Meanwhile, though Macdonald imagined that he was not only protecting Suchet’s northern flank, but also attracting the attention of O’Donnell to himself, the enterprising Spanish general had contrived an unwelcome surprise for him. He knew that he was not strong enough to fight the 7th Corps in the open field, nor even to face Suchet by making another attempt to relieve Tortosa—which place, for the moment, was in no immediate danger. He therefore resolved to draw Macdonald from his present position, by a blow at the corner of Catalonia where the French were weakest.
The Marshal considered that Baraguay d’Hilliers was perfectly safe in the northern region which he garrisoned, since no regular Spanish force was now in arms in that direction. O’Donnell resolved to undeceive him. Leaving the two divisions of Obispo and Eroles to block the road from Macdonald’s post at Cervera to Barcelona, with orders to retire into Tarragona if hard pressed, he ordered a third division, that of Campoverde, to prepare for a forced march to the north. At the same time a force, consisting of the British frigate Cambrian and the Spanish frigate Diana, convoying a few transports with 500 men on board for disembarkation, sailed from Tarragona, for a destination which was kept secret to the last moment. The troops were under Doyle, the British commissioner in Catalonia; Captain Fane of the Cambrian was senior naval officer.
O’Donnell’s march was perilous: he had to pass close to the front of the garrisons of Barcelona, Hostalrich, and Gerona, through a most difficult and mountainous country, without giving any signs of his presence; for, if his movement were discovered, Baraguay d’Hilliers might concentrate his scattered brigades, and crush him by force of numbers. The march, however, was carried out with complete success, and on September 13 O’Donnell lay with 6,000 infantry and 400 horse at Vidreras, south of Gerona, while the naval force was hovering off Palamos, the nearest point on the coast. The rough region between Gerona and the sea was at this moment occupied by half Rouyer’s division of troops of the Confederation of the Rhine, under Schwartz—the ever-unlucky general whose name was connected with the disasters of Bruch[601] and Manresa[602]. He had with him four weak battalions of the 5th (Anhalt-Lippe) and 6th (Schwartzburg-Waldeck-Reuss) regiments, and a squadron of cuirassiers: a force which, owing to the sickliness of the autumn season, did not amount to much more than 1,500 men in all. But he was so close to Gerona[603], where lay Rouyer’s other two regiments, and some French troops, that he was not considered in any danger by his superiors. Schwartz’s main duty was to prevent any communication between the somatenes of the inland and the cruisers which were always passing up and down the coast. Provoked by a recent raid at Bagur, on September 10, where an English landing-party had stormed one of his coast batteries, and captured the garrison of 50 men, Schwartz had just strengthened all his posts along the shore. He had only 700 men at his head quarters at La Bispal; the rest were dispersed between Bagur, San Feliu, Palamos, and the connecting post at Calonje. On the morning of the fourteenth he was stricken with horror when his outposts informed him that they had been driven in by Spanish infantry and cavalry in overwhelming force. He sent orders, too late, for his troops on the coast to concentrate, and prepared to fall back on Gerona with his whole force. But his messenger had hardly gone when he was attacked by O’Donnell, who drove him into the indefensible castle of La Bispal, which was commanded by a neighbouring hill and the church tower of the village. After losing some men shot down from these points of vantage, Schwartz surrendered at nightfall, when the Spaniards were preparing to storm his refuge. His defence cannot have been very desperate, as he had lost only one officer and four men killed, and three officers and sixteen men wounded. But this was only part of the disaster which befell the German brigade that day: by a careful timing of the attacks Doyle and Fane stormed Palamos with the landing-force at the same moment that La Bispal was being attacked, while Colonel Fleires, with a detachment of O’Donnell’s land troops, surprised San Feliu, and Colonel Aldea with another cut off the companies at Calonje. In all the Spaniards captured on that day one general, two colonels, fifty-six officers, and 1,183 rank and file, with seventeen guns. Schwartz’s brigade was absolutely destroyed; only a few stragglers reached Gerona, from which no help had been sent, because O’Donnell had turned loose all the somatenes of the region to demonstrate against the place[604].
Without waiting for Rouyer and Baraguay d’Hilliers to assemble their forces, O’Donnell departed from the scene of his exploits without delay. He himself, having received a severe wound in the foot, embarked with the prisoners on board Fane’s ships and returned to Tarragona. Campoverde, with the land-force, retired hastily past Gerona to the mountains of the north, retook Puycerda, beat up the outposts of the French garrison of Montlouis on the frontier of Cerdagne, and raised some contributions on the other side of the Pyrenees. From thence he descended the Segre, and established himself at Cardona and Calaf, facing Macdonald’s northern flank.
So thoroughly had the main body of the 7th Corps lost touch with the troops left behind at Gerona and in the Ampurdam, that the news of the disaster of La Bispal only reached Macdonald, via France and Saragossa, more than a fortnight after it had happened. It alarmed him for the safety of the north, but did not suffice to draw him away from Suchet, as O’Donnell had hoped. The news that the Spanish raiding division had disappeared from the neighbourhood of Gerona encouraged him to remain in his present position, which alone made the siege of Tortosa possible. Presently he was informed that a considerable force had appeared in his own sphere of operations—this being the same division of Campoverde which had done all the mischief in the north. He therefore marched on October 18, with two French and two Italian brigades, to attack this new enemy. On the next day he occupied Solsona, where the Junta of Upper Catalonia had hitherto been sitting. The place was found deserted by its inhabitants, and was plundered; its great cathedral was burnt—either by accident or design. On the twenty-first, however, when the Marshal came in front of Cardona, he found the town, the inaccessible castle above it, and the neighbouring heights, manned by Campoverde’s division, strengthened by several thousand somatenes of the district. The Italian general Eugenio marched straight at the position, with Salme’s French brigade in support, despising his enemy, and not waiting for the Commander-in-Chief and the reserves. He met with a sharp repulse, for the Spaniards charged his columns just as they drew near the crest, and hurled them down with loss. Macdonald refused to throw in all his troops, and contented himself with bringing off the routed brigade. He then returned to Solsona and Cervera, much harassed in his retreat by the somatenes. It is curious that he did not press the combat further, as he had a large superiority of numbers over the Catalan division, and had not lost much more than 100 men in the first clash[605]. But the position was formidable, and the Marshal more than once in this campaign showed himself averse to taking risks. Perhaps, also, he may have already made up his mind to return to the east and abandon Suchet, since it was at about this time that more disquieting information from Baraguay d’Hilliers reached him by way of France.
This new budget of troubles contained two main items. The first was that the August supplies thrown into Barcelona were nearly exhausted, and that the town urgently required revictualling. The second was that it was impossible to send on the necessary convoys, because of the extreme activity of the somatenes, and the inadequate number of troops left in Northern Catalonia. One considerable train of waggons had been captured and destroyed near La Junquera, on the very frontier of France, by the Baron de Eroles, who had now taken up the command of the northern insurgents. Another was standing fast at Gerona for want of sufficient escort, a third had been collected at Perpignan, but dared not start. So pressing was the need for the relief of Barcelona, that Macdonald made up his mind that he must break up from his present cantonments—even at the risk of making the siege of Tortosa impossible—and transfer himself to the north-east.
Accordingly, on November 4, he commenced a toilsome march by way of Calaf, Manresa, and Hostalrich to Gerona, where he arrived in safety on the 10th. Campoverde followed him, for some way, by parallel paths along the mountains, but never dared to strike, the strength of the 7th Corps when it marched in a mass being too great for him. It is probable that the Marshal would have had more trouble if O’Donnell had been in the field, but that enterprising general was not yet healed of the wound which he had received at La Bispal. It had gangrened, and he had been sent to Majorca by his physicians, who declared that a complete cessation from military work was the only chance of saving his life. The interim command was turned over in November to the senior Lieutenant-General in Catalonia, Miguel Iranzo, a very poor substitute for the hard-fighting Spanish-Irish general.
Macdonald, having joined Baraguay d’Hilliers, had now an imposing mass of troops under his hand. Moreover, he got back the services of his old divisional generals Souham and Pino, who arrived from sick leave, and took over charge of the divisions lately in the charge of Frère and Severoli. A great draft from France and Italy had rejoined in their company. The Marshal was therefore able to collect the fractions of the great convoy destined for Barcelona, and to conduct it to that city after a slow and cautious march on November 25. He then changed the battalions in the garrison of Barcelona, where he left both Pino and Souham, sent back to the Ampurdam the troops he had borrowed from Baraguay d’Hilliers, as escort for the returning convoy, and marched for the second time to join Suchet; moving by way of Momblanch, he got once more into touch with the Army of Aragon at Falcet, near Mora, on December 12.
Thus the campaign came back, at mid-winter, to the same aspect that it had shown in the first days of September. It has been the wont of military critics to throw the blame for the lost three months on Macdonald[606]. But this seems unfair: it is true that he was absent from the post which he had promised to hold, for the protection of Suchet’s rear, from November 4 to December 13. But why had so little been done to forward the siege of Tortosa during the time from September 4 to November 4—two whole months—while the Marshal was in the covenanted position, and actually carrying out his promise to contain the Catalans, and leave Suchet’s hands free for the actual prosecution of the projected siege? The commander of the Army of Aragon had been given two of the best campaigning months of the year—September and October—and had no enemy about him save the ever-unlucky Valencian army, the local somatenes of the Lower Ebro, and the scattered bands of Villacampa in the hills of Upper Aragon. It was only sixty miles from his base at Mequinenza, where his siege-train had been collected months before, to the walls of Tortosa, and he had brought up his field army before that place as early as August. No doubt the country between Mequinenza and Tortosa is rough, and its roads execrable, while water-transport along the Ebro was rendered more difficult than usual by a rather dry autumn, which kept the river low. But twenty-six heavy siege-guns were got down to Xerta, only ten miles from Tortosa, as early as September 5, during a lucky flood, while a considerable number more were pushed to the front during the same month, by the land route, formed by Suchet’s new military road from Caspe to Mora. It seems, therefore, that Suchet’s inactivity in September and October can be explained neither by laying blame on Macdonald, nor by exaggerating the difficulties of transport. If, as he wrote himself, ‘Notre corps d’armée se trouvait enchaîné sur le bas Ebre, sans pouvoir agir, et son chef n’avait d’espoir que dans une crue d’eau et dans le secours des circonstances[607],’ he was himself responsible for his failure, either from over-caution or because he had undertaken a task beyond his means. The real cause of his two months’ delay was the vigorous action of the enemy. There was no danger from the disorganized Valencian army, which only made a feeble attempt on November 26-27 to beat up the small force under General Musnier, which lay at Uldecona to cover the blockade of Tortosa from the south; the attack, led by Bassecourt, was driven off with ease. The real opponents of Suchet were the irregular forces of the Catalans, and the Aragonese insurgents in his rear. The former, though few in numbers, since Macdonald was attracting their main attention, attacked every convoy that tried to float down the gorge of the Ebro, and sometimes with success. On the 15th of September they captured a whole battalion of Pignatelli’s Neapolitans, which was acting as guard to some boats. On other occasions they took or destroyed smaller or greater portions of flotillas carrying guns or stores to Xerta, where the siege park was being collected. But Villacampa’s Aragonese gave even greater trouble; from his lair in the Sierra de Albaracin that enterprising partisan made countless descents upon Suchet’s rear, and so molested the garrisons of Upper Aragon, that the French general had repeatedly to send back troops from his main body to clear the roads behind him. Villacampa was beaten whenever he tried to fight large bodies, even though he was aided by a General Carbajal, whom the Regency had sent from Cadiz with money and arms, to stir up a general revolt in the Teruel-Montalban region. The Polish General Chlopiski, detached in haste from the blockade of Tortosa, broke the forces of Carbajal and Villacampa in two successive engagements at Alventosa, on the borders of Valencia (October 31), and Fuensanta, near Teruel (November 11). The insurrection died down, Villacampa retired into his mountains, and Chlopiski returned to the main army. But only a few days later Suchet had to cope with a new danger: Macdonald having taken himself off to Gerona, the Catalans were at last able to detach regular troops to reinforce the somatenes of the Lower Ebro. A brigade under General Garcia Navarro came up to Falcet, opposite Mora, and formed the nucleus of a raiding force, which beset the whole left bank of the Ebro, and made its navigation almost impossible. Suchet had to detach against it seven battalions under Abbé and Habert, who attacked Navarro’s entrenched camp at Falcet on November 12, and stormed it. The Spanish general, who showed distinguished personal courage, and charged valiantly at the head of his reserves, was taken prisoner with some 300 men. The somatenes fled to the hills again, and the regulars retired to Reus, near Tarragona, where they were out of Suchet’s sphere of operations. It was just after this combat that the unfortunate Army of Valencia made the useless diversion of which we have already spoken[608]. It, at least, kept Suchet busy for a few days. By the time that it was over, the greater part of the remaining siege-material was ready at Xerta, the water-carriage down the Ebro having become easy since Garcia Navarro’s defeat. When, therefore, Macdonald’s arrival at Momblanch was reported at Suchet’s head quarters, and an adequate covering-force was once more placed between him and the Catalan army in the direction of Tarragona, the actual leaguer of Tortosa could at length begin. It lasted, short though it was, till the New Year of 1811 had come, and must, therefore, be described not here but in the fourth volume of this work.
Thus six months had elapsed between the fall of Lerida and the commencement of the next stage of the French advance in Eastern Spain. If it is asked why the delay was so long, the answer is easy: it was due not, as some have maintained, to Suchet’s slowness or to Macdonald’s caution, but solely to the splendid activity displayed by Henry O’Donnell, a general often beaten but never dismayed, and to the tenacity of the Catalans, who never gave up hope, and were still to hold their own, after a hundred disasters, till the tide of success in the Peninsula at last turned back in 1812-13.