On March 10th Napoleon, who had marked with approval all Suchet’s

earlier operations, while he was thoroughly dissatisfied with

Macdonald, resolved to cut up the old 7th Corps or Army of Catalonia,

by making over nearly half of its force to the Army of Aragon. A decree

declared that the three provinces of Lerida, Tarragona, and Tortosa

were transferred to the charge of Suchet, with so much of the province

of Barcelona as lay east of the pass of Ordal and the course of the

upper Llobregat. Along with the provinces went the troops stationed in

them, viz. the French division of Frère, the Italian division of Pino,

and the Neapolitan division now commanded by Compère, together with the

cavalry and artillery attached to them. Macdonald’s charge was cut down

to the region of Barcelona and the lands north of it. The 7th Corps,

or troops of his command, sank from over 40,000 to about 25,000 men.

The 3rd Corps rose from 26,000 to 43,000 men. With this augmented force

Suchet was told both to hold down his old realm in Aragon, and to take

Tarragona, furnishing not only a siege army but a covering force as

well. Macdonald was no longer to be the shield of Suchet’s operations,

as during the siege of Tortosa, but was to occupy himself on a separate

and minor system of operations--the Imperial orders directed him to

occupy Cardona, Berga, and Urgel, the centres of resistance in upper

Catalonia, and to take the rocky stronghold of Montserrat.

Meanwhile, it was necessary to transfer Macdonald’s own person from

Lerida, where lay the troops that he had to surrender, to Barcelona,

which was to be for the future the centre of his activity. So dangerous

was the passage that he had to be given an escort of no less than

7,000 infantry and 700 horse. Taking the way of Manresa, he started

from Lerida on March 30th and cut his way through the Spanish forces

which stretched across his path. The regular division of Sarsfield,

supported by the _somatenes_ of central Catalonia, gave him much

trouble: though they failed to hold Manresa, which the French stormed

and wantonly burnt, they hung on to the flanks of the marching column,

repeatedly attacked its rearguard, and cut off or slew in three days

of continuous fighting some 600 men. After reaching the Llobregat at

Sabadel, Macdonald went on to the neighbouring Barcelona, while his

escort fought its way back to Lerida by the road of Igualada, and

joined Suchet on April 9th.

Having now got the whole of his new army under his own hand, Suchet

was able to prepare all his arrangements for the march on Tarragona.

Ample provision had first to be made for the defence of Aragon in his

rear, where the enemies were numerous if not powerful--Mina on the side

of Navarre, Villa Campa and Carbajal in the mountains of the south,

and the Army of Valencia beyond the lower course of the Ebro. He set

aside three battalions and a cavalry regiment to watch Mina[622], and

two battalions each for garrisons at Saragossa and Calatayud[623];

he placed a brigade under Paris at Daroca[624], and another under

Abbé at Teruel[625] to watch the southern insurgents. To keep off the

Valencians he left a regiment at Morella and Alcañiz[626], another in

garrison at Tortosa[627], and 1,600 men disposed in small forts along

the lower Ebro from La Rapita at its mouth to Caspe[628]. Musnier was

given charge of all the troops on the right bank of the Ebro, and had

orders to unite Abbé’s and Paris’s brigades and evacuate the southern

hill-country if the Valencians made a serious advance against Tortosa.

[622] One battalion each of the 44th and 115th Ligne and 1st of

the Vistula, and the Italian _Dragons de Napoléon_.

[623] At Saragossa one battalion each of the 5th Léger and 117th

Ligne; at Calatayud two battalions of 14th Ligne.

[624] Two battalions of the 44th, two of the 2nd of the Vistula.

[625] Three battalions of the 114th and two of the 121st, with

two squadrons of cuirassiers.

[626] Two battalions of the 115th Ligne.

[627] Two battalions of the 121st Ligne.

[628] One battalion of the 115th, one of the 3rd of the Vistula,

and apparently some of the Neapolitans.

This left Suchet twenty-nine battalions for the expeditionary corps

with which he was about to march against Tarragona--of which nineteen

were French, two Polish, and eight Italian. They amounted to just

under 15,000 bayonets. Since the three divisions of the Army of Aragon

had all been thinned down by the numerous detachments left behind,

he amalgamated what remained of them with the French and the Italian

brigades left to him by Macdonald, to make up three provisional

divisions for the field, under Habert, Harispe, and Frère. The first

had one French and two Italian brigades (fourteen battalions), the

others two brigades each (six and nine battalions respectively).

There was a cavalry brigade of 1,400 men under Boussard, and a large

provision of artillery and engineers for the siege (2,000 men of the

former, 750 of the latter arm). Counting the auxiliary services the

army had about 20,000 men--no great figure for the task before it, for

Tarragona was strong and Campoverde had some 12,000 or 15,000 regular

troops at his disposition--the three divisions of Sarsfield, Eroles,

and Courten--besides such aid as the miqueletes might give. And this

last resource was not to be despised; though they were not always

forthcoming when they were most required, yet they were not usually

found wanting. They could never be caught, owing to their knowledge of

their own hills, and they were never discouraged.

It was arranged that the army should march on Tarragona by two separate

routes; while the divisions of Frère and Harispe started from Lerida

by the road of Momblanch, the third division, that of Habert, was to

move from a separate base--Tortosa, where had been collected the heavy

artillery and the munitions of the siege. The guns which had taken

Tortosa were still lying there, with all the artillery reserve, and it

was to escort them that Habert was detailed to take the southern route

along the sea-coast by the Col de Balaguer. From this direction too

were to come the provisions of the army, which had been brought down

by water from Saragossa and Mequinenza while the Ebro was in flood,

and deposited at Mora--the nearest point on the river to Tarragona.

This division of forces was perhaps necessary, but appeared dangerous;

if Campoverde, when the French commenced their movements, had thrown

himself with all disposable forces upon the weak division of

Habert--only six battalions--and had wrecked the battering-train, there

could have been no siege of Tarragona for many a month to come.

But before the two columns had started from Lerida and Tortosa, and

while part of Harispe’s division was out on a final cattle-hunt up the

valley of the Noguera, before the Commander-in-Chief had even come up

to the front to join his army, a message arrived from the north which

might well have stopped the whole expedition. On April 21st Suchet,

still at Saragossa, received the astounding news that the Spaniards

had captured Figueras, the bulwark of northern Catalonia, and the most

important place (with the exception of Barcelona) which belonged to

the French in the whole principality. The disaster had happened on

the night of the 9th-10th, and the news of it had been brought by a

spy paid by Macdonald, across the territory occupied by the Spanish

army: otherwise it would have taken still longer to travel, by the

circuitous route through France, which was the only way by which news

from Upper Catalonia could reach Aragon[629]. Macdonald and Maurice

Mathieu, the governor of Barcelona, who added his supplications to

those of the Marshal, begged Suchet to abandon for the moment the

projected siege of Tarragona, and to march to their aid with every man

that he could spare. For they must collect as large a force as possible

to recover Figueras, and a field army could not be got together from

the much-reduced 7th Corps, which had to find a garrison of 6,000

men for Barcelona, and similar, if smaller, detachments for Gerona,

Rosas, Hostalrich, Mont Louis, Palamos, and other smaller places.

If Campoverde should march northward, with the bulk of his regular

divisions, to succour Figueras, there would be little or nothing to

oppose to him.

[629] Down to this winter Suchet could only communicate with

France up the Ebro and sent messengers via Tudela and Pampeluna,

but he had just opened a somewhat shorter route for himself via

Jaca and Oleron, which saved three days. Even so, communications

were intolerably slow. See Suchet’s _Mémoires_, ii. p. 9.

Suchet weighed the petition of his colleague with care, but refused to

assent to it. His decision was highly approved by the Emperor when he

came to know of it, and the reasons which he gave for his answer seem

convincing. It would take, as he calculated, twenty-five days to move a

division, or a couple of divisions, from Lerida to Figueras across the

hostile country-side of Catalonia; and since the disaster was already

eleven days old when the news came to hand, there must be over a month

of delay between the moment when the Spaniards had taken the fortress

and that at which the Army of Aragon could intervene. In that month the

fate of affairs in the Ampurdam would have been already decided. The

succours for the garrison of northern Catalonia must come from France,

not from Aragon. Figueras lies only twenty miles from the French

frontier[630], and Baraguay d’Hilliers could be helped far more readily

from Perpignan, Toulouse, or Narbonne than from Lerida. National Guards

and dépôt troops could be hurried to his aid in a few days. As to

Campoverde, he would be called home at once by a blow delivered against

Tarragona, his capital and chief arsenal. He must infallibly hurry

back to defend it, at the head of his field army, and Macdonald and

Baraguay d’Hilliers would then have nothing but the miqueletes opposed

to them. If the 7th Corps, with the reinforcements from France which

it must infallibly receive, could not deal with Rovira, Manso and the

rest, it was time to abandon the Peninsular War! The crisis, whichever

way its results might lean, was bound to have come and passed before

the Army of Aragon could be of any use. It would almost certainly have

ended in a check for the Spaniards, since the Emperor could pour as

many men into the Ampurdam as he pleased. At the worst Figueras would

be beleaguered so soon as the reinforcements arrived from France, and

all the best of the Spaniards in northern Catalonia would be shut up in

the place and kept out of mischief. It was entirely to the advantage of

the Imperial arms that the enemy should lock up his men in garrisons,

for they were much more troublesome when acting as partisans in the

mountains[631].

[630] As Suchet remarks (ii. p. 17) the Emperor at Paris could

have the news of the fall of Figueras on April 15th or 16th,

while he himself only got it on April 21st.

[631] For all these arguments and others see Suchet’s _Mémoires_,

ii. pp. 5-18.

Accordingly, on April 24th, Suchet, having sent a direct refusal to

Macdonald’s petition, came up to Lerida, and on the 28th Harispe’s

and Frère’s divisions started off for Tarragona by the shortest

road, that through Momblanch. At the same time Habert with the siege

artillery moved out from Tortosa for the same destination along the

coast-road by the Col de Balaguer and Cambrils. On May 2 both columns

were near Tarragona, having met with very little opposition by the

way, for Campoverde, with the larger part of his field army, had gone

off a fortnight before to the north, with the intention of succouring

Figueras, and the rest of his regulars had retired into Tarragona to

form its garrison.

Before dealing with the long and bitterly contested struggle at

Tarragona, it is necessary to explain how Figueras had come into

the hands of the Spaniards. This place was a new and well-designed

eighteenth-century fortress, built sixty years back by Ferdinand VI, to

supplement the defences of the Catalonian frontier. Thus it had not the

weaknesses of old-fashioned strongholds like Gerona or Lerida, where

the scheme of the fortifications dated back to the Middle Ages. Close

to the high-road from Perpignan to Barcelona, and only twenty miles

from the frontier, stands an isolated hill with a flat top, at whose

foot lay the original village or small town of Figueras. Ferdinand

VI had fortified this hilltop so as to form a circular bastioned

enceinte, and thus created a most formidable citadel, which he named

after himself San Fernando. It dominated the little town below, and

the whole of the surrounding plain of the Ampurdam. The slopes below

the wall are steep, even precipitous in some places, and there is only

one road leading up into the place by curves and zigzags, though there

are several posterns at other points. San Fernando had been one of

the fortresses which Napoleon seized by treachery in 1808--a French

detachment, ostensibly marching through the town towards Barcelona, had

fallen upon and evicted the Spanish garrison[632]. Since then it had

formed the most important base for operations in northern Catalonia,

and had been the magazine from which the sieges of Rosas and Gerona

had been fed. A long possession of three years had made the Imperial

generals careless, and the garrison had gradually dwindled down to

a provisional battalion of 600 or 700 men, mainly composed at this

moment of drafts for the Italian and Neapolitan divisions of Pino and

Compère, detained on their way to the front, according to the usual

system. The governor was a Brigadier-General Guillot, who seems to have

been a negligent and easy-going officer. The rocky fortress was so

strong that it never entered into his head that his restless neighbours

the miqueletes might try a blow at it. It was a mere chance that on

the day when the assault was delivered a marching battalion of Italian

drafts, escorting General Peyri, who was coming up to take command of

Pino’s late division, happened to be billeted in the town below--next

day they would have been gone.

[632] See vol. i. p. 37.

It was clearly Guillot’s carelessness, and the small numbers of his

garrison, which inspired the miquelete chiefs with the idea of making

an attack by surprise on this almost impregnable citadel. Rovira, the

most active of them, got into communication with three young Catalans

who passed as _Afrancesados_ and were employed by the commissary

Bouclier, who had charge of the magazines. One, Juan Marquez, was his

servant, the other two, Pedro and Ginés Pons, were under-storekeepers.

All three were mere boys, the oldest not twenty-one years of age.

Marquez got wax impressions of various keys belonging to his master,

including those of the store-vaults and of a postern gate leading into

them from the foot of the ramparts, and made false keys from them. It

was determined that a picked band of miqueletes should attempt to force

their way into the place through the postern on the midnight of April

9th-10th. Rovira sent the details of his scheme to Campoverde, who,

despite of his late fiasco at Barcelona, was delighted with the plan,

and offered to come up with his field army to the north if the attempt

should succeed.

The miquelete chiefs conducted their enterprise with considerable

skill. On the 7th of April Rovira collected some 2,000 men at the

foot of the Pyrenees, north of Olot, and threatened to make a descent

into the French valleys beyond, in order to distract the attention

of the enemy. On the 9th he counter-marched for Figueras, and at

dusk got within nine miles of it. At one in the morning his forlorn

hope, 700 men under two captains named Casas and Llovera, came up

under the ramparts, found their confederates waiting for them at the

postern, and were admitted by means of the false keys. They burst up

out of the vaults, and caught the garrison mostly asleep[633]--the

governor was captured in his bed, the main-guard at the great gate was

surprised, and the few men who came straggling out of the barracks

to make resistance were overpowered in detail. Only thirty-five men

were killed or wounded on the part of the French, not so many on the

Spanish side, and in an hour or less the place was won. The captors

promptly admitted their friends from without, and ere dawn over 2,000

Catalans were manning the walls of the fortress. The material captured

was immense--16,000 muskets, several hundred cannon, a great store of

boots and clothing, four months’ provisions for a garrison of 2,000

men, and 400,000 francs in the military chest. General Peyri, with the

Italian _bataillon de marche_ which was sleeping in the town below, was

unable to do anything--there had been very little firing, and when some

fugitives ran down from San Fernando, it was to tell him that the place

was completely mastered by the enemy. He put his troops under arms, and

drew off at daylight to Bascara, half-way to Gerona, with his 650 men,

after having sent off the bad news both to Baraguay d’Hilliers on one

side and to the governor of Perpignan on the other[634]. The former

sent him out a battalion and a squadron, and told him to return towards

Figueras and to place himself in observation in front of it till he

was succoured. All the disposable troops in northern Catalonia should

join him within two days. Peyri therefore reoccupied Figueras town,

and barricaded himself in it with 1,500 men--being quite unable to do

more; he had to watch the Catalans introducing reinforcements into San

Fernando without being able to molest them. Baraguay d’Hilliers did

not come to his succour for some days, being unable to leave Gerona

till he had called in some dangerously exposed outlying posts, and had

strengthened Rosas, which was threatened by some English frigates, who

showed signs of throwing a landing-party ashore to besiege it. He then

came up with 2,000 men to join Peyri, while a more considerable force

arrived from Perpignan under General Quesnel, who had charge of the

Pyrenean frontier, and appeared with three line battalions, and two

more of National Guards of the Gers and Haute-Garonne. Having 6,500

infantry and 500 cavalry concentrated, d’Hilliers was able to throw a

cordon of troops round San Fernando and to commence its blockade on

April 17th.

[633] Vacani, iii. p. 25, says that the best part of the

garrison had been out on an expedition in the hills all the

day, seeking for the bands who were said to be threatening the

French frontier. They returned late at night tired out, and slept

the sleep of the weary, while recruits and convalescents were

furnishing the few guards considered necessary in such a strong

place. A picket of Neapolitans who were in charge of the main

gate were captured without resistance, being attacked, to their

surprise, from the inside of the fortress.

[634] Napier suggests (iii. 222) that Peyri might have tried to

assail San Fernando before the enemy was properly settled down

into it. This seems a most doubtful criticism: he had only 650

men of drafts with him; neither he nor they knew the topography

of the fortress; it was pitch dark; the strength of the enemy

was unknown. The garrison had succumbed in a few minutes despite

of all its advantages of position. To attack would have been

foolhardy.

The place, however, was now fully garrisoned. Rovira had thrown into

it, during the week when free entry was possible, miqueletes to the

number of some 3,000, making a brigadier named Martinez, one of his

most trusted lieutenants, the governor. On the 16th a reinforcement of

regular troops arrived--part of the division of Baron Eroles, which had

the most northern cantonments among the units of Campoverde’s field

army. Eroles had marched from Martorel by Olot, and had captured on

his way the small French garrisons of that place and of Castelfollit,

making 548 prisoners. Campoverde sent messages to say that he would

arrive himself with larger forces in a few days. Having thrown

Courten’s division into Tarragona, he would bring up the rest of his

available troops--Sarsfield’s division and the remainder of that of

Eroles, with all the miqueletes that he could collect. Meanwhile the

local _somatenes_ of central Catalonia pressed in close upon Gerona and

Hostalrich, and kept Baraguay d’Hilliers in a state of great anxiety,

for he feared that they might capture these places, whose garrisons had

been depleted to make up his small field force.

The opportunity offered to the Spaniard was not one that was likely

to last for long, since Napoleon, on hearing of the fall of Figueras,

had issued orders for the concentration of some 14,000 troops from

Southern France, a division under General Plauzonne from Languedoc and

Provence, and five or six odd battalions more[635]. When these should

arrive, in the end of April or the first days of May, the French in

northern Catalonia would be too strong to fear any further disasters.

But meanwhile Macdonald and Baraguay d’Hilliers had a fortnight of

doubt and danger before them. The former proposed to march himself to

Figueras, with what troops he could spare from Barcelona, but since

its garrison was only about 6,000 strong, and the place was large and

turbulent, it was clear that he could bring little with him. It was for

this reason that he wrote to Suchet in such anxiety on April 16th, and

begged for the loan of one or two divisions from the Army of Aragon.

Till he got his answer, he did not himself move forth. Hence d’Hilliers

alone had to bear the brunt of the trouble.

[635] See Napoleon, _Correspondance_, xxii. no. 17,644.

Plauzonne’s regiments were the 3rd Léger, 11th and 79th Line, and

four battalions of the 67th Line and one of the 16th Léger also

crossed the frontier.

There is no doubt that Campoverde had a fair chance of achieving

a considerable if temporary success; but he threw it away by his

slowness and want of skill. Though aware of the capture of Figueras

on April 12th, he did not start from Tarragona till the 20th, nor

reach Vich in northern Catalonia till the 27th. He had then with him

6,000 infantry, mostly of Sarsfield’s division, and 800 horse. Rovira

drew near to co-operate, with those of the miqueletes of the Ampurdam

who had not already thrown themselves into the fortress. The force

collected ought to have sufficed to break through the thin blockading

cordon which Baraguay d’Hilliers had thrown round the fortress, if it

had been properly handled. But Campoverde was no general. On May 3rd

the relieving army approached the place, the miqueletes demonstrated

against the northern part of the French lines, while Sarsfield broke

through at a point on the opposite side, near the town, and got into

communication with Eroles, who came down with 2,000 men to join him.

They fell together upon the French regiment (the 3rd Léger) on this

front, which took refuge in the barricaded town and defended itself

there for some time. According to all the Spanish narratives the three

battalions in Figueras presently offered to surrender, and wasted

time in negotiations, while Baraguay d’Hilliers was collecting the

main body of his forces in a solid mass. Screened by an olive wood in

his march, the French general suddenly fell on Sarsfield’s flank and

rear, while he was intent on the enemy in the town alone; a charge of

dragoons cut up two of the Spanish regiments, and the rest gave way in

disorder, Sarsfield falling back towards the plain, and Eroles retiring

into the fortress. The reserve of Campoverde and the miqueletes were

never seriously engaged. If they had been used as they should have

been, the fight might have gone otherwise than it did, for counting

the garrison of San Fernando and the irregulars, the Spaniards had a

considerable superiority of numbers. They lost over 1,000 men, the

French about 400[636]. During the time while the blockading line was

broken, Sarsfield had introduced into San Fernando some artillerymen

(much needed for the vast number of guns in the place), and part of

a convoy which he was conducting, but the greater portion of it,

including a great drove of sheep, was captured by the enemy at the

moment of the rout.

[636] So the French narratives. Martinien’s lists show three

officers killed and thirteen wounded on May 3 before Figueras.

The regiments which suffered most were the 3rd and 23rd Léger,

each with one officer killed and four wounded.

If Campoverde and his army had been given no other task save the

relief of Figueras, it is probable that this combat would have been

but the commencement of a long series of operations. But he received,

immediately after his check, the news that Suchet had marched from

Lerida on April 28th, and had appeared in front of Tarragona on May

3rd. The capital of Catalonia was even more important than Figueras,

and it was necessary to hasten to its aid, for no regular troops had

been left in the southern part of the principality, save the single

division of Courten, which had hastened to shut itself up in the

city. Accordingly Sarsfield was directed to take 2,000 infantry and

the whole cavalry of the army, and to march by the inland to threaten

Suchet’s rear, and his communications with Lerida, while Campoverde

himself came down to the coast with 4,000 men, embarked at Mataro,

the nearest port in Spanish hands, and sailed for Tarragona, where he

arrived in safety, to strengthen the garrison. Eroles came out of San

Fernando with a few hundreds of his own troops, before the blockade

was fully re-established, and joined Rovira in the neighbouring

mountains, leaving the defence of the fortress to Martinez with five

regular battalions[637] and 3,000 miqueletes. Eroles and Rovira were

the only force left to observe Baraguay d’Hilliers, and since they

had only a few thousand men, mostly irregulars, they were able to do

little to help the place. For the besieging force was strengthened

in May by the arrival of Plauzonne’s division from France, while

Macdonald came up from Barcelona with a few battalions, and took over

the command from Baraguay d’Hilliers. By the end of the month he had

over 15,000 men, and had begun to shut in the fortress on its height

by an elaborate system of contravallations, which he compares in his

memoirs to Caesar’s lines around Alesia. Martinez made a most obstinate

and praiseworthy defence--of which more hereafter--and the siege of

Figueras dragged on for many months, till long after the more important

operations around Tarragona had come to an end. But after Campoverde’s

departure for the south there was never any hope that it could be

relieved: all that its defenders accomplished was to detain and

immobilize the whole 7th Corps, which, when it had garrisoned Barcelona

and Gerona, and supplied the blockading force for San Fernando, had not

a man disposable for work in other quarters. Thus Suchet had to carry

out his operations against Tarragona without any external assistance,

whereas, if Figueras had never been lost, he might have counted on

much incidental help from his colleague Macdonald. This much was

accomplished by the daring exploit of April 10th: if Campoverde had

been capable of utilizing the chance that it gave him, its results

might have been far more important.

[637] The regulars left in San Fernando were two battalions of

Voluntarios de Valencia, one of Ultonia, and two of Antequera.

SECTION XXVIII: CHAPTER II

THE SIEGE AND FALL OF TARRAGONA. MAY-JUNE 1811

Suchet had marched, as has been already mentioned, from Lerida, with

Harispe’s division, on April 28th, Frère’s division following. On the

29th the head of the column reached Momblanch, where half a battalion

was left behind in a fortified post, to keep open the Lerida road.

On May 2nd the large manufacturing town of Reus, only ten miles from

Tarragona, was occupied: on May 3rd the French advanced guard, Salme’s

brigade, approached the city, and drove in the Catalan advanced posts

as far as the river Francoli. But the siege could not begin till

Habert’s force, escorting the battering-train, should come up from

Tortosa; and this all-important column was much delayed. Its road ran

along the seaside from the Col de Balaguer onward, and Codrington’s

squadron of English frigates and gunboats accompanied it all the way,

vexing and delaying it, by bombarding it whenever it was forced to come

within gunshot of the beach. This was practically all the opposition

that Suchet met with: a few miqueletes had shown themselves in the

hills between Reus and Momblanch, but they were too weak to fight.

Campoverde had carried off the best both of regulars and irregulars to

the relief of Figueras, and Courten, who had barely 4,500 men in his

division[638], had wisely shut himself up in Tarragona, where every man

was wanted: for the enceinte was very long, and the sedentary garrison

consisted of only five or six battalions. The troops inside the walls

did not amount, when the siege began, to 7,000 men: hence came the

weakness shown in the early days; it was not till Campoverde’s army

came back from the north (May 10) that an adequate defensive force was

in existence for such a large fortress.

[638] The composition of the divisions of the Army of Catalonia

was shifting, and hard to follow, but (as far as I can make out)

Courten’s division consisted of three battalions of Granada,

two each of Almanza, Almeria, and America, while the sedentary

garrison contained four or five battalions of the new Catalan

‘Sections’ or ‘local line,’ besides a battalion of Voluntarios de

Tarragona.

Tarragona, though some of its fortifications were not skilfully

planned, was a very strong place. The nucleus of the works was the

circuit of the old Celtiberian town of Tarraco, which afterwards became

the capital of Roman Spain. This forms the upper city in modern times.

It is built on an inclined plane, of which the eastern end (530 feet

above sea-level), where the cathedral lies, is the higher side, and

the slope goes downhill, and westward: the southern face, that towards

the sea, is absolutely precipitous, the northern one hardly less so.

Large fragments of the Cyclopean walls built by the Celtiberians, or

perhaps by the Carthaginians, are visible along the crest on both of

these sides. On the west, the lowest part of the old town, a line of

modern fortifications divided the upper town from the lower; there

was a sharp drop along this line: in most places it is very steep,

and the road of to-day goes up the hillside in zigzags, to avoid the

break-neck climb[639]. Below the fortifications of the upper city,

and divided from them by a broad belt of ground free of houses[640],

lay the port-town or lower city, clustering around the harbour, which

is an excellent roadstead shut in by a mole 1,400 feet long, which

runs out from the south-west corner of the place. The lower city was

enclosed on its northern and western sides by a front of six bastions;

its southern side, facing the port and the open sea, had not, and did

not need, any great protection; it could only have been endangered by

an enemy whose strength was on the water, and who could bring a fleet

into action. There was a sort of citadel in the port-town, a work named

the Fuerte Real, which lies on an isolated mound inside the north-west

angle of the walls. About 400 yards west of the most projecting bastion

of the place the river Francoli flows into the sea, at the western

end of the harbour. In the angle between the river and the port was an

outlying work, Fort Francoli, destined to keep besiegers away from the

shipping, which they might easily bombard from this point, if it were

not occupied. This fort was connected with the lower town by a covered

way protected by a long entrenchment containing two lunettes.

[639] Apparently there was in 1811 no road of this sort, up

the steep slope above the railway station of to-day; the

main _chaussée_ from Valencia entered the upper city at its

north-western end, and there was no good road for carriages

up the south-western point, as there is now (the so-called

Despeñaperros).

[640] Long since built over. The line of the old fortifications

of the upper city is now marked by a broad promenade, the Rambla

de San Juan.

Notwithstanding the great strength of the high-lying upper city, it

had been furnished with a second line of defence, outside its old

Roman walls. Low down the hillside five forts, connected by a wall

and covered way, protected its whole eastern front from the edge of

the heights as far as the sea. The Barcelona road, crawling along the

water’s edge, enters the place between two of these forts, and goes

to the Lower, after sending a steep bypath up to a gate in the Upper,

city[641].

[641] It is a stiff climb up a very steep ascent to enter the

upper city by its ‘Barcelona Gate.’

On the west and north-west the high-lying fortress commands all the

surrounding country-side. But to the due north there is a lofty hill

about 800 yards from the walls, called Monte Olivo. This dominates the

lower town, since it is 200 feet high, or more, though it is itself

dominated by the upper town. An enemy in possession of it has every

advantage for attacking the north front of the lower town. Wherefore,

during the course of the last two years, the summit of the hill

had been entrenched, and a very large hornwork, the Fuerte Olivo,

constructed upon it. This was a narrow fort, following the shape of

the crest of the hill, with a length of 400 yards, and embrasures

for forty-seven guns. Its outer front was protected by a ditch hewn

in the solid rock: its rear was only slightly closed with a low wall

crowned by palisades, so as to leave it exposed to the fire of the

upper city, if by any chance the enemy should get possession of it.

Such an extensive work required a garrison of over 1,000 men--a heavy

proportion of the 6,500 which formed the total force of the Spaniards

at the commencement of the siege.

When Suchet arrived in front of Tarragona, and had driven the Spaniards

within their works (May 3rd-4th), his chief engineer and artillery

officers, Rogniat and Vallée, had to conduct a long and careful

survey of the fortifications opposed to them. They concluded that

the northern front of the city was practically impregnable, from its

precipitous contours, and that the eastern front, though a little

less rocky, was equally ineligible, because of the trouble which

would be required to transport guns first across the high ground to

the north-east, and then down to the seashore. The south front, being

all along the water’s edge, was inaccessible. There remained only the

western front, that formed by the lower city, where the defences lay

in the plain of the Francoli, and had no dominance over the ground

in front of them. There was an additional advantage for the besieger

here, in that the soil was partly river sand, partly the well-broken-up

loam of suburban market gardens, and in all cases very easy to dig.

But if they were to attack the west front, the engineers required the

General-in-Chief to accomplish two preliminary operations for them.

He must take Fort Olivo, which commanded with its flanking fires much

of the ground on which they intended to work, and he must drive away

from the northern side of the harbour the Anglo-Spanish squadron which

lay there, since its heavy guns would enfilade all works started for

the purpose of approaching the western front of Tarragona in the

neighbourhood of the mouth of the Francoli.

This being the programme laid down, Suchet took up his positions round

the fortress--Harispe’s division had charge of the main part of the

northern front, its French brigade (Salme) occupying the ground in

front of Fort Olivo, while its two Italian brigades stretched eastward

along the distant heights, curving round so as to cut the Barcelona

road along the sea-coast with their extreme detachment. Frère’s

division had the central part of the lines, and lay on both sides of

the course of the Francoli river, its main force, however, being on the

left bank. Habert’s division, which had just come up from Tortosa, was

placed near the mouth of the river, and facing towards the port; it

formed the right wing of the army, and covered the siege-park, which

was established at the village of Canonge, about a mile and a half from

the walls of Tarragona. The magazines and hospitals were fixed at the

large town of Reus, nine miles to the rear, under a considerable guard;

for though the road from thence to the French lines ran over the gentle

undulations of the coast plain, yet there was always danger that bands

of miqueletes might descend from the hills for some daring enterprise.

Several of the intermediate villages were fortified, to serve as

half-way refuges for convoys and small parties on the move.

Some days were lost to the French in completing the survey of

Tarragona, in settling down the troops into their permanent camps, and

in bringing up from the rear, along the Tortosa road, the remainder of

the battering-train and its munitions. It was not till May 8th that

serious operations began. Suchet’s first object was to drive away from

the northern end of the harbour the English and Spanish ships, whose

fire swept the ground about the mouth of the Francoli, across which his

siege-works were to be constructed. With this object a large fort was

constructed on the shore, in which very heavy guns, fatal to shipping,

were to be placed. Commodore Codrington, who was lying in the harbour

with a small squadron of two 74’s and two frigates, assisted by several

Spanish gunboats, bombarded the fort incessantly, but what he destroyed

in the day the French rebuilt with additions every night, and on May

13th the fort was sufficiently completed to receive its armament of

24-pounders. The ship-guns were unable to cope with them, and the

vessels of the Allies during the rest of the siege were compelled to

keep to the south end of the port, and could only vex the besieger’s

subsequent trench-building by a distant and ineffective fire. On the

16th a first parallel, directed against the most advanced Spanish work,

Fort Francoli, was begun in the low ground beside the new fort.

Before this check to the squadron had been completed a great change in

the situation was made by the arrival of Campoverde on May 10, with

4,000 regular troops brought by sea from Mataro--fractions of the

divisions of Eroles and Sarsfield, though neither of these generals

had come in person[642]. The garrison being strengthened up to 10,000

men, and raised in morale by the reinforcement, became very bold and

enterprising. Sorties began almost at once: Harispe’s division having

seized on the 13th May two slight outlying entrenchments below Fort

Olivo, three battalions sallied out on the 14th and made a desperate

attempt to retake them. It failed, but on the 18th an equally vigorous

sortie was made against the fort beyond the Francoli, and the first

parallel near it, by about 2,000 men, who drove in the trench-guards

and destroyed a section of the works, but were finally thrust back

into the lower city by the arrival of reinforcements led by General

Habert. How hot the fighting had been here is shown by the fact that

Suchet’s dispatch owns to a loss of over 150 men, with three officers

killed and eleven wounded. The sallying force lost 218, a figure which

Suchet enlarges in his report to 250 killed and 600 wounded. On the

20th the Spaniards made a third sally, on a different front, far to

the north-east, across the high ground north of the Barcelona road,

and tried to break through the line of blockade kept up by Harispe’s

Italian brigades. This was on a smaller scale, and had no luck; it

was apparently intended to open up communication with Sarsfield, who

(marching by circuitous ways across central Catalonia) had reached

Valls and Alcover, only ten miles from Tarragona, on the upper

Francoli, with 1,200 men. This trifling force was to be the nucleus

of an ‘army of relief’ which was to be collected from all quarters

to threaten Suchet’s rear. Sarsfield made his appearance known to

his chief in Tarragona by lighting beacons on the mountain tops.

Learning that the Spanish force was insignificant, Suchet detached

two battalions and some cuirassiers to drive Sarsfield further away

from Alcover, and did so with small loss, forcing him to retire to the

mountains above Valls.

[642] The regiments that landed with Campoverde seem to have been

the 2nd of Savoia (2 battalions), Voluntarios de Gerona, and two

of the Andalusian regiments which had formed the core of Reding’s

old Granadan division, which marched to Catalonia in 1808, viz.

Iliberia and Santa Fé, the first three battalions strong, the

other with two.

About this time the French artillery and engineer commanders reported

to their chief that it would be at least ten days before they were in

a position to begin a serious attack against the western front of the

city, and Suchet resolved that the enforced delay should be utilized

for an attack on Fort Olivo, whose capture would sooner or later be a

necessity, if the main operations against the city were to prosper.

Accordingly, while the approaches against the west front went steadily

on, a separate offensive advance against the Olivo was prepared.

Between the 22nd and the 28th of May trenches were pushed towards the

fort, and batteries containing thirteen guns erected to bear upon

it. Their fire had effected serious damage on the parapets and the

artillery of the fort by the 29th, yet the engineers reported that they

could not fill the ditch, which was dug in the solid rock, and could

not promise to make accessible breaches beyond it. But they reported

that the rear face of the work, which the French artillery could not

reach, was very weak, the low wall and palisade closing the gorge

being no more than nine feet high. There was also a gap in the front

protection caused by the entry, into the right end of the fort, of an

aqueduct which carried water down into Tarragona. This structure made a

sort of bridge across the ditch; it had not been cut, but only closed

with palisades, which were being rapidly demolished by the French

cannonade[643].

[643] This discovery was the work of the Italian engineer officer

Vacani, whose work on the campaign of the Italian troops of

Napoleon in Spain is one of the most valuable of our original

sources. See his vol. v. pp. 175-6. He was with the assaulting

column.

On the night of the 29th Suchet made the rather rash venture of trying

to escalade Fort Olivo at the two weak points. One column was to turn

the work under cover of the darkness, and to endeavour to break in at

the gorge in its rear. The other was to try the imperfect breach in the

right front, by crossing the aqueduct, though it was only seven feet

broad, if it should be found that the ditch was impassable. Meanwhile

a general demonstration was to be made by scattered _tirailleurs_

against the whole face of the Olivo, so as to distract the attention of

the enemy, and the batteries down by the Francoli were to bombard the

lower city with the same purpose. Both attacks were successful--more

by luck than by their deserts, for the plan was most hazardous. The

column which had gone round to the rear of the fort ran in upon a

Spanish regiment[644] which was coming up the hill to relieve the

garrison. The two forces hustled against each other in the dark, and

became hopelessly mingled in a close combat just outside the postern

gate of the gorge. The garrison was unable to fire upon their enemies,

because they were intermixed among their friends, and, when the fight

surged against the postern and the palisades, the French succeeded in

entering the gorge, some by scrambling up the low and weak defences,

others by bursting in at the gate along with the Spanish reinforcements

with whom they were engaged. They might have been checked, for the

defenders were fighting fiercely, if the other attack had not also

succeeded. But at the right front of the fort, where the second assault

was made, though many of the forlorn hope fell into the ditch, a

desperate charge took the storming-party across the seven-foot gangway

of the aqueduct, and over the shattered palisades that blocked it. The

garrison could tell by the noise of the musketry that the enemy had

entered both in front and in rear, and were stricken by despair[645].

But the greater part of them clubbed together and continued a desperate

resistance, which was only subdued when Suchet sent in all his reserves

and the trench-guards to back the stormers. They were then beset on all

sides, and finally overwhelmed.

[644] Three battalions of Iliberia were holding the fort on

the 29th; they had been much tried, and two battalions of the

sister-regiment of Almeria were coming up to relieve them.

[645] Vacani is very positive that the stormers at the aqueduct

got into the fort before those at the gorge.

The losses of the garrison were terrible--of the five battalions of

Iliberia and Almeria, and the two companies of artillery which had

been engaged--some 3,000 men in all--very nearly one-third, as it

would appear, were slain or captured[646]. The prisoners were about

970 in number, many wounded, including the commander of the fort,

Colonel Gomez, who had received no less than ten bayonet stabs. Three

or four hundred men had been killed--the French had given little

quarter during the earlier part of the fighting. The remainder of the

garrison had escaped into the city, by climbing over the low wall of

the gorge and running down the slopes, at the moment of the final

disaster. The French loss, according to Suchet, was only about 325

killed and wounded, and probably did not greatly exceed that figure.

The assailants had, it must be confessed, extraordinary luck. If the

turning column had not become mingled with the Spanish reinforcements

it might never have been able to break into the gorge; while the other

attack could not have succeeded if the governor had taken the proper

precaution of cutting the aqueduct, which served the stormers as a

bridge--for the ditch proved wholly impracticable, and the breach could

not be approached.

[646] Suchet says that except 70 officers and 1,000 men taken

prisoners ‘the whole of the rest of the garrison had perished’

(ii. 60). Belmas (iii. 502) speaks of 970 prisoners and says that

1,200 were killed, but acknowledges that ‘some of the Spaniards’

got away. Vacani (v. 187) says that ‘many’ Spaniards escaped,

but that the bulk of six battalions were destroyed, 1,000 being

captured and 1,200 slain. The governor, Contreras, says that

there were 4,000 men in the fort, and that somewhere about 2,000

were killed or wounded (p. 248). But the figures must have been

lower: Iliberia was about 1,500 strong, Almeria about 1,200:

there were also 200 gunners in the fort: the total garrison

therefore was about 3,000. But at the end of the siege, a month

later, Iliberia surrendered 368 unwounded men, and Almeria 464.

They must have lost many hundreds during the last six weeks of

the leaguer, yet were still 832 strong. It is hard to see that

they can have lost more than 1,200 or 1,300 between them on May

29, and very probably Toreno and Arteche are right in putting the

total loss at only 1,100 and odd. If so, the killed, including

the gunners, must have been only between 300 and 400. The

ever-accurate Schepeler gives 1,200 for the total loss (p. 433),

and I suspect is nearest of all to the truth. Napier, as usual,

merely reproduces Suchet’s figures.

On the morning after the assault the spirit of the Spaniards was so

little broken that a sortie was made with the purpose of retaking

the Olivo, the survivors of the two regiments which had lost it

volunteering to head the attack. Campoverde thought that the French

might be caught before they had made new defences to protect the weak

rear face of the fort, but they had built up the entry of the gorge

with sandbags, and the assault--led by Colonel O’Ronan, a Spanish-Irish

officer--was beaten off with loss, though a few daring men not only

reached the gorge, but scrambled in through its broken palisades to die

inside the work. All the guns of the upper city were then turned upon

the Olivo, and reduced its rear to a shapeless mass of earth. But this

did not seriously harm the French, who burrowed into its interior and

made themselves strong there. They only wanted to be masters of the

hill because it flanked their projected approaches in the low ground,

and did not intend to use it as their base for any further active

operations.

After the Olivo disaster Campoverde held a council of war (May 30th),

and announced to his officers that the means by which Tarragona

could be saved was the collecting of a great army of succour to fall

upon Suchet’s rear. He was himself about to depart, in order to take

command of it; Sarsfield’s and Eroles’s small detachments, all of

which he would collect, must form its nucleus. The _somatenes_ of all

central Catalonia should be called in, and the province of Valencia

had promised to lend him a whole division of regulars. So saying,

he departed by sea along with his staff and a number of the richer

inhabitants of the city (May 31st). General Caro, who had hitherto

acted as governor, was sent to hurry up the Valencians, and the

command of the place was made over to an officer newly arrived from

Cadiz, General Juan Senen Contreras[647], who by no means liked the

task assigned to him. The garrison was still 8,000 strong, for just

after the fall of the Olivo two battalions of regulars arrived from

Valencia[648]--the first-fruits of the succours promised from that

province--and a draft of 400 recruits landed from Majorca. It seems

to have been a mistake of Campoverde to come to Tarragona at all--his

presence would have been much more valuable in the interior, where a

supreme commander was much wanted, and while he was shut up in the

fortress (from May 10th to May 31st) little had been done outside. The

Junta of Catalonia, now sitting at Montserrat, had been issuing many

proclamations, but had not accomplished much in the way of gathering in

the _somatenes_.

[647] See his pamphlet on the defence of Tarragona and his own

responsibilities, printed in the 3rd volume of _Mémoires sur la

Guerre d’Espagne_.

[648] Apparently 3rd battalion of Cazadores de Valencia, and 1st

battalion of the _First_ regiment of Savoia. This last must be

carefully distinguished from the 1st battalion of the _Second_

regiment of Savoia, which belonged to the Catalan army, and had

already been brought into Tarragona on May 10th by Campoverde.

See the history of the two in the Conde de Clonard’s colossal

work on the regimental histories of the Spanish line.

On June 3rd Campoverde reached Igualada, and established his head

quarters there, but found only 3,000 men assembled under Sarsfield.

He sent that general off to Tarragona, to act as second in command to

Contreras, and took over charge of his few battalions; by calling in

Eroles, and hunting up deserters and detachments, he had collected in a

fortnight 5,280 regular infantry and 1,183 cavalry--all that there were

of mounted men in Catalonia. The whole was much too small a force to

justify him in attacking Suchet in his lines--even when the _somatenes_

should come in to join him. All depended on the expected succours

from Valencia, and they were slow in arriving. Charles O’Donnell,

the newly appointed Captain-General of that province, had made up a

scheme for drawing off Suchet by attacking his garrisons in southern

Aragon, and had gone off early in May with his main force against

Teruel. This scheme had no effect whatever; Suchet had fixed his teeth

into Tarragona, and was not to be distracted by any demonstrations

against his more distant detachments. Campoverde grew so desperate that

he offered to give over supreme command to O’Donnell, if the latter

would come into Catalonia with his whole disposable force, and begin

by attacking Mora, Suchet’s great dépôt on the Ebro. The Valencian

Captain-General, though he refused to take this responsibility, finally

agreed to send a division of regulars under General Miranda by sea

to join the Catalans. This force, about 4,000 strong, appeared at

Tarragona on June 14th, and came ashore, but was immediately afterwards

reshipped by Campoverde’s orders, and transferred to Villanueva de

Sitjes, where it landed, and marched inland to Igualada to join the

‘army of succour,’ which by its arrival was raised to nearly 11,000

regular troops.

While Campoverde was slowly beating up his reinforcements, Tarragona

was already in grave danger. The formal attack on the lower city began

on the night of June 1st, when Vallée and Rogniat, the commanders of

the French artillery and engineers, declared that they had everything

ready. The front selected for attack was the two south-westerly

bastions, those called San Carlos and Orleans, but as a preliminary

task it was necessary to drive the Spaniards out of the subsidiary and

external defence formed by the outlying Fort Francoli, at the mouth

of the river, and by the long entrenchment which joined it to the

city, with the lunette of the Prince, a very small work, inserted in

its midst. For Fort Francoli had a position which would enable it to

enfilade the French trenches when they should draw near to the enceinte

of the city.

On the night of June 1st the French threw up their first parallel at a

distance of only a little over 300 yards from the bastion of Orleans:

it was connected with the entrenchments beyond the Francoli by a zigzag

trench. On the second night the parallel was completed for a length of

600 yards, and three batteries begun in it--one directed against the

lunette of the Prince and the line joining it to Fort Francoli, the

other two against the bastion of Orleans and the adjacent curtain. On

June 3rd the besiegers began to work forward by a flying sap towards

the fort, and by the 7th had pushed their front trench to within twenty

yards of the work. On that same day the artillery began to play against

it, not only from the new batteries, but from the old ones beyond the

river, which had previously been directed against the fleet. The fort

was weakly built, and a practicable breach was made in its left face

before the bombardment had been twelve hours in progress. Serious

damage had also been done to the long entrenchment connecting Fort

Francoli with the lower city. Contreras, rightly regarding the work as

untenable, ordered its serviceable guns to be removed the moment after

dusk set in, and bade its commander, Colonel Roten, to draw off the

garrison, two battalions of the regiment of Almanza. They withdrew at

8.30, and an hour and a half later three French columns charged out of

the trenches and seized the fort[649]. They were surprised to meet with

no resistance, not having detected the withdrawal of the Spaniards.

Finding themselves unopposed, they tried to push along the entrenchment

from the fort towards the town, but were stopped, with some loss, by

the guns of the Prince lunette.

[649] Suchet in his memoirs conceals the fact that the fort was

already abandoned when his troops entered (ii. p. 72). But the

evidence of Contreras, Schepeler, and other Spanish authorities

is clear and unanimous.

The Spanish engineers had assured Contreras that the low-lying Fort

Francoli would be untenable under the fire of the neighbouring bastion

of San Carlos, the battery on the Mole on the other side of the

harbour, and the heavy guns of the men-of-war. A fierce fire was opened

against it from all these quarters, but proved insufficient to stop

the French from burrowing into the ruins of the fort, connecting it

with their trenches, and finally building in its right front a heavy

battery, which bore along the line of the entrenchment and enfiladed

the Prince lunette. This work faced northward, and exposed only a weak

flank to the attack. Fort Francoli having ceased to be an obstacle,

the besiegers could now throw out a second parallel from the first,

which they had constructed in front of the bastion of Orleans. Five

new batteries were placed in it, some bearing on Orleans, some on San

Carlos, and one having the special task of beating down the Prince

lunette. The Spanish guns in the lower city answered with a fierce

fire which caused much damage and took many lives, but the work,

nevertheless, went on unceasingly. On June 16th all the new batteries

were ready to commence their work.

Contreras had been much chagrined by the complete failure of the best

efforts of his artillery to hold back the advance of the enemy, and

reports that the morale of the troops was disagreeably affected by

the arrival of the Valencian division of Miranda on June 14th and its

prompt departure, after staying less than two days in the place. The

garrison had looked upon it as a seasonable reinforcement, and were

dashed in spirits when it made no stay with them. It seems to have been

a complete mistake to have brought these 4,000 men to Tarragona at all:

they should have been landed at once in Villanueva de Sitjes to join

the army of succour.

Nevertheless the governor did his best to delay the progress of the

French attack, and when his artillery proved ineffective, sent out

two strong sorties on the 11th and 14th, which did some damage to the

trenches[650] but were driven back in the end, as was inevitable. On

the 16th all the new French batteries were ready, as well as that in

Fort Francoli, and the bombardment began. The advanced batteries were

within 120 yards of the bastions which they were attacking, and had a

tremendous effect. By evening there was the commencement of a breach

in the left face of the Orleans bastion, and several other parts of

the enceinte were badly damaged, as was also the Prince lunette. This

had not been effected without grave loss: one French battery had been

silenced, a reserve magazine had been blown up, and the loss in men

among the artillery had been very heavy. Nevertheless the assailants

had the superiority in the cannonade, and were well satisfied. After

dark the columns of stormers carried the Prince lunette by assault,

one of the parties having slipped round its flank by descending on

to the beach, where a few yards at the water’s edge had been left

unfortified. The battalion of the regiment of Almanza which held the

work was practically exterminated. Thus the Spaniards lost the last of

the outer protections of Tarragona, and the captured lunette became the

emplacement of one more battery destined to play upon the bastion of

San Carlos (June 17).

[650] The first was a big affair, 3,000 men under Sarsfield

taking part in it, but oddly enough it is not mentioned by Suchet

or Belmas.

It was clear that the crisis was now at hand: the French were now

lodged close under the walls of the city, and had already damaged its

enceinte. But to storm it would be a costly business, and Contreras

showed no signs of slackening in his energy, though his letters to

Campoverde and his narrative of the siege both show that he thought

very badly of his position. It was clear that both sides must now

utilize their last resources: Suchet had already ordered up from beyond

the Ebro the brigade of Abbé, which had hitherto been observing the

Valencians, in order that its 3,600 men might compensate him for the

heavy losses that he had suffered[651]. Contreras began to call on

the Captain-General very hotly for help; at his departure Campoverde

had promised that the army of succour should be pressing Suchet’s

rear within seven days, and now seventeen had elapsed and no signs

of its approach were to be seen. He complained bitterly that many

of his officers were failing him; even colonels had gone off by sea

to Villanueva de Sitjes pretending sickness, or absconding without

even that excuse[652]. Naturally the spirit of the rank and file had

suffered from this desertion. There is good contemporary Spanish

authority for the notion that Contreras himself contributed somewhat

to the discouragement, by exhibiting too openly his failing hope, and

stating that Tarragona must fall in a fortnight if the field army did

not save it[653]. But so far as practical precautions went he did his

duty, strengthened the damaged places in the walls as best he could,

and devoted much energy to seeing that the troops were properly paid

and fed, and that the breaches were mined, and protected to the rear by

cuttings and traverses. Very different was the conduct of Campoverde,

who showed that he was absolutely unfit for command by his miserable

conduct during the critical weeks. After having been joined by

Miranda’s Valencian division on June 16th he had 11,000 regular troops

under his hand, a force insufficient to meet Suchet in the open field,

but quite large enough to give the French grave trouble--indeed to make

the continuance of the siege impossible if it were properly handled.

But to bring effective pressure upon the enemy it was necessary to

come up close to him, and Campoverde for many days tried a policy

which was bound to fail. He kept far away, cut Suchet’s communication

by placing himself at Momblanch, and sent Eroles and other officers

to molest the French detachments on the Lower Ebro and to cut off the

convoys coming up from Tortosa and Lerida. Apparently he hoped that

these distant diversions would cause Suchet to draw off great part of

his army from the siege, in order to succour his outlying posts. But

the French general did nothing of the kind, and took no notice of the

loss of convoys, or the danger to remote dépôts; he stuck tight to the

siege, and at this very time, by calling up Abbé’s brigade from the

south to Tarragona, he had deliberately risked even more than before on

the side of Valencia. Between the 16th and the 24th June, the critical

days in the siege, Campoverde and his 11,000 men had no effect whatever

on the course of operations. Yet he kept sending messages to Contreras

promising him prompt assistance, and on the 20th bade him dispatch

Sarsfield out of the city, to assume command of his old division in

the fighting which was just about to begin. That fighting never took

place--to the Captain-General’s eternal disgrace--for at the last

moment he flinched from placing himself within engaging distance of

Suchet. It seems clear that his true policy was to push much closer to

the enemy’s lines, so as to force the French to come out against him,

and then either to let them attack him in some strong position in the

hills to the north-east of Tarragona, where their cavalry would have

been useless, or else to avoid an engagement by a timely retreat when

Suchet should have been drawn well away from the fortress. In either

case he would have compelled his adversary to draw so many men away

from the siege that it could not have proceeded. For it would have been

useless for Suchet to march against him with less than 7,000 or 8,000

men, and the total of the besieging army had dwindled down to 16,000 by

this time, while Abbé’s reserve brigade had not yet come up. Probably,

as Napier suggests, a blow at the French magazines and hospitals at

Reus, only ten miles from Tarragona, would have forced Suchet to draw

off two divisions for a fight, and Campoverde need not have accepted

it, unless he had found himself some practically impregnable position.

But to skulk in the hills many miles away and send detachments against

outlying French posts could have no effect.

[651] It seems to have arrived about June 20, in time for the

storm on the 21st.

[652] See his memoirs, p. 273, and Arteche, x. 274.

[653] See especially Schepeler (i. 438). Arteche (x. 317) grants

that he had not the iron resolution of Alvarez, the governor of

Gerona, but thinks that he did his honest best, and this I think

can hardly be denied. His own narrative is simple and modest, but

does not conceal the fact that he was from the first downhearted,

and feared the worst. Napier (iii. 240) calls him vacillating and

deceitful. There is some foundation for the former charge (see p.

513 below), but the latter seems unjustifiable. The only evidence

brought to justify the accusation can be explained away (see

Codrington’s letters in the appendix to Napier, vol. iii).

While Campoverde hesitated, Suchet took the lower city of Tarragona

by a vigorous effort. At seven o’clock on the evening of the 21st the

assault was delivered by five storming-columns, composed of the massed

grenadier and _voltigeur_ companies of all his French regiments, 1,500

strong, and supported by a brigade under General Montmarie, There were

now two good breaches in the bastions of San Carlos and Orleans, the

curtain between them had also been much injured, and even the Fuerte

Real, the inner stronghold behind the Orleans bastion, had been damaged

by shot and shell which passed over the outer works. Contreras had sent

down into the lower city 6,000 out of the 8,000 men who were still at

his disposition, and had handed over the charge of them to Sarsfield,

the officer who had the best reputation in the whole of Catalonia. But

by an ill-chance there was actually no one in command when the assault

was delivered. Campoverde’s dispatch recalling Sarsfield to the field

army had come to hand that morning, and Contreras, thinking himself

bound to obey it, sent Sarsfield a passport to leave the city, and

designated General Velasco to take his place. Sarsfield, whose courage

cannot be impeached, but whose judgement was evidently at fault on

this afternoon, left at once, embarking on board a boat in the harbour

at three o’clock, without going to see Contreras or waiting for the

arrival of the officer who was to supersede him. He merely sent for the

senior colonel in the lower city, handed over the command to him, and

put out to sea at a moment’s notice. Four hours later, when the storm

took place, Contreras was not aware that Sarsfield had yet departed,

and Velasco, coming down to take charge of the troops, found himself

in the middle of the fighting before he had reached the walls, or

discovered the manner in which their garrison was distributed. There

was clearly something wrong here--apparently Sarsfield and Contreras

were not on good terms, and the former acted with small regard for the

welfare of the service[654].

[654] Toreno (ii. p. 544) makes out that the fault was with

Contreras, and Napier, who used far more violent language, says

that he ‘acted a shameful part.... The assault was momentarily

expected, yet he ordered Sarsfield to embark immediately,

averring that he had Campoverde’s peremptory commands. Sarsfield

remonstrated vainly, saying that the troops would be left to

an inefficient subordinate, but was compelled to embark, and

Velasco, coming a few hours later, found only the dead bodies of

his garrison. Contreras then assured Codrington and the Junta

that Sarsfield had gone without orders, and betrayed his post!’

There is much misrepresentation in this: (1) Contreras _had_

Campoverde’s command to send him Sarsfield without delay. (2)

He passed the order on to Sarsfield, but did not know that the

latter had gone off, without waiting a moment, after sending him

a note to say that Don José Carlos, the senior colonel in the

lower city, was incompetent to take command. Naturally Contreras

thought that Sarsfield would have waited to see Velasco and hand

over the troops to him. (3) Therefore Contreras was correct in

saying to the Junta that Sarsfield departed ‘sin conocimiento

mío,’ though he had sent him a passport to leave the town. See

Arteche, ix. 288-9.

At seven o’clock Suchet let loose the stormers, who were led by the

Italian General Palombini, while, to distract the attention of the

garrison to other points, he ordered a general bombardment of the

northern front, and showed a column on the side of Fort Olivo. The

assault was immediately successful at both the critical points: the

forlorn hope on the side of the Orleans bastion, starting from its

ditch, went up the breach like a whirlwind, losing somewhat from the

musketry fire of the defenders but not from their cannon, for all had

been silenced. The Spaniards were cleared out so quickly from the

bastion that they had not time to fire two mines, which would have

blown up the breach and the storming-column if they had worked. They

rallied for a few minutes at the gorge, but were driven from it by the

French reserve, who poured into the town. At the San Carlos breach

matters went almost as rapidly: the first attacking column was checked,

but when the second supported it, the united mass carried the breach

and burst into the town; a retrenchment and a row of palisades erected

behind the breach were crossed in face of a half-hearted defence. All

the columns having penetrated within the walls, those who turned to

the left attacked the Fuerte Real, the weak and somewhat damaged work

which served as citadel to the lower city: it was carried by assault

without any great difficulty, partly because its earthen ramp had been

somewhat damaged by the bombardment, and could be climbed at some

points, but more because the garrison defended themselves very badly,

and gave way when they saw that the streets on their flanks and behind

them were inundated by the enemy. The other section of the stormers,

inclining to their right, moved towards the mole and the large

magazines at its base, where they met General Velasco, who had only

arrived at the moment that the assault began, with the Spanish reserve.

There was fierce fighting here for a moment, but, turned by a column

which had passed around their flank by the quay at the water’s edge,

Velasco’s men broke like the rest. The whole of the garrison rushed

up the slope, towards the one gate which leads into the upper city,

and finally entered it under cover of a heavy fire kept up from the

neighbouring ramparts. Contreras reports that some of the pursuers came

on so fiercely that they were shot down while actually battering at the

closed gate.

The losses of the two parties were about equal in numbers--Contreras

reports that he found no more than 500 and odd men missing when the

battalions from the lower city were reassembled; Suchet gives 120

killed and 362 wounded as his total loss. The casualties on both sides

would have been heavier if the garrison had fought better--but it is

clear that, when the breaches were once gained, no serious attempt was

made to defend the Fuerte Real, the retrenchments, or the barricaded

houses of the lower city. Only Velasco’s reserve battalions made any

fight in the streets; the rest fled early. The French might perhaps

have made more captures--they only took 200 wounded prisoners--if they

had not turned at once to plundering the houses and magazines. But

they fell into great disorder; many of the unfortunate inhabitants of

the quarter about the port were not only stripped of their goods but

murdered, and a great number of dwellings were wantonly set on fire.

Eighty guns were captured on the walls of the lower city, and a great

quantity of food and stores in the dépôts along the quay. But the

soldiers destroyed more than was saved--especially in the wine stores.

Not the least disastrous result of this unhappy affair was that the

harbour was now closed to the Spaniards. The English men-of-war and the

native merchant vessels which had hitherto sheltered under the west end

of the mole had to put out to sea. The traders went off to Villanueva,

Minorca, or Valencia, but Codrington’s squadron sought the bare

roadstead off Milagro Point, under the precipitous southern face of the

upper city. Here there were no quays, and when the sea was rough it was

impossible to land. But in ordinary weather boats could communicate

freely with the shore, and Tarragona was not yet deprived of its access

to the water, though that access had become difficult and dangerous.

Suchet proceeded to make it more so on the 23rd, when he erected a

battery, near the base of the mole, to play on the roadstead. Landing,

however, was made rather exciting than dangerous by these guns, which

never did much harm.

On the morning after the storm of the lower city the French engineers

began to make surveys for the attack on the inner line of defence of

Tarragona. Its strength lay in its commanding position, and in the fact

that along many parts of its short front the ground just below it was

too steep and too rocky to allow of approaches being constructed on it.

Its weakness was that the wall was weak and old--a seventeenth-century

work built only to resist the cannon of that day. There was no ditch or

other outer defence, unless a hedge of prickly aloes counted as such.

The front was composed of four bastions; counting from north to south

they were named San Pablo, San Juan (at whose left side lay the only

gate), Jesus, and Cervantes. The last named overhung the precipitous

cliff looking down to the sea above Milagro Point. The French engineers

reported in favour of making the attack on the curtain wall between San

Juan and San Pablo, the ground here being less steep than elsewhere,

and showing soil which could be dug into; there was also some cover

to be found, in half-ruined houses along the road up to the gate.

Moreover the other, or southern section of the wall, was not only on

a steeper ascent, but might be exposed to high-trajectory fire from

the ships in the roadstead below. The first parallel, therefore, was

thrown up opposite San Juan and San Pablo, with a communication to the

rear covered by the buildings and gardens along the road, and three

batteries were planned in it, and commenced on June 24th. A fourth

battery, down in the plain outside the city, was to co-operate by a

flanking fire uphill.

This day saw Campoverde’s first and last demonstration in favour of

the garrison. It was a miserable affair. Driven to do something by

Contreras’s appeals, and by the openly displayed discontent of his own

army, he at last drew in close to the French lines. On the 23rd his

army marched from Momblanch to Villarodona, fifteen miles north-east

of Tarragona. On the next day it was divided into two columns; the

first (composed of Miranda’s Valencian division) marched over the

hills, with orders to fall upon the encampments of Harispe’s Italian

brigades on the north-east side of the French lines. The second, or

Catalan division, under Sarsfield, with which went the Captain-General

himself, marched by another road more to the east, and was to come into

line on Miranda’s left. Meanwhile Contreras was to make a sally out

of the eastern side of Tarragona with 4,000 men of the garrison, and

to attack Harispe’s rear when he saw his front engaged with the ‘army

of succour.’ Both Campoverde’s columns reached the points designated

for them, Miranda getting unopposed to Pallaresos, and the second

division to Cattlar, three miles further east. Suchet, warned by his

outlying cavalry, concentrated Harispe’s and part of Frère’s divisions

in the rear of his lines to the French left of Fort Olivo, leaving

Habert, Abbé, and the rest of Frère’s troops to hold the lower city

and the trenches. His line, composed of some 8,000 men including all

his cavalry, was plainly visible both to the Spaniards outside and

those within the city, and Contreras formed his sallying column ready

to rush down when the first cannon-shot should be heard. But Miranda,

on finding himself in touch with the enemy, sent back messages to the

effect that he was not sure of his route, that the French seemed very

strong, and that he dared not advance. Instead of depriving him of

his command, and then bringing up the second column to the help of

the first, Campoverde, after some hesitation, gave him leave to draw

back, and both divisions retired that night to Vendrils, ten miles

to the rear, in the eastern hills. Not a shot had been fired, and

Contreras, whose men had been waiting under arms the whole afternoon,

had to draw them back into the city without having seen a single man

of the relieving army, which, though only four miles away, was hidden

from him by the intervening hills. So ended a day of great peril for

Suchet, who with 11,000 men in front of him, and 4,000 more ready to

attack his rear, might well have suffered a disaster, or at least have

proved unable to prevent the junction of the two hostile forces. For

the Spaniards were not bound to descend and attack him in the plain,

but might have manœuvred along the hills and forced him to take the

offensive in unfavourable ground, under pain of seeing them break his

blockading line. Codrington summed up the situation by writing to his

chief, Pellew, that ‘the Marquis [Campoverde] blamed Generals Miranda

and Caro, while the latter retorted the accusation, and I am inclined

to think by giving full credit to what each says of the other, neither

will suffer ignominy beyond that to which his conduct has entitled

him.’ For Tarragona, as Contreras was truly repeating in every dispatch

that he sent out, was in imminent danger, and if the army of succour

did not give it _immediate_ help might fall at any moment. The city, as

a matter of fact, was taken only four days later.

Campoverde, however, had now formed the conclusion that he was still

too weak to attack Suchet. He wrote orders to Contreras to send him

out of the city his two best regiments, Iliberia and Almeria, and

General Velasco to command them. He made a desperate appeal to the

_somatenes_ to rally to his colours, which had little effect, for

his reputation was now gone, and he was suspected of timidity or

even of treason. Finally he got news that there was a small British

expeditionary force in Catalan waters, and sent his lieutenant Eroles

to sea, to look for it, and to invite it to land at Villanueva and

join him. In a week or so he would have 20,000 men, as he supposed,

and would then try something desperate. Meanwhile, unjustly suspecting

Contreras of cowardice, he sent secret letters into Tarragona to the

brigadier-generals of the garrison, bidding them depose and confine the

governor if he showed signs of capitulating. Disgusted at this move,

the generals showed the epistles to Contreras, who was driven still

deeper into despair by seeing that the Captain-General distrusted him,

regarded his views as to the danger of the city as exaggerated, and

was evidently deferring succour for an indefinite period. Nevertheless

he concealed his knowledge of the plan for his deposition, and

prepared, under protest, to send the regiment of Almeria off by sea;

to dispatch Iliberia also he refused, saying that his garrison was

already insufficient. But rough weather on the 27th prevented the

regiment from embarking from the dangerous Milagro roadstead, which was

unapproachable by boats during an east wind.

Suchet, freed from a dire responsibility by the disappearance of the

army of succour on the night of the 24th, resolved to hurry matters,

lest it should presently come forward again in greater strength. On the

following day the siege troops pushed forward by zigzag approaches to

within 150 yards of the wall of the upper city, and commenced a second

parallel in front of the curtain between San Juan and San Pablo. This

was done under a hot and effective fire which cost many lives; the

completion of the projected batteries, and more especially the hauling

of their cannon up steep slopes and among ruins, took more time than

the engineer officers had calculated to be necessary. It was not till

the morning of the 28th that the twenty-two heavy guns destined for the

breaching had been got into place, and that the fire was opened.

These three days, the 25th-26th-27th of June, were a time of agony for

the unfortunate Contreras, who was distracted from his primary duty of

preparing to receive the assault by having to deal with Campoverde’s

plot for deposing him, and other problems. The most important of these

was the arrival in the roadstead on the 26th of a flotilla, which

brought not only some small reinforcements from Valencia and Murcia,

but about 1,100 British infantry[655] and a half-company of artillery

under Colonel Skerret. This little force had been sent by General

Graham from Cadiz at the desire of the Regency, which was seeking in

all quarters for help for Tarragona. Colonel Skerret had Graham’s

orders to do everything that could be done for the place, short of

placing his detachment in any position where it was exposed to serious

danger of having to capitulate, i. e. he was forbidden to land it if

he should think Tarragona untenable, unless he judged himself able to

bring off the troops by sea in the moment of disaster. On the morning

of his arrival the weather was so rough that no boat could get in to

the shore, and communication with Contreras was opened up by a sailor

who swam ashore with a letter. The governor thus found himself offered

the aid of the British force if he would guarantee that it would be

able to escape should the town fall--a most hampering condition. In the

evening, the surf having somewhat abated, Colonel Skerret came ashore,

and was joined next morning by an engineer and an artillery officer,

as also by General Charles Doyle, and by Codrington, the commander of

the British squadron off the Catalonian coast. They conferred with

Contreras, who told them that he feared the town was untenable, and

that he intended, when the walls should be breached, not to make a

prolonged defence, but to sally out of the Barcelona gate, and to try

to cut his way to join Campoverde. He thought that the sortie must

succeed, since the French would be intent on a storm on the western

side of the fortress, and would never expect an attack to be delivered

at the same moment from its eastern side. He therefore invited Skerret

to land his 1,200 men and take part in the enterprise. But if he

preferred to join him in withstanding the approaching storm by the

French, he might choose whatever point he liked in the enceinte, and

defend it. It is clear that at this moment the governor was himself

hesitating between the two alternatives, and that it relieved his mind

to throw the responsibility of choice on Skerret.

[655] The troops were the 2/47th, a detachment of the 3/95th, and

some light companies lent by the governor of Gibraltar, 1,147

in all, counting the gunners. See Graham’s dispatches to Lord

Liverpool and to Colonel Skerret of June 14th, 1811.

The British officers, military and naval, spent the afternoon in going

round the city. They agreed with Contreras that the wall was weak and

likely to be breached without much difficulty. This being so, was it

consistent with Graham’s directions to land the troops? The sortie

might fail, and the garrison, Spanish and English, might be driven back

into the town and captured. A defence of the breach might also fail,

and in that case it would be almost impossible to get off the troops by

sea, since if Skerret’s own single boat had had the greatest difficulty

in coming ashore in the surf, it was certain that many boats, hastily

manned and crammed with soldiers, and escaping under the fire of the

pursuing French, would come to grief on a large scale. Skerret and

Codrington, after much consultation, resolved that they dared not bring

the British troops ashore, for they could not guarantee that the men

could be taken away again. They therefore refused both of Contreras’s

alternative offers. Just at this moment Baron Eroles arrived from

Campoverde, with an appeal to Skerret to land at Villanueva de Sitjes

and join the ‘army of succour.’ With Codrington’s approval the colonel

consented to do so[656], and set sail northward early in the morning

of the 28th. It cannot be disputed that this whole business was most

unhappy in its results. That a British force should appear in the

roadstead for 36 hours, and then depart without landing a man, appeared

to the garrison of Tarragona to prove that their own condition was

hopeless. If there had been a reasonable hope of defending the town

successfully, as they argued, the British would have come ashore. Their

departure caused deep discouragement, and Contreras was no doubt right

in stating that next after Campoverde’s conduct that of Skerret was

the most active cause of the demoralization which the garrison showed

on the next day. It would have been far better that the expedition

should never have appeared. Yet it is hard to blame Skerret or his

adviser, Codrington. They had Graham’s orders that the men were not

to be placed in a position where they might have to capitulate, and

it could not be disputed that Tarragona on June 27th was such a

position[657]. It would have been better not to tie Skerret’s hands by

any conditions, and to leave him free to act as he thought best for

the interest of Great Britain and Spain. The addition of 1,100 steady

infantry to the force defending the breaches might very possibly have

wrecked Suchet’s assault; even if their effort had failed, the loss

of two battalions would have been a lesser shock to British prestige

in eastern Spain than their withdrawal into ignominious safety at the

moment of danger.

[656] That this represents pretty accurately what happened is, I

think, clear from the comparison of Codrington’s very full letter

to General Graham (see his _Life_, i. 225), Skerret’s report

to Graham and the Regency (printed in Arteche, ix. pp. 544-5),

and Contreras’s own narrative of the siege. This version, as it

will be seen, differs from that of Napier, who is much harder

on Skerret than he deserves--though the colonel was an unlucky

officer and distrusted by his subordinates (see e. g. Sir Harry

Smith’s autobiography, i. pp. 118-19).

[657] The critical phrase of Graham’s instructions to Skerret

was: ‘You will before landing your detachment state to the

governor that you must have at all times free and open

communication with his Majesty’s ships of war: and in the event

of the place being under the necessity of surrendering, that you

are at liberty to withdraw the troops on board the said ships

previous to the capitulation.’ The orders are dated June 14.

Contreras spent the few hours that remained to him after Skerret’s

departure in hesitation between the idea of cutting his way out of

Tarragona along the eastern road, and that of defending the town to the

last possible moment. He finally resolved that he would hold the walls

for one day only, and would evacuate the city on the night of the 28th,

if the French had made any impression during the first twenty-four

hours of the bombardment. The main body of the garrison, divided into

three columns, was to make its exit from the Rosario gate, while 1,400

men remained to hold the walls as long as they could, with orders to

save themselves if possible and follow the rest when the enemy should

break in. Officers and men alike were informed of this, and had their

destined positions in the sortie explained to them. It seems likely

that the knowledge that they were intended to abscond in a few hours

made the troops less obstinate in their defence when the assault

came. But meanwhile Contreras made proper preparation for holding

back the enemy till the destined time of departure. He told off his

best regiments to the exposed front, and constructed a second line of

defence behind it, by barricading and loopholing the houses of the

Rambla, the broad street above the enceinte, and by blocking the narrow

lanes which lead up to it with barrels filled with stones, so that from

wall to wall there was a continuous inner fortification. But all this

was a temporary arrangement--the garrison was to hold out till night

only, and then escape by a great sortie.

Unfortunately the sortie was never made--for Suchet pushed matters

so fast that the bombardment and the assault were all over in twelve

hours. The twenty-two guns in the breaching batteries opened at dawn,

and soon began to damage the weak old walls in the most effective

style. The French had originally intended to make two breaches, one to

the left in the curtain near the San Pablo bastion, the other to the

right nearer the bastion of San Juan. But finding the latter hard to

complete owing to the misdirection of one of his batteries, Suchet had

the whole force of the battering turned on to the spot nearer to San

Pablo, which he regarded as most favourable for his purpose. By four

o’clock in the afternoon there was a breach over 30 feet broad at this

point, all the guns in the adjacent flanks of the two bastions had been

silenced, and nearly all those along the whole front. The explosion of

a powder magazine had completely wrecked the Cervantes bastion at the

other end of the Spanish line. Notwithstanding that the musketry fire

of the garrison was still unsubdued, and that the breach was not very

wide, Suchet determined to risk all, by assaulting the place in the

later hours of the long summer afternoon. Three columns, each composed

of 400 men of the _compagnies d’élite_ of various regiments, were

sent forward into the advanced trenches: 1,200 men more under General

Habert crept up to the shelter of the front houses of the lower city.

A separate force of five battalions under General Montmarie marched

outside the walls, and placed itself in the low ground facing the

Rosario gate, but out of gunshot. This column was to advance towards

that gate if the assault succeeded, and was to be admitted by the

stormers, if they won their way into the north-west angle of the upper

city, just behind the breach, from which the gate was not far distant.

At five o’clock the three storming-columns burst out from three

separate points of the trenches and raced for the breach, which they

reached by no means simultaneously, for two of them were somewhat

hindered by the aloe hedge below the wall, which had not been entirely

broken down by the bombardment. They received a tremendous musketry

fire from the whole front, but only three guns in the left side of

the San Juan bastion plied them with grape: the rest of the Spanish

artillery had been dismounted or disabled. Contreras had filled the

breach with the remains of the two battalions of Provincial Grenadiers

of Castile, a corps which had been serving with credit in Catalonia

since the autumn of 1808; in support was the regiment of Almeria, also

reckoned a good unit. The important retrenchment in the Rambla was held

by the regiment of Almanza; of the rest of his force there was a less

proportion along the front of attack, and a greater proportion placed

on the unassailed south and north flanks of the city than was wise.

Troops should have been heaped unsparingly upon the breach.

The first French column that reached its destination came on in

some disorder, got half-way up the crumbling débris on the breach,

and recoiled under the musketry fire from its crest. But when the

others arrived, and General Habert and a crowd of other officers put

themselves at the head of the mass, and led a second assault, it was

successful. The stormers rolled over the summit of the breach and

trampled down the Provincial Grenadiers. The regiment of Almeria, which

had been placed behind in column, with orders to charge the enemy with

the bayonet the moment that he broke through, gave way--according to

Contreras--without carrying out his command. The main body of the

French then swept down into the street behind the breach, but some

turned to their left to try to open the Rosario gate to Montmarie,

and others made to their right and swept the ramparts as far as the

Cervantes bastion. The Spaniards had rallied at the retrenchments along

the line of the Rambla, and made here a better defence than on the far

more tenable walls. The assault had succeeded in half an hour[658]--the

street-fighting which followed was prolonged and bitter. But when the

French reserves arrived and entered the upper city, the barricaded

street was passed, the Rosario gate was burst open, so that Montmarie’s

column got in upon the Spanish flank, and the resistance went to

pieces. Contreras, manfully trying to bring up a battalion of Savoia,

his last intact regiment, for a charge, was bayoneted and taken

prisoner. One of the divisional generals, Courten, bethinking himself

of the proposed sortie that was to have taken place that evening, led

out a disorderly remnant of 3,000 men by the Barcelona gate, and tried

to escape along the seashore. They had not got far when they ran into

one of Harispe’s Italian brigades and some squadrons of _chasseurs

à cheval_, which had been set to watch this obvious bolt-hole. When

checked, some of the demoralized troops tried to turn back towards the

city, others dispersed and strove to get away across the hills, some

hundreds stripped, and endeavoured to swim out to the British ships,

which were lying in the Milagro roadstead[659]. A fair number of these

were saved by the boats of the _Blake_ and her consorts, which ran

inshore to pick them up. But many more were cut down by the French

cavalry on the beach, and it was some time before the excited riders

would give quarter, and accepted the surrender of Courten and the

survivors. General Velasco, the second-in-command in the city, had the

luck to escape across the mountains almost alone, and brought the bad

news to Campoverde.

[658] Codrington, looking on from his ship, says that the storm

succeeded ‘almost immediately,’ and that ‘from the rapidity with

which they [the French] entered, I fear they met with but little

opposition.’ (_Life_, i. 227.) This is borne out by Contreras’s

narrative.

[659] For details of this sally see Codrington’s letter of July

29 in his _Life_, i. p. 228.

[Illustration: TARRAGONA]

While this ineffective attempt at a sally was in progress, the

street-fighting in the city above was still going on. Isolated bodies

of the Spaniards made a most desperate resistance: Colonel Gonzales,

the brother of Campoverde, attempted to hold out in the cathedral with

300 men, but was killed with all followers after a brave resistance.

The fact that many small parties defended themselves for a time in

barricaded private houses gave the French an excuse for something that

almost amounted to the systematic massacre of non-combatants. All

the larger dwellings were broken open, whether shots had been fired

from their windows or no, and a great proportion of their inhabitants

murdered. Of the 4,000 corpses which littered the streets of

Tarragona more than half were those of civilians, and according to

the Spanish official report 450 women and children were among the

slain[660]. As one Spanish authority bitterly remarks, the victorious

stormers generally gave quarter to any man wearing a uniform, and

let off their fury on priests and unarmed citizens. Plunder was even

more general than murder, and there was the inevitable accompaniment

of drunkenness and rape. Knowing what happened at Badajoz in April

1812, it is not for the British historian to dilate with too great

moral indignation on the doings of Suchet’s soldiery. Suffice it to

say that all the atrocities afterwards seen at Badajoz were suffered

by the unhappy people of Tarragona, and that the actual slaughter of

non-combatants was much greater--about 100 inhabitants are believed

to have been murdered at Badajoz, more than 2,000 in the Catalonian

city. Spanish authorities state that the Poles and Italians behaved

decidedly worse than the native French. The officers made some attempt

to check the orgie, but (like the British at Badajoz) they failed: riot

and slaughter went on all night, and it was not till the next day that

order was restored. One of the most dreadful incidents of the storm was

that many individuals, both soldiers and civilians, tried to escape to

the Milagro roadstead by climbing down the precipitous south front of

the city, and, losing their footing, were dashed to pieces or mortally

maimed on the beach below.

[660] Those who like to sup on horrors may read the original

document in Arteche’s Appendix X to his tenth volume, pp. 546-8.

The garrison, owing to the last-received reinforcements, was over

10,000 strong at the moment of the storm; as Suchet accounts for

more than 8,000 prisoners[661], the actual loss at the storm cannot

have been much over 2,000 men. But to the 10,000 Spaniards killed or

captured on June 28th we must add the losses of the garrison during the

earlier operations. It seems that the Army of Catalonia lost in all

14,000 or 15,000 men in this disastrous siege. A certain amount of the

wounded, however, had been sent off from time to time on English ships

to Majorca and other safe destinations, and survived to fight another

day. The French casualties during the siege amounted to 924 killed

and 3,372 wounded--a total of 4,296. This was a very heavy proportion

out of the 22,000 men[662] who were from first to last engaged in the

operations; and if the sick, who are not included in Suchet’s report

along with the wounded, are deducted from the survivors, it is clear

that the army must have been reduced to a dangerously low figure by

June 28th, and that the Spanish authorities[663] who estimate the total

loss of their enemies at 6,000 cannot be far out.

[661] See table XX in Appendix.

[662] See table XX in Appendix.

[663] e. g. see Schepeler, i. 343, and Arteche, x. 314.

But the effect produced was worth the effort which had been made:

nearly two-thirds of the regular troops of the Army of Catalonia had

been destroyed. The great fortress, which for three years had been

the base of the Spanish resistance, had been taken; there was now no

considerable place left in the hands of the patriots--Solsona, Berga,

Cardona, Seo de Urgel, and the other towns which they still retained

were of small importance. They had lost their one fortified harbour,

and for the future their communication by sea with Valencia, the

Balearic Isles, and the British fleet, could only be conducted hastily

and, as it were, surreptitiously; for any port, to which their forces

in the inland might descend for a moment, was always liable to be

attacked and seized by a French flying column. How nearly the spirit of

resistance was crushed in the principality by the stunning blow which

Suchet had inflicted will be shown in our next chapter.

Meanwhile, having reorganized his troops, and determined that the upper

town of Tarragona should be fortified and garrisoned, but the harbour

town dismantled and abandoned, the French commander was at liberty to

proceed further with his scheme for the conquest of eastern Spain. But

there was bound to be some preliminary delay before he could deliver

his great blow against Valencia. One brigade had to be told off to

escort the 8,000 Spanish prisoners to Saragossa; another had to return

to the south to deal with the insurgents of Aragon, who had been left

comparatively unmolested while Abbé was drawn off to the siege. Suchet

himself--soon to be a marshal, for the Emperor carried out his promise

that ‘he should find his baton within the walls of Tarragona’--marched

with some 7,000 or 8,000 men, all that was left disposable, to open up

communications with Barcelona. Before his departure he had a curious

interview with Contreras: the wounded general, brought before him

on a stretcher, was reproached with having violated the laws of war

by persisting in the defence of an untenable town when capitulation

had been his bounden duty! The Spaniard made the proper answer, that

any commander who surrenders before he is obliged is a traitor and a

coward. Thereupon Suchet changed his tone, and offered him tempting

conditions if he would take service under King Joseph. This proposal

being answered as it deserved, Contreras was sent as a prisoner to the

castle of Bouillon, from which he escaped after a captivity of fifteen

months in October 1812[664].

[664] Interesting details of his perilous escape, in company with

a French royalist officer, Bouvet de Lozier, and of his final

arrival in England, may be found in his _Narrative_, written in

1813.

SECTION XXVIII: CHAPTER III

THE FALL OF FIGUERAS AND THE AUTUMN CAMPAIGN IN CATALONIA. JULY-OCTOBER

1811

The news of the fall of Tarragona, brought by the fugitive General

Velasco, came as a thunderclap to Campoverde and his ‘army of

succour.’ While the Captain-General had been hesitating, marching

and countermarching, and sending about for further reinforcements,

the great city entrusted to him had fallen. It was impossible for

the simplest soldier in his ranks to fail to see that the whole

responsibility for its loss lay with Campoverde, and from that moment

his authority ceased, and officers and men alike began to clamour

for his resignation. His former popularity in Catalonia had, most

deservedly, vanished. The newly raised recruits began to melt away

from their colours; the _somatenes_ refused to serve one whom they

regarded as a coward, if not as a traitor. On the news that a French

column had started from Tarragona to attack him, Campoverde abandoned

his head quarters at Vendrils, and fled inland to Cervera, where he at

last thought himself safe for the moment. His departure exposed the

dépôt at Villanueva de Sitjes, where his sea-borne stores were lying,

and the French seized it on the 30th, making prize of many ships not

ready for sailing, and capturing 800 Tarragona wounded in the hospital.

Skerret’s 1,200 British were lying off the place in their transports,

just preparing to land and to join Campoverde, as he had desired.

Finding that disembarkation was impossible, and that the Catalan army

had disappeared, Skerret took his expedition back to Cadiz, after a

most humiliating experience.

Meanwhile there was high debate at Cervera. The Valencian general,

Miranda, demanded that Campoverde should at once dismiss him and his

division, and permit them to return home by sea. They had been lent by

Charles O’Donnell for the one purpose of the relief of Tarragona; and

that operation being now impossible, for the best of reasons, Miranda

claimed leave to depart. He was naturally anxious to serve no longer

under such a miserable chief as Campoverde--though his own behaviour

on June 24th gave him no right to complain. It was hard to see how

his request could be refused, yet many of the chiefs of the Catalan

army thought that the departure of the Valencian division implied the

end of all formal war in the principality. The proposal to remove not

only the Valencians but all the regular troops was raised: Campoverde,

feeling his authority gone, and willing to throw all responsibility on

his lieutenants, called a council of war on July 1st. By a majority

of four to three general officers, the meeting decided in favour of

abandoning Catalonia altogether. Sarsfield, the fighting-man of the

army, gave a furious negative, and Campoverde himself made a more

timid objection to the move[665]. But the retreat to Valencia being

once voted, the Captain-General was only too glad to fall in with the

project, and to be quit of the duties which he had so ill discharged.

All the regulars were to sail when a convenient exit to the sea could

be found--at the moment of the council of war Suchet was on the move in

the neighbourhood of Barcelona, and the small ports usually available

were blocked. It was a miserable resolve, when Figueras was still

holding out, when the inland was still intact, and when Suchet had been

obliged to disperse his troops, and could obviously make no general

move for some weeks. Fortunately difficulties cropped up to prevent the

evacuation. The British commodore, Codrington, when asked to prepare

transports and convoy, replied ‘that although he would strain any

point to restore to General O’Donnell and to Valencia the troops so

liberally furnished by that kingdom, he would not embark the Marquis

of Campoverde, or any of the troops belonging to Catalonia, which it

was his duty to assist in defending, instead of depriving it of that

protection which it had[666].’ Eroles, Manso, and other local Catalan

officers sent in equally strong protests; they would be glad to be rid

of the Captain-General, but it would be treason to withdraw the whole

regular army, and to leave the principality to be defended by the

miqueletes alone. The spirit of the people would be brought low, and

resistance would die down when they knew that they were abandoned for

ever by the army.

[665] For the wording of the votes see the précis of the council

of war in the Appendix to Arteche, vol. x. pp. 550-2. Caro, San

Juan, Velasco, and Carrasquedo voted for embarkation: Sarsfield,

Santa Cruz, and Campoverde for holding on in Catalonia. Miranda

would not vote, ‘not considering himself as belonging to the

Catalan army,’ but was in favour of the evacuation. Eroles was

absent.

[666] Letter of Codrington, in his _Life_, i. p. 235.

Meanwhile Suchet had spent the days while the Spaniards were debating

in opening up the communications between his own army and Barcelona,

which had so long been out of touch. He marched with the greater part

of the divisions of Harispe and Frère, as has already been mentioned,

to Villafranca and Villanueva de Sitjes, where he left the bulk of his

troops, then by the pass of Ordal to Barcelona itself. Here General

Maurice Mathieu was in a very isolated position, for since Macdonald

had taken off all the disposable troops to the siege of Figueras,

the city had been entirely cut off from him, the _somatenes_ having

intercepted the road, while English cruisers maintained a fairly

effective blockade on the side of the sea. Suchet concerted with the

governor a plan for opening up communication with Macdonald, and

occupying the port of Mataro, north of Barcelona, where the Spaniards

still had an access to the sea. He determined to bring up Harispe and

Frère, and went back to pick them up. This he did, and returned with

them to Barcelona on July 9th, while an expedition sent out by Maurice

Mathieu seized Mataro.

But meanwhile Campoverde, reflecting that if the little ports between

Tarragona and Barcelona were blocked to him, there still remained

those between Barcelona and Rosas, had made a rapid march through

the inland, and had arrived at Arens de Mar, north of Mataro, before

Suchet returned to Barcelona. The bulk of Miranda’s division was

safely shipped off on July 9th by Codrington, and transported to

Valencia[667]. But the cavalry, refusing to abandon their horses, had

turned westward, under a Colonel Gasca, and to the number of some

900 saved themselves by a most extraordinary march. Striking across

northern Aragon, and dodging between the French garrisons, they reached

the Upper Ebro near Tudela, where they forded the great river by the

aid of guides lent them by the great guerrillero Mina. Once on the

south bank, they executed another equally dangerous march, evading

many French detachments, and rejoined Charles O’Donnell in the end of

August, having travelled in six weeks no less than 740 miles, through

the heart of a region which was supposed to be in military occupation

by the enemy. Their loss was only four officers and fifty-three men,

though 213 horses had perished in the mountains. This achievement

sufficiently shows the superficial nature of Suchet’s occupation of

Aragon: he could not prevent so large a body as 900 men from crossing

it twice from end to end.

[667] Codrington says that he only embarked 2,400 men out of

the 4,000 who had come to Catalonia. The cavalry had gone

another way, and 600 or 800 men had deserted, some to join the

_somatenes_, others to find their way home to Valencia as best

they could.

Campoverde, after shipping off Miranda’s infantry at Arens de Mar, had

retired inland to Vich, where on the evening after the embarkation his

disastrous captain-generalship came to an end. For he found waiting

him there General Luis Lacy, sent by the Cadiz regency to relieve

him in command. The new chief was a stranger to Catalonia, and the

people would have preferred Eroles to lead them--indeed, a junta of

Catalan officers had already offered to put themselves under his

orders[668]. But Eroles, the most honourable of all the local leaders,

refused to commit an act of indiscipline, and Lacy was recognized as

Captain-General, while Campoverde absconded hastily by sea. Rejecting

all idea of evacuating the principality, Lacy drew back into the

mountains with the mere wreck of an army which had been handed over

to him--some 2,000 or 3,000 men--and established himself at Solsona,

where the Junta of Catalonia also took refuge. In this place and the

neighbouring hill-towns he began to reorganize his demoralized troops,

and to gather in recruits and deserters. But he was far too weak to do

anything for the long-enduring garrison of Figueras, which was still

holding out, though nearing its last gasp.

[668] Apparently while the army was at Agramunt near Cervera,

about July 4th. See Codrington’s correspondence in his _Life_,

i. 236, and in Napier’s Appendix to vol. iii. p. 398. For

testimonials to the honourable and patriotic conduct of Eroles

throughout the campaign, see Codrington’s letters, _passim_.

Suchet, after failing to prevent the embarkation of the Valencian

division, had determined to spend some time in opening up free

communication between Barcelona and Macdonald’s army in front of

Figueras, as also between Barcelona and his own base of operations at

Lerida. He must set matters on a satisfactory footing in Catalonia,

before undertaking the great invasion of Valencia, which the Emperor

had assigned as his next task. The expedition towards Macdonald’s rear

was accomplished by Suchet himself with the divisions of Frère and

Harispe. One column (Palombini’s Italians) marched up the valley of

the Tenes river, by Monbuy and Codinas, the other and larger column

followed the Congost river. Neither met with opposition, and they

joined at the defile of Centelles above Vich. That town was occupied

on July 15th, and flying columns sent out from it to Ripol, Olot, and

Castelfollit. By means of these detachments Suchet got into touch

with Macdonald, who was found to be holding Figueras closely blocked,

and to be in no need of help, for though his army was sickly, yet

the besieged garrison was known to be in a desperate condition, and

its surrender was expected to occur at any moment. Determining that

Macdonald could shift for himself, and would be able to overrun all

northern Catalonia when his army was set free from the siege, Suchet

turned back from Vich, with the object of achieving his second aim, the

clearing of the road from Barcelona to Lerida. This great route was

safe for large detachments--indeed, Montmarie’s brigade had marched

along it almost unmolested ten days back. But it could not be used by

convoys or small parties, so long as the Spaniards were in possession

of the mountain of Montserrat, which overhangs it for many miles. This

lofty peak, the projecting angle of one of the chief Catalan sierras,

was the nearest point to Barcelona now in the hands of the patriots.

It was occupied at this moment by Eroles and some 1,500 miqueletes,

who continually made descents into the plain from their fastness. The

Montserrat is a fantastic pile of rock, whose highest point reaches

4,000 feet above the sea-level; it is mainly composed of red slate,

a geological formation which runs to precipices, and at first sight

the enormous bulk--its circumference is fifteen miles--looks almost

inaccessible. But several paths run up among its clefts, and on a

platform 3,000 feet up lies the sanctuary of Our Lady of Montserrat,

the oldest and formerly the richest sanctuary of Catalonia, with a

great Renaissance church and a large monastery. Most of the monks had

fled to Majorca with their treasure in 1808, and their empty home

served as the head quarters of the local miqueletes, and the magazine

of their munitions. For cargoes of arms and stores, run ashore on the

central Catalan coast, were generally forwarded to Montserrat for

distribution. The mountain was not regularly fortified, indeed it was

too large for fortification, but there were two batteries with ten guns

placed across the only practicable road which led up to the sanctuary

from the north, and the buildings themselves, far above, had been

loopholed and barricaded. Nothing save its own steepness protected a

minor path which climbs to the monastery from the village of Colbato.

Another from Monistrol, which lies in the plain to the north-west, had

been blasted away in places. The aspect of the peak was formidable, but

its strength was more apparent than real, when it was held by no more

than 1,500 irregular troops: for over and above the known paths there

were many places where lightly equipped men could scramble, over slopes

which were only precipitous in certain sections. When a very large

force delivered a concentric attack on the mountain, it was impossible

for the small garrison to block every possible point up which active

assailants might make their way.

Suchet had brought up more than 10,000 men for the attack, including

a battalion or two borrowed from the garrison of Barcelona. Abbé’s

brigade was to make the main assault along the road: Montmarie’s

brigade, now returned from Lerida, was to menace the steep path from

Colbato to the summit; Harispe and Frère, lower down towards the plain,

watched the Igualada and Manresa roads, the Barcelona troops the road

to the south by Bruch. On July 25th the assault was delivered by Abbé’s

five battalions: they were scarcely opposed on the lower slopes, but

met with a fierce resistance at the first battery, near the chapel of

Saint Cecilia, 1,200 yards from the monastery. Here the column halted,

to throw out swarms of skirmishers over the precipitous hillside. Some

of them climbed high enough to bring an enfilading fire to bear on the

Spanish guns, and as their discharge began to slacken, the grenadier

companies charged up the road and captured them. The miqueletes fell

back on the second battery, which was presently captured in the same

fashion by the combination of a flanking fire and a frontal attack. The

Spanish gunners, the only regulars present, stood to their guns to the

last in the most gallant way, and were nearly all bayoneted. Abbé was

rearranging his column for an attack on the fortified monastery above,

when furious firing was heard to break out in its direction, and the

garrison were presently seen streaming down the hillside to the east. A

large body of the French skirmishers, thrown out for the first attack,

had found their way over the rocks to the back of the sanctuary, where

there are rough tracks leading to some hermitages which lie out far

from the main buildings. When some 300 men had collected behind the

monastery, they delivered an attack on it from the rear. The small

reserve placed in the buildings was panic-stricken by an attack from

this side--all the more so because they saw the rest of their comrades

recoiling from the batteries below, which had already been taken. They

fled, after making no great stand, and, joining the main body, rushed

down the precipitous ravines on the east front of the peak, where a

few perished by falls, but the majority got away safely over ground

where the victors could not follow. So fell Montserrat, with a loss

of only 200 men to the French and 400 to the Spaniards. The storming

of the holy mountain was a picturesque rather than a really difficult

achievement, but the blow inflicted on the Catalans was a very severe

one: Montserrat had been looked upon as impregnable, and the protection

of its patroness was supposed to have defended it for the three years

during which the French had been holding Barcelona, which lies so close

to its foot. The Spaniards had now no post left on the great road from

Barcelona to Lerida, and Suchet disposed part of his army to hold this

line, Palombini’s Italian brigade being left on Montserrat, while

Frère’s division lay at Igualada, and two cavalry and one infantry

regiments held Cervera and its neighbourhood (the ‘Llano de Urgel’ or

flat land of western Catalonia) as far as the gates of Lerida. Abbé’s

brigade went off southward, to join Musnier’s division (to which it

belonged) on the lower Ebro.

With the fall of Montserrat ended Suchet’s Catalan campaign. He had

subdued all that part of the principality which had been made over

to him, when Napoleon broke up the old 7th Corps and assigned the

districts of Lerida, Tortosa, and Tarragona to the Army of Aragon.

He had now before him the long-projected invasion of Valencia, and

intended to take it in hand, so soon as the brigades escorting the

Tarragona prisoners should have returned to Saragossa, and the southern

regions of Aragon should have been cleared of the insurgents, who had

flocked down into them from the hills when Abbé’s brigade had been

withdrawn to the north in June. For during the siege of Tarragona

Villacampa had invested Teruel, in which a French battalion was shut

up, Duran had attacked Calatayud, though without success, and a

partisan named Campillo had raided as far as Cariñena, only thirty

miles from Saragossa. During the month of August, when Suchet was

able to dispose of the troops set free from Catalonia, flying columns

under Harispe, Compère, and Peyri scoured all southern Aragon. Teruel

was relieved, and Villacampa and his lieutenants were driven back

into their old fastnesses in the sierras of Albaracin and Molina, the

remotest recesses of the rugged land where Aragon and New Castile meet.

But the Valencian expedition could not be taken in hand before the

month of September had begun.

Meanwhile the siege of Figueras had lingered on for a month longer

than Macdonald and Suchet had expected. The brigadier Martinez, with

his five small regular battalions[669] and his 3,000 miqueletes, had

made a most admirable defence. No assistance, not even any prospect

of assistance, had been before them since Campoverde’s defeat on May

3rd. The whole field army of Catalonia had been drawn away to defend

or relieve Tarragona, and Martinez had no friends near him save the

_somatenes_ of the Ampurdam and the Pyrenean valleys, who were willing,

but weak and disorganized. Their most popular chief, the fighting

priest Rovira, had gone off to Cadiz to ask for succour, but found

there that Tarragona was rightly considered a far more important

place to save, and that there was no hope for Figueras. All that the

_somatenes_ could do was to molest Macdonald’s convoys and foraging

parties. May, June, and July wore slowly away, and Martinez was still

holding out, with a garrison reduced to half-rations. Yet he was doing

good service, since he was detaining in front of him the whole of the

disposable troops of the 7th Corps, not to speak of some battalions

of National Guards from the southern departments of France. No help

from Macdonald could come to Suchet during the whole of the siege of

Tarragona, or the subsequent operations about Montserrat. Instead it

was Suchet who was forced to help Macdonald, by clearing his rear by

the march to Vich.

[669] One of Ultonia, two of Antequera, 1st and 2nd of the

Voluntarios de Valencia.

The Duke of Tarentum had completed a great circumvallation around

the rocky fortress of San Fernando, and had pushed forward batteries

to within 500 yards of its walls, but he never attempted to breach

them, or to storm the place. It is hard to make out why he made no

such endeavour, for though the place is high lying and difficult of

approach, it is not more so than the upper city of Tarragona, with

which Suchet was dealing in such a prompt and drastic fashion. But

from March to August Figueras was blockaded rather than besieged.

Macdonald’s proceedings are all the more difficult to understand

because his army was suffering severely from the heat during June and

July--the National Guards and the newly arrived battalions from the

interior of France were thinned by malarial fevers, and by pestilence

bred by long tarrying in unsanitary camps. Probably we must ascribe his

refusal to open trenches and proceed to battering-work and assault, to

his memory of what had happened at Gerona. The 7th Corps had an evil

tradition of the repeated failures to storm that city, and of the loss

of life which had accompanied them. Figueras, it was clear, must fall

sooner or later from starvation; there was no chance that it could

be relieved; was it worth while to waste good soldiers in taking by

force a place that must yield in a week or two for want of provisions?

Macdonald evidently under-estimated the obstinacy of the defenders and

the amount of their stores, and may have regretted in July that he had

not started a regular siege in May. But it was now too late to begin

it, since surrender was inevitable within a few days, as he supposed.

Evidence of the distressed state of the garrison was forthcoming on

July 17th, when Martinez turned out of the fortress, without any

demand for exchange, 850 French and Italian prisoners who had been

confined in the bomb-proofs since the commencement of the siege; they

were in a half-starved condition, and reported that for some days they

had hardly received any food at all[670]. General Guillot and the

officers were not released--they were useful hostages, since their

lives were at the disposition of the governor, in case the French

should threaten to refuse quarter to irregulars, or make other harsh

demands when the inevitable surrender should draw nearer.

[670] See Vacani, v. p. 313. It will be remembered that when

Masséna was in a similar position at Genoa in 1800, be refused to

dismiss his Austrian prisoners, and allowed many hundreds of them

to die of starvation. Martinez was more merciful.

The expectation that Martinez would hoist the white flag within a few

days of the release of the prisoners was entirely falsified. He held

out, suffering terrible privations, for another month; he was aware

that Tarragona had fallen, that Campoverde’s army had gone to pieces,

and that he had no hope of succour. But he rightly considered that

it was his duty to detain the 7th Corps before his walls to the last

possible moment. Meanwhile he kept up the spirits of his garrison as

best he could, by assuring them that it was well within their power to

break out through the adversary’s lines by a general sortie, when the

last rations should have been issued. By August 16th this moment had

arrived: the Spaniards had eaten not only the few horses in the place,

but the dogs and rats[671]: only three days’ half-rations were left.

The plan for the evasion was well designed: in the afternoon Rovira,

who had returned with empty hands from Cadiz, showed himself on the

hills nearest to Figueras with some 2,000 _somatenes_--all that could

be collected; he made roving demonstrations against the north side of

the French circumvallation, in the hope of drawing the reserves in

that direction, but allowed himself to be driven away without serious

resistance. After dark, however, Martinez sallied from the fortress

on the opposite side--the south-west--in the direction of the sea,

hoping to find the line thin on that front. He had brought with him

every man who could march, and dashed at the circumvallation in one

broad column. The hostile pickets and outposts were rolled in, but the

Spaniards were brought up against an impassable _abattis_, while two

batteries on each side began playing against the flanks of the mass.

After vainly trying to break through for some minutes, they recoiled

into the fortress, leaving 400 dead and wounded behind them.

[671] ‘Hasta los insectos más inmundos’ as Martinez wrote to the

Catalan Junta.

Next morning (August 17th) General Baraguay d’Hilliers, judging

that the enemy must now be thoroughly disheartened, sent in a

_parlementaire_ to propose capitulation. Martinez, aware that his last

bolt was shot, agreed to surrender on the third day, that following the

issue of the last half-ration in his stores. The garrison crawled out

and laid down its arms on the 19th: it mustered something over 2,000

men still able to stand, and there were another 1,000 in the hospitals.

From first to last some 1,500 more had perished during the four months

and nine days that the siege had lasted. The French had suffered almost

as heavily--4,000 men had died in the lines since March, many more from

fever and dysentery than from shot and shell. Macdonald sought eagerly

among the prisoners for the three young Catalans who had let their

compatriots into San Fernando. The two brothers Pons had escaped with

Eroles in June[672], but the third, Juan Marquez, was found, and hanged

on a high gallows on the ravelin of the fortress.

[672] They both became officers in the Catalan army, and

survived for many years after the war; the elder died, a retired

brigadier-general, in the year 1850. See Arteche, x. 480. Vacani

and Napier err in saying that he was hanged with Marquez, who was

his cousin.

Thus ended in disaster the story of Figueras. But both the capture

of the place and its defence form a most honourable page in the

history of the war. Rovira’s enterprise in seizing it and Martinez’s

obstinacy in maintaining it, long after all hope was gone, were equally

praiseworthy. Though nothing came of the exploit in the end, they had

immobilized the whole French 7th Corps for the entire summer of 1811,

and had prevented Macdonald from giving a single battalion to help

Suchet’s attack on Tarragona. If Campoverde had possessed the most

ordinary capacity or resolution, he might have turned the opportunity

given him by the _somatene_ chiefs to such good account as to wreck all

the campaign planned by Napoleon for the subjection of Catalonia.

Better management on May 3rd might have led to the defeat of Baraguay

d’Hilliers, and if he had been driven off from Figueras, and isolated

from Macdonald, who was then far away at Barcelona, Suchet would have

had to march to the help of his comrades, and the siege of Tarragona

could never have begun. We are brought back to the point which has

already so often confronted us--Campoverde’s miserable inefficiency was

the final cause of all the disasters of 1811 in the principality of

which he was the Captain-General.

[Illustration: CATALONIA]

Two such blows as the fall of Tarragona and the recapture of Figueras

seemed to render inevitable the final subjection of Catalonia. It is

with astonishment that we find that its obstinate people maintained

their resistance for two years more, and were found still defending

themselves when the war came to an end with the abdication of Napoleon

in 1814. The new Captain-General, Lacy, was a man harsh and unpopular,

but he had at least the merit of energy. His army was a mere wreck,

but he issued orders for a general levy of all men between 18 and 40

to fill the depleted cadres of the few surviving regular battalions,

and despite the ill-will of the Junta--who wished to lean more on the

miqueletes, and distrusted the old army--he gradually collected a new

force. Early in August, as if in bravado, he burst into France on the

side of Puigcerda, and executed a destructive raid along the valleys of

Cerdagne. If he was not strong enough to help Figueras, or to oppose

Suchet, he was at least determined to do all the harm that he could

to the enemy. This incursion threw Napoleon into a fit of rage, and,

forgetting his own orders to Suchet which prescribed the invasion of

Valencia as the next decisive move in the war, he wrote him an angry

dispatch on August 22nd[673], in which he told the newly appointed

Marshal that he ought to have left a strong French division at Vich,

and to have marched with his main body against the Catalonian inland,

aiming at Cardona and Urgel and the other unsubdued places. ‘He should

have profited by the panic into which the Spaniards had been thrown,

and might have terminated the war in the province, while by making

his retrogression to Saragossa he has given the enemy the chance of

rallying on all sides.’ It is sufficient answer to this accusation to

say that, if the Marshal had thrown all his available troops into the

Catalan mountains, he would have become involved in a series of endless

marches and counter-marches after an intangible enemy, which would have

prevented him from carrying out in the autumn his great and successful

attack on Valencia. The strength of the Catalan resistance did not

lie in the possession of Cardona or Urgel or any other old-fashioned

stronghold, but in the determination of its people not to lay down

their arms. There is no probability that the war could have been

‘terminated’ in the way that the Emperor hoped.

[673] _Correspondance_, vol. xxii, no. 18,066.

By September Lacy had reorganized the remnants of the old Army

of Catalonia into three weak divisions under Eroles, Milans, and

Sarsfield, each containing only four or five battalions. Every one

of the new units represented many lost corps--the single regiment of

Baza included all the remnants of the Granadan division, which Reding

had brought to Catalonia in 1809 fourteen thousand strong. The new

Cazadores de Cataluña raised by the well-known miquelete-chief Manso

were formed from the _cadres_ of six old Catalonian tercios[674]--it

was the same with the regiments bearing the local names of Manresa,

Mataro, and Ausona. The cavalry, consisting of the few hundred

Catalonian horse who had but joined in Gasca’s retreat to Valencia,

amounted to five squadrons of hussars and cuirassiers. The whole,

including garrisons, may have made up 8,000 men--all that was left

of the 25,000 organized troops which had formed the ‘1st Army’ on

December 1st, 1810. But there still remained an Army of Catalonia, and

as Macdonald and Maurice Mathieu and Decaen were to find, the Catalans

were still ready to fight.