There are certain episodes of the Peninsular War which the British historian has to narrate with a feeling of some humiliation, but which have to be set forth in full detail, if only for the purpose of illustrating the manifold difficulties with which Wellington had to cope. Of these by far the most distressing is the story of General Sir John Murray at Tarragona.

It will be remembered that a diversion on the East Coast formed an essential part of Wellington’s great scheme for the expulsion of the French from Spain, and that he had devoted much care to instructing Murray in the manner in which it was to be carried out. If sufficient shipping to embark 10,000 men could be procured at Alicante, the bulk of the Anglo-Sicilian army was to be transported to Catalonia, and to strike at Tarragona, getting what aid it could from the local Spanish forces under the Captain-General Copons. If, as was to be expected, Suchet should fly northward from Valencia with all his available field-army, to rescue Tarragona, the two Spanish units in the kingdom of Murcia, Elio’s and Del Parque’s armies, were to take the offensive against the detachments which the French Marshal would have to leave behind him to hold down his southern conquests. Murray might fail in Catalonia, if Suchet were rapid and lucky in his combinations; but in that case Elio and Del Parque ought to get possession of the city of Valencia and all its fertile plainland. Or, on the other hand, Suchet might be loth to abandon his advanced position, might hold it in force, and might order Decaen and the Army of Catalonia to make head against the Anglo-Sicilian expeditionary force. If this should happen, the Spanish generals might be held in check, but Murray would have a free hand at Tarragona. With the aid of Copons he ought to be able to take the place, and to throw all the French occupation of Catalonia into disorder. In the end, Suchet would have to evacuate Valencia, in order to save Decaen and the Catalan garrisons. At the worst the expedition of the Anglo-Sicilian army ought at least to have the effect of giving Suchet so much to think about, that he would have no attention to spare for the perils of King Joseph and the fate of Castile.

This last minimum result was all that was achieved. Suchet, it is true, had an anxious time during the critical days of Wellington’s march to Vittoria, and sent no help to the King. But neither was Tarragona taken by the Anglo-Sicilians, nor Valencia by the armies of Elio and Del Parque. Both of those forces endured humiliating checks, from an enemy over whom they had every strategical advantage. And the story of Murray’s operations about Tarragona is not the story of an honest and excusable failure, but one which provokes bitter irritation over the doings of a British general who showed himself not only timid and incompetent, but shifty, mendacious, and treacherous to his allies. There is nothing in the whole history of the Peninsular War which produces such an unpleasant impression as the facts revealed by the minutes of Murray’s court-martial, supplemented by certain documents which ought to have been forthcoming at that trial, but unfortunately were not.

But to proceed to the details of this unhappy campaign. In obedience to Wellington’s orders, Murray began to draw his army in to Alicante between the 25th and 27th of May, the forward positions which the Anglo-Sicilians had held being handed over to Elio’s troops, while those of Del Parque, who had at last been brought up from the borders of Andalusia, took post on Elio’s left, about Yecla and Chinchilla. Both these armies were to move forward, as soon as Suchet should be detected in the act of detaching divisions northward to deal with Murray’s oncoming invasion. The appearance of the Spaniards on ground hitherto held by British outposts gave the Marshal warning that some new plan was developing. A raid by sea was an obvious possibility, but he could not tell whether it might not be directed on a point as far south as Valencia or as far north as Rosas. Till Murray showed his hand only precautionary movements could be made. Suchet was at this moment stronger than he had been at the time of the battle of Castalla. Warned of his danger by the results of that fight, he had strengthened his troops on the littoral at the expense of the garrisons inland. Severoli’s Italian division had been ordered down from Saragossa to Valencia[665]. This heavy draft on the northern section of his army was rendered possible by the fact that Clausel had come far forward into Aragon in pursuit of Mina, so that Saragossa and its region could be held with smaller numbers than usual. The Spanish irregular forces in this direction had full occupation found for them, by the raid of the Army of Portugal into their sphere of operations. And this suited well with Wellington’s general plan—the more that French troops were drawn down to the Mediterranean, the less would there be of them available for service in Castile, when his own blow came to be delivered.

Murray had at his disposal in the harbour of Alicante transports sufficient to carry much more than the force of 10,000 men, which Wellington had named as the minimum with which a raid on Catalonia might be attempted. He was able to embark the whole of his own army, with the exception of the regiment of Sicilian cavalry (he was short of horse-transports), and in addition nearly the whole of Whittingham’s Spaniards—all indeed save one battalion[666] and the attached squadrons. This made up a force of 14,000 infantry, 800 cavalry, and 800 artillery, with 24 field-guns and the battering train which had been sent round from Portugal. The British contingent was a little stronger than at the time of the battle of Castalla, for if one battalion of the King’s German Legion had been sent back to Sicily since that fight, Wellington had permitted Murray to draw in the 2/67th, long in garrison at Cartagena, and had sent him a Portuguese and a British company of artillery to man his battering train[667]. Moreover, two squadrons of Brunswick Hussars had arrived direct from England.

The whole force, having been swiftly embarked at Alicante, sailed on May 31st; and being favoured with a strong south-west wind came in sight of the high-lying Tarragona on June 2nd. The fleet of transports ran into the bay sheltered by Cape Salou, eight miles south of its goal. There would have been no object in risking a more difficult disembarkation on the long open beaches at the mouth of the Francoli river, closer to Tarragona. Before landing his main body Murray shipped off two battalions (2/67th and De Roll-Dillon) under Colonel Prevost, to seize the defile of the Col de Balaguer, the point twenty miles to the south of Tarragona where the coast-road from Tortosa curves round a steep headland between a precipice and the sea. There was a small French fort, San Felipe de Balaguer, blocking the Col, and Prevost was ordered to take it if he could. But its fall was not an absolutely essential condition to the success of the siege, for the road could be cut, blasted away, or blocked with entrenchments north of the fort, at several points where a thousand men could stop a whole army corps. It was desirable to take this precaution, because the Col de Balaguer road was the only route by which succours coming from Valencia could reach the plain of Tarragona, without taking an immense détour inland, by paths impracticable for artillery.

On hearing of the arrival of the British fleet off Cape Salou, General Copons, Captain-General of Catalonia, rode down from his head-quarters at Reus, ten miles away, to report to Murray that he had received Wellington’s instructions, and had done his best to carry them out. The Spanish Army of Catalonia consisted of no more than 15,000 men, even after it had received the two battalions which Wellington had sent to it by sea during the winter[668]. Over 5,500 of them were locked up in garrisons in the interior; many of these were untrained recruits, and none were available for the field. Of the remainder, Copons had brought down twelve battalions to the neighbourhood of Tarragona, leaving only two under his second-in-command, Eroles, to watch the French garrisons in the north[669]. He had also with him his handful of cavalry—370 sabres; field-guns the army had none. Altogether there were 7,000 men ready to join Murray at once: 1,500 more might be brought in, if the French of the northern garrisons should move down to join General Decaen at Barcelona. Copons had certainly done all that was in his power to aid Wellington’s scheme. Murray asked him to lend two battalions to join the brigade that was to strike at Fort San Felipe and to block the Col de Balaguer, and to arrange the rest so as to cover at a distance the disembarkation of the Anglo-Sicilian army. Copons consented, and on the next morning the whole force came ashore, Prevost’s brigade in a creek near the Col de Balaguer, where it found the two Spanish battalions already arrived, the rest of the army at Salou Bay. The expeditionary force was little cumbered with transport, and had but a small allowance of horses and mules: the infantry and some of the field-guns with the greater part of the cavalry were ashore by the early afternoon, and marched that same night on Tarragona, which was invested from sea to sea, Mackenzie and Adam taking up their position by the mouth of the Francoli, Clinton occupying the Olivo heights, and Whittingham extending down to the shore east of the city. The French garrison kept quiet—being of no strength sufficient to justify the showing of a man outside the walls.

General Bertoletti had with him two battalions, one French and one Italian[670], a company of Juramentados, two companies of artillery, and the armed crews of three small vessels which were blockaded in the port—they were turned on to act as auxiliary gunners. The whole did not exceed 1,600 men. This was an entirely inadequate force, and the defences were in an unsatisfactory condition. After Suchet had captured the city in 1811, he had no intention of leaving locked up behind him a garrison of the size required for such a large fortress. The outer enceinte had been left in the condition of ruin consequent on the siege[671], and only the Upper City on its high cliff was occupied. Its western front, where the breaches had been, was repaired; but the Lower City and its fortifications remained practically untouched. All that had been done was to patch up two isolated strong-points, the so-called Fort Royal and Bastion of St. Carlos. These had been cut off from the mass of the ruins, and closed in at the rear: each was armed with one gun. The object of this was merely to prevent British ships from entering Tarragona roadstead and mooring there. These two outlying posts, dangerously remote from the city above, were held by no more than a company each. Bertoletti thought for a moment of abandoning them, since he dared not detach reinforcements from his inadequate garrison, and his communication with the forts was across half a mile of exposed ground: nothing was more likely than that the enemy would slip detachments among the ruined houses and walls of the Lower City, and dig himself in between the Upper City and the weak outlying posts, which must inevitably fall. But reflecting on the advantage of keeping the harbour unusable, he resolved to hold on to them till the last minute. And his policy turned out to be justified, for had they been evacuated, even the torpid and timorous Murray could hardly have avoided the temptation of closing in on the Upper City, which was in no condition to hold out for the space of nine days during which the Anglo-Sicilian army lay in front of it.

From the first moment of his landing Murray seems to have been obsessed with the idea that every disposable French soldier in Catalonia and Valencia would be on his back within a very few days. As his evidence during his court martial shows, he had a notion that Suchet would practically evacuate Valencia, and march against him with three-quarters of his available men, while at the same time Decaen would abandon all Catalonia save the largest towns and bring an even greater force to Tarragona from the north. He had made elaborate, and in part correct, calculations as to the gross force of the two French armies, by which he made out that the enemy might conceivably concentrate 25,000 men against him. For the fact that such a force would have to be scraped together from very remote points, between which communication must be very difficult, he made insufficient allowance. Still less did he calculate out the handicap on the enemy caused by the fact that Suchet and Decaen were out of touch with each other, and would obviously look upon the problem presented to them from different points of view,—all the former’s action being influenced by his wish to hold on to Valencia, all the latter’s by his anxiety not to have his communication with France cut off. Murray assumed that all roads marked on his map would be practicable to the enemy, that Suchet’s information would always be correct, that his troops would march every day the possible maximum, and that they would have no difficulties concerned with food, water, or weather. Every conceivable hazard of war was to fall luckily for the enemy, unluckily for himself. At his trial in 1814 he explained that he was never sanguine of success, and that he did not expect when he sailed that he could take Tarragona[672]. He chose to regard himself as the blind and unwilling instrument of Wellington’s orders, which he would carry out, so far as he could, with an expectation that they would lead to failure. And he observed that the dominating motive which influenced all his doings was that Wellington had written that ‘he would forgive everything excepting that the corps should be beaten or dispersed’[673]. Deducing from this phrase the general policy that he must pursue, Murray came to the conclusion ‘the first principle is the army’s safety’. He started intending to subordinate all chances of success to the remotest risk of defeat. His mind obsessed with this miserable prepossession, he was, in fact, defeated before he had ever set sail. Yet he hid his resolve from his generals, even from the senior officer, Clinton, who would have succeeded to the command if he had fallen sick or received a chance bullet. They all complained that he never gave them any hint of what were his intentions, or showed them Wellington’s orders which it was his duty to carry out. ‘We were totally uninformed,’ said Clinton at the court martial, ‘of the instructions which the Commander of the forces might have for his guidance[674]. The first that we knew of these instructions of the Commander of the forces, and then partially only, was when he produced them at a Council of War on June 17th,’ after the siege of Tarragona was over. Clinton, Mackenzie, and Adam, the three commanders of units, were all very confident in their men: ‘they were in the highest state of discipline and equipment[675],’ said Mackenzie, and spoiling for a fight. Hence their entire amazement as they discovered that Murray was intending to avoid all offensive operations: it even led to an infraction of discipline, when Mackenzie, Adam, and General Donkin[676] called together on their commander to urge on him a more active policy[677], and were chased out of the room with the words ‘it will not do’—a decision which, as Mackenzie remarked, ‘was unanswerable’. For any further urging of the point would have amounted to military disobedience. From the moment when the army landed at Cape Salou on June 3rd, down to the day of its ignominious flight on June 12th, Murray was thinking of nothing but horrible possibilities—he was what the French call a catastrophard.

Probably his most disastrous resolve of all was that which he came to when first he surveyed Tarragona, on the evening of his disembarkation. Though he noted the half-ruinous condition of the two outworks, on which the enemy was working to the last moment, their isolated position, and the fact that they were surrounded by all sorts of cover easily to be seized, he resolved to lay formal siege to them, as if they were the solid front of a regular line of defence. As Napier remarks with perfect good sense, they should have been dealt with as Wellington dealt with the Redoute Renaud at Rodrigo, or Hill with the forts of Almaraz, which were far more formidable works than the Fuerte Real or San Carlos[678]. They should have been taken by force, escaladed, on the night of the formation of the blockade. And being incomplete, ill-flanked, and without palisades or ditch, and under-manned, they undoubtedly could have been rushed. But Murray, instead of trying to gain time for the prompt attack on the main fortress and its badly-stopped breaches, proceeded to lay out approaches and commence batteries on the low ground by the mouth of the Francoli river, with the object of reducing the two outworks by regular operations. On June 4th one battery was commenced near the sea, 600 yards from San Carlos, another farther inland, 900 yards from the Fuerte Real. Their construction was covered by a naval bombardment: Admiral Hallowell moved into the roadstead a brig, three bomb-vessels, and two gunboats, which shelled the Upper City freely, in order to distract the attention of the garrison from the work on the batteries by the Francoli. The fire was kept up from dusk till dawn on the 4th-5th, and repeated on the 6th-7th during the same hours—throughout the day the workers in the trenches kept low. This bombardment had the desired result of permitting the batteries to be finished without molestation, but inflicted no great damage on the city, though it set fire to some houses, and caused casualties both among the garrison and the inhabitants. But unaimed night-fire had of course no effect on the walls of the enceinte.

By dawn on the 6th the two batteries were ready and opened on the outworks with six guns: they kept up the fire all day, and with some effect, suffering themselves very little from the distant counter-fire of the Upper City. At dark, according to the French narrative of the defence, parties of skirmishers came out of the trenches, took cover in the ruins of the lower city and kept up a persistent tiraillade against the outworks[679]. It was expected that they would try to rush them at some chosen hour—and this would undoubtedly have been the right policy. But nothing of the kind happened; the British parties withdrew at dawn, and Bertoletti began to ask himself whether the whole of these feeble operations were not a mere demonstration, intended to draw the French armies of Valencia and Catalonia toward Tarragona, while the real blow was being delivered in some other quarter.

During the second night of naval bombardment, that of the 6th-7th, Murray had ordered a third breaching battery to be built, near the bridge of the Francoli, 300 yards closer to the Fuerte Real than the original battery, No. 2. On the morning of the 7th all three batteries were hard at work, and with good effect; the gorge of the Fuerte Real was blown to bits by flank fire from the new battery, its one gun silenced, its parapet levelled for a long space: the garrison had to keep under cover. At dusk Major Thackeray, the senior engineer of the army, reported that the work could be stormed at any moment. According to Murray’s narrative Thackeray made at the same moment the curious comment, that if the fort were escaladed and occupied, the ground gained would be of no immediate use for the attack on the Upper City, whose most accessible front—the bastions of San Juan and San Pablo—might be much more easily battered from the slopes of the Olivo hill, farther inland, than from the low-lying site of the Fuerte Real. To storm the outworks would cost men—to build new advanced batteries on or near them would cost many more, since they were completely commanded by the Upper City. ‘As the state of the fort was now such that it could be taken whenever convenient,’ wrote Murray, ‘I consented to defer the attack, and directed that the fire upon it should continue only sufficiently to prevent its being re-established[680].’

The decision seems of more than doubtful wisdom. It was from ground near the Fuerte Real that Suchet had pushed forward his approaches in the siege of 1811, and his batteries in the lower town had proved effective. To resolve, after four days spent on battering the outworks, that it was better to attack from a new front, was equivalent to sacrificing the whole of the exertions of those four days, and starting the siege anew. But Murray accepted Thackeray’s scheme, though the engineer warned him that he should require fourteen days more of open trenches to reduce the Upper City. This would relegate the crisis of the final assault to July 21st, and meanwhile Suchet and Decaen would have had three weeks to concentrate, instead of one. The time-problem looked very unsatisfactory.

However the new plan was taken up—more artillery and engineer-stores and more guns were landed on the beach west of the mouth of the Francoli, as were also the remainder of the horses of the cavalry and the field-guns. The disembarkation was not always easy, as the surf on the beach grew dangerous whenever the wind was high. On several days communication with the shore had to be given up for many hours on end. Murray complained that the foreign troops worked slowly and unwillingly, and that he had to replace them with British parties, in order to get up the ammunition from the boats to the batteries[681].

However, progress was made, and in the four days between the 7th and the 10th of June two heavy batteries were thrown up on the high-lying slopes of the Olivo hill, in positions from which they could bring an enfilading as well as a frontal fire to bear upon the three corner bastions of the Upper City, including the roughly repaired breaches in the curtain, by which Suchet had made his entry in 1811. On the 9th and again on the 10th Admiral Hallowell sent his available vessels in-shore to resume the bombardment; and late on the latter day the batteries on the Olivo began their fire, which they continued on the following morning: it was very effective, all the attacked bastions and the curtain between them being much damaged. Meanwhile the old batteries by the Francoli overwhelmed the Fuerte Real and San Carlos forts with renewed fire, destroying such repairs as the garrisons had been able to carry out. The Governor, Bertoletti, made up his mind that there would be a general assault both on the forts and on the Upper City on the night of the 11th, and made such preparations as he could to receive it. But the prospect was gloomy—the garrison was worn out, the walls were crumbling, and there seemed no hope of succour from without.

Meanwhile, harassed as the Governor might be, Murray was in an even greater state of depression. He had never believed, as he acknowledged at his court martial, that he could succeed. The only gleam of hope which ever entered his mind was when on the morning of the 8th he received news that the fort of Balaguer had been taken, so that the road by which Suchet could most easily arrive was completely blocked. At any rate there would be a day or two gained, since the army of Valencia would have to take difficult and circuitous roads, instead of a short and direct one, when it came up.

The siege of the Fort of San Felipe de Balaguer had lasted four days. The place was small, only sixty yards square; it mounted twelve guns, but was held by only a single company. It was in a rocky and inaccessible position, and when Colonel Prevost had landed with his brigade, and had reconnoitred the place on the 3rd, he found that it must be battered by heavy guns. Shelling it with field pieces proved unavailing. Accordingly aid was sought from the fleet, and with great difficulty the sailors of the Invincible got two 12-pounders and a howitzer ashore, to a spot 700 yards from the fort. But the ground was so steep and rocky that it was difficult to construct a battery, and when the fire was opened it proved not very effective. It was only when more guns had been hoisted up the rocks, to a position only 300 yards from the fort, that anything was accomplished. On the evening of the 7th a lucky bomb from a mortar exploded one of the French magazines, and the commandant surrendered[682]. It was thought that he might have held out longer, as his main magazine was intact—but nearly a third of his garrison of 150 men had been hurt, and their morale was low. With the capture of Fort San Felipe the coast road became absolutely blocked to any troops coming from Suchet’s direction, and Murray, as he confessed, ‘entertained a ray of hope, not so much of the capture of Tarragona itself, but that the expedition might prove, as Lord Wellington wished it to prove, an effective diversion in favour of the allied army in Valencia[683].’ It was this success, as he explained, which encouraged him to remain two days longer in front of Tarragona than he would otherwise have done, since the loss of the coast-road would add two marches to the distance which Suchet had to cover in order to join Decaen.

For already this downhearted general was obsessed with panic fears that the enemy might be upon him at any moment. He was gleaning in every rumour of the near approach of Suchet and Decaen, however incredible. On the 4th he had received an express from Prevost, with a message that the Marshal had reached Tortosa and might be at the Col de Balaguer on the 5th. On the 7th there was a report that a heavy French column was at Amposta, near the mouth of the Ebro, marching north. And on the other side Decaen was said to be in movement—‘Could I ever have expected,’ said Murray, a year later, ‘that his army would not be united, that his movable column would have remained divided at Gerona, Figueras, and Barcelona[684]?’ Accordingly he wrote that night to Wellington, ‘I am much afraid we have undertaken more than we are able to perform. But to execute your Lordship’s orders I shall persevere as long as prudence will permit. I have as yet no certain information of Suchet’s movements, nor of Decaen to the eastward. But there are reports of both, and if they prove true, in five or six days I may be attacked by a force infinitely superior, without the hope of a retreat in case of misfortune. I calculate that Suchet can bring into the field 24,000 or 25,000 men without difficulty[685].’ There is not a thought in Murray’s brain of the chance that one of the enemy’s columns might be late, and that it might be possible from his central position to fall upon the other, with his own forces and those of Copons united.

As a matter of fact things were working out most favourably for him. Suchet had seen the great transport-fleet pass the coast of Valencia on the 31st May; but he was wholly in doubt whether the expedition might be intending to strike at Tortosa or Tarragona, at Barcelona or Rosas. The Marshal had to make up his mind to act, before he knew his enemy’s objective or his exact numbers. After many searchings of heart he resolved to keep the bulk of his forces in the kingdom of Valencia, which he was most unwilling to give up, and to march with a column of moderate strength to reinforce the Army of Catalonia. He left Harispe in command in the South, with his own division, that of Habert, Severoli’s Italians, and the bulk of his cavalry, and resolved to move on Tortosa with Musnier’s division, his hussar regiment, three batteries of artillery, and an improvised brigade under General Pannetier, composed of four battalions borrowed some time back from the Army of Catalonia, one battalion of his own, and an odd squadron of Westphalian light horse belonging to the Army of the Centre. The whole made up about 8,000 men[686], a force so weak that it was clear that he dared not attack Murray till he should be joined by the troops of Decaen. Pannetier’s brigade had a long start, as it was about Castellon and Segorbe when the order to march arrived: it reached Tortosa on June 8th, and Perello on the Balaguer road on the 10th. Then the news came in that the fort of San Felipe had capitulated two days before. Pannetier halted, and sent back the information to Suchet, who had reached Tortosa on the 9th, escorted by a squadron of dragoons. But Musnier’s division had taken some time to assemble, only left Valencia on the 7th, and was far behind. Suchet was in no small perplexity this day. The coast-road was blocked: it was the only one by which guns and transport could move directly on Tarragona. No news whatever had been received of Decaen and the Army of Catalonia. Musnier could not reach Tortosa till the 11th. Should he recall Pannetier, wait for the arrival of the rest of his column, and then march with his whole force by the circuitous inland road along the Ebro, by Ginestar, Tivisa, and Momblanch, so as to reach the plain of Tarragona from the north? This would lead to insufferable delays—the country was desolate and waterless, and when the column reached its goal the Army of Copons, with help perchance from Murray, would be in the way. Ten days might easily be wasted, and meanwhile Tarragona would probably have fallen. Information must at all costs be got, and the Marshal finally ordered Pannetier to drop all his impedimenta, and push with his infantry alone by mountain paths from Perello to Monroig, on the edge of the hills overlooking the plain of Tarragona. This was to take a dangerous risk—a brigade of 2,500 bayonets might easily be surrounded by the Catalans and cut off. But the attention of Copons was at this moment distracted to the other direction. Pannetier reached the slopes above Monroig on the night of the 11th-12th, and could get no information there—the people had fled up into the mountains. The only fact that came to his notice was that no cannonading could be heard next morning from the direction of Tarragona: the most natural deduction was that the place had fallen. But in case it might still be resisting, Pannetier ordered a row of bonfires to be lighted along the hillsides, which he thought would be visible to the beleaguered garrison, and would show that succour was at hand. He then drew off again by the same rough paths by which he had come, and returned to Valdellos, half-way back to Perello. From thence he could only send a report of a negative kind to Suchet, who was left none the wiser for this risky reconnaissance. Meanwhile Musnier’s division had at last come up, but there had also arrived the news that Del Parque and Elio were on the move in Valencia, and were pushing back Harispe’s advanced troops. On the 12th-13th-14th the Marshal remained stationary, waiting vainly for news, and fearing the worst. Murray, if he had but known it, had nothing to fear from this quarter.

On the other flank also things were working out in the best possible fashion for the besieger of Tarragona. There was a long delay before the Army of Catalonia could prepare a field force which could dare to face the Anglo-Sicilians. Decaen himself was at Gerona, far away to the North, and got the news of Murray’s landing on June 5th, by a dispatch sent him by Maurice Mathieu, Governor of Barcelona. He had no troops under his hand save the four battalions of Beurmann’s brigade of Lamarque’s division; he could only collect more men by cutting down the garrisons of Figueras and Puycerda, and calling in two brigades (those of Petit and Espert) which were acting as flying columns at the moment, and were out of touch, in the sub-Pyrenean foot-hills. The news that a very large disembarkation had taken place near Tarragona struck him at first with such dismay that he replied to Maurice Mathieu that they could not hope to resist such a force, and that it might even be necessary to evacuate Barcelona[687]. However, resolving to do what he could, he ordered Beurmann’s brigade to march on Barcelona (June 8), and sent orders around for a general shifting of the northern garrisons, so that he hoped to collect another 4,000 men at Gerona in the course of a week, if the flying columns could be discovered and brought in. With this reserve he intended to come down to join the rest of the field force about the 14th or 15th. Meanwhile he ordered Maurice Mathieu to demonstrate against the enemy, without risking anything, or quitting the valley of the Llobregat and the vicinity of Barcelona.

Maurice Mathieu was the only one of the generals in Catalonia, French or allied, who deserves any credit for his conduct in this campaign of blunders. He resolved that the one thing necessary was to take the offensive, and to threaten the besiegers of Tarragona, even if he dared not venture to attack them. Beurmann’s brigade having arrived on June 10th, he marched next day with it and four battalions of his own to Villafranca, half-way between Barcelona and Tarragona, and drove in Copons’ outposts—leaving his base-fortress occupied by a very inadequate garrison. He had only 6,000 infantry and 300 horse with him, so that he was wholly incapable of facing Murray’s expeditionary force if it should show fight. Meanwhile he sent letters to Decaen, telling him that the honour of the Army of Catalonia was at stake, and that it was necessary for him to come down from Gerona without delay, and with every available man. But the Commander-in-Chief did not appear—he was detained by a naval demonstration in the Bay of Rosas. For Sir Edward Pellew, then in command of the Mediterranean Fleet, had run down from his usual cruising ground opposite Toulon, and concentrated a numerous squadron off the coast of the Ampurdam. He came close in-shore, made a great display of boats, and even landed a few hundred marines on June 8th. The news of this disembarkation filled Decaen with the idea that the Tarragona expedition was only a snare, intended to make him draw off all his forces southward, and that the true blow would be struck at Rosas. He concentrated his scattered troops with the object of parrying it, and was so long in detecting his mistake that it was only on June 15th that he set out from Gerona, with four battalions and one squadron, to join Maurice Mathieu, having at last discovered that Pellew could do no real mischief.

The Governor of Barcelona, therefore, had never more than 6,000 men at his disposition during the critical days of the campaign—June 11th-12th-13th-14th. He had, as has been mentioned above, reached Villafranca on the first-named day. There he received what had been longed for in vain up till now, a detailed dispatch from Suchet, setting forth his intentions. But it was no less than twelve days old, having been written at Valencia on May 31st, before the Marshal had any knowledge of Murray’s strength, objective, or intentions. It stated that he was intending to march via Tortosa, and that he hoped that Decaen with all his disposable field force would come down to meet him at Reus, unless indeed the Anglo-Sicilians were aiming at some more northern point, in which case he would have to follow them to Upper Catalonia. But he added that it was possible that the whole naval expedition might be a mere feint, intended to lure him northward beyond the Ebro; the fleet might turn back again and re-land the whole of Murray’s force near Valencia[688].

The dispatch was hopelessly out of date, and Maurice Mathieu had no means of knowing whether Suchet had carried out his original intentions. But his first impression was that he must seek for the Marshal at Reus, according to the directions given. Accordingly on June 12 he pushed his vanguard as far as Arbos, six miles in advance of Villafranca, and some 24 miles from Tarragona. But nothing could be heard of the Marshal’s approach, and Copons’ troops were gathering in from all sides to block the road, while Murray was only one march away. Seized with sudden misgivings at finding himself close to 20,000 enemies with such a trilling force, Mathieu made up his mind that it would be madness to push on. At 10 o’clock on the night of the 12th-13th[689] he evacuated both Arbos and Villafranca, and retreated in haste to Barcelona, to await the arrival of Decaen and the reserve.

Murray’s miserable timidity now intervened, to save Tarragona, just when both the French forces had found themselves foiled, and had given up the relief of the fortress as impossible. The story reads like the plot of a stupid theatrical farce, where every character does the wrong thing, in order to produce absurd complications in the situation. On the 12th Pannetier, on the hills above Monroig, heard no bombardment, because the bombardment had ceased. And Maurice Mathieu on the night of that same day was running away from an enemy who had already absconded that very afternoon. So, after coming within 35 miles of each other, the two French generals had turned back in despair and given up the game. But Murray had given it up also.

The bombardment had gone on very successfully throughout the 11th June, and the engineers reported at noon that the Fuerte Real could be stormed at any moment, and that the works of the Upper City were crumbling in many places. Orders were issued that Mackenzie’s division should storm the Fuerte Real at 10 p.m., while Clinton’s was to make a demonstration against the Upper City. All arrangements were made, and after dark the troops designated for the assault filed into the advanced trenches: the signal was to be by a flight of rockets[690]. But the rockets never went up.

For some days Murray had been in a state of agonized indecision. On the 9th he had received information from a trusted secret agent in Valencia that Suchet had marched for Tortosa on the 7th with 9,000 men—this was absolutely certain and showed that all the previous rumours from the South had been false. On the same day a dispatch came in from Eroles at Vich to say that a French column (Beurmann’s brigade) had left Gerona on the 8th, marching for Barcelona, and that he intended to follow it with his own detachment, and would join Copons before the enemy could concentrate. The French then were on the move on both flanks—but still far off. On the night of the 10th General Manso, commanding on Copons’ right flank, reported the approaching departure of Maurice Mathieu from Barcelona, but overrated his force at 10,000 men. He undertook to detain them in the defiles beyond Villafranca for at least one day. This news was corroborated next evening by an officer of Whittingham’s staff, who had seen the column, estimated it at 7,000 to 8,000 infantry, and reported that it had entered Villafranca at 4 p.m. on the 11th[691]. But it was the movements of Suchet which gave Murray the greater alarm: by ingenious miscalculations[692] he had arrived at the statistical conclusion that the Marshal had got 12,000 or 13,000 men of all arms with him, instead of the real 8,000[693]. And when the arrival of Pannetier’s brigade at Perello on the 10th was reported to him on the following day, he proceeded to assume that the French column was all closed up: ‘the Marshal with 13,000 men was within two long marches of Tarragona[694].’ Many generals would have asked for no better opportunity than that of being placed in a central position with some 23,000 men—the Anglo-Sicilian troops and those of Copons exceeded that figure—while two hostile columns, one of 13,000 men and the other of 10,000, 35 miles apart, were trying to join each other across a difficult country by bad roads. (As a matter of fact, of course, the French force was much smaller—no more than 8,000 men on the West, and 6,000 on the East, though Murray must not be too much blamed for the over-estimate.) But the two governing ideas that ruled in the brain of the unfortunate general were firstly the memory of Wellington’s warning that ‘the one thing that could not be forgiven would be that the corps should be beaten or dispersed’, and secondly the fact that his army was composed of heterogeneous material, some of which might be found wanting at a crisis. But he concealed his downheartedness till the last moment, both from his own lieutenants and from the Spaniards. On the 10th he rode out to meet General Copons at Torre dem Barra, to which place the Catalan head-quarters had just been moved, and agreed with him to defend the line of the Gaya river against the column coming from Barcelona. He promised to send up all his cavalry, 8,000 infantry, and two field batteries to join the Spanish army, which was now concentrated across the two roads by which Tarragona could be approached from Villafranca. Five battalions were on the northern road, by the Col de Santa Cristina, four and the three squadrons of horse on the southern route, nearer the sea. Warnings were issued to Clinton’s and Whittingham’s divisions, and also to Lord Frederick Bentinck, the cavalry brigadier, to be ready to march to the line of the Gaya[695]. This looked like business, and the spirits of the Anglo-Sicilians were high that night.

On the morning of the 11th, while the bombardment of Tarragona was going on in a very satisfactory way, Murray rode out again, met Copons at Vendrils, behind the Gaya, and spent much time in inspecting the chosen positions. He disliked them; the river was fordable in many places, and a very long front would have to be guarded: it was considered that the French might break through by one of the roads before the troops guarding the other could arrive. However, adhering to his promise of the 10th, Murray ordered up Bentinck with two squadrons of hussars and two guns to the mouth of the Gaya, where they took over the outposts on the coast-road. The infantry was not brought up—as the assault on Tarragona was to take place that evening. The only news from the front received in the afternoon were rumours that Maurice Mathieu had actually reached Villafranca[696].

At seven o’clock Murray started home, and reached his head-quarters before Tarragona two hours later. There he found a batch of reports awaiting him, which finally broke down his resolution to fight, and drove him to the ignominious flight which he had already contemplated on more than one day during the preceding week. Two Spanish officers had come in from the Col de Santa Cristina, to report that the Barcelona column had certainly occupied Villafranca, and was apparently pushing on beyond it: this was discouraging. But the document which Murray regarded as all-important was a note from his adjutant-general, Donkin, to the effect that peasants, who had just come in from Perello, reported that Suchet’s column had continued its advance: ‘This corps of infantry may be at Reus to-morrow, if they think proper to march by Perello without artillery. And Decaen (i. e. Mathieu), if he marched this day to Villafranca, can also reach Reus to-morrow. This possibility may, perhaps, make some change in your arrangements[697].’ As a matter of fact, we have already seen that it was only Pannetier’s brigade which had gone across the hills from Perello towards Monroig, and that this was a mere reconnaissance.

But Donkin’s picture of Suchet and the Barcelona column joining at Reus, in his rear, on the 12th, with forces which Murray’s imagination raised to 25,000 men, was so much in consonance with the fears which had been obsessing the brains of the Commander-in-Chief throughout the last ten days, that he felt that his nightmare was coming true. There could be no doubt that he was on the brink of a disaster like the Ostend catastrophe of 1798[698]. Of course Suchet’s active brain had planned his complete destruction. He tells us in his defence[699] that he asked himself whether it was probable that an officer of the Marshal’s activity and reputation would have left a man more than he could help in Valencia. ‘Was it the character of a French general to act with inadequate means when ample means were within his reach? Was it probable that he would have brought a small force only from the Xucar by the fatiguing march to Tortosa? Would he have left a man idle in the south when in danger of losing his communication with France? Every disposable corps, many more than what might be calculated to be fairly disposable, must be with the Marshal.’ He might have not 13,000 men but many more. And the Barcelona column might be not 10,000 men but 13,000.

Rather than take the risk of waiting one day longer in his present position, Murray resolved to abscond by sea, while the enemy was still twenty miles away from Tarragona. By 9.30 p.m. he had sent his staff officers with messages to his divisional generals to stop the projected assault, to order all guns, horses, and stores to be got on shipboard, and the infantry after them. He calculated, in his panic, that he had only eighteen hours in hand: the re-embarkation must be over by dusk on the 12th. But the most disgraceful part of his scheme was that he had resolved to leave Copons and the Catalans to their fate, after having brought them to the Gaya by definite promises of assistance, without which they would never have taken up their fighting position, and this though he had renewed his pledges that same morning. He sent no warning of his real intentions to his colleague, but only told him that recent information had made it necessary for him to re-embark his battering train; but six Anglo-Sicilian battalions should be sent out next morning, to strengthen the force behind the Gaya.

There followed a night and a morning of confusion. No one in the expeditionary force had hitherto suspected Murray’s wavering confidence, except Admiral Hallowell, to whom he had on June 9th made the remark that he imagined that they ought to be thinking about getting away in safety rather than about prolonging the siege, and the Quartermaster-General, Donkin, to whom on the same day Murray had said that he suspected that they would have ere long to depart, whereupon that officer had drawn up a secret scheme for the details of re-embarkation[700]. But since nothing more had been heard about such a move on the 10th or the 11th, Hallowell and Donkin had supposed that the idea was abandoned. Clinton and the other senior officers had been kept entirely in the dark, till the sudden orders of 9.30 p.m. were delivered to them. At midnight Admiral Hallowell came in to Murray’s quarters to protest against the hasty departure, which would cause all manner of confusion and ensure the loss of much valuable material: they parted after an angry altercation. Colonel Williamson (commanding the artillery) also appeared, to say that in the time given him he could get off the guns in the batteries near the shore, but not those on the distant Olivo. He understood the general to reply that he might be granted some extra hours, and that the Olivo guns might be brought down after dark on the 12th[701].

But in the morning Murray’s apprehension grew progressively worse. He had at first intended to do something to cover Copons’ inevitable retreat, and ordered Clinton to throw out six battalions towards the Gaya. But he soon cancelled this order, and directed Bentinck to bring back his cavalry and guns from Altafulla without delay. At 9 a.m. a message was sent to Williamson, to say that the guns on the Olivo must be spiked or destroyed, as it would be perilous to wait till night[702]. Half an hour later Murray’s notions of retreat flickered round to a new scheme—the troops on the shore should embark there; but those on the northern heights—the divisions of Clinton and Whittingham—should march to the Col de Balaguer via Constanti, and take ship in the much better harbourage behind Cape Salou. Half an hour later he abandoned this scheme, and ordered them down to the beach by the Francoli, there to embark without delay.

This dispatch reduced Clinton to a state of cold rage: at the court martial in 1814 he produced seven separate orders which he had received between dawn and 1.30 that day: they were all contradictory, and deserve record as showing Murray’s state of mind during the critical hours. (1) The first, received early, directed him to take six battalions towards the Gaya, to cover the retreat of Copons from Altafulla. (2) The second, sent off at 9 o’clock, told him not to execute this march, but to wait till the Spaniards had cleared off, and then to move, not with six battalions but with the whole of his own and Whittingham’s divisions, to Constanti[703]. (3) The third was to the effect that the baggage should be sent to the Col de Balaguer, to which the whole army would now proceed[704]. (4) Half an hour later Clinton was told to cancel the last two dispatches, and to come down to head-quarters on the nearest beach. (5) A supplementary verbal order directed that the guns in the Olivo batteries should be spiked. (6) Twenty minutes later Clinton was told that the guns might still be saved: Whittingham’s Spaniards should remain on the Olivo and guard them till dusk, when the artillery would try to get them down to the shore. (7) Lastly, at 1.30, the final order cancelled the sixth, it directed (once more) that Whittingham’s troops must follow Clinton’s for instant embarkation, and that the guns should be spiked without delay. This was done, to the intense disgust of the gunners, who had been getting everything ready for an orderly retreat after dusk. Seventeen heavy pieces in good condition, and one more which had been disabled, were spiked and left in the Olivo batteries, while the infantry hurried down to the shore.

The momentary wavering in Murray’s orders during the early morning, when he seemed inclined to risk a longer stay, and to march Clinton’s division and the baggage by land to the anchorage by the Col de Balaguer, was apparently caused partly by new remonstrances from Hallowell, partly by an interview with some of his subordinates, somewhere between 8 and 9 a.m., Mackenzie, Adam, Donkin, and Thackeray, the chief engineer, entered the house of the Commander-in-Chief together, and Adam, as their spokesman, urged him with great heat not to embark, but to advance, join Copons, and attack the French on the Gaya with every available man. Murray replied that if he did so, the French would refuse to fight and give back toward Barcelona; while Suchet, coming from the other direction, would cut him off from the fleet and relieve Tarragona. But if, on the other hand, he were to march against Suchet, and stop him, then the Barcelona column would relieve Tarragona and get the expeditionary force separated from its transports. Either course would be equally ruinous. He also said that Wellington had told him ‘not to commit the army’. The generals withdrew—further insistence would have amounted to military insubordination. The final hurry-scurry order, to destroy the guns and embark pell-mell, was caused by news from Copons that the French at Villafranca had advanced as far as Arbos, only ten miles from the Gaya, and seemed still to be coming on.

During the night and the morning that followed all the guns from the lower batteries, much valuable material, some of the cavalry, and the infantry of Adam, were got aboard. The shipment of artillery stores was still proceeding at 10 o’clock, when Murray ordered that nothing but men should now be embarked—all else must be abandoned. Admiral Hallowell, who was superintending the work on the beach in person, was much incensed with this resolve, and took it upon himself to direct the sailors in the boats to refuse infantry, and to go on lading stores. Then came a deadlock—Hallowell said that there was plenty of time to take off everything: Donkin, coming down from Murray’s quarters, maintained that the French were only two and a half hours’ march away, and that the infantry must be got off at all costs: horses and mules might have to be shot, and food and ammunition abandoned[705]. There was much disputing, but the naval men, obeying the admiral, continued to embark horses and artillery material till midday, when Mackenzie’s infantry began to pour down to the beaches, followed by Clinton’s and Whittingham’s battalions[706]. All through the afternoon the shipping off of troops continued without any interruption, till only a rearguard of 500 of Clinton’s men was left on shore. No news of the French coming to hand, there was a relaxation of the wild hurry which had prevailed between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. Murray permitted Bentinck to take that part of the cavalry which had not yet embarked round to the anchorage by the Col de Balaguer by land[707], and sent on behind them twelve field-guns escorted by a half battalion of the 2/27th. Meanwhile, the troops having all got off, the boats began to load again with transport mules, entrenching tools, spare shot, platform timbers, sand bags, and biscuit. The rear guard was not taken off till late at night; and, even after it was gone and dawn had come, the sailors continued to find and take off various valuable leavings[708]. No molestation whatever was suffered from the garrison, who regarded the whole movement as inexplicable, and only crept out with caution after the last British troops had disappeared, to find 18 spiked guns and some artillery stores in the Olivo batteries, and a certain amount of flour and beef barrels left on the shore. The most distressing part of the chronicle of this wretched day’s work is Murray’s dealings with Copons. He had induced the Captain-General to bring his army to the line of the Gaya, by the promise of supporting him with 8,000 men, renewed on the morning of the 11th. At dawn on the 12th the message was sent that six battalions only could be spared. An hour or two later Copons received the crushing news that the whole expeditionary army was about to re-embark, abandoning him to his own resources. If Murray’s view of the situation had been correct, the Spaniards must have been caught between Suchet advancing on Reus and Mathieu converging on the same point from Villafranca. His moral guilt, therefore, was very great. But, as a matter of fact, nothing disastrous happened. On hearing that he had been left in the lurch, Copons withdrew the troops which he had at Altafulla on the coast-road, to join those at the Col de Santa Cristina, leaving the way to Tarragona open to Maurice Mathieu, and preparing to retreat into the mountains if necessary. He kept a close look-out upon the French column, and was astonished on the morning of the 13th to learn that, after sending a vanguard to Arbos on the previous day, six miles down the southern road, it had turned back at ten o’clock at night, and was now in full retreat on Barcelona. The crisis was over for the moment. Copons returned to his old head-quarters at Reus, threw out a slight screen of troops to the line of Gaya, and reoccupied Villafranca with a few cavalry. He was quite ready to retreat into the mountains once more if any untoward developments should supervene.