[41] One battalion each of Badajoz, Burgos, and Tiradores de

Cuenca--under 2,000 men in all.

[42] Four thousand strong at Saguntum, it surrendered on January

8th, 5,513 strong. Of its quality, the less said the better.

[43] Mahy to Blake quoted at length in Arteche, xi. p. 196,

footnote.

The diversion to be conducted by Montijo and the irregulars in Aragon

constituted the only real hope of salvation for Blake and the city of

Valencia. But it was, we may say, doomed from the first to failure,

unless some favourable chance should intervene. A couple of thousand

regulars, with the aid of guerrillero bands, hard to assemble, and not

mustering at any time more than 6,000 or 7,000 men collected on one

spot, were sent to paralyse the movements of more than 20,000 French.

For to that figure Reille’s and Severoli’s divisions, together with

the original garrison left in Aragon under Musnier, most certainly

amounted. It cannot be denied that the diversion gave much trouble to

the enemy, but it never prevented him from executing any operation of

primary importance. On October 27th the Italian general, Mazzuchelli,

with one of Severoli’s brigades, drove off the Empecinado, and relieved

the long-besieged garrison of Molina, which he brought off, abandoning

the castle. But as he was returning to his chief, who then lay at

Daroca, the Empecinado fell on his marching column in the Pass of

Cubillejo, and inflicted severe damage upon it[44]. Severoli then sent

out a second column of 800 men, to relieve Almunia, on the road to

Saragossa, another outlying garrison. But Duran surprised and scattered

this party just as it reached its destination, and then captured the

fort with its garrison of 140 men (October 31). This provoked the enemy

to march against him in force, whereupon, after fighting an obstinate

engagement with Mazzuchelli near Almunia, in which the Italians lost

220 men, he turned sideways, and descended upon Daroca, which his

adversary had left weakly manned; he stormed the town and laid siege to

the fort. This brought down upon him Pannetier, with one of Reille’s

brigades: thereupon, wisely refusing to fight, Duran went up into the

mountains of Molina (November 1811).

[44] For details see Vacani, v. pp. 470-1.

Here he was joined some weeks later by the regular brigade under the

Conde de Montijo, which Blake had sent up from Valencia. This little

detachment had threaded its way among Reille’s columns, and had

narrowly escaped destruction near Albarracin. The Conde, assuming chief

command at the high-lying village of Mulmarcos, informed the Aragonese

guerrilleros that something desperate must be done, to relieve the

pressure on Valencia; and after sending for the Empecinado, who was

now beyond the mountains, in the province of Guadalajara, marched on

Calatayud. Unfortunately the Partida chiefs, accustomed to conduct

their expeditions on their own responsibility, viewed the advent of

Montijo, a stranger of no great military reputation, with jealousy

and dislike. Duran and the Conde having reached Ateca near Calatayud,

committed themselves to a serious combat with a column of 2,000 men

from its garrison, having every expectation of being succoured by the

Empecinado, who had reached their neighbourhood. He did not appear,

however, and they were repulsed. Thereupon the Spaniards parted, the

Conde and the regulars retiring to Torrehermosa, Duran to Deza, in the

province of Soria. The Empecinado, when all was over, sent in a letter

in which he explained that he had held off ‘because his officers and

soldiers had no confidence save in their own chief:’ but it was clear

that he himself wrecked the expedition out of self-willed indiscipline.

The month of December was now far advanced, and nothing effective

had been done to help Blake. The Aragonese bands had cost Reille and

Severoli many toilsome marches, and had inflicted on them appreciable

losses--Severoli’s division was now 2,000 men weaker than it had

been in September. But they had failed entirely to stop the larger

movements of the enemy, who was able to move wherever he pleased with

a column of 3,000 men, though any lesser force was always in danger of

being harried or even destroyed. When Suchet determined that he would

again risk trouble in his rear, and would bring both the divisions

from the Ebro down to Valencia, no one could prevent him from doing

so. It is true that Severoli and Reille were leaving behind them a

country-side still infested by an active and obstinate enemy. But if

their generalissimo judged that he was prepared to take this risk, and

was determined to crush Blake before he completed the subjugation of

Upper Aragon, there was nothing that could hinder him from carrying out

his intention. By the middle of December Severoli was on his way to

the Guadalaviar by way of Teruel, and Reille followed not far behind,

though one of his brigades (Bourke’s) had been distracted, by being

ordered to conduct the prisoners from Saguntum to the French frontier,

and the other (Pannetier’s) had been drawn so far northward in hunting

Montijo and Duran that it was several marches behind the leading

columns.

It was not, however, Reille and Severoli alone who were set in motion

for the ruin of Blake and Valencia. Nor was Suchet’s mind the final

controlling force of the operations which were to spread all over

eastern Spain in the months of December 1811 and January 1812. The

Emperor, when he hurried the Army of Aragon forward in September, had

explained that this was the crucial point of the war, and repeated in

November that ‘l’important, dans ce moment, est la prise de Valence.’

Portugal could wait--Wellington, with 18,000 men sick, and forced to

remain on the defensive,--was a negligible quantity during the winter:

he should be dealt with in the spring by a general combination of

all the French armies[45]. Acting on this comfortable but erroneous

hypothesis, Napoleon determined to shift eastward and southward not

only Reille and Severoli, but other troops from the armies which were

directly or indirectly opposed to Wellington, so as to alter for a

time the general balance of forces on the Portuguese side of the

Peninsula. On October 18th, before the battle of Saguntum had been

fought and won, Berthier had been directed to write to Marmont that,

for the support of the invasion of Valencia, King Joseph and the Army

of the Centre would be ordered to send troops to Cuenca, to take Blake

in the rear. In consequence the Army of Portugal must ‘facilitate the

task of the King,’ i. e. find detachments to occupy those parts of New

Castile from which Joseph would have to withdraw the normal garrison

for his expedition to Cuenca. But presently it became evident that the

Army of the Centre would have great difficulty in providing a column

strong enough to make this diversion, even if it were relieved in La

Mancha, or the province of Toledo, by units belonging to Marmont.

Napoleon then made the all-important determination to borrow troops

from the Army of Portugal for the Valencian expedition. By this time

he knew of the battle of Saguntum, and had received Suchet’s appeals

for reinforcements. His dispatch to Marmont of November 20th informs

the Marshal that he must provide a division of 6,000 men of all arms,

to join the disposable force which King Joseph can spare for the

assistance of Suchet. The still more important dispatch of the next day

varied the orders in an essential detail, by saying that the Marshal

must send not ‘a detachment of 6,000 men’ but _such a force as, united

to the column supplied by King Joseph, would provide a total of 12,000

men for the diversion_.’ And it was added that, in addition, the Army

of Portugal would have to find 3,000 or 4,000 men more, to keep up the

communications of the expeditionary force with its base in New Castile.

The detachment might be made without any fear of adverse consequences,

since Wellington had 20,000 men in hospital, and barely as many in

a state to take the field, so no risk would be run in depleting the

force opposed to him [46]. Napoleon, conveniently ignoring the exact

wording of his own dispatch, reproached Marmont (when evil results had

followed) for having detached ‘an army corps and thirty guns’ for the

diversion, instead of ‘a light flying column.[47]’ But it will be seen

that the Marshal was literally obeying the orders given him when he

moved 12,000 men towards Valencia. For the Army of the Centre provided

not much more than 3,000 men under General d’Armagnac for the Cuenca

expedition[48], and Marmont had, therefore, to find 9,000 men to bring

it up to the strength which the Emperor prescribed, as well as the

3,000-4,000 men to cover the line of communications.

[45] _Correspondance de Napoléon_, 18,267, and cf. pp. 590-2 of

vol. iv of this work.

[46] See these dispatches printed in full in Marmont’s

_Mémoires_, iv. pp. 256-8. This wording is most important and

should be studied with care. Note that Wellington’s sick have

gone up from 18,000 to 20,000 in twenty-four hours, to oblige the

Emperor.

[47] Berthier to Marmont, January 23, 1812. Printed in the

latter’s _Mémoires_, iv. pp. 297-9.

[48] Though King Joseph had said that if Marmont took over the

whole of La Mancha, he could then reinforce d’Armagnac up to

8,000 men. This he never really accomplished (Joseph to Berthier,

Nov. 26).

All these dispatches reached Marmont’s head-quarters at Plasencia with

the tardiness that was normal in Spain, where officers bearing orders

had to be escorted by detachments many hundreds strong, supposing

that their certain arrival at their destination was desired. If they

travelled rapidly and unescorted, they became the inevitable prey of

the guerrilleros. The dispatch of October 18th, saying that Marmont

must replace King Joseph’s garrisons in La Mancha, came to hand on

November 11, and the Marshal accordingly directed Foy’s division, then

at Toledo, to break itself up and occupy the various posts which the

German division of the Army of the Centre had been holding. Foy set out

to fulfil these orders on November 22.

The Emperor’s second and third dispatches, those of November 20-21st,

turned up on December 13th[49], and Marmont found himself under orders

to find 9,000 men for the Cuenca expedition,--since d’Armagnac had

only 3,000 men to contribute--and in addition 3,000-4,000 more for

the line of communications. Now the Marshal was as fully convinced

as his master that Wellington was not in a condition to move, or to

do any serious harm, and under this impression, and being probably

stirred (as Napoleon afterwards remarked)[50] by the desire to increase

his own reputation by a dashing feat of arms, he resolved to take

charge of the expedition in person. He ordered that the divisions

of Foy and Sarrut--both weak units, the one of eight, the other of

nine battalions[51]--and Montbrun’s light cavalry should prepare to

march under his own charge to join d’Armagnac, and move on Valencia.

Another division should come into La Mancha to take up the cantonments

evacuated by Foy, and keep over the line of communications. Clausel

should be left in charge of the remainder of the army, and observe

Wellington.

[49] Date fixed by Marmont’s letter to Berthier of Feb. 6.

[50] ‘Sa Majesté (writes Berthier) pense que, dans cette

circonstance, vous avez plus calculé votre gloire personnelle que

le bien de son service,’ Jan. 23, letter quoted above on the last

page.

[51] Each division had about 4,000 or 4,500 men: the light

cavalry about 1,700, so the whole would have made about 10,000

sabres and bayonets.

This scheme was never carried out, for on December 20 Marmont received

another dispatch, ordering him to transfer his head-quarters to

Valladolid, and to move a large part of his army into Old Castile. Of

this more hereafter. But being thus prevented (for his own good fortune

as it turned out) from going on the expedition, he gave over Foy’s and

Sarrut’s divisions to Montbrun, and bade him execute the diversion. He

himself went, as ordered, to Valladolid. If he had received the last

dispatch a little later, or had started a little earlier, he would have

been put in the ignominious position of being absent from his own point

of danger, when Wellington suddenly struck at Ciudad Rodrigo in the

early days of January.

Montbrun, his substitute, had drawn together his forces in La Mancha by

the 29th of December, but receiving from d’Armagnac, who was already

on the move with 3,000 men, the assurance that the road from Cuenca to

Valencia was practically impassable at midwinter, and that he could

certainly get no guns along it, he resolved to take another route

towards the scene of active operations. Accordingly he set out to march

by the road San Clemente, Chinchilla, Almanza, which runs across the

upland plain of La Mancha and Northern Murcia, and does not cross rough

ground till it nears the descent to the sea-coast on the borders of

Valencia. The column did not leave San Clemente and El Probencio till

January 2, and (as we shall see) was too late to help Suchet, who had

brought matters to a head long before it drew near him.

Meanwhile d’Armagnac, though his force was trifling[52], had been of

far greater use. He had reoccupied Cuenca, but finding (as he had

informed Montbrun) that the roads in that direction were impracticable,

had swerved southward, avoiding the mountains, and getting to Tarazona

in La Mancha, marched towards the passes of the Cabriel River, and the

road on to Valencia by way of Requeña. His approach being reported to

Blake, who had no troops in this direction save two battalions under

Bassecourt, the Captain-General was seized with a natural disquietude

as to his rear, for he had no accurate knowledge of the French

strength. Wherefore he directed General Freire, with the succours which

he had been intending to draw up from Murcia, to abandon the idea of

reinforcing the main army, and to throw himself between d’Armagnac and

Valencia [November 20]. The French general, beating the country on

all sides, and thrusting before him Bassecourt’s small force and the

local guerrilleros, marched as far as Yniesta, and forced the passage

of the Cabriel at Valdecañas, but finding that he had got far away

from Montbrun, who did not march till many days after he himself had

started, and being informed that Freire, with a very large force, was

coming in upon his rear, he stopped before reaching Requeña and turned

back towards La Mancha[53]. He had succeeded, however, in preventing

Freire from reinforcing Valencia, and the Murcian succours never got

near to Blake. He even for a time distracted troops from the main

Spanish army, for Zayas was sent for some days to Requeña, and only

returned just in time for the operations that began on December 25th.

The net outcome, therefore, of Montbrun’s and d’Armagnac’s operations

was simply to distract Freire’s division from Valencia at the critical

moment--an appreciable but not a decisive result.

[52] Apparently four or five battalions of the German division

gathered from La Mancha, and a brigade of dragoons. Joseph calls

it in his _Correspondance_ 3,000 men, when describing this

operation (Joseph to Berthier, Nov. 12, 1811).

[53] D’Armagnac’s obscure campaign will be found chronicled

in detail in the narrative of the Baden officer, Riegel, iii.

pp. 357-60, who shared in it along with the rest of the German

division from La Mancha.

Meanwhile Suchet found himself able to deliver his decisive blow on the

Guadalaviar. By his orders Severoli and Reille had drawn southward by

way of Teruel, deliberately abandoning most of Aragon to the mercy of

the insurgent bands; for though Caffarelli had moved some battalions

of the Army of the North to Saragossa and the posts along the Ebro,

the rest of the province was left most inadequately guarded by the

small force that had originally been committed to Musnier’s charge,

when first Suchet marched on Valencia. Musnier himself accompanied

Severoli’s division, leaving his detachments under Caffarelli’s orders,

for he had been directed to come to the front and assume the command

of his old brigades, those of Ficatier and Robert, both now with the

main army. When Reille and the Italians marched south, Aragon was

exposed to the inroads of Montijo, Duran, the Empecinado, and Mina,

all of whom had been harried, but by no means crushed, by the late

marches and countermarches of the French. That trouble would ensue both

Napoleon and Suchet were well aware. But the Emperor had made up his

mind that all other considerations were to be postponed to the capture

of Valencia and the destruction of Blake’s army. When these ends were

achieved, not only Reille and Severoli, but other troops as well,

should be drawn northwards, to complete the pacification of Aragon, and

to make an end of the lingering war in Catalonia.

Severoli had reached Teruel on November 30, but was ordered to await

the junction of Reille’s troops, and these were still far off. Indeed

Reille himself only started from Saragossa with Bourke’s brigade on

December 10th, and Pannetier’s brigade (which had been hunting Duran in

the mountains) was two long marches farther behind. Without waiting for

its junction, Severoli and Reille marched from Teruel on December 20th,

and reached Segorbe unopposed on the 24th. Here they were in close

touch with Suchet, and received orders to make a forced march to join

him, as he intended to attack the lines of the Guadalaviar on the 26th.

To them was allotted the most important move in the game, for they were

to cross the Guadalaviar high up, beyond the westernmost of Blake’s

long string of batteries and earthworks, and to turn his flank and get

in his rear, while the Army of Aragon assailed his front, and held him

nailed to his positions by a series of vigorous attacks. The point on

which Reille and Severoli were to march was Ribaroja, fifteen miles

up-stream from Valencia.

When the two divisions from Aragon should have arrived, Suchet could

count on 33,000 men in line, but as Pannetier was still labouring up

two marches in the rear, it was really with 30,000 only that he struck

his blow--a force exceeding that which Blake possessed by not more

than 6,000 or 7,000 bayonets. Considering the strength of the Spanish

fortifications the task looked hazardous: but Suchet was convinced,

and rightly, that the greater part of the Army of Valencia was still

so much demoralized that much might be dared against it: and the event

proved him wise.

On the night of December 25th all the divisions of the Army of Aragon

had abandoned their cantonments, and advanced towards the Spanish

lines--Habert on the left next the sea; Palombini to the west of

Valencia, opposite the village of Mislata; Harispe and Musnier farther

up-stream, opposite Quarte. The cavalry accompanied this last column.

Reille and Severoli, on their arrival, were to form the extreme

right of the line, and would extend far beyond the last Spanish

entrenchments. The weak Neapolitan division alone (now not much over

1,000 strong) was to keep quiet, occupying the entrenched position in

the suburb of Serranos, which faced the city of Valencia. Its only duty

was to hold on to its works, in case Blake should try a sortie at this

spot, with the purpose of breaking the French line in two. That such

a weak force was left to discharge such an important function, is a

sufficient proof of Suchet’s belief in Blake’s incapacity to take the

offensive.

The lines which the French were about to assail were rather long than

strong, despite of the immense amount of labour that had been lavished

on them during the last three months. Their extreme right, on the side

of the sea, and by the mouth of the Guadalaviar was a redoubt (named

after the Lazaretto hard by) commanding the estuary: from thence a

long line of earthworks continued the defences as far as the slight

hill of Monte Oliveto, which guarded the right flank of the great

entrenched camp of which the city formed the nucleus. Here there was

a fort outside the walls, and connected with them by a ditch and a

bastioned line of earthworks, reaching as far as the citadel at the

north-east corner of the town. From thence the line of resistance

for some way was formed of the mediaeval wall of Valencia itself,

thirty feet high and ten thick. It was destitute of a parapet broad

enough to bear guns: but the Spaniards had built up against its back,

at irregular distances, scaffolding of heavy beams, and terraces of

earth, on which a certain amount of cannon were mounted. The gates were

protected by small advanced works, mounting artillery. Blake had made

Valencia and its three outlying southern and western suburbs of Ruzafa,

San Vincente, and Quarte into a single place of defence, by building

around those suburbs a great line of earthworks and batteries. It was

an immense work consisting of bastioned entrenchments provided with

a ditch eighteen feet deep, and filled in some sections with water.

From the city the line of defence along the river continued as far

as the village of Manises, with an unbroken series of earthworks and

batteries. The Guadalaviar itself formed an outer obstacle, being a

stream running through low and marshy ground, and diverted into many

water-cuts for purposes of irrigation.

The continuous line of defences from the sea as far as Manises was

about eight miles long. It possessed some outworks on the farther bank

of the Guadalaviar, three of the five bridges which lead from Valencia

northward having been left standing by Blake, with good _têtes-de-pont_

to protect them from Suchet’s attacks. Thus the Spaniards had the

power to debouch on to the French side of the river at any time that

they pleased. This fact added difficulties to the projected attack

which the Marshal was planning.

The troops behind the lines of the Guadalaviar consisted of some

23,000 regulars, with a certain amount of local urban guards and

armed peasantry whose number it is impossible to estimate with any

precision--probably they gave some 3,000 muskets more, but their

fighting value was almost negligible. The right of the line, near

the sea, was entirely made over to these levies of doubtful value.

Miranda’s division manned the fort of Monte Oliveto and the whole north

front of the city. Lardizabal garrisoned the earthworks from the end of

the town wall as far as the village of Mislata. This last place and its

works fell to the charge of Zayas. Creagh’s Murcians were on Zayas’s

left at Quarte: finally the western wing of the army was formed by

the Valencian divisions of Obispo and Villacampa; holding San Onofre

and Manises, where the fortifications ended. The whole of the cavalry

was placed so as to cover the left rear of the lines, at Aldaya and

Torrente. A few battalions of the raw ‘Reserve Division’ were held in

the city as a central reserve. The arrangements of Blake seem liable

to grave criticism, since he placed his two good and solid divisions,

those of Lardizabal and Zayas, in the strongest works in the centre of

his line, but entrusted his left flank, where a turning movement by

the French might most easily take place, to the demoralized battalions

of Villacampa and Obispo, who had a consistent record of rout and

disaster behind them. It is clear that lines, however long, can always

be turned, unless their ends rest, as did those of Torres Vedras, on

an impassable obstacle such as the sea. If the French should refuse

to attack the works in front, and should march up the Guadalaviar to

far beyond the last battery, it would be impossible to prevent them

from crossing, all the more so because, after Manises, the network of

canals and water-cuts, which makes the passage difficult in the lower

course of the river, comes to an end, and the only obstacle exposed to

the invader is a single stream of no great depth. Blake, therefore,

should have seen that the critical point was the extreme west end of

his lines, and should have placed there his best troops instead of his

worst. Moreover he appears to have had no proper system of outposts

of either cavalry or infantry along the upper stream, for (as we

shall see) the first passage of the French was made not only without

opposition, but without any alarm being given. Yet there were 2,000

Spanish cavalry only a few miles away, at Torrente and Aldaya.

Suchet’s plan of attack, which he carried out the moment that Reille

joined him, and even before the latter’s rearmost brigade had got up

into line, was a very ambitious one, aiming not merely at the forcing

of the Guadalaviar or the investment of Valencia, but at the trapping

of the whole Spanish army. It was conducted on such a broad front, and

with such a dispersion of the forces into isolated columns, that it

argued a supreme contempt for Blake and his generalship. Used against

such a general as Wellington it would have led to dreadful disaster.

But Suchet knew his adversary.

The gist of the plan was the circumventing of the Spanish lines by two

columns which, starting one above and the other below Valencia, were

to cross the river and join hands to the south of the city. Meanwhile

the main front of the works was to be threatened (and if circumstances

favoured, attacked) by a very small fraction of the French army. Near

the sea Habert’s division was to force the comparatively weak line of

works at the estuary, and then to cut the road which runs from Valencia

between the Mediterranean and the great lagoon of the Albufera. Far

inland the main striking force of the army, composed of the divisions

of Harispe and Musnier, with all the cavalry, and with Reille’s three

brigades following close behind, was to pass the Guadalaviar at

Ribaroja, three or four miles above Manises, and from thence to extend

along the south front of the Spanish lines, take them in the rear, and

push on so as to get into touch with Habert. Compère’s weak Neapolitan

brigade was to block the bridge-heads out of which Blake might make

a sally northward. Palombini’s Italians were to press close up to

Mislata, which Suchet judged to be the weakest point in the Spanish

lines, and to deliver against it an attack which was to be pushed more

or less home as circumstances might dictate. The whole force employed

(not counting Pannetier’s brigade, which had not yet joined Reille)

was just 30,000 men. Of these 25,000 were employed in the flanking

movements; less than 5,000 were left to demonstrate against Blake’s

front along the lines of the Guadalaviar.

The main and decisive blow was of course to be delivered by Harispe,

Musnier, and Reille, who were to cross the river at a point where the

Spaniards were unlikely to make any serious opposition, since it was

outside their chosen ground of defence, and was clearly watched rather

than held. If 20,000 men crossed here, and succeeded in establishing

themselves south of Valencia by a rapid march, Blake would find his

lines useless, and would be forced to fight in the open, in order to

secure a retreat southward, or else to shut himself and his whole force

up in the entrenched camp around the city. Suchet could accept either

alternative with equanimity: a battle, as he judged, meant a victory,

the breaking up of the Spanish army and the capture of Valencia. If,

on the other hand, Blake refused to fight a general engagement, and

retired within his camp, it would lead to his being surrounded, and

the desired end would only be deferred for a few days. There were only

two dangers--one was that the Spanish general might abscond southward

with the bulk of his army, without fighting, the moment that he heard

that his enemy was across the Guadalaviar. The second was that, waiting

till the French main body was committed to its flank march, he might

break out northward by the three bridges in his hands, overwhelm the

Neapolitans, and escape towards Liria and Segorbe into the mountains.

Suchet judged that his enemy would try neither of these courses; he

would not be timid enough to retreat on the instant that he learnt that

his left wing was beginning to be turned; nor would he be resourceful

enough to strike away northward, as soon as he saw that the turning

movement was formidable and certain of success. Herein Suchet judged

aright.

At nightfall on the 25th-26th of December two hundred hussars, each

carrying a voltigeur behind him, forded the Guadalaviar at Ribaroja,

and threw out a chain of posts which brushed off a few Spanish cavalry

vedettes. The moment that the farther bank was clear, the whole force

of Suchet’s engineers set to work to build two trestle-bridges for

infantry, and to lay a solid pontoon bridge higher up for guns and

cavalry. A few hours later Harispe’s division began to pass--then

Musnier’s, lastly Boussard’s cavalry. The defile took a long time,

and even by dawn Reille’s three brigades had not arrived or begun to

pass. But by that time ten thousand French were over the river. The

Spanish vedettes had reported, both to their cavalry generals at Aldaya

and to Blake at Valencia, that the enemy was busy at Ribaroja, but

had not been able to judge of his force, or to make out that he was

constructing bridges. Their commanders resolved that nothing could

be done in the dark, and that the morning light would determine the

character of the movement[54].

[54] So Suchet’s narrative (_Mémoires_, ii. pp. 214-15). Belmas

says that only one bridge was finished when Harispe and Musnier

passed--the others after dawn only.

The late December sun soon showed the situation. Harispe’s division

was marching on Torrente, to cut the high-road to Murcia. The cavalry

and one brigade of Musnier were preparing to follow: the other brigade

of the second division (Robert’s) was standing fast by the bridges, to

cover them till Reille should appear and cross. But while this was the

most weighty news brought to Blake, he was distracted by intelligence

from two other quarters. Habert was clearly seen coming down by the

seaside, to attack at the estuary; and Palombini was also approaching

in the centre, in front of Mislata. The daylight was the signal for the

commencement of skirmishing on each of the three far-separated points.

Blake, strange as it may appear, made up his mind at first that the

real danger lay on the side next the sea, and that Habert’s column was

the main striking force[55]. But when it became clear that this wing

of the French army was not very strong, and was coming on slowly, he

turned his attention to Palombini, whose attack on Mislata was made

early, and was conducted in a vigorous style. It was to this point that

he finally rode out from the city, and he took up his position behind

Zayas, entirely neglecting the turning movement on his left--apparently

because it was out of sight, and he could not make the right deduction

from the reports which his cavalry had brought him.

[55] For Blake’s opinions and actions see the record of his

staff-officer, Schepeler (pp. 502-3).

Meanwhile Harispe’s column, pushing forward with the object of

reaching the high-road from Valencia to Murcia, the natural route

for Blake’s army to take, if it should attempt to escape southward,

ran into the main body of the Spanish horse, which was assembling in

the neighbourhood of the village of Aldaya. The French infantry were

preceded by a squadron of hussars, who were accompanied by General

Boussard, the commander of Suchet’s cavalry division. This small force

was suddenly encompassed and cut up by several regiments of Martin

Carrera’s brigade. Boussard was overthrown and left for dead--his sword

and decorations were stripped from his body. But more French squadrons

began to come up, and Harispe’s infantry opened fire on the Spaniards,

who were soon forced to retire hurriedly--they rode off southward

towards the Xucar river. They were soon completely out of touch with

the rest of Blake’s army.

Harispe’s column then continued its way, sweeping eastward towards the

Murcian _chaussée_ in the manner that Suchet had designed; but the rest

of the operations of the French right wing were not so decisive as its

commander had hoped. Mahy, learning of the movement of the encircling

column, and seeing Robert’s brigade massed opposite the extreme flank

of his position at Manises, while some notice of Reille’s near approach

also came to hand, suddenly resolved that he would not be surrounded,

and abandoned all his lines before they were seriously attacked. He

had the choice of directing Villacampa and Obispo to retire towards

Valencia and join Blake for a serious battle in the open, or of bidding

them strike off southward and eastward, and escape towards the Xucar,

abandoning the main body of the army. He chose the second alternative,

and marched off parallel with Harispe’s threatening column, directing

each brigade to get away as best it could. His force at once broke up

into several fractions, for the cross-roads were many and perplexing.

Some regiments reached the Murcian _chaussée_ before Harispe, and

escaped in front of him, pursued by the French cavalry. Others, coming

too late, were forced to forgo this obvious line of retreat, and to

struggle still farther eastward, only turning south when they got

to the marshy borders of the lagoon of Albufera. Obispo, with 2,000

of his men, was so closely hunted by the hostile cavalry that he

barely found safety by striking along the narrow strip of soft ground

between the lagoon and the sea. On the morning of the 27th he struggled

through to Cullera near the mouth of the Xucar: Mahy, with the greater

part of Villacampa’s division and some of Obispo’s and Creagh’s,

arrived somewhat earlier at Alcira, higher up the same stream, where

he found the fugitive cavalry already established. The divisions were

much disorganized, but they had lost very few killed or wounded, and

not more than 500 prisoners. Mahy rallied some 4,000 or 5,000 men at

Alcira, and Obispo a couple of thousand at Cullera, but they were a

‘spent force,’ not fit for action. Many of the raw troops had disbanded

themselves and gone home.

[Illustration: VALENCIA The Siege (Dec 1811-Jan 1812)]

Thus three-sevenths of Blake’s army were separated from Valencia

and their Commander-in-Chief without having made any appreciable

resistance. But it seems doubtful whether Mahy should be blamed--if he

had waited an hour longer in his positions his whole corps might have

been captured. If he had retired towards Valencia he would have been,

in all probability, forced to surrender with the rest of the army a

few days later. And in separating himself from his chief he had the

excuse that he knew that Blake’s intention had been to retire towards

the Xucar if beaten, not to shut himself up in Valencia. He may have

expected that the rest of the army would follow him southward, and

Blake (as we shall see) probably had the chance of executing that

movement, though he did not seize it.

Meanwhile the progress of the engagement in other quarters must be

detailed. Palombini made a serious attempt to break through the left

centre of the Spanish lines at Mislata. His task was hard, not so

much because of the entrenchments, or of the difficulty of crossing

the Guadalaviar, which was fordable for infantry, but from the many

muddy canals and water-cuts with which the ground in front of him

abounded. These, though not impassable for infantry, prevented guns

from getting to the front till bridges should have been made for

them. The Italians waded through the first canal, and then through

the river, but were brought to a stand by the second canal, that of

Fabara, behind which the Spanish entrenchments lay. After a furious

fire-contest they had to retire as far as the river, under whose bank

many sought refuge--some plunged in and waded back to the farther side.

Palombini rallied them and delivered a second attack; but at only one

point, to the left of Mislata, did the assault break into the Spanish

line. Zayas, aided by a battalion or two which Mahy had sent up from

Quarte, vindicated his position, and repulsed the attack with heavy

loss. But when the news came from the left that Harispe had turned the

lines, and when Mahy’s troops were seen evacuating all their positions

and hurrying off, Zayas found himself with his left flank completely

exposed.

Blake made some attempt to form a line _en potence_ to Zayas’s

entrenchments, directing two or three of Creagh’s battalions from

Quarte and some of his reserve from the city to make a stand at the

village of Chirivella. But the front was never formed--attacked by some

of Musnier’s troops these detachments broke up, Creagh’s men flying to

follow Mahy, and the others retiring to the entrenched camp.

Thereupon Blake ordered Zayas and Lardizabal, who lay to his right, to

retreat into Valencia before they should be turned by the approaching

French. The movement was accomplished in order and at leisure, and all

the guns in and about the Mislata entrenchments were brought away.

Palombini had been too hardly handled to attempt to pursue.

The General-in-Chief seemed stunned by the suddenness of the disaster.

‘He looked like a man of stone,’ says Schepeler, who rode at his side,

‘when any observation was made to him he made no reply, and he could

come to no decision. He would not allow Zayas to fight, and when a

colonel (the author of this work) suggested at the commencement of

the retreat that it would be well to burn certain houses which lay

dangerously close to the entrenched camp, he kept silence. Whereupon

Zayas observed in bitter rage to this officer: “Truly you are dull,

my German friend; do you not see that you cannot wake the man up?”’

According to the narratives of several contemporaries there would still

have been time at this moment to direct the retreating column southward

and escape, as Obispo did, along the Albufera. For Habert (as we shall

see) had been much slower than Harispe in his turning movement by the

side of the Mediterranean. Some, among them Schepeler, suggest that

the whole garrison might have broken out by the northern bridges and

got away. For Palombini was not in a condition to hinder them, and the

Neapolitans in front of the bridge-heads were but a handful of 1,200

men. But the General, still apparently unconscious of what was going on

about him, drew back into the entrenched camp, and did no more.

Habert, meanwhile, finally completed his movement, and joined hands

with Harispe at last. His lateness was to be accounted for not by the

strength of the opposition made by the irregular troops in front of

him, but by the fact that his advance had been much hindered by the

fire of the flotilla lying off the mouth of the Guadalaviar. Here

there was a swarm of gunboats supported by a British 74 and a frigate.

Habert would not commence his passage till he had driven them away, by

placing a battery of sixteen siege-guns on the shore near the Grao.

After much firing the squadron sheered off[56], and about midday the

French division crossed the Guadalaviar, partly by fording, partly

on a hastily constructed bridge, and attacked the line of scattered

works defended by irregulars which lay behind. The Spaniards were

successively evicted from all of them, as far as the fort of Monte

Oliveto. Miranda’s division kept within the entrenched camp, and gave

no assistance to the bands without; but it was late afternoon before

Habert had accomplished his task, and finally got into touch with

Harispe.

[56] Napier says (iv. p. 30) that the gunboats fled without

firing a shot. Suchet and Schepeler speak of much firing, as does

Arteche.

Blake was thus shut up in Valencia with the divisions of Miranda,

Zayas, and Lardizabal, and what was left of his raw reserve battalions:

altogether some 17,000 fighting-men remained with him. The loss in

actual fighting had been very small--about 500 killed and wounded

and as many prisoners. The French captured a good many guns in the

evacuated works and a single standard. Suchet returned his total

casualties at 521 officers and men, of whom no less than 50 killed

and 355 wounded were among Palombini’s Italians--the only corps which

can be said to have done any serious fighting[57]. The Marshal’s

strategical combination would have been successful almost without

bloodshed, if only Palombini had not pressed his attack so hard, and

with so little necessity. But the Spanish army, which was drawn out on

a long front of nine miles, without any appreciable central reserve,

and with no protection for its exposed flank, was doomed to ruin the

moment that the enemy appeared in overwhelming force, beyond and behind

its extreme left wing. Blake’s only chance was to have watched every

ford with great vigilance, and to have had a strong flying column of

his best troops ready in some central position, from which it could be

moved out to dispute Suchet’s passage without a moment’s delay. Far

from doing this, he tied down his two veteran divisions to the defence

of the strongest part of his lines, watched the fords with nothing but

cavalry vedettes, and kept no central reserve at all, save 2,000 or

3,000 men of his untrustworthy ‘Reserve Division.’ In face of these

dispositions the French were almost bound to be successful. A disaster

was inevitable, but Blake might have made it somewhat less ruinous if

he had recognized his real position promptly, and had ordered a general

retreat, when Harispe’s successful turning movement became evident. In

this case he would have lost Valencia, but not his army.

[57] No less than three of the Italian colonels were hit, and

thirty-four officers in all.

As it was, a week more saw the miserable end of the campaign. Suchet’s

first precaution was to ascertain whether there was any danger from

the fraction of the Spanish army which Mahy and Obispo had carried

off. He was uncertain how strong they were, and whether they were

prepared to attack him in the rear, supposing that he should sit down

to the siege of Valencia. Accordingly he sent out at dawn on the 26th

December two light columns of cavalry and voltigeurs against Alcira

and Cullera, whither he knew that the refugees had retired. These two

reconnaissances in force discovered the enemy in position, but the

moment that they were descried Mahy retreated towards Alcoy, and Obispo

towards Alicante--both in such haste and disorder that it was evident

that they had no fighting spirit left in them.

Suchet, therefore, was soon relieved of any fear of danger from this

side, and could make his arrangements for the siege. He sent back to

the north bank of the Guadalaviar the whole division of Musnier, which

was there joined three days later by Reille’s belated brigade, that of

Pannetier. Harispe, Habert, Severoli, and Reille’s other French brigade

(that of Bourke) formed the investment on the southern bank. Palombini

lay astride of the river near Mislata, with one brigade on each bank.

The whole force of 33,000 men was sufficient for the task before it.

The decisive blow would have to be given by the siege artillery; the

whole train which had captured Saguntum had long been ready for its

work. And it had before it not regular fortifications of modern type,

but, in part of the circumference of Blake’s position, mediaeval walls

not built to resist artillery, in the rest the ditch and bank of the

entrenched camp, which, though strong as a field-work, could not be

considered capable of resisting a formal attack by a strong siege-train.

Blake was as well aware of this as Suchet, and he also knew (what

Suchet could not) that the population of 100,000 souls under his charge

had only 10 days’ provision of flour and 19 or 20 of rice and salt

fish. The city, like the army, had been living on daily convoys from

the south, and had no great central reserves of food. If he should sit

down, like Palafox at Saragossa, to make an obstinate defence behind

improvised works, he would be on the edge of starvation in less than

three weeks. But such a defence was impossible in face of the spirit

of the people, who looked upon Blake as the author of all their woes,

regarded him as a tyrant as well as an imbecile, and were as likely to

rise against him as to turn their energies to resisting the French.

Palafox at Saragossa accomplished what he did because the spirit of the

citizens was with him: Blake was despised as well as detested.

When he recovered his composure he called a council of war, which voted

almost unanimously[58] that the city was indefensible, and that the

army must try to cut its way out on the north side of the Guadalaviar.

If the sally had been made on the 27th it might have succeeded, for

it was not till late on that day that Suchet’s arrangements for the

blockade of the north bank were complete. But the investing line had

been linked up by the night of the 28th-29th, when Blake made his last

stroke for safety. At six in the evening the field army issued from

the gate of St. José and began to cross the bridge opposite it, the

westernmost of the three of which the Spaniards were in possession.

This led not to the great _chaussée_ to Saguntum and Tortosa, which

was known to have been cut and entrenched by the enemy, but to the

by-road to Liria and the mountains. Lardizabal headed the march, Zayas

followed, escorting the artillery and a considerable train, Miranda

brought up the rear. Charles O’Donnell was left to man the walls with

the urban guards and the ‘Reserve Division,’ and was given permission

to capitulate whenever he should be attacked.

[58] Only Miranda voted against a sortie, and thought that

nothing could be done, except to hold out for a while in the

walls and then surrender. Arteche, xi. p. 241.

Lardizabal’s vanguard, under a Colonel Michelena, swerved from the

Liria road soon after passing the Guadalaviar, in order to avoid French

posts, and successfully got as far as the canal of Mestalla before it

was discovered or checked. The canal was too broad to be passed by

means of some beams and planks which had been brought up. But Michelena

got his men across, partly by fording and partly over a mill-dam, and

presently got to the village of Burjasort, where the artillery of

Palombini’s division were quartered. These troops, surprised in the

dark, could not stop him, and he pushed on through them and escaped

to the hills with his little force--one squadron, one battalion, and

some companies of Cazadores--some 500 or 600 men[59]. Lardizabal, who

should have followed him without delay, halted at the canal, trying

to build a bridge, till the French all along the line were alarmed by

the firing at Burjasort and began to press in upon him. He opened fire

instead of pushing on at all costs, and presently found himself opposed

by forces of growing strength. Blake thereupon made up his mind that

the sally had failed, and gave orders for the whole column to turn back

and re-enter Valencia. It seems probable that at least a great part of

the army might have got away, if an attempt had been made to push on

in Michelena’s wake, for the blockading line was thin here, and only

one French regiment seems to have been engaged in checking Lardizabal’s

exit.

[59] Not 5,000 as Napier (probably by a misprint) says on page 31

of his 4th vol. Apparently a misprint in the original edition has

been copied in all the later fourteen!

Be this as it may, the sortie had failed, and Blake was faced by

complete ruin, being driven back with a disheartened army into a city

incapable of defence against a regular siege, and short of provisions.

Next morning the despair of the garrison was shown by the arrival of

many deserters in the French camp. The inevitable end was delayed for

only eleven days more. On January 1, most of the siege-guns having

been brought across the Guadalaviar, Suchet opened trenches against

two fronts of the entrenched camp, the fort of Monte Oliveto and the

southern point of the suburb of San Vincente, both salient angles

capable of being battered from both flanks. Seven batteries were built

opposite them by January 4th, and the advanced works in front were

pushed up to within fifty yards of the Spanish works. Thereupon Blake,

before the siege-guns had actually opened, abandoned the whole of his

entrenched camp on the next day, without any attempt at defence. The

French discovering the evacuation, entered, and found eighty-one guns

spiked in the batteries, and a considerable quantity of munitions.

Blake was now shut up in the narrow space of the city, whose walls

were very unsuited for defence, and were easily approachable in many

places under shelter of houses left undemolished, which gave cover only

fifty yards from the ramparts. For no attempt had been made to clear

a free space round the inner _enceinte_, in case the outer circuit of

the camp should be lost. While fresh batteries were being built in

the newly-captured ground, to breach the city wall, Suchet set all

the mortars in his original works to throw bombs into Valencia. He

gathered that the population was demoralized and probably the garrison

also, and thought that a general bombardment of the place might bring

about a surrender without further trouble. About a thousand shells

were dropped into the city within twenty-four hours, and Suchet then

(January 6th) sent a _parlementaire_ to invite Blake to capitulate.

The Captain-General replied magniloquently that ‘although yesterday

morning he might have consented to treat for terms allowing his army

to quit Valencia, in order to spare the inhabitants the horrors of a

bombardment, now, after a day’s firing, he had learnt that he could

rely on the magnanimity and resignation of the people. The Marshal

might continue his operations if he pleased, and would bear the

responsibility for so maltreating the place.’

As a matter of fact the bombardment had been very effective, numerous

non-combatants had perished, and the spirit of the population was

broken. Many openly pressed for a surrender, and only a few fanatical

monks went round the streets exhorting the citizens to resistance.

The bombardment continued on the 7th and 8th, and at the same time

Suchet pushed approaches close to the walls, and in several places

set his miners to work to tunnel under them. Actual assault was never

necessary, for on the 8th Blake held a council of war, which voted for

entering into negotiation with the enemy. The report of this meeting

sets forth that ‘it had taken into consideration the sufferings of the

people under these days of bombardment; the cry of the populace was

that an end must be put to its misery; it was impossible to prolong the

defence with any profit, without exposing the city to the horrors of an

assault, in which the besiegers would probably succeed, considering the

depressed condition of the garrison, and the feebleness of the walls.

The citizens had not only failed to aid in the defence and to second

the efforts of the regular troops, but were panic-stricken and demanded

a surrender. The army itself did not seem disposed to do its duty, and

after hearing the evidence of the commanders of different corps, the

council decided in favour of negotiating to get honourable terms. If

these were refused it might be necessary to continue a hopeless defence

and die honourably among the ruins of Valencia[60].

[60] See the long _procès verbal_ of the Council’s proceedings

translated in Belmas, iv. pp. 203-6.

It is probable that Blake would really have accepted any terms offered

him as ‘honourable,’ for he assented to all that Suchet dictated to

him. A feeble attempt to stipulate for a free departure for the field

army, on condition that the city and all its armaments and resources

were handed over intact, met with the curt refusal that it deserved. A

simple capitulation with the honours of war was granted: one clause,

however, was looked upon by Blake as somewhat of a concession, though

it really was entirely to Suchet’s benefit. He offered to grant an

exchange to so many of the garrison as should be equivalent man for

man, to French prisoners from the dépôts in Majorca and Cabrera, where

the unfortunate remnants of Dupont’s army were still in confinement.

As this was not conceded by the Spanish government, the clause had no

real effect in mitigating the fate of Blake’s army[61]. Other clauses

in the capitulation declared that private property should be respected,

and that no inquiry should be made after the surrender into the past

conduct of persons who had taken an active part in the revolution of

1808, or the subsequent defence of the kingdom of Valencia: also that

such civilians as chose might have three months in which to transport

themselves, their families, and their goods to such destination as they

pleased. These clauses, as we shall see, were violated by Suchet with

the most shocking callousness and shameless want of respect for his

written word.

[61] The proposal of exchange came first to Mahy at Alicante; he

called a council of generals, which resolved that the release of

so many French would profit Suchet overmuch, because many of them

had been imprisoned at Alicante and Cartagena, and had worked on

the fortifications there. They could give the Marshal valuable

information, which he had better be denied. The proposal must

therefore be sent on to the Regency at Cadiz. That government,

after much debate, refused to ratify the proposal, considering it

more profitable to the enemy than to themselves.

On January 9 the citadel and the gate adjacent were handed over to the

French; Blake (at his own request) was sent away straight to France,

and did not remain to take part in the formal surrender of his troops

and of the city. It would seem that he could not face the rage of the

Valencians, and was only anxious to avoid even twenty-four hours of

sojourn among them after the disaster. Napoleon affected to regard him

as a traitor, though he had never done even a moment’s homage to Joseph

Bonaparte in 1808, and shut him up in close captivity in the donjon of

Vincennes, where he remained very uncomfortably lodged till the events

of April 1814 set him free[62].

[62] Some notes about his captivity may be found in the

_Mémoires_ of Baron Kolli, the would-be deliverer of King

Ferdinand, who was shut up in another tower of the castle.

The total number of prisoners yielded up by Valencia was 16,270 regular

troops, of whom some 1,500 were sick or wounded in the hospitals. The

urban guards and armed peasants, who were supposed to be civilians

covered by the amnesty article in the capitulation, are not counted in

the total. The regulars marched out of the Serranos gate on January

10, and after laying down their arms and colours were sent prisoners

to France, marching in two columns, under the escort of Pannetier’s

brigade, to Saragossa. Twenty-one colours and no less than 374 cannon

(mostly heavy guns in the defences) were given over, as also a very

large store of ammunition and military effects, but very little food,

which was already beginning to fail in the city when Blake surrendered.

To prevent unlicensed plunder Suchet did not allow his own troops to

enter Valencia till January 14th, giving the civil authorities four

days in which to make preparations for the coming in of the new régime.

He was better received than might have been expected--apparently

Blake’s maladroit dictatorship had thoroughly disgusted the people.

Many of the magistrates bowed to the conqueror and took the oath of

homage to King Joseph, and the aged archbishop emerged from the village

where he had hidden himself for some time, and ‘showed himself animated

by an excellent spirit’ according to the Marshal’s dispatch.

This prompt and tame submission did not save Valencia from dreadful

treatment at the victor’s hands. Not only did he levy on the city and

district a vast fine of 53,000,000 francs (over £2,120,000), of which

3,000,000 were sent to Madrid and the rest devoted to the profit of the

Army of Aragon, but he proceeded to carry out a series of atrocities,

which have been so little spoken of by historians that it would be

difficult to credit them, if they were not avowed with pride in his own

dispatches to Berthier and Napoleon.

The second article of Blake’s capitulation, already cited above,

had granted a complete amnesty for past actions on the part of the

Valencians--‘Il ne sera fait aucune recherche pour le passé contre ceux

qui auraient pris une part active à la guerre ou à la révolution,’ to

quote the exact term. In his dispatch of January 12 to Berthier, Suchet

is shameless enough to write: ‘I have disarmed the local militia: all

guilty chiefs will be arrested, and all assassins punished; _for in

consenting to Article II of the Capitulation my only aim was to get

the matter over quickly_[63].’ ‘Guilty chiefs’ turned out to mean all

civilians who had taken a prominent part in the defence of Valencia:

‘assassins’ was interpreted to cover guerrilleros of all sorts, not

(as might perhaps have been expected) merely those persons who had

taken part in the bloody riots against the French commercial community

in 1808[64]. In his second dispatch of January 17 Suchet proceeds to

explain that he has arrested 480 persons as ‘suspects,’ that a large

number of guerrillero leaders have been found among them, who have

been sent to the citadel and have been already shot, or will be in

a few days. He has also arrested every monk in Valencia; 500 have

been sent prisoners to France: five of the most guilty, convicted of

having carried round the streets a so-called ‘banner of the faith,’

and of having preached against capitulation, and excited the people

to resistance, have been already executed. Inquiries were still in

progress. They resulted in the shooting of two more friars[65]. But

the most astonishing clause in the dispatch is that ‘all those who

took part in the murders of the French [in 1808] will be sought

out and punished. Already _six hundred_ have been executed by the

firmness of the Spanish judge Marescot, whom I am expecting soon to

meet[66].’ It was a trifling addition to the catalogue of Suchet’s

doings that 350 students of the university, who had volunteered to aid

the regular artillery during the late siege, had all been arrested

and sent off to France like the monks. Two hundred sick or footsore

prisoners who straggled from the marching column directed on Teruel

and Saragossa are said to have been shot by the wayside[67]. It is

probable that innumerable prisoners were put to death in cold blood

after the capitulation of Valencia, in spite of Suchet’s guarantee

that ‘no research should be made as to the past.’ Of this Napier says

no word[68], though he quotes other parts of Suchet’s dispatches, and

praises him for his ‘vigorous and prudent’ conduct, and his ‘care not

to offend the citizens by violating their customs or shocking their

religious feelings.’

[63] See the dispatches printed in full in Belmas, Appendix, vol.

iv, pp. 218-20, and 226-7 of his great work.

[64] For which see vol. i. p. 68.

[65] The names of all seven friars are given by Toreno and

Schepeler.

[66] Can the frightful figure of 600 be a mistake for 60?

[67] See Toreno, iii. p. 28.

[68] See his pages, iv. 33.

SECTION XXX: CHAPTER IV

SUCHET’S CONQUEST OF VALENCIA: SIDE-ISSUES AND CONSEQUENCES.

JANUARY-MARCH 1812

When once Suchet’s long-deferred movements began, on December 26, 1812,

his operations were so rapid and successful that the whole campaign

was finished in fourteen days. The unexpected swiftness of his triumph

had the result of rendering unnecessary the subsidiary operations

which Napoleon had directed the Armies of Portugal, the Centre, and

Andalusia, to carry out.

D’Armagnac, with his 3,000 men of the Army of the Centre, still lay

at Cuenca when Suchet’s advance began, hindered from further movement

by the badness of the roads and the weather. Opposite him were lying

Bassecourt’s small force at Requeña--not 2,000 men--and the larger

detachment of the Murcian army under Freire, which Blake had originally

intended to draw down to join his main body. This seems to have

consisted of some 4,000 foot and 1,000 horse[69] about the time of the

New Year.

[69] On February 1st Freire’s infantry division, though it had

suffered much from desertion in the meanwhile, still numbered

3,300 men present, and his cavalry 850 sabres. See tables in _Los

Ejércitos españoles_, pp. 149-50.

Far more important was the force under Montbrun, detached from the Army

of Portugal, which had moved (all too tardily) from La Mancha and the

banks of the Tagus, by Napoleon’s orders. Assembled, as we have already

shown[70], only on December 29th, it had started from San Clemente on

January 2 to march against Blake’s rear by the route of Almanza, the

only one practicable for artillery at midwinter. Thus the expedition

was only just getting under way when Suchet had already beaten Blake

and thrust him into Valencia. It consisted of the infantry divisions

of Foy and Sarrut, of the whole of the light cavalry of the Army of

Portugal, and of five batteries of artillery, in all about 10,000 men.

Of the succour which had been promised from d’Armagnac’s division,

to raise the force to the figures of 12,000 men, few if any came to

hand[71].

[70] See above, p. 56.

[71] According to Joseph’s letter to Montbrun (_Correspondence of

King Joseph_, viii. p. 294) a battalion or two may have joined

Montbrun, as he tells that general that he is glad to know that

the troops of his army have given satisfaction.

Montbrun marched with Sarrut and the cavalry by Albacete and

Chinchilla, leaving Foy as a reserve échelon, to follow by slower

stages and keep up the communication with La Mancha. Between Chinchilla

and Almanza the advanced cavalry fell in with Freire’s Spanish

division, marching across its front. For on the news of Suchet’s

passage of the Guadalaviar on December 26, Freire had moved southward

from his position on the Cabriel river, with the intention of joining

Mahy, and so of building up a force strong enough to do something to

succour Blake and the beleaguered garrison of Valencia. On January 6th

Montbrun’s horse came upon one of Freire’s detachments, dispersed it,

and took some prisoners. But the greater part of the Murcians succeeded

in getting past, and in reaching Mahy at Alicante (January 9th).

So cowed was the country-side by the disasters about Valencia that

Montbrun at Almanza succeeded in getting a letter carried by one of

his staff to Valencia in two days[72]. It announced to Suchet his

arrival on the rear of the Spanish army, and his intention of pressing

on eastward so as to drive away Freire and Mahy and completely cut off

the retreat of Blake towards Murcia. But when the dispatch was received

Blake was already a prisoner, and his army had laid down its arms on

the preceding day. Suchet, therefore, wrote a reply to Montbrun to

thank him for his co-operation, to inform him that it was no longer

necessary, and to advise him to return as quickly as possible toward

the Army of Portugal and the Tagus, where his presence was now much

more needed than on the coast of the Mediterranean. The Army of Aragon

was strong enough to deal in due course with Mahy and Freire, and to

take Alicante.

[72] Suchet, _Mémoires_, ii. p. 234, for dates.

Montbrun, however, refused to accept this advice. He was probably,

as his chief Marmont remarks, desirous of distinguishing himself by

carrying out some brilliant enterprise as an independent commander[73].

Knowing that Mahy’s and Freire’s troops were in a very demoralized

condition, and underrating the strength of the fortress of Alicante,

he resolved to march against that place, which he thought would make

little or no resistance. Accordingly he called forward Foy to Albacete

and Chinchilla, left the main part of his guns in his charge, and

marched on Alicante with the cavalry and Sarrut’s division, having only

one battery of horse artillery with him.

[73] Marmont accuses Montbrun exactly as Napoleon accuses Marmont!

At the news of his approach Mahy, who had been at Alcoy since he

abandoned the line of the Nucar on December 27th, retired into Alicante

with Creagh’s and Obispo’s infantry. Bassecourt also joined him there,

while Freire with his own column, Villacampa’s division, and all the

Murcian and Valencian cavalry, occupied Elche and other places in

the neighbourhood. Over 6,000 regular infantry were within the walls

of Alicante by January 15th. Montbrun on the following day drove

Freire out of Elche westward, and presented himself in front of the

new fortification of Alicante, which had been much improved during

the last year, and included a new line of bastioned wall outside the

old mediaeval _enceinte_ and the rocky citadel. It is probable that

Montbrun had no knowledge of the recent improvements to the fortress,

and relied on old reports of its weakness. After advancing into the

suburbs, and throwing a few useless shells into the place, whose

artillery returned a heavy fire, he retreated by Elche and Hellin to

Albacete[74]. As he went he laid waste the country-side in the most

reckless fashion, and raised heavy requisitions of money in Elche,

Hellin, and other places. This involved him in an angry correspondence

with Suchet, who insisted that no commander but himself had a right

to extort contributions in the region that fell into his sphere of

operations.

[74] On his first appearance he sent to summon Alicante, and

received the proper negative answer. But Schepeler, who was in

the place, says that the governor, General de la Cruz, showed

signs of yielding. Fortunately the other generals did not. It

would have been absurd to treat seriously a force of 4,000

infantry and 1,500 horse with only six light guns! (Schepeler, p.

520.)

Montbrun’s raid was clearly a misguided operation. Alicante was far too

strong to be taken by escalade, when it was properly garrisoned: the

only chance was that the garrison might flinch. They refused to do so,

and the French general was left in an absurd position, demonstrating

without siege-guns against a regular fortress. His action had two

ill-effects--the first was that it concluded the Valencian campaign

with a fiasco--a definite repulse which put heart into the Spaniards.

The second (and more important) was that it separated him from Marmont

and the Army of Portugal for ten days longer than was necessary. His

chief had given him orders to be back on the Tagus by the 15th-20th of

January, as his absence left the main body too weak. Owing to his late

start he would in any case have overpassed these dates, even if he had

started back from Almanza on January 13th, after receiving the news

of the fall of Valencia. But by devoting nine days to an advance from

Almanza to Alicante and then a retreat from Alicante to Albacete, he

deferred his return to Castile by that space of time. He only reached

Toledo on January 31st with his main column. Foy’s division, sent on

ahead, arrived there on the 29th. Montbrun’s last marches were executed

with wild speed, for he had received on the way letters of the most

alarming kind from Marmont, informing him that Wellington had crossed

the Agueda with his whole army and laid siege to Ciudad Rodrigo. The

Army of Portugal must concentrate without delay. But by the time that

Montbrun reached Toledo, Rodrigo had already been twelve days in the

hands of the British general, and further haste was useless. The troops

were absolutely worn out, and received with relief the order to halt

and wait further directions, since they were too late to save the

fallen fortress. It is fair to Montbrun to remark that, even if he had

never made his raid on Alicante, he would still have been unable to

help his chief. If he had turned back from Almanza on January 13th, he

would have been at Toledo only on the 22nd--and that city is nearly 200

miles by road from Ciudad Rodrigo, which had fallen on the 19th. The

disaster on the Agueda was attributable not to Montbrun’s presumptuous

action, but to the Emperor’s orders that the Army of Portugal should

make a great detachment for the Valencian campaign. Even if the

raiding column had started earlier, as Napoleon intended, it could not

have turned back till it got news of the capitulation of Blake, which

only took place on January 8th. And whatever might then have been its

exact position, it could not have been back in time to join Marmont

in checking the operations of Wellington, which (as we have already

stated) came to a successful end on January 19th. Wherefore, though

Montbrun must receive blame, the responsibility for the fall of Rodrigo

lay neither with him nor with Marmont, but with their great master.

Another diversion made by Napoleon’s orders for the purpose of

aiding Suchet was quite as futile--though less from the fault of the

original direction, and more from an unforeseen set of circumstances.

Like Marmont and King Joseph, Soult had also been ordered to lend

Suchet assistance against Valencia, by demonstrating from the side of

Granada against Murcia and its army. This order, issued apparently

about November 19, 1811[75]. and repeated on December 6th, reached

the Duke of Dalmatia just when he had assembled all his disposable

field-forces for the siege of Tarifa, an operation where preparations

began on December 8th and which did not end till January 5th.

Having concentrated 13,000 men in the extreme southern point of his

viceroyalty, Soult had not a battalion to spare for a sally from its

extreme eastern point. He could not give up a great enterprise already

begun; and it was only when it had failed, and the troops from Tarifa

were returning--in a sufficiently melancholy plight--that Soult could

do anything. But by this time it was too late to help Suchet, who had

finished his business without requiring assistance from without.

[75] It is alluded to in a dispatch of the Emperor to Berthier on

that day. ‘Le duc de Dalmatie a l’ordre d’envoyer une colonne en

Murcie pour faire une diversion.’ St. Cloud, Nov. 19.

[Illustration: _Marshal Suchet, Duke of Albufera_

_from the portrait by Charpentier_]

Whether Soult was already aware of the surrender of Valencia or not,

when January 20th had arrived, he had before that day issued orders

to his brother, the cavalry general, Pierre Soult, to take the light

horse of the 4th Corps from Granada, and to execute with them a raid

against Murcia, with the object of drawing off the attention of any

Spanish troops left in that direction from Suchet. The General, with

about 800 sabres, pushing on by Velez Rubio and Lorca, arrived

before the gates of Murcia quite unopposed on January 25th. Freire had

left no troops whatever to watch the borders of Granada, and had drawn

off everything, save the garrison of Cartagena, toward the Valencian

frontiers. Pierre Soult summoned the defenceless city, received its

surrender, and imposed on it a ransom of 60,000 dollars. He entered

next day, and established himself in the archbishop’s palace; having

neither met nor heard of any enemy he was quite at his ease, and was

sitting down to dine, when a wild rush of Spanish cavalry came sweeping

down the street and cutting up his dispersed and dismounted troopers.

This was General Martin La Carrera, whose brigade was the nearest force

to Murcia when Soult arrived. Hearing that the French were guarding

themselves ill, he had resolved to attempt a surprise, and, dividing

his 800 men into three columns, assailed Murcia by three different

gates. His own detachment cut its way in with success, did much damage,

and nearly captured the French general. But neither of the other

parties showed such resolution; they got bickering with the French at

the entries of the city, failed to push home, and finally retired with

small loss. The gallant and unfortunate La Carrera, charging up and

down the streets in vain search for his reinforcements, was finally

surrounded by superior numbers, and died fighting gallantly.

His enterprise warned Soult that Spanish troops were collecting in

front of him, and indeed Villacampa’s infantry was not far off.

Wherefore he evacuated Murcia next day, after raising so much of the

contribution as he could, and plundering many private houses. The

Spaniards reoccupied the place, and Joseph O’Donnell, now placed in

command of the Murcian army in succession to Mahy, gave La Carrera’s

corpse a splendid funeral. Soult retreated hastily to the Granadan

frontier, pillaging Alcantarilla and Lorca by the way. This was the

only part taken by the French Army of Andalusia in the January campaign

of 1812. The siege of Tarifa had absorbed all its energies.

Montbrun’s and Pierre Soult’s enterprises had little effect on the

general course of events in eastern Spain. It was Suchet’s own

operations which, in the estimation of every observer from the Emperor

downwards, were to be considered decisive. When Valencia had fallen,

every one on the French side supposed that the war was practically

at an end in this region, and that the dispersion of the remnants of

Mahy’s and Freire’s troops and the capture of Peniscola, Alicante, and

Cartagena,--the three fortresses still in Spanish hands,--were mere

matters of detail. No one could have foreseen that the region south

of the Xucar was destined to remain permanently in the hands of the

patriots, and that Suchet’s occupation of Valencia was to last for

no more than eighteen months. Two causes, neither of them depending

on Suchet’s own responsibility, were destined to save the kingdom of

Murcia and the southern region of Valencia from conquest. The first was

Napoleon’s redistribution of his troops in eastern Spain, consequent

on the approach of his war with Russia. The second was the sudden

victorious onslaught of Wellington on the French in the western parts

of the Peninsula. How the former of these causes worked must at once

be shown--the effect of the latter cause did not become evident till a

little later.

Of the 33,000 men with whom Suchet had conquered Valencia and captured

Blake, no less than 13,000 under Reille had been lent him from the

Army of the North, and were under orders to return to the Ebro as

soon as possible. Indeed, till they should get back, Aragon, very

insufficiently garrisoned by Caffarelli’s division, was out of hand,

and almost as much in the power of the Empecinado, Duran, and Montijo,

as of the French. Moreover, so long as Caffarelli was at Saragossa,

and his troops dispersed in the surrounding region, both Navarre and

Old Castile were undermanned, and the Army of the North was reduced to

little more than Dorsenne’s two divisions of the Young Guard. To secure

the troops for the great push against Valencia, so many divisions

had shifted eastward, that Marmont and Dorsenne between them had, as

the Emperor must have seen, barely troops enough in hand to maintain

their position, if Wellington should make some unexpected move--though

Napoleon had persuaded himself that such a move was improbable. In

spite of this, he was anxious to draw back Reille’s and Caffarelli’s,

no less than Montbrun’s, men to more central positions.

But this was not all: in December the Emperor’s dispatches begin

to show that he regarded war with Russia in the spring of 1812 as

decidedly probable, and that for this reason he was about to withdraw

all the Imperial Guard from Spain. On December 15th a note to Berthier

ordered all the light and heavy cavalry of the Guard--chasseurs,

grenadiers à cheval, dragoons, Polish lancers--to be brought home, as

also its horse artillery and the _gendarmes d’élite_. All these were

serving in the Army of the North, and formed the best part of its

mounted troops. This was but a trifling preliminary warning of his

intentions: on January 14, 1812--the results of the Valencian campaign

being still unknown--he directed Berthier to withdraw from Spain

the whole of the Infantry of the Guard and the whole of the Polish

regiments in Spain. This was an order of wide-spreading importance,

and created large gaps in the muster-rolls of Suchet, Soult, and

Dorsenne. Suchet’s Poles (three regiments of the Legion of the Vistula,

nearly 6,000 men, including the detachments left in Aragon) formed

a most important part of the 3rd Corps. Soult had the 4th, 6th, and

9th Polish regiments and the Lancers, who had done such good service

at Albuera, a total of another 6,000 men. But Dorsenne was to be the

greatest sufferer--he had in the Army of the North not only the 4th

of the Vistula, some 1,500 bayonets, but the whole of the infantry

of the Young Guard, the two divisions of Roguet and Dumoustier,

twenty-two battalions over 14,000 strong. The dispatch of January 14

directed that Suchet should send off his battalions of the Legion

‘immediately after the fall of Valencia.’ Soult was to draft away

his Poles ‘within twenty-four hours after the receipt of the order.’

Dorsenne, of course, could not begin to send off the Guard Divisions

of infantry till the troops lent from the Army of the North (Reille

and Caffarelli) were freed from the duties imposed on them by the

Valencian expedition. A supplementary order of January 27th told him

that he might keep them for some time longer if the English took the

offensive--news of Wellington’s march on Rodrigo was just coming to

hand. ‘Le désir,’ says the Emperor, ‘que j’ai d’avoir ma Garde n’est

pas tellement pressant qu’il faille la renvoyer avant que les affaires

aient pris une situation nouvelle dans le Nord[76].’ As a matter of

fact some Guard-brigades did not get off till March, though by dint

of rapid transport, when they had once passed the Pyrenees, they

struggled to the front in time to take part in the opening of the great

Russian campaign in June. The fourth brigade, eight battalions under

Dumoustier, did not get away till the autumn was over.

[76] Napoleon to Berthier, Paris, Jan. 27, 1812.

Thus the Emperor had marked off about 27,000 good veteran troops for

removal from the Peninsula, with the intention of using them in the

oncoming Russian war. The Army of the North was to lose the best of its

divisions--those of the South and of Aragon very heavy detachments.

Nothing was to come in return, save a few drafts and _bataillons de

marche_ which were lying at Bayonne. The Emperor in his dispatch makes

some curious self-justificatory remarks, to the effect that he should

leave the Army of Spain stronger than it had been in the summer of

1811; for while he was withdrawing thirty-six battalions, he had sent

into the Peninsula, since June last, forty-two battalions under Reille,

Caffarelli, and Severoli. This was true enough: but if the total

strength of the troops now dedicated to Spain was not less than it had

been in June 1811, it was left weaker by 27,000 men than it had been in

December 1811.

Now Suchet, when deprived of Reille’s aid, and at the same time

directed to send back to France his six Polish battalions, was left

with a very inadequate force in Valencia--not much more than half what

he had at his disposition on January 1. It would seem that the Emperor

overrated the effect of the capture of Blake and the destruction of his

army. At any rate, in his dispatches to Suchet, he seemed to consider

that the whole business in the East was practically completed by the

triumph at the New Year. The Marshal was directed ‘to push an advanced

guard towards Murcia, and put himself in communication with the 4th

Corps--the eastern wing of Soult’s army--which would be found at

Lorca[77].’ But the operations of the troops of the Army of Andalusia

in this quarter were limited to the appearance for two days at Murcia

of Pierre Soult’s small cavalry raid, of which Suchet got no news till

it was passed and gone. He was left entirely to his own resources,

and these were too small for any further advance: the Emperor not only

took away both Reille and the Poles, but sent, a few days later, orders

that Palombini’s Italian division, reduced by now to 3,000 men by its

heavy casualties on December 26th, should be sent into southern Aragon

against Duran and Montijo. The departure of Palombini (February 15th)

left Suchet with less than 15,000 men in hand. It must be remembered

that the conquest of a Spanish province always meant, for the French,

the setting aside of a large immobilized garrison, to hold it down,

unless it were to be permitted to drop back into insurrection. It was

clear that with the bulk of the kingdom of Valencia to garrison, not to

speak of the siege of the still intact fortress of Peniscola, Suchet

would have an infinitesimal field-force left for the final move that

would be needed, if Mahy and Freire were to be crushed, and Alicante

and Cartagena--both strong places--to be beleaguered.

[77] See Suchet’s _Mémoires_, ii. pp. 237-8.

The Marshal had by the last week in January pushed Harispe’s division

to Xativa, beyond the Xucar, and Habert’s to Gandia near the sea-coast.

These 9,000 men were all his disposable force for a further advance:

Valencia had to be garrisoned; Musnier’s division had gone north,

to cover the high-road as far as Tortosa and the Ebro; some of the

Italians were sent to besiege Peniscola. Suchet might, no doubt, have

pushed Habert and Harispe further forward towards Alicante, but he

had many reasons for not doing so. That fortress had been proved--by

Montbrun’s raid--to be in a posture of defence: besides its garrison

there were other Spanish troops in arms in the neighbourhood. To the

forces of Freire, Obispo, Villacampa, and Bassecourt, there was added

the newly-formed brigade of General Roche, an Irish officer lent by

the British government to the Spaniards, who had been drilling and

disciplining the cadres of the battalions handed over to him[78],

till they were in a better condition than most of the other troops

on this coast. The muster-rolls of the ‘united 2nd and 3rd armies,’

as these remnants were now officially styled, showed, on February 1,

1812, 14,000 men present, not including Villacampa’s division, which

was moving off to its old haunts in Aragon. By March 1 this figure

had risen to 18,000, many deserters who had gone home after the fall

of Valencia having tardily rejoined the ranks of their battalions.

Over 2,000 cavalry were included in the total--for nearly the whole of

Blake’s squadrons had escaped (not too gloriously) after the disastrous

combats on December 26, 1812.

[78] These were Chinchilla, 2nd of Murcia, and a new locally

raised battalion called 2nd of Alicante. He was in March handed

over also Canarias, Burgos, and Ligero de Aragon, which had

belonged to Freire till that date.

If Suchet, therefore, had moved forward with a few thousand men at

the end of January, he would have risked something, despite of the

depressed morale of his enemies. But in addition there was vexatious

news from Catalonia, which presently caused the sending of part of

Musnier’s division beyond the Ebro, and it was reported (only too

correctly) that the yellow fever had broken out with renewed violence

at Murcia and Cartagena. An advance into the infected district might

be hazardous. But most of all was any further initiative discouraged

by the consideration that no help could be expected from Marmont or

Soult. By the end of January Suchet was aware of Wellington’s invasion

of Leon, and of the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo. Not only did this move

absorb all the attention of Marmont, Dorsenne, and King Joseph, but

Soult was convinced that it boded evil for him also, and that a new

attack on Badajoz was imminent. Hill’s manœuvres in Estremadura (of

which more elsewhere) attracted all his attention, and he let it be

known that he had neither the wish nor the power to send expeditions

eastward, to co-operate against Murcia. Last, but most conclusive, of

all Suchet’s hindrances was a grave attack of illness, which threw

him on a bed of sickness early in February, and caused him to solicit

permission to return to France for his convalescence. The Emperor

(with many flattering words) refused this leave, and sent two of his

body physicians to Valencia to treat the Marshal’s ailment. But it was

two months before Suchet was able to mount his horse, and put himself

at the head of his army. From February to the beginning of April

operations were necessarily suspended for the Army of Aragon, since its

chief was not one of those who gladly hand over responsibility and the

power of initiative to his subordinates.

Hence there was a long gap in the story of the war in south-eastern

Spain from January to April 1812. The only events requiring notice

during that period were the occupation by the French of Denia and

Peniscola. The former, a little port on the projecting headland south

of Valencia, was furnished with fortifications newly repaired during

Blake’s régime, and had been an important centre of distribution

for stores and munitions of war, after the Spaniards lost the Grao

of Valencia in November, since it was the nearest harbour to their

positions along the Guadalaviar. In the general panic after Blake’s

surrender Mahy withdrew its garrison, but forgot to order the removal

of its magazines. Harispe seized Denia on January 20, and found sixty

guns mounted on its walls, and forty small merchant vessels, some of

them laden with stores, in its port. He garrisoned the place, and

fitted out some of the vessels as privateers. Mahy’s carelessness in

abandoning these resources was one of the reasons which contributed

most to his removal from command by the Cadiz Regency. It was indeed

a gross piece of neglect, for at least the guns might have been

destroyed, and the ships brought round to Alicante.

The story of Peniscola, however, was far more disgraceful. This

fortress sometimes called ‘the little Gibraltar’ from its impregnable

situation--it is a towering rock connected with the mainland by a

narrow sand-spit 250 yards long--was one of the strongest places in all

Spain. It had appeared so impregnable to Suchet, that, on his southward

march from Tortosa to Valencia, he had merely masked it, and made no

attempt to meddle with it[79]. Peniscola had suffered no molestation,

and was regularly revictualled by Spanish and British coasting vessels

from Alicante, Cartagena, and the Balearic Isles. The governor, Garcia

Navarro, was an officer who had an excellent reputation for personal

courage--taken prisoner at Falset in 1811[80] he had succeeded in

escaping from a French prison and had reported himself again for

further service. The garrison of 1,000 men was adequate for such a

small place, and was composed of veteran troops. In directing it to be

formally beleaguered after the fall of Valencia, Suchet seems to have

relied more on the general demoralization caused by the annihilation of

Blake’s army than on the strength of his means of attack. On January

20th he ordered Severoli with two Italian and two French battalions to

press the place as far as was possible, and assigned to him part of the

siege-train that had been used at Saguntum. The trenches, on the high

ground of the mainland nearest the place, were opened on the 28th, and

on the 31st the besiegers began to sap downhill towards the isthmus,

and to erect five batteries on the best available points. But it was

clear that the fortress was most inaccessible, and that to reach its

walls across the low-lying sand-spit would be a very costly business.

[79] See above, p. 14.

[80] See vol. iii. pp. 503-4.

Nevertheless, when a summons was sent in to the governor on February

2nd, he surrendered at once, getting in return terms of an unusually

favourable kind--the men and officers of the garrison were given leave

either to depart to their homes with all their personal property, or

to enlist in the service of King Joseph. This was a piece of mere

treachery: Navarro had made up his mind that the cause of Spain

was ruined by Blake’s disaster, and had resolved to go over to the

enemy, while there were still good terms to be got for deserters. As

Suchet tells the story, the affair went as follows. A small vessel,

sailing from Peniscola to Alicante, was taken by a privateer fitted

out by Harispe at Denia. Among letters seized by the captors[81] was

one from the governor, expressing his disgust with his situation,

and in especial with the peremptory advice given him by the English

naval officers who were in charge of the revictualling service and

the communications. He went on to say that he would rather surrender

Peniscola to the French than let it be treated as a British dependency,

whereupon the Marshal asked, and obtained, the surrender of the place.

Napier expresses a suspicion--probably a well-founded one--that the

letter may have been really intended for Suchet’s own eye, and that

the whole story was a piece of solemn deceit. ‘Such is the Marshal’s

account of the affair--but the colour which he thought it necessary

to give to a transaction so full of shame to Navarro, can only be

considered as part of the price paid for Peniscola[82].’ The mental

attitude of the traitor is sufficiently expressed by a letter which

reached Suchet along with the capitulation. ‘I followed with zeal,

with fury I may say, the side which I considered the just one. To-day

I see that to render Spain less unhappy it is necessary for us all to

unite under the King, and I make my offer to serve him with the same

enthusiasm. Your excellency may be quite sure of me--I surrender a

fortress fully provisioned and capable of a long defence--which is the

best guarantee of the sincerity of my promise[83].’

[81] Suchet says that the captain of the boat threw his letters

overboard at the last moment, but that they floated and were

picked up by the French. Was this a farce? Or is the whole story

doubtful?

[82] Napier, _Peninsular War_, iv. p. 38.

[83] See letter printed in Belmas, iv. p. 248.

The most astounding feature of the capitulation was that Navarro got

his officers to consent to such a piece of open treachery. If they had

done their duty, they would have arrested him, and sent him a prisoner

to Alicante. Demoralization and despair must have gone very far in this

miserable garrison.

The capture of Peniscola was Suchet’s last success. He fell sick

not long after, and when he once more assumed the active command

of his troops in April, the whole situation of French affairs in

Spain was changed, and no further advance was possible. The results

of Wellington’s offensive operations in the West had begun to make

themselves felt.

Meanwhile the remains of the Valencian and Murcian armies were

reorganizing themselves, with Alicante as their base and central port

of supply. Joseph O’Donnell, though not a great general, was at least

no worse than Blake and Mahy--of whom the former was certainly the most

maladroit as well as the most unlucky of commanders, while the latter

had shown himself too timid and resourceless to play out the apparently

lost game that was left to his hand in January 1812. By March there was

once more an army in face of the French, and in view of the sudden halt

of the invaders and the cheerful news from the West, hope was once more

permissible. The main body of O’Donnell’s army remained concentrated

in front of Alicante, but Villacampa’s division had gone off early to

Aragon, to aid in the diversion against Suchet’s communications, which

was so constantly kept up by Duran and the Empecinado. This was a good

move: the weak point of the French occupation was the impossibility

of holding down broad mountain spaces, in which small garrisons were

useless and helpless, while heavy columns could not live for more than

a few days on any given spot.

SECTION XXXI

MINOR CAMPAIGNS OF THE WINTER OF 1811-12

CHAPTER I

CATALONIA AND ARAGON

The chronicle of the obstinate and heroic defence made by the Catalans,

even after the falls of Tarragona and Figueras had seemed to make all

further resistance hopeless, was carried in the last volume of this

work down to October 28, 1811, when Marshal Macdonald, like St. Cyr and

Augereau, was recalled to Paris, having added no more to his reputation

than had his predecessors while in charge of this mountainous

principality. We have seen how General Lacy, hoping against hope,

rallied the last remnants of the old Catalan army, and recommenced

(just as Macdonald was departing) a series of small enterprises against

the scattered French garrisons. He had won several petty successes

in evicting the enemy from Cervera, Igualada, and Belpuig--the small

strongholds which covered the main line of communication east and west,

through the centre of the land, between Lerida and Barcelona. The enemy

had even been forced to evacuate the holy mountain of Montserrat, the

strongest post on the whole line.

Hence when, in November, General Decaen arrived to take over

Macdonald’s task, he found before him a task not without serious

difficulties, though the actual force of Spaniards in the field was far

less than it had been before the disasters at Tarragona and Figueras.

Lacy had a very small field army--he had reorganized 8,000 men by

October, and all through his command the total did not grow very much

greater. When he handed over his office to Copons fifteen months after,

there were no more than 14,000 men under arms, including cadres and

recruits. On the other hand he had a central position, a free range

east and west, now that the line of French posts across Catalonia had

been broken, and several points of more or less safe access to the sea.

Munitions and stores, and occasionally very small reinforcements from

the Balearic Isles, were still brought over by the British squadron

which ranged along the coast. Some of the officers, especially the much

tried and never-despairing Eroles, and the indefatigable Manso, were

thoroughly to be relied upon, and commanded great local popularity.

This Lacy himself did not possess--he was obeyed because of his stern

resolve, but much disliked for his autocratic and dictatorial ways,

which kept him in constant friction with the Junta that sat at Berga.

Moreover he was a stranger, while the Catalans disliked all leaders who

were not of their own blood: and he was strongly convinced that the

brunt of the fighting must be borne by the regular troops, while the

popular voice was all in favour of the _somatenes_ and guerrilleros,

and against the enforcement of conscription. Much was to be said on

either side: the warfare of the irregulars was very harassing to the

French, and had led to many petty successes, and one great one--the

capture of Figueras. On the other hand these levies were irresponsible

and untrustworthy when any definite operation was in hand: they might,

or they might not, turn up in force when they were required: the frank

disregard of their chiefs for punctuality or obedience drove to wild

rage any officer who had served in the old army. With regular troops

it was possible to calculate that a force would be where it was wanted

to be at a given time, and would at least attempt to carry out its

orders: with the _somatenes_ it was always possible, nay probable,

that some petty quarrel of rival chiefs, or some rival attraction of

an unforeseen sort, would lead to non-appearance. To this there was

the easy reply that ever since Blake first tried to make the Catalans

work ‘_militarmente_ and not _paisanmente_’ the regular army for some

two years had never gained a single battle, nor relieved a single

fortress[84]. The best plan would probably have been to attempt to

combine the two systems: it was absolutely necessary to have a nucleus

of regular troops, but unwise to act like Blake and Lacy, who tried

to break up and discourage the _somatenes_, in order that they might

be forced into the battalions of the standing army. The constant

series of defeats on record had been caused rather by the unskilful

and over-ambitious operations of the generals than by their insisting

on keeping up the regular troops, who had behaved well enough on many

occasions. But too much had been asked of them when, half-trained

and badly led, they were brought into collision with the veterans of

France, without the superiority of numbers which alone could make up

for their military faults.

[84] See notes on discussions of this sort in Sir Edward

Codrington’s _Memoirs_, i. pp. 264 and 277. He had seen much of

the evils of both kinds of organization, and leaned on the whole

to the irregulars, from a personal dislike for Lacy.

Since the capture of Cervera, Belpuig, and Igualada in October, the

territories held by the French in Catalonia fell into two separate and

divided sections. On the western side, adjacent to Aragon, Frère’s

division, left behind by Suchet, garrisoned Lerida, Tarragona, and

Tortosa: though it was a powerful force of over 7,000 men, it could

do little more than occupy these three large places, each requiring

several battalions. At the best it could only furnish very small

flying columns to keep up the communication between them. It was hard

to maintain touch with the other group of French fortresses, along

the sea-coast road from Tarragona to Barcelona, which were often

obsessed by Spanish bands, and always liable to be molested by Edward

Codrington’s British ships, which sailed up and down the shore looking

for detachments or convoys to shell. The fort of the Col de Balaguer,

twenty miles north of Tortosa, was the look-out point towards Tarragona

and the sole French outpost in that direction.

In eastern Catalonia the newly-arrived commander, General Decaen (a

veteran whose last work had been the hopeless defence of Bourbon and

Mauritius, where he had capitulated in 1810), had some 24,000 men in

hand. But he was much hampered by the necessity for holding and feeding

the immense Barcelona, a turbulent city which absorbed a whole division

for its garrison. It was constantly on the edge of starvation, and was

only revictualled with great trouble by vessels sailing from the ports

of Languedoc, of which more than half were habitually captured by the

British, or by heavy convoys labouring across the hills from Gerona,

which were always harassed, and sometimes taken wholesale, by the

Spanish detachments told off by Lacy for this end. Gerona and Figueras,

both fortresses of considerable size, absorbed several battalions each.

Smaller garrisons had also to be kept in Rosas, Hostalrich, Mataro,

and Montlouis, and there were many other fortified posts which guarded

roads or passes, and were worth holding. It was with difficulty that

6,000 or 8,000 men could be collected for a movable field-force, even

by borrowing detachments from the garrisons. An additional nuisance

cropped up just as Decaen took over the command: Lacy, seeing that the

Pyrenean passes were thinly manned, sent Eroles with 3,000 men to raid

the valleys of Cerdagne on the French side of the hills. The invaders

beat two battalions of national guards near Puigcerda, and swept far

down the valley (October 29-November 2), returning with thousands

of sheep and cattle and a large money contribution levied from the

villages. This raid (which enraged Napoleon[85]) made it necessary to

guard the Pyrenees better, and to send up more national guards from the

frontier departments.

[85] Who called the raid an ‘insult’--Napoleon to Berthier,

Paris, Feb. 29, 1812, and compare letter of March 8.

Thus it came to pass that though Lacy had no more than 8,000 men

available, and no fortress of any strength to serve as his base

(Cardona and Seu d’Urgel, his sole strongholds, were mediaeval

strongholds with no modern works), he paralysed the French force

which, between Lerida and Figueras, could show more than three times

that strength. Such was the value of the central position, and the

resolute hatred of the countryside for its oppressors. Catalonia could

only be held down by garrisoning every village--and if the army of

occupation split itself up into garrisons it was helpless. Hence,

during the winter of 1811-12 and the spring and summer of the following

year, it may be said that the initiative lay with the Catalans, and

that the enemy (despite of his immensely superior numbers) was on the

defensive. The helplessness of the French was sufficiently shown by

the fact that from June to December 1811 Barcelona was completely cut

off from communication with Gerona and France. It was only in the

latter month that Decaen, hearing that the place was on the edge of

starvation, marched with the bulk of Lamarque’s division from Upper

Catalonia to introduce a convoy; while Maurice Mathieu, the governor of

Barcelona, came out with 3,000 men of the garrison to meet him, as far

as Cardadeu. Lacy, determined that nothing short of a vigorous push by

the enemy should make their junction possible, and relieve Barcelona,

offered opposition in the defile of the Trentapassos, where Vives had

tried to stop St. Cyr two years back, showing a front both to Decaen

and to Mathieu. But on recognizing the very superior numbers of the

enemy he wisely withdrew, or he would have been caught between the two

French columns. Decaen therefore was able to enter Barcelona with his

immense convoy. [December 3rd-4th, 1811.] The Spaniards retreated into

the inland; their headquarters on the first day of the New Year were at

Vich.

There being no further profit in pressing Barcelona for the time being,

Lacy, in January, resolved to turn his attention to the much weaker

garrison of Tarragona, which belonged to Frère’s division and Suchet’s

army, and was not under Decaen’s immediate charge. Its communications

with Lerida and Tortosa were hazardous, and its stores were running

low. The Spanish general therefore (about January 2) sent down Eroles’s

division to Reus, a few miles inland from Tarragona, with orders to

cut all the roads leading into that fortress. The place was already

in a parlous condition for want of food, and its governor had sent

representations to Suchet that he was in need of instant succour.

Therefore the moment that Valencia fell, the Marshal directed Musnier,

whose division he had told off to hold the sea-coast between the Ebro

and Guadalaviar, to march with the bulk of his men to Tortosa, to pick

up what reinforcements he could from its garrison, and to open the road

from thence to Tarragona.

Lafosse, the governor of Tortosa, was so impressed with the danger of

his colleague in Tarragona, that he marched ahead along the coast-road

before Musnier arrived, and reached the Col de Balaguer with a

battalion of the 121st regiment and one troop of dragoons on January

18. Here he should have waited for the main column, but receiving false

news that Eroles had left Reus and returned to the north, he resolved

to push on ahead and clear the way for Musnier, believing that nothing

but local _somatenes_ were in front of him. He had reached Villaseca,

only seven miles from Tarragona, when he was suddenly surprised

by Eroles descending on his flank with over 3,000 men. He himself

galloped on with the dragoons towards Tarragona, and escaped, with only

twenty-two men, into the fortress. But his battalion, after barricading

itself in Villaseca village and making a good resistance for some

hours, was forced to surrender. Eroles took nearly 600 prisoners, and

over 200 French had fallen. Lafosse, sallying from Tarragona with all

that could be spared from the garrison, arrived too late to help his

men, and had to return in haste [January 19][86].

[86] There is an interesting account of the combat of Villaseca

in Codrington’s _Memoirs_, i. pp. 254-6: he was present, having

chanced to come on shore to confer with Eroles as to co-operation

against Tarragona. An odd episode of the affair was that, when

the French surrendered, they were found to have with them as

prisoners Captains Flinn and Pringle, R.N., whom they had

surprised landing at Cape Salou on the previous day.

Tarragona now seemed in imminent danger, and both Musnier at Tortosa

and Maurice Mathieu at Barcelona saw that they must do their best to

relieve the place, or it would be starved out. Musnier spent so much

time in organizing a convoy that he was late, and the actual opening

of the road was carried out by the governor of Barcelona. That great

city chanced to be crammed with troops at the moment, since Lamarque’s

division, which had escorted the December convoy, was still lying

within its walls. Maurice Mathieu, therefore, was able to collect 8,000

men for the march on Tarragona. Eroles, unfortunately for himself, was

not aware of this, and believing that the enemy was a mere sally of

the Barcelona garrison, offered them battle at Altafulla on January

24. The French had marched by night, and a fog chanced to prevent

the Catalans from recognizing the strength of the two columns that

were approaching them. Eroles found himself committed to a close

fight with double his own numbers, and after a creditable resistance

was routed, losing his only two guns and the rearguard with which he

tried to detain the enemy. His troops only escaped by breaking up and

flying over the hills, in what a French eye-witness described as _un

sauve-qui-peut général_. About 600 of them in all were slain or taken:

the rest assembled at Igualada three days later. Eroles blamed Lacy

and Sarsfield for his disaster, asserting that the Captain-General

had promised to send the division of the latter to his help. But his

anger appears to have been misplaced, for at this very time Decaen,

to make a division in favour of Maurice Mathieu’s movement, had sent

out two columns from Gerona and Figueras into Upper Catalonia. They

occupied Vich, Lacy’s recent head-quarters, on January 22, two days

before the combat of Altafulla, and Sarsfield’s troops were naturally

sent to oppose them. After wasting the upper valleys, Decaen drew

back to Gerona and Olot on the 29th, having sufficiently achieved his

purpose. Tarragona, meanwhile, was thoroughly revictualled by Musnier,

who brought up a large convoy from Tortosa. Reinforcements were also

thrown into the place, and a new governor, General Bertoletti, who was

to distinguish himself by a spirited defence in the following year.

In February the whole situation of affairs in Aragon and western

Catalonia (eastern Catalonia was less affected), was much modified by

the return from the south of the numerous troops which had been lent

to Suchet for his Valencian expedition. It will be remembered that

Napoleon had ordered that Reille should march back to the Ebro with his

own and Severoli’s divisions, and that shortly afterwards he directed

that Palombini’s division should follow the other two into Aragon. Thus

a very large body of troops was once more available for the subjection

of Aragon and western Catalonia, which, since Reille’s departure in

December, had been very inadequately garrisoned by Caffarelli’s and

Frère’s battalions, and had been overrun in many districts by the bands

of the Empecinado, Duran, Mina, and the Conde de Montijo. Napoleon’s

new plan was to rearrange the whole of the troops in eastern Spain.

[Illustration: CATALONIA]

Reille was to be the chief of a new ‘Army of the Ebro,’ composed of

four field divisions--his own, Palombini’s and Severoli’s Italians, and

a new composite one under General Ferino constructed from so many of

Frère’s troops as could be spared from garrison duty (seven battalions

of the 14th and 115th of the line), and six more battalions (1st Léger

and 5th of the line) taken half from Musnier’s division of Suchet’s

army and half from Maurice Mathieu’s Barcelona garrison[87]. This

last division never came into existence, as Suchet and Maurice Mathieu

both found themselves too weak to give up the requisitioned regiments,

which remained embodied respectively with the Valencian and Catalan

armies. Nevertheless Reille had more than 20,000 men actually in hand,

not including the fixed garrisons of Tarragona, Lerida, and the other

fortresses on the borders of Aragon and Catalonia. This, when it is

remembered that Caffarelli was still holding the Saragossa district,

seemed an adequate force with which to make an end of the guerrilleros

of Aragon, and then to complete, in conjunction with Decaen’s Corps,

the subjection of inland Catalonia. For this last operation was to be

the final purpose of Reille: while Decaen was to attack Lacy from the

eastern side, Reille (with Lerida as his base) was to fall on from the

west, to occupy Urgel and Berga (the seat of the Catalan Junta and the

centre of organized resistance), and to join hands with Decaen across

the crushed remnants of the Spanish army[88]. So sure did the Emperor

feel that the last elements of Catalan resistance were now to be

destroyed, that he gave orders for the issue of the proclamation (drawn

up long before[89]) by which the Principality was declared to be united

to the French empire. It was to be divided into the four departments

of the Ter [capital Gerona], Montserrat [capital Barcelona],

Bouches-de-l’Ebre [capital Lerida], and Segre [capital Puigcerda].

Prefects and other officials were appointed for each department, and

justice was to be administered in the name of the Emperor. The humour

of the arrangement (which its creator most certainly failed to see) was

that three-fourths of the territory of each department was in the hands

of the patriots whom he styled rebels, and that none of his prefects

could have gone ten miles from his _chef-lieu_ without an escort of 200

men, under pain of captivity or death.

[87] Napoleon to Berthier, Paris, Jan. 25, after the receipt of

the news of the fall of Valencia.

[88] Details may be found in the dispatches of Feb. 29, and May

1st and 8th.

[89] See vol. iv. p. 215.

Reille’s start was much delayed by the fact that one of his French

brigades had been told off to serve as escort to the mass of Blake’s

prisoners from Valencia, and could not get quit of them till, marching

by Teruel, it had handed them over for transference beyond the Pyrenees

to the garrison of Saragossa. Of his two Italian divisions, Palombini’s

was instructed to devote itself to the clearing of southern Aragon,

and the opening up of the communications between the French garrisons

of Daroca, Teruel, and Calatayud. The other, Severoli’s, called off

from the siege of Peniscola, which had originally been entrusted to

it[90], marched for Lerida in two columns, the one by the sea-coast and

Tortosa, the other inland, by way of Morella and Mequinenza. When his

troops had begun to concentrate on the borders of Aragon and Catalonia,

in and about Lerida, Reille began operations by sending a column, one

French brigade and one Italian regiment, to attack the ubiquitous

Eroles, who, since his defeat at Altafulla a month before, had betaken

himself to the inland, and the rough country along the valleys of the

two Nogueras, with the object of covering Catalonia on its western

front.

[90] See above, p. 88.

This expedition, entrusted to the French brigadier Bourke, ended in

an unexpected check: Eroles offered battle with 3,000 men in a strong

position at Roda, with a torrent bed covering his front (March 5).

Bourke, having far superior numbers, and not aware of the tenacity of

the Catalan troops, whom he had never before encountered, ordered a

general frontal attack by battalions of the 60th French and 7th Italian

line. It was handsomely repulsed, with such heavy loss--600 casualties

it is said--that the French retreated as far as Barbastro, pursued for

some distance by the troops of Eroles, who thus showed that their late

disaster had not impaired their morale[91]. This was a most glorious

day for the Baron, one of the few leaders of real capacity whom the

war in Catalonia revealed. He had been a civilian in 1808, and had to

learn the elements of military art under chiefs as incapable as Blake

and Campoverde. From a miquelete chief he rose to be a general in the

regular army, purely by the force of his unconquerable pertinacity and

a courage which no disasters could break. As a local patriot he had an

advantage in dealing with his Catalan countrymen, which strangers like

Reding, Blake, Lacy, or Sarsfield never possessed, and their confidence

was never betrayed. A little active man of great vivacity, generally

with a cigar in the corner of his mouth, and never long still, he

was not only a good leader of irregular bands, but quite capable of

understanding a strategical move, and of handling a division in a

serious action. His self-abnegation during his service under chiefs

whose plans were often unwise, and whose authority was often exercised

in a galling fashion, was beyond all praise[92].

[91] The exact loss is uncertain, but Bourke himself was wounded,

and Martinien’s lists show 15 other casualties among French and

Italian officers: Vacani (vi. p. 65) says that the 7th Italian

line alone lost 15 killed and 57 wounded. A loss of 16 officers

implies _at least_ 300 men hit.

[92] For numerous anecdotes of Eroles and lively pictures of his

doings the reader may refer to the Memoirs of Edward Codrington,

with whom he so often co-operated.

The check at Roda forced Reille to turn aside more troops against

Eroles--practically the whole of Severoli’s division was added to

the column which had just been defeated, and on March 13th such a

force marched against him that he was compelled to retire, drawing

his pursuers after him toward the upper course of the Noguera, and

ultimately to seek refuge in the wilds of Talarn among the foot-hills

of the higher Pyrenees. His operations with a trifling force paralysed

nearly half Reille’s army during two critical months of the spring of

1812. Meanwhile, covered by his demonstration, Sarsfield executed a

destructive raid across the French border, overran the valleys beyond

Andorra, and exacted a ransom of 70,000 dollars from Foix, the chief

town of the department of the Arriège (February 19). This was the best

possible reply to Napoleon’s recent declaration that Catalonia had

become French soil. The Emperor was naturally enraged; he reiterated

his orders to Reille to ‘déloger les insurgents: il n’est que trop

vrai qu’ils se nourrissent de France’--’il faut mettre un terme à ces

insultes [93].’ But though Reille pushed his marches far into the

remote mountainous districts where the borders of Aragon and Catalonia

meet, he never succeeded in destroying the bands which he was set to

hunt down: a trail of burnt villages marked his course, but it had

no permanent result. The inhabitants descended from the hills, to

reoccupy their fields and rebuild their huts, when he had passed by,

and the insurgents were soon prowling again near the forts of Lerida,

Barbastro, and Monzon.

[93] Napoleon to Berthier, March 8th, 1812.

Palombini in southern Aragon had equally unsatisfactory experiences.

Coming up from Valencia by the high-road, he had reached Teruel on

February 19th, and, after relieving and strengthening the garrison

there, set out on a circular sweep, with the intention of hunting down

Gayan and Duran--the Conde de Montijo had just returned to the Murcian

army at this moment[94], while the Empecinado was out of the game for

some weeks, being, as we shall presently see, busy in New Castile.

But the movements of the Italian general were soon complicated by the

fact that Villacampa, with the remnants of his division, had started

from the neighbourhood of Alicante and Murcia much at the same time as

himself, to seek once more his old haunts in Aragon. This division had

given a very poor account of itself while serving as regular troops

under Blake, but when it returned to its native mountains assumed a

very different efficiency in the character of a large guerrilla band.

Appearing at first only 2,000 strong, it recruited itself up to a much

greater strength from local levies, and became no mean hindrance to

Palombini’s operations.

[94] Apparently about the same time that Villacampa and his

division came up to replace him in Aragon.

On the 29th of February the Italian general relieved Daroca, and a few

days later he occupied Calatayud, which had been left ungarrisoned

since the disaster of the previous October[95]. After fortifying the

convent of Nostra Señora de la Peña as a new citadel for this place,

he split up his division into several small columns, which scoured the

neighbourhood, partly to sweep in provisions for the post at Calatayud,

partly to drive off the guerrilleros of the region. But to risk small

detachments in Aragon was always a dangerous business; Villacampa, who

had now come up from the south, cut off one body of 200 men at Campillo

on March 5, and destroyed six companies at Pozohondon on the 28th of

the same month. Taught prudence by these petty disasters, and by some

less successful attacks on others of his flying columns, Palombini once

more drew his men together, and concentrated them in the upland plain

of Hused near Daroca. From thence he made another blow at Villacampa,

who was at the same time attacked in the rear by a column sent up

by Suchet from Valencia to Teruel. The Spaniard, however, easily

avoided the attempt to surround him, and retired without much loss or

difficulty into the wild Sierra de Albarracin (April 18th). Meanwhile,

seeing Palombini occupied in hunting Villacampa, the guerrillero Gayan

made a dash at the new garrison of Calatayud, and entering the city

unexpectedly captured the governor and sixty men, but failed to reduce

the fortified convent in which the rest of the Italians took refuge

[April 29th]. He then sat down to besiege them, though he had no guns,

and could work by mines alone: but Palombini soon sent a strong column

under the brigadiers Saint Paul and Schiazzetti, who drove off Gayan

and relieved Calatayud [May 9th].

[95] See above, page 21.

Nevertheless three months had now gone by since the attempt to reduce

southern Aragon began, and it was now obvious that it had been wholly

unsuccessful. The hills and great part of the upland plains were still

in the possession of the Spaniards, who had been often hunted but never

caught nor seriously mishandled. Palombini owned nothing more than the

towns which he had garrisoned, and the spot on which his head-quarters

chanced for the moment to be placed. His strength was not sufficient

to enable him to occupy every village, and without such occupation

no conquest could take place. Moreover the time was at hand when

Wellington’s operations in the West were to shake the fabric of French

power all over Spain--even in the remote recesses of the Aragonese

Sierras. Palombini was to be drawn off in July to join the Army of the

Centre and to oppose the English. And with his departure such hold as

the French possessed on the rugged region between Calatayud, Saragossa,

and Teruel was to disappear.

It will be noted that during these operations of the spring no mention

has been made of the Empecinado, who had been so prominent in this

quarter during the preceding autumn and winter. This chief was now

at the bottom of his fortunes: raiding in New Castile after his

accustomed fashion, he had been completely defeated by General Guy

and a column of King Joseph’s army near Siguenza (February 7). He lost

1,000 men, only saved his own person by throwing himself down an almost

impracticable cliff, and saw his whole force dispersed. This affair

is said to have been the result of treachery: one of the Empecinado’s

lieutenants, a certain guerrillero leader named Albuir (better known

as El Manco from having lost a hand) being taken prisoner a few days

before, saved his neck by betraying his chief’s position and plans:

hence the surprise. El Manco entered the King’s service and raised a

‘counter-guerrilla’ band, with which he did considerable harm for a

space. The Empecinado had only collected 600 men even by April, when he

joined Villacampa and aided him in a raid round Guadalajara[96].

[96] For all this see Schepeler, pp. 570-1; King Joseph’s Letters

(Ducasse), viii. pp. 291 and 305; and Toreno, iii. pp. 81-2.

Mina, on the other hand, the greatest of all the partisans, was doing

some of his best service to the cause of liberty during the early

months of 1812. This was the period when he was conducting his bloody

campaign of reprisals against Abbé, the governor of Navarre, who had

published in December 1811 the celebrated proclamation which not only

prohibited any quarter for guerrilleros, but made their families

and villages responsible for them, and authorized the execution of

‘hostages’ levied on them, as well as the infliction of crushing fines.

Mina replied by the formal declaration of a ‘war of extermination

against all French without distinction of rank,’ and started the system

of shooting four prisoners for every Spaniard, soldier or civilian,

executed by the enemy. This he actually carried out for some months,

till the French proclamation was withdrawn. The most horrid incident

of this reign of terror was the shooting by the French, on March 21,

of the four members of the ‘insurrectional junta’ of the province

of Burgos, all magistrates and civilians, whom they had captured in

a raid, and the counter-execution of eighty French soldiers by the

Curate Merino, one of Mina’s colleagues, a few days later. This time of

atrocities ended shortly after, when Abbé withdrew his proclamation and

Mina followed his example.