Paris’s orders had been to make for Mequinenza if he were compelled to leave Zaragoza; this he found impossible, and was glad to effect his escape by Huesca and Jaca. Marshal Suchet, after leaving a garrison of 4500 men in Tortosa, under Baron Robert, moved toward the frontier of Aragon, with the double view of saving Paris, and of enabling a detachment to rejoin him which he had sent to destroy the castles at Teruel and Alcañiz, and bring off the garrisons. The detachment having arrived at Caspe, Suchet pushed his columns to Fabera, and had now his army on the right bank of the Ebro ... having its right at Caspe, its centre at Gandessa, and its left at Tortosa. Here he received intelligence that Paris was driven upon Jaca; that Clausel, who had moved down from Jaca with a view of securing Zaragoza, finding it too late, had again retreated, and retiring still further, had taken a position with his corps upon the frontier of France, and that the whole of Aragon was lost. Nothing remained for him but to draw off the garrisons of Zuera, Gurrea, Anzanigo, Ayerbe, Huesca, Belchite, Fuentes, Pina, Bujaraloz and Caspe, and to think only of combining his operations with General Decaen for maintaining Catalonia. He crossed the Ebro therefore at Mequinenza, Mora, and ♦July 15.Suchet’s Mémoires, 2, 329–331.♦ Tortosa; and in passing between Hospitalet and Cambrils, was cannonaded by the English fleet. To maintain the line of the lower Ebro after the deliverance of Aragon was impossible; it was equally so to feed his army in the sterile environs of Tortosa, where he was also in danger of having the defiles in his rear occupied by the enemy, who might come by sea, and interpose between him and the strong places in Catalonia; he determined therefore upon moving on Reus, Valls, and Tarragona.
♦Duran enters Zaragoza. July 10.♦
Meantime Duran, manifesting no displeasure at the discourtesy which had been shown towards him, made his entrance into Zaragoza. His first business was to march through the rejoicing streets to the church of Our Lady of the Pillar, and here offer up thanksgiving; his second was to lay siege to the castle. The heavy artillery of his division was sent for, and approaches regularly made; and the Zaragozans, after having so often seen the Spaniards who had been made prisoners in Aragon or Valencia, marched through their streets, had now the satisfaction of seeing a French garrison brought prisoners thither in their turn from La Almunia, where they had surrendered to a detachment of the Sorian division. During the first days of the siege, Mina, finding it in vain to pursue General Paris, returned, and took up his quarters with his troops in the suburb; and this was supposed to be a farther indication of jealousy towards Duran, because by remaining on that side of the Ebro which appertained to his own district of Upper Aragon, he was not under his command; it was deemed more strange that he took no part whatever at this time in the operations of the siege, but left it wholly to be carried on by the Sorian division; in fact, he was daily expecting to be appointed to the command of the whole province. Before that appointment arrived, intelligence came that Suchet had advanced to Fabara and Caspe; upon which he crossed the bridge, began his retreat to Las Casetas and to Alagon, and sent orders to Tabuenca to follow him with his regiment: Tabuenca replied that he was under General Duran’s command, and could not leave Zaragoza without his orders. And Duran, as soon as he was informed of this, sent to Mina, saying he could not allow the regiment of Rioja to accompany him in his retreat (a retreat of which he was no otherwise informed than by the orders which had been sent to its colonel), because being determined to defend the city, he required its presence, and indeed he requested the support of some of his troops also; for if the enemy should advance to Zaragoza, which he did not expect, the retreat of the Spanish troops would have a most prejudicial effect upon the public mind; the two divisions were strong enough to meet the French and give them battle, and this they ought to do; but for himself, with his single division, he could defend the city. This indeed Duran at that juncture could well have done; but if the alternative had been to meet Suchet in the field, or to retreat, the course which Mina followed, in pursuance of his usual system, would have been unquestionably the most judicious.
♦Mina takes the command.♦
It was soon ascertained that Suchet had retreated, upon which Mina returned to Zaragoza; he then took up his quarters in the city, and the siege of the Aljaferia was carried on jointly by the two divisions; and on the fourth day after his return, the commission which he had looked for arrived, appointing him Commandant-General of all Aragon. The same day brought orders for Duran to join the army of Catalonia, leaving, however, such regiments as Mina might think proper to detain. Mina took two out of four regiments, and one of three squadrons of cavalry; with the remainder Duran departed for Catalonia, leaving to Mina the reputation of effecting the deliverance of Zaragoza, which certainly was not due to him, and was not needed for one who had rendered more signal services to his country, when its fortunes were at the lowest ebb, than any other individual. Duran was remarkable among all the partizans who distinguished themselves in this war for the
♦Reconquista de Zaragoza, pp. 23–84.♦ discipline which, as an old officer, he introduced among his troops, and which he maintained by means that made him equally respected and beloved. Father, or grandfather, were the appellations by which they called him, and which he deserved by the care which he manifested on all occasions for them. On ♦The Aljaferia surrendered.♦ the second day after his departure a redoubt was blown up, in which the commanding officer of the artillery, and 28 men who were in garrison there, perished. This was said to have been his own act; and it was said also that another artillery officer intended to set fire to the powder-magazine, but was prevented by the soldiers, who with their besiegers must otherwise have been destroyed, and with them no small part of the city. The motive assigned for this insane desperation was resentment against the commandant of the place for determining to capitulate, though the works had sustained little injury, and were abundantly provided for a long defence. Immediately after this the garrison surrendered.
♦Conduct of the Zaragozans during their captivity.♦
Thus, after four years of captivity, Zaragoza was delivered from its detested enemies. During the greater part of that time no tidings but those of ill fortune had reached the Zaragozans, ... the defeat of their armies, the capture of one strong hold after another, some having yielded through famine, others to the strength and skill of the besiegers, and more having been basely or traitorously given up. And though they well knew that the journals of the Intrusive Government, like those in France, were conducted upon a system of falsehood, suppressing every thing which could not be made appear favourable to Buonaparte’s views, they could not doubt the substance of these tidings, nor, in some of the worst cases, the extent of the national loss. The prisoners who were taken in Blake’s defeat before Murviedro, and the still greater number who surrendered with him at Valencia, had been marched through the streets of Zaragoza, in the depth of winter, and in a condition which would have moved any soldiers to compassion except those of Buonaparte and of the generals whom he employed in Spain: without shoes and stockings, foot-sore, half naked, half famished, they were driven and outraged and insulted by an enemy who seemed, together with the observances of civilized war, to have renounced the feelings of humanity. At such times the Zaragozans, without distinction of rank or sex, crowded about their unfortunate countrymen to administer what consolation they could, to weep over them, and to share with them their own scanty supplies of clothing and of food. On such occasions, too, all the respectable families, as if by one consent, kept days of mourning and humiliation[1], each in their houses: and more earnest prayers were never offered up than they breathed in bitterness of soul for the deliverance of their injured country, and for vengeance upon their merciless and insolent oppressors.
At the time of the deliverance, and long after, the city and its environs bore miserable vestiges of the two sieges. Ruined houses were to be seen far and near on every side, and the broken walls of what once had been fertile inclosures. Some streets were merely ruins; in others, the walls of the houses were literally covered with the marks of musket-balls, and in some places large holes had been made in them by the numbers which had struck there. Most of the churches and convents were nothing but heaps of ruins; the Capuchin’s convent had been so totally demolished, that only a solitary cross remained to mark the spot where it had stood. Nothing had been repaired except the Aljaferia and such of the fortifications as the French re-fortified for their own security. Much of this material destruction was reparable; but precious monuments of antiquity had been destroyed, ... precious libraries and precious manuscripts, which never could be replaced; and upon most of the inhabitants irreparable ruin had been brought. The loss of life which had been sustained there may be summed up: broken fortunes and broken hearts are not taken into the account; but the sufferers had the proud and righteous satisfaction of knowing that they had not suffered in vain. The two sieges of Zaragoza, that in which it was overcome, not less than that which it successfully resisted, contributed more than any other event to keep up the national spirit of the Spaniards, to exalt the character of the nation, and to excite the sympathy and the admiration of other countries. And the good will not pass away with the generation upon whom the evil fell. There is no more illustrious example of public virtue in ancient or modern history than this of Zaragoza. Such examples are not lost upon posterity; and such virtue, as it affords full proof that the Spanish character retains its primitive strength, affords also the best ground for hope, not only that Spain may resume its rank in Christendom as a great and powerful kingdom, but also that the Spaniards may become, religiously and politically, a free and enlightened nation; not by the remote consequences of a sudden and violent revolution, which always brings with it more evils than it sweeps away, but by the progress of wisdom and truth, working their sure though slow effect in God’s good time, among a patient, thoughtful, and devout people.
♦St. Sebastian’s.♦