CHAP. LIV. 1808. 43. Catalonia. above fifty thousand veteran troops could, notwithstanding all the losses of the campaign, be collected for the defence of the Ebro.* While this decisive stroke was struck in the south of Spain, the contest had already assumed elsewhere a sanguinary character; the success had been more checkered in the Catalonian mountains; and the British army, under the guidance of WELLINGTON, had chased the French eagles from the rock of Lisbon. Napoleon, who was by no means aware of the almost insurmountable obstacles which the tenacious spirit and Campaign in rugged mountains of Catalonia were to oppose to his arms, had directed Duhesme to co-operate with Lefebvre Desnouettes in the siege of Saragossa. In order to accomplish this object, that general, early in June, fitted out two corps: the first, four thousand five hundred strong, under the orders of General Chabran, was despatched towards the south, with instructions to make itself master of Tortosa and Tarragona, and then proceed on and co-operate with Marshal Moncey in the attack on Valencia; while the second, under General Schwartz, consisting of three thousand eight hundred men, after Duhesme, 18. punishing Manresa, destroying the powder-mills there, Nap. i. 75. Tor. i. 309. and levying a heavy contribution on its inhabitants, was Foy, 312. to push on to Lerida, and, after securing that important fortress, give its aid to Lefebvre before the walls of June 4. 1 Foy, iv. 143, 147. July io. * Savary was blamed by Napoleon for this retreat to the Ebro, and he alleged that the line of the Douro might have been maintained, and the operations against Saragossa in consequence not interrupted. In justice to the French general, however, it must be observed, that his situation in the capital, after the surrender of Dupont, had become extremely critical; and that the losses which the troops at the capital had undergone, were such as to preclude the hope of a successful stand being made against the united Spanish armies which might advance from the south. Shortly after his arrival at Madrid he had written in these luminous and explicit terms to the Emperor, in a despatch which throws great light on the state of the contest at that period :-"It is no longer a mere affair in which, by punishing the leaders, a revolt may be suppressed. If the arrival of the King does not pacify the country, we shall have a regular war on our hands with the troops of the line, and one of extermination with the peasantry. The system of sending moveable columns over the provinces, is likely to induce partial checks which will lead to the spreading of the insurrection. It is indispensable that your Majesty should consider seriously of the means of carrying on the war. We lose four hundred men a-month in the hospitals alone; our army can in no respect be compared to that which occupies Germany. Every thing has been calculated according to the turn which it was expected affairs would assume, not that which they have actually taken. Many battalions have not four officers; the whole cavalry is fit for the hospital together. The crowds of young and presumptuous men who crowd the army, contribute rather to embarrassment than any thing else. There is an incalculable difference between such coxcombs and a steady veteran sergeant or officer." SAVARY to NAPOLEON; FOY, iv. 34, 35. Saragossa. These columns quitted Barcelona early in June, and directed their march to their respective points of destination; but both experienced defeat. The tocsin was ringing on all the hills; the villages were deserted; the woods and higher parts of the mountains, the rugged passes and inaccessible thickets, formed so many rallying points to the courageous Somatenes.* CHAP. 1808. 44. near Casa June 6. Schwartz, indeed, in his march towards Saragossa, forced the celebrated pass of Bruch, though beset with armed men; but, advancing a little farther, he encoun- Defeat of tered a disaster at Casa Mansana. The villagers assailed Schwartz the invaders with showers of stones, balls, and even boil- Mansana. ing water from the roofs of the houses: the peasants, who had fled in disorder a few minutes before through the streets, returned to the charge. Threatened on all sides, Schwartz resolved to retreat, which he effected at first in good order; but his advanced guard having attempted, during the night, to force the passage of the town of Esparraguera, which lay on his road, was repulsed with loss, and his troops, thrown into disorder by that noeturnal check, were never able to gain their proper array till they found refuge, two days after, under the cannon June & of Barcelona. Chabran, whose route lay through a less mountainous district, reached Tarragona in safety on the 7th, and got possession of that important town without opposition: but Duhesme was so much alarmed by the repulse of Schwartz, that he hastily recalled him to Barcelona. So dangerous is it to make a retrograde movement while engaged with an insurrection, that a very severe resistance was experienced in the retreat, at places where not a shot had been fired during the advance. Irritated by this opposition and the sanguinary excesses of the peasants, the French set fire to Villa-Franca as they retired; and Duhesme having sent Count Theodore Lecchi with the Italian division and 1 Tor. i. 309, 315. Nap. i. Schwartz's troops to his assistance, the united columns 75, 77. Foy, again approached the pass of Bruch: but, finding the iv. 143, 151. Somatenes posted on its rugged cliffs in even greater 19. strength than before,1 they fell back after a bloody skir *The Somatenes are the levée-en-masse, which, by an ancient law of Catalonia, are bound to turn out and defend their parishes whenever the Somaten or alarmbell is heard from the churches.-TORENO, i. 309. June 14. Duhesme, 18, LIV. CHAP. mish, and regained the shelter of Barcelona, pursued up to the very gates by the dropping fire and taunting scoffs of their gallant though rustic opponents. * 1808. 45. Universal spread of the insurrection. These defeats produced the greater sensation, both among the French and Spaniards, that they were gained, not by regular troops, but a tumultuary array of peasants, wholly undisciplined, and most of whom had then for the first time been engaged either in military service or exercise. They occasioned in consequence a universal insurrection in Catalonia; the cities equally as the mountains caught the flame. The burghers of Lerida, Tortosa, Tarragona, Gerona, and all the towns in the province not garrisoned by French troops, closed their gates, manned their ramparts, and elected juntas to direct measures of defence; while the mountain districts, which embraced four-fifths of the province, obeyed the animating call of the Somaten, and, under the guidance of their parish priests, organised a desperate Vendéan warfare. Forty regiments, of a thousand men each, were ordered to be raised for active operations among these formidable mountaineers. Regular officers were, for the most part, obtained to direct their organisation; the ranks were in a short time complete, and, for the service of light troops, of a very efficient description. An equal force was directed to be prepared as a reserve, in case their mountain fastnesses should be threatened by the enemy. The peculiar nature of these extensive and thicklypeopled hill-districts, as well as the character and resolution of their inhabitants; their rugged precipices, woodclad steeps, and terraced slopes; their villages, perched like eyries on the summit of cliffs, and numerous forts and castles, each susceptible of a separate defence; their bold and energetic inhabitants, consisting of lawless smugglers or hardy peasants, long habituated to the enTor. i. 315, joyment of almost unbounded practical freedom-rendered this warfare one of a peculiarly hazardous and laborious description.1 + 1 Foy, iv. 151, 155. 316. Nap. i. 77. The inhabitants of Bruch, to commemorate their victory, erected a stone in the pass, with this pompous though laconic inscription:-"Victores Marengo, Austerlitz, et Jena, hic victi fuerunt diebus vi. et xiv. Junii, anno 1808."Foy, iv. 151. †Though locally situated in an unlimited monarchy, the province of Catalonia, like those of Navarre and Biscay, has long enjoyed such extensive civil privileges as savour rather of democratic equality than despotic authority. Its LIV. 1808. 46. by the Gerona. Aware of the necessity of striking a decisive blow CHAP. in the present critical state of affairs in the province, Duhesme conceived that a sudden coup-de-main against GERONA, which lies on the direct road to France, would Defeat of a both re-establish his communications, which the insur- coup-de-main rections in all directions had totally intercepted, and French strike a general terror into the enemy. Accordingly, two against days after the return of the former ill-fated expedition, June 16. he set out in the direction of that town, with six thousand of his best troops, taking the coast-road to avoid the fortress of Hostalrich, which was in the hands of the enemy. After cutting his way with great slaughter through a large body of Somatenes who endeavoured to June 17. obstruct his progress, he appeared on the 20th before June 20. Gerona. Little preparation had been made to repel an assault; but the gates were closed, and the inhabitants, in great numbers, were on the walls prepared to defend their hearths. Having at length got his scaling ladders ready, and diverted the attention of the besieged by a skirmish with the Somatenes on the plains at a distance from the ramparts, the assaulting columns suddenly approached the walls at five in the afternoon. Though they got very near without being perceived, and a few brave men reached the summit, they were repulsed in two successive attacks with great slaughter; and 1 Nap. i. 77, Duhesme having in vain tried the effect of a negotiation 80. Foy, iv. to induce a surrender, returned, by forced marches, to Tor. i. 315, Barcelona, harassed at every step by the Somatenes, 317. who, descending in great strength from the hills, inflicted a severe loss on his retreating columns.1 After this defeat, the whole plain round Barcelona, called the Llobregat, was filled with the enemy's troops; and General Duhesme, enraged at finding himself thus beset in the capital of the province, marched out against social state differs altogether from that of Arragon, though they were so long united under the same sceptre. Nowhere, except in this mountain republic, is there so ardent a thirst after political freedom, or so large an enjoyment, at least in the mountainous districts, of its practical blessings. The inhabitants cherish the most profound hatred of the French, whom they accuse of having excited their fathers to revolt against the government of Madrid, and abandoned them, when the contest was no longer conducive to their interests. In the long and opulent district which runs along the sea-shore, and contains the flourishing seaports of Tarragona, Rosas, and Barcelona, commercial interests prevail; and the alliance and consequent trade with England were as much the object of desire as the withering union with France had been a subject of aversion.-Foy, iv. 137, 138. 151, 159. CHAP. 1808. 47. Expedition which is de feated. June 30. them, a week afterwards, and defeated a large body of the peasantry at the bridge of Molinos del Rey, capturing all their artillery. Rallying, however, at their old fastnesses of Bruch and Igualado, they again, when the against Rosas, French retired, returned to the Llobregat, and not only shut within the ramparts of Barcelona, but up the enemy established a communication with the insurgents in the interior, along the sea-coast, from the Pyrenean frontier to the mouth of the Ebro, which all became the theatre of insurrection. Napoleon, to whom the prolongation of the war in so many different quarters of Spain had become a subject of great uneasiness, no sooner received intelligence of these untoward events than he directed Duhesme to issue from Barcelona, relieve Figueras, where four hundred French were closely blockaded by the insurgent peasantry, and afterwards carry by assault both Rosas and Gerona. General Reille, whom he sent forward with a large convoy guarded by five thousand men, defeated the Somatenes before Figueras, and raised the blockade of that fortress; but when, encouraged by this success, he attempted a coup-de-main against Rosas, he sustained a repulse; and finding himself daily more closely straitened by the insurgents, was obliged to retire with considerable loss towards Gerona. About the same time the Spanish affairs in the whole province acquired a degree of consistency to which they had never previously attained, by the conclusion of a treaty between Lord Collingwood and the Marquis Palacios, governor of the Balearic Isles, in virtue of which the whole disposable force in those islands was conveyed to the Catalonian shores, and thirteen hundred good troops were directed towards Gerona. At the same time, Palacios himself, with four thousand five hundred men, and thirty-seven pieces of cannon, landed at Tarragona, where their presence excited a most extraordinary degree of enthusiasm.1 July 5 July 11. July 22. 1 Tor. i. 38, 39. Nap. i. 82, 83. Foy, iv. 169, 172. St Cyr, Guerre dans la Catal. 14, 17. Castanos, i. 32, 84. 48. siege of Gerona. Meanwhile Duhesme, with the main body of his forces, six thousand strong, a considerable train of heavy Unsuccessful artillery, and every thing requisite for a siege, set out from Barcelona and took the road for Gerona. He was long delayed, however, on the road, which runs close to the sea-shore, on the one side by the fire of an English frigate, under the command of LORD COCHRANE, which |