Throughout the greater part of Spain meanwhile a desultory warfare had been carried on, in which the French were generally successful. Victor was conducting the siege of Cadiz, an operation that proceeded languidly on both sides, from want of numbers on Victor’s, and the usual causes on that of the Spaniards.

The assembling of the cortes was looked to as the period and as the means of the regeneration of Spain. These hopes were confirmed, and the peculiar character of the Spanish resolution was, at the same time, curiously illustrated by the mode in which the elections were carried on, even in the provinces most thoroughly occupied by the French. Considerable bodies of armed peasants, or of guerillas, sometimes temporarily drove the French from the town where an election was appointed to take place, sometimes merely held them at bay, whilst the suffrages were collected. And thus, almost everywhere, deputies were elected who, sooner or later, found their way to Cadiz. On the 24th of September, 1810, the cortes were solemnly opened. The assembly immediately decreed a new levy of 150,000 men, together with provision for the support and equipment of all the Spanish armies. But then, as if this decree had sufficed for expelling the enemy, who held the whole country in subjection, they dedicated their whole attention to framing a constitution, and to establishing sweeping theories, resembling those adopted by the French National Assembly, and equally democratic in their tenor. The disputes that ensued between the cortes and the regency ended in the dissolution of the latter body, for whom was substituted an executive council of three. The cortes offended the clergy by attacking the Inquisition, and attempting other ecclesiastical reforms for which the country was unripe, exasperated the whole church, and sowed the seeds of the fatal subsequent reaction that robbed Spain of all the internal benefits she ought to have derived from the restoration of her representative legislature.

[1810-1811 A.D.]

Although they had allowed the colonies to send deputies to the cortes, they were not willing to treat the colonists as brethren. The colonies had unanimously professed their loyalty to Ferdinand, and their adhesion to the national cause. The emissaries employed by Napoleon and Joseph to seduce them had been everywhere derided and punished; and the American revenues, regularly conveyed to the mother-country by English vessels, ought, if fairly applied, to have done much towards supporting the war.

On the intelligence of the surrender of Seville, the subjugation of Andalusia, and the flight and dispersion of the central junta, the province of Caracas assumed that Spain was conquered; and, declaring that it never would submit to Joseph, cast off the authority of the mother-country whilst proclaiming inviolable fidelity to Ferdinand. This example was followed by the other provinces of Terra Firma, as the north coast of the South American continent was called; and on the 19th of April, 1810, the Venezuela confederation proclaimed its independent existence under Ferdinand VII. They refused to acknowledge the Cadiz regency and cortes, with whom they carried on a paper war; and those bodies, vehemently resenting this daring assertion of independence, divided the forces that should have been dedicated to the expulsion of the enemy from Spain, in order to compel colonial submission.

From the injudicious appointment to the chief command of the worst of all the Spanish generals, Lapeña, Cadiz must have fallen, if Soult had not been ordered by Napoleon to co-operate with Masséna against Portugal. Lapeña, to whom Graham, as a measure of conciliation, gave up the supreme command, stood inactive in a safe and distant post, with eleven thousand Spaniards, whilst at Barrosa, Graham, with little more than four thousand English and Portuguese, fought and defeated nearly nine thousand French. By the Spanish general’s refusal even to pursue the beaten enemy, the benefit of this hardly won success was lost. The council and cortes approved of Lapeña’s conduct: he claimed the merit of the victory, and Graham, in disgust, resigning his command to General Cooke, joined Lord Wellington. La Romana died on the 24th of January, 1811. Olivenza had capitulated on the 22nd, and the French laid siege to Badajoz. La Romana’s successor, Mendizabal, was defeated by Soult; but Don Raphael Menacho, the governor of Badajoz, defended the place stoutly, and Soult remained before it. In Portugal the winter had passed with little alteration. Wellington and Masséna had spent it in watching each other.

[1811 A.D.]

By the end of February, 1811, the provisions, which the obstinacy of the regents had left to the French, were exhausted. Masséna learned from his partisans in Lisbon that English reinforcements had landed on the 2nd of March, and on the 6th he had evacuated Santarem and begun his retreat. He conducted it with great skill, stained, however, with as great and wanton cruelty. In fact, this retreat, though highly honourable to the general’s abilities, remains one of the foulest blots upon the moral character of the French army.[120] But the pursuit was conducted by Lord Wellington with yet greater ability, every strong position taken by the French army being immediately turned by the British; and on the 5th of April Masséna was finally driven across the frontiers of Portugal. This retreat cost the French about six thousand men, and the allies a tenth of that number. Masséna’s previous losses are estimated at twenty-five or thirty thousand.

FAILURES IN SPAIN

Lord Wellington, having now again delivered Portugal, asked for such reinforcements as might enable him to undertake the deliverance of Spain, without being, as before, dependent upon the obstinate generals and feeble counsels of that country. But to the feasibility of his future schemes, and even to the maintenance of Portugal and of Cadiz, the recovery of Almeida, Ciudad Rodrigo, and Badajoz was indispensable. The first of these fortresses Wellington immediately blockaded, and directed Marshal Beresford to lay siege to the last.