THE FALL OF GERONA. AUGUST–DECEMBER, 1809

When Monjuich had been evacuated, the position of Gerona was undoubtedly perilous: of the two mountain summits which command the city one was now entirely in the hands of the French; for not only the great fort itself but several of the smaller works above the ravine of the Galligan—such as the fortified convent of San Daniel and the ruined tower of San Juan—had been lost. The front exposed to attack now consisted of the northern section of the old city wall, from the bastion of Santa Maria at the water’s edge, to the tower of La Gironella, which forms the north-eastern angle of the place, and lies further up the slope of the Capuchin heights than any other portion of the enceinte. The space between these two points was simply covered by a mediaeval wall set with small round towers: neither the towers nor the curtain between them had been built to hold artillery. Indeed the only spots on this front where guns had been placed were (1) the comparatively modern bastion of Santa Maria, (2) a work erected under and about the Gironella, and called the ‘Redoubt of the Germans,’ and (3, 4) two parts of the wall called the platforms[41] of San Pedro and San Cristobal, which had been widened till they could carry a few heavy guns. On the rest of the enceinte, owing to its narrowness, nothing but wall-pieces and two-pounders could be mounted. The parts of the curtain most exposed to attack were the sections named Santa Lucia, San Pedro, San Cristobal, and Las Sarracinas, from churches or quarters which lay close behind them. With nothing but an antiquated wall, seven to nine feet thick, thirty feet high, and destitute of a ditch, it seemed that this side of Gerona was doomed to destruction within a few days.

But there were points in the position which rendered the[p. 38] attack more difficult than might have been expected. The first was that any approaches directed against this front would be exposed to a flanking fire from the forts on the Capuchin heights, especially from the Calvary and Chapter redoubts. The second was that the greater part of the weak sections of the wall were within a re-entering angle; for the tower of Santa Lucia and the ‘Redoubt of the Germans’ by the Gironella project, and the curtains between them are in a receding sweep of the enceinte. Attacks on these ill-fortified sections would be outflanked and enfiladed by the two stronger works. The only exposed part of the curtain was that called Santa Lucia, running from the tower of that name down to the bastion of Santa Maria. Lastly, the parallels which the French might construct from their base on Monjuich would have to be built on a down slope, overlooked by loftier ground, and when they reached the foot of the walls they would be in a sort of gulley or bottom, into which the defenders of the city could look down from above. The only point from which the north end of Gerona could be approached from flat ground and without disadvantages of slope, is the short front of less than 200 yards breadth between the foot of Monjuich and the bank of the Ter. Here, in the ruins of the suburb of Pedret, there was plenty of cover, a soil easy to work, and a level terrain as far as the foot of the Santa Maria bastion. The engineers of the besieging army selected three sections of wall as their objective. The first was the ‘Redoubt of the Germans’ and the tower of La Gironella, the highest and most commanding works in this part of the enceinte: once established in these, they could overlook and dominate the whole city. The other points of attack were chosen for the opposite reason—because they were intrinsically weak in themselves, not because they were important or dominating parts of the defences. The curtain of Santa Lucia in particular seemed to invite attack, as being in a salient angle, unprotected by flanking fire, and destitute of any artillery of its own.

Verdier, therefore, on the advice of his engineers, set to work to attack these points of the enceinte between La Gironella and Santa Maria. New batteries erected amid the ruins of Monjuich were levelled against them, in addition to such of the older[p. 39] batteries as could still be utilized. On the front by Pedret also, where nothing had hitherto been done, works were prepared for guns to be directed against Santa Maria and Santa Lucia. Meanwhile a perpetual bombardment with shell was kept up, against the whole quarter of the town that lay behind the selected points of attack. Mortars were always playing, not only from the Monjuich heights but from two batteries erected on the so-called ‘Green Mound’ in the plain beyond the river Ter. Their effect was terrible: almost every house in the northern quarter of Gerona was unroofed or destroyed: the population had to take refuge in cellars, where, after a few days, they began to die fast—all the more so that food was just beginning to run short as August advanced. From the 14th to the 30th of that month Verdier’s attack was developing itself: by its last day four breaches had been established: one, about forty feet broad, in the curtain of St. Lucia, two close together in the works at La Gironella[42], the fourth and smallest in the platform of San Cristobal. But the approaches were still far from the foot of the wall, the fire of the outlying Spanish works, especially the Calvary fort, was unsubdued, and though the guns along the attacked front had all been silenced, the French artillery had paid dearly both in lives and in material for the advantage they had gained. Moreover sickness was making dreadful ravages in the ranks of the besieging army. The malarious pestilence on which the Spaniards had relied had appeared, after a sudden and heavy rainfall had raised the Ter and O?a beyond their banks, and inundated the whole plain of Salt. By malaria, dysentery and sunstroke Verdier had lost 5,000 men, in addition to his casualties in the siege. Many of them were convalescents in the hospitals of Perpignan and Figueras, but it was hard to get them back to the front; the somatenes made the roads impassable for small detachments, and the officers on the line of communication, being very short of men, were given to detaining drafts that reached them on their way to Gerona[43]. Hence Verdier, including[p. 40] his artillerymen and sappers, had less than 10,000 men left for the siege, and these much discouraged by its interminable length, short of officers, and sickly. This was not enough to guard a periphery of six miles, and messengers were continually slipping in or out of Gerona, between the widely scattered camps of the French.

On August 31 a new phase of the siege began. In response to the constant appeals of Alvarez to the Catalan Junta, and the consequent complaints of the Junta alike to the Captain-General Blake, and to the central government at Seville, something was at last about to be done to relieve Gerona. The supreme Central Junta, in reply to a formal representation of the Catalans dated August 16[44], had sent Blake 6,000,000 reals in cash, and a peremptory order to march on Gerona whatever the state of his army might be, authorizing him to call out all the somatenes of the province in his aid. The general, who had at last returned to Tarragona, obeyed, though entirely lacking confidence in his means of success; and on the thirty-first his advance guard was skirmishing with St. Cyr’s covering army on the heights to the south of the Ter.

Blake’s army, it will be remembered, had been completely routed at Belchite by Suchet on June 18. The wrecks of his Aragonese division had gradually rallied at Tortosa, those of his Valencian divisions at Morella: but even by the end of July he had only a few thousand men collected, and he had lost every gun of his artillery. For many weeks he could do nothing but press the Junta of Valencia to fill the depleted ranks of his regiments with recruits, to reconstitute his train, and to provide him with new cannon. Aragon had been lost—nothing could be drawn from thence: Catalonia, distracted by Suchet’s demonstration on its western flank, did not do as much as might have been expected in its own defence. The Junta was inclined to favour the employment of miqueletes and[p. 41] somatenes, and to undervalue the troops of the line: it forgot that the irregulars, though they did admirable work in harassing the enemy, could not be relied upon to operate in large masses or strike a decisive blow. Still, the regiments at Tarragona, Lerida, and elsewhere had been somewhat recruited before August was out.

Blake’s field army was composed of some 14,000 men: there were five Valencian regiments—those which had been least mishandled in the campaign of Aragon—with the relics of six of the battalions which Reding had brought from Granada in 1808[45], two of Lazan’s old Aragonese corps, and five or six of the regiments which had formed the original garrison of Catalonia. The battalions were very weak—it took twenty-four of them to make up 13,000 infantry: of cavalry there were only four squadrons, of artillery only two batteries. Those of the rank and file who were not raw recruits were the vanquished of Molins de Rey and Valls, or of Maria and Belchite. They had no great confidence in Blake, and he had still less in them. Despite the orders received from Seville, which bade him risk all for the relief of Gerona, he was determined not to fight another pitched battle. The memories of Belchite were too recent to be forgotten. Though much obloquy has been poured upon his head for this resolve, he was probably wise in his decision. St. Cyr had still some 12,000 men in his covering army, who had taken no share in the siege: their morale was intact, and they had felt little fatigue or privation. They could be, and were in fact, reinforced by 4,000 men from Verdier’s force when the stress came. Blake, therefore, was, so far as regular troops went, outnumbered by the French, especially in cavalry and artillery. He could not trust in time of battle the miqueletes, of whom some 4,000 or 5,000 from the Ampurdam and Central Catalonia came to join him. He thought that it might be possible to elude or[p. 42] outflank St. Cyr, to lure him to divide his forces into scattered bodies by threatening many points at once, or, on the other hand, to induce him to concentrate on one short front, and so to leave some of the exits of Gerona open. But a battle with the united French army he would not risk under any conditions.

St. Cyr, however, was too wary for his opponent: he wanted to fight at all costs, and he was prepared to risk a disturbance of the siege operations, if he could catch Blake in the open and bring him to action. The moment that pressure on his outposts, by regular troops coming from the south, was reported, he drew together Souham’s and Pino’s divisions on the short line between San Dalmay on the right and Casa de Selva on the left, across the high road from Barcelona. At the same time he sent stringent orders to Verdier to abandon the unimportant sections of his line of investment, and to come to reinforce the field army at the head of his French division, which still counted 4,000 bayonets. Verdier accordingly marched to join his chief, leaving Lecchi’s Italians—now little more than 2,000 strong—to watch the west side of Gerona, and handing over the charge of the works on Monjuich, the new approaches, and the park at Pont Mayor, to the Westphalians. He abandoned all the outlying posts on the heights, even the convent of San Daniel, the village of Campdura, and the peak of Nuestra Se?ora de los Angeles. Only 4,600 infantry and 2,000 gunners and sappers were left facing the garrison: but Alvarez was too weak to drive off even such a small force.

On September 1 Blake ostentatiously displayed the heads of his columns in front of St. Cyr’s position; but while the French general was eagerly awaiting his attack, and preparing his counter-stroke, the Spaniard’s game was being played out in another quarter. While Rovira and Claros with their miqueletes made noisy demonstration from the north against the Westphalians, and threatened the park and the camp at Sarria, Blake had detached one of his divisions, that of Garcia Conde, some 4,000 strong, far to the left beyond St. Cyr’s flank: this corps had with it a convoy of more than a thousand mules laden with provisions, and a herd of cattle. It completely escaped the notice of the French, and marching from Amer at break of day came down into the plain of Salt at noon, far in[p. 43] the rear of St. Cyr’s army. Garcia Conde had the depleted Italian division of the siege corps in front of him: one of the brigadiers, the Pole Milosewitz, was in command that day, Lecchi being in hospital. This small force, which vainly believed itself covered from attack by St. Cyr’s corps, had kept no look-out to the rear, being wholly intent on watching the garrison. It was surprised by the Spanish column, cut into two halves, and routed. Garcia Conde entered the Mercadal in triumph with his convoy, and St. Cyr first learnt what had occurred when he saw the broken remnants of the Italians pouring into the rear of his own line at Fornells.

That night Gerona was free of enemies on its southern and eastern sides, and Alvarez communicated freely with Rovira’s and Claros’s irregulars, who had forced in the Westphalian division and compelled it to concentrate in Monjuich and the camp by the great park near Sarria. The garrison reoccupied the ruined convent of San Daniel by the Galligan, and placed a strong party in the hermitage on the peak of Nuestra Se?ora de los Angeles. It also destroyed all the advanced trenches on the slopes of Monjuich. On the next morning, however, it began to appreciate the fact that the siege had not been raised. St. Cyr sent back Verdier’s division to rejoin the Westphalians, and with them the wrecks of Lecchi’s routed battalions. He added to the force under Verdier half Pino’s Italian division—six fresh battalions. With these reinforcements the old siege-lines could be reoccupied, and the Spaniards were forced back from the points outside the walls which they had reoccupied on the night of September 1.

By sending away such a large proportion of the 16,000 men that he had concentrated for battle on the previous day, St. Cyr left himself only some 10,000 men for a general action with Blake, if the latter should resolve to fight. But the Spanish general, being without Garcia Conde’s division, had also no more than 10,000 men in line. Not only did he refuse to advance, but when St. Cyr, determined to fight at all costs, marched against him with offensive intentions, he hastily retreated as far as Hostalrich, two marches to the rear. There he broke up his army, which had exhausted all its provisions. St. Cyr did the same and for the same reasons; his men had to[p. 44] disperse in order to live. He says in his memoirs that if Blake had shown a bold front against him, and forced him to keep the covering army concentrated for two more days, the siege would have had to be raised. For the covering army had advanced against the Spaniards on September 2 with only two days’ rations, it had exhausted its stores, and eaten up the country-side. On the fourth it would have had to retire, or to break up into small fractions, leaving the siege-corps unprotected. St. Cyr doubted whether the retreat would have ceased before Figueras was reached. But it is more probable that he would have merely fallen back to join Verdier, and to live for some days on the dép?ts of Pont Mayor and Sarria. He could have offered battle again under the walls of Gerona, with all his forces united. Blake might have got into close touch with Alvarez, and have thrown what convoys he pleased into the town; but as long as St. Cyr and Verdier with 22,000 men lay opposite him, he could not have risked any more. The situation, in short, would have been that which occurred in February 1811 under the walls of Badajoz, when Mortier faced Mendizabal, and would probably have ended in the same fashion, by the French attacking and driving off the relieving army. Blake, then, may be blamed somewhat for his excessive caution in giving way so rapidly before St. Cyr’s advance: but if we remember the quality of his troops and the inevitable result of a battle, it is hard to censure him overmuch.

Meanwhile Garcia Conde, whose movements were most happy and adroit, reinforced the garrison of Gerona up to its original strength of 5,000 bayonets, by making over to Alvarez four whole battalions and some picked companies from other corps, and prepared to leave the town with the rest of his division and the vast drove of mules, whose burden had been discharged into the magazines. If he had dedicated his whole force to strengthening the garrison, the additional troops would have eaten up in a few days all the provisions that the convoy had brought in[46].[p. 45] Accordingly he started off at two a.m. on September 4 with some 1,200 men, by the upland path that leads past the hermitage of Los Angeles: St. Cyr had just placed Pino’s troops from the covering army to guard the heights to the south-east of Gerona, but Garcia Conde, warned by the peasants of their exact position, slipped between the posts and got off to Hostalrich with a loss of no more than fifty men[47].

Before he could consider his position safe, Verdier had to complete the lines of investment: this he did on September 5 by driving off the intermediate posts which Alvarez had thrown out from the Capuchin heights, to link the town with the garrison in the hermitage of Nuestra Se?ora de los Angeles. Mazzuchelli’s brigade stormed the hermitage itself on the following day, with a loss of about eighty men, and massacred the greater part of the garrison. On that same day, however, the French suffered a small disaster in another part of the environs. General Joba, who had been sent with three battalions to clear the road to Figueras from the bands of Claros and Rovira, was beaten and slain at San Gregorio by those chiefs. But the miqueletes afterwards retired to the mountains, and the road became intermittently passable, at least for large bodies of men.

It was not till September 11, however, that Verdier recom[p. 46]menced the actual siege, and bade his batteries open once more upon Gerona. The eleven days of respite since Blake interrupted the bombardment on September 1 had been invaluable to the garrison, who had cleared away the débris from the foot of the breaches, replaced the damaged artillery on the front of attack, and thrown up interior defences behind the shattered parts of the wall. They had also destroyed all the advanced trenches of the besiegers, which had to be reconstructed at much cost of life. In four days Verdier had recovered most of the lost ground, when he was surprised by a vigorous sally from the gate of San Pedro: the garrison, dashing out at three p.m., stormed the three nearest breaching batteries, spiked their guns, and filled in all the trenches which were advancing towards the foot of the walls. Four days’ work was thus undone in an hour, and it was only on September 19 that Verdier had reconstructed his works, and pushed forward so far towards his objective that he considered an assault possible. He then begged St. Cyr to lend him a brigade of fresh troops, pleading that the siege-corps was now so weak in numbers, and so demoralized by its losses, that he did not consider that the men would do themselves justice at a storm. The losses of officers had been fearful: one battalion was commanded by a lieutenant, another had been reduced to fifty men; desertion was rampant among several of the foreign corps. Of 14,000 infantry[48] of the French, Westphalian, and Italian divisions less than 6,000 now remained. So far as mere siegecraft went, as he explained to St. Cyr, ‘the affair might be considered at an end. We have made four large practicable breaches, each of them sufficient to reduce the town. But the troops cannot be trusted.’ St. Cyr refused to lend a man for the assault, writing with polite irony that ‘every general has his own task: yours is to take Gerona with the resources placed at your disposal by the government for that object, and the officers named by the government to conduct the siege[49].’ He added that he considered, from its past[p. 47] conduct, that the morale of the siege-corps was rather good than bad. He should not, therefore, allow the covering army to join the assault; but he would lend the whole of Pino’s division to take charge of Monjuich and the camps, during the storm, and would make a demonstration against the Mercadal, to distract the enemy from the breaches. With this Verdier had to be content, and, after making two final protests, concentrated all his brigades save those of the Westphalian division, and composed with them four columns, amounting to some 3,000 men, directing one against each of the four breaches. That sent against the platform of San Cristobal was a mere demonstration of 150 men, but the other three were heavy masses: the Italians went against Santa Lucia, the French brigade against the southern breach in the ‘Redoubt of the Germans,’ the Berg troops against the northern one. A separate demonstration was made against the Calvary fort, whose unsubdued fire still flanked the breaches, in the hope that its defenders might be prevented from interfering in the main struggle.

Alvarez, who had noted the French columns marching from all quarters to take shelter, before the assault, in the trenches on the slopes of Monjuich and in front of Pedret, had fair warning of what was coming, and had done his best to provide against the danger. The less important parts of the enceinte had been put in charge of the citizens of the ‘Crusade,’ and the picked companies of every regiment had been told off the breaches. The Englishman, Ralph Marshall, was in charge of the curtain of Santa Lucia, William Nash, the Spanish-Irish colonel of Ultonia, commanded at the two breaches under La Gironella: Brigadier Fournas, the second-in-command of the garrison, had general supervision of the defences; he had previously taken charge of Monjuich during the great assault in August. Everything had been done to prepare a second line of resistance behind the breaches; barricades had been erected, houses loopholed, and a great many marksmen disposed on roofs and church towers, which looked down on the rear-side of the gaps in the wall.

At four o’clock in the afternoon of September 19 the three columns destined for the northern breaches descended from Monjuich on the side of San Daniel, crossed the Galligan, and[p. 48] plunged into the hollow at the foot of the ‘Redoubt of the Germans.’ At the same moment the fourth column started from the ruins of the tower of San Juan to attack the curtain of Santa Lucia. The diversion against the Calvary fort was made at the same moment, and beaten off in a few minutes, so that the fire of this work was not neutralized during the assault according to Verdier’s expectation. The main assault, nevertheless, was delivered with great energy, despite the flanking fire. At the two points of attack under La Gironella the stormers twice won, crossed, and descended from the breach, forcing their way into the ruined barracks behind. But they were mown down by the terrible musketry fire from the houses, and finally expelled with the bayonet. At the Santa Lucia curtain the Italians scaled the breach, but were brought up by a perpendicular drop of twelve feet behind it—the foot of the wall in this quarter chancing to be much higher than the level of the street below. They held the crest of the breach for some time, but were finally worsted in a long and furious exchange of fire with the Spaniards on the roofs and churches before them, and recoiled. The few surviving officers rallied the stormers, and brought them up for a second assault, but at the end of two hours of hard fighting all were constrained to retire to their trenches. They had lost 624 killed and wounded, including three colonels (the only three surviving in the whole of Verdier’s corps) and thirty other officers. The Spanish loss had been 251, among them Colonel Marshall, who was mortally wounded at his post on the Santa Lucia front.
Map of the siege of Gerona

Enlarge  SIEGE OF GERONA

Verdier accused his troops of cowardice, which seems to have been unjust. St. Cyr wrote to the Minister of War to express his opinion that his subordinate was making an excuse to cover his own error, in judging that a town must fall merely because there were large breaches in its walls[50]. ‘The columns stopped for ninety minutes on the breaches under as heavy a fire as has ever been seen. There was some disorder at the end, but that is not astonishing in view of the heavy loss suffered before the[p. 49] retreat. I do not think that picked grenadiers would have done any better, and I am convinced that the assault failed because the obstacles to surmount were too great.’ The fact was that the Spaniards had fought with such admirable obstinacy, and had so well arranged their inner defences, that it did not suffice that the breaches should have been perfectly practicable. At the northern assault the stormers actually penetrated into the buildings behind the gaps in the ruined wall, but could not get further forward[51]. In short, the history of the siege of Gerona gives a clear corroboration of the old military axiom that no town should ever surrender merely because it has been breached, and justifies Napoleon’s order that every governor who capitulated without having stood at least one assault should be sent before a court martial. It refutes the excuses of the too numerous commanders who have surrendered merely because there was a practicable breach in their walls, like Imaz at Badajoz in 1811. If all Spanish generals had been as wary and as resolute as Mariano Alvarez, the Peninsular War would have taken some unexpected turns. The moral of the defences of Tarifa, Burgos, and San Sebastian will be found to be the same as that of the defence of Gerona.

The effect of the repulse of September 19 on the besieging army was appalling. Verdier, after writing three venomous letters to the Emperor, the War Minister, and Marshal Augereau[52], in which he accused St. Cyr of having deliberately sacrificed the good of the service to his personal resentments, declared himself invalided. He then went off to Perpignan, though permission to depart was expressly denied him by his superior: his divisional generals, Lecchi and Morio, had already preceded him to France. Disgust at the failure of the storm had the same effect on the rank and file: 1,200 men went to the hospital in the[p. 50] fortnight that followed the assault, till by October 1 the three divisions of the siege-corps numbered little more than 4,000 bayonets—just enough to hold Monjuich and the camps by the great dép?ts at Pont Mayor and Sarria. The store of ammunition in the park had been used up for the tremendous bombardment poured upon the breaches from the 15th to the 17th of September. A new supply was wanted from Perpignan, yet no troops could be detached to bring it forward, for the miqueletes were again active, and on September 13 had captured or destroyed near Bascara a convoy guarded by so many as 500 men.

St. Cyr, left in sole charge of the siege by Verdier’s departure, came to the conclusion that it was useless to proceed with the attack by means of trenches, batteries, and assaults, and frankly stated that he should starve the town out, but waste no further lives on active operations. He drew in the covering corps closer to Gerona, so that it could take a practical part in the investment, put the wrecks of Lecchi’s troops—of whom less than 1,000 survived—into Pino’s division, and sent the French brigade of Verdier’s old division to guard the line between Bascara and the Frontier. Thus the distinction between the siege-corps and the covering troops ceased to exist, and St. Cyr lay with some 16,000 men in a loose circle round Gerona, intent not on prosecuting advances against the walls, but only on preventing the introduction of further succours. He was aware that acute privations were already being suffered by the Spaniards: Garcia Conde’s convoy had brought in not much more than eight days’ provisions for the 5,000 men of the reinforced garrison and the 10,000 inhabitants who still survived. There was a considerable amount of flour still left in store, but little else: meat, salt and fresh, was all gone save horseflesh, for Alvarez had just begun to butcher his draught horses and those of his single squadron of cavalry. There was some small store of chocolate, tobacco, and coffee, but wine and aguardiente had run out, so had salt, oil, rice, and—what was most serious with autumn and winter approaching—wood and charcoal. All the timbers of the houses destroyed by the bombardment had been promptly used up, either for fortification or for cooking[53].[p. 51] Medical stores were wholly unobtainable: the chief hospital had been burnt early in the siege, and the sick and wounded, laid in vaults or casemates for safety, died off like flies in the underground air. The seeds of pestilence were spread by the number of dead bodies of men and animals which were lying where they could not be reached, under the ruins of fallen houses. The spirit alike of garrison and troops still ran high: the repulse of the great assault of September 19, and the cessation of the bombardment for many days after had encouraged them. But they were beginning to murmur more and more bitterly against Blake: there was a general, if erroneous, opinion that he ought to have risked a battle, instead of merely throwing in provisions, on September 1. Alvarez himself shared this view, and wrote in vigorous terms to the Junta of Catalonia, to ask if his garrison was to perish slowly by famine.

Blake responded by a second effort, less happily planned than that of September 1. He called together his scattered divisions, now about 12,000 strong, and secretly concentrated them at La Bispal, between Gerona and the sea. He had again got together some 1,200 mules laden with foodstuffs, and a large drove of sheep and oxen. Henry O’Donnell, an officer of the Ultonia regiment, who had been sent out by Alvarez, marched at the head of the convoy with 2,000 picked men; a division of 4,000 men under General Wimpfen followed close behind to cover its rear. Blake, with the rest, remained at La Bispal: he committed the egregious fault of omitting to threaten other[p. 52] parts of the line of investment, so as to draw off St. Cyr’s attention from the crucial point. He trusted to secrecy and sudden action, having succeeded in concentrating his army without being discovered by the French, who thought him still far away beyond Hostalrich. Thus it came to pass that though O’Donnell struck sharply in, defeated an Italian regiment near Castellar, and another three miles further on, and reached the Constable fort with the head of the convoy, yet the rest of Pino’s division and part of Souham’s concentrated upon his flank and rear, because they w............