THE INSURRECTIONARY ARMIES.
The Spanish Juntas had wisely recommended to their countrymen to avoid general engagements—to avail themselves of the difficulties of various kinds which their country presents to an army of invaders—to operate upon the flanks, the rear, and the communications of the French—and to engage the enemy in a war of posts, in which courage and natural instinct bring the native sharpshooter more upon a level with the trained and practised soldier, than the professors of military tactics are at all times willing to admit. But although this plan was excellently laid down, and in part adhered to, in which case it seldom failed to prove successful, yet on many occasions it became impossible for the Spanish leaders to avoid more general actions, in which defeat and loss were usually inevitable. The character of the insurrectionary armies, or rather of the masses of armed citizens so called, led to many fatal errors of this kind. They were confident in their own numbers and courage, in proportion to their ignorance of the superiority which discipline, the possession of cavalry and artillery, and the power of executing combined and united movements, must always bestow upon regular forces. They were also impatient of the miseries necessarily brought upon the country by a protracted and systematic war of mere defence, and not less unwilling to bear the continued privations to which they themselves were exposed. On some occasions, opposition on the part of their officers to their demand of being led against the enemy, to put an end, as they hoped, to the war, by one brave blow, was construed into cowardice or treachery; and falling under the suspicion of either, was a virtual sentence of death to the suspected person. Sometimes, also, these insurrectionary bodies were forced to a general action, which they would willingly have avoided, either by want of provisions, with which they were indifferently supplied at all times, or by the superior manœuvres of a skilful enemy. In most of the actions which took place from these various causes, the French discipline effectually prevailed over the undisciplined courage of the insurgents, and the patriots were defeated with severe loss.
On these occasions, the cruelty of the conquerors too frequently sullied their victory, and materially injured the cause in which it was gained. Affecting to consider the Spaniards, who appeared in arms to oppose a foreign yoke and an intrusive king, as rebels taken in the fact, the prisoners who fell into the hands of the French were subjected to military execution; and the villages where they had met with opposition were delivered up to the licentious fury of the soldier, who spared neither sex nor age. The French perhaps remembered, that some such instances of sanguinary severity, in the commencement of the Italian campaigns, had compelled the insurgents of Lombardy to lay down their arms, and secured the advantages which Napoleon had gained by the defeat of the Austrian forces. But in Spain the result was extremely different. Every atrocity of this kind was a new injury to be avenged, and was resented as such by a nation at no time remarkable for forgiveness of wrongs. The sick, the wounded, the numerous stragglers of the French army, were, when they fell into the hands of the Spaniards, which frequently happened, treated with the utmost barbarity; and this retaliation hardening the heart, and inflaming the passions of either party as they suffered by it in turn, the war assumed a savage, bloody, and atrocious character, which seemed to have for its object not the subjection, but the extermination of the vanquished.
The character of the country, very unfavourable to the French mode of supporting their troops at the expense of the districts through which they marched, added to the inveteracy of the struggle. Some parts of Spain are no doubt extremely fertile, but there are also immense tracts of barren plains, or unproductive mountains, which afford but a scanty support to the inhabitants themselves, and are totally inadequate to supply the additional wants of an invading army. In such districts the Marauders, to be successful in their task of collecting provisions, had to sweep a large tract of country on each side of the line of march—an operation the more difficult and dangerous, that though the principal high-roads through Spain are remarkably good, yet the lateral communications connecting them with the countries which they traverse are of the worst possible description, and equally susceptible of being defended by posts, protected by ambuscades, or altogether broken up, and rendered impervious to an invader. Hence it was long since said by Henry IV., that if a general invaded Spain with a small army, he must be defeated—if with a large one, he must be starved; and the gigantic undertaking of Buonaparte appeared by no means unlikely to fail, either from the one or the other reason.
At the first movement of the French columns into the provinces which were in insurrection, victory seemed every where to follow the invaders. Lefebvre Desnouettes defeated the Spaniards in Arragon on the 9th of June; General Bessières beat the insurgents in many partial actions in the same month, kept Navarre and Biscay in subjection, and overawed the insurgents in Old Castile. These, however, were but petty advantages, compared to that which he obtained, in a pitched battle, over two united armies of the Spaniards, consisting of the forces of Castile and Leon, joined to those of Galicia.
The first of these armies was commanded by Cuesta, described, by Southey,[405] as a brave old man, energetic, hasty, and headstrong, in whose resolute, untractable, and decided temper, the elements of the Spanish character were strongly marked. His army was full of zeal, but in other respects in such a state of insubordination, that they had recently murdered one of the general officers against whom they harboured some rashly adopted suspicions of treachery. The Galician army was in the same disorderly condition; and they also had publicly torn to pieces their general, Filangieri,[406] upon no further apparent cause of suspicion than that he had turned his thoughts rather to defensive than offensive operations. Blake, a good soldier, who enjoyed the confidence of the army, but whose military talents were not of the first order, succeeded Filangieri in his dangerous command, and having led his Galician levies to form a junction with Cuesta, they now proceeded together towards Burgos. The two generals differed materially in opinion. Cuesta, though he had previously suffered a defeat from the French near Cabezon, was for hazarding the event of a battle, moved probably by the difficulty of keeping together and maintaining their disorderly forces; while Blake, dreading the superiority of the French discipline, deprecated the risk of a general action. Bessières left them no choice on the subject. He came upon them, when posted near Medina del Rio Seco, where, on the 14th July, the combined armies of Galicia and Castile received the most calamitous defeat which the Spaniards had yet sustained. The patriots fought most bravely, and it was said more than twenty thousand slain were buried on the field of battle.
July 20.
Napoleon received the news of this victory with exultation. "It is," he said, "the battle of Villa Viciosa. Bessières has put the crown on Joseph's head. The Spaniards," he added, "have now perhaps fifteen thousand men left, with some old blockhead at their head;—the resistance of the Peninsula is ended."[407] In fact, the victory of Medina del Rio Seco made the way open for Joseph to advance from Vittoria to Madrid, where he arrived without molestation. He entered the capital in state, but without receiving any popular greetings, save what the municipal authorities found themselves compelled to offer. The money which was scattered amongst the populace was picked up by the French alone, and by the French alone were the theatres filled, which had been thrown open to the public in honour of their new prince.[408]
VALENCIA.
In the meantime, however, the advantages obtained by Bessières in Castile seemed fast in the course of being outbalanced by the losses which the French sustained in the other provinces. Duhesme, with those troops which had so treacherously possessed themselves of Barcelona and Figueras, seems, at the outset, to have entertained little doubt of being able not only to maintain himself in Catalonia, but even to send troops to assist in the subjugation of Valencia and Arragon. But the Catalonians are, and have always been, a warlike people, addicted to the use of the gun, and naturally disposed, like the Tyrolese, to act as sharp-shooters. Undismayed by several partial losses, they made good the strong mountain-pass of Bruch and other defiles, and, after various actions, compelled the French general to retreat towards Barcelona, with a loss both of men and character.[409]