There were about 700 of the enemy in the town, who supposed at first that the stir which they perceived in the castle was merely some quarrel between the French and the Italians of whom the garrison was composed. One of them went to ascertain this; he was asked _Quien vive?_ as he approached, and upon his replying “France,” was fired at and shot. Upon this the French commandant sent a trumpeter, who was ordered to return and tell his master, on the part of General Martinez and Colonel Rovira, that no Frenchman must again present himself before the fortress, or he would be answered at the cannon’s mouth. Martinez immediately sent off a dispatch in brief but characteristic language: “Glory to the God of armies, and honour to the brave Catalans, St. Fernando de Figueras is taken; Rovira had the happiness of directing the enterprise, and I of having been the commander.” The Doctor-Colonel, in a private letter which found its way to the press, alluded to the ridicule which had been cast upon his project: “The _Rovirada_ is made,” said he, “and the great fortress is ours!”
♦ROVIRA REWARDED WITH CHURCH PREFERMENT.♦
Rovira needed no other reward than the place in history which the success of this _Rovirada_ secured for him; but it was not the less becoming that the government should express their sense of his services. Some little time after, the dignity of Maestre-Escuela, which is equivalent to that of prebend in the English church, fell vacant in the cathedral of Vich. A decree had past in the preceding year for leaving unfilled such ecclesiastical offices as could, without indecency, be dispensed with, and applying their revenues to the public use as long as the necessities of the country should require. The Regency applied to the Cortes to dispense with this law for the present occasion only, that they might confer the vacant dignity upon Rovira, as the most appropriate testimony of national gratitude; that when the bloody struggle in which they were engaged against the tyrant of Europe should have terminated happily, as was to be expected, they said, he might have a decorous retirement suitable to his profession, and an establishment for that time in which, indispensably, he ought to renounce the military honours and dignities with which he was now decorated, but which, in any other than the actual circumstances, were incompatible with his ministerial character. Arguelles declared, that the Doctor Brigadier (for to this rank he had then been promoted) was worthy in the highest degree of national gratitude; but he wished that any mode of remuneration should be devised rather than one which involved the suspension of a law, ... too perilous an example not to be carefully avoided. But Creus observed, that Rovira, who was a priest as much in heart as in profession, would value this prebend more than any military rank which could be conferred upon him; and more even than the archdeanery of Toledo, because it was in his own country. And he argued, that no injury could accrue to the state, as the income might be reserved for the treasury while the existing circumstances continued. Garcia Herreros was of opinion that the reward ought to be of the nature of the service; the soldier should have a military recompense, the priest a clerical one; he proposed, therefore, that as the order of St. Fernando had just been instituted, Dr. Rovira should be the first person who should be invested with it; and that when the war was ended one of the best prebends should then be given him. The proposal of the Regency, however, was adopted, and Rovira was made Maestre-Escuela of the cathedral of Vich, for having recovered Figueras.