Oliver Hayes - The Sieges of Gerona (1808/09)

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Bretwalda Battles

The Peninsular War

The Sieges of Gerona (1808/9)

by

Oliver Hayes

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Published by Bretwalda Books

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First Published 2012

Copyright Bretwalda Books 2012

Oliver Hayes asserts his moral rights to be regarded as the author of this work.

ISBN 978-1-909099-33-3

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Contents

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The three sieges of Gerona (or Girona as it is sometimes spelled) were one of the key turning points in the Peninsular War. Until the French army arrived in front of Gerona they had defeated every Spanish force they met, though in fact many Spanish forces had avoided contact with the French preferring to pull back and bide their time to see how the political situation turned out.

There can be no doubt that the political picture was complex, shifting and uncertain. Most of the Spanish royal family was being held in polite captivity in France. A new King of Spain had been installed in Madrid, King Joseph who was brother to Napoleon the Emperor of the French. The central government bureaucracy was firmly in the hands of King Joseph. However, the Spanish state was rather less centralised than many other kingdoms and the regions had considerable power. Some of the regional juntas had accepted King Joseph, others had not. Of those that had rejected King Joseph and his orders, some were behaving as if they were independent states, some were claiming allegiance to the absent King Charles and a few had not made clear where they stood. It is no wonder that Spanish generals preferred to keep their armies in being and not risk them in combat until some sense could be sorted out.

Governor Julian de Bolibar in Gerona did not have the luxury of being able to wait and see. On 20 June 1808 a French army arrived at the gates of the city and demanded immediate entry. Bolibar chose to slam the gates in the faces of the French. It was a brave gesture, and had every expectation of being a fatal one for the forces ranged against him were strong and experienced. That he managed to drive them off was a startling victory.

The French were soon back to start a second siege and when that too failed they returned a third time. This time they did not go away, but settled down in large numbers to pound Gerona to rubble. Even so the Spanish refused to surrender. The heroic resistance of Gerona set Spain alight with passion. The sieges proved that the Spanish could defeat the French and that moreover nobody needed to wait for the politicians to sort things out to know where they stood.

France was the enemy of Spain. That was all anyone needed to know. The war had begun.

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The Peninsular War

The Madrid Uprising was the first serious bloodshed in what was to become the Peninsular War, the struggle that wracked the Iberian Peninsula from 1808 to 1814. That war was but one part of the wider Napoleonic Wars that engulfed Europe in a series of wars and campaigns that lasted almost 20 years and stretched from the Atlantic to Moscow and reached overseas to India, the Caribbean and the Near East. But although the Peninsular War was a part of the wider conflict, it had some unique characteristics that made it a peculiarly savage and hard-fought conflict.

In the earlier stages of the Napoleonic Wars, Spain had remained neutral or actively taken the side of France against the various coalitions that sought to crush Napoleon, the self-proclaimed Emperor of the French. Spain saw the opportunity to make gains for herself, while the French had no ambitions south of the Pyrenees. The situation began to change in 1807. Napoleon stood triumphant in Europe having defeated Prussia, Austria and Russia on the battlefield and having cowed the smaller states into submission. His only remaining enemy was Britain, and there he had a problem.

In 1805 Britain's Admiral Nelson had crushed the combined fleets of France and Spain at the Battle of Trafalgar. As a result, Napoleon had no chance of invading Britain with his magnificent army. Instead he sought to bring Britain to peace talks by crippling her trade. By blocking every European port to British merchant ships, Napoleon believed, he would do so much damage to British wealth that peace on his terms would be inevitable. Not all the European countries wanted to join such a blockade, but one by one they succumbed to Napoleon's threats and bluster. By October 1807 only Portugal still refused to join this Continental System, as it was known.

In November, Napoleon agreed a treaty with the Spanish Prime Minister, Manuel de Godoy - who was also the lover of the Spanish Queen Maria Louisa. In return for French troops being allowed to march through Spain to invade Portugal, the Spanish would get the Portuguese fleet and various overseas colonies, and as an added inducement Portugal would be divided into three minor states under Spanish domination.

The Portuguese did not wait about to be destroyed. Queen Maria I fled from Lisbon on 29 November along with her family, the Portuguese fleet, most of the merchant ships and thousands of soldiers. She moved to the Portuguese colony of Brazil where she set up court along with her son and regent John. John, later King John VI, appealed to Britain for help. John left orders in Portugal that there should be no resistance to the French in order to avoid bloodshed. The royal flight was, he said, only temporary and soon all would be right.

The embarkation of the Portuguese Royal Family at Lisbon. Queen Maria and the Regent John fled in the face of overwhelming French force and headed to Brazil from where they appealed to Britain for help.

Napoleon, meanwhile, had become more ambitious. Rather than merely close the Iberian ports to British trade, he now wanted to gain complete control of the Peninsula by merging Portugal into Spain and making his own brother, Joseph, King of Spain. His moves were made slowly. First larger numbers of French soldiers marched into Spain, claiming to be on their way to Portugal to occupy that country. In February Napoleon ordered his men in Spain to seize key Spanish fortresses and military bases using the pretext that they were needed to safeguard the supply lines to the French troops in Portugal.

King Charles IV of Spain began to grow alarmed as the numbers of French troops in Spain and Portugal passed the 100,000 mark, and an ominous 80% of them were in Spain. At the same time Spain was suffering an economic crisis, caused largely by the loss of trade to the American colonies that had followed the Battle of Trafalgar. The populace and many nobles blamed Godoy for the pro-French policy that was causing such poverty and hardship. He was already unpopular, and the French troops entering Spain made him even more so.

In the spring of 1808 Charles, Maria Louisa and Godoy were staying in the small palace at the town of Aranjuez. The trio held discussions about the deteriorating situation, and decided to follow the lead of the Portuguese royal family. Messages were sent to Cadiz ordering the Spanish fleet there to prepare to carry the royal family and court to the Spanish colony of Spain. Spain at this date was at peace with Britain, so the Royal Navy would not intervene, and might even help.

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