TAKING OF TARRAGONA. 



I HAVE often smiled to hear the ghastly prognostications of some of 

 our country grumbletonians' at their county meetings. What would 

 these good people have said, who never knew any thing of the 

 miseries and privations of war, if their little town had been sacked by 

 an enemy, or obliged to undergo the horrors of a siege ? How would 

 they have liked to have had their quiet slumbers disturbed every 

 now and then by a shell or a rocket bouncing into their apart- 

 ment presuming, too, that they had nothing to eat but a small portion 

 of their own horse, scarcely enough to keep off hunger ? There can- 

 not be a more harrassing state of existence and suffering than what is 

 endured by the inhabitants of a city during a protracted siege ; there 

 is no respite from danger, no cessation of alarm ; one becomes fami- 

 liar with death in all possible shapes and forms. Neither riches, 

 nor rank, nor power are of any avail ; no distinctions are respected, 

 except such as military discipline require, for no one can tell whom 

 the next shot may take away ; all is bustle and confusion ; the be- 

 seiged and the beseigers get every day more exasperated with each 

 other, and woe to the unfortunate inhabitants if their miseries are 

 terminated by an assault ; for excesses and crimes are committed in 

 moments of excitement and rage, that the perpetrators would not 

 have believed themselves capable of at any other time. Man knows 

 not the proportion of mischief that is within him until he is tried. 



Such are the reflections that always arise in my mind when I 

 think of Tarragona, where I happened to be the whole time it 

 was besieged by the French under Marshal Suchet ; and if strength 

 of position, united with every precaution that military prudence 

 could suggest, ought to be considered as a sufficient guarantee, I 

 should have thought it impossible that it could ever have fallen. 

 Aware of its great importance, the junta of Catalonia had taken care 

 that Tarragona should be well supplied with provisions and ammuni- 

 tion, and defended by a numerous garrison, under the command of 

 experienced and well tried officers. All these precautions, however, 

 did not deter Marshal Suchet from undertaking the siege of this 

 place, with means apparently disproportioned to the difficulties he 

 had to encounter. He fixed his head quarters at Reus, a large town 

 about five miles off, and regularly invested the city on all sides ; but 

 the communication was open with the sea, and we had a strong 

 squadron ready to co-operate with the Spanish general for its de- 

 fence. The Marquis Campo Verde had an army of 30,000 men in 

 the neighbourhood, and it was expected that he would have attacked 

 the French, and obliged them to raise the siege. This, however, 

 the marquis did not think himself strong enough to attempt: it 

 is not my intention at this distance of time to question the merits or 

 failings of any general; I merely mention facts according to my re- 

 collection. 



There could not have been a stronger proof of the superiority of 

 the French in Spain, than in the siege of Tarragona. They came 



