History of the Peninsular War, Volume 1 (of 6)

by Robert Southey

♦National character unchanged.♦

Travellers, forming their hasty estimate from the inhabitants of sea-ports and great cities, have too generally agreed in reviling the Portugueze and Spaniards; but if they whose acquaintance with these nations was merely superficial have been disposed to depreciate and despise them, others who dwelt among them always became attached to the people, and bore willing and honourable testimony to the virtues of the national character. It was indeed remarkable how little this had partaken of the national decay. The meanest peasant knew that his country had once been prosperous and powerful; he was familiar with the names of its heroes; and he spake of the days that were past with a feeling which was the best omen for those that were to come.

♦Both countries in an improving state.♦

Such was the moral and intellectual state of the peninsular kingdoms toward the close of the eighteenth century. There was not the slightest appearance of improvement in the principles of the government or in the administration of justice; but, if such a disposition had arisen, no nations could have been in a more favourable state for the views of a wise minister and an enlightened sovereign. For the whole people were proudly and devoutly attached to the institutions of their country; there existed among them neither sects, nor factions, nor jarring interests; they were one-hearted in all things which regarded their native land; individuals felt for its honour as warmly as for their own; and obedience to their sovereign was with them equally a habit and a principle. In spite of the blind and inveterate despotism of the government, the mal-administration of the laws, and the degeneracy of the higher classes, both countries were in a state of slow, but certain, advancement; of which, increasing commerce, reviving literature, humaner manners, and mitigated bigotry were unequivocal indications. In this state they were found when France was visited by the most tremendous revolution that history has recorded, ... a revolution which was at once the consequence and the punishment of its perfidious policy, its licentiousness, and its irreligion.

♦Both become subservient to France.♦

It was soon seen that this revolution threatened to propagate itself throughout the whole civilised world. The European governments combined against it; their views were discordant, their policy was erroneous, their measures were executed as ill as they were planned: a master-mind was equally wanting in the cabinet and in the field. In the hour of trial the Spanish court perceived the inefficiency of its organized force; and having neither wisdom to understand the strength of the nation, nor courage and virtue to rely upon it, it concluded a disastrous war by a dishonourable peace. From that time its councils were directed by France, and its treasures were at the disposal of the same domineering ally. A war against England, undertaken upon the most frivolous pretexts, and ruinous to its interests, was the direct consequence; and when, after the experimental peace of Amiens, hostilities were renewed between France and England, Spain had again to experience the same fatal results of the dependence to which her cabinet had subjected her. Portugal had purchased peace with less apparent dishonour, because the terms of the bargain were not divulged; but there also the government soon found that in such times to be weak is to be miserable: it was compelled to brook the ostentatious insolence of the French ambassadors, and to pay large sums for the continuance of a precarious neutrality whenever France thought proper to extort them; for the system of Europe had now been overthrown, and the laws of nations were trampled under foot. A military power, more formidable than that of Rome in its height of empire, of Zingis, or of Timour, had been established in France upon the wreck of all her ancient institutions; and this power was directed by the will of an individual the most ambitious of the human race, who was intoxicated with success, and whose heart and conscience were equally callous.

♦Causes of the French Revolution.♦

Many causes combined in producing the French revolution: the example of a licentious court had spread like a pestilence through the country; impiety was in fashion among the educated classes; and the most abominable publications were circulated among the ignorant with as much zeal as if a conspiracy had actually been formed for the subversion of social order, by removing from mankind all restraints of morality, of religion, and of decency. Things were in this condition when France took part in the American war; a measure to which Louis XVI. reluctantly consented, because he felt in his heart its injustice, and had perhaps an ominous sentiment of its impolicy. The seeds of republicanism and revolution were thus imported by the government itself, and they fell upon a soil which was prepared for them. Financial difficulties increased; state quacks were called in; a legislative assembly was convoked in a kingdom where none of the inhabitants had been trained to legislation; and the fatal error was committed of uniting the three estates in one chamber, whereby the whole power was transferred to the commons. There was a generous feeling at that time abroad, from which much good might have been educed, had there been ability to have directed it, and if the heart of the country had not been corrupted. Nothing was heard except the praises of freedom and liberality, and professions of the most enlarged and cosmopolitan philanthropy. The regenerated nation even renounced for the future, all offensive war by a legislative act: they fancied that the age of political redemption was arrived, and they announced the Advent of Liberty, with peace on earth, good will towards men. They themselves seemed to believe that the Millennium of Philosophy was begun; and so in other countries the young and ardent, and the old who had learned no lessons from history, believed with them. But the consequences which Burke predicted from changes introduced with so much violence, and so little forethought, followed in natural and rapid succession. ♦Progress of the French revolution.♦ The constitutionalists, who had supposed that it is as easy to remodel the institutions of a great kingdom in practice as in theory, were driven from the stage by bolder innovators; and these in their turn yielded to adventurers more profligate and more daring than themselves. Nobility was abolished; monarchy was overthrown; the church was plundered; the clergy were proscribed; atheism was proclaimed; the king and queen were put to death, after a mockery of judicial forms; the dauphin slowly murdered by systematic ill-usage; a plaster statue of Liberty was set up in Paris; and in the course of two years more than fifteen hundred persons were beheaded at the feet of that statue, men and women indiscriminately. The frenzy spread throughout all France. In the wholesale butcheries which were reported to the National Convention, by its agents, as so many triumphs of equality and justice, not less than eighteen thousand lives were sacrificed by the executioner. It seemed as if God had abandoned the unhappy nation who had denied Him, and that they were delivered over, as the severest chastisement, to the devices of their own hearts. Before this madness was exhausted, the wretches who had thrust themselves into the government paid the earthly penalty of their guilty elevation. One faction did justice upon another: in the same place where dogs had licked the blood of Louis and his queen, there in succession did they lick the blood of Brissot, Danton, Hebert, Robespierre, and their respective associates. When the theorists, the fanatics, and the bolder villains, had perished, a set of intriguers, who had accommodated themselves in turn to all, came forward, and divided the spoil; till the unhappy nation, disgusted with such intrigues, and weary of perpetual changes, acquiesced with joy in the usurpation of a military adventurer, which promised them stability, at least, if not repose.

♦Character of Napoleon Buonaparte.♦

The revolution had given the government absolute command over the whole physical force of France; and this prodigious power was now at the disposal of an individual unchecked by any restraint, and subject to no responsibility. Perhaps it would not have been possible to have selected among the whole human race any other man, to whom it would have been so dangerous to commit this awful charge. Napoleon Buonaparte possessed all the qualities which are required to form a perfect tyrant. His military genius was of the highest order; his talents were of the most imposing kind; his ambition insatiable; his heart impenetrable: he was without honour, without veracity, without conscience; looking for no world beyond the present, and determined to make this world his own, at whatever cost. The military executions committed in Italy by his orders had shown his contempt for the established usages of war, the law of nations, and the common feelings of humanity: the suppression of the Papal government, the usurpation of the Venetian states, and the seizure of Malta, had proved that neither submissiveness nor treaties afforded any protection against this fit agent of a rapacious and unprincipled democracy. ♦His crimes in Egypt and Syria.♦ But it was during the Egyptian expedition that the whole atrocity of his character was displayed. He landed in Egypt, proclaiming that he was the friend of the Grand Seignior, and that the French were true Mussulmen, who honoured Mahommed and the Koran. His first act was to storm a city belonging to the Grand Seignior, which he never summoned to surrender, and which was incapable of defence. The butchery was continued for some hours after the resistance had ceased. The very perpetrators of this carnage have related that they put to death old and young, men, women, and children, in the mosques, whither these unoffending and helpless wretches had fled to implore protection from God and from their prophet; and they have avowed that this was done deliberately, for the purpose of astonishing the people. Thus it was that Buonaparte commenced his career in Egypt. He left Alexandria, exclaiming, “The Virtues are on our side! Glory to Allah,” he said; “there is no other God but God: Mahommed is his prophet, and I am his friend.” He proclaimed to the Egyptians that Destiny directed all his operations, and had decreed from the beginning of the world, that after beating down the Cross, he should come into that country to fulfil the task assigned him; and he called upon them to enjoy the blessings of a system, in which the wisest and the most virtuous were to govern, and the people were to be happy. It is literally true, that the Egyptian mothers mutilated or killed their daughters, to save them from the brutality of his troops; and that wherever the French moved, a flock of kites and vultures followed, sure of the repast which these purveyors every where provided for them. Their general entered Syria, took Jaffa by assault, and issued a proclamation upon its capture, professing that he would be “clement and merciful, after the example of God.” Four days after the capture, and after that profession of clemency had been made, he drew out his prisoners, some three thousand in number, and had them deliberately slaughtered. A whole division of his army was employed in this massacre; and when their cartridges were exhausted, they finished the work with the bayonet and the sword, dragging away those who had expired, in order to get at the living, who, in the hope of escaping death, had endeavoured to hide themselves under the bodies of the dead. To complete this monster’s character, it was only needful that he should show himself as inhuman toward his own soldiers as his prisoners; and that it might be complete in all parts, this proof of his disposition was not wanting. When Sir Sidney Smith and Captain Wright, then Sir Sidney’s lieutenant, compelled him to raise the siege of Acre, the sick and wounded in his army were more than he had means of removing: any other general would have recommended them to the humanity of an English enemy; but this would have been humiliating to Buonaparte, and therefore poison was administered to them by his orders.