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Preface

The second volume of this work has swelled to an even greater bulk than its predecessor. Its size must be attributed to two main causes: the first is the fact that a much greater number of original sources, both printed and unprinted, are available for the campaigns of 1809 than for those of 1808. The second is that the war in its second year had lost the character of comparative unity which it had possessed in its first. Napoleon, on quitting Spain in January, left behind him as a legacy to his brother a comprehensive plan for the conquest of the whole Peninsula. But that plan was, from the first, impracticable: and when it had miscarried, the fighting in every region of the theatre of war became local and isolated. Neither the harassed and distracted French King at Madrid, nor the impotent Spanish Junta at Seville, knew how to combine and co-ordinate the operations of their various armies into a single logical scheme. Ere long, six or seven campaigns were taking place simultaneously in different corners of the Peninsula, each of which was practically independent of the others. Every French and Spanish general fought for his own hand, with little care for what his colleagues were doing: their only unanimity was that all alike kept urging on their central governments the plea that their own particular section of the war was more critical and important than any other. If we look at the month of May, 1809, we find that the following six disconnected series of operations were all in progress at once, and that each has to be treated as a separate unit, rather than as a part of one great general scheme of strategy--(1) Soult’s campaign against Wellesley in Northern Portugal, (2) Ney’s invasion of the Asturias, (3) Victor’s and Cuesta’s movements in Estremadura, (4) Sebastiani’s demonstrations against Venegas in La Mancha, (5) Suchet’s contest with Blake in Aragon, (6) St. Cyr’s attempt to subdue Catalonia. When a war has broken up into so many fractions, it becomes not only hard to follow but very lengthy to narrate. Fortunately for the historian and the student, a certain amount of unity is restored in July, mainly owing to the fact that the master-mind of Wellesley has been brought to bear upon the situation. When the British general attempted to combine with the Spanish armies of Estremadura and La Mancha for a common march upon Madrid, the whole of the hostile forces in the Peninsula [with the exception of those in Aragon and Catalonia] were once more drawn into a single scheme of operations. Hence the Talavera campaign is the central fact in the annals of the Peninsular War for the year 1809. I trust that it will not be considered that I have devoted a disproportionate amount of space to the setting forth and discussion of the various problems which it involved.

The details of the battle of Talavera itself have engaged my special attention. I thought it worth while to go very carefully over the battle-field, which fortunately remains much as it was in 1809. A walk around it explained many difficulties, but suggested certain others, which I have done my best to solve.

In several other chapters of this volume I discovered that a personal inspection of localities produced most valuable results. At Oporto, for example, I found Wellesley’s passage of the Douro assuming a new aspect when studied on the spot. Not one of the historians who have dealt with it has taken the trouble to mention that the crossing was effected at a point where the Douro runs between lofty and precipitous cliffs, towering nearly 200 feet above the water’s edge! Yet this simple fact explains how it came to pass that the passage was effected at all--the French, on the plateau above the river, could not see what was going on at the bottom of the deeply sunk gorge, which lies in a ‘dead angle’ to any observer who has not come forward to the very edge of the cliff. I have inserted a photograph of the spot, which will explain the situation at a glance. From Napier’s narrative and plan I am driven to conclude that he had either never seen the ground, or had forgotten its aspect after the lapse of years.

A search in the Madrid Deposito de la Guerra produced a few important documents for the Talavera campaign, and was made most pleasant by the extreme courtesy of the officers in charge. It is curious to find that our London Record Office contains a good many Spanish dispatches which do not survive at Madrid. This results from the laudable zeal with which Mr. Frere, when acting as British minister at Seville, sent home copies of every Spanish document, printed or unprinted, on which he could lay his hands. Once or twice he thus preserved invaluable ‘morning states’ of the Peninsular armies, which it would otherwise have been impossible to recover. Among our other representatives in Spain Captain Carroll was the only one who possessed to a similar degree this admirable habit of collecting original documents and statistics. His copious ‘enclosures’ to Lord Castlereagh are of the greatest use for the comprehension of the war in the Asturias and Galicia.

Neither Napier nor any other historian of the Peninsular War has gone into the question of Beresford’s reorganization of the Portuguese army. Comparing English and Portuguese documents, I have succeeded in working it out, and trust that Chapter III of Section XIII, and Appendix No. V, may suffice to demonstrate Beresford’s very real services to the allied cause.

It is my pleasant duty to acknowledge much kind help that I have received from correspondents on both sides of the sea, who have come to my aid in determining points of difficulty. Of those in England I must make particular notice of Colonel F. A. Whinyates, R.A., a specialist in all matters connected with the British artillery. I owe to him my Appendix No. XI, which he was good enough to draw up, as well as the loan of several unpublished diaries of officers of his own arm, from which I have extracted some useful and interesting facts. I must also express my obligation to Mr. E. Mayne, for information relating to Sir Robert Wilson’s Loyal Lusitanian Legion, of which his relative, Colonel W. Mayne, was in 1809 the second-in-command. The excerpts which he was kind enough to collect for me have proved of great service, and could not have been procured from any other quarter. Nor must I omit to thank two other correspondents, Colonel Willoughby Verner and the Rev. Alexander Craufurd, for their notes concerning the celebrated ‘Light Division,’ in which the one is interested as the historian of the old 95th, and the other as the grandson of Robert Craufurd, of famous memory.

Of helpers from beyond the Channel I must make special mention of Commandant Balagny, the author of Napoléon en Espagne, who has supplied me with a great number of official documents from Paris, and in especial with a quantity of statistics, many of them hitherto unpublished, which serve to fix the strength and the losses of various French corps in 1809. I also owe to him my Appendix VI (iii), a most interesting résumé of the material in the French archives relating to the strange ‘Oporto conspiracy’ of Captain Argenton and his confederates. This obscure chapter of the history of the Peninsular War is, I think, brought out in its true proportions by the juxtaposition of the English and French documents. It is clear that Soult’s conduct was far more sinister than Napier will allow, and also that the plot to depose the Marshal was the work of a handful of military intriguers, not of the great body of highly-placed conspirators in whose existence the mendacious Argenton has induced some historians to believe.

At Madrid General Arteche placed at my disposal, with the most bountiful liberality, his immense stores of knowledge, which I had learnt to appreciate long before, as a conscientious student of his Guerra de la Independencia. He pointed out to me many new sources, which had escaped my notice, and was good enough to throw light on many problems which had been vexing me. For his genial kindness I cannot too strongly express my obligation.

Of the officers at the Madrid Deposito de la Guerra, whose courtesy I have mentioned above, I must give special thanks to Captain Emilio Figueras, from whom (just as these pages are going to press) I have received some additional figures relating to the Army of Estremadura in 1809.

Finally, as in my first volume, I must make special acknowledgement of the assistance of two helpers in Oxford--the indefatigable compiler of the Index, and Mr. C. E. Doble, whose corrections and suggestions have been as valuable in 1903 as in 1902.

C. OMAN.

ALL SOULS COLLEGE, June 20, 1903.

SECTION IX AFTER CORUNNA (JAN.-FEB. 1809)

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Consequences of Moore’s Diversion: Rally of the Spanish Armies: Battle of Ucles 1

II. Napoleon’s departure from Spain: his plans for the Termination of the War: the Counter-Plans of the Junta: Canning and Cadiz 15

SECTION X THE AUTUMN AND WINTER CAMPAIGN IN CATALONIA

I. The Siege of Rosas 37

II. St. Cyr relieves Barcelona: Battles of Cardadeu and Molins de Rey 58

III. The Campaign of February, 1809: Battle of Valls 76

SECTION XI THE SECOND SIEGE OF SARAGOSSA (DEC. 1808-FEB. 1809)

I. The Capture of the Outworks 90

II. The French within the Walls: the Street-fighting: the Surrender 115

SECTION XII THE SPRING CAMPAIGN IN LA MANCHA AND ESTREMADURA

I. The Rout of Ciudad Real 143

II. Operations of Victor and Cuesta: the Battle of Medellin 149

SECTION XIII SOULT’S INVASION OF PORTUGAL

I. Soult’s Preliminary Operations in Galicia (Jan.-March 1809) 170

II. Portugal at the moment of Soult’s Invasion: the Nation, the Regency, and Sir John Cradock 196

III. The Portuguese Army: its History and its Reorganization 208

IV. Combats about Chaves and Braga: Capture of Oporto (March 10-29, 1809) 223

V. Soult’s halt at Oporto: Operations of Robert Wilson and Lapisse on the Portuguese Frontier: Silveira’s defence of Amarante 250

VI. Intrigues at Oporto: the Conspiracy of Argenton 273

SECTION XIV WELLESLEY’S CAMPAIGN IN NORTHERN PORTUGAL (MAY 1809)

I. Sir Arthur Wellesley: the general and the man 286

II. Wellesley retakes Oporto 312

III. Soult’s Retreat from Oporto 343

SECTION XV OPERATIONS IN NORTHERN SPAIN (MARCH-JUNE 1809)

I. Ney and La Romana in Galicia and the Asturias 367

II. The French abandon Galicia 390

III. Operations in Aragon: Alcañiz and Belchite (March-June 1809) 406

SECTION XVI THE TALAVERA CAMPAIGN (JULY-AUG. 1809)

I. Wellesley at Abrantes: Victor evacuates Estremadura 433

II. Wellesley enters Spain 449

III. Wellesley and Cuesta: the interview at Mirabete 463

IV. The March to Talavera: Quarrel of Wellesley and Cuesta 483

V. Concentration of the French Armies: the King takes the offensive: Combats of Torrijos and Casa de Salinas 494

VI. The Battle of Talavera: the Preliminary Combats (July 27-28) 507

VII. The Battle of Talavera: the Main Engagement (July 28) 527

VIII. The Retreat from Talavera 559

IX. The end of the Talavera Campaign: Almonacid 599

APPENDICES

I. The ‘Army of the Centre,’ Jan. 11, 1809. The Spanish Army at the Battle of Ucles 621

II. The Garrison of Saragossa 622

III. The French Army in Spain, in Feb. 1809 624

IV. The Spanish Army at Medellin 627

V. The Portuguese Army in 1809: organization and numbers 629

VI. Papers relating to the intrigues at Oporto, April-May 1809 632

VII. Strength of Wellesley’s Army, May 6, 1809 640

VIII. Soult’s Report on Galicia, June 25, 1809 642

IX. Suchet’s and Blake’s Armies, May and June 1809 643

X. Papers relating to the Talavera Campaign: strength and losses of the British, Spanish, and French Armies 645

XI. The British Royal Artillery in the Peninsula, 1809 654

XII. Venegas’s Army of La Mancha in June-July 1809 655

INDEX 657

MAPS AND PLANS

I. UCLES AND ROSAS To face 54

II. GENERAL MAP OF CATALONIA: BATTLE OF VALLS ” 88

III. SARAGOSSA, THE SECOND SIEGE ” 134

IV. MEDELLIN ” 166

V. BRAGA (LANHOZO) AND OPORTO ” 248

VI. NORTHERN PORTUGAL, SHOWING SOULT’S AND WELLESLEY’S CAMPAIGNS OF 1809 ” 360

VII. ALCAÑIZ AND MARIA ” 426

VIII. TALAVERA ” 550

IX. CENTRAL SPAIN, SHOWING THE LOCALITIES OF THE TALAVERA CAMPAIGN ” 596

ILLUSTRATIONS

JOSEPH PALAFOX, EQUESTRIAN PORTRAIT BY GOYA Frontispiece

A PORTUGUESE CAVALRY SOLDIER, 1809 212

A PORTUGUESE INFANTRY SOLDIER, AND A MAN OF THE ORDENANZA 222

THE DOURO ABOVE OPORTO, THE LOCALITY OF WELLESLEY’S CROSSING 336

COINS STRUCK IN SPAIN DURING THE PENINSULAR WAR 478

ERRATA IN VOL. II

The following facts I discovered in Madrid and Lisbon when it was too late to correct the chapters in which the mis-statements occur.

(1) Page 82, note 93. I have found from a Madrid document that part, though not the whole, of the Regiment of Baza was present at Valls. One battalion was left behind with Wimpffen: one marched with Reding: about 800 men therefore must be added to my estimate of the Spanish infantry.

(2) Page 318, note 394. I found in Lisbon that the regiments which marched with Beresford to Lamego were not (as I had supposed) nos. 7 and 19, but nos. 2 and 14, with the 4th cazadores. Those which joined from the direction of Almeida were two battalions of no. 11 (1st of Almeida) and one of no. 9.

(3) Page 366. A dispatch of Beresford at Lisbon clears up my doubts as to Silveira’s culpability. Beresford complains that the latter lost a whole day by marching from Amarante to Villa Pouca without orders; the dispatch directing him to take the path by Mondim thus reached him only when he had gone many miles on the wrong road. The time lost could never be made up.

SECTION IX

AFTER CORUNNA

(JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1809)

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Chapter I

THE CONSEQUENCES OF MOORE’S DIVERSION: RALLY OF THE SPANISH ARMIES: BATTLE OF UCLES

With the departure of Napoleon from Madrid on December 21, the offensive action of the French army in central Spain came to a stand. The Emperor had taken away with him the field army, which had been destined to deliver those blows at Lisbon and Seville that were to end the war. The troops which he had left behind him in the neighbourhood of Madrid were inadequate in numbers for any further advance, and were forced to adopt a defensive attitude. The only regions in which the invaders continued to pursue an active policy were Aragon and Catalonia, from which, on account of their remoteness, the Emperor had not withdrawn any troops for his great encircling movement against Sir John Moore. In both those provinces important operations began on the very day on which Bonaparte set out to hunt the English army: it was on December 21 that Lannes commenced the second siege of Saragossa, and that St. Cyr, after relieving Barcelona, scattered the army of Catalonia at the battle of Molins de Rey. But the campaigns of Aragon and Catalonia were both of secondary importance, when compared with the operations in central Spain. As the whole history of the war was to show, the progress of events in the valley of the lower Ebro and in the Catalan hills never exercised much influence on the affairs of Castile and Portugal. It is not, therefore, too much to assert that it was Moore’s march on Sahagun, and that march alone, which paralysed the main scheme of the Emperor for the conquest of Spain.

Between December 21 and January 2 the central reserves of the French army had been hurried away to the Esla and the plains of northern Leon. It was not till the new year had come that the Emperor began to think of sending some of them back to the neighbourhood of Madrid. The 8th Corps had been incorporated with the 2nd, and sent in pursuit of Moore: the corps of Ney and the division of Lapisse were left to support Soult in his invasion of Galicia. The Imperial Guard marched back to Valladolid. Of all the troops which had been distracted to the north-west, only Dessolles’ division of the Central Reserve returned to the capital. Such a reinforcement was far from being enough to enable Joseph Bonaparte, and his military adviser Jourdan, to assume the offensive towards the valleys of the Tagus and Guadiana. The consequences of Moore’s diversion were not only far-reaching but prolonged: it was not till the middle of March that the army of the king was able to resume the attempt to march on Seville, and by that time the condition of affairs had been profoundly modified, to the advantage of the Spaniards.

The intervening time was not one of rest for Joseph and his army. Their movements require careful attention. When Napoleon hurried the main body of his troops across the Somosierra in pursuit of the British, he left behind him the corps of Victor, shorn of Lapisse’s division, the whole of the corps of Lefebvre[1], and the three independent cavalry divisions of Lasalle, Latour-Maubourg and Milhaud--in all 8,000 horse and 28,000 foot with ninety guns. There was also the Royal Guard of King Joseph, four battalions of foot, and a regiment of horse, beside two skeleton regiments of Spanish deserters, which the ‘Intrusive King’ was raising as the nucleus of a new army of his own[2].

[1] Save two Dutch and one German regiment of Leval’s division, which had been left behind on garrison duty in Biscay and Old Castile.

[2] This was done by the Emperor’s orders. The cadres of these regiments, called Royal-Étranger and Royal-Napoléon, were formed partly of Frenchmen, partly of Spanish Afrancesados. The rank and file of the first regiment were to be raised from the Swiss and Germans who had served in the old Spanish army: some of them had adhered to the French, others, when taken prisoners in the late campaign, had offered to serve King Joseph. The second regiment was to be composed of native Spaniards. See Correspondance de Napoléon, 14,531.

Of these troops the incomplete German division of Leval (2nd of the 4th Corps) and King Joseph’s guards formed the garrison of Madrid. This force seeming too small, the division of Ruffin (1st of the 1st Corps) was ordered in to reinforce them. The rest of the army lay in two concentric semicircles outside Madrid: the inner semicircle was formed of infantry: there was a regiment at Guadalajara[3], a whole division under Marshal Victor himself at Aranjuez[4], and two divisions of the 4th Corps under Marshal Lefebvre at Talavera[5]. Outside these troops was a great cavalry screen. In front of Victor the three cavalry brigades of Latour-Maubourg’s division lay respectively at Tarancon, Ocaña, and Madridejos, watching the three roads from La Mancha. West of them lay Milhaud’s division of dragoons, in front of Talavera, in the direction of Navalmoral and San Vincente, observing the passes of the Sierra de Toledo. Lastly, as a sort of advanced guard in the direction of Estremadura, Lasalle’s light cavalry had pushed on to the great bridge of Almaraz, behind which the wrecks of the mutinous armies of Belvedere and San Juan were beginning to collect, under their new commander Galluzzo[6].

[3] The 55th, a stray remnant left behind by Dessolles.

[4] Division of Villatte. It had one battalion detached, along with the 26th Chasseurs, at Toledo.

[5] Division of Valence and Sebastiani.

[6] Lasalle’s division (often altered in composition) now consisted of the 10th and 26th Chasseurs, 9th Dragoons and Polish Lancers.

The Emperor’s parting orders to Jourdan had been to send forward Lasalle and Lefebvre to deal a blow at the Estremaduran army. They had, he wrote, twice the numbers necessary to break up the small force of disorganized troops in front of them. On December 24, Lefebvre was to cross the Tagus, scatter Galluzzo’s men to the winds, and then come back to Talavera, after building a tête-de-pont at Almaraz. Lasalle’s cavalry would be capable of looking after what was left of this force, for it would not give trouble again for many a week to come. Victor, on the side of La Mancha, must keep watch on any movements of the Spaniards from the direction of Cuenca or the Sierra Morena. He would have no difficulty in holding them off, for ‘all the débris of the insurgent armies combined could not face even the 8,000 French cavalry left in front of them--to say nothing of the infantry behind[7].’

[7] See for all these details Nap. Corresp., 14,609.

The first portion of the orders of the Emperor was duly carried out. On December 24 the Duke of Dantzig advanced from Talavera upon the bridges of Arzobispo and Almaraz, behind which lay 6,000 or 7,000 of Galluzzo’s dispirited levies. He made no more than a feint at the first-mentioned passage, but attacking the more important bridge of Almaraz carried it at the first rush, and took the four guns which Galluzzo had mounted on the southern bank to command the defile. The Spaniards, scattered in all directions, abandoned the banks of the Tagus, and placed themselves in safety behind the rugged Sierra de Guadalupe. So far the Emperor’s design was carried out: but Lefebvre then took a most extraordinary step. Instead of returning, as he had been ordered, to Talavera, and remaining in that central position till further orders should be sent him, he went off on an inexplicable adventure of his own. Leaving only Lasalle’s cavalry and two Polish battalions on the Tagus, he turned north, as if intending to join the Emperor, crossed the mountains between New and Old Castile, and on January 5 appeared at Avila in the latter province[8]. Not only was the march in complete contravention of the Emperor’s orders, but it was carried out in disobedience to five separate dispatches sent from Madrid by Jourdan, in the name of King Joseph. Lefebvre paid no attention whatever to the ‘lieutenant of the Emperor,’ in spite of vehement representations to the effect that he was exposing Madrid by this eccentric movement. It was indeed an unhappy inspiration that led him to Avila, for at this precise moment the Spaniards were commencing a wholly unexpected offensive advance against the Spanish capital, which Lefebvre, if he had remained at Talavera, might have aided in repelling. Much incensed at his disobedience Napoleon deprived him of the command of the 4th Corps, and sent him back to France. ‘This marshal,’ he wrote to King Joseph, ‘does nothing but make blunders: he cannot seize the meaning of the orders sent him. It is impossible to leave him in command of a corps;--which is a pity, for he is a brave enough fellow on the battle-field[9].’ Sebastiani, Lefebvre’s senior divisional general, replaced him in command of his corps.

[8] Napier misrepresents this move in the strangest way, saying (i. 364) merely that ‘the Duke of Dantzig recrossed the Tagus and took post between Talavera and Plasencia.’ Avila is fifty miles north of these places, and on the other side of the Guadarrama.

[9] Napoleon to Joseph from Valladolid, Jan. 9, Nap. Corresp., 14,671.

The new Spanish advance upon Madrid requires a word of explanation. We have seen that the weary and dilapidated Army of the Centre, now commanded by the Duke of Infantado, had reached Cuenca on December 10, after escaping from the various snares which Napoleon had set for it during its march from Calatayud to the valley of the upper Tagus. When he had escaped from Bessières’ pursuit, the duke proceeded to give his army a fortnight’s much-needed rest in the mountain villages round Cuenca. He sent back to Valencia the wrecks of Roca’s division, which had originally been raised in that kingdom. It had dwindled down to 1,455 men, from its original 8,000[10]. The other troops, the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th divisions of the old army of Andalusia[11], had not suffered quite so much, as they had not been seriously engaged at Tudela, but they were half-starved and very disorderly. Infantado was forced to shoot an officer and two sergeants for open mutiny before he could restore the elements of discipline[12].

[10] See the figures furnished by the Valencian Junta in Argüelles, ii. 74. It must he remembered that 4,800 of the division had escaped to Saragossa, and took part in its defence.

[11] The 1st division had only four battalions present, the others having been at Madrid, in the army of San Juan.

[12] The officer, a Lieutenant Santiago, had refused to march on Cuenca, and when the order was repeated, unlimbered his battery across the road and threatened to fire on the troops who were marching in that direction. See Arteche, iii. 12.

The province of Cuenca is the most thinly peopled and desolate of all the regions of Spain[13], and though some stores and food were procured from Valencia, it was impossible to re-equip the army in a satisfactory way. Winter clothing, in particular, was absolutely unprocurable, and if the men had not been placed under roofs in Cuenca and the villages around, they must have perished of cold. But a fortnight’s rest did much for them: many stragglers came up from the rear, a few reinforcements were received, and to the surprise of the whole army the brigade of the Conde de Alacha, which had been cut off from the rest of the troops on the day of Tudela, turned up intact to join its division. This detachment, it will be remembered[14], had been left in the mountains near Agreda, to observe the advance of Marshal Ney: after the rout it had nearly fallen into the hands of the 6th Corps, and had been forced to turn off into obscure by-paths. Then, passing in haste between the French divisions in New Castile, it had finally succeeded in reaching Cuenca.

[13] It had only 311 inhabitants to the square league in 1803, as compared with 926 in Andalusia, and 2,009 in Guipuzcoa.

[14] See vol. i. p. 437.

Infantado, finding that the French still hung back and advanced no further into his mountain refuge, proceeded to reorganize his army; the three weakened battalions of the old line regiments were consolidated into two or often into one. The four divisions of the original Andalusian host were amalgamated into two, with an extra ‘vanguard’ and ‘reserve’ composed of the best troops[15]. This rearrangement had not yet been fully completed when the duke made up his mind that he would venture on an advance against Madrid. He could learn of nothing save cavalry in his front, and he had received early notice of the departure of Napoleon to the north. Giving the command of his vanguard and the greater part of his cavalry to General Venegas, he bade him descend into the plains, and endeavour to surprise the brigade of dragoons which lay at Tarancon[16]. This task Venegas attempted to execute on Christmas Day: he had already turned the town with half his force, and placed himself across the line of retreat of the dragoons, before they knew of his approach. Warned, just in time of his danger, the French brigadier resolved to cut his way through: he charged down on the enemy, who fell into a line of battalion squares with long intervals between them. Dashing between the squares the two regiments got through with the loss of fifty or sixty men. The Spanish cavalry, which arrived late on the field, made no attempt to pursue. On the same day Infantado had sent out another column under General Senra, with orders to march on Aranjuez: finding that it was held not only by cavalry but by a heavy force of infantry, the Spanish brigadier wisely halted at a discreet distance, for which he was sharply taken to task by his chief. It is certain that if he had gone on, Victor would have made mincemeat of his little force of 4,000 men.

[15] For these changes see Appendix I.

[16] Perreimond’s brigade of Latour-Maubourg’s division.

Although the advance of Venegas and Senra soon stopped short, the news that the Spaniards were descending in force into the plain of New Castile was most discomposing to King Joseph, who was at this moment very weak in troops. Lefebvre had just started on his eccentric march to Avila: Dessolles was not yet back from the north, and there was no disposable reserve at Madrid save the single division of Ruffin, for the king’s guards and Leval’s Germans were barely enough to hold down the capital, and could not be moved. The situation was made worse by the revolt of several of the small towns of the upper Tagus, including Chinchon and Colmenar, which rose under the belief that Infantado’s army would soon be at their gates. There was nothing between the duke and Madrid save the single infantry division of Villatte, which lay with Marshal Victor at Aranjuez, and the six dragoon regiments of Latour-Maubourg, a force of little more than 9,000 sabres and bayonets.

Fortunately for King Joseph, Infantado was a most incapable general, and allowed his opportunity to slip by. By driving in the French cavalry screen, he had given notice of his existence, and spread alarm up to the gates of Madrid. But in order to profit by the situation he should have dashed in at once, before the enemy had time to draw together. If he had marched from Cuenca with his reserves, in the wake of Venegas, he could have brought 20,000 men to bear upon Victor, before the latter could receive the very moderate succours that King Joseph could send him. Instead of doing anything of the kind, he remained quiescent at his head quarters, and did not even send Venegas any further orders, either to advance or to retreat. From December 26 to January 11, the Spanish vanguard lay at Tarancon, as if with the express intention of giving the French time to concentrate. The duke meanwhile, as his dispatches show, was drawing up a grandiose plan of operations, which included not only the eviction of King Joseph from Madrid, but the cutting of Napoleon’s communication and the raising of the siege of Saragossa! He was most anxious to induce the Central Junta to move forward all their other forces to aid him. But they could do nothing, so deplorable was the state of their army, but bid the weak division of 6,000 men, which was guarding the Sierra Morena, to begin a demonstration in La Mancha. In pursuance of this order Del Palacio made a forward movement, as dangerous as it was useless, to Villaharta on the upper Guadiana.

Jourdan and the Intrusive King, meanwhile, were for ten days in a state of great anxiety, expecting every moment to hear that the whole Spanish army had descended from the mountains and thrown itself upon the upper Tagus. They ordered Victor to move from Aranjuez to Arganda to parry such a blow, and made preparations for reinforcing him with Ruffin’s division, while the rest of the garrison of Madrid, with the French civilians, and the mass of Afrancesados, were to shut themselves up in the forts on the Retiro, being too few to hold the entire city. But the expected advance of Infantado never occurred, and Jourdan and Victor were able to put down the insurrection of the little towns in the plain without any interruption. Chinchon was stormed, and the whole male population put to the sword; at Colmenar there were executions on a large scale, and a fine of 50,000 piastres was levied. The rest of the insurgents fled to the hills[17].

[17] Jourdan confesses to this massacre in the most open way. ‘Le 27e Léger s’étant présenté aux portes de Chinchon, fut reçu à coups de fusil. Cette provocation occasionna la perte des habitants: ils furent tous tués, et la ville incendiée.’ Mémoires du Maréchal Jourdan, 139.

On January 8, 1809, the fears of Joseph and Jourdan came to a happy end, for on that day the division of Dessolles marched in from Old Castile, while on the 10th the 4th Corps appeared, having been sent back in haste from Avila by the Emperor. This reinforcement of more than 20,000 men completely cleared the situation. The French line of defence could now be re-established: Valence’s Polish division was placed at Toledo: Leval’s Germans, completed by the arrival of their belated Dutch brigade, were sent to Talavera. Sebastiani’s division, with Dessolles and the king’s guard, remained to garrison Madrid. Ruffin was sent out to join Victor, who was ordered to march at once on Tarancon and fall upon the Spanish corps which had remained there in such strange torpidity since Christmas day[18]. The Emperor, sending these orders from Valladolid, expressed himself in a somewhat contemptuous strain as to his brother’s fears. ‘The army of Castaños’ (i.e. of Infantado) ‘was as great a fiction as that of La Romana: rumour made them 20,000 strong, while really there were not more than 5,000 of them[19]. Victor had ten times as many men as were necessary for clearing off the Spaniards. The panic at Madrid had been absurd and discreditable: all that was wanted was to catch and hang a dozen mauvais sujets, and the capital would keep quiet.’

[18] All these movements are most clearly set forth in Jourdan’s Mémoires, by far the best authority for the campaign of Ucles.

[19] Nap. Corresp., 14,637 and 14,684.

On January 12 Victor marched from Aranjuez with the twenty-one battalions of Villatte’s and Ruffin’s divisions, the squadrons of light horse which formed his corps-cavalry, and the three brigades of dragoons composing the division of Latour-Maubourg--in all some 12,000 foot and 3,500 horse. He did not find Venegas at Tarancon: on hearing that the French were massing in front of him, that officer had called in the outlying brigade of Senra, and had retired ten miles to Ucles, in the foot-hills of the mountains of Cuenca. He sent news of Victor’s approach to Infantado, but the latter gave him no definite orders either to fight or to retreat. He merely forwarded to him three or four more battalions of infantry, and announced that he was coming up from Cuenca with the reserves: he fixed no date for his probable arrival.

Much troubled by the want of definite orders, Venegas doubted whether he ought to hold his ground and await his chief, or fall back into the mountains. After some hesitation he resolved to take the more dangerous course, tempted by the fine position of Ucles, which offered every advantage for a defensive action. He had with him about 9,500 infantry in twenty-two very weak battalions, some of which had no more than 250 or 300 bayonets. Of cavalry he had nine incomplete regiments, giving only 1,800 sabres[20]. There were but five guns with the army, of which one had broken down, and was not fit for service. The town of Ucles lies in the midst of a long ridge stretching north-east and south-west, with a steep slope towards the plain, from which the French were approaching. Venegas drew up his men in a single long line, with the town in the centre. Four battalions were barricaded in Ucles: six took post to the left of it, eight to the right. Only one was held back in reserve, but three with four regiments of cavalry were left out in front, to observe the French advance, in the neighbourhood of the village of Tribaldos. The four guns and the remainder of the cavalry were drawn up before the town. It is almost needless to point out the faults of this order-of-battle--over-great extension and the want of a reserve. The position was too long for the numbers available. Moreover the men were not in good fighting trim: though several of the old regiments from Baylen were among them, their spirits were low: they had not yet recovered from the dreadful fatigues of the retreat from Tudela, and they had little confidence in their leaders.

[20] Beside the twenty battalions given in the Appendix to Arteche, iv, Venegas’s narrative shows that at least two more (Baylen and Navas de Tolosa) were present.

Victor marched from Tarancon at daybreak on January 13, with one division on each of the two routes which lead eastward from that place, Villatte’s on the southern road which goes directly to Ucles, Ruffin’s on the longer and more circuitous path, which, running parallel to the other, ultimately rejoins it at Carrascosa some way behind that town. The majority of Latour-Maubourg’s cavalry accompanied the former column.

Already on the previous night Victor’s vedettes had discovered the Spanish outpost at Tribaldos: very early on the following morning it was driven in by the advance of Villatte’s column, and joined the main body of the army of Venegas. The Marshal then pushed forward to the foot of the hills, to reconnoitre the enemy’s position. Having discerned the lie of the ground, and the distribution of the Spanish forces, his mind was soon made up. Orders were promptly sent to Ruffin to leave the road on which he was advancing, and to close in upon the right flank and rear of Venegas’s army. Meanwhile Villatte and the cavalry drew up in front of Ucles, with a strength of about 7,000 bayonets and 2,500 sabres. The dragoons were placed in the centre; in front of them was ranged a battery, which commenced to shell the town and the Spanish horse drawn up before its gates. This was only a demonstration: the real blow was to be given by an attack on the Spanish left, where the hillside was of easier access than on the steep and rocky northern end of the ridge. Villatte’s second brigade, the 94th and 95th regiments, executed a circular march under the eyes of the enemy, and having turned their extreme flank, rapidly climbed the hill and formed up at right angles to the Spanish line. These six battalions fell upon the exposed wing and rolled it up without much difficulty, till they arrived under the very walls of Ucles, driving the enemy before them. Venegas, who was watching the fight from the court of the monastery which dominates the town, had tried to hurry up reinforcements from his right wing: but they arrived too late to be of any use. When the attack on the enemy’s left was seen to be making good progress, and the attention of the Spaniards was distracted to that point, Victor directed the first brigade of Villatte’s division to assail the steep hill on the Spanish right. They carried it with ease, for half the defenders had been withdrawn to reinforce the left, and the rest were demoralized by the evident disaster on the other flank. The whole of Venegas’s army fled eastward without any further endeavour to hold their ground, the considerable force of cavalry in the centre making no attempt, as it would appear, to cover the retreat of the foot. Such rearguard as there was consisted of two or three infantry battalions under General Giron.

Suddenly the Spaniards of the right wing and centre saw rising up in front of them, as they fled, an imposing line of French infantry, barring their further progress. This force consisted of the nine battalions of Ruffin’s division. They had lost their way while seeking for the Spanish flank, and (like Ferguson at Roliça) made too wide a circle to enable them to intervene in the actual fighting. But the very length of their turning movement proved advantageous, as they had now got into the direct rear of the retreating army. Driven on by the pursuing dragoons of Latour-Maubourg, the Spaniards found themselves rushing into the very arms of Ruffin’s division. The disaster was complete, and more than half of Venegas’s army was encircled and captured. Most of the cavalry, indeed, escaped, by dispersing and riding rapidly round the flanks of Ruffin’s line. But the slow-moving infantry was trapped: a few battalions from the left wing got off to the south-east, and General Giron with a remnant of his brigade cut his way through a gap between two French regiments. All the rest had to surrender.

Of Venegas’s 11,000 men, about 1,000 had been killed or wounded: four generals, seventeen colonels, 306 other officers and 5,560 rank and file were captured[21]. The French secured the four guns which formed the sole artillery of the beaten army, and twenty standards[22]. Their own loss was insignificant--Victor returned his total casualties at 150 men, and probably did not much understate them, as he had met with no serious resistance.

[21] These numbers are probably exact: Jourdan quotes them from his own official report to Berthier of Jan. 20. See his Mémoires, p. 144.

[22] As the wrecks of fifteen or sixteen battalions had surrendered, there seems no reason to doubt the number of standards. But the Spaniards asserted that Victor eked out his trophies, by taking down the old battle-flags of the knights of Santiago from their church in Ucles.

Though they had suffered so little, the French showed great ferocity after the fight. They not only sacked the town of Ucles, but executed in cold blood sixty-nine of its notables, including many monks, who were accused of having fired on the assailants from their convent windows. When the column of Spanish prisoners was sent off to Madrid, orders were given (it is said by Victor himself) that those who would not keep up with the rest should be shot, and we have good French authority to the effect that this was regularly done; thirty or more a day, mostly the wounded and the sick, were shot by the wayside when they dropped behind[23].

[23] Cf. the Mémoires of Rocca (of the 2nd Hussars, Victor’s corps-cavalry), p. 68, and Schepeler.

What, meanwhile, had happened to the Spanish Commander-in-chief, and the 9,000 men whom he had retained at Cuenca? Infantado had started to join Venegas on January 12: he slept that night at Horcajada, fifteen miles to the east of Ucles. Resuming his march next morning, he had got as far as Carrascosa, when a disorderly mob of 2,000 routed infantry hurtled into his vanguard. Questioning the fugitives, he learnt the details of the battle of Ucles, and found that the victorious army of the French was only five miles away. Then with a promptitude very different from his torpor of the last three weeks, the duke turned his column to the rear, and made off with all speed. He first returned to his base at Cuenca to pick up his baggage and stores, and then marched by vile cross-roads and in abominable weather to Chinchilla in the kingdom of Murcia, which he reached on January 20. His artillery, forced to go at a snail’s pace among the hills and torrents, and escorted by a single cavalry regiment only, was surprised and captured by Digeon’s dragoons at Tortola, a few miles to the south of Cuenca (Jan. 18). Fifteen guns were lost on this occasion: several of the French authorities ingeniously add them to the trophies of Ucles, and write as if they had all been taken from Venegas in open battle[24].

[24] Notably the ever-inaccurate Victoires et Conquêtes, and Thiers. The usually-sensible Belmas makes the Spanish prisoners amount to 13,000 men, two thousand more than Venegas ever put in line.

Victor after occupying Cuenca, and finding that Infantado was now too far away to be pursued with any chance of success, turned down into the plains of La Mancha, to strike at the small Andalusian force which had advanced under Del Palacio, to lend countenance to Infantado’s projects for a march on Madrid. This division, some 6,000 strong, had reached Villaharta on the upper Guadiana, but when the news of Ucles arrived, its commander hastily drew it back to the foot of the passes. Finding no enemy to attack, Victor, after crossing La Mancha unopposed, took up his post at Madridejos, on the high-road between Madrid and the Despeña Perros, and waited for further orders from Head Quarters.

It was only after the victory of Ucles that King Joseph was permitted by his brother to make his formal entry into Madrid. Up to this moment he had been told to stop at the Palace of the Pardo, far outside the walls, and only to pay furtive and unostentatious visits to his official abode in the city. When the inhabitants of the capital had been sufficiently impressed by the arrival of the numerous columns of the 4th Corps and of Dessolles, and had seen the banners and the prisoners taken at Ucles paraded through their streets, their king was once more sent among them. Joseph made his appearance on January 22, passed through a long lane of French bayonets to the church of San Isidro, where a Te Deum was chanted for the late victories, and then entered his palace. Here he received numerous deputations of Spaniards who swore him fealty. But the moral effect of these oaths was not very great, for the local notables attended under the pressure of the bayonet. Napoleon had sent orders that every town in Castile of more than 2,000 souls must dispatch delegates to Madrid, or the consequences would be unpleasant[25]. The delegates appeared, but it may be guessed with what feelings they mouthed their oaths and their protestations of joy and loyalty. Yet Joseph, determined to play the part of the benevolent monarch, took the whole farce seriously, and answered with lavish declarations of his love and sympathy for the great Spanish nation. Sentiments of the kind were to be the staple of his fruitless and copious oratory for the next four years. His heart would have sunk within him if only he could have recognized their futility: but 1809 was but just beginning, and he was far from realizing the full meaning of his position: it took a very long time to thoroughly disenchant this hard-working and well-meaning prince.

[25] Nap. Corresp., 14,729, from Valladolid, Jan. 16.

SECTION IX: CHAPTER II

NAPOLEON’S DEPARTURE FROM SPAIN: HIS PLANS FOR THE TERMINATION OF THE WAR: THE COUNTER-PLANS OF THE JUNTA

Four days after the battle of Ucles Napoleon quitted Spain. He had rested at Valladolid from January 6 to January 17, after his return from the pursuit of Sir John Moore. Though he had failed to entrap the British Army he was not discontented with his achievements. He was fully convinced that he had broken the back of the Spanish insurrection, and that he could safely return to France, leaving the completion of the work to his brother and his marshals. He was anxious to hear that Saragossa had fallen, and that the English had been driven out of the Peninsula. When these two events should have come to pass, his armies might resume, under the guidance of his subordinates, the original advance against Portugal and Andalusia which had been so effectually frustrated by Moore’s daring move.

Meanwhile he spent full eleven days at Valladolid, busy with all manner of desk-work, connected not merely with Spain, but with the affairs of the whole continent. He was evidently anxious to leave an impression of terror behind him: he hectored and bullied the unfortunate Spanish deputations that were compelled to come before him in the most insulting fashion. His harangues generally wound up with the declaration that if he was ever forced to come back to Spain in arms, he would remove his brother Joseph, and divide the realm into subject provinces, which should be governed by martial law. Some French soldiers (probably marauders) having been assassinated, he arrested and threatened to hang the whole municipality of Valladolid, finally releasing them only when three persons accused (rightly or wrongly) of the murders were delated to him and executed. He sent advice to King Joseph to deal in the same way with Madrid: nothing would keep the capital quiet, he wrote, but a good string of executions[26]. It was to be many years before he realized that hanging did no good in Spain, and was only repaid by additional assassinations. In return for this good advice to his brother, he extorted from him fifty of the choicest pictures of the royal gallery at Madrid; but in compensation Joseph was invited to annex all that he might choose from the private collections of the exiled Spanish nobility and the monasteries of the capital[27].

[26] ‘Faites donc pendre une douzaine d’individus à Madrid: il n’y manque point de mauvais sujets, et sans cela il n’y aura rien de fait.’ Nap. Corresp., 14,684. Compare Lecestre, Lettres inédites de Napoléon, i. 275, where orders are given that thirty persons, who had already been acquitted by the civil tribunals, should he rearrested, tried again before a court martial, and promptly shot! Napoleon to Joseph, Jan. 16, 1809.

[27] ‘Je préfèrerais que vous prissiez tous les tableaux qui se trouvent dans les maisons confisquées et dans les couvents supprimés, et que vous me fissiez présent d’une cinquantaine de chefs-d’œuvre. Vous sentez qu’il ne faut que de bonnes choses.’ Nap. Corresp., 14,717.

Suggestions have sometimes been made that Napoleon hastened his departure from Spain, because he saw that the suppression of the insurrection would take a much longer time than he had originally supposed, and because he wished to transfer to other hands the lengthy and inglorious task of hunting down the last armies of the Junta. This view is certainly erroneous: his three months’ stay in Spain had not opened the Emperor’s eyes to the difficulties of the business that he had taken in hand. Though many of his couriers and aides-de-camp had already been ambuscaded and shot by the peasantry, though he was already beginning to see that a blockhouse and a garrison would have to be placed at every stage on the high-roads, he believed that these sinister signs were temporary, and that the country-side, after a few sanguinary lessons had been given, would sink down into the quiet of despair.

His final legacy to his brother, on departing, was a long dispatch giving a complete plan of operations for the next campaign. Soult, after forcing the English to embark, was to march on Oporto. Napoleon calculated that he ought to capture it on February 1, and that on February 10 he would be in front of Lisbon. The Portuguese levies he practically disregarded as a fighting force, and he was ignorant that there still remained 8,000 or 10,000 British troops on the Tagus, who would serve to stiffen their resistance.

When Soult should have captured Oporto, and be well on the way to Lisbon, Victor was to go forward with his own 1st Corps, the division of Leval from the 4th Corps, and the cavalry of Milhaud, Latour-Maubourg, and Lasalle. He was to strike at Estremadura, occupy Merida and Badajoz, and join hands with Soult along the Tagus. Lisbon being reduced, Victor was to borrow a division from Soult and march on Seville with 40,000 men. With such a force, as the Emperor calculated, he would subdue the whole of Andalusia with ease.

Meanwhile Saragossa must (as Napoleon rightly thought) fall some time in February. When it was disposed of, the 3rd and 5th Corps would provide a garrison for Aragon, and then march on Valencia, which would be attacked and subdued much about the same time that Victor would arrive at Seville. St. Cyr would have made an end of the Catalans long before. Thus the whole Peninsula would be subdued ere the summer was over. There was nowhere a Spanish army that could make head against even 10,000 French troops. The only possible complication would be that Moore’s army might conceivably take ship, not for England, but for Lisbon or Cadiz. If the English, ‘the only enemy who could create difficulties,’ took this course, the Emperor might have to give further orders. But it does not seem that he regarded this as a likely contingency, since he had conceived an even exaggerated idea of the losses and demoralization which the British had suffered in the retreat to Corunna. To Joseph he wrote, ‘reserve yourself for the expedition to Andalusia, which may start three weeks hence. With 40,000 men, marching by an unexpected route [i.e. by Badajoz, not by La Carolina], you will surprise the enemy and force him to submit. This is an operation which will make an end of the war: I leave the glory of it to you[28].’ To Jerome Napoleon he wrote in the most laconic style, ‘the Spanish affair is done with[29],’ and then proceeded to discuss the general politics of the Continent, as if his whole attention could now be given to the doings of Austria and Russia. On January 18 he rode out of Valladolid, and after six days of incessant travel reached Paris on the 24th. His first care after his arrival was to scare the intriguers of the capital into good behaviour. His second was to endeavour to treat Austria after the same fashion. He had not yet made up his mind whether the ministers of Francis II meant mischief, or whether they had merely been presuming on his long absence in Spain: on the whole he thought that they could be reduced to order by bold language, and by the ostentatious movement of troops on the Rhine and upper Danube. But he was not sure of his conclusion: in his correspondence letters stating that Austria has been brought to reason, alternate with others in which she is accused of incorrigible perversity, and a design to make war in the spring[30]. The Emperor’s suspicions are most clearly shown by the fact that in February he ordered the whole of the Imperial Guard, except two battalions and three squadrons, to be brought up from Spain and directed on Paris[31]. In the same month he sent secret orders to the princes of the Confederation of the Rhine, to bid them be ready to mobilize their contingents at short notice.

[28] Napoleon to Joseph, Jan. 11, 1809, Nap. Corresp., 14,684.

[29] Almost the same words are found in a dispatch to Mollien of Jan. 24, ‘Aujourd’hui les affaires d’Espagne sont à peu près terminées.’ This was written after the Emperor had returned to Paris.

[30] Cf., for example, Nap. Corresp., 14,741 and 14,749, where Austria is said to have changed her tone and stopped her preparation, with 14,721 and 14,779, which show a most hostile spirit against her.

[31] For the details, see Nap. Corresp., 14,780, written to Bessières from Paris on Feb. 15.

It is clear that as regards the affairs of Spain the Emperor was in January and February, 1809, as much deluded as he had been seven months before, in June, 1808. The whole plan of campaign which he dictated at Valladolid, and sent as his parting gift to Joseph and Jourdan, was absolutely impracticable, and indicated a fundamental ignorance of the character of the Spanish war. It would have been a perfectly sensible document if the struggle had been raging in Italy or Germany, though even there the calculations of distance and time would have been rather hazardous. Twenty-three days were given to Soult to expel the English, to pacify Galicia, to take Oporto, and to march on Lisbon! Even granting that all had gone as the Emperor desired, the estimate was too short by half. It was midwinter; Galicia and northern Portugal form one of the most mountainous regions in Europe: their roads are vile; their food supplies are scanty; their climate at that season of the year detestable. Clearly the task given to Soult could not be executed in the prescribed time[32].

[32] As a matter of fact, as has been stated elsewhere, Soult though working his hardest did not leave Corunna till Feb. 20, 1809, nor take Oporto till March 29.

But this is a minor point: it was not so much in his ‘logistics’ that the Emperor went wrong as in his general conception of the character of the war. He imagined that in dealing with Spain he might act as if he were dealing with Austria or Prussia--indeed that he had an enormous extra advantage in the fact that the armies of Ferdinand VII were infinitely inferior in mere fighting power to those of Francis II or Frederick William III. By all the ordinary rules of modern warfare, a nation whose capital had been occupied, and whose regular armies had been routed and half-destroyed, ought to have submitted without further trouble. The Emperor was a little surprised that the effect of Espinosa and Gamonal, of Tudela and Ucles, had not been greater. He had almost expected to receive overtures from the Junta, asking for terms of submission. But somewhat disappointed though he might be, he had not yet realized that Spain was not as other countries. The occupation of Madrid counted for little or nothing. The insurrectionary armies, when driven into a corner, did not capitulate, but dispersed, and fled in small parties over the hills, to reunite on the first opportunity. Prussian or Austrian troops under similar circumstances would have quietly laid down their arms. But to endeavour to grasp a Spanish corps was like clutching at a ball of quicksilver: the mass dispersed in driblets between the fingers of the manipulator, and the small rolling pellets ultimately united to form a new force. Large captures of Spaniards only took place on the actual battle-field (as at Ucles or Ocaña), or when an army had shut itself up in a fortress and could not get away, as happened at Saragossa and Badajoz. Unless actually penned in between bayonets, the insurgents abandoned cannon and baggage, broke their ranks and disappeared, to gather again on some more propitious day, either as fresh armies or as guerrilla bands operating upon the victor’s lines of communication.

Nor was this all: in Italy, Germany, and Austria Bonaparte had dealt with regions where the population remained quiescent when once the regular army had been beaten. Risings like that of Verona in 1797, or of the Tyrol in 1805, were exceptional. The French army was wont to go forward without being forced to leave large garrisons behind it, to hold down the conquered country-side. A battalion or two placed in the chief towns sufficed to secure the communication of the army with France. Small parties, or even single officers bearing dispatches, could ride safely for many miles through an Italian or Austrian district without being molested. It was not thus in Spain: the Emperor was to find that every village where there was not a French garrison would be a focus of active resistance, and that no amount of shooting or hanging would cow the spirits of the peasantry. It was only after scores of aides-de-camp had been murdered or captured, and after countless small detachments had been destroyed, that he came to realize that every foot of Spanish soil must not only be conquered but also held down. If there was a square of ten miles unoccupied, a guerrilla band arose in it. If a district thirty miles long lacked a brigade to garrison it, a local junta with a ragged apology for an army promptly appeared. Three hundred thousand men look a large force on paper, but when they have to hold down a country five hundred miles broad they are frittered away to nothing. This Great Britain knows well enough from her recent South African experience: but it was not a common matter of knowledge in 1809. If the Emperor had been told, on the day of his entry into Madrid, that even three years later his communication with Bayonne would only be preserved by the maintenance of a fortified post at every tenth milestone, he would have laughed the idea to scorn. Still more ridiculous would it have appeared to him if he had been told that it would take a body of 300 horse to carry a dispatch from Salamanca to Saragossa, or that the normal garrison of Old Castile would have to be kept at 15,000 men, even when there was no regular Spanish army nearer to it than Oviedo or Astorga. In short he, and all Europe, had much to learn as to the conditions of warfare in the Peninsula. If he had realized them in March, 1808, there would have been no treachery at Bayonne, and the ‘running sore,’ as he afterwards called the Spanish war, would never have broken forth.

Meanwhile the conquest of Spain was hung up for a month and more after the victory of Ucles. The Emperor had bidden Joseph and Jourdan to wait till the February rains were over, before sending out the great expedition against Andalusia; the siege of Saragossa was prolonged far beyond expectation, and Soult in Galicia (as we shall presently see) found the time-allowance which his master had set him inadequate to the verge of absurdity. The French made no further move of importance till March.

The Central Junta, therefore, were granted three full months from the date of their flight from Aranjuez to Seville, in which to reorganize their armies for the oncoming campaign of 1809--a respite which they gained (as we have already shown) purely and solely through Moore’s splendid inspiration of the march to Sahagun.

The members of the Junta trailed into Seville at various dates between December 14 and December 17. Their rapid journey at midwinter through the Sierra de Guadalupe and the still wilder Sierra Morena had been toilsome and exhausting[33]. It proved fatal to their old president, Florida Blanca, who died of bronchitis only eleven days after he had arrived at Seville. In his stead a Castilian Grandee of unimpeachable patriotism but very moderate abilities, the Marquis of Astorga, was elected to the presidential chair. The Junta had no enviable task before it: the news of the disasters on the Ebro and the fall of Madrid had thrown the nation into a paroxysm of unreasoning fury. Ridiculous charges of treason were being raised against all those who had been in charge of the war. Blake and Castaños (of all people!) were being openly accused of having sold themselves to Napoleon. There were a number of political assassinations in the regions to which the French had not yet penetrated: most of the victims were old friends of Godoy. It looked at first as if the central government would be unable to restore any sort of order, or to organize any further resistance. Some of the local juntas, whose importance had disappeared with the meeting of the Supreme Junta, showed signs of wishing to resume their ancient independence. Those of Seville and Jaen were especially disobliging. But the evils of disunion were so obvious that even the most narrow-minded particularists settled down after a time into at least a formal obedience to the central government.

[33] It will be remembered (see vol. i. p. 529), that they went via Talavera, Merida, and Llerena.

The enforced halt made by the French after Napoleon’s departure for Madrid was the salvation of Spain. By the month of January things were beginning to assume a more regular aspect, and some attempt was made to face the situation. The most favourable part of that situation was that money at least was not wanting for the moment. The four or five millions of dollars which the British Government had distributed to the provincial Juntas and to the ‘Central’ had long been spent, and in 1809 no more than £387,000 in specie was advanced to Spain. Spent also was the enormous amount of money accruing from patriotic gifts and local assessments. But there had just arrived at Cadiz a large consignment of specie from America. The Spanish colonies in the New World had all adhered without hesitation to the cause of Ferdinand VII, and their first and most copious contribution had just come to hand. Not only had the Governors of Mexico and Peru and the other provinces strained every nerve to raise money, but a vast patriotic fund had been collected by individuals. There were rich merchants and land-holders in America who made voluntary offerings of sums as large as 100,000 or 200,000 dollars apiece. The money which came to hand early in 1809 amounted to more than £2,800,000, and much more was received ere the close of the year. It was with this sum, far more than with British money, that the Spanish armies were paid and fed: but their equipment mainly came from England. The stores of arms, clothing, and munition which had existed in the arsenals of the Peninsula when the war broke out, had all been exhausted in the autumn, and had not even sufficed to equip fully the unfortunate armies which were beaten on the Ebro. The government and the local juntas had set up new manufactories at Seville, Valencia, and elsewhere, which were already turning out a large quantity of weapons, accoutrements, and uniforms: it was now that the armies began to appear in the rough brown cloth of the country and in leather shakos, abandoning the old white uniform and plumed hat which had been the garb of the Spanish line. But the reclothing and rearmament of the troops could never have been completed without the enormous consignments of cloth, powder, muskets, lead, and leather work which came from England. It is true that much was lost by the fortune of war before it could be utilized--notably the considerable amount of muskets, ammunition, and cloth which had been landed in Galicia for La Romana’s army. This, as we have seen, was either destroyed by Sir John Moore’s army or captured by Soult, because the Galician Junta had kept it waiting too long at the base. But all that went to Andalusia, Valencia, and Catalonia came safely to hand. Palafox’s army was re-equipped, just before the second siege of Saragossa began, with British stores sent up by Colonel Doyle from Tarragona. The armies of the south and east also received enormous consignments of necessaries.

It remains to speak of the purely military aspect of the Junta’s position. When January began, the wrecks of the Spanish armies were distributed in a wide semicircle reaching from Oviedo to Gerona, while the French lay in their midst. In the Asturias there were still 14,000 or 15,000 men under arms: the relics of Acevedo’s division of Blake’s army had fallen back, and joined the other levies which the local Junta had assembled. The whole force was watching the two lines on which the French could conceivably move during the winter--the coast route from Santander to Gijon, and the pass of Pajares which leads from Leon to Oviedo.

In Galicia, La Romana’s army, now engaged in the miserable retreat from Astorga to Orense, had fallen into the most wretched condition. Of the 22,000 men who had been assembled at Leon in December only 6,000 or 7,000 were now to be found: the Galician battalions had melted home when the army fell back among their native mountains. They cannot be much blamed, for they were suffering acute starvation: in the spring they came back to join the colours readily enough. The regulars, who still hung together, were famished, naked, typhus-ridden, and incapable of any great exertion. Their general’s only care was to keep them as far as possible from Soult and Ney, till the winter should have passed by, and food and clothing be procured.

Between La Romana’s men at Orense and the army of Estremadura on the Tagus there was no Spanish force in the field. When Lapisse and D’Avenay had occupied Zamora and Salamanca, the only centre of resistance in Leon was the fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo, which was held by a handful of local militia. Portuguese troops were beginning to collect in its rear at Almeida, but with them the Junta had nothing to do.

The Estremaduran army had now passed from the hands of Galluzzo to those of Cuesta. The Junta, in spite of the memories of Cabezon and Rio Seco, had once more given the obstinate and incapable old soldier an important command. Apparently they had been moved by the widespread but idiotic cry imputing treachery to the generals who had been beaten on the Ebro, and gave Cuesta an army because (with all his faults) no one ever dreamed of accusing him of treachery or sympathy with the French. His forces consisted (1) of the wrecks of Belvedere’s army from Gamonal, (2) of the débris of San Juan’s army from Madrid, (3) of new Estremaduran levies, which had not gone forward to Burgos in October, but had remained behind to complete their organization, (4) of the four dismounted cavalry regiments from Denmark, which had been sent to the south when La Romana landed at Santander, in order to procure equipment and horses. In all, the army of Cuesta had no more than 10,500 foot and 2,000 or 2,500 horse. The spirit of the old troops of San Juan and Belvedere was still very bad, and they were hardly recovered from their December mutinies and murders. After Lefebvre had driven them back from the Tagus, and occupied the bridges of Almaraz and Arzobispo, the Estremadurans had retired to Merida and Truxillo: on January 11 their most advanced position was at the last-named place.

To the east of Estremadura lay the weakest point of the Spanish line: Andalusia and its mountain barrier of the Sierra Morena were almost undefended in January, 1809. It will be remembered that all through the autumn of the preceding year the local juntas, intoxicated with the fumes of Baylen, had let the months slip by without doing much to organize the ‘Army of Reserve,’ of which they had spoken so much in August and September. It resulted that, when Reding had marched for Catalonia, and the last belated fractions of Castaños’ army had been forwarded to Madrid, Andalusia was almost destitute of troops. When the Junta fled to Seville, it looked around for an army with which to defend the passes of the Sierra Morena. Nothing of the kind existed: the only force available consisted of nine or ten battalions, mainly new levies, which were dispersed through the ‘Four Kingdoms’ completing their armament and organization. They were hastily mobilized and pushed forward to the Sierra Morena, but not more than 6,000 bayonets and 500 sabres could be collected. This was the sole force that lay between the French at Madrid and the Junta at Seville. The charge of the division, whose head quarters were placed at La Carolina, was given to the Marquis del Palacio, who in the general shifting of commanders had just been recalled from Catalonia.

The British Government’s knowledge of the danger to which Andalusia was exposed, from the absolute want of troops to defend it, led to an untoward incident, which did much to endanger its friendly relations with the Junta. On hearing of the fall of Madrid, and of Moore’s retreat towards Galicia, Canning harked back to one of his old ideas of the previous summer, the notion that British troops might be sent to the south of Spain, if a safe basis for their operations were secured. This, as the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs believed, would best be provided by the establishment of a garrison in Cadiz. It was all-important that this great centre of commerce should not fall into the hands of the French, and early in January it was known in London that there was no adequate Spanish force ready to defend the passes of Andalusia. If Napoleon had an army large enough to provide, not only for the pursuit of Moore, but for the dispatch of a strong corps for an attack on Seville, it seemed probable that the French might overrun Southern Spain as far as the sea, without meeting with serious opposition. Accordingly, Canning wrote to Frere, on the fourteenth day of the new year, 1809, to offer the assistance of a considerable British force for the defence of Andalusia, if Cadiz were placed in their hands.

‘The question of the employment of a British army in the south of Spain,’ he wrote, ‘depends essentially upon the disposition of the Spanish Government to receive a corps of that army into Cadiz. Without the security to be afforded by that fortress, it is impossible to hazard the army in the interior, after the example of the little co-operation which Sir John Moore represents himself to have received from the Spaniards in the north.... In consequence of the imminent danger, and of the pressing necessity for immediate decision arising from Sir John Moore’s retreat, and from the defenceless state in which you represent Andalusia to be, His Majesty’s Government have deemed it right (without waiting for the result of your communication with the Central Junta) to send a force direct to Cadiz, to be admitted into that fortress. Four thousand men under Major-General Sherbrooke are directed to sail immediately, and he is informed that he is to expect instructions from you on his arrival, containing the determination of the Spanish Government respecting his admission into Cadiz.... In the event of a refusal of the Junta to afford this proof of confidence, Major-General Sherbrooke is directed to proceed to Gibraltar[34].’

[34] Canning to Frere, Jan. 14, 1809 (Record Office).

The last paragraph of this dispatch shows that Canning’s intentions were perfectly honourable, and that he did not intend to bring any pressure to bear upon the Junta in the event of their refusing to admit a British garrison into Cadiz. His views were founded upon the information available in London when he wrote, and he was under the impression that a French army might probably be marching upon Seville at the moment when his letter would reach Frere’s hands. But--as we have seen--the diversion of the main force of Napoleon’s army of invasion against Moore, had rendered any such expedition impossible, and no immediate danger was really to be apprehended.

The same idea, however, had entered into Frere’s mind, and long before he received Canning’s dispatch he had been sounding members of the Central Junta as to the way in which they would look on a proposal to send British troops to Cadiz. The answer which he received from their secretary, Martin de Garay, was not reassuring: Don Martin ‘energetically repudiated’ the project: there would be no objection, he said, to admit a garrison, if Cadiz became ‘the ultimate point of retreat’ of the armies and government of Spain. But the danger that had appeared so pressing some weeks before had passed by, the French had stopped their advance, and the Junta were now hoping to defend Estremadura and the course of the Tagus. The invaders, as they trusted, would be met and checked on the line of Alcantara and Almaraz. They deprecated any sending of British troops to Cadiz, and hoped that Lisbon would be the point to which reinforcements would be dispatched, as its evacuation would have deplorable results. De Garay, in a second letter, spoke of rumours to the effect that Cradock was proposing to evacuate Portugal, and trusted that they were not true. As a matter of fact they were, and that timid commander was already making secret preparations to embark.

Frere gave up for the present any idea of pressing the project further, unless the French should recommence their advance on Andalusia. He had not yet received Canning’s dispatch from London, and did not know that the home government had taken to heart the plan for occupying Cadiz and sending a large expedition to Andalusia. But on February 2, before any hint of the kind had reached him, he was informed by a dispatch from Lisbon that troops had been already sent off to Cadiz[35]. This step was the work of Sir George Smith, one of the numerous British military agents in the Peninsula, who had taken upon himself to force events to an issue, without first taking the precaution of communicating either with the home government or the British ambassador at Seville. Smith was a hasty and presumptuous man, full of zeal without discretion. The defencelessness of Andalusia had impressed him, just as it had impressed Canning and Frere. But instead of opening communications with the Junta, as they had both done, he had merely written in very urgent terms to Cradock, and adjured him to detach troops from the scanty garrison of Portugal in order to secure Cadiz. The general, when thus pressed, consented to fall in with the scheme, and set aside a brigade under Mackenzie, which he shipped off from Lisbon at twenty-four hours’ notice (February 2). He also ordered the 40th regiment, then in garrison at Elvas, to march on Seville. Both Cradock and Smith were gravely to blame, for they had no authorization to attempt to occupy Cadiz, without obtaining the consent of the Spanish Government[36]. They should have consulted both Frere and the Junta before moving a man: but it was only when the troops had actually embarked that they thought fit to notify their action to the ambassador at Seville.

[35] The 29th, 3/27th, and 2/9th regiments.

[36] As Canning wrote to Frere, after receiving the news of the abortive expedition, ‘The enclosed copy of the instructions under which Sir G. Smith was sent out, will show you that the step taken by that officer was not to have been taken except at the direct solicitation of the Spanish authorities.... He has been directed to leave Cadiz at once, and you may assure the Junta that no separate or secret commission was, has been, or ever will be entrusted to any officer or other person,’ Feb. 26 (Record Office).

On receiving their letters Frere was placed in an unenviable position. Having just seen his own proposals negatived by the Junta in polite but decisive terms, he now learnt that a British force had been sent off to carry out precisely the plan which the Spaniards had refused to take into consideration. Four days later he was informed that Mackenzie’s brigade, which had chanced upon a favourable wind, was actually lying in Cadiz harbour, and that Sir George Smith was endeavouring to induce the local authorities of the place to permit them to land. The Junta, as was inevitable, suspected Frere of having been in the plot, and imagined that he was trying to force their hand by the display of armed force. Cadiz was at Smith’s mercy, for it was only garrisoned by its urban guards; and the populace were by no means unwilling to see the British land, for the fear of the French was upon them, and they welcomed the approach of reinforcements of any kind.

The supreme authority in Cadiz at this moment was the Marquis of Villel, a special commissioner sent down by the Central Junta, of which he was a member. He refused to be cajoled by Smith, and very properly referred his demand for permission to disembark to the government at Seville. The latter, not unnaturally incensed, turned for explanations to Frere. The ambassador’s conduct when placed in this dilemma was by no means wise or straightforward. Instead of frankly disavowing Smith’s action, he adopted the tortuous course[37] of pretending that the expedition from Lisbon had been sent with his knowledge and consent, but that he would not allow it to land without the leave of the Junta. The Spaniards replied in terms of some indignation, and returned a frank negative to the demand. Their secretary, de Garay, wrote that the unexpected appearance of General Mackenzie’s force was ‘painful and disagreeable intelligence, Cadiz being no longer in danger from the French, and two Spanish regiments being already on their way to reinforce the garrison. The measure which had been taken would admit of a thousand interpretations, and a consent to hand over the fortress to the British would compromise the Central Junta with the whole nation.’ The fact was that Spanish public opinion was strongly opposed to allowing the British to obtain a foothold in Cadiz; there was a deeply-rooted notion abroad that, if once occupied, the place might be kept permanently in our hands, and be turned into a second Gibraltar.

[37] Frere, by his own showing, exceeded the bounds of diplomatic evasion. He writes to Canning (Feb. 9) to say that the dispatch of the Lisbon troops had been a complete surprise to him, as he had not received any information on the subject. ‘It occurred to me, however, that it was best to take it upon myself, and to affect to consider it a thing of course, and to say that I had sent orders in conformity with the note which I had received from Mr. de Garay. In order to give this some semblance of truth, I did afterwards write a letter to Lisbon to this effect, and sent it off before I dispatched my note to Mr. de Garay. This did not prevent me from being assailed by remonstrances.’ Finally he proceeded to tell the Junta ‘that he only wished to see Cadiz occupied in the extreme case of an immediate attack by the French’ (Record Office).

Unfortunately for the credit of Great Britain with her allies, tumults broke out at Cadiz within a few days of the arrival of Mackenzie’s army, which supplied an excuse to malevolent Spaniards for attributing the worst motives to their allies. As a matter of fact they were not stirred up by Sir George Smith or any other emissary of the British Government, but were the results of the eccentric behaviour of the Marquis de Villel[38]. This personage was a very strange character, a sort of nineteenth-century Spanish Puritan, with a taste for playing the benevolent despot. He attributed the misfortunes of his country (and not without much reason) to her moral decadence. His idea of the way to commence her regeneration was peculiar, considering the circumstances of the time. He issued an edict commanding all married pairs living apart, to reunite, issued laws repressing theatre-going, late hours, and gambling, legislated concerning the length of ladies’ skirts, and organized a grand battue against women of light reputation, of whom he imprisoned some scores. When he proceeded to engage in a sort of moral inquisition into the private life of all classes, he naturally became very unpopular, and on the first opportunity the populace rose against him. He had ordered into the city a newly-embodied ‘Swiss’ battalion, raised from the prisoners of Dupont’s army and other deserters of all nationalities. The cry was raised by his enemies that he was admitting Frenchmen in disguise into the sacred fortress, with the purpose of betraying it to the enemy. Other rumours were put about to the effect that he was deliberately neglecting the fortifications, and supplying the batteries with powder adulterated with sand[39].

[38] For Villel’s eccentricities in detail see Toreno, i. pp. 375-6, and Arteche, v. p. 107.

[39] See Col. Leslie (of the 29th), Memoirs, p. 94.

When the foreign battalion drew near to Cadiz on February 22, and began to march up the long spit which connects the city with the Isla de Leon, the storm burst. A mixed multitude of rioters shut the gates against the troops, and then swept the streets, maltreating Villel’s subordinates, and slaying Don José Heredia the commander of the coast-guard, a person very unpopular with the smugglers, who formed an appreciable element in the crowd. The High Commissioner himself was besieged in his house, hunted from it, and nearly murdered: he only escaped by the kind offices of the head of a Capuchin convent, who took him within his gates, and made himself responsible to the rioters for keeping the refugee in safe custody. The mob next tried to break open the state prison, for the purpose of slaying General Caraffa and other political captives. Fortunately Felix Jones, the military Governor, succeeded in saving these unhappy persons, by the not over-willing aid of the urban guards, many of whom had joined in the outbreak.

The rioters expressed great friendliness for the British, and many of them kept inviting the troops in the offing to come ashore. It was very lucky that no attention was paid to these solicitations[40], for if they had landed the worst suspicions of the Junta would have appeared justified, and the insurrection would have been attributed to the machinations of Frere or Smith. Fortunately the latter had died, only a few days before the troubles broke out, the victim of a fever which carried him off after no more than twenty-four hours of illness. If he had survived till the twenty-second, he would have been quite capable of taking the fatal step of listening to the appeals of the rioters, and ordering the troops ashore.

[40] Mackenzie wrote that ‘it was evident that the people were favourable to our landing and occupying the town, for it was frequently called for during the tumult.’ But ‘the utmost care was taken to prevent our officers or soldiers from taking any part whatever on this occasion, and except when I was applied to by the Governor for the interference of some British officers as mediators, we stood perfectly clear.’ Dispatch to Castlereagh in the Record Office, dated Lisbon, March 13, 1809.

As it turned out the whole expedition ended in an absurd fiasco. When the riots had died down, the Junta recalled the eccentric de Villel, but they would not listen to any proposals from Frere for admitting British troops into Cadiz, even when he suggested that only two battalions should remain there, while the rest, including Sherbrooke’s division, which was expected to arrive in a few days, should come up and join the 40th regiment at Seville, with the ultimate purpose of marching into Estremadura. The Junta replied that ‘the loyalty of the British Ministry and the generosity of its efforts to assist Spain were beyond suspicion: but the National Government must respect national prejudices, and avoid exposing itself to censure. If there were any urgent danger, they would have no hesitation in admitting the troops of their allies into Cadiz. But the French were still far away, and there was no immediate prospect of their approach. The British expedition would be more usefully employed in Catalonia, or in some other theatre of war, than in Cadiz[41].’ By March 4, when this final answer was sent to Frere, the state of affairs had so much changed, that the representations made by the Junta were more or less correct. The imminent danger which had existed in January had passed away.

[41] Martin de Garay to Frere, March 4 (Record Office).

Accordingly, after lying idly for four weeks in their transports, and gazing with much unsatisfied curiosity on the white houses, the green shutters, and the flat roofs of Cadiz, across the beautiful bay, Mackenzie’s regiments set sail again for Lisbon on March 6. As they ran out of the harbour, they met Sherbrooke’s belated convoy, whose arrival had been delayed by fearful tempests in the Bay of Biscay. The whole force, 6,000 bayonets strong, was brought back to Portugal. It might have been of infinite service to Cradock if it had remained at Lisbon and had never been sent to Cadiz, and its presence might have induced him to adopt measures less timid and futile than those which (as we shall see) he had pursued during January and February[42].

[42] Napier enlarges on this incident at great length in pages 14-19 of his second volume. In his persistent dislike for Canning, Castlereagh and Mr. Frere, as well as for the Spaniards, he concludes that the business ‘indicated an unsettled policy, shallow combination, and had agents on the part of the British Cabinet, and an unwise and unworthy disposition in the Supreme Junta,’ while Smith was ‘zealous and acute’ and Cradock ‘full of zeal and moral courage.’ It is hard to give an unqualified assent to any one of these views. Smith was wrong in acting without giving any notice of his intentions to the Junta: Cradock’s zeal was equally untempered by discretion. The British Cabinet, acting on the information available in the end of December, was right to be anxious about Cadiz, and equally right to abandon its attempt to occupy the place in March, when the conditions of the war had changed, and the Junta had shown its dislike to the proposal. As to the Spaniards, the matter was only broached to them in February, when the danger of an immediate French advance had passed away, and they were entirely justified in their answer, which was framed as politely as could be contrived. We must not blame them overmuch for their suspicion: England, though now a friend, had long been an enemy--and the fate of Gibraltar was always before their eyes.

But this unfortunate incident has detained us too long; we must return to the state of the Spanish armies at the end of the month of January. Beyond the levies of the Marquis Del Palacio at La Carolina, there was a long gap in the Spanish line of defence. The next force under arms was the army of Infantado, now engaged in its exhausting winter march from Cuenca to the Murcian border. After the rout of Ucles it was still 12,000 strong, though destitute of all supplies and not fit for immediate service. The Junta ordered it to march from Chinchilla to join Del Palacio’s force at the mouth of the Despeña Perros, and so to strengthen the defences of Andalusia. This was done, and the two forces were safely united, so that when a few more new battalions had been brought up from Granada, 20,000 men were placed between Victor and Andalusia. The Junta removed Infantado from command, rightly judging that he had sacrificed Venegas at Ucles by his neglect to send orders and his sloth in coming up to join his subordinate. The charge of the force at La Carolina (still called ‘the Army of the Centre’) was made over to General Cartaojal.

Beyond Infantado’s depleted corps lay the army of Valencia. Its nucleus was the remains of the old division of Llamas and Roca, which had served with Castaños at Tudela. The local Junta rapidly recruited this skeleton force from 1,500 up to 5,000 men[43]. They added to it several new regiments raised during the winter in Valencia and Murcia, and by February had 10,000 men available for succouring Aragon and Catalonia, though their quality left much to be desired.

[43] See the table in Argüelles on p. 74 of his Appendix-volume.

A little further north Palafox was still holding out with splendid desperation in Saragossa, where he had shut himself up with the whole army of Aragon. His original 32,000 men were already much thinned by pestilence and the sword, but in January their spirit was yet unbroken, and though it was clear that they were doomed to final destruction, if they were not relieved from the outside, yet they were still doing excellent work in detaining in front of them the whole of the 3rd and 5th French Army Corps.

There yet remains to be described the strongest of all the Spanish armies, that of Catalonia. In addition to the original garrison of the province, and to its gallant miqueletes and somatenes, there had been gradually drafted into the principality (1) the greater part of the garrison of the Balearic Isles, some 9,000 men; (2) Reding’s Granadan division which started from its home over 10,000 strong; (3) 2,500 men of Caraffa’s old division from Portugal; (4) the Marquis of Lazan’s Aragonese division from the side of Lerida, about 4,000 bayonets. Thus in all some 32,000 men in organized corps had been massed in Catalonia, and the somatenes added some 20,000 irregulars. Of course the Spanish strength in January did not reach these figures. Many men had been lost at the siege of Rosas and in the battles of Cardadeu and Molins de Rey: yet there were still 40,000 troops of one sort or another available; the spirit of the country was irritated rather than lowered by the late defeats; the French only occupied the ground that was within the actual circle of fire of their garrisons. If the Catalans had been content to avoid general engagements, and to maintain an incessant guerrilla warfare, they might have held their own. Though the enemy had a very capable commander in General St. Cyr, they had as yet accomplished nothing more than the capture of the antiquated fortress of Rosas, the relief of Barcelona, and the winning of two fruitless battles. Catalonia remained unsubdued till the very end of the struggle.

Reckoning up all their armies, the Junta had in the end of January some 135,000 men in arms,--a force insufficient to face the French in the open, for the latter (even after the departure of the Imperial Guard) had still nearly 300,000[44] sabres and bayonets south of the Pyrenees, but one quite capable of keeping up the national resistance if it were only conducted upon the proper lines. For, as Napoleon and his marshals had yet to learn, no Spanish district could be considered conquered unless a garrison was left in each of its towns, and flying columns kept in continual motion through the open country. Of the 288,000 French who now lay in Spain more than half were really wanted for garrison duty. A district like Galicia was capable of keeping 40,000 men employed: even the plains of Old Castile and Leon swallowed up whole divisions.

[44] 288,000 on Feb. 15. See Napier’s extracts from the Imperial muster rolls, i. 514. These numbers include the sick and detached.

But, unfortunately for Spain, the mania for fighting pitched battles was still obsessing the minds of her generals. Within a few weeks three wholly unnecessary and disastrous engagements were to be risked, at Valls, Ciudad Real, and Medellin. Instead of playing a cautious defensive game, and harassing the French, the Spaniards persisted in futile attempts to face the enemy in general actions, for which their troops were wholly unsuited. The results were so deplorable that but for a second British intervention--Wellesley’s march to Talavera--Andalusia would have been in as great peril in July, 1809, as it had been in January.

The Central Junta must take its share of the responsibility for this fact no less than the Spanish generals. It still persisted in its old error of refusing to appoint a single commander-in-chief, so that each army fought for its own hand, without any attempt to co-ordinate its actions with those of the others. Indeed several of the generals were at notorious enmity with their colleagues--notably Cuesta and Venegas. It was to no purpose that the Central Government displayed great energy in organizing men and collecting material, if, when the armies had been equipped and sent to the front, they were used piecemeal, without any general strategical scheme, and led ere long to some miserable disaster, such as Ucles, or Medellin, or Ocaña. The Junta, the generals, and the nation were all alike possessed by the delusion that with energy and sufficient numbers they might on some happy morning achieve a second Baylen. But for such a consummation Duponts and Vedels are required, and when no such convenient adversaries were to be found, the attempt to encompass and beat a French army was certain to end in a catastrophe.

The only Spanish fighters who were playing the proper game in 1809 were the Catalonian somatenes, and even they gave battle far too often, and did not adhere with a sufficient pertinacity to the harassing tactics of guerrilla warfare. General Arteche has collected in his fourth volume something like a dozen schemes for the expulsion of the French from Spain, which were laid before the Junta, or ventilated in print, during this year. It is interesting to see that only one of them advocates the true line of resistance--the avoiding of battles, the harassing of the enemy’s flanks and communications, and the employment of numerous flying bands instead of great masses[45]. Some of the other plans are the wild imaginings of ignorant fools--one wiseacre wished to run down the French columns with pikemen in a sort of Macedonian phalanx, another to arm one-sixth of the troops with hand-grenades! But the majority of the Junta’s self-constituted advisers thought that numbers were the only necessary thing, and proposed to save Spain by crushing the invaders with levies en masse of all persons between sixteen and fifty--one enthusiast makes the age-limit fourteen to seventy!

[45] See Arteche, iv. 115-51: the advocate of the guerrilla game was a certain Faustino Fernandez.

These were the views of the nation, and the generals and the Junta were but infected with the common delusion of all their compatriots. They would not see that courage and raw multitudes are almost helpless when opposed by equal courage combined with skill, long experience of war, superior tactics, and intelligent leading.

SECTION X

THE AUTUMN AND WINTER CAMPAIGN IN CATALONIA

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I. THE SIEGE OF ROSAS

Before we follow further the fortunes of Southern Spain, it is necessary to turn back and to take up the tale of the war on the Eastern coast at the point where it was left in Section V.

The same torpor which was notable in the operations of the main armies of the Spaniards and the French during the months of September and October was to be observed in Catalonia also. On the Ter and the Llobregat the inability of the French to move was much more real, and the slackness of the Spaniards even more inexplicable, than on the Ebro and the Aragon.

In the early days of September the situation of the invaders was most perilous. After the disastrous failure of the second siege of Gerona, it will be remembered that Reille had withdrawn to Figueras, close to the French frontier, while Duhesme had cut his way back to Barcelona, after sacrificing all his artillery and his baggage on the way. Both commanders proceeded to report to the Emperor that there was need for ample reinforcements of veteran troops, or a catastrophe must inevitably ensue. Meanwhile Reille preserved a defensive attitude at the foot of the Pyrenees; while Duhesme could do no more than hold Barcelona, and as much of its suburban plain as he could safely occupy without risking overmuch his outlying detachments. He foresaw a famine in the winter, and devoted all his energies to seizing and sending into the town all foodstuffs that he could find in the neighbourhood. His position was most uncomfortable: the late expedition had reduced his force from 13,000 to 10,000 sabres and bayonets. The men were demoralized, and when sent out to forage saw somatenes behind every bush and rock. The populace of Barcelona was awaiting a good opportunity for an émeute, and was in constant communication with the insurgents outside.

The blockade was not as yet kept up by any large section of the Captain-General’s regular troops, nor had any attempt been made to run lines around the place. It was conducted by an elastic cordon of four or five thousand miqueletes, supported by no more than 2,000 infantry of the regular army and possessing five or six field-guns. The charge of the whole line was given to the Conde de Caldagues, who had so much distinguished himself in the previous month by his relief of Gerona. He had been entrusted with a force too small to man a circuit of twelve or fifteen miles, so that Duhesme had no difficulty in pushing sorties through the line of Spanish posts, whenever he chose to send out a sufficiently strong column. But any body that pressed out too far in pursuit of corn or forage, risked being beset and mishandled on its return march by the whole of the somatenes of the country-side. Hence there was a limit to the power to roam of even the largest expeditions that Duhesme could spare from his depleted garrison. The fighting along the blockading cordon was incessant, but never conclusive. On September 2 a strong column of six Italian battalions swept aside the Spaniards for a moment in the direction of San Boy, but a smaller expedition against the bridge of Molins de Rey was repulsed. The moment that the Italians returned to Barcelona, with the food that they had scraped together in the villages, Caldagues reoccupied his old positions. There were many skirmishes but no large sorties between September 2 and October 12, when Milosewitz took out 2,000 men for a cattle-hunt in the valley of the Besos. He pierced the blockading line, routing the miqueletes of Milans at San Jeronimo de la Murtra, and penetrated as far as Granollers, twenty miles from Barcelona, where he made an invaluable seizure, the food dépôt of the eastern section of the investing force. But he was now dangerously distant from his base, and as he was returning with his captures, Caldagues fell upon him at San Culgat with troops brought from other parts of the blockading line. The Italians were routed with a loss of 300 men[46], and their convoy was recaptured. After this Duhesme made no more attempts to send expeditions far afield: in spite of a growing scarcity of food, he could not afford to risk the loss of any more men by pushing his sorties into the inland.

[46] So Vacani. Laffaille gives the incredible figure of 48!

Meanwhile Reille at Figueras was in wellnigh as forlorn a situation. His communications with Perpignan were open, so that he had not, like Duhesme, the fear of starvation before his eyes. But in other respects he was almost as badly off: the somatenes were always worrying his outposts, but this was only a secondary trial. The main trouble was the want of clothing, transport, and equipment: the heterogeneous mob of bataillons de marche, of Swiss and Tuscan conscripts, had been hurried to the frontier without any proper preparations: this mattered comparatively little during the summer; but when the autumn cold began Reille found that troops, who had neither tents nor greatcoats, and whose original summer uniforms were now worn out, could not keep the field. His ranks were so thinned by dysentery and rheumatic affections that he had to put the men under cover in Figueras and the neighbouring towns, and even to withdraw to Perpignan some of his battalions, whose clothing was absolutely dropping to pieces. His cavalry, for want of forage in the Pyrenees, were sent back into Languedoc, where occupation was found for them by Lord Cochrane who was conducting a series of daring raids on the coast villages between the mouth of the Rhone and that of the Tech[47]. Reille continued to solicit the war minister at Paris for clothing and transport, but could get nothing from him: all the resources of the empire were being strained in September and October to fit out the main army, which was about to enter Spain on the side of Biscay, and Napoleon refused to trouble himself about such a minor force as the corps at Figueras.

[47] See Cochrane’s Autobiography, pp. 269-85.

The Spaniards, therefore, had in the autumn months a unique opportunity for striking at the two isolated French forces in Catalonia. Two courses were open to them: they might have turned their main army against Barcelona, and attempted to besiege instead of merely to blockade Duhesme: or on the other hand they might have left a mere cordon of somatenes around Duhesme, and have sent all their regulars to join the levies of the north and sweep Reille across the Pyrenees. The resources at their disposition were far from contemptible: almost the whole garrison of the Balearic Isles having disembarked in Catalonia, there were now some 12,000 regulars in the Principality, and the local Junta had put so much energy into the equipment of the numerous tercios of miqueletes which it had raised, that the larger half of them, at least 20,000 men, were more or less ready for the field. Moreover they were aware that large reinforcements were at hand. Reding’s Granadan division, 10,000 strong, was marching up from the south, and was due to arrive early in November. The Aragonese division under the Marquis of Lazan, which had been detached from the army of Palafox, was already at Lerida. Valencia had sent up a line regiment[48], and the remains of the division of Caraffa from Portugal were being brought round by sea to the mouth of the Ebro[49]. Altogether 20,000 men of new troops were on the way to Catalonia, and the first of them had already come on the scene.

[48] Two battalions of the 2nd of Savoia: the old regiment of the name had been completed to four battalions, two were with Castaños and called 1st of Savoia, the other two came to Catalonia.

[49] Four battalions of Provincial Grenadiers of Old and New Castile had already come up.

Unfortunately the Marquis Del Palacio, the new Captain-General of Catalonia, though well-intentioned, was slow and undecided to the verge of absolute torpidity. Beyond allowing his energetic subordinate Caldagues to keep up the blockade of Barcelona he did practically nothing. A couple of thousand of his regulars, based on Gerona and Rosas, lay opposite Reille, but were far too weak to attack him. About 3,000 under Caldagues were engaged in the operations around Barcelona. The rest the Captain-General held back and did not use. All through September he lay idle at Tarragona, to the great disgust of the local Junta, who at last sent such angry complaints to Aranjuez that the Central Junta recalled him, and replaced him by Vives the old Captain-General of the Balearic Islands, who took over the command on October 28.

This gave a change of commander but not of policy, for Vives was as slow and incapable as his predecessor. We have already had occasion to mention the trouble that he gave in August, when he refused to send his troops to the mainland till actually compelled to yield by their mutiny. When he took over the charge of operations he found 20,000 foot and 1,000 horse at his disposition, and the French still on the defensive both at Barcelona and at Figueras. He had a splendid opportunity, and it was not yet too late to strike hard. But all that he chose to attempt was to turn the blockade of Barcelona into an investment, by tightening the cordon round the place. To lay siege to the city does not seem to have been within the scope of his intentions, but on November 6 he moved up to the line of the Llobregat with 12,000 infantry and 700 horse, mostly regulars. He had opened negotiations with secret friends within the walls, and had arranged that when the whole forces of Duhesme were sufficiently occupied in resisting the assault from outside, the populace should take arms and endeavour to seize and throw open one of the gates. But matters never got to this point: on November 8 several Spanish columns moved in nearer to Barcelona, and began to skirmish with the outposts of the garrison. But the attack was incoherent, and never pressed home. Vives then waited till the 26th, when he had received more reinforcements, the first brigade of Reding’s long-expected Granadan division. On that day another general assault on Duhesme’s outlying posts was delivered, and this time with considerable success: several of the suburban villages were carried, over a hundred Frenchmen were captured, and the line of blockade was drawn close under the walls. Duhesme had no longer any hold outside the city. But Barcelona was strong, and its garrison, when concentrated within the place, was just numerous enough to hold its own. Duhesme had thought for a moment of evacuating the city and retiring into the citadel and the fortress of Montjuich: but on mature consideration he resolved to cling as long as possible to the whole circuit of the town. He had heard that an army of relief was at last on the way, and made up his mind to yield no inch without compulsion.

Thus Vives wasted another month without any adequate results: he had, with the whole field army of Catalonia, done nothing more than turn the French out of their first and weakest line of defence. The fortress was intact, and to all intents and purposes might have been observed as well by 10,000 somatenes as by the large force which Vives had brought against it.

Meanwhile the enemy, utterly unopposed on the line of the Pyrenees, was getting together a formidable host for the relief of Barcelona. When he had recognized that Reille’s extemporized army was insufficient alike in quantity and in quality for the task before it, the Emperor had directed on Perpignan (as we have already seen[50]) two strong divisions of the Army of Italy, one composed of ten French battalions under General Souham, the other of thirteen Italian battalions. The order to dispatch them had only been given on August 10, and the regiments, which had to be mobilized and equipped, and then to march up from Lombardy to the roots of the Pyrenees, did not begin to arrive at Perpignan till September 14: the artillery, and the troops which came from the more distant points, only appeared on October 28. Even then there was a further week’s delay, for the Emperor had monopolized for the main army, on the side of the Bidassoa, all the available battalions of the military train: the Army of the Eastern Pyrenees had no transport save that which the regiments had brought with them, and it was with the greatest difficulty that a few hundred mules and some open carts were collected from the French border districts. It was only on November 5 that the army crossed the Pyrenees, by the great pass between Bellegarde and La Junquera.

[50] Vol. i. p. 333.

The officer placed in command was General Gouvion St. Cyr, who afterwards won his marshal’s bâton in the Russian war of 1812. He was a general of first-rate ability, who had served all through the wars of the Revolution with marked distinction: but he disliked Bonaparte and had not the art to hide the fact. This had kept him back from earlier promotion. St. Cyr was by no means an amiable character: he was detested by his officers and his troops as a confirmed grumbler, and selfish to an incredible degree[51]. He was one of those men who can always show admirable and convincing reasons for not helping their neighbours. C’était un mauvais compagnon de lit, said one of the many colleagues, whom he had left in the lurch, while playing his own game. From his morose bearing and his dislike for company he had got the nickname of ‘le hibou.’ He was cautious, cool-headed, and ready of resource, so that his troops had full confidence in him, though he never commanded their liking. Even from his history of the Catalonian war, one can gather the character of the man. It is admirably lucid, and illustrated with original documents, Spanish no less than French, in a fashion only too rare among the military books of the soldiers of the Empire. But it is not only entirely self-centred, but full of malevolent insinuations concerning Napoleon and the author’s colleagues. In his first chapter he broaches the extraordinary theory that Napoleon handed over to him the Catalonian army without resources, money, or transport, in order that he might make a fiasco of the campaign and ruin his reputation! He actually seems to have believed that his master disliked to have battles won for him by officers who had not owed to him the beginning of their fortunes[52], and would have been rather pleased than otherwise to see the attempt to relieve Barcelona end in a failure.

[51] For several curious and interesting stories concerning St. Cyr, the reader may search the third volume of Marbot’s Mémoires. Marbot is not an authority to be followed with much confidence, but the picture drawn of the marshal is borne out by other and better writers.

[52] ‘On ne pourra pas échapper à la pensée que Napoléon, avec sa force immense, a été assez faible pour ne vouloir que des succès obtenus par lui-même, ou du moins sous ses yeux. Autrement on eût dit que la victoire était pour lui une offense: il en voulait surtout à la fortune quand elle favorisait les armes d’officiers qui ne lui devaient pas leur élévation.’ Journal de l’Armée de Catalogne, p. 26.

These are, of course, the vain imaginings of a jealous and suspicious hypochondriac. It is true that Napoleon disliked St. Cyr, but he did not want to see the campaign of Catalonia end in a disaster. He gave the new general a fine French division of veteran troops, and, as his letter to the Viceroy Eugène Beauharnais shows, the picked regiments of the whole Italian army. The Seventh Corps mustered in all more than 40,000 men, and 25,000 of these were concentrated under St. Cyr’s hand at Perpignan and Figueras. It is certain that the troops were not well equipped, and that the auxiliary services were ill represented. But this was not from exceptional malice on Napoleon’s part: he was always rather inclined to starve an army with which he was not present in person, and at this moment every resource was being strained to fit out the main force which were to deliver the great blow at Madrid. Catalonia was but a ‘side show’: and when St. Cyr tries to prove[53] that it was the most important theatre of war in the whole peninsula, he is but exaggerating, after the common fashion of poor humanity, the greatness of his own task and his own victories.

[53] St. Cyr, p. 23.

Before starting from Perpignan St. Cyr refitted, as best he could, the dilapidated battalions of Reille, which were, he says, in such a state of nudity that those who had been sent back within the French border had to be kept out of public view from motives of mere decency[54]. The whole division had suffered so much from exposure that instead of taking the field with the 8,000 men which it possessed in August, it could present only 5,500 in November, after setting aside a battalion to garrison Figueras[55].

[54] Ibid., p. 19.

[55] For composition see the table of the 7th Corps in Appendix of vol. i. The figures given by St. Cyr are Pino 8,368, Souham 7,712, Chabot 1,988, Reille 4,000. The last is an understatement, as shown by the morning state of Reille’s division in Relmas, ii. 456, which shows 4,612 excluding the garrison of Figueras, more than 1,000 strong.

But though Reille was weak, and the division of Chabot (a mere corps of two Neapolitan battalions and one regiment of National Guards) was an almost negligible quantity, the troops newly arrived from Italy were both numerous and good in quality. Souham’s ten French battalions had 7,000 bayonets, Pino’s thirteen Italian battalions had 7,300. Their cavalry consisted of one French and two Italian regiments, making 1,700 sabres. The total force disposable consisted of 23,680 men, of whom 2,096 were cavalry, and about 500 artillery. In this figure are not included the National Guards and dépôts left behind to garrison Bellegarde, Montlouis, and other places within the French frontier, but only the troops available for operations within Catalonia.

On his way to Perpignan, St. Cyr had visited the Emperor at Paris, so as to receive his orders in person. Napoleon informed him that he left him carte blanche as to all details; the one thing on which he insisted was that Barcelona must be preserved: ‘si vous perdiez cette place, je ne la reprendrais pas avec quatre-vingt mille hommes.’ This then was to be the main object of the coming campaign: there were about two months available for the task, for Duhesme reported that, though food was growing scarce, he could hold out till the end of December. To lessen the number of idle mouths in Barcelona he had been giving permits to depart to many of the inhabitants, and expelling others, against whom he could find excuses for severity.

The high-road from Figueras to Barcelona was blocked by the fortress of Gerona, whose previous resistance in July and August showed that its capture would be a tedious and difficult matter. St. Cyr calculated that he had not the time to spare for the siege of this place: long ere he could expect to take it, Duhesme would be starved out. He made up his mind that he would have to march past Gerona, and as the high-road is commanded by the guns of the city, he would be forced to take with him no heavy guns or baggage, but only light artillery and pack-mules, which could use the by-paths of the mountains. It was his first duty to relieve Barcelona by defeating the main army of Vives. When this had been done, it would be time enough to think of the siege of Gerona.

But there was another fortress which St. Cyr resolved to clear out of his way before starting to aid Duhesme. On the sea-shore, only ten miles before Figueras, lies the little town of Rosas, which blocks the route that crawls under the cliffs from Perpignan and Port-Vendres to the Ampurdam. The moment that the French army advanced south from Figueras, it would have Rosas on its flank, and even small expeditions based on the place could make certain of cutting the high-road, and intercepting all communications between the base and the field force that had gone forward. But it was more than likely that the Spaniards would land a considerable body of troops in Rosas, for it has an excellent harbour, and every facility for disembarkation. Several English men-of-war were lying there; it served them as their shelter and port of call while they watched for the French ships which tried to run into Barcelona with provisions, from Marseilles, Cette, or Port-Vendres. Already they had captured many vessels which endeavoured to pierce the blockade.

St. Cyr therefore was strongly of opinion that he ought to make an end of the garrison of Rosas before starting on his expedition to aid Duhesme. The place was strategically important, but its fortifications were in such bad order that he imagined that it might be reduced in a few days. The town, which counted no more than 1,500 souls, consisted of a single long street running along the shore. It was covered by nothing more than a ditch and an earthwork, resting at one end on a weak redoubt above the beach, and at the other upon the citadel. The latter formed the strength of the place: it was a pentagonal work, regularly constructed, with bastions, and a scarp and counterscarp reveted with stone. But its resisting power was seriously diminished by the fact that the great breach which the French had made during its last siege in 1794 had never been properly repaired. The government of Godoy had neglected the place, and, when the insurrection began, the Catalans had found it still in ruins, and had merely built up the gap with loose stones and barrels filled with earth. A good battering train would bring down the whole of these futile patchings in a few days. A mile to the right of the citadel was a detached work, the Fort of the Trinity, placed above a rocky promontory which forms the south-eastern horn of the harbour. It had been built to protect ships lying before the place from being annoyed by besiegers. The Trinity was built in an odd and ingenious fashion: it was commanded at the distance of only 100 yards by the rocky hill of Puig-Rom: to prevent ill effects from a plunging fire from this elevation, its front had been raised to a great height, so as to protect the interior of the work from molestation. A broad tower 110 feet high covered the whole side of the castle which faces inland. ‘Nothing in short, for a fortress commanded by adjacent heights, could have been better adapted for holding out against offensive operations, or worse adapted for replying to them. The French battery on the cliff was too elevated for artillery to reach, while the tower, which prevented their shot from reaching the body of the fort, also prevented any return fire at them, even if the fort had possessed artillery. In consequence of the elevated position of the French on the cliff, they could only breach the central portion of the tower. The lowest part of the breach they made was nearly sixty feet above its base, so that it could only be reached by long scaling ladders[56].’ It is seldom that a besieger has to complain of the difficulty caused to him by the possession of ground completely dominating a place that he has to reduce: but in the course of the siege of Fort Trinity the French were undoubtedly incommoded by the height of the Puig-Rom. The garrison below, hidden in good bomb-proofs and covered by the tower, suffered little harm from their fire. To batter the whole tower to pieces, by a downward fire, was too long and serious a business for them; they merely tried to breach it.

[56] Lord Cochrane’s Autobiography, i. 303. He adds ‘A pretty correct idea of our relative positions may be formed if the unnautical reader will imagine our small force placed in the nave of Westminster Abbey, with the enemy attacking the great western tower from the summit of a cliff 100 feet higher than the tower, so that the breach in course of formation corresponds to the great west window of the Abbey. It was no easy matter to them to scale the external wall of the tower up to the great window, and more difficult still to get down from the window into the body of the church. These were the points I had to provide against, for we could not prevent the French either from breaching or from storming.’

If the ground in front of Fort Trinity was too high for the French, that of the town of Rosas was too low. It was so marshy that in wet weather the ditches of their siege works filled at once with water, and their parapets crumbled into liquid mud. The only approach on ground of convenient firmness and elevation was opposite a comparatively narrow front of the south-eastern corner of the place.

The garrison of Rosas, when St. Cyr undertook its siege, was commanded by Colonel Peter O’Daly, an officer of the Ultonia, who had distinguished himself at Gerona; it was composed of a skeleton battalion (150 men) of the governor’s own Irish corps, of half the light infantry regiment 2nd of Barcelona, of a company of Wimpffen’s Swiss regiment, and 120 gunners. These were regulars: of new levies there were the two miquelete tercios of Lerida and Igualada, with some companies of those of Berga and Figueras. The whole force was exactly 3,000 strong. It would be wrong to omit the mention of the British succours which took part in the defence. There lay in the harbour the Excellent, 74, and two bomb-vessels: when the Excellent departed on November 21 she was replaced by the Fame, another 74-gun ship, and during the last days of the siege Lord Cochrane in his well-known frigate the Impérieuse was also present. It is well to remember their exact force, for the French narrators of the leaguer of Rosas are prone to call them ‘the British squadron,’ a term which seems rather too magnificent to apply to a group of vessels never numbering more than one line-of-battle ship, one frigate, and two bomb-vessels.

St. Cyr moved forward on November 5, with the four divisions of Souham, Pino, Reille, and Chabot, which (as we have seen) amounted in all to about 23,000 men. He had resolved to use Pino and Reille--some 12,000 men--for the actual siege, and Souham and Chabot for the covering work. Accordingly the weak division of the last-named officer was left to watch the ground at the foot of the passes, in the direction of Figueras and La Junquera, while Souham took up the line of the river Fluvia, which lay across the path of any relieving force that might come from the direction of Gerona. St. Cyr remained with the covering army, and gave the conduct of the siege to Reille, perhaps because he had already made one attack on the town in August.

On November 6 Reille marched down to the sea, driving before him the Spanish outlying pickets, and the peasantry of the suburban villages, who took refuge with their cattle in Rosas. On the seventh the investment began, Reille’s own division taking its position on the marshy ground opposite the town, while Pino encamped more to the left, upon the heights that face the fort of the Trinity. The head quarters were established at the village of Palau. A battalion of the 2nd Italian light infantry was placed far back, to the north-east, to keep off the somatenes of the coast villages about Llanza and Selva de Mar from interfering in the siege.

Next day the civil population of Rosas embarked on fishing-vessels and small merchantmen, and departed to the south, abandoning the whole town to the garrison. They just missed seeing some sharp fighting. The covering party who had been detached to the neighbourhood of Llanza were beset during a dense mist by the somatenes of the coast: two companies were cut to pieces or captured; the rest were saved by General Fontane, who led out three battalions from Pino’s lines to their assistance. While this engagement was in progress, the garrison sallied out with 2,000 men to beat up the main camp of the Italians; they were repulsed after a sharp fight; the majority got back to the citadel, but one party being surrounded, Captain West of the Excellent landed with 250 of his seamen and marines, cut his way to them, and brought them off in safety. West had his horse shot under him (a curious note to have to make concerning a naval officer), and lost ten men wounded.

After the eighth there followed seven days of continuous rain, which turned the camp of Reille’s division into a marsh, and effectually prevented the construction of siege works in the low-lying ground opposite to the town. The only active operation that could be undertaken was an attempt to storm the fort of the Trinity, which the French believed to be in far worse condition than was actually the case. It was held by eighty Spaniards, under the Irish Lieutenant-Colonel Fitzgerald, and twenty-five of the Excellent’s marines[57]. The six voltigeur and grenadier companies of the 2nd Italian light infantry delivered the assault with great dash and resolution. But as the strong frontal tower of the fort was high and unbreached, they could make no impression, their ladders proved useless, and they were repulsed with a loss of sixty men. Their leader, the chef-de-bataillon Lange, and several other officers were left dead at the foot of the walls.

[57] James’s Naval History, v. p. 90.

Seeing that nothing was to be won by mere escalade, Reille had to wait for his siege artillery, which began to arrive from Perpignan on November 16. He at once started two batteries on the Puig-Rom to breach the Fort of the Trinity, and when the ground had begun to grow dry in front of the town, opened trenches opposite its north-eastern angle. When a good emplacement had been found a battery was established which played upon the citadel, and commanded so much of the harbour that Reille hoped that the British ships would be compelled to shift their anchorage further out to sea. The Spaniards and the Excellent replied with such a heavy fire that in a few hours the battery was silenced, after its powder magazine had been exploded by a lucky shell [November 19].

Next day, however, the French repaired the damage and mounted more guns, whose fire proved so damaging that Captain West had to move further from the shore. The assailants had established a marked superiority over the fire of the besieged, and availed themselves of it by pushing out parallels nearer to the town, and building four more breaching batteries. With these additional resources they began to work serious damage in the unstable bastions of the citadel. They also knocked a hole in the Fort of the Trinity: but the breach was so far from the foot of the wall that it was still almost inaccessible, the heaps of rubbish which fell into the ditch did not even reach the lowest part of the gap.

On the twenty-first the Excellent was relieved by the Fame, and Captain West handed over the task of co-operating with the Spaniards to Captain Bennett. The latter thought so ill of the state of affairs, that after two days he withdrew his marines from the Trinity Fort, an action most discouraging to the Spaniards. But at this juncture there arrived in the bay the Impérieuse frigate, with her indefatigable commandant Lord Cochrane, a host in himself for such a desperate enterprise as the defence of the much-battered town. He got leave from his superior officer to continue the defence, and manned the Trinity again with his own seamen and marines. They had hardly established themselves there, when the Italian brigade of Mazzuchelli made a second attempt to storm the fort: but it was repulsed without even having reached the foot of the breach.

Cochrane, seeing that the battery which was playing on the Trinity was on the very edge of a precipitous cliff, resolved to try whether it would not be possible to surprise it at night, by landing troops on the beach at the back of the Puig-Rom; if they could get possession of the guns for a few minutes he hoped to cast them over the declivity on to the rocks below. O‘Daly lent him 700 miqueletes from the garrison of the town, and this force was put ashore with thirty of the Impérieuse’s marines who were to lead the assault. The Italians, however, were not caught sleeping, the attack failed, and the assailants were beaten back to the rocks by the beach, with the loss of ten killed and twenty wounded, beside prisoners[58]. The boats of the frigate only brought off 300 men, but many more escaped along the beach into the hilly country to the east, and were neither captured nor slain [November 23]. The sortie, however, had been disastrous, and the Governor, O’Daly, was so down-hearted at the loss of men and at the way in which the walls of the citadel were crumbling before his eyes, that he began to think of surrender. Nor was he much to blame, for the state of things was so bad that it was evident that unless some new factor was introduced into the siege, the end was not far off. The utter improbability of relief from without was demonstrated on the twenty-fourth. Julian Alvarez, the Governor of Gerona and commander of the Spanish forces in the Ampurdam, was perfectly well aware that it was his duty to do what he could for the succour of Rosas. But his forces were insignificant: Vives had only given him 2,000 regular troops to watch the whole line of the Eastern Pyrenees, and of this small force half was shut up in Rosas. Nevertheless Alvarez sallied out from Gerona with two weak battalions of Ultonia and Borbon, and half of the light infantry regiment of Barcelona. Picking up 3,000 local miqueletes he advanced to the line of the Fluvia, where Souham was lying, with the division that St. Cyr had told off to cover the siege. The Spaniards drove in the French outposts at several points, but immediately found themselves opposed by very superior numbers, and brought to a complete stand. Realizing that he was far too weak to do anything, Alvarez retreated to Gerona after a sharp skirmish. If he had pushed on he would infallibly have been destroyed. O’Daly received prompt news of his colleague’s discomfiture, and saw that relief was impossible. The fact was that Vives ought to have brought up from Barcelona his whole field army of 20,000 men. With such a host Souham could have been driven back, and Reille compelled to relax the investment, perhaps even to raise the siege. But the Captain-General preferred to waste his men and his time in the futile blockade of Duhesme, who could have been just as well ‘contained’ by 10,000 somatenes as by the main Spanish army of Catalonia. The only attempt which Vives made to strengthen his force in the Ampurdam was to order up to Gerona the Aragonese division of 4,000 men under the Marquis of Lazan, which was lying at Lerida. This force arrived too late for the skirmish on the Fluvia, and when it did appear was far too small to accomplish anything. Alvarez and Lazan united had only 8,000 bayonets, while St. Cyr’s whole army (as we have already seen) was 25,000 strong, and quite able to maintain the siege, and at the same time to provide a covering force against a relieving army so weak as that which now lay at Gerona.

[58] Compare the narrative of Lord Cochrane, i. 299-300, with those of Belmas, ii. 441, and St. Cyr. The latter is, of course, wrong in saying that the whole sortie was composed of British seamen and marines. It is curious that Cochrane states his own loss at more than the French claimed to have killed or taken.

The siege operations meanwhile were pushed on. Fresh batteries were established to sweep the harbour, and to render more difficult the communication of the citadel and the Trinity fort with the English ships. A new attack was started against the eastern front of the town, and measures were taken to concentrate a heavier fire on the dilapidated bastion of the citadel, which had been destroyed in the old siege of 1794 and never properly repaired. On the twenty-sixth an assault was directed by Pino’s division against the town front. This was defended by no more than a ditch and earthwork: the Italians carried it at the first rush, but found more difficulty in evicting the garrison from the ruined houses along the shore. Five hundred miqueletes, who were barricaded among them, made a very obstinate resistance, and were only driven out after sharp fighting. One hundred and sixty were taken prisoners, less than a hundred escaped into the citadel: the rest perished. The besiegers at once established a lodgement in the town, covering themselves with the masonry of the demolished houses. It was in vain that the Fame and Impérieuse ran close in shore and tried to batter the Italians out of the ruins. They inflicted considerable loss, but failed to prevent the enemy from finding shelter. Next night the lodgement in the town was connected with the rest of the siege works, and used as the base for an attack against a hitherto unmolested front of the citadel.

Just after the storming of the town, the garrison received the only succour which was sent to it during the whole siege; a weak battalion of regulars from the regiment of Borbon was put ashore near the citadel under cover of the darkness. It would have been more useful on the preceding day, for the defence of the outer works. After the arrival of this small succour the Governor, O’Daly, sent eighty men of the Irish regiment of Ultonia to reinforce Cochrane in the Trinity fort, withdrawing a similar number of miqueletes to the citadel.

The guns established by the besiegers in their new batteries among the ruins of the town made such good practice upon the front of the citadel that Reille thought it worth while on the twenty-eighth to summon the Governor to surrender. O’Daly made a becoming answer, to the effect that his defences were still intact and that he was prepared to continue his resistance. To cut him off from his communication with the sea, the only side from which he could expect help, Reille now began to build batteries along the water-front of the town, which commanded the landing-places below the citadel. The English ships proved unable to subdue these new guns, and their power to help O’Daly was seriously diminished. It was only under cover of the darkness that they could send boats to land men or stores for the citadel. On the thirtieth they tried to take off the sick and wounded, who were now growing very numerous in the place: but the shore-batteries having hit the headmost boat, the rest drew off and abandoned the attempt. The prospects of the garrison had grown most gloomy.

Meanwhile the Trinity fort had been perpetually battered for ten days, and the hole in the great frontal tower was growing larger. It can hardly be called a breach, as owing to the impossibility of searching the lower courses of the wall by the plunging fire from the Puig-Rom, the lowest edge of the gap was forty feet from the ground. The part of the tower which had been opened was the upper section of a lofty bomb-proof casemate, which composed its ground story. Lord Cochrane built up, with the débris that fell inwards, and with hammocks filled with earth and sand, new walls inside the bomb proof, cutting off the hole from the interior of the tower: thus enemies entering at the gap would find that they had only penetrated into the upper part of a sort of cellar. The ingenious captain also set a long slide or shoot of greased planks just under the lip of the hole, so that any one stepping in would be precipitated thirty feet into the bottom of the casemate. But the mere sight of this mantrap, as he called it, proved enough for the enemy, who never pushed the attack into it.

On November 30 Pino’s division assaulted the fort, the storming party being composed of six grenadier and voltigeur companies of the 1st and 6th Italian regiments. They came on with great courage, and planted their ladders below the great hole, amid a heavy fire of musketry from the garrison. The leaders succeeded in reaching the edge of the ‘breach,’ but finding the chasm and the ‘mantrap’ before them, would not enter. They were all shot down: grenades were dropped in profusion into the mass at the foot of the ladders, and after a time the stormers fled back under cover, leaving two officers and forty men behind them. They were rallied and brought up again to the foot of the breach, but recoiled after a second and less desperate attempt to enter. The garrison lost only three men killed and two wounded, of whom four were Spaniards. They captured two prisoners, men who had got so far forward that they dared not go back under the terrible fire which swept the foot of the tower. These unfortunates had to be taken into the fort by a rope, so inaccessible was the supposed breach. After this bloody repulse, the besiegers left Lord Cochrane alone, merely continuing to bombard his tower, and throwing up entrenchments on the beach, from which they kept up an incessant musketry fire on the difficult landing-place by which the fort communicated with the ships.

Their main attention was now turned to the citadel, where O’Daly’s position was growing hopeless. ‘Their practice,’ says Cochrane, ‘was beautiful. So accurately was their artillery conducted that every discharge “ruled a straight line” along the lower part of the walls. This being repeated till the upper portion was without support, as a matter of course the whole fell into the ditch, forming a breach of easy ascent. The whole proceedings were clearly visible from the Trinity[59].’ On December 3 the Governor played his last card: the worst of the damage was being done by the advanced batteries placed among the ruins of the town, and it was from this point that the impending assault would evidently be delivered. O’Daly therefore picked 500 of his best men, opened a postern gate, and launched them at night upon the besiegers’ works. The sortie was delivered with great dash and vigour: the trench guards were swept away, the breaching batteries were seized, and the Spaniards began to throw down the parapets, spike the guns, and set fire to the platforms and fascines. But heavy reserves came up from the French camp, and their attack could not be resisted. Before any very serious damage had been done, the besieged were driven out of the trenches by sheer force of numbers, and forced to retire to the citadel, leaving forty-five dead behind them. Reille acknowledged the loss of one officer and twelve men killed, and nineteen men wounded.

[59] Cochrane, Autobiography, i. 307.

On the fourth the siege works were pushed forward to within 200 yards of the walls of the citadel, and the breach already established in the dilapidated bastion was enlarged to a great breadth. After dark the French engineers got forward as far as the counterscarp, and reported that an assault was practicable, and could hardly fail. The same fact was perfectly evident to O’Daly, who sent out a parlementaire to ask for terms. He offered to surrender in return for leave to take his garrison off by sea. Reille naturally refused, as the Spaniards were at his mercy, and enforced an unconditional surrender.

The state of things being visible to Lord Cochrane on the next morning, he hastily evacuated the Trinity fort, which it was useless to hold after the citadel had fallen. His garrison, 100 Spaniards and eighty British sailors and marines, had to descend from the fort by rope ladders, as the enemy commanded the proper point of embarkation. They were taken off by the boats of the Fame and Impérieuse under a heavy musketry fire, but suffered no appreciable loss. The magazine was left with a slow match burning, and exploded, ruining the fort, before the garrison had got on board their ships.

St. Cyr, in his journal of the war in Catalonia, suggests that Bennett and Cochrane ought to have tried to take off the garrison of the citadel in the same fashion. But this was practically impossible: the communication between the citadel and the sea had been lost for some days, the French batteries along the beach rendering the approach of boats too dangerous to be attempted. If Captain Bennett had sent in the limited supply of boats that the Fame, the Impérieuse and the two smaller vessels[60] possessed they would probably have been destroyed. For they would have had to make many return journeys in order to remove 2,500 men, under the fire of heavy guns placed only 200 or 300 yards away from the landing-place. It was quite another thing to remove 180 men from the Trinity, where the enemy could bring practically nothing but musketry to bear, and where the whole of the garrison could be taken off at a single trip. Another futile charge made by the French against the British navy, is that the Fame shelled the beach near the citadel while the captive garrison was marching out, and killed several of the unfortunate Spaniards. If the incident happened at all (there is no mention of it in Lord Cochrane or in James) it must have been due to an attempt to damage the French trenches; Captain Bennett could not have known that the passing column consisted of Spaniards. To insinuate that the mistake was deliberate, as does Belmas, is simply malicious[61].

[60] These were the two bomb-vessels Meteor and Lucifer. The Magnificent 74 came up the same day, but after the evacuation of the Trinity.

[61] St. Cyr does not say so (p. 50), but only that the Spaniards imagined that it was done deliberately. Belmas (p. ii. 453) asks if it was not irritation on the part of the British. Arteche does not repulse the silly suggestion, as he reasonably might (iv. 270).

O’Daly went into captivity with 2,366 men, leaving about 400 more in hospital. The total of the troops who had taken part in the defence, including the reinforcements received by sea, had been about 3,500, so that about 700 must have perished in the siege. The French loss had been at least as great--Pino’s division alone lost thirty officers and 400 men killed and wounded[62], besides many sick. It is probable that the total diminution in the ranks of Reille’s two divisions was over 1,000, the bad weather having told very heavily on the ill-equipped troops.

[62] Belmas, ii. 454, and Vacani, ii. 315, agree in these figures.

So ended an honourable if not a very desperate defence. The place was doomed from the first, when once the torpid and purblind Vives had made up his mind to keep his whole force concentrated round Barcelona, and to send no more than the insignificant division of Alvarez and Lazan to the help of O’Daly. Considering the dilapidated condition of the citadel of Rosas, and the almost untenable state of the town section of the fortifications, the only wonder is that the French did not break in at an earlier date. The first approaches of Reille’s engineers were, according to Belmas, unskilfully conducted, and pushed too much into the marsh. When once they received a right direction, the result was inevitable. Even had the artillery failed to do its work Rosas must nevertheless have fallen within a few days, for it was insufficiently provisioned, and, as the communication with the sea had been cut off since November 30, must have yielded ere long to starvation. The French found an ample store of guns (fifty-eight pieces) and much ammunition in the place, but an utterly inadequate supply of food.

[N.B.--Belmas, St. Cyr, and Arteche have all numerous slips in their narration, from not having used the British authorities. Vacani’s account is, on the whole, the best on the French side. Much may be learnt from James’s Naval History, vol. v, but more from Lord Cochrane’s picturesque autobiography. From this, e.g., alone can it be ascertained that the column which attacked the Puig-Rom on November 23 was composed of miqueletes, not of British soldiers. Cochrane is represented by several writers as arriving on the twenty-fourth or even the twenty-sixth, while as a matter of fact he reached Rosas on the twenty-first. It may interest some to know that Captain Marryat, the novelist, served under Cochrane, and was mentioned in his dispatch. So the description of the siege of Rosas in Marryat’s Frank Mildmay, wherein his captain is so much glorified, is a genuine personal reminiscence, and not an invention of fiction.]

SECTION X: CHAPTER II

ST. CYR RELIEVES BARCELONA: BATTLES OF CARDADEU AND MOLINS DE REY

When Rosas had fallen St. Cyr was at last able to take in hand the main operation which had been entrusted to him by Napoleon--the relief of Barcelona. While the siege was still in progress he had received two letters bidding him hasten to the relief of Duhesme without delay[63], but he had taken upon himself the responsibility of writing back that he must clear his flank and rear before he dared move, and that he should proceed with the leaguer of Rosas, which could only last a few days longer, unless he received formal orders to abandon the undertaking. He ventured to point out that the moral and political effects of taking such a step would be deplorable[64]. Napoleon’s silence gave consent, and St. Cyr’s plea was justified by the fall of the place on December 5.

[63] Berthier to St. Cyr, Burgos, Nov. 13. ‘Si Roses tarde à être pris, il faut marcher sur Barcelone sans s’inquiéter de cette place, &c.,’ and much to same effect from Coubo, Nov. 16 [wrongly printed in St. Cyr, Nov. 10].

[64] St. Cyr to the Emperor, Nov. 17, from Figueras.

Rosas having been captured, the French general had now at his disposition all his four divisions, those of Souham, Pino, Reille, and Chabot, which even after deducting the casualties suffered in the siege, and the losses experienced by the covering troops from the bad weather, still amounted to 22,000 men. After counting up the very considerable forces which the Spaniards might place in his way, he resolved to take on with him for the relief of Barcelona the troops of Souham, Pino, and Chabot, and to leave behind only those of Reille. With about 5,000 or 5,500 soldiers of not very good quality that officer was to hold Figueras and Rosas, watch Gerona, and protect the high-road to Perpignan. St. Cyr himself with the twenty-six battalions and nine squadrons forming the other three divisions, a force of some 15,000 infantry and 1,500 horse, took his way to the south.

The first obstacle in his way was Gerona: but if he stopped to besiege and take it, it was clear that he would never reach Barcelona in time to save Duhesme from starvation: that general had reported that his food would only last till the end of December, and Gerona would certainly hold out more than three weeks. Indeed, as we shall see, when it was actually beleaguered in the next year, it made a desperate defence, lasting for nearly six months[65]. St. Cyr saw from the first that he must leave the fortress alone, and slip past it. As it commanded the high-road, this resolution forced him to abandon any intention of taking forward his artillery and his wheeled transport. They could not face the rugged by-paths on to which he would be compelled to throw himself, and he marched without a single gun, and with his food and provisions borne on pack-horses and mules, of which he had a very modest provision.

[65] May 30 to Dec. 10, 1809.

St. Cyr was quite well aware that if General Vives were to resign the blockade of Barcelona to his miqueletes and somatenes, and to come against him with his whole army, the task of relieving Duhesme would be dangerous if not impossible. There are but two roads from Gerona to Barcelona, and across each of them lie half a dozen positions which, if entrenched and held by superior numbers, he could not hope to force. These two routes are the coast-road by Mataro and Arens de Mar--which the French had used for their first march to Gerona in August--and the inland road up the valley of the Besos by Hostalrich and Granollers. But the former had been so conscientiously destroyed by Lord Cochrane and the local somatenes[66] that St. Cyr regarded it as impassable; there were places where it had been blasted away for lengths of a quarter or a half of a mile. Moreover, at many points the army would have to defile under the cliffs for long distances, and might be shelled by any British men-of-war that should happen to lie off the coast[67]. Accordingly the French general determined to try the inland road, though he would have to march round Gerona and the smaller fortress of Hostalrich, and though it was cut by several admirable positions, where the Catalans might offer battle with reasonable prospects of success. It was all-important that Vives should be left as long as possible in uncertainty as to his adversary’s next move, and that the Catalans should be dealt with in detail rather than in mass. St. Cyr resolved, therefore, to make a show of attacking Gerona, and to try whether he could not catch Lazan and Alvarez, and rout them, before the Captain-General should come up to their assistance.

[66] See vol. i. p. 331.

[67] St. Cyr, Journal de l’Armée de Catalogne, p. 58.

On December 9, therefore, St. Cyr had his whole corps, minus the division of Reille, concentrated on the left bank of the river Ter. On the next day he manœuvred as if about to envelop Gerona. He had hoped that this move would tempt Lazan and Alvarez to come out and meet him in the open. But fully conscious that their 8,000 men would be exposed to inevitable defeat, the two Spanish officers wisely kept quiet under the walls of their stronghold. Having worked round their flank, St. Cyr on the eleventh sent back the whole of his artillery and heavy baggage to Figueras, and plunged into the mountains; at La Bispal he distributed four days’ biscuit to his men, warning them that there would be no further issue of rations till they reached Barcelona. The light carts which had been dragged thus far with the food were burnt. As to munitions, each soldier had fifty cartridges in his pouch, and the pack-mules carried 150,000 more, a reserve of only ten rounds for each man[68]. The equipment of the army, in short, was such that if it failed to force its way to Barcelona within six days it must starve, while if it was forced to fight three or four heavy engagements it would be left helpless, without a cartridge for a final battle. The general, if not the men in the ranks, fully realized the peril of the situation.

[68] St. Cyr says that Napoleon falsified his report, when reprinting it in the Moniteur, and put 150 instead of 50 rounds per man, to disguise the risk that had been run (p. 58).

On the twelfth St. Cyr pushed along the mountains above Palamos and San Feliu, brushing away a body of miqueletes from the coast-land under Juan Claros, who tried to hold the defile. On the thirteenth the French reached Vidreras, where they were again on a decent road, that which goes from Gerona to Malgrat. They now perceived that they were being followed by Lazan and the garrison of Gerona, whose camp-fires were visible on the heights to the north, while troops, evidently detached from the blockade of Barcelona, were visible in front of them. It was clear that St. Cyr had at least succeeded in placing himself between the two main forces which the enemy could oppose to him, and might engage them separately. He might also count on the Spaniards looking for him on the Malgrat-Mataro road, on which he was now established, while it was his intention to abandon it, in order to plunge inland once more, and to fall into the main chaussée to Barcelona, south of Hostalrich. That a path existed, along which such a movement could be carried out, was only known to the general by the report of a Perpignan smuggler, who had once kept sheep among these hills. But when exploring parties tried to find it, they lost their way, and reported that no such route existed. If this was the fact, St. Cyr was ruined: but he refused to believe the officers who assured him that the smuggler had erred, and pushing among the rocks finally discovered it himself. During his exploration he was nearly cut off by a party of somatenes, and his escort had to fight hard in order to save him.

But the road was found, and on the fifteenth the army followed it, almost in single file, while the dragoons had to dismount and lead their horses. They saw the fortress of Hostalrich in the valley below them, and passed it in sight of the garrison. Some of the latter came out, and skirmished with the rearguard of St. Cyr’s long column, but they were too weak to do much harm, while Lazan, whose advent from the north would have caused more serious difficulties, had been completely eluded, and never came in sight.

In the afternoon the whole expeditionary force safely descended into the Barcelona chaussée near San Celoni, from which place they drove out four battalions of miqueletes, the first troops that the tardy Vives had detached from his main army. The men were much fatigued, and the somatenes were beginning to give trouble both in flank and rear, but St. Cyr insisted that they should not encamp by San Celoni, but push southward through the difficult defile of the Trentapassos, so that they might not find it held against them on the following morning. This was done, and the best of the many positions which the Spaniards might have held to oppose the march of the invaders was occupied without the least resistance. St. Cyr encamped at the southern end of the pass, and saw before him, when the night had fallen, a line of watch-fires far down the valley of the Besos which showed that the Spaniards from the leaguer of Barcelona had at last come out to oppose him.

The conduct of Vives during the last six days had been in perfect keeping with the rest of his slow and stupid guidance of the campaign. He had received in due course news of the fall of Rosas, and soon after the additional information that St. Cyr had crossed the Ter and was threatening Gerona. Opinion was divided in the camp of the Catalans as to whether the French were about to lay siege to that fortress, or to pass it by and make a dash for the relief of Duhesme. If they sat down before Gerona there was no need to hurry: if they should pass it by, it would be necessary to move at once, in order to occupy the defiles against them. The opinion of the more intelligent officers was that St. Cyr would be forced to march to aid Duhesme, whose want of provisions was well known by secret intelligence sent out from Barcelona. Unfortunately Vives inclined to the other side: he preferred to believe the alternative which did not impose on him the necessity for instant and decisive action. He did nothing, and pretended to be waiting for further news. It reached him on the night of December 11-12, in the form of a message from the Junta of Gerona, to the effect that the French had sent back their artillery and were plunging into the mountains in the direction of La Bispal, so that it was clear that they must be marching to relieve Duhesme. It might have been expected that the Captain-General would now at last break up from his lines, and hasten to throw himself across the path of the approaching enemy. But after holding a long and fruitless council of war he contented himself with sending out Reding, with that part of the newly-arrived Granadan division which had reached Catalonia. On the twelfth therefore the Swiss General started by the inland road with seven battalions of his own Andalusian levies and a regiment of cavalry. Next day he reached Granollers and halted there. At the same time Francisco Milans, with four tercios of miqueletes, was sent out to guard the coast-road, the other possible line of approach by which St. Cyr might arrive. Reding had 5,000 men, Milans 3,000: but Vives still lay before Barcelona with two-thirds of his army, at least 16,000 or 17,000 bayonets. It was in vain that Caldagues, the preserver of Gerona, implored him to leave no more than a screen of miqueletes in the lines, and to sally forth to fight with every regular soldier that he could muster. The Captain-General refused to listen, supporting his inactivity by pleading that the advice sent from Gerona did not speak of the enemy’s force as very large: the defiles, he urged, were so difficult that Reding and Milans, aided by Lazan, ought to be able to hold them against any small expeditionary force.

Thus St. Cyr was left to work out his daring plan without any serious opposition. The only force with which he came in contact was Milans’ brigade of miqueletes, who, finding the coast-road clear, had crossed the mountains and occupied San Celoni. These were the troops whom St. Cyr drove away on the afternoon of the fifteenth, before entering the defile of the Trentapassos.

On receiving news of this combat, which had taken place only twenty-one miles from his lines, Vives at last set out in person. But persisting in his idiotic notion of blocking Barcelona to the last moment, he left Caldagues before the place with 12,000 men, and marched with a single brigade of 4,000 bayonets to join Reding. Moving all through the night of the fifteenth-sixteenth he joined the Granadans at daybreak at Cardadeu on the high-road. Their united strength was only 9,000 men, of whom 600 were cavalry, and seven guns[69]. This was the whole force which fought St. Cyr, for Lazan, moving with culpable slowness, was still far north of San Celoni, when he should have been pressing on the rear of the French, while Milans with the miqueletes, who had been beaten on the previous day, was some miles away in the mountains on the right, and quite out of touch with his commander-in-chief. Nine thousand Spaniards, in short, were within ten miles of the field, yet took no part in the battle. St. Cyr in his central position kept them apart, and they failed to combine with Vives and his force at Cardadeu.

[69] Cf. Cabanes, with Arteche, iv. 276.

The valley of the Besos at this point has broadened out, and is no longer the narrow defile that is seen a few miles further to the north. But there is much broken ground on both sides of the high-road. A little way north of Cardadeu is a low hill covered with pines, lying to the right of the chaussée: at the foot of the hill is a ravine which the road has to cross at right angles, and which falls into the stream called the Riera de la Roca. The country-side was composed partly of cultivated ground, partly of thickets of pine and oak, which rendered it difficult for either side to get a general view of its adversaries’ movements.

Vives, who had only reached his fighting-ground at dawn, had no time to reconnoitre his position, or to make any elaborate scheme for getting the best use out of the terrain. He hastily drew up his army in two lines across the high-road: the front line was behind the ravine, the second higher up on the pine-clad hill. Reding’s troops held the right wing on the lowest ground, and extended as far as the river Mogent, a branch of the Besos. Vives’ own Catalan regiments formed the centre and left: they were mainly placed on the hill commanding the road, with three guns in front of their centre, and two further to the left on a point from which they could enfilade a turn of the chaussée. The miqueletes of Vich, on the extreme left, held a spur of the higher mountains which bound the valley of the Besos. The reserve drawn up on the high-road, behind the main position, consisted of two guns, two squadrons of horse (Husares Españoles, lately arrived from Majorca) and two battalions.

St. Cyr could make out very little of his adversaries’ force or position; the woods and hills masked the greater part of the Spanish line. But he knew that he must attack, and that promptly, for every hour that he delayed would give time for Lazan to come up in his rear, and Milans on his left flank. He left behind him at the southern outlet of the Trentapassos the three battalions of Chabot’s division, with orders to hold the defile at all costs against Lazan, whenever the latter should appear. With the other twenty-three battalions forming the divisions of Pino and Souham he marched down the high-road to deal with Vives. It was necessary to attack at once: ‘the biscuit distributed at La Bispal was just finished: the cartridges were running low, for many had been spent in the preceding skirmishes. There was, in fact, only ammunition for one hour of battle[70].’ St. Cyr saw that he must win by one short and swift stroke, or suffer a complete disaster. Accordingly, he had resolved to form his two strong divisions--more than 13,000 men--into one great column, which was to charge the Spanish centre and burst through by its own impetus and momentum. Pino’s thirteen Italian battalions formed the head of the mass: Souham’s ten French battalions its rear. The General’s plan is best expressed in his own words: his orders to Pino, who was to lead the attack, ran as follows:--

[70] St. Cyr, Journal de l’Armée de Catalogne, p. 64.

‘The corps must fight in the order in which I have arranged it this morning. There is neither time nor means to make dispositions to beat the Spaniards more or less thoroughly. The country-side is so broken and wooded that it would take three hours to reconnoitre their position, and in two hours Lazan may be on the spot attacking our rear. Not a minute can be lost: we must simply rush at and trample down[71] the corps in our front, whatever its strength may be. Our food is done, our ammunition almost exhausted. The enemy has artillery, which is a reason the more for haste: the quicker we attack, the less time will he have to shell us. There must be no attempt to feel his position; not one battalion must be deployed. Though his position is strong we must go straight at it in column, and burst through the centre by striking at that one point with our whole force. The enemy must be given no time to prepare his defence or bring up his reserves. You must not change the disposition in column in which we march, even in order to take great numbers of prisoners. Our sole end is to break through and to get as close as we can to Barcelona this evening. Our camp-fires must be visible to the garrison by night, to show that we are at hand to raise the siege.’

[71] ‘Il faut passer sur le ventre au corps de troupes en face, quel que soit son nombre.’ St. Cyr, p. 66.

This order of battle was most hazardous: if St. Cyr had found in front of him two steady English divisions instead of Reding’s raw Granadan levies and the gallant but untrained Catalan miqueletes, it is certain that affairs would have gone as at Busaco or Talavera. Dense columns attacking a fair position held by good troops in line are bound to suffer terrible losses, and ought never to succeed. But St. Cyr knew the enemies with whom he had to deal, and his method was well adapted to his end. If he ran some risk of failing at the commencement of the action, it was simply because his subordinates did not follow out his directions.

General Pino, on whom the responsibility of opening the attack devolved, started with every intention of obedience. But when he arrived at the foot of the Spanish position, and the balls began to fall thickly among his leading battalions, he lost his head. His column only faced the Spanish right centre, and the heavy flanking fire from the hostile wings daunted him. Instead of pushing straight before him with his whole force, as St. Cyr had ordered, he threw out five battalions of Mazzuchelli’s brigade to his left[72], and two battalions under General Fontane to his extreme right[73]; the six battalions of his rear brigade were not yet up to the front, and took no part in the first assault. Thus he attacked on a front of three-quarters of a mile, instead of at one single point. His columns, after driving in the Spanish front line, came to a stand half-way up the hill, in a very irregular array, the flanks thrown forward, the centre hanging somewhat back. Reding, against whom the main attack of Mazzuchelli’s brigade had been directed, brought up his second line, and when the Italians were slackening in their advance hurled at them two squadrons of hussars, and led forward his whole division. The assailants broke, and fell back with loss.

[72] Three battalions of the 4th of the line, and two of the 2nd Light Infantry.

[73] One battalion of the 2nd Light Infantry and one of the 7th of the line.

St. Cyr, coming up to the front at this moment, was horrified to mark the results of Pino’s disobedience of his orders. But he had still Souham’s division in hand, and flung it, in one solid mass of ten battalions, upon Reding’s right; at the same time he commanded Pino to throw the two regiments of his intact rear brigade upon the Spanish centre[74], while Fontane’s two battalions continued to demonstrate against the enemy’s left. The result was what might have been expected: the column of Souham burst through the Granadan division, and completely routed the right wing of the Spanish army: at the same moment Pino’s main column forced back Vives and the Catalans along the line of the high-road. All at once fell into confusion, and, when St. Cyr bade his two Italian cavalry regiments charge up the chaussée, the enemy broke his ranks and fled to the hills. Five of the seven Spanish guns were captured, with two standards and some 1,500 unwounded prisoners. Reding, who stayed behind to the last, trying to rally a rearguard for the protection of the routed host, was nearly taken prisoner, and had to draw his sword and cut his way out. Vives, whose conduct on this day was anything but creditable, scrambled up a cliff after turning his horse loose, and came almost alone to the sea-shore near Mongat, where he was picked up by the boats of the Cambrian frigate, and forwarded to Tarragona. Besides the prisoners the Spaniards lost at least a thousand men, and many of the miqueletes dispersed to their homes. St. Cyr acknowledged 600 casualties, nearly all of them, as might have been expected, in Pino’s division.

[74] Three battalions each of the 1st and 6th of the line.

Reding at last succeeded in rallying some troops at Monmalo near San Culgat, and covered the retreat of the main mass of the fugitives to join the troops who had been left in the lines before Barcelona. As to the detached Spanish corps under Milans and the Marquis of Lazan, the former never came down from the hills till the fighting was over, though it was only four or five miles from the scene of action[75]. The latter, which was following in St. Cyr’s rear, moved with such extreme slowness that it had not yet reached San Celoni when the battle was fought, and did not even get into contact with Chabot’s division, which had been left behind to guard against its approach[76]. On learning of the defeat the Marquis marched back to Gerona, and rejoined Alvarez. Thus Vives got no assistance whatever from his outlying corps: if Lazan is to be trusted, this was largely the fault of the Commander-in-chief himself, for no dispatch from him reached his subordinates after December 14, and they had no knowledge of his movements or designs.

[75] See the account of Cabanes, who was with Milans this day, in his History of the War in Catalonia.

[76] See the narrative of an officer in the division of Lazan, printed by Cabanes as an appendix.

Meanwhile Caldagues, who had been left in charge of the blockade, had maintained his post, and repulsed a heavy sortie which Duhesme and the garrison had directed against his posts on the sixteenth. But when the news of the battle of Cardadeu reached him in the evening, he evacuated all the parts of his line which lay to the east of the Llobregat, and concentrated his 12,000 men at Molins de Rey and San Boy, on the further bank of that river. He was forced to abandon at Sarria the large dépôt of provisions from which the left wing of the investing force had been fed.

The road from Cardadeu and San Culgat to Barcelona being thus left open, St. Cyr marched in triumph into Barcelona on the morning of the seventeenth. He complains in his memoirs that he did not discover one single vedette from the garrison pushed out to meet him, and that Duhesme did not come forth to receive him, or give him a single word of thanks. Indeed, when the Governor at last presented himself to meet the commander of the Seventh Corps, he spent his first words not in expressing his appreciation for the service which had been rendered him, but in demonstrating that he had never been in danger, and could have held out for six weeks more. He was somewhat abashed when St. Cyr replied by presenting him with a copy of one of his own former dispatches to Berthier, which painted the condition of the garrison in the blackest colours, and asked for instant succours lest the worst might happen[77].

[77] St. Cyr, as any reader of his Mémoires can see, was malicious and sarcastic. But Duhesme has a bad reputation for carelessness and selfishness, and his writings make an even worse impression than those of St. Cyr. Probably the latter’s narrative is fairly correct.

It was clear that the two generals would not work well together, but as St. Cyr held the supreme command, and was determined to assert himself, Duhesme could do no more than sulk in silence. The conduct of the operations against the Catalans had been taken completely out of his hands.

St. Cyr’s daring march to Barcelona had been crowned with complete success. It was by far the most brilliant operation on the French side during the first year of the war. That it was perilous cannot be denied: if the commander of the Seventh Corps had found the whole army of Vives entrenched at the passage of the Tordera, or across the defile of the Trentapassos, it seems impossible that he could have got forward to Barcelona. Thirty thousand men, of whom half were regular troops, might have been opposed to him, and they could have brought artillery against him, while he had not a single piece. If once checked he must have retreated in haste, for he had only ammunition for a single battle. But the rapid and unexpected character of his movements entirely puzzled the enemy, and he was fortunate in having a Vives to contend against. ‘When the enemy has no general,’ as Schepeler remarks while commenting on this campaign, ‘any stroke of luck is possible.’ Against a capable officer St. Cyr would probably have failed, but he had a shrewd suspicion of the character of his opponent from what had happened during the siege of Rosas: he dared much, and his daring was rewarded by a splendid victory.

The campaign, however, was not yet completed. Barcelona had been relieved, but only a fraction of the Spanish army had been met and beaten. Caldagues lay behind the Llobregat with 11,000[78] men who had not yet been engaged. Reding had joined him with the wrecks of the troops which had fought at Cardadeu, some 3,000 or 4,000 men. They lined the eastern bank of the river, only six or seven miles from the suburbs of Barcelona, occupying the entrenchments which had been constructed to shut in Duhesme during the blockade. These were strengthened with several redoubts, some of them armed with heavy artillery, and the positions were good, but too extensive for a force of 14,000 or 15,000 men. Their weak point was that the Llobregat even in December is fordable in many places, and that if the French attacked in mass at one point they were almost certain of being able to force their way through the line. Reding, and his second-in-command Caldagues, were both of opinion that it would be wise to evacuate the lines, if St. Cyr should come out in force against them, and to fall back on the mountains in their rear, which separate the valley of the Llobregat from the coast-plain of Tarragona. Here there was a strong position at the defile of Ordal, where it was intended to construct an entrenched camp. But there was a strong temptation to hold on in the old lines for as long a time as possible, for by retiring to Ordal the army would leave open the high-road to Lerida and Saragossa, and give up much of the plain to the incursions of the French foragers. Reding sent back to Vives, who had now landed in his rear and placed himself at Villanueva de Sitjas, to ask whether he was to retreat at once, or to hold his ground. The Captain-General sent back the inconclusive reply that ‘he might fall back on Ordal if he could not defend the line of the Llobregat.’ Thus he threw back the responsibility on his subordinate, and Reding, anxious to vindicate his courage before the eyes of the Catalans, resolved after some hesitation to retain his positions, though he had grave doubts of the possibility of resistance.

[78] Some of his miqueletes had absconded during the withdrawal from the eastern half of the river.

He was not allowed much time to ponder over the situation. The reply of Vives only reached him on the night of December 20-21. On the next morning St. Cyr came out of Barcelona and attacked the lines. He had brought with him every available man: Duhesme had been left to hold the city with Lecchi’s Italians alone: his other division (that of Chabran), together with the three which had formed the army of succour--those of Souham, Pino, and Chabot--were all directed against the lines. The plan of St. Cyr was to demonstrate against the bridge of Molins de Rey, the strongest part of the Spanish position, with Chabran’s 4,000 men, while he himself crossed the fords lower down the Llobregat with the 14,000 bayonets of the other three divisions, and turned the right flank of the enemy.

At five o’clock on a miserable gusty December morning the French came down towards the river: Chabran led off by making a noisy demonstration opposite the redoubts at the bridge, on the northern flank of the position. This, as St. Cyr had intended, drew Reding’s attention to that flank: he reinforced his left with troops drawn from his right wing on the lower and easier ground down stream. An hour later the other attacking columns advanced, that of Souham crossing the ford of San Juan Despi, while Pino and Chabot passed by that of San Feliu. No proper attempt was made to dispute their advance. Outnumbered, and strung out along a very extensive position, the Catalans soon saw their line broken in several places. The only serious opposition made was by the centre, which advanced down hill against Souham and tried to charge him, but gave back long before bayonets had been crossed.

The most fatal part of Reding’s position was that on his extreme right Chabot’s three battalions had got completely round his flank, and kept edging in on the rear of his southern wing, which abandoned hill after hill as it saw its retreat threatened. Pino and Souham had only to press on, and each regiment in their front gave way in turn when it saw its exposed flank in danger. At last the whole of the Spanish right and centre was pushed back in disorder on to the still intact left behind the bridge of Molins de Rey. Now was the time for Chabran to turn his demonstration into a real attack: if he had crossed the river and advanced rapidly, he would have caught the shaken masses in front, while the rest of the army chased them forward into his arms. But being timid or unenterprising, he let the flying enemy pass across his front unmolested, and only forded the river when they had gone too far to be caught. The unhappy Vives came up at this moment, just in time to see his whole army on the run, and headed their flight to the hills.

Thus the Spaniards got away without any very crushing losses, though their historian Cabanes confesses that if Chabran had moved a quarter of an hour earlier he would have captured half the army of Catalonia. As it was, St. Cyr took about 1,200 prisoners only, though his dragoons pursued the routed enemy for many miles. It was a great misfortune for the Catalans that among these captives was the Conde de Caldagues, the one first-rate officer in their ranks. He was taken by the pursuers at Vendrell, many miles from the field, when his exhausted horse fell under him. St. Cyr captured the whole artillery of the Spaniards, twenty-five cannon[79], of which several were pieces of heavy calibre, mounted in redoubts. The field-pieces were more useful to him, as he was very short of artillery; he had brought none with him, while Duhesme had been obliged to destroy the greater part of his during the retreat from Gerona in August. He also made prize of a magazine of 3,000,000 cartridges and of many thousands of muskets, which the routed enemy cast away in their haste to escape over the hills. Some of the fugitives fled south, and did not stop till they reached Tortosa and the Ebro: others dispersed in the direction of Igualada and Lerida, but the main body rallied at Tarragona.

[79] St. Cyr says twenty-five in his report to Napoleon, but increases the number to fifty in his Mémoires, p. 87.

The victorious French divisions were pushed far out from the battle-field so as to occupy not only the whole plain of the Llobregat, but also the defiles over the hills leading to Tarragona. Chabran was placed at Martorell, Chabot at San Sadurni, Souham at Vendrell, and Pino at Villanueva de Sitjas and Villafranca. Thus the pass of Ordal was in the victor’s hands, and he had it in his power to march against Tarragona without having any further positions to force. But the siege of that place did not form, at present, any part of St. Cyr’s designs. His aim was first to collect such magazines at Barcelona as would feed his whole army of 25,000 men till the harvest was ripe, and secondly to reopen his communication with France. The sea route was rendered dangerous by the English ships, which were continually hovering off the coast. The land route was blocked by the fortresses of Hostalrich and Gerona. St. Cyr imagined that it was more important to make an end of these places, and open his route to Perpignan, than to attack Tarragona. The latter place was strong, and the greater part of the Catalan army had taken refuge in it. The siege would need, as he supposed, many months, and could not be properly conducted till a battering-train and a large store of ammunition had been brought down from France.

It is possible that the French general might have come to another conclusion if he had been aware of the state of panic and disorganization among the Catalans at this moment. The miqueletes had mostly dispersed to their homes, the regular troops were mutinous, and the populace was crying treason and looking for scape-goats. The incapable Vives was frightened into resignation, and finally replaced by Reding, whose courage at least was beyond suspicion, if his abilities were not those of a great general. The smaller towns were full of tumults and assassination: at Lerida a certain Gomez declared himself dictator and began to seize and execute all suspected persons. He did not stop till he was caught and beheaded by a battalion which Reding sent out against him. In short, anarchy reigned in Catalonia for ten days, and it is possible that if St. Cyr had marched straight to Tarragona he might have taken the place, though its inhabitants were working hard at their fortifications, and vowing to emulate Saragossa. Many historians of the war have blamed the French general for not making the attempt: but there was much to urge in his defence. It is perfectly possible that the Tarragonese might have made a gallant stand, in spite of all their troubles, for the garrison was large if disorderly. If they held out, St. Cyr had neither a siege equipage nor sufficient magazines to feed his army when concentrated in a single spot. The French troops were exhausted, and suffering dreadfully from the inclement winter weather. Lazan and Alvarez were in full force in the Ampurdam, and were giving Reille’s weak division much trouble.

Probably therefore St. Cyr was justified in halting for a month, which he employed in clearing the whole country-side for thirty miles round Barcelona, and in collecting the stores of food which his army required before it could make another move. The halt allowed time for the Catalans to rally, and for Reding to reorganize his army: by February he was ready once more to try his fortune in the field. Indeed, he was ere long more formidable than St. Cyr had expected, for he was joined by the second brigade of his own Granadan division, which came up from Valencia not long after the battle of Molins de Rey, and the last reserves from Majorca had also sailed to aid him, after giving over the fortifications of the Balearic Isles to the marines of the fleet, and the urban guards of Palma and Port Mahon. The miqueletes, too, returned to their standards when the first panic was over, and in a month Catalonia could once more show an army of 30,000 men. The first incident which occurred to encourage the insurgents was that on January 1. Lazan fell upon and very severely handled a detached battalion of Reille’s division at Castellon in the Ampurdam[80], and when Reille came up against him in person with 2,500 men, inflicted on him a sharp check at the fords of the Muga. Not long after, however, the Marquis withdrew from this region, and marched back toward Aragon, taking with him his own division and leaving only the weak corps of Alvarez to deal with Reille. His retreat was caused by the news of his brother’s desperate position in Saragossa. Hoping to make a diversion in favour of Palafox, Lazan marched to Lerida, where he began to gather in all the men that he could collect before moving back to his native province. Thus the pressure on Reille was much reduced.

[80] This was the 4th battalion of the 2nd of the line, which had joined Reille in the late autumn, and did not form part of his original division as detailed in the Appendix to vol. i. St. Cyr says that it only lost sixty prisoners besides some casualties. Lazan wrote that he took ninety prisoners, and killed or wounded over 200 more Frenchmen.

St. Cyr’s men, meanwhile, made many expeditions into the valleys above Barcelona. They cleared the defile of Bruch leading into the upper valley of the Llobregat, which the somatenes had held so gallantly against Schwartz and Chabran in June. They took, but did not hold, the almost inaccessible peak of Montserrat, and on the coast-road dominated the country as far as Mataro. But they could not reopen the communications with France: their general did not dare to set about the siege of Gerona while Reding had still the makings of an army in the direction of Tarragona. It was not till that brave but unfortunate officer had received his third defeat in February that St. Cyr was able to turn his attention to the north, and the road to Perpignan. For the present, the French general found himself mainly occupied by the imperious necessity for scraping together food not only for his own army, but for the great city of Barcelona, where both the garrison and the people were living from hand to mouth. For the resources of the neighbouring plain were nearly exhausted, and the only external supply came from occasional merchantmen from Cette or Marseilles, whose captains were tempted to run the British blockade by the enormous price which they could secure for their corn if it could be brought safely through. It was only somewhat later that the Emperor directed the naval authorities in Provence to dispatch regular convoys to Barcelona under a strong escort, whenever the British cruisers were reported to have been blown out to sea. Meanwhile the problem of food supplies remained almost as urgent a question for St. Cyr as the movements of his adversaries in the field.

SECTION X: CHAPTER III

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[81]. Accordingly he drew them closer together, in order to shorten the dangerously extended line of communication with Barcelona.

[81] St. Cyr, Campagne de Catalogne, p. 98.

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[82] and the Balearic Isles[83]; 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.

[82] Regiments of Santa Fé, and 1st of Antequera, three battalions with 3,600 men in November, and probably 3,000 in February.

[83] Swiss Regiment of Beschard, about 2,000 strong, and Majorca Militia [sometimes called ‘Palma’], 600 strong.

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[84], 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.

[84] Troops from Barcelona under Lecchi came out to replace Pino at Villafranca.

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[85] into the arms of Pino, who came on the scene later in the day [Feb. 17]. 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 [Feb. 18]. 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[86].

[85] Chabot lost a Neapolitan colonel (Carascosa) and many other prisoners.

[86] St. Cyr says nothing of his own danger, but the incident is given at length by Vacani, iii. 93, who mentions that one of Pino’s aides-de-camp was wounded.

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[87]. 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.

[87] ‘Si nous ne fîmes pas dans cette affaire le nombre de prisonniers que nous eussions dû y faire,’ says St. Cyr, ‘c’est que dans cette journée l’ennemi fit plus usage de ses jambes que de ses armes. Quelques centaines seulement, la plupart blessés, tombèrent entre nos mains’ [Campagne de Catalogne, p. 107].

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[88]. 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 Villarodoña, half-way up the course of Gaya, unless he should have been already attacked by Reding and forced to take some other line.

[88] The details of this cross-march in a badly-surveyed country, where the maps are very deficient, are more easily to be made out from Vacani’s narrative (pp. 95-8) than from St. Cyr’s own account.

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[89], 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 Villarodoña, in the central valley of the Gaya[90] [February 21].

[89] St. Cyr (p. 109) has a curious story to the effect that he had failed entirely to find the road, but ultimately discovered it by giving leave to a wounded Spanish officer to return to Tarragona. He was followed at a discreet distance by scouts, who noted the way that he took, and he thus served as a guide of Pino’s division as far as the convent of Santas Cruces.

[90] Souham had anticipated St. Cyr’s orders, and started to advance from Vendrell before his chief’s dispatch from Igualada came to hand.

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[91]. 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 [February 21]. 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[92] 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[93]. 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. [February 24.] 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[94].

[91] Two battalions of miqueletes (Lerida and 1st of Tarragona), 300 cavalry, a field-battery, and a battalion of Reding’s own regiment of Swiss, about 2,100 men in all.

[92] Col. Doyle was present at this council: his account of it is in the Record Office. He declares that he himself was all for fighting, that Reding wavered, and the majority refused to take risks.

[93] There is a detailed estimate of Reding’s army given by St. Cyr in his Appendix no. 11. He says that the figures were given him by ‘a Spanish general taken prisoner at Valls,’ which must mean the Marquis of Casteldosrius, the only officer of that rank captured. The names of nearly all the battalions cited in this list are to be verified, either in Reding’s dispatch or in the narrative of Cabanes--all indeed except the regiment of Baza, and the three Miquelet Tercios, 1st and 2nd of Tarragona and Lerida. But it is probable that Casteldosrius gave St. Cyr a morning state of the whole army collected at Santa Coloma on the twenty-fourth, and that these corps (with a total force of 3,000 men) formed part of the force left with Wimpffen at Santa Coloma. I am driven to this conclusion by the statement of Doyle in his letter written from Santa Coloma, on the day before the battle, that Reding was marching “with 500 horse and a little over 10,000 foot,” for Tarragona. Doyle is arguing in favour of fighting, and has no object in understating the numbers. His figures are borne out by all the Spanish narratives. The force must have stood as follows:--

INFANTRY.

Granadan Division:

Reding’s Swiss (one batt.) 500 Iliberia (or 1st of Granada) 1,860 Santa Fé (two batts.) 2,300 1st of Antequera 1,100 ------ 5,760

From the Old Catalan Army:

Guards [150 Spanish, 280 Walloons] 430 Soria 1,000 2nd of Savoia 800 Provincial Grenadiers of Old and New Castile 1,300 Wimpffen’s Swiss (two batts.) 1,140 Palma Militia 350 ------ 5,020

CAVALRY.

Husares of Granada 450 Husares Españoles 250 ---- 700 ARTILLERY.

2 batteries, 8 guns 200

SAPPERS.

1 Company 100 ------ Total 11,800

[Erratum from p. xii: I have found from a Madrid document that part, though not the whole, of the Regiment of Baza was present at Valls. One battalion was left behind with Wimpffen: one marched with Reding: about 800 men therefore must be added to my estimate of the Spanish infantry.]

[94] These details are from Doyle’s letter of Feb. 24, in the Record Office.

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[95].

[95] The French forces engaged at Valls were:--

Souham’s Division: 1st Léger (three batts.). 42nd of the Line (three batts.).

Provisional regiment: [One batt. each of 3rd Léger and 67th Line, two batts. 7th Line.]

10 battalions, about 5,500 men. 24th Dragoons, about 500 men, two batteries.

Pino’s Division: 1st Italian Light Regiment (three batts.). 2nd Italian Light Regiment (three batts.). 4th Line (three batts.). 6th ” ” ” 7th ” (one batt.).

13 battalions, about 6,500 men. 7th Italian Dragoons (‘Dragoons of Napoleon’) and Italian Royal Chasseurs, together about 800 men.

Total about 13,800 men, a force somewhat superior to that of the Spaniards, if the latter had only the corps given in the last table.

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[96], 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.

[96] Vacani, iii. 105-6. This fact is mentioned by no other author.

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[97].

[97] Arteche, v. 207-9, makes Reding deliver a second attack on Souham in the early afternoon. This is, I think, an error, caused by a misreading of Cabanes’ somewhat confused account of the fight, from which it might be possible (if no other sources existed) to deduce a second Spanish advance. But Cabanes is really dealing with the later phases of the first combat only. It is conclusive that neither Reding himself, in his official dispatch, St. Cyr, Doyle, nor Vacani mention any engagement in the early afternoon.

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[98], 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.

[98] St. Cyr in his Memoirs (p. 123) makes the curious statement that he silenced his artillery after it had fired only three rounds, lest he should frighten off the Spaniards before he could reach them with his infantry, and so prevent the latter from closing and winning as decisive a victory as possible. One is almost prone to doubt the story, and to suppose that the cessation of fire was due to the fear of killing his own men when they were getting close to the Spanish line. Arteche puts this incident too early in the fight, during Reding’s supposed second attack.

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[99] and taken, and he himself only cut his way out after receiving three sabre wounds on his head and shoulders, which ultimately proved fatal.

[99] Among them was an English officer named Reid.

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[100]. 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.

[100] Including Colonels Dumont and Antunez commanding respectively the Walloon and Spanish guards, the Marquis of Casteldosrius commanding the cavalry brigade, three of Reding’s aides-de-camp, and eighty other officers. Two colonels were killed, a brigadier-general (Saint Ellier) and many other superior officers wounded.

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[101]. 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.

[101] ‘Votre Altesse me dit qu’il n’y a rien autour de nous qui puisse résister à 6,000 hommes. Je lui demande pardon. La division Souham a été quelque temps seule le 25, et nous avons vu qu’il était temps que l’autre division arrivât.... On ne peut nier que les troupes espagnoles gagnent tous les jours, et nous sommes forcés de leur rendre justice; à la bataille de Valls elles se sont très-bien battues.’ St. Cyr to Berthier, Valls, March 6, 1809.

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.

SECTION XI

THE SECOND SIEGE OF SARAGOSSA

(DECEMBER 1808-FEBRUARY 1809)

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