History of the war in the Peninsula and in the south of France from the year 1807 to the year 1814, vol. 4

by William Francis Patrick Napier

To these complaints, Napoleon answered with1811. January. his usual force and clearness of judgment. He insisted that the cost of the war had drained the French exchequer; that he had employed nearly four hundred thousand men for the king’s interest, and that rather than increase the expenses he would withdraw some of the troops. He reproachedJoseph’s papers captured at Vittoria, MSS. Joseph with the feebleness of his operations, the waste and luxury of his court, his ill-judged schemes of conciliation, his extravagant rewards, his too great generosity to the opposite party, and his raising, contrary to the opinion of the marshals, a Spanish army which would desert on the first reverse. The constitution of Bayonne, he said, was rendered null by the war, nevertheless he had not taken a single village from Spain, and he had no wish to seize the provinces of the Ebro, unless the state of the contest obliged him to do so. He required indeed a guarantee for the repayment of the money France had expended for the Spanish crown, yet the real wishes of the people were to be ascertained before any cession of territory could take place, and to talk of Portugal before it was conquered was folly. As this last observation wasIbid. Joseph’s own argument, an explanation ensued, when it appeared that Almenara, thinking the seizure of the Ebro provinces a settled plan, had, of his own accord, asked for Portugal as an indemnification; a fact that marks the character of the Spanish cabinet.

Napoleon also assured the king that there must be a great deal of money in Spain, for, besides the sums sent from France, the plate of the suppressed convents, and the silver received by the Spaniards from America, there were the subsidies from England, and the enormous expenditure of her troops. Then, the seizure and sale of national domains, and of confiscated colonial produce, were to be taken into calculation, and if the king wanted more, he must extract it from the country, or go without. France would only continue her subsidy of two millions of franks monthly. The emperor had always supported his wars by the resources of the territory in which it was carried on, and the king might do the same.

Joseph replied that his court was neither luxurious nor magnificent; that he recompensed services, by giving bills on the contingent sales of national domains, which could not be applied to the wants of the soldiers; that he could scarcely keep the public servants alive, and that his own expenses were not greater than the splendour of the crown required. That many of the best generals approved of his raising a Spanish army, desertions from it were less frequent than was imagined, and were daily diminishing; and these native troops served to garrison towns while the French were in the field. He wished, he said, to obtain large loans rather than small gifts from the French treasury, and desired that the confiscated property of the Spanish noblemen who had been declared traitors in 1808, should be paid to him; but with regard to harsh measures, the people could not pay the contributions, and the proceedings of a king with his subjects shouldJoseph’s papers captured at Vittoria, MSS. not be like those of a foreign general. Lenity was necessary to tranquillize the provinces subdued, and as an example to those which resisted. The first thing was to conciliate the people’s affections. The plate of the suppressed convents was not so valuable as it appeared at a distance, the greater part of it was already plundered by the guerillas, or by the French troops. The French marshals intercepted his revenues, disregarded his orders, insulted his government, and oppressed the country. He was degraded as a monarch and would endure it no longer. He had been appointed to the throne of Spain without his own consent, and although he would never oppose his brother’s will, he would notJoseph’s papers captured at Vittoria, MSS. live a degraded king, and was therefore ready to resign, unless the emperor would come in person and remedy the present evils.

Napoleon, while he admitted the reasonableness of some of the king’s statements, still insisted, and with propriety of argument, that it was necessary to subdue the people before they could be conciliated. Yet to prevent wanton abuses of power, he fixed the exact sum which each person,[Appendix, No. III.] Section 3. from the general governors down to the lowest subaltern was to receive, and he ordered every person violating this regulation to be dismissed upon the spot, and a report of the circumstance sent to Paris within twenty hours after. Before this, Bessieres, acknowledged by all to be aFebruary. just and mild man, had been sent to remedy the mischief said to have been done by Kellerman, and others in the northern provinces. And in respect of conciliation, the emperor remarked that he had himself, at first, intended to open secret negotiations with the Cortes, but on finding what an obscure rabble they were, he had desisted. He therefore recommended Joseph to assemble at Madrid a counter-cortes, composed of men of influence andApril. reputation, wherein (adverting to the insane insolence of the Spaniards towards their colonies) he might by the discussion of really liberal institutions, and by exposing the bad faith with which the English encouraged the Americans, improve public opinion, and conciliate the Spaniards with hopes of preserving the integrity of the empire, so rudely shaken by the revolt of the colonies.

An additional subsidy was peremptorily refused, but the emperor finally consented to furnish Joseph with half a million of franks monthly, for the particular support of his court; and it is worthy of notice, as illustrating the character of Napoleon, that in the course of these disputes, Joseph’s friends[Appendix, No. III.] at Paris, repeatedly advised him, that the diplomatic style of his letters incensed and hardened the emperor, whereas his familiar style as a brother always softened and disposed him to concede what was demanded. Joseph, however, could not endureMay. the decree for establishing the military governments, by which the administration was placed entirely in the hands of the generals, and their reports upon the civil and judicial administration referred entirely to the emperor. It was a measure assailing at once his pride, his power, and his purse. His mind, therefore, became daily more embittered, and his prefects and commissaries, emboldened by his opinions, absolutely refused to act under the French marshal’s orders. Many of these complaints, founded on the reports of his Spanish servants, were untrue and others distorted. We have seen how the habitual exaggerations, and even downright falsehoods of the juntas and the regency, thwarted the English general’s operations, and the king, as well as the French generals, must have encountered a like disposition in the Spanish ministers. Nevertheless, the nature of the war rendered it impossible but that much ground of complaint should exist.

Joseph’s personal sentiments, abstractedly viewed, were high-minded and benevolent; but they sorted ill with his situation as an usurper. He had neither patience nor profundity in his policy, and at last such was his irritation, that having drawn up a private but formal renunciation of the crown, he took an escort of five thousand men, and about the[Appendix, No. III.] Section 2. period of the battle of Fuentes Onoro, passed out of Spain and reached Paris: there Ney, Massena, Junot, St. Cyr, Kellerman, Augereau, Loison, and Sebastiani, were also assembled, and all discontented with the war, and with each other.

By this rash and ill-timed proceeding, the intrusive government was left without a head, and the army of the centre was rendered nearly useless at the critical moment, when Soult, engaged in the Albuera operations, had a right to expect support from Madrid. The northern army also was in a great measure paralysed, and the army of Portugal, besides having just failed at Fuentes, was in all the disorganization attendant upon the retreat from Santarem, and upon a change of commanders. This was the principal cause why Bessieres abandonedSee [Chap. I.] the Asturias and concentrated his forces in Leon and Castile on the communications with France; for it behoved the French generals, everywhere to hold their troops in hand, and to be on the defensive, until the emperor’s resolution in this extraordinary conjuncture should be known.

Napoleon astounded at this precipitate action of the king, complained, with reason, that having promised not to quit the country without due[Appendix, No. III.] Section 3. notice, Joseph had failed to him, both as a monarch and as a general, and that he should at least have better chosen his time; for if he had retired in January, when the armies were all inactive, the evil would have been less, as the emperor might then have abandoned Andalusia, and concentrated Soult’s and Massena’s troops on the Tagus; which would have been in accord with the policy fitting for the occasion. But now when the armies had suffered reverses, when they were widely separated, and in pursuit of different objects, the mischief was great, and the king’s conduct not to be justified!

Joseph replied that he had taken good measures to prevent confusion during his absence, and then reiterating his complaints and declaring his resolution to retire into obscurity, he finished by observing, with equal truth and simplicity of mind, that it would be better for the emperor that he[Appendix, No. III.] Section 2. should do so, inasmuch as in France he would be a good subject, but in Spain a bad king.

The emperor had however too powerful an intellect for his brother to contend with. Partly by reason, partly by authority, partly by concession, he obliged him to return again in July, furnished with a species of private treaty, by which the army of the centre was placed entirely at his disposal. He was also empowered to punish delinquents, to change the organization, and to remove officers who were offensive to him, even the chief of the staff, general Belliard, who had been represented by Orquijo as inimical to his system. And if any of the other armies should, by the chances of war, arrive within the district of the centre army, they also, while there, were to be under the king; and at all times, even in their own districts, when he placed himself at their head. The army of the north was to remain with its actual organization and under a marshal, but Joseph had liberty to change Bessieres for Jourdan.