If Campoverde and his army had been given no other task save the relief of Figueras, it is probable that this combat would have been but the commencement of a long series of operations. But he received, immediately after his check, the news that Suchet had marched from Lerida on April 28th, and had appeared in front of Tarragona on May 3rd. The capital of Catalonia was even more important than Figueras, and it was necessary to hasten to its aid, for no regular troops had been left in the southern part of the principality, save the single division of Courten, which had hastened to shut itself up in the city. Accordingly Sarsfield was directed to take 2,000 infantry and the whole cavalry of the army, and to march by the inland to threaten Suchet’s rear, and his communications with Lerida, while Campoverde himself came down to the coast with 4,000 men, embarked at Mataro, the nearest port in Spanish hands, and sailed for Tarragona, where he arrived in safety, to strengthen the garrison. Eroles came out of San Fernando with a few hundreds of his own troops, before the blockade was fully re-established, and joined Rovira in the neighbouring mountains, leaving the defence of the fortress to Martinez with five regular battalions[637] and 3,000 miqueletes. Eroles and Rovira were the only force left to observe Baraguay d’Hilliers, and since they had only a few thousand men, mostly irregulars, they were able to do little to help the place. For the besieging force was strengthened in May by the arrival of Plauzonne’s division from France, while Macdonald came up from Barcelona with a few battalions, and took over the command from Baraguay d’Hilliers. By the end of the month he had over 15,000 men, and had begun to shut in the fortress on its height by an elaborate system of contravallations, which he compares in his memoirs to Caesar’s lines around Alesia. Martinez made a most obstinate and praiseworthy defence—of which more hereafter—and the siege of Figueras dragged on for many months, till long after the more important operations around Tarragona had come to an end. But after Campoverde’s departure for the south there was never any hope that it could be relieved: all that its defenders accomplished was to detain and immobilize the whole 7th Corps, which, when it had garrisoned Barcelona and Gerona, and supplied the blockading force for San Fernando, had not a man disposable for work in other quarters. Thus Suchet had to carry out his operations against Tarragona without any external assistance, whereas, if Figueras had never been lost, he might have counted on much incidental help from his colleague Macdonald. This much was accomplished by the daring exploit of April 10th: if Campoverde had been capable of utilizing the chance that it gave him, its results might have been far more important.
SECTION XXVIII: CHAPTER II
THE SIEGE AND FALL OF TARRAGONA. MAY-JUNE 1811
Suchet had marched, as has been already mentioned, from Lerida, with Harispe’s division, on April 28th, Frère’s division following. On the 29th the head of the column reached Momblanch, where half a battalion was left behind in a fortified post, to keep open the Lerida road. On May 2nd the large manufacturing town of Reus, only ten miles from Tarragona, was occupied: on May 3rd the French advanced guard, Salme’s brigade, approached the city, and drove in the Catalan advanced posts as far as the river Francoli. But the siege could not begin till Habert’s force, escorting the battering-train, should come up from Tortosa; and this all-important column was much delayed. Its road ran along the seaside from the Col de Balaguer onward, and Codrington’s squadron of English frigates and gunboats accompanied it all the way, vexing and delaying it, by bombarding it whenever it was forced to come within gunshot of the beach. This was practically all the opposition that Suchet met with: a few miqueletes had shown themselves in the hills between Reus and Momblanch, but they were too weak to fight. Campoverde had carried off the best both of regulars and irregulars to the relief of Figueras, and Courten, who had barely 4,500 men in his division[638], had wisely shut himself up in Tarragona, where every man was wanted: for the enceinte was very long, and the sedentary garrison consisted of only five or six battalions. The troops inside the walls did not amount, when the siege began, to 7,000 men: hence came the weakness shown in the early days; it was not till Campoverde’s army came back from the north (May 10) that an adequate defensive force was in existence for such a large fortress.
Tarragona, though some of its fortifications were not skilfully planned, was a very strong place. The nucleus of the works was the circuit of the old Celtiberian town of Tarraco, which afterwards became the capital of Roman Spain. This forms the upper city in modern times. It is built on an inclined plane, of which the eastern end (530 feet above sea-level), where the cathedral lies, is the higher side, and the slope goes downhill, and westward: the southern face, that towards the sea, is absolutely precipitous, the northern one hardly less so. Large fragments of the Cyclopean walls built by the Celtiberians, or perhaps by the Carthaginians, are visible along the crest on both of these sides. On the west, the lowest part of the old town, a line of modern fortifications divided the upper town from the lower; there was a sharp drop along this line: in most places it is very steep, and the road of to-day goes up the hillside in zigzags, to avoid the break-neck climb[639]. Below the fortifications of the upper city, and divided from them by a broad belt of ground free of houses[640], lay the port-town or lower city, clustering around the harbour, which is an excellent roadstead shut in by a mole 1,400 feet long, which runs out from the south-west corner of the place. The lower city was enclosed on its northern and western sides by a front of six bastions; its southern side, facing the port and the open sea, had not, and did not need, any great protection; it could only have been endangered by an enemy whose strength was on the water, and who could bring a fleet into action. There was a sort of citadel in the port-town, a work named the Fuerte Real, which lies on an isolated mound inside the north-west angle of the walls. About 400 yards west of the most projecting bastion of the place the river Francoli flows into the sea, at the western end of the harbour. In the angle between the river and the port was an outlying work, Fort Francoli, destined to keep besiegers away from the shipping, which they might easily bombard from this point, if it were not occupied. This fort was connected with the lower town by a covered way protected by a long entrenchment containing two lunettes.
Notwithstanding the great strength of the high-lying upper city, it had been furnished with a second line of defence, outside its old Roman walls. Low down the hillside five forts, connected by a wall and covered way, protected its whole eastern front from the edge of the heights as far as the sea. The Barcelona road, crawling along the water’s edge, enters the place between two of these forts, and goes to the Lower, after sending a steep bypath up to a gate in the Upper, city[641].
On the west and north-west the high-lying fortress commands all the surrounding country-side. But to the due north there is a lofty hill about 800 yards from the walls, called Monte Olivo. This dominates the lower town, since it is 200 feet high, or more, though it is itself dominated by the upper town. An enemy in possession of it has every advantage for attacking the north front of the lower town. Wherefore, during the course of the last two years, the summit of the hill had been entrenched, and a very large hornwork, the Fuerte Olivo, constructed upon it. This was a narrow fort, following the shape of the crest of the hill, with a length of 400 yards, and embrasures for forty-seven guns. Its outer front was protected by a ditch hewn in the solid rock: its rear was only slightly closed with a low wall crowned by palisades, so as to leave it exposed to the fire of the upper city, if by any chance the enemy should get possession of it. Such an extensive work required a garrison of over 1,000 men—a heavy proportion of the 6,500 which formed the total force of the Spaniards at the commencement of the siege.
When Suchet arrived in front of Tarragona, and had driven the Spaniards within their works (May 3rd-4th), his chief engineer and artillery officers, Rogniat and Vallée, had to conduct a long and careful survey of the fortifications opposed to them. They concluded that the northern front of the city was practically impregnable, from its precipitous contours, and that the eastern front, though a little less rocky, was equally ineligible, because of the trouble which would be required to transport guns first across the high ground to the north-east, and then down to the seashore. The south front, being all along the water’s edge, was inaccessible. There remained only the western front, that formed by the lower city, where the defences lay in the plain of the Francoli, and had no dominance over the ground in front of them. There was an additional advantage for the besieger here, in that the soil was partly river sand, partly the well-broken-up loam of suburban market gardens, and in all cases very easy to dig. But if they were to attack the west front, the engineers required the General-in-Chief to accomplish two preliminary operations for them. He must take Fort Olivo, which commanded with its flanking fires much of the ground on which they intended to work, and he must drive away from the northern side of the harbour the Anglo-Spanish squadron which lay there, since its heavy guns would enfilade all works started for the purpose of approaching the western front of Tarragona in the neighbourhood of the mouth of the Francoli.
This being the programme laid down, Suchet took up his positions round the fortress—Harispe’s division had charge of the main part of the northern front, its French brigade (Salme) occupying the ground in front of Fort Olivo, while its two Italian brigades stretched eastward along the distant heights, curving round so as to cut the Barcelona road along the sea-coast with their extreme detachment. Frère’s division had the central part of the lines, and lay on both sides of the course of the Francoli river, its main force, however, being on the left bank. Habert’s division, which had just come up from Tortosa, was placed near the mouth of the river, and facing towards the port; it formed the right wing of the army, and covered the siege-park, which was established at the village of Canonge, about a mile and a half from the walls of Tarragona. The magazines and hospitals were fixed at the large town of Reus, nine miles to the rear, under a considerable guard; for though the road from thence to the French lines ran over the gentle undulations of the coast plain, yet there was always danger that bands of miqueletes might descend from the hills for some daring enterprise. Several of the intermediate villages were fortified, to serve as half-way refuges for convoys and small parties on the move.