The food-problem, on which those who defend Augereau lay all the stress possible[350], was no doubt a very real one. The feeding of Barcelona, with its garrison and its large civil population, by means of convoys brought from France, was no easy task. But it seems clear that with the large force at his disposition—the 7th Corps was over 50,000 strong[351]—Augereau could have organized convoy-guards sufficiently powerful to defy the Spaniards, without abandoning the offensive position in front of Barcelona, which was all-important to him. He might have set aside 10,000 men for that purpose, and still have kept a strong field army together. Had he done so, O’Donnell could not have dared to march with 8,000 men, the pick of the Catalan army, to relieve Lerida, while his old enemies were massed, awaiting an impossible attack, a hundred miles away.
Meanwhile, the one task which was completed by the 7th Corps during the months of April and May was the reduction of Hostalrich. The little castle was a place of strength, perched high above the abandoned town to which it belonged. It was garrisoned by two battalions, one of Granadan regulars from Reding’s old division, the other of local Catalan levies[352], under Colonel Juliano Estrada, an officer of high spirit and commendable obstinacy. To the first summons made to him in January by Augereau, he had replied that ‘Hostalrich was the child of Gerona, and would know how to emulate the conduct of the mother-city.’ Nor was this high-flown epigram belied by the after-conduct of the garrison. Hostalrich held out from January 16 to May 12 without receiving either a convoy from without or any reinforcements. Twice the local miqueletes attempted to pass succours into the castle, but on each occasion they were driven off, after having barely succeeded in communicating with Estrada. Their convoys never got close enough to enter the gates. At last, on May 12, the provisions of the place were completely exhausted: thereupon Estrada took in hand a scheme which was only tried by one other governor during the whole Peninsular War—the Frenchman Brennier at Almeida in May 1811. He put every able-bodied man of the garrison under arms at midnight, issued silently from the castle, and charged at the besiegers’ lines, with the intention of cutting his way through to Campo Verde’s head quarters in the mountains. He was fortunate enough to pierce the Italian outposts at the first rush. But two whole brigades were presently at his heels, his guides lost their way among cliffs and ravines, and he was overtaken. Turning back with his rearguard to fend off the pursuers, he was wounded and taken prisoner. Ten other officers and some 300 soldiers shared his fate: the rest of the garrison dispersed in the hills, and reached Vich in small parties to the number of 800 men. If only their gallant commander had escaped with them, the exploit would have been an exact parallel to the Almeida sortie of 1811.
The reduction of Hostalrich and of a small fort on the Isles of Las Medas near the mouth of the Ter, were the last achievements of the Army of Catalonia while it was under the command of Augereau. On April 24 the Emperor had resolved to remove him from his post, and had ordered Marshal Macdonald, Duke of Tarentum, to relieve him. In the Moniteur it was merely stated that the elder Marshal had been forced by ill-health to resign his charge. But the real causes of his displacement are plainly stated in Napoleon’s letter to the Minister of War. They were the blow which he had given to the imperial prestige by his retreat to Gerona, and his disobedience in having failed to march on Lerida in aid of Suchet. It must be confessed that the wrath of the Emperor was justifiably roused. Its final manifestation took the shape of a minute directing that when the Moniteur published the news of the successes at Hostalrich and Las Medas, the name of Augereau was to be kept out of the paragraph, and only those of his subordinates mentioned[353].
While the new commander of the 7th Corps was on his way from Italy to Perpignan, and for some time after his arrival on May 22, there was a complete suspension of active operations. None of the French generals in the principality could do more than await orders, and keep the neighbourhood of his cantonments safe from the irrepressible miqueletes. The whole interest of the French operations in North-Western Spain during this period turns on the movements of the Army of Aragon.
On returning from his futile Valencian expedition, Suchet had found awaiting him at Saragossa orders to commence without delay the siege of Lerida, and promising that Augereau would ‘contain’ the Spanish army of Catalonia, and would ultimately open up communication with him by way of Cervera or Momblanch. In obedience to the imperial mandate, the commander of the 3rd Corps collected more than half his troops for the expedition against Lerida. This concentration entailed the abandonment of the rough country of Southern Aragon to Villacampa and his bands; for having determined to leave only Laval’s division behind him to protect the central parts of the province, Suchet had to evacuate the region of Teruel, Albaracin and Montalvan. Laval’s two brigades remained in the valley of the Jiloca, between Saragossa and Daroca, watching the debouches from the mountains. The other two divisions of the Army of Aragon were destined for the siege of Lerida. Musnier, with one column, marching down from Caspe and Alcañiz[354], crossed the Ebro at Flix, and approached Lerida from the south. Habert, with his division, coming from the side of Saragossa, made for the same goal by way of Alcubierre and Monzon. It might seem a dangerous experiment to march the two isolated columns across the Spanish front, for a junction at a point so remote from their respective starting-points. But, for the moment, there was no hostile force of any importance in their neighbourhood. Severoli and Augereau being still at Reus, when Musnier and Habert started on their way, O’Donnell could spare no troops for the relief of Lerida. It was not till they had retired, and the Duke of Castiglione had withdrawn all his forces to Hostalrich and Gerona, that the Captain-General found himself free for an expedition to the West. In front of Musnier, while he was marching on Lerida, there were nothing but trifling detachments sent out for purposes of observation by the Governor of Tortosa. In front of Habert there were only 2,000 men under Colonel Perena, thrown out from Lerida to observe the open country between the Segre and the Cinca. This was the sole field-force which remained from the old Spanish Army of Aragon, with the exception of the two dilapidated regiments that formed the nucleus of Villacampa’s band.
On April 10, Suchet arrived at Monzon with a brigade of infantry, and the six companies of artillery and four of engineers which were destined for the siege of Lerida. On the thirteenth he was before the walls of the place on the west bank of the Segre, while on the next day Habert appeared on the other bank, driving before him Colonel Perena and his battalions. This second French column had passed the Segre at Balaguer, from which it had expelled the Spanish brigade. Perena, having the choice between returning into the mountains or strengthening the garrison of Lerida, had taken the latter alternative. On the same day Musnier came up from the South, and joined the army with the force that had started from Alcañiz and had crossed the Ebro at Flix. Suchet had now concentrated the whole of the 13,000 men[355] whom he destined for the siege.
The town of Lerida, then containing some 18,000 inhabitants, lies in a vast treeless plain on the western bank of the broad and rapid Segre. Its topography is peculiar: out of the dead level of the plain rise two steep and isolated hills. One of these, about 800 yards long by 400 broad, and rising 150 feet above the surrounding flats, is crowned by the citadel of the town; the other, somewhat longer but rather narrower, is no other than the hill about which Caesar and Afranius contended in the old Civil Wars of Rome, when Lerida was still Ilerda. It lies about three-quarters of a mile from the first-named height. In 1810 its culminating summit was covered by a large work called Fort Garden, and its southern and lower end was protected by the two small redoubts called San Fernando and El Pilar. The town occupies the flat ground between the citadel-height and the river. It has no trans-pontine suburb, but only a strong tête-du-pont on the other side of the Segre. The strength of the place lay in the fact that its whole eastern front was protected by the river, its whole western front by the high-lying citadel. The comparatively short southern front was under the guns of Fort Garden, which commanded all the ground over which an enemy could approach this side of the town. There only remained, unprotected by outer works, the northern front, and this was the point which a skilful enemy would select as his objective. Another fact which much favoured the defence was that the besieger was forced to make very long lines of investment, since he had to shut in not only the town, but the whole plateau on which lie Fort Garden and its dependent works. Moreover, he must keep a force beyond the Segre, to block the tête-du-pont, and this force must be a large one, because the east was the quarter from which succours sent from Catalonia must certainly appear. The garrison, on the other hand, was quite adequate to man the works entrusted to it; the entry into the town of Perena’s Aragonese battalions had brought it up to a strength of over 8,000 men. The artillery were the weak point—there were only 350 trained men to man over 100 pieces. The Governor was Major-General Garcia Conde, who owed his promotion to his brilliant achievements at Gerona in the preceding September.
Suchet’s 13,000 men were insufficient for a close and thorough investment of such a large space as that covered by the Lerida-Garden fortifications. He was forced to leave a considerable part of its southern front watched by cavalry posts alone. Of his total force, Musnier, with six battalions and the greater part of the cavalry—about 4,000 men in all, was beyond the river. Three battalions blocked the tête-du-pont, the rest formed a sort of covering force, destined to keep off the approach of enemies from the side of Catalonia. On the hither side of the Segre the three brigades of Habert, Buget, and Vergès were encamped facing the western and north-western fronts of Lerida. They counted only thirteen battalions, being weakened by 1,200 men who had been detached to garrison Monzon and Fraga. The communication between Musnier’s division and the rest of the army was by a flying bridge thrown across the Segre two miles above the town; it was guarded by a redoubt. The artillery park was placed at the village of San Rufo, opposite the north-western angle of the town, from which it is distant about 2,500 yards. It was evident from the first that this would be the point of attack selected by the French engineers.
The army had barely taken up its position when, on April 19, rumours were spread abroad that O’Donnell was on his way to relieve Lerida. They must have been pure guesses, for the Spanish general on that day was still at Tarragona and had made no movement. They were, however, sufficiently persistent to induce Suchet to take off Musnier’s covering corps, strengthened by three other battalions, on a mission of exploration, almost as far as Tarrega, on the Barcelona road. No Spanish force was met, nor could any information be extracted from the inhabitants. The absence of the troops on the left bank of the Segre was soon detected by Garcia Conde, who—to his great regret three days later—sent messengers to inform O’Donnell that the French lines to the east of the city were now almost unoccupied.
The fiery O’Donnell was already on his way when this news reached him. The moment that he was sure that Augereau had left Barcelona and was retreating northward, he had resolved to fly to the relief of Lerida with the two divisions of which he could dispose. On the twentieth he marched from Tarragona by Valls and Momblanch, with 7,000 regular infantry, 400 horse, a single battery, and some 1,500 miqueletes. On the twenty-third he had reached Juneda, twelve miles from Lerida, without having seen a French picket or having been detected himself. He intended to drive off the few battalions blocking the bridge-head, and to open up communication with the besieged town that same day. Unfortunately for him, Suchet and Musnier had returned on the previous night from their expedition to Tarrega, and were now lying at Alcoletge, three miles north of the bridge-head, with seven battalions and 500 cuirassiers.