History of the Peninsular War, Volume 4 (of 6)

by Robert Southey

CHAPTER XXV.

PLANS OF THE FRENCH. SIR A. WELLESLEY RAISED TO THE PEERAGE. MARQUIS WELLESLEY ARRIVES IN SPAIN. ALTERATIONS IN THE BRITISH MINISTRY. STATE OF THE SPANISH GOVERNMENT. THE BRITISH ARMY RETREATS TO THE FRONTIERS OF PORTUGAL. BATTLES OF TAMAMES, OCANA, AND ALBA DE TORMES.

♦1809.
August.♦

Never during the war had the prospect appeared so hopeful as when Sir Arthur entered Spain. For the first time Buonaparte had been repulsed at all points in a great battle; and for the first time also a spirit of national resistance had broken forth in Germany, ... the only spirit by which his tyranny could be overthrown. The Spaniards seemed to acquire strength from their defeats, learning confidence in their resources, if not experience from misfortunes; while the British army, by the passage of the Douro and the discomfiture of Soult, had once more made the enemy feel what they might apprehend from such troops and such a commander.

♦Soult proposes immediately to invade Portugal.♦

The Peninsula was but a secondary object in the all-grasping schemes of Buonaparte’s ambition. At first he had expected to secure it without a struggle; nor was he yet so undeceived concerning the real nature of the resistance to be experienced there, as to believe that any serious effort would be required for completing its conquest. In Germany it was, he thought, that the fate of Europe must be decided; and this opinion was proclaimed in England by those who, on every occasion, sought to persuade the public that resistance to such a statesman and such a general, wherever it was attempted, could only end in defeat, and humiliation, and ruin. Under this impression he had ordered the intrusive government, which was in fact entirely under his orders, to content itself with protracting the war till the campaign in Germany should be brought to a close. That campaign was now ended. The battle of Wagram had re-established his shaken power; an armistice had immediately been sued for, and in the negotiations which followed, the house of Austria surrendered more than the French king Francis I. had lost at Pavia. The news of this great success did not, however, induce the Intruder to deviate from his instructions. M. Soult, the most enterprising as well as the ablest of the French officers who were employed in Spain, proposed at this time a plan for re-entering Portugal. The line which should have secured the communication of the British army with Lisbon he occupied, now that that army had found it necessary to retreat across the Tagus. He proposed, therefore, to move from Plasencia against Beresford’s inefficient force, while Ney, advancing from Salamanca, should act upon its left flank. That army, if not absolutely destroyed, would be prevented from forming a junction by way of Alcantara with Sir Arthur; and the French, by rapidly pursuing this advantage, might occupy Abrantes, and once more take possession of Lisbon, in which case Soult, ♦Campaign of 1809, pp. 49–52.
Ib. App. C-K.♦ still deceiving himself with regard to the disposition of the Portugueze, thought they would submit to an enemy whom they found it hopeless to resist. The plan was boldly conceived, though M. Soult had not sufficiently taken into his calculation the character of the troops with which he would again be brought in contact: but it was rejected by Joseph, who was at that time guided chiefly by M. Jourdan. That General, distinguished for his signal successes in the revolutionary war, held the high situation of Major-General of the army of Spain; and he preferring what seemed the surer though the slower course, resolved implicitly to follow the Emperor Napoleon’s instructions, and undertake no offensive operation for the present. A plan, he said, had been laid down for invading Portugal, and would be executed in the month of February. It was their intention to subjugate the south of Spain before this should be undertaken; and if the British Commander had possessed as little foresight as appeared in the conduct of the Spanish government, or if the British army had not derived better support from the Portugueze than from the Spaniards, the French might have succeeded in both parts of their intended operations.

♦Sir A. Wellesley raised to the peerage.♦

The Central Junta expressed its sense of Sir Arthur Wellesley’s services, by nominating him one of the Captain-generals of the army (a rank nearly equivalent to that of our field-marshal), and presenting him, in the name of Ferdinand, with some horses selected from the best breeds of Andalusia. “This tribute,” they said, “was of small value in comparison with the services which he had rendered to Spain, and still less in proportion to the wishes of those who offered it: but for hearts like his, the satisfaction resulting from great achievements was their best recompense; not was it in the power of man to bestow any reward which could equal the glory of being one of the principal deliverers of a great and generous people, of listening to their blessings, and of deserving their gratitude.” Sir Arthur accepted the horses, and the appointment also, provided he should receive permission from his own sovereign; but he declined the pay attached to it, not thinking it becoming that he should burthen the finances of Spain during such a contest. In England, also, he was recompensed with new honours. As soon as the news of his victory arrived, he was raised to the peerage by the titles of Baron Douro of Wellesley, and Viscount Wellington of Talavera, and of Wellington in the county of Somerset.

♦Aug. 1.
Marquis Wellesley arrives in Spain.♦

On the fourth morning after the battle, while the bells of Cadiz were ringing, the cannon firing, and the people rejoicing with higher hopes than had been felt since the surrender of Dupont, Marquis Wellesley landed in that harbour to supersede Mr. Frere. A great concourse assembled to see him land, and as he set foot on shore, a French flag was spread before him, that he might tread upon it in honour of his brother’s victory. The people drew his carriage, which in that country is an unusual mark of respect. The Marquis gave one of them a purse of gold to distribute among his comrades: but the man returned it, and, in the name of the people, assured him they desired no reward, being happy that they had this opportunity of expressing the sentiments of the whole nation. Both at Cadiz and at Seville the Marquis was received with every mark of public honour, and with the most enthusiastic expressions of attachment and gratitude to the British nation. But the first dispatches from Sir Arthur opened ♦Distress of the army for provisions.♦ upon him a disheartening prospect. The combined armies, amounting to not less than 60,000 men, and 16,000 or 18,000 horse, were depending entirely for their daily supply upon the country, which did not contain a population in many square miles equal to the number of the army, and could not of course produce a sufficiency for its sustenance. Extremadura indeed is the worst peopled and least cultivated province of the whole Peninsula. It was necessary to send to a great distance for supplies, which, scanty as they were, could not be procured regularly, nor without great difficulty. The troops were ill fed, and frequently received no rations whatever. Effectual measures, Sir Arthur said, must be taken, and that speedily. No army could serve to any purpose unless it were properly fed; and it was absurd to suppose that a Spaniard, or a man or animal of any country, could make exertions without a due supply of food; in fact the Spaniards were more clamorous, and more exhausted, if they did not receive it regularly, than the English. The English, however, were in a state of great distress; from the 3d till the 7th they had had no bread; then about 4000 pounds of biscuit were divided among 30,000 mouths, and the whole supply ♦Aug. 8.♦ was exhausted. “The army,” said Sir Arthur, “will be entirely lost, if this treatment continues. If efficient measures had been adopted by the government when the distress of the British troops was first represented to them, the benefit must ere this have been experienced. There had been no neglect on the part of Mr. Frere: the evil was owing to the poverty and exhausted state of the country; to the inactivity of the magistrates and people; to their disinclination to taking any trouble, except that of packing up their property, and removing when they heard of the approach of a French patrole; to their habits of insubordination and disobedience, and to the want of power in the government and their officers.”

♦Disputes with Cuesta concerning supplies.♦

Cuesta’s unaccommodating temper aggravated the evil. He was applied to after the battle for ninety mules to draw the British artillery in place of those lost in the action; there were at that time hundreds in his army employed in drawing empty carts, and yet he refused to part with any. Five guns belonging to Alburquerque’s division having been taken at Arzobispo, the Duke endeavoured to make over to the British army the mules attached to them; but Cuesta took them for himself. His own cavalry were plentifully supplied with barley, while hundreds of the British horses died for want of it. In other respects, his men suffered as many privations as the English; and vexation at this and at the untoward issue of the campaign, combined with bodily infirmity, seems to have bewildered him: he lent ear to every complaint against the allies; and at a time when they were literally starving, both men and horses, he wrote to their General, stating that his own troops were in want of necessary food, because all that he ordered for their use was intercepted by the British and their commissaries. The English, he said, actually sold biscuit and meat; and he heard continual complaints and saw continual traces that they plundered all the places through which they passed, and even followed the peasantry to the mountains, for the purpose of stripping them even to the shirt. Sir Arthur positively denied that any thing going to the Spanish army had been stopped by the British; as for the tale of his soldiers selling provisions, he observed, that it was beneath the dignity of his Excellency’s situation and character to notice such things, and beneath his own to reply to them. He was concerned that General Cuesta should conceive there was any reason for complaining of the British troops; but, continued he, “when troops are starving, which those under my command have been, as I have repeatedly told your Excellency since I joined you, and particularly when they had no bread from the 3d to the 7th, it is not astonishing that they should go to the villages and even to the mountains to look for food where they think they can get it. The complaints of the inhabitants, however, should not have been confined to the conduct of the British; here in Deleitosa I have seen Spanish soldiers, who ought to have been elsewhere, take off the doors of the houses which were locked up, in order that they might plunder the houses; and they afterwards burnt the doors.”

To preserve discipline among starving troops is indeed impossible, and neither Cuesta nor Sir Arthur could be responsible for their men under such circumstances; but the letter of the former brought the question respecting provisions to a point, and Sir Arthur called upon him to state distinctly whether he understood that the Spanish army was to have not only all the provisions which the country could afford, but all those also which were sent from Seville; whether any magazines had been formed, and from whence the troops were to draw provisions? “I hope,” said he, “that I shall receive satisfactory answers to these questions to-morrow morning; if not, I beg that your Excellency will be prepared to occupy the posts opposite Almaraz, as it will be impossible for me to remain any longer in a country in which no arrangement is made for provisioning my troops, and in which it is understood that all the provisions which are either found in the country, or are sent from Seville (as I have been informed, for the use of the British army) are to be applied solely and exclusively to the Spanish troops.” On the day that this correspondence took place, an English commissary arriving from Truxillo with bread and barley for the British army, was stopped on the way, and deprived of all his barley and part of his bread by a detachment of Spanish horse. Whatever momentary irritation might be occasioned by circumstances like these, Sir Arthur commiserated the sufferings of the Spanish army too sincerely to harbour any resentment; but he perceived the absolute necessity of withdrawing. “It is useless,” he said to the British ambassador, “to complain; but we are not treated as friends, much less as the only prop on which the cause of Spain can depend. But, besides this want of good-will, which can easily be traced to the temper of the General, there is such a want of resources in the country, and so little exertion in bringing forward what is to be found; that if the army were to remain here much longer, it would become totally useless. The daily and increasing loss of horses from deficiency of food, and from the badness of what there is, is really alarming.” Ney’s return to Old Castille strengthened him in this resolution; it satisfied him that no serious attack upon Andalusia was intended for the present, and he thought it not unlikely that this corps of the enemy was about to invade Portugal, for the sake of drawing him out of Spain.

♦Mr. Frere requires the removal of Cuesta.♦

The necessity of removing Cuesta from the command appeared so urgent to Mr. Frere, that he deemed it his duty to present a memorial upon the subject, though Marquis Wellesley was expected two days afterward at Seville. ♦Aug. 9.♦ He dwelt upon his abandonment of the wounded at Talavera, and upon the imminent danger to which he had exposed Venegas by concealing from him, as well as from his government, the true state of the combined armies, and the inability of the English to proceed. The dismissal of Cuesta, he said, could not long be delayed, and it was important that it should take place instantly, and another commander appointed: either the choice being left to Sir Arthur, or the Junta itself appointing the Duke of Alburquerque, who possessed his confidence and that of the army, and whose abilities had been tried and approved. This was the only satisfaction which could be given to the British General and his army, and even this would be little: “the wound,” said Mr. Frere, “is very deep, and the English nation could not have received one more difficult to heal than the abandonment of their wounded at Talavera.” This was the last act of Mr. Frere in his public capacity; and it was consistent with the whole conduct of that minister, who, during his mission never shrunk from any responsibility, nor ever, from the fear of it, omitted any effort which he thought requisite for the common welfare of his own country and of Spain. In presenting such a memorial, while his successor was, as it were, at the door, he was conscious that he might appear to be acting irregularly in his public character; and in his private one, that it might alter the feelings with which he could have wished to take leave of his friends in Spain; but, in addition to the urgency of the case, he considered also that it would be peculiarly unpleasant for Marquis Wellesley to begin his mission with an altercation in which his brother was concerned. Mr. Frere’s situation had been unfavourable to any thing like a controlling influence; the intelligence which announced the intended assistance of a British force had been accompanied with an intimation of his recall, and for some months he had, as he expressed himself, literally been a minister only from day to day, looking for the arrival of his successor by the first fair wind. The Junta expressed their sense of his zealous services by conferring upon him the Castillian title of Marquez de la Union (which he received permission from his own government to retain); and, in reply to the momentary outcry which misrepresentation and party spirit had raised against him in England, they represented his conduct such as they conceived it to be, and as it truly was. This had never prevented him from using the strongest language and taking the highest tone toward the very persons who had been foremost in this friendly act; but he felt how unfavourable his situation was, and, knowing that that of Marquis Wellesley would in all respects be very different, he hoped the Marquis might be able to remedy the existing evils as far as they were capable of being remedied. The task, however, was no easy one. “It might seem,” he said, “that a British minister ought before that time to have established a regular system for securing the subsistence of the armies; but the evil lay deep; it arose from an old despotic government, and from eighteen years of the basest corruption, intrigue, and public pillage. The effects of all this still continued, the system itself was not wholly done away, and even a sovereign in ordinary times would find it difficult to remedy it.”

♦Cuesta resigns the command.♦

Marquis Wellesley, on his arrival, did not think it expedient to insist on Cuesta’s removal. That General, he observed, was said to be deficient in every quality necessary for an extensive command, except courage; his temper rendered him peculiarly unfit for acting with an allied army, and it was scarcely possible that another officer with equal disqualifications should be found in the Spanish service. But the government was under some apprehension of his influence, which was supposed to be extensive and dangerous, though it rested on no other foundation than the precarious one of undeserved popularity. The Marquis, therefore, limited his interference to a strong expression of his sense of the General’s misconduct, being of opinion that his removal might be effected more willingly and with less danger if it appeared to be the consequence of his own actions, rather than the result of a direct application from the British ambassador. The Junta, however, were desirous that such a direct application should be made; and Marquis Wellesley then addressed a note to Garay, stating that it was impossible to hope for any degree of co-operation, or even for any aid from the troops of Spain to the British army, if the chief command remained in the hands of General Cuesta. Cuesta had wisely anticipated such a measure. Two days after the date of that letter to Sir Arthur, in which he complained so preposterously of the British troops, a paralytic stroke deprived him of the use of one leg; feeling himself then completely incapacitated, he delivered over the army to the second in command, D. Francisco de Eguia, and requested permission to resign, that he might go to the baths of Alhama. When, therefore, the Marquis delivered in his note, he was informed that Cuesta’s resignation had been accepted.

♦Eguia succeeds ad interim to the command.♦

Eguia was well acquainted with the military topography of Spain, but had no other qualification for the command of an army: at the battle of Medellin he did not venture to depart from his orders without receiving fresh ones from Cuesta, at a time when it was impossible for Cuesta to communicate with him, and by this imbecility he completed the destruction of the army that day. Mr. Frere, knowing that the military Junta would be most likely to confirm him in the command, because he was one of the old school, wrote a private note to Garay, deprecating such an appointment. Alburquerque was the proper person for the command; but the Junta were jealous of his rank, his popularity, his talents, and his enlightened views; and Marquis Wellesley soon discovered that, if he were named to the command, the army under him would certainly be reduced. Till, however, a successor to Cuesta should be chosen, the command devolved upon Eguia; and when that General notified this to the British Commander, he accompanied the intelligence with the fairest professions, desiring him to depute a confidential officer, who, with another appointed on the part of the Spaniards, might regulate the distribution of provisions in such a manner that the English army should be supplied in preference to the Spaniards. Lord Wellington expressed, in reply, his perfect confidence in the intentions of Eguia, and sent some officers to Truxillo, there to meet any whom Eguia might appoint, and settle some practicable arrangement: a preference like that which was spoken of he well perceived was impossible.

♦Calvo sent to see to the supplies.♦

When first the Junta were informed of the distress of the British army, nothing appeared to hurt them so much as that their own troops should have been supplied while their allies were in want, and they ordered Cuesta, in every instance, to supply the British troops in preference to his own. They directed the Junta of Badajoz to send two members of their body into the vale of Plasencia, and secure the persons of those magistrates who, having engaged to furnish means for the British army, had failed in their engagement; to supersede them also, and place at the disposal of the British commissary every thing which he might require. Before these measures could be executed, Soult entered from Old Castille, and the whole of the fertile country on that side of the Tagus fell into the possession of the enemy. When the complaints of the British General became louder, the Junta, alarmed at his intended retreat into Portugal, deputed D. Lorenzo Calvo, one of their own body, to the armies, hoping that his exertions, aided by his authority, would effectually remedy the evil. Calvo was considered a man of energetic character and activity, and, having been bred up in commerce, had acquired those habits of business which were necessary for the service in which he was now employed. True to that system of dissimulation, which, by the old school, was esteemed essential in all business of state, he was charged to invest Cuesta with the order of Charles III. lest that General should take umbrage at the distinction conferred upon Lord Wellington, though at this very time the Junta were so offended at Cuesta’s conduct, that nothing but their fears had prevented them from immediately displacing him.

♦Lord Wellington declares his intention of falling back.♦

But neither Eguia’s professions, nor the measures of the government, nor the presence of one of its members, produced any relief to the British army. Had it been in a condition for service, and provided with means of transport, Lord Wellington had it in view to act against the French at Plasencia, for which purpose he ordered materials to be collected for repairing the Puente de Cardinal; but his cavalry had now consumed all the forage within reach; they were obliged to go from twenty to thirty miles to procure it, and frequently when they had gone so far, the Spaniards, being themselves in equal want, deprived them of it on their return. The horses were at length so much reduced that they were scarcely able to relieve the outposts. More than a month had now elapsed since the British General informed Cuesta that, if he were not supplied, he could not remain in Spain. In the course of that time, if proper measures had been taken, supplies might have been forwarded from the farthest part of Andalusia; but not a mule or cart, or article of provision of any kind had been obtained under any order from, or arrangement made by, the government. Lord Wellington applied for a remount of only an hundred mares, which could not be used in the Spanish cavalry, because they used stallions; even these he could not procure, nor did he receive an answer to his application. It was now become absolutely necessary to withdraw, and on the 18th of August, he requested Marquis Wellesley to give notice to the government that he was about so to do. “Since the 22d of last month,” said he, “the horses have not received their regular deliveries of barley, and the infantry not ten days’ bread. I have no doubt the government have given orders that we should be provided as we ought to be, but orders are not sufficient. To carry on the contest to any purpose, the labour and service of every man and of every beast in the country should be employed in the support of the armies; and these should be so classed and arranged as not only to secure obedience to the orders of the government, but regularity and efficiency in the performance of the service. Magazines might then with ease be formed, and transported wherever the armies should be stationed. But as we are now situated, 50,000 men are collected upon a spot which cannot afford subsistence for 10,000, and there are no means of sending to a distance to make good the deficiency: the Junta have issued orders, which, for want of arrangement, there are no persons to obey; and the army would perish here, if I were to remain, before the supplies could arrive.”

♦Correspondence with Eguia and Calvo.♦

Prepared as both the Spanish government and general ought to have been for such a determination, both manifested the greatest astonishment when it was announced. Eguia wrote to Lord Wellington, repeating his protestations, that he should have every thing which he required, and that the Spaniards should go without any thing, rather than the British should be in want. “An English commissary,” he said, “should reside at Truxillo, who should have a key of the magazines, and take the proportion for the British army, though his own should perish. If,” he continued, “notwithstanding these conclusive protestations, the British General persisted in marching into Portugal, it would be apparent that other causes induced him to take that step, and not the want of subsistence.” Upon this insulting assertion, Lord Wellington informed Eguia that any further correspondence between them was unnecessary. He entered, nevertheless, into a sufficient explanation of the real state of affairs. The magazines of Truxillo, according to a return sent by Eguia himself, did not contain a sufficiency to feed the British army alone for one day. No doubt was entertained of the exertions of the Spanish General, nor of his sincerity. “The deficiencies,” said Lord Wellington, “arise not from want of orders of your Excellency, but from the want of means in the country, from the want of arrangement in the government, and from the neglect of timely measures to supply the wants which were complained of long ago.” A letter from Calvo to Lord Wellington implied the same suspicion concerning the motives of his retreat as Eguia had done, though in more qualified terms. This member of the Junta came forward with something more specious than vague promises and protestations. “He bound himself,” he said, “to provide the army, within three days, with all the rations which it might require; and within fifteen days to have magazines formed in places appointed by the British General, containing all the articles which the army could consume in one or two months; and to provide also carts and mules, both of draft and burthen, sufficient for the transport of these magazines.” He then protested that 7000 rations of bread, 50,000 pounds of flour, 250 fanegas of barley, 50 of rye, 100 of wheat, and 60 arrobas of rice were ready, with means of transport for them, and before the morrow noon would reach the British army in their present position. “My activity,” said Calvo, “shall not rest until continual remittances of the same articles prove that my promises deserve to be confided in; and if there were in your Excellency’s intention any disposition to alter your purpose of retreat, I am certain I should obtain the satisfaction of hearing your Excellency yourself confess that I had surpassed your hopes.” At the time when Lord Wellington received this letter, he had in his possession an order dated only five days back, and signed by this very member of the Supreme Junta, ordering to the Spanish head-quarters, for the use of the Spanish army, all the provisions which the British commissary had provided in the town of Guadalupe and its neighbourhood. Well, therefore, might he reply to him, that he could have no confidence in his assurances. “As for the promise,” said he, “of giving provisions to the British army to the exclusion of the Spanish troops, such a proposal can only have been made as an extreme and desperate measure to induce me to remain in Spain; and were it practicable, I could not give my consent to it. The Spanish army must be fed as well as the British. I am fully aware,” he continued, “of the consequences which may follow my departure, though there is now no enemy in our front; but I am not responsible for them, whatever they may be. They are responsible who, having been made acquainted with the wants of this army more than a month ago, have taken no effectual means to relieve them; who allowed a brave army, which was rendering gratuitous services to Spain, and which was able and willing to pay for every thing it received, to starve in the midst of their country, and be reduced by want to a state of inefficiency; who refused or neglected to find carriages for removing the officers and soldiers who had been wounded in their service, and obliged me to give up the equipment of the army for the performance of this necessary act ♦Aug. 20.♦ of humanity.” On the following day Lord Wellington began his retreat in the direction of Badajoz.

♦Marquis Wellesley proposes a plan for supplying the armies.♦

He halted at Merida, and eight days after his departure, being then four marches from Xaraicejo, he found none of the supplies on the road which had so confidently been promised. Having, however, been able to separate his troops, and being out of reach of Eguia’s army, he now procured regular supplies. Marquis Wellesley meantime had been indefatigable in pressing upon the government the necessity of a regular plan for provisioning the armies; and he found, upon investigation, that orders enough had been issued, but no means had been employed either to enforce the execution of those orders, or to ascertain in what respects they had failed, or what were the causes either of their total failure or of their partial success. No magazines or regular depots had been established, no regular means of transport provided, nor any persons regularly appointed to conduct and superintend convoys, under the direction of the general commanding the army; nor had any system been adopted for drawing from the more fertile provinces, by a connected chain of magazines, resources to supply the deficiency of those poorer countries in which the army might be acting. At the solicitation of the Junta, Marquis Wellesley delivered in a plan for remedying these evils. It was less easy of execution in Spain than it would have been in England, where the system of our stagecoaches and waggons has disciplined a great number of persons in the detail of such arrangements; yet, with due exertions on the part of government, it might speedily have been established. Two days elapsed, and no notice was taken of the proposal; he requested a reply, and after two days more Garay put into his hand a long string of regulations for the internal management of the magazines when they should have been formed. Marquis Wellesley again anxiously inquired whether the Junta were disposed to adopt the plan which he had formed at their request, and whether any steps had been taken for carrying it into effect? At length, after it had been nine days in their hands, he was informed that they assented to it,—but this was all; it was a mere verbal assent, and no measures whatever were taken for beginning arrangements of such urgent necessity. The government at the same time expressed its confidence that the British army would now rejoin the Spaniards, and make a forward movement against the enemy. Marquis Wellesley suspected some of the Junta of treason. “This proposition,” said he to his government, “accords with the general tenor of those professions of zeal for active war, which have particularly characterized the declarations of the Junta since the army has been deprived of the means of movement and supply. Far from affording any just foundation of confidence in their intentions, such declarations of activity and enterprise, unaccompanied by any provident or regular attention to the means and objects of the war, serve only to create additional suspicions of ignorance, weakness, or insincerity. No person acquainted with the real condition of the British and Spanish forces at ♦Aug. 30.♦ this time, could reasonably advise a forward movement against the enemy with any other view than the certain destruction of the allied armies.”

♦His ill opinion of the Spanish government.♦

The conduct of the Junta gave strong grounds for such a suspicion. The real cause which had checked the progress of a victorious army, and finally reduced it to a state unfit for service, could not be concealed; public opinion loudly imputed this evil to the negligence of government, and the government endeavoured, by ungenerous artifices, to divert the general indignation. Rumours were set afloat that the real cause of the retreat of the British army was very different from the assigned one; they had not fallen back upon Portugal because there had been any deficiency either in their means of supply or of transport, but because of certain political considerations, inconsistent with the security and honour of Spain, and with the good faith of Great Britain. Demands, it was whispered, had been made in the King of England’s name, for the cession of Cadiz, of the Havannah, and even of the whole island of Cuba; changes had been required in the form of the Spanish government, as preliminary conditions to the further operations of the British troops in Spain, and Lord Wellington had retreated only because these demands were refused. These reports, which, if not invented by the government, certainly were not discountenanced by them, were absolutely and entirely false; nothing had been asked from Spain except subsistence for the army employed in her defence. Marquis Wellesley, however, though he perceived the criminal misconduct of the government, and though he affirmed that in the last campaign no rational motives could be imagined for the conduct of some of the generals and officers, unless it were supposed that they concerted their operations with the French instead of the British general, did justice to the people of Spain. “Whatever insincerity or jealousy towards England existed, was to be found,” he said, “in the government, its officers, and adherents; no such unworthy sentiment prevailed among the people.” They had done their duty, and were still ready to do it; and, notwithstanding the vexations which he experienced, and the alarm and even ill-will which the retreat of the British excited, he remembered, as became him, that the cause of Spain and England was the same: while, therefore, he expressed his opinion that the Cortes ought to be assembled, and a more efficient government formed than that of so ill-constituted and anomalous a body as the Junta, he listened willingly to every suggestion for employing the British troops in any practicable manner. Might it not be possible, it was said, for them to take up a position on the left bank of the Guadiana, occupying Merida as an advanced post, their right at Almendralejo, and their left extending toward Badajoz? Portugal might be covered by this position; Seville protected at the same time, and a point of support given to the left of the Spanish army, which should in that case be cantoned in Medellin, Don Benito, and Villa Nueva de la Serena.

♦Lord Wellington objects to taking a position on the Guadiana.♦

This plan the Marquis proposed to his brother; but that able general was of opinion that the Guadiana was not defensible by a weaker against a stronger army, being fordable in very many places, and affording no position. The Spanish army, he thought, was at that time in the best position in that part of the country, one which they ought to hold against any force that could be brought against them, if they could hold any thing; while they held it they covered the Guadiana effectually, and their retreat from it was always secure. He, therefore, recommended that they should send away the bridge of boats which was still opposite Almaraz, and remain where they were as long as possible. For the British army, Lord Wellington said, he saw no chance at present of its resuming offensive operations; and he desired that no hopes might be held out to the Junta of any further co-operation on his part with the Spanish troops, which in their present state were by no means to be depended on. He saw the difficulty to which this determination might reduce the Spanish government; their army might be seized with a panic, run off, and leave every thing exposed to instant loss. All he could say to this was, that he was in no hurry to withdraw from Spain; he wanted to refresh his troops; he should not enter Portugal till he had heard Marquis Wellesley’s sentiments; if he did enter it he should go no farther than the frontier, where he should be so near, that the enemy, unless in very great force, would not venture across the Guadiana, leaving the British army upon their flank and rear; in fact, therefore, he should be as useful to Spain within the Portugueze frontier as upon the Guadiana, and even more so, because the nearer he went to Portugal, the more efficient he should become. The best way to cover the Guadiana and Seville, was by a position on the enemy’s flank.

♦Alburquerque appointed to the command in Extremadura.♦

As an inducement to Lord Wellington to remain, and co-operate with the Spanish army, the Junta proposed to place the corps which they designed to leave in Extremadura under his command. This was to consist of 12,000 men, a number inadequate to the service for which they were required; but the true reason was perceived by the British General; he had by this time had ample opportunities of discovering that the Junta, in the distribution of their force, did not consider military defence and military operations so much as political intrigues and the attainment of trifling political objects. The Junta of Extremadura had insisted that Alburquerque should have the command in their province; the government was weak enough in authority to be obliged to yield this, and weak enough in judgement to diminish as far as possible the army which they unwillingly entrusted to this envied and most ill-treated nobleman. Lord Wellington, who could not have accepted the command unconditionally without permission from his own court, declined it altogether under present circumstances, as being inconsistent with those operations which he foresaw would soon become necessary for the British army. He had intelligence that a council of war held at Salamanca had recommended an attack upon Ciudad Rodrigo: the loss of that place would cut off the only communication which the Spanish government had with the northern provinces, and would give the French secure possession of Old Castille, and probably draw after it the loss of Almeida. It would, therefore, be incumbent upon him to make exertions for relieving Ciudad Rodrigo. The cabildo of that city, just at this time when Lord Wellington was contemplating their approaching danger, and how best to succour them, gave an example of the spirit which too many of these provincial authorities displayed toward the British army. 100,000 pounds of biscuit had been ordered there, and paid for by a British commissary; and when Marshal Beresford sent for it, that it might be deposited in the magazines at Almeida, the cabildo seized 30,000 pounds of this quantity, upon the ground that debts due to that city by Sir John Moore’s army had not been paid, ... although part of the business of the commissary who was sent to Ciudad Rodrigo was to settle these accounts, and discharge the debts in question.

♦Lord Wellington withdraws to Badajoz.♦

This was a specimen of that ill-will towards England which prevailed in many places among persons of this rank; and Marquis Wellesley perceived that such persons, if not favoured by the government, were certainly not discountenanced. The same spirit was manifested but too plainly by the persons employed about Cuesta’s army. While they were professing that the English army should be served in preference to their own people (even to the exclusion of them, if needful), they never offered to supply a single cart or mule, or any means of transport from their own abundance. Lord Wellington, for want of such means, was compelled to leave his ammunition behind him, and then no difficulty was found in transporting it to the Spanish stores. No difficulty was found in transporting the bridge of boats from Almaraz to Badajoz; yet if these means of transport, with which the Spanish army was always abundantly provided, had been shared with the British army, many of the difficulties under which it suffered would have been relieved, and its separation, says Lord Wellington, certainly would not have taken place when it did. The distress which his men suffered would not have been felt in an equal degree by the French, or by any people who understood how to manage their food. Meat they had always in sufficiency, and their chief want was of bread, ... they were not ingenious enough to make a comfortable meal without it, though flour or rice was served out in its stead. But the want of food for the cavalry, and of means of transport, which actually rendered the British army inefficient, could not be remedied by any dexterity of the men, or any foresight of the general, and is wholly imputable to the conduct of the Spanish generals and the Spanish government. Spain was grievously injured by this unpardonable misconduct. The English ministry were at this very time proposing to increase Lord Wellington’s force to 30,000 men, provided the supreme command were vested in the British general, and effectual arrangements made for their supply. But in the present state of things, both the Marquis and his brother perceived that any co-operation with the Spanish armies would only draw on a repetition of the same disasters. The intent was therefore abandoned, ♦1809.
September.♦ and Lord Wellington at the beginning of September, proceeded to Badajoz, stationing his army, part within the Portugueze frontier, and part on the Spanish territory, in a position which would menace the flank and rear of the French if they advanced toward Andalusia.

♦Expedition to Walcheren.♦

While the allied armies were thus rendered inefficient, not by the skill or strength of the enemy, but by the inexperience and incapacity of the Spanish authorities, the mightiest force that had ever left the British shores was wasted in a miserable expedition to the Scheldt, and upon objects so insulated, and unimportant at that crisis, that if they had been completely attained, success would have been nugatory. Had that force been landed in the north of Germany, as the Austrian government proposed, it has since been known, that what Schill did with his single regiment, would have been done by Blucher and the whole Prussian army. Marquis Wellesley had always disapproved of its destination, looking upon the plan as at once absurd and ruinous. Destructive to the last degree it proved, from the unwholesome nature of the country to which it was sent: a cause which of all others might with most certainty have been foreseen, and yet by some fatality seems to have been overlooked by all who were concerned in planning the expedition or consulted upon it. The only consolation, if consolation it may be deemed, for the misemployment of such a force, was in the knowledge that, owing to the state of the Spanish counsels, and the temper of the Spanish generals, it could not have acted in Spain.

♦Inquiry into the conduct of the Duke of York.♦

The British government meantime had to struggle with difficulties at home as well as abroad, and of the most unexpected kind. During the former part of the year parliament was occupied with an inquiry into the conduct of the Duke of York as commander-in-chief, which ended in his resigning the office. The circumstances which were disclosed rendered this resignation becoming and necessary; but perhaps there never was another instance in which the reaction of public opinion was at once so strongly and so justly manifested. For when the agitation was subsided which had been raised, not so much by the importance of the business itself, as by the unremitting efforts of a set of libellers the vilest and most venomous of their kind, it was then perceived that the accusation had originated in intrigue and malice; that the abuses which were brought to light were far less than had been supposed to exist, and that in proving them it had been proved also that the greatest improvements had been introduced into that department by his Royal Highness, and that the general administration was excellent. From that time, therefore, the Duke acquired a popularity which he had never before possessed; and the efforts which had been made with persevering malignity to ruin him in the good opinion of the nation, served only to establish him there upon the strongest and surest grounds.

♦Alterations in the ministry.♦

This inquiry had occupied a full third of the whole session, to the grievous interruption of public business, and the more grievous excitement of the people, even to the extinction in most minds of all other public interest whatever. The ministry meantime had other causes of disquiet, which did not transpire till the session had closed. Mismanaged arrangements for the removal of Lord Castlereagh from the war department, induced him to challenge Mr. Canning, with whom the wish for his removal originated, but who in the course of the affair had been as ill used as himself. Both parties in consequence resigned; the Duke of Portland did the same, compelled by the state of his health, for he died almost immediately afterwards, and thus the administration was broken up. Lord Liverpool, the only remaining secretary of state, performed the business of the other two departments, while the remaining members of the cabinet looked about in dismay, and almost in despair, for new colleagues and for a new head. ♦Sept. 23.♦ Their situation appeared so forlorn that official letters were addressed to Earl Grey and Lord Grenville, informing them that his Majesty had authorized Earl Liverpool and Mr. Perceval to communicate with their lordships for the purpose of forming an extended and combined administration, and requesting them to come to town, that as little time as possible might be lost in forwarding so important an object. Earl Grey replied, that had his Majesty been pleased to signify he had any commands for him personally, he should not have lost a moment in showing his duty by prompt obedience to his royal pleasure; but when it was proposed that he should communicate with the existing ministers, for the purpose of forming a combined administration with them, he should be wanting in duty to the King, and in fairness to them, if he did not at once declare that such a union was, as far as it regarded him under the then circumstances, impossible: this being the answer which he was under the necessity of giving, his appearance in London could be of no advantage; and it might possibly be of detriment to the country, if, in consequence of a less decisive answer, any farther delay should take place in the formation of a settled government.

Lord Grenville, who was in Cornwall, replied, he should lose no time in repairing to town, and begged leave to defer all observations upon the business till his arrival. The day after his arrival he sent an answer conformable to that of Earl Grey, declining the proposed communication, because it could not be productive of any public advantage. “I trust,” he added, “I need not say that this opinion is neither founded in any sentiment of personal hostility, nor in a desire of unnecessarily prolonging political differences. To compose, not to inflame, the divisions of the empire, has always been my anxious wish, and is now more than ever the duty of every loyal subject; but my accession to the existing administration could not in any respect contribute to this object, nor could it be considered in any other light than as a dereliction of public principle. This answer, which I must have given to any such proposal, if made while the government was yet entire, cannot be varied by the retreat of some of its members. My objections are not personal, they apply to the principle of the government itself, and to the circumstances which attended its appointment.”

Nothing but extreme necessity could have induced the remaining ministers to make these overtures; and when their advances were thus rejected, great hopes were entertained by the adverse party, that they would not be able to keep their ground as an administration. It was even affirmed and believed that some of the highest offices were offered to different persons, and that none could be found to accept them. The only hope of the ministry rested upon Marquis Wellesley; hints were thrown out that he would not join any arrangement in which Mr. Canning was not included; this opinion, however, proved erroneous, the Marquis accepted the office which Mr. Canning vacated, the Earl of Liverpool was transferred from the home to the war department, and the situation which he had vacated was filled by Mr. Ryder. Lord Palmerstone was made secretary at war in the room of Sir James Pulteney, and Mr. Perceval took the place of the Duke of Portland, ... thus uniting in himself, as Mr. Pitt and Mr. Addington had done before him, the offices of first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer. The loss of the Duke was only that of a name; that of Mr. Canning was greatly regretted, as was also the secession of Mr. Huskisson, who resigned his seat at the treasury at the same time; but though the ministry was weakened by their departure, it was well understood that the opposition would derive no aid from them; and, on the whole, government was thought to have gained by these changes more than it had lost, in consequence of the high reputation of Marquis Wellesley, and the almost general desire of the nation to see him in administration. His brother, Mr. Henry Wellesley, was appointed to succeed him as ambassador to Spain.

♦Disposition of the French and Spanish armies.♦

The disposable force of the enemy in Spain at this time was estimated at 125,000 men, well provided with cavalry and artillery, exclusive of the garrisons in Barcelona and the strong places upon the Pyrenean frontier. Of these, about 35,000 were employed in Arragon and Catalonia, the rest were in the two Castilles and Extremadura, 70,000 being in the field under Victor, Soult, Ney, Sebastiani, and Mortier, ... the remainder employed in garrisons, and in keeping up the communication between the different places in their possession. Sick and wounded were not included, and an allowance was made for the loss of 10,000 men at Talavera. At the lowest estimate, this was the number of the enemy; the force of the Spaniards was miserably inferior. Blake, after the rout at Belchite, had reassembled a small army, scarcely exceeding 6000 men, with which he was endeavouring, from time to time, to relieve Gerona. Noroña had 15,000 men in Galicia; but a tenth part of these were without arms, and he had neither cavalry nor artillery. The Duke del Parque had 9000 men at Ciudad Rodrigo, and Eguia and Venegas had about 50,000 in their two armies. But the inefficient state of these troops had been lamentably proved; both cavalry and infantry were for the most part undisciplined, and the latter neither properly clothed nor accoutred, notwithstanding large supplies of all things needful had been sent from England.

♦Neediness of the intrusive government.♦

The Intruder meantime, now that immediate danger was averted, had leisure to feel the wretched state to which his subserviency to a wicked brother had reduced him. He was, indeed, in possession of Madrid, and half the kingdom was overrun by his troops; but how were those troops to be paid, or how was he to support the expenses of his court and government? Whatever might be the issue of the war in the Peninsula, the vast colonial empire of Spain could never be his, and the resources which still continued to arrive from thence were enjoyed by the legitimate government. Whereever his authority extended, trade was at an end, the people were impoverished, and the sources of revenue destroyed. The first-fruits of plunder also had now been consumed. Andalusia, indeed, offered a harvest as yet untouched, and which would ere long be at his disposal; but till the opportunity arrived, it was necessary to glean whatever had been spared in the former pillage. An edict was issued, denouncing severe punishment against those who should secrete papers or effects belonging to the suppressed monasteries, and offering a reward for the discovery of such property, proportionate to its value. He had previously confiscated the property of all Spaniards in foreign countries, who should not forthwith return in obedience to his command; he now called upon those in whose hands property, papers, or effects had been left by others when forsaking their place of residence, to deliver them up for the use of the treasury. Any persons buying or selling gold, silver, or jewels, which had belonged to a suppressed convent, or to an insurgent, were to be severely punished; and those who assisted the insurgents in any manner were to be put to death. Another decree sequestered the revenues of all archbishops and bishops, and appointed pensions from the state instead. Another commanded all persons possessing plate to the amount of more than ten dollars, except in plates, knives, and spoons, to give in an account thereof within three days; the mint was immediately to pay a fourth of its value, and the remainder was promised within four months. All plate which should be concealed after this edict was to be forfeited, and a fourth of its value given to the informer; and silversmiths were forbidden to purchase any articles in silver, except such as were permitted to be in use by the present decree.

♦Measures of severity.♦

These measures proved the neediness of the intrusive government. Its atrocious character had already been amply demonstrated; if farther proof were needed, it was to be found in a decree by which all persons whose sons were serving in what it called the insurgent armies were required to furnish a man to the Intruder’s service for every son, or a proportionate sum of money; the elder brothers, or other nearest relations or guardians of those who had no father, were subjected to the same law; and those who had no money either for procuring the substitute or paying the fine were to be imprisoned, or sent into France. But it was reserved for this government to introduce a new species of barbarity, which had never before been heard of in war. Kellermann, whom the English had rescued with such difficulty from the vengeance of the Portugueze at Lisbon, was at this time governor-general of what the French called Upper Spain, ♦Oct. 28.♦ that is, of the provinces of Salamanca, Zamora, Toro, Leon, Valladolid, Palencia, Burgos, Soria, Santander, Biscay, Guipuzcoa, and Alava. ♦Kellermann’s edict.♦ Throughout this whole tract of country he placed all horses and mares above a certain height in requisition for the French armies, ordering them to be taken to the respective country towns, and there delivered for that purpose; and every horse or mare below the size named, or under thirty months old, with every mare that should be three months gone with foal, was to have the left eye put out by the owner, and to be in other ways rendered unfit for military service. A fine of four times the value of the beast was to be exacted from any one who disobeyed this edict, and all French officers were charged to see it carried into execution. Nothing can more strikingly evince their moral degradation, than that their general should have ordered them to enforce the execution ♦Measures of Joseph’s ministers.♦ of an edict like this. These were the measures pursued in the name of a King who was represented as being equally philosophic and humane, who was to remedy all the evils of long misrule, to relieve the people from all grievances, restore Spain to its ancient prosperity, and confer upon it a happiness which it had never before enjoyed! In an unhappy hour had Joseph’s ministers entered his service, persuading, or seeking to persuade, themselves that they might benefit their country by giving their countenance to a perfidious and odious usurpation. The ablest men who have ever endeavoured to do good by evil means, have felt their best intentions frustrated in the attempt. These ministers, worthy, as under other circumstances they might have been of their station, found themselves now the mere instrument of that very military power which they had flattered themselves that they should be allowed to direct. Still, however, seeking some excuse to their own hearts, and to posterity, they took advantage of the time for attempting alterations, which would have been most salutary if the nation had been prepared for them, ... but for which it was so little prepared, that the premature attempt only attached the Spaniards the more to the very evils from which it was intended to deliver them. One sweeping decree abolished all the regular orders in Spain, whether monastic, mendicant, or clerical; the individuals belonging to them were ordered to quit their convents within fifteen days, resume their secular habits, and repair to their native places, where pensions were promised them. It was certain that the intrusive government had neither the means nor the intention of paying these pensions; but the whole property of the suppressed orders was seized for the use of the state. The reason assigned for this measure in the preamble to the decree was, that these communities had taken a hostile part against the government, which, while it thus abolished them, wished to recompense those individuals who had conducted themselves well. Better reasons, Urquijo and his colleagues well knew, would only have exasperated a people whose souls were thoroughly enslaved to the superstitions which debased them; but the cause which was thus assigned exasperated them as much, and this feeling was kept up and disseminated every where by the ejected members, who, wherever they went, excited the compassion of their countrymen and inflamed their hatred of the intrusive government. Some prudence as well as humanity was shown, by exempting the nuns from this decree; they were subjected to the ordinary, and forbidden to receive pupils. The military orders were abolished also, except that of the Golden Fleece, and the one which the intrusive government had itself instituted. This was needlessly offending the national pride, which was in like manner wounded by the removal of the tax raised under the name of the Voto de Santiago; the relief, even had circumstances allowed it to be felt, would not have compensated for the outrage upon Spanish feeling. In taking away the privilege of sanctuary, and suppressing all ecclesiastical jurisdiction in civil and criminal cases, the ministers acted as they would have wished to do, had they held their offices by a better tenure; and in making strangulation the mode of death for all criminals of whatever rank, and decreeing that degradation was implied in the sentence. But when an edict affected to abolish all dignities and titles which had not been conferred by the Intruder, and required the traitorous nobles in his service to receive from him a confirmation of the peerage which they had disgraced, the futility of the decree only provoked contempt.

♦The Central Junta announce that the Cortes will be assembled.♦

Joseph’s ministers had leisure for legislative speculations and for dreams of reformation. The real business of government was not in their hands; in all essential points they were mere ciphers, and seemed to feel that they were so. The Central Junta was in a situation as much more trying as it was more honourable. The difficulties and embarrassments of every kind with which they were beset might have confused heads more experienced in affairs of state; and their exertions under the pressure of immediate danger left them little time for those measures of effectual reform, which Spain so greatly needed, but which were looked for more eagerly by the British nation than by the Spaniards, for as a people the Spaniards were contented with their old system, and attached to it even with all its evils and abominations. The general wish in England was that the Cortes should be convened, and this was desired as sincerely by the British government as by Jovellanos and those other noble minded Spaniards who hoped through regular and constitutional means to restore the liberty and the prosperity of their country. It was long after the installation of the Junta before the disasters of the day allowed them leisure for thinking of the morrow. To this their delay in taking measures for assembling the Cortes must be ascribed, more than to their love of power, which they were ill able to wield, or of the patronage which they unworthily bestowed. But to these motives the delay was imputed; and by not following the advice of Jovellanos when the act would have appeared spontaneous and graceful, they lost the opportunity of obtaining that popularity which even the semblance of disinterestedness is sure to acquire. It was not till eight months after their installation that a decree came forth for re-establishing the legal representation of the monarchy in its ancient Cortes. The time was left indefinite, but the edict said it would be convoked in the course of the ensuing year, or earlier, if circumstances should permit.

The language of the Supreme Junta on this, as on every other occasion, was worthy of the position in which the national government was placed, and of the principles on which it professed to act. “The Spanish people,” they said, “must leave to their posterity an inheritance worthy of the sacrifices which were made for obtaining it. The Supreme Junta had never lost sight of this object; and the progress of the enemy, which had hitherto occupied their whole attention, rendered more bitter the reflection, that all their disasters were solely owing to the disuse of those institutions which, in happier times, secured the welfare and the strength of the state. The ambition of some, and the indolence of others, had reduced those institutions to nothing; and the Junta, from the moment of its installation, solemnly bound itself to restore them. The time was now arrived for this great work. Desirous, therefore, that the nation should appear with the dignity due to its heroic efforts; that the rights of the people should be placed beyond the reach of encroachments; and that the sources of public felicity should run freely as soon as the war ceased, and repair whatever inveterate arbitrary power had scorched, or the present devastation had destroyed, the Junta decreed, that the Cortes should be re-established, and would immediately proceed to consider the method of convening it; for which end it would nominate a committee of five of its members. It would also investigate, in order to propose them to the nation assembled in Cortes, the means of supporting the holy war in which they were engaged; of insuring the observance of their fundamental laws; of meliorating the legislation and abolishing the abuses which had crept into it; of collecting and administering the revenue, and of reforming the system of public education. And to combine the information necessary for such discussions, it would consult the councils, provincial Juntas, tribunals, magistracies, corporations, bishops, and universities, and the opinion of intelligent and enlightened persons.”

♦Declaration which was first proposed.♦

A declaration in stronger terms had been submitted to the Junta, and rejected by them at the instigation of Mr. Frere. “Spaniards,” it was there said, “it is three ages since the laws on which the nation founded its defence against tyranny have been destroyed. Our fathers did not know how to preserve the liberty which had been bequeathed to them; and although all the provinces of Spain successively struggled to defend it, evil stars rendered their efforts useless. The laws, from that time forward, have been only an expression more or less tyrannical, or beneficent, of a particular will. Providence, as if to punish the loss of that prerogative of free men, has paralysed our valour, arrested the progress of our intellect, and impeded our civilization, till we have come to that condition, that an insolent tyrant formed the project of subduing the greatest nation of the globe, without reckoning upon its will, and even despising its existence. In vain has the prince sometimes attempted to remedy some of the evils of the state: buildings cannot be erected on sand, and without fundamental and constituted laws, it is useless for the philosopher in his study, or the statesman in the theatre of business, to exert himself for the good of the people. The best projects are not put in execution, or not carried through. Good suggestions are followed by evil ones; economy and order, by prodigality and rapine; a prudent and mild minister, by an avaricious and foolish favourite; and thus the ship of the state floats without sails and helm, till, as has happened to the Spanish monarchy, it is dashed to pieces on a rock. How, but by the re-establishment of freedom, could that blood be recompensed which flows in every part of the Peninsula; those sacrifices which Spanish loyalty is offering every instant; that moral resistance, as universal as it is sublime, which disconcerts our enemies, and renders them hopeless even in the midst of their victories? When this dreadful contest is concluded, the Spaniard shall say proudly to himself, ‘My fathers left me slavery and wretchedness for my inheritance; I leave to my descendants liberty and glory.’ Spaniards, this is the feeling which, by reflection in some, and by instinct in all, animates you now; and it shall not be defrauded of its expectations. Our detractors say that we are fighting to defend old abuses, and the inveterate vices of our corrupted government; let them know that your struggle is for the happiness, as well as the independence of your country; that you will not depend henceforward on the uncertain will or the variable temper of a single man; nor continue to be the plaything of a court without justice, under the control of an insolent favourite, or a capricious woman; but that on the edifice of your ancient laws you will rear a barrier between despotism and your sacred rights. This barrier consists in a constitution to aid and support the monarch when he is just, and to restrain him when he follows evil councils. Without a constitution all reform is precarious, all prosperity uncertain; without it the people are no more than flocks of slaves, put in motion at the order of a will, frequently unjust, and always unrestrained; without it the forces of the whole society, which should procure the greatest advantages for all its members, are employed exclusively to satisfy the ambition, or satiate the frenzy of a few, or perhaps of one.”

♦Objections by Mr. Frere.♦

When this paper was communicated to Mr. Frere, he saw serious objections, which he stated to Garay, and which the Junta, though they would otherwise have published the proclamation, readily admitted. That ambassador perceived, more clearly perhaps than any other person at that time, the danger to be apprehended from convoking a legislative assembly in a nation altogether unprepared for it by habits, feelings, education, or general knowledge. He considered it a delicate and dangerous point in every respect, and said, “that if the decision of the question were left in his hand, notwithstanding the necessity for widening the basis of the government, the failure of all the political experiments which had been made in these latter times, and the impossibility which had been found (by a fatality peculiar to the present age) of forming a permanent establishment, even in affairs less essential than the formation of a free constitution for a great nation, would make him waver. But taking the decision for granted, he thought the manner in which it was proposed to announce it likely to produce bad effects in Spain; and he could venture,” he said, “to assure D. Martin de Garay, that it would undoubtedly create them in England. If the Spaniards had indeed passed three centuries under arbitrary government, they ought not to forget that it was the price which they paid for having conquered and peopled the fairest portion of the world, and that the integrity of that immense power rested solely upon these two words, Religion and the King. If the old constitution had been lost by the conquest of America, the first object should be to recover it; but in such a manner as not to lose what had cost so much in the acquisition: and for this reason, they ought to avoid, as a political poison, every enunciation of general principles, the application of which it would be impossible to limit or qualify, even when the Negroes and Indians should quote it in favour of themselves. And allowing that a bad exchange had been made in bartering the ancient national liberty for the glory and extension of the Spanish name; allowing that the error should at all hazards be done away; even though it were so,” Mr. Frere said, “it did not appear becoming the character of a well-educated person to pass censures upon the conduct of his forefathers, or to complain of what he may have lost by their negligence or prodigality, still less so if it were done in the face of the world; and what should be said of a nation who should do this publicly, and after mature deliberation?”

This was true foresight,—and yet the English ambassador approached Charybdis in his fear of Scylla. He spoke to the Spaniards of Religion and the King; in England the truest and most enlightened lovers of liberty can have no better rallying words; in Spain those words had for three hundred years meant the inquisition and an absolute monarch, whose ministers, so long as they could retain his favour, governed according to their own will and pleasure, unchecked by any constitutional control. The government did not obtain by their decree for ♦Unpopularity of the Junta.♦ convoking the Cortes the popularity which they had perhaps expected. The measure had been long delayed, and therefore was supposed to have been unwillingly resolved on. So much, indeed, had been expected from the Central Junta, that no possible wisdom on their part, no possible success, could have answered the unreasonable demand. The disappointment of the nation was in proportion to its hopes, and the government became equally the object of suspicion and contempt. Some of the members had large estates in those provinces which were occupied by the French, and it was suspected that where their property was, there their hearts were also. Their subsequent conduct proved how greatly they were injured by this distrust. They were not censured for their first disasters, which the ablest men under like circumstances could not have averted. Had they obtained accurate intelligence of the strength and movements of the enemy when Buonaparte entered Spain; had they exerted themselves as much in disciplining troops as in raising and embodying them, and had they supplied them with regularity and promptitude; it would not have been possible to have stopped the progress of such a force. Something was allowed for the confidence which the battle of Baylen had inspired, and for the enthusiasm of the people, which the government had partaken. Neither would the nation have been disposed to condemn, even if it had perceived, errors which arose from the national character. But when, after the bitter experience of twelve whole months, no measures had been adopted for improving the discipline of the armies, or supplying them in the field, the incapacity of the Junta became glaring, and outcries against them were heard on all sides.

♦Their difficulties and errors.♦

One of the weightiest errors for which they were censured was for not exerting themselves more effectually to bring the whole strength of the country against the invaders. They had promised to raise 500,000 men and 50,000 cavalry. Granada was the only province which supplied its full proportion, and Granada even exceeded it; its contingent was about 28,000, whereas it furnished nearly forty. But this depended more upon the provincial Juntas than upon the central government, whose decrees were of no avail in those parts which the enemy possessed, and were ill observed in others, where the local administrations, from disgust, or jealousy, or indolence, or incapacity, seemed to look on as spectators of the dreadful drama, rather than to perform their parts in it, as men and as Spaniards. Neither is it to the want of numbers that their defeats were to be attributed; there were at all times men enough in the field; arms, equipments, and discipline were wanting. It is unjust to judge of the exertions of the Spanish Junta by those of the National Convention in France, who had the whole wealth and strength of a populous and rich country at their absolute disposal, and who began the revolutionary war with officers, and tacticians, and statesmen capable of wielding the mighty means which were put into their hands. The fault of the Junta was in relying too much upon numbers and bravery, and too little upon their fortresses. The general under whom the great captain Gonzalo de Cordova learnt the art of war had left them a lesson which they might profitably have remembered. He used to say, that fortresses ought to be opposed to the impatience and fury of the French, and that the place for stationing raw troops was behind walls and ramparts.

The most important errors which the Junta had hitherto committed were, the delay in convoking the Cortes, and their conduct towards Sir Arthur Wellesley’s army; but the national character contributed in no slight degree to both. For it was not the known aversion of Florida Blanca to the name of a representative assembly, nor the fears of some of the Junta, nor the love of power in others, which protracted the convocation of the Cortes, so much as their reverential adherence to established forms. This was evident in Jovellanos himself, who regarded it as equally profane and dangerous to approach this political ark of the covenant, without scrupulously observing all the ceremonies and solemnities which the law prescribed. Precedents on points of this kind are not to be found in Spain as they are in England. Antiquaries were to be consulted, archives examined, old regulations adapted to new circumstances,—and this when the enemy was at the gates. The defect may well be pardoned, because of the virtues with which it was connected. Had the Spaniards regarded with less veneration the deeds and the institutions of their ancestors, they would never have supported that struggle which will be the wonder of succeeding ages. Their conduct toward the English army sprang from a worse fault; from that pride which made them prone to impose upon others and upon themselves a false opinion of their strength. It is the national failing, for which they have ever been satirized, by their own writers as well as by other nations. They will rather promise and disappoint, than acknowledge their inability; of this, their history for the last two centuries affords abundant examples; they had yet to learn, that perfect sincerity is as much due to an ally as to a confessor. In many cases the government was itself deceived; the same false point of honour prevailing in every department, from the lowest to the highest, it received and acted upon exaggerated statements and calculations; but in others, it cannot be denied, that pride led to the last degree of meanness, and that promises were held out to the English general, which those who made them must have known it was impossible to perform.

Yet it must be admitted that the errors of the Junta were more attributable to the character of the nation than of the individuals; and those individuals were placed in circumstances of unexampled difficulty. Four-and-thirty men, most of them strangers to each other, and unaccustomed to public business, were brought together to govern a nation in the most perilous crisis of its history, without any thing to direct them except their own judgement, and almost without any other means than what the patriotism of the people could supply. They had troops indeed, but undisciplined, unofficered, unprovided, half armed, and half clothed. The old system of government was broken up, the new one was yet to be formed. They had neither commissariat nor treasury; the first donations and imposts were exhausted; so also were the supplies which England had liberally given, and those from America had not yet arrived. Added to these difficulties, and worse than all, was that dreadful state of moral and social anarchy into which the nation had been thrown, and which was such that no man knew in whom he could confide. To poison food or water in time of war is a practice which all people, who are not absolute savages, have pronounced infamous by common consent; but it is a light crime compared to the means which Buonaparte employed for the subjugation of Spain,—means which poisoned the well-springs of social order, and loosened the very joints and fibres of society. Morla, when he betrayed his country, committed an act of treason against human nature. The evil had been great before, but when a Judas Iscariot had been found in Morla during the agony of Spain, in whom could the people confide? “Suspicion,” says Jovellanos, “and hatred were conceived and spread with frightful facility. How many generals, nobles, prelates, magistrates, and lawyers, were regarded with distrust, either because of their old relations with Godoy, or because they were connected with some of the new partizans of the tyranny; or for the weakness, or indecision, or ambiguity of their conduct; or for the calumnies and insinuations which rivalship and envy excited against them! It was considered as a crime to have gone to Bayonne, to have remained at Madrid, or resided in other places which were occupied by the intrusive government; to have submitted to swear allegiance to it, to have obeyed its orders, or to have suffered even compulsively its yoke and its contempt. What reputation was secure? Who was not exposed to the attacks of envy, to the imputations of calumny, and to the violence of an agitated populace?”

From this state of things it necessarily arose, that the Junta acted in constant fear and suspicion of those whom they employed. Their sense of weakness and their love of power increased the evil. Fearing the high spirit of Alburquerque, and the influence which rank and talents conjoined would give to his deserved popularity among the soldiers, they cramped him in a subordinate command, while they trusted those armies which were the hope of Spain to Cuesta, because they were afraid of offending him, and to Venegas, for the opposite reason, that they were sure of his obsequious submission. Some odium they incurred by permitting a trade with towns which the enemy occupied. For the sake, as was alleged, of those Spaniards who were compelled to live under the yoke, and also for the advantage of the colonies, they had granted licences for conveying sugar, cacao, and bark, to those parts of the kingdom. ♦July 14.♦ These licences were only to be trusted to persons of known and approved patriotism, who were likewise to be strictly watched, and liable to be searched upon any suspicion. The weakness of such a concession in such a war, as well as the obvious facility which it afforded to the French and their traitorous partizans, excited just reprehension; and at the close of the year ♦Dec. 28.♦ the Junta found it necessary to revoke their edict, acknowledging that, in spite of all precautions, it was found prejudicial to the public safety. Some of the members were suspected of enhancing the price of necessaries for the army, by their own secret monopolies; others were said to be surrounded by venal instruments, through whom alone they were accessible. These imputations were probably ill-founded or exaggerated; certain, however, it is, that never had any government fewer friends. Men of the most opposite principles were equally disaffected toward it. Its very defenders had no confidence in its stability, and were ready to forsake it. They who dreaded any diminution of the regal authority, could not forgive its popular origin; they who aspired to lay the foundation of a new and happier order of things, were discontented, because the measures which were taken towards the reformation of the state were slowly, and, as they deemed, reluctantly adopted. Those wretches who were sold to France were the enemies of any government which resisted the usurpation; and those whose timid natures, or short-sighted selfishness, disposed them to submission, naturally regarded it with dislike, because it delayed the subjection of the country. Among the people, who were actuated by none of these feelings, it was sufficient to render the Junta unpopular that it was unfortunate. The times rendered them suspicious; their own conduct and their power made them obnoxious to many; and their ill-fortune, more than their errors, made them disliked by all.

♦Scheme for overthrowing them.♦

Influenced by some of these motives, and perhaps in no little degree by jealousy, the Junta of Seville were particularly hostile to the government, and a plan was formed in that city for overthrowing it: the members were to be seized, and some of the most obnoxious transported to Manilla in a ship which was prepared for the purpose. Some regiments had been gained over, and it is said even the guards of the Junta; but as the persons who designed this revolution had for their direct object the good of Spain, they considered it a mark of confidence due to Great Britain to make the English ambassador acquainted with their purpose; for in fact, so far were the Spanish people from regarding the interference of Great Britain with jealousy, that they were disappointed because their ally did not interfere more frequently, and with more effect. Marquis Wellesley, of whom it had been said by Mr. Whitbread that he would, if opportunity should offer, take Spain and Portugal as Buonaparte had done, had now an opportunity of showing in what manner he thought himself bound to act by a government which he knew to be weak, and suspected to be treacherous. At the very time when this foul imputation was brought against him in parliament, he gave to that government just so much information of its danger, as, without compromising the safety of any persons concerned, enabled the Junta to prevent the intended insurrection.

The general wish was less for the convocation of the Cortes, than for the establishment of a regency, from which more unanimity and more vigour was expected, than from the present divided council. The people of Cadiz said the fate of Spain was in Marquis Wellesley’s hands, that he ought to remove the Junta, and establish an energetic government. Those persons who respected hereditary claims would have had the Archbishop of Toledo appointed regent, as being the only Bourbon in the country; but he was young; and what weighed against him more than the want of either talents or character, was, that he was believed to be governed by his sister, the wife of Godoy. Others looked to Romana, knowing his dislike to the Junta, and hoping that he would assume the government himself, or intrust it to able hands. Another project was to appoint both these personages regents, with the Duke del Infantado, and two other colleagues. It was thought that the army would gladly have seen the supreme authority vested in one of their own body, either Romana or Infantado. But both these noblemen were free from any such ambition; and Montijo, who was always intriguing for power, was so well known, that he was the last person whom any party would have trusted.

♦Commission appointed by the Junta.♦

The warning which had thus been given was not lost upon the Junta, and they attended to the representations which accompanied it; they knew their weakness, and perceived their danger; admitted that the existing government was not suited to the state of affairs, and nominated a commission for the purpose of inquiring in what manner it might best be replaced. Romana was included in the commission, and upon this occasion he delivered in a paper, which, if they had required additional proof of his hostility, and their own unstable tenure, would amply have ♦Romana’s address.
Oct. 4.♦ afforded it. “There were three cases,” he said, “either of which ought to produce a change in the system of a government: When a nation, which ought only to obey, doubts the legitimacy of the authority to which it is to submit; when such authority begins to lose its influence; when it is not only prejudicial to the public weal, but contrary to the principles of the constitution. The existing government was objectionable upon all these grounds: it was founded upon a democratic principle of representation, inconsistent with the pure monarchical system of Spain, and with the heroic loyalty of the Spaniards, and which, if it continued, would subvert the monarchy. As often as he meditated upon this subject, he doubted the lawfulness of the existing government; and this opinion was general in the provinces through which he had passed. Among the services which he had endeavoured to perform for his king and country, it was not the least that he had yielded obedience to the orders of this government, and made the constituted authorities in Leon, Asturias, and Gallicia do the same; considering this absolutely necessary to preserve the nation from anarchy. A government, though illegal, might secure the happiness of the people, if it deserved their confidence, and they respected its authority; but the existing government had lost its authority. The people, who judge of measures by the effects which they see produced, complain that our armies are weak for want of energy in the government; that no care has been taken for supplying them; that they have not seen the promised accounts of the public expenditure, and how the sums which have arrived from America, those which our generous allies have given, the rents of the crown, and the voluntary contributions, have been expended: they look in vain for necessary reforms; they see that employments are not given to men of true merit, and true lovers of their country; that some members, instead of manifesting their desire of the public good, by disinterestedness, seek to preserve their authority for their own advantage; that others confer lucrative and honourable employments on their own dependents and countrymen; that for this sole reason ecclesiastical offices have been filled up, the rents of which ought to have been applied to the necessities of the state; that that unity which is necessary in the government, is not to be found, many of the Junta caring only for the interests of their particular provinces, as if they were members of some body different from that of the Spanish monarchy; that they had not only confirmed the military appointments made by the provincial Juntas, without examining the merits of the persons appointed, but had even assigned recompences to many who were destitute of all military knowledge, having never seen service, nor performed any of those duties which were confided to them; that the Junta, divided into sections, dispatched business in matters altogether foreign to their profession, and in which they were utterly unversed, instead of referring them to the competent and appropriate ministers; that horses taken from their owners, instead of being sent to the armies, were dying for hunger on the dry sea-marshes; finally, that many of the most important branches of administration were in the hands of men, suspicious, because of their conduct from the commencement of the public misfortunes, and because they were the creatures of that infamous favourite, who had been the author of all the general misery. Such,” said Romana, “are the complaints of the people: there is but one step to disobedience; the enemy will profit by the first convulsion, and anarchy or servitude will then be the alternative.”

The Marquis then stated, that the time for which some provinces had appointed their representatives to the Junta was expired; that others had empowered them not to exercise the sovereign authority, but to constitute a government which might represent the monarch: in neither case could these provinces be expected to acknowledge an authority which they had never conferred. The commission, he proceeded to say, had proposed that the Junta should reduce itself to five persons, in whom the executive power should be vested; and that in rotation each member of the existing body should enter into this supreme executive council, which should also preside over the Cortes when it was assembled. This project discovered the love of power in the Junta more unequivocally than any other part of their conduct. What Romana proposed in its stead was as prudent in itself as it was inconsistent with his previous positions. After maintaining that the powers of the existing government were from the first illegal, and that even such as they were, they had, for part of the members, expired, he recommended nevertheless that this government should, as representing legitimately or illegitimately the Cortes, appoint a regent, or a council of regency, consisting of three or of five persons, especially advising, as a proof of generosity and patriotism, that they should nominate none of their own body. A Junta should be formed, under the title of the Permanent Deputation of the Realm, to represent the Cortes till the Cortes should be assembled; it should consist of five members and a procurador-general, and one of these members should always be chosen from their American brethren, as forming an integral part of the nation. But the Cortes should be assembled with as little delay as circumstances would permit, and then no laws should be passed, or contributions imposed, without its consent. “If,” said he, “I have in some cases connected the supreme power with the nation, I have done no more than revive the constitutional principles of the Spanish monarchy, which have been stifled by the despotism of its kings and their ministers.” However hostile to the principles of civil liberty the first positions of Romana appeared, the most zealous friends of freedom might have been contented with his conclusions.

“Ought we,” said he, “to fear that an adventurer, who usurps the throne of Ferdinand, should appear among us, if we had a government like this, emanating from the consent of the people, from submission to the true God, and from the necessity of our mournful and perilous situation? Would our armies then be defective in numbers, and in subordination and discipline? would they be so filled with ignorant and cowardly officers, so unprovided with food, so irregularly paid, and so destitute of all equipments? would men be appointed generals, because they would support the persons who appointed them, or because they knew how to command an army and how to save the country? With such a government, the nation would have invincible armies, the armies would have generals, the troops would be officered, and the soldiers would learn subordination and discipline. When Spain shall see that auspicious day, I shall think it the first day of her hope, and the most happy of her glorious revolution. Such,” he continued, “is my opinion; but I ought not to forget that I have publicly controverted it by my actions. For who sustained your sovereign authority in the army and province which I governed? Gallicia, whom didst thou obey? Didst thou respect in me any power but that of the Central Junta, or did I consent that thou shouldst separate thyself from a government which I was sanctioning by my own obedience? Asturias, didst not thou see the powerful arm upraised which thou hadst implored so earnestly, and the blow of its power fall upon a Junta, which, after having acknowledged the sovereignty of the Central, and received from it succours, of which my soldiers, naked and exhausted, were in want, domineered like a despot, and had even disobeyed the express will of our King, D. Ferdinand? Nevertheless,” said he, addressing the Central Junta, “you rewarded this scandalous disobedience; and removed me covertly from the command, in order that guilty Spaniards might be honoured with the greater distinction. My opinions were the same then that they are now; but circumstances imperiously required a government, and any government is better than none. Then it was my duty to obey; now I should not perform what is due to my character, if I did not declare what I believe to be required for the salvation of my country. How indeed should I be silent; how should I suffer the fire of patriotism to be extinguished, seeing the sacrifice of so many victims in our glorious cause; faithful wives murdered with their daughters, after the most foul and unutterable outrages; nuns driven from their cloisters, some wandering about, many more the prey of lustful impiety; ministers of the altar forced from the sanctuary; temples turned into stables and dens of uncleanness; towns reduced to servitude; opulence to squalid beggary; armies composed of the bravest spirits of the nation, which have disappeared in the hottest struggles of their native land, consumed by hunger, naked, and destitute; seeing, in fine, that such revenues and the liberal donations of Spain and America have not even supplied the first necessities of the soldier? How could I remain a tranquil spectator of such great and mournful objects, and not think them superior to the nearest personal interest, to our self-love, and to our very existence? As a Spaniard,” he concluded, “I am ready to suffer a thousand deaths in defence of our liberty; and in my rank I have rendered homage to the descendant of the Pelayos, the Jaymes, and the Garcias. As a general, I will join myself to the last soldier who shall have resolution to revenge his country in the last period of her independence; but as a representative of the nation, I must be excused from occupying that distinguished place, unless a legitimate government be immediately established, which foreign powers will not hesitate to acknowledge, which will represent our sovereign, and which will save a people who are resolved to die for their God, for their king, and for the happiness of their posterity.”

♦Reply of the Junta.♦

It is proof of full political freedom in the Spanish press at this juncture, that this paper should have appeared, being little short of a declaration of hostility against the existing government. But though the high monarchical principles with which Romana began his manifesto displeased the democratic party, and the glaring inconsistency of his proposal weakened the effect which his authority might otherwise have produced, the government felt the necessity of doing something to conciliate the nation; they determined to convoke the Cortes, and announced the resolution in a paper which may be considered as their official apology. In this paper, without directly referring to Romana’s ♦Oct. 28.♦ charges, they replied to them. “Spaniards,” said they, “it has seemed good to Providence that in this terrible crisis you should not be able to advance one step towards independence, without advancing one likewise toward liberty. An imbecile and decrepit despotism prepared the way for French tyranny. Political impostors then thought to deceive you by promising reforms, and announcing, in a constitution framed at their pleasure, the empire of the laws, ... a barbarous contradiction, worthy of their insolence. But the Spanish people, that people which before any other enjoyed the prerogatives and advantages of civil liberty, and opposed to arbitrary power the barrier which justice has appointed, need borrow from no other nation the maxims of political prudence, and told these impudent legislators, that the artifices of intriguers and the mandates of tyrants are not laws for them. You ran to arms; and fortune rendered homage to you, and bestowed victory in reward for your ardour. The immediate effect was the reunion of the state, which was at that time divided into as many factions as provinces. Our enemies thought they had sown among us the deadly seed of anarchy, and did not remember that Spanish judgement and circumspection are always superior to French intrigue. A supreme authority was established without contradiction and without violence; and the people, after having astonished the world with the spectacle of their sublime exaltation and their victories, filled it with admiration and respect by their moderation and discretion.

“The Central Junta was installed, and its first care was to announce, that if the expulsion of the enemy was the first object of its attention in point of time, the permanent welfare of the state was the principal in importance; for to leave it sunk in the sea of old abuses, would be a crime as enormous as to deliver you into the hands of Buonaparte; therefore, as soon as the whirlwind of war permitted, it resounded in your ears the name of the Cortes, which has ever been the bulwark of civil freedom; a name heretofore pronounced with mystery by the learned, with distrust by politicians, and with horror by tyrants; but which henceforth in Spain will be the indestructible basis of the monarchy, the most secure support of the rights of Ferdinand and his family, a right for the people, and an obligation for the government. That moral resistance, which has reduced our enemies to confusion and despair in the midst of their victories, must not receive a less reward. Those battles which are lost, those armies which are destroyed; those soldiers who, dispersed in one action, return to offer themselves for another; that populace which, despoiled of almost all they possessed, returned to their homes to share the wretched remains of their property with the defenders of their country; that struggle of barbarity on the one hand, and of invincible constancy on the other, present a whole as terrible as magnificent, which Europe contemplates with astonishment, and which history will one day record, for the admiration and example of posterity. A people so generous ought only to be governed by laws which bear the great character of public consent and common utility, ... a character which they can only receive by emanating from the august assembly which has been announced to you.”

The Junta now betrayed that undue desire of retaining their power, which, though not their only error, was the only one which proceeded from selfish considerations. “It had been recommended,” they said, “that the existing government should be converted into a regency of three or of five persons, and this opinion was supported by the application of an ancient law to our present situation; but a political position which is entirely new, occasions political forms and principles absolutely new also. To expel the French, to restore to his liberty and his throne our adored King, and to establish a solid and permanent foundation of good government, are the maxims which gave the impulse to our revolution, are those which support and direct it; and that government will be the best which shall best promote these wishes of the Spanish nation. Does a regency promise this security? What inconveniences, what dangers, how many divisions, how many parties, how many ambitious pretensions within and without the kingdom; how much, and how just, discontent in our Americas, now called to have a share in the present government! What would become of our Cortes, our liberty, the cheering prospects of future welfare and glory which present themselves? What would become of the object most valuable and dear to the Spanish nation ... the rights of Ferdinand? The advocates for this institution ought to shudder at the danger to which they expose them, and to bear in mind that they afford to the tyrant a new opportunity of buying and selling them. Let us bow with reverence to the venerable antiquity of the law; but let us profit by the experience of ages. Let us open our annals and trace the history of our regencies. What shall we find? ... a picture of desolation, of civil war, of rapine, and of human degradation, in unfortunate Castille.”

The weakness of this reasoning proved how the love of power had blinded those from whom it proceeded. The Junta wished to evade the law of the Partidas, because it did not specify a case which it could not possibly have contemplated, though the law itself was perfectly and directly relevant. They assumed it as a certain consequence of a regency, that the colonies would be disgusted; that the Cortes would not be convoked; that the rights of Ferdinand would be disregarded; and that new opportunities of corruption would be afforded to France; and they forgot to ask themselves what reason there could be for apprehending all or any of these dangers, more from a council of regency than from their own body. Romana’s manifesto contained nothing more flagrantly illogical than this. Having thus endeavoured to set aside this project by alarming the nation, they admitted that the executive power ought to be lodged in fewer hands, and said, that with that circumspection, which neither exposed the state to the oscillations consequent upon every change of government, nor sensibly altered the unity of the body which it was intrusted with, they had concentrated their own authority; and that from this time those measures which required dispatch, secrecy, and energy, would be directed by a section formed of six members, holding their office for a time.

The remainder of the manifesto was in a worthier strain. “Another opinion,” they said, “which objected to a regency, objected also to the Cortes as an insufficient representation, if convoked according to the ancient forms; as ill-timed, and perhaps perilous in the existing circumstances; and in fine as useless, because the provincial Juntas, which had been immediately erected by the people, were their true representatives; but as the government had already publicly declared that it would adapt the Cortes, in its numbers, forms, and classes, to the present state of things, any objection drawn from the inadequacy of the ancient forms was malicious, as well as inapplicable. Yes, Spaniards,” said they, “you are about to have your Cortes, and the national representation will be as perfect and full as it can and ought to be, in an assembly of such importance and eminent dignity. You are about to have your Cortes; and at what time, gracious God! can the nation adopt this measure better than at present? When war has exhausted all the ordinary means, when the selfishness of some, and the ambition of others, debilitate and paralyse the efforts of government; when they seek to destroy from its foundations the essential principle of the monarchy, which is union; when the hydra of federalism, so happily silenced the preceding year by the creation of the central power, dares again to raise its heads, and endeavour to precipitate us into anarchy; when the subtlety of our enemies is watching the moment of our divisions to destroy the state; this is the time, then, to collect in one point the national dignity and power, where the Spanish people may vote and call forth the extraordinary resources which a powerful nation ever has within it for its salvation. That alone can put them in motion; that alone can encourage the timidity of some, and restrain the ambition of others; that alone can suppress importunate vanity, puerile pretensions, and infuriated passions. Spain will, in fine, give to Europe a fresh example of its religion, its circumspection, and its discretion, in the just and moderate use which it is about to make of the liberty in which it is constituted. Thus it is that the supreme Junta, which immediately recognized this national representation as a right, and proclaimed it as a reward, now invokes and implores it as the most necessary and efficacious remedy; and has therefore resolved that the general Cortes shall be convoked on the first day of January in the next year, in order to enter on their august functions the first of March following. When that happy day has arrived, the Junta will say to the representatives of the nation,

“‘Ye are met together, O fathers of your country! and re-established in all the plenitude of your rights, after a lapse of three centuries. Called to the exercise of authority by the unanimous voice of the kingdom, the individuals of the supreme Junta have shewn themselves worthy of the confidence reposed in them, by employing all their exertions for the preservation of the state. When the power was placed in our hands, our armies, half formed, were destitute; our treasury was empty, and our resources uncertain and distant. We have maintained in the free provinces unity, order, and justice; and in those occupied by the enemy, we have exerted our endeavours to preserve patriotism and loyalty. We have vindicated the national honour and independence in the most complicated and difficult diplomatic negotiations; and we have made head against adversity, ever trusting that we should overcome it by constancy. We have, without doubt, committed errors, and would willingly, were it possible, redeem them with our blood; but in the confusion of events, among the difficulties which surrounded us, who could be certain of always being in the right? Could we be responsible, because one body of troops wanted valour and another confidence; because one general had less prudence and another less good fortune? Much Spaniards, is to be attributed to your inexperience, much to circumstances, but nothing to our intention; that ever has been to deliver our King, to preserve to him a throne for which the people has made such sacrifices, and to maintain it free, independent, and happy. We have decreed the abolition of arbitrary power from the time we announced the re-establishment of our Cortes. Such is, O Spaniards! the use we have made of the unlimited authority confided to us; and when your wisdom shall have established the basis and form of government most proper for the independence and good of the state, we will resign it into the hands you shall point out, contented with the glory of having given to the Spaniards the dignity of a nation legitimately constituted.’”

♦Guerillas.♦

Had the nation been more alive to such hopes as were thus held out, the pressure of events and the presence of imminent danger would have distracted their thoughts from all speculative subjects. Frustrated as their expectations of immediate deliverance had been, their confidence was not shaken; the national temper led them to think lightly of every disaster, but to exaggerate every trifling success; and the defeats at Arzobispo and Almonacid were less felt or thought of by the body of the people, than the successful exploits of those predatory bands, who, under the name of Guerillas, were now in action every where. The government partook of this disposition; and it must be ascribed as much to this as to policy, that the official as well as the provincial journals published every adventure of this kind more fully and circumstantially than some of those actions wherein their armies had disappeared. The example which Mina and the Empecinado had set was followed with alacrity and tempting success, rich opportunities being offered by the requisition of plate from churches and from individuals, which the intrusive government was at this time enforcing. The guerillas were on the watch, and intercepted no trifling share of the spoils. One party surprised a convoy with eighty quintals of silver near Segovia. The French, who found themselves sorely annoyed by this species of warfare, though they were as yet far from apprehending all they should suffer by it, endeavoured to raise a counter-force of the same kind in Navarre, under the name of Miquelets. But that appellation, which was so popular among the Spaniards, had no attraction for them when it was pressed into the usurper’s service, and the scheme only evinced the incapacity of those who projected it, for the guerillas depended for information, shelter, every thing which could contribute either to their success or their safety, upon the good will of their countrymen; who then would engage in an opposite service, with the certainty that every Spaniard would regard him as an enemy and traitor, and as such endeavour secretly or openly to bring about his destruction?

♦D. Julian Sanchez.♦

Among the persons who became most eminent for their exploits in this desultory warfare, D. Julian Sanchez began at this time to be distinguished. He raised a company of lancers in ♦1809.
October.♦ the district of Ciudad Rodrigo, and acted with such effect against the enemy in the plains of Castille, that General Marchand, who commanded the sixth corps at Salamanca, threatened to execute the vengeance which the guerillas at once eluded and defied, upon those whom he suspected of favouring them. Specifying, therefore, eight of the principal sheep-owners in that part of the country, he declared that they should be kept under a military guard in their own houses, and the severest measures be enforced against their persons and property, if the bands of robbers, as he called them, did not totally disappear within eight days after the date of his proclamation. He declared also that the priests, alcaldes, lawyers, and surgeons of every village, should be responsible with their lives for any disorders committed by the guerillas within their respective parishes; adding, that every village and every house which the inhabitants might abandon on the approach of the French should be burnt. This served only to call forth an indignant reply from Sanchez, containing some of those incontrovertible truths which made the better part of the French themselves detest the service in which they were employed.

Ney’s corps was at this time in Salamanca, under General Marchand, occupying also Ledesma and Alba de Tormes. Soult’s head-quarters were at Plasencia; he occupied Coria, Galesteo, and the banks of the Tietar and the Tagus, as far as the Puente del Arzobispo; Mortier’s corps was at Talavera, Oropesa, La Calzada de Oropesa, and Naval Moral; Victor’s advanced posts were at Daymiel, his head-quarters at Toledo; Sebastiani was at Fuenlebrada, and his corps extended from Aranjuez to Alcala. On the side of La Mancha or Extremadura, they could not hope to open a way to Seville, unless the government by an act of suicidal madness should encounter the certain consequences ♦The French repulsed from Astorga.♦ of a general action. Remaining, therefore, on the defensive here, they prepared for offensive operations on the side of Salamanca, with a view to the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo, and a third invasion of Portugal. Sir Robert Wilson’s representations respecting the importance of that point had not been neglected by the government; the force which the Duque del Parque commanded there was now respectable in numbers, and had acquired some experience as well as confidence in that desultory warfare which Sir Robert had begun, and which D. Julian Sanchez had so well continued. Preparatory to their movements on this quarter, the French attempted to carry Astorga by a sudden attack, for which purpose, with a force of 2600 men, they advanced from the Ezla, and endeavoured to force the Bishop’s Gate. D. Jose Maria de Santocildes, who commanded there, was neither wanting in principle nor in ♦Oct. 9.♦ conduct. His measures for defence were well taken and well executed, and after a four hours’ action, the enemy retreated with the loss of more than 200 men.

♦Battle of Tamames.
Oct. 18.♦

A movement of more importance was presently undertaken against the Duque del Parque, who had taken a strong position on the heights near Tamames. Marchand commanded the French corps, consisting of 10,000 foot, 1200 horse, with fourteen pieces of cannon; and nothing but his contempt of the enemy could have induced him to attack them in such a post. He came on in full confidence, forming his columns with ostentatious display, as if to exhibit the perfect facility with which their evolutions were made. As it was soon apparent that the main attack would be upon the left, being the weakest part of the position, the Duke ordered Count de Belveder, with half the reserve, to support this point. Carrera, who commanded the left wing, stood the attack well; a small party of cavalry, still further to the left, were posted in a wood, from whence it was intended that they should issue, and charge the flank of the enemy; but Carrera’s second brigade making a movement for the purpose of allowing their artillery to play, the French horse charged them at full speed before they were well formed, broke in upon them, and cut down the Spaniards at their guns: ... for a moment the day seemed lost. The Duke, with his staff, came up in time to the place of danger. Mendizabal, who was second in command, sprang from his horse, and rallied those who were falling back; the young Principe de Anglona distinguished himself in the same manner; and Carrera, whose horse had received two musket-balls, and one wound with a sabre, put himself at the head of his men, charged the French with the bayonet, routed them and recovered the guns. Meantime an attack was made upon the right and centre; but here the Spaniards were more strongly posted, and D. Francisco de Losada, who commanded in that part, repulsed them. They retreated in great disorder, leaving more than 1100 on the field; their wounded were not less than 2000.

♦The French retire from Salamanca. Oct. 21.♦

On the third day after the battle, the Duke moved forward, hoping to surprise the enemy in Salamanca. He crossed at Ledesma on the 23d, and marched all the night of the 24th; at daybreak he reached the heights which command Salamanca to the northward, but the French had retreated during the night to Toro, carrying with them the church plate and all their other plunder. They had remained five days in hope of receiving a reinforcement from Kellermann, who, with a weak corps, occupied the country between Segovia and Burgos; but seeing no succour approach, the loss which they had sustained rendered it necessary for them to retire with all speed, upon the unexpected intelligence that the Spaniards were within three leagues of the city.

♦Marshal Soult appointed Major general.♦

The people of Salamanca did not long enjoy their deliverance. While Kellermann was reinforced with one brigade, another from Dessoles’ division was directed toward that city, preparatory to more important movements; activity having now been given to the French armies, and union, which had long been wanted, by the appointment of Marshal Soult to the rank of Major-General in place of Marshal Jourdan, who was recalled to Paris. This change was highly acceptable to the troops in general, though there prevailed a feeling of personal ill-will toward Soult on the part of some of his fellow marshals which had not existed toward his predecessor; but more confidence was reposed in him, the reputation which Jourdan had obtained in the days of the National Convention not having been supported by his subsequent fortune. The Duque del Parque, perceiving that more serious operations were likely to be directed against him, urged the government to act on the offensive in La Mancha, as a means ♦The Junta resolve on risking a general action.♦ of averting the danger from himself; and the Junta needed little encouragement at this time for measures of the most desperate temerity. The ablest members of that body partook so strongly of the national temper, that they were wholly incapacitated for understanding the real state either of their own armies, or of the allies, or of their enemies. Their infatuation might seem incredible, if it were not proved both by their conduct and by documents which they themselves laid before the nation, stating upon what grounds they had acted. They had persuaded themselves that if Sir Arthur, after Cuesta rejoined him, had given battle to Soult, according to his original intention, the destruction of Soult’s army would have been easy and certain, the annihilation of Victor’s army easy ♦Exposicion de la Junta Central. Ramo Diplomatico, P. 27.♦ as a consequent measure, the recovery of Madrid easy, and the expulsion of the French as far as the Ebro, or even to the Pyrenees. By some fatality, they said, the British General had chosen that line of conduct which was precisely the most prejudicial to the Spanish cause. By some stranger fatality they themselves persisted in believing that the British army had been at all times amply supplied with means of subsistence and of transport, that it was at any time capable of advancing, and (as if themselves incapable of understanding that the British Commander and the British Ambassador meant what they said in their repeated representations) that it would advance if the Spaniards evinced the determination and the ability to act without them. And with this persuasion they deluded their General as well as themselves.

♦Areizaga appointed to the command.♦

Rash as he was, even Cuesta would hardly have been so deluded. Upon his resignation Eguia had only held the command while the government could look about for a successor. Castaños was under a cloud; the inquiry which he demanded had never been granted, and though public opinion was beginning to regard him as his past services and real worth deserved, there was no thought of again employing him. Alburquerque was an object of jealousy; Romana of dislike and fear. Areizaga therefore, who had been highly commended by Blake for his conduct in the battle of Alcañiz, was removed from the command at Lerida to be placed at the head of 50,000 men. Alburquerque, who had from 9000 to 10,000 in Extremadura, was ordered to join Parque, and place himself under his orders; while Areizaga, with the greatest force that they could collect, was instructed ♦State of Madrid.♦ to advance upon Madrid. What they knew concerning the state of that city might well excite their feelings, and raise in them a strong desire of delivering its inhabitants from their bondage; but there was nothing to encourage the extravagant hopes which they entertained. The national feeling existed nowhere in greater strength, though there was no other place wherein so many traitors were collected; all who in other parts of the country had made themselves conspicuous as partizans of Joseph, having fled thither when they could not abide in safety elsewhere. To leave the capital was an enterprise of the utmost danger for those who were willing to sacrifice every thing, and take their chance in the field against the invaders: any one might enter; but in the course of a few hours it was known who the stranger was, whence he came, where he was harboured, what was his business, and who were his connexions, ... every thing which the most vigilant police, and the most active system of espionage could discover. The tradesmen and those whose means of subsistence were not destroyed by the revolution were oppressed by heavy and frequent exactions; the Intruder’s ministers knew the impolicy of this, but nevertheless were compelled to impose these burdens; and after the atrocities which they had sanctioned, they could suffer nothing more either in character or in peace of mind. Otherwise, even in Madrid, where a strong military force kept every thing in order, and where none of the immediate evils of war were felt, there were sights which might have wrung the heart. Men and women, who had been born and bred in opulence, begged in the streets, as soon as evening had closed, ... the feelings of better times preventing them from exposing their misery in the daylight. But what most wounded the Spanish temper was the condition of their clergy, and monks, and friars, who, suffering as it were as confessors under the intrusive government, worked as daily labourers for their support, employing in hard and coarse labour hands which, the Spaniards said, were consecrated by the use of holy oil, and by contact with the Body of our Lord!

Overlooking all impediments in the way of their desires, the Junta calculated so surely upon delivering the capital, that they fixed upon a captain-general, a governor, and a corregidor, who were to enter upon their functions as soon ♦Jovellanos, § 103.♦ as it should be recovered; and they charged Jovellanos and Riquelme to draw up provisional ♦1809.
November.♦ regulations for securing tranquillity there when the enemy should withdraw. This confidence arose from a national character which repeated disasters could neither subdue nor correct. The rashness with which they determined to bring on a general action, at whatever risk, appeared to them a prudent resolution. Now that the continental war was terminated, and Buonaparte had no other employment for his armies, it was certain that more troops than had been withdrawn from Spain would be marched into it, for the purpose of effecting its subjugation; they thought it therefore the best and surest policy to make a great effort before the numbers of the enemy should be thus formidably increased. Former failures had neither disheartened nor instructed them; and they furthered the equipment of the army with a zeal which, if it had been excited two months before in providing for their allies, might have realized the hopes wherein they now indulged.

♦Condition of the British army.♦

The new commander partook the blind confidence of his government. In some degree he appears to have been deceived by them; for he was neither informed of Lord Wellington’s determination not to advance, nor of the condition of the British army, which was such at that time as to render an advance impossible. From causes which physiologists have not yet been able to ascertain, the country where they were quartered, upon the Guadiana, is peculiarly unhealthy during the dry season, when that river ceases to be a stream, and, like its feeders, is reduced to a succession of detached pools in the deeper parts of its course. The troops suffered so much more than the natives, partly because the disease laid stronger hold on constitutions which were not accustomed to it, and partly from the peculiar liableness of men, when congregated in camps, to receive and communicate endemic maladies, that more than a third of their whole number were on the sick list; and the inhabitants of the country, aware as they were that this plague belonged to it, ascribed its greater prevalence and malignity among the strangers to their having eaten mushrooms, holding the whole tribe themselves in abhorrence, and not thinking the ordinary causes of the disease could account for the effects which they witnessed. Areizaga was ignorant of all this, and the government allowed him to advance with an expectation that the British army was to follow and support him.

♦Disposition of the French troops.♦

Knowing the condition of that army, it seems almost incredible that the Junta could have deceived themselves when they thus deceived their general. But unlikely as it was that they should have given orders for a forward movement of such importance, without such co-operation, they hoped perhaps to deceive the enemy, by reports that Lord Wellington and Alburquerque would advance along the valley of the Tagus. The French were never able to obtain good intelligence of the English plans; they could, however, to a certain point, foresee them, as a skilful chess-player apprehends the scheme of an opponent who is not less expert than himself at the game; they had learnt to respect the British army in the field, but they thought the British Commander was more likely from caution to let pass an opportunity of success, than to afford the enemy one by rashness. This opinion they had formed from the events of the late campaign, being fully aware of the danger to which they had been exposed, and unacquainted with the difficulties which had frustrated Sir Arthur’s plans, ... difficulties indeed which they who were accustomed always to take whatever was needful for their armies either from friend or foe, without any other consideration than that of supplying their own immediate wants, would have regarded with astonishment, if not contempt. When Marshal Soult therefore prepared at this time to act against the Spaniards, the English force hardly entered into his calculations. He had 70,000 men available for immediate service in one direction. One corps of these, under Laborde, watched the Tagus, with an eye to Alburquerque’s movements. Victor observed the roads from Andalusia to Toledo and Aranjuez, having his cavalry in advance at Madrilejos and Consuegra; Sebastiani, with the fourth corps, was in the rear of Victor, securing the capital, from which neighbourhood a division had been sent to support Marchand after his defeat at Tamames. The reserve, under Mortier, was at Talavera; Gazan occupied Toledo with two weak regiments; and Joseph was with his guards at Aranjuez, relying upon the fortune of Napoleon, and now, when the Continent was effectually subdued, and reinforcements had already begun to enter the Peninsula, believing himself in secure possession of the crown of Spain.

♦Areizaga advances from the Sierra Morena.♦

On the 3d of November, Areizaga’s army, consisting of 43,000 foot, 6600 cavalry, and sixty pieces of cannon, began their march from the foot of the Sierra Morena into the plains, taking with them eight days’ provision. The advanced guard, of 2000 cavalry under Freire, were one day’s march in front; the infantry followed in seven divisions, then the rest of the cavalry in reserve, and the head-quarters last, marching from twenty to thirty miles a day; they had no tents, and took up their quarters at night in the towns upon the road. They advanced forces by Daymiel on the left, others along the high road to Madrid, by Valdepeñas and Manzanares. The French retired before them, and in several skirmishes of cavalry the Spaniards were successful. Latour Maubourg escaped with a considerable body of horse from Madrilejos by the treachery of a deserter, who apprised him of his danger just in time for him to get out of the town as the Spaniards entered it. They continued their way through Tembleque to Dos Barrios; then, by a flank march, reached S. Cruz de la Zarza; threw bridges across the Tagus, and passed a division over. Here they took a position; the French pushed their patroles of cavalry near the town, and Areizaga drew out his army in order of battle. An action upon that ground did not suit the enemy, and the Spanish general was frantic enough to determine upon leaving the mountains, and giving them battle in the plain.

♦The Austrian commissioner remonstrates against his purpose. Nov. 16.♦

Baron Crossand, who was employed in Spain on a mission from Austria, was with the army, and, dreading the unavoidable consequences of such a determination, presented a memorial to Areizaga, reminding him, that only the preceding day he had admitted how dangerous it would be thus to hazard the welfare of his country. None of the motives, he said, which should induce a prudent general to risk a battle were applicable in the present case; he had nothing to urge him forward, and the most fertile provinces of Spain were in his rear: by meeting the enemy upon their own ground, the advantage of position was voluntarily given them, and the superiority of numbers which the Spaniards possessed was not to be considered as an advantage, in their state of discipline; so far indeed was it otherwise that the French founded part of their hopes upon the disorder into which the Spaniards would fall in consequence of their own multitude. A victory might procure the evacuation of Madrid and of the two Castilles, but these results were light in the balance when weighed against the consequences of defeat. The wisest plan of operations was to entrench himself upon the strong ground which the left bank of the Tagus afforded; from thence he might send out detachments toward Madrid and in all directions, and act in concert with the Dukes of Parque and Alburquerque, patience and caution rendering certain their ultimate success.

♦Battle of Ocaña.♦

These representations were lost upon Areizaga; he marched back to Dos Barrios, and then advanced upon Ocaña into the open country. About 800 French and Polish cavalry were in the town; they were driven out by the Spanish horse; a skirmish ensued, in which four or five hundred men fell on both sides. In this affair the French general Paris was borne out of the saddle by a lancer, and laid dead on the field. He was an old officer, whom the Spaniards represent as a humane and honourable man, regretting that he should have perished in such a cause. Areizaga bivouacqued that night; and the French, who had now collected the corps of Sebastiani and Mortier, under command of the latter, crossed the Tagus before morning. At daybreak Areizaga ascended the church tower of Ocaña, and seeing the array and number of the enemy, it is said that he perceived, when too late, what would be the result of his blind temerity. He arrayed his army in two equal parts, one on each side the town; and his second line was placed so near the first, that, if the first were thrown into disorder, there was not room for it to rally. Most of the cavalry were stationed in four lines upon the right flank, a disposition neither imposing in appearance nor strong in reality. The artillery was upon the two flanks.

About seven in the morning, Zayas, who had often distinguished himself, attacked the French cavalry with the advanced guard, and drove them back. Between eight and nine the cannonade began. The Spanish artillery was well served; it dismounted two of the French guns, and blew up some of their ammunition-carts. Mortier having reconnoitred the ground, determined to make his chief attack upon the right, and, after having cannonaded it for a while from a battery in his centre, he ordered Leval, with the Polish and German troops, to advance, and turn a ravine which extended from the town nearly to the end of this wing of the Spanish army. Leval formed his line in compact columns; the Spaniards met them along the whole of their right wing, and their first line wavered. It was speedily reinforced; the right wing was broken, and a charge of cavalry completed the confusion on this side. The left stood firm, and cheered Areizaga as he passed; an able general might yet have secured a retreat, but he was confounded, and quitted the field, ordering this part of the army to follow him. Lord Macduff, who was with the Spaniards, then requested the second in command to assume the direction; but while he was exerting himself to the utmost, the French cavalry broke through the centre, and the rout was complete. The Spaniards were upon an immense plain, every where open to the cavalry, by whom they were followed and cut down on all sides. Victor, who crossed the Tagus at Villa Mensiger, pursued all night. All their baggage was taken, almost all their artillery; according to the French account, 4000 were killed, and 26,000 made prisoners: on no occasion have the French had so little temptation to exaggerate. Their own loss was about 1700.

This miserable defeat was the more mournful, because the troops that day gave proof enough both of capacity and courage to show how surely, under good discipline and good command, they might have retrieved the military character of their country. No artillery could have been better served. The first battalion of guards, which was 900 strong, left upon the field fourteen officers, and half its men. Four hundred and fifty of a Seville regiment, which had distinguished itself with Wilson at Puerto de Baños, entered the action, and only eighty of them were accounted for when the day was over. Miserably commanded as the Spaniards were, there was a moment when the French, in attempting to deploy, were thrown into disorder, by their well-supported fire, and success was at that moment doubtful. The error of exposing the army in such a situation must not be ascribed wholly to incapacity in Areizaga, who had distinguished himself not less for conduct than courage at Alcañiz; it was another manifestation of the national character, of that obstinacy which no experience could correct, of that spirit which no disasters could subdue.

♦Treatment of the prisoners.♦

There was none of that butchery in the pursuit by which the French had disgraced themselves at Medellin. The intrusive government had at that time acted with the cruelty which fear inspires; feeling itself secure now, its object was to take prisoners, and force them into its own service; and for this purpose a different sort of cruelty was employed. While the Madrid Gazette proclaimed that the French soldiers behaved with more than humanity to the captured Spaniards, that they might gratify their Emperor’s brother by treating his misled subjects with this kindness, the treatment which those prisoners received was in reality so brutal, that if the people of Madrid had had no other provocation, it would have sufficed for making them hate and execrate the Intruder, and those by whom his councils were directed. They were plundered without shame or mercy by the French troops, and any who were recognized as having been taken before, or as having belonged to Joseph’s levies, were hurried before a military tribunal, and shot in presence of their fellows. Even an attempt to escape was punished with death by these tribunals, whose sentence was without appeal! They were imprisoned in the Retiro, and in the buildings attached to the Museum, where they were ill fed and worse used; and they who had friends, relations, or even parents, in Madrid, were neither allowed to communicate with, nor to receive the slightest assistance from them. By such usage about 8000 were forced into a service, from which they took the first opportunity ♦Rigel, 2. 406.♦ to desert, most of them in the course of a few months having joined the guerillas.

The defeat of Areizaga drew after it that of the Duke del Parque. Too confident in his troops, he remained in his advanced situation, amid the open country of Castille, till the army which he had defeated was reinforced by Kellermann’s division from Valladolid. The Duke knew there were 8000 French infantry and 2000 horse in Medina del Campo, and, thinking that this was all their force, took a position at Carpio, upon the only rising ground in those extensive plains, and there waited for their attack. The enemy advanced slowly, as if waiting for other troops to come up. Seeing this, the Duke gave orders to march against them, and the French retreated, fighting as they fell back, from about three in the afternoon till the close of day, when they entered Medina del Campo. The Duke then discovered that a far greater force than he had expected was at hand, and fell back to his position at Carpio, there to give his troops rest, for they had been thirty hours without any. At midnight the French also retired upon their reinforcements. During the following day the Duke obtained full intelligence; it now became too evident that he could no longer continue in his advanced situation, and he began his retreat from Carpio in the night. In the evening of the next day he halted a few hours at Vittoria and Cordovilla, and at ten that night continued his march, being pursued by Kellermann, who did ♦Battle of Alba de Tormes.♦ not yet come near enough to annoy him. On the morning of the 28th he reached Alba de Tormes, and there drew up his troops to resist the enemy, who were now close upon him. He posted them upon the heights which command the town on both sides of the Tormes, in order to cover his rear-guard, the bridges, and the fords; the whole cavalry was on the left bank. General Lorcet began the attack, and was repulsed by the infantry and artillery: two brigades of French horse then charged the right wing of the Spaniards; their cavalry were ordered to meet the charge; whether from some accidental disorder, or sudden panic, they took to flight without discharging a shot, or exchanging a single sword stroke; part of them were rallied and brought back, but the same disgraceful feeling recurred; they fled a second time, and left the right flank of the army uncovered: the French then charged the exposed wing with an overpowering force, and, in spite of a brave resistance, succeeded in breaking through. The victorious cavalry then charged the left of the Spaniards; but here it was three times repulsed. Mendizabal and Carrera formed their troops into an oblong square, and every farther attempt of the enemy was baffled: night now came on; this body, taking advantage of the darkness, retreated along the heights on the left bank of the town, and the Duke then gave orders to fall back in the direction of Tamames. They marched in good order till morning, when, as they were within eight miles of that town, and of the scene of their former victory, a small party of the enemy’s horse came in sight, and a rumour ran through the ranks that the French were about to charge them in great force. The very men who had fought so nobly only twelve hours before now threw away firelocks, knapsacks, and whatever else encumbered them: the enemy were not near enough to avail themselves of this panic; and the Duke, with the better part of his troops, reached the Peña de Francia, and in that secure position halted to collect again the fugitives and stragglers. Kellermann spoke of 3000 men killed and 2000 prisoners: and all the artillery of the right wing was taken.

By this victory the French were enabled without farther obstacle to direct their views against Ciudad Rodrigo, and to threaten Portugal: and Lord Wellington removed in consequence from his position in the vicinity of Badajos to the north of the Tagus, there to take measures against the operations which he had long foreseen. Alburquerque’s little army was now the only one which remained unbroken; but what was this against the numerous armies of the French? even if it were sufficient to cover Extremadura, what was there on the side of La Mancha to secure Andalusia, and Seville itself? Every effort was made to collect a new army under Areizaga at the passes of the Sierra, and to reinforce the Duke del Parque also; ... but the danger was close at hand.

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CHAPTER XXVI.
SIEGE OF GERONA.

♦1809.♦

While the Central Junta directed its whole attention toward Madrid, and expended all its efforts in operations, so ill concerted and ill directed, that the disastrous termination was foreseen with equal certainty both by their friends and foes, Catalonia was left to defend itself; and a sacrifice of heroic duty, not less memorable than that which Zaragoza had exhibited, was displayed at Gerona.

♦Gerona.♦

Gerona (the Gerunda of the Romans, a place of such unknown antiquity that fabulous historians have ascribed its foundation to Geryon) is situated upon the side and at the foot of a hill, where the little river Onar, which divides the city from the suburbs, falls into the Ter. Two centuries ago it was second only to Barcelona in size and importance; other places in the principality, more favourably situated for commerce, and less overlaid with monks and friars, had now outgrown it, for of about 14,000 inhabitants, not less than a fourth were clergy and religioners. In the thirteenth century it was distinguished by the defence[1] which Ramon Folch of Cardona made there against Philip III. of France; a memorable siege, not only for the resolution with which Ramon held out, and for the ability with which he obtained honourable terms at last, concealing from Philip the extremity of famine to which the place was reduced, but also for the singular destruction which was brought upon the besiegers by a plague of flies[2]. Their bite is said to have been fatal to the horses, of which such numbers died, that their carcasses produced pestilence; two-thirds of the army perished, and the remainder found it necessary to retreat into their own country, carrying home in their coffins the chiefs who had led them into Spain. In the succession-war, Gerona was signalized by the desperate resistance which it made against Philip V. After it had fallen, the Catalans blockaded it during eight months; M. Berwick raised the blockade, and the French minister proposed to him to demolish the works; his plea was, that the expense of keeping a garrison there might be spared; but his intent, that the Spaniards might have one strong-hold the less upon their frontier. But Berwick required an order from Louis XIV. to warrant him in a proceeding which must necessarily offend the King of Spain; and Louis was then withheld by a sense of decency from directly ordering what he wished to have had done. The fortifications after that time had been so neglected, that when Arthur Young was there in 1787, he thought they were not strong enough to stop an army for half an hour: the old walls, however, had now been well repaired; and the city was also protected by four forts upon the high ground above it. But its principal defence was the citadel, called here, as at Barcelona, Monjuic, which commanded it from an eminence about sixty fathoms distant. This was a square fort, 240 yards in length on each side, with four bastions, and for outworks the four towers of Saints Luis, Narcis, Daniel, and Juan.

♦Force of the garrison.♦

The garrison amounted only to 3400 men, but they were commanded by Mariano Alvares, ♦Vol. i. p. 465; Vol. ii. p. 322.♦ and the inhabitants were encouraged by having twice driven the enemy from their walls. After the battle of Valls it was certain that the French, having no force to oppose them in the field, would make a third attempt to obtain possession of this important place, and that they would make it in sufficient strength and with ample means, lest they should incur the disgrace of a third repulse. No means, therefore, were neglected of providing for defence; but while every military preparation which the circumstances permitted was made, Alvarez felt and understood that his surest reliance must be placed upon that moral resistance of which the Zaragozans had set them so illustrious an example. Like the ♦Crusaders enrolled.♦ crusaders of old, the inhabitants took the cross, and formed eight companies of an hundred men each; the women also, maids and matrons alike, enrolled themselves in an association which they ♦Company of St. Barbara.♦ called the Company of St. Barbara, to perform whatever duties lay within their power, as their countrywomen had done at Zaragoza. The French scoffed at these things, as indicating the fanaticism of a people whom they considered greatly inferior to themselves. Light-minded, as well as light-hearted, and regardless of any higher motive than may be found in the sense of mere military duty (for it was the direct object of Buonaparte’s institutions to eradicate or preclude every better principle), they were incapable of perceiving that the state of mind which their nefarious conduct had called forth, sanctified such measures.

♦St. Narcis appointed generalissimo.♦

These were demonstrations of the religious feeling with which the Geronans devoted themselves to the cause of their country, and to the duty of self-defence. With more reason might the French deride the part which in that city was assigned to the Patron Saint, though such derision would come with little consistency from those among them who professed to believe in the Romish church. St. Narcis, as the Saint is called in the clipt language of that province, had obtained as much credit for defeating Duhesme in his first attempt upon Gerona, as for sending the plague of flies against the French King Philip. A meeting had in consequence been held of the municipality, the chapter, the heads of the religious houses, and all the chief persons of the city, Colonel Julien Bolivar presiding as the king’s lieutenant. Resolutions were passed, that seeing St. Narcis had always vouchsafed his especial protection to the principality of Catalonia, as had been manifested during the former invasions of the French, and recently by the defeat of Duhesme, which was wholly owing to his favour; and seeing moreover that for the purpose of resisting the tyranny and oppression of Napoleon Buonaparte it was necessary to appoint a commander who should be capable of directing their operations and repulsing such an enemy, ... no one could so worthily fill that office as the invincible patron and martyr St. Narcis; and therefore, in the name of Ferdinand the King, they nominated him Generalissimo of all the Spanish forces by land and sea, and confided to him the defence of Gerona, of its district, and of the whole principality. On the following Sunday, the Junta, with all the clergy and other persons of distinction, went in procession to notify this appointment to the Saint in his shrine in the church of St. Felix; the shrine was opened, and a general’s staff, a sword, and a belt, all richly ornamented, were deposited by the relics of the chosen commander; and the enthusiastic joy which the ceremony excited was such, that the Spaniards said it seemed as if the glory of the Lord had descended and filled the church, manifesting that their devotion was approved and blessed by Heaven!

♦All mention of capitulating forbidden.♦

This display of national character and of Romish superstition had taken place in the first fervour of their feelings after a signal deliverance. The spirit of the Geronans did not fail when danger was again at hand; and the governor, seeing and relying upon this disposition of the people, thought it advisable, before the time of trial approached, to restrain by fear the few treacherous subjects who might be waiting, when opportunity offered, to declare themselves; ♦April 1.♦ he published an edict, therefore, forbidding all persons from speaking of capitulation on pain of immediate death, without exception of class, rank, or condition. Both by the garrison and the people it was received with acclamations. The military Junta of the city proposed that the streets should be unpaved as a precaution against bombardment; this was opposed by the board of police, upon the ground that it would be prejudicial to health; the question, therefore, was referred to the medical board, who found it convenient to avoid a physical discussion, and compromised the matter by deciding that the paving should be taken up in the squares and streets through which the troops must necessarily pass.

♦St. Cyr would have reduced the city by blockade.♦

General Reille, who was to have commanded the besieging army, was at this time superseded by General Verdier. This army consisted of 18,000 men; to make up that number Marshal St. Cyr was compelled to weaken the corps of observation under his own command, which was thus reduced to about 12,000; but from such armies as the Catalans could bring into the field, and such counsels as directed them, he well knew how little there was to apprehend. ♦St. Cyr, 164.♦ In this confidence St. Cyr would have preferred blockading the city to besieging it, and would have waited till it should be reduced by famine, whereby all the loss which the besiegers sustained might have been spared. But he was neither consulted nor listened to, holding the command at this time only till Marshal Augereau ♦1809. May.♦ should arrive. On the 6th of May the besiegers first appeared on the heights of Casa Roca and Costarroja on the other side the Ter, and began to form their lines without opposition. A battery of eleven mortars was planted upon Casa Roca, from whence it commanded the city; works were erected against Monjuic also; the garrison being far too weak to impede these operations, and no efforts being made for impeding them from without. When the lines were completed, and every thing ready to commence the bombardment, they sent a flag of truce requiring Alvarez to spare himself and the city the evils which must inevitably attend resistance. D. Mariano admitted the officer to his presence, and bade him tell his general, that in future the trouble of sending flags of truce might be spared, for he would hold no other communication with him than at the mouth of the cannon. The French commander found means of conveying a letter to him afterwards, with the significant observation that he might probably repent having thus cut himself off from the only means of communication which ♦The bombardment begins.♦ were allowed in war. It was on the 12th of June that the summons was sent, and on the night of the 13th, about an hour after midnight, the bombardment began. Then for the first time the generale or alarm was beat, a sound which afterwards became so frequent in this ♦1809. June.♦ devoted city: roused from their sleep, the aged and the children repaired to cellars and other places of imagined security, which they who could had provided for this emergency, and the female company of St. Barbara hastened to their posts. An ill-judged sally was made early on the 17th against some works which were supposed to be the base of a battery against the Puerto de Francia: it was successful, but the success was of little importance and dearly purchased; many brave men fell, and 110 were brought back wounded. The bombardment continued, and among other buildings the military hospital was destroyed: the people, while it was in flames, observed that its destruction was deserved, for, instead of proving a place of help and healing for the sick, covetousness and peculation had made their profit there upon human misery. The hospitals of St. Domingo and St. Martin were also rendered uninhabitable; one other had been made ready, another was to be prepared, and the difficulty of providing for the sick and wounded increased at the time when their numbers were daily increasing. About the end of the month an epidemic affection of the bowels become prevalent, occasioned partly by the perpetual agitation of mind which the people endured, partly by sleeping in damp subterranean places, where the air never circulated freely, and where many had nothing but the ground to lie on. In July, a bilious fever is usually endemic in Gerona; it seized especially upon the lower classes now, and upon the refugees from those places which had been taken or burned by the enemy; and it affected the wounded also.

♦St. Cyr draws nearer Gerona.♦

During these operations St. Cyr, retaining the command till Augereau, who was disabled by an attack of gout at Perpignan, should arrive to supersede him, had remained in his position ♦P. 368.♦ near Vich. The capture of the French troops near Monzon, and Blake’s success at Alcañiz, had so alarmed the enemy at Zaragoza and at Madrid, that orders were dispatched for him to return towards Tarragona, and combine his movements with Suchet, who, it was deemed, would otherwise be in danger. But King Joseph’s orders were respected almost as little by the French commanders as by the Spanish nation. Marshal St. Cyr represented that his army had always been left to itself, having no relation with any other corps, and being specially destined for subjugating Catalonia, which the Emperor Napoleon had thought quite sufficient employment for it, and which, in fact, would long continue to require all its efforts. On the other hand, Verdier was entreating him to approach nearer Gerona, and this he prepared to do, being aware that Blake’s immediate object, after collecting the runaways from Belchite, must be to introduce supplies and reinforcements into the besieged city. His first care was to send the sick and wounded to Barcelona, the only place where they could be in safety. This done, no time was lost in breaking up from quarters which he was unwilling to abandon; for though the want of meat and wine had been severely felt there by the troops and officers, as well as by the invalids, there had been no lack of bread; and the country through which they had to pass not being practicable for carriages of any kind, no more could be taken with them than the soldiers could carry for ♦June 18.♦ themselves. The movement was so luckily timed, that they reached S. Coloma de Farnes, just as a small detachment of Blake’s army arrived there, escorting some 1200 cattle to Gerona: the whole convoy fell into their hands, ♦St. Cyr, 167–172.♦ with an abundance of wine also, the want of which is felt by the French soldiers more severely than any other privation.

♦Palamos taken by the French.♦

St. Cyr’s head-quarters were now at Caldas de Malavella, and he occupied a line extending from Oña in advance of Bruñola to S. Feliu de Guixols, of which place his troops took possession at this time, after a brave but ineffectual resistance. It was a point of considerable importance, being the port most convenient for those Spanish vessels which cut off the communication between France and Barcelona for all ships which were not under a strong escort. Palamos was of still more importance at this juncture, because from thence Gerona communicated by sea with Tarragona. This place was attacked by Italian troops under General Fontane; it was carried by assault, and the only persons who were spared were the few who threw themselves into the sea, and were received prisoners when the fury of the invaders had spent itself[3]. On the other hand, the Catalans were not always unsuccessful in their endeavours to annoy the invaders. Rovira, formerly a canon, and therefore called Doctor Colonel Rovira (one of the most able and enterprising partizans who appeared during the contest), intercepted a convoy and a train of artillery horses, to supply the loss of which St. Cyr was obliged to part with the horses belonging to his corps. And a battalion which Augereau had sent to fix up proclamations in the villages beyond the frontier, was routed by Colonel Porta before it had disposed of three of ♦St. Cyr, 173, 190.♦ its papers. Augereau having, in the campaign of 1794, served in that province, and left a good name there, had counted upon the effect of his proclamations, not considering that he was now engaged in a cause in which every heart and every understanding, every principle and every feeling, were against him.

♦Assault of Monjuic.♦

Verdier meantime prosecuted the siege, in full expectation of bringing it to a speedy conclusion. ♦1809.
July.♦ The outworks were soon rendered untenable, and the redoubts which covered the front of Monjuic were carried with a facility which made him undervalue his opponents. At ♦St. Cyr, 175.♦ the beginning of July, three batteries played upon three sides of this little fortress: that which was planted against the north front consisted of twenty four-and-twenty pounders; while the French were battering it, the angle upon which the flag was hoisted fell into the ditch; D. Mariano Montorro descended for it in the midst of the fire, brought it up in safety, and replanted it upon the wall. The breach was soon wide enough for forty men abreast. The fire of the garrison had ceased, for they perceived that the French were secured by their trenches, and powder was too precious to be used unless its effects were certain: the enemy, who had not learned the temper of the men with whom they were contending, judged from this silence, that their hearts or ammunition had failed, and in the night between the fourth and fifth they assaulted the breach. But it was for this that the garrison had reserved their fire, and they poured it so destructively upon the columns which approached, that the French retreated with great loss. For three days they continued their fire upon the breach. Between two and three on the morning of the 8th, 6000 men again assaulted it; and at the same time the town was bombarded[4]. D. Blas de Furnas, second in command at Monjuic, was in the thickest of the fight; he strained his voice till from exertion it totally failed, but still his presence and his actions encouraged all who saw him. The enemy came on, filled the fosse, and proceeded to the breach ... “Woe to him,” says Samaniego, the historian of the siege, and himself one of the besieged, “woe to him who sets his foot upon the fosse of Monjuic!” A mortar, which lay masked among the ruins of the ravelin, and discharged 500 musket-balls at every shot, was played full upon the enemy by D. Juan Candy, and the havoc which it made was tremendous. Three times during that day the assault was repeated, with the utmost resolution on the part of the assailants, who were never thrown into confusion, though all their efforts were unavailing, and though they left 1600 of their number slain. The day, however, was disastrous to the Geronans also, though not from any evil which it was possible for strength or courage to have averted. The tower of St. Juan, which stood between the west curtain of the castle, the city, and the Calle de Pedret, was blown up. In what manner the magazine took fire was never known. Part of its little garrison were fortunately employed in active service elsewhere; the rest were buried in the ruins, from whence twenty-three persons were extricated alive amid the incessant fire which the enemy kept up upon the spot. Their preservation was in great measure owing to the exertions of D. Carlos Beramendi. The company of St. Barbara distinguished themselves that day: covered with dust and blood, under the burning heat of July, and through the incessant fire of the batteries and musketry, they carried water and wine to the soldiers, and bore back the wounded.

The severe loss which the French sustained in this second attempt convinced them, that while one stone remained upon another, Monjuic was not to be taken by assault. From this time, therefore, they continued to batter it on three sides; and, practising the surest and most destructive mode of warfare, stationed sharpshooters in their trenches on every side, so that for one of the garrison to be seen was almost certain death. So perilous was the service become, that the centinels were changed every half hour, yet nine were killed in one day at one post, and scarcely one escaped unwounded. It became at length impossible to observe the operations of the enemy, so thick were their marksmen, and with such fatal certainty did they take their aim: no other means remained than that of sending some one into the fosse, who, lifting up his head with the most imminent hazard, took a momentary glance. By the beginning of August the besiegers had pushed their parallels to the edge of the fosse; their labour was impeded by the stony soil, which rendered it necessary to bring earth from some distance; for this, however, they had hands enough, and they had no apprehension to hurry and disturb them, that any army powerful enough to raise the siege could be brought against them.

♦Succours intercepted.♦

Meantime the Spaniards were preparing for an attempt to introduce succours. For this purpose they threatened the right of the covering army, hoping to draw their attention upon that point, while 1500 men passed through the French line near Llagostera, where General Pino had his head-quarters. They succeeded perfectly in this difficult attempt, through their knowledge of the country, ... but a straggler who lagged behind fell into the enemy’s hand, and upon information which was obtained from him, it was understood that they would direct their course to Castellar de la Selva, and endeavour to pass through the besieging army in the night. There was time to take measures for intercepting them, and being turned aside from thence at nightfall, when they were beginning to debouche, they fell in at daybreak with Pino, who was in pursuit, and scarcely a third escaped: the rest were made prisoners, and sent into France. It was learnt from the prisoners ♦July 11.♦ that the Spaniards did not intend to make any serious effort for raising the siege till the besiegers should be weakened by those diseases which the season would infallibly produce. Reports, nevertheless, were current that such an effort would be made on Santiago’s day, when the patron of Spain might be expected once more to inspire or assist his faithful votaries. The French would have deemed themselves fortunate if this report had been verified; for according to the barbarous system of warfare which Buonaparte pursued, they were left to provide subsistence for themselves as they could; ... the soldiers had to cut the corn, thresh it, and grind it for themselves; and though St. Cyr had given orders that biscuit for four days’ consumption should always be kept in readiness, in case it should be necessary to collect the army for the purpose of giving battle, not more than half that quantity could ever be provided. More than once also ammunition became scarce, great part coming from Toulouse, and even from so remote a point as Strasbourg. ♦St. Cyr, 164.♦ Unhappily the Spaniards were in no condition to profit by the embarrassments of the enemy; and nothing was done by England for Catalonia, where, during the first years of the struggle, so much might have been done ♦Vol. ii. p. 328.♦ with effect. The army which in the preceding autumn had been ordered thither from Sicily, and detained by its general for the protection of that island, was employed at this time in an expedition against Naples, as a diversion in favour of the Austrians; and thus the means which might have saved Gerona were misdirected.

♦The ravelin taken.♦

Meantime the main attacks of the besiegers were directed against the ravelin which was now the main defence of Monjuic. While it was possible to maintain it, the garrison contended who should be stationed there, as at the post of honour. It was repeatedly attacked by night, but the defenders were always ready, and always repulsed the assailants. It was now discovered that the enemy were mining; this was distinctly ascertained by the sounds which were heard in the direction of the fosse. The castle was founded upon a rock, and therefore the officers apprehended no immediate danger from operations of this nature. The purpose of the French was to destroy a breast-work which protected that gate of the castle through which was the passage to the ravelin: the breast-work was almost wholly of earth, and its explosion did no hurt, but it left the gate exposed. A battery, already prepared, began to play upon it, and the communication between the castle and the ravelin was thus rendered exceedingly difficult. A sally was made against this battery, and the guns were spiked; a priest was one of the foremost in this adventure: he received a ball in his thigh, and fell; the enemy pressed on to kill him; one of their officers, at the hazard of his own life, protected him, and in this act of humane interference was slain by the Spaniards, ... ♦1809.
August.♦ a circumstance which their journalists recorded with becoming regret. The success which had been obtained was of little avail, for the French had artillery in abundance: in the course of a few hours they mounted other pieces in place of those which had been rendered useless, and continued their fire upon the gate and the ravelin. At the same time they formed a covered way from their own parapet to the breach of the ravelin; by this, on the night between the 4th and 5th of August they poured a sufficient body of troops through the breach to overpower the forty men who were stationed there; but having won the place, they could not maintain it, exposed as it was to musketry from the castle. It was, therefore, left for the dead who covered it. About forty hours afterwards, a few Spaniards determined to go and bring off the arms which the French had not had time to carry away; they found a lad of sixteen who had lain thus long among the carcasses; he was the only one of his comrades who escaped death or captivity, ... they brought him off, and he was sent to the hospital half dead with exhaustion.

♦Monjuic abandoned.♦

The guns of Monjuic had now been silenced; the enemy were so near, that sometimes the Spaniards knocked them down with stones: it was with difficulty that the governor, D. Guillerme Nasch, could restrain his men: impatient at remaining inactive, they earnestly solicited permission to sally out upon the most desperate attempts. The garrison had held out seven-and-thirty days since a practicable breach was made. A week had elapsed since the ravelin was lost, and three sides of the castle were now entirely in ruins; there was little water left, and that little foul and unwholesome; the number of soldiers was every day diminished by disease as well as by the chances of war. Under these circumstances, the governor deemed it his duty to preserve the men who were still left, that they might assist in the defence of the city. On the evening of the 11th he abandoned the ruins, and retired into Gerona, every man taking with him two hand-grenades and as many cartridges as he could carry. Matches were left in the magazine, and the retreat was effected with only the loss of one man, who was killed by a shell when he had entered the gates.

♦Verdier expects the town to fall.♦

Elated with this success, ... a success dearly purchased, and bringing no glory to the conqueror, ... Verdier assured his government that Gerona could not now hold out longer than from eight to fifteen days. He planted one battery against the bulwark of St. Pedro, and another upon Monjuic, which commanded all the works in the plain, and the whole line of the city from St. Pedro to the tower of Gironella. Other batteries, placed by St. Daniel’s Tower, commanded Fort Calvary, the Castle of the Constable, and one of its advanced posts. While they were forming these, and throwing up works nearer the city than they could approach before the fall of Monjuic, a little respite was necessarily afforded to the besieged; but, that no rest might be given them, shells were thrown in from time to time by night and day. From the commencement of the siege Alvarez had felt the want of men, and had repeatedly solicited a reinforcement of 2000; even then the garrison would hardly have amounted to half its complement. Nothing but the want of men prevented him from making more frequent sallies, ... in all that were made, the desperate courage and high sense of duty which inspired the Spaniards gave them a decided advantage. “Never,” said he, in his report to the government, “never have I seen the precious enthusiasm of all who are within this city abated even for a moment; and a thousand times would they have sallied out, if I had not, because of their scanty numbers, been compelled to forbid them.” Just after the fall of Monjuic, D. Ramon Foxa, and D. Jose Cantera, brought him 700 men, a trifling number considering the state of Gerona, and the importance of defending it; but they were volunteers, and went with willing and prepared minds to make the sacrifice which was required of them.

♦A battery planted on the cathedral.♦

Alvarez now planted upon the roof of the cathedral a battery of three cannon. The little opposition which was made to this as an act of profanation was soon overcome, for the clergy felt that, as when fighting in the field, they were employed in the service of the altar, so, in such a war, the temple could not be desecrated by using it as a fortress. Till now a watch had been kept upon the tower, to observe the movements of the enemy, and ring the alarm whenever an attack was about to be made. It was composed of the clergy of the cathedral, with one of the Canons at their head: now that the battery was planted there, this guard made their station a place of arms also, and annoyed the besiegers with musketry. The cathedral had been hitherto the hospital for wounded officers; it now became necessary to remove them to a safer quarter, for the enemy directed their fire thither with a perseverance that discovered how much they were annoyed from thence. In the frequent removal of the hospitals which the bombardment occasioned, the company of St. Barbara was of the most essential service; throughout the whole siege, these heroic women shrunk from no duty, however laborious, however perilous, or however painful. Three of the leaders are especially mentioned, Dona Lucia Joana de Fitzgéralt, D. Mariangela Vivern, and D. Maria Custi, commandants of the three divisions of St. Narcis, St. Dorothy, and St. Eulalia.

At the end of August, several breaches had been made by the batteries of Monjuic, and it was every day apprehended that they would be made practicable. Alvarez then declared in his general orders, that if any of the defenders flinched from the breach when it was attacked, they should immediately be considered as enemies, and fired upon accordingly. The besiegers continually constructed new works, they had troops at command, artillery in abundance, and ♦Distress of the city.♦ engineers of the greatest skill. The garrison was considerably reduced; the hospitals were no longer able to contain the numbers who required admission: the contagion increased, and became more virulent; the magazines were exhausted of all their provisions except wheat and a little flour, and famine began to be severely felt. Not a word of capitulation was permitted within the city, nor a thought of it entertained; but Blake was well aware that it was now absolutely necessary to make a great effort for the relief of the place, and throw in troops and ♦Attempt to introduce succours.♦ supplies. This was exceedingly difficult; for, although the enemy occupied an extensive line, it might easily be contracted, and they would certainly employ their whole force to prevent the entrance of supplies into a place which they had strictly blockaded for more than three months. The only means of succeeding would be to divert their attention upon various points, and make them suppose that the Spaniards intended to give battle in the quarter directly opposite to that by which the convoy was to proceed. Blake’s head-quarters were at S. Ilari when he began his movements; he ordered Don Manuel Llanden, lieutenant of the regiment of Ultonia, with as many troops as could be allotted for this service, and as many of the Somatenes as he could collect on the way, to march to the heights of Los Angeles, which are north of Gerona, dislodge the enemy from that position, where they had only a small body of infantry, and protect the convoy which was to be introduced on that side. Blake then advanced two hours’ march towards the Ermida, or Chapel of Pradro, with the reserve, that he might be ready to give assistance wherever it was wanted; from thence he dispatched the colonel of the regiment of Ultonia, D. Enrique O’Donnell, with 1200 foot and a few cavalry, to attack the French at Bruñolas, his object being to make them suppose that the convoy was proceeding in that direction.

♦Sept. 1.♦

O’Donnell, by the error of his guides, was led more than two hours’ march out of the direct road, and thus prevented from attacking the enemy at daybreak, according to his intention. This, however, did not frustrate the plan. Bruñolas was a strong position, the enemy were posted in two bodies, and they had a redoubt with entrenchments on the top of the mountain. Stationing one part of his men at the foot of the ascent, to defeat the purpose of the enemy, which he perceived was to attack his principal column in flank, he ordered Sarsfield, with the greater part of his force, to attack the French in front; it was done with complete success; they were driven from their entrenchments, and reinforcements came hastening towards them, this, as Blake had designed, being supposed to be the point which it was of most importance to ♦1809.
September.♦ secure. O’Donnell having succeeded in this diversion, now descended into the plain, lest he should be turned by superior numbers. There was some difficulty in the descent, owing to its steepness and the proximity of the enemy, nevertheless it was effected in perfect order, and having reached the plain, he halted, and formed in order of battle. Another division of the Spaniards under General Loygorri joined him, and they continued in that position to occupy the attention of the French, and draw more of their troops from the side of the Ter during the whole of the day.

While O’Donnell thus successfully executed his orders on one side, D. Juan Claros acted on another in concert with the Doctor Colonel Rovira. Rovira dislodged the enemy from the castle of Montagut, which they had fortified. Claros at the same time attacked them on the left bank of the Ter, dislodged them from the height which they occupied on that part of the river, killed the Westphalian General Hadelin, burnt their encampments at Sarria and Montrospe, and won the battery of Casa Enroca. Llanden meantime obtained possession of the heights of Los Angeles: this opened a way for ♦Garcia Conde enters with reinforcements.♦ the convoy, with which Garcia Conde, at the head of 4000 foot and 500 horse, advanced from Amer, crossed the Ter, and hastened along the right bank toward Gerona. The attention of the enemy had been so well diverted by the attacks on other points, that the Spaniards were enabled to break through the force which had been left there, set fire to the tents, and effect their entrance. Six hundred men sallied at the same time from the city to the plain of Salt, partly to assist in confusing the enemy, but more for the purpose of restoring water to the only two mills within the walls. In this they failed; for, since the French had broken the water-courses, it was discovered that the weather had completed their destruction; ... had not this detachment thus uselessly employed their time, they might have carried off the besiegers’ magazines from Salt.

♦Inadequacy of this relief.♦

These operations, so honourable to Blake who planned, and to the officers who executed them, were performed during a day of heavy and incessant rain, which concealed their movements from the enemy. Of the troops who got into Gerona, 3000 remained there. Alvarez did not conceal from them the desperate nature of the service upon which they had entered; he addressed both officers and men, telling them, that if any one among them dreaded the thoughts of death, now was the time to leave the city, for the Geronans and their defenders had sworn to perish rather than surrender, and he asked if they were willing, to swear the like? They readily took the oath. Conde, with the rest of the army and the beasts of the convoy, accomplished his return as happily as his entrance. Of all Blake’s actions this was the only one which was completely successful. But more might have been done, and ought to have been attempted. If he had given the French battle, a victory would have delivered Gerona; and a defeat could only have produced the dispersion of his own troops, in a country which they knew, where every man was friendly to them, and where they would presently have re-assembled. He had little to lose, and every thing to gain. Even if, instead of retreating as soon as his object of introducing supplies was effected, he had continued to threaten the enemy, without risking an action, an opportunity of attacking them at advantage must have been given him; for of the two days’ biscuit which had been reserved for such an occasion, one had been consumed, and the French army could not have been kept together for want of supplies. Blake was highly and deservedly extolled for the skill with which he had conducted his operations; but the attempt, though it had succeeded in all parts, was miserably inadequate to the object. The stores, which after so much preparation and with such skilful movements had been introduced, contained only a supply for fifteen days. Hopes indeed were held out of others which were to follow, but it was impossible not to perceive that the enemy would be more vigilant hereafter, and that the introduction of a second convoy would be rendered far more difficult than that of the first. Alvarez was so well convinced of this, that he immediately reduced the rations one half, preparing at once with invincible resolution for the extremity which he knew was ♦St. Cyr, 231.♦ now to be expected; and then, it is said, that for the first time there was some desertion from the Spanish troops.

♦Los Angeles taken, and the garrison put to the sword.♦

The Spaniards, after the late action, had occupied with 500 men the convent of N. Señora de los Angeles, which was situated upon the highest ground in the vicinity, and having been fortified, was now an important point, as facilitating both ingress and egress for the besieged, while it remained in their hands. Mazuchelli, therefore, with the Italian troops, was ordered to take it. According to his statement the Spanish commandant Llanden fired upon the officer who summoned him; and therefore when the post was carried, after a brave resistance, every man was put to the sword except three officers, whom the Italian commander saved, and Llanden himself, who leapt from one of the ♦St. Cyr, 243.♦ church-windows, and effected his escape. The Italian soldiers had become mercilessly ferocious in the course of this war, exasperated, it is said, by the murder of some of their sick and wounded ♦Ib. 262.♦ who had fallen into the hands of Rovira and other guerilla chiefs. In these dreadful cases, where cruelty excites revenge, and revenge provokes fresh cruelty, there is a fearful accumulation of guilt on all the parties who thus aggravate the evils of war: but that the inhumanity of the invaders was carried on upon a wider scale, that it was systematically encouraged and sometimes enjoined, and that it extended to women and even children, is as certain ... as that the provocation was given by them, and the example set, ... an example which neither the Spaniards nor Portugueze were likely to be slow in following. The enemy were less fortunate in an attack upon the irregular forces under Claros and Rovira, who with incessant activity intercepted their communication with Figueras. Verdier attacked them at S. Gregori, where they were well posted and well commanded, for these leaders were men well fitted for the sort of warfare in which they were engaged, and the French were compelled to retire with the loss of one of their generals.

♦Unsuccessful sally.♦

The besiegers were at this time compelled for want of ammunition to suspend their efforts till a supply could be received from France. The time was not lost by the garrison in strengthening their works, works however which derived their main strength from the unconquerable spirit of the inhabitants. When the supplies arrived the enemy directed their fire upon the three points of St. Lucia, St. Cristobal, and the Quartel de Alemanes, or Quarter of the Germans. This latter building rested in part of its foundation upon the wall itself, and the object of the enemy was to beat it down, that they might enter over its ruins as by a bridge. The fire from the cathedral, from the Sarracinas, and from the tower of Gironella, was well kept up in return; but the French had so greatly the advantage both in the number and size of their artillery, that Alvarez ordered a sally, in the ♦Sept. 15.♦ hope of spiking their guns. That it might be the more unexpected, the gate of S. Pedro, which had been walled up since the loss of Monjuic, was re-opened, and the Spaniards advanced with such rapidity upon the enemy’s works, that the attack was made almost as soon as they were seen. In many points it was successful, in some the Spaniards failed, and when they were thrown into confusion they were unable to rally. In some few of the persons chosen for the sally, something worse than want of discipline discovered itself, ... they lagged behind in the assault, and, without sharing the danger, fell in with their braver comrades on their return. So much was done, and so much more must have been effected, if all had behaved equally well, that Colonel Marshal, an Englishman in the Spanish service, exclaimed, “We have lost a great victory!”

♦The French repulsed in a general assault.♦

The guns which had been rendered useless were soon replaced, and an incessant fire was kept up upon the three great breaches; on the 18th, the French engineers declared that all three were practicable. Monjuic had taught the enemy not to be too confident of success; the breaches indeed were of such magnitude that it seemed scarcely possible they should fail in storming them, but they knew that victory must be dearly purchased. In the evening, therefore, they sent a white flag; it was not noticed from the town, and the officers who accompanied it made signs to the Spaniards; there was no firing at this time, and the men, both of the besieging army and the town, were looking silently and intently on, to await the issue. Alvarez at length sent a verbal order to the French officers to retire, ... they requested to be heard, and were told from the walls to retire on peril of their lives; they persisted in offering a letter, and then both the castle of the Constable and the tower of Gironella fired. As soon as the officers reached their own lines, the batteries were again opened, some upon the breaches, others throwing shells into the town. During the night this was kept up, and the enemy collected troops upon the heights of Campdura and in Monjuic, for the assault. At daybreak they were seen in motion in different parts, with the purpose, it was supposed, of calling off attention from the real points of danger. The whole ♦Sept. 19.♦ forenoon was employed in preparation. Between three and four, the watch on the cathedral informed Alvarez that troops were descending from Monjuic to St. Daniel. At the same time the like intelligence arrived from the forts of the Constable and of the Capuchines; and another messenger from the cathedral followed, with tidings that the enemy were advancing in force both from Monjuic and St. Daniel against the breaches, and that many of them carried instruments for sapping.

The alarm was now rung from the cathedral, and beaten through the streets; there was scarcely any interval between the alarm and the attack, so near to the walls were the points of which the enemy were in possession: 2000 men came on straight from Monjuic, an equal number advanced between Monjuic and St. Daniel, a third body from S. Miguel; at the same time a movement of troops was seen in the woods of Palau; they advanced against the three bridges, the Puerto de Francia, and forts Calvary and Cabildo. It was not without surprise that the enemy found the Geronans prepared to receive them at all these points. Nasch, the defender of Monjuic, had his post at the Quartel de Alemanes, where one of the principal breaches was made. Colonel Marshall was at the breach of St. Lucia; a company of crusaders, composed entirely of clergy, were stationed at the breach of St. Cristobal; the rest of the garrison, and crusaders, and all the other townsmen manned the walls. The company of St. Barbara were distributed among the different posts, to perform their important functions, and proclamations were made, inviting the other women of Gerona to assist them in this awful hour.

At the Quartel de Alemanes the enemy mounted the breach with the utmost resolution, and they succeeded in forcing their way into the first quadrangle of that great building; the French batteries continued to play upon the walls and the buildings adjoining the breach, and a huge fragment fell upon those who were foremost in the assault, just at the moment when part of the Ultonia regiment was about to charge them: a few of the Spaniards were buried with them in the ruins. The Geronans then rushed on, drove back the enemy, presented themselves in the breach, and fought hand to hand with the assailants. Frequently such was the press of the conflict, and such the passion which inspired them, that impatient of the time required for reloading their muskets, the defendants caught up stones from the breach, and brained their enemies with these readier weapons. Four times the assault was repeated in the course of two hours, and at every point the enemy were beaten off. Alvarez, during the whole assault, hastened from post to post, wherever there was most need of his presence, providing every thing, directing all and encouraging all; he had prepared cressets to light up the walls and breaches in case the enemy should persist in their attempt after darkness closed; but they withdrew long before night set in, hastily and in disorder, leaving 800 of their best men slain. Among them was that Colonel Floresti, whom this very Mariano Alvarez had admitted into Monjuic at Barcelona, when the French took their ♦See vol. i. p. 201.♦ treacherous possession of that fortress.

Of the besieged forty-four fell in this glorious day, and 197 were wounded. Our brave countryman, Colonel Marshall, died of his wounds, as did D. Ricardo Maccarty, another officer of the same regiment, who was Irish either by birth or extraction. A glorious success had been gained, one that filled the conquerors with the highest and most ennobling pride; this joy it brought with it, but it brought no rest, no respite, scarcely even a prolongation of hope. There was neither wine to distribute to the soldiers after their exertions, nor even bread; a scanty mess of pulse or corn, with a little oil, or a morsel of bacon in its stead, was all that could be served out, ... and this not from the public magazines, but given by the inhabitants, who, in the general extremity, shared their stores with the soldiers, lamenting that they had nothing better to bestow. “What matters it?” said these brave Spaniards, “the joy of having saved Gerona to-day will give us strength to go on!” A party went out to bring in any of the wounded enemies who might have been left among the dead; one had been stript by a miquelet, but upon perceiving what was the object of their search, he discovered himself to be living. “Having been wounded,” he said, “he feigned death as the only chance of escaping death, for he had been led to believe that the miquelets and the peasants gave no quarter.” The man who had stripped him happened to be present when he spoke; he immediately re-clothed him, ran to bring him water, and took charge of him till he could be removed to the hospital. While the Spaniards were employed in this humane office, a fire was opened upon them from the enemy’s works, occasioned, no doubt, by some error of the French centinels: it drove them in, and the remainder of the wounded were consequently left to perish. One wretched German, by the breach of St. Lucia, lay groaning for twenty hours before death relieved him.

♦St. Cyr resolves to reduce the city by famine.♦

The loss which they had sustained in this assault thoroughly discouraged the besiegers; and when St. Cyr, for the sake of proving to the Spaniards that he was not to be outdone by them in perseverance, would have made a second effort, the officers whom he consulted were unanimously of opinion that it ought not again to be attempted. The Marshal, however unwilling to make an acknowledgement so honourable to the people against whom he was employed, was compelled then to admit that Gerona could only be reduced by famine, and to determine upon pursuing that course, which of all others is the most wearying to the soldiers, and the most painful to a general who has not extinguished in himself all sense of humanity. Every day now added to the distress of the besieged. Their flour was exhausted; wheat they had still in store, but men are so much the slaves of habit, that it was considered as one great evil of the siege, that they had no means of grinding it; two horse-mills, which had been erected, were of such clumsy construction, that they did not perform half the needful work, and the Geronans, rather than prepare the unground corn in any way to which they had not been accustomed, submitted to the labour of grinding it between two stones, or pounding it in the shell of a bomb with a cannon-ball. For want of other animal food, mules and horses were slaughtered for the hospital and for the shambles; a list was made of all within the city, and they were taken by lot. Fuel was exceedingly scarce, yet the heaps which were placed in cressets at the corners of the principal streets, to illuminate them in case of danger, remained untouched, and not a billet was taken from them during the whole siege. The summer fever became more prevalent; the bodies of the sufferers were frequently covered with a minute eruption, which was usually a fatal symptom: fluxes also began to prevail[5].

♦O’Donnell enters the city.♦

The hope of relief was the only thing talked of in Gerona, and day and night the people, as well as the watchmen, looked eagerly on all sides for the succours of which they were so greatly in need, and which they knew Blake was preparing. That general, on the 21st of September, had assembled a convoy at Hostalrich; on the morning of the 26th a firing was heard towards Los Angeles, and a strong body of the garrison sallied out to assist the convoy. Wimpfen had the command of the advancing army. When they reached the heights of S. Pelayo, before La Bisbal, O’Donnell was sent forward, with 1000 men, to open a way through the enemy: this officer, who was generally not less successful than enterprising in his attempts, broke through the enemy, set fire to one of their encampments, and made way for 160 laden beasts, which entered safely through the Puerta del Areny. The joy of the besieged was but of short endurance; they looked to see more troops and more supplies hastening on: 10,000 men they knew had been sent upon this service, 1000 had effected their part, why could not the nine follow? After gazing for hours in vain, they could no longer deceive themselves with hope; it was but too certain that the rest of the convoy had been intercepted. They then began to censure the general who had attempted to introduce it on that side, where the way was craggy, and led through such defiles, that a handful of men would be sufficient to defeat his purpose: their disappointment vented itself in exclamations against Blake, and they blamed him for remaining at the head of an army after so many repeated misfortunes as he had sustained. ♦Failure of the attempt to relieve it.♦ That general was not more censured by the Catalans than by the enemy for his conduct during the siege. The French condemned his want of promptitude and enterprise, being conscious themselves that for want of resources they must have been seriously endangered, if they had been repeatedly and vigorously attacked, or even threatened. But Blake, after the panic at Belchite, could have no confidence in his men: nor was this his only misfortune; though in other respects a good officer, he wanted that presence of mind which is the most essential requisite for a commander, and he was therefore better qualified to plan a campaign than to execute his own arrangements. When he succeeded in the former attempt for relieving Gerona, if the fair occasion had been seized the enemy might have then been compelled to raise the siege; but it was let pass for want of alacrity and hope. This second effort was miserably unsuccessful; nine parts of the convoy fell into the enemy’s hand, and there was a loss of more than 3000 men, for the ♦St. Cyr, 262.♦ Italians gave no quarter. St. Cyr thought that the men who had got into the city could not possibly retreat from it, and must therefore accelerate its surrender; and believing that the ♦St. Cyr gives up the command to Augereau.♦ business of the siege was done, he went to Perpignan for the purpose of making arrangements for the better supply of the army, and getting rid of an irksome command which his successor seemed in no haste to assume. His situation had long been painful. The service itself was one to which no casuistry could reconcile an honourable mind; the system of preying upon the country gave a barbarous character to it, which, if the cause itself had been less odious, must have been intolerable to one bred up in those feelings and observances by which the evils of war were mitigated: and if Marshal St. Cyr had been insensible to these reflections, he had much personal mortification to endure. There was reason to suspect that the army was neglected, because he was an object of displeasure to the government which employed him; and he was made to feel that the officers under him were, for his sake, debarred from the honours and advancement which they were entitled to expect. Finding therefore that Augereau was not incapacitated by ill health ♦St. Cyr, 264, 268.♦ from assuming the command, he communicated to him his determination of holding it no longer, and was rewarded for his services by two years of disgrace and exile.

♦O’Donnell effects his retreat.♦

Marshal Augereau had not been many hours before Gerona when O’Donnell with his thousand men broke through the besieging army, and accomplished his retreat more daringly and not less successfully than he had effected his entrance. It was O’Donnell who first formed the Geronans into companies, and disciplined them: he had not remained in the city during the siege, because it was rightly thought he would be better able to assist it from without; and he had displayed such skill and intrepidity in intercepting a convoy at Mascara, in concert with Rovira, that the Central Junta promoted him to the rank of brigadier. When, in the unhappy attempt at relieving the city, he and his division only had entered, he took up his station between the fort of the Capuchins and of La Reynana; but Gerona stood in need of provisions, not men; a thousand troops added nothing to her useful strength, the Geronans were strong enough without them to resist an assault if another were made; with them they were not numerous enough to sally and raise the siege; the continuance of O’Donnell then could only serve to hasten the fall of the city, by increasing the consumption of its scanty stores, and to weaken his own men by the privations in which they shared. It was agreed, therefore, with Alvarez that he should cut his way through the enemy; and a few families thought it better to follow him in this perilous attempt, than remain in a city where it now became apparent that they who escaped death could not long escape captivity. The place was completely surrounded, so that to elude the enemy was impossible; the only hope was to surprise them, ♦Oct. 13.♦ and then force a way. One night, after the moon was down, they left their position in silence: the Geronan centinels at St. Francisco de Paula mistook them for an enemy, and fired: but it is not unlikely that this accident, which might so easily have frustrated the enterprise, facilitated it, by deceiving the French, who, when they heard the alarm given from the city, could never imagine that an attempt was about to be made upon their camp. To make way by the mountains, O’Donnell knew would be impossible, in the darkness, without confusion; ♦1809.
October.♦ therefore, though the enemy’s posts were more numerous on the plain, he judged it safer to take that course. The plan was ably carried into effect; his men surprised the first post, fell upon them with sword and bayonet, not firing a gun, cut them off without giving the alarm, and sparing two prisoners, made them their guides through the encampment. They passed five-and-twenty posts of the enemy, through many of which they forced their way: Souham was surprised in his quarter, and fled in his shirt, leaving behind him as much booty as the Spaniards had time to lay hands on. The alarm spread throughout the whole of the lines, but it was too late; by daybreak the Spaniards reached S. Colona, where Milans was posted with part of Blake’s army, and it was not till they were thus placed in safety that a body of 2000 foot and 200 horse, who had been sent in pursuit of them, came up. O’Donnell was promoted to the rank of camp-marshal for this exploit.

♦Magazines at Hostalrich taken by the French.♦

But an immediate change took place in the condition of the besieging army under the new commander. Their wants were immediately supplied from France, they were largely reinforced, and encouragement of every kind was given them, as if to show that the disfavour which they had experienced had been wholly intended toward Marshal St. Cyr. Augereau being thus in strength, sent General Pino against the town of Hostalrich, where magazines were collected for Blake’s army, and for the relief of Gerona. The town was occupied by 2000 troops; Blake was too distant to act in support of this important post; the Spaniards, after a gallant resistance, were driven into the citadel by superior numbers; the magazines were lost, and the greater part of the town burnt.

♦Augereau offers favourable terms.♦

The French purchased their success dearly; but it cut off the last possibility of relief from Gerona. The besieged now died in such numbers, chiefly of dysentery, that the daily deaths were never less than thirty-five, and sometimes amounted to seventy. The way to the burial place was never vacant. Augereau straitened the blockade; and, that the garrison might neither follow the example of O’Donnell, nor receive any supplies, however small, he drew his lines closer, stretched cords with bells along the interspaces, and kept watch-dogs at all the posts. The bombardment was continued, and always with greater violence during the night than the day, as if to exhaust the Geronans by depriving them of sleep. He found means also of sending letters into the city, sparing no attempts to work upon the hopes and fears of the people; he told them of his victory at Hostalrich, ... of the hopeless state of Blake’s army, ... of the peace which Austria had made; ... he threatened the most signal vengeance if they persisted in holding out, and he offered to grant an armistice for a month, and suffer supplies immediately to enter, provided Alvarez would capitulate at the end of that time, if the city were not relieved. There was a humanity in this offer such as no other French general had displayed during the course of the Spanish war; but Alvarez and the Geronans knew their duty too well to accept even such terms as these after the glorious resistance which they had made. With such an enemy, and in such a cause, they knew that no compromise ought to be made: they had devoted themselves for Spain, and it did not become them, for the sake of shortening their own sufferings, to let loose so large a part of the besieging army as this armistice would have left at liberty for other operations.

♦Destruction of a French convoy by the British ships.♦

While the people of Gerona opposed this heroic spirit of endurance to the enemy, an affair took place at sea, which, if it brought no immediate relief to the Catalans, convinced them at least that they were not wholly neglected by Great Britain. Lord Collingwood having obtained intelligence that an attempt would be made from Toulon for throwing supplies into Barcelona, sailed from Minorca about the middle of October, and took his station a few leagues off Cape St. Sebastian, on the coast of Catalonia. On the 23d the enemy’s fleet came in sight, consisting of three ships of the line, two frigates, two armed store ships, and a convoy of sixteen sail. Rear Admiral Martin was ordered to give chase; he fell in with the ships of war off ♦Oct. 25.♦ the entrance of the Rhone, but they escaped him that night, because the wind blew directly on shore. The next morning he renewed the chase, and drove two of them, one of eighty guns, the other of seventy-four, on shore, off Frontignan, where they were set fire to by their own crews; the other ship of the line and one frigate ran on shore at the entrance of the port of Cette, where there was little probability that the former could be saved, but they were under protection of the batteries. The second frigate had hauled her wind during the night, and got into Marseilles road.

Two brigs, two bombards, and a ketch belonging to the convoy, were burnt by the Pomona while Admiral Martin was in chase. The other vessels made for the bay of Rosas; a squadron pursued, and found them moored under the protection of the castle, Fort Trinidad, and several batteries newly erected by the French. Four of these vessels were armed; the largest was of 600 tons, carrying sixteen nine-pounders, and 110 men; she was inclosed in boarding nettings, and perfectly prepared for action. The English boats, however, boarded them all, though they were bravely defended, and though a constant fire was kept up from the forts and from the beach. Of the eleven ships, three had landed their cargoes, but all were taken or burnt; and of the whole convoy there only escaped the frigate, which put into Marseilles, and one of the store-ships, which probably succeeded in reaching Barcelona.

♦Increased distress of the city.♦

It was no unimportant service thus to straiten the French in that city, ... but it was a success which brought no relief to Gerona, where the devoted inhabitants seemed now abandoned to their fate. Hitherto the few mules and horses which remained unslaughtered had been led out to feed near the walls of St. Francisco de Paula, and of the burial ground: ... this was now prevented by the batteries of Palau and Montelivi, and by the French advanced posts; and these wretched animals, being thus deprived of their only food, gnawed the hair from each other’s tails and manes before they were led to the shambles. Famine at length did the enemy’s work; the stores from which the citizens had supplied the failure of the magazines were exhausted; it became necessary to set a guard over the ovens, and the food for the hospitals was sometimes seized upon the way by the famishing populace. The enemy endeavoured to tempt the garrison to desert, by calling out to them to come and eat, and holding out provisions. A few were tempted; they were received with embraces, and fed in sight of the walls, ... poor wretches, envying the firmer constancy of their comrades more than those comrades did the food, for lack of which their own vital spirits were well-nigh spent! None of that individual animosity was here displayed which characterized the street-fighting ♦1809.
November.♦ at Zaragoza, ... the nature of the siege was not such as to call it forth; and some of those humanities appeared, which in other instances the French generals systematically outraged in Spain. The out-sentries frequently made a truce with each other, laid down their arms, and drew near enough to converse; the French soldier would then give his half-starved enemy a draught from his leathern bottle, or brandy flask, and when they had drunk and talked together, they returned to their posts, scoffed at each other, proceeded from mockery to insult, and sometimes closed the scene with a skirmish.

♦Report of the state of health.♦

The only disgraceful circumstance which occurred during the whole siege was the desertion of ten officers in a body, two of whom were men of noble birth; they had been plotting to make the governor capitulate, and finding their intentions frustrated, went over to the enemy in open day. Except in this instance, the number of deserters was very small. Towards the end of November many of the inhabitants, having become utterly hopeless of relief, preferred the chance of death to the certainty of being made prisoners, and they ventured to pass the enemy’s lines, some failing in the attempt, others being more fortunate. At this time Samaniego, who was first surgeon to the garrison, delivered in to Alvarez a report upon the state of ♦Nov. 29.♦ health: as he gave it into his hands, he said something implying the melancholy nature of its contents; Alvarez replied, “this paper then, perhaps, will inform posterity of our sufferings, if there should be none left to recount them!” He then bade Samaniego read it. It was a dreadful report. There did not remain a single building in Gerona which had not been injured by the bombardment; not a house was habitable; the people slept in cellars, and vaults, and holes amid the ruins; and it had not unfrequently happened that the wounded were killed in the hospitals. The streets were broken up; so that the rain water and the sewers stagnated there, and the pestilential vapours which arose were rendered more noxious by the dead bodies which lay rotting amid the ruins. The siege had now endured seven months; scarcely a woman had become pregnant during that time; the very dogs, before hunger consumed them, had ceased to follow after kind; they did not even fawn upon their masters; the almost incessant thunder of artillery seemed to make them sensible of the state of the city, and the unnatural atmosphere affected them as well as humankind. It even affected vegetation. In the gardens within the walls the fruits withered, and scarcely any vegetable could be raised. Within the last three weeks above 500 of the garrison had died in the hospitals; a dysentery was raging and spreading; the sick were lying upon the ground, without beds, almost without food; and there was scarcely fuel to dress the little wheat that remained, and the few horses which were yet unconsumed. Samaniego then adverted with bitterness to the accounts which had been circulated, that abundant supplies had been thrown into the city; and he concluded by saying, “if by these sacrifices, deserving for ever to be the admiration of history, and if by consummating them with the lives of us who, by the will of Providence, have survived our comrades, the liberty of our country can be secured, happy shall we be in the bosom of eternity and in the memory of good men, and happy will our children be among their fellow-countrymen!”

♦Some of the outworks taken by the French.♦

The breaches which had been assaulted ten weeks before were still open; it was easier for the Geronans to defend than to repair them, and the French had suffered too much in that assault to repeat it. A fourth had now been made. The enemy, learning from the officers who had deserted that the ammunition of the place was almost expended, ventured upon bolder operations. They took possession by night of the Calle del Carmen; from thence they commanded the bridge of S. Francisco, which was the only means of communication between the old city and that part on the opposite side of the Ter; from thence also they battered Forts Merced and S. Francisco de Paula. During another night they got possession of Fort Calvary, which they had reduced to ruins, and of the Cabildo redoubt: this last success seems to have been owing to some misconduct, for the historian of the siege inveighs upon this occasion against the pernicious measure of intrusting boys with command, as a reward for the services of their fathers. The city redoubts fell next. The bodily strength as well as the ammunition of the Geronans was almost exhausted, and these advantages over them were gained with comparative ease. The enemy were now close to the walls, and thus cut off the forts of the Capuchins and of the Constable, the only two remaining outworks. The garrisons of both amounted only to 160 men; they had scarcely any powder, little water, and no food. These posts were of the last importance; it was resolved to make a sally for the sake of relieving them, and the garrison of the town gave up for this purpose their own miserable rations, contributing enough for the consumption of three days. The ration was at this time a handful of wheat daily, or sometimes, in its stead, the quarter of a small loaf, and five ounces of horse’s or mule’s flesh, every alternate day.

♦Last sally of the garrison.♦

The few men who could be allotted for this service, or indeed who were equal to it, sallied in broad day through the Puerto del Socorro, within pistol-shot of the redoubts which the enemy now possessed; they were in three bodies, two of which hastened up the hill toward the two forts, while the third remained to protect them from being attacked in the rear from the Calle del Carmen. The sally was so sudden, so utterly unlooked for by the besiegers, and so resolutely executed, that its purpose was accomplished, ♦1809.
December.♦ though not without the loss in killed and wounded of about forty men, which was nearly a third of those who were employed in it. This was the last effort of the Geronans. The deaths increased in a dreadful and daily accelerating progression; the burial-places were without the walls; it had long been a service of danger to bury the dead, for the French, seeing the way to the cemetery always full, kept up a fire upon it; hands could not now be found to carry them out to the deposit-house, and from thence to the grave; and at one time 120 bodies were lying in the deposit-house, uncoffined, in sight of all who passed the walls.

♦Alvarez becomes delirious.♦

The besiegers were now erecting one battery more in the Calle de la Rulla; it was close upon one of the breaches, and commanded the whole space between Forts Merced and S. Francisco de Paula. This was in the beginning of December; on the 4th Alvarez was seized with a nervous fever, occasioned undoubtedly by the hopeless state of the city. On the 8th the disorder had greatly increased, and he became delirious. The next day the Junta assembled, and one of their body was deputed to examine Samaniego and his colleague Viader, whether the governor was in a state to perform the duties of his office. They required a more specific question; and the Canon who had been deputed then said, it was feared that, in the access of delirium, the governor might give orders contrary to his own judgement, if he were in perfect sanity of mind, and contrary to the public weal, when the dreadful situation of the city was considered. The purport of such language could not be mistaken; and they replied, that, without exceeding the bounds of their profession, they could pronounce his state of health to be incompatible with the command, and his continuance in command equally incompatible with the measures necessary for his recovery.

♦Capitulation.♦

Samaniego and his colleague went after this consultation to visit the governor, whom they found in such a state that they judged it proper for him to receive the viaticum, thinking it most probable that, in the next access of fever, he would lose his senses and die, ... for this was the manner in which the disorder under which he laboured usually terminated. Being thus delivered over to the priests, Alvarez, before the fit came on, resigned the command, which then devolved upon Brigadier D. Julian de Bolivar: a council was held during the night, composed of the two Juntas, military and civil; and the result was, that in the morning, D. Blas de Furnas, an officer who had greatly distinguished himself during the siege, should treat for a capitulation. The whole of the 10th was employed in adjusting the terms. They were in the highest degree honourable. The garrison were to march out with the honours of war, and be sent prisoners into France, to be exchanged as soon as possible for an equal number of French prisoners then detained in Majorca and other places. None were to be considered prisoners except those who were ranked as soldiers; the commissariat, intendants, and medical staff were thus left at freedom. The French were not to be quartered upon the inhabitants; the official papers were neither to be destroyed nor removed; no person was to be injured for the part which he had taken during the siege; those who were not natives of Gerona should be at liberty to leave it, and take with them all their property; the natives also who chose to depart might do so, take with them their moveable property, and dispose as they pleased of the rest.

While the capitulation was going on, many of the enemy’s soldiers came to the walls, bringing provisions and wine, to be drawn up by strings, ... an honourable proof of the temper with which they regarded their brave opponents. During the night the deserters who were in Gerona, with many other soldiers and peasants, attempted to escape: some succeeded, others were killed or taken in the attempt, and not a few dropped with weakness upon the way. To those who remained, the very silence of night, it is said, was a thing so unusual, that it became a cause of agitation. At daybreak it was found that the soldiers had broken the greater part of their arms, and thrown the fragments into the streets or the river. When the garrison were drawn up in sight of the French, their shrunken limbs and hollow eyes and pale and meagre countenances sufficiently manifested by what they had been subdued. The French observed, not without admiration, that in the city, as well as at Monjuic, most of the guns had been fired so often that they were rendered useless; brass itself had given way, says Samaniego, before the constancy of the Geronans.

The first act of the French officer who was appointed governor was to order all the inhabitants to deliver in their arms, on pain of death, and to establish a military commission. Te Deum was ordered in the cathedral; it was performed with tears, and a voice which could difficultly command its utterance. Augereau would fain have had a sermon like that which had been preached before Lasnes at Zaragoza, but not a priest could be found who would sin against his soul by following the impious example. A guard was set upon Alvarez; he amended slowly, and the physicians applied for leave for him to quit the city, and go to some place upon the sea-shore; it was replied, that Marshal Augereau’s orders only permitted him to allow the choice of any place on the French frontier, or in the direct road to France. He chose Figueras, and, having recovered sufficiently to bear the removal, was hurried off at ♦Dec. 24.♦ midnight without any previous notice, and under a strong escort. The Friars, who had been all confined in the church of St. Francisco, with a cannon pointed against the door, and a match lighted, were marched off at the same time, in violation of the terms. The sick and wounded Spaniards were hastily removed to St. Daniel; they were laid upon straw, and being left without even such necessaries as they had possessed in the city, except that they were better supplied with food, many died in consequence. There was a grievous want of humanity in this; but no brutal acts of outrage and cruelty were committed, as at Zaragoza; and, when so many of the French generals rendered themselves infamous, Augereau, and the few who observed any of the old humanities of war, deserve to be distinguished from their execrable colleagues.

♦Death of Alvarez.♦

The Central Junta decreed the same honours to Gerona and its heroic defenders as had been conferred in the case of Zaragoza. The rewards which Mariano Alvarez had deserved by his admirable conduct were to be given to his family, if, as there was reason to fear, he himself should not live to receive them. The sad apprehension which was thus expressed was soon verified. He died at Figueras. It was said, and believed, in Catalonia, that Buonaparte had sent orders to execute him in the Plaza at Gerona, and that the French, fearing the consequences if they should thus outrage the national feeling, put him out of the way by poison[6]. His death was so probable, considering what he had endured during the siege, and the condition in which it left him, that no suspicion of this kind would have prevailed, if the public execution of Santiago Sass and of Hofer, and the private catastrophe of Captain Wright and of Pichegru, had not given dreadful proof that the French government and its agents were capable of any wickedness. In the present imputation they were probably wronged, but it was brought on them by the opinion which their actions had obtained and merited.

♦Eroles escapes.♦

About 600 of the garrison made their escape from Rousillon. Eroles was one; than whom no Spaniard rendered greater services to his country during the war, nor has left to posterity a more irreproachable and honourable name.

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CHAPTER XXVII.
PROCEEDINGS IN FRANCE AND IN THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT.

♦1809.♦

♦Buonaparte divorces the Empress Josephine.♦

The year had thus closed in Spain as triumphantly for the invaders as it began; and yet the French felt, and could not but feel, that the subjugation of that kingdom was more distant at this time than they had supposed it to be when they entered upon the invasion, in the wantonness of insolent power. Buonaparte, when he recapitulated the exploits of the year to his senate, intimated an intention of returning thither to complete the conquest. “When I shall show myself beyond the Pyrenees,” said he, “the frightened leopard will fly to the ocean to avoid shame, defeat, and death. The triumph of my arms will be the triumph of the genius of good over that of evil; of moderation, order, and morality, over civil war, anarchy, and the evil passions.” He neither mentioned nor alluded to the battle of Talavera; the circumstances of that well-fought field had been so completely concealed from the French nation, that they were fully persuaded the English had suffered a great defeat; but the lesson had not been lost upon Buonaparte. That battle, and the repulse at Esling, made him for the first time feel the insecure foundation of his power; it taught him that his armies were not invincible. His hatred for England, implacable as it was, had not prevented him from regarding with admiration the military genius of Marlborough, though he was incapable of appreciating the principles and feelings which induced that excellent commander on every occasion to mitigate by every means in his power the miseries of war. He despised the counsels, and egregiously miscalculated the resources of Great Britain; but he was compelled in his heart to render reluctant justice to the national spirit, which Vimeiro and Coruña, and the Douro and Talavera, had shewn him could be displayed by her armies no less than by her fleets; and he could not but secretly and ominously apprehend, that such victories as those of Blenheim and Ramillies might be achieved by such soldiers. It is believed that this feeling determined him to connect himself by marriage with one of the great continental powers. Secret arrangements for this having been made with the house of Austria, he divorced the Empress Josephine at the close of the year by an act of his own government, and with her full acquiescence, reasons of state being made the plea, as they were the motives, for this measure. In the manner of the separation, in the provision which was made, and in the honours which were reserved for Josephine, due regard was shown her: she was a gentle and benevolent woman; and had Buonaparte in his moral nature been half as worthy of the throne, the world might have loved and revered the memory of both.

♦Farther requisition for the armies in Spain.♦

But triumphantly as the war with Austria had been concluded, the prospect of peace was yet far distant. The war-minister reported, that the French armies in Spain consisted of 300 battalions and 150 squadrons, and it would be sufficient, without sending any additional corps, to keep them at their full establishment: 30,000 men collected at Bayonne afforded means for accomplishing this, and for repulsing any force which the English might send to that country. In this state of things, no other levy was necessary than such as would supply the contingent indispensably requisite for replacing in the battalions of the interior the drafts which were daily made from them. There remained from the conscription of the years 1806, 7, 8, 9, 10, more than 80,000 men, who, though ballotted, had not been called into actual service; it was proposed to call out 36,000, and then to declare those classes free from any future call. “By these means, sire,” said the minister, “your armies will be maintained at their present strength, and a considerable number of your subjects will be definitively released from the conscription.” There were also at the Emperor’s disposal 25,000 men, afforded by the conscription for 1811; but upon these it was not proposed to call, unless events should disappoint his pacific intentions.

Thirty thousand men stationed at Bayonne to supply the constant consumption of his army in Spain, 36,000 to be raised for replacing the drafts from the interior, and 25,000 to be taken by anticipation, before the conscription in its regular course ought to have reached them, and to be held in readiness for farther demands of blood; this was the prospect held out at the conclusion of the Austrian war; these were the sacrifices which the French were called upon to make, not for defence, not for the interests, not for the honour of France, but to support a wanton and execrable usurpation, which had no other cause than the individual ambition of Buonaparte.... ♦Display of Spanish flags.♦ He felt how needful it was to persuade the French that a war which they knew to be so destructive was not as inglorious as it was unjust, and for this purpose a parade was made of the victories which had been obtained in Spain. The flags taken at Espinosa, Burgos, Tudela, Somosierra, and Madrid, were presented to the legislative body; a detachment of the grenadiers of the imperial guard was introduced, and seated on the right and left of Buonaparte’s statue, that the stage might be full. Rhetorical speeches were delivered, and the session concluded like a stage spectacle, with a flourish of trumpets, and cries of Long live the Emperor! In this exhibition, Buonaparte addressed himself to the ruling passion of the people over whom he reigned. “Without glory,” he said, “there could be no happiness for a Frenchman;” and the moral feeling of the nation had been so debased that they believed glory might be attained in a war thus flagrantly and infamously unjust. ♦1810.
January.♦ The prevailing weakness of his own character also was betrayed in this display; no other successes were brought forward than those which had been won while he was in Spain; for though he liberally rewarded his generals in all ways, and left them also at full liberty to enrich themselves by exaction and plunder, he was jealous of any celebrity that they might attain, and desired, more from personal vanity than from political considerations, that in every success the French should look to him, and to him alone, as the author of their victories.

While France was thus rejoicing in the triumphs of its armies, the Central Junta saw the whole extent of their danger, and rested their hopes upon the goodness of their cause and the character of the Spanish nation, with a composure which nothing could shake. Never was a nation more truly represented in its defects and in its virtues, in its strength and in its weakness. While in their administration they committed the same errors, deceiving themselves and others, which in former wars had rendered the Spaniards[7] the most inefficient and impracticable of all allies; their language was that of the loftiest fortitude, and their public papers breathed a spirit worthy of their station. One of the most splendid of these orations was issued during the fearful pause after the defeat of their armies at Ocaña and at Alba de Tormes, when the peace with Austria left Buonaparte at leisure to ♦Address of the Central Junta to the nation.♦ direct his whole force against Spain. “Our enemies,” said they, “exhort us to submit to the clemency of the conqueror. Because in their own degraded hearts they find nothing but baseness when they are weak, and atrocity when they are strong, they imagine that the Spaniards must abandon all their lofty hopes. Who has told them that our virtue is of so low a standard? Does fortune oppose to us greater obstacles? we will redouble our exertions! Are our dangers augmented? we shall acquire the greater glory! Slaves of Buonaparte, waste not time in sophistries which can deceive no one; speak frankly and say, we will be the most wicked of men, because we believe ourselves the most powerful: ... this language is consistent and intelligible; but do not attempt to persuade us that the abandonment of our rights is wisdom, and that cowardice is prudence! Submit?... Do these sophists know to what they advise the most high-minded nation upon earth? It would be a stain without example in our annals, if after such efforts, such incredible events, we were to fall at the feet of the crowned slave who has been sent to us as king. And for what? That from the midst of his banquets, his ruffian parasites, and his prostitutes, he may point out the churches which are to be burnt; the estates which are to be divided among his satellites; the virgins and matrons who are to be taken to his seraglio; the youths who are to be sent as the tribute to the Minotaur of France!

“Spaniards, think not that the Junta speak thus to excite you by the arts of language; what need of words, when things speak for themselves? Your houses are destroyed; your churches demolished; your fields laid waste; your families dispersed and wandering through the country, or hurried into the grave. Have we made so many sacrifices, have the flames of war consumed half Spain, that we should abandon the other half to the far more deadly peace which the enemy prepares for it? For no one will beguile himself with the insidious parade of the improvements which the French hold out. The Tartar who commands them has decreed, that Spain shall have neither industry, nor commerce, nor population, nor political representation whatever: ... to be made a waste and solitary sheep-walk for supplying French manufactures with our wools; to become a nursery of men who may be hurried away to slaughter; such is the destiny which he would impose upon the most highly favoured of all countries! Shall we then, submitting to this, submit also to the destruction of our religion; abandon the interests of heaven and the faith of our fathers to the sacrilegious mockery of these banditti; and forsake the sanctuary which, during seven centuries, and in a thousand and a thousand battles, our forefathers maintained against the Saracens? If we should do this, the victims who perished in that contest would cry to us from their graves, Ungrateful and perfidious race, shall our sacrifices be in vain, and is our blood of no estimation in your eyes? No, patriots! rest in peace, ... and let not that bitter thought disturb the quiet of your sepulchres!

“There is no peace, there can be none in this state of things! That Spain may be free, is the universal wish of the nation; and if that cannot be obtained, at least it may become one immense desert, one wide grave, where the accumulated remains of French and Spaniards may exhibit to future ages our glory and their shame. But fortune is not so inimical to virtue as to leave to its defenders only this melancholy termination. It is written in heaven, and the history of all ages attests the truth, that a people who decidedly love their liberty and independence must ultimately establish them, in despite of all the artifice and all the violence of tyranny. Victory, which is so often a gift of fortune, is sooner or later the reward of constancy. What defended the little republics of Greece from the barbarous invasion of Xerxes? What reconstructed the Capitol when it was almost destroyed by the Gauls? What preserved it from the mighty arms of Hannibal? What, in times nearer our own, protected the Swiss from German tyranny, and gave independence to Holland in spite of the power of our ancestors?

“Spaniards, the Junta announces to you frankly what has happened in the continent, because it would not have you ignorant for a moment of the new danger which threatens the country: they announce it in the confidence, that, instead of being dismayed, you will collect new strength, and show yourselves more worthy of the cause which you defend, and of the admiration of the universe: they announce it to you, because they know that the determination of the Spaniards is to be free at whatever cost; and all means however violent, all resources however extraordinary, all funds however privileged, must be called out to repel the enemy. The ship’s treasures must be thrown overboard to lighten her in the tempest and save her from shipwreck. Our country is sinking; ... strength, riches, life, wisdom, council, ... whatever we have is hers. The victory is ours, if we carry on to the end of our enterprise the sublime enthusiasm with which it began. The mass with which we must resist the enemy must be composed of the strength of all, and the sacrifices of all; and then what will it import that he pours upon us anew the legions which are now superfluous in Germany, or the swarm of conscripts which he is about to drag from France? We began the contest with 80,000 men less; he began it with 200,000 more. Let him replace them if he can; let him send or bring them to this region of death, as destructive to the oppressors as to the oppressed! Adding to the experience of two campaigns the strength of despair and of fury, we will give to their phalanxes of banditti the same fate which their predecessors have experienced; and the earth, fattened with their blood, shall return to us with usury the fruits of which they have deprived us! Let the monarchs of the North, forgetful of what they are, and of what they are capable, submit to be the slaves of this new Tamerlane; let them purchase at such a price the tranquillity of a moment, till it comes to their turn to be devoured! What is this to us, who are a mighty people, and resolved to perish or to triumph? Did we ask their consent when, twenty months ago, we raised our arms against the tyrant? Did we not enter into the contest alone? Did we not carry it on for a campaign alone?... Nothing which is necessary for our defence is wanting. Our connexion is daily drawn closer with America, to whose assistance, as timely as it was generous, the mother country is deeply indebted, and on whose zeal and loyalty a great part of our hope is founded. The alliance which we have formed with Great Britain continues and will continue; that nation has lavished for us its blood and its treasures, and is entitled to our gratitude and that of future ages. Let, then, intrigue, or fear, prevail with weak governments and misled cabinets; let them, if they will, conclude treaties, illusory on the part of him who grants, and disgraceful on the part of those who accept them; let them, if they will, relinquish the common cause of civilized nations, and inhumanly abandon their allies! The Spanish people will stand alone and erect amid the ruins of the European continent. Here has been drawn, never to be sheathed, the sword of hatred against the execrable tyrant; here is raised, never to be beaten down, the standard of independence and of justice! Hasten to it, all ye in Europe who will not live under the abominable yoke; ye who will not enter into a league with iniquity; ye who are indignant at the fatal and cowardly desertion of these deluded princes, come to us! Here the valiant shall find opportunities of acquiring true honour; the wise and the virtuous shall obtain respect; the afflicted shall have an asylum. Our cause is the same; the same shall be our reward. Come! and, in despite of all the arts and all the power of this inhuman despot, we will render his star dim, and form for ourselves our own destiny!”

Two things are remarkable in this paper; the total change, or rather restoration of public feeling, which must have been effected, before a Spanish government would hold up the resistance of the Dutch to Philip as a glorious example to the Spanish people; and the want of foresight and information in the Junta, who could not only rely upon the attachment of the colonies, but even venture to declare, that the hopes of the country rested in great measure upon them. But though the Spanish government deceived itself in looking for hope where none was to be found, and in its exaggerated opinion of its military strength, it was not mistaken in relying upon the national character, and that spirit of endurance which constituted ♦State of public opinion in England.♦ its moral strength. Upon this it was, and upon the extent and nature of the Peninsula, that those persons who from the commencement looked on with unshaken confidence to the final expulsion of the invaders, founded their judgement. The Continent, notwithstanding its extent, fell under the yoke of France, because the spirit of the people was not such as to supply the want of magnanimity and of wisdom in their rulers: the Tyrolese were subdued notwithstanding their heroism, because, in so small a territory as the Tyrol, numbers, remorselessly employed, must necessarily overcome all resistance. But no force can be sufficient to conquer and keep in subjection a peninsula, containing about 170,000 square miles, and twelve millions of inhabitants, if the people carry resistance to the uttermost. Their armies may be defeated, their towns occupied, their fortresses taken, their villages burnt, ... but the country cannot be conquered while the spirit of the nation remains unsubdued. In Spain the mountains form a chain of fastnesses running through the whole Peninsula, and connecting all its provinces with each other. In such a country, therefore, when the war ceases to be carried on by army against army, and becomes the struggle of a nation against its oppressors, pursued incessantly by night and day, the soldier, no longer acting in large bodies, loses that confidence which discipline gives him; while the peasant, on the other hand, feels the whole advantage which the love of his country, and the desire of vengeance, and the sense of duty, and the approbation of his own heart, give to the individual in a contest between man and man. The character of the Spaniards was displayed in their annals. The circumstances of their country remained the same as when Henri IV. said of it, that it was a land wherein a weak army must be beaten, and a strong one starved. They who were neither ignorant of history nor of human nature considered these things; and therefore, from the commencement of the struggle, regarded it with unabated hope.

But never since the commencement of the French revolution had the affairs of England, of Europe, and of the world, worn so dark an aspect as at this time. The defeats which the Spaniards had sustained were far more disheartening than those of the preceding winter, because they evinced that neither had the armies improved in discipline, nor the government profited by experience. It was but too plain, that, notwithstanding the show of resistance made at the Sierra Morena, the kingdoms of Andalusia were in fact open to the enemy; so supine was the Central Junta, as to make it even probable that Cadiz itself might be betrayed or surprised; and if, now that Buonaparte had no other object, he should march a great force against the English in Portugal, there were few persons who had sufficient knowledge of the country and of the character of the people, to look onward without dismay.

♦Lord Wellington’s views with regard to Portugal.♦

Lord Wellington calculated upon both. He knew that man is naturally brave, that the men of any country therefore may, with good training, be made good soldiers, and that if the Spanish troops were no longer what they had been under the Prince of Parma, the fault was not in the materials, but in the composition of their armies. The Portugueze were as proud a people as the Spaniards, and had in their history as much cause for pride; but they were not so impracticable. The removal of their court removed all those intrigues and jealousies which would otherwise have been at work; the nation felt itself at this time dependent upon England; but there was no humiliation in this; any such sentiment was precluded by old alliance, the confidence of hereditary attachment, and the consciousness that it was willing and able to do its own part in its own defence. Whatever measures the British government advanced were cordially adopted; and Lord Wellington, during the mortifying inaction to which he was reduced, had the satisfaction of knowing that the Portugueze troops were every day improving in military habits and feelings, and that he might reckon upon them in the next campaign as an efficient force. In all his views and opinions concerning the course to be pursued, Marquis Wellesley entirely agreed with him; and the Marquis, when he returned to England to take his place in administration, proposed that every effort should be made for placing Portugal in the best state of preparation. He knew that we might rely upon the Spaniards for perseverance through all reverses and under every disadvantage; but it was on the Portugueze that we must place our trust for regular and effectual co-operation.

♦The King’s speech.♦

When parliament assembled this was referred to in the king’s speech. “The efforts,” it was said, “of Great Britain, for the protection of Portugal, had been powerfully aided by the confidence which the Prince Regent had reposed in his majesty, and by the co-operation of the local government, and of the people of that country. The expulsion of the French from that kingdom, and the glorious victory of Talavera, had contributed to check the progress of the enemy. The Spanish government had now, in the name and by the authority of Ferdinand VII., determined to assemble the general and extraordinary Cortes of the nation. This measure, his majesty trusted, would give fresh animation and vigour to the councils and the arms of Spain, and successfully direct the energies and spirit of the Spanish people to the maintenance of the legitimate monarchy, and to the ultimate deliverance of their country. The most important considerations of policy and of good faith required, that as long as this great cause could be maintained with a prospect of success, it should be supported, according to the nature and circumstances of the contest, by the strenuous and continued assistance of the power and resources of Great Britain.”

In the debates which ensued it was a melancholy thing to see how strongly the spirit of opposition manifested itself even in those persons whose opinions and feelings regarding the justice and necessity of the war were in entire ♦Speech of Earl St. Vincent;♦ sympathy with the government. Earl St. Vincent inveighed in the strongest terms against the ministers, to whose ignorance and incapacity, to whose weakness, infatuation, and stupidity, he said, all our disasters and disgrace were owing. After panegyrizing Sir John Moore as one of the ablest men who ever commanded an army, he spoke of the battle of Talavera as a victory which had been purchased with the useless expenditure of our best blood, which led to no advantage, and which had had all the consequences of defeat. “It is high time,” said he, “that parliament should adopt strong measures, or the voice of the country will resound like thunder in their ears. Any body may be a minister now: they pop in, and they pop out, like the man and woman in a peasant’s barometer; they rise up like tadpoles; they may be compared to wasps, to hornets, to locusts; they send forth their pestilential breath over the whole country, and nip and destroy every fair flower in the land. The conduct of his majesty’s government has led to the most frightful disasters, which are no where exceeded in the annals of history. The country is in that state which makes peace inevitable; it will be compelled to make peace, however disadvantageous, because it will be unable to maintain a war so shamefully misconducted and so disastrous in its consequences.”

♦Lord Grenville;♦

Lord Grenville spake in a similar temper. The day must come, he said, when ministers would have to render an account to parliament of the treasures which they had wasted, and the lives which they had sacrificed. Their measures had uniformly failed, and presented nothing but an unbroken series of disgraceful, irremediable failures. And yet they had the confidence, the unblushing confidence, to tell us of a victory! Gilded disasters were called splendid victories, and the cypress that droops over the tombs of our gallant defenders, whose lives have been uselessly sacrificed, was to be denominated blooming laurels! He spake of what might have been done if an army had been sent either to Trieste or to the north of Germany; condemned the Walcheren expedition, as the plan and execution of that miserable enterprise deserved, and pronounced a condemnation not less unqualified upon the plans which had been pursued in Spain, where, he said, they had persisted in expecting co-operation from an armed peasantry, persevering in error after the absurdity of such an expectation had been proved. Why too had the army in that country been exposed in unhealthy situations? But the Lords had a duty to perform; having seen what had taken place before in Spain and Portugal, they could not exculpate themselves for having continued to repose confidence in such ministers. They must exert themselves in this most imminent crisis of their country. “You cannot be ignorant,” said he, “of its tremendous situation, and where can you look? To the government! See it, my Lords, broken, distracted, incompetent, incapable of exerting any energy, or inspiring any confidence! It is not from the government that our deliverance is to be expected; it must be found, if it be found at all, in your own energy and in your own patriotism.” And he concluded with moving as an amendment to the address, that vigorous and effectual proceedings should be instituted, as the only atonement which could be made to an injured people!

♦Honourable Mr. Ward;♦

The language of the opposition in the House of Commons was not more temperate. “Lord Wellington’s exploits at Talavera,” said the Honourable Mr. Ward, “left the cause of Spain as desperate as they found it, and in their consequences resembled not victories, but defeats. For by what more disastrous consequences could defeat have been followed, than by a precipitate retreat, by the loss of 2000 men left to the mercy of the enemy upon that spot where they had just fought and conquered, but fought and conquered in vain; that spot which, as it were in mockery to them, we had endeavoured to perpetuate in the name of the general? By what worse could it have been followed than by the loss of all footing in Spain, the ruin of another army, and the virtual renunciation of all the objects of the war? William III. used by his skilful generalship to render defeat harmless, ... our generals made victory itself unavailing.”

♦Mr. Ponsonby;♦

Mr. Ponsonby said it was a crisis which called upon the House of Commons to put forth its penal powers; and that had he a choice between punishment and pardon, he should prefer punishment, because the circumstances of the country imperiously required some solemn example. ♦Mr. Whitbread;♦ Mr. Whitbread directed the force of his invective against Marquis Wellesley. “To Spain,” he said, “he had gone, after delays which ought to be accounted for; and what were his services when he got there? Why, he went through the mummery of dancing on the French flag! He visited the Junta, went through all the routine of etiquette and politics, made a speech about reform, took his glass after dinner, and religiously toasted the Pope. On his return, of course, when the places were going, he came in for his share, and made one of the administration which the Chancellor of the Exchequer had at length compiled; but in what manner had he compiled it? His first application was to two noble lords, with whose principles he had been at war all his political life: they rejected the tender in a manner worthy of their dignity, and the rebuff which they gave would have daunted any man of less temerity than himself. There was not a man, from the Orkneys to the Land’s End, who did not pronounce him and his administration weak, incapable, and insufficient. Even with the addition of the two colleagues who had deserted them they were feeble, but they then stood on a principle, or rather in opposition to a principle; but now, having been rejected by all who were worthy, the weak, and old, and infirm, were collected from the hedges and high roads, and consorted with for want of better.

“Let our relative situation with the enemy,” he pursued, “be well considered! Austria gone, the French force concentrated, and Spain their only object. We are told that Portugal may be defended by 30,000 men; but would not Buonaparte know our force to a drummer? and where we had 30,000 he would have three score. Who would struggle against such fearful odds? We held our ground in that country just at the will of the French Emperor, and at his option he could drive us out of it. And what could we expect from our present ministry, ... or rather from a single man, for the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in fact, stood alone? Marquis Wellesley, of whom such account had been made, might be considered as completely insignificant. Who was he? The governor of India, ... the man who had scarcely escaped the censure of that house for his cruel tyranny! the man who had assailed the press, that sacred palladium of the people! the friend of despotism! the foe to liberty! Could this man say to Buonaparte, in the noble indignation of insulted virtue, ‘I have not done as you have!’ Alas! if such a man had strength, he would indeed be a fearful acquisition to such a government; but he was known, and therefore weak and harmless. Peace,” Mr. Whitbread concluded, “should be the cry of the nation. Peace, ... particularly because the thraldom of millions of our fellow-subjects was the tenure by which this incapable junto held their offices.”

♦Mr. Perceval.♦

Mr. Perceval replied to this speech in all its parts. “As to the situation,” he said, “which he had the honour to hold in his Majesty’s council, he must state, in the most explicit manner, that it was not an object of his own desire; on the contrary, if his wishes had been realized, another person would then have held the office of first lord of the treasury. When, by his Majesty’s directions, he had applied to Lords Grey and Grenville, for the purpose of forming an extended administration, the first proposition which he should have made to them, if they had given him an opportunity of stating it, would have been, that it should be left to themselves to determine who should be the first lord of the treasury.” This was a confession of weakness: twelve months before, Mr. Perceval was strong in the opinion of the people; but now the deplorable Walcheren expedition hung about him like a mill-stone, and, even in his own feelings, weighed him down. Having said what he could in defence of that expedition, he rose into a higher strain, when speaking of the Spaniards, and the unjust and unfeeling manner in which their conduct had been represented. “Was it liberal,” he said, “that the defenders of Zaragoza and Gerona should be said to have displayed no generosity, no enthusiasm, no patriotism? Well, indeed, might those persons censure what was done to aid the Spanish cause, who could assert that the cause did not deserve success! But neither in ancient nor in modern history could an example be found of a country maintaining a contest like that which this degraded Spain, and this degraded Spanish government, had so long supported. Never, in recent times, had 250,000 Frenchmen been so long in a country without subduing it. Spain was not subdued; but what effect upon the Spaniards such language as had been used that night might produce, it was impossible to predict!”

♦Vote of thanks to Lord Wellington opposed by the Earl of Suffolk.♦

When a vote of thanks to Lord Wellington was moved in the House of Lords, it was opposed by the Earl of Suffolk, who argued that the best mode of assisting Spain was by a floating force, which might be landed wherever it could be most useful; by such a mode of warfare, he said, Gerona, during its long and glorious defence, ♦Earl Grosvenor;♦ might have been relieved. Earl Grosvenor also opposed the vote, and made some judicious remarks upon the practice of raising men to the peerage whose fortunes were not adequate to support the rank. The ends of military fame, he said, would be better promoted if different orders of military merit were established; the same spirit of valour might be excited, and all inconveniences to the constitution ♦Earl Grey;♦ avoided. Earl Grey denied that the battle of Talavera was a victory; it had been trumpeted as such, he said, by ministers, but in so doing they had practised an unworthy deception. Lord Wellington had betrayed want of capacity and want of skill: the consequences had been most disastrous, nor did we yet know the extent of the evil. One army had been compelled to retreat into Portugal, where he feared it was in a very critical situation, and where, from the unhealthiness of the position which it occupied, disease had made such an alarming progress among the troops, that he believed their numbers did not at that time exceed 9000 effective men.

♦Marquis Wellesley;♦

Marquis Wellesley replied, that he knew the circumstances which had influenced his brother in all his movements during the campaign, and the plain statement of those circumstances triumphantly vindicated him. “Against strange mismanagement,” he said, “such unlooked for, such unaccountable casualties as had occurred during that campaign, and frustrated a plan so wisely contrived, no human prudence on Sir Arthur’s part could provide. Concerning the necessity of a radical change in the government of Spain, his opinions,” he continued, “were not unknown. But it surely was not to be expected that Spain could reach at once the vigour of a free government, just emerging as she was from that dreadful oppression which had broken down the faculties of her people, ... from those inveterate habits and ancient prejudices which had so long contracted her views and retarded her improvement, and from the disconnexion and disunion between her different provinces. The change which was desired could not be the work of a day. But were we therefore to desert the Spaniards in this crisis of their fortunes, and abandon them to the mercy of their invaders?... As for the circumstances which attended and followed the battle of Talavera, nothing more perhaps, in a military sense, could be said of the result, than that the British troops had repulsed the attack of a French army almost double their numbers, the efforts of which had been chiefly directed against them. But was there no skill, no bravery, no perseverance displayed in the mode in which that repulse was effected? Did no glory redound from it to the British arms? Had it not been acknowledged, even by the enemy, as the severest check they had yet sustained? That victory had saved the south of Spain from absolute destruction, had afforded time for Portugal to organize her army, and had enabled Lord Wellington to take a position where he might derive supplies from Spain, at the same time that he drew nearer to his own magazines. He should not attempt to diminish the disasters which afterwards befel the Spanish armies; both his noble brother and himself had earnestly advised them to keep on the defensive; but, flushed with the victory of Talavera, and too sanguine of success, they advanced at all points, and the result had fatally justified the propriety of the advice which had been given them. This, however, was not the present subject. It was enough for him to have shown that Lord Wellington had arrested the progress of the French armies into the south of Spain, and procured a breathing time for Portugal; that country was placed in a greater degree of security than at any time since it had been menaced by France, and such essential improvements had been introduced into the Portugueze army, that it would be enabled effectually to co-operate with the British troops. These advantages were fairly to be ascribed to Lord Wellington; and he did not hesitate to say, that his brother was as justly entitled to every distinction which his sovereign had conferred, and to every honour and reward which it was in the power of that house to bestow, as any noble lord who for his personal services had obtained the same distinctions, or who sat there by descent from his illustrious ancestors.”

To this temperate and able speech, which showed that means had been taken with due foresight, and that with due perseverance there ♦Lord Grenville.♦ was a well-grounded hope of success, Lord Grenville replied by arguing from the misconduct of the Spanish ministers against our own. “Let the house,” he said, “consider how much dependence the administration had placed upon such a government as that of the Spaniards, and then ask themselves if they could be justified in supporting them in a continuance of error. We were now told that reliance was to be placed upon the co-operation of the Portugueze; but they ought to judge of the future from the past, to recollect that for want of co-operation it had been found necessary to retreat, and that the remnant of the army was in a situation not unlike that in which it was placed by its advance to Talavera.”

♦Feb. 1.♦

The vote of thanks was opposed in like manner ♦General Tarleton;♦ in the House of Commons. General Tarleton said, that Lord Wellington’s dispatches were vain-glorious, partial, and incorrect; that he had been deficient in information concerning the amount and situation of Soult’s army; and that he had been compelled to a precipitate retreat, after abandoning his sick and wounded. ♦Mr. Whitbread.♦ Mr. Whitbread affirmed, that the battle had been more a repulse than a victory; nor could he, he said, withhold a tear, when he thought of the British blood which had been spilt in sacrifice to incapacity and folly. The consequence of the battle was, that the army had no other retreat than that through Deleitosa, and their condition during that retreat was such, that many hundred perished on the road from famine. The Spanish cause, he concluded, was now more hopeless than ever. But the motion received a powerful support from Mr. Windham, who, setting all party views aside, followed the feelings of his own generous nature. “The unproductive consequences of this victory,” he said, ... “for a victory it was, and a glorious victory, ... were not to be put in comparison with the military renown which we had gained. Ten or fifteen years ago, it was thought on the continent that we might do something at sea, ... that an Englishman was a sort of sea-animal; but our army was considered as nothing. Our achievements in Egypt first entitled us to the name of a military power; the battle of Maida confirmed it; and he would not give the battles of Vimeiro, Coruña, and Talavera, for a whole Archipelago of sugar islands.”

♦Pension voted for Lord Wellington. Feb. 16.♦

The vote was carried in both houses without a division. But the opposition tried their strength in the House of Commons upon the King’s message, recommending that a pension of 2000l. should be settled upon Lord Wellington, and the two next heirs to his title in succession. “With the grant of the peerage,” ♦Mr. Calcraft;♦ Mr. Calcraft said, “that house had nothing to do; he was sorry it had been conferred; but though there was no remedy for it, the house ought not to add to it the pension. Pensions and thanks might be voted, but they could not permanently blind the country; whatever the public opinion might be now, it would not be with ministers upon this subject a month hence, when the whole fruits of Lord Wellington’s victories and campaigns would develope themselves to public view. It was mournful and alarming to hear that Lord Wellington had said he could defend Portugal with 50,000 men, provided 30,000 of them were British; for if the French were in earnest in their designs upon that country, before three months Lord Wellington and his army would be in England. Neither Portugal nor any other country could be defended by victories like that of Talavera.”

It was said by General Craufurd, a peerage might be an incumbrance to Lord Wellington without a pension. General Loftus also remarked, that he had always been one of the most liberal men in existence, and the state of his circumstances was therefore, he imagined, far from sufficient for the support of the dignity ♦Opposed by Sir Francis Burdett;♦ to which he was elevated. Sir Francis Burdett took this occasion for touching a popular note. “If Lord Wellington’s liberality,” he said, “had brought him into difficulty or debt, who was it whom they called upon to free him from the incumbrance? ... the people; ... who already owed debts enough, not in consequence of any prodigality of their own, but through the impositions of their representatives. As to the military part of the question, he could only say, that the result was failure, ... failure as complete as failure could be. But even if the occasion had been such as to deserve reward, he should object to making any appeal for that purpose to the people’s purse. What was become of the patronage of the government? Where were the sinecures, which were always defended because they afforded a fund for such purposes as these? Yet application was made to the people, ... and this by a government who, while they perpetually threw the burden upon the people, had greater means of rewarding merit at their disposal than all the combined merit of Europe could possibly exhaust.”

♦Mr. Whitbread;♦

The same strain of argument was pursued by Mr. Whitbread. “It was often argued,” he said, “that the expectation of one of those great places falling in satisfied many a claimant: if so, why should not Lord Wellington wait for one of them? It was an important part of the question, whether, supposing the peerage to have been merited, the circumstances of the new peer were such as to require the pension; for if they were not, it would be a scandalous waste of the public money. Nor was it necessarily to follow, that whenever the king was advised to grant a peerage to any officer, the House of Commons was bound to vote him a pension.”

This produced from Mr. Wellesley Pole a ♦Mr. Wilberforce;♦ statement of his brother’s fortune. Mr. Wilberforce then appealed to the house, whether, if Lord Wellington had devoted the great talents which confessedly belonged to him to the bar, or to any other liberal pursuit, he would not have rendered them infinitely more productive than it appeared that he had done by actively employing them in the service of his country? and he protested against the unjust and impolitic illiberality of opposing such a grant upon such grounds. The same opinion ♦Mr. Canning.♦ was delivered by Mr. Canning. “The victories of Lord Wellington,” he said, “had re-established our military character, and retrieved the honour of the country, which was before in abeyance. If the system of bestowing the peerage was to be entirely changed, and the House of Lords to be peopled only by the successors to hereditary honours, Lord Wellington certainly would not be found there. But he would not do that noble body the injustice of supposing that it was a mere stagnant lake of collected honours: it was to be occasionally refreshed by fresh streams. It was the prerogative of the crown to confer the honour of the peerage; it was the duty of that house to give it honour and independence. The question was, whether they would enable Lord Wellington to take his seat with the proudest peer in the other house, or whether they would send him there with the avowed intention that it was only to the crown he was to look for support. It was their duty to take care if the crown made a peer, that it should not make a generation of peers wholly dependent on its favour for their support.”

There was a great majority upon this question, 213 voting for the grant, 106 against it. But the current of popular opinion in the metropolis set in with the opposition at this time; for the Walcheren expedition, like a pestilential vapour, clouded the whole political ♦The common council petition against the pension.♦ horizon. The common council presented a petition against the pension: a measure so extraordinary, they said, in the present state of the country, and under all the afflicting circumstances attending our armies in Spain and Portugal under that officer’s command, could not but prove highly injurious in its consequences, and no less grievous than irritating to the nation at large. In the military conduct of Lord Wellington, the lord mayor and common council added, they did not recognise any claims to national remuneration; and they conceived it to be a high aggravation of the misconduct of his majesty’s unprincipled and incapable advisers, that they had, in contempt and defiance of public opinion, recommended this grant to parliament. There was neither reason nor justice in making it, and therefore they prayed that it might not pass into a law. When the second reading was moved, Mr. Whitbread said he trusted that as this petition had been presented, the minister would not press it that day. Mr. Perceval replied he saw no necessity for any such forbearance, and the bill passed by a great majority, 106 dividing against 36.

In these debates ministers were completely triumphant. Some of their opponents accused them of having done too much, others of having done too little, and some would fain have persuaded the people of Great Britain, that our army had obtained no victory at Talavera. The charge of having taken no measures for conciliating the Spaniards, by obtaining for them a restoration of those political rights which had been so long withheld, was abundantly disproved by the papers laid before parliament. There it appeared that Mr. Stuart, Mr. Frere, and Marquis Wellesley, had each pressed upon the existing government the necessity of convoking the Cortes. The great error which the ministry had committed, was in their neglect of Catalonia. In the commencement of the struggle this fault was not imputable to them, but to the general, who disobeyed his instructions to convey his army to that most important scene of operations: the effects of that fatal error were to a certain extent irremediable; but no subsequent attempt was made, and the French were suffered to take fortress after fortress, without an effort on our part to relieve them. Still the conduct of administration toward Spain was far more worthy of commendation than of censure; if not without error, if not always successful, it had uniformly been brave and generous: we had every motive of policy for assisting the Spaniards in their struggle, but the assistance was given in a manner worthy of the nation which gave, and of the noble people who received it.

The result of any discussion upon this subject was anticipated by the public; they, in spite of the efforts of factious news-writers, and journalists of higher pretensions, whose want of feeling was more disgraceful even than their want of foresight, continued to feel concerning Spain like freemen and like Englishmen. Nor was Mr. Windham the only member of opposition who expressed this sentiment. When in ♦Marquis of Lansdown;
June 8.♦ the course of the session the Marquis of Lansdown moved for a vote of censure upon ministers for rashness and ignorance, the strong bias of party spirit did not prevent him from rendering justice, in some respects, both to his own countrymen and to Spain. “Whatever he might think of the policy which led to the battle of Talavera,” he said, “or of its consequences, he should ever contemplate the action itself as a proud monument of glory to the general who commanded, and to the army who won that ever-memorable day. No success, he affirmed, could be expected in Spain under such a government, or with armies so constituted and commanded as the Spanish armies, or where supplies could not be procured; these things ought to have been known; but these things were no reflection on the Spanish national character. The Spaniards had displayed acts of the most splendid heroism which had ever been recorded; they had converted the walls of Zaragoza and Gerona into fortifications almost impregnable. Their disasters were imputable, not to the people, but to those who could suppose that a junta of persons put together in any manner composed a government, and that a crowd of men collected in any way was an army. Still he was ready to confide in the Spanish people, and to believe that much might yet be done by their efforts; and he cherished the hope, and would cherish it to the last, that if ever Europe was saved, our own country would be an important agent in that great event. But it was not by co-operating in rash expeditions with such armies as that of Cuesta.”

♦Lord Holland;♦

Lord Holland spoke to the same purport, while the intent of his speech was to fix a censure on the ministers. He condemned them for having sent out Mr. Stuart and Mr. Frere without adequate instructions, particularly with regard to the most important point, the arrangement of a system for redressing the grievances of the Spanish people and restoring their rights. But on that point the British government was fully justified. He condemned them also for neither having sent an adequate force, nor given proper instructions, nor made adequate provision for that force which they did send: but the event had shown, that a larger force had been sent than could be provided, in the inexperienced state of our own commissariat, and in the disordered state of Spain. He said that ministers ought equally to be condemned by those who disapproved of our interposing at all in the affairs of Spain, and by those who were most interested in the success of the Spaniards: if, indeed, there was any difference, the friends of Spain must condemn them most, because they were peculiarly mortified by the disappointment of their wishes, a disappointment which the misjudging policy of these ministers had produced. He was one who had felt this mortification, for no event had ever excited a livelier interest in his mind, not even the dawn of the French revolution. But having thus spoken to justify the vote of censure which he was about to give, Lord Holland argued in defence of the principle which his own party vehemently and even virulently opposed. He dwelt upon the importance of supporting Spain to the utmost, and upon the perilous facilities which Cadiz and Lisbon would afford for the invasion of Ireland, if those ports were suffered to fall into the hands of the French. If, after all efforts, he said, Spain should ultimately be subdued, his advice was, that we should promote the establishment of such a system of government in the Spanish colonies as good statesmen could approve, the only system which ought to be approved in any country, a system founded upon the opinions and wishes of the people.

♦Marquis Wellesley.♦

Marquis Wellesley replied to the general attack which was made upon ministers, in a manner worthy of his reputation as a statesman. He pointed out the solid advantages which had been gained during the last campaign, by securing Portugal, and giving time for the Portugueze to form an army, which was now in a state to co-operate with the British troops; he showed also what advantages had been gained to the Spaniards, had the Junta known how to profit by them, or followed the advice which both he himself and Lord Wellington had pressed upon them in vain. Then, in a clear and masterly manner, he enforced the duty and necessity of supporting the cause of Spain. “Justly,” he said, “had it been stated by the noble Marquis, that if ever Europe was to be delivered, England must be the great agent in her deliverance; and justly he might have added, that the fairest opportunity for effecting that deliverance opened, when Spain magnanimously rose to resist the most flagrant usurpation of which history records an example. Not only were we called upon by the splendour, the glory, the majesty of the Spanish cause, to lend our aid; a principle of self-preservation called upon us also: these efforts on the part of Spain afforded us the best chance of providing for our own security, by keeping out of the hands of France the naval means of Spain, which Buonaparte was so eager to grasp, knowing they were the most effectual weapons he could wield against the prosperity and the power of Great Britain. The views of Buonaparte, in his endeavours to subjugate Spain, were obvious, even to superficial observers. The old government had placed at his disposal the resources of that country, but the old government was feeble and effete; and, however subservient to his will, he knew it was an instrument which he could not pitch to the tone of his designs. He therefore resolved to seize upon the whole Peninsula, and to establish in it a government of his own. He may have been prompted to this partly by his hatred to the Bourbon race, partly by the cravings of an insatiable ambition, partly by the vain desire of spreading his dynasty over Europe, partly by mere vanity: but his main object was, that he might wield with new vigour the naval and colonial resources of Spain, to the detriment of Great Britain. This alone could suit the vastness of his designs; this alone could promise to gratify his mortal hatred of the British name. By the entire subjugation of the Peninsula, and the full possession of its resources, he knew that he should be best enabled to sap the fundamental security of these kingdoms. Therefore how highly important was it to keep alive there a spirit of resistance to France! There were no means, however unprincipled, which Buonaparte would scruple to employ for the attainment of his ends. To him force and fraud were alike, ... force, that would stoop to all the base artifices of fraud, ... fraud, that would come armed with all the fierce violence of force. Every thing which the head of such a man could contrive, or the arm execute, would be combined and concentrated into one vast effort, and that effort would be strained for the humiliation and destruction of this country. Universal dominion is, and will continue to be, the aim of all French governments; but it is pre-eminently the object to which such a mind as Buonaparte’s will aspire. England alone stands in the way of the accomplishment of that design, and England he has therefore resolved to strike down and extirpate. How then were these daring projects to be met? How, but by cherishing, wherever it may be found, but particularly in the Peninsula, the spirit of resistance to the usurpations of France? If we have saved the navy of Portugal; if we have saved the Spanish ships at Ferrol; if we have enabled the Portugueze government to migrate to their colonies; if we have succeeded in yet securing the naval and colonial resources both of Portugal and Spain; how have these important objects been achieved, but by fomenting in both these kingdoms a spirit of resistance to the overwhelming ambition of Buonaparte? To this end must all our efforts be now directed. This is the only engine which now remains for us to work in opposition to Buonaparte’s gigantic designs. Why then should we depart from that salutary line of policy? what is there to dissuade or discourage us from adhering to it? I can discover nothing in the aspect of Spanish affairs that wears any thing like the hue and complexion of despair. If, indeed, it had appeared that this spirit began to languish in the breast of the Spaniards, if miscarriages, disasters, and defeats had been observed to damp the ardour and break down the energies of the Spanish mind, then might it be believed that further assistance to the Spanish cause would prove unavailing. But, fortunately for this country, not only is there life still in Spain, but her patriotic heart still continues to beat high: the generous and exalted sentiment, which first prompted us to lend our aid to the cause of Spain, should therefore be still maintained in full force, and should still inspirit us to continue that aid to the last moment of her resistance. The struggle in which Spain is now engaged is not merely a Spanish struggle. In that struggle are committed the best, the very vital interests of England. With the fate of Spain the fate of England is now inseparably blended. Should we not therefore stand by her to the last? For my part, my lords, as an adviser of the crown, I shall not cease to recommend to my sovereign to continue to assist Spain to the latest moment of her resistance. It should not dishearten us that Spain appears to be in the very crisis of her fate; we should, on the contrary, extend a more anxious care over her at a moment so critical. For in nations, and above all in Spain, how often have the apparent symptoms of dissolution been the presages of new life, and of renovated vigour? Therefore, I would cling to Spain in her last struggle; therefore, I would watch her last agonies, I would wash and heal her wounds, I would receive her parting breath, I would catch and cherish the last vital spark of her expiring patriotism. Nor let this be deemed a mere office of pious charity; nor an exaggerated representation of my feelings; nor an overcharged picture of the circumstances that call them forth. In the cause of Spain, the cause of honour and of interest is equally involved and inseparably allied. It is a cause in favour of which the finest feelings of the heart unite with the soundest dictates of the understanding.”

Full use was made of these debates by the French government, which was at this time employing every artifice for making the people believe that Great Britain was on the brink of ruin. The King’s speech, as usual, was falsified, and sent abroad. There it was said, that whatever temporary and partial inconveniences might have resulted from the measures which were directed by France against our trade and revenue, the great source of our prosperity and strength, those measures had wholly failed of producing any general effect. The official French paper substituted for these words a sentence, in which the King was made to tell his parliament, they must be aware that the measures adopted by France to dry up the great sources of our prosperity had been to a certain degree efficient. It was said that we were not merely on the verge of national bankruptcy, but actually suffering under all the horrors of famine; that our crops of every kind had failed; we were obliged to feed our cattle with sugar and molasses, and had nothing but sugar, cocoa, and coffee, and the skin and bones of these cattle for ourselves. To a certain degree, Buonaparte and his journalists may have perhaps believed the falsehoods which they circulated; they read in our factious newspapers of decaying trade, diminished resources, and starving manufacturers; and the opposition told them, that France was certain of success in whatever she attempted on the Continent; that the cause of Spain was hopeless; that it was impossible for us to carry on the war; that if we did not grant the Roman Catholics all that they demanded, Ireland would be lost, and the loss of Ireland would draw after it the downfal of the British empire. Speeches of this tenour were carefully translated for the use of the Emperor’s subjects, and circulated throughout the Continent: but when the French saw it asserted, upon the authority of English members of parliament, that the Spaniards and Portugueze had nothing worth fighting for; that they were inimical in their hearts to England; that Buonaparte was reforming the abuses of their old government, and redressing their grievances; when they saw it affirmed in the English House of Commons, that the people of Spain must know Marquis Wellesley would, if opportunity should offer, take both Spain and Portugal as Buonaparte had done; when they saw the same persons who represented Sir John Moore as a consummate general vilify the talents of Lord Wellington, deny his merits, oppose the rewards which were so justly conferred on him, and maintain, in the face of their insulted country, that the British army had gained no victory at Talavera; it appeared to them impossible that language, at once so false, so absurd, and so co-operative with the designs of France, could have been uttered by an English tongue; such speeches were supposed to have been invented in France, and they attributed to the artifices of their own government what were in reality the genuine effusions of perverse minds, irritable tempers, and disappointed faction.

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CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE FRENCH ENTER ANDALUSIA. DISSOLUTION OF THE CENTRAL JUNTA AND APPOINTMENT OF A REGENCY. ALBURQUERQUE’S RETREAT.

♦1810.♦

♦Supineness of the Central Junta.♦

The Central Junta manifested none of that energy after the rout at Ocaña which they had so successfully exerted after the battle of Medellin. The whole extent, not of the loss alone, but of the danger also, had then been fairly stated, and bravely regarded. The danger was more immediate now; so imminent indeed, that it was scarcely possible they should have deceived themselves with any expectation of seeing it averted; but they did not venture to proclaim the whole truth, and call forth in the southern provinces a spirit like that which the Catalans displayed, and which might have made their cities and strong places emulate Zaragoza and Gerona. Instead of this, they suffered a fallacious hope to be held out, that if the enemy should enter the kingdoms of the south, the passes would be occupied behind them; the Dukes of Parque and Alburquerque would hasten to the scene of action, and another day like that of Baylen might be expected. Fuller accounts were given in the official gazette of an affair of guerillas than of the battle of Ocaña; and details were published of their victory at Tamames, after the army by which it was gained had been routed at Alba de Tormes.

♦General discontent.♦

They obtained a few addresses thanking them for having convoked the Cortes, which, it was said, would like an elixir of life revivify the social body to its very extremities, and congratulating them upon their triumph over internal divisions, and over those who would hastily and inopportunely have established a regency. But their enemies were more active than their friends, or rather than their dependants, for other friends they had none; and their congratulations were as premature as their triumph was short-lived. Romana’s declaration against them was not the only symptom that they had lost the confidence of the army as well as of the people. The Conde de Noroña being at this time removed from the command in Galicia, addressed a proclamation to the Galicians, telling them the country was in danger, and that for his part he had given up all dependence upon the existing government. His repeated applications for money and arms had never obtained the slightest notice, and seemed rather to have given offence. Under such circumstances it remained for them to act for themselves, and he advised them to form a separate Junta for their own kingdom, and be governed by it. A similar disposition prevailed in many of the provinces, and Spain seemed on the point of relapsing into that state from which the formation of the Central Junta had delivered it. They were saved from it only by the progress of the enemy.

♦Romana refuses the command.♦

So effectually were the Junta humbled, that they requested Romana would repair to Carolina, where the wreck of Areizaga’s army was collecting, and offered him full powers for whatever measures he might think necessary. But Romana was too much disgusted with the government to serve under them, and saw the consequences too clearly to place himself in a responsible situation where failure was certain. They then recalled Blake from Catalonia, where ill fortune had made him unpopular, appointing O’Donnell, in whom the soldiers and the people had great confidence, to succeed him; but this removal could not be effected in time; Castaños was not called upon, perhaps from a sense of the injustice with which he had been treated; and Areizaga was thus left in the command, neither to the satisfaction of the troops, the people, or himself, for he had now a full consciousness of his weakness, his danger, and his incapacity.

♦Montijo and D. Fr. Palafox imprisoned.♦

The government for its own safety had found it necessary to imprison Montijo and D. Francisco Palafox, and they had removed the most formidable person for popular talents in the Seville Junta, by sending Padre Gil on a mission to Sicily. That Junta, however, was busily at work, though the better members took no part in its intrigues; and the efforts which should have been made for organizing a civic and national resistance, the spirit and disposition for which were not wanting, were employed in exciting resentment against the government. This temper was not mitigated by some financial measures, which were of a nature rather to betray its weakness than show its resources. Half the plate and jewels of every family and individual was called for, as a forced loan; and a heavy tax, in the form of a license, imposed upon every one who kept a carriage of any kind, the license being granted to those only whose profession or whose infirmities rendered it necessary. All funds which had been bequeathed or appropriated to pious purposes were for the present to be taken for war expenses, those of hospitals and public schools alone excepted; vacant encomiendas and vacancies in the military orders were not to be filled up, that the revenues might be made available for the same emergency; and a scale was formed for reducing the pay of all persons in the public service, soldiers who were actually employed alone excepted. These measures, which disappointed some in their expectations, and bore heavily upon the scanty means of others, produced more discontent than relief.

♦Attempts to excite a false confidence.♦

The Junta could at this time have had no reasonable hope of preventing the French from entering Andalusia. They could have no reliance upon the remains of Areizaga’s army, for the most mournful circumstances attending such battles as that of Ocaña is, that the worst men escape, and that the best and steadiest are those who fall. Parque’s force was not so completely broken up; it had lost more in reputation than in actual strength, but its strength was comparatively small, and it was at a distance. What reliance they had was upon Alburquerque’s corps, which consisted of only 12,000 men; ... his head-quarters were at Don Benito, having 2000 men at Truxillo, and some advanced parties upon the Tagus. But their immediate danger was not from the side of Extremadura, and what was such a corps against the armies which the French would now bring into the field! Fallacious statements were circulated to make the Andalusians rely upon the strength of the passes, and the measures which had been taken for defending them. It was affirmed that Areizaga had been joined by considerable reinforcements, and abundantly supplied with means of every kind; that his army had been re-organized; that that general, who had gained the confidence of the nation, would soon be at the head of its four divisions; and that the works in the passes were such, that all the force which Napoleon might send against them would be unable to effect their way.

♦Schemes of Count Tilly.♦

Such statements, which could only deceive the people into a false security, may very possibly have been designed for that effect by some of those agents of the government, who were now looking to obtain favour with the Intruder, The members of the Junta themselves stand clearly acquitted of any such intention. One of them, and only one, had at this time his own projects in view, and they were not so much those of a traitor, as of a desperate adventurer, in the delirium of revolutionary ambition. This was the Conde de Tilly, a man equally destitute of principle and of character, and who, as sometimes happens in the crooked paths of political expediency, had been promoted from the provincial to the Central Junta, because such promotion was the readiest means of removing him from a situation which he disgraced! This man, being destitute of any private worth and of all national feeling, could have no hope for his country; and finding no farther hope there for himself, he had turned his thoughts toward the colonies. His plan was to get four or five thousand troops at his disposal, and when the crisis which he foresaw should arrive, seize what money there might be in the treasury, hasten to Cadiz, take possession of the ships there, sail for Mexico, and there establish himself at the head of an independent government. The difficulties which he might find from the British squadron at his outset, or the Mexicans on his arrival, were overlooked in this frantic scheme. A few days before the battle of Ocaña he opened it to a general officer, whom he wished to engage in the project; that officer informed Castaños, who was then residing at Algeziras, and to whom those persons who saw that some change in the executive government must soon take place, were looking as one in whom the nation might confide. The adventurer was arrested in consequence, and died not long afterwards a prisoner in one of the castles at Cadiz.

♦The Junta announce their intention to remove.♦

At the commencement of Areizaga’s unhappy operations, the Junta and the general had encouraged each other in a delusion so unreasonable that it might almost be called insane. But now if it had been possible for the government, after the experience of Somosierra, to deceive itself concerning the strength of the passes, and the reliance which might be placed upon them, their commander would have awakened them from that dream. Areizaga had lost his presumption at Ocaña, and was prepared for defeat before he was attacked. He made known his utter hopelessness to the Junta, and by sending away great part of his stores, for the purpose of securing them, betrayed it also to the army and to the people. In their former danger, after the battle of Medellin, the Junta had declared that they would never change their place of residence till some peril or public reason rendered their removal necessary; that in such case of emergency they would make their intention known, would remove to the situation where they could with most advantage attend to the defence of the country, and would never abandon the continent of Spain while there was one spot in it which they could maintain against the invaders. It was debated now whether they should act in conformity to this declaration. The intention of such a removal had been indicated when the Isle of Leon was named as the place where the Cortes were to assemble; and there were some members who objected to an earlier removal, on the ground that it would greatly increase the general alarm. But the majority rightly perceived that the danger was close at hand, and therefore that no time was to be lost. They did not, however, venture openly to state the true and obvious motives for this resolution when they announced it to the public. The Isle of Leon, they said, was the fittest place for the Cortes to hold its sittings, because there were buildings there applicable to the purpose; from thence their decrees could be communicated to every part of the Peninsula, whatever might be the vicissitudes of war; and there they might devote themselves to their arduous functions with perfect tranquillity, which was hardly attainable amid the distractions of a great city. But this having been determined, the Junta found itself in the predicament provided for by a decree of the preceding year, wherein it had been declared, that at whatever place the representatives of the nation should be convoked, to that place the government must remove its seat. They gave notice, therefore, that on the first of February they should meet in the Isle of Leon; and they made immediate preparations for the removal.

♦Murmurs at Seville.♦

The people of Seville could not but perceive that their city was to be abandoned to the enemy; this was obvious. What other designs the members of the Junta might have formed, every one guessed, according as he suspected or despised this unfortunate administration. Some said they were sold to the French, and the Junta were only pretending to fly, that they might deceive other provinces with a show of patriotism, and sell them as they had sold Andalusia. Others acquitted them of treason, to fix upon them the charge of peculation: a few of the members, they said, were, for their known virtue and talents, entitled to the love of their countrymen; the rest were a sordid race, who, having appropriated to themselves the free gifts which had been contributed for the use of the army, while they left the soldiers to perish for want of food and clothing, were now about to fly to England or to the Canaries, and there enjoy in safety the riches of which they had defrauded their brethren and their country. Those persons who could command the means of removal hastened to secure themselves in the sea-ports; others, whose fortunes rooted them to the spot, and who were thus compelled to share its fate, or whose bolder spirits were impatient of flight or of submission, joined in imprecations upon the government by which they believed themselves to have been sacrificed; ... whether the cause had been guilt or imbecility, the effect to them and to the country was the same.

♦1810.
January.
Invasion of Andalusia.♦

The preparations of the French having now been completed, the Intruder put himself at the head of the French army, and advanced to take possession of the kingdoms of Andalusia. The actual command was vested in Marshal Soult, having Victor, Mortier, and Sebastiani under him. The Intruder was accompanied by Azanza, O’Farrell, and other of his ministers, who, believing that Spain was now conquered, and that Great Britain must withdraw from a contest which it was impossible she could maintain, were confirmed in that opinion[8] by the speeches of the opposition in the British parliament, and by the authority of certain English newspapers. The French, to exaggerate their easy triumph, affirmed that the Spanish general, confiding in the entrenchments which he had thrown up at the entrance of the defile, in the cuts which had been made in the roads, and the mines which had been dug at the brink of the precipices, considered his position impregnable. But Areizaga had not been more censurable at Ocaña for rashness than he was now for the total want of that confidence with which he was thus reproached. Had he known how to have excited in his men either the hope or the despair of enthusiastic devotion to their country and their cause, the strength of the position would have afforded him such advantages, that the enemy must have sought some other entrance into Andalusia. There was no attempt at this; the remembrance of his former defeat acted both upon him and his soldiers, and the Sierra Morena was defended no better than the Somosierra had been. The men gave way at every point, with scarcely a show of resistance, because they saw, by the conduct of their general, that it was not expected they should stand their ground. One division took flight at Navas de Tolosa, where one of the most celebrated victories in Spanish history had been gained over the Moors. The operations began on the 20th of January, and the Intruder’s head-quarters were established the next day at Baylen, a name of which the French reminded the Spaniards now with bitter exultation.

♦False hopes held out to the people by the Central Junta.♦

On the same day, the Junta informed the people of Seville that the pass of Almaden had been forced; but the danger, they said, was not so great as terror might perhaps represent it. The division stationed there, having been far too weak for maintaining the post, was gone to join Alburquerque, who threatened the flank of the enemy; the Duke del Parque was advancing by rapid marches; their junction would form an army superior to the French force at Almaden, which would thus be checked in its career, or driven back; while Areizaga’s army occupied the other passes, and was ready to hasten to the defence of Seville, whither also the two dukes would repair in case of necessity. This, they said, was the true state of things, which the government had neither exaggerated nor dissembled. They had issued orders for marching off all the men in arms who could be collected to join the armies, and for supplying them; and they called upon the people of this capital to lay aside all terror, to suffer no confusion or tumult, but to display the same courage and calmness which they had so honourably manifested in times of greater danger. For the French, they said, depended more upon the distrust and disunion which they hoped to create than upon their own strength.

♦Instructions to Alburquerque.♦

While the Junta thus admonished the people to be calm, they themselves were bewildered by the danger which pressed upon them. The series of their instructions to Alburquerque, from the time when they first clearly saw that Andalusia was seriously threatened, exhibits their incapacity and their wavering councils in the most extraordinary manner. A month before the attack was made, Alburquerque warned them that the pass of Almaden was threatened, and explaining in what manner such a movement on the part of the enemy would threaten his own position, observed how expedient it was to call his troops from Truxillo and the advanced posts upon the Tagus. Their answer was, that if the enemy made the movement which he apprehended, he must endeavour to prevent them, by taking a good position, where he might fight them to advantage; meantime the force at Truxillo must not be lessened, and he must not forget to leave a competent garrison in Badajoz. By another dispatch they enjoined him to act offensively and with energy, to destroy the plans of the French for penetrating by the road of La Plata. Another ordered him to hold himself ready for marching as soon as he should receive instructions; and had he been a man of less decision, it would thus have suspended his movements till those instructions arrived. His army was thus upon the Guadiana when the passes were forced, and the enemy moved a column along the road of La Plata, to occupy Guadalcanal, and thus prevent him from entering Andalusia. This purpose Alburquerque understood, and made his own movements so judiciously, that when they expected to take easy possession of Guadalcanal, they found him there with the main body of his infantry, while the horse escorted his artillery to St. Olalla and Ronquillo; and thus the whole army was ready to move wherever its services were required. Here he received those instructions for which he had been too zealous and too good an officer to wait. They directed him to approach the enemy as near as possible, to oppose them if they attempted to enter Andalusia, and if they should retreat upon La Mancha, to harass them as much as possible; for it appears that the Junta even indulged this hope. Alburquerque informed them, that an army, consisting of 8000 disposable men and 600 horse, could not approach very near to watch the movements of a hostile force, more than three-fold its own number; if he added to his own little division that which was destined to garrison Badajoz, which had at this time scarcely 400 effective men, it would only increase his own troops to 11,700, which would still be insufficient either to occupy the line of defence, which they instructed him to take up, or to observe the enemy with any hope of impeding them: nevertheless he would do all that was possible. On the 21st the Junta ordered him to march immediately for Cordoba, in consequence of the enemy’s having occupied the pass called Puerto del Rey; the next morning they summoned him to Seville, by the shortest route, and with the utmost expedition; before night they changed their purpose, and sent off another express, ordering him ♦Manifesto del Duque de Alburquerque, 45–70.♦ to Cordoba. This vacillation was imputed to treason, especially as the war-minister, D. Antonio Cornel, had long been suspected by the people. Certain it is, that if Alburquerque had obeyed these orders, his own army must have been cut off, and Cadiz would inevitably have been taken by the enemy, according to their aim and expectation: but the error of the Junta is sufficiently accounted for by their incapacity and their alarm.

♦Insurrection at Seville against the Central Junta.♦

The termination of their power was at hand. When this last order was expedited to Alburquerque, every hour brought fresh tidings of the progress of the enemy, the murmurs of the people becoming louder as their agitation increased, and their danger appeared more imminent. The Junta were hastening their departure for Cadiz; their equipages were conveyed to the quays, and the papers from the public offices were embarked on the Guadalquiver. This alone would have made the populace apprehend the real state of things, even if it had been possible to keep them in ignorance of the disasters which so many breathless couriers announced. During the nights of the 22d and 23d the patroles were doubled; no disturbance, however, took place; the agents of Montijo and Francisco Palafox were preparing to strike an effectual blow, and carefully prevented a premature explosion. On the morning of the 24th the people assembled in the square of St. Francisco, and in front of the Alcazar; some demanded that the Central Junta should be deposed; others, more violent in their rage, cried out, that they should be put to death; but the universal cry was, that the city should be defended; and they took arms tumultuously, forbade all persons to leave the city, and patrolled the streets in numerous small parties to see that this prohibition was observed. The tumult began at eight in the morning, and in the course of two hours became general: they who secretly directed it, cried out that the Junta of Seville should assume the government, went to the Carthusian convent in which Montijo and Francisco Palafox were confined, delivered them, and by acclamation called on Saavedra to take upon himself the direction of public affairs in this emergency.

♦Saavedra takes upon himself the temporary authority.♦

D. Francisco Saavedra, at that time minister of finance and president of the Junta of Seville, was a man of great ability and high character; but he was advanced in years, and it was believed that poison had been administered to him, at the instigation of Godoy, which had in some degree affected his intellects. Whatever foundation there may have been for this belief, he betrayed no want either of intellect or of exertion on this occasion; he calmed the people by consenting to exercise the authority with which they invested him; assembled the members of the provincial Junta; issued a proclamation enjoining the Sevillians to remain tranquil; and by making new appointments, and dispatching new orders to the armies, satisfied the populace for the time. Montijo left the city to assist in collecting the scattered troops; and Romana was re-nominated to that army from which the Central Junta had removed him. The people, however, called upon Romana to take upon himself the defence of the city, and stopped his horses at the gate; but Romana evaded the multitude, and hastened towards Badajoz to secure that important fortress, as the best service which he could then perform.

♦The French enter Seville.♦

Every thing was in confusion now. The Central Junta were hastening how they could to Cadiz. Saavedra with five other members of ♦Jovellanos, p. 13. § 6.♦ the Seville Junta took the same course, separating themselves from their unworthy colleagues, some of whom, they now perceived, were corrupted by the enemy, and others betrayed by their selfishness and their fears. These persons remained to receive their reward from the intrusive government, or make their terms with it; and Seville, in spite of the disposition of its inhabitants, received the yoke like Madrid. This had been foreseen, and the Central Junta had been urged to break up the cannon foundry, and destroy the stores which they could not remove; but every thing was left to the French. The ♦They overrun Andalusia.♦ virtue indeed which had been displayed at Zaragoza and Gerona appeared the more remarkable when it was seen how ignobly the Andalusian cities submitted to the invaders, who sent off their detachments in all directions, not so much to conquer the country, as to take possession of it. Jaen, which had boasted of its preparations for defence, where six-and-forty pieces of cannon had been mounted, and military stores laid in to resist a siege, submitted as tamely as the most defenceless village. Granada, also, where a crusade had been preached, was entered without resistance by Sebastiani. The people of Alhama were the first who opposed the enemy; their town, which had only the ruins of Moorish works to protect it, was carried by storm; and Sebastiani fought his way from Antequera to Malaga through armed citizens and peasantry, headed by priests and monks. The French say that this insurrection, as they called it, put on an alarming appearance; and it is evident, from the struggle made in this quarter by a hasty and undisciplined multitude, that if the provincial authorities had displayed common prudence in preparing for the invasion, and common spirit in resisting it, Andalusia might have proved the grave of the invaders. While Sebastiani thus overran Granada, Mortier was detached on the other hand to occupy Extremadura, which it was thought was left exposed by the retreat of the English; but Alburquerque, disobeying the express commands of the government, had garrisoned Badajoz, Romana had repaired in time to that fortress, and the designs and expectations of the enemy in that important quarter were effectually baffled.

♦The French push for Cadiz.♦

This was not their only disappointment. The possession of the country, and all the open towns, was of little importance when compared with that of Cadiz. If it were possible that the fate of Spain could depend upon any single event, that event would have been the capture of Cadiz at this time; and the French therefore pushed on for it with even more than their accustomed rapidity. The city was utterly unprepared for an attack: there were not a thousand troops in the Isle of Leon, and not volunteers enough to man the works; the battery of St. Fernando, one of its main bulwarks of defence, was unfinished. While the scene of action was at a distance, the people of Cadiz thought the danger was remote also; and but for the genius and decision of a single man, Buonaparte might have executed his threat of taking vengeance there for the loss of his squadron.

♦Alburquerque’s movements.♦

At four on the morning of the 24th Alburquerque received that dispatch from the Central Junta, which, countermanding his march to Seville, ordered him to make for Cordoba. A counter-order of some kind he seems to have expected; for, in acknowledging this dispatch, he expressed his satisfaction that he had not commenced his movements according to the instructions received the preceding night, in which case he must have had the inconvenience of a counter-march; at the same time he said, that the troops which he had directed to garrison Badajoz, and which he was now ordered to recall, could not join him without great danger, and without leaving that place defenceless, ... a point of such importance, that though these orders were positive, he would not obey them unless they were repeated. At this time he was at Pedroso de la Sierra, whither he had advanced from Guadalcanal, pursuant to the first instructions, requiring him to move upon Cordoba. There was the Guadalquivir to cross, and Alburquerque, not being certain that his artillery could pass the bridge of Triana, determined to have it ferried over at Cantillana. He was near that ferry when the last dispatches reached him, written on the 23d, and repeating the order to march towards Cordoba: but Alburquerque at this time knew that the Junta were flying from Seville, though they had given him no intimation of their design, and knew also that Cordoba must then be in the enemy’s possession. He did not therefore hesitate for a moment to disobey orders, which must have led to the destruction of his army, ... an army, in the fate of which, inconsiderable as it was, the fate of Spain was more essentially involved, than in that of any which she had yet sent into the field. Having crossed at Cantillana, he made the main body proceed to Carmona, while he himself, with part of his little cavalry, advanced towards Ecija, where the French had already arrived, to ascertain their movements, and if possible alarm them by his own, and make them suppose that his army covered Seville: but the French general, as well as Alburquerque, was aware that Seville was a point of far inferior importance to that upon which the invaders had fixed their attention; and the enemy were now pushing on the chief part of their force by El Arahal and Moron to Utrera, in order to cut off the Duke from Cadiz. The least delay or indecision, from the moment he began his march, would have proved fatal. Instantly perceiving their object, he ordered his troops to make for Utrera, where his artillery and cavalry arrived almost at the same time with the French; from thence he marched with the infantry by Las Cabezas to Lebrija, across the marsh, at a season when it was deemed impracticable; thus enabling it to reach Xerez in time, while the cavalry accompanied the artillery along the high road, skirmishing as it retreated, delaying the pursuers, and sacrificing itself for the preservation of the rest of the army and of Cadiz. On the night of the 30th he performed this march from Utrera to Lebrija; and on the same night the people of Cadiz were relieved by an express from him, saying, that he was between them and the French, and should reach ♦Cadiz saved by Alburquerque.♦ the city in time to save it. The following morning he arrived at Xerez, having gained a day’s march upon the enemy: they found themselves outstript in rapidity, and outmanœuvred; and on the morning of the 2d of February, Alburquerque, with his 8000 men, entered the Isle of Leon, having accomplished a march of sixty-five leagues, 260 English miles. Thus Cadiz was saved.

♦He is appointed governor of Cadiz by the people.♦

Yet the means of defence had been so scandalously neglected, that the Isle of Leon must have been lost if the French had ventured to make a spirited attack upon it; and Cadiz would then speedily have shared the same fate. In general, the French calculate with sufficient confidence upon the errors of their enemies, ... a confidence which has rarely deceived them in the field, and has almost invariably succeeded in negotiation. Here, however, they did not think it possible that works so essential to the salvation of the government should have been left unfinished; and, knowing that the troops were under a man whom they trusted and loved, they knew that, naked, and exhausted, and half-starved as those troops were, behind walls and ramparts, they would prove desperate opponents. Having saved this all-important place by his presence, the Duke lost no time in securing it; he exerted himself night and day: the people, he says, when they are guided by their first feelings, usually see things as they are; they blessed him as their preserver, and he was appointed governor by acclamation.

♦A Junta, elected at Cadiz.♦

While Alburquerque was on his march, a change in the government had been effected. Venegas had been appointed governor of Cadiz by the Central Junta, apparently in reward for that blind obedience to their instructions, which, more than any other circumstance, frustrated Sir Arthur Wellesley’s victory. Both Mr. Frere and the British general distrusted his military talents. The people of Cadiz, with less justice, suspected his fidelity, and he was not without fear that he might become the victim of suspicion in some fit of popular fury. His danger became greater as soon as it was known that the Central Junta had been deposed at Seville, and were flying in various directions; but Venegas, with prudent foresight, went to the Cabildo, and, saying that the government from which he had received his appointment existed no longer, resigned his command into their hands, and offered to perform any duty to which they should appoint him. This well-timed submission had all the effect which he could wish; the Cabildo were flattered by it, the more, because such deference of the military to the civil authority was altogether unprecedented in that country; and they requested him to continue in his post, and act as their president, till a Junta could be elected for the government of the town. Measures were immediately taken for choosing this Junta, and the election was made in the fairest manner. A balloting-box was carried from house to house; the head of every family voted for an electoral body; and this body, consisting of about threescore persons, then elected the Junta, who were eighteen in number. A mode of election so perfectly free and unobjectionable gave to the Junta of Cadiz a proportionate influence over the people; but they themselves, proud of being, as they imagined, the only legally-constituted body in Spain, became immediately jealous of their power, and hostile to the establishment of any other.

♦Resignation of the Central Junta.♦

It was, however, essential to the salvation of the country that some government should be established, which would be recognized by the whole of Spain. The members of the Central Junta, who had arrived in the Isle of Leon, would fain have continued their functions; they found it vain to attempt this, and then, yielding to necessity, they suffered themselves to be guided by Jovellanos, who represented to them the necessity of appointing a regency, not including any individual of their own body. Mr. Frere, acting as British minister till Marquis Wellesley’s successor should arrive, exerted that influence which he so deservedly possessed, first to enforce the advice of Jovellanos upon his colleagues, and afterwards to make the Junta of Cadiz assent to the only measure which could preserve their country from anarchy; but so little were they disposed to acknowledge any authority except their own, that, unless the whole influence of the British minister had been zealously exerted, their acquiescence would not have been obtained. The Archbishop of Laodicea, who was president of the Central Junta, the Conde de Altamira, Valdes, and Ovalle, had been seized at Xerez, and were in imminent danger from the blind fury of the populace, if some resolute men had not come forward and saved them, by persuading the mob to put them under custody in the Carthusian convent, as prisoners of state. They were indebted for their liberation to Castaños, who in this time of danger had hastened to the Isle of Leon, and took measures for having them safely conducted thither. Their arrival made the number of members three-and-twenty; and on the 29th of January this government issued its last decree. Voluntarily they cannot be said to have laid down their power, but the same presiding mind which pervaded their former writings made them resign it with dignity. “Having,” they said, “reassembled in the Isle of Leon, pursuant to their decree of the 13th, the dangers of the state were greatly augmented, although less by the progress of the enemy than by internal convulsions. The change of government which they themselves had announced, but had reserved for the Cortes to effect, could no longer be deferred without mortal danger to the country. But that change must not be the act of a single body, a single place, or a single individual; for in such case, that which ought to be the work of prudence and of the law, would be the work of agitation and tumult; and a faction would do that, which ought only to be done by the whole nation, or by a body lawfully representing it. The fatal consequences which must result from such disorder were apparent; there was no wise citizen who did not perceive, no Frenchman who did not wish for them. If the urgency of present calamities, and the public opinion which was governed by them, required the immediate establishment of a Council of Regency, the appointment of that council belonged to none but the supreme authority, established by the national will, obeyed by it, and acknowledged by the provinces, the armies, the allies, and the colonies of Spain; ... the sole legitimate authority, which represented the unity of the power of the monarchy.”

♦A regency appointed.♦

After this preamble they nominated as regents Don Pedro de Quevedo y Quintana, Bishop of Orense; D. Francisco de Saavedra, late president of the Junta of Seville; General Castaños; Don Antonio de Escaño, minister of marine; and D. Esteban Fernandez de Leon, a member of the council of the Indies, as representative of the colonies. To these persons the Junta transferred its authority; providing, however, that they should only retain it till the Cortes were assembled, who were then to determine what form of government should be adopted; and that the means which were thus provided for the ultimate welfare of the nation might not be defeated, they required that the regents, when they took their oath to the Junta, should swear also that they would verify the meeting of the Cortes at the time which had been appointed. The new government was to be installed on the ♦Last address of the Central Junta.♦ third day after this decree. The Junta accompanied it with a farewell address to the people, condemning the tumult at Seville, and justifying themselves, like men who felt that they had been unjustly accused, because they had been unfortunate. Neither their incessant application to the public weal, they said, had been sufficient to accomplish what they desired, nor the disinterestedness with which they had served their country, nor their loyalty to their beloved but unhappy king, nor their hatred to the tyrant and to every kind of tyranny. Ambition, and intrigue, and ignorance had been too powerful. “Ought we,” they said, “to have let the public revenues be plundered, which base interest and selfishness were seeking to drain off by a thousand ways? Could we satisfy the ambition of those who did not think themselves sufficiently rewarded with three or four steps of promotion in as many months? or, could we, notwithstanding the moderation which has been the character of our government, forbear to correct, with the authority of the law, the faults occasioned by that spirit of faction, which was audaciously proceeding to destroy order, introduce anarchy, and miserably overthrow the state?”

Then drawing a rapid sketch of the exertions which they had made since they were driven from Aranjuez, ... “Events,” they said, “have been unsuccessful, ... but was the fate of battles in our hands? And when these reverses are remembered, why should it be forgotten that we have maintained our intimate relations with the friendly powers; that we have drawn closer the bonds of fraternity with our Americas; and that we have resisted with dignity the perfidious overtures of the usurper? But nothing could restrain the hatred which, from the hour of its installation, was sworn against the Junta. Its orders were always ill interpreted, and never well obeyed.” Then, touching upon the insults and dangers to which they had been exposed in the insurrection at Seville, ... “Spaniards,” they continued, “thus it is that those men have been persecuted and defamed, whom you chose for your representatives; they who without guards, without troops, without punishments, confiding themselves to the public faith, exercised tranquilly, under its protection, those august functions with which you had invested them! And who are they, mighty God! who persecute them? the same who, from its installation, have laboured to destroy the Junta from its foundations; the same who have introduced disorder into the cities, division into the armies, insubordination into the constituted authorities. The individuals of the government are neither perfect nor impeccable; they are men, and as such liable to human weakness and error. But as public administrators, as your representatives, they will reply to the imputations of these agitators, and show them where good faith and patriotism have been found, and where ambitious passions, which incessantly have destroyed the bowels of the country. Reduced from henceforward by our own choice to the rank of simple citizens, without any other reward than the remembrance of the zeal and of the labours which we have employed in the public service, we are ready, or, more truly, we are anxious, to reply to our calumniators before the Cortes, or the tribunal which it shall appoint. Let them fear, not us; let them fear, who have seduced the simple, corrupted the vile, and agitated the furious; let them fear, who, in the moment of the greatest danger, when the edifice of the state could scarce resist the shock from without, have applied to it the torch of dissension, to reduce it to ashes. Remember, Spaniards, the fate of Porto! an internal tumult, excited by the French themselves, opened its gates to Soult, who did not advance to occupy it till a popular tumult had rendered its defence impossible. The Junta warned you against a similar fate after the battle of Medellin, when symptoms appeared of that discord which has now with such hazard declared itself. Recover yourselves, and do not accomplish these mournful presentiments!

“Strong, however, as we are in the testimony of our own consciences, and secure in that we have done for the good of the state as much as circumstances placed within our power, the country and our own honour demand from us the last proof of our zeal, and require us to lay down an authority, the continuance of which might draw on new disturbances and dissensions. Yes, Spaniards, your government, which, from the hour of its installation, has omitted nothing which it believed could accomplish the public wish; which, as a faithful steward, has given to all the resources that have reached its hands no other destination than the sacred wants of the country; which has frankly published its proceedings; and which has evinced the greatest proof of its desire for your welfare, by convoking a Cortes more numerous and free than any which the monarchy has ever yet witnessed, resigns willingly the power and authority which you have confided to it, and transfers them to the Council of Regency, which it has established by the decree of this day. May your new governors be more fortunate in their proceedings! and the individuals of the Supreme Junta will envy them nothing but the glory of having saved their country, and delivered their King.”

Thus terminated the unfortunate but ever-memorable administration of the Central Junta, a body which had become as odious before its dissolution, as it was popular when it was first installed. If in their conduct there had been much to condemn and much to regret, it may be admitted, upon a calm retrospect, that there was hardly less to be applauded and admired. Spain will hereafter render justice to their intentions, and remember with gratitude that this was the first government which addressed the Spaniards as a free people, the first to sanction those constitutional principles of liberty which had for so many generations been suppressed. It was to be expected, when such tremendous events were passing, and such momentous interests at stake, that their errors would be judged of by their consequences without reference to their causes. An unsuccessful administration is always unpopular; and in perilous and suspicious times, when the affairs of state go ill, what is the effect of misjudgement, or weakness, or inevitable circumstances, is too commonly and too readily imputed to deliberate treason. Such an opinion had very generally prevailed against the Central Junta; but when this power was at an end, and nothing would have gratified the people more than the exposure and punishment of the guilty, not even the shadow of proof could be found against them. They were inexperienced in business, they had been trained up in prejudice, they partook, as was to be expected, of the defects of the national character; but they partook, and some of them in the highest degree, of its virtues also: and their generous feeling, their high-mindedness, and unshaken fortitude, may command an Englishman’s respect, if it be contrasted not merely with the conduct of the continental courts, but with the recorded sentiments of that party in our own state, who, during this arduous contest, represented the struggle as hopeless, and whose language, though it failed either to dispirit or to disgust the Spaniards, served most certainly to encourage the enemy. England has had abundant cause to be grateful to Providence, but never, in these latter times, has it had greater than for escaping, more than once, the imminent danger of having this party for its rulers. They would have deserted the last, the truest, of our allies; they would have betrayed the last, the only hope of Europe and of the world; they would have sacrificed our honour first, and when they had brought home the war to our own doors, which their measures inevitably must have done, the lasting infamy which they had entailed upon the nation would have been a worse evil than the dreadful and perilous trial through which it would have had to pass.

♦1810.
February.
The Regents.♦

In their choice of the regents the Junta seem to have looked for the fittest persons, without regard to any other considerations. Three of them were well known. The Bishop of Orense was venerable for his public conduct, as well as for his age and exemplary virtues; no man had contributed more signally to rouse and maintain the spirit of the country. Castaños had received from the Junta a species of ill treatment which was in the spirit of the old government, but for which they made amends by this appointment. When he was ordered as a sort of banishment to his own house at Algeziras, the people of that place, greatly to their honour, mounted a volunteer guard before the house, as a mark of respect; and the Junta, in the last days of their administration, when they turned their eyes about in distress, called upon him to take the command, and resume the rank of captain-general of the four kingdoms of Andalusia. The call was too late, but he came to the Isle of Leon in time to rescue some members of that body from the populace of Xerez; and in nominating him to the regency, they seem to have consulted the wishes of the people. Saavedra was in full popularity, and had given good proof of disinterested zeal during the tumult at Seville. Instead of securing his private property, he occupied himself in calming the people, and in preserving the public treasure and the more valuable public records; and as there was a want of vessels, he embarked the public property on board the one which had been hired for his own effects. Escaño had been minister of marine at Madrid, and was known as a man of business and fidelity. Leon’s appointment was not agreeable to the Junta of Cadiz, who felt their power, and were determined to derive from it as much advantage as possible; he therefore declined accepting the office on the plea of ill health, and D. Miguel de Lardizabal y Ariba, a native of the province of Tlaxcalla, in New Spain, and member of the council of the Indies, was appointed in his stead.

♦Their injustice towards the members of the Central Junta.♦

A government was thus formed, which, receiving its authority from the Supreme Junta, derived it ultimately from the same lawful source, ... the choice of the people and the necessity of the state. In such times, and in a nation which attaches a sort of religious reverence to forms, it was of prime importance that the legitimacy of the new government should be apparent, and its right of succession clear and indisputable. For this Spain was principally indebted to Jovellanos, the last and not the least service which that irreproachable and excellent man rendered to his country. But it was the fate of Jovellanos, notwithstanding the finest talents, the most diligent discharge of duty, the purest patriotism, and the most unsullied honour, to be throughout his life the victim of the unhappy circumstances of Spain. Seven years’ imprisonment, by the will and pleasure of the despicable Godoy, was a light evil compared with the injustice which he now endured from that government which he, more than any other individual, had contributed to appoint and to legitimate. The council of Castille, which first acknowledged the Intruder, and then acknowledged the Junta, in the same time-serving spirit attacked the Junta now that it was fallen, affirmed that its power had been a violent usurpation, which the nation had rather tolerated than consented to, and that the members had exercised this usurped power contrary to law, and with the most open and notorious selfishness and ambition. The people, not contented with their compulsory resignation, accused them of having peculated the public money; and the regency, yielding to the temper of the times, and perhaps courting popularity, acted as if it believed this charge, registered their effects, and seized their papers. Even Jovellanos was ordered to retire to his own province, which happened at that time to be free from the enemy, and there place himself under the inspection of the magistrates. This act is inexpiably disgraceful to those from whom it proceeded; upon Jovellanos it could entail no disgrace. He had long learnt to bear oppression, and patiently to suffer wrong; but this injury came with the sting of ingratitude, it struck him to the heart, and embittered his few remaining days.

This rigorous treatment of the Central Junta was the work of their implacable enemy, the council of Castille, a body which they ought to have dissolved and branded for its submission to the Intruder; and of the Junta of Cadiz, a corporation equally daring and selfish, who thought that in proportion as they could blacken the character of the former government, they should increase their own credit with the people. The members of that government had given the best proof of innocence; not one of them had gone over to the enemy, nor even attempted to conceal himself at a time when the popular hatred against them had been violently excited. Several of them had embarked on board a Spanish frigate for the Canaries; when their baggage was seized, it was, at their own request, examined before the crew, and the examination proved that they had scarcely the means of performing the voyage with tolerable comfort. Tilly died in prison without a trial. This was a thoroughly worthless man, and it might probably have appeared that he had found means of enriching himself when he was sent, in the manner of the republican commissioners in France, to superintend the army which defeated Dupont. But Calvo, who was arrested also and thrown into a dungeon, without a bed to lie on or a change of linen, and whose wife also was put in confinement, was irreproachable in his public character. He had been one of the prime movers of that spirit which has sanctified the name of Zaragoza, and during the first siege repeatedly led the inhabitants against the French. All his papers had been seized; he repeatedly called upon the regency to print every one of them, to publish his accounts, and bring him to a public trial; but he was no more attended to than if he had been in the Seven Towers of Constantinople. After the Cortes assembled he obtained a trial, and was pronounced innocent.

♦Proclamation of the Intruder.♦

The Intruder, following his armies, and thinking to obtain possession of Cadiz, and destroy the legitimate government of Spain, issued a proclamation at Cordoba, characterized by the impiety and falsehood which marked the whole proceedings of the French in this atrocious usurpation. “The moment was arrived,” he said, “when the Spaniards could listen with advantage to the truths which he was about to utter. During more than a century the force of circumstances, which masters all events, had determined that Spain should be the friend and ally of France. When an extraordinary revolution hurled from the throne the house which reigned in France, it was the duty of the Spanish branch to support it, and not lay down its arms until it was re-established. But it required a spirit of heroism to adopt such a resolution, and the cabinet of Madrid thought it better to wait for that from the progress of time, which it wanted courage to obtain by arms.” This truth, for such the Intruder might well call this part of the proclamation, marks, as much as the falsehoods which accompanied it, the devilish spirit by which the French councils had long been possessed; having allured the Spanish Bourbons by oaths and treaties to their own destruction, France now reproached them with the very conduct which she had tempted them to pursue. The paper proceeded to affirm, that, during its whole alliance with France, Spain had been watching an opportunity of falling upon her. “The conqueror of Europe,” it continued, “would not allow himself to be duped. The princes of the house of Spain, not having the courage to fight, renounced the crown, and were content to make stipulations for their private interests. The Spanish grandees, the generals, the chiefs of the nation, recognized those treaties. I,” said the Intruder, “received their oaths at Madrid, but the occurrence at Baylen threw every thing into confusion. The timid became alarmed, but the enlightened and conscientious remained true to me. A new continental war, and the assistance of England, prolonged an unequal contest, of which the nation feels all the horrors. The issue was never doubtful, and the fate of arms has now declared so. If tranquillity is not immediately restored, who can foresee the consequence? It is the interest of France to preserve Spain entire and independent, if she become again her friend and ally; but if she continue her enemy, it is the duty of France to weaken, to dismember, and to destroy her. God, who reads the hearts of men, knows with what view I thus address you. Spaniards! the irrevocable destiny is not yet pronounced. Cease to suffer yourselves to be duped by the common enemy. Employ your understanding: it will point out to you in the French troops, friends who are ready to defend you. It is yet time: rally around me! and may this open to Spain a new era of glory and happiness.”

♦Language of the despondents in England.♦

If the Spaniards had had as little wisdom, or as little sense of national honour, as the party who opposed the measures of government in England, they would have believed the Intruder, and submitted to him. This party, who, at the time of Sir John Moore’s retreat, told us that the Spaniards had then yielded, and that their fate was decided, now declared, with a little more prudence in their predictions, that the show of resistance must soon be at an end. The king’s message, declaring that Great Britain would continue its assistance to the great cause of Spain, as the most important considerations of policy and of good faith required, excited in them the gloomiest forebodings. “We were then still,” they said, “to cling to the forlorn hope of maintaining a footing in Portugal! Our resources were still farther to be drained in supporting our ally, or rather in supporting a system which did not arouse its own people to its defence; and for our efforts, however strenuous, in the support of which we did not receive either their gratitude or their co-operation. It was reported,” they said, “that the English army had made a retrograde movement to Lisbon, and actually embarked in the transports at the mouth of the Tagus. Having uniformly declared their opinion, that this expedition, under Lord Wellington, was injurious to the most important interests of the country, as they affected both its resources and its character, they should most sincerely and warmly congratulate the public if such were its termination.” That is, they would have congratulated us if we had broken our faith, deserted our allies, fled before our enemies, left Buonaparte to obtain possession of Cadiz and Lisbon, and then waited tremblingly for him upon our own shores, with our resources carefully husbanded till it pleased him to come and take them!

“It has been conjectured,” said these hopeful politicians, “that Cadiz might be abundantly supplied from the opposite coast of Barbary. But those who hazarded this opinion were not precisely informed of the state of things on the African coast. The Emperor of Morocco was extremely unfriendly to his Christian neighbours. Cadiz, to be sure, was an interesting point, which it was our interest to maintain as long as possible; but they had no expectation that Cadiz, when really attacked, could long hold out. It could not be supplied with fuel with which to bake bread for the inhabitants for one week.” While this party thus displayed their presumptuous ignorance, and vented their bitter mortification in insults against the ministry and against our allies, they endeavoured to direct attention toward the Spanish colonies, saying that the great, and indeed only object, of this country, should be to establish a mercantile connexion with the empire which was to be erected there, and recommending that we should take immediate measures for assisting the emigration of the Spanish patriots! Happily the councils of Great Britain were directed by wiser heads, and the people of Spain actuated by better principles and by a braver spirit. “We are supported,” said Romana to his countrymen, “by the illustrious English nation, who are united with the brave Portugueze, our brethren, possessing a common interest with ourselves, and who never will abandon us.” The people and the government had the same confidence in British honour. English and Portugueze troops were dispatched from Lisbon to assist in the defence of Cadiz, and Ceuta was delivered in trust to an English garrison.

♦The Isle of Leon.♦

The Isle of Leon forms an irregular triangle, of which the longest side is separated from the main land by a channel, called the river of Santi Petri, ten miles in length, and navigable for the largest ships. This side is strongly fortified, and the situation also is peculiarly strong. The bridge of Zuazo, built originally by the Romans, over the channel, is flanked with batteries, and communicates with the continent by a causeway over impassable marshes. There are two towns upon the island; that which bears the same name, and which contains about 40,000 inhabitants, is nearly in the middle of the isle; the other, called St. Carlos, which stands a little to the north, was newly erected, and consisted chiefly of barracks and other public buildings. Cadiz stands on the end of a tongue of land seven miles in length, extending from the isle into the bay; this isthmus is from a quarter to half a mile broad, flanked on one side by the sea, and on the other by the bay of Cadiz. Along this isthmus, an enemy who had made himself master of the island must pass; new batteries had been formed, new works thrown up, and mines dug; and if these obstacles were overcome, his progress would then be opposed by regular fortifications, upon which the utmost care and expense had been bestowed for rendering the city impregnable. Before this unexpected and unexampled aggression on the part of France, the great object of the Spanish government had been to render Cadiz secure from the sea: as soon, therefore, as the approach of the enemy was certain, one of the first operations was to demolish all those works on the main land from whence the shipping could be annoyed. This was a precaution which Admiral Purvis had strongly advised after the battle of Medellin, and again as soon as the more ruinous defeat of Areizaga was known. Upon the first report that the enemy were hastening toward Cadiz, in the hope of surprising it, he requested Admiral Alava to remove the ships, and place them in the lower part of the harbour, where they might be secure; but it was not till Mr. Frere had strongly urged the necessity of this precaution that the Spanish Admiral, after much reasoning on his part, reluctantly complied. The ill spirit which at this time prevailed among the naval officers arose rather from the pitiable situation in which they found themselves, than from any predilection for the French, or the more natural feeling of hostility toward the English in which they had grown up. Men being wanted for the land service, and not for the fleet, the navy had been neglected during this contest: the ships were ill manned and miserably stored, the pay far in arrears; and the officers had latterly disregarded their duty as much as they thought themselves disregarded by the government, ... hopelessness producing discontent, and discontent growing into disaffection. This temper could produce no ill effect when the regency and the people were so well disposed. The fleet was removed in time; and the hulks also in which the miserable prisoners were confined were moved lower down into the bay, and moored under the guns of the English and Spanish ships.

The British Admiral had represented in time how important it was that the batteries on the north side of the harbour should be kept in an efficient state. The danger now was from the land side, not from the sea, and by good fortune the land quarter had been strengthened some fifty years before, at a cost and with a care which had then been deemed superfluous. But the Spanish government had not forgotten that it was on that side Essex had made his attack, and England was the enemy against whom those precautions were taken. At that time every villa and garden upon the isthmus had been destroyed. During after-years of security the ground had again been covered, and was now to be cleared again. The Spaniards, roused by the exertions and example of Alburquerque, as much as by the immediate danger, laboured at the works, and carefully removed every building on the isthmus. Night and day these labours were carried on, and the sound of explosions was almost perpetual. The wood from the demolished buildings was taken into the city for fuel.

♦Victor summons the Junta of Cadiz.♦

Marshal Victor, before he understood how well the isle was secured, sent a summons to the Junta of Cadiz, telling them he was ready to receive their submission to King Joseph. Jaen, Cordova, Seville, and Granada, he said, had received the French with joy; he expected the same reception from the people of Cadiz; and as the fleets and arsenals were the property of the nation, he demanded that they should be preserved for their rightful sovereign. They returned an answer, signed by every individual of their body, declaring that they acknowledged no one for King of Spain but Ferdinand VII. Soult, also, representing the English as the enemies of Spain, insinuated, in a summons to Alburquerque, that it was their intention to seize Cadiz for themselves. Alburquerque replied, no such design was entertained by the British nation, who were not less generous than they were great and brave; their only object was to assist in the defence of Cadiz with all the means in which they abounded, an assistance which the Spaniards solicited and gratefully received. Cadiz, he added, had nothing to fear from a force of 100,000 men; the Spaniards knew that the French commanded no more than the ground which they covered, and they would never lay down their arms till they had effected the deliverance of their country.

♦Ill-will of the Junta towards Alburquerque.♦

The service which Alburquerque had rendered was so signal, and its importance so perfectly understood by all the people of Cadiz, that he was deservedly looked upon as the saviour of the place. Having been appointed governor in obedience to the general wish, he became in consequence president of the Junta, as Venegas had been before him, whose obedient policy was now rewarded by the highest station to which a subject could be appointed, that of viceroy of Mexico. Alburquerque had not solicited these appointments; on the contrary, he remonstrated against them, pointing out how impossible it was, that, having the command of the army, he could attend to other duties at the same time; and in consequence of his representations, D. Andres Lopez de Sagastizabel was nominated to act as his deputy in both capacities. The Junta of Cadiz had obtained their power unexceptionably, but no men ever made a more unworthy use of it; they had reluctantly assented to the formation of the regency, and when it was formed, endeavoured to restrain and overrule it, and engross as much authority as possible to themselves, in which, unhappily for Spain, and more unhappily for Spanish America, they were but too successful. Alburquerque became the marked object of their dislike, because he had recognised the regency at a moment when, if he had hesitated, they would have struggled to get the whole power of government into their own hands. That spirit, which had never condescended to conceal its indignant contempt for Godoy, could not stoop to court the favour of a Junta of mercantile monopolists. Not that he despised them as such; his mind was too full of noble enterprises to bestow a thought upon them, otherwise than as men who were called upon to do their duty while he did his.

♦The troops neglected.♦

His first business had been to complete the unfinished works of defence, especially the cortadura, or cut across the isthmus, where the battery of St. Fernando was erected; and lest any attempt should be made to pass beside it at low water, the iron gratings from the windows of the public buildings were removed, and placed on the beach as a chevaux-de-frise. While these things were going on, the people of Cadiz manifested a disgraceful indolence; they assembled in crowds on the ramparts, wrapt in their long cloaks, and there stood gazing silently for hours, while the English were employed in blowing up the forts round the bay; appearing, says an eye-witness, indifferent spectators of the events around them, rather than the persons for whose security these exertions were made. Meantime the troops, whose rapid march had placed these idlers out of fear, were neglected in a manner not less cruel to the individuals than it was detrimental to the public service. The points to be protected were so many, that the numbers of this little army did not suffice to guard them, without exhausting the men by double duty. Alburquerque requested that the regiments might be filled from the numberless idle inhabitants of the isle and of Cadiz, who, while they were idle, were at such a time worse than useless. Unless this were done, he said, it was not only impossible for his men to undertake any offensive operations, or even to improve themselves in discipline, but they must be wasted away with fatigue and consequent infirmities. These representations were in vain; neither was he more successful in requiring their pay, a supply of clothing, of which they stood evidently in need, and those common comforts in their quarters, which were as requisite for health as for decency. The Junta of Cadiz had seven hundred pieces of cloth in their possession, yet more than a month elapsed, and nothing was done toward clothing the almost naked troops. Alburquerque asserts, as a fact within his own positive knowledge, that the reason was, because the Junta were at that time contending with the Regency, to get the management of the public money into their own hands, and meant, if they had failed, to sell this cloth to the government, and make a profit upon it, as merchants, of eight reales per vara!

♦Alburquerque applies to the Regency in their behalf.♦

It is not to be supposed that the Junta were idle at this time; they had many and urgent duties to attend to; but no duty could be more urgent than that of supplying the wants and increasing the force of the army. The Duke applied to them in vain for six weeks, during which time he discovered that the Junta looked as much to their private interest as to the public weal; for from the beginning, he says, their aim was to get the management of the public expenditure, not merely for the sake of the influence which accompanies it, but that they might repay themselves the sums which they had lent, and make their own advantage by trading with the public money. At length he applied to the Regency. The regents, feeling how little influence they possessed over the Junta, advised the Duke to publish the memorial which he had presented to them, thinking that it would excite the feelings of the people. In this they were not deceived; ... the people, now for the first time called upon to relieve the wants of the soldiers, exerted themselves liberally, and there was not a family in which some contribution was not made for the defenders of the country. But the Junta were exasperated to the last degree by this measure, which their own culpable neglect had rendered necessary. Alburquerque’s memorial contained no complaint against them; it only stated the wants of the soldiers, and requested that, unless those wants were supplied, he might be relieved from a command, the duties of which, under such circumstances, it was not possible for him to perform. Though he was persuaded of their selfish views, he had no design of exposing an evil which there was no means of remedying; and when he understood how violently they were offended, he addressed a letter to them, disclaiming any intention of inculpating them, in terms which nothing but his earnest desire of avoiding all dissensions that might prove injurious to the country could ♦The Junta attack Alburquerque.♦ either dictate or justify. This did not prevent the Junta from publishing an attack upon him, in reply, of the most virulent nature. They reproached him with having exposed the wants and weakness of the army; entered into details as frivolous in themselves as they were false in their application, to show that they had done every thing for the soldiers; declared, with an impudence of ingratitude which it is not possible to reprobate in severer terms than it deserves, that his cavalry had retreated too precipitately, and ought to have brought in grain with them; and concluded by a menacing intimation, that the people of Cadiz were ready to support them against any persons who should attempt to impeach their proceedings. If the Junta of Cadiz had no other sins to answer for, this paper alone would be sufficient to render their name odious in history; so unprovoked was it in its temper, so false in its details, so detestable for its ingratitude. Had Alburquerque been capable of consulting his own safety by a precipitate retreat, Portugal, as he said, and the English army were at hand, ... and he needed not to have undertaken an arduous march of 260 miles in the face of a superior enemy, and in direct disobedience of the orders of his government. If the cavalry which saved Cadiz, and which they thus wantonly accused of retreating too precipitately, had been even a quarter of an hour later, it could not have entered the Isle of Leon. “This,” said the indignant Duke, “is the patriotism of the Junta of Cadiz; the enemy is at the gates, and they throw out a defiance to the general and the army who protect them!”

♦He resigns the command.♦

But Alburquerque was too sincere a lover of his country to expose it to the slightest danger, even for the sake of his own honour. He could not resent this infamous attack without exciting a perilous struggle; and without resenting it he felt it impossible to remain at the head of the army. Having thus been publicly insulted, a reparation as public was necessary to his honour, and that reparation, for the sake of Spain, he delayed to demand. The Regency would have had him continue in the command; he however persisted in resigning. No injustice which could be done him, he said, would ever have made him cease to present himself in the front of danger, had he not been compelled to withdraw for fear of the fatal consequences of internal discord. Accordingly, he who should have been leading, and who would have led, the men who loved him to victory, came over to England as ambassador, with a wounded spirit and a broken heart.

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