History of the war in the Peninsula and in the south of France from the year 1807 to the year 1814, vol. 4

by William Francis Patrick Napier

CHAPTER I.

POLITICAL SITUATION OF JOSEPH.

After the conquest of Andalusia, the intrusive1810. monarch pursued his own system of policy with more eagerness than before. He published amnesties, granted honours and rewards to his followers,Joseph’s papers captured at Vittoria, MSS. took many of the opposite party into his service, and treated the people generally with mildness. But he was guided principally by his Spanish ministers, who being tainted with the national[Appendix, No. III.] Section 1. weaknesses of character were, especially Orquijo, continually making exaggerated reports, intriguing against the French generals, and striving, sometimes with, sometimes without justice, to incense the king against them. This course, which was almost the inevitable consequence of his situation, excited angry feelings in the military, which, joined to the natural haughtiness of soldiers in command, produced constant disputes. In the conquered provinces, Joseph’s civil agents endeavoured to obtain more of the spoil than comported with the wants of the armies, and hence bickerings between the French officers and the Spanish authorities were as unceasing as they were violent. The prefects, royal commissaries, and intendants would not act under military orders, with respect to the supplies, nor would they furnish sums for the military chests. On the other hand the generals often seized the king’s revenue, raised extraordinary and forced contributions, disregarded legal forms, and even threatened to arrest the royal agents when they refused compliance with their wishes. NeitherMr. Stuart’s Papers, MSS. was Joseph’s own conduct always free from violence, for in the latter part of 1811 he obliged the merchants of Madrid, to draw bills, for two millions of dollars, on their correspondents in London, to supply him with a forced loan.

He was always complaining to the emperor that the niggardly allowances from France, the exactions of the generals, and the misery of the country left him no means of existence as a monarch; and during the greatest part of 1810 and the beginning of 1811, Santa Fé, Almenara, and Orquijo, succeeding each other as ambassadors at Paris, were in angry negotiations, with Napoleon’s ministers,Joseph’s papers captured at Vittoria, MSS. relating to this subject, and to a project for ceding the provinces of the Ebro in exchange for Portugal. Against this project Joseph protested, on the grounds that it was contrary to the constitution of Bayonne, that it would alienate the Spaniards, was degrading to himself, and unjust as a bargain; seeing that Portugal, was neither so rich, so industrious, so pleasant, nor so well affected to him as the provinces to be taken away, and the well-knownIbid. hatred between the Spaniards and Portuguese would never allow the latter to be quiet subjects.

To these complaints, Napoleon answered with1811. January. his usual force and clearness of judgment. He insisted that the cost of the war had drained the French exchequer; that he had employed nearly four hundred thousand men for the king’s interest, and that rather than increase the expenses he would withdraw some of the troops. He reproachedJoseph’s papers captured at Vittoria, MSS. Joseph with the feebleness of his operations, the waste and luxury of his court, his ill-judged schemes of conciliation, his extravagant rewards, his too great generosity to the opposite party, and his raising, contrary to the opinion of the marshals, a Spanish army which would desert on the first reverse. The constitution of Bayonne, he said, was rendered null by the war, nevertheless he had not taken a single village from Spain, and he had no wish to seize the provinces of the Ebro, unless the state of the contest obliged him to do so. He required indeed a guarantee for the repayment of the money France had expended for the Spanish crown, yet the real wishes of the people were to be ascertained before any cession of territory could take place, and to talk of Portugal before it was conquered was folly. As this last observation wasIbid. Joseph’s own argument, an explanation ensued, when it appeared that Almenara, thinking the seizure of the Ebro provinces a settled plan, had, of his own accord, asked for Portugal as an indemnification; a fact that marks the character of the Spanish cabinet.

Napoleon also assured the king that there must be a great deal of money in Spain, for, besides the sums sent from France, the plate of the suppressed convents, and the silver received by the Spaniards from America, there were the subsidies from England, and the enormous expenditure of her troops. Then, the seizure and sale of national domains, and of confiscated colonial produce, were to be taken into calculation, and if the king wanted more, he must extract it from the country, or go without. France would only continue her subsidy of two millions of franks monthly. The emperor had always supported his wars by the resources of the territory in which it was carried on, and the king might do the same.

Joseph replied that his court was neither luxurious nor magnificent; that he recompensed services, by giving bills on the contingent sales of national domains, which could not be applied to the wants of the soldiers; that he could scarcely keep the public servants alive, and that his own expenses were not greater than the splendour of the crown required. That many of the best generals approved of his raising a Spanish army, desertions from it were less frequent than was imagined, and were daily diminishing; and these native troops served to garrison towns while the French were in the field. He wished, he said, to obtain large loans rather than small gifts from the French treasury, and desired that the confiscated property of the Spanish noblemen who had been declared traitors in 1808, should be paid to him; but with regard to harsh measures, the people could not pay the contributions, and the proceedings of a king with his subjects shouldJoseph’s papers captured at Vittoria, MSS. not be like those of a foreign general. Lenity was necessary to tranquillize the provinces subdued, and as an example to those which resisted. The first thing was to conciliate the people’s affections. The plate of the suppressed convents was not so valuable as it appeared at a distance, the greater part of it was already plundered by the guerillas, or by the French troops. The French marshals intercepted his revenues, disregarded his orders, insulted his government, and oppressed the country. He was degraded as a monarch and would endure it no longer. He had been appointed to the throne of Spain without his own consent, and although he would never oppose his brother’s will, he would notJoseph’s papers captured at Vittoria, MSS. live a degraded king, and was therefore ready to resign, unless the emperor would come in person and remedy the present evils.

Napoleon, while he admitted the reasonableness of some of the king’s statements, still insisted, and with propriety of argument, that it was necessary to subdue the people before they could be conciliated. Yet to prevent wanton abuses of power, he fixed the exact sum which each person,[Appendix, No. III.] Section 3. from the general governors down to the lowest subaltern was to receive, and he ordered every person violating this regulation to be dismissed upon the spot, and a report of the circumstance sent to Paris within twenty hours after. Before this, Bessieres, acknowledged by all to be aFebruary. just and mild man, had been sent to remedy the mischief said to have been done by Kellerman, and others in the northern provinces. And in respect of conciliation, the emperor remarked that he had himself, at first, intended to open secret negotiations with the Cortes, but on finding what an obscure rabble they were, he had desisted. He therefore recommended Joseph to assemble at Madrid a counter-cortes, composed of men of influence andApril. reputation, wherein (adverting to the insane insolence of the Spaniards towards their colonies) he might by the discussion of really liberal institutions, and by exposing the bad faith with which the English encouraged the Americans, improve public opinion, and conciliate the Spaniards with hopes of preserving the integrity of the empire, so rudely shaken by the revolt of the colonies.

An additional subsidy was peremptorily refused, but the emperor finally consented to furnish Joseph with half a million of franks monthly, for the particular support of his court; and it is worthy of notice, as illustrating the character of Napoleon, that in the course of these disputes, Joseph’s friends[Appendix, No. III.] at Paris, repeatedly advised him, that the diplomatic style of his letters incensed and hardened the emperor, whereas his familiar style as a brother always softened and disposed him to concede what was demanded. Joseph, however, could not endureMay. the decree for establishing the military governments, by which the administration was placed entirely in the hands of the generals, and their reports upon the civil and judicial administration referred entirely to the emperor. It was a measure assailing at once his pride, his power, and his purse. His mind, therefore, became daily more embittered, and his prefects and commissaries, emboldened by his opinions, absolutely refused to act under the French marshal’s orders. Many of these complaints, founded on the reports of his Spanish servants, were untrue and others distorted. We have seen how the habitual exaggerations, and even downright falsehoods of the juntas and the regency, thwarted the English general’s operations, and the king, as well as the French generals, must have encountered a like disposition in the Spanish ministers. Nevertheless, the nature of the war rendered it impossible but that much ground of complaint should exist.

Joseph’s personal sentiments, abstractedly viewed, were high-minded and benevolent; but they sorted ill with his situation as an usurper. He had neither patience nor profundity in his policy, and at last such was his irritation, that having drawn up a private but formal renunciation of the crown, he took an escort of five thousand men, and about the[Appendix, No. III.] Section 2. period of the battle of Fuentes Onoro, passed out of Spain and reached Paris: there Ney, Massena, Junot, St. Cyr, Kellerman, Augereau, Loison, and Sebastiani, were also assembled, and all discontented with the war, and with each other.

By this rash and ill-timed proceeding, the intrusive government was left without a head, and the army of the centre was rendered nearly useless at the critical moment, when Soult, engaged in the Albuera operations, had a right to expect support from Madrid. The northern army also was in a great measure paralysed, and the army of Portugal, besides having just failed at Fuentes, was in all the disorganization attendant upon the retreat from Santarem, and upon a change of commanders. This was the principal cause why Bessieres abandonedSee [Chap. I.] the Asturias and concentrated his forces in Leon and Castile on the communications with France; for it behoved the French generals, everywhere to hold their troops in hand, and to be on the defensive, until the emperor’s resolution in this extraordinary conjuncture should be known.

Napoleon astounded at this precipitate action of the king, complained, with reason, that having promised not to quit the country without due[Appendix, No. III.] Section 3. notice, Joseph had failed to him, both as a monarch and as a general, and that he should at least have better chosen his time; for if he had retired in January, when the armies were all inactive, the evil would have been less, as the emperor might then have abandoned Andalusia, and concentrated Soult’s and Massena’s troops on the Tagus; which would have been in accord with the policy fitting for the occasion. But now when the armies had suffered reverses, when they were widely separated, and in pursuit of different objects, the mischief was great, and the king’s conduct not to be justified!

Joseph replied that he had taken good measures to prevent confusion during his absence, and then reiterating his complaints and declaring his resolution to retire into obscurity, he finished by observing, with equal truth and simplicity of mind, that it would be better for the emperor that he[Appendix, No. III.] Section 2. should do so, inasmuch as in France he would be a good subject, but in Spain a bad king.

The emperor had however too powerful an intellect for his brother to contend with. Partly by reason, partly by authority, partly by concession, he obliged him to return again in July, furnished with a species of private treaty, by which the army of the centre was placed entirely at his disposal. He was also empowered to punish delinquents, to change the organization, and to remove officers who were offensive to him, even the chief of the staff, general Belliard, who had been represented by Orquijo as inimical to his system. And if any of the other armies should, by the chances of war, arrive within the district of the centre army, they also, while there, were to be under the king; and at all times, even in their own districts, when he placed himself at their head. The army of the north was to remain with its actual organization and under a marshal, but Joseph had liberty to change Bessieres for Jourdan.

To prevent the oppression of the people, especially1811. June. in the north, Napoleon required the French military authorities, to send daily reports, to the king, of all requisitions and contributions exacted. And he advised his brother to keep a Spanish commissary[Appendix, No. II.] Section 3. at the head-quarters of each army, to watch over Spanish interests; promising that whenever a province should have the means, and the will, to resist the incursions of the guerillas, it should revert entirely to the government of the king, and be subjected to no charges, save those made by the Spanish civil authorities for general purposes. The armies of the south and of Aragon were placed in a like situation on the same terms, and meanwhile Joseph was to receive a quarter of the contributions from each, for the support of his court and of the central army.

The entire command of the forces in Spain the emperor would not grant, observing that the marshal directing from Madrid, as major-general, would naturally claim the glory, as well as the responsibility of arranging the operations; and hence the other marshals, finding themselves, in reality, under his, instead of the king’s command, would obey badly or not at all. All their reports and the intelligence necessary to the understanding of affairs were therefore to be addressed directly to Berthier, for the emperor’s information. Finally the half million of francs hitherto given monthly to the king was to be increased to a million for the year 1811; and it was expected that Joseph would immediately reorganize the army of the centre, restore its discipline, and make it, what it had not yet been, of weight in the contest.

The king afterwards obtained some further concessions,Ibid. the most important of which related to the employment and assembling of Spaniards according to his own directions and plans. This final arrangement and the importance given to Joseph’s return, for by the emperor’s orders, he was received as if he had only been to Paris to concert a great plan, produced a good effect for a short time; but after the fall of Figueras, Napoleon fearing to trust Spanish civilians, extended the plan, hitherto confined to Catalonia, of employing French intendants in all the provinces on the left of the Ebro. Then the king’s jealousy was again excited, and the old bickerings between him and the marshals were revived.

POLITICAL SITUATION OF FRANCE.

In 1811 the emperor’s power over the continent, as far as the frontier of Russia, was in fact, absolute; and in France internal prosperity was enjoyed with external glory. But the emperor of Russia, stimulated by English diplomacy, and by a personal discontent; in dread also of his nobles, who were impatient under the losses which the continental system inflicted upon them, was plainly in opposition to the ascendancy of France, and Napoleon, although wishing to avoid a rupture, was too long-sighted, not to perceive, that it was time to prepare for a more gigantic contest than any he had hitherto engaged in. He therefore husbanded his money and soldiers, and would no longer lavish them upon the Spanish war. He had poured men indeed continually into that country, but these were generally conscripts, while in the north of France he was forming a reserve of two hundred thousand old soldiers; but with that art that it was doubtful whether they were intended for the Peninsula or for ulterior objects, being ready for either, according to circumstances.

Such an uncertain state of affairs, prevented him from taking more decided steps, in person, with relation to Spain, which he would undoubtedly have done if the war there, had been the only great matter on his hands, and therefore the aspect of French politics, both in Spain and other places, was favourable to lord Wellington’s views. A Russian war, sooner or later, was one of the principal chances upon which he rested his hopes of final success; yet his anticipations were dashed with fear, for the situation of the Spanish and Portuguese governments, and of their armies, and the condition of the English government, were by no means so favourable to his plans, as shall be shewn in the next chapter.