1793: Invasion and defeats At first the war went badly for France. A Spanish column of 4,500 soldiers under
Captain General Antonio Ricardos invaded France on 17 April 1793, driving a French garrison from the town of
Saint-Laurent-de-Cerdans. On 20 April, Ricardos routed 1,800 unsteady French soldiers from
Céret and crossed the
Tech River. The
representatives on mission blamed La Houlière for the fiasco and removed him from command. The distraught La Houlière put a gun to his head and killed himself
General of Brigade Claude Souchon de Chameron was appointed to lead the local forces on 25 April and he took interim command of the newly created army from 1 to 13 May. Chameron was arrested later and sent to the
guillotine on 12 April 1794. The
Army of the Eastern Pyrenees was in the grip of its representatives on mission, "to an extent unknown elsewhere", according to historian
Ramsay Weston Phipps. This may have been because of the lack of officers from the regular army establishment and because the representatives were local men who wanted to promote their personal friends. Their arrogance was almost beyond belief. Raymond Gaston boasted, "I know neither Generals nor special powers. As to the Minister, he is like a dog on a race course. I alone should command here, and I shall be obeyed." His colleague Claude Dominique Côme Fabre described the army commanders-in-chief as "useless" and wished the office to be abolished. Joseph Guiter asserted, "What good are Generals? The women of our
faubourgs know as much as they do." Fabre demanded and got 100
Jacobins to be sent from Paris to be distributed within the army as "Civic Apostles" where they stirred up trouble among the enlisted men. On 14 May 1793,
General of Division Louis-Charles de Flers took command of the army The
Siege of Bellegarde occupied the invaders from 23 May until the place fell on 24 June. With his supply line to Spain secure, Ricardos moved against the
Camp de la Union on 17 July. He intended to unnerve the French by bombarding them with 100 field pieces. In the event, the French artillery under the direction of
Jean Fabre de La Martillière outdueled the Spanish guns and Ricardos withdrew. Despite his victory, Flers' reputation was damaged by his former association with
Charles François Dumouriez who had defected to the enemy. on 22 July 1794. On 7 August 1793 General of Division
Hilarion Paul Puget de Barbantane accepted the army command from the representatives on mission, assuring them that he wanted to "wash out his original sin" of being an aristocrat. Dagobert with 6,500 soldiers defeated
Manuel la Peña at
Puigcerdà on 28 August. Meanwhile, Ricardos pursued a strategy of surrounding Perpignan by fortified camps. He built camps at
Argelès-sur-Mer to the southeast,
Ponteilla to the southwest,
Olette to the west and
Peyrestortes to the northwest. Instead of seeing an opportunity to strike at the dispersed Spanish army, Barbantane was seized with fright. Leaving General of Division
Eustache Charles d'Aoust in charge of Perpignan, Barbantane retreated with one division to
Salses-le-Château, then the terrified man went to
Narbonne to look for reinforcements. Finally, Barbantane wrote his resignation which was accepted. He was of course arrested, but amazingly he avoided the guillotine.
Napoleon later described him as "useless". In the crisis, the government sent for General of Division
Louis Marie Turreau to lead the army. To fill the command vacuum, the representatives on mission called for the return of Dagobert from the Cerdagne, appointed d'Aoust as temporary commander and named General of Brigade
Jacques Gilles Henri Goguet, a former doctor, to lead the division at Salses. In the
Battle of Peyrestortes on 17 September, d'Aoust with 8,000 troops defeated Lieutenant General
Juan de Courten's 6,000 men. Since Spanish had occupied Vernet on the outskirts of Perpignan, d'Aoust attacked and recaptured this position in the morning. In the evening d'Aoust, Goguet and Representative Joseph Cassanyes improvised a successful assault on the camp at Peyrestortes, driving the Spanish forces south of the
Têt River and capturing 500 men, 43 guns and seven colors. The cautious Ricardos never budged while his camps were being overrun and the French soon recovered
Villefranche-de-Conflent as well. Dagobert returned to Perpignan on 19 September. There was a battle at Le Boulou on 3 October where Ricardos lost 300 killed and wounded out of 15,000 troops while d'Aoust's army lost 400 killed and 800 wounded out of 16,000. On 7 December, d'Aoust with 10,000 men was defeated at
Villelongue-dels-Monts by Ricardos with 8,000 Spanish and Portuguese troops. The Allies lost only 56 casualties while inflicting losses of 340 killed and wounded, 312 missing, 26 guns, two colors and 2,000 muskets on the French. Doppet decided to pull back to Perpignan for the winter under cover of a spoiling attack on Villelongue. D'Aoust led the attack on 18 December which overran the Portuguese camp and slaughtered its garrison. Doppet soon came down with illness and spent the next two and a half months in bed recovering. D'Aoust was finally in full command just in time to be blamed for a disaster. In the
Battle of Collioure, a Spanish corps commanded by Lieutenant General
Gregorio García de la Cuesta drove the French out of
Collioure and
Port-Vendres on 20 December, inflicting 4,000 casualties on the French.
Fort Saint-Elme was betrayed to the Spanish by its traitorous commander. D'Aoust ordered a retreat on the 21st but the Spanish harassed it severely. Finally, the French fought their way back to the safety of Perpignan but their total losses in the debacle were 7,700 men and 23 guns. The government singled out the
Army of the Eastern Pyrenees for disapproval despite the fact that its representatives were in large part responsible for the defeats. D'Aoust was arrested and the representatives on mission were recalled, except Fabre who was killed at Collioure. D'Aoust fell victim to the guillotine on 2 July 1794.
1794: French victories On 16 January 1794, the French government appointed General of Division
Jacques François Dugommier to lead the army. The victor of the
Siege of Toulon began a thorough reorganization of the ill-used
Army of the Eastern Pyrenees. Dugommier established supply depots, hospitals, and arsenals, and constructed roads. The army's reorganization and resupply was necessary because seven-eighths of the infantry's muskets had no bayonets, the artillery was badly armed, the cavalry and wagon train's horses were starving because of a lack of forage, the food supply was intermittent and the men's uniforms were in poor condition. After receiving reinforcements from the
Toulon army, Dugommier counted a field army 28,000 strong, backed by 20,000 garrison troops and 9,000 untrained volunteers. He formed his troops into three infantry divisions under Generals of Division
Dominique Catherine de Pérignon,
Pierre Augereau, and
Pierre François Sauret. He placed General of Division André de La Barre in charge of his 2,500 cavalry troopers. In
Madrid for a conference, Ricardos died on 13 March 1794 supposedly from poison intended for
Manuel Godoy, Prince of the Peace. His successor, Lieutenant General
Alejandro O'Reilly died on 23 March of a stomach ailment while traveling to take command. Lieutenant General
Luis Firmin de Carvajal, Conde de la Union was given command of the Allied army. On 29 April Dugommier's feint attack on the Spanish left led de la Union to reinforce that wing. The next day Pérignon's division launched the main attack through a gap in the Spanish right-center. Pérignon gained the summits behind the Spanish defenses and on 1 May the entire position collapsed. On 26 May, Sauret and La Barre recaptured Collioure after a 25-day siege. By the terms of capitulation, the 7,000-man Spanish garrison was to be exchanged for an equal number of French prisoners, neither side being able to employ the exchanged troops against the other side. But after the return of the Spanish prisoners, de la Union reneged on the agreement, claiming that it was void without his consent. Besides, he argued, the repatriated Spanish troops could not serve against France while the repatriated French could fight against other enemies. A furious Dugommier now asked his government to declare a "war to the death" and the
National Convention voted that Spanish prisoners were to be executed. For a while, some units carried out the order very thoroughly, but the Spanish refused to murder French prisoners in retaliation. On 6 May, Augereau's division drove two Spanish line battalions and about 1,000
miquelets from
Sant Llorenç de la Muga (San Lorenzo de la Muga), seizing the cannon foundry there. Pérignon fought the Spanish at
La Junquera on 7 June, in an action that saw the death of La Barre. De la Union's attempt to relieve Bellegarde failed at the
Battle of San-Lorenzo de la Muga on 13 August. The French sustained 800 casualties including General of Brigade
Guillaume Mirabel killed. Augereau led 9,000 men on the right, Pérignon had 16,000 troops in the center while Sauret commanded 9,000 on the left. The Spanish attacked with 45,000 troops including 4,000 cavalry. De la Union tried to overwhelm Augereau with 22,000 men but made the same mistake as in the May attack by attacking in six columns. This time the struggle lasted 16 hours in which Augereau was nearly driven from the field but held it at the end. The French took only 140 prisoners and killed 1,336 of their enemies. Sauret had repelled an attack on his wing while Victor's brigade had repulsed a seaborne assault on the coast. At last, Dugommier ordered Augereau to abandon the cannon foundry and move toward the center. Bellegarde proved to be a tough nut to crack and its 1,000 surviving defenders only capitulated on 17 September. The French won a decisive victory at the
Battle of the Black Mountain fought from 17 to 20 November. Uniquely, both army commanders Dugommier and de la Union were killed in action. The French had 36,700 troops to oppose 46,000 entrenched Spanish. Augereau began the attack at dawn on the 17th and began rolling up the Spanish left. After Dugommier was killed by a Spanish shell that morning, Pérignon took command of the army and called off the attack for two days. General of Division Jean Baptiste Beaufort de Thorigny took command of the center. On the 20th, Augereau's assault recommenced and captured the key Roure redoubt. De la Union led his cavalry in a countercharge and was later found dead with two bullet wounds. Taking few prisoners, the French massacred 8,000 of their foes as they overran all the defensive works on the left and center. The undefeated Spanish right wing under Lieutenant General
Juan Miguel de Vives y Feliu was also compelled to retreat. The French lost about 3,000 killed and wounded. Pérignon quickly seized
Figueres and bluffed the powerful
Sant Ferran fortress into surrendering on 28 November with 9,000 Spanish prisoners and 171 guns.
1795: War ends The
Siege of Roses lasted from 21 November until 3 February 1795 when the Spanish fleet evacuated the garrison by sea. The operation was conducted by Sauret and 13,261 men while the city was defended by Lieutenant General Domingo Izquierdo and 4,000 troops. French losses were not reported while the Spanish lost 113 killed, 470 wounded, 1,160 sick and 300 captured. The last group of men were caught because Victor was alert and drove off the last convoy of boats.
Antoine-François Andréossy performed notable service as a military engineer. The mid-winter siege led to heavy desertion among the newly conscripted soldiers. On 1 March Pérignon probed the Spanish defenses on the
Fluvià River but was driven back. He asked the government for reinforcements of 10,000 foot and 2,000 horse with which he proposed to drive Lieutenant General
José de Urrutia y de las Casas back into
Girona. The government's response was to replace Pérignon with General of Division
Barthélemy Louis Joseph Schérer on 3 March. They were aware of the rivalry between Pérignon and Augereau and preferred someone from another army to assume army command. Pérignon gave way with good grace, but was not successful in his subsequent operations. Schérer did not take up his new command until 31 May. The French government determined that the army would stand on the defensive without reinforcements, while the
Army of the Western Pyrenees conducted the main offensive. On 15 June Scherer began a movement for the purpose of foraging. Thinking that the French were attacking, Urrutia assaulted the French center and defeated it at the
Battle of Bascara. Augereau's division intervened and forced back the victorious Spanish. Unwisely, Schérer then began building a line of defenses in marshy ground which caused hundreds of his troops to sicken with fever. With a column of between 7,000 and 9,000 men, Cuesta wiped out the French garrisons at Puigcerdà and
Bellver de Cerdanya in late July. These actions occurred after the
Peace of Basel on 22 July. The news of the peace arrived on 30 July to the relief of the French and the annoyance of the Spanish, who finally had hopes of success. The army was dissolved on 12 October 1795 at which time Lamer was its commander. ==Commanders==