The most astounding feature of the capitulation was that Navarro got his officers to consent to such a piece of open treachery. If they had done their duty, they would have arrested him, and sent him a prisoner to Alicante. Demoralization and despair must have gone very far in this miserable garrison.
The capture of Peniscola was Suchet’s last success. He fell sick not long after, and when he once more assumed the active command of his troops in April, the whole situation of French affairs in Spain was changed, and no further advance was possible. The results of Wellington’s offensive operations in the West had begun to make themselves felt.
Meanwhile the remains of the Valencian and Murcian armies were reorganizing themselves, with Alicante as their base and central port of supply. Joseph O’Donnell, though not a great general, was at least no worse than Blake and Mahy—of whom the former was certainly the most maladroit as well as the most unlucky of commanders, while the latter had shown himself too timid and resourceless to play out the apparently lost game that was left to his hand in January 1812. By March there was once more an army in face of the French, and in view of the sudden halt of the invaders and the cheerful news from the West, hope was once more permissible. The main body of O’Donnell’s army remained concentrated in front of Alicante, but Villacampa’s division had gone off early to Aragon, to aid in the diversion against Suchet’s communications, which was so constantly kept up by Duran and the Empecinado. This was a good move: the weak point of the French occupation was the impossibility of holding down broad mountain spaces, in which small garrisons were useless and helpless, while heavy columns could not live for more than a few days on any given spot.
SECTION XXXI
MINOR CAMPAIGNS OF THE WINTER OF 1811-12
CHAPTER I
CATALONIA AND ARAGON
The chronicle of the obstinate and heroic defence made by the Catalans, even after the falls of Tarragona and Figueras had seemed to make all further resistance hopeless, was carried in the last volume of this work down to October 28, 1811, when Marshal Macdonald, like St. Cyr and Augereau, was recalled to Paris, having added no more to his reputation than had his predecessors while in charge of this mountainous principality. We have seen how General Lacy, hoping against hope, rallied the last remnants of the old Catalan army, and recommenced (just as Macdonald was departing) a series of small enterprises against the scattered French garrisons. He had won several petty successes in evicting the enemy from Cervera, Igualada, and Belpuig—the small strongholds which covered the main line of communication east and west, through the centre of the land, between Lerida and Barcelona. The enemy had even been forced to evacuate the holy mountain of Montserrat, the strongest post on the whole line.
Hence when, in November, General Decaen arrived to take over Macdonald’s task, he found before him a task not without serious difficulties, though the actual force of Spaniards in the field was far less than it had been before the disasters at Tarragona and Figueras. Lacy had a very small field army—he had reorganized 8,000 men by October, and all through his command the total did not grow very much greater. When he handed over his office to Copons fifteen months after, there were no more than 14,000 men under arms, including cadres and recruits. On the other hand he had a central position, a free range east and west, now that the line of French posts across Catalonia had been broken, and several points of more or less safe access to the sea. Munitions and stores, and occasionally very small reinforcements from the Balearic Isles, were still brought over by the British squadron which ranged along the coast. Some of the officers, especially the much tried and never-despairing Eroles, and the indefatigable Manso, were thoroughly to be relied upon, and commanded great local popularity. This Lacy himself did not possess—he was obeyed because of his stern resolve, but much disliked for his autocratic and dictatorial ways, which kept him in constant friction with the Junta that sat at Berga. Moreover he was a stranger, while the Catalans disliked all leaders who were not of their own blood: and he was strongly convinced that the brunt of the fighting must be borne by the regular troops, while the popular voice was all in favour of the somatenes and guerrilleros, and against the enforcement of conscription. Much was to be said on either side: the warfare of the irregulars was very harassing to the French, and had led to many petty successes, and one great one—the capture of Figueras. On the other hand these levies were irresponsible and untrustworthy when any definite operation was in hand: they might, or they might not, turn up in force when they were required: the frank disregard of their chiefs for punctuality or obedience drove to wild rage any officer who had served in the old army. With regular troops it was possible to calculate that a force would be where it was wanted to be at a given time, and would at least attempt to carry out its orders: with the somatenes it was always possible, nay probable, that some petty quarrel of rival chiefs, or some rival attraction of an unforeseen sort, would lead to non-appearance. To this there was the easy reply that ever since Blake first tried to make the Catalans work ‘militarmente and not paisanmente’ the regular army for some two years had never gained a single battle, nor relieved a single fortress[84]. The best plan would probably have been to attempt to combine the two systems: it was absolutely necessary to have a nucleus of regular troops, but unwise to act like Blake and Lacy, who tried to break up and discourage the somatenes, in order that they might be forced into the battalions of the standing army. The constant series of defeats on record had been caused rather by the unskilful and over-ambitious operations of the generals than by their insisting on keeping up the regular troops, who had behaved well enough on many occasions. But too much had been asked of them when, half-trained and badly led, they were brought into collision with the veterans of France, without the superiority of numbers which alone could make up for their military faults.