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

by Charles Oman

Accordingly the Duke of Elchingen marched from the camp in front of Saragossa with the divisions of Marchand and Dessolles, and the cavalry brigades of Beaumont and Digeon. At Calatayud he came up with the force which had been dispatched in pursuit of Castaños,—Musnier’s division of the 3rd Corps, and that of the 6th Corps which Maurice Mathieu had taken over from Lagrange, who had been severely wounded at Tudela[104]. Leaving Musnier at Calatayud to protect his communications with Aragon, Ney picked up Maurice Mathieu, and passed the mountains into New Castile, where he fell into the Emperor’s sphere of operations. We have seen that he took a prominent part in the pursuit of Sir John Moore and the invasion of Galicia.

Moncey, meanwhile, was left in front of Saragossa with his 1st, 3rd, and 4th Divisions—the 2nd being still at Calatayud. This force consisted of no more than twenty-three battalions, about 15,000 men, and was far too weak to undertake the siege. The Marshal was informed that the whole corps of Mortier was to be sent to his aid, but it was still far away, and with very proper caution he resolved to draw back and wait for the arrival of the reinforcements. If the Spaniards got to know of his condition, they might sally out from Saragossa and attack him with more than 30,000 men. Moncey, therefore, drew back to Alagon, and there waited for the arrival of the Duke of Treviso and the 5th Corps. It was not till December 20 that he was able to present himself once more before the city.

Thus Saragossa gained four weeks of respite between the battle of Tudela and the commencement of the actual siege. This reprieve was invaluable to Palafox and the Aragonese. They would have been in grave danger if Lannes had marched on and assaulted the city only two days after the battle, and before the routed army had been rallied. Even if Ney and Moncey had been permitted to begin a serious attack on November 30, the day of their arrival before the place, they would have had some chance of success. But their sudden retreat raised the spirits of the defenders, and the twenty extra days of preparation thus granted to them sufficed to restore them to full confidence, and to re-establish their belief in the luck of Saragossa and the special protection vouchsafed them by its patron saint Our Lady of the Pillar. Napoleon must take the blame for all the consequences of Ney’s withdrawal. He had ordered it without fully realizing the fact that Moncey would be left too weak to commence the siege. Probably he had over-estimated the effect of the defeat of Tudela on the Army of Aragon. For the failure of Ney’s attempt to surround Castaños he was only in part responsible, though (as we have seen) he had sent him out on his circular march two days too late[105]. But to draw off the 6th Corps to New Castile (where it failed to do any good), before the 5th Corps had arrived to take its place before Saragossa, was clearly a blunder.

Palafox made admirable use of the unexpected reprieve that had been granted him. He had not, it will be remembered, taken part in person in the battle of Tudela, but had returned to his head quarters on the night before that disaster. He was occupied in organizing a reserve to take the field in support of his two divisions already at the front, when the sudden influx of fugitives into Saragossa showed him what had occurred. In the course of the next two days there poured into the place the remains of the divisions of O’Neille and St. March from his own Army of Aragon. With them came Roca’s men, who properly belonged to Castaños, but having fought in the right wing had been separated from the main body of the Andalusian army[106]. In addition, fragments of many other regiments of the Army of the Centre straggled into Saragossa. At least 16,000 or 17,000 men of the wrecks of Tudela had come in ere four days were expired. To help them, Palafox could count on all the newly organized battalions of his reserve, which had never marched out to join the field army: they amounted to some 10,000 or 12,000 men, but many of the regiments had only lately been organized and had not received their uniforms or equipment. Nor was this all: several belated battalions from Murcia and Valencia came in at various times during the next ten days[107], so that long ere the actual siege began Palafox could count on 32,000 bayonets and 2,000 sabres of more or less regularly organized corps. He had in addition a number of irregulars—armed citizens and peasants of the country-side—whose numbers it is impossible to fix, for though some had been collected in partidas or volunteer companies, others fought in loose bands just as they pleased, and without any proper organization. They may possibly have amounted to 10,000 men at the time of the commencement of the siege, but so many were drafted into the local Aragonese battalions before the end of the fighting, that when the place surrendered in February, there were less than a thousand[108] of these unembodied irregulars under arms.

But it was not so much for the reorganization of his army as for the strengthening of his fortifications that Palafox found the respite during the first three weeks of December profitable. During the first siege it will be remembered that the fortifications of Saragossa had been contemptible from the engineer’s point of view: the flimsy mediaeval enceinte had crumbled away at the first fire of the besiegers, and the real defence had been carried out behind the barricades. By the commencement of the second siege everything had changed, and the city was covered by a formidable line of defences, executed, as was remarked by one of the French generals[109], with more zeal and energy than scientific skill, but presenting nevertheless most serious obstacles to the besieger.

After the raising of the first siege by Verdier, the Spaniards had been for some time in a state of such confidence and exultation that they imagined that there was no need for further defensive precautions. The next campaign was to be fought, as they supposed, on the further side of the Pyrenees. But the long suspension of the expected advance during the autumn months began to chill their spirits, and, as the year drew on, it was no longer reckoned unpatriotic or cowardly to take into consideration the wisdom of strengthening the inland fortresses in view of a possible return of the French. In September, Colonel San Genis, the engineer officer who had worked for Palafox during the first siege, received permission to commence a series of regular fortifications for Saragossa. The work did not progress rapidly, for the Aragonese had not as yet much belief in the possibility that they might be called on once again to defend their capital. San Genis only received a moderate sum of money, and the right to requisition men of over thirty-five from the city and the surrounding villages. The labour had to be paid, and therefore the labourers were few. The new works were sketched out rather than executed. Things progressed with a leisurely slowness, till in November the dangers of the situation began to be appreciated, and the approach of the French reinforcements drove the Saragossans to greater energy. But it was only the thunderclap of Tudela that really alarmed them, and sent soldiers and civilians, men, women, and children, to labour with feverish haste at the completion of the new lines. Between November 25 and December 20 the amount of work that was carried out was amazing and admirable. If Ney and Moncey had been allowed to commence the regular siege before the month of November had expired, they would have found the whole system of works in an incomplete condition. Three weeks later Saragossa had been converted into a formidable fortress.

The only point where San Genis’ scheme had not been fully developed was the Monte Torrero. It will be remembered that this important hill, whose summit lies only 1,800 yards from the walls of Saragossa, overlooks the whole city, and had been chosen during the first siege as the emplacement for the main breaching batteries. To keep the French from this commanding position was most important, and the Spanish engineer had intended to cover the whole circuit of the hill with a large entrenched camp, protected by continuous lines of earthworks and numerous redoubts, with the Canal of Aragon, which runs under its southern foot, as a wet ditch in its front. But, when the news of Tudela arrived, little or nothing had been done to carry out this scheme: the fortification of the city had absorbed the main attention of the Aragonese, and while that was still incomplete the Monte Torrero had been neglected. In December it was too late to begin the building of three or four miles of new earthworks, and in consequence nothing was constructed on the suburban hill save one large central redoubt, and two small works serving as têtes-de-pont, at the points where the Madrid and the La Muela roads cross the Canal of Aragon. St. March’s Valencian division, still 6,000 strong, was told off for the defence of the hill, but had no continuous line of works to cover it. The only strength of the position lay in the canal which runs round its foot: but this was not very broad, and was fordable at more than one point. In short, the Monte Torrero constituted an outlying defence which might be held for some time, in order to keep the besiegers far off from the body of the place, rather than an integral part of its line of defence.

It was on the works of Saragossa itself that the energy of more than 60,000 enthusiastic labourers, military and civilian, had been expended during the month that followed Tudela. The total accomplished in this time moves our respect: it will be well to take the various fronts in detail.

On the Western front, from the Ebro to the Huerba, there had been in August nothing more than a weak wall, many parts of which were composed of the rear-sides of convents and buildings. In front of this line there had been constructed by November 10 a very different defence. A solid rampart reveted with bricks taken from ruined houses, and furnished with a broad terrace for artillery, and a ditch forty-five feet deep now covered the entire western side of the city. The convents of the Augustinians and the Trinitarians, which had been outside the walls during the earlier siege, had been taken into this new enceinte and served as bastions in it. There being a space 600 yards long between them, where the curtain would have been unprotected by flanking fires, a great semicircular battery had been thrown out, which acted as a third bastion on this side. Strong earthworks had also been built up to cover the Portillo and Carmen gates. As an outlying fort there was the castle of the Aljafferia, which had received extensive repairs, and was connected with the enceinte by a ditch and a covered way. It would completely enfilade any attacks made on the north-western part of the new wall.

On the Southern front of the defences the work done had been even more important. Here the new fortifications had been carried down to the brink of the ravine of the Huerba, so as to make that stream the wet ditch of the town. Two great redoubts were pushed beyond it: one called the redoubt of ‘Our Lady of the Pillar’ lay at the bridge outside the Santa Engracia gate. It was provided with a deep narrow ditch, into which the water of the river had been turned, and armed with eight guns. The corresponding fort, at the south-east angle of the town, was made by fortifying the convent of San José, on the Valencia road, just beyond the Huerba. This was a quadrangle 120 yards long by eighty broad, furnished with a ditch, and with a covered way with palisades, cut in the counterscarp. It held twelve heavy guns, and a garrison of no less than 3,000 men. Between San José and the Pillar redoubt, the old town wall above the Huerba had been strengthened and thickened, and several new batteries had been built upon it. It could not well be assailed till the two projecting works in front of it should be reduced, and if they should fall it stood on higher ground and completely commanded their sites. The convent of Santa Engracia, so much disputed during the first siege, had been turned into a sort of fortress, and heavily armed with guns of position.