But what were the efforts made for the defence of the country by this inhuman junta, which, having been originally assembled to discuss the form of establishing a central government, had, unlawfully, retained their delegated power, and used it so shamefully? There was a Spanish fleet, and a sufficient number of sailors to man it, in Carthagena. There was another fleet, and abundance of seamen, in Cadiz. Lord Collingwood, and others, pressed the junta, constantly and earnestly, to fit these vessels out, and to make use of them, or at least to place them beyond the reach of the enemy. His remonstrances were unheeded; the sailors were rendered mutinous for want of pay, and even of subsistence, and the government would neither fit out [Appendix, No. 9]. ships themselves, nor suffer the English seamen to do it for them; and at the very period when the marquis of Romana and the insurgents in Gallicia were praying for a few stands of arms and five Lord Collingwood’s Correspondence. thousand pounds, from sir John Cradock, the junta possessed many millions of money, and their magazines, General Miller’s Memoirs. in Cadiz, were unable to contain the continually increasing quantity of stores and arms arriving from England, which were left to rot as they arrived, while, from every quarter of the country not yet subdued, the demand for these things was incessant.
The fleet in Cadiz harbour might have been at sea in the beginning of February. In a week it might have been at Vigo, with money and succours of all kinds for the insurgents in Gallicia; after which, by skilful operations along the coast from Vigo to St. Sebastian, it might have occupied an enormous French force on that line of country. But instead of a fleet, the junta sent colonel Barios, an obscure person, to steal through by-ways, and to take the command of men who were not in want of leaders. In the same manner, the fleet in Carthagena might have been employed on the Catalonian and French coasts; but, far from using their means, which were really enormous, with energy and judgement, the junta carried on the war by encouraging virulent publications against the French, and confined their real exertions to the assembling of the unfortunate peasants in masses, to starve for a while, and then to be cut to pieces by their more experienced opponents.
The system of false reports, also, was persevered in without any relaxation: the French were beaten on all points; the marshals were slain or taken; their soldiers were deserting, or flying in terror at the sight of a Spaniard; Joseph had plundered and abandoned Madrid; and Zaragoza had not fallen. Castro, the envoy to the Portuguese regency, so late as April, anxiously endeavoured to persuade that government and the English general, that Zaragoza had never been subdued, and that the story of its fall was a French falsehood. In June, official letters were written to marshal Beresford, from the neighbourhood of Lugo, dated the very day upon which Soult’s army relieved that town, not to give intelligence of the event, but to announce the utter defeat of that marshal, and the capture of Lugo itself; the amount of the killed and wounded, and the prisoners taken, being very exactly stated; and this, with such an appearance of truth, as to deceive Beresford, notwithstanding his previous experience of the people he had to deal with.
But the proofs of corruption and incapacity in the junta are innumerable, and not confined to the records of events kept by British officers. Romana, a few months later, upon the question of appointing a regency, thus describes their conduct: “He himself,” he said, “had doubted if the central junta was a lawful government, and this doubt was general in the provinces through which he had passed; yet he had, to preserve the nation from anarchy, not only yielded obedience to it, but he had, likewise, forced the provinces of Gallicia, Leon, and Asturias to do the same; because he thought that an illegal government might be useful if it deserved the confidence of the people, and that they respected its authority. The central junta, however, was not thus situated: the people, judging of measures by their effects, complained that the armies were weak, the government without energy; that there were no supplies; that the promised accounts of the public expenditure were withheld; and yet, all the sums drawn from America, all the succours granted by England, the rents of the crown, and the voluntary contributions were expended. The public employments were not given to men of merit and true lovers of their country. Some of the members of the junta rendered their power subservient to their own advantage; others conferred lucrative appointments on their relations and dependents. Ecclesiastical offices had been filled up to enable individuals to seize those rents for themselves which ought to be appropriated for the public service. There was no unity to be found: many of the junta cared only for the interest of their particular province, as if they were not members of the Spanish monarchy; confirming the appointments of the local juntas, without regard to fitness; and even assigning recompenses to men destitute of military knowledge, who had neither seen service nor performed the duties assigned to them.”
“The junta, divided into sections, undertook to manage affairs in which they were unversed, and which were altogether foreign to their professions. Horses, taken from their owners under pretence of supplying the armies, were left to die of hunger in the sea-marshes: and, finally, many important branches of administration were in the hands of men, suspected, both from their own conduct and from their having been creatures of that infamous favourite who was the author of the general misery.”
It was at this period that the celebrated Partidas first commenced the guerilla, or petty warfare, which has been so lauded, as if that had been the cause of Napoleon’s discomfiture. Those bands were infinitely numerous, because, every robber, that feared a jail, or that could break from one; every smuggler,[8] whose trade had been interrupted; every friar, disliking the trammels of his convent; and every idler, that wished to avoid the ranks of the regular army, was to be found either as chief or associate in the partidas.
The French, although harassed by the constant and cruel murders of isolated soldiers, or followers of the army, and sometimes by the loss of convoys, were never thwarted in any great object by these bands; but the necessity of providing subsistence, and attaching his followers to his fortunes, generally obliged the guerilla chief to rob his countrymen; and, indeed, one of the principal causes of the sudden growth of this system was the hope of intercepting the public and private plate, which, under a decree of Joseph, was bringing in from all parts to be coined in Madrid; for that monarch was obliged to have recourse to forced loans, and the property of the proscribed nobles, and suppressed convents, to maintain even the appearance of a court.
This description will apply to the mass of the partidas; but there were certainly some who were actuated by nobler motives; by revenge; by a gallant enterprising spirit; or, by an honest ambition, thinking to serve their country better than by joining the regular forces. Among the principal chiefs may be placed, Renovales, and the two Minas, in Navarre and Arragon; Porlier named the marquisetto, and Longa, in the Asturias and Biscay; Juan Martin, or El Empecinado, who vexed the neighbourhood of Madrid; Julian Sanchez, in the Gata and Salamanca country; doctor Rovera, Pereña, and some others, in Catalonia; Juan Paladea, or El Medico, between the Moreno and Toledo; the curate Merino, El Principe, and Saornil, in Castile; the friar Sapia, in Soria, and Juan Abril, near Segovia.
But these men were of very different merit. Renovales, a regular officer, raised the peasantry of the valleys between Pampeluna and Zaragoza, after the fall of the latter city; but he was soon subdued. Juan Martin, Rovera, Julian Sanchez, and the student Mina, discovered most military talent, and Sanchez was certainly a very bold and honest man; but Espoz y Mina, the uncle and successor of the student, far outstripped his contemporaries in fame. He shed the blood of his prisoners freely, but rather from false principle, and under peculiar circumstances, than from any real ferocity, his natural disposition being manly and generous; and, although not possessed of any peculiar military genius, he had a sound judgement, surprising energy, and a constant spirit.
By birth a peasant, he despised the higher orders of his own country, and never would suffer any hidalgo, or gentleman, to join his band. From 1809, until the end of the war, he maintained himself in the provinces bordering on the Ebro; often defeated, and chased from place to place, he gradually increased his forces; until, in 1812, he yet was at the head of more than ten thousand men, whom he paid regularly, and supplied from resources chiefly created by himself; one of which was remarkable:—He established a treaty with the French generals, by which articles, not being warlike stores, coming from France, had safe conduct from his partida, on paying a duty, which Mina appropriated to the subsistence of his followers.