A history of the Peninsular War, Vol. 1, 1807-1809

by Charles Oman

On the night of November 30, Napoleon descended the pass and fixed his head quarters at Buitrago. On the afternoon of December 1 the advanced parties of Latour-Maubourg’s and Lasalle’s cavalry rode up to the northern suburbs of Madrid: on the second the French appeared in force, and the attack on the city began.

The Spanish capital was, and is, a place incapable of any regular defence. It had not even, like Valencia and Saragossa, the remains of a mediaeval wall: its development had taken place in the sixteenth century, when serious fortifications had gone out of date. Its streets were broad and regular, unlike the tortuous lanes which had been the real strength of Saragossa. Nothing separates the city from its suburbs save ornamental gates, whose only use was for the levy of octroi duties. Madrid is built in a level upland, but there is a rising ground which dominates the whole place: it lies just outside the eastern limit of the city. On it stood the palace of the Buen Retiro (which gives its name to the height), and several other public buildings, among them the Observatory and the royal porcelain manufactory, known as La China. The latter occupied the more commanding and important section of the summit of the hill. Between the Retiro and the eastern side of the city lies the public park known as the Prado, a low-lying open space laid out with fountains, statues, and long avenues of trees. Three broad and handsome streets[518] run eastward and terminate in the Prado, just opposite the Retiro, so that cannon planted either by the palace or by La China can search them from end to end. This was so obvious that Murat, during his occupation of Madrid in April and May, had built three redoubts, one large and two small, facing down into the city and armed with guns of position. The inhabitants of Madrid had partly dismantled them after the departure of the French—and did themselves no harm thereby, for these earthworks were useless for defence against an enemy from without: they could be employed to overawe the city but not to protect it[519].

Ever since the rout of Gamonal, those members of the Junta who were gifted with ordinary foresight must have realized that it was probable that the Emperor would appear ere long before the gates of the capital. But to avoid alarming the excitable populace, the fact was concealed as long as possible, and it was given out that Madrid would be defended at the impregnable Somosierra. It was not till November 25 that any public measures for the fortification of the capital were spoken of. On that day the Junta issued a proclamation placing the charge of the capital in the hands of the Marquis of Castelar, Captain-General of New Castile, and of Don Tomas de Morla, the officer who had won a name by bombarding and capturing the French fleet at Cadiz in June. Under their directions, preparations were begun for putting the city in a state of defence. But the military men had a strong and well-founded belief that the place was indefensible, and that all efforts made to fortify it were labour thrown away: the fight must be made at the Somosierra, not at the gates of Madrid. It was not till the news of the rout of San Juan’s army on the thirtieth came to hand, that any very serious work was executed. But when this disaster was known there was a sudden and splendid outburst of energy. The populace, full of vindictive memories of May 2, were ready and willing to fight, and had no conception of the military weakness of their situation. If Saragossa had defended itself street by street, why, they asked, should not Madrid do the same? Their spirits were so high and their temper so ferocious, that the authorities realized that they must place themselves at the head of the multitude, or be torn to pieces as traitors. On December 1 a Junta of Defence was formed, under the presidency of the Duke of Infantado, in which Morla and Castelar were given a large and heterogeneous mass of colleagues—magistrates, officers, and prominent citizens forming an unwieldy body very unfit to act as an executive council of war. The military resources at their disposal were insignificant: there was a handful of the fugitives from the Somosierra—Castelar estimated them as not more than 300 or 400 in all[520]—and two battalions of new levies from the south, which had arrived only on the morning of December 1. The organized forces then were not more than 2,500 or 3,000 in all. But there was a vast and unruly mob of citizens of Madrid and of peasants, who had flocked into the city to aid in its defence. Weapons rather than men were wanting, for when 8,000 muskets from the Arsenal had been served out, the supply ran short. All private persons owning firearms of any description were invited to hand them in to the Junta: but this resource soon failed, and finally pikes were served out, and even mediaeval weapons from the royal armoury and the family collections of certain grandees. How many men, armed in one way or another, took part in the defence of Madrid will never be known—it cannot have been less than 20,000, and may have amounted to much more.

Not merely the combatants, but the whole population of both sexes turned themselves with absolute frenzy to the work of fortification. In the two days which they had at their disposal they carried out an enormous and ill-compacted scheme for surrounding the whole city with lines. In front of each of the gates a battery was established, formed of earth reveted with paving-stones: to connect these a continuous wall was made, by joining together all the exterior houses of the town with earthworks, or with piles of stones and bricks pulled down from buildings in the suburbs. On several fronts ditches were excavated: the more important streets were blocked with barricades, and the windows and doors of exposed buildings were built up. There were very few engineers at the disposal of the Junta of Defence, and the populace in many places worked not under skilled guidance but by the light of nature, executing enormous but perfectly useless works. ‘The batteries,’ wrote a prominent Spanish witness, ‘were all too small: they were so low that they did not prevent the gates and streets which they defended from being enfiladed: the guns being placed en barbette were much exposed, and were dominated by the artillery which the enemy afterwards placed on the high ground [i.e. the Retiro heights]. The low parapets and the want of proportion between them and their banquettes left the infantry unsheltered: indeed they were harmed rather than helped by the works, for the splinters of the paving-stones which formed the parapets proved more deadly to the garrison than did the enemy’s cannon-balls. The batteries were too low at the flanks, and placed so close to the buildings in their rear that the guns could not easily be worked nor the infantry supports move freely. The gates behind being all of hewn stone, every ball that struck them sent such a shower of fragments flying that the effect was like grape: it forced the defenders to lie flat, and even then caused terrible loss[521].’ It may be added that not only were the works unscientifically executed, but that the most tiresome results were produced by the misguided energy of persons who threw up barricades, or dug cuttings, behind them, so that it was very hard to send up reinforcements, and quite impossible to withdraw the guns from one battery for use in another.

It was natural that these self-taught engineers should neglect the one most important point in the defences of Madrid. The Retiro heights were the key of the city: if they were lost, the whole place lay open to bombardment from the dominating ground. But nothing was done here, save that the old French works round the factory of La China were repaired, the buildings of the palace, barracks, and hospital in the vicinity barricaded, and a low continuous earthwork constructed round the summit of the hill. It should have been turned into a regular entrenched camp, if the city was really to be defended.

The Junta of Defence did its best to preserve order and introduce discipline: all the armed men were paraded in the Prado, told off into bands, and allotted their posts around the circumference of the city. But there were many idle hands, and much confusion: it was inevitable that mobs should collect, with the usual consequences. Cries of ‘Treason’ were raised, some houses were sacked, and at least one atrocious murder was committed. The Marquis of Perales was president of the sub-committee which the Junta had appointed to superintend the manufacture and distribution of ammunition. Among the cartridges given out to the people some were found in which sand had been substituted for powder—probably they were relics of some petty piece of peculation dating back to the times of Godoy. When this was discovered, a furious mob ran to the house of the marquis, beat him to death, and dragged his corpse through the streets on a hurdle[522].

If the populace of Madrid was full of blind self-confidence, and imagined that it had the power to beat off the assault of Napoleon, its leaders were in a much more despondent frame of mind. Morla was one of those who had joined the patriotic party merely because he thought it was the winning side: he was deeply disgusted with himself, and was already contemplating the traitorous desertion to the enemy which has covered his name with eternal disgrace. Castelar seems to have been weak and downhearted. The Duke of Infantado was enough of a soldier to see the hopeless inefficiency of the measures of defence which had been adopted. The only chance of saving Madrid was to hurry up to its aid the two field-armies which were within touch—the old Andalusian divisions (now under La Peña), which, by orders of the Supreme Junta, were marching from Calatayud on the capital, and the routed bands of Heredia and San Juan at Segovia. Urgent appeals were sent to both of these hosts to press forward without delay: Infantado himself rode out to meet the army of the Centre, which on this day [Dec. 1] had not long passed Siguenza in its retreat, and was still nearly eighty miles from the capital. He met it at Guadalajara on the next day, in very bad condition, and much reduced by long marches and starvation: with the colours there were only 9,000 foot and 2,000 horse, and these were in a state of half-developed mutiny. The rest of the 20,000 men who had escaped from Tudela were ranging in small bands over the country-side, in search of food, and were not rallied for many days. There was not much to be hoped for from the army of the Centre, and it was evident that it could not reach Madrid till December 3 or 4. The troops of San Juan and Heredia were not so far distant, but even they had fifty-five miles to march from Segovia, and—as it turned out—the capital had fallen before either of the field-armies could possibly come to its aid. Still more fruitless were the attempts made at the last moment to induce Sir John Moore to bring up the British expeditionary force from Salamanca—he was 150 miles away, and could not have arrived before December 7, three days after the capitulation had been signed.

Napoleon dealt with the insurgents of Madrid in a very summary manner. On December 1—as we have already seen—his vedettes appeared before the city: on the morning of the second the dragoons of Lahoussaye and Latour-Maubourg came up in force and invested the northern and eastern fronts of the city. At noon the Emperor himself appeared, and late in the afternoon the infantry columns of Victor’s corps. December 2 was one of Bonaparte’s lucky days, being the anniversary of Austerlitz, and he had indulged in a faint hope that an open town like the Spanish capital might do him the courtesy of surrendering without a blow, like Vienna in 1805, or Berlin in 1806. Accordingly he sent a summons to the Junta in the afternoon; but the Spaniards were in no mood for yielding. General Montbrun, who rode up to the gates with the white flag, was nearly mobbed by enraged peasants, and the aide-de-camp who took the dispatch into the city was only saved from certain death by the exertions of some Spanish officers of the line. The Junta sent him back with the haughty reply that ‘the people of Madrid were resolved to bury themselves under the ruins of their houses rather than to permit the French troops to enter their city.’

Since the ‘sun of Austerlitz’ was not destined to set upon the triumphal entry of the Emperor into the Spanish capital, it became necessary to prepare for the use of force. As a preliminary for an attack on the following morning, Lapisse’s division of Victor’s corps was sent forward to turn the Spaniards out of many isolated houses in front of their line of entrenchments, which were being held as advanced posts. The ground being cleared, preparations could be made for the assault. The moment that Bonaparte cast eyes on the place, he realized that the heights of the Retiro were the key of the position. Under cover of the night, therefore, thirty guns were ranged in line opposite the weak earthworks which crowned the eminence. Artillery in smaller force was placed in front of several of the northern and eastern gates of the city, to distract the attention of the garrison from the critical point. Before dawn the Emperor sent in another summons to surrender, by the hands of an artillery officer who had been captured at the Somosierra. It is clear that he wished, if possible, to enter Madrid without being obliged to deliver up the city to fire and sword: it would be unfortunate if his brother’s second reign were to begin under such unhappy conditions. But it is hard to understand how he could suppose that the warlike frenzy of the Spaniards would have died down between the afternoon of December 2 and the dawn of December 3. All the reply that he obtained was a proposal from the Captain-General Castelar, that there should be a suspension of arms for twelve hours. The sole object of this delay was to allow the Spanish field-armies time to draw nearer to Madrid. Recognizing the fact—which was obvious enough—the Emperor gave orders for an immediate assault. A cannonade was opened against the gates of Los Pozos, the Recoletos, Fuencarral, and several others on the northern and eastern sides of the city. Considerable damage was done to the Spanish defences, but these attacks were all subsidiary. The real assault was delivered against the Retiro heights. The heavy cannonade which was directed against the Spanish works soon opened several breaches. Then Villatte’s division of Victor’s corps was sent in to storm the position, a feat which it accomplished with the greatest ease. The garrison of this all-important section of the defences consisted of a single battalion of new levies—the Regiment of Mazzaredo—and a mass of armed citizens. They were swept out of their works, and pursued downhill into the Prado. Pressing onward among the avenues and fountains, Villatte’s division took in the rear the defenders of the three neighbouring gates, and then, pushing in among the houses of the city, made a lodgement in the palace of the Duke of Medina Celi, and several other large buildings. There was now nothing between the French army and the heart of Madrid save the street-barricades, which the populace had thrown up behind the original lines of defence.

If Napoleon had chosen to send into the fight the rest of Victor’s corps, and had pushed forward the whole of his artillery to the edge of the captured heights, with orders to shell the city, there can be little doubt that Madrid might have been stormed ere nightfall. Its broad streets did not give the facilities of defence that Saragossa had possessed, and the Emperor had at his disposal not a weak and heterogeneous army, such as Verdier had commanded, but more than 40,000 veteran troops. His artillery, too, had on the Retiro a vantage-ground such as did not exist outside the Aragonese capital. Nevertheless the Emperor did not press the attack, and once more sent in a demand for the surrender of the place, at about eleven in the morning of December 3.