The bodies of these victims were suspended from the gallows till the following day, when the French gave orders that they should be taken down and buried. But the execution had been an act of impolitic severity: after Duran’s recent visit the national cause would not have been popular in Soria, unless the national feeling had been thus provoked; and that feeling was now manifested in a manner which the invaders had not looked for. The clergy, the nobles, the different brotherhoods of the city, and the people assembled: the bodies were carried to the church of St. Salvador in procession, with a long line of tapers, and a most numerous attendance; they were then dressed in grave clothes with becoming decency, that of the priest in his sacerdotal habits. So public and ostentatious a funeral was considered by the French an insult to their authority; soldiers, therefore, were sent to interrupt it, and some of the attendants were compelled to carry the bodies back to the gallows and hang them there again, the priest in his alb, the others in their shrouds; there they remained many days, and what the birds and the dogs had left was then buried at the foot of the gallows.
♦Retaliatory executions.♦
When D. Jose O’Donell, who commanded what was called the 2nd and 3rd army then in Murcia, received official intelligence of these executions, he wrote to Duran, as acting commander in Aragon and Soria, and instructed him to put to death ten prisoners, without distinction of rank, for each of the four victims, first apprising the nearest French commandant that he had received these orders, and should act upon them unless such reparation were made as might be deemed proportionate to the offence. Without waiting for such instructions, the Merino had exacted vengeance upon a larger scale. Having defeated a considerable body of the French who had marched from Aranda, to collect requisitions, killed and wounded some 150 and taken about 500 prisoners, he put 110 of them to death, twenty of these being in reprisals for each member of the Junta of Burgos; the others, at the rate of ten for each of his own people whom the French had executed. The other prisoners were marched into Asturias where opportunity might be found for embarking them; but all the officers, twelve in number, including the lieutenant-colonel, their commander, were reserved to be shot unless General Rey, who commanded at Burgos, would rescue them from that fate by delivering the traitor Moreno into the Merino’s hands. The unhappy prisoners are said to have addressed a letter to Rey, entreating him to save their lives by complying with this proposal, for they well knew that in these cases the Spaniards never failed to execute what they threatened. The issue has not been related, but may easily be guessed, as it was scarcely possible that the French commander should so far break his faith with a Spaniard in the Intruder’s service as to deliver him to certain death.
♦El Manco.♦
There were no persons whom the Spaniards regarded with such hatred as those who had forsaken the national cause, and entered into the Intruder’s service. Albuir, known as a Guerrilla chief by the name of El Manco, had taken this course, and became therefore a special object of vengeance to his countrymen: it is the only instance of any man who had acquired celebrity as a Guerrillero becoming a traitor, while in the officers of the army such cases were not unfrequent: this was because the regular officers were men, who, having entered the service either as a matter of course or of compulsion, felt severely the poverty of the government, and often had little else to do than to talk of its errors, complain of its abuses, and speculate upon its hopeless condition; whereas the Guerrilla leaders led a life of incessant activity and animating hope, and most of them were impelled to that course by a strong feeling either of their country’s injuries or of their own.
♦Mutual retaliation.♦
At this time Lord Wellington’s successes had animated the Spaniards with a hope of deliverance, and made the French more intent upon extirpating those persons who, by keeping up the national spirit in what they deemed the subjected provinces, occupied a large part of the invading force. They attempted to surprise the Junta of Aragon, as they had that of Burgos, and a detachment from Palombini’s troops nearly effected this at Mochales, in the lordship of Molina: the Junta escaped, but the enemy sacked the village, stripped the women in the market-place, and hung the alcalde and two other persons; in reprisals for whom, Jabarelli, the late commandant at Calatayud, and ten other prisoners, were shot by the Spaniards. Vicente Bonmati, the leader of a Guerrilla party, had been put to death at Petrel, in Valencia, with circumstances of peculiar cruelty; the French having tied his hands, transfixed them with a bayonet, and then parading him through the streets, pricked him with their bayonets till he died. Upon this the Camp Marshal Copons, provincial commandant-general in that kingdom, gave orders to shoot the first prisoner who should be taken, and informed the nearest French commandant, that for every other such execution twenty prisoners should be put to death. Such reprisals were but too characteristic of a vindictive people, capable of inflicting as well as enduring anything; but they were evidences also of that high-mindedness which the Spaniards retained in their lowest fortune; never abasing themselves, never submitting to the insolent assumption of authority, nor for a moment consenting that might should be allowed to sanction injustice. Their parties, meantime, acquired a confidence from their own experience, and from the success of their allies. ♦May 5.Guerrilla exploits.♦ Mendizabal appeared before Burgos, and drove the enemy from the monastery of Las Huelgas and the hospital del Rey. Duran entered Tudela ♦May 28.♦ by escalade, and destroyed a battering train of artillery which had been brought thither from Zaragoza, with the intent, he supposed, of laying siege to ♦May 30.♦ Ciudad Rodrigo. The Empecinado attacked the French in Cuenca; they withdrew from it in the night, and he destroyed their fortifications there, and set fire to the Inquisition. Mina received information that a strong convoy was about to set forth from Vittoria for France, escorting some prisoners taken from Ballasteros. He determined to intercept them upon the plains of Arlaban, which had been the scene of one of his most successful exploits in the preceding year; and in order to deceive the enemy, he wrote letters which were thrown into their hands, declaring his intention of marching upon the river Arga, to form a junction at the foot of the Pyrenees with two of his battalions. The enemy, ♦April 9.♦ supposing that this dreaded commander was far distant, began their march: his orders were, after one discharge to attack with the bayonet, and that no soldier should touch the convoy on pain of death till the action was ended. It was of no long duration; the vanguard were presently slaughtered; the centre and the rear, consisting of Poles and of Imperial Guards, made a brave but unavailing resistance: from 600 to 700 were slain, 500 wounded, and 150 taken, with the whole convoy, and about 400 prisoners set at liberty. M. Deslandes, the Intruder’s private secretary, was in the convoy; he got out of his carriage, and endeavoured to escape in a peasant’s dress, with which it seems he had provided himself, in anticipation of some such danger; but this disguise cost him his life, which would have been saved had it been known in time who he was. His wife, an Andalusian lady, with two of her countrywomen, who were married to officers in the enemy’s service, fell into Mina’s hands. Very few would have escaped if the French had not erected a fort at Arlaban, in consequence of their last year’s loss, and this served as a protection for the fugitives.
♦Intercepted letters from the Intruder.♦
Some letters from the Intruder were found upon his secretary. One was to Buonaparte, reminding him how, when he returned to Spain at his desire twelve months before, his Imperial Majesty had told him, that at the worst he could quit that country in case their hopes should not be realised, and that then he should have an asylum in the south of the empire. “Sire,” said he, “events have deceived my hopes; I have done no good, and I have no hopes of doing any. I entreat your Majesty, therefore, to let me resign into your hands the right to the crown of Spain, which four years ago you deigned to transfer to me. I had no other object in accepting the crown than the happiness of this vast monarchy, and it is not in my power to effect that. I entreat your Majesty to receive me into the number of your subjects, and to believe that you will never have a more faithful servant than the friend whom nature has given you.” There were other letters of the same date to his wife, whom he had left in Paris, and who was to deliver that which he had written to the Emperor only in case the decree for uniting to France the provinces beyond the Ebro should have been published; otherwise she was to await his farther directions. In another letter to her he said, that if the Emperor made war against Russia, and thought his presence in Spain could be useful, he would remain there, provided that both the military and civil authority were vested in him; otherwise his desire was to return to France. Should there be no Russian war, he would remain with or without the command, provided nothing were exacted from him which could make it believed that he consented to a dismemberment of the monarchy: provided also that troops enough and territory enough were left him, and that the monthly loan of a million, which had been promised, were paid. In that case he would remain as long as he could, thinking himself as much bound in honour not to quit Spain lightly, as he should be to quit it, if, during the war with England, sacrifices were required from him which he neither could nor ought to make, except at a general peace, for the good of Spain, of France, and of Europe. A decree for uniting to France the provinces beyond the Ebro, if it arrived unexpectedly, he said, would make him depart the next day; and if the Emperor should adjourn his projects till a time of peace, he must supply him with means of subsistence during the war. But if he inclined either to his removal, or to any of those measures which must cause him to remove, it was then of great consequence that he should return to France on kindly terms with the Emperor, and with his sincere and full consent; and this was what reason dictated to him, and what was more conformable to the situation of the miserable country over which he had been made king, and to his own domestic relations. In that case, he asked from the Emperor a domain in Tuscany, or in the south, some three hundred leagues from Paris. The course of events, and the false position in which he found himself, so contrary, he said, to the rectitude and loyalty of his character, had greatly injured his health: he was growing old; nothing but honour and duty could detain him where he was, and his inclination would drive him away, unless the Emperor explained himself in a different manner from what he had hitherto done. There was also a letter to his brother Louis, expressing a hope to see him one day in good health, and with the happiness which arises from a good conscience.... That happiness the intrusive king Joseph might well envy! It is little excuse for him that he was more weak than wicked, and in mere weakness had consented to be made the instrument of his brother’s insatiable ambition. Even in these letters, where he manifested a full sense of his humiliating situation, no consciousness is expressed of its guilt. For the sake of his own credit, and no doubt of his own personal safety, he protested against any immediate dismemberment of Spain; but he would have been contented to serve his brother’s purpose, by nominally retaining the kingdom, till a pretext could be found for dismembering it at a general peace.
But how long he should retain it depended upon something more than the will and pleasure of Napoleon Buonaparte, and this he was soon made to apprehend. ♦Sir Rowland Hill’s expedition to the bridge of Almaraz.♦ Lord Wellington was not about to remain idle with his victorious army; he prepared for offensive operations, and the first step was to interrupt the communication between the armies of Soult and Marmont. All the permanent bridges on the Tagus below that of Arzobispo had been destroyed; and the only way which was practicable for a large army was by a bridge of boats at Almaraz, in the line of the high road, where the noble bridge erected in Charles the Fifth’s time, at the city of Plasentia’s cost, had been demolished. For the protection of this important post, the French had thrown up strong works on both sides of the river: they had formed a flanked tête-du-pont on the left bank, riveted with masonry and strongly intrenched; and on the high ground above it they had constructed a large and strong redoubt, called Fort Napoleon, with an interior intrenchment, and a loop-holed tower in its centre; here they had mounted nine pieces of cannon, and had garrisoned it with between 400 and 500 men. On the right bank, there was a redoubt called Fort Ragusa, in honour of Marshal Marmont, of the same strength and construction, except that the tower had a double tier of loopholes; this flanked the bridge, and between the redoubt and the bridge there was a flêche. For farther security, the invaders had fortified an old castle commanding the Puerto de Miravete, about a league distant, being the only pass for carriages of any kind by which the bridge could be approached. A marked alteration of climate is perceptible upon crossing the narrow mountain ridge over which the road here passes. Coming from Castille, the traveller descends from this ridge into a country, where, for the first time, the gum-cistus appears as lord of the waste, ... the most beautiful of all shrubs in the Peninsula for the profusion of its delicate flowers, and one of the most delightful for the rich balsamic odour which its leaves exude under a southern sun; but which overspreads such extensive tracts, where it suffers nothing else to grow, that in many parts both of Portugal and Spain it becomes the very emblem of desolation. The old castle stood at little distance from the road, on the summit of the sierra: the French had surrounded it by a lower enceinte, twelve feet high; they had fortified a large venta, or travellers’ inn, upon the road, and had constructed two small works between the inn and the castle, forming altogether a strong line of defence.