The conduct of the French in other respects was such as heightened this feeling of abhorrence; everywhere the people groaned under their exactions, their cruelties, and their intolerable insolence. It seemed as if it were the wish of Buonaparte and his ferocious agents utterly to depopulate a country which they found it impossible to subdue. Dreadful as war always is, no ordinary war could have brought upon any nation such complicated miseries. It was impossible for those even who would have been contented to bow, like bulrushes, before the storm, to obtain security by any course of conduct; the orders of the Intrusive Government were met by counter orders from the legitimate authority; and they who obeyed that authority were, on the other hand, exposed to the penalties enacted in the Intruder’s name. Buonaparte and his wicked agents expected to govern Spain by terror, little thinking, when the plan of usurpation was laid, that the character of the nation would compensate for the imbecility of its rulers; that his system of terror would be met by counter terrors; and that the people for whom he proclaimed there was no safety but in obedience would, on their part, proclaim that obedience, when carried farther than mere passive and inevitable submission to immediate force, was a crime which would draw upon the temporizing and the timid the very evil they sought to avert. Nothing but that patient, persevering, obstinate, inflexible, and invincible spirit of local patriotism which for more than two thousand years has distinguished the Spaniards above all other nations, could have supported them through such a struggle; while the allies, by whom, under Providence, their deliverance was to be effected, were acquiring confidence in their own strength, and experience, and some of that wisdom in which at the beginning of the contest they were lamentably wanting. But, meantime, the sufferings of the Spaniards were of the severest kind, and as general as they were severe. There was scarcely a family in the Peninsula, from the highest to the lowest, of which some member had not been cut off by the sword. The affluent were deprived of their property; the industrious of their employment; men of letters were bereaved of the books and papers which had been the occupation and delight of their laborious, and honourable, and disinterested lives; and they who had grown grey in convents were driven out to beg for bread among those who were themselves reduced to want.
The Intruder, meantime, was in a condition which was truly pitiable, if one who had allowed himself to be made the ostensible cause of such wide-spreading misery and desolation had not forfeited all claim to pity. This phantom of a king had neither money to pay his ministers and dependents, nor authority over the armies which acted in his name. The Frenchified Spaniards who composed his ministry, and the French generals, agreed in despising him, ... this being almost the only point in which they agreed: on the part of Urquijo Azanza, and their colleagues, there was some commiseration mingled with their contempt; their object had been to effect a change of dynasty, under the protection of France, not to reduce Spain to the state of a province; and they could not perceive that Joseph Buonaparte was the mere puppet of his perfidious brother, without self-reproaches and unavailing regret. For their own sakes, therefore, they preserved the forms of respect toward him; but the generals were restrained by no such feeling; they set his orders at nought, and looked only to France for instructions. The object of the officers was to enrich themselves by pillage; that of the commanders was to carve out dukedoms, and provinces, and principalities, which they might govern by the sword while Buonaparte lived, and perhaps maintain for themselves by the same tenure after his death.
♦The Intruder goes to France.♦
Sick of his miserable situation, the Intruder went to France, to represent the deplorable state of Spain, and press upon Buonaparte the necessity of providing an adequate support for the government which he had established, if he could not send into the Peninsula such a force as should expel the English, and bear down all resistance. He himself perhaps would have rejoiced if Buonaparte would have executed his old threat of annexing Spain to the French empire, and treating it openly as a conquest, ... for Joseph had neither the talents nor the temper of an usurper: without virtue to refuse obedience to his tyrannical brother, and yet without those vices which would make him heartily enter into his plans, his only resource was in sensualities, for his criminal compliance had left him no other consolation. This propensity he would far rather have indulged in retirement and security: but the views and wishes of his ministers were widely different: the direct usurpation of Spain by Buonaparte would have reduced them at once to insignificance, and placed them upon a level with Godoy, whom they, perhaps, as well as their worthier countrymen, regarded as a traitor; for certain it is, that among these unhappy men there were some who began their career with good feelings, and a sincere love of their country, and who were betrayed by error and presumptuousness, and their connexion with France, into guilt and infamy. They dreaded nothing so much as Joseph’s retirement, and rejoiced in his return to Spain as at a triumph.
♦Distress both of the Intrusive and Legitimate Government.♦
It suited not the immediate policy of Buonaparte to displace his brother. Moscow instead of Madrid occupied at this time his ambitious thoughts, and supplying with men the Intrusive Government, he left it to shift as it could for means. So distressed was Joseph for money, that the plate of the royal chapel at Madrid was sent to the mint, though such an act would make him at once odious for sacrilege, and contemptible for poverty, in the eyes of the people. In want of other funds for his emissaries to America, he sent a large quantity of quicksilver to be sold at Alicante: the governor there discovered for what use the produce was designed, and seized 1700 arrobas, and the agents who had it in charge. A great effort was made to pay some of the public arrears on Buonaparte’s birthday, the fifteenth of August, for which day St. Napoleone had been foisted into the Spanish calendar. 100,000 reales de vellon were paid on this anniversary to the ministers. Lledo, the comedian, received 18,000, and 100 each were distributed to some ladies of rank, who were reduced to petition the Intruder for bread! A bull-fight was given at Madrid on this day, at which all the bulls were white; long preparation therefore must have been necessary for collecting them: D. Damaso Martin, the Empecinado’s brother, carried off from the meadows of Puente de Viveros 300, which had been destined for these ferocious sports in the capital.
The legitimate government, meantime, was not less distressed than that of the Intruder: as far as the contest lay between them, it was carried on on both sides almost without any certain revenue on which either could rely. The chief resources of the Spaniards, at the commencement of the struggle, had been in America, and these had been cut off by a series of deplorable events, in which it is difficult to say which of the opposite parties was most culpable. This was now the fourth year of the war; the spirit of the people, and the defects of their military system, had been abundantly proved; nothing was wanting but to remedy those defects by raising an army under the direction of Lord Wellington, who had delivered Portugal, and might by similar means speedily and certainly have delivered Spain. Many causes prevented this; one is to be found in a jealousy or rather dislike of England, which had grown up in the liberal party with their predilection for republican France, and which continued with other errors from the same source, still to actuate them. The pride of the Spanish character was another and more widely influencing cause: the Spaniards remembered that their troops had once been the best in the world; and this remembrance, which in the people so greatly contributed to keep up their spirit, in the government produced only a contented and baneful torpor which seemed like infatuation. The many defeats, in the course of four years, which they had sustained, from that at Rio Seco to the last ruinous action before Valencia, brought with them no conviction to the successive governments of their radical weakness and their radical error. After Lord Wellington had driven Massena out of Portugal, it was proposed that the command of the frontier provinces should be given him, and that an army should be raised there under him: it was debated in a secret sitting, and rejected by an hundred voices against thirty.
“There are three classes of men,” said Dueñas, “who will break up the Cortes, unless the Cortes breaks down them: they who refuse to acknowledge the sovereignty of the nation, calling it a mere chimera, and saying there is no sovereignty except that of the king; they who distrust our cause, and say that the few millions who inhabit Spain cannot make head against all Europe; and, lastly, they who imagine, that as the French have conquered while they despise God, we may do the same.” The deputy’s fears of the first and third of these classes were groundless, and there were but few of the second, ... but few Spaniards who despaired of Spain. Nothing, however, could tend so much to increase their number as the conduct of the government; it might well be feared that a system, if system it could be called, which trusted to its allies, and to the events that time and chance might bring forth, would at length exhaust the hopes and the constancy, as well as the blood, ♦Schemes for strengthening the government.♦ of the Spaniards. All considerate persons could not but perceive that the present government was in no respect more efficient than that of the Central Junta had been, which, for its inefficiency, would have been broken up by an insurrection, if it had not prevented such a catastrophe by a timely abdication. As a remedy for this evil, the Cortes thought at one time of taking the executive into their own hands, and administering it by a committee chosen from their own members; but the resemblance which this bore to the system pursued by the French National Convention, during the worst stage of the revolution, deterred those who favoured it from bringing forward a proposal that would reasonably have alarmed the greater part of the assembly, and have disgusted the nation. They who were of opinion that the Regency would be more effective if vested in a single person than in three or five, knew not where that person was to be found who should unite ♦Cardinal Bourbon.♦ legitimate claims with individual qualifications. Cardinal Bourbon occurred to them, but as one who had neither the personal respectability, nor the ♦The Infante D. Carlos.♦ capacity desired. The Infante D. Carlos was supposed to possess sufficient strength of character, and it was not doubted, that if opportunity of attempting to escape could be offered him, he would be not less desirous to avail himself of it than Ferdinand had, luckily for himself, been found of shrinking from the danger; but the failure in Ferdinand’s case had greatly increased both the difficulties and dangers of ♦The Princess of Brazil.♦ such an attempt. There remained the princess of Brazil, whose right to the Regency, under existing circumstances, was admitted by the Council of Castille. She had spirit and abilities equal to the charge; but, on the other hand, she was known to be of an intriguing and dangerous disposition, ... one who, being, by reason of her station, sure of impunity in this world for any thing which she might be inclined to commit, believed that her father-confessor could at all times make her equally secure in the next, and was notoriously disposed to make full use of these convenient privileges whenever any personal inclination was to be gratified or any political object to be brought about. Yet with this knowledge of her character, those British statesmen who were best acquainted with the affairs of the Peninsula at that time, and with what advantages we might carry on the war there, if it were vigorously pursued, and what were the impediments which in far greater degree than the entire force of the enemy impeded our progress, agreed in opinion, that it should be the true policy of England to support her claim, regarding the possible consequences in Portugal, of her appointment to the Spanish Regency, as a consideration of inferior moment. There would yet be a difficulty concerning the place to be fixed on for her residence: Lisbon it could not be: ... pre-eminently fitted as that city was to be the capital of the united governments, the ill-will between the Portugueze and Spaniards, which the circumstances of the present war unhappily had not tended to diminish, rendered this impossible; and, for the same reason, Cadiz was hardly less objectionable. It was thought, therefore, that the princess might best reside at Madeira, and govern in Spain through a Vice-Regent. The conduct of the Cortes in arrogating the title of Majesty, and exercising, as, in fact they did, the executive government through successive Regencies, which they nominated and dissolved at pleasure, made persons who were otherwise averse to it accede to this scheme as involving fewer inconveniences than any other which could be proposed.
♦State of the Portugueze government.♦
Some change also, and of the same kind, appeared to be not less desirable in Portugal. The arrangement which placed the Portugueze army under a British general, introducing at the same time a large proportion of British officers into that army, and that which placed the whole military establishment under a British commander-in-chief, had been necessary, and the Portugueze themselves were sensible that it was so. But it was not wisely done to put the Portugueze fleet under a British admiral, nor to make the British ambassador a member of the Regency: in the first instance, a great expense was incurred in time of extreme want; in both, some offence was given to national feeling; and in neither was there any advantage gained. Sir Charles Stuart was in no enviable situation; there was a constant opposition between him and the Souzas, who had great influence at the court of the Rio, whose intentions were not to be suspected, and whose abilities were of no common order, but whose deep prepossessions prevented them from adapting their views to the actual circumstances of the country. When he exerted himself to rectify habitual disorders, and provide for demands which were continually recurring, and which it was ruinous to neglect, the whole host of intriguers was in action against him, and he incurred the dislike of the prince, of whose ear his opponents had possession: on the other hand, the repeated complaints from head-quarters against the misconduct of the Portugueze government under which the native army was mouldering away more rapidly than it had been formed, seemed to include him of course among the persons upon whom the blame was laid. Yet his colleagues, as well as he, were more to be pitied than condemned, for what they left undone. The whole revenues of the house of Braganza were at this time remitted to Brazil, ... no unfit arrangement, as the family was there to be supported. But the court received also the revenues from Madeira and the Western Isles, and the establishments in Africa, and yet called for money from Portugal! It had left so great a part of the old court establishment there that the expenses of that part exceeded the whole produce of the crown lands; and it was continually sending persons from Brazil, to be provided for at home; ... this, at a time when Portugal with only half its former revenues, and with a ruined people, had to support an army fourfold more numerous than in its days of prosperity!