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. * LIV. 1808. 45. spread of the These defeats produced the greater sensation, both among the French and Spaniards, that they were gained, Universal not by regular troops, but a tumultuary array of peasants, insurrection. 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, hîc 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 CHAP. LIV. 1808. 46. Defeat of a Gerona. Aware of the necessity of striking a decisive blow 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 both re-establish his communications, which the insur- coup-de-main by the 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. LIV. 1808. 47. feated. June 30. CHAP. 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 Expedition against Rosas, French retired, returned to the Llobregat, and not only which is de- shut up the enemy within the ramparts of Barcelona, but 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 CHAP. 1808. sent a shower of balls among his columns whenever they came within range, and the desultory but incessant attacks of the Somatenes on the other. At length, after encountering great difficulties and experiencing a heavy loss, he succeeded in forcing his way, by the hill-road, to Hostalrich, which he summoned in vain to surrender; and leaving a few troops only to observe its garrison, he, by infinite skill and no small good fortune, avoided the guns of that fortress, and proceeded on to Gerona, under the walls of which he effected a junction with Reille's troops, who had come up from Rosas. Their united strength being now, notwithstanding all their losses, above nine thousand men, operations in form were com- July 24 menced against the place. Before this could be done, however, the succours from Majorca had been thrown July 22. into the town; and as the besiegers were themselves cut off from all communication, both with their reserve magazines at Barcelona and with the frontier of France, by the incessant activity of the peasantry, who lay in wait for and frequently intercepted the convoys, the works advanced very slowly. On the 15th August, however, the breach of Fort Montjuic was declared practicable, and an 172, 185. assault was about to commence, when the besiegers were Cabanes, ii. themselves assailed by a confused but formidable body, ten thousand strong, which appeared in their rear.1 Aug. 15. 1 Tor. i. 37, 38. Foy, iv. 62, 74. St Cyr, i. 40, 43. gona. This consisted, one-half of regular troops, which the Count Caldagues had brought up from Tarragona, the 49. other of Somatenes and Miquelets, with which he had The siege is augmented his force during its march along the coast of raised by the Spaniards Catalonia. Count Theodore Lecchi, who was left in from Tarracharge of Barcelona, was in no condition to oppose their passage almost within range of the guns of the fortress; for the troops he commanded, hardly four thousand strong, were barely adequate to guard its extensive works, and the Miquelets, stationed on the heights which overhang the city, had carried their audacity to such a pitch, as not only to keep up a constant fire on the French sentinels, but even make signals to the disturbed multitude in the streets to revolt. When this powerful force approached Gerona, the besieged made a general sally on the French lines, and with such vigour, that they penetrated into the batteries through the embrasures of VOL. XII. G CHAP. 1808. the guns, spiked the heavy cannon, and set fire to the works; while Duhesme, with the great body of the besiegers' force, was sufficiently engaged in observing the enemy which threatened them from the outside. Finding it totally impossible to continue the siege, Duhesme broke up in the night, and, dividing his force into two columns, took the road for Barcelona. But here fresh difficulties awaited him: two English frigates, under the able direction of Lord Cochrane, cannonaded and raked the road by the sea-coast; overhanging cliffs prevented them from getting out of the destructive range; while the route by the mountains in the interior, besides being closed by the cannon of Hostalrich, was in many places steep and intersected by ravines, and beset by armed peasants, who, from the rocks and woods above, kept up a destructive fire upon the troops beneath. In these circumstances the French general did not hesitate to sacrifice his artillery and stores; and thus lightened, he suc1 Cabanes, ii. ceeded in fighting his way back, by mountain-paths on 62, 81. Foy, the summit of the cliffs which overhang the sea, amidst a Tor. i. 37, 40 constant fire, to Barcelona. In this disastrous expedition Nap. i. 85, 86. St Cyr. above two thousand men and thirty pieces of artillery, besides extensive stores, were lost; and at its conclusion the French possessed nothing in Catalonia but the fortress of Barcelona and the citadel of Figueras.1 iv. 172, 193. 40, 47. Duhesme, 28, 39. 50. Universal Unbounded was the joy which these extraordinary successes in every part of Spain excited among its inhabitants. The variety of quarters in which they had arisen the Penin- augmented their moral effect: it was supposed that popsula. Entry ular energy was irresistible, when it had triumphed over of the Span- its enemies at once in Andalusia and Arragon, Valencia transports in ish troops into the capital. and Catalonia. Abandoning themselves to a pleasing and allowable, though short-lived illusion, the Spaniards generally believed that the war was at an end; that the Castilian soil was finally delivered from its invaders; and that, relieved of all disquietude as to the defence of their own country, the only question was, when they should unite their victorious arms to those of the English, and 2 Tor. ii. 82, carry the torrent of invasion across the Pyrenees into the 85. Nap. i. French plains.2 These enthusiastic feelings rose to a perfect climax when the Spanish army from Andalusia entered the capital, in great pomp, with Castanos at their 287. South. ii. 287. |