Owing to the lowness, however, of the walls blocking the two old breaches, the assailants had, in their first rush, a fair chance of breaking in. Many ladders were successfully planted, and repeatedly small parties of the French got a footing on the wooden parapets. If the garrison had flinched, the storm might have succeeded: but far from flinching, they offered a desperate resistance, overthrew the ladders, slew all who had gained the top of the enceinte, and kept up a furious musketry fire, which laid low many of the soldiers who kept pressing forward to the breaches. It was to no purpose that the demonstration by the Italians below San Pedro now began: the Spaniards fired hard and fast in this direction also, but did not withdraw any men from the real point of attack, where they maintained themselves very courageously. It was in vain that Colonel Gudin brought up his reserve: it could make no head, and the survivors threw themselves down among the rocks and ruins in front of the wall—unwilling to recede, but quite unable to advance. Seeing his attack a hopeless failure, Suchet ordered the stormers back just before daylight began to appear. They had lost 247 killed and wounded out of 900 men engaged: the garrison only 15 killed and less than 30 wounded[15].
The escalade having come to this disappointing conclusion, the Marshal saw that the siege of Saguntum would be anything but a quick business. It would be necessary to bring up the siege-train to the front: orders were sent back to Ficatier to start it at once from Tortosa; but it had to batter and take Oropesa before it could even reach Murviedro. There were some weeks of delay before him, and meanwhile Blake might at last begin to show some signs of life. Suchet therefore disposed his army so as to provide both a blockading force and a covering force, to see that the blockade was not interfered with from without. It being evident that many days would elapse before the siege artillery arrived, the French engineer officers got leave to employ many detachments in preparing roads fit to bear heavy guns up the western slopes of the hill of Saguntum, from which alone the regular attack on the fortress could be conducted. Several emplacements for batteries were also chosen, and work upon them was begun.
From September 23rd, the day of Suchet’s arrival before Saguntum, down to October 16, when the heavy guns at last arrived, the French army was practically ‘marking time’: the idea which the Emperor had conceived, and which his lieutenant had adopted, that Valencia could be conquered by a sudden rush, had been proved false. Apparently Suchet had gained no more by his rapid advance to the foot of the hill of Saguntum than he would have obtained by marching in more leisurely fashion, with his siege artillery in company, and taking Oropesa on the way. The reduction of that place indeed was (as it turned out) only a single day’s task for heavy guns: and if the Marshal had captured it on his march, he might have presented himself before Saguntum with his siege-train, and have begun an active attack on that fortress, some weeks before he was actually able to get to serious work. In fact he might have been battering Saguntum on October 1, instead of having to wait till October 16th. But this is ‘wisdom after the event’: Napoleon thought that Valencia could be ‘rushed,’ and Suchet was bound to make the experiment that his master ordered.
Blake meanwhile, finding, on September 23rd, that the enemy was not about to advance against his lines, and learning soon after that the French army had settled down before Saguntum, had to revise his plans, since it was clear that he was not to be attacked in his entrenchments as he had supposed. Three courses were now open to him: either he might collect every man for a decisive battle in the open, and try to raise the siege; or he might attempt to open up attacks on Suchet’s line of communications and on his base in Aragon, so as to force him to retire by indirect operations; or he might remain passive behind the lines of the Guadalaviar. The last was an almost unthinkable alternative—it would have ruined his reputation for ever to sit quiet and do nothing, as Wellington had done during the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo in 1810. Only a general with an established reputation for courage and ability could have dared to take such a course; and Blake’s record was a long series of disasters, while he was detested by the Valencians one and all—by the army, to whom he rightly preferred his own excellent troops, no less than by the Captain-General Palacios, and the Junta, whom he had sent out of the city to sit at Alcira, when they showed a tendency to hamper his operations. Practically he was forced by his situation to take some definite offensive move against Suchet.
He chose that of indirect operations, having a well-rooted distrust of the fighting powers of a great part of the troops that were at his disposition. The record of the Valencian army he knew: the state of the Murcian army, on which he could draw for reinforcements, was represented to him in the most gloomy colours by Mahy, who had recently replaced Freire in command. On September 12th Mahy had written to him, to warn him that the spirit of his troops was detestable: ‘the Army of Murcia was little better than a phantom: there were only four or five officers for whom the rank and file had any respect or esteem, the rest were regarded as timid or incapable: the men had no confidence in themselves or their chiefs. The best thing to do would be to break up the whole army, and incorporate it into the “Expeditionary Divisions,” whose commanders were known as good soldiers, and whose battalions were trustworthy[16].’
In view of these facts Blake resolved to threaten Suchet’s flanks with demonstrations, which he had no intention of turning into attacks, but to endeavour to dislodge him from his forward position by turning loose the guerrilleros of Aragon on to his rear. With the former purpose he sent out two detachments from the Valencian lines, Obispo’s division to Segorbe,—where it cut the French communication with Teruel and southern Aragon,—Charles O’Donnell with Villacampa’s infantry and San Juan’s horse to Benaguacil, a point in the plains fifteen miles west of Saguntum, where his force formed a link between Obispo and the main body of the Valencian army, which still remained entrenched in the lines of the Guadalaviar[17]. These two detachments threatened Suchet’s flank, and even his rear, but there was no intention of turning the threat into a reality.
The real movement on which Blake relied for the discomfiture of the invaders of Valencia was that of the guerrillero bands of Aragon and the neighbouring parts of Castile, to whom he had appealed for help the moment that Suchet commenced his march. He believed that the 6,000 or 7,000 men which Suchet had left scattered in small garrisons under General Musnier might be so beset and worried by the partidas, that the Marshal might be compelled to turn back to their aid. Even Mina from his distant haunts in Navarre had been asked to co-operate. This was an excellent move, and might have succeeded, if Musnier alone had remained to hold down Aragon. But Blake had forgotten in his calculations the 15,000 men of Reille and Severoli, cantoned in Navarre and along the Upper Ebro, who were available to strengthen the small force which lay in the garrisons under Musnier’s charge.
The diversion of the guerrilleros, however, was effected with considerable energy. On September 26th the Empecinado and Duran appeared in front of Calatayud, the most important of the French garrisons in the mountains of western Aragon. They had with them 5,000 foot and 500 horse—not their full strength, for a large band of the Empecinado’s men beset at the same time the remote castle of Molina, the most outlying and isolated of all Suchet’s posts. Calatayud was held by a few companies of French, to which an Italian flying column of a battalion had just joined itself. The guerrilleros, coming in with a rush, drove the garrison out of the town into their fortified post, the large convent of La Merced, taking many prisoners in the streets. Duran then beleaguered the main body in the convent, while the Empecinado took post at the defile of El Frasno on the Saragossa road, to hold off any succour that Musnier might send up from the Aragonese capital. This precaution was justified—a column of 1,000 men came out of Saragossa, but was far too weak to force the pass and had to retire, with the loss of its commander, Colonel Gillot, and many men. Meanwhile Duran pressed the besieged in the convent with mines, having no artillery of sufficient calibre to batter its walls. After blowing down a corner of its chapel with one mine, and killing many of the defenders, the guerrillero chief exploded a second on October 3, which made such a vast breach that the garrison surrendered, still 560 strong, on the following day[18].
This success would have gone far to shake the hold of the French on Aragon, but for the intervention of Reille from Navarre. At the first news of the blockade of Calatayud, he had dispatched a column, consisting of the whole brigade of Bourke, 3,500 strong, which would have saved the garrison if it had had a less distance to march. But it arrived on the 5th to find the convent blown up, while the Spaniards had vanished with their prisoners. Bourke thereupon returned to Tudela, and the guerrilleros reoccupied Calatayud on his departure.
Meanwhile, however, the whole Italian division of Severoli, over 7,000 strong, marched down the Ebro to reinforce the small garrison of Saragossa. This large reinforcement restored the confidence of the French. Musnier himself took charge of it and marched at its head against Duran and the Empecinado. They wisely refused to fight, gave way, evacuated Calatayud, and took refuge in the hills (October 12). While the main field-force of the enemy was drawn off in this direction, Mina took up the game on the other side of the Ebro. Entering Aragon with 4,000 men he besieged the small garrison of Exea, which abandoned its post, and cut its way through the guerrilleros, till it met a column of 800 Italian infantry[19] sent out from Saragossa to bring it off. Colonel Ceccopieri, the leader of this small force, underrating the strength of his enemy, then marched to relieve the garrison of Ayerbe. He was surprised on the way by Mina’s whole force, and in a long running fight between Ayerbe and Huesca was surrounded and slain. The column was exterminated, two hundred Italians were killed, six hundred (including many wounded) were taken prisoners (October 16th).