Thus Wellington without committing any fault, would have found a more powerful army than Marmont’s, again on the Duero, and capable of renewing the former operations with the advantage of former errors as warning beacons. But his own army would not have been so powerful as before, for the reinforcements sent from England did not even suffice to replace the current consumption of men; and neither the fresh soldiers nor the old Walcheren regiments were able to sustain the toil of the recent operations. Three thousand troops had joined since the battle, yet the general decrease, including the killed and wounded, was above eight thousand men, and the number of sick was rapidly augmenting from the extreme heat. It may therefore be said that if Marmont was stricken deeply by Wellington the king poisoned the wound. The English general had fore-calculated all these superior resources of the enemy, and it was only Marmont’s flagrant fault, on the 22d, that could have wrung the battle from him; yet he fought it as if his genius disdained such trial of its strength. I saw him late in the evening of that great day, when the advancing flashes of cannon and musketry, stretching as far as the eye could command, shewed in the darkness how well the field was won; he was alone, the flush of victory was on his brow, and his eyes were eager and watchful, but his voice was calm, and even gentle. More than the rival of Marlborough, since he had defeated greater warriors than Marlborough ever encountered, with a prescient pride he seemed only to accept this glory, as an earnest of greater things.
BOOK XIX.
CHAPTER I.
1812. As Wellington’s operations had now deeply affected the French affairs in the distant provinces, it is necessary again to revert to the general progress of the war, lest the true bearings of his military policy should be overlooked. The battle of Salamanca, by clearing all the centre of Spain, had reduced the invasion to its original lines of operation. For Palombini’s division having joined the army of the centre, the army of the Ebro was broken up; Caffarelli had concentrated the scattered troops of the army of the north; and when Clauzel had led back the vanquished army of Portugal to Burgos, the whole French host was divided in two distinct parts, each having a separate line of communication with France, and a circuitous, uncertain, attenuated line of correspondence with each other by Zaragoza instead of a sure and short one by Madrid. But Wellington was also forced to divide his army in two parts, and though, by the advantage of his central position, he retained the initial power, both of movement and concentration, his lines of communication were become long, and weak because the enemy was powerful at either flank. Wherefore on his own simple strength in the centre of Spain he could not rely, and the diversions he had projected against the enemy’s rear and flanks became more important than ever. To these we must now turn.
EASTERN OPERATIONS.
See [Book XVII. Chap. II.] It will be recollected that the narrative of Catalonian affairs ceased at the moment when Decaen, after fortifying the coast line and opening new roads beyond the reach of shot from the English ships, was gathering the harvest of the interior. Lacy, inefficient in the field and universally hated, was thus confined to the mountain chain which separates the coast territory from the plains of Lerida, and from the Cerdaña. The insurrectionaryCaptain Addington’s correspondence, MSS. spirit of the Catalonians was indeed only upheld by Wellington’s successes, and by the hope of English succour from Sicily; for Lacy, devoted to the republican party in Spain, had now been made captain-general as well as commander-in-chief, and sought to keep down the people, who were generally of the priestly and royal faction. He publicly spoke of exciting a general insurrection, yet, in his intercourse with the English naval officers, avowed his wish to repress the patriotism of the Somatenes; he was not ashamed to boast of his assassination plots, and History of the conspiracies against the French army in Catalonia, published at Barcelona, 1813. received with honour, a man who had murdered the aide-de-camp of Maurice Mathieu; he sowed dissentions amongst his generals, intrigued against all of them in turn, and when Eroles and Manso, who were the people’s favourites, raised any soldiers, he transferred the latter as soon as they were organized to Sarzfield’s division, at the same time calumniating that general to depress his influence. He quarrelled incessantly with captain Codrington, and had no desire to see an English force in Catalonia lest a general insurrection should take place, for he feared that the multitude once gathered and armed would drive him from the province and declare for the opponents of the cortez. And in this view the constitution itself, although emanating from the cortez, was long withheld from the Catalans, lest the newly declared popular rights should interfere with the arbitrary power of the chief.
July. Such was the state of the province when intelligence that the Anglo-Sicilian expedition had arrived at Mahon, excited the hopes of the Spaniards and the fears of the French. The coast then became the great object of interest to both, and the Catalans again opened a communication with the English fleet by Villa Nueva de Sitjes, and endeavoured to collect the grain of the Campo de Taragona. Decaen, coming to meet Suchet who had arrived at Reus with two thousand men, drove the Catalans to the hills again; yet the Lerida district was thus opened to the enterprises of Lacy, because it was at this period that Reille had detached general ParisSee [Book XVII. Chap. II.] from Zaragoza to the aid of Palombini; and that Severoli’s division was broken up to reinforce the garrisons of Lerida, Taragona, Barcelona, and Zaragoza. But the army of the Ebro being dissolved, Lacy resolved to march upon Lerida, where he had engaged certain Spaniards in the French service to explode the powder magazine when he should approach; and this odious scheme, which necessarily involved the destruction of hundreds of his own countrymen, was vainly opposed by Eroles and Sarzfield.
On the 12th of July, Eroles’ division, that general being absent, was incorporated with Sarzfield’s and other troops at Guisona, and the whole journeying day and night reached Tremp on the 13th. Lacy having thus turned Lerida, would have resumed the march at mid-day, intending to attack the next morning at dawn, but the men were without food, and exhausted by fatigue, and fifteen hundred had fallen behind. A council of war being then held, Sarzfield, who thought the plot wild, would have returned, observing that all communication with the sea was abandoned, and the harvests of the Camps de Taragona and Valls being left to be gathered by Sarzfield’s Vindication, MSS. the enemy, the loss of the corn would seriously affect the whole principality. Displeased at the remonstrance, Lacy immediately sent him back to the plain of Urgel with some infantry and the cavalry, to keep the garrison of Balaguer in check; but in the night of the 16th when Sarzfield had reached the bridge of Alentorna on the Segre, fresh orders caused him to return to Limiana on the Noguera. Meanwhile Lacy himself had advanced by Agen towards Lerida, the explosion of the magazine took place, many houses were thrown down, two hundred inhabitants and one hundred and fifty soldiers were destroyed; two bastions fell, and the place was laid open.
Henriod the governor, although ignorant of the vicinity of the Spaniards, immediately manned the breaches, the garrison of Balaguer, hearing the explosion marched to his succour, and when the Catalan troops appeared, the citizens enraged by the destruction of their habitations aided the French; Lacy then fled back to Tremp, bearing the burthen of a crime which he had not feared to commit, but wanted courage to turn to his country’s advantage. To lessen the odium thus incurred, he insidiously attributed the failure to Sarzfield’s disobedience; and as that general, to punish the people of Barbastro for siding with the French and killing twenty of his men, had raisedCaptain Codrington’s Papers, MSS. a heavy contribution of money and corn in the district, he became so hateful, that some time after, when he endeavoured to raise soldiers in those parts, the people threw boiling water at him from the windows as he passed.