in favourable advanced positions, began to shell the redoubts on the
Monte Torrero, with satisfactory results, as they dismounted some of
the defender’s guns and exploded a small dépôt of reserve ammunition.
An hour later the infantry came into action. Moncey had told off for
the assault the divisions of Morlot and Grandjean, twenty battalions
in all[118]. The former attacked the eastern front of the position,
fording the canal and assailing the left-hand _tête-de-pont_ on
the Valencia road from the flank. The latter, which had passed the
canal far outside the Spanish lines, and operated between it and
the Huerba, attacked the south-western slopes of the hill. The
defence was weak, and when a brigade of Grandjean’s men pushed in
between the main redoubt on the crest and the Huerba, and took the
western part of the Spanish line in the rear, the day was won. St.
March’s battalions wavered all along the line; and as his reserves
could not be induced to fall upon the French advance, the Valencian
general withdrew his whole division into the city, abandoning the
entire circuit of the Monte Torrero. The assailants captured seven
guns--some of them disabled--in the three redoubts, and a standard
of the 5th regiment of Murcia. They had only lost twenty killed and
fifty wounded; the Spanish loss was also insignificant, considering
the importance of the position that was at stake, and hardly any
prisoners were taken[119]. The besiegers had now the power to bombard
all the southern front of Saragossa, and dominated, from the slopes
of the hill, the two advanced forts of San José and the Pillar. The
leaders of the populace were strongly of opinion that the Valencian
division had misbehaved, and they were not far wrong. Palafox had
great difficulty in protecting St. March, whose personal conduct
had been unimpeachable, from the wrath of the multitude, who wished
to make him responsible for the weakness shown by his men[120]. The
officer who lost the Monte Torrero in the first siege had been tried
and shot[121]: St. March was lucky to escape even without a reprimand.
[118] Morlot’s division was short of the 121st and the 2nd Legion
of Reserve, left behind at Alagon and Tudela, and had only nine
battalions present.
[119] Moncey to Berthier, Dec. 23.
[120] Cavallero, pp. 89-90.
[121] See vol. i. p. 153.
Meanwhile things had gone very differently at the other point where
the French had tried to break down the outer defences of the city.
The attack on the transpontine suburb of San Lazaro had been allotted
to Gazan’s division. This was a very formidable force, 9,000 veterans
of the best quality, who were bent on showing that they had not
degenerated since they fought at Friedland. Owing to some slight
mistake in the combination, Gazan only delivered his attack at one
o’clock, two hours after the fighting on the Monte Torrero had
ceased. His leading brigade, that of Guérin, six battalions strong,
advanced against the northern and eastern fronts of the defences
of the suburb. The Spaniards were holding as an outwork a large
building called the Archbishop’s Tower (Torre del Arzobispo)[122]
on the Villanueva road, 600 yards in front of the main line of
entrenchments. This Gazan’s men carried at the first rush, killing
or capturing 300 men of a Swiss battalion[123] which held it. They
then pushed forward towards the inner fortifications, but were taken
in flank by a heavy artillery fire from a redoubt which they had
overlooked. This caused them to swerve towards the Barcelona road,
where they got possession of a house close under the convent of
Jesus, and threatened to cut off the garrison of that stronghold
from the rest of the defenders of the suburb. At this moment a
disgraceful panic seized the defenders of the San Lazaro convent,
which lay directly in front of the assailants. They abandoned their
post, and began to fly across the bridge into Saragossa. But Palafox
came up in person with a reserve, and reoccupied the abandoned post.
He then ordered a sortie against the buildings which the French
had seized, and succeeded in driving them out and compelling them
to retire into the open ground. Gazan doubted for a moment whether
he should not send in his second brigade to renew the attack, for
the six battalions that had borne the brunt of the first fighting
had now fallen into complete disorder. But remembering that if this
force failed to break into the suburb he had no reserves left, and
that Palafox might bring over the bridge as many reinforcements as
he chose, the French general resolved not to push the assault any
further. He drew back and retired behind the Gallego stream, where he
threw up entrenchments to cover himself, completely abandoning the
offensive. For two or three days he did not dare to move, expecting
to be attacked at any moment by the garrison. A sudden rise of the
Ebro had cut off his communication with Moncey, and he could neither
send the marshal an account of his check, nor get any orders from
him[124]. His casualty-list was severe, thirty officers and 650 men
killed and wounded: the Spaniards lost somewhat less, even including
the 300 Swiss who were cut to pieces at the Archbishop’s Tower.
[122] Belmas calls it a factory (ii. 151), but Palafox in his
dispatch gives the name above.
[123] ‘Suizos de Aragon.’
[124] An officer of sappers named Henri, and one of his privates,
tried to reopen communication by swimming the river on an
ice-cold night. They reached the further bank, but died of
exhaustion among the reeds, where their corpses were found next
morning: thus the message was never delivered. Belmas, ii. 153.
Palafox next morning issued a proclamation, extolling the valour
shown in the defence of the suburb, treating the loss of the Monte
Torrero as insignificant, and exaggerating the losses of the French.
The Saragossans were rather encouraged than otherwise by the results
of the day’s fighting, and spoke as if they had merely lost an
outwork by the unsteadiness of St. March’s Valencians, while the main
hostile attack had been repulsed. But it is clear that the capture
of the dominating heights south of the city was an all-important
gain to the French. Without the Monte Torrero they could never have
pressed the siege home. As to the failure at the suburb, it came
from attacking with headlong courage an entrenched position that had
not been properly reconnoitred. The assault should never have been
delivered without artillery preparation, and was a grave mistake.
But clearly Mortier’s corps had yet to learn what the Spaniards were
like, and to realize that to turn them out from behind walls and
ditches was not the light task that they supposed.
Moncey so thoroughly miscalculated the general effect of the fighting
upon the minds of the Spaniards, that next morning he sent in to
Palafox a flag of truce, with an officer bearing a formal demand for
the surrender of the city. ‘Madrid had fallen,’ he wrote: ‘Saragossa,
invested on all sides, had not the force to resist two complete
_corps d’armée_. He trusted that the Captain-General would spare the
beautiful and wealthy capital of Aragon the horrors of a siege. Ample
blood had already been shed, enough misfortunes already suffered by
Spain.’ Palafox replied in the strain that might have been expected
from him--‘The man who only wishes to die with honour in defence of
his country cares nothing about his position: but, as a matter of
fact, he found that his own was eminently favourable and encouraging.
In the first siege he had held out for sixty-one days with a garrison
far inferior to that now under his command. Was it likely that
he would surrender, when he had as many troops as his besiegers?
Looking at the results of the fighting on the previous day, when
the assailants had suffered so severely in front of San Lazaro, he
thought that he would be quite as well justified in proposing to the
Marshal that the besieging army should surrender “to spare further
effusion of blood,” as the latter had been to make such a proposition
to him. If Madrid had fallen, Madrid must have been sold: but he
begged for leave to doubt the truth of the rumour. Even at the worst
Madrid was but a town, like any other. Its fate had no influence on
Saragossa[125].’
[125] The two letters may be found in full in the appendices to
Belmas, vol. ii.
Having received such an answer Moncey had only to set to work as fast
as possible: his engineer-in-chief, General Lacoste, after making a
thorough survey of the defences, pronounced in favour of choosing two
fronts of attack, both starting on the Monte Torrero, and directed
the one against the fort of San José and the other against that of
the Pillar. These projecting works would have to be carried before
any attempt could be made against the inner _enceinte_ of the town.
At the same time, Lacoste ordered a third attack, which he did not
propose to press home, to be made on the castle of the Aljafferia,
on the west side of the town. It was only intended to distract the
attention of the Spaniards from the points of real danger. On the
further bank of the Ebro, Gazan’s division was directed to move
forward again, and to entrench itself across all the three roads,
which issue from the suburb, and lead respectively to Lerida, Jaca,
and Monzon. He was not to attack, but merely to blockade the northern
exits of Saragossa. Communications with him were established by
means of a bridge of boats and pontoons laid above the town. Gazan
succeeded in shortening the front which he had to protect against
sorties by letting the water of the Ebro into the low-lying fields
along its banks, where it caused inundations on each of his flanks.
On the twenty-third the preliminary works of the siege began,
approaches and covered ways being constructed leading down from the
Monte Torrero to the spots from which Lacoste intended to commence
the first parallels of the two attacks on the Pillar and San José.
Preparations of a similar sort were commenced for the false attack on
the left, opposite the Aljafferia. Six days were occupied in these
works, and in the bringing up of the heavy artillery, destined to arm
the siege-batteries, from Tudela. The guns had to come by road, as
the Spaniards had destroyed all the barges on the Canal of Aragon,
and blown up many of its locks. It was not till some time later that
the French succeeded in reopening the navigation, by replacing the
sluice-gates and building large punts and floats for the carriage of
guns or munitions.
Just before the first parallel was opened Marshal Moncey was recalled
to Madrid [December 29], the Emperor being apparently discontented
with his delays in the early part of the month. He was replaced in
command of the 3rd Corps by Junot, whose old divisions had been made
over (as we have seen in the first volume) to Soult’s 2nd Corps. This
change made Mortier the senior officer of the besieging army, but he
and Junot seem to have worked more as partners than as commander and
subordinate. Junot, in his report to the Emperor[126] on the state in
which he found the troops, enlarges at great length on the deplorable
condition of the 3rd Corps. Many of the battalions had never received
their winter clothing, hundreds entered the hospitals every day, and
there was no corresponding outflow of convalescents. No less than 680
men had died in the base hospital at Pampeluna in November, and the
figure for December would be worse. He doubted if there were 13,000
infantry under arms in his three divisions--here he exaggerated
somewhat, for even a fortnight later the returns show that his
‘present under arms,’ after deducting all detachments and sick, were
still over 14,000 bayonets: on January 1, therefore, there must
have been 15,000. He asked for money, reinforcements, and a supply
of officers, the commissioned ranks of his corps showing a terrible
proportion of gaps. On the other hand, he conceded that the 5th
Corps was in excellent condition, its veterans suffering far less
from disease than his own conscripts. Either of Gazan’s and Suchet’s
divisions was, by itself, as strong as any two of the divisions of
the 3rd Corps.
[126] Junot to Berthier, Jan. 1, 1809.
On the night of the twenty-ninth--thirtieth, within twelve hours
of Moncey’s departure, the first parallel was opened, both in the
attack towards San José and in that opposite the Pillar fort. When
the design of the besiegers became evident, Palafox made three
sallies on the thirty-first, but apparently more with the object of
reconnoitring the siege-works and distracting the workers than with
any hope of breaking the French lines, for there were not more than
1,500 men employed in any of the three columns which delivered the
sorties. The assault on the trenches before San José was not pressed
home, but opposite the false attack at the Aljafferia the fighting
was more lively; the French outposts were all driven in with loss,
and a squadron of cavalry, which had slipped out from the Sancho
gate, close to the Ebro, surprised and sabred thirty men of a picket
on the left of the French lines. Palafox made the most of this small
success in a magniloquent proclamation published on the succeeding
day. He should have sent out 15,000 men instead of 3,000 if he
intended to get any profit out of his sorties. An attack delivered
with such a force on some one point of the lines must have paralysed
the siege operations, and might have proved disastrous to the French.
Meanwhile the besiegers, undisturbed by these sallies, pushed forward
their works on the northern slopes of the Monte Torrero. The attack
opposite San José got forward much faster than that against the
Pillar: its second parallel was commenced on January 1, and its
batteries were all ready to open by the ninth. The other attack was
handicapped by the fact that the ground sloped down more rapidly
towards the Huerba, so that the trenches had to be made much deeper,
and pushed forward in perpetual zigzags, in order to avoid being
searched by the plunging fire from the Spanish batteries on the other
side of the stream, in the _enceinte_ of the town. To get a flanking
position against the Pillar redoubt, the left attack was continued
by another line of trenches beyond the Huerba, after it has made its
sharp turn to the south.
Before the engineers had completed their work, and long ere the
breaching batteries were ready, a great strain was thrown upon the
besiegers by fresh orders from Napoleon. On January 2, Marshal
Mortier received a dispatch, bidding him march out to Calatayud
with one of his two divisions, and open up the direct communication
with Madrid. Accordingly he departed with the two strong brigades
of Suchet’s division, 10,000 bayonets. This withdrawal threw much
harder work on the remainder of the army: Junot was left with not
much more than 24,000 men, including the artillerymen, to maintain
the investment of the whole city. He was forced to spread out the
3rd Corps on a very thin line, in order to occupy all the posts from
which Suchet’s battalions had been withdrawn. Morlot’s division
came down from the Monte Torrero to occupy the ground which Suchet
had evacuated: Musnier had to cover the whole of the hill, and to
support both the lines of approach on which the engineers were busy.
Grandjean’s division remained on its old front, facing the eastern
side of the city, and Gazan still blockaded the suburb beyond the
Ebro. As the last-named general had still 8,000 men, there were
only 15,000 bayonets and the artillery available for the siege, a
force far too small to maintain a front nearly four miles long. If
Palafox had dared to make a general sortie with all his disposable
men, Junot’s position would have been more than hazardous. But
the Captain-General contented himself with making numerous and
useless sallies on a petty scale, sending out the most reckless and
determined of his men to waste themselves in bickering with the
guards of the trenches, when he should have saved them to head a
general assault in force upon some weak point of the siege lines. The
diaries and narratives of the French officers who served at Saragossa
are full of anecdotes of the frantic courage shown by the besieged,
generally to no purpose. One of the strangest has been preserved by
the very prosaic engineer Belmas, who tells how a priest in his robes
came out on January 6 in front of Gazan’s lines, and walked among
the bullets to within fifty yards of the trenches, when he preached
with great unction for some minutes, his crucifix in his hand, to the
effect that the French had a bad cause and were drawing down God’s
anger upon themselves. To the credit of his audience it must be said
that they let him go off alive, contenting themselves with firing
over his head, in order to see if they could scare him into a run.
At daybreak on January 10, the whole of the French batteries opened
upon San José and the Pillar fort. The fire against the latter was
distant and comparatively ineffective, but the masonry of San José
began to crumble at once: its walls, solid though they were, had
never been built to resist siege artillery. The roofs and tiles came
crashing down upon the defenders’ heads, and most of their guns were
silenced or injured. The besiegers suffered little--Belmas says
that only one officer and ten men fell, though two guns in the most
advanced battery were disabled. The loss of the Spaniards on the
other hand was numbered by hundreds, more being slain by the fall
of stones and slates than by the actual cannon balls and shells of
the assailants. At nightfall Palafox withdrew most of the guns from
the convent, but replaced the decimated garrison by three fresh
battalions. It was clear that the work would fall next day unless the
besiegers were driven off from their batteries. At 1 A.M., therefore,
300 men made a desperate sally to spike the guns. But the French were
alert, and had brought up two field-pieces close to the convent,
which repressed the sortie with a storm of grape.
Next morning the bombardment of San José recommenced, and by the
afternoon a large breach had been established in its southern wall.
At four o’clock General Grandjean launched a picked force, composed
of the seven voltigeur companies of the 14th and 44th regiments,
upon the crumbling defences[127]. The garrison had already begun
to quit the untenable post, and only a minority remained behind to
fight to the last. The storming column entered without much loss,
partly by laying scaling-ladders to the foot of the breach, partly by
using a small bridge of planks across the ditch, which the Spaniards
had forgotten to remove. They only lost thirty-eight men, and made
prisoners of about fifty of the garrison who had refused to retire
into the city when the rest fled.
[127] Belmas, ii. 175.
Though San José was thus easily captured, it was difficult to
establish a lodgement in it, for the batteries on the _enceinte_
of Saragossa searched it from end to end, dominating its ruined
quadrangle from a superior height. But during the night the besiegers
succeeded in blocking up its gorge, and in connecting the breach with
their second parallel by a covered way of sandbags and fascines.
The convent was now the base from which they were to attack the
town-walls behind it.
But before continuing the advance in this direction it was necessary
to carry the fort of Our Lady of the Pillar, the other great
outwork of the southern front of Saragossa. The main attention of
the besiegers was directed against this point from the twelfth to
the fifteenth, and their sapping gradually took them to within a
few yards of the counterscarp. The Spanish fire had been easily
subdued, and a practicable breach established. On the night of the
fifteenth-sixteenth the fort was stormed by the Poles of the 1st
regiment of the Vistula. They met with little or no resistance, the
greater part of the garrison having withdrawn when the assault was
seen to be imminent. A mine under the glacis exploded, but failed
to do any harm: another, better laid, destroyed the bridge over the
Huerba, behind the fort, when the work was seen to be in the power of
the assailants. Lacoste reported to Junot that the Poles lost only
one killed and two wounded--an incredibly small casualty list[128].
[128] Lacoste to Junot, Jan. 16, in Belmas, ii. 378.
The fall of the fort of the Pillar gave the French complete
possession of all the ground to the south of the Huerba, and left
them free to attack the _enceinte_ of the city, which had now lost
all its outer works save the Aljafferia: in front of that castle the
‘false attack’ made little progress, for the besiegers did not press
in close, and contented themselves with battering the old mediaeval
fortress from a distance. On that part of the line of investment
nothing of importance was to happen.
SECTION XI: CHAPTER II
SIEGE OF SARAGOSSA: THE FRENCH WITHIN THE WALLS: THE STREET-FIGHTING:
THE SURRENDER
Lacoste’s first care, when the Pillar and San José had both fallen
into his hands, was to connect the two works by his ‘third parallel,’
which was drawn from one to the other just above the edge of the
ravine of the Huerba. In order to assail the walls of the city that
stream had to be crossed, a task of some difficulty, for its bed was
searched by the great batteries at Santa Engracia along the whole
front between the two captured forts, while north of San José the
‘Palafox Battery’ near the Porta Quemada completely overlooked the
lower and broader part of the river bed. The Spaniards kept up a fast
and furious fire upon the lost works, with the object of preventing
the besiegers from moving forward from them, or constructing fresh
batteries among their ruins. In this they were not successful:
the French, burrowing deep among the débris, successfully covered
themselves, and suffered little.
The second stage of the siege work, the attack on the actual
_enceinte_ of Saragossa, now began. The two points on which it was
directed were the Santa Engracia battery--the southern salient of
the town--and the extreme south-eastern angle of the place, where
lay the Palafox Battery and the smaller work generally known as the
battery of the Oil Mill (Molino de Aceite). The former was less than
200 yards from the Pillar fort, the latter not more than 100 from San
José, but between them ran the deep bed of the Huerba.
From the twelfth to the seventeenth the French were busily engaged
in throwing up batteries in the line of their third parallel, and on
the morning of the last-named day no less than nine were ready. Five
opened on Santa Engracia, four on the Palafox battery: at both points
they soon began to do extensive damage, for here the walls had not
been entirely reconstructed (as on the western front of the city),
but only patched up and strengthened with earthworks at intervals.
The masonry of the convent of Santa Engracia suffered most, and began
to fall in large patches. Palafox saw that the _enceinte_ would
be pierced ere long, and that street-fighting would be the next
stage of the siege. Accordingly he set the whole civil population
to work on constructing barricades across the streets and lanes of
the south-eastern part of the city, in the rear of the threatened
points, and turned every block of houses into an independent fort by
building up all the doorways and windows facing towards the enemy.
The spirits of the garrison were still high, and the Captain-General
had done his best to keep them up by issuing gazettes containing
very roseate accounts of the state of affairs in the outer world.
His communication with the open country was not completely cut, for
thrice he had been able to send boats down the Ebro, which took their
chance of running past the French batteries at night, and always
succeeded. One of these boats had carried the Captain-General’s
younger brother, Francisco Palafox, who had orders to appeal to
the Catalans for help, and to raise the peasants of Lower Aragon.
Occasional messengers also got in from without: one arrived on
January 16 from Catalonia, with promises of aid from the Marquis of
Lazan, who proposed to return from Gerona with his division, in order
to fall upon the rear of the besiegers. Palafox not only let this be
known, but published in his Official Gazette some utterly unfounded
rumours, which the courier had brought. Reding, it was said, had
beaten St. Cyr in the open field: the Duke of Infantado was marching
from Cuenca on Aragon with 20,000 men. Sir John Moore had turned to
bay on the pursuing forces of the Emperor, and had defeated them at
a battle in Galicia in which Marshal Ney had been killed[129]. To
celebrate this glorious news the church bells were set ringing, the
artillery fired a general salute, and military music paraded the
town. These phenomena were perfectly audible to the besiegers, and
caused them many searchings of heart, for they could not guess what
event the Saragossans could be celebrating.
[129] Was this a distorted rumour of the combat of Cacabellos,
and the death of General Colbert, the commander of Ney’s
corps-cavalry, on Jan. 3?
The garrison needed all the encouragement that could be given to
them, for after the middle of January the stress of the siege began
to be felt very heavily. Food was not wanting--for, excepting fresh
meat and vegetables, everything was still procurable in abundance.
But cold and overcrowding were beginning to cause epidemic disorders.
The greater part of the civil population had taken refuge in their
cellars when the bombardment began, and after a few days spent in
those dark and damp retreats, from which they only issued at night,
or when they were called on for labour at the fortifications, began
to develop fevers and dysentery. This was inevitable, for in most of
the dwellings from twenty to forty persons of all ages were crowded
in mere holes, no more than seven feet high, and almost unprovided
with ventilation, where they lived, ate, and slept, packed together,
and with no care for sanitary precautions[130]. The malignant fevers
bred in these refuges soon spread to the garrison: though under
cover, the soldiery were destitute of warm clothing (especially the
Murcian battalions), and could not procure enough firewood to cook
their meals. By January 20 there were 8,000 sick among the 30,000
regular troops, and every day the wastage to the hospital grew more
and more noticeable. Many officers of note had already fallen in
the useless sorties, and in especial a grave loss had been suffered
on January 13, when Colonel San Genis, the chief engineer of the
besieged, and the designer of the whole of the defences of the
city, was killed on the ramparts of the Palafox battery, as he was
directing the fire against the new entrenchment which the French were
throwing up across the gorge of the San José fort[131]. He had no
competent successor as a general director, for his underlings had no
grasp of siege-strategy, and were only good at details. They built
batteries and barricades and ran mines in pure opportunism, without
any comprehensive scheme of defence before their eyes.
[130] For the description of these miserable and most
insalubrious refuges, see Cavallero, pp. 90-100.
[131] I give the date of San Genis’ death from Arteche, iv.
Belmas, on the other hand, puts it on Jan. 26, and Cavallero
apparently on Jan. 28, for he says that it was three days before
that of Lacoste, who was shot on Feb. 1.
The French meanwhile were very active, though the constant increase
of sickness in the 3rd Corps was daily thinning the regiments,
till the proportion of men stricken down by fever was hardly less
than that among the Spaniards. On the seventeenth and eighteenth
Lacoste began to contrive a descent into the bottom of the ravine
of the Huerba, by a series of zigzags pushed forward from the third
parallel, both in the direction of Santa Engracia and in that of the
Palafox battery. The latter was repeatedly silenced by the advanced
batteries of the besiegers, but they could not subdue the incessant
musketry fire from windows and loopholes which swept the whole bed
of the Huerba, and rendered the work at the head of the new sap most
difficult and deadly. Sometimes it had to be completely abandoned
because of the plunging fire from the city[132]. Yet it was always
resumed after a time: the French found that their best and easiest
work was done in the early morning, when, for day after day, a
dense fog rose from the Ebro, which rendered it impossible for the
Spaniards to see what was going on, or to aim with any certainty
at the entrenchments. Irritated at the steady if slow progress of
the enemy, Palafox launched on the afternoon of January 23 the most
desperate sortie that his army had yet essayed against the advanced
works of the French. At four o’clock on that day[133] three columns
dashed out and attacked the line of trenches: one, as a blind, was
sent out opposite the Aljafferia, to distract the attention of
Morlot’s division from the main sally. The other two were serious
attacks, but both made with too small numbers--apparently no more
than 200 picked men in each. The left-hand column became hotly
engaged with the trenches to the north of San José, and got no
further forward than a house a little beyond the Huerba, from which
they expelled a French post. But the right-hand force carried out
a very bold programme. Crossing the Huerba below Santa Engracia,
they broke through the third parallel, and then made a dash at two
mortar-batteries in the second parallel which had particularly
annoyed the defence on that morning. The commander of the sortie,
Mariano Galindo, a captain of the Volunteers of Aragon, led his
men so straight that they rushed in with the bayonet on the first
battery and spiked both its pieces. They were making for the second
when they were overwhelmed by the trench guard and by reinforcements
hurrying up from Musnier’s camp. Of a hundred men who had gone
forward with Galindo from the third parallel twelve were killed and
thirty, including their brave leader, taken prisoners. The French
stated their loss at no more than six killed and five wounded, a
figure that seems suspiciously low, considering that the first line
of trenches had been stormed by the assailants, and a battery in the
second line captured and disabled. Galindo had gone forward more than
500 yards, into the very middle of the French works, before he was
checked and surrounded. It was a very gallant exploit, but once more
we are constrained to ask why Palafox told off for it no more than a
mere handful of men. What would have happened had he thrown a solid
column of 10,000 men upon the siege-works, instead of a few hundred
volunteers?
[132] Belmas, ii. 198.
[133] Oddly enough, Belmas places this sortie on Jan. 21, on
which day, as Arteche shows, none of the Spanish accounts speak
of a sortie, while the latter give at great length details of the
fighting on the twenty-third. Probably the Spanish date is the
correct one.
On the twenty-second, the day before Galindo’s sortie, Junot was
superseded in command of the besieging army by Lannes, who had been
restored to health by two months’ holiday, and was now himself
again. He arrived just in time to take charge of the important task
of storming the main _enceinte_, for which Junot’s preparations
were now far advanced. But though the siege operations looked not
unpromising, he found the situation grave and dangerous. Belmas and
the other French historians describe this as the most critical epoch
of the whole Saragossan episode[134]. The fact was that at last
there were beginning to be signs of movement in the open country of
Aragon. During the month that had elapsed since the siege began, the
peasantry had been given time to draw together. Francisco Palafox,
after escaping from the city, had gone to Mequinenza, and was
arming the local levies with muskets procured from Catalonia. He
had already a great horde assembled in the direction of Alcañiz.
On the other bank of the Ebro Colonel Perena had been organizing
a force at Huesca, from northern Aragon and the foot-hills of the
Pyrenees. Lastly, it was known that Lazan was on his way from
Gerona to aid his brothers, and had brought to Lerida his division
of 4,000 men[135], a comparatively well-organized body of troops,
which had been under arms since October. Even far back, on the way
to Pampeluna, insurgents had gathered in the Sierra de Moncayo, and
were threatening the important half-way post of Tudela, by which the
besieging army kept up its communication with France.
[134] Belmas, ii. 203.
[135] Napier (i. 376) calls them ‘Catalonians’: but they were all
Aragonese, sent to aid Catalonia in October.
Hitherto these gatherings had looked dangerous, but had done no
actual harm. General Wathier, with the cavalry of the 3rd Corps, had
scoured the southern bank of the Ebro and kept off the insurgents;
but now they were pressing closer in, and on January 20 a battalion,
which Gazan had sent out to drive away Perena’s levies, had been
checked and beaten off at Perdiguera, only twelve miles from the camp
of the besiegers.
Lannes could not fail to see that if he committed himself to
the final assault on Saragossa, and entangled the 3rd Corps in
street-fighting, he might find himself assailed from the rear on
all points of his lines. There were no troops whatever in front of
Saragossa to form a ‘covering-force’ to beat off the insurgents, if
they should come down upon his camps while he was storming the city,
for the 3rd Corps and Gazan’s division had now only 20,000 infantry
for the conduct of the siege.
Accordingly the Marshal resolved to undo the Emperor’s arrangements
for keeping up the line of communication with Madrid, and to draw in
Mortier, with Suchet’s strong and intact division, from Calatayud,
where he had been lying for the last three weeks. This was the
only possible force which he could use to provide himself with a
covering army. The touch with Madrid, a thing of comparatively minor
importance, had to be sacrificed, except so far as it could be kept
up by the division of Dessolles, which had now come back from the
pursuit of Sir John Moore, and had pushed detachments back to its old
posts at Sigüenza and Guadalajara.
Mortier therefore evacuated Calatayud by the orders of Lannes, and
came back to the Ebro: passing behind the besieging army he crossed
the river and took post at Perdiguera with 10,000 men, facing the
levies of Perena in the direction of Huesca. It was only when he
had made certain of having this powerful reinforcement close at
hand, ready to deal with any interference from without, that Lannes
dared to proceed with the assault. At the same time that Mortier
arrived at Perdiguera, he sent out Wathier, with two battalions and
two regiments of cavalry, to deal with the insurgents of the Lower
Ebro, where Francisco Palafox had been busy. Four or five thousand
peasants with one newly-levied regiment of Aragonese volunteers tried
to resist this small column, but were beaten on the twenty-sixth
in front of the town of Alcañiz, which fell into Wathier’s hands,
and with it 20,000 sheep and 1,500 sacks of flour, which had been
collected for the revictualling of Saragossa, in case the investment
should be broken. They were a welcome windfall to the besieging army,
where food was none too plentiful, since the plain country where it
lay encamped had now been eaten bare, and convoys of food from Tudela
and Pampeluna were rare and inadequate.
On January 24 the French had succeeded in pushing three approaches
across the Huerba, and were firmly established under its northern
bank. Two days later they made lodgements in ruins, cellars, and
low walls where buildings had been pulled down, in the narrow space
between the town wall and the river bank, below the Palafox battery.
The cannon of the defenders could only act intermittently: every
night the parapets were repaired, but every morning after a few hours
of artillery duel the Spanish guns were silenced by the dreadful
converging fire poured in upon them. Meanwhile Palafox was heaping
barricade upon barricade in the quarters behind the threatened
points, and fortifying the houses and convents which connected them.
The final crisis arrived on the twenty-seventh. There were now
three practicable breaches,--two were on the side of the Palafox
battery, one in the convent of Santa Engracia. To storm the first and
second Lannes told off the light companies of the first brigade of
Grandjean’s division; to the third was allotted the 1st regiment of
the Vistula from Musnier’s division. Heavy supports lay behind them,
in the third parallel, with orders to rush in if the storming parties
should prove successful.
The assault was delivered with great dash and swiftness at noon on
the twenty-seventh. On two points it was successful. At the most
northern breach the assailants reached the summit of the wall, but
could not get down into the city, on account of the storm of musketry
from barricades and houses that swept the gap into which they had
advanced. They merely made a lodgement in the breach itself, and
could penetrate no further. But in the central breach, close beneath
the Palafox battery, the voltigeurs not only passed the walls, but
seized the ‘Oil Mill’ which abutted on them, and a triangular block
of houses projecting into the town. At the Santa Engracia breach they
were even more fortunate: the Poles carried the convent with their
first rush: its outer wall had been battered down for a breadth of
thirty yard and entering there the stormers drove out the Spaniards
from the interior buildings of the place, and got into the large
square which lies behind it, where they seized the Capuchin nunnery.
Thus a considerable wedge was driven through the _enceinte_, and the
Spaniards had to evacuate the walls for some little distance on each
side of Santa Engracia. From the stretch to the west of that convent
they were driven out by an unpremeditated assault of Musnier’s
supports, who ran out from the trenches on the left of the Huerba,
and escaladed the dilapidated wall in front of them, when they saw
the garrison drawing back on account of the flanking fire from Santa
Engracia. They got possession of the whole outer _enceinte_ as far as
the Trinitarian convent by the Carmen gate.
These successes were bought at the moderate loss of 350 men, of
whom two-thirds fell in the fighting on the Santa Engracia front;
the Spaniards lost somewhat more, including a few prisoners. In any
ordinary siege the day would have settled the fate of the place, for
the besiegers had broken through the _enceinte_ in two places, and
though the space seized inside the Palafox battery was not large, yet
on each side of Santa Engracia the assailants had penetrated so far
that a quarter of a mile of the walls was in their possession. But
Saragossa was not as other places, and the garrison were perfectly
prepared with a new front of defence, composed of batteries and
crenellated houses in rear of the lost positions. Two wedges, one
large and one small, had been driven into the town, but they had to
be broadened and driven further in if they were to have any effect.
On the twenty-eighth, therefore, a new stage of the siege began, and
the street-fighting, which was to last for twenty-four days more,
had its commencement. Lannes had heard, from those who had served
under Verdier in the first siege, of the deplorable slaughter and
repeated repulses that had followed the attempt to carry by main
force the internal defences of the city. To hurl solid columns of
stormers at the barricades and the crenellated houses was not his
intention. He had made up his mind to advance by sap and mine, as
if he were dealing with regular fortifications. His plan was to use
each block of houses that he gained as a base for the attack upon the
next, and never to send in the infantry with the bayonet till he had
breached by artillery, or by mines, the building against which the
assault was directed. This form of attack was bound to be slow, but
it had the great merit of costing comparatively little in the way of
casualties. The fact was that the Marshal had not the numbers which
would justify him in wasting lives by assaults which might or might
not be successful, but which were certain to prove very bloody. The
whole Third Corps, as we have already seen, did not now furnish much
more than 13,000 bayonets, while Gazan’s men were all occupied in
watching the suburb, and Suchet’s lay far out, as a covering corps
set to watch Perena and Lazan.
There was no one single dominating position in the city whose
occupation was likely to constrain the besieged to surrender. The
whole town is built on a level, and its fifty-three solidly-built
churches and convents formed so many forts, each of which was
defensible in itself and could not be reduced save by a direct
attack. All that could be done was to endeavour to capture them one
by one, in the hope that at last the Saragossans would grow tired
of their hopeless resistance, and consent to surrender, when they
realized that things had gone so far that they could only protract,
but could not finally beat off, the slow advance of the besieging
army.
The work of the French, therefore, consisted in spreading out from
their two separate lodgements on the eastern and southern sides of
the city, with the simple object of gaining ground each day and of
driving the Spaniards back towards the centre of the place. On the
right attack the most important objective of the besiegers was the
block of monastic buildings to the north of the Palafox battery,
the twin convents of San Augustin and Santa Monica, which lay along
the northern side of the small wedge that they had driven into the
north-eastern corner of the town. As these buildings lay on ground
slightly higher than that which the French had occupied, it was
difficult to attack them by means of mines. But an intense converging
fire was brought to bear upon them, both from batteries outside the
walls, playing across the Huerba, and by guns brought inside the
captured angle of the _enceinte_. The outer walls of Santa Monica
were soon a mass of ruins: nevertheless the first attack on it
[January 29] was beaten off, and it was only on the next day, after
twenty-four hours more of furious bombardment, that Grandjean’s men
succeeded in storming, first the convent and then its church, after a
furious hand-to-hand fight with the defenders.
After establishing themselves in Santa Monica the French were able
to capture some of the adjoining houses, and to turn their attention
against its neighbour San Augustin. They ran two mines under it, and
at the same time battered it heavily from the external batteries
beyond the Huerba. On February I the explosion took place: it opened
a breach in the east end of the convent church, and the storming
party, entering by the sacristy, got possession of the choir chapels
and the high altar. But the Spaniards rallied in the nave, ran a
barricade of chairs and benches across it, and held their own for
some time, firing down from the pulpit and the organ loft with
effect. Some climbed up into the roof and picked off the French
through the holes which the bombardment had left in the ceiling.
For some hours this strange indoor battle raged within the spacious
church. But at last the French carried the nave, and at night only
the belfry remained untaken. Its little garrison pelted the French
with grenades all day, and saved themselves at dusk by a sudden and
unexpected dash through the enemy.
In the first flush of success, after San Augustin had been stormed,
the 44th regiment, from Grandjean’s division, tried to push on
through the streets towards the centre of the town. They captured
several barricades and houses, and struggled on till they had nearly
reached the Coso. But this sort of fighting was always dangerous
in Saragossa: the citizens kept up such a fierce fire from their
windows, and swarmed out against the flanks of the column in such
numbers, that the 44th had to give back, lost all that it had taken
beyond San Augustin, and left 200 dead and wounded behind. Even
the formal official reports of the French engineers speak with
respect of the courage shown by the besieged on this day. The houses
which they had lost in the afternoon they retook in the dusk, by
an extraordinary device. Finding the French solidly barricaded in
them, and proof against any attack from the street, hundreds of the
defenders climbed upon the roofs, tore up the tiles and entered by
the garrets, from which they descended and drove out the invaders by
a series of charges which cleared story after story[136]. Many monks,
and still more women, were seen among the armed crowds which swept
the assailants back towards Santa Monica. It was especially noticed
that the civilians did far more of the fighting than the soldiers.
This was their own special battle.
[136] Report of General Laval (commanding-in the trenches this
day) to Lannes, in Appendix xxvi, of Belmas, vol. ii. Cf. von
Brandt, p. 34.
Irritated at his losses on this day, Lannes issued a general order,
expressly forbidding any attempts to storm houses and barricades by
main force. After an explosion, the troops were to seize the building
that had been shattered, and to cover themselves in it; they were not
to go forward and fall upon intact defences further to the front.
While the struggle was raging thus fiercely from January 28 to
February 1, in the eastern area of street-fighting, there had been a
no less desperate series of combats all around Santa Engracia, on the
southern front of attack. Here Musnier’s division was endeavouring
to drive the Spaniards out of the blocks of houses to the right and
left of the captured convent. They worked almost entirely by mines,
running tunnels forward from beneath the convent to blow down the
walls of the adjoining dwellings. But even when the mines had gutted
the doomed buildings, it was not easy to seize them: the few men who
survived the explosion did not fly, but held out among the ruins,
and had to be bayonetted by the assailants who rushed out from the
convent to occupy the new lodgements. Time after time the defenders,
though perfectly conscious that they were being undermined, and that
by staying on guard they were courting certain death, refused to
evacuate the threatened houses or to retire into safety. Hence their
losses were awful, but the French too suffered not a little, while
pushing forward to occupy each building as it was cleared by the
explosion. The constant rain of musket balls from roofs and church
towers searched out the ruins in which they had to effect their
lodgements, and many of the assailants fell before they could cover
themselves among the débris.
On the thirty-first the Spaniards made a sudden rush from the
Misericordia buildings, to recover the Trinitarian convent, the most
western point on the _enceinte_ which had fallen into the hands of
the French at the assault of the twenty-seventh. They charged in upon
it with the greatest fury, and blew open the gate with a four-pounder
gun which they dragged up by hand to the very threshold. But the
French had built up the whole entrance with sandbags, which held
even when the doors had been shattered; and, after persisting for
some time in a fruitless attempt to break in, the Saragossans had to
retire, foiled and greatly thinned in numbers.
On the following day (February 1) the French began to move forward
from Santa Engracia towards the Coso, always clearing their way by
explosions, and risking as few men as possible. Nevertheless they
could not always keep under cover, and this day they suffered a
severe loss: their chief engineer, General Lacoste, was shot through
the head, while reconnoitring from a window the houses against which
his next attack was to be directed[137]. He was succeeded in command
by Colonel Rogniat, one of the French historians of the siege. That
officer, as he tells us, discovered that his sappers were using too
large charges of powder, which destroyed the roofs and four walls of
each house that they undermined, so that the infantry who followed
had no cover when they first took possession. He therefore ordered
the substitution of smaller measures of powder, so as to throw down
only parts of the wall of the building nearest to the French lines,
and to leave the roof and the outer walls uninjured. In this way it
was much more easy to establish a lodgement, since the storming-party
were covered the moment that they had dashed into the shattered
shell. The only plan which the Spaniards could devise against this
method of procedure, was to set fire to the ruins, and to prevent
the entry of the assailants by burning down all that was left of the
house. As the buildings of Saragossa contained little woodwork, and
were not very combustible[138], the besieged daubed the walls with
tar and resin to make them blaze the better. When an explosion had
taken place, the surviving defenders set fire to the débris of floors
and roofs before retiring[139]. In this way they sometimes kept the
French back for as much as two days, since they could not make their
lodgement till the cinders had time to cool. Countermining against
the French approaches was often tried, but seldom with success,
for there were no trained miners in the city: the one battalion of
sappers which Palafox possessed had been formed from the workmen of
the Canal of Aragon, who had no experience in subterranean work. On
the other hand the French had three whole companies of miners, beside
eight more of sappers, who were almost as useful in the demolition of
the city. They maintained a distinct ascendent underground, though
they not unfrequently lost men in the repeated combats with knife and
pistol which ensued when mine and countermine met, and the two sides
fought for the possession of each other’s galleries.
[137] There is a full account of his death in Legendre, i.
149; that officer was in the room with him, when he and his
aide-de-camp, Lalobe, were simultaneously shot through the head
as they peered out of a side window where they thought themselves
unobserved.
[138] The ceilings in all the better sort of houses were made of
vaulted arches, not of beams and boards.
[139] See Cavallero, p. 120, and compare Belmas, ii. 253.
The first week of February was now drawing to its close, and the
advance of the French into the city, though steady, had been
extremely slow. Every little block of five or six houses cost a day
to break up, and another to entrench. The waste of life, though not
excessive, was more than Lannes could really afford, and he waited
impatiently, but in vain, for any signs that the obstinacy of the
defence was slackening. But though he could not see it, the garrison
were being tried far more hardly than the besiegers. It was not so
much the loss by fire and sword that was ruining them as the silent
ravages of the epidemic fevers. Since the French had got within the
walls, and the bombardment of the city was being carried on from a
shorter range than before, the civilian population had been forced to
cling more closely than ever to its fetid cellars, and the infectious
fever which had appeared in January was developing at the most
fearful rate. Living under such insanitary conditions, and feeding
on flour and salt fish, for the vegetables had long been exhausted,
the Saragossans had no strength to bear up against the typhus. Whole
families died off, and their bodies lay forgotten, tainting the air
and spreading the contagion. Even where there were survivors, they
could not easily dispose of the dead, for the urban cemeteries were
gorged, and burials took place in trenches hastily opened in streets
or gardens. Outside the churches there were hundreds of corpses,
some coffined, others rolled in shrouds or sheets, waiting in rows
for the last services of the church, which the surviving clergy were
too few to read. The shells from the incessant bombardment were
continually falling in these open spaces, and tearing the dead to
pieces. Ere the siege was over there was a mass of mutilated and
decaying bodies heaped in front of every church door. Hundreds more
lay in the debatable ground for which the Spaniards and French were
contending, and the whole town reeked with contagion. The weather
was generally still and warm for the time of year, with a thick fog
rising every morning from the low ground by the Ebro. The smoke from
the burning houses lay low over the place, and the air was thick
with the mingled fumes of fire and pestilence. If it nauseated the
French, who had the open country behind them, and were relieved by
regiments at intervals, and allowed a rest in their camps outside
the walls, it was far more terrible to the Spaniards. The death rate
rose, as February drew on, from 300 up to 500 and even 600 a day.
The morning state of the garrison on the fourth day of the month
showed 13,737 sick and wounded, and only 8,495 men under arms. As the
total had been 32,000 when the siege began, nearly 10,000 men must
already have perished by the sword or disease. The civil population,
containing so many women, children, and aged persons, was of course
dying at a much quicker rate. Yet the place held out for sixteen
days longer! Palafox himself was struck down by the fever, but still
issued orders from his bed, and poured out a string of hysterical
proclamations, in which his delirium is clearly apparent.
The terrible situation of the Saragossans was to a large extent
concealed from the besiegers, who only saw the line of desperate
fighting-men which met them in every house, and could only guess at
the death and desolation that lay behind. Every French eye-witness
bears record to the low spirits of the troops who were compelled to
fight in the long series of explosions and assaults which filled the
early weeks of February. The engineer Belmas, the most matter-of-fact
of all the historians of the siege, turns aside for a moment from his
traverses and mining-galleries, to describe the murmurs of the weary
infantry of the 3rd Corps. ‘Who ever heard before,’ they asked, ‘of
an army of 20,000 men being set to take a town defended by 50,000
madmen? We have conquered a quarter of it, and now we are completely
fought out. We must halt and wait for reinforcements, or we shall all
perish, and be buried in these cursed ruins, before we can rout out
the last of these fanatics from their last stronghold[140].’ Lannes
did his best to encourage the rank and file, by showing them that the
Spaniards were suffering far more than they, and by pointing out that
the moment must inevitably come when the defence must break down from
mere exhaustion. He also endeavoured to obtain reinforcements from
the Emperor, but only received assurances that some conscripts and
convalescents for the 3rd Corps should be sent to him from Pampeluna
and Bayonne. No fresh regiments could be spared from France, when
the affairs of Central Europe were looking so doubtful[141]. The
best plan which the Marshal could devise for breaking down the
resolution of the Spaniards was to lengthen his front of attack, and
so endeavour to distract the attention of the besieged from the main
front of advance towards the Coso.
[140] Belmas, ii. 294. Cf. Rogniat and Legendre.
[141] Berthier to Lannes, Paris, Feb. 10.
This was only to be done by causing the division of Gazan, which had
so long remained passive in front of the suburb, to open an energetic
attack on that outlying part of the fortress. The advantage to be
secured in this direction was not merely that a certain amount of
the defenders would be drawn away from the city. If the suburb were
captured it would be possible to erect batteries in it, which would
search the whole northern side of Saragossa, the one quarter of the
city which was still comparatively unaffected by the bombardment.
Here the bulk of the civil population was crowded together, and
here too Palafox had collected the greater part of his stores and
magazines. If the last safe corner of the city were exposed to a
bombardment from a fresh quarter, it would probably do much to lower
the hopes of the defenders.
During the last days of January Gazan’s division had pressed back
the Spanish outposts in front of the suburb, and on the thirtieth of
that month Lannes had sent over two companies of siege artillery, to
construct batteries opposite the convents of Jesus and San Lazaro.
It was not till February 2-3, however, that he ordered a serious and
active attack to be pressed in this quarter. From the trench which
covered the front of Gazan’s investing lines a second parallel was
thrown out, and two breaching batteries erected against the Jesus
convent: on the fourth an advance by zigzags was pushed still further
forward, and more guns brought up. Some little delay was caused by
an unexpected swelling of the Ebro, which inundated that part of the
trenches which lay nearest to the river: but by the eighth all was
ready for the assault. The Jesus convent, as a glance at the map
will readily show, was the most projecting point of the defences of
the suburb, and was not well protected by any flanking fire from the
other works--indeed it was only helped to any appreciable extent by
a long fire across the water from the northern side of Saragossa,
and by the few gunboats which were moored near the bridge. It was a
weak structure--merely a brick convent with a ditch beyond it--and
the breaching batteries had found no difficulty in opening many large
gaps in its masonry. On the eighth it was stormed by Taupin’s brigade
of Gazan’s division: the garrison made a creditable resistance,
which cost the French ninety men, and then retired to San Lazaro
and the main fortifications of the suburb. The French established
themselves in the convent, and connected it with their siege-works,
finally turning its ruins into part of the third parallel, which they
began to draw out against the remaining transpontine works. They
would probably have proceeded to complete their operations in this
direction within the next two or three days, if it had not been for
an interruption from without. The two brothers, Lazan and Francisco
Palafox, had now united their forces, and had come forward to the
line of the Sierra de Alcubierre, only twenty miles from Saragossa,
the former with his 4,000 men from Catalonia, the latter with a mass
of peasants. Mortier, from his post at Perdiguera, reported their
approach to Lannes, and the latter went out in person to meet them,
taking with him Guérin’s brigade of Gazan’s division, and leaving
only that of Taupin to hold the lines opposite the suburb. Faced by
the 12,000 veteran bayonets of the 5th Corps, the two Palafoxes felt
that they were helpless, and retreated towards Fraga and Lerida,
without attempting to fight. On the thirteenth, therefore, Lannes
came back to the siege with the troops that he had drawn away from
it. While he was absent Palafox had a splendid opportunity for a
sortie on a large scale against Taupin and his isolated brigade, for
only 4,000 men were facing the suburb. But the time had already gone
by in which the garrison was capable of such an advance. They could
not now dispose of more than 10,000 men, soldiers and peasants and
citizens all included, and none of these could be drawn away from the
city, where the fighting-line was always growing weaker. Indeed, its
numbers were so thinned by the epidemic that Palafox was guarding
the Aljafferia with no more than 300 men, and manning the unattacked
western front with convalescents from the hospitals, who could
hardly stand, and often died at their posts during the cold and damp
hours of the night. All his available efficients were engaged in the
street-fighting with the 3rd Corps.
For while the attack on the suburb was being pressed, the slow
advance of the besiegers within the walls was never slackened.
On some days they won a whole block of houses by their mining
operations: on others they lost many men and gained no advantage. The
right attack was extending itself towards the river, and working
from the convent of San Augustin into the quarter of the Tanneries.
At the same time it was also moving on toward the Coso, but with
extreme slowness, for the Spaniards made a specially desperate
defence in the houses about the University and the Church of the
Trinity. One three-storied building, which covered the traverse
across the Coso to the south of the University, stood _ten_ separate
assaults and four explosions, and held out from the ninth to the
eighteenth, effectually keeping back the advance of the besiegers
in this direction[142]. Nor could the French ever succeed in
connecting their field of operations on this front with that which
centred around Santa Engracia. Down to the very end of the siege the
Saragossans clung desperately to the south-eastern corner of the
city, and kept control of it right down to the external walls and the
bank of the Huerba, where they still possessed a narrow strip of 300
yards of the _enceinte_.
[142] Belmas, ii. 314, and before.
The left attack of the French, that from the Santa Engracia side,
made much more progress, though even here it was slow and dearly
bought. On February 10, however, in spite of several checks, the
besiegers for the first time forced their way as far as the Coso,
working through the ruined hospital which had been destroyed in the
first siege. On the same day, at the north-western angle of their
advance, they made a valuable conquest in the church and convent of
San Francisco. A mine was driven under this great building from the
ruins of the hospital, and filled with no less than 3,000 pounds of
powder. It had not been discovered by the Spaniards, and the convent
was full of fighting-men at the moment of the explosion. The whole
grenadier company of the 1st regiment of Valencia and 300 irregulars
were blown up, and perished to a man[143]. Nor was this all: in
the northern part of the building was established the main factory
for military equipment of the Army of Aragon: it was crammed with
workpeople, largely women, for Palafox had forgotten or refused to
withdraw the dépôt to a less convenient and spacious but more safe
position. All these unfortunate non-combatants, to the number of at
least 400, perished, and the roof-tops for hundreds of yards around
were strewn with their dismembered limbs.
[143] In Lejeune, i. 169, the reader will find some horrible
anecdotes of this explosion.
It might have been expected that, as the immediate consequence of
this awful catastrophe, the French would have made a long step
forward in this direction. But such was not the case: before the
smoke had cleared away Spaniards rushed forward from the inner
defences, and occupied part of the ruins of San Francisco. A body
of peasants, headed by the _émigré_ colonel de Fleury, got into the
bell-tower of the convent, which had not fallen with the rest, and
kept up from its leads a vigorous plunging fire upon the besiegers,
when they stole forward to burrow into the mass of débris. But
with the loss of some thirty men the French succeeded in mastering
two-thirds of the ruins: next day they cleared the rest, and stormed
the belfry, where de Fleury and his men were all bayonetted after
a desperate fight on the winding stairs. It was first from the
commanding height of this steeple that the French officers obtained a
full view of the city. The sight was encouraging to them: they could
realize how much the inner parts of the place had suffered from the
bombardment, and noted with their telescopes the small number of
defenders visible behind the further barricades, the heaps of corpses
in the streets, and the slow and dejected pace of the few passengers
visible. Two great gallows with corpses hanging from them especially
attracted the eyes of the onlookers[144]. Other circumstances united
on this and the following day (February 11-12) to show that the
defence was at last beginning to slacken. A great mob of peasants,
mainly women, came out of the Portillo gate towards Morlot’s
trenches, and prayed hard for permission to go through the lines to
their villages. They were not fired on, but given a loaf apiece, and
then driven back into the city. It was still more significant that at
night, on the eleventh, four or five bodies of deserters stole out
to the French; they were all foreigners, belonging to the ‘Swiss’
battalion[145] which was shut up in Saragossa: several officers
were among them. To excuse themselves they said that Palafox and
the friars were mad, and that they judged that all further defence
had become impossible. Yet the siege was to endure for nine days
longer[146]!
[144] Lejeune, i. 177.
[145] The ‘Suizos de Aragon,’ of which the unfortunate Fleury had
been colonel, had not all perished on Dec. 21.
[146] Arteche, iv. 472, and Lejeune, i. 179.
Though the two main attacks continued to press slowly forward, and
that on the left had now reached the Coso and covered a front of
100 yards on the southern side of that great street, it was not on
this front that the decisive blow was destined to be given. On the
eighteenth Lannes determined to deliver the great assault on the
suburb, where the batteries in the third parallel and about the
Jesus convent had now completely shattered the San Lazaro defences.
All Gazan’s men being now back in their trenches, since Mortier’s
expedition had driven off the Marquis of Lazan, Lannes considered
that he might safely risk the storm. Fifty-two siege-guns played on
San Lazaro throughout the morning of the eighteenth, and no less
than eight practicable breaches were opened in it and the works to
its right and left. At noon three storming columns leaped out of the
trenches and raced for the nearest of these entries. All three burst
through: there was a sharp struggle in the street of the suburb, and
then the French reached and seized a block of houses at the head of
the bridge, which cut the defence in two and rendered a retreat into
Saragossa almost impossible. The Spaniards, seeing that all was lost,
split into two bodies: one tried to force its way across the bridge;
but only 300 passed; the rest were slain or captured. The main part,
consisting of the defenders of the western front of the suburb,
formed in a solid mass and, abandoning their defences, tried to
escape westward up the bank of the Ebro, into the open country. They
got across the inundation in their front, but when they had gone thus
far were surrounded by two regiments of French cavalry, and forced to
surrender. They numbered 1,500 men, under General Manso, commanding
the 3rd division of Palafox’s army, the one which furnished the
garrison of the suburb. The officer commanding the whole transpontine
defence, Baron de Versage, had been killed by a cannon-ball on the
bridge.
[Illustration: SECOND SIEGE OF SARAGOSSA
DEC. 1808 TO FEB. 1809]
This was not the only disaster suffered by the Saragossans on the
eighteenth: at three in the afternoon, when the news of the loss
of the suburb had had time to spread round the town, and the
attention of the besieged was distracted to this side, Grandjean’s
division attacked the houses and barricades in the north-eastern part
of the city, which had so long held them at bay. A great mine opened
a breach in the University, which was stormed, and with it fell the
houses on each side, as far as the Coso. At the same time another
attack won some ground in the direction of the Trinity convent, and
the Ebro. Next day the Spaniards in this remote corner of the town,
almost cut off from the main body of the defenders, and now battered
from the rear by new works thrown up in the suburb, in and about San
Lazaro, drew back and abandoned the quarter of the Tanneries, the
quays, and the outer _enceinte_ looking over the mouth of the Huerba.
On the nineteenth it was evident that the end had come: a third of
the ever-dwindling force of effective men of which Palafox could
dispose had been killed or captured at the storm of San Lazaro. The
city was now being fired on from the north, the only side which had
hitherto been safe. The epidemic was worse than ever--600 a day are
said to have died during the final week of the siege. The last mills
which the garrison possessed had lately been destroyed, and no more
flour was issued, but unground corn, which had to be smashed up
between paving-stones, or boiled and eaten as a sort of porridge.
The supply of powder was beginning to run low; not from want of
material to compound it, but from the laboratories having been mostly
destroyed and from the greater part of the arsenal workmen having
died. Only about 700 pounds a day [six quintals] could now be turned
out, and the daily expenditure in the mines and barricades came to
much more.
On this morning the French noted that at many points the defence
seemed to be slackening, and that parts of the line were very
feebly manned. They made more progress this day than in any earlier
twenty-four hours of the siege. Their main work, however, was to run
six large mines under the Coso, till they got below the houses on its
further side, somewhat to the right of San Francisco. Rogniat placed
3,000 pounds of powder in each, a quantity that was calculated to
blow up the whole quarter.
It was not necessary to use them. The spirits of the defenders had
at last been broken, and surrender was openly spoken of--though its
mention ten days earlier would have cost the life of the proposer.
Palafox on his sick bed understood that all was over; he sent for
General St. March and resigned the military command to him. But in
order that he might not seem to be shirking his responsibility, and
trying to put the ignominy of asking for terms on his successor,
he sent his aide-de-camp Casseillas to Lannes, offering surrender,
but demanding that the troops should march out with the honours of
war and join the nearest Spanish army in the field. Then he turned
his face to the wall, and prepared to die, for the fever lay heavy
upon him, and broken with despair and fatigue he thought that he
had not many hours to live. St. March’s appointment not being well
taken--the loss of the Monte Torrero was still remembered against
him--Palafox’s last act was to give over charge of the city to a
Junta of thirty-three persons[147], mainly local notables and clergy,
to whom the finishing of the negotiations would fall.
[147] Their names can be found on p. 494 of Arteche, vol. iv.
Of course Lannes sent back the Captain-General’s aide-de-camp with
the message that he must ask for unconditional surrender, and that
the proposal that the garrison should be allowed to depart was
absurd. The fighting was resumed on the morning of the twentieth,
and the French were making appreciable progress, when the Junta
once more sent to ask terms from the besiegers. It was not without
some bitter debate among themselves that they took this step, for
there was still a minority, including St. March and the priest Padre
Consolation, who wished to continue the resistance. They were backed
by a section of the citizens, who began to collect and to raise angry
cries of Treason. But the whole of the soldiery and the major part
of the civilian defenders were prepared to yield. At four o’clock in
the afternoon they sent out to ask for a twenty-four hours’ truce to
settle terms of surrender. Lannes granted them two hours to send him
out a deputation charged with full powers to capitulate, and ordered
the bombardment and the mining to cease. His aide-de-camp, who bore
the message, was nearly murdered by fanatics in the street[148], and
was rescued with difficulty by some officers of the regular army.
But the Junta sent him back with the message that the deputation
should be forthcoming, and within the stipulated time eleven of its
members came out from the Portillo gate[149], to the Marshal’s head
quarters on the Calatayud road. There was not much discussion: Lannes
contented himself with pointing out to the Spaniards that the place
was at his mercy: he had the plan of his siege-works unrolled before
them, and pointed out the position of the six great mines under the
Coso[150], as well as those of the advanced posts which he had gained
during the last two days. The deputies made some feeble attempts to
secure that the name of Ferdinand VII should appear in the articles
of capitulation, and that the clergy should be guaranteed immunity
and undisturbed possession of their benefices. Lannes waved all such
proposals aside, and dictated a form of surrender which was on the
whole reasonable and even generous. The garrison should march out
on the following day, and lay down its arms 100 yards outside the
Portillo gate. Those who would swear homage to King Joseph should
have their liberty, and might take service with him if they wished.
Those who refused the oath should march as prisoners to France.
The city should be granted a general pardon: the churches should
be respected: private property should not be meddled with. The
citizens must surrender all their weapons of whatever sort. Any civil
magistrates or employés who wished to keep their places must take the
oath of allegiance to King Joseph.
[148] In Lejeune, i. 194-5, will be found a most picturesque
account of the interview of the French envoy with the
fever-ridden and despairing Junta, almost hysterical with rage
and shame, but accepting the inevitable.
[149] It is notable that there was not a single churchman among
them, though there were eight among the thirty-three members
of the Junta. The clergy represented to the last the fighting
section.
[150] Lejeune, in his interesting narrative of this interview,
says that he saw one of the deputies pore over the map and
recognize his own house among the mined buildings; he crossed
himself five or six times, and cried in accents of bitter grief
‘_Ah la Casa Ciscala_.’ The name of Don Joachim Ciscala does
occur among the eleven signatures, so the story is probably true.
Lejeune, i. 198.
On the following morning the garrison marched out: of peasants and
soldiers there were altogether about 8,000 men, 1,500 of whom were
convalescents from the Hospitals. ‘Never had any of us gazed on a
more sad or touching sight,’ writes Lejeune; ‘these sickly looking
men, bearing in their bodies the seeds of the fever, all frightfully
emaciated, with long black matted beards, and scarcely able to hold
their weapons, dragged themselves slowly along to the sound of the
drum. Their clothes were torn and dirty: everything about them bore
witness to terrible misery. But in spite of their livid faces,
blackened with powder, and scarred with rage and grief, they bore
themselves with dignity and pride. The bright coloured sashes, the
large round hats surmounted by a few cock’s-feathers which shaded
their foreheads, the brown cloaks or _ponchos_ flung over their
varied costumes, lent a certain picturesqueness to their tattered
garb. When the moment came for them to pile their arms and deliver up
their flags, many of them gave violent expression to their despair.
Their eyes gleamed with rage, and their savage looks seemed to
say that they had counted our ranks, and deeply regretted having
surrendered to such a small army of enemies[151].’
[151] Lejeune, i. 202.
Another and more matter-of-fact eye-witness adds, ‘They were a most
motley crowd of men of all ages and conditions, some in uniform, more
without it. The officers were mostly mounted on mules or donkeys, and
were only distinguished from the men by their three-cornered hats and
their large cloaks. Many were smoking their _cigarillos_ and talking
to each other with an aspect of complete indifference. But all were
not so resigned. The whole garrison, 8,000 to 10,000 strong, defiled
in front of us: the majority looked so utterly unlike soldiers,
that our men said openly to each other that they ought not to have
taken so long or spent so much trouble in getting rid of such a
rabble[152].’ The column was promptly put in motion for France, under
the escort of two of Morlot’s regiments. Many died on the way from
the fever whose seeds they carried with them. Few or none, as might
have been supposed, took advantage of the offer to save themselves
from captivity by taking the oath to King Joseph.
[152] Von Brandt, _Aus meinem Leben_, pp. 43-4.
It is sad to have to confess that the French did not keep to the
terms of the capitulation. That Lannes could not restrain his men
from plunder, as he had promised, was hardly surprising. There were
so many empty houses and churches containing valuables, that it was
not to be wondered at that the victors should help themselves to all
they could find. But they also plundered occupied houses, and even
stole the purses of the captive officers. What was worse was that
many assassinations took place, especially of clergy, for the French
looked upon the priests and friars as being mainly responsible for
the desperate defence. Two in especial, Padre Basilio Bogiero, the
chaplain of Palafox, and Santiago Sass, a parish priest, were shot
in cold blood two days after the surrender[153]. Public opinion in
the French ranks was convinced that they, more than any one else,
had kept the Captain-General up to the mark. Palafox himself was
treated with great brutality. As he lay apparently moribund, the
French officer who had been made interim governor of Saragossa came
to his bedside, and bade him to sign orders for the surrender of
Jaca and Monzon. When he refused, this colonel threatened to have
him shot, but left him alone when threats had no effect. Ere he was
convalescent he was sent off to France, where the Emperor ordered
that he should be treated, not as a prisoner of war, but as guilty
of treason, and shut him up for many years as a close captive in the
donjon of Vincennes.
[153] For details, see Arteche, iv. 512-3.
The state in which Saragossa was found by the French hardly bears
description. It was a focus of corruption, one mass of putrefying
corpses. According to a report which Lannes elicited from the
municipal officers, nearly 54,000 persons had died in the place
since the siege began[154]. Of these about 20,000 were fighting-men,
regular or irregular, the rest were non-combatants. Only 6,000 had
fallen by fire and sword: the remainder were victims of the far more
deadly pestilence. A few days after the siege was ended Lannes stated
that the total population of the town was now only 15,000 souls,
instead of the 55,000 which it had contained when the siege began.
But his estimate does not include some thousands of citizens who had
fled into the open country, the moment that they were released from
investment, in order to escape from the contagion in the city. ‘Il
est impossible que Saragosse se relève,’ wrote the marshal; ‘cette
ville fait horreur à voir.’ It was weeks indeed before the dead were
all buried: months before the contagion of the siege-fever died out
from the miserable city. Even after five years of the capable and
benevolent government of Suchet it was still half desolate, and no
attempt had been made to rebuild the third of its houses and churches
which had been reduced to ashes by the mines and the bombardment.
[154] Lannes to Berthier, March 19, 1809.
The French losses in front of Saragossa are not easy to calculate.
Belmas says that the total of casualties was about 3,000 in the
infantry, but he takes no notice of the losses by siege-fever, except
to say that many died from it. He does not give the losses of the
artillery, except of that small part of it which was not attached
either to the 3rd or to the 5th Corps. Considering that the 3rd Corps
alone had 13,123 sick on January 15, and that typhus is a notoriously
deadly disease, it is probable that the total losses of the French
during the siege amounted to 10,000 men. It is hard otherwise to
explain the difference between the 37,000 men that the 3rd Corps
counted in October, and the 14,000 men which it mustered when Suchet
took over its command in April. The sufferings of the 5th Corps
were small in comparison, for till February began it took no very
serious part in the siege, and its health was notoriously far better
than that of Junot’s divisions[155]. But we cannot be far wrong in
concluding with Schepeler and Arteche that the total French loss must
have been 10,000 men, rather than the 4,000 given by Napier, who is
apparently relying on Rogniat. That officer gives only the casualties
in battle, and not the losses in hospital.
[155] It seems quite clear that the ‘1,500 men in hospital’ which
Belmas mentions on ii. 327 is a misprint for 15,000. For his own
figures show that (p. 381) there were 13,000 invalids six weeks
earlier, and before the deadly street-fighting had begun. How
many died we cannot say, but Suchet in April had only 10,527 men
present in nineteen battalions (_Mémoires_, i. 331), with eight
more battalions ‘on command,’ which would give another 4,000. Von
Brandt (p. 50) carefully says that the total of 3,000 dead does
not include ‘the thousands who perished in hospital.’
So ended the siege of Saragossa--a magnificent display of civic
courage, little helped by strategy or tactics. For Palafox, though a
splendid leader of insurgents, was, as his conduct in October and
November had shown, a very poor general. He made a gross initial
mistake in shutting up 40,000 fighting-men in a place which could
have been easily defended by 25,000. If he had sent one or two
divisions to form the nucleus of an army of relief in Lower Aragon,
with orders to harass, but not to fight pitched battles, it is hard
to see how the siege could have been kept up. His second fault was
the refusal to make sorties on a large scale during the first half
of the siege, while he was still in possession of great masses of
superfluous fighting-men. He sent out scores of petty sallies of a
few hundred men, but never moved so many as 5,000 on a single day.
Such a policy worried but could not seriously harm the French, while
it destroyed the willing men of the garrison; if the Captain-General
had saved up all the volunteers whom he lost by tens and twenties in
small and fruitless attacks on the trenches, he could have built up
with them a column-head that would have pierced through the French
line at any point that he chose. Anything might have been done during
the three weeks while Mortier was at Calatayud, and especially during
the days when Gazan with his 8,000 men was cut off by the floods, and
isolated on the further bank of the Ebro.
The Captain-General’s conduct, in short, was not that of a capable
officer. But it is absurd to endeavour to represent him as a coward,
or as a puppet whose strings were pulled by fanatical friars. He knew
perfectly well what he was doing, and how to manage the disorderly
but enthusiastic masses of the population[156]. There can be no doubt
that his personal influence was all-important, and the effect of his
constant harangues and proclamations immense. It would be quite as
true to say that the friars and the mob-orators were his tools, as
that he was theirs. He had to humour them, but by humouring them he
got out of them the utmost possible service. Against the stories that
his proclamations were written for him, and that he had to be goaded
into issuing every order that came from his head quarters, we have
the evidence of Vaughan and others who knew him well. It is unanimous
in ascribing to him incessant activity and an exuberant fluency in
composition. Arteche has preserved some minutes on the siege which he
wrote long after the Peninsular War was over: they are interesting
and well-stated, but more creditable to him as a patriot than as a
military man[157]. There can be no doubt that the garrison might have
been much more wisely handled: but it is doubtful whether under any
other direction it would have shown so much energy and staying power.
There is certainly no other Spanish siege, save that of Gerona, where
half so much resolution was shown. If the defence had been conducted
by regular officers and troops alone, the place would probably have
fallen three weeks earlier. If the monks and local demagogues had
been in command, and patriotic anarchy alone had been opposed to
the French, Saragossa would possibly have fallen at an even earlier
date, from mere want of intelligent direction. Palafox, with all his
faults, supplied the connecting link between the two sections of the
defenders, and kept the soldiery to work by means of the example of
the citizens, while he restrained the citizens by dint of his immense
personal influence over them, won in the first siege. In short, he
may have been vain, bombastic, and a bad tactician, but he was a good
Spaniard. If there had been a few dozen men more of his stamp in
Spain, the task of the French in 1808-9 would have been infinitely
more difficult. The example of Saragossa was invaluable to the nation
and to Europe. The knowledge of it did much to sicken the French
soldiery of the whole war, and to make every officer and man who
entered Spain march, not with the light heart that he felt in Germany
or Italy, but with gloom and disgust and want of confidence. They
never failed to do their duty, but they fought without the enthusiasm
which helped them so much in all the earlier wars of the Empire.
[156] The foundation for most of the stories against Palafox
seems to be Lannes’ letter to Napoleon of 19 mars: ‘Ce
pauvre misérable prêtait seulement son nom aux moines et aux
intrigants.’ I cannot find anywhere the source from which Napier
draws his statement that Palafox hid himself in a bomb-proof, and
lived ‘in a disgusting state of sensuality,’ shirking all the
dangers of the siege (i. 389).
[157] Arteche, iv. 507-8.
SECTION XII
THE SPRING CAMPAIGN IN LA MANCHA AND ESTREMADURA
CHAPTER I
THE ROUT OF CIUDAD REAL
By the middle of the month of February, as we have already seen,
Andalusia was once more covered by two considerable Spanish armies:
Cartaojal, with the wrecks of Infantado’s host and the new levies of
Del Palacio, was holding the great passes at the eastern end of the
Sierra Morena. Cuesta had rallied behind the Guadiana the remains
of the army of Estremadura. He was at present engaged in reducing
it to order by the only method of which he was master, the shooting
of any soldier who showed signs of disobedience or mutiny[158]. The
army deserved nothing better: its dastardly murder of its unfortunate
general in December justified any amount of severity in his successor.
[158] There are details in the diary of a citizen of Badajoz in
the _Vaughan Papers_.
Meanwhile Victor, after his victory at Ucles, and his vain attempt
to surprise Del Palacio, had passed away to the west, leaving
nothing in the plains of La Mancha save the dragoons of Milhaud and
Latour-Maubourg, who were placed as a cavalry screen across the
roads to the south, with their divisional head quarters at Ocaña and
Madridejos respectively.
The Marshal drew back to the valley of the Tagus, and marched by
Toledo on Almaraz; this was in strict execution of the plan dictated
by Napoleon before he left Spain. It will be remembered that he had
directed that, when the February rains were over, Victor should
move on Badajoz, to assist by his presence in that direction the
projected attack of Soult on Lisbon. Only when Estremadura and
Portugal had been subdued was the attack on Andalusia to be carried
out. Soult, as we shall see, was (by no fault of his own) much slower
in his movements than Napoleon had expected, and Victor waited in
vain at Talavera for any news that the invasion of Portugal was in
progress. Hence the Spaniards gained some weeks of respite: the ranks
of their armies were filled up, and the spirits of their generals
rose.
Cartaojal remained for some time at La Carolina, reorganizing and
recruiting the depleted and half-starved battalions which Infantado
had handed over to him. He had expected to be attacked by Victor,
but when he learnt that the Marshal had gone off to Toledo, and that
La Mancha was covered only by a thin line of cavalry, he began to
dream of resuming the offensive. Such a policy was most unwise: it
shows that Cartaojal, like so many other Spanish generals, was still
possessed with the fatal mania for grand operations and pitched
battles. He had in his head nothing less than a plan for thrusting
back the cavalry screen opposite to him, and for recovering the whole
of La Mancha. If Victor’s corps had been the only force available
to oppose him, there would have been something to say for the plan.
An advance on Toledo and Madrid must have brought back the Duke of
Belluno from his advance towards Estremadura. But, as a matter of
fact, Jourdan and King Joseph had not left the roads to La Mancha
unguarded: they had drafted down from Madrid two infantry divisions
of the 4th Corps, whose command Sebastiani had now taken over from
Lefebvre. The first division lay at Toledo: the third (Valence’s
Poles) at Aranjuez; thus the former supported Latour-Maubourg, the
latter Milhaud.
Ignorant, apparently, of the fact that there was anything but cavalry
in his front, Cartaojal resolved to beat up the French outposts.
With this object he told off half his infantry and two-thirds of his
horse, under the Duke of Albuquerque, a gallant and enterprising,
but somewhat reckless, officer, of whom we shall hear much during
the next two years of the war. Marching with speed and secrecy,
Albuquerque, with 2,000 horse and 9,000 infantry, fell upon Digeon’s
brigade of dragoons at Mora on February 18. He tried to cut it off
with his cavalry, while he attacked it in front with his foot. But
Digeon saw the danger in time, and fell back in haste, after losing a
few men of the 20th Dragoons and some of his baggage. His demand for
assistance promptly brought down Sebastiani, with the 1st division of
the 4th Corps, and the two remaining brigades of Latour-Maubourg’s
cavalry. The moment that he heard that a heavy force had arrived
in his front, Albuquerque retired as far as Consuegra, where the
French caught up his rear, and inflicted some loss upon it. He then
fell still further back, crossed the Guadiana, and took post at
Manzanares. Sebastiani did not pursue him beyond Consuegra, giving as
his excuse the exhausted condition of the country-side[159].
[159] For these operations compare Jourdan’s _Mémoires_, pp.
178-9, and Arteche, v. 228-31.
Cartaojal meanwhile, with the rest of his army, had come up from the
passes to Ciudad Real, following in wake of Albuquerque’s advance.
When he met with his lieutenant they fell to quarrelling, both as to
what had already occurred, and as to what should now be done, for
the Duke was anxious to induce his chief to make a general advance
on Toledo, while Cartaojal desired him to take a single division of
infantry and to try the adventure himself. While they were disputing,
orders came from the Supreme Junta that troops were to be detached
from the Army of La Mancha to strengthen that of Estremadura.
Cartaojal took the opportunity of getting rid of Albuquerque, by
putting him at the head of the detachment which was to be sent to
Cuesta. The Duke, not loth to depart, went off with a division of
4,500 infantry and a regiment of cavalry[160], and marched down the
Guadiana into Estremadura.
[160] The cavalry regiment had only 264 sabres: the infantry
battalions were Campomayor, Tiradores de Cadiz, Granaderos
del General, militia of Cordova, Guadix and Osuna. Only the
first-named was an old regular corps.
Cartaojal remained for the first three weeks of March at Ciudad Real
and Manzanares with the main body of his force, about 2,500 horse
and 10,000 foot, keeping behind him, at the foot of the passes, a
reserve of 4,000 men under La Peña. This was tempting providence,
for he was now aware that the whole 4th Corps, as well as a great
mass of cavalry, was in front of him, and that he might be attacked
at any moment. His position, too, was a faulty one; he had descended
into the very midst of the broad plain of La Mancha, and had occupied
as his head quarters an open town, easy to turn on either flank, and
with a perfectly fordable river as its sole defence. As if this peril
was not sufficient, Cartaojal suddenly resolved that he would make
the dash at Toledo which Albuquerque had proposed to him, though he
had refused to send his whole army against that point when the scheme
was pressed upon him by his late second-in-command. The nearest
hostile troops to him were a regiment of Polish lancers, belonging
to Lasalle’s division, which lay at Yébenes, twenty miles outside
Toledo. Making a swift stroke at this force, while it was far from
expecting any advance on his part, Cartaojal drove it in, killing
or taking nearly 100 of the Poles (March 24). But Sebastiani came
up to their aid with an infantry division and three regiments of
Milhaud’s dragoons. The Spaniard refused to accept battle, and fell
hastily back to Ciudad Real, where he established his whole army
behind the river Guadiana, in and about the open town. He was most
unsafe in the midst of the vast plain, and was soon to rue his want
of caution. Sebastiani had been joined by his Polish division and by
part of his corps-cavalry, and having some 12,000 or 13,000 men in
hand[161], had resolved to pay back on Cartaojal the beating up of
his outpost at Yébenes. On March 26, Milhaud’s division of dragoons
seized the bridge of Peralvillo, close to Ciudad Real, and crossed
to the southern bank of the Guadiana. The Spanish general called
up all his cavalry, and some of his foot, and marched to drive the
dragoons back. They withdrew across the water, but still held the
bridge, behind which they had planted their artillery. Next morning
Sebastiani’s infantry came up, and he determined to attack Ciudad
Real. Cartaojal, who was taken completely off his guard, was suddenly
informed that column after column was pressing across the bridge and
marching against him. He did not dream for a moment of fighting,
but gave orders for an instant retreat towards the passes. He threw
out his cavalry and horse artillery to cover the withdrawal of his
infantry, who hurried away in half a dozen small bodies across the
interminable plain. Sebastiani charged the Spanish horse with his
Polish lancers and Dutch hussars, supported by Milhaud’s dragoons.
The covering force broke and fled, and the pursuers came up with
several of the columns of the retreating infantry. Some of them were
dispersed, others were surrounded and taken prisoners. The pursuit
was continued next morning, till it was interrupted by a fearful
burst of rain, which darkened the horizon, hid the fugitives, and
stopped the chase, or Cartaojal’s army might have been entirely
destroyed. He lost in this rout, which it would be absurd to call a
battle, five guns, three standards, and more than 2,000 prisoners,
among whom were sixty-one officers. The loss in killed and wounded
was probably not very great, for there had been no attempt at a
stand, and the troops which were cut off had surrendered without
resistance[162]. The loss of the French was insignificant, probably
less than 100 men in all. They had stayed their pursuit at Santa Cruz
de Mudela, from whence they returned to Ciudad Real, where they lived
on the magazines which Cartaojal had collected before his unfortunate
march on Yébenes. Sebastiani dared not follow the fugitives into the
mountains, as he had received orders to clear La Mancha, but not to
invade Andalusia: that was to be the task of Victor.
[161] He had his own original division of the 4th Corps (twelve
batts.), Valence’s Poles (six batts.), the 3rd Dutch Hussars
(part of his corps-cavalry), the regiment of Polish lancers, and
Milhaud’s three regiments, the 12th, 16th and 21st Dragoons:
apparently in all 12,744 men.
[162] It seems clear that the 2,000 killed and wounded, given by
Jourdan (p. 186) and _Victoires et Conquêtes_, is merely a rough
estimate. Belmas’ figures (i. 69) are still more absurd: he makes
the Spaniards lose 9,000 men from an army which did not exceed
16,500 all told, including the rear division of La Peña.
Cartaojal recrossed the Despeña Perros, and established his head
quarters at Sta Elena, in front of La Carolina. His army had been
more frightened than hurt, and when the stragglers came in, still
numbered 2,000 horse and 12,000 infantry. But he was not allowed
to retain its command. Justly indignant at the carelessness with
which he had allowed himself to be surprised in front of Ciudad
Real, and at his general mismanagement, the Supreme Junta deposed
him, and replaced him by Venegas, though the record of the latter’s
operations at Ucles was hardly encouraging to the soldiery. By the
middle of April the army had been reinforced by new Granadan levies,
and could take the field, although its state of discipline was bad
and its _morale_ much shaken by the late events.
SECTION XII: CHAPTER II
OPERATIONS OF VICTOR AND CUESTA: BATTLE OF MEDELLIN
While Cartaojal and his Andalusian levies were faring so ill in La
Mancha, the army of Estremadura and its obstinate old general were
going through experiences of an even more disastrous kind. Cuesta,
it will be remembered, had rallied about Badajoz and Merida the
demoralized troops that had served under San Juan and Galluzzo. He
was, contrary to all expectation, allowed to remain unmolested for
some weeks. The irrational movement of Lefebvre to Plasencia and
Avila[163] had left him for the moment almost without an enemy in
his front. Along the middle Tagus he had nothing opposed to him save
Lasalle’s four regiments of light cavalry, supported by Leval’s
German division at Talavera. While Victor was engaged in the campaign
of Ucles, and in his subsequent circular march through La Mancha to
Toledo, the army of Estremadura enjoyed a time of complete rest.
Cuesta’s fault was not want of energy: after shooting a competent
number of mutineers, and disgracing some officers who had shown signs
of cowardice, he distributed his troops into three new divisions
under Henestrosa, Trias, and the Duke Del Parque, and began to move
them back towards the Tagus. As there was nothing in his way except
Lasalle’s light horse, he was able to take up, at the end of January,
the same line which Galluzzo had been forced to evacuate in December.
The French cavalry retired behind the river to Oropesa, abandoning
the great bridge of Almaraz, the main passage of the Tagus, on
January 29. Thereupon Cuesta broke the bridge, a difficult task, for
his mines failed, and the work had to be completed with the pick. It
was so badly managed that when the key-stone at last gave way, an
engineer officer and twenty-six sappers were still upon the arch,
and were precipitated into the river, where they were every one
drowned. The Captain-General then established his head quarters at
Deleytosa, a central point in the mountains, from which he commanded
the two passages of the Tagus, that at Almaraz and that by the
Puente del Conde, near Meza de Ibor. He arranged his 15,000 men with
advanced guards at the water’s edge, opposite each of the possible
points of attack, and reserves on the high ground to the rear. This
forward position gave much encouragement to the peasantry of New
Castile, and bands of guerrillas began (for the first time) to be
seen on the slopes of the Sierra de Gredos and the Sierra de Toledo.
There was a feeling of uneasiness even up to the gates of Madrid.
[163] See pp. 4-5 of this volume.
To restrain the advances of the Spaniards, King Joseph sent out
Lasalle’s cavalry and Leval’s Germans on February 19, with orders
to clear the nearer hills. They crossed the Tagus at the bridge of
Arzobispo, a little below Talavera, and forced back the division of
Trias, which was watching this flank of Cuesta’s position. But the
country was almost impassable for cavalry, a mere mass of ravines and
spurs of the Sierra de Guadalupe, and after advancing as far as the
pass of San Vincente, and seeing the Spaniards begin to gather in
force on his front and flank, Lasalle retreated, and recrossed the
Tagus without having effected anything of importance.
It was not till a month later that the French took the offensive
in earnest. Victor was now returned from his excursion into La
Mancha, with his two divisions of the 1st Corps, and the six dragoon
regiments of Latour-Maubourg, whom he had drawn off to Toledo,
handing over the charge of observing Cartaojal to Milhaud and
Sebastiani. Uniting these forces to those of Leval and Lasalle, he
massed at Talavera an army of some 22,000 or 23,000 men, of whom
5,000 were admirable cavalry[164].
[164] This is the estimate of Jourdan (_Mémoires_, p. 181), and
exactly agrees with the figures which I give on p. 152.
Joseph and Jourdan were now of the opinion that it was time for
Victor to move forward on Estremadura, in accordance with the great
plan for the conquest of southern Spain, which the Emperor had left
behind as his legacy when he departed from Valladolid. It was true
that this movement was to have been carried out in co-operation with
the advance of Marshal Soult upon Portugal; but no news could be got
of the Duke of Dalmatia’s present position. The last dispatch from
him was nearly a month old. Writing from Orense on February 24 he
had stated that he hoped to be at Chaves by March 1, and should then
march on Oporto and Lisbon. According to Napoleon’s calculations he
was to be at the last-named city within ten days of the capture of
Oporto. It was therefore, in the opinion of Joseph and Jourdan, high
time that Victor should start, in order to get in touch with Soult
when the Portuguese capital should be occupied.
The Duke of Belluno, however, raised many difficulties, even when he
had been shown the Emperor’s orders. He complained that he ought to
have the help of Lapisse’s division, the second of his own Corps,
which still lay at Salamanca. He doubted whether he could dare to
take on with him, for an expedition into Estremadura, the German
division of Leval: he ought, perhaps, to leave it at Talavera and
Almaraz, in order to keep up his communications with Madrid. If this
were done he would muster only 16,000 men for his great forward
movement, and he had the gravest doubt whether Soult could or would
give him the assistance of which the Emperor had written, even if he
seized Lisbon within the appointed time. Finally, he was short of
engineer officers, sappers, horses, and reserve ammunition.
Much of what the Duke of Belluno wrote was true: in particular, the
idea of co-operation with Soult was perfectly chimerical: Napoleon
had worked out all his logistics to an erroneous result, from want of
a real conception of the conditions and difficulties of war in the
Peninsula. But some of the pleas which Victor urged merely serve to
show his disinclination to accept the task which had been set him;
and in especial he underrated the numbers of his troops beyond the
limit of fair statement. He had with him nine battalions of Ruffin’s
division, twelve of Villatte’s, eight of Leval’s; of cavalry he had
six regiments of Latour-Maubourg’s dragoons, three of Lasalle’s
light cavalry[165], two regiments of his own corps-cavalry, and the
Westphalian regiment of the 4th Corps which was attached to Leval’s
Germans. The total must have amounted to 15,000 infantry, and about
5,500 cavalry: he had also sixty guns with 1,600 artillerymen[166].
[165] 26th and 10th Chasseurs and 9th Dragoons; the fourth
regiment, the Polish lancers, was with Sebastiani (see pp. 146-7).
[166] The February figures for Victor’s men _présents sous les
armes_ are:--
1st Division, Ruffin 5,429
3rd Division, Villatte 6,376
German Division [deducting one battalion] 3,127
Corps-cavalry [two regiments] 1,386
Latour-Maubourg’s dragoons 2,527
Lasalle’s three regiments 1,121
Westphalian _Chevaux-Légers_ 487
Artillery of 1st Corps 1,523
Leval’s artillery (two batteries) 184
------
Total 22,160
In spite of his reluctance Victor was forced to yield to the pressure
of Jourdan and the Emperor’s explicit orders. On March 14 he began to
make his preparations to cross the Tagus and to attack Cuesta: it was
reported to him that the roads starting from the two bridges which
were in his power, those of Talavera and Arzobispo, were neither of
them practicable for artillery, and that only the route by Almaraz
was suitable for the guns and heavy baggage. But the bridge of
Almaraz was broken, and beyond it were visible entrenchments thrown
up by the Spaniards, and a considerable body of troops--the division
of General Henestrosa. The Duke of Belluno determined to clear the
way for a crossing at Almaraz, by sending infantry across the Tagus
by the passages higher up-stream, with orders to sweep the southern
bank till they came opposite to the broken bridge. They were to
dislodge the force behind it, and then the artillery, the baggage,
and cavalry were to cross on a bridge of rafts, which was being
prepared close to Almaraz, in order to be ready the moment that it
should be wanted.
On March 15, therefore, Leval’s Germans crossed the Tagus by the
bridge of Talavera, with some of Lasalle’s cavalry, while on the
next morning Victor himself passed at Arzobispo with the divisions
of Villatte and Ruffin. The combined column pushed westward by a bad
road on the hillside overhanging the river, in a difficult country
of rocks and woods, seamed with countless ravines, where cavalry
could barely act and artillery would have been perfectly useless.
Cuesta, on hearing of this movement to turn his flank, threw back
his right wing, and bade it make a stand behind the ravine of the
little river Ibor, which falls into the Tagus half-way between
Arzobispo and Almaraz. His force in this direction consisted of the
division of the Duke del Parque, about 5,000 strong, with six guns.
On the seventeenth Victor’s columns, with the Germans of Leval at
their head, arrived before the defiles of Meza de Ibor, and found
themselves confronted by the Duke, who was firmly established on
the other side of the ravine, in a fine position, with his guns on
a projecting rock which enfiladed the high-road. Victor directed
Leval’s eight[167] battalions to cross the ravine, and storm the
heights on the other side. This they did in very gallant style, but
not without heavy losses, for the Estremadurans, confident in the
strength of their rugged fighting-ground, made a long and vigorous
resistance, till the Germans actually came to close quarters with
them and ran in with the bayonet. Del Parque’s line then crumpled
up, and dispersed over the hillsides: finding it impossible to bring
off his guns, he cast them over the precipice into the ravine below.
The Germans lost seventy killed and 428 wounded while climbing the
difficult slopes: Del Parque’s men probably suffered far less, as
they absconded when the enemy closed, and had been under cover till
that moment. The supposition of some French authorities that the
defenders of Meza de Ibor lost 1,000 men is most improbable. The
country was one exactly suited for a cheap defence, and for an easy
scattering over the hills in the moment of defeat.
[167] One Hessian battalion was still absent, in garrison at
Segovia, so the total of the division was not much over 3,000.
The Duke fell back on Deleytosa, higher up the side of the Sierra de
Guadalupe, where Cuesta had established his head quarters. Here he
was joined by another of the Estremaduran divisions, that of General
Trias, nearly 5,000 strong. Henestrosa, with the rest of the army,
was still watching the passage at Almaraz, where Cuesta had made up
his mind that the main attack of the French would be delivered. He
persisted for some time in believing that Victor’s movement across
the Talavera and Arzobispo bridges was merely a feint; and thus it
was that Del Parque had been left alone to bear the first brunt of
the attack. When he was at last convinced that the bulk of Victor’s
infantry was on his flank, and that Almaraz was hopelessly turned,
the old Captain-General hastily sent orders to Henestrosa to abandon
his entrenchments opposite the bridge, and to retreat on Truxillo
across the mountains. He himself took that path without delay, and
got off in safety with his two leading divisions, but Henestrosa had
to brush across the front of the advancing French, and was in some
danger. Luckily for him Victor was more set on clearing the road from
Almaraz than on pursuing the enemy.
When Henestrosa had disappeared, the passage was open, and the
cavalry of Latour-Maubourg and Beaumont, guarding the artillery and
baggage-train of the 1st Corps, crossed on the rafts which had been
prepared long before, and joined the infantry and the Marshal. The
passage presented more difficulties than had been expected, for it
proved impossible to construct a permanent bridge; the stream was
very fierce, and the anchors by which the floats were moored found
no hold in the smooth rocky bottom. The guns passed either by being
sent over on rafts or by means of a rope ferry, which was with some
difficulty rigged up. It was not till some time later that a solid
bridge of boats was built at this most important passage[168]. One
cavalry regiment was left behind to protect it[169].
[168] Jourdan’s _Mémoires_, p. 182.
[169] Apparently the Westphalian _Chevaux Légers_, which had
hitherto been attached to Leval’s German division.
Cuesta, when he had united his three divisions, would have dearly
loved to give battle to Victor behind Truxillo, in the excellent
position of the Puerto de Santa Cruz, where the _chaussée_ from
Madrid to Badajoz crosses the Sierra de Guadalupe. His love for
general engagements was by no means cured by the event of his
experiments at Cabezon and Medina de Rio Seco. But he was withheld
from offering battle not by mere prudence, but by the fact that
he was expecting to receive two considerable reinforcements. The
Marquis de Portago was bringing up a detachment from Badajoz--three
battalions[170] which had been intended to form the nucleus of a
new Fourth division that was being organized in that fortress. At
the same moment Albuquerque was expected from the east, at the head
of the 4,500 men whom the Supreme Junta had detached from the
army of La Mancha, and had sent down the Guadiana to join that of
Estremadura. Cuesta wished to pick up these 7,000 men before he gave
battle.
[170] Four more had to be left behind in the fortress.
Accordingly he evacuated the pass of Santa Cruz, and fell back
southward towards his reinforcements, leaving Henestrosa with the
bulk of his cavalry to act as a rearguard. That officer carried out
his duty with a dash and a vigour that were rare in Spanish armies
at this date. When the fiery Lasalle came pressing up against him
with his usual fury, the Spanish general contrived to inflict on him
two distinct checks. At Berrocal, half-way down the defile of Santa
Cruz, he made a sudden halt and drove in the leading squadron of the
French by a charge of his Royal Carbineers, a small remnant of the
Guard-Cavalry which had been serving with the Army of Estremadura
since its formation [March 20]. The French lost ten killed and
fifteen wounded[171].
[171] Jourdan, p. 182.
This was a trifle, but on the next day Henestrosa scored a far more
tangible advantage. Noting that Lasalle’s leading regiment, the 10th
Chasseurs, had got far ahead of the rest of the division, and was
pushing on with reckless haste, he laid a trap for it in front of
the village of Miajadas. Presenting a small body of cavalry on the
high-road, he hid on each side of it a strong regiment of his own
horse, with orders to fall upon the flank and rear of the French when
they should have passed the ambush. The two corps set aside for this
surprise were Infante and Almanza, both regiments of La Romana’s army
from Denmark, which had not yet drawn their sabres since the war
commenced.
Colonel Subervie of the 10th Chasseurs, advancing with heedless
confidence to charge the body of Spaniards in front of him, suddenly
saw himself enveloped and surrounded by the two regiments placed
in ambush. There was a furious _mêlée_, in which the chasseurs
lost one officer and sixty-two men killed and about seventy more
wounded, before they could cut their way out of the snare. The
sight of Lasalle’s main body coming up in haste to the rescue made
Henestrosa give the order for a prompt retreat, which he accomplished
without loss. ‘We arrived,’ writes a French officer of one of the
supporting regiments, ‘too late, and saw nothing but a cloud of dust
in the distance, made by the Spaniards as they rode away, and the
colonel of the 10th tearing his hair at the sight of his numerous
wounded[172].’ This lesson taught Lasalle more caution: it was
creditable to Henestrosa, though it must be confessed that he had two
men to one in the skirmish, in addition to the advantage of taking
his enemy by surprise. Oddly enough the regiments which accomplished
this successful _coup_ on the twenty-first were the same which
behaved worst in the great battle of the next week[173].
[172] Rocca, p. 268.
[173] See pp. 162-3.
At Miajadas, where this skirmish had taken place, the road descending
from the pass of Santa Cruz forks in two directions. One branch goes
towards Merida and Badajoz, the other and less important to Medellin,
La Serena, and the upper Guadiana. It would have been natural for
Cuesta to take the former route, which brought him nearer to his
base at Badajoz, and at the same time enabled him to cover the main
road to Andalusia, at which Victor was presumably aiming. But the
old general left this line unprotected, and retired by the eastern
path to Medellin. His main object was to secure his junction with the
reinforcements from La Mancha, which Albuquerque was bringing to him.
They were nearing La Serena, and would be cut off from him if he took
the road to Badajoz. At the same time he argued that, as he had thus
placed himself on the flank of the French, they could not afford to
march past him, since the moment that they left Merida behind them he
would be enabled to cut their communications with Madrid. He imagined
that Victor would prefer to fight him, and would not dare either to
take in hand the siege of Badajoz, or to advance against Andalusia,
without clearing his flank by a general action. The moment that he
should have picked up Albuquerque, Cuesta was prepared to indulge the
enemy with a fight, and if he were not attacked himself he intended
to take the offensive. This was sheer madness; even when he had drawn
in his last reserves the old general had but 20,000 foot and 3,000
horse[174], a number which only exceeded Victor’s total by three or
four thousand men because the latter had been dropping detachments
between Almaraz and Merida. Considering the relative value of the
individual soldiery of the two armies, Cuesta’s behaviour was that of
a criminal lunatic. We shall see that his tactics were as bad as his
strategy.
[174] The Spanish statements that Cuesta had only 2,200 horse
seem disproved by a letter from Cuesta’s camp, Col. D’Urban to
Cradock (April 7), to the effect that Cuesta had already rallied,
after Medellin, fully 3,000 horse, but only 6,000 or 7,000 foot
[Record Office].
The Marshal had left the two Dutch battalions of Leval’s division
at Truxillo, in charge of his sick: he dropped the 1st Dragoons of
Latour-Maubourg’s division at Miajadas, to guard the cross-roads,
and sent out the 4th and 9th from the same division along the upper
Guadiana, where they soon learnt of Cuesta’s presence on the other
side of the river. Lasalle’s light horse rode down to Merida, and
occupied the old Roman capital of western Spain without having to
strike a blow. Learning that the Spaniards had not retreated in
this direction, but by the eastern road, the Marshal (as Cuesta had
supposed likely) directed the bulk of his infantry on Medellin;
only the division of Ruffin remained behind, at the cross-roads of
Miajadas.
Meanwhile Cuesta had evacuated Medellin, and fallen back to La
Serena, where Albuquerque joined him on the twenty-seventh. The
moment that the army was united, he turned back, and retraced his
steps towards his former position. On the twenty-eighth he reached
the town of Don Benito, only five miles from Medellin, and learnt
to his great pleasure that Victor was before him and quite ready to
fight. The Marshal had swept the whole country-side with his numerous
cavalry during the last four days, and discovering that there was no
Spanish force opposite him in any direction save that of La Serena,
had ordered Lasalle and Ruffin to march up and join him from Merida
and Miajadas. On the morning of the twenty-ninth he had his entire
army united, save the two Dutch battalions left at Truxillo, two
more of Leval’s battalions left at Merida[175], the 1st Dragoons at
Miajadas, and one other cavalry regiment which had been told off to
guard the bridge of Almaraz. He cannot have had less than 13,000
infantry and 4,500 horse, even when allowance is made for the sick
and the losses at Meza de Ibor and Miajadas. Cuesta outnumbered him
by 6,000 infantry, but was overmatched in cavalry by more than three
to two, since he had but 3,000 sabres, and even more hopelessly in
artillery, since Victor had brought over fifty guns to the field,
while he had only thirty.
[175] Frankfort and the 1st of Hesse. See Sausez’s _Régiment de
Francfort_, p. 30.
Having been joined in the early morning by Lasalle’s and Ruffin’s
detachments, Victor had drawn out his army in front of Medellin, when
his cavalry brought him the news of the approach of the Spaniards.
Medellin, an ancient town dominated by a Moorish citadel on a lofty
hill, lies in the angle between the river Guadiana and the Hortiga
torrent. The latter, easily fordable in March and dry in June, is
an insignificant stream but flows at the bottom of a steep ravine.
The Guadiana, on the other hand, is a river of the first class: the
great bridge which leads into Medellin is no less than 450 yards
long. There were several fords up-stream from the bridge, but in
March, when the river was high, it is doubtful whether they were
practicable. Victor’s line, drawn in a quarter of a circle from the
Hortiga to the Guadiana, was well protected on either flank by the
broad river and the steep ravine. His order of battle was rather odd:
its front line was composed of a division of infantry (Villatte’s of
twelve battalions) in the centre, with two projecting wings, each
composed of a cavalry division supported by two battalions of Leval’s
Germans. On the right, near the Hortiga, was Latour-Maubourg with
five of his six regiments of dragoons[176] and ten horse artillery
guns. On the left, beside the Guadiana, was Lasalle with three of
his own light cavalry regiments, and the 2nd Hussars of Victor’s
corps-cavalry. The remaining battalion of Leval’s division[177] was
with Villatte in the centre. Ruffin’s division, forming the reserve,
lay far to the rear on the further side of the Hortiga. He had with
him one cavalry regiment[178] and a reserve of artillery: one
battalion was detached to guard the baggage, which was parked at the
bridge-head below the town.
[176] The sixth regiment (1st Dragoons) was still absent at
Miajadas.
[177] The division had started with nine battalions, but two (as
will be remembered) were left behind at Truxillo, and two more
at Merida. Those with Lasalle were the two Baden battalions,
those with Latour-Maubourg a Nassau battalion, and one formed of
the united light companies of the division. The second Nassau
battalion was to the rear, with Villatte. See Sémélé’s narrative,
p. 463.
[178] 5th Chasseurs, of the corps-cavalry of the 1st Corps.
Victor’s army, therefore, formed a short and compact arc of a circle,
a mile and a half outside of Medellin. Facing him, three or four
miles away, was the Spanish army, ranged in a much larger arc, also
extending from the Hortiga to the Guadiana, in front of the town of
Don Benito. It was deployed along a series of gentle heights, on
either side of the main road from Medellin. The position, though
rather long for the Spanish numbers, presented many advantages for a
defensive battle: but it was Cuesta’s intention to go forward, not
to receive the attack of the French. He saw with pleasure that the
enemy had come half-way to meet him, and was about to fight with a
difficult defile (the bridge of Medellin) in his rear. Secure from
being outflanked by Victor’s numerous cavalry, for the two streams
covered his wings, he resolved to march straight before him and to
bear down the French line by a direct frontal attack. On his left
were the divisions of Del Parque and Henestrosa, eight battalions in
a single line, all deployed four deep. They had no supports whatever,
save one battalion of grenadiers which marched behind their centre.
On their outside flank rode three regiments of cavalry, close to
the ravine of the Hortiga[179]. The centre was composed of the four
battalions of the division of Trias, all drawn up in the same fashion
as the left wing. The right was formed by Portago’s incomplete
division[180] (only three battalions) and by the contingent from La
Mancha which Albuquerque had just brought up--seven strong battalions
with 4,500 bayonets. Outside Albuquerque’s extreme right, and on the
banks of the Guadiana, was placed a cavalry force corresponding to
that on the extreme left, and also formed of three regiments[181].
A few remaining squadrons of cavalry were posted in the intervals
between the wings and the centre[182]. The artillery went forward,
each battery with the division to which it was attached. This was a
most extraordinary order of battle: with the object of securing his
flanks and of covering the whole space between the rivers, Cuesta
was advancing with a front of nearly four miles and a depth of only
four men! There is no parallel in modern history for such a dangerous
array. If any single point in the long line gave way, there was no
reserve with which to fill the gap and save the day. And it was
morally certain that a weak point would be found somewhere, for many
of the battalions were raw troops which had never seen fire, and the
greater part of the others had graduated in the school of panic under
Belvedere and San Juan.
[179] These were the regiments Infante and Almanza (from Denmark)
and the new cavalry regiment of Toledo. Letter of Sir Benjamin
D’Urban to Cradock, April 8, 1809 (Record Office).
[180] Its remainder was garrisoning Badajoz. Those on the field
were Badajoz (two batts.), and 3rd of Seville (one batt.).
[181] Apparently these regiments were Albuquerque’s regiment
from the Andalusian army, with the Cazadores de Llerena (a new
Estremaduran corps) and Del Rey (one of the Baltic regiments).
[182] These were the two hussar regiments, Voluntarios de España,
and Maria Luisa, the latter of which had been re-named ‘Hussars
of Estremadura’.
Cuesta, however, was eminently satisfied with himself and with his
order of battle: he intended to envelop the shorter French line with
converging fire, to thrust it back on to the defile of Medellin,
and if possible to seize the bridge behind its left flank, and to
endeavour to cut off its retreat. Blind self-confidence could go no
further!
When Victor advanced from Medellin he was aware of the proximity of
the Spaniards, and could see their cavalry vedettes on all the hills
in front of Don Benito, but it was not till his army had marched some
distance across the bare and level fields, that Cuesta revealed his
order of battle. When the French were well advanced in the plain,
the whole Army of Estremadura crowned the heights, and then swept
downward from them, in one continuous line forming an exact quarter
of a circle. The infantry was well closed up; each regiment had its
mounted officers in front, and the generals were riding up and down
the line, perpetually supervising the dressing of their battalions,
for they were quite conscious that in the order which Cuesta had
chosen any gap or wavering in the line would be ruinous. Each
division had its battery in front, and in the long intervals between
the guns a very thick line of skirmishers covered the advance of the
main body.
Facing this imposing line, as it will be remembered, the French had
the five dragoon regiments of Latour-Maubourg on the right, and the
four light cavalry regiments of Lasalle on the left, each supported
by two of Laval’s German battalions. The centre under Villatte was
somewhat ‘refused,’ and was much farther from the Spaniards than were
the two powerful wings of cavalry. As the enemy advanced, Victor
bade Latour-Maubourg and Lasalle to seize any good opportunity for
a charge, but not to risk, unless circumstances favoured them, a
general attack on the Spaniards, until they should have begun to lose
their order. The wings of the enemy being covered by the two rivers,
there could be no question of flank attacks, and frontal charges by
cavalry on unbroken infantry are proverbially dangerous.
When, however, the armies drew near, Latour-Maubourg thought that he
saw his chance, and bade one of his brigades (2nd and 4th Dragoons)
charge Del Parque’s infantry in the Spanish left-centre. The attack
completely failed: a fortunate discharge of the Duke’s divisional
battery blew a gap in the centre of the charging line; the battalions
on each side stood firm and opened a heavy fire, and the dragoons
went to the rear in disorder. Their flight exposed the flank of the
two German battalions which formed the centre of Latour-Maubourg’s
line. The Spanish infantry pressed forward, and engaged them with
vigour. This determined Victor to order his right wing to fall back
and to get into line with Villatte, before making another stand.
Accordingly Latour-Maubourg retired, his unbroken regiments moving
off in very good order, but suffering considerably from the fire of
the Spanish skirmishers, who ran forward with great rapidity and
pressed them hard.