♦Retreat of the garrison.♦
The French expected such an attempt, and judged, from the stir which they beheld in the fort, that it would be made in the ensuing night. That evening, therefore, they strengthened their post at Tordera on the right, thinking, as the men themselves did, that the governor would make for Arenys de Mar, where the ships were awaiting him. At ten, the garrison descended the glacis on the side of the high road of St. Celoni, and crossed the road and the space between the fort and the heights of Masanas. It was broad moonlight. Two advanced parties, to the right and left, fell upon the enemy’s picquets with the bayonet; those, however, who escaped gave the alarm; but the garrison had gained the start, ascended to St. Jacinto, and hastened toward St. Feliu de Buxaleu. A league from Hostalrich they fell in with an enemy’s encampment, and routed them; this gave the alarm to another body of 2000 French, whose station was near, on the road to Arbucias; but they were received so resolutely, that they soon gave over the pursuit. Thus all was effected which could be done by skill and courage; one division lost its way, and many of the men dropt on the road, their strength failing them on this great exertion, from the want of rest and food, which they had long endured. Among them was the noble Julian de Estrada, who thus fell into the hands of the enemy: this was a heavier loss to his country than that of the fortress which he had defended so well; for in the course of the war, Catalonia had but too much cause bitterly to regret the loss of such men as Estrada and Alvarez. Five hundred men reached Vich in safety on the following day, 132 joined them on the next, being part of the battalion of Gerona, who had lost their way and fallen in with the enemy; stragglers continually came in, and on the evening of that day, the number who had accomplished their retreat amounted to 800, though the French asserted, that every man was either killed or taken.
In such an enterprise, it was impossible to bring off the sick and wounded; the comptroller of the hospital, D. Manuel Miguel Mellado, remained with them to go through the form of delivering up the ruins, and provide for their safety. Such of the invalids as were best able mounted guard, the gates were closed, and the drawbridges raised; and in this state Mellado anxiously waited for what might happen. Half an hour before midnight, a brisk fire of musketry was poured in upon the flanks of the ravelin, and of St. Francisco. Mellado called out to the enemy to cease firing, for the fort was theirs; and he requested them to wait till the morning, that he might deliver a letter from the governor to the French general. They replied, they would suffer no delay, the gates must instantly be opened; otherwise, they had ladders, and would enter and put every man to the sword. He, however, told them he would not open the gates till he had seen their general; upon this they renewed their fire, setting up a loud shout like men who were about to obtain possession of their prey. Mellado hastened to the bulwark of St. Barbara, where he apprehended the escalade would be made, and there he perceived that the enemy, who had found a rope-ladder in the covered way, were endeavouring to grapple the drawbridge with it; but, either from the weight of the rope, which rendered it difficult to be thrown, or because the irons were not sufficiently sharp to lay hold, their attempts were frustrated. This Mellado could not foresee; and knowing that no time was to be lost, he hastened out through a covered way to the nearest work of the enemy, and called out to the commandant, requesting him to stop the assault, and send him to the general, that he might deliver the governor’s letter; the party who were flanking the ravelin, no sooner heard his voice than they fired a volley towards it; upon which, without waiting for an answer, he hastened to the nearest centinel of the French, and the captain of the guard conducted him to the French commandant in the town; whom he entreated to have compassion upon the wounded in the fort, and call off the assailants. This officer was a man of humanity, and instantly sent off to suspend the assault, while Mellado, who was now delivered from his fears for his poor defenceless countrymen, was escorted to the general. In the morning the gates were opened to the enemy. The French soldiers gave sufficient proof how little mercy the wounded would have found at their hands, had they been under no control, for they stript the clothes and blankets from the beds of these helpless men. Mazzachelli gave orders that they should be conveyed to Gerona; and Mellado, having seen this performed, and perceiving that it was intended to detain him and his assistants as prisoners, took the first opportunity of making his escape.
♦Las Medas and Lerida surrendered.♦
At the very time when the garrison of Hostalrich, after a four months’ defence, and a bombardment, during which between three and four thousand shells were thrown into the place, ♦May 13.♦ thus gallantly effected their retreat, the Catalans suffered another loss. The islands and fortress of Las Medas, which were of material importance from their position on the coast, were surprised by a party of Neapolitan infantry, and given up in a manner which the French imputed to cowardice, though, by their own account, treason, on the part of the commander, was the only intelligible cause of the surrender. Lerida also was rather betrayed than yielded by Garcia Conde. The town was entered by assault: and the castle, where the works were uninjured, and which, under Alvarez or Estrada, might have rivalled Gerona, was surrendered the next day. For this there was no excuse; O’Donnell’s last orders to the governor had been, that if the city should be taken, he was to defend the fortresses; and if no such orders had been given, his duty required him to hold out to the last extremity. The commander-in-chief, who rewarded the defenders of Hostalrich with a medal, stigmatized this conduct as it deserved; but he reminded the Catalans, that Tarragona, Tortosa, Cardona, Berga, Seu de Urgel, Coll de Ballaguer, and Mequinenza, still remained as bulwarks of the principality; that if all these were lost, there would be their inaccessible mountains; and that when they began the war, they had neither army nor fortresses, for all their fortified places had been dismantled. A wound which he had received during the siege of Gerona, and which had never been healed, because he never allowed himself rest enough from the incessant and anxious activity of his situation, became now so threatening, that he was constrained for a while to withdraw from ♦Augereau superseded by Marshal Macdonald.♦ the command. Augereau also, about the same time, was recalled. His success in sieges did not expiate, in Buonaparte’s eyes, for the loss in men and reputation which he had sustained from an enemy who were now become as wary as they were active and enterprising. Marshal Macdonald, Duke of Tarento, succeeded him. The plunder of Barcelona was sent into France under Augereau’s escort; and a number of commercial adventurers from that country, who, being deceived by the French official accounts, had supposed that Spain was actually subdued, and gone thither with the intent of forming establishments, gladly seized the first opportunity of returning in safety.
If the war was carried on by the Catalans with an unwearied and unremitting energy which was not displayed in other parts of Spain, it was not wholly owing to that enterprising and unconquerable spirit by which they have always been characterized, but in some degree to the natural strength of the province, and still more to the advantage which they derived from having many places in their possession which could not be reduced without a regular siege. Throughout Spain there existed the same feeling of indignation against the invaders, ... but where the country, the villages, and the towns were alike open, there was not the same possibility of resistance; plains could not be defended by peasantry; nor could the contest be maintained by large bodies against a superior enemy, when there were neither fortified towns nor natural fastnesses on which they could retire. In such parts the war was carried on by guerilla parties, who made incursions from the mountainous districts into the plains, and whenever it was necessary to disperse, found friends every where. Wherever the French were nominally masters of the country, the guerillas harassed their communication, cut off their small parties, and diminished their numbers by a mode of warfare as disheartening to the enemy as it was consuming and inglorious; while in the stronger parts of the kingdom, such as Asturias, and the province of Cuenca, and the mountains of Ronda, the inhabitants perseveringly defended their native soil.
♦Fort Matagorda taken by the French.♦
Cadiz, however, was the point whereon all eyes were at this time turned, in expectation of great events. Victor had been left to command the siege, if siege it may be called. The French occupied the shore of the bay, fortified their own position, and endeavoured to annoy the shipping and the town; a regular attack upon the isle was too perilous for them to attempt. Fort Matagorda was the only point from which it was thought possible that they could injure the town: it had been built for the defence of the arsenal, opposite to the broadest part of that tongue of land which connects Cadiz with the Isle of Leon. From thence it was apprehended they might with the largest land mortars throw shells to the gates of the city; Ormond indeed had planted his cannon there, in the fruitless attempt upon Cadiz in Queen Anne’s reign. The fort, like the other land-works, had been dismantled upon their approach; but when it was seen that they were beginning to reconstruct it, it was deemed advisable that they should be dispossessed, and that the post should be maintained as long as possible against them. Accordingly they were compelled to abandon it, and the hasty works which could be re-erected were garrisoned by a party of British soldiers and seamen under Captain Maclean. They defended it for nearly two months, till it was reduced to a heap of ruins; and having lost in the last two days sixteen killed and fifty-seven wounded, were brought off by the boats of the British squadron, under the fire of the enemy’s batteries, with little loss. The manner in which this weak fort was defended taught the French what they might expect if they should attempt the Isle of Leon, for the defence of which a formidable line of works behind the Santi Pietri had now been executed under the direction of General Sir Thomas Graham, who had arrived from England to command the auxiliary forces there. These works extended to the ocean on the right, and on the left occupied the Caraccas as an advanced post. The French also were more intent upon securing themselves in their cantonments than upon annoying the Spaniards. They fortified Puerto Real, Puerto Santa Maria, and Chiclana, formed entrenched camps between these places, and strengthened the Trocadero, where they established batteries from whence to bombard the town. Having presently found the inefficiency of the field artillery, which was all that they had brought with them, they fished up the guns from the French and Spanish ships which had been wrecked upon that coast after the battle of Trafalgar. Most of the heavy pieces with which two-and-twenty batteries were now mounted were recovered in this manner from the sea.
♦Storm at Cadiz.♦
The French, though disappointed in their main object here by Alburquerque’s sagacity, and the prompt assistance of the British forces, were in high spirits. They were in a fine country; their quarters were at once commodious and secure; and a few weeks after their arrival the winds and waves threw into their possession no inconsiderable booty. For during a tremendous gale, which continued four days with unabated violence, three line of battle ships, one frigate, and about forty merchantmen were driven[12] to the side of the bay which they occupied, and went on shore at the height of the spring side. The men were taken out by the boats of the British squadron, and the ships were set on fire by the enemy’s red-hot shot; but no small part of the lading fell into their ♦Cruel usage of the French prisoners in the bay.♦ hands. During the tempest the French on board the prison ships could not receive their supplies of provisions and water from the shore; their signals of distress were disregarded by the Spaniards; and if the British Admiral had not sent his boats to their relief as soon as the gale abated, very many more of these miserable men than actually perished must have fallen victims, the Spaniards being in no haste to encounter the swell for the sake of enemies whom they seem to have considered as out of the pale of humanity. In the case of these prisoners, indeed, they had cast off all compassion, and the obduracy of the national character was fully manifested towards them, the negligence of the government being in this instance hardly less criminal than the avarice ♦1810.
May.♦ and brutality of those whom it employed. Admiral Pickmore perceiving with how little care the pontoons were secured, proposed to the Spanish Admiral that chains should be used as bridles to their cables; application was made to the Admiral in command at the Caraccas; they were promised from time to time, but never sent; and, as the British Commander had foreseen, ♦May 15.♦ the prisoners in the Castilla, nearly 700 in number, and mostly officers, cut the cable one night, when wind and tide were in their favour, ♦Escape of two prison ships.♦ and hoisting a sail which they had made from their hammocks, ran for the opposite coast. English boats were presently sent after them, while it was doubted whether the vessel had not by accident parted from her anchor; but when they reached her it was impossible to board, the pontoon being light, her ports all down, no steps on the side, nor ropes over it, and the French prepared, not only with musketry, but with cannon-ball of twenty-four and thirty-six pounders, which had been used for ballast in the vessel: two hundred men were stationed to throw these by hand, and the boats were presently disabled when such missiles were showered upon them. Fort Puntales and the gun and mortar boats opened their fire upon the pontoon, the vessel was burnt, but the fugitives, with little loss, effected their escape[13].