Two obvious criticisms on these operations in the month of August must be made. The first is that Del Palacio might probably have destroyed Duhesme’s whole army, if, instead of sending out his lieutenant Caldagues with a handful of regulars and 2,000 miqueletes, he had marched on Gerona with his entire force, the 5,000 old troops from Port Mahon and the whole of the local levies of Central Catalonia. Lecchi was so weak in Barcelona that a few thousand somatenes could have kept him in check, for he dared not ungarnish the city. If the Captain-General had thrown every man into the struggle at Gerona, it seems certain that Duhesme must either have been annihilated or have fled away with Reille to Figueras, abandoning Barcelona to its inevitable fate.
The second comment is equally obvious: Duhesme’s generalship was even worse than that of Del Palacio. Since the Spaniards came against him not with the whole army of Catalonia, but with a mere detachment of 7,000 somatenes, he should have formed a covering force of 5,000 men, and have fallen upon them while they were still at some distance from Gerona. Instead of doing this, he allowed them to encamp for three days unmolested at Castella, a village no more than five miles distant from Reille’s outposts. There they concerted their operations with the garrison, and fell upon the investing force at the moment that suited them best. It is the extraordinary apathy or neglect displayed by Duhesme that justifies Caldagues’ bold stroke at the French lines. Finding the enemy so torpid, he might well venture an assault upon them, without incurring the charge of rashness of which Napier finds him guilty[320]. In other circumstances it would have been mad for the Spaniard, who had no more than 7,000 somatenes, to attack a French army 13,000 strong. But seeing Duhesme so utterly negligent—and his army strung out on a long front of investment, without any covering force—Caldagues was quite justified in making the experiment which turned out so successfully. Duhesme tried to extenuate his fault, by giving out that he had been about to abandon the siege even before he was attacked, and that he had orders from Bayonne authorizing such a step. But we may be permitted to join his successor St. Cyr in doubting both the original intention and the imperial authorization[321]. There is at least no trace of it in the correspondence of Napoleon, who as late as August 23, seven days after the fight outside Gerona, was under the impression that Reille’s division alone might suffice to capture the city, though he was prepared if necessary to support him with other troops. On the seventeenth of the same month, the day on which Duhesme began his disastrous retreat on Barcelona, Napoleon had already made up his mind to supersede him, and had directed St. Cyr, with two fresh divisions, to take post at Perpignan. But in the orders given to the new commander in Catalonia there is no sign that the Emperor had acquiesced in the raising of the siege of Gerona, though it may perhaps be deduced from a later dispatch that he had not disapproved of the strengthening of Lecchi’s garrison at Barcelona by the withdrawal of Chabran’s division from the leaguer[322].
Meanwhile Napoleon had recognized that even with Reille’s reinforcements, Catalonia was not adequately garrisoned, and on August 10 had directed 18,000 fresh troops upon the principality. These, moreover, were not the mere sweepings of his dépôts, like Reille’s men, but consisted of two strong divisions of old troops; Souham’s was composed of ten French battalions from Lombardy, Pino’s of 10,000 men of the best corps of the army of the kingdom of Italy[323]. A little later the Emperor resolved to send one division more, Germans this time, to Catalonia. Instead of the 13,000 men whom he had originally thought sufficient for the subjugation of the province, he had now set aside more than 40,000 for the task, and this did not prove to be one man too many. No better testimonial could be given to the gallant somatenes, than that they had forced the enemy to detach so large a force against them. Nor could any better proof be given of the Emperor’s fundamental misconception of the Spanish problem in May and June, than the fact that he had so long been under the impression that Duhesme’s original divisions would be enough to subdue the rugged and warlike Catalan principality.
Before Souham, Pino, and the rest could arrive on the scene, many weeks must elapse, and meanwhile we must turn back to the main course of the war in Central Spain, where the condition of affairs had been profoundly modified by the results of the Capitulation of Baylen.
SECTION VI
THE CONSEQUENCES OF BAYLEN
CHAPTER I
THE FRENCH RETREAT TO THE EBRO
While dealing with the operations of the French armies in the various provinces of Spain, we have observed that at every point the arrival of the news of Dupont’s disaster at Baylen produced notable results. It was this unexpected intelligence that drove the intrusive king out of Madrid within a week of his arrival, and ere the ceremonial of his proclamation had been completed. It brought back Bessières from the Esla to the Arlanzon, and raised the siege of Saragossa. Knowing of it Junot summoned his council of war at Torres Vedras with a sinking heart, and Duhesme lacked the confidence to try the ordeal of battle before Gerona. Beyond the Pyrenees its influence was no less marked. Napoleon had imagined that the victory of Rio Seco had practically decided the fate of the Peninsula, and at the moment of Baylen was turning his attention to Austria rather than to Spain. On July 25, five days after Dupont had laid down his arms, he was meditating the reinforcement of his army in Germany, and drafting orders that directed the garrisons of northern France on Mainz and Strasburg[324]. To a mind thus preoccupied the news of the disaster in Andalusia came like a thunderclap. So far was the Spanish trouble from an end, that it was assuming an aspect of primary importance. If Austria was really intending mischief, it was clear that the Emperor would have two great continental wars on his hands at the same moment—a misfortune that had never yet befallen him. It was already beginning to be borne in upon him that the treachery at Bayonne had been a blunder as well as a crime. Hence came the wild rage that bursts out in the letters written upon the days following that on which the news of Baylen reached him at Bordeaux. ‘Has there ever, since the world began,’ wrote Bonaparte to Clarke, his minister of war, ‘been such a stupid, cowardly, idiotic business as this? Behold Mack and Hohenlohe justified! Dupont’s own dispatch shows that all that has occurred is the result of his own inconceivable folly.... The loss of 20,000 picked men, who have disappeared without even inflicting any considerable loss on the enemy, will necessarily have the worst moral influence on the Spanish nation.... Its effect on European politics will prevent me from going to Spain myself.... I wish to know at once what tribunal ought to try these generals, and what penalty the law can inflict on them for such a crime[325].’ A similar strain runs through his first letter to his brother Joseph after the receipt of the news—‘Dupont has soiled our banners. What folly and what baseness! The English will lay hands on his army[326]. Such events make it necessary for me to go to Paris, for Germany, Poland, Italy, and all, are tied up in the same knot. It pains me grievously that I cannot be with you, in the midst of my soldiers[327].’ In other letters the capitulation is ‘a terrible catastrophe,’ ‘a horrible affair, for the cowards capitulated to save their baggage,’ and (of course) ‘a machination paid for with English gold[328]. These imbeciles are to suffer on the scaffold the penalty of this great national crime[329].’ The Emperor did well to be angry, for the shock of Baylen was indeed felt to every end of Europe. But he should have blamed his own Macchiavellian brain, that conceived the plot of Bayonne, and his own overweening confidence, that launched Dupont with 20,000 half-trained conscripts (not, as he wrote to Clarke, with vingt mille hommes d’élite et choisis) on the hazardous Andalusian enterprise.