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Moreover, the best generals were now in command: Victor was at Amurrio, Bessières at Miranda on the Ebro, Moncey at Tafalla, Lefebvre near Bilbao, Ney at Logroño on the Ebro, Saint-Cyr at La Junquera, each with a corps, the smallest of twenty, the largest of thirty thousand men. Duhesme was shut up in Barcelona with ten thousand.
At the same time, Joachim Murat, the living hero of hazardous and doubtful enterprises, had just been appointed general-in-chief of the armies in Spain. His instructions were all military. "Do not disturb in any manner the division of Duhesme," wrote the emperor to his lieutenant, on the 16th of March, 1808; "leave that where it is.
He is severely wounded by Napoleon, and only saved by the assistance of Lord Hill. In the meantime the Duke makes a tremendous carnage among the French. He encounters General Duhesme and vanquishes him, but spares his life. He kills Toubert, who kept the gaming-house in the Palais Royal, and Maronet, who loved to spend whole nights in drinking champagne.
Madame Thiers wore a rich moyen age costume; Madame de Plaisance headed a whole quadrille of hunters and huntresses. The Comtesse Duhesme another, in which both gentlemen and ladies wore the charming costumes brought into fashion by Giraud's picture, La Permission de Dix Heures.
General Duhesme, Governor of Barcelona, wishing to rid himself of the most ill-disciplined portion of his garrison, formed the principal part into the crew of a vessel, the command of which he gave to a lieutenant of Babastre, a celebrated corsair of the Mediterranean. There were amongst these improvised seamen a hussar, a dragoon, two veterans, a miner with his long beard, &c. &c.
Duhesme, who had so treacherously possessed himself of Barcelona and Figueras, found himself surrounded by the Catalonian mountaineers, who, after various affairs, in which much blood was shed on both sides, compelled him to shut himself up in Barcelona.
The course of events in Catalonia prevented Duhesme from affording any such assistance; and the inhabitants of Valencia, male and female, rising en masse, and headed by their clergy, manned their walls with such determined resolution, that the French marshal was at length compelled to retreat.
Bessières had twenty-five thousand more, half in Old Castile under himself, half in Aragon under Verdier. Duhesme commanded the thirteen thousand who were in Catalonia; Dupont stood on the Tagus near Toledo with twenty-four thousand more. In the first weeks of June four different skirmishes occurred between the French regulars and the insurgents in different parts of the country.
There was no appearance as yet of any English invasion, and the army in Portugal was in no need of assistance; but Moncey followed Dupont with thirty thousand so-called men; Duhesme led an army corps to Barcelona at one end of the Pyrenees, while Darmagnac passed the gorge of Roncesvalles into Navarre with his division, and seized Pamplona; Bessières hurried on behind with the guard; and Jerome was ordered to levy forty thousand men in Westphalia.
If the Pope persists in his refusal, I will establish a senate at Rome; and when once Rome and the pontifical states shall be in my hands, they will never be out of them again." Already the revenues of Civita Vecchia had been seized by Generals Lemarrois and Duhesme. "By what right do you do this?" demanded an employe of the pontifical treasury.
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