SECTION XXVIII: CHAPTER III

THE FALL OF FIGUERAS AND THE AUTUMN CAMPAIGN IN CATALONIA. JULY-OCTOBER 1811

The news of the fall of Tarragona, brought by the fugitive General Velasco, came as a thunderclap to Campoverde and his ‘army of succour.’ While the Captain-General had been hesitating, marching and countermarching, and sending about for further reinforcements, the great city entrusted to him had fallen. It was impossible for the simplest soldier in his ranks to fail to see that the whole responsibility for its loss lay with Campoverde, and from that moment his authority ceased, and officers and men alike began to clamour for his resignation. His former popularity in Catalonia had, most deservedly, vanished. The newly raised recruits began to melt away from their colours; the somatenes refused to serve one whom they regarded as a coward, if not as a traitor. On the news that a French column had started from Tarragona to attack him, Campoverde abandoned his head quarters at Vendrils, and fled inland to Cervera, where he at last thought himself safe for the moment. His departure exposed the dép?t at Villanueva de Sitjes, where his sea-borne stores were lying, and the French seized it on the 30th, making prize of many ships not ready for sailing, and capturing 800 Tarragona wounded in the hospital. Skerret’s 1,200 British were lying off the place in their transports, just preparing to land and to join Campoverde, as he had desired. Finding that disembarkation was impossible, and that the Catalan army had disappeared, Skerret took his expedition back to Cadiz, after a most humiliating experience.

Meanwhile there was high debate at Cervera. The Valencian general, Miranda, demanded that Campoverde should at once dismiss him and his division, and permit them to return home by sea. They had been lent by Charles O’Donnell for the one purpose of the relief of Tarragona; and that operation being now impossible, for the best of reasons, Miranda claimed leave[p. 529] to depart. He was naturally anxious to serve no longer under such a miserable chief as Campoverde—though his own behaviour on June 24th gave him no right to complain. It was hard to see how his request could be refused, yet many of the chiefs of the Catalan army thought that the departure of the Valencian division implied the end of all formal war in the principality. The proposal to remove not only the Valencians but all the regular troops was raised: Campoverde, feeling his authority gone, and willing to throw all responsibility on his lieutenants, called a council of war on July 1st. By a majority of four to three general officers, the meeting decided in favour of abandoning Catalonia altogether. Sarsfield, the fighting-man of the army, gave a furious negative, and Campoverde himself made a more timid objection to the move[665]. But the retreat to Valencia being once voted, the Captain-General was only too glad to fall in with the project, and to be quit of the duties which he had so ill discharged. All the regulars were to sail when a convenient exit to the sea could be found—at the moment of the council of war Suchet was on the move in the neighbourhood of Barcelona, and the small ports usually available were blocked. It was a miserable resolve, when Figueras was still holding out, when the inland was still intact, and when Suchet had been obliged to disperse his troops, and could obviously make no general move for some weeks. Fortunately difficulties cropped up to prevent the evacuation. The British commodore, Codrington, when asked to prepare transports and convoy, replied ‘that although he would strain any point to restore to General O’Donnell and to Valencia the troops so liberally furnished by that kingdom, he would not embark the Marquis of Campoverde, or any of the troops belonging to Catalonia, which it was his duty to assist in defending, instead of depriving it of that protection which it had[666].’ Eroles,[p. 530] Manso, and other local Catalan officers sent in equally strong protests; they would be glad to be rid of the Captain-General, but it would be treason to withdraw the whole regular army, and to leave the principality to be defended by the miqueletes alone. The spirit of the people would be brought low, and resistance would die down when they knew that they were abandoned for ever by the army.

Meanwhile Suchet had spent the days while the Spaniards were debating in opening up the communications between his own army and Barcelona, which had so long been out of touch. He marched with the greater part of the divisions of Harispe and Frère, as has already been mentioned, to Villafranca and Villanueva de Sitjes, where he left the bulk of his troops, then by the pass of Ordal to Barcelona itself. Here General Maurice Mathieu was in a very isolated position, for since Macdonald had taken off all the disposable troops to the siege of Figueras, the city had been entirely cut off from him, the somatenes having intercepted the road, while English cruisers maintained a fairly effective blockade on the side of the sea. Suchet concerted with the governor a plan for opening up communication with Macdonald, and occupying the port of Mataro, north of Barcelona, where the Spaniards still had an access to the sea. He determined to bring up Harispe and Frère, and went back to pick them up. This he did, and returned with them to Barcelona on July 9th, while an expedition sent out by Maurice Mathieu seized Mataro.

But meanwhile Campoverde, reflecting that if the little ports between Tarragona and Barcelona were blocked to him, there still remained those between Barcelona and Rosas, had made a rapid march through the inland, and had arrived at Arens de Mar, north of Mataro, before Suchet returned to Barcelona. The bulk of Miranda’s division was safely shipped off on July 9th by Codrington, and transported to Valencia[667]. But the cavalry, refusing to abandon their horses, had turned westward, under a Colonel Gasca, and to the number of some 900 saved them[p. 531]selves by a most extraordinary march. Striking across northern Aragon, and dodging between the French garrisons, they reached the Upper Ebro near Tudela, where they forded the great river by the aid of guides lent them by the great guerrillero Mina. Once on the south bank, they executed another equally dangerous march, evading many French detachments, and rejoined Charles O’Donnell in the end of August, having travelled in six weeks no less than 740 miles, through the heart of a region which was supposed to be in military occupation by the enemy. Their loss was only four officers and fifty-three men, though 213 horses had perished in the mountains. This achievement sufficiently shows the superficial nature of Suchet’s occupation of Aragon: he could not prevent so large a body as 900 men from crossing it twice from end to end.

Campoverde, after shipping off Miranda’s infantry at Arens de Mar, had retired inland to Vich, where on the evening after the embarkation his disastrous captain-generalship came to an end. For he found waiting him there General Luis Lacy, sent by the Cadiz regency to relieve him in command. The new chief was a stranger to Catalonia, and the people would have preferred Eroles to lead them—indeed, a junta of Catalan officers had already offered to put themselves under his orders[668]. But Eroles, the most honourable of all the local leaders, refused to commit an act of indiscipline, and Lacy was recognized as Captain-General, while Campoverde absconded hastily by sea. Rejecting all idea of evacuating the principality, Lacy drew back into the mountains with the mere wreck of an army which had been handed over to him—some 2,000 or 3,000 men—and established himself at Solsona, where the Junta of Catalonia also took refuge. In this place and the neighbouring hill-towns he began to reorganize his demoralized troops, and to gather in recruits and deserters. But he was far too weak to do anything for the long-enduring garrison of Figueras, which was still holding out, though nearing its last gasp.

[p. 532]Suchet, after failing to prevent the embarkation of the Valencian division, had determined to spend some time in opening up free communication between Barcelona and Macdonald’s army in front of Figueras, as also between Barcelona and his own base of operations at Lerida. He must set matters on a satisfactory footing in Catalonia, before undertaking the great invasion of Valencia, which the Emperor had assigned as his next task. The expedition towards Macdonald’s rear was accomplished by Suchet himself with the divisions of Frère and Harispe. One column (Palombini’s Italians) marched up the valley of the Tenes river, by Monbuy and Codinas, the other and larger column followed the Congost river. Neither met with opposition, and they joined at the defile of Centelles above Vich. That town was occupied on July 15th, and flying columns sent out from it to Ripol, Olot, and Castelfollit. By means of these detachments Suchet got into touch with Macdonald, who was found to be holding Figueras closely blocked, and to be in no need of help, for though his army was sickly, yet the besieged garrison was known to be in a desperate condition, and its surrender was expected to occur at any moment. Determining that Macdonald could shift for himself, and would be able to overrun all northern Catalonia when his army was set free from the siege, Suchet turned back from Vich, with the object of achieving his second aim, the clearing of the road from Barcelona to Lerida. This great route was safe for large detachments—indeed, Montmarie’s brigade had marched along it almost unmolested ten days back. But it could not be used by convoys or small parties, so long as the Spaniards were in possession of the mountain of Montserrat, which overhangs it for many miles. This lofty peak, the projecting angle of one of the chief Catalan sierras, was the nearest point to Barcelona now in the hands of the patriots. It was occupied at this moment by Eroles and some 1,500 miqueletes, who continually made descents into the plain from their fastness. The Montserrat is a fantastic pile of rock, whose highest point reaches 4,000 feet above the sea-level; it is mainly composed of red slate, a geological formation which runs to precipices, and at first sight the enormous bulk—its circumference is fifteen miles—looks almost inaccessible. But several paths run up among its clefts, and on a platform[p. 533] 3,000 feet up lies the sanctuary of Our Lady of Montserrat, the oldest and formerly the richest sanctuary of Catalonia, with a great Renaissance church and a large monastery. Most of the monks had fled to Majorca with their treasure in 1808, and their empty home served as the head quarters of the local miqueletes, and the magazine of their munitions. For cargoes of arms and stores, run ashore on the central Catalan coast, were generally forwarded to Montserrat for distribution. The mountain was not regularly fortified, indeed it was too large for fortification, but there were two batteries with ten guns placed across the only practicable road which led up to the sanctuary from the north, and the buildings themselves, far above, had been loopholed and barricaded. Nothing save its own steepness protected a minor path which climbs to the monastery from the village of Colbato. Another from Monistrol, which lies in the plain to the north-west, had been blasted away in places. The aspect of the peak was formidable, but its strength was more apparent than real, when it was held by no more than 1,500 irregular troops: for over and above the known paths there were many places where lightly equipped men could scramble, over slopes which were only precipitous in certain sections. When a very large force delivered a concentric attack on the mountain, it was impossible for the small garrison to block every possible point up which active assailants might make their way.

Suchet had brought up more than 10,000 men for the attack, including a battalion or two borrowed from the garrison of Barcelona. Abbé’s brigade was to make the main assault along the road: Montmarie’s brigade, now returned from Lerida, was to menace the steep path from Colbato to the summit; Harispe and Frère, lower down towards the plain, watched the Igualada and Manresa roads, the Barcelona troops the road to the south by Bruch. On July 25th the assault was delivered by Abbé’s five battalions: they were scarcely opposed on the lower slopes, but met with a fierce resistance at the first battery, near the chapel of Saint Cecilia, 1,200 yards from the monastery. Here the column halted, to throw out swarms of skirmishers over the precipitous hillside. Some of them climbed high enough to bring an enfilading fire to bear on the Spanish guns, and as their discharge began to slacken, the grenadier companies charged up[p. 534] the road and captured them. The miqueletes fell back on the second battery, which was presently captured in the same fashion by the combination of a flanking fire and a frontal attack. The Spanish gunners, the only regulars present, stood to their guns to the last in the most gallant way, and were nearly all bayoneted. Abbé was rearranging his column for an attack on the fortified monastery above, when furious firing was heard to break out in its direction, and the garrison were presently seen streaming down the hillside to the east. A large body of the French skirmishers, thrown out for the first attack, had found their way over the rocks to the back of the sanctuary, where there are rough tracks leading to some hermitages which lie out far from the main buildings. When some 300 men had collected behind the monastery, they delivered an attack on it from the rear. The small reserve placed in the buildings was panic-stricken by an attack from this side—all the more so because they saw the rest of their comrades recoiling from the batteries below, which had already been taken. They fled, after making no great stand, and, joining the main body, rushed down the precipitous ravines on the east front of the peak, where a few perished by falls, but the majority got away safely over ground where the victors could not follow. So fell Montserrat, with a loss of only 200 men to the French and 400 to the Spaniards. The storming of the holy mountain was a picturesque rather than a really difficult achievement, but the blow inflicted on the Catalans was a very severe one: Montserrat had been looked upon as impregnable, and the protection of its patroness was supposed to have defended it for the three years during which the French had been holding Barcelona, which lies so close to its foot. The Spaniards had now no post left on the great road from Barcelona to Lerida, and Suchet disposed part of his army to hold this line, Palombini’s Italian brigade being left on Montserrat, while Frère’s division lay at Igualada, and two cavalry and one infantry regiments held Cervera and its neighbourhood (the ‘Llano de Urgel’ or flat land of western Catalonia) as far as the gates of Lerida. Abbé’s brigade went off southward, to join Musnier’s division (to which it belonged) on the lower Ebro.

With the fall of Montserrat ended Suchet’s Catalan cam[p. 535]paign. He had subdued all that part of the principality which had been made over to him, when Napoleon broke up the old 7th Corps and assigned the districts of Lerida, Tortosa, and Tarragona to the Army of Aragon. He had now before him the long-projected invasion of Valencia, and intended to take it in hand, so soon as the brigades escorting the Tarragona prisoners should have returned to Saragossa, and the southern regions of Aragon should have been cleared of the insurgents, who had flocked down into them from the hills when Abbé’s brigade had been withdrawn to the north in June. For during the siege of Tarragona Villacampa had invested Teruel, in which a French battalion was shut up, Duran had attacked Calatayud, though without success, and a partisan named Campillo had raided as far as Cari?ena, only thirty miles from Saragossa. During the month of August, when Suchet was able to dispose of the troops set free from Catalonia, flying columns under Harispe, Compère, and Peyri scoured all southern Aragon. Teruel was relieved, and Villacampa and his lieutenants were driven back into their old fastnesses in the sierras of Albaracin and Molina, the remotest recesses of the rugged land where Aragon and New Castile meet. But the Valencian expedition could not be taken in hand before the month of September had begun.

Meanwhile the siege of Figueras had lingered on for a month longer than Macdonald and Suchet had expected. The brigadier Martinez, with his five small regular battalions[669] and his 3,000 miqueletes, had made a most admirable defence. No assistance, not even any prospect of assistance, had been before them since Campoverde’s defeat on May 3rd. The whole field army of Catalonia had been drawn away to defend or relieve Tarragona, and Martinez had no friends near him save the somatenes of the Ampurdam and the Pyrenean valleys, who were willing, but weak and disorganized. Their most popular chief, the fighting priest Rovira, had gone off to Cadiz to ask for succour, but found there that Tarragona was rightly considered a far more important place to save, and that there was no hope for Figueras. All that the somatenes could do was to molest Macdonald’s[p. 536] convoys and foraging parties. May, June, and July wore slowly away, and Martinez was still holding out, with a garrison reduced to half-rations. Yet he was doing good service, since he was detaining in front of him the whole of the disposable troops of the 7th Corps, not to speak of some battalions of National Guards from the southern departments of France. No help from Macdonald could come to Suchet during the whole of the siege of Tarragona, or the subsequent operations about Montserrat. Instead it was Suchet who was forced to help Macdonald, by clearing his rear by the march to Vich.

The Duke of Tarentum had completed a great circumvallation around the rocky fortress of San Fernando, and had pushed forward batteries to within 500 yards of its walls, but he never attempted to breach them, or to storm the place. It is hard to make out why he made no such endeavour, for though the place is high lying and difficult of approach, it is not more so than the upper city of Tarragona, with which Suchet was dealing in such a prompt and drastic fashion. But from March to August Figueras was blockaded rather than besieged. Macdonald’s proceedings are all the more difficult to understand because his army was suffering severely from the heat during June and July—the National Guards and the newly arrived battalions from the interior of France were thinned by malarial fevers, and by pestilence bred by long tarrying in unsanitary camps. Probably we must ascribe his refusal to open trenches and proceed to battering-work and assault, to his memory of what had happened at Gerona. The 7th Corps had an evil tradition of the repeated failures to storm that city, and of the loss of life which had accompanied them. Figueras, it was clear, must fall sooner or later from starvation; there was no chance that it could be relieved; was it worth while to waste good soldiers in taking by force a place that must yield in a week or two for want of provisions? Macdonald evidently under-estimated the obstinacy of the defenders and the amount of their stores, and may have regretted in July that he had not started a regular siege in May. But it was now too late to begin it, since surrender was inevitable within a few days, as he supposed. Evidence of the distressed state of the garrison was forthcoming on July 17th, when Martinez turned out of the fortress, without[p. 537] any demand for exchange, 850 French and Italian prisoners who had been confined in the bomb-proofs since the commencement of the siege; they were in a half-starved condition, and reported that for some days they had hardly received any food at all[670]. General Guillot and the officers were not released—they were useful hostages, since their lives were at the disposition of the governor, in case the French should threaten to refuse quarter to irregulars, or make other harsh demands when the inevitable surrender should draw nearer.

The expectation that Martinez would hoist the white flag within a few days of the release of the prisoners was entirely falsified. He held out, suffering terrible privations, for another month; he was aware that Tarragona had fallen, that Campoverde’s army had gone to pieces, and that he had no hope of succour. But he rightly considered that it was his duty to detain the 7th Corps before his walls to the last possible moment. Meanwhile he kept up the spirits of his garrison as best he could, by assuring them that it was well within their power to break out through the adversary’s lines by a general sortie, when the last rations should have been issued. By August 16th this moment had arrived: the Spaniards had eaten not only the few horses in the place, but the dogs and rats[671]: only three days’ half-rations were left. The plan for the evasion was well designed: in the afternoon Rovira, who had returned with empty hands from Cadiz, showed himself on the hills nearest to Figueras with some 2,000 somatenes—all that could be collected; he made roving demonstrations against the north side of the French circumvallation, in the hope of drawing the reserves in that direction, but allowed himself to be driven away without serious resistance. After dark, however, Martinez sallied from the fortress on the opposite side—the south-west—in the direction of the sea, hoping to find the line thin on that front. He had brought with him every man who could march, and dashed[p. 538] at the circumvallation in one broad column. The hostile pickets and outposts were rolled in, but the Spaniards were brought up against an impassable abattis, while two batteries on each side began playing against the flanks of the mass. After vainly trying to break through for some minutes, they recoiled into the fortress, leaving 400 dead and wounded behind them.

Next morning (August 17th) General Baraguay d’Hilliers, judging that the enemy must now be thoroughly disheartened, sent in a parlementaire to propose capitulation. Martinez, aware that his last bolt was shot, agreed to surrender on the third day, that following the issue of the last half-ration in his stores. The garrison crawled out and laid down its arms on the 19th: it mustered something over 2,000 men still able to stand, and there were another 1,000 in the hospitals. From first to last some 1,500 more had perished during the four months and nine days that the siege had lasted. The French had suffered almost as heavily—4,000 men had died in the lines since March, many more from fever and dysentery than from shot and shell. Macdonald sought eagerly among the prisoners for the three young Catalans who had let their compatriots into San Fernando. The two brothers Pons had escaped with Eroles in June[672], but the third, Juan Marquez, was found, and hanged on a high gallows on the ravelin of the fortress.

Thus ended in disaster the story of Figueras. But both the capture of the place and its defence form a most honourable page in the history of the war. Rovira’s enterprise in seizing it and Martinez’s obstinacy in maintaining it, long after all hope was gone, were equally praiseworthy. Though nothing came of the exploit in the end, they had immobilized the whole French 7th Corps for the entire summer of 1811, and had prevented Macdonald from giving a single battalion to help Suchet’s attack on Tarragona. If Campoverde had possessed the most ordinary capacity or resolution, he might have turned the opportunity given him by the somatene chiefs to such good account as to wreck all the campaign planned by Napoleon for the subjection[p. 539] of Catalonia. Better management on May 3rd might have led to the defeat of Baraguay d’Hilliers, and if he had been driven off from Figueras, and isolated from Macdonald, who was then far away at Barcelona, Suchet would have had to march to the help of his comrades, and the siege of Tarragona could never have begun. We are brought back to the point which has already so often confronted us—Campoverde’s miserable inefficiency was the final cause of all the disasters of 1811 in the principality of which he was the Captain-General.
General Map of Catalonia

Enlarge  CATALONIA

Two such blows as the fall of Tarragona and the recapture of Figueras seemed to render inevitable the final subjection of Catalonia. It is with astonishment that we find that its obstinate people maintained their resistance for two years more, and were found still defending themselves when the war came to an end with the abdication of Napoleon in 1814. The new Captain-General, Lacy, was a man harsh and unpopular, but he had at least the merit of energy. His army was a mere wreck, but he issued orders for a general levy of all men between 18 and 40 to fill the depleted cadres of the few surviving regular battalions, and despite the ill-will of the Junta—who wished to lean more on the miqueletes, and distrusted the old army—he gradually collected a new force. Early in August, as if in bravado, he burst into France on the side of Puigcerda, and executed a destructive raid along the valleys of Cerdagne. If he was not strong enough to help Figueras, or to oppose Suchet, he was at least determined to do all the harm that he could to the enemy. This incursion threw Napoleon into a fit of rage, and, forgetting his own orders to Suchet which prescribed the invasion of Valencia as the next decisive move in the war, he wrote him an angry dispatch on August 22nd[673], in which he told the newly appointed Marshal that he ought to have left a strong French division at Vich, and to have marched with his main body against the Catalonian inland, aiming at Cardona and Urgel and the other unsubdued places. ‘He should have profited by the panic into which the Spaniards had been thrown, and might have terminated the war in the province, while by making his retrogression to Saragossa he has given the enemy[p. 540] the chance of rallying on all sides.’ It is sufficient answer to this accusation to say that, if the Marshal had thrown all his available troops into the Catalan mountains, he would have become involved in a series of endless marches and counter-marches after an intangible enemy, which would have prevented him from carrying out in the autumn his great and successful attack on Valencia. The strength of the Catalan resistance did not lie in the possession of Cardona or Urgel or any other old-fashioned stronghold, but in the determination of its people not to lay down their arms. There is no probability that the war could have been ‘terminated’ in the way that the Emperor hoped.

By September Lacy had reorganized the remnants of the old Army of Catalonia into three weak divisions under Eroles, Milans, and Sarsfield, each containing only four or five battalions. Every one of the new units represented many lost corps—the single regiment of Baza included all the remnants of the Granadan division, which Reding had brought to Catalonia in 1809 fourteen thousand strong. The new Cazadores de Catalu?a raised by the well-known miquelete-chief Manso were formed from the cadres of six old Catalonian tercios[674]—it was the same with the regiments bearing the local names of Manresa, Mataro, and Ausona. The cavalry, consisting of the few hundred Catalonian horse who had but joined in Gasca’s retreat to Valencia, amounted to five squadrons of hussars and cuirassiers. The whole, including garrisons, may have made up 8,000 men—all that was left of the 25,000 organized troops which had formed the ‘1st Army’ on December 1st, 1810. But there still remained an Army of Catalonia, and as Macdonald and Maurice Mathieu and Decaen were to find, the Catalans were still ready to fight.

When the enemy was under the delusion that with the fall of Montserrat and Figueras the back of the resistance of the Principality had been broken, Lacy began to take the offensive. On September 11-12, aided by English ships, he drove the[p. 541] French out of the Medas Islands, at the mouth of the Ter, and built on the largest of them a fort which gave him a secure point of communication with the Mediterranean Squadron. But this was a side-issue: in October he accomplished something far more important. Descending on the line of garrisons by which the French kept open the road from Barcelona to Lerida, he took 200 men at Igualada on October 4, captured a large convoy near Cervera three days later, and on October 11 took that town with 645 prisoners, and the neighbouring Belpuig with 150 more on October 14. The chain of forts was broken, and to the intense joy of all Catalonia the French dismantled the monastery of Montserrat and evacuated the Holy Mountain. Half of Suchet’s work in the summer had been undone. A few days later Macdonald was recalled to Paris (October 28); he was the third marshal whose reputation got no profit from his Catalonian campaign—his failure was as bad as that of Augereau, and he had not even got the small credit that St. Cyr won in battle. The command of the 7th Corps fell to General Decaen.