Sit of Figueres (1811)

Head office of Figueres (1811)

In 1811, François Gilles Guillot ordered the 1st district of the High Catalonia, under the orders of the general colonel Baraguay-with Hilliers, commander-in-chief of this province. To ensure the communications of the army with the France, to supervise the enemy stations, to go on the various points where they would be presented to disperse them, such was the object of its mission. The place of Figuières was located in its command.

This place, become the principal warehouse of the provisioning of the army, formed a central and advantageous point for the operations which were entrusted to the Guillot general. These considerations had determined it to establish its general headquarter in the fort of San Fernando de Figuières.

Invested general command of the district, it had necessarily the higher command of the place of Figuières; but its functions did not enable him to be delivered to the details of this part of its administration. The city and the fort of Figuières, had its particular and special commander. It was the colonel of infantry Yann which fulfilled these functions at the time have the fort of Figuières was surprised by the Spanish insurrectionists. This event took place in the night of the 9 with the April 10th 1811, and was the result of treason. Some Spaniards employed near the guard-store of the provisioning of reserve, facilitated with insurgent the means of being introduced into the fort.

The gang leader Will deliver, with the head of 600 men (supported by the troops of the gang leader Rovira and of the colonel-sergeant Martinez), approached the walls of the place to the favor of the night, and gained, without being considering, the entry of the store, whose doors were open for him, using skeleton keys, by one of the Spaniards attached to the guard-store Blouquier. He penetrated in the interior and surprised the guard of the principal door, after having killed the sentinel. The insurrectionists spread themselves in the fort, seize the principal doors and of the exits, the sentinels and all those cut the throat of which are shown laid out to defend oneself, and place men in front of the barracks to prevent the exit of the troops. To the first rifle shots, the sentinel of the station of the Hospital had gone to give alarm to the barracks occupied by the deposit Italy N. One had even beaten a moment the general one in the top of the fort and with the post office of the barracks. The Italian troop is armed at once, joins, and advances the cross bayonet; but encircled of all shares by the insurrectionists, who make rain on it a hail of balls, it is obliged to put the weapons low. 40 Italians were killed the weapons with the hand, a greater number was wounded.

With the first noise which he heard, the Guillot general, who placed in the fort, precipitated towards the place from which fire left, he had then the pain to hear the Napolitain S, who belonged to the garrison, shout: Viva Espagna, siarno tutti fratelli . The Neapolitan stations which kept the bastions of the place opposed only one low resistance. The soldiers of this nation, who were in the barracks, remained in the inaction and did not imitate the good example that the Italians gave them. The 5th battalion of the train of the military crews, only French troop which was then in the fort, could not be employed usefully, waited until it was locked up under the grids of the stables, of which keys, deposited in the adjudant of the place, could be found only too late. However these soldiers agree to put low the weapons only the following day at four o'clock in the evening, and on the threat which was made to them be all shot if they did not cease a resistance become useless.

During all this time, the Guillot general sought to rejoin around him the most possible world, and made all the provisions which he believed cleanest to stop the effects of the invasion, but it was in vain; there succumbed and remained prisoner of the Spaniards. During its captivity, it conceived the bold project to take again the fortress by the same means of which the enemies had been used for themselves to seize some, i.e. of providing to the French Army the facility to be introduced into the fort and to surprise the Spanish garrison.

Encouraged in its perilous company by the desire to take again its revenge, he managed to allure some Spanish warrant officers and soldiers whom he sent in turn to the general Baraguay-in Hilliers to inform it of the state of the garrison and his provisions, and to submit various projects to him to surprise the place. Seven emissary arrived fortunately to destination, but the eighth was stopped carrying the dispatches of Guillot. This unhappy was shot, and the Guillot general, who up to that point had enjoyed the regards due to his rank, was locked up in a wet dungeon, where it received hardly water and the bread necessary to his subsistence.

The Spanish commander delivered it to a council of war which condemned it to be last by the weapons. However the French Army more tightened each day the blockade of the place. The helps until the garrison waited did not arrive. The Spaniards saw arriving the moment when they would be obliged to go. These reasons and the fear of the reprisals determined the chiefs to suspend the execution of the sentence pronounced against the Guillot general. Indeed, the garrison capitulated the August 19th 1811, and the Guillot general was delivered after forty-nine days of the hardest captivity.

By judgment of the August 23rd the military commission, established for this purpose, condemned to the capital punishment Marques, Junyez and Floretta like culprits to have delivered the fort San Fernando to the Spanish insurrectionists, it also condemned, by contumacy, with the same sorrow named the Pons (Genis) and Pons (Pierre). As for the Guillot general, it was immediately led, by order of the Emperor, with the Citadelle of Perpignan to be held there until new order.

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