The persons in authority had sufficient influence to save his life, and put him in confinement for security; but they were unable to protect ♦Vol. ii. p. 64.♦ Luiz de Oliveira, who having been deservedly thrown into prison in June, had been left there as if forgotten, with that iniquitous neglect of justice which had long been usual in Portugal. He was murdered and dragged through the streets by the rabble; and a few other victims perished in this last explosion of popular fury. The Bishop, who appears to have been at that time in the battery of S. Francisco encouraging the troops, saw now what had been represented to him vainly, though in time, that the works were too extensive, as well as too weak. He had been advised to strengthen them by throwing up works en flèche, to place 1500 of the best troops in their rear, as a reserve for supporting the point which should be attacked, and to throw up a second line close under the suburb, and have the houses loop-holed, in preparation for that sort of defence which the inhabitants were in a temper to have maintained, had there been spirits to have directed them, as at Zaragoza. None of these things had been done; and the Bishop, sensible when too late of ♦The bishop leaves the city.♦ the errors which had been committed, and the value of the time which had been lost, and perceiving also too many proofs of that confusion which insubordination always produces, crossed to the left bank of the Douro during the night, leaving the ill-planned and ill-constructed works to be defended by an inadequate force and an inefficient general. All night the bells of all the churches were ringing the alarm; the churches were filled with supplicants, the streets with a multitude, who wasted in furious demonstrations that strength which should have been reserved for the defence of their streets, and houses, and chambers. At midnight a storm of wind and rain and thunder broke over the city, and while the lightnings flashed above, a useless discharge of cannon and musketry was kept up by the Portugueze along the line, at which the enemy gazed as at a spectacle, for not a shot could reach them. Soult had given orders that the works should be attacked at six on the ensuing morning, which was Good Friday. Napoleon and Glory was the word. The storm ceased ♦Operations, &c. 168–9.♦ about three, and the attack was postponed till seven, that the soil might have time to dry, so as not to impede the troops in their movements.
♦Porto taken.♦
General Parreiras before the attack was made had lost all hope of opposing a successful resistance. Yet when the enemy attacked the Prelada, a quinta, or country-seat, about a mile from the city, where the lines formed an angle, they did not force it without a loss of 500 men, including two chefs de bataillon. Having forced it, they flanked the greater part of those troops who did their duty. The right and left were attacked also; a panic soon spread: in less than an hour after the commencement of the action, the General seeing that all was lost, had crossed the bridge, and the French were in the town. A tremendous carnage ensued; the cavalry charging through the streets, and slaughtering indiscriminately all whom they overtook: for an officer who accompanied General Foy the preceding day had been killed, having attempted to defend himself when the General surrendered, and the circumstance of his death was made a pretext for this butchery. But the greatest destruction took place in the passage of the river; the inhabitants rushed to the bridge of boats in such numbers, that the first pontoon sank under their weight; the crowd from behind still pressed on, forcing those who were foremost into the stream, and themselves in like manner precipitated in their turn; the French meantime keeping up a fire of grape-shot upon the affrighted and helpless fugitives. From three to four thousand persons are supposed to have perished thus; and not satisfied with this, the enemy kept up a fire from the most commanding points upon those who were endeavouring to cross in boats. Of the numbers who were thus killed a large proportion consisted of women and children. But in this miserable day neither sex, age, nor innocence could obtain mercy, nor manly and heroic courage command respect from the inhuman enemy. The men, and they were not few, who did their duty, singly or in small parties where a handful of brave Portugueze had got together, were put to the sword. About two hundred, whom the French praised in reality when they intended to depreciate them by calling them the most fanaticised, collected near the Cathedral, and fought till the last man was cut down. The scenes which ensued were more odious and more opprobrious to humanity than even the horrors of this carnage; the men, however, were not allowed to commit enormities of every kind till they were glutted, as they had been at ♦Col. Jones’s Acc. of the War, i. 195.♦ Evora. Marshal Soult exerted himself to check their[7] excesses with an earnestness which, even if it proceeded from mere motives of policy, must be recorded to his honour. And he had some officers to second him with true good will in this good work; for though the miscreants were with him who had disgraced their country and their profession by the atrocities which they had perpetrated or permitted at Evora and Leiria, there were others who abhorred the iniquitous service in which they were engaged, and who were members of a secret society, the object of which was to throw off Buonaparte’s yoke, and restore peace to France and Europe.
♦Soult remains at Porto.♦
Complete as his success had hitherto been, and little as it had cost him, Marshal Soult did not find it advisable to push on for Lisbon. He now knew what was the spirit of the nation, and he was without any intelligence from Lapisse and Victor, whose movements were to be combined with his. He applied himself therefore to securing what he had won, and endeavoured to conciliate the Portugueze, and raise a party among them in favour of the ambitious designs which, like Junot, he appears now to ♦1809.
April.♦ have formed. For this purpose a newspaper was published at Porto a week only after its capture, and the first number opened with a panegyric upon the conqueror because he had not totally destroyed the city. While the streets were yet stained with the blood of the carnage, and there was mourning in every house, and bodies were every day cast up by the river and along the sea-beach, ... while it was stated officially in the Madrid Gazette that the whole garrison had been put to the sword, ... Marshal Soult was panegyrized for clemency! The dreadful catastrophe which Porto had suffered, said his writers, might serve as a warning for all who undertook great enterprises without calculating the means, or looking on to the end. But amid the horror with which so severe an example affected every feeling heart, there was abundant matter of consolation for minds capable of weighing things in the balance of philosophy. Towns carried by assault had invariably, among the most civilized nations, paid with their total destruction the penalty of their contumacy. This was the fate which Porto had had to apprehend; and from this it had been spared by a hero who always listened to the voice of mercy, and in whose heart valour and humanity contended for the ascendance!
♦Disposition of the inhabitants.♦
The Portugueze are not so light a people as to be thus easily deceived. They had seen the tender mercies of the French too recently to be duped by their professions, and not more than a sixth part of the inhabitants remained in Porto under their government. If this proof of their ♦Operations, &c. 183.♦ disposition augured ill for the French, it lessened the difficulty of providing for the city, which was an object of no small anxiety to the captors. They who had undertaken to supply the troops went into the country by night to make their bargains with persons whom they could trust, ♦Do. 206.♦ and the supplies were brought in darkness at a stated hour to a stated place; for if any person had been seen engaged in thus administering to the enemy, his life would have been the penalty of his treason. When the English property was put up to sale, not a person would bid for it: an individual at last ventured to offer about a third part of its value for certain goods, but before four-and-twenty hours had elapsed he absconded, either for the fear of being marked as one who had dealt with the French, or unable ♦Operations, &c. 205.♦ to bear the shame of having been the only Portugueze in Porto who had thus disgraced himself.
♦Marshal Soult’s views respecting the Liberals and the Jews.♦
There were, however, in Portugal, as in every country, men who have no other principle than the determination of promoting their own interest by any means; and there were some few who entertained that abject and superstitious faith in Buonaparte’s fortune which his partizans and flatterers every where endeavoured to promote. Some also there were who, in their vehement abhorrence for the besotted despotism and the filthy superstition which degraded their country, had renounced their national feeling and their Christian faith. The scheme of Soult’s policy was to make such persons (whom he supposed more numerous than they were) stand forward as a party, engage them in the irremissible offence of swearing fidelity to Napoleon and obedience to his representative, and employ them in corrupting their countrymen, and in watching and subjugating those whom they could not seduce. For this purpose he had his emissaries in the capital and in the provinces to spread disaffection by representing the abuses and evils both of the civil and ecclesiastical system, ... abuses which it was hardly possible to exaggerate, and evils which in themselves and in their consequences were only more tolerable and less pernicious than the iron tyranny which Buonaparte would have substituted in ♦Campaign of 1809 in the Peninsula, 15. Do. Appendix A.♦ their place. Marshal Soult had also conceived the strange intention of making the Jews, whose number in Portugal he estimated at 200,000, avow their religion under the protection of France, and hold upon an appointed day a general feast for the success of the Emperor’s arms. It is probable that he overrated them as greatly as he mistook their character; but if they had been mad enough to act in conformity to his wishes, a general massacre would have been the certain consequence. For the old inhuman prejudice against this persecuted race, when yielding to wiser laws and the spirit of the age, had been revived by the manner in which Buonaparte courted them. It was observed by some of the Spanish journalists, that when the Turks were the terror of Christendom, they had derived their information from the Jews, who were their instruments every where; and the promise of Buonaparte to abolish the Inquisition provoked only from the Spaniards the remark that this measure must have been suggested by some Israelite of the Sanhedrim.
♦His hopes of becoming King of Northern Lusitania.♦