“Spaniards, the Junta announces to you frankly what has happened in the continent, because it would not have you ignorant for a moment of the new danger which threatens the country: they announce it in the confidence, that, instead of being dismayed, you will collect new strength, and show yourselves more worthy of the cause which you defend, and of the admiration of the universe: they announce it to you, because they know that the determination of the Spaniards is to be free at whatever cost; and all means however violent, all resources however extraordinary, all funds however privileged, must be called out to repel the enemy. The ship’s treasures must be thrown overboard to lighten her in the tempest and save her from shipwreck. Our country is sinking; ... strength, riches, life, wisdom, council, ... whatever we have is hers. The victory is ours, if we carry on to the end of our enterprise the sublime enthusiasm with which it began. The mass with which we must resist the enemy must be composed of the strength of all, and the sacrifices of all; and then what will it import that he pours upon us anew the legions which are now superfluous in Germany, or the swarm of conscripts which he is about to drag from France? We began the contest with 80,000 men less; he began it with 200,000 more. Let him replace them if he can; let him send or bring them to this region of death, as destructive to the oppressors as to the oppressed! Adding to the experience of two campaigns the strength of despair and of fury, we will give to their phalanxes of banditti the same fate which their predecessors have experienced; and the earth, fattened with their blood, shall return to us with usury the fruits of which they have deprived us! Let the monarchs of the North, forgetful of what they are, and of what they are capable, submit to be the slaves of this new Tamerlane; let them purchase at such a price the tranquillity of a moment, till it comes to their turn to be devoured! What is this to us, who are a mighty people, and resolved to perish or to triumph? Did we ask their consent when, twenty months ago, we raised our arms against the tyrant? Did we not enter into the contest alone? Did we not carry it on for a campaign alone?... Nothing which is necessary for our defence is wanting. Our connexion is daily drawn closer with America, to whose assistance, as timely as it was generous, the mother country is deeply indebted, and on whose zeal and loyalty a great part of our hope is founded. The alliance which we have formed with Great Britain continues and will continue; that nation has lavished for us its blood and its treasures, and is entitled to our gratitude and that of future ages. Let, then, intrigue, or fear, prevail with weak governments and misled cabinets; let them, if they will, conclude treaties, illusory on the part of him who grants, and disgraceful on the part of those who accept them; let them, if they will, relinquish the common cause of civilized nations, and inhumanly abandon their allies! The Spanish people will stand alone and erect amid the ruins of the European continent. Here has been drawn, never to be sheathed, the sword of hatred against the execrable tyrant; here is raised, never to be beaten down, the standard of independence and of justice! Hasten to it, all ye in Europe who will not live under the abominable yoke; ye who will not enter into a league with iniquity; ye who are indignant at the fatal and cowardly desertion of these deluded princes, come to us! Here the valiant shall find opportunities of acquiring true honour; the wise and the virtuous shall obtain respect; the afflicted shall have an asylum. Our cause is the same; the same shall be our reward. Come! and, in despite of all the arts and all the power of this inhuman despot, we will render his star dim, and form for ourselves our own destiny!”
Two things are remarkable in this paper; the total change, or rather restoration of public feeling, which must have been effected, before a Spanish government would hold up the resistance of the Dutch to Philip as a glorious example to the Spanish people; and the want of foresight and information in the Junta, who could not only rely upon the attachment of the colonies, but even venture to declare, that the hopes of the country rested in great measure upon them. But though the Spanish government deceived itself in looking for hope where none was to be found, and in its exaggerated opinion of its military strength, it was not mistaken in relying upon the national character, and that spirit of endurance which constituted ♦State of public opinion in England.♦ its moral strength. Upon this it was, and upon the extent and nature of the Peninsula, that those persons who from the commencement looked on with unshaken confidence to the final expulsion of the invaders, founded their judgement. The Continent, notwithstanding its extent, fell under the yoke of France, because the spirit of the people was not such as to supply the want of magnanimity and of wisdom in their rulers: the Tyrolese were subdued notwithstanding their heroism, because, in so small a territory as the Tyrol, numbers, remorselessly employed, must necessarily overcome all resistance. But no force can be sufficient to conquer and keep in subjection a peninsula, containing about 170,000 square miles, and twelve millions of inhabitants, if the people carry resistance to the uttermost. Their armies may be defeated, their towns occupied, their fortresses taken, their villages burnt, ... but the country cannot be conquered while the spirit of the nation remains unsubdued. In Spain the mountains form a chain of fastnesses running through the whole Peninsula, and connecting all its provinces with each other. In such a country, therefore, when the war ceases to be carried on by army against army, and becomes the struggle of a nation against its oppressors, pursued incessantly by night and day, the soldier, no longer acting in large bodies, loses that confidence which discipline gives him; while the peasant, on the other hand, feels the whole advantage which the love of his country, and the desire of vengeance, and the sense of duty, and the approbation of his own heart, give to the individual in a contest between man and man. The character of the Spaniards was displayed in their annals. The circumstances of their country remained the same as when Henri IV. said of it, that it was a land wherein a weak army must be beaten, and a strong one starved. They who were neither ignorant of history nor of human nature considered these things; and therefore, from the commencement of the struggle, regarded it with unabated hope.
But never since the commencement of the French revolution had the affairs of England, of Europe, and of the world, worn so dark an aspect as at this time. The defeats which the Spaniards had sustained were far more disheartening than those of the preceding winter, because they evinced that neither had the armies improved in discipline, nor the government profited by experience. It was but too plain, that, notwithstanding the show of resistance made at the Sierra Morena, the kingdoms of Andalusia were in fact open to the enemy; so supine was the Central Junta, as to make it even probable that Cadiz itself might be betrayed or surprised; and if, now that Buonaparte had no other object, he should march a great force against the English in Portugal, there were few persons who had sufficient knowledge of the country and of the character of the people, to look onward without dismay.
♦Lord Wellington’s views with regard to Portugal.♦
Lord Wellington calculated upon both. He knew that man is naturally brave, that the men of any country therefore may, with good training, be made good soldiers, and that if the Spanish troops were no longer what they had been under the Prince of Parma, the fault was not in the materials, but in the composition of their armies. The Portugueze were as proud a people as the Spaniards, and had in their history as much cause for pride; but they were not so impracticable. The removal of their court removed all those intrigues and jealousies which would otherwise have been at work; the nation felt itself at this time dependent upon England; but there was no humiliation in this; any such sentiment was precluded by old alliance, the confidence of hereditary attachment, and the consciousness that it was willing and able to do its own part in its own defence. Whatever measures the British government advanced were cordially adopted; and Lord Wellington, during the mortifying inaction to which he was reduced, had the satisfaction of knowing that the Portugueze troops were every day improving in military habits and feelings, and that he might reckon upon them in the next campaign as an efficient force. In all his views and opinions concerning the course to be pursued, Marquis Wellesley entirely agreed with him; and the Marquis, when he returned to England to take his place in administration, proposed that every effort should be made for placing Portugal in the best state of preparation. He knew that we might rely upon the Spaniards for perseverance through all reverses and under every disadvantage; but it was on the Portugueze that we must place our trust for regular and effectual co-operation.
♦The King’s speech.♦
When parliament assembled this was referred to in the king’s speech. “The efforts,” it was said, “of Great Britain, for the protection of Portugal, had been powerfully aided by the confidence which the Prince Regent had reposed in his majesty, and by the co-operation of the local government, and of the people of that country. The expulsion of the French from that kingdom, and the glorious victory of Talavera, had contributed to check the progress of the enemy. The Spanish government had now, in the name and by the authority of Ferdinand VII., determined to assemble the general and extraordinary Cortes of the nation. This measure, his majesty trusted, would give fresh animation and vigour to the councils and the arms of Spain, and successfully direct the energies and spirit of the Spanish people to the maintenance of the legitimate monarchy, and to the ultimate deliverance of their country. The most important considerations of policy and of good faith required, that as long as this great cause could be maintained with a prospect of success, it should be supported, according to the nature and circumstances of the contest, by the strenuous and continued assistance of the power and resources of Great Britain.”
In the debates which ensued it was a melancholy thing to see how strongly the spirit of opposition manifested itself even in those persons whose opinions and feelings regarding the justice and necessity of the war were in entire ♦Speech of Earl St. Vincent;♦ sympathy with the government. Earl St. Vincent inveighed in the strongest terms against the ministers, to whose ignorance and incapacity, to whose weakness, infatuation, and stupidity, he said, all our disasters and disgrace were owing. After panegyrizing Sir John Moore as one of the ablest men who ever commanded an army, he spoke of the battle of Talavera as a victory which had been purchased with the useless expenditure of our best blood, which led to no advantage, and which had had all the consequences of defeat. “It is high time,” said he, “that parliament should adopt strong measures, or the voice of the country will resound like thunder in their ears. Any body may be a minister now: they pop in, and they pop out, like the man and woman in a peasant’s barometer; they rise up like tadpoles; they may be compared to wasps, to hornets, to locusts; they send forth their pestilential breath over the whole country, and nip and destroy every fair flower in the land. The conduct of his majesty’s government has led to the most frightful disasters, which are no where exceeded in the annals of history. The country is in that state which makes peace inevitable; it will be compelled to make peace, however disadvantageous, because it will be unable to maintain a war so shamefully misconducted and so disastrous in its consequences.”
♦Lord Grenville;♦
Lord Grenville spake in a similar temper. The day must come, he said, when ministers would have to render an account to parliament of the treasures which they had wasted, and the lives which they had sacrificed. Their measures had uniformly failed, and presented nothing but an unbroken series of disgraceful, irremediable failures. And yet they had the confidence, the unblushing confidence, to tell us of a victory! Gilded disasters were called splendid victories, and the cypress that droops over the tombs of our gallant defenders, whose lives have been uselessly sacrificed, was to be denominated blooming laurels! He spake of what might have been done if an army had been sent either to Trieste or to the north of Germany; condemned the Walcheren expedition, as the plan and execution of that miserable enterprise deserved, and pronounced a condemnation not less unqualified upon the plans which had been pursued in Spain, where, he said, they had persisted in expecting co-operation from an armed peasantry, persevering in error after the absurdity of such an expectation had been proved. Why too had the army in that country been exposed in unhealthy situations? But the Lords had a duty to perform; having seen what had taken place before in Spain and Portugal, they could not exculpate themselves for having continued to repose confidence in such ministers. They must exert themselves in this most imminent crisis of their country. “You cannot be ignorant,” said he, “of its tremendous situation, and where can you look? To the government! See it, my Lords, broken, distracted, incompetent, incapable of exerting any energy, or inspiring any confidence! It is not from the government that our deliverance is to be expected; it must be found, if it be found at all, in your own energy and in your own patriotism.” And he concluded with moving as an amendment to the address, that vigorous and effectual proceedings should be instituted, as the only atonement which could be made to an injured people!