The fate of the Peninsula hung, at this moment, evidently upon a thread; and the deliverance of that country was due to other causes than the courage, the patriotism, or the constancy, of the Spaniards. The strength and spirit of Spain was broken; the enthusiasm was null, except in a few places, in consequence of the civil wars, and intestinal divisions incited by the monks and British hirelings; and the emperor was, with respect to the Spaniards, perfectly master of operations. He was in the centre of the country; he held the capital, the fortresses, the command of the great lines of communication between the provinces; and on the wide military horizon no cloud interrupted his view, save the city of Saragossa on the one side, and the British army on the other. “Sooner or later,” said the emperor, and with truth, “Saragossa must fall.” The subjugation of Spain seemed inevitable, when, at this instant, the Austrian war broke out, and this master-spirit was suddenly withdrawn. England then put forth all her vast resources, and the genius and vigor of Sir John Moore, aided, most fortunately, by the absence of Napoleon, and the withdrawal of the strength of his army for the subjugation of the Peninsula; and it was delivered from the French, after oceans of blood had been spilt and millions of treasure wasted, to fall into the hands of the not less tyrannical and oppressive English. “But through what changes of fortune, by what unexpected helps, by what unlooked-for events,—under what difficulties, by whose perseverance, and in despite of whose errors,—let posterity judge; for in that judgment,” says Napier, “only will impartiality and justice be found.”
BONAPARTE LEAVES SPAIN.
Tidings having reached the emperor that the Austrian army was about to invade France, he recalled a large portion of his army, and appointing his brother Joseph to be his lieutenant-general, he allotted separate provinces to each corps d’armée, and directing the imperial guard to hasten to France, he returned to Valladolid, where he received the addresses of the nobles and deputies of Madrid, and other great towns; and after three days’ delay, he departed himself, with scarcely any escort, but with such astonishing speed as to frustrate the designs which some Spaniards had, in some way, formed against his person.
RETREAT OF SIR JOHN MOORE.
The general command of the French army in Spain was left with Soult, assisted by Ney. This gallant general, bearing the title of the Duke of Dalmatia, commenced his pursuit of the English army with a vigor that marked his eager desire to finish the campaign in a manner suitable to its brilliant opening. Sir John Moore had arrived in Salamanca by the middle of November, and on the 23d the other divisions of the army had arrived at the stations assigned them. Sir David Baird had already reported himself at Astorga, when Moore received positive information that the French had entered Valladolid in great force. And this place was only three days’ march distant from the British. At a glance, the great mind of Moore comprehended the full difficulty of his critical situation. In the heart of a foreign country, unsupported by the Spanish government, his army wanting the very necessaries of life, he found himself obliged to commence that retreat in winter, over mountains covered with snow, which proved so fatal to the British army, or wait to meet the French troops, flushed with victory, and sustained by an overwhelming force. In vain he appealed to the junta of Salamanca for aid. In vain he endeavored to arouse the spirit of patriotism, which had shone forth so brightly in the first days of the insurrection. Instead of aiding him either to advance or retreat, they endeavored to direct him what course to pursue; and painted, with true Spanish pride and hyperbole, in glowing colors, what their armies had done, and what they could do. His camp was therefore struck, and he retreated through the rocks of Gallicia, closely followed by the pursuing army. Whenever the advance guards of the enemy approached, the British rallied with vigor, and sustained their reputation for bravery; but they displayed a lamentable want of discipline in all other parts of their conduct. The weather was tempestuous; the roads miserable; the commissariat was utterly defective, and the very idea that they were retreating was sufficient to crush the spirits of the soldiery. At Bembibre, although the English well knew that the French were close behind, they broke into the immense wine-vaults of that city. All effort by their officers to control them was utterly useless. Hundreds became so inebriated as to be unable to proceed, and Sir John Moore was obliged to proceed without them. Scarcely had the reserve marched out of the village, when the French cavalry appeared. In a moment the road was filled with the miserable stragglers, who came crowding after the troops, some with shrieks of distress and wild gestures, others with brutal exclamations; while many, overcome with fear, threw away their arms, and those who preserved them were too stupidly intoxicated to fire, and kept reeling to and fro, alike insensible to their danger and disgrace. The enemy’s horsemen, perceiving this, bore at a gallop through the disorderly mob, cutting to the right and left as they passed, and riding so close to the columns that the infantry were forced to halt in order to protect them. At Villa Franca even greater excesses were committed; the magazines were plundered, the bakers driven away from the ovens, the wine-stores forced, the doors of the houses were broken, and the scandalous insubordination of the soldiers was, indeed, a disgrace to the army. Moore endeavored to arrest this disorder, and caused one man, taken in the act of plundering a magazine, to be hanged. He also endeavored to send despatches to Sir David Baird, directing him to Corunna, instead of Vigo; but his messenger became drunk and lost his despatches, and this act cost the lives of more than four hundred men, besides a vast amount of suffering to the rest of the army. An unusual number of women and children had been allowed to accompany the army, and their sufferings were, indeed, dreadful to witness. Clark, in his history of the war, gives a heart-rending account of the horrors of this retreat. “The mountains were now covered with snow; there was neither provision to sustain nature nor shelter from the rain and snow, nor fuel for fire to keep the vital heat from total extinction, nor place where the weary and footsore could rest for a single hour in safety. The soldiers, barefooted, harassed and weakened by their excesses, were dropping to the rear by hundreds; while broken carts, dead animals, and the piteous appearance of women, with children, struggling or falling exhausted in the snow, completed the dreadful picture. It was still attempted to carry forward some of the sick and wounded;—the beasts that drew them failed at every step, and they were left to perish amid the snows.” “I looked around,” says an officer, “when we had hardly gained the highest point of those slippery precipices, and saw the rear of the army winding along the narrow road. I saw their way marked by the wretched people, who lay on all sides, expiring from fatigue and the severity of the cold, their bodies reddening in spots the white surface of the ground. A Portuguese bullock-driver, who had served the English from the first day of their arrival, was seen on his knees amid the snow, dying, in the attitude and act of prayer. He had, at least, the consolations of religion, in his dying hour. But the English soldiers gave utterance to far different feelings, in their last moments. Shame and anger mingled with their groans and imprecations on the Spaniards, who had, as they said, betrayed them. Mothers found their babes sometimes frozen in their arms, and helpless infants were seen seeking for nourishment from the empty breasts of their dead mothers. One woman was taken in labor upon the mountain. She lay down at the turning of an angle, rather more sheltered than the rest of the way from the icy sleet which drifted along; there she was found dead, and two babes which she had brought forth struggling in the snow. A blanket was thrown over her, to hide her from sight,—the only burial that could be afforded; and the infants were given in charge to a woman who came up in one of the carts, little likely, as it was, that they could survive such a journey.”
DESTRUCTION OF MAGAZINES AT CORUNNA.
Soult hung close on the rear of this unfortunate army, and pursued them until they reached Corunna, on the 12th of January. As the morning dawned, the weary and unfortunate general, saddened by the dark scenes through which he had passed, sensible that the soldiers were murmuring at their retreat, unsupported by his Spanish allies, and well aware that rumor and envy and misunderstanding would be busy with his name in his own native land, appeared on the heights that overhung the town. With eager and anxious gaze, he turned to the harbor, hoping to perceive there his fleet, which he had ordered to sail from Vigo. But the same moody fortune which had followed him during his whole career pursued him here. The wintry sun looked down upon the foaming ocean, and only the vast expanse of water met his view. The fleet, detained by contrary winds, was nowhere visible; and once more he was obliged to halt with his forces, and take up quarters. The army was posted on a low ridge, and waited for the French to come up. The sadness of the scene was by no means passed. Here, stored in Corunna, was a large quantity of ammunition, sent over from England, and for the want of which both the Spanish and English forces had suffered, and which Spanish idleness and improvidence had suffered to remain here for months, unappropriated. This must now be destroyed, or fall into the possession of the enemy. Three miles from the town were piled four thousand barrels of powder on a hill, and a smaller quantity at some distance from it. On the morning of the 13th, the inferior magazine blew up, with a terrible noise, and shook the houses in the town; but when the train reached the great store, there ensued a crash like the bursting forth of a volcano;—the earth trembled for miles, the rocks were torn from their bases, and the agitated waters rolled the vessels, as in a storm; a vast column of smoke and dust, shooting out fiery sparks from its sides, arose perpendicularly and slowly to a great height, and then a shower of stones and fragments of all kinds, bursting out of it with a roaring sound, killed many persons who remained too near the spot. Stillness, slightly interrupted by the lashing of the waves on the shore, succeeded, and then the business of the day went on. The next scene was a sad one. All the horses of the army were collected together, and, as it was impossible to embark them in face of the enemy, they were ordered to be shot. These poor animals would otherwise have been distributed among the French cavalry, or used as draft-horses.
On the 14th, the transports from Vigo arrived. The dismounted cavalry, the sick and wounded, the best horses, belonging to the officers, which had been saved, and fifty-two pieces of artillery, were embarked during the night, only retaining twelve guns on shore, ready for action. And now the closing scene of this sad drama was rapidly approaching, giving a melancholy but graceful termination to the campaign.
DEATH OF SIR JOHN MOORE.
On the night of the 15th, everything was shipped that was destined to be removed, excepting the fighting men. These were intending to embark, as soon as the darkness should permit them to move without being perceived, on the night of the 16th; but in the afternoon the French troops drew up, and offered battle. This the English general would not refuse, and the action soon became general. The battle was advancing, with varied fortune, when Sir John Moore, who was earnestly watching the result of the battle in the village of Elvina, received his death-wound. A spent cannon-ball struck him on his breast. The shock threw him from his horse, with violence; but he rose again, in a sitting posture, his countenance unchanged, and his steadfast eye still fixed on the regiments before him, and betraying no signs of pain. In a few moments, when satisfied that his troops were gaining ground, his countenance brightened, and he suffered himself to be carried to the rear. Then was seen the dreadful nature of his hurt. The shoulder was shattered to pieces; the arm was hanging by a piece of skin; the ribs over the heart were broken and bared of flesh, and the muscles of the breast torn into long strips, which were interlaced by their recoil from the dragging shot. As the soldiers placed him in a blanket, his sword got entangled, and the hilt entered the wound. Captain Hardinge, a staff officer, who was near, attempted to take it off; but the dying man stopped him, saying, “It is as well as it is; I had rather it should go out of the field with me.” And in that manner, so becoming to a soldier, he was borne from the fight by his devoted men, who went up the hill weeping as they went. The blood flowed fast, and the torture of his wound was great; yet, such was the unshaken firmness of his mind, that those about him judged, from the resolution of his countenance, that his hurt was not mortal, and said so to him. He looked steadfastly at the wound for a few moments, and then said, “No,—I feel that to be impossible.” Several times he caused his attendants to turn around, that he might behold the field of battle; and, when the firing indicated the advance of the British, he discovered his satisfaction, and permitted his bearers to proceed. Being brought to his lodgings, the surgeon examined his wound, but there was no hope. The pain increased, and he spoke with great difficulty. Addressing an old friend, he said, “You know that I always wished to die this way.” Again he asked if the enemy were defeated; and being told that they were, observed, “It is a great satisfaction to me that we have beaten the French.” Once, when he spoke of his mother, he became agitated. It was the only time. He inquired after his friends and officers who had survived the battle, and did not even now forget to recommend those whose merit entitled them to promotion. His strength failed fast; and life was almost extinct, when he exclaimed, as if in that dying hour the veil of the future had been lifted, and he had seen the baseness of his posthumous calumniators, “I hope the people of England will be satisfied; I hope my country will do me justice.” In a few minutes afterwards he died, and his corpse, wrapped in a military cloak, was interred by the officers of his staff, in the citadel of Corunna. The guns of the enemy paid his funeral honors, and the valiant Duke of Dalmatia, with a characteristic nobleness, raised a monument to his memory. The following is so beautiful and touching a description of his burial, that we cannot refrain from quoting it, even though it may be familiar to most of our readers. It was written by the Rev. Charles Wolfe, of Dublin.