Charles Oman

THE STRUGGLE IN CATALONIA

CHAPTER I

DUHESME’S OPERATIONS: FIRST SIEGE OF GERONA (JUNE-JULY,1808)

There is still one corner of the Iberian Peninsula whose history, during the eventful summer months of 1808, we have not yet chronicled. The rugged and warlike province of Catalonia had already begun that heroic struggle against its French garrison which was to endure throughout the whole of the war. Far more than any other section of the Spanish nation do the Catalans deserve credit for their unswerving patriotism. Nowhere else was the war maintained with such resolution. When the struggle commenced the French were already masters by treachery of the chief fortresses of the land: the force of Spanish regular troops which lay within its borders was insignificant: there was no recognized leader, no general of repute, to head the rising of the province. Yet the attack on the invaders was delivered with a fierceness and a persistent energy that was paralleled in no other quarter of the Peninsula. For six years marshal after marshal ravaged the Catalan valleys, sacked the towns, scattered the provincial levies. But not for one moment did the resistance slacken; the invaders could never control a foot of ground beyond the narrow space that was swept by the cannon of their strongholds. The spirit of the race was as unbroken in 1813 as in 1808, and their untiring bands still held out in the hills, ready to strike at the enemy when the least chance was offered. Other provinces had equal or greater advantages than Catalonia for protracted resistance: Biscay, the Asturias, and Galicia were as rugged, Andalusia far more populous, Valencia more fertile and wealthy. But in none of these was the struggle carried on with such a combination of energy and persistence as in the Catalan hills. Perhaps the greatest testimony that can be quoted in behalf of the people of that devoted province is that Napier, bitter critic as he was of all things Spanish, is forced to say a good word for it. ‘The Catalans,’ he writes, ‘were vain and superstitious; but their courage was higher, their patriotism purer, and their efforts more sustained than those of the rest. The somatenes were bold and active in battle, the population of the towns firm, and the juntas apparently disinterested[290].’ No one but a careful student of Napier will realize what a handsome testimonial is contained in the somewhat grudging language of this paragraph. What the real credit due to the Catalans was, it will now be our duty to display.

It will be remembered that in the month of February the French general Duhesme had obtained possession of the citadel and forts of Barcelona by a particularly impudent and shameless stratagem[291]. Since that time he had been lying in the city that he had seized, with his whole force concentrated under his hand. Of the 7,000 French and 5,000 Italian troops which composed his corps, all were with him save a single battalion of detachments which had been left behind to garrison Figueras, the fortress close to the French frontier, which commands the most important of the three roads by which the principality of Catalonia can be entered.

Duhesme believed himself to be entirely secure, for of Spanish regular troops there were barely 6,000 in all scattered through the province[292], and a third of these were Swiss mercenaries, who, according to the orders of Bonaparte, were to be taken at once into the French service. That there was any serious danger to be feared from the miqueletes of the mountains never entered into the heads of the Emperor or his lieutenant. Nor does it seem to have occurred to them that any insurrection which broke out in Catalonia might be immediately supported from the Balearic Isles, where a heavy garrison was always kept, in order to guard against any descent of the British to recover their old stronghold of Port Mahon[293]. If Napoleon had realized in May that the Spanish rising was about to sweep over the whole Peninsula, he would not have dared to leave Duhesme with such a small force. But persisting in his original blunder of believing that the troubles which had broken out were merely local and sporadic, he was about to order Duhesme to make large detachments from a corps that was already dangerously weak.

The geography of Catalonia, as we have had occasion to relate in an earlier chapter, is rather complicated. Not only is the principality cut off by its mountains from the rest of Spain—it faces towards the sea, while its neighbour Aragon faces towards the Ebro—but it is divided by its numerous cross-ranges into a number of isolated valleys, between which communication is very difficult. Its coast-plain along the Mediterranean is generally narrow, and often cut across by spurs which run down from the mountains of the inland till they strike the sea. Except on the eastern side of the principality, where it touches Aragon in the direction of Lerida, there is no broad expanse of level ground within its borders: much the greater part of its surface is upland and mountain.

Catalonia may be divided into four regions: the first is the district at the foot of the Eastern Pyrenees, drained by the Fluvia and the Ter. This narrow corner is called the Ampurdam; it contains all the frontier-fortresses which protect the province on the side of France. Rosas commands the pass along the sea-shore, Figueras the main road from Perpignan, which runs some twenty miles further inland. A little further south both these roads meet, and are blocked by the strong city of Gerona, the capital of all this region and its most important strategical point. South of Gerona a cross-range divides the Ampurdam from the coast-plain of Central Catalonia; the defile through this range is covered by the small fortified town of Hostalrich, but there is an alternative route from Gerona to Barcelona along the coast by Blanes and Arens de Mar.

The river-basin of Central Catalonia is that of the Llobregat, near whose estuary Barcelona stands. Its lower course lies through the level ground along the coast, but its upper waters and those of its tributaries drain a series of highland valleys, difficult of access and divided from each other by considerable chains of hills. All these valleys unite at the foot of the crag of Montserrat, which, crowned by its monastery, overlooks the plain, and stands sentinel over the approach to the upland. In the mountains behind Montserrat was the main stronghold of the Catalan insurrection, whose rallying-places were the high-lying towns of Manresa, Cardona, Berga, and Solsona. Only three practicable roads enter the valleys of the Upper Llobregat, one communicates by the line of Manresa and Vich with the Ampurdam; a second goes from Manresa via Cervera to Lerida, and ultimately to the plains of Aragon; the third is the high-road from Barcelona to Manresa, the main line of approach from the shore to the upland. But there is another route of high importance in this section of Catalonia, that which, starting from Barcelona, avoids the upper valleys, strikes inland by Igualada, crosses the main watershed between the coast and the Ebro valley below Cervera, and at that place joins the other road from Manresa and the Upper Llobregat, and continues on its way to Lerida and the plains of Aragon. This, passing the mountains at the point of least resistance, forms the great trunk-road from Barcelona to Madrid.

The third region of the principality is the coastland of Tarragona, a district cut off from the coastland of Barcelona by a well-marked cross-ridge, which runs down from the mountains to the sea, and reaches the latter near the mouth of the Llobregat. The communication between the two maritime districts is by two roads, one passing the cross-ridge by the defile of Ordal, the other hugging the beach and finding its way between the hills and the water’s edge by Villanueva de Sitjas. The coastland of Tarragona is not drained by a single river of considerable volume, like the Llobregat, but by a number of small streams such as the Francoli and the Gaya, running parallel to each other and at right angles to the coast. Each is separated from the next by a line of hills of moderate height. The southern limit of this region is the Ebro, whose lower course is protected by the strong fortress of Tortosa. Its main line of internal communication is the great coast-route from Barcelona to Tarragona, and from Tarragona to the mouth of the Ebro. Its touch with Aragon and Central Spain is maintained by a good road from Tarragona by Montblanch to Lerida.

The fourth and last region of Catalonia is the inland, which looks not towards the Mediterranean but to the Ebro and Aragon. It is drained by the Segre, an important stream, which after being joined by its tributaries, the Noguera and the Pallaresa, falls into the Ebro not far to the south of Lerida. The tracts around that town are flat and fertile, part of the main valley of the Ebro. But the head-waters of the Segre and its affluents flow through narrow and difficult mountain valleys, starting in the highest and wildest region of the Pyrenees. They are very inaccessible, and served by no roads suitable for the use of an army. Hence, like the upper valley of the Llobregat, they served as places of refuge for the Catalan insurgents when Lerida and the flat country had been lost. The only place of importance in these highlands is the remote town of Seu d’ Urgel[294], a mediaeval fortress near the sources of the Segre, approached by mule-paths only, and quite lost in the hills.

Catalonia, then, is pre-eminently a mountain land, and one presenting special difficulties to an invader, because it has no central system of roads or valleys, but is divided into so many heterogeneous parts. Though not fertile, it was yet rich, and fairly well peopled when compared with other regions of Spain[295]. Its wealth came not from agriculture but from commerce and manufactures. Barcelona, a city of 180,000 souls, was the greatest Mediterranean port of Spain: on each side of it, along the coast, are dozens of large fishing-villages and small harbour-towns, drawing their living from the sea. Of the places which lay farther back from the water there were many which made an ample profit from their manufactures, for Catalonia was, and still remains, the workshop of Spain. It is the only province of the kingdom where the inhabitants have developed industries on a large scale: its textile products were especially successful, and supplied the whole Peninsula.

More than any other part of Spain, Catalonia had suffered from the war with England and the Continental System. The closure of its ports had told cruelly upon its merchants and manufacturers, who were fully aware that their sufferings were the logical consequence of the French alliance. They had, moreover, a historic grudge against France: after encouraging them to revolt in the seventeenth century, the Bourbons had then abandoned them to the mercies of the King of the Castilians. In the great war of the Spanish Succession, Catalonia had taken sides against France and Don Philip, and had proclaimed Charles of Austria its king—not because it loved him, but because it hated the French claimant. Even after the Peace of Utrecht the Catalans had refused to lay down their arms, and had made a last desperate struggle for provincial independence. It was in these wars that their miqueletes[296] had first made their name famous by their stubborn fighting. These bands were a levy en masse of the population of military age, armed and paid by their parishes, not by the central government, which could be called out whenever the principality was threatened with invasion. From their liability to turn out whenever the alarm-bell (somaten) was rung, they were also known as somatenes. The system of the Quinta and the militia ballot, which prevailed in the provinces under the crown of Castile, had never been applied to the Catalans, who gloried in the survival of their ancient military customs. The somatenes had been called out in the French war of 1793-5, and had done good service in it, distinguishing themselves far more than the troops of the line which fought on the frontier of the Eastern Pyrenees. The memories of that struggle were still fresh among them, and many of the leaders who had won a name in it were still fit for service. In Catalonia then, more than in any other corner of Spain, there were all the materials at hand for a vigorous popular insurrection, even though the body of regular troops in the principality was insignificant. The Catalans rose to defend their provincial independence, and to recover their capital, which had been seized so shamelessly by the trickery of Duhesme. They did not concern themselves much with what was going on in Aragon and Valencia, or even in Madrid. Their fight with the invader forms an episode complete in itself, a sort of underplot in the great drama of the Peninsular War, which only touches the main struggle at infrequent intervals. It was not affected by the campaigns of Castile, still less had it any noticeable influence on them. It would be equally possible to write the history of the war in Catalonia as a separate treatise, or to compile a general history of the war in which Catalonia was barely mentioned.

When the echoes of the cannon of the second of May went rolling round Spain, they stirred up Catalonia no less than the other provinces which lie at a distance from the capital. The phenomena which appeared in the South and the West were repeated here, in much the same sequence, and at much the same dates, as elsewhere. But the rising of the Catalans was greatly handicapped by the fact that their populous and wealthy capital was occupied by 12,000 French troops. Barcelona could not set the example to the smaller places, and for some time the outburst was spasmodic and local. The chief focus of rebellion was Lerida, where an insurrectionary Junta was formed on May 29. At Tortosa the populace rose a few days later, and murdered the military governor, Santiago de Guzman, because he had been slow and reluctant to place himself at their head. On June 2 Manresa, in the upper valley of the Llobregat, followed their example, and from it the flame of insurrection spread all over the central upland. In Barcelona itself there were secret meetings, and suspicious gatherings in the streets, on which Duhesme had to keep a watchful eye. But the main preoccupation of the French general was that there were still several thousand Spanish troops in the town, who might easily lead the populace in an Émeute. He had got rid of one regiment, that of Estremadura, in May: he gave it orders to march to Lerida, where the magistrates and people refused to receive it within their walls, dreading that it might not be ready to join in their projected rising. This was a vain fear, for the corps readily took its part in the insurrection, and marched to join Palafox at Saragossa. But there still remained in Barcelona a battalion each of the Spanish and the Walloon Guards, and the cavalry regiment of Borbon, some 2,500 men in all. To Duhesme’s intense satisfaction, these troops, instead of keeping together and attacking the French garrison when the news of the revolt reached them, began to desert in small parties. Far from attempting to compel them to stay by their colours, Duhesme winked at their evasion, and took no notice of their proceedings, even when a whole squadron of the Borbon Regiment rode off with trumpets sounding and its officers at its head. Within a few days the greater part of the Spanish troops had vanished, and when Duhesme was directed by his master to disarm them, there were very few left for him to deal with. These scattered remnants of the Guard Regiments drifted in small bands all over Catalonia, some were found at Gerona, others at Tarragona, others at Rosas. Nearly 400 went to Aragon and fought under Palafox at Epila: another considerable body joined the Valencian insurgents[297]. But these two strong veteran battalions never were united again, or made to serve as a nucleus for the Catalan levies[298].

Saved from the peril of a rising of the Spanish regiments in Barcelona, Duhesme had still the insurrection of the province on his hands. But he was not left free to deal with it according to his own inspirations. By the last dispatch from Napoleon which reached him before the communications with Madrid and Bayonne were cut, a plan of campaign was dictated to him. The Emperor ordered him to chastise the insurgents of Lerida and Manresa, without ceasing to keep a strong grip on Barcelona, and on the line of touch with France through Figueras. But, as if this was not enough to occupy his small army of 12,000 or 13,000 men, he was to provide two strong detachments, one of which was to co-operate with Moncey in Valencia, and the other with Lefebvre-Desnouettes in Aragon. A glance at the Emperor’s instructions is enough to show how entirely he had misconceived the situation, and how thoroughly he had failed to realize that all Spain was up in arms. The first detachment, 4,000 strong, was to march on Lerida, and to enter Aragon along the line of the Ebro. It was then to move on Saragossa to join Lefebvre. The second detachment, also 4,000 strong, was to move on Valencia via Tortosa, join Marshal Moncey, and finally occupy the great naval arsenal of Cartagena. With the 5,000 men that remained Duhesme was to hold down Barcelona and Central Catalonia, while keeping open the line of communications with Figueras and Perpignan.

Either Duhesme was as blind to the real state of affairs as his master, or he considered that unquestioning obedience was his first duty. He told off the two columns as directed, only cutting down their strength a little, so as not wholly to ungarnish Barcelona. For the Valencian expedition he told off General Chabran, with the best brigade in his army, three veteran French battalions of the 7th and 16th of the line[299]. With this force he sent his single brigade of French cavalry, two regiments under General BessiÈres (the brother of the Duke of Istria). The whole amounted to 2,500 foot and 600 horse. For the attack on Lerida, he had to send out troops of more doubtful value—all foreigners, for there were no more French to be spared. General Schwartz was given one Swiss, two Neapolitan, and one Italian battalion[300], with no more than a single squadron of cavalry, for his march was to lie over a very mountainous country. His whole force was 3,200 strong. To the general directions given by Napoleon, Duhesme added some supplementary orders of his own. Chabran was to pass by Tarragona, leave a battalion in its citadel, and take as a compensation the two battalions of Wimpfen’s Swiss Regiment, which was to be incorporated in the French army. It was expected that he would get into touch with Marshal Moncey when he should reach Castellon de la Plana. Schwartz, on the other hand, was told to march by the mountain road leading to Manresa, in order to punish the inhabitants of that town for their rebellion. He was to fine them 750,000 francs, and to destroy a powder-mill which they possessed. He was then to march on Lerida, from which he was to evict the insurrectionary Junta: the city was to pay a heavy war-contribution, and to receive a garrison of 500 men. With the rest of his brigade Schwartz was to join the French forces before Saragossa, not later than June 19.

Schwartz started from Barcelona on June 4: a tempest forced him to wait for a day at Martorel, in the coast-plain, but on the sixth he reached the pass of Bruch, at whose foot the roads from Igualada and from Manresa join. Here he met with opposition: the news of his approach had spread all up the valley of the Llobregat, and the somatenes of the upland towns were hurrying forward to hold the defile by which the high-road from Barcelona climbs into the upper country. At the moment when the invaders, marching in the most careless fashion, were making their way up the hill, only the levy of Manresa was in position. They were a mere handful, 300 or 400 at most, and many were destitute of muskets. But from the cover of a pine-wood they boldly opened fire upon the head of Schwartz’s column. Surprised to find himself attacked, the French general deployed a battalion and drove the somatenes out of their position: they retired in great disorder up the hill towards Manresa. Schwartz followed them with caution, under the idea that they must be the vanguard of a larger force, and that there were probably regular troops in support, further along the defile. In this he was wrong, but the retreating Manresans received reinforcements a few miles behind the place of the first skirmish. They were joined by the levies of San Pedor and other villages of the Upper Llobregat, marching forward to the sound of the single drum that was to be found in the upland. The peasants ensconced themselves in the rocks and bushes on either side of the road, and again offered battle. Schwartz took their opposition much too seriously, extended a long front of tirailleurs against them, but did not push his attack home. Soon other bands of somatenes from the direction of Igualada began to gather round his left flank, and it seemed to him that he would soon be surrounded and cut off from his line of communications with Barcelona. His regiments were raw and not of the best quality: the Neapolitans who composed more than half his force passed, and with reason, as the worst troops in Europe. He himself was a cavalry officer who had never held independent command before, and was wholly unversed in mountain warfare. Reflecting that the afternoon was far spent, that he was still twelve miles from Manresa, and that the whole country-side was on the move against him, he resolved to abandon his expedition. Instead of hurling his four battalions upon the somatenes, who must have been scattered to the winds if attacked by such superior numbers, he drew back, formed his men in a great square, with the cavalry and guns in the middle, and began a retreat across the more open parts of the defile. The Spaniards followed, pressing in the screen of tirailleurs by which the square was covered, and taking easy shots into the solid mass behind them. After six miles of marching under fire, Schwartz’s Swiss and Italians were growing somewhat demoralized, for nothing could be more harassing to raw and unwilling troops than such a retreat. At last they found their way blocked by the village of Esparraguera, where the inhabitants barricaded the streets and opened a hot fire upon the front face of the square. Seeing his men hesitate and break their ranks, Schwartz hastily bade them scatter right and left and pass round the village without attempting to storm it. This device succeeded, but when the two halves of the column reunited beyond Esparraguera, they were in such disorder that there was no means of stopping them. The whole streamed into Martorel in a confused mass at nightfall, after a retreat whose incidents remind the military reader, in every detail, of the rout of the British troops in the march to Lexington, on the first day of the old American War of 1775.

When he reached the plains Schwartz was able to retire unharmed to Barcelona, having saved three of his four guns[301] and lost no very large proportion of his men. But he had suffered the disgrace of being worsted by inferior numbers of undisciplined peasantry, and brought his troops back in a state of demoralization, which was very discouraging to the rest of the garrison of the Catalonian capital. Duhesme, instead of taking him to task, fully approved of his retreat, on the ground that if he had pushed on for Manresa and Lerida he would probably have lost his whole brigade. Realizing at last the true strength of the insurrection, and learning that the somaten was sounding in every village, and that the peasantry were flocking together in thousands, Duhesme determined to concentrate his whole force, and sent orders to Chabran to abandon his Valencian expedition and return at once to Barcelona. He was probably quite right in his resolve, though Chabran’s retreat was the determining fact that ruined Moncey’s campaign in the province south of the Ebro. The Emperor had sketched out the whole plan of operations on false premises, and when the new military situation had developed itself, it would have been absurd for his lieutenants to carry out his original orders in blind and servile obedience.

Chabran’s column had reached Tarragona when it received Duhesme’s letters of recall. It had started on June 4, and found the coastland still quiet, the insurrection not having yet spread downwards from the hills. On arriving at Tarragona Chabran took possession of the citadel, and issued orders to the two battalions of Wimpfen’s Swiss Regiment, which formed the garrison of the place, to prepare to march with him against Valencia. The Swiss officers showed no alacrity in falling in with this plan. They were not animated by the patriotic fury which had carried away the rest of the Spanish regular troops into the insurgent camp. On the other hand they felt no enthusiasm at the idea of joining the French in an attack on their late employers. They were deferring obedience to the orders of the French general on various futile pleas, when the news of Schwartz’s defeat at Bruch reached Tarragona. Directed to return in haste and to rejoin Duhesme, General Chabran marched off on June 9, leaving Wimpfen’s mercenaries behind: they would not follow him, and declared in favour of the insurgent Junta at Lerida the moment that his back was turned. The retreating French column had to brush aside several considerable bands of somatenes, which tried to arrest its progress, for the coastland had taken arms after the combat of Bruch, and its levies hoped to treat Chabran as their compatriots of the upland had treated Schwartz. But the three veteran French battalions were of tougher material than the Neapolitans and Italians who had been routed on the sixth, and successfully cut their way back to Barcelona. They were aided by the unwisdom of the insurgents, who, instead of trying to defend the difficult defile of Ordal, came down into the plain. When they attacked Chabran at Vendrell and Arbos, they were charged by his cavalry and scattered to the winds with heavy loss. The French, when the actions were over, sacked with every circumstance of brutality all the villages which lay along their path[302]. On June 11 they got into touch with Duhesme’s outposts, and on the twelfth re-entered Barcelona.

The whole of the ‘Army of the Eastern Pyrenees’ was now reunited under its commander’s hand, and Duhesme thought himself strong enough to punish the peasantry of the Upper Llobregat for their victory at Bruch. On the fourteenth Chabran, with his own brigade and the Swiss and Italians of Schwartz, marched from Martorel to assault once more the pass which the uplanders had defended so well eight days before. But the woods and rocks of Bruch were now manned by many thousands of somatenes: all Central Catalonia had sent its levies thither, and they were supported by 400 regulars from Lerida and four pieces of artillery. After feeling the position, and directing against it at least one serious attack, Chabran drew back and refused to press on the action—apparently influenced by the manifest reluctance of Schwartz’s troops to advance, no less than by the strength of the ground. After losing nearly 400 men he retired to the plain and marched back to Barcelona [June 15].

Duhesme had a more pressing business in hand than the chastisement of the mountaineers of the Upper Llobregat. He had now learnt, by the fact that couriers from France had ceased to arrive, that his communications with Figueras and Upper Catalonia had been cut, and it was absolutely necessary that they should be reopened. This was to prove a harder task than he imagined: the somatenes were now up in every valley as far as the French frontier; they had driven into the citadel of Figueras the weak battalion of detachments that had been left to hold that town, and some of the bolder spirits were feeling their way through the Pyrenean recesses to commence raids on Roussillon. Such alarm was felt at Perpignan that the general commanding the district had begun to call out the national guards, for he had no regulars at his disposal save a few hundred men of details and detachments, who were waiting to go forward to join their regiments in Duhesme’s corps. But all this was unknown at Barcelona, and it was with very little conception of the difficulties before him that Duhesme resolved to march on Gerona and reopen the main road to France. He told off for this service one half of the infantry battalions which composed his army—the Italian division of Lecchi, consisting of the brigades of Schwartz and of Milosewitz, the latter of which had hitherto remained in garrison at Barcelona, and had not taken part in the futile attacks on the defile of Bruch. He also took with him nearly the whole of his cavalry, four French and three Italian squadrons of cuirassiers and chasseurs, and a battery of eight guns. This gave him a formidable force of 5,900 men[303], about half of the total strength of his corps when the losses suffered at Bruch and elsewhere are deducted.

Duhesme had resolved to march on Gerona by the comparatively easy road along the sea-coast, rather than by the alternative route which passes further inland by the valley of the Besos and the town of Hostalrich. Even in the lowland, however, he found the somatenes prepared to oppose him. At the castle of Mongat, only six miles outside Barcelona, he met the first swarm 8,000 or 9,000 strong. They had procured a few guns, which they had mounted so as to sweep the road, and lay in disorderly masses along the crest of a rising ground. Duhesme, amusing them in front by a false attack, sent a strong column to turn their right flank: seeing themselves likely to be enveloped, the peasants fled after a short skirmish, in which they suffered considerable loss. Pushing onward, Duhesme arrived that same afternoon at the large open town of Mataro, a place of 20,000 souls given over to the manufacture of glass and cotton goods. The populace had hastily barricaded the outlets of the streets with carts and piles of furniture, and discharged two or three cannon against the approaching enemy. But Milosewitz’s Italian brigade easily burst through the feeble defences and took Mataro by storm. Its attempt at resistance was considered by Duhesme to justify its sack, and he granted the plunder of the town to his men, who only moved on the next day after having thoroughly robbed every dwelling of its portable goods and murdered a considerable number of the inhabitants. The French army of Catalonia was the most motley and undisciplined force of all the imperial hosts in Spain, and for that reason it was by far the most cruel and brutal in its behaviour to the natives, who had not as yet justified any such treatment by their manner of conducting the war. Any ferocity which they showed from this time onward was a well-deserved revenge for what they had suffered.

Leaving Mataro on the eighteenth, Duhesme arrived before Gerona on the twentieth, after burning most of the villages on the road, in revenge for the constant molestation which he suffered from the somatenes. He found the city placed in a state of defence, so far as was possible in the case of an old-fashioned fortress called upon to stand a siege at ten days’ notice. There was a small regular garrison, the Irish regiment of Ultonia, under its two lieutenant-colonels, O’Donovan and O’Daly: but this corps only counted 350 bayonets. In addition there were a few trained artillerymen, and the armed citizens of the town, not more than 2,000 in all, for Gerona had but 14,000 inhabitants. The place lies on either side of the small stream of the OÑa, just above its confluence with the river Ter. On the south bank is the main part of the town, straggling up the side of a steep hill, which is crowned at its eastern end by an ancient citadel, known (like those of several other Catalonian towns) by the name of Monjuich. Further westward, along the crest of this hill, lie three other forts, those of the Constable, Queen Anne, and the Capuchins. These, like the citadel, are detached works, not connected by any line of wall but only by a ditch. The town, which is completely commanded by the four forts, has no protection on the south side of the OÑa but a mediaeval wall, destitute of a ditch and not more than twenty feet high. But on the other side of the river, the northern suburb, known as the Mercadal, having no line of outlying heights to protect it, had been fortified in the style of Vauban with a regular front of five bastions, though, like the fortifications of the city, it was without a ditch.

Duhesme had no battering-train, and his force of 5,900 men was insufficient to invest the whole circumference of the city of Gerona and its forts. But, like Moncey before Valencia, he was resolved to make an attempt to storm the city by escalade, or by battering in its gates. He left alone the citadel and the line of works on the hill, only sending a single battalion to demonstrate against the fort of the Capuchins. His real attack was directed against the sole point where the old enceinte of the city is not fully protected by the forts, the gate of the Carmen, on the very brink of the OÑa. In no very honourable spirit, he sent in one of his aides-de-camp, with a white flag, to demand the surrender of Gerona, and while that officer was conferring with the governor and the local Junta, suddenly launched his column of assault against the gate, hoping to catch the Spaniards off their guard. The attack was a failure: the heavy guns from the forts above silenced the French field-artillery which tried to batter in the gate. Then Duhesme sent forward a storming party, with artillerymen at its head bearing petards with which to blow open the entrance: but the heavy musketry-fire from the walls laid low the head of the column, and the rest swerved, and fell back to get under cover. A feeble demonstration beyond the OÑa against the bastions of Santa Clara and San Francisco had not even the desired effect of distracting the attention of the defenders of the Carmen Gate.

Seeing his attack foiled, Duhesme sent in at dusk a second flag of truce, inviting the Junta of Gerona to send out deputies to confer with him on certain points which he was desirous of submitting to them. The Catalans were simple enough to comply with his offer: they would have been wiser to avoid all negotiations with such an enemy. For this parley was only intended to cover a second assault. Seeing that he could not hope to batter his way into the place by means of his light field-artillery, Duhesme was preparing a great escalade under cover of the night. The point which he chose for it was the bastion of Santa Clara, on the centre of the low front of the Mercadal, beyond the OÑa. He collected a quantity of ladders from the neighbouring villages, and told off for the assault the three battalions of the brigade of Schwartz.

At ten o’clock[304] the Italians crept up beneath the ramparts, where the citizens on guard do not seem to have kept a good look out, and delivered their attack. But these raw troops, moving in the darkness, made many mistakes: the chief one was that many of the ladder-party went astray among the water-courses and field-walls, so that the provision of ladders proved insufficient. The garrison of the bastion, however, had been taken completely by surprise, and allowed the head of the column to escalade the twenty-foot wall with no more hindrance than a few musket-shots. The Neapolitan Colonel Ambrosio and the leading files had actually mounted, and driven back the citizens to the gorge of the bastion, when there arrived reinforcements, a company of the Regiment of Ultonia, which charged with the bayonet, drove the Italians back, and hurled them over the rampart. An Irish lieutenant, Thomas Magrath, and a Carmelite friar seized and overturned the ladders, at the cost of the life of the former. When the garrison began firing down into the mass of assailants crowded at the foot of the wall, and the neighbouring bastion commenced to discharge a flanking fire of artillery, the Italians broke and fled. A second attempt at an escalade, made two hours later at another bastion, failed even more lamentably, for the garrison were on the alert and detected the assailants before they drew near the walls.

Convinced that he was too weak to take Gerona without siege-artillery, Duhesme broke up his camp and fled under cover of the night, marking his retreat by a third insincere attempt to open negotiations with the garrison. He hastily made off by the same road by which he had come, and returned to Barcelona by forced marches, dropping on the way one of his Italian brigades at Mataro [June 24]. In the whole expedition he had lost 700 men[305].

So ended the first attempt on Gerona, to the great credit of its gallant defenders, and more especially to that of the weak Irish regiment which had borne the brunt of the fighting. Duhesme’s whole campaign bore a singular resemblance to that which Moncey was making at the same moment in Valencia, and, like it, was wrecked on the initial blunder of supposing that Spanish towns, defended by a population in a high state of patriotic enthusiasm, could be carried by escalade without any proper preparation by artillery. French generals soon got to know their adversaries better: the same levies that could be easily scattered in the open field were formidable under cover of stone walls.

On returning to Barcelona, Duhesme found that the insurgents of Central Catalonia had drawn close to the capital in his absence. Eight or ten thousand somatenes had come down to the line of the Llobregat, had broken its bridges, had entrenched themselves opposite its fords, and were preparing to blockade Barcelona. They had brought up a considerable number of guns taken from the batteries on the coast, which had so long kept watch upon the English. But of regular troops there were only a few present—a mixed body of 400 men from Lerida, and some small remnants of the old Spanish garrison of Barcelona. The command seems to have been held by Juan Baget, a lawyer of Lerida, who had been named colonel of miqueletes by the Junta of his native town. Duhesme was determined not to be deprived of his hold on the coast-plain by this tumultuary army. On the thirtieth he sallied out from Barcelona with Goulas’s French brigade and three of Lecchi’s Italian battalions, accompanied by the cuirassiers of BessiÈres. Though the line of the Llobregat is marked by steep banks, and though a considerable number of guns were mounted behind it, the position was too long and too much exposed to be capable of defence by undisciplined bands of mountaineers. While the Italians menaced its front, Goulas and BessiÈres forded the river and turned the flank of the Catalans. Chased out from the villages of San Boy and Molins de Rey by a sweeping charge, they were pursued across the plain, stripped of all their artillery, and forced to take refuge in their old positions along the edge of the mountains of Montserrat, after losing a considerable number of men.

Less successful was another stroke against the insurgents which Duhesme endeavoured to deal five days later. General Chabran, with the Italian brigade that had been left at Mataro, a regiment of French cavalry and a field-battery, moved out to clear the hills above the coast, and to sweep the valley of the Besos. He had before him the somatenes of the regions about Vich, Hostalrich, and Santa Coloma, under Francisco Milans, a half-pay lieutenant-colonel, who had been placed at their head by the local Junta. Chabran forced his way for some distance inland till he reached Granollers, always harassed but never seriously attacked by the insurgents. Milans, who showed all through his career a real genius for guerilla warfare, had ordered his levies never to stand when pressed, but to hang about the enemy’s line of march, cut off his pickets and scouting parties, and fall upon the baggage-train which trailed at the rear of his column. These tactics were perfectly successful: having reached Granollers after a most toilsome march, Chabran refused to push further among the mountains, turned back, and retreated to Mataro, accompanied home by the somatenes, who pursued him to the very outskirts of the town, and cut off his stragglers and many of his baggage animals [July 4].

The moment that the Catalan insurrection grew serious, Duhesme had sent repeated appeals for help to the Emperor: the land route to Perpignan being cut, he had to use small vessels which put out to sea at night, risked capture by the English ships lying off the coast, and when fortunate reached the harbours of Collioure or Port-Vendres, just beyond the Pyrenees. Napoleon looked upon the Catalonian war as a very small matter, but he was fully resolved that Duhesme must be succoured. Accordingly he determined to concentrate a division at Perpignan, but he refused to allot to it any of his veteran French troops. He swept together from the Southern Alps and Piedmont a most heterogeneous body of 7,000 or 8,000 men, even worse in quality than the motley army which he had entrusted to Duhesme. The command was entrusted to a capable officer, General Reille, one of the Emperor’s aides-de-camp, who was told to advance and relieve Figueras, after which he was to stretch out his hand to Duhesme, who would push northward to meet him. His improvised army consisted of two battalions of recruits just levied in the lately annexed duchy of Tuscany, and constituting the nucleus of a new regiment with the number 113, of a battalion of national guards, some mobilized gendarmerie, a battalion of the ‘Legion of Reserve of the Alps’ from Grenoble, five ‘battalions of detachments,’ and the single battalion which formed the contingent of the little republic of the Valais[306]. The cavalry comprised two squadrons of Tuscan dragoons, and two escadrons de marche of French cuirassiers and chasseurs. There seem to have been no more than two batteries of artillery allotted to the force[307]. Reille was informed that other troops from Italy would ultimately arrive at Perpignan, but that they were not to be expected till the end of July or the beginning of August. For the relief of Figueras and the opening up of communications with Duhesme he must depend on his own forces.

Travelling with commendable rapidity, Reille arrived at Perpignan on July 3. Of all the detachments that were marching to join him he found that nothing had yet reached the frontier but the local national guards and gendarmerie, the two Tuscan battalions, a company of the 2nd Swiss Regiment, and artillerymen enough to serve a couple of guns. With no more than the Tuscans and the Swiss, less than 1,600 men in all, he marched on Figueras on July 5, dispersing on the way some bands of somatenes, who tried to oppose him at the passage of the Muga. He threw a convoy into the place and strengthened its garrison, but could do no more, for all the country beyond Figueras was up in arms, and his raw Italian recruits could hardly be kept to their colours. Indeed he was forced to make them march in solid columns whenever he moved them, for when ordered to deploy they always fell into disorder, and tried to make off to the rear[308].

But by July 11 Reille had begun to receive many of the drafts and detachments which the Emperor was pouring into Perpignan, and having now three or four thousand men disposable, he resolved to strike a blow at Rosas, the small seaport town which blocks the coast-road from Perpignan to Barcelona. Marching through the plains of the Ampurdam he reached his objective, an insignificant place with a dilapidated outer entrenchment and a citadel of some small strength. It was defended by no more than 400 miqueletes, and had but five guns on its land-front. But the little garrison showed a bold face, and when Reille proceeded to invest Rosas he found himself attacked from the rear by four or five thousand somatenes levied by Don Juan Claros, a retired infantry captain who had called to arms the peasantry of the coast. They beset the besiegers so fiercely that Reille resolved to abandon the investment, a determination which was assisted by the sight of a British line-of-battle ship[309] landing marines to strengthen the garrison. Accordingly he cut his way back to Figueras on the twelfth, harassed all the way by the bands of Claros, who killed or took no less than 200 of his men[310]. Rosas was to defy capture for some months more, for Reille’s next effort was, by his master’s direction, devoted to a more important object—the clearing of the great road from Perpignan to Barcelona, and the opening up of communications with Duhesme.

SECTION V: CHAPTER II

THE STRUGGLE IN CATALONIA (JULY-AUGUST, 1808): THE SECOND SIEGE OF GERONA