Guerrilla Warfare Page 6

  By 1809 the Spanish regular armies had virtually ceased to exist and it was in that year that the guerrillas first appeared on the scene. Nominally, they were subject to the supervision of the central junta which had retreated from Madrid to Cadiz via Seville, and the various provincial juntas — in Castile, Asturias and elsewhere. But these bodies were often paralyzed by internal dissension, and they helped the guerrillas only in a small way, monetary for the most part. Since they were chased by the French from town to town, they could not act as an alternative government. The first major guerrilla bands appeared in Aragon and Galicia; in the beginning the insurgents were ill trained, shot poorly, kept unreliable watch and were given to panic. Only by trial and error did they learn caution, and also learn not to fight except in the most favorable conditions. Soon much of Castile and León was in their hands, which made it impossible for the government to collect taxes. Originally the French had stationed garrisons only in major cities such as Burgos, Valladolid, Segovia, Guadalajara, but the guerrilleros' activities compelled Suchet, the French commander, to leave some units in every town and major village. Thus, the French army was forced to spread its forces very thin on the ground. Every messenger had to be given a substantial escort and the smaller garrisons were by no means safe from attack. The central junta had called for a people's war (corso terrestre) in a decree published in Seville in April 1809, promising awards for special feats of heroism and support for windows and orphans of fallen soldiers. It called on the population to give food, supplies and information to the guerril-leros, who, however, had not waited for official appeals. There had already been attacks against French soldiers by isolated individuals who had hoped that others would follow their example and that as a result the country would be saved from the invaders.54 Gradually small bands of guerrilla fighters came into being, to increase in strength over the years. The most important were those headed by Espoz y Mina and the Empecinado.

  Espoz y Mina was born in a Navarrese village in 1781, "the son," in his own words, "of honest farmers of that province."55 He raised sheep and cattle, having taken charge of the family's farm after his father's death. "I lived in deepest peace," he wrote in his autobiography, until the convulsions of 1808 put an end to the rural idyll. He enlisted as a soldier in Doyle's batallion in February 1809 to fight the French and later joined a small guerrilla band which had been formed by his nephew Xavier, nicknamed "the Student." The younger Mina engaged in a number of daring actions, such as storming the town of Tafella, but was captured by the French in March 1810, whereupon the seven remaining insurgents elected Espoz their chief. Since, again as recorded by Mina, no one belonging to the rich classes appeared on the scene to hoist the banner of resistance, he rallied the patriotic elements, notably the youth. Among his first operations was an attack against a rival gang led by one Echeverria who had become the scourge of the villagers, robbing, plundering and in general making himself very unpopular. Though his own forces were inferior at the time — Mina had only four hundred men under his command — he attacked Echeverria and had him and three of his aides shot.

  In April 1810 Mina began his raids which were to harass the French for the next four years. One of his major accomplishments was to attract large sections of the French Ninth Corps to Navarre — about twenty-six thousand men according to his own account, eighteen thousand according to other sources — a force badly needed by Massena at the battle of Salamanca:

  Mina's lot during this period was no enviable one: he was beset on all sides by flying columns, and was often forced to bid his band disperse and lurk in small parties in the mountains, till the enemy should have passed on. Sometimes he was lurking, with seven companions only, in a cave or a gorge; at another he would be found with 3,000 men, attacking large convoys, or even surprising one of the blockhouses with which the French tried to cover his whole sphere of activity.56

  Mina was chased simultaneously by several French generals — Reille, Caffarrelli, d'Agoult and Dorsenne — with forces five or six times as strong as his own. In recognition of his services, the Regency made him commander in chief of the guerrilleros in Navarre. The French, on the other hand, were exceedingly frustrated by the tiring, costly and ultimately pointless marches through almost impassable territory; they burned villages and shot all captured guerrillas. Mina retaliated in kind, threatening to execute four French officers for every Spanish officer, and twenty French soldiers for each Spanish one. When the French shot four members of the Burgos provincial junta, the Curate Merino, another guerrilla commander, had eighty French soldiers shot. In October 1811, after the French governor in Pamplona executed several civilians, including some priests, for having helped Mina, Mina avowed "war to the death" to every French soldier and officer, including the French emperor.57 But in 1812 both sides, by mutual agreement, stopped this indiscriminate slaughter.

  The most important military action conducted by Mina took place in March-April 1812. About thirty thousand French troops were massed in pursuit of the guerrilla leader who at that time had some three to four thousand men under his command. Caffarrelli invaded the Pyrenean valley of Roneal where Mina's hospitals and supply depots were located. Mina escaped into Aragon, much to the chagrin of the French who were, however, consoled by the thought that even though he had again escaped, he would need many months to recover from the blow that had been inflicted on him. But a mere two weeks later Mina was back in action and scored one of his greatest successes, attacking and destroying a great convoy in the Pass of Salinas. Five thousand Polish soldiers were killed or wounded, four hundred and fifty Spanish prisoners were freed, and immense booty fell into the hands of the guerrilleros. Once again major French forces were sent out to capture this elusive man, whose boast was that he was never surprised, but who, on 23 April, found himself nevertheless encircled.58 Malcarado, one of his chief lieutenants, had betrayed his whereabouts to the French general Pannetier. For once the element of surprise was on the side of the French; five Hussars appeared on Mina's doorstep. His men were dispersed through the village of Robres; some had already been taken prisoner. Mina counterattacked with a few orderlies, rescued some of his officers and men, and, having escaped in a hazardous march to the Rioja, executed the traitor on the way. Like most guerrilleros, Mina was given to magnifying the extent and the importance of his exploits; it is unlikely, for instance, that the French, as he claimed, suffered forty thousand casualties in the battles against him, and that he took fourteen thousand prisoners (total French casualties in the Peninsular War from 1808 to 1814 were ninety thousand). But there is no doubt, as he maintains in his memoirs, that at a critical time for Wellington's army he distracted large sections of the French army of the north which, if employed elsewhere, might have been of decisive significance.

  Mina received two heavy siege guns in late 1812; they had been landed on the Biscay coast and were put to good use in the siege of Pamplona in February 1813. Mina proceeded to expel the French from Navarre. In late March of that year he all but destroyed two French batallions in open battle. A last effort to pursue and destroy his forces was made in May 1813 by General Clausel with the help of four French divisions. Mina countered with the stratagem used so often before when facing superior forces: he dispersed the units until his command, and the small detachments easily filtered through the enemy net. But Clausel also attacked Mina's chief supply base, gambling on the assumption that the guerrilla leader would not surrender his vital strongpoint without a fight. The gamble paid off in part; one thousand guerrillas were killed or captured in the battle that ensued and Mina had to escape posthaste to eastern Aragon. Once here, however, he rallied some of his scattered troops and enlisted fresh volunteers. During the following months, Mina's forces gradually became part of the new Spanish regular army; they were among the first units that entered France in pursuit of the French troops. In this last phase of fighting on Spanish soil, Mina no longer evaded battle as in his early guerrilla days. General Buquet wrote Berthier: "Mina's troops are now so
hardened that, when forces are equal, they accept battle quite gladly. He has now at least 7,000 men ready to give fight, including a cavalary of 1,000, which is not at all to be despised."59

  Next to Mina, the Empecinado (Juan Martin Diaz) was the most notorious guerrilla fighter of the Peninsular War, The forces serving under this Castilian peasant were smaller than Mina's, but his daring attacks harassed the French, gave fresh courage to his countrymen, and made him a legend in his own lifetime.60 Diaz was born in September 1775 in a village near Valladolid; his parents were peasants and he himself, in the words of his biographer, "acquired great bodily strength working in the fields." At the age of sixteen he ran away from home and joined the army, but his parents persuaded him to return. Later on he rejoined the army and, after serving for a while as a private, returned to his farm work and married. Then in March 1808 he cajoled two neighbors, one a lad of sixteen, into going along with him in a challenging enterprise; they intercepted first one, then another French courier, and killed them both. Several more acquaintances volunteered their services and a small guerrilla band was formed which became active southeast of Madrid. The Empecinado claims that his unit killed six hundred Frenchmen in the summer of 1808, well before Mina appeared on the scene; the figure is no doubt greatly exaggerated.

  In these early days the Empecinado gave no quarter to prisoners because there were no facilities for transporting and detaining them. Like other guerrilla leaders, he offered his men both daily pay and a share of the plunder, but he also claims that, when on one occasion early on in his guerrilla career he seized a great sum of money, the larger part of it was given to the junta. His contemporaries described him as a man little above middle stature, firmly knit and of muscular frame, with a dark complexion and black and animated eyes. He was calm but could react quickly when circumstances demanded it. Steadfast in adversity, he was, according to his friends, a modest man who sought no rewards for his activities.61

  The Empecinado was arrested by Spanish government forces in November 1808 following a denunciation. He broke his handcuffs and escaped from jail just as the French entered the village in which he was being held. Pretending to be a stableman, he waited on the French dragoons, picked one of their best horses and made off on it. His second guerrilla career began with small operations in the Madrid and Salamanca region carried out in collaboration with his three brothers, one of them only fifteen at the time. By the spring of 1809 his little band numbered forty-eight men and he received some money from General Moore to keep it going. The Empecinado (the name is derived from the black soil of his native region) attacked gendarmes and small French garrisons. Flying columns were sent out to destroy him, and the villagers were threatened with dire punishment if they helped him; even his aged mother was arrested and faced with execution by the French. In order not to endanger the villagers, the Empecinado launched sham attacks against them to obtain food and other supplies. On several occasions he abducted the alcaldes, the village elders. Like Mina and other guerrilla leaders, he engaged in almost constant hit-and-run assaults; he suffered numerous defeats but was never decisively beaten. With a hundred and twenty men he entered the fortress of Pedraza, then withdrew to the Avila mountains where seventy of his men deserted. Made captain of cavalry by the junta, he harassed the troops of Soult and Ney at the time of their temporary retreat from Galicia in 1809. Shortly afterward, he briefly enlisted four thousand peasants armed with firelocks and fowling pieces. He attacked Salamanca, but some of his soldiers again deserted and he had to restrict his activities for several months. On one occasion he fought a duel with a French commander, whom he killed. The junta dispatched him to the Guadalajara area, where he evaded a trap set for him by twenty-five hundred French troops. By this time he was treating prisoners according to the rules of war; like Mina, he had detachments consisting of Polish, Italian and German deserters. There were even a few German officers among them According to the Empecinado's own account, he induced about six thousand men to desert, again no doubt a greatly exaggerated figure. But it is true that the French commanders regarded these defections as a serious problem.62

  At one stage of the Peninsular War robbers became scarcely less of a menace than the French occupiers, and the Empecinado, "scrupulously attentive to the interest of the laboring class," destroyed the gang of one Don Bernardo Mayor.63 By 1810-11 he commanded a thousand infantry and four hundred horsemen; he went through the pretense of forcing young villagers to join his units so as not to subject their families to French acts of retaliation. Like Mina, he had to face treason and mutiny in his own camp and he suffered more than one setback. The provincial junta gave him bad advice and two hundred of his men were taken prisoner in a French surprise attack while in church on Good Friday, 1811. Hugo, the French general who had been sent out to capture him, offered a deal: why would he not enter King Joseph's service? The Empecinado's answer was, "Would you kindly stop writing me...."

  In May 1811 he received three pieces of artillery, but there was renewed trouble among his officers and he was beaten by the French at Cuenca. Having commanded forces almost equal to a divison, his effective strength following these reverses was again down to four hundred men. The new junta, however, helped him rebuild his forces and in lower Aragon he took "thousands of prisoners" over a period of several weeks. After these successes, there was once more a sudden defeat; attacked by renegade Spaniards, he was surrounded and could save himself only by jumping down a precipice. Severely wounded, he was out of combat for some months. By March 1812 he had recovered, and he entered Madrid with Wellington; Guadalajara surrendered to him.

  The setbacks encountered by the Empecinado were the result of inattention to orders, to disobedience and, perhaps above all, to lack of punctuality. But, as the chronicler of the Empecinado's campaign notes, the strict observance of military discipline was impossible to enforce in a corps formed amidst the bayonets of the enemy. The guerrilleros were officered by people whose minds and habits were not those of professional military men.64. Furthermore, there was always the danger that those who had been punished would desert. It was only toward the end of the war that the rudiments of military discipline became firmly implanted in the Empecinado's little army. He claims that he never let his men be idle; when he seized funds that had been extorted from the townspeople by the French, they were returned to the owners. Even with the French, relations were almost friendly toward the end; on one occasion General Suchet handed over to him twenty Spanish officers who had been taken prisoner.

  Espoz y Mina and the Empecinado were but two of a whole host of guerrilla leaders. There was Merino, a goatherd in his youth who became a curate, but who spent more time hunting than attending to his clerical duties. His base of operations was in the Burgos and Soria region where he had his own musket factory. Among his early recruits there were many young law students; one of them, Santilan, later became Minister of Finance. At the end of the war he had three to four thousand men under him. Merino, too, was made a general by the junta but he usually wore his black surtout, which he preferred to his general's uniform. Those who knew him intimately described him as a man of small build but iron frame, of vindictive and cruel disposition, but truly disinterested; he never claimed any part of the booty.65

  Among the other guerrilla leaders, Julian Sanchez deserves mention; a former professional soldier, he collected some hundred horsemen, and attacked French convoys in the neighborhood of Avila. Later his forces became part of Wellington's Anglo-Portuguese army. The French thought more highly of Sanchez (whom they referred to as "chef de parti") than of Mina and the Empecinado who in their eyes were no more than bandits. Camilo Gomez, a wealthy Castilian farmer, and Lucas Rafael, a young clergyman, gathered small bands around them; in each case members of their families had been killed or molested by the French. In old Castile a guerrilla leader nicknamed El Medico ("short, ferocious, dark eyes, lots of hair") raided the countryside up to and including the suburbs of Madrid. In Zamora Province, el Capuchino (Jean
de Mendietta) was the main guerrilla leader. At one time he captured the French general Francheschi, but very soon released him. When he was in turn in French captivity and fell ill, he appealed to Francheschi's wife for help and obtained it. EI Marquesito was made captain general in Asturias and Francesco Longa was another prominent leader of the insurgents.