The second corps of the Rhenish confederated troops was stationed in Catalonia, where they were fully occupied. Their fate has been described by two Saxon officers, Jacobs and Von Seebach. In the commencement of 1809, Reding the Swiss, who had, in 1808, chiefly contributed to the capture of the French army at Baylen, commanded the whole of the Spanish forces in Catalonia, consisting of forty thousand Spaniards and several thousand Swiss; but these guerilla troops, almost invincible in petty warfare, were totally unable to stand in open battle against the veterans of the French emperor, and Reding was completely routed by St. Cyr at Taragona. In St. Cyr's army were eight thousand Westphalians under General Morio, three thousand Berglanders, fifteen hundred Wurzburgers, from eight to nine hundred men of Schwarzburg, Lippe, Waldeck, and Reuss, all of whom were employed in the wearisome siege of Gerona, which was defended by Don Alvarez, one of Spain's greatest heroes. The popular enthusiasm was so intense that even the women took up arms (in the company of St. Barbara) and aided in the defence of the walls. The Germans, ever destined to head the assault, suffered immense losses on each attempt to carry the place by storm. In one attack alone, on the 3d of July, in which they met with a severe repulse, they lost two thousand of their men. Their demand of a truce for the purpose of carrying their wounded off the field of battle was answered by a Spaniard, Colonel Blas das Furnas, "A quarter of an hour hence not one of them will be alive!" and the whole of the wounded men were, in fact, murdered in cold blood by the Spaniards. During a second assault on the 19th of September, sixteen hundred of their number and the gallant Colonel Neuff, an Alsatian, who had served in Egypt, fell. Gerona was finally driven by famine to capitulate, after a sacrifice of twelve thousand men, principally Germans, before her walls. Of the eight thousand Westphalians but one battalion remained. St. Cyr was, in 1810, replaced by Marshal Augereau, but the troops were few in number and worn out with fatigue; a large convoy was lost in an unlucky engagement, in which numbers of the Germans deserted to the Spanish, and Augereau retired to Barcelona, the metropolis of Catalonia, in order to await the arrival of reinforcements, among which was a Nassau regiment, one of Anhalt, and the identical Saxon corps that had so dreadfully suffered in the Tyrol.[7] The Saxon and Nassau troops, two thousand two hundred strong, under the command of General Schwarz, an Alsatian, advanced from Barcelona toward the celebrated mountain of Montserrat, whose hermitages, piled up one above another en amphitheatre, excite the traveller's wonder. Close in its vicinity lay the city of Manresa, the focus of the Catalonian insurrection. The German troops advanced in close column, although surrounded by infuriated multitudes, by whom every straggler was mercilessly butchered. The two regiments, nevertheless, succeeded in making themselves masters of Manresa, where they were instantly shut in, furiously assailed, and threatened with momentary destruction. The Anhalt troops and a French corps, despatched by Augereau to their relief, were repulsed with considerable loss. Schwarz now boldly sallied forth, fought his way through the Spaniards, and, after losing a thousand men, succeeded in reaching Barcelona, but was shortly afterward, after assisting at the taking of Hostalrich, surprised at La Bisbal and taken prisoner with almost all the Saxon troops. The few that remained fell victims to disease.[8] The fate of the prisoners was indeed melancholy. Several thousand of them died on the Balearic Islands, chiefly on the island of Cabrera, where, naked and houseless, they dug for themselves holes in the sand and died in great numbers of starvation. They often also fell victims to the fury of the inhabitants. The Swiss engaged in the Spanish service, sometimes saved their lives at the hazard of their own.
Opposed to them was the German Legion, composed of the brave Hanoverians, who had preferred exile in Britain to submission to Jerome, and had been sent in British men-of-war to Portugal, whence they had, in conjunction with the troops of England and Spain, penetrated, in 1808, into the interior of Spain.[9] At Benavente, they made a furious charge upon the French and took their long-delayed revenge. Linsingen's cavalry cut down all before them; arms were severed at a blow, heads were split in two; one head was found cut in two across from one ear to the other. A young Hanoverian soldier took General Lefebvre prisoner, but allowed himself to be deprived of his valuable captive by an Englishman.—The Hanoverians served first under Sir John Moore. On the death of that commander at Corunna, the troops under his command returned to England: a ship of the line, with two Hanoverian battalions on board, was lost during the passage. The German Legion afterward served under the Duke of Wellington, and shared the dangers and the glory of the war in the Peninsula. "The admirable accuracy and rapidity of the German artillery under Major Hartmann greatly contributed to the victory of Talavera, and received the personal encomiums of the Duke."
Langwerth's brigade gained equal glory. The German Legion was, however, never in full force in Spain. A division was, in 1809, sent to the island of Walcheren, but shared the ill-success attending all the attempts made in the North Sea during Napoleon's reign. The conquest and demolition of Vliessingen in August was the only result. A pestilence broke out among the troops, and, on Napoleon's successes in Austria, it was compelled to return to England. A third division, consisting of several Hanoverian regiments, was sent to Sicily, accompanied the expedition to Naples in 1809, and afterward guarded the rocks of Sicily. The Hanoverians in Spain were also separated into various divisions, each of which gained great distinction, more particularly so, the corps of General Alten in the storming of Ciudad-Rodrigo. In 1812, the Hanoverian cavalry broke three French squares at Garcia Hernandez.
The Russians had, meanwhile, invaded Sweden. Gustavus Adolphus, hitherto Russia's firmest ally, was suddenly and treacherously attacked. General Buxhovden overran Finland, inciting the people, as he advanced, to revolt against their lawful sovereign. But the brave Finlanders stoutly resisted the attempted imposition of the yoke of the barbarous Russ, and, although ill-supported by Sweden, performed prodigies of valor. Gustavus Adolphus was devoid of military knowledge, and watched, as if sunk in torpor, the ill-planned operations of his generals. While the flower of the Swedish troops was uselessly employed against Denmark and Norway, Finland was allowed to fall into the grasp of Russia.[10] The Russians were already expected to land in Sweden, when a conspiracy broke out among the nobility and officers of the army, which terminated in the seizure of the king's person and his deposition, March, 1809. His son, Gustavus Vasa, the present ex-king of Sweden, was excluded from the succession, and his uncle Charles, the imbecile and unworthy duke of Sudermania,[11] was proclaimed king under the title of Charles XIII. He was put up as a scarecrow by the conspirators. Gustavus Adolphus IV. had, at all events, shown himself incapable of saving Sweden. But the conspirators were no patriots, nor was their object the preservation of their country; they were merely bribed traitors, weak and incapable as the monarch they had dethroned. They were composed of a party among the ancient nobility, impatient of the restrictions of a monarchy, and of the younger officers in the army, who were filled with enthusiasm for Napoleon. The rejoicings on the occasion of the abdication of Gustavus Adolphus were heightened by the news of the victory gained by Napoleon at Ratisbon, which, at the same time, reached Stockholm. The new and wretched Swedish government instantly deferred everything to Napoleon and humbly solicited his favor; but Napoleon, to whom the friendship of Russia was, at that time, of higher importance than the submission of a handful of intriguants in Sweden, received their homage with marked coldness. Finland, shamefully abandoned in her hour of need, was immediately ceded to Russia, in consideration of which, Napoleon graciously restored Rugen and Swedish-Pomerania to Sweden. Charles XIII. adopted, as his son and successor, Christian Augustus, prince of Holstein-Augustenburg, who, falling dead off his horse at a review,[12] the aged and childless monarch was compelled to make a second choice, which fell upon the French general, Bernadotte, who had, at one time, been a furious Jacobin and had afterward acted as Napoleon's general and commandant in Swedish-Pomerania, where he had, by his mildness, gained great popularity. The majority in Sweden deemed him merely a creature of Napoleon, whose favor they hoped to gain by this flattering choice; others, it may be, already beheld in him Napoleon's future foe, and knew the value of the sagacity and wisdom with which he was endowed, and of which the want was so deeply felt in Sweden at a period when intrigue and cunning had succeeded to violence. The Freemasons, with whom he had placed himself in close communication, appear to have greatly influenced his election.[13] The unfortunate king, Gustavus Adolphus, after being long kept a close prisoner in the castle of Gripsholm, where his strong religious bias had been strengthened by apparitions,[14] was permitted to retire into Germany; he disdainfully refused to accept of a pension, separated himself from his consort, a princess of Baden, and lived in proud poverty, under the name of Colonel Gustavson, in Switzerland.— Bernadotte, the newly adopted prince, took the title of Charles John, crown prince of Sweden. Napoleon, who was in ignorance of this intrigue, was taken by surprise, but, in the hope of Bernadotte's continued fidelity, presented him with a million en cadeau; Bernadotte had, however, been long jealous of Napoleon's fortune, and, solely intent upon gaining the hearts of his future subjects, deceived him and secretly permitted the British to trade with Sweden, although publicly a party in the continental system.
This system was at this period enforced with exaggerated severity by Napoleon. He not only prohibited the importation of all British goods, but seized all already sent to the continent and condemned them to be publicly burned. Millions evaporated in smoke, principally at Amsterdam, Hamburg, Frankfort, and Leipzig. The wealthiest mercantile establishments were made bankrupt.
In addition to the other blows at that time zealously bestowed upon the dead German lion, the king of Denmark attempted to extirpate the German language in Schleswig, but the edict to that effect, published on the 19th of January, 1811, was frustrated by the courage of the clergy, schoolmasters, and peasantry, who obstinately refused to learn Danish.[15]
[Footnote 1: The pope, among other things, long refused his consent to the second marriage of the king of Westphalia, although that prince's first wife was merely a Protestant and an American citizen.]
[Footnote 2: Bilderdyk, whom the Dutch consider as their greatest poet, was, nevertheless, at that time, Napoleon's basest flatterer, and ever expressed a hypochondriacal and senseless antipathy to Germany.]
[Footnote 3: At Amsterdam, in 1811; in the district around Leyden, in 1812. Insurrections of a similar character were suppressed in April, 1811, in the country around Liege; in December, 1812, at Aix-la- Chapelle; the East Frieslanders also rebelled against the conscription.]
[Footnote 4: It was during this year that Napoleon caused the seamless coat of the Saviour, which had, during the Revolution, taken refuge at Augsburg, to be borne in a magnificent procession to Treves and to be exposed for eighteen days to public view. The pilgrims amounted to two hundred and fifty thousand.—Hormayr, who had, during the foregoing year, summoned the Tyrolese to arms against Napoleon, said in his Annual for 1811, "By the marriage of the emperor Napoleon with Maria Louisa, the Revolution may be considered as completely terminated and peace durably settled throughout Europe.">[