The French now returned with superior numbers, under the command of the king, aided by his major-general, Marshal Jourdan. Upon the 27th and 28th of July they attacked the allies at Talavera. The battle, long, obstinately contested, and sanguinary, ended in the complete defeat of the assailants; but the destitute and exhausted condition of the English troops, who were without provisions for man or horse, prevented their pursuing the discomfited enemy, who was consequently enabled to retreat in good order. The good that should have resulted from the victory was further counteracted by an alarm from the north, and Cuesta’s perverse temper.
La Romana had rallied and increased his little army, and had so harassed Soult and Ney, that they, considering likewise the greater importance of the transactions then taking place in the south, resolved to evacuate the province. They did so, and Galicia remained thenceforward unmolested by invaders. In their progress southwards the two marshals were joined by Mortier, and Soult received from Napoleon the command of the combined corps with orders to march upon the English and Cuesta. The Spaniards stationed to secure the mountain passes fled; and Sir Arthur led the British army against this new foe, intrusting to Cuesta the maintenance of the post of Talavera. An apprehension of Victor’s advancing anew induced Cuesta to evacuate Talavera, and he hastened after Wellesley, leaving fifteen hundred British wounded to the enemy, whilst it is said many of his own carts were removed empty. This step, and Soult’s advance in unexpected strength, exposed Sir Arthur to be cut off from Portugal. His troops were starving; and as the protection of Portugal was the point chiefly insisted upon in his instructions, he retreated to a frontier position on the Guadiana. Venegas was defeated at Almonacid. Blake’s army of Aragon and Valencia had been beaten and dispersed; and the fall of Spain appeared to be inevitable. Venegas’ repeated defeats had now made him so unpopular that the command of his army was taken from him.
Meanwhile the central junta exerted themselves to reinforce Cuesta’s army, which had been surprised and half destroyed by the enemy since its separation from the English; and they thought of removing the unmanageable general. A paralytic stroke saved them that trouble, by compelling him to resign. The command of the principal army of fifty thousand men was given to Areizaga who was ordered to free Madrid, before the reinforcements, set at liberty by the end of the Austrian war, could reach Spain. The same peculiarity of the Spanish character, namely, assuming as done whatever is promised, or even wished, seems to have convinced the inexperienced statesmen of the central junta that the general they had sent to conquer could not be beaten, and that a decree, ordering the English army to be well supplied, must answer every purpose, though they took no measures for procuring the provisions or the cattle required. Lord Wellington remained in his cantonments; and on the 17th of November, Areizaga was totally defeated at Ocaña. The French now menaced Portugal: the British general was prepared for its protection.
The French were masters of nearly all Spain north of the Sierra Morena, with the exception of Galicia, Valencia, and Catalonia; and in this last province, although it resisted most stoutly, the French army, under St. Cyr, held the field, and Gerona, one of the most important fortresses not in their hands, fell in December, after emulating the glory of Saragossa during a seven months’ siege.[118] But their garrisons were distressed, and their communications were harassed both by the British cruisers on the coast, and by the Catalans themselves, who were almost all in arms, as miquelets or guerrillas, displaying the same indomitable spirit they had shown in former wars. In the course of the year 1809, as the regular armies were defeated and dispersed, the example of the Catalans was followed throughout Spain; and bands of guerillas consisting of peasants, deserters, outlaws—of individuals, in short, of all classes—were everywhere established, the command of which was assumed by men of talent and resolution, likewise of all classes—officers, monks, physicians, yeomen, or smugglers. This was a mode of warfare to which the climate was favourable, the vindictive Spanish character peculiarly adapted, and habits of discipline unnecessary. They appeared in force wherever a blow was to be struck; when pursued, they dispersed and vanished. A few of the guerilla leaders, as Juan Martin Diaz, better known as the Empecinado, Julian Sanchez, Juan Diaz Porlier, Don Mariano de Renovalos Longa, and last, and far the greatest, the two Minas, uncle and nephew, acquired a celebrity that renders the record of their names indispensable in Spanish history.
[1809-1810 A.D.]
The central junta, opposed by the local junta, and alarmed at their own unpopularity, were now prevailed upon to transfer their authority to a regency of five persons. The regency, instead of devoting their time and thoughts to calling forth the resources and energies of the country, or even to the defence of Cadiz, began their administration by a vehement attack upon the measures of the central junta, accused that body of usurpation and peculation, threw some of the members into prison, and banished even the excellent Jovellanos to his native province, where his conduct was ordered to be watched. Alburquerque was deprived of the government of Cadiz and sent as ambassador to England, where he soon died, of mortification, it is said, at his ill usage. Whilst the regency were persecuting their predecessors, or occupied with commercial interests, Andalusia and Granada submitted at once to the conqueror, who met resistance only from Cadiz.
The war with Austria was now over, and it was generally expected that the dreaded Napoleon would return to the peninsula, to bear down all resistance by the energy of his own mighty genius. But he sent his favourite general, Masséna, whom he had surnamed the Spoiled Child of Victory, to conquer Portugal, drive the English into the sea, and, it was supposed, receive the crown of Portugal as his reward.
The Spaniards had now no army on foot deserving the name, and central Spain, from the Pyrenees to the lines before Cadiz, was nominally in the possession of King Joseph, Galicia and Estremadura, on the western, and Murcia, Valencia, and Catalonia on the eastern side, with a few fortresses, being all that yet remained unconquered; and, in Catalonia, Suchet was slowly making formidable progress. But the temper of the people never was less subdued, and the war had assumed a character of extraordinary ferocity.
Napoleon deemed that professional soldiers only had a right to fight; and instead of respecting the patriotic feeling that roused the whole nation to struggle for independence, he considered the armed peasantry as mere licentious rebels against their lawful king. Hence whilst the ordinary courtesies of war were observed towards the British, nearly all the Spaniards and the irregular Portuguese troops were treated with wanton cruelty, and their women exposed to the grossest outrage from the French soldiery, until almost every individual in the Spanish guerilla bands, and the Portuguese irregulars, had a private injury to revenge; and even sympathy in their resentments can barely palliate the sanguinary temper in which that revenge was sought. And to these personal motives of exasperation was added a deep sense of religious horror, since the French emperor had seized upon the estates of the church, upon Rome itself, and carried Pope Pius VII, who refused to sanction his spoliation, a prisoner to France. From the influence of so many various feelings, the whole of Spain was now overrun by fierce guerillas, and Joseph, in fact, was only master of the places actually occupied by French soldiers.
As soon as the French movements threatened Portugal, Lord Wellington could not hope, with 27,000 British, and 30,000 nearly untried Portuguese troops, to defend Portugal against 80,000 French veterans, led by an able general, and supported by bodies of 30,000 or 40,000 men, acting as a rearguard.