The total number of prisoners yielded up by Valencia was 16,270 regular troops, of whom some 1,500 were sick or wounded in the hospitals. The urban guards and armed peasants, who were supposed to be civilians covered by the amnesty article in the capitulation, are not counted in the total. The regulars marched out of the Serranos gate on January 10, and after laying down their arms and colours were sent prisoners to France, marching in two columns, under the escort of Pannetier’s brigade, to Saragossa. Twenty-one colours and no less than 374 cannon (mostly heavy guns in the defences) were given over, as also a very large store of ammunition and military effects, but very little food, which was already beginning to fail in the city when Blake surrendered.
To prevent unlicensed plunder Suchet did not allow his own troops to enter Valencia till January 14th, giving the civil authorities four days in which to make preparations for the coming in of the new régime. He was better received than might have been expected—apparently Blake’s maladroit dictatorship had thoroughly disgusted the people. Many of the magistrates bowed to the conqueror and took the oath of homage to King Joseph, and the aged archbishop emerged from the village where he had hidden himself for some time, and ‘showed himself animated by an excellent spirit’ according to the Marshal’s dispatch.
This prompt and tame submission did not save Valencia from dreadful treatment at the victor’s hands. Not only did he levy on the city and district a vast fine of 53,000,000 francs (over £2,120,000), of which 3,000,000 were sent to Madrid and the rest devoted to the profit of the Army of Aragon, but he proceeded to carry out a series of atrocities, which have been so little spoken of by historians that it would be difficult to credit them, if they were not avowed with pride in his own dispatches to Berthier and Napoleon.
The second article of Blake’s capitulation, already cited above, had granted a complete amnesty for past actions on the part of the Valencians—’Il ne sera fait aucune recherche pour le passé contre ceux qui auraient pris une part active à la guerre ou à la révolution,’ to quote the exact term. In his dispatch of January 12 to Berthier, Suchet is shameless enough to write: ‘I have disarmed the local militia: all guilty chiefs will be arrested, and all assassins punished; for in consenting to Article II of the Capitulation my only aim was to get the matter over quickly[63].’ ‘Guilty chiefs’ turned out to mean all civilians who had taken a prominent part in the defence of Valencia: ‘assassins’ was interpreted to cover guerrilleros of all sorts, not (as might perhaps have been expected) merely those persons who had taken part in the bloody riots against the French commercial community in 1808[64]. In his second dispatch of January 17 Suchet proceeds to explain that he has arrested 480 persons as ‘suspects,’ that a large number of guerrillero leaders have been found among them, who have been sent to the citadel and have been already shot, or will be in a few days. He has also arrested every monk in Valencia; 500 have been sent prisoners to France: five of the most guilty, convicted of having carried round the streets a so-called ‘banner of the faith,’ and of having preached against capitulation, and excited the people to resistance, have been already executed. Inquiries were still in progress. They resulted in the shooting of two more friars[65]. But the most astonishing clause in the dispatch is that ‘all those who took part in the murders of the French [in 1808] will be sought out and punished. Already six hundred have been executed by the firmness of the Spanish judge Marescot, whom I am expecting soon to meet[66].’ It was a trifling addition to the catalogue of Suchet’s doings that 350 students of the university, who had volunteered to aid the regular artillery during the late siege, had all been arrested and sent off to France like the monks. Two hundred sick or footsore prisoners who straggled from the marching column directed on Teruel and Saragossa are said to have been shot by the wayside[67]. It is probable that innumerable prisoners were put to death in cold blood after the capitulation of Valencia, in spite of Suchet’s guarantee that ‘no research should be made as to the past.’ Of this Napier says no word[68], though he quotes other parts of Suchet’s dispatches, and praises him for his ‘vigorous and prudent’ conduct, and his ‘care not to offend the citizens by violating their customs or shocking their religious feelings.’
SECTION XXX: CHAPTER IV
SUCHET’S CONQUEST OF VALENCIA: SIDE-ISSUES AND CONSEQUENCES. JANUARY-MARCH 1812
When once Suchet’s long-deferred movements began, on December 26, 1812, his operations were so rapid and successful that the whole campaign was finished in fourteen days. The unexpected swiftness of his triumph had the result of rendering unnecessary the subsidiary operations which Napoleon had directed the Armies of Portugal, the Centre, and Andalusia, to carry out.
D’Armagnac, with his 3,000 men of the Army of the Centre, still lay at Cuenca when Suchet’s advance began, hindered from further movement by the badness of the roads and the weather. Opposite him were lying Bassecourt’s small force at Requeña—not 2,000 men—and the larger detachment of the Murcian army under Freire, which Blake had originally intended to draw down to join his main body. This seems to have consisted of some 4,000 foot and 1,000 horse[69] about the time of the New Year.
Far more important was the force under Montbrun, detached from the Army of Portugal, which had moved (all too tardily) from La Mancha and the banks of the Tagus, by Napoleon’s orders. Assembled, as we have already shown[70], only on December 29th, it had started from San Clemente on January 2 to march against Blake’s rear by the route of Almanza, the only one practicable for artillery at midwinter. Thus the expedition was only just getting under way when Suchet had already beaten Blake and thrust him into Valencia. It consisted of the infantry divisions of Foy and Sarrut, of the whole of the light cavalry of the Army of Portugal, and of five batteries of artillery, in all about 10,000 men. Of the succour which had been promised from d’Armagnac’s division, to raise the force to the figures of 12,000 men, few if any came to hand[71].