CHAPTER XIII.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT. CONFERENCE AT ERFURTH. PROPOSAL FOR PEACE. BUONAPARTE ENTERS SPAIN.
♦1808.
It had always been Buonaparte’s system, and therein it was that the strength and wisdom of his policy consisted, to ensure success, as far as the end can be rendered certain by the employment of adequate means. Having stripped Spain of its best troops, introduced his armies into the heart of the country, seized the most important fortresses, inveigled into captivity the whole Royal Family, and extorted from them a formal renunciation of the crown in his favour; the people, he thought, if they dared attempt any partial opposition, would be effectually intimidated by the first slaughter, and the military executions which should follow it. His calculation was erroneous, because the Spanish character, and the strength of good principles, had not been taken into the account. He had never dreamt of a national resistance; and the defeat of armies, till that time irresistible, affected him the more deeply, because he felt that the measures ♦Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr, 18.♦ which had drawn on these disasters were as infamous as he now perceived that they were impolitic. The reverses which befell him in the latter part of his bloody career he bore with the coldest insensibility; but he was distressed by these, and all but cast down.
♦He conceals them from the French people.♦
But it was too late to recede; the infamy was indelible, it remained only to secure the prize, and this he believed there would be no difficulty in effecting. His first care was to conceal from the French all knowledge of the mortifying failure his arms had experienced, till he should have secured the subserviency of the other continental powers, and collected fresh armies to pour into the peninsula. His system of government was founded upon falsehood as well as force. While all Spain was in arms, the French papers represented it as joyfully welcoming its new sovereign. “The disturbances,” they said, “which broke out in a few provinces were completely quelled: they had been occasioned only by the common people, who wished to pillage the rich: the disaffected had got together some bands of smugglers, opened the prisons, and put arms into the hands of the felons: these wretches had committed great excesses upon their peaceful countrymen, but every thing was now quiet. The captains-general, the magistrates, and the polished part of the nation, displayed the best sentiments, and the greatest repose and best state of mind prevailed. At Cadiz the public tranquillity did not experience a moment’s interruption; the inhabitants of that interesting city had resisted all the insidious offers of the English. Throughout the peninsula, indeed, only a few insignificant individuals had been led astray by the spies of England. But the Council of Castille, and the most respectable persons, had exerted their influence with all ranks, to crush the seeds of sedition before they should shoot forth; and their efforts had been completely successful.” Over great part of France and of the continent these accounts would be believed; wherever, indeed, a vigilant tyranny could keep out all information except its own. But at Bayonne it was not possible that the truth could be concealed; and by the falsehood which was officially circulated in that part of the country, it seems that the general opinion there was strongly against a war, provoked solely for the aggrandizement ♦June 8.♦ of the Buonaparte family. M. Champagny addressed a note to the prefect of the Gironde, informing him, that the Emperor had just received advices from his brother the King of Holland, saying the King of England was dead, and that the first act of George IV. had been to make a total change of ministers. This was not given as a report, but as an authenticated fact, officially communicated: “and may this event,” it was added, “be the presage of a general peace, ... the object of the Emperor’s wishes, to the want of which Europe is so sensible, and which would be so advantageous to the commerce of Bourdeaux in particular!” The same falsehood was repeated in that number of the Madrid[37] Gazette which contained Buonaparte’s proclamation of Joseph as King of Spain and the Indies. Buonaparte endeavoured also to keep his allies as well as his subjects ignorant of the real state of things. The Russian Ambassador at Madrid could find no means of communicating to his court an account of what was passing in Spain, all his letters being intercepted in France, till at the end of August, when some British officers were in Madrid, an opportunity was afforded him of sending his dispatches through England; he then confided to the honour of a hostile power what could no longer be trusted to an unprincipled ally.
♦Statement of the French government.♦
It was not till two months after the capture of the ships at Cadiz, and five weeks after the flight of the Intruder from Madrid, that any account of the affairs of Spain appeared in the French ♦Sept. 6.♦ papers, except assurances that all was well. A long narrative was then published, written with the usual falsehood of the French government, but not with its usual skill. The insurrection was ascribed entirely to the artifices and bribes of England, assisted by the monks and the Inquisition, ... the Inquisition, which had lent its whole authority to the usurpation! Great stress was laid upon the excesses which the patriots had committed; whereas the list of persons who were here claimed as martyrs in the Intruder’s cause did not equal in number the victims of one noyade in the Loire, scarcely exceeded that of one day’s allowance for the guillotine in Paris. The military detail, which was called a correct abstract of the events of the campaign, was composed with studied and inextricable confusion; all order of time and place was inverted and involved, and facts, exhibited thus piecemeal, were still farther disguised by suppression, exaggeration, and falsehood. At Valencia, it was said, French intrepidity overcame every obstacle: twenty pieces of artillery were taken; the suburbs were carried, and the streets strewed with dead bodies: ... this indeed was true; but they were the bodies of the French. At Zaragoza, fourteen cloisters, which had been fortified, three-fourths of the city, the arsenal, and all the magazines were in their possession. That unfortunate city was almost ruined by fire, the bombardment, and the explosion of mines. Not a hint was given of the event of that memorable siege. The loss of the fleet was not mentioned. Dupont was so spoken of, as to make it evident, that, if he returned to France, his life would atone for his failure. After a series of events which could not be described, because they ought to be a subject of judicial inquiry, he had committed the triple fault of suffering his communication with Madrid to be cut off, of letting himself be separated from two-thirds of his army, and then giving battle in a disadvantageous position, after a forced night-march; and, manifesting an equal deficiency of political as of military talent, he had allowed himself to be deceived in negotiations. This unexpected event, the numerous descents of the English upon the coast of Galicia, (where no English had landed, except a few officers,) and the excessive heat of the season, had induced the King to assemble his troops, and place them in a cooler climate than that of New Castille, and in a situation possessing a milder atmosphere, and better water: therefore, he left Madrid, and the army went into cooler cantonments. The bodies of insurgents scarcely deserved to be mentioned: they defended themselves behind a wall or a house; but a single squadron of cavalry, or a battalion of infantry, was sufficient to put many thousands of them to the rout. “All that the English papers have published,” said Buonaparte’s gazetteer, “is unfounded and false. England knows well the part that she is acting; she also knows well what she is to expect from all her efforts. Her only object is to involve Spain in confusion, that she may thereby make herself mistress of such of its possessions as best suit her purposes.”
♦Report of M. Champagny.♦