4º.—With such soldiers, the battles of Cardadeu, Molino, Igualada, and Valls, were gained; yet general St. Cyr does not hesitate to call the Migueletes, who were beaten at those places, the best light troops in the world. The best light troops are neither more nor less than the best troops in the world; but if, instead of fifteen thousand Migueletes, the four thousand men composing Wellington’s light division had been on the heights of Cardadeu—general St. Cyr’s sixty rounds of ammunition would scarcely have carried him to Barcelona. The injurious force with which personal feelings act upon the judgement are well known, or it might excite wonder that so good a writer and so able a soldier should advance such fallacies.
5º.—General St. Cyr’s work, admirable in many respects, bears, nevertheless, the stamp of carelessness. Thus, he affirms that Dupont’s march to Andalusia encouraged the tumults of Aranjues; but the tumults of Aranjues happened in the month of March, nearly three months previous to Dupont’s movement, which took place in May and June. Again, he says, that, Napoleon, to make a solid conquest in the Peninsula, should have commenced with Catalonia, instead of over-running Spain by the northern line of operations; an opinion quite unsustainable. The progress of the seventh corps was impeded by the want of provisions, not by the enemy’s force. Twenty thousand men could beat the Spaniards in the field, but they could not subsist. What could three hundred thousand men have done? Would it have given a just idea of Napoleon’s power to employ the strength of his empire against the fortified towns in Catalonia? In what would the greater solidity of this plan have consisted? While the French were thus engaged, the patriots would have been organizing their armies; England would have had time to bring all her troops into line, and two hundred thousand men placed between Zaragoza and Tortosa, or breaking into France by the western Pyrenees, while the Austrians were advancing to the Rhine, would have sorely shaken the solidity of general St. Cyr’s plan.
6º.—The French emperor better understood what he was about; he saw a nation intrinsically powerful and vehemently excited, yet ignorant of war, and wanting the aid which England was eager to give. All the elements of power existed in the Peninsula, and they were fast approximating to a centre, when Napoleon burst upon that country, and as the gathering of a water-spout is said to be sometimes prevented by the explosion of a gun, so the rising strength of Spain was dissipated by his sudden and dreadful assault. If the war was not then finished, it was because his lieutenants were tardy and jealous of each other.
7º.—St. Cyr appears to have fallen into an error, common enough in all times, and one very prevalent among the French generals in Spain. He considered his task as a whole in itself, instead of a constituent part of a greater system. He judged very well what was wanting for the seventh corps, to subjugate Catalonia in a solid manner, but he did not discern that it was fitting that the seventh corps should forget Catalonia, to aid the general plan against the Peninsula. Rosas surrendered at the very moment when Napoleon, after the victories of Baylen, Espinosa, Tudela, and the Somosierra, was entering Madrid as a conqueror. The battles of Cardadeu and Molino del Rey may, therefore, be said to have completely prostrated Spain, because the English army was isolated, the Spanish army destroyed, and Zaragoza invested. Was that a time to calculate the weight of powder and the number of pick-axes required for a formal siege of Tarragona? The whole Peninsula was shaken to the centre, the proud hearts of the Spaniards sunk with terror, and in that great consternation, to be daring, was, on the part of the French generals, to be prudent. St. Cyr was not in a condition to besiege Tarragona, formally, but he might have assaulted it with less danger than he incurred by his march to Barcelona. The battle of Valls was another epoch of the same kind; the English army had re-embarked, and the route of Ucles had taken place. Portugal was invaded and Zaragoza had just fallen. That was a time to render victory fruitful, yet no attempt was made against Tortoza.
8º.—St. Cyr, who justly blames Palacios and Vives for remaining before Barcelona instead of carrying their army to the Ter and the Fluvia, seems inclined to applaud Reding for conduct equally at variance with the true principles of war. It was his own inactivity after the battle of Molino that produced the army of Reding, and the impatient folly of that army, and of the people, produced the plan which led to the route of Igualada and the battle of Valls. But, instead of disseminating his thirty thousand men on a line of sixty miles, from Tarragona to the Upper Llobregat, Reding should have put Tarragona and Tortosa into a state of defence, and, leaving a small corps of observation near the former, have made Lerida the base of his operations. In that position, and keeping the bulk of his force in one mass, he might have acted on St. Cyr’s flanks and rear effectually, by the road of Cervera—and without danger to himself; nor could the French general have attempted aught against Tarragona.
But it is not with reference to the seventh corps alone that Lerida was the proper base of the Spanish army. Let us suppose that the supreme junta had acted for a moment upon a rational system; that the Valencian troops, instead of remaining at Morella, had been directed on Mequinenza and that the duke of Infantado’s force had been carried from Cuença to the same place instead of being routed at Ucles. Thus, in the beginning of February, more than fifty thousand regular troops would have been assembled at Lerida, encircled by the fortresses of Monzon, Balaguer, Mequinenza, Tarragona, and Tortoza. Its lines of operations would have been as numerous as the roads. The Seu d’Urgel, called the granary of Catalonia, would have supplied corn, and the communication with Valencia would have been direct and open. On this central and impregnable position such a force might have held the seventh corps in check, and also raised the siege of Zaragoza; nor could the first corps have followed Infantado’s movements without abandoning the whole of the emperor’s plans against Portugal and Andalusia.
9º.—St. Cyr praises Reding’s project for surrounding the French, and very gravely observes that the only method of defeating it was by taking the offensive himself. Nothing can be juster; but he should have added that it was a certain method; and, until we find a great commander acting upon Reding’s principles, this praise can only be taken as an expression of civility towards a brave adversary. St. Cyr’s own movements were very different; he disliked Napoleon personally, but he did not dislike his manner of making war. Buonaparte’s campaign in the Alps against Beaulieu was not an unheeded lesson. There is, however, one proceeding of St. Cyr’s for which there has been no precedent, and which it is unlikely will ever be imitated, St. Cyr. namely, the stopping of the fire of the artillery when it was doing infinite execution, that a moral ascendancy over the enemy might be established. It is impossible to imagine a more cutting sarcasm on the courage of the Catalans than this fact; yet, general St. Cyr states that his adversaries were numerous, and fought bravely. Surely he could not have commanded so long without knowing that there is in all battles a decisive moment, when every weapon, every man, every combination of force that can be brought to bear, is necessary to gain the victory.
10º.—If general St. Cyr’s own marches and battles did not sufficiently expose the fallacy of his opinions relative to the vigour of the Catalans, lord Collingwood’s correspondence would supply the deficiency. That able and sagacious man, writing at this period says,—
“In Catalonia, every thing seems to have gone wrong since the fall of Rosas. The Spaniards are in considerable force, yet are dispersed and panic-struck whenever the enemy appears.”—“The applications for supplies are unlimited; they want money, arms, and ammunition, of which no use appears to be made when they get them.”—“In the English papers, I see accounts of successes, and convoys cut off, and waggons destroyed, which are not true. What has been done in that way has been by the boats of our frigates, which have, in two or three instances, landed men and attacked the enemy with great gallantry. The Somatenes range the hills in a disorderly way, and fire at a distance, but retire on being approached.”—“The multitudes of men do not make a force.”
Add to this the Spanish historian Cabane’s statements that the Migueletes were always insubordinate, detested the service of the line, and were many of them armed only with staves, and we have the full measure of the Catalans’ resistance.