1808.] GENEROUS APPEAL TO FRENCH HONOUR. 151 posed defenders, who at once took to flight, occupied the barracks, the observatory, the porcelain manufactory, and even the Hotel of Medina Celi, on the opposite side of the Prado. General Maison, to the north of the city, at the same time secured the Puertas dos Pozos Fueneanal and del Duque. In one of these assaults the house of a Spanish veteran officer was entered. The octogenarian met the assailants at the door, leading forward a young woman, veiled, and, addressing himself to the officer in command, said, “I know, by experience, what are the horrors and licence of war. This is my only daughter; defend her honour, and I will give her you to wife with a handsome dowry." It is almost needless to say that the offer was accepted. At about 11 o'clock, the Emperor ordered another summons, and Morla and Iriarte answered it in person. Napoleon received them at the head of his staff. With all humility, the representatives of the capital demanded a few hours' time to endeavour to calm the excited multitude. The Emperor at once broke out into a long and violent tirade, the purport of which was, " Je ne veux ni ne dois retirer mes troupes. Retournez en Madrid. Révenez alors, si vous n'avez à moi parler du peuple que pour m'apprendre qu'il est soumis. Sinon, vous et vos troupes, vous serez tous passés par les armes." Morla, in a very brief space, returned to the Imperial head-quarters, bearing the absolute submission of the inhabitants; but his colleague, the Marquis de Castellan, collecting all the troops he could meet with, took advantage of a gate which was unguarded to escape, in the course of the night, out of the city. On the morning of the 4th all the gates of Madrid were given over to General Belliard. Napoleon ordered the army to be billeted in the monasteries, at their expense, and commanded a general disarmament of the people, and, in order to evince his further displeasure, he would not himself enter the capital, but placed his head-quarters at the village of Chamartin, and ordered the intrusive King to come up to the army, but not to enter the capital. He was only to occupy the Casa Reale del Prado, two or three leagues distant. 32. SIEGE OF ROSAS.-BATTLES OF THE LLOBREGAT AND UELES. In the course of the summer considerable anxiety was shown by the French to maintain their communication with Spain by way of Perpignan, which the patriot bands seriously menaced. In the month of June, a coup-de-main, attempted by General Duhesme against Gerona, had failed, and the whole plain round Barcelona called the Llobregat was occupied by Spanish troops, keeping the French garrison 7,000 strong, close prisoners in that city. A sortie under Reille recovered Figueras, but at the same time failed to get possession of Rosas. About this time, in virtue of an arrangement with the British Admiral, Lord Collingwood, the Marquis Palasios, Governor of the Balearic islands, landed at Tarragona with 4,500 soldiers and 37 pieces of cannon. Among the British cruisers appointed to harass the French in their movements along the east coast of Spain, the frigate "Impérieuse," 38, Captain Lord 152 CAPTURE OF ROSAS. [A.D. Cochrane, played a conspicuous part. On the 31st of July, this distinguished and enterprising officer had landed, and taken possession of the castle of Mongal, completely commanding the road between Barcelona and Gerona. He had also, at the same period, succeeded in demolishing the telegraphic communications of the French with their own country. When General Duhesme was compelled by the combined Somatenes and Miguelets to raise the siege of Gerona in July, he was assailed on his return to Barcelona by Lord Cochrane, who completely raked the road, and obliged him to sacrifice all his siege train, consisting of 30 pieces of artillery. Above 2,000 men were lost in this retreat by Duhesme, who at length reached Barcelona in safety, but he now possessed nothing in Catalonia, except that strong fortress and Figueras. Napoleon, therefore, directed the Italian troops, who had been brigaded at Perpignan in three divisions, under Generals Souham Pino and Chabot, to be formed into one corps-d'armée under General Gouvion Saint Cyr, to re-open the communications through the Eastern Pyrenees. They accordingly crossed the passes of the mountains, and sat down, on the 6th of November, before Rosas, in front of which at this time the "Excellent," 74, Captain West, and bomb-ship" Meteor," Captain Collins, lay within point-blank shot, and a well-directed fire from these ships soon compelled the enemy to retire from the town, into which their advance had penetrated. On the 8th, Captain West, observing that the Miguelets were being pressed by the enemy, changing his character to that of a land officer, mounted his horse, and placing himself at the head of 250 of the seamen and marines of the "Excellent," made an attack upon the besiegers, by which they rescued their friends, but at some loss, for sailors, in such a novel description of employment, were not very well organised, and West had his horse shot under him. On the 15th, the French assaulted unsuccessfully the bastion of Trinidada, and fresh bomb-ships at this period joining the British squadron, their fire galled the advance of the besiegers so much, that they were compelled to raise batteries to endeavour to silence them, which at length obliged the ships to draw away from the shore. On the 22nd the citadel was completely invested, and a breach made in the "Trinidada," and it was now considered desirable to withdraw the British, who had been sent in to assist the garrison; but on the 24th, Lord Cochrane returned to the Bay, and finding that the 800 Spaniards in garrison were on the point of surrendering, threw himself in the citadel, with about 80 seamen and marines of the "Impérieuse." The besiegers were astounded at the renewed vigour that immediately characterised the defence, and when, on the 30th, these made a fresh assault with 1,000 picked men, they were repulsed with the loss of their leader and the greater number of his followers. However, the resources of a French corps-d'armée, supplied with all the requisites for a siege, could not be withstood for ever, and, on the 5th of December, Lord Cochrane saw the necessity of quitting the post; therefore, having exploded the magazines, he re-embarked his men, and the town capitulated the same night. Immediately 1808.] GREAT BARBARITIES BY THE FRENCH. 153 after the surrender of Rosas, St. Cyr set himself in motion to relieve General Duhesme, who was closely blockaded in Barcelona. He avoided in his march, which was one of great difficulty, the forts of Gerona and Hostelritz, and adopting a way through the mountains, on the 16th carried by the bayonet the position of Cardaden, defended by General Reding. On the following day he found 15,000 men under Vives, posted between Llines and Cardaden, whom he attacked and defeated, and on the 17th entered Barcelona, to the immense joy of the liberated French garrison. He now found that his own force of 17,000 men united to that of Dubesme, amounting to 9,000, gave him an army far in excess of any Spanish army in the neighbourhood, and accordingly, on the 20th, he again quitted the place, and leaving only the divison Lechi in garrison, he marched into the Llobregat with all his power. Here at Molinos del Rey, where the high road to Valencia crosses the river by a bridge, he found the Spanish army under General Rives, well placed, and numbering 20,000 men. On the 24th he moved up his army under Generals Chabran, Souham and Piso, to attack them. The Spanish poured a telling fire on the assailants as they mounted the hill, but, when arrived on the summit, the French found no more worthy enemy here than elsewhere: all fled so swiftly, that few were killed or wounded: they ran, throwing away their arms and accoutrements, and abandoning all their artillery, and General Vives only saved himself by reaching Tarragona. The Central Junta cast the blame upon the General, and, disgracing him, gave his command to Reding. When Napoleon advanced upon Madrid, he directed Marshal Lefebvre at Talavera to possess himself of the bridge over the Tagus at Almaraz, which the Spanish General Galluzzo had attempted ineffectually to destroy. Sebastiani was sent accordingly to Arzobisho, and Lefebvre drove back the Spanish army as far as Merida. Galluzzo was therefore in like manner deposed by the Supreme Junta for his incapacity and succeeded by Cuesta. In order to complete the history of the dispersion of the grand armies, it may be related here that the Duke del Infantado with the wreck of the army of Castaños and the levies raised in Granada and Andalusia reached Cuenca, but when he heard that the French emperor had quitted the capital he put his army again in motion in the end of December, to endeavour to surprise it. Victor, however, who was at Toledo, was quite upon the alert, and met him at Ucles on the 13th of January, when he fell on the Spaniards in front, while General Ruffin attacked their rear, and utterly annihilated them. The French on this occasion signalised their triumph by great barbarities. Plunder, murder, torture, and violation racked the inhabitants of the district, while the unfortunate prisoners were shot without mercy! 154 THE BRITISH ARMY RETIRES ON CORUÑA. [A.D. 33. THE BRITISH ARMY, UNDER MOORE, COMMENCES ITS When Lieutenant-General Sir John Moore heard, on the 28th of November, of the successive dispersion of the Spanish armies at Salamanca, his anxious and too distrustful disposition became, suddenly, filled with the worst apprehensions. In every expectation he had been disappointed, every representation had proved false; he had been deceived by spurious promises of co-operation which never could be realised, and grossly led astray by the representations of the British ministers at Madrid and Lisbon. Mr. Frere pressed him earnestly to march to the support of Madrid; Mr. Stuart, who was a diplomatist of greater caution and sounder judgment, wrote in the same strain. He could meet with no native authority in whom he could place any trust or confidence. His mind became not only perplexed but irritated by the progress of events, and he at once took the resolution of withdrawing his army altogether out of Spain, and of assembling it on the banks of the Tagus. The same day he wrote to Sir David Baird to carry back his division to Coruña, embark them there, and join him at Lisbon, and to Sir John Hope to come up, in all haste, by Alba de Tormes, and join him at Ciudad Rodrigo or Almeida. He, at the same time, communicated his intentions to the British ministers, Stuart and Frere. Both wrote strongly to dissuade him from this determination, and the Supreme Junta sent two Spanish Generals to wait upon Sir John Moore in person, and, if possible, turn him from this purpose. Colonel Graham, however, at the same time, came in to head-quarters with the certain intelligence of the new defeat of the Spaniards at Somo Sierra, and of the entrance of Napoleon into Madrid. Morla, in his letter to Sir John, dated the 2nd of December, at the very moment when he was entering into terms with the enemy, endeavoured to persuade him by the assurance that the patriots had an army in the field of 40,000 men,. under Castaños, with which the British army could unite and fall on the rear of the enemy. Bad as Moore already thought of the Spanish authorities, it could not have entered into his conception that the principal chief of the Junta was conspiring with the French to inveigle the army of their ally into the enemy's power; nor could he imagine that the British Minister on the spot should be himself so grossly deceived, by those who surrounded him, as to send him intelligence and advice without any reasonable ground of truth or hope. On the 5th, he received a letter from Frere announcing that the capital had resisted a first assault, and was prepared to follow the example of Zaragoza, and resist the French to the uttermost, asserting these as facts to urge the British army to make an effort in favour of the people of Madrid. Overpowered, therefore, by these entreaties and representations thus urged upon him by persons in whose judgment, from their positions, he ought to trust, Sir John Moore, on the same day, altered his plans, and sent word to Baird and Hope to join him with all speed and with all their forces at Astorga. On the 10th, Sir 1808.] NAPOLEON ADVANCES AGAINST MOORE. 155 John Hope came up with the artillery and cavalry, and a communication was opened with the Marquis de la Romagna to co-operate with the patriot force under his command, and to this city Moore now resolved to advance. On the 13th, the cavalry, under Lord Paget, entered Toro with General Beresford's brigade, and head-quarters were advanced to Alaejos, and on the 18th Brigadier Charles Stuart, with a brigade of the 18th and Germans, came aux prises with a party of French cavalry and infantry near Rueda. The French were perfectly surprised in this encounter with the British, whom they believed to be in full retreat; their whole detachment was routed and either killed or wounded, and 80 were actually made prisoners. An intercepted despatch from Marshal Berthier to Marshal Soult now apprised the General that the 4th corps-d'armée was moving on Badajoz, and that Marshal Junot with the 8th corps had passed the Pyrenees, and was moving forward, while Soult himself was in Valladolid. Moore therefore halted his army at Toro on the 14th, and effected a junction with Baird at Benevente. On the 20th of December he moved his whole army forward to within three leagues of Sahagun. Here Lord Paget received information that 700 of the enemy's cavalry were posted in that town, and that it might be practicable to cut them off. The ground was covered with snow, the cold was intense; nevertheless, sending General Slade with the 10th Hussars to enter the town from the side of the Cega, he led forward the 15th and horseartillery in person by a different route, and at dawn of day fell upon the outlying picket, one of whom alone escaped with the intelligence to the main body. Accordingly, when Paget cleared the town, he found the enemy drawn up to receive him in an open plain. Without a moment's hesitation, the British cavalry charged, and though they most unexpectedly found that they had a broad ditch to pass, yet, with a true fox-hunting spirit, they at once leaped over the obstacle and fell upon the enemy, who fled, leaving two colonels and 160 men prisoners. The head-quarters of Sir John Moore were, in consequence of this success, established at Sahagun on the 21st; but it was necessary for him to halt the army to await supplies, nor could they be put in motion till the following day. Marshal Soult, posted at Saldana, who was in a somewhat critical state, defending the position of the Carrion with 18,000 men, was considerably taken aback by this bold advance of Moore: he made up his mind to march against him on the 23rd, and, accordingly, arranged with the Marquis de la Romagna to move all the Spanish troops he still possessed in Leon upon Minsilla, to aid in the manœuvre. Moore counted on having a force of 23,000 bayonets and 2,278 sabres with 60 guns. 34. NAPOLEON ADVANCES AGAINST IT FROM MADRID. As soon as Napoleon heard of the forward movement of Sir John Moore, he ordered Soult to retire before him back to Burgos, to which city he ordered Junot also to advance in all haste, while he |