THE SALAMANCA CAMPAIGN. MAY-AUGUST 1812
I. King Joseph as Commander-in-Chief 297
II. The Bridge of Almaraz. May 19, 1812 315
III. Wellington’s Advance into Leon. June 13-19, 1812 335
IV. The Salamanca Forts. Ten Days of Manœuvres, June 20-30,
1812 359
V. Marmont takes the Offensive. July 1812 383
VI. The Battle of Salamanca, July 22, 1812. The Early Stages 418
VII. The Battle of Salamanca: the Main Engagement 446
VIII. The Consequences of Salamanca. Garcia Hernandez 475
IX. The Pursuit of King Joseph. Majalahonda. Wellington
at Madrid 504
X. Affairs in the South. June-August 1812. Soult, Hill,
and Ballasteros 519
XI. The Two Diversions: (1) Operations in the North: Sir
Home Popham and Caffarelli. (2) Operations in
the East: Suchet, Joseph O’Donnell, and Maitland.
June-August 1812 548
XII. Wellington Returns to the Douro. August 31, 1812.
Finis 576
APPENDICES
I. Suchet’s Army in Valencia. Morning-state of Oct. 1,
1811 583
II. Strength of Blake’s Army at the Battle of Saguntum,
Oct. 25, 1811 584
III. Suchet’s Army at the Siege of Valencia. Morning-state
of Dec. 31, 1811 585
IV. Surrender-Roll of Blake’s Army at Valencia, Jan. 9,
1812 586
V. French and Anglo-Spanish Troops employed at the Siege
of Tarifa, Dec. 1811-Jan. 1812 586
VI. Siege of Ciudad Rodrigo: (1) Strength of the Garrison;
(2) British Losses during the Siege 587
VII. Note on some Points of Controversy regarding the
Storm of Ciudad Rodrigo 589
VIII. The French ‘Army of the South.’ Return of March 1,
1812 590
IX. Siege of Badajoz: (1) Strength of the Garrison; (2)
British Losses at the Storm 593
X. Wellington’s Army at Salamanca. Strength and Losses 595
XI. Marmont’s Army at Salamanca. Strength and Losses 600
XII. British Losses at the Combats of Castrejon and Castrillo,
July 18, 1812 607
XIII. Spanish Troops on the East Coast of Spain in the Spring of
1812: (1) Morning-state of March 1; (2) Joseph
O’Donnell’s Strength and Losses at Castalla 608
XIV. British Forces on the East Coast of Spain in 1812. A note
by Mr. C. T. Atkinson 609
XV. The Scovell Ciphers 611
XVI. The British Artillery in the Peninsula, 1812. By Major
John Leslie, R.A. 619
INDEX 623
MAPS AND PLANS
I. GENERAL THEATER OF SUCHET’S OPERATIONS IN EASTERN
SPAIN _To face_ 8
II. PLAN OF THE BATTLE OF SAGUNTUM ” 42
III. PLAN OF SUCHET’S INVESTMENT OF VALENCIA ” 64
IV. GENERAL MAP OF CATALONIA ” 96
V. PLAN OF TARIFA ” 128
VI. PLAN OF THE SIEGE OPERATIONS AT CIUDAD RODRIGO ” 176
VII. PLAN OF THE SIEGE OPERATIONS AT BADAJOZ ” 256
VIII. MAP OF THE DISTRICT ROUND ALMARAZ ” 328
IX. GENERAL MAP OF CENTRAL SPAIN, TO ILLUSTRATE
THE SALAMANCA CAMPAIGN ” 352
X. PLAN OF THE SALAMANCA FORTS ” 376
XI. MAP OF THE COUNTRY BETWEEN SALAMANCA
AND TORDESILLAS ” 400
XII. GENERAL PLAN OF THE BATTLE OF SALAMANCA ” 448
XIII. (1) THE LAST EPISODE AT SALAMANCA; (2) GARCIA
HERNANDEZ ” 480
XIV. GENERAL MAP OF ESTREMADURA TO ILLUSTRATE HILL’S
CAMPAIGNS IN MARCH-APRIL AND JUNE-AUGUST 1812 ” 528
ILLUSTRATIONS
PORTRAIT OF MARSHAL SOULT _Frontispiece_
PORTRAIT OF MARSHAL SUCHET _To face_ 80
VIEW OF CIUDAD RODRIGO, ON THE MORNING AFTER THE STORM ” 186
PORTRAIT OF MARSHAL MARMONT ” 208
(1) VIEW OF THE FRENCH ARAPILE, AND (2) VIEW OF THE
GENERAL LIE OF THE GROUND AT SALAMANCA ” 422
SECTION XXX
SUCHET’S CONQUEST OF VALENCIA. SEPTEMBER 1811-JANUARY 1812
CHAPTER I
THE INVASION OF VALENCIA. SIEGE OF SAGUNTUM. SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1811
In the last volume of this work the chronicle of all the campaigns of
1811 was completed, save in one corner of Spain, where, on the eastern
coast, the fortunes of the French armies have only been pursued down
to the recall of Marshal Macdonald to Paris on October 28th. Already,
before the Duke of Tarentum had been added to the list of the generals
who had been withdrawn and superseded for failure in Catalonia, another
series of operations had been begun in the East, which was destined
to lead directly to one more Spanish disaster, but indirectly to the
ruin of the French cause in Spain. For, as has already been pointed out
in the last pages of the last volume[1], it was to be the diversion
by Napoleon’s orders of French divisions eastward, from the borders
of Portugal to those of Valencia, that was to give Wellington his
long-desired opportunity of opening a successful offensive campaign
against his immediate opponents in the West. The fall of Valencia was
to lead to the fall of Ciudad Rodrigo in January 1812.
[1] vol. iv. pp. 587-91.
It will be remembered that the Emperor’s ambitious schemes for the
conquest of the kingdom of Valencia, the last district of eastern
Spain where he had as yet secured no solid foothold, had been deferred
perforce till Figueras fell, on August 19, 1811. As long as that great
fortress, which lies only a few miles from the French frontier, and
blocks the main road from Perpignan to Barcelona, had been maintained
against Macdonald by the resolute Martinez, it was impossible to
take up a new offensive campaign: all the disposable French troops in
Catalonia were immobilized around the stubborn garrison. At length the
remnant of the starving miqueletes had laid down their arms, and the
troops which had been for so long blockading them became disposable for
the assistance of Suchet, whose ‘Army of Aragon’ was to deliver the
main blow against Valencia.
Six days after the surrender of Figueras the news that the obstacle
to advance had been at last removed reached Paris, on August 25, and
on the same evening Berthier wrote, by his master’s orders, to bid
Suchet move forward: ‘Everything leads us to believe that Valencia is
in a state of panic, and that, when Murviedro has been taken and a
battle in the open field has been won, that city will surrender. If
you judge otherwise, and think that you must wait to bring up your
siege artillery for the attack on the place, or that you must wait
for a better season [i. e. early autumn] to commence the operation, I
must inform you that, in every case, it is the imperative order of the
Emperor that your head-quarters are to be on Valencian territory on or
about September 15th, and as far forward towards the city as possible.’
The orders were feasible, and (as we shall see) were duly executed:
but Napoleon had committed his usual mistake of undervaluing the
tenacity of the Spanish enemy, whom he so deeply despised. Suchet set
his troops in motion on September 15th; he took Murviedro--but only
after a desperate siege of two months--he beat the army of Valencia in
a very decisive pitched battle, but the city by no means fulfilled the
Emperor’s prophecy by a prompt surrender. Fighting round its walls went
on for five weeks after Murviedro fell: and it was not till troops had
been brought to aid Suchet from very remote provinces, that he at last
compelled the capitulation of Valencia after the New Year of 1812 had
passed. Before the city yielded Wellington was on the move, far away
on the Portuguese frontier, and it was not many days after Suchet’s
aide-de-camp brought the glorious news of the capitulation of Valencia,
that Marmont’s aide-de-camp followed, with the wholly unexpected and
unwelcome tidings that the British had stormed Ciudad Rodrigo, and
that the hold of the French army on Leon and Castile had been shaken.
The one piece of information was the complement and consequence of the
other.
Suchet’s invasion of Valencia, in short, was a much harder and more
venturesome enterprise than his master had calculated. It was true that
the Spanish forces in front of him seemed in September wholly incapable
of holding him back. The Army of Catalonia had been reduced by a series
of disasters, culminating in the falls of Tarragona and Figueras, to a
mere remnant of 8,000 men, lurking in the high hills of the interior.
The Army of Valencia had made a miserable exhibition of itself during
the last year: it had brought no effective help to the Catalans, and
whenever any of its detachments came into contact with the French, they
had invariably suffered discreditable defeats, even when their numbers
were far greater than those of the invaders. Of all the armies of Spain
this was undoubtedly the one with the worst fighting reputation. It
was to small profit that the Captain-General was raising yet newer
and rawer battalions than those which already existed, to swell the
numbers, but not the efficiency, of his command. In July the nominal
total of the Valencian army, including the irregulars of the ‘flying
column’ of the Empecinado, had been just 30,000 men. By October there
were 36,000 under arms, including the new ‘Reserve Division[2],’ whose
six battalions of recruits had only 135 officers to 6,000 men--an
allowance of one officer to 45 men, not much more than half of the
proportion that is necessary even among good veteran troops. But in
truth the only valuable fighting force that was present in the kingdom
in September was the infantry of the two weak divisions of the old
Albuera army, under Zayas and Lardizabal, whom Blake had brought round
from Cadiz with him, when he assumed command of the Eastern provinces.
They did not between them muster more than 6,000 bayonets, but were
good old troops, who were to distinguish themselves in the oncoming
campaign.
[2] ‘The Reserve Division’ consisted of a 3rd battalion from some
of the old regiments of the Valencian army, viz. 1st of Savoya,
Avila, Don Carlos, Volunteers of Castile, Cazadores de Valencia,
Orihuela. They were each about 1,000 strong, but averaged only 22
officers per battalion.
In addition, it was possible that Valencia might be able to draw a
few thousand men to her aid from the depleted army of Murcia, which
had suffered so severely at Soult’s hands during the short campaign of
the previous August[3]. But such assistance was purely problematical;
if Soult should stir again from the side of Andalusia, it would be
impossible for General Mahy to bring a single Murcian battalion to the
succour of Blake. If, by good fortune, he should not, only a fraction
of Mahy’s small army would be free, since the greater part of it would
be required to watch the Andalusian frontier, and to protect the great
naval arsenal and fortress of Cartagena.
[3] See vol. iv. pp. 475-83.
If the regular troops only in eastern Spain had to be counted, it
was certain that Suchet could dispose of numbers superior to his
adversaries. The gross total of the French Army of Catalonia, where
General Decaen had now taken Macdonald’s place, was 30,000 men. That
of Suchet’s own ‘Army of Aragon’ was nearly 50,000, if garrisons,
sick, and drafts on the march are reckoned in it. With these deducted,
it could still supply about 31,000 men of all arms for the field.
But these were not the only resources available. On the upper Ebro,
in Navarre and western Aragon, were the two newly arrived divisions
of Reille and Severoli, which had entered Spain during the summer,
and had hitherto had no occupation save a little hunting of Mina’s
guerrilleros. These two divisions counted 15,000 fresh troops of good
quality, and Suchet reckoned on their assistance to cover his rear,
when he should begin his march on Valencia. Technically they belonged
to Dorsenne’s ‘Army of the North,’ but Severoli’s Italians had been
promised as a reinforcement for Aragon already, and when Suchet asked
for the grant of Reille’s division also it was not denied him. There
were 70,000 men in all to be taken into consideration when the attack
on Valencia was planned out.
No such force, of course, could be set aside for the actual invasion.
The reason why not half so many thousands could be utilized for the
projected stroke was that the Spanish War, as we have already had
to point out on many occasions, was not a normal struggle between
regular armies. The French had not only to conquer but to occupy every
province that they overrun. Wherever an adequate garrison was not left,
the guerrilleros and miqueletes inundated the country-side, cut all
communications, and blockaded such small detachments as had been left
far apart from the main army. Suchet’s 70,000 men had to hold down
Aragon and Catalonia, at the same time that they undertook the further
extension of their master’s power on the Valencian side.
Decaen in Catalonia had 23,000 men fit for service, not including
sick and drafts on the march. Lacy’s little army was not more than
8,000 strong in September: yet Suchet dared not take away a man from
Catalonia. The large garrison of Barcelona, a whole division, and the
smaller garrisons of Gerona, Rosas, and Mont Louis absorbed nearly half
the effective total. The remainder were, as it turned out, not strong
enough to keep the Catalans in check, much less to prosecute active
offensive operations against them. It was in October, after Suchet had
started against Valencia, that Lacy carried out the series of small
successful raids against Igualada, Cervera, and Montserrat, which have
been spoken of in an earlier chapter[4]. We need not wonder, then, that
not a Frenchman was drawn from Catalonia: they were all wanted on the
spot to keep a tight hold on the turbulent principality. The example
of the surprise of Figueras in the last spring was sufficient to prove
the necessity of keeping every point strongly garrisoned, on pain of
possible disaster.
[4] See vol. iv. pp. 540-1.
As to the Army of Aragon, it was far stronger than the Army of
Catalonia, but on the other hand it had even more fortresses to
garrison. Saragossa, Tortosa, Tarragona, Lerida, were large places,
each absorbing several battalions. In addition there were the smaller
strongholds of Jaca, Mequinenza, Monzon, Morella, requiring care. All
these were regular fortresses, but they did not exhaust the list of
points that must be firmly held, if the communications of Suchet’s
field-force with its distant base were to be kept free and unhampered.
Southern Aragon and the mountain-ganglion where the borders of that
kingdom and of Valencia and New Castile meet, in the roughest country
of the whole Spanish peninsula, had to be guarded. For in this
region lay the chosen hunting-ground of the guerrillero bands of the
Empecinado, Duran, and many other lesser chiefs: and Mina himself,
from his usual haunts in Navarre, not unfrequently led a raid far to
the south of the Ebro. Suchet had therefore to place garrisons in
Teruel, Daroca, Alcañiz, Calatayud, and Molina, none of which possessed
modern fortifications. The detachments left to hold them had to utilize
a large convent, a mediaeval castle, or some such post of defence, in
case they were attacked by the roving hordes of the enemy. Able to
protect themselves with ease against small parties, and to keep the
roads open under ordinary circumstances, they were exposed to serious
danger if the guerrilleros should mass themselves in force against any
one garrison--more especially if the bands should have been lent a few
cannon and gunners from the regular Spanish armies. For convents or old
castles could not resist artillery fire.
To cover his rear Suchet was forced to set aside one whole division,
that of Frère, thirteen battalions strong[5], and mustering over 7,000
men, and immense detachments of the three other French divisions of
the Army of Aragon. The units told off for the field army left no less
than 6,800 able-bodied men (besides sick and convalescents) behind
them, while they took 22,000 to the front. Frère’s division remained
on the side of Western Catalonia, holding Lerida and Tortosa in force,
and the intermediate places with small posts. The detachments from
Musnier’s, Harispe’s, and Habert’s French, and from Palombini’s Italian
divisions, took charge of Southern Aragon, leaving a company here and a
battalion there. But the Marshal selected with great care the men who
were to march on the Valencian expedition: each regiment drafted its
most effective soldiers into the marching units, and left the recruits
and the old or sickly men in the garrisons. Thus the battalions used
in the oncoming campaign were rather weak, averaging not much over
450 men, but were composed entirely of selected veterans. The only
doubtful element taken forward was the so-called ‘Neapolitan Division’
of General Compère, which was only 1,500 strong--in reality a weak
brigade--and had no great reputation. But what was left of this corps
was its best part--the numerous men who wanted to desert had already
done so, and its weaklings were dead by this time. Of his cavalry
Suchet took forward almost the whole, leaving behind only two squadrons
of the 4th Hussars for the service between the garrisons, and of the
other regiments only the weakly men and horses[6]. Practically all his
horse and field artillery also went forward with him.
[5] Composed at this time of the 14th and 42nd and 115th Line,
and the 1st Léger, the first two and last each three battalions
strong, the other (115th) with four.
[6] The 24th Dragoons left about 140 men behind, the 13th
Cuirassiers 50 only, the Italian ‘Dragoons of Napoleon’ 124, but
the 4th Hussars about 500, much more than half their force.
Of his own Army of Aragon, Suchet, as we have thus seen, left nearly
14,000 men ‘present under arms’ to cover his rear. But this was not
enough to make matters wholly secure, so untameable were the Aragonese
and Catalans with whom he had to deal. Indeed, if this force only had
been left to discharge the appointed task, it is clear, from subsequent
happenings, that he would have suffered a disaster during his absence
in Valencia. He asked from the Emperor the loan of half Reille’s
division from Navarre, as well as the prompt sending to the front of
Severoli’s Italians, who had been promised him as a reinforcement when
first they entered Spain. The petition was granted, and these troops
entered northern Aragon, and took charge of the places along the Ebro,
while the expeditionary army was on its way to Valencia. Most of them
were ultimately brought forward to the siege of the great city, and
without them neither could Aragon have been maintained nor Valencia
captured. Practically we may say that Suchet, at his original start,
took 26,000 men to beat the Valencians and capture their city, but
that he left nearly 30,000 more behind him, to hold down the provinces
already conquered and to deal with the guerrilleros.
Two main roads lead from the north to Valencia: the one, coming from
Tortosa and Catalonia, hugs the coast of the Mediterranean, from which
it is never more than a few miles distant. The other, far inland, and
starting from Saragossa, follows the valley of the Xiloca among the
hills of Southern Aragon, crosses the watershed beyond Teruel, and
descends to the sea near Murviedro, where it joins the coast-road only
a few miles north of Valencia. There is a third, and much inferior,
route between these two, which starts from Mequinenza on the Lower
Ebro, crosses the mountainous Valencian frontier near Morella, and
comes down to the coast at Castellon de la Plana, twenty miles north of
Murviedro. Of these roads the first was as good as any in Spain, and
was suitable for all manner of traffic: but it had the disadvantage
of being flanked at a distance of only two miles by the small but
impregnable fortress of Peniscola, which lies on a rocky headland
thirty miles beyond Tortosa, and of being absolutely blocked by the
little town of Oropesa, twenty miles further south. Oropesa was no more
than a ruinous mediaeval place, with two castles hastily repaired,
without any modern works: but since the road passed through it, no
heavy guns or wagons starting from Tortosa could get further south till
its forts had been captured.
The second road, that from Aragon by Teruel and Murviedro, is marked
on contemporary maps as a post-route fit for all vehicles: but it
passed through a very mountainous country, and was much inferior as a
line of advance to the coast-road. It was not blocked by any fortress
in the hands of the Spaniards, but between Teruel and Segorbe it was
crossed by many ridges and ravines highly suitable for defence. The
third track, that by Morella, was unsuitable for wheeled traffic, and
could only be used by infantry and cavalry. Its one advantage was that
Morella, its central point, had been already for some time in French
hands, and contained a garrison and stores, which made it a good
starting-point for a marching column.
[Illustration: SUCHET’S CAMPAIGNS 1811-12 IN VALENCIA]
Suchet determined to use all three of these roads, though such a plan
would have been most hazardous against a wary and vigorous enemy: for
though they all converge in the end on the same point, Murviedro,
they are separated from each other by long stretches of mountain,
and have no cross-communications. In especial, the road by Teruel
was very distant from the other two, and any isolated column taking
it might find itself opposed by immensely superior forces, during
the last days of its march; since Valencia, the enemy’s base and
headquarters, where he would naturally concentrate, lies quite close to
the concluding stages of the route Teruel-Murviedro. It must have been
in sheer contempt for his opponent--a contempt which turned out to be
justified--that the Marshal sent a detachment of eleven battalions by
this road, for such a force of 5,000 men might have been beset by
the whole Valencian army, 30,000 strong, and the other columns could
not have helped it.
Suchet’s arrangements were governed by a single fact--his siege
artillery and heavy stores were parked at Tortosa, and from thence,
therefore, along the coast road, must be his main line of advance,
though it would be necessary to mask Peniscola and to capture Oropesa,
before he could get forward to his objective--the city of Valencia.
It might have seemed rational to move the whole field army by this
route: but some of the troops destined for it were coming from distant
points, and to march them down the Ebro bank to Tortosa would have
taken much time. Moreover if the whole force concentrated there, it
would all have to be fed from the magazines at Tortosa, and those lying
in Aragon would be of no use. The Marshal started himself from this
point, on September 15, with the division of Habert, and an infantry
reserve formed of Robert’s brigade of the division of Musnier, together
with the whole of the cavalry and field artillery of the army. The
siege-train guarded by the other brigade of Musnier’s division--that
of Ficatier--followed: but Musnier himself did not accompany the
expedition, having been left in general charge of the detachments
placed in garrison on the Ebro and in Upper Aragon. The whole column
made up about 11,000 combatants.
The second column, consisting of the two auxiliary
divisions--Palombini’s eleven Italian battalions and Compère’s 1,500
Neapolitans--took (without any artillery to hamper them) the mountain
road by Alcañiz and Morella: they were slightly over 7,000 strong, and,
if all went well, were destined to unite with the main body somewhere
near Oropesa or Castellon de la Plana. It was not likely that this
column would meet with much opposition.
But the third detachment, Harispe’s 5,000 men from Upper Aragon, who
were to take the inland and western road by Teruel, were essaying a
very dangerous task, if the enemy should prove active and enterprising,
more especially as they had no artillery and hardly any cavalry with
them. Blake might have taken the offensive with 20,000 men against
them, while still leaving something to contain--or at least to
observe--Suchet’s main column.
The Spanish Commander-in-Chief, however, did nothing of the sort,
and met the invasion with a tame and spiritless defensive on all its
points. When Suchet’s advance was reported, Blake had his forces in a
very scattered situation. Of the 36,000 men of whom he could nominally
dispose, the Empecinado’s ‘flying column’ was as usual detached in
the mountains of Molina and Guadalajara, harassing small French
garrisons. Zayas’s division had been left far to the south at Villena,
near Alicante, to work off the contagion of yellow fever which it had
contracted while passing by Cartagena. For in that port the disease was
raging terribly at the time. Obispo’s division was in the high hills on
the borders of Aragon. In the neighbourhood of Valencia were only the
troops of Lardizabal and Miranda, with the main body of the cavalry.
The Army of Murcia, which was destined to send succour if it should not
find itself beset by Soult on the other side, was lying cantoned at
various points in that province. As the French were at this time making
no demonstration from the side of Granada, it now became clear that it
would be able to send certain succours to Blake. But they were not yet
designated for marching, much less assembled, and it was clear that
they would come up very late.
This dispersion of the available troops did not, in the end, make much
difference to the fate of the campaign, for Blake had from the first
made up his mind to accept the defensive, to draw in his outlying
detachments, and to stand at bay in the neighbourhood of Valencia,
without attempting to make any serious resistance on the frontier.
Since his arrival he had been urging on the construction of a line of
earthworks, forming fortified camps, around the provincial capital.
The ancient walls of Valencia itself were incapable of any serious
resistance to modern artillery, but outside them, all along the banks
of the Guadalaviar river, for some miles inland to the West, and as
far as the sea on the East, batteries, _têtes-de-pont_, trenches, and
even closed works of considerable size had been constructed. It was
by holding them in force and with great numbers that Blake intended
to check the invasion. In front of his chosen position, at a distance
of twenty miles, there was a great advanced work--a newly restored
fortress of crucial importance--the fastness of Saguntum, or ‘San
Fernando de Sagunto’ as it had just been re-christened. This was the
acropolis of one of the most ancient towns of Spain, the Saguntum which
had detained Hannibal so long before its walls at the opening of the
Third Punic War. In the age of the Iberians, the Carthaginians, and
the Romans, and even down to the days of the Ommeyad califs, there had
been a large and flourishing city on this site. But in the later middle
ages Saguntum had declined in prosperity and population, and the modern
town--which had changed its name to Murviedro (_muri veteres_) had
shrunk down to the foot of the hill. It was now a small open place of
6,000 souls, quite indefensible. But above it towered the steep line of
rock which had formed the citadel in ancient days: its narrow summit
was crowned with many ruins of various ages--from cyclopean foundations
of walls, going back to the time of the ancient Iberians, to Moorish
watch-towers and palaces. The empty space of steep slope, from the
acropolis down to the modern town, was also sprinkled with decaying
walls and substructures of all sorts, among which were cisterns and
broken roadways, besides the remains of a large Roman theatre, partly
hewn out of the live rock.
There had been no fortifications by Murviedro when Suchet last
passed near Valencia, in his abortive raid of March 1810[7]. On that
occasion he had scaled the citadel to enjoy the view and to take a
casual survey of the picturesque ruins upon it[8]. But since then a
great change had taken place. On the advice, as it is said, of the
English general, Charles Doyle[9], Blake had determined to restore the
citadel as a place of strength. This was when he last held command
in Valencia, and before he joined the Cadiz Regency. But his idea
had been carried out after his departure by the Valencian Junta and
the successive Captains-General who had come after him. By means of
more than a year’s work the citadel had been made a tenable fortress,
though one of an irregular and unscientific sort. The old Iberian and
Moorish walls had been repaired and run together in a new _enceinte_,
with material taken from the other ruins all around. In especial the
Roman theatre, hitherto one of the most perfect in Southern Europe,
had been completely gutted, and its big blocks had proved most
useful for building the foundations of weak points of the circuit of
fortification. This was strong at some points, from the toughness and
height of the old ramparts, but very sketchy at others. Where the slope
was absolutely precipitous, a rough wall of dry stone without mortar
alone had been carried along the edge of the cliff. The narrow summit
of the rock formed a most irregular enclosure, varying much in height
from one point to another. It was divided into four separate sections
cut off from each other by cross-walls. The westernmost and lowest,
facing the only point from which there is a comparatively gentle ascent
to the summit, was crowned by a new battery called by the name of _Dos
de Mayo_, to commemorate the Madrid Insurrection of 1808. Rising high
in the centre of this work was an ancient bastion named the Tower of
San Pedro. Much higher, on the extreme peak of the summit, was the
citadel tower, called San Fernando, where the governor’s flag flew, and
from whence the whole fortress could be best surveyed. From this point
the rock descended rapidly, and its long irregular eastern crest was
surrounded by weakly-repaired walls, ending in two batteries called
by the names of Menacho, the gallant governor of Badajoz[10], and
Doyle, the English general who had suggested the fortification of the
place. But the greater part of this eastern end of the works lay above
slopes so precipitous that it seemed unlikely that they would ever be
attacked. The western end, by the Dos Mayo battery, was the obvious
point of assault by an enemy who intended to use regular methods.
[7] See vol. iii. pp. 284-6.
[8] Suchet’s _Mémoires_, ii. p. 156.
[9] See Arteche, xi. p. 123.
[10] See vol. iv. p. 56.
The construction was by no means finished when Suchet’s expedition
began: many parts of the new walls were only carried up to half their
intended height, and no regular shelter for the garrison had been
contrived. Instead of proper barracks and casemates there were only
rough ‘leans-to,’ contrived against old walls, or cover made by roofing
in with beams old broken towers, and bastions. The hospital was the
only spacious and regular building in the whole _enceinte_: the powder
magazine was placed deep down in the cellars of the fort San Fernando.
The armament of the place was by no means complete: the guns were being
sent up just as Suchet started. Only seventeen were ready, and of
these no more than three were 12-pounders: the rest were only of the
calibre of field artillery (4- and 8-pounders) or howitzers. A fortress
which has only seventeen guns for an _enceinte_ of 3,000 yards, and
possesses no heavy guns to reply to the 18- or 24-pounders of a
siege-train, is in a state of desperate danger.
Blake had thrown into the place a brigade under the command of Colonel
Luis Andriani, consisting of five battalions, two each of the regiments
of Savoya and Don Carlos, one of the Cazadores de Orihuela. Of these
two were new ‘third battalions[11]’ from the recently raised ‘Division
of Reserve,’ incomplete in officers, only half drilled, and not yet
fully provided with uniforms. The total force came to 2,663 officers
and men, including about 150 artillerymen and sappers. It is probable
that these troops would have made no better show in the open field
than did the rest of the Valencian army, a few weeks later: but they
showed behind walls the same capacity for unexpected resistance which
had surprised the French on other occasions at Ciudad Rodrigo, Gerona,
and Figueras. Andriani, the governor, seems to have made an honourable
attempt to do his duty at the head of the doubtfully efficient garrison
placed at his disposal.
[11] The battalions were the 2nd and 3rd of Savoya (the last a
new levy) the 1st and 2nd of Don Carlos, and the 3rd of Orihuela,
this last raw and newly raised like the 3rd of Savoya.
In addition to Saguntum Blake held two outlying posts in his front,
Peniscola on its lofty headland, garrisoned by about 1,000 men under
General Garcia Navarro, and the half-ruined Oropesa, which he had
resolved to hold, because it blocked the sea-coast road so effectively.
But its only tenable points were two mediaeval towers, one in the town
commanding the high-road, the other by the shore of the Mediterranean.
Their joint garrisons did not amount to 500 men, and it was obvious
that they could not hold out many days against modern artillery. But
the gain of a day or two might conceivably be very valuable in the
campaign that was about to begin. It is clear, however, that his main
hope of resistance lay in the line of entrenched camps and batteries
along the Guadalaviar, in front of Valencia: here he intended to make
his real stand, and he hoped that Saguntum, so little distant from
this line, would prove a serious hindrance to the enemy when he came up
against it.
Suchet’s three columns all started, as Napoleon had ordered, on
September 15th. The Marshal’s own main body, coming from Tortosa,
reached Benicarlo, the first town across the Valencian frontier, next
day, and on the 17th came level with Peniscola, whose garrison kept
quiet within the limits of its isthmus. The Marshal left a battalion
and a few hussars to observe it, and to see that it did not make
sallies against his line of communication. On the 19th the head of
the marching column reached Torreblanca, quite close to Oropesa. A
reconnaissance found that the place was held, and came into contact
with some Spanish horse, who were easily driven off. This was the first
touch with Blake’s field army that had been obtained. But the enemy was
evidently not in force, and the garrison of Oropesa hastily retired
into the two towers which formed its only tenable positions. On a close
inspection it was found that the tower in the town completely commanded
the high-road, wherefore the Marshal took a slight circuit by suburban
lanes round the place, with his main body and guns, and continued his
advance, after leaving a few companies to blockade the towers. On
the same evening he was joined by Palombini’s column from Morella,
consisting of the two Italian divisions. They had accomplished their
march without meeting any resistance, though the road from Morella by
San Matteo and Cabanes was rough and easily defensible. The united
force, now 16,000 strong, proceeded on its march next day, and the
Marshal was agreeably surprised when, on the morning of the 20th, the
cavalry scouts on his right flank announced to him that they had come
in touch with Harispe’s column from Teruel, which had appeared at the
village of Villafanes a few miles from the main road. Thus the whole
army of invasion was happily united.
Harispe, as it turned out, had left Teruel on the 15th, in obedience to
his orders, by the post-road to Segorbe and the coast. But hearing on
the second day that a large Valencian force was holding the defile of
Las Barracas, where the road crosses the watershed, he had turned off
by a bad side-path to Ruvielos in the upper valley of the Mijares, in
the hope of joining his chief without being forced to storm a difficult
position. Blake, as a matter of fact, much alarmed at the approach of
a flanking column on the Teruel side, and ignorant of its strength,
had sent the division of Obispo and some other detachments to hold the
pass. But no enemy came this way--Harispe had diverged down the course
of the Villahermosa river, by a country road only practicable for a
force without guns or wheeled transport, and got down by rapid marches
to the coast-plain beyond Alcora, without having seen any enemy save
some scattered guerrillero bands. He had thoroughly distracted Blake’s
attention and had run no danger, because he took an unexpected and
difficult route, in a direction quite different from that by which the
Spaniards expected him to appear[12].
[12] Vacani says that the Teruel column was intended by Suchet
as a mere demonstration, and was never intended to follow the
high-road Teruel-Segorbe, but to take a cross-route over the
hills, such as was actually used by it. But Suchet, in his
_Mémoires_, makes no such statement (ii. p. 152), and speaks as
if Harispe had taken the Ruvielos route on his own responsibility.
The whole army was now concentrated near Villafanes on September 21,
save the detachments left to block Peniscola and Oropesa, and the
brigade of Ficatier, which, escorting the siege-train, had been left
at Tortosa, to await orders for starting when there should be no enemy
left in northern Valencia to molest it. The heavy guns were to come
forward down the coast-road, first to breach the towers of Oropesa, and
when the way past them was clear, to play their part, if necessary, in
the more serious task of battering Saguntum.
On advancing from Castellon de la Plana on September 22 the French army
found a very small Spanish rearguard--500 or 600 men--covering the
bridge of Villareal over the Mijares. They gave way before the first
attack, which was a very simple affair, since the river was nearly dry
and everywhere fordable. No more was seen of the enemy next day, and
on the 23rd Suchet found himself on the banks of the Palancia stream,
which flows under the foot of the rock of Saguntum. The Spaniards had
retired still further towards Valencia, leaving the fortress to its
own resources. These were unknown to Suchet, who was aware that the
ruinous citadel had been rebuilt, but could not tell without further
reconnaissance what was its strength. In order to invest the place, and
to make closer investigation possible, Harispe’s division crossed the
Palancia to the right of Saguntum, Habert’s to the left. The latter
sent six companies into the town of Murviedro, and drove up some
Spanish pickets from it into the fortress which towered above. The
two divisions then joined hands to the south of Saguntum, completing
its investment, while Palombini’s Italians took post at Petres and
Gillet on the road to Segorbe--to the north-west--in case Blake might
have placed some of his troops on this side-route, with the object of
troubling the siege by attacks from the rear. The cavalry went forward
down the high-road to Valencia, and sent back news that they had
explored as far as Albalete, only six miles from the capital, and had
met no enemy. The division of Lardizabal and the cavalry of San Juan,
which had been the observing force in front of Suchet, had retired
beyond the Guadalaviar river, and had shut themselves up (along with
the rest of Blake’s army) in the entrenchments behind that stream. The
Spanish general was evidently acting on the strictest principles of
passive defence.
The French marshal determined not to seek his enemy on his chosen
ground, till he should have taken Saguntum and brought up his
siege-train to the front. The former condition he thought would not
prove difficult to accomplish. A survey of the fortress revealed
its extremely irregular and incomplete state of defence. Though the
cliffs were in all parts steep and in some places inaccessible, many
sections of the works above them were obviously unfinished and very
weak. After a close reconnaissance by his engineer officers had been
made, Suchet determined that it would be worth while to try an attempt
at escalade on some of the most defective points, without waiting for
the arrival of the siege-train. He set his sappers and carpenters to
work to make sixty ladders, which were ready in full number on the
third day. The front chosen for the assault was in the _enceinte_
immediately overhanging the town of Murviedro, where two ancient gaps
in the wall were clearly visible; the new work was not half finished,
and a low structure, roughly completed with beams laid above the
regular foundations, was all that blocked the openings. The masons of
the garrison were heard at night, working hard to raise the height of
the stone wall which was to replace the temporary wooden parapets.
There being no artillery available, they could not be hindered in their
building: but it did not seem to advance very rapidly.
Suchet set apart for the actual escalade two columns, each composed of
300 volunteers from Habert’s division: they were to be supported by a
reserve of similar strength under Colonel Gudin, which was formed up,
completely under cover, within the streets of Murviedro. At midnight
on September 27th-28th the stormers pushed forward under cover of the
darkness, and in small successive parties, into a large Roman cistern
above the ruined theatre, which was ‘dead ground,’ and not exposed to
fire from any part of the ramparts. Here they were only 120 yards from
the two breaches. Meanwhile, as a diversion, six Italian companies from
Palombini’s division were ordered to make a noisy demonstration against
the distant part of the defences which lay under the tower of San
Pedro[13]. General Habert was to have 2,000 men more under arms, ready
to support the assailing column.
[13] The complete orders for the attack may be read in the first
_Pièce justificative_ in Belmas’s history of the siege, pp.
115-17 of vol. iv of his elaborate work.
The stormers reached their appointed place apparently undiscovered,
and the attack would have been delivered--according to Suchet’s
dispatch--without any preliminary firing, but for an accident. The
Marshal says that the Spaniards had pushed an exploring patrol down the
hillside, which fell in with the French pickets and drew their fire.
Thereupon the assaulting columns in the cistern, thinking themselves
discovered, let off a few shots and charged uphill, a little ahead of
the appointed time, and before the Italian demonstration had begun[14].
The governor, Andriani, in his dispatch, makes no mention of this, but
merely says that about 2 a.m. his sentinels thought that they detected
movements on the slopes, and that a short time afterwards a fierce
attack was delivered. At any rate the garrison was not surprised as
Suchet had hoped.
[14] Vacani (v. p. 381) contradicts Suchet, saying that there
was no Spanish patrol, and that the French pickets fired from
nervousness at an imaginary foe.
Owing to the lowness, however, of the walls blocking the two old
breaches, the assailants had, in their first rush, a fair chance of
breaking in. Many ladders were successfully planted, and repeatedly
small parties of the French got a footing on the wooden parapets. If
the garrison had flinched, the storm might have succeeded: but far
from flinching, they offered a desperate resistance, overthrew the
ladders, slew all who had gained the top of the _enceinte_, and kept
up a furious musketry fire, which laid low many of the soldiers who
kept pressing forward to the breaches. It was to no purpose that the
demonstration by the Italians below San Pedro now began: the Spaniards
fired hard and fast in this direction also, but did not withdraw any
men from the real point of attack, where they maintained themselves
very courageously. It was in vain that Colonel Gudin brought up his
reserve: it could make no head, and the survivors threw themselves down
among the rocks and ruins in front of the wall--unwilling to recede,
but quite unable to advance. Seeing his attack a hopeless failure,
Suchet ordered the stormers back just before daylight began to appear.
They had lost 247 killed and wounded out of 900 men engaged: the
garrison only 15 killed and less than 30 wounded[15].
[15] Vacani makes the losses 360 instead of 247, and it is
possible that Suchet has given only the casualties at the main
assault, and not those in the distant demonstrations. Vacani says
that the Italians lost 52 men in their false attack.
The escalade having come to this disappointing conclusion, the Marshal
saw that the siege of Saguntum would be anything but a quick business.
It would be necessary to bring up the siege-train to the front: orders
were sent back to Ficatier to start it at once from Tortosa; but it had
to batter and take Oropesa before it could even reach Murviedro. There
were some weeks of delay before him, and meanwhile Blake might at last
begin to show some signs of life. Suchet therefore disposed his army so
as to provide both a blockading force and a covering force, to see that
the blockade was not interfered with from without. It being evident
that many days would elapse before the siege artillery arrived, the
French engineer officers got leave to employ many detachments in
preparing roads fit to bear heavy guns up the western slopes of the
hill of Saguntum, from which alone the regular attack on the fortress
could be conducted. Several emplacements for batteries were also
chosen, and work upon them was begun.
From September 23rd, the day of Suchet’s arrival before Saguntum,
down to October 16, when the heavy guns at last arrived, the French
army was practically ‘marking time’: the idea which the Emperor had
conceived, and which his lieutenant had adopted, that Valencia could be
conquered by a sudden rush, had been proved false. Apparently Suchet
had gained no more by his rapid advance to the foot of the hill of
Saguntum than he would have obtained by marching in more leisurely
fashion, with his siege artillery in company, and taking Oropesa on the
way. The reduction of that place indeed was (as it turned out) only a
single day’s task for heavy guns: and if the Marshal had captured it
on his march, he might have presented himself before Saguntum with his
siege-train, and have begun an active attack on that fortress, some
weeks before he was actually able to get to serious work. In fact he
might have been battering Saguntum on October 1, instead of having to
wait till October 16th. But this is ‘wisdom after the event’: Napoleon
thought that Valencia could be ‘rushed,’ and Suchet was bound to make
the experiment that his master ordered.
Blake meanwhile, finding, on September 23rd, that the enemy was not
about to advance against his lines, and learning soon after that the
French army had settled down before Saguntum, had to revise his plans,
since it was clear that he was not to be attacked in his entrenchments
as he had supposed. Three courses were now open to him: either he might
collect every man for a decisive battle in the open, and try to raise
the siege; or he might attempt to open up attacks on Suchet’s line of
communications and on his base in Aragon, so as to force him to retire
by indirect operations; or he might remain passive behind the lines of
the Guadalaviar. The last was an almost unthinkable alternative--it
would have ruined his reputation for ever to sit quiet and do nothing,
as Wellington had done during the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo in 1810.
Only a general with an established reputation for courage and ability
could have dared to take such a course; and Blake’s record was a long
series of disasters, while he was detested by the Valencians one and
all--by the army, to whom he rightly preferred his own excellent
troops, no less than by the Captain-General Palacios, and the Junta,
whom he had sent out of the city to sit at Alcira, when they showed a
tendency to hamper his operations. Practically he was forced by his
situation to take some definite offensive move against Suchet.
He chose that of indirect operations, having a well-rooted distrust
of the fighting powers of a great part of the troops that were at
his disposition. The record of the Valencian army he knew: the state
of the Murcian army, on which he could draw for reinforcements, was
represented to him in the most gloomy colours by Mahy, who had recently
replaced Freire in command. On September 12th Mahy had written to him,
to warn him that the spirit of his troops was detestable: ‘the Army of
Murcia was little better than a phantom: there were only four or five
officers for whom the rank and file had any respect or esteem, the
rest were regarded as timid or incapable: the men had no confidence in
themselves or their chiefs. The best thing to do would be to break up
the whole army, and incorporate it into the “Expeditionary Divisions,”
whose commanders were known as good soldiers, and whose battalions were
trustworthy[16].’
[16] See Mahy’s letter to Blake on pp. 109-12 of vol. xi of
Arteche. The General is writing very carefully so as not to speak
too ill of his army: but his views are clear.
In view of these facts Blake resolved to threaten Suchet’s flanks with
demonstrations, which he had no intention of turning into attacks, but
to endeavour to dislodge him from his forward position by turning loose
the guerrilleros of Aragon on to his rear. With the former purpose he
sent out two detachments from the Valencian lines, Obispo’s division
to Segorbe,--where it cut the French communication with Teruel and
southern Aragon,--Charles O’Donnell with Villacampa’s infantry and San
Juan’s horse to Benaguacil, a point in the plains fifteen miles west
of Saguntum, where his force formed a link between Obispo and the main
body of the Valencian army, which still remained entrenched in the
lines of the Guadalaviar[17]. These two detachments threatened Suchet’s
flank, and even his rear, but there was no intention of turning the
threat into a reality.
[17] Blake kept under his own hand in the lines the divisions of
Zayas, Lardizabal, Miranda, and the Reserve.
The real movement on which Blake relied for the discomfiture of the
invaders of Valencia was that of the guerrillero bands of Aragon and
the neighbouring parts of Castile, to whom he had appealed for help
the moment that Suchet commenced his march. He believed that the 6,000
or 7,000 men which Suchet had left scattered in small garrisons under
General Musnier might be so beset and worried by the _partidas_, that
the Marshal might be compelled to turn back to their aid. Even Mina
from his distant haunts in Navarre had been asked to co-operate. This
was an excellent move, and might have succeeded, if Musnier alone
had remained to hold down Aragon. But Blake had forgotten in his
calculations the 15,000 men of Reille and Severoli, cantoned in Navarre
and along the Upper Ebro, who were available to strengthen the small
force which lay in the garrisons under Musnier’s charge.
The diversion of the guerrilleros, however, was effected with
considerable energy. On September 26th the Empecinado and Duran
appeared in front of Calatayud, the most important of the French
garrisons in the mountains of western Aragon. They had with them 5,000
foot and 500 horse--not their full strength, for a large band of the
Empecinado’s men beset at the same time the remote castle of Molina,
the most outlying and isolated of all Suchet’s posts. Calatayud was
held by a few companies of French, to which an Italian flying column of
a battalion had just joined itself. The guerrilleros, coming in with a
rush, drove the garrison out of the town into their fortified post, the
large convent of La Merced, taking many prisoners in the streets. Duran
then beleaguered the main body in the convent, while the Empecinado
took post at the defile of El Frasno on the Saragossa road, to hold off
any succour that Musnier might send up from the Aragonese capital. This
precaution was justified--a column of 1,000 men came out of Saragossa,
but was far too weak to force the pass and had to retire, with the
loss of its commander, Colonel Gillot, and many men. Meanwhile Duran
pressed the besieged in the convent with mines, having no artillery of
sufficient calibre to batter its walls. After blowing down a corner
of its chapel with one mine, and killing many of the defenders, the
guerrillero chief exploded a second on October 3, which made such a
vast breach that the garrison surrendered, still 560 strong, on the
following day[18].
[18] Vacani gives a long and interesting account of the siege (v.
pp. 404-13) and attributes the weak defence to quarrels between
the commander of the Italians and the French governor, Müller.
This success would have gone far to shake the hold of the French
on Aragon, but for the intervention of Reille from Navarre. At the
first news of the blockade of Calatayud, he had dispatched a column,
consisting of the whole brigade of Bourke, 3,500 strong, which would
have saved the garrison if it had had a less distance to march. But it
arrived on the 5th to find the convent blown up, while the Spaniards
had vanished with their prisoners. Bourke thereupon returned to Tudela,
and the guerrilleros reoccupied Calatayud on his departure.
Meanwhile, however, the whole Italian division of Severoli, over
7,000 strong, marched down the Ebro to reinforce the small garrison
of Saragossa. This large reinforcement restored the confidence of
the French. Musnier himself took charge of it and marched at its
head against Duran and the Empecinado. They wisely refused to fight,
gave way, evacuated Calatayud, and took refuge in the hills (October
12). While the main field-force of the enemy was drawn off in this
direction, Mina took up the game on the other side of the Ebro.
Entering Aragon with 4,000 men he besieged the small garrison of Exea,
which abandoned its post, and cut its way through the guerrilleros,
till it met a column of 800 Italian infantry[19] sent out from
Saragossa to bring it off. Colonel Ceccopieri, the leader of this
small force, underrating the strength of his enemy, then marched to
relieve the garrison of Ayerbe. He was surprised on the way by Mina’s
whole force, and in a long running fight between Ayerbe and Huesca was
surrounded and slain. The column was exterminated, two hundred Italians
were killed, six hundred (including many wounded) were taken prisoners
(October 16th).
[19] Belonging to the 7th Line of Severoli’s division.
Musnier returned in haste from Calatayud at the news of this disaster,
but left the bulk of Severoli’s division to occupy western Aragon.
He then set himself, with the help of Reille, to hunt down Mina. But
the latter, marching with ease between the columns that pursued him,
for the peasantry kept him informed day by day of every movement of
the enemy, retreated westward. Easily eluding the French, he made an
extraordinary excursion, right across Navarre, Alava, and Biscay, down
to the sea coast at Motrico, where he handed over his prisoners to
the captain of the British frigate _Isis_, and then returned unharmed
to his familiar haunts. Of such a delusive nature was the hold of the
French on Northern Spain, that a column of 5,000 men could march for
200 miles across it without being intercepted or destroyed.
All these exploits of the guerrilleros were daring and well planned,
but though they had given Musnier much trouble, and cost the French
many a weary hour of march and countermarch, they had not cleared
Aragon of the enemy, nor shaken Suchet’s position. Indeed, on October
20, the general condition of affairs in Aragon was more favourable for
the invaders than on September 20, for two fresh divisions had been
drawn down into that province, and there were 20,000 French and Italian
troops in it instead of 6,000. The petty disasters at Calatayud and
Ayerbe were irritating rather than important. Suchet never for a moment
felt inclined to relax his hold upon Valencia: that western Aragon was
in an uproar affected him little, when his communication with his two
main dépôts of stores at Tortosa and Morella was not interrupted.
Blake, it may be mentioned, did not content himself with setting the
Empecinado and Duran in motion, he tried another division in another
quarter with even less result. Rumours had reached him that King
Joseph’s Army of the Centre was about to co-operate with Suchet, by
sending a column across the mountains to Cuenca and Requeña. The news
was false, for though Napoleon had ordered the King to do what he
could to help in the invasion of Valencia, Joseph had replied that
he had not even one brigade to spare for a serious demonstration,
and had not moved--the guerrilleros gave sufficient occupation to
his much-scattered army, of which a large portion was composed of
untrustworthy Spanish _Juramentados_. But, listening to vain reports,
Blake ordered Mahy to collect the best of his Murcian troops and
to march on Cuenca to meet the supposed invaders. His subordinate,
leaving Freire in command in Murcia, took seven selected battalions
of foot under Creagh and the Marquis of Montijo, with 800 horse and
one battery, and moved from his camp at Mula by Hellin and Chinchilla
northward. The distance to be covered was great, the roads after
Chinchilla very bad. Mahy arrived in front of Cuenca on October 15th,
to find that there was only one battalion and two squadrons of Joseph’s
army there. This little force evacuated the high-lying city in haste,
and fled towards Madrid the moment that the Murcians showed themselves.
No other French force could be heard of in any direction. At Cuenca
Mahy received a dispatch from Blake (who had apparently discovered his
mistake about the Army of the Centre), telling him to descend from the
mountains by Moya and Liria, and to join the wing of the main army,
which lay under Obispo at Segorbe. It was only on the 23rd October
that he came in: his troops, the pick of the Murcian army, had been
completely wasted for some twenty days in a circular march against a
non-existent enemy. Meanwhile every man had been wanted in Valencia.
Suchet, when once he had settled down to the siege of Saguntum, had
not failed to notice Blake’s weak demonstration against his flank by
means of the divisions of Obispo and Charles O’Donnell. He did not
intend to tolerate it, and on September 30 had sent Palombini with his
own Italian division and Robert’s French brigade to beat up Obispo’s
quarters at Segorbe. The Spanish division made a poor attempt to defend
itself on a position in front of that town, but was easily beaten and
retired into the mountains. It was then the turn of Charles O’Donnell;
when Palombini had come back to the camp, Suchet took Harispe’s
division, with Robert’s brigade, and two regiments of cavalry, to evict
the Spanish division from Benaguacil. O’Donnell made a slightly better
fight than Obispo had done, and deployed Villacampa’s infantry behind
an irrigation canal, with San Juan’s cavalry on his flanks. But the
French were superior in numbers as well as in confidence: one fierce
charge broke O’Donnell’s line, and he had to retreat in haste to the
hills behind him, losing 400 men, cut up in the pursuit by Suchet’s
cavalry, while the French casualties barely reached three officers and
sixty men (October 2nd). Blake, who had been quite close enough to
succour O’Donnell if he had chosen, made no attempt to aid him, and
kept quiet behind his lines on the Guadalaviar. There the routed troops
joined him next day.
Suchet, having thus cleared his flanks, settled down to the siege
of Saguntum, where his heavy artillery was now much needed. The
besieging army had to content itself for another fortnight with making
preparations for the expected train--levelling roads and constructing
approaches on the ground which was destined for the front of attack, at
the west end of the hill of Saguntum.
Meanwhile the siege-train was lumbering down from Tortosa by the
coast-road. On October 6th Suchet started to meet it, taking with him
the 1,500 Neapolitans of Compère. On the 8th he reached Oropesa, where
he found the small Spanish garrison still holding the two towers which
have before been mentioned. The first guns that came up were turned
against the tower by the high-road; it was easily breached, and on
the 10th surrendered: 215 men and four guns were captured. Next day
came the turn of the other tower, that by the sea; but before the
siege-battery had opened on it, the British 74 _Magnificent_ and a
squadron of Spanish gunboats ran inshore, and took off the garrison of
150 men in their boats, under the ineffective fire of the French.
The moment that the tower which blocked the high-road had fallen, and
before that on the shore had been evacuated, Suchet began to push the
head of his precious convoy of heavy artillery southward. It made such
a good pace that the first guns arrived at the camp before Saguntum
as early as the night of October 12th. Meanwhile the Marshal himself
returned thither, escorted by Compère’s Neapolitans: the brigade of
Ficatier, which had escorted the train hitherto, was dispersed to cover
the line of communications, placing its five battalions at Oropesa,
Almenara, and Segorbe.
SECTION XXX: CHAPTER II
THE BATTLE OF SAGUNTUM. OCTOBER 1811
After Charles O’Donnell and Obispo had been driven away from the
threatening position upon Suchet’s flank, Blake found himself during
the early days of October in a very unpleasant dilemma. It was
clear that his own feeble efforts to molest the French army were
a complete failure. Presently the message reached him that Mahy’s
unlucky expedition to Cuenca had been absolutely useless. But the most
disheartening news was that the attempt to overrun Aragon by means
of the guerrilleros had failed; its initial success, the capture of
Calatayud on October 3, had only led to the inundation of the whole
countryside in that direction by the numerous battalions of Reille and
Severoli.
As the days wore on, Blake found himself obliged to confess that the
idea of dislodging Suchet by operations in his rear was hopeless. The
only remaining alternative for him was to endeavour to call together
every available man, and to try to beat the French army in a great
pitched battle. Considering the well-known disrepute of both the
Murcian and the Valencian troops, the prospect was not one that the
Spanish general could view with much confidence. But political reasons
forced him to fight--his policy of passive resistance had made him so
unpopular with the Valencians of all ranks, from the members of the
exiled Junta down to the private soldiers, that if he had held back any
longer it is probable that he might have been deposed or murdered by a
conspiracy. Saguntum was holding out most gallantly, and the ignominy
of leaving it to fall, without making any effort for its succour, was
sufficiently evident. He made up his mind about the middle of October
that he must advance and fight. But, being very properly determined
to fight with all available resources, he had to await the descent of
Mahy and the Murcians from Cuenca, and by his own fault that important
column could not be drawn in to the main army before the 23rd. It was
only on that day that an advance in force became possible: for a week
and more Blake anxiously awaited the junction, and until it took place
he would not move.
Meanwhile Suchet, entirely unmolested, was pressing the siege of
Saguntum with all possible expedition. The first siege-guns from
Tortosa reached his camp, as has been already mentioned, on October
12th. But it was not till four days later that the actual battering
of the place began. Though paths had been traced out, and the
emplacements of batteries settled, long ere the siege-train came up,
the actual getting of the guns into position proved a very tiresome
business, on account of the steep and rocky slopes over which they
had to be dragged. And the construction of approaches and parallels
upon the hillside progressed very slowly, because of the absence of
earth--at last it was found that soil to bind the loose stones of
the ground together would have, for the most part, to be carried up
in sandbags from the valley below, for hardly any could be scraped
together on the spot. The engineer officer who wrote the diary of the
siege confesses that if the Spanish garrison had only been provided
with heavy artillery, the approach-building would have proved almost
impossible[20]. But, as has been already noted, there were but
seventeen guns mounted in the whole fortress, and of these only three
were 12-pounders--the rest being small field-pieces, too weak to batter
down parapets of even modest thickness. Moreover the very steepness of
the slope over which the siege-works were being advanced made much of
it ‘dead ground,’ which guns above could not properly sweep or search
out.
[20] Belmas, iv. p. 97.
On the 11th of October the two generals, Vallée and Rogniat, who
had regularly commanded Suchet’s artillery and engineers during his
previous sieges, arrived from the rear--both had been in France on
leave, and they had come forward with the train from Tortosa to
Oropesa. Their arrival added confidence to the subordinates who had
hitherto worked without them, for the reputation of each for success
was very great. Rogniat immediately on his arrival made several
important modifications in the projected batteries, and showed how
the approaches might be pushed forward to within seventy yards of the
fortress, by taking advantage of favourable dips and rocky outcrops in
the hillside.
On the 16th, five batteries were armed with the guns which had come up,
and fire was opened upon the projecting western angle of the fortress,
the tower of San Pedro. It proved to be made of ancient Moorish stone
and mortar, almost as hard as iron, and crumbled very slowly. But the
modern works below it, which were only a few months old, owned no such
resisting power, and within two days showed signs of serious damage.
The Spanish counter-fire was insignificant--there were very few guns
available, and it was only when the approaches got within easy musket
shot of the walls that the besiegers began to suffer appreciable
casualties. For the Spanish infantry, disregarding the cannonade, kept
up a furious fire against the heads of the saps all day and night.
On the afternoon of the 18th the engineer and artillery officers
reported to Suchet that they had made a sufficient breach in the
curtain of the work called the Dos Mayo battery, just where it joined
on the tower of San Pedro, and that they regarded it as practicable
for assault. The Marshal ordered that the storm should be fixed for
the same evening, lest the Spaniards should succeed in repairing the
breach during the hours of darkness. The column of assault consisted
of 400 men, picked from Habert’s division, supported by a reserve of
Palombini’s Italians. The fire of the siege artillery was kept up to
the last moment, and did much harm to the garrison, who were very
clearly seen piling gabions, sandbags, and stones on the ruinous lip of
the breach, in disregard of the steady fire that kept pounding it down
[21].
[21] See narrative of Vacani, an eye-witness (vol. v. p. 399).
The assault was duly delivered at five o’clock, and proved a complete
failure. The stormers found the breach most difficult to climb, as
its face was entirely formed of big blocks of stone without earth
or débris. The column won its way half up the ascent, and isolated
officers and men got further, and were bayoneted or shot at close
quarters by the defenders, who clustered very thickly at the top. But
no general rush of men could reach the summit, where (it is said) the
actual gap in the parapet was not more than six or seven feet broad.
After several ineffective attempts to mount, the assailants came to
a stand on the lower part of the slope, and opened a scattering fire
on the Spaniards above them. Whereupon, seeing the opportunity lost,
General Habert, who had been given charge of the operations, ordered
the men to fall back to the trenches, and to abandon the assault.
This was a most creditable feat of arms for the garrison, who had
hardly a cannon to help them, and held their own almost entirely by
musketry fire, though they rolled some live shells, beams, and large
stones down the breach at intervals. Their casualties were heavy, but
those of the assailants, as was natural, much greater. Suchet lost at
least 300 men, though in his dispatch to the Emperor[22] he gave an
elaborate table of casualties showing a total of only 173. But his
‘returns,’ even the most specious looking of them, should never be
trusted--as will be seen when we are dealing with the second battle of
Castalla in a later volume. This excellent officer was as untrustworthy
as Soult or Masséna in the figures which he sent to his master[23].
[22] To be found in print in Belmas, iv. pp. 124-8.
[23] This indictment of Suchet must be supported by details. In
his elaborate table of casualties by corps at the end of his
dispatch of Oct. 20, he only allows for 3 officers killed and
8 wounded, 40 men killed and 122 wounded--total 173. But the
lists of officers’ casualties in Martinien show, on the other
hand, _five_ officers killed (Coutanceau, Saint Hilaire, Turno,
Giardini, Cuny), and at least _ten_ wounded (Mathis, Durand,
Gauchet, D’Autane, Adhémar, Gattinara, Lamezan, D’Esclaibes,
Maillard, Laplane), and probably three more.
Oddly enough, in his _Mémoires_ (ii. p. 173) Suchet gives _by
name_ four officers killed at the breach (out of the five), while
in his official report he had stated that there were only three
killed altogether. We must trust rather Vacani, an eye-witness
and a man much interested in statistics and casualties, when he
gives the total of 300 for the losses, than Suchet’s table.
After this Suchet resolved to make no more attempts to storm Saguntum.
‘When even the best of soldiers,’ remarks Belmas, ‘have made every
effort to carry a place and have failed, they imagine that the place
is impregnable. And if an attempt is made to lead them once more to an
assault, they will not again act with the confidence which is needed
to secure victory.’ Wellington was to find this out at Burgos, a year
later. Indeed in their early stages the sieges of Saguntum and Burgos
show a rather notable parallelism, though their ends were dissimilar.
General Rogniat easily persuaded the Marshal to drop the heroic method
which had gained so little success, and to fall back on the systematic
work which is slow but certain[24].’ Suchet gave permission to the
engineers to establish more batteries, and to defer all further
attempts to storm till the approaches should have been carried up to
the very foot of the walls, and the whole curtain of the Dos Mayo
redoubt should have been battered down.
[24] Belmas, iv. p. 96.
The garrison, much encouraged by their successful effort of the 18th,
continued to make an obstinate resistance: as the enemy sapped uphill
towards them, they kept up such a careful and deadly fire that the
casualties in the trenches amounted every day to 15 or 20 men. For the
next six days nothing decisive happened, though the works continued to
creep slowly forward: they had to be built with parapets consisting
entirely of earth brought from below, and made very high, since the
nearer they got to the works, the more did the plunging fire from above
search them out.
Meanwhile Blake was preparing, though with no great self-confidence,
to make an attack on Suchet’s siege-lines, and was only awaiting the
arrival of Mahy and the Murcians before striking. He began by trying
a feeble diversion on the flank, sending back Obispo’s division once
more to Segorbe, and getting some of the Empecinado’s bands to threaten
Teruel, the southernmost of the garrisons in Aragon. This so far
annoyed the French marshal that on the 20th of October he sent off
Palombini, with one French and one Italian brigade and 400 horse, to
drive Obispo out of Segorbe, and to open the road to Teruel. By so
doing he placed himself in a dangerous position, for he had detached
4,500 men on an excursion which could not take less than four days,
and if Blake had refused to wait for Mahy, and had let Obispo amuse
Palombini, he could have marched against the siege-lines with 20,000
men, including all his best troops, and would have found only 12,000,
besides the gunners of the siege artillery, left in the French camp.
If Suchet had left any detachments to maintain the blockade, as he
probably would have done, he could only have fought with odds of less
than one to two. If he had brought up all his battalions, the garrison
would have sallied forth and destroyed his siege-works.
But Blake did not take his chance--whatever it may have been worth: he
waited for Mahy, who was only due on the 23rd. Meanwhile Palombini made
a rapid raid upon Segorbe: but Obispo, leaving two battalions only to
make a show of resistance, crossed the hills by by-paths and drew in
to Liria, on the flank of the main army, and in close touch with it.
He could have been used for a battle, if Blake had chosen to deliver
one upon the 22nd or 23rd. But the unlucky Spanish general did not so
choose: and Palombini--finding nothing serious in front of him, and
hearing that Teruel had been already relieved by Severoli--rightly
returned by forced marches to Saguntum, which he reached on the
afternoon of the 24th of October.
Meanwhile the long-expected Mahy arrived at Liria on the night of the
23rd, and found Obispo already lying there. The two forces united, and
marched on the 24th to Betera, but there again divided, the Murcians
going on to join Blake’s main body, while the Valencian division
received orders from the Commander-in-Chief to move as an independent
flanking column, and from Naquera to fall upon the flank or right rear
of Suchet’s position in front of Saguntum.
On the same day Blake himself broke out of the lines behind the
Guadalaviar, and after issuing a well-worded proclamation, in which he
said that Andriani’s gallant garrison must not perish unassisted, and
declared a confidence which he must have been far from feeling in the
resolution of his troops, advanced for some miles along the high-road,
so as to place himself at nightfall within striking distance of the
enemy.
His plan of operations, which was clearly set forth in his directions
to Mahy[25], was ambitious in the highest degree, and aimed at the
complete destruction of his enemy. Expecting to find Suchet drawn up to
meet him in the plain south of Saguntum, it appears that he intended
to fight a battle in which an immensely strong left wing was to turn
and break down Suchet’s right, while a weaker right wing (composed,
however, of his best troops) was to attack him frontally, and hold
his main body ‘contained,’ while the turning movement was delivered.
The left wing contained 26 battalions and nearly 20 squadrons, making
nearly 16,000 bayonets and 1,700 sabres[26]. The detached division of
Obispo, from Naquera, was to fall on the extreme French right from
the rear; the two other Valencian infantry divisions (Miranda and
Villacampa), led by Charles O’Donnell, were to tackle it in front.
Mahy’s Murcians were to support O’Donnell, at the same time reaching
out a hand towards Obispo--in order to do this Mahy was directed to
send out two battalions (under a Colonel O’Ronan) to Cabezbort, a
hillside intermediate between the point where Obispo was expected
and the left of the two other Valencian divisions. The left wing had
allotted to it the whole of the Murcian horse, 800 sabres, and one of
the two Valencian cavalry brigades, under General San Juan, which was
of about the same strength. It had also 18 guns.
[25] Which may be read in full in Arteche, xi. pp. 157-9.
[26] We are luckily in possession of the exact ‘morning state’
of Blake’s army, which is printed in the rare Spanish government
publication of 1822, _Estados de la Organizacion y Fuerza de
los Ejércitos Españoles_, pp. 184-7. Obispo had 3,400 men,
Miranda 4,000, Villacampa 3,350, Mahy 4,600 infantry, under
Montijo and Creagh, and 830 horse. This wing had 2 horse- and 2
field-batteries, 18 guns.
So much for the left wing. The right wing, conducted by Blake in
person, which had advanced up the high-road from Valencia towards
Murviedro, consisted of the two ‘Expeditionary Divisions’ of Zayas
and Lardizabal, both very weak because of the losses which they
had suffered in the campaign around Baza in August--each was eight
battalions strong; but the former had only 2,500, the latter 3,000 men,
so that the units averaged well under 400 bayonets. But these were good
old troops, which had greatly distinguished themselves at Albuera: they
were the only part of Blake’s army in which any real confidence could
be placed. In support of these veterans the Commander-in-Chief brought
up the Valencian ‘Division of Reserve,’ which consisted entirely of the
newly raised 3rd battalions of the regiments serving with Villacampa
and Miranda. They had only been under arms a few months, were not
fully equipped or clothed, and were dreadfully under-officered; for
five strong battalions, of over 700 bayonets each, there were only
75 officers in all--fifteen per battalion, where there should have
been thirty, and these were the mere leavings of the older units of
each regiment, or else newly gazetted ensigns. As a fighting force
these 3,500 men were nearly useless--and Blake put them where they
were least likely to get into trouble. They were divided into two
brigades: Brigadier-General Velasco seems to have been in command,
_vice_ Acuña, who had the division during the autumn. The right column
was accompanied by the handful of horse belonging to the ‘Expeditionary
Force’--300 sabres under General Loy--and by the second Valencian
Cavalry Brigade under General Caro, some 800 mounted men more. It was
accompanied, like the other wing, by three batteries. Thus, counting
its gunners and sappers, the right wing had under 10,500 men, while the
immensely strong left had over 17,000. But it is quality rather than
mere numbers which counts in war--the weak wing fought a good battle
against equal strength, and looked for a moment as if it might win. The
strong wing disgraced itself, and was routed by a fourth of its own
numbers.
Suchet had been somewhat troubled by the first news of Blake’s sudden
sally from Valencia, for though he desired a battle, wherein success
would probably win him the immediate surrender of the hard-pressed
garrison of Saguntum, yet he did not wish that matters should be forced
to a crisis in Palombini’s absence. It was only after the well-timed
return of that general to his camp, that he welcomed the approach of a
decisive action. But with Palombini at his disposition again, he was
eager to fight.
He had at this moment with him, in the lines before Saguntum, 35
battalions of foot (of which the three Neapolitan units under Compère
were mere skeletons, with little over a thousand men between them),
with 15 squadrons of horse and 36 field-guns. He left behind him, to
maintain the siege-works before the fortress, two battalions of the
117th line from Habert’s division, and Balathier’s Italian brigade,
making four battalions more. The weak Neapolitan brigade of Compère,
only 1,400 men, even with its cavalry included, was placed in support
of the blockading force, at Gillet and Petres, to watch the road from
Segorbe, by which some outlying Spanish detachment might possibly
attempt to communicate with the garrison of Saguntum. This left for the
line of battle 26 battalions--six of Habert’s, eleven of Harispe’s,
four of Palombini’s Italians, and five of Robert’s reserve brigade.
The total amounted to about 12,000 infantry, while the whole of the
cavalry, except the two Neapolitan squadrons, was put in the field
to the amount of some 1,800 sabres. Counting the gunners of the six
batteries of artillery, Suchet’s fighting force was not much over
14,000 men. He had left 4,000, besides the gunners of the siege-train
and the sappers, to deal with the garrison of Saguntum. This was little
more than half of Blake’s numbers, for the Spanish general--as we have
seen--was marching forward with 27,000 men in line. That Suchet gladly
took the risk sufficiently shows his opinion of the quality of the
greater part of the Valencian army. It seems, we must confess, rather
hazardous to have left 4,000 men in the blockading corps, when forces
were so unequal. In a similar case Beresford at Albuera took every
man out of the trenches, and fought with his whole army. Andriani’s
garrison was not numerous enough to execute any really dangerous sally
in the rear, and was so constricted, in its precipitous fastness, that
it could not easily come down or deploy itself. Perhaps Suchet may have
feared, however, that it would take the opportunity of absconding by
some postern, if it were not shut in upon all sides. But there were to
be moments during the battle when the Marshal would gladly have had the
assistance of two or three more battalions of steady troops.
Suchet had chosen for his fighting-ground the narrow plain south of
Saguntum, extending from the sea to the foot of the hills of the Sancti
Espiritus range--a space of less than three miles in very flat ground.
It was open for the most part, but sprinkled in certain sections with
olives and carob-trees, and contained one or two slight eminences or
mounds, which rose above the general surface, though only by a score
or two of feet, so that they had a certain command over the adjoining
flats. The left of the line, nearest to the sea, was formed of Habert’s
imperfect division, which, having detached two battalions for the
blockade of Saguntum, had only six left--2,500 bayonets--in line.
The right consisted of Harispe’s division, which was stronger than
Habert’s, as it had nine battalions in line, even after setting aside
one regiment (the 44th) for a flank-guard. Its force was about 3,600
bayonets. This division lay to the right of the road from Murviedro to
Valencia. The reserve consisted of the Italian brigade (that of Saint
Paul), which had not been told off for the siege, and of the three
French cavalry regiments, in all 2,000 bayonets and 1,300 sabres.
It was drawn up half a mile in rear of Habert and Harispe, ready to
support either of them. The batteries, horse and foot, accompanied
their respective divisions.
We have thus accounted for 10,000 men. The remainder of Suchet’s
fighting force constituted a flank-guard, to prevent his line from
being turned on its right, the side of the hills. It originally
consisted of Robert’s ‘reserve brigade,’ five battalions, or 2,500
bayonets, and of one cavalry regiment, Schiazzetti’s Italian
dragoons--450 sabres--with one battery. These troops were drawn up on
the higher slopes of the Sancti Espiritus hills, covering the pass of
the same name and the country road which goes over it. To these Suchet
added, at the last moment, one regiment from Harispe’s division, the
44th, under the Brigadier Chlopiski, who, being senior to Robert,
took command of the whole flank-guard. These two battalions--1,200
men--took post on the hill-slopes to the left of Robert, half-way
between his position and that of Harispe’s right. The whole force,
including the dragoons and the artillery, made about 4,300 men.
Compère’s Neapolitans were too far to their left rear to be reckoned an
appreciable support, and had their own separate task, though they were
never called upon to discharge it. The ground occupied by Chlopiski’s
4,300 men was exceedingly strong, and the Marshal hoped that they might
be relied upon to hold off the turning movement, which he was aware
was to be made against his inland flank. For he knew that Charles
O’Donnell was advancing from the direction of Betera, which could
only mean a projected attack on his own right. Had he realized that
not only O’Donnell, but also Obispo and Mahy’s Murcians, in all some
17,000 men, were about to operate against Chlopiski, he must surely
have strengthened his covering force, for the odds would have been
impossible if the Valencians had made any fight at all. But they did
not!
On the morning of the 25th of October Suchet was ready to receive the
attack which was impending. He could make out the general dispositions
of the enemy, and the concentric advance of Obispo’s, O’Donnell’s, and
Blake’s own men was duly reported to him. It was on receiving notice of
the heavy appearance of the second, or central, hostile column that he
detached Chlopiski’s two battalions to strengthen Robert’s flank-guard.
Presently, about 7 o’clock, the Spaniards came within touch; the left,
it would seem, somewhat before the right[27], the first shots being
interchanged between the two battalions which Mahy had sent towards
Cabezbort and Robert’s troops. This was only a trifling skirmish, the
Spaniards being completely checked. But soon after a serious attack was
delivered.
[27] There are terrible difficulties as to the timing of the
battle of Saguntum. Suchet says that the first engagement was
between Obispo’s flanking division, coming over the hills on
the west, and Robert. Schepeler says that Obispo arrived too
late altogether, and was practically not in the fight (p. 472).
I think that the explanation is that Suchet took O’Ronan’s two
battalions for Obispo, because they came from the direction
where he was expected. I follow, in my timing of the battle,
the very clear narrative of Vacani (v. pp. 440-1), who seems
to make it clear that the main fighting on the French right
was well over before that in the centre, and long before that
on the left. Schepeler (who rode with Blake that day) also
makes it certain that Lardizabal and Zayas were fighting long
after Miranda, Villacampa, and Mahy had been disposed of. But
difficulties remain, which could only be cleared up if we had a
report by Obispo. General Arteche thinks that the action began
fairly simultaneously all along the line, and follows Schepeler
in saying that Obispo was late (xi. p. 174), the very reverse of
Suchet’s statement that he came, and was beaten, too early.
The next advance was that of the two Valencian divisions under Charles
O’Donnell, who were a long way ahead of the main body of Mahy’s
Murcians, their destined reserve. Blake’s intention was apparently
to strike with his left wing first, and to force in the French right
before his own column delivered its blow. Everything depended on the
successful action of the mass of Valencian and Murcian infantry against
the small hostile force posted on the slopes of the Sancti Espiritus
hills.
The divisions of Miranda and Villacampa duly descended from the lower
opposite heights of the Germanels, crossed the bottom, and began to
mount the opposing slope, Villacampa on the left, somewhat in advance,
Miranda a little to his right rear: behind them in support marched San
Juan’s Valencian cavalry. Beyond the latter there was a considerable
gap to the nearest troops of Blake’s own column, which had not yet
come into action. Mahy, whose orders definitely said that he was to
act as a reserve, and to protect O’Donnell’s flank if the latter were
checked, occupied the Germanels, when the Valencians had gone on, and
was still at the top of his own slope, having to his left front the
two detached battalions at Cabezbort under O’Ronan, when the clash
came. Waiting till the two Valencian divisions and the cavalry in
support were some little way up the hill, and had begun to drive in
his skirmishers, Chlopiski moved down upon them with the whole of his
modest force--Robert’s five battalions in front, to the right of the
pass and the road, his own two battalions of the 44th to its left and
somewhat on the flank. Meanwhile Schiazzetti’s regiment of Italian
dragoons charged down the gap between the two bodies of infantry. As
Villacampa was somewhat ahead of Miranda, the first crash fell upon
him. Robert’s infantry drove him without any difficulty right downhill,
while the Italian dragoons rode at Miranda’s battalions on his right.
Villacampa’s men fell into hopeless confusion, but what was worse was
that Miranda’s division, seeing their comrades break, gave way before
the cavalry without making any resistance whatever, apparently before
the French 44th had even got into touch with them on the flank. This
was a disgraceful business: the 7,000 Valencian infantry, and the
1,700 cavalry in support, were routed in ten minutes by half their own
numbers--one good cavalry regiment of 450 sabres sufficed to upset a
whole division of seven battalions--if a single one of them had formed
a steady square, the Italian horse ought to have been driven off with
ease!
But this was not the end of the affair. San Juan’s horse were close
behind the routed divisions--O’Donnell ordered them up to save the
wrecks of his infantry: at the same time Mahy hurried forward two
battalions of his Murcians[28] to support San Juan, and began to
advance with the rest of his division down the slope of the Germanels
hill.
[28] Burgos and Tiradores de Cadiz.
After making havoc of the Valencian foot, Chlopiski had halted his
troops for a moment, wishing to be sure that matters were going well
with the French main body before he committed himself to any further
enterprise. But the temptation to go on was too great, for the routed
Spanish troops and their supports were weltering together in confusion
at the bottom of the hill. It is said that the dragoon colonel,
Schiazzetti, settled the matter for his superior, by charging at San
Juan’s horse the moment that he had got his squadrons re-formed. The
Valencian cavalry, though it outnumbered the Italians by two to one,
turned tail at once and bolted, riding over the two battalions of
Murcian infantry which were in its immediate rear, and carrying them
away in its panic. Chlopiski then led on his seven battalions against
the disordered mass in front of him, and swept the whole before him. It
gave way and fled uphill, horse and foot, the Murcian cavalry brigade
in reserve going off on the same panic-stricken way as the Valencian.
It was some time before Mahy could get a single regiment to stand--but
at last he found a sort of rearguard of two battalions (one of his
own, one of Villacampa’s[29]) which had kept together and were still
capable of obeying orders. The French were now exhausted; the infantry
could not follow in regular formation so fast as their enemy fled; the
handful of cavalry was dispersed, driving in prisoners on every side.
So Mahy and O’Donnell ultimately got off, with their men in a horde
scattered over the country-side--the cavalry leading the stampede and
the two rallied battalions bringing up the rear[30]. The Spanish left
wing lost over 2,000 prisoners, mainly from Miranda’s division, but
only some 400 killed and wounded; several guns from the divisional
batteries were of course lost. All this was over so early in the day
that the fighting on Blake’s right wing was at its hottest just when
the wrecks of his left were disappearing over the hills. Obispo, who
came up too late to help,[31] and the two detached battalions under
O’Ronan got off separately, more towards the north, retiring on Naquera.
[29] Cuenca and Molina.
[30] O’Ronan’s two battalions went off in a separate direction,
unpursued, and joined Obispo, not being in the rout.
[31] See above, page 36.
The tale of this part of the battle of Saguntum is lamentable.
There is no record so bad in the whole war: even the Gebora was a
well-contested fight compared with this--and at Belchite the army that
fled so easily gave way before numbers equal or superior to its own,
not inferior in the proportion of one to three. The fact was that the
Valencian troops had a long record of disasters behind them, were
thoroughly demoralized, and could not be trusted for one moment, and
that the Murcians (as Mahy confessed) were not much better. The defeat
was rendered more shameful by the fact that the smaller half of Blake’s
Army, the ‘Expeditionary Force,’ was at the same moment making head
in good style against numbers rather larger than its own, and seemed
for a moment about to achieve a splendid success. If the Spanish left,
17,000 strong, could have ‘contained’ half its own strength, if it
could have kept 8,000 instead of 4,000 French employed for one hour,
Blake might have relieved Saguntum and driven off Suchet. But the story
is disgraceful. Mahy wrote next morning to Blake, ‘I must tell you,
with my usual bluntness, that you had better sell the horses of this
cavalry, and draft the men into the infantry. I could not have believed
in the possibility of such conduct, if I had not seen it with my own
eyes take place and cost us so much[32].’ Blake actually gave orders
for one hussar regiment (a Murcian one) to be deprived of its horses
and drafted out. But did the infantry behave much better?
[32] Quoted in Arteche, xi. p. 178.
We may now turn to a less depressing narrative, the story of the
operations of Blake’s own wing. The Commander-in-Chief, as it will
be remembered, had with him the ‘Expeditionary Divisions,’ the
Valencian Reserve Division, and Loy’s and Caro’s 1,100 cavalry. He took
post himself on the height called El Puig, with one brigade of the
Valencians, to the south of the ravine of the Picador, which crosses
the plain in a diagonal direction. The rest of the troops went forward
in two columns: Zayas formed the right near the sea; his flank was
covered by a squadron of gunboats, which advanced parallel with him,
as near the shore as their draught permitted. He was ordered to push
on and get, if possible, round Suchet’s flank, where Habert’s line
was ‘refused,’ because of the guns of the flotilla, whose fire the
French wished to avoid. If successful Zayas was to try to communicate
with the garrison of Saguntum. Further inland Lardizabal’s division,
accompanied by the 1,100 cavalry, and followed by the other brigade
of the Valencian reserve, crossed the Picador at the bridge on the
_chaussée_, and deployed in the plain, directly opposite Harispe’s
division. The whole force was about equal to the French opposed to it.
The two ‘Expeditionary Divisions’ went forward in good order and with
great confidence: Suchet remarks in his _Mémoires_ that in all his
previous campaigns he had never seen Spanish troops advance with such
resolution or in such good order[33]. Zayas, on the sea-flank, became
immediately engaged with Habert, before the village of Puzzol, in a
heavy fight, with exactly equal numbers--each had about 2,500 men.
Both sides lost heavily, and neither had any advantage: Suchet had
ordered Habert not to take the offensive till matters were settled in
the centre, but the defensive proved costly, and the Spaniards pushed
on--these were the same battalions which had behaved so well on the
hill of Albuera--Irlanda, Patria, and the Spanish and Walloon Guards.
[33] _Mémoires_, ii. p. 182.
Further to the left Lardizabal had deployed, after crossing the ravine,
with his two weak brigades in line; the Valencian reserve remained
behind near the bridge, but Loy’s and Caro’s cavalry came forward on
the right in support. Opposite the front brigade (Prieto’s) was a long
low mound, the last outlying spur of the Sancti Espiritus range. This
was soon seen by both sides to be a point of vantage--the army that
could occupy it would have a good artillery position commanding the
hostile line. Suchet ordered up Harispe’s right battalions to seize
it, and galloped thither in person at the head of his escort of fifty
hussars. But the Spaniards had also marked it, and the Marshal had
hardly reached its top when he found Prieto’s skirmishers swarming up
the slope. He had to retire, and rode back to bring up his infantry;
but, by the time that they had come forward, the enemy had formed a
hasty line of battle along the mound, with a battery in its centre.
Suchet had therefore to attack--which he did in full force, the four
battalions of the 7th Line forming a heavy column in the centre, while
those of the 116th and the 3rd of the Vistula deployed on each side
somewhat to the rear--a clear instance of the use of the _ordre mixte_
which Napoleon loved. The left flank was covered by two squadrons of
the 4th Hussars and one of the 13th Cuirassiers, brought out from the
reserve.
This was bringing 3,600 bayonets to bear against 1,500, for Prieto’s
brigade counted no more upon the mound. The attack was successful, but
not without severe loss: General Paris, leading on the 7th regiment,
was wounded, as were both his aides-de-camp, and Harispe’s horse was
killed under him; the Spanish artillery fire had been deadly. When
the mound was stormed, the Spanish infantry were forced back, but by
no means in disorder. They formed up again not far from its foot,
and Lardizabal brought up his second brigade to support his first,
placed two batteries in line, and stood to fight again. Suchet, having
re-formed Harispe’s men, found that he had before him a second combat
on the flat ground. The infantry on both sides were heavily engaged,
and six French guns had been brought forward to enfilade Lardizabal’s
right, when a new turn was given to the battle. The Spanish general
ordered Loy’s and Caro’s 1,100 cavalry to charge in mass upon the three
squadrons of hussars and cuirassiers which covered Harispe’s left.
The move was an unexpected one, and was concealed for some time by
scattered carob-trees: the attack was well delivered, and the French
horse, outnumbered by more than two to one, were completely routed and
fled in disorder. Loy then wheeled in upon the French flank, captured
three guns of the battery there placed, and nearly broke the 116th of
the Line, which had only just time to fall back and form itself _en
potence_ to the rest of the division. The remainder of the Spanish
cavalry pursued the retreating hussars.
The moment looked black for the Marshal: he himself confesses in his
_Mémoires_ that if Harispe’s infantry had given way the battle might
have been lost[34]. But he had still a reserve: he sent back orders to
Palombini to bring up Saint Paul’s four Italian battalions into the
gap, and rode himself to the two squadrons of the 13th Cuirassiers
which had not yet advanced into the fight. They were only 350 sabres,
but the regiment was a fine one, and had won, at Margalef and other
fields, a great confidence in its ability to face long odds. They were
launched straight at the victorious Spanish cavalry, whose main body
was advancing in great disorder, and with its line broken by the groves
of carob-trees, while the remainder had turned inward against the
French infantry. The cuirassiers went straight through the squadrons
opposed to them, and swept them away: whereupon even those units of the
Spanish horse which had not been attacked wheeled round, and retreated
hastily toward the Picador ravine and its bridge. The cuirassiers
followed, upsetting everything in their front, and only halted on
the edge of the ravine, where they were checked by the fire of the
battery attached to the Valencian reserve, and the skirmishers of that
body, who had lined the farther edge of the depression[35]. Both the
Spanish brigadiers, Loy and Caro, had behaved very gallantly; both were
severely wounded, while trying to rally their men, and were left on the
field as prisoners.
[34] _Mémoires_, ii. p. 185.
[35] This account of the charge of the cuirassiers comes from
the _Mémoires_ of Colonel de Gonneville, who commanded their
leading squadron. There is a curious point to be settled here.
Marshal Suchet says (_Mémoires_, ii. p. 185) that he rode in
person to the head of the regiment, and harangued it shortly on
Margalef and other ancient glories, before bidding it charge.
While speaking he was struck by a spent ball on the shoulder.
But de Gonneville (who had read Suchet’s book, as he quotes
it in other places) says distinctly (p. 208 of his _Souvenirs
militaires_) that he received no orders, and charged on his own
responsibility. ‘N’ayant là d’ordre à recevoir de personne,
mais comprenant la nécessité d’arrêter cette masse de cavalerie
qui arrivait à nous, &c. ... je donnai le signal.’ Was Suchet
romancing about his little speech? Or was de Gonneville, who
wrote his _Mémoires_ forty years later, oblivious? Either
hypothesis is difficult.
The defeat of the Spanish horse settled the day, which had for a moment
looked doubtful. At the sight of the French hussars breaking, and the
advance of their own line, the garrison of Saguntum, who had the whole
field in view from their lofty perch, had lined their walls, cheering
and waving their shakos in the air--despite of the shells from the
siege-batteries which continued to play upon them. The cheers died down
as the changed fortunes of the day became visible, and hearts sank in
the fortress. But the fighting was not yet concluded.
[Illustration: SAGUNTUM]
The rout of Loy’s and Caro’s horse had not directly affected
Lardizabal’s infantry, for the victorious cuirassiers had galloped
straight before them after the fugitives, though they had also ridden
over and captured a Spanish battery on the right of the line of
deployed battalions. The decisive blow in this quarter was given by
Saint Paul’s Italians, who, issuing from olive groves behind Harispe’s
left, came in upon the unprotected flank of Lardizabal’s troops, which
they rolled up, driving away at the same time a few squadrons which
had not been affected by the charge of the cuirassiers. These last
rode in among their own infantry, which was already hotly engaged
with Harispe’s battalions, and carried confusion down the line. The
division, which had hitherto fought most gallantly, gave way, and
retired in confusion towards the bridge over the Picador, and the
Cartuja where Lardizabal hoped to sustain himself by means of the
battery and the Valencian reserve battalions which he left there.
Meanwhile Blake, from the summit of the knoll of El Puig, had witnessed
with impotent grief the rout of his right centre. He had placed himself
so far to the rear that no orders which he sent reached Lardizabal in
time, and the reserve which he had kept under his own hand, three raw
Valencian battalions and a battery, would have been too weak to save
the day, even if it had not been so far--two miles--from the central
focus of the fight as to make its arrival in time quite impossible.
The General, from the moment that he had given the original order to
advance, exercised no influence whatever on the operations; one of his
staff says that he sat on his horse in blank and stupid amazement at
the rout, and that some of those who watched him thought him wanting in
personal courage no less than in decision[36]. But at last he roused
himself to issue orders for the retreat of his broken left and centre
towards Valencia, and for the instant withdrawal of his still intact
right wing.
[36] Schepeler, p. 473.
Here Zayas’s division stood in a most difficult place, for though
it had been contending on equal terms with Habert’s in front of the
village of Puzzol, it is one thing to keep up a standing fight, and
another to withdraw from it with a victorious enemy pushing in upon the
flank. However, Zayas ordered his battalions back, and though pressed
by Habert, brought them in good order across the ravine and back to
the height of El Puig, where Blake stood waiting him with his small
reserve. Only one corps, the Walloon Guards, had thrown itself into
the houses of Puzzol, could not be extracted from them in time, and
was surrounded and captured. But this small disaster did much to save
the rest of the division, for so many of the French closed in upon the
village, where the Walloons made a good stand, that the pursuit was not
so hotly pushed as it might have been. If Suchet could have pressed
in upon Blake before Zayas joined him, the whole Spanish right column
might have been completely cut off from its retreat. But the Marshal
required some leisure to rearrange his line, after routing Lardizabal;
and by the time that he had sent off the rallied 4th Hussars to help
Chlopiski gather in prisoners, and had turned the Italians aside to
march against Blake, with Harispe in support, nearly two hours had gone
by, and the Spanish right, molested only by Habert, was drawing off
towards safety. Following the road along the sea-shore, it reached the
suburbs of Valencia without any further loss.
Not so the unfortunate remnant of Lardizabal’s troops. They had halted
at the Cartuja, behind the Picador, while their general strove to
rally them on the reserve there left. This delay, though soldier-like
and proper, enabled Suchet to catch them up: he charged them with his
last fresh regiment, the 24th Dragoons, which had been kept in hand,
apparently behind Habert’s position, till the retreat of the Spanish
right began. Then, attacking along the high-road, these squadrons broke
in upon the half-rallied troops, swept them away, and captured two
guns put in battery across the _chaussée_, and badly supported by the
Valencian reserve battalions. Lardizabal’s column went off in great
disorder, and was hunted as far as the Caraixet stream, losing many
prisoners to the dragoons, as well as four flags.
So ended the day; the loss of the Spaniards was not very heavy in
killed and wounded--about 1,000 it is said, mainly in Lardizabal’s
and Zayas’s divisions--for the others did not stand to fight. But
of prisoners they lost 4,641, including 230 officers and the two
wounded cavalry brigadiers. Miranda’s division contributed the
largest proportion to the captives, though Zayas lost 400 men of the
Walloon battalion, and Lardizabal a still greater number out of his
weak division of 3,000 bayonets[37]. Twelve guns were left behind,
seven captured in the hard fighting in the right centre, five from
O’Donnell’s easily-routed divisions. The French casualties are given by
Suchet at about 130 killed and 590 wounded--probably an understatement,
as the regimental returns show 55 officers hit, which at the ordinary
rate of casualties should imply over 1,000 rank and file disabled.
As a commentary on the fighting, it may be remarked that Chlopiski
and Robert, in dealing with Obispo, O’Donnell, and Mahy, had only 7
officers _hors de combat_, while Harispe and Habert lost 41 in the real
fight with Zayas and Lardizabal[38].
[37] 2nd of Badajoz (two battalions) was almost exterminated,
losing 17 officers, 21 sergeants, and 500 men, ‘mostly
prisoners,’ out of 800 present. See its history in the Conde de
Clonard’s great work on the Spanish army.
[38] The 16th Line (three battalions) alone, in fighting Zayas,
lost just double as many officers as the seven battalions of
Chlopiski and Robert in their engagement with Mahy, Miranda, and
Villacampa!
The actual losses in action were not the worst part of the battle
of Saguntum--the real disaster was the plain demonstration that the
Valencian troops could not stand even against very inferior numbers.
It was to no purpose that the two gallant ‘Expeditionary Divisions’
had sacrificed themselves, and lost one man in three out of their
small force of 5,500 men in hard fighting. They had been betrayed by
their worthless associates on the left. Blake’s generalship had not
been good--he dispersed his columns in the most reckless way, and kept
no sufficient reserves--but with the odds in his favour of 27,000
men to 14,000, he ought yet to have won, if the larger half of his
army had consented to fight. They did not: with such troops no more
could be hoped from further battles in the open field--whatever the
numerical odds might be. They could at most be utilized behind walls
and entrenchments, for purely passive defence. And this, as we shall
see, was the deduction that their general made from the unhappy events
of October 25.
Next morning Suchet sent in a summons to the garrison of Saguntum, and
the governor, Andriani, after short haggling for terms, surrendered.
He is not to be blamed: his garrison had seen the rout of Blake’s army
with their own eyes, and knew that there was no more hope for them.
They were, as we have seen, mainly raw troops, and their good bearing
up to this moment, rather than their demoralization after the battle,
should provoke notice. The French approaches were by this time within
a few yards of the Dos Mayo redoubt and its hastily patched breaches.
The artillery fire of the besiegers was rapidly levelling the whole
work, and the next storm, made on a wide front of shattered curtain,
must have succeeded. It is true that a governor of the type of Alvarez
of Gerona would then have held out for some time in the castle of San
Fernando. But Andriani’s troops were not like those of Alvarez, and he
himself was a good soldier, but not a fanatical genius. Two thousand
three hundred prisoners marched out on the 26th, leaving not quite 200
men in hospital behind them. The 17 guns of the fortress were many of
them damaged, and the store of shot and shell was very low, though
there were plenty of infantry cartridges left[39].
[39] For details see Belmas, iv. pp. 140-3.
SECTION XXX: CHAPTER III
THE CAPTURE OF VALENCIA AND OF BLAKE’S ARMY. NOVEMBER 1811-JANUARY 1812
As the result of the disastrous battle of Saguntum Blake had lost the
fortress which had served him so well as an outwork: while his field
army was much decreased in numbers, and still more in self-confidence.
It was obviously impossible that he should ever again attempt to take
the offensive with it. But he was still in possession of Valencia
and all its resources, and his carefully fortified lines along the
Guadalaviar were so strong that even a defeated army could make some
stand behind them. He had still, after all his losses, more than 22,000
men under arms[40]. Yet it is doubtful whether a resolute push on the
part of the enemy would not have dislodged him, for more than half his
army was in a state of complete demoralization.
[40] A battalion or two left in Valencia, when the rest of the
army went out to deliver Saguntum, must be added to the 20,000
men who came back from the battle. These corps were 2nd of Leon
of Lardizabal’s division, and one battalion of Savoya belonging
to Miranda.
Suchet, however, had made up his mind not to strike at once; and when a
few days had passed, and the Spaniards had been granted time to settle
down into the lines, it would undoubtedly have been hazardous to attack
them with the very modest numbers that the Army of Aragon had still
in line. The chance would have been to press the pursuit hard, on the
very day after the battle. But when the Marshal had counted up his
losses in the trenches and the field, had deducted a small garrison
for Saguntum, and had detached a brigade to escort to Tortosa his
numerous prisoners, he thought himself too weak for a decisive blow.
He would not have had 15,000 men in hand, unless he should call up
Ficatier’s brigade from Segorbe and Oropesa, and this he did not want
to do, as he was entirely dependent for food and stores on the line of
communication which Ficatier was guarding. Accordingly he resolved to
defer his next blow at Blake, till he should have summoned from Aragon
Severoli’s division, and Reille’s too, if the Emperor would give him
leave to requisition that force. He could not utilize Reille without
that leave; but Severoli’s troops belonged to his own army, and were at
his disposition, if he should judge it possible to draw them southward
without endangering the safety of Aragon. This he was prepared to do,
if a sufficient garrison for that province could be provided from
another source. And the only obvious source was the Army of the North:
if the Emperor would consent to order Dorsenne to find troops to make
Saragossa and the line of the Ebro secure, it would not be over rash to
borrow both Severoli and Reille for operations against Valencia. But it
was clear that it would take some weeks for the permission to be sent
from Paris, and for the troops of the Army of the North to be moved,
when and if the permission was granted. We shall see, as a matter of
fact, that it was not till the end of December, two full months after
the battle of Saguntum, that the two divisions were collected on the
desired ground, and the final blow against Blake was delivered.
Meanwhile Suchet could do no more than place his divisions in the
most favourable position for making the advance that would only be
possible when Severoli, and perhaps Reille also, should arrive. With
this object he pushed them forward on November 3 to the line of the
Guadalaviar, close in front of Blake’s long series of entrenchments.
Harispe on the right advanced to Paterna, Habert on the left to the
close neighbourhood of Valencia. He drove the Spanish outposts from
the outlying suburb of Serranos, which lay beyond the lines and on
the north side of the river, and also from the Grao, or port and mole
which forms the outlet of Valencia to the sea. It was most unlucky for
Blake, in the end, that his natural line of communication with the
Mediterranean and the English fleet lay north of the Guadalaviar, and
outside his line of fortifications. Indeed it looks as if there was a
cardinal fault in the planning of the defences when the Grao was left
outside them, for though rather remote from the city (two miles) it
would be of inestimable importance, supposing that the French were
to succeed in crossing the Guadalaviar and investing Valencia. With
the port safe, the defenders could receive succour and supplies to
any extent, and if finally reduced to extremity could retreat by sea.
Some of the energy which had been expended in throwing up the immense
fortified camp which embraced all the southern suburbs, and in lining
the river westward with batteries, might well have been diverted to
the fortification of the Grao and its connexion with the works of the
city. But probably Blake, in his looking forward to the possible events
of the future, did not contemplate among the contingencies to be faced
that of his being shut up with the greater part of his army within the
walls of Valencia. If he were forced from the lines of the Guadalaviar,
he must have intended to fall back inland or southward, and not to
allow himself to be surrounded in the capital. Otherwise it would
have been absolutely insane for him to leave unfortified, and abandon
without a struggle, Valencia’s sole outlet to the sea.
Meanwhile finding himself for week after week unassailed in his lines,
Blake had to take stock of his position, and see if there was anything
that he could do to avert the attack which must come one day, and
which would obviously be formidable. For it had become known to him,
ere long, that Severoli’s division, and probably other troops, were
working in towards Valencia, and would certainly join Suchet before
the winter was over. The only expedients of which Blake made use were
to keep masses of men continuously at work strengthening his lines,
and to renew the attempt, which he had made fruitlessly in September,
for loosing Suchet’s hold on Valencia by launching against his rear
the irregulars of Aragon--the bands of the Empecinado, Duran, and the
minor chiefs. To add some solidity to their hordes he detached from
his army the Conde de Montijo, with one of the two brigades which Mahy
had brought from Murcia. This turbulent nobleman, more noted for his
intrigues than for his fighting power, was given a general command
over all the bands, and marched to join them with three battalions[41]
and a few guns--the latter provision was intended to obviate the
difficulty which the irregulars had experienced in October from their
want of artillery. Blake intended to call up Freire from Murcia with
another draft from the depleted ‘Third Army,’ whose best troops Mahy
had already led to Valencia. But, as we shall see, this detachment
was presently distracted to another quarter, and never joined the
main force. The nominal strength of the mass of troops along the
Guadalaviar was, however, increased by degrees, owing to the filling
of the ranks of the divisions cut up at Saguntum by men from the
half-trained reserve and dépôts. Miranda’s division in particular,
which had lost so many prisoners in the battle, was completed to more
than its original strength by absorbing three raw ‘third battalions’
from the ‘Reserve Division,’ besides other drafts[42]. Blake also
endeavoured to make use of ‘urban guards’ and other levies of irregular
organization and more than doubtful value: the population in the north
of the kingdom, behind Suchet’s lines, were invited to form guerrillero
bands: but the Valencians never showed the zeal or energy of the
Catalans and Aragonese. The bands that appeared were few in numbers,
and accomplished nothing of note. Indeed, it appears that the patriotic
spirit of the province had run low. Mahy, in a letter to Blake of
this month, complains bitterly that the peasantry refuse to convey
letters for him, or even to give him information as to the position
and movements of the French, while he knew that hundreds of them were
visiting Suchet’s camps daily in friendly fashion[43]. It appears that
the people were sick of the war, and discontented with Blake, whose
conduct to the local authorities was even more injurious to him than
the uniform failure of all his military operations.