After the failure of the assault at Monjouic, Verdier recommenced his approaches in due form, opened galleries for a mine, and interrupted the communication with the city by posting men in the ruins of the little fort of St. Juan. But his operations were retarded by Claros and Rovira, who captured a convoy of powder close to the French frontier. To prevent a recurrence of such events, the brigade of Souham’s division was pushed from Bañolas to St. Lorenzo de la Muja; and, on the 2d of August, the fortified convent of St. Daniel, situated in the valley of the Galligan, between the Constable fort and Monjouic, was taken by the French, who thus entirely intercepted the communication between the latter place and the city.
On the 4th of August, the glacis of Monjouic being crowned, the counterscarp blown in, and the flank defences ruined, the ditch was passed, and the half moon in front of the curtain carried by storm, but no lodgement was effected. During the day, Alvarez made an unsuccessful effort to retake the ruins of St. Juan; and at the same time, two hundred Spaniards who had come from the sea-coast with provisions, and penetrated to the convent of St. Daniel, thinking that their countrymen still held it, were made prisoners.
On the 5th the engineers having ascertained that the northern bastion being hollow, the troops would, after storming it, be obliged to descend a scarp of twelve or fourteen feet, changed the line of attack, and commenced new approaches against the eastern bastion. A second practical breach was soon opened, and preparations made for storming on the 12th, but in the night of the 11th, the garrison blew up the magazines, spiked the guns, and, without loss, regained Gerona. Thus the fort fell, after thirty-seven days of open trenches and one assault.
CHAPTER III.
Verdier, elated by the capture of Monjouic, boasted, in his despatches, of the difficulties that he had overcome, and they were unquestionably great, for the rocky nature of the soil had obliged him to raise his trenches instead of sinking them, and his approaches had been chiefly carried on by the flying sap. But he likewise expressed his scorn of the garrison, held their future resistance cheap, and asserted that fifteen days would suffice to take the town; in which he was justified neither by past nor succeeding facts; for the Spaniards indignant at his undeserved contempt, redoubled their exertions and falsified all his predictions; and while these events were passing close to Gerona, Claros and Rovira, at the head of two thousand five hundred Miguelettes, attacked Bascara a post between Figuera and Gerona at the moment when a convoy, escorted by a battalion had arrived there from Belgarde. The commandant of Figueras indeed, uniting some “gens d’armes” and convalescents to a detachment of his garrison, succoured the post on the 6th; but, meanwhile, the escort of the convoy had fallen back on France and spread such terror, that Augereau applied to St. Cyr for three thousand men to protect the frontier. That general refused this ill-timed demand, and, in his Memoirs, takes occasion to censure the system of moveable columns, as more likely to create than to suppress insurrections, as being harassing to the troops, weakening to the main force, and yet ineffectual, seeing that the peasantry must always be more moveable than the columns, and better informed of their marches and strength. There is great force in these observations, and if an army is in such bad moral discipline that the officers commanding the columns cannot be trusted, it is unanswerable. It must also be conceded that this system, at all times requiring a nice judgement, great talents, and excellent arrangement, was totally inapplicable to the situation and composition of the seventh corps. Yet, with good officers and well combined plans, it is difficult to conceive any more simple or efficient mode of protecting the flanks and rear of an invading army, than that of moveable columns supported by small fortified posts; and it is sufficient that Napoleon was the creator of this system, to make a military man doubtful of the soundness of St. Cyr’s objections. The emperor’s views, opinions, and actions, will in defiance of all attempts to lessen them, go down, with a wonderful authority to posterity.
A few days after the affair of Bascara, eight hundred volunteers, commanded by two officers, named Foxa and Cantera, quitted Olot, and making a secret march through the mountains, arrived in the evening of the 10th, upon the Ter, in front of Angeles; but being baffled in an attempt to pass the river there, descended the left bank in the night, pierced the line of investment, and, crossing at a ford near St. Pons, entered Gerona at day-break. This hardy exploit gave fresh courage to the garrison; yet the enemy’s approaches hourly advanced, pestilence wasted the besieged, and the Spanish generals outside the town still remained inactive.
In this conjuncture, Alvarez and his council were not wanting to themselves; while defending the half ruined walls of Gerona with inflexible constancy, they failed not to remonstrate against the cold-blooded neglect of those who should have succoured them; and the Supreme Junta of Catalonia, forwarded their complaints to the Central Junta at Seville, with a remarkable warmth and manliness of expression.
“The generals of our army,” they said, “have formed no efficient plan for the relief of Gerona; not one of the three lieutenant-generals here has been charged to conduct an expedition to its help; they say that they act in conformity to a plan approved by your Majesty. Can it be true that your Majesty approves of abandoning Gerona to her own feeble resources! If so, her destruction is inevitable; and should this calamity befall, will the other places of Catalonia and the Peninsula have the courage to imitate her fidelity, when they see her temples and houses ruined, her heroic defenders dead, or in slavery? And if such calamities should threaten towns in other provinces, ought they to reckon upon Catalonian assistance when this most interesting place can obtain no help from them?”—“Do you not see the consequences of this melancholy reflection, which is sufficient to freeze the ardour, to desolate the hearts of the most zealous defenders of our just cause? Let this bulwark of our frontier be taken, and the province is laid open, our harvests, treasures, children, ourselves, all fall to the enemy, and the country has no longer any real existence.”
In answer to this address, money was promised, a decree was passed to lend Catalonia every succour, and Blake received orders to make an immediate effort to raise the siege. How little did the language of the Spaniards agree with their actions! Blake, indeed, as we shall find, made a feeble effort to save the heroic and suffering city; but the Supreme Central Junta were only intent upon thwarting and insulting the English general, after the battle of Talavera, and this was the moment that the Junta of Catalonia, so eloquent, so patriotic with the pen, were selling, to foreign merchants, the arms supplied by England for the defence of their country!