CHAPTER I
THE CONSEQUENCES OF OCAÑA. DECEMBER 1809–JANUARY 1810
The news of the disaster of Ocaña gave a death-blow to the Central Junta. Its attempt to win back its lost credit by an offensive campaign against Madrid having ended in such a lamentable fashion, there was nothing left for it but to acquiesce in its own supersession by the oft-discussed national Cortes. But that assembly was not to meet till March 1, 1810—a date still four months in the future,—and even its form and constitution had not yet been settled. For it would have been absurd to have called it together in the ancient and unrepresentative shape,—a legacy from the time of Charles V,—in which it had been wont to meet under the Bourbon kings. Many regions had few or no members; decayed mediaeval towns of Old Castile had more deputies than the most populous provinces. Moreover, it had yet to be settled how that larger half of the realm which was now occupied by the French was to elect its representatives. The commission was still sitting to determine these vital points, and in this moment of dismay the day of the assembly of the Cortes seemed very far distant. The French might be following hard on the heels of Areizaga’s broken host, and might enter Seville, long before it had been decided what sort of a Cortes was to take over the power from the hands of the discredited Central Junta.
That most unhappy government, therefore, had to face both an acute constitutional crisis and an acute military crisis. Something had to be done without delay to satisfy public opinion concerning the convocation of the Cortes, or the revolution which had been checked by Wellesley’s aid in September would certainly burst forth again. But even more pressing was the necessity for rallying and reinforcing the army which had been crushed at Ocaña, before the French should resume their advance. The actual administrative power was for the moment in the hand of the first of those temporary executive committees to which the Junta had agreed to delegate its authority by the decree of September 19. This body, composed of six members, among whom La Romana was numbered, had come into office on November 1. The rest of the Junta were only too eager to throw on their comrades the weight of the responsibility which should have fallen upon them all. The executive committee was accused on all sides of slow and feeble action. It published, as soon as possible, the details concerning the constitution of the forthcoming Cortes, which (in pursuance of the recommendation of the commission of inquiry) was to consist of two classes of members, elected representatives who were to be allotted in due proportion to all the provinces of the realm, and ‘privilegiados’ or chosen individuals from the nobility and the higher clergy. The American colonies were to be given members no less than the mother country, but their numbers were to be small. Such an arrangement seemed to foreshadow a double-chambered legislature, resembling that of Great Britain, and British precedents had no doubt been running in the minds of the framers of the constitution. But—as we shall see—the Cortes, when it actually met, took no such shape. The mandate for the election of the assembly was duly published; and so far public opinion was to a certain extent satisfied, for it was clear that the Central Junta was at last about to abdicate. But though the majority of the Spanish people were contented to wait, provided that the executive committee should show signs of rising to the occasion, and doing its best as an interim government, there were some politicians who saw in the crisis only an opportunity for pushing their private ambitions. Those veteran intriguers, the Conde de Montijo and Francisco Palafox, undismayed by the failure of the September plot, began to make arrangements with the Seville demagogues for a fresh attempt at a coup d’état. Their plots seem to have distracted Romana and his colleagues from their obvious military duties—the conspirator at home is always the enemy who looms most large before the eyes of a weak government. But after some search both were discovered, arrested and imprisoned.
Meanwhile the executive committee, with the Junta’s approval, issued a long series of edicts concerning the reorganization of the army, and the defence of Andalusia from the French attack, which might at any moment begin. The ‘Army of the Centre,’ of which Areizaga was still, strange to say, left in command, was to be raised to 100,000 men by a strenuous conscription. The press was to be all-embracing, married men, novices in monasteries, persons in minor orders, only sons of widows, all the classes hitherto exempt, were to be subject to it. To provide funds the clergy were ordered to send in to the mint all church plate save such as was strictly necessary for the celebration of the sacraments, and all private citizens were bidden to contribute one half of their table-silver. In order to provide teams for the artillery—which had lost nearly all its horses and guns at Ocaña—a strict requisition for draught animals was begun all over Andalusia. Engineers were sent out to fortify all the passes of the Sierra Morena, with permission to exact forced labour from the peasantry of the hill country. Three members of the Junta—Rabe, Riquelme and Campo Sagrado—were sent to Areizaga’s head quarters at La Carolina as ‘field deputies,’ to stir up or support the energy of the commander-in-chief. This was a device borrowed from the practice of the French Revolution, and had no better effect than might have been expected. As in 1793, the ‘Representatives on Mission’ were either useless or positively harmful. They either wished to thrust amateurish plans of their own upon the military men, or at least distracted them by constant inquisitorial supervision.
On the whole the effect of this volley of violent decrees was small. With six months to carry them out they might, no doubt, have produced great results. But within nine weeks after the disaster of Ocaña the French had commenced their attack, and in that space of time little had been accomplished. The money was beginning to come in, the recruits were being collected, but had not been armed or clothed, still less drilled. Of the fortifications in the passes many had been sketched out, but only a few had begun to take tangible shape. To man them there was still only the wrecks of Areizaga’s old army, which had hardly begun to receive its drafts of conscripts. Its whole force at the New Year did not exceed 30,000 men, and these were distributed over a front of more than 150 miles, for not only the main group of passes in front of La Carolina had to be watched, but also the eastern ingress into Andalusia by Baeza and Ubeda, and the western defiles from Almaden and Benalcazar, which lead directly down on to Cordova. The whole country-side was in a state of desperate turmoil and excitement, yet very little in the way of practical defence had been completed by the middle of January.
Meanwhile, in accordance with the ridiculous constitution of the ‘executive committee,’ half of its members went out of office at the New Year, and were succeeded by other individuals of the Junta. Among those superseded was La Romana, who was now directed to go off to Valencia as captain-general. The Junta seems to have considered that he would be less dangerous in company with his brother José Caro in that province, than when posted at the seat of government, with his brother to back him by threats of Valencian military interference. Yet La Romana did not depart, and was still lingering at Seville when the French crossed the Sierra Morena.
There was a larger military problem before the Junta and the new ‘executive committee’ than the mere defence of Andalusia. The whole arrangement of the national armies had to be recast in consequence of the black day of Ocaña. The corps of Del Parque and Albuquerque, as well as all the smaller outlying bodies of troops, had to receive new orders. Above all it was necessary to discover what were the plans of Wellington, for the present position of the British army at Badajoz was the most important factor in the whole situation. As long as it remained there, in support of the small force under Albuquerque which was guarding the passages of the Tagus at Almaraz and Arzobispo, the western section of the front of Andalusia was secure. The defence of the eastern section, too, was in no small degree helped by the fact that Wellington’s solid troops were in a position to march up the Guadiana, and to threaten the flank of any French army which might intend to attack the Despeña-Perros, or any other of the passes which lead from La Mancha down to the Andalusian plains.
It was a terribly disquieting fact for the Junta that, even before Ocaña had been fought and lost, Wellington had begun to announce his intention of leaving Badajoz and retiring within the boundaries of Portugal. He had paid a flying visit to Seville on the 2nd-4th[107] of November, just as Areizaga’s unhappy advance into La Mancha was commencing. The project had been concealed from him[108], and when he learnt of it he had expressed his entire disapprobation of it, and had refused to give any promise to support the Spanish armies in their offensive movements. For this reason he had been bitterly provoked when Areizaga and Albuquerque both wrote him, a little later, to say that they had been promised the assistance of his army by the Junta[109]. He had consistently prophesied ill of the adventure, and had recorded his opinion that both Del Parque and Areizaga would probably lose their armies. In a dispatch of November 20, six days before the news of Ocaña reached him, he had announced his definite intention of leaving Badajoz with the main body of his army, and transferring himself to the north of the Tagus, where, by posting himself in the Portuguese province of Beira, he would cover the high-roads to Lisbon from Old Castile. This decision was founded on his belief that when the French had made an end of Areizaga and Del Parque—a contingency which he regarded as almost certain[110]—they would strike at Lisbon and not at Seville. He had good reasons for holding this view; it was exactly consonant with Napoleon’s own plan, which was only abandoned by reason of King Joseph’s pleadings with his brother. For, from the French standpoint, it was far more profitable to conquer Portugal and to expel the British army from the Peninsula, than to overrun Andalusia. Wellington and his troops formed the one solid nucleus of resistance which still remained; it was clear that the dispersion of the miserable wrecks of Areizaga’s host would present no difficulty. And not only was it advisable, from the Emperor’s point of view, to destroy the most formidable hostile force still surviving, but the balance of strategical advantage was all in favour of subduing Portugal, before Andalusia should be invaded. For Portugal flanks the attack on southern Spain, and a good army based upon it could check the advance on Seville and Cadiz by demonstrations aimed at Valladolid or Madrid, which might wreck or delay the conquest of Andalusia. It may be objected that Andalusia also flanks the attack on Portugal; but the objection had no validity since the day of Ocaña, as the Junta had now no longer any striking force in hand. It would be many months before Areizaga’s host was in a proper condition for undertaking even cautious defensive operations. A French attack on Portugal, therefore, would be practically unmolested by external interference.
At the present moment the strength of the French troops in Spain was not sufficient to provide two armies for offensive purposes, the one destined to march on Seville, the other on Lisbon. The numbers at the front had not appreciably increased since the autumn, though already the reinforcements which the Emperor had set upon the march, after concluding his peace with Austria, had begun to appear at Bayonne, and to cross the Bidassoa. But in December and January the roads were bad, the days short, and provisions hard to procure. Hence Wellington reckoned that, till the spring should arrive, the allies would have to face no more than the forces which were already opposed to them. When, however, the campaigning season should have come round, and the reinforcements from Germany should have been incorporated with the old Army of Spain, he thought that Portugal would be the enemy’s main objective. It was therefore his intention to withdraw his army, or at least the greater part of it, from Spanish Estremadura, and to arrange it so as to cover Lisbon, even though by making this movement he was weakening the left flank of the defence of Andalusia. If he had to choose between the interests of Portugal and those of Spain, he was prepared to sacrifice the latter. His reasons were simple: (1) he considered Portugal more important in the grand strategy of the defence of the Peninsula than Andalusia; (2) he regarded it as more defensible, and he had already—as we shall presently see—sketched out and commenced the construction of his great lines of Torres Vedras, in which his trust as a final impregnable stronghold was already fixed; (3) he held that although Great Britain was pledged to assist both Spain and Portugal, yet her moral obligation to the latter was far more binding, since Portugal had placed herself entirely in the hands of her allies, had put her army at their disposal, and had contributed all her resources to the common cause, while the Spanish Junta had shown a jealous and suspicious spirit, had refused to show confidence in Great Britain, and had persisted in carrying out a military policy of its own, which led to a consistent series of disasters; (4) the Portuguese army, though its fighting power was not as yet ascertained, could be at least relied upon for obedience; experience had shown that the promises of the Spaniards could not be trusted, and that any campaign undertaken in their company might be wrecked by some incalculable piece of slackness or miscalculation[111].
Accordingly on November 20 Wellington declared his intention of withdrawing his army—save one single division—to the north of the Tagus, and of placing it at various points in the province of Beira, so as to cover all the practicable roads to Lisbon from the side of Old Castile. On the twenty-sixth he sent formal notice of his intentions to Seville, well knowing the storm of indignation that would be roused thereby. At the same time he advised the Junta to reinforce Albuquerque’s army of Estremadura with troops drawn from Del Parque, adding that to keep Albuquerque well to the front, in his present positions at Almaraz and Arzobispo, was the best means of protecting the western approaches of Andalusia. Del Parque’s corps, whose reason for existence was the ‘containing’ of the French troops in Old Castile, would be able to spare troops to strengthen the army of Estremadura, because the English host, in its new position, would be behind it, and opposed to the forces under Kellermann and Marchand, which had hitherto had nothing in their front but the ‘Army of the Left.’ Moreover, it would be an appreciable relief to Del Parque, who was finding the greatest difficulty in feeding his army in the thinly-peopled mountain region between Ciudad Rodrigo and Bejar, to be freed from the burden of maintaining one or two of his five divisions.
The Junta, as might have been expected, took Wellington’s determination to remove from Badajoz with the worst of graces. They could hardly have failed to do so, when one of his main reasons for departing, barely concealed in his dispatches to them, was his fear of getting involved in their operations, and his reluctance to place his troops in line with the Spanish armies. Nor could they have been expected to agree with his strategical view that Lisbon, not Cadiz, would be the main objective of the grand advance of the French armies, when the spring should come round. To every man or body of men their own possible dangers naturally seem more imminent and more interesting than those of their neighbours. The departure of the English from Badajoz was formally announced to the Junta on November 26, and began to be carried out on December 8, when the brigade of Guards marched for Portalegre, and was followed on successive days by the other brigades of the army. By the 24th of December Wellington and his staff alone were left in the Estremaduran fortress, and next day his head quarters were at Elvas, across the frontier. The second division, under Hill, halted at Abrantes, where Wellington intended to leave it, as the nucleus of a covering force which was to guard Lisbon from any possible attack from the south side of the Tagus. The rest of the army pursued its way across the mountains of Beira, and by January 3, 1810, head quarters were at Coimbra, and the main body of the British troops was beginning to take up billets in the small towns of the valley of the Mondego.
Convinced that no more was to be hoped from Wellington, the Executive Committee issued their orders for a new arrangement of the line of defence of Andalusia. Albuquerque was ordered to leave no more than a small corps of observation on the Tagus, in front of Almaraz, and to bring back the main body of the army of Estremadura to the line of the Guadiana, in order to link his right wing to the left of Areizaga’s forces. On December 24 his new head quarters were at Don Benito, and he had some 8,000 men collected there and at the neighbouring town of Merida; the rest of his small army was furnishing the garrison of Badajoz, and the detached force on the Tagus, whose duty was to watch the movements of the French 2nd Corps, which still lay in its old post at Talavera, and remained entirely quiescent.
From Albuquerque’s post at Don Benito there was a gap of seventy-five miles to the next force in the Spanish line. This consisted of the wrecks of the two old divisions of Copons and Zerain from the army of Areizaga, not more than 4,500 strong[112]. They were encamped at Pozo Blanco and at Almaden, the mining town on the Alcudia, where the frontiers of Estremadura, Andalusia, and La Mancha meet. This place lies near the northern exit of the two passes, the Puerto Blanco and Puerto Rubio which lead down from La Mancha on to Cordova, the one by Villaharta, the other by Villanueva de la Jara and Adamuz. Both are difficult, both pass through a desolate and uninhabited country, but either of them might conceivably serve for the passage of an army. Sixty miles east of Almaden was the main body of the rallied Army of the Centre, occupying the group of passes which lie around the high-road from Madrid to Andalusia. Head quarters were at La Carolina, the central point upon which the routes from most of these passes converge. About 13,000 men were disposed in front, covering the main chaussée through the Despeña-Perros, and the side defiles of the Puerto del Rey and the Puerto del Muradal. Here Areizaga had concentrated the remains of the divisions of Zayas, Castejon, Giron and Lacy, of which the last two were mere wrecks, while the two former counted about 4,000 bayonets apiece. Finally, some fifteen miles off to the right, the remnants of the divisions of Vigodet and Jacomé, perhaps 6,000 men in all, covered the two easternmost passes from La Mancha, those of Aldea Quemada and Villa Manrique, which descend not upon La Carolina, but on Ubeda and Linares, the towns at the headwaters of the Guadalquivir in the extreme north-eastern angle of the Andalusian plain. Areizaga’s artillery was all in the passes, placed in the various new entrenchments which were being thrown up. His cavalry had for the most part been sent back to recruit and reform itself in the interior of the province, being useless in the mountains.
The mere description of this disposition of forces is sufficient to show the hopeless condition of the defence of Andalusia. Areizaga was trying to cover every possible line by which the French might advance, with the result that his army and that of Albuquerque were strung out on a front of 150 miles, and could not concentrate 15,000 men on any single point. The passes which they were trying to guard were not only numerous, but in several cases very practicable, where roads lay not between cliffs or precipices, but over slopes which could be ascended by infantry on each side of the pass. The fortifications and the troops holding them could be turned by enemies who took the trouble to climb the side acclivities. It was clear that if the French chose to attack the Sierra Morena with no more than the 60,000 men who had been concentrated after the battle of Ocaña, they could bring an overwhelming force to bear on any one or two of the passes which they might select, while leaving the garrisons of the rest alone, or threatening them with trifling demonstrations. If the enemy should choose to strike by Almaden at Cordova, the Spanish centre and right wing would be cut off from their retreat on Seville, and would have to take refuge in the kingdom of Murcia. If the Despeña-Perros and its neighbours should turn out to be the selected objective, Areizaga’s right wing must suffer the same fate. And, if driven from the passes, the army would have to encounter, in the broad plain behind, the overpowering force of French cavalry which King Joseph could bring up. The problem set before the defence was a hopeless one, and most of the generals under Areizaga were aware of the fact—as indeed were the rank and file. Disaster was bound to follow if the enemy managed his business with ordinary prudence.
[Note]: This shows the old uniform of Charles IV. The Line regiments had white, the Foreign and Light regiments blue, coats. Both wore white breeches and black gaiters: the plume and facings varied in colour for each regiment.
SECTION XVIII: CHAPTER II
THE CONQUEST OF ANDALUSIA. KING JOSEPH AND HIS PLANS
When considering the action of the French after the victory of Ocaña, it is necessary to remember that King Joseph and Soult were not in the position of ordinary invaders, who have just succeeded in demolishing the last army of their enemy. In wars of a normal type the victor knows that the vanquished will sue for terms when further resistance appears hopeless; he proceeds to dictate the cessions of territory or payments of indemnities that he thinks proper, as the price of peace. But it was not a profitable treaty which Napoleon desired: he had put it out of his own power to end the war in such a fashion, when he declared his brother King of Spain. For him there was no Spanish government in existence save that which he had set up at Madrid: the Central Junta, and the Cortes when it should meet, were mere illegal assemblies, with which he could not deign to enter into negotiations. It was now perfectly clear that the Spaniards would never submit of their own accord. Their position in December 1809, desperate as it might be, was no worse than it had been in the March of the same year. Areizaga’s army had suffered no more at Ocaña than had those of Cuesta and Cartaojal nine months before, on the disastrous fields of Medellin and Ciudad Real. Indeed, there were probably more men actually in line to defend Andalusia in December than there had been in April. Moreover, in the early spring Soult had been in the full career of conquest in Portugal, and nothing save Cradock’s insignificant force appeared to prevent his onward march to Lisbon. At mid-winter, on the other hand, the flank of Andalusia was covered by Wellington’s victorious army, and by the reorganized Portuguese host of Beresford. If the Junta had refused to listen to the insidious advances of Sotelo in April[113], there was no reason to suppose that it would lend a ready ear to any similar advocate of submission in December. Indeed, its every action showed a resolve to fight out the losing game to the end.
Joseph Bonaparte would never be King of Spain till every province was held down by French bayonets. Not only must each corner of the land be conquered, but after conquest it must be garrisoned. For, where there was no garrison, insurrection burst out at once, and the weary process of pacification had to be repeated.
It was this last fact that restrained King Joseph from following up his pursuit of the wrecks of the Spanish army to the Sierra Morena, and the gates of Seville, on the morning after Ocaña. To make up the host that had defeated Areizaga, and the other smaller force that was dealing with Del Parque in Leon, the King had been forced to concentrate all his divisions, and the consequence had been that the control of the broad tracts behind him had been lost. We have already had occasion to mention[114] that throughout Old Castile and Leon, the open country was now in the hands of the guerrilleros, who had been growing in force and numbers ever since the time of Talavera, and had risen to the height of their confidence after the day of Tamames, and Del Parque’s repeated occupation of Salamanca. Navarre, and many parts of New Castile were equally disturbed, and Aragon, which Suchet had tamed during the autumn, was beginning once more to move. There were no French troops in the disturbed regions save scanty garrisons at Burgos, Valladolid, Benavente, Avila, Segovia, Guadalajara, Palencia, Tudela, Tafalla, and a few other strategic points. These were cut off from each other, and from Madrid, save when a governor sent out his messenger with an escort many hundreds strong, and even such a force had often to fight its way through half a dozen bands before reaching its destination. The garrisons themselves were not always safe: so powerful were the bands of some of the guerrillero chiefs that they aspired to waging regular war, and did not confine themselves to blocking the roads, or intercepting couriers and convoys. The Empecinado, whose sphere of activity lay on the borders of Old and New Castile, got possession of Guadalajara for a day, though he retired when reinforcements from Madrid were reported to be approaching. Somewhat later, the younger Mina—‘the Student,’ as he was called to distinguish him from his more celebrated uncle Espoz, stormed the town of Tafalla, and shut up the remains of its garrison in its castle, while the flying-columns of the governor of Navarre were seeking him in every other direction. He too, like the Empecinado, had to seek safety in retreat and dispersion, when his exploit drew in upon him forces sent from Suchet’s army of Aragon.
The activity of the guerrilleros did not merely constitute a military danger for King Joseph. It affected him in another, and an equally vexatious, fashion, by cutting off nearly all his sources of revenue. While the open country was in the hands of the insurgents, he could raise neither imposts nor requisitions from it. The only regular income that he could procure during the later months of 1809 was that which came in from the local taxes of Madrid, and the few other large towns of which he was in secure possession. And save in the capital itself, his agents and intendants had to fight hard with the military governors to secure even this meagre pittance[115]. The King could not command a quarter of the sum which he required to pay the ordinary expenses of government. His courtiers and ministers, French and Spanish, failed to receive their salaries, and the Spanish army, which he was busily striving to form, could not be clothed or armed, much less paid. Nothing vexed Joseph more than this: he wished to make himself independent of his brother’s generals, by raising a large force of his own, which should be at his personal disposition. He formed the cadre of regiment after regiment, and filled them with deserters from the foreign troops of the Junta, and with any prisoners who could be induced to enlist under his banners in order to avoid transportation to France. But the recruits, when sent to join the new regiments, disappeared for the most part within a few weeks. Joseph thought that it was from lack of pay and proper sustenance, and raged at the idea that, but for the want of money, he might have at his disposition a formidable army of his own. But he deceived himself: the ‘juramentados’ had for the most part no desire save to desert and rejoin their old colours: the real renegades were few. In the ranks of the Junta’s army the soldier was even worse clothed, fed, and paid than in that of Joseph. No amount of pampering would have turned the King’s Spanish levies into loyal servants.
Pending the reduction to order of the country-side of the two Castiles, which he vainly hoped to see accomplished during the next six months, Joseph found only one expedient for raising money. It was a ruinous one, and could not be repeated. This was the confiscation of property belonging to all persons who were in the service of the Junta, and of all the religious orders. This would have given him vast sums, if only he could have found buyers. But it was not easy to persuade any one to pay ready cash for lands overrun by the guerrilleros, or for houses in towns which were practically in a state of siege, and were also subject to a grinding taxation. Property of immense value had to be alienated for wholly inadequate sums. The afrancesados, whom Joseph was most anxious to conciliate, got such payment as he could afford, mainly in the form of vain grants of property which they could not turn to account. The only ready money which was in circulation was that which came from the coining down, at the Madrid mint, of the considerable amount of plate belonging to the monasteries and the churches on which the King had laid hands. Naturally, he was regarded as a sacrilegious robber by his unwilling subjects—though few, or none, murmured when the Central Junta filled its exchequer by similar expedients. But the Junta had not decreed the abolition of the religious orders—it only purported to be raising a patriotic loan from their resources. A minister of Joseph sums up the situation sufficiently well in three sentences. ‘Spanish public opinion was inexorable: it rejected everything coming from us—even benefits: thus the King and his councillors spent themselves in fruitless labours. Nothing answered their expectations, and the void in the Treasury, the worst danger, showed no sign of diminution. On the contrary, the financial distress increased every day, and the unpleasant means which we were compelled to employ in order to supply the never-ceasing wants of the army completely alienated the nation from us[116].’
The orders issued by the King and Soult after the battle of Ocaña, show that they had no immediate intention of pursuing Areizaga’s routed host, and entering Andalusia at its heels—tempting though such a policy might be from the purely military point of view. After Victor and the 1st Corps had joined him, on the day following the battle, Joseph had nearly 60,000 men in hand. But his first move was to disperse this formidable army: Gazan’s division of Mortier’s corps was at once hurried off towards the north, to reinforce Kellermann in Leon—for the battle of Alba de Tormes had not yet taken place, and it was thought that the 6th Corps needed prompt assistance. Laval’s division of Sebastiani’s corps was detached in another direction, being told off to escort to Madrid, and afterwards to Burgos and Vittoria, the vast mass of prisoners taken at Ocaña. Milhaud, with his own dragoons, and an infantry brigade taken from Sebastiani’s corps, was directed to push eastwards by way of Tarancon, and then to march on Cuenca, where it was reported that many of the fugitives from Areizaga’s army had rallied. The brigade of Dessolles’ division which had been present at Ocaña and Joseph’s own troops returned to Madrid, in company with their master. When the capital was again adequately garrisoned, numerous flying-columns were sent out from it, to clear the roads, and disperse the guerrilleros. Mortier, with that part of the 5th Corps which had not been detached under Gazan, was drawn back to Toledo. Thus of all the troops which had been concentrated on November 20th, only Victor’s corps and the Polish division, with the cavalry brigade of the 4th Corps, were retained in La Mancha, facing the Sierra Morena. The 1st Corps was pushed forward to Ciudad Real and its neighbourhood, with its advanced cavalry watching the passes. The Poles remained at Ocaña and La Guardia, with Perreymond’s three regiments of light horse in front of them at Madridejos[117].
In the dispatch which detailed to the Minister of War at Paris this disposition of the army, Soult explained his reasons for holding back. It was a more pressing necessity to restore order in the provinces of the interior than to pursue the wrecks of Areizaga’s force, which was so completely dispersed that no further danger need be feared from it. Before undertaking any large general scheme of operation, the King thought it best to consult his imperial brother as to his wishes. It was rumoured that Napoleon himself might appear on the scene within a few weeks, and it was certain that the first columns of reinforcements from Germany, which might prove to be the heralds of his approach, were just about to cross the Bidassoa. Moreover, it would be prudent to discover what had become of Albuquerque and of the English, before any great move to the southward was made, as also to make an end of the army of Del Parque, by means of the reinforcements which had just been sent to Kellermann[118].
Within three weeks the situation had changed, and many of the reasons which had induced the King and Soult to adopt a waiting policy had disappeared. On November 28th, as we have already seen, Kellermann routed Del Parque at Alba de Tormes, though he had not yet received the succours which Gazan was bringing up to his aid. The Army of the Left being no longer a source of danger, Kellermann not only sent orders to Gazan—who had reached Segovia—to return to New Castile, since he was no longer wanted in the North, but presently sent back to the King Rey’s brigade of Dessolles’ division which had been lent him early in November. Thus 10,000 men who had been detached came back under the King’s control[119], and were once more available for offensive operations.
Still more important was the fact that in the first days of December the reinforcements from Germany had at last begun to cross the Pyrenees, and were arriving in Navarre and Biscay in enormous numbers. Two strong divisions, commanded by Loison and Reynier and counting more than 20,000 bayonets, had already appeared, and the head of the interminable column which followed them had reached Bayonne. It was certain that at least 90,000 men were on the march, to fill up the void in Old Castile which had been causing the King and Soult so much trouble. The roads would soon be cleared, the isolated garrisons relieved, and the communications with Madrid made safe. The newly arrived generals had received orders to sweep every valley on their southward march, and to disperse every band of guerrilleros[120]. Another possible source of danger, which had preoccupied the minds of Joseph and his Major-general after Ocaña, had also been removed. The English had made no forward movement towards the Tagus; they were reported to be still quiescent at Badajoz, and rumours (which afterwards turned out to be correct) had already reached the French head quarters, to the effect that Wellington was just about to retire into Portugal. Moreover, Milhaud’s expedition to Tarancon and Cuenca, and the excursions of the flying-columns sent out from Madrid, had all proved successful. The insurgents had been dispersed with ease, wherever they had been met with.
Of all the reasons for delay which were valid on November 20th there was now none left unremoved save the most important of all. The Emperor had not yet made his intentions known; though pressed to declare his will by every letter sent by his brother or by Soult, he gave no answer as to a general plan of campaign. Several of his dispatches had reached Madrid: they were full of details as to the troops which he was sending across the Pyrenees, they contained some advice as to finance, and some rebukes for the King concerning petty matters of administration[121], but there was no permission, still less any order, to invade Andalusia or Portugal; nor did Napoleon deign to state that he was, or was not, coming to Spain in person. It was only when Joseph received the first dispatch opening up the matter of the divorce of Josephine[122], that he was able to guess that, with such an affair on hand, his brother would not set out for the Peninsula during the winter or the early spring.
By the middle of December Joseph had made up his mind that it would be politic to attack Andalusia without delay. He had won over Soult to his ideas—the Marshal having now abandoned the plan, which he had urged so strongly in the autumn, that Lisbon not Seville should be the objective of the next French advance. It is easy to understand the King’s point of view—he wished rather to complete the conquest of his own realm, by subduing its wealthiest and most populous province, than to do his brother’s work in Portugal, where he had no personal interest. It is less obvious why Soult concurred with him—as a great strategist he should have envisaged the situation from the military rather than the political point of view. Apparently Joseph had won him over by giving him all that he asked, and treating him with effusive courtesy: their old quarrels of the preceding summer had been entirely forgotten. At any rate Soult had now become the ardent advocate of the invasion of Andalusia, though—as his predecessor Jourdan tersely puts it—‘the English army being now the only organized force in a state to face the imperial troops, and its presence in the Peninsula being the thing that sustained the Spanish government and gave confidence to the Spanish people, I imagine that we ought to have set ourselves to destroy that army, rather than to have disseminated our troops in garrisoning the whole surface of Spain[123].’ The same thought was in the Emperor’s mind when he wrote in January—too late to stop the Andalusian expedition—that ‘the only danger in Spain is the English army; the rest are partisans who can never hold the field against us[124].’
On the 14th of December, 1809, Soult at last made a formal appeal, in a dispatch to Berthier, for leave to commence the march on Seville. ‘At no time since the Spanish War began,’ he wrote, ‘have circumstances been so favourable for invading Andalusia, and it is probable that such a movement would have the most advantageous results. I have already informed your Excellency that preparations would be made for this movement, while we waited for his Majesty to deign to make known to us his supreme will.’ Soult adds that if only Loison’s division of the reinforcements may be brought up to Burgos, and a second division sent to Saragossa, in order to free Suchet for field service, the invasion can be begun, as soon as the army in New Castile has completed its equipment and received its drafts.
No direct reply was received to this dispatch, nor to several subsequent communications, in which Soult and Joseph set forth the arrangements which they were making, always subject to the Imperial approval, for concentrating an army for the Andalusian expedition. Strange as it may appear, it was only in a letter written on January 31, 1810, when the King had already crossed the Sierra Morena, that Napoleon vouchsafed a word concerning the all-important problem[125]. It is clear that he had ample time to have stopped it, if such had been his will; the ultimate responsibility, therefore, lay with him. But he refrained from ordering it, or from approving it, thus reserving to himself all the possibilities of ex-post-facto criticism. Since no prohibition came, Joseph made up his mind to strike; it was natural that he should be fascinated by the idea of conquering in person the one great province of Spain which remained intact. A brilliant campaign, in which he would figure as commander-in-chief as well as king, might at last convince the Spaniards of his capacity. He was prepared to play the part of a merciful and generous conqueror. At the worst the revenues of the wealthy Andalusia would be a godsend to his depleted treasury.
Two plans were drawn up for the invasion. The first was more cautious, and more consonant with the strict rules of strategy. The second was bolder and promised more immediate results. According to the first the King was to concentrate his main army in La Mancha, and to threaten the passes, while two great flanking columns carried out the preliminary conquest of Estremadura and Valencia. Mortier was to march with the 5th and 2nd Corps upon Badajoz, to crush Albuquerque, and to occupy the valley of the Guadiana. Simultaneously Suchet was to make a push from Aragon into Valencia with the bulk of his corps, while his place at Saragossa was to be taken by a large force drawn from the newly-arrived reinforcements from France. Only when Badajoz and Valencia had fallen, and Suchet and Mortier could advance parallel with him on either flank, was the King to march against Seville. The weak point of the scheme was that either Badajoz or Valencia might make a long resistance; if their garrisons fought like that of Gerona the central advance on Andalusia might be delayed for an indefinite time.
The second plan, the one that was adopted, was to leave the 2nd Corps alone to watch Albuquerque and Estremadura, to order Suchet to advance against Valencia, but to strike straight at Seville, without waiting for the completion of either the Estremaduran or the Valencian operations. In the original draft for this campaign[126], nearly the whole of the King’s army was to concentrate at Almaden and Ciudad Real, and from thence to strike straight at Cordova, by the difficult and little-used passes of the central Sierra Morena. Meanwhile Sebastiani, with no more than a single infantry division and Milhaud’s dragoons, was to demonstrate against the main group of passes in front of La Carolina, along the line of the high-road from Madrid, so as to distract the attention of the Spaniards from the real point of attack. More than 50,000 men were to descend suddenly on Cordova, for the whole of the 1st and 5th Corps, Dessolles’ Reserve division, the King’s Guard, and Latour-Maubourg’s dragoons, were to march in a mass by the unexpected route via Almaden, Villanueva de la Jara, and Adamuz. The Spanish centre would undoubtedly be broken, and it was probable that Cordova, Seville, and Cadiz would be carried by the first rush, for Areizaga’s army would be cut off from them and driven eastward towards Murcia.
The plan, an admirable one from the point of view of strategy, had to be abandoned, for it was found that the country between Almaden and Cordova was so absolutely barren and uninhabited, and the roads so bad, that it would be impossible to carry a very large body of troops across it at mid-winter. It was doubtful whether the passes were practicable for artillery; it was certain that no food could be obtained, and the train required to carry rations for 50,000 men would be so large and heavy that it would probably stick fast in the mountains.
On January 11, when Mortier, Dessolles, and the rest of the army had already moved out of their cantonments and taken the road for La Mancha, the revised draft of the plan of campaign was issued. It was inferior in unity of conception to the first plan, and did not seem likely to produce such good results; but it had the merit of being practicable. By this scheme Victor alone was to march on Cordova, with the 22,000 men of the 1st Corps: he was to endeavour to take his artillery with him, but if the passes proved too rough, he was to send it back by Almaden to join the main army. Mortier, Dessolles, Sebastiani, Milhaud, and the King’s Reserves were to strike at the group of passes in front of La Carolina, and to drive the Spaniards out of them: it was hoped that they would thrust Areizaga’s host into the arms of Victor, who would be descending into the valley of the Guadalquivir just in time to meet the enemy retiring from the defiles. For this operation the King was to take with him rather more than 40,000 men.
It may be remarked that this plan divided the French army into two separate columns entirely destitute of lateral communications, and that, if the Spaniards had been stronger, considerable danger would have been incurred. Areizaga might have concentrated every man against one or other of the columns, and have brought it to a stand, while merely observing the other. But to do so he would have required a far larger force than he actually possessed: he had, as we have seen, only 23,000 men under arms, and even if he collected every available bayonet in one mass, either half of the French army was strong enough to meet and to beat him. The King, therefore, was running no real risk when he divided up his troops. As a matter of fact, Areizaga had made matters easy for the enemy, by splitting his small and dilapidated host into three sections—Zerain, with 4,500 men only, was on Victor’s road; the head quarters, with 13,000 men, were at La Carolina opposite the King; Vigodet with 6,000, was far to the right in the eastern passes[127]. Disaster was inevitable from the first moment of the campaign.
On January 7 King Joseph and Soult moved out from Madrid in the wake of the columns of Dessolles and the Royal Guard, which had already started. On the 8th they were at Toledo, on the 11th at Almagro, near Ciudad Real; here they conferred with Victor, and, in consequence of his reports concerning the state of the passes in the direction of Cordova, recast their plans, and adopted the scheme of operations which has just been detailed. On the following day Victor and his corps marched from Ciudad Real for Almaden, to carry out the great turning movement. The main army waited for six days to allow him to get far forward on his rugged route, and only on the 18th started out to deliver the frontal attack on the Despeña-Perros and the other passes in front of La Carolina.
It may be mentioned that Joseph had left behind him to garrison Madrid the French division of the 4th Corps[128], and not Dessolles’ troops, who had been wont to occupy the capital during the earlier operations. Both Dessolles’ and Joseph’s own reserves, his Royal Guard and a strong brigade of his newly-raised Spanish army, joined in the invasion. Since the German division of the 4th Corps was still absent, escorting the prisoners of Ocaña, it resulted that Sebastiani had with him only his Polish division, his cavalry, and some details sufficient to muster up a total of just 10,000 men. His corps was never properly reassembled during the whole of the rest of the war, as some of the regiments which he now left behind never rejoined him in Andalusia, but were left in garrison in New Castile till 1812, and practically became part of the ‘Army of the Centre.’
Besides the garrison of Madrid, Joseph left to cover his rear the whole 2nd Corps, still under the provisional command of Heudelet, which lay at Talavera and was charged to watch Albuquerque. If the rumour of the departure of the English from Badajoz were true, there would be no danger in this quarter. But Joseph was not yet quite certain that Wellington had retired into Portugal. The only serious preoccupation which vexed his mind, at the moment when he was preparing to attack, was the idea that the English might still come up by Truxillo and join Albuquerque in a raid on Madrid. Heudelet, the constant purveyor of false information, did his best to scare his master on January 13, by sending him a report that Wellington was still at Badajoz with 23,000 men[129]. But later and more trustworthy news from other quarters, showing that the English army had marched off for Abrantes long before Christmas, at last set the King’s mind at rest on this all-important topic.
There was nothing to be feared from the west when Wellington had taken his departure. Albuquerque’s small force was powerless, and if Del Parque moved down from the Sierra de Francia into the valley of the Tagus, the 6th Corps could make a corresponding movement. Ney had now returned to take command at Salamanca, and the confidence of his troops, shaken somewhat by Marchand’s incapable leadership, was now restored. Behind Ney and Kellermann were the innumerable battalions of the new reinforcements from Germany, the head of whose column had now reached Burgos. The King’s rear, therefore, was well guarded when he began his great offensive movement against Andalusia.
SECTION XVIII: CHAPTER III
ANDALUSIA OVERRUN: CADIZ PRESERVED. JANUARY–FEBRUARY 1810
On the 19th of January, 1810, the unfortunate Areizaga began to receive from all quarters dispatches which left him no doubt that the fatal hour had arrived, and that the whole of his line, from Villamanrique on the east to Almaden on the west, was about to be assailed by the enemy. From every point on his front of 150 miles, his subordinates sent him in reports to the effect that strong hostile columns had come up, and had thrust in their outposts. Indeed, Zerain, from his remote cantonment on the extreme left, had announced that an overwhelming force, coming from the direction of Ciudad Real, had beaten him out of the town of Almaden as early as the 15th, and had compelled him to retire towards the south-west, leaving the direct road to Cordova uncovered. This was, of course, the corps of Victor, whose flanking movement was already threatening to cut the line of communication between La Carolina and Seville. But it would take some days for the 1st Corps to pass the rugged defiles of the Sierra de Los Pedroches, which lie between Almaden and the valley of the Guadalquivir. An even more pressing danger seemed to be foreshadowed from the less-remote right of the Spanish line, where Vigodet reported, from the pass of Villamanrique, that he had been driven in to his final fighting position at Montizon, by a French column marching up from Villanueva de los Infantes. In the centre, the enemy had advanced to Santa Cruz de la Mudela, where the roads to all the group of passes about the Despeña-Perros branch off, but had not yet shown how many of them he intended to use. Areizaga could not determine whether some of the French movements were mere demonstrations, or whether every one of them portended a real attack on the morrow. Zerain was too far off to be helped; but Vigodet’s demands for assistance were so pressing that the Commander-in-Chief sent off to his aid, on the night of the 19th, the one division which he had hitherto kept in reserve at La Carolina, the 4,000 bayonets of Castejon. This left him only three divisions—those of Zayas, Lacy, and Giron, not more than 9,000 men in all, to defend the high-road to Madrid and the subsidiary passes on its immediate flank.
As a matter of fact, the appearance of the French advanced guards implied a genuine attack at every possible point of access. King Joseph had resolved to carry the whole of the defiles by a simultaneous onslaught on the morning of the 20th. His policy seems to have been one of very doubtful wisdom, for it would have been as effective to pierce the Spanish line at one point as at four, and he could have concentrated an overwhelming force, and have been absolutely certain of success, if he had launched his main body at one objective, while demonstrating against the rest. He had preferred, however, to cut up his army into four columns, each of which assailed a different pass. Sebastiani, on the extreme French left, separated by a gap of twenty miles from the main column, was the enemy who had driven in Vigodet at the opening of the Villamanrique pass. He had with him the remains of his own 4th Corps—of which such a large proportion had been left behind in New Castile,—a body of about 10,000 men[130]. His orders were to force the defile in his front, and to descend into the plain in the rear of the Spanish centre, by way of Ubeda and Linares, so as to cut off the enemy’s retreat towards Murcia, and to envelop him if he should hold the Despeña-Perros too long.
Next to Sebastiani in the French line was a column composed of Girard’s division of the 5th Corps, the King’s Guards, and the Spanish regiments in Joseph’s service[131]. It was nearly 14,000 strong, and advanced straight up the Madrid chaussée, aiming at the Despeña-Perros and the Spanish centre. If the enemy should fight well, and if the flanking movements should fail, this column would have the hardest work before it: for, unlike the minor passes to east and west, the Despeña-Perros becomes in its central length a narrow and precipitous defile, easily capable of defence. The Spaniards had run entrenchments across it, and had mined the road at more than one point. But its fatal weakness lay in the fact that the by-paths from the western passes descend into it to the rear of the point where these obstructions had been placed. If they were seized by the advancing French, the fortifications across the chaussée would prove a mere trap for the troops which held them.
Mortier, with Gazan’s division of the 5th Corps and Dessolles’ troops, about 15,000 strong, was told off to assail these flanking defiles on the Spanish left[132]. The two passes are the Puerto del Rey and the Puerto del Muradal. The former got its name from Alfonso VIII, who in 1212 had turned the position of the Almohad Sultan Mohammed-abu-Yakub by this route, and so forced him to the decisive battle of Navas de Tolosa, a few miles to the rear. In 1810 it was a tortuous and rough road, but practicable for artillery: the slopes on either side of it, moreover, were not inaccessible to infantry. A mile or two to its left, nearer the Despeña-Perros, was the still rougher path of the Puerto del Muradal, which was practicable for infantry but not for guns. Between this defile and the entrenchments across the Madrid chaussée, the crest of the Sierra was accessible to troops advancing in loose order and prepared for a stiff climb: the Spanish engineers had therefore placed a large earthwork on its culminating point, known as the Collado de Valdeazores. Giron’s weak division of no more than 3,200 bayonets was entrusted with the defence both of the Puerto del Rey and the Puerto del Muradal. Those of Lacy and Zayas, about 5,000 in all, held the Despeña-Perros and the entrenchments on each side of it. Areizaga lay behind them, with a reserve of 1,000 men at most—having sent off Castejon and his division to join Vigodet on the preceding night, he had no more with him than his personal guard, the ‘Batallón del General’, and some detached companies.
Mortier, like the good general that he was, did not confine his operations to an attack against the narrow fronts of the two passes, but assailed the rough hillside on each side of them, sending out whole battalions deployed as skirmishers to climb the slopes. Of Gazan’s division, one brigade marched against the Puerto del Muradal, but the other went up, in open order, on the space between the Puerto and the Spanish redoubt at the Collado de Valdeazores. Similarly, Dessolles attacked the Puerto del Rey with a few battalions, but sent the rest up the less formidable portions of the flanking slopes. Girard and the King’s Reserves, meanwhile, did not press their attack on the Despeña-Perros, till the troops on their right had already begun to drive the enemy before them.
The results of these tactics might have been foreseen from the first: Giron’s 3,200 men, attacked by 15,000, were driven in at a pace that ever grew more rapid. They could not defend the passes, because the slopes on each side were turned by the enemy. Their line was broken in two or three places, and they fled in haste down the rear of the Sierra, to escape being captured by flanking detachments which were pushing on at full speed to head them off. The moment that the Despeña-Perros was turned by Mortier’s movement, the troops occupying it had to retreat at headlong speed, just as Girard was commencing his attack on them. All did not retire with sufficient promptness: the battalion in a redoubt on the Collado de los Jardines, on the right flank of the high-road, was cut off and captured en masse. All the guns in the pass were taken, there being no time to get them away down the steep road in their rear. After two hours of scrambling rather than fighting, the main passages of the Sierra Morena were in the hands of the French. The mines on the high-road had been fired when the retreat was ordered, but did not wreck the chaussée in such a way as to prevent the enemy from pursuing. The losses of the Spaniards were no more than a few hundreds killed and wounded, and 500 prisoners; those of the French were less than 100 in all[133]. There had, in truth, been hardly the semblance of a battle.
The full results of the disaster were only developed next day: the troops which had defended the central passes escaped, though in dreadful disorder. But those further to their right were destined to a worse fate. While Mortier and the King were forcing the great defiles, Sebastiani had been fighting all day with Vigodet, in the defiles about Montizon and St. Esteban del Puerto. He had no such superiority in numbers over his enemy as had the King on the main field of operations[134], hence his progress was slower, and his victory, though complete, was not so prompt and crushing. Vigodet and his 6,000 men were dispersed by the afternoon, and fled down the valley of the Guadalen towards the plains, with Sebastiani’s cavalry in pursuit. Having fought much longer than Lacy and Giron, their losses were heavier than those of the central division—probably 1,000 killed, wounded, or taken. Shortly after, there appeared on the scene, moving along the steep hill-path from La Carolina, the Spanish division of Castejon, which had been sent off on the previous night to support Vigodet. It found the St. Esteban position in the possession of the French, and turned hastily back to rejoin Areizaga. But, while it had been on the march, the Commander-in-Chief and his army had been routed, and La Carolina was in the hands of the French. Castejon found himself enclosed between Sebastiani and the King, in a most perilous position. On the morning of the 21st, he tried to escape by the by-path to Linares, but on arriving near that place found that Mortier’s troops were already across his road. A brigade of Sebastiani’s corps was in hot pursuit in his rear, and Castejon, seeing himself thus enclosed, surrendered at Arquillos, with his whole intact division of over 4,000 men and ten guns.
Already, before the capture of this Spanish corps, the King and Sebastiani had joined hands, their reconnoitring parties having met in the valley of the Guadalen. On learning of the complete success of both columns, Joseph and Soult resolved to urge the pursuit in two separate directions. Sebastiani was told to push forward by way of Ubeda and Baeza to Jaen, while the main column marched by Baylen on Andujar and Cordova. It was hoped that news of Victor would soon be received: if all had gone well, he would have reached the Guadalquivir somewhere in the neighbourhood of Cordova, so as to be in the rear of any Spanish force that might have retreated from La Carolina in the direction of Seville.
As a matter of fact, however, both Vigodet and also Areizaga with the wreck of the troops from the central passes, had abandoned any hope of covering Seville, and had retreated southwards on Jaen. There was no force whatever left upon the Cordova road, and the King met no resistance upon the 22nd or the 23rd. On the latter day Sebastiani, arriving in front of Jaen, found the Spanish commander-in-chief with some 7,000 or 8,000 men prepared to defend the town. He attacked at once, and routed these dispirited troops, who made little or no show of resistance. Practically the whole force went to pieces: the French captured forty-six guns, mostly those of the reserve-park of the Army of Andalusia, which had been deposited in Jaen. Of the wrecks of that unhappy force, Areizaga carried off a small remnant to Guadix in the eastern mountains, near the borders of Murcia. Lacy, with another fraction, retired on Granada. But the large majority had left their colours, and dispersed to their homes.
King Joseph and Soult meanwhile, advancing unopposed along the high-road to Cordova and Seville, got into touch at Andujar with the advanced cavalry of Victor on the night of the 22nd of January. The march of the 1st Corps had been toilsome in the extreme, but almost unopposed save by the difficulties of the road. After driving Zerain’s little detachment out of Almaden on the 15th, they had hardly seen an enemy. Zerain and his colleague Copons had retired by the road towards Seville south-westward. Victor, though he sent out flying parties of cavalry to threaten Benalcazar and Hinojosa, to his right, had really pushed further to the left, on the easternmost of the two rough passes which lead to Cordova. The day after leaving Almaden he had sent his artillery back to La Mancha, the dilapidated and abandoned road to which he had committed himself proving absolutely impracticable for anything that travelled on wheels. But he pushed on with his infantry and horsemen, and passing Santa Eufemia, Torrecampo and Villanueva de la Jara, came down into the plain of the Guadalquivir at Adamuz, fifteen miles to the east of Cordova, on January 21st, the day after Soult and King Joseph had forced the Despeña Perros and the Puerto del Rey. Wishing to get into touch with them before attacking Cordova, he halted his infantry, but sent out his cavalry to the gates of that city on the one side, and on the other to Montoro and Andujar, where they met the vedettes of the main army on the evening of the 22nd. Thus the French host was once more concentrated: the march on Seville could be continued without delay. Victor now became the advanced guard: he entered Cordova, which opened its gates without resistance, on the 24th. There was no Spanish force in front of the French army, since Zerain and Copons had retired towards Seville by a road far to the west, while the wrecks of Areizaga’s army had been driven off in a south-easterly direction.
Soult and King Joseph, therefore, had leisure to plan out the remainder of their campaign without any disturbance from the enemy. On the 25th[135] they resolved to detach Sebastiani and his 10,000 men for the conquest of Granada, to leave Dessolles’ division at Cordova and Andujar, but to march on Seville in a single mass with the remaining 50,000 sabres and bayonets of the Army of Andalusia. The desire to seize the capital from which the Junta had so long defied him, seems to have mastered every other idea in the mind of the intrusive King. The rebel government should be captured, or at least forced to take refuge in Portugal or the sea. Then at last the provinces would submit, the regular armies would lay down their arms, the guerrillero bands would disperse to their homes, and he might reign as a real king, not as the mere tool of his imperious brother. The capture of Seville would be the last act but one of the drama: after that he would become the national monarch of a submissive people, and carry out all the schemes of vague benevolence on which his mind was wont to dwell in his more hopeful hours. That the resistance would continue, even if Seville were his own and the Junta were scattered and discredited, he did not dream. And Seville, he knew, must fall; to defend it there could be, as he concluded, nothing but a half-armed mob, backed by the few thousand dispirited soldiers who had fled before Victor from the western section of the Sierra Morena. Even if the rebel capital made itself a second Saragossa, he had at his disposal an army double the strength of that which had reduced the obstinate Aragonese city.
In subsequent years critics, wise after the event, never tired of declaiming against the policy which Joseph and Soult approved on January 25, 1810. It was easy in 1811 or 1812 to point out that a division or two might have been spared from the victorious army to execute a march upon Cadiz, while the main force was dealing with Seville. The island-fortress, which was to defy the French during the next three years, might have been caught while it was still ungarrisoned and panic-stricken, if only the invaders had detached a column from Carmona, where the road from Cordova bifurcates to Seville on the right and Cadiz on the left. It is certain that, if any suggestion to that effect was made at the time, Soult, Mortier, and the other generals present at the council of war passed it over[136]. The fact was that Seville loomed large before the imaginations of them all: Cadiz seemed but a secondary affair at the moment. It appeared probable that the whole of the scattered forces of the enemy would mass themselves to defend the insurgent capital. On January 25th, when the original plan was drawn up, no one realized that there was a Spanish army approaching, whose presence in Andalusia had not yet become known, or that the general of that army would deliberately leave Seville to its fate, as incapable of defence and doomed to destruction, and hasten by forced marches to throw himself into the island-city which was destined to become the new capital of insurgent Spain. Unable to foresee such a development, Joseph wrote to his brother on January 27 that Seville would probably submit without fighting, and that he would then enter Cadiz ‘sans coup férir.’
Albuquerque’s operations, which ultimately turned out to be the most important section of the Andalusian campaign, need a word of explanation. It will be remembered that, early in January, he had assembled, at Don Benito and Medellin, the small field-force that he could command, after providing the garrison of Badajoz and leaving a detachment above Almaraz to watch the French 2nd Corps. It did not amount to more than 8,000 men, of which some 1,000 were cavalry. His position at Don Benito was intended to protect the flank of Zerain and Copons, who lay to his right, covering the passes that lead from Almaden on to Cordova. On January 15th he received from Zerain the news that he was about to be attacked at Almaden by a French column of at least 20,000 men. The Duke promptly began to march eastward to join his colleague, and reached Campanario on January 16th. Here he was met by the information that Zerain had been driven out of Almaden on the preceding day, and had drawn back by Benalcazar and Hinojosa on to the Seville road. Copons from Pozo Blanco was retiring in the same direction. The Duke thereupon concluded that his duty was to fall back by a route parallel to that of Victor’s advance, and to draw nearer to Seville, strengthening himself as he approached that city by Zerain’s and Copons’ small corps.
Accordingly he sent off three of his weakest battalions to strengthen the garrison of Badajoz, which was very small at the moment, directed his artillery (with a cavalry escort) to take the good but circuitous high-road to Seville by Merida, Los Santos, and Santa Olalla, and started off across the mountains with his infantry and 500 horse. Marching very rapidly, though the roads were bad and the days short, he moved by Zalamea and Maguilla to Guadalcanal, on the borders of Andalusia, which he reached on January 18th. Here he received from the Central Junta an absurd order, apparently based on the idea that he was still at Campanario, which bade him stop Victor’s advance, by falling on his flank and rear by the road to Agudo and Almaden. But since the marshal had seized Almaden on the 15th, and was known to have moved southward from thence, it was clear that he must now be more than half-way to Cordova: if the Army of Estremadura plunged back into the mountains to seek Agudo and Almaden, it would only reach them on the 22nd or 23rd, and Victor would be at the gates of Cordova on the 21st. The Junta’s order was so hopelessly impracticable that the Duke took upon himself to disobey it, and wrote in reply that he should move so as to place himself between Victor and Seville, and would cover the Andalusian capital ‘so far as was possible with the small force at his disposition.’
Accordingly Albuquerque, instead of returning northward into the Estremaduran mountains, moved a stage further south, to El Pedroso, on the road from Guadalcanal to Seville, and sent orders to Copons and Zerain to join him with their small divisions. Two days later he received the order which should have been sent him on the 18th, instead of the insane directions that were actually given; by it he was directed to march on Seville with all speed. On the 23rd, therefore, he arrived at the ferry of Cantillana, twenty miles north of Seville: here he received news that his artillery and its escort had safely completed its round, and were about to cross the Guadalquivir at Rinconada, fifteen miles to the south. At Cantillana, however, the Duke got the last dispatch which the Central Junta ever issued; it was dated on the 23rd, a few hours before the members dispersed and fled. By this he was directed to march not on Seville but on Cordova, which at the moment the document came to hand—the morning of the 24th—had just been occupied by Victor.
That day Albuquerque crossed the Guadalquivir and occupied Carmona, where he was joined by his artillery, and by part of Copons’ division, but not (apparently) by Zerain’s, which had retired into Seville. He had now about 10,000 men, of whom 1,000 were horsemen, and 20 guns. From Carmona he threw out a cavalry screen on all sides: his vedettes on the 27th struck French cavalry at Ecija, and were driven in; they reported that the enemy was advancing in enormous force from Cordova—as was indeed the case. Meanwhile news had come up from Seville that the Junta had fled on the night of the 23rd-24th, that anarchy reigned in the city, and that a new revolutionary government had been installed. There was no longer any legitimate executive from which orders could be received. Albuquerque had to make up his mind whether he would retire into Seville, and put himself at the disposition of the mob and its leaders, or whether he should seek some safer base of operations. Without a moment’s hesitation he resolved to leave the Andalusian capital to itself, and to retire on Cadiz, which he knew to be ungarrisoned, yet to be absolutely impregnable if it were properly held. This wise resolution, it may be said without hesitation, saved the cause of Spain in the south. If Cadiz had been left unoccupied there would have been no further resistance in Andalusia.
But we must return to the operations of the French. On the 25th Victor had advanced from Cordova, taking the direct road to Seville via La Carlota and Ecija, while Mortier and the Royal Guard followed him at short intervals. The Duke of Belluno occupied Ecija on the 27th and Carmona on the 28th. On these two days his advanced guard got into contact with Albuquerque’s cavalry screen, and learnt from prisoners that the Army of Estremadura, whose presence in Andalusia thus became known, was in front of them[137]. On reaching Carmona Victor obtained the still more important news that Albuquerque, after staying in that place for two days, had not retired into Seville, as might have been expected, but had marched southward to Utrera on the road to Cadiz, leaving the greater city uncovered. On the night of the 29th the leading division of Victor’s corps, the dragoons of Latour-Maubourg, appeared in front of Seville, and reported that works were being hastily thrown up around it on all sides[138], and that they had been fired on by masses of armed irregulars at every point where they had pushed forward vedettes towards its suburbs[139].
Seville was at this moment, and had been now for six days, in a state of chaos. The Central Junta had absconded on the 23rd, taking along with it both its Executive Committee and the Ministers of State. The panic had begun on the 18th, when the news had come in that Victor’s corps had thrust Zerain out of Almaden three days before, and was marching on Cordova. It had grown worse two days later, when Areizaga reported that another French army was marching against the Despeña-Perros. The Junta published a proclamation on the 20th, exhorting the Andalusians to have no fear, for Albuquerque had been directed to fall on Victor’s flank, and Del Parque with the Army of Castile was on the march to join him, so that the enemy would be forced to turn back to guard himself. Such orders were indeed sent, but any man of sense could see that they must arrive too late. If Victor was at Almaden on the 15th, he might be at Cordova on the 21st: if King Joseph was at the foot of the passes on the 19th, he might be across them on the 20th. What use, therefore, would be a summons sent to Albuquerque in Estremadura, or to Del Parque in the mountains between Bejar and Ciudad Rodrigo? The French would be in the valley of the Guadalquivir long before Del Parque had even received his orders to move. As a matter of fact, that general got his dispatch on January 24, the day that Victor entered Cordova, and even Albuquerque was informed of the Junta’s behests only on the 18th, when he reached Guadalcanal.
The obvious ineptitude which the Government had shown, and the imminent peril to which Seville was exposed, gave another chance to the local conspirators, who had already twice prepared a pronunciamento against the Junta. On the 22nd riots broke out, and demagogues were preaching at every street corner the necessity for deposing these incapable rulers, and substituting for them a regency of true patriots, and a Committee of Public Safety, which should show the energy in which the Junta had been so lacking. The people clamoured at the doors of the Arsenal, asking for muskets and cannon, they mustered outside the prisons where Palafox, Montijo, and other chiefs who had been arrested for their earlier plots, were still confined. Many of the members of the Junta left Seville on this and the following day, on the plausible pretext that it was necessary for them to betake themselves to Cadiz—which, by a decree of Jan. 13, had been designated as the meeting-place of the approaching National Cortes—in order to make preparations for the meeting of that august assembly. Indeed, the Junta had been directed to meet at Cadiz on February 1 for that purpose. The news that King Joseph had forced the passes of the Sierra Morena, which came to hand early on the 22nd, sufficed to make an end of any shadow of power which the Junta still possessed. Next day those members who had hitherto stuck to their post, and the Ministers, left the town with elaborately contrived secrecy. Seville fell into the hands of the mob, who, led by a Capuchin friar riding on a mule and brandishing a crucifix, burst open the prisons and the Arsenal, armed themselves, and nominated a new ‘Supreme National Junta.’ Its executive was to be composed of Palafox and Montijo, the Marquis of La Romana, General Eguia, and Francisco Saavedra, an aged and respectable person, who had been president of the old Junta of Seville, the original committee which had been suppressed by the Central Junta. He is said to have been used as a mere tool by Palafox and Montijo, and to have been disgusted by their acts. This new, and obviously illegal, Government issued decrees stigmatizing the fugitive ‘Centralists’ as cowards and traitors, and claiming authority not only over Andalusia, but over all Spain. They ordered the calling out of the levy en masse, and issued commissions displacing generals and governors in all the provinces. One of these documents declared Del Parque removed from the command of the Army of the Left, and named La Romana as his successor. The marquis, glad to escape from the tumult, rode off at once, presented himself at the head quarters of the Castilian army, and was recognized without difficulty as its chief—though his authority might well have been contested if any general had chosen to take up the cause of the discredited Central Junta.
But that unhappy body had no longer a single friend: its members were mobbed and arrested on their flight from Seville to Cadiz; its President the Archbishop of Laodicea, its Vice-President the Conde de Altamira, and the War Minister Cornel were seized at Xeres by a frantic mob, and would have been murdered, if General Castaños, whom the Junta had treated so badly in December 1808, had not arrived in time to save their lives. Twenty-three members reached Cadiz, and there, by a proclamation dated January 29th, abdicated their authority, and nominated a Regency, to which they resigned their power, and the duty of receiving and welcoming the expected Cortes. The Regents were Castaños, the Bishop of Orense, Admiral Escaño, Saavedra—the president of the new and illegal Junta at Seville—and Fernandez de Leon, an American Treasury-official, who was to represent the Colonies[140]. It will be noted that the nominators were wise enough to refrain from appointing any of their own number to serve in the Regency.
Meanwhile, the duty of resisting the first shock of the French advance fell not on the Regency, but on the Revolutionary Government which had installed itself in power at Seville. These usurpers proved themselves quite as incapable as the men whom they had superseded. When once in possession of power, Palafox and his friends had to count up their resources: they had at their disposal an armed mob of 20,000 men, and a mere handful of regular troops, consisting of the regiments which had served as the guards of the late Junta, and four or five isolated battalions from the division of Zerain, which had finally sought refuge in Seville. These troops seem to have been about 4,000 strong at the most[141]. There was an immense quantity of artillery from the arsenal; it had been dragged out to line the new earthworks, on which the populace was busily engaged, but not two hundred trained gunners existed to man the batteries. It was hoped that Albuquerque’s Estremaduran army would come to their aid, but—as we have already seen—the Duke deliberately refused to acknowledge the authority of the Seville Junta, and, instead of falling back upon the city, marched southwards to Utrera on the Cadiz road, leaving the great chaussée Ecija-Carmona-Seville open to the French.
On the 28th, the leaders of the Junta having taken stock of their position, and discovered its danger (for the lines which the people had thrown up would have required 50,000 men to man them, and not half that force was forthcoming even if every rioter armed with a musket was counted), copied in the most ignominious fashion the prudence or cowardice of the Central Junta, which they had so fiercely denounced five days before. Under the cover of the night Eguia, Montijo, Saavedra, and Palafox absconded from Seville without taking leave of their followers. Saavedra fled to Cadiz, where it is surprising to find that he was made a member of the new Regency, Palafox to Albuquerque’s camp, Montijo to the southern mountains, where (as he announced) he was intending to collect an army of succour for Seville. When, therefore, on the next evening Latour-Maubourg’s dragoons appeared before the entrenchments of the city, there was no longer any responsible government to turn the ardour of the multitude to account. Nevertheless, mobs, headed by frantic friars, ran to the entrenchments, and discharged musketry and cannon-shot at every French vedette that showed itself.
On the afternoon of the 30th, Victor appeared to reinforce Latour-Maubourg’s cavalry, bringing with him the bulk of the infantry of the 1st Corps. The King, Soult, and Mortier were close behind[142]. On this day it had been settled at a Council-of-War held at Carmona that the whole of the army should march on Seville, leaving Cadiz alone for the present, and detaching only a brigade of cavalry to pursue the army of Albuquerque. On the next morning Victor received assurances, from persons who had escaped from the city, that it was doubtful whether he would be opposed, since the mob was panic-stricken at the flight of its leaders, and the senior military officers were convinced that resistance was impossible. Certain that the defence would be feeble, if any were offered, Soult gave orders that the 1st Corps should storm the lines on February 1st. But no military operations were necessary: on the evening of January 31st the corporation of Seville had sent out a deputation to negotiate for surrender. They offered to admit the enemy, if they were guaranteed security of life and property for all who should submit, and a promise that no extraordinary war-contribution should be levied on their city. To this the King, who was anxious to enter the place as a pacific conqueror, without storm or bloodshed, gave an eager consent. While the civil authorities were treating with Victor, the small body of regular troops in Seville, under the Visconde de Gand, quietly left the place by the bridge leading to the western side of the Guadalquivir, and retreated in haste toward the Condado de Niebla and the borders of Portugal.
On the afternoon of February 1, Joseph entered Seville in triumph at the head of his Guard, and lodged himself in the Alcazar, the old residence of the Kings of Spain. He was welcomed by a deputation which comprised some persons of mark. The impression made on the citizens by the conduct of the two Juntas, and the turbulence of the mob which had ruled during the last eight days, had been so deplorable that a considerable number of the Sevillians despaired of the national cause, and rushed to acknowledge the usurper. Indeed, there were more ‘Josefinos’ found in this city than in any other corner of Spain. The ‘intrusive king’ released a number of political prisoners, whom the last Junta had arrested on suspicion of treason. Apparently this suspicion had been well grounded, as many of the captives, headed by the Swiss generals Preux and Reding[143], did homage to Joseph, and accepted office under him.
Encouraged by these defections to his cause, and by the fact that deputations had presented themselves from Cordova and Jaen to bespeak his protection, Joseph hastened to publish an absurd address to his army, couched in the magniloquent style which all French writers of proclamations at this time were wont to borrow from their Emperor. ‘The barriers placed by Nature between the North and the South of Spain have fallen. You have met with friends only beyond the Sierra Morena. Jaen, Cordova, Seville have flung open their gates.... The King of Spain desires that between the Pillars of Hercules a third pillar shall arise, to recall to posterity, and to the navigators of both the new and the old world, the memory of the officers and men of that French army which drove back the English, saved thirty thousand Spaniards, pacified the ancient Baetica, and regained for France her natural allies.’ The rather puzzling passage concerning the ‘thirty thousand Spaniards saved’ refers to the prisoners of Ocaña and the Sierra Morena, whom the French, according to the King, ‘recognized as brethren led astray by the common enemy. You spared them, and I have received them as my children.’
Some elation in the King’s language was, perhaps, pardonable at the moment. The moral effect of the surrender of Seville was considerable in France, England, and the rest of Europe, though less in Spain than elsewhere. The tangible trophies of the conquest were enormous—the place had been the central arsenal of Spain, and the amount of artillery, ammunition, and warlike equipment captured was very large. The cannon-foundry and other military factories were taken over in excellent condition, and kept the French army of Andalusia well supplied during the three years of its existence. Tobacco to the value, as it was said, of £1,000,000 was found in the great central magazine, and quinine, quicksilver, and other commodities of government monopoly to a considerable additional sum. Nothing had been done, since the news of the passage of the Sierra Morena had arrived, to destroy or remove all this valuable state property.
On the day following their entry into Seville, Joseph and Soult directed Victor to march in pursuit of Albuquerque, and to take possession of Cadiz. So complete had been the débâcle of the Spanish armies since the Andalusian campaign began, that it seems to have been supposed that the Army of Estremadura would offer no serious resistance, even if it should succeed in throwing itself into Cadiz before it was overtaken. Marching with laudable expedition, the Duke of Belluno covered the eighty-three miles between Seville and Cadiz in four days, and presented himself in front of the place on the evening of February 5th. But Albuquerque, unmolested in his march from Utrera, had arrived on the 3rd, bringing with him not only his own troops and those of Copons, but several recruit-battalions picked up at Xeres, Lebrija, San Lucar, and Puerto Santa Maria, where they had been organizing. He had some 12,000 men in all, not counting the civic militia of Cadiz, which had hitherto been its sole garrison.
Cadiz, in the days when the practicable range of the heaviest artillery did not exceed 2,500 yards, was one of the strongest places in the world. The town lies on the extreme point of a long sandy peninsula, which runs out into the sea from the Isla de Leon, a large island separated from the mainland of Andalusia by the salt-water channel of the Rio Santi Petri, an arm of the sea varying from 300 to 400 yards in breadth, and flowing through marshes which make access to its banks very difficult. The Isla, protected by this enormous wet ditch, has a front towards the continent of about seven miles, from the naval arsenal of La Carraca at its north end to the Castle of Santi Petri at its south. Batteries had already been thrown up at all the commanding points, and Albuquerque had broken the only bridge, that of Zuazo, which crossed the marsh and the Rio. It would be impossible to pass the channel save by collecting great quantities of boats, and these would have to move under artillery fire. Venegas, the military governor of Cadiz, had already ordered all the vessels, small and great, of the villages round the bay to be destroyed or brought across to the city. Moreover, there were a score of gunboats in the channel, manned from the Spanish fleet, which could be used to oppose any attempt to cross the Rio. Indeed, naval assistance to any amount was available for the defence of Cadiz: there were a dozen Spanish and four English line-of-battle ships in the harbour. All through the three long years while the French lay in front of the Isla, no attempt was ever made to throw a force in boats across the channel: the venture seemed too hazardous.
If, however, Victor had, by some expedient, succeeded in crossing the Rio, there were two lines of defence behind it, of far greater strength than that formed by this outer ditch of the Cadiz works. The triangular Isla de Leon forms with its apex a long sand-spit, which projects for four miles into the Atlantic. Half way along it the breadth of the spit is contracted to no more than 200 yards, and here there was a continuous entrenchment from water to water, called the Cortadura, or the battery of San Fernando, armed with many heavy guns. Supposing this isthmus to have been passed, there lies, two miles further along the sand-spit, the outer enceinte of Cadiz itself, with a front of not more than 400 yards in breadth, and deep water on either side.
Cadiz had been captured more than once in earlier wars, but always by an enemy who could attack from the sea. Neither the Isla de Leon nor the San Fernando line could be held against an attack supported by a fleet which came close in shore, and battered the works from flank and rear, or landed troops behind them. The sea, it may be remarked, is four fathoms deep to within a short distance (about 300 yards) of the shore, all along the south front of the Isla and the Isthmus, so that there was nothing to prevent a fleet coming close to the works. But against any naval attack Cadiz was, in 1810, absolutely secured by the predominance of the English fleet. There was no armed French vessel nearer than Bayonne or Barcelona, nor any possibility of bringing one round. All that was done by the besiegers in a three years’ leaguer was to build some gunboats in the northern inlets of the bay, and these they never dared to bring out into the open water.
The real danger to Cadiz lay not from the sea side, nor on the Isla front, but from the inner side of the harbour and the east. Here a long spit of land runs out from beside the town of Puerto Real in the direction of Cadiz. It is called the Trocadero, from a village situated on its south-eastern side. At its extreme point is a fort named San José, while another fort, named San Luis, lies alongside of the other on a low mud-island. In advance of both, built right in the marsh, and surrounded by water at high-tide, was a third called Matagorda. These three forts were the outer defences of the harbour against a naval attack, and could cross fires with the town batteries and a castle called Puntales, which lies on the easternmost point of the isthmus, a mile from the battery of San Fernando. Matagorda is only 1,200 yards from Puntales, and 3,000 yards from the eastern point of the city of Cadiz. If the French took possession of it, and of the neighbouring San José and San Luis, they could bombard the Puntales castle and all the neighbouring section of the Isthmus, to the grave danger and discomfort of all who had to pass between the city and the Isla de Leon. They would also be able to annoy ships lying in all the eastern reaches of the great harbour. But before Victor arrived in front of Cadiz, San José, San Luis, and Matagorda were blown up, with the leave of the governor Venegas, by a detachment of seamen from the British fleet. There could, therefore, be no trouble from this direction, unless the enemy succeeded in restoring and rearming the three forts,—no easy task under the fire of the Puntales castle and the fleet. It was not till some months had passed that the struggle began for these ruined works, the only points from which the defence could be seriously incommoded.
On his first arrival Victor summoned the town, and received a prompt and angry answer of refusal from the governor and the local Junta. The marshal inspected the city’s outer defences, and was forced to report to the King at Seville that it seemed that nothing could be done against the place till he had brought up heavy artillery, and built himself boats. Joseph, unwilling to believe anything that contradicted the hopes of complete triumph that he had been nourishing ever since the passage of the Sierra Morena, came up to Puerto Santa Maria, on the bay of Cadiz, looked at the situation, did not find it reassuring, and wrote to his imperial brother to propose that he should send out his Toulon fleet to attack the place on the sea side[144]. Napoleon, still smarting under the memory of how Admiral Martin had destroyed an important section of that fleet in the preceding October, ignored this proposal. He did not forget, though his brother had apparently done so, the fact that the British Mediterranean fleet was still in existence.
Thus the position in front of Cadiz assumed the shape which it was to maintain for months, and even for years. Victor’s corps could provide enough men to observe the whole shore of the bay, and to blockade the garrison. But the Spaniards recovered their courage when they saw the enemy reduced to inactivity, and began ere long to receive reinforcements. The first to arrive were 3,000 of the regular troops which had been at Seville. This corps, under the Visconde de Gand, had escaped westward after the capitulation, and, though pursued by a brigade of Mortier’s corps, reached Ayamonte, at the mouth of the Guadiana, and there took ship for Cadiz. Somewhat later there arrived some troops sent by Wellington. The Spaniards in their day of disaster had forgotten their old jealousy about Cadiz, and asked for aid. Wellington, though loath to spare a man from Portugal, sent them in the early days of February three British[145] and two Portuguese battalions from Lisbon, under General William Stewart. So promptly were these troops shipped and landed, that they arrived at Cadiz between the 10th and the 15th of February, to the number of about 3,500 bayonets[146]. Thus the town was placed in security from any coup de main on Victor’s part.
The internal situation in Cadiz, however, left much to be desired. The town had elected a local Junta of defence, of which the governor Venegas was made President, and this body had frequent disputes with the new Regency, nominated by the Central Junta at the time of its abdication, and also with Albuquerque, whom Venegas did not wish to recognize as his hierarchical superior. The local body could make a fair show of objections to recognizing the legitimacy of the Regency: the old Central Junta itself had a doubtful origin, and the government nominated by those of its members who had taken refuge in Cadiz could not claim a clear title. But to raise the point at this moment of crisis was factious and unpatriotic, and the conduct of the local Junta became merely absurd when it tried to arrogate to itself authority extending outside its own city, and to issue orders to the outlying provinces, or the colonies of America. Still worse, it refused to issue clothing and footgear to Albuquerque’s army, whose equipment had been worn out by the long march from Estremadura, or to subsidize the military hospitals, though it had a considerable stock both of money and of military stores at its disposition. At the end of February the Regency nominated Venegas Viceroy of Mexico, and having bought him off with this splendid piece of preferment, made Albuquerque his successor in the governorship of Cadiz. But even thus they did not succeed in getting proper control over the city, for the Junta refused to allow the Duke to place his head quarters within the walls, or to issue orders to the civic militia. A modus vivendi was only reached when the Regents made an ignominious pact with the local oligarchy, by which the latter, in return for recognizing their legitimate authority, and undertaking to pay and feed the garrison, were granted the control of the port-revenues and other royal taxes of Cadiz, as well as of all the subsidies arriving from America. How the functions of government became still further complicated, when the members of the long-expected Cortes began to arrive, and to claim their rights as the sole legitimate representatives of the nation, must be told in another chapter[147].
Leaving matters at a deadlock in and about Cadiz, we must turn back to the operations of the French in the outlying parts of Andalusia. Sebastiani, it will be remembered, had taken Jaen on January 23rd. He was directed to march from thence on Granada and Malaga, to scatter the remains of Areizaga’s army, and to subdue the valleys of the Sierra Nevada and the long sea-coast below them. All this he accomplished with ease. On the 28th he routed at Alcala la Real a force composed of some of Areizaga’s fugitives, which had been joined by Freire and all the cavalry of the Andalusian army. These regiments, which had been cantoned in the valley of the Guadalquivir, since they were useless in the passes, had been collected by Freire to the number of 2,000 sabres. They were routed and dispersed by Milhaud’s and Perreymond’s dragoons and chasseurs, losing over 500 men and the whole of their artillery. The survivors dispersed, and retired in small parties eastward, only rallying in the province of Murcia. That same evening Sebastiani pushed on towards Granada, and was met by a deputation of its magistrates, who brought the keys of the city and a promise of submission. The French vanguard entered it next day. Lacy, who had taken refuge there with the small remains of his division, retired to Guadix. Sebastiani levied a military contribution of 5,000,000 reals on the city, placed a garrison of 1,500 men in the Alhambra, and marched with a mixed force on Malaga, the only place in this quarter where organized resistance showed itself. Here the local magistrates had been deposed by a popular rising, and several thousand irregulars had been collected by a Colonel Abello, a Capuchin friar named Fernando Berrocal, and three brothers, notaries, of the name of San Millan. They seized the passes of the Sierra de Alhama, and called all the hill-country to arms. Sebastiani, marching by Antequera, cleared the passes on February 5th, beat the half-armed insurgent bands outside the suburbs of Malaga, and stormed the town. He exacted a contribution of 12,000,000 reals, and hung the three San Millans and several other leading insurgents. After this he extended his troops along the coast, and occupied Velez Malaga, Motril, and Almunecar. The roads and the towns were his, but many of the insurgents took to the hills, and maintained a guerrilla warfare, which never ceased throughout the next three years. There were always bands on foot in the Alpujarras and the Sierra de Ronda, though the 4th Corps expended much energy in hunting them down.
Meanwhile Giron, Lacy, Freire, and the rest of the fugitive generals had retired eastward. They had now come under the orders of Blake, who superseded Areizaga and took over charge of 3,000 or 4,000 dispirited men at Guadix on January 30th. He retired at once within the borders of the kingdom of Murcia. Small parties and stragglers continued to come in for many weeks, and by March there were 10,000 foot and 1,500 horse collected—all in the worst state of equipment, and thoroughly demoralized by their late disasters.
We must now turn to the other end of Andalusia: King Joseph, when departing to inspect the outworks of Cadiz, had left Mortier in command in this quarter. The Marshal, after hunting the little force of the Visconde de Gand out of the Condado de Niebla, had been directed to deal a stroke at Badajoz. Accordingly, leaving a brigade in Seville and another in the Condado, he marched with one infantry division and his light cavalry into Estremadura. He reached Olivenza with 9,000 men, and summoned Badajoz on February 12th, but he had arrived too late. A considerable Spanish force was now before him, the old host of Del Parque, which the Central Junta had called down to the Guadiana when the original Army of Estremadura marched under Albuquerque to succour Andalusia. How Mortier and La Romana, the successor of Del Parque, dealt with each other in the months of the spring must be told in a later chapter[148].
The King, meanwhile, spent the months of February and March in a circular tour through Andalusia, where he affected to perceive nothing but friendly feeling among the inhabitants. He visited Ronda, Malaga, Granada, Jaen, celebrating Te Deums, and giving bull-fights and banquets. It is certain that a sufficient show of submission was made to nourish his happy illusions as to the finality of his conquest. Threats or bribes induced many notables to present themselves at his receptions, and it seems that a considerable portion of the Andalusians hoped to save themselves from the rapacity of the military authorities by professing an enthusiasm for the King. He, for his part, did his best to protect them—but he was soon gone, and the native officials whom he appointed were powerless against Sebastiani, the church plunderer, and Soult, the judicious collector of works of art. ‘At the very moment when the King was lavishing assurances and promises,’ writes his devoted servant Miot, ‘and everywhere extolling the thorough disinterestedness of France, severe and crushing exactions were being laid on the provinces in our occupation. An iron hand was grinding them to the dust. The King was powerless to resist the open violation of the promises which he was daily giving[149].’
Open resistance, however, had ceased, save at Cadiz and in the inaccessible recesses of the Sierra Nevada. Andalusia had been subdued from end to end, and neither the King nor Soult yet realized that a lamentable strategic mistake had been made when 70,000 veteran troops had been pinned down to garrison the newly conquered realm, while Portugal and Wellington’s army remained untouched. In their conception, as in that of the Emperor, the conquest of Portugal was to be sufficiently provided for by the new reinforcements which were now pouring over the Ebro, to the number of over 100,000 sabres and bayonets.