When it is considered that in a great city only a small number of persons can estimate justly the immense advantages of their situation, and the comparative weakness of the enemy, it must be confessed that the spirit displayed by the Valencians upon this occasion was very great; unfortunately it ended there, nothing worthy of such an energetic commencement was afterwards performed, although very considerable armies were either raised or maintained in the province.
Journal of Moncey.
At Quarte Moncey, hearing that the captain-general, Serbelloni, was marching upon Almanza to intercept the communication with Chieva and Buñol, resolved to relinquish the line of Cuenca, and to attack Serbelloni before he could quit the kingdom of Murcia. This vigorous resolution he executed with great celerity; for, directing the head of his column towards Torrente, he continued his march until night, halting a short distance from that town. And a forced march the next day brought him near Alcira, only one league from the river Xucar; from his bivouac at that place he despatched advice to general Chabran of this change of affairs.
In the mean time the conde de Serbelloni, surprised in the midst of his movement, and disconcerted in his calculations by the decision and rapidity of Moncey, took up a position to defend the passage of the Xucar; the line of that river is strong, and offers many advantageous points of resistance; but the Spaniards imprudently occupied both banks, and in this exposed situation were attacked upon the morning of the 1st of July; the division on the French side was overthrown, and the passage forced without loss of time. Serbelloni then retired to the heights of San Felice, which covered the main road leading from Alcira to Almanza, hoping to secure the defiles in front of the latter town before the enemy could arrive there; but Moncey was again too quick for him; for leaving San Felice to his left, he continued his march on another route, and by a strenuous exertion seized upon the gorge of the defiles near Almanza late in the night of the 2d; the Spanish troops in the mean time approached his position, but were dispersed at day-break on the 3d, and some of their guns captured; the road being now open, Moncey entered the town of Almanza the same day. The 4th he took post at Bonete. The 5th near Chinchilla, and the 6th at Albacete, where he got intelligence that general Frere, who should have been at St. Clemente with a division, was gone towards Mequeña.
To explain this movement it is necessary to observe that when Dupont marched towards Andalusia, and Moncey against Valencia, the remaining divisions of their corps were employed by Savary to scour the country in the neighbourhood of Madrid, and to protect the rear and connect the operations of those generals; thus general Gobert, who, following Napoleon’s orders, should have been at Valladolid, was sent with the third division of Dupont towards Andalusia; and general Frere (commanding the second division of Moncey’s), who should have been at San Clemente, a central point, from whence he could gain the road leading from Seville to La Mancha, and intercept the communication between Valencia and Cuenca, or seize upon the point of junction where the route from Carthagena and Murcia falls into the road of Valencia, was sent by Requeña to reinforce Moncey.
Meanwhile, the inhabitants of Cuenca rose in arms, and being joined by a force of seven or eight thousand peasants, overpowered and destroyed a French detachment left in that town. The duke of Rovigo, fearing that Moncey’s column would be compromised by this insurrection, ordered general Caulaincourt, then at Taracon, to quell it with a force composed of cavalry and some provisional battalions. Caulaincourt arrived in front of Cuenca on the evening of the 3d of July; finding the insurgents in position, he attacked and dispersed them with great slaughter, and the town being deserted by the inhabitants, was given up to pillage.
In the mean time, Frere, who had quitted San Clemente upon the 26th, made his way to Requeña; there he received intelligence of Caulaincourt’s success, and that Moncey had passed the Xucar; whereupon, retracing his steps, he returned to San Clemente, his troops being wearied, sickly, and exhausted by these long and useless marches in the heats of summer. Moncey now re-organized his forces, and prepared artillery and other means for a second attempt against Valencia; but he was interrupted by Savary, who, alarmed at the advance of Cuesta and Blake, recalled Foy’s History. Frere towards Madrid, and Moncey, justly offended that Savary, inflated with momentary power, should treat him with so little ceremony, broke up from San Clemente, and likewise returned by the way of Ocaña to the capital.
OBSERVATIONS.
1º. The result of marshal Moncey’s campaign being published by the Spaniards as a great and decisive failure, produced extravagant hopes of final success; a happy illusion if the chiefs had not partaken of it, and pursued their wild course of mutual flattery and exaggeration, without reflecting that in truth there was nothing very satisfactory in the prospect of affairs. Moncey’s operation was in the nature of a moveable column; the object of which was to prevent the junction of the Valencian army with the Aragonese. The attempt upon the town of Valencia was a simple experiment, which, if successful, would have produced great effects, but having failed, the evil resulting was but trifling in a military [Appendix, No. 7.] point of view. Valencia was not the essential object of the expedition, and the fate of the general campaign depended upon the armies in Old Castile.
2º. It was consoling that a rich and flourishing town had not fallen into the power of the enemy; but at the same time a want of real nerve in the Spanish insurrection was visible. The kingdoms of Murcia and Valencia acted in concert, and contained two of the richest sea-port towns in the Peninsula; their united force amounted to thirty thousand organised troops, exclusive of the armed peasants in various districts; and the populace of Valencia were deeply committed by the massacre of the French residents. Here then, if in any place, a strenuous resistance was to be expected; nevertheless, marshal Moncey, whose whole force was at first only eight thousand French, and never exceeded ten thousand men, continued marching and fighting without cessation for a month, during which period he forced two of the strongest mountain passes in the world, crossed several large and difficult rivers, carried the war into the very streets of Valencia; and being disappointed of assistance from Catalonia, extricated his division from a difficult situation, after having defeated his opponents in five actions, killed and wounded a number of them, equal in amount to the whole of his own force, and made a circuit of above three hundred miles through a hostile and populous country, without having sustained any serious loss, without any desertion from the Spanish battalions incorporated with his own, and what was of more importance, having those battalions much increased by desertions from the enemy. In short, the great object of the expedition had been attained, the plan of relieving Zaragoza was entirely frustrated, and the organization of an efficient Spanish force retarded.