The Spanish auxiliary forces were well received in the north and in the Alemtejo; but general Taranco dying soon after his arrival at Oporto, the French general Quesnel was sent to command that province. Junot had early taken possession of Elvas, and detached general Maurin to the Algarves, with sixteen Return of the French army. [Appendix, No. 28.] hundred men; and, when Solano was ordered by his court to withdraw from Portugal, nine French battalions and the cavalry, under the command of Kellerman, took possession of the Alemtejo also, and occupied the fortress of Setuval. At the same time Junot replaced Caraffa’s division at Thomar by a French force, and distributed the former in small bodies, at a considerable distance from each other, on both sides of the Tagus, immediately round Lisbon.
Foy.
The provisions of the treaty of Fontainebleau were unknown to the Portuguese, a circumstance that procured the Spanish troops a better reception than the French; but that treaty was now no longer regarded by Junot, whose conduct plainly discovered that he considered Portugal to be a possession entirely belonging to France.
When all his stragglers were come up, his army recovered from its fatigues, and that he knew that a reinforcement of five thousand men had arrived at Salamanca on its march to Lisbon, Junot proceeded more openly to assume the chief authority; he commenced Ibid.
Thiebault. by exacting a forced loan of two hundred thousand pounds, and not only interfered with the different departments of state, but put Frenchmen into all the lucrative offices; and his promises and protestations of amity became loud and frequent in proportion to his encroachments and the increase of his power. At last being created by Napoleon duke of Abrantes, he threw off all disguise, suppressed the council of regency, seized the reins of government himself, and while he established many useful regulations, made the nation sensibly alive to the fact that he was a despotic conqueror.
The flag and the arms of Portugal were replaced by those of France; and of the Portuguese army, eight thousand men were selected and sent from the kingdom, under the command of the marquis d’Alorna and Gomez Frere, two noblemen of the greatest reputation for military talent among the native officers. Five thousand more were attached to the divisions of Junot’s army, and the rest were disbanded.
An extraordinary contribution of four millions sterling, decreed by Napoleon, was then demanded, under the curious title of a ransom for the state; this sum was exorbitant, and Junot prevailed on the emperor Thiebault. to reduce it one half. He likewise on his own authority accepted the forced loan, the confiscated English merchandise, the church plate, and the royal property, in part payment; but the people were still unable to raise the whole amount, for the court had Foy. before taken the greatest part of the church plate and bullion of the kingdom, and had also drawn large sums from the people, under the pretext of defending the country, with which treasure they departed, leaving the public functionaries, the army, private creditors, and even domestic servants, unpaid.
But although great discontent and misery prevailed, the tranquillity of Lisbon, during the first month after the arrival of the French, was remarkable; no disturbance took place, the populace were completely controlled by the activity of a police, established under the prince regent’s government by the count de Novion, a French emigrant, and continued by Junot on an extended scale.
No capital city in Europe suffers so much as Lisbon from the want of good police regulations, and the French general conferred an unmixed benefit on the inhabitants by giving more effect to Novion’s plans; yet so deeply rooted is the prejudice in favour of ancient customs, that no act of the duke of Abrantes gave the Portuguese more offence than his having the streets cleansed, and the wild dogs (that infested them by thousands) killed. A French serjeant, distinguished by his zeal in destroying those disgusting and dangerous animals, was in revenge assassinated.
Thiebault.
In the course of March and April, Junot’s military system was completed; the arsenal of Lisbon, one of the finest establishments of the kind in Europe, contained all kinds of naval and military stores in abundance, and ten thousand excellent workmen in every branch of business appertaining to war; hence the artillery, the carriages, the ammunition, and all the minor equipments of the army, were soon renewed and put in the best possible condition, and the hulks of two line-of-battle ships, three frigates, and seven lighter vessels of war, were refitted, armed, and moored across the river to defend the entrance, and to awe the town. The army itself, perfectly recovered from its fatigues, reinforced, and better disciplined, was grown confident in its chief from the success of the invasion, and being well fed and clothed, was become a fine body of robust men, capable of any exertion. In March it was re-organized in three divisions of infantry and one of cavalry. General La Borde commanded the first, general Loison the second, general Travot the third, general Margaron the fourth, and general Taviel directed the artillery. General Kellerman commanded in the Alemtejo, general Quesnel at Oporto, general Maurin in the Algarves, and Junot himself in Lisbon.