CHAPTER III.
Joseph being proclaimed king, required the council of Castile to take the oath of allegiance prescribed by the constitution; but with unexpected boldness, that body, hitherto obedient, met his orders with a remonstrance. War, virtually declared on the 2d of May, was at this time raging in all parts of the Memoir of O’Farril, and Azanza. peninsula, and the council was secretly apprized that a great misfortune had befallen the French arms. It was no longer a question between Joseph and some reluctant public bodies, but an awful struggle between great nations; and how the spirit of insurrection breaking forth simultaneously in every province was nourished in each, until it acquired the consistence of regular warfare, I shall now relate.
Just before the tumult of Aranjuez, the marquis of Solano y Socoro, commanding the Spanish auxiliary force in the Alentejo, received orders from Godoy to withdraw from that country with his division, and to post it on the frontier of Andalusia, to cover the projected journey of Charles IV. Napoleon was aware of these orders, but would not interrupt their execution. Solano quitted Portugal without difficulty, and in the latter end of May, observing the general agitation, repaired to his government of Cadiz, where a French squadron[5], under admiral Rossily, had just before taken refuge from the English fleet. As Solano passed through Seville (that city being in a state of great ferment), he was required to put himself at the head of an insurrection in favour of Ferdinand VII. He refused, and passed on to his own government; but there also the people were ripe for a declaration against the French; and a local government having been in the mean time established at Seville, the members at once assumed the title of the “Supreme Junta of Spain and the Indies,” declared war in form against the intrusive monarch, commanded all men between the ages of sixteen and forty-five to take arms, called upon the troops of the camp of St. Roch to acknowledge their authority, and ordered Solano to attack the French squadron. That unfortunate man hesitated to commit his country in a war with a power whose strength and means he was better acquainted with than the temper of his own countrymen, and was instantly murdered: he died with a courage worthy of his amiable and unblemished character. There is too much reason to believe that his death was coolly projected, and that the junta at Seville sent an agent to Cadiz for the express purpose of exciting the populace to commit this odious assassination.
This foul stain upon the cause was intensely deepened by the perpetration of similar or worse deeds in every part of the kingdom. At Seville the conde d’Aguilar was dragged from his carriage, and, without even the imputation of guilt, inhumanly butchered; and here again it is said that the mob were instigated by a leading member of the junta, count Gusman de Tilly, a man described as “capable of dishonouring a whole nation by his crimes,” while his victim was universally admitted to be virtuous and accomplished.
As early as April, general Castaños (then commanding the camp of St. Roch) had entered into communication with sir Hew Dalrymple, the governor of Gibraltar; he was resolved to seize any opportunity that offered to resist the French, and he appears to have been the first, if not the only Spaniard, who united patriotism with prudent calculation, readily acknowledging the authority of the junta of Seville, and stifling the workings of self-interest with a virtue by no means common to his countrymen at that period. When the insurrection first broke out, admiral Purvis, commanded the British squadron off Cadiz, and in concert with general Spencer (who happened to be in that part of the world with five thousand men), offered to co-operate with Solano, if he would assail the French ships of war in the harbour: upon the death of that unfortunate man, this offer was renewed and pressed upon don Thomas Morla, his successor; but he, for reasons hereafter to be mentioned, refused all assistance, and reduced the hostile ships himself. Sir Hew Dalrymple’s correspondence. Castaños, on the contrary, united closely with all the British commanders, and obtained from them supplies of arms, ammunition, and money; and at the insistence of sir Hew Dalrymple, the merchants of Gibraltar advanced a loan for the service of the Spanish patriots[6].
Moniteur. Azanza an O’Farril. Nellerto.
Meanwhile the assassinations at Cadiz and Seville were imitated in every part of Spain; hardly can a town be named in which some innocent and worthy persons were not slain. Grenada had its murders; Carthagena rivalled Cadiz in ruthless cruelty; and Valencia was foul with slaughter. Don Miguel de Saavedra, the governor of that city, was killed, not in the fury of the moment, for he escaped the first danger and fled, but being pursued and captured, was brought back and deliberately sacrificed. Balthazar Calvo, a canon of the church of St. Isidro, then commenced a massacre of the French residents. For twelve days unchecked he traversed the streets of Valencia, followed by a band of fanatics, brandishing their knives, and filling all places with blood: many hundred helpless people fell the victims of his thirst for murder; and at last, emboldened by the impunity he enjoyed, Calvo proceeded to threaten the junta itself; but there his career was checked. Those worthy personages, who (with the exception of Mr. Tupper, the English consul, then a member), had calmly witnessed his previous violence, at once found the means to crush his power when their own safety was concerned. The canon, being in the act of braving their authority, was seized by stratagem, imprisoned, and soon afterwards strangled, together with two hundred of his band.
The conde de Serbelloni, captain-general of the province, placed himself at the head of the insurrection, and proceeded to organise an army; and at the same time the old count Florida Blanca assumed the direction of the Murcian patriots, and those two kingdoms acted cordially together.
In Catalonia the occupation of Barcelona impeded the development of the popular effervescence, but the feeling was the same, and the insurrection breaking out at the town of Manresa, soon spread to all the unfettered parts of the province.
In Aragon the arrival of don Joseph Palafox kindled the fire of patriotism; he had escaped from Bayonne, and his family were greatly esteemed in a country where it was of the noblest among a people absurdly vain of their ancient descent. The captain-general, fearful of a tumult, ordered Palafox to quit the province. This circumstance, joined to some appearance of mystery in his escape, inflamed the passions of the multitude; they surrounded his abode, and forced him to put himself at their head: the captain-general was displaced and confined, some persons were murdered, and a junta was formed. Palafox was considered by his companions as a man of slender capacity and great vanity, and there is nothing in his exploits to create a doubt of the justness of this opinion. It was not Palafox that upheld the glory of Aragon, it was the spirit of the people, which he had not excited, and could so little direct, that for a long time after the commencement of the first siege, he was kept a sort of prisoner in Zaragoza; and evident distrust of his courage and fidelity was displayed by the population which he is supposed to have ruled.
The example of Aragon aroused the Navarrese, and Logroño became the focus of an insurrection which extended along most of the valleys of that kingdom. In the northern and western provinces the spirit of independence was equally fierce, and as decidedly pronounced, accompanied also by the same brutal excesses. In Badajos the conde de la Torre del Frenio was butchered by the populace, and his mangled carcass dragged through the streets in triumph. At Talavera de la Reyna, the corregidor with difficulty escaped a similar fate by a hasty flight. Leon presented a wide, unbroken scene of anarchy. In Valladolid, and all the great towns, the insurgent patriots laid violent hands upon every person who did not instantly concur in their wishes, and pillage was added to murder.
Gallicia seemed to hold back for a moment; but the example of Leon, and the arrival of an agent from the Asturias, where the insurrection was in full force, produced a general movement. Filanghieri, the governor of Coruña, an Italian by birth, was by a tumultuous crowd called upon to exercise the rights of sovereignty, and to declare war in form against the French: like every man of sense in Spain, he was unwilling to commence such an important revolution upon such uncertain grounds; the impatient populace instantly attempted his life, which was then saved by the courage of an officer of his staff; but his horrible fate was only deferred. He was a man of talent, sincerely attached to Spain, and he exerted himself with success in establishing a force in the province: no suspicion of guilt seems to have attached to his conduct, and his death marks the temper of the times and the inherent ferocity of the people. A part of the regiment of Navarre seized him at Villa Franca del Bierzo, planted the ground with their bayonets, and then tossing him in a blanket, let him fall on the points thus disposed, and there leaving him to struggle, they dispersed and retired to their own homes.
The Asturians were the first who proclaimed their indefeasible right of choosing a new government when the old one ceased to afford them protection. Having established a local junta, and invested it with all the functions of royalty, they declared war against the French, and despatched deputies to England to solicit assistance.
In Biscay and the Castiles, fifty thousand bayonets overawed the great towns; but the peasantry commenced a war in their own manner against the stragglers and the sick, and thus a hostile chain surrounding the French army was completed in every link.
This universal and nearly simultaneous effort of the Spanish people was beheld by the rest of Europe with astonishment and admiration: astonishment at the energy thus suddenly put forth by a nation hitherto deemed unnerved and debased; admiration at the devoted courage of an act, which, seen at a distance, and its odious parts unknown, appeared with all the ideal beauty of Numantian patriotism. In England the enthusiasm was unbounded; dazzled at first with the splendour of such an agreeable, unlooked-for spectacle, men of all classes gave way to the impulse of a generous sympathy, and forgot, or felt disinclined to analyse, the real causes of this apparently magnanimous exertion. But without wishing to detract from the merit of the Spanish people, and certainly that merit was very great, it may be fairly doubted if the disinterested vigour of their character was the true source of their resistance. Constituted as modern states are, with little in their systems of government or education which conduces to nourish intense feelings of patriotism, it would be miraculous indeed if such a result was obtained from the pure virtue of a nation, which for two centuries had groaned under the pressure of civil and religious despotism. It was, in fact, produced by several co-operating causes, many of which were any thing but commendable.
The Spanish character, with relation to public affairs, is distinguished by inordinate pride and arrogance. Dilatory and improvident, the individual as well as the mass, all possess an absurd confidence that every thing is practicable which their heated imagination suggests; once excited, they can see no difficulty in the execution of a project, and the obstacles they encounter are attributed to treachery; hence the sudden murder of so many virtuous men at the commencement of this commotion. Kind and warm in his attachments, but bitter in his anger, the Spaniard is patient under privations, firm in bodily suffering, prone to sudden passion, vindictive, bloody, remembering insult longer than injury, and cruel in his revenge. With a strong natural perception of what is noble, his promise is lofty, but as he invariably permits his passions to get the mastery of his reason, his performance is mean.
In the progress of this war the tenacity of vengeance peculiar to the nation supplied the want of cool, persevering intrepidity; but it was a poor substitute for that essential quality, and led rather to deeds of craft and cruelty than to daring acts of patriotism. Now the abstraction of the royal family, and the unexpected pretension to the crown, so insultingly put forth by Napoleon, aroused all the Spanish pride. The tumults of Madrid and Aranjuez had agitated the public mind, and prepared it for a violent movement, and the protection afforded by the French to the obnoxious Godoy increased the ferment of popular feeling: a dearly cherished vengeance was thus frustrated at the moment of its expected accomplishment, and the disappointment excited all that fierceness of anger which with Spaniards is, for the moment, uncontrollable. Just then the tumult of Madrid, swollen and distorted, wrought the people to frenzy, and they arose with one accord, not to meet a danger the extent of which they had calculated, and were prepared, for the sake of independence, to confront, but to gratify the fury of their hearts, and to slake their thirst of blood.
During Godoy’s administration the property of the church had been trenched upon, and it was evident, from the example of France and Italy, that, under the new system, that operation would be repeated. This was a matter that involved the interests, and, of course, stimulated the activity of a multitude of monks and priests, who found no difficulty in persuading an ignorant and bigoted people that the aggressive stranger was also the enemy of religion and accursed of God; hence processions, miracles, prophecies, distribution of reliques, and the appointment of saints to the command of the armies, were freely employed to fanaticize the mass of the patriots. In every part of the peninsula the clergy were distinguished for their active zeal, and monks or friars were leaders in the tumults, or at the side of those who were instigating them to barbarous actions. Napoleon’s Memoires, Campagne d’Italie, Venise. Buonaparte found the same cause produce similar effects during his early campaigns in Italy; and if the shape of that country had been as favourable for protracted resistance, and that a like support had been afforded to them by Great Britain, the heroes of Spain would have been rivalled by modern Romans!
The continental system of mercantile exclusion was another spring of this complicated machinery. It threatened to lessen the already decayed commerce of the maritime towns; but the contraband trade, which has always been carried on in Spain to an incredible extent, was certain of destruction; and with that trade [Appendix, No. 9.] the fate of one hundred thousand excise and custom-house officers was involved. It required but a small share of penetration to perceive, that a system of armed revenue officers, organized after the French manner, and stimulated by a vigorous administration, would quickly put an end to the smuggling, which was, in truth, only a consequence of the monopolies and internal restrictions upon the trade of one province with another—vexations abolished by the constitution of Bayonne: hence all the activity and intelligence of the merchants engaged in foreign trade, and all the numbers and lawless violence of the smugglers, were enlisted in the cause of the country, and swelled the ranks of the insurgent patriots; and hence also the readiness of the Gibraltar merchants to advance the loan before spoken of.
The state of civilisation in Spain was likewise exactly suited to an insurrection: if the people had been a little more enlightened, they would have joined the French; if very enlightened, the invasion could not have happened at all; but, in a country where the comforts of civilized society are less needed, and therefore less attended to than in any other part of Europe, where the warmth and dryness of the climate render it no sort of privation or even inconvenience to sleep for the greatest part of the year in the open air, and where the universal custom is to go armed, it was not difficult for any energetic man to assemble and keep together large masses of the credulous peasantry. No story could be too gross for their belief, if it agreed with their wishes. “Es verdad, los dicen,” “It is true, they say it,” is the invariable answer of a Spaniard if a doubt is expressed of the truth of an absurd report. Of temperate habits, possessing little furniture, and generally hoarding all the gold he can get, the Spanish peasant is less concerned for the loss of his house than the inhabitant of another country would be: the effort that he makes in relinquishing his abode must not be measured by the scale of an Englishman’s exertion in a like case; and once engaged in an adventure, the lightness of his spirits, and the brilliancy of his sky, make it a matter of indifference to the angry Spanish peasant whither he wanders.
The evils which had afflicted the country previous to the period of the French interference was another cause which tended to prepare the Spaniards for violence, and aided in turning that violence against the intruders. Famine, oppression, poverty, and disease, Historia de la Guerra contra Napoleon. the loss of commerce, and unequal taxation, had pressed sorely upon them; for such a system the people could not be enthusiastic; but they were taught to believe, that Godoy was the sole author of the misery they suffered, and that Ferdinand would redress their grievances; and as the French were the strenuous protectors of the former, and the oppressors of the latter, it was easy to add this bitterness to their natural hatred of the domination of a stranger; and it was so done.
Such were the principal causes which combined to produce this surprising revolution, from which so many great events flowed, without one man of eminent talent being cast up to control or direct the spirit which was thus accidentally excited. Nothing proves more directly the heterogeneous nature of the feelings and interests which were united together than this last fact, which cannot be attributed to a deficiency of natural talent, for the genius of the Spanish people is notoriously ardent, subtle, and vigorous; but there was no common bond of feeling which a great man could lay hold of to influence large masses. Persons of sagacity perceived very early that the Spanish revolution, like a leafy shrub in a violent gale of wind, greatly agitated but disclosing only slight unconnected stems, afforded no sure hold for the ambition of a master-spirit, if such there were. It was clear that the cause would fail unless supported by England, and then England would direct all, and not suffer her resources to be wielded for the glory of an individual, whose views and policy might hereafter thwart her own; nor was it difficult to perceive that the downfall of Napoleon, not the regeneration of Spain, was the object of her cabinet.
The explosion of public feeling was fierce in its expression, because political passions will always be vehement at the first moment of their appearance among a people new to civil commotion, and unused to permit their heat to evaporate in public discussions. The result was certainly a wonderful change in the affairs of Europe; it seems yet undecided whether that change has been for the better or for the worse. In the progress of their struggle, the Spaniards developed more cruelty than courage, more violence than intrepidity, more personal hatred of the French than enthusiasm for their own cause. They opened indeed a wide field for the exertions of others; they presented a fulcrum upon which a lever was rested that moved the civilised world; but assuredly the presiding genius, the impelling power, came from another quarter. Useful accessories they were, but as principals they displayed neither wisdom, spirit, nor skill sufficient to resist the prodigious force by which they were assailed. If they appeared at first heedless of danger, it was not because they were prepared to perish rather than submit, but that they were reckless of provoking a power whose terrors they could not estimate, and in their ignorance despised.
It is, however, not surprising that great expectations were at first formed of the heroism of the Spaniards, and those expectations were greatly augmented by their agreeable qualities. There is not upon the face of the earth a people so attractive in the friendly intercourse of society: their majestic language, fine persons, imposing dress and lively imaginations, the inexpressible beauty of the women, and the air of romance which they throw over every action, and infuse into every feeling, all combine to delude the senses and to impose upon the judgment. As companions they are incomparably the most agreeable of mankind; but danger and disappointment attend the man who, confiding in their promises and energy, ventures upon a difficult enterprise. “Never do to-day what you can put off until to-morrow,” is the favourite proverb in Spain, and, unlike most proverbs, it is rigidly attended to.