This terminated the first series of operations in the fourth epoch of the war; operations which, in three weeks, had put the French in possession of Andalusia and Southern Estremadura, with the exception of Gibraltar and Cadiz in the one, and of Badajos, Olivenza, and Albuquerque in the other province. Yet, great as were the results of this memorable irruption, more might have been obtained; and the capture of Cadiz would have been a fatal blow to the Peninsula.
From Andujar to Seville is only a hundred miles, yet the French took ten days to traverse that space; a tardiness for which there appears no adequate cause. The king, apparently elated at the acclamations and seeming cordiality with which the towns, and even villages, greeted him, moved slowly. He imagined that Seville would open her gates at once; and thinking that the possession of that town, would produce the greatest moral effect, in Andalusia, and all over Spain, changed the first judicious plan of campaign, and marched thither in preference to Cadiz. The moral influence of Seville, was however transferred, along with the government, to Cadiz; and Joseph was deceived in his expectations of entering the former city as he had entered Cordoba. When he discovered his error there was still time to repair it by a rapid pursuit of Albuquerque, but he feared to leave a city with a hundred thousand people in a state of excitement upon his flank; and resolving first to reduce Seville, he met indeed with no formidable resistance, yet so much of opposition, as left him only the alternative of storming the town or entering by negotiation. The first his humanity forbad; the latter cost him time, which was worth his crown, for Albuquerque’s proceedings were only secondary: the ephemeral resistance of Seville was the primary cause of the safety of Cadiz.
The march by which the Spanish duke secured the Isla de Leon, is only to be reckoned from Carmona. Previous to his arrival there, his movements, although judicious, were more the result of necessity than of skill. After the battle of Ocaña, he expected that Andalusia would be invaded; yet, either fettered by his orders or ill-informed of the enemy’s movements, his march upon Agudo was too late, and his after-march upon Guadalcanal, was the forced result of his position; he could only do that, or abandon Andalusia and retire to Badajos.
From Guadalcanal, he advanced towards Cordoba on the 23d, and he might have thrown himself into that town; yet the prudence of taking such a decided part, was dependent upon the state of public sentiment, of which he must have been a good judge. Albuquerque indeed, imagined, that the French were already in possession of the place, whereas they did not reach it until four days later; but they could easily have entered it on the 24th: and as he believed that they had done so, it is apparent that he had no confidence in the people’s disposition. In this view, his determination to cross the Guadalquivir, and take post at Carmona, was the fittest for the occasion. It was at Carmona he first appears to have considered Seville a lost city; and when the French approached, we find him marching, with a surprising energy, towards Cadiz, yet he was again late in deciding; for the enemy’s cavalry, moving by the shorter road to Utrera, overtook his rear-guard: and the infantry would assuredly have entered the Island of Leon with him, if the king had not directed them upon Seville. The ephemeral resistance of that city therefore saved Albuquerque; and he, in return, saved Cadiz.
CHAPTER II.
Lord Wellington’s plans were deeply affected by the invasion of Andalusia: but before treating of the stupendous campaign he was now meditating, it is necessary, once more to revert to the operations in the other parts of the Peninsula, tracing them up to a fixed point; because, although bearing strongly on the main action of the war, to recur to them chronologically, would totally destroy, the unity of narrative indispensable to a just handling of the subject.
OPERATIONS IN NAVARRE, ARAGON, AND VALENCIA.
Suchet, being ordered to quell the disorders in Navarre, repaired to Pampeluna, but previously directed an active pursuit of the student Mina, who, availing himself of the quarrel between the military governor and the viceroy, was actually master of the country between that fortress and Tudela, and was then at Sanguessa. General Harispe, with some battalions, marched straight against him from Zaragoza, while detachments from Tudela and Pampeluna endeavoured to surround him by the flanks, and a fourth body moving into the valleys of Ainsa and Medianoz, cut him off from the Cinca river.