SECTION II: CHAPTER III

THE FRENCH ARMY IN SPAIN

§ 1. THE ARMY OF 1808: ITS CHARACTER AND ORGANIZATION.

In dealing with the history of the imperial armies in the Peninsula,

it is our first duty to point out the enormous difference between the

troops who entered Spain in 1807 and 1808, under Dupont, Moncey, and

Murat, and the later arrivals who came under Bonaparte’s personal

guidance when the first disastrous stage of the war was over.

Nothing can show more clearly the contempt which the Emperor

entertained, not only for the Spanish government but for the Spanish

nation, than the character of the hosts which he first sent forth

to occupy the Peninsula. After Tilsit he was the master of half a

million of the best troops in the world; but he did not consider the

subjugation of Spain and Portugal a sufficiently formidable task to

make it necessary to move southward any appreciable fraction of the

Grand Army. The victors of Jena and Friedland were left in their

cantonments on the Rhine, the Elbe, and the Oder, while a new force,

mainly composed of elements of inferior fighting value, was sent across

the Pyrenees.

This second host was at Napoleon’s disposition mainly owing to the fact

that during the late war he had been anticipating the conscription.

In the winter of 1806-7 he had called out, a year too soon, the men

who were due to serve in 1808. In the late autumn of 1807, while his

designs in Spain were already in progress, he had summoned forth the

conscription of 1809. He had thus under arms two years’ contingents of

recruits raised before their proper time. The dépôts were gorged, and,

even after the corps which had been depleted in Prussia and Poland had

been made up to full strength, there was an enormous surplus of men in

hand.

To utilize this mass of conscripts the Emperor found several ways. Of

the men raised in the winter of 1806-7 some thousands had been thrown

into temporary organizations, called ‘legions of reserve,’ and used

to do garrison duty on the Atlantic coast, in order to guard against

possible English descents. There were five of these ‘legions’ and two

‘supplementary legions’ in the army sent into Spain: they showed a

strength of 16,000 men. None of them had been more than a year under

arms, but they were at any rate organized units complete in themselves.

They formed the greater part of the infantry in the corps of Dupont.

A shade worse in composition were twenty ‘provisional regiments’ which

the Emperor put together for Spain. Each regimental dépôt in the south

of France was told to form four companies from its superabundant mass

of conscripts. These bodies, of about 560 men each, were united in

fours, and each group was called a ‘provisional regiment.’ The men of

each battalion knew nothing of those of the others, since they were all

drawn from separate regiments: there was not a single veteran soldier

in the ranks: the officers were almost all either half-pay men called

back to service, or young sub-lieutenants who had just received their

commissions. These bodies, equally destitute of _esprit de corps_ and

of instruction, made up nearly 30,000 men of the army of Spain. They

constituted nearly the whole of the divisions under Bessières and

Moncey, which lay in Northern Spain at the moment of the outbreak of

the war.

But there were military units even less trustworthy than the

‘provisional regiments’ which Napoleon transferred to Spain in the

spring of 1808. These were the five or six _régiments de marche_, which

were to be found in some of the brigades which crossed the Pyrenees

when the state of affairs was already growing dangerous. They were

formed of companies, or even smaller bodies, hastily drawn together

from such southern dépôts, as were found to be still in possession of

superfluous conscripts even after contributing to the ‘provisional

regiments.’ They were to be absorbed into the old corps when the

pressing need for instant reinforcements for the Peninsula should come

to an end. In addition to all these temporary units, Bonaparte was

at the same moment making a vast addition to his permanent regular

army. Down to the war of 1806-7 the French regiments of infantry

had consisted of three battalions for the field and a fourth at the

dépôt, which kept drafting its men to the front in order to fill up

the gaps in the other three. Napoleon had now resolved to raise the

establishment to five battalions per regiment, four for field service,

while the newly created fifth became the dépôt battalion. When the

Peninsular War broke out, a good many regiments had already completed

their fourth field-battalion, and several of these new corps are to

be found in the rolls of the armies which had entered Spain. The

multiplication of battalions had been accompanied by a reduction of

their individual strength: down to February, 1808, there were nine

companies to each unit, and Junot’s corps had battalions of a strength

of 1,100 or 1,200 bayonets. But those which came later were six-company

battalions, with a strength of 840 bayonets when at their full

establishment.

All the troops of which we have hitherto spoken were native Frenchmen.

But they did not compose by any means the whole of the infantry which

the Emperor dispatched into Spain between October, 1807, and May, 1808.

According to his usual custom he employed great numbers of auxiliaries

from his vassal kingdoms: we note intercalated among the French units

seven battalions of Swiss, four of Italians, two each of Neapolitans

and Portuguese[76], and one each of Prussians, Westphalians,

Hanoverians, and Irish. Altogether there were no less than 14,000

men of foreign infantry dispersed among the troops of Junot, Dupont,

Bessières, Moncey, and Duhesme. They were not massed, but scattered

broadcast in single battalions, save the Italians and Neapolitans, who

formed a complete division under Lecchi in the army of Catalonia.

[76] These last were the rear battalions of the unfortunate

Portuguese legion which was in march for the Baltic; they were

still on this side of the Pyrenees when the war began, and were

hastily utilized against Saragossa.

The cavalry of the army of Spain was quite as heterogeneous and

ill compacted as the infantry. Just as ‘provisional regiments’ of

foot were patched up from the southern dépôts of France, so were

‘provisional regiments’ of cavalry. The best of them were composed

of two, three, or four squadrons, each contributed by the dépôt of

a different cavalry regiment. The worst were _escadrons de marche_,

drawn together in a haphazard fashion from such of the dépôts as had

a surplus of conscripts even after they had given a full squadron

to the ‘provisional regiments.’ There were also a number of foreign

cavalry regiments, Italians, Neapolitans, lancers of Berg, and Poles.

Of veteran regiments of French cavalry there were actually no more than

three, about 1,250 men, among the 12,000 horsemen of the army of Spain.

When we sum up the composition of the 116,000 men who lay south of the

Pyrenees on the last day of May, 1808, we find that not a third part

of them belonged to the old units of the regular French army. It may be

worth while to give the figures:--

Of veterans we have--

_Infantry._ _Cavalry._

(1) A detachment of the Imperial Guard,

which was intended to serve as the Emperor’s

special escort during his irruption into Spain 3,600 1,750

(2) Twenty-six battalions of infantry of the

line and light infantry, being all first, second,

or third battalions, and not newly raised fourth

battalions 25,800

(3) Three old regiments of cavalry of the line 1,250

(4) Three newly raised fourth battalions of

infantry regiments of the line 1,800

This gives a total of regularly organized -----------------

French troops of the standing army of 31,200 3,000

-----------------

(5) Five legions of reserve, and two

‘supplementary legions of reserve’ 16,000

(6) Fifteen ‘provisional regiments’ from the

dépôts of Southern France [the remaining five

had not crossed the frontier on May 31] 31,000

(7) Six _régiments de marche_ of conscripts 3,200

(8) Eighteen battalions of Italian, Swiss,

German, and other auxiliaries 14,000

(9) Sixteen ‘provisional regiments’ of cavalry,

and a few detached ‘provisional squadrons,’ and

_escadrons de marche_ 9,500

(10) Three regiments of foreign cavalry 1,000

This makes a total of troops in temporary -----------------

organization, or of foreign origin, of 64,200 10,500

Napoleon, then, intended to conquer Spain with a force of about 110,000

men, of which no more than 34,000 sabres and bayonets belonged to

his regular army; the rest were conscripts or foreign auxiliaries.

But we must also note that the small body of veteran troops was

not distributed equally in each of the corps, so as to stiffen the

preponderating mass of conscripts. If we put aside the division of

Imperial Guards, we find that of the remaining 25,000 infantry of old

organization no less than 17,500 belonged to Junot’s army of Portugal,

which was the only one of the corps that had a solid organization.

Junot had indeed a very fine force, seventeen old line battalions to

two battalions of conscripts and three of foreigners. The rest of

the veteran troops were mainly with Duhesme in Catalonia, who had a

good division of 5,000 veterans. In the three corps of Dupont, Moncey,

and Bessières on the other hand old troops were conspicuous by their

absence: among the 19,000 infantry of Dupont’s corps, on which (as it

chanced) the first stress of the Spanish war was destined to fall,

there was actually only two battalions (1,700 men) of old troops. In

Moncey’s there was not a single veteran unit; in Bessières’, only

four battalions. This simple fact goes far to explain why Dupont’s

expedition to Andalusia led to the capitulation of Baylen, and why

Moncey’s march on Valencia ended in an ignominious retreat. Countries

cannot be conquered with hordes of undrilled conscripts--not even

countries in an advanced stage of political decomposition, such as the

Spain of 1808.

§ 2. THE ARMY OF 1808-14: ITS CHARACTER AND ORGANIZATION.

Baylen, as we shall see, taught Napoleon his lesson, and the second

army which he brought into the Peninsula in the autumn of 1808, to

repair his initial disasters, was very differently constituted from the

heterogeneous masses which he had at first judged to be sufficient for

his task. It was composed of his finest old regiments from the Rhine

and Elbe, the flower of the victors of Jena and Friedland. Even when

the despot had half a million good troops at his disposition, he could

not be in force everywhere, and the transference of 200,000 veterans to

Spain left him almost too weak in Central Europe. In the Essling-Wagram

campaign of 1809 he found that he was barely strong enough to conquer

the Austrians, precisely because he had left so many men behind him

in the Peninsula. In the Russian campaign of 1812, vast as were the

forces that he displayed, they were yet not over numerous for the

enterprise, because such an immense proportion of them was composed of

unwilling allies and disaffected subjects. If the masses of Austrians,

Prussians, Neapolitans, Portuguese, Westphalians, Bavarians, and so

forth had been replaced by half their actual number of old French

troops from Spain, the army would have been far more powerful. Still

more was this the case in 1813: if the whole of the Peninsular army had

been available for service on the Elbe and Oder at the time of Lützen

and Bautzen, the effect on the general history of Europe might have

been incalculable. Truly, therefore, did the Emperor call the Spanish

War ‘the running sore’ which had sapped his strength ever since its

commencement.

A word as to the tactical organization of the French army in 1808 is

required. The infantry regiments of normal formation consisted, as we

have seen, of four field battalions and one dépôt battalion; the last

named never, of course, appeared at the front. Each field battalion

was composed of six companies of 140 men: its two flank companies, the

grenadiers and voltigeurs, were formed of the pick of the corps[77]:

into the grenadiers only tall, into the voltigeurs only short men

were drafted. Thus a battalion should normally have shown 840 and a

regiment 3,360 men in the field. But it was by no means the universal

rule to find the whole four battalions of a regiment serving together.

In the modern armies of France, Germany, or Russia, a regiment in

time of peace lives concentrated in its recruiting district, and can

take the field in a compact body. This was not the case in Napoleon’s

ever-wandering hosts: the chances of war were always isolating single

battalions, which, once dropped in a garrison or sent on an expedition,

did not easily rejoin their fellows. Many, too, of the new fourth

battalions raised in 1807 had never gone forward to Germany to seek the

main body of their regiments. Of the corps which were brought down to

Spain in the late autumn of 1808 there were more with three battalions

than with four concentrated under the regimental eagle. Some had only

two present, a few no more than one[78]. But the Emperor disliked to

have single isolated battalions, and preferred to work them in pairs,

if he could not get three or four together. The object of this was

that, if one or two battalions got much weakened in a campaign, the

men could be fused into a single unit, and the supernumerary officers

and sergeants sent back to the dépôt, where they would form a new

battalion out of the stock of conscripts. But the fresh organization

might very likely be hurried, by some sudden chance of war, to

Flushing, or Italy, or the Danube, while the eagle and the main body

remained in Spain--or vice versa.

[77] French generals were much addicted to the pernicious

practice of massing the grenadier companies of all the regiments

of a division, or an army corps, in order to make a picked

battalion or brigade, to be used as a reserve. Junot had four

such battalions (_grenadiers réunis_) at Vimiero, and Victor

three at Barossa.

[78] To take a later example, of the three _corps d’armée_ (II,

VI, VIII) with which Masséna invaded Portugal in 1810, there

were only _three_ regiments with four battalions present; while

seventeen had three, eight had two, and ten a single battalion

only.

There was therefore, in consequence of the varying strength of the

regiments, no regularity or system in the brigading of the French

troops in Spain: in one brigade there might be five or six isolated

battalions, each belonging to a separate regiment; in another three

from one regiment and two from a second; in a third four from one

regiment and one from another. Nor was there any fixed number of

battalions in a brigade: it might vary from three (a very unusual

minimum) up to nine--an equally rare maximum. Six was perhaps the most

frequent number. A division was composed of two, or less frequently of

three, brigades, and might have any number from ten up to sixteen or

eighteen battalions--i.e. it varied, allowing for casual losses, from

6,000 to 10,000 men. This irregularity was part of Napoleon’s system:

he laid it down as an axiom that all military units, from a brigade to

an army corps, ought to differ in strength among themselves: otherwise

the enemy, if he had once discovered how many brigades or divisions

were in front of him, could calculate with accuracy the number of

troops with which he had to do.

Much confusion is caused, when we deal with Napoleon’s army, by the

strange system of numeration which he adopted. The infantry, whether

called ‘line regiments’ or ‘light infantry regiments,’ were drilled and

organized in the same way. But the Emperor had some odd vagaries: he

often refused to raise again a regiment which had been exterminated,

or taken prisoners _en masse_. Hence after a few years of his reign

there were some vacant numbers in the list of infantry corps. The

regiments, for example, which were garrisoning the colonies at the time

of the rupture of the Peace of Amiens, fell one after another into the

hands of the English as the war went on. They were never replaced, and

left gaps in the army list. On the other hand the Emperor sometimes

raised regiments with duplicate numbers, a most tiresome thing for the

military historian of the next age. It is impossible to fathom his

purpose, unless he was set on confusing his enemies by showing more

battalions than the list of existing corps seemed to make possible. Or

perhaps he was thinking of the old legions of the Roman Empire, of

which there were always several in existence bearing the same number,

but distinguished by their honorary titles. Those who wish to read the

story of one of these duplicate regiments may follow in the history of

Nodier the tale of the raising and extermination of Colonel Oudet’s

celebrated ‘9th Bis’ of the line[79].

[79] Nodier, _Souvenirs de la Révolution_, ii. 233-5.

There is another difficulty caused by a second freak of the Emperor:

all regiments ought, as we have said, to have shown four field

battalions. But Bonaparte sometimes added one or even two more, to

corps which stood high in his favour, or whose dépôts produced on some

occasions a very large surplus of conscripts. Thus we find now and

then, in the morning state of a French army corps, a fifth or even

a sixth[80] battalion of some regiment. But as a rule these units

had not a very long existence: their usual fate was to be sent home,

when their numbers ran low from the wear and tear of war, in order

to be incorporated in the normal _cadres_ of their corps. On the

authority of that good soldier and admirable historian, Foy, we are

able to state that on the first of June, 1808, Napoleon had 417 field

battalions, over and above the dépôts, on his army rolls. If the 113

regiments of the line, and the thirty-two light infantry regiments had

all been in existence and complete, there should have been 580 field

battalions. Clearly then some corps had disappeared and many others

had not more than three battalions ready. But the units were always

being created, amalgamated, or dissolved, from week to week, so that

it is almost impossible to state the exact force of the whole French

army at any given moment. The most important change that was made

during the year 1808 was the conversion of those of the provisional

regiments which escaped Dupont’s disaster into new permanent corps.

By combining them in pairs the 114th-120th of the line and the 33rd

léger were created[81]. In the succeeding five years more and more

corps were raised: the annexation of Holland and Northern Germany in

1810-11 ultimately enabled the Emperor to carry the total of his line

regiments up to 156 [1813], and of his light infantry regiments up to

thirty-six[82].

[80] In the campaign of 1810 the 26th, 66th, and 82nd regiments

in Masséna’s army had 5th and 6th battalions in the field.

[81] This was done on July 7 (see _Nap. Corresp._, 14,164). Nos.

1 and 2 became the 114th of the line, 3 and 4 the 115th, 5 and

6 the 116th, 7 and 8 the 33rd léger, 9 and 10 the 117th, 11 the

118th, 13 and 14 the 119th, 17 and 18 the 120th. When the 6th,

7th, and 8th were captured at Baylen, new conscripts had to be

brought from France to complete the 116th and replace the 33rd

léger.

[82] See Rousset’s excellent _La Grande Armée de 1813_.

Of the French cavalry we need not speak at such length. When the

Spanish war broke out, Bonaparte was possessed of about eighty

regiments of horsemen, each taking the field with four squadrons of

some 150 to 200 men. There were twelve regiments of cuirassiers, two of

carabineers, thirty of dragoons, twenty-six of _chasseurs à cheval_,

ten of hussars, i.e. fourteen regiments of heavy, thirty of medium, and

thirty-six of light horse. The cuirassiers were hardly ever seen in

Spain--not more than two or three regiments ever served south of the

Pyrenees[83]. On the other hand the greater part of the dragoons were

employed in the Peninsula--there were in 1809 twenty-five of the thirty

regiments of them in the field against the English and Spaniards.

More than half of the hussars also served in Spain. To the veteran

corps of regulars there were added, at the outset of the war, as will

be remembered, a great number of ‘provisional regiments,’ but these

gradually disappeared, by being incorporated in the older _cadres_, or

in a few cases by being formed into new permanent units. There was also

a mass of Polish, German, and Italian cavalry; but these auxiliaries

did not bear such a high proportion to the native French as did the

foreign part of the infantry arm. By far the most distinguished of

these corps were the Polish lancers, whom the English came to know only

too well at Albuera. The Italians were almost exclusively employed on

the east coast of Spain, in the army of Catalonia. The Germans--mostly

from Westphalia, Berg, and Nassau--were scattered about in single

regiments among the cavalry corps of the various armies. They were

always mixed with the French horse, and never appeared in brigades

(much less in divisions) of their own.

[83] The most distinguished of these was the 13th Cuirassiers,

a regiment of new formation, which served throughout the war in

Aragon and Catalonia, and was by far the best of Suchet’s mounted

corps. For its achievements the reader may be referred to the

interesting _Mémoires_ of Colonel de Gonneville.

The average strength of a French cavalry regiment during the years

1809-14 was four squadrons of about 150 men each. It was very seldom

that a corps showed over 600 men in the ranks: not unfrequently it

sank to 450[84]. When it grew still further attenuated, it was usual

to send back the _cadres_ of one or two squadrons, and to complete to

full numbers the two or three which kept the field. These figures do

not hold good for the raw ‘provisional regiments’ which Bonaparte used

during the first year of the war: they sometimes rose to 700 or even

800 strong, when the dépôts from which they had been drawn chanced to

be exceptionally full of recruits[85]. But such large corps are not to

be found in the later years of the war. By 1812, when Napoleon, busied

in Central Europe, ceased to reinforce his Spanish armies, the average

of a cavalry regiment had shrunk to 500 men. In 1813 it was seldom that

400 effective sabres could be mustered by any mounted corps.

[84] In Masséna’s army of 1810 the largest cavalry regiment (25th

Dragoons) had 650 men. In Suchet’s army in the same year there

was one exceptionally strong regiment (4th Hussars) with 759

sabres.

[85] The 2nd Provisional Dragoons of Moncey’s corps had no less

than 872 men in June, 1808.

As to the scientific arms of the French service, the artillery and

engineers, there is no doubt that throughout the war they deserved very

well of their master. Artillery cannot be improvised in the manner that

is possible with infantry, and the batteries which accompanied Dupont’s

and Moncey’s conscripts into Spain in 1808 were veterans. Without them

the raw infantry would have fared even worse than it did, during the

first year of the struggle. The proportion of guns which the French

employed during the wars of the Empire was generally very large in

comparison with the size of their armies--one of the many results of

the fact that Bonaparte had originally been an artillery officer. He

raised, as was remarked, the number of gunners in the French service

to a figure as large as that of the whole regular army of Louis XVI at

the moment when the Revolution broke out. But in Spain the difficulties

of transport and the badness of the roads seem to have combined to

keep down the proportion of guns to something very much less than

was customary in the more favourable _terrain_ of Italy or Germany.

A large part, too, of the pieces were of very light metal--four- and

even three-pounders, which were found easier to transport across the

mountains than six- or eight-pounders, though much less effective in

the field. In many of the campaigns, therefore, of the Peninsular War

the French artillery stood in a proportion to the total number of men

present, which was so low that it barely exceeded that customary among

the British, who were notoriously more ‘under-gunned’ than any other

European army save that of Spain. Junot at Vimiero had twenty-three

guns to 13,500 men: Victor at Talavera had eighty guns to about 50,000

men: Masséna in 1810 invaded Portugal with some 70,000 men and 126

guns; at Fuentes d’Oñoro he only showed forty-two guns to 40,000

bayonets and sabres[86]. Soult at Albuera had (apparently) forty guns

to 24,000 men: in the autumn campaign of 1813 the same marshal had 125

guns to 107,000 men. It will be noted that the proportion never rises

to two guns per thousand men, and occasionally does not much exceed one

gun per thousand[87]. This contrasts remarkably with the 350 guns to

120,000 men which Bonaparte took out for the campaign of Waterloo, or

even with the 1,372 guns to 600,000 men of the Russian expedition and

1,056 guns to 450,000 men of the ill-compacted army of 1813.

[86] In this case the low proportion was due to want of horses,

not to bad roads. Even the forty-two guns were only produced when

Bessières had lent Masséna many teams.

[87] I take these figures respectively from Thiébault, Fririon,

Lapène, Le Clerc, and Rousset.

SECTION II: CHAPTER IV

THE TACTICS OF THE FRENCH AND THEIR ADVERSARIES

DURING THE PENINSULAR WAR

An account of the numbers and the organization of an army is of

comparatively little interest, unless we understand the principles on

which its leaders are accustomed to handle it on the day of battle, and

its value as a fighting machine.

Speaking generally, the tactics of the French infantry during the

Peninsular War were those which had been developed fifteen years

before, during the first struggles of the Revolution. They nearly

always attacked with a thick cloud of tirailleurs covering one or two

lines of battalions in column. The idea was that the very numerous

and powerful skirmishing line would engage the enemy sufficiently to

attract all his attention, so that the massed battalions behind arrived

at the front of battle almost without sustaining loss. The momentum

of the columns ought then to suffice to carry them right through the

enemy’s lines, which would already have suffered appreciably from

the fire of the tirailleurs. This form of attack had won countless

victories over Prussian, Austrian, and Russian; and many cases had been

known where a hostile position had been carried by the mere impetus

of the French columns, without a shot having been fired save by their

skirmishers. But this method, which Wellington called ‘the old French

style,’ never succeeded against the English. It had the fatal defect

that when the column came up through the tirailleurs and endeavoured

to charge, it presented a small front, and only the first two ranks

could fire. For the normal French battalion advanced in column of

companies, or less frequently of double companies, i.e. with a front

of forty or at most of eighty men, and a depth of nine or of eighteen,

since the company was always three deep, and there were six companies

to a battalion. The rear ranks only served to give the front ranks

moral support, and to impress the enemy with a sense of the solidity

and inexorable strength of the approaching mass. Sometimes a whole

regiment or brigade formed one dense column. Now if the enemy, as was

always the case with the British, refused to be impressed, but stood

firm in line, held their ground, and blazed into the head of the mass,

the attack was certain to fail. For 800 men in the two-deep line,

which Wellington loved, could all use their muskets, and thus poured

800 bullets per volley into a French battalion of the same strength,

which only could return 160. The nine-deep, or eighteen-deep, column

was a target which it was impossible to miss. Hence the front ranks

went down in rows and the whole came to a standstill. If, as was often

the case, the French battalion tried to deploy in front of the English

line, so as to bring more muskets to bear, it seldom or never succeeded

in accomplishing the manœuvre, for each company, as it straggled out

from the mass, got shot down so quickly that the formation could never

be completed. No wonder that Foy in his private journal felt himself

constrained to confess that, for a set battle with equal numbers on a

limited front, the English infantry was superior. ‘I keep this opinion

to myself,’ he adds, ‘and have never divulged it; for it is necessary

that the soldier in the ranks should not only hate the enemy, but also

despise him[88].’ Foy kept his opinion so closely to himself that he

did not put it in his formal history of the Peninsular War: it has only

become public property since his journals were published in 1900.

[88] Diary of Foy, in Girod de l’Ain’s _Vie Militaire du Général

Foy_, p. 98.

But the fact that with anything like equal numbers the line must beat

the column was demonstrated over and over again during the war. It had

first been seen at Maida in 1806, but that obscure Calabrian battle

was hardly known, even by name, save to those who had been present.

It was at Talavera, and still more at Busaco and Albuera, that it

became patent to everybody that the attack in battalion column, even

if preceded by a vigorous swarm of skirmishers, could never succeed

against the English. At the two former fights the French attacked

uphill, and laid the blame of their defeat upon the unfavourable

ground. But when at Albuera three English brigades drove double their

own numbers from the commanding ridge on which Soult had ranged them,

simply by the superiority of their musketry fire, there was no longer

any possibility of disguising the moral. Yet to the end of the war,

down to Waterloo itself, the French stuck to their old formation: at

the great battle in 1815, as Wellington tersely said, ‘The French came

on once more in the old style, and we beat them in the old style.’

But when Napoleon’s armies were opposed to troops who could not stand

firm to meet them in a line formation, they generally succeeded. The

Spaniards, in their earlier battles, often tried to resist in a line of

deployed battalions, but their _morale_ was not good enough when the

attacking column drew close to them, and they generally gave way at the

critical moment and let their assailants break through[89]. The same

had often been the case with the Austrians and Prussians, who in their

earlier wars with Napoleon used the line formation which Frederick the

Great had popularized fifty years before. The great king had accustomed

his troops to fight in a three- or four-deep line, with a comparatively

small provision of skirmishers to cover their front, for it was by the

fire of the whole battalion that his troops were intended to win. The

masses of tirailleurs which the French sent forward in front of their

columns generally succeeded in engaging the Prussian or Austrian line

so closely, that the columns behind them came up without much loss, and

then broke the line by their mere momentum and moral effect. Hence in

their later wars the German powers copied their enemies, and took to

using a very thick skirmishing line backed by battalion columns in the

French style.

[89] The reader who wishes to see a logical explanation of the

phenomenon may find it in the remarks of the Spanish Colonel

Moscoso (1812) in Arteche, ii. 394. He explains that the

skirmishing line of his compatriots was always too thin to

keep back the tirailleurs. The latter invariably pushed their

way close up to the Spanish main body, and while presenting in

their scattered formation no definite mark for volleys, were yet

numerous enough to shoot down so many of their opponents as to

shake the Spanish formation before the columns in the rear came

up.

Wellington never found any reason to do so. His method was to conceal

his main line as long as possible by a dip in the ground, a hedge,

or a wall, or to keep it behind the crest of the position which it

was holding. To face the tirailleurs each battalion sent out its

light company, and each brigade had assigned to it several detached

companies of riflemen: from 1809 onward some of the 60th Rifles and one

or two foreign light corps[90] were broken up and distributed round

the various divisions for this special purpose. This gave a line of

skirmishers strong enough to hold back the tirailleurs for a long time,

probably till the supporting columns came up to help them. It was only

then that the British skirmishing line gave way and retired behind

its main body, leaving the deployed battalions in face of the French

column, of which they never failed to give a satisfactory account.

The covering screen of light troops often suffered terribly; e.g., at

Barossa, Brown’s ‘light battalion’ lost fourteen out of twenty-one

officers and more than half its rank and file[91], while holding off

the French advance from the line which was forming in its rear. But the

combat always went well if the enemy’s skirmishers could be kept back,

and his supporting columns forced to come to the front, to engage with

the regiments in two-deep formation which were waiting for them.

[90] e.g. _Brunswick-Oels_ and the _Chasseurs Britanniques_.

[91] See Blakeney, _A Boy in the Peninsular War_, edited by

Sturges (1899), pp. 189, 190, for an account of this bloody

episode.

Charges with the bayonet are often heard of in narratives--especially

French narratives--of the Peninsular War. But it was very seldom that

the opposing troops actually came into collision with the white weapon.

There were occasions, almost invariably in fighting in villages or

enclosed ground, on which considerable numbers of men were killed

or wounded with the bayonet, but they were but few. It is certain,

however, that the 43rd at Vimiero, the 71st and 88th at Fuentes

d’Oñoro, and the 20th at Roncesvalles, engaged in this fashion[92];

and other cases could be quoted. But as a rule a ‘bayonet charge’ in

a French historian merely means the advance of a column up to the

enemy’s position without firing: it does not imply actual contact

or the crossing of weapons. An English charge on the other hand was

practically an advance in line with frequent volleys, or independent

file-firing. At Albuera, or Barossa, or Salamanca it was the ball not

the bayonet which did the work; the enemy was shot down, or gave way

without any hand-to-hand conflict.

[92] The reader who is curious as to details of actual

bayonet-fighting may consult Grattan for the 88th, and the

anonymous ‘T.S.’ of the 71st for Fuentes d’Oñoro, and Steevens of

the 20th for Roncesvalles. The charge of Tovey’s company of the

latter corps, on the last-mentioned occasion, much resembled one

of the incidents of Inkerman.

French cavalry tactics had by 1808 developed into as definite a system

as those of the infantry. Napoleon was fond of massing his horsemen

in very large bodies and launching them at the flank, or even at the

centre, of the army opposed to him. He would occasionally use as many

as 6,000 or 8,000, or (as at Waterloo) even 12,000 men for one of

these great strokes. Two or three of his famous battles were won by

tremendous cavalry charges--notably Marengo and Dresden, while Eylau

was just saved from falling into a disaster by a blow of the same

kind. But cavalry must be used at precisely the right moment, must be

skilfully led and pushed home without remorse, and even then it may be

beaten off by thoroughly cool and unshaken troops. It is only against

tired, distracted, or undisciplined battalions that it can count on a

reasonable certainty of success. All through the war the Spanish armies

supplied the French horsemen with exactly the opportunities that they

required: they were always being surprised, or caught in confusion

while executing some complicated manœuvre; and as if this was not

enough, they were often weak enough in _morale_ to allow themselves to

be broken even when they had been allowed time to take their ground

and form their squares. The battles of Gamonal (1808), Medellin, Alba

de Tormes, and Ocaña (1809), the Gebora, and Saguntum (1811) were good

examples of the power of masses of horse skilfully handled over a

numerous but ill-disciplined infantry.

On the other hand, against the English the French cavalry hardly ever

accomplished anything worthy of note. It is only possible to name two

occasions on which they made their mark: the first was at Albuera,

where, profiting by an opportune cloud-burst which darkened the face

of day, two regiments of lancers came in upon the flank of a British

brigade (Colborne’s of the second division), and almost entirely cut it

to pieces. The second incident of the kind was at Fuentes d’Oñoro, in

the same summer, when Montbrun’s cavalry charged with some effect on

Houston’s division and hustled it back for some two miles, though they

never succeeded in breaking its squares.

On the other hand the cases where the French horsemen found themselves

utterly unable to deal with the British infantry were very numerous--we

need only mention Cacabellos (during Moore’s retreat), El Bodon,

Salamanca, and several skirmishes during the retreat from Burgos in

1812. After such experiences it was no wonder that Foy, and other old

officers of the army of Spain, looked with dismay upon Napoleon’s great

attempt at Waterloo to break down the long line of British squares

between La Haye Sainte and Hougoumont, by the charges of ten or twelve

thousand heavy cavalry massed on a short front of less than a mile[93].

The Emperor had never seen the British infantry fight, and was

entirely ignorant of their resisting power.

[93] See Foy’s diary in Girod de l’Ain, p. 277.

Of fights between cavalry and cavalry, where the two sides were

present in such equal numbers as to make the struggle a fair test

of their relative efficiency, there were but few in the Peninsular

War. In the early years of the struggle Wellington was very scantily

provided with horsemen, and never could afford to engage in a cavalry

battle on a large scale. Later on, when he was more happily situated

in this respect, he showed such a marked reluctance to risk great

cavalry combats that the old saying that he was ‘pre-eminently an

infantry general’ seems justified. That he could use his horsemen

vigorously enough, when he saw his opportunity, he showed at Assaye,

long before he had made his name known in Europe. Yet the only one

of his great battles in Spain where his dragoons took a prominent

part in the victory was Salamanca, where Le Marchant’s brigade struck

such a smashing blow on the flank of the French army. We have his own

authority[94] for the fact that he hesitated to mass great bodies of

horse, because he doubted the tactical skill of his officers, and the

power of the regiments to manœuvre. ‘I considered our cavalry,’ he

wrote ten years after the war was over, ‘so inferior to the French from

want of order, that although I considered one squadron a match for two

French, I did not like to see four British opposed to four French: and

as the numbers increased and order, of course, became more necessary, I

was the more unwilling to risk our men without having a superiority in

numbers. They could gallop, but could not preserve their order.’

[94] Letter to Lord William Russell, July 31, 1826.

Foy, in his excellent history of the Spanish War, emits an opinion

in words curiously similar to those of Wellington, stating that

for practical purposes the English troopers were inferior to the

French on account of their headlong impetuosity and want of power to

manœuvre[95]. When two such authorities agree, there must clearly

have been some solid foundation for their verdict. Yet it is hard to

quote many combats in their support: there were cases, no doubt, where

English regiments threw their chances away by their blind fury in

charging, as did the 23rd Light Dragoons at Talavera, the 13th Light

Dragoons near Campo Mayor on March 25, 1811, and Slade’s brigade at

Maguilla on June 11, 1812. Yet with the memory before us of Paget’s

admirable operations at Sahagun and Benavente in December, 1808, of

Lumley’s skilful containing of Latour Maubourg’s superior numbers at

Albuera, and his brilliant success at Usagre over that same general in

1811, as well as Cotton’s considerable cavalry fight at Villa Garcia in

1812, it seems strange to find Wellington disparaging his own troopers.

No doubt we must concede that the British horsemen did not show that

marked superiority over their rivals of the same arm which Wellington’s

infantry always asserted. But fairly balancing their faults and their

merits, it would seem that there was something wanting in their general

no less than in themselves. A lover of the cavalry arm would have got

more profit out of the British horse than Wellington ever obtained. It

is noticeable that not one of the successful fights cited above took

place under the eye or the direction of the Duke.

[95] Foy, i. 288-90.

As to the Spanish cavalry, it was (as we have already had occasion to

remark) the weakest point in the national army. In the first actions

of the war it appeared on the field in such small numbers that it had

no chance against the French. But later on, when the juntas succeeded

in raising large masses of horsemen, their scandalous conduct on a

score of fields was the despair of Spanish generals. We need only

mention Medellin and Ocaña as examples of their misbehaviour. No French

cavalry-general ever hesitated to engage with double of his own number

of Spanish horse. When vigorously charged they never failed to give

way, and when once on the move it was impossible to rally them. It

was often found on the night of a battle that the mass of the cavalry

was in flight twenty miles ahead of the infantry, which it had basely

deserted.

Napoleon, as every student of the art of war knows, had started his

career as an officer of artillery, and never forgot the fact. He

himself has left on record the statement that of all his tactical

secrets the concentration of an overwhelming artillery fire on a given

point was the most important. ‘When once the combat has grown hot,’

he wrote, ‘the general who has the skill to unite an imposing mass of

artillery, suddenly and without his adversary’s knowledge, in front

of some point of the hostile position, may be sure of success.’ His

leading idea was to secure an overwhelming artillery preparation for

his infantry attacks: for this reason his typical battle began with

the massing of a great number of guns on the points of the enemy’s

line which he intended ultimately to break down. In this respect he

abandoned entirely the vicious tactics that prevailed in the earlier

years of the revolutionary war, when the cannon, instead of being

concentrated, were distributed about in twos and threes among the

infantry battalions. We shall find that his method had been perfectly

assimilated by his subordinates: when the ground allowed of it, they

were much given to collecting many guns at some salient point of the

line, and bringing a concentrated fire to bear on the weak spot in

the enemy’s position. At Ocaña a battery of this kind had a great

share in the credit of the victory; at Albuera it saved Soult’s routed

troops from complete destruction. The names of artillery generals like

Senarmont and Ruty need honourable mention for such achievements. If

the French artillery had less effect against the English than against

most of Napoleon’s foes, it was because of Wellington’s admirable

custom of hiding his troops till the actual moment of battle. Austrian,

Russian, or Prussian generals occupied a hillside by long lines drawn

up on the hither slope, of which every man could be counted. Hence they

could be thoroughly searched out and battered by the French guns, long

before the infantry was let loose. Wellington, on the other hand, loved

to show a position apparently but half-defended, with his reserves, or

even his main line, carefully hidden behind the crest, or covered by

walls and hedges, or concealed in hollows and ravines. Hence the French

artillery-preparation was much embarrassed: there were no masses to

fire at, and it was impossible to tell how any part of the line was

held. By the end of the war the French marshals grew very chary of

attacking any position where Wellington showed fight, for they never

could tell whether they were opposed by a mere rearguard, or by a whole

army skilfully concealed.

The English armies, unlike the French, always took with them a

comparatively small proportion of artillery, seldom so much as two guns

to the thousand men, as Foy remarks. But what there was was excellent,

from its high discipline and the accuracy of its fire. The Duke

preferred to work with small and movable units, placed in well-chosen

spots, and kept dark till the critical moment, rather than with the

enormous lines of guns that Bonaparte believed in. His horse artillery

was often pushed to the front in the most daring way, in reliance on

its admirable power of manœuvring and its complete steadiness. At

Fuentes d’Oñoro, for example, it was made to cover the retreat of the

right wing before the masses of French cavalry, in a way that would

have seemed impossible to any one who was not personally acquainted

with Norman Ramsay and his gunners. Hence came the astounding fact that

during the whole war the Duke never in the open field lost an English

gun. Several times cannon were taken and retaken; once or twice guns

not belonging to the horse or field batteries were left behind in a

retreat, when transport failed. But in the whole six years of his

command Wellington lost no guns in battle. Foy gives an unmistakable

testimony to the English artillery in his history, by remarking that in

its material it was undoubtedly superior to the French[96]: the same

fact may be verified from the evidence of our own officers, several of

whom have left their opinion on record, that after having inspected

captured French cannon, limbers, and caissons they much preferred their

own.

[96] Foy, i. 296.

This statement, it must be remembered, only applies to the field and

horse artillery. The English siege artillery, all through the war,

was notably inferior to the French. Wellington never possessed a

satisfactory battering train, and the awful cost at which his sieges

were turned into successes is a testimony to the inadequacy of his

resources. The infantry were sent in to win, by sheer courage and

at terrible expense of life, the places that could not be reduced

by the ill-equipped siege artillery. There can be no doubt that in

poliorcetics the enemy was our superior: but with a very small number

of artillery officers trained to siege work, an insignificant body

of Royal Engineers[97], and practically no provision of trained

sappers[98], what was to be expected? It was not strange that the

French showed themselves our masters in this respect. But the fault

lay with the organization at head quarters, not with the artillery and

engineer officers of the Peninsular army, who had to learn their trade

by experience without having received any proper training at home.

[97] It was usual to supplement the meagre supply of engineers by

officers who volunteered from the line.

[98] There were only the ‘Royal Military Artificers’ in very

small numbers. The rank and file of the engineer corps did not

yet exist.

SECTION III

SARAGOSSA AND BAYLEN

CHAPTER I

OPENING OF HOSTILITIES: THE FRENCH INVASIONS OF ANDALUSIA AND VALENCIA

While the provinces of Spain were bursting out, one after another,

into open insurrection, Murat at Madrid and Bonaparte at Bayonne were

still enjoying the fools’ paradise in which they had dwelt since the

formal abdication of Ferdinand VII. The former was busy in forcing

the Junta of Regency to perform the action which he elegantly styled

‘swallowing the pill,’ i.e. in compelling it to do homage to Napoleon

and humbly crave for the appointment of Joseph Bonaparte as King of

Spain. He imagined that his only serious trouble lay in the lamentable

emptiness of the treasury at Madrid, and kept announcing smooth things

to his master--‘The country was tranquil, the state of public opinion

in the capital was far happier than could have been hoped: the native

soldiery were showing an excellent disposition, the captains-general

kept sending in good reports: the new dynasty was likely to be popular,

and the only desire expressed by the people was to see their newly

designated king arrive promptly in their midst[99].’ Letters of this

kind continued to flow from the pen of the Duke of Berg till almost the

end of the month. Even after details of the insurrection of Aragon and

the Asturias began to reach him, he could write on May 31 that a strong

flying column would suffice to put everything right. About this time he

was seized by a violent fever and took to his bed, just as things were

commencing to grow serious. On his convalescence he left for France,

after putting everything in charge of Savary, the man who of all

Frenchmen most deserved the hatred of Spain. About the middle of June

he recrossed the French frontier, and after a few weeks went off to

Naples to take up his new kingship there. Spain was never to see him

again: the catastrophe which he had, by his master’s orders, brought

about, was to be conducted to its end by other hands.

[99] Murat to Napoleon, May 18.

While Murat lay sick at the suburban palace of Chamartin, and while

Napoleon was drafting acts and constitutions which the assembly of

notables at Bayonne were to accept and publish, the first acts of war

between the insurgents and the French army of occupation took place.

We have already had occasion to point out that the main military

strength of the insurrection lay in Galicia and Andalusia, the two

districts in which large bodies of regular troops had placed themselves

at the disposition of the newly organized juntas. In Valencia,

Catalonia, and Murcia the movement was much weaker: in Old Castile,

Aragon, and the Asturias it had hardly any other forces at its disposal

than hordes of half-armed peasants. Clearly then Galicia and Andalusia

were the dangerous points for the French, and the former more than the

latter, since an army descending from its hills, and falling on the

long line of communications between France and Madrid, might cause the

gravest inconvenience. If there had been any organized Spanish forces

in Aragon, there would have been an equal danger of an attack directed

from Saragossa against the eastern flank of the French communications.

But while Galicia was possessed of a numerous army of regular troops,

Aragon had nothing to show but a mass of hastily assembled peasants,

who were not yet fully provided with arms and were only just beginning

to be told off into battalions.

Napoleon, at the moment when he began to order his troops to move, was

under the impression that he had to deal with a number of isolated

riots rather than with a general insurrection of the Spanish nation.

His first orders show that he imagined that a few flying columns would

be able to scour the disaffected districts and scatter the bands of

insurgents without much trouble. Instead of a strategical plan for

the conquest of Spain, we find in his directions nothing more than

provisions for the launching of a small column against each point where

he had been informed that a rising had broken out. He presupposes that

the kingdom as a whole is quiet, and that bodies of 3,000 or 4,000

men may march anywhere, without having to provide for the maintenance

of their communications with Madrid, or with each other. Only in a

friendly country would it have been possible to carry out such orders.

There were at the Emperor’s disposition, at the end of May, some

116,000 men beyond the Pyrenees: but the 26,000 troops under Junot in

Portugal were so completely cut off from the rest, by the insurrection

in Castile and Estremadura, that they had to be left out of

consideration. Of the remainder the corps of Dupont and Moncey, 53,000

strong, lay in and about Madrid: Bessières, to whom the preservation

of the main line of communications with France fell, had some 25,000

between Burgos and San Sebastian: Duhesme, isolated at Barcelona, and

communicating with France by Perpignan and not by Bayonne, had only

some 13,000 at his disposal in Catalonia. Up to the first week in June

the Emperor thought that the 91,000 men of these four corps would be

enough to pacify Spain.

His first design was somewhat as follows: Bessières was to keep a firm

hand on the line of communications, but also to detach a division of

4,000 men under Lefebvre-Desnouettes against Saragossa, and a brigade

under Merle to pacify Santander and the northern littoral. The Emperor

does not at first seem to have realized that, with the army of Galicia

hanging on his western flank, Bessières might not be able to spare men

for such distant enterprises. He dealt with the corps as if it had

nothing to face save the local insurgents of Aragon and Old Castile.

From the large body of troops which lay about Madrid, Toledo, and

Aranjuez, two strong columns were to be dispatched to strike at the

two main centres of the insurrection in Southern Spain. Dupont was to

take the first division of his army corps, with two brigades of cavalry

and a few other troops, and march on Cordova and Seville. This gave

him no more than about 13,000 men for the subjugation of the large and

populous province of Andalusia. The other two infantry divisions of his

corps remained for the present near Madrid[100].

[100] For details of his force see the note on pp. 182-3.

On the other side of the capital, Marshal Moncey with a somewhat

smaller force--one division of infantry from his own army corps and

one brigade of cavalry, 9,000 men in all--was to move on Valencia,

and to take possession of that city and of the great naval arsenal of

Cartagena. His expedition was to be supported by a diversion from the

side of Catalonia, for Duhesme (in spite of the small number of his

army) was told to send a column along the sea-coast route, by Tarragona

and Tortosa, to threaten Valencia from the north. Moncey’s remaining

infantry divisions, which were not detailed for the expedition that

he was to lead, remained near Madrid, available (like Dupont’s second

and third divisions) for the reinforcement of Bessières or the

strengthening of the two expeditionary columns, as circumstances might

decide.

Clearly Dupont and Moncey were both sent forth to undertake impossible

tasks. Napoleon had not comprehended that it was not provincial

_émeutes_ that he had to crush, but the regular resistance of a nation.

To send a column of 12,000 men on a march through 300 miles of hostile

territory to Cadiz, or a column of 9,000 men on a march of 180 miles

to Valencia, presupposes the idea that the expeditions are affairs of

police and not strategical operations. Our astonishment grows greater

when we consider the character of the troops which Dupont and Moncey

commanded. In the army of the former there was _one_ veteran French

battalion--that of the Marines of the Guard, six of raw recruits of the

Legions of Reserve, two of Paris Municipal Guards (strangely distracted

from their usual duties), one of the contingent of the Helvetic

Confederation, and four of Swiss mercenaries in the Spanish service,

who had just been compelled to transfer their allegiance to Napoleon.

The cavalry consisted of four ‘provisional regiments’ of conscripts.

It was a military crime of the first order to send 13,000 troops of

this quality on an important expedition. Moncey’s force was of exactly

the same sort--eight battalions of conscripts formed in ‘provisional

regiments’ and two ‘provisional regiments’ of dragoons, plus a

Westphalian battalion, and two Spanish corps, who deserted _en masse_

when they were informed that they were to march against Valencia in

company with the marshal’s French troops. He had not one single company

or squadron of men belonging to the old imperial army.

Bessières was much more fortunate, as, among the 25,000 men of whom he

could dispose, there were four veteran battalions of the line and two

old regiments of cavalry; moreover there were sent ere long to his aid

three of the battalions of the Imperial Guard which lay at Madrid, and

four hundred sabres of the dragoons, chasseurs, and gendarmes of the

same famous corps.

The march of the two expeditionary columns began on May 24, a date

at which Murat and his master had but the faintest notion of the

wide-spreading revolt which was on foot. Moncey and Dupont were both

officers of distinction: the marshal was one of the oldest and the

most respected officers of the imperial army: he had won the grade

of general of division in the days of the Republic, and did not owe

his first start in life to Napoleon. Of all the marshals he was by

several years the senior. He passed as a steady, capable, and prudent

officer of vast experience. Dupont on the other hand was a young man,

who had first won a name by his brilliant courage at the combat of

Dirnstein in the Austrian war of 1805. Since then he had distinguished

himself at Friedland: he was on the way to rapid promotion, and, if

his expedition to Andalusia had succeeded, might have counted on a

duchy and a marshal’s bâton as his reward. Napoleon knew him as a brave

and loyal subordinate, but had never before given him an independent

command. He could hardly guess that, when left to his own inspirations,

such a brilliant officer would turn out to be dilatory, wanting in

initiative, and wholly destitute of moral courage. It is impossible to

judge with infallible accuracy how a good lieutenant will behave, when

first the load of responsibility is laid upon his shoulders. On May 24,

Dupont quitted Toledo with his 13,000 men: in the broad plains of La

Mancha he met with no opposition. Everywhere the people were sullen,

but no open hostility was shown. Even in the tremendous defiles of the

Sierra Morena he found no enemy, and crossed the great pass of Despeña

Perros without having to fire a shot. Coming out at its southern end

he occupied Andujar, the town at the main junction of roads in Eastern

Andalusia, on June 5. Here he got clear intelligence that the whole

country-side was up in arms: Seville had risen on May 26, and the rest

of the province had followed its example. There was a large assembly

of armed peasants mustering at Cordova, but the regular troops had not

yet been brought up to the front. General Castaños, whom the Junta had

placed in chief command, was still busily engaged in concentrating his

scattered battalions, forming them into brigades and divisions, and

hastily filling up with recruits the enormous gaps which existed in the

greater part of the corps. The regulars were being got together at a

camp at Carmona, south of the Guadalquivir, and not far from Seville.

The organization of new battalions, from the large number of volunteers

who remained when the old regiments were completed, took place

elsewhere. It would be weeks, rather than days, before the unorganized

mass took shape as an army, and Dupont might count on a considerable

respite before being attacked. But it was not only with the forces

of Castaños that he had to reckon: at Cordova, Seville, Granada, and

all the other towns of Andalusia, the peasants were flocking in to be

armed and told off into new regiments. There was every probability

that in a few days the movement would spread northward over the Sierra

Morena into La Mancha. An insurrection in this district would sever

Dupont’s communications with Madrid, for he had not left behind him any

sufficient detachments to guard the defiles which he had just passed,

or to keep open the great post-road to the capital across the plains of

New Castile. When he started he had been under the impression that it

was only local troubles in Andalusia that he had to suppress.

Dupont was already beginning to find that the insurgents were in much

greater numbers than he had expected when he crossed the Sierra Morena,

but till he had made trial of their strength he considered that it

would be wrong to halt. He had close before him the great city of

Cordova, a most tempting prize, and he resolved to push on at least so

far before taking it upon himself to halt and ask for reinforcements.

His continued movement soon brought about the first engagement of the

war, as at the bridge of Alcolea he found his advance disputed by a

considerable hostile force [June 7].

The military commandant of the district of Cordova was a certain Don

Pedro de Echávarri, a retired colonel whom the local Junta had just

placed in command of its levies. His force consisted of 10,000 or

12,000 peasants and citizens, who had only received their arms three

days before, and had not yet been completely told off into regiments

and companies. On the 4th of June he had been sent a small body of

old troops--one battalion of light infantry (Campo Mayor), and one

of militia (the 3rd Provincial Grenadiers of Andalusia)--1,400 men

in all, and with them eight guns. To have abandoned Cordova without

a fight would have discouraged the new levies, and probably have led

to Echávarri’s own death; for the armed mob which he commanded would

have torn him to pieces as a traitor if he had refused to give battle.

Accordingly he resolved to defend the passage of the Guadalquivir

at the point where the high-road from Andujar crossed it, six miles

outside Cordova. He barricaded the bridge and placed his guns and the

two old battalions on the hither side of the river, in a position

commanding the defile. On each flank of them some thousands of the

Cordovan insurgents were drawn up, while the remainder of the levy,

including all the mounted men, were sent across the bridge, and hidden

in some hills which overhung the road by which the French were coming.

They were ordered to show themselves, and to threaten to fall upon the

enemy from the flank, when he should have developed his attack upon

the bridge. If Echávarri had been guided by military considerations he

would not have dared to offer battle with such a raw and motley force

to 12,000 French troops--even if the latter were but the conscripts of

Dupont. But political necessity compelled him to make the attempt.

When Dupont found the position of Alcolea occupied, he cannonaded

the Spaniards for a time, and then launched his vanguard against the

bridge. The leading battalion (it was one of those formed of the Paris

Municipal Guards) stormed the barricades with some loss, and began to

cross the river. After it the rest of Pannetier’s brigade followed,

and began to deploy for the attack on the Spanish position. At this

moment the Cordovan levies beyond the river showed themselves, and

began to threaten a flank attack on Dupont. The latter sent his cavalry

against them, and a few charges soon turned back the demonstration, and

scattered the raw troops who had made it. Meanwhile Dupont’s infantry

advanced and overpowered the two regular battalions opposed to them:

seeing the line broken, the masses of insurgents on the flanks left the

field without any serious fighting. The whole horde gave way and poured

back into Cordova and right through the city, whose ruined walls they

made no attempt to defend. They had lost very few men, probably no more

than 200 in all, while the French had suffered even less, their only

casualties being thirty killed and eighty wounded, wellnigh all in the

battalion which had forced the barricades at the bridge.

There would be no reason to linger even for a moment over this

insignificant skirmish, if it had not been for the deplorable events

which followed--events which did more to give a ferocious character

to the war than any others, save perhaps the massacre by Calvo at

Valencia, which was taking place (as it chanced) on that very same day,

June 7.

Dupont, after giving his army a short rest, led it, still ranged in

battle array, across the six miles of plain which separated him from

Cordova. He expected to find the defeated army of Echávarri rallying

itself within the city. But on arriving in front of its gates, he found

the walls unoccupied and the suburbs deserted. The Cordovans had

closed their gates, but it was rather for the purpose of gaining time

for a formal surrender than with any intention of resisting. Dupont

had already opened negotiations for the unbarring of the gates, when a

few scattered shots were fired at the French columns from a tower in

the wall, or a house abutting on it. Treating this as a good excuse

for avoiding the granting of a capitulation, Dupont blew open one of

the gates with cannon, and his troops rushed into the empty streets

without finding any enemy to defeat. The impudent fiction of Thiers to

the effect that the entry of the French was seriously resisted, and

that desperate street-fighting took place, is sufficiently disproved

by the fact that in the so-called storming of Cordova the French lost

altogether two killed and seven wounded.

Nevertheless the city was sacked from cellar to garret. Dupont’s

undisciplined conscripts broke their ranks and ran amuck through the

streets, firing into windows and battering down doors. Wherever there

was the least show of resistance they slew off whole households: but

they were rather intent on pillage and rape than on murder. Cordova was

a wealthy place, its shops were well worth plundering, its churches

and monasteries full of silver plate and jewelled reliquaries, its

vaults of the strong wines of Andalusia. All the scenes of horror that

afterwards occurred at Badajoz or San Sebastian were rehearsed for the

first time at Cordova; and the army of Dupont had far less excuse than

the English marauders and murderers of 1812 and 1813. The French had

taken the city practically without loss and without opposition, and

could not plead that they had been maddened by the fall of thousands of

their comrades, or that they were drunk with the fury of battle after

many hours of desperate fighting at the breaches. Nevertheless, without

any excuse of this sort, Dupont’s army behaved in a way that would have

suited better the hordes of Tilly and Wallenstein. Their commanders

could not draw them away from their orgies and outrages till the next

day: indeed, it seems that many of the French officers disgraced

themselves by joining in the plunder. While the men were filling their

haversacks with private property, there were found colonels and even

generals who were not ashamed to load carts and coaches with pictures,

tapestries, and metal-work from churches and public buildings, and bags

of dollars from the treasury, where no less than 10,000,000 reals of

specie had been found. Laplanne, whom Dupont appointed commandant of

the place, took 2,000 ducats of blackmail from the Count of Villanueva,

on whom he had billeted himself, in return for preserving his mansion

from pillage. When the French left Cordova, nine days later, they had

with them more than 500 wheeled vehicles seized in the place which were

loaded with all sorts of plunder[101].

[101] It is astonishing to find that Napier (i. 114) expressly

denies that Cordova was sacked. Foy (iii. 231), the best of the

French historians, acknowledges that ‘unarmed civilians were

shot, churches and houses sacked, and scenes of horror enacted

such as had not been seen since the Christian drove out the

Moor in 1236.’ Captain Baste, the best narrator among French

eye-witnesses, speaks of assassination, general pillage, and

systematic rape. Cabany, Dupont’s laudatory biographer, confesses

(p. 89) to drunkenness and deplorable excesses, and allows that

Dupont distributed 300,000 francs as a ‘gratification’ among his

general officers. Many of the details given above are derived

from the official narrative of the Cordovan municipal authorities

printed in the _Madrid Gazette_.

Dupont had hardly settled down in Cordova, and begun to substitute

crushing military contributions for unsystematic pillage, when he found

himself cut off from his base. The valley of the Upper Guadalquivir,

and the slopes of the Sierra Morena, on both the southern and the

northern sides of the passes, rose in arms in the second week of

June. The French had left no detachments behind to preserve their

communications: between Cordova and Toledo there were only a few posts

where stragglers and sick had been collected, some isolated officers

busy on surveying or on raising contributions, and some bodies of ten

or twenty men escorting couriers or belated trains of wagons bearing

food or ammunition to the front. Most of these unfortunate people were

cut up by the insurgents, who displayed from the first a most ferocious

spirit. The news of the sack of Cordova drove them to the commission

of inhuman cruelties; some prisoners were blinded, others tortured

to death: Foy says that the brigadier-general Réné, surprised while

crossing the Morena, was thrown into a vat of boiling water and scalded

to death[102]. The parties, which escaped massacre hastily drew back

towards Madrid and Toledo, and soon there was not a French soldier

within 150 miles of Dupont’s isolated division.

That general did not at first realize the unpleasantness of his

position. He had been sufficiently surprised by the opposition offered

at Alcolea, and the rumours of the concentration of the army of

Castaños, to make him unwilling to advance beyond Cordova. He wrote

to Murat asking for reinforcements, and especially for troops to keep

open his lines of communication. There were, he said, at least 25,000

regular troops marching against him: the English might disembark

reinforcements at Cadiz: the whole province was in a flame: it was

impossible to carry out the Grand-Duke of Berg’s original orders to

push straight on to Seville. But matters were even worse than he

thought: in a few days he realized, from the non-arrival of couriers

from Madrid, that he was cut off: moreover, his foraging parties, even

when they were only a few miles outside Cordova, began to be molested

and sometimes destroyed.

[102] Foy, iii. 233. Cabany (p. 96), on the other hand, says that

he was sawn in two between planks. Gille, in his _Mémoires d’un

Conscrit de 1808_ (p. 85), gives other distressing details.

After waiting nine days, Dupont very wisely resolved to fall back, and

to endeavour to reopen communications with his base. On June 16 he

evacuated Cordova, much to the regret of his soldiers, who resented the

order to abandon such comfortable quarters. On the nineteenth, dragging

with him an enormous convoy of plunder, he reached Andujar, the great

junction of roads where the routes from the passes of the Morena come

down to the valley of the Guadalquivir. It would have been far wiser

to go still further back, and to occupy the debouches of the defiles,

instead of lingering in the plain of Andalusia. He should have retired

to Baylen, the town at the foot of the mountains, or to La Carolina,

the fortress in the upland which commands the southern exit of the

Despeña Perros. But he was vainly dreaming of resuming the attempt to

conquer the whole south of Spain when reinforcements should arrive, and

Andujar tempted him, since it was the best point from which he could

threaten at once Cordova, Jaen, and Granada, the three chief towns of

Eastern Andalusia. Here, therefore, he abode from June 19 to July 18, a

wasted month during which the whole situation of affairs in Spain was

changed.

Here we must leave Dupont, while we treat of the doings of the other

French generals during the month of June. While the invasion of

Andalusia was running its course, both Moncey and Bessières had been

seriously engaged.

The first named of the two marshals was placed in charge of one-half of

the offensive part of Napoleon’s plan for the subjugation of Spain,

while Bessières was mainly responsible for the defensive part, i.e.

for the maintaining of the communications between Madrid and Bayonne.

It is with Moncey’s expedition against Valencia, therefore, that we

must first deal. Although he started a few days later than Dupont,

that marshal was (like his colleague) still dominated by the idea that

possessed both Napoleon and Murat--that the insurrections were purely

local, and that their suppression was a mere measure of police. This

notion accounts for his choice of route: there are two roads from

Madrid to Valencia, a long and fairly easy one which passes through

the gap between the mountains of Murcia and those of Cuenca, by San

Clemente, Chinchilla, and the plain of Almanza, and a shorter one,

full of dangerous defiles and gorges, which cuts through the heart

of the hills by Tarancon, Valverde, and Requeña. The former crosses

the watershed between the valley of the Tagus and those of the rivers

flowing into the Mediterranean Sea at the easiest point, the latter at

one of the most difficult ones. But Moncey, thinking only of the need

to deal promptly with the Valencian insurgents, chose the shorter and

more difficult route.

He left Madrid on June 4: a week later he was near Cuenca, in the

midst of the mountains. Not a shot had yet been fired at him, but as

he pressed eastward he found the villages more and more deserted, till

at last he had reached a region that seemed to have become suddenly

depopulated. He turned a little out of his way on the eleventh to

occupy the city of Cuenca[103], the capital of this wild and rugged

country, but resumed his advance on the eighteenth, after receiving

from Madrid peremptory orders to press forward[104]. There lay before

him two tremendous defiles, which must be passed if he was to reach

Valencia. The first was the deep-sunk gorge of the river Cabriel, where

the highway plunges down a cliff, crosses a ravine, and climbs again

up a steep opposing bank. The second, thirty miles further on, was the

Pass of the Cabrillas, the point where the road, on reaching the edge

of the central plateau of Spain, suddenly sinks down into the low-lying

fertile plain of Valencia.

[103] Cuenca lies twenty-five miles off the main Madrid-Valencia

road, well to the north of it.

[104] Moncey’s delay of a week at Cuenca provoked Savary (now

acting for the invalided Murat) to such an extent, that he sent

forward the cavalry-general Excelmans, nominally to take charge

of Moncey’s vanguard, really to spur the cautious marshal on to

action. But Excelmans was captured on the way by peasants, and

sent a prisoner to Valencia.

If the Conde de Cervellon, the general whom the Valencian Junta had put

in charge of its army, had concentrated on these defiles the 7,000 or

8,000 regular troops who were to be found in the province and in the

neighbouring district of Murcia, it is probable that Moncey would never

have forced his way through the mountains; for each of the positions,

if held in sufficient force, is practically impregnable. But the

Spaniards had formed a deeply rooted notion that the invader would come

by the easy road over the plains, by San Clemente and Almanza, and not

through the mountains of Cuenca. The whole of the troops of Murcia and

the greater part of those of Valencia had been directed on Almanza,

where there was a good position for opposing an army descending from

Castile. Only a small detachment had been sent to watch the northern

road, and its commander, Don Pedro Adorno, had stationed at the bridge

of the Cabriel no more than one battalion of Swiss mercenaries (No.

1 of Traxler’s regiment) and 500 armed peasants with four guns. The

position was too extensive to be held by 1,500 men: Moncey found that

the river was fordable in several places, and detached a small column

to cross at each, while two battalions dashed at the bridge. In spite

of the steepness of the ravine the French got over at more than one

point, and climbed the opposite slope, whereupon the peasants fled,

and half the Swiss battalion was surrounded and captured while it was

trying to cover the retreat of the guns[105]. Adorno, who was lying

some miles to the rear, at Requeña, when he should have been present

in full force at the bridge, ought now to have fallen back to cover

Valencia, but in a moment of panic he fled across country to join the

army at Almanza [June 21].

[105] Moncey induced a good many of these mercenaries to take

service with him; but they deserted him when the time of trouble

began.

This disgraceful flight left the Valencian Junta almost destitute of

troops for the defence of the still stronger defile of the Cabrillas,

which Moncey had yet to force before he could descend into the plain.

The Junta hurried up to it two regiments of recruits--one of which is

said to have been first practised in the manual exercise the day before

it went into action[106]. These, with 300 old soldiers, the wrecks of

the combat at the Cabriel, and three guns, tried to hold the pass.

Moncey turned both flanks of this very inadequate defending force, and

then broke through its centre. Many of the Spaniards dispersed, 500

were slain or captured, and the rest fled down the pass to Valencia.

After riding round the position, Moncey remarked that it was so strong

that with 6,000 steady troops he would undertake to hold it against

Napoleon himself and the Grand Army [June 24].

[106] Arteche, _Guerra de la Independencia_, ii. 150.

Two days later, after a rapid march down the defile and across the

fertile Valencian plain, Moncey presented himself before the gates of

its capital, and demanded its surrender. But he found that there was

still much fighting to be done: a small column of regulars had arrived

in the city, though the main army from Almanza was still far distant.

With three battalions of old troops and 7,000 Valencian levies, Don

José Caro, a naval officer and brother of the celebrated Marquis of

La Romana, had taken up a position four miles outside the city at San

Onofre. He had covered his front with some irrigation canals, and

barricaded the road. Moncey had to spend the twenty-seventh in beating

back this force into Valencia, not without some sharp fighting.

On the next day he made a general assault upon the city. Valencia was

not a modern fortress: it had merely a wet ditch and an enceinte of

mediaeval walls. There were several points where it seemed possible

to escalade the defences, and the marshal resolved to storm the

place. But he had forgotten that he had to reckon with the auxiliary

fortifications which the populace had constructed during the last

three days. They had built up the gates with beams and earth,

barricaded the streets, mounted cannon on the walls where it was

possible, and established several batteries of heavy guns to sweep the

main approaches from the open country. The city being situated in a

perfectly level plain, and in ground much cut up by irrigation canals,

it had been found possible to inundate much of the low ground. As the

river Guadalaviar washed the whole northern side of the walls, Moncey’s

practicable points of attack were restricted to certain short spaces on

their southern front.

The marshal first sent a Spanish renegade, a Colonel Solano, to summon

the place. But the Valencians were exasperated rather than cowed by

their late defeats; their leaders--especially Padre Rico, a fighting

priest of undoubted courage and capacity--had worked them up to a high

pitch of enthusiasm, and they must have remembered that, if they

submitted, they would have to render an account for Calvo’s abominable

massacre of the French residents. Accordingly the Junta returned

the stirring answer that ‘the people of Valencia preferred to die

defending itself rather than to open any sort of negotiations.’ A mixed

multitude of 20,000 men, of whom some 8,000 were troops of one sort

and another[107], manned the walls and barricades and waited for the

assault.

[107] But only 1,500 were regulars; the rest were newly

incorporated levies.

After riding round the exposed front of the city, Moncey resolved to

attack only the south-eastern section. He formed two columns, each of

a brigade, of which one assailed the gate of San José near the river,

while another marched on the gate of Quarte, further to the south.

Considering the weak resistance that he had met at the Cabriel and at

the Pass of the Cabrillas, he had formed a sanguine expectation that

the Valencians would not make a firm stand, even behind walls and

barricades. In this he was wofully deceived: the French had yet to

learn that the enemy, though helpless in the open, was capable of the

most obstinate resistance when once he had put himself under cover of

bricks and earth. The first assault was beaten off with heavy loss,

though Moncey’s conscripts showed great dash, reached the foot of the

defences, and tried to tear down the palisades with their hands. The

marshal should have seen at once that he had too large a business in

hand for the 8,000 men of whom he could dispose. But he persevered,

bringing forward his field artillery to batter the gates and earthworks

before a second assault should be made. It was to no purpose, as they

were soon silenced by the guns of position which the besieged had

prepared for this very purpose. Late in the afternoon Moncey risked a

second general attack, embracing the gate of Santa Lucia as well as the

other points which he had before assailed. But the stormers were beaten

off with even heavier loss than on the first assault, and bodies of

the defenders, slipping out by posterns and side-gates, harassed the

retreating columns by a terrible flanking fire.

Clearly the game was up: Moncey had lost at least 1,200 men, a sixth of

his available infantry force[108]. He was much to blame for pressing

the attack when his first movement failed, for as Napoleon (wise after

the event) said in his commentary on the marshal’s operations: ‘On ne

prend pas par le collet une ville de quatre-vingt mille âmes.’ If the

first charge did not carry the walls, and the garrison stood firm, the

French could only get in by the use of siege artillery, of which they

did not possess a single piece.

[108] Foy, generally a very fair calculator of French casualties,

gives the marshal’s losses at 2,000 men in all, which seems

rather a high figure. Napier (i. 95) says that he had 800 wounded

to carry, which supposes a total loss of 1,100 or 1,200. Thiers’

estimate of 300 is as obviously absurd as most of the other

figures given by that historian. No such loss would have stopped

a French army--even an army of conscripts.

Moncey’s position was now very dangerous: he knew that the country was

up in arms behind him, and that his communications with Madrid were

completely cut. He was also aware that Cervellon’s army from Almanza

must be marching towards him, unless it had taken the alternative

course of pressing in on his rear, to occupy the difficult passes by

which he had come down into the Valencian coast-plain. His conscripts

were dreadfully discouraged by their unexpected reverse: he was

hampered by a great convoy of wounded men, whose transport would cause

serious delays. Nothing had been heard of the diversion which General

Chabran, with troops detached from Duhesme’s army in Catalonia, had

been ordered to execute towards the northern side of Valencia. As a

matter of fact that general had not even crossed the Ebro. Retreat was

necessary: of the three possible lines on which it could be executed,

that along the coast road, in the direction where Chabran was to be

expected, was thought of for a moment, but soon abandoned: it was too

long, and the real base of the marshal’s corps was evidently Madrid,

and not Barcelona. The route by Tarancon and the Cabrillas, by which

the army had reached Valencia, was terribly difficult: clearly it would

be necessary to force again the defiles which had been cleared on the

way down to the coast. And it was possible that 9,000 or 10,000 regular

troops might now be occupying them.

Accordingly, Moncey resolved to retire by the third road, that

through the plains by Almanza and San Clemente. If, as was possible,

Cervellon’s whole army was now blocking it, they must be fought and

driven off: a battle in the plain would be less dangerous than a battle

at the Cabrillas or the bridge of the Cabriel. Before daylight on June

29, therefore, the marshal moved off on this road.

Luck now came to his aid: the incapable Spanish commander had made up

his mind that the French would retreat by the way that they had come,

and had sent forward General Llamas with all the troops of Murcia

to seize the defile of the Cabrillas. He himself followed with the

rest of the regulars, but halted at Alcira, behind the Xucar. Thus

while Moncey was marching to the south, the main body of his enemies

was moving northward. Cervellon refused to fight in the absence of

Llamas, so nothing was left in the marshal’s way save bands of peasants

who occupied the fords of the Xucar and the road between Jativa and

Almanza: these he easily brushed away in a couple of skirmishes. Nor

did a small column detached in pursuit from Valencia dare to meddle

seriously with his rearguard. So without even exchanging a shot with

the Spanish field-army, which Cervellon had so unwisely scattered and

sent off on a false track, Moncey was able to make his way by Jativa,

Almanza, and Chinchilla back towards La Mancha [July 2-6].

At San Clemente he met with reinforcements under General Frère,

consisting of the third division of Dupont’s original corps, some

5,000 strong. This division had been sent to search for him by Savary,

who had been filled with fears for his safety when he found that the

communications were cut, and that Cuenca and all the hill-country had

risen behind the expeditionary force. After vainly searching for Moncey

on the northern road, in the direction of Requeña, Frère at last got

news that he had taken the southern line of retreat, and successfully

joined him on July 8. At San Clemente the marshal intended to halt

and to wait for Cervellon’s arrival, in the hope of beating him in

the open. But a few days later he received news from Madrid, to the

effect that Savary wished to draw back the French forces nearer to the

capital, and that Frère, at least, must move in to Ocaña or Toledo.

Much displeased at finding a junior officer acting as the lieutenant of

the Emperor--for Savary was but a lieutenant-general, while he himself

was a marshal--Moncey threw up the whole scheme of waiting to fight

the Valencian army, and marched back to the immediate neighbourhood of

Madrid [July 15].

There can be no doubt that the marshal had extraordinary luck in this

short campaign. If he had been opposed by a general less timid and

incapable than the Conde de Cervellon, he might have found arrayed

against him, at the bridge of the Cabriel, or at the Cabrillas, a

considerable body of regulars--eight or nine thousand men--with a

numerous artillery, instead of the insignificant forces which he

actually defeated. Again, while he was trying to storm Valencia,

Cervellon might have attacked him in the rear with great chance of

success; or the Spaniard might have kept his forces united, and opposed

Moncey as he retreated from before Valencia. Instead of doing so he

split up his army into detachments, and the greater part of it was sent

off far from the central point of his operations, and did not fire

a shot. Truly such a general was, as Thucydides remarks concerning

the Spartans of old, ‘very convenient for his adversaries.’ A less

considerate enemy would have had a fair chance of bringing Moncey’s

campaign to the same disastrous end that befell that of Dupont.

SECTION III: CHAPTER II

OPERATIONS IN THE NORTH: THE SIEGE OF SARAGOSSA

Having watched the failure of the expeditions by which Napoleon had

hoped to complete the conquest of Southern Spain, we must turn our eyes

northward, to Madrid and the long line of communications which joined

the capital to the French base of operations at Vittoria, Pampeluna,

and San Sebastian. At the moment when the Valencian and Andalusian

expeditions were sent out from Madrid and Toledo, Murat had still

under his hand a large body of troops, the second and third division

of Moncey’s corps, the second and third of Dupont’s, and the 5,000

horse and foot of the Imperial Guard--in all more than 30,000 men.

Bessières, if the garrison of the northern fortresses and some newly

arrived reinforcements are added to his original force, had more than

25,000. With these the grand-duke and the marshal had to contain the

insurrection in Northern Spain, and to beat back the advance of the

army of Galicia.

The furthest points to the north and east to which the wave of

insurrection had washed up were Logroño and Tudela in the Ebro

valley, Santander on the coast of the Bay of Biscay, and Palencia and

Valladolid in Old Castile. All these places lay in Bessières’ sphere of

action, and he promptly took measures to suppress the rising at each

point. On June 2 a column sent out from Vittoria reoccupied Logroño,

slaying some hundreds of half-armed peasants, and executing some of

their leaders who had been taken prisoners. On the same day a stronger

force, six battalions and two squadrons under General Merle, marched

from Burgos on Santander. Driving before him the insurgents of the

Upper Ebro valley, Merle advanced as far as Reynosa, and was about

to force the defiles of the Cantabrian Mountains and to descend on

to Santander, when he received orders to return and to take part in

suppressing the more dangerous rising in the plains of Old Castile.

News had arrived that the captain-general, Cuesta, was collecting a

force at Valladolid, which threatened to cut the road between Burgos

and Madrid. To deal with him Bessières told off Merle, and another

small column of four battalions and two regiments of _chasseurs_ under

his brilliant cavalry-brigadier, Lasalle, one of the best of Napoleon’s

younger generals. After sacking Torquemada (where some peasants

attempted an ineffectual resistance) and ransoming the rich cathedral

town of Palencia, Lasalle got in touch with the forces of Cuesta at

the bridge of Cabezon, where the main road from Burgos to Valladolid

crosses the river Pisuerga. On the eleventh of June Merle joined him:

on the twelfth their united forces, 9,000 strong, fell upon the levies

of the Captain-general.

Throughout the two years during which he held high command in the

field, Gregorio de la Cuesta consistently displayed an arrogance

and an incapacity far exceeding that of any other Spanish general.

Considering the state of his embryo ‘army of Castile,’ it was insane

for him to think of offering battle. He had but four cannon; his only

veteran troops were 300 cavalry, mainly consisting of the squadrons

which had accompanied Ferdinand VII as escort on his unhappy journey

to Bayonne. His infantry was composed of 4,000 or 5,000 volunteers of

the Valladolid district, who had not been more than a fortnight under

arms, and had seen little drill and still less musketry practice. It

was absolutely wicked to take them into action. But the men, in their

ignorance, clamoured for a battle, and Cuesta did not refuse it to

them. His dispositions were simply astounding; instead of barricading

or destroying the bridge and occupying the further bank, he led his

unhappy horde across the river and drew them up in a single line, with

the bridge at their backs.

On June 12 Lasalle came rushing down upon the ‘army of Castile,’ and

dashed it into atoms at the first shock. The Spanish cavalry fled

(as they generally did throughout the war), the infantry broke, the

bridge and the guns were captured. Some hundreds of the unfortunate

recruits were sabred, others were drowned in the river. Cuesta fled

westwards with the survivors to Medina de Rio Seco, abandoning to its

fate Valladolid, which Lasalle occupied without opposition on the same

evening. The combat by which this important city was won had cost the

French only twelve killed and thirty wounded.

This stroke had completely cleared Bessières’ right flank: there

could be no more danger from the north-west till the army of Galicia

should think proper to descend from its mountains to contest with

the French the dominion of the plains of Leon and Old Castile. The

marshal could now turn his attention to other fronts of his extensive

sphere of command. After the fight of Cabezon Merle’s division was

sent northward, to conquer the rugged coastland of the province of

Santander. There were frightful defiles between Reynosa and the shore

of the Bay of Biscay: the peasants had blocked the road and covered

the hillsides with _sungahs_. But the defence was feeble--as might be

expected from the fact that the district could only put into the field

one battalion of militia[109] and a crowd of recent levies, who had

been about three weeks under arms. On June 23 Merle finished clearing

the defiles and entered Santander, whose bishop and Junta fled, with

the wreck of their armed force, into the Asturias.

[109] ‘Provincial of Laredo,’ 571 bayonets.

Meanwhile the troops under Bessières had been equally active, but with

very different results, on the Middle Ebro and in the direction of

Aragon. It was known at Burgos and at Bayonne that Saragossa had risen

like the rest of the Spanish cities. But it was also known that there

was hardly a man of regular troops in the whole kingdom of Aragon:

here, as in Old Castile or in Santander, the invaders would have to

deal only with raw levies, who would probably disperse after their

first defeat. Saragossa itself, the central focus of the rising, was no

modern fortress, but a town of 60,000 souls, surrounded by a mediaeval

wall more fitted to assist in the levy of _octroi_ duties, than in a

defence against a regular army. Accordingly the column under Lefebvre

Desnouettes, which was directed to start from Pampeluna against the

Aragonese insurgents, was one of very moderate size--3,500 infantry,

1,000 horse, and a single battery of field artillery[110]. But it was

to be joined a few days later by another brigade[111] and battery,

which would bring its total force up to something more than 6,000 men.

[110] They were a battalion each of the 15th, 47th, and 70th of

the line, all old troops, and the 2nd ‘Supplementary Regiment of

the legions of Reserve,’ two battalions strong, with a regiment

of Polish lancers and the 5th _escadron de marche_.

[111] The 1st regiment of the Vistula (two batts.) and the 6th

_bataillon de marche_.

The resources of the kingdom of Aragon were large, but the patriots

were, when the war broke out, in a condition most unfavourable for

strenuous action. The province was one of those which had been denuded

of its usual garrison: there only remained part of a cavalry regiment,

the ‘King’s Dragoons,’ whose squadrons had been so depleted that it had

only 300 men and ninety horses, with a weak battalion of Volunteers of

Aragon--some 450 men--and 200 gunners and sappers. In addition there

had straggled into Saragossa about 500 men from various Spanish corps

at Madrid, Burgos, and elsewhere, who had deserted their colours when

the news of the insurrection reached them. This was a small _cadre_

on which to create a whole army, but the feat was accomplished by the

energetic young man who put himself at the head of the rising in the

middle valley of the Ebro. Joseph Palafox, the second son of a noble

family of Aragon, had been one of the suite which accompanied Ferdinand

VII to Bayonne, and was an indignant spectator of the abominable

treachery which there took place. When the tragedy was over he was

fortunate enough to escape to Spain: he retired to his native district,

took a prominent part in rousing the Aragonese, and was chosen by

them as Captain-general when the weak or incapable Guillelmi was

deposed. He was only twenty-eight years of age, and had no military

experience, for he had only served in the peaceful ranks of the king’s

bodyguard[112]. He had been a courtier rather than a soldier, yet at

the critical moment of his life it cannot be denied that he displayed

a courage and energy which justified the high opinions which the

Aragonese entertained of him. He kept Saragossa clean from the plague

of political assassination, which was so rife in every other corner of

Spain. He wisely got his appointment as Captain-general confirmed by

the Cortes of Aragon, which he summoned to meet in its ancient form. He

found out the most capable leaders of the populace, and always asked

their advice before taking any important step. But his main virtue was

his untiring activity: considering the procrastination and want of

organizing power displayed by most of the Spanish generals, his talent

for rapid work seems remarkable. He was only placed in power on May 26,

and by June 8 he was already engaged with the French. In this short

time he had raised and organized seven regiments of new levies--7,400

men in all. They were stiffened with the deserters from Madrid, and

commanded by such retired and half-pay officers as could be got

together. There were some scores of cannon in the arsenal of Saragossa,

but hardly any gunners, and a very small store of ammunition. Palafox

started a powder factory and a manufactory of small arms, turned the

workmen of the Canal of Aragon into a corps of sappers, and made a

general levy of horses to remount his single regiment of dragoons,

and to provide his artillery with draught animals. This was but the

commencement of Palafox’s activity: ere Saragossa was saved he had

raised the whole kingdom, and got more than 30,000 men under arms[113].

[112] Palafox has been so often abused that I take the

opportunity of quoting the description of him given by Sir

Charles Vaughan, one of the three or four Englishmen who saw

him at Saragossa in the day of his power, and the only one who

has left his impressions on record. He lived with Palafox for

some five weeks in October-November, 1808. ‘This distinguished

nobleman is about thirty-four years of age [an overstatement by

six years]; his person is of middling stature, his eyes lively

and expressive, and his whole deportment that of a perfectly

well-bred man. In private life, so far as my daily intercourse

gave me an opportunity of judging, his manners were kind,

unaffected, and ingratiating. From the great readiness with

which he dispatched business, and from the letters and public

papers which were written by him with apparent great ease in my

presence, I was led to form a very favourable opinion of his

talents. There was a quickness in his manner of seizing objects,

an impatience until they were accomplished. He was fond of

talking of the events of the siege, and anxious to introduce to

us men of every class who had distinguished themselves. There

was a vivacity in his manner and conversation, an activity in

his exertions as an officer, that is rarely met in a Spaniard.

It was always a most cheering and interesting thing to ride with

him through the streets of Saragossa. The joy and exultation of

the people as he passed evidently sprung from the heart. To have

acquitted himself to their satisfaction was no mean reward, and

forms a sufficient answer to all the unworthy attempts (which

I have been disgusted to witness) to depreciate his character’

(_Vaughan Papers_, from an unpublished journal of 1808).

[113] Napier is always hard on Spanish officers and

administrators, but I think that of the whole class Palafox

receives the most undeserved contumely from his pen. He holds him

to have been a mere puppet, whose strings were pulled by obscure

Saragossan demagogues like the celebrated Tio Jorge. He even

doubts his personal courage. Both Spanish and French historians

unite in taking the Captain-general quite seriously, and I think

they are right. His best testimonial is the harsh and vindictive

treatment that he received at Napoleon’s hands.

Already by the eighth of June he had hurried out a small force to

meet Lefebvre Desnouettes at Tudela, the frontier town on the Ebro,

which in the Middle Ages had been known as ‘the key of Aragon.’ This

force, which consisted of 2,000 of his new levies, was placed under the

command of his own elder brother the Marquis of Lazan, who had escaped

from Madrid under the pretext that he would bring pressure to bear upon

the Captain-general and induce him to submit to Murat. The marquis,

though joined by 3,000 or 4,000 peasants and citizens of Tudela, was

easily routed by the French column, and forced back to Mallen sixteen

miles nearer to Saragossa. Lefebvre followed him, after having executed

a certain number of the notables of Tudela and sacked the town.

Reinforced by more of his brother’s new levies, Lazan offered battle

again at Mallen, in a bad position, where his men had little protection

against the enemy’s artillery and the charges of his Polish lancers. He

was naturally routed with severe losses. But even then the Aragonese

were not broken in spirit: Palafox himself marched out with the

remainder of his new levies, some of whom had not been five days under

arms. At Alagon, only seventeen miles from the gates of Saragossa, he

drew up 6,000 infantry (of whom 500 were regulars) 150 dragoons and

four guns, trying to cover himself by the line of the Canal of Aragon

and some olive groves. It is hardly necessary to say that his artillery

was overpowered by the fourteen pieces of the French, and that his

infantry gave back when furiously assailed by the Poles. Palafox

charged at the head of his two squadrons of dragoons, but was wounded

in the arm and had his horse killed under him. His routed followers

carried him back into the city, where the majority took refuge, while

the more faint-hearted fled beyond it to Alcaniz and other points in

Upper Aragon.

Elated by three easy victories, Lefebvre thought that there was nothing

more to do but to enter Saragossa in triumph. He was much deceived:

the citizens were standing at bay behind their flimsy defences, having

recovered in a single night from the dismay caused by the arrival of

the broken bands who had fought at Alagon. The military conditions

were not unlike those which Moncey had to face in another region,

a fortnight later: Saragossa like Valencia lies in an extensive

plain, with its northern side washed by the waters of the Ebro, and

its eastern by those of the shallow and fordable Huerba: but its

southern and western fronts are exposed to attack from the open. It

was surrounded by a brick wall of ten to twelve feet high, interrupted

in several places by convents and barracks whose blank back-faces

continued the line of the _enceinte_[114]. Inside the wall were the

crowded lanes in which dwelt the 60,000 citizens, a tangle of narrow

streets save the one broad Coso which intersects the place from east

to west. The houses were mostly solid and lofty structures of brick

and stone, with the heavy barred windows and doors usual in Spain.

The strength, such as it was, of Saragossa consisted not in its outer

shell, but in the closely packed houses, convents, and churches, each

of which might serve at need as a small fortress. Many of them were

solid enough to resist any form of attack save that of being battered

by artillery. When barricades had been thrown across the lanes from

side to side, each square of buildings would need to be assaulted

and captured piecemeal. But none of the French officers who arrived

in front of Saragossa on June 15, 1808, had any conception that the

problem about to be presented to them was that of street-fighting

carried on from house to house. There had been many sieges since the

war of the French Revolution began, but none carried on in this manner.

In Italy or Germany no one had ever heard of a city which tried, for

want of bastions and curtains, to defend itself by barricades: such

places always saved themselves by an obvious and blameless surrender.

[114] The chief of these buildings inserted in the wall were the

convents or Santa Engracia and the Misericordia, and the cavalry

barracks.

But if a siege was coming, there was one position just outside the town

which was clearly destined to play a chief part in it. Just across the

Huerba lay a broad flat-topped hill, the Monte Torrero, which rose to

the height of 180 feet, and overlooked all the south side of the place.

It was such a splendid vantage-ground for siege-batteries, that the

defenders were bound to hold it, lest it should fall into the power

of the French. It should have been crowned by a strong detached fort,

or even by an entrenched camp. But Palafox in the short time at his

disposal had only been able to throw up a couple of open batteries upon

it, and to loophole the extensive magazines and workshops of the Canal

of Aragon, which were scattered over the summit of the hill, while the

canal itself flowed, as a sort of outer defence, around its further

foot.

Saragossa had two other outlying defences: the one was the Aljafferia,

an old square castle with four towers at its corners, which had been

the abode of Moorish emirs, and of Aragonese kings, but now served

as the prison of the Inquisition. It lay a couple of hundred yards

outside the western gate (Puerto del Portillo) of the city. It was a

solid brick structure, but quite unsuited to resist a serious artillery

attack. The second outwork was the suburb of San Lazaro beyond the

Ebro: it was connected with Saragossa by a new and handsome bridge,

known as the ‘Puente de Piedra,’ or ‘Stone Bridge.’ Cannon were

mounted at its southern end so as to sweep its whole length.

On June 15, Lefebvre-Desnouettes appeared before the city, driving

before him some Spanish outposts which he had met upon the way. He

resolved at once to carry the place by storm, a task which, considering

the weakness of its walls, did not seem impossible, and all the more

so because the gates stood open, each defended only by an earthwork

containing two or three guns. The French general, neglecting the Monte

Torrero and its commanding slopes, attacked only the western front

between the gate of Portillo, near the Ebro, and the gate of Santa

Engracia, close to the banks of the Huerba. His French brigade assailed

the northern and his Polish regiment the southern half of this long

line of walls and buildings. His two field-batteries were run up into

the fighting line, to batter the earthworks and to reply to the Spanish

guns. The only reserve which he kept in hand consisted of his brigade

of cavalry.

The resistance offered to Lefebvre was of the most irregular sort:

Palafox himself was not present, and his second-in-command, Bustamante,

seems to have done little in the way of issuing orders. The 6,000

half-trained levies which had fought at Alagon had not recovered their

organization, and were hopelessly mixed in the line of defence with

4,000 or 5,000 armed citizens of all ages and classes who had gone to

the walls, each parish under the charge of two or three local leaders,

who paid little obedience to the commands of the regular officers.

The Captain-General himself had started out that morning at the head

of 150 dragoons, and 200 infantry, all regulars, by the road beyond

the Ebro. He had told his subordinates that he was intending to raise

in Upper Aragon a force with which he would fall on Lefebvre’s line

of communications, and so compel him to abandon his attack on the

city. But there is no doubt that he had really conceived grave doubts

as to the possibility of Saragossa defending itself, and intended to

avoid being captured within its walls. He wished to have the power of

continuing the struggle outside, in case the French should penetrate

into the city. On the morning after the fight at Alagon, bruised and

wounded, he was in a pessimistic frame of mind, as his resolve shows.

But there is no occasion to brand him, as does Napier, with timidity:

his previous and his subsequent conduct preclude such a charge. It was

merely an error of judgement: the Captain-General should have stayed

behind to defend his capital, and have sent his brother Lazan, or some

other officer whom he could trust, to raise the country-side in the

rear of the French[115]. His retirement might well have discouraged

the Saragossans and led to deplorable results; but as a matter of

fact, Lefebvre’s attack began so soon after he had ridden out over the

bridge, that the news of his departure had not yet got abroad, and the

populace were still under the impression that he was among them. It was

not till the fighting was over that he was missed.

[115] That Palafox and those about him despaired of the defence

is honestly confessed in the Marquis de Lazan’s _Campaña del

verano de 1808_. He and his brother ‘had not believed that an

open town defended by untrained peasants could defend itself,’

and the news of Lefebvre’s first repulse astonished as much as it

pleased them.

Lefebvre-Desnouettes before Saragossa was in exactly the same position

as Moncey before Valencia, and acted in the same way, pushing forward

a rather reckless attack on the city in full confidence that the

Spaniards would not stand before an assault pressed home. He had,

moreover, the advantages of being able to attack a wider front, of

having no ditches and inundations to cramp his operations, and of

dealing with walls even weaker than those of Valencia, and defended by

artillery of which very few were pieces of heavy calibre.

The first attack was delivered in the most dashing, not to say

foolhardy, style. At the gate of Santa Engracia a squadron of Polish

lancers, who led the van, charged into and over the small battery which

covered the ingress into the city. Their wild rush carried them right

into the place, in spite of a dropping fire of musketry directed upon

them from every house that they passed. Turning into a broad lane to

the left, these headstrong horsemen rode forward, losing men at every

step, till they were brought to a stand in the Plaza del Portillo,

where the majority were shot down; a very few succeeded in escaping by

the way along which they had come. The Polish infantry, which should

have followed closely on the heels of the lancers, penetrated no

further than the earthwork at the gate, where it got closely engaged

with the Spaniards who held the neighbouring convent of Santa Engracia.

Exposed in the open street to a heavy fire from behind walls and

windows, the leading battalion gave way, and retired into the olive

groves and buildings outside the gate.

Meanwhile the French brigade of Lefebvre’s division attacked the gates

of Portillo and the Carmen and the adjoining cavalry barracks. At

the last-named post they scaled the walls, which were particularly

low and weak at this point, and got into the city. But at the gates

the batteries in the narrow ingress held them back. After a sharp

skirmish, a general rush of peasants, soldiers, and citizens, swept

out the invaders from the cavalry barracks, and the front of defence

was restored. Lefebvre would have done well to pause before renewing

his assault: but (like Moncey at Valencia) he was loth to believe that

the enemy would face a persistent attempt to break in. He accordingly

ordered both the columns to renew their attacks: for some time it

seemed likely that he might succeed, for the French forced both the

Carmen and the Portillo gates and reoccupied the cavalry barracks,

while the Poles burst in for a second time at Santa Engracia. But it

proved impossible to make any further advance into the city, where

every house was full of musketeers and the narrow lanes were blocked

with artillery, which swept them from end to end. When it became clear

that the enemy were making no further progress, the Spaniards rallied

behind the Bull-Ring on the Portillo front, and in the convent of Santa

Engracia on the southern front, and swept out the decimated battalions

of Lefebvre by a determined charge[116].

[116] The Spaniards have called this first attack on Saragossa

the action of the Eras del Rey, the name of the meadows outside

the Portillo and Carmen gates, in which the French columns massed

themselves for the attack.

It is not surprising to find that the assailants had suffered very

heavily in such a desperate attack on walls and barricades teeming with

defenders worked up to a high pitch of patriotic frenzy. Lefebvre lost

700 men, and left behind him at the Portillo gate several guns which

had been brought up too close to the place, and could not be dragged

off under the dreadful musketry fire from the walls, and the flanking

discharges from the neighbouring castle of Aljafferia. The Spaniards,

fighting under cover except at the moment of their final charges, had

suffered comparatively little: their loss is estimated at not much over

300 men. They might well be proud of their success: they had certainly

showed a heroic spirit in fighting so obstinately after three crushing

defeats in the open field. That a practically unfortified town should

defend itself by street-fighting was a new idea: and that peasants

and citizens (there were not 900 regulars in the place) should not

only hold out behind walls, but execute desperate charges _en masse_,

would till that day have been regarded as impossible by any soldier

of Napoleon. Every thinking man in the French army must have looked

with some dismay on the results of the fight, not because of the loss

suffered, for that was a mere trifle, but because of the prospect of

the desperate national resistance which had evidently to be faced.

Meanwhile, Lefebvre-Desnouettes retired for some thousands of yards

from the city, and pitched his camp facing its western front. He sent

pressing letters asking for reinforcements both to Madrid and to

Bayonne, and attempted no offensive action for ten days. If he sent

a formal summons of surrender to the Saragossans, it was to waste

time and allow fresh troops to arrive, rather than with any hope that

he could intimidate the citizens. He was himself more likely to be

attacked during the next few days than to make any forward movement.

But he was already beginning to receive reinforcements: on June 21

there arrived two battalions of the 2nd Regiment of the Vistula, and

more troops were behind.

Palafox, on the other hand, received much unexpected encouragement

from the combat of the sixteenth. On receiving the news of it at

Belchite on the following morning, he sent back his brother, the

Marquis de Lazan, giving him the command of the city, and bidding him

tell the Saragossans that he would endeavour to raise the siege in a

very few days. There was already a considerable body of insurgents

in arms in South-western Aragon, under the Baron de Versage, who had

raised at Calatayud two battalions of new levies[117], and gathered in

some fugitives from the Spanish garrison of Madrid. Palafox ordered

the baron to join him with every man that he could bring, and their

two detachments met at Almunia on June 21, and from thence marched

towards Saragossa by the road which leads down the valley of the Xalon

by Epila. At the last-named place they were only fifteen miles from

Lefebvre-Desnouettes’ camp, and were already threatening the French

communications with Logroño and Vittoria. But their army was still very

small--no more than 550 regular infantry, 1,000 men of Versage’s new

regiments, 350 cavalry, and a couple of thousand levies of all kinds,

among whom were noted a company of eighty armed Capuchin friars and a

body of mounted smugglers.

[117] He called them the ‘Regiment of Ferdinand VII,’ and the

‘Second Regiment of the kingdom of Aragon.’

The French general had now to make up his mind whether he would raise

the siege and fall upon Palafox with his whole army, or whether he

would dare to divide his scanty resources, and maintain the attack on

the city with one part, while he sent a containing force against the

Captain-General’s bands. He resolved to take the latter course--a most

hazardous one considering the fact that he had, even with his last

reinforcements, not much more than 6,000 sound men in his camp. He

dispatched the Polish Colonel Chlopiski with the first regiment of the

Vistula, one French battalion, a squadron of lancers and four guns to

hold back Palafox, while with the 3,000 men that remained he executed

several demonstrations against outlying parts of the defences of

Saragossa, in order to distract the attention of the citizens.

This very risky plan was carried out with complete success. While

the Saragossans were warding off imaginary attacks, Chlopiski made

a forced march and fell upon Palafox at Epila on the night of June

23-24. The Aragonese army was completely surprised and routed in a

confused engagement fought in the dark. Several hundred were cut up,

and the town of Epila was sacked: Palafox fell back in disorder towards

Calatayud and the mountains, while Chlopiski returned to the siege.

The Captain-General, much disconcerted by this disaster, resolved that

he would fight no more battles in the open, but merely reinforce the

city with the best of his soldiers and resist behind its walls. So

sending back Versage and his levies to the hills, he made an enormous

detour with his handful of veteran troops and a few hundred irregulars,

and re-entered Saragossa by the northern side, which still remained

open. He had great difficulty in holding his followers together, for

many (and especially his untrustworthy cavalry) wished to retire on

Valencia and to abandon the struggle in Aragon. But by appealing

to their patriotism--‘he would give every man who insisted on it a

passport for Valencia, but those who loved him would follow him’--he

finally carried off the whole force, and took somewhat over 1,000 men

back to the besieged city [July 1].

During his absence the condition of affairs in Saragossa had been

considerably altered. On the one hand the defences had been much

improved: the gates had been strongly stockaded, and the walls had

been thickened with earth and sandbags, and furnished with a continuous

_banquette_, which had hitherto been wanting. On the other hand the

French were beginning to receive reinforcements: on the twenty-sixth

General Verdier arrived with three battalions of his division (the

second of Bessières’ corps)[118] and two _bataillons de marche_, in

all some 3,000 or 3,500 men. From this time forward small bodies of

troops began to reach the besiegers at short intervals, including two

more Polish battalions[119], one battalion of French regulars, two

Portuguese battalions (the last of the unfortunate division which was

on its way across Spain towards the Baltic), 1,000 National Guards

of the Hautes Pyrénées and Basses Pyrénées, hastily sent across the

frontier from Bayonne, and three squadrons of cavalry[120]. What was

more important than the mere numbers was that they brought with them

siege-guns, in which Lefebvre had hitherto been entirely deficient.

These pieces came from the citadel of Pampeluna, and were part of those

resources of which the French had so treacherously taken possession in

the preceding February.

[118] They belonged to the 14th Provisional Regiment, and the

accompanying corps were the 4th and 7th _bataillons de marche_.

[119] 3rd Regiment of the Vistula.

[120] 3rd, 6th, and 9th _escadrons de marche_.

Verdier on his arrival superseded Lefebvre-Desnouettes, who was

considerably his junior, and took charge of the siege. His first act

was to develop an attack on the Monte Torrero, the hill in the suburbs,

beyond the Huerba, which dominates, at a distance of 1,800 yards,

the southern front of the city. The Spaniards had neither encircled

it with continuous lines, nor crowned it with any closed work. It

was protected only by two small batteries and some trenches covering

the most obvious points of attack. The garrison was composed of no

more than 500 men, half peasants, half regulars of the Regiment of

Estremadura, of which three weak battalions had arrived from Tarrega

on the previous day (June 27)[121]. Verdier sent three columns, each

of one battalion, against the more accessible parts of the position,

and drove out the small defending force with ease. His task was made

lighter by a piece of casual luck: on the night before the assault the

main powder-magazine of the Saragossans, situated in the Seminary,

was ignited by the carelessness of a workman, and blew up, killing

many persons and wrecking the Seminary itself and many houses in its

vicinity. A few hours after this disaster had taken place, and while

the whole city was busy in extinguishing the conflagration, the French

attack was delivered; hence the original garrison got no help from

within the walls. But its own conduct was deplorably weak: the colonel

in command[122] headed the rush to the rear, a piece of cowardice for

which he was imprisoned and (after the siege had been raised) was sent

before a court-martial and shot.

[121] The Regiment of Estremadura was so weak at the outbreak of

hostilities that its three battalions had only 770 men. It had

been hastily brought up to 900 bayonets before entering the city.

[122] His name was Vincente Falco; he belonged to the artillery.

On the evening of the twenty-eighth Verdier began to construct heavy

breaching batteries on the slopes of the Monte Torrero, commanding

all the southern side of the city. Others were thrown up on the

south-western front, opposite the points which had been unsuccessfully

assaulted twelve days before. On the thirtieth of June the works were

armed with thirty siege-guns, four mortars, and twelve howitzers, which

opened simultaneously on Saragossa at midnight, and continued to play

upon the place for twenty-four hours, setting many houses on fire, and

breaching the flimsy ramparts in half a dozen places. The old castle

of the Aljafferia was badly injured, and the gates of Portillo and the

Carmen knocked out of shape: there were also large gaps in the convent

of the Augustinians, and in the Misericordia, whose back wall formed

part of the _enceinte_. All the unarmed population was forced to take

refuge in the cellars, or the more solidly built parts of the churches,

while the fighting-men were trying to construct barricades behind the

worst breaches, and to block up with sandbags, beams, and barrels all

the lanes that opened upon them.