Joseph Bonaparte / Makers of History

by John S. C. Abbott

Thus terminated the year 1812. The disappointment of the British Government, in view of the discomfiture and retreat of Wellington, was very great, and the indignation of that portion of the English people who were opposed to this interminable warfare against the new régime in France knew no bounds. That the English army had, through a long line of disastrous retreat, according to the testimony of its commander, inflicted outrages upon the Spanish people, its allies, greater than that commander had ever read of in history, keenly wounded the national pride.

Wellington intrusted with the supreme Command.

As fresh tidings arose of the disasters which had befallen Napoleon in the north, the British Government renewed their zeal to assail him from the south. Large re-enforcements were sent out during the winter with such abundant supplies as to enable Wellington to commence the spring campaign with every assurance of success. The Cortes in Cadiz, with ever-varying policy, much to the disgust of many of the Spanish generals, invested the British duke with the supreme command. The opposition, however, was so great that the duke's brother, Mr. Henry Wellesley, who was then British ambassador at Cadiz, advised him not to accept the office. But the energetic duke was confident that, by combining the whole military strength of the Peninsula with the army and fleet of England, he could drive the feeble remnants of the French from the kingdom. He therefore undertook the command.

The Cortes was led to this decisive measure from the fact that there was a strong and increasing party of their own number in favor of rallying to the support of Joseph. Their only choice lay between Joseph or Ferdinand, or the experiment of a democratic republic. Wellington's visit to Cadiz, says Alison, "brought forcibly under his notice the miserable state of the Government at that place, ruled by a furious democratic faction, intimidated by an ungovernable press, and alternately the prey of aristocratic intrigue and democratic fury. He did not fail to report to the Government this deplorable state of things."

In the beginning of May Wellington was prepared to take the field with an allied army of two hundred thousand men. The navy of England actively co-operated with this immense force, conveying supplies and protecting the extreme flanks of the line, which stretched across the kingdom. The storm of war burst forth again in all its fury. Manfully Joseph contended to the last. In the vicinity of Valladolid he had concentrated fifty thousand men, and hoped to be able there to give battle. But Wellington came upon him with an army one hundred thousand strong, which was reported to be one hundred and ninety thousand.

Battle of Vittoria.

The French on the 14th of June retreated to Vittoria. The garrison in Madrid and the civil authorities now abandoned the capital and took refuge with the army. Here a short but terrible battle ensued. The English had eighty thousand combatants on the field; the French, according to their statement, had but half as many. Alison states their force at sixty-five thousand. It was an awful battle. Both parties fought desperately. The loss of the French was six thousand nine hundred and sixty; that of the English five thousand one hundred and eighty.[Z] The French army was impoverished after weary months of warfare, in a land stricken by famine, and wasted by the sweep of armies and the plundering of banditti. It was with very great difficulty that Joseph could support his destitute troops. Yet Alison, in that strain of exaggeration which sullies his often eloquent pages, writes:

"Independent of private booty, no less than five millions and a half of dollars in the military chest of the army were taken; and of private wealth the amount was so prodigious that for miles together the combatants may almost be said to have marched upon gold and silver, without stooping to pick it up."

Victory of the British.

In the hour of victory Wellington seemed to have no control over his soldiers, whom his pen describes as drunken and brutal. Reeling in intoxication, they wandered at will. Wellington states that three weeks after the battle above twelve thousand of his soldiers had abandoned their colors. "I am convinced," he says in a dispatch to Lord Bathurst, "that we have out of our ranks doubled our loss in the battle, and have lost more men in the pursuit than the enemy have."