Having thus completed the episode of Sir John Moore's expedition, we resume the progress of Napoleon, to whom the successive victories of Reynosa, Burgos, and Tudela, had offered a triumphant path to Madrid. On the 1st of December, his headquarters being at the village of Saint Augustino, he was within sight of that capital, and almost within hearing of the bells, whose hollow and continued toll announced general insurrection, and the most desperate resistance. Nor was the zeal of the people of Madrid inadequate to the occasion, had it been properly directed and encouraged. They seized on the French officer who brought a summons of surrender, and were with difficulty prevented from tearing him to pieces. On the 3d, the French attacked Buen Retiro, a palace which had been fortified as a kind of citadel. A thousand Spaniards died in the defence of this stronghold. On the 4th, Morla opened a capitulation with Napoleon. He and Yriarte, another noble Spaniard, of whom better things had been hoped, came to testify their repentance for the rash part they had undertaken, and to express their sense that the city could in nowise be defended; but, at the same time to state, that the populace and volunteers were resolute in its defence, and that some delay would be necessary, to let their zeal cool, and their fears come to work in their turn.
Buonaparte admitted these deputies to his own presence, and with the audacity which sometimes characterised his language, he read them a lecture on their bad faith,[469] in not observing the treaty of Baylen—on their bad faith, in suffering Frenchmen to be assassinated—on their bad faith, in seizing upon the French squadron at Cadiz. This rebuke was gravely urged by the individual, who had kidnapped the royal family of Spain while they courted his protection as his devoted vassals—who had seized the fortresses into which his troops had been received as friends and allies—who had floated the streets of Madrid with the blood of its population—and, finally, who had taken it upon him to assume the supreme authority, and dispose of the crown of Spain, under no better pretext than that he had the will and the power to do so. Had a Spaniard been at liberty to reply to the Lord of Legions, and reckon with him injury for injury, falsehood for falsehood, drop of blood for drop of blood, what an awful balance must have been struck against him![470]
In the meantime, those citizens of Madrid who had determined on resistance, began to see that they were deserted by such as should have headed them in the task, and their zeal became cooled under the feelings of dismay and distrust. A military convention was finally concluded, in virtue of which General Belliard took possession of the city, on the 4th of December. The terms were so favourable, as to show that Buonaparte, while pretending to despise the sort of resistance which the population might have effected, was well pleased, nevertheless, not to drive them to extremity. He then published a proclamation, setting forth his desire to be the regenerator of the Spanish empire. But in case his mild and healing mediation should be again refused, he declared he would treat them as a conquered people, and place his brother on another throne. "I will, in that case, set the crown of Spain on my own head, and I shall know how to make it respected; for God," concluded this extraordinary document, "has given me the power and the will to surmount all difficulties."[471]
VALLADOLID.
There were now two operations which nearly concerned Buonaparte. The first was the dispersion of the remaining troops of Castanos, which had escaped the fatal battle of Tudela, and such other armed bodies as continued to occupy the south of Spain. In this the French had for some time an easy task; for the Spanish soldiers, surprised and incensed at their own disasters, were, in many instances, the assassins of their generals, and the generals had lost all confidence in their mutinous followers. But before pursuing his successes in the south, it was Buonaparte's first resolution to detach a part of the French army upon Portugal, by the way of Talavera, and by occupying Lisbon, intercept the retreat of Sir John Moore and his English army. The advance of the English general to Salamanca interfered with this last design. It seemed to Napoleon, that he did not yet possess forces sufficient at the same time to confront and turn back Sir John Moore, and, on the other hand, to enter Portugal and possess himself of Lisbon. The latter part of the plan was postponed. Placing himself at the head of his Guards, Napoleon, as we have seen, directed his march towards Valladolid, and witnessed the retreat of Sir John Moore. He had the pleasure of beholding with his own eyes the people whom he hated most, and certainly did not fear the least, in full retreat, and was observed scarcely ever to have appeared so gay and joyous as during the pursuit, which the French officers termed the race of Benevente.[472] But he had also the less pleasing spectacle of the skirmish, in which the general commanding the cavalry of his Imperial Guard was defeated, and his favourite, General Lefebvre, made prisoner. He halted with his Guards at Astorga, left Ney with 18,000 men to keep the country in subjection, and assigned to Soult the glorious task of pursuing the English and completing their destruction. We have already seen how far he proved able to accomplish his commission.
Meanwhile, the Emperor himself returned to Valladolid, and from thence set off for France with the most precipitate haste. His last act was to declare his brother Joseph generalissimo over the French armies; yet, notwithstanding this mark of trust and confidence, there is reason to believe that Buonaparte repented already his liberality, in assigning to another, though his own brother, an appanage so splendid, and which was likely to cost so much blood and treasure. Something to this purpose broke out in his proclamation to the people of Madrid; and he was more explicit when speaking confidentially to the Abbé de Pradt, whom, in returning from Benevente, the Emperor met at Valladolid.
They were alone; it was a stormy night; and Buonaparte, opening the window from time to time, to ascertain the possibility of travelling, only turned from it to overwhelm Monsieur de Pradt with questions on the state of the capital which he had just left. The abbé did not disguise their disaffection; and when Napoleon endeavoured to show the injustice of their complaints, by insisting on the blessings he had conferred on Spain, by the diminution of tithes, abolishing feudal servitudes, and correcting other abuses of the old government, De Pradt answered by saying, that the Spaniards did not thank Napoleon for relief from evils to which they were insensible; and that the country was in the situation of the wife of Sganarelle in the farce, who quarrelled with a stranger for interfering with her husband when he was beating her. Buonaparte laughed, and continued in these remarkable words:—"I did not know what Spain was. It is a finer country than I was aware, and I have made Joseph a more valuable present than I dreamed of. But you will see, that by and by the Spaniards will commit some folly, which will place their country once more at my disposal. I will then take care to keep it to myself, and divide it into five great viceroyships."[473]
While the favourite of fortune nourished these plans of engrossing and expanding ambition, the eagerness of his mind seems to have communicated itself to his bodily frame; for, when the weather permitted him to mount on horseback, he is said at once, and without halting, save to change horses, to have performed the journey from Valladolid, to Burgos, being thirty-five Spanish leagues, or about seventy English miles and upwards, in the space of five hours and a half.[474]
The incredible rapidity with which Napoleon pressed his return to France, without again visiting Madrid, or pausing to hear the fate of the English army, surprised those around him. Some conjectured that a conspiracy had been discovered against his authority at Paris; others, that a band of Spaniards had devoted themselves to assassinate him; a third class assigned different causes; but it was soon found that the despatch which he used had its cause in the approaching rupture with Austria.[475]
AUSTRIA.