[390] Baron Vincent.
[391] See the dispatch (Nap. Corresp., 14,380).
[392] Napoleon to Champagny (Nap. Corresp., 14,643).
[393] Napoleon to Champagny (Nap. Corresp., 14,643).
[394] It is strange to find that Napier was convinced that Napoleon had a real desire for peace, and hoped to secure it by the proposals of October, 1808. He writes (i. 210): ‘The English ministers asserted that the whole proceeding was an artifice to sow distrust among his enemies. Yet what enemies were they among whom he could create this uneasy feeling? Sweden, Sicily, Portugal! the notion as applied to them was absurd; it is more probable that he was sincere. He said so at St. Helena, and the circumstances of the period warrant a belief in that assertion.’ But Napier has failed to see that the design was not to ‘sow distrust among his enemies.’ The whole business was intended to influence French public opinion, and in a secondary way the public opinion of all Europe. Bonaparte wished to pose as a friend of peace, and to bestow on England the unenviable rôle of the selfish fomenter of wars. With many simple folk in France and elsewhere he succeeded, but no Englishman, save one blinded by a dislike for everything Tory, could have been deceived.
[395] For the organization and state of Blake’s force, see the [Appendix].
[396] The Asturias had raised nineteen new battalions: of these eight went forward with Blake, and eleven remained behind.
[397] The 4th Galician Division under the Marquis of Portago.
[398] The 3rd Galician Division under General Riquelme.
[399] All these moves are best described in Marshal Jourdan’s Mémoires (edited by Grouchy; Paris, 1899), pp. 71-5.