History of the Peninsular War, Volume 4 (of 6)

by Robert Southey

♦Objections by Mr. Frere.♦

When this paper was communicated to Mr. Frere, he saw serious objections, which he stated to Garay, and which the Junta, though they would otherwise have published the proclamation, readily admitted. That ambassador perceived, more clearly perhaps than any other person at that time, the danger to be apprehended from convoking a legislative assembly in a nation altogether unprepared for it by habits, feelings, education, or general knowledge. He considered it a delicate and dangerous point in every respect, and said, “that if the decision of the question were left in his hand, notwithstanding the necessity for widening the basis of the government, the failure of all the political experiments which had been made in these latter times, and the impossibility which had been found (by a fatality peculiar to the present age) of forming a permanent establishment, even in affairs less essential than the formation of a free constitution for a great nation, would make him waver. But taking the decision for granted, he thought the manner in which it was proposed to announce it likely to produce bad effects in Spain; and he could venture,” he said, “to assure D. Martin de Garay, that it would undoubtedly create them in England. If the Spaniards had indeed passed three centuries under arbitrary government, they ought not to forget that it was the price which they paid for having conquered and peopled the fairest portion of the world, and that the integrity of that immense power rested solely upon these two words, Religion and the King. If the old constitution had been lost by the conquest of America, the first object should be to recover it; but in such a manner as not to lose what had cost so much in the acquisition: and for this reason, they ought to avoid, as a political poison, every enunciation of general principles, the application of which it would be impossible to limit or qualify, even when the Negroes and Indians should quote it in favour of themselves. And allowing that a bad exchange had been made in bartering the ancient national liberty for the glory and extension of the Spanish name; allowing that the error should at all hazards be done away; even though it were so,” Mr. Frere said, “it did not appear becoming the character of a well-educated person to pass censures upon the conduct of his forefathers, or to complain of what he may have lost by their negligence or prodigality, still less so if it were done in the face of the world; and what should be said of a nation who should do this publicly, and after mature deliberation?”

This was true foresight,—and yet the English ambassador approached Charybdis in his fear of Scylla. He spoke to the Spaniards of Religion and the King; in England the truest and most enlightened lovers of liberty can have no better rallying words; in Spain those words had for three hundred years meant the inquisition and an absolute monarch, whose ministers, so long as they could retain his favour, governed according to their own will and pleasure, unchecked by any constitutional control. The government did not obtain by their decree for ♦Unpopularity of the Junta.♦ convoking the Cortes the popularity which they had perhaps expected. The measure had been long delayed, and therefore was supposed to have been unwillingly resolved on. So much, indeed, had been expected from the Central Junta, that no possible wisdom on their part, no possible success, could have answered the unreasonable demand. The disappointment of the nation was in proportion to its hopes, and the government became equally the object of suspicion and contempt. Some of the members had large estates in those provinces which were occupied by the French, and it was suspected that where their property was, there their hearts were also. Their subsequent conduct proved how greatly they were injured by this distrust. They were not censured for their first disasters, which the ablest men under like circumstances could not have averted. Had they obtained accurate intelligence of the strength and movements of the enemy when Buonaparte entered Spain; had they exerted themselves as much in disciplining troops as in raising and embodying them, and had they supplied them with regularity and promptitude; it would not have been possible to have stopped the progress of such a force. Something was allowed for the confidence which the battle of Baylen had inspired, and for the enthusiasm of the people, which the government had partaken. Neither would the nation have been disposed to condemn, even if it had perceived, errors which arose from the national character. But when, after the bitter experience of twelve whole months, no measures had been adopted for improving the discipline of the armies, or supplying them in the field, the incapacity of the Junta became glaring, and outcries against them were heard on all sides.

♦Their difficulties and errors.♦

One of the weightiest errors for which they were censured was for not exerting themselves more effectually to bring the whole strength of the country against the invaders. They had promised to raise 500,000 men and 50,000 cavalry. Granada was the only province which supplied its full proportion, and Granada even exceeded it; its contingent was about 28,000, whereas it furnished nearly forty. But this depended more upon the provincial Juntas than upon the central government, whose decrees were of no avail in those parts which the enemy possessed, and were ill observed in others, where the local administrations, from disgust, or jealousy, or indolence, or incapacity, seemed to look on as spectators of the dreadful drama, rather than to perform their parts in it, as men and as Spaniards. Neither is it to the want of numbers that their defeats were to be attributed; there were at all times men enough in the field; arms, equipments, and discipline were wanting. It is unjust to judge of the exertions of the Spanish Junta by those of the National Convention in France, who had the whole wealth and strength of a populous and rich country at their absolute disposal, and who began the revolutionary war with officers, and tacticians, and statesmen capable of wielding the mighty means which were put into their hands. The fault of the Junta was in relying too much upon numbers and bravery, and too little upon their fortresses. The general under whom the great captain Gonzalo de Cordova learnt the art of war had left them a lesson which they might profitably have remembered. He used to say, that fortresses ought to be opposed to the impatience and fury of the French, and that the place for stationing raw troops was behind walls and ramparts.

The most important errors which the Junta had hitherto committed were, the delay in convoking the Cortes, and their conduct towards Sir Arthur Wellesley’s army; but the national character contributed in no slight degree to both. For it was not the known aversion of Florida Blanca to the name of a representative assembly, nor the fears of some of the Junta, nor the love of power in others, which protracted the convocation of the Cortes, so much as their reverential adherence to established forms. This was evident in Jovellanos himself, who regarded it as equally profane and dangerous to approach this political ark of the covenant, without scrupulously observing all the ceremonies and solemnities which the law prescribed. Precedents on points of this kind are not to be found in Spain as they are in England. Antiquaries were to be consulted, archives examined, old regulations adapted to new circumstances,—and this when the enemy was at the gates. The defect may well be pardoned, because of the virtues with which it was connected. Had the Spaniards regarded with less veneration the deeds and the institutions of their ancestors, they would never have supported that struggle which will be the wonder of succeeding ages. Their conduct toward the English army sprang from a worse fault; from that pride which made them prone to impose upon others and upon themselves a false opinion of their strength. It is the national failing, for which they have ever been satirized, by their own writers as well as by other nations. They will rather promise and disappoint, than acknowledge their inability; of this, their history for the last two centuries affords abundant examples; they had yet to learn, that perfect sincerity is as much due to an ally as to a confessor. In many cases the government was itself deceived; the same false point of honour prevailing in every department, from the lowest to the highest, it received and acted upon exaggerated statements and calculations; but in others, it cannot be denied, that pride led to the last degree of meanness, and that promises were held out to the English general, which those who made them must have known it was impossible to perform.

Yet it must be admitted that the errors of the Junta were more attributable to the character of the nation than of the individuals; and those individuals were placed in circumstances of unexampled difficulty. Four-and-thirty men, most of them strangers to each other, and unaccustomed to public business, were brought together to govern a nation in the most perilous crisis of its history, without any thing to direct them except their own judgement, and almost without any other means than what the patriotism of the people could supply. They had troops indeed, but undisciplined, unofficered, unprovided, half armed, and half clothed. The old system of government was broken up, the new one was yet to be formed. They had neither commissariat nor treasury; the first donations and imposts were exhausted; so also were the supplies which England had liberally given, and those from America had not yet arrived. Added to these difficulties, and worse than all, was that dreadful state of moral and social anarchy into which the nation had been thrown, and which was such that no man knew in whom he could confide. To poison food or water in time of war is a practice which all people, who are not absolute savages, have pronounced infamous by common consent; but it is a light crime compared to the means which Buonaparte employed for the subjugation of Spain,—means which poisoned the well-springs of social order, and loosened the very joints and fibres of society. Morla, when he betrayed his country, committed an act of treason against human nature. The evil had been great before, but when a Judas Iscariot had been found in Morla during the agony of Spain, in whom could the people confide? “Suspicion,” says Jovellanos, “and hatred were conceived and spread with frightful facility. How many generals, nobles, prelates, magistrates, and lawyers, were regarded with distrust, either because of their old relations with Godoy, or because they were connected with some of the new partizans of the tyranny; or for the weakness, or indecision, or ambiguity of their conduct; or for the calumnies and insinuations which rivalship and envy excited against them! It was considered as a crime to have gone to Bayonne, to have remained at Madrid, or resided in other places which were occupied by the intrusive government; to have submitted to swear allegiance to it, to have obeyed its orders, or to have suffered even compulsively its yoke and its contempt. What reputation was secure? Who was not exposed to the attacks of envy, to the imputations of calumny, and to the violence of an agitated populace?”

From this state of things it necessarily arose, that the Junta acted in constant fear and suspicion of those whom they employed. Their sense of weakness and their love of power increased the evil. Fearing the high spirit of Alburquerque, and the influence which rank and talents conjoined would give to his deserved popularity among the soldiers, they cramped him in a subordinate command, while they trusted those armies which were the hope of Spain to Cuesta, because they were afraid of offending him, and to Venegas, for the opposite reason, that they were sure of his obsequious submission. Some odium they incurred by permitting a trade with towns which the enemy occupied. For the sake, as was alleged, of those Spaniards who were compelled to live under the yoke, and also for the advantage of the colonies, they had granted licences for conveying sugar, cacao, and bark, to those parts of the kingdom. ♦July 14.♦ These licences were only to be trusted to persons of known and approved patriotism, who were likewise to be strictly watched, and liable to be searched upon any suspicion. The weakness of such a concession in such a war, as well as the obvious facility which it afforded to the French and their traitorous partizans, excited just reprehension; and at the close of the year ♦Dec. 28.♦ the Junta found it necessary to revoke their edict, acknowledging that, in spite of all precautions, it was found prejudicial to the public safety. Some of the members were suspected of enhancing the price of necessaries for the army, by their own secret monopolies; others were said to be surrounded by venal instruments, through whom alone they were accessible. These imputations were probably ill-founded or exaggerated; certain, however, it is, that never had any government fewer friends. Men of the most opposite principles were equally disaffected toward it. Its very defenders had no confidence in its stability, and were ready to forsake it. They who dreaded any diminution of the regal authority, could not forgive its popular origin; they who aspired to lay the foundation of a new and happier order of things, were discontented, because the measures which were taken towards the reformation of the state were slowly, and, as they deemed, reluctantly adopted. Those wretches who were sold to France were the enemies of any government which resisted the usurpation; and those whose timid natures, or short-sighted selfishness, disposed them to submission, naturally regarded it with dislike, because it delayed the subjection of the country. Among the people, who were actuated by none of these feelings, it was sufficient to render the Junta unpopular that it was unfortunate. The times rendered them suspicious; their own conduct and their power made them obnoxious to many; and their ill-fortune, more than their errors, made them disliked by all.

♦Scheme for overthrowing them.♦

Influenced by some of these motives, and perhaps in no little degree by jealousy, the Junta of Seville were particularly hostile to the government, and a plan was formed in that city for overthrowing it: the members were to be seized, and some of the most obnoxious transported to Manilla in a ship which was prepared for the purpose. Some regiments had been gained over, and it is said even the guards of the Junta; but as the persons who designed this revolution had for their direct object the good of Spain, they considered it a mark of confidence due to Great Britain to make the English ambassador acquainted with their purpose; for in fact, so far were the Spanish people from regarding the interference of Great Britain with jealousy, that they were disappointed because their ally did not interfere more frequently, and with more effect. Marquis Wellesley, of whom it had been said by Mr. Whitbread that he would, if opportunity should offer, take Spain and Portugal as Buonaparte had done, had now an opportunity of showing in what manner he thought himself bound to act by a government which he knew to be weak, and suspected to be treacherous. At the very time when this foul imputation was brought against him in parliament, he gave to that government just so much information of its danger, as, without compromising the safety of any persons concerned, enabled the Junta to prevent the intended insurrection.