A history of the Peninsular War, Vol. 4, Dec. 1810-Dec. 1811

by Charles Oman

But this was not his only trouble; Bonnet in Asturias was holding Oviedo and the district immediately round it with a strong division, which varied at one time and another from 6,000 to 8,000 men. He was very useful in his present position, because he cut the Spanish line of defence along the north coast in two, and because he seemed to threaten Galicia from the north-east. The threat was not a very real one, for he had not enough men to deliver an attack on eastern Galicia and at the same time to hold Oviedo and its neighbourhood. But he was a source of trouble as well as of strength to his superiors, for it was very difficult to keep in touch with him through the pass of Pajares, and if he were to be attacked at once by the Galicians and by a British landing-force, his position would be a very dangerous one. He had been put to great trouble by Renovales’s naval expedition in October 1810[267], though this was but a small force and had not received any real help from Galicia along the land side. Bessières, after he had been a few months in authority, was inclined to withdraw Bonnet to the south side of the sierras, and to abandon Oviedo, but was warned against such a move by his master, who said that this would be ‘a detestable operation,’ as it would relieve Galicia from the threat of invasion, allow of the re-formation of a Junta and an army in Asturias, and necessitate a heavy concentration at Santander[268]. Nevertheless the Marshal did at one crisis withdraw the division from Oviedo.

Between Bonnet in the Asturias and Ciudad Rodrigo, the long front against Galicia was occupied by a single weak French division, that of Serras, whose head quarters were at Benavente, his advanced post at Astorga, and his flank-guards at Leon and Zamora[269]. If the army of Galicia had been in good order this force would have been in great danger, for it was not strong enough to hold the ground allotted to it. But when Del Parque in 1809 drew off to Estremadura the old Army of the North, he had left behind him only a few skeleton corps, and the best of these had been destroyed in defending Astorga in the following year. The formation of a new Galician army of 20,000 men had been decreed, and the cadres left behind in the country had been filled up in 1810, but the results were not satisfactory. The Captain-General, Mahy, was a man of little energy, and spent most of it in quarrels with the local Junta, whom he accused of conspiracy against him, and charged with secret correspondence with La Romana and his party. He seized their letters in the post and imprisoned two members, whereupon riots broke out, and complaints were sent to the Regency at Cadiz. This led to Mahy’s recall, and the captain-generalship was given to the Duke of Albuquerque, then on his mission to London. He died without having returned to Spain, so that the appointment was nugatory, and the Regency then gave it to Castaños, who was at the same time made Captain-General of Estremadura, after the death of La Romana and the disaster at the Gebora. Castaños went to the Tagus, to rally the poor remnants of the Estremaduran army, and while retaining the nominal command in Galicia never visited that province, but deputed the command in it to Santocildes, the young general who had so bravely defended Astorga in the preceding spring. He had been sent prisoner to France, but was adroit enough to escape from his captivity, and to make his way back to Corunna. His appointment was popular, but he got no great service out of the Galician army, which was in a deplorable condition, and hopelessly scattered. The Junta kept many battalions to garrison the harbour-fortresses of Corunna, Vigo, and Ferrol, and the main body, whose head quarters lay at Villafranca in the Vierzo, did not amount to more than 7,000 men, destitute of cavalry (which Galicia could never produce) and very poorly provided with artillery. There was another division, under General Cabrera, some 4,000 strong, at Puebla de Senabria, and a third under Barcena and Losada on the borders of the Asturias, opposite Bonnet. The whole did not amount to 16,000 raw troops—yet this was sufficient to hold Serras in observation and to watch Bonnet, who was too much distracted by the Cantabrian bands to be really dangerous. But in the spring of 1811 the Galicians could do no more, and Wellington was much chagrined to find that he could get no effective assistance from them, after he had driven Masséna behind the Agueda, and so shaken the hold of the French on the whole kingdom of Leon. It was not till June that Santocildes found it possible to descend from the hills and threaten Serras. This led to a petty campaign about Astorga and on the Orbigo river, which will be narrated in its due place.

While affairs stood thus in the north, King Joseph and his ‘Army of the Centre’ were profiting for many months from the absence of any danger upon the side of Portugal. Indeed, the period between September 1810 and April 1811 were the least disturbed of any in the short and troublous reign of the Rey Intruso, so far as regular military affairs went. There was no enemy to face save the guerrilleros, yet these bold partisans, of whom the best known were the Empecinado and El Medico (Dr. Juan Palarea) on the side of the eastern mountains, and Julian Sanchez more to the west, on the borders of Leon, sufficed to keep the 20,000 men of whom King Joseph could dispose[270] in constant employment. Such a force was not too much when every small town, almost every village, of New Castile had to be provided with a garrison. Roughly speaking, each province absorbed a division: the Germans of the Rheinbund occupied La Mancha, Lahoussaye’s dragoons and the incomplete division of Dessolles[271] held Toledo and its district, the King’s Spaniards the Guadalajara country, leaving only the Royal Guards and some drafts and detachments to garrison the capital. It was with considerable difficulty that Joseph collected in January 1811 a small expeditionary force of not over 3,500 men[272], with which Lahoussaye went out, partly to open up communications with Soult in Estremadura, but more especially to search for any traces of the vanished army of Masséna in the direction of the Portuguese frontier. Lahoussaye started from Talavera on February 1, communicated by means of his cavalry with Soult’s outposts between Truxillo and Merida, and then went northward across the Tagus to Plasencia, from which his cavalry searched in vain, as far as Coria and Alcantara, for any news of the Army of Portugal. From Plasencia he was soon driven back to Toledo by want of supplies. Joseph had directed him to seize Alcantara, re-establish its broken bridge, and place a garrison there; but this turned out to be absolutely impossible, for it would have been useless to leave a small force in this remote spot, when it was certain that it must ere long retire for lack of food, and might well be cut off by the guerrilleros before it could reach Talavera, the nearest occupied point[273].

The Army of the Centre just sufficed to occupy the kingdom of New Castile, and was unable to do more. At least, however, it could maintain its position, and was in no danger. The King was even able to make state visits to places in the close neighbourhood of Madrid, such as Alcala and Guadalajara[274], and seems to have regarded the possibility of such a modest tour as a sign of the approaching pacification of this region.

But just at the moment when Joseph Bonaparte’s military situation was safe, if not satisfactory, he was passing through a diplomatic crisis which absorbed all his attention and reduced him to the verge of despair. We have already alluded, in an earlier chapter, to Napoleon’s insane resolve to annex all Spain beyond the Ebro to the French Empire[275], in return for which he was proposing to hand over Portugal, when it should be conquered, to his brother. The proclamation announcing this strange resolve, which was to make Frenchmen of Mina and all the guerrilleros of Navarre, no less than of the Catalan armies which were still striving so hard against Macdonald, was delayed in publication. For the Emperor wished to wait till Lisbon was in the hands of Masséna, before he made known his purpose. But Joseph was aware that the proclamation had been drawn up, and had been sent out to the governors of the northern provinces, who were only waiting for orders to issue it. The news that the English had evacuated Portugal might any day arrive, and would be the signal for the dismemberment of Spain. He had sent in succession to Paris his two most trusted Spanish adherents, the Duke of Santa-Fé and the Marquis of Almenara, to beg the Emperor to forgo his purpose; all was to no effect. Santa-Fé came back in December absolutely crushed by the reception that he had been given; the Emperor had delivered to him an angry diatribe, in which he complained that his brother forgot that he was a French prince, and remarked that ‘many other European sovereigns, who had received much harder measure, did not make nearly so much noise about it as the King of Spain[276].’ Almenara reached Madrid about a week later to report an equally characteristic interview with Napoleon. He had been directed to inform his master that he should be given one more chance. Let him open negotiations with the Cortes at Cadiz, making them the offer that if they would recognize him as King of Spain, he would recognize them as lawful representatives of the nation, and rule them according to the constitution drawn up at Bayonne. Cadiz and the other fortresses held by the troops of the Regency must open their gates, and Napoleon would then promise to make no annexations of Spanish soil; he would even guarantee the integrity of the kingdom. If the Cortes refused to treat, the Emperor would regard himself as free from any previous engagements made with his brother or the Spanish nation. The provinces beyond the Ebro would become part of France. He added that if affairs in Portugal went badly, it would not be wise to open negotiations with Cadiz at all, for fear that the Spaniards might take the mere fact that proposals had been made to them as a token of growing fear and depression on the part of Joseph.

The King and his ministers knew well the impracticability of making any offer to the government of Cadiz, which (with all its faults and internal dissensions) was determined to fight to the death, and had never shown the least intention of recognizing Napoleon’s nominee as King of Spain. They looked upon the scheme as merely a preliminary to the publication of the edict for the annexation of the provinces beyond the Ebro. King Joseph was to be made to demonstrate his own futility, since he would receive an angry and contemptuous reply, or no reply at all, and it would then be open to his brother to declare that the attempt to govern a united Spain by a king had failed, and that it was necessary to dismember it—perhaps to cut it up into a number of French military governments. This seems to have been Joseph’s own impression; in the council at which the Emperor’s proposal was discussed, he broke out into violent reproaches and bitter complaints against his brother, and explained with tears to his ministers that he and they were betrayed. He was now for abdicating, and this would have been the most dignified course to take. He talked of buying an estate in France, and settling down, far from Paris, as a private person. He had indeed charged his wife’s nephew, Marius Clary, to cross the Pyrenees, and purchase a castle and lands for him in Touraine or the South, where he might hide his disgrace and disappointment.

This move provoked Napoleon’s wrath. He signified his displeasure. ‘The members of the Imperial family could not legally make any acquisition of land in France without the formal consent of the Emperor. In addition, it was impossible for the King of Spain, or the commander of the Army of the Centre, to quit his post without having received the Imperial authorization. Painful as the declaration must be, if the King took such a hazardous step, he should be arrested at Bayonne on crossing the frontier. There must be no more talk about the constitution of Bayonne: the Emperor could dispose of Spain at his good pleasure, and in the interests of the French Empire alone.’ If Joseph persisted in the idea of abdication, he must first make a formal statement to that effect to the French ambassador at Madrid, and, provided that it was considered that the step would cause no dangerous results, nor give rise to any slanderous reports, he might come to his estate of Morfontaine near Paris and ‘finish the matter en règle[277].’

Joseph at first seemed inclined to accept any terms by which he might emerge from his present ignominious position, and actually had several interviews with Laforest, in which they discussed the drafting of a deed of abdication. But it seemed that Napoleon would prefer the prolongation of the present state of affairs, and for his own purposes intended that a puppet king should continue at Madrid. By the ambassador’s advice the document ultimately took the shape of a letter in which Joseph, instead of abdicating in definitive form, merely stated his wish to do so, and referred it to his brother. His confidant, Miot de Melito, with whom he talked over the whole matter, expresses his opinion that at the last moment the fascination of the crown overpowered his master’s full sense of resentment. ‘The King’s note was a good piece of writing, but I consider that it did not state clearly enough that the course to which he inclined, and which he preferred to all others, was abdication. I wished that he had made a stronger affirmation of this, and told him so, but to no effect. It was easy to see that the name of King had still a powerful attraction, from which Joseph could not escape, and I wondered at the glamour and intoxication which (as it seems) hangs about supreme power, since the mere shadow of that power could overweigh with him so many rebuffs and so much resentment[278].’

Napoleon made no reply to his brother’s declaration; he had no intention of taking over the formal responsibility for the government of Spain, and preferred to leave another to answer for all its obvious injustices and oppressions. Affairs were at a standstill for some months, till in April Joseph, taking the opportunity of a formal invitation to become one of the godfathers of the newly-born King of Rome, the heir of the Empire, made a sudden and unauthorized sally to Paris. He started from Madrid on April 23, accompanied by nine of his courtiers and ministers, and crossed the Bidassoa into France on May 10. He made no halt at Bayonne, lest he should be stopped there by orders from his brother, and when, at Dax in Gascony, he received an Imperial dispatch forbidding him to quit Spain, he was able to plead that it was too late to act upon it. Pursuing his journey night and day, he presented himself at Paris on May 15th, and announced to Napoleon that he was come to discharge in person the honourable duties of god-parent at the approaching baptism of his nephew.

Though annoyed at the King’s arrival, for refusals and evasions of a brother’s petitions are transacted more easily by letter than face to face, the Emperor thought it well to make no open show of displeasure, and accepted all the explanations given to him. There followed a series of interviews at Rambouillet, in which Joseph allowed himself to be talked out of his project of abdication: for the Emperor declared that he found him useful in his present position, and informed him that it was his duty, as a brother and a French prince, to obey the directions of the head of his house. In return Napoleon promised to make many arrangements which would render the King’s position less intolerable than it had been for the last year. He would provide him with a monthly subsidy of a million francs from the French treasury, of which half would be for the sustenance of his court and ministers, and the other half for the pay of the Army of the Centre. Orders were issued to Soult, commanding the Army of Andalusia, Bessières, commanding the newly-formed Army of the North, and Suchet, so far as the Army of Aragon was concerned (but not for Catalonia), by which they were directed to pay over to a commissary appointed by Joseph one quarter of the gross revenues which they were raising in the districts which they occupied. They were also directed to leave the law courts in the King’s hands, and not to allow judgements to be given in the name of the Emperor. It was this last practice, frequently adopted by Kellermann in Castile, which had irritated Joseph more than any other misdemeanour of the local commandants.