A vigorous pursuit might have done much further harm to the defeated Spaniards; but Bessières’ men had been marching since two in the morning, and fighting all through the mid-day. They were much fatigued, and their commander did not press the chase far beyond the river. But the town of Rio Seco was sacked from cellar to garret, with much slaying of non-combatants and outrages of all kinds[139], a fact very discreditable to the marshal, who could have stopped the plunder had he chosen.
The defeated generals met, a little to the west of the battle-field, and after a bitter altercation, in which Blake used the plainest words about Cuesta’s generalship, parted in wrath. The Galicians retired by the way they had come, and joined the division which had been left behind three days before; they then went back to the passes above Astorga, abandoning a considerable amount of stores at Benavente. Cuesta took the army of Castile to Leon, retiring on the Asturias rather than on Galicia.
Bessières’ well-earned victory was creditable to himself and his troops, but the way had been made easy for him by the astounding tactical errors of the Captain-General of Castile. The rank and file of the Spanish army had no reason to be ashamed of their conduct: it was their commander who should have blushed at the reckless way in which he had sacrificed his willing troops. Handled by Cuesta the best army in the world might have been defeated by inferior numbers.
The strategical results of the battle of Rio Seco were great and far-reaching. All danger of the cutting of the communications between Madrid and Bayonne was averted, and Napoleon, his mind set at rest on this point, could now assert that Dupont’s position in Andalusia was henceforth the only hazardous point in his great scheme of invasion[140]. It would clearly be a very long time before the army of Galicia would again dare to take the offensive, and meanwhile Madrid was safe, and the attempt to conquer Southern Spain could be resumed without any fear of interruption. Bessières, after such a victory, was strong enough not to require any further reinforcements from the central reserve in and about the capital.
The most obvious result of Rio Seco was that King Joseph was now able to proceed on his way to Madrid, and to enter the city in triumph. After receiving the homage of the Spanish notables at Bayonne, and nominating a ministry, he had crossed the frontier on July 9. But he had been obliged to stop short at Burgos, till Bessières should have beaten off the attack of Blake and Cuesta: his presence there had been most inconvenient to the marshal, who had been forced to leave behind for his protection Rey’s veteran brigade of Mouton’s division, which he would gladly have taken out to the approaching battle.
When the news of Medina de Rio Seco arrived at Burgos, the usurper resumed his march on Madrid, still escorted by Rey’s troops. He travelled by short stages, stopping at every town to be complimented by reluctant magistrates and corporations, who dared not refuse their homage. The populace everywhere shut itself up in its houses in silent protest. Joseph’s state entry into Madrid on July 20 was the culminating point of the melancholy farce. He passed through the streets with a brilliant staff, between long lines of French bayonets, and amid the blare of military music. But not a Spaniard was to be seen except the handful of courtiers and officials who had accepted the new government. The attempts of the French to produce a demonstration, or even to get the town decorated, had met with passive disobedience. Like Charles of Austria when he entered Madrid in 1710, Joseph Bonaparte might have exclaimed that he could see ‘a court, but no people’ about him. But he affected not to notice the dismal side of the situation, assumed an exaggerated urbanity, and heaped compliments and preferment on the small section of Afrancesados who adhered to him.
The usurper had resolved to give himself as much as possible the air of a Spanish national king. Of all his Neapolitan court he had brought with him only one personage, his favourite Saligny, whom he had made Duke of San Germano. The rest of his household was composed of nobles and officials chosen from among the herd which had bowed before him at Bayonne. There were among them several of the late partisans of King Ferdinand, of whom some had frankly sold themselves to his supplanter, while others (like the Duke of Infantado) were only looking for an opportunity to abscond when it might present itself. The first list of ministers was also full of names that were already well known in the Spanish bureaucracy. Of the cabinet of Ferdinand VII, Cevallos the minister of Foreign Affairs, O’Farrill at the War Office, Piñuela at the ministry of Justice, were base enough to accept the continuation of their powers by the usurper. Urquijo, who took the Secretaryship of State, was an old victim of Godoy’s, who had once before held office under Charles IV. Mazarredo, who was placed at the ministry of Marine, was perhaps the most distinguished officer in the Spanish navy. But Joseph imagined that his greatest stroke of policy was the appointment as minister of the Interior of Gaspar de Jovellanos, the most prominent among the Spanish liberals, whose reputation for wisdom and patriotism had cost him a long imprisonment during the days of the Prince of the Peace. The idea was ingenious, but the plan for strengthening the ministry failed, for Jovellanos utterly refused to take office along with a clique of traitors and in the cabinet of a usurper. Yet even without him, the body of courtiers and officials whom Joseph collected was far more respectable, from their high station and old experience, than might have been expected—a fact very disgraceful to the Spanish bureaucrats.
In less troublous times, and with a more legitimate title to the crown, Joseph Bonaparte might have made a very tolerable king. He was certainly a far more worthy occupant of the throne than any of the miserable Spanish Bourbons: but he was not of the stuff of which successful usurpers are made. He was a weak, well-intentioned man, not destitute of a heart or a conscience: and as he gradually realized all the evils that he had brought on Spain by his ill-regulated ambition, he grew less and less satisfied with his position as his brother’s tool. He made long and untiring efforts to conciliate the Spaniards, by an unwavering affability and mildness, combined with a strict attention to public business. Unfortunately all his efforts were counteracted by his brother’s harshness, and by the greed and violence of the French generals, over whom he could never gain any control. It is a great testimony in his favour that the Spanish people despised rather than hated him: their more violent animosity was reserved for Napoleon. His nominal subjects agreed to regard him as a humorous character: they laughed at his long harangues, in which Neapolitan phrases were too often mixed with the sonorous Castilian: they insisted that he was blind of one eye—which did not happen to be the case. They spoke of him as always occupied with the pleasures of the table and with miscellaneous amours—accusations for which there was a very slight foundation of fact. They insisted that he was a coward and a sluggard—titles which he was far from meriting. He was, they said, perpetually hoodwinked, baffled, and bullied, alike by his generals, his ministers, and his mistresses. But they never really hated him—a fact which, considering the manner of his accession, must be held to be very much to his credit.
But the first stay of the ‘Intrusive King,’ as the Spaniards called him, in his capital, was to be very short. He had only arrived there on July 20: his formal proclamation took place on the twenty-fourth. He had hardly settled down in the royal palace, and commenced a dispute with the effete ‘Council of Castile’—which with unexpected obstinacy refused to swear the oath to him and to the constitution of Bayonne—when he was obliged to take to flight. On the twenty-fourth rumours began to be current in Madrid that a great disaster had taken place in Andalusia, and that Dupont’s army had been annihilated. On the twenty-eighth the news was confirmed in every particular. On August 1, the King, the court, and the 20,000 French troops which still remained in and about the capital, marched out by the northern road, and took their way towards the Ebro. This retreat was the result of a great council of war, in which the energetic advice of Savary, who wished to fight one more battle in front of the capital, with all the forces that could be concentrated, was overruled by the King and the majority of the generals. ‘A council of war never fights,’ as has been most truly observed.