A history of the Peninsular War, Vol. 1, 1807-1809

by Charles Oman

Palafox entered Saragossa on the morning of July 2, just in time to see Verdier launch his whole available infantry force upon the shattered western and southern fronts of the city. The assault was made under much more favourable conditions than that of June 16, since the strength of the storming columns was more than doubled, and the defences had been terribly mishandled by the bombardment. On the other hand the garrison was in no degree shaken in spirit: the fire of the last twenty-four hours had been much more dangerous to buildings than to men, and the results of the first assault had given the defenders a confidence which they had not felt on the previous occasion. Hence it came to pass that of the six columns of assault not one succeeded in making a permanent lodgement within the walls. Even the isolated castle of Aljafferia and the convent of San José, just outside the Porta Quemada, were finally left in the hands of the besieged, though the latter was for some hours held by the French. The hardest fighting was at the Portillo gate, where the assaulting battalions more than once reached the dilapidated earthwork that covered the ingress to the north-western part of the city. It was here that there occurred the well-known incident of the ‘Maid of Saragossa.’ The gunners at the small battery in the gate had been shot down one after another by the musketry of the assailants, the final survivors falling even before they could discharge the last gun that they had loaded. The infantry supports were flinching and the French were closing in, when a young woman named Agostina Zaragoza, whose lover (an artillery sergeant) had just fallen, rushed forward, snatched the lighted match from his dying hand, and fired the undischarged twenty-four-pounder into the head of the storming column[123]. The enemy was shaken by a charge of grape delivered at ten paces, the citizens, shamed by Agostina’s example, rushed back to reoccupy the battery, and the assault was beaten off. Palafox states that the incident occurred before his own eyes: he gave the girl a commission as sub-lieutenant of artillery, and a warrant for a life-pension: she was seen a year later by several English witnesses, serving with her battery in Andalusia[124].

The fruitless attack of July 2 cost the French 200 killed and 300 wounded. The Saragossan garrison lost somewhat less, in spite of the bombardment, since they had been fighting under cover against enemies who had to expose themselves whenever they got near the wall. Verdier resolved for the future to shun attempts at escalade, and to begin a regular siege. He commenced on the third of July to construct parallels, for a main attack on the southern side of the place, and a secondary attack on the north-western. He also threw a detachment across the Ebro [July 11], to close the hitherto undisturbed access to the city through the suburb of San Lazaro and the stone bridge. The force which could be spared for this object from an army of no more than 12,000 or 13,000 men was not really sufficient to hold the left bank of the Ebro, and merely made ingress and egress difficult without entirely preventing it. On two or three occasions when considerable bodies of Spaniards presented themselves, the French could do no more than skirmish with them and try to cut off the convoys which they were bringing to the city. They could not exclude them, and for the whole remainder of the siege the communications of the Saragossans with the open country were never entirely closed[125].

By July 15, Verdier’s trenches were commencing to work up close to the walls, and the next ten days of the month were occupied in desperate struggles for the convents of San José, of the Capuchins and Trinitarians, which lie outside the city near the Carmen and Porta Quemada gates. By the twenty-fourth the French had occupied them, connected them with their approaches, and begun to establish in them breaching batteries. Another, but less powerful, attack was directed against the Portillo gate. The mortars and howitzers bombarded the city continuously from the first to the third. But it was not till the dawn of August 4 that the heavy guns were ready to begin their task of battering down the gates and walls of Saragossa. After five hours of steady firing the Spanish batteries were silenced, and several breaches had been made, mostly in or about the Convent of Santa Engracia, at the southernmost point of the city. The streets behind it had been terribly shattered by the previous bombardment, and many buildings destroyed, notably the central hospital, from which the Spaniards had to remove, under a terrible hail of shells, more than 500 sick and wounded, as well as a number of lunatics and idiots: the institution had been used as an asylum before the outbreak of the war. Many of these unfortunate creatures were destroyed by the besiegers’ fire[126], as were also no small number of the wounded and of their doctors and nurses.

Palafox and his brother the marquis remained near Santa Engracia, trying to encourage their followers to repair the barricades behind the breaches, and to loophole and strengthen those of the houses which still stood firm. But amid the dreadful and unceasing storm of projectiles it was hard to keep the men together, and most of the projected retrenchments were battered down before they could be finished. At two o’clock in the afternoon of the fourth, Verdier let loose his storming columns, composed of four Polish and nine French battalions[127]. They were directed in three bodies against three separate breaches, the easternmost in the Convent of Santa Engracia, the second at the gate of the same name, the third more to the left, in the wall near the gate of the Carmen. All three were successful in forcing their way into the city: the defences had been completely shattered, and at one point 300 continuous yards of the outer wall had fallen. The Spaniards clung for some time to the cloisters and church of Santa Engracia, but were at last expelled or exterminated, and 1,000 yards of the enceinte with the adjoining buildings were in the hands of the French.

It was at this moment, apparently, that Verdier sent in a parlementaire with the laconic note—‘Head Quarters, Santa Engracia. Capitulation?’ To which Palafox returned the well-known reply—‘Head Quarters, Saragossa. War to the knife[128].’

All through the afternoon of the fourth of August, the French slowly pushed their way up the streets which lead northward towards the Coso, the main thoroughfare of Saragossa. They could only get forward by storming each house, and turning each barricade that offered resistance, so that their progress was very slow. While inflicting terrible losses on the Spaniards, they were also suffering very heavily themselves. But they drove a broad wedge into the city, till finally they reached and crossed the Coso, halfway between the southern wall and the river. In the streets beyond the Coso their impetus seemed to have exhausted itself: many of the men were too tired to press forward any longer; others turned aside to plunder the churches and the better sort of houses[129]. Verdier tried to cut his way to the great bridge, so as to divide the defenders into two separate bodies, and was so far successful that many of the Spaniards began to troop off across the river into the suburb of San Lazaro. But he himself was wounded, his main column lost its way in the narrow side-streets, and the attack died down.

In the late afternoon there was almost a suspension of hostilities, and the firing slackened for a space. But at last the Aragonese, encouraged by the exhaustion of their enemies, began to resume the offensive. The fugitives who had crossed to the northern side of the Ebro were hustled together and driven back by their leaders, while a loaded gun was placed on the bridge to prevent their return. The garrison of the eastern front, which had not been seriously attacked, sent all the reinforcements that it could spare into the centre of the town. At dusk masses of Spaniards debouched from the neighbourhood of the two cathedrals, and began to assail the positions held by the French beyond the line of the Coso. The first charge into the open street is recorded to have been led by a monk[130] and sixteen peasants, every one of whom were killed or wounded; but endless reinforcements poured out of every lane, and the exhausted French began to lose ground. The fighting was of that deadly sort in which the question has to be settled, whether the defenders of the houses in a street can shoot down their assailants, exposed in the roadway, before the latter can burst into each separate dwelling and exterminate its garrison in detail. Often the French held the upper stories long after the Spaniards had seized the ground floor, and the staircases had to be stormed one after the other. It was natural that in such struggles the defenders should receive no quarter. Though the fight raged with many variations of fortune in all the central parts of the city, there was after a time no doubt that the Aragonese were gaining ground. The French detachments which had penetrated furthest into the place were gradually cut off and exterminated; the main bodies of the columns drew back and strengthened themselves in two large stone buildings, the convents of San Francisco and San Diego. At nightfall they retained only a wedge-like section of the city, whose apex near San Francisco just touched the southern side of the Coso, while its base was formed by the line of wall between the gates of Santa Engracia and the Carmen.

The French had lost nearly 2,000 men in the struggle: the engineer Belmas gives the total as 462 killed and 1,505 wounded[131], more than a fifth of the troops which had actually been engaged in the assault. Among the Saragossans, who before the street-fighting began had been subjected to a severe bombardment for many hours, the casualties must have been nearly as great. But they could spare combatants more easily than their enemies: indeed they had more men than muskets, and as each defender fell there was a rush of the unarmed to get possession of his weapon.

During the night of August 4-5 both sides, fatigued though they were, set to work to cover themselves with barricades and works constructed with the débris of ruined houses. In the morning both French and Spaniards had rough but continuous lines of defence, those of the latter circling round those of the former, with nothing but the width of a narrow street between them. Wherever there was anything approaching an open space cannon had been brought up to sweep it. Where the houses still stood firm, communications had been made between them by breaking holes through the party walls. In the streets the corpses of both sides lay thick, for under the deadly cross-fire no one dared venture out to remove them: in a day or two the sanitary conditions would be horrible.

Meanwhile both besiegers and besieged were too exhausted to undertake any more serious operations, and the fighting sank to little more than a desultory fusillade between enemies equally well protected by their defences. Such interest as there was in the operations of August 5-6 lay outside the walls of Saragossa. On the afternoon of the day of the great assault a column of Spanish troops from Catalonia—two line battalions and 2,000 or 3,000 new levies and armed peasants—arrived at Villamayor on the north of the Ebro, only seven miles from the city. It escorted a much-desired convoy of ammunition, for the supplies in the city were running very low. While the fighting was still raging in the streets Palafox rode out of the suburb of San Lazaro with 100 dragoons and joined this force. On the next morning (August 5) he skirmished with the French troops which lay beyond the Ebro, and passed into the city one veteran battalion and a few wagons of munitions. He then proposed to attack the detached French brigade (that of Piré) with his whole remaining force on the next day, in order to clear the northern front, and to send the rest of his convoy—no less than 200 wagons—into Saragossa. But on the same night he received news of the battle of Baylen and the surrender of Dupont’s army. Moreover, he was informed that a division of the army of Valencia, under Saint-March, was on the way to reinforce him. This induced him to halt for two days, to see whether the French would not raise the siege without further fighting.