Meanwhile the French brigade of Lefebvre’s division attacked the gates of Portillo and the Carmen and the adjoining cavalry barracks. At the last-named post they scaled the walls, which were particularly low and weak at this point, and got into the city. But at the gates the batteries in the narrow ingress held them back. After a sharp skirmish, a general rush of peasants, soldiers, and citizens, swept out the invaders from the cavalry barracks, and the front of defence was restored. Lefebvre would have done well to pause before renewing his assault: but (like Moncey at Valencia) he was loth to believe that the enemy would face a persistent attempt to break in. He accordingly ordered both the columns to renew their attacks: for some time it seemed likely that he might succeed, for the French forced both the Carmen and the Portillo gates and reoccupied the cavalry barracks, while the Poles burst in for a second time at Santa Engracia. But it proved impossible to make any further advance into the city, where every house was full of musketeers and the narrow lanes were blocked with artillery, which swept them from end to end. When it became clear that the enemy were making no further progress, the Spaniards rallied behind the Bull-Ring on the Portillo front, and in the convent of Santa Engracia on the southern front, and swept out the decimated battalions of Lefebvre by a determined charge[116].
It is not surprising to find that the assailants had suffered very heavily in such a desperate attack on walls and barricades teeming with defenders worked up to a high pitch of patriotic frenzy. Lefebvre lost 700 men, and left behind him at the Portillo gate several guns which had been brought up too close to the place, and could not be dragged off under the dreadful musketry fire from the walls, and the flanking discharges from the neighbouring castle of Aljafferia. The Spaniards, fighting under cover except at the moment of their final charges, had suffered comparatively little: their loss is estimated at not much over 300 men. They might well be proud of their success: they had certainly showed a heroic spirit in fighting so obstinately after three crushing defeats in the open field. That a practically unfortified town should defend itself by street-fighting was a new idea: and that peasants and citizens (there were not 900 regulars in the place) should not only hold out behind walls, but execute desperate charges en masse, would till that day have been regarded as impossible by any soldier of Napoleon. Every thinking man in the French army must have looked with some dismay on the results of the fight, not because of the loss suffered, for that was a mere trifle, but because of the prospect of the desperate national resistance which had evidently to be faced.
Meanwhile, Lefebvre-Desnouettes retired for some thousands of yards from the city, and pitched his camp facing its western front. He sent pressing letters asking for reinforcements both to Madrid and to Bayonne, and attempted no offensive action for ten days. If he sent a formal summons of surrender to the Saragossans, it was to waste time and allow fresh troops to arrive, rather than with any hope that he could intimidate the citizens. He was himself more likely to be attacked during the next few days than to make any forward movement. But he was already beginning to receive reinforcements: on June 21 there arrived two battalions of the 2nd Regiment of the Vistula, and more troops were behind.
Palafox, on the other hand, received much unexpected encouragement from the combat of the sixteenth. On receiving the news of it at Belchite on the following morning, he sent back his brother, the Marquis de Lazan, giving him the command of the city, and bidding him tell the Saragossans that he would endeavour to raise the siege in a very few days. There was already a considerable body of insurgents in arms in South-western Aragon, under the Baron de Versage, who had raised at Calatayud two battalions of new levies[117], and gathered in some fugitives from the Spanish garrison of Madrid. Palafox ordered the baron to join him with every man that he could bring, and their two detachments met at Almunia on June 21, and from thence marched towards Saragossa by the road which leads down the valley of the Xalon by Epila. At the last-named place they were only fifteen miles from Lefebvre-Desnouettes’ camp, and were already threatening the French communications with Logroño and Vittoria. But their army was still very small—no more than 550 regular infantry, 1,000 men of Versage’s new regiments, 350 cavalry, and a couple of thousand levies of all kinds, among whom were noted a company of eighty armed Capuchin friars and a body of mounted smugglers.
The French general had now to make up his mind whether he would raise the siege and fall upon Palafox with his whole army, or whether he would dare to divide his scanty resources, and maintain the attack on the city with one part, while he sent a containing force against the Captain-General’s bands. He resolved to take the latter course—a most hazardous one considering the fact that he had, even with his last reinforcements, not much more than 6,000 sound men in his camp. He dispatched the Polish Colonel Chlopiski with the first regiment of the Vistula, one French battalion, a squadron of lancers and four guns to hold back Palafox, while with the 3,000 men that remained he executed several demonstrations against outlying parts of the defences of Saragossa, in order to distract the attention of the citizens.
This very risky plan was carried out with complete success. While the Saragossans were warding off imaginary attacks, Chlopiski made a forced march and fell upon Palafox at Epila on the night of June 23-24. The Aragonese army was completely surprised and routed in a confused engagement fought in the dark. Several hundred were cut up, and the town of Epila was sacked: Palafox fell back in disorder towards Calatayud and the mountains, while Chlopiski returned to the siege.
The Captain-General, much disconcerted by this disaster, resolved that he would fight no more battles in the open, but merely reinforce the city with the best of his soldiers and resist behind its walls. So sending back Versage and his levies to the hills, he made an enormous detour with his handful of veteran troops and a few hundred irregulars, and re-entered Saragossa by the northern side, which still remained open. He had great difficulty in holding his followers together, for many (and especially his untrustworthy cavalry) wished to retire on Valencia and to abandon the struggle in Aragon. But by appealing to their patriotism—‘he would give every man who insisted on it a passport for Valencia, but those who loved him would follow him’—he finally carried off the whole force, and took somewhat over 1,000 men back to the besieged city [July 1].
During his absence the condition of affairs in Saragossa had been considerably altered. On the one hand the defences had been much improved: the gates had been strongly stockaded, and the walls had been thickened with earth and sandbags, and furnished with a continuous banquette, which had hitherto been wanting. On the other hand the French were beginning to receive reinforcements: on the twenty-sixth General Verdier arrived with three battalions of his division (the second of Bessières’ corps)[118] and two bataillons de marche, in all some 3,000 or 3,500 men. From this time forward small bodies of troops began to reach the besiegers at short intervals, including two more Polish battalions[119], one battalion of French regulars, two Portuguese battalions (the last of the unfortunate division which was on its way across Spain towards the Baltic), 1,000 National Guards of the Hautes Pyrénées and Basses Pyrénées, hastily sent across the frontier from Bayonne, and three squadrons of cavalry[120]. What was more important than the mere numbers was that they brought with them siege-guns, in which Lefebvre had hitherto been entirely deficient. These pieces came from the citadel of Pampeluna, and were part of those resources of which the French had so treacherously taken possession in the preceding February.
Verdier on his arrival superseded Lefebvre-Desnouettes, who was considerably his junior, and took charge of the siege. His first act was to develop an attack on the Monte Torrero, the hill in the suburbs, beyond the Huerba, which dominates, at a distance of 1,800 yards, the southern front of the city. The Spaniards had neither encircled it with continuous lines, nor crowned it with any closed work. It was protected only by two small batteries and some trenches covering the most obvious points of attack. The garrison was composed of no more than 500 men, half peasants, half regulars of the Regiment of Estremadura, of which three weak battalions had arrived from Tarrega on the previous day (June 27)[121]. Verdier sent three columns, each of one battalion, against the more accessible parts of the position, and drove out the small defending force with ease. His task was made lighter by a piece of casual luck: on the night before the assault the main powder-magazine of the Saragossans, situated in the Seminary, was ignited by the carelessness of a workman, and blew up, killing many persons and wrecking the Seminary itself and many houses in its vicinity. A few hours after this disaster had taken place, and while the whole city was busy in extinguishing the conflagration, the French attack was delivered; hence the original garrison got no help from within the walls. But its own conduct was deplorably weak: the colonel in command[122] headed the rush to the rear, a piece of cowardice for which he was imprisoned and (after the siege had been raised) was sent before a court-martial and shot.
On the evening of the twenty-eighth Verdier began to construct heavy breaching batteries on the slopes of the Monte Torrero, commanding all the southern side of the city. Others were thrown up on the south-western front, opposite the points which had been unsuccessfully assaulted twelve days before. On the thirtieth of June the works were armed with thirty siege-guns, four mortars, and twelve howitzers, which opened simultaneously on Saragossa at midnight, and continued to play upon the place for twenty-four hours, setting many houses on fire, and breaching the flimsy ramparts in half a dozen places. The old castle of the Aljafferia was badly injured, and the gates of Portillo and the Carmen knocked out of shape: there were also large gaps in the convent of the Augustinians, and in the Misericordia, whose back wall formed part of the enceinte. All the unarmed population was forced to take refuge in the cellars, or the more solidly built parts of the churches, while the fighting-men were trying to construct barricades behind the worst breaches, and to block up with sandbags, beams, and barrels all the lanes that opened upon them.