisturbed, deployed in front of La Carrera’s left and advanced against it. The Spanish general threw back his wing to protect himself, and ordered his cavalry to threaten the flank of the advancing force. But he was nearly swept away: when the skirmishing lines were in contact, the French brigadier ordered his cavalry to charge the centre of the Spanish division: striking in diagonally, Lorcet’s Hussars and Chasseurs broke La Carrera’s line, and captured the six guns of his divisional artillery. Almost at the same moment Anglona’s cavalry came in upon Maucune’s flank; but being opposed by two battalions of the 69th in square, they received but one fire and fled hastily to the rear. Maucune then resumed his march up the hill, covering his flank with his horsemen, and pushing La Carrera’s broken line before him. But at the head of the slope he met Belveder’s reserve, which let the broken troops pass through their intervals, and took up the fight steadily enough. The French were now opposed by triple numbers, and the combat came to a standstill: Maucune’s offensive power was exhausted, and he could no longer use his cavalry on the steep ground which he had reached.
Meanwhile, on seeing their right brigade opening the combat with such success, the two other French columns went forward, Marcognet against the Spanish centre, Anselme of the 25th Léger against the extreme right. But the ground was here much steeper: Losada’s Galician division stood its ground very steadily, and Marcognet’s two regiments made an involuntary halt three-quarters of the way up the heights, under the full fire of the two Spanish batteries there placed and the long line of infantry. The officers made several desperate attempts to induce the columns to resume their advance, but to no effect. They fell in great numbers, and at last the regiments recoiled and descended the hill in disorder. Losada’s battalions pursued them to the foot of the slope, and the Spanish light troops in the village sallied out upon their flank, and completed their rout. Marcognet’s brigade poured down into the plain as a disordered mass of fugitives, and were only stayed when Marchand brought up the 27th and 59th to their rescue. Del Parque wisely halted the pursuing force before it came into contact with the French reserves, and took up again his post on the heights.
Meanwhile the 25th Léger, on the extreme French right, had not pressed its attack home, and retreated when the central advance was repulsed. Maucune, too, seeing the rout to his left, withdrew from the heights under cover of his cavalry, carrying off only one of the Spanish guns that he had taken early in the fight, and leaving in return a disabled piece of his own on the hill.
The battle was fairly lost, and Marchand retired, under cover of his cavalry along the Salamanca road. The enemy made no serious attempt to pursue him in the plain, where his horsemen would have been able to act with advantage. The French had lost 1,300 or 1,400 men, including 18 officers killed, and a general (Lorcet) and 54 officers wounded[84]. Marcognet’s brigade supplied the greater part of the casualties; the 76th lost its eagle, seven officers killed and fifteen wounded: the 39th almost as many. The cavalry and Maucune’s brigade suffered little. The very moderate Spanish loss was 713 killed and wounded, mostly in La Carrera’s division.
This was the first general action since Baylen in which the Spaniards gained a complete victory. They had a superiority of about seven to four in numbers, and a good position; nevertheless the troops were so raw, and the past record of the Army of the Left was so disheartening, that the victory reflects considerable credit on the Galicians. The 6th Corps was reckoned the best of all the French units in Spain, being entirely composed of old regiments from the army of Germany. It is not too much to say that Ney’s absence was responsible for the defeat of his men. Marchand attacked at three points, and was weak at each. The Marshal would certainly have massed a whole division against the Spanish left, and would not have been stopped by the stout resistance made by Belveder’s reserve. A demonstration by a few battalions would have ‘contained’ Losada’s troops on the left, where the ground was too unfavourable for a serious attack[85].
On the 19th of October the beaten army reached Salamanca by a forced march. Marchand feared that the enemy would now manœuvre either by Ledesma, so as to cut him off from Kellermann and the troops in the north, or by Alba de Tormes, so as to intercept his communication with Madrid. In either case he would have to retreat, for there was no good defensive ground on the Tormes to resist an army coming from the west. As a matter of fact Del Parque moved by Ledesma, for two reasons: the first was that he wished to avoid the plains, fearing that Kellermann might have joined the 6th Corps with his cavalry division. The second was that, by moving in this direction, he hoped to make his junction with Ballasteros, who had started from the Asturias to join him, and had been reported to have moved from Astorga to Miranda del Duero, and to be feeling his way south-eastward. The juncture took place: the Asturian division, after an unsuccessful attempt to cut off the garrison of Zamora on the seventeenth, had marched to Ledesma, and met the main army there. Del Parque had now 28,000 men, and though still very weak in cavalry, thought himself strong enough to march on Salamanca. He reached it on October 25 and found it evacuated. Marchand, learning that Kellermann was too far off to help him, and knowing that no reinforcements from Madrid could reach him for many days, had evacuated the town on the previous evening. He retired towards Toro, thus throwing up his communications with Madrid in order to make sure of joining Kellermann. This seems doubtful policy, for that general could only aid him with 4,000 or 5,000 men, and their joint force would be under 20,000 strong. On the other hand, by retiring on Peñaranda or Medina de Campo, and so approaching the King’s army, he could have counted on picking up much larger reinforcements, and on resuming the struggle with a good prospect of success.
As a matter of fact Jourdan, on hearing of the disaster of Tamames, had dispatched, to aid the 6th Corps, Godinot’s brigade of Dessolles’ division, some 3,500 bayonets, from Madrid, and Heudelet’s division of the 2nd Corps, about 4,000 strong, from Oropesa, as well as a couple of regiments of cavalry. He made these detachments without scruple, because there was as yet no sign of any activity on the part of the Spanish armies of La Mancha and Estremadura. A week later he would have found it much more hazardous to weaken his front in the valley of the Tagus. These were the last orders issued by Jourdan, who resigned his post on October 31, while Soult on November 5 arrived at Madrid and replaced him as chief of the staff to King Joseph.
Del Parque, not unnaturally elated by his victory, now nourished ambitious ideas of clearing the whole of Leon and Old Castile of the enemy, being aware that the armies of La Mancha and Estremadura ought now to be on the move, and that full occupation would be found ere long for the French corps in the valley of the Tagus. He ordered up his 5th Division, the raw Leonese battalions of Castrofuerte, from Ciudad Rodrigo, and made vehement appeals to the Portuguese Government to lend him the whole of Beresford’s army for a great advance up the Douro. The Regency, though much pressed by the Spanish ambassador at Lisbon, gave a blank refusal, following Wellington’s advice to have nothing to do with offensive operations in Spanish company[86]. But part of Beresford’s troops were ordered up to the frontier, not so much to lend a moral support to Del Parque’s advance[87] as to be ready to defend their own borders in the event of his defeat. Showing more prudence than Wellington had expected, Del Parque did not push forward from Salamanca, when he became certain that he would have to depend on his own forces alone. Even after the arrival of his reserves from Rodrigo he remained quiet, only pushing out reconnaissances to discover which way the enemy had gone. He had, in fact, carried out his part in the Central Junta’s plan of campaign, by calling the attention of the French to the north, and distracting troops thither from the King’s army. It was now the time for Albuquerque and Areizaga to take up the game, and relieve him. Marchand meanwhile had retired across the Douro, and taken up an extended line behind it from Zamora to Tordesillas—a front of over forty miles—which it would have been impossible to hold with his 13,000 men against a heavy attack delivered at one point. But he was hardly in position when Kellermann arrived, took over the command, and changed the whole plan of campaign (November 1). He had left two battalions to guard Benavente, two to hold Valladolid, and had only brought up his 3,000 dragoons and 1,500 infantry. Seeing that it was absolutely necessary to recover the line of communication with Madrid, he ordered the 6th Corps to leave Zamora and Toro, mass at Tordesillas, and then cross the Douro to Medina del Campo, the junction point of the roads from Madrid, Segovia, Valladolid, and Toro. To this same place he brought up his own small force, and having received Godinot’s brigade from Madrid, had thirty-four battalions and eighteen squadrons concentrated—about 23,000 men. Though not yet joined by the other troops from the south—Heudelet’s division—he now marched straight upon Salamanca in two columns, one by Cantalapiedra, the other by Fuente Sauco, intending to offer battle to Del Parque.
But the duke, much to the surprise of every one, utterly refused to fight, holding the plain too dangerous for an army so weak in cavalry as his own, and over-estimating the enemy’s force at 36,000 men[88]. He retired from Salamanca, after having held it less than a fortnight, on November 5, and took not the road to Ciudad Rodrigo but that to Bejar and the Pass of Baños, as if he were about to pass the mountains into Estremadura[89]. This was an excellent move: the French could not pursue him in force without evacuating Old Castile and Leon, which it would have been impossible for them to contemplate. For when Kellermann had concentrated his troops to strike at Salamanca, there was nothing left behind him in the vast upland save a battalion or two at Benavente, Valladolid, and Burgos. Mahy, from Galicia, and the Asturians might have overrun the whole region unopposed. As it was, the whole of the provinces behind the Douro showed signs of bursting out into insurrection. Julian Sanchez, the Empecinado, and other guerrillero chiefs, whose names were soon to be famous, raised large bands during the absence of the normal garrisons, and swept the country-side, capturing convoys and cutting the lines of communication between Vittoria, Burgos, and Valladolid. Porlier came down with a flying column from the Asturias, assaulted Palencia, and threatened Burgos. The French governors on every side kept reporting their perilous position, when they could get a message through to Madrid[90].
Realizing that he must cover his rear, or the whole of Old Castile would be lost to the insurgents, Kellermann, after occupying Salamanca on November 6, left the 6th Corps and Godinot’s brigade distributed between Ledesma, Salamanca, and Alba de Tormes, watching Del Parque, and returned in haste with his own troops to the Douro. He commenced to send out flying columns from Valladolid to deal with the guerrilleros, but did not work too far afield, lest he might be called back by a new forward movement on the part of the Army of the Left. But in a few days he had to recast all his arrangements, for—as Del Parque had calculated—the campaign in La Mancha had just opened, and the position of the French in Leon and Old Castile was profoundly affected by the new developments.
In the south, as we have already explained, the Junta designed Albuquerque’s army of Estremadura to be a mere demonstrating force, while Areizaga’s 55,000 men were to strike the real blow. The Estremaduran troops, as was proper, moved early to draw the attention of the enemy. Albuquerque’s first division under Bassecourt—6,000 infantry and 600 horse—was on the Tagus from Almaraz to Meza de Ibor: his second division under St. Juan and the rest of his cavalry—some 4,000 in all—were moving up from Truxillo. Bassecourt began by sending a small force of all arms across the river at Almaraz, to drive in Soult’s outposts and spread reports abroad in all directions that he was acting as the vanguard to Wellington’s army, which was marching up from Badajoz. Unfortunately the full effect that he desired was not produced, because deserters informed Soult that the British Army was still quiescent on the Guadiana[91]. The French made no movement, and left the 2nd Corps alone to watch Albuquerque.
Meanwhile Areizaga, within a few days of assuming the command of the army of La Mancha, commenced his forward movement. On November 3, having concentrated his eight divisions of infantry and his 5,700 horse at Santa Cruz de Mudela, at the foot of the passes, he gave the order to advance into the plains. The head quarters followed the high-road, with the train and three divisions: the rest, to avoid encumbering the chaussée, marched by parallel side-roads, but were never more than ten miles from their Commander-in-Chief: at any rate Areizaga avoided the sin of dispersion. His army was the best which had been seen under the Spanish banners since Tudela. The men had all been furnished with new clothes and equipment since August, mainly from English stores landed at Cadiz. There were sixty guns, and such a body of cavalry as had never yet been collected during the war. The value of the troops was very unequal; if there were many old battalions of the regular army, there were also many new units composed of half-trained Andalusian levies. The cavalry included the old runaways of Medellin, and many other regiments of doubtful value. The morale was on the whole not satisfactory. ‘I wish I had anything agreeable to communicate to you from this army’ wrote Colonel Roche, a British officer attached to Areizaga’s staff, to Wellington. ‘The corps which belonged to the original army of La Mancha are certainly in every respect superior to those from Estremadura, and from everything that I can learn none of those abuses which were to be lamented in the army of Estremadura existed here—or, at least, in a much less degree. But nothing can exceed the general discontent, dissatisfaction, and demoralization of the mass of the people and of the army. How can anybody who has the faculty of reason separate the inefficiency, intrigue, bad organization, and consequent disasters of the army from the source of all those evils in the Junta? There is not a man of the least reflection who, as things now stand, has a hope of success; and this is the more melancholy, because the mass of the people are just as inveterate in their resentment and abhorrence of the French as at the first hour of the revolution[92].’ The fact seems to have been that the superior officers doubted the wisdom of taking the offensive according to the Junta’s orders, and had no confidence in Areizaga, who was only known as a fighting general, and had no reputation for skill. The rank and file, as Arteche remarks, were disposed to do their duty, but had no confidence in their luck[93]. Their government and not their generals must take the major part of the blame for the disaster that followed.
Areizaga was well aware that his best chance was to strike with extreme boldness and vigour, and to dash into the midst of the French before they could concentrate. Hence his march was at first conducted with great rapidity and decision; between the 3rd and the 8th of November he made nearly fifteen miles a day, though the roads were somewhat broken up by the autumn rains. On the eighth he reached La Guardia, eighty miles from his starting-point, and his advanced cavalry under General Freire had its first skirmish with a brigade of Milhaud’s dragoons at Costa de Madera, near Dos Barrios. The Spanish horse deployed in such numbers that the French were compelled to move off in haste and with some loss, though they had beaten off with ease the first two or three regiments which had gone forward against them.
The Spanish advance had been so rapid and so unexpected that Soult and King Joseph had been taken completely by surprise. On November 6 the Marshal had reported to Paris that ‘the troops on the Tagus and in La Mancha are up to the present unmolested, and as, from all I can learn, there is no prospect of the enemy making any offensive movement on that side, I intend to form from them a strong flying column to hunt the brigands in the direction of Burgos[94].’ Only four days later he had to announce that an army of at least 40,000 men was close in front of Aranjuez, and not more than thirty-five miles from Madrid, and that he was hurrying together troops from all quarters to make head against them. At the moment indeed, there was nothing directly between Areizaga’s vanguard at La Guardia and the Spanish capital, save the Polish division of the 4th Corps stationed at Aranjuez, and Milhaud’s five regiments of dragoons at Ocaña. If the Spaniard had pushed on for three days more at his starting pace, he might have crossed the Tagus, and have forced King Joseph to fight, close in front of Madrid, with an imperfectly assembled army. On the ninth and tenth Leval’s Germans were in march from Toledo to Aranjuez to join Sebastiani’s Poles: Mortier’s first division was hurrying from Talavera to Toledo, and his second division was making ready to follow. The 2nd Corps, despite Albuquerque’s demonstration in front of Almaraz, was preparing to quit Oropesa, in order to replace Mortier’s men at Talavera. Victor, in the meanwhile, with the First Corps, was lying in front of Toledo at Ajofrin, with his cavalry at Mora and Yebenes: he reported that no hostile force had come his way, but that he had ascertained that a large army had marched past his front along the great chaussée from Madridejos to Aranjuez. He was in a position to attack it in rear and flank, if there was a sufficient force gathered in its front to justify him in closing[95].
But on reaching La Guardia, Areizaga seemed suddenly to realize the dangers of his movement. No doubt it was the news that Victor was almost in his rear that paralysed him, but he halted on the ninth, when a bold advance would certainly have enabled him to seize Aranjuez, by evicting the small force under Milhaud and Sebastiani. For three fatal days, the 9th, 10th, and 11th of November, the Spanish main body remained halted in a mass at La Guardia, as if for the special purpose of allowing the enemy to concentrate. On the eleventh Areizaga at last began to move again: he sent forward the whole of his cavalry, supported by Zayas and his Vanguard division, to press back the force in his front. They found Milhaud’s five regiments of dragoons ranged in line of battle before the small town of Ocaña, and supported by Sebastiani’s Polish infantry. Freire advanced, using his triple superiority of numbers to turn both flanks of the French cavalry; Milhaud, after some partial charges, retired behind the Poles, who formed a line of six battalion squares. The Spanish horse made a half-hearted attempt to attack them, but were repelled by their rolling fire before they came to close quarters, and drew back. It was now four o’clock in the afternoon, and the Spanish infantry was only just beginning to come up. Zayas and Freire agreed that it was too late to begin a second attack, and put off fighting till the next morning. But during the night the French evacuated Ocaña and retired to Aranjuez, wisely judging that it would be insane to wait for the arrival of the Spanish main body. They had lost about fifty men, Freire’s cavalry just over two hundred.
Next day [November 12], Areizaga brought up the whole of his army to Ocaña, and his cavalry reconnoitred up to the gates of Aranjuez and the bridge of Puente La Reyna. Sebastiani made ready to defend them, and having been joined by the German division from Toledo, wrote to Soult to say that he would resist to the last extremity, in order to gain time for the arrival of Victor’s corps and the other troops which were marching up from the west and north[96]. The attack which he expected was never delivered. Areizaga, nervous about the presence of the 1st Corps on his flank, had resolved to shift his army eastward to get further away from it. Abandoning his line of communication by La Guardia and Madridejos, he marched his whole force by cross-roads parallel to the Tagus up to La Zarza, and seized the fords of Villamanrique, twenty-five miles above Aranjuez, on the Madrid-Albacete road. If Victor, as he supposed, had been manœuvring on his flank, this movement would have cut him off from his base in Andalusia, and have left him only the mountains of Murcia as a line of retreat. But, as a matter of fact, the 1st Corps was no longer at Ajofrin or Mora, but had been called behind the Tagus, so that his retreat was safer than he supposed.
Soult and King Joseph, meanwhile, had been completing their concentration. They had written to Kellermann, ordering him to send back to Madrid without delay the brigade of Dessolles’ division under Godinot which had been lent him, and to spare them as well one infantry brigade of the 6th Corps. These troops were too far off to be available at once; but of the remainder of their units the Royal Guard and Spanish battalions of King Joseph, with Dessolles’ remaining brigade, were moved out to support Sebastiani. Victor had been brought back across the Tagus, and was also marching on Aranjuez. Mortier’s corps was concentrated at Toledo, while the 2nd Corps was in motion from Oropesa to Talavera, having discovered no signs of a serious advance on the part of Albuquerque. The care of Madrid was handed over to the incomplete French division of the 4th Corps[97], some of whose battalions were dispersed at Guadalajara, Alcala, Segovia, and other garrisons. Paris’s light cavalry of the same corps was also at this moment watching the roads to the east of Madrid.
On the twelfth Areizaga threw Lacy’s division across the Tagus, and laid down two pontoon bridges near Villamanrique, so as to be able to bring over his whole army in the shortest possible time. But the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth were days of storm, the river rose high, and the artillery and train stuck fast on the vile cross-roads from Ocaña over which they were being brought. In consequence less than half the Spanish army was north of the Tagus on November 15, though the advance cavalry pushed on to the line of the Tajuna, and skirmished with Paris’s chasseurs about Arganda. It seemed nevertheless that Areizaga was committed to an advance upon Madrid by the high-road from Albacete, wherefore Soult blew up the bridges of Aranjuez and Puente la Reyna, and ordered Victor to march from Aranjuez on Arganda with the 1st Corps, nearly 20,000 men, purposing to join him with the King’s reserves and to offer battle on the Tajuna, while Mortier and Sebastiani’s Poles and Germans should fall upon the enemy’s flank. But this plan was foiled by a new move upon Areizaga’s part; he now commenced a retreat as objectless as his late advance. Just as Victor’s cavalry came in touch with his front, he withdrew his whole army across the Tagus, destroyed his bridges, and retired to La Zarza on the seventeenth, evidently with the intention of recovering his old line of communication with Andalusia, via Ocaña and Madridejos.
The moment that this new departure became evident, Soult reversed the marching orders of all his columns save Victor’s, and bade them return hastily to Aranjuez, where the bridge was repaired in haste, and to cross the Tagus there, with the intention of intercepting Areizaga’s line of retreat and forcing a battle on him near Ocaña. Victor, however, had got so far to the east that it would have wasted time to bring him back to Aranjuez, wherefore he was directed to cross the river at Villamanrique and follow hard in Areizaga’s rear.
On the morning of the eighteenth Milhaud’s and Paris’s cavalry, riding at the head of the French army, crossed the Tagus at Aranjuez, and pressing forward met, between Ontigola and Ocaña, Freire’s horsemen moving at the head of Areizaga’s column, which on this day was strung out between La Zarza and Noblejas, marching hastily westward towards the high-road. The collision of Milhaud and Freire brought about the largest cavalry fight which took place during the whole Peninsular War. For Milhaud and Paris had eight regiments, nearly 3,000 men, while three of Freire’s four divisions were present, to the number of over 4,000 sabres. On neither side was any infantry in hand.
Sebastiani, who had come up with the light cavalry of his corps, was eager for a fight, and engaged at once. Charging the Spanish front line with Paris’s light horse, he broke it with ease: but Freire came on with his reserves, forming the greater part of them into a solid column—an odd formation for cavalry. Into this mass Milhaud charged with four regiments of dragoons. The heaviness of their formation did not suffice to enable the Spaniards to stand. They broke when attacked, and went to the rear in disorder, leaving behind them eighty prisoners and some hundreds of killed and wounded. The French lost only a few scores, but among them was Paris, the not unworthy successor of the adventurous Lasalle in command of the light cavalry division attached to the 4th Corps.
Moving forward in pursuit of the routed squadrons, Sebastiani approached Ocaña, but halted on discovering that there was already Spanish infantry in the town. The head of Areizaga’s long column had reached it, while the cavalry combat was in progress: the rest was visible slowly moving up by cross-roads from the east. Soult was at once apprised that the enemy’s army was close in his front—so close that it could not get away without fighting, for its train and rearguard were still far behind, and would be cut off if the main body moved on without making a stand.
Areizaga, though he had shown such timidity when faced by Sebastiani’s 9,000 men at Aranjuez, and by Victor’s 20,000 on the Tajuna, now offered battle to the much more formidable force which Soult was bringing up. He was indeed compelled to fight, partly because his men were too weary to move forward that night, partly because he wished to give time for his train to arrive and get on to the chaussée.
On the morning of the nineteenth his army was discovered drawn up in two lines on each side of the town of Ocaña. There were still some 46,000 infantry and 5,500 cavalry under arms despite of the losses of the late week[98]. The oncoming French army was smaller; though it mustered 5,000 horse it had only 27,000 foot—the Germans and Poles of Sebastiani, Mortier with nearly the whole of the 5th Corps, a brigade of Dessolles’ division, the King’s guards, and the cavalry of Milhaud, Paris, and Beauregard[99]. Victor was too far off to be available; having found the flooded Tagus hard to cross, he was on this day barely in touch with the extreme rearguard of Areizaga’s army which was escorting the train. Being nearly twenty miles from Ocaña, he could not hope to arrive in time for the general action, if it was to be delivered next morn. If Areizaga stood firm for another day, Victor would be pressing him from the flank and rear while the main army was in his front: but it was highly probable that Areizaga would not stand, but would retreat at night; all his previous conduct argued a great disinclination to risk a battle. Wherefore Soult and the King, after a short discussion[100], agreed to attack at once, despite their great numerical inferiority. In the open plain of La Mancha a difference of 16,000 or 17,000 infantry was not enough to outweigh the superior quality and training of the French army.
There is, so to speak, no position whatever at Ocaña: the little unwalled town lies in a level upland, where the only natural feature is a ravine which passes in front of the place; it is sufficiently deep and broad at its western end to constitute a military obstacle, but east of the town gradually grows slighter and becomes a mere dip in the ground. Areizaga had chosen this ravine to indicate the line of his left and centre; but on his right, where it had become so shallow as to afford no cover, he extended his troops across and beyond it. The town was barricaded and occupied, to form a central support to the line. There were olive-groves in the rear of Ocaña which might have served to hide a reserve, or to mark a position for a rally in case a retreat should become necessary. But Areizaga had made no preparation of this sort. His trains, with a small escort, had not arrived even on the morning of the nineteenth, but were still belated on the cross-roads from Noblejas and La Zarza.
The order of the Spanish army in line of battle is difficult to reconstruct, for Areizaga uses very vague language in the dispatch in which he explained his defeat, and the other documents available, though they give detailed accounts of some of the corps, say little or nothing of others. It seems, however, that Zayas, with the vanguard division, formed the extreme left, behind the deepest part of the ravine, with a cavalry brigade under Rivas on its flank and rear. He had the town of Ocaña on his right. Then followed in the line, going from left to right, the divisions of Vigodet, Giron, Castejon, and Lacy. Those of Copons, Jacomé, and Zerain appear to have formed a second line in support of the other four[101]. Vigodet’s left was in the town of Ocaña and strongly posted, but the other flank, where Lacy lay, was absolutely in the air, with no natural feature to cover it. For this reason Areizaga placed beyond it Freire, with the whole of the cavalry except the brigade on the extreme left under Rivas. Unfortunately the Spanish horse, much shaken by the combat of the preceding day, was a weak protection for the flank, despite its formidable numbers. The sixty guns of the artillery were drawn out in the intervals of the infantry divisions of the first and second line.
Soult’s plan of attack was soon formed. The ravine made the Spanish left—beyond Ocaña—inaccessible, but also prevented it from taking any offensive action. The Marshal therefore resolved to ignore it completely, and to concentrate all his efforts against the hostile centre and right, in the open ground. The scheme adopted was a simple one: Sebastiani’s Polish and German divisions were to attack the Spanish right wing, and when they were at close quarters with the enemy the main mass of the French cavalry was to fall upon Freire’s horse, drive it out of the field, and attack on the flank the divisions already engaged with the infantry. For this purpose Milhaud’s, Paris’s, and Beauregard’s regiments, more than 3,500 sabres, were massed behind the Poles and Germans. For a time their march would be masked by olive-groves and undulations of the ground, so that they might come in quite suddenly upon the enemy. Mortier with his first division—that of Girard—and a regiment of Gazan’s, followed in the rear of the Polish and German infantry, to support their frontal attack. Dessolles, with his own brigade and Gazan’s remaining one, took post opposite Ocaña, ready to fall upon the Spanish centre, when the attack to his left should have begun to make way. He had in his front the massed artillery of the 4th and 5th Corps, thirty guns under Senarmont, which took ground on a low knoll above the great ravine, from which they could both play upon the town of Ocaña and also enfilade part of the Spanish line to its immediate right—Vigodet’s division and half of Giron’s. Finally the King, with his guards and other troops, horse and foot, were placed to the right rear of Dessolles, to act as a general reserve, or to move against Zayas if he should attempt to cross the ravine and turn the French right.
The plan, despite of some checks at the commencement, worked in a satisfactory fashion. The German and Polish divisions of Leval and Werlé attacked Lacy’s and Castejon’s divisions, which gave back some little way, in order to align themselves with Vigodet who was sheltered by the slight eastern end of the ravine. The enemy followed and brought up six guns to the point to play upon the new position which the Spaniards had taken up. The forward movement was continuing, when suddenly to the surprise of the French, Lacy’s, Castejon’s, and Giron’s men, leaving their places in the line, made a furious counter-charge upon the Poles and Germans, drove them back for some distance, and threw them into disorder. This movement was no result of Areizaga’s generalship: he had betaken himself to the summit of the church-tower of Ocaña, an inconvenient place from which to issue orders, and practically left his subordinates to fight their own battle. Mortier was forced to bring forward Girard’s division to support his broken first line. It was hotly engaged with Lacy and Giron, when suddenly it felt the Spaniards slacken in their fire, waver, and break. This was the result of the intervention of a new force in the field. The great mass of French squadrons, which had been sent under Sebastiani to turn the Spanish right, had now come into action. Arriving close to Freire’s cavalry before it was discovered, it fell on that untrustworthy corps, and scattered it to the winds in a few minutes. Then, while three or four regiments followed the routed horsemen, the rest turned inwards upon the hostile infantry. The flanks of the first and second lines of Areizaga’s right were charged simultaneously, and hardly a regiment had time to get into square. Brigade after brigade was rolled up and dispersed or captured; the mass of fugitives, running in upon the troops that were frontally engaged with Girard, wrecked them completely. Of the five divisions of the Spanish left, a certain number of steady regiments got away, by closing their ranks and pushing ahead through the confusion, firing on friend and foe alike when they were hustled. But many corps were annihilated, and others captured wholesale. The last seems to have been the fate of nearly the whole of Jacomé’s division of the second line, as hardly a single unit from it is reported as rallied a month later, and the French accounts speak of a whole column of 6,000 men which laid down its arms in a mass before the light cavalry of the 4th Corps. Just as the Spanish right broke up, Dessolles with his two brigades, followed by the King’s reserve, crossed the ravine and attacked the town of Ocaña, and the two divisions—Vigodet and Copons—which lay in first and second line immediately to the east of it. These retired, and got away in better order than their comrades to the right. Of all the Spanish army only Zayas’s vanguard division, on the extreme left, now remained intact. Areizaga had sent it an order to cross the ravine and attack the French right, when he saw his army beginning to break up. Then, a few minutes later, he sent another order bidding it close to the right and cover the retreat. After this the Commander-in-Chief descended from his tower, mounted his horse, and fled. Zayas carried out the second order, moved to the right, and found himself encompassed by masses of fugitives from Giron’s, Castejon’s, and Lacy’s broken divisions, mixed with French cavalry. He sustained, with great credit to himself and his troops, a rearguard action for some miles, till near the village of Dos Barrios, where his line was broken and his men at last mixed with the rest of the fugitives[102].
The whole routed multitude now streamed wildly over the plain, with the French cavalry in hot pursuit. Thousands of prisoners were taken, and the chase only ended with nightfall. The fugitives headed straight for the Sierra Morena, and reached it with a rapidity even greater than that which they had used in their outward march a fortnight before. Victor’s cavalry arrived in time to take up the pursuit next morning: they had on their way to the field captured the whole of the trains of the Spanish army, on the road from Noblejas to Ocaña. The losses of Areizaga’s army were appalling; about 4,000 killed and wounded and 14,000 prisoners. Thirty flags and fifty out of the sixty guns had been captured. When the wrecks of the army had been rallied in the passes, three weeks after the battle, only some 21,000 infantry[103] and 3,000 horse were reported as present. The divisions of Lacy, Jacomé, and Zerain had practically disappeared, and the others had lost from a third to a half of their numbers. The condition of the cavalry was peculiarly disgraceful; as it had never stood to fight, its losses represent not prisoners, for the most part, but mere runaways who never returned to their standards. The French had lost about 90 officers and 1,900 men, nearly all in the divisions of Leval, Werlé, and Girard[104]. The cavalry, which had delivered the great stroke and won the battle, suffered very little. Mortier had been slightly wounded, Leval and Girard severely.
Even allowing for the fact that Areizaga had been the victim of the Junta’s insensate resolve to make an offensive movement on Madrid, it is impossible to speak with patience of his generalship. For a combination of rashness and vacillation it excels that of any other Spanish general during the whole war. His only chance was to catch the enemy before they could concentrate: he succeeded in doing this by his rapid march from the passes to La Guardia. Then he waited three days in deplorable indecision, though there were only 10,000 men between him and Madrid. Next he resumed his advance, but by the circuitous route of Villamanrique, by taking which he lost three days more. Then he halted again, the moment that he found Victor with 20,000 men in his front, though he might still have fought at great advantage. Lastly he retreated, yet so slowly and unskilfully that he was finally brought to action at Ocaña by the 34,000 men of Mortier and Sebastiani. He was sent out to win a battle, since Madrid could not be delivered without one, and knew that he must fight sooner or later, but threw away his favourable opportunities, and then accepted an action when all the chances were against him. For he must have known by this time the miserable quality of his cavalry, yet gave battle in a vast plain, where everything depended on the mounted arm. In the actual moment of conflict he seems to have remained in a hypnotized condition on his church-tower, issuing hardly an order, and allowing the fight to go as it pleased. Yet he was, by all accounts, possessed of personal courage, as he had proved at Alcañiz and elsewhere. Apparently responsibility reduced him to a condition of vacillating idiocy. Perhaps the most surprising fact of the whole business is that the Junta retained him in command after his fiasco, thanked him for his services, and sent him an honorary present—as it had done to Cuesta after Medellin with somewhat better excuse. He was its own man, and it did not throw him over, even when he had proved his perfect incompetence.
To complete the narrative of the deplorable autumn campaign of 1809, it only remains to tell of the doings of Albuquerque and Del Parque. The former played his part with reasonable success; he was ordered to distract the attention of the enemy from the army of La Mancha, and did what he could. Having got some 10,000 men concentrated at Almaraz, he sent one column over the Tagus to demonstrate against the 2nd Corps from beyond the river, and with another threatened the bridge of Talavera from the near side. But Heudelet, now in command of the 2nd Corps, soon found that there was no reality in his demonstration, and that he was not supported by the English, though he had given out that Wellington was close in his rear. After skirmishing around Talavera from the 17th to the 22nd of November, the Duke hastily recrossed the river on hearing the news of Ocaña, and resumed his old positions.
Del Parque’s campaign was more vigorous and more unfortunate. While he lay in the passes above Bejar and Baños, he got early news of the withdrawal of Godinot’s and Marcognet’s troops toward Madrid, when Soult summoned them off to reinforce the main army. He reasoned that since he had now only the 6th Corps, shorn of one of its brigades, in his front, he might repeat the success of Tamames, for Marchand was weaker than he had been in October, while he himself was far stronger. Accordingly he disregarded an order from the Junta to extend his operations southward, and to join Albuquerque in the valley of the Tagus. Instead, he marched once more upon Salamanca on November 18, the day before the disaster of Ocaña. He drove in an outlying brigade of Marchand’s force from Alba de Tormes, and pressed it vigorously back towards the main body. Conscious that with his 10,000 men he could not hope to face 30,000, Marchand promptly evacuated Salamanca on December 19, and retired, just as he had done in October, behind the Douro, concentrating his whole corps at Toro. He sent urgent demands for help both to Kellermann at Valladolid, and to Soult at Madrid. By the time that they arrived Areizaga had been dealt with, and the army in New Castile could spare as many reinforcements as were required. Marcognet’s brigade, the one which had been borrowed from the 6th Corps, was first sent back from Segovia, the point which it had reached in its southward march, and Gazan’s division of the 5th Corps was ordered by Soult to follow.
Meanwhile Del Parque, still ignorant of the disaster in the south, had occupied Salamanca on November 20, and on the following day moved out towards Cantalapiedra and Medina del Campo, with the object of throwing himself between Marchand and Kellermann and the capital. This was an excellent move, and, but for what had happened at Ocaña, might have had considerable results, since the Army of the Left ought to have made an end of the small French force in Old Castile.
Kellermann, however, had seen the danger of Marchand’s retreat to Toro, and had directed him to close in towards the east, and to occupy Medina del Campo, as the strategical point that must be held in order to maintain touch with Madrid. Thus it chanced that on November 23 Labassée’s brigade and four regiments of cavalry, coming from Tordesillas, reached Medina del Campo just as Marcognet’s brigade, returning from Segovia, came into the town from the other side. They had hardly met when the approach of Del Parque’s army along the Salamanca road was reported. The two French brigadiers thought for a moment of fighting, and the cavalry was ordered to press back the Spanish advanced guard. They drove off with ease Anglona’s horsemen, who rode at the head of the long column, but were repulsed by Ballasteros’s infantry, which formed square in good style, and drove them off with a rolling fire of musketry. Seeing that the whole Spanish army was coming up, Marcognet and Labassée then evacuated Medina del Campo, and retired to Valdestillas. With one push more the Spaniards could have cut the line between Valladolid and Madrid.
On November 24 the whole 6th Corps and Kellermann’s dragoons, with a battalion or two from the garrisons of Old Castile, were concentrated at Puente de Duero, with their van at Valdestillas. If attacked, they must have gone behind the Douro and abandoned all touch with Madrid; for there were not more than 16,000 men in line, and they were forced to take the defensive. But, to their surprise, Del Parque made no advance. He had heard on that morning of the disaster of Ocaña, and guessed that reinforcements for Kellermann must already be on the march. Wherefore he resolved to regain the mountains without delay, and to give up Salamanca and his other conquests. With this prudent resolve he broke up from Medina del Campo, and marched hastily away in retreat, making, not for Salamanca, which was too much in the plains to please him, but for Alba de Tormes. He had gained a day’s start by his prompt action, but on the twenty-sixth Kellermann set off in pursuit, leaving orders for the troops that were expected from Madrid to follow him.
On the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh the French cavalry failed even to get in touch with Del Parque’s rearguard, and found nothing but a few stragglers on the road. But on the afternoon of the twenty-eighth the leading squadrons reported that they had come upon the whole Spanish army encamped in a mass around the town of Alba de Tormes. The duke had flattered himself that he had shaken off his pursuers, and was surprised in a most unfortunate position. Two of his divisions (Ballasteros and Castrofuerte) were beyond the Tormes, preparing to bivouac on the upland above it. The other three were quartered in and about the town, while the cavalry was watching the road, but had fallen in so close to the main body that its vedettes gave very short notice of the approach of the enemy. Kellermann was riding with the leading brigade of his cavalry—Lorcet’s chasseurs and hussars; the six regiments of dragoons were close behind him, so that he had over 3,000 sabres in hand; but the infantry was ten miles to the rear. If he waited for it, Del Parque would have time to cross the river and take up a defensive position behind it. The French general, therefore, resolved to risk a most hazardous experiment, an attack with unsupported cavalry upon a force of all arms, in the hope of detaining it till the infantry should come up. The Spaniards were getting into line of battle in a hurry, Losada’s division on the right, Belveder’s and La Carrera’s on the left, the cavalry—1,200 sabres at most—in their front. The divisions beyond the river were only beginning to assemble, and would take some time to recross the narrow bridge: but 18,000 men were on the right bank prepared to fight.
Without a moment’s delay Kellermann ordered Lorcet’s brigade to charge the Spanish right and centre: it was followed by the six regiments of dragoons in three successive lines, and the whole mass came down like a whirlwind upon Del Parque’s front, scattering his cavalry to the winds, and breaking the whole of Losada’s and the right of Belveder’s divisions. A battery of artillery, and nearly 2,000 prisoners were taken. The wrecks of the broken divisions fell back into Alba de Tormes, and jammed the bridge, thus preventing the divisions on the further side from recrossing it. Kellermann then rallied his squadrons, and led them against La Carrera’s division and the remaining battalions of that of Belveder. These troops, formed in brigade-squares upon a rising ground, held out gallantly and repulsed the charge. But they were cut off from the bridge, which they could only reach by a dangerous flank movement over rough ground. By continually threatening to repeat his attacks, Kellermann kept them from moving off, till, two hours and a half after the action had begun, the French infantry and guns commenced to come up. La Carrera saw that it would be fatal to await them, and bade his division retreat and reach the bridge as best it could. This was naturally done in disorder, and with some loss; but it was already growing dusk, and the bulk of the Spanish left got away.
While the Spaniards were defiling over the bridge, Marchand’s leading brigade attacked Alba, out of which it drove some rallied troops of Losada’s division, who held the town to cover La Carrera’s retreat. This was done with ease, for Del Parque had not brought over his two intact divisions, preferring to use them as a second line behind which the others could retire. Alba was stormed, and two guns, which had been placed behind a barricade at its main exit, were taken by the French.
Here the fighting stopped: the Spaniards had lost five flags, nine guns, most of their baggage, and about 3,000 killed or taken—no very ruinous deductions from an army of 32,000 men. The French casualties were less than 300 in all[105]. Del Parque was determined not to fight again next morning, and bade his army make off under cover of the night. The disorder that followed was frightful: the three divisions that had been in the battle dispersed, and went off in all directions, some towards Ciudad Rodrigo, others towards Tamames, others by the hill-road that leads towards Tala and the Pass of Baños. Many of the raw Leonese troops, though they had not been engaged, also left their colours in the dark[106]. It was a full month before Del Parque could collect his whole army, which, when it had been reorganized, was found to number 26,000 men, despite all its misfortunes. It would seem, therefore, that beside the losses in the battle some 3,000 men must have gone off to their homes. The duke fixed his head quarters at San Martin de Trebejos in the Sierra de Gata, and dispersed his infantry in cantonments about Bejar, Fuenteguinaldo, and Miranda de Castanar. Having only the ruined region around Coria and Plasencia, and the small district about Ciudad Rodrigo, to feed them, these troops suffered dreadful privations during the winter, living on half-rations eked out with edible acorns. By the middle of January they had lost 9,000 men from fever, dysentery, and starvation.
Despite all this, it is fair to say that Del Parque’s campaign contrasts most favourably with that of Areizaga. He showed a laudable prudence when he twice evacuated Salamanca rather than fight a battle in the plain. His victory of Tamames was most creditable, showing that when prudently conducted, and ranged in a well-chosen hill-position, his army could give a good account of itself. But for the disaster of Alba de Tormes his record might be considered excellent. There, it is true, he committed a grave mistake, by separating his army into two halves by the river when his enemy was in pursuit. But in his defence it may be urged that his cavalry ought to have had vedettes out for ten or fifteen miles to the rear, and to have given him long warning of the approach of the French. And when the enemy’s horse did make its sudden appearance, it was contrary to the laws of probability that it would attack at once, without waiting for its infantry and guns. Kellermann’s headlong charge was a violation of all rules, a stroke of inspiration which could not have been foreseen. If the Spanish cavalry had been of any use whatever, and if Losada’s division had only known how to form square in a hurry, it ought to have been beaten off. But the resisting-power of a Spanish army was always a doubtful quantity. Kellermann resolved to take the risk of attacking, and was rewarded by a victory on which he was not entitled to reckon. He would probably have justified his tactics by urging that failure could have no severe penalty, for the Spaniards could not pursue him if he were repulsed, while success would bring splendid results. This was true: and if his infantry had been five miles more to the front, he might have captured the whole of La Carrera’s division.