The Siege Of Saragossa
On the banks of the Ebro, in northwestern Spain, stands the ancient city
of Saragossa, formerly the capital of Aragon, and a place of fame since
early Roman days. A noble bridge of seven arches, built nearly five
centuries ago, crosses the stream, and a wealth of towers and spires gives
the city an imposing appearance. This city is famous for its sieges, of
which a celebrated one took place in the twelfth century, when the
/>
Christians held it in siege for five years, ending in 1118. In the end the
Moors were forced to surrender, or such of them as survived, for a great
part of them had died of hunger. In modern times it gained new and high
honor from its celebrated resistance to the French in 1808. It is this
siege with which we are concerned, one almost without parallel in history.
We have told in the preceding tale how Charles IV. of Spain was forced to
yield the throne to his son Ferdinand, who was proclaimed king March 20,
1808. This act by no means agreed with the views of Napoleon, who had
plans of his own for Spain, and who sought to end the difficulty by
deposing the Bourbon royal family and placing his own brother, Joseph
Bonaparte, on the throne.
The imperious emperor of the French had, however, the people as well as
the rulers of Spain to deal with. The news of his arbitrary action was
received throughout the Peninsula with intense indignation, and suddenly
the land blazed into insurrection, and the French garrisons, which had
been treacherously introduced into Spain, found themselves besieged.
Everywhere the peasants seized arms and took to the field, and a fierce
guerilla warfare began which the French found it no easy matter to
overcome. At Baylen, a town of Andalusia, which was besieged by the
insurgents, the French suffered a serious defeat, an army of eighteen
thousand men being forced to surrender as prisoners of war. This was the
only important success of the Spanish, but they courageously resisted
their foes, and at Saragossa gained an honor unsurpassed in the history of
Spain. Never had there been known such a siege and such a defence.
Saragossa was attacked by General Lefebre on June 15, 1808. Thinking that
a city protected only by a low brick wall, with peasants and townsmen for
its defenders, and few guns in condition for service, could be carried at
first assault, the French general made a vigorous attack, but found
himself driven back. He had but four or five thousand men, while the town
had fifty thousand inhabitants, the commander of the garrison being Joseph
Palafox, a man of indomitable spirit.
Lefebre, perceiving that he had been over-confident, now encamped and
awaited reinforcements, which arrived on the 29th, increasing his force to
twelve thousand men. He was recalled for service elsewhere, General
Verdier being left in command, and during the succeeding two months the
siege was vigorously prosecuted, the French being supplied with a large
siege train, with which they hotly bombarded the city.
Weak as were the walls of Saragossa, interiorly it was remarkably well
adapted for defence. The houses were strongly built, of incombustible
material, they being usually of two stories, each story vaulted and
practically fireproof. Every house had its garrison, and the massive
convents which rose like castles within the circuit of the wall were
filled with armed men. Usually when the walls of a city are taken the city
falls; but this was by no means the case with Saragossa. The loss of its
walls was but the beginning, not the end, of its defence. Each convent,
each house, formed a separate fortress. The walls were loop-holed for
musketry, ramparts were constructed of sand-bags, and beams were raised
endwise against the houses to afford shelter from shells.
It was not until August that the French, now fifteen thousand strong, were
able to force their way into the city. But to enter the city was not to
capture it. They had to fight their way from street to street and from
house to house. At length the assailants penetrated to the Cosso, a public
walk formed on the line of the old Moorish ramparts, but here their
advance was checked, the citizens defending themselves with the most
desperate and unyielding energy.
The singular feature of this defence was that the women of Saragossa took
as active a part in it as the men. The Countess Burita, a beautiful young
woman of intrepid spirit, took the lead in forming her fellow-women into
companies, at whose head were ladies of the highest rank. These,
undeterred by the hottest fire and freely braving wounds and death,
carried provisions to the combatants, removed the wounded to the
hospitals, and were everywhere active in deeds of mercy and daring. One of
them, a young woman of low rank but intrepid soul, gained world-wide
celebrity by an act of unusual courage and presence of mind.
While engaged one day in her regular duty, that of carrying meat and wine
to the defenders of a battery, she found it deserted and the guns
abandoned. The French fire had proved so murderous that the men had shrunk
back in mortal dread. Snatching a match from the hand of a dead
artillery-man, the brave girl fired his gun, and vowed that she would
never leave it while a Frenchman remained in Saragossa. Her daring shamed
the men, who returned to their guns, but, as the story goes, the brave
girl kept her vow, working the gun she had chosen until she had the joy to
see the French in full retreat. This took place on the 14th of August,
when the populace, expecting nothing but to die amid the ruins of their
houses, beheld with delight the enemy in full retreat. The obstinate
resistance of the people and reverses to the arms of France elsewhere had
forced them to raise the siege.
The deeds of the "Maid of Saragossa" have been celebrated in poetry by
Byron and Southey and in art by Wilkie, and she stands high on the roll of
heroic women, being given, as some declare, a more elevated position than
her exploit deserved.
Saragossa, however, was only reprieved, not abandoned. The French found
themselves too busily occupied elsewhere to attend to this centre of
Spanish valor until months had passed. At length, after the defeat and
retreat of Sir John Moore and the English allies of Spain, a powerful
army, thirty-five thousand strong, returned to the city on the Ebro, with
a battering train of sixty guns.
Palafox remained in command in the city, which was now much more strongly
fortified and better prepared for defence. The garrison was
super-abundant. From the field of battle at Tudela, where the Spaniards
had suffered a severe defeat, a stream of soldiers fled to Saragossa,
bringing with them wagons and military stores in abundance. As the
fugitives passed, the villagers along the road, moved by terror, joined
them, and into the gates of the city poured a flood of soldiers,
camp-followers, and peasants, until it was thronged with human beings.
Last of all came the French, reaching the city on the 20th of December,
and resuming their interrupted siege. And now Saragossa, though destined
to fall, was to cover itself with undying glory.
The townsmen, giving up every thought of personal property, devoted all
their goods, their houses, and their persons to the war, mingling with the
soldiers and the peasants to form one great garrison for the fortress into
which the whole city was transformed. In all quarters of the city massive
churches and convents rose like citadels, the various large streets
running into the broad avenue called the Cosso, and dividing the city into
a number of districts, each with its large and massive structures, well
capable of defence.
Not only these thick-walled buildings, but all the houses, were converted
into forts, the doors and windows being built up, the fronts loop-holed,
and openings for communication broken through the party-walls; while the
streets were defended by trenches and earthen ramparts mounted with
cannon. Never before was there such an instance of a whole city converted
into a fortress, the thickness of the ramparts being here practically
measured by the whole width of the city.
Saragossa had been a royal depot for saltpetre, and powder-mills near by
had taught many of its people the process of manufacture, so no magazines
of powder subject to explosion were provided, this indispensable substance
being made as it was needed. Outside the walls the trees were cut down and
the houses demolished, so that they might not shield the enemy; the public
magazines contained six months' provisions, the convents and houses were
well stocked, and every preparation was made for a long siege and a
vigorous defence.
Again, as before, companies of women were enrolled to attend the wounded
in the hospitals and carry food and ammunition to the men, the Countess
Burita being once more their commander, and performing her important duty
with a heroism and high intelligence worthy of the utmost praise. Not less
than fifty thousand combatants within the walls faced the thirty-five
thousand French soldiers without, who had before them the gigantic task of
overcoming a city in which every dwelling was a fort and every family a
garrison.
A month and more passed before the walls were taken. Steadily the French
guns played on these defences, breach after breach was made, a number of
the encircling convents were entered and held, and by the 1st of February
the walls and outer strongholds of the city were lost. Ordinarily, under
such circumstances, the city would have fallen, but here the work of the
assailants had but fairly begun. The inner defences--the houses with their
unyielding garrisons--stood intact, and a terrible task still faced the
French.
The war was now in the city streets, the houses nearest the posts held by
the enemy were crowded with defenders, in every quarter the alarm-bells
called the citizens to their duty, new barricades rose in the streets,
mines were sunk in the open spaces, and the internal passages from house
to house were increased until the whole city formed a vast labyrinth,
throughout which the defenders could move under cover.
Marshall Lannes, the French commander, viewed with dread and doubt the
scene before him. Untrained in the art of war as were the bulk of the
defenders, courage and passionate patriotism made up for all deficiencies.
Men like these, heedless of death in their determined defence, were
dangerous to meet in open battle, and the prudent Frenchman resolved to
employ the slow but surer process of excavating a passage and fighting his
way through house after house until the city should be taken piecemeal.
Mining through the houses was not sufficient. The greater streets divided
the city into a number of small districts, the group of dwellings in each
of which forming a separate stronghold. To cross these streets it was
necessary to construct underground galleries, or build traverses, since a
Spanish battery raked each street, and each house had to be fought for and
taken separately.
While the Spaniards held the convents and churches the capture of the
houses by the French was of little service to them, the defenders making
sudden and successful sallies from these strong buildings, and
countermining their enemies, their numbers and perseverance often
frustrating the superior skill of the French. The latter, therefore,
directed their attacks upon these buildings, mining and destroying many of
them. On the other hand, the defenders saturated with rosin and pitch the
timbers of the buildings they could no longer hold, and interposed a
barrier of fire between themselves and their assailants which often
delayed them for several days.
Step by step, inch by inch, the French made their way forward, complete
destruction alone enabling them to advance. The fighting was incessant.
The explosion of mines, the crash of falling buildings, the roar of cannon
and musketry, the shouts of the combatants continually filled the air,
while a cloud of smoke and dust hung constantly over the city as the
terrible scene of warfare continued day after day.
By the 17th of February the Cosso was reached and passed. But the French
soldiers had become deeply discouraged by their fifty days of unremitting
labor and battle, fighting above and beneath the earth, facing an enemy as
bold as themselves and much more numerous, and with half the city still to
be conquered. Only the obstinate determination of Marshal Lannes kept them
to their work.
By his orders a general assault was made on the 18th. Under the
university, a large building in the Cosso, mines containing three thousand
pounds of powder were exploded, the walls falling with a terrific crash.
Meanwhile, fifty pieces of artillery were playing on the side of the Ebro,
where the great convent of St. Lazar was breached and taken, two thousand
men being here cut off from the city. On the 19th other mines were
exploded, and on the 20th six great mines under the Cosso, loaded with
thousands of pounds of powder, whose explosion would have caused immense
destruction, were ready for the match, when an offer to surrender brought
the terrible struggle to an end.
The case had become one of surrender or death. The bombardment, incessant
since the 10th of January, had forced the women and children into the
vaults, which were abundant in Saragossa. There the closeness of the air,
the constant burning of oil, and the general unsanitary conditions had
given rise to a pestilence which threatened to carry off all the
inhabitants of the city. Such was the state of the atmosphere that slight
wounds became fatal, and many of the defenders of the barricades were fit
only for the hospitals. By the 1st of February the death-rate had become
enormous. The daily deaths numbered nearly five hundred, and thousands of
corpses, which it was impossible to bury, lay in the streets and houses,
and in heaps at the doors of the churches, infecting the air with their
decay. The French held the suburbs, most of the wall, and one-fourth of
the houses, while the bursting of thousands of shells and the explosion of
nearly fifty thousand pounds of gunpowder in mines had shaken the city to
its foundations. Of the hundred thousand people who had gathered within
its walls, more than fifty thousand were dead; thousands of others would
soon follow them to the grave; Palafox, their indomitable chief, was sick
unto death. Yet despite this there was a strong and energetic party who
wished to protract the siege, and the deputies appointed to arrange terms
of surrender were in peril of their lives.
The terms granted were that the garrison should march out with the honors
of war, to be taken as prisoners to France; the peasants should be sent to
their homes; the rights of property and exercise of religion should be
guaranteed.
Thus ended one of the most remarkable sieges on record,--remarkable alike
for the energy and persistence of the attack and the courage and obstinacy
of the defence. Never in all history has any other city stood out so long
after its walls had fallen. Rarely has any city been so adapted to a
protracted defence. Had not its houses been nearly incombustible it would
have been reduced to ashes by the bombardment. Had not its churches and
convents possessed the strength of forts it must have quickly yielded. Had
not the people been animated by an extraordinary enthusiasm, in which
women did the work of men, a host of peasants and citizens could not so
long have endured the terrors of assault on the one hand and of pestilence
on the other. In the words of General Napier, the historian of the
Peninsular War, "When the other events of the Spanish war shall be lost in
the obscurity of time, or only traced by disconnected fragments, the story
of Zaragoza, like some ancient triumphal pillar standing amidst ruins,
will tell a tale of past glory."