CHAP. IV.
When Lerida fell, Conde was accused of treachery, but there seems no foundation for the charge; the cause stated by Suchet is sufficient for the effect; yet the defence was very unskilful. The walls, on the side of the attack, could not be expected, and scarcely did, offer an impediment to the French general; hence the citadel should have been the better prepared, and, as the besiegers’ force, the corps of observation being deducted, did not exceed the garrison in number, it might have baffled Suchet’s utmost efforts. Engineers require that the relative strength of besiegers and besieged, should not be less than four to one; yet here the French invested a force equal to themselves, and in a short time reduced a great fortress in the midst of succouring armies, for Lerida had communications, 1º. With the armed population of the high valleys; 2º. With O’Donnel’s corps of fourteen thousand; 3º. With Cervera, where Campo Verde was posted with four thousand men; 4º. With Tortoza, where the marquis of Lazan, now released from his imprisonment, commanded from five to six thousand; 5º. With Valencia, in which province there was a disposable army of fifteen thousand regular and more than thirty thousand irregular soldiers.
It is evident that, if all these forces had been directed with skill and concert upon Lerida, not only the siege would have been raised, but the very safety of the third corps endangered; and it was to obviate this danger that Napoleon directed the seventh corps to take such a position on the Lower Ebro as would keep both O’Donnel and the Valencians in check; but Augereau, as we have seen, failed to do this; and St. Cyr asserts that the seventh corps could never safely venture to pass the mountains, and enter the valley of the Ebro. On the other hand, Suchet affirms that Napoleon’s instructions could have been obeyed without difficulty. St. Cyr himself, under somewhat similar circumstances, blockaded Taragona for a month; Augereau, who had more troops and fewer enemies, might have done the same, and yet spared six thousand men to pass the mountains; Suchet would then have been tranquil with respect to O’Donnel, and would have had a covering army to protect the siege, and these troops, fed from the resources of Aragon, would have relieved Catalonia.
Augereau has been justified, on the ground, that the blockade of Hostalrich would have been raised while he was on the Ebro. The danger of this could not have escaped the emperor, yet his military judgement, unerring in principle, was often false in application, because men measure difficulties by the standard of their own capacity, and Napoleon’s standard only suited the heroic proportions. One thing is, however, certain, that Catalonia presented the most extraordinary difficulties to the invaders. The powerful military organization of the Miguelettes and Somatenes,—the well-arranged system of fortresses,—the ruggedness and sterility of the country,—the ingenuity and readiness of a manufacturing population thrown out of work,—and, finally, the aid of an English fleet, combined to render the conquest of this province a gigantic task. Nevertheless, the French made progress, each step planted slowly indeed and with pain, but firmly, and insuring the power of making another.
Hostalrich and Lerida fell on the same day. The acquisition of the first consolidated the French line of communication with Barcelona; and, by the capture of the second, Suchet obtained large magazines, stores of powder, ten thousand muskets, the command of several dangerous rivers, easy access to the higher valleys, and a firm footing in the midst of the Catalonian strong holds; and he had taken or killed fifteen thousand Spanish soldiers. Yet this was but the prelude to greater struggles. The Miguelettes supplied O’Donnel with abundance of men, and neither his courage nor his abilities were at fault. Urgel, Cardona, Berga, Cervera, Mequinenza, Taragona, San Felippe Balaguer, and Tortoza the link of connexion between Valencia and Catalonia, were still to be subdued, and, during every great operation, the Partisans, being unmolested, recovered strength.
Thus while the siege of Lerida was going on, the marquis of Lazan entered the town of Alcanitz with five thousand men, and would have carried the castle, but that general Laval despatched two thousand men, from Zaragoza, to its succour, when the Spaniards, after a skirmish in the streets, retired; and, while this was passing at Alcanitz, Villa Campa, intercepted four hundred men conducting a convoy of provisions from Calatayud to Zaragoza. Colonel Petit, the commander, being attacked in the defile of Frasno, was forced to abandon his convoy, and, under a continued fire, to fight his way for ten miles, until his detachment, reduced to one hundred and eighty wounded men, passed the Xalon river, and, at the village of Arandiza, finally repulsed the assailants. The remainder of this desperate band were taken or killed, and Petit himself, wounded, a prisoner, and sitting in the midst of several Spanish officers, was basely murdered the evening after the action. Villa Campa put the assassin to death, but, at the same time, suffered the troops to burn alive the Alcalde of Frasno, an old man taken among the French.
This action happened the day Lerida fell; and, the next day, Chlopiski, following Villa Campa’s march from Daroca, reached Frasno. The Spaniards were no longer there, and Chlopiski, dividing his forces, pursued them, by the routes of Calatayud and Xarava, to Molina, where he destroyed a manufactory for arms, and so pressed the Spanish general, that his troops disbanded, and several hundred retired to their homes. At the same time, an attack, made from the side of Navarre, on the garrison of Ayerbe, was repulsed.
But these petty events, while they evinced the perseverance of the Spaniards, proved also the stability of Suchet’s power in Aragon. His system was gradually sapping the spirit of resistance in that province. In Lerida his conduct was as gentle and moderate as the nature of this unjust war would permit; and, however questionable, the morality of the proceeding by which he reduced the citadel, it must be acknowledged that his situation required most decided measures, for the retreat of the seventh corps set free not only O’Donnel’s army, but Campo Verde’s and all the irregular bands. The Somatenes of the high valleys appeared in force, on the Upper Segre the very day of the assault; eight hundred Miguelettes attacked Venasque three days after; and Campo Verde, marching from Cervera, by Agramunt, took post in the mountains of Lliniana, above Talarn and Tremp, where great bodies of the Somatenes also assembled.
Their plans were disconcerted by the sudden fall of Lerida; the Miguelettes were repulsed from Venasque; the Somatenes defeated at Tremp; and general Habert, marching from Balaguer, cut off Campo Verde from Cervera, and forced him to retreat upon Cardona. But, if the citadel of Lerida had held out, and O’Donnel, less hasty, had combined his march, at a later period, with these Somatenes and with Campo Verde, the third corps could scarcely have escaped a disaster; whereas, now the plain of Urgel and all the fertile valleys opening upon Lerida fell to the French, and Suchet, after taking measures to secure them, turned his arms against Mequinenza, which, by its situation at the confluence of the Segre and the Ebro, just where the latter begins to be navigable, was the key to further operations. The French general could not advance in force against Tortoza, nor avail himself of the water-carriage, until Mequinenza should fall.
Suchet’s activity was extreme; one detachment, sent the day after the assault of Lerida, by the left bank of the Segre, was already before the place, and general Musnier’s division, descending the right bank of that river, drove in some of the outposts and commenced the investment on the 20th of May.
Mequinenza, built on an elbow of land formed by the meeting of the Segre and Ebro, was fortified by an old Moorish wall, and strengthened by modern batteries, especially on the Fraga road, the only route by which artillery could approach. A shoot from the Sierra de Alcubierre filled the space between the two rivers, and narrowing as they closed, ended in a craggy rock, seven hundred feet high and overhanging the town, which was built between its base and the water.
This rock was crowned by a castle, with a rampart, which being inaccessible on two sides from the steepness, and covered, on a third, by the town, could only be assailed, on the fourth, along a high neck of land, three hundred yards wide, that joined the rock to the parent hills; and the rampart on that side, was bastioned, lined with masonry, and protected by a ditch, counterscarp, and covered way with palisades.
No guns could be brought against this fort, until the country people, employed by Suchet, had opened a way from Torriente, over the hills, and this occupied the engineers until the 1st of June. Meanwhile the brigade, which had defeated Lazan, at Alcanitz, arrived on the right bank of the Ebro, and completed the investment. The 30th of May, general Rogniat, coming from France, with a reinforcement of engineer-officers, and several companies of sappers and miners, also reached the camp, and, taking the direction of the works, contracted the circle of investment, and commenced active operations.
SIEGE OF MEQUINENZA.
The Spaniards made an ineffectual sally the 31st; and, the 2d of June, the French artillery, consisting of eighteen pieces, of which six were twenty-four-pounders, being brought over the hills, the advanced posts of the Spaniards were driven into the castle, and, during the night, ground was broken two hundred yards from the place, under a destructive fire of grape. The workmen suffered severely; and, while this was passing on the height, approaches were made against the town, in the narrow space between the Ebro and the foot of the rock. Strong infantry posts were also entrenched, close to the water, on the right bank of that river, to prevent the navigation; yet eleven boats, freighted with inhabitants and their property, quitted the town, and nine effected their escape.
In the night of the 3d the parallels on the rock were perfected, the breaching-batteries commenced, and parapets of sand-bags were raised, from behind which the French infantry plied the embrasures of the castle with musketry. The works against the town were also advanced; but, in both places, the nature of the ground greatly impeded the operations. The trenches above, being in a rocky soil, were opened chiefly by blasting; those below were in a space too narrow for batteries, and, moreover, searched by a plunging fire, both from the castle, and from a gun mounted on a high tower in the town wall. The troops on the right bank of the Ebro, however, opened their musketry with such effect on the wall, that a part of the garrison quitted it; both it and the tower were then escaladed without difficulty; and the Spaniards all retired to the castle. The French placed a battalion in the houses, and put those next the rock in a state of defence; and although the garrison of the castle rolled down large stones from above; they killed more of the inhabitants than of the enemy.
The 6th the French batteries on the rock, three in number, were completed; and, in the night, forty grenadiers carried by storm a small outwork called the horse-shoe. The 7th Suchet, who had been at Zaragoza, arrived in the camp; and, on the 8th, sixteen pieces of artillery, of which four were mortars, opened on the castle. The Spaniards answered with such vigour, that three French guns were dismounted; yet the besiegers acquired the superiority, and, at nine o’clock in the morning, the place was nearly silenced, and the rampart broken in two places. The Spaniards endeavoured to keep up the defence with musketry, while they mounted fresh guns, but the interior of the castle was so severely searched by the bombardment, that, at ten o’clock, the governor capitulated. Fourteen hundred men became prisoners of war; forty-five guns, large stores of powder and of cast iron were captured, and provisions for three months were found in the magazines.
Two hours after the fall of Mequinenza, general Mont-Marie, commanding the troops on the right bank of the Ebro, marched, with his brigade, against Morella, in the kingdom of Valencia, and took it on the 13th of June; for the Spaniards, with a wonderful negligence, had left that important fortress, commanding one of the principal entrances into the kingdom of Valencia, without arms or a garrison. When it was lost, general O’Donoju, with a division of the Valencian army, advanced to retake it, but Mont-Marie defeated him. The works were then repaired, and Morella became a strong and important place of arms.
By these rapid and successful operations Suchet secured, 1º. A fortified frontier against the regular armies of Catalonia and Valencia; 2º. Solid bases for offensive operations, and free entrance to those provinces; 3º. The command of several fertile tracts of country and of the navigation of the Ebro; 4º. The co-operation of the seventh corps, which, by the fall of Lerida, could safely engage beyond the Llobregat. But, to effect the complete subjugation of Catalonia, it was necessary to cut off its communications by land with Valencia, and to destroy O’Donnel’s base. The first could only be attained, by taking Tortoza, the second by capturing Taragona. Hence the immediate sieges of those two great places, the one by the third, and the other by the seventh corps, were ordered by the emperor.
Suchet was ready to commence his part, but many and great obstacles arose: the difficulty of obtaining provisions, in the eastern region of Catalonia, was increased by O’Donnel’s measures, and that general, still commanding above twenty thousand men, was neither daunted by past defeats, nor insensible to the advantages of his position. His harsh manners and stern sway, rendered him hateful to the people, but he was watchful to confirm the courage, and to excite the enthusiasm of his troop’s by conferring rewards and honours on the field of battle; and, being of singular intrepidity himself, his exhortations had more effect.
Two years of incessant warfare had also formed several good officers, and the full strength and importance of every position and town were, by dint of experience, becoming known. With these helps O’Donnel long prevented the siege of Tortoza, and found full employment for the enemy during the remainder of the year. Nevertheless, the conquest of Catalonia advanced, and the fortified places fell one after another, each serving, by its fall, to strengthen the hold of the French, in the same proportion that it had before impeded their progress.
The foundations of military strength were however, deeply cast in Catalonia. There the greatest efforts were made by the Spaniards, and ten thousand British soldiers, hovering on the coast, ready to land on the rear of the French, or to join the Catalans in an action, would at any period of 1809 and 1810, have paralized the operations of the seventh corps, and saved Gerona, Hostalrich, Tortoza, Taragona, and even Lerida. While those places were in the hands of the Spaniards and their hopes were high, English troops from Sicily were reducing the Ionian islands or loitering on the coast of Italy, but when all the fortresses of Catalonia had fallen, when the regular armies were nearly destroyed, and when the people were worn out with suffering, a British army which could have been beneficially employed elsewhere, appeared, as if in scorn of common sense, on the eastern coast of Spain.
Notwithstanding the many years of hostility with France, the English ministers were still ignorant of every military principle; and yet too arrogant to ask advice of professional men; for it was not until after the death of Mr. Perceval, and when the decisive victory of Salamanca shewed the giant in his full proportions, that even Wellington himself was permitted the free exercise of his judgement, although he was more than once reminded by Mr. Perceval, whose narrow views continually clogged the operations, that the whole responsibility of failure would rest on his head.