Harispe’s column then continued its way, sweeping eastward towards the Murcian chaussée in the manner that Suchet had designed; but the rest of the operations of the French right wing were not so decisive as its commander had hoped. Mahy, learning of the movement of the encircling column, and seeing Robert’s brigade massed opposite the extreme flank of his position at Manises, while some notice of Reille’s near approach also came to hand, suddenly resolved that he would not be surrounded, and abandoned all his lines before they were seriously attacked. He had the choice of directing Villacampa and Obispo to retire towards Valencia and join Blake for a serious battle in the open, or of bidding them strike off southward and eastward, and escape towards the Xucar, abandoning the main body of the army. He chose the second alternative, and marched off parallel with Harispe’s threatening column, directing each brigade to get away as best it could. His force at once broke up into several fractions, for the cross-roads were many and perplexing. Some regiments reached the Murcian chaussée before Harispe, and escaped in front of him, pursued by the French cavalry. Others, coming too late, were forced to forgo this obvious line of retreat, and to struggle still farther eastward, only turning south when they got to the marshy borders of the lagoon of Albufera. Obispo, with 2,000 of his men, was so closely hunted by the hostile cavalry that he barely found safety by striking along the narrow strip of soft ground between the lagoon and the sea. On the morning of the 27th he struggled through to Cullera near the mouth of the Xucar: Mahy, with the greater part of Villacampa’s division and some of Obispo’s and Creagh’s, arrived somewhat earlier at Alcira, higher up the same stream, where he found the fugitive cavalry already established. The divisions were much disorganized, but they had lost very few killed or wounded, and not more than 500 prisoners. Mahy rallied some 4,000 or 5,000 men at Alcira, and Obispo a couple of thousand at Cullera, but they were a ‘spent force,’ not fit for action. Many of the raw troops had disbanded themselves and gone home.
Thus three-sevenths of Blake’s army were separated from Valencia and their Commander-in-Chief without having made any appreciable resistance. But it seems doubtful whether Mahy should be blamed—if he had waited an hour longer in his positions his whole corps might have been captured. If he had retired towards Valencia he would have been, in all probability, forced to surrender with the rest of the army a few days later. And in separating himself from his chief he had the excuse that he knew that Blake’s intention had been to retire towards the Xucar if beaten, not to shut himself up in Valencia. He may have expected that the rest of the army would follow him southward, and Blake (as we shall see) probably had the chance of executing that movement, though he did not seize it.
Meanwhile the progress of the engagement in other quarters must be detailed. Palombini made a serious attempt to break through the left centre of the Spanish lines at Mislata. His task was hard, not so much because of the entrenchments, or of the difficulty of crossing the Guadalaviar, which was fordable for infantry, but from the many muddy canals and water-cuts with which the ground in front of him abounded. These, though not impassable for infantry, prevented guns from getting to the front till bridges should have been made for them. The Italians waded through the first canal, and then through the river, but were brought to a stand by the second canal, that of Fabara, behind which the Spanish entrenchments lay. After a furious fire-contest they had to retire as far as the river, under whose bank many sought refuge—some plunged in and waded back to the farther side. Palombini rallied them and delivered a second attack; but at only one point, to the left of Mislata, did the assault break into the Spanish line. Zayas, aided by a battalion or two which Mahy had sent up from Quarte, vindicated his position, and repulsed the attack with heavy loss. But when the news came from the left that Harispe had turned the lines, and when Mahy’s troops were seen evacuating all their positions and hurrying off, Zayas found himself with his left flank completely exposed.
Blake made some attempt to form a line en potence to Zayas’s entrenchments, directing two or three of Creagh’s battalions from Quarte and some of his reserve from the city to make a stand at the village of Chirivella. But the front was never formed—attacked by some of Musnier’s troops these detachments broke up, Creagh’s men flying to follow Mahy, and the others retiring to the entrenched camp.
Thereupon Blake ordered Zayas and Lardizabal, who lay to his right, to retreat into Valencia before they should be turned by the approaching French. The movement was accomplished in order and at leisure, and all the guns in and about the Mislata entrenchments were brought away. Palombini had been too hardly handled to attempt to pursue.
The General-in-Chief seemed stunned by the suddenness of the disaster. ‘He looked like a man of stone,’ says Schepeler, who rode at his side, ‘when any observation was made to him he made no reply, and he could come to no decision. He would not allow Zayas to fight, and when a colonel (the author of this work) suggested at the commencement of the retreat that it would be well to burn certain houses which lay dangerously close to the entrenched camp, he kept silence. Whereupon Zayas observed in bitter rage to this officer: “Truly you are dull, my German friend; do you not see that you cannot wake the man up?”’ According to the narratives of several contemporaries there would still have been time at this moment to direct the retreating column southward and escape, as Obispo did, along the Albufera. For Habert (as we shall see) had been much slower than Harispe in his turning movement by the side of the Mediterranean. Some, among them Schepeler, suggest that the whole garrison might have broken out by the northern bridges and got away. For Palombini was not in a condition to hinder them, and the Neapolitans in front of the bridge-heads were but a handful of 1,200 men. But the General, still apparently unconscious of what was going on about him, drew back into the entrenched camp, and did no more.
Habert, meanwhile, finally completed his movement, and joined hands with Harispe at last. His lateness was to be accounted for not by the strength of the opposition made by the irregular troops in front of him, but by the fact that his advance had been much hindered by the fire of the flotilla lying off the mouth of the Guadalaviar. Here there was a swarm of gunboats supported by a British 74 and a frigate. Habert would not commence his passage till he had driven them away, by placing a battery of sixteen siege-guns on the shore near the Grao. After much firing the squadron sheered off[56], and about midday the French division crossed the Guadalaviar, partly by fording, partly on a hastily constructed bridge, and attacked the line of scattered works defended by irregulars which lay behind. The Spaniards were successively evicted from all of them, as far as the fort of Monte Oliveto. Miranda’s division kept within the entrenched camp, and gave no assistance to the bands without; but it was late afternoon before Habert had accomplished his task, and finally got into touch with Harispe.
Blake was thus shut up in Valencia with the divisions of Miranda, Zayas, and Lardizabal, and what was left of his raw reserve battalions: altogether some 17,000 fighting-men remained with him. The loss in actual fighting had been very small—about 500 killed and wounded and as many prisoners. The French captured a good many guns in the evacuated works and a single standard. Suchet returned his total casualties at 521 officers and men, of whom no less than 50 killed and 355 wounded were among Palombini’s Italians—the only corps which can be said to have done any serious fighting[57]. The Marshal’s strategical combination would have been successful almost without bloodshed, if only Palombini had not pressed his attack so hard, and with so little necessity. But the Spanish army, which was drawn out on a long front of nine miles, without any appreciable central reserve, and with no protection for its exposed flank, was doomed to ruin the moment that the enemy appeared in overwhelming force, beyond and behind its extreme left wing. Blake’s only chance was to have watched every ford with great vigilance, and to have had a strong flying column of his best troops ready in some central position, from which it could be moved out to dispute Suchet’s passage without a moment’s delay. Far from doing this, he tied down his two veteran divisions to the defence of the strongest part of his lines, watched the fords with nothing but cavalry vedettes, and kept no central reserve at all, save 2,000 or 3,000 men of his untrustworthy ‘Reserve Division.’ In face of these dispositions the French were almost bound to be successful. A disaster was inevitable, but Blake might have made it somewhat less ruinous if he had recognized his real position promptly, and had ordered a general retreat, when Harispe’s successful turning movement became evident. In this case he would have lost Valencia, but not his army.