As this corps had not fallen back upon the main body, which it might easily have done, but had passed on toward Alagon, Blake was confirmed in his opinion that the French did not mean to defend Zaragoza if it should be attacked. Nevertheless, reflecting that the country in his rear was entirely open, and considering the general situation of the Spanish armies, the importance of preserving his own, which was in so promising a state, and the complicated and hazardous movements of a retreat, in which he knew how little it could be trusted, he deemed it by no means advisable to bring on a general action, and therefore did not alter Areizaga’s position, looking upon Botorrita as a strong post, where, in case of any reserve, the ♦June 14.♦ enemy might be detained. When he joined Areizaga there, the troops had begun to skirmish; this had been brought on by that general’s making a reconnoissance in considerable strength; and Blake was so well satisfied with the behaviour of his troops, that he endeavoured to surround the enemy, but they retired in time. Early on the following morning Suchet drew out his whole force from Zaragoza to attack him. The firing began at the advanced posts by five in the morning, and went on increasing till the same hour in the afternoon, when the French resolved to break the Spanish line, supposing that the men were weary and the ammunition spent.
♦Blake retreats to Belchite.♦
Blake’s advanced guard was at Maria, where the road from Zaragoza to Madrid crosses the cordillera: the ground between him and the city consisted of hills and vales, ridge behind ridge. His cavalry was stationed in the high road, the rest of the line was formed by the infantry and artillery. The Spaniards, fighting and retreating in good order, fell back successively from one of these heights to another, but when they reached the fourth, their cavalry had been worsted. Blake then thought it necessary to fall back on Botorrita, which he did with as much order as the nature of the ground would permit. A few guns were spiked and abandoned; not from necessity, but because it was more advantageous to fire them to the last than bring them off. The two armies were near, and in sight of each other, when night closed. Blake ♦June 16.♦ expected to be attacked the next day; but as the enemy manifested no such intention, he rightly concluded that they were manœuvring either with a view to surround him, or to threaten his rear. Accordingly he ascertained that 3000 French were posted at Torrecilla. About two hours before nightfall a brisk fire was opened upon his left, with the intent of making him change his position, in which case his rear would have been exposed to this detachment. But the attack was repulsed, as was a second which the enemy made upon the centre a little before midnight. The Spanish general then retreated to Belchite in perfect order, which he did without being molested. The next day the enemy came again in sight, and Blake, who had hitherto had no reason to distrust his troops, took a position in full expectation of being attacked on the morrow, and in good hope of repelling the enemy as completely as he had done before Alcañiz.
♦Flight of the Spaniards.♦
Belchite, once the capital of a petty Moorish sovereignty, stands upon the slope of some bending hills, which almost surround it: toward Zaragoza the country is level, covered with gardens and olive-yards. The position which Blake had taken was singularly advantageous; his right was completely safe from the enemy’s cavalry, and protected by a chapel, with a number of outbuildings and two large sheep-folds, which were all pierced for musketry: to attack the centre, the enemy’s horse must be exposed to a tremendous cross fire, and the left had their retreat upon the strong post which was occupied by the other wing. Blake’s arrangement was so made, that if the enemy, as he expected, should make a great effort on his left, three columns might be brought to attack them on that side; and if unsuccessful, they could have fallen back upon the centre and the right flank, being meantime assailable only in front, and protected the while by their artillery, which also had its retreat secure to the same strong ♦June 18.♦ post. He had harangued his troops, and they made a thousand protestations that they would do their duty. The attack was made, as he had expected, on the left; four or five shot were fired on both sides, and the French threw a few shells, which wounded four or five men. But upon one shell falling into the middle of a regiment, the men were seized with a sudden panic and fled; the panic instantly spread, ... a second and a third regiment ran away without firing a gun, and in a few minutes the generals were left with none but a few officers in the midst of the position. With all their efforts they could not rally more than two hundred men, and nothing was left for them but to make for the nearest strong place, leaving artillery, baggage, and every thing to the enemy.
The defeat was in all its circumstances so thoroughly disgraceful, ... so disheartening and hopeless in its consequences, that Blake almost ♦Blake offers his resignation, which is not accepted.♦ sunk under it. He told the government that he was incapable of entering into details, but considered it due to the nation that a judicial inquiry should be instituted into the conduct of a general under whose command an army of from 13,000 to 14,000 effective men had been utterly routed and dispersed. “He knew that he had not been culpable,” he said, “but after so many proofs of his unhappy fortune, he wished not to be employed any longer in command. As a Spaniard and a soldier he was still ready to serve his country in an inferior station, and he requested only that some portion of his present pay might be continued for the support of his family, or a part of the Encomienda which had recently been conferred upon him, but which it was not fitting that so useless a person should retain. The government, however, neither accepted his proffered resignation, nor instituted any inquiry. The former would have been unjust towards a brave and honourable officer whose conduct was unimpeachable, and his character above suspicion; the latter must have been altogether nugatory. The panic had been instantaneous and general, and it was impossible to punish a whole army. All that could be done was to publish the whole details, in no degree attempting to disguise or palliate the injury and disgrace which had been brought on the nation: to declare that the commander-in-chief and the generals had done their duty, and retained the full confidence of the country, and to brand the fugitives in a body, as men who were the opprobrium of the Spanish name, and had rendered themselves objects of execration to their countrymen.
The men who in their panic had thus lost all use of reason, as well as all sense of honour and of duty, were not likely, when they found themselves in safety, and recovered their senses, to be affected by this denunciation. A religion which is contented to accept the slightest degree of attrition, and keeps short reckonings with conscience, had taught them to be upon easy terms with themselves; ... moreover the moral disease was so endemic, that it had ceased to be disgraceful: the greater part of these men had behaved well at Alcañiz and in the subsequent operations; and no doubt expected to be more fortunate on a better occasion, for a report was raised that the French had received so great a reinforcement at the moment of commencing the action as to render resistance hopeless; and though this was indignantly contradicted by Blake, the men found an excuse for themselves in believing it. The disgrace was deeply felt by the government, and by the general whose hopes were blasted by it in the blossom; but the Spaniards were in no degree disheartened, not even those upon whom it brought immediate danger; and when the French, in the course of a few days, attempted to carry Mequinenza by a coup de main, they were beaten off with considerable loss.
♦Commencement of the guerillas.♦
At this time also that system of warfare began which soon extended throughout Spain, and occasioned greater losses to the French than they suffered in all their pitched battles. The first adventurers who attracted notice by collecting stragglers from their own dispersed armies, deserters from the enemy, and men who, made desperate by the ruin of their private affairs in the general wreck, were ready for any service in which they could at the same time gratify their just vengeance and find subsistence, were ♦Porlier.♦ Juan Diaz Porlier in Asturias, and Juan Martin Diaz in Old Castille, the latter better known ♦The Empecinado.♦ by his appellation of the[23] Empecinado. A lawyer, by name Gil, commenced the same course in the Pyrenean valleys of Navarre and Aragon. After a short career of some two months he disappeared, and Egoaguerra, who renewed the attempt, withdrew from that wilder way of life to engage in Doyle’s battalion. The third adventurer who at this time raised the spirits of the Pyrenean provinces, and for a while gave employment to the French in Navarre, was that D. Mariano de Renovales by whom the Convent of S. Joseph had been so gallantly defended ♦1809.
May.♦ at the last siege of Zaragoza. Having been ♦Renovales in the valley of Roncal.♦ made prisoner when the city surrendered, he had effected his escape on the way to France, and collected in the valleys of Roncal and Anso a body of men and officers, who, like himself, believed that the scandalous manner in which the terms of capitulation had been violated by the French released them from any obligation of observing it. They had probably agreed to rendezvous in these valleys as many of them as could escape, and his intention was to form them into a body, and rejoin the army. But when it was known that they were collecting there, and that the mountaineers, confiding in their presence, refused obedience to the intrusive government, 600 men were ordered from the garrison of Pamplona to enter the valleys at six points, and reduce them to subjection.
♦He defeats a French detachment.