A history of the Peninsular War, Vol. 2, Jan.-Sep. 1809

by Charles Oman

The officer placed in command was General Gouvion St. Cyr, who afterwards won his marshal’s bâton in the Russian war of 1812. He was a general of first-rate ability, who had served all through the wars of the Revolution with marked distinction: but he disliked Bonaparte and had not the art to hide the fact. This had kept him back from earlier promotion. St. Cyr was by no means an amiable character: he was detested by his officers and his troops as a confirmed grumbler, and selfish to an incredible degree[51]. He was one of those men who can always show admirable and convincing reasons for not helping their neighbours. C’était un mauvais compagnon de lit, said one of the many colleagues, whom he had left in the lurch, while playing his own game. From his morose bearing and his dislike for company he had got the nickname of ‘le hibou.’ He was cautious, cool-headed, and ready of resource, so that his troops had full confidence in him, though he never commanded their liking. Even from his history of the Catalonian war, one can gather the character of the man. It is admirably lucid, and illustrated with original documents, Spanish no less than French, in a fashion only too rare among the military books of the soldiers of the Empire. But it is not only entirely self-centred, but full of malevolent insinuations concerning Napoleon and the author’s colleagues. In his first chapter he broaches the extraordinary theory that Napoleon handed over to him the Catalonian army without resources, money, or transport, in order that he might make a fiasco of the campaign and ruin his reputation! He actually seems to have believed that his master disliked to have battles won for him by officers who had not owed to him the beginning of their fortunes[52], and would have been rather pleased than otherwise to see the attempt to relieve Barcelona end in a failure.

These are, of course, the vain imaginings of a jealous and suspicious hypochondriac. It is true that Napoleon disliked St. Cyr, but he did not want to see the campaign of Catalonia end in a disaster. He gave the new general a fine French division of veteran troops, and, as his letter to the Viceroy Eugène Beauharnais shows, the picked regiments of the whole Italian army. The Seventh Corps mustered in all more than 40,000 men, and 25,000 of these were concentrated under St. Cyr’s hand at Perpignan and Figueras. It is certain that the troops were not well equipped, and that the auxiliary services were ill represented. But this was not from exceptional malice on Napoleon’s part: he was always rather inclined to starve an army with which he was not present in person, and at this moment every resource was being strained to fit out the main force which were to deliver the great blow at Madrid. Catalonia was but a ‘side show’: and when St. Cyr tries to prove[53] that it was the most important theatre of war in the whole peninsula, he is but exaggerating, after the common fashion of poor humanity, the greatness of his own task and his own victories.

Before starting from Perpignan St. Cyr refitted, as best he could, the dilapidated battalions of Reille, which were, he says, in such a state of nudity that those who had been sent back within the French border had to be kept out of public view from motives of mere decency[54]. The whole division had suffered so much from exposure that instead of taking the field with the 8,000 men which it possessed in August, it could present only 5,500 in November, after setting aside a battalion to garrison Figueras[55].

But though Reille was weak, and the division of Chabot (a mere corps of two Neapolitan battalions and one regiment of National Guards) was an almost negligible quantity, the troops newly arrived from Italy were both numerous and good in quality. Souham’s ten French battalions had 7,000 bayonets, Pino’s thirteen Italian battalions had 7,300. Their cavalry consisted of one French and two Italian regiments, making 1,700 sabres. The total force disposable consisted of 23,680 men, of whom 2,096 were cavalry, and about 500 artillery. In this figure are not included the National Guards and dépôts left behind to garrison Bellegarde, Montlouis, and other places within the French frontier, but only the troops available for operations within Catalonia.

On his way to Perpignan, St. Cyr had visited the Emperor at Paris, so as to receive his orders in person. Napoleon informed him that he left him carte blanche as to all details; the one thing on which he insisted was that Barcelona must be preserved: ‘si vous perdiez cette place, je ne la reprendrais pas avec quatre-vingt mille hommes.’ This then was to be the main object of the coming campaign: there were about two months available for the task, for Duhesme reported that, though food was growing scarce, he could hold out till the end of December. To lessen the number of idle mouths in Barcelona he had been giving permits to depart to many of the inhabitants, and expelling others, against whom he could find excuses for severity.

The high-road from Figueras to Barcelona was blocked by the fortress of Gerona, whose previous resistance in July and August showed that its capture would be a tedious and difficult matter. St. Cyr calculated that he had not the time to spare for the siege of this place: long ere he could expect to take it, Duhesme would be starved out. He made up his mind that he would have to march past Gerona, and as the high-road is commanded by the guns of the city, he would be forced to take with him no heavy guns or baggage, but only light artillery and pack-mules, which could use the by-paths of the mountains. It was his first duty to relieve Barcelona by defeating the main army of Vives. When this had been done, it would be time enough to think of the siege of Gerona.

But there was another fortress which St. Cyr resolved to clear out of his way before starting to aid Duhesme. On the sea-shore, only ten miles before Figueras, lies the little town of Rosas, which blocks the route that crawls under the cliffs from Perpignan and Port-Vendres to the Ampurdam. The moment that the French army advanced south from Figueras, it would have Rosas on its flank, and even small expeditions based on the place could make certain of cutting the high-road, and intercepting all communications between the base and the field force that had gone forward. But it was more than likely that the Spaniards would land a considerable body of troops in Rosas, for it has an excellent harbour, and every facility for disembarkation. Several English men-of-war were lying there; it served them as their shelter and port of call while they watched for the French ships which tried to run into Barcelona with provisions, from Marseilles, Cette, or Port-Vendres. Already they had captured many vessels which endeavoured to pierce the blockade.

St. Cyr therefore was strongly of opinion that he ought to make an end of the garrison of Rosas before starting on his expedition to aid Duhesme. The place was strategically important, but its fortifications were in such bad order that he imagined that it might be reduced in a few days. The town, which counted no more than 1,500 souls, consisted of a single long street running along the shore. It was covered by nothing more than a ditch and an earthwork, resting at one end on a weak redoubt above the beach, and at the other upon the citadel. The latter formed the strength of the place: it was a pentagonal work, regularly constructed, with bastions, and a scarp and counterscarp reveted with stone. But its resisting power was seriously diminished by the fact that the great breach which the French had made during its last siege in 1794 had never been properly repaired. The government of Godoy had neglected the place, and, when the insurrection began, the Catalans had found it still in ruins, and had merely built up the gap with loose stones and barrels filled with earth. A good battering train would bring down the whole of these futile patchings in a few days. A mile to the right of the citadel was a detached work, the Fort of the Trinity, placed above a rocky promontory which forms the south-eastern horn of the harbour. It had been built to protect ships lying before the place from being annoyed by besiegers. The Trinity was built in an odd and ingenious fashion: it was commanded at the distance of only 100 yards by the rocky hill of Puig-Rom: to prevent ill effects from a plunging fire from this elevation, its front had been raised to a great height, so as to protect the interior of the work from molestation. A broad tower 110 feet high covered the whole side of the castle which faces inland. ‘Nothing in short, for a fortress commanded by adjacent heights, could have been better adapted for holding out against offensive operations, or worse adapted for replying to them. The French battery on the cliff was too elevated for artillery to reach, while the tower, which prevented their shot from reaching the body of the fort, also prevented any return fire at them, even if the fort had possessed artillery. In consequence of the elevated position of the French on the cliff, they could only breach the central portion of the tower. The lowest part of the breach they made was nearly sixty feet above its base, so that it could only be reached by long scaling ladders[56].’ It is seldom that a besieger has to complain of the difficulty caused to him by the possession of ground completely dominating a place that he has to reduce: but in the course of the siege of Fort Trinity the French were undoubtedly incommoded by the height of the Puig-Rom. The garrison below, hidden in good bomb-proofs and covered by the tower, suffered little harm from their fire. To batter the whole tower to pieces, by a downward fire, was too long and serious a business for them; they merely tried to breach it.

If the ground in front of Fort Trinity was too high for the French, that of the town of Rosas was too low. It was so marshy that in wet weather the ditches of their siege works filled at once with water, and their parapets crumbled into liquid mud. The only approach on ground of convenient firmness and elevation was opposite a comparatively narrow front of the south-eastern corner of the place.

The garrison of Rosas, when St. Cyr undertook its siege, was commanded by Colonel Peter O’Daly, an officer of the Ultonia, who had distinguished himself at Gerona; it was composed of a skeleton battalion (150 men) of the governor’s own Irish corps, of half the light infantry regiment 2nd of Barcelona, of a company of Wimpffen’s Swiss regiment, and 120 gunners. These were regulars: of new levies there were the two miquelete tercios of Lerida and Igualada, with some companies of those of Berga and Figueras. The whole force was exactly 3,000 strong. It would be wrong to omit the mention of the British succours which took part in the defence. There lay in the harbour the Excellent, 74, and two bomb-vessels: when the Excellent departed on November 21 she was replaced by the Fame, another 74-gun ship, and during the last days of the siege Lord Cochrane in his well-known frigate the Impérieuse was also present. It is well to remember their exact force, for the French narrators of the leaguer of Rosas are prone to call them ‘the British squadron,’ a term which seems rather too magnificent to apply to a group of vessels never numbering more than one line-of-battle ship, one frigate, and two bomb-vessels.