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

by Charles Oman

On the twenty-third the preliminary works of the siege began, approaches and covered ways being constructed leading down from the Monte Torrero to the spots from which Lacoste intended to commence the first parallels of the two attacks on the Pillar and San José. Preparations of a similar sort were commenced for the false attack on the left, opposite the Aljafferia. Six days were occupied in these works, and in the bringing up of the heavy artillery, destined to arm the siege-batteries, from Tudela. The guns had to come by road, as the Spaniards had destroyed all the barges on the Canal of Aragon, and blown up many of its locks. It was not till some time later that the French succeeded in reopening the navigation, by replacing the sluice-gates and building large punts and floats for the carriage of guns or munitions.

Just before the first parallel was opened Marshal Moncey was recalled to Madrid [December 29], the Emperor being apparently discontented with his delays in the early part of the month. He was replaced in command of the 3rd Corps by Junot, whose old divisions had been made over (as we have seen in the first volume) to Soult’s 2nd Corps. This change made Mortier the senior officer of the besieging army, but he and Junot seem to have worked more as partners than as commander and subordinate. Junot, in his report to the Emperor[126] on the state in which he found the troops, enlarges at great length on the deplorable condition of the 3rd Corps. Many of the battalions had never received their winter clothing, hundreds entered the hospitals every day, and there was no corresponding outflow of convalescents. No less than 680 men had died in the base hospital at Pampeluna in November, and the figure for December would be worse. He doubted if there were 13,000 infantry under arms in his three divisions—here he exaggerated somewhat, for even a fortnight later the returns show that his ‘present under arms,’ after deducting all detachments and sick, were still over 14,000 bayonets: on January 1, therefore, there must have been 15,000. He asked for money, reinforcements, and a supply of officers, the commissioned ranks of his corps showing a terrible proportion of gaps. On the other hand, he conceded that the 5th Corps was in excellent condition, its veterans suffering far less from disease than his own conscripts. Either of Gazan’s and Suchet’s divisions was, by itself, as strong as any two of the divisions of the 3rd Corps.

On the night of the twenty-ninth—thirtieth, within twelve hours of Moncey’s departure, the first parallel was opened, both in the attack towards San José and in that opposite the Pillar fort. When the design of the besiegers became evident, Palafox made three sallies on the thirty-first, but apparently more with the object of reconnoitring the siege-works and distracting the workers than with any hope of breaking the French lines, for there were not more than 1,500 men employed in any of the three columns which delivered the sorties. The assault on the trenches before San José was not pressed home, but opposite the false attack at the Aljafferia the fighting was more lively; the French outposts were all driven in with loss, and a squadron of cavalry, which had slipped out from the Sancho gate, close to the Ebro, surprised and sabred thirty men of a picket on the left of the French lines. Palafox made the most of this small success in a magniloquent proclamation published on the succeeding day. He should have sent out 15,000 men instead of 3,000 if he intended to get any profit out of his sorties. An attack delivered with such a force on some one point of the lines must have paralysed the siege operations, and might have proved disastrous to the French.

Meanwhile the besiegers, undisturbed by these sallies, pushed forward their works on the northern slopes of the Monte Torrero. The attack opposite San José got forward much faster than that against the Pillar: its second parallel was commenced on January 1, and its batteries were all ready to open by the ninth. The other attack was handicapped by the fact that the ground sloped down more rapidly towards the Huerba, so that the trenches had to be made much deeper, and pushed forward in perpetual zigzags, in order to avoid being searched by the plunging fire from the Spanish batteries on the other side of the stream, in the enceinte of the town. To get a flanking position against the Pillar redoubt, the left attack was continued by another line of trenches beyond the Huerba, after it has made its sharp turn to the south.

Before the engineers had completed their work, and long ere the breaching batteries were ready, a great strain was thrown upon the besiegers by fresh orders from Napoleon. On January 2, Marshal Mortier received a dispatch, bidding him march out to Calatayud with one of his two divisions, and open up the direct communication with Madrid. Accordingly he departed with the two strong brigades of Suchet’s division, 10,000 bayonets. This withdrawal threw much harder work on the remainder of the army: Junot was left with not much more than 24,000 men, including the artillerymen, to maintain the investment of the whole city. He was forced to spread out the 3rd Corps on a very thin line, in order to occupy all the posts from which Suchet’s battalions had been withdrawn. Morlot’s division came down from the Monte Torrero to occupy the ground which Suchet had evacuated: Musnier had to cover the whole of the hill, and to support both the lines of approach on which the engineers were busy. Grandjean’s division remained on its old front, facing the eastern side of the city, and Gazan still blockaded the suburb beyond the Ebro. As the last-named general had still 8,000 men, there were only 15,000 bayonets and the artillery available for the siege, a force far too small to maintain a front nearly four miles long. If Palafox had dared to make a general sortie with all his disposable men, Junot’s position would have been more than hazardous. But the Captain-General contented himself with making numerous and useless sallies on a petty scale, sending out the most reckless and determined of his men to waste themselves in bickering with the guards of the trenches, when he should have saved them to head a general assault in force upon some weak point of the siege lines. The diaries and narratives of the French officers who served at Saragossa are full of anecdotes of the frantic courage shown by the besieged, generally to no purpose. One of the strangest has been preserved by the very prosaic engineer Belmas, who tells how a priest in his robes came out on January 6 in front of Gazan’s lines, and walked among the bullets to within fifty yards of the trenches, when he preached with great unction for some minutes, his crucifix in his hand, to the effect that the French had a bad cause and were drawing down God’s anger upon themselves. To the credit of his audience it must be said that they let him go off alive, contenting themselves with firing over his head, in order to see if they could scare him into a run.

At daybreak on January 10, the whole of the French batteries opened upon San José and the Pillar fort. The fire against the latter was distant and comparatively ineffective, but the masonry of San José began to crumble at once: its walls, solid though they were, had never been built to resist siege artillery. The roofs and tiles came crashing down upon the defenders’ heads, and most of their guns were silenced or injured. The besiegers suffered little—Belmas says that only one officer and ten men fell, though two guns in the most advanced battery were disabled. The loss of the Spaniards on the other hand was numbered by hundreds, more being slain by the fall of stones and slates than by the actual cannon balls and shells of the assailants. At nightfall Palafox withdrew most of the guns from the convent, but replaced the decimated garrison by three fresh battalions. It was clear that the work would fall next day unless the besiegers were driven off from their batteries. At 1 A.M., therefore, 300 men made a desperate sally to spike the guns. But the French were alert, and had brought up two field-pieces close to the convent, which repressed the sortie with a storm of grape.

Next morning the bombardment of San José recommenced, and by the afternoon a large breach had been established in its southern wall. At four o’clock General Grandjean launched a picked force, composed of the seven voltigeur companies of the 14th and 44th regiments, upon the crumbling defences[127]. The garrison had already begun to quit the untenable post, and only a minority remained behind to fight to the last. The storming column entered without much loss, partly by laying scaling-ladders to the foot of the breach, partly by using a small bridge of planks across the ditch, which the Spaniards had forgotten to remove. They only lost thirty-eight men, and made prisoners of about fifty of the garrison who had refused to retire into the city when the rest fled.

Though San José was thus easily captured, it was difficult to establish a lodgement in it, for the batteries on the enceinte of Saragossa searched it from end to end, dominating its ruined quadrangle from a superior height. But during the night the besiegers succeeded in blocking up its gorge, and in connecting the breach with their second parallel by a covered way of sandbags and fascines. The convent was now the base from which they were to attack the town-walls behind it.

But before continuing the advance in this direction it was necessary to carry the fort of Our Lady of the Pillar, the other great outwork of the southern front of Saragossa. The main attention of the besiegers was directed against this point from the twelfth to the fifteenth, and their sapping gradually took them to within a few yards of the counterscarp. The Spanish fire had been easily subdued, and a practicable breach established. On the night of the fifteenth-sixteenth the fort was stormed by the Poles of the 1st regiment of the Vistula. They met with little or no resistance, the greater part of the garrison having withdrawn when the assault was seen to be imminent. A mine under the glacis exploded, but failed to do any harm: another, better laid, destroyed the bridge over the Huerba, behind the fort, when the work was seen to be in the power of the assailants. Lacoste reported to Junot that the Poles lost only one killed and two wounded—an incredibly small casualty list[128].

The fall of the fort of the Pillar gave the French complete possession of all the ground to the south of the Huerba, and left them free to attack the enceinte of the city, which had now lost all its outer works save the Aljafferia: in front of that castle the ‘false attack’ made little progress, for the besiegers did not press in close, and contented themselves with battering the old mediaeval fortress from a distance. On that part of the line of investment nothing of importance was to happen.