Under the belief that the Spaniards were still quartered in the Hanse towns and Holstein, Canning sent for Robertson and asked him whether he would undertake this dangerous mission to Northern Germany. The priest accepted the offer, and was dispatched to Heligoland, where Mr. Mackenzie, the British agent in this lately seized island, found him a place on board a smuggling vessel bound for the mouth of the Weser. He was safely landed near Bremerhafen and made his way to Hamburg, only to find that the Spaniards had been moved northward into the Danish isles. This made the mission more dangerous, as Robertson knew neither the country nor the language. But he disguised himself as a German commercial traveller, and laid in a stock of chocolate and cigars—things which were very rare in the North, as along with other colonial produce they were proscribed by the Continental System, and could only be got from smugglers. It was known that the Spanish officers felt deeply their privation of the two luxuries most dear to their frugal race, so that it seemed very natural that a dealer in such goods should attempt to find a market among them.
Getting to Nyborg without much difficulty, the priest took his fate in his hands, and introduced himself to La Romana with a box of cigars under one arm and a dozen packets of chocolate under the other. When they were alone, he threw himself on the Marquis’s confidence, owning that he was a priest and a British subject, not a German or a commercial traveller. The Spaniard was at first suspicious and silent, thinking that he had to deal with an agent provocateur of the French Government, who was trying to make him show his hand. Robertson had no written vouchers for his mission—they would have been too dangerous—but had been given some verbal credentials by Canning, which soon convinced La Romana of his good faith. The Marquis then owned that he was disgusted with his position, and felt sure that Napoleon had plotted the ruin of Spain, though what exactly had happened at Bayonne he had not yet been able to ascertain. Robertson next laid before him Canning’s offer—that if the expeditionary force could be concentrated and got to the coast, the Baltic fleet should pick it up, and see that it was landed at Minorca, Gibraltar, the Canaries, in South America, or at any point in Spain that the Marquis might select.
La Romana asked for a night to talk the matter over with his staff, and next day gave his full consent to the plan, bidding the priest pass the word on to Sir Richard Keates, and discover the earliest day on which transports could be got ready to carry off his men. Robertson tried to communicate with a British frigate which was hovering off the coast of Fünen, but was arrested by Danish militiamen while signalling to the ship from a lonely point on the beach. His purpose was almost discovered, and he only escaped by a series of ingenious lies to the militia colonel before whom he was taken by his captors. Moving further south, he again tried to get in touch with Sir Richard Keates, and this time succeeded. The news was passed to London, and transports were prepared for the deliverance of the Spaniards. Canning also sent to Fünen an agent of the Asturian Junta, who would be able to give his countrymen full news of the insurrection that had taken place in June.
Meanwhile La Romana had sounded his subordinates, and found them all eager to join in the plan of evasion, save Kindelan, the brigadier-general commanding the troops in Jutland, who showed such unpatriotic views that the officer sent to confer with him dropped the topic without revealing his commission. The plan which the Marquis had formed was rather ingenious: Bernadotte was about to go round the garrisons in his command on a tour of inspection. It was agreed that under the pretext of holding a grand field-day for his benefit, all the scattered Spanish troops in Fünen should be concentrated at Nyborg. The regiments in Zealand and Jutland were to join them, when the arrival of the British fleet should be reported, by seizing the Danish small craft in the harbours nearest to them, and crossing over the two Belts to join their commander.
An unfortunate contretemps, however, interfered to prevent the full execution of the scheme. Orders came from Paris that all the Spanish troops were to swear allegiance to Joseph Bonaparte, each corps parading at its head quarters for the purpose on July 30 or 31. This news caused grave disorders among the subordinate officers and the men, who were of course in complete ignorance of the plan for evasion. La Romana and his councillors held that the ceremony had better be gone through—to swear under compulsion was not perjury, and to refuse would draw down on the Spanish corps overwhelming numbers of Danes and French, so that the whole scheme for escape would miscarry. Accordingly the troops in Jutland and Fünen went through the ceremony in a more or less farcical way—in some cases the men are said to have substituted the name Ferdinand for the name Joseph in their oath, while the officers took no notice of this rather startling variation.
But in Zealand things went otherwise: the two infantry regiments of Guadalajara and Asturias, when paraded and told to take the oath, burst out into mutiny, drove off those of their own officers who tried to restrain them, killed the aide-de-camp of the French General Fririon, who was presiding at the ceremony, and threatened to march on Copenhagen. Next day they were surrounded by masses of Danish troops, forced to surrender, disarmed, and put in confinement in small bodies at various points in the island [August 1].
This startling news revealed to Bernadotte the true state of feeling in the Spanish army, and he wrote to La Romana to announce that he was about to visit the Danish Isles in order to inquire into the matter. Fortunately there came at the same moment news from England that the time for escape was at hand. On August 4, only three days after the mutiny at Roeskilde, the brigantine Mosquito, having on board Rafael Lobo (the emissary of the Asturian deputies), reached the Baltic, and communicated by night with some of the Spanish officers on the island of Langeland. The British fleet had sailed, and the time for action had arrived.
Accordingly La Romana gave the word to the officers in each garrison to whom the secret had been entrusted. On August 7, the troops in Fünen concentrated, and seized the port of Nyborg: the Danes were completely taken by surprise, and no resistance was made save by a gallant and obstinate naval officer commanding a brig in the harbour. He fired on the Spaniards, and would not yield till an English frigate and five gunboats ran into the port and battered his vessel to pieces.
On August 8 the troops in Jutland struck their blow: the infantry regiment of Zamora at Fredericia seized a number of fishing-vessels, and ferried itself over into Fünen with no difficulty. General Kindelan, the only traitor in the camp, had been kept from all knowledge of what was to happen: when he saw his troops on the move, and received an explanatory note from La Romana putting him in possession of the state of affairs, he feigned compliance in the plan, but disguised himself and fled to the nearest French cantonment, where he gave enemy a full account of the startling news. The cavalry regiments Infante and Del Rey had the same luck as their comrades of Zamora: they seized boats at Aarhuus, and, abandoning their horses, got across unopposed to Fünen. Their comrades of the regiment of Algarve were less lucky: they were delayed for some time by the indecision of their aged and imbecile colonel: when Costa, their senior captain, took command and marched them from Horsens towards the port of Fredericia, it was now too late. A brigade of Dutch Hussars, warned by Kindelan, beset them on the way and took them all prisoners. Costa, seeing that the responsibility would fall on his head, blew out his brains at the moment of surrender.
Romana had concentrated in Fünen nearly 8,000 men, and was so strong that the Danish general at Odense, in the centre of the island, dared not meddle with him. On August 9, 10, and 11 he passed his troops over to the smaller island of Langeland, where the regiment of Catalonia had already disarmed the Danish garrison and seized the batteries. Here he was safe, for Langeland was far out to sea, and he was now protected from the Danes by the English warships which were beginning to gather on the spot. A few isolated men from Zealand, about 150 in all, succeeded in joining the main body, having escaped from their guards and seized fishing-boats: but these were all that got away from the regiments of Asturias and Guadalajara, the mutineers of July 31.