Meanwhile he had to face the situation: within a few hours of the moment when Villoutreys placed Dupont’s dispatch in his hands, he had so far got over the first spasms of his wrath that he was able to dictate a general plan for the reconcentration of his armies[330]. We have compared the French forces in Spain to a broad wedge, of which the point, directed against the heart of the insurrection, was formed by the three divisions of Dupont’s corps. This point had now been broken off; but the Emperor, still clinging to the idea of the wedge, wished to preserve Madrid and to form in and about it a new army fit for offensive operations. With this force he would strike at the insurgents of Andalusia and Valencia when they marched on the capital, while Bessières in the valley of the Douro, and Verdier in the valley of the Ebro were still to preserve a forward position, and shield the army of the centre from the flank attacks of the Galicians and the Aragonese. The troops left around Madrid at the moment of the disaster of Baylen were parts of the three divisions of Moncey’s corps[331], one of Dupont’s, and the brigade which had escorted Joseph Napoleon from Burgos, together with 3,000 horse—a total of about 23,000 men. Bonaparte judged that this was not enough to resist the combined attack of Castaños and of the Valencians and Murcians of Saint March and Llamas. Accordingly he intended that Bessières should lend the King two brigades of infantry—a deduction from his force which would compel him to fall back from Leon into Old Castile[332]—and that Verdier should spare a brigade from the army in front of Saragossa[333], though it was none too strong for the task before it. Six battalions from the reserve at Bayonne were to make a forced march to Madrid to join the King. Thus reinforced up to 35,000 men, the corps at Madrid would be able, as the Emperor supposed, to make head against any combination of Spanish troops that could possibly be brought against it.
But all these arrangements were futile. Bonaparte at Bordeaux was separated from his brother at the Retiro by so many miles that his orders were grown stale before they reached their destination. His scheme was made out on August 2, but on the preceding day King Joseph and his whole army had evacuated Madrid. The terror of Baylen was upon them, and they were expecting every moment to find themselves attacked by Castaños, who was as a matter of fact celebrating triumphal feasts at Seville. With a haste that turned out to be altogether unnecessary, Moncey’s corps, escorting the King, his court, and his long train of Spanish refugees, crossed the Somosierra and did not halt till they reached Aranda de Duero, in the plains of Old Castile. Napoleon was forced to make other plans in view of this retreat, whose moral consequences were hardly inferior in importance to those of Dupont’s capitulation. For both the Spanish nation and the courts of Europe looked upon the evacuation of Madrid as marking the complete downfall of Napoleon’s policy, and portending a speedy retirement of the invaders behind the Pyrenees. It is certain that if the spirit of Joseph and his advisers had been unbroken, they might have clung to the capital till the reinforcements which the Emperor was hurrying to their aid had arrived. It is probable that the 35,000 men, of whom Savary and Moncey could then have disposed, might have held Castaños in check till the army from the Rhine had time to come up. Yet there is every excuse for the behaviour of the French commanders, for they could not possibly have known that the Spaniards would move with such astonishing slowness, or that they would refrain from hurling every available man on Madrid. And as a matter of fact the evacuation of the capital turned out in the end to be advantageous to Napoleon, for it inspired his adversaries with a foolish self-confidence which proved their ruin. If they had been forced to fight hard in New Castile, they would have been obliged to throw much more energy into the struggle, and could not have slackened their efforts under the false impression that the French were absconding in dismay to Bayonne.
When Bonaparte learnt that his brother had fled from Madrid and crossed the passes into Old Castile, he was forced to draw out a wholly different scheme from that which he had sketched on August 2. The King, he wrote, with Moncey’s corps, must take post at Aranda, where the Douro is crossed by the high-road from France to Madrid. His army should be strengthened to a force of 30,000 men: meanwhile Bessières and Verdier must protect his flanks. The former with 15,000 men should take Valladolid as his head quarters and guard against any attempt of Blake to resume the offensive. As to Verdier, since he had been instructed to abandon the siege of Saragossa—a grave blunder—he must be drawn back as far as Tudela on the Middle Ebro. From that point he would easily be able to ‘contain’ the tumultuary army of Palafox. If the Spaniards showed signs of pressing in on any part of the front, the King, Verdier, or Bessières—as the case might demand—must not hang back, but endeavour to shatter the vanguard of any advancing force by a bold stroke. At all costs the war must not be waged in a timid style—in short, to adopt a well-known military axiom, ‘the best defensive would be a vigorous local offensive[334].’ Meanwhile it should be known that enormous reinforcements were in march from the Rhine and the Elbe. This was indubitably correct, for on August 5 the 1st and 6th Corps of the ‘Grand Army,’ and two divisions of heavy cavalry, had been sent their orders to break up from their garrisons and set out for Spain[335]. The Viceroy of Italy and the Princes of the Confederation of the Rhine had also been directed to send large contingents to the Peninsula: the troops from Italy were to move on Perpignan and strengthen the army of Catalonia; those from the German states were to march on Bayonne and join the main army[336]. Somewhat later the Emperor directed still further masses of men to be drawn off from Germany, namely Marshal Mortier with the 5th Corps and two more divisions of dragoons[337], while the whole of the Imperial Guard came down from Paris on the same errand[338]. There were still nearly 100,000 of the old army left in Spain[339], and the reinforcements would amount to 130,000 more, a force which when united would far surpass both in numbers and in quality any army that the Spaniards would be able to get together in the course of the next two months.
It was from Rochefort and on August 5 that Napoleon sent off his orders to his brother to stay his retreat at Aranda de Duero, and to keep Bessières at Valladolid and Verdier at Tudela. Once more the distances of space and time were too much for him. Before the dispatch from Rochefort came to hand, Joseph and Savary had already abandoned Aranda: they left it on the sixth and by the ninth were at Burgos. At that city they were met by Bessières, who according to the King’s orders had fallen back from the Esla to the Arlanzon. Napoleon’s elaborate scheme for the maintenance of the line of the Douro had thus fallen through, as completely as his earlier plan for the defence of Madrid. Seeing that his orders were clearly out of date, Moncey and Bessières[340] agreed that they might be disregarded. The next line suitable for an army acting on the defensive was that of the Ebro, and to the banks of that river the dispirited army of France now withdrew.
The head quarters were established at Miranda: the troops of Bessières and Moncey were massed at that place and at Logroño, with a strong detachment across the Ebro at Pancorbo, and some cavalry lying out as far as Burgos: Verdier’s army, after finally raising the siege of Saragossa, fell back on Milagro, the point where the Aragon falls into the Ebro. Thus some 70,000 men were concentrated on a comparatively short and compact front, covering the two great roads which lead to France by Vittoria and by Pampeluna. Against any frontal attack from the direction of Madrid the position was very strong. But a glance at the map shows that the flanks were not properly protected: there was nothing to prevent Blake from turning the extreme right by an advance into Biscay, or to prevent Palafox from turning the extreme left by a march on Pampeluna via Tafalla or Sanguesa. If either of these moves were made by a powerful force, the army on the Ebro would be compelled either to abandon its positions in order to go in pursuit, or else to leave them occupied by a detachment insufficient to resist a serious attack along the line of the high-road from Madrid. Both those operations were ultimately taken in hand by the Spaniards, but it was at too late an hour, when the reinforcements from Germany had begun to arrive, and when ample means were at the disposal of the French generals for repulsing flank attacks, without drawing off men from the line of the Ebro. The astounding slowness of the Spaniards, and the lamentable want of union between the commanders of the various provincial armies, ruined any chance that there might have been of success. The troops of King Joseph were safely installed in their defensive positions by August 15. On that day the leading columns of the Spanish army had only just arrived at Madrid. It was not till a month later that the number of troops brought forward to the line of the Ebro approached the total strength of the host of the intrusive King. The offensive operations of Blake and Palafox did not commence till the second half of September, when the columns of the ‘Grand Army’ were already drawing near to the Pyrenees, and all possible chance of success had long gone by. They were not developed till October, when the counter-stroke of the French was fully prepared. From August 15 down to the day of the battle of Zornoza (October 31) there are two months and a half of wasted time, during which the Spaniards did nothing more than stir up an ineffectual rising in Biscay and gradually push to the front scattered corps whose total did not amount to much more than 100,000 men. The troops of Bonaparte on the other hand—now under the orders of Jourdan, who arrived at Miranda on August 25[341]—had little to do but to ward off the feeble attempts to cut their communications in Biscay, and to incorporate, brigade by brigade, the numerous reinforcements which kept marching in from Bayonne. For even ere the three veteran corps from Germany came to hand, there was a continuous stream of troops pouring across the Pyrenees. Most important, perhaps, of all the arrivals was that of Marshal Ney, the toughest and most resolute of all the Emperor’s fighting-men, who brought with him a spirit of enterprise and confidence which had long been wanting in the army of Spain[342].
SECTION VI: CHAPTER II
CREATION OF THE ‘JUNTA GENERAL’
On August 1, Madrid had seen the last of the French: yet it was not till the thirteenth that the Spanish troops appeared before the gates of the capital. Even then it was not the victorious army of Andalusia which presented itself, but only the Valencian corps of Llamas, a mere division of 8,000 men, which would not have dared to push forward, had it not known that Joseph Bonaparte and all his train were now far on their way towards the Ebro. During the thirteen days which elapsed between his departure and the arrival of the Valencians there was a curious interregnum in Madrid. It took some time to convince the populace and the local authorities that the hated invaders were really gone, and that they were once more their own masters. Nothing reflects the state of public opinion better than the Madrid Gazette: down to August 1, it shows the hand of a French editor; ‘His Majesty’ means King Joseph, and all the foreign intelligence is coloured with French views. On August 2 the foreign influence begins to disappear, and we note a very cautious and tentative proclamation by the old ‘Council of Castile.’ That effete body, shorn by the French of most of its prominent members, had repeatedly yielded to the orders of Murat and Savary: it had carried out many decrees of the new executive, yet it had never actually recognized the legality of King Joseph’s accession. Indeed at the last moment it had striven, by feeble methods of evasion and delay, to avoid committing itself to this final step. But we may guess that, had there been no Baylen, the Council would finally have made up its mind to ‘swallow the pill’—if we may use once more Murat’s characteristic phrase. However, the flight of Joseph had saved it from being forced to range itself on the side of the traitors, and its members were able to stay behind in Madrid without fearing for their necks. In their first manifesto there is not a word that could have offended Savary, if he had returned the next day. It preaches the necessity of calm, order, and quiet: no one must stir up mobs, compromise the public safety, or vex his respectable neighbours[343]. The rest of the paper on this and the two following days is filled up with essays on geography and political economy, lists of servants seeking places, and colourless foreign news many weeks old. Such piteous stuff was not likely to keep the people quiet: on August 4 a mob assembled, broke open the house of Don Luis Viguri (one of Godoy’s old confidants), murdered him, and dragged his body through the streets. Fearing that they too might be considered Afrancesados the Council published a second proclamation of the most abject kind. The ‘melancholy instance of insubordination’ of the previous day causes them ‘intolerable sorrow’ and is ‘unlikely to tend to public felicity.’ The loyal and generous citizens ought to wait for the working of the law and its ministers, and not to take the execution of justice into their own hands. The clergy, the local officials, every employer of labour, every father of a family, are begged to help to maintain peace and order. Then comes a page of notices of new books, and a short paper on the ethics of emigration! Of Ferdinand VII or Joseph I, of politics domestic or foreign, there is not a word. Two days later the Council at last makes up its mind, and, after a week of most uncomfortable sitting on the fence, suddenly bursts out into an ‘Address to the honourable and generous people of the capital of Spain,’ in the highest strain of patriotism: ‘Our loved King is in chains, but his loyal subjects have risen in his name. Our gallant armies have achieved triumphs over “the invincibles of Marengo, Austerlitz, and Jena.” All Europe stands surprised at their rapid victories. These fellow citizens of ours, crowned with the laurels of success, will soon be with us. Meanwhile the Council must beg the patriotic citizens of Madrid to abstain from riot and murder, and to turn their energies into more useful channels. Let them prostrate themselves before the altar in grateful thanks to God, and make preparations to receive and embrace the oncoming bands of liberators.’ Domestic intelligence becomes for the future a list of French atrocities, and of (sometimes apocryphal) victories in the remoter corners of Spain[344]. Foreign intelligence is served up with an English rather than a French flavour. The arsenal of ‘Volovich[345]’ is shipping scores of cannon and thousands of muskets for the use of the brave Spaniards, the treasures of Great Britain are to be poured into the hands of the insurrectionary Juntas, and so forth. All this comes a little late: the good intentions of the Council would have been more clear if they had been expressed on August 2 instead of August 7, when the French were still at Buitrago, rather than when they were far away beyond Aranda de Duero[346].
It is really astonishing to find that the Council made a bid for power, and attempted to assume the pose of a senate of warm-hearted patriots, after all its base servility to Murat and Savary during the last six months. Its president, Don Arias Mon y Velarde, actually had the audacity to write a circular-note to the various provincial Juntas of Spain, proposing that, as a single central government must obviously be established, they should send representatives to Madrid to concert with the Council on means of defence, and lend it the aid of their influence and authority. That such a discredited body should attempt to assume a kind of presidential authority over the local Juntas who had raised and directed the insurrection was absurd. The replies which were returned were of the most uncompromising kind: the Galician Junta taunted the Council with having been ‘the most active instrument of the Usurper.’ Palafox, speaking for Aragon, wrote that it ‘was a corporation which had not done its duty.’ The active and ambitious Junta of Seville wished to accuse the Council before the face of the Spanish people ‘of having subverted the fundamental laws of the realm, of having given the enemy every facility for seizing the domination of Spain, of having lost all legal authority and become null and void, and of being suspected of deliberate treason of the most atrocious sort possible.’ The Valencians voted that ‘no public body of any kind ought to enter into correspondence with the Council of Castile, or come to any understanding with it[347].’ All these rebuffs to the Council were well deserved, and it is clear that the provincial Juntas were entirely justified in their action. But it is to be feared that there lay at the bottom of their hearts not merely honest indignation at the impudent proposal that had been laid before them, but a not unnatural desire to cling as long as possible to their existing power and authority. In many of the provinces there was shown a most unworthy and unwise reluctance to proceed at once to the construction of a single governing body for Spain, even when the proposal was put forward not by a discredited corporation like the Council, but by men of undoubted patriotism.