HISTORICAL AND ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES TO CANTO VII.
For the incidents connected with Napoléon’s invasion of Portugal and Spain, and for the state of both monarchies at that period, the reader is referred to Napier’s and Southey’s Histories of the Peninsular War, and (with the necessary caution in the perusal) to Thiers’s Histoire du Consulat et de l’Empire. I have endeavoured to adhere as closely to historical truth as the nature of poetical composition would permit. My residence in both Peninsular countries, since they were visited either by Southey or Napier, has enabled me to add some additional particulars, derived from sources exhibited of late years, which tend to throw fresh light upon these transactions.
The Emperor commenced with the invasion of Portugal, for various reasons, of which the chief was probably that, as there was no family alliance between France and Portugal, as between France and Spain, an injustice done to the former country would be less shocking and startling to the common feelings of mankind. That Napoléon himself regarded an invasion of Spain in that light is evident from a remarkable expression which he used in conversation with his aide-de-camp, Savary:—“I am always afraid of a change of which I do not see the scope: the best plan of all would be to avoid a war with Spain, it would be a kind of Sacrilege (he used the expression); but I shall not shrink from making it.”—Thiers, Histoire du Consulat et de l’Empire.
When Junot entered Lisbon, the old Queen of Portugal was mad, and the Prince Regent possessed no vigour of character to supply the sovereign’s intellectual deficiencies. These were supposed to be in great measure chargeable upon the superstitious terrors with which her head had been filled by Dom José Maria de Mello, Bishop of Algarve and Grand Inquisitor of the Kingdom. Influenced partly by fear of Junot, and partly by the popular discontent with the fugitive government, (for the entire Royal family and Court of Portugal fled to Brazil the moment it was ascertained that Junot was on his march close to Lisbon, and left the poor miserable country to shift for itself,) the principal ecclesiastics of the kingdom, with a subserviency too characteristic of that order in every country, worshipped the rising sun, and lavished their despicable incense upon Junot and Napoléon. Cardinal Mendoza, the Patriarch of Lisbon, issued a pastoral sounding the praises of “the man whom past ages had been unable to divine, the man of prodigies, the Great Emperor whom God had called to establish the happiness of nations!” At the voice of this reverend Prince of the Church, the bishops and clergy, and in imitation of them the civil magistrates, recommended it to the faithful and to the people generally, as a binding civil and religious obligation, to receive the French cordially and pay obedience to their General. This language was especially noticeable in the mouth of the Inquisitor General, since he had always been heard to profess principles of the most diametrically opposite character. Against the “impious revolutionists” of France he had been the first to fulminate his censures. He had sought to re-establish autos-da-fé, in all their original bloody ferocity, under the reign of his august but crazy penitent. And at the commencement of the revolution he had seriously proposed the excommunication of the French nation en masse by the dignified clergy of Portugal.
The concentration of Junot’s troops around Lisbon made the reception of the French régime a matter of little difficulty. But it is not a little curious that the voice of old prophecy was made to contribute to the same result. The Nostradamus of Portugal, Bandarra, had predicted these changes as conformable to the will of God, and the triumph of the imperial eagle of Napoléon might be read in his prophetic quatrains. Curiously illustrative are these details of the character of a people of whom it has (with some exaggeration) been said that one half are waiting for the coming of Dom Sebastian, and the other half for that of the Messiah. The prophecy of Bandarra struck the nation with astonishment, and for a time they regarded it as literally fulfilled. The closeness of realization was certainly astounding. Gonzalo Annes Bandarra was a poor cobbler of Trancoso in the district of Guarda, who composed about the year 1540 some prophecies which have ever since obtained great reputation in the country, amongst all classes. His trovas or redondilhas (rhymed quatrains) have been printed several times, and in 1809 an edition was published at Barcelona. When the French entered Lisbon in 1807, the event was found by the believers in prophecy to be not only clearly predicted in Bandarra, but the Imperial power to be precisely indicated, and the first letter of the name of Napoléon, in the 17th and 18th quatrains of the third prophetic dream, which are as follows:—
“Ergue-se a Aguia imperial
Com os seus filhos ao rabo,
E com as unhas no cabo
Faz o ninho em Portugal.
Poe um A pernas acima,
Tira—lhe a risca do meio,
E por detraz lha arrima,
Saberas quern te nomeio.”
“The Imperial Eagle rises, with his children at his tail, and with his claws before him makes his nest in Portugal. Put an A with its legs upside down; take away its middle bar, and put this bar behind it. You will know him I name.” The coarseness of the wording belongs to the era and to the popular literature of Portugal generally. The N and the imperial eagle are made out perfectly. The coincidence does not quite convince, but in the words of the hero of the Gridiron story, “it is mighty remarkable!”
Junot proceeded to depose the Royal House of Portugal with the coolest unconcern, and from the old Palace of the Inquisition, where he established his Intendance Générale, and upon whose ruins the new National Theatre has just been raised, he issued a proclamation declaring that “the dynasty of Braganza had ceased in Portugal!” Meanwhile Solano, a creature of Godoy’s, who had accompanied Junot to Lisbon, was active on behalf of his infamous master, whose obscure birth-place I lately saw at Badajoz, and substituted in several public acts the name of the King of Spain for that of the Prince Regent of Portugal. He created a Chief Judge and a Superintendent of Finances, and both employments were conferred upon Castilian subjects. Solano was the intimate confident of the Prince of the Peace, and it is believed that it was not without superior orders that he proceeded in these hasty innovations. The future Sovereign of the Algarves, as designated in the secret treaty with Napoléon, was so impatient to reign on his own account that, if the reports which prevailed at the period are to be believed, dollars were struck at the Madrid mint, bearing upon one side the head of Godoy with the legend Emmanuel primus Algarviorum dux, and on the other the ancient arms of the kingdom of Algarve.
Shortly after his arrival Junot proceeded, as he phrased it, “inaugurer avec éclat à Lisbonne le drapeau tricolore français.” The Portuguese had previously received them as friends: this outrage opened their eyes. It was on a Sunday; 6,000 men of all arms were assembled in the great square of the Rocio, to be reviewed by the General. Mid-day sounded. A salvo of artillery resounded from the Castle of St. George, originally built by the Moors. Every eye was turned towards these ancient walls, which topple over the city somewhat like the Calton Hill at Edinburgh. In an instant was seen to fall the standard of Portugal which floated before on the loftiest tower of the Castle, while its place was taken in another instant by a foreign flag surmounted by the imperial eagle! To describe the outraged feelings of the Portuguese, to paint their indignation and horror, is impossible. Their loyalty and their national pride are almost the only virtues which they retain. Their southern hatred was excited to terrific intensity. Conceive what would be the feelings of veteran warriors, who have dragged out the remnant of an existence spared by the missiles and casualties of war, to see the flag beneath which their blood has flowed insulted by its enemies. Some idea may then be formed of the grief and rage which took possession of the people of Lisbon. A torrent of bitterness deluged their souls. The sacred standard which was thus supplanted was consecrated alike by religious feelings and by secular remembrances of glory. It had been given, according to popular belief, by Christ himself to Afonso Henriques, the founder of the Monarchy, impressed by the Redeemer with the marks of his Passion, for the five shields of the conquered Moorish kings displayed on the Quinas were likewise said to be typical of the Sacred Wounds, and with this other labarum their new Constantine had been told to “go forth and conquer.” “Death to the French!” was soon the cry, but the cannon and paraded soldiery of Junot suppressed the insurrectionary movement.
The earthquake, stated in the text to have occurred at the period of the French entry into Lisbon, is strictly historical. “Le lendemain de l’entrée des Français on éprouva dans Lisbonne une légère secousse de tremblement de terre, qui fit monter la mer sur les quais.” (Foy, Hist. Guerre. Pénins. liv. ii.) Junot wrote thus impiously concerning this event to the Minister of War, Clarke. “Les dieux sont pour nous; j’en tiens l’augure de ce, que le tremblement de terre ne nous a annoncé que leur puissance sans nous faire de mal!”
Napoléon’s treatment of Spain was not characterized by the same daring recklessness, but by what must be regarded as unprincipled profligacy. One of his own generals, Baron Foy, calls the Spanish invasion “une traîtreuse usurpation.”—Hist. Guerre. Pénins. liv. ii.
A Spanish army entered Portugal under Junot in 1807, with absurd and astounding ignorance mistaking the English for enemies, and the French for friends, to both Peninsular countries. The Marquis del Socorro, who commanded this army, was the tool of the infamous Godoy and the French, and it is thus he spoke of us in the proclamation which he issued at Oporto. He declared his object to be “de vous délivrer de la perfide domination et de la politique ambitieuse des Anglais. * * Tous ensemble, nous vengerons les outrages que la férocité traîtresse des Anglais a faits à toutes les nations de l’Europe!”—Foy, Histoire Guerre. Pénins. liv. ii. pièces justificatives.
The unsuspected testimony of Foy leaves the fearful iniquity of Napoléon’s seizure of the principal fortresses of Spain beyond dispute. “Il y eut,” says he, “dans les moyens par lesquels on s’en rendit maître, un mélange de l’astuce des faibles et de l’arrogance des forts. On n’employa que la ruse pour Pampelune et Saint-Sébastien.” (liv. iii.) The following is his detailed account of the seizure of these several fortresses:—The castle of Montjuic at Barcelona was too difficult of approach for the troops to reach it without being perceived. Duhesme went to the Count d’Ezpeleta, Captain-General of the province: “My soldiers occupy your citadel,” said he. “Open to me this instant the gates of Montjuic; for the Emperor Napoléon has ordered me to place a garrison in your fortresses. If you hesitate, I declare war against Spain, and you will be responsible for the torrents of blood which your resistance will have caused to flow.” The name of Napoléon produced its accustomed effect. The Spanish General was aged and timid, and the only instruction which his government had given him was to avoid taking any step which might embroil them with France. He resigned the keys of Montjuic, and General Duhesme became master of Catalonia. Thus fell without striking a blow, into the power of France, the largest city of the Spanish monarchy—a city which a century before had struggled single-handed, after all Spain had submitted, against the power of Louis XIV.
The gates of the fortress of Pamplona had been opened to the French general Darmagnac as to a friend. But the military authority remained in the hands of the Viceroy, Marquis de Valle-Santoro, and the volunteer battalion of Tarragona, 700 men strong, was lying in the citadel, and performed the military service of the place. Since Cardinal Cisneros, regent of Castile, dismantled all the strong places of Navarre, with the exception of its capital, the received opinion has been that he who commands in Pamplona is master of the province. To command in Pamplona, it is requisite to obtain possession of the citadel. This fortress, built by Philip II., contains within it extensive magazines for munitions of war and mouth, and might hold out for an indefinite period. The French soldiers came on fixed days, in undress and unarmed, to receive their provisions in the interior of the citadel. The Spanish troops maintained a strict guard upon these occasions, and never failed to have the drawbridge raised during the entire time that the distribution lasted. During the night of the 15th February, 1808, Darmagnac collected 100 grenadiers at his lodgings, which he had taken “non sans dessein,” says Foy, on the esplanade which separates the town from the citadel. They entered their general’s residence with their firelocks and cartouches, one after the other, in profound silence. At seven o’clock on the morning of the 16th, sixty men went to receive their provisions as usual, but were commanded by an officer of intelligence and daring named Robert. Under pretext of waiting for the quarter-master, the men stopt, some of them on the drawbridge and some beyond it. The drawbridge was thus prevented from being raised. It rained; and some of them entered the guard-house, as it were to escape from the shower. “A un signal donné,” (says Foy) they leapt upon the arms of the guard, where they lay ranged at one side; and the two sentinels were immediately disarmed. The Spaniards could not extricate themselves from the hands of the French, who filled the guard-house. Those who made any resistance were beat with the butt-ends of muskets. By this time arrived the grenadiers who had been lying in ambuscade at the general’s house. They proceeded straight to a bastion of 15 guns, directed on the entrance to the ditch. The forty-seventh French battalion, quartered not far distant, followed close on the grenadiers. The rampart was covered with Frenchmen, before the Spanish garrison, shut up in their casernes, had even thought of putting themselves on their defence. Darmagnac announced to the Viceroy and the Council of Navarre that, as he would probably have some stay to make in Pamplona, he had been obliged for the security of his troops to introduce into the citadel a battalion which would do duty there in concert with the national garrison—“a slight change, he added, which, instead of altering the good understanding between, them, should only be regarded as a tie the more between two reciprocally faithful allies!”
Ties of a similar character became established daily. Thouvenot, General of Brigade, had been sent to San Sebastian, with a commission to assemble in one dépôt the soldiers who arrived from France on their way to join their respective corps in Spain. “This dépôt (concludes Foy) becoming presently very numerous found itself in possession of the place, without the detachments of the Spanish regiments of the King and of Africa, who formed the garrison, perceiving it. It is thus that the French became masters of Figuera, Barcelona, Pamplona, and San Sebastian; and then their military operations in the Peninsula became placed on a reasonable basis! The mask was thrown off, the interested observers whom Spain had received as allies, for a time dissembled their projects, but they no longer sought to conceal the means which they adopted for their accomplishment.”—Hist. Guerre. Pénins. liv. iii.
Yet these are the events which Thiers, in his Histoire du Consulat et de l’Empire, has the coolness to describe, without one word of reprobation, censure, or comment, in the following words:
“As soon as the French troops crossed the frontiers they were quartered at Saint Sebastian, Pampeluna, Rosas, Figueras, and Barcelona.”
Of the character and deeds of Godoy, the chief actor in these transactions, the following brief but on the whole satisfactory sketch is given by Thiers:—
“This man, whom an extraordinary degree of favour had raised up to the supreme power in Spain, governed the state as an absolute master for more than ten years; he had confirmed his power by filling the government offices with his creatures. He had become the dispenser of every favour and every boon, and was so completely the medium of the king’s decisions, that the monarch answered to every applicant: ‘Call upon Emanuel,’—the prince being named Emanuel Godoy. This supreme authority had stirred up against him a general detestation, which had counterbalanced the favour he enjoyed, because he had of course committed many acts of injustice in building up his power. The Prince of Asturias was in the cabinet; he likewise had to complain of the favourite’s haughtiness, the Prince of Peace not fearing to irritate him by exhibiting the source of a despotic sway which laid its burden even on the successor to the crown. The Prince of Asturias became his enemy, and lost no opportunity of contriving his destruction, in which object he was encouraged by the opinion of the people.
“On every side murmurs rose against the Prince of Peace; his influence began to decline; and he was soon driven to his last and lowest shifts to prop it up. He had long since felt the necessity of consolidating his power, and had striven by every art to acquire the friendship of France. His enemies availed themselves of this circumstance to injure him, and charged him with treachery; asserted that he wanted to sell Spain to France, and had reduced her already to one of those vice-royalties obedient to the Emperor.
“On the other hand (so mutable and various is the public mind) they attributed to France whatever evil afflicted Spain, and accused her of supporting the Prince of Peace. This state of things every day produced fresh bickerings between the partisans of the rival princes; the counsels of the Prince Royal were not always prudent, and he was induced by the aversion of the people towards his powerful opponent to endeavour to quell the ambition of the Prince of Peace by making him the victim of his immoderate thirst for power. The favourite, foreseeing the coming catastrophe, and all Spain in arms to crush and overthrow him, gave himself up for lost, when the French troops advanced into the Spanish territory, to execute the treaty of Fontainebleau, of which he alone possessed the secret, and which was not even signed.”
The Basque glories, which I have recorded in the ballad of “The Tartar Town,” are all strictly historical. The Basque dialect was once spoken all over Spain, and is nearly identical with the Tartar language. I use this supposed Tartar origin for poetical purposes. Ever since the death of Ferdinand VII., the Basque fueros have been a constant bone of contention. Espartero abolished, but Narvaez partially restored them. The only fueros now retained are an exemption from duty upon stamps, salt, and tobacco.
III. “A glory streamed around her, giant-strong.”
This stanza has been inspired by Murillo’s Immaculate Conceptions, on whose wonderful beauties I have gazed for days at Seville and Madrid.
IV. “Seemed as a rosebud gathering ere it blew
All forms of Beauty.”
Als eine blume zeigt sie sich der welt;
Zum muster wuchs das schöne bild empor.
Göthe, “Miedings Tod.”
“She blossoms to the world like a flower; her beautiful form grows up to be a pattern.”
VI. “Oh Love, oh wedded Love, of life the balm!”
“You have reason to commend that excellent institution * * the faithful nuptial union of man and wife that was first instituted.” (Bacon, New Atlantis.) The same sentiments are still more nobly expressed in Milton’s Tetrachordon and Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, where the poet, unshackled by his prose fetters, is still a poet, glowing with fancy and with rare sublimity, and has given expression to nobler sentiments on chaste love than any other writer, ancient or modern.
VII. “The rapturous joy more rapture gave alone.”
Tu mihi sola places; nec jam, te præter, in urbe
Formosa est oculis ulla puella meis.
Atque utinam posses uni mihi bella videri.
Tibul. 1. iv. 13.
“A stolen pressure of the hand, a tone
Unheard save by one ear.”
Fallendique vias mille ministrat Amor!
Tibul. 1. iv. 6.
“A language dead to all save lovers.”
O quanta dulce imagen,
Quantas tiernas palabras
Alli diré, que el labio
Quiere decir, y calla.
Cienfuegos.
“And bend, oh bend those glorious eyes
Upon thy slave once more, once more.”
Medid el ayre de unos bellos ojos,
Y me direys del cielo al suelo el trecho.
Lope de Vega, Angelica, iii.
X. “Like Clytemnestra’s son by Furies driven.”
——“Ereptæ magno inflammatus amore
Conjugis, et scelerum furiis agitatus Orestes.”
Virg. Æn. iii. 330.
Ὅμως δὲ φεῦγε, μηδὲ μαλθακὸς γένῃ·
Ἐλῶσι γάρ σε καὶ δι’ ἠπείρου μακρᾶς
Βεβῶτ’ ἀνατεὶ τὴν πλανοστιβῆ χθόνα,
Ὑπέρ τε πόντον, καὶ περιῤῥύτας πόλεις.
Æschyl. Eumen. 74.
“Fly! nor inert become. For they (the Furies) shall pursue thee through the long continent, passing untired through the wanderer-trodden earth, through the sea, and the sea-girt cities!”
XIII. —“Through her, too, passed the steel!”
Cujus animam gementem * *
Pertransivit gladius!
Antiphonar. Rom. “Stabat Mater.”
XVI. “As each the other’s head had joyous rent,
And gnawed like Ugolino.”
Quandò ebbe detto ciò, con gli occhi torti
Riprese il teschio misero co’ denti,
Che furo all’ osso, come d’un can forti.
Dante, Inferno, c. xxx.
XVII. “Of Spain’s defenders see the bayonets gleam,
And lust and plunder the defenders’ aim!”
Wir zogen in feindes land hinein,
Dem freunde sollt’s nicht viel besser seyn.
Göthe, “Ich hab’ mein sach.”
“We marched into the enemy’s land; our friends they fared no better.”
XXVII. “And murdered sleep wakes wild from sanguinary dreams.”
—φόβος γὰρ ἀνθ’ ὕπνου παραστατεῖ,
Τὸ μὴ βεβαίως βλέφαρα συμβαλεῖν ὕπνῳ.
Æschyl. Agamem. 14.
“For Fear doth stand me in the place of sleep, lest closely I shut my eye-lids.”
XXIX. “Spain’s disasters from their primal source.”
Dii multa neglecti dederunt
Hesperiæ mala luctuosæ.
Horat. Carm. iii. 6.
XXXII. “The judge perverts to more pervert the law.”
“They heard sworn judges of the law adjudge, upon such grounds and reasons as every stander-by was able to swear was not law.”—Clarendon, Hist. Great Rebel. i.
“Gives Demon-forms of hate the guise of saints.”
“Cette question curieuse—savoir, s’il est permis aux jesuites de tuer les jansenistes!”—Pascal, Lettres Provinciales, tome i.
XXXII. “The Holy Office Hell delighted saw!”
The operation of the Spanish Inquisition in an intellectual point of view may be inferred from the character of the Index Expurgatorius which was affixed in the different churches. On these prohibitory lists, by the side of the great names of Montesquieu, Robertson, and Filangieri were to be found the titles of the filthiest French romances.
XXXIII. “In sullen, fierce indifference bide till rent
The thunder-clouds, supine—and some on Vengeance bent.”
Ἀλλ’ ὦ πατρῷα γῆ, θεοί τ’ ἐπόψιοι,
Τίσασθε, τίσασθ’ ἀλλὰ τῷ χρόνῳ ποτε.
Soph. Philoct. 1040.
“But, oh father-land and all-seeing Gods! avenge, avenge at length in fitting time!” It may here be seen how unfounded is the claim of the Germans to the originality of their phrase “Vaterland.”
XXXV. “And secret treaties had the recreant drawn
With Hell’s diplomacy our soil to carve.”
O embajadores, puros majaderos!
Que si los reyes quieren engañar,
Comienzan por nosotros los primeros.
Diego de Mendoza.
“Oh Ambassadors, mere utterers of silly speeches! If Kings wish to deceive, they begin by deceiving us the first!” So writes the renowned Mendoza to his brother-diplomatist, Zuñiga. Mendoza, one of the most illustrious of the political, military, and literary worthies of Old Spain, was Ambassador for Charles V. to Rome, and is still more celebrated as the author of Lazarillo de Tormes.
“Entant que souverain, s’il parle selon sa pensée, il vous dira, j’observerai le traité de paix, pendant que le bien de mon royaume le demandera; je me moquerai de mon serment, des que la maxime de l’état le voudra.”—Bayle, Dict. Hist. et Crit. art. Agesilaus.
XXXVI. “His curling wave receding,” &c.
Vidimus flavum Tiberim retortis, &c.—Horat. Carm. i. 2.
——Guadiana
Atraz tornou as ondas de medroso:
Correo ao mar o Tejo duvidoso.
Camóens, Lus. iv. 28.
“Sinks o’er his golden sands, and sighing wears the chain.”
——Amnis aurifer Tagus.
Catul. xxvii.
XXXVII. “And Priests profane declared thy conquerors sent by God!”
Dizei-lhe que tambem dos Portuguezes
Alguns traidores houve algumas vezes.
Camóens, Lus. iv. 33.
I have had the satisfaction of visiting within the past year all the scenes which form the historical portion of this Canto—San Sebastian, Madrid, Badajoz the birth-place of Godoy, Lisbon, Almeda, and a score of other localities consecrated by heroic or saddening recollections. The toils of my pilgrimage will have been amply repaid, if I have derived some inspiration from the genius loci.
IBERIA WON.