While the British force in the Peninsula was increased, and the Spanish rendered more available than it had been in any former campaign, that of the French was weakened; the enormous loss which Buonaparte had suffered in Russia, and the obstinate ambition with which he kept large garrisons in the north of Germany, rendering it necessary for him to withdraw troops from Spain. From 10 to 20,000 repassed the Pyrenees; not fewer than 140,000 were still left, ... good troops, well-officered, and under commanders of high reputation and approved skill. But both officers and men had had their confidence abated; the generals felt that even the resources of the conscription were exhaustible; and as little hope, when they considered the present state of their Emperor’s fortunes, could be entertained of subjugating the Spaniards, the object upon which all seemed to be most intent was that of enriching themselves by plunder, while it was still in their power ♦Exactions of the French.♦ to do so. M. Suchet left scarcely one picture of any value in Valencia, either in the convents, churches, or private houses; and that city was thus deprived of the finest works of Juanes, ... works which, precious as they are, were there enhanced in value by the local and religious feeling with which his fellow-citizens regarded the productions of their saintly painter. There and everywhere contributions were imposed and exacted in a manner which made it apparent that the Intrusive government treated them now not as subjects who were to be taxed, but as enemies from whom all that could be extorted was to be taken. Their operations on the side of New Castille and Leon were at this time confined to periodical circuits for the purpose of enforcing the payment of contributions. On the side of the Tagus they fortified the right bank of the river, repaired the Puente del Arzobispo, and occupied Almaraz, though they did not restore the bridge there.
♦Longa acts successfully against the enemy. Nov. 28.♦
Meantime the Spaniards were not idle. Longa surprised General Fromant in the valley of Sedano, when returning to Burgos with the requisitions which he had collected, and with sixty respectable householders whom he was taking away as hostages for the contribution: the hostages were rescued, Fromant with about 700 of his men killed, and nearly 500 taken prisoners. A party of the enemy had entered Bilbao, these also he surprised, and they suffered the loss of 200 men; then making for Salinas de Anaña, which was the strongest hold of the French in that district, he besieged it with 2500 men and five pieces of artillery, and after three days, the remainder of the garrison, consisting of 250, surrendered at discretion. This so dismayed the enemy that they abandoned Nauclares and Armiñon, which he was proceeding to attack, and both fortresses were demolished by his orders. His next object was the Fuerte del Cubo de Pancorbo, a post of importance for its situation, and for the care with which it had been strengthened; here too the garrison were made prisoners and the fort demolished. Caffarelli meantime was vainly besieging Castro, where he suffered some loss, and found it necessary to give up the attempt, that he might check Longa in his career of success. That active partizan was now threatening Breviesca; he eluded Caffarelli and Palombini when they moved against him, and retreating to Zovalina, there to refresh his troops, ordered his retreat so well that they were uncertain what direction he had taken; Caffarelli therefore reinforced his garrisons, and repairing to Vittoria himself, left Palombini at Poza with 3000 foot and 300 horse to protect the high road, and be ready to act against Longa. ♦Feb. 13.♦ But while a third of that force was detached to levy contributions, Longa surprised the remainder at daybreak: their collected plunder and some 300 prisoners fell into his hands, and they suffered a further loss of between two and three hundred in killed and wounded. The approach of their detachment, and of a large body on its way from Burgos to Vittoria, then rendered it necessary for him to retire.
While Longa thus harassed the enemy in the north of ♦Mina’s movements.♦ Spain, Mina was assailing them with his wonted activity in Navarre and Aragon. The English landed two 12-pounders for him in the Deva, together with clothing, ammunition, and other things of which he was in need; 600 of his men were ready to receive and escort these. The French endeavoured to intercept them, and were repulsed in the attempt; and Mina was no sooner possessed of the guns than he attacked the enemy in Tafalla, where they had a garrison of 400 men. General ♦Feb. 11.♦ Abbé moved to relieve it with all the disposable force from Pamplona; but he was beaten back by a part of Mina’s force which had been left to observe that city, and on the fifth day of the siege the garrison surrendered as prisoners of war. The wounded he sent under an escort to Pamplona; destroyed the fort at Tafalla, and the works, ... also a Franciscan Convent, and an old palace in which the French might have established a garrison; and he demolished in like manner two other such edifices at Olite, that the road might be clear between Pamplona and Tudela. From Tafalla he proceeded to Sos in Upper Aragon, a fort which the enemy had occupied more than three years, and fortified sufficiently as long as the Spaniards could bring no guns against it. They were on the point of surrendering after a four days’ siege, when General Paris arrived from Zaragoza and carried off the garrison, leaving the fort half ruined: Mina completed its demolition, and by this enterprise laid open the road between Pamplona and Jaca. Shortly after, Fermin de Leguia, who was under ♦Feb. 20.♦ his orders, ventured, without instructions, upon an adventure which was executed as boldly as it ♦March 11.♦ was designed. With only fifteen men, being the whole of his party, he approached the castle of Fuenterrabia in the night, scaled the wall with one man by the help of spikes and ropes which supplied the place of a ladder, surprised the sentinel, got possession of the keys, opened the gates for his men, and took eight artillerymen prisoners, while the remainder of the garrison, who dreamt of no danger, were sleeping in the town. He then spiked the guns, threw into the sea all the ammunition which he could not carry away, set fire to the castle, and though pursued by the enemy retreated without loss. Mina was heard of next at Lodosa, where he attacked a detachment of 1000 French, few of whom ♦March 29.Caffarelli recalled from Spain.♦ escaped, 635 being made prisoners. Caffarelli had at this time been called to France, giving up the command in the north to Clausel; that able general hoped to signalize himself by destroying an indefatigable enemy who had baffled the efforts of all his predecessors; and this was the first proof which he made of that enemy’s ability. Mina next attempted to intercept a convoy which was going from Tolosa to Pamplona; the convoy was alarmed in time, but the attempt led to an affair with Abbé’s force, in which the French retired with the loss of full 300 men.
♦Clausel endeavours to hunt Mina down.♦
Clausel had left a considerable garrison in Puente la Reyna, well fortified for the sort of war which they might have to sustain; and an advanced post of 50 men at Mendigorria, in an old church of S. Maria, which they had fortified. While he was in pursuit of Mina from Estella, and Abbé from Pamplona, their skilful antagonist led them to suppose that he was in the valley of Berrueza, ... then making a rapid counter-march with one of his regiments, appeared in Mendigorria. The garrison at Puente outnumbered him both in horse and foot, but they did not ♦April 21.♦ venture to interrupt him in his operations; and he set fire to the church. The French had no other resource than to ascend the tower, and fire upon them from thence. He sent a trumpet to offer terms, but they would not allow him to approach, either in the confident expectation of being succoured from Puente, or because they were confounded by the situation in which they found themselves; for the smoke and the flames distressed them so dreadfully, that in the course of half an hour, they prepared to let themselves down by ropes; but Mina ordered ladders to the roof of the church, from whence they descended, and were made prisoners. The Guerrilla chief, now Camp-Marshal in the regular service, took credit to himself for sparing their lives when by the laws of war they had placed them at his mercy: by this time indeed both the invaders and the Spaniards in Navarre had found it their interest to revert to the humanities of civilized warfare. His own hospital was in the valley of Roncal, and from the combined movements of Clausel and Abbé he inferred that it was their intention to deprive him of that retreat, the only one which there was for his wounded and invalids. Not being strong enough to resist the force which was now brought against him, he removed all who were in a condition to bear removal, and left the others to the enemy’s mercy, calling to mind no doubt with satisfaction his own recent conduct at Tafalla and Mendigorria: as he had hoped, the men were humanely treated by General Abbé, though the hospital effects were destroyed, and Isaba, which had been deserted by its inhabitants, was set on fire, and 150 houses burnt. Clausel employed the months of April and May in endeavouring to hunt this formidable enemy down, of whom in an intercepted letter to the Intruder, he said, that he would be Lord of Navarre unless it were occupied by a corps of from 20 to 25,000 men; because when he was weak he always avoided an action, and fell upon detachments when he was sure of victory. In the course of this attempt the loss which his own men sustained from fatigue far exceeded any that he inflicted upon Mina’s hardy troops, who were intimately acquainted with the country, and accustomed to the hair-breadth scapes of such campaigns. At no time, however, was so much apprehension entertained for Mina’s safety, though he himself relied with his wonted confidence upon his resources and his fortune, now too not without certain knowledge that his pursuers would soon be called off to a contest which for them would be of a far more serious kind.
♦Renovales made prisoner.♦
On the side of Biscay the enemy were more successful; they surprised and captured Renovales, with six of his officers, at Carvajalez de Zamora; and Castro, from which Caffarelli had been repulsed, was taken by General Foy, after a siege of eighteen days. The Governor Don Pedro Pablo Alvares ♦Castro de Urdiales taken by Gen. Foy.♦ discharged his duty to the utmost, and the Lyra, Royalist, and Sparrow sloops of war, and the Alphea schooner, under Captain Bloye, assisted in the defence. Foy brought all the force which he could collect against it, and proceeded as if he hoped to strike the province as well as the garrison with terror, ... for he offered no terms, and seemed determined to take the place by storm, let it cost what it would. When he had made a breach wide enough to admit twenty men abreast, he turned his guns on the town and castle, and threw shells incessantly at the bridge that connected the ♦May 11.♦ castle with the landing-place, hoping thus to cut off the retreat of the garrison, which at the commencement of the siege consisted of 1200 men. At noon the enemy entered in great numbers through the breach and by escalade in various parts; the garrison when they could no longer defend the town retreated into the castle, the ships’ boats were in readiness to receive them, and they were embarked by companies under a tremendous fire of musquetry, two companies remaining to defend the castle, till the last gun was thrown into the sea. Every soldier was brought off, and many of the inhabitants, and landed at Bermeo on the following day. The town was burnt. Foy indeed acted in the spirit of ♦Enormities committed there by the French.♦ his Portugueze campaign; as he had offered no terms he showed no mercy, but when the town was entered put the defenders to the bayonet without distinction. It had been well if the wickedness of the enemy had ended there; but in one of their unsuccessful attacks many of their men had been pushed down a ravine by their fellows while pressing forward to the charge, the bridge by which they expected to cross having been destroyed by the English; and because the inhabitants had not informed them of the destruction of this bridge, they butchered men and women, sparing none, and inflicting upon them cruelties which nothing but a devilish nature could devise.
Little attempt was made on the enemy’s part to annoy the allies during the winter and spring. Foy, with 1500 infantry and 100 horse, had endeavoured, in February, to surprise the post at Bejar, but was promptly repulsed; and the French in the same month advanced from Orbigo and Castro Gondoles as far as Astorga and Manzanal in one direction, and to the Puebla de Sanabria and Mombuey in another, the Gallician army retreating before them, and then resuming their former position when the enemy in their turn had retired. Much greater activity was shown in plundering the inhabitants; and this kind of war, wherein there could be no resistance, was carried on so shamelessly, that the Intruder, it was said, deemed it necessary to call one of the generals to account.
Clausel was of opinion that an error had been committed in not concentrating their forces more upon the Ebro, which might have been done, he said, without abandoning Castille, and this error, he feared, they should find cause to repent. But the Intruder’s council had determined upon taking the Douro for their line of defence; and with this view they threw up works on the right bank at every assailable point, relying, as Soult had formerly done at Porto, upon the security which that deep ♦M. Soult called from Spain.♦ and rapid river might afford them. Marshal Soult had been called away in March to take part in the campaign in Germany. The head-quarters of what had been his army were removed from Toledo to Madrid early in April, and Toledo was abandoned; but troops were kept at Illescas, and reconnoissances made by the cavalry towards Escalona, the Alberche, and Añobes del Tajo, apprehending some movement of Sir Rowland’s army in this direction. The ♦The Intruder goes to Valladolid.♦ Intruder, leaving that capital to which he was never to return, removed his court, or rather his head-quarters, to Valladolid, where the Palace Gardens were put in order for his recreation, and some defensive works constructed. On the 11th of April, General Hugo, who had been left with the command in Madrid, informed the Ayuntamiento that the troops were about to depart, and that they must take measures for preserving tranquillity and guarding the public buildings, civil and military. The most precious articles in the cabinet of natural history were sent off, with whatever else could be removed from the other public establishments, and all arrears of contribution were exacted with the utmost rigour. Beasts enough were not left in Madrid for the scavengers’ use, so that the inhabitants were ordered to collect the sweepings of the streets into the squares, and there burn what used to be carried into the country for manure. The people of that poor capital had always clung to the hope of deliverance with a strength of belief which characterizes the nation, and in the movements of their oppressors they now saw reasonable ground for expecting that it could not be long delayed.