If this Caballero was the old minister to Charles the IVth, no misery was too great a punishment for his tyrannical rule under that monarch, yet it was not from the hands of the French it should have come; and Joseph’s distress for money must certainly have been great, since that brave and honest man Jourdan, a marshal of France, major-general of the armies, and a personal favourite of the king’s, complained that the non-payment of hisJourdan’s Official correspondence, MSS. appointments had reduced him to absolute penury, and after borrowing until his credit was exhausted he could with difficulty procure subsistence. It is now time to describe the secondary operations of the war, but as these were spread over two-thirds of Spain, and were simultaneous, to avoid complexity it will be necessary to class them under two great heads, namely those which took place north and those which took place south of the Tagus.
CHAPTER IV.
OPERATIONS SOUTH OF THE TAGUS.
1813. February. In December 1812 general Copons had been appointed captain-general of Catalonia instead of Eroles, but his arrival was delayed and the province was not relieved from Lacy’s mischievous sway until February 1813, when Eroles, taking the temporary command, re-established the head-quarters at Vich. The French, being then unmolested, save by the English ships, passed an enormous convoy to France, but Eroles was not long idle. Through the medium of a double spy, he sent a forged letter to the governor of Taragona, desiring him to detach men to Villa Nueva de Sitjes, with carts to transport some stores; at the same time he gave out that he was himself going to the Cerdaña, which brought the French moveable column to that quarter, and then, Eroles, Manso, and Villamil, making forced marches from different points, reached Torre dem barra where they met the British squadron. The intention was to cut off the French detachment on its march to Villa Nueva and then to attack Taragona, but fortune rules in war; the governor received a letter from Maurice Mathieu of a different tenor from the forged letter, and with all haste regaining his fortress balked this well-contrived plan.
Sarzfield, at enmity with Eroles, was now combining his operations with Villa Campa, and they menaced Alcanitz in Aragon; but general Pannetier who had remained at Teruel to watch Villa Campa, and to protect Suchet’s communications, immediately marched to Daroca, Severoli came from Zaragoza to the same point, and the Spaniards, alarmed by their junction, dispersed. Sarzfield returned to Catalonia, Bassecour and the Empecinado remained near Cuenca, and Villa Campa as usual hung upon the southern skirts of the Albaracyn mountain, ready to pounce down on the Ebro or on the Guadalquivir side as advantage might offer. Meanwhile Suchet was by no means at ease. The successes in Catalonia did not enable him to draw reinforcements from thence, because Napoleon, true to his principle of securing the base of operations, forbad him to weaken the army there, and Montmarie’s brigade was detached from Valencia to preserve the communication between Saguntum and Tortoza. But Aragon which was Suchet’s place of arms and principal magazine, being infested by Mina, Duran, Villa Campa, the Empecinado, and Sarzfield, was becoming daily more unquiet, wherefore Pannetier’s brigade remained between Segorbé and Daroca to aid Severoli. Thus although the two armies of Aragon and Catalonia mustered more than seventy thousand men, that of Aragon alone having forty thousand, with fifty field-pieces, Suchet could not fight with more than sixteen thousand infantry, two thousand cavalry and perhaps thirty guns beyond the Xucar. His right flank was always liable to be turned by Requeña, his left by the sea which was entirely at his adversary’s command, and his front was menaced by fifty thousand men, of which three thousand might be cavalry with fifty pieces of artillery.
The component parts of the allied force were the Anglo-Sicilians which, including Whittingham’s and Roche’s divisions, furnished eighteen thousand soldiers. Elio’s army furnishing twelve thousand exclusive of the divisions of Bassecour, Villa Campa, and the Empecinado, which, though detached, belonged to him. Del Parque’s army reinforced by new levies from Andalusia, and on paper twenty thousand. Numerically this was a formidable power if it had been directed in mass against Suchet; but on his right the duke of Dalmatia, whose head-quarters were at Toledo, sent forward detachments which occupied the army of Del Parque; moreover the secret negociations for the defection of the latter were now in full activity, and from the army of the centre a column was sent towards Cuenca to draw Bassecour and the Empecinado from Suchet’s right flank; but those chiefs had five thousand men, and in return continually harassed the army of the centre.
1813. On the side of the Morena and Murcia, Soult’s operations were confined to skirmishes and foraging parties. Early in January his brother, seeking to open a communication with Suchet by Albacete, defeated some of Elio’s cavalry with the loss of fifty men, and pursued them until they rallied on their main body, under Freyre; the latter offered battle with nine hundred horsemen in front of the defile leading to Albacete; but Soult, disliking his appearance turned off to the right, and passing through Villa Nueva de los Infantes joined a French post established in Valdepeña at the foot of the Morena, where some skirmishes had also taken place with Del Parque’s cavalry. The elder Soult thus learned, that Freyre, with two thousand five hundred horsemen, covered all the roads leading from La Mancha, to Valencia and Murcia; that Elio’s infantry was at Tobara and Hellin, Del Parque’s head-quarters at Jaen; that the passes of the Morena were guarded, and magazines formed at Andujar, Linares, and Cordoba, while on the other side of La Mancha, the Empecinado had come to Hinojoso with fifteen hundred horsemen, and the column sent from the army of the centre was afraid to encounter him.
These dispositions, and the strength of the Spaniards, not only prevented the younger Soult from penetrating into Murcia, but delayed the march of a column, under general Daricau, destined to communicate with Suchet, and bring up the detachments baggage and stores, which the armies of the south and centre had left at Valencia. The scouting parties of both sides now met at different points, and on the 27th of January, a sharp cavalry fight happened at El Corral, in which the French commander was killed, and the Spaniards, though far the most numerous, defeated. Meanwhile Daricau, whose column had been reinforced, reached Utiel, opened the communication with Suchet by Requeña, cut off some small parties of the enemy, and then continuing his march received a great convoy, consisting of two thousand fighting men, six hundred travellers, and the stores and baggage belonging to Soult’s and the king’s armies. This convoy had marched for Madrid by the way of Zaragoza, but was recalled when Daricau arrived, and under his escort, aided by a detachment of Suchet’s army placed at Yniesta, it reached Todelo in the latter end of February safely, though Villa Campa came down to the Cabriel River, to trouble the march.
During these different operations numerous absurd and contradictory reports, principally originating in the Spanish and English newspapers, obtained credit in the French armies, such as, that sir Henry Wellesley and Infantado had seized the government at Cadiz; that Clinton, by an intrigue, had got possession of Alicant; that Ballesteros had shewn Wellington secret orders from the cortez not to acknowledge him as generalissimo, or even as a grandee; that the cortez had removed the regency because the latter permitted Wellington to appoint intendants and other officers to the Spanish provinces; that Hill had devastated the frontier and retired to Lisbon though forcibly opposed by Morillo; that a nephew of Ballesteros had raised the standard of revolt; that Wellington was advancing, and that troops had been embarked at Lisbon for a maritime expedition, with other stories of a like nature, which seem to have disturbed all the French generals save Soult, whose information as to the real state of affairs continued to be sure and accurate. He also at this time detected four or five of Wellington’s emissaries, amongst them, was a Portuguese officer on his own staff; a man called Piloti, who served and betrayed both sides; and an amazon called Francisca de la Fuerte, who, though only twenty-two years old, had already commanded a partida of sixty men with some success, and was now a spy. But in the latter end of February the duke of Dalmatia was recalled, and the command of his army fell to Gazan, whose movements belong rather to the operations north of the Tagus. Wherefore turning to Suchet, I shall proceed to give an exact notion of his resources and of the nature of the country where his operations were conducted.