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General Lefebvre- Desnouettes met more resistance at Tudela, where the insurgents had broken down the bridge over the Ebro. On the 15th June he was before Saragossa, where Don Joseph Palafox had shut himself up; the whole population covered the roofs of the houses, where there was a constant hail-storm of musket balls.
The house was built for the famous dancer Guimard, then passed to Madame Talma, who sold it to madame Beauharnais, afterwards the Empress Joséphine, who added the pavilion at the nearer end. Bertrand inhabited this mansion a short time after his return from St. Helena, at present it is untenanted, and undergoing repair; it belongs to the widow of General Lefebvre Desnouettes.
The town of Brienne was burnt to the ground; Alsusieff was made prisoner; Lefebre Desnouettes died; and there was considerable slaughter on both sides; but the affair had no result of importance. Blucher retired but a little further up the Aube, and posted himself at La Rothiere, where Schwartzenberg, warned by the cannonade, hastened to co-operate with him. Napoleon said at St.
He announced his departure, saying that he handed over the command to the King of Naples, and whom he trusted they would obey the same as himself. Then, shaking hands with some, embracing others, and talking kindly to all, even those whom he had often badly used, he stepped into a sledge during the night of the 5th December, with Caulaincourt, Duroc, Mouton, and Lefebvre- Desnouettes.
In the meantime Lefebre Desnouettes, whose early success in Arragon has been alluded to, was occupied with the siege of Zaragossa the inhabitants of which city had risen in the first outbreak, and prepared to defend their walls to the last extremity.
After various petty skirmishes, in which the insurgents of Arragon were worsted by Lefebre Desnouettes, and those of Navarre and Biscay by Bessieres, the latter officer came upon the united armies of Castile, Leon and Galicia, commanded by the Generals Cuesta and Blake, on the 14th of July, at Riosecco, and defeated them in a desperate action, in which not less than 20,000 Spaniards died.
But if Napoleon had remained motionless at the island of Elba, these revolutionary projects would, in all probability, have successively failed, as did those of the Generals d'Erlon, Lallemand, and Lefèvre Desnouettes, even so late as the month of March.
The chasseurs and lancers of the Guard were on the right of the infantry, under Lefebvre Desnouettes; and the grenadiers and dragoons of the Guards, under Guyot, were on the left. All the French corps comprised, besides their cavalry and infantry regiments, strong batteries of horse artillery; and Napoleon's numerical superiority in guns was of deep importance throughout the action.
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