History of the war in the Peninsula and in the south of France from the year 1807 to the year 1814, vol. 4Napier, William Francis Patrick
History
History of the war in the Peninsula and in the south of France from the year 1807 to the year 1814, vol. 4
Napier, William Francis Patrick
Peninsular War, 1807-1814
General Martinez, after making many vain efforts to break the line of
blockade, and having used every edible substance, prepared, on the
16th of August, to make a final effort, in concert with Rovira who
came down to Llers. An officer deserting from the garrison betrayed
the project; and Rovira was beaten in the morning before the garrison
sallied, nevertheless, in the night Martinez endeavoured to cut his
way through the lines on the side of Rosas, but was driven back with
a loss of four hundred men. Three days after, the place was given up
and three thousand famished men were made prisoners. Thus ended the
fourth great effort of the Catalonians. The success of the French
was not without alloy, more than a fourth part of the blockading
troops had died of a pestilent distemper; Macdonald himself was too
ill to continue in the command, and the remainder of his army was
so weakened, that no further active operations could be undertaken;
Suchet was still occupied in Aragon, and Lacy thus obtained time and
means to reorganize troops for a fifth effort.
The persons who had betrayed the place to Rovira were shot by
Macdonald, and the commandant whose negligence had occasioned this
misfortune was condemned to death; but Napoleon, who has been so
foully misrepresented as a sanguinary tyrant, Napoleon, who had
commuted the sentence of Dupont, now pardoned general Guillot; a
clemency in both cases remarkable, seeing that the loss of an army by
one, and of a great fortress by the other, not only tended directly
and powerfully to the destruction of the emperor’s projects, but were
in themselves great crimes; and it is to be doubted if any other
sovereign in Europe would have displayed such a merciful greatness of
mind.
OBSERVATIONS.
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