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The aspect of affairs in Spain at the commencement of 1810 was gloomy in the extreme. Scarcely a town, fortress, or army remained to the Spaniards; yet, perhaps, never did Napoleon feel a deeper anxiety concerning it. The spirit of the people had shown that it could not be easily subdued. He might beat its regular troops, and compel the surrender of cities, after long and severe sieges, but there still remained a whole population hostile to him. Throughout all the mountain districts the inhabitants might be said to be still in arms against him, and there was a fire burning in the general Spanish heart that might at any moment blaze up into a dangerous flame, or, if not, must wear out his troops, his energies, and his resources. Napoleon had yet to discover that it is impossible to subdue the people of a mountainous country, so as to rule them in peace, if they are at heart opposed to the ruler.

Yet, looking at Spain from a mere momentary point of view, its condition was sad enough. Saragossa had undergone a second siege, in which the inhabitants had again made a brilliant stand, and caused the French much loss and suffering, though compelled at length to surrender. The battle of Ocaña, in November of 1809, had been lost by Areizaga, and left Spain without a single considerable army. During the latter part of the same year, General Reding, the patriotic Swiss general, had been defeated at Valls. Blake had sustained two heavy defeats near Saragossa and Belchite, with the loss of the greater part of his artillery and men. Gerona had withstood a desperate siege, but was compelled to capitulate on the 10th of December. Tarragona and Tortosa had suffered the same fate. In some of these towns the Spaniards had not yielded till they had killed and eaten their horses and mules.

Towards the end of the year Soult had been recalled to Madrid, to take the place of Jourdain, who was remanded to Paris. Soult then determined to make an expedition into the south, to subdue Seville and Cadiz—the last places of consequence left to the Spaniards. He took King Joseph with him, or rather, perhaps, King Joseph was afraid to be left in the capital without his protection. The battle of Ocaña, and the destruction of Areizaga's army, left the passes of the Sierra Morena all open, and on the 21st of January Soult was at Baylen, where the army of Dupont had surrendered. Thence he pushed forward for Seville, sending other divisions of the army to traverse Malaga and Granada. Nothing could be more favourable to the visit of Soult than the then condition of Seville. The stupid, proud, ignorant Junta had refused all proffers of aid from the British, and they had, at the same time, worn out the patience of the people, who had risen upon them, and expelled them from the place. They then fled to Cadiz, in the hope of renewing their authority there; but they met with a still fiercer reception from the people of Cadiz, and were compelled formally to resign. As for the inhabitants of Seville, they talked of defending the city against the French, but there was no order amongst them, no authority, and they did nothing. Soult marched on from town to town, collecting a rich spoil everywhere, which the Spaniards had left behind them. They seemed to think of carrying away with them only their money, but a mass of other wealth fell into the hands of the French, and amongst it, as usual, great quantities of British cannon, muskets, and ammunition, which assisted in enabling the French to fight with us. Soult entered Cordova in triumph on the 17th of January, and Seville on the 1st of February, and there King Joseph established his court for some time.

CADIZ.

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Soult sent on Marshal Victor, without delay, to surprise and seize Cadiz. But the Duke of Albuquerque, with eight or ten thousand men, had been called at the first alarm, and, making a rapid march of two hundred and sixty English miles, reached the city just before him. The garrison now consisted of twenty thousand men—British, Spanish, and Portuguese—commanded chiefly by General Graham, an officer who had distinguished himself at Toulon, at the same time that Buonaparte first made his merit conspicuous. The British troops had been offered by Lord Wellington, and, though insolently refused by the Junta before, were now thankfully accepted. Some were hastened from Torres Vedras, under command of the Hon. Major-General Stewart, and some from Gibraltar. The British, independent of the Portuguese under their command, amounted to six thousand. The Spanish authorities, having their eyes opened at length to the value of the British alliance, now gave the command of their little fleet to Admiral Purvis, who put the ships, twenty in number, into tolerable order, and joined them to his own squadron. With these moored across the harbour, he kept the sea open for all necessary supplies; and though Soult, accompanied by King Joseph, arrived on the 25th of February, and sat down before the place, occupying the country round from Rota to Chiclano, with twenty-five thousand men, he could make no impression against Cadiz, and the siege was continued till the 12th of August, 1812, when the successes of Wellington warned them to be moving. It was an essential advantage to Wellington's campaign that twenty-eight thousand French should thus be kept lying before this place.

In Andalusia, the French under Sebastiani held Malaga and Granada; but more eastward, the Spanish made a very troublesome resistance. It was in vain that Sebastiani marched into the mountains of Murcia to disperse the forces that Blake was again collecting there. Beaten in one place, they appeared in another. A strong force, under General Lacey, surprised a body of six thousand French at Ronda, and put them to flight, securing their arms and stores. In Catalonia, General O'Donnell stood his ground well, the country not only being by nature strong, but lying along the coast, where the British could support them by their fleets. Rushing from their hills and mountain forts, the Catalonian militia continually inflicted severe chastisement on the French invaders, and then retired to their fortresses. Marshals Suchet, Augereau, and Macdonald found it impossible to make permanent head against O'Donnell and the Catalonians. In fact, though Spain might seem to be conquered, having no great armies in the field, it was never less so—and that Buonaparte felt. Wherever there were hills and forests, they swarmed with sharpshooters. For this species of warfare—the guerilla—the Spanish were peculiarly adapted. The mountaineers, headed by the priest, the doctor, or the shepherd, men who, in spite of their ordinary habits, had a genius for enterprise, were continually on the watch to surprise and cut off the enemy. Other bodies of them were led by men of high birth, or of military training, but who were distinguished for their superior spirit and endurance of fatigue. These leaders had the most perfect knowledge of the woods and passes of the mountains, and had the most immediate information from the peasantry of the movements of the French. They could, therefore, come upon them when totally unlooked-for, and cut them off suddenly. If they were repulsed they disappeared like shadows into the forests and deserts. Sometimes they came several thousand strong; sometimes a little band of ten or twenty men would dash forward from their concealment and effect some startling deed. To chase them appeared hopeless, for they vanished in a thousand ways, as water sinks into the earth and disappears. To intimidate them, Soult published a proclamation that he would treat them as bandits, and immediately shoot all that he captured; and the commanders replied by another proclamation that for every Spaniard shot they would execute three Frenchmen; and they so literally fulfilled their threat that the French were compelled to return to the ordinary rules of warfare.

Such was the state of Spain, though nominally conquered by the French. It was only held by a vast force, and there was no prospect that this force could ever be dispensed with. Joseph was so heartily tired of his kingdom that, on going to Paris to attend Napoleon's marriage, he declared that he would abdicate unless he were made generalissimo of all the forces in Spain, the separate generals, in their own provinces, paying but little regard to his commands, but each acting as if viceroy of his own province. To Napoleon the state of things was equally irksome. The drain of men and money was intolerable, and appeared without prospect of any end. He resolved, therefore, to make a gigantic effort to drive the British out of Portugal, when he hoped to be able to subjugate Spain. He could not yet proceed thither himself, but he sent heavy reinforcements under Drouet and Junot, and dispatched Massena, who was reckoned the greatest general next to himself, to drive Wellington into the sea. Massena had been so uniformly victorious, that Buonaparte styled him "the dear child of victory," and had made him Prince of Esslingen.