A history of the Peninsular War, Vol. 5, Oct. 1811-Aug. 31, 1812

by Charles Oman

Montbrun’s and Pierre Soult’s enterprises had little effect on the general course of events in eastern Spain. It was Suchet’s own operations which, in the estimation of every observer from the Emperor downwards, were to be considered decisive. When Valencia had fallen, every one on the French side supposed that the war was practically at an end in this region, and that the dispersion of the remnants of Mahy’s and Freire’s troops and the capture of Peniscola, Alicante, and Cartagena,—the three fortresses still in Spanish hands,—were mere matters of detail. No one could have foreseen that the region south of the Xucar was destined to remain permanently in the hands of the patriots, and that Suchet’s occupation of Valencia was to last for no more than eighteen months. Two causes, neither of them depending on Suchet’s own responsibility, were destined to save the kingdom of Murcia and the southern region of Valencia from conquest. The first was Napoleon’s redistribution of his troops in eastern Spain, consequent on the approach of his war with Russia. The second was the sudden victorious onslaught of Wellington on the French in the western parts of the Peninsula. How the former of these causes worked must at once be shown—the effect of the latter cause did not become evident till a little later.

Of the 33,000 men with whom Suchet had conquered Valencia and captured Blake, no less than 13,000 under Reille had been lent him from the Army of the North, and were under orders to return to the Ebro as soon as possible. Indeed, till they should get back, Aragon, very insufficiently garrisoned by Caffarelli’s division, was out of hand, and almost as much in the power of the Empecinado, Duran, and Montijo, as of the French. Moreover, so long as Caffarelli was at Saragossa, and his troops dispersed in the surrounding region, both Navarre and Old Castile were undermanned, and the Army of the North was reduced to little more than Dorsenne’s two divisions of the Young Guard. To secure the troops for the great push against Valencia, so many divisions had shifted eastward, that Marmont and Dorsenne between them had, as the Emperor must have seen, barely troops enough in hand to maintain their position, if Wellington should make some unexpected move—though Napoleon had persuaded himself that such a move was improbable. In spite of this, he was anxious to draw back Reille’s and Caffarelli’s, no less than Montbrun’s, men to more central positions.

But this was not all: in December the Emperor’s dispatches begin to show that he regarded war with Russia in the spring of 1812 as decidedly probable, and that for this reason he was about to withdraw all the Imperial Guard from Spain. On December 15th a note to Berthier ordered all the light and heavy cavalry of the Guard—chasseurs, grenadiers à cheval, dragoons, Polish lancers—to be brought home, as also its horse artillery and the gendarmes d’élite. All these were serving in the Army of the North, and formed the best part of its mounted troops. This was but a trifling preliminary warning of his intentions: on January 14, 1812—the results of the Valencian campaign being still unknown—he directed Berthier to withdraw from Spain the whole of the Infantry of the Guard and the whole of the Polish regiments in Spain. This was an order of wide-spreading importance, and created large gaps in the muster-rolls of Suchet, Soult, and Dorsenne. Suchet’s Poles (three regiments of the Legion of the Vistula, nearly 6,000 men, including the detachments left in Aragon) formed a most important part of the 3rd Corps. Soult had the 4th, 6th, and 9th Polish regiments and the Lancers, who had done such good service at Albuera, a total of another 6,000 men. But Dorsenne was to be the greatest sufferer—he had in the Army of the North not only the 4th of the Vistula, some 1,500 bayonets, but the whole of the infantry of the Young Guard, the two divisions of Roguet and Dumoustier, twenty-two battalions over 14,000 strong. The dispatch of January 14 directed that Suchet should send off his battalions of the Legion ‘immediately after the fall of Valencia.’ Soult was to draft away his Poles ‘within twenty-four hours after the receipt of the order.’ Dorsenne, of course, could not begin to send off the Guard Divisions of infantry till the troops lent from the Army of the North (Reille and Caffarelli) were freed from the duties imposed on them by the Valencian expedition. A supplementary order of January 27th told him that he might keep them for some time longer if the English took the offensive—news of Wellington’s march on Rodrigo was just coming to hand. ‘Le désir,’ says the Emperor, ‘que j’ai d’avoir ma Garde n’est pas tellement pressant qu’il faille la renvoyer avant que les affaires aient pris une situation nouvelle dans le Nord[76].’ As a matter of fact some Guard-brigades did not get off till March, though by dint of rapid transport, when they had once passed the Pyrenees, they struggled to the front in time to take part in the opening of the great Russian campaign in June. The fourth brigade, eight battalions under Dumoustier, did not get away till the autumn was over.

Thus the Emperor had marked off about 27,000 good veteran troops for removal from the Peninsula, with the intention of using them in the oncoming Russian war. The Army of the North was to lose the best of its divisions—those of the South and of Aragon very heavy detachments. Nothing was to come in return, save a few drafts and bataillons de marche which were lying at Bayonne. The Emperor in his dispatch makes some curious self-justificatory remarks, to the effect that he should leave the Army of Spain stronger than it had been in the summer of 1811; for while he was withdrawing thirty-six battalions, he had sent into the Peninsula, since June last, forty-two battalions under Reille, Caffarelli, and Severoli. This was true enough: but if the total strength of the troops now dedicated to Spain was not less than it had been in June 1811, it was left weaker by 27,000 men than it had been in December 1811.

Now Suchet, when deprived of Reille’s aid, and at the same time directed to send back to France his six Polish battalions, was left with a very inadequate force in Valencia—not much more than half what he had at his disposition on January 1. It would seem that the Emperor overrated the effect of the capture of Blake and the destruction of his army. At any rate, in his dispatches to Suchet, he seemed to consider that the whole business in the East was practically completed by the triumph at the New Year. The Marshal was directed ‘to push an advanced guard towards Murcia, and put himself in communication with the 4th Corps—the eastern wing of Soult’s army—which would be found at Lorca[77].’ But the operations of the troops of the Army of Andalusia in this quarter were limited to the appearance for two days at Murcia of Pierre Soult’s small cavalry raid, of which Suchet got no news till it was passed and gone. He was left entirely to his own resources, and these were too small for any further advance: the Emperor not only took away both Reille and the Poles, but sent, a few days later, orders that Palombini’s Italian division, reduced by now to 3,000 men by its heavy casualties on December 26th, should be sent into southern Aragon against Duran and Montijo. The departure of Palombini (February 15th) left Suchet with less than 15,000 men in hand. It must be remembered that the conquest of a Spanish province always meant, for the French, the setting aside of a large immobilized garrison, to hold it down, unless it were to be permitted to drop back into insurrection. It was clear that with the bulk of the kingdom of Valencia to garrison, not to speak of the siege of the still intact fortress of Peniscola, Suchet would have an infinitesimal field-force left for the final move that would be needed, if Mahy and Freire were to be crushed, and Alicante and Cartagena—both strong places—to be beleaguered.

The Marshal had by the last week in January pushed Harispe’s division to Xativa, beyond the Xucar, and Habert’s to Gandia near the sea-coast. These 9,000 men were all his disposable force for a further advance: Valencia had to be garrisoned; Musnier’s division had gone north, to cover the high-road as far as Tortosa and the Ebro; some of the Italians were sent to besiege Peniscola. Suchet might, no doubt, have pushed Habert and Harispe further forward towards Alicante, but he had many reasons for not doing so. That fortress had been proved—by Montbrun’s raid—to be in a posture of defence: besides its garrison there were other Spanish troops in arms in the neighbourhood. To the forces of Freire, Obispo, Villacampa, and Bassecourt, there was added the newly-formed brigade of General Roche, an Irish officer lent by the British government to the Spaniards, who had been drilling and disciplining the cadres of the battalions handed over to him[78], till they were in a better condition than most of the other troops on this coast. The muster-rolls of the ‘united 2nd and 3rd armies,’ as these remnants were now officially styled, showed, on February 1, 1812, 14,000 men present, not including Villacampa’s division, which was moving off to its old haunts in Aragon. By March 1 this figure had risen to 18,000, many deserters who had gone home after the fall of Valencia having tardily rejoined the ranks of their battalions. Over 2,000 cavalry were included in the total—for nearly the whole of Blake’s squadrons had escaped (not too gloriously) after the disastrous combats on December 26, 1812.

If Suchet, therefore, had moved forward with a few thousand men at the end of January, he would have risked something, despite of the depressed morale of his enemies. But in addition there was vexatious news from Catalonia, which presently caused the sending of part of Musnier’s division beyond the Ebro, and it was reported (only too correctly) that the yellow fever had broken out with renewed violence at Murcia and Cartagena. An advance into the infected district might be hazardous. But most of all was any further initiative discouraged by the consideration that no help could be expected from Marmont or Soult. By the end of January Suchet was aware of Wellington’s invasion of Leon, and of the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo. Not only did this move absorb all the attention of Marmont, Dorsenne, and King Joseph, but Soult was convinced that it boded evil for him also, and that a new attack on Badajoz was imminent. Hill’s manœuvres in Estremadura (of which more elsewhere) attracted all his attention, and he let it be known that he had neither the wish nor the power to send expeditions eastward, to co-operate against Murcia. Last, but most conclusive, of all Suchet’s hindrances was a grave attack of illness, which threw him on a bed of sickness early in February, and caused him to solicit permission to return to France for his convalescence. The Emperor (with many flattering words) refused this leave, and sent two of his body physicians to Valencia to treat the Marshal’s ailment. But it was two months before Suchet was able to mount his horse, and put himself at the head of his army. From February to the beginning of April operations were necessarily suspended for the Army of Aragon, since its chief was not one of those who gladly hand over responsibility and the power of initiative to his subordinates.

Hence there was a long gap in the story of the war in south-eastern Spain from January to April 1812. The only events requiring notice during that period were the occupation by the French of Denia and Peniscola. The former, a little port on the projecting headland south of Valencia, was furnished with fortifications newly repaired during Blake’s régime, and had been an important centre of distribution for stores and munitions of war, after the Spaniards lost the Grao of Valencia in November, since it was the nearest harbour to their positions along the Guadalaviar. In the general panic after Blake’s surrender Mahy withdrew its garrison, but forgot to order the removal of its magazines. Harispe seized Denia on January 20, and found sixty guns mounted on its walls, and forty small merchant vessels, some of them laden with stores, in its port. He garrisoned the place, and fitted out some of the vessels as privateers. Mahy’s carelessness in abandoning these resources was one of the reasons which contributed most to his removal from command by the Cadiz Regency. It was indeed a gross piece of neglect, for at least the guns might have been destroyed, and the ships brought round to Alicante.

The story of Peniscola, however, was far more disgraceful. This fortress sometimes called ‘the little Gibraltar’ from its impregnable situation—it is a towering rock connected with the mainland by a narrow sand-spit 250 yards long—was one of the strongest places in all Spain. It had appeared so impregnable to Suchet, that, on his southward march from Tortosa to Valencia, he had merely masked it, and made no attempt to meddle with it[79]. Peniscola had suffered no molestation, and was regularly revictualled by Spanish and British coasting vessels from Alicante, Cartagena, and the Balearic Isles. The governor, Garcia Navarro, was an officer who had an excellent reputation for personal courage—taken prisoner at Falset in 1811[80] he had succeeded in escaping from a French prison and had reported himself again for further service. The garrison of 1,000 men was adequate for such a small place, and was composed of veteran troops. In directing it to be formally beleaguered after the fall of Valencia, Suchet seems to have relied more on the general demoralization caused by the annihilation of Blake’s army than on the strength of his means of attack. On January 20th he ordered Severoli with two Italian and two French battalions to press the place as far as was possible, and assigned to him part of the siege-train that had been used at Saguntum. The trenches, on the high ground of the mainland nearest the place, were opened on the 28th, and on the 31st the besiegers began to sap downhill towards the isthmus, and to erect five batteries on the best available points. But it was clear that the fortress was most inaccessible, and that to reach its walls across the low-lying sand-spit would be a very costly business.

Nevertheless, when a summons was sent in to the governor on February 2nd, he surrendered at once, getting in return terms of an unusually favourable kind—the men and officers of the garrison were given leave either to depart to their homes with all their personal property, or to enlist in the service of King Joseph. This was a piece of mere treachery: Navarro had made up his mind that the cause of Spain was ruined by Blake’s disaster, and had resolved to go over to the enemy, while there were still good terms to be got for deserters. As Suchet tells the story, the affair went as follows. A small vessel, sailing from Peniscola to Alicante, was taken by a privateer fitted out by Harispe at Denia. Among letters seized by the captors[81] was one from the governor, expressing his disgust with his situation, and in especial with the peremptory advice given him by the English naval officers who were in charge of the revictualling service and the communications. He went on to say that he would rather surrender Peniscola to the French than let it be treated as a British dependency, whereupon the Marshal asked, and obtained, the surrender of the place. Napier expresses a suspicion—probably a well-founded one—that the letter may have been really intended for Suchet’s own eye, and that the whole story was a piece of solemn deceit. ‘Such is the Marshal’s account of the affair—but the colour which he thought it necessary to give to a transaction so full of shame to Navarro, can only be considered as part of the price paid for Peniscola[82].’ The mental attitude of the traitor is sufficiently expressed by a letter which reached Suchet along with the capitulation. ‘I followed with zeal, with fury I may say, the side which I considered the just one. To-day I see that to render Spain less unhappy it is necessary for us all to unite under the King, and I make my offer to serve him with the same enthusiasm. Your excellency may be quite sure of me—I surrender a fortress fully provisioned and capable of a long defence—which is the best guarantee of the sincerity of my promise[83].’