fugitives, and in virtue of his authority as regent assumed the chief
direction of the war in Valencia, where his noble efforts were nearly
rendered futile by the villainy of Palacio's faction, who opposed him
and endeavoured to detach the soldiers and people from his authority,
and proposed to inundate the plains that lie round the black marble
mountain of Murviedro; but on Suchet invading the province, Blake
concentrated his ill-armed and undisciplined but brave horde of
peasantry to meet him. Exclusive of 5000 infantry and 700 Murcian
horsemen, under O'Mahy, at Cuença, and 2000 men under Bassecour at
Riguena, in September, he had 20,000 foot and 2000 horse; but, as
a foreigner by name and race, he was unpopular both in Murcia and
Valencia, "and the regency of which he formed a part was tottering,"
adds General Napier, in the fourth volume of his history. "The Cortes
had quashed O'Mahy's command of the Murcian army, and even recalled
Blake himself; but the order, which did not reach him until he was
engaged with Suchet, was not obeyed. Meanwhile that part of the Murcian
army which should have formed a reserve after O'Mahy's division had
marched for Cuença, fell into the greatest disorder; above 8000 men
deserted in a few weeks, and those who remained were exceedingly
dispirited."
Suchet's army entered in three columns, passed Castellon de la Plana,
masked Pensicola, invested Oropesa, and skirmished at Almansora, where
a few French, by bravely routing a great body of Spaniards, made
Blake doubt seriously the firmness of his troops; and thus leaving
four thousand men under O'Donnel at Segorbe, he retired beyond the
Guadalquiver, leaving Valencia in confusion. Suchet then invested the
town of Saguntum, and again turning all his attention to destroy Blake,
after much manoeuvring, they fought their disastrous battle of the 25th
October, 1811.
On the level and fertile plain which lies between Murviedro and
Valencia, and is intersected by torrents and ravines, fringed by
olive-trees, Suchet drew out his lines of battle before the ramparts of
Saguntum, where Blake was defeated, with the loss of 5000 men; and on
the Emperor Napoleon reinforcing Suchet with 15,000 men, under General
Reille (a Reilly of Irish parentage), the position of Blake and his
Andalusians became more than ever desperate.
He had now fought _five pitched battles_ as a general, and had under
his command 22,000 foot and 3000 horse. In November, Suchet advanced
towards the Guadalquiver with a force diminished to 18,000 men by
garrisons and detachments. Though Blake had destroyed two of the
bridges, and manned the houses, and was in hourly expectation of a
general rising of the Valencians, the French fearlessly stormed his
defences, crossed the river, menaced his front, and harassed his rear,
until he was compelled to form an intrenched camp five miles in extent,
enclosing the city of Valencia and three of its suburbs. A twelve-feet
ditch surrounded this camp, the slope of which was so high as to
require ladders.
The battle of Valencia, fought in December, 1811, followed. O'Mahy
was defeated, and fled to Alcira, leaving Blake blocked up in the
fortified camp with eighteen thousand men in want of provisions, while
the French were well and freely supplied by the _Valencians_, who, as
Blake reports, "were a bad people." On the 2nd December he made a bold
effort to break through Suchet's lines, and sallied out at the head of
ten thousand men; but was repulsed, and Suchet pushed more vigorously
than ever the siege of the city, knowing well that it was impossible
for Blake to remain long in a camp which included a starving population
of fifty thousand souls. The fire of sixty great guns drove Blake into
the city, abandoning his camp on the 5th December to the foe, who
found in it eighty pieces of cannon. In the evening Suchet summoned
Valencia; but Blake declined to yield. Then skirmishes, assaults, and
bombarding continued till the 9th, when the citizens were on the point
of insurging against Blake, and insisted that he should surrender. He
complained bitterly of their cowardice, and required leave to march
with his soldiers to Alicant with their baggage, colours, and only four
pieces of cannon.
These terms were refused him.
The Valencians opened their gates, and the brave but unfortunate Blake
was compelled to surrender his sword, and march out at the head of
twenty-two generals, eight hundred and ninety-three other officers,
and eighteen thousand men, as prisoners of war; leaving in the hands
of the enemy eighty stand of colours, two thousand horses, three
hundred and ninety pieces of cannon, forty thousand stand of arms, one
hundred and eighty thousand pounds of powder, and three millions of
ball-cartridges, with a vast store of other warlike munition.
After the fall of Valencia he had no opportunity of achieving anything
of importance; and in May, 1812, the Regent Charles O'Donnel, Conde
de Abispal, bestowed the command of the Valencian forces upon his own
brother Joseph, who rallied at Alicant the remains of Blake's army,
four thousand of whom escaped from Suchet's guards.
For his last important capture, Suchet was created Duke of Albufera;
and poor Blake, as a prisoner of war too important to be exchanged, was
ordered into France with his two aides-de-camp.
The preceding has been but a brief outline of the career, services, and
struggles of Blake, whose popularity, by a combination of circumstances
over which he had no control, was almost destroyed for ever in Spain.
He was accompanied to the Spanish frontier by the Adjutant-General
Florestan Pipi, who was then sent to Naples. On entering France
he was sent to Paris, and from thence to the strong Château de
Vincennes, where he remained a close prisoner until the fall of the
Imperial Government; but this captivity did not prevent the Cortes
from appointing him a Counsellor of State when naming the regency.
The triumph of the allies having broken his fetters in 1814, after
receiving many marks of favour from the Emperor Alexander, he returned
into Spain under the ministry of Ballasteros, and was appointed
Director-General of the Corps of Engineers. He occupied this honourable
post until the revolution of 1820, when, in exchange, he received a
seat in the Council of State. When war was threatened between France
and Spain in 1823 he was appointed, on the 7th February, one of the
committee of five generals who were ordered to concert measures for
defending the kingdom. In the French army which entered Spain in
that year, under the Marquis of Lauriston (an officer of _Scottish_
parentage), we find two lieutenant-generals of _Irish_ descent--Count
Bourke and Viscount O'Donoughue; the Duke of Angoulême was
General-in-Chief, and to him, the Duke of Berwick and Alba, a Spanish
grandee of the Stuart blood, gave his adherence. The restoration
caused by the French intervention under the Marshal Lauriston was
fatal to Blake; for being suspected by the royalists of constitutional
principles, he was only able to avoid prosecution by great care and
solicitude: but his career was drawing to a close, as he died at
Valladolid in 1827, regretted by all the Spanish army, and eulogized by
the people in their songs and stories of "the War of Independence."
The military men who had borne arms under him, says a French writer,
recognised and admitted his positive talent, his great knowledge and
perspicacité of tactiques; but agreed that he failed in two essential
points--the prompt _coup d'oeil_ which decides at once the fortune of a
battle, and that art of manner by which it is necessary to excite the
enthusiasm of the soldier.
A distinguished branch of the old Celtic sept of O'Donnel has borne a
prominent part in the Spanish annals during the last fifty years; but
so early as the days of Philip of Anjou and Charles of Spain, we find
an O'Donnel fighting in the ranks of their armies.
Soon after the accession of James VI. to the English throne, he was
engaged in the last struggle of the Crown against the houses of
O'Donnel and O'Neil. An earldom was bestowed as a peace-offering upon
the chief of the former; but his plots against the king soon deprived
him of it: his estates were seized, an English colony planted in the
land of his tribe, and he fled to the Court of Spain, between which
and the Irish there had been a close connexion during the animosity of
Philip II. and Elizabeth. He was welcomed with all the honours of a
Castilian grandee, and attained a high rank under King Charles. Eighty
years after this we find his descendant, Baldearg O'Donnel, still
remembering the days when the chiefs, or petty princes of his race,
were solemnly inaugurated as the successors of St. Columba on the Rock
of Kilmacrenan. He resigned his commission in the service of Philip V.,
of whom he begged permission to join the Irish, then in arms against
William of Orange. Philip refused; but the O'Donnel fled by a route so
circuitous that he visited Turkey, and after enduring many privations,
landed at Kinsale in 1690, where seven thousand armed Ulster-men hailed
him with joy, as the _Red O'Donnel_ of an ancient Celtic prophecy.
From Baldearg O'Donnel is descended General Count O'Donnel, who
commanded the army of Maria Theresa on the fall of Count Lacy at
the great battle of Toorgau in 1761; and also General O'Donnel,
Vice-Governor of Lombardy, who was attacked by the Milanese during the
Austrian revolution of 1848, when his palace was stormed and himself
taken prisoner. There was also a Count O'Donnel in the Hungarian
service, who died at Brussels in 1767, after reaching the patriarchal
age of one hundred and two years.
Of this ancient Celtic family there are now, or were lately, four
general officers of the highest rank in the service of Great Britain,
Spain, Austria, and America; but of these the most distinguished is
Leopold O'Donnel, Conde de Lucena and Marshal in the service of Donna
Isabella II.
The four O'Donnels, Henry, Charles, Joseph, and Alexander, who attained
such distinction in Spain during the Peninsula War, were the sons of
Irish gentlemen who emigrated to that country during the latter end of
the last century; and of their services and honours our limits will
allow but a brief outline; while General Sarsfield, Colonel O'Ronan,
A.D.C. to the Marquis de Campo Verde, or such partisan soldiers as
MacDonel, the unfortunate Guerilla chief who fell in action, Captain
Flinter the Christino, or General O'Doyle and his brother, a captain,
who were taken prisoners at the last battle of Vittoria, and shot in
cold blood by Zumalacarregui, can only be indicated here by name.
CHARLES (afterwards) Count O'Donnel first became known to history in
1810, when commanding at Albuquerque, from whence, on the 14th March,
he made a vigorous attempt to surprise General Foy, but was driven into
Casceres. Marching towards the ancient city of Merida on the 2nd April,
he drove back General Regnier and made an attempt to surprise Truxillo
(the birthplace of Pizarro), which is situated on a mountain. Here he
was repulsed, and with difficulty effected a retreat to Albuquerque;
but three months after we find him at Truxillo again, co-operating with
Don Carlos de España, with whom he cut off the French at Rio Monte.
In May he had lent two thousand infantry and two hundred cannoneers
to Blake, to enable that officer to conduct the siege of Tarragona,
receiving in return from Captain Codrington two thousand British
muskets to equip a new levy. He allowed four thousand of his best
Valencians to embark with Miranda to fight at Tarragona, but not until
he received a pledge that the British would bring back all who survived
the siege.
Charles served long with Blake, and was in most of the battles just
recounted; thus, to rehearse his earlier services would be to enumerate
those of Blake a second time.
In September, 1811, when the latter was forced to retire beyond the
Guadalaviar, he left Charles O'Donnel with four thousand men on the
side of Segorbe; and on investing Saguntum in October, he sent him with
Villa Campo's division and San Juan's cavalry to Betera. There O'Donnel
was attacked by Harispe, though well posted in rear of a canal, and
having his centre protected by a chapel and some houses; but the French
advanced with such fury, that the Spaniards were swept away by the
first fire.
In the war of 1823, General O'Donnel commanded a corps of Royalists,
which were destroyed by the troops of Torrijos, the Constitutionalist;
and soon after, his wife, the Condesa de O'Donnel, had a narrow escape
from a party of the Empecinado, who were sent to Valladolid to take
her prisoner, but were repulsed by the troops of the Marshal Duke of
Reggio.
Charles O'Donnel was now Captain-General of Old Castile, and as such,
in the month of August, he summoned and took from its insurgent
garrison, under General Jalon, the citadel of Ciudad Rodrigo. By
the convention between them, it appears that the governor of the
fortress undertook to obey any orders he might receive direct from
the king; but displayed great distrust of the royalists and the Irish
commander. After this, the latter marched into Estremadura, everywhere
crushing the Constitutionalists, and enforcing the supremacy of the
king. In August his head-quarters were at Salamanca, and in October
at Algesiras. This war, in which the absolute power of Ferdinand was
fatally enforced by the bayonets of France under Marshal Lauriston,
the Duke of Reggio, and others, soon ended; but though smothered for a
time, the restless spirit of the Spaniards soon again broke forth into
a flame, and most fatally for the house of O'Donnel, as shall be shown
in the sequel.
JOSEPH O'DONNEL, who had been serving with his brothers against the
common enemy, was appointed by the regent, the Conde de Abispal, to
succeed Blake in command of the Murcians and Valencians in May, 1812.
He collected the remains of these two armies, remodelled them with
great energy, raised new levies, and during the illness of Marshal
Suchet mustered fourteen thousand men in the neighbourhood of Alicant.
These operations, with others in Catalonia, brought on the battle of
Castalla in July, when, with 6000 foot, 700 horse, and eight guns, he
fought General Harispe on the mountains; but on the rough pathway and
a narrow bridge near Biar, the Spanish infantry were borne down by
the weight and fury of the French cuirassiers, and forced to retreat,
leaving 3000 slain on the field. O'Donnel, who had made incredible
exertions to gain the day, and had fired two pieces of cannon at the
bridge with his own hands, attributed his defeat to the disobedience
and inability of San Estevan, who commanded his cavalry, and who, by
holding that force aloof, took no share in the battle. Pursued by the
French cuirassiers, Joseph fled by the Jumella road, and reached the
city of Murcia, where he was joined by General Maitland's armament from
Sicily, and thus saved from destruction; but he unwisely required that
officer to abstain from all requisitions for forage and rations from
the neighbouring country. Maitland assented, and immediately sank under
the unnecessary difficulties thus created. In August, when O'Donnel was
at Yecla with 6000 men, the Cortes passed a severe censure upon him
for his conduct at the battle of Castalla; so severe, indeed, that his
brother, the Conde de Abispal, a proud and haughty soldier, resigned
his high command during the campaign, which ended in Wellington's
retreat from Burgos; and then the weakness of the Spanish Government
became more than ever apparent.
On the 6th of December, when at Malaga, Joseph wrote a long letter
to General Donkin, concerning the _malheur_ at Castalla, in which
we find his knowledge of English so imperfect that he was obliged,
after a dozen of lines, to adopt and end it in French; and after this
unfortunate defeat we hear no more of him.
ALEXANDER O'DONNEL, the third brother, was colonel of a regiment of
Spanish infantry, and served with it in the Danish Isles under Romana.
Attacked there by overwhelming numbers, they effected their escape in
1808; but on being made captives at Espinosa, they entered the French
ranks to the number of 4500, and served in Napoleon's Continental war,
until they were all taken prisoners by the Russians on the retreat from
Moscow, when they were brought back to Spain in British ships, under
the care of Captain Hill of the Royal Navy. One of the Spanish corps
which returned after this strange career of military service was the
regiment of Don Alexander O'Donnel, which had been fully equipped by
the Emperor Alexander in 1812, and for which the daughter of General
Betancourt embroidered a pair of colours. It was styled the _Imperial
Alexander Regiment_, and under O'Donnel distinguished itself in the
national cause till after the disasters of 1823.
HENRY O'DONNEL, Conde de Abispal, who, like his brother, had been
serving with success and distinction in the battles of the Peninsula,
was a brave, reckless, and determined soldier, possessed of military
talents of a very high order, together with a heedlessness of his own
life and of the lives of others. Passing, with honour to himself,
through all the subaltern ranks, he was a colonel of Spanish infantry
in 1809, when Blake ordered him to command in the attack upon Sauham's
posts near Brunola, where, on the 31st August, he had the mortification
of seeing the place retaken, after he had carried it at the point of
the bayonet.
On the 26th September, as related in the memoir of Blake, he led the
advanced guard in the brilliant attempt to relieve Gerona. On the
13th October he broke out of the city, sword in hand, hewed a passage
through the French blockade, and, falling on Sauham's quarters sabre
_à la main_, forced that general to fly in his shirt, and successfully
achieved one of the most daring enterprises of that memorable siege.
In 1810, on succeeding Blake in command of the Catalonians--an
appointment bestowed by the provincial Junta, who heard of his high
reputation--he attacked Marshal Augereau with great fury, and drove
him into Gerona. He took up a position at Vich, but on the approach
of the French retired to the Col de Sespina, where he led a charge so
fierce and decisive, that Sauham's battalions were hurled from the
hills in confusion upon the plain. Marching to Manresa, he summoned the
Miguelets from Lerida to his colours. These were a species of banditti
who infested the mountains, and were armed with pistols, daggers, and
blunderbusses. With 12,000 men, Henry O'Donnel took up a position at
Maya in February, and harassed the French before Vich, where he fought
and lost a severe battle, and was forced to retreat to the Sierras,
and from thence to Tarragona, leaving a fourth of his men dead on the
field.
O'Donnel, "whose energy and military talents," says Napier, "were
superior to all his predecessors," now sent Caro with 6000 men against
the French at Villa Franca, where unfortunately they were all killed or
captured; and being wounded, he was compelled for a time to resign the
command to General Gasca.
On the 6th April, he harassed the French, then retreating from
Tarragona towards Barcelona; and after retiring from Vich with an army
discomfited by only 5000 Frenchmen, with the same discomfited men
he baffled Augereau, who led 20,000 bayonets; forced him to abandon
Lower Catalonia, and to retreat in disgrace to Gerona, where Marshal
Macdonald, a Scotsman, was sent by Napoleon to succeed him. During the
investment of Hostalric by the French, Henry O'Donnel collected many
convoys for its relief; he attacked the blockade at several points
with the Miguelets, and particularly distinguished himself in a noble
and dashing attempt to relieve the brave Julian Estrada, on the night
of the 12th May, when this strong citadel fell. During the siege of
Lerida by Suchet, O'Donnel collected two divisions of 4000 each; with
these and 600 cavalry he skilfully passed the defile of Momblanch, and
fought the contest of Margalef, where his troops were defeated; but he
rallied, and led them again upon the columns of the Duc d'Albufera.
The struggle was terrible; but he was forced to retreat through the
passes, leaving one general, eight colonels, 5000 men, and three guns
in the hands of the foe. His force was now 1400 strong, well supplied
by the active Miguelets; and by the bravery of his soldiers and his own
unwearying zeal he long prevented the siege of Tortoza, and found full
employment for the enemy during the remainder of the year.
"After the battle of Margalef, Henry O'Donnel re-united his forces,
and being of a stern, unyielding disposition, not only repressed the
discontents occasioned by that defeat, but forced the reluctant (and
lawless) Miguelets to supply his ranks and submit to discipline."
Thus, in July he had twenty-two thousand men when Marshals Macdonald
and Suchet combined to crush him, and when Napoleon's order to invest
Tortoza arrived. On this O'Donnel, after making a skilful feint towards
Trivisa, suddenly threw himself with ten thousand men into the fated
city, from whence, upon the noon of the 3rd July, he fell furiously
upon the French entrenchments, and made a fearful slaughter of the
troops of Laval. After this he retired to Tarragona. Having cut off
Macdonald's communication with the walled city of Ampurias, he now
conceived and executed the most skilful and vigorous plan which had yet
graced the Spanish arms.
Leaving Campo Verde in the valley of Aro, on the 14th, he marched
rapidly down from Casa de Silva upon Abispal, where the French, under
Swartz, were entrenched. He attacked them, slew two hundred, and,
taking the rest, embarked them for Tarragona, whither he retired soon
after, to take a little repose, being troubled by his last wound; yet
in January, 1811, we find him again in arms, directing the movements of
the army, and harassing Marshals Macdonald and Suchet, though unable to
ride or appear in the field; and on his being created Conde de Abispal,
he resigned the command of his Catalonians, three thousand in number,
to Campo Verde, being so disabled by wounds that he was quite unable to
conduct the siege of Tortoza.
In October, 1812, he was appointed to that situation, which several
Irish soldiers of fortune have held--Captain-General of Andalusia,--and
on Wellington reaching Cadiz in December of that year, after the
retreat from Burgos, on his making a complete re-organization of the
Spanish forces, the first reserve corps was given to the Conde de
Abispal, and the second reserve to Lacy. Thus they both served in the
new campaign which ended so gloriously on the field of Vittoria. After
this signal victory, the task of reducing the forts near the tremendous
pass of Pancorbo, which secured the approach to the Ebro, was given to
the Irish Conde and his Andalusians, to whom they fell partly by storm
and partly by capitulation.
On the 14th July, 1813, to O'Donnel and his reserve of five thousand
was permanently entrusted the important duty of blocking up the
French garrison in Pampeluna, now almost the last stronghold of
Napoleon in Spain. This task he conducted with great vigour, while
Wellington secured the passes of the Pyrenees and pushed the siege of
San Sebastian; but on Soult forcing the passes on the 25th July, such
an alarm reached Pampeluna, that the Conde de Abispal spiked some of
his cannon, blew up his magazines, abandoned the trenches, and but
for Picton's victorious stand at Huarte, was prepared to retreat. On
the fortunate arrival of a small Spanish division under Don Carlos
d'Espana, the blockade was resumed and the siege pressed with renewed
vigour.
O'Donnel was posted on the right of Marshal Murillo at the great and
decisive battle of Pampeluna, so absurdly and obstinately styled by the
British _the battle of the Pyrenees_, from which it is nearly thirty
miles distant. Soult was completely overthrown, and in August O'Donnel
reinforced the seventh division in occupying the important passes of
Exhallar and Zugaramurdi. After this, being again troubled by old
wounds, he fell ill and resigned his command for a time to Giron. In
November he resumed it again, and occupied the beautiful valley of the
Bastan, prior to the invasion of France under Wellington.
In February, 1814, he led six thousand men at the passage of the Gaves,
and was engaged in all the operations on the Lower Pyrenees with the
Spaniards under the Prince of Anglona. He served in that victorious
campaign which terminated at the blood-stained hill of Toulouse, where,
as General Napier so pithily remarks, "the war terminated, _and with it
all remembrance of the veterans' services_."