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Updated: June 28, 2025
General Dupont still waited for the divisions of Vedel and Frere, which he had sent to Madrid for; and at Cadiz, in the French fleet, they were counting the days, and soon the hours.
"All Spaniards believe the sacred vessels of Cordova are in the bags of your soldiers," said General Castanos. While the wretched negotiators accepted a capitulation which delivered them to their enemies, Vedel had proposed to General Dupont to attempt a new attack; he sent at the same time one of his aides-de-camp to plead the cause of his division.
That of Vedel was already on its march. Marshal Moncey had failed before Valencia, and could not commence the investment for want of siege guns; he had brought back his division in good condition, and effected his junction with General Frere at San Clemente.
In the Vedel zone, after throwing hand grenades, an Austrian detachment attacked. It was speedily repulsed in violent hand-to-hand fighting. The detachment was pursued and decimated by Italian fire. The few survivors were captured.
The Spaniards guarded all the passages; an officer appeared announcing the truce. General Vedel refused to believe it. He sent off an aide-de-camp to ascertain the truth from General Reding. "If you do not return in half-an-hour," said he, "I shall commence firing."
The divisions of Dufour and Vedel saw their army taken away, and 20,000 men of those French troops, who up to the present time had been accustomed to victory, remained during long years prisoners of war, subjected to the worst treatment, slowly decimated by sickness and sorrow.
To assist in this attempt to wean Tycho from his scientific tastes, his uncle chose as a tutor to accompany him an intelligent and upright young man named Vedel, who was four years senior to his pupil, and accordingly, in 1562, we find the pair taking up their abode at the University of Leipzig. The tutor, however, soon found that he had undertaken a most hopeless task.
A melancholy sadness weighed upon both officers and men; the general-in- chief, formerly brilliant, bold, even emphatically eloquent, hid his despair inside his tent; scarcely would he listen to the voice of those who surrounded him. Broken down by his misfortune, he had lost all energy and all presence of mind. The same fault of irresolution and despair seems to have taken hold on General Vedel.
The food of the troops was bad and insufficient, and the sick were numerous; isolated in the midst of a country passionately hostile, without means of information as to the enemy's movements, without news of Madrid or the government, the French remained stationary, sad and depressed. General Vedel occupied Baylen, General Gobert La Carolina; thus they commanded the defiles of the mountain.
At the given moment, having no news from their emissary, the French sounded the charge, and already a battalion of Spanish infantry had been surrounded, while the cuirassiers advanced at full gallop; at the same instant the officers of the enemy, accompanied by an aide-de-camp of General Dupont, came up to Vedel. The orders of the general-in-chief were precise, they must cease firing.
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