SUCHET AND AUGEREAU IN ARAGON, VALENCIA, AND CATALONIA, MARCH–JULY 1810

Though Suchet had successfully pacified the plains of Aragon during the autumn of 1809, and though Augereau in the last month of that year had received the surrender of the much-enduring garrison of Gerona, the position of the French in North-Eastern Spain was still far from satisfactory. It was not yet possible for the 3rd and the 7th Corps to combine their operations. While the broad strip of territory in Western Catalonia reaching from the foot of the Pyrenees to the sea—whose places of strength were Lerida, Tarragona, and Tortosa—still remained intact, Augereau and Suchet could still communicate only by the circuitous route through France: a letter from Saragossa to Barcelona took a fortnight or more to arrive at its destination. It was high time that they should endeavour to get into touch with each other, by cutting through the Spanish line of defence. Both of the corps-commanders had now a comparatively free hand, and could assemble a considerable force for offensive operations. Suchet’s position was the happier: he had no Spanish army opposed to him at the moment. His only opponents were—to the West the bold guerrillero Mina the Younger on the borders of Navarre; to the South Villacampa with the dilapidated remains of his band on the side of the Sierra de Albaracin and Molina; and to the East the governor of Lerida, who kept a flying force under Colonel Perena on foot between the Cinca and the Segre, for the encouragement of the insurgents of Eastern Aragon. None of[p. 283] these three opponents could do any serious mischief to the 3rd Corps, which had risen by the New Year of 1810 to a strength of 24,000 men[329], now that its drafts from France were beginning to arrive. Mina was the most tiresome of the three: he was a young man of untiring energy, and kept the borders of Navarre in a perpetual ferment, till he was finally put down by mere force of numbers. For while Suchet sent a number of columns under General Harispe to hunt him, Lagrange’s division of the newly arrived 8th Corps came down from the side of Pampeluna, and swept the valleys of the Arga and the Aragon from the other quarter. Pursued from one refuge to another by 12,000 men, Mina ended by bidding his followers disperse. He did not appear again as a combatant till the 8th Corps had passed on into Castile in the month of February 1810.

Villacampa and Perena being very weak adversaries, Suchet could now dispose of the greater part of his corps for offensive operations. Two lines of attack were open to him: the more natural and obvious one was to attack Lerida or Tortosa, while Augereau and the 7th Corps moved against them from the other side. This was Suchet’s own intention, and he had received dispatches from Paris which approved of the plan. But another objective was pointed out to him from another quarter. It will be remembered that while King Joseph and Soult were planning the details of their Andalusian expedition, one of the schemes which they discussed was the use of the 3rd Corps as a flanking detachment to cover their attack on Seville[330]: it was to march on Valencia while Mortier marched on Badajoz. The plan was rejected in favour of the direct frontal march against the passes of the Sierra Morena. Nevertheless, when the defiles had been passed, and the King had entered Cordova in triumph, he recurred to his original scheme, and on January 27 Soult sent orders to Suchet directing him to make a dash at Valencia, and assuring him that the demoralization of the Spaniards was so great that he would probably enter the city without meeting with much resistance. Similar orders, as we have already seen,[p. 284] were sent to Ney, who was directed at the same moment to make himself master of Ciudad Rodrigo[331], which Soult and the King imagined to be likely to surrender at the first summons.

Suchet, though doubting (as he says) the wisdom of the plan of campaign imposed upon him, prepared to obey, and concentrated 8,000 men, consisting of Laval’s division and half that of Musnier, at Teruel, on the borders of Valencia, while Habert, with six battalions more, was to move in a separate parallel column from Alca?iz, and to strike down on to the sea-coast of Valencia by way of Morella. On their way to Teruel some of Laval’s columns made a side-stroke at Villacampa, and drove off his band into the mountains of New Castile.

The march on Valencia had already begun, when Suchet received at Teruel, on March 1, the dispatch from the Emperor which announced to him that the kingdom of Aragon had been made an independent ‘military government’ under his charge[332], and that he was for the future to take no orders from Madrid, but to seek all his instructions from Paris. By the same dispatch Suchet was informed that the Emperor approved of the plan for directing the 3rd Corps against Lerida and the rear of Catalonia which he had himself always advocated. But since Habert’s column had already disappeared in the mountains, and could not be recalled, and since his own advanced guard had actually crossed the borders of Valencia, Suchet thought that it was now too late to turn back, and that he must endeavour to carry out Soult’s orders, even though they were now countermanded by the Emperor. Accordingly he marched by Sarrion, on the road which leads from Teruel to Segorbe, and from thence to Murviedro on the Valencian coast, where Habert was to join him.

The force opposed to Suchet was that Valencian army which the governor—or rather the dictator—José Caro had so persistently refused to lend to Blake in the preceding autumn for the relief of Gerona. It was about 12,000 strong at the moment, and as some nine months had elapsed since the disaster of Belchite, where the Valencian troops had fared so badly, the regiments had been recruited up to their old strength, and had been thoroughly reorganized and re-equipped. Nevertheless,[p. 285] Caro did not wish to risk them in the open field, and, when Suchet’s approach was reported to him, ordered the troops to prepare to retreat within the walls of the city of Valencia, which had been so successfully defended against Moncey two years before. He was probably right in his decision: having no great superiority of numbers over the French invading columns, he would have been risking over much if he had offered battle on the frontier, even in an advantageous position. Behind the fortifications of Valencia, which had been improved and enlarged during the last two years, he could at least be certain of making a long and formidable resistance. If the enemy appeared without a great battering-train, and unprepared for a regular siege, the garrison would be absolutely safe. Accordingly, Caro sent out only a single brigade to observe and retard Suchet’s advance: this force, assisted by some armed peasants, tried to hold the defile of Alventosa against the French (March 4), but was beaten out of the position with ease, lost four guns, and retired by Segorbe and Murviedro on to Valencia, without offering further resistance. Suchet, following in the wake of the Spanish detachment, reached Murviedro on March 5, and there met Habert, whose march by Morella and Castellon-de-la-Plana had been absolutely unopposed.

A day later the French appeared in front of the fortifications of Valencia. Having surveyed the outworks, and summoned the place in vain, Suchet found that there was no more to be done. His bolt was shot: the city intended to defend itself: it was full of troops, and the whole population had been armed. Caro had given notice that the defence was to be conducted in the style of Saragossa, and as a foretaste of his intentions court-martialled and hanged several persons who were accused of being traitors[333]. After lying four days in front of Valencia, Suchet marched off again on the night of March 10-11, having[p. 286] convinced himself that he had been sent on a fool’s errand by Soult and King Joseph. For the expedition had only been undertaken on the hypothesis that the enemy was demoralized and ready to surrender—which was clearly not the case. No siege train had been brought, and without heavy artillery Valencia was impregnable. The retreat of the French was hastened by the fact that their communications with Aragon had already been cut off. Villacampa, undismayed by his defeat in February, had returned to the front the moment that the invading columns had passed on to the Valencian coast. He had blockaded the garrison of Teruel, cut off two small columns which were moving in its neighbourhood, and captured four guns and some 300 prisoners. At the same moment, though Suchet was unaware of the fact, Colonel Perena, with a detachment from Lerida, had made a demonstration against Monzon, and when the garrison of Eastern Aragon concentrated to defend it, had fallen on Fraga and burnt the bridge there—the only crossing of the Cinca which was in French hands. Mina, too, warned of the departure of the main body of the 3rd Corps for the South, had reassembled some of his levies, and begun to render the road from Saragossa to Pampeluna once more unsafe.

Suchet, therefore, on withdrawing from Valencia, found plenty of occupation awaiting him in Aragon. Villacampa was once more chased into the wilds of the Sierra de Albaracin: and several columns were detached in pursuit of Mina. This time the young partisan was unfortunate—he was caught between one of Suchet’s detachments and a party sent out by the governor of Navarre, and taken prisoner on March 31, with some scores of his followers. His place, however, was taken ere long by his uncle Espoz y Mina, who rallied the remnant of the guerrilleros of North-Western Aragon, and continued the struggle with an energy as great, and a success far greater, than that of his nephew.

Meanwhile, the months of February and March had been wasted, so far as the 3rd Corps was concerned, and it was not till April that Suchet was able to take in hand the enterprise which he himself had approved, and to which the Emperor had now given his consent—the siege of Lerida. A few weeks after his return to Saragossa he received from Paris two imperial[p. 287] letters denouncing his late campaign as presumptuous, objectless, and altogether deserving of high condemnation[334].

While the Valencian expedition had been in progress Marshal Augereau had been trying his hand at the Catalan problems which Verdier and St. Cyr had found so puzzling. His luck had been bad—and his faults had been many—for of all the commanders-in-chief who successively endeavoured to subjugate the untameable principality he was decidedly the least capable. When Gerona fell, the main body of his army was let loose for operations in the open field. But Verdier’s divisions, on whom the burden of the siege work had fallen, were in much too dilapidated a condition for active service[335]. Leaving them to recover their strength and gather up their convalescents, in cantonments between Figueras and Gerona, Augereau moved southwards in January, at the head of the troops of Souham and Pino, whose two divisions still counted 12,000 bayonets with the eagles, though they left behind them 5,000 sick in the hospitals of Figueras and Perpignan.

The Marshal’s main duty at this moment was to clear the road from Figueras to Barcelona, which the Spanish fortress of Gerona had so effectually blocked during the whole year 1809. All further advances were suspended till this operation should have been completed, by the Emperor’s special orders. Duhesme, indeed, isolated in Barcelona with some 6,000 men, communicating with France only by sea, and surrounded by a discontented population, which was reduced to semi-starvation by the blockade kept up by the British fleet, was in a perilous condition. There had been many who thought that if Blake, in October 1809, had marched against Barcelona instead of trying to throw succours into Gerona, he would have forced Augereau to abandon the siege of the latter place. For Duhesme would have been in such danger, since he was neither strong enough to fight in the open nor to man efficiently the immense circuit of the walls of Barcelona, that Augereau might[p. 288] probably have judged that it was better to save the capital of Catalonia than to continue the interminable blockade of the smaller town that was holding out so obstinately against him. Be this as it may, Augereau set Souham’s and Pino’s columns on the march early in January 1810, after having first executed at their head a sort of battue of the somatenes of the mountains around Gerona, as far as Ripol and Campredon. His progress was a reign of terror: he had issued on December 28th a proclamation stating that all irregulars taken with arms in their hands were to be treated as simple highway robbers, and hung without any form of trial[336]. He was as good as his word, and all the prisoners taken by the flying columns of Souham and Pino were suspended on a line of gallows erected on the high-road between Gerona and Figueras. These atrocities turned the war in Catalonia into a struggle even more ferocious than that of 1809, for the natives, very naturally, retaliated upon every French straggler that they caught, and the Spanish regular officers had great difficulty in saving the lives even of large bodies who had laid down their arms upon formal terms of surrender.

Two roads lead from Gerona and the valley of the Ter to Barcelona—that by Vich and that by Hostalrich. They unite near Granollers, twenty miles outside Barcelona. Augereau marched with the Italian division of Pino by the second road, while he sent Souham by the other. Both met with opposition: the small castle of Hostalrich was still held by the Spaniards—it was the only fortified place in central Catalonia which was now in their hands, and commanded, though it did not actually block, the main road to Barcelona. On arriving before it, the Marshal ordered Mazzuchelli’s Italian brigade to form the siege, trusting that the place would fall in a few days; but finding the resistance more serious than he had expected, he finally continued his march, with the remainder of the Italian division, towards Granollers and Barcelona. He had ordered Duhesme to come out to meet him at the former place, with as many of his troops as he could spare from garrison duty.
Map ofCcatalonia

Enlarge  CATALONIA

[p. 289]Souham meanwhile, on the eastern road, had entered Vich on January 11. He found that it had just been evacuated by the main body of the Spanish Army of Catalonia, whose head quarters had been maintained in that town all through the later months of the siege of Gerona. This force, still numbering about 7,000 men, was no longer under the command of its old general. Blake had resigned at Christmastide, after a lively altercation with the Junta of Catalonia, who laid the blame for the fall of Gerona on his shoulders, while he maintained that they were to blame for not having ordered the general levée en masse of the principality at an earlier date[337]. The command then passed in quick succession to the two senior general officers of the Catalan army, first to the Marquis of Portago, and then, after he had fallen ill, to General Garcia Conde, Governor of Lerida. But these interim commanders-in-chief were replaced in a few weeks by a younger and much more active leader, Henry O’Donnell—the man who had conducted the second convoy for Gerona, and had cut his way out of the place with such splendid address and resolution. He had only just been raised to the rank of Major-General, yet was now entrusted by the Central Junta with the control of the entire army of Catalonia. As he was setting to work to reorganize it, Souham arrived in front of his head quarters. Judging it unwise to offer battle at the head of demoralized troops, O’Donnell evacuated Vich, and fell back to the mountains above it. Souham followed him with an advanced guard as far as the pass called the Col de Suspina, where the Spaniard suddenly turned upon the pursuing force, and hurled it back with loss upon the main body of the division (January 12, 1810). He refused, however, to face Souham next day, and retreated towards Manresa; thereupon the French general also turned back, thinking it profitless to leave the Vich-Barcelona road, and to plunge into the hills in pursuit of an evasive enemy. He ended by making his way across the mountains to join the Marshal.

Meanwhile, Augereau, with Pino’s Italian brigades, reached Granollers, and came into touch with Duhesme’s troops, just in time to find that a disaster had preceded his arrival. The Governor of Barcelona, in obedience to the orders sent him, had[p. 290] marched out on January 16 with three battalions and 250 cuirassiers in order to meet the Marshal. He waited four days at Granollers, and then left the brigade under the charge of Colonel Guétry, and returned in person to Barcelona, recalled by rumours of a threatened attack from the side of Tarragona. On the morning after his departure Guétry’s force, which believed itself in complete security, was suddenly surprised in its camps by a detachment sent out by O’Donnell. That enterprising officer had heard that Augereau was still twenty miles away, and that Guétry had scattered his men in the three villages of Santa Perpetua, Mollet, and Granollers, in order to cover them from the bitter January weather. Accordingly, he resolved to risk an attack on this unwary detachment. Two brigades—about 4,000 men—under the Marquis of Campo Verde, made a forced march across the mountains, and fell upon the villages at dawn. The battalion of the 112th in Santa Perpetua was completely cut to pieces or captured—only two men are said to have escaped. The 7th and the cuirassiers at Mollet fared somewhat better, but were driven back to Barcelona with heavy loss. Part of the third battalion, one of the 5th Italian Line regiment, which was posted at Granollers, escaped destruction by throwing itself into a fortified convent, and held out for two days, till it was saved by the approach of Augereau along the high-road. Altogether, Duhesme’s division was thinned by the loss of 1,000 men on January 21-22: Guétry had been taken prisoner, with some 600 men more and two guns. The Spaniards disappeared the moment that Augereau came in sight, and rejoined O’Donnell in the hills.

Augereau entered Barcelona on the twenty-fourth, and at once asserted his authority by deposing Duhesme from the governorship and sending him home to France. They were old enemies, and the general’s friends regarded his disgrace as a display of spite on the part of his superior[338]. But as all the Spanish narratives describe the eighteen-months’ dictatorship of Duhesme as having been as much distinguished for private[p. 291] rapacity as for public oppression, it is probable that the Marshal’s action was wholly justifiable. The Emperor, however, refused to sanction the prosecution of the general on the charges laid against him, remarking that such proceedings would give too much pleasure to the Catalans, ‘il y avait bien autre chose à faire que de réjouir les Espagnols par cette réaction[339].’

Having concentrated Pino’s and Souham’s troops at Barcelona, Augereau would have proceeded to advance against the Catalans, and lay siege to Tarragona, but for one fact—the magazines of the city were almost empty, and no food could be procured for the army. Indeed, after a very few days it was necessary for the Marshal to retrace his steps, in order to bring up an enormous convoy for the revictualling of the place, which was being collected at Perpignan and Figueras. All that he had done by his march was to open up the road, and to muzzle the fortress of Hostalrich, which was still being blockaded by the Italians. Accordingly, on February 1 his two divisions marched back each by the way that it had originally taken—Souham to Vich, where he halted, Pino to Gerona, where the convoy began presently to gather, escorted thither in detachments by a large body of reinforcements which had just come up from France. For the Emperor had strengthened the Army of Catalonia by a division of troops of the Confederation of the Rhine, under General Rouyer, and by a Neapolitan brigade—some 8,000 men in all. But the long train of carts and mules came in slowly, and March began before Augereau was ready to move.

Meanwhile, his lieutenant Souham had been exposed to a sudden and unexpected peril. O’Donnell had discovered that the division at Vich was completely isolated and did not count much more than 5,000 sabres and bayonets. Having reorganized his own field army at Moya, near Manresa, and brought it up to a strength of 7,000 foot and 500 horse by calling a few troops from Tarragona, he directed the somatenes of Northern Catalonia to muster on the other side of Vich, so as to fall on Souham from the rear. The indefatigable miquelete leaders Rovira and Milans got together between 3,000 and 4,000 men, despite of all their previous losses and defeats. On February 19 these levies thrust in the pickets of the French division on the eastern[p. 292] side, but Souham did not see his danger till, on the following morning, he found O’Donnell’s regular troops pouring down into the plain of Vich in three columns, and challenging him to a battle in the open. Since the day of Valls the Catalan army had never tried such a bold stroke.

The French general was greatly outnumbered—he had but 4,000 infantry and 1,200 horse to oppose to O’Donnell’s 7,500 regulars and the 3,500 miqueletes. The action fell into two separate parts—while Rovira and Milans bickered with two battalions left to guard the town of Vich, Souham fought a pitched battle against the Spanish main body with the eight battalions and two and a half regiments of cavalry[340] which constituted the remainder of his force. It was a fierce and well-contested fight: O’Donnell took the offensive, and his men displayed an unwonted vigour and initiative. Unhappily for this enterprising general his small body of horsemen was utterly unable to restrain or to cope with the superior French cavalry. Twice the battle was turned by the charge of Souham’s squadrons: after the first repulse O’Donnell rallied his beaten right wing, threw in all his reserves, and tried to outflank the shorter French line on both sides. The enemy was losing heavily and showing signs of yielding, when the whole of his cavalry made a second desperate charge on the Spanish right. It was completely successful; O’Donnell’s turning column, composed of the Swiss regiments of Kayser[341] and Traxler, was broken, and the larger part of it captured. Thereupon, the Spanish general, who had displayed undaunted courage throughout the day, and headed several charges in person, thought it time to retire. He fell back on the mountains, leaving behind him 800 killed and wounded, and 1,000 prisoners. The French[p. 293] had suffered at least 600 casualties[342], including Souham himself, desperately wounded in the head, and had been within an ace of destruction: but for their superiority in cavalry, the day was lost.

On March 13, Augereau had at last collected his vast convoy at Gerona—there were more than a thousand waggons laden with flour, besides pack-mules, caissons, carriages, and other vehicles of all sorts. He marched in person to escort it, with the Italians—who were now under Severoli, Pino having gone home on leave,—and the newly arrived German division of Rouyer. Verdier was left behind—as in January—to defend the Ampurdam from the incursions of the miqueletes of Rovira and Milans. Meanwhile, Souham’s division, which had passed into the hands of General Augereau, the Marshal’s brother, since its old chief had been invalided to France, pursued a line of march parallel to that of the main force. Moving from Vich by the Col de Suspina and Manresa, it came down into the valley of the Llobregat, on the same day that Pino’s and Rouyer’s troops reached it by the other route. The Marshal and the main column had made their way past Hostalrich, which was found still unsubdued, and still blockaded by Mazzuchelli’s brigade, which had been left opposite it in January. These troops were ordered to join their division, a mixed detachment under Colonel Devaux being left in their stead to watch the castle. The Marshal then took up his residence in the palace at Barcelona, and had himself proclaimed Governor of Catalonia with great state, in consonance with the imperial decree of February 8, which had taken the principality out of the hands of King Joseph, and made its administrator responsible to Paris alone, and not to Madrid.

Augereau established himself permanently at Barcelona, and proceeded during the next two months to act rather as a viceroy than as a commander-in-chief. The conduct of military operations he handed over to his brother, to the unbounded disgust of the other generals. In what proportions the responsibility[p. 294] for the disasters which followed should be distributed between the two Augereaus it is hard to say. But Napoleon, very naturally and reasonably, placed it on the Marshal’s shoulders, and wrote that ‘Ce n’est point en restant dans les capitales éloignées de l’armée que des généraux en chef peuvent acquérir de la gloire ou mériter mon estime[343].’ The force assembled on the Llobregat was now a very large one, consisting of three divisions, those of Augereau, Severoli, and Rouyer. It numbered nearly 20,000 men, for along with the convoy there had marched a mass of drafts for the old regiments of the 7th Corps, which brought their battalions up to full strength[344].

There were only two rational plans of campaign open to the French: the one was to march on Tarragona with a siege-train, and to complete the conquest of Catalonia by the capture of its greatest fortress. The other was to mask Tarragona, and to strike across the principality westward, in order to get into communication with Suchet and the Army of Aragon, by way of Igualada, Cervera, and Lerida. If the two corps could meet, Northern Catalonia would be completely isolated from Tarragona, Tortosa, and Valencia. It was this latter plan which Augereau had been ordered to carry out by his master. He was directed to march on Lerida, and to join Suchet before that place. By a dispatch of February 19 he had been informed that on March 1 the Army of Aragon would have arrived before Lerida, and would be forming its siege[345]. This prophecy was false: for Suchet, as we have seen, had gone off on his Valencian expedition, and was at Teruel on the appointed day. It was impossible to direct from Paris a combined movement depending on accurate timing for its success. But Augereau should have attempted to carry out the order sent him by his master with proper zeal and dispatch. This he failed to do: his own inclination was to strike a blow at Tarragona, and the movements of his corps show that this was the operation which he had determined to carry out. Instead of marching in person[p. 295] with his main body, on Cervera and Lerida, he directed his brother to take his own and Severoli’s divisions and to move by Villafranca on Reus, a large town twelve miles to the north-west of Tarragona, and suitable as a base of operations against that city (March 29). A battalion and a half was dropped at Villafranca, to keep open the communications between Reus and Barcelona, while a brigade of Rouyer’s newly arrived Germans, under the ever-unlucky Schwartz—the vanquished of Bruch and Esparraguera[346]—was placed as a sort of flank-guard at Manresa. On March 27 a summons was sent in to Tarragona demanding surrender. This was, of course, refused—the town was full of troops, for Henry O’Donnell had just strengthened its garrison by retiring into it himself, with the 6,000 men who represented the remains of his field army.

The Spanish general, contemplating the position of affairs with a wary eye, had convinced himself that he could stop General Augereau’s further movements by striking at his line of communication with Barcelona. This he proceeded to do in the most skilful and successful fashion. Before the enemy closed in upon Tarragona, he sent out a picked force under General Juan Caro, with orders to attack Villafranca and Manresa without a moment’s delay. This daring stroke was completely successful: Caro stormed Villafranca at dawn on March 30, and took or captured the whole of the 800 men posted there. He was wounded, and had to hand over his command to Campo Verde, who, after some preliminary skirmishing lasting for three days, completed the little campaign by driving Schwartz out of Manresa, after a heavy fight, on April 5, in which the German brigade lost 30 officers and 800 men[347]. The somatenes turned out to hunt the routed force as it retired on Barcelona, and inflicted many further losses, so that Schwartz only brought back a third of his brigade to the Marshal.

The touch between the two divisions at Reus and the garrison of Barcelona was thus completely severed. Moreover, Augereau[p. 296] feared lest the next move of the raiding force might be an attack on the isolated force under Colonel Devaux which was blockading Hostalrich. He therefore sent out a brig with one of his aides-de-camp on board, bearing orders to his brother and Severoli to return at once to his head quarters with their troops. By good fortune the messenger reached his destination without being intercepted by English cruisers, and the two divisions started on their march back to Barcelona on April 7. Only two days before, Severoli, more by luck than by skill, had got for a moment into touch with the Army of Aragon. An exploring column of two battalions under Colonel Villatte, which he had sent out westward to Falcet, in the direction of the Ebro, met—entirely by chance—a similar detachment of Musnier’s division of the 3rd Corps, which had advanced to Mora. On interchanging news of their respective armies, Villatte learnt from his colleague that Suchet was at this moment marching on Lerida, where, according to the Emperor’s instructions to Marshal Augereau, he ought to have arrived more than a month before. Villatte brought back the information to Severoli, but the latter could make no use of it while he was under orders to return without delay to Barcelona[348]. He and General Augereau accomplished their retreat in three days, much harassed on the way, not only by the somatenes of the mountains but also by O’Donnell, who followed them with a detachment of the garrison of Tarragona. They took some small revenge on him, however, at Villafranca, where they turned on the pursuers and inflicted a sharp check on their advanced guard, which was pressing in, with more courage than discretion, on a force which outnumbered it by four to one. On April 9 the whole army was encamped outside the walls of Barcelona. Counting the garrison, Augereau had now more than 20,000 men in hand, but, not contented with this concentration, he sent orders back to the Ampurdam, ordering Verdier to bring forward as many troops as possible to Gerona, and from thence to push forward down the high-road as far as Granollers, so as to succour Devaux, if the Spaniards should show any intention of relieving Hostalrich.

The Marshal’s next move lost him the favour of Napoleon,[p. 297] and led to his removal in disgrace to Paris. On April 11 he issued orders to Severoli to march on Hostalrich, and there to take over the conduct of the siege from Devaux, while at the same time he himself moved back to Gerona with his brother’s French division, and an immense train, consisting partly of the empty carts of the convoy which he had brought south in March, partly of confiscated property of all sorts from Barcelona[349]. Augereau’s excuse for this retrograde movement, which abandoned all Central Catalonia to the enemy, was that his army would have exhausted the magazines of Barcelona if he had kept it concentrated for ten days more, and that he had no other way of feeding it, since the activity of the somatenes made the dispatch of foraging detachments utterly impossible. The moral effect of the move was deplorable: after taking in hand an offensive movement against Tarragona, he had allowed himself to be checked by an enemy hopelessly inferior in numbers, had lost over 3,000 men in petty combats, and then had retired to the base from which he had started in January. Three months had been wasted, and nothing had been gained save that the small castle of Hostalrich was now in a desperate condition for want of food, and must fall if not speedily succoured. What rendered the position of Augereau the more shameful was that he had now in front of him only a skeleton enemy. For O’Donnell at this moment was distracted by the advance of Suchet against Lerida, and had been forced to draw off towards the borders of Aragon two of the four divisions into which he had reorganized his little field army. Facing Augereau there was only Campo Verde’s division of regulars—not over 5,000 strong—and the bands of the mountains. It was against such an enemy that the Marshal had concentrated 25,000 men—including Verdier’s force—between Hostalrich and Gerona.

The food-problem, on which those who defend Augereau lay all the stress possible[350], was no doubt a very real one.[p. 298] The feeding of Barcelona, with its garrison and its large civil population, by means of convoys brought from France, was no easy task. But it seems clear that with the large force at his disposition—the 7th Corps was over 50,000 strong[351]—Augereau could have organized convoy-guards sufficiently powerful to defy the Spaniards, without abandoning the offensive position in front of Barcelona, which was all-important to him. He might have set aside 10,000 men for that purpose, and still have kept a strong field army together. Had he done so, O’Donnell could not have dared to march with 8,000 men, the pick of the Catalan army, to relieve Lerida, while his old enemies were massed, awaiting an impossible attack, a hundred miles away.

Meanwhile, the one task which was completed by the 7th Corps during the months of April and May was the reduction of Hostalrich. The little castle was a place of strength, perched high above the abandoned town to which it belonged. It was garrisoned by two battalions, one of Granadan regulars from Reding’s old division, the other of local Catalan levies[352], under Colonel Juliano Estrada, an officer of high spirit and commendable obstinacy. To the first summons made to him in January by Augereau,............