♦He deserts from the French army.♦
After carrying on a correspondence with Eroles for about two months, and arranging with him a plan for attacking some of the places which the French held on the left of the Llobregat, it was agreed that he should come over to the Spaniards and put the design in execution; and hoping both to render service to the cause in which he now embarked, and to conceal the fact of his own desertion, leaving Barcelona in the night, he led away with him from the ♦Jan. 17.♦ neighbourhood of that city two squadrons of cuirassiers, to whom he produced a forged order of the Marshal’s that they should follow him on a secret expedition. His intention was that Eroles should intercept them, and make them and himself prisoners: but the messenger, whom he had dispatched two days before to apprise the Baron of his movements, fell in with a party of hussars belonging to the Anglo-Sicilian army, who were scouring the road to Moncada, and was detained by them; and when Van Halen came to the place appointed, and found that the scheme had failed, nothing remained for him but to provide for his own safety by escaping as soon as he could. Thus his desertion became notorious, and all the plans which had been formed upon the supposition of keeping it secret were frustrated.
♦His scheme for recovering certain places.♦
But Van Halen’s disposition was turned to perilous intrigues and enterprises: he now conceived a design of recovering some strong places by stratagem; and Eroles remembering the Rovirada by which Figueras had been surprised, and being himself of an adventurous spirit, entered readily into his views, and went with him to General Copons, whose head-quarters were then at Vich. Copons was not without difficulty induced to give his consent, and they then proceeded to Xerta, where Don Josef Sans, who commanded the force before Tortosa, had his head-quarters. This place was so strictly blockaded that it was certain no tidings of Van Halen’s desertion could have reached it; and to induce a belief in other quarters that he had left Catalonia, bills upon Madrid and other places at a distance had been taken up for him. He had possessed himself not only of Suchet’s cipher, but of the handwritings which it was necessary to counterfeit; and letters were now written as from the Marshal, informing General Robert the commander that the exigencies of the Emperor’s affairs compelled him to withdraw all his garrisons from that side of the Llobregat; that Colonel D’Eschalard of his staff was gone to Tarrasa, there to conclude the treaty for evacuating them; and that he must be prepared to depart with his equipage and field-artillery as soon as orders to that effect should reach him. It was added, that the Emperor had been pleased to honour him with the grand-cross of the Imperial Order of the Reunion, and upon this the Marshal offered him his congratulations. An unlucky peasant was found, who undertook, in the character of a spy of Suchet’s, to carry this forged dispatch into the town. So few communications, without a strong escort, escaped the vigilance of the Catalans, that whenever a single messenger was sent, the letter ... written in the smallest compass and in the fewest words ... used to be inclosed in lead, and swallowed by the bearer. Van Halen was well acquainted with all the details of such transactions. If the enemy sent a spy out from one of their fortresses, they usually made a sally, and thus brought him out unobserved, and set him on his way; but the messenger who was to make his way in, approached in the darkness, and made a certain signal with a flint and steel. The peasant, though carefully instructed upon this as upon all other points, forgot this important part of his instructions, and in consequence was wounded by the sentinel: the first part of his errand, however, was not the less performed; the dispatch was delivered to General Robert, and no suspicion being entertained of the stratagem, the man was sent to the hospital, and there carefully attended. But the answer which he should have delivered into the hands of his employers was sent by another person, and consequently not received by those who were expecting it.
♦The deceit tried at Tortosa.♦
Having learnt what had befallen their messenger, Eroles and Van Halen proceeded with their device. A Spanish officer was sent with a letter from Sans, saying he had just received a copy of a treaty signed at Tarrasa by the Spanish and French commanders-in-chief in Catalonia, agreeing upon an armistice of fifteen days for the evacuation of the places named in the treaty, Tortosa being one; he inclosed a letter with D’Eschalard’s signature, which it was pretended had accompanied it, and in which it was stated that the chef d’escadron, Van Halen, one of the Marshal’s aides-de-camp, would speedily arrive with full instructions. The garrison were on the point of making a sally when the officer arrived: the news of the armistice spread; a free communication in consequence took place with the advanced posts of the Spaniards, and on the next morning General Robert sent out Colonel Plique to make arrangements for evacuating the place; at the same time he liberated some soldiers who had lately been surprised and made prisoners. The Colonel accordingly came at the hour appointed; Van Halen presented himself in his aide-de-camp’s uniform, and the Spanish Captain Daura, as having accompanied him from the Llobregat, delivered a letter from Copons. Plique desired to be left alone with Van Halen, whose instructions he was authorized to receive, in case the Spanish commander should not permit him to enter the town. He inquired of him concerning the state of affairs which had reduced the Emperor to sacrifice these places, and Van Halen briefly related the series of reverses which rendered it necessary to withdraw from Spain 30,000 men, leaving only garrisons in Barcelona, Gerona, and Figueras. The Marshal, he said, was before Barcelona, waiting impatiently ♦February.♦ for their arrival, that he might begin his march: his desire was that no man should be left in the hospitals if he could safely be removed; that General Robert should bring away all the artillery he could, and include the public money with his own to avoid all difficulty upon that score: for himself, he added, he must proceed with the same orders to Murviedro and Peñiscola. Plique inquired if the English assented to the armistice, and was assured that they did. He then asked if the only favour which the Emperor had bestowed upon their garrison was that of granting the grand-cross to General Robert, the Marshal, he said, when he withdrew from Valencia, having promised to recommend several officers for promotion. Van Halen told him he had understood that two Generals of Brigade were made, M. Plique himself he believed being one, and M. Jorry, then at Murviedro, the other. The Colonel appears to have been completely deceived; but he was instructed to invite Brigadier Sans to a repast before the town should be evacuated, and to request that he would send officers of artillery to take possession of the magazines, and that he would allow the aide-de-camp to return with him into the town, and take up his quarters there. This, Sans said, he was positively enjoined not to permit; all he could allow was that M. Van Halen, accompanied by a Spanish officer, should present himself at the Puente de Jesus, and confer there with General Robert. When they reached the bridge, Robert did not come out, but he sent the chief of his staff, with several officers, and one company, and they renewed the request that Van Halen might enter; this of course was refused, and in case an attempt had been made to seize him, Eroles with a body of horse was near at hand. A letter was sent in, inclosing a copy of the forged treaty, and the parties then separated. Van Halen suspected that the deceit had been discovered; still, however, he carried it on, and wrote to Robert, saying, ♦It fails there.♦ that as the officers had urged him to do, he should have evaded the presence of the Spanish Colonel, had he not been strictly ordered by Marshal Suchet to do nothing which could tend to interrupt the good understanding during the armistice; and being now obliged to communicate without delay his orders in Murviedro and Peñiscola, he was deprived of the honour of seeing him. General Robert answered this by a letter to Sans, regretting that he had not accepted his invitation. Van Halen’s letter, he said, gave him no satisfactory notion either of his proceedings or those of his government; and unless he conferred with Van Halen in the fortress, he should not observe the armistice, but renew hostilities that afternoon, and continue them till this aide-de-camp, whom he must see, returned from Murviedro.
♦Attempt at Lerida.♦
It was known afterwards that a spy during the preceding night had entered the town, and his letters made General Robert immediately suspect the stratagem: disappointed of getting Van Halen into his hands, and of taking the Spanish officers in a counter-snare, he took the only vengeance in his power, by putting to death the wounded peasant who had brought the first forged letter. Eroles, meantime, not discouraged by this failure, lost no time in trying the same artifice elsewhere. Mequinenza had hitherto only been observed by part of one regiment; and the garrison, though reduced in number, made incursions for many leagues round, by which means they had laid in stores of provision for eighteen months, and kept the surrounding country in continual alarm. Eroles, on his way from Xerta towards Lerida, sent his adjutant, Don Antonio Mazeda, with Don José Antonio Cid, a member of the provincial deputation of Catalonia, to raise the Somatenes, and by this means cut off all communication with the place; and he dispatched before them a peasant with such another letter as that which at first had imposed upon General Robert. He halted that night a day’s journey from Lerida, having in his company Don Juan Antonio Daura, who forged the signatures, Van Halen, and Lieutenant Don Eduardo Bart, who spoke French so perfectly, that he was able to personate a French officer. Here they parted company, the two latter making for Torres del Segre, a place on the river of that name, six leagues from Mequinenza, and three from Lerida; there they remained in secret, coming out only at night to confer with Eroles, learn from him the state of affairs, and copy such papers as were required, none of which were forwarded till they had been examined by each of the party most carefully. The Baron himself proceeded to the blockading force before Lerida, and appearing there as Commandant-General of the blockade of that place, Monzon and Mequinenza, he reviewed the troops, inspected their posts, and made ♦Feb. 9.♦ dispositions for straitening the blockade; meanwhile the forged orders were sent in by a trusty agent to the governor, General Lamarque. Hither the spy from Mequinenza returned, bringing with him the reply of Baron Bourgeois, the governor, to Marshal Suchet, in which he acknowledged the receipt of his orders, said that he was preparing to obey, inclosed the returns of his force, the state of the military chest and the magazines, and thanked the Emperor for the grand-cross with which he had been pleased to honour him; the same messenger brought also a letter from Mazeda, saying that he had strictly blockaded the place. The reply from the governor of Lerida was in like manner brought him, and he thus obtained the exact returns which he wished, and understood also that both commandants were ready to fall into the snare.
♦and at Mequinenza, where it succeeds.♦
He then set out for Mequinenza, with 300 foot and 40 horse, including a company of Mina’s division, which he met upon the way, and ordered to follow him. Van Halen was instructed to join him by a different road, which he did, in sight of the fortress, Eroles having first sent in dispatches, signed in D’Eschalard’s name, and sealed with the seal of the staff, informing the governor of the pretended armistice, and stating that the two aides-de-camp, Van Halen and Captain Castres, would go round to the fortresses with the necessary orders; he accompanied this with a letter in his own name, announced the arrival of an officer from Marshal Suchet, and requested to be informed what number of officers the French Commandant would bring out to confer with this officer in his presence, that he might present himself with an equal number; coming himself, if the Commandant came, or deputing one of his chief officers, if General Bourgeois should think proper to act by delegate: in either case, his troops should be drawn out at an equal distance with those of the French from any central point which the Commander might please to name. Time and place were accordingly appointed, and Van Halen in his French uniform, and Bart as his orderly, went to the conference without an escort, and with an effrontery which prevented all suspicion. Van Halen presented a letter as from Suchet, in which the Marshal was made to say how painfully he felt the circumstances which compelled him to give orders for evacuating places wherein, at the cost of so many sacrifices, they had planted their victorious banners. But unexampled defections had forced the Emperor to this measure; and his object now was, to preserve these brave garrisons, and place them once more in the first rank of his bayonets. His aide-de-camp was charged with verbal communications. Van Halen acted his part perfectly; and having arranged everything for the march of the troops, who were to evacuate the place on the following noon, Eroles hastened with his subtle agent to Lerida, there to repeat the stratagem.