Meanwhile Suchet had spent the days while the Spaniards were debating in opening up the communications between his own army and Barcelona, which had so long been out of touch. He marched with the greater part of the divisions of Harispe and Frère, as has already been mentioned, to Villafranca and Villanueva de Sitjes, where he left the bulk of his troops, then by the pass of Ordal to Barcelona itself. Here General Maurice Mathieu was in a very isolated position, for since Macdonald had taken off all the disposable troops to the siege of Figueras, the city had been entirely cut off from him, the somatenes having intercepted the road, while English cruisers maintained a fairly effective blockade on the side of the sea. Suchet concerted with the governor a plan for opening up communication with Macdonald, and occupying the port of Mataro, north of Barcelona, where the Spaniards still had an access to the sea. He determined to bring up Harispe and Frère, and went back to pick them up. This he did, and returned with them to Barcelona on July 9th, while an expedition sent out by Maurice Mathieu seized Mataro.
But meanwhile Campoverde, reflecting that if the little ports between Tarragona and Barcelona were blocked to him, there still remained those between Barcelona and Rosas, had made a rapid march through the inland, and had arrived at Arens de Mar, north of Mataro, before Suchet returned to Barcelona. The bulk of Miranda’s division was safely shipped off on July 9th by Codrington, and transported to Valencia[667]. But the cavalry, refusing to abandon their horses, had turned westward, under a Colonel Gasca, and to the number of some 900 saved themselves by a most extraordinary march. Striking across northern Aragon, and dodging between the French garrisons, they reached the Upper Ebro near Tudela, where they forded the great river by the aid of guides lent them by the great guerrillero Mina. Once on the south bank, they executed another equally dangerous march, evading many French detachments, and rejoined Charles O’Donnell in the end of August, having travelled in six weeks no less than 740 miles, through the heart of a region which was supposed to be in military occupation by the enemy. Their loss was only four officers and fifty-three men, though 213 horses had perished in the mountains. This achievement sufficiently shows the superficial nature of Suchet’s occupation of Aragon: he could not prevent so large a body as 900 men from crossing it twice from end to end.
Campoverde, after shipping off Miranda’s infantry at Arens de Mar, had retired inland to Vich, where on the evening after the embarkation his disastrous captain-generalship came to an end. For he found waiting him there General Luis Lacy, sent by the Cadiz regency to relieve him in command. The new chief was a stranger to Catalonia, and the people would have preferred Eroles to lead them—indeed, a junta of Catalan officers had already offered to put themselves under his orders[668]. But Eroles, the most honourable of all the local leaders, refused to commit an act of indiscipline, and Lacy was recognized as Captain-General, while Campoverde absconded hastily by sea. Rejecting all idea of evacuating the principality, Lacy drew back into the mountains with the mere wreck of an army which had been handed over to him—some 2,000 or 3,000 men—and established himself at Solsona, where the Junta of Catalonia also took refuge. In this place and the neighbouring hill-towns he began to reorganize his demoralized troops, and to gather in recruits and deserters. But he was far too weak to do anything for the long-enduring garrison of Figueras, which was still holding out, though nearing its last gasp.
Suchet, after failing to prevent the embarkation of the Valencian division, had determined to spend some time in opening up free communication between Barcelona and Macdonald’s army in front of Figueras, as also between Barcelona and his own base of operations at Lerida. He must set matters on a satisfactory footing in Catalonia, before undertaking the great invasion of Valencia, which the Emperor had assigned as his next task. The expedition towards Macdonald’s rear was accomplished by Suchet himself with the divisions of Frère and Harispe. One column (Palombini’s Italians) marched up the valley of the Tenes river, by Monbuy and Codinas, the other and larger column followed the Congost river. Neither met with opposition, and they joined at the defile of Centelles above Vich. That town was occupied on July 15th, and flying columns sent out from it to Ripol, Olot, and Castelfollit. By means of these detachments Suchet got into touch with Macdonald, who was found to be holding Figueras closely blocked, and to be in no need of help, for though his army was sickly, yet the besieged garrison was known to be in a desperate condition, and its surrender was expected to occur at any moment. Determining that Macdonald could shift for himself, and would be able to overrun all northern Catalonia when his army was set free from the siege, Suchet turned back from Vich, with the object of achieving his second aim, the clearing of the road from Barcelona to Lerida. This great route was safe for large detachments—indeed, Montmarie’s brigade had marched along it almost unmolested ten days back. But it could not be used by convoys or small parties, so long as the Spaniards were in possession of the mountain of Montserrat, which overhangs it for many miles. This lofty peak, the projecting angle of one of the chief Catalan sierras, was the nearest point to Barcelona now in the hands of the patriots. It was occupied at this moment by Eroles and some 1,500 miqueletes, who continually made descents into the plain from their fastness. The Montserrat is a fantastic pile of rock, whose highest point reaches 4,000 feet above the sea-level; it is mainly composed of red slate, a geological formation which runs to precipices, and at first sight the enormous bulk—its circumference is fifteen miles—looks almost inaccessible. But several paths run up among its clefts, and on a platform 3,000 feet up lies the sanctuary of Our Lady of Montserrat, the oldest and formerly the richest sanctuary of Catalonia, with a great Renaissance church and a large monastery. Most of the monks had fled to Majorca with their treasure in 1808, and their empty home served as the head quarters of the local miqueletes, and the magazine of their munitions. For cargoes of arms and stores, run ashore on the central Catalan coast, were generally forwarded to Montserrat for distribution. The mountain was not regularly fortified, indeed it was too large for fortification, but there were two batteries with ten guns placed across the only practicable road which led up to the sanctuary from the north, and the buildings themselves, far above, had been loopholed and barricaded. Nothing save its own steepness protected a minor path which climbs to the monastery from the village of Colbato. Another from Monistrol, which lies in the plain to the north-west, had been blasted away in places. The aspect of the peak was formidable, but its strength was more apparent than real, when it was held by no more than 1,500 irregular troops: for over and above the known paths there were many places where lightly equipped men could scramble, over slopes which were only precipitous in certain sections. When a very large force delivered a concentric attack on the mountain, it was impossible for the small garrison to block every possible point up which active assailants might make their way.
Suchet had brought up more than 10,000 men for the attack, including a battalion or two borrowed from the garrison of Barcelona. Abbé’s brigade was to make the main assault along the road: Montmarie’s brigade, now returned from Lerida, was to menace the steep path from Colbato to the summit; Harispe and Frère, lower down towards the plain, watched the Igualada and Manresa roads, the Barcelona troops the road to the south by Bruch. On July 25th the assault was delivered by Abbé’s five battalions: they were scarcely opposed on the lower slopes, but met with a fierce resistance at the first battery, near the chapel of Saint Cecilia, 1,200 yards from the monastery. Here the column halted, to throw out swarms of skirmishers over the precipitous hillside. Some of them climbed high enough to bring an enfilading fire to bear on the Spanish guns, and as their discharge began to slacken, the grenadier companies charged up the road and captured them. The miqueletes fell back on the second battery, which was presently captured in the same fashion by the combination of a flanking fire and a frontal attack. The Spanish gunners, the only regulars present, stood to their guns to the last in the most gallant way, and were nearly all bayoneted. Abbé was rearranging his column for an attack on the fortified monastery above, when furious firing was heard to break out in its direction, and the garrison were presently seen streaming down the hillside to the east. A large body of the French skirmishers, thrown out for the first attack, had found their way over the rocks to the back of the sanctuary, where there are rough tracks leading to some hermitages which lie out far from the main buildings. When some 300 men had collected behind the monastery, they delivered an attack on it from the rear. The small reserve placed in the buildings was panic-stricken by an attack from this side—all the more so because they saw the rest of their comrades recoiling from the batteries below, which had already been taken. They fled, after making no great stand, and, joining the main body, rushed down the precipitous ravines on the east front of the peak, where a few perished by falls, but the majority got away safely over ground where the victors could not follow. So fell Montserrat, with a loss of only 200 men to the French and 400 to the Spaniards. The storming of the holy mountain was a picturesque rather than a really difficult achievement, but the blow inflicted on the Catalans was a very severe one: Montserrat had been looked upon as impregnable, and the protection of its patroness was supposed to have defended it for the three years during which the French had been holding Barcelona, which lies so close to its foot. The Spaniards had now no post left on the great road from Barcelona to Lerida, and Suchet disposed part of his army to hold this line, Palombini’s Italian brigade being left on Montserrat, while Frère’s division lay at Igualada, and two cavalry and one infantry regiments held Cervera and its neighbourhood (the ‘Llano de Urgel’ or flat land of western Catalonia) as far as the gates of Lerida. Abbé’s brigade went off southward, to join Musnier’s division (to which it belonged) on the lower Ebro.
With the fall of Montserrat ended Suchet’s Catalan campaign. He had subdued all that part of the principality which had been made over to him, when Napoleon broke up the old 7th Corps and assigned the districts of Lerida, Tortosa, and Tarragona to the Army of Aragon. He had now before him the long-projected invasion of Valencia, and intended to take it in hand, so soon as the brigades escorting the Tarragona prisoners should have returned to Saragossa, and the southern regions of Aragon should have been cleared of the insurgents, who had flocked down into them from the hills when Abbé’s brigade had been withdrawn to the north in June. For during the siege of Tarragona Villacampa had invested Teruel, in which a French battalion was shut up, Duran had attacked Calatayud, though without success, and a partisan named Campillo had raided as far as Cariñena, only thirty miles from Saragossa. During the month of August, when Suchet was able to dispose of the troops set free from Catalonia, flying columns under Harispe, Compère, and Peyri scoured all southern Aragon. Teruel was relieved, and Villacampa and his lieutenants were driven back into their old fastnesses in the sierras of Albaracin and Molina, the remotest recesses of the rugged land where Aragon and New Castile meet. But the Valencian expedition could not be taken in hand before the month of September had begun.
Meanwhile the siege of Figueras had lingered on for a month longer than Macdonald and Suchet had expected. The brigadier Martinez, with his five small regular battalions[669] and his 3,000 miqueletes, had made a most admirable defence. No assistance, not even any prospect of assistance, had been before them since Campoverde’s defeat on May 3rd. The whole field army of Catalonia had been drawn away to defend or relieve Tarragona, and Martinez had no friends near him save the somatenes of the Ampurdam and the Pyrenean valleys, who were willing, but weak and disorganized. Their most popular chief, the fighting priest Rovira, had gone off to Cadiz to ask for succour, but found there that Tarragona was rightly considered a far more important place to save, and that there was no hope for Figueras. All that the somatenes could do was to molest Macdonald’s convoys and foraging parties. May, June, and July wore slowly away, and Martinez was still holding out, with a garrison reduced to half-rations. Yet he was doing good service, since he was detaining in front of him the whole of the disposable troops of the 7th Corps, not to speak of some battalions of National Guards from the southern departments of France. No help from Macdonald could come to Suchet during the whole of the siege of Tarragona, or the subsequent operations about Montserrat. Instead it was Suchet who was forced to help Macdonald, by clearing his rear by the march to Vich.
The Duke of Tarentum had completed a great circumvallation around the rocky fortress of San Fernando, and had pushed forward batteries to within 500 yards of its walls, but he never attempted to breach them, or to storm the place. It is hard to make out why he made no such endeavour, for though the place is high lying and difficult of approach, it is not more so than the upper city of Tarragona, with which Suchet was dealing in such a prompt and drastic fashion. But from March to August Figueras was blockaded rather than besieged. Macdonald’s proceedings are all the more difficult to understand because his army was suffering severely from the heat during June and July—the National Guards and the newly arrived battalions from the interior of France were thinned by malarial fevers, and by pestilence bred by long tarrying in unsanitary camps. Probably we must ascribe his refusal to open trenches and proceed to battering-work and assault, to his memory of what had happened at Gerona. The 7th Corps had an evil tradition of the repeated failures to storm that city, and of the loss of life which had accompanied them. Figueras, it was clear, must fall sooner or later from starvation; there was no chance that it could be relieved; was it worth while to waste good soldiers in taking by force a place that must yield in a week or two for want of provisions? Macdonald evidently under-estimated the obstinacy of the defenders and the amount of their stores, and may have regretted in July that he had not started a regular siege in May. But it was now too late to begin it, since surrender was inevitable within a few days, as he supposed. Evidence of the distressed state of the garrison was forthcoming on July 17th, when Martinez turned out of the fortress, without any demand for exchange, 850 French and Italian prisoners who had been confined in the bomb-proofs since the commencement of the siege; they were in a half-starved condition, and reported that for some days they had hardly received any food at all[670]. General Guillot and the officers were not released—they were useful hostages, since their lives were at the disposition of the governor, in case the French should threaten to refuse quarter to irregulars, or make other harsh demands when the inevitable surrender should draw nearer.
The expectation that Martinez would hoist the white flag within a few days of the release of the prisoners was entirely falsified. He held out, suffering terrible privations, for another month; he was aware that Tarragona had fallen, that Campoverde’s army had gone to pieces, and that he had no hope of succour. But he rightly considered that it was his duty to detain the 7th Corps before his walls to the last possible moment. Meanwhile he kept up the spirits of his garrison as best he could, by assuring them that it was well within their power to break out through the adversary’s lines by a general sortie, when the last rations should have been issued. By August 16th this moment had arrived: the Spaniards had eaten not only the few horses in the place, but the dogs and rats[671]: only three days’ half-rations were left. The plan for the evasion was well designed: in the afternoon Rovira, who had returned with empty hands from Cadiz, showed himself on the hills nearest to Figueras with some 2,000 somatenes—all that could be collected; he made roving demonstrations against the north side of the French circumvallation, in the hope of drawing the reserves in that direction, but allowed himself to be driven away without serious resistance. After dark, however, Martinez sallied from the fortress on the opposite side—the south-west—in the direction of the sea, hoping to find the line thin on that front. He had brought with him every man who could march, and dashed at the circumvallation in one broad column. The hostile pickets and outposts were rolled in, but the Spaniards were brought up against an impassable abattis, while two batteries on each side began playing against the flanks of the mass. After vainly trying to break through for some minutes, they recoiled into the fortress, leaving 400 dead and wounded behind them.
Next morning (August 17th) General Baraguay d’Hilliers, judging that the enemy must now be thoroughly disheartened, sent in a parlementaire to propose capitulation. Martinez, aware that his last bolt was shot, agreed to surrender on the third day, that following the issue of the last half-ration in his stores. The garrison crawled out and laid down its arms on the 19th: it mustered something over 2,000 men still able to stand, and there were another 1,000 in the hospitals. From first to last some 1,500 more had perished during the four months and nine days that the siege had lasted. The French had suffered almost as heavily—4,000 men had died in the lines since March, many more from fever and dysentery than from shot and shell. Macdonald sought eagerly among the prisoners for the three young Catalans who had let their compatriots into San Fernando. The two brothers Pons had escaped with Eroles in June[672], but the third, Juan Marquez, was found, and hanged on a high gallows on the ravelin of the fortress.