Eroles returned to Reus, and was like to have surprised the Col de Balaguer, for he sent a detachment under colonel Villamil, dressed in Italian uniforms which had been taken by Rovira in Figueras, and his men were actually admitted within the palisade of the fort before the garrison perceived the deceit. A lieutenant with sixteen men placed outside were taken, and this loss was magnified so much to Eroles that he ordered Villamil to make a more regular attack. To aid him Codrington brought up the Blake, and landed some marines, yet no impression was made on the garrison, and the allies retired on the 17th at the approach of two thousand men sent from Tortoza. Eroles and Manso then vainly united near Manresa to oppose Decaen, who, coming down from Vich, forced his way to Reus, seized a vast quantity of corn, supplied Taragona, and then marched to Barcelona.
November. These operations indisputably proved that there was no real power of resistance in the Catalan army, but as an absurd notion prevailed that Soult, Suchet, and Joseph were coming with their armies in oneCaptain Codrington’s correspondence, MSS. body, to France, through Catalonia, Lacy endeavoured to cover his inactivity by pretending a design to raise a large force in Aragon, with which to watch this retreat, and to act as a flanking corps to lord Wellington, who was believed to be then approaching Zaragoza. Such rumours served to amuse the Catalans for a short time, but the sense of their real weakness soon returned. In December Bertoletti, the governor of Taragona, marched upon Reus, and defeated some hundred men who had reassembled there; and at the same time a French convoy for Barcelona, escorted by three thousand men, passed safely in the face of six thousand Catalan soldiers, who were desirous to attack but were prevented by Lacy.
The anger of the people and of the troops also, on this occasion was loudly expressed, Lacy was openly accused of treachery, and was soon after recalled. However, Eroles who had come to Cape Salou to obtain succour from the squadron for his suffering soldiers, acknowledged that the resources of Catalonia were worn out, the spirit of the people broken by Lacy’s misconduct, and the army, reduced to less than seven thousand men, naked and famishing. Affairs were so bad, that expecting to be made captain-general he was reluctant to accept that office, and the regular warfare was in fact extinguished, for Sarzfield was now acting as a partizan on the Ebro. Nevertheless the French were greatly dismayed at the disasters in Russia; their force was weakened by the drafts made to fill up the ranks of Napoleon’s new army; and the war of the partidas continued, especially along the banks of the Ebro, where Sarzfield, at the head of Eroles’ ancient division, which he had carried with him out of Catalonia, acted in concert with Mina, Duran, Villa Campa, the Frayle, Pendencia, and other chiefs, who were busy upon Suchet’s communication between Tortoza and Valencia.
Aragon being now unquiet, and Navarre and Biscay in a state of insurrection, the French forces in the interior of Spain were absolutely invested. Their front was opposed by regular armies, their flanks annoyed by the British squadrons, and their rear, from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean, plagued and stung by this chain of partidas and insurrections. And England was the cause of all this. England was the real deliverer of the Peninsula. It was her succours thrown into Biscay that had excited the new insurrection in the northern provinces, and enabled Mina and the other chiefs to enter Aragon, while Wellington drew the great masses of the French towards Portugal. It was that insurrection, so forced on, which, notwithstanding the cessation of the regular warfare in Catalonia, gave life and activity to the partidas of the south. It was the army from Sicily which, though badly commanded, by occupying the attention of Suchet in front, obliged him to keep his forces together instead of hunting down the bands on his communications. In fine, it was the troops of England who had shocked the enemy’s front of battle, the fleets of England which had menaced his flanks with disembarkations, the money and stores of England which had supported the partidas. Every part of the Peninsula was pervaded by her influence, or her warriors, and a trembling sense of insecurity was communicated to the French wherever their armies were not united in masses.
Such then were the various military events of the year 1812, and the English general taking a view of the whole, judged that however anxious the French might be to invade Portugal, they would be content during the winter to gather provisions and wait for reinforcements from France wherewith to strike a decisive blow at his army. But those reinforcements never came. Napoleon, unconquered of man, had been vanquished by the elements. The fires and the snows of Moscow combined, had shattered his strength, and in confessed madness, nations and rulers rejoiced, that an enterprize, at once the grandest, the most provident, the most beneficial, ever attempted by a warrior-statesman, had been foiled: they rejoiced that Napoleon had failed to re-establish unhappy Poland as a barrier against the most formidable and brutal, the most swinish tyranny, that has ever menaced and disgraced European civilization.
CHAPTER VII.
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.
1812. Lord Wellington exasperated by the conduct of the army and by the many crossings he had experienced during the campaign, had no sooner taken his winter-quarters, than he gave vent to his indignation in a circular letter, addressed to the superior officers, which, being ill-received by the army at the time, has been frequently referred to since with angry denunciations of its injustice. In substance it declared, “that discipline had deteriorated during the campaign in a greater degree than he had ever witnessed or ever read of in any army, and this without any disaster, any unusual privation or hardship save that of inclement weather; that the officers had, from the first, lost all command over their men, and hence excesses, outrages of all kinds, and inexcusable losses had occurred; that no army had ever made shorter marches in retreat, or had longer rests; no army had ever been so little pressed by a pursuing enemy, and that the true cause of this unhappy state of affairs was to be found in the habitual neglect of duty by the regimental officers.”
These severe reproaches were generally deserved, and only partially unjust; yet the statements, on which they were founded, were in some particulars unintentionally inaccurate, especially as regarded the retreat from Salamanca. The marches, though short as to distance, after quitting the Tormes, were long as to time, and it is the time an English soldier bears his burthen, for like the ancient Roman he carries the load of an ass, that crushes his strength. Some regiments had come from Cadiz without halting, and as long garrison duty had weakened their bodies, both their constitutions and their inexperience were too heavily taxed. The line of march from Salamanca was through a flooded, and flat, clayey country, not much easier to the allies than the marshes of the Arnus were to Hannibal’s army; and mounted officers, as that great general well knew when he placed the Carthaginian cavalry to keep up the Gallic rear, never judge correctly of a foot-soldier’s exertions; they measure his strength by their horses’ powers. On this occasion the troops, stepping ankle-deep in clay, mid-leg in water, lost their shoes, and with strained sinews heavily made their way, and withal they had but two rations in five days.