The industrial arts.
As for the various lesser arts of an industrial character, such as the making of furniture, articles of gold and silver, rich fabrics, and vases, the same succession of baroque and neo-classic styles is to be noted. Thus the furniture of the earlier years affected twisted and grotesque forms, while it was later shaped upon stiltedly correct lines. The azulejos industry remained in existence, making use of blue, yellow, green, and occasionally rose. Gold work was of scant importance, but the making of tapestries was rather notable; they were combined with the paintings of leading artists, many of which were supplied by Goya.
Spanish music.
In the realm of music the realistic and popular indigenous type had to contend against the Italian school. The latter found favor at court and among the erudite, but the national product held its own with the people, appearing especially in the plays of dramatists of the Spanish school, such as Ramón de la Cruz. Some of the native songs were mythological or idyllic in character, but usually they were satirical or funny, interwoven with popular melodies and even with the musical cries with which street vendors called out their wares, admirably adapted to the realistic plays in which they were sung. It was to the national Spanish music that the great foreign masters looked, and this, therefore, was able to contribute notably to the progress of the art; Mozart and Rossini were among the composers affected by Spanish influences. Despite the construction at this time of magnificent organs, religious music in Spain remained in a state of corruption and decay. The guitar continued to be the favorite musical instrument.
CHAPTER XXXIX
THE GROWTH OF LIBERALISM, 1808-1898
The Spanish American wars of independence and the virtual completion of Spain’s gift to the Americas.
WITH the outbreak of the Spanish “War of Independence” against Napoleon the interest of Spain proper as affecting the Americas almost if not wholly ceased. Her gift to the new world was by this time complete except as regards the island dependencies of the West Indies and the Philippines in the Far East. She was still to have important relations with the Americas, such as her vain endeavor to suppress the revolutions of her colonies and her relations with the United States concerning Florida and Cuba, but those matters belong to the field of Hispanic American history rather than to that of Spain as conceived in the present work. In 1808 the news of the accession of Joseph Bonaparte to the throne of Spain, after Napoleon had wrested the abdication of their rights from Charles IV and Ferdinand VII, was received in the colonies with hostile demonstrations, for the majority of Spanish Americans were loyal to Ferdinand. When in 1809 all the peninsula seemed lost, many began to hold to the view that relations with Spain, which had always been rather with the king than with the nation, were severed, and in the next year certain regions set up governments of their own, thus starting the movement for independence which ended only with the battle of Ayacucho in 1824.[67] Circumstances, skilfully directed by separatist leaders, had led the Americas to proceed out of what was at first a feeling of patriotism to the royal government to what eventually resulted in embittered wars against it. The wars were fought largely, though not wholly, by the colonists themselves, one faction supporting the newly constituted governmental machinery in the Americas, and the other following the lead of the changing national régimes in Spain,—just as if the war of the American Revolution had been a conflict of Whigs and Tories. It becomes pertinent, then, to enquire why Spain did not make a more strenuous effort to overcome the rebellions in her colonies, which she had always regarded as vital to her, and why she did not seriously attempt to reconquer them in the course of the nineteenth century. The answer lies in a statement of the internal affairs of Spain, who went through one of the most trying periods in the annals of the peninsula, characterized by an incessant recurrence of disturbances and even civil war. For Spain herself, however, it was a period of advance along Liberal lines. Spain gained, though it cost her an empire.
Patriotic Spanish uprising against Napoleon.
The years 1808 to 1814 are almost the only time in the century to which Spaniards may look back with satisfaction and pride, but the glory of their war against Napoleon may well be regarded by them as compensation for their losses and degradation in other respects. It took several weeks for the news of the treachery of Bayonne, followed by the events of the Dos de Mayo, to circulate throughout Spain. When at last the people comprehended what had happened, a wild outburst of rage against the French swept the peninsula. Between May 24 and June 10 every region in the country rose in arms against the invaders, each district acting independently, but all actuated by the same motives. As an English writer (Oman) has expressed it: “The movement was spontaneous, unselfish, and reckless; in its wounded pride, the nation challenged Napoleon to combat, without any thought of the consequences, without counting up its own resources or those of the enemy.” Juntas, or governing groups, for the various provinces hastily constituted themselves and prepared for the conflict. There were some 100,000 widely scattered Spanish troops, between men of the regular army and the militia, but they were almost wholly unfit to take the field, and as events proved were badly officered. Against them were about 117,000 French soldiers in the peninsula (including 28,000 in Portugal), and though these were far from equalling Napoleon’s best military units they were vastly superior in every technical respect to the Spaniards. If it had been a mere question of armies in the field there could have been no doubt as to the outcome in the shape of a decisive French victory, but something was going on in Spain which Napoleon had never dreamed of and seemed unable to understand; in a land stirred by the furor of patriotism such as had permeated all Spain the ordinary rules of military science had to be left in abeyance. Napoleon thought that all was over, when things were just about to begin; flying patrols here and there, a species of mounted police, would be enough, he believed, in addition to the existing garrisons, to keep the peninsula under control. It was of a piece with this estimate that he should send General Dupont with a column of 13,000 men, later reinforced up to 22,000, to effect the conquest of Andalusia. Dupont found, what other French commanders were to learn after him, that the only land he could conquer was that actually occupied at a given time by his soldiers; the country in his rear rose behind him as surely as the armies before him stood ready at the first opportunity to oppose his advance. Getting into a difficult position at Baylén, he surrendered to the Spanish general, Castaños, on June 23, with 18,000 men. In less than two months the disorganized Spanish forces had been able to strike a blow such as French arms had not received for nine years. Meanwhile, Joseph Bonaparte, who had been designated by Napoleon for the crown of Spain as early as in the month of March, had been offered the throne on May 13 by the French-dominated Junta of the Regency, of Madrid, and on June 15 at Bayonne by a deputation of Spanish nobles who had been ordered to go there for precisely that purpose. Joseph had entered Madrid in July, but the capitulation of Baylén caused him to leave that city and retire with most of his forces behind the Ebro. Thus had the patriots won in their first trial of arms, and the moral effect of the victory made it certain, henceforth, that the Spaniards would fight to the end.
The Spanish War of Independence.