♦Neglect of the Valencian government.♦
No province had as yet suffered so little as Valencia; the people were proud of the spirit and signal success with which they had repelled Marshal Moncey from the walls of their capital; their country was the most fertile and most populous part of Spain; men were in abundance, wealth was not wanting, and there were more appearances of activity and preparation than were any where else to be seen. In every town and village militia and guerilla bands were formed; about 50,000 were thus embodied, the greater part armed with fire-arms; and besides these there were 11,000 troops of the line; but with this force nothing was undertaken. Good service might have been rendered on one side by harassing the enemy’s communications in La Mancha; and scenes of more important action were open both in Arragon and Catalonia, ... even on their own borders; but the will, courage, and means were inefficient, for want of capacity in their leaders. They waited for the enemy upon their own ground, in hope and in confidence, but without foresight or system. General Doyle endeavoured to convince the provincial government that no time should be lost in fortifying the important points of Morella, Oropesa, and Murviedro. He inferred from some of Suchet’s movements an intention to establish himself in the latter place, which would have cut off the communication between Catalonia and the rest of Spain, and have given him command of the Huerta de Valencia, and of the whole country to the very gates of Tortosa. But in the confidence and confusion which prevailed alike in the people and in the officers and the rulers, nothing was done; and so far were they from storing Tarragona, and forming a depôt at Peñiscola, as the importance of the crisis required, that Tortosa itself had not at this time provisions for a week’s consumption. They relied upon the defence of their frontier, upon their own numbers and resources, upon fortune and Providence; for themselves, they were ready to meet the danger manfully whenever it should come, ... but as for any system of defence, to fortune and Providence that seemed to be left.
♦The force on the Valencian frontier dispersed.♦
The Valencians were in this state when the half-armed, half-clothed, half-hungered Arragonese, with whom their abundant means ought to have been shared, were dispersed, and the frontier in consequence was left open. General Caro determined to march upon Teruel, which the French had entered, but the movements of an active enemy soon compelled him to change this determination. One division of Suchet’s army advanced from Alcañiz upon Morella; no means had been taken for strengthening that important point, the Valencians therefore fell back from thence, and from San Mateo also, and the enemy, without experiencing any opposition, proceeded by Burriol with all speed toward Murviedro. Meantime Suchet with the other division advanced upon the same point by way of Alventosa; there he encountered a brave resistance from the vanguard of Caro’s army, and after a contest, which lasted nearly the whole day, was repulsed. The Spanish commander, expecting a renewal of the attack, requested a reinforcement from Segorbe; he was informed in reply, that General Caro had ordered the troops to fall back upon the capital. This disheartened men who were too prone to interpret an order for retreating as a signal for flight; they dispersed upon the next attack, leaving the artillery upon the ground; Segorbe was entered in pursuit, and Suchet, having sacked that place, effected a junction with the other division of his army at Murviedro.
His corps consisted of about 12,000 men, with thirty field-pieces; a force manifestly insufficient for its object, if he had not counted upon the success of his machinations in the capital. ♦Suchet advances against Valencia.♦ From thence he advanced to the Puig, and having fixed his head-quarters on the spot ♦March 6.♦ where King Jayme el Conquistador had encamped when he undertook the conquest of Valencia, he addressed a letter to the Captain General Caro, saying, that he came not to make war upon the happy capital of the finest kingdom in Spain, nor to lay waste the delicious country which surrounded it, but to offer protection and peace, such as Jaen, and Granada, ♦1810.
March.♦ and Cordoba, and Seville were enjoying. Andalusia had submitted; the army, having discharged its duty, had entered into the service of King Joseph Napoleon; and the militia, consisting of men enlisted by force, and under the penalty of death if they refused, had been dismissed. Religion was respected, justice observed, private property untouched; and General Caro was now invited to open the gates of Valencia, that the French might enter, and he might deserve the blessings of his country. Wherefore should he prolong a contest, the issue of which the Spaniards themselves could now no longer consider doubtful? They had done enough to prove their courage, and it was time that their sufferings should have an end. The Captain General’s answer contained some stinging truths, and some remarkable falsehoods. It contrasted the professions of General Suchet with his actual conduct; and it assured him that the French had been completely defeated between Puerto Real and the Isle of Leon, that they had evacuated Seville in consequence, and were in full retreat toward the Sierra Morena. Authentic intelligence was so irregularly communicated, and the most extravagant reports so eagerly propagated and so readily believed, that it is very possible the Captain General of Valencia believed the incredible statement which he advanced. Suchet addressed a summons also to the inhabitants of Valencia, calling upon them as proprietors and parents to consult their own interest and their duty, by preserving their beautiful and flourishing city from the calamities of war. They returned for answer, that they were prepared to sacrifice every thing in the defence of their just cause; that having defeated Moncey in a similar attempt, they had good reason now to hope for the same success; and that it was for his Excellency, who so humanely deprecated the effusion of blood, to consider whether the best method of avoiding that evil was not to abstain from an attack?
♦He retreats from Valencia.♦
Suchet, in fact, had no intention of making one. It was, however, expected by the Valencians; and in that expectation the superior Junta, by Caro’s advice, had removed to St. Felipe, a city to which it seems strange that its old name of Xativa should not have been at this time restored. There they were to exert themselves for supplying the capital and annoying the invaders, a military Junta being appointed meantime within the city, to dispose of the peasantry who had flocked thither, and to direct the labours of a willing people. A former Junta had been assembled after the dispersion at Alventosa, and in the course of the ensuing night every member had been arrested upon a charge of treason. An edict also was passed, confiscating the property of all who had fled from the city at this time, their absence being interpreted as proof either of cowardice or of treachery. Such severity was not without cause. Relying upon their intelligence in the city, the van of the French army entered the suburb of Murviedro, and occupied the College of Pius V. the Royal Palace, and the Zaidia, all which are without the walls on the farther bank of the Turia. From the palace they fired upon the bridge; and they exasperated, if it were possible to exasperate, the hatred of the Spaniards, by exposing the images which they had taken from the churches on their march and in the suburbs to the fire of the city, having stript some of their taudry attire, and dressed up others in regimentals. But finding their hopes fail, and not being in sufficient force to venture upon an attack, they decamped during the night of the 11th, retreating with such celerity, that they abandoned great part of their plunder.
♦A conspiracy discovered in that city.♦
The Valencians imputed their deliverance on this occasion to their Patroness and Generalissima, the Virgin, under her invocation of Maria Santissima de los Desamparados, and to the Saints who were natives of Valencia. A deliverance it was; for a plan had actually been formed to assassinate the Captain General, and proclamations in favour of King Joseph and his French allies were found upon the chief mover of this treason, Colonel Baron de Pozoblanco. This person, who appears to have been a revolutionary fanatic, suffered under the hangman; his head was exposed upon a stake in the market-place, with an inscription under it, announcing his crime, and charging him also with belonging to the sect of the illuminated Egyptian freemasons, which was said to be extending itself from Madrid into La Mancha, Murcia, and Valencia, and to have converted the different appellations of the Virgin into distinctive names for its own organization.
♦The French boast of success.♦