Not discouraged by these repeated losses and multiplied disgraces the Spaniards continued to pursue that system of hostility which was carried on wherever the French were nominally masters of the country; a mode ♦Irregular war.♦ of war destructive to the invaders against whom it was directed, but dreadful also in its effect upon the people by whom it was waged. The Junta ♦See vol. i.♦ of Seville had, from the beginning of the struggle, perceived that the strength of Spain lay in her people, and not in her armies. The Central Junta also had early acknowledged the importance of that irregular and universal warfare for which the temper of the Spaniards and the character of the country were equally adapted; and they attempted to regulate it by a long edict, giving directions for forming Partidas of volunteers, and Quadrillas, which were to consist of smugglers, appointing them pay, enacting rules for them, and subjecting them to military law; but it is manifest that these restrictions would only be observed where the Government had sufficient authority to enforce them, which was only where they had armies on foot, and that when thus restricted, little was to be done by it. They spoke with a clear understanding of the circumstances in which Spain was placed when they proclaimed a Moorish war[10], and bade the Spaniards remember in what manner their fathers had exterminated a former race of invaders. The country, they said, was to be saved by killing the enemies daily, just as they would rid themselves of a plague of locusts; a work which was slow, but sure, and in its progress would bring the nation to the martial pitch of those times, when it was a pastime to go forth and seek the Hagarenes. They reminded them of the old Castilian names, for skirmishes[11], ambushments, assaults, and stratagems, the necessary resources of domestic warfare, and told them that the nature of the country and of the inhabitants rendered Spain invincible.
This character, on the part of the Spaniards, the war had now assumed in all parts of Spain. The French were no sooner masters of the field, than they found themselves engaged in a wearing, wasting contest, wherein discipline was of no avail, and by which, in a country of such extent and natural strength, any military power, however great, must ultimately be consumed. In any other part of Europe, they would have considered the conquest complete after such victories as they had obtained; but in Spain, where army after army had been routed, and city after city taken, ... when Joseph reigned at Madrid, and Soult commanded in Seville, ... when Victor was in sight of Cadiz, and Massena almost in sight of Lisbon, ... when Buonaparte had put all his other enemies under his feet, and in the height of his fortune, and plenitude of his power, had no other object than to effect the subjugation of the Peninsula, ... the generals and the men whom he employed there were made to feel that the cause in which they were engaged was as hopeless as it was unjust. They were never safe except when in large bodies, or in some fortified place. Every day some of their posts were surprised, some escort or convoy cut off, some detachment put to death; dispatches were intercepted, plunder was recovered, and what excited the Spaniards more than any, or all other considerations, vengeance was taken by a most vindictive people for insupportable wrongs. In every part of Spain, where the enemy called themselves masters, leaders started up, who collected about them the most determined spirits; followers enough were ready to join them; and both among chiefs and men, the best and the worst characters were to be found: some were mere ruffians, who if the country had been in peace would have lived in defiance of the laws, as they now defied the force of the intrusive Government; others were attracted by the wildness and continual excitement attendant upon a life of outlawry and adventure, to which, in the present circumstances of the nation, honour, instead of obloquy, was attached; but many were influenced by the deepest feelings and strongest passions which act upon the heart of man; love of their country, which their faith elevated and strengthened; and hope which that love and that faith rendered inextinguishable; and burning hatred, seeking revenge for the most wanton and most poignant injuries that can be inflicted upon humanity.
These parties began to be formed immediately after Buonaparte swept the land before him to Madrid, and from that time they continued to increase in numbers and activity, as the regular armies declined in reputation and in strength. The enemy made a great effort to put them down after the battle of Ocaña, and boasted of having completely succeeded, because the guerrillas disappeared before them, dispersing whenever they were in danger of being attacked by a superior force. There was nothing in their dress to distinguish them from the peasantry; every one was ready to give them intelligence or shelter; they knew the country perfectly; each man shifted for himself in time of need; and when they re-assembled at the appointed rallying place, so far were they from being dispirited by the dispersion, that the ease with which they had eluded the enemy became a new source of confidence. They became more numerous and more enterprising after it had been seen how little loss they sustained, when, for a time, the intrusive Government made it its chief object to extirpate them; their escapes, as well as their exploits, were detailed both in the official and provincial Gazettes; and the leaders became known in all parts, not of Spain only, but of Europe, by their own names, or the popular appellations which had been given them indicative of their former profession or personal appearance. El Manco, the man with a maimed arm, commanded one band; the Old Man of Sereña another. There was el Frayle, the Friar; el Cura, the Priest; el Medico, the Doctor; el Cantarero, the Potter; el Cocinero, the Cook; el Pastor, the Shepherd; el Abuelo, the grand-father. One chief was called el Chaleco, from the fashion of his waistcoat; he won for himself a better reputation than might have been expected from such an appellation: another obtained the name of Chambergo, from his slouched hat. Names of worse import appear among them; there was the Malalma, the Bad Soul, de Aibar, and the Ladron, the Robber, de Lumbier.
A large portion of the men who engaged under these leaders were soldiers, who had escaped in some of the miserable defeats to which the rashness of the Government and the incapacity of their generals had exposed them; or who had deserted from the regular army to this more inviting service. Smugglers also, a numerous and formidable class of men, now that their old occupation was destroyed, took to the guerrilla life, and brought to it the requisites of local knowledge, hardiness and audacity, and the quick sense of sight and hearing which they had acquired in carrying on their dangerous trade by night. But the greater number were men who, if circumstances had permitted, would have passed their life usefully and contentedly in the humble stations to which they were born; labourers, whom there were now none to employ, ... retainers, who partook the ruin of the great families to which they and their ancestors had been attached; ... owners or occupiers of land, whose fields had been laid waste, and whose olive-yards destroyed; and the whole class of provincial tradesmen, whose means of subsistence were cut off, happy if they had only their own ruin and their country’s quarrel to revenge, and not those deeper injuries of which dreadful cases were continually occurring wherever the enemy were masters. Monks, also, and friars, frocked and unfrocked, were among them: wherever the convents were suppressed, and their members forbidden to wear the habit on pain of death, which was done in all the provinces that the French overran, the young took arms, the old employed themselves in keeping up the spirit of the people; and the intrusive Government paid dearly for the church property, when those who had been previously supported by it exchanged a life of idleness for one of active exertion in the national cause, some to preach a crusade against the invaders, others to serve in it. These whom oppression had driven out from the cloister were not the only religioners who took arms. Not a few in the parts of the country which were still free took the opportunity, precious to them, of escaping from the servitude to which they were bound, disgusted with the follies of their profession, sick of its impostures, or impatient of its restraints. Public opinion encouraged them in this course; the multitude ascribing their conduct to a religious zeal for their country, while those who wished for the reformation of the abuses which had prepared the way for all this evil, were glad to see this disposition manifest itself in a class of men whom they justly regarded as one of the pests of Spain. The General of the Franciscans applied to Mendizabal to deliver up a friar who had enlisted in his army; but the application was so little in accord with the spirit of the times, that Mendizabal’s answer was read with universal approbation by the Spaniards. “The head of the Franciscans,” said that commander, “must have forgotten what Cardinal Ximenes de Cisneros did when he commanded the army which took Oran. If that prelate in those days thought of nothing but destroying the Koran, and substituting the Gospel in its stead, what would he do now, when the religion of our fathers and our mother country is in danger? I have taken a lesson from his Eminency. Let the present head of the order send me a list of all the brethren capable of bearing arms, not forgetting himself, if he is fit for service, and we will march together and free our religion and our country. Inspire then your friars, that they may be agents in this noble work, putting away all kind of sloth; and let no other cry be heard than that of ‘War against the tyrant, freedom for our religion, our country, and our beloved Ferdinand.’” While this course was taken by the monks and friars, it is related of the nuns in the subjected parts of the country, that they passed ♦Rocca. 240.♦ the nights in praying for the success and deliverance of their countrymen, and the days in preparing medicines and bandages for the sick and wounded French.
♦State of the guerrilla warfare.♦
Fewer guerrilla parties appeared in Andalusia than in any other province, although more had been expected there, from the fierier character of the people, and the local circumstances; the land being divided between the cathedrals, a few convents, and a few great proprietors, and the greater part of the inhabitants day-labourers, who were likely to be tempted ♦Andalusia.♦ by the prospect of a predatory life. But Andalusia seemed as if its generous blood had been exhausted in the first years of the war; and at this time the mountaineers of Ronda were the only part of its population who opposed a determined resistance to the intrusive Government. Their general, Valdenebro, tendered his resignation because the Regency had made him subordinate to the Marques de Portago, who commanded at the Campo de S. Roque; he had performed good service there; and it was stated in the Cortes as an example for imitation, that one or two patriots, and one or two priests who possessed local knowledge, and were of ordinary rank, but of extraordinary courage, composed his adjutants, his aides-de-camp, and his whole staff. The orator did not bear in mind that Valdenebro was at the head, not of an army, but of an irregular force. Forest-flies these mountaineers were called, to express the ♦Mountains of Ronda.♦ pertinacity with which they annoyed the enemy, and the facility with which they eluded him. Ready themselves to endure all privations, to encounter all dangers, to make any sacrifices in the national cause, they regarded submission in such a cause, when it proceeded from weakness, as little less odious than the conduct of those traitors who accepted office under the intrusive Government; and because the city of Ronda had made no resistance to the French, they looked upon the name as disgraced, and called their mountainous region the Serrania de Fernando VII., to mark their indignation against the conduct of its capital. If the spirit of such a people could have been subdued, the enemy were neither wanting in activity nor in inhumanity for effecting their purpose. They had light pieces of artillery for mountain service, two of which were carried by a mule, one on each side, balancing each other; the carriages and ammunition-boxes were made portable in the same way: and their attacks were so frequent, that in the course of two years there was one village which they entered forcibly fifty times. Sebastiani, in whose military command this district was comprised, was a person who betrayed no compunction in carrying the abominable edict of M. Soult into effect; and scarcely a day passed in which several prisoners were not put to death in Granada in conformity to that decree. Among the instances of heroic virtue which were displayed here during the continuance of this tyranny, there are two which were gratefully acknowledged by the national Government. Lorenzo Teyxeyro, an inhabitant of Granada, who had performed the dangerous service of communicating intelligence to the nearest Spanish general, was discovered, and might have saved his life if he would have named the persons through whom the communication was carried on; but he was true to them as he had been to his country, and suffered death contentedly. The other instance was attended with more tragic circumstances. Captain Vicente Moreno, who was serving with the mountaineers of Ronda, was made prisoner, carried to Granada, and there had the alternative proposed to him of suffering by the hangman, or entering into the intruder’s service. Sebastiani showed much solicitude to prevail upon this officer, having, it may be believed, some feeling of humanity, if not some fore-feeling of the opprobrium which such acts of wickedness draw after them in this world, and of the account which is to be rendered for them in the next. Moreno’s wife and four children were therefore, by the General’s orders, brought to him when he was upon the scaffold, to see if their entreaties would shake his resolution; but Moreno, with the courage of a martyr, bade her withdraw, and teach her sons to remember the example which he was about to give them, and to serve their country, as he had done, honourably and dutifully to the last. This murder provoked a public retaliation which the Spaniards seldom exercised, but ... when they did ... upon a tremendous scale. Gonzalez, who was member in the Cortes for Jaen, had served with Moreno, and loved him as such a man deserved to be loved; and by his orders seventy French prisoners were put to death at Marbella.
So wicked a system as that which Buonaparte’s generals unrelentingly pursued could nowhere have been exercised with so little prospect of success, and such sure effect of calling forth a dreadful vengeance, as among the Spaniards. Against such enemies they considered all means lawful; this was the feeling not here alone, but throughout the body of the nation; the treacherous commencement of the war on the part of the French, and the systematic cruelty with which it had been carried on, discharged them, they thought, from all observances of good faith or humanity towards them; and upon this principle they acted to its full extent. The labourer at his work in the fields or gardens had a musket concealed at hand, with which to mark the Frenchman whom ill fortune might bring within his reach. Boys, too young to be suspected of any treachery, would lead a party of the invaders into some fatal ambuscade; women were stationed to give the signal for beginning the slaughter, and that signal was sometimes ♦Rocca, 225, 226. 212.♦ the hymn to the Virgin! Not fewer than 8000 French are said to have been cut off in the mountains of Ronda.
There, however, it was more properly a national than a guerrilla warfare; the work of destruction being carried on less by roving parties than by the settled inhabitants, who watched for every opportunity of vengeance. There were more bands in Extremadura than in Andalusia, but ♦Estrdemadura.♦ there were not many; for Extremadura was not in the line for convoys, which always offered the ♦D. Toribio Bustamente.♦ most inviting prey. The most noted leader in the province was D. Toribio Bustamente, known by the name of Caracol, who had been master of the post-office at Medina del Rio Seco; among the other horrors which were committed in that unhappy town after Cuesta and Blake were defeated by M. Bessieres, the wife of this man had been violated and murdered, and his son also, a mere child, had been butchered. From that hour he devoted himself to the pursuit of vengeance, and many were the enemies who suffered under his hand for the crimes of their countrymen, till, after a career of two years, he fell at the pass of Miravete with the satisfaction of a man who, in the performance of what he believed to be his sacred duty, had found the death which he desired. Bustamente’s men acquired a good character, as well for their behaviour to the inhabitants, as for the courage and success with which they harassed the enemy: but there were other parties in Extremadura, who inflicted more injury upon their countrymen than upon the French. This was the case in La Mancha also; the Government, with a vigour which it seldom exerted, arrested some of the banditti leaders, and brought them to justice; but such examples were too few to deter other ruffians from pursuing the same course, while the authority of either Government, national or intrusive, was so ill-established, that there was no other law than that of the strongest. One adventurer, however, in this province raised himself to respectability and rank by his services, though known by the unpromising appellation ♦Francisco Abad, the Chaleco.♦ of El Chaleco. Francisco Abad Moreno was his name: he began his career as a common soldier, and escaping from some rout, joined company with two fugitives of his own regiment, and began war upon his own account. Their first exploit was to kill an enemy’s courier and his escort; and shortly afterwards having added two recruits to his number, he presented to the Marques of Villafranca, at Murcia, five carts laden with tobacco, quicksilver, and plate, which he had taken from the French, and the ears[12] of thirteen Frenchmen who had fallen by their hands! His party increased as his name became known; and he cut off great numbers of the enemy, sometimes in Murcia, sometimes in La Mancha, intercepting their convoys and detachments. Showing as little mercy as he looked for, and expecting as little as he showed, he faced with desperate or ferocious courage the danger from which there was no escape by flight, swimming rivers when swoln by rain, or employing any means that might give him the victory. On one occasion he broke a troop of the French by discharging a blunderbuss loaded with five-and-thirty bullets; it brought down nine of the enemy, according to his own account, and he received so severe a contusion on the shoulder from the recoil, that it entirely disabled him for a time; but the party was kept together under his second in command, Juan de Bacas, and its reputation enhanced by greater exploits.
One service which Bacas performed diffused a general feeling of vindictive joy through La Mancha and the adjacent ♦Ciria, the Nero of La Mancha.♦ provinces. D. Benito Maria Ciria acted for the intrusive Government as governor and corregidor of La Mancha. He was a man of information and singular activity, who might have obtained for himself an honourable remembrance, if he had displayed the same zeal in the cause of his country which he exerted for its oppressors. From the beginning he was suspected of favouring the Intruder, and had been apprehended on that suspicion before the French forced the passes of the Sierra Morena; the military Junta of La Carolina spared him, and upon the first appearance of the enemy, he proved that his intentions had not been mistaken, by joining them. From that time Ciria served them with the rancorous alacrity of a true traitor, insomuch that he was called the Nero of La Mancha. This evil celebrity drew on him its proper punishment. Bacas was on the watch for a favourable opportunity, and as soon as it occurred, he entered Almagro at the head of his guerrillas, and seized him in the streets of that city: the people called out for his punishment upon the spot, but Bacas felt that the solemnity of a judicial sentence would make the example more impressive; he carried his prisoner therefore to Valencia de Alcantara, and delivered him there to the arm of the law, under which he suffered as a traitor. A victory could not have occasioned greater exultation throughout La Mancha; if Bacas and his party, it was said, had performed no other service than that of bringing this offender to justice, they would have deserved well of their country for that alone.
It would have been well for humanity, and honourable for Spain, if those who were engaged with right feelings in their country’s cause had always shown this regard to order and the course of law; but the Spaniards had, under long misrule, become a lawless nation; the great trampled upon the laws, and by the people murder was scarcely regarded as a crime; in their vindictive feelings they were unrestrained by any religious awe, or any apprehension of earthly punishment. A squadron of the La Manchan Crusaders entered this very city of Almagro; they sacked the house of the traitor who collected the revenues for the Intruder; and because his wife in her rage reviled them, professed her attachment to King Joseph, and threatened them with vengeance in his name, they killed her; and Ureña, a priest, who commanded the party, related the circumstance with perfect complacency in his official dispatch. The heart of the nation was already hard, and the little which might have been done by the legitimate Government for correcting the national inhumanity, and inducing, or at least endeavouring to induce, a more christian, a more civilized, a more humane spirit, was neglected.