I was aroused by a discharge of cannon, and found the camp in commotion. The Spaniards, under Reding and Castanos, had, as the colonel anticipated, fallen upon our line of march at daybreak, and cut off a large portion of the baggage-train. It had been loaded with the church-plate, and general plunder of Cordova; and the avarice of the French had obviously involved them in formidable difficulty. But, even in the universal tumult, the importance of my seizure was not forgotten; and I was ordered to the rear in charge of a guard. The action now began on all sides; the cannonade rapidly deepening on the flank and centre of the French position, and the musketry already beginning to rattle on various points of the line. From the height on which I stood, the whole scene lay beneath my eye; and nothing could have been better worth the speculation of any man—who was not under sentence of being shot as soon as the struggle was over!
I was aware of the reputation of the French general. He held a high name among the braves of the imperial army for the last ten years, and he had been foremost everywhere. In the desperate Italian campaign against the Austrians and Russians; in the victorious campaign of Austerlitz; in the sanguinary campaign of Eylau—Dupont was one of the most daring of generals of brigade. But his pillage of Cordova had roused the Spanish wrath into fury; and the effort to carry off his plunder made it impossible for him to resist a vigorous attack, even with his twenty thousand veterans. He had indulged himself in Cordova, until the broken armies of the south had found time to rally; and a force of fifty thousand men was now rushing down upon his centre. The hills, as far as the eye could range, were covered with the armed peasantry, moving like dark clouds over their sides, and descending by thousands to the field. The battle now raged furiously in the centre, and the charges of the French cavalry made fearful gaps in the Spanish battalions. At length, the rising of the dust on the right showed that a strong column was approaching, which might decide the day. My heart beat slow as I saw the tricolor floating above its bayonets. It was the advanced guard, with Dupont at its head—a force of three thousand men, which had returned rapidly on its steps, as soon as the sound of the attack had reached it. It was boldly resisted by the Swiss and Walloon brigades of the Spanish line: but the French fire was heavy, its manœuvre was daring, and I began to fear for the fate of the day; when a loud explosion, and a hurried movement at the extreme of the French position, turned my eyes to the left wing. There the Spanish attack had swept every thing before it. Brigade after brigade was giving way, and the country was covered with scattered horsemen, infantry retiring in disorder, and broken and captured guns. The peasantry, too, had joined in the pursuit, and the wing seemed utterly ruined. To retrieve this disorder was now hopeless, for the French general had extended his line to the extraordinary length of ten miles. His baggage-train was his ruin. The whole Spanish line now advanced, shouting, and only halting at intervals to cannonade the enemy. The French returned a feeble fire, and began to retreat. But retreat was now impossible, and they must fight, or be massacred. At this moment I saw an officer, from the spot where Dupont sat on his charger surrounded by his staff, gallop between the two armies. He was met by a Spanish officer. The firing ceased. Dupont had surrendered, with all the troops in Andalusia!
I was now at liberty, and I was received by the Spanish commander-in-chief with the honours due to my mission and my country. After mutual congratulations on this most brilliant day, I expressed my wish to set off for Madrid without delay. An escort of cavalry was ordered for me, and by midnight I had left behind me the slaughter and the triumph, the noblest of Spanish fields, the immortal Baylen!
The night was singularly dark; and as the by-roads of the Peninsula are confessedly among the most original specimens of the road-making art, our attention was chiefly occupied, for the first hour, in finding our way in Indian file. At length, on the country's opening, I rode forward to the head of the troops, and addressed some questions, on our distance from the next town, to the officer. He at once pronounced my name, and my astonishment was not less than his own. In the commandant of the escort I found my gallant, though most wayward, young friend, Mariamne's lover, Lafontaine! His story was brief. In despair of removing her father's reluctance to their marriage, and wholly unable to bring over Mariamne to his own opinion, that she would act the wiser part in taking the chances of the world along with himself, he had resolved to enter the Russian or the Turkish service, or any other in which he had the speediest probability of ending his career by a bullet or a sabre-blow. The accidental rencontre of one of his relations, an officer high in the Spanish service, had led him into the Peninsula; where, as a Royalist, he was warmly received by a people devoted to their kings; and had just received a commission in the cavalry of the guard, when the French war broke out. He felt no scruples in acting as a soldier of Spain; for, with the death of Louis, he had regarded all ties as broken, and he was now a citizen of the world. I ventured to mention the name of Mariamne; and I found that, there at least, the inconstancy charged on his nation had no place. He spoke of her with eloquent tenderness, and it was evident that, with all his despair of ever seeing her again, she still held the first place in his heart. In this wandering, yet by no means painful, interchange of thoughts, we moved on for some hours; when one of the advanced troopers rode back, to tell us that he had heard shots in the distance, and other sounds of struggle. We galloped forward, and from the brow of the next hill saw flames rising from a village in the valley beneath, and a skirmish going on between some marauding troops and the peasantry. Lafontaine instantly ordered an advance; and our whole troop were soon in the centre of the village, busily employed with the pistol and sabre. The French, taken by surprise, made but a slight resistance, and, after a few random shots, ran to a neighbouring wood. But as I was looking round, to congratulate my friend on his success, I saw him, to my infinite alarm, reel in his saddle, and had only time to save him from falling to the ground.
The accommodation of the Ventas and Posadas is habitually wretched, and I demanded whether there was not a house of some hidalgo in the neighbourhood, to which the wounded officer might be carried. One of the last shots of the skirmish had struck him in the arm, and he was now fainting with pain. The house was pointed out, and we carried my unfortunate friend there, in a swoon. Even in that moment of anxiety, and with scarcely more than the first dawn to guide us, I could not help being struck with the cultivated beauty of the avenue through which we passed, and the profusion and variety of the flowers, which now began to breathe their opening incense to the dawn. The house was old, but large and handsome, and the furniture of the apartment into which we were shown, was singularly tasteful and costly. Who the owner was, was scarcely known among the bold fellows who accompanied us; but by their pointings to their foreheads, and their making the sign of the cross at every repetition of my enquiries, I was inclined to think him some escaped lunatic. I shortly, however, received a message from him, to tell me, that so soon as the crowd should be dismissed, he would visit the officer. The apartment was cleared and he came. This was a new wonder for me. It was Mordecai that entered the room. The light was still so imperfect, that for awhile he could not recognise either of us; and when I advanced to take his hand, and addressed him by his name, he started back as if he had trod upon a snake. However, his habitual presence of mind soon enabled him to answer all my enquiries, and, among the first, one for the health and happiness of his daughter. Fearful of the effects of his intelligence, whether good or evil, on the nerves of Lafontaine, who still lay on the sofa, almost invisible in the dusk, I begged to follow him to another room, and there I listened to his whole anxious history since our parting.—Mariamne had suddenly grown discontented with Poland; which to Mordecai himself had become a weary residence, from the ravages of the French war. For some reason, unaccountable to me, said the old man, she set her heart upon Spain, and had now been domiciled in this secluded spot for a year. But she was visibly fading away. She read and wrote much, and was even more attached to her harp and her flowers than ever; yet declared that she had bid farewell to the world. The father wept as he spoke, but his were the tears of sorrow rather than of anguish. They stole quietly down his cheeks, and showed that the stern and haughty spirit was subdued within him. I had not ventured to allude to Lafontaine; but the current of his own thoughts at length led to that forbidden topic. "I am afraid, Mr Marston," said he, "that I have been too harsh with my child. I looked for her alliance with some of the opulent among my own kindred; or I should have rejoiced if your regards had been fixed on her, and hers on you. And in those dreams, I forgot that the affections must choose for themselves. I had no objection to the young Frenchman, but that he was a stranger, and was poor.—Yet are not we ourselves strangers? and if he was poor, was not I rich? But all is over now; and I shall only have to follow my poor Mariamne, where I should have much rather preceded her,—to the grave."
I now requested to see Mariamne. She met me with almost a cry of joy, and with a cheek of sudden crimson; but, when the first flush passed away, her looks gave painful proof of the effect of solitude and sorrow. The rounded beauty of her cheek was gone, her eyes, once dancing with every emotion, were fixed and hollow, and her frame, once remarkable for symmetry, was thin and feeble. But, her heart was buoyant still, and when I talked of past scenes and recollections, her eye sparkled once more. Still, her manner was changed—it was softer and less capricious; her language, even her voice, was subdued; and more than once I saw a tear stealing on her eye. At length, after hearing some slight detail of her wanderings, and her fears that the troubles of Spain might drive her from a country in whose genial climate and flowery fields "she had hoped to end her days;" I incidentally asked—whether, in all her wanderings, she had heard of "my friend, Lafontaine." How impossible is it to deceive the instinct of the female heart! The look which she gave me, the searching glance of her fine eyes, which flashed with all their former lustre, and the sudden quivering of her lip, told me how deeply his image was fixed in her recollection. She saw at once that I had tidings of her lover; and she hung upon the hand which I held out to her, with breathless and beseeching anxiety. After some precautions, I revealed to her the facts—that he was as faithfully devoted to her as ever, and—that he was even under her roof!
I leave the rest of her story to be conjectured. I shall only say, that I saw her made happy; the burden taken off her spirits which had exhausted her frame; her former vivacity restored, her eye sparkling once more; and even the heart of her father cheered, and acknowledging "that there was happiness in the world, if men did not mar it for themselves." The "course of true love" had, at last, "run smooth." I was present at the marriage of Lafontaine. The trials of fortune had been of infinite service to him; they had sobered his eccentricity, taught him the value of a quiet mind, and prepared him for that manlier career which belongs to the husband and the father. I left them, thanking me in all the language of gratitude, promising to visit me in England.
My mission to the junta was speedily and successfully accomplished. Spain, in want of every thing but that which no subsidy could supply, a determination to die in the last intrenchment, was offered arms, ammunition, and the aid of an English army. In her pride, and yet a pride which none could blame, she professed herself able to conquer by her own intrepidity. Later experience showed her, by many a suffering, the value of England as the guide, sustainer, and example of her national strength. But Spain had still the gallant distinction of being the first nation which, as one man, dared to defy the conqueror of all the great military powers of the Continent. The sieges of Saragossa and Gerona will immortalize the courage of the Spanish soldier; the guerilla campaigns will immortalize the courage of the Spanish peasant; and the memorable confession of the French Emperor, that "Spain was his greatest error, and his ultimate ruin," is a testimonial more lasting than the proudest trophy, to the magnanimous warfare of the Peninsula.
This was the Crisis. The spirit of the whole European war now assumed a bolder, loftier, and more triumphant form. A sudden conviction filled the general heart, that the fortunes of the field were about to change. Nations which had, till then, been only emulous in prostration to the universal conqueror, now assumed the port of courage, prepared their arms, and longed to try their cause again in battle. The outcry of Spain, answered by the trumpet of England, pierced to the depths of that dungeon in which the intrigue and the power of France had laboured to inclose the continental nations. The war of the Revolution has already found historians, of eloquence and knowledge worthy of so magnificent an era of human change. But, to me, the chief interest arose from its successive developments of the European mind. The whole period was a continued awakening of faculties, hitherto almost unknown, in the great body of the people. The first burst of the Revolution, like the first use of gunpowder, had only shown the boundless force of a new element of destruction. The Spanish insurrection showed its protecting and preservative power. The tremendous energy which seemed to defy all control, was there seen effecting the highest results of national defence, and giving proof of the irresistible strength provided in the population of every land. What nation of Europe does not possess a million of men for its defence; and what invader could confront a million of men on their own soil? Let this truth be felt, and aggression becomes hopeless, and war ceases to exist among men.