History of the war in the Peninsula and in the south of France from the year 1807 to the year 1814, vol. 5

by William Francis Patrick Napier

To have given up all the Peninsula, west of the Ebro, would have been productive of no benefit, save what might have accrued from the jealousy which the Spaniards already displayed towards their allies; but if that jealousy, as was probable, had forced the British general away, he could have carried his army to Italy, or have formed in Germany the nucleus of a great northern confederation on the emperor’s rear. Portugal was therefore, in truth, the point of all Europe in which the British strength was least dangerous to Napoleon during the invasion of Russia; moreover, an immediate war with that empire was not a certain event previous to the capture of Valencia. Napoleon was undoubtedly anxious to avoid it while the Spanish contest continued; yet, with a far-reaching European policy, in which his English adversaries were deficient, he foresaw and desired to check the growing strength of that fearful and wicked power which now menaces the civilised world.

The proposal for peace which he made to England before his departure for the Niemen is another circumstance where his object seems to have been misrepresented. It was called a device to reconcile the French to the Russian war; but they were as eager for that war as he could wish them to be, and it is more probable that it sprung from a secret misgiving, a prophetic sentiment of the consequent power of Russia, lifted, as she then would be towards universal tyranny, by the very arm which he had raised to restrain her. The ostensible ground of his quarrel with the emperor Alexander was the continental system; yet, in this proposal for peace, he offered to acknowledge the house of Braganza in Portugal, the house of Bourbon in Sicily, and to withdraw his army from the Peninsula, if England would join him in guaranteeing the crown of Spain to Joseph, together with a constitution to be arranged by a national Cortes. This was a virtual renunciation of the continental system for the sake of peace with England; and a proposal which obviated the charge of aiming at universal dominion, seeing that Austria, Spain, Portugal, and England would have retained their full strength, and the limits of his empire would have been fixed. The offer was made also at a time when the emperor was certainly more powerful than he had ever yet been, when Portugal was, by the avowal of Wellington himself, far from secure, and Spain quite exhausted. At peace with England, Napoleon could easily have restored the Polish nation, and Russia would have been repressed. Now, Poland has fallen, and Russia stalks in the plenitude of her barbarous tyranny.

Political state of England.—The new administration, despised by the country, was not the less powerful in parliament; its domestic proceedings were therefore characterised by all the corruption and tyranny of Mr. Pitt’s system, without his redeeming genius. The press was persecuted with malignant ferocity, and the government sought to corrupt all that it could not trample upon. Repeated successes had rendered the particular contest in the Peninsula popular with the ardent spirits of the nation, and war-prices passed for glory with the merchants, land-owners, and tradesmen; but as the price of food augmented faster than the price of labour, the poorer people suffered, they rejoiced, indeed, at their country’s triumphs because the sound of victory is always pleasing to warlike ears, but they were discontented. Meanwhile all thinking men, who were not biassed by factions, or dazzled by military splendour, perceived in the enormous expenses incurred to repress the democratic principle, and in the consequent transfer of property, the sure foundation of future reaction and revolution. The distresses of the working classes had already produced partial insurrections, and the nation at large was beginning to perceive that the governing powers, whether representative or executive, were rapacious usurpers of the people’s rights; a perception quickened by malignant prosecutions, by the insolent extravagance with which the public money was lavished on the family of Mr. Perceval, and by the general profusion at home, while lord Wellesley declared that the war languished for want of sustenance abroad.

Napoleon’s continental system, although in the nature of a sumptuary law, which the desires of men will never suffer to exist long in vigour, was yet so efficient, that the British government was forced to encourage, and protect, illicit trading, to the great detriment of mercantile morality. The island of Heligoland was the chief point of deposit for this commerce, and either by trading energy, or by the connivance of continental governments, the emperor’s system was continually baffled; nevertheless its effects will not quickly pass away; it pressed sorely upon the manufacturers at the time, and by giving rise to rival establishments on the continent, has awakened in Germany a commercial spirit by no means favourable to England’s manufacturing superiority.

But ultimate consequences were never considered by the British ministers; the immediate object was to procure money, and by virtually making bank-notes a legal tender, they secured unlimited means at home, through the medium of loans and taxes, which the corruption of the parliament, insured to them, and which, by a reaction, insured the corruption of the parliament. This resource failed abroad. They could, and did, send to all the allies of England, enormous supplies in kind, because to do so, was, in the way of contracts, an essential part of the system of corruption at home; a system aptly described, as bribing one-half of the nation with the money of the other half, in order to misgovern both. Specie was however only to be had in comparatively small quantities, and at a premium so exorbitant, that even the most reckless politician trembled for the ultimate consequences.

The foreign policy of the government was very simple, namely, to bribe all powers to wear down France. Hence to Russia every thing, save specie, was granted; and hence also, amicable relations with Sweden were immediately re-established, and the more readily that this power had lent herself to the violation of the continental system by permitting the entry of British goods at Stralsund; but wherever wisdom, or skill, was required, the English minister’s resources failed altogether. With respect to Sicily, Spain, and Portugal, this truth was notorious; and to preserve the political support of the trading interests at home, a degrading and deceitful policy, quite opposed to the spirit of lord Wellington’s counsels, was followed in regard to the revolted Spanish colonies.

The short-sighted injustice of the system was however most glaring with regard to the United States of America. Mutual complaints, the dregs of the war of independence, had long characterised the intercourse between the British and American governments, and these discontents were turned into extreme hatred by the progress of the war with France. The British government in 1806 proclaimed, contrary to the law of nations, a blockade of the French coast, which could not be enforced. Napoleon, in return, issued the celebrated decrees of Berlin and Milan, which produced the no less celebrated orders in council. The commerce of all neutrals was thus extinguished by the arrogance of the belligerents; but the latter very soon finding that their mutual convenience required some relaxation of mutual violence, granted licenses to each other’s ships, and by this scandalous evasion of their own policy, caused the whole of the evil to fall upon the neutral, who was yet called the friend of both parties.

The Americans, unwilling to go to war with two such powerful states, were yet resolved not to submit to the tyranny of either; but the injustice of the English government was the most direct, and extended in its operations, and it was rendered infinitely more bitter by the violence used towards the seamen of the United States: not less than six thousand sailors, it was said, were taken from merchant vessels on the high seas, and forced to serve in the British men-of-war. Wherefore, after first18th June, 1812. passing retaliatory, or rather warning acts, called the non-intercourse, non-importation, and embargo acts, the Americans finally declared war, at the moment when the British government, alarmed at the consequences of their own injustice, had just rescinded the orders in council.

The immediate effects of these proceedings on the contest in the Peninsula, shall be noticed in another place, but the ultimate effects on England’s prosperity have not yet been unfolded. The struggle prematurely told the secret of American strength, and it has drawn the attention of the world to a people, who, notwithstanding the curse of black slavery which clings to them, adding the most horrible ferocity to the peculiar baseness of their mercantile spirit, and rendering their republican vanity ridiculous, do in their general government uphold civil institutions, which have startled the crazy despotisms of Europe.

Political state of Spain.—Bad government is more hurtful than direct war; the ravages of the last are soon repaired, and the public mind is often purified, and advanced, by the trial of adversity, but the evils, springing from the former, seem interminable. In the Isla de Leon the unseemly currents of folly, although less raging than before, continued to break open new channels and yet abandoned none of the old. The intrigues of the princess Carlotta were unremitted, and though the danger of provoking the populace of Cadiz, restrained and frightened her advocates in the Cortez, she opposed the English diplomacy, with reiterated, and not quite unfounded accusations, that the revolt of the colonies was being perfidiously fostered by Great Britain:—a charge well calculated to lower the influence of England, especially in regard to the scheme of mediation, which beingApril. revived in April by lord Castlereagh, was received by the Spaniards with outward coldness, and a secret resolution to reject it altogether; nor were they in any want of reasons to justify their proceedings.