CHAPTER XVIII. SECOND SIEGE OF ZARAGOZA.

♦1808.
December.♦

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.

♦Castaños accused at Zaragoza as a traitor.♦

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.

♦State of public feeling in that city.♦

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.”

♦None of the inhabitants leave the city.♦

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.

♦Works of defence.♦

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.

♦Preparations within the city.♦

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.

♦M. Moncey reconnoitres the Torrero.♦

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.

♦They take the Torrero.♦

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.

♦Unsuccessful attack upon the suburbs.♦

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.

♦Moncey summons Palafox to surrender.♦

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.

♦The investment of the city completed.♦

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.

♦1809.
January.

Junot takes the command of the French.♦

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.

♦Rumours of success, and rejoicings in the city.♦

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.

♦An infectious disease appears in 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.

♦Attempts of Lazan and Francisco Palafox to succour the city.♦

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.

♦Condition of the army in Catalonia.♦

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.

♦The army re-formed in Tarragona.♦

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.

♦Conduct of the French under St. Cyr.♦

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.

♦Orders to attempt the relief of Zaragoza.♦

But plainly as it would have been the policy of the Spaniards to confine themselves to the slow and sure method of weeding out their invaders, till they could bring their regular troops into a fit state for taking the field, the pressing danger of Zaragoza called for immediate efforts. Francisco Palafox, looking every where for that aid which was nowhere to be found, had gone to Cuenca, and proposing that Infantado should march the central army to his brother’s relief, had been present at a council where the proposal was discussed, and had seen with his own eyes how utterly incapable that army was of engaging in such an attempt, or even of attempting ♦Infantado, Manifiesto, 87.♦ such a march. Orders to undertake something for its relief had been dispatched from the Central Junta to the provinces of Valencia and Catalonia. The Valencians were offended with Palafox for having detained General St. Marc with a division of their army; no man contributed more by his military talents to the defence of the city than that general, but he and his men were now cooped up to die of pestilence, when they might have effectually served the Zaragozans in the field. Want of will therefore made the Valencians take only half measures, and these so tardily as to be of no avail. Neither did Reding manifest the feeling which he ought to have partaken upon this subject, partly because the sense of his own difficulties possessed him, and partly perhaps from a personal dislike to the Palafox family. One natural consequence of thus delaying succour in quarters where there was most ability was to produce premature and rash attempts on the part of those who felt more generously. Palafox ♦Tardiness in obeying them.♦ had written to say, that as long as provisions lasted, and there were ruins to shelter them, Zaragoza would not surrender. The place chosen for a depot was Mequinenza, and there, chiefly by the exertions of General Doyle, stores in considerable quantity were collected; but impatient of waiting, when time was so precious, till a well-concerted attempt to introduce supplies could be made, a Colonel who had ♦Defeat of the peasantry.♦ several thousand peasants under his command moved to Belchite, within five leagues of Zaragoza, with a convoy under protection of this force, which was as unmanageable in a body, as it might have been efficient in its proper mode of warfare. The enemy, at the beginning of the siege, had stationed General Vathier at Fuentes with 600 cavalry and 1200 foot to command the country and collect provisions. This movement of the peasants was too near him to be concealed; he fell upon them, routed them with some slaughter, and got possession of all their stores. ♦Alcañiz occupied by the French.♦ The pursuit led him as far as Ixar, and from thence he proceeded against Alcañiz. The peasantry whom Francisco Palafox had collected there drew up on the heights before the town, and withstood the attack with more firmness ♦Rogniat, 17.♦ than might have been expected from such a force; but they were not equal to contend with disciplined troops; and Vathier occupied the towns of Alcañiz and Cuspe as long as the siege endured.

♦Movement in Navarre and Aragon.♦

These misfortunes did not discourage the Spaniards, and the movements of the inhabitants both in Navarre and Aragon were formidable enough to excite some uneasiness in the besiegers. While the Navarrese bands interrupted their communication with Pamplona, the mountaineers of Soria threatened Tudela, and those of the Sierra de Muela endangered their hospitals and establishments at Alagon Lazan, meantime, with his brother Francisco, occupied the country from Villa Franca de Ebro to Licineña and Zuera, and sending detachments as far as Capavrosa to intercept the enemy’s convoys, straitened Gazan’s division in their camp. More than once the French were without meat, and upon half rations of bread; and they might have been foiled a second time before Zaragoza, more shamefully than the first, if the heroism of the inhabitants had been in any degree seconded from without, and if the want of capacity in the Spanish leaders had not been as glaring as the want of order in the field and of reason in their councils. The besiegers had felt some ill effects from the latter cause; but an end was put to jarring pretensions and contrarient views when ♦M. Lasnes takes the command.♦ Marshal Lasnes arrived on the 22d of January to take the command. He had previously ordered Mortier to leave Calatayud, and act with Suchet’s division on the left of the Ebro; having dispersed the force which Francisco Palafox had collected there, they took possession of Zuera, and scouring the country as far as Pina, Sarineña, ♦Rogniat, 18, 20.♦ and Huesca, secured the besiegers from interruption on that side. The French Marshal hoped that this might abate the spirit of the Zaragozans as much as it had cheered them ♦He summons Palafox to surrender. Jan. 25.♦ when they saw the force of their countrymen upon the surrounding heights; and he addressed a letter to Palafox, telling him that the force upon which he had relied for relief had been destroyed, that the English had fled to Coruña and embarked there, leaving 7000 prisoners, and that Romana had escaped with them, his army with their officers having yielded to the Emperor: that Infantado had been defeated at Ucles with the loss of 18,000 men; and that if after this true statement he persisted in withstanding a force more than sufficient for effecting its purpose, the destruction of the city and of its inhabitants must rest upon his head. Palafox ♦Cavallero, 107.♦
♦Seb. Hermandez, 14, 15.♦ replied, that M. Lasnes would cover himself with glory if he were to win the city by force of manly courage with the sword, and not by bombarding it; but that the Zaragozans knew their duty, and would not surrender.

♦The French enter the city, but with great loss. Jan. 26.♦

All the outworks had now been taken except the Castle of the Inquisition, which had never been seriously attacked, because its possession was of no importance to the enemy. The batteries against the city itself were completed, and on the day after the summons fifty pieces opened their fire upon the wall, and on the morrow three practicable breaches were made. One was by an oil-mill, a building standing alone, without the walls, and close to them; the enemy had established themselves in it during the night. The second was to the left of this, immediately opposite S. Joseph’s; the third in the monastery of S. Engracia. All these were attacked. A column issuing from the oil-mill presently reached the first, and the explosion of two fougades at the foot of the breach scarcely appeared to impede their progress. But they found an inner intrenchment, well constructed and mounted with two guns; and when they attempted to carry this the bell of the Torre Nueva rang, the inhabitants manned the adjacent houses, and a fire was opened from roofs and windows which it was neither possible to return nor to withstand. Profiting, however, by the cover which the exploded fougades afforded them, they succeeded in lodging themselves upon the breach. On the left they were more successful; after gaining the ramparts, they made their way into the opposite house, which the artillery had breached, and into the two adjoining ones; their progress was then stopped, but they established themselves within the walls, and repaired and lengthened for their own use a double caponier, by which the besieged used to communicate with S. Joseph’s. The attack upon the third breach was more formidable. After a severe struggle the enemy entered the convent of S. Engracia, obtained possession of its ruins and of the nunnery of S. Joseph, which stood near, and of which little more than the mere shell was remaining. Piercing the walls of this, they enfiladed the curtain from S. Engracia to the bridge of the Huerba, and taking the tête-de-pont in reverse, became masters of the bridge, over which fresh troops joined them to follow up their success. They pushed on to the Capuchin convent of La Trinidad, which made part of the line; forty artillerymen, who were stationed there without support, as a place not in danger of attack, were cut to pieces at their guns, and the convent was taken. It was recovered by the Spaniards; but two battalions came to support the assailants, who took it a second time, and maintained their conquest, though at a dear price. The greater part of the French who occupied the curtain fell under the fire from the houses. They suffered also considerably in a vain attempt to possess themselves of a single house which defended an imperfect breach to the right of all their other attacks. Their whole loss was stated by themselves at 600, that of the besiegers at eight. The Spaniards, with better reason, believed that a much greater proportion of the enemy had fallen; and the French had in fact received so severe a lesson, that they determined not to ♦Rogniat, 22, 26.
Cavallero, 102–105.♦ risk any more direct attacks, but proceed always as much as possible under cover: there was danger otherwise that the troops would become impatient of so fatal a service, and even that all their efforts might be unavailing.

♦The enemy establish themselves in the Trinidad convent.♦

As it was now no longer necessary to carry on the false attack upon the Aljafaria, the engineers were called from thence to fortify the Trinidad convent, and establish a communication with it and with a house by the bridge; commanding in this manner the whole intermediate space. During the night the Spaniards endeavoured to recover the ruins of S. Engracia and the adjoining houses, but without success. They attempted twice also to regain the Trinidad, and once succeeded so far as to force open the church door: the enemy had formed an epaulement within of bags of earth, and fought to advantage behind that protection. A friar was at the head of the assailants, with a sword in one hand and the crucifix in the other; one of his brethren was killed in the act of administering extreme unction to a Spaniard who was mortally wounded; another took the holy oil from the slain, and continued to perform the same office to his dying countrymen. Women also mingled with the combatants, distributing cartridges to them, and bearing refreshments to their sons, ♦Rogniat, 25, 28.
Cavallero, 105.♦ their husbands, and fathers, and sometimes rushing upon the enemy when these dear relatives fell, to revenge their deaths, and to die with them.

♦Convents of S. Augustin and S. Monica won.♦

The French had in vain attempted to get possession of the convents of S. Augustin and ♦Feb. 1.♦ S. Monica. Having been repelled in assaulting ♦1809.
February.♦ the breaches, they sprung a mine under the partition wall, and by that means effected an entrance, turning all the works which the Spaniards had constructed for their defence. They forced their way into the church. Every column, every chapel, every altar, became a point of defence, which was repeatedly attacked, taken, and retaken, and attacked again; the pavement was covered with blood, and the aisles and nave of the church strewed with the dead, who were trampled under foot by the combatants. In the midst of this conflict the roof, which had been shattered by bombs, fell in; the few who were not crushed, after a short pause which this tremendous shock and the sense of their own escape occasioned, renewed the fight with increased desperation: fresh parties of the enemy poured in: monks, and citizens, and soldiers came to the defence, and the contest was continued upon the ruins and the bodies of the dead and the dying. It ended in favour of the invaders, who succeeded in keeping the disputed position. Taking advantage of the opportunity afforded while the attention of the Spaniards was directed to this point, they entered the Rua Quemada, where no attack was at that time apprehended, and got possession of one side of the street to the angle which it makes with the Cozo: their sappers were beginning to pierce the walls of the houses, barricade the doors and windows, and establish traverses in the street, when the Zaragozans charged them with redoubled spirit, drove them out with considerable loss, and recovered four houses which had been taken on a preceding day. At the same time an attack was made on the side of S. Engracia, when, after exploding two mines, the Poles got possession of some ruined houses; but in obtaining this success, General Lacoste, the ♦Rogniat, 27, 30.
Cavallero, 106.♦ French commandant of engineers, was killed. His opponent, Colonel San Genis, had fallen the preceding day: he was succeeded by Colonel Zappino, Lacoste by Colonel Rogniat.

♦The enemy proceed by mining.♦

Now that the city was open to the invaders, the contest was to be carried on once more in the streets and houses. But the French had been taught by experience that in such domestic warfare the Zaragozans derived a superiority from the feeling and principle which inspired them, and the cause wherein they were engaged. They had learned that the only means of conquering it was to destroy it house by house, and street by street; and upon this system of destruction they proceeded. Three companies of miners and eight of sappers carried on this subterranean war. The Spaniards had officers who could have opposed them with not inferior skill; but men were wanting, and the art of sapping and mining is not one which can be learned on the spot where it is wanted; their attempts therefore were frequently discovered, and the men suffocated in their own works. Nor indeed had they been more expert could powder have been supplied for their consumption. The stock with which the Zaragozans began had been exhausted; they had none but what they manufactured day by day, and no other cannon-balls than those which had been fired against them, and which they collected and fired back upon the enemy.

♦Progress of the pestilence.♦

The Zaragozans expected miracles for their deliverance; and they exerted themselves so excellently well, that the French, with all their advantages, would have found themselves unequal to the enterprise in which they were engaged, and other armies must have been brought up to supply more thousands for the slaughter, if the defenders had not been suffering under an evil which in their circumstances it was equally impossible to prevent or to alleviate. The consequences of that evil, when it had once appeared, were but too surely to be apprehended; and in bitter anticipation, yet while a hope ♦Miralles, Elogio de Zaragoza, p. 42.♦ remained, an Aragoneze exclaimed, Zaragoza surrenders not, if God is neutral! If the seasons had only held their ordinary course, this heroic people might a second time have delivered themselves. In that part of Spain January is commonly a wet month. Had the rains fallen as usual, the enemy would hardly have been able to complete their approaches; had the weather, on the contrary, been severe, it might have stopped the contagion, and then the city would have had hands as well as hearts for its defence. But the season proved at once dry enough for the ground to be in the most favourable state for the besiegers’ operations, and mild enough to increase the progress of the disease, which was now more destructive than the enemy, though no enemy ever employed the ♦Cavallero, 71.♦ means of destruction with less remorse. When once the pestilence had begun it was impossible to check its progress, or confine it to one quarter of the city. It was not long before more than thirty hospitals were established; ... as soon as one was destroyed by the bombardment the patients were removed to some other building which was in a state to afford them temporary shelter, and thus the infection was carried to every part of Zaragoza. The average of daily deaths from this cause was at this time not less than three hundred and fifty; men stretched upon straw, in helpless misery lay breathing their last, and with their dying breath spreading the mortal taint of their own disease, who, if they had fallen in action, would have died with the exultation of martyrs. Their sole comfort was the sense of having performed their duty religiously to the uttermost ... all other alleviations were wanting; neither medicines nor necessary food were to be procured, nor needful attendance ... for the ministers of charity themselves became victims of the disease. All that the most compassionate had now to bestow was a little water in which rice had been boiled, and a winding-sheet. The nuns, driven from their convents, knew not where to take refuge, nor where to find shelter for their dying sisters. The Church of the Pillar was crowded with poor creatures, who, despairing of life, hoped now for nothing more than to die in the presence of the tutelary saint. The clergy were employed night and day in administering the sacraments to the dying, till they themselves sunk under the common calamity. The slightest wound produced gangrene and death in bodies so prepared for dissolution by distress of mind, agitation, want of proper aliment and of sleep. For there was now no respite neither by day nor night for this devoted city; even the natural order of light and darkness was destroyed in Zaragoza: by day it was involved in a red sulphureous atmosphere of smoke and dust, which hid the face of heaven; by night the fire of cannon and mortars, and the flames of burning houses, kept it in a state of horrible illumination. The cemeteries could no longer afford room for the dead; huge pits were dug to receive them in the streets and in the courts of the public buildings, till hands were wanting for the labour; they were laid before the churches, ♦Sebastian Hernandez, p. 17.
Cavallero, p. 108.♦ heaped upon one another, and covered with sheets; and that no spectacle of horror might be wanting, it happened not unfrequently that these piles of mortality were struck by a shell, and the shattered bodies scattered in all directions.

♦First talk of surrender in the city.♦

On the 1st of February the situation of the city appeared so desperate, that persons of approved and unquestionable patriotism came to the Regent of the Royal Audience of Aragon, D. Pedro Maria Ric, and besought him to represent to Palafox the necessity of capitulating; but Ric, with a spirit like that of Palafox himself, could not submit to this while there was any possibility of prolonging the defence. He knew that of all examples there is none which makes so sure and so powerful an impression as that of heroic suffering; and that if Zaragoza were defended to the last gasp, the influence of its fall under such circumstances would be not less honourable and hardly less salutary than a happier termination. Nor indeed would the people have consented to a surrender; their spirit was unsubdued, and the principle which supported it retained all its force. The worst effect of their sense of increasing danger was, that it increased their suspicions, always too easily excited; and ♦D. P. M. Ric, Semanario Patriotico, No. 28, p. 214.
Cavallero, p. 110.♦ to those suspicions several persons were sacrificed, being with or without proof hung during the night in the Cozo and in the market-place. The character indeed of the struggle was such as to excite the most implacable indignation and hatred against an enemy, who having begun the war with such unexampled treachery, prosecuted it with a ferocity equally unexampled in later ages.

♦The contest carried on by fire.♦

Four days the French were employed in forming three galleries to cross the Rua Quemada. They failed in two; the third opened into the cellar of an undefended house; thence they made way along great part of the street from house to house, and crossing another street by means of a double epaulement of bags of earth, established themselves in the ruins of a house which formed an angle of the Cozo and of the Rua del Medio, Their next object was to get possession of the Escuelas Pias, a building which commanded some traverses made for defending the Cozo. The French often attacked it, and were as often repulsed; they then attempted the adjoining houses. The system of blowing up the houses exposed them to an evil which had not been foreseen, for when they attempted to establish themselves upon the ruins, the Spaniards from the dwellings near fired upon them with sure effect. They endeavoured therefore so to proportion the charge in their mines as to breach the house without destroying it; but to deprive them of the cover which they would thus have obtained, the Zaragozans with characteristic desperation set fire now to every house before they abandoned it. They began this mode of defence here, maintaining the entrance till they had prepared the building for burning; for so little wood was used in the construction, that it was necessary to smear the floors and beams with melted resin, to make them more combustible. When all was ready they then set fire to the place, and retired into the Escuelas Pias, interposing thus a barrier of flames between them and the assailants. The enemy endeavoured in vain to extinguish the fire under a shower of balls; and the time thus gained was employed by the Zaragozans in forming new works of defence. Unable to win the Schools by any other means, the enemy at length prepared a mine, which was discovered too late ♦Rogniat, 30, 1.
Cavallero, 121. Feb. 7.♦ for the Spaniards to frustrate their purpose, but in time to disappoint them of their expected advantage by setting fire to the disputed edifice.

♦Convent of Jesus taken in the suburbs.♦

On the same day operations were renewed against the suburbs, where the enemy, at the commencement of the siege, had received so severe a repulse. General Gazan, availing himself of an ambiguity in his orders, had, after that lesson, contented himself with keeping up the blockade; nor could any representation induce him to engage in more active operations, till M. Lasnes arrived with authority to enforce his orders. The Convent of Jesus, situated on the road to Barcelona, formed part of the defence on that side; the engineers, not having time to rase it, deeming it better that it should be occupied than abandoned for the enemy. Trenches were now opened against this building, and twenty battering pieces soon effected a breach, which was carried almost as easily as it had been made; but when the enemy, flushed with success, entered the suburbs in pursuit of the retreating garrison, they were driven out with great slaughter, as on their former attempt. ♦Rogniat, 34, 35.♦ They entrenched themselves, however, on the ruins of the convent, established a communication with it, and lodgements on the right and left.

The attack in the centre was pursued with the same vigour, and resisted with the same desperate determination. Every door, every staircase, every chamber was disputed; the ♦S. Francisco taken.♦ French abandoned all attacks to the left for the sake of concentrating their efforts here, that they might the sooner reach the Cozo, extend themselves along it to the right as far as the quay, and thus connect their operations with those of Gazan on the other side the Ebro: and these increased efforts were met with proportionate exertions by the Zaragozans. Grenades were thrown from one floor to another, and bombs were rolled among the enemy, when they were so near that the Spaniards who rolled them expected themselves also to perish by the explosion. Their resolution seemed, if it were possible, to increase with their danger; every spot was defended with more obstinacy than the last; and this temper would have been, as it deserved to be, invincible, if pestilence the while had not been consuming them faster than fire and sword. The sense of honour as well as of duty was carried to its highest point; the officers preferred dying upon the stations which they had been appointed to defend, rather than to live after having lost them, though every possible resistance had been made. On this side, after having occupied and been driven from the vaults of the Hospital, which had been reduced to ruins in the former siege, the enemy succeeded at length in carrying a gallery to the great convent of S. Francisco; ... a countermine was prepared, which compelled them to stop before they could get under the walls of the convent. The engineer, Major Breuille, immediately charged the mine with three thousand weight of powder, and fired it, having drawn by feigned preparations for an assault as many Spaniards as he could within the sphere of destruction. The explosion was terrible, and brought down part of the building: the enemy rushed through the breach, and making way into the church, formed an epaulement there to establish themselves. Some Zaragozans who were acquainted with the building got, by passages connected with the tower, upon the cornices of the church; others mounted the roof, and broke holes in it, and from thence they poured down grenades upon the invaders, and drove them from their post. The ruins of this convent, which had been burnt during the first siege, and now shattered by the mine, were disputed two whole days, till the defenders at length were driven from the last chapel by the bayonet. For the advantage now both in numbers and in physical power was on the side of the enemy, the pestilence having so wasted the Spaniards, that men ♦Rogniat, 36.
Cavallero, 126.♦ enough could not be provided to man the points which were attacked without calling up from the hospitals those who had yet strength enough to use a weapon.

From the tower of this building the French commanded the Cozo for a musket-shot distance ♦The French begin to murmur.♦ on either side. After many desperate attempts their miners succeeded in crossing that street; but they were baffled in their attacks upon the University, and so many of their officers and best soldiers had fallen in this murderous struggle, that the disgust which ought to have been excited by their abominable cause was produced by the difficulty which they found in pursuing it. Not the men alone, but the officers also, began to complain that they were worn out, though they had as yet only taken a fourth part of the town; it was necessary, they said, to wait for reinforcements, otherwise they should all be buried in these cursed ruins, before they could drive the fanatics from their last retreat. Marshal Lasnes represented to them, that destructive as the mode of war was, it was more so to the besieged than to them, whose operations were directed by more skill, and carried on by men trained to such service; that pestilence was doing their work; and that if these desperate madmen chose to renew the example of Numantia, and bury themselves under the ruins of their city, bombs and mines would not now be ♦Rogniat, 38.♦ long in destroying the last of them. Marshal Lasnes was a man after the Emperor Napoleon’s own heart; with so little honourable feeling, that he regarded the Zaragozans merely as madmen; and with so little human feeling, that he would have completed the destruction of the city and its last inhabitants with the same insensibility that he declared his intention of doing so.

♦Not even an attempt is made to relieve the city.♦

S. Genis had repeatedly said, “Let me never be appealed to if there is any question of capitulating, for I shall never be of opinion that we can no longer defend ourselves.” In the same spirit Palafox wrote to his friend General Doyle: “Within the last forty-eight hours,” said he, “6000 shells have been thrown in; two-thirds of the city are in ruins; but we will perish under the ruins of the remaining part, rather than surrender.” It was not by any promises or hopes of external succour that this spirit was supported. Palafox well knew that no efforts would be wanting on the part of his brothers, or of his friends; but he knew also what divided counsels and jarring interests were opposed to them, and that willing lives were all they could have had at their command. General Doyle with great exertions got together ammunition and stores at Mequinenza, in the beginning of February; and the Marques de Lazan took the field from Lerida with a nominal force of 7000 foot and 250 horse to attempt something for the relief of the besieged city. It was soon learnt by their spies that a corps of 10,000 foot and 800 horse was ready to oppose them; and rather than make an attempt which must inevitably have ended in the utter rout of his ill-disciplined troops, Lazan waited at Monzon, to be joined by a division from Valencia, which the Junta of that kingdom had at last consented to send across the Ebro. But a French division in Aragon threatened to impede the junction: ammunition was wanted from Lerida, which the Junta of that city demurred at granting; time was consumed in miserable counsels and hopeless expectation, Lazan looking to Reding for some great exertion, and Reding deterred from attempting any thing, though with a superior force, by total want of confidence in his army, and the suspicion that whatever passed at his head-quarters was immediately communicated to the enemy; and thus while Lazan and his brother were in the most pitiable distress, knowing the state of Zaragoza, where their families were suffering under the unexampled horrors of such a siege, ... while every man in their division partook that feeling which the situation of the besieged excited in all their countrymen ... an anxiety as unexampled as it was great, ... and while every where it was expected that some efforts such as the occasion required would be made; even the most ready and devoted courage was of no avail where preparation, order, discipline, prompt judgement, and vigorous authority were all wanting; and though the province and the nation were in arms, Zaragoza was left to its fate without even an attempt to save it.

♦Progress of the pestilence.♦

Meantime pestilence was consuming the Zaragozans faster than fire and sword. The points which were not immediately threatened were now wholly manned by men who rose from their straw in the hospitals, and sate at their posts, unable to support themselves standing, wrapped in their blankets, and shivering or panting for breath, as the ague or the hot fit of the disease might prevail. The officer whose dreadful task it was to choose out patients for the service became in his turn a victim to the contagion. Hopeless of finding relief any where, the sick resigned themselves quietly to their fate; the dying and the dead were buried together beneath the houses which were blown up, or consumed in the flames; and the French found court-yards and chambers filled with corpses, and said themselves that they were fighting now only to obtain possession of a cemetery. ♦Rogniat, 39.
Cavallero, 129.♦ The ravages of the disease were such, that many, bearing up with invincible resolution to the last, fell in the streets and died. The enemy did not remit their attacks while death was thus doing their work; they profited by the weakness of the besieged, and opening a fire ♦Feb. 18.♦ from their batteries on both sides the Convent of Jesus upon the suburbs, made another attempt upon the feeble works where they had twice been repulsed with such great loss. A fire ♦The suburbs taken.♦ from fifty pieces soon made the way open, and the bridge being flanked by some of their guns, no succour could be sent from the city. Baron de Versaje, who commanded there, and had distinguished himself in the defence, was killed in repairing to his post. A breach was made in the Convent of S. Lazarus on the left bank; the garrison, exhausted by privations and fatigue and sickness, opposed all the resistance in their power, ... the greater number dying in its defence; and this edifice being taken, the Spaniards could neither retreat from the suburbs, nor hope to support themselves there, when they could no longer be supplied with food or ammunition from the city. Finding themselves separated by the enemy into two columns, the one body crossed the bridge with considerable loss, and effected their retreat into the town; the other cut their way through the enemy, and endeavoured to escape in the open country ♦Rogniat, 41.
Cavallero, 137.♦ along the bank of the Ebro; they were pursued by the French horse, and after sustaining a second action till their powder was exhausted, were taken prisoners to the number of 1500.

♦The University taken.♦

The loss of the left bank exposed to the enemy the only part of the city which had not yet been open to their direct attacks, but had only suffered from the bombardment. On the other side, the University, after repeated attempts, had been taken, and the traverses which the Spaniards had so well defended in the Cozo. Palafox had now been seized with the disease. Capitulation had been mentioned at the last council in which he was present, and when it was asked how long the city could hold out, his answer had been, hasta la ultima tapia; “to the ♦Palafox transfers his authority to a Junta.♦ last mud-wall.” Being now utterly disabled, he transferred all his authority, civil and military, on the night of the 18th, to a Junta, naming Ric to be the president. That noble-minded Spaniard immediately summoned the members, and they began their functions at one on the morning of the 19th. The chiefs of the various military departments were summoned to deliver ♦Condition of the besieged.♦ their opinions. The general of cavalry represented, that there remained only sixty-two horses, and those weak and unserviceable, the rest having died of hunger. From a statement of the infantry it appeared that there were only 2822 men fit for service. Ammunition was nearly exhausted; there was none but what was manufactured in the Inquisition, and that would be destroyed if a shell should fall there. The commandant of engineers reported that the fortifications were demolished, there were neither men nor materials for repairing them, and all the cloth which could serve for bags of earth had been consumed. All the officers who had thus been consulted gave their opinion that the place ought to be surrendered, and that the Junta would be responsible to God and the King for the lives which every hour were sacrificed, if they persisted in resistance, now that it was become manifestly impossible to save the city. Having heard this melancholy representation, the Junta required General San Marc, who was one of their members, to express his judgement; the eminent talents and courage which he had displayed during the whole siege would render his opinion decisive both with them and the commander-in-chief and the people. He stated, that if the enemy made a general attack, which the preparations that were observed appeared to indicate, the loss of the city was inevitable, and would be followed by every imaginable horror. It was known with what fury the French treated every place which they conquered, and their rage would be greater here, on account of the hatred which they and their general and their bloody Emperor bore towards a city that had once put them to such shame, and now cost them so dearly. If the attacks were partial, such as those which were repeatedly made every day, they might hold out two days longer, or possibly four, provided men could be found for defence and for the works; longer than four days it was not possible to maintain the contest: San Marc concluded by declaring, that unless there were well-founded expectations of speedy relief, it was unjustifiable ♦Ric, Sem. Patr. 215, 6.♦ to sacrifice the lives which in these days must be lost, the loss of the city in that short time being unavoidable.

Upon this the Junta proceeded to make inquiry what expectations of relief there were: for this purpose the Duke of Villahermosa was sent to Palafox; but Palafox was now so ill that he could give no account of any thing, for the fever had fixed upon his brain. His secretary was applied to for any letters and documents which might be in his possession: he delivered in two, both of which were dated long back. One was a letter from Francisco Palafox, saying, that after making the utmost exertions to collect troops, but in vain, he was then at Tortosa, assembling the peasantry with some soldiers from the garrisons on the coast, and that he designed to strengthen this force with some gun-boats that were to be sent up the Ebro. The other was a scrap of paper, written in enigmatical terms (for it had to pass through the enemy’s lines), and, as it was supposed, by the Conde de Montijo. It said, that the writer and the Duke del Infantado wished to come to the relief of Zaragoza, but the Central Junta had ordered that the Swiss should go, and that they were to fall upon Madrid. The Swiss was understood to mean General Reding; but he was so situated that no succour could be expected from him; for he was in Catalonia, and the enemy being masters of the suburbs, it was not possible for him now to cross the bridge. Moreover there could be no doubt, that other divisions of the French gave him full employment. These papers, therefore, only confirmed the Junta in their apprehensions that the French were victorious every where, and that in the ♦Ric, 216, 7.♦ general distress of the country they could expect no relief.

♦Flag of truce sent to the French.♦

While they were deliberating the bombardment was renewed. They knew that the city could not hold out; twenty-six members voted for a capitulation, eight, with Ric among them, that they should still continue their resistance, urging that there was a possibility of being succoured. Such was the high spirit of these brave men, that the opinion of the minority was followed: for they who had voted for surrendering had done so for the sake of others, ... for themselves, there was not one among them who would not rather have died than capitulated. They agreed to send a flag of truce to the enemy, requesting a suspension of hostilities for three days, that officers might in the meantime be sent to ascertain the situation of the Spanish armies, and according to the intelligence which might thus be obtained, they would then treat for a surrender. Lasnes, when he had summoned the city, had proposed this method himself, ... he now resented the proposal as an insult, and vented the most ferocious threats against the city, unless it were immediately delivered up. The flag was remanded with a second letter, reminding him that the proposal was originally his own: he did not vouchsafe to answer in any other manner than ♦Ric, 217, 8.♦ by a shower of bombs, and by ordering the attack to be renewed.

♦Last efforts of the besieged.♦

In the evening of that day the quarter of the Tanneries was lost, a part of the strand leading to the stone bridge, and the Puerto del Angel, a point of great importance. Four cannon in the battery of the wooden bridge were spiked, treacherously it was supposed, ... but there was no time for ascertaining this and punishing the traitors. The handful of men who remained were at their posts, manifesting their wonted resolution; but they were too few for the severe service to which they were exposed, and San Marc applied to Ric to reinforce with only 200 the points which were attacked, ... more he did not ask for, knowing the deplorable state of the city. Ric had already charged Don Miguel Marraco, a beneficed priest of the Church of the Pillar, whom the general had commissioned to organise the peasantry, to provide men for the works, ... he now sent him a note which would have excited him to new exertions had there been any remissness on his part. Don Mariano Cerazo, an honourable citizen, who had distinguished himself by his zeal and his influence with the people, was called upon in like manner; and certain priests also, who had united for the purpose of training and encouraging the peasantry, were requested in this emergency to furnish men. These measures, before the pestilence had so widely extended itself, would in a quarter of an hour have produced a thousand armed men. Ric ordered also the alarm to be beaten in the New Tower, and taking advantage of a favourable moment, when the enemy were driven back by the bayonet from the Convent del Sepulcro, he sent the public crier through the streets to proclaim this success, and summon the people by sound of trumpet to complete the victory. But disease had subdued them; of the surviving population, the few who were not suffering under the disorder were attending their sick or dying friends, and neither hope nor despair could call them out, ... hope, indeed, they had none, and the dreadful duty in which they were engaged rendered them insensible to all evils but those before their eyes. San Marc was joined by only seventeen men; ill tidings came upon him from every quarter; one commander complained that he was cut off at his station, another that he was on the point of being so, a third that he was undermined, ... from every quarter they called for troops and ♦Ric, 218, 9.♦ labourers and ammunition, at a time when all were wanting.

♦D. P. Maria Ric goes out to treat with M. Lasnes.♦

Thus situated, the Junta ordered the almoners of the different parishes to inform their parishioners of the state of the city, and report the opinion which they should form in consequence. Two-thirds of the city had been destroyed; thirty thousand of the inhabitants had perished, and from three to four hundred persons were daily dying of the pestilence. Under such circumstances the Junta protested that they had fulfilled their oath of fidelity, for Zaragoza was destroyed; and they dispatched a flag of truce to the French commander, requesting a suspension of hostilities for four-and-twenty hours, that they might in that time negotiate for a capitulation. A French officer came with the reply, requiring the Junta to wait upon Marshal Lasnes within two hours, and declaring that after that time was expired he would not listen to any terms. Ric instantly summoned the Junta, and as they could not all be immediately collected, he proceeded with some of them toward Marshal Lasnes, leaving some to acquaint the others with the result of the flag of truce, and to act as circumstances might require. They took a trumpeter with them to announce a parley, because the firing was still continued on both sides; but, notwithstanding this, the Spanish deputies were fired at from one of the enemy’s batteries. Ric protested against this violation of the laws of war, and refused to proceed till he was assured that it should not be repeated. An aide-de-camp of the French general had just before arrived, with instructions that the Junta should repair to the Casa Blanca, not to the suburbs, as had been first appointed; this officer went for an escort of infantry, and conducted Ric and his colleagues to the general’s presence. Lasnes received them with an insolent indifference, while his despite for the brave resistance which he had found betrayed itself in marks of affected contempt. He took some turns about the room, then addressing himself to Ric, began to inveigh against the Zaragozans for not believing him when he said that resistance was in vain, ... for which, he said, they deserved little consideration from his hands. He reproached the Junta also. Ric interrupted him. The Junta, he said, had commenced their sittings on the yesterday, and therefore could not be responsible for any thing before that time. The Marshal himself must feel, that if they had surrendered without having ascertained the absolute necessity of surrendering, they would have failed in their duty. When they were informed of the actual state of affairs, they had considered of a capitulation, and addressed a letter, proposing measures which he himself had suggested in the summons to which he now alluded. This had offended him, and he did not condescend to notice their second letter in explanation of the first. They had then dispatched a third flag, requesting a suspension of four-and-twenty hours, because they were accountable to the people, and that time was necessary for ascertaining the public will. Zaragoza, which had so nobly distinguished itself by the manner of its resistance, must also distinguish itself in the manner of capitulating, when capitulation was become inevitable. “Acting upon these principles,” said Ric, “it is my duty to declare that I bring neither powers nor instructions, neither do I know the will of the people; but I believe they ♦Ric, 229–231.♦ will accept a capitulation, provided it be reasonable, and becoming the heroism with which Zaragoza has defended itself.”

♦Capitulation.♦

The manner and the manliness of this declaration were not lost even upon Lasnes: in spite of himself he felt the superiority of the men who stood before him, and, abstaining from farther insults, he said, that the women and children should be safe, and that the negotiation was concluded. Ric replied, it was not yet begun; for this would be surrendering at discretion, and Zaragoza had no such thought. If the Marshal insisted upon this, he might renew his attacks on the city, “And I and my companions,” said the noble Aragoneze, “will return there, and continue to defend ourselves; we have yet arms and ammunition, and daggers: war is never without its chances; and if we are driven to despair, it yet remains to be seen who are to be victorious.” This answer did not appear to irritate the French general; he knew, indeed, that though farther resistance could not possibly save Zaragoza, every inch which he had to win must be dearly purchased, and, for the honour of France, the sooner the siege was concluded the better; ... it had already lasted too long. There was another reason, too, why he did not refuse to grant terms, ... it would be in his power to break them. He called for his secretary, and dictated the preamble of the capitulation and some of the articles. The first stipulated that the garrison should surrender prisoners. Ric proposed that they should march out, as became them, with the honours of war; Lasnes would not consent to make any alteration in the words of the article, but he promised that those honours should be allowed them, and that the officers should retain their baggage, and the men their knapsacks. Ric then required that Palafox might be at liberty to go whithersoever he pleased, with all his staff. It was replied, that an individual could never be the subject of capitulation; but Marshal Lasnes pledged his word of honour that Palafox should go to any place he pleased; and he specified Mallen or Toledo. Those places, Ric replied, would not suit him, because they were occupied by French troops, and it was understood that he thought of going to Majorca. Lasnes then gave his word of honour that he might go to any place which he thought best. It was demanded that all persons, not included in the garrison, who wished to leave Zaragoza, in order to avoid the contagion, should be allowed passports. Lasnes replied, all who wished it might go out, ... he pledged his word to this; ♦Ric, 231, 2.♦ but it was not necessary, he said, to insert an article upon this head, and he was desirous of terminating the capitulation.

♦Farther conditions asked, and refused.♦

While copies of the capitulation were drawing out, the French general produced a plan of the city, and laid his finger upon the part which was that night to have been blown up, telling Ric that 44,000 lbs. of powder were already lodged for the explosion, and that this would have been followed by a cannonade from seventy pieces of artillery, and a bombardment from thirty mortars, which they were at that time mounting in the suburbs. The duplicates being signed, Ric and his companions returned to lay the terms before the other members of the Junta; and they, who had ascertained the opinion of their fellow-citizens, accepted, ratified, and signed the act. Some farther stipulations, however, they still thought desirable; they wished it to be stated in the articles, that the garrison were to march out with the honours of war; for, as only the written capitulation would appear in the gazettes, if this were not expressed it would not be understood. They required also, that the peasants who had been formed into temporary corps should not be prisoners of war, urging, that they ought not to be considered as regular soldiers, and representing the injury which it would be to agriculture if they were marched away. And at the petition of the clergy, they requested that an article might be added, securing to them the punctual payment of their revenues from the funds assigned by the government for that purpose. With these proposals Ric returned to Marshal Lasnes; the two former were in every respect unexceptionable; the last was the only one upon which any demur might have been looked for. The French commander, however, broke into a fit of rage, snatched the paper out of Ric’s hand, and threw it into the fire. One of his generals, sensible of the indecency of this ♦Ric, 232–4.♦ conduct, rescued it from the flames; and Ric, unable to obtain more, received a ratified copy of the capitulation, and returned to the city.

The French, by their own account, threw above 17,000 bombs during the siege, and expended near an hundred and sixty thousand weight of powder. More than 30,000 men, and 500 officers, the flower of the Spanish armies, lay buried beneath the ruins of Zaragoza; and this is far from the amount of lives which were sacrificed in this memorable and most virtuous defence, the number of women and children who perished by the bombardment, by the mines, by famine and pestilence, remaining untold. The loss of the besiegers was carefully concealed; it was sufficient to cripple their army; the Paris papers declared, that one part was to march against Lerida, another against Valencia, and neither of these movements could be effected.

♦Conduct of the French.♦

On the evening of the capitulation the French troops entered. They began immediately to pillage. General Laval was appointed governor. He ordered all the clergy of the city to go out and compliment Marshal Lasnes; ... the yoke was upon their necks; they went forth to appear at this ceremony, like prisoners in a Roman triumph, and as they went, the French soldiers were permitted to rob them of their apparel in the streets. Laval, when complaint was made to him of such outrages, observed, that his troops had to indemnify themselves for the plunder which they looked upon as certain, and which ♦Ric, 235.♦ they would have had in another day, if the capitulation had not disappointed them.

♦Treatment of the prisoners.♦

When the French entered the city six thousand bodies were lying in the streets and trenches, or piled up in heaps before the churches. The people, still unsubdued in spirit, were with difficulty restrained from declaring that the capitulation was concluded without their consent, and rushing upon the invaders with the determination of taking vengeance and dying in the act. The armed peasants, instead of delivering up the weapons which they were no longer permitted to use, broke them in pieces with generous indignation. General O’Neille died before the surrender; St. Marc was one of the many hundreds whom the pestilence carried off within a few days after it. P. Basilio escaped from the danger of the war and of the contagion. He was a man of exemplary life and great attainments; and having been tutor to Palafox, and fought by his side in both sieges, remained now at his bedside, to wait upon him in his illness, and administer, if need should be, the last offices of religion to his heroic and beloved pupil. There the French found him, as they had ever found him during the siege, at the post of duty; and they put him to death for having served his country with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his strength. P. Santiago Sass suffered a like martyrdom. The officers received orders to come out of the city, on pain of being shot if they remained ♦Feb. 22.♦ there after four-and-twenty hours. Immediately upon forming without the town for their march, they were, in contempt of the capitulation, plundered of every thing, stripped of the devices of their different ranks, and pushed in among the common soldiers as leaders of insurgents. It was affirmed in the French bulletin that 17,000 men laid down their arms: there were not more than four-and-twenty hundred capable of bearing them; the rest were in the hospitals, and this, with five-and-twenty hundred taken in the suburbs and during the siege, was the number which was marched off for France. Two hundred and seventy of these men, who from fatigue and weakness could not keep up the pace which their ferocious guard required, were butchered and left on the road, where their companions in the next division might march over their bodies. Augustina Zaragoza was among the prisoners. She had distinguished herself in this siege as much as in the former. At the commencement she took her former station at the Portillo, by the same gun which she had served so well; “See, general,” said she, with a cheerful countenance, pointing to the gun when Palafox visited that quarter, “I am again with my old friend.” Her husband was severely wounded, and she pointed the cannon at the enemy, while he lay bleeding among his companions by her side. Frequently she was at the head of an assaulting party, sword or knife in hand, with her cloak wrapt round her, cheering the soldiers, and encouraging them by her example; constantly exposed as she was, she escaped without a wound: yet once she was thrown into a ditch, and nearly suffocated by the dead and dying who covered her. At the close of the siege she was too well known by the French to escape notice, and they made her prisoner. Fortunately, as it proved, she had at that time taken the contagion, and was removed to the hospital, where, as she was supposed to be dying, little care was taken to secure her. Feeling herself better, she availed herself of this, and effected her escape. Another heroine, whose name was Manuella Sanchez, was shot through the heart. Donna Benita, a lady of distinction, who headed one of the female corps which had been formed to carry provisions, bear away the wounded, and fight in the streets, escaped the hourly dangers to which she exposed herself, only to die of grief upon hearing that her daughter had been killed. During the siege six hundred women and children perished, not by the bombardment and the mines, but in action, by the sword, or bayonet or bullet.

♦Treatment of Palafox.♦

Marshal Lasnes had pledged his word of honour that Palafox should be at liberty to go wherever he would, as soon as he should be able to travel; in contempt of that pledge, he was immediately made prisoner, surrounded entirely by French, and left even in want of necessary food. Ric, who was ever ready to exert himself when any duty was to be performed, remonstrated against this treatment both verbally and in writing. He could obtain little immediate ♦He is compelled by threats of death to sign orders for delivering up other fortresses.♦ relief, and no redress. Arrangements were concerted for his escape, and so well laid, that there would have been every prospect of success, if he had been sufficiently recovered to make the attempt. They were not, however, altogether fruitless; for M. Lasnes having extorted from him, by threats of immediate death if he refused, orders to the governors of Jaca, Benasque, Monzon, and Mequinenza, to deliver up those places to the French, he found means to advise his brother, the Marques de Lazan, of the iniquitous proceeding, and to direct that no obedience should be given to orders so obtained. Unfortunately Jaca and Monzon had been entrusted to commanders who waited only for an opportunity of betraying their charge, and they opened the gates to the enemy. Before Palafox had recovered he was hurried away into France, a country from which and to which, while it was under the iron yoke of Buonaparte, no prisoner returned. On the way he was treated with insolence and barbarity, and robbed even to his very shirt. Buonaparte, who, feeling no virtue in himself, acknowledged none in others, had already reproached him as a coward and a runaway in the field; he now, with contradictory calumny, reviled him for having defended Zaragoza against the will of the inhabitants. “The people,” it was said in the French papers, “held him in such abhorrence, that it was necessary to station a guard before his door, for otherwise he would have been stoned. An idea of the detestation in which he and the monks of his party were held could only be formed by remembering the hatred with which those men were regarded in France, who governed by terror and the guillotine.” Yet while they thus asserted at one time that Palafox defended the city against the will of the people, at another they affirmed that the Spanish troops would have surrendered long before, being perfectly sensible that resistance was unavailing after the French had entered the city, but it did not depend upon them, ... they were obliged to submit to the wills of the meanest of the inhabitants. Any one who should have expressed a wish to capitulate would have been punished with death: such a thought could not be uttered till two-thirds of the city were lying in ruins, and 20,000 of its defenders destroyed by disease.... No higher eulogy could be pronounced upon Zaragoza than was comprised in the very calumnies of its unworthy conqueror.

♦Demands of the French.♦

Before the main body of the French made their entry they demanded of Ric 50,000 pair of shoes, 8000 pair of boots, and 1200 shirts, with medicines and every requisite for an hospital. Several of the officers demanded for themselves double equipage and linen, curtains, pens, paper, and whatever they wanted, insisting that plenty of every thing should be supplied them, and the best of its kind, at the expense of the city. A service of china was required for Junot; and this merciless oppressor, who had escaped the proper punishment of his crimes in Portugal, insisted that a tennis-court should be fitted up for his amusement, in a city of which two-thirds were then lying in ruins, beneath which so large a proportion of the inhabitants lay buried! Ric resisted demands which it was impossible for the city to supply. The French generals, provoked at his refusal to engage for the maintenance of their household, threatened to send in a squadron of hussars. He replied, that well they might, since the gates of the city were demolished and in their power, but that from that moment they would not advance a foot of ground till they had moistened it with French blood. Another member of the Junta, who had less courage, undertook that these ruffians should be satisfied as far as was possible. Ric, who was too true a Spaniard to live under the government of the Intruder, ♦Ric, 245–9.♦ renounced the high office which he held, and, not being considered a prisoner, obtained his liberty.

♦Lasnes makes his entrance.♦

Lasnes made his entrance on Sunday the 5th of March; his approach was announced by the discharge of 200 cannon, and he proceeded in triumph through that part of the city which remained standing, to the Church of the Pillar. The wretched inhabitants had been compelled to adorn the streets with such hangings as could be found, and to witness the pomp of festive triumph, and hear the sounds of joy and exultation. ♦Baseness of the suffragan bishop.♦ The suffragan bishop of the diocese, a traitor who had fled from the town when it took arms, and now returned thither to act as the instrument of the oppressors, met Lasnes at the great door of the church, and conducted him in procession, with the crucifix and the banner, to a throne prepared before the altar, and near the famous idol, which had escaped destruction. Then the wretch addressed a sermon to his countrymen upon the horrors of war! “They had seen,” he said, “in their unhappy city, the streets and market-places strewn with dead, parents expiring and leaving their children helpless and unprotected, babes sucking at the dry breast of the famished mother, palaces in ruins, houses in flames, dead bodies heaped at the doors of the churches, and hurried into common graves without any religious ceremony. And what had been the cause of all this ruin? I repeat it,” said the villanous time-server, “I shall always repeat it, your sins and your seditious spirit, your forgetfulness of the principles of the gospel. These horrors have ceased: and to whom are you indebted for this unexpected happiness? To God in the first place, who raises and destroys monarchies according to his will; after God, to the Virgin of the Pillar, who interceded for us; and in the next place to the generous heart of the great Napoleon, the man who is the messenger of God upon earth to execute his divine decrees, and who is sent to punish us for our sins. Nothing can equal his power except his clemency and his goodness! He has granted us the inestimable favour of peace; oh that, at the expense of my tears and my blood, I could render it eternal! It is fitting, O my God, that for this great and unexpected mercy, this signal mercy, we should all exclaim, Te Deum Laudamus! We praise thee, O God!” Such were the blasphemies which this hoary traitor uttered over the ruins of his heroic city! It is not possible to record them without feeling a wish, that some one of the noble-hearted Zaragozans, who at that hour of bitterness were wishing themselves in the grave, had smitten him upon the spot in the name of his religion and his country.

♦Language of the French.♦

The oath of obedience and allegiance was then administered to those persons who either retained or accepted office under the Intruder’s government. A superb entertainment followed, at which Lasnes and his chief officers sate down to a table of four hundred covers, and at every health which was drunk to the family of Buonaparte the cannons were discharged. The transactions of the day furnished a fine topic for the journalists at Paris. “All the people,” they said, “manifested their joy at so sudden and happy a change in acclamations of ‘long live the Emperor!’ they were edified by the behaviour of their conquerors during the religious ceremony; that ceremony had melted the most obdurate hearts, the hatred of the French was eradicated from all breasts, and Aragon would soon become one of the most submissive provinces in Spain!” At the time when these falsehoods were circulated in France, Junot issued a proclamation, declaring, that every Aragoneze found in arms should be punished with death. Upon this the Supreme Junta addressed an order to their generals, requiring them to apprise the French commanders to whom they might be opposed, that every Spaniard who was capable of carrying arms was a soldier, so their duty required them to be, and ♦Decree of the Central Junta.♦ such the Supreme Junta declared them: “This,” they said, “was not a war of armies against armies, as in other cases, but of an army against a whole nation, resisting the yoke which a tyrant and usurper sought to force upon them; every individual, therefore, of that nation was under the protection of the laws of war, and the general who should violate those laws was not a soldier, but a ruffian, who would provoke the indignation of Heaven, and the vengeance of man. The Junta well knew,” they said, “that the French, when they were victorious, ridiculed principles which the observance and respect of all nations had consecrated, and that they did this with an effrontery and insolence equal to the affectation with which they appealed to them when they were vanquished. The Spaniards were, however, in a condition to enforce that justice which they demanded. Three Frenchmen should suffer for every Spaniard, be he peasant or soldier, who might be put to death. Europe would hear with admiration as well as horror, that a magnanimous nation, which had begun its struggle by making 30,000 prisoners, was forced, in opposition to its natural character, to decimate those prisoners without distinction, from the first general to the meanest in the ranks. But it was the chiefs of their own nation who condemned these unfortunate wretches, and who, by imposing upon Spain the dreadful necessity of retaliation, signed the death of their own countrymen when they murdered a Spaniard.”

♦Address to the nation.♦

The Junta pronounced the funeral oration of Zaragoza, in an address to the people. “Spaniards,” said they, “the only boon which Zaragoza begged of our unfortunate monarch at Vittoria was, that she might be the first city to sacrifice herself in his defence. That sacrifice has been consummated. More than two months the murderous siege continued; almost all the houses were destroyed, those which were still standing had been undermined; provisions were nearly exhausted, ammunition all consumed; 16,000 sick were struggling with a mortal contagion, which every day hurried hundreds to the grave; the garrison was reduced to less than a sixth part; the general dying of the pestilence; O’Neille, the second in command, dead; St. Marc, upon whom the command then devolved, prostrated by the fever: so much was required, Spaniards, to make Zaragoza yield to the rigour of fate, and suffer herself to be occupied by the enemy. The surrender was made upon such terms as the French have granted to other towns, and those terms have been observed as usual by the perfidious enemy. Thus only were they able to take possession of those glorious precincts, filled only with demolished houses and temples, and peopled only with the dead and the dying; where every street, every ruin, every wall, every stone, seemed mutely to say to the beholder, Go, tell my king, that Zaragoza, faithful to her word, hath joyfully sacrificed herself to maintain her truth.

“A series of events, as mournful as they are notorious, frustrated all the efforts which were made to relieve the city; but the imagination of all good men accompanied her defenders in their dangers, was agitated with them in their battles, sympathised in their privations and efforts, and followed them through all the dreadful vicissitudes of their fortune; and when strength failed them at last through a continued resistance, which they had prolonged almost beyond belief, in the first moment of grief it seemed as if the light of liberty had been at once extinguished, and the column of independence overthrown. But, Spaniards, Zaragoza still survives for imitation and example! still survives in the public spirit which, from her heroic exertions, is for ever imbibing lessons of courage and of constancy. For where is the Spaniard, priding himself upon that name, who would be less than the Zaragozans, and not seal the liberty of his country, which he has proclaimed, and the faith to his king, which he has promised, at the cost of the same perils and the same labours? Let the base, the selfish, and the cowardly be dismayed by them; not the other towns of Aragon, who are ready to imitate and to recover their capital; not the firm and faithful patriots, who see in that illustrious city a model to imitate, vengeance to be exacted, and the only path of conquest. Forty thousand Frenchmen, who have perished before the mud walls of Zaragoza, cause France to mourn the barren and ephemeral triumph which she has obtained, and evince to Spain, that three cities of equal resolution will save their country, and baffle the tyrant. Valour springs from valour; and when the unhappy who have suffered, and the victims who have died there, shall learn that their fellow-citizens, following them in the paths of glory, have surpassed them in fortune, they will bless their destiny, however rigorous it has been, and rejoice in the contemplation of our triumphs.

“Time passes away, and days will come when these dreadful convulsions, with which the genius of iniquity is now afflicting the earth, will have subsided. The friends of virtue and patriotism will come to the banks of the Ebro to visit those majestic ruins, and beholding them with admiration and with envy, Here, they will say, stood that city which in modern ages realised, or, more truly, surpassed those ancient prodigies of devotement and constancy, which are scarcely credited in history! Without a regiment, without other defence than a weak wall, without other resources than its courage, it first dared to provoke the fury of the tyrant: twice it withstood the force of his victorious legions. The subjection of this open and defenceless town cost France more blood, more tears, more slaughter, than the conquest of whole kingdoms: nor was it French valour that subdued it; a deadly and general pestilence prostrated the strength of its defenders, and the enemy, when they entered, triumphed over a few sick and dying men, but they did not subdue citizens, nor conquer soldiers.”

♦Honours decreed to the inhabitants.♦

This address was followed by a decree, declaring “that Zaragoza, its inhabitants, and garrison, had deserved well of their country, in an eminent and heroic degree: That whenever Palafox should be restored to liberty, to effect which no efforts on the part of the government should be wanting, the Junta, in the name of the nation, would confer upon him that reward which might seem most worthy of his unconquerable constancy and ardent patriotism: That every officer employed in the siege should be promoted one step, and every private soldier enjoy the rank and the pay of serjeant: That all the defenders of Zaragoza, and its inhabitants, and their heirs, should enjoy personal nobility: That pensions, conformable to their rank and circumstances, should be granted to the widows and orphans of all who had perished there: That the having been within the walls during the siege should be considered as a claim in future pretensions: That Zaragoza should be exempt from all contributions for ten years, from the time when peace should be established; and that at that time the rebuilding of the public edifices, with all possible magnificence, should be begun at the expense of the state, and a monument erected in the great square of the city, in perpetual memory of the valour of the inhabitants and their glorious defence: That in all the cities of the kingdom an inscription should forthwith be set up, relating the most heroic circumstances of the two sieges, and a medal be struck in its honour, as a testimony of national gratitude. Finally, the Junta promised the same honours and privileges to every city which should resist a like siege with like constancy, and proposed rewards for the best poem and best discourse upon this memorable event; the object being not only to hold up the virtues of the Zaragozans to the present generation and to posterity, but to inflame the hearts of the Spaniards with the same ardent patriotism, the same love of freedom, and the same abhorrence of tyranny.”

♦Falsehoods of the French government.♦

The capitulation was published by the Intruder’s ministers in the Madrid gazette, and inserted in a French journal printed in the same capital. That journal was suppressed by order of Buonaparte as soon as he was informed of this; and it was stated in his bulletin that Lasnes would allow no capitulation, and had only published certain provisions as his4 pleasure; and that the French possessed themselves of the whole town by force. Had the facts been thus, it would not have derogated in the slightest degree from the heroism of a people who had discharged their duty to the uttermost. But the falsehood is worthy of notice, not only as showing Napoleon Buonaparte’s systematic disregard of truth, but as exemplifying also that want of generosity which peculiarly characterized him, and made him incapable of doing justice in any one instance to the principles, virtues, talents, or even courage, of those by whom he was opposed.