The Cortes faithfully represented the nation in their feelings on this subject; and accordingly they issued a decree, declaring null and of no effect all treaties or transactions of any kind which Ferdinand should authorize while he remained in duresse, whether in the enemy’s country or in Spain, so long as he was under the direct or indirect influence of the Usurper. The nation, it was proclaimed, would never consider him free, nor render him obedience, till they should see him in the midst of his true subjects, and in the bosom of the national congress: nor would they lay down their arms, nor listen to any proposal for an accommodation of any kind, till Spain had been completely evacuated by the troops which had so unjustly invaded it. At the time when this brave decree was passed, the condition of Spain appeared hopeless to those persons by whom moral causes are overlooked, and from whose philosophy all consideration of Providence is dismissed. Fortress after fortress had fallen; army after army had been destroyed, till the Spaniards had no longer anything in the field which could even pretend to the name, except the force under Romana with Lord Wellington. The enemy surrounded the bay of Cadiz, and were masters of the adjacent country, wherever they could cover it with their troops, or scour it with their cavalry. Yet in the sight of these enemies, from the neck of land which they thus beleaguered, the Cortes legislated for Spain; and its proceedings, though the Intruder and his unhappy adherents affected to despise them, were regarded with the deepest anxiety throughout the Peninsula, and wherever the Spanish language extends. There is no other example in history of so singular a position. During the three years which had elapsed since the commencement of the struggle, Buonaparte had not only increased his power, but seemed also to have consolidated and established it; while Spain had endured all the evils of revolution without acquiring a revolutionary strength; and, what appeared more surprising, none of those commanding spirits which revolutions usually bring forth had arisen there. Enlightened Spaniards had with one consent called for the Cortes, as the surest remedy for their country; and in England they who were most friendly to the Spaniards, and they who were least so, had agreed in the propriety of convoking it. Long as the Cortes had been suspended, it was still a venerable name; and its restoration gladdened the hearts of the ♦Character of the Cortes.♦ people. A fairer representation could not have been obtained if the whole kingdom had been free, nor a greater proportion of able men; the circumstances, also, in which they were placed, increased their claims to respect among a people by whom poverty has never been despised. Many of the members, having lost their whole property in the general wreck, were dependent upon friendship even for their food. For although a stipend was appointed, some of those provinces which were occupied by the enemy could find no means of paying it; and no provision for remedying this default had been yet devised. They who had professions could not support themselves by practising, because the business of the Cortes engrossed their whole attention. The self-denying ordinance, which they had passed, excluded them from offices of emolument; and there were deputies who sometimes had not wherewith to buy oil for a lamp to give them light. Under these circumstances they respected themselves, and were respected by the nation according to the true standard of their worth.

But as the Cortes faithfully represented the characteristic virtues of the nation, they represented with equal fidelity its defects. The majority were scarcely less bigoted than the most illiterate of their countrymen; and they prided themselves upon having made the assembly swear to preserve the Romish as the exclusive religion of Spain: this, they said, was one of the things which reflected most lustre upon the Cortes. Their opponents, who designated themselves as the Liberal party, assented to what they could neither with prudence nor safety have opposed; and they swore, accordingly, to maintain in its domination and intolerance a corrupt religion which they despised and hated. Disbelief is too weak a word for expressing the feelings of a generous Spaniard toward the superstition which has eaten like a cancer into the bosom of his country. And most unhappily for themselves and Spain, the men whose heart and understanding revolted against intolerance and imposture were themselves infected with the counterpoison of French philosophy, and their best purposes were too often sophisticated with the frothy notions of that superficial school. This party, though far inferior in numbers, took the lead, with the activity and zeal of men who had embraced new opinions, and were labouring to promote them. Though fatally erroneous in what is of most importance, they acted in many cases with a quick and ardent perception of what is just; and not unfrequently they were right in the general principle, even when they were wrong in its application. Through their exertions, measures were carried, as far as votes of the Cortes could effect them, which, if they had been effectual, would have conferred lasting benefit upon the people. But in many of these reforms they proceeded rashly, neither sufficiently regarding the rights of individuals, nor the opinions and habits of the nation; and in what was most required at such a crisis both parties were alike deficient. Instead of infusing into the Government that energy which had been expected, the Cortes weakened and embarrassed the executive by perpetually intermeddling with it; so that, under their control, the Regency which they had appointed became more inefficient than the central Junta. And instead of making the deliverance of the country their paramount object, they busied themselves in framing a constitution; a work, which, if it had been more needful, might well have been deferred till a more convenient season. Great part of their sittings was consumed in metaphysical discussions, arising out of the scheme of the constitution; and the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people was asserted in a temper which plainly manifested how surely that sovereignty, if it were once erected, would become unendurably tyrannical. Day after day these abstractions were debated, while the enemy was besieging Cadiz. Meantime no measures were adopted for bringing the army into a better state; and the mournful truth became apparent even to those who most reluctantly acknowledged it. But if it be difficult to form an effective army where there are none who have studied the principles and profited by the practice of war, it is yet more difficult to make legislators of men whose minds are ill disciplined, even when well stored.

CHAPTER XXXV.
AFFAIRS OF PORTUGAL. ROMANA’S DEATH. BADAJOZ TAKEN BY THE FRENCH. MASSENA’S RETREAT.

♦1810.
Expectations of the French.♦

Early in November, the besiegers before Cadiz fired a salute in honour of Massena’s triumphant entrance into Lisbon. Such demonstrations could not deceive the inhabitants of the Isle of Leon; but might serve to depress the Spaniards, who had no such means of information; and also to encourage the French themselves, whose confidence in their fortune had by this time received some abatement, and whose hopes of bringing the contest to an end rested chiefly now upon the success of the campaign in Portugal. Massena had undertaken the conquest of that kingdom in full expectation of outnumbering[16] any disciplined force which could be opposed to him, and still more certainly of outmanœuvring it; for the French Government well knew with what misplaced parsimony the military plans of the English were calculated; and they had neither reckoned upon the skill of the British general, nor the resolution of the British ministry, nor the spirit and exertions of the Portugueze people. He had been confirmed in this expectance by the cautious system which Lord Wellington had, through that parsimony, been compelled to observe during the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo: and though it was by an accident of war that Almeida had fallen into his hands, the speedy reduction of a place so important at that juncture increased the habitual confidence of one who had been accustomed to hear himself called the Child of Victory. That presumption had received a lesson at Busaco, and a check for which he was equally unprepared at the lines of Torres Vedras. Could Lord Wellington have spared a sufficient force to have occupied Santarem, as well as Abrantes; or had the orders of the Portugueze Regency for removing all provisions, been carried into full effect in that part of the country, he must soon have been compelled to retreat. The wonder, however, is that so much devoted obedience was found to a measure, as dreadful in its immediate consequences to the persons upon whom it fell, as it was indispensable for the deliverance of the country. But being allowed to take a position which was not to be forced without a greater expense of life than his antagonist could afford; having found the means of present subsistence, and possessing also that impassibility, ... that utter recklessness of the sufferings which he inflicted, ... that perfect destitution of humanity, ... which one of his fellow-marshals ♦See vol. ii.♦ had said was necessary for a commander in this atrocious war, he was enabled to wait for assistance, and for the chance of events.

♦Gardanne enters Portugal, and marches back again.♦

He had sent General Foy to give Buonaparte the fullest account of his situation; and to supply his wants till farther orders or effectual reinforcements should be received, he ordered General Gardanne, who commanded on the Agueda, to escort a convoy of ammunition. Strong reconnoitring parties were sent out frequently, both on the Coimbra and Castello Branco roads, in the hope of meeting him; and one of these parties had at length the mortification to ascertain that he had been within three leagues of their advanced posts on the Zezere, and had then turned back, a peasant having deceived him, by declaring that the whole French army had withdrawn. Whether the man acted thus upon the impulse of the moment, or had been sent from Abrantes upon this hazardous service, he succeeded in alarming men who, from the want of other tidings, were prepared to believe the worst. Gardanne’s corps consisted of 3000 men; but they were so dispirited in their retreat, that when Colonel Grant, with a handful of the Ordenanza, fired upon them at Cardigos, they abandoned their convoy: nor did this active officer desist from the pursuit, till they had lost all their baggage and several hundred men; thus reaching the frontier in a manner which had every appearance, and all the consequences, of a precipitate and forced retreat. The Comte d’Erlon, General Drouet, who commanded the 9th corps, had meantime arrived there; and he determined to enter Portugal, and open a communication with Massena. Advancing, therefore, with 10,000 men, he left some 8000 under General Claparede, at Guarda, to drive away the Portugueze force in his rear.

♦Drouet enters with 10,000 men.♦

Silveira commanded the force in that quarter: the other divisions, under Brigadier-General Miller, Colonels Wilson and Trant, shut in the line of the Mondego to the confluence of the Alva. Trant was in Coimbra, which he had recovered by a movement as important in its effects upon the campaign, as it was promptly conceived and ably executed. Wilson had occupied the road from Ponte de Murcella to Thomar, establishing himself at Cabaços; but when the French had occupied Thomar, they attacked him twice from thence, and at length compelled him to fall back upon Espinhal. This was precisely in the line of Drouet’s march; and he was thus placed between two fires, the enemy who had driven him from Cabaços being now strongly posted there. He therefore collected boats at Pena Cova, and crossed the Mondego, timing this movement so critically, that the next day, when the enemy had passed the Alva at Ponte de Murcella, and occupied Foz d’Arouce and the neighbouring ♦Dec. 25.♦ villages, he re-crossed with a regiment of militia and some cavalry at the same place, took post the same evening at St. Andre, and captured some of their marauders there in the act of pillage; being then so near the invading force, that several of their stragglers came dropping in during the night, thinking their comrades were in possession of the place, and did not discover their mistake till they were captured. Early on the morrow he moved on Foz d’Arouce; Drouet’s rear-guard had just quitted it; the village had been sacked, and several of its inhabitants of both sexes were lying dead in the streets, victims of those outrages and cruelties which invariably marked the movements of the French in Portugal. Wilson hung upon their flank and rear; and, cutting off their stragglers and marauding parties, which was all that could be done with so small a force, made about an hundred prisoners. Trant also marched from Coimbra with part of the garrison, in the direction of Miranda de Corvo, to harass the enemy, if he should take the Condeixa road; but Drouet, having communicated with the party at Cabaços, who expected his advance, halted at Espinhal, till he received instructions from Massena to proceed with his corps and establish himself at Leyria. Wilson then collected his division, and closed upon his rear, for the purpose of impeding him in that marauding system upon which the whole army depended for subsistence. Their detached parties were then brought in daily contact; a sort of warfare in which the Portuguese were fully equal to their invaders, and in which they had always the great advantage of sure intelligence.