La Saragossa

Spanish military leader

• Born: 1786
• Birthplace: Tortosa, Catalonia, Spain
• Died: 1857
• Place of death: Saragossa, Spain

Because of an act of extraordinary courage during the French siege of Saragossa, the woman who became legendary as “La Saragossa” symbolized Spanish resistance to Napoleon’s forces during a crucial period of invasion in the Peninsular War.

Early Life

Little is known about the childhood of Maria Agustina Saragossa y Domenech. She grew up in a period during which Franco-Spanish relations were frequently tense and, at times, openly hostile and belligerent. After the French Revolution of 1789 and the establishment of the revolutionary regime in France, Spain occupied a precarious international position. The revolutionary regime, having tried and executed the Bourbon monarchs in France, had no qualms about dissolving the Family Compact of 1761, which had allied the Bourbon monarchs throughout Europe, and attacking the Spanish monarchy.

In 1793 France officially declared war on Spain, causing a vicious anti-French fervor throughout the Iberian Peninsula as religious leaders and village volunteers rallied around military leaders to fight the French. Although peace was declared between the countries three years later, intense hatred continued to strain their relations, which soured irrevocably in 1808 when Napoleon Bonaparte and his officials refused to recognize Ferdinand VII , the newly crowned Bourbon monarch. Instead, Napoleon installed his elder brother, Joseph Bonaparte, upon the Spanish throne to make Spain obedient to France. A nationwide revolt ensued as Spain struggled against French domination. Before being assisted by the British in 1809, the Spanish fought alone for one year under circumstances that profoundly affected most Spaniards, including Maria Agustina.

Life’s Work

Agustina gained her fame and legend by the heroic action she took when the French decided to besiege Saragossa, her native city. Napoleon’s Iberian forces, after successfully conquering the Spanish cities of Tudela, Mallen, Alagon, and Epila, turned their attention toward Saragossa, the former Caesar Augusta of Roman Hispania and the capital of Aragon. The city occupied a fairly breachable position, being flanked only by the Ebro River on the north, an open plain to the south, and the Hueva stream to the east and southeast.

Saragossa itself was in the wilderness of Aragon and had no access to the sea or communication with nearby cities. However, a twelve-foot wall surrounded the city, and many of the massive interior buildings, including several monasteries and the old Moorish stronghold, the Aljafería, had proved virtually impervious throughout centuries of warfare. The Spanish forces at Saragossa were not very sizable, numbering only one thousand regulars to be supplemented by five or six thousand civilians with little military training and few weapons. Nevertheless, pockets of resistance formed, particularly around different military leaders. José de Palafox, the leader of the Aragonese revolt and a native of Saragossa, helped form a junta made up of his friends and relatives.

When the French troops arrived on June 15, 1808, brigadier general Charles Lefebre-Desnoüettes pressed for Saragossa’s surrender, anticipating a swift capitulation and a triumphant march into Aragon’s capital. He did not want to lay traditional siege because he had few men and resources at his disposal after his other campaigns. The French general determined the weakest part of the city’s defenses and successfully attacked the fortifications at one of the farthest external points, at Monte Torrero. Upon his order, some French soldiers managed to break through the Spanish defenses before the guns were in place, but most were slain while the remaining French forces retreated, which helped encourage the city’s resistance.

Incensed by the breach in security, Spanish leaders later ordered the officer in command to be tried and hanged publicly to instill fear and patriotic fervor into the town’s inhabitants so they would work fervently to repel the French onslaught. The French general had completely underestimated the rebellious spirit of the Saragossans, who managed to repel the first French assault. At the end of the first day, the French army retired to an area one mile from the city’s wall between the two rivers to await supplies and reinforcements. The French had lost almost seven hundred men in the fray, and Lefebre-Desnoüettes wanted to wait.

This reprieve from battle allowed Saragossa to form a more organized and deadly defense. Over the next several weeks, every inhabitant in the city worked in some capacity to fortify Saragossa’s defense. Women and children made uniforms, while men fortified buildings, made ammunition, burned outlying houses, cut down trees, and readied weapons. Private homes became fortresses and bastions of defense. Everyone, including Agustina, prepared for a fierce and bloody battle.

On the morning of July 2, 1808, the French launched a full assault in six strategic areas: the cavalry barracks, the Aljafería Castle, and the gates of Portillo, Carmen, Sancho, and Santa Engracia. The Spanish, under the leadership of Palafox, sought to direct their defense from the centrally located monastery of San Francisco. The men worked the cannons feverishly as their comrades died about them. Agustina gained her fame from a critical moment in the siege during which the French offense began to surmount the weakening defense at the strategically vital Portillo gate. The defensive position of the gate suddenly became vulnerable as artillery personnel serving the battery lay dying and defenders began to scatter. Rather than allow the French infantry to pour through an irreparably weakened stronghold, Agustina took a lit fuse from the hands of her dead fiancé or husband, an artilleryman, and touched it to a cannon loaded with gunshot. Heedless of the carnage all about her, she shot the guns one after another, all the while, according to some accounts, deriding the cowardice of men fighting on both sides of the battle.

Agustina’s actions instantly revived the Spanish defense and checked the French advance, which had moved to within one hundred meters of the guns. Although wounded in the battle, she fervently compelled her compatriots to arms. Men and women alike seemed to have admired and followed her example. She inspired at least one woman to take over the cannon from a dead soldier posted at the Santa Engracia battery and fire it at French infantry. Matching the patriotism of Agustina, Palafox refused to surrender, choosing instead to lead the city’s inhabitants in a fight to the death. This proved unnecessary as the French soldiers broke ranks, many leaving their weapons behind in their flight. Until November, the Spanish successfully withstood the long-lasting siege.

After the first siege, the Saragossans were widely admired and honored throughout Spain. Every Spanish town produced plays such as Los Patriotas de Aragon (the patriots of Aragon) that depicted the Saragossans’ defiance in the face of Napoleon’s troops. Agustina earned the name “La Saragossa” and became famous in her own right throughout Spain and much of Europe. For her valiant and heroic actions, Agustina received a commendation from Palafox, the rank and salary of a gunner, and a shield of honor that was sewn to her sleeve.

Over the next several months, Saragossa’s inhabitants worked to regain and fortify their defensive position, expecting that they would be able to again withstand a ferocious assault. The second siege began at the end of December, 1808, and seemed at first to follow the pattern of the first. Acting as an official gunner, Agustina was wounded in the defense of the city. Despite the best efforts of Agustina and the Saragossans, the siege lasted only until the middle of February, 1809. Although La Saragossa and the other city inhabitants fought gamely, even offensively at times, the French finally occupied the city. In those three months, Saragossa lost 54,000 people, with only 12,000 to 15,000 inhabitants remaining alive. Agustina miraculously survived the second siege and, along with all the inhabitants of Saragossa, was rounded up by the French before being dispersed throughout Aragon.

Little else is known of the woman heroically named La Saragossa. Occasional accounts of her actions surfaced in later years as French and Spanish soldiers alike bragged about having seen her in action at Saragossa or having met her in other skirmishes with the French. In each tale, her beauty, intelligence, and, most of all, her bravery in the face of adversity garnered her great honor, although few of these rumors can be substantiated or documented.

Agustina’s legend and heroic reputation persist in poetry and art as well. The nineteenth century English Romantic poet Lord Byron saw La Saragossa in Seville wearing many medals and orders at the command of the junta and was inspired to write a verse about her that was read throughout Europe. In Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812-1818, 1819), he wrote

Her lover sinks—she sheds no ill-tim’d tearHer chief is slain—she fills his fatal postHer fellows flee—she checks their base careerThe foe retires—she heads the sallying host:Who can appease like her a lover’s ghost?Who can avenge so well a leader’s fall?What maid retrieve when man’s flush’d hope is lost?Who hang so fiercely on the flying Gaul,Foil’d by a woman’s hand, before a batter’d wall?

These verses illustrate how Lord Byron commemorated La Saragossa and helped vivify her legend in the imagination of his readers.

Francisco de Goya, a nineteenth century Spanish painter from Saragossa, further immortalized her legend in his series entitled Los desastres de la guerra (1810-1814; the disasters of war), an expression of his disgust at the barbarity and bloodshed of the Peninsular War and his admiration of La Saragossa. One of his works, titled Qué Valor , depicts Agustina standing at the cannon amid the bodies of her fallen comrades ready to light the fuse and spur the Spanish defense to action. This painting was destroyed by the French in 1809. Two other painters, Juan Gálvez and Ferdinand Brambila, were commissioned by the restored Ferdinand VII to sketch scenes of Saragossa’s heroics and devastation and produced an etching of Agustina and the cannon in a series titled Las Ruinos de Zaragoza (the ruins of Saragossa).

When Agustina died in 1857, her body was returned to Saragossa and buried in the Portilla Church alongside the other heroes of Saragossa. A statue and cannon stand outside the church in honor of her memory.

Significance

Maria Agustina, as La Saragossa, clearly personified Spain’s fierce resistance to Napoleon’s incursions, not only at the sieges of Saragossa but also throughout the larger Peninsular War. Arguably, the prolonged defiance of the Saragossans wreaked havoc on Napoleon’s campaigns in Spain and lowered the morale and fighting ability of his soldiers. Although the individual efforts of Agustina may not have had a permanent effect after the first siege and France was ultimately victorious, La Saragossa symbolized resistance, patriotism, and perseverance among the Spanish.

Bibliography

Esdaile, Charles J. Fighting Napoleon: Guerillas, Bandits, and Adventurers in Spain, 1808-1814. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004. Focuses on the Spanish peasants, bandits and other guerilla fighters (like La Saragossa) who attacked the French army, assessing the contributions they made to the Peninsular War.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Peninsular War: A New History. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002. A comprehensive history of the war, providing details of the battles as well as the political and social dimensions of the conflict.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Spanish Army in the Peninsular War. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1988. Esdaile traces the history of the Spanish army from 1788 to 1814, and the impact of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars on Spain.

Gates, David. The Spanish Ulcer: A History of the Peninsular War. New York: W. W. Norton, 1986. This book contains detailed sections on the first and second sieges of Saragossa within the context of the larger Peninsular War.

Lovett, Gabriel H. Napoleon and the Birth of Modern Spain. 2 vols. New York: New York University Press, 1965. This two-volume set offers a comprehensive survey of Napoleon’s wars in the Iberian Peninsula. A chapter on “Heroic Zaragoza” explains how Saragossa attempted to withstand the French forces and describes La Saragossa’s patriotism.

Lynch, John. Bourbon Spain 1700-1808. Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell, 1989. Lynch provides an insightful and comprehensive overview of the crises facing the Bourbon monarchy in Spain. The book contains a bibliographic essay on different aspects of the Spanish Bourbon regime.

Rudorff, Raymond. War to the Death: The Sieges of Saragossa, 1808-1809. New York: Macmillan, 1974. Rudorff offers one of the most comprehensive accounts of the two invasions of Saragossa. The book also contains several illustrations, including Goya’s Qué Valor and other paintings concerning the sieges.

Tranie, J., and Juan Carlos Carmigniani. Napoleon’s War in Spain: French Peninsular Campaigns, 1807-1814. Harrisburg, Pa.: Arms and Armour Press, 1982. This highly illustrated account of Napoleon’s wars in Spain contains more description than analysis and includes a useful chronology of his military campaigns throughout Spain and Portugal.