Such were the principal causes which combined to produce this surprising revolution, from which so many great events flowed, without one man of eminent talent being cast up to control or direct the spirit which was thus accidentally excited. Nothing proves more directly the heterogeneous nature of the feelings and interests which were united together than this last fact, which cannot be attributed to a deficiency of natural talent, for the genius of the Spanish people is notoriously ardent, subtle, and vigorous; but there was no common bond of feeling which a great man could lay hold of to influence large masses. Persons of sagacity perceived very early that the Spanish revolution, like a leafy shrub in a violent gale of wind, greatly agitated but disclosing only slight unconnected stems, afforded no sure hold for the ambition of a master-spirit, if such there were. It was clear that the cause would fail unless supported by England, and then England would direct all, and not suffer her resources to be wielded for the glory of an individual, whose views and policy might hereafter thwart her own; nor was it difficult to perceive that the downfall of Napoleon, not the regeneration of Spain, was the object of her cabinet.
The explosion of public feeling was fierce in its expression, because political passions will always be vehement at the first moment of their appearance among a people new to civil commotion, and unused to permit their heat to evaporate in public discussions. The result was certainly a wonderful change in the affairs of Europe; it seems yet undecided whether that change has been for the better or for the worse. In the progress of their struggle, the Spaniards developed more cruelty than courage, more violence than intrepidity, more personal hatred of the French than enthusiasm for their own cause. They opened indeed a wide field for the exertions of others; they presented a fulcrum upon which a lever was rested that moved the civilised world; but assuredly the presiding genius, the impelling power, came from another quarter. Useful accessories they were, but as principals they displayed neither wisdom, spirit, nor skill sufficient to resist the prodigious force by which they were assailed. If they appeared at first heedless of danger, it was not because they were prepared to perish rather than submit, but that they were reckless of provoking a power whose terrors they could not estimate, and in their ignorance despised.
It is, however, not surprising that great expectations were at first formed of the heroism of the Spaniards, and those expectations were greatly augmented by their agreeable qualities. There is not upon the face of the earth a people so attractive in the friendly intercourse of society: their majestic language, fine persons, imposing dress and lively imaginations, the inexpressible beauty of the women, and the air of romance which they throw over every action, and infuse into every feeling, all combine to delude the senses and to impose upon the judgment. As companions they are incomparably the most agreeable of mankind; but danger and disappointment attend the man who, confiding in their promises and energy, ventures upon a difficult enterprise. “Never do to-day what you can put off until to-morrow,” is the favourite proverb in Spain, and, unlike most proverbs, it is rigidly attended to.
CHAPTER IV.
The commotion of Aranjuez had undeceived the French emperor; he perceived that he was engaged in a delicate enterprise, and that the people he had to deal with were any thing but tame and quiescent under insult. Determined, however, to persevere, he pursued his political intrigues, and, without relinquishing the hope of a successful termination to the affair by such means, he arranged a profound plan of military operations, and so distributed his forces, that, at the moment when Spain was pouring forth her swarthy bands, the masses of the French army were concentrated upon the most important points, and combined in such a manner, that, from their central position they had the power of overwhelming each separate province, no three of which could act in concert without first beating a French corps; and if any of the Spanish armies succeeded in routing a French force, the remaining corps of the latter could unite without difficulty, and retreat without danger. It was the skill of this disposition which enabled seventy thousand men, covering a great extent of country, to brave the simultaneous fury of a whole nation: an army less ably distributed would have been trampled under foot, and lost amidst the tumultuous uproar of eleven millions of people.
The inconvenience in a political point of view that would have arisen from suffering a regular army to take the field was evident. To have been able to characterise the opposition of the Spanish people as a partial insurrection of peasants, instigated by some evil-disposed persons to act against the wishes of the respectable part of the nation, would have given some colour to the absorbing darkness of the invasion: but to have permitted that which was at first an insurrection of peasants to take the form and consistence of regular armies and methodical warfare, would have been a military error, and dangerous in the extreme. Napoleon, who well knew that scientific war is only a wise application of force, laughed at the delusion of those who regarded the want of a regular army as a favourable circumstance, and who hailed the undisciplined peasant as the more certain defender of the country. He knew that a general insurrection can never last long, that it is a military anarchy, and incapable of real strength: he knew that it was the disciplined battalions of Valley Forge, not the volunteers of Lexington, that established American independence; that it was the veterans of Arcole and Marengo, not the republicans of Valmy, that fixed the fate of the French revolution; and consequently his efforts were directed to hinder the Spaniards from drawing together any great body of regular soldiers; an event that might easily happen, for the gross amount of the organized Spanish force was, in the month of May, about one hundred and twenty-seven thousand men of all arms. Fifteen thousand of these were in Holstein, under the marquis of Romana, but twenty thousand were already partially concentrated in Portugal. The remainder, in which were comprised eleven thousand Swiss and thirty thousand militia, were dispersed in various parts Historia de la Guerra contra Napoleon Buonaparte. of the kingdom, principally in Andalusia. Besides this force, there was a sort of local reserve called the urban militia, much neglected, and indeed more a name than a reality. Nevertheless the advantage of such an institution was considerable; men were to be had in abundance: and as the greatest difficulty in a sudden crisis is to prepare the frame-work of order, it was no small resource to find a plan of service ready, the principle of which was understood by the people.
The French army in the Peninsula about the same period, although amounting to eighty thousand men, exclusive of those under Junot in Portugal, had not more than seventy thousand capable of active operations; the remainder were sick or in depôts. The possession of the fortresses, the central position, and the combination of this comparatively small army, gave it great strength; but it had also many points of weakness; it was made up of the conscripts of different nations, French, Swiss, Italians, Poles, and even Portuguese, whom Junot had expatriated, partly to strengthen the French army, partly to weaken the nation which he held in subjection; and it is a curious fact, that some of them remained in Spain until the end of the war. A few of the imperial guards were also employed, and here and there an old regiment of the line was mixed with the young troops to give them consistence; but with these exceptions Napoleon’s notes. [Appendix, No. 3.]
Thiebault.
Dupont’s Journal. MSS. the French army must be considered as a raw levy fresh from the plough and unacquainted with discipline: so late even as the month of August many of the battalions had not completed the first elements of their drill, and if they had not been formed upon good skeletons, the difference between them and the insurgent peasantry would have been very trifling. This fact explains, in some measure, the otherwise incomprehensible checks and defeats which the French sustained at the commencement of the contest, and it likewise proves how little of vigour there was in Spanish resistance at the moment of the greatest enthusiasm.
In the distribution of these troops Napoleon attended principally to the security of Madrid. The capital city, and the centre of all interests, its importance was manifest, and the great line of communication between it and Bayonne was early and constantly covered with troops. But the imprudence with which the grand duke of Berg brought up the corps of Moncey and Dupont to the capital, the manner in which those corps were posted, cutting off the communication between the northern and southern provinces, and the haughty impolitic demeanour assumed by that prince, drew on the crisis of affairs before the time was ripe, and obliged the French monarch to hasten the advance of other troops, and to make a greater display of his force than was consistent with his policy; for Murat’s movement, while it threatened the Spaniards and provoked their hostility, placed the French army in an isolated position, leaving the long line of communication with France unprovided with soldiers and requiring fresh battalions to fill up the void thus discovered; and this circumstance generated additional anger and suspicion at a very critical period of time. To supply the chasm left by Moncey’s advance, the formation of a new corps was commenced in Navarre, Napoleon’s notes, [Appendix, No. 2.] and by successive reinforcements so increased; that in June it amounted to twenty-three thousand men, who were placed under the command of marshal Bessieres, and took the title of the “army of the Western Pyrenees.”
Bessieres, at the first appearance of the commotion, fixed his head quarters at Burgos and occupied Vittoria, Miranda de Ebro, and other towns, placing posts in his front towards Leon; this position, while it protected the line from Bayonne to the capital, enabled him to awe the Asturias and Biscay, and (by giving him the command of the valley of the Duero,) to keep the kingdom of Leon and the province of Segovia in check. The town and castle of Burgos, being put into a state of defence, contained his dépôts, and became the centre and pivot of his operations; while some intermediate posts and the fortresses connected him with Bayonne, where a reserve of twenty thousand men was formed under general Drouet, then commanding the eleventh military division of France.