“The regular troops that fled from Tudela being joined by two small divisions which retreated at the same time from Sanguessa and Caparosa, formed a garrison of 30,000 men, and together with the inhabitants and peasantry presented a mass of 50,000 combatants, who with passions excited almost to frenzy awaited an assault amidst those mighty entrenchments, where each man’s home was a fortress and his family a garrison. To besiege with only 35,000 men a city so prepared was truly a gigantic undertaking.”[33]
It was on December 20, 1808, that Marshals Moncey and Mortier appeared in front of the town. We pass over the early part of the siege, which contains nothing to distinguish it from a multitude of others. The French, supported by a powerful battering and mortar train, advanced their trenches slowly towards the town until January 22, when Marshal Lasnes arrived to assume the command. On the 29th four breaches were declared practicable. That night four columns rushed to the assault; one was repulsed, the other three established themselves, and the ramparts of the city became the front line of the French trenches.
“The walls of Zaragoza thus went to the ground, but Zaragoza herself remained erect; and as the broken girdle fell from the heroic city, the besiegers started at the view of her naked strength. The regular defences had indeed crumbled before the skill of the assailants, but the popular resistance was immediately called with its terrors into action. * * * The war being now carried into the streets of Zaragoza, the sound of the alarm–bell was heard over all the quarters of the city, and the people assembling in crowds, filled the houses nearest to the lodgments made by the French. Additional traverses and barricadoes were constructed across the principal streets; mines were prepared in the more open spaces; and the communications from house to house were multiplied, until they formed a vast labyrinth of which the intricate windings were only to be traced by the weapons and the dead bodies of the defenders. The members of the junta, become more powerful from the cessation of regular warfare, with redoubled activity and energy urged the defence, but increased the horrors of the siege by a ferocity pushed to the very verge of frenzy. Every person, without regard to rank or age, who excited the suspicion of these furious men, or those immediately about them, was instantly put to death; and amid the noble bulwarks of war a horrid array of gibbets was to be seen, on which crowds of wretches were suspended each night, because their courage had sunk beneath the accumulating dangers of their situation, or because some doubtful expression or gesture of distress had been misconstrued by their barbarous chiefs.
“From the heights of the walls which he had conquered, Marshal Lasnes contemplated this terrific scene; and judging that men so passionate and so prepared could not be prudently encountered in open battle, he resolved to proceed by the slow but certain progress of the mattock and the mine; and this was also in unison with the Emperor’s instructions. Hence from the 29th of January to the 2d February, the efforts of the French were directed to the enlargement of their lodgment on the walls; and they succeeded after much severe fighting and several explosions in working forward through the nearest houses, but at the same time they had to sustain many counter–assaults from the Spaniards.
“It has been already observed that the crossing of the large streets divided the town into certain small districts or islands of houses. To gain possession of these, it was necessary not only to mine but to fight for each house. To cross the large intersecting streets it was indispensable to construct traverses above or to work by underground galleries, because a battery raked each street, and each house was defended by a garrison that, generally speaking, had only the option of repelling the enemy in front, or dying on the gibbet erected behind. But as long as the convents and churches remained in possession of the Spaniards, the progress of the French among the islands of small houses was of little advantage to them, because the large garrisons in the greater buildings enabled the defenders not only to make continual and successful sallies, but also to countermine their enemies, whose superior skill in that kind of warfare was often frustrated by the numbers and persevering energy of the besieged. * * *
“The experience of these attacks[34] induced a change in the mode of fighting on both sides. Hitherto the play of the French mines had reduced the houses to ruins, and thus the soldiers were exposed completely to the fire from the next Spanish posts. The engineers therefore diminished the quantity of powder, that the interior only might fall, and the outward walls stand, and this method was found successful. Hereupon the Spaniards, with ready ingenuity, saturated the timbers and planks of the houses with rosin and pitch, and setting fire to those which could no longer be maintained, interposed a burning barrier which often delayed the assailants for two days, and always prevented them from pushing their successes during the confusion that necessarily followed the bursting of the mines. The fighting was however incessant, a constant bombardment, the explosion of mines, the crash of falling buildings, clamorous shouts, and the continued echo of musketry deafened the ear, while volumes of smoke and dust clouded the atmosphere, and lowered continually over the heads of the combatants, as hour by hour the French with a terrible perseverance pushed forwards their approaches to the heart of the miserable but glorious city.
“Their efforts were chiefly directed against two points, namely, that of San Engracia, which may be denominated the left attack, and that of St. Augustin and St. Monica, which constituted the right attack. At San Engracia they laboured on a line perpendicular to the Cosso, from which they were separated only by the large convent of the daughters of Jerusalem, and by the hospital for madmen, which was entrenched, although in ruins since the first siege. The line of this attack was protected on the left by the convent of the Capuchins, which General Lacoste had fortified to repel the counter–assaults of the Spaniards. The right attack was more diffused, because the localities presented less prominent features to determine the direction of the approaches: and the French, having mounted a number of light six–inch mortars on peculiar carriages, drew them from street to street, and from house to house, as occasion offered. On the other hand, the Spaniards continually plied their enemies with hand–grenades, which seem to have produced a surprising effect, and in this manner the never–ceasing combat was prolonged until the 7th of February, when the besiegers, by dint of alternate mines and assaults, had worked their perilous way at either attack to the Cosso, but not without several changes of fortune and considerable loss. They were, however, unable to obtain a footing on that public walk, for the Spaniards still disputed every house with undiminished resolution.
“The 8th, 9th, and 10th were wasted by the besiegers in vain attempts to pass the Cosso; they then extended their flanks. * * * The 11th and 12th, mines were worked under the University, a large building on the Spanish side of the Cosso, in the line of the right attack; but their play was insufficient to open the walls, and the storming party was beaten with the loss of fifty men. Nevertheless, the besiegers continuing their labours during the 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, and 17th, passed the Cosso by means of traverses, and prepared fresh mines under the University, but deferred their explosion until a simultaneous effort could be combined on the side of the suburb.
“At the left attack also a number of houses bordering on the Cosso being gained, a battery was established that raked that great thoroughfare above ground; while under it, six galleries were carried, and six mines loaded to explode at the same moment; but the spirit of the French army was now exhausted; they had laboured and fought without intermission for fifty days; they had crumbled the walls with their bullets, burst the convents with their mines, and carried the walls with their bayonets. Fighting above and beneath the surface of the earth, they had spared neither fire nor the sword; their bravest men were falling in the obscurity of a subterranean warfare; famine pinched them, and Zaragoza was still unconquered!
“‘Before this siege,’ they exclaimed, ‘was it ever heard that 20,000 men should besiege 50,000?’ Scarcely a fourth of the town was won, and they themselves were already exhausted. ‘We must wait,’ they said, ‘for reinforcements, or we shall all perish among these cursed ruins, which will become our own tombs before we can force the last of these fanatics from the last of their dens.’