On May 23, however, Suchet, with Musnier’s and Laval’s men, presented himself in front of Blake’s position at Alcañiz. He had fourteen battalions and five squadrons with him—a force in all of about 8,000 men, with eighteen guns[518]. He found the Spaniards ready and willing to fight. They were drawn up on a line of hills to the east of Alcañiz, covering that town and its bridge. Their position was good from a tactical point of view, but extremely dangerous when considered strategically: for Blake had been tempted by the strong ground into fighting with the river Guadalope at his back, and had no way of crossing it save by the single bridge of Alcañiz and a bad ford. It was an exact reproduction of the deplorable order of battle that the Russians had adopted at Friedland in 1807, though not destined to lead to any such disaster. The northern and highest of the three hills occupied by the Spaniards, that called the Cerro de los Pueyos, was held by the Aragonese troops. On the central height, called the hill of Las Horcas, was placed the whole of the Spanish artillery—nineteen guns—guarded by three Valencian battalions: this part of the line was immediately in front of the bridge of Alcañiz, the sole line of retreat. The southern and lowest hill, that of La Perdiguera, was held by Roca and the rest of the Valencians, and flanked by the small body of cavalry—only 400 sabres—which Blake possessed[519]. The whole army, not quite 9,000 strong, outnumbered the enemy by less than 800 bayonets, though in French narratives it is often stated at 12,000 or 15,000 men[520].
Suchet seems to have found some difficulty at first in making out the Spanish position—the hills hid from him the bridge and town of Alcañiz, whose position in rear of Blake’s centre was the dominant military fact of the situation. At any rate, he spent the whole morning in tentative movements, and only delivered his main stroke in the afternoon. He began by sending Laval’s brigade against the dominating hill on the right flank of the Spanish position. Two assaults were made upon the Cerro de los Pueyos, which Suchet in his autobiography calls feints, but which Blake considered so serious that he sent off to this flank two battalions from his left wing and the whole of his cavalry. Whether intended as mere demonstrations or as a real attack, these movements had no success, and were repelled by General Areizaga, the commander of the Aragonese, without much difficulty. The Spanish cavalry, however, was badly mauled by Suchet’s hussars when it tried to deliver a flank charge upon the enemy at the moment that he retired.
When all the fighting on the northern extremity of the line had died down, Suchet launched his main attack against Blake’s centre, hoping (as he says) to break the line, seize the bridge of Alcañiz, which lay just behind the hill of Las Horcas, and thus to capture the greater part of the Spanish wings, which would have no line of retreat. The attack was delivered by two of Musnier’s regiments[521] formed in columns of battalions, and acting in a single mass—a force of over 2,600 men. A column of this strength often succeeded in bursting through a Spanish line during the Peninsular War. But on this day Suchet was unlucky, or his troops did not display the usual élan of French infantry. They advanced steadily enough across the flat ground, and began to climb the hill, in spite of the rapid and accurate fire of the artillery which crowned its summit. But when the fire of musketry from the Spanish left began to beat upon their flank, and the guns opened with grape, the attacking columns came to a standstill at the line of a ditch cut in the slope. Their officers made every effort to carry them forward for the few hundred yards that separated them from the Spanish guns, but the mass wavered, surged helplessly for a few minutes under the heavy fire, and then dispersed and fled in disorder. Suchet rallied them behind the five intact battalions which he still possessed, but refused to renew the attack, and drew off ere night. He himself had been wounded in the foot at the close of the action, and his troops had suffered heavily—their loss must have been at least 700 or 800 men[522]. Blake, who had lost no more than 300, did not attempt to pursue, fearing to expose his troops in the plain to the assaults of the French cavalry.
The morale of the 3rd Corps had been so much shaken by its unsuccessful début under its new commander, that a panic broke out after dark among Laval’s troops, who fled in all directions, on a false alarm that the Spanish cavalry had attacked and captured the rearguard. Next morning the army poured into San Per and Hijar in complete disorder, and some hours had to be spent in restoring discipline. Suchet discovered the man who had started the cry of sauve qui peut, and had him shot before the day was over[523].
The French had expected to be pursued, and many critics have blamed Blake for not making the most of his victory and following the defeated enemy at full speed. The Spanish general, however, had good reasons for his quiescence: he saw that Suchet’s force was almost as large as his own; he could not match the French in cavalry; and having noted the orderly fashion in which they had left the battle-field, he could not have guessed that during the night they would disband in panic. Moreover—and this was the most important point—he was expecting to receive in a few days reinforcements from Valencia which would more than double his numbers. Till they had come up he would not move, but contented himself with sending the news of Alcañiz all over Aragon and stimulating the activity of the insurgents. As he had hoped, the results of his victory were important—the French had to evacuate every outlying post that they possessed, and the whole of the open country passed into the hands of the patriots. Perena and the insurgents of the north bank of the Ebro pressed close in to Saragossa: other bands threatened the high-road to Tudela: thousands of recruits flocked into Blake’s camp, but he was unfortunately unable to arm or utilize them.
Within a few days, however, he began to receive the promised reinforcements from Valencia—a number of fresh regiments from the rear, and drafts for the corps that were already with him[524]. He also used his authority as supreme commander in Catalonia to draw some reinforcements from that principality—three battalions of Reding’s Granadan troops and one of miqueletes: no more could be spared from in front of the active St. Cyr. Within three weeks after his victory of Alcañiz he had collected an army of 25,000 men, and considered himself strong enough to commence the march upon Saragossa. It was in his power to advance directly upon the city by the high-road along the Ebro, and to challenge Suchet to a battle outside its southern gates. He did not, however, make this move, but with a caution that he did not often display, kept to the mountains and marched by a side-road to Belchite [June 12]. Here he received news of Napoleon’s check at Essling, which had happened on the twenty-second of the preceding month; it was announced as a complete and crushing defeat of the Emperor, and encouraged the Spaniards in no small degree.
From Belchite Blake, still keeping to the mountains, pursued his march eastward to Villanueva in the valley of the Huerba. This move revealed his design; he was about to place himself in a position from which he could threaten Suchet’s lines of communication with Tudela and Logroño, and so compel him either to abandon Saragossa without fighting, or to come out and attack the Spanish army among the hills. Blake, in short, was trying to manœuvre his enemy out of Saragossa, or to induce him to fight another offensive action such as that of Alcañiz had been. After the experience of May 25 he thought that he could trust his army to hold its ground, though he was not willing to risk an advance in the open, across the level plain in front of Saragossa.
Suchet meanwhile had concentrated his whole available force in that city and its immediate neighbourhood; he had drawn in every man save a single column of two battalions, which was lying at La Muela under General Fabre, with orders to keep back the insurgents of the southern mountains from making a dash at Alagon and cutting the high-road to Tudela. He had been writing letters to Madrid, couched in the most urgent terms, to beg for reinforcements. But just at this moment the Asturian expedition had drawn away to the north all the troops in Old Castile. King Joseph could do no more than promise that the two regiments from the 3rd Corps which had been lent to Kellermann should be summoned back, and directed to make forced marches on Saragossa. He could spare nothing save these six battalions, believing it impossible to deplete the garrison of Madrid, or to draw from Valladolid the single division of Mortier’s corps, which was at this moment the only solid force remaining in the valley of the Douro.
Suchet was inclined to believe that he might be attacked before this small reinforcement of 3,000 men could arrive, and feared that, with little more than 10,000 sabres and bayonets, he would risk defeat if he attacked Blake in the mountains. The conduct of his troops in and after the battle of Alcañiz had not tended to make him hopeful of the result of another action of the same kind. Nevertheless, when Blake came down into the valley of the Huerba, and began to threaten his communications, he resolved that he must fight once again; the alternative course, the evacuation of Saragossa and a retreat up the Ebro, would have been too humiliating. Suchet devoted the three weeks of respite which the slow advance of the enemy allowed him to the reorganization of his corps. He made strenuous exertions to clothe it, and to provide it with its arrears of pay. He inspected every regiment in person, sought out and remedied grievances, displaced a number of unsatisfactory officers, and promoted many deserving individuals. He claims that the improvement in the morale of the troops during the three weeks when they lay encamped at Saragossa was enormous[525], and his statements may be verified in the narrative of one of his subordinates, who remarks that neither Moncey nor Junot had ever shown that keen personal interest in the corps which Suchet always displayed, and that the troops considered their new chief both more genial and more business-like than any general they had hitherto seen, and so resolved to do their best for him[526].
Forced to fight, but not by any means confident of victory, the French commander discharged on to Tudela and Pampeluna his sick, his heavy baggage, and his parks, before marching out to meet Blake upon June 14. The enemy, though still clinging to the skirts of the hills, had now moved so close to Saragossa that it was clear that he must be attacked at once, though Suchet would have preferred to wait a few days longer, till he should have rallied the brigade from Old Castile. These two regiments, under Colonel Robert, had now passed Tudela, and were expected to arrive on the fifteenth or sixteenth. But Blake had now descended the valley of the Huerba, and had pushed his outposts to within ten or twelve miles of Saragossa. He had reorganized his army into three divisions, one of which (mainly composed of Aragonese troops) was placed under General Areizaga, while Roca and the Marquis of Lazan headed the two others, in which the Valencian levies predominated. Of the total of 25,000 men which the muster-rolls showed, 20,000 were in line: the rest were detached or in hospital. There were about 1,000 untrustworthy cavalry and twenty-five guns.