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THE CAMPAIGN OF FEBRUARY, 1809: BATTLE OF VALLS
More than a month had elapsed since the battle of Molins de Rey before any important movements were made in Catalonia. Early in February St. Cyr drew in his divisions from the advanced positions in the plain of Tarragona, which they had taken up after the victory of Molins de Rey. They had eaten up the country-side, and were being much harassed by the miqueletes, who had begun to press in upon their communications with Barcelona, in spite of all the care that was taken to scour the country with small flying columns, and to scatter any nucleus of insurgents that began to grow up in the French rear. Owing to the dispersion of the divisions of the 7th Corps these operations were very laborious; between the new year and the middle of February St. Cyr calculated that his men had used up 2,000,000 cartridges in petty skirmishes, and suffered a very appreciable loss in operations that were practically worthless. Accordingly he drew them closer together, in order to shorten the dangerously extended line of communication with Barcelona.
Reding, during this period of waiting, had been keeping quiet in Tarragona, where he was reorganizing and drilling the harassed troops which had been beaten at Cardadeu and Molins de Rey. He had, as we have already seen, received heavy reinforcements from the South and the Balearic Isles; but it was not in numbers only that his army had improved. St. Cyr’s inaction had restored their morale. They were too, as regards food and munitions, in a much better condition than their adversaries, as they could freely draw provisions from the plain of the Lower Ebro and the northern parts of Valencia, and were besides helped by corn brought in by British and Spanish vessels from the whole eastern Mediterranean. Reding had also got a good supply of arms and ammunition from England. As he found himself unmolested, he was finally able to rearrange his whole force, so as not only to cover Tarragona, but to extend a screen of troops all round the French position. He now divided his army into two wings: he himself, on the right, kept in hand at Tarragona the 1st Division, consisting mainly of the Granadan troops: while General Castro was sent to establish the head quarters of the 2nd Division, which contained most of the old battalions of the army of Catalonia, at Igualada. Their line of communication was by Santa Coloma, Sarreal, and Montblanch. This disposition was probably a mistake: while the French lay concentrated in the middle of the semicircle, the Spanish army was forced to operate on outer lines sixty miles long, and could not mass itself in less than three or four days. By a sudden movement of the enemy, either Reding or Castro might be assailed by superior numbers, and forced to fall back on an eccentric line of retreat before he could be succoured by his colleague.
It would seem that, encouraged by St. Cyr’s quiescence, his own growing strength, and the protestations of the Catalans, Reding had once more resolved to resume the offensive. The extension of his left to Igualada was made with no less ambitious a purpose than that of outflanking the northern wing of the French army, and then delivering a simultaneous concentric attack on its scattered divisions as they lay in their cantonments. Such a plan presupposed that St. Cyr would keep quiet while the preparations were being made, that he would fail to concentrate in time, and that the Spanish columns, operating from two distant bases, would succeed in timing their co-operation with perfect accuracy. At the best they could only have brought some 30,000 men against the 23,000 of St. Cyr’s field army—a superiority far from sufficient to give them a rational chance of success. It is probable that at this moment Reding’s best chance of doing something great for the cause of Spain would have been to leave a strong garrison in Tarragona, and march early in February with 20,000 men to the relief of Saragossa, which was now drawing near the end of its powers of resistance. Lannes and Junot would have had to raise the siege if an army of such size had come up against them. But, though intending to succour Saragossa in a few weeks, Reding was induced by the constant entreaties of the Catalans to undertake first an expedition against St. Cyr. He sent off no troops to aid the Marquis of Lazan in his fruitless attempt to relax the pressure on his brother’s heroic garrison, but devoted all his attention to the 7th Corps.
St. Cyr was not an officer who was likely to be caught unprepared by such a movement as Reding had planned. The extension of the Spanish line to Igualada and the upper Llobregat had not escaped his notice, and he was fully aware of the advantage which his central position gave him over an enemy who had been obliging enough to draw out his fighting strength on an arc of a circle sixty miles from end to end. Without fully realizing Reding’s intentions, he could yet see that the Spaniards were giving him a grand opportunity of beating them in detail. He resolved to strike a blow at their northern wing, convinced that if he acted with sufficient swiftness and energy he could crush it long ere it could be succoured from Tarragona.
It thus came to pass that Reding and St. Cyr began to move simultaneously—the one on exterior, the other on interior lines—with the inevitable result. On February 15 Castro, in accordance with the instructions of the Captain-General, began to concentrate his troops at Igualada, with the intention of advancing against the French divisions at San Sadurni and Martorell. At the same time orders were sent to Alvarez, the Governor of Gerona, to detach all the men he could spare for a demonstration against Barcelona, in order to distract the attention of Duhesme and the garrison. Reding himself, with the troops at Tarragona, intended to march against Souham the moment that he should receive the news that his lieutenants were ready to strike.
At the same moment St. Cyr started out on his expedition against Igualada. He took with him Pino’s Italian division, and ordered Chabot and Chabran to concentrate with him at Capellades, seven or eight miles to the south-east of Castro’s head quarters. By taking this route he avoided the northern bank of the Noya and the defiles of Bruch, and approached the enemy from the side where he could most easily cut him off from reinforcements coming from Tarragona.
The concentration of the three French columns was not perfectly timed, those of Pino and Chabran finding their way far more difficult than did Chabot. It thus chanced that the latter with his skeleton division of three battalions, arrived in front of Capellades many hours before his colleagues. His approach was reported to Castro at Igualada, who sent down 4,000 men against him, attacked him, and beat him back with loss into the arms of Pino, who came on the scene later in the day . The Spaniards were then forced to give back, and retired to Pobla de Claramunt on the banks of the Noya, where they were joined by most of Castro’s reserves. St. Cyr had now concentrated his three divisions, and hoped that he might bring the enemy to a pitched battle. He drew up in front of them all his force, save one of Pino’s brigades, which he sent to turn their right . The Spaniards, having a fine position behind a ravine, were at first inclined to fight, and skirmished with the enemy’s main body for some hours. They narrowly missed capturing both St. Cyr and Pino, who had ridden forward with their staff to reconnoitre, and fell into an ambush of miqueletes, from which they only escaped by the speed of their horses.
But late in the day the Spanish General received news that Mazzuchelli, with the detached Italian brigade, was already in his rear and marching hard for Igualada. He immediately evacuated his position in great disorder, and fell back on his head quarters, closely pursued by St. Cyr. The main body of the Spaniards, with their artillery, just succeeded in passing through Igualada before the Italians came up, and fled by the road to Cervera. The rear was cut off, and had to escape in another direction by the path leading to Manresa. Both columns were much hustled and lost many prisoners, yet they fairly outmarched their pursuers and got away without any crushing disaster. But their great loss was that in Igualada the French seized all the magazines which had been collected from northern Catalonia for the use of Castro’s division. This relieved St. Cyr from all trouble as to provisions for many days: he had now food enough not only to provide for his field army, but to send back to Barcelona.
St. Cyr had now done all the harm that was in his power to the Spanish left wing—he had beaten them, seized their magazines, driven them apart, and broken their line. He imagined that they were disposed of for many days, and now resolved to turn off for a blow at Reding and the other half of the Catalonian army, who might meanwhile (for all that he knew) be attacking Souham with very superior numbers.
Accordingly on Feb. 19 he started off with Pino’s division to join Souham and fall upon Reding, leaving Chabot and Chabran, with all the artillery of the three divisions, to occupy Igualada and guard the captured magazines from any possible offensive return on the part of Castro. He marched by cross-roads along the foot-hills of the mountains of the great central Catalonian sierra, intending to descend into the valley of the Gaya by San Magin and the abbey of Santas Cruces, where (as he had learnt) lay the northernmost detachments of Reding’s division. Thus he hoped to take the enemy in flank and beat him in detail. He sent orders to Souham to move out of Vendrell and meet him at Villarodo?a, half-way up the course of Gaya, unless he should have been already attacked by Reding and forced to take some other line.
At San Magin the French commander came upon some of Reding’s troops, about 1,200 men with two guns, under a brigadier named Iranzo. They showed fight, but were beaten and sought refuge further down the valley of the Gaya in the fortified abbey of Santas Cruces. So bare was the country-side, and so bad the maps, that St. Cyr found considerable difficulty in tracking them, and in discovering the best way down the valley. But next day he got upon their trail, and beset the abbey, which made a good defence and proved impregnable to a force unprovided with artillery. St. Cyr blockaded it for two days, and then descended into the plain, where he got in touch with Souham’s division, which had advanced from Vendrell, and was now pillaging the hamlets round Villarodo?a, in the central valley of the Gaya .
Meanwhile Reding was at last on the move. On receiving the news of the combat of Igualada, he had to choose between the opportunity of making a counter-stroke at Souham, and that of marching to the aid of his lieutenant, Castro. He adopted the latter alternative, and started from Tarragona on February 20 with an escort of about 2,000 men, including nearly all his available cavalry. It was his intention to pick up on the way the outlying northern brigades of his division. This he succeeded in doing, drawing in to himself the troops which were guarding the pass of Santa Cristina, and Iranzo’s detachment at Santas Cruces. This force, warned of his approach, broke through the blockade at night, and reached its chief with little or no loss . Thus reinforced Reding pushed on by Sarreal to Santa Coloma, where Castro joined him with the rallied troops of his wing, whom he had collected when the French attack slackened. They had between them nearly 20,000 men, an imposing force, with which some of the officers present suggested that it would be possible to fall upon Igualada, crush Chabot and Chabran, and recover the lost magazines. But Reding was nervous about Tarragona, dreading lest St. Cyr might unite with Souham and fall upon the city during his absence. After holding a lengthy council of war he determined to return to protect his base of operations. Accordingly, he told off the Swiss General Wimpffen, with some 4.000 or 5,000 of Castro’s troops, to observe the French divisions at Igualada, and started homeward with the rest of his army, about 10,000 infantry, 700 cavalry, and two batteries of field artillery. He had made up his mind to return by the route of Montblanch and Valls, one somewhat more remote from the position of St. Cyr on the Gaya than the way by Pla, which he had taken in setting out to join Castro. Reding could only have got home without fighting by taking a circuitous route to the east, via Selva and Reus: the suggestion that he should do so was made, but he replied that having baggage and artillery with him he was forced to keep to a high-road. He chose that by Valls, though he was aware that the place was occupied: but apparently he hoped to crush Souham before Pino could come to his aid. He was resolved, it is said, not to court a combat, but on the other hand not to refuse it if the enemy should offer to fight him on advantageous ground. The truth is, that he was bold even to rashness, could never forget the great day of Baylen, in which he had taken such a splendid part, and was anxious to wash out by a victory the evil memories of Cardadeu and Molins de Rey. He set out on the evening of February 24, and by daybreak next morning was drawing near the bridge of Goy, where the high-road to Tarragona crosses the river Francoli, some two miles north of the town of Valls. His troops, as was to be expected, were much exhausted by the long march in the darkness.
St. Cyr, meanwhile, had not been intending to strike a blow at Tarragona. He regarded it as much more necessary to beat the enemy’s field army than to close in upon the fortress, which would indubitably have offered a long and obstinate resistance. When he got news of Reding’s march to Santa Coloma he resolved to follow him: he was preparing to hasten to the succour of his divisions at Igualada, when he learnt that the Swiss general had turned back, and was hurrying home to Tarragona. He resolved, therefore, to try to intercept him on his return march, and blocked his two available roads by placing Souham’s division at Valls and Pino’s at Pla. They were only eight or nine miles apart, and whichever road the Spaniards took the unassailed French division could easily come to the aid of the other.
Reding’s night march, a move which St. Cyr does not seem to have foreseen, nearly enabled him to carry out his plan. In fact, as we shall see, he had almost made an end of the French division before the Marshal, who lay himself at Pla with the Italians, arrived to succour it.
In the early morning, between six and seven o’clock, the head of the long Spanish column reached the bridge of Goy, and there fell in with Souham’s vedettes. The sharp musketry fire which at once broke out warned each party that a combat was at hand. Souham hastily marched out from Valls, and drew up his two brigades in the plain to the north of the town, placing himself across the line of the enemy’s advance. Reding at first made up his mind to thrust aside the French division, whose force he somewhat undervalued, and to hurry on his march toward Tarragona. The whole of his advanced guard and part of his centre crossed the river, deployed on the left bank, and attacked the French. Souham held his ground for some hours, but as more and more Spanish battalions kept pressing across the bridge and reinforcing the enemy’s line, he began after a time to give way—the numerical odds were heavily against him, and the Catalans were fighting with great steadiness and confidence. Before noon the French division was thrust back against the town of Valls, and Reding had been able to file not only the greater part of his army but all his baggage across the Francoli. The way to Tarragona was clear, and if he had chosen to disengage his men he could have carried off the whole of his army to that city without molestation from Souham, who was too hard hit to wish to continue the combat. It is even possible that if he had hastily brought up all his reserves he might have completely routed the French detachment before it could have been succoured.
But Reding adopted neither one course nor the other. After driving back Souham, he allowed his men a long rest, probably in order to give the rear and the baggage time to complete the passage of the Francoli. While things were standing still, St. Cyr arrived at full gallop from Pla, where he had been lying with Pino’s division, to whom the news of the battle had arrived very late. He brought with him only Pino’s divisional cavalry, the ‘Dragoons of Napoleon’ and Royal Chasseurs, but had ordered the rest of the Italians to follow at full speed when they should have got together. As Pla is no more than eight miles from Valls, it was expected that they would appear within the space of three hours. But, as a matter of fact, Pino did not draw near till the afternoon: one of his brigades, which lay far out, received contradictory orders, and did not come in to Pla till past midday, and the Italian general would not move till it had rejoined him. Three hours were wasted by this contretemps, and meanwhile the battle might have been lost.
On arriving upon the field with the Italian cavalry, St. Cyr rode along Souham’s line, steadied it, and displayed the horsemen in his front. Seeing the French rallying, and new troops arriving to their aid, the Spanish commander jumped to the conclusion that St. Cyr had come up with very heavy reinforcements, and instead of continuing his advance, or pressing on his march toward Tarragona, suddenly changed his whole plan of operations. He would not stand to be attacked in the plain, but he resolved to fight a defensive action on the heights beyond the Francoli, from which he had descended in the morning. Accordingly, first his baggage, then his main body, and lastly his vanguard, which covered the retreat of the rest, slowly filed back over the bridge of Goy, and took position on the rolling hills to the east. Here Reding drew them up in two lines, with the river flowing at their feet as a front defence, and their batteries drawn up so as to sweep the bridge of Goy and the fords. The right wing was covered by a lateral ravine falling into the Francoli; the left, facing the village of Pixamoxons, was somewhat ‘in the air,’ but the whole position, if long, was good and eminently defensible.
St. Cyr observed his adversary’s movement with joy, for he would have been completely foiled if Reding had refused to fight and passed on toward Tarragona. Knowing the Spanish troops, a pitched battle with superior numbers was precisely what he most desired. Accordingly he took advantage of the long time of waiting, while Pino’s division was slowly drawing near the field, to rest and feed Souham’s tired troops, and then to draw them up facing the southern half of Reding’s position, with a vacant space on their right on which the Italians were to take up their ground, when at last they should arrive.
When St. Cyr had lain for nearly three hours quiescent at the foot of the heights, and no reinforcements had yet come in sight, Reding began to grow anxious. He had, as he now realized, retired with unnecessary haste from in front of a beaten force, and had assumed a defensive posture when he should have pressed the attack. At about three o’clock he made up his mind that he had committed an error, but thinking it too late to resume the fight, resolved to retire on Tarragona by the circuitous route which passes through the village of Costanti. He sent back General Marti to Tarragona to bring out fresh troops from the garrison to join him at that point, and issued orders that the army should retreat at dusk. He might perhaps have got off scatheless if he had moved away at once, though it is equally possible that St. Cyr might have fallen upon his rearguard with Souham’s division, and done him some damage. But he waited for the dark before marching, partly because he wished to rest his troops, who were desperately fatigued by the night march and the subsequent combat in the morning, partly because he did not despair of fighting a successful defensive action if St. Cyr should venture to cross the Francoli and attack him. Accordingly he lingered on the hillside in battle array, waiting for the darkness.
This gave St. Cyr his chance; at three o’clock Pino’s belated division had begun to come up: first Fontane’s brigade, then, an hour and a half later, that of Mazzuchelli, whose absence from Pla had caused all the delay. It was long past four, and the winter afternoon was far spent when St. Cyr had at last got all his troops in hand.
Allowing barely enough time for the Italians to form in order of battle, St. Cyr now led forward his whole army to the banks of the Francoli. The two divisions formed four heavy columns of a brigade each: and in this massive formation forded the river and advanced uphill, driving in before them the Spanish skirmishers. The Italian dragoons went forward in the interval between two of the infantry columns; the French cavalry led the attack on the extreme right, near the bridge of Goy.
For a moment it seemed as if the two armies would actually cross bayonets all along the line, for the Spaniards stood firm and opened a regular and well-directed fire upon the advancing columns. But St. Cyr had not miscalculated the moral effect of the steady approach of the four great bodies of infantry which were now climbing the hill and drawing near to Reding’s front. Like so many other continental troops, who had striven on earlier battle-fields to bear up in line against the French column-formation, the Spaniards could not find heart to close with the formidable and threatening masses which were rolling in upon them. They delivered one last tremendous discharge at 100 yards’ distance, and then, when they saw the enemy looming through the smoke and closing upon them, broke in a dozen different places and went to the rear in helpless disorder, sweeping away the second line, higher up the hill, which ought to have sustained them. The only actual collision was on the extreme left, near the bridge of Goy, where Reding himself charged, with his staff, at the head of his cavalry, in a vain attempt to save the desperate situation. He was met in full career by the French 24th Dragoons, and thoroughly beaten. In the mêlée he was surrounded, three of his aides-de-camp were wounded and taken, and he himself only cut his way out after receiving three sabre wounds on his head and shoulders, which ultimately proved fatal.
If there had not been many steep slopes and ravines behind the Spanish position, nearly the whole of Reding’s army must have perished or been captured. But the country-side was so difficult that the majority of the fugitives got away, though many were overtaken. The total loss of the Spaniards amounted to more than 3,000 men, of whom nearly half were prisoners. All the guns of the defeated army, all its baggage, and several stands of colours fell into the hands of the victors. The French lost about 1,000 men, mostly in the early part of the engagement, when Souham’s division was driven back under the walls of Valls.
Map of part of Catalonia
Enlarge PART of CATALONIA
TO ILLUSTRATE ST CYR’S CAMPAIGN
NOV. 1808 to MARCH 1809
Map of battle of Valls
Enlarge BATTLE of VALLS
FEB. 25 1809
The Spaniards had not fought amiss: St. Cyr, in a dispatch to Berthier, acknowledges the fact—not in order to exalt the merit of his own troops, but to demonstrate that the 7th Corps was too weak for the task set it and required further reinforcements. But Reding did not give his men a fair chance; he hurried them into the fight at the end of a long night march, drew them off just when they were victorious, and altered his plan of battle thrice in the course of the day. No army could have done itself justice with such bad leading.
The wrecks of the beaten force straggled into Tarragona, their spirits so depressed that it was a long time before it was possible to trust them again in battle. When they once more took the field it was under another leader, for Reding, after lingering some weeks, died of his wounds, leaving the reputation of a brave, honest, and humane officer, but of a very poor general.
St. Cyr utilized his victory merely by blockading Tarragona. He moved Souham to Reus, and kept Pino at Valls, each throwing out detachments as far as the sea, so as to cut off the city from all its communications with the interior. An epidemic had broken out in the place, in consequence of the masses of ill-attended wounded who cumbered the hospitals. It would seem that the French General hoped that the pestilence might turn the hearts of the garrison towards surrender. If so, he was much deceived: they bore their ills with stolid patience, and being always victualled from the sea suffered no practical inconvenience from the blockade. It seems indeed that St. Cyr would have done far better to use the breathing time which he won at the battle of Valls for the commencement of a movement against Gerona. Till that place should be captured, and the high-road to Perpignan opened, there was no real security for the 7th Corps. Long months, however, were to elapse before this necessary operation was taken in hand.
THE CAPTURE OF THE OUTWORKS
While Napoleon was urging on his fruitless pursuit of Sir John Moore, while St. Cyr was discomfiting the Catalans on the Besos and the Llobregat, and while Victor was dealing his last blow to the dilapidated army of Infantado, there was one point on which the war was standing still, and where the French arms had made no great progress since the battle of Tudela. Saragossa was holding out, with the same tenacity that she had displayed during the first siege in the July and August of the preceding summer. In front of her walls and barricades two whole corps of the Emperor’s army were detained from December, 1808, till February, 1809. As long as the defence endured, she preserved the rest of Aragon and the whole of Valencia from invasion.
The battle of Tudela had been fought on November 23, but it was not till nearly a month later that the actual siege began. The reason for this delay was that the Emperor had called off to Madrid all the troops which had taken part in the campaign against Casta?os and Palafox, save Moncey’s 3rd Corps alone. This force was not numerous enough to invest the city till it had been strengthened by heavy reinforcements from the North.
After having routed the Armies of Aragon and the Centre, Marshal Lannes had thrown up the command which had been entrusted to him, and had gone back to France. The injuries which he had suffered from his fall over the precipice near Pampeluna were still far from healed, and served as the excuse for his retirement. Moncey, therefore, resumed, on November 25, the charge of the victorious army: on the next day he was joined by Ney, who, after failing to intercept Casta?os in the mountains, had descended into the valley of the Ebro, with Marchand and Dessolles’ divisions of infantry, and Beaumont’s light cavalry brigade. On the twenty-eighth the two marshals advanced along the high-road by Mallen and Alagon, and on the second day after appeared in front of Saragossa with all their troops, save Musnier’s division of the 3rd Corps and the division of the 6th Corps lately commanded by Lagrange, which had followed the retreating army of Casta?os into the hills on the road to Calatayud. They were about to commence the investment of the city, when Ney received orders from the Emperor, dispatched from Aranda, bidding him leave the siege to Moncey, and cross the mountains into New Castile with all the troops of the 6th Corps: he was to find Casta?os, and hang on his heels so that he should not be able to march to the help of Madrid.
Accordingly the Duke of Elchingen marched from the camp in front of Saragossa with the divisions of Marchand and Dessolles, and the cavalry brigades of Beaumont and Digeon. At Calatayud he came up with the force which had been dispatched in pursuit of Casta?os,—Musnier’s division of the 3rd Corps, and that of the 6th Corps which Maurice Mathieu had taken over from Lagrange, who had been severely wounded at Tudela. Leaving Musnier at Calatayud to protect his communications with Aragon, Ney picked up Maurice Mathieu, and passed the mountains into New Castile, where he fell into the Emperor’s sphere of operations. We have seen that he took a prominent part in the pursuit of Sir John Moore and the invasion of Galicia.
Moncey, meanwhile, was left in front of Saragossa with his 1st, 3rd, and 4th Divisions—the 2nd being still at Calatayud. This force consisted of no more than twenty-three battalions, about 15,000 men, and was far too weak to undertake the siege. The Marshal was informed that the whole corps of Mortier was to be sent to his aid, but it was still far away, and with very proper caution he resolved to draw back and wait for the arrival of the reinforcements. If the Spaniards got to know of his condition, they might sally out from Saragossa and attack him with more than 30,000 men. Moncey, therefore, drew back to Alagon, and there waited for the arrival of the Duke of Treviso and the 5th Corps. It was not till December 20 that he was able to present himself once more before the city.
Thus Saragossa gained four weeks of respite between the battle of Tudela and the commencement of the actual siege. This reprieve was invaluable to Palafox and the Aragonese. They would have been in grave danger if Lannes had marched on and assaulted the city only two days after the battle, and before the routed army had been rallied. Even if Ney and Moncey had been permitted to begin a serious attack on November 30, the day of their arrival before the place, they would have had some chance of success. But their sudden retreat raised the spirits of the defenders, and the twenty extra days of preparation thus granted to them sufficed to restore them to full confidence, and to re-establish their belief in the luck of Saragossa and the special protection vouchsafed them by its patron saint Our Lady of the Pillar. Napoleon must take the blame for all the consequences of Ney’s withdrawal. He had ordered it without fully realizing the fact that Moncey would be left too weak to commence the siege. Probably he had over-estimated the effect of the defeat of Tudela on the Army of Aragon. For the failure of Ney’s attempt to surround Casta?os he was only in part responsible, though (as we have seen) he had sent him out on his circular march two days too late. But to draw off the 6th Corps to New Castile (where it failed to do any good), before the 5th Corps had arrived to take its place before Saragossa, was clearly a blunder.
Palafox made admirable use of the unexpected reprieve that had been granted him. He had not, it will be remembered, taken part in person in the battle of Tudela, but had returned to his head quarters on the night before that disaster. He was occupied in organizing a reserve to take the field in support of his two divisions already at the front, when the sudden influx of fugitives into Saragossa showed him what had occurred. In the course of the next two days there poured into the place the remains of the divisions of O’Neille and St. March from his own Army of Aragon. With them came Roca’s men, who properly belonged to Casta?os, but having fought in the right wing had been separated from the main body of the Andalusian army. In addition, fragments of many other regiments of the Army of the Centre straggled into Saragossa. At least 16,000 or 17,000 men of the wrecks of Tudela had come in ere four days were expired. To help them, Palafox could count on all the newly organized battalions of his reserve, which had never marched out to join the field army: they amounted to some 10,000 or 12,000 men, but many of the regiments had only lately been organized and had not received their uniforms or equipment. Nor was this all: several belated battalions from Murcia and Valencia came in at various times during the next ten days, so that long ere the actual siege began Palafox could count on 32,000 bayonets and 2,000 sabres of more or less regularly organized corps. He had in addition a number of irregulars—armed citizens and peasants of the country-side—whose numbers it is impossible to fix, for though some had been collected in partidas or volunteer companies, others fought in loose bands just as they pleased, and without any proper organization. They may possibly have amounted to 10,000 men at the time of the commencement of the siege, but so many were drafted into the local Aragonese battalions before the end of the fighting, that when the place surrendered in February, there were less than a thousand of these unembodied irregulars under arms.
But it was not so much for the reorganization of his army as for the strengthening of his fortifications that Palafox found the respite during the first three weeks of December profitable. During the first siege it will be remembered that the fortifications of Saragossa had been contemptible from the engineer’s point of view: the flimsy mediaeval enceinte had crumbled away at the first fire of the besiegers, and the real defence had been carried out behind the barricades. By the commencement of the second siege everything had changed, and the city was covered by a formidable line of defences, executed, as was remarked by one of the French generals, with more zeal and energy than scientific skill, but presenting nevertheless most serious obstacles to the besieger.
After the raising of the first siege by Verdier, the Spaniards had been for some time in a state of such confidence and exultation that they imagined that there was no need for further defensive precautions. The next campaign was to be fought, as they supposed, on the further side of the Pyrenees. But the long suspension of the expected advance during the autumn months began to chill their spirits, and, as the year drew on, it was no longer reckoned unpatriotic or cowardly to take into consideration the wisdom of strengthening the inland fortresses in view of a possible return of the French. In September, Colonel San Genis, the engineer officer who had worked for Palafox during the first siege, received permission to commence a series of regular fortifications for Saragossa. The work did not progress rapidly, for the Aragonese had not as yet much belief in the possibility that they might be called on once again to defend their capital. San Genis only received a moderate sum of money, and the right to requisition men of over thirty-five from the city and the surrounding villages. The labour had to be paid, and therefore the labourers were few. The new works were sketched out rather than executed. Things progressed with a leisurely slowness, till in November the dangers of the situation began to be appreciated, and the approach of the French reinforcements drove the Saragossans to greater energy. But it was only the thunderclap of Tudela that really alarmed them, and sent soldiers and civilians, men, women, and children, to labour with feverish haste at the completion of the new lines. Between November 25 and December 20 the amount of work that was carried out was amazing and admirable. If Ney and Moncey had been allowed to commence the regular siege before the month of November had expired, they would have found the whole system of works in an incomplete condition. Three weeks later Saragossa had been converted into a formidable fortress.
The only point where San Genis’ scheme had not been fully developed was the Monte Torrero. It will be remembered that this important hill, whose summit lies only 1,800 yards from the walls of Saragossa, overlooks the whole city, and had been chosen during the first siege as the emplacement for the main breaching batteries. To keep the French from this commanding position was most important, and the Spanish engineer had intended to cover the whole circuit of the hill with a large entrenched camp, protected by continuous lines of earthworks and numerous redoubts, with the Canal of Aragon, which runs under its southern foot, as a wet ditch in its front. But, when the news of Tudela arrived, little or nothing had been done to carry out this scheme: the fortification of the city had absorbed the main attention of the Aragonese, and while that was still incomplete the Monte Torrero had been neglected. In December it was too late to begin the building of three or four miles of new earthworks, and in consequence nothing was constructed on the suburban hill save one large central redoubt, and two small works serving as têtes-de-pont, at the points where the Madrid and the La Muela roads cross the Canal of Aragon. St. March’s Valencian division, still 6,000 strong, was told off for the defence of the hill, but had no continuous line of works to cover it. The only strength of the position lay in the canal which runs round its foot: but this was not very broad, and was fordable at more than one point. In short, the Monte Torrero constituted an outlying defence which might be held for some time, in order to keep the besiegers far off from the body of the place, rather than an integral part of its line of defence.
It was on the works of Saragossa itself that the energy of more than 60,000 enthusiastic labourers, military and civilian, had been expended during the month that followed Tudela. The total accomplished in this time moves our respect: it will be well to take the various fronts in detail.
On the Western front, from the Ebro to the Huerba, there had been in August nothing more than a weak wall, many parts of which were composed of the rear-sides of convents and buildings. In front of this line there had been constructed by November 10 a very different defence. A solid rampart reveted with bricks taken from ruined houses, and furnished with a broad terrace for artillery, and a ditch forty-five feet deep now covered the entire western side of the city. The convents of the Augustinians and the Trinitarians, which had been outside the walls during the earlier siege, had been taken into this new enceinte and served as bastions in it. There being a space 600 yards long between them, where the curtain would have been unprotected by flanking fires, a great semicircular battery had been thrown out, which acted as a third bastion on this side. Strong earthworks had also been built up to cover the Portillo and Carmen gates. As an outlying fort there was the castle of the Aljafferia, which had received extensive repairs, and was connected with the enceinte by a ditch and a covered way. It would completely enfilade any attacks made on the north-western part of the new wall.
On the Southern front of the defences the work done had been even more important. Here the new fortifications had been carried down to the brink of the ravine of the Huerba, so as to make that stream the wet ditch of the town. Two great redoubts were pushed beyond it: one called the redoubt of ‘Our Lady of the Pillar’ lay at the bridge outside the Santa Engracia gate. It was provided with a deep narrow ditch, into which the water of the river had been turned, and armed with eight guns. The corresponding fort, at the south-east angle of the town, was made by fortifying the convent of San José, on the Valencia road, just beyond the Huerba. This was a quadrangle 120 yards long by eighty broad, furnished with a ditch, and with a covered way with palisades, cut in the counterscarp. It held twelve heavy guns, and a garrison of no less than 3,000 men. Between San José and the Pillar redoubt, the old town wall above the Huerba had been strengthened and thickened, and several new batteries had been built upon it. It could not well be assailed till the two projecting works in front of it should be reduced, and if they should fall it stood on higher ground and completely commanded their sites. The convent of Santa Engracia, so much disputed during the first siege, had been turned into a sort of fortress, and heavily armed with guns of position.
On the eastern front of the city from San José to the Ebro, the Huerba still serves as a ditch to the place, but is not so steep or so difficult as in its upper course. Here the suburb of the Tanneries (Las Tenerias), where that stream falls into the Ebro, had been turned into a strong projecting redoubt, whose fire commanded both the opposite bank of the Ebro on one side, and the lower reaches of the Huerba on the other. Half way between this redoubt and San José was a great battery (generally called the ‘Palafox Battery’) at the Porta Quemada, whose fires, crossing those of the other two works, commanded all the low ground outside the eastern front of the city.
It only remains to speak of the fortifications of the transpontine suburb of San Lazaro. This was by nature the weakest part of the defences, as the suburb is built in low marshy ground on the river’s edge. Here deep cuttings had been made and filled with water, three heavy batteries had been erected, and the convents of San Lazaro and Jesus had been strengthened, crenellated and loopholed, and turned into forts. The whole of these works were joined by palisades and ditches. They formed a great tête-de-pont, requiring a garrison of 3,000 men. As an additional defence for the flanks of the suburb three or four gunboats, manned by sailors brought up from Cartagena, had been launched on the Ebro, and commanded the reach of the river which runs along the northern side of the city.
Yet great as were the works which now sheathed the body of Saragossa, the people had not forgotten the moral lesson of the first siege. When her walls had been beaten down, she had resisted behind her barricades and the solid houses of her narrow streets. They fully realized that this might again have to be done, if the French should succeed in breaking in at some point of the long enceinte. Accordingly, every preparation was made for street fighting. Houses were loopholed, and communications were pierced between them, without any regard for private property or convenience. Ground-floor windows were built up, and arrangements made for the speedy and solid closing of all doors. Traverses were erected in the streets, to guard as far as was possible against the dangers of a bombardment, and an elaborate system of barricades, arranged in proper tactical relation to each other, was sketched out. The walls might be broken, but the people boasted that the kernel should be harder than the shell.
Outside the city, where the olive groves and suburban villas and summer houses had given much cover to the French during the first siege, a clean sweep had been made of every stone and stick for 800 yards around the defences. The trees were felled, and dragged into the city, to be cut up into palisades. The bricks and stones were carried off to revet the new ramparts and ditches. The once fertile and picturesque garden-suburbs were left bald and bare, and could be perfectly well searched by the cannon from the walls, so that the enemy had to contrive all his cover by pick and shovel, or gabion and fascine.
The soldiery, whose spirits had been much dashed by the disaster of Tudela, soon picked up their courage when they noted the enthusiasm of the citizens and the strength of the defences. Indeed, it was dangerous for any man to show outward signs of doubt or fear, for the Aragonese had been wrought up to a pitch of hysterical patriotism which made them look upon faintheartedness as treason. Palafox himself did his best to keep down riots and assassinations, but his followers were always stimulating him to apply martial law in its most rigorous form. A high gallows was erected in the middle of the Coso, and short shrift was given to any man convicted of attempted desertion, disobedience to orders, or cowardice. Delations were innumerable, and the Captain-General had the greatest difficulty in preserving from the popular fury even persons whom he believed to be innocent. The most that he could do for them was to shut them up in the prisons of the Aljafferia, and to defer their trial till the siege should be over. The fact was that Palafox was well aware that his power rested on the unlimited confidence reposed on him by the people, and was therefore bent on crossing their desires as little as he could help. He was careful to take counsel not only with his military subordinates, but with all those who had power in the streets. Hence came the prominence which is assigned in all the narratives of the siege to obscure persons, such as the priests Don Basilio (the Captain-General’s chaplain) and Santiago Sass, and to the demagogues ‘Tio Jorge’ and ‘Tio Marin.’ They represented public opinion, and had to be conciliated. It is going too far to say, with Napier, that a regular ‘Reign of Terror’ prevailed in Saragossa throughout the second siege, and that Palafox was no more than a puppet, whose strings were pulled by fanatical friars and bloodthirsty gutter-politicians. But it is clear that the Captain-General’s dictatorial power was only preserved by a careful observation of every gust of popular feeling, and that the acts of his subordinates were often reckless and cruel. The soldiers disliked the fanatical citizens: the work of Colonel Cavallero, the engineer officer who has left the best Spanish narrative of the siege, is full of this feeling. He sums up the situation by writing that ‘The agents of the Commander-in-chief sometimes abused their power. Everything was demanded in the name of King and Country, every act of disobedience was counted as high treason: on the other hand, known devotion to the holy cause gave unlimited authority, and assured impunity for any act to those who had the smallest shadow of delegated power. Even if the citizens had not been unanimous in their feelings, fear would have given them an appearance of unanimity. To the intoxication of confidence and national pride caused by the results of the first siege, to the natural obstinacy of the Aragonese, to the strength of a dictatorial government supported by democratic enthusiasm, there was added an exalted religious fanaticism. Our Lady of the Pillar, patroness of Saragossa, had, it was supposed, displayed her power by the raising of the first siege: it had been the greatest of her miracles. Anything could be got from a people in this frame of mind.’
Palafox knew well how to deal with his followers. He kept himself always before their eyes; his activity was unceasing, his supervision was felt in every department. His unending series of eloquent, if somewhat bombastic, proclamations was well suited to rouse their enthusiasm. He displayed, even to ostentation, a confidence which he did not always feel, because he saw that the strength of the defence lay in the fact that the Aragonese were convinced in the certainty of their own triumph. The first doubt as to ultimate success would dull their courage and weaken their arms. We cannot blame him, under the circumstances, if he concealed from them everything that was likely to damp their ardour, and allowed them to believe everything that would keep up their spirits.
Meanwhile he did not neglect the practical side of the defence. The best testimony to his capacity is the careful accumulation which he made of all the stores and material needed for a long siege. Alone among all the Spanish garrisons of the war, that of Saragossa never suffered from hunger nor from want of resources. It was the pestilence, not starvation, which was destined to prove the ruin of the defence. Before the French investment began Palafox had gathered in six months’ provisions for 15,000 men; the garrison was doubled by the arrival of the routed army from Tudela: yet still there was food for three months for the military. The citizens had been directed to lay in private stocks, and to feed themselves: this they had done, and it was not till the end of the siege that they began to run short of comestibles. Even when the place fell there were still large quantities of corn, maize, salt fish, oil, brandy, and forage for horses in the magazines. Only fresh meat had failed, and the Spaniard is never a great consumer of that commodity. Military stores had been prepared in vast quantities: there was an ample stock of sandbags, of timber for palisading, of iron work and spare fittings for artillery. Instead of gabions the garrison used the large wicker baskets employed for the vintage, which were available in profusion. Of artillery there were some 160 pieces in the place, but too many of them were of small calibre: only about sixty were 16-pounders or heavier. Of these more than half were French pieces, abandoned by Verdier in August in his siege-works, or fished out of the canal into which he had thrown them. Of cannon-balls there was also an ample provision: a great part, like the siege-guns, were spoil taken in the deserted camp of the French in August. Shells, on the other hand, were very deficient, and the workmen of the local arsenal could not manufacture them satisfactorily. The powder was made in the place throughout the siege: the accident in July, when the great magazine in the Seminary blew up with such disastrous results, had induced Palafox to order that no great central store should be made, but that the sulphur, saltpetre, and charcoal should be kept apart, and compounded daily in quantities sufficient for all requirements. So many thousand civilians were kept at work on powder-and cartridge-making that this plan never failed, and no great explosions took place during the second siege.
It will be remembered that want of muskets had been one of the chief hindrances of the Aragonese during the operations in July and August. It was not felt in December and January, for not only had Palafox collected a large store of small arms during the autumn, to equip his reserves, but he received, just before the investment began, a large convoy of British muskets, sent up from Tarragona by Colonel Doyle, who had gone down to the coast by the Captain-General’s desire, to hurry on their transport. As the siege went on, the mortality among the garrison was so great that the stock of muskets more than sufficed for those who were in a state to bear arms.
Such were the preparations which were made to receive the French, when they should finally present themselves in front of the walls. All had been done, save in one matter, to enable the city to make the best defence possible under the circumstances. The single omission was to provide for a field force beyond the walls capable of harassing the besiegers from without, and of cutting their communications with their base. From his 40,000 men Palafox ought to have detached a strong division, with orders to base itself upon Upper Aragon, and keep the French in constant fear as to their supplies and their touch with Tudela and Pampeluna. Ten thousand men could easily have been spared, and the mischief that they might have done was incalculable. The city had more defenders than were needed: in the open country, on the other hand, there was no nucleus left for further resistance. Almost every available man had been sent up to Saragossa: with the exception of Lazan’s division in Catalonia, and of three other battalions, the whole of the 32,000 men raised by the kingdom of Aragon were inside the walls. Outside there remained nothing but unorganized bands of peasants to keep the field and molest the besiegers. The only help from without that was given to the city was that supplied by Lazan’s small force, when it was withdrawn from Catalonia in January, and 4,000 men could do nothing against two French army corps. Even as it was, the French had to tell off the best part of two divisions to guard their communications. What could they have done if there had been a solid body of 10,000 men ranging the mountains, and descending at every favourable opportunity to fall upon some post on the long line Alagon-Mallen-Tudela-Pampeluna by which the besiegers drew their food and munitions from their base?
It would seem that the neglect of Palafox to provide for this necessary detachment arose from three causes. The first was his want of real strategical insight—which had been amply displayed during the autumn, when he was always urging on his colleagues his ridiculous plan for ‘surrounding’ the French army, by an impossible march into Navarre and the Pyrenees. The second was his conviction, well-founded enough in itself, that his troops would do much better behind walls than in the open. The third was a strong belief that the siege would be raised not by any operations from without, but by the rigours of the winter. In average years the months of January and February are tempestuous and rainy in Aragon. The low ground about Saragossa is often inundated: even if the enemy were not drowned out (like the besiegers of Leyden in 1574), Palafox thought that they would find trench-work impossible in the constant downpour, and would be so much thinned by dysentery and rheumatism that they would have to draw back from their low-lying camps and raise the siege. Unfortunately for him the winter turned out exceptionally mild, and (what was worse) exceptionally dry. The French had not to suffer from the awful deluge which in Galicia, during this same month, was rendering the retreat of Sir John Moore so miserable. The rain did no more than send many of the besiegers to hospital: it never stopped their advance or flooded their trenches.
When Palafox had nearly completed his defences—the works on the Monte Torrero alone were still hopelessly behindhand—the French at last began to move up against him. On December 15 Marshal Mortier arrived at Tudela with the whole of the 5th Corps, veterans from the German garrisons who had not yet fired a shot in Spain. Their ranks were so full that though only two divisions, or twenty-eight battalions, formed the corps, it counted 21,000 bayonets. It had also a brigade of two regiments of hussars and chasseurs as corps-cavalry, with a strength of 1,500 sabres. The condition of Moncey’s 3rd Corps was much less satisfactory: it was mainly composed of relics of the original army of Spain—of the conscripts formed into provisional regiments with whom Napoleon had at first intended to conquer the Peninsula. Its other troops, almost without exception, had taken part in the first siege of Saragossa under Verdier, a not very cheerful or inspiriting preparation for the second leaguer. All the regiments had been thinned by severe sickness in the autumn; on October 10 they had already 7,741 men in hospital—far the largest figure shown by any of the French corps in Spain. The number had largely increased as the winter had drawn on, and the battalions had grown so weak that Moncey consolidated his four divisions into three during his halt at Alagon. The whole of the 4th division was distributed between the 2nd and 3rd, so as to bring the others up to a decent strength. On December 20 the thirty-eight battalions only made up 20,000 effective men for the siege, while more than 10,000 lay sick, some with the army, some in the base hospitals at Pampeluna. The health of the corps grew progressively worse in January, till at last in the middle days of the siege it had 15,000 men with the colours, and no less than 13,000 sick. We find the French generals complaining that one division of the 5th Corps was almost as strong and effective at this time as the whole combined force of the 3rd Corps. Nevertheless these weary and fever-ridden troops had to take in charge the main part of the siege operations.
During the twenty days of his halt at Alagon, Moncey had employed his sappers and many of his infantry in the manufacture of gabions, wool-packs, and sandbags for the projected siege. He was continually receiving convoys of heavy artillery and ammunition from Pampeluna, and when Mortier came up on December 20, had a sufficiency of material collected for the commencement of the leaguer. The two marshals moved on together on that day, and marched eastward towards Saragossa, with the whole of their forces, save that four battalions were left to guard the camp and dép?ts at Alagon, and three more at Tudela to keep open the Pampeluna road. Gazan’s division crossed the Ebro opposite Tauste, to invest the transpontine suburb of Saragossa: the rest of the army kept to the right bank. Late in the evening both columns came in sight of the city. They mustered, after deducting the troops left behind, about 38,000 infantry, 3,500 cavalry, and 3,000 sappers and artillerymen. They had sixty siege-guns, over and above the eighty-four field-pieces belonging to the corps-artillery of Mortier and Moncey. The provision of artillery was copious—far more than the French had turned against many of the first-class fortresses of Germany. The Emperor was determined that Saragossa should be well battered, and had told off an extra proportion of engineers against the place, entrusting the general charge of the work to his aide-de-camp, General Lacoste, one of the most distinguished officers of the scientific corps.
When the reinvestment began, Gazan on the left bank established himself at Villanueva facing the suburb of San Lazaro. Mortier with Suchet’s division took post at San Lamberto opposite the western front of the city. Moncey, marching round the place, ranged Grandjean’s troops opposite the Monte Torrero, on the southern front of the defences, and Morlot further east near the mouth of the Huerba. His other division, that of Musnier, formed the central reserve, and guarded the artillery and the magazines. The Spaniards made no attempt to delay the completion of the investment, and kept quiet within their walls.
On the next morning the actual siege began. It was destined to last from December 20 to February 20, and may be divided into three well-marked sections. The first comprises the operations against the Spanish outworks, and terminates with the capture of the two great bridge-heads beyond the Huerba, the forts of San José and Our Lady of the Pillar: it lasted down to January 15. The second period includes the time during which the besiegers attacked and finally broke through the main enceinte of the city: it lasts from January 16 to January 27. The third section consists of the street-fighting, after the walls had been pierced, and ends with the fall of Saragossa on February 20.
Having reconnoitred the whole circuit of the Spanish defences on the very evening of their arrival before the city (December 20), Moncey and Mortier recognized that their first task must be to evict the Spaniards from the Monte Torrero, the one piece of dominating ground in the whole region of operations, and the spot from which Saragossa could be most effectively attacked. They were rejoiced to see that the broad hill was not protected by any continuous line of entrenchments, but was merely crowned by a large open redoubt, and defended in front by the two small bridge-heads on the Canal of Aragon. There was nothing to prevent an attempt to storm it by main force. This was to be made on the following morning: at the same time Gazan, on the left bank of the Ebro, was ordered to assault the suburb of San Lazaro. Here the marshals had underrated the strength of the Spanish position, which lay in such low ground and was so difficult to make out, that it presented to the observer from a distance an aspect of weakness that was far from the reality.
At eight on the morning of December 21 three French batteries, placed in favourable advanced positions, began to shell the redoubts on the Monte Torrero, with satisfactory results, as they dismounted some of the defender’s guns and exploded a small dép?t of reserve ammunition. An hour later the infantry came into action. Moncey had told off for the assault the divisions of Morlot and Grandjean, twenty battalions in all. The former attacked the eastern front of the position, fording the canal and assailing the left-hand tête-de-pont on the Valencia road from the flank. The latter, which had passed the canal far outside the Spanish lines, and operated between it and the Huerba, attacked the south-western slopes of the hill. The defence was weak, and when a brigade of Grandjean’s men pushed in between the main redoubt on the crest and the Huerba, and took the western part of the Spanish line in the rear, the day was won. St. March’s battalions wavered all along the line; and as his reserves could not be induced to fall upon the French advance, the Valencian general withdrew his whole division into the city, abandoning the entire circuit of the Monte Torrero. The assailants captured seven guns—some of them disabled—in the three redoubts, and a standard of the 5th regiment of Murcia. They had only lost twenty killed and fifty wounded; the Spanish loss was also insignificant, considering the importance of the position that was at stake, and hardly any prisoners were taken. The besiegers had now the power to bombard all the southern front of Saragossa, and dominated, from the slopes of the hill, the two advanced forts of San José and the Pillar. The leaders of the populace were strongly of opinion that the Valencian division had misbehaved, and they were not far wrong. Palafox had great difficulty in protecting St. March, whose personal conduct had been unimpeachable, from the wrath of the multitude, who wished to make him responsible for the weakness shown by his men. The officer who lost the Monte Torrero in the first siege had been tried and shot: St. March was lucky to escape even without a reprimand.
Meanwhile things had gone very differently at the other point where the French had tried to break down the outer defences of the city. The attack on the transpontine suburb of San Lazaro had been allotted to Gazan’s division. This was a very formidable force, 9,000 veterans of the best quality, who were bent on showing that they had not degenerated since they fought at Friedland. Owing to some slight mistake in the combination, Gazan only delivered his attack at one o’clock, two hours after the fighting on the Monte Torrero had ceased. His leading brigade, that of Guérin, six battalions strong, advanced against the northern and eastern fronts of the defences of the suburb. The Spaniards were holding as an outwork a large building called the Archbishop’s Tower (Torre del Arzobispo) on the Villanueva road, 600 yards in front of the main line of entrenchments. This Gazan’s men carried at the first rush, killing or capturing 300 men of a Swiss battalion which held it. They then pushed forward towards the inner fortifications, but were taken in flank by a heavy artillery fire from a redoubt which they had overlooked. This caused them to swerve towards the Barcelona road, where they got possession of a house close under the convent of Jesus, and threatened to cut off the garrison of that stronghold from the rest of the defenders of the suburb. At this moment a disgraceful panic seized the defenders of the San Lazaro convent, which lay directly in front of the assailants. They abandoned their post, and began to fly across the bridge into Saragossa. But Palafox came up in person with a reserve, and reoccupied the abandoned post. He then ordered a sortie against the buildings which the French had seized, and succeeded in driving them out and compelling them to retire into the open ground. Gazan doubted for a moment whether he should not send in his second brigade to renew the attack, for the six battalions that had borne the brunt of the first fighting had now fallen into complete disorder. But remembering that if this force failed to break into the suburb he had no reserves left, and that Palafox might bring over the bridge as many reinforcements as he chose, the French general resolved not to push the assault any further. He drew back and retired behind the Gallego stream, where he threw up entrenchments to cover himself, completely abandoning the offensive. For two or three days he did not dare to move, expecting to be attacked at any moment by the garrison. A sudden rise of the Ebro had cut off his communication with Moncey, and he could neither send the marshal an account of his check, nor get any orders from him. His casualty-list was severe, thirty officers and 650 men killed and wounded: the Spaniards lost somewhat less, even including the 300 Swiss who were cut to pieces at the Archbishop’s Tower.
Palafox next morning issued a proclamation, extolling the valour shown in the defence of the suburb, treating the loss of the Monte Torrero as insignificant, and exaggerating the losses of the French. The Saragossans were rather encouraged than otherwise by the results of the day’s fighting, and spoke as if they had merely lost an outwork by the unsteadiness of St. March’s Valencians, while the main hostile attack had been repulsed. But it is clear that the capture of the dominating heights south of the city was an all-important gain to the French. Without the Monte Torrero they could never have pressed the siege home. As to the failure at the suburb, it came from attacking with headlong courage an entrenched position that had not been properly reconnoitred. The assault should never have been delivered without artillery preparation, and was a grave mistake. But clearly Mortier’s corps had yet to learn what the Spaniards were like, and to realize that to turn them out from behind walls and ditches was not the light task that they supposed.
Moncey so thoroughly miscalculated the general effect of the fighting upon the minds of the Spaniards, that next morning he sent in to Palafox a flag of truce, with an officer bearing a formal demand for the surrender of the city. ‘Madrid had fallen,’ he wrote: ‘Saragossa, invested on all sides, had not the force to resist two complete corps d’armée. He trusted that the Captain-General would spare the beautiful and wealthy capital of Aragon the horrors of a siege. Ample blood had already been shed, enough misfortunes already suffered by Spain.’ Palafox replied in the strain that might have been expected from him—‘The man who only wishes to die with honour in defence of his country cares nothing about his position: but, as a matter of fact, he found that his own was eminently favourable and encouraging. In the first siege he had held out for sixty-one days with a garrison far inferior to that now under his command. Was it likely that he would surrender, when he had as many troops as his besiegers? Looking at the results of the fighting on the previous day, when the assailants had suffered so severely in front of San Lazaro, he thought that he would be quite as well justified in proposing to the Marshal that the besieging army should surrender “to spare further effusion of blood,” as the latter had been to make such a proposition to him. If Madrid had fallen, Madrid must have been sold: but he begged for leave to doubt the truth of the rumour. Even at the worst Madrid was but a town, like any other. Its fate had no influence on Saragossa.’
Having received such an answer Moncey had only to set to work as fast as possible: his engineer-in-chief, General Lacoste, after making a thorough survey of the defences, pronounced in favour of choosing two fronts of attack, both starting on the Monte Torrero, and directed the one against the fort of San José and the other against that of the Pillar. These projecting works would have to be carried before any attempt could be made against the inner enceinte of the town. At the same time, Lacoste ordered a third attack, which he did not propose to press home, to be made on the castle of the Aljafferia, on the west side of the town. It was only intended to distract the attention of the Spaniards from the points of real danger. On the further bank of the Ebro, Gazan’s division was directed to move forward again, and to entrench itself across all the three roads, which issue from the suburb, and lead respectively to Lerida, Jaca, and Monzon. He was not to attack, but merely to blockade the northern exits of Saragossa. Communications with him were established by means of a bridge of boats and pontoons laid above the town. Gazan succeeded in shortening the front which he had to protect against sorties by letting the water of the Ebro into the low-lying fields along its banks, where it caused inundations on each of his flanks.
On the twenty-third the preliminary works of the siege began, approaches and covered ways being constructed leading down from the Monte Torrero to the spots from which Lacoste intended to commence the first parallels of the two attacks on the Pillar and San José. Preparations of a similar sort were commenced for the false attack on the left, opposite the Aljafferia. Six days were occupied in these works, and in the bringing up of the heavy artillery, destined to arm the siege-batteries, from Tudela. The guns had to come by road, as the Spaniards had destroyed all the barges on the Canal of Aragon, and blown up many of its locks. It was not till some time later that the French succeeded in reopening the navigation, by replacing the sluice-gates and building large punts and floats for the carriage of guns or munitions.
Just before the first parallel was opened Marshal Moncey was recalled to Madrid , the Emperor being apparently discontented with his delays in the early part of the month. He was replaced in command of the 3rd Corps by Junot, whose old divisions had been made over (as we have seen in the first volume) to Soult’s 2nd Corps. This change made Mortier the senior officer of the besieging army, but he and Junot seem to have worked more as partners than as commander and subordinate. Junot, in his report to the Emperor on the state in which he found the troops, enlarges at great length on the deplorable condition of the 3rd Corps. Many of the battalions had never received their winter clothing, hundreds entered the hospitals every day, and there was no corresponding outflow of convalescents. No less than 680 men had died in the base hospital at Pampeluna in November, and the figure for December would be worse. He doubted if there were 13,000 infantry under arms in his three divisions—here he exaggerated somewhat, for even a fortnight later the returns show that his ‘present under arms,’ after deducting all detachments and sick, were still over 14,000 bayonets: on January 1, therefore, there must have been 15,000. He asked for money, reinforcements, and a supply of officers, the commissioned ranks of his corps showing a terrible proportion of gaps. On the other hand, he conceded that the 5th Corps was in excellent condition, its veterans suffering far less from disease than his own conscripts. Either of Gazan’s and Suchet’s divisions was, by itself, as strong as any two of the divisions of the 3rd Corps.
On the night of the twenty-ninth—thirtieth, within twelve hours of Moncey’s departure, the first parallel was opened, both in the attack towards San José and in that opposite the Pillar fort. When the design of the besiegers became evident, Palafox made three sallies on the thirty-first, but apparently more with the object of reconnoitring the siege-works and distracting the workers than with any hope of breaking the French lines, for there were not more than 1,500 men employed in any of the three columns which delivered the sorties. The assault on the trenches before San José was not pressed home, but opposite the false attack at the Aljafferia the fighting was more lively; the French outposts were all driven in with loss, and a squadron of cavalry, which had slipped out from the Sancho gate, close to the Ebro, surprised and sabred thirty men of a picket on the left of the French lines. Palafox made the most of this small success in a magniloquent proclamation published on the succeeding day. He should have sent out 15,000 men instead of 3,000 if he intended to get any profit out of his sorties. An attack delivered with such a force on some one point of the lines must have paralysed the siege operations, and might have proved disastrous to the French.
Meanwhile the besiegers, undisturbed by these sallies, pushed forward their works on the northern slopes of the Monte Torrero. The attack opposite San José got forward much faster than that against the Pillar: its second parallel was commenced on January 1, and its batteries were all ready to open by the ninth. The other attack was handicapped by the fact that the ground sloped down more rapidly towards the Huerba, so that the trenches had to be made much deeper, and pushed forward in perpetual zigzags, in order to avoid being searched by the plunging fire from the Spanish batteries on the other side of the stream, in the enceinte of the town. To get a flanking position against the Pillar redoubt, the left attack was continued by another line of trenches beyond the Huerba, after it has made its sharp turn to the south.
Before the engineers had completed their work, and long ere the breaching batteries were ready, a great strain was thrown upon the besiegers by fresh orders from Napoleon. On January 2, Marshal Mortier received a dispatch, bidding him march out to Calatayud with one of his two divisions, and open up the direct communication with Madrid. Accordingly he departed with the two strong brigades of Suchet’s division, 10,000 bayonets. This withdrawal threw much harder work on the remainder of the army: Junot was left with not much more than 24,000 men, including the artillerymen, to maintain the investment of the whole city. He was forced to spread out the 3rd Corps on a very thin line, in order to occupy all the posts from which Suchet’s battalions had been withdrawn. Morlot’s division came down from the Monte Torrero to occupy the ground which Suchet had evacuated: Musnier had to cover the whole of the hill, and to support both the lines of approach on which the engineers were busy. Grandjean’s division remained on its old front, facing the eastern side of the city, and Gazan still blockaded the suburb beyond the Ebro. As the last-named general had still 8,000 men, there were only 15,000 bayonets and the artillery available for the siege, a force far too small to maintain a front nearly four miles long. If Palafox had dared to make a general sortie with all his disposable men, Junot’s position would have been more than hazardous. But the Captain-General contented himself with making numerous and useless sallies on a petty scale, sending out the most reckless and determined of his men to waste themselves in bickering with the guards of the trenches, when he should have saved them to head a general assault in force upon some weak point of the siege lines. The diaries and narratives of the French officers who served at Saragossa are full of anecdotes of the frantic courage shown by the besieged, generally to no purpose. One of the strangest has been preserved by the very prosaic engineer Belmas, who tells how a priest in his robes came out on January 6 in front of Gazan’s lines, and walked among the bullets to within fifty yards of the trenches, when he preached with great unction for some minutes, his crucifix in his hand, to the effect that the French had a bad cause and were drawing down God’s anger upon themselves. To the credit of his audience it must be said that they let him go off alive, contenting themselves with firing over his head, in order to see if they could scare him into a run.
At daybreak on January 10, the whole of the French batteries opened upon San José and the Pillar fort. The fire against the latter was distant and comparatively ineffective, but the masonry of San José began to crumble at once: its walls, solid though they were, had never been built to resist siege artillery. The roofs and tiles came crashing down upon the defenders’ heads, and most of their guns were silenced or injured. The besiegers suffered little—Belmas says that only one officer and ten men fell, though two guns in the most advanced battery were disabled. The loss of the Spaniards on the other hand was numbered by hundreds, more being slain by the fall of stones and slates than by the actual cannon balls and shells of the assailants. At nightfall Palafox withdrew most of the guns from the convent, but replaced the decimated garrison by three fresh battalions. It was clear that the work would fall next day unless the besiegers were driven off from their batteries. At 1 A.M., therefore, 300 men made a desperate sally to spike the guns. But the French were alert, and had brought up two field-pieces close to the convent, which repressed the sortie with a storm of grape.
Next morning the bombardment of San José recommenced, and by the afternoon a large breach had been established in its southern wall. At four o’clock General Grandjean launched a picked force, composed of the seven voltigeur companies of the 14th and 44th regiments, upon the crumbling defences. The garrison had already begun to quit the untenable post, and only a minority remained behind to fight to the last. The storming column entered without much loss, partly by laying scaling-ladders to the foot of the breach, partly by using a small bridge of planks across the ditch, which the Spaniards had forgotten to remove. They only lost thirty-eight men, and made prisoners of about fifty of the garrison who had refused to retire into the city when the rest fled.
Though San José was thus easily captured, it was difficult to establish a lodgement in it, for the batteries on the enceinte of Saragossa searched it from end to end, dominating its ruined quadrangle from a superior height. But during the night the besiegers succeeded in blocking up its gorge, and in connecting the breach with their second parallel by a covered way of sandbags and fascines. The convent was now the base from which they were to attack the town-walls behind it.
But before continuing the advance in this direction it was necessary to carry the fort of Our Lady of the Pillar, the other great outwork of the southern front of Saragossa. The main attention of the besiegers was directed against this point from the twelfth to the fifteenth, and their sapping gradually took them to within a few yards of the counterscarp. The Spanish fire had been easily subdued, and a practicable breach established. On the night of the fifteenth-sixteenth the fort was stormed by the Poles of the 1st regiment of the Vistula. They met with little or no resistance, the greater part of the garrison having withdrawn when the assault was seen to be imminent. A mine under the glacis exploded, but failed to do any harm: another, better laid, destroyed the bridge over the Huerba, behind the fort, when the work was seen to be in the power of the assailants. Lacoste reported to Junot that the Poles lost only one killed and two wounded—an incredibly small casualty list.
The fall of the fort of the Pillar gave the French complete possession of all the ground to the south of the Huerba, and left them free to attack the enceinte of the city, which had now lost all its outer works save the Aljafferia: in front of that castle the ‘false attack’ made little progress, for the besiegers did not press in close, and contented themselves with battering the old mediaeval fortress from a distance. On that part of the line of investment nothing of importance was to happen.
SIEGE OF SARAGOSSA: THE FRENCH WITHIN THE WALLS: THE STREET-FIGHTING: THE SURRENDER
Lacoste’s first care, when the Pillar and San José had both fallen into his hands, was to connect the two works by his ‘third parallel,’ which was drawn from one to the other just above the edge of the ravine of the Huerba. In order to assail the walls of the city that stream had to be crossed, a task of some difficulty, for its bed was searched by the great batteries at Santa Engracia along the whole front between the two captured forts, while north of San José the ‘Palafox Battery’ near the Porta Quemada completely overlooked the lower and broader part of the river bed. The Spaniards kept up a fast and furious fire upon the lost works, with the object of preventing the besiegers from moving forward from them, or constructing fresh batteries among their ruins. In this they were not successful: the French, burrowing deep among the débris, successfully covered themselves, and suffered little.
The second stage of the siege work, the attack on the actual enceinte of Saragossa, now began. The two points on which it was directed were the Santa Engracia battery—the southern salient of the town—and the extreme south-eastern angle of the place, where lay the Palafox Battery and the smaller work generally known as the battery of the Oil Mill (Molino de Aceite). The former was less than 200 yards from the Pillar fort, the latter not more than 100 from San José, but between them ran the deep bed of the Huerba.
From the twelfth to the seventeenth the French were busily engaged in throwing up batteries in the line of their third parallel, and on the morning of the last-named day no less than nine were ready. Five opened on Santa Engracia, four on the Palafox battery: at both points they soon began to do extensive damage, for here the walls had not been entirely reconstructed (as on the western front of the city), but only patched up and strengthened with earthworks at intervals. The masonry of the convent of Santa Engracia suffered most, and began to fall in large patches. Palafox saw that the enceinte would be pierced ere long, and that street-fighting would be the next stage of the siege. Accordingly he set the whole civil population to work on constructing barricades across the streets and lanes of the south-eastern part of the city, in the rear of the threatened points, and turned every block of houses into an independent fort by building up all the doorways and windows facing towards the enemy. The spirits of the garrison were still high, and the Captain-General had done his best to keep them up by issuing gazettes containing very roseate accounts of the state of affairs in the outer world. His communication with the open country was not completely cut, for thrice he had been able to send boats down the Ebro, which took their chance of running past the French batteries at night, and always succeeded. One of these boats had carried the Captain-General’s younger brother, Francisco Palafox, who had orders to appeal to the Catalans for help, and to raise the peasants of Lower Aragon. Occasional messengers also got in from without: one arrived on January 16 from Catalonia, with promises of aid from the Marquis of Lazan, who proposed to return from Gerona with his division, in order to fall upon the rear of the besiegers. Palafox not only let this be known, but published in his Official Gazette some utterly unfounded rumours, which the courier had brought. Reding, it was said, had beaten St. Cyr in the open field: the Duke of Infantado was marching from Cuenca on Aragon with 20,000 men. Sir John Moore had turned to bay on the pursuing forces of the Emperor, and had defeated them at a battle in Galicia in which Marshal Ney had been killed. To celebrate this glorious news the church bells were set ringing, the artillery fired a general salute, and military music paraded the town. These phenomena were perfectly audible to the besiegers, and caused them many searchings of heart, for they could not guess what event the Saragossans could be celebrating.
The garrison needed all the encouragement that could be given to them, for after the middle of January the stress of the siege began to be felt very heavily. Food was not wanting—for, excepting fresh meat and vegetables, everything was still procurable in abundance. But cold and overcrowding were beginning to cause epidemic disorders. The greater part of the civil population had taken refuge in their cellars when the bombardment began, and after a few days spent in those dark and damp retreats, from which they only issued at night, or when they were called on for labour at the fortifications, began to develop fevers and dysentery. This was inevitable, for in most of the dwellings from twenty to forty persons of all ages were crowded in mere holes, no more than seven feet high, and almost unprovided with ventilation, where they lived, ate, and slept, packed together, and with no care for sanitary precautions. The malignant fevers bred in these refuges soon spread to the garrison: though under cover, the soldiery were destitute of warm clothing (especially the Murcian battalions), and could not procure enough firewood to cook their meals. By January 20 there were 8,000 sick among the 30,000 regular troops, and every day the wastage to the hospital grew more and more noticeable. Many officers of note had already fallen in the useless sorties, and in especial a grave loss had been suffered on January 13, when Colonel San Genis, the chief engineer of the besieged, and the designer of the whole of the defences of the city, was killed on the ramparts of the Palafox battery, as he was directing the fire against the new entrenchment which the French were throwing up across the gorge of the San José fort. He had no competent successor as a general director, for his underlings had no grasp of siege-strategy, and were only good at details. They built batteries and barricades and ran mines in pure opportunism, without any comprehensive scheme of defence before their eyes.
The French meanwhile were very active, though the constant increase of sickness in the 3rd Corps was daily thinning the regiments, till the proportion of men stricken down by fever was hardly less than that among the Spaniards. On the seventeenth and eighteenth Lacoste began to contrive a descent into the bottom of the ravine of the Huerba, by a series of zigzags pushed forward from the third parallel, both in the direction of Santa Engracia and in that of the Palafox battery. The latter was repeatedly silenced by the advanced batteries of the besiegers, but they could not subdue the incessant musketry fire from windows and loopholes which swept the whole bed of the Huerba, and rendered the work at the head of the new sap most difficult and deadly. Sometimes it had to be completely abandoned because of the plunging fire from the city. Yet it was always resumed after a time: the French found that their best and easiest work was done in the early morning, when, for day after day, a dense fog rose from the Ebro, which rendered it impossible for the Spaniards to see what was going on, or to aim with any certainty at the entrenchments. Irritated at the steady if slow progress of the enemy, Palafox launched on the afternoon of January 23 the most desperate sortie that his army had yet essayed against the advanced works of the French. At four o’clock on that day three columns dashed out and attacked the line of trenches: one, as a blind, was sent out opposite the Aljafferia, to distract the attention of Morlot’s division from the main sally. The other two were serious attacks, but both made with too small numbers—apparently no more than 200 picked men in each. The left-hand column became hotly engaged with the trenches to the north of San José, and got no further forward than a house a little beyond the Huerba, from which they expelled a French post. But the right-hand force carried out a very bold programme. Crossing the Huerba below Santa Engracia, they broke through the third parallel, and then made a dash at two mortar-batteries in the second parallel which had particularly annoyed the defence on that morning. The commander of the sortie, Mariano Galindo, a captain of the Volunteers of Aragon, led his men so straight that they rushed in with the bayonet on the first battery and spiked both its pieces. They were making for the second when they were overwhelmed by the trench guard and by reinforcements hurrying up from Musnier’s camp. Of a hundred men who had gone forward with Galindo from the third parallel twelve were killed and thirty, including their brave leader, taken prisoners. The French stated their loss at no more than six killed and five wounded, a figure that seems suspiciously low, considering that the first line of trenches had been stormed by the assailants, and a battery in the second line captured and disabled. Galindo had gone forward more than 500 yards, into the very middle of the French works, before he was checked and surrounded. It was a very gallant exploit, but once more we are constrained to ask why Palafox told off for it no more than a mere handful of men. What would have happened had he thrown a solid column of 10,000 men upon the siege-works, instead of a few hundred volunteers?
On the twenty-second, the day before Galindo’s sortie, Junot was superseded in command of the besieging army by Lannes, who had been restored to health by two months’ holiday, and was now himself again. He arrived just in time to take charge of the important task of storming the main enceinte, for which Junot’s preparations were now far advanced. But though the siege operations looked not unpromising, he found the situation grave and dangerous. Belmas and the other French historians describe this as the most critical epoch of the whole Saragossan episode. The fact was that at last there were beginning to be signs of movement in the open country of Aragon. During the month that had elapsed since the siege began, the peasantry had been given time to draw together. Francisco Palafox, after escaping from the city, had gone to Mequinenza, and was arming the local levies with muskets procured from Catalonia. He had already a great horde assembled in the direction of Alca?iz. On the other bank of the Ebro Colonel Perena had been organizing a force at Huesca, from northern Aragon and the foot-hills of the Pyrenees. Lastly, it was known that Lazan was on his way from Gerona to aid his brothers, and had brought to Lerida his division of 4,000 men, a comparatively well-organized body of troops, which had been under arms since October. Even far back, on the way to Pampeluna, insurgents had gathered in the Sierra de Moncayo, and were threatening the important half-way post of Tudela, by which the besieging army kept up its communication with France.
Hitherto these gatherings had looked dangerous, but had done no actual harm. General Wathier, with the cavalry of the 3rd Corps, had scoured the southern bank of the Ebro and kept off the insurgents; but now they were pressing closer in, and on January 20 a battalion, which Gazan had sent out to drive away Perena’s levies, had been checked and beaten off at Perdiguera, only twelve miles from the camp of the besiegers.
Lannes could not fail to see that if he committed himself to the final assault on Saragossa, and entangled the 3rd Corps in street-fighting, he might find himself assailed from the rear on all points of his lines. There were no troops whatever in front of Saragossa to form a ‘covering-force’ to beat off the insurgents, if they should come down upon his camps while he was storming the city, for the 3rd Corps and Gazan’s division had now only 20,000 infantry for the conduct of the siege.
Accordingly the Marshal resolved to undo the Emperor’s arrangements for keeping up the line of communication with Madrid, and to draw in Mortier, with Suchet’s strong and intact division, from Calatayud, where he had been lying for the last three weeks. This was the only possible force which he could use to provide himself with a covering army. The touch with Madrid, a thing of comparatively minor importance, had to be sacrificed, except so far as it could be kept up by the division of Dessolles, which had now come back from the pursuit of Sir John Moore, and had pushed detachments back to its old posts at Sigüenza and Guadalajara.
Mortier therefore evacuated Calatayud by the orders of Lannes, and came back to the Ebro: passing behind the besieging army he crossed the river and took post at Perdiguera with 10,000 men, facing the levies of Perena in the direction of Huesca. It was only when he had made certain of having this powerful reinforcement close at hand, ready to deal with any interference from without, that Lannes dared to proceed with the assault. At the same time that Mortier arrived at Perdiguera, he sent out Wathier, with two battalions and two regiments of cavalry, to deal with the insurgents of the Lower Ebro, where Francisco Palafox had been busy. Four or five thousand peasants with one newly-levied regiment of Aragonese volunteers tried to resist this small column, but were beaten on the twenty-sixth in front of the town of Alca?iz, which fell into Wathier’s hands, and with it 20,000 sheep and 1,500 sacks of flour, which had been collected for the revictualling of Saragossa, in case the investment should be broken. They were a welcome windfall to the besieging army, where food was none too plentiful, since the plain country where it lay encamped had now been eaten bare, and convoys of food from Tudela and Pampeluna were rare and inadequate.
On January 24 the French had succeeded in pushing three approaches across the Huerba, and were firmly established under its northern bank. Two days later they made lodgements in ruins, cellars, and low walls where buildings had been pulled down, in the narrow space between the town wall and the river bank, below the Palafox battery. The cannon of the defenders could only act intermittently: every night the parapets were repaired, but every morning after a few hours of artillery duel the Spanish guns were silenced by the dreadful converging fire poured in upon them. Meanwhile Palafox was heaping barricade upon barricade in the quarters behind the threatened points, and fortifying the houses and convents which connected them.
The final crisis arrived on the twenty-seventh. There were now three practicable breaches,—two were on the side of the Palafox battery, one in the convent of Santa Engracia. To storm the first and second Lannes told off the light companies of the first brigade of Grandjean’s division; to the third was allotted the 1st regiment of the Vistula from Musnier’s division. Heavy supports lay behind them, in the third parallel, with orders to rush in if the storming parties should prove successful.
The assault was delivered with great dash and swiftness at noon on the twenty-seventh. On two points it was successful. At the most northern breach the assailants reached the summit of the wall, but could not get down into the city, on account of the storm of musketry from barricades and houses that swept the gap into which they had advanced. They merely made a lodgement in the breach itself, and could penetrate no further. But in the central breach, close beneath the Palafox battery, the voltigeurs not only passed the walls, but seized the ‘Oil Mill’ which abutted on them, and a triangular block of houses projecting into the town. At the Santa Engracia breach they were even more fortunate: the Poles carried the convent with their first rush: its outer wall had been battered down for a breadth of thirty yard and entering there the stormers drove out the Spaniards from the interior buildings of the place, and got into the large square which lies behind it, where they seized the Capuchin nunnery. Thus a considerable wedge was driven through the enceinte, and the Spaniards had to evacuate the walls for some little distance on each side of Santa Engracia. From the stretch to the west of that convent they were driven out by an unpremeditated assault of Musnier’s supports, who ran out from the trenches on the left of the Huerba, and escaladed the dilapidated wall in front of them, when they saw the garrison drawing back on account of the flanking fire from Santa Engracia. They got possession of the whole outer enceinte as far as the Trinitarian convent by the Carmen gate.
These successes were bought at the moderate loss of 350 men, of whom two-thirds fell in the fighting on the Santa Engracia front; the Spaniards lost somewhat more, including a few prisoners. In any ordinary siege the day would have settled the fate of the place, for the besiegers had broken through the enceinte in two places, and though the space seized inside the Palafox battery was not large, yet on each side of Santa Engracia the assailants had penetrated so far that a quarter of a mile of the walls was in their possession. But Saragossa was not as other places, and the garrison were perfectly prepared with a new front of defence, composed of batteries and crenellated houses in rear of the lost positions. Two wedges, one large and one small, had been driven into the town, but they had to be broadened and driven further in if they were to have any effect.
On the twenty-eighth, therefore, a new stage of the siege began, and the street-fighting, which was to last for twenty-four days more, had its commencement. Lannes had heard, from those who had served under Verdier in the first siege, of the deplorable slaughter and repeated repulses that had followed the attempt to carry by main force the internal defences of the city. To hurl solid columns of stormers at the barricades and the crenellated houses was not his intention. He had made up his mind to advance by sap and mine, as if he were dealing with regular fortifications. His plan was to use each block of houses that he gained as a base for the attack upon the next, and never to send in the infantry with the bayonet till he had breached by artillery, or by mines, the building against which the assault was directed. This form of attack was bound to be slow, but it had the great merit of costing comparatively little in the way of casualties. The fact was that the Marshal had not the numbers which would justify him in wasting lives by assaults which might or might not be successful, but which were certain to prove very bloody. The whole Third Corps, as we have already seen, did not now furnish much more than 13,000 bayonets, while Gazan’s men were all occupied in watching the suburb, and Suchet’s lay far out, as a covering corps set to watch Perena and Lazan.
There was no one single dominating position in the city whose occupation was likely to constrain the besieged to surrender. The whole town is built on a level, and its fifty-three solidly-built churches and convents formed so many forts, each of which was defensible in itself and could not be reduced save by a direct attack. All that could be done was to endeavour to capture them one by one, in the hope that at last the Saragossans would grow tired of their hopeless resistance, and consent to surrender, when they realized that things had gone so far that they could only protract, but could not finally beat off, the slow advance of the besieging army.
The work of the French, therefore, consisted in spreading out from their two separate lodgements on the eastern and southern sides of the city, with the simple object of gaining ground each day and of driving the Spaniards back towards the centre of the place. On the right attack the most important objective of the besiegers was the block of monastic buildings to the north of the Palafox battery, the twin convents of San Augustin and Santa Monica, which lay along the northern side of the small wedge that they had driven into the north-eastern corner of the town. As these buildings lay on ground slightly higher than that which the French had occupied, it was difficult to attack them by means of mines. But an intense converging fire was brought to bear upon them, both from batteries outside the walls, playing across the Huerba, and by guns brought inside the captured angle of the enceinte. The outer walls of Santa Monica were soon a mass of ruins: nevertheless the first attack on it was beaten off, and it was only on the next day, after twenty-four hours more of furious bombardment, that Grandjean’s men succeeded in storming, first the convent and then its church, after a furious hand-to-hand fight with the defenders.
After establishing themselves in Santa Monica the French were able to capture some of the adjoining houses, and to turn their attention against its neighbour San Augustin. They ran two mines under it, and at the same time battered it heavily from the external batteries beyond the Huerba. On February I the explosion took place: it opened a breach in the east end of the convent church, and the storming party, entering by the sacristy, got possession of the choir chapels and the high altar. But the Spaniards rallied in the nave, ran a barricade of chairs and benches across it, and held their own for some time, firing down from the pulpit and the organ loft with effect. Some climbed up into the roof and picked off the French through the holes which the bombardment had left in the ceiling. For some hours this strange indoor battle raged within the spacious church. But at last the French carried the nave, and at night only the belfry remained untaken. Its little garrison pelted the French with grenades all day, and saved themselves at dusk by a sudden and unexpected dash through the enemy.
In the first flush of success, after San Augustin had been stormed, the 44th regiment, from Grandjean’s division, tried to push on through the streets towards the centre of the town. They captured several barricades and houses, and struggled on till they had nearly reached the Coso. But this sort of fighting was always dangerous in Saragossa: the citizens kept up such a fierce fire from their windows, and swarmed out against the flanks of the column in such numbers, that the 44th had to give back, lost all that it had taken beyond San Augustin, and left 200 dead and wounded behind. Even the formal official reports of the French engineers speak with respect of the courage shown by the besieged on this day. The houses which they had lost in the afternoon they retook in the dusk, by an extraordinary device. Finding the French solidly barricaded in them, and proof against any attack from the street, hundreds of the defenders climbed upon the roofs, tore up the tiles and entered by the garrets, from which they descended and drove out the invaders by a series of charges which cleared story after story. Many monks, and still more women, were seen among the armed crowds which swept the assailants back towards Santa Monica. It was especially noticed that the civilians did far more of the fighting than the soldiers. This was their own special battle.
Irritated at his losses on this day, Lannes issued a general order, expressly forbidding any attempts to storm houses and barricades by main force. After an explosion, the troops were to seize the building that had been shattered, and to cover themselves in it; they were not to go forward and fall upon intact defences further to the front.
While the struggle was raging thus fiercely from January 28 to February 1, in the eastern area of street-fighting, there had been a no less desperate series of combats all around Santa Engracia, on the southern front of attack. Here Musnier’s division was endeavouring to drive the Spaniards out of the blocks of houses to the right and left of the captured convent. They worked almost entirely by mines, running tunnels forward from beneath the convent to blow down the walls of the adjoining dwellings. But even when the mines had gutted the doomed buildings, it was not easy to seize them: the few men who survived the explosion did not fly, but held out among the ruins, and had to be bayonetted by the assailants who rushed out from the convent to occupy the new lodgements. Time after time the defenders, though perfectly conscious that they were being undermined, and that by staying on guard they were courting certain death, refused to evacuate the threatened houses or to retire into safety. Hence their losses were awful, but the French too suffered not a little, while pushing forward to occupy each building as it was cleared by the explosion. The constant rain of musket balls from roofs and church towers searched out the ruins in which they had to effect their lodgements, and many of the assailants fell before they could cover themselves among the débris.
On the thirty-first the Spaniards made a sudden rush from the Misericordia buildings, to recover the Trinitarian convent, the most western point on the enceinte which had fallen into the hands of the French at the assault of the twenty-seventh. They charged in upon it with the greatest fury, and blew open the gate with a four-pounder gun which they dragged up by hand to the very threshold. But the French had built up the whole entrance with sandbags, which held even when the doors had been shattered; and, after persisting for some time in a fruitless attempt to break in, the Saragossans had to retire, foiled and greatly thinned in numbers.
On the following day (February 1) the French began to move forward from Santa Engracia towards the Coso, always clearing their way by explosions, and risking as few men as possible. Nevertheless they could not always keep under cover, and this day they suffered a severe loss: their chief engineer, General Lacoste, was shot through the head, while reconnoitring from a window the houses against which his next attack was to be directed. He was succeeded in command by Colonel Rogniat, one of the French historians of the siege. That officer, as he tells us, discovered that his sappers were using too large charges of powder, which destroyed the roofs and four walls of each house that they undermined, so that the infantry who followed had no cover when they first took possession. He therefore ordered the substitution of smaller measures of powder, so as to throw down only parts of the wall of the building nearest to the French lines, and to leave the roof and the outer walls uninjured. In this way it was much more easy to establish a lodgement, since the storming-party were covered the moment that they had dashed into the shattered shell. The only plan which the Spaniards could devise against this method of procedure, was to set fire to the ruins, and to prevent the entry of the assailants by burning down all that was left of the house. As the buildings of Saragossa contained little woodwork, and were not very combustible, the besieged daubed the walls with tar and resin to make them blaze the better. When an explosion had taken place, the surviving defenders set fire to the débris of floors and roofs before retiring. In this way they sometimes kept the French back for as much as two days, since they could not make their lodgement till the cinders had time to cool. Countermining against the French approaches was often tried, but seldom with success, for there were no trained miners in the city: the one battalion of sappers which Palafox possessed had been formed from the workmen of the Canal of Aragon, who had no experience in subterranean work. On the other hand the French had three whole companies of miners, beside eight more of sappers, who were almost as useful in the demolition of the city. They maintained a distinct ascendent underground, though they not unfrequently lost men in the repeated combats with knife and pistol which ensued when mine and countermine met, and the two sides fought for the possession of each other’s galleries.
The first week of February was now drawing to its close, and the advance of the French into the city, though steady, had been extremely slow. Every little block of five or six houses cost a day to break up, and another to entrench. The waste of life, though not excessive, was more than Lannes could really afford, and he waited impatiently, but in vain, for any signs that the obstinacy of the defence was slackening. But though he could not see it, the garrison were being tried far more hardly than the besiegers. It was not so much the loss by fire and sword that was ruining them as the silent ravages of the epidemic fevers. Since the French had got within the walls, and the bombardment of the city was being carried on from a shorter range than before, the civilian population had been forced to cling more closely than ever to its fetid cellars, and the infectious fever which had appeared in January was developing at the most fearful rate. Living under such insanitary conditions, and feeding on flour and salt fish, for the vegetables had long been exhausted, the Saragossans had no strength to bear up against the typhus. Whole families died off, and their bodies lay forgotten, tainting the air and spreading the contagion. Even where there were survivors, they could not easily dispose of the dead, for the urban cemeteries were gorged, and burials took place in trenches hastily opened in streets or gardens. Outside the churches there were hundreds of corpses, some coffined, others rolled in shrouds or sheets, waiting in rows for the last services of the church, which the surviving clergy were too few to read. The shells from the incessant bombardment were continually falling in these open spaces, and tearing the dead to pieces. Ere the siege was over there was a mass of mutilated and decaying bodies heaped in front of every church door. Hundreds more lay in the debatable ground for which the Spaniards and French were contending, and the whole town reeked with contagion. The weather was generally still and warm for the time of year, with a thick fog rising every morning from the low ground by the Ebro. The smoke from the burning houses lay low over the place, and the air was thick with the mingled fumes of fire and pestilence. If it nauseated the French, who had the open country behind them, and were relieved by regiments at intervals, and allowed a rest in their camps outside the walls, it was far more terrible to the Spaniards. The death rate rose, as February drew on, from 300 up to 500 and even 600 a day. The morning state of the garrison on the fourth day of the month showed 13,737 sick and wounded, and only 8,495 men under arms. As the total had been 32,000 when the siege began, nearly 10,000 men must already have perished by the sword or disease. The civil population, containing so many women, children, and aged persons, was of course dying at a much quicker rate. Yet the place held out for sixteen days longer! Palafox himself was struck down by the fever, but still issued orders from his bed, and poured out a string of hysterical proclamations, in which his delirium is clearly apparent.
The terrible situation of the Saragossans was to a large extent concealed from the besiegers, who only saw the line of desperate fighting-men which met them in every house, and could only guess at the death and desolation that lay behind. Every French eye-witness bears record to the low spirits of the troops who were compelled to fight in the long series of explosions and assaults which filled the early weeks of February. The engineer Belmas, the most matter-of-fact of all the historians of the siege, turns aside for a moment from his traverses and mining-galleries, to describe the murmurs of the weary infantry of the 3rd Corps. ‘Who ever heard before,’ they asked, ‘of an army of 20,000 men being set to take a town defended by 50,000 madmen? We have conquered a quarter of it, and now we are completely fought out. We must halt and wait for reinforcements, or we shall all perish, and be buried in these cursed ruins, before we can rout out the last of these fanatics from their last stronghold.’ Lannes did his best to encourage the rank and file, by showing them that the Spaniards were suffering far more than they, and by pointing out that the moment must inevitably come when the defence must break down from mere exhaustion. He also endeavoured to obtain reinforcements from the Emperor, but only received assurances that some conscripts and convalescents for the 3rd Corps should be sent to him from Pampeluna and Bayonne. No fresh regiments could be spared from France, when the affairs of Central Europe were looking so doubtful. The best plan which the Marshal could devise for breaking down the resolution of the Spaniards was to lengthen his front of attack, and so endeavour to distract the attention of the besieged from the main front of advance towards the Coso.
This was only to be done by causing the division of Gazan, which had so long remained passive in front of the suburb, to open an energetic attack on that outlying part of the fortress. The advantage to be secured in this direction was not merely that a certain amount of the defenders would be drawn away from the city. If the suburb were captured it would be possible to erect batteries in it, which would search the whole northern side of Saragossa, the one quarter of the city which was still comparatively unaffected by the bombardment. Here the bulk of the civil population was crowded together, and here too Palafox had collected the greater part of his stores and magazines. If the last safe corner of the city were exposed to a bombardment from a fresh quarter, it would probably do much to lower the hopes of the defenders.
During the last days of January Gazan’s division had pressed back the Spanish outposts in front of the suburb, and on the thirtieth of that month Lannes had sent over two companies of siege artillery, to construct batteries opposite the convents of Jesus and San Lazaro. It was not till February 2-3, however, that he ordered a serious and active attack to be pressed in this quarter. From the trench which covered the front of Gazan’s investing lines a second parallel was thrown out, and two breaching batteries erected against the Jesus convent: on the fourth an advance by zigzags was pushed still further forward, and more guns brought up. Some little delay was caused by an unexpected swelling of the Ebro, which inundated that part of the trenches which lay nearest to the river: but by the eighth all was ready for the assault. The Jesus convent, as a glance at the map will readily show, was the most projecting point of the defences of the suburb, and was not well protected by any flanking fire from the other works—indeed it was only helped to any appreciable extent by a long fire across the water from the northern side of Saragossa, and by the few gunboats which were moored near the bridge. It was a weak structure—merely a brick convent with a ditch beyond it—and the breaching batteries had found no difficulty in opening many large gaps in its masonry. On the eighth it was stormed by Taupin’s brigade of Gazan’s division: the garrison made a creditable resistance, which cost the French ninety men, and then retired to San Lazaro and the main fortifications of the suburb. The French established themselves in the convent, and connected it with their siege-works, finally turning its ruins into part of the third parallel, which they began to draw out against the remaining transpontine works. They would probably have proceeded to complete their operations in this direction within the next two or three days, if it had not been for an interruption from without. The two brothers, Lazan and Francisco Palafox, had now united their forces, and had come forward to the line of the Sierra de Alcubierre, only twenty miles from Saragossa, the former with his 4,000 men from Catalonia, the latter with a mass of peasants. Mortier, from his post at Perdiguera, reported their approach to Lannes, and the latter went out in person to meet them, taking with him Guérin’s brigade of Gazan’s division, and leaving only that of Taupin to hold the lines opposite the suburb. Faced by the 12,000 veteran bayonets of the 5th Corps, the two Palafoxes felt that they were helpless, and retreated towards Fraga and Lerida, without attempting to fight. On the thirteenth, therefore, Lannes came back to the siege with the troops that he had drawn away from it. While he was absent Palafox had a splendid opportunity for a sortie on a large scale against Taupin and his isolated brigade, for only 4,000 men were facing the suburb. But the time had already gone by in which the garrison was capable of such an advance. They could not now dispose of more than 10,000 men, soldiers and peasants and citizens all included, and none of these could be drawn away from the city, where the fighting-line was always growing weaker. Indeed, its numbers were so thinned by the epidemic that Palafox was guarding the Aljafferia with no more than 300 men, and manning the unattacked western front with convalescents from the hospitals, who could hardly stand, and often died at their posts during the cold and damp hours of the night. All his available efficients were engaged in the street-fighting with the 3rd Corps.
For while the attack on the suburb was being pressed, the slow advance of the besiegers within the walls was never slackened. On some days they won a whole block of houses by their mining operations: on others they lost many men and gained no advantage. The right attack was extending itself towards the river, and working from the convent of San Augustin into the quarter of the Tanneries. At the same time it was also moving on toward the Coso, but with extreme slowness, for the Spaniards made a specially desperate defence in the houses about the University and the Church of the Trinity. One three-storied building, which covered the traverse across the Coso to the south of the University, stood ten separate assaults and four explosions, and held out from the ninth to the eighteenth, effectually keeping back the advance of the besiegers in this direction. Nor could the French ever succeed in connecting their field of operations on this front with that which centred around Santa Engracia. Down to the very end of the siege the Saragossans clung desperately to the south-eastern corner of the city, and kept control of it right down to the external walls and the bank of the Huerba, where they still possessed a narrow strip of 300 yards of the enceinte.
The left attack of the French, that from the Santa Engracia side, made much more progress, though even here it was slow and dearly bought. On February 10, however, in spite of several checks, the besiegers for the first time forced their way as far as the Coso, working through the ruined hospital which had been destroyed in the first siege. On the same day, at the north-western angle of their advance, they made a valuable conquest in the church and convent of San Francisco. A mine was driven under this great building from the ruins of the hospital, and filled with no less than 3,000 pounds of powder. It had not been discovered by the Spaniards, and the convent was full of fighting-men at the moment of the explosion. The whole grenadier company of the 1st regiment of Valencia and 300 irregulars were blown up, and perished to a man. Nor was this all: in the northern part of the building was established the main factory for military equipment of the Army of Aragon: it was crammed with workpeople, largely women, for Palafox had forgotten or refused to withdraw the dép?t to a less convenient and spacious but more safe position. All these unfortunate non-combatants, to the number of at least 400, perished, and the roof-tops for hundreds of yards around were strewn with their dismembered limbs.
It might have been expected that, as the immediate consequence of this awful catastrophe, the French would have made a long step forward in this direction. But such was not the case: before the smoke had cleared away Spaniards rushed forward from the inner defences, and occupied part of the ruins of San Francisco. A body of peasants, headed by the émigré colonel de Fleury, got into the bell-tower of the convent, which had not fallen with the rest, and kept up from its leads a vigorous plunging fire upon the besiegers, when they stole forward to burrow into the mass of débris. But with the loss of some thirty men the French succeeded in mastering two-thirds of the ruins: next day they cleared the rest, and stormed the belfry, where de Fleury and his men were all bayonetted after a desperate fight on the winding stairs. It was first from the commanding height of this steeple that the French officers obtained a full view of the city. The sight was encouraging to them: they could realize how much the inner parts of the place had suffered from the bombardment, and noted with their telescopes the small number of defenders visible behind the further barricades, the heaps of corpses in the streets, and the slow and dejected pace of the few passengers visible. Two great gallows with corpses hanging from them especially attracted the eyes of the onlookers. Other circumstances united on this and the following day (February 11-12) to show that the defence was at last beginning to slacken. A great mob of peasants, mainly women, came out of the Portillo gate towards Morlot’s trenches, and prayed hard for permission to go through the lines to their villages. They were not fired on, but given a loaf apiece, and then driven back into the city. It was still more significant that at night, on the eleventh, four or five bodies of deserters stole out to the French; they were all foreigners, belonging to the ‘Swiss’ battalion which was shut up in Saragossa: several officers were among them. To excuse themselves they said that Palafox and the friars were mad, and that they judged that all further defence had become impossible. Yet the siege was to endure for nine days longer!
Though the two main attacks continued to press slowly forward, and that on the left had now reached the Coso and covered a front of 100 yards on the southern side of that great street, it was not on this front that the decisive blow was destined to be given. On the eighteenth Lannes determined to deliver the great assault on the suburb, where the batteries in the third parallel and about the Jesus convent had now completely shattered the San Lazaro defences. All Gazan’s men being now back in their trenches, since Mortier’s expedition had driven off the Marquis of Lazan, Lannes considered that he might safely risk the storm. Fifty-two siege-guns played on San Lazaro throughout the morning of the eighteenth, and no less than eight practicable breaches were opened in it and the works to its right and left. At noon three storming columns leaped out of the trenches and raced for the nearest of these entries. All three burst through: there was a sharp struggle in the street of the suburb, and then the French reached and seized a block of houses at the head of the bridge, which cut the defence in two and rendered a retreat into Saragossa almost impossible. The Spaniards, seeing that all was lost, split into two bodies: one tried to force its way across the bridge; but only 300 passed; the rest were slain or captured. The main part, consisting of the defenders of the western front of the suburb, formed in a solid mass and, abandoning their defences, tried to escape westward up the bank of the Ebro, into the open country. They got across the inundation in their front, but when they had gone thus far were surrounded by two regiments of French cavalry, and forced to surrender. They numbered 1,500 men, under General Manso, commanding the 3rd division of Palafox’s army, the one which furnished the garrison of the suburb. The officer commanding the whole transpontine defence, Baron de Versage, had been killed by a cannon-ball on the bridge.
Map of the second siege of Saragossa
Enlarge SECOND SIEGE of SARAGOSSA
DEC. 1808 to FEB. 1809
This was not the only disaster suffered by the Saragossans on the eighteenth: at three in the afternoon, when the news of the loss of the suburb had had time to spread round the town, and the attention of the besieged was distracted to this side, Grandjean’s division attacked the houses and barricades in the north-eastern part of the city, which had so long held them at bay. A great mine opened a breach in the University, which was stormed, and with it fell the houses on each side, as far as the Coso. At the same time another attack won some ground in the direction of the Trinity convent, and the Ebro. Next day the Spaniards in this remote corner of the town, almost cut off from the main body of the defenders, and now battered from the rear by new works thrown up in the suburb, in and about San Lazaro, drew back and abandoned the quarter of the Tanneries, the quays, and the outer enceinte looking over the mouth of the Huerba.
On the nineteenth it was evident that the end had come: a third of the ever-dwindling force of effective men of which Palafox could dispose had been killed or captured at the storm of San Lazaro. The city was now being fired on from the north, the only side which had hitherto been safe. The epidemic was worse than ever—600 a day are said to have died during the final week of the siege. The last mills which the garrison possessed had lately been destroyed, and no more flour was issued, but unground corn, which had to be smashed up between paving-stones, or boiled and eaten as a sort of porridge. The supply of powder was beginning to run low; not from want of material to compound it, but from the laboratories having been mostly destroyed and from the greater part of the arsenal workmen having died. Only about 700 pounds a day could now be turned out, and the daily expenditure in the mines and barricades came to much more.
On this morning the French noted that at many points the defence seemed to be slackening, and that parts of the line were very feebly manned. They made more progress this day than in any earlier twenty-four hours of the siege. Their main work, however, was to run six large mines under the Coso, till they got below the houses on its further side, somewhat to the right of San Francisco. Rogniat placed 3,000 pounds of powder in each, a quantity that was calculated to blow up the whole quarter.
It was not necessary to use them. The spirits of the defenders had at last been broken, and surrender was openly spoken of—though its mention ten days earlier would have cost the life of the proposer. Palafox on his sick bed understood that all was over; he sent for General St. March and resigned the military command to him. But in order that he might not seem to be shirking his responsibility, and trying to put the ignominy of asking for terms on his successor, he sent his aide-de-camp Casseillas to Lannes, offering surrender, but demanding that the troops should march out with the honours of war and join the nearest Spanish army in the field. Then he turned his face to the wall, and prepared to die, for the fever lay heavy upon him, and broken with despair and fatigue he thought that he had not many hours to live. St. March’s appointment not being well taken—the loss of the Monte Torrero was still remembered against him—Palafox’s last act was to give over charge of the city to a Junta of thirty-three persons, mainly local notables and clergy, to whom the finishing of the negotiations would fall.
Of course Lannes sent back the Captain-General’s aide-de-camp with the message that he must ask for unconditional surrender, and that the proposal that the garrison should be allowed to depart was absurd. The fighting was resumed on the morning of the twentieth, and the French were making appreciable progress, when the Junta once more sent to ask terms from the besiegers. It was not without some bitter debate among themselves that they took this step, for there was still a minority, including St. March and the priest Padre Consolation, who wished to continue the resistance. They were backed by a section of the citizens, who began to collect and to raise angry cries of Treason. But the whole of the soldiery and the major part of the civilian defenders were prepared to yield. At four o’clock in the afternoon they sent out to ask for a twenty-four hours’ truce to settle terms of surrender. Lannes granted them two hours to send him out a deputation charged with full powers to capitulate, and ordered the bombardment and the mining to cease. His aide-de-camp, who bore the message, was nearly murdered by fanatics in the street, and was rescued with difficulty by some officers of the regular army. But the Junta sent him back with the message that the deputation should be forthcoming, and within the stipulated time eleven of its members came out from the Portillo gate, to the Marshal’s head quarters on the Calatayud road. There was not much discussion: Lannes contented himself with pointing out to the Spaniards that the place was at his mercy: he had the plan of his siege-works unrolled before them, and pointed out the position of the six great mines under the Coso, as well as those of the advanced posts which he had gained during the last two days. The deputies made some feeble attempts to secure that the name of Ferdinand VII should appear in the articles of capitulation, and that the clergy should be guaranteed immunity and undisturbed possession of their benefices. Lannes waved all such proposals aside, and dictated a form of surrender which was on the whole reasonable and even generous. The garrison should march out on the following day, and lay down its arms 100 yards outside the Portillo gate. Those who would swear homage to King Joseph should have their liberty, and might take service with him if they wished. Those who refused the oath should march as prisoners to France. The city should be granted a general pardon: the churches should be respected: private property should not be meddled with. The citizens must surrender all their weapons of whatever sort. Any civil magistrates or employés who wished to keep their places must take the oath of allegiance to King Joseph.
On the following morning the garrison marched out: of peasants and soldiers there were altogether about 8,000 men, 1,500 of whom were convalescents from the Hospitals. ‘Never had any of us gazed on a more sad or touching sight,’ writes Lejeune; ‘these sickly looking men, bearing in their bodies the seeds of the fever, all frightfully emaciated, with long black matted beards, and scarcely able to hold their weapons, dragged themselves slowly along to the sound of the drum. Their clothes were torn and dirty: everything about them bore witness to terrible misery. But in spite of their livid faces, blackened with powder, and scarred with rage and grief, they bore themselves with dignity and pride. The bright coloured sashes, the large round hats surmounted by a few cock’s-feathers which shaded their foreheads, the brown cloaks or ponchos flung over their varied costumes, lent a certain picturesqueness to their tattered garb. When the moment came for them to pile their arms and deliver up their flags, many of them gave violent expression to their despair. Their eyes gleamed with rage, and their savage looks seemed to say that they had counted our ranks, and deeply regretted having surrendered to such a small army of enemies.’
Another and more matter-of-fact eye-witness adds, ‘They were a most motley crowd of men of all ages and conditions, some in uniform, more without it. The officers were mostly mounted on mules or donkeys, and were only distinguished from the men by their three-cornered hats and their large cloaks. Many were smoking their cigarillos and talking to each other with an aspect of complete indifference. But all were not so resigned. The whole garrison, 8,000 to 10,000 strong, defiled in front of us: the majority looked so utterly unlike soldiers, that our men said openly to each other that they ought not to have taken so long or spent so much trouble in getting rid of such a rabble.’ The column was promptly put in motion for France, under the escort of two of Morlot’s regiments. Many died on the way from the fever whose seeds they carried with them. Few or none, as might have been supposed, took advantage of the offer to save themselves from captivity by taking the oath to King Joseph.
It is sad to have to confess that the French did not keep to the terms of the capitulation. That Lannes could not restrain his men from plunder, as he had promised, was hardly surprising. There were so many empty houses and churches containing valuables, that it was not to be wondered at that the victors should help themselves to all they could find. But they also plundered occupied houses, and even stole the purses of the captive officers. What was worse was that many assassinations took place, especially of clergy, for the French looked upon the priests and friars as being mainly responsible for the desperate defence. Two in especial, Padre Basilio Bogiero, the chaplain of Palafox, and Santiago Sass, a parish priest, were shot in cold blood two days after the surrender. Public opinion in the French ranks was convinced that they, more than any one else, had kept the Captain-General up to the mark. Palafox himself was treated with great brutality. As he lay apparently moribund, the French officer who had been made interim governor of Saragossa came to his bedside, and bade him to sign orders for the surrender of Jaca and Monzon. When he refused, this colonel threatened to have him shot, but left him alone when threats had no effect. Ere he was convalescent he was sent off to France, where the Emperor ordered that he should be treated, not as a prisoner of war, but as guilty of treason, and shut him up for many years as a close captive in the donjon of Vincennes.
The state in which Saragossa was found by the French hardly bears description. It was a focus of corruption, one mass of putrefying corpses. According to a report which Lannes elicited from the municipal officers, nearly 54,000 persons had died in the place since the siege began. Of these about 20,000 were fighting-men, regular or irregular, the rest were non-combatants. Only 6,000 had fallen by fire and sword: the remainder were victims of the far more deadly pestilence. A few days after the siege was ended Lannes stated that the total population of the town was now only 15,000 souls, instead of the 55,000 which it had contained when the siege began. But his estimate does not include some thousands of citizens who had fled into the open country, the moment that they were released from investment, in order to escape from the contagion in the city. ‘Il est impossible que Saragosse se relève,’ wrote the marshal; ‘cette ville fait horreur à voir.’ It was weeks indeed before the dead were all buried: months before the contagion of the siege-fever died out from the miserable city. Even after five years of the capable and benevolent government of Suchet it was still half desolate, and no attempt had been made to rebuild the third of its houses and churches which had been reduced to ashes by the mines and the bombardment.
The French losses in front of Saragossa are not easy to calculate. Belmas says that the total of casualties was about 3,000 in the infantry, but he takes no notice of the losses by siege-fever, except to say that many died from it. He does not give the losses of the artillery, except of that small part of it which was not attached either to the 3rd or to the 5th Corps. Considering that the 3rd Corps alone had 13,123 sick on January 15, and that typhus is a notoriously deadly disease, it is probable that the total losses of the French during the siege amounted to 10,000 men. It is hard otherwise to explain the difference between the 37,000 men that the 3rd Corps counted in October, and the 14,000 men which it mustered when Suchet took over its command in April. The sufferings of the 5th Corps were small in comparison, for till February began it took no very serious part in the siege, and its health was notoriously far better than that of Junot’s divisions. But we cannot be far wrong in concluding with Schepeler and Arteche that the total French loss must have been 10,000 men, rather than the 4,000 given by Napier, who is apparently relying on Rogniat. That officer gives only the casualties in battle, and not the losses in hospital.
So ended the siege of Saragossa—a magnificent display of civic courage, little helped by strategy or tactics. For Palafox, though a splendid leader of insurgents, was, as his conduct in October and November had shown, a very poor general. He made a gross initial mistake in shutting up 40,000 fighting-men in a place which could have been easily defended by 25,000. If he had sent one or two divisions to form the nucleus of an army of relief in Lower Aragon, with orders to harass, but not to fight pitched battles, it is hard to see how the siege could have been kept up. His second fault was the refusal to make sorties on a large scale during the first half of the siege, while he was still in possession of great masses of superfluous fighting-men. He sent out scores of petty sallies of a few hundred men, but never moved so many as 5,000 on a single day. Such a policy worried but could not seriously harm the French, while it destroyed the willing men of the garrison; if the Captain-General had saved up all the volunteers whom he lost by tens and twenties in small and fruitless attacks on the trenches, he could have built up with them a column-head that would have pierced through the French line at any point that he chose. Anything might have been done during the three weeks while Mortier was at Calatayud, and especially during the days when Gazan with his 8,000 men was cut off by the floods, and isolated on the further bank of the Ebro.
The Captain-General’s conduct, in short, was not that of a capable officer. But it is absurd to endeavour to represent him as a coward, or as a puppet whose strings were pulled by fanatical friars. He knew perfectly well what he was doing, and how to manage the disorderly but enthusiastic masses of the population. There can be no doubt that his personal influence was all-important, and the effect of his constant harangues and proclamations immense. It would be quite as true to say that the friars and the mob-orators were his tools, as that he was theirs. He had to humour them, but by humouring them he got out of them the utmost possible service. Against the stories that his proclamations were written for him, and that he had to be goaded into issuing every order that came from his head quarters, we have the evidence of Vaughan and others who knew him well. It is unanimous in ascribing to him incessant activity and an exuberant fluency in composition. Arteche has preserved some minutes on the siege which he wrote long after the Peninsular War was over: they are interesting and well-stated, but more creditable to him as a patriot than as a military man. There can be no doubt that the garrison might have been much more wisely handled: but it is doubtful whether under any other direction it would have shown so much energy and staying power. There is certainly no other Spanish siege, save that of Gerona, where half so much resolution was shown. If the defence had been conducted by regular officers and troops alone, the place would probably have fallen three weeks earlier. If the monks and local demagogues had been in command, and patriotic anarchy alone had been opposed to the French, Saragossa would possibly have fallen at an even earlier date, from mere want of intelligent direction. Palafox, with all his faults, supplied the connecting link between the two sections of the defenders, and kept the soldiery to work by means of the example of the citizens, while he restrained the citizens by dint of his immense personal influence over them, won in the first siege. In short, he may have been vain, bombastic, and a bad tactician, but he was a good Spaniard. If there had been a few dozen men more of his stamp in Spain, the task of the French in 1808-9 would have been infinitely more difficult. The example of Saragossa was invaluable to the nation and to Europe. The knowledge of it did much to sicken the French soldiery of the whole war, and to make every officer and man who entered Spain march, not with the light heart that he felt in Germany or Italy, but with gloom and disgust and want of confidence. They never failed to do their duty, but they fought without the enthusiasm which helped them so much in all the earlier wars of the Empire.
THE ROUT OF CIUDAD REAL
By the middle of the month of February, as we have already seen, Andalusia was once more covered by two considerable Spanish armies: Cartaojal, with the wrecks of Infantado’s host and the new levies of Del Palacio, was holding the great passes at the eastern end of the Sierra Morena. Cuesta had rallied behind the Guadiana the remains of the army of Estremadura. He was at present engaged in reducing it to order by the only method of which he was master, the shooting of any soldier who showed signs of disobedience or mutiny. The army deserved nothing better: its dastardly murder of its unfortunate general in December justified any amount of severity in his successor.
Meanwhile Victor, after his victory at Ucles, and his vain attempt to surprise Del Palacio, had passed away to the west, leaving nothing in the plains of La Mancha save the dragoons of Milhaud and Latour-Maubourg, who were placed as a cavalry screen across the roads to the south, with their divisional head quarters at Oca?a and Madridejos respectively.
The Marshal drew back to the valley of the Tagus, and marched by Toledo on Almaraz; this was in strict execution of the plan dictated by Napoleon before he left Spain. It will be remembered that he had directed that, when the February rains were over, Victor should move on Badajoz, to assist by his presence in that direction the projected attack of Soult on Lisbon. Only when Estremadura and Portugal had been subdued was the attack on Andalusia to be carried out. Soult, as we shall see, was (by no fault of his own) much slower in his movements than Napoleon had expected, and Victor waited in vain at Talavera for any news that the invasion of Portugal was in progress. Hence the Spaniards gained some weeks of respite: the ranks of their armies were filled up, and the spirits of their generals rose.
Cartaojal remained for some time at La Carolina, reorganizing and recruiting the depleted and half-starved battalions which Infantado had handed over to him. He had expected to be attacked by Victor, but when he learnt that the Marshal had gone off to Toledo, and that La Mancha was covered only by a thin line of cavalry, he began to dream of resuming the offensive. Such a policy was most unwise: it shows that Cartaojal, like so many other Spanish generals, was still possessed with the fatal mania for grand operations and pitched battles. He had in his head nothing less than a plan for thrusting back the cavalry screen opposite to him, and for recovering the whole of La Mancha. If Victor’s corps had been the only force available to oppose him, there would have been something to say for the plan. An advance on Toledo and Madrid must have brought back the Duke of Belluno from his advance towards Estremadura. But, as a matter of fact, Jourdan and King Joseph had not left the roads to La Mancha unguarded: they had drafted down from Madrid two infantry divisions of the 4th Corps, whose command Sebastiani had now taken over from Lefebvre. The first division lay at Toledo: the third (Valence’s Poles) at Aranjuez; thus the former supported Latour-Maubourg, the latter Milhaud.
Ignorant, apparently, of the fact that there was anything but cavalry in his front, Cartaojal resolved to beat up the French outposts. With this object he told off half his infantry and two-thirds of his horse, under the Duke of Albuquerque, a gallant and enterprising, but somewhat reckless, officer, of whom we shall hear much during the next two years of the war. Marching with speed and secrecy, Albuquerque, with 2,000 horse and 9,000 infantry, fell upon Digeon’s brigade of dragoons at Mora on February 18. He tried to cut it off with his cavalry, while he attacked it in front with his foot. But Digeon saw the danger in time, and fell back in haste, after losing a few men of the 20th Dragoons and some of his baggage. His demand for assistance promptly brought down Sebastiani, with the 1st division of the 4th Corps, and the two remaining brigades of Latour-Maubourg’s cavalry. The moment that he heard that a heavy force had arrived in his front, Albuquerque retired as far as Consuegra, where the French caught up his rear, and inflicted some loss upon it. He then fell still further back, crossed the Guadiana, and took post at Manzanares. Sebastiani did not pursue him beyond Consuegra, giving as his excuse the exhausted condition of the country-side.
Cartaojal meanwhile, with the rest of his army, had come up from the passes to Ciudad Real, following in wake of Albuquerque’s advance. When he met with his lieutenant they fell to quarrelling, both as to what had already occurred, and as to what should now be done, for the Duke was anxious to induce his chief to make a general advance on Toledo, while Cartaojal desired him to take a single division of infantry and to try the adventure himself. While they were disputing, orders came from the Supreme Junta that troops were to be detached from the Army of La Mancha to strengthen that of Estremadura. Cartaojal took the opportunity of getting rid of Albuquerque, by putting him at the head of the detachment which was to be sent to Cuesta. The Duke, not loth to depart, went off with a division of 4,500 infantry and a regiment of cavalry, and marched down the Guadiana into Estremadura.
Cartaojal remained for the first three weeks of March at Ciudad Real and Manzanares with the main body of his force, about 2,500 horse and 10,000 foot, keeping behind him, at the foot of the passes, a reserve of 4,000 men under La Pe?a. This was tempting providence, for he was now aware that the whole 4th Corps, as well as a great mass of cavalry, was in front of him, and that he might be attacked at any moment. His position, too, was a faulty one; he had descended into the very midst of the broad plain of La Mancha, and had occupied as his head quarters an open town, easy to turn on either flank, and with a perfectly fordable river as its sole defence. As if this peril was not sufficient, Cartaojal suddenly resolved that he would make the dash at Toledo which Albuquerque had proposed to him, though he had refused to send his whole army against that point when the scheme was pressed upon him by his late second-in-command. The nearest hostile troops to him were a regiment of Polish lancers, belonging to Lasalle’s division, which lay at Yébenes, twenty miles outside Toledo. Making a swift stroke at this force, while it was far from expecting any advance on his part, Cartaojal drove it in, killing or taking nearly 100 of the Poles (March 24). But Sebastiani came up to their aid with an infantry division and three regiments of Milhaud’s dragoons. The Spaniard refused to accept battle, and fell hastily back to Ciudad Real, where he established his whole army behind the river Guadiana, in and about the open town. He was most unsafe in the midst of the vast plain, and was soon to rue his want of caution. Sebastiani had been joined by his Polish division and by part of his corps-cavalry, and having some 12,000 or 13,000 men in hand, had resolved to pay back on Cartaojal the beating up of his outpost at Yébenes. On March 26, Milhaud’s division of dragoons seized the bridge of Peralvillo, close to Ciudad Real, and crossed to the southern bank of the Guadiana. The Spanish general called up all his cavalry, and some of his foot, and marched to drive the dragoons back. They withdrew across the water, but still held the bridge, behind which they had planted their artillery. Next morning Sebastiani’s infantry came up, and he determined to attack Ciudad Real. Cartaojal, who was taken completely off his guard, was suddenly informed that column after column was pressing across the bridge and marching against him. He did not dream for a moment of fighting, but gave orders for an instant retreat towards the passes. He threw out his cavalry and horse artillery to cover the withdrawal of his infantry, who hurried away in half a dozen small bodies across the interminable plain. Sebastiani charged the Spanish horse with his Polish lancers and Dutch hussars, supported by Milhaud’s dragoons. The covering force broke and fled, and the pursuers came up with several of the columns of the retreating infantry. Some of them were dispersed, others were surrounded and taken prisoners. The pursuit was continued next morning, till it was interrupted by a fearful burst of rain, which darkened the horizon, hid the fugitives, and stopped the chase, or Cartaojal’s army might have been entirely destroyed. He lost in this rout, which it would be absurd to call a battle, five guns, three standards, and more than 2,000 prisoners, among whom were sixty-one officers. The loss in killed and wounded was probably not very great, for there had been no attempt at a stand, and the troops which were cut off had surrendered without resistance. The loss of the French was insignificant, probably less than 100 men in all. They had stayed their pursuit at Santa Cruz de Mudela, from whence they returned to Ciudad Real, where they lived on the magazines which Cartaojal had collected before his unfortunate march on Yébenes. Sebastiani dared not follow the fugitives into the mountains, as he had received orders to clear La Mancha, but not to invade Andalusia: that was to be the task of Victor.
Cartaojal recrossed the Despe?a Perros, and established his head quarters at Sta Elena, in front of La Carolina. His army had been more frightened than hurt, and when the stragglers came in, still numbered 2,000 horse and 12,000 infantry. But he was not allowed to retain its command. Justly indignant at the carelessness with which he had allowed himself to be surprised in front of Ciudad Real, and at his general mismanagement, the Supreme Junta deposed him, and replaced him by Venegas, though the record of the latter’s operations at Ucles was hardly encouraging to the soldiery. By the middle of April the army had been reinforced by new Granadan levies, and could take the field, although its state of discipline was bad and its morale much shaken by the late events.
OPERATIONS IN ARAGON: ALCA?IZ AND BELCHITE
(MARCH-JUNE 1809)
When, upon February 20, the plague-stricken remnant of the much-enduring garrison of Saragossa laid down their arms at the feet of Lannes, it seemed probable that the whole of North-Eastern Spain must fall a helpless prey to the invader. The time had come when the 3rd and the 5th Corps, freed from the long strain of the siege, were once more available for field-operations. For the last two months almost every dispatch that the Emperor or King Joseph wrote, had been filled with plans and projects that began with the words ‘When Saragossa shall have fallen.’ If only Palafox and his desperate bands were removed, it would be easy to trample down Aragon, to take Catalonia in the rear, and finally to march to the gates of Valencia, and end the struggle on the eastern coast.
Now at last the 30,000 men of Mortier and Junot could be turned to other tasks, and there seemed to be every reason to expect that they would suffice to carry out the Emperor’s designs. There was no army which could be opposed to them, for, only a few days after the capitulation of Saragossa, Reding had risked and lost the battle of Valls, and the wrecks of his host had taken refuge within the walls of Tarragona.
The only surviving Spanish force which was under arms in the valley of the Ebro consisted of the single division, not more than 4,000 strong, under the Marquis of Lazan. After his vain attempt to come to the rescue of Saragossa in the early days of February, Lazan had drawn back to Fraga and Monzon, forced to look on from afar at the last stage of his brother’s desperate resistance. In the rest of the kingdom of Aragon there were but two or three scattered battalions of new levies, and some guerrilla bands under Perena and other chiefs.
The mistaken policy which had led Joseph Palafox to shut up in Saragossa not only his own army but also the succours which he had procured from Valencia and Murcia, now bore its fruit. There was no force left which could take the field against the victorious army of Lannes. It seemed therefore that the war in Aragon must come to a speedy end: the French had but to advance and the whole kingdom must fall into their hands. The national cause, however, was not quite so desperate as might have been supposed. Here, as in other regions of Spain, it was ere long to be discovered that it was one thing to destroy a Spanish army, and another to hold down a Spanish province. A French corps that was irresistible when concentrated on the field of battle, became vulnerable when forced to divide itself into the number of small garrisons that were needed for the permanent retention of the territory that it had won. Though the capital of Aragon and its chief towns were to remain in the hands of the enemy for the next five years, yet there were always rugged corners of the land where the struggle was kept up and the invader baffled and held in check.
Yet immediately after the fall of Saragossa it seemed for a space that Aragon might settle down beneath the invader’s heel. Lannes, whose health was still bad, returned to France, but Mortier and Junot, who now once more resumed that joint responsibility that they had shared in December, went forth conquering and to conquer. They so divided their efforts that the 5th Corps operated for the most part to the north, and the 3rd Corps to the south of the Ebro, though occasionally their lines of operations crossed each other.
The kingdom of Aragon consists of three well-marked divisions. On each side of the Ebro there is a wide and fertile plain, generally some thirty miles broad. But to the north and the south of this rich valley lie range on range of rugged hills. Those on the north are the lower spurs of the Pyrenees: those to the south form part of the great central ganglion of the Sierras of Central Spain, which lies just where Aragon, Valencia, and New Castile meet.
The valley of the Ebro gave the French little trouble: it was not a region that could easily offer resistance, for it was destitute of all natural defences. Moreover, the flower of its manhood had been enrolled in the battalions which had perished at Saragossa, and few were left in the country-side who were capable of bearing arms—still fewer who possessed them. The plain of Central Aragon lay exhausted at the victor’s feet. It was otherwise with the mountains of the north and the south, which contain some of the most difficult ground in the whole of Spain. There the rough and sturdy hill-folk found every opportunity for resistance, and when once they had learnt by experience the limitations of the invader’s power, were able to keep up a petty warfare without an end. Partisans like Villacampa in the southern hills, and Mina in the Pyrenean valleys along the edge of Navarre, succeeded in maintaining themselves against every expedition that was sent against them. Always hunted, often brought to bay, they yet were never crushed or destroyed.
But in March 1809 the Aragonese had not yet recognized their own opportunities: the disaster of Saragossa had struck such a deep blow that apathy and despair seemed to have spread over the greater part of the kingdom. When Mortier and Junot, after giving their corps a short rest, began to spread movable columns abroad, there was at first no resistance. The inaccessible fortress of Jaca in the foot-hills of the Pyrenees surrendered at the first summons; its garrison was only 500 strong, yet it should have made some sort of defence against a force consisting of no more than a single regiment of Mortier’s corps, without artillery. .] The fall of this place was important, as it commands the only pass in the Central Pyrenees which is anything better than mule-track. Though barely practicable for artillery or light vehicles, it was useful for communication between Saragossa and France, and gave the French army of Aragon a line of communication of its own, independent of the long and circuitous route by Tudela and Pampeluna.
Other columns of Mortier’s corps marched against Monzon and Fraga, the chief towns in the valley of the Cinca. On their approach the Marquis of Lazan retired down the Ebro to Tortosa, and both towns were occupied without offering resistance. Another column marched against Mequinenza, the fortress at the junction of the Ebro and Segre: here, however, they met with opposition; the place was only protected by antiquated sixteenth-century fortifications, but it twice refused to surrender, though on the second occasion Mortier himself appeared before its walls with a whole brigade. The Marshal did not besiege it, deferring this task till he should have got all of Eastern Aragon well in hand. At this same time he made an attempt to open communications with St. Cyr in Catalonia, sending a regiment of cavalry under Colonel Briche to strike across the mountains beyond the Segre in search of the 7th Corps. Briche executed half his mission, for by great good fortune combined with very rapid movement, he slipped between Lerida and Mequinenza, got down into the coast-plain and met Chabot’s division of St. Cyr’s army at Montblanch. When, however, he tried to return to Aragon, in order to convey to the Duke of Treviso the information as to the distribution of the 7th Corps, he was beset by the somatenes, who were now on the alert. So vigorously was he assailed that he was forced to turn back and seek refuge with Chabot. Thus Mortier gained none of the news that he sought, and very naturally came to the conclusion that his flying column had been captured or cut to pieces.
Meanwhile Junot and the 3rd Corps were operating south of the Ebro. The Duke of Abrantes sent one of his three divisions (that of Grandjean) against Caspe, Alca?iz, and the valleys of the Guadalope and Martin, while another (that of Musnier) moved out against the highlands of the south, and the mountain-towns of Daroca and Molina. Most of the battalions of his third division, that of Morlot, were still engaged in guarding on their way to France the prisoners of Saragossa.
Of the two expeditions which Junot sent out, that which entered the mountains effected little. It lost several small detachments, cut off by the local insurgents, and though it ultimately penetrated as far as Molina, it was unable to hold the place. The whole population had fled, and after remaining there only six days, the French were forced to return to the plains by want of food. The Aragonese at once came back to their former position.
Grandjean, who had moved against Alca?iz, had at first more favourable fortune. He overran with great ease all the low-lying country south of the Ebro, and met with so little opposition that he resolved to push his advance even beyond the borders of Valencia. Accordingly he ascended the valley of the Bercantes, and appeared before Morella, the frontier town of that kingdom, on March 18. The place was strong, but there was only a very small garrison in charge of it, which retired after a slight skirmish, abandoning the fortress and a large store of food and equipment. If Grandjean could have held Morella, he would have secured for the French army a splendid base for further operations. But he had left many men behind him at Caspe and Alca?iz, and had but a few battalions in hand. He had gone too far forward to be safe, and when the Junta of Valencia sent against him the whole of the forces that they could collect—some 5,000 men under General Roca—he was compelled to evacuate Morella and to fall back on Alca?iz.
Mortier and Junot were concerting a joint movement for the completion of the conquest of Eastern Aragon, and an advance against Tortosa, when orders from Paris suddenly changed the whole face of affairs. The Emperor saw that war with Austria was inevitable and imminent: disquieted as to the strength of the new enemy, he resolved to draw troops from Spain to reinforce the army of the Danube. The only corps which seemed to him available was that of Mortier, and on April 5 he ordered that the Duke of Treviso should concentrate his troops and draw back to Tudela and Logro?o. It might still prove to be unnecessary to remove the 5th Corps from the Peninsula; but at Logro?o it would be within four marches of France if the Emperor discovered that he had need of its services in the north. On the same day Napoleon removed Junot from his command, probably on account of the numerous complaints as to his conduct sent in by King Joseph. To replace him General Suchet, the commander of one of Mortier’s divisions, was directed to take charge of the 3rd Corps.
Ten days later the imperial mandate reached Saragossa, and on receiving it Mortier massed his troops and marched away to Tudela. We have already seen that his corps was never withdrawn from Spain, but merely moved from Aragon to Old Castile. But its departure completely changed the balance of fortune on the Lower Ebro. The number of French troops in that direction was suddenly reduced by one half, and the 3rd Corps had to spread itself out to the north, in order to take over all the positions evacuated by Mortier. It was far too weak for the duty committed to its charge, and at this moment it had not even received back the brigade sent to guard the Saragossa prisoners, which (it will be remembered) had been called off and lent to Kellermann. There were hardly 15,000 troops left in the whole kingdom of Aragon, and these were dispersed in small bodies, with the design of holding down as much ground as possible. The single division of Grandjean had to cover the whole line from Barbastro to Alca?iz—places seventy miles apart—with less than 5,000 bayonets. The second division, Musnier’s, with its head quarters at Saragossa, had to watch the mountains of Upper Aragon. Of the 3rd division, that of Morlot, the few battalions that were available were garrisoning Jaca and Tudela, on the borders of Navarre. No sooner had Mortier’s corps departed, than a series of small reverses occurred, the inevitable results of the attempt to hold down large districts with an inadequate force. Junot, who was still retained in command till his successor should arrive, seemed to lack the courage to draw in his exposed detachments: probably his heart was no longer in the business, since he was under sentence of recall. Yet he had six weeks of work before him, for by some mischance the dispatch nominating Suchet to take his place reached Saragossa after that general had marched off at the head of his old division of Mortier’s corps. Cross-communication being tardy and difficult, it failed to catch him up till he had reached Valladolid. Returning from thence with a slow-moving escort of infantry, Suchet did not succeed in joining his corps till May 19. He found it in a desperate situation, for the last four weeks had seen an almost unbroken series of petty reverses, and it looked as if the whole of Aragon was about to slip out of the hands of the French. It was fortunate for the 3rd Corps that its new commander, though hitherto he had never been placed in a position of independent responsibility, proved to be a man of courage and resource—perhaps indeed the most capable of all the French generals who took part in the Peninsular War. A timid or unskilful leader might have lost Aragon, and imperilled the hold of King Joseph on Madrid. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the entire French position in Spain would have been gravely compromised if during the last weeks of May the 3rd Corps had been under the charge of a less skilful and self-reliant commander.
In the month that elapsed before Suchet’s arrival the consequences of the withdrawal of the 5th Corps from the Lower Ebro were making themselves felt. The Aragonese were not slow to discover the decrease in the numbers of the invaders, and to note the long distances that now intervened between post and post. The partisans who had retired into Catalonia, or had taken refuge in the mountains of the south and the north, began to descend into the plains and to fall upon the outlying French detachments. On May 6 Colonel Perena came out of Lerida, and beset the detachment of Grandjean’s division which held the town and fortress of Monzon, with a horde of peasants and some Catalan miqueletes. The governor, Solnicki, thereupon fell back to Barbastro, the head quarters of Habert’s brigade. That general considered that he was in duty bound to retake Monzon, and marched against it with six battalions and a regiment of cuirassiers. He tried to cross the Cinca, not opposite the town, but much lower down the stream, at the ferry of Pomar. But just as his vanguard had established itself on the other bank, a sudden storm caused such a rising of the waters that its communication with the main body was completely cut off. Thereupon Habert marched northward, and tried to force a passage at Monzon, so as to secure a line of retreat for his lost detachment. The bridge of that town however had been barricaded, and the castle garrisoned: Habert was held at bay, and the 1,000 men who had crossed at the ferry of Pomar were all cut off and forced to surrender. After marching for three days among the insurgents, and vainly endeavouring to force their way through the horde, they had to lay down their arms when their cartridges had all been exhausted. Only the cuirassiers escaped, by swimming the river when the flood had begun to abate, and found their way back to Barbastro.
In consequence of this disaster the French lost their grip on the valley of the Cinca, for the insurgents, under Perena and the Catalan chief Baget, moved forward into the Sierra de Alcubierre and raised the whole country-side in their aid. Habert, fearing to be cut off from Saragossa, thereupon retired to Villafranca on the Ebro, and abandoned all North-Eastern Aragon.
Meanwhile the other brigade of Grandjean’s division, which still lay at Alca?iz, south of the Ebro, was also driven in by the Spaniards. Its commander Laval was attacked by a large force coming from Tortosa, and was forced to draw back to San Per and Hijar . At the news of his retreat all the hill-country of Southern Aragon took arms, and the bands from Molina and the other mountain-cities extended their raids down the valley of the Huerta and almost to the gates of Saragossa.
The Spanish force which had seized Alca?iz was no mere body of armed peasants, but a small regular army. General Blake had just been given the post of commander-in-chief of all the forces of the Coronilla—the old kingdom of Aragon and its dependencies, Valencia and Catalonia. Burning to atone for his defeats at Zornoza and Espinosa by some brilliant feat of arms, he was doing his best to collect a new ‘Army of the Right.’ From Catalonia he could draw little or nothing: the troops which had fought under Reding at Valls were still cooped up in Tarragona, and unfit for field-service. But Blake had concentrated at Tortosa the division of the Marquis of Lazan—the sole surviving fraction of the old Army of Aragon—and the troops which he could draw from Valencia. These last consisted at this moment of no more than the reorganized division of Roca from the old ‘Army of the Centre.’ Its depleted cadres had been sent back by Infantado from Cuenca, and the Junta had shot into them a mass of recruits, who in a few weeks had raised the strength of the division from 1,500 to 5,000 bayonets. Other regiments were being raised in Valencia, but in the early weeks of May they were not yet ready for the field, though by June they gave Blake a reinforcement of nearly 12,000 men. Murcia could provide in May only one single battalion for Blake’s assistance: all its field army had perished at Saragossa. The total force of the new ‘Army of the Right’ when it advanced against Alca?iz was less than 10,000 men—the Valencians in its ranks outnumbered the Aragonese by four to three.
When Suchet therefore arrived at Saragossa on May 19, and took over the command of the 3rd Corps from the hands of Junot, the prospect seemed a gloomy one for the French. Their outlying detachments had been forced back to the neighbourhood of Saragossa: the central reserve (Musnier’s two brigades) was small: the third division (with the exception of one regiment) was still absent—one of its brigades was with Kellermann in Leon, and some detachments were scattered among the garrisons of Navarre. After the sick and the absent had been deducted, Suchet found that he had not much more than 10,000 men under arms, though the nominal force of the 3rd Corps was still about 20,000 sabres and bayonets. Nor was it only in numbers that the Army of Aragon was weak: its morale also left much to be desired. The newly-formed regiments which composed more than half of the infantry were in a deplorable condition, a natural consequence of the haste with which they had been organized and sent into the field. Having been originally composed of companies drawn from many quarters, they still showed a mixture of uniforms of different cut and colour, which gave them a motley appearance and, according to their commander, degraded them in their own eyes and lowered their self-respect. They had not yet fully recovered from the physical and moral strain of the siege of Saragossa. Their pay was in arrear, the military chest empty, the food procured from day to day by marauding. There was much grumbling among the officers, who complained that the promotions and rewards due for the capture of Saragossa had almost all been reserved for the 5th Corps. The guerrilla warfare of the last few weeks had disgusted the rank and file, who thought that Junot had been mismanaging them, and knew absolutely nothing of the successor who had just replaced him. The whole corps, says Suchet, was dejected and discontented.
Nevertheless there was no time to rest or reorganize these sullen battalions: the Spaniards were pressing in so close that it was necessary to attack them at all costs: the only other alternative would have been to abandon Saragossa. Such a step, though perhaps theoretically justifiable under the circumstances, would have ruined Suchet’s military career, and was far from his thoughts. Only two days after he had assumed the command of the corps, he marched out with Musnier’s division to join Laval’s troops at Hijar. He had sent orders to Habert to cross the Ebro and follow him as fast as he was able: but that general, who was still on the march from Barbastro to Villafranca, did not receive the dispatch in time, and failed to join his chief before the oncoming battle.
On May 23, however, Suchet, with Musnier’s and Laval’s men, presented himself in front of Blake’s position at Alca?iz. He had fourteen battalions and five squadrons with him—a force in all of about 8,000 men, with eighteen guns. He found the Spaniards ready and willing to fight. They were drawn up on a line of hills to the east of Alca?iz, covering that town and its bridge. Their position was good from a tactical point of view, but extremely dangerous when considered strategically: for Blake had been tempted by the strong ground into fighting with the river Guadalope at his back, and had no way of crossing it save by the single bridge of Alca?iz and a bad ford. It was an exact reproduction of the deplorable order of battle that the Russians had adopted at Friedland in 1807, though not destined to lead to any such disaster. The northern and highest of the three hills occupied by the Spaniards, that called the Cerro de los Pueyos, was held by the Aragonese troops. On the central height, called the hill of Las Horcas, was placed the whole of the Spanish artillery—nineteen guns—guarded by three Valencian battalions: this part of the line was immediately in front of the bridge of Alca?iz, the sole line of retreat. The southern and lowest hill, that of La Perdiguera, was held by Roca and the rest of the Valencians, and flanked by the small body of cavalry—only 400 sabres—which Blake possessed. The whole army, not quite 9,000 strong, outnumbered the enemy by less than 800 bayonets, though in French narratives it is often stated at 12,000 or 15,000 men.
Suchet seems to have found some difficulty at first in making out the Spanish position—the hills hid from him the bridge and town of Alca?iz, whose position in rear of Blake’s centre was the dominant military fact of the situation. At any rate, he spent the whole morning in tentative movements, and only delivered his main stroke in the afternoon. He began by sending Laval’s brigade against the dominating hill on the right flank of the Spanish position. Two assaults were made upon the Cerro de los Pueyos, which Suchet in his autobiography calls feints, but which Blake considered so serious that he sent off to this flank two battalions from his left wing and the whole of his cavalry. Whether intended as mere demonstrations or as a real attack, these movements had no success, and were repelled by General Areizaga, the commander of the Aragonese, without much difficulty. The Spanish cavalry, however, was badly mauled by Suchet’s hussars when it tried to deliver a flank charge upon the enemy at the moment that he retired.
When all the fighting on the northern extremity of the line had died down, Suchet launched his main attack against Blake’s centre, hoping (as he says) to break the line, seize the bridge of Alca?iz, which lay just behind the hill of Las Horcas, and thus to capture the greater part of the Spanish wings, which would have no line of retreat. The attack was delivered by two of Musnier’s regiments formed in columns of battalions, and acting in a single mass—a force of over 2,600 men. A column of this strength often succeeded in bursting through a Spanish line during the Peninsular War. But on this day Suchet was unlucky, or his troops did not display the usual élan of French infantry. They advanced steadily enough across the flat ground, and began to climb the hill, in spite of the rapid and accurate fire of the artillery which crowned its summit. But when the fire of musketry from the Spanish left began to beat upon their flank, and the guns opened with grape, the attacking columns came to a standstill at the line of a ditch cut in the slope. Their officers made every effort to carry them forward for the few hundred yards that separated them from the Spanish guns, but the mass wavered, surged helplessly for a few minutes under the heavy fire, and then dispersed and fled in disorder. Suchet rallied them behind the five intact battalions which he still possessed, but refused to renew the attack, and drew off ere night. He himself had been wounded in the foot at the close of the action, and his troops had suffered heavily—their loss must have been at least 700 or 800 men. Blake, who had lost no more than 300, did not attempt to pursue, fearing to expose his troops in the plain to the assaults of the French cavalry.
The morale of the 3rd Corps had been so much shaken by its unsuccessful début under its new commander, that a panic broke out after dark among Laval’s troops, who fled in all directions, on a false alarm that the Spanish cavalry had attacked and captured the rearguard. Next morning the army poured into San Per and Hijar in complete disorder, and some hours had to be spent in restoring discipline. Suchet discovered the man who had started the cry of sauve qui peut, and had him shot before the day was over.
The French had expected to be pursued, and many critics have blamed Blake for not making the most of his victory and following the defeated enemy at full speed. The Spanish general, however, had good reasons for his quiescence: he saw that Suchet’s force was almost as large as his own; he could not match the French in cavalry; and having noted the orderly fashion in which they had left the battle-field, he could not have guessed that during the night they would disband in panic. Moreover—and this was the most important point—he was expecting to receive in a few days reinforcements from Valencia which would more than double his numbers. Till they had come up he would not move, but contented himself with sending the news of Alca?iz all over Aragon and stimulating the activity of the insurgents. As he had hoped, the results of his victory were important—the French had to evacuate every outlying post that they possessed, and the whole of the open country passed into the hands of the patriots. Perena and the insurgents of the north bank of the Ebro pressed close in to Saragossa: other bands threatened the high-road to Tudela: thousands of recruits flocked into Blake’s camp, but he was unfortunately unable to arm or utilize them.
Within a few days, however, he began to receive the promised reinforcements from Valencia—a number of fresh regiments from the rear, and drafts for the corps that were already with him. He also used his authority as supreme commander in Catalonia to draw some reinforcements from that principality—three battalions of Reding’s Granadan troops and one of miqueletes: no more could be spared from in front of the active St. Cyr. Within three weeks after his victory of Alca?iz he had collected an army of 25,000 men, and considered himself strong enough to commence the march upon Saragossa. It was in his power to advance directly upon the city by the high-road along the Ebro, and to challenge Suchet to a battle outside its southern gates. He did not, however, make this move, but with a caution that he did not often display, kept to the mountains and marched by a side-road to Belchite . Here he received news of Napoleon’s check at Essling, which had happened on the twenty-second of the preceding month; it was announced as a complete and crushing defeat of the Emperor, and encouraged the Spaniards in no small degree.
From Belchite Blake, still keeping to the mountains, pursued his march eastward to Villanueva in the valley of the Huerba. This move revealed his design; he was about to place himself in a position from which he could threaten Suchet’s lines of communication with Tudela and Logro?o, and so compel him either to abandon Saragossa without fighting, or to come out and attack the Spanish army among the hills. Blake, in short, was trying to man?uvre his enemy out of Saragossa, or to induce him to fight another offensive action such as that of Alca?iz had been. After the experience of May 25 he thought that he could trust his army to hold its ground, though he was not willing to risk an advance in the open, across the level plain in front of Saragossa.
Suchet meanwhile had concentrated his whole available force in that city and its immediate neighbourhood; he had drawn in every man save a single column of two battalions, which was lying at La Muela under General Fabre, with orders to keep back the insurgents of the southern mountains from making a dash at Alagon and cutting the high-road to Tudela. He had been writing letters to Madrid, couched in the most urgent terms, to beg for reinforcements. But just at this moment the Asturian expedition had drawn away to the north all the troops in Old Castile. King Joseph could do no more than promise that the two regiments from the 3rd Corps which had been lent to Kellermann should be summoned back, and directed to make forced marches on Saragossa. He could spare nothing save these six battalions, believing it impossible to deplete the garrison of Madrid, or to draw from Valladolid the single division of Mortier’s corps, which was at this moment the only solid force remaining in the valley of the Douro.
Suchet was inclined to believe that he might be attacked before this small reinforcement of 3,000 men could arrive, and feared that, with little more than 10,000 sabres and bayonets, he would risk defeat if he attacked Blake in the mountains. The conduct of his troops in and after the battle of Alca?iz had not tended to make him hopeful of the result of another action of the same kind. Nevertheless, when Blake came down into the valley of the Huerba, and began to threaten his communications, he resolved that he must fight once again; the alternative course, the evacuation of Saragossa and a retreat up the Ebro, would have been too humiliating. Suchet devoted the three weeks of respite which the slow advance of the enemy allowed him to the reorganization of his corps. He made strenuous exertions to clothe it, and to provide it with its arrears of pay. He inspected every regiment in person, sought out and remedied grievances, displaced a number of unsatisfactory officers, and promoted many deserving individuals. He claims that the improvement in the morale of the troops during the three weeks when they lay encamped at Saragossa was enormous, and his statements may be verified in the narrative of one of his subordinates, who remarks that neither Moncey nor Junot had ever shown that keen personal interest in the corps which Suchet always displayed, and that the troops considered their new chief both more genial and more business-like than any general they had hitherto seen, and so resolved to do their best for him.
Forced to fight, but not by any means confident of victory, the French commander discharged on to Tudela and Pampeluna his sick, his heavy baggage, and his parks, before marching out to meet Blake upon June 14. The enemy, though still clinging to the skirts of the hills, had now moved so close to Saragossa that it was clear that he must be attacked at once, though Suchet would have preferred to wait a few days longer, till he should have rallied the brigade from Old Castile. These two regiments, under Colonel Robert, had now passed Tudela, and were expected to arrive on the fifteenth or sixteenth. But Blake had now descended the valley of the Huerba, and had pushed his outposts to within ten or twelve miles of Saragossa. He had reorganized his army into three divisions, one of which (mainly composed of Aragonese troops) was placed under General Areizaga, while Roca and the Marquis of Lazan headed the two others, in which the Valencian levies predominated. Of the total of 25,000 men which the muster-rolls showed, 20,000 were in line: the rest were detached or in hospital. There were about 1,000 untrustworthy cavalry and twenty-five guns.
In his final advance down the Huerba, Blake moved in two columns. Areizaga’s division kept to the right bank and halted at Botorrita, some sixteen miles from Saragossa. The Commander-in-chief, with the other two divisions, marched on the left bank, and pushing further forward than his lieutenant, reached the village of Maria, twelve miles from the south-western front of the city. A distance of six or seven miles separated the two corps. Thus Blake had taken the strategical offensive, but was endeavouring to retain the tactical defensive, by placing himself in a position where the enemy must attack him. But he seems to have made a grave mistake in keeping his columns so far apart, on different roads and with a river between them. It should have been his object to make sure that every man was on the field when the critical moment should arrive.
Already on the morning of the fourteenth the two armies came into contact. Musnier’s division met the Spanish vanguard, thrust it back some way, but then came upon Blake and the main body, and had to give ground. Suchet, on the same evening, established his head quarters at the Abbey of Santa Fé, and there dictated his orders for the battle of the following day. Having ascertained that Areizaga’s division was the weaker of the two Spanish columns, he left opposite it, on the Monte Torrero, a mile and a half outside Saragossa, only a single brigade—five battalions—under General Laval, who had now become the commander of the 1st Division, for Grandjean had been sent back to France. Protected by the line of the canal of Aragon, these 2,000 men were to do their best to beat off any attack which Areizaga might make against the city, while the main bodies of both armies were engaged elsewhere. The charge of Saragossa itself was given over to Colonel Haxo, who had but a single battalion of infantry and the sapper-companies of the army.
Having set aside these 3,000 men to guard his flank and rear, Suchet could only bring forward Musnier’s division, and the remaining brigade of Laval’s division (that of Habert), with two other battalions, for the main attack. But he retained with himself the whole of his cavalry and all his artillery, save one single battery left with the troops on Monte Torrero. This gave him fourteen battalions—about 7,500 infantry—800 horse, and twelve guns—less than 9,000 men in all—to commence the battle. But he was encouraged to risk an attack by the news that the brigade from Tudela was now close at hand, and could reach the field by noon with 3,000 bayonets more. It would seem that Suchet (though he does not say so in his Mémoires) held back during the morning hours, in order to allow this heavy reserve time to reach the fighting-ground.
Blake was in order of battle along the line of a rolling hill separated from the French lines by less than a mile. Behind his front were two other similar spurs of the Sierra de la Muela, each separated from the other by a steep ravine. On his right flank was the river Huerba, with level fields half a mile broad between the water’s edge and the commencement of the rising ground. The village of Maria lay to his right rear, some way up the stream. The Spaniards were drawn out in two lines, Roca’s division on the northernmost ridge, Lazan’s in its rear on the second, while the cavalry filled the space between the hills and the river. Two battalions and half a battery were in reserve, in front of Maria. The rest of the artillery was placed in the intervals of the first line.
The French occupied a minor line of heights facing Blake’s front: Habert’s brigade held the left, near the river, having the two cavalry regiments of Wathier in support. Musnier’s division formed the centre and right: a squadron of Polish lancers was placed far out upon its flank. The only reserve consisted of the two stray battalions which did not belong either to Musnier or Habert—one of the 5th Léger, another of the 64th of the Line.
Blake’s army was slow in taking up its ground, while Suchet did not wish to move till the brigade from Tudela had got within supporting distance. Hence in the morning hours there was no serious collision. But at last the Spaniards took the initiative, and pushed a cautious advance against Suchet’s left, apparently with the object of worrying him into assuming the offensive rather than of delivering a serious attack. But the cloud of skirmishers sent against Habert’s front grew so thick and pushed so far forward, that at last the whole brigade was seriously engaged, and the artillery was obliged to open upon the swarm of Spanish tirailleurs. They fell back when the shells began to drop among them, and sought refuge by retiring nearer to their main body.
About midday the bickering died down on the French left, but shortly after the fire broke out with redoubled energy in another direction. Disappointed that he could not induce Suchet to attack him, Blake had at last resolved to take the offensive himself, and columns were seen descending from his extreme left wing, evidently with the intention of turning the French right. Having thus made up his mind to strike, the Spanish general should have sent prompt orders to his detached division under Areizaga, to bid it cross the Huerba with all possible speed, and hasten to join the main body before the engagement had grown hot. It could certainly have arrived in two hours, since it was but six or seven miles away. But Blake made no attempt to call in this body of 6,000 men (the best troops in his army) or to utilize it in any way. He only employed the two divisions that were under his hand on the hillsides above Maria.
The attack on the French right, made between one and two o’clock, precipitated matters. When Suchet saw the Spanish battalions beginning to descend from the ridge, he ordered his Polish lancers to charge them in flank, and attacked them in front with part of the 114th regiment and some voltigeur companies. The enemy was thrown back, and retired to rejoin his main body. Then, before they were fully rearranged in line of battle, the French general bade the whole of Musnier’s division advance, and storm the Spanish position. He was emboldened to press matters to an issue by the joyful news that the long-expected brigade from Tudela had passed Saragossa, and would be on the field in a couple of hours.
The eight battalions of the 114th, 115th, and the 1st of the Vistula crossed the valley and fell upon the Spanish line between two and three o’clock in the afternoon. Roca’s men met them with resolution, and the fighting was for some time indecisive. Along part of the front the French gained ground, but at other points they were beaten back, and to repair a severe check suffered by the 115th, Suchet had to engage half his reserve, the battalion of the 64th, and to draw into the fight the 2nd of the Vistula from Habert’s brigade upon the left. This movement restored the line, but nothing appreciable had been gained, when a violent hailstorm from the north suddenly swept down upon both armies, and hid them for half an hour from each other’s sight.
Map of the battle of Alca?iz
Enlarge BATTLE of ALCA?IZ
MAY 23RD 1809
Map of the battle of Maria
Enlarge BATTLE of MARIA
JUNE 15TH 1809
Before it was over, Suchet learnt that Robert and his brigade had arrived at the Abbey of Santa Fé, on his right rear. He therefore resolved to throw into the battle the wing of his army which he had hitherto held back,—Habert’s battalions and the cavalry. When the storm had passed over, they advanced against the Spanish right, in the low ground near the river. The three battalions of infantry led the way, but when their fire had begun to take effect, Suchet bade his hussars and cuirassiers charge through the intervals of the front line. The troops here opposed to them consisted of 600 cavalry under General O’Donoju—the whole of the horsemen that Blake possessed, for the rest of his squadrons were with Areizaga, far away from the field.
The charge of Wathier’s two regiments proved decisive: the Spanish horse did not wait to cross sabres, but broke and fled from the field, exposing the flank of the battalions which lay next them in the line. The cuirassiers and hussars rolled up these unfortunate troops, and hunted them along the high-road as far as the outskirts of Maria; here they came upon and rode down the two battalions which Blake had left there as a last reserve, and captured the half-battery that accompanied them.
The Spanish right was annihilated, and—what was worse—Blake had lost possession of the only road by which he could withdraw and join Areizaga. Meanwhile Habert’s battalions had not followed the cavalry in their charge, but had turned upon the exposed flank of the Spanish centre, and were attacking it in side and rear. It is greatly to Blake’s credit that his firmness did not give way in this distressing moment. He threw back his right, and sent up into line such of Lazan’s battalions from his rear line as had not yet been drawn into the fight. Thus he saved himself from utter disaster, and though losing ground all through the evening hours, kept his men together, and finally left the field in a solid mass, retiring over the hills and ravines to the southward. ‘The Spaniards,’ wrote an eye-witness, ‘went off the field in perfect order and with a good military bearing.’ But they had been forced to leave behind them all their guns save two, for they had no road, and could not drag the artillery up the rugged slopes by which they saved themselves. Blake also lost 1,000 killed, three or four times that number of wounded, and some hundreds of prisoners. The steadiness of the retreat is vouched for by the small number of flags captured by the French—only three out of the thirty-four that had been upon the field. Suchet, according to his own account, had lost no more than between 700 and 800 men.
When safe from pursuit the beaten army crossed the Huerba far above Maria, and rejoined Areizaga’s division at Botorrita on the right bank of that stream.
Next morning, to his surprise, Suchet learnt that the enemy was still in position at Botorrita and was showing a steady front. The victor did not march directly against Blake, as might have been expected, but ordered Laval, with the troops that had been guarding Saragossa, to turn the Spaniards’ right, while he himself man?uvred to get round their left. These cautious proceedings would seem to indicate that the French army had been more exhausted by the battle of the previous day than Suchet concedes. The turning movements failed, and Blake drew off undisturbed at nightfall, and retired on that same road to Belchite by which he had marched on Saragossa, in such high hopes, only four days back.
The battle of Maria had been on the whole very creditable to the Valencian troops. But the subsequent course of events was lamentable. On the way to Belchite many of the raw levies began to disband themselves: the weather was bad, the road worse, and the consciousness of defeat had had time enough to sink into the minds of the soldiery. When Blake halted at Belchite, he found that he had only 12,000 men with him: deducting the losses of the fifteenth, there should have been at least 15,000 in line. Of artillery he possessed no more than nine guns, seven that had been with Areizaga, and two saved from Maria.
It can only be considered therefore a piece of mad presumption on the part of the Spanish general that he halted at Belchite and again offered battle to his pursuers. The position in front of that town was strong—far stronger than the ground at Maria. But the men were not the same; on June 15 they had fought with confidence, proud of their victory at Alca?iz and intending to enter Saragossa in triumph next day. On June 18 they were cowed and disheartened—they had already done their best and had failed: it seemed to them hopeless to try the fortunes of war again, and they were half beaten before a shot had been fired. The mere numerical odds, too, were no longer in their favour: at Maria, Blake had 13,000 men to Suchet’s 9,000—if we count only the troops that fought, and neglect the 3,000 French who came up late in the day, and were never engaged. At Belchite, Blake had about 12,000 men, and Suchet rather more, for he had gathered in Laval’s and Robert’s brigades—full 5,000 bayonets, and could put into line 13,000 men, even if allowance be made for his losses in the late battle. It is impossible to understand the temerity with which the Spanish general courted a disaster, by resolving to fight a second battle only three days after he had lost the first.
Blake’s centre was in front of Belchite, in comparatively low-lying ground, much cut up by olive groves and enclosures. His wings were drawn up on two gentle hills, called the Calvary and El Pueyo: the left was the weaker flank, the ridge there being open and exposed. It was on this wing therefore that Suchet directed his main effort; he sent against it the whole of Musnier’s division and a regiment of cavalry, while Habert’s brigade marched to turn the right: the centre was left unattacked. The moment that Musnier’s attack was well pronounced, the whole of the Spanish left wing gave way, and fell back on Belchite, to cover itself behind the walls and olive-groves. Before the French division could be re-formed for a second attack, an even more disgraceful rout occurred on the right wing. Habert’s brigade had just commenced to close in upon the Spaniards, when a chance shell exploded a caisson in rear of the battery in Blake’s right-centre. The fire communicated itself to the other powder-wagons which were standing near, and the whole group blew up with a terrific report. ‘This piece of luck threw the whole line into panic,’ writes an eye-witness, ‘the enemy thought that he was attacked in the rear. Every man shouted Treason! whole battalions threw down their arms and bolted. The disorder spread along the entire line, and we only had to run in upon them and seize what we could. If they had not closed the town-gates, which we found it difficult to batter in, I fancy that the whole Spanish army would have been captured or cut to pieces. But it took some time to break down the narrow grated door, and then a battalion stood at bay in the Market Place, and had to be ridden down by our Polish lancers before we could get on. Lastly, we had to pass through another gate to make our exit, and to cross the bridge over the Aguas in a narrow formation. This gave the Spaniards time to show a clean pair of heels, and they utilized the chance with their constitutional agility. We took few prisoners, but got their nine guns, some twenty munition wagons, and the whole of their very considerable magazines. General Suchet wrote up a splendid account of the elaborate man?uvres that he made. But I believe that my tale is nearer to the facts, and that the order of battle which he published was composed après coup. The whole affair did not last long enough for him to carry out the various dispositions which he details.’
The whole Spanish army was scattered to the winds. It was some days before the Aragonese and Catalans began to rally at Tortosa, and the Valencians at Morella. The total loss in the battle had not been large—Suchet says that only one regiment was actually surrounded and cut to pieces, and only one flag taken. But of the 25,000 men who had formed the ‘Army of the Right’ on June 1, not 10,000 were available a month later, and these were in a state of demoralization which would have made it impossible to take them into action.
Suchet was therefore able to set himself at leisure to the task of reducing the plains of Aragon, whose control had passed out of his hands in May. He left Musnier’s division at Alca?iz to watch all that was left of Blake’s army, while he marched with the other two to overrun the central valley of the Ebro. On June 23 he seized Caspe and its long wooden bridge, and crossed the river. Next he occupied Fraga and Monzon, and left Habert and the 3rd division to watch the valley of the Cinca. With the remaining division, that of Laval, he marched back to Saragossa , sweeping the open country clear of guerrilla bands. Then he sat down for a space in the Aragonese capital, to busy himself in administrative schemes for the governance of the kingdom, and in preparation for a systematic campaign against the numerous insurgents of the northern and southern mountains, who still remained under arms and seemed to have been little affected by the disasters of Maria and Belchite.
Thus ended Blake’s invasion of Aragon, an undertaking which promised well from the day of Alca?iz down to the battle of June 15. It miscarried mainly through the gross tactical error which the general made in dividing his army, and fighting at Maria with only two-thirds of his available force. His strategy down to the actual moment of battle seems to have been well-considered and prudent. If he had put the Aragonese division of Areizaga in line between the river and the hill, instead of his handful of untrustworthy cavalry, it seems likely that a second Alca?iz might have been fought on the fatal fifteenth of June. For Suchet’s infantry attack had miscarried, and it was only the onslaught of his cavalry that won the day. Had that charge failed, Saragossa must have been evacuated that night, and the 3rd Corps would have been forced back on Navarre—to the entire dislocation of all other French operations in Spain. If King Joseph had received the news of the loss of Aragon in the same week in which he learnt that Soult and Ney had evacuated Galicia, and Kellermann the Asturias, he would probably have called back Victor and Sebastiani and abandoned Madrid. For a disaster in the valley of the Douro or the Ebro, as Napoleon once observed, is the most fatal blow of all to an invader based on the north, and makes central Spain untenable. While wondering at Blake’s errors, we must not forget to lay part of the blame at the door of his lieutenant Areizaga—the incapable man who afterwards lost the fatal fight of Oca?a. An officer of sound views, when left without orders, would have ‘marched to the cannon’ and appeared on the field of Maria in the afternoon. Areizaga sat quiescent, six miles from the battle-field, while the cannon were thundering in his ears from eleven in the morning till six in the afternoon!
As for Suchet, we see that he took a terrible risk, and came safely through the ordeal. There were many reasons for evacuating Saragossa, when Blake came down the valley of the Huerba to cut the communications of the 3rd Corps. But an enterprising general just making his début in independent command, could not well take the responsibility of retreat without first trying the luck of battle. Fortune favoured the brave, and a splendid victory saved Saragossa and led to the reconquest of the lost plains of Aragon. Yet, with another cast of the dice, Maria might have proved a defeat, and Suchet have gone down to history as a rash officer who imperilled the whole fate of the French army in Spain by trying to face over-great odds.
WELLESLEY AT ABRANTES: VICTOR EVACUATES ESTREMADURA
When Wellesley’s columns, faint but pursuing, received the orders which bade them halt at Ruivaens and Montalegre, their commander was already planning out the details of their return-march to the Tagus. From the first moment of his setting forth from Lisbon, he had looked upon the expedition against Soult as no more than a necessary preliminary to the more important expedition against Victor. He would have preferred, as we have already seen, to have directed his first blow against the French army in Estremadura, and had only been induced to begin his campaign by the attack upon Soult because he saw the political necessity for delivering Oporto. His original intention had been no more than to man?uvre the 2nd Corps out of Portugal. But, owing to the faulty dispositions of the Duke of Dalmatia, he had been able to accomplish much more than this—he had beaten the Marshal, stripped him of his artillery and equipment, destroyed a sixth of his army, and flung him back into Galicia by a rugged and impracticable road, which took him far from his natural base of operations. He had done much more than he had hoped or promised to do when he set out from Lisbon. Yet these ‘uncovenanted mercies’ did not distract him from his original plan: his main object was not the destruction of Soult, but the clearing of the whole frontier of Portugal from the danger of invasion, and this could not be accomplished till Victor had been dealt with. The necessity for a prompt movement against the 1st Corps was emphasized by the news, received on May 19 at Montalegre, that its commander was already astir, and apparently about to assume the offensive. Mackenzie reported from Abrantes, with some signs of dismay, that a strong French column had just fallen upon Alcantara, and driven from it the small Portuguese detachment which was covering his front.
Accordingly Wellesley turned the march of his whole army southward, the very moment that he discovered that the 2nd Corps had not fallen into the trap set for it at Chaves and Ruivaens. He had resolved to leave nothing but the local levies of Silveira and Botilho to watch Galicia, and to protect the provinces north of the Douro. ‘Soult,’ he wrote, ‘will be very little formidable to any body of troops for some time to come.’ He imagined—and quite correctly—that the Galician guerrillas and the army of La Romana would suffice to find him occupation. He did not, however, realize that it was possible that not only Soult but Ney also would be so much harassed by the insurgents, and would fall into such bitter strife with each other, that they might ere long evacuate Galicia altogether. This, indeed, could not have been foreseen at the moment when the British turned southwards from Montalegre. If Wellesley could have guessed that by July 1 the three French Corps in Northern Spain—the 2nd, 5th, and 6th—would all be clear of the mountains and concentrated in the triangle Astorga-Zamora-Valladolid, he would have had to recast his plan of operations. But on May 19 such a conjunction appeared most improbable, and the British general could not have deemed it likely that a French army of 55,000 men, available for field-operations, would be collected on the central Douro, at the moment when he had committed himself to operations on the Tagus. Indeed, for some weeks after he had departed from Oporto the information from the north made any such concentration appear improbable. While he was on his march to the south he began to hear of the details of Ney’s and Kellermann’s expedition against the Asturias, news which he received with complacency, as it showed that the French were entangling themselves in new and hazardous enterprises which would make it more difficult than ever for them to collect a force opposite the frontier of Northern Portugal. Down to the very end of June Wellesley had no reason to dread any concentration of French troops upon his flank in the valley of the Douro. It was only in the following month that Soult was heard of at Puebla de Senabria and Ney at Astorga. By that time the British army had already crossed the frontier of Spain and commenced its operations against Victor.
At the moment when Wellesley turned back from Montalegre and set his face southward, he had not yet settled the details of his plan of campaign. There appeared to be two courses open to him. The first was to base himself upon Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo, and advance upon Salamanca. This movement, which he could have begun in the second week of June, would undoubtedly have thrown into disorder all the French arrangements in Northern Spain. There would have been no force ready to oppose him save a single division of Mortier’s corps—the rest of that marshal’s troops were absent with Kellermann in the Asturias. This could not have held the British army back, and a bold march in advance would have placed Wellesley in a position where he could have intercepted all communications between the French troops in Galicia and those in and about Madrid. The movement might appear tempting, but it would have been too hazardous. The only force that could have been used for it was the 20,000 troops of Wellesley’s own army, backed by the 12,000 or 15,000 Portuguese regulars whom Beresford could collect between the Douro and the Tagus. The Spaniards had no troops in this direction save the garrison of Ciudad Rodrigo, and a battalion or two which Carlos d’Espa?a had raised on the borders of Leon and Portugal. On the other hand, the news that the British were at Salamanca or Toro would certainly have forced Ney, Soult, and Kellermann to evacuate Galicia and the Asturias and hasten to the aid of Mortier. They would have been far too strong, when united, for the 30,000 or 35,000 men of Wellesley and Beresford. La Romana and the Asturians could have brought no corresponding reinforcements to assist the British army, and must necessarily have arrived too late—long after the French corps would have reached the Douro. The idea of a movement on Salamanca, therefore, did not even for a moment enter into Wellesley’s mind.
The other alternative open to the British general, and that which he had from the first determined to take in hand, was (as we have already seen) a march against Victor. Such a movement might be carried out in one of two ways. (1) It would be possible to advance against his flank and rear by keeping north of the Tagus, and striking, by Coria and Plasencia, at Almaraz and its great bridge of boats, across which ran the communication between the 1st Corps and Madrid. This operation would have to be carried out by the British army alone, while the Spanish army of Estremadura, acting from a separate base, kept in touch with Victor but avoided compromising itself by any rash attack upon him. The Marshal, placed in a central position between Wellesley’s and Cuesta’s forces, would certainly try to beat one of them before they got the chance of drawing together. (2) It was equally possible to operate against Victor not on separate lines, but by crossing the Tagus, joining the Spaniards somewhere in the neighbourhood of Badajoz, and falling upon the Marshal with the united strength of both armies. This movement would be less hazardous than the other, since it would secure the concentration of an army of a strength sufficient to crush the 25,000 men at which the 1st Corps might reasonably be rated. But it would only drive Victor back upon Madrid and King Joseph’s reserves by a frontal attack, while the other plan—that of the march on Almaraz—would imperil his flank and rear, and threaten to cut him off from the King and the capital.
Before making any decision between the two plans, Wellesley wrote to Cuesta, from Oporto on May 22, a letter requesting him to state his views as to the way in which the operations of the British and Spanish armies could best be combined. He informed him that the troops which had defeated Soult were already on their way to the south, that the head of the column would reach the Mondego on the twenty-sixth, and that the whole would be concentrated near Abrantes early in June. It was at that place that the choice would have to be made between the two possible lines of attack on Victor—that which led to Almaraz, and that which went on to Southern Estremadura. A few days later Wellesley dispatched a confidential officer of his staff—Colonel Bourke—to bear to the Spanish general a definite request for his decision on the point whether the allied armies should prepare for an actual junction, or should man?uvre from separate bases, or should ‘co-operate with communication,’ i.e. combine their movements without adopting a single base or a joint line of advance. Bourke was also directed to obtain all the information that he could concerning the strength, morale, and discipline of Cuesta’s army, and to discover what chance there was of securing the active assistance of the second Spanish army in the south—that which, under General Venegas, was defending the defiles in front of La Carolina.
It was clear that some days must elapse before an answer could arrive from the camp of the Estremaduran army, and meanwhile Wellesley continued to urge the counter-march of his troops from the various points at which they had halted between Oporto and Montalegre. All the scattered British brigades were directed on Abrantes by different routes: those which had the least distance to march began to arrive there on the eleventh and the twelve of June.
The Commander-in-chief had resolved not to take on with him the Portuguese regulars whom he had employed in the campaign against Soult. Both the brigades which had marched on Amarante under Beresford, and the four battalions which had fought along with Wellesley in the main column, were now dropped behind. They were destined to form an army of observation, lest Mortier and his 5th Corps, or any other French force, might chance to assail the front between the Douro and the Tagus during the absence of the British in the south. Beresford, who was left in command, was directed to arrange his troops so as to be able to support Almeida, and resist any raid from the direction of Salamanca or Zamora. The main body of the army lay at Guarda, its reserves at Coimbra. The Portuguese division which had been lying on the Zezere in company with Mackenzie’s troops, was also placed at Beresford’s disposition, so that he had about eighteen battalions, four regiments of cavalry, and five or six batteries—a force of between 12,000 and 15,000 men. It was his duty to connect Wellesley’s left wing with Silveira’s right, and to reinforce either of them if necessary. The Commander-in-chief was inclined to believe, from his knowledge of the disposition of the French corps at the moment, that no very serious attack was likely to be directed against Northern Portugal during his absence—at the most Soult might threaten Braganza or Mortier Almeida. But it was necessary to make some provision against even unlikely contingencies.
The only Portuguese force which Wellesley had resolved to utilize for the campaign in Estremadura was the battalion of the Loyal Lusitanian Legion, under Colonel Mayne, which had been stationed at Alcantara watching the movements of Victor. Sir Robert Wilson, now recalled from Beresford’s column and placed once more with his own men, was to take up the command of his old force, and to add to it the 5th Cazadores, a regiment which had hitherto been lying with Mackenzie’s division at Abrantes. With these 1,500 men he was to serve as the northern flank-guard of the British army when it should enter Spain.
When Wellesley first started upon his march, he was under the impression that his plan of campaign might be settled for him by the movements of Victor rather than by the devices of Cuesta. The rapidity of his progress was partly caused by the news of the Marshal’s attack on Alcantara, an operation which might, as it seemed, turn out to be the prelude of a raid in force upon Central Portugal. That it portended an actual invasion with serious designs Wellesley could not believe, being convinced that Victor would have to leave so large a proportion of his army to observe Cuesta, that he would not be able to set aside more than 10,000 or 12,000 men for operations in the valley of the Tagus. But such a force would be enough to sweep the country about Castello Branco and Villa Velha, and to beat up Mackenzie’s line of defence on the Zezere.
The actual course of events on the Tagus had been as follows. Victor, even after having received the division of Lapisse, considered himself too weak either to march on Cuesta and drive him over the mountains into Andalusia, or to fall upon Central Portugal by an advance along the Tagus. He had received vague information of the formation of Mackenzie’s corps of observation on the Zezere, though apparently he had not discovered that there was a strong British contingent in its ranks. But he was under the impression that if he crossed the Guadiana in force, to attack Cuesta, the Portuguese would advance into Estremadura and cut his communications; while if he marched against the Portuguese, Cuesta would move northward to attack his rear. Accordingly he maintained for some time a purely defensive attitude, keeping his three French infantry divisions concentrated in a central position, at Torremocha, Montanches, and Salvatierra (near Caceres), while he remained himself with Leval’s Germans and Latour-Maubourg’s dragoons in the neighbourhood of Merida, observing Cuesta and sending flying columns up and down the Guadiana to watch the garrison of Badajoz and the guerrillas of the Sierra de Guadalupe. He had not forgotten the Emperor’s orders that he was to be prepared to execute a diversion in favour of Marshal Soult, when he should hear that the 2nd Corps was on its way to Lisbon. But, like all the other French generals, he was profoundly ignorant of the position and the fortunes of the Duke of Dalmatia. On April 22 the head-quarters staff at Madrid had received no more than a vague rumour that the 2nd Corps had entered Oporto a month before! They got no trustworthy information concerning its doings till May was far advanced. Victor, therefore, depending on King Joseph for his news from Northern Portugal, was completely in the dark as to the moment when he might be called upon to execute his diversion on the Tagus. The Portuguese and Galician insurgents had succeeded in maintaining a complete blockade of Soult, and thus had foiled all Napoleon’s plans for combining the operations of the 1st and the 2nd Corps.
Victor was only stirred up into a spasmodic activity in the second week in May, by the news that a Portuguese force had crossed the frontier and occupied Alcantara, where the great Roman bridge across the Tagus provided a line of communication between North-Western and Central Estremadura. This detachment—as we have already seen—consisted of no more than Colonel Mayne’s 1st battalion of the Loyal Lusitanian Legion, brought down from the passes of the Sierra de Gata, and of a single regiment of newly-raised militia—that of the frontier district of Idanha. They had with them the six guns of the battery of the Legion and a solitary squadron of cavalry, Wellesley had thrown forward this little force of 2,000 men to serve as an outpost for Mackenzie’s corps on the Zezere. But rumour magnified its strength, and Victor jumped to the conclusion that it formed the vanguard of a Portuguese army which was intending to concert a combined operation with Cuesta, by threatening the communication of the 1st Corps while the Spaniards attacked its front.
Labouring under this delusion, Victor took the division of Lapisse and a brigade of dragoons, and marched against Alcantara upon the eleventh of May. As he approached the river he was met at Brozas by Mayne’s vedettes, whom he soon drove in to the gates of the little town. Alcantara being situated on the south side of the Tagus, it was impossible to defend it: but Mayne had barricaded and mined the bridge, planted his guns so as to command the passage, and constructed trenches for his infantry along the northern bank. After seizing the town, Victor opened a heavy fire of artillery and musketry against the Portuguese detachment. It was met by a vigorous return from the further bank, which lasted for more than three hours before the defence began to flag. The Marshal very properly refused to send forward his infantry to attempt the storm of the bridge till his artillery should have silenced that of the defenders. At about midday the Idanha militia, who had already suffered not inconsiderable losses, deserted their trenches and fled. Thereupon Mayne fired his mine in the bridge, but unhappily for him the tough Roman cement defied even the power of gunpowder; only one side of the arch was shattered; the crown of the vault held firm, and the passage was still possible. The Legion still kept its ground, though it had lost many men, and had seen one of his guns dismounted, and the rest silenced by the French artillery. But when Victor hurled the leading brigade of Lapisse’s division at the bridge he succeeded in forcing it. Mayne drew off his legionaries in good order and retreated to the pass of Salvatierra, leaving behind him a gun and more than 250 killed and wounded —a heavy loss from the 1,000 men of the single battalion which bore the whole brunt of the fighting.
Victor went no further than Alcantara, having satisfied himself that the Portuguese force which had made such a creditable resistance consisted of a single weak brigade, and did not form the vanguard of an army bent on invading Estremadura. After remaining for no more than three days at Alcantara, and trying in vain to obtain news of the whereabouts of Soult—who was at that moment being hunted past Guimaraens and Braga in the far north—the Marshal drew back his troops to Torremocha near Caceres.
His advance, though it had only lasted for six days, and had not been pushed more than a few miles beyond Alcantara, had much disturbed General Mackenzie, who dreaded to find himself the next object of attack and to see the whole of the 1st Corps debouching against him by the road through Castello Branco. Wellesley wrote to him that he need not be alarmed, that Victor could not spare more than 10,000 or 12,000 men for his demonstration, and that the 8,000 British and Portuguese troops behind the Zezere were amply sufficient to maintain defensive operations till the main army from the north should come up. He expressed his opinion that the French force at Alcantara was ‘a mere reconnoitring party, sent out for the purpose of ascertaining what has become of Soult,’ a conclusion in which he was perfectly right. Mackenzie, who betrayed an exaggerated want of confidence in his Portuguese troops, was profoundly relieved to see the enemy retire upon the seventeenth. He had advanced from Abrantes and taken up a defensive position along the Sobreira Formosa to resist the Marshal, but he had done so with many searchings of heart, and was glad to see the danger pass away. When Victor had retired into Central Estremadura, Mayne came back with all due caution, and reoccupied the bridge of Alcantara.
Wellesley, therefore, had been perfectly well justified in his confidence that nothing was to be feared in this direction. The French could not possibly have dared to undertake more than a demonstration in the direction of Castello Branco. King Joseph’s orders to Victor had prescribed no more, and the Marshal had accomplished even less. In his letter of excuse to Jourdan he explained that he would gladly have left Lapisse’s division at Alcantara, or even have moved it forward for some distance into Portugal, if he had not found it absolutely impossible to feed it in the bare and stony district north of the Tagus, where Junot’s army had been wellnigh starved in November 1807. The peasantry of the villages for fifteen leagues round Alcantara had, as he declared, gone off into the mountains with their cattle, after burying their corn, and he had found it impossible to discover food for even three days’ consumption of a single division.
During Victor’s absence at Alcantara, Cuesta had sent down a part of his troops to make a raid on Merida, the Marshal’s advanced post on the Guadiana. It failed entirely; the garrison, two battalions of Leval’s German division, maintained themselves with ease in a large convent outside that town, which Victor had patched up and turned into a place of some little strength. On hearing that the Spaniards were descending from the mountains, King Joseph ordered the Duke of Belluno to attack them at once. But on the mere news of the Marshal’s approach Cuesta called back his detachment into the passes, sweeping off at the same time the inhabitants of all the villages along the Guadiana, together with their cattle and their stores of provisions.
At the beginning of June Victor began to press the King and Jourdan for leave to abandon his hold on Southern Estremadura, and to fall back towards the Tagus. He urged that his position was very dangerous, now that Cuesta’s army had been recruited up to a force of 22,000 infantry and 6,000 horse, especially since the Portuguese had once more got possession of Alcantara. His main contention was that he must either be reinforced up to a strength which would permit him to attack Andalusia, or else be permitted to withdraw from the exhausted district between the Guadiana and the Tagus, in order to seek a region where his men would be able to live. The only district in this neighbourhood where the country-side was still intact was that north of the Tagus, around the towns of Plasencia and Coria—the valleys of the Alagon and Tietar. To move the army in this direction would involve the evacuation of Central Estremadura—it would be necessary to abandon Merida, Truxillo, and Caceres, with the sacrifice of a certain amount of prestige. But unless the 1st Corps could be reinforced—and this, as Victor must have known, was impossible—there was no other alternative. The internal condition of the army was growing worse day by day. ‘The troops are on half rations of bread: they can get little meat—often none at all. The results of starvation are making themselves felt in the most deplorable way. The men are going into hospital at the rate of several hundreds a day.’ A few days later Victor adds, ‘If I could even get together enough biscuit to feed the army for merely seven or eight days I should not feel so uncomfortable. But we have no flour to issue for a bread ration, so cannot bake biscuit.’ And again he adds, ‘The whole population of this region has retired within Cuesta’s lines, after destroying the ovens and the mills, and removing every scrap of food. It seems that the enemy is resolved to starve us out, and to leave a desert in front of us if we advance.... Carefully estimating all my stores I find that I have barely enough to last for five days in hand. We are menaced with absolute famine, which we can only avoid by moving off, and there is no suitable cantonment to be found in the whole space between Tagus and Guadiana: the entire country is ruined.’
Joseph and Jourdan replied to the first of these dismal letters by promising to send the 1st Corps 300,000 rations of biscuit, and by urging its commander to renew his attack on Alcantara, in order to threaten Portugal and ‘disengage the Duke of Dalmatia’—who, on the day when their dispatch was written, was at Lugo, in the north of Galicia, some 300 miles as the crow flies from Victor’s head quarters. They received the answer that such a move was impossible, as Mayne had just blown up the bridge of Alcantara, and it was now impossible to cross the Tagus.
A few days later the news arrived at Madrid that Soult had been defeated and flung out of Portugal. It had taken three weeks for information of this transcendent importance to reach the king! Seriously alarmed, Joseph and Jourdan sent Victor his long-denied permission to retire from Estremadura and place himself behind the Tagus. They do not seem to have guessed that the victorious Wellesley would make his next move against the 1st Corps, but imagined that he would debouch into Old Castile by way of Rodrigo and Salamanca, wherefore their main idea was to strengthen Mortier and the army in the valley of the Douro. Thus it fell in with their views that Victor should draw back to the line of the Tagus, a general concentration of all the French troops in the Peninsula seeming advisable, in face of the necessity for resisting the supposed attack on Old Castile. Another reason for assuming a defensive attitude was the gloomy news from Aragon, where Suchet, after his defeat at Alca?iz, had retired on Saragossa and was sending despairing appeals for reinforcements to Madrid.
Accordingly, the 1st Corps evacuated Estremadura between the fourteenth and the nineteenth of June, and, crossing the Tagus, disposed itself in a position on the northern bank, with its right wing at Almaraz and its left at Talavera. Here Victor intended to make his stand, being confident that with the broad river in front of him he could easily beat off any attack on the part of the Spanish army.
But when Wellesley and Cuesta first began to correspond concerning their joint movement against the French in Estremadura, Victor was still in his old cantonments, and their scheme of operations had been sketched out on the hypothesis that he lay at Merida, Torremocha, and Caceres. It was with the design of assailing him while he still held this advanced position, that Cuesta drew up his paper of answers to Wellesley’s queries and dispatched it to Abrantes to meet the British general on his arrival.
If the old Captain-General’s suggestions were by no means marked with the stamp of genius, they had at least the merit of variety. He offered Wellesley the choice between no less than three plans of campaign. (1) His first proposal was that the British army should descend into Southern Estremadura, and join him in the neighbourhood of Badajoz. From thence the united host was to advance against Victor and assail him in front. But meanwhile Cuesta proposed to send out two subsidiary columns, to turn the Marshal’s flanks and surround him. One was to base itself on Alcantara and march along the northern bank of the Tagus to seize Almaraz: the other was to push by La Serena through the Guadalupe mountains to threaten Talavera. By these operations, if Victor would be good enough to remain quiet in his present cantonments, he would be completely surrounded, his retreat would be cut off, and he would finally be compelled to surrender. The scheme was of course preposterous. What rational man could have supposed it likely that the Marshal would remain quiescent while his flanks were being turned? He would certainly have hastened to retire and to throw himself upon the detached columns, one or both of which he could have annihilated before the main armies of the allies could get within touch of him. Wellesley refused to listen for a moment to this plan of campaign. (2) The second proposal of Cuesta was that the British army should pass the Tagus at Alcantara and operate against Victor’s flank, while the Spanish army attacked him in front. To this the same objection could be urged: it presupposed that the Frenchman would remain fixed in his present cantonments: but he certainly would not do so when he heard that he was to be assailed on both flanks; he would retire behind the Tagus at once, and the British army would have wasted its march, and be obliged to return to the north bank of that river: moreover, it would involve a very long movement to the south to get in touch with Victor’s flank. Probably it would be necessary to descend as far into Estremadura as Caceres, and, when that point was reached, the Marshal could make the whole man?uvre futile by retiring at once behind the Tagus at Almaraz. To follow him to the north bank the British would have to retrace their steps to Alcantara.
The third proposal of Cuesta—the only one in which Wellesley could find any prospect of success, was that the British army, keeping north of the Tagus, should march by Castello Branco on Plasencia. There it would be in the rear of Victor’s best line of retreat by the bridge of Almaraz. If the man?uvre could be kept very secret, and executed with great speed, Almaraz, perhaps also the subsidiary passage at Arzobispo, might be seized. Should the Marshal get early news of the movement, and hurry back across the Tagus to fend off this stab in the rear, Wellesley was prepared to fight him in the open with equal forces, conceiving that he was ‘sufficiently strong to defend himself against any attack which Victor might make.’ He hoped that Cuesta was able to guarantee that he also was competent to hold his own, supposing that the Marshal, neglecting the British diversion, should concentrate his corps and strike at the Spanish army.
On the whole, therefore, Wellesley was not disinclined to fall in with this plan, which had the extra merit of remaining feasible even if Victor withdrew north of the Tagus before either of the allied armies had completed its march. He made one countersuggestion, viz. that Cuesta might move eastward, with the whole or part of his army, join the army of Venegas in La Mancha, and attack Sebastiani, leaving the British alone to deal with Victor. But he did not wish to press this plan, thinking that an attack on the enemy’s left was on first principles less advisable than one on his right, because it did not offer any chance of cutting him off from Madrid.
The answer to Cuesta’s proposals was sent off from Abrantes, which Wellesley, preceding his army by three or four days’ march, reached upon June 8. He had now under his hand Mackenzie’s Anglo-Portuguese force, but the leading brigades of the troops who had fought at Oporto could not arrive before the eleventh or twelfth. There was thus ample time to concert the joint plan of campaign before the whole army would be concentrated and ready to move. But when Cuesta’s reply to the dispatch of June 8 came to hand upon June 13, Wellesley was much vexed to find that the old Captain-General had expressed a great dislike for the idea that the British army should march upon Plasencia and Almaraz—though it had been one of his own three suggestions. He now pleaded urgently in favour of the first of his original alternatives—that Wellesley should come down to Badajoz and join him in a frontal attack upon Victor. With much reluctance the British general resolved to comply, apparently moved by his ally’s openly expressed dislike to being left to face Victor alone. ‘I must acknowledge,’ he wrote to Colonel Bourke, ‘that I entertain no apprehension that the French will attack General Cuesta: I am much more afraid that they are going away, and strengthening themselves upon the Tagus.’ To the Spanish General he sent a dispatch to the same effect, in which he pledged himself to march to join the army of Estremadura, though he frankly stated that all his information led him to believe that Victor had no intention of taking the offensive, and that the junction was therefore unnecessary. He expressed his hope that Cuesta would avoid all fighting till they had met, the only possible danger to the allied cause being that one of the two armies should suffer a defeat before the other had started on the combined movement to which they were committed.
Fortunately for all parties concerned, the march on Badajoz which Wellesley so much disliked never had to be begun, for on the day after he had sent off his dispatch to Cuesta he received reliable information from several sources, to the effect that Victor had evacuated and blown up the fortified convent of Merida, and had sent off all his baggage and heavy artillery towards Almaraz. During the next four days the whole of the 1st Corps marched for that all-important bridge, and crossed it. On the nineteenth Victor had established his entire army north of the Tagus, at Almaraz, Arzobispo, and Talavera. Thus the whole face of affairs was changed, and the advance of the British army into Southern Estremadura was rendered unnecessary. It was fortunate that the news of the retreat of the 1st Corps was received at Abrantes just in time to allow of the countermanding of the march of Wellesley’s army on Badajoz, for that fruitless movement would have begun if the Duke of Belluno had been able to retain his starving army in its positions for a few days longer.
WELLESLEY ENTERS SPAIN
The retreat of Victor beyond the Tagus forced Wellesley to concert yet another plan of operation with Cuesta, since the position of the French army, on which the whole of the recently adopted scheme depended, had just suffered a radical change. It was clear that every consideration now pointed to the necessity for adopting the combination which Wellesley had urged upon his colleague in his letter of June 8, viz. that the British army should move on Plasencia and Almaraz. It would now be striking at the flank instead of the rear of Victor’s corps, but it was clear that under the new conditions it would still be in a position to roll up his whole army, if he should endeavour to defend the passages of the Tagus against the Spaniards, who were now approaching them from the front. For Cuesta had descended from the mountains when he heard of Victor’s retreat, and was now approaching Almaraz.
It took some time, however, to induce the Captain-General to consent to this move. To the extreme vexation of his colleague he produced other plans, so gratuitously impracticable that Wellesley wrote to Castlereagh to say that he could conceive no explanation for the old man’s conduct save a desire to refuse any scheme urged on him by others, and a resolve to invent and advocate alternative plans of his own out of mere pride and wrongheadedness. ‘The best of the whole story,’ he added, was that Cuesta was now refusing to accept a plan which he himself had suggested in one of his earlier letters, merely because that plan had been taken up and advocated by his ally. ‘The obstinacy of this old gentleman,’ he concluded, ‘is throwing out of our hands the finest game that any armies ever had.’
The necessity for working out a new scheme for the combined operations of the British and Spanish armies, in view of Victor’s retreat to Almaraz, entailed the loss of a few days. It would have been impossible to start on the advance to Plasencia till Cuesta had promised to accept that movement as part of the joint campaign. There was also some time to be allowed for concluding an agreement with Venegas, the General of the La Carolina army, whose connexion with the campaign must become much more intimate, now that the fighting was to take place not in Estremadura, but further north, in the valley of the Tagus. For while Victor lay at Merida and Sebastiani at Manzanares and Ciudad Real, the Spanish forces which faced them were very far apart. But when Victor retired to Talavera, and Sebastiani to Madridejos, in the end of June, Cuesta and Venegas—each following the corps opposed to him—could draw closer together. It was evident that the Andalusian army ought to be made to play an important part in the combined operations of July.
It would be unfair to the Spanish generals to let it be supposed that the necessity for settling on a common scheme of operations with them was the sole cause which detained Wellesley at Abrantes from the eighth to the twenty-seventh of June. The leading brigades of the British troops from Oporto had begun to reach Abrantes on the eleventh, and the more belated columns came up on the fourteenth and fifteenth. But it would have been impossible to have moved forward without some further delay, even if Wellesley had been in possession of a complete and satisfactory plan of operations on the day upon which his whole force was concentrated on the line of the Zezere. At the least he would have required another week for preparations.
His hindrances at this moment were manifold. The first was the distressed condition of those of his brigades which had seen most service during the Oporto campaign. Many regiments had been constantly on the march from May 9 to June 14, without obtaining more than two days’ rest in the whole time. Their shoes were worn out, their jaded baggage-animals had dropped to the rear, and they were leaving so many stragglers on the way that it was absolutely necessary to give them a moderate rest at Abrantes, in order to allow the ranks to grow full and the belated baggage to come up. The regiments which had followed Beresford in the forced march from Amarante to Chaves were worst off—they had never completely recovered from the fatigues of those three days of constant rain and storm spent on the stony roads of the Tras-os-Montes. In any case some delay must have occurred before all the troops were ready to march. But many circumstances conspired to detain the army at Abrantes for several days after the moment at which Wellesley had determined to start for Plasencia. The first was the non-arrival of convoys of shoes and clothing which he had ordered up from Lisbon. The transport of the army was not yet fully organized, its officers were lacking in experience, if not in zeal, and orders were slowly executed. Many corps had, in the end, to start for Spain without receiving the much-needed stores, which were still trailing up from Santarem to Abrantes when Wellesley gave the signal to advance. Another hindrance was the lack of money: the army was obliged to pay for its wants in coin, but hard cash was so difficult to procure both in London and in Lisbon that arrears were already beginning to grow up. At first they vexed the soul of Wellesley almost beyond endurance, but as the war dragged on they only grew worse, and the Commander-in-chief had to endure with resignation the fact that both the pay of the men and the wages of the Portuguese muleteers and followers were overdue for many months. In June 1809 he had not yet reached this state of comparative callousness, and was endeavouring to scrape together money by every possible device. He had borrowed ￡3,000 in Portuguese silver from the merchants of the impoverished city of Oporto: he was trying to exchange bills on England for dollars at Cadiz, where the arrival of the American contribution had produced a comparative plenty of the circulating medium. Yet after all he had to start from Abrantes with only a comparatively moderate sum in his military chest, the rest had not reached him on June 28, the treasure convoy having taken the unconscionable time of eleven days to crawl forward from Lisbon to Abrantes—a distance of no more than ninety miles.
A third cause of delay was the time spent in waiting for reinforcements from Lisbon. Eight or nine regiments had landed, or were expected to arrive within the next few days. It was in every way desirable to unite them to the army before the campaign should begin. This was all the more necessary because several corps had to be deducted from the force which had been used in the Oporto campaign. Under stringent orders from home, Wellesley had sent back two infantry battalions and part of two cavalry regiments to Lisbon, to be embarked for Gibraltar and Sicily. In return he was to receive a much larger body of troops. But while the deduction was immediate, the addition took time. Of all the troops which were expected to reinforce the army, only one battalion caught him up at Abrantes, while a second and one regiment of Light Dragoons joined later, but yet in time for Talavera. Thus at the commencement of the actual campaign the force in the field was, if anything, slightly less in numbers than that which had been available in May. It was particularly vexatious that the brigade of veteran light infantry, for which Wellesley had made a special demand on Castlereagh as early as April, did not reach Abrantes till long after the army had moved forward. These three battalions, the nucleus of the famous Light Division, had all gone through the experiences of Moore’s campaign, and were once more under their old leader Robert Craufurd. Detained by baffling winds in the Downs, the transports that bore them only reached Lisbon at various dates between June 28 and July 2, though they had sailed on May 25. Their indefatigable brigadier hurried them forward with all speed to the front, but in spite of his exertions, they only came up with the main army after the day of battle was over. The same was the fate of two batteries of horse artillery—an arm in which Wellesley was wholly deficient when he marched into Spain. They arrived late, and were still far to the rear when the march from Abrantes began.
It thus resulted that although there were over 33,000 British troops in the Peninsula at the commencement of July 1809, less than 21,000 could be collected for the advance on Plasencia which was now about to begin. More than 8,000 men lay at Lisbon, or were just starting from that city, while 4,500 were in hospital. The sick seemed more numerous than might have been expected at the season of the year: though the fatigues of the Oporto campaign accounted for the majority of the invalids, yet Wellesley was of opinion that a contributory cause might be found in the slack discipline of certain regiments, where inefficient commanding officers had neglected sanitary precautions, and allowed their men to neglect personal cleanliness, or to indulge to excess in wine and unripe fruit and vegetables. It was his opinion that the number of men in hospital should never exceed ten per cent. of the total force. But all through the war he found that this proportion was exceeded.
With the internal condition of many of his regiments Wellesley was far from satisfied. His tendency to use the plainest, indeed the harshest, terms concerning the rank and file, is so well known that we are not surprised to find him writing that ‘the army behave terribly ill: they are a rabble who cannot bear success any more than Sir John Moore’s army could bear failure.’ He complained most of all of the recruits sent him from the Irish militia, who were, he said, capable of every sin, moral or military. Though he was ‘endeavouring to tame the troops,’ yet there were several regiments in such bad order that he would gladly have sent them home in disgrace if he could have spared a man. The main offence, of course, was robbery of food from the Portuguese peasantry, often accompanied by violence, and now and then by murder. The number of assistant-provost-marshals was multiplied, some offenders were caught and hanged, but marauding could not be suppressed, even while the troops were receiving full rations in their cantonments at Abrantes. When they were enduring real privation, in the wilds of Estremadura, matters grew much worse. Though many regiments were distinguished for their good behaviour, yet there were always some whose excesses were a disgrace to the British army. Their Commander never shrank from telling them so in the most incisive language; he was always complaining that he could not get a sufficient number of the criminals flogged or hanged, and that regimental court-martials were far too lenient in their dealings with offenders.
It was at Abrantes that Wellesley first arranged his army in divisions, and gave it the organization which, with certain modifications, it was to maintain during the rest of the war. His six regiments of cavalry were to form a single division consisting of one heavy and two light brigades, commanded respectively by Fane, Cotton, and Anson. The twenty-five battalions of infantry were distributed into four divisions of unequal strength under Generals Sherbrooke, Hill, Mackenzie, and A. Campbell. Of these the first was by far the largest, counting four brigades of two battalions each: the first (Henry Campbell’s) was formed of the two battalions of Guards, the second (Cameron’s) of two line regiments, the third and fourth, under Low and Langwerth, comprised the infantry of the King’s German Legion. The second and third divisions each consisted of two brigades of three battalions each. The fourth, and weakest, showed only five battalions in line. Of artillery there were only thirty guns, eighteen English and twelve German: all were field-batteries, as none of the much-desired horse artillery had yet reached the front. They were all of very light calibre, the heaviest being a brigade of heavy six-pounders belonging to the German Legion.
On June 28 the army at last moved forward: that day the head quarters were at Corti?ada, on the Sobreira Formosa. On the thirtieth Castello Branco, the last Portuguese town, was reached. On July 3 the leading brigades passed the Elga, the frontier river, and bivouacked on the same night around Zarza la Mayor, the first place in Spanish Estremadura. At the same time Sir Robert Wilson’s small column of 1,500 Portuguese crossed the border a little further north, and advanced in a direction parallel to that of the main army, so as to serve as a flank guard for it in the direction of the mountains.
King Joseph meanwhile was in a state of the most profound ignorance concerning the impending storm. As late as July 9 he wrote to his brother that the British had not as yet made any pronounced movement, and that it was quite uncertain whether they would invade Galicia, or strike at Castile, or remain in the neighbourhood of Lisbon! On that day the head of the British army had entered Plasencia, and was only 125 miles from Madrid. It is impossible to give any better testimonial than this simple fact to the way in which the insurgents and the guerrillas served the cause of the allies. Wellesley had been able to march from Oporto to Abrantes, and from Abrantes to Plasencia, without even a rumour of his advance reaching Madrid. All that Joseph had learnt was that there was now an allied force of some sort behind Alcantara, in the direction of Castello Branco. He took it for granted that they were Portuguese, but in one dispatch he broaches the theory that there might be a few English with them—perhaps from having heard a vague report of the composition of Mackenzie’s division on the Zezere in May. He therefore wrote in a cheerful tone to the Emperor that ‘if we have only got to deal with Cuesta and the Portuguese they will be beaten by the 1st Corps. If they have some English with them, they can be beaten equally well by the 1st Corps, aided by troops which I can send across the Tagus via Toledo’ (i.e. the 5,000 or 6,000 men of the Central Reserve which could be spared from Madrid). ‘I am not in the least disquieted,’ he continued, ‘concerning the present condition of military affairs in this part of Spain.’ In another epistle to his brother he added that ‘if the English should be at the back of Cuesta, it would be the happiest chance in the world for the concluding of the whole war.’
It was lucky for the King that he was not induced to try the experiment of falling upon Wellesley and Cuesta with the 28,000 men of Victor and the Central Reserve. If he had done so, he would have suffered a frightful disaster and have lost Madrid.
In the end of June and the first days of July Joseph’s main attention had been drawn off to that part of his front where there was least danger, so that he was paying comparatively little heed to the movements of the allies on the lower Tagus. He had been distracted by a rash and inexplicable movement of the Spanish army of La Mancha. When General Venegas had heard of the retreat of Victor from Estremadura, and had been informed that Cuesta was about to move forward in pursuit of the 1st Corps, he had concluded that his own troops might also advance. He argued that Sebastiani and the 4th Corps must beat a retreat, when their right flank was uncovered by Victor’s evacuation of the valley of the Guadiana. He was partly justified in his idea, for Joseph had drawn back Sebastiani’s main body to Madridejos when Victor abandoned Merida. It was safe therefore to advance from the Despe?a Perros into the southern skirts of La Mancha, as far as Manzanares and the line of the Guadiana. But to go further forward was dangerous, unless Venegas was prepared to risk a collision with Sebastiani. This he was certainly not in a condition to do: his troops had not yet recovered from the moral effects of the rout of Ciudad Real, and his brigades were full of new battalions of untried Andalusian reserves. He should have been cautious, and have refused to move without concerting his operations with Cuesta: to have had his corps put hors de combat at the very beginning of the joint campaign of the allied armies would have been most disastrous.
Nevertheless Venegas came down from the passes of the Sierra Morena with 18,000 infantry, 3,000 horse, and twenty-six guns, and proceeded to thrust back Sebastiani’s cavalry screen and to push in his outposts in front of Madridejos. The French general had in hand at this moment only two infantry divisions and Milhaud’s dragoons; his third division and his light cavalry were still absent with Victor, to whom they had been lent in March for the campaign of Medellin. But with 13,000 foot and 2,000 horse he ought not to have feared Venegas, and could have given a good account of him had he chosen to attack. But having received exaggerated reports of the strength of the Spanish army, he wrote to the King that he was beset by nearly 40,000 men and must be reinforced at once, or he would have to fall back on Madrid. Joseph, fully believing the news, sent orders to Victor to restore to the 4th Corps the divisions of Leval and Merlin, and then, doubting whether these troops could arrive in time, sallied out of Madrid on June 22 with his Guards and half the division of Dessolles—about 5,500 men.
It was lucky for Venegas that Sebastiani had refused to fight him, but still more lucky that the news of the King’s approach reached him promptly. On hearing that Joseph had joined the 4th Corps on June 25 he was wise enough to turn on his heel and retreat in all haste towards his lair in the passes of the Sierra Morena. If he had lingered any longer in the plains he would have been destroyed, for the King, on the arrival of Leval’s and Merlin’s divisions, would have fallen upon him at the head of 27,000 men. As it was, Venegas retired with such promptitude to Santa Cruz de Mudela, at the foot of the passes, that the French could never catch him. Joseph pursued him as far as Almagro and El Moral, on the southern edge of La Mancha, and there stopped short. He had received, on July 2, a dispatch from Victor to the effect that Cuesta had repaired the bridge of Almaraz and begun to cross the Tagus, while a body of 10,000 allied troops, presumably Portuguese, had been heard of in the direction of Plasencia. (This was in reality the whole army of Wellesley!) Rightly concluding that he had pushed the pursuit of Venegas too far, the King turned back in haste, left Sebastiani and the 4th Corps behind the Guadiana, and returned with his reserve to Toledo, in order to be in a position to support Victor. His excursion to Almagro had been almost as reckless and wrongheaded as Venegas’s advance to Madridejos, for he had separated himself from Victor by a gap of 200 miles, at the moment when the British army was just appearing on the Marshal’s flank, while Cuesta was in his front. If the allied generals had concentrated their forces ten days earlier—a thing that might well have happened but for the vexatious delays at Abrantes caused by Cuesta’s impracticability—the 1st Corps might have been attacked at the moment when Joseph lay at the foot of the Sierra Morena, in a position too remote from Talavera to allow him to come up in time to succour Victor.
While the King was absent on his expedition in pursuit of Venegas the most important change in the situation of affairs on the Tagus was that the Duke of Belluno had drawn back his troops from the line of the Tagus, where they had been lying since June 19, and had retired behind the Alberche. His retreat was not caused by any apprehension as to the appearance of Wellesley on his flank—a fact which was completely concealed from him—but by sheer want of provisions. On June 25 he sent to the King to say that his army was again starved out of its cantonments, and that he had eaten up in a week the small remnant of food that could be squeezed out of the country-side between the Tagus and the Tietar, and was forced to transfer himself to another region. ‘The position,’ he wrote, ‘is desperate. The 1st Corps is on the eve of dissolution: the men are dropping down from mere starvation. I have nothing, absolutely nothing, to give them. They are in a state of despair.... I am forced to fall back on Talavera, where there are no more resources than here. We must have prompt succour, but where can it be found? If your Majesty abandons me in my present wretched situation, I lose my honour, my military record—everything. I shall not be to blame for the disaster which menaces my troops, but I shall have to bear the blame. Tomorrow I shall be at Talavera, waiting your Majesty’s orders. The enemy has a pontoon-train: if he wishes to cross the Tagus he can do so, for the 1st Corps can no longer remain opposite him. Never was there a more distressing situation than ours.’
On June 26, therefore, Victor transferred himself to Talavera, and adopted a position behind the Alberche, after burning the materials of the late pontoon bridge at Almaraz, which he had taken up and stored in case they might again be needed. His movement was a lucky one for himself, as it took him further away from Wellesley’s army, which was just about to start from Abrantes with the object of turning his flank. It puzzled Cuesta, who sought for some other explanation of his departure than mere starvation, and was very cautious in taking advantage of it. However, on the day after the French had withdrawn, he pushed troops across the Tagus, and prepared to construct another bridge at Almaraz to replace that which the French had destroyed. His cavalry pushed out to Navalmoral and Oropesa, and further to the east he passed some detachments of infantry across the bridge of Arzobispo, which Victor—most unaccountably—had left intact. Fortunately he did no more, and refrained from advancing against Talavera, a step which from his earlier record we should judge that he might well have taken into consideration.
On the part of the allies things were now in a state of suspense from which they were not to stir for a fortnight. Cuesta was waiting for Wellesley, Wellesley was pushing forward from Zarza la Mayor to join Cuesta. Venegas was recovering at Santa Cruz de Mudela from the fatigues of his fruitless expedition into La Mancha.
But on the French side matters suffered a sudden change in the last days of July—the hand of the Emperor was stretched out from the banks of the Danube to alter the general dispositions of the army of Spain. On June 12 he had dictated at Sch?nbrunn a new plan of campaign, based on information which was already many weeks old when it reached him. At this date the Emperor was barely aware that Soult was being pressed by Wellesley in Northern Portugal. He had no detailed knowledge of what was taking place in Galicia or the Asturias, and was profoundly ignorant of the intrigues at Oporto which afterwards roused his indignation. But he was convinced that the English army was the one hostile force in Spain which ought to engage the attention of his lieutenants. Acting on this belief he issued an order that the 2nd, 5th, and 6th Corps—those of Soult, Mortier, and Ney—were to be united into a single army, and to be told off to the task of evicting Wellesley from Portugal. They were to put aside for the present all such subsidiary enterprises as the subjection of Galicia and the Asturias, and to devote themselves solely to ‘beating, hunting down, and casting into the sea the British army. If the three Corps join in good time the enemy ought to be crushed, and then the Spanish war will come to an end. But the troops must be moved in masses and not march in small detachments.... Putting aside all personal considerations, I give the command of the united army to the Duke of Dalmatia, as the senior marshal. His three Corps ought to amount to something between 50,000 and 60,000 men.’
This dispatch reached King Joseph at El Moral in La Mancha on July 1, and Soult at Zamora on July 2. It had been drawn up in view of events that were taking place about May 15. It presupposed that the British army was still in Northern Portugal, in close touch with Soult, and that Victor was in Estremadura. As a matter of fact Soult was on this day leading his dilapidated corps down the Esla, at the end of his retreat from Galicia. Ney, furious at the way in which his colleague had deserted him, had descended to Astorga three days before. Mortier was at Valladolid, just about to march for Villacastin and Madrid, for the King had determined to draw him down to aid in the defence of the capital. Finally, Cuesta, instead of lying in the Sierra Morena, as he was when Napoleon drew up his orders, was now on the Tagus, while Wellesley was no longer in touch with Soult on the Douro, but preparing to fall upon Victor in New Castile. The whole situation was so changed that the commentary which the Emperor appended to his orders was hopelessly out of date—as was always bound to be the case so long as he persisted in endeavouring to direct the course of affairs in Spain from the suburbs of Vienna.
Soult was overjoyed at receiving the splendid charge which the Emperor’s decree put into his hands, though he must have felt secret qualms at the idea that ere long some account of his doings at Oporto must reach the imperial head quarters and provoke his master’s wrath. There was a bad quarter of an hour to come. But meanwhile he was given a formidable army, and might hope to retrieve the laurels that he had lost in Portugal, being now in a position to attack the British with an overwhelming superiority of numbers. It must have been specially delightful to him to find that Ney had been put under his orders, so that he would be able to meet his angry colleague in the character of a superior officer dealing with an insubordinate lieutenant.
Soult’s first action, on finding himself placed in command of the whole of the French forces in North-western Spain, was to issue orders to Mortier to march on Salamanca, and to Ney to bring the 6th Corps down to Benavente. These dispositions clearly indicate an intention of falling upon Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, and assailing Northern Portugal—the plan which the Duke of Dalmatia had broached to the King in his letter from Puebla de Senabria on June 25, before he had received the news that the 5th and 6th Corps had been added to his command.
It is clear that on July 2 Soult had no knowledge of Wellesley’s movements, and thought that the British army was quite as likely to be aiming at Salamanca as at Madrid. It is also evident that he was aware that he would be unable to move for some weeks. Till the 2nd Corps should have received the clothing, munitions, and artillery which had been promised it, it could not possibly take the field for the invasion of Portugal.
Soult, therefore, was obliged to wait till his stores should be replenished, and till the two corps from Astorga and Valladolid should concentrate on his flanks. It was while he was remaining perforce in this posture of expectation that the news of the real condition of affairs in New Castile was at last brought to him.
WELLESLEY AND CUESTA: THE INTERVIEW AT MIRABETE
It was not till the third day of July that Wellesley had been able to cross the Spanish border. Since Victor had assumed his new position to the north of the Tagus as early as the nineteenth of the preceding month, there was a perilous fortnight during which Cuesta and his army were left alone to face the French. All through this time of waiting, the British Commander-in-chief was haunted by the dread that the old Captain-General might repeat his earlier errors, and once more—as at Rio Seco and Medellin—court a pitched battle. Wellesley had done his best to urge caution, by letters written not only to Cuesta himself, but to his Chief-of-the-staff O’Donoju and to Colonel Roche, who had now replaced Bourke as British representative at the head quarters of the Army of Estremadura. Fortunately they were not needed: the Spanish General was for once cautious: he followed Victor at a respectful distance, and when he had reached the Tagus and repaired the bridge of Almaraz, held back his army to the southern bank and only pushed a few small detachments beyond the stream to search for the enemy. Since the French had withdrawn to Talavera on June 26 there was no collision. The cavalry of the 1st Corps were discovered upon the upper Tietar and the Alberche, but they preserved a defensive attitude, and the Spaniards did not provoke them by any rash attempt to drive them back upon their main body. All remained quiet, as Wellesley had rather desired than expected.
Cuesta’s strategical position, therefore, was perfectly secure, since he kept his main body to the south of the river, and showed no desire to meddle with Victor before the arrival of the British. At this moment military affairs were not the only things that were engaging the attention of the old Captain-General. He was watching with considerable anxiety the course of events at Seville, where he was aware that he had many enemies. Ever since his high-handed action against the deputies of Leon in the preceding autumn, he knew that the Central Junta, and especially its Liberal wing, viewed him with suspicion and dislike. It was with great reluctance that they had placed him in command of the Estremaduran army, and if he had not been popular with the Conservative and clerical party and with some of the military cliques, he would not have retained his post for long. At this moment there were many intrigues stirring in Andalusia, and if some of them were directed against the Junta, others had no other end than the changing of the commanders of the various armies. While the Junta were debating about forms of government, and especially about the summoning of a national Cortes in the autumn, there were a number of officers of damaged reputation whose main object was to recover the military rank of which they had been deprived after misfortunes in the field. Infantado, who thought that it was absurd that he should have been disgraced after Ucles, while Cuesta had been rewarded after Medellin, was at the head of one party of intriguers, which included Francisco Palafox and the Conde de Montijo, and had secured the aid of Colonel Doyle, late British agent in Aragon and Catalonia, an officer who showed a lamentable readiness to throw himself into the intestine quarrels of the Spanish factions. Their actions went to the very edge of high treason, for Montijo stirred up a riot at Granada on April 16, attacked the provincial authorities, and almost succeeded in carrying out a pronunciamiento which must have led to civil war. The Junta did no more than banish him to San Lucar, from which place he continued his plots with Infantado, in spite of the warning that he had received.
In Seville, faction if not so openly displayed was equally violent. There was, as we have already said, a large section of the Junta whose dearest wish would have been to displace Cuesta: it was they who had obtained the nomination of Venegas to take charge of the troops in La Mancha, merely because he was known to be an enemy of the elder general. Yet since the two armies would have to co-operate in any attempt to recover Madrid, it was clearly inexpedient that their commanders should be at enmity. Some of the politicians at Seville were set on giving high command to the Duke of Albuquerque, an energetic and ambitious officer, but one gifted with the talent of quarrelling with every superior under whom he served: he was now bickering with Cuesta just as in March he had bickered with Cartaojal. The Duke was a great admirer of all things English, and a personal friend of Frere, the British minister. The latter did his best to support his pretensions, often expressing in official correspondence with the Junta a desire that Albuquerque might be given an independent corps, and entrusted with the charge of the movement that was to be concerted in conjunction with Wellesley’s army.
But it was not so much Albuquerque as Wellesley himself that Cuesta dreaded as a possible successor. For Frere was possessed with the notion that the time had now arrived at which it would be possible to press for the appointment of a single Commander-in-chief of all the Spanish armies. The obvious person to fill this post was the victor of Vimiero and Oporto, if only Spanish pride would consent to the appointment of a foreigner. Frere had sufficient sense to refrain from openly publishing his idea. But he was continually ventilating it to his private friends in the Junta, in season and out of season. There can be no doubt that both from the military and the political point of view the results of Wellesley’s exaltation to the position of Generalissimo would have been excellent. If he had controlled the whole of the Spanish armies in the summer of 1809, the course of affairs in the Peninsula would have taken a very different turn, and the campaign of Talavera would not have been wrecked by the hopeless want of co-operation between the allied armies. But it was not yet the time to press for the appointment: great as Wellesley’s reputation already was, when compared with that of any Spanish general, it was still not so splendid or so commanding as to compel assent to his promotion. Legitimate national pride stood in the way, and even after Espinosa, and Tudela, and Medellin the Spaniards could not believe that it was necessary for them to entrust the whole responsibility for the defence of their country to the foreigner. Only a few of the politicians of Seville showed any liking for the project. Wellesley himself would have desired nothing so much as this appointment, but being wiser and less hopeful than Frere, he thought it useless to press the point. When the sanguine diplomat wrote to him, early in June, to detail his attempts to bring home the advisability of the project to his Spanish friends, the general’s reply was cautious in the extreme. ‘I am much flattered,’ he said, ‘by the notion entertained by some of the persons in authority at Seville, of appointing me to the command of the Spanish armies. I have received no instruction from Government upon that subject: but I believe that it was considered an object of great importance in England that the Commander-in-chief of the British troops should have that situation. But it is one more likely to be attained by refraining from pressing it, and leaving it to the Spanish themselves to discover the expediency of the arrangement, than by any suggestion on our parts.’ He concluded by informing Frere that he could not conceive that his insinuation was likely to have any effect, and that the opinion of the British Ministry was probably correct—viz. that at present national jealousy made the project hopeless.
Now it was impossible that Frere’s well-meaning but mistaken endeavours should escape the notice of Cuesta’s friends in Seville. The British Minister had spoken to so many politicians on the subject, that we cannot doubt that his colloquies were promptly reported to the Captain-General of Estremadura. This fact goes far to explain Cuesta’s surly and impracticable behaviour towards Wellesley during the Talavera campaign. He disliked his destined colleague not only because he was a foreigner, and because he showed himself strong-willed and outspoken during their intercourse, but because he believed that the Englishman was intriguing behind his back to obtain the post of Generalissimo. This belief made him determined to assert his independence on the most trifling matters, loth to fall in with even the most reasonable plans, and suspicious that every proposal made to him concealed some trap. He attributed to Wellesley the design of getting rid of him, and was naturally determined to do nothing to forward it.
The English officers who studied Cuesta’s conduct from the outside, during the Talavera campaign, attributed his irrational movements and his hopeless impracticability to a mere mixture of pride, stupidity, and obstinacy. They were wrong; the dominant impulse was resentment, jealousy, and suspicion—a combination far more deadly in its results than the other. He awaited the approach of Wellesley with a predisposition to quarrel and a well-developed personal enmity, whose existence the British general had not yet realized.
We have dealt in the last chapter with the strength and organization of the British army at the moment when Wellesley crossed the frontier on July 3. It remains to speak of the two Spanish armies which were to take part in the campaign. We have already seen that Cuesta’s host had been reinforced after Medellin with a new brigade of Granadan levies, and a whole division taken from the army of La Mancha. Since that date he had received large drafts both of infantry and cavalry from Andalusia. Six more regiments of horse had reached him, besides reinforcements for his old corps. All were now strong in numbers, and averaged between 400 and 500 sabres, so that by the middle of June he had fully 7,000 mounted men under his orders. Eight or nine additional regiments of infantry had also come to hand since April—some of them new Andalusian levies, others old corps whose cadres had been filled up since the disaster of Ucles. His infantry counted about 35,000 bayonets, divided into five divisions and a ‘vanguard’: the latter under Zayas was about 4,000 strong, each of the others exceeded 5,000. The cavalry formed two divisions, under Henestrosa and Albuquerque, one composed of seven, one of six regiments. There were thirty guns—some of heavy calibre, nine-and twelve-pounders—with about 800 artillerymen. The whole army, inclusive of sick and detached, amounted to 42,000 men, of whom perhaps 36,000 were efficients present with the colours.
The second Spanish army, that of La Mancha under Venegas, was much weaker, having furnished heavy detachments to reinforce Cuesta before it took the field in June. Its base was the old ‘Army of the Centre,’ which had been commanded by Casta?os and Infantado. Some twenty battalions that had seen service in the campaign of Tudela were still in its ranks: they had been recruited up to an average of 500 or 600 bayonets. The rest of the force was composed of new Andalusian regiments, raised in the winter and spring, some of which had taken part in the rout of Ciudad Real under Cartaojal, while others had never before entered the field. The gross total of the army on June 16 was 26,298 men, of whom 3,383 were cavalry. Deducting the sick in hospital, Venegas could dispose of some 23,000 sabres and bayonets, distributed into five divisions. The horsemen in this army were not formed into separate brigades, but allotted as divisional cavalry to the infantry units. There was little to choose, in point of efficiency, between the Estremaduran army and that of La Mancha; both contained too many raw troops, and in both, as was soon to be proved, the bulk of the cavalry was still as untrustworthy as it had shown itself in previous engagements.
The Spaniards therefore could put into the field for the campaign of July on the Tagus some 60,000 men. But the fatal want of unity in command was to prevent them from co-ordinating their movements and acting as integral parts of a single army guided by a single will. Venegas was to a certain degree supposed to be under Cuesta’s authority, but as he was continually receiving orders directly from the Junta, and was treated by them as an independent commander, he practically was enabled to do much as he pleased. Being a personal enemy of Cuesta, he had every inducement to play his own game, and did not scruple to do so at the most important crisis of the campaign,—covering his disregard of the directions of his senior by the easy pretext of a desire to execute those of the central government.
On July 15, the day when his share in the campaign commenced, the head quarters of Venegas were at Santa Cruz de Mudela, just outside the northern exit of the Despe?a Perros. His outposts lay in front, at El Moral, Valdepe?as, and Villanueva de los Infantes. He was divided by a considerable distance—some twenty-five miles—from the advanced cavalry of Sebastiani’s corps, whose nearest detachment was placed at Villaharta, where the high-road to Madrid crosses the river Giguela.
Meanwhile we must return to Wellesley, who having crossed the frontier on July 3, was now moving forward by short marches to Plasencia. On the fourth the head quarters were at Zarza la Mayor, on the sixth at Coria, on the seventh at Galisteo; on the eighth Plasencia was reached, and the general halted the army, while he should ride over to Almaraz and confer in person with Cuesta on the details of their plan of campaign. In the valley of the Alagon, where the country was almost untouched by the hand of war, provisions were obtainable in some quantity, but every Spanish informant agreed that when the troops dropped down to the Tagus they would find the land completely devastated. Wellesley was therefore most anxious to organize a great dép?t of food before moving on: the local authorities professed great readiness to supply him, and he contracted with the Alcaldes of the fertile Vera de Plasencia for 250,000 rations of flour to be delivered during the next ten days. Lozano de Torres, the Spanish commissary-general sent by the Junta to the British head quarters, promised his aid in collecting the food, but even before Wellesley departed to visit Cuesta, he had begun to conceive doubts whether supplies would be easily procurable. The difficulty was want of transport—the army had marched from Portugal with a light equipment, and had no carts to spare for scouring the country-side in search of flour. The General had relied on the assurances sent him from Seville to the effect that he would easily be able to find local transport in the intact regions about Coria and Plasencia: but he was disappointed: very few carts could be secured, and the store of food in the possession of the army seemed to shrink rather than to increase during every day that the army remained in the valley of the Alagon, though the region was fruitful and undevastated. It is certain that the British commissaries had not yet mastered the art of gathering in provisions from the country-side, and that the Spanish local authorities could not be made to understand the necessity for punctuality and dispatch in the delivery of the promised supplies.
On July 10 Wellesley started off with the head-quarters staff to visit Cuesta, at his camp beyond the bridge of Almaraz, there to concert the details of their joint advance. Owing to an error made by his guides he arrived after dusk at the hamlet below the Puerto de Mirabete, around which the main body of the Army of Estremadura was encamped. The Captain-General had drawn out his troops in the afternoon for the inspection of the British commander. When at last he appeared they had been four hours under arms in momentary expectation of the arrival of their distinguished visitor, and Cuesta himself, though still lame from the effect of his bruises at Medellin, had sat on horseback at their head during the greater part of that time.
Two admirable accounts of the review of the Estremaduran host in the darkness were written by members of Wellesley’s staff. It is well worth while to quote one of them, for the narrative expresses with perfect clearness the effect which the sight of the Spanish troops made upon their allies:—
‘Our arrival at the camp was announced by a general discharge of artillery, upon which an immense number of torches were made to blaze up, and we passed the entire Spanish line in review by their light. The effect produced by these arrangements was one of no ordinary character. The torches, held aloft at moderate intervals, threw a red and wavering light over the whole scene, permitting at the same time its minuter parts to be here and there cast into the shade, while the grim and swarthy visages of the soldiers, their bright arms and dark uniforms, appeared peculiarly picturesque as often as the flashes fell upon them. Nor was Cuesta himself an object to be passed by without notice: the old man preceded us, not so much sitting upon his horse as held upon it by two pages, at the imminent risk of being overthrown whenever a cannon was discharged, or a torch flamed out with peculiar brightness. His physical debility was so observable as clearly to mark his unfitness for the situation which he held. As to his mental powers, he gave us little opportunity of judging, inasmuch as he scarcely uttered five words during the continuance of our visit: but his corporal infirmities were ever at absolute variance with all a general’s duties.
‘In this way we passed by about 6,000 cavalry drawn up in rank entire, and not less than twenty battalions of infantry, each of 700 to 800 bayonets. They were all, without exception, remarkably fine men. Some indeed were very young—too young for service—particularly among the recruits who had lately joined. But to take them all in all, it would not have been easy to find a stouter or more hardy looking body of soldiers in any European service. Of their appointments it was not possible to speak in the same terms of commendation. There were battalions whose arms, accoutrements, and even clothing might be pronounced respectable: but in general they were deficient, particularly in shoes. It was easy to perceive, from the attitude in which they stood, and the manner in which they handled their arms, that little or no discipline prevailed among them: they could not but be regarded as raw levies. Speaking of them in the aggregate they were little better than bold peasantry, armed partially like soldiers, but completely unacquainted with a soldier’s duty. This remark applied to the cavalry as much as to the infantry. Many of the horses were good, but the riders manifestly knew nothing of movement or of discipline: and they were on this account, as also on that of miserable equipment, quite unfit for service. The generals appeared to have been selected by one rule alone—that of seniority. They were almost all old men, and, except O’Donoju and Zayas, evidently incapable of bearing the fatigues or surmounting the difficulties of a campaign. It was not so with the colonels and battalion commanders, who appeared to be young and active, and some of whom were, we had reason to believe, learning to become skilful officers.... Cuesta seemed particularly unwilling that any of his generals should hold any serious conversation with us. It is true that he presented them one by one to Sir Arthur, but no words were exchanged on the occasion, and each retired after he had made his bow.’ Albuquerque, of whom the Captain-General was particularly jealous, had been relegated with his division to Arzobispo, and did not appear on the scene.
The all-important plan of campaign was settled at a long conference—it lasted for four hours—on the morning of the following day. According to all accounts the scene at the interview must have been curious. Cuesta could not, or would not, speak French: Wellesley was not yet able to express himself fluently in Spanish. Accordingly, O’Donoju, the chief of the staff of the Army of Estremadura, acted as interpreter between them, rendering Wellesley’s views into Spanish and Cuesta’s into English. The greater part of the discussion consisted in the bringing forward of plans by the British commander and their rejection by the Captain-General. Cuesta was full of suspicion, and saw a trap in every proposal that was made to him: he imagined that Wellesley’s main object was to edge him out of the supreme command. He was almost silent throughout the interview, only opening his lips to give emphatic negatives, for which O’Donoju proceeded to find ingenious and elaborate explanations.
It was not the principles on which the campaign was to be conducted, but the details of the distribution of the troops on which the trouble arose. The enemy’s position and force was fairly well known to both generals, except in one all-important particular. They were aware that Victor lay behind the Alberche with not much more than 22,000 men, that Sebastiani was at Madridejos with a somewhat smaller force, and that King Joseph with his central reserve, which they over-estimated at 12,000 men, was able at any moment to join the 1st Corps. Hence they expected to find some 34,000 French troops at Talavera, and rightly considered that with the 55,000 men of their two armies they ought to give a good account of them. Sebastiani, as they supposed, might be left out of the game, for occupation for him would be found by the army of La Mancha, which was to be told off for this purpose and directed to cling to the skirts of the 4th Corps and never to lose sight of it. As Venegas would have, according to their calculations, nearly double the numbers of Sebastiani, he would have no difficulty in keeping him in check.
But it was not only on the French troops in New Castile that watch had to be kept. It was necessary to take into account the enemy beyond the mountains, in the valley of the Douro. The allied generals were aware that Mortier and Soult must both be considered. The former they knew to be at Valladolid, and they had learnt that King Joseph was proposing to bring him down towards Madrid—as was indeed the fact. Accordingly they expected that he might turn up in a few days somewhere in the direction of Avila. Soult they knew to be at Zamora, and from the dispatches captured with General Franceschi ten days before, they had a good knowledge of his force and intentions. A study of these documents led them to conclude that he could not move for many weeks, owing to the dilapidated state of his corps—which he had painted in the most moving terms in his letters to King Joseph. They also gathered that if he moved at all, he would be inclined to threaten Northern Portugal or Ciudad Rodrigo: in the dispatches captured with Franceschi he had named Braganza as a point at which he might strike. Accordingly they opined that he need not be taken very seriously into consideration, especially as he was wholly destitute of artillery. Yet he might be drawn into the field by the news that Madrid was in danger. If he were induced to bring help to the King, he would almost certainly work by making a diversion against the communications of the British army, and not by directly joining himself to Joseph’s army by the long and circuitous march from Zamora to Madrid. To carry out such a diversion he would be obliged to cross the lofty Sierra de Francia by one of the passes which lead from the Salamanca region into the valley of the Alagon—perhaps by the defile of Perales, but much more probably by the better known and more practicable pass of Ba?os. Wellesley took the possibility of this movement into serious consideration, but did not think that it would be likely to cause him much danger if it should occur, for he believed that Soult would bring with him no more than the 15,000 or 18,000 men of his own 2nd Corps. That he would appear not with such a small force, but with Ney and Mortier in his wake, leading an army of 50,000 bayonets, did not enter into the mind of the British commander. Mortier was thought to be moving in the direction of Avila: Ney was believed to be contending with the Galician insurgents in the remote regions about Lugo and Corunna. The news of his arrival at Astorga had not yet reached the allied camps, and he was neglected as a factor in the situation. Wellesley and Cuesta had no conception that any force save that of Soult was likely to menace their northern flank and their line of communications when they committed themselves to their advance on Madrid. To provide against a possible movement of the 2nd Corps into the valley of the Tagus, therefore, all that was necessary was to hold the defiles of Perales and Ba?os. The former had already been seen to, for even before the meeting of Wellesley and Cuesta, Carlos d’Espa?a had blocked it with two or three battalions drawn from the garrison of Ciudad Rodrigo. For the latter Wellesley hoped that Cuesta would provide a sufficient garrison. The old Captain-General promised to do so, but only sent 600 men under the Marquis Del Reino, a wholly inadequate detachment.
Wellesley’s first proposal to his Spanish colleague was that the main bodies of both armies should advance against Victor, while a detachment of 10,000 men should move out to the left, in the direction of Avila, to look for Mortier, if he were to be found in that direction, and if not to turn the enemy’s right and threaten Madrid. He hoped that Venegas and the army of La Mancha might at the same time move forward against Sebastiani, and keep him so fully employed that he would not be able to spare a man to aid Victor and King Joseph.
Cuesta at once refused to make any detachment in the direction of Avila from his own army, and suggested that Wellesley should find the 10,000 men required for this diversion. The English general objected that it would take exactly half his force, and that he could not split up such a small unit, while the Spaniards could easily spare such a number of troops from their total of 36,000 men. This argument failed to move Cuesta, and the project was dropped, Wellesley thinking that it was not strictly necessary, though very advisable.
The only flanking force which was finally set aside for operations on the left wing, for the observation of the French about Avila and the feint at Madrid, consisted of Sir Robert Wilson’s 1,500 Portuguese, and a corresponding body of two battalions and one squadron from the Spanish army—about 3,500 men in all. It played a part of some little importance in the campaign, but it is hard to see that it would have exercised any dominant influence even if it had been raised to the full strength that Wellesley had desired. Mortier, as a matter of fact, was not near Avila, and so the 10,000 men sent in this direction would not have served the end that the British general expected. The 5th Corps had been called off by Soult, contrary to the wishes of the King, and no body of troops was needed to contain it, on this part of the theatre of war. It was ultimately to appear at a very different point, where no provision had been made for its reception.
Far more important were the arrangements which Wellesley and Cuesta made for the diversion on their other flank. It was from the miscarriage of this operation, owing to the wilful disobedience of the officer charged with it, that the failure of the whole campaign was to come about. They agreed that Venegas with the 23,000 men of the army of La Mancha, was to move up the high-road from his position at Santa Cruz de Mudela, and drive Sebastiani before him. Having pushed back the 4th Corps to the Tagus, Venegas was then to endeavour to force the passage of that river either at Aranjuez or at Fuentedue?as, and to threaten Madrid. It was calculated that Sebastiani would be forced to keep between him and the capital, and would be unable to spare a man to reinforce Victor and King Joseph. Thus Wellesley and Cuesta with 56,000 men would close on the King and the Marshal, who could not have more than 35,000, and (as it was hoped) defeat them or at least man?uvre them out of Madrid. A glance at the map will show one peculiarity of this plan: it would have been more natural to bid Venegas march by the bridge of Toledo rather than by those of Aranjuez and Fuentedue?as; to use the latter he would have to move towards his right, and to separate himself by a long gap from the main army of the allies. At Toledo he would be within thirty-five miles of them—at Aranjuez seventy, at Fuentedue?as 100 miles would lie between him and the troops of Wellesley and Cuesta. It would appear that the two generals at their colloquy came to the conclusion that by ordering Venegas to use the eastern passages of the Tagus they would compel Sebastiani to remove eastward also, so that he would be out of supporting distance of Victor. They recognized the bare possibility that Sebastiani might refuse to devote himself to the task of holding back the army of La Mancha, might leave Madrid to its fate, and then hurry off to join the King and the 1st Corps in an assault on the main Anglo-Spanish army. In this case they settled that Venegas should march on the capital and seize it, a move which (as they supposed) would force Joseph to turn back or to re-divide his army. But it is clear that they did not expect to have to fight Victor, the King, and Sebastiani combined, as they were ultimately forced to do at Talavera on July 28. They supposed that Venegas would find occupation for the 4th Corps, and that they might count on finding only the 1st Corps and Joseph’s Madrid reserves in front of them.
When armies are working in a joint operation from separate bases it is all-important that they should time their movements with the nicest exactitude. This Wellesley and Cuesta attempted to secure, by sending to Venegas an elaborate time-table. He was ordered to be at Madridejos on July 19, at Tembleque on the twentieth, at Santa Cruz de la Zarza on the twenty-first, and at the bridge of Fuentedue?as on the twenty-second or twenty-third. All this was on the supposition that Sebastiani would have about 12,000 men and would give ground whenever pressed. If he turned out by some unlikely chance—presumably by having rallied the King’s reserves—to be much stronger, Venegas was to man?uvre in the direction of Tarancon, to avoid a general action, and if necessary to retreat towards the Passes from which he had started. It would be rather an advantage than otherwise if (contrary to all probability) the French had concentrated their main force against the army of La Mancha, for this would leave Victor helpless in front of the united hosts of Wellesley and Cuesta, which would outnumber him by two to one.
A Portuguese Cavalry Soldier
Enlarge SPANISH COINS OF THE PERIOD OF THE PENINSULAR WAR
What the allied generals never expected was that Venegas would let Sebastiani slip away from his front, without any attempt to hold him, and would then (instead of marching on Madrid) waste the critical days of the campaign (July 24-29) in miserable delays between Toledo and Aranjuez, when there was absolutely no French field-force between him and Madrid, nor any hostile troops whatever in his neighbourhood save a weak division of 3,000 men in garrison at Toledo. The failure of the Talavera campaign is due even more to this wretched indecision and disobedience to orders on the part of Venegas than to the eccentricities and errors of Cuesta. If the army of La Mancha had kept Sebastiani in check, and refused to allow him to abscond, there would have been no battles on the Alberche on July 27-28, for the French would never have dared to face the Anglo-Spaniards of the main host without the assistance of the 4th Corps.
But to return to the joint plan of Wellesley and Cuesta: on July 23, the day on which Venegas was to reach Fuentedue?as (or Aranjuez) the 56,000 men of the grand army were to be assailing Victor behind the Alberche. The British were to cross the Tietar at Bazagona on the eighteenth and follow the high-road Navalmoral-Oropesa. The Estremadurans, passing the Tagus at Almaraz and Arzobispo, were to move by the parallel route along the river bank by La Calzada and Calera, which is only five or six miles distant from the great chaussée. Thus the two armies would be in close touch with each other, and would not be caught apart by the enemy. On reaching Talavera they were to force the fords of the Alberche and fall upon Victor in his cantonments behind that stream. Sir Robert Wilson and the 3,500 men of his mixed Spanish and Portuguese detachment were to move up as the flank-guard of the allied host, and to push by the head waters of the Tietar for Escalona on the side-road to Madrid.
Criticisms of the most acrimonious kind have been brought to bear on this plan by English, French, and Spanish writers. Many of them are undeserved; in particular the tritest objection of all, made ex post facto by those who only look at the actual course of the campaign, that Wellesley was exposing his communications to the united forces of Soult, Ney, and Mortier. There was on July 10, when Cuesta and Wellesley met, no reason whatever for apprehending the contingency of the march of the three marshals upon Plasencia. Soult, as his own letters of June 25 bore witness, was not in a condition to move—he had not a single piece of artillery, and his troops were in dire need of rest and re-equipment. Ney was believed to be at Corunna or Lugo—Soult’s intercepted dispatches spoke of the 6th Corps as being destined to remain behind in Galicia, and he (as the allied generals supposed) ought best to have known what his colleague was about to do. How could they have guessed that, in wrath at his desertion by the Duke of Dalmatia, Ney would evacuate the whole kingdom, abandon fortresses like Ferrol and Corunna, and march for Astorga? Without Ney’s corps to aid him, Soult could not possibly have marched on Plasencia—to have done so with the 2nd Corps alone would have exposed him to being beset by Wellesley on one side and by Beresford on the other. As to Mortier and the 5th Corps, Cuesta and Wellesley undervalued their strength, being unaware that Kellermann had sent back from the Asturias the division that had been lent him for his expedition to Oviedo. They thought that the Duke of Treviso’s force was more like 7,000 than 17,000 bayonets, and—such as it was—they had the best of reasons for believing that it was more likely to march on Madrid by Avila than to join Soult, for they had before them an intercepted dispatch from the King, bidding Mortier to move down to Villacastin in order to be in supporting distance of the capital and the 1st Corps.
On the whole, therefore, the two generals must be excused for not foreseeing the descent of 50,000 men upon their communications, which took place three weeks after their meeting at the bridge of Almaraz: the data in their possession on July 10 made it appear most improbable.
A much more valid criticism is that which blames the method of co-operation with Venegas which was employed. ‘Double external lines of operations’ against an enemy placed in a central position are notoriously perilous, and the particular movement on Fuentedue?as, which the army of La Mancha was ordered to execute, was one which took it as far as possible from Wellesley’s and Cuesta’s main body. Yet it may be urged in their defence that, if they had drawn in Venegas to join them, they would have got little profit out of having 23,000 more Spaniards on the Alberche. Sebastiani on the other hand, who could join Victor at the same moment that the corps from La Mancha joined the allies, would bring some 17,000 excellent troops to Talavera. The benefit of drawing in Venegas would be much less than the disadvantage of drawing in Sebastiani to the main theatre of war. Hence came the idea that the army from the Passes must be devoted to the sole purpose of keeping the 4th Corps as far as possible from the Alberche. Even knowing that Venegas was hostile to Cuesta, and that he was a man of no mark or capacity, Wellesley could not have expected that he would disobey orders, waste time, and fail utterly in keeping touch with Sebastiani or threatening Madrid.
The one irreparable fault in the drawing up of the whole plan of campaign was the fundamental one that Wellesley had undertaken to co-operate with Spanish armies before he had gauged the weak points of the generals and their men. If he had held the post of commander-in-chief of the allied forces, and could have issued orders that were obeyed without discussion, the case would have been different. But he had to act in conjunction with two colleagues, one of whom was suspicious of his intentions and jealous of his preponderant capacity, while the other deliberately neglected to carry out clear and cogent orders from his superior officer. Cuesta’s impracticability and Venegas’s disobedience could not have been foreseen by one who had no previous experience of Spanish armies. Still less had Wellesley realized all the defects of the Spanish rank and file when placed in line of battle. That he did not hold an exaggerated opinion of their merits when he started on the campaign is shown by letters which he wrote nine months before. But he was still under the impression that, if cautiously handled, and not exposed to unnecessary dangers, they would do good service. He had yet to witness the gratuitous panic of Portago’s division on the eve of Talavera, and the helplessness of the Spanish cavalry at the combats of Gamonal and Arzobispo. After a month’s experience of Cuesta and his men, Wellesley vowed never again to take part in grand operations with a Spanish general as his equal and colleague. This was the teaching of experience—and on July 10 the experience was yet to come.
The interview at the bridge of Almaraz had not been very satisfactory to Wellesley, but it was far from having undeceived him as to the full extent of the difficulties that lay before him. He wrote to Frere at Seville that he had been on the whole well received, and that Cuesta had not displayed any jealousy of him. As that sentiment was at this moment the predominant feeling in the old man’s breast, it is clear that he had succeeded in hiding it. But the obstinate silence of Wellesley’s colleague had worried him. O’Donoju had done all the talking, and ‘it was impossible to say what plans the general entertains.’ He was moreover somewhat perturbed by the rumours which his staff had picked up from the Estremaduran officers, to the effect that Cuesta was so much the enemy of the Central Junta that he was plotting a pronunciamiento for its deposition. As to the fighting powers of the Spanish army, Wellesley wrote to Castlereagh that ‘the troops were ill clothed but well armed, and the officers appeared to take pains with their discipline. Some of the corps of infantry were certainly good, and the horses of the cavalry were in good condition.’ Only ten days later he was to utter the very different opinion that ‘owing to their miserable state of discipline and their want of officers properly qualified, these troops are entirely incapable of performing any man?uvre however simple,’ and that ‘whole corps, officers and men, run off on the first appearance of danger.’
The British Commander-in-chief had indeed many moral and mental experiences to go through between the interview at Mirabete on July 10, and the retreat from Talavera on August 2!