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HISTORY
OF THE
WAR IN THE PENINSULA

AND IN THE

SOUTH OF FRANCE,

FROM THE YEAR 1807 TO THE YEAR 1814.

BY

W. F. P. NAPIER, C.B.

LT. COLONEL H. P. FORTY-THIRD REGIMENT.

VOL. II.

LONDON:

THOMAS AND WILLIAM BOONE, STRAND.

MDCCCXXIX.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

APPENDIX.

LIST OF PLATES.

NOTICE.

General Semelé’s journal, referred to in this volume, is only an unattested copy; the rest of the manuscript authorities quoted or consulted are original papers belonging to, and communications received from, the duke of Wellington, marshal Soult, marshal Jourdan, Mr. Stuart,[1] sir J. Cradock,[2] sir John Moore, and other persons employed either in the British or French armies during the Peninsular War.

The returns of the French army are taken from the emperor Napoleon’s original Muster Rolls.

The letter S. marks those papers received from marshal Soult.

HISTORY

OF THE

PENINSULAR WAR.

BOOK V.

CHAPTER I.

The effect produced in England by the unfortunate issue of sir John Moore’s campaign, was not proportionable to the importance of the subject. The people, trained to party politics, and possessing no real power to rebuke the folly of the cabinet, regarded disasters and triumphs with factious rather than with national feelings, and it was alike easy to draw the public attention from affairs of weight, and to fix it upon matters of little moment. In the beginning of 1809, the duke of York’s conduct being impeached, a parliamentary investigation followed; and to drag the private frailties of that prince before the world, was thought essential to the welfare of the country, when the incapacity which had caused England and Spain to mourn in tears of blood, was left unprobed. An insular people only, who are protected by their situation from the worst evils of war, may suffer themselves to be thus deluded; but if an unfortunate campaign were to bring a devastating enemy into the heart of the country, the honour of a general, and the whole military policy of the cabinet, would no longer be considered as mere subjects for the exercise of a vile sophist’s talents for misrepresentation.

It is true that the ill success of the British arms was a topic, upon which many orators in both houses of parliament expatiated with great eloquence, but the discussions were chiefly remarkable, as examples of acute debating without any knowledge of facts. The opposition speakers, eager to criminate the government, exaggerated the loss and distress of the retreat, and comprehending neither the movements nor the motives of sir John Moore, urged several untenable accusations against their adversaries. The ministers, disunited by personal feelings, did not all adopt the same ground of defence. Lord Castlereagh and lord Liverpool, passing over the errors of the cabinet by which the general had been left only a choice of difficulties, asserted, and truly, that the advantages derived from the advance to Sahagun more than compensated for the losses in the subsequent retreat. Both those statesmen paid an honourable tribute to the merits of the commander; but Mr. Canning, unscrupulously resolute to screen Mr. Frere, assented to all the erroneous statements of the opposition, and endeavoured with malignant dexterity to convert them into charges against the fallen general. Sir John Moore was, he said, answerable for the events of the campaign, whether the operations were glorious or distressful, whether to be admired or deplored, they were his own, for he had kept the ministers ignorant of his proceedings. Being pressed closely on that point by Mr. C. Hutchinson, Mr. Canning repeated this assertion. Not long afterwards, sir John Moore’s letters, written almost daily and furnishing exact and copious information of all that was passing in the Peninsula, were laid before the house.

The reverses experienced in Spain had somewhat damped the ardour of the English people; but a cause so rightful in itself, was still popular, and a treaty having been concluded with the junta, by which the contracting powers bound themselves to make common cause against France, and to agree to no peace except by mutual consent, the ministers appeared resolute to support the contest. But while professing unbounded confidence in the result of the struggle, they already looked upon the Peninsula as a secondary object; for the preparations of Austria, and the reputation of the archduke Charles, whose talents were foolishly said to exceed Napoleon’s, had awakened the dormant spirit of coalitions. It was more agreeable to the aristocratic feelings of the English cabinet, that the French should be defeated by a monarch in Germany, than by a plebeian insurrection in Spain. The obscure intrigues carried on through the princess of Tour and Taxis, and the secret societies of Germany emanating as they did from patrician sources, engaged all the attention of the ministers, and exciting their sympathy, nursed those distempered feelings, which led them to see weakness and disaffection in France when, throughout that mighty empire, few desired and none dared openly to oppose the emperor’s wishes, when even secret discontent was confined to some royalist chiefs and splenetic republicans, whose influence was never felt until after Napoleon had suffered the direst reverses.

Unable to conceive the extent of that monarch’s views, and the grandeur of his genius, the ministers attributed the results of his profound calculations to a blind chance, his victories to treason, to corruption, to any thing but that admirable skill, with which he wielded the most powerful military force that ever obeyed the orders of a single chief. And thus self-deluded, and misjudging the difficulties to be encountered, they adopted every idle project, and squandered their resources without any great or decided effort. While negotiating with the Spanish Junta for the occupation of Cadiz, they were also planning an expedition against Sicily; and while loudly asserting their resolution to defend Portugal, reserved their principal force for a blow against Holland; their preparations for the last object being, however, carried on with a pomp and publicity little suitable to war. With what a mortal calamity that pageant closed, shall hereafter be noticed; but at present it is fitting to describe the operations that took place in Spain, coincident with and subsequent to the retreat of sir John Moore.

It has been already stated, that when the capital surrendered to the Emperor, he refused to permit Joseph to return there, unless the public bodies and the heads of families would unite to demand his restoration, and swear, without any mental reservation, to be true to him. Registers had consequently Nellerto. been opened in the different quarters of the city, and twenty-eight thousand six hundred heads of families inscribed their names, and voluntarily swore, in presence of the host, that they were Azanza and O’Farril. sincere in their desire to receive Joseph. After this, deputations from all the councils, from the junta of commerce and money, the hall of the Alcaldes, and from the corporation, waited on the emperor at Valladolid, and being there joined by the municipality of that town, and by deputies from Astorga, Leon, and other places, presented the oath, and prayed that Joseph might be king. Napoleon thus entreated, consented that his brother should return to Madrid, and reassume his kingly functions.

It would be idle to argue from this apparently voluntary submission to the French emperor, that a change favourable to the usurpation had been produced in the feelings of the Spanish people; but it is evident that Napoleon’s victories and policy had been so far effectual, that in the capital, and many other great towns, the multitude as well as the notables were, either from fear or conviction, submissive to his will; and it is but reasonable to suppose, that if his conquests had not been interrupted by extraneous circumstances, this example would have been generally followed, in preference to the more glorious, but ineffectual, resistance made by the inhabitants of those cities, whose fortitude and whose calamities have forced from mankind a sorrowful admiration. The cause of Spain at this moment was in truth lost; if any cause depending upon war, which is but a succession of violent and sudden changes, can be called so; for her armies were dispersed, her government bewildered, and her people dismayed; the cry of resistance had ceased, and in its stead the stern voice of Napoleon, answered by the tread of three hundred thousand French veterans was heard throughout the land. But the hostility of Austria having arrested the emperor’s career in the Peninsula, the energy of the Spaniards revived at the abrupt cessation of his terrific warfare.

Joseph, escorted by his French guards, in number between five and six thousand, entered Madrid in state the 23d of January. He was, however, a king without revenues, and he would have been without even the semblance of authority, if he had not been likewise nominated the emperor’s lieutenant in Spain, by virtue of which title he was empowered to move the French army at his will. This power was one extremely unacceptable to the marshals, and he would have found it difficult to enforce it, even though he had restrained the exercise to the limits prescribed by his brother. But disdaining to separate the general from the monarch, King’s correspondence captured at Vittoria, MSS. he conveyed his orders to the French army, through his Spanish ministers, and the army in its turn disdained and resisted the assumed authority of men, who, despised for their want of military knowledge, were also suspected as favouring interests essentially differing from those of the troops.

The iron grasp that had compressed the pride and the ambitious jealousy of the marshals being thus relaxed, the passions that had ruined the patriots began to work among their enemies, producing indeed less fatal effects, because their scope was more circumscribed, but sufficiently pernicious to stop the course of conquest. The French army, no longer a compact body, terrible alike from its massive strength, and its flexible activity, became a collection of independent bands, each formidable in itself, but, from the disunion of the generals, slow to combine for any great object; and plainly discovering, by irregularities and insubordination, that they knew when a warrior, and when a voluptuous monarch was at their head; but these evils were only felt at a later period; and the distribution of the troops, when Napoleon quitted Valladolid, still bore the impress of his genius.

The first corps was quartered in La Mancha.

The second corps was destined to invade Portugal.

The third and fifth corps carried on the siege of Zaragoza.

The fourth corps remained in the valley of the Tagus.

The sixth corps, wanting its third division, was appointed to hold Gallicia.

The seventh corps continued always in Catalonia.

The imperial guards, directed on Vittoria, contributed to the security of the great communication with France until Zaragoza should fall, and were yet ready to march when wanted for the Austrian war.

General Dessolles, with the third division of the sixth corps, returned to Madrid. General Bonnet, with the fifth division of the second corps, remained in the Montagna St. Andero.

General Lapisse, with the second division of the first corps, was sent to Salamanca, where he was joined by Maupetit’s brigade of cavalry, which had crossed the Sierra de Bejar.

The reserve of heavy cavalry being broken up, was distributed, by divisions, in the following order:—

Latour Maubourg’s joined the first corps. Lorge’s and Lahoussaye’s were attached to the second corps. Lassalle’s was sent to the fourth corps. The sixth corps was reinforced with two brigades. Milhaud’s division remained at Madrid, and Kellerman’s guarded the lines of communication between Tudela, Burgos, and Palencia.

Thus, Madrid being still the centre of operations, the French were so distributed, that by a concentric movement on that capital, they could crush every insurrection within the circle of their positions; and the great masses, being kept upon the principal roads diverging from Madrid to the extremities of the Peninsula, intercepted all communication between the Provinces: while the second corps, thrust out, as it were, beyond the circumference, and destined, as the fourth corps had been, to sweep round from point to point, was sure of finding a supporting army, and a good line of retreat, at every great route leading from Madrid to the yet unsubdued provinces of the Peninsula. The communication with France was, at the same time, secured by the fortresses of Burgos, Pampeluna, and St. Sebastian; and by the divisions posted at St. Ander, Burgos, Bilbao, and Vittoria; and it was supported by a reserve at Bayonne.

The northern provinces were parcelled out into military governments, the chiefs of which corresponded with each other; and, by the means of moveable columns, repressed every petty insurrection. The third and fifth corps, also, having their base at Pampeluna, and their line of operations directed against Zaragoza, served as an additional covering force to the communication with France, and were themselves exposed to no flank attacks, except from the side of Cuença, where the duke of Infantado commanded; but that general was himself watched by the first corps.

All the lines of correspondence, not only from France but between the different corps, were maintained by fortified posts, having greater or lesser garrisons, according to their importance. Between Bayonne and Burgos there were eleven military stations. Between Burgos and Madrid, by the road of Muster-rolls of the French army, MSS. Aranda and Somosierra, there were eight; and eleven others protected the more circuitous route to the capital by Valladolid, Segovia, and the Guadarama. Between Valladolid and Zaragoza the line was secured by fifteen intermediate points. The communication between Valladolid and St. Ander contained eight posts; and nine others connected the former town with Villa Franca del Bierzo, by the route of Benevente and Astorga; finally, two were established between Benevente and Leon.

At this period, the force of the army, exclusive of Joseph’s French guards, was three hundred [Appendix, No. 1], section 1. and twenty-four thousand four hundred and eleven men, about thirty-nine thousand being cavalry.

Fifty-eight thousand men were in hospital.

The depôts, governments, garrisons, posts of correspondence, prisoners, and “battalions of march,” composed of stragglers, absorbed about twenty-five thousand men.

The remainder were under arms, with their regiments; and, consequently, more than two hundred and forty thousand men were in the field: while the great line of communication with France was (and the military reader will do well to mark this, the key-stone of Napoleon’s system) protected by above fifty thousand men, whose positions were strengthened by three fortresses and sixty-four posts of correspondence, each more or less fortified.

Having thus shewn to the reader the military state of the French, I shall now proceed with the narrative of their operations; following, as in the first volume, a local rather than a chronological arrangement of events.

OPERATIONS IN ESTREMADURA AND LA MANCHA.

The defeat of Galluzzo has been incidentally touched upon before. The duke of Dantzic having observed that the Spanish general, with six thousand raw levies, pretended to defend a line of forty miles, made a feint of crossing the Tagus, at Arzobispo, and then suddenly descending to Almaraz, forced a passage over that bridge, on the 24th of December, killed and wounded many Spaniards, and captured four guns: and so complete was the dispersion, that for a long time after, not a man was to be found in arms throughout Estremadura. [Appendix, No. 2], sections 2 and 3. The French cavalry were at first placed on the tracks of the fugitives; but intelligence of sir John Moore’s advance to Sahagun being received, Ibid. the pursuit ceased at Merida, and the fourth corps, which had left eight hundred and thirty men in garrison at Segovia, took post between Talavera and Placentia. The duke of Dantzic was then recalled to France, and general Sebastiani succeeded to the command of the fourth corps. It was at this period that the first corps (of which the division of Lapisse only had followed the emperor to Astorga) moved against Toledo, and that town was occupied without opposition. The French outposts were then pushed towards Cuença on the one side, and towards the Sierra Morena on the other.

Meanwhile, the central junta, changing its first design, retired to Seville, instead of Badajos; and being continually urged, both by Mr. Stuart and Mr. Frere, to make some effort to lighten the pressure on the English army, ordered Palafox and the duke of Infantado to advance; the one from Zaragoza towards Tudela, the other from Cuença towards Madrid. The marquis of Palacios, who had been removed from Catalonia, and was now at the head of five or six thousand levies in the Sierra Morena, was also directed to advance into La Mancha; and Galluzzo, deprived of his command, was constituted a prisoner, along with Cuesta, Castaños, and a number of other culpable or unfortunate officers, who, vainly demanding a judgement on their cases, were dragged from place to place by the government.

Cuesta was, however, so popular in Estremadura, that the central junta, although fearing and detesting him, consented to his being placed at the head of Galluzzo’s fugitives, part of whom had, when the pursuit ceased, rallied behind the Guadiana, and were now, with the aid of fresh levies, again taking the form, rather than the consistence, of an army. This appointment was an act of deplorable weakness and incapacity. The moral effect was to degrade the government by exposing its fears and weakness; and, in a military view, it was destructive, because Cuesta was physically and mentally incapable of command. Obstinate, jealous, and stricken in years, he was heedless of time and circumstances, of disposition and fitness. To punish with a barbarous severity, and to rush headlong into battle, constituted, in his mind, all the functions of a general.

[Appendix, No. 2], section 2d.

The president, Florida Blanca, being eighty-one years of age, died at Seville, and the marquis of Astorga succeeded him; but the character of the junta was in no manner affected by the change. Some fleeting indications of vigour had been produced by the imminence of the danger during the flight from Aranjuez, but a large remittance of silver, from South America, having arrived at Cadiz, Appendix, No. 13. Vol. I. the attention of the members was so absorbed, by this object, that the public weal was blotted from their remembrance, and even Mr. Frere, ashamed [Appendix, No. 2], section 2. of their conduct, appeared to acquiesce in the justness of sir John Moore’s estimate of the value of Spanish co-operation.

The number of men to be enrolled for the defence of the country had been early fixed at five hundred thousand, but scarcely one-third had joined their colours; nevertheless, considerable bodies were assembling at different points, because the people, especially those of the southern provinces, although dismayed, were obedient, and the local authorities, at a distance from the actual scene of war, rigorously enforced the law of enrolment, and sent the recruits to the armies, hoping thereby either to stave the war off from their own districts, or to have the excuse of being without fighting men, to plead for quiet submission.

The fugitive troops also readily collected again at any given point, partly from patriotism, partly because the French were in possession of their native provinces, partly that they attributed their defeats to the treachery of their generals, and partly that, being deceived by the gross falsehoods and boasting of the government, they, with ready vanity, imagined that the enemy had invariably suffered enormous losses. In fine, for the reasons mentioned in the commencement of this history, men were to be had in abundance; but, beyond assembling them and appointing some incapable person to command, nothing was done for defence.

The officers who were not deceived had no confidence either in their own troops or in the government, nor were they themselves confided in or respected by their men. The latter were starved, were misused, ill-handled, and they possessed neither the compact strength of discipline nor the daring of enthusiasm. Under such a system, it was impossible that the peasantry could be rendered energetic soldiers; and they certainly were not active supporters of their country’s cause; but, with a wonderful constancy, they suffered for it, enduring fatigue and sickness, nakedness and famine, with patience, and displaying, in all their actions and in all their sentiments, a distinct and powerful national character. This constancy and the iniquity of the usurpation hallowed their efforts in despite of their ferocity, and merits respect, though the vices and folly of the juntas and the leading men rendered the effect of those efforts nugatory.

Palacios, on the receipt of the orders above mentioned, advanced, with five thousand men, to Vilharta, in La Mancha, and the duke of Infantado, anticipating the instructions of the junta, was already in motion from Cuença. His army, reinforced by the divisions of Cartoajal and Lilli and by fresh levies, was about twenty thousand men, of which two thousand were cavalry. To check the incursions of the French horsemen, he had, a few days after the departure of Napoleon from Madrid, detached general Senra and general Venegas with eight thousand infantry and all the horse to scour the country round Tarancon and Aranjuez; the former halted at Horcajada, and the latter endeavoured to cut off a French detachment, but was himself surprised and beaten by a very inferior force.

Marshal Victor, however, withdrew his advanced posts, and, concentrating Ruffin’s and Villatte’s divisions of infantry and Latour Maubourg’s cavalry, at Villa de Alorna, in the vicinity of Toledo, left Venegas in possession of Tarancon. But, among the Spanish generals, mutual recriminations succeeded this failure: the duke of Infantado possessed neither authority nor talents to repress their disputes, and in this untoward state of affairs receiving the orders of the junta, he immediately projected a movement on Toledo, intending to seize that place and Aranjuez, to break down the bridges, and to maintain the line of the Tagus.

Quitting Cuença on the 10th, he reached Horcajada on the 12th, with ten thousand men, the remainder of the army, commanded by Venegas, being near Tarancon.

The 13th, the duke having moved to Carascosa, a town somewhat in advance of Horcajada, met a crowd of fugitives, and heard, with equal surprise and consternation, that the corps under Venegas was already destroyed, and the pursuers close at hand.

ROUT OF UCLES.

It appeared that Victor, uneasy at the movements of the Spanish generals, but ignorant of their situation and intentions, had quitted Toledo also on the 10th, and marched to Ocaña, whereupon Venegas, falling back from Tarancon, took a position at Ucles. The 12th, the French continued to advance in two columns, of which the one, composed of Ruffin’s division and a brigade of cavalry, lost its way, and arrived at Alcazar; but the other, commanded by Victor himself, and composed of Villatte’s division, the remainder of the cavalry, and the parc of artillery, took the road of Ucles, and came upon the position of Venegas early in the morning of the 13th.

This meeting was unexpected by either party, but the French attacked without hesitation, and the Spaniards, flying towards Alcazar, fell in with Ruffin’s division, and were totally discomfitted. Several thousands laid down their arms, and many, dispersing, fled across the fields; some, however, keeping their ranks, made towards Ocaña, where, coming suddenly upon the French parc of artillery, they received a heavy discharge of grape-shot, and dispersed. Of the whole force, a small party only, under general Giron, succeeded in forcing its way by the road of Carascosa, and so reached the duke of Infantado, who immediately retreated to Cuença, and without further loss, as the French cavalry were too fatigued to pursue briskly.

From Cuença the duke sent his artillery towards Valencia, by the road of Tortola; but himself, with the infantry and cavalry, marched by Chinchilla, and from thence to Tobarra, on the frontiers of Murcia.

At Tobarra he turned to his right, and made for Santa Cruz de Mudela, a town situated near the entrance to the defiles of the Sierra Morena. There he halted in the beginning of February, after a painful and circuitous retreat of more than two hundred miles, in a bad season. But all his artillery had been captured at Tortola, and his forces were, by desertion and straggling, reduced to a handful of discontented officers and a few thousand dispirited men, worn out with fatigue and misery.

Meanwhile, Victor, after scouring a part of the province of Cuença and disposing of his prisoners, made a sudden march upon Vilharta, intending to surprise Palacios, but that officer apprized of the retreat of Infantado had already effected his junction with the latter at Santa Cruz de Mudela. Whereupon the French marshal recalling his troops, again occupied his former position at Toledo. The prisoners taken at Ucles were marched to Madrid, those who were weak and unable to walk were Rocca’s Memoirs. (according to Mr. Rocca) shot by the orders of Victor, because the Spaniards had hanged some French prisoners. If so, it was a barbarous and a shameful retaliation, unworthy of a soldier; for what justice or honour is there in revenging the death of one innocent person by the murder of another.

When Victor withdrew his posts the duke of Infantado and Palacios proceeded to re-organize their forces under the name of the Carolina Army. The levies from Grenada and other parts were ordered up, and the cavalry, commanded by the duke of Alburquerque, endeavoured to surprise a French regiment of dragoons at Mora, but the latter getting together quickly, made a bold resistance and effected their retreat with scarcely any loss. Alburquerque having failed in this attempt retired to Consuegra and was attacked the next day by superior numbers, but retired fighting and got safely off. The duke of Infantado was now displaced, and the junta conferred the command on general Urbina Conde de Cartaojal, who applied himself to restore discipline, and after a time finding no enemy in front advanced to Ciudad Real, and taking post on the left bank of the Upper Guadiana opened a communication with Cuesta. At this period the latter’s force amounted to sixteen thousand men, of which three thousand were cavalry; for, as the Spaniards generally suffered more in their flights than in their battles, the horsemen escaped with little damage and were easily rallied again in greater relative numbers than the infantry.

The fourth corps having withdrawn, as I have already related, to the right bank of the Tagus, Cuesta advanced from the Guadiana and occupied the left bank of that river, on a line extending from the mountains in front of Arzobispo to the Puerto de Mirabete. The French, by fortifying an old tower, held the command of the bridge of Arzobispo, but Cuesta immediately broke down that of Almaraz, a magnificent structure, the centre arch of which was more than a hundred and fifty feet in height.

In these positions the troops on either side remained tranquil both in La Mancha and Estremadura, and so ended the exertions made to lighten the pressure upon the English army. Two French divisions of infantry and as many brigades of cavalry had more than sufficed to baffle them, and hence the imminent danger that menaced the south of Spain, when sir John Moore’s vigorous operations drew the emperor’s forces to the north, may be justly estimated.

CHAPTER II.

CONTINUATION OF THE OPERATIONS IN ARAGON.

From the field of battle at Tudela, all the fugitives of O’Neil’s, and a great part of those from Castaños’s army, fled to Zaragoza and with such speed as to bring the first news of their own disaster. With the troops, also, came an immense number of carriages and the military chests, for the roads were wide and excellent and the pursuit was slack.

The citizens and the neighbouring peasantry were astounded at this quick and unexpected calamity. They had, with a natural credulity, relied on the vain and boasting promises of their chiefs, and being necessarily ignorant of the true state of affairs never doubted that their vengeance would be sated by a speedy and complete destruction of the French. When their hopes were thus suddenly blasted; when they beheld troops, from whom they expected nothing but victory, come pouring into the town with all the tumult of panic; when the peasants of all the villages through which the fugitives passed, came rushing into the city along with the scared multitude of flying soldiers and camp followers; every heart was filled with consternation, and the date of Zaragoza’s glory would have ended with the first siege, if the success at Tudela had been followed up by the French with that celerity and vigour which the occasion required.

Appendix Vol. I.

Napoleon, foreseeing that this moment of confusion and terror would arrive, had with his usual prudence provided the means and given directions for such an instantaneous and powerful attack as would inevitably have overthrown the bulwark of the eastern provinces. But the sickness of marshal Lasnes, the difficulty of communication, the consequent false movements of Moncey and Ney, in fine, the intervention of fortune, omnipotent as she is in war, baffled the emperor’s long-sighted calculations, and permitted the leaders in the city to introduce order among the multitude, to complete the defensive works, to provide stores, and finally by a ferocious exercise of power to insure implicit obedience to their minutest orders. The danger of resisting the enemy appeared light, when a suspicious word or even a discontented gesture was instantaneously punished by a cruel death.

The third corps having thus missed the favourable moment for a sudden assault, and being reduced by sickness, by losses in battle, and by Muster roll of the French Army, MSS. detachments to seventeen thousand four hundred men, including the engineers and artillery, was too weak to invest the city in form, and, therefore, remained in observation on the Xalon river. Meanwhile, a battering train of sixty guns, with well furnished parcs, which had been by Napoleon’s orders previously collected in Pampeluna, were dragged by cattle to Tudela and embarked upon the canal leading to Zaragoza.

Marshal Mortier, with the fifth corps, was also directed to assist in the siege, and he was in march to join Moncey, when his progress also was arrested by sir John Moore’s advance towards Burgos. But the utmost scope of that general’s operation being soon determined by Napoleon’s counter-movement, Mortier resumed his march to reinforce Moncey, and, on the 20th of December, their united corps, forming an army of thirty-five thousand men of all arms, advanced against Zaragoza. Cavalhero.
Doyle’s Correspondence, MSS. At this time, however, confidence had been restored in that town, and all the preparations necessary for a vigorous defence were completed.

The nature of the plain in which Zaragoza is situated, the course of the rivers, the peculiar construction of the houses, and the multitude of convents have been already described, but the difficulties to be encountered by the French troops were no longer the same as in the first siege. At that time but little assistance had been derived from science, but now, instructed by experience and inspired as it were by the greatness of their resolution, neither the rules of art nor the resources of genius were neglected by the defenders.

Zaragoza offered four irregular fronts, of which the first, reckoning from the right of the town, extended from the Ebro to a convent of barefooted Carmelites, and was about three hundred yards wide.

The second, twelve hundred yards in extent, reached from the Carmelites to a bridge over the Huerba.

The third, likewise of twelve hundred yards, stretched from this bridge to an oil manufactory built beyond the walls.

The fourth, being on an opening of four hundred yards, reached from the oil manufactory to the Ebro.

The first front, fortified by an ancient wall and flanked by the guns on the Carmelite, was strengthened Rogniat’s Seige of Zaragoza.
Cavalhero’s Siege of Zaragoza. by some new batteries and ramparts, and by the Castle of Aljaferia, commonly called the Castle of the Inquisition, which stood a little in advance. This was a fort of a square form having a bastion and tower at each corner, and a good stone ditch, and it was connected with the body of the place by certain walls loop-holed for musketry.

The second front was defended by a double wall, the exterior one being of recent erection, faced with sun-dried bricks, and covered by a ditch with perpendicular sides fifteen feet deep and twenty feet asunder. The flanks of this front were derived from the convent of the Carmelites, from a large circular battery standing in the centre of the line, from a fortified convent of the Capuchins, called the Trinity, and from some earthen works protecting the head of the bridge over the Huerba.

The third front was covered by the river Huerba, the deep bed of which was close to the foot of the ramparts. Behind this stream a double entrenchment was carried from the bridge-head to the large projecting convent of Santa Engracia, a distance of two hundred yards. Santa Engracia itself was very strongly fortified and armed; and, from thence to the oil manufactory, the line of defence was prolonged by an ancient Moorish wall, on which several terraced batteries were raised, to sweep all the space between the rampart and the Huerba. These batteries, and the guns in the convent of Santa Engracia, likewise overlooked some works raised to protect a second bridge that crossed the river, about cannot-shot below the first.

Upon the right bank of the Huerba, and a little below the second bridge, stood the convent of San Joseph, the walls of which had been strengthened and protected by a deep ditch with a covered way and pallisade. It was well placed to impede the enemy’s approaches, and to facilitate sorties on the right bank of the river; and it was, as I have said, open, in the rear, to the fire of the works at the second bridge, and both were again overlooked by the terraced batteries, and by the guns of Santa Engracia.

The fourth front was protected by the Huerba, by the continuation of the old city wall, by new batteries and entrenchments, and by several armed convents and large houses.

Beyond the walls the Monte Torrero, which commanded all the plain of Zaragoza, was crowned by a large, ill-constructed fort, raised at the distance of eighteen hundred yards from the convent of San Joseph. This work was covered by the royal canal, the sluices of which were defended by some field-works, open to the fire of the fort itself.

On the left bank of the Ebro the suburb, built in a low marshy plain, was protected by a chain of redoubts and fortified houses. Finally, some gun-boats, manned by seamen from the naval arsenal of Carthagena, completed the circuit of defence. The artillery of the place was, however, of too small a Cavalhero. calibre. There were only sixty guns carrying more than twelve-pound balls; and there were but eight large mortars. There was, however, no want of small arms, many of which were English that had been supplied by colonel Doyle.

These were the regular external defences of Zaragoza, most of which were constructed at the time, according to the skill and means of the engineers; but the experience of the former siege had taught the people not to trust to the ordinary resources of art, and, with equal genius and resolution, they had prepared an internal system of defence infinitely more efficacious.

It has been already observed that the houses of Zaragoza were fire-proof, and, generally, of only two stories, and that, in all the quarters of the city, the numerous massive convents and churches rose like castles above the low buildings, and that the greater streets, running into the broad-way called the Cosso, divided the town into a variety of districts, unequal in size, but each containing one or more large structures. Now, the citizens, sacrificing all personal convenience, and resigning all idea of private property, gave up their goods, their bodies, and their houses to the war, and, being promiscuously mingled with the peasantry and the regular soldiers, the whole formed one mighty garrison, well suited to the vast fortress into which Zaragoza was transformed: for, the doors and windows of the houses were built up, and their fronts loop-holed; internal communications were broken through the party-walls, and the streets were trenched and crossed by earthen ramparts, mounted with cannon, and every strong building was turned into a separate fortification. There was no weak point, because there could be none in a town which was all fortress, and where the space covered by the city was the measurement for the thickness of the ramparts: nor in this emergency were the leaders unmindful of moral force.

The people were cheered by a constant reference to the former successful resistance; their confidence was raised by the contemplation of the vast works that had been executed; and it was recalled to their recollection that the wet, usual at that season of the year, would spread disease among the enemy’s ranks, and would impair, if not entirely frustrate, his efforts. Neither was the aid of superstition neglected: processions imposed upon the sight, false miracles bewildered the imagination, and terrible denunciations of the divine wrath shook the minds of men, whose former habits and present situation rendered them peculiarly susceptible of such impressions. Finally, the leaders were themselves so prompt and terrible in their punishments that the greatest cowards were likely to show the boldest bearing in their wish to escape suspicion.

To avoid the danger of any great explosion, the powder was made as occasion required; and this was the more easily effected because Zaragoza contained a royal depôt and refinery for salt-petre, and there were powder-mills in the neighbourhood, which furnished workmen familiar with the process of manufacturing that article. The houses and trees beyond the walls were all demolished and cut down, and the materials carried into the town. The public magazines contained six months’ provisions; the convents were well stocked, and the inhabitants had, likewise, laid up their own stores for several months. General Doyle also sent a convoy into the town from the side of Catalonia, and there was abundance of money, because, in addition to the resources of the town, the military chest of Castaños’s army, which had been supplied only the night before the battle of Tudela, was, in the flight, carried to Zaragoza.

Companies of women, enrolled to attend the hospitals and to carry provisions and ammunition to the combatants, were commanded by the countess Doyle’s Correspondence, M.S.
Cavalhero, Siege of Zaragoza. of Burita, a lady of an heroic disposition, who is said to have displayed the greatest intelligence and the noblest character during both sieges. There were thirteen engineer officers, and eight hundred sappers and miners, composed of excavators formerly employed on the canal, and there were from fifteen hundred to two thousand cannoneers.

The regular troops that fled from Tudela, being joined by two small divisions, which retreated, at the same time, from Sanguessa and Caparosa, formed a garrison of thirty thousand men, and, together with the inhabitants and peasantry, presented a mass of fifty thousand combatants, who, with passions excited almost to phrensy, awaited an assault amidst those mighty entrenchments, where each man’s home was a fortress and his family a garrison. To besiege, with only thirty-five thousand men, a city so prepared was truly a gigantic undertaking!

SECOND SIEGE OF ZARAGOZA.

The 20th of December, the two marshals, Moncey and Mortier, having established their hospitals and Rogniat. magazines at Alagon on the Xalon, advanced in three columns against Zaragoza.

The first, composed of the infantry of the third corps, marched by the right bank of the canal.

The second, composed of general Suchet’s division of the fifth corps, marched between the canal and the Ebro.

The third, composed of general Gazan’s division of infantry, crossed the Ebro opposite to Tauste, and from thence made an oblique march to the Gallego river.

The right and centre columns arrived in front of the town that evening. The latter, after driving back the Spanish advanced guards, halted at a distance of a league from the Capuchin convent of the Trinity; the former took post on both sides of the Huerba, and, having seized the aqueduct by which the canal is carried over that river, proceeded, in pursuance of Napoleon’s orders, to raise batteries, and to make dispositions for an immediate assault on Monte Torrero. Meanwhile general Gazan, with the left column, marching by Cartejon and Zuera reached Villa Nueva, on the Gallego river, without encountering an enemy.

The Monte Torrero was defended by five thousand Spaniards, under the command of general St. Marc; but, at day-break on the 21st, the French opened their fire against the fort, and one column of infantry having attracted the attention of the Spaniards, a second, unseen, crossed the canal under the aqueduct, and, penetrating between the fort and the city, entered the former by the rear, and, at the same time, a third column stormed the works protecting the great sluices. These sudden attacks, and the loss of the fort, threw the Cavalhero. Spaniards into confusion, and they hastily retired to the town, which so enraged the plebeian leaders that the life of St. Marc was with difficulty saved by Palafox.

It had been concerted among the French that general Gazan should assault the suburb, simultaneously with the attack on the Torrero; and that officer, having encountered a body of Spanish and Swiss troops placed somewhat in advance, drove the former back so quickly that the Swiss, unable to make good their retreat, were, to the number of three or four hundred, killed or taken. But, notwithstanding Rogniat. this fortunate commencement, Gazan did not attack the suburb itself until after the affair at Monte Torrero was over, and then only upon a single point, and without any previous examination of the works. The Spaniards, recovering from their first alarm, soon reinforced this point, and Gazan was forced to desist, with the loss of four hundred men. This important failure more than balanced the success against the Monte Torrero. It restored the shaken confidence of the Spaniards at a most critical moment, and checking in the French, at the outset, that impetuous spirit, that impulse of victory, which great generals so carefully watch and improve, threw them back upon the tedious and chilling process of the engineer.

The 24th of December the investment of Zaragoza was completed on both sides of the Ebro. General Gazan occupied the bridge over the Gallego with his left, and covered his front from sorties by inundations and cuts that the low, marshy plain where he was posted enabled him to make without difficulty.

General Suchet occupied the space between the Upper Ebro and the Huerba.

Morlot’s division of the 3d corps encamped in the broken hollow that formed the bed of that stream.

General Meusnier’s division crowned the Monte Torrero, and general Grandjean continuing the circuit to the Lower Ebro, communicated with Gazan’s posts on the other side. Several Spanish detachments that had been sent out to forage were thus cut off, and could never re-enter the town; and a bridge of boats being constructed on the Upper Ebro completed the circle of investment, and ensured a free intercourse between the different quarters of the army.

General Lacoste, an engineer of reputation, and aide-de-camp to the Emperor, directed the siege. His plan was, that one false and two real attacks should be conducted by regular approaches on the right bank of the Ebro, and he still hoped to take the suburb by a sudden assault. The trenches being opened on the night of the 29th of December, the 30th the place was summoned, and the terms dictated by Napoleon when he was at Aranda de Duero, were offered. The example of Madrid was also cited to induce a surrender. Palafox replied, that—If Madrid had surrendered, Madrid had been sold: Zaragoza would neither be sold nor surrender! On the receipt of this haughty answer the attacks were commenced; the right being directed against the convent of San Joseph; the centre against the upper bridge over the Huerba; the left, which was the false one, against the castle of Aljaferia.

The 31st Palafox made sorties against all the three attacks. From the right and centre he was beaten back with loss, and he was likewise repulsed on the left at the trenches: but some of his cavalry gliding between the French parallel and the Ebro surprised and cut down a post of infantry stationed behind some ditches that intersected the low ground on the bank of that river. This trifling success exalted the enthusiasm of the besieged, and Palafox gratified his personal vanity by boasting proclamations and orders of the day, some of which bore the marks of genius, but the greater part were ridiculous.

The 1st of January the second parallels of the true attacks were commenced. The next day Palafox caused the attention of the besiegers to be occupied on the right bank of the Ebro, by slight skirmishes, while he made a serious attack from the side of the suburb on general Gazan’s lines of contrevallation. This sally was repulsed with loss, but, on the right bank, the Spaniards obtained some success.

Marshal Moncey being called to Madrid, Junot assumed the command of the third corps, and, about the same time, marshal Mortier was directed to take post at Calatayud, with Suchet’s division of the fifth corps, for the purpose of securing the communication with Madrid. The gap in the circle of investment left by this draft of eight thousand men, being but scantily stopped by extending general Morlot’s division, a line of contrevallation was constructed at that part to supply the place of numbers.

The besieged, hoping and expecting each day that the usual falls of rain taking place would render the besiegers’ situation intolerable, continued their fire briskly, and worked counter approaches on to the right of the French attacks: but the season was unusually dry, and a thick fog rising each morning covered the besiegers’ advances and protected their workmen, both from the fire and from the sorties of the Spaniards.

The 10th of January, thirty-two pieces of French artillery being mounted and provisioned, the convent of San Joseph and the head of the bridge over the Huerba, were battered in breach, and, at the same time, the town was bombarded. San Joseph was so much injured by this fire that the Spaniards, resolving to evacuate it, withdrew their guns. Nevertheless, two hundred of their men made a vigorous sortie at midnight, and were upon the point of entering one of the French batteries, when they were taken in flank by two guns loaded with grape, and were, finally, driven back, with loss of half their number.

The 11th, the besiegers’ batteries continued to play on San Joseph with such success that the breach became practicable, and, at four o’clock in the evening, some companies of infantry, with two field-pieces, attacked by the right, and a column was kept in readiness to assail the front, when this attack should have shaken the defence. Two other companies of chosen men were directed to search for an entrance by the rear, between the fort and the river.

The defences of the convent were reduced to a ditch eighteen feet deep, and a covered way which, falling back by both flanks to the Huerba, was then extended along the banks of that river for some distance. A considerable number of men still occupied this covered way: but, when the French field-pieces on the right raked it with a fire of grape, the Spaniards were thrown into confusion, and crossing the bed of the river took shelter in the town. At that moment the front of the convent was assaulted; but, while the depth of the ditch and the Spanish fire checked the impetuosity of the assailants at that point; the chosen companies passed round the works, and finding a small bridge over the ditch crossed it, and entered the convent by the rear. The front was carried by escalade, almost at the same moment, and the few hundred Spaniards that remained were killed or made prisoners.

The French, who had suffered but little in this assault, immediately lodged themselves in the convent, raised a rampart along the edge of the Huerba, and commenced batteries against the body of the place and against the works at the head of the upper bridge, from whence, as well as from the town, they were incommoded by the fire that played into the convent.

The 15th, the bridge-head, in front of Santa Engracia, was carried with the loss of only three men; but the Spaniards cut the bridge itself, and sprung a mine under the works; the explosion, however, occasioned no mischief, and the third parallels being soon completed, and the trenches of the two attacks united, the defences of the besieged were thus confined to the town itself. They could no longer make sallies on the right bank of the Huerba without overcoming the greatest difficulties. The passage of the Huerba was then effected by the French, and breaching and counter-batteries, mounting fifty pieces of artillery, were constructed against the body of the place. The fire of these guns played also upon the bridge over the Ebro, and interrupted the communication between the suburb and the town.

Unshaken by this aspect of affairs, the Spanish leaders, with great readiness of mind, immediately forged intelligence of the defeat of the emperor, and, with the sound of music, and amidst the shouts of the populace, proclaimed the names of the marshals who had been killed; asserting, also, that Palafox’s brother, the marquis of Lazan, was already wasting France. This intelligence, extravagant as it was, met with implicit credence, for such was the disposition of the Spaniards throughout this war, that the imaginations of the chiefs were taxed to produce absurdities proportionable to the credulity of their followers; hence the boasting of the leaders and the confidence of the besieged augmented as the danger increased, and their anticipations of victory seemed realized when the night-fires of a succouring force were discerned blazing on the hills behind Gazan’s troops.

The difficulties of the French were indeed fast increasing, for while enclosing Zaragoza they were themselves encircled by insurrections, and their supplies so straightened that famine was felt in their camp. Disputes amongst the generals also diminished the vigour of the operations, and the bonds of discipline being relaxed, the military ardour of the troops naturally became depressed. The soldiers reasoned openly upon the chances of success, which, in times of danger, is only one degree removed from mutiny.

The nature of the country about Zaragoza was exceedingly favourable to the Spaniards. The town, although situated in a plain, was surrounded, at the distance of some miles, by strong and high mountains, and, to the south, the fortresses of Mequinenza and Lerida afforded a double base of operations for any forces that might come from Catalonia and Valencia. The besiegers drew all their supplies from Pampeluna, and consequently their long line of operations, running through Alagon, Tudela, and Caparosa, was difficult to defend from the insurgents, who, being gathered in considerable numbers in the Sierra de Muela and on the side of Epila, threatened Alagon, while others, descending from the mountain of Soria, menaced the important point of Tudela.

The marquis of Lazan, anxious to assist his brother, had drafted five thousand men from the Catalonian army, and taking post in the Sierra de Liciñena, or Alcubierre, on the left of the Ebro, drew together all the armed peasantry of the valleys as high as Sanguessa, and extending his line from Villa Franca on the Ebro to Zuera on the Gallego, hemmed in the division of Gazan, and even sent detachments as far as Caparosa to harass the French convoys coming from Pampeluna.

To maintain their communications and to procure provisions the besiegers had placed between two or three thousand men in Tudela, Caparosa, and Tafalla, and some hundreds in Alagon and at Montalbarra. Between the latter town and the investing army six hundred and fifty cavalry were stationed: a like number were posted at Santa Fé, to watch the openings of the Sierra de Muela, and sixteen hundred cavalry with twelve hundred infantry, under the command of general Wathier, were pushed towards the south as far as Fuentes, Wathier, falling suddenly upon an assemblage of four or five thousand insurgents that had taken post at Belchite, broke and dispersed them, and then pursuing his victory took the town of Alcanitz, and established himself there in observation for the rest of the siege. But Lazan still maintained himself in the Alcubierre.

In this state of affairs marshal Lasnes, having recovered from his long sickness, arrived before Zaragoza, and took the supreme command of both corps on the 22d of January. The influence of his firm and vigorous character was immediately perceptible; he recalled Suchets division from Calatayud, where it had been lingering without necessity, Rogniat. and, sending it across the Ebro, ordered Mortier to attack Lazan. At the same time a smaller detachment was directed against the insurgents in Zuera, and, meanwhile, Lasnes repressing all disputes, restored discipline in the army, and pressed the siege with infinite resolution.

The detachment sent to Zuera defeated the insurgents and took possession of that place and of the bridge over the Gallego. Mortier encountered the Spanish advanced guard at Perdeguera, and pushed it back to Nuestra Señora de Vagallar, where the main body, several thousand strong, was posted. After a short resistance, the whole fled, and the French cavalry took four guns; Mortier then spreading his troops in a half circle, extending from Huesca to Pina on the Ebro, awed all the country lying between those places and Zaragoza, and prevented any further insurrections.

A few days before the arrival of marshal Lasnes, the besieged being exceedingly galled by the fire from a mortar-battery, situated at some distance behind the second parallel of the central attack, eighty volunteers, under the command of Don Mariano Galindo, endeavoured to silence it. They surprised and bayonetted the guard in the nearest trenches, and passing on briskly to the battery, entered it, and were proceeding to spike the artillery, when unfortunately the reserve of the French arrived, and, the alarm being given, the guards of the first trenches also assembled in the rear of this gallant band, intercepting all retreat. Thus surrounded, Galindo, fighting bravely, was wounded and taken, and the greatest part of his comrades perished with as much honour as simple soldiers can attain.

The armed vessels in the river now made an attempt to flank the works raised against the castle of Aljaferia, but the French batteries forced them to drop down the stream again; and between the nights of the 21st and the 26th of January the besiegers’ works being carried across the Huerba, the third parallels of the real attacks were completed. The oil manufactory and some other advantageous posts, on the left bank of the above-named river, were also taken possession of and included in the works, and at the false attack a second parallel was commenced at the distance of a hundred and fifty yards from the castle of Aljaferia; but these advantages were not obtained without loss. The Spaniards made sallies, in one of which they spiked two guns and burnt a French post on the right.

The besiegers’ batteries had, however, broken the wall of the town in several places. Two practicable breaches were made nearly fronting the convent of San Joseph; a third was commenced in the convent of Saint Augustin, facing the oil manufactory. The convent of San Engracia was laid completely open to an assault; and, on the 29th, at twelve o’clock, the whole army being under arms, four chosen columns rushed out of the trenches, and burst upon the ruined works of Zaragoza.

On the right, the assailants twice stormed an isolated stone house that defended the breach of Saint Augustin, and twice they were repulsed, and finally driven back with loss.

In the centre, the attacking column, regardless of two small mines that exploded at the foot of the walls, carried the breach fronting the oil manufactory, and then endeavoured to break into the town; but the Spaniards retrenched within the place, opened such a fire of grape and musquetry that the French were content to establish themselves on the summit of the breach, and to connect their lodgement with the trenches by new works.

The third column was more successful; the breach was carried, and the neighbouring houses also, as far as the first large cross street; beyond that, the assailants could not penetrate, but they were enabled to establish themselves within the walls of the town, and immediately brought forward their trenches, so as to comprehend this lodgement within their works.

The assault of the fourth column, which was directed against San Engracia, was made with such rapidity and vigour that the Polish regiment of the Vistula not only carried that convent itself, but the one adjoining to it; and the victorious troops, unchecked by the fire from the houses, and undaunted by the simultaneous explosion of six small mines planted in their path, swept the ramparts to the left as far as the bridge over the Huerba; and, at that moment, the guards of the trenches, excited by the success of their comrades, broke forth, without orders, mounted the walls, pushed along the ramparts to the left, bayonetted the artillery-men at their guns in the Capuchin convent, and, continuing their career, endeavoured some to reach the semicircular battery and the Misericordia, and others to break into the town.

This wild assault was soon checked by grape from two guns planted behind a traverse on the ramparts, and by a murderous fire from the houses. As their ranks were thinned, the ardour of the French sunk, and the courage of their adversaries increased. The former were, after a little, driven back upon the Capuchins; and the Spaniards were already breaking into that convent in pursuit, when two battalions, detached by general Morlot from the trenches of the false attack, arrived, and secured possession of that point, which was moreover untenable by the Spaniards, inasmuch as the guns of the convent of Santa Engracia saw it in reverse. The French took, on this day, more than six hundred men. But general La Coste immediately abandoned the false attack against the castle, fortified the Capuchin convent and a house situated at an angle of the wall abutting upon the bridge over the Huerba, and then joining them by works to his trenches, the ramparts of the town became the front line of the French.

The walls of Zaragoza thus went to the ground, but Zaragoza herself remained erect; and, as the broken girdle fell from the heroic city, the besiegers started at the view of her naked strength. The regular defences had, indeed, crumbled before the skill of the assailants; but the popular resistance was immediately called, with all its terrors, into action; and, as if Fortune had resolved to mark the exact moment when the ordinary calculations of science should cease, the chief engineers on both sides were simultaneously slain. The French general, La Coste, a young man, intrepid, skilful, and endowed with genius, perished like a brave soldier; but the Spanish colonel, San Genis, died not only with the honour of a soldier, but the glory of a patriot; falling in the noblest cause, his blood stained the ramparts which he had himself raised for the protection of his native place.

CHAPTER III.

The war being now carried into the streets of Zaragoza, the sound of the alarm-bell was heard over all the quarters of the city; and the people, assembling in crowds, filled the houses nearest to the lodgements made by the French. Additional traverses and barricadoes were constructed across the principal streets; mines were prepared in the more open spaces; and the communications from house to house were multiplied, until they formed a vast labyrinth, of which the intricate windings were only to be traced by the weapons and the dead bodies of the defenders. The members of the junta, become more powerful from the cessation of regular warfare, with redoubled activity and energy urged the defence, but increased the horrors of the siege by a ferocity pushed to the very verge of phrenzy. Every person, without regard to rank or age, who excited the suspicions of these furious men, or of those immediately about them, was instantly put to death; and amidst the noble bulwarks of war, a horrid Cavalhero. array of gibbets was to be seen, on which crowds of wretches were suspended each night, because their courage had sunk beneath the accumulating dangers of their situation, or because some doubtful expression or gesture of distress had been misconstrued by their barbarous chiefs.

From the heights of the walls which he had conquered, marshal Lasnes contemplated this terrific Rogniat. scene; and, judging that men so passionate, and so prepared, could not be prudently encountered in open battle, he resolved to proceed by the slow, but certain process of the mattock and the mine: and this was also in unison with the emperor’s instructions. Hence from the 29th of January to the 2d of February, the efforts of the French were directed to the enlargement of their lodgements on the walls; and they succeeded, after much severe fighting and several explosions, in working forward through the nearest houses; but, at the same time, they had to sustain many counter-assaults from the Spaniards; especially one, exceedingly fierce, made by a friar on the Capuchins’ convent of the Trinity.

It has been already observed that the crossing of the large streets divided the town into certain small districts, or islands of houses. To gain possession of these, it was necessary not only to mine but to fight for each house. To cross the large intersecting streets, it was indispensable to construct traverses above or to work by underground galleries; because a battery raked each street, and each house was defended by a garrison that, generally speaking, had only the option of repelling the enemy in front or dying on the gibbet erected behind. But, as long as the convents and churches remained in possession of the Spaniards, the progress of the French among the islands of small houses was of little advantage to them, because the large garrisons in the greater buildings enabled the defenders not only to make continual and successful sallies, but also to countermine their enemies, whose superior skill in that kind of warfare was often frustrated by the numbers and persevering energy of the besieged.

To overcome these obstacles the breaching batteries opposite the fourth front fired upon the convents of Saint Augustin and Saint Monica, and the latter was assaulted on the 31st of January. At the same time a part of the wall in another direction being thrown down by a petard, a body of the besiegers poured in and taking the main breach in rear, cleared not only the convent but several houses around it. The Spaniards undismayed immediately opened a gallery from St. Augustin and worked a mine under Saint Monica, but at the moment of its being charged the French discovered and stifled the miners.

The 1st of February the breach in Saint Augustin, also, became practicable, and the attention of the besieged being drawn to that side, the French sprung a mine which they had carried under the wall from the side of Saint Monica and immediately entered by the opening. The Spaniards thus unexpectedly taken in the rear, were thrown into confusion and driven out with little difficulty. They, however, rallied in a few hours after and attempted to retake the structure, but without success, and the besiegers animated by this advantage broke into the neighbouring houses and, at one push, carried so many as to arrive at the point where the street called the Quemada joined the Cosso, or public walk. The besieged rallied, however, at the last house of the Quemada, and renewed the combat with so much fury that the French were beaten from the greatest part of the houses they had taken, and suffered a loss of above a hundred men.

On the side of San Engracia a contest still more severe took place; the houses in the vicinity were blown up, but the Spaniards fought so obstinately for the ruins that the Polish troops were scarcely able to make good their lodgement—although two successive and powerful explosions had, with the buildings, destroyed a number of the defenders.

The experience of these attacks induced a change in the mode of fighting on both sides. Hitherto the play of the French mines had reduced the houses to ruins, and thus the soldiers were exposed completely to the fire from the next Spanish posts. The engineers, therefore, diminished the quantity of powder that the interior only might fall and the outward walls stand, and this method was found successful. Hereupon the Spaniards, with ready ingenuity, saturated the timbers and planks of the houses with rosin and pitch, and setting fire to those which could no longer be maintained, interposed a burning barrier which often delayed the assailants for two days, and always prevented them from pushing their successes during the confusion that necessarily followed the bursting of the mines. The fighting was, however, incessant, a constant bombardment, the explosion of mines, the crash of falling buildings, clamorous shouts, and the continued echo of musquetry deafened the ear, while volumes of smoke and dust clouded the atmosphere and lowered continually over the heads of the combatants, as hour by hour, the French with a terrible perseverance pushed forward their approaches to the heart of the miserable but glorious city.

Their efforts were chiefly directed against two points, namely that of San Engracia, which may be denominated the left attack, and that of Saint Augustin and Saint Monica which constituted the right attack. At San Engracia they laboured on a line perpendicular to the Cosso, from which they were only separated by the large convent of the Daughters of Jerusalem, and by the hospital for madmen, which was entrenched, although in ruins since the first siege. The line of this attack was protected on the left by the convent of the Capuchins, which La Coste had fortified to repel the counter assaults of the Spaniards. The right attack was more diffused, because the localities presented less prominent features to determine the direction of the approaches; and the French having mounted a number of light six-inch mortars, on peculiar carriages, drew them from street to street, and house to house, as occasion offered. On the other hand the Spaniards continually plied their enemies with hand grenades, which seem to have produced a surprising effect, and in this manner the never-ceasing combat was prolonged until the 7th of February, when the besiegers, by dint of alternate mines and assaults, had worked their perilous way at either attack to the Cosso, but not without several changes of fortune and considerable loss. They were, however, unable to obtain a footing on that public walk, for the Spaniards still disputed every house with undiminished resolution.

Meanwhile, Lasnes having caused trenches to be opened on the left bank of the Ebro, a battery of twenty guns played against an isolated structure called the Convent of Jesus, which covered the right of the suburb line. On the 7th of February this convent was carried by storm, and with so little difficulty that the French, supposing the Spaniards to be panic stricken, assailed the suburb itself, but were quickly driven back with loss; they, however, made good their lodgement in the convent.

On the town side the 8th, 9th, and 10th were wasted by the besiegers in vain attempts to pass the Cosso; they then extended their flanks. On the right with a view to reach the quay, and so connect this attack with that against the suburb, and on the left to obtain possession of the large and strongly built convent of Saint Francisco, in which after exploding an immense mine and making two assaults they finally established themselves.

The 11th and 12th, mines were worked under the university, a large building on the Spanish side of the Cosso, in the line of the right attack; but their play was insufficient to open the walls, and the storming party was beaten, with the loss of fifty men. Nevertheless, the besiegers continuing their labours during the 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, and 17th, passed the Cosso by means of traverses, and prepared fresh mines under the university, but deferred their explosion until a simultaneous effort could be combined on the side of the suburb.

At the left attack also, a number of houses, bordering on the Cosso being gained, a battery was established that raked that great thoroughfare above ground, while under it six galleries were carried, and six mines loaded to explode at the same moment; but the spirit of the French army was now exhausted; they had laboured and fought without intermission for fifty days; they had crumbled the walls with their bullets, burst the convents with their mines, and carried the breaches with their bayonets,—fighting above and beneath the surface of the earth, they had spared neither fire nor the sword, their bravest men were falling in the obscurity of a subterranean warfare; famine pinched them, and Zaragoza was still unconquered!

“Before this siege,” they exclaimed, “was it ever heard of, that twenty thousand men should besiege fifty thousand?” Scarcely a fourth of the Rogniat. town was won, and they, themselves, were already exhausted. “We must wait,” they said, “for reinforcements or we shall all perish among their cursed ruins, which will become our own tombs, before we can force the last of these fanatics from the last of their dens.”

Marshal Lasnes, unshaken by these murmurs and obstinate to conquer, endeavoured to raise the soldiers’ hopes. He pointed out to them that the losses of the besieged so far exceeded their own, that the Spaniards’ strength would soon be wasted and their courage must sink, and that the fierceness of their defence was already abated,—but if contrary to expectation they should renew the example of Numantia, their utter destruction must quickly ensue from the united effects of battle, misery, and pestilence.

These exhortations succeeded, and on the 18th, all the combinations being complete, a general assault took place. The French at the right attack, having opened a party-wall by the explosion of a petard, made a sudden rush through some burning ruins, and carried, without a check, the island of houses leading down to the quay, with the exception of two buildings. The Spaniards were thus forced to abandon all the external fortifications between Saint Augustin and the Ebro, which they had preserved until that day. And while this assault was in progress, the mines under the university containing three thousand pounds of powder were sprung, and the walls tumbling with a terrific crash,—a column of the besiegers entered the place, and after one repulse secured a lodgement. During this time fifty pieces of artillery thundered upon the suburb and ploughed up the bridge over the Ebro, and by mid-day opened a practicable breach in the great convent of Saint Lazar, which was the principal defence on that side. Lasnes, observing that the Spaniards seemed to be shaken by this overwhelming fire, immediately ordered an assault, and Saint Lazar being carried forthwith, all retreat to the bridge was thus intercepted, and the besieged falling into confusion, and their commander, Baron Versage, being killed, were all destroyed or taken, with the exception of three hundred men, who braving the terrible fire to which they were exposed, got back into the town. General Gazan immediately occupied the abandoned works, and having thus cut off above two thousand men that were stationed on the Ebro, above the suburb, forced them also to surrender.

This important success being followed on the 19th by another fortunate attack on the right bank of the Ebro, and by the devastating explosion of sixteen hundred pounds of powder, the constancy of the besieged was at last shaken. An aide-de-camp of Palafox came forth to demand certain terms, before offered by the marshal, adding thereto that the garrison should be allowed to join the Spanish armies, and that a certain number of covered carriages should follow them. Lasnes rejected these proposals, and the fire continued, but the hour of surrender was come! Fifty pieces of artillery on the left bank of the Ebro, laid the houses on the quay in ruins. The church of Our Lady of the Pillar, under whose especial protection the city was supposed to exist, was nearly effaced by the bombardment, and the six mines under the Cosso loaded with many thousand pounds of powder, were ready for a simultaneous explosion, which would have laid a quarter of the remaining houses in the dust. In fine, war had done its work, and the misery of Zaragoza could no longer be endured.

The bombardment which had never ceased since the 10th of January, had forced the women and children to take refuge in the vaults, with which the city abounded. There the constant combustion of oil, the closeness of the atmosphere, unusual diet, and fear and restlessness of mind, had combined to produce a pestilence which soon spread to the garrison. The strong and the weak, the daring soldier and the shrinking child fell before it alike, and such was the state of the atmosphere and the predisposition to disease that the slightest wound gangrened and became incurable. In the beginning of February the deaths were from four to five hundred daily; the living were unable to bury the dead, and thousands of carcases, scattered about the streets and court yards, or piled in heaps at the doors of the churches, were left to dissolve in their own corruption, or to be licked up by the flames of the burning houses as the defence became contracted.

The suburb, the greatest part of the walls, and one-fourth of the houses were in the hands of the French, sixteen thousand shells thrown during the bombardment, and the explosion of forty-five thousand pounds of powder in the mines had shaken the Cavalhero. Rogniat. Suchet. city to its foundations, and the bones of more than forty thousand persons of every age and sex, bore dreadful testimony to the constancy of the besieged.

Palafox was sick, and of the plebeian chiefs, the curate of St. Gil, the lemonade seller of the Cosso, and the Tios, Jorge, and Marin, having been slain in battle, or swept away by the pestilence, the obdurate violence of the remaining leaders was so abated, that a fresh junta was formed, and after a stormy consultation, the majority being for a surrender, a deputation waited upon marshal Lasnes on the 20th of February, to negotiate a capitulation.

They proposed that the garrison should march out with the honours of war; that the peasantry should not be considered as prisoners; and at the particular request of the clergy, they also demanded that the latter should have their full revenues guaranteed to them, and punctually paid. This article was rejected with indignation, and, according to the French writers, the place surrendered at discretion; but the Spanish writers assert, that Lasnes granted certain terms, drawn up by the deputation at the moment, the name of Ferdinand the 7th being purposely omitted in the instrument, which in substance run thus:—

The garrison to march out with the honours of war; to be constituted prisoners, and marched to France; the officers to retain their swords, baggage, and horses, the men their knapsacks; and persons of either class, wishing to serve Joseph, to be immediately enrolled in his ranks. The peasants to be sent to their homes. Property and religion to be guaranteed.

With this understanding the deputies returned to the city; but fresh commotions had arisen during their absence. The party for protracting the defence, although the least numerous, were the most energetic; they had before seized all the boats on the Ebro, fearing that Palafox and others, of whom they entertained suspicions, would endeavour to quit the town; and they were still so menacing and so powerful, that the deputies durst not pass through the streets, but retired outside the walls to the castle of Aljaferia, and from thence sent notice to the junta of their proceedings. The dissentient party would, however, have fallen upon the others the next day, if the junta had not taken prompt measures to enforce the surrender. The officer in command of the walls near the castle, by their orders, gave up his post to the French during the night, and on the 21st of February, from twelve to fifteen thousand sickly beings laid down those arms which they were scarcely able to support; and this cruel and memorable siege was finished.

Observations.—1º.—When the other events of the Spanish war shall be lost in the obscurity of time, or only traced by disconnected fragments, the story of Zaragoza, like some ancient triumphal pillar standing amidst ruins, will tell a tale of past glory; and already men point to the heroic city, and call her Spain, as if her spirit were common to the whole nation; yet it was not so, nor was the defence of Zaragoza itself the effect of unalloyed virtue. It was not patriotism, nor was it courage, nor skill, nor fortitude, nor a system of terror, but all these combined under peculiar circumstances that upheld the defence; and this combination, and how it was brought about, should be well considered; because it is not so much by catching at the leading resemblances, as by studying the differences of great affairs, that the exploits of one age can be made to serve as models for another.

Plate 1. to face Pa. 48.

Explanatory Sketch of the
SEIGE OF ZARAGOZA,
1808, 1809.

London. Published by T. & W. BOONE, July 1829.

2º.—The defence of Zaragoza may be examined under two points of view; as an isolated event, and as a transaction bearing on the general struggle in the Peninsula. With respect to the latter, it was a manifest proof, that neither the Spanish people, nor the government, partook of the Zaragozan energy. For it would be absurd to suppose that, in the midst of eleven millions of people, animated by an ardent enthusiasm, fifty thousand armed men could for two months be besieged, shut in, destroyed, they and their works, houses, and bodies, mingled in one terrible ruin, by less than thirty-five thousand adversaries, and that without one effort being made to save them!

Deprive the transaction of its dazzling colours, and the simple outline comes to this: Thirty-five thousand French, in the midst of insurrections, in despite of a combination of circumstances peculiarly favourable to the defence, reduced fifty thousand of the bravest and most energetic men in Spain. It is true, the latter suffered nobly; but was their example imitated? Gerona, indeed, although less celebrated, rivalled, and perhaps more than rivalled, the glory of Zaragoza; but elsewhere her fate spoke, not trumpet-tongued to arouse, but with a wailing voice, that carried dismay to the heart of the nation.

3d.—As an isolated transaction, the siege of Zaragoza is very remarkable; but it would be a great error to suppose, that any town, the inhabitants of which were equally resolute, might be as well defended. Fortitude and bravery will do much; but the combinations of science are not to be defied with impunity. There are no miracles in war! If the houses of Zaragoza had not been nearly incombustible, the bombardment alone would have caused the besieged to surrender, or to perish with their flaming city.

4th.—That the advantage offered by the peculiar structure of the houses, and the number of the convents and churches, was ably seized by the Spaniards, is beyond doubt. General Rogniat, Lacoste’s successor, indeed, treats his opponents’ skill in fortification with contempt; but colonel San Genis’ talents are not to be judged of by the faulty construction of a few out-works, at a time when he was under the control of a disorderly and ferocious mob. He knew how to adapt his system of defence to the circumstances of the moment, and no stronger proof of real genius can be given. “Do not consult me about a capitulation,” was his common expression. “I shall never be of opinion that Zaragoza can make no further defence.” But neither the talents of San Genis, nor the construction of the houses, would have availed, if the people within had not been of a temper adequate to the occasion; and to trace the passions by which they were animated to their true causes is a proper subject for historical and military research.

5th.—That they did not possess any superior courage is evident from the facts that the besieged, although twice the number of the besiegers, never made any serious impression by their sallies, and that they were unable to defend the breaches. In large masses, the standard of courage which is established by discipline may be often inferior to that produced by fanaticism, or any other peculiar excitement; but the latter never lasts long, neither is it equable, because men are of different susceptibility, following their physical and mental conformation. Hence a system of terror has always been the resource of those leaders who, engaged in great undertakings, have been unable to recur to discipline. Enthusiasm stalked in front of their bands, but punishment brought up the rear; and Zaragoza was no exception to this practice.

6th.—It may be said that the majority of the besieged, not being animated by any peculiar fury, a system of terror could not be carried to any great length; but a close examination explains this seeming mystery. The defenders were composed of three distinct parties,—the regular troops, the peasantry from the country, and the citizens; but the citizens, who had most to lose, were naturally the fiercest, and, accordingly, amongst them, the system of terror was generated. The peasantry followed the example, as all ignorant men, under no regular control, will do; the soldiers meddled but little in the interior arrangements, and the division of the town into islands of posts rendered it perfectly feasible for violent persons, already possessed of authority, to follow the bent of their inclinations: there was no want of men, and the garrison of each island found it their own interest to keep those in front of them to their posts, that the danger might be the longer staved off from themselves.

7th.—Palafox was only the nominal chief of Zaragoza, the laurels gathered in both sieges should adorn plebeian brows, but those laurels dripped with kindred as well as foreign blood. The energy of the real chiefs, and the cause in which that energy was exerted, may be admired; the acts perpetrated by this ruling band were, in themselves, atrocious; and Palafox, although unable to arrest their savage proceedings, can claim but little credit for his own conduct. For more than a month preceeding the surrender, he never came forth of a vaulted building, which was impervious to shells, and in which, there is too much reason to believe, he and others, of both sexes, lived in a state of sensuality, forming a disgusting contrast to the wretchedness that surrounded them.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE FRENCH OPERATIONS.

1º. Before the arrival of marshal Lasnes, the operations were conducted with little vigour. The want of unity, as to time, in the double attack of the Monte Torrero and the suburb, was a flagrant error, that was not redeemed by any subsequent activity; but, after the arrival of that marshal, the siege was pursued with singular intrepidity and firmness. General Rogniat appears to disapprove of Suchet’s division having been sent to Calatayud, yet it seems to have been a judicious measure, inasmuch as it was necessary,—

1st. To protect the line of correspondence with Madrid.

2d. To have a corps at hand, lest the duke of Infantado should quit Cuença, and throw himself into the Guadalaxara district, a movement that would have been extremely embarrassing to the king. Suchet’s division, while at Calatayud, fulfilled these objects, without losing the power of succouring Tudela, or, by a march on the side of Daroca, of intercepting the duke of Infantado if he attempted to raise the siege of Zaragoza; but, when the Spanish army at Cuença was directed on Ucles, and that of the marquis of Lazan was gathering strength on the left bank of the Ebro, it was undoubtedly proper to recall Suchet.

2º.—It may not be misplaced here to point out the errors of Infantado’s operations. If, instead of bringing on a battle with the first corps, he had marched to the Ebro, established his depôts and places of arms at Mequinenza and Lerida, opened a communication with Murcia, Valencia, and Catalonia, and joined the marquis of Lazan’s troops to his own, he might have formed an entrenched camp in the Sierra de Alcubierre, and from thence have carried on a methodical war with, at least, twenty-five thousand regular troops; the insurrections on the French flanks and line of communication with Pampeluna would then have become formidable; and, in this situation, having the fortresses of Catalonia behind him, with activity and prudence he might have raised the siege.

3º.—From a review of all the circumstances attending the siege of Zaragoza, we may conclude that fortune was extremely favourable to the French. They were brave, persevering, and skilful, and they did not lose above four thousand men; but their success was owing partly to the errors of their opponents, principally to the destruction caused by Rogniat. the pestilence within the town; for, of all that multitude said to have fallen, six thousand Spaniards only were slain in battle. Thirteen convents and churches had been taken; but, when the town surrendered, forty remained to be forced.

Such are the principal circumstances of this memorable siege. I shall now relate the contemporary operations in Catalonia.

CHAPTER IV.

OPERATIONS IN CATALONIA.

It will be remembered, that when the second siege of Gerona was raised, in August, 1808, general Duhesme returned to Barcelona, and general Reille to Figueras; after which, the state of affairs obliged those generals to remain on the defensive. Napoleon’s measures to aid them were as prompt as the occasion required. While the siege of Gerona was yet in progress, he had directed troops to assemble at Perpignan in such numbers, as to form with those already in Catalonia, an army of more than forty thousand men, to be called the “7th corps.” St. Cyr’s Journal of Operations. Then appointing general Gouvion St. Cyr to command it, he gave him this short but emphatic order: “Preserve Barcelona for me. If that place be lost, I cannot retake it with 80,000 men.”

The troops assembled at Perpignan were the greatest part but raw levies; Neapolitans, Etruscans, Romans, and Swiss: there were, however, some old regiments; but as the preparations for the grand army under the emperor absorbed the principal attention of the administration in France, general St. Cyr was straightened in the means necessary to take the field; and his undisciplined troops, suffering severe privations, were depressed in spirit, and inclined to desert.

The 1st of November, Napoleon, who was at Bayonne, sent orders to the “7th corps” to commence its operations; and St. Cyr, having put his divisions in motion on the 3d, crossed the frontier, and established his head-quarters at Figueras on the 5th.

In Catalonia, as in other parts of Spain, lethargic vanity, and abuses of the most fatal kind, had succeeded to the first enthusiasm, and withered the energy of the people. The local junta issued, indeed, abundance of decrees, and despatched agents to the supreme junta, and to the English commanders in the Mediterranean, and in Portugal, all charged with the same instructions, namely, to demand arms, ammunition, and money. And although the central junta treated their demands with contempt, the English authorities answered them generously and freely. Lord Collingwood lent the assistance of his fleet. From Malta and Sicily arms were obtained; and sir Hew Dalrymple having completely equipped the Spanish regiments released by the convention of Cintra, despatched them to Catalonia in British transports. Yet it may be doubted if the conduct of the central junta were not the wisest; for the local government established at Tarragona had already become so negligent, or so corrupt, that the arms thus supplied were, instead Lord Collingwood’s Correspondence. of being used in defence of the country, sold to foreign merchants! and such being the political state of Catalonia, it naturally followed that the military affairs should be ill conducted.

The count of Caldagues, who had relieved Gerona, returned by Hostalrich, and resumed the line of the Llobregat; and fifteen hundred men, drawn from Cabanes. the garrison of Carthagena, having reached Taragona, the marquis of Palacios, accompanied by the junta, quitted the latter town, and fixed his head-quarters at Villa Franca, within twenty miles of Caldagues. The latter disposed his troops, five thousand in number, at different points between Martorel and San Boy, covering a line of eighteen miles, along the left bank of the river.

General Duhesme rested a few days, and then marching from Barcelona with six thousand men in the night, arrived the 2d of September at day-break on the Llobregat, and immediately attacked Caldagues’ line in several points, but principally at San Boy and Molino del Rey. The former fort was carried, some guns and stores were captured, and the Spaniards were pursued to Vegas, a distance of seven or eight miles; but at Molino del Rey the French were repulsed, and Duhesme then returned to Barcelona.

It was the intention of the British ministers, that an auxiliary force should have sailed from Sicily about this period, to aid the Catalans; and doubtless it would have been a wise and timely effort: but Napoleon’s foresight prevented the execution; for he directed Murat to menace Sicily with a descent; and that prince, feigning to collect forces on the coast of Calabria, spread many reports of armaments being in preparation, and, as a preliminary measure, attacked and carried the island of Capri; upon which occasion sir Hudson Lowe first became known to history, by losing in a few days a post that, without any pretensions to celebrity, might have been defended for as many years. Murat’s demonstrations sufficed to impose upon sir John Stuart, and from ten to twelve thousand British troops were thus paralyzed at a most critical period: but such will always be the result of a policy which has no fixed and definite object in view. When statesmen cannot see their own way clearly, the executive officers will seldom act with vigour.

The Spanish army was now daily increasing; the tercios of Migueletes were augmented in number, and a regiment of hussars, that had been most absurdly kept in Majorca ever since the beginning of the insurrection, arrived at Taragona.

Mariano Alvarez, the governor of Gerona, was appointed to the command of the vanguard, composed of the garrisons of Gerona and Rosas, and of the corps of Juan Claros, and other partizans.

Francisco Milans and Milans de Bosch, with their Migueletes, kept the mountains to the northward and eastward of Barcelona; and while the latter hemmed in the French right, the former covered the district of El Vallés, and like a bird of prey watched the French foragers in the plain surrounding Barcelona.

Palacios remained at Villa Franca, and the count of Caldagues continued to guard the line of the Llobregat.

The little port of St. Felice de Quixols, near Palamos Bay, was filled with privateers, and the English frigates off the coast not only aided the Spaniards in all their enterprizes, but carried on a littoral warfare in the gulf of Lyons with great spirit and success.

During the month of September several petty skirmishes happened between the French marauding parties and the Migueletes about Barcelona; but on the 10th of October, Duhesme attacked and dislodged Francisco Milans from the mountains to the north of that city; and designing to forage the district of El Vallés, sent on the 11th a column of two thousand men along the sea coast towards Mattaro, with orders to turn from thence to the left, clear the heights beyond the Besos, of Migueletes, and push for Granollers on the route to Vich: this column he supported by a second of nearly equal strength, under general Millossewitz.

The first column reaching Granollers on the 12th, put the local junta of that district to flight, captured some provisions and other stores, and, finally, joined the second column, which was posted at Mollet. Millossewitz, leaving a part of his force at the pass of Moncada, then proceeded to San Culgat. Caldagues, hearing of this excursion, drew together three thousand infantry, a hundred and fifty cavalry, and six guns from his line on the Llobregat, and was in full march by the back of the mountains for the pass of Moncada, expecting to intercept the French in their return to Barcelona: Cabanes. but, falling in with them at San Culgat, a confused action ensued, and both sides claimed the victory; the French, however, retreated across the mountains to Barcelona without having foraged the district, and Caldagues returned to his former position, justly proud of this vigorous and soldier-like movement.

The 28th of October, Palacios quitted Catalonia to command the levies in the Sierra Morena. General Vives succeeded him, and the army was again reinforced by some infantry from Majorca. The Spanish regiments, released by the convention of Cintra, also arrived at Villa Franca, and seven or eight thousand Granadian levies were brought up to Tarragona by general Reding, and, at the same time, six thousand men drafted from the army of Aragon, reached Lerida, under the command of the marquis de Lazan.

The whole force, including the garrisons of Hostalrich, Gerona, and Rosas, was now not less than thirty-six thousand men; of which twenty-two St. Cyr.
Doyle’s Correspondence, MSS. thousand infantry, and twelve hundred cavalry, were in the neighbourhood of Barcelona, or in march for the Llobregat. This force, organized in six divisions, of which the troops in the Ampurdan formed one, took the name of the army of the right, and Vives seeing himself at the head of such a power, and in possession of all the hills and rivers encircling Barcelona, resolved to besiege that city.

The 3d of November, he transferred his head-quarters to Martorel; the 8th he commenced a series of trifling skirmishes, to drive the French posts back into the town: but they repulsed him; and, from that time until the blockade was raised, a warfare of the most contemptible nature was carried on by the Spaniards: the French, who were about ten thousand strong, always maintaining their outposts.

Notwithstanding this appearance of strength, Catalonia was a prey to innumerable disorders. Vives, a weak, indolent man, had been a friend of Godoy, and was not popular; he it was that, commanding in the islands, had retained the troops in them with such tenacity as to create doubts of his attachment to the cause; but, although the supreme junta privately expressed their suspicions, and Lord Collingwood’s Correspondence. requested lord Collingwood to force Vives to an avowal of his true sentiments, they, at the same time, wrote to the latter, publicly, in the most flattering terms, and, finally, appointed him captain-general of Catalonia. By the people, however, both he and others were vehemently suspected, and, as the mob governed throughout Spain, the authorities, civil and military, were more careful to avoid giving offence to the multitude than anxious to molest the enemy. Catalonia was full of strong places: but they were neither armed nor provisioned, and, like all other Spaniards, the Catalans were confident that the French only thought of retreating.

Such was the state of the province and of the armies, when Napoleon, being ready to break into the northern parts of Spain, general St. Cyr commenced his operations. His force (including a Muster rolls of the French army, MSS. German division of six thousand men, not yet arrived at Perpignan) amounted to more than thirty St. Cyr. thousand men, ill-composed, however, and badly provided; and St. Cyr himself was extremely discontented with his situation. The Emperor had given him discretionary powers to act as he judged fitting, only bearing in mind the importance of relieving Barcelona; but marshal Berthier neglected the equipment of the troops; and Duhesme declared that his magazines would not hold out longer than December.

To march directly to Barcelona was neither an easy nor an advantageous movement. That city could only be provisioned from France; and, until the road was cleared, by the taking of Gerona and Hostalrich, no convoys could pass except by sea, yet, to attack these places with prudence, it was essential to get possession of Rosas, not only to secure an intermediate port for French vessels passing with supplies to Barcelona, but to deprive the English of a secure harbour, and the Spaniards of a point from whence they could, in concert with their allies, intercept the communications of the French army: and even blockade Figueras, which, from the want of transport, could not be provisioned at this period. These considerations having determined St. Cyr to commence by the siege of Rosas, he repaired to Figueras, in person, the 6th of November; and, on the 7th, general Reille being charged to conduct the operation, after a sharp action, drove in the Spaniards before the place and completed the investment.

SIEGE OF ROSAS.

This town was but a narrow slip of houses built along the water’s edge, at the head of the gulph of the same name.

The citadel, a large irregular pentagon, stood on one side of the town, and, on the other, the mountains that skirt the flat and swampy plain of the Ampurdan, rose, bluff and rocky, at the distance of half a mile. An old redoubt was built at the foot of these hills, and, from thence to the citadel, an entrenchment had been drawn to cover the houses. Hence, Rosas, looking towards the land, had the citadel on the left hand, the mountains on the right, and the front covered by this entrenchment. The roadstead permitted ships of the line to anchor within cannon-shot of the place; and, on the right hand coming up the gulph, a star fort, called the Trinity, crowned a rugged hill about a mile and a quarter distant from the citadel, the communication between it and the town being by a narrow road carried between the foot of the hills and the water’s edge.

The garrison of Rosas consisted of nearly three thousand men, two bomb-vessels, and an English seventy-four (the Excellent), were anchored off the town, and captain West, the commodore, reinforced the garrisons of the Trinity and the citadel with marines and seamen from these vessels; but the damages sustained in a former siege had been only partially repaired; both places were ill-found in guns and stores, and the Trinity was commanded at the distance of pistol-shot from a point of the mountains called the Puig Rom.

The force under Reille, consisting of his own and general Pino’s Italian division, skirmished daily with the garrison; but the rain, which fell in torrents, having flooded the Ampurdan, the roads became impassable for the artillery, and delayed the opening of the trenches. Meanwhile, Souham’s division took post between the Fluvia and Figueras, to cover the operations of the siege on the side of Gerona, and an Italian brigade, under general Chabot, was posted at Rabos and Espollas, to keep the Somatenes down.

But, before Chabot’s arrival, Reille had detached a battalion to that side; and, being uneasy for its safety, sent three more to its assistance: this saved the battalion, which was in great danger; and two companies were actually cut off by the Somatenes. This loss, however, proved beneficial, as it enraged the Italians, and checked their disposition to desert; and St. Cyr, unwilling to pursue the system of St. Cyr. burning villages, and yet anxious to repress the insidious hostility of the peasants, in reprizal for the loss of his two companies, seized an equal number of villagers, and sent them prisoners to France.

The inhabitants of Rosas having embarked or taken refuge in the citadel, the houses, and the entrenchments covering them, were left to the French; but the latter were prevented, by the fire of the English ships, from effecting a permanent lodgement in the deserted town; and, after a few days, a detachment from the garrison, consisting of soldiers and townsmen, established a post there.

Captain West’s despatch.

The 8th captain West, in conjunction with the governor, made a sally, but was repulsed; and, on the 9th several yards of the citadel ramparts crumbled; but, with the assistance of the British seamen, the breach was repaired in the night before the enemy became aware of the accident.

The 15th an obstinate assault made on the Trinity was repulsed, the English seamen bearing a principal share in the success.

The 16th the roads being passable, the French battering-train was put in motion. The way leading up to the Puig Rom was repaired, and two battalions were posted there, on the point commanding the Trinity.

The 19th three guns were mounted against the Trinity, and the trenches were opened at the distance of four hundred yards from the citadel.

The 20th the fire of some French mortars obliged the vessels of war to anchor beyond the range of the shells. During this time, Souham was harassed by the Migueletes from the side of Gerona. The French cavalry, unable to find forage, were sent back to France; and Napoleon, rendered uneasy by the reports of general Duhesme, ordered the seventh corps to advance to Barcelona, so as to St. Cyr. arrive there by the 26th of November; but St. Cyr refused to abandon the siege of Rosas without a positive order.

The assistance afforded to the besieged by captain West was represented to the junta as an attempt of that officer to possess himself of the place. The junta readily believed this tale, and entered into an angry correspondence with don Pedro O’Daly, the governor, relative to the supposed treachery; but no measures were taken to raise the siege. During this correspondence, the Excellent sailed from Rosas, and was succeeded by the Fame, captain Bennet. This officer landed some men under the Trinity on the 23d, and endeavoured, but ineffectually, to take the battery opposed to that fort.

The 27th the besiegers assaulted the Spaniards, who, to the number of five hundred, had entrenched themselves in the deserted houses of the town. A hundred and sixty were taken, and fifty escaped into the citadel; the rest were slain. Breaching batteries were immediately commenced among the ruins of the houses, and the communication with the shipping rendered so unsafe, that Lazan, who had come from Lerida to Gerona with six thousand men, and had collected provisions and Doyle’s Correspondence, MSS. stores at the mouth of the Fluvia, with the intention of supplying Rosas by sea, abandoned his design. The ruinous condition of the front, exposed to the fire of the besiegers, now induced Reille to summon the place a second time; but the governor refused to surrender.

The 30th of November, the engineers reported that the breach in the Trinity was practicable, and an assault was ordered; although an Italian officer, appointed to lead the storming party of fifty men, and who had formerly served in the fort, asserted that the breach was not a true one. The Spanish commandant thought his post untenable; and two days before, the marines of the Fame had been withdrawn by captain Bennet: but at this time, lord Cochrane, a man of infinite talent in his profession, and of a courage and enterprise that have seldom, if ever, been surpassed, arrived in the Imperieuse frigate, and immediately threw himself, with eighty men, into the fort.

The Italian’s representations being unheeded, he advanced to the assault like a man of honour, and was killed, together with all his followers, excepting four, two of whom escaped back to their own side, the other two being spared by the English seamen, were drawn up with cords into the fort. The breach had, however, been practicable at first; but it was broken in an old gallery, which lord Cochrane immediately filled with earth and hammocks, and so cut off the opening. In the course of a few days, a second assault was made, but the French were again repulsed with loss. Meanwhile the breaching batteries opened against the citadel, and a false attack was commenced on the opposite side.

The 4th December the garrison made a sally, in the night, from the citadel, and with some success; but the walls were opened by the enemy’s fire, and the next day O’Daly, hopeless of relief, surrendered with about two thousand four hundred men, of which two hundred were wounded. Lord Cochrane, also, blew up the magazine, and abandoned Fort Trinity. General St. Cyr observes that the garrison of Rosas might have been easily carried off, at night, by the British shipping; but to embark two thousand five hundred men, in the boats of two ships, and under a heavy fire, whether by night or day, is not an easy operation; nevertheless, the censure seems well founded, because sufficient preparation might have been previously made.

The defence of Rosas (with the exception of lord Cochrane’s efforts) cannot be deemed brilliant, whether with relation to the importance of the place, the assistance that might have been rendered from the sea, or the number of the garrison compared with that of the besiegers. It held out, however, thirty days, and, if that time had been well employed by the Spaniards, the loss of the garrison would have been amply repaid; but Vives, wholly occupied with Barcelona, was indifferent to the fate of Rosas. A fruitless attack on Souham’s posts, by Mariano Alvarez, was the only effort made to interrupt the siege, or to impede the farther progress Doyle’s Correspondence, MSS. of the enemy. Lazan, although at the head of six or seven thousand men, could not rely upon more than three thousand; and his applications to Vives for a reinforcement were unheeded.

The fall of Rosas enabled St. Cyr to march to the relief of Barcelona, and he resolved to do so: yet the project, at first sight, would appear rather insane than hardy; for the roads, by which Gerona and Hostalrich were to be turned, being mere paths impervious to carriages, no artillery, and little ammunition, could be carried, and the country was full of strong positions. The Germans had not yet arrived at Perpignan; it was indispensable to leave Reille in the Ampurdan, to protect Rosas and Figueras; and, these deductions being made, less than eighteen thousand men, including the cavalry, which had been recalled from France, remained disposable for the operation.

But, on the Spanish side, Reding having come up, there were twenty-five thousand men in the camp before Barcelona, and ten thousand others, under Lazan and Alvarez, were at Gerona. All these troops were, however, exceedingly ill organized. Cabanes. Two-thirds of the Migueletes only carried pikes, and many were without any arms at all. There was no sound military system; the Spanish generals were ignorant of the French movements and strength; and their own indolence and want of vigilance drew upon them the contempt and suspicion of the people.

The 8th of December St. Cyr united his army on the left bank of the Fluvia. The 9th he passed that river, and, driving the Spaniards over the Ter, established his head-quarters at Mediñya, ten miles from Gerona. He wished, before pursuing his own march, to defeat Lazan, lest the latter should harass the rear of the army; but, finding that the marquis would not engage in a serious affair, he made a show of sitting down before Gerona on the 10th, St. Cyr. hoping thereby to mislead Vives, and render him slow to break up the blockade of Barcelona: and Cabanes. this succeeded; for the Spaniard remained in his camp, irresolute and helpless, while his enemy was rapidly passing the defiles and rivers between Gerona and the Besos.

The nature of the country between Figueras and Barcelona has been described in the first volume; referring to that description, the reader will find that the only carriage-routes by which St. Cyr could march were, one by the sea-coast, and one leading through Gerona and Hostalrich. The first, exposed to the fire of the English vessels, had also been broken up by lord Cochrane, in August; and, to use the second, it was necessary to take the fortresses, or to turn them by marching for three days through the mountains. St. Cyr adopted the latter plan, trusting that rapidity and superior knowledge of war would enable him to separate Lazan and Alvarez from Vives, and so defeat them all in succession.

The 11th, he crossed the Ter and reached La Bisbal; here he left the last of his carriages, delivered out four days’ biscuit and fifty rounds of ammunition to the soldiers, and with this provision, a drove of cattle, and a reserve of ten rounds of ammunition for each man, he commenced his hardy march the 12th of December, making for Palamos. On the route he encountered and beat some Migueletes that Juan Claros had brought to oppose him, and, when near Palamos, he suffered a little from the fire of the English ships; but he had gained a first step, and his hopes were high.

The 13th, he turned his back upon the coast, and, by a forced march, reached Vidreras and Llagostera, and thus placed himself between Vives and Lazan, for the latter had not yet passed the heights of Casa de Selva.

The 14th, marching by Mazanet de Selva and Martorel, he reached the heights above Hostalrich, and encamped at Grions and Masanas. During this day’s journey, his rear was slightly harassed by Lazan and Claros; but he was well content to find the strong banks of the Tordera undefended by Vives. The situation of the army was, however, extremely critical. Lazan and Claros had, the one on the 11th, the other on the 12th, informed Vives of the movement; hence the bulk of the Spanish force before Barcelona might be expected, at any moment, in some of the strong positions in which the country abounded, and the troops from Gerona were, as we have seen, close in the rear; the Somatenes were gathering thickly on the flanks, Hostalrich was in front, and the French soldiers had only sixty rounds of ammunition.

St. Cyr’s design was to turn Hostalrich, and get into the main road again behind that fortress. The smugglers of Perpignan had affirmed that there was no pathway, but a shepherd assured him that there was a track by which it could be effected; and, when the efforts of the staff-officers to trace it failed, St. Cyr himself discovered it, but nearly fell into the hands of the Somatenes during the search.

The 15th, at day-break, the troops being put in motion, turned Hostalrich and gained the main road. The garrison of that place, endeavouring to harass their rear, were repulsed; but the Somatenes on the flanks, emboldened because the French, to save ammunition, did not return their fire, became exceedingly troublesome; and, near San Celoni, the head of the column encountered some battalions of Migueletes, which Francisco Milans had brought up from Arenas de Mar, by the pass of Villa Gorguin.

Milans, not being aware of St. Cyr’s approach, was soon beaten, and his men fell back, part to Villa Gorguin, part to the heights of Nuestra Señora de Cordera: the French thus gained the defile of Treintapasos. But they were now so fatigued that all desired to halt, save St. Cyr, who insisted upon the troops clearing the defile, and reaching a plain on the other side: this was not effected before ten o’clock. Lazan’s troops did not appear during the day; but Vives’ army was in front, and its fires were seen on the hills between Cardadeu and Llinas.

Information of St. Cyr’s march, as I have already observed, had been transmitted to Vives on the 11th, and there was time for him to have carried the bulk of his forces to the Tordera before the French could pass that river; but intelligence of the battle of Tudela, and of the appearance of the French near Zaragoza, arrived at the same moment, Cabanes. and the Spanish general betrayed the greatest weakness and indecision, at one moment resolving to continue before Barcelona, at another designing to march against St. Cyr. He had, on Doyle’s Correspondence, MS. the 9th, sent Reding with six guns, six hundred cavalry, and one thousand infantry, to take the command in the Ampurdan; but, the 12th, after receiving Lazan’s report, he reinforced Reding, who was still at Granollers, and directed him upon Cardadeu.

The 14th, he ordered Francisco Milans to march by Mattaro and Arenas de Mar, to examine the coast road, and, if the enemy was not in that line, to repair also to Cardadeu.

The 15th, Milans, as we have seen, was beaten at St. Celoni; but, in the night, he rallied his whole division on the heights of Cordera, thus flanking the left of the French forces at Llinas.

A council of war was held on the 13th. Caldagues advised that four thousand Migueletes should be left to observe Duhesme, and that the rest of the army should march at once to fight St. Cyr. Good and soldier-like advice; but Vives was loth to abandon the siege of Barcelona, and, adopting half-measures, left Caldagues, with the right wing of the army, to watch Duhesme, and carried the centre and the left, by the route of Granollers, to the heights between Cardadeu and Llinas, where (exclusive of Milan’s division) he united, in the night of the 15th, about eight thousand regulars, besides several thousand Somatenes. Duhesme immediately occupied the posts abandoned by Vives, and thus separated him from Caldagues.

St. Cyr’s position, on the morning of the 16th, would have been dangerous, if he had been opposed by any but Spanish generals and Spanish troops. Vives and those about him, irresolute and weak as they were in action, were not deficient in boasting words; they called the French army, in derision, “the succour;” and, in allusion to the battle of Baylen, announced that a second “bull-fight,” in St. Cyr. which Reding was again the “matador,” would be exhibited. But Dupont and St. Cyr were men of a different stamp: the latter justly judging that the Spaniards were not troops to stand the shock of a good column, united his army in one solid mass, at day-break on the 16th, and marched straight against the centre of the enemy, giving orders that the head of the column should go headlong on, without either firing or forming line.

BATTLE OF CARDADEU.

The hills which the Spaniards occupied were high and wooded; the right was formed by Reding’s division, the left by Vives, and the Somatenes hung on the sides of a lofty ridge, which was only separated from the right of the position by the little river Mogent. The main road from Llinas led straight upon the centre, and there was a second road conducting to Mataro, which, branching off from the first, run between the Mogent and the right of Reding’s ground.

When the French commenced their march, the Somatenes galled their left flank, and general Pino, whose division headed the column of attack, instead of falling upon the centre, sent back for fresh instructions, St. Cyr. and meanwhile extended his first brigade in a line to the left. St. Cyr, who had reiterated the order to fight in column, was sorely troubled at Pino’s error, the ill effects of which were instantly felt, because, Reding advancing against the front and flank of the extended brigade, obliged it to commence a fire, which it was impossible to sustain for want of ammunition.

In this difficulty the French general acted with great ability and vigour: Pino’s second brigade was directed to do that which the first should have done. Two companies were sent to menace the left of the Spaniards, and St. Cyr, at the same time, rapidly carried Souham’s division, by the Mataro road, against Reding’s extreme right. The effect was instantaneous and complete, the Spaniards overthrown on their centre and right, and charged by the cavalry, were beaten and dispersed in every direction, leaving all their artillery and ammunition, and two thousand prisoners behind.

Vives, escaping on foot across the mountain, reached Mataro, where he was taken on board an English vessel. Reding fled on horseback by the main road; and the next day, having rallied some of the fugitives at Monmalo, retreated by the route of San Culgat to Molino del Rey. The loss of the French was six hundred men; but the battle, which lasted only one hour, was so complete, that St. Cyr resolved to push on to Barcelona immediately, without seeking to defeat Milans or Lazan, whom he judged too timid to venture an action: moreover, he hoped that Duhesme, who had been informed, on the 7th, of the intended march, and who could hear the sound of the artillery, would intercept and turn back the flying troops.

The French army had scarcely quitted the field of battle when Milans arrived; but, finding how matters stood, retired to Arenas de Mar, and gave notice to Lazan, who retreated to Gerona. St. Cyr’s rear was thus cleared; but Duhesme, heedless of what was passing at Cardadeu, instead of intercepting the beaten army, sent Lecchi to attack Caldagues. The latter general, however, concentrated his division on the evening of the 16th, repulsed Lecchi, and retired behind the Llobregat, but left behind some artillery and the large magazines which Vives had collected for the siege and accumulated in his camp.

St. Cyr reached Barcelona without encountering any of Duhesme’s troops, and, in his Memoirs of this campaign, represents that general as astonishingly negligent, seeking neither to molest the enemy nor to meet the French army; treating everything belonging to the service with indifference, making false returns, and conniving at gross malversation in his generals.

St. Cyr.

St. Cyr, now reflecting upon the facility with which his opponents could be defeated, and the difficulty of pursuing them, resolved to rest a few days at Barcelona, in hopes that the Spaniards, if unmolested, would re-assemble in numbers behind the Llobregat, and enable him to strike an effectual blow, for his design was to disperse their forces so as they should not be able to interrupt the sieges which he meditated; nor was he deceived in his calculations. Reding joined Caldagues, and rallied from twelve to fifteen thousand men behind the Llobregat, and Vives, having relanded at Sitjes, sent orders to Lazan and Milans to march likewise to that river by the district of Vallés. The arrival of the latter was, however, so uncertain that the French general, judging it better to attack Reding at once, united Chabran’s division to his own, on the 20th, and advanced to St. Felieu de Llobregat.

The Spaniards were drawn up on the heights behind the village of San Vincente; their position was lofty and rugged, commanding a free view of the approaches from Barcelona. The Llobregat covered the front, and the left flank was secure from attack, except at the bridge of Molino del Rey, which was entrenched, guarded by a strong detachment, and protected by heavy guns. Reding’s cavalry amounted to one thousand, and he had fifty pieces of artillery, the greatest part of which were in battery at the bridge of Molino del Rey; but his right was accessible, because the river was fordable in several places. The main road to Villa Franca led through this position, and, at the distance of ten or twelve miles in the rear, the pass of Ordal offered another post of great strength.

Vives was at San Vincente on the 19th, but returned to Villa Franca the same day; hence, when the French appeared on the 20th, the camp was thrown into confusion.

A council of war being held, one party was for fighting, another for retreating to Ordal: an officer Cabanes. was then sent to Vives for orders, but he returned with a message, that Reding might retreat if he could not defend his post. The latter, however, fearing that he should be accused, and perhaps sacrificed for returning without reason, resolved to fight, although he anticipated nothing but disaster. The season was extremely severe; snow was falling, and both armies suffered from the cold and wet. The Spanish soldiers were dispirited by past defeats, and the despondency and irresolution of their generals could not escape observation: but the French and Italian troops were confident in their commander, and flushed with success. In these dispositions the two armies passed the night before

THE BATTLE OF MOLINO DEL REY.

St. Cyr observing that Reding’s attention was principally directed to the bridge of Molino, ordered Chabran’s division to that side, with instructions to create a diversion, by opening a fire from some artillery, and then retiring, as if his guns could not resist the weight of the Spanish metal; in short, to persuade the enemy that a powerful effort would be made there; but when the centre and right of the Spaniards should be attacked, Chabran was to force the passage of the bridge, and assail the heights beyond it. This stratagem succeeded; Reding massed his troops on the left, and neglected his right, which was the real point of attack.

The 21st of December, Pino’s division crossed the Llobregat at daylight, by a ford in front of St. Felieu, and marched against the right of the Spanish position: Chabot’s division followed; and Souham’s, which had passed at a ford lower down, and then ascended by the right bank, covered Pino’s passage. The light cavalry were held in reserve behind Chabot’s division, and a regiment of cuirassiers was sent to support Chabran at Molino del Rey.

The Spanish position consisted of two mountain heads, separated by a narrow ravine and a torrent; and as the troops of the right wing were exceedingly weakened, they were immediately chased off their headland by the leading brigade of Pino’s division. Reding then seeing his error, changed his front, and drew up on the other mountain, on a new line, nearly perpendicular to the Llobregat; but he still kept a strong detachment at the bridge of Molino, which was thus in rear of his left. The French divisions formed rapidly for a fresh effort. Souham on the right, Pino in the centre, Chabot on the left. The latter gained ground in the direction of Villa Franca, and endeavoured to turn the Spaniards’ right, and cut off their retreat; while the light cavalry making way between the mountain and the river, sought to connect themselves with Chabran at Molino.

St. Cyr’s columns, crossing the ravine that separated them from the Spaniards, soon ascended the opposite mountain. The Catalans had formed quickly, and opposed their enemies with an orderly, but ill directed fire. Their front line then advanced, and offered to charge with an appearance of great intrepidity; but their courage sunk, and they turned as the hostile masses approached. The reserves immediately opened a confused volley upon both parties; and in this disorder, the road to Villa Franca being intercepted by Chabot, the right was forced upon the centre, the centre upon the left, and the whole pushed back in confusion upon Molino del Rey.

Meanwhile a detachment from Chabran’s division had passed the Llobregat above Molino, and so blocked the road to Martorel; and in this miserable situation the Spaniards were charged by the light cavalry, and scarcely a man would have escaped if Chabran had obeyed his orders, and pushing across the bridge of Molino had come upon their rear; but that general, at all times feeble in execution, remained a tranquil spectator of the action, until the right of Souham’s division reached the bridge; and thus the routed troops escaped, by dispersing, and throwing away every thing that could impede their flight across the mountains. Vives reached the field of battle just as the route was complete, and was forced to fly with the rest. The victorious army pursued in three columns; Chabran’s in the direction of Igualada, Chabot’s by the road of San Sadurni, which turned the pass of Ordal, and Souham’s by the royal route of Villa Franca, at which place the head-quarters were established on the 22d. The posts of Villa Nueva and Sitjes were immediately occupied by Pino, while Souham pushed the fugitives to the gates of Tarragona.

The loss of the Spaniards, owing to their swiftness, was less than might have been expected; not more than twelve hundred fell into the hands of the French, but many superior officers were killed or wounded; and, on the 22d, the count de Caldagues was taken, a man apparently pedantic in military affairs, and wanting in modesty, but evidently possessed of both courage and talent. The whole of the artillery, and vast quantities of powder, were captured, and with them a magazine of English muskets, quite new. Yet many of the Migueletes were unarmed, and the junta were unceasing in their demands for succours of this nature; but the history of any one province was the history of all Spain.

CHAPTER V.

Barcelona was now completely relieved, and the captured magazines supplied it for several months. There was no longer a Spanish army in the field; and in Tarragona, where some eight or nine thousand of the Spanish fugitives, from this and the former battle, had taken refuge, there was terrible disorder. Cabanes. The people rose tumultuously, broke open the public stores, and laying hands on all the weapons they could find, rushed from place to place, as if searching for something to vent their fury upon. The head of Vives was called for; and to save his life, he was cast into prison by Reding, who was proclaimed general-in-chief.

The regular officers were insulted by the populace, and there was as usual a general cry to defend the city, mixed with furious menaces against traitors, but there were neither guns, nor ammunition, nor provisions; and during the first moment of anarchy, St. Cyr. St. Cyr might certainly have rendered himself master of Tarragona by a vigorous effort. But the opportunity soon passed away; the French general sought only to procure subsistence, and occupied himself in forming a train of field artillery; while Reding, who had been almost without hope, proceeded to rally the army, and place the town in a state of defence.

Doyle’s Correspondence, MSS.

The 1st of January eleven thousand infantry and eight hundred cavalry were re-assembled at Tarragona and Reus; and a Swiss regiment from Majorca and two Spanish regiments from Granada, increased this force. Three thousand four hundred men arrived from Valencia on the 5th, and from thence also five thousand muskets, ammunition in proportion, and ten thousand pikes which had just been landed from England, were forwarded to Tarragona. A supply of money, obtained from the British agents at Seville, completed the number of fortuitous and fortunate events that combined to remedy the disaster of Molino del Rey. These circumstances, and the inactivity of St. Cyr, who seemed suddenly paralyzed, restored the confidence of the Catalonians, but their system remained unchanged; for confidence among the Spaniards always led to insubordination, but never to victory.

Meanwhile, a part of the troops flying from Molino had taken refuge at Bruch, and being joined by the Somatenes, chose major Green, one of the English military agents, for their general, thinking to hold that strong country, which was considered as impregnable ever since the defeats of Chabran and Swartz. St. Cyr, glad of this opportunity to retrieve the honour of the French arms, detached Chabran himself, on the 11th of January, to take his own revenge; but that general was still depressed by the recollection of his former defeat. St. Cyr. To encourage him, Chabot was directed from San Sadurni upon Igualada, by which the defile of Bruch was turned, and a permanent defence rendered impossible. The Spaniards, however, made little or no resistance; and eight guns were taken, and a considerable number of men killed. The French pursued to Igualada; and a detachment, without orders, even assailed and took Montserrat itself, and afterwards rejoined the main body without loss. Chabot was then recalled to San Sadurni, and Chabran was quartered at Martorel.

While these events were passing beyond the Llobregat, the marquis of Lazan was advancing, with seven or eight thousand men, towards Castellon de Ampurias. The 1st of January he drove back a battalion of infantry upon Rosas with considerable loss; but the next day general Reille, having assembled about three thousand men, intercepted Lazan’s communications, and attacked him in his position behind the Muga. The victory seems to have been undecided; but in the night, Lazan regained his communications, and returned to Gerona.

The battle of Molino del Rey checked, for a time, the ardour of the Catalans, and Reding at first avoided serious actions, leaving the Somatenes to harass the enemy. This plan being followed during the months of January and February, was exceedingly troublesome to St. Cyr, because he was obliged to send small parties continually to seek for subsistence, and the country people, hiding their provisions with great care, strove hard to protect their scanty stores. But in the beginning of February the country between the Llobregat and Tarragona was almost exhausted of food. The English ships continued to vex the coast-line; and the French, besides deserters, lost many men, killed and wounded, in the innumerable petty skirmishes sustained by the marauding parties. Still St. Cyr maintained his positions; and the country people, tired of a warfare in which they were the chief sufferers, clamoured against Reding, that he, with a large regular force, should look calmly on, until the last morsel of food was discovered, and torn from their starving families. The townspeople, also feeling the burthen of supporting the troops, impatiently urged the general to fight; nor was this insubordination confined to the rude multitude.

Lazan, although at the head of nine thousand men, had remained perfectly inactive after the skirmish at Castellon de Ampurias; but when Reding required him to leave a suitable garrison in Gerona, and bring the rest of his troops to Igualada, he would not obey; and this difference was only terminated by Lazan’s marching, with five thousand men, to the assistance of Zaragoza. The result of his operations there has been already related in the narrative of that siege.

The army immediately under Reding was, however, very considerable: the Swiss battalions were numerous and good, and some of the most experienced of the Spanish regiments were in Catalonia. Every fifth man of the robust population had been called out after the defeat of Molino del Rey; and, although the people, averse to serve as regular soldiers, did not readily answer the call, the forces under Reding were so augmented that, in the beginning of February, it was not less than twenty-eight thousand men. The urban guards were also put in activity, and above fifteen thousand Somatenes assisted the regular troops; but there was more show than real power, for Reding was incapable of wielding the regular troops skilfully; and the Migueletes being ill armed, without clothing and insubordinate, devastated the country equally with the enemy.

The Somatenes, who only took arms for local interests, would not fight, except at the times and in the manner and place that suited themselves; and not only neglected the advice of the regular officers, but reviled all who would not adopt their own views; causing many to be removed from their commands; and, with all this, the Spanish generals never obtained good information of the enemy’s movements, yet their own plans were immediately made known to the French; because, at Reding’s head-quarters, as at those of Castaños before the battle of Tudela, every project was openly and ostentatiously discussed. Reding himself was a man of no military talent; his activity was of body, not of mind, but he was brave and honourable, and popular; because, being without system, arrangement, or deep design, and easy in his nature, he thwarted no man’s humours, and thus floated in the troubled waters until their sudden reflux left him on the rocks.

The Catalonian army was now divided into four distinct corps.

Alvarez, with four thousand men, held Gerona and the Ampurdan.

Lazan, with five thousand, was near Zaragoza.

Don Juan Castro, an officer, accused by the Spaniards of treachery, and who afterwards did attach himself to Joseph’s party, occupied, with sixteen thousand men, a line extending from Olesa, on the Upper Llobregat, to the pass of San Cristina, near Tarragona, and this line running through Bruch, Igualada, and Llacuna, was above sixty miles long. The remainder of the army, amounting to ten or twelve thousand men under Reding himself, were quartered at Tarragona, Reus, and the immediate vicinity of those places.

The Spaniards were fed from Valencia and Aragon, (the convoys from the former being conveyed in vessels along the coast). Their magazines were accumulated on one or two points of the line, and those points being chosen without judgement fettered Reding’s movements and regulated those of the French, whose only difficulty, in fact, was to procure food.

Early in February, St. Cyr, having exhausted the country about him, and having his communications much vexed by the Somatenes and by descents from the English ships, closed his posts and kept his divisions in masses at Vendril, Villa Franca, San Sadurni, and Martorel. The seventh corps at this period having been reinforced by the [Appendix No. 1], section 6. German division, and by some conscripts, amounted to forty-eight thousand men, of which forty-one thousand were under arms; but the force immediately commanded by St. Cyr did not exceed twenty-three thousand of all arms.

The relative position of the two armies was, however, entirely in favour of the French general, his line extending from Vendril, by Villa Franca, to Martorel, was not more than thirty miles, and he had a royal road by which to retreat on Barcelona. The Spanish posts covering, as I have said, an extent of above sixty miles, formed a half-circle round the French line, and their communications were more rugged than those of St. Cyr. Nevertheless, it is not to be doubted that, by avoiding any serious action, the Catalans would have obliged the French to abandon the country, between the Llobregat and Tarragona. Famine and the continued drain of men, in a mountain warfare, would have forced them away; nor could they have struck any formidable blow to relieve themselves, seeing that all the important places were fortified towns requiring a regular siege. The never-failing arrogance of the Spanish character, and the unstable judgement of Reding, induced him to forego these advantages. The closing of the French posts and some success in a few petty skirmishes were magnified, the last into victories and the first into a design on the part of the enemy to fly.

An intercourse opened with some of the inhabitants of Barcelona likewise gave hopes of regaining that city by means of a conspiracy within the walls. The Catalans had before made proposals to general Lecchi to deliver up the citadel of that place, nor is there any thing that more strongly marks the absurd self-sufficiency of the Spaniards, during this war, than the repeated attempts they made to corrupt the French commanders. As late as the year 1810, Martin Carrera, being at the head of about two thousand ragged peasants, half-armed, and only existing under the protection of the English outposts, offered to marshal Ney, then investing Ciudad Rodrigo, rank and honours in the Spanish army if he would desert!

Reding, swayed by the popular clamour, resolved to attack, and in this view he directed Castro to collect his sixteen thousand men and fall upon the right flank and rear of St. Cyr, by the routes of Llacuna and Igualada, and to send a detachment to seize the pass of Ordal, and thus cut off the French line of retreat to Barcelona. Meanwhile, advancing with eight thousand by the road of Vendril and St. Cristina; Reding, himself, was to attack the enemy in front. All the Migueletes and Somatenes between Gerona and the Besos were to aid in these operations, the object being to surround the French, a favourite project with the Spaniards at all times; and as they publicly announced this intention, the joy was universal, and the destruction of the hostile army was as usual anticipated with the utmost confidence.