The History of Napoleon Buonaparte

by J. G. Lockhart

His ancient enemy was omnipotent at sea; and if the character of her armies stood at the moment much lower both at home and abroad than it ever deserved to do, this was a mistake which one well-organised campaign was likely to extinguish. England possessed at this time a population of twenty millions, united in the spirit of loyalty and regarding the Spanish cause as just, noble and sacred: a standing army of 200,000 of the best troops in the world, an immense recruiting establishment, and a system of militia which enabled her to swell her muster to any limit. Her colonies occupied a large share of this army; but there remained at her immediate command a force at least equal to that with which Buonaparte had conquered Austria and Prussia. Her credit was unbounded; and her commerce not only supplied means of information altogether unrivalled, but secured for her the secret goodwill of whole classes in every country. England possessed Generals worthy to cope with the best of Buonaparte's Marshals, and in the hour of need discovered that she possessed one capable of confronting, and of conquering, the great Emperor himself. Finally, she possessed the incalculable advantage of warring on the side of justice and freedom, against an usurper, whose crimes were on the same gigantic scale with his genius. The remembrance of their leader's perfidy weighed heavily on the moral strength of the French army throughout the approaching contest; while a proud conviction that their cause was the right sustained the hearts of the English.

Upon them, ultimately, the chief burden and the chief glory of the war devolved: yet justice will ever be done to the virtuous exertions of their allies of the Peninsula. At the moment when the insurrection occurred, 20,000 Spanish troops were in Portugal under the orders of Junot; 15,000 more, under the Marquis de Romana, were serving Napoleon in Holstein. There remained 40,000 Spanish regulars, 11,000 Swiss, and 30,000 militia; but of the best of these the discipline, when compared with French or English armies, was contemptible. The nobility, to whose order the chief officers belonged, were divided in their sentiments—perhaps the greater number inclined to the interests of Joseph. Above all, the troops were scattered, in small sections, over the face of the whole country, and there was no probability that any one regular army should be able to muster so strong as to withstand the efforts of a mere fragment of the French force already established within the kingdom. The fleets of Spain had been destroyed in the war with England: her commerce and revenues had been mortally wounded by the alliance with France and the maladministration of Godoy. Ferdinand was detained a prisoner in France. There was no natural leader or chief, around whom the whole energies of the nation might be expected to rally. It was amidst such adverse circumstances that the Spanish people rose everywhere, smarting under intolerable wrongs, against a French army, already 80,000 strong, in possession of half the fortresses of the country, and in perfect communication with the mighty resources of Napoleon.

There are authors who still delight to undervalue the motives of this great national movement; according to whom the commercial classes rose chiefly, if not solely, from their resentment of the pecuniary losses inflicted on them by Godoy's alliance with the author of the "continental system"; the priesthood because Godoy had impoverished the church, and they feared that a Buonapartean government would pursue the same course to a much greater extent; the peasantry because their priests commanded them. All these influences unquestionably operated, and all strongly; but who can believe in the absence of others infinitely above these, and common to all the Spaniards who, during six years, fought and bled, and saw their towns ruined and their soil a waste, that they might vindicate their birthright, the independence of their nation? Nor can similar praise be refused to the great majority of the Portuguese. Napoleon summoned a body of the nobles of that kingdom also to meet him early in the year at Bayonne: they obeyed, and being addressed by the haughty usurper in person, resisted all his efforts to cajole them into an imitation of the Spanish Notables, who at the same time and place accepted Joseph for their King. They were in consequence retained as prisoners in France during the war which followed; but their fate operated as a new stimulus upon the general feeling of their countrymen at home, already well prepared for insurrection by the brutal oppression of Junot.

The Spanish arms were at first exposed to many reverses; the rawness of their levies, and the insulated nature of their movements, being disadvantages of which it was not difficult for the experienced Generals and overpowering numbers of the French to reap a full and bloody harvest. After various petty skirmishes, in which the insurgents of Arragon were worsted by Lefebre Desnouettes, and those of Navarre and Biscay by Bessieres, the latter officer came upon the united armies of Castile, Leon and Galicia, commanded by the Generals Cuesta and Blake, on the 14th of July, at Riosecco, and defeated them in a desperate action, in which not less than 20,000 Spaniards died. This calamitous battle it was which opened the gates of Madrid to the intrusive king—whose arrival in that capital on the 20th of the same month has already been mentioned.

But Joseph was not destined to remain long in Madrid: the fortune of war, after the great day of Riosecco, was everywhere on the side of the patriots. Duhesme, who had so treacherously possessed himself of Barcelona and Figueras, found himself surrounded by the Catalonian mountaineers, who, after various affairs, in which much blood was shed on both sides, compelled him to shut himself up in Barcelona. Marshal Moncey conducted another large division of the French towards Valencia, and was to have been further reinforced by a detachment from Duhesme. The course of events in Catalonia prevented Duhesme from affording any such assistance; and the inhabitants of Valencia, male and female, rising en masse, and headed by their clergy, manned their walls with such determined resolution, that the French marshal was at length compelled to retreat. He fell back upon the main body, under Bessieres, but did not effect a conjunction with them until his troops had suffered miserably in their march through an extensive district, in which every inhabitant was a watchful enemy.

A far more signal catastrophe had befallen another powerful corps d'armée, under General Dupont, which marched from Madrid towards the south, with the view of suppressing all symptoms of insurrection in that quarter, and, especially, of securing the great naval station of Cadiz, where a French squadron lay, watched, as usual, by the English. Dupont's force was increased as he advanced, till it amounted to 20,000 men; and with these he took possession of Baylen and La Carolina, in Andalusia, and stormed Jaen. But before he could make these acquisitions, the citizens of Cadiz had universally taken the patriot side; the commander of the French vessels had been forced to surrender them; and the place, having opened a communication with the English fleet, assumed a posture of determined defence. General Castaños, the Spanish commander in that province, meanwhile, having held back from battle until his raw troops should have had time to be disciplined, began at length to threaten the position of the French. Jaen was attacked by him with such vigour, that Dupont was fain to evacuate it, and fall back to Baylen, where his troops soon suffered severe privations, the peasantry being in arms all around them, and the supply of food becoming from day to day more difficult. On the 16th of July, Dupont was attacked at Baylen by Castaños, who knew from an intercepted despatch the extent of his enemy's distress: the French were beaten, and driven as far as Menjibar. They returned on the 18th, and attempted to recover Baylen; but, after a long and desperate battle, in which 3000 of the French were killed, Dupont, perceiving that the Spaniards were gathering all around in numbers not to be resisted, proposed to capitulate. In effect, he and 20,000 soldiers laid down their arms at Baylen, on condition that they should be transported in safety into France. The Spaniards broke this convention, and detained them as prisoners—thus, foolishly as well a wickedly, imitating the perfidy of Napoleon's own conduct to Spain. This battle and capitulation of Baylen were termed by the Emperor himself the Caudine forks of the French army. He attributed the disaster to treachery on the part of Dupont: it was the result of the rashness of the expedition, and the incompetency of the conductor. The richest part of Spain was freed wholly of the invaders: the light troops of Castaños pushed on, and swept the country before them; and within ten days, King Joseph perceived the necessity of quitting Madrid, and removed his headquarters to Vittoria.

In the meantime Lefebre Desnouettes, whose early success in Arragon has been alluded to, was occupied with the siege of Zaragossa—the inhabitants of which city had risen in the first outbreak, and prepared to defend their walls to the last extremity. Don Jose Palafox, a young nobleman of no great talents, who had made his escape from Bayonne, was invested with the command; but the real leaders were the priests and some of the private citizens, who selected him for the prominent place as belonging to a family of eminent distinction in their kingdom, but in effect considered and used him as their tool. Some Spanish and Walloon regiments, who had formed the garrisons of strong places treacherously seized by the enemy before the war commenced, had united with Palafox, and various bloody skirmishes had occurred—ere the French general was enabled to shut them up in Zaragossa and form the siege. The importance of success in this enterprise was momentous, especially after the failure of Moncey at Valencia. Napoleon himself early saw, that if the Valencians should be able to form an union with the Arragonese at Zaragossa, the situation of the Catalonian insurgents on the one side would be prodigiously strengthened; while, on the other hand, the armies of Leon and Galicia (whose coasts offered the means of continual communication with England) would conduct their operations in the immediate vicinity of the only great road left open between Madrid and Bayonne—the route by Burgos. He therefore had instructed Savary to consider Zaragossa as an object of the very highest importance; but the corps of Lefebre was not strengthened as the Emperor would have wished it to be, ere he sat down before Zaragossa. The siege was pressed with the utmost vigour; but the immortal heroism of the citizens baffled all the valour of the French. There were no regular works worthy of notice: but the old Moorish walls, not above eight or ten feet in height, and some extensive monastic buildings in the outskirts of the city, being manned by crowds of determined men, whose wives and daughters looked on, nay, mingled boldly in their defence—the besiegers were held at bay week after week, and saw their ranks thinned in continual assaults without being able to secure any adequate advantage. Famine came and disease in its train, to aggravate the sufferings of the townspeople; but they would listen to no suggestions but those of the same proud spirit in which they had begun. The French at length gained possession of the great convent of St. Engracia, and thus established themselves within the town itself: their general then sent to Palafox this brief summons: "Headquarters, Santa Engracia—Capitulation"; but he received for answer: "Headquarters, Zaragossa—War to the knife." The battle was maintained literally from street to street, from house to house, and from chamber to chamber. Men and women fought side by side, amidst flames and carnage; until Lefebre received the news of Baylen, and having wasted two months in his enterprise, abandoned it abruptly, lest he should find himself insulated amidst the general retreat of the French armies. Such was the first of the two famous sieges of Zaragossa.

The English government meanwhile had begun their preparations for interfering effectually in the affairs of the Peninsula. They had despatched one body of troops to the support of Castaños in Andalusia; but these did not reach the south of Spain until their assistance was rendered unnecessary by the surrender of Dupont at Baylen. A more considerable force, amounting to 10,000, sailed early in June, from Cork, for Coruña, under the command of the Honourable Sir Arthur Wellesley. This armament, originally designed to co-operate with another from India in a great attack on Mexico, had its destination altered the moment the Spanish Insurrection was announced. Sir Arthur, being permitted to land at what point of the Peninsula he should judge most advantageous for the general cause, was soon satisfied that Portugal ought to be the first scene of his operations, and accordingly lost no time in opening a communication with the patriots, who had taken possession of Oporto. Here the troops which had been designed to aid Castaños joined him. Thus strengthened, and well informed of the state of the French armies in Spain, Sir Arthur resolved to effect a landing and attack Junot while circumstances seemed to indicate no chance of his being reinforced by Bessieres.

It is, perhaps, an evil unavoidable in the institutions of an old and settled government, that men rarely, very rarely, unless they possess the advantages of illustrious birth and connection, can hope to be placed in situations of the highest importance until they have passed the prime vigour of their days. Sir Arthur Wellesley, fortunately for England and for Europe, commenced life under circumstances eminently favourable for the early development and recognition of his great talents. To his brother, the Marquis Wellesley's rank as Governor-General of India, he owed the opportunity of conducting our armies in the East at a time of life when, if of inferior birth, he could hardly have commanded a battalion; and the magnificent campaign of Assaye so established his reputation, that shortly after his return to Europe he was entrusted without hesitation with the armament assembled at Cork.

It was on the 8th of August, 1808—a day ever memorable in the history of Britain—that Sir Arthur Wellesley effected his debarkation in the bay of Mondego. He immediately commenced his march towards Lisbon, and on the 17th came up with the enemy under General Laborde, strongly posted on an eminence near Roriça. The French contested their ground gallantly, but were driven from it at the point of the bayonet, and compelled to retreat. The British General, having hardly any cavalry, was unable to pursue them so closely as he otherwise would have done: and Laborde succeeded in joining his shattered division to the rest of the French forces in Portugal. Junot (recently created Duke of Abrantes) now took the command in person; and finding himself at the head of full 24,000 troops, while the English army were greatly inferior in numbers, and miserably supplied with cavalry and artillery, he did not hesitate to assume the offensive. On the 21st of August he attacked Sir Arthur at Vimiero. In the language of the English General's despatch, "a most desperate contest ensued"; and the result was "a signal defeat," Junot, having lost thirteen cannon and more than two thousand men, immediately fell back upon Lisbon, where his position was protected by the strong defile of the Torres Vedras.