The Central Junta perfectly understood and truly represented the spirit of the nation, partaking in some things its blindness and its obstinacy, but also its exalted feeling, its true heroism, and its incomparable devotion to the cause of national independence. Its information concerning the real state of affairs was as imperfect as its other arrangements. In the correspondence concerning Cadiz, Garay assured the British Ambassador that Zaragoza was still holding out, not considering that by little less than miracle that glorious city could have held out so long, and not knowing that the enemy had then been eight days in possession of its ruins.

Palafox was not present at the battle of Tudela. He had embarked on the river just before the action began, little apprehending that it was so near, and believing that his presence was required at Zaragoza. This was one cause among the many which led to the misfortunes of that day; for Castaños, who would otherwise have been with his own troops, remained with ♦Representaciones, &c. del G. Castaños, p. 195.♦ the Aragonese to supply his place, and each army was thus deprived of the General who knew the troops, and in whom they trusted. During the short time that these Generals had acted together, there had been no want of confidence and frankness between them: but after their separation, and the refusal of Castaños to throw his troops into Zaragoza instead of retreating toward Madrid, in obedience to the orders of the Central Junta, the disasters which had been sustained were imputed by Palafox to his errors. He had been far from apprehending, he said, that he should have to prepare for a second siege; and never could any combination of his own have placed him under such a necessity. The charge of incapacity against Castaños was more broadly made in an official account of the action by General O’Neille, and he was publicly accused of having sold the army and betrayed his country.

Castaños himself did Palafox the justice to believe that he had been deceived by malicious representations. The other charges proceeded from men who sought to shelter their own misconduct by appearing as accusers, or from private malice, which in such times never loses the opportunity of exerting itself with sure effect. Zaragoza was in a state of tremendous agitation; the same spirit was still prevailing there which had so wonderfully repulsed the French, but that spirit had broken the bonds of order; and Palafox, who was so well able to direct the popular feeling in the hour of danger, found it necessary at other times in many things to yield to it. His power was absolute while he held it; but though it had been confirmed to him by the Supreme Junta, it was in fact held only by the tenure of popular opinion, which among large masses of men, and more especially in perilous circumstances, is always influenced less by the considerate and the wise, than by the headstrong, the audacious, and the profligate. Victims whom ♦Cavallero, p. 67.♦ he dared not interfere to save were sacrificed, and the utmost he could do in behalf of any accused persons, was to secure them in prison, and ♦Measures of precaution.♦ thus respite them from immediate death. During the former siege the French who resided in the city had been put under arrest; and there had been the twofold anxiety of guarding against any correspondence between them and the besiegers, and protecting them against the fatal effects of popular suspicion, which at any moment might have produced a massacre of these unfortunate persons. To prevent both the inconvenience and the danger, Palafox sent them away to distant places of confinement; but it was necessary to prepare the people for this by a proclamation, appealing to their honour, and courage, and humanity, and cautioning them against the enemy’s emissaries, who were seeking to bring a stain upon their cause by exciting them to acts of murder. The prisoners and deserters were also removed. The nuns were permitted to remove to other convents not within the scene of immediate danger, where they might occupy themselves without interruption in their holy exercises. Aware that in so large a city there must be persons whom their own wealth would have bribed to betray their country, and who would fain have submitted for the sake of preserving their property, Palafox decreed that the inhabitants of Zaragoza, of whatever rank or condition, should consider themselves bound to devote their persons, their property, and their lives to its defence; that the rich should foster, and assist, and clothe the poor, enable them to maintain their respective posts, and remunerate them for the zeal with which they defended their lives, their estates, and their common country. If any man were unnatural enough to disregard this sacred duty, which he owed both to his native land and his religion, he should be fined in proportion to the magnitude of his offence, and the amount of the fine appropriated to the subsistence of the army. All persons who served the cause of the enemy, by pasquinades, by endeavouring to excite a want of confidence in the chiefs, the people, or the army, or by raising disturbances and riots, should be carried before the newly-appointed judge of the police, who would pass judgment according to their crimes, and suitable to the danger of the country; but before he imposed the punishment of death, he should consult the captain-general. Every house was ordered to be well supplied with vessels of water, in order to extinguish fires; and the officers of the ward were charged to superintend this important measure of preparation. Persons entering or leaving the city were to be watched with care, because the enemy assumed the dress of the Spaniards, and, greatly superior as they were, resorted to every artifice. “All these measures,” said Palafox, “should be obeyed with religious respect, because they are all directed to the good of our country, which, in happier times, will recompense all the sacrifices we make, ... sacrifices so acceptable in the sight of God, and of the Virgin Mother of God, who is our celestial protectress.”

Three days were allowed for all women, all men above threescore, and all boys under fourteen, to leave the city; a general order being issued, that whithersoever they might go, they should be welcomed, and provided for. But not one of the inhabitants left the place. The sentiment of patriotism was as ardent in the women as in the men; they thought it a worse evil to seek bread and protection apart from their husbands and fathers than to abide the siege with them, and triumph or perish together: and even if this sentiment had not been so general and so strong, whither were they to betake themselves for security in a land which was every where overrun or threatened by the enemy’s armies? In no place would they have imagined themselves so secure as in Zaragoza itself, which had been so wonderfully defended and delivered, and which they believed to be invincible through the protection of Our Lady of the Pillar, who had chosen it for the seat of her peculiar worship. During the former siege prints of that idol had been distributed by women in the heat of action, and worn by the men in their hats both as a badge and an amulet. The many remarkable escapes and deliverances which had occurred ♦Supposed miracles.♦ were ascribed not to all-ruling and omnipresent Providence, but to the immediate interference ♦Memoria de lo mas Interesante, &c. 121.♦ of the Magna Mater of Zaragoza. Palafox himself had been trained up with more than common care in the superstition of the place; he and his brethren in their childhood had been taken every day to attend mass in the Holy Chapel where the image was enshrined, dressed at such times in the proper costume of the Infantes, as a mark of greater honour to the present Goddess. An appearance in the sky, which at other times might have passed unremembered and perhaps unnoticed, had given strong confirmation to the popular faith. About a month before the commencement of the first siege a white cloud appeared at noon, and gradually assumed the form of a palm tree; the sky being in all other parts clear, except that a few specks of fleecy cloud hovered about the larger one. It was first observed over the church of N. Señora del Portillo, and moving from thence till it seemed to be immediately above that of the Pillar, continued in the same form about half an hour, and then dispersed. The inhabitants were in a state of such excitement, that crowds joined in the acclamation of the first beholder, who cried out, A miracle! and after the ♦1808.♦ defeat of the besiegers had confirmed the omen, a miracle it was universally pronounced to have been, the people proclaiming with exultation that ♦Do. 11.♦ the Virgin had by this token prefigured the victory she had given them, and promised Zaragoza her protection as long as the world should endure.

In many recorded instances superstition such as this has deluded men to their destruction. But the Zaragozans knew that to obtain the divine support, wherein they trusted, they must deserve it by works as well as faith, and that the manner in which heavenly aid would be manifested would be by blessing their human exertions. Palafox himself, confidently as he had expected that the army which he commanded would be successful in the field, had not been negligent in preparing to withstand a second siege. Works of considerable extent and importance had been designed, and executed as far as time and means permitted. It was impossible to convert so large a city into a good fortified place, accessible as it was on all sides, and every where commanded within reach of cannon; but with a population so resolute in defending themselves, every thing became of consequence which could impede the enemy. The houses within 700 toises of the place were demolished, and their materials employed in the fortifications; and the numerous and valuable plantations of olive trees within the same distance were cut down: there was reason to regret that this precaution had not been carried farther. During the autumn the works had not been prosecuted with vigour, because all men of a certain age were required for military service, and those who might have been disposable for such employment were busied in the vintage, or in gathering hemp. Moreover volunteers did not offer themselves for this labour, while the danger appeared remote; and when there were so many demands upon the treasury, the expense of wages could ill be defrayed. It so happened that no mischief resulted from this dangerous economy: after the battle of Tudela there were hands enough at the General’s disposal; and the French allowed time for completing all that had been intended, while they were collecting means and materials for a siege, the difficulties of which they had been taught how to estimate. The works were directed by the Commander of the Engineers, Colonel San Genis; and what was defective in them was imputable not to any want of science, but to the difficulty of fortifying the whole circuit of a great city. The Aljafaria, which had been the palace of the Moorish kings, then of the kings of Aragon, and was now called the Castle of the Inquisition, because it contained the prisons of that accursed tribunal, had been converted into a fortress by Philip V., and was now repaired and strengthened. It was a square, with four tower-bastions, surrounded by a good ditch, and communicating with the city by a double caponiere. From thence to the bridge over the Guerva the place was protected by a long line of wall and batteries; two Capuchin convents which came into the line were fortified, and served to flank it. A ditch was carried from one of these to the bridge, and the bridge itself secured by a tête-de-pont. A double retrenchment extended from thence to the memorable Convent of St. Engracia, which was made a sort of citadel; and from that Convent to the Ebro the old wall had been strengthened; this part of the city being covered also by the bed of the Guerva, and by the Convent of St. Joseph on the farther bank of that river, which had been well fortified, and was the most salient point of the whole circle, serving as a strong tête-de-pont to protect the besieged when they sallied in the direction of Valencia. The suburb beyond the Ebro was defended by redoubts and fleches, with batteries and traverses at the entrance of the streets. The artillery amounted to 160 pieces, the greater part being four, eight, and twelve pounders: what pieces there were of larger calibre had mostly been recovered from the canal into which the French had thrown them on their retreat. Great part of the cannon balls also were what the French had fired or left behind them. To prevent all danger from the explosion of their magazines, it was determined not to prepare a stock of gunpowder, but to make it day by day as it should be wanted; and this could easily be done, because Zaragoza was the place where all the saltpetre of Aragon was refined. There was no want of musquets, either for the inhabitants or the troops and peasantry with whom the city was crowded. The stores contained corn, wine, brandy, oil, salt-fish, and pulse, sufficient for six months’ ♦Cavallero, 74–80. Rogniat, 4–6.♦ consumption for 15,000 men; this ought to have been the amount of the garrison; but fatal circumstances, and the more fatal error of supposing that the means of defence would be in proportion to the number of the defenders, had ♦The city crowded with soldiers.♦ doubled it. Palafox would have had the central army, as well as his own troops, take refuge there after the battle of Tudela. Castaños indeed led away the wreck of that army in a different direction; but there were other persons in authority who, not having the same foresight, thought the best means of succouring Zaragoza was by increasing its garrison. The Central Junta fell into this error, and ordered the Valencian government to send thither all the force it could raise, which was not absolutely required for its own safety. A Walloon battalion, which had served during the former siege, was sent from Tarragona. A proclamation was issued from Zaragoza, inviting the dispersed soldiers to repair thither, and fill up the places of their brethren who had fallen in that holy cause, and were already in glory, enjoying their reward. By these means not less than 30,000 regular troops were collected there; as many as 15,000 peasants entered the city to share in the dangers and merit of its defence; and the hospitals were ♦Cavallero, 82.♦ filled with the sick and wounded from Tudela, who had all been removed hither as the place to which they could most easily be conveyed.

Except in the great and fatal error of thus crowding the city with men, the means of defence were wisely provided. That the enemy would effect an entrance was not doubted; traverses therefore were made in the streets which were near the wall, the doors and the windows of the ground-floor were walled up, communications opened within from house to house, and the house-tops parapeted to secure the defendants. Every householder, providing for life as well as death, laid in ample supplies. The convents were well stored. In the general fervour of national feeling men were as liberal of their means as of their lives. Nor was this feeling confined to those who could gratify it by taking an active part in military service, and by the expectation or the enjoyment of vengeance: among instances of a rarer heroism that of a physician may be noticed, Miguel Guillen by name, who came from Valencia, and, refusing all pay, devoted himself to the service of the hospitals.

Marshal Moncey, on whom the odious service of besieging Zaragoza had been imposed, fixed his head-quarters at Alagon, while he waited for reinforcements, and preparations were making to commence it. At the end of November he reconnoitred the Torrero, a point which it was ♦1808.
December.♦ necessary to occupy before he could begin the siege; some warm skirmishes ensued, which tended to encourage the Spaniards, because the enemy, when they had well examined the ground, returned to Alagon. The importance of the Torrero seems not to have been duly appreciated by the Zaragozans; they contented themselves with throwing up some slight works there, faced with unburnt bricks. Moncey had with him 17,000 men, and was joined by Mortier with 14,000 in the middle of December. Meantime a battering train of sixty pieces was brought from Pamplona; projectiles also were supplied from the same arsenal; the country was compelled to furnish means of transport as far as Tudela, and there they were embarked upon the canal. ♦The French appear before the city.♦ All being ready, they appeared before Zaragoza on the 20th. Gazan’s division crossing the Ebro at Tauste marched to Zuera and Villa Nueva; Suchet’s took a position upon the right bank of the river, within a league of the city; and Moncey, following the right bank of the canal, placed one of his divisions on the left of the ♦Rogniat, 3.♦ Guerva, opposite the great sluice, the two others on the right.

Buonaparte had declared that bombs and mines should bring Zaragoza to reason; and in the spirit of that declaration had prepared the fullest means for overpowering moral resistance by military force. Skilled as he was in the art of war, he did not, like a Mahommedan conqueror, reckon upon numbers for success: to have employed a larger army (even if the Austrian war had not occurred) would have been wasting men here who might be more serviceably employed in other quarters; there was the difficulty of feeding them, and no danger could be apprehended from any efforts which might be made to raise the siege; but the number of engineers was unusually large, and the means of destruction were in proportion. General Lacoste commanded this department; he was perfect master of his profession, and having served with Buonaparte in Egypt, had acquired at the siege of Cairo some knowledge of the kind of difficulties with which he had now to contend. During the night the enemy erected a battery which commanded the Torrero, and was opened upon it at daybreak: a false attack was made upon that post in front, where the canal covered it; meantime another brigade, which under cover of the olive-yard of St. Joseph had got possession of an aqueduct the preceding evening, passed the canal under that aqueduct, and moved rapidly up the left bank with the intention of interposing between the city and the point of attack. The Spaniards were thrown into confusion by the explosion of an ammunition-cart; and the exertions of a very able officer, and the example of a few steady corps, were not able to restore order or confidence. But, considering the distance of the Torrero from the city, they had expected to lose it, and prepared accordingly; so that by blowing up the Puente de America they prevented the cavalry from pursuit, and retreated in good order. The officer who had drawn off his men from this position during the former siege had been put to ♦See vol. ii. p. 12.♦ death with circumstances of great cruelty. It ♦Sebastian Hernandez, 3–5.♦ was fortunate for San Marc, the general of the Valencian troops, who now commanded there, ♦Rogniat, 6. Cavallero, 89.♦ that Palafox knew how to appreciate his excellent talents and distinguished worth. For being a Frenchman, he was peculiarly obnoxious to suspicion; and if he had fallen a victim to popular jealousy, the Zaragozans would have lost the ablest military man employed in their defence.

Meantime Gazan’s division moved from Zuera and Villa Nueva, drove back a corps of Swiss, who were posted on the road to Villa Mayor, dislodged them with the loss of some 300 from the Torre del Arzobispo, and attempted to enter the suburbs by a coup-de-main. This was in conformity to Lacoste’s opinion. Its success would materially have facilitated the progress of the besiegers, who might then have established breaching batteries upon the left bank of the Ebro, and opened a way into the city by demolishing the line of houses on the quay. D. Josef Manso, of the royal guards, commanded on that side; and after a severe action, repulsed the enemy: they renewed the attack with their reserve, and the Spaniards gave way. Palafox, who saw from a window what was passing, hurried across the bridge, cut down some of the runaways, and by his voice and example changed the fate of the day. Time had been gained for San Marc to arrive there with the troops who had retired from the Torrero, ♦Rogniat, 7.
Cavallero, 90, 1.♦ and the enemy were repelled with a loss which they stated at 400 men, and the Spaniards at 4000.

On the following day Moncey, who had fixed his head-quarters at the Torrero, addressed a letter to Palafox and the magistrates of Zaragoza, warning them that the city was now besieged on all sides, and all its communications cut off, and that he might now employ against it every means of destruction which the laws of war allowed. Madrid, he said, had capitulated, and thereby saved itself from the miseries which a longer resistance must have drawn on. Zaragoza, however she might confide in the courage of her inhabitants, could not possibly succeed against the means which were now brought against her, and her total destruction must be inevitable if she caused those means to be employed. He called upon them to spare the effusion of blood, and save so fine and so estimable a city, and to inspire the people with peaceful sentiments, as the way to deserve their love and gratitude. On his part, he promised them every thing compatible with his feelings, his duty, and the power which the Emperor had given him. Marshal Moncey was an upright and honourable man, unstained by any of the revolutionary crimes; what his feelings were may therefore well be supposed. Gladly would he have induced the Zaragozans to submit, that he might have saved himself from the enormous guilt of destroying the city and its inhabitants for resisting what he and every man in the French army who acknowledged the difference between right and wrong, felt in their hearts to be an insolent and iniquitous usurpation. Palafox replied to the summons, and told him it was in vain to think of appalling men by the horrors of a siege, who had endured one, and who knew how to die. If Madrid had capitulated (which he could not believe), it had been sold: and what then? Madrid was but a single place, and there was no reason why Zaragoza should yield, when there were 60,000 men determined to defend it. The Marshal had tried them yesterday, and his troops had left at the gates witnesses enough of that determination. It might be more fitting for him to assume a lofty tone, and talk to the Marshal of capitulating, if he would not lose his army before the town. The spirit of eleven million Spaniards ♦Cavallero, 92.
Sebastian Hernandez, 6, 7.♦ was not to be extinguished by oppression; and they who had resolved to be free, were so. As for the blood which Marshal Moncey was desirous of sparing, it was as glorious for the Spaniards to lose it in such a cause, as it was ignominious for the French to be the instruments of shedding it.

During that and the ensuing day General Gazan completed the investment of the suburb. One of his brigades extended on the right of the Zuera road, the other on the left, with two battalions at the bridge over the Galego on the road to Valencia. The swampy nature of the ground, upon which the inhabitants relied in some degree for their protection on that side, was favourable to the besiegers also, for it enabled them to form inundations along the greater part of their line, which secured them against any sorties. On the right bank Suchet’s division, forming the left of the besieging army, extended from the Ebro to the valley of the Huerba; that valley was occupied by Morlot’s; Meusnier’s was encamped on the heights of the ♦Rogniat, 7.♦ Torrero; and Grandjean’s extended from thence to the Ebro on the other end of the bow, where a bridge of boats was laid, to establish their communication with the troops on the side of the suburb. It was determined to make three attacks; one upon the Castle of the Inquisition, with the view of employing the garrison on that side, which was their strongest part; one upon the bridge over the Huerba, where the name of that Pillar which was regarded as the palladium of the city had been given to the redoubt; and the third upon S. Joseph’s: this was the immediate object of the enemy; they deemed it the weakest point, and thought to connect their attack against it with an attempt upon the suburb, where Lacoste still hoped that the French might establish themselves. The weather was peculiarly favourable to their operations, being at once mild and dry; the nights were long and dark, and every morning a thick fog effectually covered them from the fire of the besieged, who could never see where to point their guns till it ♦Cavallero, 95.♦ was near mid-day. Meantime they were not idle; a line of counter-approaches was commenced which compelled the enemy to prolong their works, lest they should be enfiladed; sallies were made from S. Joseph’s to interrupt them, and to cut down the olive-trees and destroy the buildings which afforded them cover; and on the last day of the year the Spaniards made a general attempt along the whole line. ♦Cavallero, 94.
Rogniat, 9.♦ It was every where repulsed; but Palafox, who knew of what importance it was to excite a spirit of emulation in the troops, ordered those who had distinguished themselves by some partial success to wear a red riband as a badge of honour on the breast. He addressed a proclamation ♦Proclamation of Palafox to the people of Madrid.♦ also to the people of Madrid. The dogs by whom he was beset, he said, scarcely left him time to clean his sword from their blood, but they still found their grave at Zaragoza. The defenders of that city might be destroyed, but compelled to surrender they could not be: and he promised that, so soon as he was at liberty, he would hasten to the deliverance of Madrid. All Palafox’s proclamations were in the same spirit; his language had the high tone, and something of the inflation of Spanish romance, suiting the character of those to whom it was directed.

At the beginning of the year Mortier received orders to move upon Calatayud with Suchet’s division. It was thought that they would be more serviceably employed in keeping that part of Aragon in awe, than in forwarding the operations of the siege. The position which they left was filled up by extending Morlot’s division, and securing its front by three redoubts. Moncey and Mortier, holding independent commands, appear to have been mutually jealous of each other; and Gazan, conceiving that his orders required him only to cover the siege, refused to make any farther attempt upon the suburb, after the severe repulse which he had sustained, strongly as the commandant of the engineers advised a second attack. The arrival of Junot to take the command did not put an end to this disunion: there were indeed plain indications, that if Buonaparte had died at this time, his generals, like Alexander’s, would have made some atonement to mankind by taking vengeance upon each other. The works, however, went on, under a heavy fire; and on the 10th eight batteries were opened against St. Joseph and the redoubt of the Pillar. Colonel Mariano de Renovales commanded the former post, a man who made himself conspicuous throughout the whole course of the war by his activity and enterprising courage. An old brick convent, ♦St. Joseph’s and the redoubt of the Pillar taken.♦ and works faced with unburnt bricks, were soon demolished; and in the night it was found necessary to remove the heavy artillery into the town, as it could no longer be used. A brave sally was made at midnight against one of the batteries; but the adventurers were taken in flank by two guns placed at the right of the second parallel, and being exposed to a murderous fire in front, retreated with considerable loss. The next day, the convent being in ruins, and the breach practicable, an assault was made in the evening; at the same time a party of the enemy, turning the convent, effected an entrance by a bridge which the besieged had neglected to remove, and obtained possession of the ruins. The French employed three days in repairing the works and connecting them with their second parallel. It had been an easy but an important conquest; for they were now secured against the garrison on that side by the river, and by an escarp eight feet high. On the 15th they attacked the redoubt ... it was defended by the second regiment of Aragonese volunteers, and it was not till the works were reduced to ruins, and the flower of that regiment ♦Rogniat, 11, 14.
Cavallero, 96.♦ had perished, that the survivors retreated into the city, and blew up the bridge. A second parallel was then opened against the town, which had now no longer any defence on this side but its feeble wall and the houses themselves.

Meantime a tremendous bombardment was kept up upon this devoted city. The enthusiasm of the inhabitants was not abated by the loss of their outworks: from the beginning they knew that this contest must come to the knife’s point, and the event of the former siege made them look with full hope for a similar deliverance. They were encouraged also by false rumours which arrived announcing a victory over Buonaparte by the combined armies of Romana and Sir John Moore. Palafox immediately announced it in an extraordinary gazette; it was just as night closed; the people crowded into the streets and squares, the bands of all the regiments were collected, bells were rung, salutes fired, and the multitude with shouts and acclamations of joy went in tumultuous procession to the Church of the Pillar, to return thanksgiving, and join in the hymn of Salve Regina. The besiegers heard the music and the uproar, and ascribed to the artifices of Palafox and the other leaders what was in fact the genuine impulse ♦Rogniat, 15.
Seb. Hernandez, 13.♦ of public feeling. By good fortune the bombardment was suspended at the time, but in the course of the night more than six hundred shells were thrown into the city.

The worst evil arising from the bombardment was one which had not been anticipated from that cause, and against which, had it been foreseen, it would hardly have been possible to provide. A great number of the inhabitants retired into cellars, the women especially retreated there with their children, for security from the shells. In these long low vaults, where wine and oil had formerly been kept, they were crowded together day and night, where it was necessary to burn lamps during the day, and where fresh air entered as scantily as daylight. Such places soon became hot-beds of infection, and other causes contributed to extend the calamity. On the first day of the siege, when the attack was made upon the suburbs, part of the troops, exhausted by the previous exertions, were under arms for some hours in the Cozo, exposed first to a heavy snow, and then to a severe frost: this produced a catarrh, which proved infectious, and was soon followed by all the dreadful symptoms of camp contagion. The number of soldiers and of countrymen would at any time have crowded the city, but more especially now, when the inhabitants of all those houses which were prepared and blockaded for street warfare were compelled to seek quarters in the inner parts of the town. The Murcian and Valencian troops came from a country where great part of their food consisted in fresh or preserved fruits; the mere change of diet from such aliment to garrison stores was sufficient to produce disease. They had also been used to drink well water: change of water is a cause of illness as frequent as it is unsuspected; and that of the Ebro, though it is preferred by the Aragonese to any other, is thought unwholesome for those who are not accustomed to it. To these causes must be added scantiness of food (an evil consequent upon the fatal error of crowding the place with men), unusual exertions, and the impossibility of recruiting exhausted strength by needful sleep in a city which was now bombarded without intermission; and among that part of the population who were not immediately engaged in the defence, fear, anxiety, and perpetual agitation of mind, predisposing the body for endemic disease.

Every rumour of success, however preposterous in its circumstances, and incredible in itself, was readily believed by the Zaragozans; they were too ill-informed to judge of probabilities, or to understand the real condition of their country; but this they knew, that if in other parts the Spaniards did their duty as devoutly as they themselves were discharging it, the deliverance of Zaragoza and the triumph of Spain were certain. They were always in hope that some vigorous effort would be made for their relief; and, to accelerate this, D. Francisco Palafox left the city, embarked at night in a little boat, and descending the Ebro and getting to Alcañiz, began to organize the peasantry, who lost no opportunity of harassing the enemy’s communications. His situation, like that of the Marquez de Lazan, was truly pitiable; not only their brother, but their wives and families, were in Zaragoza, ... to them more than to any other individuals the inhabitants looked for succour, from the same hereditary feeling which had made them at the beginning of their troubles turn as it were naturally to the house of Palafox for a leader. But both were ordinary men, unequal to the emergency in every thing except in good-will. General Doyle was in Catalonia; he had passed through Zaragoza on his way to that province, had commanded the Spanish cavalry in a spirited and successful affair at Olite a few days before the battle of Tudela, and as a complimentary memorial of that service, Palafox had formed a legion, and named it after him. From him also, as an Englishman, the Zaragozans expected aid, and if zeal and activity could have supplied the place of adequate means, their expectations would not have been disappointed. He had been indefatigable in his exertions for storing the city before the French encamped around it: he succeeded by repeated representations to the local and provincial Juntas in making them put Mequinenza in a state of defence, ... an old town with a castle which commanded the navigation of the Ebro, about half way between Zaragoza and its mouth; and he was now endeavouring to make Reding attempt something in aid of the besieged city.

St. Cyr had not known how to improve a victory so well as the Spaniards did how to remedy a defeat. As soon as the fugitives from Molins de Rey brought the first tidings of their rout to Tarragona, the populace, supposing themselves to be betrayed, rose tumultuously, and took the power into their own hands. They blocked up the gates, unpaved the streets, and removed the stones to the windows and varandas, that they might be ready for a civic defence. They got possession of the arsenal, and distributed the arms and ammunition; they moved the artillery from one place to another, at the will of any one who fancied himself qualified to give orders; and they called out for the head of Vives, as the traitor who had been the cause of all their misfortunes. In this imminent danger Vives made a formal resignation of the ♦Reding takes the command.♦ command, and Reding, upon whom it devolved, was enabled to save his life by letting him be put in confinement. The superior Junta, apprehensive alike of the populace and of a siege or an immediate assault, got out of the city as soon as they could (for the people had forbidden any person to leave it), and fixed themselves at Tortosa, leaving, however, two of their members to represent them in the Junta of that district. If while this insubordination prevailed the French had attempted to carry the place by a coup-de-main, they might probably have succeeded; but St. Cyr was not so well acquainted with the inability of the Spaniards as with the difficulties of his own position. A few days after the battle a strong detachment of French appeared before the city; the generale was beaten, the somaten was sounded from the Cathedral, one of the forts fired, and the place was in the utmost confusion, when a flag of truce arrived, with a request that an aid-de-camp of M. St. Cyr might be allowed to confer with General Vives. Reding, to whom the letter was delivered, suspected that the real intent must be to discover the state of the place; he communicated it to the Junta, and two of their members, with two officers, were sent out to know the purport of the mission. It was not without difficulty that these persons could get out of the gate, so fearful were the people of being betrayed; the general opinion was, that the French had sent to summon the town, and the universal cry was, that they would not capitulate, they would listen to no such proposals, they would die for their king, their religion, and their country. It proved, however, that the aid-de-camp came only to propose an exchange of prisoners. The impolicy of agreeing to this was obvious; but Reding knew how ill the prisoners on both sides were treated, and thought it due to humanity to exchange them. The advantage was wholly on the enemy’s side; they received disciplined soldiers, who had now been many months in the country, and had had opportunities since their capture of observing the state of the Spaniards, and even learning their intentions, for every thing like secrecy seemed to be despised; and they gave in return ♦Cabañes, p. iii. c. 13.♦ only men of the new levies, not exchanging a single dragoon or artilleryman, nor one of the Swiss troops.

Reding was fully sensible how injurious it was that the enemy should thus be enabled to fill up their ranks; he suffered it, however, for the sake of mitigating the evils of a war in which he considered success absolutely hopeless. From the same hopelessness he committed the greater error of suffering himself to be surrounded by persons, some of whom were suspected by the superior Junta, and others by himself: but with this there was a generous feeling mingled; he would not, because they were unpopular, cease to employ men of whom he had a good opinion, nor would he upon a strong suspicion of guilt dismiss others as if they were guilty. His despondency was rooted in the constitution of his mind, but it did not make him omit any efforts for enabling the army again to take the field; and it was one happy part of the Spanish character, that no defeat, however complete and disgraceful, produced any effect in dispiriting the nation. The very men who, taking panic in battle, threw down their arms and fled, believed they had done their country good service by saving themselves for an opportunity of better fortune; and as soon as they found themselves in safety, were ready to be enrolled and take their chance again. Such of the runaways as had reached the Ebro, when they could get no farther, turned back, and came in troops to Tarragona. They came in pitiable condition, and without arms: ... Reding knew not where to look but to the English for money and muskets, and a failure of powder also was apprehended, the materials having hitherto been supplied from Zaragoza. It would have been madness to have attempted punishing any of these fugitives; the better mode of impressing upon them a sense of military duty was to let them see that their superiors could not behave ill with impunity: Reding therefore degraded one colonel and several inferior officers for their conduct at Molins de Rey, and made them serve in the ranks; but by posting them in advanced parties gave them an opportunity of retrieving their character and their rank. The government never acted with so much energy as when it was refitting an army after a defeat: its efforts were then such as the danger required. Two regiments arrived from Granada, a Swiss one from Majorca; supplies were sent from Valencia; men came in from all quarters as the hopes of the people rose, and by the middle of January the force in Tarragona was not inferior to that which had been so shamefully dispersed at Granollers. The men recovered heart, and acquired confidence from frequent success in the desultory warfare wherein Reding practised them. But he himself continued3 to despond; ♦Cabañes, p. iii. c. 13.♦ and, in sad anticipation of defeat, deferred acting, when activity and enterprise might have found or made opportunities for success.

It was their victories which made the French most sensible of the difference between this and the other wars wherein they had been engaged; ... the spoils of the field were the only fruits of success. These indeed had been of signal consequence in Catalonia; they had enabled St. Cyr to relieve Barcelona, to refit his troops, and to strengthen himself with a park of field-pieces. He had profited by the first panic to dislodge the Spaniards from the pass of Bruch, which they had twice so gloriously defended; his troops had entered Igualada after the success, and the dangerous impression which his ostentation of justice and his observance of the humanities of war were likely to produce upon the wealthier classes, was seen by the conduct of the inhabitants, who seemed to think it a matter of indifference whether their houses were occupied by the national troops or by the French. But the system upon which Buonaparte carried on this wicked war rendered it impossible for any general to persist in a course of honourable conduct. The army which he had ordered into Catalonia was left to provide for itself, in a province which had now been many months the seat of war, and which never even in peace produced half its own consumption of corn. It had also to store the places of Rosas, Figueras, and Barcelona; for no attempt was made to bring provisions from France by land ... (the pass indeed between Bellegarde and Figueras was so dangerous to the French, that they called it the Straits of Gibraltar); and it was seldom that a vessel could escape the vigilance of the British cruisers. Eleven victuallers intended for Barcelona were lying in the port of Caldaques under convoy of a cutter and a lugger, when Lord Cochrane landed his men, drove the French from the town, took their batteries, and captured the whole. St. Cyr, however humane by nature, however honourable by principle, was engaged in a service with which humanity and honour were incompatible: he could support his army by no other means than by plundering the inhabitants, and the Catalans were not a people who would endure patiently to be plundered. The difficulty was increased by the Moorish custom still retained in that part of Spain of preserving corn, not in barns or granaries, but in mattamores. In the towns these subterranean magazines were emptied before the French could enter; in the country they were so easily concealed, that, after long and wearying search, it was a rare fortune to discover one. And the Miquelets and Somatenes were so constantly on the alert, that frequently when the marauders had seized their booty they were deprived of it. In this sort of warfare their loss was generally greater than that of the natives, who on such occasions had them at vantage. How considerable ♦St. Cyr, 92–99.♦ it must have been may be in some degree estimated from the fact, that in the course of seven weeks St. Cyr’s foraging parties fired away not less than two million cartridges.