Many of the French artillery-men and non-commissioned Suchet’s Memoirs. officers had been withdrawn from Spain to serve in Germany. One brigade of the third corps also was employed to protect the communications on the side of Navarre, and another was detached to escort the prisoners from Zaragoza to Bayonne. These drafts, added to the loss sustained during the siege, reduced the number of troops in Aragon to about twelve thousand disposable men under arms.
Junot, being sick, returned to France, and general Suchet succeeded him. The weakness of the army gave great uneasiness to the new general,—an uneasiness which was not allayed by finding that men and officers were, from various causes, discontented and dispirited. Suchet was, however, no ordinary man; and, with equal prudence and vigour, he commenced a system of discipline in his corps, and of order in his government, that afterwards carried him, with scarcely a check, from one success to another, until he obtained the rank of marshal for himself, and the honour for his corps of being the only one in Spain that never suffered any signal reverse.
Suchet hoped that the battle of Valls, and other defeats sustained by the Spaniards at this period, would give him time to re-organize his troops in tranquillity—but this hope soon vanished. The peasantry, observing the weakness of the third corps, only waited for a favourable opportunity to rise, and the Migueletes and Somatenes of the mountains about Lerida and Mequenenza were, under the command of colonel Pereña and colonel Baget, already in activity.
While the duke of Abrantes yet held the command Blake’s appointment took place; and that general drawing troops from Valencia and Tarragona, and, being joined by Lazan, fixed his quarters at Morella, on the frontier of Aragon. Designing to operate in that province rather than in Catalonia, he endeavoured to re-kindle the fire of insurrection; nor was fortune adverse to him. A part of the garrison of Monzon having made an unsuccessful marauding excursion beyond the Cinca, the citizens fell upon those who remained, and obliged them to abandon that post, which was immediately occupied by Pereña. The duke of Abrantes sent eight companies of infantry and thirty cuirassiers to retake the place: but Baget having reinforced Pereña, the French were repulsed, and the Cinca suddenly overflowing behind them, cut off their retreat. The cavalry, plunging with their horses into the river, escaped by swimming; but the infantry finding the lower passages guarded by the garrison of Lerida, and the upper cut off by the partizan corps, after three days’ marching and skirmishing, surrendered to Pereña and Baget. The prisoners were carried to Tarragona, and soon afterwards exchanged, in pursuance of a convention made by Reding and St. Cyr.
This little success was, as usual, sufficient to excite the most extravagant hopes, and the garrison of Mequinenza having, about the same time, burnt a bridge of boats which the French had thrown over the Ebro at Caspe, Blake immediately advanced, and, driving back the French from Beceyta and Val de Ajorfa, entered Alcanitz. The beaten troops retired in haste and with loss to Samper and Ixar; and it was at this moment, when the French were harassed on both banks of the Ebro, and their wings separated by the destruction of the bridge at Caspe, that Suchet arrived to take the command of the third corps. Seeing his divisions disseminated over a great tract of country, and in danger of being beaten in detail, he immediately ordered general Habert to abandon the left bank of the Ebro, cross that river at Fuentes, and follow in reserve upon Ixar, where Suchet himself rallied all the rest of the troops, with the exception of a small garrison left in Zaragoza.
BATTLE OF ALCANITZ.
The French battalions were fearful and disorderly: but the general, anxious to raise their spirits, marched towards Blake on the 23d of May. The Suchet’s Memoirs. latter was in position in front of Alcanitz, a bridge over the Guadalupe was immediately behind his centre, which was covered by a hill; his left was well posted near some pools of water, but his right was rather exposed. The French had about eight thousand infantry and seven hundred cavalry in the field, and the Spaniards about twelve thousand of all arms.
Suchet, observing Blake’s dispositions, judged that if he could carry the hill in the centre, and so separate the Spanish wings, the latter would be cut off from the bridge of Alcanitz, and obliged to surrender. In this design he directed a column against each wing, to draw Blake’s attention to his flanks: but, when the skirmishers were well engaged, three thousand men, pushing rapidly along the main road, attacked the hillock. A brisk fire of musketry and artillery, however, checked their progress; the Spaniards stood firm, and the French, after a feeble effort to ascend the hill, began to waver, and, finally, fled outright. Suchet, who was himself slightly wounded, rallied them in the plain, and remained there for the rest of the day, but without daring to renew the action. In the night, he retreated; and, although not pursued, his troops were seized with panic, and, at day-light, came pouring into Samper with all the tumult and disorder of a rout. Blake’s inactivity enabled Suchet to restore order; he caused the man who first commenced the alarm to be shot; and then, encouraging the troops that they might not seem to fly, he rested in position two whole days, after which he retreated to Zaragoza.
This action at Alcanitz was a subject of triumph and rejoicing all over Spain. The supreme junta conferred an estate upon Blake; the kingdom of Murcia was added to his command; his army rapidly augmented; and he himself greatly elated and confirmed in a design he had formed to retake Zaragoza, turned his whole attention to Aragon, and totally neglected Catalonia, to which province it is time to return.