Charles Oman

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.

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].

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].

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.

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.

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].

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].

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

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].

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.

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.

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].

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.

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.

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.

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.

Palafox entered Saragossa on the morning of July 2, just in time to see Verdier launch his whole available infantry force upon the shattered western and southern fronts of the city. The assault was made under much more favourable conditions than that of June 16, since the strength of the storming columns was more than doubled, and the defences had been terribly mishandled by the bombardment. On the other hand the garrison was in no degree shaken in spirit: the fire of the last twenty-four hours had been much more dangerous to buildings than to men, and the results of the first assault had given the defenders a confidence which they had not felt on the previous occasion. Hence it came to pass that of the six columns of assault not one succeeded in making a permanent lodgement within the walls. Even the isolated castle of Aljafferia and the convent of San JosÉ, just outside the Porta Quemada, were finally left in the hands of the besieged, though the latter was for some hours held by the French. The hardest fighting was at the Portillo gate, where the assaulting battalions more than once reached the dilapidated earthwork that covered the ingress to the north-western part of the city. It was here that there occurred the well-known incident of the ‘Maid of Saragossa.’ The gunners at the small battery in the gate had been shot down one after another by the musketry of the assailants, the final survivors falling even before they could discharge the last gun that they had loaded. The infantry supports were flinching and the French were closing in, when a young woman named Agostina Zaragoza, whose lover (an artillery sergeant) had just fallen, rushed forward, snatched the lighted match from his dying hand, and fired the undischarged twenty-four-pounder into the head of the storming column[123]. The enemy was shaken by a charge of grape delivered at ten paces, the citizens, shamed by Agostina’s example, rushed back to reoccupy the battery, and the assault was beaten off. Palafox states that the incident occurred before his own eyes: he gave the girl a commission as sub-lieutenant of artillery, and a warrant for a life-pension: she was seen a year later by several English witnesses, serving with her battery in Andalusia[124].

The fruitless attack of July 2 cost the French 200 killed and 300 wounded. The Saragossan garrison lost somewhat less, in spite of the bombardment, since they had been fighting under cover against enemies who had to expose themselves whenever they got near the wall. Verdier resolved for the future to shun attempts at escalade, and to begin a regular siege. He commenced on the third of July to construct parallels, for a main attack on the southern side of the place, and a secondary attack on the north-western. He also threw a detachment across the Ebro [July 11], to close the hitherto undisturbed access to the city through the suburb of San Lazaro and the stone bridge. The force which could be spared for this object from an army of no more than 12,000 or 13,000 men was not really sufficient to hold the left bank of the Ebro, and merely made ingress and egress difficult without entirely preventing it. On two or three occasions when considerable bodies of Spaniards presented themselves, the French could do no more than skirmish with them and try to cut off the convoys which they were bringing to the city. They could not exclude them, and for the whole remainder of the siege the communications of the Saragossans with the open country were never entirely closed[125].

By July 15, Verdier’s trenches were commencing to work up close to the walls, and the next ten days of the month were occupied in desperate struggles for the convents of San JosÉ, of the Capuchins and Trinitarians, which lie outside the city near the Carmen and Porta Quemada gates. By the twenty-fourth the French had occupied them, connected them with their approaches, and begun to establish in them breaching batteries. Another, but less powerful, attack was directed against the Portillo gate. The mortars and howitzers bombarded the city continuously from the first to the third. But it was not till the dawn of August 4 that the heavy guns were ready to begin their task of battering down the gates and walls of Saragossa. After five hours of steady firing the Spanish batteries were silenced, and several breaches had been made, mostly in or about the Convent of Santa Engracia, at the southernmost point of the city. The streets behind it had been terribly shattered by the previous bombardment, and many buildings destroyed, notably the central hospital, from which the Spaniards had to remove, under a terrible hail of shells, more than 500 sick and wounded, as well as a number of lunatics and idiots: the institution had been used as an asylum before the outbreak of the war. Many of these unfortunate creatures were destroyed by the besiegers’ fire[126], as were also no small number of the wounded and of their doctors and nurses.

Palafox and his brother the marquis remained near Santa Engracia, trying to encourage their followers to repair the barricades behind the breaches, and to loophole and strengthen those of the houses which still stood firm. But amid the dreadful and unceasing storm of projectiles it was hard to keep the men together, and most of the projected retrenchments were battered down before they could be finished. At two o’clock in the afternoon of the fourth, Verdier let loose his storming columns, composed of four Polish and nine French battalions[127]. They were directed in three bodies against three separate breaches, the easternmost in the Convent of Santa Engracia, the second at the gate of the same name, the third more to the left, in the wall near the gate of the Carmen. All three were successful in forcing their way into the city: the defences had been completely shattered, and at one point 300 continuous yards of the outer wall had fallen. The Spaniards clung for some time to the cloisters and church of Santa Engracia, but were at last expelled or exterminated, and 1,000 yards of the enceinte with the adjoining buildings were in the hands of the French.

It was at this moment, apparently, that Verdier sent in a parlementaire with the laconic note—‘Head Quarters, Santa Engracia. Capitulation?’ To which Palafox returned the well-known reply—‘Head Quarters, Saragossa. War to the knife[128].’

All through the afternoon of the fourth of August, the French slowly pushed their way up the streets which lead northward towards the Coso, the main thoroughfare of Saragossa. They could only get forward by storming each house, and turning each barricade that offered resistance, so that their progress was very slow. While inflicting terrible losses on the Spaniards, they were also suffering very heavily themselves. But they drove a broad wedge into the city, till finally they reached and crossed the Coso, halfway between the southern wall and the river. In the streets beyond the Coso their impetus seemed to have exhausted itself: many of the men were too tired to press forward any longer; others turned aside to plunder the churches and the better sort of houses[129]. Verdier tried to cut his way to the great bridge, so as to divide the defenders into two separate bodies, and was so far successful that many of the Spaniards began to troop off across the river into the suburb of San Lazaro. But he himself was wounded, his main column lost its way in the narrow side-streets, and the attack died down.

In the late afternoon there was almost a suspension of hostilities, and the firing slackened for a space. But at last the Aragonese, encouraged by the exhaustion of their enemies, began to resume the offensive. The fugitives who had crossed to the northern side of the Ebro were hustled together and driven back by their leaders, while a loaded gun was placed on the bridge to prevent their return. The garrison of the eastern front, which had not been seriously attacked, sent all the reinforcements that it could spare into the centre of the town. At dusk masses of Spaniards debouched from the neighbourhood of the two cathedrals, and began to assail the positions held by the French beyond the line of the Coso. The first charge into the open street is recorded to have been led by a monk[130] and sixteen peasants, every one of whom were killed or wounded; but endless reinforcements poured out of every lane, and the exhausted French began to lose ground. The fighting was of that deadly sort in which the question has to be settled, whether the defenders of the houses in a street can shoot down their assailants, exposed in the roadway, before the latter can burst into each separate dwelling and exterminate its garrison in detail. Often the French held the upper stories long after the Spaniards had seized the ground floor, and the staircases had to be stormed one after the other. It was natural that in such struggles the defenders should receive no quarter. Though the fight raged with many variations of fortune in all the central parts of the city, there was after a time no doubt that the Aragonese were gaining ground. The French detachments which had penetrated furthest into the place were gradually cut off and exterminated; the main bodies of the columns drew back and strengthened themselves in two large stone buildings, the convents of San Francisco and San Diego. At nightfall they retained only a wedge-like section of the city, whose apex near San Francisco just touched the southern side of the Coso, while its base was formed by the line of wall between the gates of Santa Engracia and the Carmen.

The French had lost nearly 2,000 men in the struggle: the engineer Belmas gives the total as 462 killed and 1,505 wounded[131], more than a fifth of the troops which had actually been engaged in the assault. Among the Saragossans, who before the street-fighting began had been subjected to a severe bombardment for many hours, the casualties must have been nearly as great. But they could spare combatants more easily than their enemies: indeed they had more men than muskets, and as each defender fell there was a rush of the unarmed to get possession of his weapon.

During the night of August 4-5 both sides, fatigued though they were, set to work to cover themselves with barricades and works constructed with the dÉbris of ruined houses. In the morning both French and Spaniards had rough but continuous lines of defence, those of the latter circling round those of the former, with nothing but the width of a narrow street between them. Wherever there was anything approaching an open space cannon had been brought up to sweep it. Where the houses still stood firm, communications had been made between them by breaking holes through the party walls. In the streets the corpses of both sides lay thick, for under the deadly cross-fire no one dared venture out to remove them: in a day or two the sanitary conditions would be horrible.

Meanwhile both besiegers and besieged were too exhausted to undertake any more serious operations, and the fighting sank to little more than a desultory fusillade between enemies equally well protected by their defences. Such interest as there was in the operations of August 5-6 lay outside the walls of Saragossa. On the afternoon of the day of the great assault a column of Spanish troops from Catalonia—two line battalions and 2,000 or 3,000 new levies and armed peasants—arrived at Villamayor on the north of the Ebro, only seven miles from the city. It escorted a much-desired convoy of ammunition, for the supplies in the city were running very low. While the fighting was still raging in the streets Palafox rode out of the suburb of San Lazaro with 100 dragoons and joined this force. On the next morning (August 5) he skirmished with the French troops which lay beyond the Ebro, and passed into the city one veteran battalion and a few wagons of munitions. He then proposed to attack the detached French brigade (that of PirÉ) with his whole remaining force on the next day, in order to clear the northern front, and to send the rest of his convoy—no less than 200 wagons—into Saragossa. But on the same night he received news of the battle of Baylen and the surrender of Dupont’s army. Moreover, he was informed that a division of the army of Valencia, under Saint-March, was on the way to reinforce him. This induced him to halt for two days, to see whether the French would not raise the siege without further fighting.

Verdier had got the same intelligence at the same hour, with orders to be ready to retreat at a moment’s notice, and to avoid entangling himself in further engagements. He was preparing to withdraw, when on the seventh he received supplementary dispatches from Madrid, with directions to hold on for the present, and to keep the Saragossans occupied, without, however, compromising himself too much. Accordingly he resumed the bombardment, and began to throw into the city an immense number of shells: for he saw that when his retreat was definitely ordered, he would not be able to carry off with him the vast stores of munitions that he had accumulated in his camp.

Enlarge Saragossa.

Seeing that the French did not move, Palafox attacked the covering force on the left bank of the Ebro on August 8. His enemies were very inferior in numbers and had been told not to risk anything, considering the delicate state of affairs. Accordingly the relieving force crossed the river Gallego, pushed back PirÉ’s 2,000 men in a long skirmishing fight, and ultimately established themselves on ground just outside the suburb of San Lazaro: the convoy, under cover of the fighting, successfully entered the city over the great bridge. That night Verdier withdrew PirÉ’s brigade across the river, thus leaving the whole northern front of the place free from blockade. Clearly this could only mean that he was about to raise the siege, but for five days more he continued to ravage the central parts of the city with his bombs, and to bicker at the barricades with the Saragossans. But on the thirteenth the Spaniards noted that his camps seemed to be growing empty, and on the fourteenth a series of explosions told them that he was abandoning his siege works. Santa Engracia and the other points held inside the city were all destroyed on that day, and the ammunition which could not be carried off was blown up. The guns which had been pressed forward into the ruined streets were spiked and left behind, as it would have been impossible to extricate them under the Spanish fire. Of those in the outer batteries some were thrown into the canal, others disabled by having their trunnions knocked off, others merely spiked. Altogether no less than fifty-four pieces, all more or less injured, but many susceptible of repair, were left behind to serve as trophies for the Saragossans.

Finally Verdier withdrew by slow marches up the Ebro to Tudela, where he took post on August 17. He had lost in all over 3,500 men in his long-continued struggle with the heroic city. The Aragonese must have suffered at least as much, but the figures are of course impossible to verify. They said that their casualties amounted to no more than 2,000, but this must surely be an understatement, for Palafox says that by August 1 there were of his original 7,000 levies only 3,500 left under arms. Even allowing for heavy diminution by desertion and dispersion, this implies very serious losses in action, and these seven Aragonese battalions formed only a part of the garrison, which counted 13,000 men on August 13. Probably the unembodied citizens and peasants suffered in a still heavier proportion than troops which had received even a small measure of organization. If the whole losses came to 4,500 it would not be surprising—but nothing can be stated with certainty. Yet whatever were their sufferings, the Saragossans had turned over a new page in the history of the art of war. They had defended for two months an unfortified place, by means of extemporized barricades, retrenchments, and earthworks, and had proved their ability to resist even a formidable train of siege artillery. If the news of Dupont’s disaster had not arrived in time to save them, they would no doubt have succumbed in the end, as must any besieged place which is not sooner or later relieved from the outside. But meanwhile they had accomplished a rare feat: almost unaided by regular troops, almost destitute of trained artillerymen and engineers, they had held at bay a force which Napoleon at the commencement of the siege would have supposed to be equal to the task of conquering not only Aragon, but the whole eastern side of the Iberian Peninsula.

SECTION III: CHAPTER III

OPERATIONS IN THE NORTH: BATTLE OF MEDINA DE RIO SECO

While Lefebvre-Desnouettes and Verdier were making their long series of attacks on Saragossa, matters were coming to a head in the north-west of Spain. The army of Galicia had at last descended into the plains, and commenced to threaten the right flank of BessiÈres and the communications between Burgos and Madrid. This forward movement was due neither to the Galician Junta, nor to the officer whom they had placed in command of their army, but to the obstinate persistence of Cuesta, who had not in the least learnt the lesson of caution from his defeat at Cabezon, and was eager to fight a pitched battle with all the forces that could be collected in Northern Spain.

The resources at hand were not inconsiderable: in Galicia, or on the way thither from Portugal, were no less than thirty-nine battalions of regular infantry—though most of them were very weak: there were also thirteen battalions of embodied militia, some thirty guns, and a handful of cavalry (not more than 150 sabres). The Junta had placed in command, after the murder of the captain-general Filanghieri, a comparatively young general—Joachim Blake, one of those many soldiers of fortune of Irish blood who formed such a notable element in the Spanish army. When the insurrection broke out he had been merely colonel of the regiment named ‘the Volunteers of the Crown’: he had never had more than three battalions to manage before he found himself placed at the head of the whole Galician army. Though a most unlucky general—half a dozen times he seems to have been the victim of ill fortune, for which he was hardly responsible—Blake was in real merit far above the average of the Spanish commanders. He had neither the slackness nor the arrogance which were the besetting sins of so many of the Peninsular generals: and his dauntless courage was not combined with recklessness or careless over-confidence. He showed from the first very considerable organizing power: all his efforts were directed to the task of inducing the Junta and the people of Galicia to allow him to draft the crowds of recruits who flocked to his banner into the old regiments of the line and the militia, instead of forming them into new corps. With some trouble he carried his point, and was able to bring up to their full complement most of the old battalions: of new units very few[132] were created. When he took the field it was only the old cadres thus brought up to strength that accompanied him, not raw and unsteady troops of new organization.

After hastily concentrating and brigading his army at Lugo, Blake led them to the edge of the mountains which divide Galicia from the plains of Leon. It was his original intention to stand at bay on the hills, and force the French to attack him. With this object he occupied the passes of Manzanal, Fuencebadon, and Puebla de Sanabria, the only places where roads of importance penetrate into the Galician uplands [June 23]. His whole field force, distributed into four divisions and a ‘vanguard brigade’ of light troops, amounted to some 25,000 men fit for the field: in addition, 8,000 or 10,000 new levies were being organized behind him, but he refused—with great wisdom—to bring them to the front during his first movements.

On Blake’s left flank were other Spanish troops: the Junta of the Asturias had raised some 15,000 men: but these—unlike the Galician army—were utterly raw and untrained. Of old troops there was but one single militia battalion among them. The Junta had dispersed them in small bodies all along the eastern and southern side of the province, arraying them to cover not only the high road from Madrid and Leon to Oviedo, but every impracticable mule-path that crosses the Cantabrian Mountains. By this unwise arrangement the Asturian army was weak at every point: it was impossible to concentrate more than 5,000 men for the defence of any part of the long and narrow province. The fact was that the Junta looked solely to the defence of its own land, and had no conception that the protection of the Asturias should be treated as only a section of the great problem of the protection of the whole of Northern Spain.

While the Galicians and the Asturians were taking up this purely defensive attitude, they had forgotten to reckon with one factor in their neighbourhood. Right in front of them lay the old Captain-General of Castile, with the wrecks of the army that had been so signally routed at Cabezon. He had retired to Benavente on the Esla, and there had halted, finding that he was not pursued by Lasalle. Here he reorganized his scattered Castilian levies into three battalions, and raised three more in the province of Leon. He had still 300 or 400 regular cavalry, but not a single gun. Quite undismayed by his late defeat, he persisted in wishing to fight in the plain, and began to send urgent messages both to Blake and to the Juntas of Asturias and Galicia, begging them to send down their armies from the hills, and aid him in making a dash at Valladolid, with the object of cutting off BessiÈres’ communications with Madrid, and so disarranging the whole system of Napoleon’s plan for the conquest of Spain.

The Asturians, partly from a well-justified disbelief in Cuesta’s ability, partly from a selfish desire to retain all their troops for the defence of their own province, refused to stir. They sent the Captain-General a modest reinforcement, two battalions of the newly raised regiment of Covadonga, but refused any more aid. Instead, they suggested that Cuesta should fall back on Leon and the southern slope of the Asturian hills, so as to threaten from thence any advance of the French into the plains of Leon.

But the Galician Junta showed themselves less unyielding. Despite of the remonstrances of Blake, who was set on maintaining the defensive, and holding the passes above Astorga, they consented to allow their army to move down into the plain of Old Castile and to join Cuesta. After some fruitless remonstrances Blake moved forward with the bulk of his host, leaving behind him his second division to hold the passes, while with the other three and his vanguard brigade he marched on Benavente [July 5].

On July 10 the armies of Galicia and Castile met at Villalpando, and a brisk quarrel at once broke out between their commanders. Cuesta was for attacking the French at once: Blake pointed out that for an army with no more than thirty guns and 500 or 600 cavalry to offer battle in the plains was sheer madness. The Irish general had the larger and more effective army, but Cuesta was thirteen years his senior as lieutenant-general, and insisted on assuming command of the combined host in accordance with the normal rules of military precedence. After some fruitless resistance Blake yielded, and the whole Spanish army moved forward on Valladolid: all that Cuesta would grant on the side of caution was that the third Galician division, 5,000 strong, should be left as a reserve at Benavente. Even this was a mistake: if the two generals were to fight at all, they should have put every available man in line, and have endeavoured at all costs to induce the Asturians also to co-operate with them. They might have had in all for the oncoming battle 40,000 men, instead of 22,000, if the outlying troops had been collected.

A blow from the north-west was precisely what Napoleon at Bayonne and Savary at Madrid had been expecting for some weeks. Both of them were perfectly conscious that any check inflicted on BessiÈres in Old Castile would wreck the whole plan of invasion. So much of the marshal’s corps d’armÉe had been distracted towards Saragossa, that it was clearly necessary to reinforce him. From Madrid Savary sent up half of the troops of the Imperial Guard which had hitherto been in the capital—three battalions of fusiliers (first regiment) and three squadrons of cavalry[133]. Napoleon afterwards blamed him severely for not having sent more, saying that from the mass of troops in and about Madrid he might have spared another complete division—that of Gobert, the second division of Moncey’s corps. Without its aid the Emperor half-expected that BessiÈres might be checked, if the Galicians came down in full force[134]. He himself sent up from Bayonne nearly all the troops which were at that moment under his hand, ten veteran battalions just arrived from Germany, forming the division of General Mouton.

The reinforcements being hurried on to BessiÈres by forced marches, that general found himself on July 9 at the head of a force with which he thought that he might venture to attack Blake and Cuesta. If they had brought with them all their troops, and had called in the Asturians, it is probable that the marshal would have found himself too weak to face them: fortunately for him he had only five-ninths of the army of Galicia and Cuesta’s miserable levies in front of him. His own fighting force was formed of odd fragments of all the divisions which formed his corps d’armÉe: large sections of each of them were left behind to guard his communications with France, and others were before Saragossa. BessiÈres marched from Burgos with the brigade of the Imperial Guard: at Palencia he picked up Lasalle’s cavalry with half Mouton’s newly arrived division of veterans (the second brigade was left at Vittoria) and a small part of Merle’s division, which had been hastily brought over the mountains from Santander to join him. There was also present the larger half of Verdier’s division, of which the rest was now in Aragon with its commander[135].

On the evening of July 13, Lasalle’s light cavalry got in touch with the outposts of the Spaniards near Medina de Rio Seco, and reported that Blake and Cuesta were present in force. On the next morning BessiÈres marched before daybreak from Palencia, and just as the day was growing hot, discovered the enemy drawn up on rising ground a little to the east of the small town which has given its name to the battle. Blake had 15,000 infantry and 150 cavalry with twenty guns[136]; Cuesta 6,000 infantry and 550 cavalry, but not a single cannon. They outnumbered BessiÈres by nearly two to one in foot soldiery, but had little more than half his number of horse, and only two-thirds as many guns.

A more prudent general than Cuesta would have refused to fight at all with an army containing in its ranks no less than 9,000 recruits, and almost destitute of cavalry. But if fighting was to be done, a wise man would at any rate have chosen a good position, where his flanks would be covered from turning movements and inaccessible to the enemy’s very superior force of horsemen. The old Captain-General cared nothing for such caution: he had merely drawn up his army on a gentle hillside, somewhat cut up by low stone walls, but practicable for cavalry at nearly every point. His flanks had no protection of any kind from the lie of the ground: behind his back was the town of Medina de Rio Seco, and the dry bed of the Sequillo river, obstacles which would tend to make a retreat difficult to conduct in orderly fashion. But a retreat was the last thing in Cuesta’s thoughts.

Bad as was the position selected, the way in which it was occupied was still more strange. The Captain-General had divided his host into two halves, the one consisting of the first division of the army of Galicia and of the vanguard brigade, the other of the fourth Galician division and the raw ‘Army of Castile.’ Blake with the first-named force was drawn up in a short, compact formation, three lines deep, at the south-eastern front of the hill, the ‘Plateau of Valdecuevas,’ as it is called. His right looked down into the plain, his left, in the centre of the plateau, stood quite ‘in the air.’ But nearly a mile to his left rear, and quite out of sight, lay the other half of the army, just too far off to protect Blake’s exposed flank if it should be attacked, and in a very bad position for defending itself. Why Cuesta ranged his left wing (or second line, if it may so be called) low down on the reverse slope of the plateau, and in a place where it could not even see Blake’s corps, it is impossible to conceive. ToreÑo hazards the guess that, in his arrogant confidence, he placed Blake where he would have to bear the stress of the battle, and might probably lose ground, intending to come up himself with the left wing and restore the fight when his colleague should be sufficiently humbled. Such a plan would not have been outside the scope of the old man’s selfish pride.

BessiÈres, marching up from the east, came in sight of the Spaniards in the early morning. He at once deployed his whole army, and advanced in battle array over the plain. In front was a slight cavalry screen of Lasalle’s chasseurs; next came Mouton’s division, deployed to the right, and Merle’s division, with Sabathier’s brigade, to the left of the country-road which leads, over the plateau, towards Medina de Rio Seco. The Imperial Guard, horse and foot, and the bulk of Lasalle’s cavalry brigade were in reserve behind the centre. On getting near the enemy’s position, BessiÈres soon discovered the two halves of the Spanish army and the broad gap which lay between them. His mind was at once made up: he proposed to contain Cuesta with a small force, and to fall upon and envelop Blake with the rest of his army before the Captain-General of Castile could come to his aid. This excellent plan was carried out to the letter, thanks to the incapacity of Cuesta.

Not far east of the plateau of Valdecuevas lay an isolated eminence, the mound of Monclin: on it the marshal drew up the greater part of his artillery (twenty guns) which began to batter Blake’s front line: the Galician batteries replied, and held their own though outnumbered by two to one. Then Sabathier’s eight weak battalions deployed and commenced a cautious attack upon Blake’s front: this was not to be pressed home for a time. Meanwhile Merle’s seven battalions pushed into the fight, continuing Sabathier’s line to the south-west and trying to envelop Blake’s southern flank. They forced the Galicians to throw back their right wing, and to keep continually extending it, in order to avoid being turned. The Spaniards fought not amiss, and for some hour or more the battle was almost stationary.

Meanwhile, far to the French right, Mouton’s five battalions were executing a cautious demonstration against Cuesta’s forces, across the northern folds of the plateau. The old general allowed himself to be completely occupied by this trifling show of attack, and made no movement to aid Blake’s wing. The gap between him and his colleague was not filled up. Then came the sudden development of BessiÈres’ plan: Sabathier and Merle were told to attack in earnest, and while Blake was deeply engaged with their fifteen battalions, Lasalle rode into the open space on the left of the Galicians, formed up the 22nd chasseurs À cheval at right angles to the Spanish line, and charged in furiously upon Blake’s flank. The unfortunate troops on whom the blow fell were deployed in line, and utterly unprepared for a cavalry shock from the side. The first battalion which received the attack broke at once and ran in upon the second[137]: in a few minutes Blake’s whole left wing fell down like a pack of cards, each corps as it fled sweeping away that next to it. The French infantry, advancing at the same moment, ran in with the bayonet, seized the Spanish guns, and hustled the Galicians westward along the plateau in a mob. Blake’s troops were only saved from complete destruction by the steadiness of a Navarrese battalion, which formed square to cover the retreat, and at the cost of one-third of its strength allowed the other corps to get a long start in their flight. They retired due west, and crossed the Sequillo to the south of the town of Rio Seco before they could be rallied.

It was now the turn of Cuesta to suffer. The moment that Blake was disposed of, BessiÈres marched over the hill towards the other half of the Spanish army: leaving some of Lasalle’s cavalry and Sabathier’s brigade to pursue the routed corps, he formed the whole of his remaining troops in a line, bringing up the reserve of the Imperial Guard to make its centre, while Mouton formed the right wing and the two brigades of Merle the left. Cuesta, outnumbered and attacked down hill, would have done wisely to retreat and to seek for shelter in and behind the town of Rio Seco in his immediate rear. But he had prepared a new surprise for the enemy; as they descended upon him they were astonished to see his front line, the eight battalions which formed the fourth Galician division, form itself into columns of attack and slowly commence to climb the hill with the object of attacking their right and centre. Meanwhile Cuesta’s handful of cavalry rode out on the northern end of the line and fell upon the skirmishers of Mouton’s division, whom it chased back till it was met and driven off by the three squadrons of the Imperial Guard.

The uphill charge of the fourth Galician division was a fine but an utterly useless display of courage. They were attacking nearly double their own numbers of victorious troops, who outflanked them on both wings and tore them to pieces with a concentric fire of artillery to which they could not respond. The regiments at each end of the line were soon broken up, but in the centre two battalions of picked grenadiers[138] actually closed with the French, captured four guns of the Imperial Guard, and forced back the supporting infantry of the same corps for a short space, till BessiÈres hurled upon them the three squadrons of the Guard-Cavalry, which broke them and swept them down hill again.

Seeing his attack fail, Cuesta bade his last reserve, the raw Castilian and Leonese levies, retreat behind the river and the town of Medina de Rio Seco, which they did without much loss, covered to a certain extent by the two Asturian battalions, the only part of Cuesta’s own force which was seriously engaged.

The ‘Army of Castile,’ therefore, had no more than 155 casualties, but the two Galician divisions had suffered heavily. They left behind them on the field nearly 400 dead, and over 500 wounded, with some 1,200 prisoners. The ten guns of Blake’s wing had all been captured, and with them several pairs of colours. In addition more than a thousand of the Galician recruits had dispersed, and could not be rallied. Altogether Blake’s army had lost over 3,000 men. The French, as might have been expected, had suffered comparatively little: they had 105 killed and 300 wounded, according to Foy; other historians give even smaller figures.

A vigorous pursuit might have done much further harm to the defeated Spaniards; but BessiÈres’ men had been marching since two in the morning, and fighting all through the mid-day. They were much fatigued, and their commander did not press the chase far beyond the river. But the town of Rio Seco was sacked from cellar to garret, with much slaying of non-combatants and outrages of all kinds[139], a fact very discreditable to the marshal, who could have stopped the plunder had he chosen.

The defeated generals met, a little to the west of the battle-field, and after a bitter altercation, in which Blake used the plainest words about Cuesta’s generalship, parted in wrath. The Galicians retired by the way they had come, and joined the division which had been left behind three days before; they then went back to the passes above Astorga, abandoning a considerable amount of stores at Benavente. Cuesta took the army of Castile to Leon, retiring on the Asturias rather than on Galicia.

BessiÈres’ well-earned victory was creditable to himself and his troops, but the way had been made easy for him by the astounding tactical errors of the Captain-General of Castile. The rank and file of the Spanish army had no reason to be ashamed of their conduct: it was their commander who should have blushed at the reckless way in which he had sacrificed his willing troops. Handled by Cuesta the best army in the world might have been defeated by inferior numbers.

The strategical results of the battle of Rio Seco were great and far-reaching. All danger of the cutting of the communications between Madrid and Bayonne was averted, and Napoleon, his mind set at rest on this point, could now assert that Dupont’s position in Andalusia was henceforth the only hazardous point in his great scheme of invasion[140]. It would clearly be a very long time before the army of Galicia would again dare to take the offensive, and meanwhile Madrid was safe, and the attempt to conquer Southern Spain could be resumed without any fear of interruption. BessiÈres, after such a victory, was strong enough not to require any further reinforcements from the central reserve in and about the capital.

The most obvious result of Rio Seco was that King Joseph was now able to proceed on his way to Madrid, and to enter the city in triumph. After receiving the homage of the Spanish notables at Bayonne, and nominating a ministry, he had crossed the frontier on July 9. But he had been obliged to stop short at Burgos, till BessiÈres should have beaten off the attack of Blake and Cuesta: his presence there had been most inconvenient to the marshal, who had been forced to leave behind for his protection Rey’s veteran brigade of Mouton’s division, which he would gladly have taken out to the approaching battle.

When the news of Medina de Rio Seco arrived at Burgos, the usurper resumed his march on Madrid, still escorted by Rey’s troops. He travelled by short stages, stopping at every town to be complimented by reluctant magistrates and corporations, who dared not refuse their homage. The populace everywhere shut itself up in its houses in silent protest. Joseph’s state entry into Madrid on July 20 was the culminating point of the melancholy farce. He passed through the streets with a brilliant staff, between long lines of French bayonets, and amid the blare of military music. But not a Spaniard was to be seen except the handful of courtiers and officials who had accepted the new government. The attempts of the French to produce a demonstration, or even to get the town decorated, had met with passive disobedience. Like Charles of Austria when he entered Madrid in 1710, Joseph Bonaparte might have exclaimed that he could see ‘a court, but no people’ about him. But he affected not to notice the dismal side of the situation, assumed an exaggerated urbanity, and heaped compliments and preferment on the small section of Afrancesados who adhered to him.

The usurper had resolved to give himself as much as possible the air of a Spanish national king. Of all his Neapolitan court he had brought with him only one personage, his favourite Saligny, whom he had made Duke of San Germano. The rest of his household was composed of nobles and officials chosen from among the herd which had bowed before him at Bayonne. There were among them several of the late partisans of King Ferdinand, of whom some had frankly sold themselves to his supplanter, while others (like the Duke of Infantado) were only looking for an opportunity to abscond when it might present itself. The first list of ministers was also full of names that were already well known in the Spanish bureaucracy. Of the cabinet of Ferdinand VII, Cevallos the minister of Foreign Affairs, O’Farrill at the War Office, PiÑuela at the ministry of Justice, were base enough to accept the continuation of their powers by the usurper. Urquijo, who took the Secretaryship of State, was an old victim of Godoy’s, who had once before held office under Charles IV. Mazarredo, who was placed at the ministry of Marine, was perhaps the most distinguished officer in the Spanish navy. But Joseph imagined that his greatest stroke of policy was the appointment as minister of the Interior of Gaspar de Jovellanos, the most prominent among the Spanish liberals, whose reputation for wisdom and patriotism had cost him a long imprisonment during the days of the Prince of the Peace. The idea was ingenious, but the plan for strengthening the ministry failed, for Jovellanos utterly refused to take office along with a clique of traitors and in the cabinet of a usurper. Yet even without him, the body of courtiers and officials whom Joseph collected was far more respectable, from their high station and old experience, than might have been expected—a fact very disgraceful to the Spanish bureaucrats.

In less troublous times, and with a more legitimate title to the crown, Joseph Bonaparte might have made a very tolerable king. He was certainly a far more worthy occupant of the throne than any of the miserable Spanish Bourbons: but he was not of the stuff of which successful usurpers are made. He was a weak, well-intentioned man, not destitute of a heart or a conscience: and as he gradually realized all the evils that he had brought on Spain by his ill-regulated ambition, he grew less and less satisfied with his position as his brother’s tool. He made long and untiring efforts to conciliate the Spaniards, by an unwavering affability and mildness, combined with a strict attention to public business. Unfortunately all his efforts were counteracted by his brother’s harshness, and by the greed and violence of the French generals, over whom he could never gain any control. It is a great testimony in his favour that the Spanish people despised rather than hated him: their more violent animosity was reserved for Napoleon. His nominal subjects agreed to regard him as a humorous character: they laughed at his long harangues, in which Neapolitan phrases were too often mixed with the sonorous Castilian: they insisted that he was blind of one eye—which did not happen to be the case. They spoke of him as always occupied with the pleasures of the table and with miscellaneous amours—accusations for which there was a very slight foundation of fact. They insisted that he was a coward and a sluggard—titles which he was far from meriting. He was, they said, perpetually hoodwinked, baffled, and bullied, alike by his generals, his ministers, and his mistresses. But they never really hated him—a fact which, considering the manner of his accession, must be held to be very much to his credit.

But the first stay of the ‘Intrusive King,’ as the Spaniards called him, in his capital, was to be very short. He had only arrived there on July 20: his formal proclamation took place on the twenty-fourth. He had hardly settled down in the royal palace, and commenced a dispute with the effete ‘Council of Castile’—which with unexpected obstinacy refused to swear the oath to him and to the constitution of Bayonne—when he was obliged to take to flight. On the twenty-fourth rumours began to be current in Madrid that a great disaster had taken place in Andalusia, and that Dupont’s army had been annihilated. On the twenty-eighth the news was confirmed in every particular. On August 1, the King, the court, and the 20,000 French troops which still remained in and about the capital, marched out by the northern road, and took their way towards the Ebro. This retreat was the result of a great council of war, in which the energetic advice of Savary, who wished to fight one more battle in front of the capital, with all the forces that could be concentrated, was overruled by the King and the majority of the generals. ‘A council of war never fights,’ as has been most truly observed.

SECTION III: CHAPTER IV

DUPONT IN ANDALUSIA: THE CAPITULATION OF BAYLEN

We left General Dupont at Andujar, on the upper course of the Guadalquivir, whither he had retired on June 19 after evacuating Cordova. Deeply troubled by the interruption of his communications with Madrid, and by the growing strength displayed by the Spanish army in his front, he had resolved that it was necessary to draw back to the foot of the Sierra Morena, and to recover at all costs his touch with the main French army in the capital. He kept sending to Murat (or rather to Savary, who had now superseded the Grand-Duke) persistent demands for new orders and for large reinforcements. Most of his messengers were cut off on the way by the insurgents, but his situation had become known at head quarters, and was engrossing much of Savary’s attention—more of it indeed than Napoleon approved. The Emperor wrote on July 13 that the decisive point was for the moment in Castile, and not in Andalusia, and that the best way to strengthen Dupont was to reinforce BessiÈres[141].

Such had not been Savary’s opinion: frightened at the isolation in which Dupont now lay, he sent to his assistance the second division of his corps, 6,000 men under General Vedel, all recruits of the ‘legions of reserve,’ save one single battalion of Swiss troops. The division was accompanied by Boussard’s cavalry, the 6th Provisional Dragoons, some 600 strong. Vedel made his way through La Mancha without difficulty, but on entering the DespeÑa Perros defiles found his passage disputed by a body of insurgents—2,000 peasants with four antique cannon—who had stockaded themselves in the midst of the pass. A resolute attack scattered them in a few minutes, and on reaching La Carolina on the southern slope of the mountains Vedel got in touch with Dupont, who had hitherto no notice of his approach [June 27].

Instead of leaving the newly arrived division to guard the passes, Dupont called it down to join him in the valley of the Guadalquivir. With the assistance of Vedel’s troops he considered himself strong enough to make head against the Spanish army under CastaÑos, which was commencing to draw near to Andujar. Keeping his original force at that town—a great centre of roads, but a malarious spot whose hospitals were already crowded with 600 sick,—he placed Vedel at Baylen, a place sixteen miles further east, but still in the plain, though the foot-hills of the Sierra Morena begin to rise just behind it. To assert himself and strike terror into the insurgents, Dupont ordered one of Vedel’s brigades to make a forced march to Jaen, the capital of a province and a considerable focus of rebellion. This expedition scattered the local levies, took and sacked Jaen, and then returned in safety to Baylen [July 2-3].

Meanwhile CastaÑos was drawing near: he had now had a month in which to organize his army. Like Blake in Galicia, he had used the recruits of Andalusia to fill up the gaps in the depleted battalions of the regular army. But less fortunate than his colleague in the north, he had not been able to prevent the Juntas of Seville and Granada from creating a number of new volunteer corps, and had been obliged to incorporate them in his field army, where they were a source of weakness rather than of strength. His total force was some 33,000 or 34,000 men, of whom 2,600 were cavalry, for in this arm he was far better provided than was the army of the North. The whole was organized in four divisions, under Generals Reding, Coupigny, Felix Jones (an Irish officer, in spite of his Welsh name), and La PeÑa. In addition there was a flying brigade of new levies under Colonel Cruz-Murgeon, which was pushed forward along the roots of the mountains, at a considerable distance in front of the main body: it was ordered to harass Dupont’s northern flank and to cut his communications with Baylen and La Carolina.

With 16,000 or 17,000 men, including nearly 3,500 cavalry, Dupont ought to have been able to contain CastaÑos, if not to beat him. The proportion of his forces to those of the enemy was not much less than that which BessiÈres had possessed at Medina de Rio Seco. But, unfortunately for himself and his master, Dupont was far from possessing the boldness and the skill of the marshal. By assuming not a vigorous offensive but a timid defensive along a protracted front, he threw away his chances. The line which he had resolved to hold was that of the Upper Guadalquivir, from Andujar to the next passage up the river, the ferry of Mengibar, eight miles from Baylen. This gave a front of some fifteen miles to hold: but unfortunately even when drawn out to this length the two divisions of Barbou and Vedel did not cover all the possible lines of attack which CastaÑos might adopt. He might still march past them and cut them off from the defiles of the Morena, by going a little higher up the river and crossing it near Baeza and Ubeda. Dupont was wrong to take this line of defence at all: unless he was prepared to attack the army of Andalusia in the open, he should have retired to Baylen or to La Carolina, where he would have been able to cover the passes for as long as he might choose, since he could not have had either of his flanks turned.

Meanwhile he was gratified to hear that further reinforcements were being sent to him. Unreasonably disquieted about Andalusia, as Napoleon thought, Savary proceeded to send a third division to aid Dupont. This was Gobert’s, the second of Moncey’s corps: it started from Madrid not quite complete, and left strong detachments at the more important towns along the road through La Mancha. Though originally seventeen battalions strong, it reached the northern slope of the Sierra Morena with only ten. Savary had not intended it to go any further: he had told Dupont that it was to be used to cover his retreat, if a retreat became necessary, but not for active operations in Andalusia. But disregarding these directions Dupont commanded Gobert to cross the Morena and come down to join Vedel: this he did, bringing with him nine ‘provisional battalions[142]’ and the second provisional regiment of cuirassiers, perhaps 5,000 men in all. There were now over 20,000 French on the south side of the mountain, a force amply sufficient to deal with CastaÑos and his 33,000 Andalusians [July 7]. But they were still widely scattered. Dupont lay at Andujar with 9,000 or 10,000 sabres and bayonets: Vedel was sixteen miles away at Baylen, with 6,000 men, of whom 2,000 under General Liger-Belair were pushed forward to the ferry of Mengibar. Gobert was at La Carolina, at the foot of the passes, with five battalions about him, and a sixth encamped on the summit of the defile. He had sent forward the remainder of his division (the four battalions of the sixth provisional regiment, and half the second provisional cuirassiers) to join Dupont at Andujar, so that he had not more than 2,800 bayonets and 350 cavalry with him.

CastaÑos, meanwhile, had brought up his whole army, with the exception of the flying corps of Cruz-Murgeon, to a line close in front of Andujar: the heads of his columns were at Arjona and Arjonilla, only five miles from Dupont. On July 11 the Spanish generals held a council of war at PorcuÑa, and drew out their plan of operations. Since the enemy seemed to be still quiescent, they resolved to attack him in his chosen position behind the river. CastaÑos, in person—with the divisions of Jones and La PeÑa, 12,000 strong—undertook to keep Dupont employed, by delivering an attack on Andujar, which he did not intend to press home unless he got good news from his second and third columns. Meanwhile, six miles up the river, Coupigny with the second division, nearly 8,000 strong, was to attempt to cross the Guadalquivir by the ford of Villa Nueva. Lastly, Reding with the first division, the best and most numerous of the whole army, 10,000 strong, was to seize the ferry of Mengibar and march on Baylen. Here he was to be joined by Coupigny, and the two corps were then to fall upon the rear of Dupont’s position at Andujar, while CastaÑos was besetting it in front. It was their aim to surround and capture the whole of the French division, if its general did not move away before the encircling movement was complete. Meanwhile the flying column of Cruz-Murgeon, about 3,000 strong, was to cross the Guadalquivir below Andujar, throw itself into the mountains in the north, and join hands with Reding and Coupigny behind the back of Dupont.

This plan, though ultimately crowned with success, was perilous in the highest degree. But CastaÑos had seriously underestimated the total force of Dupont, as well as misconceived his exact position. He was under the impression that the main body of the French, which he did not calculate at more than 12,000 or 14,000 men, was concentrated at Andujar, and that there were nothing more than weak detachments at Mengibar, Baylen, or La Carolina. These, he imagined, could not stand before Reding, and when the latter had once got to the northern bank of the river, he would easily clear the way for Coupigny to cross. But as a matter of fact Vedel had 6,000 men at Mengibar and Baylen, with 3,000 more under Gobert within a short march of him. If the Spanish plan had been punctually carried out, Reding should have suffered a severe check at the hands of these two divisions, while Dupont could easily have dealt with CastaÑos at Andujar. Coupigny, if he got across at Villa Nueva, while the divisions on each side of him were beaten off, would have been in a very compromised position, and could not have dared to push forward. But in this curious campaign the probable never happened, and everything went in the most unforeseen fashion.

On July 13 the Spanish plan began to be carried out, Reding marching for Mengibar and Coupigny for Villa Nueva. CastaÑos kept quiet at Arjonilla, till his lieutenants should have reached the points which they were to attack. On the same day Dupont received the news of Moncey’s repulse before Valencia, and made up his mind that he must persevere in his defensive attitude, without making any attempt to mass his troops and fall upon the enemy in his front[143]. Just at the moment when his enemies were putting the game into his hands, by dividing themselves into three columns separated from each other by considerable gaps, he relinquished every intention of taking advantage of their fault.

On July 14 Reding appeared in front of the ferry of Mengibar, and pushed back beyond the river the outlying pickets of Liger-Belair’s detachment. He made no further attempt to press the French, but Dupont, disquieted about an attack on this point, ordered Gobert to bring down the remains of his division to Baylen, to join Vedel. Next morning the Spaniards began to develop their whole plan: CastaÑos appeared on a long front opposite Andujar, and made a great demonstration against the position of Dupont, using all his artillery and showing heads of columns at several points. Coupigny came down to the river at Villa Nueva, and got engaged with a detachment which was sent out from Andujar to hold the ford. Reding, making a serious attempt to push forward, crossed the Guadalquivir at Mengibar and attacked Liger-Belair. But Vedel came up to the support of his lieutenant, and when the Swiss general found, quite contrary to his expectation, a whole division deployed against him, he ceased to press his advance, and retired once more beyond the river.

Nothing decisive had yet happened: but the next day was to be far more important. The operations opened with two gross faults made by the French: Dupont had been so much impressed with the demonstration made against him by CastaÑos, that he judged himself hopelessly outnumbered at Andujar, and sent to Vedel for reinforcements. He bade him send a battalion or two, or even a whole brigade, if the force that he had fought at Mengibar seemed weak and unenterprising[144]. This was an error, for CastaÑos only outnumbered the French at Andujar by two or three thousand men, and was not really to be feared. But Vedel made a worse slip: despising Reding overmuch, he marched on Baylen, not with one brigade, but with his whole division, save the original detachment of two battalions under Liger-Belair which remained to watch Mengibar. Starting at midnight, he reached Andujar at two on the afternoon of the sixteenth, to find that CastaÑos had done no more than repeat his demonstration of the previous day, and had been easily held back. Cruz-Murgeon’s levies, which the Spanish general had pushed over the river below Andujar, had received a sharp repulse when they tried to molest Dupont’s flank. Coupigny had made an even feebler show than his chief at the ford of Villa Nueva, and had not passed the Guadalquivir.

But Reding, on the morning of the sixteenth, had woken up to unexpected vigour. He had forded the river near Mengibar, and fallen on Liger-Belair’s detachment for the second time. Hard pressed, the French brigadier had sent for succour to Baylen, whither Gobert had moved down when Vedel marched for Andujar. The newly arrived general came quickly to the aid of the compromised detachment, but he was very weak, for he had left a battalion at La Carolina and sent another with a squadron of cuirassiers to LiÑares, to guard against a rumoured movement of the Spaniards along the Upper Guadalquivir. He only brought with him three battalions and 200 cavalry, and this was not enough to contain Reding. The 4,000 men of the two French detachments were outnumbered by more than two to one; they suffered a thorough defeat, and Gobert was mortally wounded. His brigadier, Dufour, who took over the command, fell back on Baylen, eight miles to the rear. Next morning, though not pressed by Reding, he retired towards La Carolina, to prevent himself being cut off from the passes, for he credited a false rumour that the Spaniards were detaching troops by way of LiÑares to seize the DespeÑa Perros.

Dupont heard of Gobert’s defeat on the evening of the sixteenth. It deranged all his plans, for it showed him that the enemy were not massed in front of Andujar, as he supposed, but had a large force far up the river. Two courses were open to him—either to march on Baylen with his whole army in order to attack Reding, and to reopen the communications with La Carolina and the passes, or to fall upon CastaÑos and the troops in his immediate front. An enterprising officer would probably have taken the latter alternative, and could not have failed of success, for the whole French army in Andalusia save the troops of Belair and Dufour was now concentrated at Andujar, and not less than 15,000 bayonets and 3,000 sabres were available for an attack on CastaÑos’ 12,000 men[145]. Even if Coupigny joined his chief, the French would have almost an equality in numbers and a great superiority in cavalry and guns. There cannot be the slightest doubt that the Spaniards would have suffered a defeat, and then it would have been possible to expel Reding from Baylen without any danger of interference from other quarters.

But, in a moment of evil inspiration, Dupont chose to deprive himself of the advantage of having practically his whole army concentrated on one spot, and determined to copy the error of the Spaniards by splitting his force into two equal halves. He resolved to retain his defensive position in front of Andujar, and to keep there his original force—Barbou’s infantry and FrÉsia’s horse. But Vedel with his own men, the four battalions from Gobert’s division which were at Andujar, and 600 cavalry, was sent off to Baylen, where he was directed to rally the beaten troops of Dufour and Liger-Belair, and then to fall upon Reding and chase him back beyond the Guadalquivir[146].

On the morning, therefore, of July 17 Vedel set out with some 6,000 men and marched to Baylen. Arriving there he found that Dufour had evacuated the place, and had hurried on to La Carolina, on the false hypothesis that Reding had pushed past him to seize the passes. As a matter of fact the Spaniard had done nothing of the kind: after his success at Mengibar, he had simply retired to his camp by the river, and given his men twenty-four hours’ rest. It was a strange way to employ the day after a victory—but his quiescence chanced to have the most fortunate effect. Vedel, on hearing that Dufour had hastened away to defend La Carolina and the passes, resolved to follow him. He was so inexcusably negligent that he did not even send a cavalry reconnaissance towards Mengibar, to find out whether any Spanish force remained there. Had he done so, he would have found Reding’s whole division enjoying their well-earned siesta! In the direction of La Carolina and the passes there was no enemy save a small flanking column of 1,800 raw levies under the Count of ValdecaÑas, which lay somewhere near LiÑares.

On the night of the seventeenth, Vedel and his men, tired out by a long march of over twenty miles, slept at Guarroman, halfway between Baylen and La Carolina. Dufour and Liger-Belair had reached the last-named place and Santa Elena, and had found no Spaniards near them. On the morning of the eighteenth Vedel followed them, and united his troops to theirs. He had then some 10,000 or 11,000 men concentrated in and about La Carolina, with one single battalion left at Guarroman to keep up his touch with Dupont. The latter had been entirely deceived by the false news which Vedel had sent him from Baylen—to the effect that Reding and his corps had marched for the passes, in order to cut the French communications with Madrid. Believing the story, he forwarded to his subordinate an approval of his disastrous movement[147], and bade him ‘instantly attack and crush the Spanish force before him, and after disposing of it return as quickly as possible to Andujar, to deal with the troops of the enemy in that direction.’ Unfortunately, as we have seen, there was no Spanish corps at all in front of Vedel; but by the time that he discovered the fact it was too late for him to rejoin Dupont without a battle[148]. His troops were tired out with two night marches: there were no supplies of food to be got anywhere but at La Carolina, and he decided that he must halt for at least twelve hours before returning to join Dupont.

Meanwhile, on the morning of the eighteenth, Reding’s 9,500 men, of whom 750 were cavalry, had been joined by Coupigny and the second Andalusian division, which amounted to 7,300 foot and 500 horse. Advancing from Mengibar to attack Baylen, they found to their surprise that the place was unoccupied: Vedel’s rearguard had left it on the previous afternoon. Reding intended to march on Andujar from the rear on the next day, being under the full belief that Vedel was still with Dupont, and that the troops which had retired on La Carolina were only the fragments of Gobert’s force. For CastaÑos and his colleagues had drawn up their plan of operations on the hypothesis that the enemy were still concentrated at Andujar.

Reding therefore, with some 17,000 men, encamped in and about Baylen, intending to start at daybreak on July 19, and to fall on Dupont from behind, while his chief assailed him in front. But already before the sun was up, musket-shots from his pickets to the west announced that the French were approaching from that direction. It was with the head and not with the rear of Dupont’s column that CastaÑos’ first and second divisions were to be engaged, for the enemy had evacuated Andujar, and was in full march for Baylen.

On the night of the seventeenth Dupont had received the news that Vedel had evacuated Baylen and gone off to the north-east, so that a gap of thirty miles or more now separated him from his lieutenant. He had at first been pleased with the move, as we have seen: but presently he gathered, from the fact that CastaÑos did not press him, but only assailed him with a distant and ineffective cannonade, that the main stress of the campaign was not at Andujar but elsewhere. The Spanish army was shifting itself eastward, and he therefore resolved that he must do the same, though he would have to abandon his cherished offensive position, his entrenchments, and such part of his supplies as he could not carry with him. Having made up his mind to depart, Dupont would have done wisely to start at once: if he had gone off early on the morning of the eighteenth, he would have found Reding and Coupigny not established in position at Baylen, but only just approaching from the south. Probably he might have brushed by their front, or even have given them a serious check, if he had fallen on them without hesitation.

But two considerations induced the French general to wait for the darkness, and to waste fourteen invaluable hours at Andujar. The first was that he hoped by moving at night to escape the notice of CastaÑos, who might have attacked him if his retreat was open and undisguised. The second was that he wished to carry off his heavy baggage train: not only had he between 600 and 800 sick to load on his wagons, but there was an enormous mass of other impedimenta, mainly consisting of the plunder of Cordova. French and Spanish witnesses unite in stating that the interminable file of 500 vehicles which clogged Dupont’s march was to a very great extent laden with stolen goods[149]. And it was the officers rather than the men who were responsible for this mass of slow-moving transport.

It was not therefore till nine in the evening of the eighteenth that the French general thought fit to move. After barricading and blocking up the bridge of Andujar—he dared not use gunpowder to destroy it for fear of rousing CastaÑos—he started on his night march. He had with him thirteen battalions of infantry and four and a half regiments of cavalry, with twenty-four guns, in all about 8,500 foot soldiers and 2,500 horse, allowing for the losses which he had sustained in sick and wounded during the earlier phases of the campaign[150]. His march was arranged as follows:—Chabert’s infantry brigade led the van: then came the great convoy: behind it were the four Swiss battalions under Colonel Schramm, which had lately been incorporated with the French army. These again were followed by Pannetier’s infantry brigade and DuprÉ’s two regiments of chasseurs À cheval. The rearguard followed at some distance: it was composed of two and a half regiments of heavy cavalry, placed under the command of General PrivÉ, with the one veteran infantry battalion which the army possessed, the 500 Marines of the Guard, as also six compagnies d’Élite picked from the ‘legions of reserve.’ From the fact that Dupont placed his best troops in this quarter, it is evident that he expected to be fighting a rearguard action, with CastaÑos in pursuit, rather than to come into contact with Spanish troops drawn up across his line of march. He was ignorant that Reding and Coupigny had occupied Baylen on the previous day—a fact which speaks badly for his cavalry: with 2,500 horsemen about him, he ought to have known all that was going on in his neighbourhood. Probably the provisional regiments, which formed his whole mounted force, were incapable of good work in the way of scouting and reconnaissances.

The little town of Baylen is situated in a slight depression of a saddle-backed range of hills which runs southward out from the Sierra Morena. The road which leads through it passes over the lowest point in the watershed, as is but natural: to the north and south of the town the heights are better marked: they project somewhat on each flank, so that the place is situated in a sort of amphitheatre. The hill to the south of Baylen is called the Cerrajon: those to the north the Cerro del Zumacar Chico, and the Cerro del Zumacar Grande. All three are bare and bald, without a shrub or tree: none of them are steep, their lower slopes are quite suitable for cavalry work, and even their rounded summits are not inaccessible to a horseman. The ground to the west of them, over which the French had to advance, is open and level for a mile and a half: then it grows more irregular, and is thickly covered with olive groves and other vegetation, so that a force advancing over it is hidden from the view of a spectator on the hills above Baylen till it comes out into the open. The wooded ground is about two and a half miles broad: its western limit is the ravine of a mountain torrent, the Rumblar (or Herrumblar, as the aspirate-loving Andalusians sometimes call it). The road from Andujar to Baylen crosses this stream by a bridge, the only place where artillery can pass the rocky but not very deep depression.

It is necessary to say a few words about the ground eastward from Baylen, as this too was not unimportant in the later phases of the battle. Here the road passes through a broad defile rather than a plain. It is entirely commanded by the heights on its northern side, where lies the highest ground of the neighbourhood, the Cerro de San Cristobal, crowned by a ruined hermitage. The difference between the approach to Baylen from the west and from the east, is that on the former side the traveller reaches the town through a semicircular amphitheatre of upland, while by the latter he comes up a V-shaped valley cut through the hills.

Reding and Coupigny were somewhat surprised by the bicker of musketry which told them that the French had fallen upon their outposts. But fortunately for them their troops were already getting under arms, and were bivouacking over the lower slopes of the hills in a position which made it possible to extemporize without much difficulty a line of battle, covering the main road and the approaches to Baylen. They hastily occupied the low amphitheatre of hills north and south of the town. Reding deployed to the right of the road, on the heights of the Cerro del Zumacar Chico, Coupigny to its left on the Cerrajon. Their force was of a very composite sort—seventeen battalions of regulars, six of embodied militia, five of new Andalusian levies. The units varied hopelessly in size, some having as few as 350 men, others as many as 1,000. They could also dispose of 1,200 cavalry and sixteen guns. The greater part of the latter were placed in battery on the central and lowest part of the position, north and south of the high road and not far in front of Baylen. The infantry formed a semicircular double line: in front were deployed battalions near the foot of the amphitheatre of hills; in rear, higher up the slope or concealed behind the crest, was a second line in columns of battalions. The cavalry were drawn up still further to the rear. Finally, as a necessary precaution against the possible arrival of Vedel on the scene from La Carolina, Reding placed seven battalions far away to the east, on the other side of Baylen, with cavalry pickets out in front to give timely notice of any signs of the enemy in this quarter. These 3,500 men were quite out of the battle as long as Dupont was the only enemy in sight.

Before it was fully daylight General Chabert and his brigade had thrust back the Spanish outposts. But the strength of the insurgent army was quite unknown to him: the morning dusk still lay in the folds of the hills, and he thought that he might possibly have in front of him nothing but some flying column of insignificant strength. Accordingly, after allowing the whole of his brigade to come up, Chabert formed a small line of attack, brought up his battery along the high road to the middle of the amphitheatre, between the horns of the Spanish position, and made a vigorous push forward. He operated almost entirely to the south of the road, where, opposite Coupigny’s division, the hill was lower and the slope gentler than further north.

To dislodge 14,000 men and twenty guns in position with 3,000 men and six guns was of course a military impossibility. But Chabert had the excuse that he did not, and could not, know what he was doing. His attempt was of course doomed to failure: his battery was blown to pieces by the Spanish guns, acting from a concentric position, the moment that it opened. His four battalions, after pushing back Coupigny’s skirmishing line for a few hundred yards, were presently checked by the reserves which the Spaniard sent forward. Having come to a stand they soon had to retire, and with heavy loss. The brigade drew back to the cover of the olive groves behind it, leaving two dismounted guns out in the open.

Behind Chabert the enormous convoy was blocking the way as far back as the bridge of the Rumblar. Five hundred wagons with their two or four oxen apiece, took up, when strung along the road, more than two and a half miles. Dupont, who rode up at the sound of the cannon, and now clearly saw the Spanish line drawn up on a front of two miles north and south of the road, realized that this was no skirmish but a pitched battle. His action was governed by the fact that he every moment expected to hear the guns of CastaÑos thundering behind him, and to find that he was attacked in rear as well as in front. He accordingly resolved to deliver a second assault as quickly as possible, before this evil chance might come upon him. With some difficulty the Swiss battalions, DuprÉ’s brigade of light cavalry, and PrivÉ’s dragoons pushed their way past the convoy and got into the open. They were terribly tired, having marched all night and covered fifteen miles of bad road, but their general threw them at once into the fight: Pannetier’s brigade and the Marines of the Guard were still far to the rear, at or near the bridge of the Rumblar.

Dupont’s second attack was a fearful mistake: he should at all costs have concentrated his whole army for one desperate stroke, for there was no more chance that 6,000 men could break the Spanish line than there had been that Chabert’s 3,000 could do so. But without waiting for Pannetier to come up, he delivered his second attack. The four Swiss battalions advanced to the north of the road, Chabert’s rallied brigade to the south of it: to the right of the latter were PrivÉ’s heavy cavalry, two and a half regiments strong, with whom Dupont intended to deliver his main blow. They charged with admirable vigour and precision, cut up two Spanish battalions which failed to form square in time, and cleared the summit of the Cerrajon. But when, disordered with their first success, they rode up against Coupigny’s reserves, they failed to break through. Their own infantry was too far to the rear to help them, and after a gallant struggle to hold their ground, the dragoons and cuirassiers fell back to their old position. When they were already checked, Chabert and Schramm pushed forward to try their fortune: beaten off by the central battery of the Spanish line and its infantry supports, they recoiled to the edge of the olive wood, and there reformed.

The French were now growing disheartened, and Dupont saw disaster impending over him so closely that he seems to have lost his head, and to have retained no other idea save that of hurling every man that he could bring up in fruitless attacks on the Spanish centre. He hurried up from the rear Pannetier’s brigade of infantry, leaving at the bridge of the Rumblar only the single battalion of the Marines of the Guard. At eight o’clock the reinforcements had come up, and the attack was renewed. This time the main stress was at the northern end of the line, where Pannetier was thrown forward, with orders to drive Reding’s right wing off the Cerro del Zumacar Grande, while the other battalions renewed their assault against the Spanish centre and left. But the exhausted troops on the right of the line, who had been fighting since daybreak, made little impression on Coupigny’s front, and Reding’s last reserves were brought forward to check and hold off the one fresh brigade of which Dupont could dispose.

The fourth attack had failed. The French general had now but one intact battalion, that of the Marines of the Guard, which had been left with the baggage at the bridge over the Rumblar, to protect the rear against the possible advent of CastaÑos. As there were still no signs of an attack from that side, Dupont brought up this corps, ranged it across the road in the centre of the line, and drew up behind it all that could be rallied of Chabert’s and Pannetier’s men. The whole formed a sort of wedge, with which he hoped to break through the Spanish centre by one last effort. The cavalry advanced on the flanks, PrivÉ’s brigade to the south, DuprÉ’s to the north of the road. Dupont himself, with all his staff around him, placed himself at the head of the marines, and rode in front of the line, waving his sword and calling to the men that this time they must cut their way through [12.30 P.M.].

All was in vain: the attack was pressed home, the marines pushed up to the very muzzles of the Spanish cannon placed across the high road, and DuprÉ’s chasseurs drove in two battalions in Reding’s right centre. But the column could get no further forward: the marines were almost exterminated: DuprÉ was shot dead: Dupont received a painful (but not dangerous) wound in the hip, and rode to the rear. Then the whole attack collapsed, and the French rolled back in utter disorder to the olive groves which sheltered their rear. The majority of the rank and file of the two Swiss regiments in the centre threw up the butts of their muskets in the air and surrendered—or rather deserted—to the enemy[151].

At this moment, just as the firing died down at the front, a lively fusillade was heard from another quarter. Cruz-Murgeon’s light column, from the side of the mountains, had come down upon the Rumblar bridge, and had begun to attack the small baggage-guard[152] which remained with the convoy. All was up. Cruz-Murgeon was the forerunner of La PeÑa, and Dupont had not a man left to send to protect his rear. The battalions were all broken up, the wearied infantry had cast themselves down in the shade of the olive groves, and could not be induced even to rise to their feet. Most of them were gasping for water, which could not be got, for the stream-beds which cross the field were all dried up, and only at the Rumblar could a drink be obtained. Not 2,000 men out of the original 11,000 who had started from Andujar could be got together to oppose a feeble front to Reding and Coupigny. It was only by keeping up a slow artillery fire, from the few pieces that had not been silenced or dismounted, that any show of resistance could be made. When the attack from the rear, which was obviously impending, should be delivered, the whole force must clearly be destroyed.

Wishing at least to get some sort of terms for the men whom he had led into such a desperate position, Dupont at two o’clock sent his aide-de-camp, Captain Villoutreys, one of the Emperor’s equerries, to ask for a suspension of hostilities from Reding. He offered to evacuate Andalusia, not only with his own troops but with those of Vedel and Dufour, in return for a free passage to Madrid. This was asking too much, and if the Spanish general had been aware of the desperate state of his adversary, he would not have listened to the proposal for a minute. But he did not know that La PeÑa was now close in Dupont’s rear, while he was fully aware that Vedel, returning too late from the passes, was now drawing near to the field from the north. His men were almost as exhausted as those of Dupont, many had died from sunstroke in the ranks, and he did not refuse to negotiate. He merely replied that he had no power to treat, and that all communications should be made to his chief, who must be somewhere in the direction of Andujar. He would grant a suspension of arms for a few hours, while a French and a Spanish officer should ride off together to seek for CastaÑos.

Dupont accepted these terms gladly, all the more so because La PeÑa’s division had at last reached the Rumblar bridge, and had announced its approach by four cannon-shots, fired at regular intervals, as a signal to catch Reding’s ear. It was with the greatest difficulty that the commander of the fourth Andalusian division could be got to recognize the armistice granted by his colleague; he saw the French at his mercy, and wanted to fall upon them while they were still in disorder. But after some argument he consented to halt. Captain Villoutreys, accompanied by the Spanish Colonel Copons, rode through his lines to look for CastaÑos.

The Spanish commander-in-chief had displayed most blameworthy torpidity on this day. He had let Dupont slip away from Andujar, and did not discover that he was gone till dawn had arrived. Then, instead of pursuing at full speed with all his forces, he had sent on La PeÑa’s division, while he lingered behind with that of Felix Jones, surveying the enemy’s empty lines. The fourth division must have marched late and moved slowly, as it only reached the Rumblar bridge—twelve miles from Andujar—at about 2 p.m. It could easily have been there by 8 or 9 a.m., and might have fallen upon Dupont while he was delivering one of his earlier attacks on the Baylen position.

At much the same moment that Villoutreys and Copons reached CastaÑos at Andujar, at about five o’clock in the afternoon, the second half of the French army at last appeared upon the scene. General Vedel had discovered on the eighteenth that he had nothing to fear from the side of the passes. He therefore called down all Dufour’s troops, save two battalions left at Santa Elena, united the two divisions at La Carolina, and gave orders for their return to Baylen on the following morning. Leaving the bivouac at five o’clock Vedel, with some 9,000 or 9,500 men, marched down the defile for ten miles as far as the village of Guarroman, which he reached about 9.30 or 10 a.m.[153] The day was hot, the men were tired, and though the noise of a distant cannonade could be distinctly heard in the direction of Baylen, the general told his officers to allow their battalions two hours to cook, and to rest themselves. By some inexplicable carelessness the two hours swelled to four, and it was not till 2 p.m. that the column started out again, to drop down to Baylen. An hour before the French marched, the cannonade, which had been growling in the distance all through the mid-day rest, suddenly died down. Vedel was in nowise disturbed, and is said to have remarked that his chief had probably made an end of the Spanish corps which had been blocking the road between them.

After this astonishing display of sloth and slackness, Vedel proceeded along the road for ten miles, till he came in sight of the rear of the Spanish position at Baylen. His cavalry soon brought him the news that the troops visible upon the hillsides were enemies: they consisted of the brigade which Reding had told off at the beginning of the day to hold the height of San Cristobal and the Cerro del Ahorcado against a possible attack from the rear. It was at last clear to Vedel that things had not gone well at Baylen, and that it was his duty to press in upon the Spaniards, and endeavour to cut his way through to his chief. He had begun to deploy his troops across the defile, with the object of attacking both the flanking hills, when two officers with a white flag rode out towards him. They announced to him that Dupont had been beaten, and had asked for a suspension of hostilities, which had been granted. La PeÑa’s troops had stayed their advance, and he was asked to do the same.

Either because he doubted the truth of these statements, or because he thought that his appearance would improve Dupont’s position, Vedel refused to halt, and sent back the Spanish officers to tell Reding that he should attack him. This he did with small delay, falling on the brigade opposed to him with great fury. Boussard’s dragoons charged the troops on the lower slopes of the Cerro del Ahorcado, and rode into two battalions who were so much relying on the armistice that they were surprised with their arms still piled, cooking their evening meal. A thousand men were taken prisoners almost without firing a shot[154]. Cassagnes’ infantry attacked the steep height of San Cristobal with less good fortune: his first assault was beaten off, and Vedel was preparing to succour him, when a second white flag came out of Baylen. It was carried by a Spanish officer, who brought with him De Barbarin, one of Dupont’s aides-de-camp. The general had sent a written communication ordering Vedel to cease firing and remain quiet, as an armistice had been concluded, and it was hoped that CastaÑos would consent to a convention. The moment that his answer was received it should be passed on; meanwhile the attack must be stopped and the troops withdrawn.

Vedel obeyed: clearly he could do nothing else, for Dupont was his hierarchical superior, and, as far as he could see, was still a free agent. Moreover, De Barbarin told him of the very easy terms which the commander-in-chief hoped to get from CastaÑos. If they could be secured it would be unnecessary, as well as risky, to continue the attack. For La PeÑa might very possibly have annihilated the beaten division before Vedel could force his way to its aid, since horse and foot were both ‘fought out,’ and there was neither strength nor spirit for resistance left among them. Vedel therefore was justified in his obedience to his superior, and in his withdrawal to a point two miles up the La Carolina road.

Meanwhile Villoutreys, the emissary of Dupont, had reached the camp of CastaÑos at Andujar[155] late in the afternoon, and laid his chief’s proposals before the Spaniard. As might have been expected, they were declined—Dupont was in the trap, and it would have been absurd to let him off so easily. No great objection was made to the retreat of Vedel, but CastaÑos said that the corps caught between La PeÑa and Reding must lay down its arms. Early next morning (July 20) Villoutreys returned with this reply to the French camp.

Dupont meanwhile had spent a restless night. He had gone round the miserable bivouac of his men, to see if they would be in a condition to fight next morning, in the event of the negotiations failing. The result was most discouraging: the soldiers were in dire straits for want of water, they had little to eat, and were so worn out that they could not be roused even to gather in the wounded. The brigadiers and colonels reported that they could hold out no prospect of a rally on the morrow[156]. Only PrivÉ, the commander of the heavy-cavalry brigade, spoke in favour of fighting: the others doubted whether even 2,000 men could be got together for a rush at the Spanish lines. When an aide-de-camp, whom Vedel had been allowed to send to his chief, asked whether it would not be possible to make a concerted attack on Reding next morning, with the object of disengaging the surrounded division, Dupont told him that it was no use to dream of any such thing. Vedel must prepare for a prompt retreat, in order to save himself; no more could be done.

At dawn, nothing having been yet settled, La PeÑa wrote to Dupont threatening that if the 1,000 men who had been captured by Vedel on the previous day were not at once released, he should consider the armistice at an end, and order his division to advance. The request was reasonable, as they had been surprised and taken while relying on the suspension of arms. Dupont ordered his subordinate to send them back to Reding’s camp. CastaÑos meanwhile was pressing for a reply to his demand for surrender: he had brought up Felix Jones’s division to join La PeÑa’s in the early morning, so that he had over 14,000 men massed on the right bank of the Rumblar and ready to attack[157]. Dupont was well aware of this, and had made up his mind to surrender when he realized the hopeless demoralization of his troops. Early in the morning he called a council of war; the officers present, after a short discussion, drew up and signed a document in which they declared that ‘the honour of the French arms had been sufficiently vindicated by the battle of the previous day: that in accepting the enemy’s terms the commander-in-chief was yielding to evident military necessity: that, surrounded by 40,000 enemies, he was justified in averting by an honourable treaty the destruction of his corps.’ Only the cavalry brigadier PrivÉ, refused to put his name to the paper, on which appear the signatures of three generals of division, of the officers commanding the artillery and engineers, of two brigadiers, and of three commanders of regiments.

After this formality was ended Generals Chabert and Marescot rode out from the French camp and met CastaÑos. They had orders to make the best terms they could: in a general way it was recognized that the compromised division could not escape surrender, and that Vedel and Dufour would probably have to evacuate Andalusia and stipulate for a free passage to Madrid. The Spaniards were not, as it seems, intending to ask for much more. But while they were haggling on such petty points as the forms of surrender, and the exemption of officers’ baggage from search, a new factor was introduced into the discussion. Some irregulars from the Sierra Morena came to CastaÑos, bringing with them as a prisoner an aide-de-camp of Savary[158]. They had secured his dispatch, which was a peremptory order to Dupont to evacuate Andalusia with all his three divisions, and fall back towards Madrid. This put a new face on affairs, for CastaÑos saw that if he conceded a free retreat to Vedel and Dufour, he would be enabling them to carry out exactly the movement which Savary intended. To do so would clearly be undesirable: he therefore interposed in the negotiations, and declared that the troops of these two generals should not be allowed to quit Andalusia by the road which had been hitherto proposed. They must be sent round by sea to some port of France not immediately contiguous with the Spanish frontier.

Chabert and Marescot, as was natural, declaimed vehemently against this projected change in the capitulation, and declared that it was inadmissible. But they were answered in even more violent terms by the turbulent Conde de Tilly, who attended as representative of the Junta of Seville. He taunted them with their atrocities at the sack of Cordova, and threatened that if the negotiations fell through no quarter should be given to the French army. At last CastaÑos suggested a compromise: he offered to let Dupont’s troops, no less than those of Vedel, return to France by sea, if the claim that the latter should be allowed to retreat on Madrid were withdrawn. This was conceding much, and the French generals accepted the proposal.

Accordingly CastaÑos and Tilly, representing the Spaniards, and Chabert and Marescot, on behalf of Dupont, signed preliminaries, by which it was agreed that the surrounded divisions should formally lay down their arms and become prisoners of war, while Vedel’s men should not be considered to have capitulated, nor make any act of surrender. Both bodies of men should leave Andalusia by sea, and be taken to Rochefort on Spanish vessels. ‘The Spanish army,’ so ran the curiously worded seventh article of the capitulation, ‘guarantees them against all hostile aggression during their passage.’ The other clauses contain nothing striking, save some rather liberal permissions to the French officers to take away their baggage—each general was to be allowed two wheeled vehicles, each field officer or staff officer one—without its being examined. This article caught the eye of Napoleon, and has been noted by many subsequent critics, who have maintained that Dupont and his colleagues, gorged with the plunder of Cordova, surrendered before they needed, in order to preserve their booty intact. That they yielded before it was inevitable we do not believe: but far more anxiety than was becoming seems to have been shown regarding the baggage. This anxiety finds easy explanation if the Spanish official statement, that more than £40,000 in hard cash, and a great quantity of jewellery and silver plate was afterwards found in the fourgons of the staff and the superior officers, be accepted as correct[159].

The fifteenth clause of the capitulation had contents of still more doubtful propriety: it was to the effect that as many pieces of church plate had been stolen at the sack of Cordova, Dupont undertook to make a search for them and restore them to the sanctuaries to which they belonged, if they could be found in existence. The confession was so scandalous, that we share Napoleon’s wonder that such a clause could ever have been passed by the two French negotiators; if they were aware that the charge of theft was true (as it no doubt was), shame should have prevented them from putting it on paper: if they thought it false, they were permitting a gratuitous insult to the French army to be inserted in the capitulation.

While the negotiations were going on, Dupont sent secret orders to Vedel to abscond during the night, and to retreat on Madrid as fast as he was able. Chabert and Marescot had of course no knowledge of this, or they would hardly have consented to include that general’s troops in the convention. In accordance with his superior’s orders, and with the obvious necessities of the case, Vedel made off on the night of July 20-21, leaving only a screen of pickets in front of his position, to conceal his departure from the Spaniards as long as was possible. On the return of his plenipotentiaries to his camp on the morning of the twenty-first, Dupont learnt, to his surprise and discontent, that they had included Vedel’s division in their bargain with CastaÑos. But as that officer was now far away—he had reached La Carolina at daybreak and Santa Elena by noon—the commander-in-chief hoped that his troops were saved.

The anger of the Spaniards at discovering the evasion of the second French division may easily be imagined. Reding, who was the first to become aware of it, sent down an officer into Dupont’s camp, with the message that if Vedel did not instantly return, he should regard the convention as broken, and fall upon the surrounded troops: he should give no quarter, as he considered that treachery had been shown, and that the armistice had been abused. Dupont could not hope to make a stand, and was at the enemy’s mercy. He directed his chief of the staff to write an order bidding Vedel to halt, and sent it to him by one of his aides-de-camp, accompanied by a Spanish officer. This did not satisfy Reding, who insisted that Dupont should write an autograph letter of his own in stronger terms. His demand could not be refused, and the two dispatches reached Vedel almost at the same hour, as he was resting his troops at Santa Elena before plunging into the passes.

Vedel, as all his previous conduct had shown, was weak and wanting in initiative. Some of his officers tried to persuade him to push on, and to leave Dupont to make the best terms for himself that he could. Much was to be said in favour of this resolve: he might have argued that since he had never been without the power of retreating, it was wrong of his superior to include him in the capitulation. His duty to the Emperor would be to save his men, whatever might be the consequences to Dupont. The latter, surrounded as he was, could hardly be considered a free agent, and his orders might be disregarded. But such views were far from Vedel’s mind: he automatically obeyed his chief’s dispatch and halted. Next day he marched his troops back to Baylen, in consequence of a third communication from Dupont.

On July 23 Dupont’s troops laid down their arms with full formalities, defiling to the sound of military music before the divisions of La PeÑa and Jones, who were drawn up by the Rumblar bridge. On the twenty-fourth Vedel’s and Dufour’s troops, without any such humiliating ceremony, stacked their muskets and cannon on the hillsides east of Baylen and marched for the coast. When the two corps were numbered it was found that 8,242 unwounded men had surrendered with Dupont: nearly 2,000 more, dead or wounded, were left on the battle-field; seven or eight hundred of the Swiss battalions had deserted and disappeared. With Vedel 9,393 men laid down their arms[160]. Not only did he deliver up his own column, but he called down the battalion guarding the DespeÑa Perros pass. Even the troops left beyond the defiles in La Mancha were summoned to surrender by the Spaniards, and some of them did so, though they were not really included in the capitulation, which was by its wording confined to French troops in Andalusia. But the commanders of three battalions allowed themselves to be intimidated by Colonel Cruz-Murgeon, who went to seek them at the head of a few cavalry, and tamely laid down their arms[161].

The Spaniards had won their success at very small cost. Reding’s division returned a casualty list of 117 dead and 403 wounded, in which were included the losses of the skirmish of July 16 as well as those of the battle of the nineteenth. Coupigny lost 100 dead and 894 wounded. La PeÑa’s and Cruz-Murgeon’s columns, which had barely got into touch with the French when the armistice was granted, cannot have lost more than a score or two of men. The total is no more than 954. There were in addition 998 prisoners captured by Vedel when he attacked from the rear, but these were, of course, restored on the twentieth, in consequence of the orders sent by Dupont, along with two guns and two regimental standards.

CastaÑos, a man of untarnished honour, had every intention of carrying out the capitulation. The French troops, divided into small columns, were sent down to the coast, or to the small towns of the Lower Guadalquivir under Spanish escorts, which had some difficulty in preserving them from the fury of the peasantry. It was necessary to avoid the large towns like Cordova and Seville, where the passage of the unarmed prisoners would certainly have led to riots and massacres. At Ecija the mob actually succeeded in murdering sixty unfortunate Frenchmen. But when the troops had been conducted to their temporary destinations, it was found that difficulties had arisen. The amount of Spanish shipping available would not have carried 20,000 men. This was a comparatively small hindrance, as the troops could have been sent off in detachments. But it was more serious that Lord Collingwood, the commander of the British squadron off Cadiz, refused his permission for the embarkation of the French. He observed that CastaÑos had promised to send Dupont’s army home by water, without considering whether he had the power to do so. The British fleet commanded the sea, and was blockading Rochefort, the port which the capitulation assigned for the landing of the captive army. No representative of Great Britain had signed the convention[162], and she was not bound by it. He must find out, by consulting his government, whether the transference of the troops of Dupont to France was to be allowed.

On hearing of the difficulties raised by Collingwood, CastaÑos got into communication with Dupont, and drew up six supplementary articles to the convention, in which it was stipulated that if the British Government objected to Rochefort as the port at which the French troops were to be landed, some other place should be selected. If all passage by sea was denied, a way by land should be granted by the Spaniards. This agreement was signed at Seville on August 6, but meanwhile the Junta was being incited to break the convention. Several of its more reckless and fanatical members openly broached the idea that no faith need be kept with those who had invaded Spain under such treacherous pretences. The newspapers were full of tales of French outrages, and protests against the liberation of the spoilers of Cordova and Jaen.

Matters came to a head when Dupont wrote to Morla, the Captain-General of Andalusia, to protest against further delays, and to require that the first division of his army should be allowed to sail at once [August 8]. He received in reply a most shameless and cynical letter[163]. The Captain-General began by declaring that there were no ships available. But he then went on to state that no more had been promised than that the Junta would request the British to allow the French troops to sail. He supposed that it was probable that a blank refusal would be sent to this demand. Why should Britain allow the passage by sea of troops who were destined to be used against her on some other point of the theatre of war? Morla next insinuated that Dupont himself must have been well aware that the capitulation could not be carried out. ‘Your Excellency’s object in inserting these conditions was merely to obtain terms which, impossible as they were to execute, might yet give a show of honour to the inevitable surrender.... What right have you to require the performance of these impossible conditions on behalf of an army which entered Spain under a pretence of alliance, and then imprisoned our King and princes, sacked his palaces, slew and robbed his subjects, wasted his provinces, and tore away his crown?’

After a delay of some weeks Lord Collingwood sent in to the Junta the reply of his government. It was far from being of the kind that Morla and his friends had hoped. Canning had answered that no stipulations made at Baylen could bind Great Britain, but that to oblige her allies, and to avoid compromising their honour, she consented to allow the French army to be sent back to France, and to be landed in successive detachments of 4,000 men at some port between Brest and Rochefort (i.e. at Nantes or L’Orient). It is painful to have to add that neither the Junta of Seville nor the Supreme Central Junta, which superseded that body, took any steps to carry out this project. Dupont himself, his generals, and his staff, were sent home to France, but their unfortunate troops were kept for a time in cantonments in Andalusia, then sent on board pontoons in the Bay of Cadiz, where they were subjected to all manner of ill usage and half-starved, and finally dispatched to the desolate rock of Cabrera, in the Balearic Islands, where more than half of them perished of cold, disease, and insufficient nourishment[164]. Vedel’s men were imprisoned no less than Dupont’s, and the survivors were only released at the conclusion of the general peace of 1814.

So ended the strange and ill-fought campaign of Baylen. It is clear that Dupont’s misfortunes were of his own creation. He ought never to have lingered at Andujar till July was far spent, but should either have massed his three divisions and fallen upon CastaÑos, or have retired to a safe defensive position at Baylen or La Carolina and have waited to be attacked. He might have united something over 20,000 men, and could have defied every effort of the 35,000 Spaniards to drive him back over the Sierra Morena. By dividing his army into fractions and persisting in holding Andujar, he brought ruin upon himself. But the precise form in which the ruin came about was due less to Dupont than to Vedel. That officer’s blind and irrational march on La Carolina and abandonment of Baylen on July 17-18 gave the Spaniards the chance of interposing between the two halves of the French army. If Vedel had made a proper reconnaissance on the seventeenth, he would have found that Reding had not marched for the passes, but was still lingering at Mengibar. Instead, however, of sweeping the country-side for traces of the enemy, he credited a wild rumour, and hurried off to La Carolina, leaving the fatal gap behind him. All that followed was his fault: not only did he compromise the campaign by his march back to the passes, but when he had discovered his mistake he returned with a slowness that was inexcusable. If he had used ordinary diligence he might yet have saved Dupont on the nineteenth: it was his halt at Guarroman, while the cannon of Baylen were thundering in his ears, that gave the last finishing touch to the disaster. If he had come upon the battle-field at ten in the morning, instead of at five in the afternoon, he could have aided his chief to cut his way through, and even have inflicted a heavy blow on Reding and Coupigny. A careful study of Vedel’s actions, from his first passage of the Sierra Morena to his surrender, shows that on every possible occasion he took the wrong course.

But even if we grant that Vedel made every possible mistake, it is nevertheless true that Dupont fought his battle most unskilfully. If he had marched on the morning instead of the night of July 18, he probably might have brushed past the front of Reding and Coupigny without suffering any greater disaster than the loss of his baggage. Even as things actually fell out, it is not certain that he need have been forced to surrender. He had 10,000 men, the two Spanish generals had 17,000, but had been forced to detach some 3,500 bayonets to guard against the possible reappearance of Vedel. If Dupont had refused to waste his men in partial and successive attacks, and had massed them for a vigorous assault on the left wing of the Spaniards, where Coupigny’s position on the slopes of the Cerrajon was neither very strong nor very well defined, he might yet have cut his way through, though probably his immense baggage-train would have been lost. It is fair, however, to remember that this chance was only granted him because CastaÑos, in front of Andujar, was slow to discover his retreat and still slower to pursue him. If that officer had shown real energy, ten thousand men might have been pressing Dupont from the rear before eight o’clock in the morning.

As it was Dupont mismanaged all the details of his attack. He made four assaults with fractions of his army, and on a long front. The leading brigades were completely worn out and demoralized before the reserves were sent into action. The fifth assault, in which every man was at last brought forward, failed because the majority of the troops were already convinced that the day was lost, and were no longer capable of any great exertions. It is absurd to accuse Dupont of cowardice—he exposed his person freely and was wounded—and still more absurd to charge him (as did the Emperor) with treason. He did not surrender till he saw that there was no possible hope of salvation remaining. But there can be no doubt that he showed great incapacity to grasp the situation, lost his head, and threw away all his chances.

As to the Spaniards, it can truly be said that they were extremely fortunate, and that even their mistakes helped them. CastaÑos framed his plan for surrounding Dupont on the hypothesis that the main French army was concentrated at Andujar. If this had indeed been the case, and Dupont had retained at that place some 15,000 or 17,000 men, the turning movement of Reding and Coupigny would have been hazardous in the extreme. But the French general was obliging enough to divide his force into two equal parts, and his subordinate led away one of the halves on a wild march back to the passes. Again Reding acted in the most strange and unskilful way on July 17; after defeating Liger-Belair and Dufour he ought to have seized Baylen. Instead, he remained torpid in his camp for a day and a half: this mistake led to the far more inexcusable error of Vedel, who failed to see his adversary, and marched off to La Carolina. But Vedel’s blindness does not excuse Reding’s sloth. On the actual day of battle, on the other hand, Reding behaved very well: he showed considerable tenacity, and his troops deserve great credit. It was no mean achievement for 13,000 or 14,000[165] Spaniards, their ranks full of raw recruits and interspersed with battalions levied only five weeks before, to withstand the attack of 10,000 French, even if the latter were badly handled by their general. The Andalusians had good reason to be proud of their victory, though they might have refrained from calling Dupont’s Legions of Reserve and provisional regiments the ‘invincible troops of Austerlitz and Friedland,’ as they were too prone to do. They had at least succeeded in beating in the open field and capturing a whole French army, a thing which no continental nation had accomplished since the wars of the Revolution began.

NOTE

Sir Charles Vaughan, always in search of first-hand information, called on CastaÑos and had a long conversation with him concerning the Convention. I find among his papers the following notes:—

‘Among other particulars of the surrender, General CastaÑos stated that the French General Marescot had the greatest influence in bringing it about. The great difficulty was to persuade them [Marescot and Chabert] to capitulate for Vedel’s army as well as Dupont’s. A letter had been intercepted ordering Vedel back to Madrid, and another ordering Dupont to retire. This letter had considerable effect with the French: but the offer of carrying away their baggage and the plunder of the country was no sooner made, than the two generals desired to be permitted to retire and deliberate alone. After a few minutes they accepted the proposal. But General CastaÑos, to make the article of as little value as possible, got them to insert the clause that the French officers should be allowed to embark all their baggage, &c., according to the laws of Spain. He well knew that those laws forbid the exportation of gold and silver. The consequence was that the French lost all their more valuable plunder when embarking at Puerto Santa Maria.’