History of the war in the Peninsula and in the south of France from the year 1807 to the year 1814, vol. 4

by William Francis Patrick Napier

Suchet’s position was becoming more embarrassing every moment; he had now delivered four assaults, his force was diminished nearly one-fifth of its original number, and the men’s strength was spent with labouring on his prodigious works: his line of communication with Lerida was quite intercepted and that with Mora interrupted, and he had lost a large convoy of provisions together with the mules that carried it. The resolution of the besieged seemed in no manner abated, and their communication with the sea, although partially under the French fire, was still free; the sea itself was covered with ships of war, overwhelming reinforcements might arrive at any moment, and Campo Verde with ten thousand men was daily menacing his rear. The Valencian army, Villa Campa, the Empecinado, Duran who had defeated a French detachment near Mirando del Ebro, Mina who had just then taken the convoy with Massena’s baggage at the Puerto de Arlaban, in fine all the Partidas of the mountains of Albaracin, Moncayo, and Navarre, were in motion, and menacing his position in Aragon. This rendered it dangerous for him to call to his aid any more troops from the right of the Ebro, and yet a single check might introduce despondency amongst the soldiers of the siege, composed as they were of different nations, and some but lately come under his command; indeed their labours and dangers were so incessant and wearing, that it is no small proof of the French general’s talent, and the men’s spirit, that the confidence of both was still unshaken.

On the 24th the crisis seemed at hand, intelligence arrived in the French camp, that the Spanish army was coming down the Gaya river to fight, at the same time the garrison got under arms, and an active interchange of signals took place between the town and the fleet. Suchet immediately placed a reserve to sustain the guards of his trenches, and marched with a part of his army to meet Campo Verde. That general, pressed by the remonstrances of Contreras and the junta, had at last relinquished his own plan, recalled Eroles, and united his army at Momblanch on the 22nd, and then moving by Villardoña, had descended the hills between the Gaya and the Francoli; he was now marching in two columns to deliver battle, having directed Contreras to make a sally at the same moment. But Miranda, who commanded his right wing, found, or pretended to find, some obstacles and halted, whereupon Campo Verde instantly relinquished the attack, and marched to Vendril before the French general could reach him.

The 25th he again promised Contreras to make a decisive attack, and for that purpose desired that three thousand men of the garrison should be sent to Vendril, and the remainder be held ready to cut their way through the enemy’s lines during the action. He likewise assured him that four thousand English were coming by sea to aid in this project, and it is probable some great effort was really intended, for the breaching batteries had not yet opened their fire, and the wall of the place was consequently untouched; ten thousand infantry and a thousand cavalry under Campo Verde were within a few miles of the French camp on the Barcelona side; eight thousand men accustomed to fire were still under arms within the walls; and on the 26th colonel Skerrett appeared in the roadstead, not with four thousand, but with twelve hundred British soldiers, sent from Cadiz and from Gibraltar to succour Taragona.

The arrival of this force, the increase of shipping in the roadstead, and the promises of Campo Verde, raised the spirits of the garrison from the depression occasioned by the disappointment of the 27th; and they were still more elated when in the evening colonel Skerrett and his staff, accompanied by general Doyle, captain Codrington, and other officers of the navy, disembarked, and proceeded to examine the means of defence. But they were struck withContreras’ Report consternation when they heard that the British commander, because his engineers affirmed that the[Appendix, No. II.] Section 1. wall would give way after a few salvos from the breaching batteries, had resolved to keep his troops on board the transports, idle spectators of the garrison’s efforts, to defend the important place which he had been sent to succour.

Contreras, thus disappointed on all sides, and without dependence on Campo Verde, resolved, if the French delayed the storm until the 29th, to make way by a sally on the Barcelona road, and so join the army in the field; meanwhile to stand the assault if fortune so willed it. And he had good reason for his resolution, for the ground in front of the walls was high and narrow; and although there was neither ditch nor covered way, a thick hedge of aloe trees, no small obstacle to troops, grew at the foot of the rampart, which was also cut off from the town, and from the side works, by an internal ditch and retrenchment. Behind the rampart the houses of the great street called the Rambla, were prepared for defence, furnishing a second line of resistance; and although the cuts on the flanks hindered the making of sallies in force, which at such a period was a good mode of defence, the reduced state of the French army gave reason to believe that eight thousand brave men could resist it effectually.

The 28th a general plan for breaking out on the Barcelona side, the co-operation of the fleet, and a combined attack of the Spanish army, was arranged; and Eroles embarked for the purpose of re-landing at Taragona, to take the leading of the troops destined to sally forth on the 29th. The French general had however completed his batteries on the night of the 27th, and in the morning of the 28th they opened with a crashing effect. One magazine blew up in the bastion of Cervantes; all the guns in that of San Paulo were dismounted; the wall fell away in huge fragments before the stroke of the batteries, and from the Olivo, and from all the old French trenches, the guns and mortars showered bullets and shells into the place. This fire was returned from many Spanish pieces, still in good condition, and the shoulders of the French batteries were beaten down; yet their gunners, eager for the last act of the siege, stood to their work uncovered, the musketry rattled round the ramparts, the men on both sides crowded to the front, and while opprobrious words and mutual defiance passed between them, the generals, almost within hearing of each other, exhorted the soldiers to fight with the vigour that the crisis demanded.

STORMING OF THE UPPER TOWN.

At five o’clock in the evening the French fireSuchet. suddenly ceased, and fifteen hundred men led byRogniat. general Habert passing out from the parallel, went at full speed up against the breach; twelve hundredVacani. under general Ficatier followed in support, general Montmarie led a brigade round the left,Codrington’s papers. MSS. to the bastion of Rosario, with a view to break the gates there during the assault, and thus penetrating, to turn the interior defence of the Rambla. Harispe took post on the Barcelona road, to cut off the retreat of the garrison.

The columns of attack had to pass over an open space of more than a hundred yards before they could reach the foot of the breach; and when within twenty yards of it, the hedge of aloes obliged them to turn to the right, and left, under a terrible fire of musketry and of grape, which the Spaniards, who were crowding on the breach with apparent desperation, poured unceasingly upon them. The destruction was great, the head of the French column got into confusion, gave back, and was beginning to fly, when the reserves rushed up, and a great many officers coming forward in a body, renewed the attack. At that moment one Bianchini, an Italian soldier, who had obtained leave to join the column as a volunteer, and whose white clothes, amidst the blue uniforms of the French, gave him a supernatural appearance, went forth alone from the ranks, and gliding silently and sternly up the breach, notwithstanding many wounds reached the top, and there fell dead. Then the multitude bounded forward with a shout, the first line of the Spaniards fled, and the ramparts were darkened by the following masses of the French.